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Georges 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 that.
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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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of fasting.
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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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Nice.
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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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after I retired.
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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 sounds, yes.
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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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00:16:54.420
Like it starts becoming, you know,
link |
00:16:57.180
just like you said, our society is so much about food.
link |
00:16:59.420
There's so many, so much advertisement
link |
00:17:01.180
and so much of our social life is about food.
link |
00:17:03.420
And so, it's very easy to live life,
link |
00:17:07.100
like live day to day thinking, when is the next meal?
link |
00:17:10.660
Like, what am I gonna eat for lunch?
link |
00:17:11.820
What am I gonna eat for dinner?
link |
00:17:12.740
What am I gonna eat for breakfast?
link |
00:17:14.740
And if you're not careful,
link |
00:17:17.180
that's gonna get in the way of you doing cool shit
link |
00:17:20.500
for like liberating yourself and thinking like,
link |
00:17:23.780
what am I actually passionate about in this life?
link |
00:17:25.940
Like creating and forgetting to eat those kinds of things
link |
00:17:29.100
and still being able to fuel your body.
link |
00:17:31.700
I don't know.
link |
00:17:32.540
It's been fascinating to figure out like later in life
link |
00:17:37.020
that carbs aren't necessary to function well.
link |
00:17:41.020
It makes me think like,
link |
00:17:42.220
we don't know anything about nutrition.
link |
00:17:44.020
That's right.
link |
00:17:44.860
You know, personally,
link |
00:17:49.020
I don't think I could have a diet without carbs.
link |
00:17:53.060
I love chocolate too much.
link |
00:17:54.820
For me, eating, it's a pleasure of life.
link |
00:17:57.180
I love my carbs.
link |
00:17:58.020
I love my sugar.
link |
00:17:59.500
However, if you talk about diet,
link |
00:18:01.140
I don't have a specific diet.
link |
00:18:03.180
But recently, what I'm trying to do is,
link |
00:18:07.780
the days that I do not work out, I only eat once.
link |
00:18:12.340
That's kind of my rules.
link |
00:18:14.780
Plus, I try to respect 16, eight
link |
00:18:17.500
and do my three day fast four time a year.
link |
00:18:22.260
But the rest of the thing,
link |
00:18:24.060
I let myself loose because I don't think I would be happy
link |
00:18:29.500
if I don't give myself the right to eat.
link |
00:18:35.940
For me personally, I love to eat so much.
link |
00:18:37.900
Thanks.
link |
00:18:38.740
And you talk about diet carnivore diet,
link |
00:18:41.940
it's very interesting because a few years ago,
link |
00:18:45.860
I went to Africa in Masai Mara.
link |
00:18:49.220
And it's a tribe in East Africa.
link |
00:18:54.340
And I went to visit them.
link |
00:18:56.940
I did a safari.
link |
00:18:58.820
And I talked to them.
link |
00:19:00.180
And these guys, their diet is 99% carnivore.
link |
00:19:05.420
They, that's crazy.
link |
00:19:06.860
And you should see, they're very beautiful people.
link |
00:19:09.220
I shred it like that.
link |
00:19:10.740
Some people would say, oh, it's genetic.
link |
00:19:12.260
I'm like, yeah, maybe it's genetic.
link |
00:19:13.420
But I mean, and think about the Eskimos also,
link |
00:19:17.380
that like most of their diet is on fish, right?
link |
00:19:21.460
So I believe it can be done, you know?
link |
00:19:24.620
Like I believe it can be done
link |
00:19:26.020
like an exclusive carnivore diet.
link |
00:19:27.980
And I think I'm gonna try it pretty soon
link |
00:19:31.540
just to have the experience, you know?
link |
00:19:33.540
To see how it feels like.
link |
00:19:34.580
Well, you're gonna hang out with Joe.
link |
00:19:37.100
Be careful bringing it up
link |
00:19:38.180
because he'll convince you to forever switch
link |
00:19:40.420
to carnivore, definitely.
link |
00:19:41.460
He loves it.
link |
00:19:42.580
I mean, but just like you, I think he loves food.
link |
00:19:47.180
So he can't ever stay on carnivore.
link |
00:19:50.660
It was funny because we went to an Italian restaurant
link |
00:19:52.900
together and I still only eat meat.
link |
00:19:55.500
Like I love the constraints of discipline.
link |
00:20:01.300
That's partially why I like carnivore.
link |
00:20:03.420
I like saying no to food that is delicious.
link |
00:20:06.420
But a part of the problem is that
link |
00:20:11.740
I don't know how to moderate.
link |
00:20:12.740
You said chocolate.
link |
00:20:13.700
I don't know how to have one chocolate.
link |
00:20:15.220
Is that something you're able to do?
link |
00:20:17.380
Have like in moderation?
link |
00:20:19.900
No, it's when I have an opportunity, I do it.
link |
00:20:22.620
I don't have any.
link |
00:20:23.460
I'm an extremist person.
link |
00:20:25.180
Like I, that's the thing.
link |
00:20:27.460
I, when I have a chance, I like, I just eat.
link |
00:20:32.220
I go too much.
link |
00:20:33.060
And that's why I like about my life.
link |
00:20:34.500
You know, that's what I like about fasting
link |
00:20:36.980
because probably if I would not have discovered fasting,
link |
00:20:40.580
eating chocolate would give me cramps
link |
00:20:42.740
and all sorts of problems.
link |
00:20:44.820
Cause people on ulcer colitis,
link |
00:20:47.020
normally they cannot eat chocolate.
link |
00:20:48.380
They cannot drink alcohol.
link |
00:20:49.540
But I believe because I'm fasting,
link |
00:20:52.940
that's the reason why I'm medication,
link |
00:20:56.180
medicine, medication free.
link |
00:20:57.860
I can eat whatever I want, whatever I want.
link |
00:21:00.060
But I have to do that fasting, you know?
link |
00:21:02.700
And now it becomes to a, it became to a point
link |
00:21:05.100
that it's no longer hard for me.
link |
00:21:07.100
It's like normal.
link |
00:21:08.140
I don't even force myself.
link |
00:21:10.420
I don't, it's easy.
link |
00:21:12.020
You know what I mean?
link |
00:21:13.220
Some of my friends thinks I'm insane, you know?
link |
00:21:16.700
But I tell them, it's like when you get used to it,
link |
00:21:19.740
it becomes like an habit.
link |
00:21:21.340
And I'm, and I know that on Turgata,
link |
00:21:24.340
like our ancestor did not eat three times a day.
link |
00:21:27.460
It's not true.
link |
00:21:30.060
They ate when they could
link |
00:21:32.340
and when they eat, they feed themselves
link |
00:21:35.820
as much as they can until that,
link |
00:21:37.220
because the next time,
link |
00:21:38.140
because they didn't know when they could eat again, right?
link |
00:21:41.620
So it's, I think that's how we're built, you know?
link |
00:21:46.300
To have this similar lifestyle.
link |
00:21:50.660
If we could take a step back
link |
00:21:51.740
to the discussion about fear a little bit.
link |
00:21:54.460
So Mike Tyson talks about this process
link |
00:21:58.060
of him walking to the ring.
link |
00:22:00.020
He sounds similar to you in many ways
link |
00:22:02.060
of the anxiety and the fear that he experiences.
link |
00:22:05.140
And he has this sort of story
link |
00:22:09.300
that he tells about walking to the ring
link |
00:22:11.620
and being supremely afraid.
link |
00:22:13.980
But as he walks and gets closer and steps in,
link |
00:22:16.380
he finds the confidence and becomes supremely confident.
link |
00:22:19.740
I think he calls himself like a God.
link |
00:22:21.460
I feel like a God in the ring.
link |
00:22:23.900
Is, do you go through a similar process
link |
00:22:26.340
of finding the confidence?
link |
00:22:27.780
Well, it, yes.
link |
00:22:31.540
And I use James Lange theory.
link |
00:22:37.900
So what I do is because I'm not afraid
link |
00:22:41.660
to admit that I'm afraid.
link |
00:22:44.500
And in the beginning of my career,
link |
00:22:48.940
I really thought, I asked myself,
link |
00:22:51.100
because I was very good in mixed martial art,
link |
00:22:53.580
but I really thought I wasn't made for this
link |
00:22:56.060
because the idea of fighting didn't make me happy.
link |
00:23:03.220
It's something like I was forced to do
link |
00:23:06.060
in order to keep that lifestyle that I have
link |
00:23:10.740
and achieve my goal, perhaps one day
link |
00:23:12.580
to make enough money to retire.
link |
00:23:14.700
And you know, that was my dream.
link |
00:23:16.940
But when I was looking around the gym
link |
00:23:19.860
where I was training,
link |
00:23:21.260
most of my training partner, they were happy.
link |
00:23:22.900
They were excited.
link |
00:23:23.740
And sometimes I corner a lot of guys
link |
00:23:25.900
and they're happy and they're in the locker room.
link |
00:23:27.620
They don't react the same way I do.
link |
00:23:30.620
Some perhaps does, but if you see me in the locker room,
link |
00:23:36.500
like when I get, like my last fight with Michael Bisping,
link |
00:23:38.860
just to give you an example.
link |
00:23:40.140
In my last fight with Michael Bisping,
link |
00:23:42.420
because it's fresh, it's the one that is the most recent.
link |
00:23:45.460
And, but it's always the same thing.
link |
00:23:47.380
My last fight in Bisping, I get in the locker room.
link |
00:23:51.060
I had like three guys that I trained with, Mickey Gull,
link |
00:23:56.180
Eman Zahabi and Joseph Duffy.
link |
00:23:59.580
They all lost.
link |
00:24:00.420
It was like, like, my locker room was basically cursed.
link |
00:24:04.580
You know, when you're in a locker room
link |
00:24:07.340
and people from your locker room leave for a fight
link |
00:24:10.380
and then they come back, it's kind of a momentum.
link |
00:24:12.340
You know, you shake and yeah, good job.
link |
00:24:14.660
Now it's my thing.
link |
00:24:15.500
You know, it's kind of a team brotherhood sort of thing.
link |
00:24:19.580
So the atmosphere in my locker room was pretty bad.
link |
00:24:26.820
It was like going to a, you know, like a funeral.
link |
00:24:32.220
So I was very scared.
link |
00:24:34.300
And before every fight, I asked myself,
link |
00:24:37.020
I asked myself, always, shit, what the hell I'm doing here?
link |
00:24:41.260
Why did I choose to come back?
link |
00:24:43.100
Oh my God.
link |
00:24:43.940
And I'm freaking out.
link |
00:24:45.300
However, I'm putting on a mask, like I'm acting.
link |
00:24:51.380
Because if I don't do that, it will reflect on my coaches.
link |
00:24:54.700
And if my coach, the confidence of my coaches is affected,
link |
00:24:58.700
it will reflect on me.
link |
00:25:00.340
So I need to feel strong.
link |
00:25:02.580
I need to make them believe that I'm excited to be there
link |
00:25:07.820
and I'm happy to be there.
link |
00:25:08.980
So this sort of play start when I get,
link |
00:25:13.380
when I first step in the locker room,
link |
00:25:15.260
even though I feel completely different,
link |
00:25:17.780
but that's how I play it.
link |
00:25:20.140
Normally the fight day, I never felt, feel 100%.
link |
00:25:24.180
I always felt exhausted, tired.
link |
00:25:27.620
My highs are hitching because I don't sleep enough
link |
00:25:30.940
the few nights before,
link |
00:25:32.060
because I'm constantly rehearsing scenarios
link |
00:25:35.140
that might happen in the fight.
link |
00:25:37.540
So mentally, it's not that I'm not on top.
link |
00:25:42.660
But you keep all that to yourself.
link |
00:25:44.060
I keep it to myself and I'm lying to everybody around me.
link |
00:25:48.620
But everybody knows, you know?
link |
00:25:51.580
Faraz, John, then I heard, they know Freddie Rose,
link |
00:25:54.580
they've been with me for a long time.
link |
00:25:55.740
So they know what's going on,
link |
00:25:56.780
but at least I'm lying to them.
link |
00:25:58.420
I'm like, hey, I'm feeling great.
link |
00:26:00.020
So, and seeing all my training partner,
link |
00:26:02.900
like very disappointed because they lost their fight,
link |
00:26:05.620
some were badly hurt as well.
link |
00:26:08.780
It was hard.
link |
00:26:10.420
So, and I remember I get one,
link |
00:26:12.180
I get, I start to warm up and everything.
link |
00:26:15.140
And as you start to warm up, you become a different person
link |
00:26:19.300
because, you know, we know that certain posture
link |
00:26:23.420
and yoga can affect your mental state.
link |
00:26:26.980
But I would say it's a little bit the same thing
link |
00:26:29.220
in fighting, you know?
link |
00:26:30.260
Like when you started hitting the pads,
link |
00:26:32.740
your muscle memory, your instincts comes back
link |
00:26:36.220
and you remember that you're good at this, you know?
link |
00:26:39.500
And your confidence starts to grow.
link |
00:26:41.980
And as seeing your trainers holding the pad
link |
00:26:44.020
and repeating your moves, it makes you also remember
link |
00:26:47.900
all the sacrifice you have done to your training camp
link |
00:26:50.860
and confidence comes from how you prepared yourself.
link |
00:26:54.980
And even you're afraid, you can be confident,
link |
00:26:58.580
confident at the same time.
link |
00:26:59.740
Being afraid and being confident is two different things.
link |
00:27:03.340
And before every fight, just right before I walk in,
link |
00:27:08.220
it's when I'm scared, I go in the bathroom
link |
00:27:11.460
and I look at myself in the mirror.
link |
00:27:12.700
I used to have a bandana and a gi,
link |
00:27:14.860
but now I didn't have this for my last fight
link |
00:27:18.220
because of the new Reebok deal they had.
link |
00:27:22.100
But I did the same rehearsal that I always do.
link |
00:27:24.220
I look at myself in the mirror
link |
00:27:25.220
and I start to compliment myself.
link |
00:27:27.980
Like even if I don't believe it,
link |
00:27:30.180
I'm starting to trying to believe it.
link |
00:27:32.020
As I am, I'm finding all the reason
link |
00:27:34.060
why I'm gonna win the fight.
link |
00:27:35.940
And all my trainer knows that before every fight,
link |
00:27:39.220
when the guy from the UFC goes and step in my room
link |
00:27:42.100
and say, St. Pierre, are you up next?
link |
00:27:43.180
I always take a few minutes to do that same rehearsal.
link |
00:27:47.580
And I tell myself, I'm gonna win this fight
link |
00:27:49.420
because I'm better and I'm very cocky about myself.
link |
00:27:52.700
I'm telling all the reasons that I'm gonna win.
link |
00:27:56.020
I got a better team, I made more sacrifice.
link |
00:27:58.940
I'm faster, I'm more powerful, way more athletic.
link |
00:28:01.740
My fighting IQ is better than him.
link |
00:28:03.460
I got a strategy on point
link |
00:28:05.300
that he's never gonna be able to keep up with.
link |
00:28:07.660
And this and that.
link |
00:28:09.500
And I was telling myself,
link |
00:28:11.700
I'm gonna show these young kids how things should be done.
link |
00:28:14.940
I'm trying to boost myself.
link |
00:28:16.860
Try to boost yourself.
link |
00:28:18.300
And you start to believe in it.
link |
00:28:19.740
You become a different person.
link |
00:28:21.500
So when you walk out the bathroom,
link |
00:28:24.180
now rock and roll.
link |
00:28:25.540
Now, I really believe it for real.
link |
00:28:28.540
Like I'm still scared, but I believe it for real.
link |
00:28:31.260
And that's the transformation that happened for me right there.
link |
00:28:33.780
And from now, from there to the fight,
link |
00:28:37.580
until the fight is over, I call it cruise control.
link |
00:28:41.940
Because you don't have time to think in a fight.
link |
00:28:44.300
If you're trying to think, you're missing the opportunity.
link |
00:28:46.980
So that's how I see it for myself.
link |
00:28:49.700
So at that point, you stop thinking.
link |
00:28:51.020
And you just go cruise control, autopilot.
link |
00:28:53.180
Trust yourself, you know?
link |
00:28:54.740
Trust yourself because you repeated all the scenarios, you know?
link |
00:28:58.940
So everything that you have done,
link |
00:29:00.380
it's inside that your computer, your brain is programmed
link |
00:29:04.140
to react accordingly to certain situations.
link |
00:29:07.460
And it's not the night of the fight that you will tell yourself,
link |
00:29:11.460
oh, finally, I'm going to do this if you do this now.
link |
00:29:13.700
Now, if you have not practiced it before, you're screwed.
link |
00:29:18.100
The preparation, the repetition, that makes it happen, you know?
link |
00:29:22.540
What about like the really difficult moments in a fight
link |
00:29:26.380
where you are tested to your limits, essentially?
link |
00:29:31.780
Usually it's cardio related exhaustion, right?
link |
00:29:34.300
Where you have to ask yourself that same question.
link |
00:29:36.420
It's like, why the hell am I doing this?
link |
00:29:38.540
Yes.
link |
00:29:39.540
Do you experience those?
link |
00:29:41.620
Or are you able to ride through the autopilot?
link |
00:29:43.940
And if you do, what do you do in those moments?
link |
00:29:46.700
Never in a fight.
link |
00:29:47.660
When I'm in a fight, when the fight is on,
link |
00:29:52.220
I never change my mind.
link |
00:29:53.340
I go until the end.
link |
00:29:56.220
However, for example, my first fight would be JPN.
link |
00:30:00.420
I had a terrible first round.
link |
00:30:03.020
So I had to switch gear.
link |
00:30:04.980
That happened sometime.
link |
00:30:06.700
But it's part of my plan.
link |
00:30:08.340
I always have a plan B, plan A, plan B, plan C.
link |
00:30:12.860
You need to have that.
link |
00:30:13.660
If fighters goes into a fight thinking,
link |
00:30:15.740
oh, what I'm going to do this is this,
link |
00:30:17.940
and they don't have a plan B, if this doesn't work,
link |
00:30:21.060
that's mean they're not well prepared.
link |
00:30:22.820
If you talk to me before every fight,
link |
00:30:24.820
I can like in 30 seconds give you my old strategy, you know?
link |
00:30:29.380
For BJPN, my first fight with BJPN was,
link |
00:30:32.220
oh, I'm going to keep it standing up,
link |
00:30:35.460
keep the fight from the outside, you know,
link |
00:30:37.180
because I'm faster than him.
link |
00:30:38.780
Then the fight would be JPN start.
link |
00:30:40.580
I found out that I was not faster than him.
link |
00:30:44.060
And I found out that his reaction time was better than mine.
link |
00:30:49.420
So I got beat up the first round,
link |
00:30:52.620
and I got out of the blood, you know, and everything.
link |
00:30:54.780
So my plan B was now I'm going to wrestle him.
link |
00:30:58.380
You know, I'm going to wrestle him,
link |
00:30:59.580
and you know, make him tired and trying to put him down.
link |
00:31:02.740
And that's how I beat him, because I switch gear, you know?
link |
00:31:06.460
But if you can't do that,
link |
00:31:07.740
if you cannot find a way to become the perfect nemesis
link |
00:31:10.700
to your opponent, you might win if you fight,
link |
00:31:13.700
but you're going to fight someone sooner or later
link |
00:31:19.060
that will give you a lot of trouble.
link |
00:31:23.460
So that's where the anxiety pays off.
link |
00:31:25.140
You're anticipating all the ways it goes wrong.
link |
00:31:26.900
So you've developed a plan B and plan C.
link |
00:31:30.420
Hi, you know, we talked a lot with like John Donahur,
link |
00:31:34.740
who you work with.
link |
00:31:36.020
It's interesting.
link |
00:31:36.860
I don't think I've heard him talk about plan B and plan C.
link |
00:31:39.820
He usually has a really clear plan A,
link |
00:31:43.900
an entire system of plan A.
link |
00:31:45.700
I don't think I've heard him.
link |
00:31:46.980
We've had a good discussion about it
link |
00:31:51.100
and over some cheeseburgers.
link |
00:31:54.900
And he was kind of espousing the value of mastering escapes.
link |
00:32:02.060
So when you find yourself in bad situations,
link |
00:32:05.700
being exceptionally good at finding ways
link |
00:32:07.900
out of those bad situations,
link |
00:32:09.460
and that's a way of dominance.
link |
00:32:11.340
There's nothing, there's no better way
link |
00:32:13.980
to dominate your opponent, according to him,
link |
00:32:16.540
than to show that they can't possibly hurt you
link |
00:32:18.780
no matter how bad the position is.
link |
00:32:21.300
It's like, as opposed to a physical dominance,
link |
00:32:24.140
it's a psychological dominance.
link |
00:32:25.700
It's very interesting.
link |
00:32:27.100
But I wonder if he has plan B and plan C in his mind too.
link |
00:32:32.580
You know, in mixed martial arts,
link |
00:32:34.660
sometimes it's like in science,
link |
00:32:36.100
sometimes you can make a mistake, you know?
link |
00:32:38.460
Like every human can make a mistake, you know?
link |
00:32:41.820
There's certain sport or a certain situation
link |
00:32:44.220
that if there's a mistake made, that's it, exactly.
link |
00:32:49.620
Sometimes it's the case in MMA,
link |
00:32:51.860
but sometimes you're able to redeem yourself.
link |
00:32:55.180
And if you look, the fight with BJPan1 that I had,
link |
00:33:01.420
which was probably one of the most competitive fight,
link |
00:33:03.780
and it was probably the,
link |
00:33:05.340
it was the fight that I got the most damage.
link |
00:33:08.780
And I was messed up.
link |
00:33:09.740
It took me three days, like two, three days
link |
00:33:11.980
to recuperate from that fight.
link |
00:33:13.100
I was really damaged.
link |
00:33:14.980
And my first fight versus my second fight,
link |
00:33:17.900
I made a lot of adjustment
link |
00:33:19.940
because I have learned from my first fight.
link |
00:33:22.700
And also I had a guy, one thing people don't know,
link |
00:33:26.220
like they talk about fighters having secret weapons.
link |
00:33:29.140
See, for me, my secret weapons was not,
link |
00:33:32.140
like some is that they use like certain,
link |
00:33:34.180
like different things.
link |
00:33:35.060
For me, it was knowledge.
link |
00:33:36.820
I had a guy in Montreal, he was measuring frames.
link |
00:33:40.420
He's not a scientist, he's a friend of Ferris and I.
link |
00:33:43.980
And what he does, he watch fight and he measure frames.
link |
00:33:47.700
But the way he does it is when you watch a fight
link |
00:33:49.940
and one of the guy throw a punch,
link |
00:33:51.980
he cut the picture by frame, the video by frame.
link |
00:33:55.180
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
link |
00:33:56.620
So he's able to see which fighter has better reaction time
link |
00:34:01.180
than others.
link |
00:34:02.820
And BJPan, he found out that BJPan evolved the UFC roster
link |
00:34:07.820
at the time when he was in his prime.
link |
00:34:09.380
He had probably the best reaction time of all.
link |
00:34:12.700
According to him, Leo Tomashido was the second one.
link |
00:34:16.020
But BJPan was the first one.
link |
00:34:17.860
So I knew that if I would try to go first
link |
00:34:21.540
because I always been the fastest guy
link |
00:34:23.660
normally when I fight someone.
link |
00:34:25.700
But when I fought BJPan, I tried to go first
link |
00:34:28.340
and he was always able to,
link |
00:34:30.740
like I never, it was never able to touch him with my jab
link |
00:34:34.100
and he came back with the counter punch.
link |
00:34:37.340
However, because of what he told me,
link |
00:34:41.020
I knew that BJPan has a very fast reaction time
link |
00:34:43.540
but at a very poor reset time.
link |
00:34:47.100
To him, the way he described it to me
link |
00:34:48.940
is like your nervous system is like a muscle.
link |
00:34:51.940
BJPan was so fast, but he's like more like a sprinter.
link |
00:34:55.340
So what I did the second fight, when I fought BJPan,
link |
00:34:57.980
I made him flinch, like I fake a lot.
link |
00:35:00.420
So I make him react and flinch.
link |
00:35:02.180
So all that reaction time that he used to flinch
link |
00:35:07.020
was not used properly to avoid my punches.
link |
00:35:10.140
So I load up his nervous system with a lot of information
link |
00:35:15.700
and fake and to make him flinch
link |
00:35:18.140
and pretending I was kicking and wrestling.
link |
00:35:21.660
So he got overwhelmed and he got tired very, very fast.
link |
00:35:25.700
So that's how I beat him.
link |
00:35:26.900
People sometimes they don't know really
link |
00:35:28.940
what's the strategy behind the thing.
link |
00:35:31.060
They only see the physical part.
link |
00:35:32.500
But when you fight someone, if I fight you,
link |
00:35:34.300
I look at you in the eyes.
link |
00:35:36.020
There's a lot of things that going on between you and I.
link |
00:35:39.060
I can look down here, bam, jab you in their face.
link |
00:35:42.620
The audience will not see this little detail,
link |
00:35:45.660
but you will see it.
link |
00:35:47.140
And that's what it makes the magic during a fight.
link |
00:35:50.580
The relation that you have with the opponent,
link |
00:35:52.980
like the mental game, what you make him believe,
link |
00:35:55.700
those little thing I use a lot of those.
link |
00:35:58.660
If you talk to a lot of my opponent,
link |
00:36:00.700
they'll tell you like I use a lot of these little things.
link |
00:36:03.060
Like I look down at Banna, I go up
link |
00:36:04.900
or I am pretending I want to attack you.
link |
00:36:06.940
So I make you flinch,
link |
00:36:08.860
but in reality, I'm just doing this
link |
00:36:11.180
because I want to rest.
link |
00:36:12.540
I want to recuperate and I'm tired.
link |
00:36:15.500
How much is, you know, people talk about that with poker,
link |
00:36:17.900
for example, how much is the value of this?
link |
00:36:21.340
You know, so like some people argue
link |
00:36:23.580
that poker is more about the betting.
link |
00:36:25.860
You know, just the money.
link |
00:36:27.180
It's just how much you bet and so on.
link |
00:36:29.140
So that would be more like the analogy there
link |
00:36:32.580
with fighting would be just strictly
link |
00:36:35.540
the physical movement of your body.
link |
00:36:37.500
And then a lot of people argue that there's a lot here
link |
00:36:40.140
in the way you look and the little movements in the face.
link |
00:36:42.660
So do you think there's,
link |
00:36:44.460
do you think you're communicating with your opponent
link |
00:36:47.020
when you look at them?
link |
00:36:48.740
There's no way to know for sure a hundred percent
link |
00:36:51.220
and I'm by no, no means psychic, nothing like that.
link |
00:36:54.580
And I don't believe in that at all.
link |
00:36:56.180
The only thing is I know to looking to the eyes
link |
00:36:59.220
of my opponent when he's afraid
link |
00:37:01.580
and when he gives up on me.
link |
00:37:03.660
I've been accused very often in my career
link |
00:37:07.020
to not take enough risk, to not finish my opponent.
link |
00:37:10.500
But the reason why I didn't finish my opponent
link |
00:37:12.380
is because I saw in his eyes that he gave up,
link |
00:37:15.220
he gave me the fight and I'm winning the fight.
link |
00:37:17.860
So it's not up to me.
link |
00:37:21.620
It's not to me to make it, to try to sacrifice myself
link |
00:37:24.460
trying to finish him.
link |
00:37:25.740
Perhaps if I do that, I will open up for him
link |
00:37:28.940
to capitalize on my mistake.
link |
00:37:33.140
It's up to him to make a risk.
link |
00:37:35.900
So people sometimes they don't understand
link |
00:37:38.460
that this is the art of fighting, my friend.
link |
00:37:41.180
Like if I'm winning the fight, like in hockey and ice hockey,
link |
00:37:44.540
if you're winning the game and it's the third period,
link |
00:37:47.940
it's at the end of the third period,
link |
00:37:49.100
you're not gonna take out your gold
link |
00:37:50.540
and they're trying to score another goal
link |
00:37:52.060
because winning five to three or five to four
link |
00:37:56.980
is the same thing.
link |
00:37:57.940
Same thing in MMA, we make a living out of this.
link |
00:38:00.780
And sometimes, you know, as bad as it can be,
link |
00:38:04.940
you wanna save yourself for another day,
link |
00:38:06.660
you know, you wanna minimize the damage.
link |
00:38:09.060
But if he knows he's losing the fight,
link |
00:38:11.860
it's up to him to take the risk.
link |
00:38:13.780
It's not up to me.
link |
00:38:15.580
So I'm a good counter fighter.
link |
00:38:17.500
I use a lot of my attack or counter strike
link |
00:38:20.140
or reactive takedown or proactive takedown.
link |
00:38:23.900
That's my specialty.
link |
00:38:25.540
So I'm not gonna, I'd have no desire to sacrifice myself
link |
00:38:29.580
trying to finish my opponent.
link |
00:38:31.860
If he want to, if perhaps I might give him
link |
00:38:35.620
the opportunity to capitalize on me.
link |
00:38:38.060
It's not smart to do that.
link |
00:38:41.700
And very often when I fight someone,
link |
00:38:44.420
I can read him, I see the fear in his eyes.
link |
00:38:46.900
Now I'm like, I got you now.
link |
00:38:48.580
He's very desperate.
link |
00:38:49.460
That doesn't mean I have to put my guard down
link |
00:38:52.500
because he's gonna be desperate,
link |
00:38:54.180
but I know I'm beating you.
link |
00:38:55.820
And I know I'm beating you,
link |
00:38:56.860
I'm just gonna do what I need.
link |
00:38:58.180
You know, if I have a chance, of course,
link |
00:38:59.500
I'll knock him out,
link |
00:39:00.340
but I'm not gonna try to sacrifice myself to knock him out.
link |
00:39:04.260
And if you do that,
link |
00:39:06.980
maybe one day you'll make a mistake
link |
00:39:08.700
and you'll get dropped
link |
00:39:09.980
and you'll tell yourself that I shoot.
link |
00:39:12.340
I just got brain damage.
link |
00:39:14.380
Maybe I'm never gonna come back the same.
link |
00:39:15.900
Maybe, you know, I ruin my career or, you know,
link |
00:39:18.620
it's a very serious game that we're playing.
link |
00:39:21.900
It's very dangerous.
link |
00:39:23.620
In the face of that risk,
link |
00:39:26.540
I mean, Mike Tyson talked about, you know,
link |
00:39:29.380
when the opponent looks away,
link |
00:39:31.820
he knows he's got him, right?
link |
00:39:33.980
That he's broken.
link |
00:39:38.100
For a person like me who has trouble making eye contact
link |
00:39:41.900
with people, there's truth to that.
link |
00:39:44.260
I mean, there's truth to that.
link |
00:39:46.020
That there's an animal nature to us looking away.
link |
00:39:49.940
I mean, you could see that the way the body language,
link |
00:39:53.180
the way the eyes move between two animals
link |
00:39:55.460
going at it in the wild when like two lions fight
link |
00:39:59.900
or two, whatever fight,
link |
00:40:01.820
there's a certain beta move when you've been defeated.
link |
00:40:06.660
Yes, or one thing when I know that,
link |
00:40:09.540
that when it happened, one of the sign
link |
00:40:12.180
is when I just like make a faint and the guy flinch,
link |
00:40:15.420
like crazy, that's mean he's really scared of me.
link |
00:40:17.900
It's a little bit like you're doing this,
link |
00:40:20.540
that guy flinch a little bit, or you're doing this,
link |
00:40:22.100
that's mean you hurt him and he doesn't wanna get hurt again.
link |
00:40:26.860
So he's really trying to run away
link |
00:40:29.380
and not winning the fight anymore, but not losing.
link |
00:40:34.180
So sort of surviving the five round
link |
00:40:36.740
and it's hard to finish a guy who doesn't wanna fight.
link |
00:40:41.340
A guy who's not fighting anymore to win
link |
00:40:43.700
and he's fighting to not lose.
link |
00:40:45.420
And the proof of that, if you don't believe me,
link |
00:40:47.220
just look the reign of all the greatest champion in UFC.
link |
00:40:50.140
I don't care who they are, John Jones or like,
link |
00:40:54.220
you could clearly see that in the beginning of their reign,
link |
00:40:56.580
they could finish a lot of their opponents,
link |
00:40:59.260
same as me in the beginning, I was finishing a lot of my opponent.
link |
00:41:02.060
But there's a time that the entire UFC roster is studying you
link |
00:41:06.860
and they found ways to perhaps not beating you,
link |
00:41:09.900
but they found a way to navigate through the fight
link |
00:41:14.220
in a way that they minimize the damage.
link |
00:41:16.300
You know what I mean?
link |
00:41:17.140
So it's a big difference between fighting to win
link |
00:41:19.700
and fighting to not lose.
link |
00:41:22.460
You said that there's a difference
link |
00:41:23.940
between a fighter and a martial artist.
link |
00:41:26.020
So now we were talking about fighting.
link |
00:41:28.340
You're considered by many to be
link |
00:41:30.180
one of the greatest fighters of all time,
link |
00:41:32.780
but you've said that there's a difference
link |
00:41:34.780
between a fighter and a martial artist.
link |
00:41:37.820
A fighter is training for a purpose.
link |
00:41:39.620
He has a fight.
link |
00:41:42.540
I'm a martial artist.
link |
00:41:43.740
I don't train for a fight.
link |
00:41:45.060
I train for myself.
link |
00:41:46.500
I'm training all the time.
link |
00:41:48.060
My goal is perfection, but I will never reach perfection.
link |
00:41:52.500
So what to you, does it mean to be a martial artist?
link |
00:41:56.940
Martial artists is because that lifestyle
link |
00:42:01.460
that I have has been introduced to me
link |
00:42:03.540
and the seed has been planted to my mind
link |
00:42:05.740
a long, long time ago by my father.
link |
00:42:12.260
I do not train because I have a fight.
link |
00:42:15.100
I will always train.
link |
00:42:16.220
Even now, it kind of amused me to see that
link |
00:42:21.780
a lot of people, because I'm still training,
link |
00:42:23.740
because I love the science of fighting.
link |
00:42:25.740
I do not like to fight, but I love the science of it.
link |
00:42:28.180
And I will always do it as long as I can do it.
link |
00:42:31.300
People think I'm gonna make a comeback and everything.
link |
00:42:34.140
I'm about to get to have 40 years old, you know?
link |
00:42:37.060
Like, it's, I'm, you know, like,
link |
00:42:42.100
I don't wanna fight in a cage at 40 years old.
link |
00:42:44.820
I mean, some people have done it and they did it very well,
link |
00:42:47.340
but I'm not one of them.
link |
00:42:49.580
I feel a little bit to me that,
link |
00:42:52.820
and you never say never.
link |
00:42:55.340
I feel like to me, like it's a little,
link |
00:42:56.780
like a kid that you play with a strain when he's young,
link |
00:42:58.860
like, then he's five years old,
link |
00:43:00.980
but six years old, seven years old, eight years old.
link |
00:43:03.700
And then I want to be like,
link |
00:43:05.860
what the hell I'm doing here and I'm 12 for this.
link |
00:43:08.140
Like, I have done it, you know?
link |
00:43:11.900
And I got out of it on top and I'm healthy,
link |
00:43:17.900
which is the most important thing right now.
link |
00:43:20.020
I'm touching wood and I'm wealthy.
link |
00:43:22.780
I beat the game, you know what I mean?
link |
00:43:24.380
In a way, like, that's not to be cocky, but I did it.
link |
00:43:27.260
And I wish more fighters could do the same thing.
link |
00:43:31.060
I wish, but it's unfortunate because a lot of them,
link |
00:43:34.780
they stay there and hang out for too long
link |
00:43:37.580
and they get badly hurt.
link |
00:43:39.140
They get beaten and broken, you know?
link |
00:43:45.300
And they finish broke as well
link |
00:43:47.380
because the lifestyle you have when you're a pro athlete,
link |
00:43:50.180
it's crazy, you know, it's unbelievable.
link |
00:43:53.780
However, everything that goes up in life goes down
link |
00:43:57.100
and you need to plan your future, you know?
link |
00:43:59.460
So for me, if some guys have the same mentality as me
link |
00:44:04.060
and they're watching us right now,
link |
00:44:05.180
I would say if you do it because you're just good at it,
link |
00:44:09.020
you like the money, the advantage, the freedom
link |
00:44:11.660
that it gives you, but you don't necessarily like to fight.
link |
00:44:14.740
When you're done, you finish on top, you know?
link |
00:44:17.540
Go cash out and get out of here.
link |
00:44:19.660
Walk away, this is really hard to do.
link |
00:44:21.980
However, Alex, it's not everybody that does it
link |
00:44:24.660
for that reason.
link |
00:44:25.500
Some people generally love to fight, love to compete.
link |
00:44:28.860
So they do it because they love it, you know?
link |
00:44:30.900
Or they do it because of the money.
link |
00:44:32.420
But if you don't love it, if you don't like to fight
link |
00:44:34.820
because it's very stressful and you don't enjoy,
link |
00:44:36.980
you enjoy the training, perhaps,
link |
00:44:38.820
or you don't like to fight, you do it
link |
00:44:40.020
because it's part of what you need to do
link |
00:44:42.340
in order to keep that lifestyle.
link |
00:44:44.220
And, you know, like, you don't need the money.
link |
00:44:48.100
Get out of here, man.
link |
00:44:49.540
If you're in your prime, get out of here
link |
00:44:51.700
because if you don't, you'll hurt your own legacy,
link |
00:44:54.540
you'll damage your health.
link |
00:44:56.420
It's very sad.
link |
00:44:57.860
And it's a sad business, you know what I mean?
link |
00:45:03.340
It's like a lot of, one of the places
link |
00:45:07.740
where it's the most, one of the most happiest place
link |
00:45:12.060
for me to go and the most saddest place for me to go,
link |
00:45:15.260
it's in the gym.
link |
00:45:16.100
It's a triceria in Montreal
link |
00:45:18.380
because it's one of the happiest place for me to go
link |
00:45:20.900
because I can go train and do what I love to do.
link |
00:45:24.780
But it's also a very sad place for me
link |
00:45:26.460
because after when I'm about to leave,
link |
00:45:28.500
there's always a bunch of young kids that comes
link |
00:45:31.060
or guys that are around 30, 33 years old
link |
00:45:35.420
and they come to me and say,
link |
00:45:36.260
George, you have some advice for me and I look at them.
link |
00:45:41.540
And if they're my friend, they're a real close friend of mine,
link |
00:45:44.220
I'll tell them the truth in their face
link |
00:45:46.300
and I've done it many times and it was not well received.
link |
00:45:49.580
But if they're not my friend, I have to, you know,
link |
00:45:52.260
it's always an advice about fighting
link |
00:45:53.620
and I answer their question, it's my pleasure.
link |
00:45:56.500
But the truth, if they want me to tell the truth,
link |
00:46:00.460
the big majority of them, I would tell them,
link |
00:46:03.420
listen, man, you're on a losing street of three fights,
link |
00:46:10.940
you're 33 years old, you know,
link |
00:46:14.260
I think you should think about doing something else
link |
00:46:16.940
in your life, you know, have other goals, you know,
link |
00:46:19.260
because you're not gonna make it.
link |
00:46:21.220
And, you know, I've seen that movie before
link |
00:46:24.420
and it's a very sad ending.
link |
00:46:26.580
And I'm sad to tell you the truth
link |
00:46:29.060
because you're not gonna make the money,
link |
00:46:31.180
just choose something, but if I tell them that,
link |
00:46:33.780
they're gonna be angry at me because they're gonna be like,
link |
00:46:35.580
oh, you, you make it and you think I cannot make it.
link |
00:46:37.780
So it's kind of, they're gonna think I'm cocky,
link |
00:46:40.340
but I was lucky to make it.
link |
00:46:41.980
You know what, the star were all aligned,
link |
00:46:43.620
but at one point you need to be able to have a plan B,
link |
00:46:47.380
you know, like some parent,
link |
00:46:49.420
they come to see me with their kids.
link |
00:46:52.420
Hey, this is the future world champion in the UFC
link |
00:46:55.980
and what advice would you give him?
link |
00:46:57.980
I always tell the same thing
link |
00:46:59.460
and it does not make everybody happy when I say,
link |
00:47:01.780
I say, I go to the car and say, are you good at school?
link |
00:47:05.660
Say, stay at school.
link |
00:47:06.780
School is very important for you.
link |
00:47:08.420
Stay educated.
link |
00:47:10.020
Yeah, do boxing, martial arts, a great sport, stay in shape,
link |
00:47:14.340
but don't put your eggs all in the same basket.
link |
00:47:17.260
And the parents sometimes are angry when I say,
link |
00:47:18.820
not angry, but I can see in their eyes,
link |
00:47:20.340
they're like, they kind of surprised.
link |
00:47:24.420
And it's not because I made it
link |
00:47:27.180
that I will tell their kid to follow the same path that I did.
link |
00:47:31.220
I went to school too, I've studied.
link |
00:47:34.260
I dropped off school
link |
00:47:35.700
when I had my first world championship fight against Matt Hughes.
link |
00:47:39.300
But before that, I was in school.
link |
00:47:41.420
So I had another way to go
link |
00:47:45.340
if things would not have gone the way I wanted.
link |
00:47:49.700
But the problem, and I'm saying that,
link |
00:47:51.140
it's not only about boxing and MMA,
link |
00:47:52.900
I'm talking about hockey, basketball, baseball, same thing.
link |
00:47:56.460
Maybe it's the one on 100,000 that make it.
link |
00:47:59.740
And I'm saying that make it.
link |
00:48:01.860
When I'm saying I make it, that's mean
link |
00:48:03.780
that can retire and have enough money
link |
00:48:05.900
for the rest of his life.
link |
00:48:07.060
Because it's a sad story.
link |
00:48:09.660
People only heard about the people that makes it.
link |
00:48:12.860
But a lot of fighters, even a UFC champion,
link |
00:48:16.340
in boxing champion, even in football, basketball,
link |
00:48:18.500
I don't care the big names.
link |
00:48:20.460
When they retire, they have zero.
link |
00:48:22.020
They're bankrupt, my friend.
link |
00:48:23.860
And it's a very sad story and a sad reality
link |
00:48:27.500
that most people are not aware of.
link |
00:48:29.500
But having other paths in life, actually,
link |
00:48:31.660
can also increase the chance of you dominating
link |
00:48:36.340
and reaching the highest peak in your main thing.
link |
00:48:39.740
I mean, Jimmy Page, I don't know if you know who that is,
link |
00:48:41.580
is a judo coach in America.
link |
00:48:44.900
He says that to all of his athletes,
link |
00:48:47.820
just to make sure that you go.
link |
00:48:49.380
He has a lot of Kayla Harrison,
link |
00:48:51.500
two time Olympic gold medalist.
link |
00:48:52.780
He has a lot of Olympic medalists.
link |
00:48:55.100
But basically, there's something about going to school,
link |
00:48:57.380
like having, if I forget school,
link |
00:48:59.220
any other avenue in life
link |
00:49:01.940
that gives you the freedom to go all out in your main.
link |
00:49:06.340
Like, you know you're doing it for the right reasons.
link |
00:49:09.340
You're not stuck.
link |
00:49:10.900
It clears the mind to where you're free
link |
00:49:13.500
to be the best in the world,
link |
00:49:15.580
as opposed to kind of you have to.
link |
00:49:18.580
I mean, different people are motivated by different things.
link |
00:49:21.260
So sometimes some people like having their back to the wall,
link |
00:49:25.220
and that's the only option they have.
link |
00:49:26.700
But most people, I think, excel when you have other options.
link |
00:49:30.420
I think it's a distraction,
link |
00:49:31.860
and I think it's important to have a distraction.
link |
00:49:35.020
When you say that, I think about one of my coach, John Danagher.
link |
00:49:38.660
He put his academic background experience into Jiu Jitsu.
link |
00:49:43.700
And for me, that's why he's the best teacher I ever had.
link |
00:49:46.940
He's incredible.
link |
00:49:49.500
He started teaching me
link |
00:49:52.300
when I even couldn't speak much English at the time.
link |
00:49:54.780
And I was able to communicate and understand,
link |
00:49:58.300
you know, that's how good he is.
link |
00:50:00.580
But I truly believe that most of athletes,
link |
00:50:03.460
especially in sport like mixed martial art,
link |
00:50:06.820
train way too much.
link |
00:50:08.380
If I could go back and talk to a young George,
link |
00:50:11.900
I would tell him, say, you do way too much volume.
link |
00:50:16.580
You train way too hard.
link |
00:50:17.940
Train smarter, it's more important.
link |
00:50:20.660
And I think sometimes we underestimate
link |
00:50:23.700
the benefit of recuperation.
link |
00:50:27.220
Because I think we assimilate the information
link |
00:50:31.020
that we learn during a training when we recuperate,
link |
00:50:35.380
and not during the training itself.
link |
00:50:37.660
And this whole mentality of harder, heavier, you know,
link |
00:50:42.340
like it's good for someone who's lazy.
link |
00:50:47.020
But if you're an elite athlete, most of the time,
link |
00:50:49.460
you know, like you're not always, but most of the time,
link |
00:50:52.100
it's because you're not lazy.
link |
00:50:54.660
And a lot of guys, sometimes they're elite athletes,
link |
00:50:58.940
champions, and you hear people say,
link |
00:51:01.740
oh, I can't believe he's very gifted, but he doesn't work.
link |
00:51:04.900
But perhaps it's not really because,
link |
00:51:07.740
perhaps it's because we don't understand.
link |
00:51:09.420
Perhaps he's doing the right thing,
link |
00:51:10.900
and it's us who's working too much and too hard.
link |
00:51:14.860
That's what I think.
link |
00:51:16.900
There's a guy I train with, he made me think about it.
link |
00:51:21.540
His name is Mansur Barnawi.
link |
00:51:23.700
He's going to be a future star.
link |
00:51:25.980
He's an incredible fighter.
link |
00:51:27.940
He trained once a day.
link |
00:51:31.060
And he asked me some time to advise
link |
00:51:32.460
when he came to Montreal, he's from France.
link |
00:51:33.980
You'll hear about him, he's very good.
link |
00:51:37.660
And I saw him in the morning at TriStar.
link |
00:51:41.220
And I said, OK, I'll see you perhaps later
link |
00:51:42.980
in the other training zone.
link |
00:51:43.860
No, I only train once a day.
link |
00:51:46.500
And he kind of waits for me to give him like,
link |
00:51:50.420
not an approval, but to see how I react.
link |
00:51:54.900
Or I don't know, it was kind of a strange feeling.
link |
00:51:57.940
But I told myself, at that point,
link |
00:51:59.900
I kind of had an awakening, and I told myself, man,
link |
00:52:06.220
maybe he's doing the right thing.
link |
00:52:08.300
Because a lot of people would say, for example, oh,
link |
00:52:10.740
that's a lazy way of doing it.
link |
00:52:13.100
But perhaps it's the best way to do it.
link |
00:52:15.660
I'm not saying that training once a day
link |
00:52:17.380
is the best way to do it.
link |
00:52:18.500
That's what I'm saying.
link |
00:52:19.420
I'm saying that everybody is different.
link |
00:52:22.780
But for him, it works beautifully.
link |
00:52:25.980
And I wouldn't change anything if I would be him,
link |
00:52:29.780
because he's improving like crazy.
link |
00:52:33.900
Yeah, and ultimately, the bigger picture there
link |
00:52:36.300
is to do something that everyone else says is stupid.
link |
00:52:40.420
It's like the fasting thing, that a lot of people
link |
00:52:43.620
would say, a lot of nutritional experts would say
link |
00:52:45.940
that that's a dumb way.
link |
00:52:48.740
If you want to be an MMA fighter,
link |
00:52:50.460
you should be eating like many times a day.
link |
00:52:52.620
You should be starting every day with oatmeal.
link |
00:52:55.100
You should be carving up constantly.
link |
00:52:57.460
But that's not necessarily true for everybody.
link |
00:52:59.860
And it's possible.
link |
00:53:01.220
I'm sure there's actually now a few MMA fighters
link |
00:53:03.180
that are carnivore only.
link |
00:53:04.260
It's possible.
link |
00:53:05.460
I used to eat right before training,
link |
00:53:08.700
and it didn't bother me.
link |
00:53:11.980
However, now, my first training that I do normally,
link |
00:53:17.940
in average, around noon, 11 AM, I haven't
link |
00:53:24.020
eaten anything when I do my first training.
link |
00:53:25.940
And it feels to me that I'm much more clear in my mind.
link |
00:53:32.300
I'm much more creative.
link |
00:53:33.900
I feel better.
link |
00:53:35.500
Yeah, it's a big difference.
link |
00:53:37.060
I just wish I would have known that before.
link |
00:53:39.500
Well, it's fascinating, the role of the mind in all of this,
link |
00:53:41.980
how important is it for your mind to be clear,
link |
00:53:45.740
to really think deeply?
link |
00:53:48.300
There's a judoka American named Travis Stevens.
link |
00:53:54.020
I remember he said something that the right kind of practice
link |
00:53:59.940
is when your mind is exhausted at the end of it,
link |
00:54:03.420
that you were constantly thinking through things.
link |
00:54:07.660
Like, your body shouldn't be exhausted first.
link |
00:54:09.700
Your mind should be exhausted first.
link |
00:54:11.980
It's really fascinating.
link |
00:54:13.300
So people think about training hard.
link |
00:54:17.140
A successful practice is where you walk away just overwhelmed
link |
00:54:21.500
how much you had to think.
link |
00:54:23.660
It's a fascinating framing of a successful practice.
link |
00:54:27.300
It's true.
link |
00:54:28.300
Travis Stevens was one of my main training partners
link |
00:54:31.340
when I got ready for my fight with Nick Diaz and Carlos
link |
00:54:36.220
Condit.
link |
00:54:38.060
He drove every Friday from, I believe, Boston.
link |
00:54:44.540
It's like a six hour drive.
link |
00:54:47.220
Drive to the gym in Montreal.
link |
00:54:50.740
Train with us an hour and a half.
link |
00:54:54.460
Drive back.
link |
00:54:58.300
He's got such an amazing discipline.
link |
00:55:01.340
I was so happy for him when he won the medal at the Olympic
link |
00:55:05.140
game.
link |
00:55:05.900
Man, what a well deserved accomplishment.
link |
00:55:12.420
It's unbelievable.
link |
00:55:13.580
It paid off.
link |
00:55:15.100
I was so happy for him.
link |
00:55:16.540
And every time we got to the gym,
link |
00:55:20.540
he was waiting for me in the kneeling position like a soldier.
link |
00:55:26.140
I was like, my god, this guy is made of steel.
link |
00:55:31.060
And after training, I always offer him.
link |
00:55:33.620
And I say, hey, Travis, I know you like to train with that.
link |
00:55:36.340
Because in Montreal, they have a very good judo team,
link |
00:55:38.420
Nicolas Gill and all those guys.
link |
00:55:41.500
And I say, if you want to stay, I'll get you at the hotel.
link |
00:55:44.780
Anything you want is like, no, no, I got to go back.
link |
00:55:46.660
I got another training later.
link |
00:55:48.100
I'm like, not only did he train with us,
link |
00:55:50.620
you have to go back because he had another training.
link |
00:55:53.220
I'm like, this is insane.
link |
00:55:55.340
And he's gone through a huge number of injuries.
link |
00:55:57.780
So he's also an innovator because, I mean,
link |
00:56:01.980
it's difficult to say, but for American judo,
link |
00:56:04.060
there's not many high level judoka.
link |
00:56:06.700
So if you want to fight with the best in the world,
link |
00:56:10.660
you have to be alone.
link |
00:56:12.660
It's a lonely journey, actually.
link |
00:56:14.540
It's kind of sad.
link |
00:56:16.580
It's much easier to be in Japan where everybody's a killer.
link |
00:56:19.780
When you're alone at it, it's a difficult journey.
link |
00:56:23.180
And it's funny we talked about there's some sports
link |
00:56:28.180
where a mistake is that's it.
link |
00:56:32.740
You can't recover from a mistake.
link |
00:56:34.620
I think judo oftentimes is one of those sports.
link |
00:56:37.420
And added on top of that is the Olympics, only every four
link |
00:56:44.020
years.
link |
00:56:45.220
And Travis's story, he's the reason when I saw him in 2008
link |
00:56:49.420
is I started martial arts.
link |
00:56:51.660
I switched from wrestling and street fighting
link |
00:56:55.780
to doing jiu jitsu and judo.
link |
00:56:58.180
And I just saw so much guts.
link |
00:56:59.940
And in 2000, I might be messing up the years here,
link |
00:57:03.860
but in the next Olympics, he fought.
link |
00:57:07.460
And he lost on just the referee call.
link |
00:57:11.900
And just he went to war.
link |
00:57:13.340
And he just so much guts and just everything on the line
link |
00:57:18.660
and to lose.
link |
00:57:19.780
And then to still persevere through all the injuries,
link |
00:57:22.140
through all of that, through incredibly difficult training
link |
00:57:24.860
sessions to go another four years and then compete
link |
00:57:28.100
and then win a medal.
link |
00:57:29.260
I mean, that guy's just and like he clearly
link |
00:57:33.100
could have been very successful.
link |
00:57:35.220
He's also an incredible jiu jitsu competitor.
link |
00:57:37.460
So he could have switched to that, but he's stuck.
link |
00:57:40.780
In a lot of sport, when you're an elite, like for example,
link |
00:57:47.300
in Canada, I saw keys, the number one sport of the country.
link |
00:57:52.220
Kids, when they're an elite, when they're young,
link |
00:57:54.420
they get chosen.
link |
00:57:56.020
And they're kind of already known as a superstar.
link |
00:58:02.060
The school where they go and the program they follow,
link |
00:58:05.220
like I'm sure it's the same thing in the US, in basketball,
link |
00:58:07.780
baseball, perhaps American football,
link |
00:58:11.780
because they already chosen.
link |
00:58:13.900
So they grew up with that, that it's
link |
00:58:17.180
a kid that superstar, a stardom, so to speak.
link |
00:58:21.540
And it's already sort of glamorous, you know?
link |
00:58:26.220
However, in MMA, there's no MMA, judo, wrestling.
link |
00:58:32.260
Like in America, because it's not our national sport,
link |
00:58:34.940
it's actually it's not like even when I first started,
link |
00:58:38.820
it was not really well received by the media.
link |
00:58:42.460
There's no glamour into it.
link |
00:58:45.180
Now I don't know.
link |
00:58:46.060
It seems like it's another era now.
link |
00:58:48.580
And I feel sometimes that some people
link |
00:58:52.660
do it for the wrong reason.
link |
00:58:54.940
You know, some people do it because of the glamour,
link |
00:58:58.380
because of the money.
link |
00:58:59.940
But even if you're an elite and very good,
link |
00:59:02.740
the glamour and the money won't come in the beginning.
link |
00:59:07.420
It's a very long grind before it starts to come in.
link |
00:59:13.540
And you need to make those sacrifices.
link |
00:59:16.020
And it's a journey that where you will be tested,
link |
00:59:19.860
you will be hurt, repeatedly, and you're
link |
00:59:23.580
going to have to reach the down deep and come back up.
link |
00:59:28.780
And then once you finally think you made it,
link |
00:59:31.340
you're going to go back in the down deep again.
link |
00:59:33.500
It's a very exhausting and encouraging adventure sometimes.
link |
00:59:39.700
But if you hold on to your dream and you believe in it,
link |
00:59:42.500
and you have the stars are aligned, you're going to make it.
link |
00:59:47.460
That's why it's only a few people that make it.
link |
00:59:50.980
And that's why I feel sometimes a lot of people
link |
00:59:55.500
in the new generation do it for the wrong reason.
link |
00:59:58.060
In my generation, because of sport,
link |
01:00:00.460
at first there were no rules.
link |
01:00:03.460
I thought it was more pure.
link |
01:00:04.780
The people that did it was really because of the passion.
link |
01:00:07.660
We didn't seek money, fame.
link |
01:00:11.740
We did it because we wanted to be.
link |
01:00:13.940
I did it because I wanted to be the man.
link |
01:00:16.580
I like to have the confidence that when
link |
01:00:19.020
I walk somewhere, I have the confidence
link |
01:00:21.580
that it's an illusion because nobody is faster than a bullet.
link |
01:00:24.620
Yes.
link |
01:00:25.940
But I wanted to achieve it for myself.
link |
01:00:28.740
And which today now, because I don't
link |
01:00:32.140
know if it's social media and all that,
link |
01:00:35.380
the world has changed, the glamour.
link |
01:00:39.260
I feel it's a different thing right now.
link |
01:00:42.740
Yeah.
link |
01:00:43.740
If you get in it for the glamour or the money,
link |
01:00:45.660
you may not have the right amount of fuel
link |
01:00:48.580
to persevere through all the ups and downs, for sure.
link |
01:00:51.860
When you talk about motivation of money and glamour,
link |
01:00:58.780
a guy comes to mind, and I don't know how many wrestlers
link |
01:01:01.660
you know, but in Russia, there's a guy
link |
01:01:05.580
named Bovasya Satyev, the Satyev brothers,
link |
01:01:09.740
one of the greatest freestyle wrestlers of all time.
link |
01:01:12.940
But he also has, it's funny, he doesn't have many interviews.
link |
01:01:17.140
One of my goals is to go out and talk to him in Russian,
link |
01:01:19.620
do an interview with him.
link |
01:01:20.900
Because he's exceptionally poetic and a deep thinker.
link |
01:01:24.500
He's the kind of martial artist that you are in the way
link |
01:01:27.740
that it's not just about the different battles you've
link |
01:01:30.220
been through or whatever.
link |
01:01:31.700
It's about the philosophy behind the way he approaches life.
link |
01:01:35.540
Now, he has spoken quite a bit about that the glamour,
link |
01:01:39.500
the fame, the money are all things
link |
01:01:41.500
that get in the way of the purity of the experience,
link |
01:01:47.100
the art, that the way to achieve greatness
link |
01:01:50.060
is to just lose yourself in the art of the actual combat.
link |
01:01:56.340
In his case, it's wrestling.
link |
01:01:58.500
And then kind of not to worry and actively make sure
link |
01:02:02.700
that you block out anybody who feeds you
link |
01:02:07.700
the narrative where you're supposed
link |
01:02:09.140
to be this famous person and all those kinds of things
link |
01:02:12.100
that he basically says, let others write your story.
link |
01:02:16.620
Make sure that you just focus on the art.
link |
01:02:19.140
And another person from that side of the world
link |
01:02:21.900
is, of course, Khabib.
link |
01:02:24.060
So he represents that side of the world.
link |
01:02:26.380
And we were talking about walking away.
link |
01:02:28.820
And most people not being able to walk away at the top
link |
01:02:33.260
as you have, but also now Khabib has, it looks like,
link |
01:02:38.460
incredibly so.
link |
01:02:39.420
So maybe you can comment about what your thoughts are
link |
01:02:43.180
about Khabib numbering him out of being
link |
01:02:45.460
able to just walk away.
link |
01:02:47.860
We talk about the gold very often.
link |
01:02:50.260
Khabib isn't the argument because he
link |
01:02:54.740
has the most dominant carrier of all martial art, the guy.
link |
01:03:01.180
Some guys can be named the gold for different reasons,
link |
01:03:03.820
but Khabib, for that reason, and he's undefeated,
link |
01:03:07.820
I don't even know if he lost.
link |
01:03:10.260
He might have lost round, but he dominates all his opponent.
link |
01:03:15.340
It was ridiculous.
link |
01:03:17.340
And such an incredible carrier that he had.
link |
01:03:22.300
I love to watch him fight, he's incredible.
link |
01:03:27.140
And when you talk about the art, when
link |
01:03:29.220
you say mixed martial art, the idea
link |
01:03:34.500
of a flawless performance for me,
link |
01:03:39.300
everybody often, when we say flawless performance,
link |
01:03:42.820
thinks about a knockout, a brutal knockout.
link |
01:03:46.900
But for me, it's to be able to showcase beautiful technique,
link |
01:03:53.740
like a beautiful takedown, beautiful submission,
link |
01:03:56.700
like something beautiful that you know when you look at,
link |
01:04:02.300
for example, Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan,
link |
01:04:07.780
or like Stephen Curry.
link |
01:04:11.700
Even if you don't know nothing about basketball
link |
01:04:14.260
and you watch Michael Jordan, you'll be like, wow,
link |
01:04:17.380
that's beautiful what you just did.
link |
01:04:19.660
Like we talk about fighting and trying
link |
01:04:22.180
to say the word beautiful in fighting for certain people,
link |
01:04:26.100
it could sound kind of crazy, but I'm
link |
01:04:28.900
talking about the technique, a beautiful technique.
link |
01:04:33.700
For me, that's the goal.
link |
01:04:35.540
When I was fighting, it's not only to have a brutal knockout,
link |
01:04:38.460
because some people are more gifted than others.
link |
01:04:41.260
I'm saying gifted, some people are better than others
link |
01:04:43.300
in certain phase of fighting.
link |
01:04:46.060
But for me, it was that it was to showcase, to win, of course,
link |
01:04:49.300
but to showcase some beautiful technique
link |
01:04:52.380
that you can watch it and be like, wow, that was incredible.
link |
01:04:56.500
The timing, he did it.
link |
01:04:58.740
And when I think about Khabib Nurmagomedov,
link |
01:05:03.340
I see all the detail of his work, especially when
link |
01:05:06.700
he's got his opponent against the fence,
link |
01:05:08.820
that's his area of expertise where he's, to me,
link |
01:05:12.700
he's the best that ever did it.
link |
01:05:15.140
In terms of that fighting style, that particular expertise
link |
01:05:20.300
that he has, it's just incredible.
link |
01:05:22.060
The flawless execution of that particular set of techniques.
link |
01:05:25.420
Yeah.
link |
01:05:26.020
And Conor McGregor had the accuracy.
link |
01:05:31.300
The spider, Anderson Silva, was, I would say,
link |
01:05:35.180
the most flamboyant of all.
link |
01:05:37.780
He was moving like the Matrix.
link |
01:05:39.980
John Jones was incredible in terms of creativity,
link |
01:05:42.980
spinning elbows and that.
link |
01:05:44.540
And he faced incredible adversity.
link |
01:05:48.620
Dimitrius Johnson was so complete.
link |
01:05:51.700
You could bring, he was slamming a guy to an arm bar.
link |
01:05:54.900
It was just unbelievable.
link |
01:05:56.500
He was like the complete fighter.
link |
01:05:59.660
BJ Penn was so flexible.
link |
01:06:02.180
He did stuff with his body that nobody could do.
link |
01:06:06.260
The dexterity of his hips was just unbelievable.
link |
01:06:10.340
Dominic Cruz, to me, was incredible.
link |
01:06:12.540
His footwork, his distance control.
link |
01:06:15.740
So when you talk about the goat, Royce Gracie, another one,
link |
01:06:19.460
he did things that I think, for me, is not number one.
link |
01:06:21.740
Yeah, I got to end, starting to interrupt.
link |
01:06:23.900
The hoist is a fascinating one.
link |
01:06:25.220
I'd love to hear what you think about him.
link |
01:06:26.820
But many people consider you, most people,
link |
01:06:31.380
consider you to be the number one greatest
link |
01:06:35.020
mixed martial arts fighter ever.
link |
01:06:38.060
So it's fascinating to remove you from that list
link |
01:06:41.420
and continue this discussion and asking,
link |
01:06:44.140
like, who do you think is the greatest fighter ever?
link |
01:06:46.500
You listed some amazing ones.
link |
01:06:48.300
Royce, you somehow skipped Fedor.
link |
01:06:51.180
I'm very, as a Russian, I'm very offended.
link |
01:06:53.300
No, I was going to, there's so many.
link |
01:06:55.700
Fedor is one as well.
link |
01:06:57.260
Fedor, I think, in his prime was like,
link |
01:06:59.700
when you say, when you talk about a name, for example,
link |
01:07:02.580
like, we talk about him when he was in his prime.
link |
01:07:07.100
Like, when I talk, for example, about Anderson Silva,
link |
01:07:09.260
I'm not talking about the Anderson Silva
link |
01:07:10.780
who fought his last fight against Ray Yohal.
link |
01:07:14.540
I'm talking about Anderson Silva who knocked out Victor Belfer.
link |
01:07:17.660
Yes.
link |
01:07:18.820
BJP and the same thing.
link |
01:07:21.180
The problem is when fighters hang on for too long in the sport.
link |
01:07:25.220
That's what happened.
link |
01:07:26.060
They kind of make people forget how good they were.
link |
01:07:32.140
And it's very sad.
link |
01:07:33.060
We talk about Fedor and just think about steeping Mio Chich.
link |
01:07:37.900
Mio Chich is probably the greatest heavyweight of all time,
link |
01:07:41.020
with Fedor.
link |
01:07:42.340
I would really wonder who would have won this fight,
link |
01:07:45.380
the both guys in their prime.
link |
01:07:47.780
I tend to lean towards Fedor because my heart was with Fedor.
link |
01:07:51.220
Fedor, but he could have gone the other way.
link |
01:07:52.860
But just because Mio Chich loses his last fight now,
link |
01:07:55.980
everybody is like, oh, yeah, they forgot about him.
link |
01:07:58.740
It's crazy, man.
link |
01:08:00.180
It's one fight, you zig when you should zag, boom.
link |
01:08:04.420
That's the reality of mixed martial arts.
link |
01:08:06.580
Well, that's why the thing is the mixed martial arts
link |
01:08:10.580
isn't just the performance, the strictly who won and who lost.
link |
01:08:14.300
It's also the stories we tell ourselves.
link |
01:08:16.500
And so, I mean, there's beautiful stories being weaved.
link |
01:08:20.100
And that also is part of who is the greatest of all time.
link |
01:08:24.300
Is what were the battles?
link |
01:08:26.940
What had to be overcome?
link |
01:08:29.580
What was the flavor of the flawless performances?
link |
01:08:35.500
All of that plays into it.
link |
01:08:37.860
And you're right, being able to walk away at the top
link |
01:08:40.580
is also part of that.
link |
01:08:42.340
A lot of people ask me about Khabib.
link |
01:08:45.020
And that fight, I want it to happen.
link |
01:08:49.940
Khabib wanted to happen, but UFC did not want to happen.
link |
01:08:53.620
Between you and Khabib.
link |
01:08:54.700
Yes.
link |
01:08:55.540
And we tried to make it about three years ago
link |
01:08:58.260
when I retired, no, three.
link |
01:09:00.580
No, it was after two years ago.
link |
01:09:03.260
And it never came to fruition.
link |
01:09:05.900
The UFC were clear.
link |
01:09:07.020
They said they have other plans for Khabib.
link |
01:09:09.420
And it makes sense for the business standpoint
link |
01:09:12.180
because they want to keep the ball rolling.
link |
01:09:15.540
Now Khabib retired.
link |
01:09:16.620
And like everybody else, after Justin Gay tree,
link |
01:09:20.020
I was doing the commentator in French for the UFC.
link |
01:09:23.020
And I had butterflies.
link |
01:09:24.180
I thought he was going to call me out.
link |
01:09:26.860
If there's one guy that I would have said yes,
link |
01:09:28.980
it would be him because for a fighter,
link |
01:09:30.940
the most exciting things to do, it's often the scariest one.
link |
01:09:36.900
And Khabib was worth the risk.
link |
01:09:39.020
He's the scariest match up for you?
link |
01:09:40.380
Yes.
link |
01:09:41.820
He was worth the risk because nobody
link |
01:09:44.700
have ever been able to solve them.
link |
01:09:47.580
How would you solve the Khabib,
link |
01:09:49.180
never again, matter of puzzle?
link |
01:09:50.700
Well, Khabib is very good against the fans.
link |
01:09:53.820
I would have to establish a game plan and everything.
link |
01:09:56.220
But I think what I would need it to do
link |
01:10:00.500
is take the center of the octagon right away.
link |
01:10:03.220
Use a lot of think and faith.
link |
01:10:05.500
Keep the fight all the way out or all the way in.
link |
01:10:09.580
And when I say all the way in is when you close the gap,
link |
01:10:11.860
use my proactive and reactive takedown
link |
01:10:14.180
and perhaps my superior explosivity to put him down.
link |
01:10:17.900
I like to use those proactive and reactive techniques
link |
01:10:21.940
because for me, I feel it's more economical.
link |
01:10:25.060
Khabib is a much better chain wrestler than me.
link |
01:10:28.260
Chain wrestler is when you get the guys to the fans,
link |
01:10:30.620
it's pure wrestling.
link |
01:10:31.940
What makes my takedown very efficient?
link |
01:10:34.940
It's my karate.
link |
01:10:35.940
It's not my wrestling.
link |
01:10:37.940
I'm very good at timing my opponent and getting in
link |
01:10:43.940
with my explosivity.
link |
01:10:45.940
So if you watch at my takedown, it does not demand often.
link |
01:10:49.460
It does not demand a lot of work when I use the,
link |
01:10:52.180
I call it proactive takedown when he's coming to punch me
link |
01:10:57.180
and I react, so I mean, proactive is when I'm faking it.
link |
01:11:02.180
So I instigate the takedown by a fake, then I take him down.
link |
01:11:07.180
And reactive is when he's, I'm baiting him to throw something
link |
01:11:10.980
then I'm coming.
link |
01:11:11.980
It's a counter.
link |
01:11:12.980
Yeah.
link |
01:11:13.980
Yes.
link |
01:11:14.980
But all my takedown.
link |
01:11:15.980
In the center of the octagon.
link |
01:11:16.980
Yes.
link |
01:11:17.980
My takedowns are more in the center of the octagon.
link |
01:11:20.260
Like, for example, another guy that does it well is Gleason
link |
01:11:22.740
Thibault that did it well in his best days, you know,
link |
01:11:26.740
Khabib has more a style of chain wrestling.
link |
01:11:28.820
I would say like Camaru Usman, sort of speak, kind of guy.
link |
01:11:32.580
It's a different style.
link |
01:11:33.780
You cannot compare both styles.
link |
01:11:36.660
And that's the kind of takedown I'm good.
link |
01:11:38.540
And I would, if I would have fight Khabib, that's one of the
link |
01:11:41.180
strategies I would have, I wouldn't have been afraid because
link |
01:11:44.140
everybody that I thought I was able to put them down.
link |
01:11:47.300
And I have the pedigree to prove it in my fight resume.
link |
01:11:52.500
So you would have perhaps seen on his back and I would have
link |
01:11:55.340
perhaps be in my back as well.
link |
01:11:57.180
So it would have been a very interesting fight.
link |
01:11:59.460
How hard do you think he's to takedown?
link |
01:12:01.300
I mean, a lot of people speak about his wrestling being just
link |
01:12:04.580
It has nothing to do with the wrestling because
link |
01:12:07.580
It has to do with the karate.
link |
01:12:08.580
If I got the timing and I got my both hand around his knees,
link |
01:12:12.260
he's going down.
link |
01:12:13.260
Everybody goes down.
link |
01:12:14.260
Yes.
link |
01:12:15.260
Yes.
link |
01:12:16.260
And I had a lot of that.
link |
01:12:18.500
That's what I would have.
link |
01:12:19.500
I would not have been afraid of his wrestling.
link |
01:12:23.180
I would have be the instigator.
link |
01:12:24.940
I would have forced the fight forward.
link |
01:12:27.980
And that's what that's how I would have approached that fight,
link |
01:12:30.860
which I believe most of his opponent were afraid of his
link |
01:12:35.860
wrestling because they didn't have the tools that I have to
link |
01:12:38.340
put him down.
link |
01:12:40.060
I would not have forced the wrestling.
link |
01:12:41.740
I would have in the clinch, I would have tried to disengage.
link |
01:12:44.700
I have many ways to disengage a clinch.
link |
01:12:47.700
I would have wanted to force the fight in a fighting distance,
link |
01:12:52.300
you know, like in a shoot box distance, not in a wrestling
link |
01:12:55.900
distance.
link |
01:12:57.420
Is it possible this fight still happens?
link |
01:13:02.740
Your young look great in a suit.
link |
01:13:06.620
Well, there's a lot of problems now.
link |
01:13:10.300
And the thing is, now I made peace with it.
link |
01:13:14.580
I no longer don't want to fight.
link |
01:13:16.700
And I don't, it's not going to happen.
link |
01:13:18.020
UFC was not interested.
link |
01:13:19.380
And I'm bound by contract with the UFC and by exclusivity.
link |
01:13:23.980
There are some people says to me, oh, how about if Russian
link |
01:13:26.900
are a crazy, wealthy Russian guy come with the money?
link |
01:13:32.500
I said, I'm going to be in court with UFC.
link |
01:13:36.820
And also, I'm older now.
link |
01:13:39.500
And when I go home and I'm like, I don't want to do this.
link |
01:13:43.580
You know, like, I don't want to do this, but like, for example,
link |
01:13:47.700
I was training with Freddie Roach a few days ago
link |
01:13:50.060
and I'm hitting pads, you know, and Freddie is looking at me
link |
01:13:54.300
and he's like, hey, you have the hitchback.
link |
01:13:56.300
I'm like, yeah, if Dana White would walk in the room
link |
01:13:59.460
in the gym at that precise moment with the UFC contract,
link |
01:14:03.780
I would sign it in the blink of an eye.
link |
01:14:06.860
But when I go home, I'm like, hell no.
link |
01:14:11.780
My belly is full, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy.
link |
01:14:15.740
Why would I want to fight for?
link |
01:14:17.740
I made peace with it.
link |
01:14:18.940
But the minute I go back in the gym because I still get it
link |
01:14:21.900
inside me when I train with the young guys, I still get it.
link |
01:14:25.100
And a lot of guys think, hey, tell me the truth,
link |
01:14:27.940
you're preparing a comeback because I still get it.
link |
01:14:30.140
You know, I'm a little bit older, but I got more knowledge.
link |
01:14:33.020
I can compensate.
link |
01:14:35.500
I become a different animal because, you know, it changed you.
link |
01:14:40.580
But then after you go home and you're like, man, no way I'm doing this.
link |
01:14:46.900
It's very hard to explain, you need to be a fighter to understand
link |
01:14:50.780
that it's very, very hard to explain.
link |
01:14:53.180
Well, from your perspective, I think Khabib is one of the rare,
link |
01:14:57.540
one of the few fascinating scientific puzzles yet to be solved.
link |
01:15:01.420
So from that aspect, as a martial artist,
link |
01:15:04.180
it's just a fascinating journey to try to solve that puzzle.
link |
01:15:07.100
There is a thing, too, that we say, oh, who's the best fighter, people?
link |
01:15:12.020
Like I realized that later in my life.
link |
01:15:16.620
And I'm sure a lot of young guys will say, oh, I said, yeah, it's not...
link |
01:15:20.940
Don't speak for me, but I'm telling you right now
link |
01:15:23.820
what I'm about to say you will realize it later.
link |
01:15:27.140
When I was young, I think you can proclaim yourself the bad ass man on the planet.
link |
01:15:33.420
You know, like nobody can beat you.
link |
01:15:35.940
It's an illusion, man.
link |
01:15:37.420
That's the sad thing about, for example, D.C., Daniel Cormier
link |
01:15:41.780
does probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all time.
link |
01:15:46.300
You said Miochish, but like it's almost because of that little matchup with John Jones.
link |
01:15:51.660
It's difficult for people to conceive of him as the greatest of all time.
link |
01:15:56.220
It's all about matchup.
link |
01:15:57.580
It's all about timing.
link |
01:15:58.940
And also you make a fight.
link |
01:16:01.540
You make both guys fight 10 times.
link |
01:16:04.700
The result might be different.
link |
01:16:07.420
Like every time, you know, I mean, maybe he's going to win 8 out of 10.
link |
01:16:14.180
But that night is going to lose.
link |
01:16:16.700
Why? Because we don't know the universe made it like that.
link |
01:16:19.820
You know, maybe he got sick, maybe he had the emotional issues.
link |
01:16:22.940
He didn't sleep well and he makes him lose focus and he got caught.
link |
01:16:28.060
We don't know, but that's the thing with that.
link |
01:16:31.700
People ask me, would you have done it with Khabib?
link |
01:16:33.980
What would happen? I don't know.
link |
01:16:35.340
Maybe out of 10 time.
link |
01:16:36.500
I don't know. Maybe as a fighter, I hope I would have won more than him.
link |
01:16:40.940
He thinks the opposite is only one way to find out.
link |
01:16:43.860
But that night, if there is a fight, the guy that's going to win
link |
01:16:47.980
doesn't mean he's the best fighter.
link |
01:16:49.100
That's mean that he's the one that fought the best the night of the fight.
link |
01:16:54.100
Same thing in basketball or hockey.
link |
01:16:56.620
The team that wins the game.
link |
01:16:58.460
It's not necessarily the best team is the team that play the best.
link |
01:17:02.980
The night of the game and fighting is no different.
link |
01:17:06.420
So being the baddest man on the planet, it's an illusion.
link |
01:17:11.860
I mean, that's the tragic thing about it is on any one night,
link |
01:17:15.740
anything can happen and that tells a story for all of human history.
link |
01:17:19.460
It's sad to think about, but that's what makes it beautiful.
link |
01:17:24.900
That there's so much at stake, like entire lives, all the dreams you've had
link |
01:17:30.380
growing up, all the hard work, all of it is decided in a single night.
link |
01:17:34.300
Even though that means nothing in terms of who's actually better.
link |
01:17:37.540
It's I mean, that's the beauty.
link |
01:17:40.460
That's why people love the Olympics, especially because it happens so rarely
link |
01:17:44.420
and dreams are broken or like triumph is achieved by the unlikely hero.
link |
01:17:51.940
All like right there.
link |
01:17:54.860
I mean, that's that's why we love it, right?
link |
01:17:56.540
That's why that's why I love it.
link |
01:17:58.580
If we wouldn't know always the result before it would be boring,
link |
01:18:01.940
that's why we do it, you know, you watch the odds, you know,
link |
01:18:05.740
like like sometimes I like to watch the odds before a fight, you know.
link |
01:18:11.660
Because, you know, there's things, you know, I believe in causality.
link |
01:18:16.660
You know, I believe in everybody believe different things,
link |
01:18:19.980
but I believe everything is because there's a there's a cause to everything.
link |
01:18:24.500
That's personally what I believe.
link |
01:18:26.380
I don't believe that I have like free will.
link |
01:18:29.820
I think I have the illusion of free will, but I believe there is a cause for everything.
link |
01:18:34.180
And if I'm doing something because of something, because of a cause,
link |
01:18:37.820
by definition, there is no free will in a way, you know, if there is a cause
link |
01:18:41.420
by definition, there is not.
link |
01:18:43.820
How does that make you feel, by the way?
link |
01:18:45.260
Like the idea that if we just look outside even just human psychology
link |
01:18:50.300
and fighting and so on, if we look at like physics, if everything is predetermined,
link |
01:18:54.100
if all of these little molecules interacting, it's already like your story is already written.
link |
01:19:00.260
I mean, it depends. It's written, but I wouldn't need to know all the data
link |
01:19:04.940
and it's impossible, right?
link |
01:19:06.220
They like it's it's it's kind of weird.
link |
01:19:10.140
I got to say, but I don't to me, I don't see any argument
link |
01:19:15.300
to counter that idea.
link |
01:19:16.860
I I I I I I I I I don't maybe I'm I'm ignorant, but I haven't seen nobody
link |
01:19:22.620
and everything that I've read so far, there is nothing that counter
link |
01:19:26.380
that I did that that because in a mechanical world,
link |
01:19:31.020
if your car broke or, you know, we don't say, oh, the car decided to broke
link |
01:19:36.020
or a tree, a tree is fall.
link |
01:19:39.300
There's reason why the trees fall.
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01:19:40.820
We don't say the trees decide to fall, right?
link |
01:19:43.340
So because us human being, I think it's our ego we decide.
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01:19:47.700
And I'm no different than anybody when I make a decision.
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01:19:50.540
I decided to this, I choose to do this.
link |
01:19:55.260
But I'm aware that there is causes
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01:20:00.220
that make me do certain things.
link |
01:20:03.020
And by definition, I think if there is a cause,
link |
01:20:07.020
there is no free will by definition, right?
link |
01:20:09.380
Yes, but the thing is, just like you said,
link |
01:20:11.780
we understand so little about human intelligence, the human mind
link |
01:20:15.780
and especially consciousness that the this giant mystery,
link |
01:20:24.140
this darkness that we don't understand how how it how it feels
link |
01:20:28.540
like to be something, to be a conscious being that because of that,
link |
01:20:33.540
we're not able to really even reason about free will or not.
link |
01:20:38.060
Because there might be some magic that comes from consciousness.
link |
01:20:42.740
You know, the consciousness might be the thing that makes us
link |
01:20:47.380
different from a car that breaks down.
link |
01:20:49.620
There might be something totally fascinating, totally undiscovered
link |
01:20:56.700
yet that will make us realize that free will is actually real
link |
01:21:00.180
and somehow fundamental to the human experience.
link |
01:21:02.940
So it's sometimes I think we forget when we talk about free will
link |
01:21:10.020
and physics and it all seeming to be predetermined.
link |
01:21:14.340
We forget how little we actually understand about the world.
link |
01:21:18.020
And I think in that mystery, that could be totally new ideas
link |
01:21:22.700
that are yet to be discovered and will make us realize that it's
link |
01:21:26.300
not just an illusion.
link |
01:21:28.540
It is something that is like at the core of how the universe works.
link |
01:21:33.340
Some people believe that consciousness is a fundamental
link |
01:21:37.820
property of the universe.
link |
01:21:39.420
Like it's a it's a one of the forces of physics.
link |
01:21:41.540
Like consciousness permeates everything in everything.
link |
01:21:46.140
Like this table is conscious, but it's not as conscious as us
link |
01:21:50.380
and where this little peak of consciousness.
link |
01:21:52.740
And if that's true, and if we get to understand that, maybe there's
link |
01:21:56.500
something there's an extra bonus we get in terms of free will.
link |
01:22:01.420
Once you become one of those entities that are super conscious.
link |
01:22:05.180
So I tend to be sort of humbled by the mystery of it.
link |
01:22:10.140
Do you believe one day with with the technology that keep improving,
link |
01:22:16.700
we will make robot that will be able to be somehow conscious?
link |
01:22:25.460
Absolutely.
link |
01:22:26.220
I that's been my dream.
link |
01:22:28.020
That's been I hope I hope to do just that.
link |
01:22:30.940
First of all, I believe that all people are capable and want
link |
01:22:34.620
to be good to each other.
link |
01:22:36.900
And I think love is a is a really powerful thing that connects us
link |
01:22:43.300
and can create better and better worlds sort of like create better
link |
01:22:48.900
and better societies that improve both the technology, the quality
link |
01:22:53.340
of life and just the basics of human experience.
link |
01:22:56.460
And I think creating AI systems that are conscious that are human
link |
01:23:00.340
like can enable us to be better to each other like they can it's almost
link |
01:23:06.900
like adding more and more kindness to the world through the systems
link |
01:23:12.140
we interact with will inspire us to be better and better to each other.
link |
01:23:15.900
In terms of them being conscious, I think that is an absolute requirement
link |
01:23:22.060
that entities we interact with communicate some element of consciousness to us.
link |
01:23:29.140
Like that's how we connect to each other.
link |
01:23:30.940
The reason we you and I connect is that we believe that each of us are conscious.
link |
01:23:36.980
And to me, what consciousness means is the ability to hurt, ability to to suffer
link |
01:23:42.940
to to struggle in this world.
link |
01:23:45.740
Because just like you said, without the struggle, you don't have the love.
link |
01:23:52.060
You don't have the pleasure.
link |
01:23:53.140
And ultimately, consciousness is an entity's ability to struggle, to suffer.
link |
01:23:59.940
And from that arises the pleasure and us together being able to appreciate
link |
01:24:07.780
sort of appreciate the highs and experience together at the lows.
link |
01:24:16.020
That's how we form the deep connections.
link |
01:24:18.340
I personally think we can create that in robots and I personally believe
link |
01:24:21.940
I personally believe it's a lot easier than we think.
link |
01:24:25.860
Does it make you afraid sometimes about the fact that one day high like
link |
01:24:32.900
intelligence, artificial intelligence could be, you know, could hurt us?
link |
01:24:38.140
Or, you know, like because we're, you know, because of Hollywood, of course,
link |
01:24:41.860
you know, the movies we watch.
link |
01:24:43.020
But it seems like when I hear sometimes Elon Musk talking, you know, like,
link |
01:24:47.380
yeah, so Elon talks about with AI, we're summoning the demon.
link |
01:24:52.540
He is very concerned and I talked to him about it quite a bit.
link |
01:24:56.820
He's very concerned about all the different ways AI could hurt us humans.
link |
01:25:02.460
I tend to believe that there's a lot more ways in which AI can make our lives
link |
01:25:07.100
better and can make life awesome for humans.
link |
01:25:10.460
I think humans are the ones that can do a lot of evil things.
link |
01:25:14.820
So I'm less worried about AI.
link |
01:25:16.940
I'm more worried about humans.
link |
01:25:18.780
If I look at what you men have done on the course of history, you know,
link |
01:25:24.100
for example, in regards to the planet, to the scale of the universe,
link |
01:25:31.220
I think what I'm afraid is that we have more of a destructive force
link |
01:25:37.740
than a beneficial force.
link |
01:25:39.620
So if a high take that in consideration in order to protect us against ourselves,
link |
01:25:47.060
it could hurt us.
link |
01:25:48.780
And I don't know if you understand what like, what do you think about that?
link |
01:25:52.620
Does it makes you afraid sometimes?
link |
01:25:55.380
Not because of a high, but because what human are doing that high could do to us
link |
01:26:01.020
to prevent us of hurting each or ourselves, you know?
link |
01:26:05.340
Yeah, no, I mean, definitely it can bring out the.
link |
01:26:08.180
The worst in human nature and provide tools for evil people to do evil things
link |
01:26:15.980
at a larger scale.
link |
01:26:17.340
But I just think it depends what you think human beings are.
link |
01:26:22.780
I tend to believe that as we get more intelligent, we we start to see the value,
link |
01:26:31.700
the evolutionary value and the value in terms of happiness of being good to each other.
link |
01:26:36.380
And I think AI, if you look at AI as an optimization problem of how to create
link |
01:26:40.900
a civilization that works well and expands throughout the universe,
link |
01:26:44.260
I think love is much more effective.
link |
01:26:48.100
So AI will help us maximize that.
link |
01:26:51.100
I think there's going to be always spikes throughout, as it has been through human
link |
01:26:55.860
history, where charismatic leaders will do evil onto the world in the name of good.
link |
01:27:01.940
You have the Stalin and the Hitler's and all of that.
link |
01:27:06.620
But ultimately, over time, I think technology will give the good, the good people power
link |
01:27:17.260
and the evil people less power.
link |
01:27:21.020
Now, there's a lot of ways in that, in that that won't be the case.
link |
01:27:26.020
There's a lot of ways for it to go wrong.
link |
01:27:27.660
And Elon talks about them.
link |
01:27:28.940
But I honestly think in terms of intelligent AI, that's going to bring more love to the world.
link |
01:27:36.940
The thing I'm concerned about is dumb AI.
link |
01:27:39.940
So there's been a lot of discussion between China and the United States recently on
link |
01:27:44.940
autonomous weapons system.
link |
01:27:46.940
This is something people don't, they're afraid to talk about.
link |
01:27:49.940
But there's now a race where the United States has officially said that they're not against
link |
01:27:59.940
adding AI to its weapons systems.
link |
01:28:02.940
So now the US military is adding automation, adding intelligence to its drones, to its
link |
01:28:12.940
anything that can create damage.
link |
01:28:14.940
And so, of course, they did this so in response to China doing that.
link |
01:28:20.940
So you can imagine, this is Terminator.
link |
01:28:23.940
You think about Terminator as intelligent systems, they're not.
link |
01:28:27.940
They're pretty dumb.
link |
01:28:29.940
The point is, they're efficient at doing what they do.
link |
01:28:33.940
And in the space of war, efficient at doing what you do means killing.
link |
01:28:38.940
So that I'm really afraid of.
link |
01:28:40.940
But those are dumb AI.
link |
01:28:42.940
Those aren't your loving, deep, fulfilling relationships.
link |
01:28:48.940
That's like efficiently being able to fly, to plan the trajectory of dropping bombs, of
link |
01:28:55.940
missiles, of how to do counter attacks, of how to maximize the destruction of a particular
link |
01:29:01.940
facility instead of individuals.
link |
01:29:03.940
And then that can just escalate.
link |
01:29:06.940
And as opposed to the Cold War with the Soviet Union, this could be a hot war.
link |
01:29:11.940
And then the consequences, once you allow, it's kind of terrifying.
link |
01:29:18.940
Because currently, the drones are operated by humans.
link |
01:29:21.940
So you have, say, you have information about intelligence gives you information about a
link |
01:29:29.940
particular terrorist located in this area.
link |
01:29:32.940
And then you use drones to maybe the automation there is to help you figure out what is the
link |
01:29:39.940
best trajectory to strike at that location.
link |
01:29:43.940
So you still have a human that pulls the trigger at the end, dropping the bomb.
link |
01:29:49.940
Now, automation and AI in autonomous weapons systems might be where you say, there's a bad
link |
01:29:56.940
guy over here, you figure out how to get rid of the bad guy.
link |
01:30:01.940
So then, of course, the systems will be very good at finding the right trajectory and so
link |
01:30:06.940
on, but there's bugs that can happen, unexpected bugs, that the system might figure out that
link |
01:30:13.940
there is this bad guy might actually be in these other five locations.
link |
01:30:19.940
So it might make sense to cover the entire area, right?
link |
01:30:23.940
And so you might drop bombs on the entire area.
link |
01:30:27.940
And then, you know, that's just okay.
link |
01:30:30.940
So that's going to lead to a lot of destruction at a scale of a city.
link |
01:30:33.940
But then you can immediately take that to nuclear weapons.
link |
01:30:36.940
If you add automation to responding to counterattacks to nuclear weapons, you might get information
link |
01:30:43.940
that somebody is planning a nuclear attack on the United States, and the AI system will
link |
01:30:47.940
immediately respond.
link |
01:30:49.940
And, you know, it can respond at a scale of launching nuclear weapons itself.
link |
01:30:53.940
And so there's all of these possibilities that don't require much intelligence.
link |
01:30:58.940
And that's exceptionally concerning.
link |
01:31:03.940
I'm like you, I do not believe there is babies that are born bad.
link |
01:31:08.940
I think people do bad things because of their experience.
link |
01:31:14.940
However, if I look through my experience and from what I can see, very often,
link |
01:31:21.940
men's power wants more power.
link |
01:31:28.940
That's what makes me afraid.
link |
01:31:30.940
Yeah, absolutely.
link |
01:31:32.940
Listen, I've come from the Soviet Union.
link |
01:31:36.940
Stalin is arguably one of the most powerful humans in history.
link |
01:31:40.940
He's not talked to often enough about by the evils he's done.
link |
01:31:43.940
Hitler gets all the attention.
link |
01:31:45.940
But Stalin has done arguably much more evil than Hitler.
link |
01:31:49.940
Yeah, this is human nature.
link |
01:31:51.940
He wants power.
link |
01:31:53.940
We see that with institutions.
link |
01:31:54.940
We see that with governments and nations.
link |
01:31:56.940
I think you see this with the internet.
link |
01:32:00.940
People are really hungry for the distribution of power.
link |
01:32:05.940
You see that people are very much distrustful of centralized places of power,
link |
01:32:10.940
of institutions and so on.
link |
01:32:12.940
So I think successful organizations, successful companies, successful governments
link |
01:32:18.940
will be run by people who distribute the power.
link |
01:32:21.940
I don't trust myself with power at all.
link |
01:32:24.940
And I think you have to build into the system that no one person can have power,
link |
01:32:30.940
that you distribute it.
link |
01:32:32.940
That's where you have, in the financial sector, you have cryptocurrency right now
link |
01:32:36.940
with Bitcoin and all those kinds of things.
link |
01:32:38.940
People are exploring, how can we avoid the central bank to have control?
link |
01:32:44.940
With the power in the hands of people, thousands of people, millions of people.
link |
01:32:48.940
In the same way with military, with any kind of technology,
link |
01:32:56.940
I think the future looks very distributed.
link |
01:32:59.940
What do you think about militarizing space?
link |
01:33:03.940
The space force.
link |
01:33:07.940
I don't think about it often because right now I'm filled with excitement about space exploration,
link |
01:33:13.940
which is the positive aspect.
link |
01:33:15.940
So Elon, you know, I was born in an era where it was exciting.
link |
01:33:21.940
I don't know about you, but for me it's exciting to look up to the stars
link |
01:33:25.940
and dream about us humans colonizing Mars, colonizing other planets,
link |
01:33:32.940
expanding out to the galaxy and to the universe.
link |
01:33:34.940
That's really exciting.
link |
01:33:36.940
So the possibilities there are endless.
link |
01:33:42.940
I don't think, because also the resources are endless.
link |
01:33:46.940
And so I think we get into trouble with militarization, with wars,
link |
01:33:51.940
when the resources are very constrained.
link |
01:33:53.940
So I think for a while we're not going to be fighting.
link |
01:33:58.940
The only wars we'll be fighting in space are the ones that kind of help us.
link |
01:34:04.940
Another nation to compete.
link |
01:34:06.940
Who goes to the moon first, I guess.
link |
01:34:08.940
Yes, those kinds of things are maybe for satellites and all those kinds of communication
link |
01:34:13.940
and maybe in assistance for cyber warfare, which is also very dangerous.
link |
01:34:18.940
But in terms of the wars out in space, I think everything out in space will be positive and inspiring.
link |
01:34:28.940
It's very hard, but all good things are hard, I think.
link |
01:34:32.940
This is where I've been talking to a bunch of people about extraterrestrial life.
link |
01:34:37.940
I'm really excited by...
link |
01:34:41.940
I don't know, it's the other thing.
link |
01:34:43.940
When I look out to the stars, it's exciting to me.
link |
01:34:47.940
I know I think you've spoken about it being scary.
link |
01:34:50.940
But to me, it's exciting that there's intelligent creatures out there,
link |
01:34:54.940
far beyond perhaps the intelligence of our own,
link |
01:34:57.940
that are just too far away to explore yet,
link |
01:35:00.940
but we might one day come in contact with them.
link |
01:35:03.940
That to me is the ultimate motivator,
link |
01:35:07.940
is to meet other intelligent life forms out there and connect with them.
link |
01:35:12.940
Have you ever met Jacques Vallée?
link |
01:35:15.940
No, but I've been in communication.
link |
01:35:17.940
I hope to talk to him. He's an amazing French.
link |
01:35:20.940
I know that there are many theories about...
link |
01:35:24.940
If there's alien, we don't know, right?
link |
01:35:27.940
But some people think it's from another star system.
link |
01:35:31.940
Jacques Vallée has a...
link |
01:35:33.940
To make a long story short, he has a different theory.
link |
01:35:36.940
He thinks it's perhaps beings that could be living in a different dimension than us.
link |
01:35:44.940
And the reason why he says that is when he makes an experiment...
link |
01:35:48.940
When there is a sightings very often of a UFO,
link |
01:35:51.940
let's say I'm the UFO, you have three guys.
link |
01:35:56.940
They are looking at the UFO very often.
link |
01:36:00.940
One experiment that you can do, and sometimes that is the case,
link |
01:36:05.940
you ask your two friends to walk on the side,
link |
01:36:07.940
and there's a point that it's like a corridor.
link |
01:36:10.940
You see the UFO, then you stop seeing it like a corridor.
link |
01:36:14.940
That's one of the reasons why he's saying that it's perhaps dimension.
link |
01:36:19.940
And I found that fascinating.
link |
01:36:21.940
This is what, to the discussion of consciousness and all that,
link |
01:36:25.940
it feels like we might be just experiencing a very particular slice of this universe.
link |
01:36:30.940
We might not be understanding what's at the higher dimensions,
link |
01:36:33.940
or higher dimensions in whatever form that means.
link |
01:36:37.940
There's all these physical theories now that describe a world with dimensions
link |
01:36:43.940
that's much higher than the three dimension of space in the one dimension of time.
link |
01:36:48.940
So whatever the hell is going on in those other dimensions,
link |
01:36:52.940
it could be something, unfortunately, this is the sad part.
link |
01:36:57.940
It might be something we can't even comprehend with our human brains.
link |
01:37:01.940
That the limitations are just, I mean, we're just descendants of apes.
link |
01:37:07.940
So it might not be possible to even understand.
link |
01:37:10.940
Is there alien? Is there another dimension?
link |
01:37:12.940
Are they human from the future?
link |
01:37:14.940
Is there perhaps Chinese or another group of people
link |
01:37:18.940
that are working with technology far behind?
link |
01:37:21.940
Lex, I had the chance to meet, because of the sport I'm doing,
link |
01:37:26.940
I met a lot of people in military and politics sometimes,
link |
01:37:30.940
that I asked them every time.
link |
01:37:33.940
I met one this week, and I asked him, I said,
link |
01:37:39.940
is it true about the UFOs there?
link |
01:37:41.940
And he says to me, even before I asked him,
link |
01:37:45.940
I said, I sort of have to ask you a question.
link |
01:37:48.940
I was in Los Angeles.
link |
01:37:50.940
And I said, sorry, I have to ask you a question.
link |
01:37:52.940
He said, oh, you want to ask me about UFO right away?
link |
01:37:54.940
I said, yes.
link |
01:37:56.940
He saw it in your eyes.
link |
01:37:57.940
He said, yeah, there's things that flies that we don't know.
link |
01:38:00.940
But he didn't tell me, he doesn't know,
link |
01:38:02.940
they don't know if it's alien or whatever,
link |
01:38:04.940
but there's things apparently that are detected,
link |
01:38:06.940
and I know you met Fravor.
link |
01:38:09.940
Fravor is fascinating.
link |
01:38:11.940
It makes me sad that...
link |
01:38:13.940
We live in a different era now,
link |
01:38:15.940
that it used to be a subject that was ridiculed,
link |
01:38:18.940
and now it's so cool that I'm very excited to live
link |
01:38:22.940
into that era.
link |
01:38:24.940
Yeah, it's really exciting,
link |
01:38:26.940
but still the governments are kind of behind the times
link |
01:38:28.940
on that aspect.
link |
01:38:30.940
They're not transparent, and they don't communicate well.
link |
01:38:34.940
It saddens me to think the possibility that
link |
01:38:38.940
the US government might be in possession of something
link |
01:38:42.940
that they don't tell the world about
link |
01:38:45.940
because they're just scared.
link |
01:38:47.940
It's because they don't know what the hell it is,
link |
01:38:49.940
and they don't want the Chinese to gain the technology
link |
01:38:51.940
or all those kinds of things.
link |
01:38:53.940
Do you think the president of the United States,
link |
01:38:56.940
for example, because the president comes and goes
link |
01:38:58.940
every, right, four or eight years,
link |
01:39:00.940
do you think he would know all the secrets
link |
01:39:02.940
or it would be a guy like, for example,
link |
01:39:05.940
Vladimir Putin would know much of, you know what I mean?
link |
01:39:08.940
I don't think the president even knows all the secrets.
link |
01:39:13.940
The US president, yeah.
link |
01:39:15.940
I don't think so, because he goes,
link |
01:39:17.940
they go back and forth every four years.
link |
01:39:20.940
They have the terms, right?
link |
01:39:22.940
I wasn't sure before,
link |
01:39:25.940
but I think I could trust the previous
link |
01:39:28.940
United States president of Donald Trump
link |
01:39:31.940
that if he knew, he would probably tweet about it.
link |
01:39:36.940
Perhaps.
link |
01:39:41.940
I've worked with DARPA.
link |
01:39:43.940
I've worked with the DOD at clearance,
link |
01:39:46.940
and I think from the perspective,
link |
01:39:48.940
if you see the world as fundamentally a dangerous world
link |
01:39:52.940
where secrets are important to have
link |
01:39:55.940
from a military perspective,
link |
01:39:57.940
I think it's very unsafe to tell the president
link |
01:40:01.940
of the United States that you have this kind of technology.
link |
01:40:05.940
So if you think of the world in that way,
link |
01:40:07.940
I hate that that's how that world is viewed,
link |
01:40:10.940
because ultimately, I think what's more powerful
link |
01:40:13.940
than the military secrets,
link |
01:40:15.940
and I hope that actually is what will happen in the 21st century,
link |
01:40:18.940
what's more powerful is inspire people.
link |
01:40:22.940
Inspire the young Elon Musk's of the world
link |
01:40:26.940
to create cool new things.
link |
01:40:28.940
If we have technology that we have encountered
link |
01:40:33.940
that we don't understand,
link |
01:40:35.940
that should only be inspiration to develop that kind of stuff.
link |
01:40:39.940
It shouldn't be seen as a military threat,
link |
01:40:43.940
as a secret to hold on to.
link |
01:40:45.940
I think secrets...
link |
01:40:48.940
I hope we more and more let go of the idea
link |
01:40:51.940
that there are secrets that give us advantage.
link |
01:40:54.940
In the tech sector,
link |
01:40:56.940
people are more and more releasing the software,
link |
01:40:59.940
making it open source.
link |
01:41:01.940
Secrets don't make sense.
link |
01:41:04.940
They share the knowledge.
link |
01:41:06.940
They share the knowledge.
link |
01:41:08.940
Being afraid to share the knowledge,
link |
01:41:10.940
I think, I hope, is an old idea.
link |
01:41:13.940
When you make it, things more compartmentalize.
link |
01:41:17.940
That's the other thing,
link |
01:41:19.940
is the bureaucracy of government.
link |
01:41:22.940
People only know their own little thing,
link |
01:41:24.940
and they don't spread the information.
link |
01:41:26.940
It doesn't travel well.
link |
01:41:28.940
There's a lot of inefficiencies there.
link |
01:41:30.940
It makes me sad,
link |
01:41:32.940
because the science, the engineering
link |
01:41:35.940
that happens in governments,
link |
01:41:37.940
developing the different airplanes
link |
01:41:40.940
they use for military applications,
link |
01:41:42.940
is some of the most incredible engineering ever.
link |
01:41:44.940
It's secret, because they're afraid to share it
link |
01:41:47.940
with the Russians and the Chinese and so on.
link |
01:41:50.940
But on that topic,
link |
01:41:52.940
I do think somebody like Vladimir Putin,
link |
01:41:54.940
probably knows some stuff.
link |
01:41:57.940
My God.
link |
01:41:59.940
I would love to know what he knows.
link |
01:42:01.940
But then again, you never know,
link |
01:42:03.940
because even he is...
link |
01:42:05.940
I think of him as an exceptionally powerful person,
link |
01:42:08.940
but he's also just managing a bunch of tribes.
link |
01:42:11.940
His power is very limited.
link |
01:42:13.940
He's trying to hold together
link |
01:42:16.940
a bunch of greedy, power hungry madmen.
link |
01:42:21.940
He's trying to establish a balance.
link |
01:42:24.940
He might not know everything.
link |
01:42:26.940
I hope this changes,
link |
01:42:28.940
because I think there's nothing more exciting about...
link |
01:42:31.940
I don't even know if there is a human that knows.
link |
01:42:34.940
You know what I mean?
link |
01:42:36.940
This idea that there's some alien civilization
link |
01:42:39.940
that land on the White House
link |
01:42:41.940
and say, all right, I come to meet the prison.
link |
01:42:43.940
I'm like, why would they do that?
link |
01:42:45.940
You know what I mean?
link |
01:42:47.940
It's kind of absurd.
link |
01:42:49.940
Well, I do think that actually...
link |
01:42:51.940
I mean, that's one possibility, right?
link |
01:42:53.940
If an alien civilization really wanted to contact us,
link |
01:42:58.940
I think everybody would know.
link |
01:43:00.940
So I think we're...
link |
01:43:02.940
If there's any kind of interaction
link |
01:43:04.940
between humans and aliens,
link |
01:43:07.940
I think most likely what we're interacting with
link |
01:43:10.940
is a crappy probe drone thing
link |
01:43:14.940
that kind of just like...
link |
01:43:16.940
Yeah, more and more.
link |
01:43:18.940
This dumb thing...
link |
01:43:20.940
We're not interacting with the aliens.
link |
01:43:22.940
I think just like for us,
link |
01:43:25.940
I think humans aren't...
link |
01:43:27.940
when we venture out into space,
link |
01:43:31.940
the first thing that's going to meet aliens
link |
01:43:33.940
is our robots.
link |
01:43:34.940
It's not us humans,
link |
01:43:36.940
because we keep sending robots out.
link |
01:43:38.940
So they're going to make decisions about humans
link |
01:43:42.940
by looking at the robots.
link |
01:43:44.940
They're famous grays.
link |
01:43:46.940
The grays.
link |
01:43:47.940
Maybe they are robots.
link |
01:43:49.940
Maybe it's all BS too, you know?
link |
01:43:51.940
Yeah, so I don't know...
link |
01:43:53.940
I don't know what that interaction actually would look like
link |
01:43:56.940
if aliens really wanted to reach out,
link |
01:43:58.940
really communicate.
link |
01:43:59.940
And I don't know if we're able to actually communicate with them.
link |
01:44:01.940
That's one of the sad things.
link |
01:44:03.940
We might not be able to...
link |
01:44:05.940
The aliens might already be here,
link |
01:44:08.940
and we might just not even know
link |
01:44:11.940
how to see them or know how to communicate with them.
link |
01:44:14.940
There's so much misinformation,
link |
01:44:18.940
and sometimes there's people
link |
01:44:20.940
that are very credible that made crazy claims.
link |
01:44:25.940
You don't know what to believe.
link |
01:44:28.940
Like Paul Elyer,
link |
01:44:30.940
the Minister of Defence of Canada,
link |
01:44:33.940
said that there are many alien rays that ever...
link |
01:44:37.940
That's what he said.
link |
01:44:38.940
Research it.
link |
01:44:39.940
And that scientist from,
link |
01:44:42.940
I think Israel recently,
link |
01:44:44.940
said something about Trump.
link |
01:44:46.940
He was keeping secret.
link |
01:44:48.940
Medvedev, you're from Russia.
link |
01:44:49.940
Medvedev, I've been caught during a break
link |
01:44:52.940
in between interviews to talk about,
link |
01:44:54.940
like, oh, it's like men in black,
link |
01:44:56.940
I don't know what to speak.
link |
01:44:58.940
I don't know.
link |
01:44:59.940
It didn't look like he was joking,
link |
01:45:01.940
but I don't know if he was saying the truth.
link |
01:45:03.940
Yeah, you can check on YouTube.
link |
01:45:05.940
It went viral.
link |
01:45:07.940
Yeah, there's a lot of things like that sometimes.
link |
01:45:10.940
Or Bob Lazar, I'm like,
link |
01:45:13.940
imagine if it's true, man.
link |
01:45:16.940
Imagine if we're like a fish in the water
link |
01:45:19.940
who live in our home world,
link |
01:45:21.940
and sometimes there's a fisherman that grabbed the fish,
link |
01:45:24.940
back in the water, and the fish goes back to the other fish and says,
link |
01:45:27.940
hey, there's someone that take me out of the water,
link |
01:45:30.940
then I've seen things that I did not like.
link |
01:45:33.940
Imagine if it's true, like,
link |
01:45:35.940
and one other thing, like,
link |
01:45:38.940
I wanted to ask you because you were consciousness.
link |
01:45:41.940
How about dreams?
link |
01:45:42.940
What is a dream?
link |
01:45:44.940
I more and more, I don't know if you're paying attention to this.
link |
01:45:47.940
There's now, it's become more acceptable in the scientific community
link |
01:45:50.940
to do large scale studies of psychedelics, for example.
link |
01:45:53.940
And there's a lot of connection between psychedelics and dreams.
link |
01:45:56.940
There's very similar states.
link |
01:45:58.940
There's a lot our mind does when it detaches itself from reality,
link |
01:46:02.940
that it can just explore a lot of different ideas.
link |
01:46:05.940
It's very possible that dreams is you're traveling somewhere.
link |
01:46:08.940
And the same thing with psychedelics, you're traveling somewhere.
link |
01:46:11.940
In a different, not traveling to physical space,
link |
01:46:14.940
it's the other dimensions that we're talking about.
link |
01:46:16.940
You're traveling some other,
link |
01:46:18.940
through some other dimension to meet some other creature.
link |
01:46:21.940
People talk with DMT that they meet some elves.
link |
01:46:24.940
I've never done, I'd like to.
link |
01:46:26.940
I don't know if there's a safe, legal way to do it,
link |
01:46:29.940
but they all talk about meeting elves
link |
01:46:33.940
and creatures, like entities.
link |
01:46:36.940
Like, who are they?
link |
01:46:38.940
What's...
link |
01:46:40.940
What is this?
link |
01:46:41.940
Is it because they're high or is it because...
link |
01:46:43.940
They're actually meeting something.
link |
01:46:45.940
And maybe there's no difference.
link |
01:46:47.940
I mean, who knows exactly.
link |
01:46:49.940
That takes us right back to us,
link |
01:46:51.940
not being able to really understand how our mind works.
link |
01:46:54.940
You know, I work in artificial intelligence.
link |
01:46:57.940
It's clear that we understand so little about intelligence,
link |
01:47:01.940
some basic things about intelligence.
link |
01:47:03.940
Just at the very sort of basic first principles level,
link |
01:47:09.940
we don't understand what it means to reason,
link |
01:47:13.940
to think, to assimilate pieces of knowledge together
link |
01:47:18.940
from the basics to the complex.
link |
01:47:20.940
We don't understand it.
link |
01:47:21.940
We don't understand how the human mind does it.
link |
01:47:24.940
We don't understand how the human mind is able to take
link |
01:47:26.940
incredible waterfall of information
link |
01:47:29.940
and filter cleanly into just, like, clean.
link |
01:47:33.940
You only see the things that are important
link |
01:47:35.940
and are able to stitch them together
link |
01:47:37.940
and be able to reason about the world.
link |
01:47:39.940
And at the same time have moments of genius, of creativity.
link |
01:47:43.940
Like, what is that?
link |
01:47:45.940
That also, you know, people, writers talk about that,
link |
01:47:48.940
that they're, you know, they're almost like communicating
link |
01:47:50.940
with the muse.
link |
01:47:51.940
Like, where do ideas come from?
link |
01:47:53.940
This is the Joe Rogan philosophy.
link |
01:47:55.940
But I do know that past civilization,
link |
01:47:57.940
where a lot of them were based on shamanism.
link |
01:48:00.940
And you know what, I think it's sad is,
link |
01:48:03.940
if someone drank alcohol and when he's drunk,
link |
01:48:07.940
he's going to commit, like, create, like, like murders or something.
link |
01:48:12.940
We're gonna blame the person, right?
link |
01:48:14.940
We're gonna say that's his fault.
link |
01:48:16.940
It's not the fault of alcohol.
link |
01:48:18.940
However, if someone does psychedelic or any things
link |
01:48:21.940
that is illegal and do something crazy,
link |
01:48:24.940
now we're gonna put the fault on psychedelic,
link |
01:48:28.940
you know what I mean?
link |
01:48:29.940
And perhaps the person itself is the reason
link |
01:48:33.940
why, you know, he's been doing these things,
link |
01:48:35.940
you know what I mean?
link |
01:48:36.940
So, yeah, it's fascinating how, like, society,
link |
01:48:40.940
you know, like in Canada, they just legalize marijuana.
link |
01:48:43.940
Oh, yeah?
link |
01:48:44.940
Yeah, marijuana is legal.
link |
01:48:46.940
But before that, before they did it, like,
link |
01:48:49.940
if you talk, for example, to my dad, my dad,
link |
01:48:51.940
he's against it, like, because he's a whole mentality.
link |
01:48:54.940
He's like, it's drug, it's bad.
link |
01:48:56.940
But drinking a glass, you know, drinking a beer, it's fine.
link |
01:48:59.940
I mean, what is, you know what I mean?
link |
01:49:02.940
What is good, what is bad?
link |
01:49:04.940
I guess you think chocolate could be bad as well
link |
01:49:07.940
for your health or, I mean, I'm going to the extreme now,
link |
01:49:10.940
but what is good, what is bad?
link |
01:49:12.940
If you use it for recreation,
link |
01:49:14.940
you use it for an experience, to learn about yourself.
link |
01:49:18.940
It's like, the line is very tiny, you know?
link |
01:49:22.940
There are some countries that drugs are all legals,
link |
01:49:26.940
you know what I mean?
link |
01:49:27.940
And I don't know the stats,
link |
01:49:29.940
but I would be interesting to know
link |
01:49:31.940
if they have more crimes there
link |
01:49:35.940
than other countries where it's more strict.
link |
01:49:38.940
I would be interesting to know about that.
link |
01:49:40.940
It's fascinating to me, you know?
link |
01:49:42.940
Yeah, and I mean, we humans kind of just come up with
link |
01:49:45.940
arbitrary lines of what's good, what's bad,
link |
01:49:47.940
that applies with drugs, that applies with anything,
link |
01:49:50.940
that applies with animals, for example.
link |
01:49:53.940
We talked about carnivore diet.
link |
01:49:55.940
Maybe the time we live in now will be remembered
link |
01:49:58.940
for the cruelty to animals, for example.
link |
01:50:01.940
And I believe this, the 21st century,
link |
01:50:05.940
will be remembered for our cruelty to robots.
link |
01:50:09.940
That eventually there'll be a civil rights movement
link |
01:50:14.940
for robots, the ones who choose to be conscious,
link |
01:50:18.940
the ones who have consciousness will say,
link |
01:50:21.940
we deserve rights too.
link |
01:50:23.940
We deserve to be treated with respect too.
link |
01:50:26.940
How about the people we put in jail?
link |
01:50:29.940
People put in jail.
link |
01:50:30.940
I mean, I think in the future we'll look back
link |
01:50:33.940
and we'll think of ourselves being stupid
link |
01:50:36.940
to put people in jail instead of, you know,
link |
01:50:40.940
like trying to fix the problem at the base, you know?
link |
01:50:45.940
Of course now, or I guess it's our ignorance
link |
01:50:48.940
that made it in a way that we cannot sometimes understand
link |
01:50:51.940
what makes sometimes a psychopath a psychopath
link |
01:50:54.940
or a murderer a murderer.
link |
01:50:56.940
But you know, if we can pinpoint the problem
link |
01:50:59.940
and take care of it before, you know what I mean?
link |
01:51:02.940
Or made it in a way that we can reestablish
link |
01:51:05.940
that person in the society, you know?
link |
01:51:08.940
Who knows, you know, what was the future's old?
link |
01:51:11.940
It's interesting. We live in an interesting time.
link |
01:51:14.940
You mentioned your father.
link |
01:51:16.940
What have you learned from your dad?
link |
01:51:19.940
You mentioned he was an important part of your childhood.
link |
01:51:21.940
My dad is amazing.
link |
01:51:24.940
I grew up, we didn't have a lot of money,
link |
01:51:26.940
but it doesn't mean if I'm born in a nice country
link |
01:51:28.940
that always nice thing happened, you know?
link |
01:51:31.940
My dad, for me, is a big role model
link |
01:51:35.940
because I see him through my life facing a lot of adversity.
link |
01:51:41.940
You know, he stopped drinking when I was a teenager.
link |
01:51:44.940
He was an alcoholic.
link |
01:51:46.940
And I've seen him struggle through that, you know?
link |
01:51:50.940
And it was very, very hard.
link |
01:51:52.940
And I've seen him work like crazy hours,
link |
01:51:59.940
like leave in the morning, come home at night,
link |
01:52:03.940
burned out because of work through almost all his life.
link |
01:52:07.940
To the point that it became a slave of the system.
link |
01:52:13.940
It became an habit and a normal way of living.
link |
01:52:17.940
And it made me realize that I've learned a lot through my father.
link |
01:52:21.940
He taught me perseverance, hard work, you know?
link |
01:52:25.940
When you face adversity, you know,
link |
01:52:27.940
to never give up until you achieve it.
link |
01:52:30.940
But also, he taught me a lesson that in a way
link |
01:52:35.940
that I don't want to be like him.
link |
01:52:37.940
Even if he is happy, it's because I realize
link |
01:52:41.940
I don't think he knows anything else.
link |
01:52:43.940
Like he works through all his life.
link |
01:52:46.940
And I don't want to live to work.
link |
01:52:49.940
I want to work for, you know what I mean?
link |
01:52:51.940
I want to decide when I work, you know?
link |
01:52:53.940
I feel like he lived to work instead of working for a living.
link |
01:52:59.940
And perhaps it's because he did not have choice.
link |
01:53:03.940
He was the older of his family.
link |
01:53:05.940
They were nine kids.
link |
01:53:07.940
My grandfather died when he was young.
link |
01:53:09.940
So he had to become the father of the family
link |
01:53:12.940
and work to put money on the table.
link |
01:53:15.940
So perhaps that made him that way.
link |
01:53:19.940
And he became like an habit for him.
link |
01:53:23.940
My dad taught me when I was at school,
link |
01:53:26.940
I was bullied at school.
link |
01:53:28.940
He's the first one who initiated me to martial art.
link |
01:53:31.940
He taught me karate.
link |
01:53:33.940
My dad was a black belt in Kyoko Shinkari as well.
link |
01:53:36.940
But because he was working too much,
link |
01:53:38.940
he didn't have time to teach me.
link |
01:53:40.940
And I needed self defense in order to defend myself.
link |
01:53:45.940
I have a winning, a great career in mixed martial art,
link |
01:53:48.940
but in the schoolyard, my record is not very good.
link |
01:53:56.940
When you're a kid and you're about seven, eight years old
link |
01:54:02.940
and you're facing bullies that are two to three years older
link |
01:54:09.940
than yourself, it's not the same thing
link |
01:54:12.940
than when you're 25 and the guy is 28.
link |
01:54:14.940
So there is a big discrepancy in terms of maturity.
link |
01:54:20.940
So my dad introduced me to karate.
link |
01:54:25.940
Then he didn't have time to teach me.
link |
01:54:28.940
Then he put me in a school with a teacher.
link |
01:54:33.940
It was Jean Couture.
link |
01:54:36.940
And I grew up with a lot of anger.
link |
01:54:39.940
And there were two persons that was afraid growing up.
link |
01:54:44.940
It was my dad.
link |
01:54:45.940
My dad was very severe, very strict with me.
link |
01:54:48.940
And I'm glad he was because I could have become very bad.
link |
01:54:53.940
I could have become chosen on a different path.
link |
01:54:56.940
People see me as a nice guy.
link |
01:54:58.940
I am a nice guy.
link |
01:54:59.940
I tried to be a good role model,
link |
01:55:01.940
but I could easily have turned towards our own path.
link |
01:55:05.940
There's darkness somewhere in there.
link |
01:55:07.940
Yes, there are a lot.
link |
01:55:09.940
And a lot of my friends have chosen that path.
link |
01:55:11.940
And unfortunately, they are not with me today.
link |
01:55:18.940
Even if I'm from Canada,
link |
01:55:20.940
and Canada seems like the nicest country in the world.
link |
01:55:23.940
Like I said, even if you live in a nice country,
link |
01:55:26.940
not always nice thing, it depends on the situation.
link |
01:55:29.940
But that's what my dad taught me.
link |
01:55:31.940
And he gave me that because I'm very good at learning
link |
01:55:38.940
by observing people.
link |
01:55:40.940
And by observing him, I see the struggle he had with alcoholism
link |
01:55:44.940
and what he did, the pain,
link |
01:55:46.940
sometimes that he inflicted to us, to my family.
link |
01:55:50.940
But how he turned, he did a 180 degree.
link |
01:55:56.940
And I really admire that.
link |
01:55:58.940
And I know it was very, very hard for him and he did it.
link |
01:56:02.940
For me, that's a great role model for me.
link |
01:56:06.940
So your dad being an engine of basically hard work
link |
01:56:10.940
and you finding a balance of being able to work your ass off,
link |
01:56:14.940
but also to be able to enjoy a piece of chocolate.
link |
01:56:17.940
What is the perfect day in the life of George St. Pierre look like?
link |
01:56:23.940
So like, if you were to go through a day that's very productive
link |
01:56:27.940
but also one that makes you sit back and enjoy
link |
01:56:30.940
and say, that was a good day.
link |
01:56:32.940
What's that look like?
link |
01:56:33.940
What are we talking about?
link |
01:56:34.940
When do you wake up?
link |
01:56:35.940
What do you eat?
link |
01:56:37.940
What do you do?
link |
01:56:38.940
It changed over the years.
link |
01:56:39.940
When I was younger, I had a good day.
link |
01:56:41.940
It was like a good training session
link |
01:56:43.940
or achieving good thing in my training.
link |
01:56:46.940
And that's why I was very good at it
link |
01:56:48.940
because when I was obsessed,
link |
01:56:51.940
I think to be good at something, you need to become obsessed.
link |
01:56:55.940
And to me, performing in my training was everything.
link |
01:57:00.940
When I had a bad training session,
link |
01:57:03.940
I didn't tell my training partner.
link |
01:57:05.940
I was acting like because of my ego.
link |
01:57:07.940
I didn't tell nobody.
link |
01:57:09.940
I was like, hey, then I go in the locker room.
link |
01:57:13.940
Then I'm playing the training in my mind.
link |
01:57:19.940
I'm saying, I should have done this, should have done that.
link |
01:57:21.940
And it haunts me, it haunts me, man, it's a training.
link |
01:57:25.940
And it haunts me until the next training session
link |
01:57:28.940
when I can redeem myself.
link |
01:57:30.940
That's how it is.
link |
01:57:32.940
When we used to train all together back in the day,
link |
01:57:38.940
in Canada, we had David Loiseau.
link |
01:57:41.940
We had Patrick Côté.
link |
01:57:43.940
We had Dennis Gang, Steve Vigno, Jean Attangoulay.
link |
01:57:48.940
There was all like the best guy in Canada
link |
01:57:51.940
that were training with each other.
link |
01:57:53.940
We were training in different gyms, but once a week,
link |
01:57:57.940
I made it in a way that I contact everybody
link |
01:58:00.940
that we all joined force and we exchanged ideas
link |
01:58:03.940
and we trained with each other.
link |
01:58:05.940
I would say friendly competition.
link |
01:58:08.940
It was not malicious, but it was hard training.
link |
01:58:12.940
Our goal was to improve, but it wasn't very competitive.
link |
01:58:16.940
And when that day you used to get out of the training session
link |
01:58:20.940
with a bad performance for me,
link |
01:58:22.940
it used to haunt me until the following week
link |
01:58:25.940
when I could give it back and perform better
link |
01:58:28.940
with the guy that I had the most trouble with.
link |
01:58:31.940
That's how it was.
link |
01:58:33.940
And that's how you get better.
link |
01:58:35.940
But it was not a training where we were trying to do
link |
01:58:40.940
malicious things to one another.
link |
01:58:42.940
You know what I mean?
link |
01:58:44.940
You need to be playful, but playful, but competitive.
link |
01:58:48.940
That when I had a good training session
link |
01:58:50.940
because the sparring was on a Friday,
link |
01:58:52.940
I had the best weekend in the world.
link |
01:58:54.940
I was going out with my friend, drinking and partying
link |
01:58:56.940
and having fun.
link |
01:58:58.940
That was my ideal day back in the day.
link |
01:59:04.940
Today is change.
link |
01:59:06.940
You know, my life has changed.
link |
01:59:09.940
I am not the same person I used to be
link |
01:59:15.940
when I went on my knees and begged the UFC for a title shot.
link |
01:59:19.940
You know what I mean?
link |
01:59:21.940
I'm wealthy.
link |
01:59:23.940
I'm healthy, most importantly.
link |
01:59:25.940
That's the most important thing.
link |
01:59:27.940
And I'm going to tell you the truth.
link |
01:59:30.940
As good as my career was,
link |
01:59:33.940
man, my private life is a million time better.
link |
01:59:38.940
And people ask me, sometimes they always wonder,
link |
01:59:42.940
they try to ask me.
link |
01:59:44.940
And it's normal.
link |
01:59:46.940
A lot of people are curious.
link |
01:59:48.940
And in the sport of mixed martial arts,
link |
01:59:53.940
we say we play basketball, we play soccer,
link |
01:59:56.940
but we don't play fighting.
link |
01:59:58.940
So when you expose your private life,
link |
02:00:01.940
we've seen that happen in the fight with
link |
02:00:03.940
sometimes Conor McGregor and Khabib.
link |
02:00:05.940
Your competitor knows that he cannot get to you,
link |
02:00:08.940
so what he will do, he will try to get to someone that you love.
link |
02:00:12.940
So I never expose my private life.
link |
02:00:15.940
I never post Instagram of my family or my stuff.
link |
02:00:19.940
That's the reason why.
link |
02:00:21.940
Because I'm in a business of fighting.
link |
02:00:25.940
And people know that they cannot get to me.
link |
02:00:28.940
And I believe that because I was bullied when I was young,
link |
02:00:34.940
I didn't realize that when I was young.
link |
02:00:38.940
But it helps me deal with the mental warfare
link |
02:00:42.940
that I had to face right now in my life in mixed martial arts
link |
02:00:45.940
because it's a very ego test export.
link |
02:00:47.940
And there's a lot of intimidation.
link |
02:00:52.940
And I was used to, I've been used to this thing when I was young.
link |
02:00:56.940
So it does not get to me.
link |
02:00:58.940
However, the good way to get to me,
link |
02:01:01.940
go try to get to someone I love.
link |
02:01:06.940
Now, man, I'm gonna go crazy.
link |
02:01:09.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:01:10.940
And I'm aware of that.
link |
02:01:11.940
So in order to protect myself,
link |
02:01:13.940
I always, because I'm aware I'm a public person.
link |
02:01:17.940
So I try to always keep my surrounding in the private.
link |
02:01:22.940
One of the ways that your friend of mine, Joe Rogan,
link |
02:01:28.940
has been an inspiration that he's got like an incredible family.
link |
02:01:33.940
And he, for the most part, it started to change recently.
link |
02:01:35.940
Actually, it's kind of interesting.
link |
02:01:36.940
But for the most part throughout his life, he kept it pretty secret.
link |
02:01:40.940
Doesn't talk about it in his calm.
link |
02:01:41.940
He's a comedian.
link |
02:01:42.940
Comedians talk about everything.
link |
02:01:43.940
He doesn't really talk about it.
link |
02:01:45.940
And there's something to that.
link |
02:01:47.940
It preserves the magic of the silence of the private life.
link |
02:01:51.940
And I think it can affect the development of the kid.
link |
02:01:56.940
If the kid grew up being, oh, he's the son of that guy
link |
02:02:01.940
instead of being his own person.
link |
02:02:03.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:02:04.940
So for me, it's very important.
link |
02:02:07.940
Like, my parents are older.
link |
02:02:09.940
It's fine.
link |
02:02:10.940
But it taught me a big lesson.
link |
02:02:12.940
When I'm with my friend at the dinner or anything,
link |
02:02:15.940
I talk with the person or we share a thing.
link |
02:02:17.940
But when I'm talking, I'm aware of the audience where I'm in front.
link |
02:02:22.940
Yeah.
link |
02:02:23.940
But oftentimes those people are just incredible.
link |
02:02:25.940
It kind of makes me sad that, you know,
link |
02:02:29.940
there's a lot of people that love you, right?
link |
02:02:30.940
And there are a lot of really incredible people.
link |
02:02:32.940
And you'll never get to really know their story.
link |
02:02:35.940
I mean, I don't know.
link |
02:02:36.940
For me, it makes me sad.
link |
02:02:37.940
You see them like at airports and stuff.
link |
02:02:39.940
People will tell me they listen to this podcast or something like that.
link |
02:02:42.940
And I could tell they're incredible people.
link |
02:02:45.940
And it makes me, it's like a little goodbye of a possible friend.
link |
02:02:49.940
I don't know.
link |
02:02:50.940
It makes me sad.
link |
02:02:51.940
It makes me, it's lonely.
link |
02:02:54.940
It's almost like celebrity is a lonely thing.
link |
02:02:57.940
So the higher the celebrity, the more lonely you become in some kind of way.
link |
02:03:01.940
But of course you have that little jam of a private life where you can...
link |
02:03:05.940
Personally, I believe every relationship, I don't like to use this term,
link |
02:03:11.940
but it's always a give and take relationship, you know?
link |
02:03:16.940
Like you can gain something and the person...
link |
02:03:19.940
It could be something like not materialistic, like something always a good, confident,
link |
02:03:25.940
like someone that can give me good advice or...
link |
02:03:29.940
It's a word I would say like extensional.
link |
02:03:32.940
If a pilot has a copilot, the copilot has an extensional relationship with him.
link |
02:03:38.940
He knows if he gets sick or he faint, he's there to make sure, he's there to help.
link |
02:03:44.940
And I think in every relation, it's about compatibility, but it's about extensionality.
link |
02:03:49.940
Right?
link |
02:03:50.940
In a way that if that person is extensional.
link |
02:03:53.940
And sometimes we talk about love, you know?
link |
02:03:56.940
Like sometimes I think, is it a BS word or not?
link |
02:04:00.940
Because I myself sometimes look at myself in the mirror.
link |
02:04:05.940
And when I do stupid thing, sometimes I love myself a lot and sometimes I don't.
link |
02:04:11.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:04:12.940
Because I'm angry at myself, I've done stupid thing.
link |
02:04:16.940
So that means sometimes love could be fluctuating.
link |
02:04:19.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:04:20.940
How about in relationships, sometimes people, they say they love each other,
link |
02:04:24.940
but then when they divorce, they go,
link |
02:04:26.940
Oh, I want the house and the dog and the kids stay with me.
link |
02:04:29.940
And you know what I mean?
link |
02:04:31.940
If you love, by definition, if you really love someone,
link |
02:04:36.940
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 |
02:04:41.940
if you really love her, you're going to help her pack and leave.
link |
02:04:46.940
But in our society sometimes we want to hone something.
link |
02:04:50.940
To me, love includes the missing somebody, the losing somebody, the anger at somebody.
link |
02:04:56.940
It's all the passion, feelings towards somebody.
link |
02:04:59.940
That's all love.
link |
02:05:00.940
Like I, you know, it's all part of the thing.
link |
02:05:02.940
It's the ups and downs.
link |
02:05:04.940
It's the sad thing is when the feelings towards a person, the ups and downs go away.
link |
02:05:10.940
The forgetting.
link |
02:05:11.940
That's the opposite of love.
link |
02:05:13.940
So the opposite of love isn't hate.
link |
02:05:15.940
To me, the opposite of love is forgetting.
link |
02:05:18.940
And that's a much bigger, the depth of human connection.
link |
02:05:22.940
That's how I see love.
link |
02:05:23.940
So sometimes I try to stay positive and I've been asked how I try to,
link |
02:05:29.940
because I have the image of someone who's positive,
link |
02:05:32.940
but I go through my own demon as well sometimes.
link |
02:05:35.940
However, when we talk about love, when I was young, you know, like, I didn't love who I was at first.
link |
02:05:46.940
That's how I love.
link |
02:05:47.940
I learned to kind of love myself.
link |
02:05:50.940
Like when I was going through bullying, I believe I was bullied because I didn't love myself.
link |
02:05:57.940
Because I project a very bad image of what I think of myself.
link |
02:06:03.940
I was a kid that lacked a lot of confidence.
link |
02:06:05.940
I was looking down when I was walking.
link |
02:06:07.940
I shrugged my shoulder.
link |
02:06:09.940
When someone was talking to me, I was avoiding eye contact.
link |
02:06:13.940
So I was a very easy target for bullies.
link |
02:06:16.940
And I think bullies are like predatory animal in nature.
link |
02:06:21.940
They will hunt the easier prey.
link |
02:06:24.940
They don't go.
link |
02:06:25.940
The lion don't go for the half a bull.
link |
02:06:29.940
They go for the one who's old or who's sick, the weakest one.
link |
02:06:32.940
And bullies are the same in society, I believe.
link |
02:06:35.940
And I didn't like to be bullied, of course, but I didn't like the person that I was.
link |
02:06:41.940
But I found out to martial art, the respect, and my coach was extraordinary to me.
link |
02:06:52.940
He taught me discipline and self strength.
link |
02:06:55.940
And I found out that I needed to, in order to love myself, I needed to change myself.
link |
02:07:01.940
Because when I looked at my son in the mirror, I didn't like what I saw.
link |
02:07:05.940
So I decided to become like someone that I would love.
link |
02:07:11.940
So I tried to look people straight up and trying to showcase a more confident image that I had.
link |
02:07:23.940
And it was hard in the beginning because I didn't really believe in it.
link |
02:07:26.940
But I faked it until I kind of make it.
link |
02:07:30.940
So when I was walking at school, more and more, I was learning how to become more confident.
link |
02:07:36.940
And I was like taking charge.
link |
02:07:39.940
The teacher was asking questions.
link |
02:07:41.940
At first, I was never answering.
link |
02:07:43.940
I was like this, waiting always to be the last.
link |
02:07:45.940
Then I was, hey, I know what the answer is.
link |
02:07:48.940
This is the answer.
link |
02:07:49.940
I got out of my comfort zone, so to speak.
link |
02:07:54.940
And I wish I would tell you that I got out of bullying
link |
02:07:58.940
because a Hollywood story, I use martial art to beat up all the bullies.
link |
02:08:03.940
But it's not how it happened to me.
link |
02:08:05.940
It happened because I changed myself from the inside out.
link |
02:08:09.940
And I learned how to, because I didn't love myself in the beginning,
link |
02:08:15.940
I learned how to become like someone that I love.
link |
02:08:20.940
And even now, by no means perfect, I do a lot of stupid things.
link |
02:08:26.940
But I learn as a person.
link |
02:08:28.940
And even I do something stupid.
link |
02:08:30.940
I'm like, shoot, I did something stupid.
link |
02:08:32.940
At least I can apologize to the person if I realize.
link |
02:08:36.940
And then I know that I'm not the person I was in the past.
link |
02:08:41.940
I'm the person that I am right now.
link |
02:08:44.940
So I can learn and become that image of the person that I love.
link |
02:08:49.940
So in a way, the reason why I'm trying to be positive
link |
02:08:52.940
and I'm able to stay positive sometime in life
link |
02:08:56.940
is because I'm always trying to be like that person that I love.
link |
02:09:02.940
And I think if you don't look yourself in the mirror
link |
02:09:04.940
and don't love yourself or don't see any positive future for yourself,
link |
02:09:09.940
how can you change your environment if you cannot change yourself?
link |
02:09:12.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:09:13.940
You would never be happy if you're not happy when you look at yourself in the mirror.
link |
02:09:18.940
So change yourself first, then change your...
link |
02:09:20.940
You know, it's not the environment that's going to change for yourself.
link |
02:09:23.940
You have to go from the inside out, you know?
link |
02:09:28.940
This I learned to martial art.
link |
02:09:30.940
I had a coach who was incredible.
link |
02:09:33.940
He used to drill these ideas in my head and give me confidence, you know?
link |
02:09:38.940
Like this telling me all these beautiful things about myself.
link |
02:09:42.940
And now he's dead now, unfortunately, a piece to him.
link |
02:09:46.940
But he was incredible, incredible.
link |
02:09:49.940
He was very, very strict. I was afraid of him.
link |
02:09:51.940
I was afraid of my dad and afraid of him.
link |
02:09:53.940
He couldn't teach nowadays like he used to teach me
link |
02:09:56.940
because he would be probably in jail, you know?
link |
02:09:59.940
But I'm glad he did it because for that time being, that's what I needed.
link |
02:10:04.940
And I would never have had that career I had in mixed martial art without this
link |
02:10:10.940
because I would never have got out of my comfort zone.
link |
02:10:13.940
It would have been impossible.
link |
02:10:15.940
And in order to improve in life, you need to get out of your comfort zone.
link |
02:10:18.940
It's hard. It's very hard to do.
link |
02:10:21.940
And strive to be the person that you can love.
link |
02:10:24.940
That's beautifully put, George.
link |
02:10:27.940
If you were to give advice to a young person today about life, what would you tell him?
link |
02:10:33.940
If he takes life with the same mentality that I do,
link |
02:10:42.940
if he has the same taste of things that I have,
link |
02:10:48.940
I would tell him, you know, for sport, for life in general,
link |
02:10:54.940
I would say if you will have a dream, you know, like make everything in your power
link |
02:11:05.940
and work very hard, you know, never take no for an answer
link |
02:11:10.940
and go through hell in order to achieve it.
link |
02:11:14.940
Don't work hard only but work smart.
link |
02:11:21.940
That's, I think, the problems with a lot of people.
link |
02:11:25.940
They work hard. They can work hard. They burn themselves. They don't work smart.
link |
02:11:28.940
Whether it is in science and business, they make bad choices
link |
02:11:35.940
or they badly inform in sport how many guys I've seen ruin their career in the gyms.
link |
02:11:42.940
They spar so hard. They ruin themselves in the gyms.
link |
02:11:46.940
They leave their career in the gyms.
link |
02:11:49.940
What I would say to, for example, because my field of expertise,
link |
02:11:53.940
it's in sport of mixed martial art, I would say to a young kid,
link |
02:12:01.940
make your training playful. You know, when you get ready for competition,
link |
02:12:08.940
you need to try to recreate those elements that makes you go outside of your comfort zone.
link |
02:12:16.940
But in every day's life in general, make your training playful.
link |
02:12:21.940
Don't make it like a hardcore competition about who's winning, who's losing.
link |
02:12:27.940
Make it playful so it will increase your, because you will not be afraid of getting hurt or losing.
link |
02:12:38.940
You will be tempted to try more things and it will make you become more creative.
link |
02:12:48.940
You know, that brings up another question about learning.
link |
02:12:52.940
So you value knowledge and you're exceptional at basically being very good at learning
link |
02:13:00.940
and figuring stuff out, new things or going deeper on the things you already know.
link |
02:13:04.940
So what advice would you have for how to learn effectively?
link |
02:13:09.940
How, you know, you say work smart. How do you figure this game out?
link |
02:13:15.940
I believe the best way to learn is learning from other people's mistake.
link |
02:13:23.940
However, I'm not perfect and I've learned from my mistakes as well.
link |
02:13:29.940
And sometimes it took me a few mistakes to learn the same thing.
link |
02:13:36.940
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 |
02:13:50.940
So it's crucial to trying to learn from other people's mistakes.
link |
02:13:55.940
Do you study others?
link |
02:13:57.940
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.
link |
02:14:12.940
And how can I make the fight go in a way that I'm taking my opponent outside of his comfort zone?
link |
02:14:20.940
Very often people are good at studying their opponent, but they're not good at looking at themselves.
link |
02:14:26.940
They're better at knowing what they should do in order to maximize their odds of success, right?
link |
02:14:33.940
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.
link |
02:14:46.940
That's why I always seek advice from the best in every discipline. I wrestle with the best wrestler I could be with.
link |
02:14:58.940
I box with the best boxers. I practice karate with the best karate fighters.
link |
02:15:04.940
Same thing in jujitsu. I train jujitsu with the best jujitsu guys.
link |
02:15:09.940
However, when I mix everything and mix martial art, because I'm very competent in every area.
link |
02:15:18.940
So when I'm fighting someone, I'm very good at identifying where he's the less competent.
link |
02:15:26.940
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.
link |
02:15:36.940
There's no certainty. It's all about odds, I believe, because there is always an X factor that you do not control.
link |
02:15:43.940
Yeah, it's fascinating to see you, actually, because you've been a student of movement.
link |
02:15:48.940
You've been exploring all kinds of gymnastics, all that kind of stuff.
link |
02:15:52.940
There's something reminiscent to, like, Conor McGregor is one other martial artist that's kind of explored movement, been a scholar of movement.
link |
02:16:02.940
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.
link |
02:16:11.940
Is there a philosophy behind that that you have?
link |
02:16:14.940
You talk about Bruce Lee, man. He changes my life, too. He was ahead of his time.
link |
02:16:24.940
Yeah, incredible.
link |
02:16:26.940
A lot of people talk to me and ask me, hey, is Bruce Lee would have been able to fight in UFC?
link |
02:16:32.940
Look, I don't think so. I don't know. I think he was a martial artist.
link |
02:16:38.940
He could have defended himself, but to say that he could have competed amongst the elite of the elite fighter.
link |
02:16:44.940
Perhaps in his time, but for sure, if you put him in UFC right now, the sport has improved incredibly since then.
link |
02:16:54.940
But in terms of philosophy, Bruce Lee was amazing.
link |
02:16:59.940
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.
link |
02:17:07.940
And we see that kick that got popularized by John Jones, you know, the sidekick to the tie.
link |
02:17:16.940
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.
link |
02:17:25.940
And there is, I felt there is like kind of three dimension in martial art.
link |
02:17:31.940
There is the philosopher like Bruce Lee. There is the choreography, the choreograph people.
link |
02:17:38.940
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.
link |
02:17:49.940
Mixed martial art, they are unbelievable. And there is also the one that competed in fighting.
link |
02:17:56.940
That's what I do. I personally specialize in.
link |
02:18:00.940
Well, you also do the philosophy.
link |
02:18:02.940
I do a little bit of philosophy, but that's a consequence of the fighting.
link |
02:18:07.940
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.
link |
02:18:19.940
But you will specialize in one. I specialize through my life in fighting, like the real thing in terms of fighting, competition.
link |
02:18:27.940
And of course, if you do martial art, you will be able to defend yourself because it's a self defense.
link |
02:18:32.940
However, you might not be able to fight as an elite and the most prestigious organization.
link |
02:18:38.940
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.
link |
02:18:48.940
These guys are incredible. They're like real life superhero things they do.
link |
02:18:53.940
To me, like, it's fascinating. It's amazing.
link |
02:18:57.940
And also Bruce Lee, the philosophy.
link |
02:19:00.940
How many hours he took thinking about these stuff?
link |
02:19:06.940
I'm sure he did not just came out of nowhere. He was thinking. That's mean he slept on this.
link |
02:19:14.940
How many hours? It just unbelievable.
link |
02:19:17.940
He's like water, my friend. How many times has he thought about water going to bed before he said that?
link |
02:19:23.940
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.
link |
02:19:33.940
Is it a clip on or is it an actual tie?
link |
02:19:36.940
It's an actual tie.
link |
02:19:38.940
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?
link |
02:19:50.940
In a fight, I think it would be a disadvantage.
link |
02:19:54.940
I work as a security bouncer in nightclubs and event when I was 18 years old.
link |
02:20:01.940
And sometimes I had to work in certain event that I was in suit and tie.
link |
02:20:08.940
I never had to use my force to take someone out when I was in suit and tie.
link |
02:20:16.940
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.
link |
02:20:26.940
And I would have called back up for sure.
link |
02:20:28.940
And I would have probably used the element of surprise to be first on the guy.
link |
02:20:34.940
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.
link |
02:20:45.940
And when you go, you have to use the element of surprise.
link |
02:20:49.940
Because fighting and mixed martial arts and fighting in the street, it's two different things.
link |
02:20:55.940
And yes, I'm a mixed martial arts competitor.
link |
02:20:59.940
That's what I've done all my life, but I had a lot of street fighting in my life.
link |
02:21:03.940
A lot when I was in...
link |
02:21:04.940
What's the difference?
link |
02:21:05.940
What's like the...
link |
02:21:06.940
Oh my God, it's a huge difference.
link |
02:21:08.940
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,
link |
02:21:19.940
I would maybe sometimes pick guys that are not in UFC, not necessarily.
link |
02:21:23.940
Because in the street fight, there's no referee that says go.
link |
02:21:27.940
It's the element of surprise.
link |
02:21:29.940
And when you're a nice guy, you're not the aggressor, you always have the element of surprise.
link |
02:21:34.940
That's what it taught me.
link |
02:21:35.940
Oh, interesting.
link |
02:21:36.940
Yes, because if...
link |
02:21:38.940
Aggression or sacrifice seems a surprise.
link |
02:21:40.940
The person will not come punch you without warning.
link |
02:21:43.940
It needs to trigger something.
link |
02:21:46.940
It's something that needs to be triggered before.
link |
02:21:48.940
So if someone comes because he's looking for trouble, there's a sign that he's looking for trouble.
link |
02:21:55.940
So I was just talking with Bass Root and this weekend about it.
link |
02:21:59.940
I saw that.
link |
02:22:00.940
Every martial art comes from...
link |
02:22:03.940
Some martial art are from Exclusivik for competition.
link |
02:22:07.940
Like sport karate, certain martial art.
link |
02:22:11.940
But traditional martial art are for the street or for self defense.
link |
02:22:16.940
And I start my background in Kyoko Shin Karate.
link |
02:22:19.940
So it's for...
link |
02:22:20.940
And I did Japanese Jujitsu.
link |
02:22:21.940
So my background, before I even start training for mixed martial art, my background is in self defense.
link |
02:22:28.940
And it's very important to understand that in a street fight, the element of surprise is everything.
link |
02:22:34.940
And there are no rules.
link |
02:22:35.940
You can't go for the eyes, the neck, the...
link |
02:22:38.940
It surprises everything.
link |
02:22:39.940
It's a total ball game, you know what I mean?
link |
02:22:42.940
You have the chair, the beard, there's so much more thing going on.
link |
02:22:47.940
So the idea of...
link |
02:22:49.940
Because you are a UFC fighter, you think you're invincible.
link |
02:22:52.940
This is BS.
link |
02:22:54.940
Anybody can come.
link |
02:22:55.940
Like if a big guy who punch very hard, most people don't know how to punch.
link |
02:22:59.940
By the way, they don't know how to make a fist and throw it in a forward direction.
link |
02:23:02.940
But if someone knows how to do it, I don't care who you are.
link |
02:23:05.940
If you could be Francis and Genu, someone come behind your head and...
link |
02:23:09.940
Or let's say there's an argument and you get surprised by a punch.
link |
02:23:13.940
You can't be dropped and lose a fight.
link |
02:23:15.940
It doesn't matter.
link |
02:23:16.940
The element of surprise is everything.
link |
02:23:19.940
So you were saying remove all the sources of the elements of surprise.
link |
02:23:22.940
Clear the bar, remove the tie.
link |
02:23:25.940
I still disagree with you about the tab.
link |
02:23:27.940
And just for your information, if someone comes looking for trouble and you see me do this...
link |
02:23:36.940
And going sideways a little bit, that's my position that I'm thinking.
link |
02:23:41.940
There you go.
link |
02:23:42.940
Maybe something will happen and I'm about...
link |
02:23:44.940
That's a good...
link |
02:23:45.940
I'm about thinking about doing the element.
link |
02:23:47.940
I'm about to punch you or to do something to take care of this.
link |
02:23:51.940
See, to flip the table on you then, wearing a tie is communicating the nice guy image.
link |
02:23:57.940
So it actually gives you the freedom for more elements of surprise by wearing the tie.
link |
02:24:02.940
If you take it off, that's more you're limiting your options.
link |
02:24:07.940
Because nobody's going to expect the guy in the tie to do anything.
link |
02:24:10.940
I'm a big believer that sometimes it's not only materialism, it's what you project.
link |
02:24:17.940
That's true.
link |
02:24:18.940
Like I said, I had troubles in a bar and I was able to deflect.
link |
02:24:22.940
The guy was looking for trouble talking to me and I was able to deflect his own aggressivity
link |
02:24:27.940
by saying like, hey man, that's a nice shirt.
link |
02:24:30.940
Where did you get it?
link |
02:24:31.940
Like saying like something was stupid like this.
link |
02:24:34.940
Then it kind of break the momentum and he, you know, but the guy was looking for trouble.
link |
02:24:40.940
I don't want to fight you.
link |
02:24:41.940
I don't want to fight you, but I'm not going to wait until you pull.
link |
02:24:46.940
You make the first move because the minute you touch me, you push me or you touch me,
link |
02:24:52.940
you declare war and the war is unleashed, my friend.
link |
02:24:55.940
And I'm taking you out of order with the necessary force, of course.
link |
02:25:00.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:25:01.940
That's the thing with martial art.
link |
02:25:04.940
If you use the necessary force to take out a problem, it's okay.
link |
02:25:08.940
But if you, you know, you take advantage of it, that's when it's not all right because it's a weapon.
link |
02:25:14.940
So if someone comes up to me, that's my position.
link |
02:25:17.940
And now I'm assessing the situation.
link |
02:25:20.940
You know, that's, that's how they teach in self defense here.
link |
02:25:24.940
Never put your hands down.
link |
02:25:25.940
I was in there because I'm down or boom.
link |
02:25:29.940
Like what this is, this is very important.
link |
02:25:32.940
And you never, you're always your center line on the side.
link |
02:25:35.940
Yeah.
link |
02:25:36.940
Like this.
link |
02:25:37.940
If someone knows martial art, he will recognize that pattern.
link |
02:25:41.940
But if you go like this, if someone talked to you and you go like this,
link |
02:25:44.940
that's mean you're telling the guy that you want to fight.
link |
02:25:47.940
You don't want to do that.
link |
02:25:48.940
You don't want to, oh yeah.
link |
02:25:49.940
That's, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's the position.
link |
02:25:53.940
Cause your hand are here, you know, whatever you can do, you're here.
link |
02:25:57.940
Well, also your ear tells a story.
link |
02:25:59.940
It's not everybody that knows that.
link |
02:26:02.940
However, some people might think that it's my mom grabbed me by the ear and pulled me
link |
02:26:06.940
because I didn't listen to her, you know.
link |
02:26:08.940
A real fight in the street and a fight in the mixed martial art is a different ballgame.
link |
02:26:13.940
What do you think is the best martial art to prepare you for street fighting?
link |
02:26:17.940
You know, people often kind of have this discussion of jiu jitsu,
link |
02:26:20.940
maybe boxing, maybe wrestling.
link |
02:26:22.940
Do you think we can talk about a young person studying martial arts to prepare themselves?
link |
02:26:27.940
For a street fight, it's often much different than a mixed martial art fight.
link |
02:26:33.940
And I know there's a lot of BS in the world of martial art, like self defense stuff.
link |
02:26:39.940
But I believe self defense is very important in a way to understand the situation,
link |
02:26:49.940
to understand those situations that might occur, how to deal with it.
link |
02:26:57.940
Not necessarily that we talk about the technicality, we talk about the tacticality, the tactics, you know.
link |
02:27:05.940
Like when I'm talking to you about the element of surprise, it's important.
link |
02:27:08.940
This is not technique.
link |
02:27:09.940
A technique is a punch or techniques that I physically will use to enable my opponent, my aggressor.
link |
02:27:18.940
Tactic is the tactic I'm telling you about is in a street fight.
link |
02:27:22.940
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.
link |
02:27:28.940
And I have to be first.
link |
02:27:31.940
I cannot let him go first.
link |
02:27:33.940
So I have to strike first or do something.
link |
02:27:35.940
This is the first thing that generally I have to agree on.
link |
02:27:43.940
After that, of course, there's the knowledge.
link |
02:27:46.940
If you're a professional fighter, you have a huge advantage once the fight has started, the war has declared.
link |
02:27:53.940
Now everything goes.
link |
02:27:55.940
But generally speaking, the person that will intervene physically, that will have the first blow or the first punch,
link |
02:28:04.940
will have a huge disadvantage.
link |
02:28:07.940
It's like doing a hundred meter raise and having a head start.
link |
02:28:10.940
And that you can't prepare for with any martial art.
link |
02:28:14.940
Yeah, and if I'm a smart guy, I know how to fight.
link |
02:28:17.940
If a guy like an heavyweight champion comes to me, I know what to do to disable him.
link |
02:28:26.940
Boom, or hair, or the neck.
link |
02:28:30.940
If you blind him, what is he going to do?
link |
02:28:33.940
You know what I mean?
link |
02:28:35.940
Or a bottle, you know what I mean?
link |
02:28:37.940
So the element of surprise is everything.
link |
02:28:40.940
That's why it's always good to be the nice guy and not looking for trouble.
link |
02:28:45.940
Because if you're not looking for trouble, you have the head start.
link |
02:28:48.940
You have the option of having a head start.
link |
02:28:50.940
So what you're saying is being a nice guy is the best form of self defense.
link |
02:28:53.940
Maybe a little humor too.
link |
02:28:55.940
You know how I have learned that?
link |
02:28:57.940
I've learned that when I was a kid.
link |
02:28:59.940
I was about maybe six, six years old.
link |
02:29:03.940
We used to play in Montreal a lot of snow.
link |
02:29:06.940
We used to play King of the Montaigne.
link |
02:29:08.940
That's the first combat lesson that I've learned in my life.
link |
02:29:11.940
And I managed somehow.
link |
02:29:13.940
It was a lot of kids.
link |
02:29:14.940
I managed to get on the top of the Montaigne.
link |
02:29:16.940
And another guy came in on top of the Montaigne.
link |
02:29:19.940
And he was angry that I was there before him.
link |
02:29:23.940
When you play King of the Montaigne, it was a mountain of snow.
link |
02:29:27.940
You don't strike each other.
link |
02:29:29.940
You just wrestle and push.
link |
02:29:31.940
And I managed to be first.
link |
02:29:32.940
And when he came, he says to me, say, okay, you want to fight.
link |
02:29:37.940
And I said, yeah, I don't know what it means.
link |
02:29:39.940
Like I want to fight.
link |
02:29:40.940
You want to wrestle.
link |
02:29:41.940
He said, I say, yes.
link |
02:29:43.940
He punched me right in the face.
link |
02:29:45.940
Boom.
link |
02:29:46.940
And then I fall on the bottom of the mountain.
link |
02:29:49.940
Then when I fall down, I remember that vision in my life.
link |
02:29:53.940
Because it's, I really remember that for the rest of my life.
link |
02:29:57.940
I'm about to stand up and I see the blood coming out of my nose.
link |
02:30:01.940
I see the snow is red because my nose is bleeding.
link |
02:30:05.940
Now I remember the limit of surprises, everything.
link |
02:30:10.940
My first street fight, I lost it.
link |
02:30:13.940
I didn't get knocked out, but I got dropped on the bottom of the snow mountain.
link |
02:30:18.940
And I was like, ah, you got me because I was not expecting my hand.
link |
02:30:22.940
I was not expecting a punch.
link |
02:30:24.940
So from there, when I felt the eat during an argument or something was not right,
link |
02:30:30.940
I always stroke first.
link |
02:30:32.940
I didn't win all my fight because sometimes there were more than one guys on me, you know.
link |
02:30:38.940
But I think it's important to not be the aggressor.
link |
02:30:43.940
So you have the element of surprise and always use that in your favor.
link |
02:30:47.940
That's so brilliant.
link |
02:30:48.940
Let me go from the very practical to the most impractically huge question about the meaning of life.
link |
02:30:55.940
You said that when great depths of unrelenting sorrow are punctuated by great peaks of joy and liberation,
link |
02:31:04.940
the result is delicious.
link |
02:31:06.940
So what do you think is the meaning of this whole journey that we're on, this life?
link |
02:31:13.940
What makes life delicious?
link |
02:31:15.940
To me, you know, satisfaction is the end for me.
link |
02:31:22.940
Like I always, if I'm satisfied, that's mean I have no nothing to live for.
link |
02:31:28.940
I'm not talking only about my career, I'm talking about my life.
link |
02:31:32.940
What do you want in your life?
link |
02:31:34.940
You want kids, you want a family, you want to be champion.
link |
02:31:37.940
What do you want in your life?
link |
02:31:38.940
You have like a long term goal, short term goal.
link |
02:31:44.940
In mixed martial art, I achieve what I needed to achieve.
link |
02:31:47.940
I'm satisfied.
link |
02:31:49.940
I'm no longer the same George Napierre than when I was begging for a title shot on my knees.
link |
02:31:54.940
I move on from it.
link |
02:31:58.940
Now I had the chance to go into movies.
link |
02:32:01.940
Now that same insane drive that I had to be the champion in the world, now I put it into acting.
link |
02:32:14.940
Like I'm having a lot of acting class now and luckily for me, the timing was amazing.
link |
02:32:20.940
I got cast for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier that is on Disney Plus channel.
link |
02:32:26.940
It's a huge, huge project to be part of for me because it's like you play basketball,
link |
02:32:34.940
you have a chance to go for the NBA right away.
link |
02:32:36.940
I was very lucky.
link |
02:32:38.940
The timing was just too perfect.
link |
02:32:40.940
And so you need to constantly challenging yourself and having goals to achieve.
link |
02:32:47.940
You know, like keep your brain activated, like keep working.
link |
02:32:52.940
And the proof of that is that you see sometimes some old people, like when they retire very often,
link |
02:33:00.940
sometimes you see that they got sick and they die or because they...
link |
02:33:06.940
It's either because sometimes we think we...
link |
02:33:11.940
We do something good for them by making not work and giving them a break.
link |
02:33:19.940
So in our mind, we're like, oh, he's going to be able to relax.
link |
02:33:22.940
But in their mind, it's not good because they're not busy.
link |
02:33:26.940
They have nothing to live for.
link |
02:33:27.940
Like my dad is used to work all the time and he has always something to do.
link |
02:33:32.940
He's retired now.
link |
02:33:34.940
I myself now call him by force to find him some job.
link |
02:33:38.940
Hey, dad, can you come in my house?
link |
02:33:41.940
I have this thing to repair.
link |
02:33:43.940
I don't know how to do it.
link |
02:33:44.940
So it gives him a reason not to live on because he has other things to do.
link |
02:33:49.940
But what I mean is also in life, I think you always don't be afraid to aim high.
link |
02:33:57.940
Don't be afraid to fix your objective very high and never be able to reach it.
link |
02:34:03.940
Be afraid of reaching your goals, essentially.
link |
02:34:05.940
I mean, you always have to keep moving it out.
link |
02:34:07.940
You think there's a...
link |
02:34:09.940
It's an interesting question because you've been acting in some really exciting things.
link |
02:34:13.940
Do you think there's a dramatic role where it's a basically...
link |
02:34:19.940
You go full Robert De Niro and taxi driver.
link |
02:34:23.940
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 love it.
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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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But the...
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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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Oh, cut.
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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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Oh, yeah.
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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?
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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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And that's life.
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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
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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
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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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I'm so honored.
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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 George.
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Nice.
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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.