Humans are fascinated by violence and you've got to ask yourself. Why is it the rash guard? Yes
And I talk so much shit that I'm like, man if I lose this is gonna be rough. You're learning this shut the fuck up
I got you man. You were powered by McDonald's and Coca-Cola
I want more and then I spack them and he didn't want to fight anymore
If George St. Pierre and
Kabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins
I'm here with three individuals
Each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines
The greatest MMA fighter of all time George St. Pierre the greatest martial arts coach of all time
John Donahue her and
the greatest submission grappler of all time
Gordon Ryan
So let me ask the first question you guys didn't see the question no preparation here
What is the key to your success each of you one thing or multiple things that come to mind?
John go first
Is it the rash guard yes, I
I like that you choose John right off the bat seem the most nervous
For for me, it's about
Finding a way to work in a world where most of the answers are already known
Okay, and any developed sport by the time you enter that sport most of the basic precepts to the
The the major techniques that the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out and so
In a highly developed world
The key to success is to be able to identify
Some area of the industry that you're in which is currently undervalued
So do what the other people are not doing
Deeper than that. You're you
Everyone has a view of okay. These are the the main skills of the industry I work in
at any given time
Some set of skills attributes
Will always be somewhat undervalued they're underappreciated by the people in the game
You see that at any in any given industry there are always trends which change
The nature of the industry over time so
fashion trends in the clothing industry you'll see at any given time there's a
General wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time
What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say here is something which is
Genuinely useful, but which is currently being underused underutilized and I want to bring that back in and
develop it and
Because it's an inherently useful product
It will be very very successful in its initial applications against people who aren't currently using it
If you can do this in whatever ever industry you're in I believe you'll be highly successful
so this implies both for actual specific like techniques and
The also tactics as well in the case of
Jiu Jitsu so for example in my sport leg locks have always been around
Okay, there's there's no shortage of people you can look back in history who are applying leg locks
Nonetheless as in across the industry
Leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated. There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport
for most of the history of the sport of Jiu Jitsu tended to de-emphasize leg locks and
When I looked at them, I said there was immense potential, but it wasn't being realized and needed to be changed
Since then that has more or less occurred now most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important
Aspect and they're no longer undervalued if anything has gone too far the other way and now perhaps they're a little overvalued
and the
this kind of fashion trend exists in every industry and
The job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify
Okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued and then
Look at what is their actual objective value and then work
To to to bring them back to the forefront. So John brought up fashion
George is wearing a really sexy shirt. So
Assuming that's not the reason is there
Is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career?
Well, of course, everybody knows the famous and sort of every athletes are saying oh, it's could be genetic
I was maybe gifted that certain predisposition. I worked really hard
but I think
something that
People don't talk enough is when everybody sometimes go right. I
Was never afraid to try to go left and I felt many time trying to do things that were not
Known to be things that would bring brought me brought me success
But I I tried it, you know, I was very often I was the first of trying new things and I felt many time
but certain times it gives me a certain advantage and
for example, I
Was sometimes fighting guys that had much better wrestling background than than me on paper and
Nobody before that thought those guys never nobody had there to try to
Take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good
And I didn't have on paper that wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight
But when everybody
Tried to go right. I was going left. I fought them in a different way and that was
The blueprint to beat certain some of these guys, you know, I mean, you know what I mean
So yeah, so we'll actually talk about a few fights where you did just that this is fascinating
But let's say at the high level. So Gordon again sticking on fashion. May I compliment your
Incredible badass hat trying to fit in here. Yeah, we should say we're in Texas now. So he's
Become a Texan overnight. So what is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to your success?
Yeah, so first of all, that has to be a rule where you don't ask us all those same questions because
How am I supposed to compete with the answer John just gave?
There's nothing I can do that's gonna top that. Yeah, but I think it's
There's many things but I think the number one thing is just as John
When I came in I was a blue belt and I was beating Brown and black belts in competition already
But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport
I would just come in and if something wasn't working
I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively and that just degenerated me into
degenerated into me
spastically knee-sliding into cross-hashi Gurami against Eddie Cummings for six months and then just getting heel-hooked repeatedly and
I'm like, this is not working and Eddie like when I met him was like a chubby
Librarian looking guy and I'm like there's I'm like six to like a jacked like 170 and I'm like
There's no way I'm losing to a guy who looks like this
But he just kept heel-hooking me
So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn't work and then John's like well
If you learned leg locks, you might you might have some more success and then I was like, yeah
That probably makes sense and from then on I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport instead of doing
Doing things harder. I would actually try to get better at your jiu-jitsu. You remember like a turning point where
You became as opposed to being mediocre not just in technique, but an approach to
To great
Um, I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training consistently
So I trained full-time with John when I was purple belt mid-level purple belt and towards the end of my brown belt
Days I was beating up like legitimate like ADCC champions in the gym
So I think like brown to black belt was a big thing for me
And then when I won my first EBI and I was I smitted Yuri who won ADCC and I beat Roostum
So I think that was like my turning point as a competitor
But I think I started to to reach world level a little bit before that
I think somewhere around brown belt mid-level to late-level brown belt
It was it's some of that mental like it was there a moment when you like after a training session? You realize
I can actually do this
Like I could be at the top of the world. Yeah, the critical moment for me was when I think it was right
Right when I got my black belt, maybe a few months before I got my black belt
we had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and
We did a hard round together and I think I submitted them like four or five times and
And no one knew who I was I never won anything up until that point and I was like, okay
Like if this is like one of the best guys in the world and I could submit him multiple times around
I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a make a career out of this
Okay, so the actual performance was the like you don't need to
Believe before you could perform like a lot of Olympic gold medalists
They they have to believe before they can perform because like they're getting their ass kicked for a long long long time
Yeah
I think but the best way for me to believe in something is to have repeated success doing it against high level guys
Like I'm not gonna just believe I can do a double leg if I can't have double leg on anybody
So for me the the belief came from the repeated success in the gym
Yeah, but to get to the point where you're submitting somebody like Yuri Samoa is like one of the greatest grapplers ever
It's like a long journey
Yeah, but I had the confidence
I had to believe in myself because of the success that I had in the gym prior to that got it
So that man even and it's one step at a time first is the brown belt, so that's the black belt and it's world-class. Okay
George was there a turning point for you when you you thought like I can actually do this
Yes, I am I always dreamed to become champion
But I think the turning point that there was there was two turning point and there were my two losses
First my losses to Matt use I went into that fight
Just to not lose I was not fighting to win and it's after the fight when I watched the
The replay of the fight. I realized I was like I was doing pretty well
But during the fight in my own mind. I was not seeing it that way
I I thought I was getting dominated by you was like a hundred percent when I watched the replay I
Was like man, I can I can't beat this guy. I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake
so I was very frustrating but but I
I was that's what gave me the mentally the the championship level man mentality
and then I became a little bit overconfident because I start beating everybody after that and I
Start to believe the hype of people when they look at me
They were like, oh, he's the new up-incoming
Superstar and he's gonna be unstoppable and and then when I became champion I I
I lost to to to Matt to Matt Sarah. So
before I believe
my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence and
and
My second failure was I was because I was overconfident. So I think it's there's a perfect
Center of confidence. I mean, I mean, it's good to be confident
Because John taught me like confidence. It's it's like money in your bank account
If you you can have all the skills in the world, right?
And and if you're if you don't have the confidence, it's like you it's like you can you can be a millionaire
But you don't have access to your bank account
So it's that's a little bit the analogy that John told me so that's how I feel a confidence plays for an athlete
But to be overconfident, I think it's always good to to be aware to be afraid of
Of what can happen. So to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear to me
That's what mentally gave me the edge to become. I believe successful in my sport
playing off that
John gave me a speech one time and he was like you have to be able to
Like flip a switch and turn it off where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who's super confident and
He plays the character of someone who's like no one can beat me. I'm the best that there ever was and that's it
But if you look at me actually train very hard
You can't you can't play the persona of no one can beat me and have it translate into your life
And you think that you're so good that you don't have to do anything and no one could ever beat you
You have to be able to play that public persona of no one could beat me
But then you have to actually do the training to make that happen
You can't just you can't believe your own hypen say say that, you know, I can just do whatever
I want no one's ever gonna beat me if the able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete
And that made a big difference for me. It's tough because
Like you're you you dominate such a large fraction of the world and in grappling and
George to just the perfect dominance after those two
It's hard for the confidence not to just
Like how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down where you completely
deludes your mind
Um, for me, it's just number one the guys in the gym are so tough
So the guys in the guys in the gym that I train with are always like nipping at my butt and always giving me new
Problems to solve and for me, it's really just about trying to learn new stuff over time
So that keeps it interesting for me and it's not really about
You know, no one could beat me I don't have to train or have to do it
I could do whatever I want
It's more what keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I'm learning new stuff all the time of working on
Something new and progressing to new levels at all times. It's not I don't just come in and do the same thing over and over again
And that gets boring. He just come in and you don't learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time
And okay, okay, this is boring
But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals short-term and long-term goals to reach then it makes it interesting
It's a for me. It's a little bit like Gordon says is the fear because sometime in the gym
I even before when I was competing I was I was getting my butt kicked
But I don't care what happened in the gym
I mean it hit my ego, of course, because I'm a proud person
I'm a competitor even in the gym, but it's not a malicious competition
Competition in between each other when you fight you have to be malicious you go there to hurt the guy
but it hit it hit me in terms of my pride when I get
beat in a gym, of course, but
that fear that
I don't want it to happen in public, especially not during a fight that what keeps helped me keeps the balance between
Confidence and and and and fear. You know what I mean? It's kind of weird. It's a mix
It's a mixture of both that I believe I
to me
Help me
Succeed to have the right mindset to fight and I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this
This is gonna be rough. So yeah, you put a lot of I mean
That's that's a hard thing to do when you talk shit when you when you play the heel is
So actually perform the pressure is I mean you have to be good under pressure
It's the con of McGregor thing. You know the reason I actually started talking shit was actually like indirectly because of George
Because because I will become the opposite of George
I won I won my first EBI and I didn't talk shit and everyone was like being like, oh, you know
He only beat Yuri because because he was tired or
You know this or that and if they have to rematch under any other rules that he would have lost
And I'm like trying to figure out what I'm gonna do
So I'm strolling through George's feed one day and he posted a clip of him beating someone and I look at the comments
And I'm with this in mind
I'm like George is the nicest person of all time and if you look at the comments
It's like ten thousand comments and like nine thousand and nine hundred are just people calling him like all you do is lay and pray
You pussy you suck
You can't finish anybody and I'm just like I'm looking at this and I'm like people are gonna say what they're gonna say regardless
They're gonna talk shit regardless. So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself
Is there some aspect that's I mentioned kind of McGregor he he crossed the line with Khabib
At least in the eyes of Khabib. Is there something you ever regret about crossing a line?
Or does that you ever feel like there's a line or do you just keep pushing the line?
I basically play it per per person
I just I basically fire back with like one step above what what they do. It's always plus one. Yeah. Yeah, okay
So I go I usually go hard like they fire a bullet then I drop a duke
And then and then after that initial shot then we go back and forth and I'll just keep one upping them
So, you know, there's a lot of people that love you
But there's also a lot of people that love to hate you. Yeah
so
Like what do those people like energize you or do you just?
Or is it funny to you like what as an athlete as a performer you should not think about them
It's like a fun thing. It's like it's just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied
Like because like because most of them that like talk shit, they like just say stuff
That's factually incorrect. So then I just argue with like actual statistics. Yeah, it's just like
You suck or you're not gonna beat this person. I'm like, I've already submitted that guy
So it just it riles them up and it's just it's just a fun thing for me to do my my downtime
Yeah, your responses are usually very factual very scientific. I appreciate
Like you you actually you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science. Yeah, it's great. Okay. It's good mix
That's a good mix. I
Mean on a topic of haters are more specifically sort of doubts within yourself and doubts around you as you're coming up
Maybe George you can comment. I'm we're just gonna ignore John completely in this conversation
I was gonna ask you another question, but let me just ask you on this on this topic
Um, are there times in your life yet the you were surrounded by people that that doubted you all the time
And so what is there something you could say as by way of advice how you overcome the doubt either yourself or others around you?
all the time
The first time I
Manifest my desire to become a professional mix martial art athlete. Everybody doubt me
Just not even I'm not talking about the UFC just to become a professional fighter. Everybody doubt me and I became a
Became a professional fighter. I had few amateurs fight. I won them all then I fought my first fight in in Montreal
I won and I became a professional
Then I I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC everybody doubt me again. So
It's a normal thing
So I work my way up beat a few guys then I at the time a Pete Spratt was
just knocked knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick and
The person who was my agent at the time did a great move
For me
So he brought Pete Spratt and Montreal to fight me Pete Spratt came to Montreal
I and I believe he didn't know who I was
So he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck and I and I end up beating him
So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC
Then after I was in UFC. I wanted to become champion of the world, you know, but Matt Hughes was there and he seems invincible at the time so
Everybody doubt me again, and I became world champion and after when you when I was world champion. I wanted to be I
Was competing against other world champion of other weight class
For the title, you know for the legacy and everything
So it's not no longer competing against my opponent
I was you know as a competitor you always you you never wanted to be you never want to be satisfied because when
Satisfaction is the death, you know when you're satisfied you better retire because it's over
So always I have to find motivation what you can have more. I want more. Don't be satisfied in life
So I wanted to be
Like the best, you know, I was I was competing, you know, like to become the best and and you know
Of course that people doubt doubt you all the time every time you say something that it's outside of the norm of the normality
And when I say there there's nothing normal, but I'm talking about when you you manifest your desire to do something that
takes special
Attribute to to to succeed or that is something that is hard to do
It's for sure you're gonna always have people that doubt you it's so strange that people don't
They don't lean into supporting like people that love you too. Yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me
and I believe I you need to use that as a
Positive positive thing as a motivation to prove them wrong. Yeah, so for me that that was a thing when someone doubt me
Nothing gave me more
There's more energy because I want to prove him wrong. I want to look at him in the face and say hey, you see I got you man
I did it
So John, do you ever use this in one way or the other by saying?
I don't think you can do this to motivate them to prove you wrong or more general question of
You know the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness
Like what's your role as a coach when you have these two athletes?
Which regards your your first question. Would I ever say to someone you can't do this as a
As a kind of reverse psychology. I know
My job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills and as Gordon pointed out earlier if you're
In any way a rational human being and you're noticing that you're getting tremendous success
with a given move in the gym against high-level opponents who
Give a good read on what your actual opponent in a competition is is like you would have to be a moron to
Not recognize that kind of success and say this is something I should be building into my game
And you will carry the confidence that you earned in the gym into the arena
So I never try to use reverse psychology. I build it
Everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills
I know people say all this physicality on the one hand
There's mentality on the other and confidence is squirrely in the mental aspect of the game
but all the underpinnings and beginnings of confidence are physical
Okay, a rational human being will see where they're having success and where they're having failure and confidence will
Surround those areas where they're having success and will degenerate in cases where they're having failure
so my job as a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills and
I don't have to do anything
psychologically after that I just
If I can set you up to be highly successful
With a given move or a set of tactics ten times in a row against quality opposition in the gym
I don't have to do a damn thing when it comes to instilling confidence. I will tell people
Hey, you're doing a really good job with that move. It's working well for you
but
When they nod in agreement, I'm not trying to force anything on them
They're recognized they or they already recognize that long before the words came out of my mouth
But on the other hand intelligent rational people will recognize when they're failing with given moves and no amount of talk on my part
can ever change that if
if I teach Gordon
a given arm lock and
15 times in a row it tries it over a month and all 15 are failures
There's nothing I can say verbally to come up to Gordon say hey, you're really good at that move
He's gonna look at me say bullshit
I'm terrible at it and that will create a crisis of confidence where Gordon no longer believes the words coming out of my mouth
So I will never compromise that but isn't there a lot you just said 15 there you have to believe
that
Doing this arm lock 15 times over a period of a month is worth it because eventually you might get it
I think yeah, that's a separate issue that that's a separate issue that
There are times where I've more or less pushed athletes to go in a certain direction for example
When I first met Gary Tone and he never had a guillotine
Strangle and I would say to him Gary, you know, you're a scrambler like one of the greatest weapons a scrambler can ever develop as a guillotine
like it should be in your arsenal and
He was like, no, I just scrambled for the back and I said well, there's gonna be a day
You can't take someone's back and it's always good to better strangle from front and back
Okay, of course, we all prefer strangles in the back that makes sense
But there's gonna come a day where it's gonna be useful for you
and so that was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said you're learning this shut the fuck up and
You like literally wouldn't teach him any anything else until you got a guillotine. Yeah, Gary like asked my question
he's like, let's say you're guillotine and
For the first three months as gifted as is Gary Tone and isn't learning most moves most moves Gary gets it like
in minutes there was something going on with Gary just couldn't get a guillotine on people and
And finally after around three months, he started having some success until ultimately became one of his best weapons
We had to go through like 15 different variations of guillotine
Until he found one which actually worked reliably for him and that was one of the few times where I put my foot down
I said no, do you have to learn this so the long search had to do more with the physical characteristics
I couldn't figure out the right like it made sense. It made sense in the case of Gary Tone because there were more opportunities per minute of
His grappling for guillotines
That the investment in time was worth it for another athlete
I might have said well he hardly ever gets in the situation but front and head on so guillotine
So it's not even worth investing the training time
Let me ask you a question on the on the competition side mentioned haters and do you think about this aspect of the competition with athletes?
It's it's a great question and the answer is no
I'm
You can see that you could you couldn't find two more polar opposites
psychologically than George St. Pierre and
this monstrosity on my left and
I've I've never said to my athletes. Hey, I think this is the sort of demeanor you should carry yourself with
I'm myself a very flawed character and I'm the last person on earth who should be delving out moral advice to other people
The only thing is that I you know, of course, I believe some things are off limits
But as long as it's done in the context of sport where no one's physically attacking people or do anything crazy where it just goes completely
Over the top then I give almost zero
Moral advice to my athletes. I'm a jiu-jitsu coach not a preacher
I
fight if I may
We are entertainers, you know, we're athletes for professional athlete, but we make
we make a living because of people or want to see us perform
Same thing an actor or something a singer and a lot of the time
especially in the fight game
An event is
Promoted it needs to be with emotion
Love me hate me, but do not ignore me
and
You know it
When it's authentic and it
It's done. Well, I think me my personally my my favorite fighters to watch are the one that are
That I that have a sort of some sort of a bad persona. I really enjoyed watching those guys because
They bring an emotion element into a fight, which is great, you know, I feel to me
It's more interesting to watch when there is an emotion involved and I believe that's why
Some fighters make more money than others, you know, you know, what I mean
That's the reason why we make we can make a living out of this. Yeah, they're better entertainers, but you're right
The authenticity seems to be really important. There's actually something very interesting there
Um, it's time to break out some some secrets. Do you know who?
Like you think of George St. Pierre you think of like the highly technical polished
Martial artists, that's just gonna be great. Do you know who his favorite fighters to watch were?
You'd probably be thinking of probably someone who's really technically advanced
Actually, it was Mark Coleman. Oh, no, Kevin Randleman and Phil Baroni
He used to love watching that. That was a hammerhouse. That was his favorite. He would love those guys and
whenever their fights were on George, we watching the Hammerhouse crew and
It's funny what you said about how they those guys bought an intensity to to MMA that was off the charts
Have you ever met those guys in?
in their prime, let me tell you it was it was something to behold and
And I had this crazy larger-than-life personality
Most of the things I did made no sense whatsoever, but mean technically, but that was their appeal
And these guys and George loved to watch them more than anyone else
You never knew what could happen with these guys. I remember when Mark Coleman won the Pride Grand Prix
I wasn't my living room. I was jumping. I was so happy. I was like, yeah
He beat Igor Vorchevchin. I was like
I like to me. It was amazing. You know what I mean?
Because of the emotion that they brought into the fight George is actually very
Interested by something you said that normally when I
Ask what is the appeal of a given fighter?
And what makes people watch a fight you you talked about the idea that fighters are entertainers and that's absolutely correct that they are
It's this weird weird industry where you're
you're
Both an athlete and an entertainer and you need to be successful in both regards to become
financially successful in so far as
Your favorite athletes to watch at least with people who are almost like the polar opposite of who you are
I've always said that most people if you look at
Say a million people watch a pay-per-view event
What percentage of those million people have a genuine technical understanding
Of what's happening as they watch a fight
It's tiny
It's absolutely tiny the vast majority of people who watch a professional fight have almost no technical understanding
Of what's going on in front of them. So how do they relate to the fight?
What's the only way they can
It's through emotion
And so when they get a sense that these two don't like each other
Then they can relate to the fight
But only a tiny percentage of people watching a given professional fight can relate to it on a technical level
The overwhelming majority will always
Form an emotional attachment to the fight. That's why when you see things shows that uoC prime time they never focus on
The tactics and the techniques of the fight they focus on the emotional elements the preparation
The view of their own family members as athletes get ready. It's always an emotional poll
Because that's how 99 of the viewers relate to the fight if I have think about chess
Okay, if I have minimal knowledge of two world champions
Coming to to fight each other and or match up against each other in a game of chess
I know so little about chess tactics and I can't really form any kind of technical
Appreciation of what's going on on the board
But if you tell me that these two chess players hate each other's guts
And they've got a rivalry which goes back five years
And they've said this and that about each other in public then suddenly I might is pick up and I'm like, oh, okay
this sounds interesting
Because I just don't have the the knowledge to appreciate what's going on on the board in a chess game to be able to
To appreciate the the technical nuances of what they're doing. So any
Interest that I have in the chess match is going to have to come from some kind of emotional level
Because I'm just not qualified to make technical assessments
And that's exactly how it is in the case of both grappling and mixed martial arts
That's why the ones who evoke the most attention are always the ones who can form some kind of emotional appeal
Conor McGregor was the all-time master of this
I believe also
Emotion can be used as a weapon
For example, I've learned I've learned this from my favorite boxer is chagrary Leonard
Chagrary Leonard. I remember I was very young. So I watched his fight later when I was older
But I know that chagrary Leonard
Was the best boxer of his era to me personally
And I don't think nobody could
Beat him. I think he was skill skill wise. It was the best. However
When he fought in Montreal, Roberto Zoran
Roberto Zoran
Made it in a way that Leonard became very emotional
He wanted to stand in front of Zoran
And fight a different fight that
That he normally does because he wanted to show that he's a man
And he lost that fight which was a mistake
so by by
Then later on he beat Roberto Zoran in quite easy, you know the the fair the everybody remembered the no mass thing
but my point is
Emotion can be used in a way
That it can make your derail your opponent
Out of his game plan and I felt a lot of my opponent trying to do that with me
So that's why I never got involved. That was my way to defend myself against
Some kind of bullying is to put like a like a shield in front but some other guy like
Gordon he he expressed himself differently. Of course, there's a language barrier, but for him he's better at
Giving giving giving back. That says he's a better counter attacker
You know, that's the way you respond to to to the aggression of of an emotional attack
I think everybody's different in that regard. It's interesting that John said that he doesn't
Uh study the tactics of this game or maybe you're not interested in the tactics of this game
Because it seems like this is more than just being an entertainer
It seems like it could be an effective part of the match. Yeah, I just feel like whatever investment you make in that
is
It's going to get negligible rewards. First of all, it's probably only going to pertain to one match in front of you rather than the
totality of your career and
whatever gains you get out of signage
or whatever gains you get out of psychological trickery and play
Typically
Don't last long you you've raised an excellent example with uh sugar Radley and he did fight outside of his usual
Manor in that regard, but rather than me try to tell someone hey
Behave like this before a fight. I would have been probably more forceful between rounds with an athlete and say no
No, you're fighting this fight the wrong way and that would have a much
more beneficial impact on my athlete than
psychological trickery before a fight
I believe another example of
emotion that leads to failure is
Jose Aldo against Conor McGregor
I think it was
It was uh on purpose that Conor McGregor did this try to bait
Aldo to become over aggressive to open himself because he's an excellent counter puncher puncher
That's what I believe
It made a mistake
There's another great one my match against cyborg
2018 no-gey worlds where he didn't even try to win
He just like wanted to smack me in the face the whole time because he was so angry
That was talking shit to him before the match and uh, it was like the finals of the absolute
It was like the biggest
Match of the weekend and he just didn't even try to pass my guard to do anything
He just wanted to hit me in the face and I was like sick. I just won
He was incredibly fresh it's fascinating to watch like a grown man sort of lose composure
It's very interesting Gordon one thing I've always been very impressed with you and that's um
No matter how heated torque gets
Before a match with you when you go out to grapple you're absolutely cold
Like I've you've never gone into a a match
carrying anything other than just
cold-blooded
calculation and
You've always been able to separate very well
The idea of words and deeds and I think that's always been one of your
Um, one of your strongest assets a way I often measure this is when a match is over
I will ask the athlete questions about the match
And if they can't answer the question, what were you doing in the fourth minute?
Okay, what was that setup you used in the in the third minute that got you into the kimura lock?
If they can't answer that that tells me
They were just fighting on instincts and emotion but with Gordon. It's like a log book
It's like okay in the seventh minute you went for that
Uh, jiu-jitsu guitar be set up from from uh on the left side
What were you thinking he can always give an answer?
He's absolutely stone cold
Speaking of emotion
Uh, gordon you will potentially if you're healthy face andre gavel and the adcc coming up a super fight
Uh, who is andre gavel for people who don't know? Can you tell the story of your beef with?
Uh, the the emotional interaction with a man. Yeah, so, uh, andre is uh
He's considered the greatest adcc competitor of all time
Uh multiple time black belt world champion, uh, winningest adcc champion ever. He has six six gold medals
And uh, I've been trying to compete against him
Pretty much forever like since I got my black belt in 2016. I've been trying to get matches with him
Uh, he was in the first dbi that I did and he ended up pulling out and then I've been trying to get matches with him
and uh
He would always say no and give one reason or another and then uh
After the last adcc, I was like, hey andre said he was retiring after this after this uh
This competition so if he wants to retire, you know, he's he's the greatest adcc competitor of all time and
I think it's great. But if he wants to compete and that's great. I was like super nice and then he started like
Posting like passive aggressive instagram
Uh captions and uh, then we started going back and forth on the internet
And there was like one point where I saw him in person when he
Acknowledged he's like, I understand like what you're doing like we're going to pump this fight up and he was like totally on board
But then there must have been something that happened where like it changed from like him like going along with it to being like actually
Pissed and then uh, there was that one night at flow where I went to go shake his hand
And he he flipped me off and then he fought me backstage and started to try to fight me and then I started to fight
started to try to fight me and then I backed him and
Then he didn't want to fight anymore
And then we've been going back. He's actually blocked me on instagram now
So he we won't he just won't engage. No one from atos won't engage now
But it's gonna be interesting how he how he shows up if he can keep it under control or not
Do you think how do you explain that level of emotion? Is this fear of losing your throne? Is it?
Or is it just the human being like with cyborg just
Just just becoming emotionally unstable. It might just be me
I just have a way to get get under people's skin. It's just I don't know. Uh, he's he's
He was he was cool for a while and then I just I don't know it just
Then everyone gets like this. They're all so emotional by the time they actually step up to compete that it's pretty easy to read them
They're either so emotional that they want to actually come forward and and beat me like uh, like tim spriggs is a perfect example at avcc
I posted like uh
On my story on instagram like 10 minutes before our match
I said like what I'm gonna do to tim spriggs is gonna be criminal
And he's like a very stally guy and he came he saw that and then he came out and actually tried to fight me
Like he came and actually engaged my guard and I ended up submitting him
So it either has that effect or it has the effect where
They know I've talked so much shit leading up to the match
That they're so afraid to lose that they just get super stally and they move away
So it either has one effect where they come forward and they want to they want to beat me beat me
Or they want to just they're so afraid of getting submitted that they know if they engage
They're super cagey and they just back away and don't really do anything. Do you think this match happens?
There's a lot of variables one
I have to see how my stomach is and two if I'm actually gonna show up and compete in my stomachs healthy
I doubt that andre will actually show up to compete
I've been trying to compete against him for six years and he hasn't done it
So there's no reason to think he would now is it possible for you to speak to where like your estimates are about your stomach?
Or is it too unclear for now?
Still too early to tell I have this round of treatment that I'm doing until
Late February and I'm pretty sure that I need to do the same test
They did initially to retest all my levels and then go from there
So I've been feeling a little bit better like it's not nearly as bad as it used to be
I was explaining to someone the other day like
For the last four years I would be so nauseous that every time I would walk into a new room
I'd have to actively located garbage can in case I have to throw up
So I'm like one step above that right now. I'm like doing a little bit better than that
Um, so it's definitely getting a little bit better, but it's not it's not where it needs to be
Can we can we talk about diet for just a second because uh, both of you uh, george and and gordon
like suffered from stomach issues different kind, um and have arrived for now for different places
so can you maybe george speak to, um
The general question of what is the best diet for performance for training like what have you learned through your career about this?
Well, I I think everybody is different
Um, to me personally
Uh, I implement fasting
Um time restricted eating and and prolonged fasting
What's the longest you've done so far?
The longest I've done is five days. I do it quite often. I do I do four time a year. I do
Three to five days
Uh, water fast
Um, and I I liked it. It helps me with inflammation. I think it boosts the immune system
And uh, that that's about the I read papers about about this and uh, it helps me also feel
Feel good. It's kind of uh, very therapeutic to me physical and mental just mental
Yeah, mental and physical because when I eat my when I break my fast and I sit at the table with with other people
It doesn't matter what I eat if we all eat the same thing
I always tell them I said my my food right now tastes better than all of yours, you know, because I
You know, I I have this
Thing that I think I believe sometimes you need to put yourself into suffering to realize
our
pleasurable something is
and
I
tent
Personally like diet wise I eat whatever I want
Whenever I want I don't I no longer have any problem with this
But if I would have a competition coming up like
Knowing that I what I know now about my body. I would
orient myself
More towards an animal based diet
That's because I've tried different things and that's the kind of diet that I believe helped me
having less inflammation and feel better in terms of performance for for for doing something physical
So high protein high fat low carbs
Well, it's this is is different between animal based diet and keto
I mean, there's carbs. There is a lot of fruit. Uh, I got a lot of the the carbs from the fruit
Okay, a lot of organs organs
I know a little bit about paleontology and in the the past
About prehistoric humans and and I I know that
And not only about that I know because I've traveled certain place in the world
I want to to visit the Maasai in Africa the yantar gather tribe and I know that when they kill an animal
No, they go for the organs first and I know a pretty most predatory animal. They do the same thing
So organs, I believe is something that normally in in our culture in the western part of the world
We don't really eat but it's something that is very nutritious
Have you been able to convince Gordon to try fasting?
Really talk about diets
It is a different situation. I think for Gordon because he's an heavy weight. He doesn't want to lose weight
You know when a heavy weight the range of uh, like my my range was like I was a welterweight and middle weight
But the heavy weight it's like some of the guys that you can can compete against there. They might be 300 pounds. So
If you lose weight, it's a it's a big problem, you know what I mean? So
And there are things that will work for me that might not work for Gordon, you know
So we have to make his own experience and and I told Gordon sometime when everybody goes left
You try to go right see how you feel with certain things experiment
Not not a topic
That's part of your optimization
optimal performance formula
Well, uh, what I used to do before my stomach issues and for those of you listening who don't know
I had recurring staff infections in 2018 and I took a bunch of oral antibiotics and it just completely wiped out my stomach
So I just was diagnosed. It was misdiagnosed as gastroparesis
So for those of you messaging me on instagram who are just watching rogan ask me about my gastroparesis
That's not what I have. Um, they misdiagnosed it and uh, I did some other tests and for four years
I didn't even know what it was
and then I got this, uh, I went to this doctor in california who
Uh diagnosed me with I have h-pylori and then a fungal and a bacterial overgrowth of my small intestines
So the issues in the small intestines
um, so what I used to do was I used to do like seasons where I'd have
A very clean season where I was competing and I would have a lower body weight
And then I would do like an off season kind of like a bodybuilder where I would eat
A lot more food and a little bit dirtier food and I would have cheeseburgers and pizza at night time to have the extra calories
Um, but now I can't eat those foods because they upset my stomach
So now I pretty much just try to eat whatever I can and maintain the weight the best I can
Um, based around how my stomach feels. So right now it's like rice chicken eggs fish
vegetables fruits
And pretty much nothing else like anything hard to digest
Uh, anything spicy red meat fast food all that's all that's hard for me
Which sucks because in texas all the best things. Yeah barbecue
And I mean this diet is really important for you john. I can tell um
Like is it is that something you think about for athletes at all? Again, this is part of the you know, I've um to be honest with you
um, I've never seen
Any measurable improvement in sports performance in jiu-jitsu by change of diet
Uh, I do believe that diet is important for longevity
In human beings and I do think it makes a difference, especially once you get past the age of 40
um
With regards longevity
Uh for older athletes, I do believe it makes it some difference
But my observation is in athletes
In their youth and working up into their prime
I've seen athletes have the worst diets
Um, uh, god bless travis stevens for that guy won an olympic silver medal basically on mcdonald's and candy. Yeah
Um, uh, george st. pierre for 80 of your career. You were powered by mcdonald's and coca-cola
To genial freddo that was my yeah
My meal of choice before a championship fight
Gordon for him his youth was just five guys hamburgers garyton the same thing
I've worked with japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day in one olympic gold medals
um, I've worked with russian wrestlers who just ate
Whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding
Um, I've worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and
Their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I've I've never
I've never seen someone say okay. I changed my diet and because of that there was a measurable
Improvement, you know in sports performance another way to phrase it though is um, I have noticed with a lot of lead athletes
What they eat
They begin to believe that that either is not a hindrance or it's actually good
Like travis steve is an example of somebody who eats shitty
because he believes
It's like it's like a power because whatever he's traveling across the world
He can't rely on healthy good food to be there. So i'm going to eat shitty
So that that's that like my body knows how to perform under whatever skittles or whatever
Everywhere's got mcdonald's everywhere's got mcdonald's so that makes like and they've convinced themselves and you talk about russian athletes
a lot of them have very
strong beliefs about like this
But by particular food being good for them, but there's no agreement among them. Exactly. It's no agreement
Yeah, so believe is more important than the actual diet. Yeah
if I can
after
You know after a night out when you're hanging over
I think the best thing and and i'm saying this in all sincerity
I think the best thing to eat to me was like like a cheese cheeseburgers with
It's we call that a puts in back home because it's very fat. It's greasy
So it up. So the next day when you wake up. I think you feel better because it absorbed the alcohol
There you go
You can train and start the gas
My mom told me the same story once and then I try I was like I was hungover for some party
And uh, I woke up. I was like probably I don't know 19 or 20. I woke up and uh, my mom's like, yeah
I just have it have a cheeseburger go go eat go eat something greasy and I did and I was like, oh, I feel kind of better now
I do not know the science the exact science behind it
But I I always notice and I don't know if it's placebo
But I always notice that if I if I'm if I'm if I party hard and I've been drinking a lot
If I don't eat before I go into bed if I don't eat shitty food
The next day I will wake up and feel worse than if I eat shitty food. I feel better. I know it sounds crazy
I don't know why but it works for me
Yeah, but it's also hard to do science on extreme performers. So the discussions we're having is amongst the very
You know that this might not apply to a general like recreational athlete
But for the elite, I've just seen champions in every kind of combat sport
And I've never seen a correlation between dietary habit and performance and people under the age of 30
I do believe that diet is important for longevity. However, and
Uh, for that alone that may well be worth investing time in it
But with regard to sports performance at least in jiu-jitsu, I've never seen any significant difference
Well, we had a little bit of a
A difference of opinion on this. I think uh, what about strength training and muscle building or at least we had the discussion about this
So what do you believe is the value of?
um
Of you know training outside of the sport. So fitness
Lifting heavy lifting explosive all kinds of lifting
I believe personally for me, I believe and I learned that from from john
uh, I used to to do like
To train like a bodybuilder before because I thought in my early days of competition
That was the most efficient way to do things to because it was like I was watching Jean-Claude van Damme
Arnold Schwarzenegger. We thought back back in the day that was the thing
That that's how we should do it, you know for to get to get ready for a fight
but I realized
later on
That it's all about efficiency
And some guys they don't lift at all and they're doing pretty well. So I
Do cross training mostly for longevity
More it's mostly for a therapist therapist like a therapy. It's more therapeutic than for performance
It's to keep my body healthy to do a certain movement that are different than what I do every day in the gym in combat sport
to keep me
uh
Healthy and and athletic. So all the interesting movement stuff that you've done outside the sport. That was for
therapeutic mostly therapeutic
I think it does it could transcend to performance, but it's mostly therapeutic. I do not believe that squatting
five plates or bench bench pressing
Three plates will make me a better fighter. I do not I believe actually it could hurt me more
It could damage me more than than benefit me
so
Gordon is somebody who on instagram posts
A lot of pictures of you being shredded and huge
Uh, what's the value of of strength? So I do like a combination of uh
John got us big into like gymnastics type movements
Like toes to bar and muscle ups and things like that when we were young
um
Like toes to bar because that's like the exact motion you have to do when you're retaining guards needs to chest
um, so I do a lot of that stuff
in combination with I do a lot of
Opposite of george. I do a lot of bodybuilding workouts
Um, where I do like a basic split like a chest and triceps back and biceps day. Um, and my idea is that
Weightlifting should always be a supplement to jiu-jitsu. So you shouldn't be missing a jiu-jitsu session to lift weights
Um, so I don't do I do probably I train jiu-jitsu every day and I lift three to four times a week
Um, I feel like lifting seven days a week for me is too much and the lifting takes a lot of energy
When you do like hard lifts like that
But my idea is if you want to get good at jiu-jitsu do jiu-jitsu and if you want to be bigger and stronger
lift weights and
and eat food and um
I I generally don't go super heavy when I lift because you start putting crazy weights then start tearing muscles and stuff
Um, so I usually do moderate weights with a with a very high rep rep range
Like four sets of 20 with a drop set at the end to fatigue the muscles break the fibers and
grow
Okay, so uh four sets of 20. That's interesting. So that's more for endurance and raw strength. Yeah, and also I think
Closer to competition. I'll pick the intensity up and
While there's no real way to get significant gains in vo2 max
I think that lifting and just getting used to mentally redlining
Um gets me kind of in competition shape because a lot of times in jiu-jitsu the guys I'm training with
They're not on a technical level where they can physically exhaust me to the point where I feel like I'm gonna die
But uh, I get most of that like when I'm wrestling because I'm not as efficient in wrestling
So I get a lot more tired
And lifting when you do like if you do like four sets of 20
Leg press to squat and you go back and forth like you're like about to die at the end
And I think I feel like gets me in the mental habit of redlining before competition
But does muscle help you? It's like the actual mass of muscle like that. So I think being stronger will always help in the combat
It will always help. Yeah
To some degree it's not going to be to a degree where
It overrides efficiency, but I think that
It can't help being or can't hurt being stronger. Well, there's a bunch of people who believe depending on the sport that
Um, the strength can quickly become uh, that have detrimental effects to efficiency
Yeah, I agree that certain kind
I mean if strength is pure is like very cleanly purely applied to the exact movements of the sport
So in judo the explosiveness you need is very difficult to replicate in any kind of way except by doing judo. Yeah, I mean for us, uh
I always have to understand there's only so much technique that can overcome a certain amount of strength
Like if we all try to fight a silverback gorilla, it's going to kill us
Um, but that that being said, um, I do think that
Like for example heavyweights are usually the least technical because they rely on their size and strength to beat smaller people
But I think that if you stay with us with a discipline of doing everything very precise
And I train with a lot smaller people most of the time. So I get out of the habit of using
Using my strength. Um, I think if you're very precise of the way that you train
I think that the the extra size and strength can help you quick question. How would you fight a silverback gorilla?
I mean, is there which animal do you think you can actually defeat that would be impressive that most people would say you can't
You know, I actually
I don't have an uh, an answer to this. I thought you were gonna say I want I want I want to say that me and john had
Like a four-hour discussion on this one time
I'm like, what would win bear or gorilla?
And he went into like this whole dissertation about how like jaguar spin underneath and like barenbole
Silverbacks and kill them and like rip their rip their artery and their legs out. It was amazing
I guess okay. So before we talk about strength, John, let me ask you what
Do you think people would be surprised by if two animals faced
One of them would win and people wouldn't predict that
So they would be surprised by the effectiveness of certain animal at fighting in the whether it's in the forest in the jungle
So, let's slow down
So there's two animals of different species fighting
and most people would pick
So for example, the lion gets a lot of credit for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why the king of the jungle
well, I
You know, a lot of people told me that the lion
And for example, the tiger can
Be lion. Yeah, this is one of those age-old debates
Yeah, well in grappling in fighting it feels like some animals use teeth
And some use other parts of their body also like bear. Actually, I don't even know how they
They have extraordinarily powerful
And long claws and in addition, they're powerful biters as well
So I wonder in the same with the silver back. I don't know how much they're I love that we're having this discussion
We need Joe Rogan for this discussion. I think so. Yeah, I think so
so
Your question has gone and in about five different so it started with strength
And let's go back there, which is
Do you think for for an athlete and you just let's let's stick to grappling
I do you think strike strength is helpful or detrimental? I've always believed that two things
will
create whatever
Whatever effectiveness you have in grappling those are your skill set and your attributes
And the best athletes are those who excel in both
um
Don't kid yourself if someone gets twice as strong
By some kind of magic potion, they're going to be a more effective grappler if someone gets
Twice the level of endurance that they had previously. They will be a more effective grappler
These physical attributes have a very important outcome on the
Sorry a very important effect upon the outcome of matches
Um, it's always a good thing to be stronger. It's always a good thing to have better endurance
It's always a good thing to have better balance or whatever other attribute you throw out there
Um
Gordon's point was okay. Everyone agrees on that but there's a problem in order to build these things
You have to carve into other elements of your training regimen
And then it becomes well, which becomes more important increases in strength or increases in skill
There comes a point where
Investing in strength training starts to get diminishing returns
I can't tell the difference between someone who bench presses
300 pounds on the mat versus someone who bench presses 400 pounds
But that's a big difference. That's a hundred pound difference
And for an athlete to go from bench pressing 300 pounds to 400 pounds that would require a great deal of
Of training effort and focus
But if I can't tell the difference when I grapple and then why bother?
Okay, once you get to a certain strength level
It doesn't really help that much to go from a 400 pound bench press to a 450 pound bench press
If that's the stage you you're really getting a diminishing in returns on your training investment
um now skills on the other hand
Experience far far less in terms of diminishing returns every new skill you develop
can translate
Very very well into big increases in performance
Let's look at the example of gary tonan that we talked about earlier investments and guillotine
made a significant improvement in his
Effectiveness in matches and led directly to some of his most important victories
um
But if he had invested the same amount of training time and
Developing a bench press that was 25 pounds more than previously that would have had no outcome
No influence on the outcome of those matches
So the question always becomes. Yep. Everyone acknowledges that these physical
Uh attributes are important and everyone understands that becoming stronger or fitter is a desirable thing
And every athlete should work on them. The interesting question becomes. Okay at what point
Do you start to say I'm not going to be helped by further increases?
in in strength training or endurance training
um
And my point with my athletes is in the overwhelming majority of cases
If there's any kind of doubt
Invest more heavily in skill training than attribute training
Especially once you get to a certain level on the attributes
Well, the interesting thing that I think you should account for with strength training is um
There's instagram
There's the world it's uh, it seems to be more fun
To build muscle mass
Um, it's an addiction that people have. There's also economic elements too. Like most people I hate to say this, but it's true
most people are more concerned with image
than function and
uh
It's hard to sell
A fighter or a jiu-jitsu athlete who doesn't look like one looks like fader. Yeah, it's a tough sell now
You can do it in fighting and and jiu-jitsu because ultimately it's about whose hand is raised at the end of the match
And you can even use it as a selling point. You can be a guy that doesn't look like you should be winning
But he is winning that is a selling point. But if you give most people a choice between
Looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger and winning matches versus looking like fader and winning matches
Most people will select. I wish I'd rather look like Arnold Schwarzenegger
And so most athletes feel almost like an economic compulsion to be in good shape and in order to advance their marketability
Yeah, Nike's not going to sponsor fader or tank Abbott. Yeah tank Abbott
No
fader or maybe
But yeah, yeah, we need at the very top. There's there's something about uh, aesthetic
Like image of strength and power
It's also and also a personal thing if you look at yourself in the mirror, do you like what what you see?
You know what I mean? Yeah, do you find yourself attractive?
You know, what what can you do to make you look better?
You know, I think to me to me it was something one of the reasons I work out. It's also for for that
Well, I'm sure fader looks in the mirror. He says I look damn good today. Yeah, you couldn't be too
It's also a genetic factor. Some people, you know, it's harder for them. I mean, yeah
All right. So the question on training you guys john gordon trained
Often three times a day every day
um, georgia had a different
like, um
A different approach to training. So like what is uh, for for no, I don't mean that in a kind of the opposite or something
It's just not every single day. So
And obviously you are
Legitimately at the very top
Uh, in terms of performance accomplishment in the field. So what have you learned about?
What it takes to train to become not just elite but the best well, I I um
A lot of people when you say train they they see training hard. I believe you need to be very constant
Uh, and uh, very disciplined you need to train but you don't need to train hard every day
That's what john, uh taught me. Um
For me, it's the nervous system. Sometimes I feel if I load it up too much it comes to a point that you're
It's too much. There is no no more information that I can absorb
so
And I do believe that it's something that you can train to your the capacity your capacity of being able to learn of
absorbing certain thing
And uh, I did a lot of volume of training, but when I when I was getting ready for a fight
Especially during sparring day
I like to do it quick because my when I fight it's five round of five minute
I don't like to to spend
um
An hour or two hours in a gym because
I need to know how hard I can be
Going for 25 minute, you know when I not for two hours for 25 minute and at my last fight
john and I we we
we
We were thinking of how could we
make me more
Of a better finisher, you know more opportunists
And then john I remember we when we were training with gordon jake shill came garytonan
My round of grappling were different than if I would be training for
Abu Dhabi, you know for for a bi or like some like in grappling the round or longer, but
In a mixed martial arts fight
It's very rare that you're gonna spend more than
Four minutes or four minutes and a half on the ground. It's it's very unlikely. I mean it could and can happen, but so
I remember we did the round three minute we did all the round I was doing were three minute round
So it gives a different
Rhythm to the training it forced me to be more opportunist
To be more of a finisher because I had only three minutes to to do what I needed to do
So if I if I see something I need to to go for the kill right away
I cannot be too over patient, you know what I mean
And it it serves me well in my last fight and I think it that's a good blueprint to follow
um, when you're a mixed martial arts fighter, I if I would if
The result was great and I think
It maybe I should have done that before it was a great great idea that we had not to do
Um, be very careful on doing too much volume
I really try to get out and then try to focus on finishing and getting getting out
I mean to be is to build up your foundation. I believe you need a lot of volume
But when you get ready for competition, you need some to be something that
Replicate what you're gonna be facing. What do you what are we talking about?
What do you think like is there rest days five days a week?
Twice a day once a day. Is there any one formula like that or no this this I don't I do not believe in overtraining
I believe in under rest
I believe
You can be under rest and people
Always link that immediately to the volume of their how much volume they they train
Which it could be something else. How are you feeling? I'm emotionally. Are you are you having?
Problems personal problem. Do you have a have a hard time sleeping because you have a like someone died or I don't know like
You you hold money you're broke or what like, you know what I mean could be anything
Uh, there is something that can affect you psychologically or emotionally
That made it in a way that you cannot sleep well because your your stress your cortisol level is high
Your you know what I mean all these factors need to be take taken into consideration
It's not only about the volume of training people
Always think the volume of the training is the only thing
That can affect recuperation, which is not
You know, yeah, I said to minimize the amount of stress from all kinds of factors. It's a very stressful job to be a professional
Uh combat athlete, whether you're a grappler a boxer a kickboxer a fighter and you need to be taking
As a into account
Is it more or less stressful than marriage? Just kidding. Uh next question. Uh
Um
So I don't know how to ask this question given what George just said, but you're training three times a day
And finishing and what what have you learned about what what brings out the best in you as as the elite level grappler
Um, so over the recent years have actually changed it up a little bit. Um when I was
Coming up through from white to black belt
Uh, I felt that the volume was the most important. So it would be anywhere from like three
to seven sessions a day
um
Going from school to school from New York to New Jersey. Um, and I think that the volume was very important to build the skills
um
where I just
Didn't know how to move my body at purple belt the way that I should um, so I think that building the skills
Is uh, it's super important. I think that early on volume is very important
Uh now that I already have the skills built. I think that acquiring more knowledge is the most important
Um, so I find that if I do
So many sessions a day like if I do three sessions a day
Um, I feel sometimes by the third session
I'm just like so mentally like there's just there's so much information that's went through my head
The first two sessions that I feel like I'm not even there mentally on the third session
Um, so I feel like doing less volume now
But having more mental clarity per session is more important because I already have the foundational skills acquired
So a lot of your training is almost like
Just thinking like learning a lot of it. Yeah, so I'll do like I mean our schedule has been messed up
Since the pandemic because henzo's got shut down and then we're using a french gym in Puerto Rico
And now we're using a french gym in our and in austin
Um, but once we have our own school we'll have a setup schedule where I can pretty much just be there all day long
But right now I do like a lifting session in the morning and then I'll come in and help teach
At henzo's so I'm there mentally. I'm seeing what's going on and I'm playing around with ideas in my head
And then I'm there physically and very sharp mentally for the competition class
During the 1 p.m. Session and then after that I'll go home. I'll rest and get ready for the next day
Okay
What have you learned on seeing all these different athletes is there a a universal rule that applies or is it
athlete specific
First one thing that needs to be addressed is that george and gordon play very different sports with very different athletic demands
Um, gordon can be in matches that range from anywhere from six
Minutes to literally hours long
um as a result
Uh, the overall
pacing and intensity of matches is massively different
Most obviously there is no striking in gordon's sport
Striking by its very nature is a much more explosive physical action than grappling is grappling is primarily an isometric
Kind of sport based around isometric tension and endurance
um, george's sport is
Uh, does feature a significant amount of isometric tension, but the majority of it is based around explosion
So the physical demands of the two sports are radically different
In addition, the time of application is is radically different george raised a very interesting point
His matches seem long 25 minutes for a championship match. Um, but always understand that
it makes martial arts fight
at championship level
If it goes the distance is really
five five minute matches
each round
Is a match in itself and that's exactly how you're scored
You're scored by who wins the most matches over five matches
As a result the application of the techniques, especially the grappling techniques has to be done at a certain pace as george pointed out
realistically
The maximum application time you're going to get in most situations is somewhere between
15
Seconds and three minutes
Even for a specialized grappler like damien mayer, there's still a significant part of each round which is
Spent in setup time to actually get the match to the ground
Um, it's very likely that at some point your opponent will stand up out of grappling and you have to re-initiate the entire process again
So that even for specialized grapplers, you might be spending only three minutes out of a five minute round
Uh on the ground
And as a result you got to get your work done in a very short time frame
uh, gordon ryan
Once it goes to the ground and it can go to the ground because he chooses to sit to the ground
Uh, we may spend the entire match in ground positions
um
As a result the matches have completely different pacing and completely different physical demands and the preparation that the two athletes go through
will reflect that
But if george st. Pierre in training for mixed martial arts becomes fatigued to a point
Where he's no longer physically effective and able to defend himself the consequences for that in MMA training can be very deep indeed
Okay, if you make a mistake in mixed martial arts because you're fatigued and tired and you take a full power roundhouse kick to the head
That's some deep consequences. A grappler doesn't have to face that
You can be completely exhausted and grappling and just sit in the bottom of the mountain just practice just survival skills
We just don't get submitted from bottom out and that can still be an effective training session
Complete an utter physical breakdown of fatigue can be
Can end an athlete's career in mixed martial arts the consequences of training through fatigue and MMA are
potentially very deep and very disturbing
Um, the consequences of training through complete physical exhaustion and grappling aren't really that severe
Okay, you just tap whenever there's a problem just tap
um
And so they're very very different sports in the way you you prepare for them
um
and a grappling
athlete like gordon ryan we can take
Many more liberties with physical exhaustion and the amount of hours a day you spend in training
Then you could with a mixed martial arts athlete like actually be a benefit
uh exhaustion as a
as a framework of learning
So like from a place of exhaustion
Is there any benefit today?
You said being at the bottom of mouth sort of understanding the jiu jitsu grappling somehow deeper
Because you're physically absolutely absolutely because then the only thing you have left in your favor is your technique
And then you'll see how technical you are in addition you'll get to explore realms inside your mind that
We don't spend a lot of time in and you'll learn a lot about yourself and your ability to endure which will
have
Potentially great benefits in similar situations and matches. Yeah, there's uh, I mean for me for a recreational person
getting
Potion allows you the great benefit to experience what it feels like to really get dominated at an even greater frequency
than you otherwise would
And there's something there. There's some animalistic thing. That's very unpleasant
and then afterwards it takes you to a nice to a place of
like um humility and
I know you get it forces you to rethink life
In positive ways
There's something about dominance. It gives me if you get dominated a few times you can
Rationalize it somehow you say, okay. Well, I screwed this up
But when you're exhausted and you have to do like 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour of just being dominated over and over
and over being submitted
It uh, I don't know. It's it's a very good process for
For other avenues of life. I find it's I can't explain why because i'm i'm i'm
Um, uh, driving home crying afterwards listening to bruce springsteen, but afterwards
Yeah, this
Afterwards somehow you can think clear you can see clear about what is the right path through life in all walks of life
Like relationships work, but also the grappling
Actually, the grappling is the hardest one to see what you have to do
It clarifies other avenues the humility it's the it removes the bullshit
It's like we see
The world through some kind of fog and it just removes it and now you can see things clearly. I don't know what that is
I think I think it's important like you mentioned to push yourself like sometimes
To see how far you can go because sometimes you you can go further than in what you think
And it can boost your confidence. You know, you can push yourself through a certain limit
And maybe you thought your limit were was before that point and you pushed through it
But like john just mentioned
It's a risky thing to do in
Striking because if you're exhausted you're gonna get brain damage
In grappling it's you know, you tap if something wrong, but you can do it also in strength conditioning
I like to run track. I do it all the time and track and fill
It it helps me to
To to know myself better. I think it's important. It's a it's a good point
Uh, it's like it's like the scrimmage wrestling rounds we do. It's like, you know, if you stop moving
That you're gonna get scored on and you know in your mind like there's no mechanical reason
Why I am why I should give up a score here
But you're so exhausted that you're like, oh man, this is terrible. If I if I stop moving. I'm a pussy
If I don't stop move if I don't stop moving
I'm gonna be twice as exhausted when we actually do stand up
So it's it's an interesting game you have to play inside your mind. It's it's your pride very often that that
Keep you that keep you
Sharp, you know what I mean because you just want to lay down and beat it because you're completely exhausted, you know
What do you think is the connection John between this ego pride thing?
martial arts and actual violence in our
With our ancestors. Do you think
Do you have a plug into that? Do you think there's echoes of something going on there or like you mentioned you have flaws and demons
Is it deep in there somewhere? Do you think we're struggling with those demons?
Yeah, uh, you'll need to patch up your question or what though it's going on several different generations. Wow, that was
Not only might be dominating it just I mean dominating interviewing
No, no, no, I'm not
I mean, do you think do you um, I don't mean just the line between what is what is martial arts and what is violence?
I mean, there there seems to be a gray area
And that connects us to the the evolutionary ancestors. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think there's a deep
recognition and all of us that
and this is
This is
This is
Um, and this is the evidence for this is is so easy to uh to see in in in daily life. Um
If you're walking down the street and suddenly you hear a commotion and two people are fighting
You will see literally everyone on that street stop whatever they're doing and watch the fight
Humans are fascinated by violence
And you've got to ask yourself why and of course, it's a recognition that for a significant part of our evolutionary history
Violence was one of the most important elements in human existence
As much as we curse it as much as we talk badly of it. Um
Um
The juxtaposition between humans social nature and their their need to for each other to get along and to express
Love amongst the the the various members of a given community
there are
Disputes between humans that can't be resolved and ultimately
Throughout history violence has been the number one method of
conflict resolution
Um for better or for worse and there's a recognition in all of us that
This is where we come from
and there's a reason why
combat sports have this
thing where
People will watch them and they might even be repulsed by them, but they find it difficult to take their eyes from it
and um
I do believe that most combat athletes carry that sense
of their
Even if it's on a subconscious level this kind of belief that
This is who we are. Um, george you used the word pride and I believe that's a big part of it. I believe that
um
Most
Humans have this sense of self-worth and pride which they're willing to fight for and
If it gets crossed by someone else, they're willing to stand
Some people stand more early and some people could be pushed further back
but everyone's got that line
Beyond which they won't be pushed
And there's some kind of deep recognition in all of us that we have that somewhere within us
No matter how hard we try to bury it or what have you and that's why I believe there will always be this eternal
interest in combat sports
um
Now
I don't believe that most people today have any kind of respect for unrestricted violence or
Uh, non-consensual violence
um, I think most people most good people are repulsed by that and I'm I'm
I'm sure that as humanity
Improves out into the future that will become more and more widespread
but
that's not to say we we can't exercise these these
old evolutionary demons inside of us and um, uh, and
Sometimes there are just disputes between different people different cultures different nations where ultimately it's going to come to
And into into a shoving match and that will degenerate further into violence
There's always going to be a need for humans to be able to
to
express themselves
Through violent methods and to use physical force to get to their their goals and objectives
um
our
Our need as humans is always to find a balance between
The two forces of conflict and cooperation
We need cooperation because humans isolated from each other are more or less helpless and useless
Uh, in order to advance human communities need to build and grow
And so that sense of cooperation because in most of our daily lives
But there will also be irresolvable conflicts where physical force has to be used to to form a resolution
And so most human beings find themselves
Swinging like a pendulum between conflict and cooperation
and um
And that is something which
Really gives birth. I think to combat sports because sorry
Well, I really have to ask you about this then there's a guy even harvard
Uh named richard rangham and there's a lot of people that believe this he wrote this book that um
Basically, there's a lot of people studying is what happened. How do we get from apes to humans?
Like what was the magic thing right a lot of people attributed to fire and ability to cook meat
There's a lot of different theories. So he actually um
His theory
How do I describe this is basically that that the beta males won
That the the the the apes that were able to cooperate
So you though the way you develop cooperation is that there's a big bad leader
That uh, the the alpha male
that you can only um
Knock off their throne if you cooperate
And so we build big tribes that just excel the cooperation by practicing the overthrowing the leader
and so
And anytime an alpha male would rise up they would get we would uh develop our skill further and further of cooperation
And so we're all just beta males
The descendants of beta males
That's his kind of theory that cooperation is fundamental and it's so distinct to the the rest of the
Neighboring animal kingdom
So fascinating. I I wonder what you think about this tension of violence of cooperation
How important is this cooperation to the core of yeah, uh, if you you can look at it in the uh in a given training room
um
Judith and mixed martial arts is solo sports a solo athlete steps into the cage or steps onto the mat
But all of your preparation is done in a cooperative training environment with many peers and uh as much as it's an individual sport
All of your preparation is done as part of a group
There's a sense in which
That's an interesting metaphor for humanity itself everything we do in life. We do alone
But we grow up in this given community and in what have you
um
Um
With regards to the the whole alpha male beta male thing, um
Humans are it's true. This fellow is correct. We you know, most
primates do have very strongly defined alpha males who
rule the roost and determine the entire direction of the um
uh of of
Uh the community they they build around themselves
um
humans on the other hand
Don't have an alpha male in that strict
biological sense of someone who's responsible for the next generation
dominates all the
Female population, etc. Yeah, physically dominates, but we do on the other hand
Have our own version of alpha males as far as we have political and sociological leaders
Who have a disproportionate impact on the direction of a of a community?
um
So was the cooperation allowed us to
To have a greater scale of hierarchy with the alpha male on top or the alpha creature on top. Yeah. Yeah
No, that's a fascinating theory
In in nature were were very weak as a species so we needed to cooperate cooperate in order to
To evolve that I think
It made us uh the the top of the food chain if you look at um
Humanity in in nature
Really the two things that seem to
More than anything else determine whether or not a given human community will be
Successful in a predatory world on numbers and technology
Okay, the more your numbers increase in the the higher the technology of the weapons and support systems
You have around you the more successful you'll be in a predatory world
um
So it's not clear that just killing off the idea of an alpha male was the the the single biggest thing
um
The rise of technology
Uh in the growth of community
After the imposition of language these are other things that would have been
Very very important factors and in humanities rise
George you made an interesting point if you look at humans
Just the raw material of humans. We're we're we're fucking pathetic
And in a predatory animal kingdom. We're just the absolute bottom of the food chain
um, we don't have a single
effective weapon other than better than average endurance that's about it
um
But you put us in a community
Who can talk to each other with language and give us the time
To come up with technological advances such as metals
Um, and suddenly a human
will go from
No combat effectiveness in the animal kingdom to a a human armed with a simple metal tip spear can kill
Damn there any animal in the uh in the animal kingdom and working as a group
I'll beat your silver back. You know our
I'll fight him in a deep water pool because he cannot swim. So I don't have to touch him
He'll drown and I'll get him into the pool. You know why because someone told me because we live in a community
Someone told me that information. So I know he passed it on to me. Yeah
He taught you
Well, you have to convince him to you have to somehow convince him to join you in the pool, which is very difficult
It's a very problem very very difficult
um
From a technical perspective john you've looked at
That makes martial arts fighting in general and grappling. What's the difference between fighting and grappling?
That's something I'd love to
Ask all of you. Maybe john you can start like. Um, well, uh, when you talk about fighting you mean unrestricted
Uh, mma top type fighting. Yeah, well, this is fun. You said unrestricted mma type fight mma type fighting
So there's there's the street fighting. Yep. Yeah, there's mma fighting and then there's grappling
But it's really the sport of grappling. You're saying, okay. What's the difference between mma and grappling? Yes, okay
Um, see that would have been a much better question to ask. Um, well the uh, uh, the single
When you talk about grappling you're talking about juditsu rules or yeah
I mean, you could maybe also mention different rule sets that somehow fundamentally
Challenged that changed the sport. You know, um in the sport of mixed martial arts
uh
You've got two
Ways to inflict damage on the human body. You've you've got kinetic energy, which is done through striking
kicking knees elbows fists
and you've got
Isometric tension used along the lines of
lever and fulcrum
Which can be used for strangulation and and joint breaking
Um
In grappling you lose one of those you're no longer allowed to hurt your opponent with kinetic energy
You can do it accidentally through a throw, but you're not allowed to just
You know knock someone out with a throw in most grappling sports that it can happen
But it's relatively rare and it's it's not encouraged by the rule set. So um, I work with uh
Yeah, you got close
So
There's a sense in which in mixed martial arts you've got twice as many problems to deal with and um, uh, and they occur in
a
Much shorter time frame the single biggest difference between grappling technique as a weapon
In human combat versus striking technique is time
Grappling technique takes a huge amount of time to apply
Okay, the great advantage of grappling technique is certainty of outcome once you get there
It takes a huge amount of time to set up a takedown
Physically take them down
Work their way work your way towards a dominant position
culminating in your opponent's back and then apply a stranglehold. That's a long chain of events as opposed to
A strong punch or kick which can take a quarter of a second then application from start to finish and the match is over
um
and so
there's a sense in which
grappling is
it's
It's fighting for the patient and the calculating
Whereas striking is much more for
In this short time frame where everything gets done and in the blink of an eye
There's a sense also which grappling is a much more forgiving sport. You can make a terrible mistake
End up in a terrible position and still fight your way out and win
In mixed martial arts, it's much much less forgiving
If you get hit and stunned your chances of recovery
Minimal you're going to get swarmed on and unless it's right at the end of the round
It's very very hard to recover from getting hit and swarmed on
So there's a sense in which
The biggest difference between them is time of application of technique
Uh in mixed martial arts, it's incredibly unforgiving in terms of time
Even the smallest error can have the deepest consequences
In grappling you can make massive errors and still come back and win
um
grappling will typically be one
In a much higher percentage case by the more skilled and conditioned grappler
whereas there is
Much more of what they call a punches chance
In mixed martial arts where
There's a much higher likelihood of a lesser athlete
Defeating a greater athlete in MMA than there is in grappling simply because of time of application of the techniques
Even the smallest period of inattention in MMA and the match is over
Gordon Ryan could fall asleep for 30 seconds
Have his opponent mounted on and wake up and finish him in five minutes later. That's not going to happen in MMA
Okay, so the the stakes are much higher
You can do a lot of damage in a very small amount of time and just the dynamic the temporal dynamics of how things happen is very different
Everything you'll see will be a reflection of that. Then you go further into things like
rule sets
In the sport of grappling if Gordon Ryan comes out and sits down in the middle of the mat
His opponent must follow him to the ground and engage
In mixed martial arts, if you come to the center of the cage and sit down
The other guy can just walk away from you. They're completely
Oriented in different directions grappling is ground centered
MMA is typically standing centered at the beginning of every round you have to start standing again
If I disengage from a ground grappling situation stand up and walk away from my opponent
My opponent must follow me up to the feet
In grappling, it's the exact opposite if I sit to the ground my opponent must follow me to the ground
It's written into the rule set and so one is inherently ground oriented and one is inherently standing oriented
So it's more it's more difficult to dictate where the fight happens in mixed martial arts
Yes, you have to be able to impose where the fight is whereas in grappling you can simply choose it
So George, what is your sense of the the difference in terms of how you approached it?
Between the two sports. So you also are a student of wrestling and grappling. So in preparing for fights
What parts of grappling purely the sport that you have to leave behind?
Well, I uh
I'm very lucky. I had the opportunity to I train with I consider the best
mentor trainer I ever ever had
and I have
Some of the best grapplers that I can train with they were they were there to help me through my career
so
for my training is
Of course because I do not dedicate as much time in one specific area. It's hard to be
You know a world class athlete and that in in only one particular area always
for me
Like the idea to be more well rounded to be very competent in every of those areas striking grappling
takedowns and and all all those areas then being just
very good at one
and not as good as as others, you know, because I like the idea that
It gives me more option when I fight someone I can
Can mold myself to become the perfect nemesis to
That person better if I'm more well rounded
If I do not have those well rounded skill
And I don't have that option, you know
You have less tools to work with less technology. What about you gordon? What um
You know, what do you think is very distinct about grappling and the way you approach it versus fighting?
I think most of it was covered, but I think that though the one one of the big things is the fact that when you're looking at mma
You have a pretty general agreed upon and unified rule set where
If you look at ufc versus bell tour, they're they have slight differences in the rules. Maybe
But it's pretty much the same thing
Whereas in grappling you have ebi rules and you have adcc rules. You have ibgf rules. You have no time limit rules
Um, and each rule set will play to the skills of different athletes
If you have if you do adcc rules
Uh, it generally is slightly biased towards wrestlers or if they can stall to the overtime
And then hit a takedown in the overtime and not really doing a jiu-jitsu, but they score a takedown
They're going to win whereas if you have like an ebi, for example
You have to finish the guy in regulation or you start in a jiu-jitsu position with your back taken or in an arm bar
um, so I think that you have
certain rule sets that play in the favor of certain athletes
um, and
Certain athletes can win in one rule set, but then they just have no chance of winning in the other
Um, like when I fought Yuri the first time in ebi
I beat him in ebi the chances of me beating him on that night under an adcc rule set were probably pretty low
um
When I fought leondra low under an adcc rule set
He beat me that day, but the chances of him beating me in the same day in an ebi rule set were like next to zero
um, uh, so I think it's interesting that
In in MMA you have one unified rule set which have small differences, but they're all generally the same
um, and in jiu-jitsu you have a wide variety of different rule sets that um, have
Uh biases towards
Certain athlete skill sets
You mentioned leondra low
I gotta ask you again about adcc
You have lost very very few times in your career
Uh one I mean this is the same as true for george and uh, the only person who has ever submitted you is philippe apenia
At black belt. Yeah at black belt
He is a dcc world champion multiple time at bjjf gi and no gi world champion
You may face him a adcc or elsewhere in the future. Um, will you beat him?
uh, yes, I mean I have to say yes, right um, but uh
I fought him initially when I first got my black belt um that I fought him a year later so 2016 and 2017
um, and despite what people remember about the match
And whenever people talk about it's like, oh, yeah, the guy who strangled gordon
But no one remembers that the first match was like a 45 minute war
Um, and then the second match with the full 20 minutes of adcc
And if I didn't get my back taken in like the last
Minute and a half two minutes, it would have went into an overtime. Um, that could change the outcome of the match
um
I think that if you look at philippe's performances, especially no gi specifically no gi since then
It looks like he's almost gotten worse. Whereas since that match
Uh, in 2017, uh, the only match I lost after that was against vinny, uh, magalesh by by points and uh,
I'm on like a 55 match win streak
Over the course of four years, um, winning all the major tournaments no gi and uh, philippe since that match
I think is like five and two
No gi, um, and he's lost his last two match matches one was convincingly where he was dominated by andre and one was by submission
Um, so I don't think that he's progressed nearly as fast
If anything, he looks like he's worse than he was when he beat me in 2017 based on his previous performances
Um, that being said, I know he's gonna come in training very hard for this one and he's he's gonna be prepared
but I just don't think
that in terms of technical ability, he's anywhere near my level and um,
He was much bigger than me both times we fought. Um, the first time he was much bigger than me the second time
He was one way class above me. Um, so now there's not going to be an advantage in
Technicality and there's also not going to be a physicality advantage. So I think he's just going to be beat everywhere
This is uh, this is a good example of the scientific response to a, um
To a comment to a to a question. Yeah, so he's not, um
That that's a match you're you're not deeply concerned with
And in terms of the set of opponents because you you have and you will be facing a lot of really difficult
Yeah, that's actually in my opinion one of the easier matches because of the fact that we're relatively the same size
um, if I show up at 230 pounds like a lot of the guys are
260 270 plus so that extra weight does make a difference. I think out of that entire bracket, um
Fleet Bay is probably going to be the one of the easiest matches because of the fact that I can easily take him down
And if I take him down, I'm going to pass his guard. Whereas I feel like the other guys because they're so much bigger
And they're very cagey. Um, it may take me a while to actually
Take them to the ground. Um
And get on top of them
And I think it may be they may be longer drawn out matches because of the fact that they're so much bigger and
Stawley, it's hard to take them down, but Fleet Bay is relatively my size
And uh, his wrestling is atrocious
So and I've already taken him down in the last ADCC match
So I'm pretty sure I can just easily put him down and pass him and then finish him
Well, I'm not sure what response I was expecting but uh, that was that was phrased beautifully
um
We talked about the Tiago Alves fight that George had and john barred up in class yesterday
I believe but the point is we're talking about wrestling and I think that that's a fascinating fight that, um
There's an incredible display of strategy of skill of heart
Uh, George, could you maybe talk about that fight john? Maybe two what lessons you gained from that fight?
Go ahead. It was your fight. No mine
Well, oh, maybe it also tell what happened in terms of your injury. I think third round. Oh, yeah
um, so I was fighting Tiago Alves and uh in the third round I um
I tear my a doctor muscle
Um, it happened when I was on the bottom and he I think he pushed my knee down tried to pass my guard and I heard a pop
I don't know what I think you're going for an ombar
You were on his back you switched to ombar and he cleared the leg by pushing on your leg and you went in with a pre-existing injury
And at tour
Yes, and and it it it got worse and and I heard a pop
I don't know what it was, but I know it really hurt. So I came back standing up and
there's a
Famous video one that goes on the internet about when I go back in the corner and I tell my my coach
I'm like, I don't know what it is. I think I tore my my my a doctor muscle and
Greg Jackson is like, I don't care hit him with your growing
I was very worried because I wasn't pain, but I didn't I didn't know what what I had
So I didn't know the gravity of it and it it plays on your mind
So but I had to buy to bite down my mouthpiece and finish the fight
You know, I knew I was ahead on the on the scorecard and now I need to finish finish strong
So what was your strategy there in terms of strikes in terms of wrestling?
So he's an exceptionally difficult opponent to take down. Yeah. Well at first I
I knew I would add a good jab a good, you know to stay always
From the outside, you know fight him from the outside and and use my footwork because he was like a tank
He was much bigger and much stronger than me
and
I didn't want never wanted to stay in front of him
So he was all the way out or all the way in and when I was coming all the way in it was with my
proactive or reactive takedown where I
myself initiated the takedown by
By using a distraction like a jab to make his his end goes up and then I go with
single double leg
Or to react like baiting him for him to come hit me and then
While he's coming to hit me I go change level and and
That's the way I like to take my opponent down, you know, some guys for example like like cabbie for example, he's very good at
At at bringing his opponent to defense and use chain wrestling to to take his opponent down
I find it for me for myself. I specialize more into
Explosive takedown in the center of the octagon because I found it
more economical for me
What what did you see you were you're commenting john about the wrestling
Those those quite interesting. I mean also. Can you generally comment on the fact that George St. Pierre who don't I don't think you wrestled
I
I started wrestling I was 19 years old, but I resolved some very good russian guys
so they took me underneath their wing and but
My ability to cover distance
Come from karate does not come from wrestling wrestling is how I finish once I get the leg how I finish the takedown
So the the timing and the movement and the explosion required for this crowd. Yeah
I think an important distinction to make here is um one which
George
made throughout his career and I
Believe george you were the greatest innovator in MMA history
With regards this
and this is
The creation of what george calls shootboxing
Which is the amalgamation of striking technique in george's case mostly karate because that was his martial arts background
Into grappling and in particular takedowns
Uh
When most people say so and so has better wrestling in mixed martial arts
You have to be very careful what they mean by this
There are many highly credentialed wrestlers
In the early days of mixed martial arts who went in and truly struggled to hit a takedown
Now these are very very good wrestlers who in a wrestling match would easily put down their opponent
but
In a striking situation where the ranges are completely different and the setups are entirely different
The stances are different even the the overall conditions are different. You're no longer wearing shoes
People underestimate just what an impact it is for a wrestler to take the shoes off
You lose like 20 of your forward drives the minute you take off the shoes
um
All of these make massive differences
In whether or not you're going to be able to even make contact with an opponent for a takedown
As george pointed out the true value of wrestling in MMA is finishing the takedown once you've established contact
But that's only about 20 of the action of a of a mixed martial arts takedown
80 of it is an understanding range rhythm setup
opportunity etc etc
and
That's not part of wrestling at all. You even the overall conditions are completely different in the sport of wrestling
You start at very close range in a very bent over stance and you're expected to wrestle for
an international size for three minutes at a time
um now suddenly you're completely upright
uh
and
You're not wearing shoes all the conditions the the the rhythm and speed of it is different
And the counters are completely different. It's just an entirely different animal
And so george was an early recognizer of this
And started to put the emphasis on direct training for shootboxing
In addition to wrestling so he practiced with very good wrestlers in the Montreal wrestling club
Just the sport of wrestling and that's what made him very good at finishing takedowns
But it was in his shootboxing training
Which he himself largely developed remember george started at a time when mma was pretty damn young
and um
He we were when when you entered the sport of mixed martial arts george
It wasn't even allowed on tv
Like it was completely banned. It was in his country. It was physically banned
They had to fight on indian reservations and I mean this is way back in the wild west days of mma
And so as a as a young developing athlete, he had to
More or less do this by himself
If you ever want to hear some incredible stories talk about teenage george st. Pierre
Had a coach who used to make him
put on boxing gloves now
He was 16 17 years old and just put him on a hardwood floor against a professional boxer who was in his
Late 20s at the peak of his career and he said george. You're not allowed to punch
You just got to take him down while he tries to knock you out
and it was
Darwinism he was like
He's like you're gonna you're gonna
Adapt or you're gonna die
Literally, and he could have been very bad, but it turns out to be great
It's mythed, but there's a sensor in which
People think oh, you know what determines your takedown ability in mma is your wrestling skill that
Your wrestling skill will determine your finishing ability on takedowns, but there's so much more to it than that
um
Whenever people say, you know what what are the broad?
Elements that determine the outcome of a mixed martial arts fight
Okay on the broadest possible level and I always give the same three things
The athlete who can dominate the pace
of the match
The athlete who can dominate the direction of the match and the athlete who can dominate the setups
Will win the vast majority of fights. They're in those three things
The direction the pace and the setups you dominate all three of those
You're gonna win 90 of the matches. You're in
um
george could always dominate the direction of the fight because he could stop the other guy taking him down
And he could impose his own takedowns at any point in a match. So whether went to ground or whether it stayed standing
was always up to him
george had the most sophisticated array of setups into takedowns
That I've personally ever witnessed
um
The whole distinction between reactive and proactive takedowns came very early in george's career and he excelled in both
Most people tend to favor one or the other
Most athletes have a very hard time
imposing
Their setups on an opponent and as a result they have to use
The cage as a crutch for their for their setups where they just bully someone towards the cage and then put them down on the cage
George is one of the very few people who was equally good against the cage or in the open
It could do so in both proactive and reactive situations
um
And the scary thing is that as good as
All of you saw him look in the octagon
Anyone who knows george
As a coach will tell you he was twice as good as that in the gym where he would often go against people several weight divisions above himself
I could sit here all day. I won't name names, but I always laugh when people say oh, this is the greatest
Uh pound for pound guy of all time and I've personally seen george
Take that guy down and crush him in the gym and I can't say anything because it's rude to talk about that in public
Because it's it's just training
But I've seen george go with people all the way to light heavyweight some of the greatest names in the history of the sport put them down
Advanced position on the ground and dominate them in training. It's it's what he did during that time
I uh george, I gotta say I deeply admire
Many of the things I saw you do not just in the octagon, but in training as well
it's um
the the impact that you had on
uh
the
the degree to which
takedowns were we used in the sport was absolutely inspirational
That's why one of one of the reasons why I always say you're one of the the only athlete I ever met who taught me
More than than I taught you because you opened my eyes to a whole new world of of shootboxing
and how
I grew up in a time when uh, you I was laughing before when you talked about sugary Leonard
I was a kid watching that match and um, I grew up in a time where there was
Boxing and there was kickboxing and then I came to america and I learned grappling
and
This young man here was the innovator when it came to the integration of the two
Well, then I have to ask is george sits here uncomfortably being complimented
um
If george st. Pierre and kabeeb nirmanga met off face each other in their prime who wins
Who that's a very very loaded question. How yeah, like what are the different trajectories you see?
Okay, how does each one win in your view if one wins or the other one wins? What happens interestingly they're actually
very similar in size despite the fact that
george fought at welterweight and kabeeb
Fought it uh, lightweight if you actually see them stand next to each other the of similar height kabeeb's actually a little more thick set
Yeah, he's actually heavier than you walking around
Um, george walked around most of his career between 188 and 191 pounds
And so kabeeb actually would ironically have a kind of size and strength advantage
Uh, despite being in the lighter weight division. That's been the general trend as mma has grown
Is that athletes will come further down and wait to make weight divisions?
Uh
I believe that george has the best takedowns in history
In the open in the cage
Um kabeeb was his great strength was using the fence to facilitate takedowns
um
kabeeb's
Other great strength was not only his ability to take people down but to keep people down for extended periods of time
both of them were
Powerful strikers on the ground and could do terrible damage to opponents
On the floor. So they're both very similar in that regard
Um kabeeb was mostly a uh a puncher from the back george was mostly an elbow from the front
But both of them could lay weights to opponents with strikes on the floor
Um, both of them were highly competent with submissions on the ground
there weren't submission specialists in the sense of someone like gordon rine, but
uh, they were
certainly
No slouches with submission holds
um
Yeah, it's just a fascinating idea. So it's almost like who gets the first takedown. Yeah, I do believe that
They could probably stand up on each other
I don't think either one of them would be able to hold the other down for a whole round
Um, both of them are notoriously difficult people to hold down
So I don't think that whoever won the first takedown wins the match. I don't think it's like that
um, I do believe that george would hold a decisive advantage in striking and distance management
um, the few times that kabeeb did look shaky is
when he
kabeeb was either advancing forward menacingly, but when he had to to fight moving backwards
There was a definite asymmetry between his ability to fight going forwards
Which is very good and his ability to fight going backwards, which was noticeably weaker
Um, george would often fight both forwards and backwards. It was the giago elvis fight
Most of the standing time. Yeah, it was was going backwards. Um
That's probably there's the single biggest difference between the two athletes and skill level would be in the standing position
um on the ground
uh
Kabeeb slight edge and takedowns on the fence george slight edge and takedowns in the center
um
Ability to inflict damage on the floor roughly equal ability to fight off the back roughly equal
Ability to stand up from bottom roughly equal. It's a very very hard match
um
In terms of the biggest difference in skill level is going to be in the standing position and so it would come down to
um, that doesn't necessarily mean that kabeeb would lose in the standing position
He might just push it to the fence and just use match tactics where he
Kept the fight on the fence for significant periods of time
Um, uh, and you can win rounds in that fashion
So it's a match that could go either way. Both of them are absolutely the best that you'll ever see
I've always believed the three greatest mixed martial artists. I've ever seen in my life for george st
Pierre kabeeb. No one would get off and john jones
Um, the three of them have some interesting similarities and differences
All three
Uh beat every single person they ever faced
um
I I know john jones officially has a loss by d cube, but no one believes that was a loss
um
george does have two losses, but he
Uh
Defeated both athletes decisively
In rematches kabeeb did it by having no losses
Interestingly, all three athletes have at least one match, which is controversial in terms of who won and who lost
Um, uh, john jones has had several matches which could have gone either way on the judge's scorecard kabebes
Uh, match against glaceon t bell could have gone either way
Uh, george's match with hendrix was could have gone either way
They they all had matches that they won which people would dispute the outcome
So that was a similarity between the three of them. Um, all three of them
Have had the ability
To dominate the direction of fights when they want it to go down it goes down when they don't want it to go down
it doesn't
um
That's why I put such a heavy emphasis on that idea that a mixed martial arts champion must be able to determine the direction of a fight
The single most important attribute that they all must have
um
As to which of the three is the best it's going to come down to criteria
You you can't pull them apart the
Which answer you give as to which of those three is the greatest of all time will come down to the criteria that you use
Okay, is it being undefeated?
um, uh, is it the amount of time was it the quality of the opponents that they had if you do it by quality of opponents
I think you probably have to give it to george if you do it by
um, uh
Measure dominance through not being defeated and it has to go to compete
um
Arguably you could say the same with john jones since his one
losses
By dq
But then you could also say the last three or four fights that john's had haven't been the same measure of dominance as we saw previously
so ultimately
You've got those three guys in my opinion
And which one you choose will come down to who it says more about who you are as a viewer than it does about
The respective level of the athletes you could throw a blanket over them the three of them are just that good and um
Uh, and which one you select will probably say more about who you are as a viewer than it does about them as athletes
I believe the best fighter the goat is not even born
because the generation
That is present
Benefit of a huge advantage
They have knowledge technology that we didn't have before
And we had the the knowledge that the other generation did not have before
But
I believe the best the goat is not even born yet as good as they are today. I think you
In sport where you can measure the performance
Track and field
Olympic lifting you can you know someone
Is better than the other one because you can measure the performance fighting. It's all subjective
subjective we always debate of who would win, but
10 the tendency in sport
Is that the performance get better?
I don't think it's because the athlete necessarily get better. It's because they have access to better technology knowledge
And they learn from their predecessor
As long as that knowledge is transferred forward
Something tells me that the greatest of all time lived a few thousand years ago and it's forgotten some of the greatest warriors
Like you imagine the kind of grapplers. We just the history didn't record them
There could have been small tribes where they developed many ufcs
And they've developed the kind of things we you have to think of like the graces
Just a small family was able to develop so much so quickly
I often
As this this discussion with john and I think it's very important like to mention
I asked you very several times like what would happen if we would
Take a fighter of modern days facing the champion of pancreation
This is an interesting question and you brought something incredible a good point and and people don't don't realize it, you know
Yeah, no, I think um one of the great tragedies of martial arts history is our loss of
uh, the historical records of pancreation like most of what we know is
Uh, from what I'm told is actually lost in the fires of the library of alexandria
And we're left with only a pitiful amount of information on pancreation managers
But what we do know is that there was a very large
Uh participation in the sport and that it was why they considered the most popular
Sport in the ancient olympics and that it was represented in the ancient olympics for many hundreds of years
Plus a long period of time before its introduction into the ancient olympics
And so the development time
That it may have had would have been very significant it
Uh, as far as we know most of the development would have been in the major greek city states for
Uh, literally hundreds of years of development
Um, given its prestige as an olympic sport then the best athletes would have been doing it
But some of the sharpest minds that we know of in human history were involved in the sport
Um, Plato the great philosopher
Uh
Was a pancreationist in his youth in fact his name plato is a nickname
Platus is like plate
It means broad or big guy like the big guy and um
He spoke often about pancreation and and his written works
Um, imagine people with the intelligence of plato
thinking about
Grappling technique for hundreds of years in the most popular olympic sport of that time
Significant numbers of people with financial backing as city states put great prestige upon olympic success
They would have funneled athletes in
Bought in the best coaches and they had that for many hundreds of years
Like it's quite conceivable that the best pancreation athletes were of the absolute first quality
and um
It it's it's so sad to think we'll never know what was their skill level and uh
It's interesting to think about what kind of techniques they developed whether
There's stuff we haven't discovered yet in class. You're talking about the most effective
takedown strategy in wrestling and collegiate wrestling
So maybe let me ask first because we offline talked about this too. What is the highest percentage submission in grappling?
Overall, you have to go with the rear naked strangle strangles from the back
If you look at most tournaments and most rule sets
It has success across all rule sets. Um, all weight divisions
All body types
It doesn't require any kind of specific physical advantage such as height
Uh in order to be effective. Um, it works equally well in both fighting and grappling
Um, it will work regardless of how physically and mentally tough your opponent is. Okay
Heelhawk is a very high percentage technique in in modern day competition
But if your opponent simply makes up his mind that he's not going to tap and is willing to take the physical damage
It won't result in the end of a match
Uh, a strangle hold by contrast will always end the match regardless of your opponent's mental toughness
so, um, I believe it's fair to say that at the end of the day the single most high percentage
method of
Submitting people and in grappling is is the rear naked strength. So when you look at an athlete, maybe Gordon you can speak to this like what?
What's the best? Uh, you mentioned Gary with the guillotine
What's the best submission to really invest in is it the rear naked choke?
To really invest your development like understanding the entirety of the system that leads into that
Uh, I think that I mean you have to do them all obviously
But if I had like one submission that I would only one submission I could pick for the rest of my life
It would definitely be a rear naked
Can you explain maybe some of the actual technical details of why that's the case?
Well, as John spoke about they're different in joint locks. Whereas
You don't have to tap you can just let your leg break and then keep going with the strangle
There's there's no uh
There's there's none of that. Um, and then it's just an inherent
Advantage you have being behind someone
Um, whereas if you go for an arm bar you stop you start from top mountain
You're facing the guy and then you put him down and you're not at directly behind them with leg locks
You're facing the guy
Whereas when you're on someone's back you have them in a pin where you can your chest to back
You have a body triangle and you're paying the guy in place. You can't explode out
He can't grease his way out most of the time. Uh, and there's an inherent advantage you have being behind them due to the fact that
We're poorly set up to deal with threats behind us
So would you say that's the most dominant position you get to like more than mount
more than yeah
Sat control more than I think uh, if you look at most matches historically
Most guys who get stuck in positions for long amounts of time are guys that they're back taken
um, if you get
An explosive guy from about a mountain can bridge and he can off-bound to you and lock half guard
Maybe and then work back to guard, but if someone locks a body triangle on your back
That's where you see most guys getting pinned in place for long amounts of time
Was uh, was the body triangle like a well understood thing
Was that an invention at that point like as a system as a as a control
Have some of your your listeners can correct me on this, but I believe there was a technique band and judo called doji main
Which involved crossing feet or locking a triangle around the abdominals from the back and it was band and judo
I believe because
Of intestinal injuries which occurred in the early developmental days of of judo
and
in the modern era
When I first began judo to body triangles were relatively rare. They were not a standard part of class
um
And sometime around the late 1990s early 2000s people started to realize hey, this is a stronger method of control
um
it
It greatly increases the amount of control you have over your opponents hips and torso over regular hooks
Uh, it's not for all athletes. It's difficult for most people who are of shorter thicker statue
to
Employee on on on big people if your opponent's very broadly built through the stomach. It's almost impossible to apply
And so because it can't be applied by all people it tends not to be taught much at beginner level
and
so as a result it was always seen as a
kind of a specialist move for
taller athletes at
A higher level of competition rather than a broad based move for everyone or every body type in every class to employ
So it just didn't get emphasized that much but in top level competition now
I think you would see that it's very apparent that the vast majority of athletes whenever they have the opportunity or a choice between
body triangle
And regular rear mounts the majority of modern athletes would choose a body triangle
So we also had this conversation about wrestling
And maybe georgia can comment on like what what's the uh the highest percentage?
Not statistically speaking perhaps that's also interesting as john talked about but just for you in terms of mastery of a takedown
What's what's the best way to take it down a human being?
in wrestling well, I
Personally for me it depends
For every fighter are different. They they have a different set of skill
For me I when I look someone
Want to bring down a tree a big strong high tree
He cut it from the base
So the legs that that's what we stand on so it was to attack the leg
But is it single leg double leg is it we talked about like uh, well, there's also the the john smith low single
We actually I don't even know if that's applicable for digits at all
You can use it but it runs into problems with submission holes
Yeah, it's it's not impossible to use but without shoes and in a situation where there's a whole plethora of submission holes in the scoring
It's a little more difficult to use, you know
It is interesting something being a high percentage in terms of effectiveness tells a story
You're saying that every athlete is different, but if it's more effective for most people
I mean it's interesting. It's it's interesting what john talked about is that
The highest percentage thing is actually
In collegiate wrestling that he was talking about is on the defensive side
So blocking a takedown and then spinning around to the into the back
So that's an interesting idea
then also there's all of these kind of going in for a single and switching to a double or
Wizard position and doing knee tap like there's all these kinds of combinations that seem to be
Effective when you look at the statistics and it seems like there's maybe it's a scientific way of thinking but it seems like there is
Some conclusion to be drawn there. Oh, yeah, I believe you need to the high percentage move
There's a reason why they works. I think it's
It's made for a bigger amount of people
um
For example, I one of my main
strength
Athletic strength is I'm an explosive person
So I'll use technique that are explosive if I got a single leg my one of my thing
I like to do is to go for the double power double
but for
Someone else we got for example in a single leg position. Maybe he likes
Like body throw better. He's more a greco guy like so or he's a judo guy. He's gonna go for something something else. So
But there there is move that are I would say like you just mentioned are universal like statistically speaking they're
The highest percentage move that works for pretty much everybody
Everybody pretty much put can do an adac at jimmy, you know, it's very easy
But it's not everybody that can lock a triangle with their legs
so
So those move like a rear naked choke adac at jimmy is the highest percentage move because it's maybe more accessible
It's accessible for a bigger range of yeah based on the physical characteristics of the people
Do you draw any wisdom from these high percentages john uh for like in terms of what to focus on?
Yeah, absolutely. Um jiu jitsu has an ocean of moves and you can get lost on that ocean
You can drift for a long period of time and and and that was very little to show for it
Yeah, so my whole thing is focus. We only live one lifetime
And your training lifetime is even shorter than your actual lifetime
So in that time
Unless you die on the mat
That's the same
Uh, I I put a very high value on
Choosing what I believe to be the most high percentage
Uh moves and putting an extraordinary amount of focus on them. Um, the only problem is that
In one generation a move which can be considered low percentage might actually turn out to be high percentage in another generation
for example
We talked earlier about leg locks when I was first out of jiu jitsu, they were considered the ultimate low percentage move
and
A big part of my career has been convincing people that in fact that was that was incorrect that they can be a high percentage move
If we just change our approach to them
um, so we can't just
Follow tradition and say oh, this is low percentage. This is high percentage. It has to be part of
a fairly systematic study where you investigate
What are the reasons why it's high percentage or low percentage?
with regards takedowns
If you look at what we can consider the most high percentage takedowns
If you're in front of someone the single most high percentage way of taking them down is to get a hold of both of their legs and push them backwards
Okay, if you get a hold of one of their legs and put a force on them
They can use their other leg to defend themselves and hop around and
Funk their way out of takedowns and cause all kinds of problems for you
I didn't care how athletic your opponent is if you get a hold of firm grip
Of both of his legs and start pushing them backwards. He's going to fall down to his butt
Now he might be able to recover from there, but he will fall down
Even easier than that is to be behind someone
Takedowns from in front of someone are difficult. You go right into their hips
Their head their hands that you go into all their defensive weapons
If you're already behind someone and you're doing what in America they refer to as a mat return
This is significantly easier than taking someone down from the front
If you have control of their head in a front headlock position
You've already closed distance on your opponent. You already have close contact. You don't have to worry about shooting anymore
There's no sprawl out of that. You don't have to worry about guillotines, kimoras or the standard defenses
Those will intrinsically be easier takedowns out of front headlock
And so if we're going to talk about high percentage technique, I always go back to the mechanics of it
Rather than just historical tradition because historical tradition can be wrong. It was wrong about leg locks
It can be wrong about other things too. So my primary thing is okay. Talk to me about mechanics
That's what ultimately is going to determine whether something is high percentage or not
Gordon pointed out earlier that when you're behind someone you have innate physical advantages over the other guy
The human the human body is set up entirely to defend threats from the front
We are poorly adapted to defending threats from the rear. We don't have eyes in the back of our head
We can't apply pushing strength backwards if you get behind someone
takedowns are 10 times easier from behind someone than they are when you're in front of someone
If you have to take someone down from the front get a hold of both of their legs
If you can get a hold of both of their legs and a part of pushing force you will almost always knock them down
If you can get a hold of their head
And work takedowns from there again
It's much easier because most of their defensive apparatus has been taken away from them before the takedown even begins
and so
For me the most high percentage takedowns will always be from the front double legs
From any takedown from the back is going to be significantly easier than any takedown from the front
So all manner of mat return takedowns are going to be very high percentage
And takedowns done out of situations where the opponent is broken down in front of you
And you have either front headlock or front chest reposition are going to be significantly easier than takedowns from the open
Of course you have to consider the full
Spectrum of mechanics and volunteers possible that an outside low single leading to a double leg is much higher percentage
It's like there's a lot of chain wrestling yet, you know that needs to be considered as the possibility
Maybe a straight on double and part of this cultural too
Are people afraid of this kind of thing that they came to be the case with leg locks are people aware of this
Are they worried about this are they training for this to defend this?
and and then it's upon a specific of course that
You know with jordan boros people are preparing for the double which is why he had to develop
A whole other kinds of different stuff
And then the head to all the different controls all the different ties
within the rule set
And that's where it's so fascinating to see the effective rule set and all of this judo over the past
I think 20 years went through this every olympics different changes to the rule set like fundamentally different
In terms of what's allowed to grip whether you're allowed to touch the legs at all. That was a big one in
2012 I think
And and that changed the sport completely and so interesting
It's so interesting to watch how tiny change in the rule can change the sport
At the highest when when you're talking about people competing at the highest level
and the cool thing there is
The rule change happens on a scale of every four years
So you get to see people that are at the top of their game
Have to like recompute
So it's not like you have a new generation of people coming up with the rules. They have to figure. Oh shit
You're not allowed to like it's it's the equivalent of saying you you're not allowed to kick anymore in MMA
Because you were not allowed to grab legs anymore in judo
Interestingly, if you look at the
case of judo
If you look at the world rankings
of athletes
When they went through one of the most significant rule changes in judo history where they banned any form of grabbing the legs
The ranking of athletes didn't change much
Yeah, that tells you that there
There's a reason why those guys are at the top. Yeah, and it doesn't have to do that. There's specific to a rule set
Yeah, think about that in terms of
Imagine for example in mixed martial arts if they just said hey
starting next week
Instead of having three five minute rounds. It's going to be 15 minutes straight
That would massively change the preparation of the athletes
It's a different game at that point and judo literally was a different game before 2010 and after 2010
And yet
The international rankings didn't really change that much the countries that were dominant before
Remain dominant the athletes that remain before largely remain the same
You would think was such a massive change all the rankings would have been thrown upside down, but they weren't and
Again, it goes back to this idea that there's a reason why the guys at the top are at the top
And now for something completely different. We talked about aliens earlier. So, uh, george brought up babasar. I
I
Will likely probably talk to babasar on this podcast and then
And then john had this a skeptical look on his face about about aliens. So let me ask john and gordon
Do you think there's intelligent alien civilizations out there in the universe outside of our own?
The universe is unimaginably large
The idea that we are the only life forms and cosmos as large as this is
I think naive and foolish
There's a very high likelihood that if life could evolve on this planet that it could have done so on many many other planets around the
Around the cosmos. I think anyone who puts even a moment's thought into this would realize that there's
Almost certainly other forms of life out there
the real question with regards the alien community is
Have they got here and now they're circling our planet in
Little sulfur sources and making observations and periodically stealing people for experimentation purposes
Doesn't have to be silver saucers. It could be different other color saucers
Um, and that question i'm i'm i'm not at all convinced. No, I didn't recently
Navy footage has come out showing
Some very interesting phenomena if you talk to almost any experienced pilot
They will tell you they've seen things in the upper atmosphere that are very difficult to explain
I'll be the first one to agree with you on this
There are some things out there that are extremely difficult to explain like literally UFOs unidentified
Yeah, I mean we just don't know what they are but to go from the idea that there's things out there that we don't understand to
there's
like
Little creatures running around and um, uh, and these somehow exist
Uh, I just reserve judgment. I just say i'm i'm agnostic about these things. I think it's possible
but um
All the evidence that i've been showing so far was insufficient to come to any kind of definite conclusions until
Aliens land in central park on tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. And get out with little alien ray guns and start shooting people
I don't believe in
Many of the stories that get told
Well, what about if it's not little aliens with ray guns, but something very different very very difficult to detect for us humans
Us very human creatures at that point. It's a it's a fascinating idea and it's certainly possible, but show me the evidence
All right, what about you gordon?
Do you do you look at the cosmos and ponder the stars often? I think it's fair points jon raised
something really interesting I saw the other day was uh
someone posted like
if an alien organ or civilization
65 million light years away somehow managed to look at earth
They would theoretically see the dinosaurs because we're 65 million light years away. So like imagine us looking at
Galaxies that are 100 million light years away. That's 100 million years ago. You have no idea what it looks like now
Um, so that's what's super interesting to me about it
Yeah, the the expanse is huge and so much cool stuff could be going out there
Yeah, the scary thing of course is if they haven't visited us yet
the
There has to be a good reason for it and the the the set of scary reasons of all the fact that they
Maybe once you get sufficiently advanced in your development, you destroy yourself naturally as humans seem to be approaching now
We we more and more have the tools to destroy ourselves completely
in terms of our weapon systems
Um, and we're developing them more and more and they're becoming better and better
And then we're starting to get angry and anger on twitter and instagram at each other
Oh, that's one of the good points you're raising
history has taught us that
Everything that lives one day will die. So we will we will perish one day. Yeah
there's also just the the sheer difficulty of
of
Of travel through space like space is an unimaginably inhospitable environment
And to the best of our knowledge
This
Even the theoretical speeds that we can attain in space even if we could
Travel at the speed of light. We're not even remotely close to that
Still the distances that need to be traveled to get to even relatively close solar systems are
Very very long if you look at astronauts
Who have spent significant amounts of time and space just orbiting the earth
It has severe health effects on them. We're just not built for space. We're supposed to be
In a gravitational environment
But we you're referring to your biological mead bag that's containing the essence
Of the mind that is John Donahue. Maybe we can transfer the mind
alone
So the the the the the bag the meat the mead bag is not designed for space, but maybe the again
This is all contents of the mind. It's
It's possible, but what do you think a concrete evidence you folks who like difficult things?
Uh, what do you think about uh, Elon Musk going into colonize mars?
Is this something you find an interesting or a um
Amos pursuit I think it's a must or a salvation
We need to leave at some point the planet because historically in the past
We know that we've been bombarded by asteroid volcano
The crazy things happen here. It's very unstable. You know, we if you look at it to
True a lifetime of a human being it's nothing but just look 12 000 years ago. What happened, you know
So so there is cataclysm that happen all the time. It's very unstable. So
If we want to survive as a species, I think it's it's we need to get out to be able to get out and
Spread or seed so these are the early steps on a really long journey. But is there something about like
You know, we don't get that exploration from most of modern society, you know
the kind of exploring that people did throughout the centuries of uh, you know coming to the
North america just throughout we were shrouded in physical uncertainty of what's out there
And now we get to do the same kind of exploration with mars
Is there so I mean, is there any aspect of you that wants to travel out the space that wants to travel to mars?
There, you know, the goal is to allow civilians to travel
Perhaps in our lifetime meaning affordably you can do so now unaffordably
Traveling to space and traveling to mars are two different things. I think I would like to travel into space
I don't know if I would like to travel all the way to mars because of the risks involved
Just because
Boring
Is there some part of you that enjoys the I think that if I was like towards the end of my life
I would like to travel to mars just just just the experience. Yeah, but if I go to mars, I'm not coming back
Like that's it one way ticket
Maybe with the technology we have now maybe in the future. Maybe our
The children of our children will will be able to to experience that to go to well the the weekend
On mars
Well, the the whole design of the starship that the SpaceX is working on is supposed to come back
It's supposed to be reusable. So it's not it's not a one-way ticket
That's the whole point. It's always going back and forth back and forth. What's the time frame between two planets?
Like to travel from I think the current thing you'd be stuck on mars for two years
But how long does it take to get from earth to mars? Oh, it's pretty I'm not exactly sure but it's pretty quick
It was pretty quick like I don't know and the skill of months not skill of years
You might not be healthy when you come back, you know, all the astronauts they experience health issues
You know, they lose a lot of muscle mass bone density. So yeah, I don't think the technology is good right now. I mean
Let's say that it is I would love to be doing it for a weekend if it's safe
I would be the first one to to a for a professional fighter who sacrifices body for something
So there's some sacrifice we do in life, right? I would don't want to be there first
I wouldn't want to I leave the other one, but one I know it's it's safe
Okay count me in so one of the things that people say and this is something I wonder about is
It's like having children or something once you see once you're out in space and you look out and you see earth
You look back at earth. That's an experience. It's unlike anything else. Like you can't replicate it here
Um is to look back at that like blue dot
And that nerve-wracking
Like you see like earth disappear into the distance
Yeah, yeah disappear into the distance and then you get this actually stand on mars and see
And just to look you're standing on the ground and you're looking out
And you see the planet from when she came and where you might not be coming back
But there's a challenge to the whole thing where the risk is tremendous
And I don't know. I find that risk really compelling for some reason, but that could be just the exploration
Look, I guess that's a genetic thing too. How much do you want to explore?
There's a sense though in which even in the best case scenario where they did get the technology to whisk you to mars and
In a fairly short period of time
It's kind of an inauthentic sense of exploration because
your participation in it
is
no more exciting than
Your participation in an airline flight to a foreign country
You're basically you you didn't have anything to do with the creation of the of the vessel
You're not in command of the vessel. You're not
In any way shape or form important to the mission
You're just a person sitting in a passenger seat and you get off in a destination the same way
You would if you flew to singapore or london or someplace like that
Well, there's a hierarchy of there's a leadership and then there's a bunch of people and they all have roles
You don't get to go to mars without having a some skill set to contribute
You've made it sound like space tourism where you just pay a ticket
I don't I think it's a long time before you have space tourism to mars where you have nothing to contribute
Okay, like you will have to so what do you do you go through like a training program you go training program
And then there's uh, there's technical things you'll be contributing. So there they would bring
people
You know in terms of agriculture, I don't know. Okay, so this is this is better. This sounds like they're actually
They're more like explorers like if you you talked before about explorers and human history where
Magellan sets off on his boat and every person on the boat had a specific function. They were they were all
Into the mission in a very authentic fashion
If they weren't on the boat the performance of the crew would somehow suffer
So this sounds much better and with just like with Magellan. I think most of the crew died
That's a significant number there. Yeah
And from uh, yeah from bacteria, you know, I mean from things that are unexpected and so on and if we discover life on mars
I mean, who knows what that entails because that's like a man mission to mars
would likely be very driven by the research to do all the kind of
Exploration required to find life now from uh, mr. Musk's
Uh, point of view as a developer. Presumably there has to be some kind of financial incentive here too
is there some kind of financial benefit to mars missions is is
presumably
um
There wouldn't be that many people on earth that could afford a ticket to pay for the kind of research and development that would require this
Is there some kind of mining on mars of minerals that would be useful?
I think there's a lot of answers to this but the only honest answer is the one that looks back into human history
Well, we did a lot of things just because we we could
A lot of hard things just because we could and that led to a lot of innovation that ultimately made our life better
So this is more this is why you have nasa. This is why you have government organizations
Like what's the purpose of nasa nasa would answer that by saying, okay? Well, we're helping
Launch satellites up there all the they'll have a bunch of answers
but the reality is the programs
were
Funded in large part by our desire to explore the unknown
And um, there's some aspect to which we have to all invest into that because historically speaking
That has produced a lot of cool things along the way. They were totally unexpected like uh, but nasser is funded by
public funding the taxpayer
How is mr. Musk going to fund this well currently
The most of the funding was the SpaceX is nasa giving money
uh to
So they're making a competition who can who can get our satellites we need to go to
um
You know was for the space station to
Resupply the space station or we need to launch satellites up
Who's going to carry those quote-unquote payloads? They just need so nasa is paying whoever the hack wants to
uh get
kilograms of thing
Up into space
Why did this is this is specialty? Why did they just give up on that?
Well, they why they realized where mr. Musk came along and then bezels and others that said we can do it for one tenth of price
So why did the why should the taxpayers pay for the why don't you nasa do what you do?
Well, which is like test out cutting-edge stuff make sure they're safe and now
that we've developed
um a car
Let us let us ups and fedex take care of
Doing this at scale doing it cheaper doing it better
I mean, that's the argument and nasa took what they realized is it took way way too long to do stuff
When you're investing millions sometimes billions of dollars into a project
the
The bureaucracy builds up
And the conservatism builds up to where you're I mean you really have to test everything out
So projects take years and then you have somebody like Elon Musk coming along and says well, let's do launches every
Every week and as opposed to just throwing away the rocket will reuse the rocket
That was one of the sort of cutting-edge inventions. It's a dumb obvious idea
Like like Elon says, why do you throw away the plane?
It's the equivalent as if you flew a plane every time you threw it away
Why are we every time throwing away the plane?
But nasa's tried that kind of thing with the space shuttle since the 1970s and yes
Well, they did that with the space shuttle, but not not at the scale here that uh, it was the space shuttle was seen as this
Like majestic amazing thing that requires a huge amount of investment
Well, the el musk is like no with every basic rocket should be reusable
Nice cut cut cost cut cost. Do you do you think like
The more technology we have the more advanced we become the more
Specialized we need to be like is that for that reason that now they they there's different branch
Like you just explained now now that they're specializing in this but they left, you know other branch
Yeah, there's there's the greater and greater specializations. We build up more stuff
Which is fascinating because
Is it making us more
Dumb in a way. Do you think like like like I don't know like
You know, but like I use a cell phone, but I don't know how to build it up from
Yeah, I mean, it's that beta males building up this whole society
Um, because we're this collective intelligence
We rely on each other more and more
and
it
I do also see sort of the rise of conspiracy theories and all those kinds of things because
Like I've been talking to a few folks about flat earth recently. It's fascinating. It's fascinating
there's a large community of people that believe the earth is flat and
That idea takes hold in this day and age of all the ideas. That's the one that takes hold for a large number of people and
I think that's a consequence is this this kind of specialization where it's just a huge amount of experts
But if you look out into our world and try to reason simply about our existence
We we are losing the skills to do that because more and more people are specialized as opposed to general thinkers
We're like extremely good at specific things. Are we capable now to do a robot that is self aware?
There that's that's one the legged one. I uh, it's self aware like it's not self aware
It's been listening, but it's not self aware currently, but do you think a human being is self aware or that's a good question
I mean, I ask this question all the time when the robots move. There's a sense of
When they turn on
Something entered that robot. Wow. And when it turns off something left
If they move in a certain kind of way and if they're if they surprise you the certain elements
that enable us
to see the magic in
In a living being and some of them. I mean we can care go we can maybe list them
But it's the ability to surprise you
It's the
Ability to make mistakes and learn from them visibly. There's a bunch of things that you just
I don't know. It just feels like it has the magic of what is a living being
And which is what humans have and I try to think about how do you replicate that into a machine
So when you turn it on enough is you feel like it dies every time and he
Reborn right so for most machines. We don't feel that way
We don't when we unplug things
We don't feel that way. I don't know why we don't feel that way. That's an interesting question. But I think when
When the robot has certain qualities
like memory
like ability to recognize you
Yeah, you start to feel like you're turning off an organism
So so whenever I have like the robots that recognize me and remember
This is important that all the things we've experienced together
Then it's like holy shit
That's a that's a living thing. But does he remember it feels like a living thing. Does he remember
Your robot does he remember things that happened before you unplugged it? Is it like he's sleeping?
Like is he wake up or is he like that? So right now start to zero everything. Uh, no, it doesn't start zero
It remembers it remembers everything. That's the key every time you like you you unplug. Wow
It's storing the storing the memory. But the memories are basic. They're like, okay, we'll walk there out in the kitchen and then
Um, you looked at me. I mean the memories it's like data. It's just it's not like we've experienced it's able to actually
Uh, experience anything deep like we humans can but just the fact of memory
It's like the toaster or the microwave don't don't give a shit about me
They don't know me. They don't know me by name. They wouldn't recognize my face as being different from gordon's
They wouldn't know the difference and they wouldn't remember
The microwave currently doesn't remember, you know, the times I've been sad or happy
Like what food I put into it. It doesn't remember this
When I was being a fat ass or what I was being in good shape and
I'll just those memories are enough to make you feel when you turn a thing off
That's like shit. That's a living that's that that's a living thing disappearing. Of course, that's kind of an anthropomorphism we do to each other
But uh, that's something
you know that
That's something that makes me believe it's possible to create
Systems with which we can have a connection that are non-human like similar to dogs and cats and so on
It just makes me and that's what's interesting to me because ultimately I feel like that'll help us understand
ourselves
And maybe practice grappling moves. Anyway, um
Well, let me ask the uh advice question
Uh, now that we're together. I've asked I've spoken to john. I spoke to george
What what advice would you give to young folks whether we're talking about
Sport like excelling becoming great at grappling becoming great at fighting
Become a great at whatever sport they take on or life in general
Whether they're maybe in high school or in college. What advice would you give them to uh, excel
At that thing they take on I don't know if i'm qualified to answer this because i'm only 26
So you're at the top you said you said giving advice to young people. Um
Um for me, I think the two biggest things are
Find something that you're both talented in and you enjoy. Um
I think that if you enjoy something, but you're terrible at it
It's going to be hard for you to be successful
In life at that given in that given area. Um, and it's going to be hard to do something for long amounts of time
Uh, if you're talented at it, but you don't enjoy doing it. Um, it's easy to come in
and
train hard for a month or for two months or for a year
Um, you can be very talented at it
But if you come it it's but it's a different story to come in
Every day for five years in a row for 10 years in a row for 15 years in a row. Um, so I think
I think finding something that you're both talented in
And something you enjoy are probably the two biggest things for me
How do you find the joy in it? So you've been training insane amount, you know a lot you've been doing it for a long time
Is there's is there ways to rediscover the joy in it?
Yeah, for me initially
It was just learning new stuff, you know, you come in as a white belt and every day you learn you see a different move and you're like
Oh man, that's that's awesome. Um
And then when I started to compete more seriously towards my professional career it was
Uh, the joy of doing camps and seeing the result of those camps and beating high-level athletes
Um, and then I got to a point where I've beaten all the high-level athletes already. So
Who am I gonna compete against?
so now for me the joy is just
being
The best athlete that can possibly be until I reach my prime which I'm hoping is somewhere between 35 and 40
Um, so instead of competing against the other athletes
I'll be bored already because I already beat all the rest of the guys. Um, but
I know that Matt. I know that I can be better in a year from now or two years from now than I am today and that for me is exciting
By the way, is there some aspect of teaching that's exciting to you? Yeah, I because you become a better and better teacher over the years
Yeah, yeah, I definitely uh, I enjoy teaching and
I used to teach
A lot before I met John and then I met John and I was like, yeah, I just have no idea how to teach
Um, so that's like a completely different element of the sport
You know doing things and being good at doing things or being good at winning
And actually being able to communicate those skills and knowledge to
to a vast amount of people is
Two completely different things
George advice for young people
like yourself
well
First I was I would tell them find
What you want to become what you want to do
And long term
Use certain things maybe sometimes you don't love but where you want to propel yourself in the future
Not what your parent your your friend wants you to become what you you you want to become
So once once you find it
You cannot
Doing it by yourself everything that are that is big achievement in life. We cannot do it doing it by ourselves
So what I would say is second thing is try to build up your team and try to build up your team to be able to achieve your goal
Of people that are competent
And people that you trust
You need both competency and trust
I sell out of people some time in business. For example, they hire people they
That are that they trust but they turns out to be incompetent
So now you have to fire a friend or otherwise your business going down
It's the same problem if you do the opposite you hire someone that is competent, but you cannot trust he's gonna he's gonna screw you, you know
So it's very important to stay away from the negative build up your team people you trust and that are competent
And I would say the third one is to work to work hard to
Sacrifice yourself. Yeah, you have to go through hell sometime
But yeah, you have to see the light at the end of of it, you know to
Keep your dream in mind is going to give you the motivation to go through the tough time. It's nothing easy to go work work
Work is nothing you can accomplish without hard work
The fourth one I would say
To invest on yourself constantly
If you do not invest on yourself on whatever you are in which business and sport
The game will catch up to you
For example, if you're if you become
Champion at something
If you stop improving the other guys that are trying to be champion, they're gonna catch up to you
So you need to invest on yourself and most people
Most athletes they make the mistake when they start to having money
They buy luxury stuff
And that's one thing I didn't do when I start making money
I was investing of on traveling to new york train with john gordon and the guys to learn
What is new in the the game of jiu-jitsu? I used to go in thailand train muay thai
Uh
In las angeles to perfect my boxing skill
So instead of taking that money to buy me jewelry cars and to do what a lot of guys do because it's a mistake
I I invest it on myself because I know there were people coming. They don't want my place
So I want I didn't want them to catch me
And the last one I would say it seems weird
I would say
To give back and it's not because I'm a nice guy and it's not that I don't say that to look good. I say that
When you you make it
It creates opportunity where you can help certain group of people
But when I say give back not give back to everybody to anybody
Give back only to the the cause that you want I give back
Not because I'm a nice guy. I'm kind of it's kind of selfish
I only give back to the people that I want to give back
Because I give back to them and I know that if I'm more successful
I'm going to be able to give back to people. I loved the cause that that that count for me
So it's it brings me more motivation because I don't compete
For myself anymore. I compete to help people. I love in a way
So when you you reach the top in your game, you need to find new motivation if you're satisfied is
Is the end of it your success will go down
So you need to to to find new motivation. What can motivate you? You know, what do you want?
Oh, I want to help this or I need to to be successful. I want to
You know, you need to find reason who you what do you want to do with your success?
So when I say give back, it's not because I'm not because I'm necessarily it's not to be to look like a nice guy
To keep your motivation to be able to
Keep climbing the ladder even more
That's beautiful, George
John
Um
First off the two responses given so far covered. I think the most important things or already
Gordon talked about the the need for
An underlying passion and enjoyment if you don't have that
You're not going to have the longevity that is required in order to build
Skills which is ultimately everything's going to come down to your ability to build skills
You've got to have some kind of underlying passion and enjoyment which will keep you in the game long enough
To build world championship skills. It's going to take a minimum of five years and quite possibly considerably longer than that
Um, George talked about the idea of community. You're not going to make it by yourself
So you've got to be able to build people around you and and build a trusting environment around you to develop those skills
um
What I would add to the the excellent points that both already raised
Alludes to what I said at the start of this podcast. You've got to be able to identify
some kind of undervalued
Elements in whatever industry you're in and show the world what their true value is
in addition
You can't go through life
Doing the same things as everybody else
And expecting to get different results
This is straightforwardly irrational and worse. It's even arrogant
It's essentially the statement that I'm going to do the same thing as everyone else, but I believe I'm different
And so they'll work for me
But they didn't work for everyone else
That's like saying no, I'm special
No, you're not special. We're all pretty much the same
And um in order to be special you're going to have to exhibit skills that other people simply don't have
Um
Thirdly, I would say if you want to become something truly impressive in life
You've got to be able to focus on one or two things
That you do better than anyone else in your industry
You can't learn everything but you can get one or two skills and the more innovative those skills are the better
And you can truly excel at them. For example at the peak of his career
No one in the world was better than George St. Pierre at integrating striking and takedowns
No one in the world was better at integrating grappling and striking on the ground
He had two things that he could confidently say he was the best in the world at was he the best at every MMA skill? Nope
but he was
Absolutely the best at those two skills and those two skills were skills which he used throughout his career to win
the vast majority of his matches
Gordon Ryan at the onset of his career could confidently say there's no one in the world better than me at leg locks
He could also say there's no one better in the world than me at late stage defense
To submission holds across the board as he went through his career
He started adding more and more elements. It's gotten to an extraordinary degree now where you could
Absolutely say he's the best at guard passing the best at guard retention
And the list just keeps going on and that goes back to what
Gordon said earlier about keeping things interesting over time because we're always introducing new skill sets
The day you start saying
I'm satisfied with my skill set is the day you get bored
and bored boredom to an athlete is a precursor to
death by boredom
As long as you're still growing in those directions you'll stay in the game
For for very long periods of time. So the main thing I would add to these
statements by Gordon and George is this idea of
Finding something which is currently undervalued and showing the world what its true value is
Understanding
That you can't just use the same training methodologies as everyone else and somehow expect to be different from everyone else
You've got a almost every great rise in human civilization, whether it be groups of people or individuals
Required some kind of innovation. You've got to look for that new angle
Okay, George st. Pierre found that was shootboxing early on in his career
Uh, Gordon Ryan found it with leg locks early on in his career and they branched out from that uh from that angle
Add to this the idea that you want to become the absolute best in the world
In your industry and one or two things that make a difference
Find out what they are and focus on those things and you'll go far
John Gordon George, this is an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for your uh extremely valuable time George as somebody
Who's uh become famous in part
By commenting on people's performance
Um, how do you think we did?
How would you evaluate our performance today?
I'm not impressed by
Thank you. I love that. I I I've learned all the time. I've talked to you guys. I'm
It's it's great. I love it. It was very
Stimulated I and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's uh, it was it was something I really was looking forward to
I was hoping that we'd get together
It's so rare that at the same time in history
There would be some of the greats together and the fact that you guys would be willing to come together and talk like this
This is awesome and that gordon. He would even wear a cowboy hat. I mean, this is just historic
This is like church. You're all getting together with whoever, you know, this is great and all but the next one is just gonna be us
Just quizzing john on which animals would win in fights. Yes for the whole three hours
It'll be just so we'll invite joe, you know, just be we'll we'll make it a systematic
It'll be a debate between joe and john on which animal would win
John and I we have a thing that we send each other
Footage all the time of animal fight where
We are very intrigued about animal fight
I get to know like 3 30 a.m. On instagram. He's like check this out
Like a rhino taking a like a pig like
Like like like literally like it's not always fair
No, no, it's not ever but interesting stuff if you people would see what we send
And the stuff that we that would judge you harshly
All right. All right. Thanks so much guys. This is awesome
Thanks for listening to this conversation with george san pierre john donahar and gordon ryan
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description
And now let me leave you some words from Miyamoto musashi
There's nothing outside yourself
That can ever enable you to get better stronger richer quicker or smarter
Everything is within everything exists
Seek nothing outside of yourself
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time