The following is a conversation with Ben Askren, wrestler, MMA fighter, and a brilliant,
opinionated, and fun personality in the world of martial arts, and yes, he occasionally
likes to talk a little trash.
Given his wild online antics and his boxing match with Jake Paul, some people may forget
just how dominant he was in the sport of wrestling and in MMA for most of his career.
In wrestling, he is a two-time NCAA Division I national champion and four-time finalist.
In mixed martial arts, he went undefeated for 10 years with a record of 19-0 before losing
to Jorge Mazvedal with a flying knee that caught everyone by surprise.
He is also into cryptocurrency, disc golf, and is the co-host of Flow Wrestling Radio
Live.
This is Alex Friedman podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, here's my conversation with Ben Askren.
Before we talk about your incredible wrestling career, your MMA career, let me ask you,
I have to ask you, what did you think about the Jake Paul versus Tyron Woodley fight?
Well, I thought, I mean, I was going to buy it.
I thought Tyron Woodley won, I had five rounds of three, and again, maybe this is my bias
in the way I was seeing it.
I thought he was more effective with the striking and he was more aggressive and Jake had more
volume, but that was the only thing I would give him.
And I guess a lot of people just didn't see it that way.
They thought he landed more significantly more punches.
I just didn't think he really did any damage.
It was a split decision?
Split decision.
Yeah.
Were you surprised?
Well, it was the thing, so the thing I said when I went in to fight him, I said, maybe
he's good.
Maybe he's not.
We really have no idea to this point, you know?
And so I knew Tyron was a lot better boxing than I was.
And so I thought, okay, Tyron's, I think he's a good likely that Tyron beats him up.
But there's a chance that Jake's kind of good at this.
And I think that's kind of what played out is he's kind of good at it.
And if you saw it the way I saw it, he still was impressive in his showing and he's obviously
put a lot of time into it.
So he's, he's not bad.
We'll say that much, you know?
But isn't it surprising to you that like a elite level athlete, combat athlete, lost
to somebody who just takes it really seriously, but is nevertheless not elite level?
But I think boxing is a really specific rule set.
So I'll speak about Tyron, not myself.
Tyron had good striking, but obviously it was his first boxing match ever.
And within mixed martial arts, you have the fear of the takedown and the fear of the kick
and fear of other things to go along with the punching.
And so if you look at Tyron throughout his MMA career, a lot of times what set up his
punches were like level change fakes at a takedown, they dropped, boom, and then something
comes over the top, right?
So there's many more elements to worry about mixed martial arts where as boxing, there's
only one.
If it was his first fight, yes, I thought Tyron was going to win.
I thought this was what happened.
But like I said, I mean, it's pretty evident that Jake's, he's not bad at boxing.
He's pretty solid, you know?
He gets in there and works hard at it, I guess.
How did ten times, how many times do you think Jake wins?
I guess Tyron.
I guess Tyron.
Hmm.
If they fight again and again and again, like iterative.
Yeah.
So I mean, I, part of the thing is, okay, so Jake's corner said you need to knock out
going into the eighth round, right?
So I think they thought maybe they're trying to motivate him, but I don't see it that way
because if they, if they were actually thought that he was winning, why would they encourage
him to take a dumb risk when Tyron has clearly his knockout power, right?
It's a really stupid coaching philosophy if that's what you're thinking.
So you obviously are thinking, hey, this is actually in the balance, it's competitive.
And I feel like Tyron thought maybe he was winning and didn't have the urgency necessary.
And so I think there's a chance he turns it up a lot.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I would want to watch him again before I, so I have this problem with my personality.
Here's my personality, Lex.
I have an issue with not being able to give really exact answers.
So I hate giving you an answer that like, I don't feel like is a hundred percent calculated.
So I would like to see them go once more because I would like to see, hey, can Tyron, if, because
if Tyron can turn the pace and, and Jake can't handle it, then I think it's an eight, one
or nine, two, right?
If it goes the exact same way and maybe Tyron was a close split decision, I'm saying, oh,
it's probably going to be close every single time.
We're probably going to get a five to five type of thing, you know?
So it's like, I feel like out of one match, it's not totally indicative of what the future
is going to look like.
I feel like Tyron would get a knockout and then you would still be in the same place.
Like not, not knowing, not knowing what to predict.
Yeah.
Okay.
So your fight with Jake Paul, looking back, you ever had a little bit of time now.
How would you analyze that fight?
Oh, well, I mean, the fight specifically, I got cracked with an overhand right.
So I mean, it kind of sucks.
I would say, you know, and this is where I was like, I don't, I really don't care.
And everyone's like, why would you get me to turn to your reputation?
It's like, well, I wanted to do it.
I had an enjoyable time training and in the buildup, obviously I wasn't skillful enough
to get the win.
But if I, even, even despite the fact that I know what's going to happen, what happened,
someone asked me to do it again, I probably would have done it again, you know.
And so the way I was thinking about when I was starting, whether to do it or not, because
I got the offer.
It's like, okay, is this money, it can change my life.
Yeah, it could, right?
It's not going to double my net worth, but it's going to add significantly and make
my life easier.
Number two is like, when I was in high school, we used to do boxing matches for free just
because we thought it was fun.
We didn't have something going on Friday night.
Me and my buddies would get together and we had some boxing goes on at base and we'd
punch each other in the head.
So it's like, for something I think is enjoyable, not that it'll pay me a whole bunch of money.
Yeah, sure, I'll do it.
Would you, do you think if you got the rematch, if you did the rematch, would you, what are
the odds you win?
Okay, let's see.
Probably not very good.
I think he's pretty good actually, and I'm not very good.
Now it's probably at a low point for me because, so when I started training for that, I was
like 215 pounds, which is the heaviest I've ever been.
I came off my hip surgery, I literally, like when I said, yes, like I'll do it, like I
literally started working out like the week before for the first time in my, you know,
it's just a surgery because I wasn't able to do anything.
So could I, could I perform better?
Yeah.
But now after watching him box Tyron, like if you ask me, Ben, can you beat Tyron?
Probably not.
But I don't think I can beat Tyron.
In boxing.
In boxing.
Correct, in boxing.
Yeah.
So my chances of beating him, you know, and watching that card, it's like, damn, like
kind of be fun to box someone who I know sucks, who I know can beat.
But that's what would be fun, you know, because like the training, the preparation was fun,
but then obviously I got a butt kick that sucked, you know, can I swear on this podcast?
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
Well, I was going to drop an F-bomb.
I wasn't quite sure.
I think it sucked.
Is this where you could, you could drop all, all of the F-bombs you want.
So preparation wise, do you think you were more prepared for that fight or the, the Jordan
Barrel's exhibition?
Uh-huh.
I mean, like, how did you approach it mentally?
You know?
Um, well, the Barrel's thing, I, I obviously, it's okay.
So when I retired the first time in 2017, Barrel's was the only current, like, we'll say, really
elite level wrestler that I'd never trained with.
I was really good friends with the Nebraska head assistant coach, still am.
And I said, hey, I just want, I'm going to pay my own way.
I want to come down and train with Jordan because I want to see what it feels like.
You know, I want to, I want to get in there and mix it up.
I've mixed it up with David Taylor and Kyle Dake.
I mean, there's just something about wrestling that I love.
And so I flew myself down there in January of 2018 and I spent four days training with
Jordan.
It was a really good time.
It gave me some great insight into how he thinks and, you know, what a great champion
he is.
What was the, like training with him?
Like what, can you give some insights like, like what the, like how hard is the, the live
training?
Is it more drilling?
Is it technical?
How does his, it seems like his style is very different than yours.
So how does that match up in the room in terms of like what you learn from each other, that
kind of thing?
We only went full live for one, I think it was like a 12 or 15 minute go where it was
just go wrestle.
We did a bunch of simulated live, but obviously he, he had, so I was a senior in college when
he was a freshman in Nebraska and so we, our teams had dueled each other.
He was obviously a lot smaller at that point in time, but he had followed my career.
And so when I went in there, it was like, Hey, I know you're really good at this position.
What about this position?
What are you trying to do?
How exactly does it work?
And then let's wrestle there.
You know?
And then, Hey, what about this position?
And so, you know, we would spend 30 to 40 minutes talking about that position on the
ground or it was like, uh, when was the chest wrap?
I wasn't from headlock.
One was, uh, I don't know, it's called the, we called the lightning dump, but it's a lightning
dump.
Yeah.
It's a lightning Luke Smith in high school and he was the first person I saw do it.
So usually when I see someone do something that I named that move after them.
Got it.
Um, I know, right?
Great name.
It's a good name.
So, uh, yeah.
But so what I said, but that is like, he was still trying to be the best in the world.
I was just trying to go work out Jordan Burroughs cause I enjoyed wrestling, um, is like someone
who at that point when he has five world titles at that four or five at that point a lot.
And so I use it in my high school kids is like, Hey, this is the guy who's the best in
the world who's bringing someone in and saying, well, how do I do this?
How do I do that?
What about this?
What about that?
And so the level of inquisitive, inquisitive in it, that's a hard word, inquisitiveness
he has is really impressive.
And then it's obvious why he got to the level he did because he's figuring out all these
little situations.
And that's honestly one of the biggest things I think wrestlers, a lot of wrestlers fail
to do as they get older.
Even when they get to early college age, they say, this is my style.
This is what I do.
I'm going to lift and work out hard and I'm, and I'm not going to add anything to my game.
You know, whereas you've seen many progressions in Jordan Burrow's game, he just made his
10th world team.
And you, yeah.
And I, you know, if you have a really keen eye, you've been able to watch him change.
You know, so I've been watching him since 2007.
He's changed so much and obviously still maintained a world-class level almost the entire time.
When you say change, like what changed cause he's, he's got that double leg.
Yeah.
I didn't get that one anymore.
Was that?
He like hit his double leg for the first time against Alex Deer and he hit it in years.
Hmm.
Yeah.
So that's like, when people think about Jordan Burrow's, they think about the double leg
because in his early years, fire, he had a great double leg, right?
And even in the, so in those years, I would say the, the biggest thing with Jordan Burrow's
double leg wasn't his level of explosiveness.
It was his level of persistence.
He would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot.
And it would, a lot of times it would be from fun, creative angles and out of scramble.
Boop, all of a sudden he's on you, you know, and it was just, he was just super persistent
with it.
And I think that was probably the key.
And then you saw, you know, when he came out to the one of the first world championships
in 2011, it was kind of that type of mentality.
And then shortly after then, obviously everyone was starting to lower their stance getting
lower and he developed a really good like mantis go behind series where he would go
one way or the other way.
Then he started developing really good, like low single ankle pick type thing, you know,
and then his hand, his hand fighting got really tremendous, like 15, 16, 17, his hand fighting
was really good.
And now I just commented at the 21 trials, like a few of the defensive sequences he got
into is like, holy shit, like just not from an athletic standpoint, from a technical standpoint,
the things he were doing was just tremendous.
So I've seen him as someone like who's continued to reinvent themselves over the course of
the last 10, 12 years.
Especially in the, as a junior and senior in college, you're exceptionally dominant.
If you were to face him at the peak, both of your peaks of NCAA wrestling, could you,
could you beat him?
And if you can beat him, well, of course you can beat him.
How do you solve the Jordan borrows?
Well, so for a, a folks out wrestling standpoint, folks out, so, you know, he, he had some competitive
matches as junior senior year.
He had a two one win over, or maybe three, two over Michael Chandler, who was my teammate
who's fighting Newsy now, he had a two and one over Tyler Caldwell.
So I think you can glean some insight into that.
You know, he got ridden, he got so mad about this up on the podcast.
So during Corona, we had to make up all kinds of bullshit to talk about.
And we were doing like the last 10 years, best 165s.
And I said, Kyle Dake would ride him for over a minute.
Oh, wow.
He got so mad, you want to come on the podcast the next day.
So hopefully he doesn't listen to this like, fuck you, man.
You know, but you know,
What, when was this?
This is during Corona.
Corona last year.
He got mad.
We were talking about.
Before the trials.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah.
So, you know, Michael Chandler wrote him for two minutes plus, and that was his junior
year, not a senior year, sure, right, but it's close.
So I think there's some things there.
I think the interesting thing would be if, if I would have stuck around, right, so I
chose to go into mixed martial arts after a dozen eight, I would have been 74 and he
would have been 74.
So we would have to wrestle.
And then I think that the freestyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle is a lot more difficult to
solve than the focused out Jordan Burroughs puzzle.
And I think, I don't think he would, I think he would acknowledge that he's much better
at freestyle than he was at Folk Style, you know, although he was very good.
He's better.
This is like raw speed explosiveness, present a problem to you.
Well, so he was never, I mean, he didn't really excel on the mat in kind of either style
in freestyle.
He has got some good lace transitions, but in Folk Style, like his whole, like his entire
college career, I think he has like 10 pins, which is almost nothing, you know?
So he was gaining no value off the top position.
He was good enough on most people to get off bottom without it being an issue.
But it wasn't like, oh my gosh, this is an area where we really have to be careful.
There's a lot of things here.
You know, it's just, he wasn't gaining value there.
Whereas in freestyle, he, I don't want to say never, but the amount of times he gets
turned is incredibly rare, very, very rare.
And he does have a lace transition.
So he gets a lot of points there.
So, and obviously freestyle is, it can be geared way more in the neutral position, right?
Where we're only doing takedowns.
So yeah.
Were you surprised that he lost to Dake in the trials?
The Kyle Dake?
Oh, Kyle's so, so he's so good, right?
I mean, I think, I think his performance in the Olympics was, was, his loss then was,
was shocking to, I mean, we noticed that happened to Kyle Dake, you know?
He's been a guy who's competed with Jordan Burroughs forever and obviously he was on the
losing side for a while and now he's on the winning side.
But I think a lot of people thought it was a coin flip.
And I think actually Kyle Dake made it feel like it's not a coin flip.
It feel, now to me, it feels like Kyle Dake is going to win that match significantly
more times than he isn't, is what it feels like.
Yeah.
I forgot which trials it was.
Was it four years ago where Kyle Dake threw him?
Like he, he, you saw in clings of like, oh wow, there might be a, eventually a changing
of the guard.
Yeah.
So 13, Kyle came out and he had the one throw, but then he lost one of the matches decisively.
And then he was hurting 14 and in 16, Kyle Dake actually went up to 86 kilograms.
So in, actually in 16, at the trials we had, so Jake Herbert was number one seed.
He was former, as Guy Russell, I was a former world silver medalist.
So you had David Taylor, who had not made a team yet, who is now a world champion, Olympic
champion.
You had Kyle Dake in the bracket, who was a two-time world champion now.
And you had Jayden Cox in the bracket, who had not made any teams yet, but is now what,
a four-time world medal, two-time world champion.
So, and then obviously Jayden came out on top of that, won his first Olympic medal, Olympic
bronze medal.
So Kyle didn't wrestle Jordan in 16.
Jordan and Kyle's contention the whole time.
And they argued about this.
So I actually did a little bit of backstabbing, but it was not, it's not backstabbing.
And both of them or just one?
I didn't tell any of them.
Okay.
So Jordan got mad.
So we talked about this fake match during Corona, right?
Yeah.
We had to make, we had to make up something to talk about.
Yeah, of course.
This is obviously no matches.
So we talked about this fake match.
And do you stand behind that statement, by the way?
Listen, here's what, here's what I said.
Kyle Dake, Kyle Dake's four-time man seed champion.
Yes.
I said, you got to pick a, you got to pick a winner.
I said, Kyle Dake wins two-one on a minute and six ride time, which I mean, is literally,
we're talking as close as it gets, as close as it gets for Kyle Dake who's a four-time
NCAA champion.
Oh, sorry.
Oh, sorry.
We were talking folks over Jordan borrows, over Jordan borrows in a folks down match.
In a folks down match.
The hypothetical.
The hypothetical.
Now we're in college.
In college.
They're both of them at their peaks at 165 pounds.
So completely hypothetical.
And so Jordan called in, he was all pissed at me for picking Kyle Dake.
He wants to come on the next day and argue his point.
Yeah.
So I said, F that, that's dumb, we need to pick a winner, we need to do something hypothetical.
So then I called Kyle Dake and I said, Kyle, Jordan's going to come on and argue his case
in the morning.
If he's going to do that, why don't you come in and argue your case?
So no one else knew Kyle was coming on the podcast.
So they both show up and they went at it.
But one of the contentions Kyle had for years, and there's still this rule, if you win a
world level medal, the following year, you sit out until the very end of the American
trials and they do, they do a best two or three.
So every time previously that Kyle had wrestled Jordan, he had to come through a tournament
on Saturday.
Yeah.
Okay.
Probably three matches.
And then on Sunday, he would wrestle Jordan in the best two out of three, right?
So his contingent was I'm only wrestling Jordan at a disadvantage because I have to compete
on Saturday and then competing on, which it's a fair argument, it really is.
But I also see USA Wrestling's point is like, if someone wins a world medal, we're going
to reward them because we want that person on the team again.
So it's crazy though that you're like Kyle Dayke had to wrestle because he's not wrestling
bums in that.
Not bums.
Yeah.
And yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know how wrestlers do it because you have to go to war like three matches and
then face Jordan Barrow's.
Yeah.
Especially a few of those years with, you know, Dayke had the name Andrew Howe, but there's
a really competitive match as David Taylor had really competitive match with him.
Isaiah Martinez even got in there at the Erringer.
So he had some really competitive matches before he ever got to Jordan Barrow's.
So I never answered your initial question was, how did I feel?
So the Jordan Barrow's match, I was not in wrestling shape at all, meaning wrestling's
heavily dependent, especially in neutral positions, heavily dependent on timing and
other things.
I was wrestling very, very minimally because I was, I would start fighting again.
So like my athletic shape was great, but it was mainly for fighting, I wasn't wrestling.
So I think they were actually trying to do Barrow's Dayke beat the streets.
It's the biggest fundraiser in wrestling every single year.
In New York?
In New York City.
Yeah.
They usually raised like a million dollars.
They started all these programs in New York City to get, which I really wonder what they're
doing with the money now because they probably can't get heavy kids wrestling because New
York's crazy.
Anyways.
I think New York figures out a way what to do with the money.
That's Michael Maus complaining that they're corrupt and all that.
Well, it goes to the beat the streets organization, who then starts the clubs in New York.
So I don't know what to do with my, anyways, so I was called like, I don't know, two weeks
before the event and said, Hey, you know, someone says to wrestle Jordan Barrow's, it
fell out.
Would you wrestle him?
I said, Yeah, sure.
Why not?
You know, and it's like, well, I said, I trained with them for four days the year before.
I had a pretty good idea how the match was going to go.
It wasn't going to go so well for me, but it's like, okay, you're missing a main event.
I can bring, because of where I'm at right now in my life, I can bring a lot of attention
to wrestling.
I can help you guys raise a bunch of money for beat the streets.
My goals, I think I thought I could get one take down or turn on him was kind of my goal
for the match.
I didn't get there.
You weren't kind of hard.
He went hard.
Yeah.
That asshole can give me a point.
Yeah.
I said, this is bullshit, Jordan.
I told him through the match, like this is bullshit.
You're fucking going too hard right now.
Yeah.
I'm not wrestling anymore.
I'm a fighter.
I'm coming in here.
So yeah.
So I had a really good idea.
I mean, we wrestled together.
I think in the live go, we did like the 12 or 15 minutes.
I think I actually scored a take down in that, I believe, maybe or maybe it was a turn.
He'll probably say, no, I didn't, but whatever.
Yeah.
So I knew what was going to happen.
I knew what the outcome was going to be.
I knew I could probably, I was hoping I could stay competitive and maybe lose like 10-2
or something.
Yeah.
Well, let's walk back because I think I originally brought it up in terms of how prepared were
you against Jake Paul versus Jordan Arboros.
Yeah.
So did you prepare for Jake, Cardio wise?
Yeah.
I was trying.
Yeah.
I did.
But it was, I told you, I started training for my, I mean, once I had my hip surgery,
they said, you know, for the first six weeks, you can't even walk.
And it was hard for me to listen to them because by week four, four and a half, five, I was
feeling pretty good.
I want to get rid of my crutches, but I'm like, you know what, this is for the rest of my
life.
And if you get the, so if you get the real hip replacement, there's no wrestling.
There's no nothing.
Right.
So that's the next step.
So, okay.
I'm going to take this year.
So I do my crutches for six weeks.
The next six weeks, it's still like really low weight bearing, can't do anything, you
know?
So then I get done with the three months, which is like January and I'm like, okay, I should
start working out.
So I started riding bike a little bit and then, okay, I'm now, I'm fat.
I'm fucking fat.
I'm going to gain better shape cause I haven't been doing anything.
So I'm actually start working out and, uh, and then that happened.
Right.
So I'm like, okay, well now I got three months and it gives me a good reason to get back
in shape.
And, um, you know, I knew I wasn't going to do be a full-time boxer.
So it's like, how do I put a boxing camp together?
So I found, you know, I had, I had my old teammate, Mike Rhodes, he came up and kind
of lived with me-ish kind of thing for three months.
Uh, I found a couple of this guy, canine out of Michigan.
He came over three weeks.
He was great.
I went to Freddie Roach for a week.
So I kind of like, you know, try to get as many good as ideas as I could.
And my thought was like, okay, well, if this dude sucks, I can just be tough and, you know,
block of you punches, get him tired and then beat him up.
If he's good, that's probably not much of my doobot in the next three months because
I'm, I was never good at boxing in the first place.
All of my standup in mixed martial arts was predicated on, how do I get through the two
or three punches that are going to come at me in the time I need to get a hold of them?
You know, it's only, you only have to make two or three of them miss and then boom, you're
on top of them, at least for me.
That was all my striking was predicated on.
It wasn't about, hey, I'm going to do damage on the feet in order to make something else
happen.
It was like, how do I clear this barrier, get a hold of you?
And if you, I actually did the math one time, I think I got to take down, if you include
the knockout round against Mazvidal.
I got to take down in every round except two.
So it was like, it was like 53 out of 55 rounds in MMA, I got to take down somewhere, somewhere
in there.
Okay.
So you're hunting the takedown once you, once, once you get a, your hands on them, you get
the takedown.
Yeah.
Okay.
But the incredible thing about you, I just recently talked, spent a couple of days with
Jimmy Pedro and he talked about his guys and just champions in general, hating to
lose more than they love winning.
And the way you talked about losing, you lost very few times in your career.
Like later you, you were dominating both the wrestling and MMA, but the way you took these
losses against people that are, I don't know, below elite level.
It's fair.
I was also going to get busy, but I, but I, it's completely fair.
I thought he was a bum too.
No.
That's not what I meant.
I'm in trouble.
It's okay.
No, no, no.
But like, what, can you explain the psychology behind that?
Like the, what, is there a system behind this?
Is there a philosophy behind this?
Well, I, so I, I wasn't very good in the beginning and I think, I think that's where it all starts
from.
So I didn't start getting good until the age of like 13.
I started at five, I probably started competing more at age 10, 11, didn't really get good
till 13 and still at 13.
I'm, I'm, it's not going to be great.
I'm getting better.
Right.
I'm pretty good.
I've actually, I've actually, I have writing this book on sports psych, but this, it's,
I got, well, I got someone to write it for me kind of thing.
Cause I've had this philosophy for years that there's, there has to be this balance between
two things, right?
So on the one hand, in this category, on the one hand, you have hating to lose a great
champion has to hate to lose, like you said, right?
But on this other hand, you have to have someone who seeks out challenges, right?
Cause if you don't have that, you're never going to reach full potential either.
And so you have to balance these two balls at the same time, right?
And so like for me, I always, and this is maybe cause I wasn't good, but I was always
like, let me go find the best people to wrestle all the time.
Let me go find, I would like literally, uh, like seven days a grade when I was starting
to get better.
It was like, and there's, there's an internet, well, there's no one was using the internet.
It was like a wrestling magazine and like, Hey dad, there's a tournament here.
I think that other kids can be there.
Can you take me two hours across the state today, please?
You would wrestle like in competition against them, not in competition.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In competition.
Hey, I heard there's this tournament.
Here's the magazine and says this tournament.
Hey dad, will you take me over there tomorrow?
You weren't trying to win.
You were trying to get the experience.
I was trying to wrestle the best guys.
Maybe I win, maybe I lose.
There's no, when you used to do a competition, there's no guarantee of a winner or a loss.
You're just doing competition, right?
So I wanted to go, I wanted to challenge myself against the best guys of which I thought maybe
I could come out on top, right?
So like eighth grade year, I won way, way, you know, I probably lost a handful of times
in the state of Wisconsin.
The state of Wisconsin was probably really, really minimal the amount of times I lost,
you know?
But it was just about getting the challenge.
And it's like some kids and not kids in my club, cause I'll push them very hard on this,
are scared of challenging themselves.
They like being the big fish in the small pond.
They're not willing to go say, I want to go get that guy and I want to get that guy and
I want to get that guy.
And so that's like, so I think that's part of it for me is like, I always just love
the challenge.
I enjoy competing thoroughly, right?
And I understood from a young age because it wasn't a good, losing is a part of it.
You're not always going to win.
And that was kind of it.
It's like, Hey, sometimes, you know, and for my MMA career, I never planned it to go
that way.
But yeah, I didn't lose for nine years.
And like that's, that's pretty rare.
I didn't plan for that to happen.
That was just what happened.
Okay.
But you also didn't lose like the second part of your college career.
My 87, I lost, I won my last 87 matches.
So that didn't come along with the hatred of losing.
You just, I don't like losing.
I still don't like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you seem to, okay, but you don't, you don't seem to, you seem to kind of shrug it off
a little bit.
Okay.
So like with, specifically with these two instances that you're bringing up with the
Mazvedal, it feels definitely so, okay, let's go, let's go deep.
Let's go deep.
So on the Mazvedal one, it feels different because, so wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Yes, for people who don't know, Mazvedal loss was your first loss.
First loss.
In MMA.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, it was a dramatic loss.
Very dramatic.
And there was this kind of buildup as you were potentially one of the greats of all time
coming into this fight.
And so there's pressure, all of that.
So the, no, I mean, I was thoroughly enjoying it, I didn't feel the pressure.
So the Mazvedal fight is, he got one fucking move on me.
It's not like he beat me.
And if we do that again, I think I win at that point in my life.
For sure.
I think I win way, way, way more times than I lose.
He knew that too.
That's why he didn't want, he didn't want to sound the, sound the bad agreement.
That's why I had to taunt him and why he got so mad because I had to continue to taunt
him in order to get him to sign, right?
So that would hurt because, as for people who don't know, my MMA career, I'll just go
through it fast.
I did three fights in like smaller leagues.
I got signed by Bellator.
I was undefeated for three and a half years.
I was nine and oh, um, when I got done with that in 2012, no, 2013, um, I, at that point
in my head, I was just going to transition to the UFC because that's where you go.
I was ranked like six in the world.
I hadn't really had a competitive match at the end of the Bellator thing.
And Dana White, for a reason still unknown to me, we still haven't had this conversation.
I wish I could ask, I should ask him sometime, um, chose to refuse me.
Any entry into the UFC, he just said, I went to his office and he really said, we're not
interested.
We're not going to make you an offer.
Did you, did you mention something to, uh, about him, about the UFC?
That was a year before that, that was a year before that might play a role in it, I think.
So, uh, yes, what happened the year before that was, uh, I called him a liar, which,
but listen, I'm writing this one cause he said you can't test for drugs cause I'm,
I'm all natural, which you can tell by my physique.
Um, and I was always put off by the fact that so many people cheated and I, I was very
vocal about that.
And so he had made some statement like, Oh, well, there's no way you could test.
I said, bullshit.
You, you so very specifically, I said, you saw it does it for all other sports worldwide.
You can do it.
And then it was funny cause I hired you saw it a couple of years later.
So I think he took some offense to that, but that was like a year and almost a year and
a half.
I think somewhere later, um, it's not like he holds a grudge or anything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I, so I literally go to Vegas, um, it's a long story.
You can read about it.
Other places.
I, so I got released from a belt.
It's not like this is a negotiation.
I got released from my belt or contract.
I said, I'm out of here.
I'm going, I'm going to the UFC.
I go to Vegas and then I was told, Hey, there's no offer for you.
Tough shit.
You know?
So then I ended up signing with one championship.
I spent what three and a half years there.
I won the belt in my second fight and retain the title the entire time.
And then I just, I think dominating people.
Yeah.
I didn't have a competitive fight.
And so, um, I retired 18 and O never, never get in for someone who loves a challenge, never
getting to really challenge myself was incredibly frustrating.
And I left the door open.
I said, if I ever get the chance to prove him in this world, I'd love to come back.
So somehow a year later, I get traded trades have never happened.
And this is the one and only trade ever.
I got, I've been retired for a year, I got traded, I get to come back.
I fight Robbie Law, the first fight I win.
And then essentially they're saying, okay, if you fight, uh, you know, if you beat George,
you're going to get the title shake against Marty.
And, um, it's like this, this is what I've been working for the entire, I've been trying
to prove I was the best part of the world for the last 10 years and I have, I've not
been afforded this opportunity.
Um, so when I lost to George, that was, that was hard because I, it was something that
I had waited for for a really, really long time.
It was something that I, you know, I thought I could compete for it.
I never got the opportunity to do.
So that one was hard.
Um, at the same time from like just a competitive logistic, it's like, he got me with one move.
It wasn't like he beat my ass for 15 minutes and I got beat a bunch of different ways.
So that was like, fuck, like if I get it again, I could have done it, but I'm not, I'm not,
they're not going to let me have it again.
It's not like wrestling where you could go the next year or the next week or whatever,
you know, you lose a big 10s, you were a nationalist two weeks later.
Does that loss change you in any way?
Your psychology?
I don't, I don't think so.
It's the first loss.
I mean, had I, had I had a longer MMA career post that, there definitely would have been
a lot of time spent getting better at the, the entry point to the take down, right?
Which I'd already spent time there.
Um, I don't, I, and I, I hate making excuses, but yeah, the, the hip, the hinging of my
hip where I couldn't do was preventing me from doing some things.
That's why if you look at the fight, I'm like bent over as they go for the double leg.
Yeah.
So what happened for people who don't know, you went in for a double leg and he went flying
knee.
He did a flying knee.
Yeah.
And then he caught you well.
Specifically the way he did that knee was kind of different than the way anyone had
thrown flying knees before.
Most people go more just from a stand straight vertical, whereas he took a few like running
steps and went more, you know, the trajectory of the angle was different.
Um, so I think that's kind of probably why it caught, you know, the, I think a lot of
things in combat will probably everything, but I focus specifically on coming to happen
subconsciously.
Like our brain is reading what's coming at us and, and lost times is stuff we've seen
before so we can judge how to move correctly misread because it's something you haven't
seen before had not seen him come at that specific angle.
Yeah.
So that was also really hard with the burrows one, I told you, I knew I was going to lose.
So it was like, whatever, you know, I'm taking this because I want to put the sport of wrestling
out there in a big way.
I want to help them raise a lot of money.
We sold at Madison Square Garden who theater and we raised a whole bunch of money.
So my goals were accomplished.
Jake Paul fight.
I took it because they paid me a bunch of money and I thought it was going to be fun.
Did I have any illusion?
I was a great boxer.
No illusions whatsoever.
Would I have preferred to win?
Absolutely.
But, you know, like I told everyone, whether I win or lose on Saturday night, I'm going
to be back coaching wrestling on Monday because that's what I enjoy doing.
And I was back coaching wrestling on Monday.
And once I'm out these middle school kids, give me a little bit of shit about it.
And that's it.
But that's about it.
So where were you in terms of your shape and how you felt in the Mazvedal fight?
Would you say you're on the, I mean, it's a difficult question to ask of a world class
athlete, but like, were you past peak?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I don't know why guys like to lie about that.
I mean, the peak for me was really evidently in my late 20s.
And maybe they are all fueled by extra supplements.
I don't know.
But for me, that was evident, but you get this, so you get this crosshair where you're,
if you're smart, like, you know, like I mentioned, Joan Brose was, you're still gaining wisdom,
you're gaining strategy, gaining a lot of things, right?
And so while your physicality may go down, your overall skill level still may be rising,
especially in MMA because people usually start later because they're gaining wisdom, strategy,
all of the, maybe more tools in the toolbox, right?
They're getting all these things.
So their actual competitive peak, despite their athletic peak going down, might still
be a few years past that, right?
Because these things are crossing.
No, so I thought, I thought I was great.
Obviously, the hip was an issue.
It's funny because so that I knew I had a lot of pain here and I knew it was because
of this.
And it was like, okay, whenever I'm done, I'll just get it taken care of, whatever.
But I, every time I train, I would have pain kind of like all up my back and the day after
the surgery, I woke up and there was no pain on the right side of my, the surgery is on
the left side.
I had pain on the right side of my back.
I'm like, that's fucking weird.
Like every morning I wake up, there's a lot of pain there, you know?
I'm like, okay, I'm on pain pills.
Maybe it'll come back tomorrow.
And that's never really been back since my injury.
So it was weird because it was like this.
I thought this was affecting this, but it was affecting all the way across my whole back.
So if I get to get a new hip, honestly, if I, I don't know if this is going to change
the competitive outcome whatsoever, if I had known how good the hip replacement was going
to be, I would have done it the second I retired from one championship in November of 2017.
I would have had my hip surgery scheduled for December one.
Just from a lifestyle standpoint, I could only sleep in one position.
There's a lot of things I couldn't do.
I was in a lot of pain.
So I would have done that a lot earlier.
But no, from my athletic point, I was ready to just check those wrongs sometimes.
I don't know how to ask this, but you know, Joe Rogan, me had a, had a sense about you
similar to like Fedor, that you are potentially one of the greatest ever.
Does it hurt that you're not in the discussion now of being in the top 10 of all time?
I didn't prove it.
I don't deserve it.
But I didn't, I didn't prove it.
I mean, and so it's like, had I, had I somehow gotten to convince Dana White, we go and convince
him in 2013 to make me an offer and I didn't even need a good offer.
I needed any offer.
Had I gotten the offer then, maybe the outcome is different, right?
But given, I would never expect anyone to think of me that way.
I didn't prove it.
I know, I know what I was and I'm good with that.
And yeah, other people never got to see that.
Do you think, well, you don't know, you can't know fully, right?
Do you think if you went to the UFC at that time instead of one championship?
I think it would have a lot of success.
Yeah.
I mean, there's obviously certain guys, there's a lot of guys I've trained with that I had
a lot of really good results against.
And obviously- Who was the welterweight at that?
Tyron was the champion for a long time there.
So I was around, Tyron was the champion, Anthony was the champion at lightweight.
I was, you know, same gym as him and we had a lot of people coming through.
Yeah.
Would you face Tyron?
Would I have fought him?
I don't think so.
I mean, so he was still the champion when I came into the UFC and we said, no, we're
not going to fight.
All right.
Hey, so he can't change history, right?
So once something happens, you got to accept for what it is and move forward and obviously
hope you can continue to keep accomplishing great things, which for me, obviously my athletic
career is over.
So now it's going to be through my wrestling academies and, you know, who knows what else
I get to get into.
You might do exhibition matches and all that kind of stuff, right?
Says who?
Wrestling and stuff.
No?
I don't think so.
So here's my thing with the wrestling matches is like, just for fun.
If you said, hey, Ben, just for fun, would you love to go wrestle someone?
Yeah, I would.
I would, right?
I love wrestling.
I get in there.
I love, you know, I love like, so one of my guys has gotten to be pretty good.
He's called Keegan, Keegan O'Toole.
He just won a junior world title this year.
And so when I'm doing private lessons, I have such a thing about the development of the
athlete.
Sometimes I can wrestle hard, but most of the time it's like, I'm just going to help them
with whatever they need to help with.
And it's still wrestling and it's fun, but it's helping them.
You know, for like, Keegan comes back this summer and he's trained for the general title.
So to be able to shake hands sometimes and say like, how am I going to try to kick your
ass?
Do you try to kick my ass?
You know, like just to go, like, it's so much fun.
And I don't get to do that very much.
So if you said, Ben, would you love to do some matches and the answer is, yeah.
The problem, unfortunately for me, and maybe you can talk me off a ledge here, is like,
because of where I've gotten to my career, if I choose to do wrestling matches, it's
going to, people are going to be really excited about it.
It's going to blow up.
And it's like, I just want to wrestle just to wrestle.
I'd rather just like go in a room where no one can watch and just wrestle and just enjoy
it.
Well, you could also wrestle.
So there's different kinds of wrestling.
There's wrestling where there's an event and like, you know, there's a buildup and an
announcement.
Yeah.
And you can also do like a Khabib style, like in the room, there's cameras and you're kind
of going, it's like, does that, no, in, uh, Marcel did that.
He whipped my ass a few times.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I mean, I've seen Khabib with some videos.
Okay.
So it's just people going hard and then it's more fun.
Yeah.
You know, and it's, it's also more like presenting the beauty of the sport, you know, for sure.
And like, and there's no winning or losing really in that context.
Yeah.
Like you're just, you're always joking around a little bit, even when you're going super
hard.
So I feel like, especially in the modern day with the, with the internet, that's a compelling
way to do.
Yeah.
So I've thought about it.
I've thought about doing, cause I told you about my buddy was the, the content thing.
It's called Rockfin.
I thought about doing, you know, the old, really famous Gracie challenge.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I thought about doing the Ask When Challenge.
Do you want to hear my rule set?
Yeah.
Let's go.
I'm not sure I'm going to do this.
People are going to show up to your, like in Wisconsin.
I just select you.
I'll start with a thousand bucks, right?
Right.
Okay.
30 minutes.
You pin me or I pin you.
That's it.
No points, no nothing.
We just wrestle.
Camera.
That's it.
Right.
It's camera in the room.
Just one pin.
Just one pin.
30 minutes.
30 minutes.
Okay.
Yeah.
If I pin you, you don't get shit.
You go home.
Right.
Every person I pin, it goes up by a thousand dollars.
$2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 and so on.
If you make it the distance and I don't pin you and you don't pin me, I'll pay for your
travel and give you 500 bucks.
Right.
This is the kind of consolation prize for showing up.
If you pin me, you get whatever the jackpot is.
Wait, who's adding to the jackpot?
I am.
It's mine.
It's my money.
It's the incentive to keep winning for you because the jackpot is pinning you.
Well, I would put the content somewhere and people would watch it.
Oh, so you're going to make money?
Yeah.
So you'd make money that way.
But it's not exponentially growing.
It's just going up by like...
Yeah.
I really think there's probably only a couple of people that could pin me, so I would just
not choose those people or wait till I get a really large audience and people get really
excited.
In that case, I'm making a lot of money.
What do you think?
How many matches would go with you?
Like Caldake shows up.
I don't think he could pin me.
Yeah.
I don't think Jordan Burroughs could beat me, but he can't pin me.
He was never a pinner.
Yeah.
He ain't going to pin me.
There's only a few people who have the skill level to do so, right?
It takes a lot.
So pinning was one of my specialties.
The fourth most of all time, and I won the pinning award the last two years.
So you think you could be done on points and just pin them?
This is actually one of the issues I have with Jiu-Jitsu and the point system and the Eddie
Bravo thing.
I actually think Eddie Bravo thing is kind of, people will get so mad at me, sorry Jiu-Jitsu.
I think it's bullshit.
And you want me to tell you why it's bullshit?
So like, if Jordan Burroughs whooped my ass and the score is 16-2, but he can't pin me,
then I get to go to overtime and get a cradle on him, I'm probably going to pin him.
So I'm better than Jordan Burroughs, nah, that ain't right.
He just whooped my ass.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Like, if we can go the whole, because they do submission only.
So if Jordan Burroughs beats me up for what, it's eight minutes, 10 minutes, I don't know,
what's the length of it?
Eddie Bravo match.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So we go to me and Jordan Burroughs, he's going to outscore me significantly, but he will
not pin me.
I promise you that.
Okay.
So now we go, we go to the overtime.
Strong words, but yeah.
He won't, Jordan Burroughs is not going to, he's going to beat me.
I will give you that.
God take one pin you either.
No.
Okay.
Okay.
They will both beat me on points very badly.
Now David Taylor, he might, he might pin me because he's a very good pinner also.
They'll beat me very badly.
They will not pin me.
But now we get to overtime and we get to pick like, right?
So in Eddie Bravo, you get a rear naked choke or an arm bar.
Okay.
Give me a cradle.
I'll probably pin them.
Okay.
A good cradle.
You can say cradle or maybe give them, they're not going to probably not going to pin me.
Right.
Maybe, maybe there's a chance, but probably not because it's not their specialty.
So for people who don't know that Eddie, Eddie Bravo thing is when it goes into overtime,
you get a dominant position on a person and you get to, yeah, basically put them in a
cradle.
This is the wrestling equivalent.
Yeah.
But you take their back.
Maybe an arm bar.
Yeah.
So then I don't think that's very fair because if someone whoops your ass, they whoops your
ass and then, you know, and so I think the reason why Jiu Jitsu people accept that rule
set is that I don't think, I think they know this, but wouldn't admit it.
I don't think their point scoring system adequately rewards what people value.
So like in wrestling, we value takedowns because it gets closer to the pin and the most valuable
scoring is a near fall, near to the pin because that's the ultimate goal of the sport.
Because in Jiu Jitsu, for example, like if I were to get a takedown, so like if I went
to Gordon Ryan and he just didn't pull guard, I would probably get the takedown.
Now if somehow he didn't submit me, which he probably would, right?
But say he got close to like 12 submissions, but somehow I slipped out of all of them.
Now I went to zero, like that's ridiculous.
Like he should very clearly win because he almost submitted, you know what I'm saying?
And I realized the difficulty.
I realized the difficulty in rewarding near submissions, but that is the most valuable
thing is getting close to finishing the match.
And in most competitions, they don't actually reward that.
But okay, so this isn't about the sport.
This is about the Ben Askren challenge that we're talking about.
Why 30 minutes?
Why not unlimited time?
Why go until whenever?
Well, because then it's just a cardio thing because at some point then someone would
just have to fall over dead, right?
There's no more skill level involved.
It's just who can stand up the longest.
You honestly don't think 30 minutes is a cardio thing too.
How do you think that's actually going to look?
Kyle Day going against you for 30 minutes.
So it's going to be kind of boring for the most part.
What position are you going to be stuck in?
But you can't, you just can't have a gigantic amount of action for 30 minutes.
So I related because some of my kids when I'm teaching them wrestling, they're like,
well, but I can't do that for seven minutes.
And I'm like, well, you know, like, say, say if I had you do hanging cleans at a relatively
heavy weight as hard as you could, you're not going to last seven minutes.
You're going to, your pace will slow down, right?
So my thing is like, well, your pace doesn't have to step here because in wrestling, you're
competing against someone.
So if you're here at 100 and you go to 80, but they go to 70, that's great.
And then you go to 60, but they go to 40, this is even better, right?
Because the gap is growing.
So we don't necessarily, if we get tired, that's fine.
If they get more tired, that's better.
So I think both people would know that so they would kind of slow it down.
But yeah, I think a third, I mean, I've wrestled 30 minutes ago, I've wrestled, I've wrestled
hour long goes.
You're not going to get so tired, you're going to fall over in that time period.
But at some point, if it's unlimited, someone will get so tired or dehydrated that they're
just going to freaking fall over.
Yeah, but you think, what about making it exciting and dynamic?
You think the other person is always going to be going for the pin and thereby make it
dynamic?
Well, if they're working that hard, then they might exhaust themselves, right?
And obviously then if you're being that dynamic, then you're adding risk to yourself too because
you are doing that.
Well, I love this.
This is a great idea.
Well, I think I would rack up like 20 pins against bums or not as great people in the
beginning and then I would start bringing in better people because they would be enticed
by $20,000, the possibility to win.
And not much fanfare, just a camera and just a local.
That's it.
In my wrestling room.
Yeah.
Like the Gracie Challenge.
Yes.
Yeah.
And so then maybe you have like, for most people, you have someone edit like the 90 seconds
of the most fun things that happen and then you can watch the entire 30 minutes if you
want to.
Yeah.
And if they're not really, really elite, I'm probably going to pin them.
If they're not really elite.
So yeah.
But I don't know.
That's something I've been thinking about.
This has been like fun for me to think about and obviously a place in my skill sets because
my cardio is good and my pinning is good also.
So yeah.
So like you said, you weren't very good in your early days until 13, 14.
What was the switch?
You started to dominate people in your college career, dominated and obviously you stopped
losing at some point.
So even when I didn't lose in collegiate competition, I would go in the summers and try to make
the world team.
So I would lose some, not a lot, right?
Minimally.
Okay.
So when I'm five, I start playing all sports like, I know you moved to America at what
age?
13.
Okay.
So at least, I don't know what it was for you, but in America at my age, you usually
play like a sport every season, right?
So that's what I did in the beginning.
I had minimal success in wrestling and I was kind of chunky.
And then in fifth grade, I don't, and I can't, I can't tell you, I want to be better.
And I told my parents, and this is funny because now I look at other 11 year olds and very
few of them are this mature.
And I actually think emotional maturity is kind of one of the key indicators of how long
term successful someone's going to be.
In age 11, I said, I don't want to play baseball and I like baseball, but I don't want to play
baseball because I want to wrestle more because I want to get better at wrestling.
So age 11, I quit baseball so I could wrestle in a club for March, April, and May because
that was, that was all that existed at that point in time.
You couldn't wrestle in June, July, or August, any of those other months.
What was that desire to get better?
What is that?
So it's not about winning.
I don't know where it came from.
I just wanted to get better.
I want to get better.
I want to be good at this.
I want to be really good at this.
So when you're looking at kids now as a coach, you're looking for that.
Somebody who says, you know what, I kind of suck, I want to get better.
And I want to try to also inspire that.
I mean, honestly, I think, I think as a coach, that's probably my, my biggest job is to get
a kid and get them to believe, I can do this because if I can do this, what can I, I can
do that.
I can do that too.
Right.
And there's so many kids who unfortunately have like shitty parents or bad teachers that
tell them, you suck.
You can't be anything.
Right.
So my biggest goal as a coach is to get someone to believe they can do it.
So actually some of the ones that believe they can do it, they're the most fun, but
they're not the ones who need it the most, right?
The ones who think they can are the ones that need me the most.
Yeah.
They need someone to let's go.
So I don't, I don't know what inspired me.
I'm not sure.
So age, at age 11, fifth grade, I quit.
I started, so then I started having more success, you know, where I'm like, say placing up the
state tournament in high school.
So you, right?
And so sixth grade, I placed it like the state local youth state tournament, you know, so
I'm like having more success.
Seventh grade was the first year I won the youth state tournament.
So I'm getting better.
Eighth grade, I actually feel like I got pretty good, but like when I went to the national
tournaments, I was still having really minimal success.
My freshman year, I decided to quit football.
Same reason.
It's like, well, I need to put more time into this.
My parents, we got, my dad luckily got a mat in my basement.
So, you know, there's no, so we have a year on club and our impetus was that we didn't
have this opportunity to go to a club year round.
So we had a mat in my basement.
I had to go find, hey, you want to, you want to come wrestle?
Well, yeah, to find partners for myself.
What'd you do?
Did you drill?
Did you live wrestle?
What'd you do in that basement?
So actually, I think you'll enjoy this.
I think the start of my scrambling was, was kind of based around that.
So I got kind of, I think it's probably my freshman, sophomore, I'm kind of, the years
are a little fuzzy, right?
It's been a while.
But probably my freshman, sophomore, junior year, I found two kids who were really consistent,
who would come out like you'd come out on, he'd come out on Tuesday and this dude come
out on a Wednesday, right?
And they would come every week and they were really consistent partners for me to have in
the summer, but they weren't nearly as good as me.
They were way worse.
So it's like, okay, how do I, how do I make this kind of like fun and compelling for them
to come back?
If I swoop their ass, they're not going to come back, you know?
So it was like, I would let them get as close as they could, as I thought they could do
a takedown before not getting it and then try to like escape or get out.
So obviously if I let them get really close, sometimes they get it, you know, so they're,
they're enjoying it.
I don't know if they ever knew I was doing this, right?
I have no idea.
And that was kind of like the start because I had to figure my way out of bad positions
because I had to try to make it entertaining for them where they still got something out
of it and they want to come back the next week.
And I also got something out of it.
Yeah.
I love this.
The relationship is so important with that, like that I've, I've had a few drilling partners,
training partners that were really important to my life.
And I always wonder why it's difficult, why it's so difficult to find them.
Yeah.
Like I, if anyone's listening to this, I'm looking for a judo person in the Austin area
actually, getting the reps with people is hard.
Even in Jiu-Jitsu, that it's just like people want to do the fun stuff.
They don't want to really put in the work and it takes a certain kind of personality.
And then you also have to make it fun for the other person, just like you said, if there's
a skill mismatch, but also if you have an interest mismatch in terms of the, the amount
of drilling you want to do, all that kind of stuff, you have to figure out ways to make
it fun.
Yeah.
It's tricky.
So you did.
So I, yeah, I think I did that.
And no one told me.
So I get some, I get frustrated because now we have, you know, just at my academy, we
probably have 50, 60 high school kids only that are year round, that they're year round.
You know, maybe they're not consistent in the summer or whatever, but they're there.
So when they don't have a great partner, they start whining and it's like, you little
bitches.
Like, you know, I, I, I, some days I get really mad about it because it's like, I had no partner.
I had to find freaking two partners come twice a week.
You guys, there's still 22 people in the room.
I'm sorry.
There's not the perfect partner for you, but like, go work out with that dude.
You know?
And get it.
Yeah.
So what was the switch to change?
Was, was it gradual or gradual?
Okay.
So, uh, okay.
So ninth grade, I quit football because I want to get really serious.
Um, what position football, it was actually a nose tackle and I was, but at that point,
so I, okay.
So I was also the other thing I kind of left over here.
I was really fat growing up in a sixth grade.
I also decided, okay, I'm really fat and if I want to be competitive wrestling, I shouldn't
be fat because weight matters.
I went from 130 pounds to a hundred pounds in sixth grade.
Um, so by the time I was a freshman, I was 119.
So I had, I still wasn't as heavy as I was on sixth grade.
So I was pretty small too, but I was also slow, unfortunately.
So, uh, they put me in those tackle.
I, you know, I like the combativeness, so I was decent at it.
Um, so that's where you wrestled 119 for freshman year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah.
So then I still, I would start having a lot of success statewide, but not nationally.
It's my national success didn't come to like my junior year in high school.
Um, but yeah, I was like grinding and getting better the whole time.
And then senior year, I started having a lot of success nationally and I recruited and then,
and then even when my freshman year of college, I, uh, this is where I love competing.
I would go every weekend cause I knew if you, if you take the emotions out of competition,
all it is is seeing your failures, acknowledging them and then figuring out what you need to
work on.
Right.
If we take all the emotion out of it, that's what it is.
So I wrestled 50 matches as a red shirt freshman, which is incredibly rare.
I had 10 losses.
So it's not like to not, not so great guys, you know?
So like my, my skill level still at that point was not that great.
And then the next year I came out and I made it into your finals.
So my, my, I made a gigantic jump in that red shirt year to the, to the real freshman
year.
So a few questions.
Yeah.
Where did the funk style of wrestling, the, the creative style get developed at which stage?
So I, so I think like looking retroactively, there was no, there was no intention to start
when I was in high school with those kids, but I think that's kind of like, well, what
was happening, right?
So what I would really say is I had, I had one influential coach, my retro year of college
named Mike Ironman, a great guy.
But then the second thing was it was just out of necessity.
I had this burning desire to be the best.
And when I was getting my ass kicked every day in the room, cause we, you know, the retirement
was there.
We had all American 157.
We had all American 184.
So I wasn't having a ton of success.
And very quickly I realized from like a more traditional athletic perspective, strength
and speed.
I couldn't keep up with anyone.
It was way worse.
So it's like, okay, fuck, how do I, how do I do this?
You know, I want to do this.
How do I do this?
There's gotta be a way, you know?
So Mike Ironman showed me a couple of things, but then it was just like this creative expansion
for the next, you know, through, say three to five years.
And then even now it's like, I don't know, there's something, and maybe you feel a sway
about judo or there's something that's like fun about the way the body moves and works
and, and, and exploring something new and thinking about, hey, wrestling's been happening
at a relatively high level for, we'll say 80 to 90 years in America.
And there's still new things being developed.
And so when you see something new, like, damn, like that's great.
Or like Jason Nolfe, man, the Windix, I'm like, why did I think of that shit?
Like, why did I think of that so easy?
I should, I should have thought of that, you know?
So there's this like obsession with the sport or wrestling and, you know, positions where
I actually think sometimes think I wouldn't have smartphones because I may have been
distracted by my smartphone.
Maybe I wouldn't have been so obsessed, but maybe, but, you know, some days I had, couldn't
finish the single leg on this specific person or, or they maybe they were finishing on me
and it was like, go home and I was just fucking obsessed about that one position.
Like, okay, how do, what, what am I missing here?
And not just accepting like that, whatever the coach has to the answer, but like, what
am I missing?
What ways can my body move that no one's told me it can move yet?
Where can my arms go?
Right?
Where can I do all these things?
And so I would just obsess about these things.
And then, you know, sometimes you come in the next day and you say, oh, well, maybe this,
you know, and maybe it works.
Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe it works twice and it doesn't work the next time.
And so you kind of like have this creative process and it's like, you know, there's a
lot of things that are on the cutting room floor that never made it to the light because
you thought they'd be good and they failed and they sucked.
And then, you know, to the point where I like my senior year, I got to this point where
the people, then they were just figures, figures would wrestle in my head about positions I
was thinking about.
I wouldn't tell them what to do.
They would just, they'd just go in my head and then like some, oh fuck, wait, that's
it.
That, that's it.
That just happened.
That's the move.
And then I go try to practice and sure enough.
Boom.
That's the move.
That's exactly what you have alpha zero playing, learning chess, you have, it's called self
plays.
You have, what, did the figures have, like a clear,
No faces.
They were just like,
Did they have a human form or is it just like stick figures, essentially?
Oh, yeah, it was not like, yeah, it was not like humans.
It was more like stick figures.
They wouldn't stick figures exactly like they were.
So.
They had some volume.
Yeah.
It was like, it was like a gray person and they had, you know, three dimensions essentially
because I had to see how the things moved and yeah, I mean, this is exactly what open
AI and the, uh, the mind of Google are, uh, I don't know if you've seen, but there's something
called reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence where you have like, they've
done it for like sumo wrestling.
You have, you have like, you have these two stick figures that don't even know how to
get up at first and they figure out how to stand their two feet and then they figure
out how to push the other person off of the, the pedestal.
So, but what about like, uh, when you look at the, the Boston dynamics or sometimes they
have trouble with like jumping and balancing and the other stuff.
So are they, are they doing that same program or no, no, no, no, no, this, uh, the, the,
everything Boston dynamics is doing is hard coded.
So it's not, um, it's not learning the, all of the sophisticated movements and strategies
like high level strategies and movement.
That's all something that Boston dynamics is not doing.
If it does it, like the parkour stuff, that's all hard coded in people like project and
think like these robots have like discovered like how to move in sophisticated ways they
haven't.
Well, that's why when you and John were talking about the grappling robot, I mean, the one
thing I was, I was obsessing about in my head is that with the chess, right?
If a chess piece moves, right, uh, the horse can move like an L, right?
It can only move like an L. It doesn't matter if it moves at two meters per second or seven
meters per second.
It can only move, it can only move there, right?
Whereas like a single leg, I can shoot a single leg with many different velocities.
I can shoot at different angles.
I can shoot with different amounts of force, right?
I can shoot with my, my head up versus my head.
I mean, right?
All these things are going to matter.
We're talking about a human being defending the single leg.
All of those things are going to matter.
And that's where human beings are, uh, who wrestle are calculating those things subconsciously.
They're obviously not consciously calculating in their head, oh, the, the force is coming
at me at this.
So I need to do that.
Right?
They're just doing it.
But yeah, the thing is, so you would absolutely, if you're doing a robot that you're wrestling,
you're going to have to constrain the speed at which it moves and the power that it's
able to deliver.
So that presumably, there'll be the limitations.
So then it'll be just the same exact whether it's a human.
But then, but it's, it's even with, so if we go human max force or Jordan Rose double
max force, right?
That's the highest, that's the highest we get.
Then we go down from there.
Um, even, even with, even within that, it's like, sometimes I can shoot single leg with
a maximum force of, I don't know, we'll just say, we'll say 20 is the number, right?
I don't know.
I shoot at 20 because I feel sometimes I shoot at 15, sometimes I shoot at 12, right?
Cause you, you feel something in your opponent that makes you do it differently.
So they would have to learn how, and then, you know, all of these different things.
And sometimes maybe I clamp a little harder.
So the, the robot would have to learn all of these different incoming inputs to the system
and then create this reaction.
Oh no, no, no, 100%.
So this would be all continuous.
Like, yeah.
So unlike chess, it would not be just chess is discreet.
There's, it's, uh, you move, it's a very specific set of moves.
Now here you would, those are all variables you control and they're continuous variables.
So the speed, the force, there's actuator.
So there's all these joints, right?
Yeah.
You can move.
I mean, it's just an optimization problem.
It's kind of fast.
It's, it's fascinating.
So I've been fascinated thinking about it since you guys talked about it when I, it was a
long time ago.
I listened to it probably three, three to four weeks ago and I've kind of been like obsessing
about it ever since.
Yeah.
It just changes when, um, so unlike boxing, for example, or striking, you know, once
you grab a hold of somebody, it, it changed, you're now one body.
Right.
So it's very complicated.
It's not just shooting a, a double leg without like maybe doing like, like faking a double
leg and then shooting the double leg.
That's very doable with robotics, but then like doing a clinch and from there doing like
a Russian tie, like that, that's, uh, I think it's way harder than people realize in terms
of how many things are involved, like the force of the grip, the leverage you're providing
with all the different parts of the shoulder and the arm and the torso, the twist, how
much of your weight are you allocating, like leaning on the other person, like taking weight
off of one of your legs and the other leg, all of that.
I think that's the really interesting thing about humans is we're able to do all of this
calculation.
Subconsciously.
Yeah.
Subconsciously.
That's what I've been thinking about since we, it's like how many things even these high
school athletes who are like getting medium good are subconsciously thinking about all
the time or not even, not even thinking about like reacting to, um, but then even like for
me, I'm, you know, I'm a few orders of Meg do better than somebody's kid that player.
And so when I, when I go like super hard, it's like, I can feel their weight moving
the wrong direction.
And so for me to off balance them or trip them or whatever, it's kind of easy sometimes,
you know, because they're not feeling it the right way, right?
Or their timing is just a little bit off or the way they're grabbing the hip, maybe they
should be up a little higher, right?
These really small things.
Um, yeah, I think that's all easy to take advantage of for a robot.
It's just, there's so many things.
The big problem is ethically, I don't know how many people are willing to train with
a robot because you're going to get hurt.
Well, couldn't you make a robot train as a robot or no?
Yes.
But then it's expensive because they're going to put the padding on that thing.
I know.
But then it's not, you know, the, no, you're not capturing the full, why can't you put
like some rubber coating on them, you know, something for that effect?
You could.
I mean, you could.
Yeah.
You could.
I mean, you're talking about robots that are, these are humanoid robots.
So we're talking about $500,000 million robots.
So you would have to be motivated to spend a lot of money because you have to have them
wrestle for like a lot to get better.
Yeah.
To get better.
Yeah.
And then the, the open question is how long does it take to get good enough to be a human?
I don't, I don't think, I don't think we understand.
I don't know.
I don't think you understand how hard wrestling is.
Yeah.
Like, is it a really hard problem?
Like what's harder?
Chest or wrestling?
Wrestling by far.
Not even close.
That's, yeah.
That's the sense.
So because there's an infinite amount of moves, right, and possibilities.
So once I shoot the single leg, now you have X amount of choices.
Once you make your choice.
Now I have a choice.
X amount of choices.
Now, now you have X amount of choices on the defense and we can just keep going back
and forth, right?
And this number becomes.
Yeah.
But the same happens with chess.
Correct.
But then in wrestling, you have to make these movements in very instantaneously, right?
Cause I should say, like, I'm not going to wait and say, what's your defense?
Yeah.
Right?
You have to be instantaneously.
And then also again, based on the force and the vectors and, and the angles, you have
to calculate that and adjust.
So really, you know, if you're saying, why can't you sing like it's not like moving
the chest?
It's not one move, right?
It's, if you want to talk about different forces and stuff, it could be hundreds or
thousands of different moves based on how hard I shoot it, the angle, the direction,
all of those things.
Yeah.
But wait a minute.
So robots can do this kind of stuff really fast.
You would, I, people probably know the physiology of this, but it's the, the reaction speed
for humans, maybe a hundred milliseconds up like that.
I don't know from sensation to, to, to like from the signal traveling up your brain and
down.
I don't know what that number is, but a robot certainly could do way faster.
You would actually have to like constrain the speed.
Well, so the robot's already killing the chest people, right?
So, yeah, theoretically they could eventually beat wrestlers, but you asked what was hard
wrestling a chest.
Yeah.
And I think wrestling is because of the time component in it and then the, and, and the
physicality of, you know, is it this force or that force?
You know, cause if, if I'm going to say, say we're in a seatbelt side by side, right?
A wrestling seatbelt, not what you just do.
Based on the pressure you're giving me, I might do a bunch of different things, right?
And so like to an untrained eye, they might both look like the same thing from you to
a trained feel.
It's like, well, in one case it's really evident I should go this way, in another case
it's really evident I should go that way.
So the other thing to consider just like with chess, the AI systems, so human versus human
plays a certain way together.
They actually haven't considered a really large number of strategies that AI systems
discover.
So one possibility with a robot, they'll discover certain ties and certain takedowns.
That's what I'm saying.
That like will dominate no matter what the human does.
You think that, so you think there's that.
So this, I mean, this is what I'm talking about, the wrestling's so fun is there's even after
80, 90 years, there's this continuous evolution.
Yeah.
So you think.
There'll be some like low single type thing like John Smith type of situation.
Well, like a down block go behind is something that has really, I would say really in the
last five-ish years has really been evolved.
What's a go behind?
So when you should, they just head inside or head outside matters, but there's one for
both.
You shoot at me.
Essentially, I take my leg.
Boom.
And then so that was kind of in existence when I was in college, right?
You down block them and you stop, but usually you hit on this side of their head, right?
And now immediately you should attack that shoulder and then I start hitting a go behind
on you, right?
And so like that in its current incarnation, it absolutely wasn't when I was in college.
I would say it probably became popular five to seven years ago.
So yeah, there's these big things that are happening.
Now I really want to roll back because I want to be ahead of the game.
I want to know what I'm missing.
I mean, one interesting thing you have with AlphaZero that plays chess is it sacrifices
pieces much more than humans do.
So it'll give you a piece and not only does it give you a piece, it will wait a bunch
of moves before it makes you pay.
Because it knows that that's better for the long term.
Long term.
So like humans rarely sacrifice without getting the piece back like two or three moves after.
AlphaZero can wait like five moves.
So basically you have, you potentially with wrestling, you might have a robot that like
puts itself in bad positions, but in a certain kind of way that will actually turn out.
Lures the opponent in to trap them.
Exactly.
That's the best time.
You basically narrow, one thing to do is you narrow the set of choices.
You put yourself in a bad position, but it narrows a set of choices.
For now, because they're not used to it.
Yeah, they're not used to it.
And then you drag them into your, yeah, so, but there's also the problem is there's mechanical
issues.
Like it's actually just difficult to build robots that are able to sense because we have
sensation throughout our body.
Yeah, it's just difficult to build that kind of robot.
It's expensive.
You start talking about multi-million dollars and then people will start asking you questions.
Why did you invest all of this money?
Don't ask me what moves I do.
Hello.
It could be better investment.
Okay.
So I mentioned John Smith.
He is, if people don't know, one of the great wrestlers, wrestling coaches ever.
He's also creative like you.
He spoke really highly of you.
What do you think about that guy?
Do you guys ever work together?
Not really.
So you know what, when I was a senior and I had the people wrestling in my head, I was
lucky enough to be doing, I was pretty much graduated, so I did an independent study with
the sports cycle.
I was potentially going to go to grad school for a sports cycle.
Well, I actually did nine credits and then I decided I didn't want to do it anymore.
I continued learning on my own, but I had an independent study with the guy who's head
of USA track and field sports cycle.
So the class was, I got to go sit down and talk with him for an hour and he was like
fascinated by me.
So he didn't let me do a homework.
It was like the greatest three credits ever.
We just talked.
I learned so much.
It was so awesome.
But so I started, so one time it came up, the head of these people wrestling in my head,
you know, and he said, well, who else do you think, I bet John Smith happened.
So I went and got John Smith's number and called him and said, hey, you ever had these
people wrestling in your head?
And he said, yeah, but as soon as it stopped coaching, they went away.
Same thing happened to me.
So they started coaching.
They went away.
I like really forced myself now and I'm like, I, you know, I see some in practice and it's
really high level because high school wrestling, I don't want to, maybe I feel bad, but it's
like it's a little bit lower level, right?
So if like Keegan, for example, who won the tournament, if he's struggling with the problem
or asked me a question and I can force myself to like see the body's moving and think about
it again, you know, kind of like I was in the earlys, but it won't just, it won't just
flow there anymore.
So he said it went away and for me, it went away also.
By the way, if you can pause on the bodies in your head, what, like, how are they generating
new ideas?
Are they just kind of, I don't know, you tell me.
So it's just, they're just like scrambling in your head.
It would be specifically based on a problem I was struggling with or a specific position,
you know?
Kind of, it goes in for a single and then go from there.
Yeah, so like I'm sitting in geography class and, you know, I don't have to work that hard
because it's easy, right?
And yeah, I'm just sitting there like kind of acting like I'm looking at the board and
these guys are wrestling and I'm watching them wrestle and yeah, sometimes they come
up with a really good solution.
Is there somebody you looked up to style-wise, like Gable, John Smith, yeah, all these like
legend status people?
Probably Gable, or it's a Gable, John Smith, but after the fact.
So the problem with wrestling in my era was you couldn't watch it.
There was no access, right?
It wasn't really available.
Even if you want to say go find a bunch of John Smith, Matt, they're kind of hard to
find, right?
There's a couple of them on YouTube, but I've obviously seen all of those.
But in my era, there really wasn't any of it.
So it was hard to be a fan of something and that's why wrestling has, the fans are going
like this because now, you know, you flip on the flow app and you can watch something
that's happening in Europe, right?
We can do this easily, so we can be a fan of people.
So now I'm more a fan of wrestling than I was then because there just was no access.
So now I can watch someone I like and say, oh, shit, like that guy's wrestling.
Oh, boom, I put my phone on, I watched them wrestle, you know, that type of thing.
You know, on a quick rant, it's really frustrating that you can't watch the Olympics.
Oh my God.
So frustrating.
I've been, I think I'm going to go to war on this point.
Go to NBC's headquarters.
I'll go with you.
Yeah, you got a soldier here.
I was talking to Jimmy, Jimmy Pedro, he was surprised by this too.
Most matches, you can't see, even you talk about like a comeback, Gable Steel's, and
you can't see the full match.
You get like a crappy highlight.
So the two, the two biggest things in Rattler and really the three, the NCAA championship
and the ASPN, the Olympic trials are on NBC and the Olympics are on NBC.
And these companies are so big, they don't have a department dedicated to selling the
rights to that footage, right?
So the rights to wrestling footage, which no one really cares all that much about except
a niche, are the exact same as track and field or basketball in the Olympics.
So yes, all of this stuff is completely inaccessible to us.
The NCAA's, the Olympic trials in the Olympics, you can't go watch old film on it.
It sucks.
Yeah.
Old to current film.
Yeah.
So you can't even watch the Gable match?
The Gable Steel's, no.
They did a, you know, they do something that annoys the fuck out of me.
What?
Okay.
They, they, they, they do like a three or two minute highlight.
So it's like, they capture the most important thing, but like it's all about the buildup.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like that very beginning when you step on the mat and the nerves and you walk out
and like that.
I mean, I don't know.
You miss, then, then when the triumph happens or the heartbreak happens, it has that much
more power.
Yeah.
If you want to go to war with NBC or ASPN, I'm, I'm happy to join that.
Unfortunately.
This is the IOC.
Well, I mean, is the IOC on it?
IOC is selling the, for the Olympics is the one that's making.
Well, so NBC broadcasts, so they obviously have the live rights.
You would think they would have recorded if they, I mean, they're the ones recording
it.
You would think they keep the rights when you think.
No, no, no.
They're getting a license of it.
They're getting exclusive like license, but like the, you know, for example, I've had
this talk to Travis Stevens, the Gido player, and there's a really sort of famous match.
It's a heartbreak in his career from 2012 Olympics, where he goes against the German
Ole Bischoff, whatever, it's a 20 minute match to go to war, and that's not available
anywhere, but it's uploaded on YouTube and set to private.
The reason I know this is because on the IOC channel, so they've uploaded all of these
matches.
They haven't even put it up.
So actually, so my Olympic match, the one I won, got put public, and so I don't know
if it was private.
It's got put up on YouTube.
Yeah.
I was ordered to it the week of my Jake Paul fight.
It was so dumb.
I'm like, what?
This is, every 13 years later, this is bullshit, like this should have been up.
So I mean, what, okay, so what about Olympic trials footage that has to be the USOC then
or NBC?
So I know like, okay, so I don't flow, right, because that works for them.
I know if flow buys your event or whatever, right, they buy the rights, generally in the
contract, they'll have rights to both live stream it and then use that footage at any
point moving forward.
So those matches live on Flo's website.
That's why I would be surprised if NBC didn't have something similar.
Flow does a pretty good job of providing like a place where you can watch all these matches.
NBC does not.
It does not.
Yeah.
And also there's an argument with flow as well, but certainly with Olympics, there's
a difference between what flow does and what the Olympics represent.
What do you mean by that?
Like it feels like the Olympics, which is what the charter says, should be as accessible
as possible.
Yes.
It's like you should really lower the barrier for entry for the Olympics.
You know that's what the charter says, but those people in the IOC, these are the worst
people ever.
Yeah.
They're very bad.
Well, they're not bad.
They just lost touch of the dream they once had when they joined the IOC.
Well, I would argue all the way back that these are rich fat cats who like, I get so
mad about the NCAA, which finally now got rid of this term, bullshit term amateurism.
It's like, well, there's some holy grail where you can't make money to be an amateur
athlete.
The people who own the IOC or the people who own the institutions, college institutions
are making boatloads of money off of you.
That's crap.
So you competed, like you said, at the 2008 Olympics.
Did you believe you can win gold?
Yeah, absolutely.
So your mental game was on point.
Yeah, I was ready.
So what went wrong?
This wasn't good enough.
That was what I said.
Yeah.
I mean, so at that point in time, it was my first year of international competition.
So when I came out in 2007, it was my first time making 74 kilograms, which is pretty
small for me.
I had some failures, but then quickly I turned that around and I was having success in America.
I was beating everyone.
I don't want to say easy, but yeah, I was doing really well.
I went international one time and there was one match I got cheated on.
The Russians, they're cheaters.
Actually, it was Ukraine, not Russia.
I lost one real match where I actually lost and it was to Dennis Sarguz, who had gone
to win three world titles.
He was behind the tee of that year and it was competitive.
So I knew, okay, I'm going with the best guys in the world.
I beat a bunch of other guys who were good and had passed decent results.
So I knew I was right there.
Unfortunately, I ran this guy, Ivan Fondora, and I had someone do scouting reports for
him.
Actually, my high school coach, he's not coached this for our academy, John Messamrick.
And Fondora was the worst stylistic matchup.
I got him and I lost him second round.
So I wasn't good enough.
Had I decided to keep wrestling, I probably would have gotten better, but at that point
Dennis wasn't in the cards.
So in your division was, like you said, the tee of, that guy is special.
He's very special.
So that would be my other guy that you asked earlier who I'd enjoyed watching.
And that was a guy.
Again, it was kind of after the fact because it was hard to access footage, but he was
a lot of fun to watch.
What do you think made him great?
A lot of people talk about him as potentially one of the greatest ever.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, so he won six and three, six worlds, nine, six worlds, three Olympics, nine total,
which there's only one or two people above that.
So again, it was hard to watch any live footage of him, but from what I've seen, his feel
is different.
He was just ahead of his time and the feel and the touch he had for certain moves and
different things because obviously physically he's kind of unimposing.
He's taller, skinnier, which is, you know, it can work in wrestling, but it is by less
represented.
Yeah, he was special.
So good.
Do you take any inspiration from, let's talk about Dagestan in general, what do you think
makes those wrestlers great?
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Have you read the book The Talent Code?
Yeah, it's great.
And that kind of talks about these talent hotspots all around the world.
So now obviously with our wrestling academies, we try to take some lessons from that and
apply it.
I got to assume they didn't cover Dagestan in that book specifically, but I got to assume
a lot of the same principles that are in that book apply to Dagestan in wrestling, right?
They did South Korea and Women's Golf, they did Curacao in baseball, right?
They picked a lot of these other places that were really elite.
I think maybe Moscow and Women's Tennis also.
So I think all these things that make any group great organization is probably the same
things that's happening there.
The hardship, I mean, what, is there something specific about wrestling that can create so
many great champions?
From that area, so obviously they all love it, like it's a big deal that wrestling specifically
is a big deal there.
You know, they do Sambo also, obviously.
So that's part of it is a lot of the kids are doing it.
They obviously are rough tumble, tough life.
Get a lot of fights.
And then I think that also that a lot of them, it is a way out right there.
The elite level athletes in that part of the world from my understanding are really well
compensated compared to what the average person makes in the future really well.
So people see it as a way out was like, and then honestly, if America is getting better,
but in 2008, the reason I went to MMA was because I didn't want to be poor the whole
life.
You know what I'm saying?
It sucks.
It's like, well, I don't want to make $20,000 for the next 48 years.
So I'm going to go do something else.
If I could have made, even I need to be rich, right?
If I could have made $100,000 or $70,000 wrestling, I probably would have kept wrestling.
So I think I think it's this factors and obviously now they have a really like a bunch
of really good people in one area.
So it's probably it's been going on for a long time.
So there's probably been a bunch of like adults and coaches that are coming back and helping
that progress.
So yeah, a lot of those things that happen.
So I'm definitely going to travel there to talk to them because I can speak Russian.
It makes it makes it very, um, makes me uniquely qualified to, uh,
I don't think I speak a little bit of Russian.
Your brother can.
Yeah.
Okay.
Like a little bit like squares and no, no, no, no, like he would, oh man, don't, don't
make me over.
So I think he would be able to have a conversation with you.
I think.
Okay.
Probably not like you.
What's the, uh, what's the reason, you know, I don't know why he got obsessed with languages.
So his college degree is actually, um, what do they call interdicts where you have three
minors.
So he had a minor in Russian, a minor in Spanish and maybe Japanese.
I'm, I'm messing up.
It's definitely Russian and Spanish are for sure.
I don't know what the third one is.
No, but yeah.
They understand it.
It's really fascinating.
But the, the, uh, the emphasis on technique, the lighter drilling, like they don't really
go super hard.
Yeah.
And I only spent a couple of, so I was there.
I was in Vladikavka's in 2008.
That was where the world cup was.
We had to train there for like two days afterwards.
So, um, I didn't get to dig deep, did dig deep into what was going on or anything.
But yeah, I mean, I think sparring has a sparring is very beneficial for wrestling.
Um, not like sparring MMA is what we fight, right?
Sparring in wrestling is, so I was just described to be really simple, uh, if we're drilling,
it's relatively 0% resistance.
If we're going as hard as we can, that's a hundred percent.
There's all this gray area in the middle that's sparring, right?
And so, you know, if you have a good relationship, like, you know, college me and my brother,
we can just go and we, we know where each other's at.
We don't even have to talk about it, right?
But like in my wrestling club, I'll say, okay, hey, I want you guys to go 50% in this position
or I want the high crotch guy.
I want him to shoot and this is for him.
So I want him to go 70 and defensive guy, I want you to go 40.
So you're not, you're not supposed to be trying to win here.
You're going to go a little later.
I want you to give him some looks, you know?
So I think, I think it has really taken hold of America.
I think it's really beneficial for success.
And I think that's, I mean, America's doing better than we've ever done in the store.
Well, that's 70 and 40.
That's like an art form to find that right place.
Cause, uh, like what the really good people I've trained with, they go much closer to
a hundred percent speed wise or like, but without like forcing things, yeah, you would
when you're going.
It's a weird combination of things that like if you truly earn a technique, then you're
given that technique.
But like if you don't, you don't.
And then it becomes much less injury prone.
It becomes somehow more fun, more dynamic, you don't get stuck in positions.
It's just a lot of movement.
The one thing, so you and John talked about, uh, you know, like different ways to learn
and get better.
And so I think John obviously innovated within the sport of jujitsu, um, and so for us when,
and maybe there's just a differentiator for us.
I think about it.
So sorry to interrupt.
You have this academy.
You sent me this plan that you have a really well thought through plan for how to develop
a good wrestler.
So, but I, so I think it's, um, so for me, there's four categories, right?
There's the teaching, which is like, you don't know shit.
I'm, you're coming in and I'm showing you the move and you're literally going out there
and you're trying.
To me, that's not even drilling.
That's like teaching.
Like you're trying to learn something.
So obviously in someone's earlier periods, they're spending a lot of time in that phase
because they literally don't even know how to move their bodies the right way.
Once you learn the skill, then there's the drilling because you need to, you absolutely
have to get those reps to become really proficient in that movement and then the sparring and
then the live, right?
And so like, I think obviously by the time you get to the kind of, I don't want to end
point, right?
But further on the time you spend teaching is so, I don't want to say in, I'm sorry,
in the learning, learning teaching phase is not insignificant, but it's so much smaller
because to someone who's really good, who I've coached for 10 years, I don't have to
give this big long drawn on explanation.
I just have to say, Hey, move, move your hand a little differently, right?
Or just do this.
Yeah.
Right?
We don't have to spend any time there.
If that consumes for the younger kids, say five through 12 or 13, we're consuming a massive
amount of time there on that teaching learning phase.
And then as we get older, that time wanes a lot.
But that makes total sense, right?
Yeah.
It's funny because when you look at like Jiu Jitsu schools, they spend a lot of time
in the teaching learning and then the live feels like there's not enough drilling.
I like how you draw a distinction there because it feels, it feels like you're always starting
from scratch.
Like people have like very crappy short-term memory.
Like they're not, like the way teaching is done is you show a technique from scratch
and it seems disjoint.
It is for sure.
Especially if you have a class that's been with you for a while, you don't have to start
from scratch.
You can say, Hey, let's focus on this one little thing here or let's, after we do this,
let's do that.
You know, you kind of put or start putting it all together.
And then with Jiu Jitsu, the thing that I really struggled with was a couple of things.
It was, um, and this is not speaking for all the Jiu Jitsu, my personal experience through
the sport.
And I actually found my, so when I, I'm retired, I found someone really great that I loved
and I really wish it was Mark Lame and I don't know if you know him at all.
I wish I would have found him earlier because he was just tremendous.
Um, but number one, there's no drilling.
So it's like in wrestling, I can boil down to, I can probably name you the best six
moves, right?
So we need, as younger people, single leg, right, single leg is going to be the most
proficient takedown.
It always has been, I don't know, probably always will be unless they figure out something
different.
Um, the robot, the robot, we're going to shoot a lot of single legs.
Why?
Cause we're, cause everyone's going to do that.
Right.
We're going to shoot a lot of single legs.
So just like, say an arm bar or some type of sweep, right?
Why can't we go get 50 reps there?
Hey, we, I mean, by the time I've been in your Jiu Jitsu school for two years, I better
know fucking arm bar.
I better know what.
So don't, don't spend 10 minutes teaching me.
Just tell me to go hit 50 reps.
And then if, when I'm hitting my reps, if there's something I'm doing wrong, then just
say, Hey Ben, move your leg a little bit that way, or raise your hips up a little more,
right?
Like correct.
As you're drilling.
So you're getting all these reps at it.
So you're becoming more proficient.
And then the other thing I really struggled with was to your point during live, so many
times it's just this five minute go, go, go.
And that's not the most efficient way to learn because when you have two people, especially
when they're focused on winning and you say, go, they're going to go to wherever they do
best.
Well, if I'm trying to make you good at something, I don't want you doing what you do best all
the time.
I need you doing some other things, right?
If you have a great single leg, but you can't shoot to the other side of their body, we
need to work on that.
Right?
You need to start shooting the other side.
There's some sense that you, it's not like you should be told what to work on, but you
should be told to work on the thing that you want to work on.
Meaning, because I don't know about, maybe you can comment on this, but you know, everybody
develops a different game as you get better and better.
There's a set of things you need to be working on.
So I actually have, like when I, especially when I'm like training very seriously, I'll
have a specific technique that I have in mind and I have a sheet of paper on the side where
I literally, my head keeps counting off how many times I put myself in that position and
pulled off the technique and that's all I care about in like training.
So I'll just, whatever it is, if it's a guillotine, it's a guillotine, arm drag, arm drag, but
I want to make sure I don't, I love numbers.
So I'll say like, I'll make sure I get 50 arm drags and I'm not getting off the mat
until I do.
And that, you know, if it takes-
Is it drilling or a live contest?
So in this, in the thing I'm describing right now is the live contest.
But drilling obviously, drilling, I can't find a drilling part, like it's so hard to
find drilling partners.
Even-
So boring.
It's annoying to me that this is boring.
And there's nothing more annoying to me than the look of boredom on another person's face
when we're drilling.
Yeah.
It's like-
Do you really think drilling is that beneficial to you?
Because you said it's a job?
Yes.
Really?
Yeah.
So you think I'm an idiot, but yes.
Why?
Why am I an idiot or why am I just drilling beneficial?
Well, let's go with two trick dishes.
Why is it so beneficial?
I think for me, there's a meditative aspect to it where the more you drill, the more you
start noticing the details.
My new details.
Let me push back a little bit here.
I'm not going to push back all the way because every time, if I was wrestling, I won't head
crash or anything like whatever, right?
But even so, say like at a high level, when I'm really wrestling 10 years ago, even during
that drill portion, if we talk about the resistance of our opponent from 0 to 100, it's very likely
that my partner at that point, because it's people I'm really comfortable with, they're
probably at least going 20 or 30, right?
They're probably giving me a certain look with the sprawl or I got to get through their
hands.
If I don't set it up right, they might put their arm down, right?
So it's like we are drilling because we're wrestling at a really low resistance level,
but there's a little bit of sparring.
Oh, yeah.
The 20%.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's not really drilling.
I mean, I think it's drilling.
I think literally you're shooting and I'm just going to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom, type of thing.
It's very hard to be a dummy that doesn't do 20%.
So you're going to do 20%.
Yeah.
So yeah, that's 20%.
But that's like sparring a little bit then.
No, but they're not really resisting.
They're just giving you the right frame.
They're giving you the right movement and they're being an intelligent dummy, essentially.
But also like the really important component of this is you pick the techniques for which
is beneficial.
If the technique has dynamic elements to it, you don't want to be doing that with, I'm
saying like there's certain moves and I like those moves and I select the game base and
those moves.
So are you drilling to get better or are you drilling just to work out?
No, to get better.
That's what I'm trying to tell you.
I believe you can become like exceptionally good very fast by drilling.
But how?
First of all, let me ask you an empirical question.
Have you actually drilled 10,000 times?
Absolutely.
Millions.
Millions.
You haven't drilled millions.
100,000.
100,000 is likely.
I think you're just saying numbers.
I don't think you know what 100,000.
The number is freaking astronomical.
It's way more than 10,000.
I don't think you know what 100,000 feels like.
Dude, there was a 10-year period where I wrestled every single day.
That's 3,000 days.
So you're telling me 10,000.
That's only three of them a day.
I do way more than that.
Three of them.
Probably 30 of them a day.
That's 100,000.
Yeah.
Yeah.
100,000.
I doubt you get 30 a day for a particular technique.
I am for sure 100%.
There's no doubt.
All right.
Because some days I might do 100.
Right?
Yeah.
So 30 of 30 is not very many, especially if we count all reps, if we're counting drilling
and live.
So like our college coaches would make us just drill a lot and I just hated it.
So I would rebel and just kind of give a little spar.
You shoot a high crotch.
We'll start.
You coach us to drill high crotch.
We'll start.
You shoot the high crotch.
That's great.
Then I'm going to sit the corner.
I'm going to give you my hip.
Or I'm going to try something.
So then you have to react.
And I would argue that all skill level past like the beginner stuff is some necessity
of that.
Right?
I'm going to do this.
Then what are you going to do?
It's back and forth.
I shoot single leg.
What are you going to do?
I shoot high crotch.
What are you going to do?
And you have to start unconsciously programming these things in your head because if you're
conscious to think about it, it's going to be too slow to actually hit it in a match.
But the drilling is the unconscious programming.
But the simple movement, the first simple movement, the first simple movement, that
single leg or the high crotch or arm drag, whatever, like I feel like the amount you're
going to get better at it is so minuscule compared to the amount you're going to gain
at doing other things around it.
You see that?
No, but that's the keyword you feel.
Okay.
That's your opinion.
I think if we did a study on it that I would be proven correct.
No.
So perhaps, so first of all, your brain as an exceptionally creative combat athlete,
it's clear that you don't like the boredom of drilling.
It's obvious that you have like, you're such a creative energy that you're just not going
to be somebody who's going to enjoy that.
So enjoyment is probably having an active mind is really important.
So the question is, do you have the kind of makeup that has an active mind during a drilling
on a dummy?
And I have that mind.
But you really think, okay, so if you're, let's pick a technique, what technique do
you want to drill on?
I would do a Jiu Jitsu or wrestling.
Whatever you want.
It's hard to describe with words, but certain guard passes, let me think, just guard pass.
Okay.
So you have a guard pass and you get it to be as a nine and a half out of 10, right?
Just from a technical standpoint, don't you think you need some resistance to feel?
Because essentially, all benefit after that is going to be, what are they going to try
to do to me?
Have they shipped it that way?
Do I need to sink here or move there?
So it's like, I actually think we're agreeing, but maybe terminology wise, or the split is
the important thing, like how much of each.
So I think it is smart.
I think it's a very light touch spar is what you're talking about, which is, in my opinion,
really isn't drilling and it's because drilling past the basic proficiency, I don't think
it brings much value.
No, but that's what I'm trying to tell you is I think it does.
I think if you're doing that same movement, I think you begin to learn more over time.
Like you're saying like once you get the basic proficiency, then there's diminishing returns.
I don't think so.
Yeah, that's what I think.
I don't think so.
I think everything has diminishing returns when you're learning a technique.
But with something as complex as wrestling or grappling, if you can have way more gains
over here, why focus on going from a 9.7 to a 9.8?
If this other area, if you're spending so much time here that there's other areas left
unexplored and you can make gigantic gains over there.
No, but you're going to lose.
I think a lot depends on your style.
I think a lot is determined by how good you are at one thing.
So if you want to become a master of a particular thing and then make your whole game where
it's all pulled into that system, then I don't know.
I think one is to a small number.
Yeah.
It's small.
I feel like you can't be easily like this.
You want to funnel.
You want to create funnels.
Funnels.
Funnels.
Funnels, right?
Where everything goes into a few positions.
And then it's all filled.
And then it's all filled.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I feel you can get like drilling on a dummy 80% of the time and 20% of the time live
rolling with people worse than you, like a little bit worse than you, or a lot worse
than you.
Yeah.
So I think, so I think I definitely think, so my, my buildup would be teach.
So we're talking a complex technique, right?
So by the time we're talking, we'll say a late, late high school kid who's pretty proficient,
he's probably done the drilling part.
So then now it's like, okay, if I want to get something new to you, I'll probably tell
you, you'll probably be able to do the basic premise within five to 10 minutes if they're
good, right?
Do this.
Okay.
They do it.
Then it's like, okay.
So now here's from here, what we're going to do.
We're going to go light sparring.
So I know you have success.
Cause I need you to complete the task in order to get better at it.
That's something a lot of people in wrestling mess up is they just want to go the toughest
person.
But if you go the toughest person, you're not going to actually execute on any skills.
You're going to get a workout and I, and I need you to execute cause I need you to get
good at this in order to get good at it.
You have to get all the way through the technique.
Why do you need them to complete?
So just so they gain confidence in the technique or they go through all the stuff.
They have to feel all the way through, like if I said, we're in a high crotch when you're
drilling with stop halfway every time, but you're not actually going to be able to do
it.
Cause you're going to stop.
You're going to have to feel.
So, you know, try it on someone, spar lightly, get it, do it on someone who's not as good
as you get it, then kind of work your way up the ladder so you can get it on someone
your own skill level or maybe better than you, right?
In a, in a live competition.
So it's like, I don't know, I feel like that, that basic drilling, like, um, so a kid like
Keegan who I've probably a few times like, I feel like if there's something new, I could
literally tell him like, this is what I want you to do.
And he's such a great feel like he could go drill it proficiently within probably a minute
or two, but then to hit it on someone high level, that's going to take quite a while
longer.
And that's a mix of drilling and sparring on people a little bit worse than you.
Yeah.
And then bet, yeah.
Equal and the better.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Because there's, there's, there's just with, with grappling, there's such like a feel component
to the pressure, the movement, all these things.
And there's still, I said, there's so many things you can throw at someone on a one position,
not just moves, but moves at different levels of force or, or whatever.
Are you and these kids developing like a big picture strategy of like, what are the main
setups and takedowns and just like a whole system?
Um, so we, you know, I, I kind of sent you our technique book, right?
And how we kind of go at approach it.
So I, I think in wrestling, you're going to need, you're going to need a handful of things
just off the, off the word go, right?
You're going to, so I think on our feet, I need to be able to take this side of the
body.
I need to be able to take that side of the body.
I need to be able to bring you underneath me.
I need to be able to go around you, right?
Now we can accomplish those different ways, but we should have all of those weapons.
If we want to be really good some way, right?
So if I neglect one of those, so if I neglect the ability to say, pull you down, right?
I'd lock you, um, now if I have a good shot and you're smart, you're just going to lower
your stance.
So my shot is not going to be as successful and I have the inability to pull you down.
Right.
So I kind of need all of those so I can, as they get better, I can point those things
out.
Um, on bottom, my folks out bottom, there's certain things like you have to be good at
leg right defense.
Right.
You have to, I mean, at a high level or you just get, you're going to, when you get it
in, you're just getting stuck there.
Not going to be able to escape, um, but besides that, yeah, there's a, there's a multitude
of things that you can choose from and I'm going to, depending on your body style, uh,
and what you're good and bad at, I'm going to probably develop something a little different.
I might give you, hey, you do the quad pod, you'd be better as a knee slide, whatever.
Um, yeah, top kind of same thing.
I have to ask you about Khabib.
So I remember a while ago, Rogan said that, uh, that's the perfect fight for Khabib.
You are.
So let me ask two questions.
The first, do you think you can beat him in an MMA match when you're at your peak?
Yeah.
I don't like, uh, yeah.
I mean, it's one of those people where people like, we'll get really mad at me if I say
yes, but yeah, I mean, I think-
But how would you do it?
How would you solve that puzzle?
Yeah.
Uh, I mean, we would grapple and I think I would be better than him, but I, you know,
I, I just, I feel weird saying this, people were like, yeah, right, you're full of shit,
you know?
And, but that's no, no one out grappled him.
Right.
I mean, nobody did.
Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I, if we look at the best possible candidates, I'm definitely
one of them.
And then obviously I have a small size advantage too.
So in a wrestling match, so we can just reduce that MMA match to a wrestling match.
What do you think is the right strategy on him?
Like, do you understand his style that the, the, the, his wrestling style, the pressure
he applies to understand how the hell he makes it happen?
Yeah.
I mean, he never unfortunately fought any real, who I would say really, really high
level wrestlers.
I was actually really disappointed how bad Justin Gaetje's wrestling was because Justin
Gaetje had some solid success, but his wrestling was really bad in that fight.
Um, Gaetje has success at, at CWA.
Yeah.
I think he was seventh place, maybe, or so someone, he was definitely all American.
Uh, it was lower though.
Um, so yeah, I would, I would like to see how he dealt with someone who was like a, who
out there, oh man, this guy's a really high level wrestler.
Cause you know, we saw in this early in his career, but you know, Glacent Tebow did give
him some issues earlier in his career.
Um, so I would like to see him in that situation and see how he does.
I would love to like, you know, like, I just love wrestling and grappling.
Like, yeah, I'd love this.
Someone said, Hey, uh, Ben, you know, it could be wants to roll with you.
Okay.
I'm there tomorrow.
It sounds like a blast.
Let's go.
He's probably competitive as hell.
Yeah.
The year's still competitive.
I know when to be and when not to be like, you know, say if I'm going to high school
kids or not going to be competitive because then I'm just being a dick.
How would you take him down?
I would probably try to take single legs and stuff.
Single legs.
Yeah.
I haven't.
Okay.
No, no, no, I've honestly, I don't have the slightest clue.
I'd have to feel, I'd feel him out.
Um, the single legs.
My best take.
When people talk about his wrestling being really good, the people that train with him.
So, okay.
So I, I grilled someone, I will not say who on the Ed Ruth thing because Ed Ruth is very
elite and focused on wrestling and everybody came that great at fighting.
Unfortunately.
Wait, Ed Ruth wrestled Khabib?
They were on the same team for a while.
Yeah.
Okay.
And there was rumors that Khabib beat him up and I said, I, I sure can't believe that.
And I've heard that that was, if they were just straight wrestling, Ed would get slightly
the better of it.
Well, Ed Ruth is like one of the greats.
He's great.
He's really good.
Yeah.
So that was what I heard.
Okay, but in an MMA setting because of all the tools that Khabib would get him.
I don't know what, but I agree.
I agree with Rogan on this one.
That would have been good to see.
Yeah.
I'm fine.
So yeah, Khabib wants to work out.
I'd love it.
I love, I love wrestling and grappling.
I don't do much Jiu-Jitsu because I don't have time for it anymore.
I'm at the wrestling academy like every single day.
But yeah, I love Jiu-Jitsu while I did it.
And you know, if I didn't have a wrestling academy, that probably would still be doing
Jiu-Jitsu.
Well, and Jiu-Jitsu as well, but I'm gonna ask you a ridiculous question.
Who's the greatest of all time, freestyle or folk style?
Oh, wrestling.
Wrestling.
Hmm.
Well, I will say my knowledge past like the year 2000 is really not that great because
you can't be...
In which direction?
Sorry.
After 2000?
No, no, before.
Because you can't find any film or anything, you know?
And so you hear of all these...
So you need evidence?
You need direct evidence?
I want to be able to watch them and see them and feel the times and feel their opponents
and you know, all those things to really like, I hate giving bad answers, you know?
So I would, there's just not enough footage of any of those people.
You know, we took...
We go back to someone like Alexander Medved, like you can't find footage, you can't find
anything on it, you know?
So like, who is the wrestler?
I'm not sure.
So post 2000, I think, and obviously just freestyle.
So...
Americans?
Russia?
This is a...
TF has the probably the best argument post 2000.
I think said July of...
The Russian tank?
That guy is...
Yeah.
So who's better?
Snyder or said July of?
So said July of just wanted the Olympics.
I understand this.
I understand how that works, but there's pretty close, right?
Not really.
Not that match, but in general, the matchup.
So well, so Kyle won the first one in 17, said July of pinned him the following year,
but then Kyle lost and took bronze in 19 and then just lost.
I don't want to say fairly decisively, but it was it was six to three and that there was
a late takedown.
He kind of gave it up and maybe feels really competitive.
Maybe he wouldn't have taken a wrestle again in like two weeks here.
So that, you know, yeah, I mean, you have to say said July of at this point, there's nothing
else to say unless Kyle proves us otherwise.
Yeah.
Not enough people talk about said July of.
Okay.
Well, you think that guy should go to MMA?
I think Kyle should go to MMA?
Some of these guys.
Yeah.
They're making enough money wrestling where they don't really feel the need to.
It's terrifying though.
Is that heavyweight?
Yeah.
Probably.
It's like, it's like could be, but heavyweight.
Well, I don't know if you remember, do you remember Bilal Mokov?
So Bilal Mokov actually was the Russian representative in both styles of 2016, Greggland freestyle.
And he was, to my knowledge, the only person that UFC's ever signed that was zero in modern
era, signed that was zero and zero.
And then he actually never ended up fighting, but weird, right?
So yeah.
No motivation.
Yeah.
I don't know what the story is.
Because sometimes out of Russia, I mean, maybe you have better sources than I do.
Sometimes it feels like dudes just disappear.
Like they're a world champ or Olympic champ and you're like, wait, where'd he go?
You talked shit about Russia earlier in the conversation.
Oh, what'd I say?
I forgot.
But I think.
Steroids.
I think somebody's going to show up to your door.
I'm worried.
Honestly, I've said enough bad things where I would be kind of looking over my shoulder
if I wanted to do something.
I, for one, love the Russians.
What about Icarus?
How does that make you feel?
What about it?
It's fake news.
Oh, really?
I'm just kidding.
It's propaganda?
Maybe it is.
I don't know.
I don't know what to think anymore.
Maybe it is.
Yeah.
You know, it's troublesome, man.
I hate cheating in all of its forms.
Any other, like, recaps from the Olympics of 2020, Tokyo that stood out to you, Gable
Stevenson, like anything like that?
Gable's great.
Yeah.
No, I think America's coming to the point where we're going to compete with Russia
every single year in wrestling, which obviously, you know, a long, long time ago, many, many
years we did, we were great.
And then kind of after that Soviet Union period, I think there was a lot of poverty
in that area.
And that kind of led the wrestling team going down a little bit.
And then obviously a lot of those regions, the way they found oil and gas in the Caspian
Sea, I believe, and they've been really kind of on the upswing for the last 20 years.
And now America really since 2012 has been on the upswing and wrestling, and we're kind
of really competing with them.
And they're not sending a couple of their best guys.
So for those who don't know, the Olympics got put back in the air.
So there are hosting the World 2021 World Championships, despite the fact that we just
had the Olympics two months ago.
So it's happening next week in Oslo, Norway.
So like Russia's not sending their number one at 57 and their number one at 65.
So it's like America's probably going to win, I think.
I don't want to guarantee anything, but there's a really good chance of it.
Dave Taylor, all those guys competing.
America gave any of the Olympics that meddled, the opportunities did not even have to wrestle
off.
They just got to keep the spot since it was two months later if they meddled.
So the only one who's not as gable, gable's moving on.
We have a pretty good guy behind him named Nick Westaus, who's a world medalist.
But then he's a burles filled in the 79 spot, Jane Cox filled in the 92 spot, who's a world
champion also.
So we have a...
It's a hell of a team.
Pretty good squad.
Yeah.
Pretty good squad.
Pretty happy.
Okay.
So given your run in Bellator in one championship, that was like one of the most dominant runs
in MMA.
What would you say was like key to your dominance and that long undefeated streak?
Huh.
It probably consistency would be one.
The fact that I lived and trained the same way, no matter where my life was, where's
a lot of fighters, once they start making money for the first time, they have all these obligations
and they travel and they really enjoy making money and that's kind of why some of them
fall off.
So you had like the same process, like the same camp and...
Yeah.
I stayed at my house.
I did vacation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everything.
Just...
And so that was a big part of it.
Obviously, the style thing is like no one could...
There's only a few people who could stop my style.
And I think I continue to get better as a mixed martial artist and I wasn't as independent
and innovative in mixed martial arts, but there was a handful of things that I innovated
specifically in the top position where I spent a lot of time where it was just like...
Once I got on top of you, it was like in a spider web and there was just kind of no
way out.
You never felt the certain things I was doing and so people just, they gave up eventually.
How's the level of wrestling in MMA, would you say?
So I saw somewhere like champions, the most popular martial art for current UFC champions
are all wrestling.
So we just lost a bunch of the belts.
Wrestling is a sport, right?
But yeah, at one point we had, I think it was eight of nine maybe or something to that
effect.
And I think it's not just wrestling, not just the actual martial art of wrestling that
contributes to our success in mixed martial arts, but other things like the way we're
systemized.
So most kids who we travel with have went through the high school program and the college
program and they know how to show up on time and they know how to work hard.
So when they go to ATT or AKA or wherever, they know how to show up on time and they
know how to work hard and that's going to get you a really long way.
Just those two things, right?
Not even the techniques, it's just the discipline.
And I think you throw on top of the fact that most of us have competed 1,500 to 2,000 times.
Probably by the time we get to 20 something, like that's a huge advantage too.
Most of these other people with other disciplines maybe have competed 100, if that, right?
So we have this competitive process down really, really, really, really well.
Plus the way cut.
The way cut.
There's all these things, right?
The factor into it.
I think the fact that we're really open-minded, like I think if you would, I don't pick on
Jiu-Jitsu again, but like how many Jiu-Jitsu guys have become highly proficient in wrestling
versus how many wrestling guys have become highly proficient in Jiu-Jitsu?
I think that number swings one way and not that much the other way, you know?
So we're open to adapting and learning and for some reason, like Jiu-Jitsu people, how
many of them have got high level wrestling or even mediocre wrestling?
The number is really small.
Like they refuse to.
It's really frustrating.
Like, why won't they do this is obviously part of it.
You know, if like, I don't pick on specific guys, but there's certain guys in the history
of MMA where you're like, listen, man, I mean, Damian Maya, who's my last fight is a great
example of someone who actually did get proficient wrestling, right?
But there's some of these Jiu-Jitsu guys who's like, if you just got on top, you would submit
him.
Why can't you learn if we can take down?
Like holy moly, like just learn how to take someone down.
Once you get them down, they will not get up and you win the fight.
Like it's so easy, you know, but they refuse.
How complicated is that journey?
So like Don and her that you mentioned, Craig Jones, they're big on wrestling as part of
Jiu-Jitsu now.
Like wrestling, not just on the feet, but wrestling from the bottom coming up and all
that kind of stuff.
So how difficult does that whole skill set, would you say, for Jiu-Jitsu person to learn?
Not that hard.
If they really put their mind to it, because they already like, when you grapple and this
is any grappling art, like there's a certain part of it that you kind of get.
And it can, it might not be the exact same thing, but you understand how your body moves
and how to feel certain pressures and you can adapt yourself pretty quickly, you know?
So I don't think that there's a certain level of stubbornness where they didn't want to,
certain people didn't want to do it for whatever reason.
I think a lot of times in MMA, it's, I'm so macho, I can stand and bang thing, you know,
where they want to, you know, show how macho they are.
But yeah, that was a fresh thing when that they, there's a lot of wrestlers who became
highly proficient in Jiu-Jitsu and really adapted and it doesn't go the other way.
And then I guess the other thing there too is they can both steal from each other, right?
As any martial art can steal from another, and like, I feel like Jiu-Jitsu didn't do
enough stealing from wrestling.
Like they should have looked at all the wrestling possibilities and said, well, why don't we
steal that and that, you know, and like, hey, let's take that over.
And maybe we'd make a little tweak because it's different, but there's something we
can definitely use there.
So like in wrestling, for example, you know, there's a one-armed Jiu-Jitsu, right?
Okay.
So there's a move called, well, it's got a hundred minutes, like the oldest move in
wrestling because it's what they did, the cows where they go around the chin and they
throw them on the back.
I don't recall that one.
I don't know.
Okay.
Sorry.
Did you just ask me what I call that one?
Yeah.
Would you take a cow and grab it by the throat and say, no, but in wrestling, in wrestling.
I don't know.
Okay.
Are you putting it under?
Yeah.
So you grab their chin and then you go under their arm and then throw them on their back.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
So we call that the honey badger, but it's got honey badger, different names, wherever
you go.
It's got different names.
So I would always, I would say like pre-Jiu-Jitsu, I was, I was average at it.
Like I could do it, but against good people, you never get it for because they would get
the back of their head up and they were too strong where you couldn't collapse them by
going over their neck, right?
Yeah.
Because the forces weren't right.
And in Jiu-Jitsu, you learn the one arm gi-ti where you grab their chin and this is more
of running along the side of their head and then, and then you go here and you choke them,
right?
Mm-hmm.
Much more efficient way to move their head because the fulcrum is way down here and
their head can move into that, right?
So once I learned that in Jiu-Jitsu, I'm like, wait, I can do this in wrestling.
So now once I want to grab their chin the right way and I do the honey badger, no one
ever gets out.
Mm-hmm.
I just had to steal that Jiu-Jitsu, put it in wrestling and boom, there we go.
But very few people steal any direction.
That takes creativity.
Really?
And open-mindedness.
It's so easy because it's already done.
You just got to steal that.
I mean, same with Judo.
If you're a gi-jitsu person, there's so much stuff in Judo that's ripe for the stealing
because Judo is much more emphasized as explosive moves on the transition, which is something
Jiu-Jitsu does not do because you have some...
You mean from the takedown too?
From the takedown, but also just in general, just in the transition, the concept of transition,
the...
Like, Jiu-Jitsu is very much about like, we're in this position, then we're in this position,
then we're in this position.
The Judo is much more in when there's chaos of any kind.
That's when you need to strike.
And to learn that, I mean, that's why people like Travis Stevens and Jidoko, when they
go to Jiu-Jitsu, they can dominate, but Jiu-Jitsu people should steal that.
They're too stubborn.
Yeah.
But so is everyone.
Wrestlers are stubborn too.
No way.
There would never be any stubborn wrestlers.
Well, I mean, I was surprised, all these coaches, John Smith, Dan Gable, they don't
really have interest in MMA or Jiu-Jitsu and so on, but you would think somebody like
a John Smith would like put on a white belt and roll around.
Yeah.
I think he's just too focused on what he's a coach and what he's doing.
Yeah.
And I think if you take him when he's younger, he would have had a lot of fun.
We actually have a really good wrestler making his MMA debut tomorrow.
And if you bow knuckle, I'm sure you've heard of him, third half level.
I think he's going to have a lot of success.
I mean, some people might say that like Jiu-Jitsu makes you a little comfortable being in your
back and for a wrestler that could be like really bad.
I hate that take.
Yeah.
But that's the Dan Gable take.
It's so stupid.
It's so stupid.
For God's sakes, we know the fucking rules.
And wrestling, you don't go to your back and Jiu-Jitsu, you can.
It's like whatever.
Yeah.
You don't bow like Jiu-Jitsu, for example.
So I coached, whereas at Rufus, I coached the wrestling for a long time, three, four,
five years.
So I've been taking a Jiu-Jitsu guy and teaching them a wrestling technique where you needed
to use your feet to teach Jiu-Jitsu guys so easy, so simple, because they already understand
the concept, butterfly guard, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?
To take a wrestler who's never done any of it and teach him how to use his feet.
Oh, my God, it's such a beast.
It's so hard, you know, because that's not a weapon they're thinking about using.
So it's like, we understand the rules.
It's like freestyle and focusing on wrestling and freestyle for the man, I can lock my hands.
You don't see people lock in their hands all the time with folks just because they did
freestyle.
It's like, they get it.
There's a rule.
They understand it.
So the notion that somehow you come from on your back.
But pinning, that's like a, it has a special meaning.
Yeah.
I actually think, so Jiu-Jitsu, you don't actually want to be flat, flat, very often, right?
You don't want to be.
I always wondered this because I did a couple of catch wrestling tournaments and I did,
I would put myself in a butterfly guard and I wasn't going against good people.
So which is why I was doing all these things.
But I wondered if you could create a system of wrestling where you're butterfly guard.
So I think that there's, there's a few places where I use it, but so specifically the elevator
series was my main series up bottom.
It is, it's not butterfly guard.
It's a butterfly guard like grip with your foot.
So I boom, I go here, I catch your leg with my foot, boom and I elevate you over, right?
And then also sometimes like, I think Keegan does this too from watching me, but double
leg sometimes if I'm accepting, so freestyle obviously you're going to give a point to
me.
And then you've already got me and as I go down, I'm just going to butterfly guard you
off, you know, and then I'm going to try to flip my hip back to the mat and get it up
in a wizard position.
Nice.
Like I've used that quite a few times where it is kind of like a bailout mechanism that
gives me back to maybe not a great position, but obviously much better than being taken
down.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
Let me ask you quickly about crypto because you're also, you have a show, you have a lot
of interest in cryptocurrency, why are you interested in cryptocurrency?
Is it just a financial investment or is there philosophy that attracts you to it?
So my friend told me about it in 2017, I was actually, I went to, I was, my friend met me
in Shanghai.
I fought in one championship and he told me, and the second he told me, I'm so in because
I had read Ron Paul and the Fed, I had read, I kind of had an understanding how the Fed
is unfair.
And so when he told me about crypto this decentralized system that no one has control over, it just
made sense.
And so like we've had the podcast with Michael Sailor on it and I love the way he says it's
like, who do you trust more with your money?
Do you trust the politicians or do you trust engineers?
I think that's an easy choice.
I don't even think, I don't even think I have to think about that.
I don't trust politicians, no matter what country they come from, China, America, wherever,
I don't trust them.
So what about in 2017, what was Bitcoin?
Are you, what do you find, which ones do you find interesting?
There's all kinds of ideas.
So there's the more sort of primal mechanism of proof of work and Bitcoin, and then there's
smart contracts, ideas, and there's all kinds of innovations across the different.
So I can't say I've been super deep where I understand the technical components of a
lot of them.
I understand what Bitcoin can do for people.
And so that's probably the one I focused the most on.
And I actually, I think I was talking about, I was trying to convince Michael to talk about
Bitcoin because he hates it also.
And I think most of the main problems Bitcoin solves, people in America are so American-centric
they don't understand it.
So like high levels of inflation, that hasn't happened in, what started to happen, that hasn't
happened in America in a long time, right?
That someone in Venezuela is like, oh, I get that, you know, or remittance payments, right?
Remittance payments to, you see it.
So I saw this in, when I was spent all the time in Singapore, Singapore is obviously
a really wealthy country.
And so you'd have Indonesian workers or Filipino, and they would all go on Sundays, they would
go to these places to ship stuff back to their families and through Western Union, Western
Union gouges the shit out of these people.
I mean, they're taking 8, 10, 12% of whatever they're sending.
Then it takes five days and the person's going to pick it up, whereas Bitcoin, I could send
you Bitcoin person to person, right?
So like American people don't understand that.
American people don't really understand the unbanked, right?
A decent portion of the world is unbanked, they don't have access to it.
And a much, much, much smaller portion of the world doesn't have access to the internet.
So if I can put a mobile wallet on your phone, and we can send money person to person.
So there's a whole bunch of those problems where Americans don't really think about that
are really obvious that this solves.
So I think that's the key one, obviously the fact that the value goes up is really outstanding
also.
But if you look at it, I got in in 2017, so I got to watch it go up.
I didn't sell shit at the top, really stupid.
And then the majority of my time was spent through the bear market.
And so I had to love it for the principles that it provided, not the fact that actually
I actually lost money in the beginning and now I'm way up.
But yeah, so I just holding, just holding, I think at the top of this bull market, I
will probably sell a very small portion.
So you mean like right now there's a bull market?
Yeah, most people think in the next 36 months will be at the top of the market.
And so probably when that happens, I'll probably sell a little bit.
You got to hodl it, Ben.
You got to hodl?
Well, yeah.
So here's one of my podcast co-hosts, he's like super rich, like super rich.
So he has lost touch with the every man.
So here's my argument to him, it's really simple.
Listen, I'm doing well for myself in life, but if say someone buys a Bitcoin, right,
one Bitcoin at $5,000, which it was last year.
And this Bitcoin goes from $5,000 to $200,000, which is, you know, right around what a lot
of people think the peak is going to be, okay, about one Bitcoin.
And they're living in a $200,000 house.
So to take half of that, right, you started with $5,000 of the Bitcoin to sell half a
Bitcoin for $100,000 and pay off your house, your remaining house payment, that's life
changing to someone.
It really is.
And so you still have a Bitcoin, so if Bitcoin goes to a million, you're still going to have
half a million and you're going to feel really, really rich with a half a million dollars
because you bought it for $2,500, you know?
So yeah, so I would encourage anyone who's not Uber rich to, if you have huge profits,
take a little bit of them because it could change your life.
And if you hold it and it goes down, you're going to feel the pain of that, like sometimes
if you're more constrained financially, it's much more psychologically difficult to ride
the wood, the ups and downs.
Yeah, it is, for sure.
So they have these really fascinating things in Bitcoin, as we said, the guy, one of the
main guys on our podcast is called On Chain Metrics.
So all wallet transactions are visible, you know?
And so they have these, all these fun categories.
So I actually, I think you said you don't like numbers, but...
I like numbers.
I like numbers.
I like those numbers also.
So they have all these different categories, like you can see how long a wallet has held
a Bitcoin, right?
Or how many Bitcoins are in a certain wallet.
And so what they've seen during this, the downturn, right?
So April, it kind of peaked and went down is that the whales are still buying, so whales
and people with a thousand or more are still buying.
They've said the main group of sellers is the ones who held it from zero to three months.
So like, they don't have money, they bought it because they thought it was going up and
they're like, oh, shit, I got to sell it, right?
Whereas anyone's head out for a long time is generally still holding on to it.
That's interesting.
That's a good indicator, right?
For the whole space.
Yeah.
Well, let me ask you for some advice.
You've been through one heck of a career, one heck of a life.
What advice would you give to a young person today?
Well, in wrestling, I think wrestling is really a microcosm of what your life's going to be.
And that's why one of the things that I stress the kids is like, if we can go through this
now and figure, I have a couple of kids who are struggling with certain things, if you
can figure out this now in wrestling, it's going to be a lot better to figure out now
and get over this mental hump than when you're 32 and you have two kids and your job's not
going well.
It's going to be a lot more painful than let's fucking figure it out now.
So a lot of these things, a lot of these lessons we can learn from wrestling, whether it's
persistence or perseverance or work ethic or you know, I said, wrestling shows up on
time and they work hard, right?
These things, if we can learn these things at an early age, those are genuine, those
characteristics will generally carry on throughout our life.
And those are the things that are going to make us really successful.
So I would say find a great coach, someone who's going to spend a lot of time and put
a lot of time into you and make sure they have a lot of wisdom and steal all the wisdom
that you can from them.
And then if you can be successful at one thing, generally whatever that recipe was that took
you to be successful at that, apply it to everything else, right?
Apply it to the rest of your life.
Apply it to getting a wife that you enjoy, apply it to living in a place you want to
live, doing a job you want to do, right?
There's so many possibilities and you just have to be bold enough to go take those chances.
It's interesting because early on in life is when you have much more time.
People don't realize this.
Time to learn the lessons.
Like somehow later in life, you get busier responsibilities and all that kind of stuff.
Like high school is a magical time, you know, college.
Yeah.
There's so much time to learn.
Well, you didn't have kids yet.
Yeah.
I don't have kids.
It still fills up.
Well, no, I'm purposed and I did something that many people don't seem to be able to
do.
I walked away from a lot of responsibilities just by saying goodbye.
Oh, okay.
But like, you know, meetings, like everybody around me at MIT was like meetings fill the
day and then you have more projects and you do a great job and you become successful and
then more meetings fill the day and more responsibilities as opposed to like, wait a minute, do I want
to be involved in all these things and instead do I want to find one or two things to really
focus on?
And that's what I choose, but like that becomes harder and harder and harder as you get older.
No, I mean, I'm sure.
And also the more success you have, you become sought after other places too, I'm sure that's
happening with you.
And it's hard to say, keep saying no, no, no.
Saying those hard.
Yeah.
You're known for roasting people with a single boom roasted line.
So any ideas, maybe you want to mention, Malice, but any ideas come to mind when you look
at me.
Man, I did, you know what?
If I was going to boom roast someone, I would want to kind of like research their career
and dissect them and figure out their biggest negatives.
Get to the core.
And I didn't have that notion with you.
So I figured I got a general sense of, okay, he's really successful, he's super sharp.
He's really interested in some really interesting things.
I bet we'll have a great conversation, but I had no intention to roast you.
Yeah.
There you go.
What about Malice?
He had dinner with him last night.
Hmm.
For him.
Oh, man.
How'd you get to know him, by the way?
Twitter.
Just Twitter.
Where's the most magical place in the world, right?
I always tell people it's the greatest source of information if you know how to use it.
Yeah.
He's insane on Twitter, actually.
He's quite a lot.
So I had to unfollow him on Twitter because it was too intense.
It was too much.
No, it was too much.
It fills up.
Like I want to be able to consume the content.
So if I want to see something he says, I can go to his page, right?
But it's just too much for my timeline.
I want to be able to consume who I follow.
So I try to not follow a lot of people because I want to be able to consume them.
And he was too much.
He fights the trolls, which I don't know why you'd ever fight the trolls.
There's just too many of them.
Well, he's a troll himself.
He's like the big troll fighting the little trolls.
He's the king troll.
There's a million of them.
So even if you kill a hundred thousand, there's still not a hundred thousand left.
There's just too many.
He's got to ignore them.
It's like the Nightwalker or whatever.
Yeah.
Well, I'll take it because you had nothing.
You couldn't roast GSP out of respect, too.
So I'm just going to take that as a sign of respect.
What do you say bad about GSP?
I was now trying to roast his hair.
Like, why are you trying to grow hair now after all these years?
He looked good bald.
Everyone loved him with his head shaved.
Now it looks kind of strange.
Like, why you got hair now?
Well, it was one of the more surreal moments of my life.
So he was here and he wore a black suit and tie.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
We did the podcast with him, just mirror image of me.
And then we also did, I haven't released it yet, but just the video together and us doing
a martial arts stuff in the suit and tie.
That was quite...
That's like certain moments in your life are just like, I can't believe I was part of that.
Yeah.
Well, GSP, so yeah, I don't think I have anything to roast him about.
I mean, maybe the Matt Sarah thing would be the one that you could get him with, you know?
Yeah.
But I would be really fascinated, like really dig deep from a sports psychology standpoint,
because he always talks about how much fear he had when he was competing.
And I find that to be interesting because obviously, so it's almost like to me, it's
almost like, was he successful despite that?
Not because of that, right?
And because anxiety usually leads to really negative performance for the majority of people.
And what was it about him that the anxiety wasn't super negative?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
It's very interesting.
I wonder that too.
So I have...
I wondered that about him, but I have a huge amount of anxiety, especially with people,
just about everything.
Yeah.
I wonder if that's helpful or not.
It feels like it's very helpful.
Well, I think...
So it's okay.
I think in two different ways.
So I think probably your everyday life is different than in a performance or a competition.
You have to be like super in the moment of what you're doing.
So anything that's pulling you away, like, oh my gosh, you know, for high school kids,
right, that coach.
Oh my gosh, that girl's in the stands and if I get beat, then...
And they're actually...
They're actively thinking about this other thing when this is going on.
And I need 100% of your focus right here.
He's never...
I don't think he has anxiety in the ring.
That's the point.
I think...
I have the same thing.
Like, if I have a really high performance thing that I have to do, I don't know, a lecture
in front of a lot of people.
Yeah.
That'd be a great example.
That...
There's a huge amount of anxiety weeks ahead, days ahead, hours ahead.
So you have a system to get rid of it then?
No.
Maybe, but it's just the body gets rid of it somehow.
Yeah.
There's not a system.
Subconscious system.
Yeah.
You don't actually have anxiety while you're performing.
So that's like...
So then that problem somehow, that problem has solved itself, right?
The problem is when the anxiety is actually happening, while the wrestling match is happening,
that's the real issue.
Yeah.
But it like sneaks in there too.
That's the difference in MMA and wrestling is there's no breaks in wrestling, right?
Yeah.
I guess there is.
You can look at the crowd a little bit, like you can look.
So maybe...
A lot of violence maybe.
But there's other things we have to perform while there's more breaks, like a lecture.
You can catch yourself thinking, like in this conversation, you know, like I've said a bunch
of stuff where I think, why the hell did you say that?
It's dumb, right?
That's the anxiety because there's a pause and that could be...
I don't know.
I think it just pushes me to be better, but maybe I can be way better if I let go of that.
It's scary to think that GSB, if you let go of that.
Yeah, thanks, because he's been better, or did he have a route, like you're saying,
you don't necessarily feel those...
So I think certain people that I've coached, they would describe how they would feel, literally
during the wrestling match, right?
And you're saying during the speech performance, it's mostly gone.
And that's...
It would be interesting to see if he talked a lot about that, but if it was all the way
somehow gone, it means he would have a mechanism for it.
So I had a really bad performance in my freshman year of high school at Nationals, because
I had the ability to be anxious.
And one of my coaches talked about...
And a lot of A-type personalities are kind of that way because they're trying to consider
all possibilities at the same time.
And while we're actually performing or competing, it's negative to performance, right?
So he said he would always, leading up to the match within, say, an hour, his name was
talking about fishing.
He would get someone to talk about fishing with him because it would stop him thinking
about the match and being uber-anxious.
So I kind of took it hard and it really helped me as I would always have someone to talk
to and just goof around about whatever.
So I'm not thinking about this thing.
And then once I step in, it's time to go.
So I didn't have this anxious buildup.
Now it's how for me, I took it away, but like me, you said you have a way to get it away,
obviously, because it's not...
Yeah, I guess there's little tricks you come up with.
Yeah, you start thinking about it's not fishing.
Maybe I should try the fishing thing.
I hate fishing.
So boring.
Maybe it's good to think about that.
All right, Ben, this is like I told you, I'm a big fan of your wrestling, your fighting,
your personality.
Thank you for coming down.
Thank you for talking today.
Appreciate it.
See you, John.
Bam.
Let's go wrestle.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Askren.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Muhammad Ali, only a man who knows what
it is like to be defeated, can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with
an extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.