The following is a conversation with George St. Pierre, considered by many to be the greatest

fighter in the history of UFC and MMA, but even more than that, one of the greatest martial

artists ever.

Quick mention of our sponsors, Allform, ExpressVPN, Blinkist, Theragun, and The Information.

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that getting the chance to hang out with George, talk to him

on the podcast, record a quick self defense video that I'll release soon, all while

both of us wearing suits was one of the most memorable days of my life.

In setting all this up, I talked to Joe Rogan and originally we couldn't schedule a chat

with him and George on the JRE, which allowed me to pretend for a brief time that George

came down to Austin just to see me.

Who the hell am I?

In truth, him and Joe probably conspired to make me feel special, but that's the point.

It's inspiring to see George and Joe, who are at the top of their field, treat others

as equals, as human beings, no matter who they are, even silly Russians in a suit.

Meeting George was an honor for me beyond words.

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast and here's my conversation with my longtime martial arts

hero and now my friend, Mr. George St. Pierre.

In your fighting career, were you more motivated by the love of winning or the fear and hatred

of losing?

I like to win better than I hate to lose because if it would not have been the case, I would

never have fought in the first place because I don't like to fight at all.

But you talked about the anxiety, the fear that you experienced leading up to a fight.

So to you, ultimately the reason to go through that difficult process is because it feels

damn good to have your hand raised?

There is that.

There is also the fact that martial art, I've been introduced when I was very young and

it's probably the best thing I can do in my life, fighting, that's what I do best.

Also, it provides me of freedom, of access of things that most of people do not have,

but all that as a price and a lot of money, I made a lot of money, of course, with it.

I was maybe predisposed with certain abilities.

I met incredible mentors throughout my life.

I worked really hard and of course, I had a lot of chances.

The stars were all aligned and in order to keep that those advantages of freedom, money

and glory and access of things that most people don't have and have these dream life that

I have, I had to sacrifice myself and fight in order to keep it.

It's very hard to understand because I also believe most fighters are not like me.

A lot of guys, because I corner a lot of guys and it seems to me that they love their job.

They enjoyed to go fight in the cage.

I love to train.

I love the science of fighting, the sport, to be in good shape, the confidence that training

and mixed martial art give me.

However, I do not like the feeling of uncertainty, the stress that I have, not knowing if I will

be badly injured or humiliated or winning the fight.

To me, I'm bearable and that's what takes the most out of me.

More than brain damage, more than anything.

That's what takes the most out of me.

But the thing you get from it is the freedom that you get because of the money, but because

of the celebrity, because of everything that comes with it.

So you can be the best version of yourself because of fighting.

But at the same time, you've said that, quote, I don't believe there's pleasure in life.

I believe there's only a relief from pain.

We have to suffer to be on top.

So isn't there something to just the suffering in itself?

Just doing really difficult shit just to get to the top?

To explain that and so people can relate to it because not everybody's a fighter.

I think the best example I can give is let's say you're, you haven't eat for a long time

and you're craving, right?

So you're suffering.

And then when it's time to eat, finally, you're about to eat your favorite dish.

It's going to taste so much better.

So that's why I believe there is always some sort of sacrifice before the pleasure.

And the more sacrifice you do, like they say in fighting, the bigger the risk, the bigger

is the reward.

And I feel that's how it is for me.

Yeah, I feel that with, I started fasting a little bit in the past couple of years.

And there's nothing as amazing as a delicious meal or anything, actually anything, any food

when you haven't eaten for several days.

It's kind of incredible.

It's not incredible in this simple way of finally I get to eat.

You get to truly experience the beauty of what it is to be alive.

Like that little piece of food, you see all the flavors, you feel just the experience

of it is ultimately of gratitude of how awesome it is to be alive.

But when you eat many times a day and you're pigging out and you don't get to experience

that.

And it's fascinating.

It's really like fasting is one of the most accessible things for people, I think to experience

that kind of pairing of hardship to pleasure.

I agree.

And in my case, it changed my life on a good way.

I cannot recommend it to people because everybody is different.

But to fight Michael Bisping, my last fight was against the champion in the heavier weight

class that I used to compete at.

So I thought that if I would gain weight, it would increase my performance.

And I struggled a lot to gain weight.

I gained about eight to 10 pounds.

Normally I walk around 185 pounds.

And for that fight, I was walking around 195.

However, I forced myself to eat like six times a day.

I was on a very strict diet and it didn't feel right to me because I feel like I was

carrying like a little bit like I was carrying a bag on my shoulder.

And I think it was a bad idea for me because when I did the weigh in and I went on a scale

at 185, I couldn't go back to my initial weight that was 195 that I worked so hard for several

months to get there.

So I was 190 pounds, but I couldn't get back.

And the morning of the fight, I got sick.

We didn't know what it was in the beginning because in order to know, to find out what

it was, I needed to do what they call a colonoscopy.

They put a camera inside of you and to do that, they give you something that makes that

empty you.

And I was trying to gain weight, not to lose weight.

So I told myself I'm going to wait after the fight, whatever it is, because it was pretty

bad.

It was blood.

And I didn't know what I was.

I was very concerned.

I thought I had maybe cancer.

I was freaking out.

So I said, I'm going to do that fight.

And then after right away, I'm going to make a checkup.

So I did the fight.

Everything went well.

I won the fight.

I went back home.

I did a colonoscopy and I got diagnosed with ulcer colitis.

Then I got on very severe medication to get better.

And I'm not a big fan of medication.

I was trying to look for more natural way to get better.

And I found out about fasting and it really changed my life.

I met Dr. Jason Fong, who was one of the world authority of fasting.

He treat diabetes patient with fasting and he gave me a program of fasting and it really

changed my life.

And right away what I did is I went in a CAT scan to see the difference because it was

right after my fight with Michael Bisping and I did the CAT scan.

So I had my muscle mass, bone density, fat percentage, water retention.

It's pretty amazing.

It can show you which harm has more muscle than the other.

It's very precise.

And I did it like two months after.

So I started doing time restricted eating, 16 eight.

But right away when I started, I did three days water fast.

And the Dr. Jason Fong, he said, because I like to train during those days, I consume

Himalayan salt to make sure, because when you sweat, there's a lot of minerals to make

sure you don't deplete your mineral.

And when I compared the two results in the CAT scan, I found out my biggest concern was

to lose muscle mass.

I found out that I did not lose muscle mass.

Instead of losing it, it increased a little bit.

Even though my weight on the scale was lighter, I kept the same muscle mass even increases

a little bit.

My bone density increases a little bit.

My water retention is the biggest thing that decrease.

So my inflammation and my fat percentage.

So basically by looking at the data, I found out that by eating so much, trying to gain

weight to fight Michael Bisping, it only increases my water retention, which is not good because

it's like dead weight and inflammation on you.

So what was the actual process of fasting?

You said 16, eight time restricted, so intermittent fasting.

But you also mentioned the three hour, the three day water fast.

What did that feel like?

And you also said training during the three day?

Yes.

How did that feel?

Can you give me some details of, this is fascinating.

So I do three days water fast, four times a year.

Nice.

For me, I do it, everybody is different, but for me, I do it after New Year's.

Because during the holidays, that's when I eat bad foods and I drink.

I see it more like a cleansing, like a detox, so to speak.

Mental too, like psychological.

Yes.

I do it after the New Year's, right before the summer, cut for the beach.

After the summer, because of the summer, I've been partying a little bit sometimes, let

myself go.

And right before the holidays.

And I've tried, Dr. Phuong, he says to me, said, George, everybody's different because

I'm a very active person and everybody has a different genetics.

So for me, I feel that three days is the sweet spot because I still train during those three

days.

The first day, the first two days, I don't change nothing.

I train on my regular schedule.

However, on the third day, I modify a little bit.

I do something more easy and that's how I do it.

And I've tried before, because when I say three days is my sweet spot, I've tried to

go up to five days.

But the problem is after my third days, I found out that I had a big problem sleeping.

I get into a hyperactive mode.

They call that the hunter gatherer mode, you know, like your brain, I mean, it's amazing.

Your creativity is at its peak, but you cannot sleep very well.

And sleeping for me, I think it's very important.

So that's why I do three days for me.

It's my sweet spot.

That's interesting.

You're right.

It's the four or five days when you start, see sleep is not important for me.

So the creativity is really important.

So it's very interesting the places your mind goes after a few days.

You're right.

But I mean, what does it do to your mind?

So you mentioned your body likes it.

In terms of training, do you find that it helps you focus and think?

I mean, you're one of the great strategic thinkers in terms of martial arts.

Does it help with learning?

Does it help with thinking?

Does it help with strategizing and all of that?

Well, unfortunately, I got into fasting after I retired.

I really wish people asked me, would you have done it during the time that you competed?

And the answer is yes.

I think we live in a society that we're bombarded by publicity.

Oh, buy this, eat protein, this, that.

And fasting, nobody makes money with it because there's nothing to sell.

I think that's why a lot of people have not heard about it.

And even for myself, if someone would have talked to me about the benefits of fasting

when I was training before I got sick, I would probably have ignored him because it's hard

to believe.

It sounds ridiculous.

Don't eat.

Yes.

It's going to help your mind and you're going to gain muscle potentially.

Exactly.

And perhaps people have talked to me about it, but it went in one of my ears and got

out from the other side, you know?

But it really changed my life.

And I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and it helps me get rid of all my symptoms.

What I do is, I know a lot of people have ulcerative colitis and for me, I cannot recommend

it to other people because everybody is different.

But for me, I made a lot of research of how people from ulcerative colitis got better.

And I found out that a lot of people that got that condition get better in the natural

way through fasting, eating fermented food, collagen and bone broth and stuff like that.

And it made a huge difference in my life.

I just wish I would have known that before.

So do you have a specific diet wise stuff you like?

So I've recently, another ridiculous sounding thing, but it makes me feel really good is

very low carbs.

So keto, even carnivore, it sounds ridiculous.

It doesn't make any sense.

But it makes me feel really good, even for performance.

Is Rogan has influenced you?

He's a carnivore diet.

I was influenced actually by people, yeah.

There's I'll tell you where, because I was doing it before he was doing it.

It was popular in the endurance athlete community where it was fat adapted athletes, people

who insane people who run 50 miles, 100 miles, they figured out that they could fuel their

body by with fat that can go to fat as the source of energy as opposed to carbs.

So I remember hoping that I'll be able to learn how to run 50 miles and so on.

I've never done more than 22, but it, I just remember switching away from carbs and feeling

really liberated.

Like I wasn't thinking about food as much.

I'm able to eat once a day and feel really good.

I mean, I think every everybody's body is different, but I think carbs make me lazy.

Maybe it's because the crash, yeah, it's the crash, but also just psychologically something

it it forces me to also think about food too much.

Like it starts becoming, you know, our logistic, you said our society is so much about food.

There's so many ads, so much advertisement and so much of our social life is about food.

And so it's very easy to live life, like live day to day thinking, when is the next meal?

Like what am I going to eat for lunch?

What am I going to eat for dinner?

What am I going to eat for breakfast?

And if you're not careful, that's going to get in the way of you doing cool shit for

like liberating yourself and thinking like, what am I actually passionate about in this

life?

Like creating and forgetting to eat those kinds of things and still being able to fuel

your body.

I don't know.

It's been fascinating to, to figure out like later in life that carbs aren't necessary

to function.

Well, it makes me think like, we don't know anything about nutrition.

That's right.

Yes.

You know, personally, I don't think I could have a diet without carbs.

I love chocolate too much.

For me eating, it's a, it's a pleasure of life.

I love my carbs.

I love my sugar.

However, if you talk about that, I don't have a specific diet, but recently I, what I'm

trying to do is the days that I do not work out, I only eat once.

That's kind of my rules.

Plus I try to respect 16 eight and do my three day fast, uh, uh, four times a year.

But the rest of the thing, I, I, I, I let myself loose because I, I don't think I would

be happy if I, if I, uh, if I, if I don't give myself the, the, the, the right to, to

eat for me personally, I love to eat so much next.

And you talk about a diet, carnivore diet is very interesting because I, um, a few years

ago I went to Africa in, uh, Masai Mara and, uh, it's a tribe in, uh, in, in, uh, East

Africa and, um, I want to visit them.

I did a safari and I talked to them and these guys, they, their diet is 99% carnivore.

They they, that's crazy.

And you should see they're very beautiful people shredded.

Some people would say, Oh, it's genetic.

I'm like, yeah, maybe it's genetic.

But I mean, think about the Eskimos also that like most of their diet is on, on fish, right?

They, they, so I believe it can be done, you know, like, I believe it can be done and like

an exclusive carnivore diet.

And I, I think I'm going to try it pretty soon just to have the experience, you know,

to see how it feels like.

Well, you're going to hang out with Joe, uh, be careful bringing it up because he'll convince

you to, uh, forever switch to carnivore.

Definitely.

He loves it.

I mean, but just like you, I think he loves food.

So he's, he can't ever stay on carnivore.

It was funny cause we went to an Italian restaurant together and I still only eat meat.

Like I love, um, I love the constraints of discipline.

That's, that's partially why I like carnivore.

I like saying no to food that is delicious.

But a part of the problem is that I don't know how to moderate.

You said chocolate.

I don't know how to have one chocolate.

Is that something you're able to do?

Have like in moderation?

No, it's when it, when I have an opportunity, I do it.

I don't have any, I'm an extremist person, uh, Lex, I, I, that's the thing I, when I,

when I have a chance, I, I like, I, I just eat, I go too much.

And that's why I like about my life, you know, that's what I like about fasting.

Because probably if I would not have discovered fasting, eating chocolate would give me cramps

and all sorts of problems because people on ulcer colitis, normally they cannot eat chocolate.

They cannot drink alcohol.

But I believe because I'm fasting, that's the reason why I'm medication, medicine, medication

free.

I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, but I have to do that, that fasting, you know,

and now it becomes to a, it became to a point that it's no longer hard for me.

It's like normal.

I don't even force myself.

I don't, it's easy.

You know what I mean?

Some of my friends thinks I'm, think I'm, I'm insane, you know, but I tell them it's

like with, when you get used to it, it becomes like an habit.

And, and I'm, and I know that hunter gatherer, like our ancestor did not eat three times

a day.

It's, it's, it's not true.

They, they ate one day they could, and when they eat, they, they, they, they feed themselves

as much as they can until that, because the next time, because they didn't know when they,

they could eat again.

Right.

So it's, I think that's how we're, we're, we're built, you know, to, to, to have this

similar lifestyle.

If we could take a step back to the discussion about fear a little bit.

So Mike Tyson talks about this process of him walking to the ring.

He sounds similar to you in many ways of the anxiety and the fear that he experiences.

And he has this sort of story that he tells about walking to the ring and being supremely

afraid.

But as he walks and gets closer and steps in, he finds the confidence and becomes supremely

confident.

I think he calls himself like a God.

I feel like a God in the ring.

Is, is, do you go through a similar process of finding the confidence?

Well, it, yes.

And I use, I use a James Lange theory that they did.

So what I do is because I'm, I'm, I'm not afraid to admit that I'm afraid.

And in the beginning of my career, I really thought I asked myself, because I was very

good in mixed martial, but I, I really thought I wasn't made for this because the idea of

fighting didn't, was, was, didn't make me happy.

It's something like I, I was, I was forced to do in order to keep that lifestyle that

I have and achieve my goal.

Perhaps one day to make enough money to retire and you know, that, that was my dream.

But when I was looking around the gym where I was training, most of my training partner,

they were happy.

They were excited.

And sometime I corner, I corner a lot of guys and they're happy and they're in the locker

room.

They don't react the same way I do.

Some perhaps does, but if you see me in the locker room, like when I get like my last

fight with Michael Bisping, just to give you an example in my last fight with Michael Bisping,

because it's fresh, it's the one that is the most recent and, but it's always the same

thing.

My last fight in Bisping, I get in the locker room, I like three guys that I train with,

Mickey Gall, Eamon Zahabi and Joseph Duffy.

They all lost.

It was like, like my, my locker room was basically cursed.

You know, when you're in a locker room and people from your locker room leave for a fight

and then they come back, it's kind of a momentum, you know, you, you, you shake and yeah, good

job.

Now it's my turn.

You know, it's kind of a team brotherhood sort of thing.

So the, the, the, the atmosphere in my locker room was pretty bad.

It was like going to a, you know, like a funeral.

So I was very scared and before every fight, I asked myself, I asked myself always, shit,

what the hell I'm doing here?

Why did I choose to come back?

Oh my God.

And I'm freaking out.

However, I'm putting on a mask like I'm acting because if I don't do that, it will reflect

on my coaches.

And if my coach, my, my, the confidence of my coaches is affected, it will reflect, reflect

on me.

So I need to feel strong.

I need to make them believe that I'm excited to be there and I'm happy to be there.

So this sort of play start when I get, when I first step in the locker room, even though

I feel completely different, but that's how I play it.

Normally the day, the fight day, I never fell, feel a hundred percent.

I always feel exhausted, tired.

My highs are hitching because I don't sleep enough the few nights before, because I'm

constantly rehearse, rehearsing scenarios that might happen in the fight.

So mentally it's not that I'm not on top, but you keep all that to yourself.

I keep it to myself and I'm lying to everybody around me.

But everybody knows, you know, fair ass John De Niro, they know Freddie Rose, they've

been with me for a long time, so they know what's going on, but at least I'm lying to

them.

I'm like, I'm feeling great.

So, and seeing all my training partner, like very disappointed because they lost our fight.

Some were badly hurt as well.

It was hard.

So I remember I started to warm up and everything.

And as you start to warm up, you become a different person because we know that certain

posture and yoga can affect your mental state.

But I would say it's a little bit the same thing in fighting, you know, like when you

started hitting the pads, your muscle memory, your instincts comes back and you remember

that you're good at this, you know, and your confidence start to grow.

And as seeing your trainers holding the pad and repeating your moves, it makes you also

remember all the sacrifice you have done through your training camp and confidence come from

how you prepared yourself.

And even you're afraid, you can be confident in the same time.

Being afraid and being confident is two different things.

And before every fight, just right before I walk in, when I'm scared, I go in the bathroom

and I look at myself in the mirror.

I used to have a bandana and a gi, but now I didn't have this for my last fight because

of the new Reebok deal they had.

But I did the same rehearsal that I always do.

I look at myself in the mirror and I start to compliment myself.

Like even if I don't believe it, I'm starting to trying to believe it as I am.

I'm finding all the reasons why I'm going to win the fight.

And all my trainer knows that before every fight, when the guy from the UFC goes and

Steppen Maroon says, St. Pierre, you're up next, I always take a few minutes to do that

same rehearsal.

And I tell myself I'm going to win this fight because I'm better and I'm very cocky about

myself.

I'm telling all the reasons that I'm going to win.

I got a better team.

I made more sacrifice, you know, I'm faster, I'm more powerful, way more athletic.

My fighting IQ is better than him.

I got a strategy on point that he's never going to be able to keep up with and this

and that.

And I was telling myself, I'm going to show these young kids how things should be done.

You know, I'm trying to boost myself.

Try to boost yourself and you start to believe in it.

You become a different person.

So when you walk out the bathroom, now rock and roll, now I really believe it for real.

You know, like I'm still scared, but I believe it for real.

And that's the transformation that happened for me right there.

And from that from now, from from there to the fight, it's until the fight is over.

It's called I call it cruise control because you don't have time to think in a fight.

If you're trying to think, you're missing the opportunity.

So that's how I see it for myself.

So at that point, you stop thinking and you just go cruise control, autopilot.

Trust yourself, you know, trust yourself because you repeated all the scenarios, you know.

So everything that you have done, it's inside your computer.

Your computer, your brain is programmed to react accordingly to certain situations.

And it's not the night of the fight that you will tell yourself, oh, finally, I'm going

to do this.

If you do this now.

No, if you have not practiced it before, you're screwed.

The preparation, the repetition that makes it happen, you know.

What about like the really difficult moments in a fight where you are tested to your limits,

essentially?

Usually it's cardio related exhaustion, right?

Where you have to ask yourself that same question is like, why the hell am I doing this?

Do you experience those or are you able to ride through the autopilot?

And if you do, like, what do you do in those moments?

Never in a fight.

In a fight when the fight is on, I never change my mind, I go until the end.

However, for example, my first fight with BJ Penn, I had a terrible first round.

So I had to switch gear.

That happened sometimes, but it's part of my plan.

I always have a plan B, plan A, plan B, plan C. You need to have that.

If fighters go into a fight thinking, oh, I'm going to do this, this, this, and they

don't have a plan B, if this doesn't work, that means they're not well prepared.

If you talk to me before every fight, I can, like in 30 seconds, give you my old strategy.

You know, for BJ Penn, my first fight with BJ Penn was, oh, I'm going to keep it standing

up, keep the fight from the outside, you know, because I'm faster than him.

Then the fight with BJ Penn started.

I found out that I was not faster than him.

And I found out that his reaction time was better than mine.

So I got beat up the first round and I got a bloody nose and everything.

So my plan B was now I'm going to wrestle him, you know, I'm going to wrestle him and,

you know, make him tired and trying to put him down.

And that's how I beat him because I switched gear, you know?

But if you can't do that, if you cannot find a way to become the perfect nemesis to your

opponent, you might win a few fights, but you're going to find, you're going to fight

someone sooner or later that will, that will give you a lot of, a lot of trouble.

So that's where the anxiety pays off.

You're anticipating all the ways it goes wrong.

So you've developed a plan B and plan C. You know, we talked a lot with, like John Donoher,

who you work with.

It's interesting.

I don't think I've heard him talk about plan B and plan C. He usually has a really clear

plan A, an entire system of plan A. I don't think I've heard him, we've had a good discussion

about it in, over some cheeseburgers.

And he's, he was kind of espousing the value of mastering escapes.

So when you find yourself in bad situations, being exceptionally good at finding ways out

of those bad situations, and that's a way of dominance.

There's nothing, there's no better way to dominate your opponent according to him than

to show that they can't possibly hurt you no matter how bad the position is.

It's like, it's a, as opposed to a physical dominance, it's a psychological dominance.

It's very interesting.

But I wonder if he has plan B and plan C in his mind too.

You know, in mixed martial arts, sometimes it's like in science, sometimes you can make

a mistake, you know, like every human can make mistakes, you know.

There's certain sport or a certain situation that you, if there's a mistake made, that's

it exactly.

Sometimes it's the case in MMA, but sometimes you're able to redeem yourself.

And if you look the fight with BJ Penn 1 that I had, which was probably one of the most

competitive fight and it was probably the, it was the fight that I got the most damage

and I was messed up.

It took me three days, like two, three days to recuperate from that fight.

I was really damaged.

And my first fight versus my second fight, I made a lot of adjustment because I have

learned from my first fight.

And also I had a guy, one thing people don't know, like they talk about fighters having

secret weapons.

See, for me, my secret weapons was not like some is that they use like certain, like different

things.

For me, it was knowledge.

I had a guy in Montreal, he was measuring frames.

He's not a scientist, he's a friend of Ferras and I.

And what he does, he watch fight and he measure frames.

The way he does it is when you watch a fight and one of the guy throw a punch, he cut

the picture by frame, the video by frame.

So he's able to see which fighter has better reaction time than others.

And BJ Penn, he found out that BJ Penn of all the UFC roster at the time when he was

in his prime, he had probably the best reaction time of all.

According to him, Lyoto Machido was the second one, but BJ Penn was the first one.

So I knew that if I would try to go first, because I always been the fastest guy normally

when I fight someone.

But when I fought BJ Penn, I tried to go first and he was always able to like, I never was

never able to touch him with my jab and he came back with a counter punch.

However, because of what he told me, I knew that BJ Penn has a very fast reaction time,

but had a very poor reset time.

To him, the way he described it to me is like your nervous system is like a muscle.

BJ Penn was so fast, but he's like more like a sprinter.

So when I did the second fight, when I fought BJ Penn, I made him flinch.

Like I fake a lot.

So I make him react and flinch.

So all that reaction time that he used to flinch was not used properly to avoid my punches.

So I burn, I load up his nervous system with a lot of information and fake and to make

him flinch and pretending I was kicking and wrestling.

So he got overwhelmed and he got tired very, very fast.

So that's how I beat him.

People sometimes they don't know really what's the strategy behind the thing.

They only see the physical part.

But when you fight someone, if I fight you, I look at you in the eyes, there's a lot of

things that going on between you and I.

I can look down here, bam, jab you in the face.

The audience will not see these little detail, but you will see it.

And that's what makes the magic during a fight.

The relation that you have with the opponent, you know, like the mental game, what you make

him believe.

Those little things, I use a lot of those.

If you talk to a lot of my opponents, they'll tell you, like, I use a lot of these little

things, you know, like I look down at Banner, I go up or I am pretending I want to attack

you so I make you flinch, but in reality, I'm just doing this because I want to rest.

I want to recuperate and I'm tired.

How much is, you know, people talk about that with poker, for example.

How much is the value of this?

You know, so like some people argue that poker is more about the betting, you know, just

the money.

It's just how much you bet and so on.

So that would be more like the analogy there with with fighting would be just strictly

the physical movement of your body.

And then a lot of people argue that there's a lot here in the way you look and the little

movements in the face.

So do you think there's, do you think you're communicating with your opponent when you

look at them?

There's no way to know for sure, 100 percent.

And I'm by no, no mean psychic, nothing like that.

And I don't believe in that at all.

The only thing is I know through looking through the eyes of my opponent when he's afraid and

when he gives up on me.

I've been accused very often in my career to not take enough risk, to not finish my

opponent.

But the reason why I didn't finish my opponent is because I saw in his eyes that he gave

up.

He gave me the fight and I'm winning the fight.

So it's not up to me.

It's not to me to make it, to try to sacrifice myself trying to finish him.

Perhaps if I do that, I will open up for him to capitalize on my mistake.

It's up to him to make a risk.

So people sometimes they don't understand that is the art of fighting, my friend, you

know, like if I'm winning the fight like an hockey, an ice hockey, if you're winning the

game and it's the third period, it's at the end of the third period, you're not going

to take out your goaltender trying to score another goal because winning five to three

or five to four is the same thing.

Same thing in MMA.

We make a living out of this.

And sometimes as bad as it can be, you want to save yourself for another day, you know,

you want to minimize the damage.

But if he knows he's losing the fight, it's up to him to take the risk.

It's not up to me.

So I'm a good counter fighter.

I use a lot of my attack or counter strike or reactive take down or proactive take down.

That's my specialty.

So I'm not going to I have no desire to sacrifice myself trying to try to finish my opponent

if he want to, if perhaps I might give him the opportunity to capitalize on me.

It's not it's not smart to do that.

And very often when I fight someone, I can read him, I see the fear in his eyes.

Now I'm like, I got you now.

He's very desperate.

That doesn't mean I have to put my guard down because he's going to be desperate.

But I know I'm beating you.

And I know I'm beating you.

I'm just going to do what I need.

You know, if I have a chance, of course, I'll knock him out.

But I'm not going to try to sacrifice myself to knock him out.

And if you do that, maybe one day you'll make a mistake and you'll get dropped and you'll

you'll tell yourself, I shoot, I just got brain damage.

Maybe I'm never going to come back the same.

Maybe you know, I ruined my career or, you know, it's a it's a very serious game that

we're playing.

It's very dangerous.

In the face of that risk, I mean, Mike Tyson talked about, you know, when the opponent

looks away, he knows he's got him, right, that that he's broken.

For a person like me who has trouble making eye contact with people, there's truth to

that.

I mean, there's truth to that, that there's an animal nature to us looking away.

I mean, you could see that the way the body language, the way the eyes move between two

animals going at it in the wild when like two lions fight or two whatever fight.

There's a certain beta move when you've you've been defeated.

Yes.

Or one thing when I know that, that when it happened, one of the signs is when I just

like make a faint and the guy flinched like crazy.

That's mean he's really scared of me.

It's a little bit like you're you're you're doing this, that guy flinched a little bit

or you're doing this.

He's like, oh, that's mean you hurt him and he doesn't want to get hurt again.

So he's really trying to run away and not not winning the fight anymore, but not losing

sort of surviving the five round.

And it's hard to to finish a guy who does doesn't want to fight a guy who's not fighting

anymore to win in this fighting to not lose.

And the proof of that, if you don't believe me, just look the reign of all the greatest

champion in UFC.

I don't care who they are, John Jones or like you could clearly see that in the beginning

of their reign, they could, you know, finish a lot of their opponents, the same as me in

the beginning.

I was finishing a lot of my opponent.

But there is a time that the entire UFC roster is studying you and they found ways to perhaps

not beating you, but they found a way to navigate to the fight in a way that they minimize the

damage.

You know what I mean?

So it's a big difference between fighting to win and fighting to not lose.

You said that there's a difference between a fighter and a martial artist.

So now we were talking about fighting.

You're considered by many to be one of the greatest fighters of all time.

But you said that there's a difference between a fighter and a martial artist.

A fighter is training for a purpose.

He has a fight.

I'm I'm a martial artist.

I don't train for a fight.

I train for myself.

I'm training all the time.

My goal is perfection, but I will never reach perfection.

So what to you does it mean to be a martial artist?

Martial artist is because that lifestyle that I have has been introduced to me and the seed

has been planted to my mind a long, long time ago by my father.

I am I do not train because I have a fight.

I will always train.

Even now, it kind of amused me that to see that a lot of people, because I'm still training,

because I love the science of fighting.

I do not like to fight, but I love the science of it.

And I will always do it as long as I can do it.

People think I'm going to make a comeback and everything.

I'm I'm about to get to have 40 years old.

You know, like it's I'm, you know, like I don't want to fight in a cage at 40 years

old.

I mean, some people have done it.

They did it very well.

But I'm not one of them.

I'm I feel a little bit to me that.

And you never say never feel like to me like it's a little like a kid that you play with

the strain when he's young, like when he's five years old, six years old, seven years

old, eight years old.

But then I was like, what the hell I'm doing here?

And I'm too old for this.

I like it.

So I have done it, you know, and and I got out of it on top.

And I'm I'm healthy, which is the most important thing right now, touching wood.

And I'm I'm wealthy.

I beat the game.

You know what I mean?

In a way, like that's not to be cocky, but I did it.

And I wish more more fighters could do the same thing.

I wish, but it's unfortunate because a lot of them, they stay there and hang out for

too long and they get badly hurt.

They get beaten and broken, you know, and they finish broke as well, because the lifestyle

you have when you're a pro athlete, it's crazy, you know, it's it's it's unbelievable.

However, everything that goes up and life goes down and you need to plan your future,

you know.

And for for me, what if some guys have the same mentality as me and they're watching

us right now, I would say if you do it because you're just good at it, you like the money,

the advantage, the freedom that it gives you, but you don't necessarily like to fight.

When you're done, you finish on top, you know, go go cash out and get out of the way.

Yes.

Hard to do.

However, actually, it's not everybody that does it for that reason.

Some people generally love to fight, love to compete.

So they do it because they love it, you know, or they do it because of the money.

But if you don't love it, if you don't like to fight because it's very stressful and you

don't enjoy you, you enjoy the training, perhaps, but you don't like to fight.

You do it because it's part of what you need to do in order to keep that lifestyle.

And you know, like you don't need the money to get out of here, man.

If you're in your you're in your prime, get out of here.

Because if you don't, you'll hurt your own legacy, you'll damage your health.

It's very sad and it's a it's a sad business, you know what I mean?

It's like a lot of what one of the place where is the one of the most happiest place for

me to go and the most saddest place for me to go.

It's in the gym, Tristar in Montreal, because it's one of the happiest place for me to go

because I can go train and do what I love to do.

But it's also a very sad place for me because after when I'm about to leave, there's always

a bunch of young kid that comes or guys that are around 30, 33 years old.

And they come to me and say, hey, George, you have some advice for me.

And I look at them.

And if they're my friend, they're real close friend of mine, I'll tell them the truth in

their face.

And I've done it many times and it was not well received.

But if they're not my friend, I have to, you know, you know, it's always an advice about

fighting and I answer their question.

It's my pleasure.

But the truth, if they they want me to tell the truth, the big majority of them, I would

tell them, I said, listen, man, you're in maybe three, like on a losing street of three

fight.

You're 30, 33 years old, you know, I think you should think about doing something else

in your life.

You know, I have other goals, you know, because you're not going to make it.

And, you know, I've seen that movie before and it's a very sad ending.

And I'm I'm sad to tell you the truth because you're not going to make the money.

You just choose some.

But if I tell them that they're going to be angry at me because they'll be like, oh, you

you make it and you think I cannot make it.

So it's kind of they're going to think I'm cocky.

But I was lucky to make it.

You know, at the start, we're all aligned.

But at one point, you need to be able to to have a plan B, you know, like like some parent

they come to see me with their kids and this is the future world champion in the UFC.

And what advice would you give him?

I always tell the same thing.

And it does not make everybody happy.

When I said I say I go to the case, a are you good at school?

Say stay at school.

School is very important for you.

Stay educated.

Yeah.

Do boxing, martial arts, a great sport.

Stay in shape, but don't put your eggs all in the same basket.

And the parents sometime are angry when I'm not angry, but I can see in their eyes, they're

like they kind of surprised.

And it's not because I made it that I will tell the kid to follow the same path that

I did.

I went to school to I've studied, I dropped off school when I had my first world championship

fight against Matt Hughes.

But before that, I was in school.

Quite another, you know, another way to go if things would not have gone the same, the

way I wanted.

But the problem and I'm saying that it's not only about boxing in MMA, I'm talking about

hockey, basketball, baseball, same, same thing.

Maybe it's the one on the hundred thousand that make it.

And I'm saying I'm saying that make it when I'm saying I make it.

That's mean they can retire and have enough money for the rest of his life because it's

a sad story.

The only people only heard about the people that makes it.

But a lot of fighters, even a UFC champion in boxing, champion, even in football, basketball,

I don't I don't I don't care.

Big names when they retire, they have zero.

They're bankrupt, my friend.

And it's a very sad, sad story and a sad reality that most people are not aware of.

But having other paths in life actually can also increase the chance of you dominating

and like reaching the highest peak in your main thing.

I mean, Jimmy Pager, I don't know if you know who that is, is a judo coach in in America.

He was he says that to all of his athletes is to make sure that you go.

He has a lot of, you know, Kayla Harrison, two time Olympic gold medalist.

He has a lot of Olympic medalists.

But basically, there's something about going to school, like having an forget school, any

other avenue in life that gives you the freedom to go all out in your main like that, you

know, you're doing it for the right reasons.

You're not stuck.

It clears the mind to where you're free to be the best in the world as opposed to kind

of you have to.

I mean, different people are motivated by different things.

So sometimes some people like having their back to the wall and that's the only option

they have.

But most people, I think, excel when you have other options.

I think it's a distraction and I think it's important to have a distraction.

When you say that, I think about one of my coach, John Danaher.

He put his academic background experience into jiu jitsu.

And that for me, that's why he's the best teacher I ever had is incredible.

He start teaching me when I even couldn't speak much English at the time and I was able

to communicate and understand, you know, that's how good he is.

But I truly believe that most of the athletes, especially in sport like mixed martial arts,

train way too much.

If I could go back and talk to a young George, I would tell him, you do way too much volume.

You train way too hard, train smarter, it's more important.

And I think sometimes we underestimate the benefit of recuperation because I think we

assimilate the information that we learn during a training when we recuperate and not during

the training itself.

And this whole mentality of harder, heavier, you know, it's good for someone who's lazy.

And if you're an elite athlete, most of the time, you know, like you're not always, but

most of the time is because you're not lazy.

And a lot of guys, sometimes they're elite athletes, champions, and you'll hear people

say, oh, I can't believe he's very gifted, but he doesn't work.

But perhaps it's not really because perhaps it's because we don't understand, perhaps

he's doing the right thing and it's us who's working too much and too hard.

That's what I think.

There's a guy I train with, he made me think about it.

His name is Mansour Barnaoui, he's going to be a future star, he's an incredible fighter.

He trained once a day.

And he asked me some time advice when he came to Montreal, he's from France.

You'll hear about him, he's very good.

And I saw him in the morning at TriStar and I said, okay, I'll see you perhaps later in

the other trainings.

He said, no, I only train once a day.

And he kind of waits for me to give him like, not an approval, but like to see how I react

or, you know, I don't know, it was kind of a strange feeling, but I told myself at that

point I kind of had an awakening and I told myself, man, maybe he's doing the right thing.

Because a lot of people would say, for example, oh, that's a lazy way of doing it, but perhaps

it's the best way to do it.

I'm not saying that training once a day is the best way to do it.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm saying that everybody's different, but for him, it works beautifully.

And I wouldn't change anything, you know, like if I would be him because he's improving

like crazy.

Yeah.

And ultimately the bigger picture there is to do something that everyone else says is

stupid.

It's like the fasting thing that a lot of people would say, a lot of nutritional experts

would say that that's a dumb way.

You know, if you want to be an MMA fighter, you should be eating like many times a day.

You should be starting every day with oatmeal.

You should be carving up constantly, but that's not necessarily true for everybody.

And it's possible.

I'm sure there's actually now a few MMA fighters that are carnivore only.

It's possible.

I used to eat right before training and it didn't bother me.

However, now my first training that I do normally in average around noon, 11 a.m., I haven't

eaten anything when I do my first training.

And it feels to me that I'm much more clear in my mind.

I'm much more creative.

I feel better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a big difference.

I just wish I would have known that before.

Well, it's fascinating, the role of the mind in all of this.

How important is it for your mind to be clear, to really think deeply?

There's a judoka American named Travis Stevens.

I remember he said something that the right kind of practice is when your mind is exhausted

at the end of it, that you were constantly thinking through things like your body shouldn't

be exhausted first, your mind should be exhausted first.

It's really fascinating.

So people think about training hard, you know, a successful practice is where you walk away

just overwhelmed how much you had to think.

It's fascinating framing of a successful practice.

It's true.

Travis Stevens was one of my main training partner when I got ready for my fight with

Nick Diaz and Carlos Candit.

He drove every Friday from, I believe, Boston.

It's like a six hour drive.

Drive to the gym in Montreal, train with us an hour and a half, drive back.

He's got such an amazing discipline.

I was so happy for him when he won the medal at the Olympic game.

And what a well deserved, you know, accomplishment.

It's unbelievable.

It paid off.

You know, I was so happy for him.

And every time we got to the gym, he was waiting for me in the kneeling position like a soldier.

I was like, my God, this guy is made of steel, you know.

And after training, I always offer him, I say, Travis, I know you like to train with

that because in Montreal, they have very good judo team, Nicholas Gill and all those guys.

And I say, if you want to stay, I'll get you at the hotel, you know, like anything

you want.

He's like, no, no, I got to go back.

I have another training later.

I'm like, not only did he train with us, he had to go back because he had another training.

I'm like, this is insane.

And he's gone through a huge number of injuries.

So he's also an innovator because, I mean, it's difficult to say, but for American judo,

there's not many high level judoka.

So if you want to be the, like fight with the best in the world, you have to be alone.

It's a lonely journey, actually.

It's kind of sad.

It's much easier to be in Japan where everybody's a killer.

When you're alone at it, it's a difficult journey.

And you know, it's funny we talked about kind of, there's some sports where a mistake is,

that's it.

You can't recover from a mistake.

I think judo oftentimes is one of those sports and added on top of that is the Olympics only

every four years.

And Travis's story, he's the reason I, when I saw him in 2008, cause I started martial

arts.

I switched from like wrestling and street fighting to doing jiu jitsu and judo.

And I just saw so much guts.

And the, in 2000, I might be messing up the years here, but in the next Olympics he fought

and he lost on just the referee call.

Yeah.

And just, he went to war and he just so much guts and just everything on the line and to

lose and then to still persevere through all the injuries, through all of that, through

incredibly difficult training sessions to go another four years and then compete and

then win a medal.

I mean, that guy's just, and like he clearly could have been very successful.

He's also an incredible jiu jitsu competitor.

So he could have switched to that, but he's stuck.

In a lot of sport, when you're in elite, like for example, in Canada, ice hockey is the

number one sport of the countries.

Kids when they're in elite, when they're young, they get chosen and they're kind of already

known as a superstar.

The school where they go and the program they follow, like I'm sure it's the same thing

in the US and basketball, baseball, perhaps American football, because they already chosen.

So they grew up with that, that it's secure, that superstar stardom, so to speak.

And it's already sort of glamorous.

However, in MMA, there's no MMA, judo, wrestling, like in America, because it's not our national

sport, it's actually, it's not like, even when I first started, it was not really well

received by the media.

There's no glamor into it.

Now I don't know, it seems like it's another era now.

And I feel sometimes that some people do it for the wrong reason.

You know, some people do it because of the glamor, because of the money.

But even if you're an elite and very good, the glamor and the money won't come in the

beginning.

It's a very long grind before, you know, it starts to come in.

And you need to make those sacrifices.

And it's a journey where you will be tested, you will be hurt repetitively.

And you're going to have to reach the down deep and come back up.

And then once you finally think you made it, you're going to go back in the down deep again.

It's a very exhausting and decaraging adventure sometimes.

But if you hold on to your dream and you believe in it, you know, and you have the stars aligned,

you're going to make it.

That's why it's only a few people that make it, you know.

And that's why I feel sometimes that a lot of people in the new generation do it for

the wrong reason.

In my generation, because of sport, at first there were no rules.

I thought it was more pure.

The people that did it was really because of the passion.

We didn't seek money, fame.

We did it because we wanted to be...

I did it because I wanted to be the man, you know.

I like to have the confidence that when I walk somewhere, you know, I have the confidence

that, you know, it's an illusion because nobody is faster than a bullet.

But I wanted to achieve it for myself.

Which today now, because I don't know if it's social media and all that, the world has changed.

The glamour, you know, I feel it's a different thing right now.

Yeah, if you get in it for the glamour or the money, you may not have the right amount

of fuel to persevere through all the ups and downs, for sure.

You know, when you talk about motivation of money and glamour, a guy comes to mind, and

I don't know how many wrestlers, you know, but in Russia, there's a guy named Bovassiy

Satiev.

The Satiev brothers, one of the greatest freestyle wrestlers of all time, but he also has...

It's funny that he doesn't have many interviews.

One of my goals is to go out and talk to him in Russian, do an interview with him because

he's exceptionally poetic and a deep thinker.

He's the kind of martial artist that you are in the way that it's not just about the different

battles you've been through or whatever.

It's about the philosophy behind the way he approaches life.

Now, he has spoken quite a bit about that the glamour, the fame, the money are all things

that get in the way of the purity of the experience, the art, that the way to achieve greatness

is to just lose yourself in the art of the actual combat, in his case, it's wrestling,

and then kind of not to worry and actively make sure that you block out anybody who,

you know, feeds you the narrative where you're supposed to be this famous person and all

those kinds of things that he basically says, let others write your story.

Make sure that you just focus on the art.

And another person from that side of the world is, of course, Khabib, so he represents that

side of the world.

And we were talking about walking away and most people not being able to walk away at

the top as you have, but also now Khabib has, it looks like, incredibly so.

I mean, maybe you can comment about what your thoughts are about Khabib Nurmagomedov being

able to just walk away.

You know, we talk about the GOAT very often, Khabib is, you know, one of, isn't the argument

because he has the most dominant carrier of all martial art, the guy, you know, some guys

can be named the GOAT for different reasons, but Khabib for that reason, and he's undefeated.

I don't even know if he lost, he might have lost a round, but he dominates all his opponents.

It was ridiculous and such an incredible career that he had.

I love to watch him fight, he's incredible.

And when you talk about the art, when you say mixed martial art, the idea of a flawless

performance, for me, everybody often, when we say flawless performance, thinks about

a knockout, a brutal knockout.

But for me, it's to be able to showcase beautiful technique, like a beautiful takedown, beautiful

submission, like something beautiful that, you know, when you look at, for example, Wayne

Gretzky or Michael Jordan or like Stephen Curry, even if you don't know nothing about

basketball and you watch Michael Jordan, you'll be like, wow, that's beautiful what he just

did.

Like, we talk about fighting and trying to say the word beautiful in fighting for certain

people, it could sound kind of crazy, you know, but I'm talking about the technique,

a beautiful technique, you know, for me, that's the goal.

You know, when I was fighting, it's no need to have a brutal knockout because some people

are more gifted than others.

I'm saying gifted, some people are better than others in certain phase of fighting.

But for me, it was that it was to showcase, to win, of course, but to showcase some beautiful

technique that you can watch it and be like, wow, that was incredible.

The timing, he did it.

And when I think about Khabib Nurmagomedov, I see all the detail of his work, especially

when he's got his opponent against the fence, that's like, that's his area of expertise

where he's, to me, he's the best that ever did it in terms of that fighting style, that

particular expertise that he has, it's just incredible.

The flawless execution of that particular set of techniques.

And Conor McGregor had the accuracy.

The Spider Anderson Silva was like, was, I would say, the most flamboyant of all, you

know, like he was moving like the Matrix.

Jon Jones was incredible in terms of creativity, spinning elbows and that, and he faced incredible

adversity.

Dimitrius Johnson was so complete.

You could bring, like he was slamming a guy to an armbar.

It was just unbelievable.

Like, like he was like the complete fighter.

BJ Penn was like so flexible.

He did stuff with his body that like nobody could do his, the dexterity of his hips was

just unbelievable.

Dominic Cruz, to me, was incredible, his footwork, his distance control.

So when you talk about like the GOAT, Royce Gracie, another one, he did things that I

think for me is the number one.

Yeah, I gotta, I gotta, and sorry to interrupt, Royce is a fascinating one.

I'd love to hear what you think about him, but many people consider you, most people

consider you to be the number one greatest mixed martial arts fighter ever.

So it's fascinating to remove you from that list and continue this discussion and asking

like, who do you think is the greatest fighter ever?

You listed some amazing ones, Royce.

You somehow skipped Fedor.

I'm very, as a Russian, I'm very offended.

No, I was, I was going to, there's so many.

Fedor is one as well.

Fedor, I think in his prime was like, when you say, when you talk about a name, for example,

like we talk about him when he was in his prime.

Like when I talk, for example, about Anderson Silva, I'm not talking about the Anderson

Silva who fought, who fought his last fight against Uriah Hall.

I'm talking about the Anderson Silva who knocked out Victor Belfer.

Yes.

BJ Penn, same thing.

The problem is when fighters hang on for too long in the sport.

That's what happened.

They kind of make, make people forget how good they were.

And it's very sad.

We talk about Fedor and just, just think about Stipe Miocic.

Miocic is probably the greatest heavyweight of all time.

With Fedor, I would really wonder who would have won this fight, the both guys in their

prime.

I tend to lean towards Fedor because my heart was with Fedor, but he could have gone the

other way.

But just because Miocic lose his last fight, now everybody's like, oh yeah, they forgot

about him.

It's crazy, man.

It's one fight.

You zig when you should zag, boom.

That's the reality of mixed martial arts.

Well, that's why the thing is the mixed martial arts isn't just the performance, the strictly

who won and who lost.

It's also the stories we tell ourselves.

And so, I mean, there's beautiful stories being weaved.

And that also is part of who is the greatest of all time is what were the battles, what

had to be overcome?

What was the flavor of the flawless performances?

You know, all of that plays into it and you're right.

Being able to walk away at the top is also part of that.

A lot of people ask me about Khabib and that fight.

I want it to happen.

Khabib wanted to happen, but UFC did not want to happen between you and Khabib.

Yes.

And we tried to make it like about three years ago when I retired, two, no, three, no, it

was after two years ago and it never came to fruition.

The UFC were clear.

They said they have other plan for Khabib and it makes sense for the business standpoint

because they want to keep the ball rolling.

Now Khabib retired and like everybody else, after Justin Gaethje, I was doing the commentator

in French for the UFC and I had Butterfly, I thought he was going to call me out.

If there is one guy that I would have said, yes, it would be him, because for a fighter,

the most exciting things to do, it's often the scariest one.

And Khabib was, you know, the scariest macho.

Yes.

But he was worth the risk because nobody has ever been able to solve them.

How would you solve the Khabib Nurmagomedov puzzle?

Well, Khabib is very good against the fence.

I would have to establish a game plan and everything, but I think what I would need

it to do is take the center of the octagon right away.

Use a lot of think and faith.

Keep the fight all the way, all the way out or all the way in.

And when I say all the way in is when you close the gap, use my proactive and reactive

takedown and perhaps my superior explosive to put him down.

I like to use those proactive and reactive techniques because for me, I feel it's more

economical.

Khabib is a much better chain wrestler than me.

Chain wrestler is when you got that guy to the fence, it's pure wrestling.

What makes my takedown very efficient?

It's my karate.

It's not my wrestling.

I'm very good at timing my opponent and getting in with my explosivity.

So if you watch my takedown, it does not demand often, it does not demand a lot of work.

When I use the, I call it proactive takedown.

When he's coming to punch me and I react, I mean, proactive is when I'm faking it.

So I instigate the takedown by a fake, then I take him down.

And reactive is when I'm baiting him to throw something, then I'm going.

It's a counter.

Yeah.

Yes.

But all my takedowns...

In the center of the octagon.

Yes.

My takedowns are more in the center of the octagon.

Like for example, another guy that does it well is Gleason Thibault that did it well

in his best days.

Khabib has more a style of chain wrestling, I would say like Kamaru Usman, so to speak,

kind of guy.

It's a different style.

You cannot compare both styles.

And that's the kind of takedown I'm good.

And if I would have fight Khabib, that's one of the strategy I would have adopted.

I would not have been afraid because everybody that I fought, I was able to put them down

and I have the pedigree to prove it in my fight resume.

So you would have perhaps seen him on his back and I would have perhaps be on my back

as well.

So it would have been a very interesting fight.

How hard do you think he is to takedown?

I mean, a lot of people speak about his wrestling being just...

It has nothing to do with the wrestling because...

It has to do with the karate.

If I got that timing and I got my both hands around his knees, he's going down the other

way.

Everybody goes down.

Yes, yes, he goes down.

And I had a lot of that.

That's what I would have adopted.

I would not have been afraid of his wrestling.

I would have be the instigator.

I would have forced the fight forward.

And that's how I would have approached that fight, which I believe most of his opponent

were afraid of his wrestling because they didn't have the tools that I have to put him

down.

I would not have forced the wrestling.

I would have...

In the clinch, I would have tried to disengage.

I have many ways to disengage a clinch.

I would have wanted to force the fight in a fighting distance, like in a shoot box distance,

not in a wrestling distance.

Is it possible this fight still happens?

You're young, you look great in a suit.

Well, there's a lot of problems now.

And the thing is, now I made peace with it.

I no longer don't want to fight and I don't...

It's not going to happen.

UFC was not interested and I'm bound by contract with the UFC and by exclusivity.

Some people says to me, oh, how about if a wealthy Russian guy come with the money?

I said, I'm going to be in court with UFC.

And also, I'm older now and when I go home and I'm like, I don't want to do this, you

know?

But you were always like this.

No, I don't want to do this.

But like, for example, I was training with Freddie Roach a few days ago and I'm hitting

pads, you know?

And Freddie is looking at me and he's like, hey, you have the hitch back.

I'm like, yeah.

If Dana White would walk in the room, in the gym at that precise moment with the UFC contract,

I would sign it in the blink of an eye.

But when I go home, I'm like, hell no, my belly is full, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy.

Why would I want to fight for?

I made peace with it.

But the minute I go back in the gym, because I still get it inside me when I train with

the young guys, I still get it.

And a lot of guys think, hey, tell me the truth, you're preparing a comeback because

I still get it.

You know, I'm a little bit older, but I got more knowledge, I can compensate.

I become a different animal because, you know, it changed you.

But then after you go home and you're like, man, no way I'm doing this.

It's very hard to explain, you need to be a fighter to understand that it's very, very

hard to explain.

Well, from your perspective, I think Khabib is one of the rare, one of the few fascinating

scientific puzzles yet to be solved.

So from that aspect, as a martial artist, it's just a fascinating journey to try to

solve that puzzle.

There is a thing too, like we say, oh, who's the best fighter, people, Lex, they don't,

like I am this, I realized that later in my life and I'm sure a lot of young guy will

say, oh, I say, Pierre, it's not, don't speak for me, but I'm telling you right now what

I'm about to say, you will realize it later.

When I was young, I think you can proclaim yourself the more, the badass man on the planet,

you know, like nobody can beat you at, it's an illusion, man.

That's the sad thing about, for example, DC, Daniel Cormier does probably one of the greatest,

it's not the greatest of all time, you said Neotish, but like, it's almost because of

that little matchup with John Jones, it's difficult for people to conceive of him as

the greatest of all time.

It's all about matchup, it's all about timing, and also you make a fight, you make both guys

fight 10 times, the result might be different, like every time, you know, I mean, maybe he's

gonna win eight out of 10, but that night, he's gonna lose, why?

Because we don't know, the universe made it like that, you know, maybe he got sick, maybe

he had the emotional issues, he didn't sleep well, and it makes him lose focus and he got

caught, you don't, we don't know, but that's the thing, people ask me, would you have done

it with Khabib, what would happen?

I don't know, maybe out of 10 times, I don't know, maybe as a fighter, I hope I would have

won more than him, he thinks the opposite is only one way to find out, but that night,

if there is a fight, the guy that's gonna win doesn't mean he's the best fighter, that's

mean that he's the one that fought the best the night of the fight, same thing in basketball

or hockey, the team that wins the game, it's not necessarily the best team, it's the team

that played the best the night of the game, and fighting is no different, so being the

baddest man on the planet, it's an illusion.

I mean that's the tragic thing about it, is on any one night, anything can happen and

then that tells a story for all of human history, it's sad to think about, but that's what makes

it beautiful, that there's so much at stake, like entire lives, all the dreams you've had

growing up, all the hard work, all of it is decided in a single night, even though that

means nothing in terms of who's actually better, I mean that's the beauty, that's why people

love the Olympics especially, because it happens so rarely, and dreams are broken, or like

triumph is achieved by the unlikely hero, all like right there, I mean that's why we

love it, right, that's why we love it.

If we wouldn't know always the result before, it would be boring, that's why we do it, you

know, watch the odds, like sometimes I like to watch the odds before a fight, you know,

because there's things, I believe in causality, everybody believes different things, but I

believe everything is because there's a cause to everything, that's personally what I believe,

I don't believe that I have like free will, I think I have the illusion of free will,

but I believe there's a cause for everything, and if I'm doing something because of something,

because of a cause, by definition, there's no free will in a way, if there's a cause,

by definition, there's not.

How does that make you feel by the way, like the idea that if we just look outside of even

just human psychology and fighting and so on, if we look at like physics, if everything

is predetermined, if all of these little molecules interacting, it's all already, like your story

is already written.

I mean, it depends, it's written, but I wouldn't need to know all the data and it's impossible,

right?

Like it's kind of weird, I gotta say, but to me, I don't see any argument to counter

that idea, maybe I'm ignorant, but I haven't seen nobody and everything that I've read

so far, there's nothing that counter that idea, because in a mechanical world, if your

car broke, or we don't say, oh, the car decided to broke, or a tree is fall, there's reason

why the tree is fall, we don't say the tree is decide to fall, right?

So because us human being, I think it's our ego, we decide, and I'm no different than

anybody when I make a decision, I decided to do this, I choose to do this, but I'm aware

that there is causes that make me do certain things, and by definition, I think if there

is a cause, there is no free will, by definition, right?

Yes, but the thing is, just like you said, we understand so little about human intelligence,

the human mind, and especially consciousness, that this giant mystery, this darkness, that

we don't understand how it feels like to be something, to be a conscious being, that because

of that, we're not able to really even reason about free will, or not, because there might

be some magic that comes from consciousness, the consciousness might be the thing that

makes us different from a car that breaks down.

There might be something totally fascinating, totally undiscovered yet, that will make us

realize that free will is actually real, and is somehow fundamental to the human experience.

So it's, sometimes I think we forget when we talk about free will and physics and it

all seeming to be predetermined, we forget how little we actually understand about the

world, and I think in that mystery, there could be totally new ideas that are yet to

be discovered, and will make us realize that it's not just an illusion, it is something

that is like at the core of how the universe works.

Some people believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like

it's one of the forces of physics, like consciousness permeates everything, it's in everything.

Like this table is conscious, but it's not as conscious as us, and we're this little

peak of consciousness, and if that's true, and if we get to understand that, maybe there's

something, there's an extra bonus we get in terms of free will once you become one of

those entities that are super conscious.

So I tend to be sort of humbled by the mystery of it.

Do you believe one day with the technology that keep improving, we will make robot that

will be able to be somehow conscious?

Absolutely, that's been my dream, that's been, I hope to do just that.

First of all, I believe that all people are capable and want to be good to each other,

and I think love is a really powerful thing that connects us and can create better and

better worlds, sort of like create better and better societies that improve both the

technology, the quality of life, and just the basics of human experience.

And I think creating AI systems that are conscious, that are human like, can enable us to be better

to each other.

Like they can, it's almost like adding more and more kindness to the world through the

systems we interact with will inspire us to be better and better to each other.

In terms of them being conscious, I think that is an absolute requirement that entities

we interact with communicate some element of consciousness to us, like that's how we

connect to each other.

The reason we, you and I connect is that we believe that each of us are conscious.

And to me, what consciousness means is the ability to hurt, the ability to suffer, to

struggle in this world, because just like you said, without the struggle, you don't

have the love, you don't have the pleasure, and ultimately consciousness is an entity's

ability to struggle, to suffer, and from that arises the pleasure.

And us together being able to appreciate the highs and experience together the lows, that's

how we form the deep connections.

I personally think we can create that in robots, and I personally believe it's a lot easier

than we think.

Does it make you afraid sometimes about the fact that one day AI, like artificial intelligence

could hurt us?

Because of Hollywood, of course, the movies we watch, but it seems like when I hear sometimes

Elon Musk talking, you know?

Yeah, so Elon talks about with AI, we're summoning the demon.

He is very concerned, and I talked to him about it quite a bit, he's very concerned

about all the different ways AI could hurt us humans.

I tend to believe that there's a lot more ways in which AI can make our lives better

and can make life awesome for humans.

I think humans are the ones that can do a lot of evil things.

So I'm less worried about AI, I'm more worried about humans.

If I look at what humans have done on the course of history, for example, in regards

to the planet to the scale of the universe, I think what I'm afraid is that we have more

of a destructive force than a beneficial force.

So if AI take that in consideration in order to protect us against ourselves, it could

hurt us in a way.

I don't know if you understand, what do you think about that?

Does it makes you afraid sometimes, not because of AI, but because of what humans are doing

that AI could do to us to prevent us of hurting ourselves, you know?

Yeah, I mean, definitely it can bring out the worst in human nature and provide tools

for evil people to do evil things at a larger scale.

But I just think it depends what you think human beings are.

I tend to believe that as we get more intelligent, we start to see the value, the evolutionary

value and the value in terms of happiness of being good to each other.

And I think AI, if you look at AI as an optimization problem of how to create a civilization that

works well and expands throughout the universe, I think love is much more effective.

So AI will help us maximize that.

I think there's going to be always spikes throughout, as it has been through human history,

where charismatic leaders will do evil onto the world in the name of good.

You have the Stalin and the Hitlers and all of that.

But ultimately over time, I think technology will give the good people power and the evil

people less power.

Now there's a lot of ways that that won't be the case.

There's a lot of ways for it to go wrong and Elon talks about them, but I honestly think

in terms of intelligent AI, that's going to bring more love to the world.

The thing I'm concerned about is dumb AI.

So there's been a lot of discussion between China and the United States recently on autonomous

weapons system.

This is something people don't, they're afraid to talk about, but there's now a race where

the United States has officially said that they're not against adding AI to its weapon

systems.

So now the US military is adding automation, adding intelligence to its drones, to anything

that can create damage.

And so of course, and they did this so in response to China doing that.

So you can imagine this is Terminator.

You think about Terminators and intelligent systems, they're not, they're pretty dumb.

The point is they're efficient at doing what they do.

And in the space of war, efficient at doing what you do means killing.

So that I'm really afraid of, but those are dumb AI.

Those aren't your loving, deep, fulfilling relationships.

That's like efficiently being able to fly, to plan the trajectory of dropping bombs,

of missiles, of how to do counter attacks, of how to maximize the destruction of a particular

facility instead of individuals.

And then that can just escalate.

And as opposed to the cold war with the Soviet Union, this could be a hot war.

And then the consequences, once you allow, it's kind of terrifying because currently

the drones are operated by humans.

So you have say, you have information about, intelligence gives you information about a

particular terrorist located in this area.

And then you use drones to maybe the automation there is to help you figure out what is the

best trajectory to strike at that location.

So you still have a human that pulls the trigger at the end and dropping the bomb.

Now automation and AI and autonomous weapons systems might be where you say, there's a

bad guy over here.

You figure out how to get rid of the bad guy.

So then of course the systems will be very good at finding the right trajectory and so

on, but there's bugs that can happen.

Unexpected bugs that the system might figure out that there is this bad guy might actually

be in these other five locations.

So might make sense to cover the entire area, right?

And so you might drop bombs on the entire area and then that's just okay.

So that's going to lead to a lot of destruction at the scale of a city, but then you can immediately

take that to nuclear weapons.

If you add automation to responding to counterattacks to nuclear weapons, somebody, you might get

information that somebody is planning a nuclear attack on the United States and the AI system

will immediately respond and you know, it can respond at a scale of launching nuclear

weapons itself.

And so there's all of these possibilities that don't require much intelligence.

And that's exceptionally concerning.

I'm like you, I do not believe there is babies that are born bad.

I think people do bad things because of their experience.

However, if I look through my experience and from what I can see is some very often, man's

of power wants more power.

That's what makes me afraid with, you know?

Absolutely, listen, I've come from the Soviet Union.

Stalin is arguably one of the most powerful humans in history.

He's not talked often enough about by the evils he's done.

Hitler gets all the attention, but Stalin has done arguably much more evil than Hitler.

Yeah, well, this is human nature.

It wants power.

We see that with institutions, we see that with governments and nations.

I think you see this with the internet, people are really hungry for the distribution of

power.

Like you see that people are very much distrustful of centralized places of power, of institutions

and so on.

So I think successful organizations, successful companies, successful governments will be

run by people who distribute the power.

Like I don't trust myself with power at all.

And I think you have to build into the system that no one person can have power and that

you distribute it.

That's where you have in the financial sector, you have cryptocurrency right now with Bitcoin

and all those kinds of things.

People are exploring, how can we avoid the central bank to have the control?

How do you put the power in the hands of people, thousands of people, millions of people?

And same way with military, with any kind of, with technology, I think the future looks

very distributed.

What do you think about militarizing space?

The space force, I don't think about it often because right now I'm filled with excitement

about space exploration, which is the positive aspect.

So Elon, I was born in an era where it was exciting.

I don't know about you, but for me it's exciting to look up to the stars and dream about us

humans colonizing Mars, colonizing other planets, expanding out to the galaxy, into the universe.

That's really exciting.

So the possibilities there are endless.

I don't think, because also the resources are endless.

And so I think we get into trouble with militarization, with wars when the resources are very constrained.

So I think for a while we're not going to be fighting, the only wars we'll be fighting

in space are the ones that kind of help us.

Another nation to compete, who goes to the moon first, I guess.

Those kinds of things are maybe for satellites and all those kinds of communication and maybe

in assistance for cyber warfare, which is also very dangerous.

But in terms of the wars out in space, I think everything out in space will be positive and

inspiring.

It's very hard, but all good things are hard, I think.

This is where I've been talking to a bunch of people about extraterrestrial life.

I'm really excited by, I don't know, it's the other thing.

When I look out to the stars, it's exciting to me.

I know I think you've spoken about it being scary, but to me it's exciting that there's

intelligent creatures out there far beyond perhaps the intelligence of our own that are

just too far away to explore yet, but we might one day come in contact with them.

So that to me is the ultimate motivator is to meet other intelligence life forms out

there and connect with them.

Have you ever meet Jacques Vallée?

No, but I've been in communication.

I want to, I hope to talk to him.

He's an amazing...

French, yeah.

I know that there's many theories about, you know, if there's alien, we don't know, right?

But some people think it's from another star systems and Jacques Vallée has like to make

a long story short, he has a different theory, thinks it's perhaps beings that could be living

in a different dimension than us.

And the reason why he says that is when he makes an experiment, when there is a sightings

very often of a UFO, let's say I'm the UFO that you have three guys, they are looking

at the UFO very often, one experiment that you can do, and sometimes that is the case,

you ask your two friends to walk on the side and there's a point that it's like a corridor,

you see the UFO and then you stop seeing it like a corridor.

And that's one of the reasons why he's saying that it's perhaps dimension.

And I found that fascinating, you know?

This is what, you know, to the discussion of consciousness and all that, it feels like

we might be just experiencing a very particular slice of this universe, we might not be understanding

what's at the higher dimensions or, yeah, I mean, higher dimensions in whatever form

that means, you know, there's all these physical theories now that describe a world with dimensions

that's much higher than the four dimensions of the three dimension of space and the one

dimension of time.

So whatever the hell is going on in those other dimensions, it could be something, unfortunately,

this is the sad part, it might be something we can't even comprehend with our human brains,

that the limitations are just, I mean, we're just descendants of apes, so like it might

not be possible to even understand.

Is there alien?

Is there another dimension?

Are they human from the future?

Is there perhaps Chinese or another, you know what I mean, a group of people that are working

with technology far behind?

But you know what, Lex, I had the chance to meet, you know, because of the sport I'm doing,

I met a lot of people in military and politics sometimes that I ask them every time.

I met one this week and I asked him, I say, is it true about the UFOs there?

And he says to me, he's like, even before I asked him, I say, sorry, I have to ask you

a question.

I was in Los Angeles and I said, sorry, I have to ask you a question.

He said, oh, you want to ask me about UFOs right away, you do.

And I say, yes.

He saw it in your eyes.

He said, yeah, there is things that flies that we don't know.

But he didn't tell me, he doesn't know it, they don't know if it's alien or whatever,

but there's things apparently that are detected.

And I know you met Fravor, you know, like Fravor is fascinating.

It's crazy.

It makes me sad that we live in a different era now that it used to be a subject that

was ridicules and now it's so cool that it's, you know, I'm very excited to live in to that

era, you know?

Yeah, it's really exciting, but still the governments are kind of behind the times on

that aspect is they're not transparent and they don't communicate well.

You know, it saddens me to think the possibility that, that, you know, like the US government

might be in possession of something that they don't tell the world about because they're

just scared is because they don't know what the hell it is and they don't want the Chinese

to gain the technology or all those kinds of things.

Do you think the president of the United States, for example, because the president comes and

go every, right, four or eight years, do you think he would know all the secret or it would

be a guy like, for example, Vladimir Putin would know much of, you know what I mean?

I don't think the president even know, like even knows all the secret.

The US president.

I don't think so because he goes, they go back and forth, you know, every four years,

you know, they have the terms, right?

So I, you know, I wasn't sure before, but I think I could trust the previous United

States president of Donald Trump that if he knew, he would probably tweet about it.

So I think from the, you know, I've worked with DARPA, I worked with DOD at a clearance

and I think from the perspective, if you, if you see the world as fundamentally a dangerous

world where secrets are important to have from a military perspective, I think it's

very unsafe to tell the president of the United States that you have this kind of technology.

So if you think of the world in that way, I hate that that's how that world is viewed

because ultimately I think what's more powerful than the military secrets, and I hope that

actually is what will happen in the 21st century, is what's more powerful is inspire people.

Inspire the young Elon Musk's of the world to create cool new things.

If we have technology that we've have come, have encountered that we don't understand

that should only be inspiration to develop that kind of stuff.

It shouldn't be seen as military, as a military threat, as a secret to hold on to.

I think secrets, I hope we more and more let go of the idea that there are secrets that

give us advantage, you know, like in the tech sector, people are more and more releasing

the software and making it open source.

Like secrets don't make sense.

They share the knowledge, right?

Share the knowledge.

Like being afraid to share the knowledge, I think, I hope is an old idea.

It's more, yeah.

When you make it, things more compartmentalize, you know?

Yes.

Well, yeah.

That's the other thing is the bureaucracy of government is like people only know their

own little thing and they don't spread the information.

It doesn't travel well.

I mean, there's a lot of just inefficiencies that are, it makes me sad.

It makes me sad because the science, the engineering that happens in governments, like Lockheed

Martin developing the different airplanes that they use for military applications is

some of the most incredible engineering ever.

And it's secret because they're afraid to share it with the Russians and the Chinese

and so on.

But on that topic, I do think somebody like Vladimir Putin probably knows some stuff.

My God.

My God.

I would love to know what he knows.

But then again, you never know because even he is, you know, people think of him as an

exceptionally powerful person, but he's also just managing a bunch of tribes.

His power is very limited.

He's trying to hold together a bunch of greedy, power hungry, mad men.

That's right.

Okay.

And he's trying to establish a balance.

He might not know everything.

So I hope this changes because I think there's nothing more exciting about.

I don't even know if there is a human that knows.

You know what I mean?

Like this idea that there is some civilization, alien civilization that that land on the White

House and say, hi, I come to meet the president.

And like, why would they do that?

You know what I mean?

It's kind of absurd.

You know?

Well, I do think that actually, I mean, that's one possibility, right, is LART, you know,

if an alien civilization really wanted to contact us, I think everybody would know.

So I think what we're, if there's any kind of interaction between humans and aliens,

I think most likely what we're interacting with is a crappy like probe drone thing that

kind of just like, like, it's like this, this dumb thing, you know, we're not interacting

with the aliens.

I think just like, just like for us, I think humans aren't when we venture out into space.

The first thing that's going to meet aliens is our robots.

It's not us humans because we keep sending robots out.

So they're going to like, they're going to make decisions about humans by looking at

the robots.

I say the famous grays, the grays, maybe they are robots.

Maybe it's all BS too, you know?

Yeah.

I don't know, I don't know what that interaction actually would look like if aliens really

wanted to reach out, really communicate.

And I don't know if we're able to actually communicate with them.

That's one of the sad things.

We may not be able to, that we might, the aliens might already be here and we might

just not even know, know how to see them or know how to communicate with them.

There's so much misinformation and sometimes there is peoples that are very credible that,

that made crazy claims, you know, like, you don't know what to believe, you know, like,

like Paul Aylor, the minister of defense of Canada said like some, that there is many

alien rays that ever, that's what he said, research it and that scientists from, I think

Israel recently have said something about Trump, he was keeping secret or Medvedev,

you're from Russia, Medvedev have been caught in a, like during a break in between interviews

to talks about like, oh, it's like men in black, so to speak.

I don't know.

He didn't look like he was joking, but I don't know if he was saying the truth.

I didn't know about this.

Yeah, you can check on YouTube.

It's a, it's, it's, it went, it went viral.

Yeah.

There's a lot of things like that sometimes I'm like, or, or Bob Lazar, I'm like, imagine

if it's true, man.

Yeah.

Imagine if we're like a fish in the water, we live in our own world and sometimes there's

a fisherman that grabbed the fish, take him out of the water and threw it back in the

water and the fish goes back to the other fish and say, Hey, there's someone that, that

take me out of the water.

Then I've seen things that I did not like.

Imagine if it's true.

Like we like, yeah.

And one other thing, like I wanted to ask you because you were consciousness, how about

dreams?

What is a dream?

Yeah.

Well, I, I, I more and more, I don't know if you're paying attention to this.

There's no, it's become more acceptable in the scientific community to do large scale

studies of psychedelics, for example, and there's a lot of connection between psychedelics

and dreams.

There's very similar states.

There's, there's a lot our mind does when it detaches itself from reality that it can

just explore a lot of different ideas.

It's very possible that dreams is you're traveling somewhere and the same thing with psychedelics.

You're traveling somewhere in a different, not traveling to physical space.

It's the other dimensions that we're talking about.

You're traveling some other through some other dimension to meet some other creature.

People talk with DMT that they meet some elves.

I've never done, I I'd like to, I don't know if there's a safe legal way to do it, but

they all talk about meeting elves and creatures like entities and like, who are they?

What's what is this?

Is it because they're high or it's because they're actually meeting something and maybe

there's no difference.

I mean that who knows exactly and that's takes us right back to us not being able to really

understand how our mind works.

You know, I work in artificial intelligence.

It's clear that we understand so little about intelligence, some basic things about intelligence

just at the, at the very sort of basic first principles level.

We don't understand what it means to, to reason, to think, to assimilate pieces of knowledge

together from the, from the basics to the complex.

We don't understand it.

We don't understand how the human mind does it.

We don't understand how the human mind is able to take incredible waterfall of information

and filter cleanly into just like clean.

You only see the things that are important and are able to stitch them together and be

able to reason about the world.

And at the same time have moments of like genius of creativity.

Like what is that?

That also, you know, people, writers talk about that, that they're, you know, they're

almost like communicating with a muse, like where do ideas come from?

This is the Joe Rogan philosophy.

But I do know that past civilization where a lot of them were based on shamanism.

And you know what?

I think it's sad is if someone drink alcohol and when he's drunk, he's going to commit

like create like, like murders or something.

We're going to blame the person.

Right?

You're going to say that's his fault.

It's not the fault of alcohol.

However, if someone does psychedelic or any things that is illegal and you do something

crazy, now we're going to put the fault on psychedelic.

You know what I mean?

And perhaps the person itself is the reason why, you know, he's been doing these things,

you know what I mean?

So yeah, it's fascinating how like society, you know, like in Canada, they just legalize

marijuana.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

Marijuana is legal.

But before that, before they did it, like if you talk, for example, to my dad, my dad

is against it, like, because the whole mentality is like, it's drug, it's bad.

But drinking a glass, you know, drinking a beer, it's fine.