back to indexGeorges St-Pierre: The Science of Fighting | Lex Fridman Podcast #179
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The following is a conversation with George St. Pierre,
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considered by many to be the greatest fighter
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in the history of UFC and MMA,
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but even more than that,
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one of the greatest martial artists ever.
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Quick mention of our sponsors, AllForm, ExpressVPN,
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Blinkist, TheraGun, and TheInformation.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that getting the chance
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to hang out with George, talk to him on the podcast,
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record a quick self defense video that I'll release soon.
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All while both of us wearing suits
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was one of the most memorable days of my life.
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In setting all this up, I talked to Joe Rogan
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and then originally we couldn't schedule a chat
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with him and George on the JRE,
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which allowed me to pretend for a brief time
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that George came down to Austin just to see me.
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Who the hell am I?
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In truth, him and Joe probably conspired
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to make me feel special, but that's the point.
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It's inspiring to see George and Joe,
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who are at the top of their field,
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treat others as equals, as human beings,
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no matter who they are, even silly Russians in a suit.
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Meeting George was an honor for me beyond words.
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This is Alex Friedman podcast,
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and here's my conversation
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with my longtime martial arts hero,
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and now my friend, Mr. George Sampierre.
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In your fighting career,
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were you're more motivated by the love of winning
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or the fear and hatred of losing?
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I like to win better than I hate to lose
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because if it would not have been the case,
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I would never have fought in the first place
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because I don't like to fight at all.
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But you talked about the anxiety,
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the fear that you experienced leading up to a fight.
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So to you, ultimately, the reason to go through that
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difficult process is because it feels damn good
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to have your hand raised.
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There is also the fact that martial art,
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I've been introduced when I was very young,
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and it's probably the best thing I can do in my life,
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fighting, that's what I do best.
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Also, it provides me of freedom,
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of access of things that most of people do not have,
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but all that as a price.
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And a lot of money,
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I made a lot of money, of course, with it.
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I was maybe predisposed with certain abilities.
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I met incredible mentors throughout my life.
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I worked really hard, and of course, I had a lot of chances.
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The stars were all aligned.
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And in order to keep those advantages of freedom,
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money, and glory, and access of things
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that most people don't have,
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and have these dream life that I have,
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I had to sacrifice myself and fight in order to keep it.
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It's very hard to understand,
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because I also believe most fighters are not like me.
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They, a lot of guys, because I corner a lot of guys,
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and it seems to me that they love their job.
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They enjoyed to go fight in the cage.
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I love to train, I love the science of fighting,
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the sport, to be in good shape,
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the confidence that training in mixed martial art give me.
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However, I do not like the feeling of uncertainty,
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the stress that I have,
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not knowing if I will be badly injured,
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or humiliated, or winning the fight.
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It's, to me, unbearable.
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That's what takes the most out of me.
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More than brain damage, more than anything,
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that's what takes the most out of me.
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But the thing you get from it is the freedom
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that you get because of the money,
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but because of the celebrity,
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because of everything that comes with it.
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So you can be the best version of yourself because of fighting.
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But at the same time, you've said that, quote,
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I don't believe there's pleasure in life.
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I believe there's only a relief from pain.
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We have to suffer to be on top.
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So isn't there something to just the suffering in itself,
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just doing really difficult shit, just to get to the top?
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To explain that, so people can relate to it,
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because not everybody's a fighter.
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I think the best example I can give is,
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let's say you haven't eaten for a long time,
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and you're craving, right?
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So you're suffering.
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And then when it's time to eat, finally,
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you're about to eat your favorite dish.
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It's gonna taste so much better.
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So that's why I believe there's always some sort of sacrifice
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before the pleasure.
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And the more sacrifice you do,
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like they say in fighting, the bigger the risk,
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the bigger is the reward.
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And I feel that's how it is for me.
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Yeah, I feel that with,
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I've started fasting a little bit in the past couple of years,
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and there's nothing as amazing as a delicious meal,
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or anything, actually anything,
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any food when you haven't eaten for several days.
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It's kind of incredible.
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And it's not incredible in this simple way
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of finally I get to eat.
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You get to truly experience the beauty
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of what it is to be alive.
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Like that little piece of food,
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you see all the flavors, you feel just the experience of it
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is ultimately of gratitude, of how awesome it is to be alive.
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But when you eat many times a day and you're picking out,
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you don't get to experience that, and it's fascinating.
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It's really like fasting is one of the most accessible things
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for people, I think, to experience that kind of pairing
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of hardship to pleasure.
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I agree. And in my case, it changed my life on a good way.
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I cannot recommend it to people because everybody is different.
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But after my, to fight Michael Bisping, my last fight,
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was against the champion in the Evier weight class
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that I used to compete at.
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So I thought that if I would gain weight,
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it would increase my performance.
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And I struggled a lot to gain weight.
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I gained a little about eight to 10 pounds.
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Normally I walk around 185 pounds.
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And for that fight, I was walking around 195.
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However, I forced myself to eat like six times a day.
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I was on a very strict diet.
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And I didn't feel, it didn't feel right to me
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because I feel like I was carrying,
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like a little bit like I was carrying a bag on my shoulder.
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And I think it was a bad idea for me
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because when I did the weigh in and I went on a scale at 185,
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I couldn't go back to my initial weight
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that was 195 that I worked so hard
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for several months to get there.
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So I was 190 pound, but I couldn't get back.
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And the morning of the fight, I got sick.
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I had like, we didn't know what it was in the beginning
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because in order to know, to find out what it was,
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I needed to do what they call a colonoscopy.
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They put a camera inside of you and to do that,
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they give you something that makes that empty you.
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And I was trying to gain weight, not to lose weight.
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So I told myself, I'm gonna wait after the fight,
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whatever it is, because it was pretty bad, it was blood.
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And I didn't know what I was.
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I was very concerned.
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I thought I had maybe cancer, I was freaking out.
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So I said, I'm gonna do that fight.
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And then after right away, I'm gonna make a checkup.
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So I did the fight, everything went well.
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I won the fight, I went back home,
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I did the colonoscopy and I got diagnosed
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with ulcer colitis.
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Then I got on very severe medication to get better.
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And I'm not a big fan of medication.
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I always trying to look for more natural way to get better.
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And I found out about fasting and it really changed my life.
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I met Dr. Jason Fong, was one of the world authority
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He treat diabetes patient with fasting.
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And he gave me a program of fasting
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and it really changed my life.
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And right away, what I did is I went in a CAT scan
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to see the difference because it was right after my fight
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with Michael Bisping and I did the CAT scan.
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So I had my muscle mass, bone density, fat percentage,
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water retention, it's pretty amazing.
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It can show you which harm has more muscle than the other.
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It's very precise.
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And I did it like two months after.
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So I started doing time restricted eating, 16, eight.
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But right away, when I started, I did three days water fast.
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And the Dr. Jason Fong said,
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because I like to train during those days,
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I consume Himalayan salt to make sure,
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because when you sweat, there's a lot of minerals
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to make sure you don't depleted your mineral.
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And when I went, when I compared the two results
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in the CAT scan, I found out my biggest concern
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was to lose muscle mass.
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I found out that I did not lose muscle mass.
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Instead of losing it, it increased a little bit.
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Even though my weight on the scale was lighter,
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I kept the same muscle mass even increases a little bit.
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My bone density increases a little bit.
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My water retention is the biggest thing that decrease.
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So my inflammation and my fat percentage.
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So basically, by looking at the data,
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I found out that by eating so much,
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trying to gain weight to find Michael Bisping,
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I only increases my water retention,
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which is not good because it's dead weight
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and inflammation on you.
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So what was the actual process of fasting?
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You said 16, eight time restricted,
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so intermittent fasting,
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but you also mentioned the three day water fast.
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What did that feel like?
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And you also said training during the three day.
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How did that feel?
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Can you give me some details of this is fascinating?
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So I do three days water fast four times a year.
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For me, I do it, everybody is different,
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but for me, I do it after New Year's
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because during the holidays,
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that's when I eat bad foods and I drink.
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I see it more like a cleansing,
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like a detox, so to speak.
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Mental too, like psychological.
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Yes, I do it after the New Year's,
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right before the summer,
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cut for the beach if I have to be.
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After the summer, because of the summer,
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I've been partying a little bit sometime,
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let myself go, and right before the holidays.
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And I've tried, Dr. Fungi says to me,
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said George, everybody is different
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because I'm a very active person
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and everybody has a different genetic.
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So for me, I feel that three days is the sweet spot
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because I still train during those three days.
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The first two days, I don't change nothing.
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I train regularly on my regular schedule.
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However, on the third day, I modify a little bit.
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I do something more easy and that's how I do it.
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And I've tried before because when I say three days,
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it's my sweet spot.
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I've tried to go up to five days.
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But the problems is after my third days,
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I found out that I had a big problem sleeping.
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I get into a hyperactive mode.
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They call that the entoregator mode,
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you know, like your brain,
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I mean, it's amazing your creativity is at its peak,
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but you cannot sleep very well.
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And sleeping, for me, I think it's very important.
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So that's why I do three days.
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For me, it's my sweet spot.
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That's interesting.
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You're right, it's the four or five days
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when you start, see sleep is not important for me.
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So the creativity is really important.
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So it's very interesting
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the places your mind goes after a few days, you're right.
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But I mean, what does it do to your mind?
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So you mentioned your body likes it.
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In terms of training, do you find
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that it helps you focus and think?
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I mean, you're one of the great strategic thinkers
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in terms of martial arts.
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Does it help with learning?
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Does it help with thinking?
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Does it help with strategizing and all that?
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Well, unfortunately, I got into fasting
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I wish I would have,
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I really wish people asked me,
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would you have done it during the time that you competed?
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And the answer is yes.
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I think we live in a society that
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we're bombarded by publicity.
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Oh, buy this, eat protein, this, that.
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And fasting, nobody makes money with it
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because there's nothing to sell, you know?
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I think that's why a lot of people have not heard about it.
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And even for myself, if someone would have talked to me
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about the benefits of fasting, when I was training,
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before I got sick, I would probably have ignored him
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because I'm not, you know, it was, it's hard to believe.
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It sounds ridiculous, don't eat.
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It's gonna help your mind
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and you're going to gain muscle potentially.
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Exactly, and perhaps people have talked to me about it,
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but I kind of, it went in one of my hair
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and got out from the other side, you know?
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But it really changed my life.
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And I was diagnosed with ulcer colitis
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and it helps me get rid of all my symptoms.
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What I do is, I know a lot of people have ulcer colitis
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and for me, I cannot recommend it to other people
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because everybody is different,
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but for me, I made a lot of research of our people
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from ulcer colitis got better
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and I found out that a lot of people that got that condition
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get better in the natural way through fasting,
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eating fermented food, collagen, and bone broth
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and stuff all that got.
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And it made a huge difference in my life.
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I just wish I would have known that before.
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So do you have a specific diet wise stuff you like?
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So like, you know, I've recently,
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another ridiculous sounding thing,
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but it makes me feel really good.
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It's very low carbs.
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So, you know, keto or even carnivore,
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it sounds ridiculous.
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It doesn't make any sense,
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but it makes me feel really good even for performance.
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Is Rogan has influenced you, huh?
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He's a carnivore diet.
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I was influenced actually by people.
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Yeah, well, I'll tell you where,
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because I was doing it before he was doing it,
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is it was popular in the endurance athlete community
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where it was fat adapted athletes.
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People who, insane people who run 50 miles, 100 miles,
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they figured out that they could fuel their body with fat.
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They can go to fat as the source of energy
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as opposed to carbs.
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So, I remember hoping that I'll be able to,
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be able to learn how to run 50 miles and so on.
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I've never done more than 22,
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but it, I just remember switching away from carbs
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and feeling really liberated.
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Like I wasn't thinking about food as much.
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I'm able to eat once a day and feel really good.
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I mean, I think everybody's body is different,
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but I think carbs make me lazy.
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Maybe it's because there's,
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yeah, it's the crash, but also just psychologically,
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something, it forced me to also think about food too much.
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Like it starts becoming, you know,
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just like you said, our society is so much about food.
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There's so many, so much advertisement
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and so much of our social life is about food.
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And so, it's very easy to live life,
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like live day to day thinking, when is the next meal?
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Like, what am I gonna eat for lunch?
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What am I gonna eat for dinner?
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What am I gonna eat for breakfast?
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And if you're not careful,
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that's gonna get in the way of you doing cool shit
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for like liberating yourself and thinking like,
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what am I actually passionate about in this life?
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Like creating and forgetting to eat those kinds of things
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and still being able to fuel your body.
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It's been fascinating to figure out like later in life
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that carbs aren't necessary to function well.
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It makes me think like,
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we don't know anything about nutrition.
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You know, personally,
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I don't think I could have a diet without carbs.
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I love chocolate too much.
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For me, eating, it's a pleasure of life.
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However, if you talk about diet,
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I don't have a specific diet.
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But recently, what I'm trying to do is,
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the days that I do not work out, I only eat once.
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That's kind of my rules.
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Plus, I try to respect 16, eight
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and do my three day fast four time a year.
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But the rest of the thing,
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I let myself loose because I don't think I would be happy
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if I don't give myself the right to eat.
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For me personally, I love to eat so much.
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And you talk about diet carnivore diet,
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it's very interesting because a few years ago,
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I went to Africa in Masai Mara.
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And it's a tribe in East Africa.
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And I went to visit them.
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And I talked to them.
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And these guys, their diet is 99% carnivore.
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They, that's crazy.
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And you should see, they're very beautiful people.
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I shred it like that.
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Some people would say, oh, it's genetic.
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I'm like, yeah, maybe it's genetic.
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But I mean, and think about the Eskimos also,
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that like most of their diet is on fish, right?
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So I believe it can be done, you know?
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Like I believe it can be done
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like an exclusive carnivore diet.
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And I think I'm gonna try it pretty soon
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just to have the experience, you know?
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To see how it feels like.
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Well, you're gonna hang out with Joe.
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Be careful bringing it up
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because he'll convince you to forever switch
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to carnivore, definitely.
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I mean, but just like you, I think he loves food.
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So he can't ever stay on carnivore.
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It was funny because we went to an Italian restaurant
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together and I still only eat meat.
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Like I love the constraints of discipline.
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That's partially why I like carnivore.
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I like saying no to food that is delicious.
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But a part of the problem is that
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I don't know how to moderate.
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You said chocolate.
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I don't know how to have one chocolate.
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Is that something you're able to do?
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Have like in moderation?
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No, it's when I have an opportunity, I do it.
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I'm an extremist person.
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Like I, that's the thing.
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I, when I have a chance, I like, I just eat.
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And that's why I like about my life.
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You know, that's what I like about fasting
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because probably if I would not have discovered fasting,
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eating chocolate would give me cramps
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and all sorts of problems.
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Cause people on ulcer colitis,
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normally they cannot eat chocolate.
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They cannot drink alcohol.
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But I believe because I'm fasting,
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that's the reason why I'm medication,
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medicine, medication free.
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I can eat whatever I want, whatever I want.
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But I have to do that fasting, you know?
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And now it becomes to a, it became to a point
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that it's no longer hard for me.
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I don't even force myself.
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I don't, it's easy.
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You know what I mean?
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Some of my friends thinks I'm insane, you know?
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But I tell them, it's like when you get used to it,
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it becomes like an habit.
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And I'm, and I know that on Turgata,
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like our ancestor did not eat three times a day.
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They ate when they could
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and when they eat, they feed themselves
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as much as they can until that,
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because the next time,
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because they didn't know when they could eat again, right?
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So it's, I think that's how we're built, you know?
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To have this similar lifestyle.
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If we could take a step back
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to the discussion about fear a little bit.
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So Mike Tyson talks about this process
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of him walking to the ring.
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He sounds similar to you in many ways
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of the anxiety and the fear that he experiences.
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And he has this sort of story
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that he tells about walking to the ring
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and being supremely afraid.
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But as he walks and gets closer and steps in,
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he finds the confidence and becomes supremely confident.
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I think he calls himself like a God.
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I feel like a God in the ring.
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Is, do you go through a similar process
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of finding the confidence?
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And I use James Lange theory.
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So what I do is because I'm not afraid
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to admit that I'm afraid.
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And in the beginning of my career,
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I really thought, I asked myself,
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because I was very good in mixed martial art,
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but I really thought I wasn't made for this
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because the idea of fighting didn't make me happy.
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It's something like I was forced to do
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in order to keep that lifestyle that I have
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and achieve my goal, perhaps one day
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to make enough money to retire.
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And you know, that was my dream.
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But when I was looking around the gym
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where I was training,
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most of my training partner, they were happy.
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They were excited.
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And sometimes I corner a lot of guys
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and they're happy and they're in the locker room.
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They don't react the same way I do.
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Some perhaps does, but if you see me in the locker room,
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like when I get, like my last fight with Michael Bisping,
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just to give you an example.
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In my last fight with Michael Bisping,
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because it's fresh, it's the one that is the most recent.
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And, but it's always the same thing.
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My last fight in Bisping, I get in the locker room.
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I had like three guys that I trained with, Mickey Gull,
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Eman Zahabi and Joseph Duffy.
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It was like, like, my locker room was basically cursed.
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You know, when you're in a locker room
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and people from your locker room leave for a fight
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and then they come back, it's kind of a momentum.
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You know, you shake and yeah, good job.
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Now it's my thing.
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You know, it's kind of a team brotherhood sort of thing.
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So the atmosphere in my locker room was pretty bad.
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It was like going to a, you know, like a funeral.
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So I was very scared.
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And before every fight, I asked myself,
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I asked myself, always, shit, what the hell I'm doing here?
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Why did I choose to come back?
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And I'm freaking out.
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However, I'm putting on a mask, like I'm acting.
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Because if I don't do that, it will reflect on my coaches.
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And if my coach, the confidence of my coaches is affected,
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it will reflect on me.
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So I need to feel strong.
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I need to make them believe that I'm excited to be there
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and I'm happy to be there.
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So this sort of play start when I get,
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when I first step in the locker room,
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even though I feel completely different,
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but that's how I play it.
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Normally the fight day, I never felt, feel 100%.
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I always felt exhausted, tired.
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My highs are hitching because I don't sleep enough
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the few nights before,
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because I'm constantly rehearsing scenarios
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that might happen in the fight.
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So mentally, it's not that I'm not on top.
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But you keep all that to yourself.
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I keep it to myself and I'm lying to everybody around me.
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But everybody knows, you know?
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Faraz, John, then I heard, they know Freddie Rose,
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they've been with me for a long time.
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So they know what's going on,
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but at least I'm lying to them.
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I'm like, hey, I'm feeling great.
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So, and seeing all my training partner,
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like very disappointed because they lost their fight,
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some were badly hurt as well.
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So, and I remember I get one,
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I get, I start to warm up and everything.
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And as you start to warm up, you become a different person
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because, you know, we know that certain posture
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and yoga can affect your mental state.
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But I would say it's a little bit the same thing
link |
in fighting, you know?
link |
Like when you started hitting the pads,
link |
your muscle memory, your instincts comes back
link |
and you remember that you're good at this, you know?
link |
And your confidence starts to grow.
link |
And as seeing your trainers holding the pad
link |
and repeating your moves, it makes you also remember
link |
all the sacrifice you have done to your training camp
link |
and confidence comes from how you prepared yourself.
link |
And even you're afraid, you can be confident,
link |
confident at the same time.
link |
Being afraid and being confident is two different things.
link |
And before every fight, just right before I walk in,
link |
it's when I'm scared, I go in the bathroom
link |
and I look at myself in the mirror.
link |
I used to have a bandana and a gi,
link |
but now I didn't have this for my last fight
link |
because of the new Reebok deal they had.
link |
But I did the same rehearsal that I always do.
link |
I look at myself in the mirror
link |
and I start to compliment myself.
link |
Like even if I don't believe it,
link |
I'm starting to trying to believe it.
link |
As I am, I'm finding all the reason
link |
why I'm gonna win the fight.
link |
And all my trainer knows that before every fight,
link |
when the guy from the UFC goes and step in my room
link |
and say, St. Pierre, are you up next?
link |
I always take a few minutes to do that same rehearsal.
link |
And I tell myself, I'm gonna win this fight
link |
because I'm better and I'm very cocky about myself.
link |
I'm telling all the reasons that I'm gonna win.
link |
I got a better team, I made more sacrifice.
link |
I'm faster, I'm more powerful, way more athletic.
link |
My fighting IQ is better than him.
link |
I got a strategy on point
link |
that he's never gonna be able to keep up with.
link |
And this and that.
link |
And I was telling myself,
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I'm gonna show these young kids how things should be done.
link |
I'm trying to boost myself.
link |
Try to boost yourself.
link |
And you start to believe in it.
link |
You become a different person.
link |
So when you walk out the bathroom,
link |
now rock and roll.
link |
Now, I really believe it for real.
link |
Like I'm still scared, but I believe it for real.
link |
And that's the transformation that happened for me right there.
link |
And from now, from there to the fight,
link |
until the fight is over, I call it cruise control.
link |
Because you don't have time to think in a fight.
link |
If you're trying to think, you're missing the opportunity.
link |
So that's how I see it for myself.
link |
So at that point, you stop thinking.
link |
And you just go cruise control, autopilot.
link |
Trust yourself, you know?
link |
Trust yourself because you repeated all the scenarios, you know?
link |
So everything that you have done,
link |
it's inside that your computer, your brain is programmed
link |
to react accordingly to certain situations.
link |
And it's not the night of the fight that you will tell yourself,
link |
oh, finally, I'm going to do this if you do this now.
link |
Now, if you have not practiced it before, you're screwed.
link |
The preparation, the repetition, that makes it happen, you know?
link |
What about like the really difficult moments in a fight
link |
where you are tested to your limits, essentially?
link |
Usually it's cardio related exhaustion, right?
link |
Where you have to ask yourself that same question.
link |
It's like, why the hell am I doing this?
link |
Do you experience those?
link |
Or are you able to ride through the autopilot?
link |
And if you do, what do you do in those moments?
link |
When I'm in a fight, when the fight is on,
link |
I never change my mind.
link |
I go until the end.
link |
However, for example, my first fight would be JPN.
link |
I had a terrible first round.
link |
So I had to switch gear.
link |
That happened sometime.
link |
But it's part of my plan.
link |
I always have a plan B, plan A, plan B, plan C.
link |
You need to have that.
link |
If fighters goes into a fight thinking,
link |
oh, what I'm going to do this is this,
link |
and they don't have a plan B, if this doesn't work,
link |
that's mean they're not well prepared.
link |
If you talk to me before every fight,
link |
I can like in 30 seconds give you my old strategy, you know?
link |
For BJPN, my first fight with BJPN was,
link |
oh, I'm going to keep it standing up,
link |
keep the fight from the outside, you know,
link |
because I'm faster than him.
link |
Then the fight would be JPN start.
link |
I found out that I was not faster than him.
link |
And I found out that his reaction time was better than mine.
link |
So I got beat up the first round,
link |
and I got out of the blood, you know, and everything.
link |
So my plan B was now I'm going to wrestle him.
link |
You know, I'm going to wrestle him,
link |
and you know, make him tired and trying to put him down.
link |
And that's how I beat him, because I switch gear, you know?
link |
But if you can't do that,
link |
if you cannot find a way to become the perfect nemesis
link |
to your opponent, you might win if you fight,
link |
but you're going to fight someone sooner or later
link |
that will give you a lot of trouble.
link |
So that's where the anxiety pays off.
link |
You're anticipating all the ways it goes wrong.
link |
So you've developed a plan B and plan C.
link |
Hi, you know, we talked a lot with like John Donahur,
link |
who you work with.
link |
I don't think I've heard him talk about plan B and plan C.
link |
He usually has a really clear plan A,
link |
an entire system of plan A.
link |
I don't think I've heard him.
link |
We've had a good discussion about it
link |
and over some cheeseburgers.
link |
And he was kind of espousing the value of mastering escapes.
link |
So when you find yourself in bad situations,
link |
being exceptionally good at finding ways
link |
out of those bad situations,
link |
and that's a way of dominance.
link |
There's nothing, there's no better way
link |
to dominate your opponent, according to him,
link |
than to show that they can't possibly hurt you
link |
no matter how bad the position is.
link |
It's like, as opposed to a physical dominance,
link |
it's a psychological dominance.
link |
It's very interesting.
link |
But I wonder if he has plan B and plan C in his mind too.
link |
You know, in mixed martial arts,
link |
sometimes it's like in science,
link |
sometimes you can make a mistake, you know?
link |
Like every human can make a mistake, you know?
link |
There's certain sport or a certain situation
link |
that if there's a mistake made, that's it, exactly.
link |
Sometimes it's the case in MMA,
link |
but sometimes you're able to redeem yourself.
link |
And if you look, the fight with BJPan1 that I had,
link |
which was probably one of the most competitive fight,
link |
and it was probably the,
link |
it was the fight that I got the most damage.
link |
And I was messed up.
link |
It took me three days, like two, three days
link |
to recuperate from that fight.
link |
I was really damaged.
link |
And my first fight versus my second fight,
link |
I made a lot of adjustment
link |
because I have learned from my first fight.
link |
And also I had a guy, one thing people don't know,
link |
like they talk about fighters having secret weapons.
link |
See, for me, my secret weapons was not,
link |
like some is that they use like certain,
link |
like different things.
link |
For me, it was knowledge.
link |
I had a guy in Montreal, he was measuring frames.
link |
He's not a scientist, he's a friend of Ferris and I.
link |
And what he does, he watch fight and he measure frames.
link |
But the way he does it is when you watch a fight
link |
and one of the guy throw a punch,
link |
he cut the picture by frame, the video by frame.
link |
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
link |
So he's able to see which fighter has better reaction time
link |
And BJPan, he found out that BJPan evolved the UFC roster
link |
at the time when he was in his prime.
link |
He had probably the best reaction time of all.
link |
According to him, Leo Tomashido was the second one.
link |
But BJPan was the first one.
link |
So I knew that if I would try to go first
link |
because I always been the fastest guy
link |
normally when I fight someone.
link |
But when I fought BJPan, I tried to go first
link |
and he was always able to,
link |
like I never, it was never able to touch him with my jab
link |
and he came back with the counter punch.
link |
However, because of what he told me,
link |
I knew that BJPan has a very fast reaction time
link |
but at a very poor reset time.
link |
To him, the way he described it to me
link |
is like your nervous system is like a muscle.
link |
BJPan was so fast, but he's like more like a sprinter.
link |
So what I did the second fight, when I fought BJPan,
link |
I made him flinch, like I fake a lot.
link |
So I make him react and flinch.
link |
So all that reaction time that he used to flinch
link |
was not used properly to avoid my punches.
link |
So I load up his nervous system with a lot of information
link |
and fake and to make him flinch
link |
and pretending I was kicking and wrestling.
link |
So he got overwhelmed and he got tired very, very fast.
link |
So that's how I beat him.
link |
People sometimes they don't know really
link |
what's the strategy behind the thing.
link |
They only see the physical part.
link |
But when you fight someone, if I fight you,
link |
I look at you in the eyes.
link |
There's a lot of things that going on between you and I.
link |
I can look down here, bam, jab you in their face.
link |
The audience will not see this little detail,
link |
but you will see it.
link |
And that's what it makes the magic during a fight.
link |
The relation that you have with the opponent,
link |
like the mental game, what you make him believe,
link |
those little thing I use a lot of those.
link |
If you talk to a lot of my opponent,
link |
they'll tell you like I use a lot of these little things.
link |
Like I look down at Banna, I go up
link |
or I am pretending I want to attack you.
link |
So I make you flinch,
link |
but in reality, I'm just doing this
link |
because I want to rest.
link |
I want to recuperate and I'm tired.
link |
How much is, you know, people talk about that with poker,
link |
for example, how much is the value of this?
link |
You know, so like some people argue
link |
that poker is more about the betting.
link |
You know, just the money.
link |
It's just how much you bet and so on.
link |
So that would be more like the analogy there
link |
with fighting would be just strictly
link |
the physical movement of your body.
link |
And then a lot of people argue that there's a lot here
link |
in the way you look and the little movements in the face.
link |
So do you think there's,
link |
do you think you're communicating with your opponent
link |
when you look at them?
link |
There's no way to know for sure a hundred percent
link |
and I'm by no, no means psychic, nothing like that.
link |
And I don't believe in that at all.
link |
The only thing is I know to looking to the eyes
link |
of my opponent when he's afraid
link |
and when he gives up on me.
link |
I've been accused very often in my career
link |
to not take enough risk, to not finish my opponent.
link |
But the reason why I didn't finish my opponent
link |
is because I saw in his eyes that he gave up,
link |
he gave me the fight and I'm winning the fight.
link |
So it's not up to me.
link |
It's not to me to make it, to try to sacrifice myself
link |
trying to finish him.
link |
Perhaps if I do that, I will open up for him
link |
to capitalize on my mistake.
link |
It's up to him to make a risk.
link |
So people sometimes they don't understand
link |
that this is the art of fighting, my friend.
link |
Like if I'm winning the fight, like in hockey and ice hockey,
link |
if you're winning the game and it's the third period,
link |
it's at the end of the third period,
link |
you're not gonna take out your gold
link |
and they're trying to score another goal
link |
because winning five to three or five to four
link |
is the same thing.
link |
Same thing in MMA, we make a living out of this.
link |
And sometimes, you know, as bad as it can be,
link |
you wanna save yourself for another day,
link |
you know, you wanna minimize the damage.
link |
But if he knows he's losing the fight,
link |
it's up to him to take the risk.
link |
It's not up to me.
link |
So I'm a good counter fighter.
link |
I use a lot of my attack or counter strike
link |
or reactive takedown or proactive takedown.
link |
That's my specialty.
link |
So I'm not gonna, I'd have no desire to sacrifice myself
link |
trying to finish my opponent.
link |
If he want to, if perhaps I might give him
link |
the opportunity to capitalize on me.
link |
It's not smart to do that.
link |
And very often when I fight someone,
link |
I can read him, I see the fear in his eyes.
link |
Now I'm like, I got you now.
link |
He's very desperate.
link |
That doesn't mean I have to put my guard down
link |
because he's gonna be desperate,
link |
but I know I'm beating you.
link |
And I know I'm beating you,
link |
I'm just gonna do what I need.
link |
You know, if I have a chance, of course,
link |
I'll knock him out,
link |
but I'm not gonna try to sacrifice myself to knock him out.
link |
And if you do that,
link |
maybe one day you'll make a mistake
link |
and you'll get dropped
link |
and you'll tell yourself that I shoot.
link |
I just got brain damage.
link |
Maybe I'm never gonna come back the same.
link |
Maybe, you know, I ruin my career or, you know,
link |
it's a very serious game that we're playing.
link |
It's very dangerous.
link |
In the face of that risk,
link |
I mean, Mike Tyson talked about, you know,
link |
when the opponent looks away,
link |
he knows he's got him, right?
link |
For a person like me who has trouble making eye contact
link |
with people, there's truth to that.
link |
I mean, there's truth to that.
link |
That there's an animal nature to us looking away.
link |
I mean, you could see that the way the body language,
link |
the way the eyes move between two animals
link |
going at it in the wild when like two lions fight
link |
or two, whatever fight,
link |
there's a certain beta move when you've been defeated.
link |
Yes, or one thing when I know that,
link |
that when it happened, one of the sign
link |
is when I just like make a faint and the guy flinch,
link |
like crazy, that's mean he's really scared of me.
link |
It's a little bit like you're doing this,
link |
that guy flinch a little bit, or you're doing this,
link |
that's mean you hurt him and he doesn't wanna get hurt again.
link |
So he's really trying to run away
link |
and not winning the fight anymore, but not losing.
link |
So sort of surviving the five round
link |
and it's hard to finish a guy who doesn't wanna fight.
link |
A guy who's not fighting anymore to win
link |
and he's fighting to not lose.
link |
And the proof of that, if you don't believe me,
link |
just look the reign of all the greatest champion in UFC.
link |
I don't care who they are, John Jones or like,
link |
you could clearly see that in the beginning of their reign,
link |
they could finish a lot of their opponents,
link |
same as me in the beginning, I was finishing a lot of my opponent.
link |
But there's a time that the entire UFC roster is studying you
link |
and they found ways to perhaps not beating you,
link |
but they found a way to navigate through the fight
link |
in a way that they minimize the damage.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
So it's a big difference between fighting to win
link |
and fighting to not lose.
link |
You said that there's a difference
link |
between a fighter and a martial artist.
link |
So now we were talking about fighting.
link |
You're considered by many to be
link |
one of the greatest fighters of all time,
link |
but you've said that there's a difference
link |
between a fighter and a martial artist.
link |
A fighter is training for a purpose.
link |
I'm a martial artist.
link |
I don't train for a fight.
link |
I train for myself.
link |
I'm training all the time.
link |
My goal is perfection, but I will never reach perfection.
link |
So what to you, does it mean to be a martial artist?
link |
Martial artists is because that lifestyle
link |
that I have has been introduced to me
link |
and the seed has been planted to my mind
link |
a long, long time ago by my father.
link |
I do not train because I have a fight.
link |
I will always train.
link |
Even now, it kind of amused me to see that
link |
a lot of people, because I'm still training,
link |
because I love the science of fighting.
link |
I do not like to fight, but I love the science of it.
link |
And I will always do it as long as I can do it.
link |
People think I'm gonna make a comeback and everything.
link |
I'm about to get to have 40 years old, you know?
link |
Like, it's, I'm, you know, like,
link |
I don't wanna fight in a cage at 40 years old.
link |
I mean, some people have done it and they did it very well,
link |
but I'm not one of them.
link |
I feel a little bit to me that,
link |
and you never say never.
link |
I feel like to me, like it's a little,
link |
like a kid that you play with a strain when he's young,
link |
like, then he's five years old,
link |
but six years old, seven years old, eight years old.
link |
And then I want to be like,
link |
what the hell I'm doing here and I'm 12 for this.
link |
Like, I have done it, you know?
link |
And I got out of it on top and I'm healthy,
link |
which is the most important thing right now.
link |
I'm touching wood and I'm wealthy.
link |
I beat the game, you know what I mean?
link |
In a way, like, that's not to be cocky, but I did it.
link |
And I wish more fighters could do the same thing.
link |
I wish, but it's unfortunate because a lot of them,
link |
they stay there and hang out for too long
link |
and they get badly hurt.
link |
They get beaten and broken, you know?
link |
And they finish broke as well
link |
because the lifestyle you have when you're a pro athlete,
link |
it's crazy, you know, it's unbelievable.
link |
However, everything that goes up in life goes down
link |
and you need to plan your future, you know?
link |
So for me, if some guys have the same mentality as me
link |
and they're watching us right now,
link |
I would say if you do it because you're just good at it,
link |
you like the money, the advantage, the freedom
link |
that it gives you, but you don't necessarily like to fight.
link |
When you're done, you finish on top, you know?
link |
Go cash out and get out of here.
link |
Walk away, this is really hard to do.
link |
However, Alex, it's not everybody that does it
link |
Some people generally love to fight, love to compete.
link |
So they do it because they love it, you know?
link |
Or they do it because of the money.
link |
But if you don't love it, if you don't like to fight
link |
because it's very stressful and you don't enjoy,
link |
you enjoy the training, perhaps,
link |
or you don't like to fight, you do it
link |
because it's part of what you need to do
link |
in order to keep that lifestyle.
link |
And, you know, like, you don't need the money.
link |
Get out of here, man.
link |
If you're in your prime, get out of here
link |
because if you don't, you'll hurt your own legacy,
link |
you'll damage your health.
link |
And it's a sad business, you know what I mean?
link |
It's like a lot of, one of the places
link |
where it's the most, one of the most happiest place
link |
for me to go and the most saddest place for me to go,
link |
It's a triceria in Montreal
link |
because it's one of the happiest place for me to go
link |
because I can go train and do what I love to do.
link |
But it's also a very sad place for me
link |
because after when I'm about to leave,
link |
there's always a bunch of young kids that comes
link |
or guys that are around 30, 33 years old
link |
and they come to me and say,
link |
George, you have some advice for me and I look at them.
link |
And if they're my friend, they're a real close friend of mine,
link |
I'll tell them the truth in their face
link |
and I've done it many times and it was not well received.
link |
But if they're not my friend, I have to, you know,
link |
it's always an advice about fighting
link |
and I answer their question, it's my pleasure.
link |
But the truth, if they want me to tell the truth,
link |
the big majority of them, I would tell them,
link |
listen, man, you're on a losing street of three fights,
link |
you're 33 years old, you know,
link |
I think you should think about doing something else
link |
in your life, you know, have other goals, you know,
link |
because you're not gonna make it.
link |
And, you know, I've seen that movie before
link |
and it's a very sad ending.
link |
And I'm sad to tell you the truth
link |
because you're not gonna make the money,
link |
just choose something, but if I tell them that,
link |
they're gonna be angry at me because they're gonna be like,
link |
oh, you, you make it and you think I cannot make it.
link |
So it's kind of, they're gonna think I'm cocky,
link |
but I was lucky to make it.
link |
You know what, the star were all aligned,
link |
but at one point you need to be able to have a plan B,
link |
you know, like some parent,
link |
they come to see me with their kids.
link |
Hey, this is the future world champion in the UFC
link |
and what advice would you give him?
link |
I always tell the same thing
link |
and it does not make everybody happy when I say,
link |
I say, I go to the car and say, are you good at school?
link |
Say, stay at school.
link |
School is very important for you.
link |
Yeah, do boxing, martial arts, a great sport, stay in shape,
link |
but don't put your eggs all in the same basket.
link |
And the parents sometimes are angry when I say,
link |
not angry, but I can see in their eyes,
link |
they're like, they kind of surprised.
link |
And it's not because I made it
link |
that I will tell their kid to follow the same path that I did.
link |
I went to school too, I've studied.
link |
I dropped off school
link |
when I had my first world championship fight against Matt Hughes.
link |
But before that, I was in school.
link |
So I had another way to go
link |
if things would not have gone the way I wanted.
link |
But the problem, and I'm saying that,
link |
it's not only about boxing and MMA,
link |
I'm talking about hockey, basketball, baseball, same thing.
link |
Maybe it's the one on 100,000 that make it.
link |
And I'm saying that make it.
link |
When I'm saying I make it, that's mean
link |
that can retire and have enough money
link |
for the rest of his life.
link |
Because it's a sad story.
link |
People only heard about the people that makes it.
link |
But a lot of fighters, even a UFC champion,
link |
in boxing champion, even in football, basketball,
link |
I don't care the big names.
link |
When they retire, they have zero.
link |
They're bankrupt, my friend.
link |
And it's a very sad story and a sad reality
link |
that most people are not aware of.
link |
But having other paths in life, actually,
link |
can also increase the chance of you dominating
link |
and reaching the highest peak in your main thing.
link |
I mean, Jimmy Page, I don't know if you know who that is,
link |
is a judo coach in America.
link |
He says that to all of his athletes,
link |
just to make sure that you go.
link |
He has a lot of Kayla Harrison,
link |
two time Olympic gold medalist.
link |
He has a lot of Olympic medalists.
link |
But basically, there's something about going to school,
link |
like having, if I forget school,
link |
any other avenue in life
link |
that gives you the freedom to go all out in your main.
link |
Like, you know you're doing it for the right reasons.
link |
It clears the mind to where you're free
link |
to be the best in the world,
link |
as opposed to kind of you have to.
link |
I mean, different people are motivated by different things.
link |
So sometimes some people like having their back to the wall,
link |
and that's the only option they have.
link |
But most people, I think, excel when you have other options.
link |
I think it's a distraction,
link |
and I think it's important to have a distraction.
link |
When you say that, I think about one of my coach, John Danagher.
link |
He put his academic background experience into Jiu Jitsu.
link |
And for me, that's why he's the best teacher I ever had.
link |
He started teaching me
link |
when I even couldn't speak much English at the time.
link |
And I was able to communicate and understand,
link |
you know, that's how good he is.
link |
But I truly believe that most of athletes,
link |
especially in sport like mixed martial art,
link |
train way too much.
link |
If I could go back and talk to a young George,
link |
I would tell him, say, you do way too much volume.
link |
You train way too hard.
link |
Train smarter, it's more important.
link |
And I think sometimes we underestimate
link |
the benefit of recuperation.
link |
Because I think we assimilate the information
link |
that we learn during a training when we recuperate,
link |
and not during the training itself.
link |
And this whole mentality of harder, heavier, you know,
link |
like it's good for someone who's lazy.
link |
But if you're an elite athlete, most of the time,
link |
you know, like you're not always, but most of the time,
link |
it's because you're not lazy.
link |
And a lot of guys, sometimes they're elite athletes,
link |
champions, and you hear people say,
link |
oh, I can't believe he's very gifted, but he doesn't work.
link |
But perhaps it's not really because,
link |
perhaps it's because we don't understand.
link |
Perhaps he's doing the right thing,
link |
and it's us who's working too much and too hard.
link |
That's what I think.
link |
There's a guy I train with, he made me think about it.
link |
His name is Mansur Barnawi.
link |
He's going to be a future star.
link |
He's an incredible fighter.
link |
He trained once a day.
link |
And he asked me some time to advise
link |
when he came to Montreal, he's from France.
link |
You'll hear about him, he's very good.
link |
And I saw him in the morning at TriStar.
link |
And I said, OK, I'll see you perhaps later
link |
in the other training zone.
link |
No, I only train once a day.
link |
And he kind of waits for me to give him like,
link |
not an approval, but to see how I react.
link |
Or I don't know, it was kind of a strange feeling.
link |
But I told myself, at that point,
link |
I kind of had an awakening, and I told myself, man,
link |
maybe he's doing the right thing.
link |
Because a lot of people would say, for example, oh,
link |
that's a lazy way of doing it.
link |
But perhaps it's the best way to do it.
link |
I'm not saying that training once a day
link |
is the best way to do it.
link |
That's what I'm saying.
link |
I'm saying that everybody is different.
link |
But for him, it works beautifully.
link |
And I wouldn't change anything if I would be him,
link |
because he's improving like crazy.
link |
Yeah, and ultimately, the bigger picture there
link |
is to do something that everyone else says is stupid.
link |
It's like the fasting thing, that a lot of people
link |
would say, a lot of nutritional experts would say
link |
that that's a dumb way.
link |
If you want to be an MMA fighter,
link |
you should be eating like many times a day.
link |
You should be starting every day with oatmeal.
link |
You should be carving up constantly.
link |
But that's not necessarily true for everybody.
link |
And it's possible.
link |
I'm sure there's actually now a few MMA fighters
link |
that are carnivore only.
link |
I used to eat right before training,
link |
and it didn't bother me.
link |
However, now, my first training that I do normally,
link |
in average, around noon, 11 AM, I haven't
link |
eaten anything when I do my first training.
link |
And it feels to me that I'm much more clear in my mind.
link |
I'm much more creative.
link |
Yeah, it's a big difference.
link |
I just wish I would have known that before.
link |
Well, it's fascinating, the role of the mind in all of this,
link |
how important is it for your mind to be clear,
link |
to really think deeply?
link |
There's a judoka American named Travis Stevens.
link |
I remember he said something that the right kind of practice
link |
is when your mind is exhausted at the end of it,
link |
that you were constantly thinking through things.
link |
Like, your body shouldn't be exhausted first.
link |
Your mind should be exhausted first.
link |
It's really fascinating.
link |
So people think about training hard.
link |
A successful practice is where you walk away just overwhelmed
link |
how much you had to think.
link |
It's a fascinating framing of a successful practice.
link |
Travis Stevens was one of my main training partners
link |
when I got ready for my fight with Nick Diaz and Carlos
link |
He drove every Friday from, I believe, Boston.
link |
It's like a six hour drive.
link |
Drive to the gym in Montreal.
link |
Train with us an hour and a half.
link |
He's got such an amazing discipline.
link |
I was so happy for him when he won the medal at the Olympic
link |
Man, what a well deserved accomplishment.
link |
It's unbelievable.
link |
I was so happy for him.
link |
And every time we got to the gym,
link |
he was waiting for me in the kneeling position like a soldier.
link |
I was like, my god, this guy is made of steel.
link |
And after training, I always offer him.
link |
And I say, hey, Travis, I know you like to train with that.
link |
Because in Montreal, they have a very good judo team,
link |
Nicolas Gill and all those guys.
link |
And I say, if you want to stay, I'll get you at the hotel.
link |
Anything you want is like, no, no, I got to go back.
link |
I got another training later.
link |
I'm like, not only did he train with us,
link |
you have to go back because he had another training.
link |
I'm like, this is insane.
link |
And he's gone through a huge number of injuries.
link |
So he's also an innovator because, I mean,
link |
it's difficult to say, but for American judo,
link |
there's not many high level judoka.
link |
So if you want to fight with the best in the world,
link |
you have to be alone.
link |
It's a lonely journey, actually.
link |
It's much easier to be in Japan where everybody's a killer.
link |
When you're alone at it, it's a difficult journey.
link |
And it's funny we talked about there's some sports
link |
where a mistake is that's it.
link |
You can't recover from a mistake.
link |
I think judo oftentimes is one of those sports.
link |
And added on top of that is the Olympics, only every four
link |
And Travis's story, he's the reason when I saw him in 2008
link |
is I started martial arts.
link |
I switched from wrestling and street fighting
link |
to doing jiu jitsu and judo.
link |
And I just saw so much guts.
link |
And in 2000, I might be messing up the years here,
link |
but in the next Olympics, he fought.
link |
And he lost on just the referee call.
link |
And just he went to war.
link |
And he just so much guts and just everything on the line
link |
And then to still persevere through all the injuries,
link |
through all of that, through incredibly difficult training
link |
sessions to go another four years and then compete
link |
and then win a medal.
link |
I mean, that guy's just and like he clearly
link |
could have been very successful.
link |
He's also an incredible jiu jitsu competitor.
link |
So he could have switched to that, but he's stuck.
link |
In a lot of sport, when you're an elite, like for example,
link |
in Canada, I saw keys, the number one sport of the country.
link |
Kids, when they're an elite, when they're young,
link |
And they're kind of already known as a superstar.
link |
The school where they go and the program they follow,
link |
like I'm sure it's the same thing in the US, in basketball,
link |
baseball, perhaps American football,
link |
because they already chosen.
link |
So they grew up with that, that it's
link |
a kid that superstar, a stardom, so to speak.
link |
And it's already sort of glamorous, you know?
link |
However, in MMA, there's no MMA, judo, wrestling.
link |
Like in America, because it's not our national sport,
link |
it's actually it's not like even when I first started,
link |
it was not really well received by the media.
link |
There's no glamour into it.
link |
It seems like it's another era now.
link |
And I feel sometimes that some people
link |
do it for the wrong reason.
link |
You know, some people do it because of the glamour,
link |
because of the money.
link |
But even if you're an elite and very good,
link |
the glamour and the money won't come in the beginning.
link |
It's a very long grind before it starts to come in.
link |
And you need to make those sacrifices.
link |
And it's a journey that where you will be tested,
link |
you will be hurt, repeatedly, and you're
link |
going to have to reach the down deep and come back up.
link |
And then once you finally think you made it,
link |
you're going to go back in the down deep again.
link |
It's a very exhausting and encouraging adventure sometimes.
link |
But if you hold on to your dream and you believe in it,
link |
and you have the stars are aligned, you're going to make it.
link |
That's why it's only a few people that make it.
link |
And that's why I feel sometimes a lot of people
link |
in the new generation do it for the wrong reason.
link |
In my generation, because of sport,
link |
at first there were no rules.
link |
I thought it was more pure.
link |
The people that did it was really because of the passion.
link |
We didn't seek money, fame.
link |
We did it because we wanted to be.
link |
I did it because I wanted to be the man.
link |
I like to have the confidence that when
link |
I walk somewhere, I have the confidence
link |
that it's an illusion because nobody is faster than a bullet.
link |
But I wanted to achieve it for myself.
link |
And which today now, because I don't
link |
know if it's social media and all that,
link |
the world has changed, the glamour.
link |
I feel it's a different thing right now.
link |
If you get in it for the glamour or the money,
link |
you may not have the right amount of fuel
link |
to persevere through all the ups and downs, for sure.
link |
When you talk about motivation of money and glamour,
link |
a guy comes to mind, and I don't know how many wrestlers
link |
you know, but in Russia, there's a guy
link |
named Bovasya Satyev, the Satyev brothers,
link |
one of the greatest freestyle wrestlers of all time.
link |
But he also has, it's funny, he doesn't have many interviews.
link |
One of my goals is to go out and talk to him in Russian,
link |
do an interview with him.
link |
Because he's exceptionally poetic and a deep thinker.
link |
He's the kind of martial artist that you are in the way
link |
that it's not just about the different battles you've
link |
been through or whatever.
link |
It's about the philosophy behind the way he approaches life.
link |
Now, he has spoken quite a bit about that the glamour,
link |
the fame, the money are all things
link |
that get in the way of the purity of the experience,
link |
the art, that the way to achieve greatness
link |
is to just lose yourself in the art of the actual combat.
link |
In his case, it's wrestling.
link |
And then kind of not to worry and actively make sure
link |
that you block out anybody who feeds you
link |
the narrative where you're supposed
link |
to be this famous person and all those kinds of things
link |
that he basically says, let others write your story.
link |
Make sure that you just focus on the art.
link |
And another person from that side of the world
link |
is, of course, Khabib.
link |
So he represents that side of the world.
link |
And we were talking about walking away.
link |
And most people not being able to walk away at the top
link |
as you have, but also now Khabib has, it looks like,
link |
So maybe you can comment about what your thoughts are
link |
about Khabib numbering him out of being
link |
able to just walk away.
link |
We talk about the gold very often.
link |
Khabib isn't the argument because he
link |
has the most dominant carrier of all martial art, the guy.
link |
Some guys can be named the gold for different reasons,
link |
but Khabib, for that reason, and he's undefeated,
link |
I don't even know if he lost.
link |
He might have lost round, but he dominates all his opponent.
link |
It was ridiculous.
link |
And such an incredible carrier that he had.
link |
I love to watch him fight, he's incredible.
link |
And when you talk about the art, when
link |
you say mixed martial art, the idea
link |
of a flawless performance for me,
link |
everybody often, when we say flawless performance,
link |
thinks about a knockout, a brutal knockout.
link |
But for me, it's to be able to showcase beautiful technique,
link |
like a beautiful takedown, beautiful submission,
link |
like something beautiful that you know when you look at,
link |
for example, Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan,
link |
or like Stephen Curry.
link |
Even if you don't know nothing about basketball
link |
and you watch Michael Jordan, you'll be like, wow,
link |
that's beautiful what you just did.
link |
Like we talk about fighting and trying
link |
to say the word beautiful in fighting for certain people,
link |
it could sound kind of crazy, but I'm
link |
talking about the technique, a beautiful technique.
link |
For me, that's the goal.
link |
When I was fighting, it's not only to have a brutal knockout,
link |
because some people are more gifted than others.
link |
I'm saying gifted, some people are better than others
link |
in certain phase of fighting.
link |
But for me, it was that it was to showcase, to win, of course,
link |
but to showcase some beautiful technique
link |
that you can watch it and be like, wow, that was incredible.
link |
The timing, he did it.
link |
And when I think about Khabib Nurmagomedov,
link |
I see all the detail of his work, especially when
link |
he's got his opponent against the fence,
link |
that's his area of expertise where he's, to me,
link |
he's the best that ever did it.
link |
In terms of that fighting style, that particular expertise
link |
that he has, it's just incredible.
link |
The flawless execution of that particular set of techniques.
link |
And Conor McGregor had the accuracy.
link |
The spider, Anderson Silva, was, I would say,
link |
the most flamboyant of all.
link |
He was moving like the Matrix.
link |
John Jones was incredible in terms of creativity,
link |
spinning elbows and that.
link |
And he faced incredible adversity.
link |
Dimitrius Johnson was so complete.
link |
You could bring, he was slamming a guy to an arm bar.
link |
It was just unbelievable.
link |
He was like the complete fighter.
link |
BJ Penn was so flexible.
link |
He did stuff with his body that nobody could do.
link |
The dexterity of his hips was just unbelievable.
link |
Dominic Cruz, to me, was incredible.
link |
His footwork, his distance control.
link |
So when you talk about the goat, Royce Gracie, another one,
link |
he did things that I think, for me, is not number one.
link |
Yeah, I got to end, starting to interrupt.
link |
The hoist is a fascinating one.
link |
I'd love to hear what you think about him.
link |
But many people consider you, most people,
link |
consider you to be the number one greatest
link |
mixed martial arts fighter ever.
link |
So it's fascinating to remove you from that list
link |
and continue this discussion and asking,
link |
like, who do you think is the greatest fighter ever?
link |
You listed some amazing ones.
link |
Royce, you somehow skipped Fedor.
link |
I'm very, as a Russian, I'm very offended.
link |
No, I was going to, there's so many.
link |
Fedor is one as well.
link |
Fedor, I think, in his prime was like,
link |
when you say, when you talk about a name, for example,
link |
like, we talk about him when he was in his prime.
link |
Like, when I talk, for example, about Anderson Silva,
link |
I'm not talking about the Anderson Silva
link |
who fought his last fight against Ray Yohal.
link |
I'm talking about Anderson Silva who knocked out Victor Belfer.
link |
BJP and the same thing.
link |
The problem is when fighters hang on for too long in the sport.
link |
That's what happened.
link |
They kind of make people forget how good they were.
link |
And it's very sad.
link |
We talk about Fedor and just think about steeping Mio Chich.
link |
Mio Chich is probably the greatest heavyweight of all time,
link |
I would really wonder who would have won this fight,
link |
the both guys in their prime.
link |
I tend to lean towards Fedor because my heart was with Fedor.
link |
Fedor, but he could have gone the other way.
link |
But just because Mio Chich loses his last fight now,
link |
everybody is like, oh, yeah, they forgot about him.
link |
It's one fight, you zig when you should zag, boom.
link |
That's the reality of mixed martial arts.
link |
Well, that's why the thing is the mixed martial arts
link |
isn't just the performance, the strictly who won and who lost.
link |
It's also the stories we tell ourselves.
link |
And so, I mean, there's beautiful stories being weaved.
link |
And that also is part of who is the greatest of all time.
link |
Is what were the battles?
link |
What had to be overcome?
link |
What was the flavor of the flawless performances?
link |
All of that plays into it.
link |
And you're right, being able to walk away at the top
link |
is also part of that.
link |
A lot of people ask me about Khabib.
link |
And that fight, I want it to happen.
link |
Khabib wanted to happen, but UFC did not want to happen.
link |
Between you and Khabib.
link |
And we tried to make it about three years ago
link |
when I retired, no, three.
link |
No, it was after two years ago.
link |
And it never came to fruition.
link |
The UFC were clear.
link |
They said they have other plans for Khabib.
link |
And it makes sense for the business standpoint
link |
because they want to keep the ball rolling.
link |
Now Khabib retired.
link |
And like everybody else, after Justin Gay tree,
link |
I was doing the commentator in French for the UFC.
link |
And I had butterflies.
link |
I thought he was going to call me out.
link |
If there's one guy that I would have said yes,
link |
it would be him because for a fighter,
link |
the most exciting things to do, it's often the scariest one.
link |
And Khabib was worth the risk.
link |
He's the scariest match up for you?
link |
He was worth the risk because nobody
link |
have ever been able to solve them.
link |
How would you solve the Khabib,
link |
never again, matter of puzzle?
link |
Well, Khabib is very good against the fans.
link |
I would have to establish a game plan and everything.
link |
But I think what I would need it to do
link |
is take the center of the octagon right away.
link |
Use a lot of think and faith.
link |
Keep the fight all the way out or all the way in.
link |
And when I say all the way in is when you close the gap,
link |
use my proactive and reactive takedown
link |
and perhaps my superior explosivity to put him down.
link |
I like to use those proactive and reactive techniques
link |
because for me, I feel it's more economical.
link |
Khabib is a much better chain wrestler than me.
link |
Chain wrestler is when you get the guys to the fans,
link |
it's pure wrestling.
link |
What makes my takedown very efficient?
link |
It's not my wrestling.
link |
I'm very good at timing my opponent and getting in
link |
with my explosivity.
link |
So if you watch at my takedown, it does not demand often.
link |
It does not demand a lot of work when I use the,
link |
I call it proactive takedown when he's coming to punch me
link |
and I react, so I mean, proactive is when I'm faking it.
link |
So I instigate the takedown by a fake, then I take him down.
link |
And reactive is when he's, I'm baiting him to throw something
link |
But all my takedown.
link |
In the center of the octagon.
link |
My takedowns are more in the center of the octagon.
link |
Like, for example, another guy that does it well is Gleason
link |
Thibault that did it well in his best days, you know,
link |
Khabib has more a style of chain wrestling.
link |
I would say like Camaru Usman, sort of speak, kind of guy.
link |
It's a different style.
link |
You cannot compare both styles.
link |
And that's the kind of takedown I'm good.
link |
And I would, if I would have fight Khabib, that's one of the
link |
strategies I would have, I wouldn't have been afraid because
link |
everybody that I thought I was able to put them down.
link |
And I have the pedigree to prove it in my fight resume.
link |
So you would have perhaps seen on his back and I would have
link |
perhaps be in my back as well.
link |
So it would have been a very interesting fight.
link |
How hard do you think he's to takedown?
link |
I mean, a lot of people speak about his wrestling being just
link |
It has nothing to do with the wrestling because
link |
It has to do with the karate.
link |
If I got the timing and I got my both hand around his knees,
link |
Everybody goes down.
link |
And I had a lot of that.
link |
That's what I would have.
link |
I would not have been afraid of his wrestling.
link |
I would have be the instigator.
link |
I would have forced the fight forward.
link |
And that's what that's how I would have approached that fight,
link |
which I believe most of his opponent were afraid of his
link |
wrestling because they didn't have the tools that I have to
link |
I would not have forced the wrestling.
link |
I would have in the clinch, I would have tried to disengage.
link |
I have many ways to disengage a clinch.
link |
I would have wanted to force the fight in a fighting distance,
link |
you know, like in a shoot box distance, not in a wrestling
link |
Is it possible this fight still happens?
link |
Your young look great in a suit.
link |
Well, there's a lot of problems now.
link |
And the thing is, now I made peace with it.
link |
I no longer don't want to fight.
link |
And I don't, it's not going to happen.
link |
UFC was not interested.
link |
And I'm bound by contract with the UFC and by exclusivity.
link |
There are some people says to me, oh, how about if Russian
link |
are a crazy, wealthy Russian guy come with the money?
link |
I said, I'm going to be in court with UFC.
link |
And also, I'm older now.
link |
And when I go home and I'm like, I don't want to do this.
link |
You know, like, I don't want to do this, but like, for example,
link |
I was training with Freddie Roach a few days ago
link |
and I'm hitting pads, you know, and Freddie is looking at me
link |
and he's like, hey, you have the hitchback.
link |
I'm like, yeah, if Dana White would walk in the room
link |
in the gym at that precise moment with the UFC contract,
link |
I would sign it in the blink of an eye.
link |
But when I go home, I'm like, hell no.
link |
My belly is full, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy.
link |
Why would I want to fight for?
link |
I made peace with it.
link |
But the minute I go back in the gym because I still get it
link |
inside me when I train with the young guys, I still get it.
link |
And a lot of guys think, hey, tell me the truth,
link |
you're preparing a comeback because I still get it.
link |
You know, I'm a little bit older, but I got more knowledge.
link |
I become a different animal because, you know, it changed you.
link |
But then after you go home and you're like, man, no way I'm doing this.
link |
It's very hard to explain, you need to be a fighter to understand
link |
that it's very, very hard to explain.
link |
Well, from your perspective, I think Khabib is one of the rare,
link |
one of the few fascinating scientific puzzles yet to be solved.
link |
So from that aspect, as a martial artist,
link |
it's just a fascinating journey to try to solve that puzzle.
link |
There is a thing, too, that we say, oh, who's the best fighter, people?
link |
Like I realized that later in my life.
link |
And I'm sure a lot of young guys will say, oh, I said, yeah, it's not...
link |
Don't speak for me, but I'm telling you right now
link |
what I'm about to say you will realize it later.
link |
When I was young, I think you can proclaim yourself the bad ass man on the planet.
link |
You know, like nobody can beat you.
link |
It's an illusion, man.
link |
That's the sad thing about, for example, D.C., Daniel Cormier
link |
does probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all time.
link |
You said Miochish, but like it's almost because of that little matchup with John Jones.
link |
It's difficult for people to conceive of him as the greatest of all time.
link |
It's all about matchup.
link |
It's all about timing.
link |
And also you make a fight.
link |
You make both guys fight 10 times.
link |
The result might be different.
link |
Like every time, you know, I mean, maybe he's going to win 8 out of 10.
link |
But that night is going to lose.
link |
Why? Because we don't know the universe made it like that.
link |
You know, maybe he got sick, maybe he had the emotional issues.
link |
He didn't sleep well and he makes him lose focus and he got caught.
link |
We don't know, but that's the thing with that.
link |
People ask me, would you have done it with Khabib?
link |
What would happen? I don't know.
link |
Maybe out of 10 time.
link |
I don't know. Maybe as a fighter, I hope I would have won more than him.
link |
He thinks the opposite is only one way to find out.
link |
But that night, if there is a fight, the guy that's going to win
link |
doesn't mean he's the best fighter.
link |
That's mean that he's the one that fought the best the night of the fight.
link |
Same thing in basketball or hockey.
link |
The team that wins the game.
link |
It's not necessarily the best team is the team that play the best.
link |
The night of the game and fighting is no different.
link |
So being the baddest man on the planet, it's an illusion.
link |
I mean, that's the tragic thing about it is on any one night,
link |
anything can happen and that tells a story for all of human history.
link |
It's sad to think about, but that's what makes it beautiful.
link |
That there's so much at stake, like entire lives, all the dreams you've had
link |
growing up, all the hard work, all of it is decided in a single night.
link |
Even though that means nothing in terms of who's actually better.
link |
It's I mean, that's the beauty.
link |
That's why people love the Olympics, especially because it happens so rarely
link |
and dreams are broken or like triumph is achieved by the unlikely hero.
link |
All like right there.
link |
I mean, that's that's why we love it, right?
link |
That's why that's why I love it.
link |
If we wouldn't know always the result before it would be boring,
link |
that's why we do it, you know, you watch the odds, you know,
link |
like like sometimes I like to watch the odds before a fight, you know.
link |
Because, you know, there's things, you know, I believe in causality.
link |
You know, I believe in everybody believe different things,
link |
but I believe everything is because there's a there's a cause to everything.
link |
That's personally what I believe.
link |
I don't believe that I have like free will.
link |
I think I have the illusion of free will, but I believe there is a cause for everything.
link |
And if I'm doing something because of something, because of a cause,
link |
by definition, there is no free will in a way, you know, if there is a cause
link |
by definition, there is not.
link |
How does that make you feel, by the way?
link |
Like the idea that if we just look outside even just human psychology
link |
and fighting and so on, if we look at like physics, if everything is predetermined,
link |
if all of these little molecules interacting, it's already like your story is already written.
link |
I mean, it depends. It's written, but I wouldn't need to know all the data
link |
and it's impossible, right?
link |
They like it's it's it's kind of weird.
link |
I got to say, but I don't to me, I don't see any argument
link |
to counter that idea.
link |
I I I I I I I I I don't maybe I'm I'm ignorant, but I haven't seen nobody
link |
and everything that I've read so far, there is nothing that counter
link |
that I did that that because in a mechanical world,
link |
if your car broke or, you know, we don't say, oh, the car decided to broke
link |
or a tree, a tree is fall.
link |
There's reason why the trees fall.
link |
We don't say the trees decide to fall, right?
link |
So because us human being, I think it's our ego we decide.
link |
And I'm no different than anybody when I make a decision.
link |
I decided to this, I choose to do this.
link |
But I'm aware that there is causes
link |
that make me do certain things.
link |
And by definition, I think if there is a cause,
link |
there is no free will by definition, right?
link |
Yes, but the thing is, just like you said,
link |
we understand so little about human intelligence, the human mind
link |
and especially consciousness that the this giant mystery,
link |
this darkness that we don't understand how how it how it feels
link |
like to be something, to be a conscious being that because of that,
link |
we're not able to really even reason about free will or not.
link |
Because there might be some magic that comes from consciousness.
link |
You know, the consciousness might be the thing that makes us
link |
different from a car that breaks down.
link |
There might be something totally fascinating, totally undiscovered
link |
yet that will make us realize that free will is actually real
link |
and somehow fundamental to the human experience.
link |
So it's sometimes I think we forget when we talk about free will
link |
and physics and it all seeming to be predetermined.
link |
We forget how little we actually understand about the world.
link |
And I think in that mystery, that could be totally new ideas
link |
that are yet to be discovered and will make us realize that it's
link |
not just an illusion.
link |
It is something that is like at the core of how the universe works.
link |
Some people believe that consciousness is a fundamental
link |
property of the universe.
link |
Like it's a it's a one of the forces of physics.
link |
Like consciousness permeates everything in everything.
link |
Like this table is conscious, but it's not as conscious as us
link |
and where this little peak of consciousness.
link |
And if that's true, and if we get to understand that, maybe there's
link |
something there's an extra bonus we get in terms of free will.
link |
Once you become one of those entities that are super conscious.
link |
So I tend to be sort of humbled by the mystery of it.
link |
Do you believe one day with with the technology that keep improving,
link |
we will make robot that will be able to be somehow conscious?
link |
I that's been my dream.
link |
That's been I hope I hope to do just that.
link |
First of all, I believe that all people are capable and want
link |
to be good to each other.
link |
And I think love is a is a really powerful thing that connects us
link |
and can create better and better worlds sort of like create better
link |
and better societies that improve both the technology, the quality
link |
of life and just the basics of human experience.
link |
And I think creating AI systems that are conscious that are human
link |
like can enable us to be better to each other like they can it's almost
link |
like adding more and more kindness to the world through the systems
link |
we interact with will inspire us to be better and better to each other.
link |
In terms of them being conscious, I think that is an absolute requirement
link |
that entities we interact with communicate some element of consciousness to us.
link |
Like that's how we connect to each other.
link |
The reason we you and I connect is that we believe that each of us are conscious.
link |
And to me, what consciousness means is the ability to hurt, ability to to suffer
link |
to to struggle in this world.
link |
Because just like you said, without the struggle, you don't have the love.
link |
You don't have the pleasure.
link |
And ultimately, consciousness is an entity's ability to struggle, to suffer.
link |
And from that arises the pleasure and us together being able to appreciate
link |
sort of appreciate the highs and experience together at the lows.
link |
That's how we form the deep connections.
link |
I personally think we can create that in robots and I personally believe
link |
I personally believe it's a lot easier than we think.
link |
Does it make you afraid sometimes about the fact that one day high like
link |
intelligence, artificial intelligence could be, you know, could hurt us?
link |
Or, you know, like because we're, you know, because of Hollywood, of course,
link |
you know, the movies we watch.
link |
But it seems like when I hear sometimes Elon Musk talking, you know, like,
link |
yeah, so Elon talks about with AI, we're summoning the demon.
link |
He is very concerned and I talked to him about it quite a bit.
link |
He's very concerned about all the different ways AI could hurt us humans.
link |
I tend to believe that there's a lot more ways in which AI can make our lives
link |
better and can make life awesome for humans.
link |
I think humans are the ones that can do a lot of evil things.
link |
So I'm less worried about AI.
link |
I'm more worried about humans.
link |
If I look at what you men have done on the course of history, you know,
link |
for example, in regards to the planet, to the scale of the universe,
link |
I think what I'm afraid is that we have more of a destructive force
link |
than a beneficial force.
link |
So if a high take that in consideration in order to protect us against ourselves,
link |
And I don't know if you understand what like, what do you think about that?
link |
Does it makes you afraid sometimes?
link |
Not because of a high, but because what human are doing that high could do to us
link |
to prevent us of hurting each or ourselves, you know?
link |
Yeah, no, I mean, definitely it can bring out the.
link |
The worst in human nature and provide tools for evil people to do evil things
link |
at a larger scale.
link |
But I just think it depends what you think human beings are.
link |
I tend to believe that as we get more intelligent, we we start to see the value,
link |
the evolutionary value and the value in terms of happiness of being good to each other.
link |
And I think AI, if you look at AI as an optimization problem of how to create
link |
a civilization that works well and expands throughout the universe,
link |
I think love is much more effective.
link |
So AI will help us maximize that.
link |
I think there's going to be always spikes throughout, as it has been through human
link |
history, where charismatic leaders will do evil onto the world in the name of good.
link |
You have the Stalin and the Hitler's and all of that.
link |
But ultimately, over time, I think technology will give the good, the good people power
link |
and the evil people less power.
link |
Now, there's a lot of ways in that, in that that won't be the case.
link |
There's a lot of ways for it to go wrong.
link |
And Elon talks about them.
link |
But I honestly think in terms of intelligent AI, that's going to bring more love to the world.
link |
The thing I'm concerned about is dumb AI.
link |
So there's been a lot of discussion between China and the United States recently on
link |
autonomous weapons system.
link |
This is something people don't, they're afraid to talk about.
link |
But there's now a race where the United States has officially said that they're not against
link |
adding AI to its weapons systems.
link |
So now the US military is adding automation, adding intelligence to its drones, to its
link |
anything that can create damage.
link |
And so, of course, they did this so in response to China doing that.
link |
So you can imagine, this is Terminator.
link |
You think about Terminator as intelligent systems, they're not.
link |
They're pretty dumb.
link |
The point is, they're efficient at doing what they do.
link |
And in the space of war, efficient at doing what you do means killing.
link |
So that I'm really afraid of.
link |
But those are dumb AI.
link |
Those aren't your loving, deep, fulfilling relationships.
link |
That's like efficiently being able to fly, to plan the trajectory of dropping bombs, of
link |
missiles, of how to do counter attacks, of how to maximize the destruction of a particular
link |
facility instead of individuals.
link |
And then that can just escalate.
link |
And as opposed to the Cold War with the Soviet Union, this could be a hot war.
link |
And then the consequences, once you allow, it's kind of terrifying.
link |
Because currently, the drones are operated by humans.
link |
So you have, say, you have information about intelligence gives you information about a
link |
particular terrorist located in this area.
link |
And then you use drones to maybe the automation there is to help you figure out what is the
link |
best trajectory to strike at that location.
link |
So you still have a human that pulls the trigger at the end, dropping the bomb.
link |
Now, automation and AI in autonomous weapons systems might be where you say, there's a bad
link |
guy over here, you figure out how to get rid of the bad guy.
link |
So then, of course, the systems will be very good at finding the right trajectory and so
link |
on, but there's bugs that can happen, unexpected bugs, that the system might figure out that
link |
there is this bad guy might actually be in these other five locations.
link |
So it might make sense to cover the entire area, right?
link |
And so you might drop bombs on the entire area.
link |
And then, you know, that's just okay.
link |
So that's going to lead to a lot of destruction at a scale of a city.
link |
But then you can immediately take that to nuclear weapons.
link |
If you add automation to responding to counterattacks to nuclear weapons, you might get information
link |
that somebody is planning a nuclear attack on the United States, and the AI system will
link |
immediately respond.
link |
And, you know, it can respond at a scale of launching nuclear weapons itself.
link |
And so there's all of these possibilities that don't require much intelligence.
link |
And that's exceptionally concerning.
link |
I'm like you, I do not believe there is babies that are born bad.
link |
I think people do bad things because of their experience.
link |
However, if I look through my experience and from what I can see, very often,
link |
men's power wants more power.
link |
That's what makes me afraid.
link |
Listen, I've come from the Soviet Union.
link |
Stalin is arguably one of the most powerful humans in history.
link |
He's not talked to often enough about by the evils he's done.
link |
Hitler gets all the attention.
link |
But Stalin has done arguably much more evil than Hitler.
link |
Yeah, this is human nature.
link |
We see that with institutions.
link |
We see that with governments and nations.
link |
I think you see this with the internet.
link |
People are really hungry for the distribution of power.
link |
You see that people are very much distrustful of centralized places of power,
link |
of institutions and so on.
link |
So I think successful organizations, successful companies, successful governments
link |
will be run by people who distribute the power.
link |
I don't trust myself with power at all.
link |
And I think you have to build into the system that no one person can have power,
link |
that you distribute it.
link |
That's where you have, in the financial sector, you have cryptocurrency right now
link |
with Bitcoin and all those kinds of things.
link |
People are exploring, how can we avoid the central bank to have control?
link |
With the power in the hands of people, thousands of people, millions of people.
link |
In the same way with military, with any kind of technology,
link |
I think the future looks very distributed.
link |
What do you think about militarizing space?
link |
I don't think about it often because right now I'm filled with excitement about space exploration,
link |
which is the positive aspect.
link |
So Elon, you know, I was born in an era where it was exciting.
link |
I don't know about you, but for me it's exciting to look up to the stars
link |
and dream about us humans colonizing Mars, colonizing other planets,
link |
expanding out to the galaxy and to the universe.
link |
That's really exciting.
link |
So the possibilities there are endless.
link |
I don't think, because also the resources are endless.
link |
And so I think we get into trouble with militarization, with wars,
link |
when the resources are very constrained.
link |
So I think for a while we're not going to be fighting.
link |
The only wars we'll be fighting in space are the ones that kind of help us.
link |
Another nation to compete.
link |
Who goes to the moon first, I guess.
link |
Yes, those kinds of things are maybe for satellites and all those kinds of communication
link |
and maybe in assistance for cyber warfare, which is also very dangerous.
link |
But in terms of the wars out in space, I think everything out in space will be positive and inspiring.
link |
It's very hard, but all good things are hard, I think.
link |
This is where I've been talking to a bunch of people about extraterrestrial life.
link |
I'm really excited by...
link |
I don't know, it's the other thing.
link |
When I look out to the stars, it's exciting to me.
link |
I know I think you've spoken about it being scary.
link |
But to me, it's exciting that there's intelligent creatures out there,
link |
far beyond perhaps the intelligence of our own,
link |
that are just too far away to explore yet,
link |
but we might one day come in contact with them.
link |
That to me is the ultimate motivator,
link |
is to meet other intelligent life forms out there and connect with them.
link |
Have you ever met Jacques Vallée?
link |
No, but I've been in communication.
link |
I hope to talk to him. He's an amazing French.
link |
I know that there are many theories about...
link |
If there's alien, we don't know, right?
link |
But some people think it's from another star system.
link |
Jacques Vallée has a...
link |
To make a long story short, he has a different theory.
link |
He thinks it's perhaps beings that could be living in a different dimension than us.
link |
And the reason why he says that is when he makes an experiment...
link |
When there is a sightings very often of a UFO,
link |
let's say I'm the UFO, you have three guys.
link |
They are looking at the UFO very often.
link |
One experiment that you can do, and sometimes that is the case,
link |
you ask your two friends to walk on the side,
link |
and there's a point that it's like a corridor.
link |
You see the UFO, then you stop seeing it like a corridor.
link |
That's one of the reasons why he's saying that it's perhaps dimension.
link |
And I found that fascinating.
link |
This is what, to the discussion of consciousness and all that,
link |
it feels like we might be just experiencing a very particular slice of this universe.
link |
We might not be understanding what's at the higher dimensions,
link |
or higher dimensions in whatever form that means.
link |
There's all these physical theories now that describe a world with dimensions
link |
that's much higher than the three dimension of space in the one dimension of time.
link |
So whatever the hell is going on in those other dimensions,
link |
it could be something, unfortunately, this is the sad part.
link |
It might be something we can't even comprehend with our human brains.
link |
That the limitations are just, I mean, we're just descendants of apes.
link |
So it might not be possible to even understand.
link |
Is there alien? Is there another dimension?
link |
Are they human from the future?
link |
Is there perhaps Chinese or another group of people
link |
that are working with technology far behind?
link |
Lex, I had the chance to meet, because of the sport I'm doing,
link |
I met a lot of people in military and politics sometimes,
link |
that I asked them every time.
link |
I met one this week, and I asked him, I said,
link |
is it true about the UFOs there?
link |
And he says to me, even before I asked him,
link |
I said, I sort of have to ask you a question.
link |
I was in Los Angeles.
link |
And I said, sorry, I have to ask you a question.
link |
He said, oh, you want to ask me about UFO right away?
link |
He saw it in your eyes.
link |
He said, yeah, there's things that flies that we don't know.
link |
But he didn't tell me, he doesn't know,
link |
they don't know if it's alien or whatever,
link |
but there's things apparently that are detected,
link |
and I know you met Fravor.
link |
Fravor is fascinating.
link |
It makes me sad that...
link |
We live in a different era now,
link |
that it used to be a subject that was ridiculed,
link |
and now it's so cool that I'm very excited to live
link |
Yeah, it's really exciting,
link |
but still the governments are kind of behind the times
link |
They're not transparent, and they don't communicate well.
link |
It saddens me to think the possibility that
link |
the US government might be in possession of something
link |
that they don't tell the world about
link |
because they're just scared.
link |
It's because they don't know what the hell it is,
link |
and they don't want the Chinese to gain the technology
link |
or all those kinds of things.
link |
Do you think the president of the United States,
link |
for example, because the president comes and goes
link |
every, right, four or eight years,
link |
do you think he would know all the secrets
link |
or it would be a guy like, for example,
link |
Vladimir Putin would know much of, you know what I mean?
link |
I don't think the president even knows all the secrets.
link |
The US president, yeah.
link |
I don't think so, because he goes,
link |
they go back and forth every four years.
link |
They have the terms, right?
link |
I wasn't sure before,
link |
but I think I could trust the previous
link |
United States president of Donald Trump
link |
that if he knew, he would probably tweet about it.
link |
I've worked with DARPA.
link |
I've worked with the DOD at clearance,
link |
and I think from the perspective,
link |
if you see the world as fundamentally a dangerous world
link |
where secrets are important to have
link |
from a military perspective,
link |
I think it's very unsafe to tell the president
link |
of the United States that you have this kind of technology.
link |
So if you think of the world in that way,
link |
I hate that that's how that world is viewed,
link |
because ultimately, I think what's more powerful
link |
than the military secrets,
link |
and I hope that actually is what will happen in the 21st century,
link |
what's more powerful is inspire people.
link |
Inspire the young Elon Musk's of the world
link |
to create cool new things.
link |
If we have technology that we have encountered
link |
that we don't understand,
link |
that should only be inspiration to develop that kind of stuff.
link |
It shouldn't be seen as a military threat,
link |
as a secret to hold on to.
link |
I think secrets...
link |
I hope we more and more let go of the idea
link |
that there are secrets that give us advantage.
link |
In the tech sector,
link |
people are more and more releasing the software,
link |
making it open source.
link |
Secrets don't make sense.
link |
They share the knowledge.
link |
They share the knowledge.
link |
Being afraid to share the knowledge,
link |
I think, I hope, is an old idea.
link |
When you make it, things more compartmentalize.
link |
That's the other thing,
link |
is the bureaucracy of government.
link |
People only know their own little thing,
link |
and they don't spread the information.
link |
It doesn't travel well.
link |
There's a lot of inefficiencies there.
link |
because the science, the engineering
link |
that happens in governments,
link |
developing the different airplanes
link |
they use for military applications,
link |
is some of the most incredible engineering ever.
link |
It's secret, because they're afraid to share it
link |
with the Russians and the Chinese and so on.
link |
But on that topic,
link |
I do think somebody like Vladimir Putin,
link |
probably knows some stuff.
link |
I would love to know what he knows.
link |
But then again, you never know,
link |
because even he is...
link |
I think of him as an exceptionally powerful person,
link |
but he's also just managing a bunch of tribes.
link |
His power is very limited.
link |
He's trying to hold together
link |
a bunch of greedy, power hungry madmen.
link |
He's trying to establish a balance.
link |
He might not know everything.
link |
I hope this changes,
link |
because I think there's nothing more exciting about...
link |
I don't even know if there is a human that knows.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
This idea that there's some alien civilization
link |
that land on the White House
link |
and say, all right, I come to meet the prison.
link |
I'm like, why would they do that?
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
It's kind of absurd.
link |
Well, I do think that actually...
link |
I mean, that's one possibility, right?
link |
If an alien civilization really wanted to contact us,
link |
I think everybody would know.
link |
So I think we're...
link |
If there's any kind of interaction
link |
between humans and aliens,
link |
I think most likely what we're interacting with
link |
is a crappy probe drone thing
link |
that kind of just like...
link |
Yeah, more and more.
link |
This dumb thing...
link |
We're not interacting with the aliens.
link |
I think just like for us,
link |
I think humans aren't...
link |
when we venture out into space,
link |
the first thing that's going to meet aliens
link |
It's not us humans,
link |
because we keep sending robots out.
link |
So they're going to make decisions about humans
link |
by looking at the robots.
link |
They're famous grays.
link |
Maybe they are robots.
link |
Maybe it's all BS too, you know?
link |
Yeah, so I don't know...
link |
I don't know what that interaction actually would look like
link |
if aliens really wanted to reach out,
link |
really communicate.
link |
And I don't know if we're able to actually communicate with them.
link |
That's one of the sad things.
link |
We might not be able to...
link |
The aliens might already be here,
link |
and we might just not even know
link |
how to see them or know how to communicate with them.
link |
There's so much misinformation,
link |
and sometimes there's people
link |
that are very credible that made crazy claims.
link |
You don't know what to believe.
link |
the Minister of Defence of Canada,
link |
said that there are many alien rays that ever...
link |
That's what he said.
link |
And that scientist from,
link |
I think Israel recently,
link |
said something about Trump.
link |
He was keeping secret.
link |
Medvedev, you're from Russia.
link |
Medvedev, I've been caught during a break
link |
in between interviews to talk about,
link |
like, oh, it's like men in black,
link |
I don't know what to speak.
link |
It didn't look like he was joking,
link |
but I don't know if he was saying the truth.
link |
Yeah, you can check on YouTube.
link |
Yeah, there's a lot of things like that sometimes.
link |
Or Bob Lazar, I'm like,
link |
imagine if it's true, man.
link |
Imagine if we're like a fish in the water
link |
who live in our home world,
link |
and sometimes there's a fisherman that grabbed the fish,
link |
back in the water, and the fish goes back to the other fish and says,
link |
hey, there's someone that take me out of the water,
link |
then I've seen things that I did not like.
link |
Imagine if it's true, like,
link |
and one other thing, like,
link |
I wanted to ask you because you were consciousness.
link |
I more and more, I don't know if you're paying attention to this.
link |
There's now, it's become more acceptable in the scientific community
link |
to do large scale studies of psychedelics, for example.
link |
And there's a lot of connection between psychedelics and dreams.
link |
There's very similar states.
link |
There's a lot our mind does when it detaches itself from reality,
link |
that it can just explore a lot of different ideas.
link |
It's very possible that dreams is you're traveling somewhere.
link |
And the same thing with psychedelics, you're traveling somewhere.
link |
In a different, not traveling to physical space,
link |
it's the other dimensions that we're talking about.
link |
You're traveling some other,
link |
through some other dimension to meet some other creature.
link |
People talk with DMT that they meet some elves.
link |
I've never done, I'd like to.
link |
I don't know if there's a safe, legal way to do it,
link |
but they all talk about meeting elves
link |
and creatures, like entities.
link |
Like, who are they?
link |
Is it because they're high or is it because...
link |
They're actually meeting something.
link |
And maybe there's no difference.
link |
I mean, who knows exactly.
link |
That takes us right back to us,
link |
not being able to really understand how our mind works.
link |
You know, I work in artificial intelligence.
link |
It's clear that we understand so little about intelligence,
link |
some basic things about intelligence.
link |
Just at the very sort of basic first principles level,
link |
we don't understand what it means to reason,
link |
to think, to assimilate pieces of knowledge together
link |
from the basics to the complex.
link |
We don't understand it.
link |
We don't understand how the human mind does it.
link |
We don't understand how the human mind is able to take
link |
incredible waterfall of information
link |
and filter cleanly into just, like, clean.
link |
You only see the things that are important
link |
and are able to stitch them together
link |
and be able to reason about the world.
link |
And at the same time have moments of genius, of creativity.
link |
Like, what is that?
link |
That also, you know, people, writers talk about that,
link |
that they're, you know, they're almost like communicating
link |
Like, where do ideas come from?
link |
This is the Joe Rogan philosophy.
link |
But I do know that past civilization,
link |
where a lot of them were based on shamanism.
link |
And you know what, I think it's sad is,
link |
if someone drank alcohol and when he's drunk,
link |
he's going to commit, like, create, like, like murders or something.
link |
We're gonna blame the person, right?
link |
We're gonna say that's his fault.
link |
It's not the fault of alcohol.
link |
However, if someone does psychedelic or any things
link |
that is illegal and do something crazy,
link |
now we're gonna put the fault on psychedelic,
link |
you know what I mean?
link |
And perhaps the person itself is the reason
link |
why, you know, he's been doing these things,
link |
you know what I mean?
link |
So, yeah, it's fascinating how, like, society,
link |
you know, like in Canada, they just legalize marijuana.
link |
Yeah, marijuana is legal.
link |
But before that, before they did it, like,
link |
if you talk, for example, to my dad, my dad,
link |
he's against it, like, because he's a whole mentality.
link |
He's like, it's drug, it's bad.
link |
But drinking a glass, you know, drinking a beer, it's fine.
link |
I mean, what is, you know what I mean?
link |
What is good, what is bad?
link |
I guess you think chocolate could be bad as well
link |
for your health or, I mean, I'm going to the extreme now,
link |
but what is good, what is bad?
link |
If you use it for recreation,
link |
you use it for an experience, to learn about yourself.
link |
It's like, the line is very tiny, you know?
link |
There are some countries that drugs are all legals,
link |
you know what I mean?
link |
And I don't know the stats,
link |
but I would be interesting to know
link |
if they have more crimes there
link |
than other countries where it's more strict.
link |
I would be interesting to know about that.
link |
It's fascinating to me, you know?
link |
Yeah, and I mean, we humans kind of just come up with
link |
arbitrary lines of what's good, what's bad,
link |
that applies with drugs, that applies with anything,
link |
that applies with animals, for example.
link |
We talked about carnivore diet.
link |
Maybe the time we live in now will be remembered
link |
for the cruelty to animals, for example.
link |
And I believe this, the 21st century,
link |
will be remembered for our cruelty to robots.
link |
That eventually there'll be a civil rights movement
link |
for robots, the ones who choose to be conscious,
link |
the ones who have consciousness will say,
link |
we deserve rights too.
link |
We deserve to be treated with respect too.
link |
How about the people we put in jail?
link |
People put in jail.
link |
I mean, I think in the future we'll look back
link |
and we'll think of ourselves being stupid
link |
to put people in jail instead of, you know,
link |
like trying to fix the problem at the base, you know?
link |
Of course now, or I guess it's our ignorance
link |
that made it in a way that we cannot sometimes understand
link |
what makes sometimes a psychopath a psychopath
link |
or a murderer a murderer.
link |
But you know, if we can pinpoint the problem
link |
and take care of it before, you know what I mean?
link |
Or made it in a way that we can reestablish
link |
that person in the society, you know?
link |
Who knows, you know, what was the future's old?
link |
It's interesting. We live in an interesting time.
link |
You mentioned your father.
link |
What have you learned from your dad?
link |
You mentioned he was an important part of your childhood.
link |
My dad is amazing.
link |
I grew up, we didn't have a lot of money,
link |
but it doesn't mean if I'm born in a nice country
link |
that always nice thing happened, you know?
link |
My dad, for me, is a big role model
link |
because I see him through my life facing a lot of adversity.
link |
You know, he stopped drinking when I was a teenager.
link |
He was an alcoholic.
link |
And I've seen him struggle through that, you know?
link |
And it was very, very hard.
link |
And I've seen him work like crazy hours,
link |
like leave in the morning, come home at night,
link |
burned out because of work through almost all his life.
link |
To the point that it became a slave of the system.
link |
It became an habit and a normal way of living.
link |
And it made me realize that I've learned a lot through my father.
link |
He taught me perseverance, hard work, you know?
link |
When you face adversity, you know,
link |
to never give up until you achieve it.
link |
But also, he taught me a lesson that in a way
link |
that I don't want to be like him.
link |
Even if he is happy, it's because I realize
link |
I don't think he knows anything else.
link |
Like he works through all his life.
link |
And I don't want to live to work.
link |
I want to work for, you know what I mean?
link |
I want to decide when I work, you know?
link |
I feel like he lived to work instead of working for a living.
link |
And perhaps it's because he did not have choice.
link |
He was the older of his family.
link |
They were nine kids.
link |
My grandfather died when he was young.
link |
So he had to become the father of the family
link |
and work to put money on the table.
link |
So perhaps that made him that way.
link |
And he became like an habit for him.
link |
My dad taught me when I was at school,
link |
I was bullied at school.
link |
He's the first one who initiated me to martial art.
link |
He taught me karate.
link |
My dad was a black belt in Kyoko Shinkari as well.
link |
But because he was working too much,
link |
he didn't have time to teach me.
link |
And I needed self defense in order to defend myself.
link |
I have a winning, a great career in mixed martial art,
link |
but in the schoolyard, my record is not very good.
link |
When you're a kid and you're about seven, eight years old
link |
and you're facing bullies that are two to three years older
link |
than yourself, it's not the same thing
link |
than when you're 25 and the guy is 28.
link |
So there is a big discrepancy in terms of maturity.
link |
So my dad introduced me to karate.
link |
Then he didn't have time to teach me.
link |
Then he put me in a school with a teacher.
link |
It was Jean Couture.
link |
And I grew up with a lot of anger.
link |
And there were two persons that was afraid growing up.
link |
My dad was very severe, very strict with me.
link |
And I'm glad he was because I could have become very bad.
link |
I could have become chosen on a different path.
link |
People see me as a nice guy.
link |
I tried to be a good role model,
link |
but I could easily have turned towards our own path.
link |
There's darkness somewhere in there.
link |
Yes, there are a lot.
link |
And a lot of my friends have chosen that path.
link |
And unfortunately, they are not with me today.
link |
Even if I'm from Canada,
link |
and Canada seems like the nicest country in the world.
link |
Like I said, even if you live in a nice country,
link |
not always nice thing, it depends on the situation.
link |
But that's what my dad taught me.
link |
And he gave me that because I'm very good at learning
link |
by observing people.
link |
And by observing him, I see the struggle he had with alcoholism
link |
and what he did, the pain,
link |
sometimes that he inflicted to us, to my family.
link |
But how he turned, he did a 180 degree.
link |
And I really admire that.
link |
And I know it was very, very hard for him and he did it.
link |
For me, that's a great role model for me.
link |
So your dad being an engine of basically hard work
link |
and you finding a balance of being able to work your ass off,
link |
but also to be able to enjoy a piece of chocolate.
link |
What is the perfect day in the life of George St. Pierre look like?
link |
So like, if you were to go through a day that's very productive
link |
but also one that makes you sit back and enjoy
link |
and say, that was a good day.
link |
What's that look like?
link |
What are we talking about?
link |
When do you wake up?
link |
It changed over the years.
link |
When I was younger, I had a good day.
link |
It was like a good training session
link |
or achieving good thing in my training.
link |
And that's why I was very good at it
link |
because when I was obsessed,
link |
I think to be good at something, you need to become obsessed.
link |
And to me, performing in my training was everything.
link |
When I had a bad training session,
link |
I didn't tell my training partner.
link |
I was acting like because of my ego.
link |
I didn't tell nobody.
link |
I was like, hey, then I go in the locker room.
link |
Then I'm playing the training in my mind.
link |
I'm saying, I should have done this, should have done that.
link |
And it haunts me, it haunts me, man, it's a training.
link |
And it haunts me until the next training session
link |
when I can redeem myself.
link |
When we used to train all together back in the day,
link |
in Canada, we had David Loiseau.
link |
We had Patrick Côté.
link |
We had Dennis Gang, Steve Vigno, Jean Attangoulay.
link |
There was all like the best guy in Canada
link |
that were training with each other.
link |
We were training in different gyms, but once a week,
link |
I made it in a way that I contact everybody
link |
that we all joined force and we exchanged ideas
link |
and we trained with each other.
link |
I would say friendly competition.
link |
It was not malicious, but it was hard training.
link |
Our goal was to improve, but it wasn't very competitive.
link |
And when that day you used to get out of the training session
link |
with a bad performance for me,
link |
it used to haunt me until the following week
link |
when I could give it back and perform better
link |
with the guy that I had the most trouble with.
link |
That's how it was.
link |
And that's how you get better.
link |
But it was not a training where we were trying to do
link |
malicious things to one another.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
You need to be playful, but playful, but competitive.
link |
That when I had a good training session
link |
because the sparring was on a Friday,
link |
I had the best weekend in the world.
link |
I was going out with my friend, drinking and partying
link |
That was my ideal day back in the day.
link |
You know, my life has changed.
link |
I am not the same person I used to be
link |
when I went on my knees and begged the UFC for a title shot.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
I'm healthy, most importantly.
link |
That's the most important thing.
link |
And I'm going to tell you the truth.
link |
As good as my career was,
link |
man, my private life is a million time better.
link |
And people ask me, sometimes they always wonder,
link |
they try to ask me.
link |
A lot of people are curious.
link |
And in the sport of mixed martial arts,
link |
we say we play basketball, we play soccer,
link |
but we don't play fighting.
link |
So when you expose your private life,
link |
we've seen that happen in the fight with
link |
sometimes Conor McGregor and Khabib.
link |
Your competitor knows that he cannot get to you,
link |
so what he will do, he will try to get to someone that you love.
link |
So I never expose my private life.
link |
I never post Instagram of my family or my stuff.
link |
That's the reason why.
link |
Because I'm in a business of fighting.
link |
And people know that they cannot get to me.
link |
And I believe that because I was bullied when I was young,
link |
I didn't realize that when I was young.
link |
But it helps me deal with the mental warfare
link |
that I had to face right now in my life in mixed martial arts
link |
because it's a very ego test export.
link |
And there's a lot of intimidation.
link |
And I was used to, I've been used to this thing when I was young.
link |
So it does not get to me.
link |
However, the good way to get to me,
link |
go try to get to someone I love.
link |
Now, man, I'm gonna go crazy.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
And I'm aware of that.
link |
So in order to protect myself,
link |
I always, because I'm aware I'm a public person.
link |
So I try to always keep my surrounding in the private.
link |
One of the ways that your friend of mine, Joe Rogan,
link |
has been an inspiration that he's got like an incredible family.
link |
And he, for the most part, it started to change recently.
link |
Actually, it's kind of interesting.
link |
But for the most part throughout his life, he kept it pretty secret.
link |
Doesn't talk about it in his calm.
link |
Comedians talk about everything.
link |
He doesn't really talk about it.
link |
And there's something to that.
link |
It preserves the magic of the silence of the private life.
link |
And I think it can affect the development of the kid.
link |
If the kid grew up being, oh, he's the son of that guy
link |
instead of being his own person.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
So for me, it's very important.
link |
Like, my parents are older.
link |
But it taught me a big lesson.
link |
When I'm with my friend at the dinner or anything,
link |
I talk with the person or we share a thing.
link |
But when I'm talking, I'm aware of the audience where I'm in front.
link |
But oftentimes those people are just incredible.
link |
It kind of makes me sad that, you know,
link |
there's a lot of people that love you, right?
link |
And there are a lot of really incredible people.
link |
And you'll never get to really know their story.
link |
I mean, I don't know.
link |
For me, it makes me sad.
link |
You see them like at airports and stuff.
link |
People will tell me they listen to this podcast or something like that.
link |
And I could tell they're incredible people.
link |
And it makes me, it's like a little goodbye of a possible friend.
link |
It makes me, it's lonely.
link |
It's almost like celebrity is a lonely thing.
link |
So the higher the celebrity, the more lonely you become in some kind of way.
link |
But of course you have that little jam of a private life where you can...
link |
Personally, I believe every relationship, I don't like to use this term,
link |
but it's always a give and take relationship, you know?
link |
Like you can gain something and the person...
link |
It could be something like not materialistic, like something always a good, confident,
link |
like someone that can give me good advice or...
link |
It's a word I would say like extensional.
link |
If a pilot has a copilot, the copilot has an extensional relationship with him.
link |
He knows if he gets sick or he faint, he's there to make sure, he's there to help.
link |
And I think in every relation, it's about compatibility, but it's about extensionality.
link |
In a way that if that person is extensional.
link |
And sometimes we talk about love, you know?
link |
Like sometimes I think, is it a BS word or not?
link |
Because I myself sometimes look at myself in the mirror.
link |
And when I do stupid thing, sometimes I love myself a lot and sometimes I don't.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
Because I'm angry at myself, I've done stupid thing.
link |
So that means sometimes love could be fluctuating.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
How about in relationships, sometimes people, they say they love each other,
link |
but then when they divorce, they go,
link |
Oh, I want the house and the dog and the kids stay with me.
link |
And you know what I mean?
link |
If you love, by definition, if you really love someone,
link |
and let's say you're an old man and you love a woman and she decided to leave you for a younger man,
link |
if you really love her, you're going to help her pack and leave.
link |
But in our society sometimes we want to hone something.
link |
To me, love includes the missing somebody, the losing somebody, the anger at somebody.
link |
It's all the passion, feelings towards somebody.
link |
Like I, you know, it's all part of the thing.
link |
It's the ups and downs.
link |
It's the sad thing is when the feelings towards a person, the ups and downs go away.
link |
That's the opposite of love.
link |
So the opposite of love isn't hate.
link |
To me, the opposite of love is forgetting.
link |
And that's a much bigger, the depth of human connection.
link |
That's how I see love.
link |
So sometimes I try to stay positive and I've been asked how I try to,
link |
because I have the image of someone who's positive,
link |
but I go through my own demon as well sometimes.
link |
However, when we talk about love, when I was young, you know, like, I didn't love who I was at first.
link |
That's how I love.
link |
I learned to kind of love myself.
link |
Like when I was going through bullying, I believe I was bullied because I didn't love myself.
link |
Because I project a very bad image of what I think of myself.
link |
I was a kid that lacked a lot of confidence.
link |
I was looking down when I was walking.
link |
I shrugged my shoulder.
link |
When someone was talking to me, I was avoiding eye contact.
link |
So I was a very easy target for bullies.
link |
And I think bullies are like predatory animal in nature.
link |
They will hunt the easier prey.
link |
The lion don't go for the half a bull.
link |
They go for the one who's old or who's sick, the weakest one.
link |
And bullies are the same in society, I believe.
link |
And I didn't like to be bullied, of course, but I didn't like the person that I was.
link |
But I found out to martial art, the respect, and my coach was extraordinary to me.
link |
He taught me discipline and self strength.
link |
And I found out that I needed to, in order to love myself, I needed to change myself.
link |
Because when I looked at my son in the mirror, I didn't like what I saw.
link |
So I decided to become like someone that I would love.
link |
So I tried to look people straight up and trying to showcase a more confident image that I had.
link |
And it was hard in the beginning because I didn't really believe in it.
link |
But I faked it until I kind of make it.
link |
So when I was walking at school, more and more, I was learning how to become more confident.
link |
And I was like taking charge.
link |
The teacher was asking questions.
link |
At first, I was never answering.
link |
I was like this, waiting always to be the last.
link |
Then I was, hey, I know what the answer is.
link |
This is the answer.
link |
I got out of my comfort zone, so to speak.
link |
And I wish I would tell you that I got out of bullying
link |
because a Hollywood story, I use martial art to beat up all the bullies.
link |
But it's not how it happened to me.
link |
It happened because I changed myself from the inside out.
link |
And I learned how to, because I didn't love myself in the beginning,
link |
I learned how to become like someone that I love.
link |
And even now, by no means perfect, I do a lot of stupid things.
link |
But I learn as a person.
link |
And even I do something stupid.
link |
I'm like, shoot, I did something stupid.
link |
At least I can apologize to the person if I realize.
link |
And then I know that I'm not the person I was in the past.
link |
I'm the person that I am right now.
link |
So I can learn and become that image of the person that I love.
link |
So in a way, the reason why I'm trying to be positive
link |
and I'm able to stay positive sometime in life
link |
is because I'm always trying to be like that person that I love.
link |
And I think if you don't look yourself in the mirror
link |
and don't love yourself or don't see any positive future for yourself,
link |
how can you change your environment if you cannot change yourself?
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
You would never be happy if you're not happy when you look at yourself in the mirror.
link |
So change yourself first, then change your...
link |
You know, it's not the environment that's going to change for yourself.
link |
You have to go from the inside out, you know?
link |
This I learned to martial art.
link |
I had a coach who was incredible.
link |
He used to drill these ideas in my head and give me confidence, you know?
link |
Like this telling me all these beautiful things about myself.
link |
And now he's dead now, unfortunately, a piece to him.
link |
But he was incredible, incredible.
link |
He was very, very strict. I was afraid of him.
link |
I was afraid of my dad and afraid of him.
link |
He couldn't teach nowadays like he used to teach me
link |
because he would be probably in jail, you know?
link |
But I'm glad he did it because for that time being, that's what I needed.
link |
And I would never have had that career I had in mixed martial art without this
link |
because I would never have got out of my comfort zone.
link |
It would have been impossible.
link |
And in order to improve in life, you need to get out of your comfort zone.
link |
It's hard. It's very hard to do.
link |
And strive to be the person that you can love.
link |
That's beautifully put, George.
link |
If you were to give advice to a young person today about life, what would you tell him?
link |
If he takes life with the same mentality that I do,
link |
if he has the same taste of things that I have,
link |
I would tell him, you know, for sport, for life in general,
link |
I would say if you will have a dream, you know, like make everything in your power
link |
and work very hard, you know, never take no for an answer
link |
and go through hell in order to achieve it.
link |
Don't work hard only but work smart.
link |
That's, I think, the problems with a lot of people.
link |
They work hard. They can work hard. They burn themselves. They don't work smart.
link |
Whether it is in science and business, they make bad choices
link |
or they badly inform in sport how many guys I've seen ruin their career in the gyms.
link |
They spar so hard. They ruin themselves in the gyms.
link |
They leave their career in the gyms.
link |
What I would say to, for example, because my field of expertise,
link |
it's in sport of mixed martial art, I would say to a young kid,
link |
make your training playful. You know, when you get ready for competition,
link |
you need to try to recreate those elements that makes you go outside of your comfort zone.
link |
But in every day's life in general, make your training playful.
link |
Don't make it like a hardcore competition about who's winning, who's losing.
link |
Make it playful so it will increase your, because you will not be afraid of getting hurt or losing.
link |
You will be tempted to try more things and it will make you become more creative.
link |
You know, that brings up another question about learning.
link |
So you value knowledge and you're exceptional at basically being very good at learning
link |
and figuring stuff out, new things or going deeper on the things you already know.
link |
So what advice would you have for how to learn effectively?
link |
How, you know, you say work smart. How do you figure this game out?
link |
I believe the best way to learn is learning from other people's mistake.
link |
However, I'm not perfect and I've learned from my mistakes as well.
link |
And sometimes it took me a few mistakes to learn the same thing.
link |
But especially in the sport of mixed martial art, because we're talking about the failure could have a very serious outcome on someone's life and well being.
link |
So it's crucial to trying to learn from other people's mistakes.
link |
Do you study others?
link |
Every fight, I'm studying my opponent and I've studied myself as well to know what out my strength mix versus my opponent weaknesses.
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And how can I make the fight go in a way that I'm taking my opponent outside of his comfort zone?
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Very often people are good at studying their opponent, but they're not good at looking at themselves.
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They're better at knowing what they should do in order to maximize their odds of success, right?
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That's why I always thought, for me, it was important to not be the best at one thing, but be very good at everything.
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That's why I always seek advice from the best in every discipline. I wrestle with the best wrestler I could be with.
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I box with the best boxers. I practice karate with the best karate fighters.
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Same thing in jujitsu. I train jujitsu with the best jujitsu guys.
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However, when I mix everything and mix martial art, because I'm very competent in every area.
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So when I'm fighting someone, I'm very good at identifying where he's the less competent.
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And I know for a fact that because I'm competent everywhere, if I can bring the fight where he's outside of his comfort zone, it increases my odds of winning.
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There's no certainty. It's all about odds, I believe, because there is always an X factor that you do not control.
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Yeah, it's fascinating to see you, actually, because you've been a student of movement.
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You've been exploring all kinds of gymnastics, all that kind of stuff.
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There's something reminiscent to, like, Conor McGregor is one other martial artist that's kind of explored movement, been a scholar of movement.
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At least from my perspective, it's very sort of Bruce Lee, like, it's almost making a study of the human body and all the possible things you can do.
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Is there a philosophy behind that that you have?
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You talk about Bruce Lee, man. He changes my life, too. He was ahead of his time.
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A lot of people talk to me and ask me, hey, is Bruce Lee would have been able to fight in UFC?
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Look, I don't think so. I don't know. I think he was a martial artist.
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He could have defended himself, but to say that he could have competed amongst the elite of the elite fighter.
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Perhaps in his time, but for sure, if you put him in UFC right now, the sport has improved incredibly since then.
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But in terms of philosophy, Bruce Lee was amazing.
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One thing, just to prove that he was ahead of his time, he was talking about using your longest weapon against your opponent nearest point.
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And we see that kick that got popularized by John Jones, you know, the sidekick to the tie.
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The longest weapon against your nearest point. And boxing is the jab, but in MMA, when you can use all your weapon, that's the kick to the tie.
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And there is, I felt there is like kind of three dimension in martial art.
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There is the philosopher like Bruce Lee. There is the choreography, the choreograph people.
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Like, for example, you see in movies, the stunt people, they're incredible. Or the one that does forms and karate, like jumping, spin, kick, bad kick, like a crumbatic stuff.
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Mixed martial art, they are unbelievable. And there is also the one that competed in fighting.
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That's what I do. I personally specialize in.
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Well, you also do the philosophy.
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I do a little bit of philosophy, but that's a consequence of the fighting.
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I guess we are all like, we all practice the three dimension because martial art is, I would say it's, whether you want it or not, you have to touch these three dimensions.
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But you will specialize in one. I specialize through my life in fighting, like the real thing in terms of fighting, competition.
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And of course, if you do martial art, you will be able to defend yourself because it's a self defense.
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However, you might not be able to fight as an elite and the most prestigious organization.
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And you might not be able to perform the stunt that, for example, the stuntmen that have done in the series I was playing in the Falcon and Winter Soldier.
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These guys are incredible. They're like real life superhero things they do.
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To me, like, it's fascinating. It's amazing.
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And also Bruce Lee, the philosophy.
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How many hours he took thinking about these stuff?
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I'm sure he did not just came out of nowhere. He was thinking. That's mean he slept on this.
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How many hours? It just unbelievable.
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He's like water, my friend. How many times has he thought about water going to bed before he said that?
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Let me ask a very important fundamental question about martial arts. We're both wearing a suit and tie. Joe Rogan thinks that wearing a tie is a huge disadvantage.
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Is it a clip on or is it an actual tie?
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It's an actual tie.
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So do you agree or disagree with Joe Rogan that wearing a tie is a martial arts significant disadvantage in terms of combat in a combat scenario?
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In a fight, I think it would be a disadvantage.
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I work as a security bouncer in nightclubs and event when I was 18 years old.
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And sometimes I had to work in certain event that I was in suit and tie.
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I never had to use my force to take someone out when I was in suit and tie.
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But if I would have had to before going to the table to physically take the guy out, I would have removed my tie and I would have removed my vest for sure.
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And I would have called back up for sure.
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And I would have probably used the element of surprise to be first on the guy.
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When you're in a bar, same thing. You call back up first and you make sure you ask the waitress before to clean the table before you go.
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And when you go, you have to use the element of surprise.
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Because fighting and mixed martial arts and fighting in the street, it's two different things.
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And yes, I'm a mixed martial arts competitor.
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That's what I've done all my life, but I had a lot of street fighting in my life.
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A lot when I was in...
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What's the difference?
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What's like the...
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Oh my God, it's a huge difference.
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It's the guys that, if I would have a choice to fight, for example, certain guys in UFC in a street fight and fight other guys that are not in UFC,
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I would maybe sometimes pick guys that are not in UFC, not necessarily.
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Because in the street fight, there's no referee that says go.
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It's the element of surprise.
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And when you're a nice guy, you're not the aggressor, you always have the element of surprise.
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That's what it taught me.
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Yes, because if...
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Aggression or sacrifice seems a surprise.
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The person will not come punch you without warning.
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It needs to trigger something.
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It's something that needs to be triggered before.
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So if someone comes because he's looking for trouble, there's a sign that he's looking for trouble.
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So I was just talking with Bass Root and this weekend about it.
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Every martial art comes from...
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Some martial art are from Exclusivik for competition.
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Like sport karate, certain martial art.
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But traditional martial art are for the street or for self defense.
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And I start my background in Kyoko Shin Karate.
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And I did Japanese Jujitsu.
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So my background, before I even start training for mixed martial art, my background is in self defense.
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And it's very important to understand that in a street fight, the element of surprise is everything.
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And there are no rules.
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You can't go for the eyes, the neck, the...
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It surprises everything.
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It's a total ball game, you know what I mean?
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You have the chair, the beard, there's so much more thing going on.
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Because you are a UFC fighter, you think you're invincible.
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Like if a big guy who punch very hard, most people don't know how to punch.
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By the way, they don't know how to make a fist and throw it in a forward direction.
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But if someone knows how to do it, I don't care who you are.
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If you could be Francis and Genu, someone come behind your head and...
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Or let's say there's an argument and you get surprised by a punch.
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You can't be dropped and lose a fight.
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It doesn't matter.
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The element of surprise is everything.
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So you were saying remove all the sources of the elements of surprise.
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Clear the bar, remove the tie.
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I still disagree with you about the tab.
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And just for your information, if someone comes looking for trouble and you see me do this...
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And going sideways a little bit, that's my position that I'm thinking.
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Maybe something will happen and I'm about...
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I'm about thinking about doing the element.
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I'm about to punch you or to do something to take care of this.
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See, to flip the table on you then, wearing a tie is communicating the nice guy image.
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So it actually gives you the freedom for more elements of surprise by wearing the tie.
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If you take it off, that's more you're limiting your options.
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Because nobody's going to expect the guy in the tie to do anything.
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I'm a big believer that sometimes it's not only materialism, it's what you project.
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Like I said, I had troubles in a bar and I was able to deflect.
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The guy was looking for trouble talking to me and I was able to deflect his own aggressivity
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by saying like, hey man, that's a nice shirt.
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Where did you get it?
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Like saying like something was stupid like this.
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Then it kind of break the momentum and he, you know, but the guy was looking for trouble.
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I don't want to fight you.
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I don't want to fight you, but I'm not going to wait until you pull.
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You make the first move because the minute you touch me, you push me or you touch me,
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you declare war and the war is unleashed, my friend.
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And I'm taking you out of order with the necessary force, of course.
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You know what I mean?
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That's the thing with martial art.
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If you use the necessary force to take out a problem, it's okay.
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But if you, you know, you take advantage of it, that's when it's not all right because it's a weapon.
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So if someone comes up to me, that's my position.
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And now I'm assessing the situation.
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You know, that's, that's how they teach in self defense here.
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Never put your hands down.
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I was in there because I'm down or boom.
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Like what this is, this is very important.
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And you never, you're always your center line on the side.
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If someone knows martial art, he will recognize that pattern.
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But if you go like this, if someone talked to you and you go like this,
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that's mean you're telling the guy that you want to fight.
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You don't want to do that.
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You don't want to, oh yeah.
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That's, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's the position.
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Cause your hand are here, you know, whatever you can do, you're here.
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Well, also your ear tells a story.
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It's not everybody that knows that.
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However, some people might think that it's my mom grabbed me by the ear and pulled me
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because I didn't listen to her, you know.
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A real fight in the street and a fight in the mixed martial art is a different ballgame.
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What do you think is the best martial art to prepare you for street fighting?
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You know, people often kind of have this discussion of jiu jitsu,
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maybe boxing, maybe wrestling.
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Do you think we can talk about a young person studying martial arts to prepare themselves?
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For a street fight, it's often much different than a mixed martial art fight.
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And I know there's a lot of BS in the world of martial art, like self defense stuff.
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But I believe self defense is very important in a way to understand the situation,
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to understand those situations that might occur, how to deal with it.
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Not necessarily that we talk about the technicality, we talk about the tacticality, the tactics, you know.
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Like when I'm talking to you about the element of surprise, it's important.
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This is not technique.
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A technique is a punch or techniques that I physically will use to enable my opponent, my aggressor.
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Tactic is the tactic I'm telling you about is in a street fight.
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If someone is looking for trouble and I feel the heat rising as the conversation goes, that's the position I'm going to take.
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And I have to be first.
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I cannot let him go first.
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So I have to strike first or do something.
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This is the first thing that generally I have to agree on.
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After that, of course, there's the knowledge.
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If you're a professional fighter, you have a huge advantage once the fight has started, the war has declared.
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Now everything goes.
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But generally speaking, the person that will intervene physically, that will have the first blow or the first punch,
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will have a huge disadvantage.
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It's like doing a hundred meter raise and having a head start.
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And that you can't prepare for with any martial art.
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Yeah, and if I'm a smart guy, I know how to fight.
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If a guy like an heavyweight champion comes to me, I know what to do to disable him.
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Boom, or hair, or the neck.
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If you blind him, what is he going to do?
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You know what I mean?
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Or a bottle, you know what I mean?
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So the element of surprise is everything.
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That's why it's always good to be the nice guy and not looking for trouble.
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Because if you're not looking for trouble, you have the head start.
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You have the option of having a head start.
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So what you're saying is being a nice guy is the best form of self defense.
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Maybe a little humor too.
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You know how I have learned that?
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I've learned that when I was a kid.
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I was about maybe six, six years old.
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We used to play in Montreal a lot of snow.
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We used to play King of the Montaigne.
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That's the first combat lesson that I've learned in my life.
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And I managed somehow.
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It was a lot of kids.
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I managed to get on the top of the Montaigne.
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And another guy came in on top of the Montaigne.
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And he was angry that I was there before him.
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When you play King of the Montaigne, it was a mountain of snow.
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You don't strike each other.
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You just wrestle and push.
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And I managed to be first.
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And when he came, he says to me, say, okay, you want to fight.
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And I said, yeah, I don't know what it means.
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Like I want to fight.
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You want to wrestle.
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He said, I say, yes.
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He punched me right in the face.
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And then I fall on the bottom of the mountain.
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Then when I fall down, I remember that vision in my life.
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Because it's, I really remember that for the rest of my life.
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I'm about to stand up and I see the blood coming out of my nose.
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I see the snow is red because my nose is bleeding.
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Now I remember the limit of surprises, everything.
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My first street fight, I lost it.
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I didn't get knocked out, but I got dropped on the bottom of the snow mountain.
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And I was like, ah, you got me because I was not expecting my hand.
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I was not expecting a punch.
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So from there, when I felt the eat during an argument or something was not right,
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I always stroke first.
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I didn't win all my fight because sometimes there were more than one guys on me, you know.
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But I think it's important to not be the aggressor.
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So you have the element of surprise and always use that in your favor.
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That's so brilliant.
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Let me go from the very practical to the most impractically huge question about the meaning of life.
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You said that when great depths of unrelenting sorrow are punctuated by great peaks of joy and liberation,
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the result is delicious.
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So what do you think is the meaning of this whole journey that we're on, this life?
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What makes life delicious?
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To me, you know, satisfaction is the end for me.
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Like I always, if I'm satisfied, that's mean I have no nothing to live for.
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I'm not talking only about my career, I'm talking about my life.
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What do you want in your life?
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You want kids, you want a family, you want to be champion.
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What do you want in your life?
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You have like a long term goal, short term goal.
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In mixed martial art, I achieve what I needed to achieve.
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I'm no longer the same George Napierre than when I was begging for a title shot on my knees.
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I move on from it.
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Now I had the chance to go into movies.
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Now that same insane drive that I had to be the champion in the world, now I put it into acting.
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Like I'm having a lot of acting class now and luckily for me, the timing was amazing.
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I got cast for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier that is on Disney Plus channel.
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It's a huge, huge project to be part of for me because it's like you play basketball,
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you have a chance to go for the NBA right away.
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The timing was just too perfect.
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And so you need to constantly challenging yourself and having goals to achieve.
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You know, like keep your brain activated, like keep working.
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And the proof of that is that you see sometimes some old people, like when they retire very often,
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sometimes you see that they got sick and they die or because they...
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It's either because sometimes we think we...
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We do something good for them by making not work and giving them a break.
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So in our mind, we're like, oh, he's going to be able to relax.
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But in their mind, it's not good because they're not busy.
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They have nothing to live for.
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Like my dad is used to work all the time and he has always something to do.
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I myself now call him by force to find him some job.
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Hey, dad, can you come in my house?
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I have this thing to repair.
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I don't know how to do it.
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So it gives him a reason not to live on because he has other things to do.
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But what I mean is also in life, I think you always don't be afraid to aim high.
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Don't be afraid to fix your objective very high and never be able to reach it.
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Be afraid of reaching your goals, essentially.
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I mean, you always have to keep moving it out.
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You think there's a...
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It's an interesting question because you've been acting in some really exciting things.
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Do you think there's a dramatic role where it's a basically...
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You go full Robert De Niro and taxi driver.
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Do you think there'll be a full length feature film with George St. Pierre?
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There is level to this thing.
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I'm aware that I have to restart as a white belt.
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And for some people, it could be discouraging.
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But for me, man, it's great.
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I freaking love it.
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I embrace it because everybody told me like I would never be able to do it and it's fine.
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And also the outcome of a failure in the sport of mixed martial art is much more serious
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than the outcome of a failure for a movie, for example.
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Or if you zig when you should zag in a fight, you get knocked out.
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If you zig when you should zag in an unset...
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We'll do it again.
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And I know that I will be most likely be choosing for action martial art roles
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because that's my background.
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There is this new trend in Hollywood now.
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When they want someone to play an Italian guy, they're going to choose a real Italian person.
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When they want someone to play a Russian guy, they're going to choose someone who has a real Russian background.
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Now they want a real martial art fighter.
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I've done fighting all my life.
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I just need to improve my acting skill.
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But when I train in acting, I get myself out of my comfort zone.
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I'm not playing a role of a martial art guy.
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I'm playing like romance, comedy, drama.
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So when I go unset and play the role of a badass martial art guy, it's easier.
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So like in training for a fight, I always make my preparation harder than the actual task.
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I would love to see where...
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I don't know if you've seen The Wrestler with Mickey Work.
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Those types of films, I would love to do something like that.
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If not now, then in 10, 20 years, I could see that.
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That would be amazing.
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There's levels to the game, right?
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Yes, it's gradual.
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And I'm aware that I don't want to take something on my shoulder that I won't be able to deliver.
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It's like a fighter who wants to go for a title shot right away.
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He could very well break him.
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And I don't want to do that because I know I've done some gigs in the past,
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but I was not focusing on it because I was focusing on competing as a martial art.
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Martial art is in competition in MMA.
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But now I take it very seriously.
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So I cannot do the same mistake again because I've done some stuff.
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I've done it for the money and it was good.
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It was fun to be beat up by Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Sego and everything,
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but my acting was not on point at that time.
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So every time I'm going to come back from now on on screen, you need to be sharp
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because you cannot mess it up.
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If you mess it up, it's like a loss on your record.
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You're not taken seriously.
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So that's how I see it.
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And it's very fun because I had the chance to talk to a lot of guys
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and on top of all the class that I'm having, like a few days ago I was with Danny Trujo.
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And I always seek the advice of actors when I see some of them
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that because I really admire how they do, you know, how they project their emotion.
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And I asked him, Danny Trujo, I said to him, he's an amazing guy, by the way, very nice guy.
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And I asked him, I say, how do you do to be, because you scared the hell out of me,
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how do you do to be so scary?
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Like, what is your trick?
link |
And he tells me, he's like, George, if you threaten someone and you scream at him,
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I'm going to kill you. It's not as scary if you're smiling and you say, I'm going to kill you.
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Like, and he says also to me that another advice he gave me is like, when you say this,
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think about you killing him for real, that how you hate him and how you're going to kill him.
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So the camera will take the emotion out.
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Don't try physically to do that.
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That's the mistake I used to do before.
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I used to physically show that I'm strong and angry and to be mean.
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So these are just an example of tricks that I learned sometimes when I met an actor.
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I always try to learn from everybody that I met in my life.
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It's a difficult journey because then you have to go to some dark places as a person
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because you really have to imagine some dark things.
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It's fascinating, actually.
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I think a lot of the actor, they have sometimes problems because of that.
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Because now I understand why it's like, if you work on your bicep, your bicep will grow, right?
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It's because it's the stress that you put on it that will make it grow, right?
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Emotions, I believe, are the same way.
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If you're used to dig inside of you down deep to make your negative emotion, depressive emotion comes out,
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if something bad in your life happens, you will fall into those emotions much more rapidly
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than someone who does not that every day, you know what I mean?
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Because it's like a muscle memory.
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If you program yourself to react a certain way, you will reach that point very often.
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So that's why sometimes you see some guys, we often blame it on drugs,
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but I think it's also because of the acting that they're used to be so on the hop top
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and sometimes they go to the down deep so they're both extreme, you know?
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You've got to be psychologically tough.
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I'm so excited to see you challenge yourself in that direction.
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That's one thing that I'm a little bit afraid that happened to me.
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I really hope I'll always be having a problem to control my emotion be too much extreme.
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I hope it does not happen to me.
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And if I feel that I'm going towards that, I'm going to give up on my new objective
link |
and find something else to achieve.
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But in your personal life you want to be real with your emotions.
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You don't want to.
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Just like with biceps.
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You don't want biceps that are too big.
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You are real, but you are extreme real.
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And that's what I think is something that could happen to actors sometimes
link |
when they go too much into their emotion.
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We talk about something guys that commit suicide perhaps.
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I don't know because I don't know their real life,
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but it could be something that they get so much into their character.
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I didn't understand it at first because I'd never had acting class,
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but after a while that you have acting class now you start to realize that
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yeah, I understand why some actor get caught up in their emotion
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because that can have an influence on their life, right?
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You're on a fascinating journey.
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George, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you'll be so nice to me
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and you'll give me so much respect.
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Just that tells everything I need to know about you as a human being.
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With everything you've accomplished, you waste all your time
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and you're so nice to me just as a fellow human being.
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Man, I have so much respect.
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And the energy you give me by just even showing up here,
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I'll carry that forward for a long time to come.
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George, I love it.
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Thank you so much for talking to me.
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Thank you Lex for having me on the show.
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I've been looking to talk to you for a long time.
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For me talking to a guy like you, it's a great learning experience
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because I always learn and life is fascinating to me
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and all the experience that we have in life,
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it's something that can make us grow
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and this experience for me just make me grow as well.
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Plus, we look pretty damn sharp today.
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Man in black, my friend.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with George St. Pierre
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and thank you to AllForm, ExpressVPN, Blinkist, TheraGun
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and The Information.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi.
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Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.