back to indexTravis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness | Lex Fridman Podcast #223
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The following is a conversation with Travis Stevens,
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2016 Olympic silver medalist in Judo
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and one of the greatest American Judo ever.
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But his story is inspiring,
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not because of that Olympic medal,
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but because of the decades of injury, hardship,
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incredible battles against the best in the world,
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wrapping up in close heartbreaking losses
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at the 2008 and 2012 games,
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all of which eventually led to that very silver medal
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As we talk about in the podcast,
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Travis is also someone who's largely responsible
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for me getting into Judo,
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for which I will forever be grateful.
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He also happens to be now my Judo coach and mentor.
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I'll release a video of Travis and I
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doing some Judo in a few days.
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To support this podcast,
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please check out our sponsors in the description.
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As a side note, let me say a few words
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that I've written down about the Olympic games
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and the International Olympics Committee.
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I'm visiting family as the T shirt,
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but I had to pull away to write and to say these words
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because this very video was taken down by YouTube
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as per the request of the IOC.
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You know it's serious when a Russian takes time away
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from family, food and drink.
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I'm heartbroken to see continued incompetence,
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greed and corruption on the part of the IOC
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in failing to do as the Olympic charter states,
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to quote, ensure the fullest coverage
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and the widest possible audience in the world
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for the Olympic games, end quote.
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I want to give you two facts.
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First, they do not make most of the videos of the games
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available for replay anywhere that is accessible,
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searchable and discoverable,
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whether funded by ads or by subscriptions.
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For example, on YouTube or their own service,
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it is not available anywhere.
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Second, in the most absurd violation of the Olympic charter,
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they've uploaded all of the videos of the 2012, 2016
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and the 2020 slash 21 Olympics to YouTube.
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And they set all of these videos to private.
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This results in a situation like my four hour conversation
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that you're watching now with Travis Stevens
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being taken down due to us including a few seconds
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of a small video overlay of Travis's epic match
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against Ole Bischoff in 2012.
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This is done automatically as per the request of the IOC.
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I have the video due to having screen recorded it from 2012.
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Here you have Travis Stevens, an Olympic silver medalist,
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someone who spent his entire life overcoming injuries,
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losses, hard weight cuts, periods of no financial
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or psychological support culminating
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in the biggest heartbreak of his career in this one match.
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And this match is available nowhere online,
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not for free, not for $1 million.
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Our showing short clips of it results in the IOC
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taking it down, not demonetizing it,
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taking it down, blocking it.
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The IOC silences this amazing story of Travis Stevens
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of heartbreak that eventually led to triumph.
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And there are thousands of stories like it,
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stories that are supposed to inspire the world.
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To me and to billions of others,
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the Olympic games give a chance to celebrate
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and to be inspired by the greatest stories
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of human flourishing in the face of hardship
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and incredibly long odds or dominance
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in the pursuit of perfection
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at levels previously thought to be impossible.
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The Olympic games inspire kids like me to dream
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and to work hard to achieve in our own lives
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the same moments of magic and greatness,
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small or big, that the Olympic games reveal.
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I believe the members of the IOC are good people,
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but people who forgot the dream,
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the fire that was sparked and burned in their hearts
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when they first saw the Olympics as kids.
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They've allowed the gradual corruption
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of their own human spirit
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and thereby have robbed the world of this very fire,
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the fire of the Olympic torch,
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the fire that ought to burn in the eyes and hearts of kids
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watching the Olympics today,
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daring to dream, daring to be great.
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Please, please do better.
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The world needs you, the world needs the Olympic games.
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This is the Lux Friedman podcast
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and here's my conversation with Travis Stevens.
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Judo is a martial arts, a sport,
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a set of techniques, ideas, and philosophies.
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Can we start by maybe you giving a big picture overview
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of what is Judo to somebody who's like outside
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the whole spectrum of grappling sports?
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Yeah, Judo was originated in Japan
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that was used as a police tactic for self defense
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and subduing people.
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It's the art of being able to throw somebody to the ground
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and hold and control the situation.
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I think it's pretty much evolved since then though.
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You know, it's as you include like the sport aspect of it,
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it's grown to be something more and more dynamic
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and it's kind of gotten away from that.
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So the basics is people wear something called a gi,
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which I think nicely mimics like outdoor clothing,
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like a jacket and they start on the feet
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and they get to grip each other
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and the scoring works by the more badass the throw is,
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the more points you get,
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and if you throw the person big and hard on their back,
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you win the match and it's over and that's called an Ippon.
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Yeah, which is equivalent to a knockout.
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So I guess there's no knockdowns in Judo.
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We don't count those.
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They gotta hit their back and they gotta hit it with force.
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And so there's a huge incentive for the big throws.
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And there's also the drama of somebody catching you off guard
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with a surprise big throw and it's over.
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Yep, there's two ways of losing really.
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There's the, I saw this coming, right?
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Like you just, you see it, but you can't stop it.
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And those ones tend to be the ones you can live with.
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The ones that are like really hard to live with
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are the ones you never saw coming, right?
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Cause that just shows that that person
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has really outclassed you.
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Right, so there's like a set of, a small set of throws.
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Maybe we can go through them that are like,
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you saw it coming, but you couldn't do anything about it.
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And then there's the set of throws
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that are more like surprises.
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So first of all, the counters,
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or if you fake one thing and go the other way,
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then that's a surprise and it's like, oh shit.
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You off balance the person because they think
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you're going one way and then you go the other way.
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And then there's this, oh shit moment.
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All of a sudden your back is just slammed on the ground.
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One of the ones, I mean, you're good at many throws,
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but one of them is a, that I think reveals
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the beauty of judo is the foot sweep.
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There's something about the off balance and the timing
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that if you catch them right, all of a sudden,
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it's like I had the same feeling when I went skydiving,
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like all of a sudden the ground is not under you anymore.
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Yeah, and you just, you go weightlessness
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for like a split second and you realize
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you've lost like all control of your limbs.
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Like it's like zero gravity, right?
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Like you just, you can't turn, you can't rotate,
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you can't do much of anything.
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And then before you know it, you've hit the floor.
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It's a cool feeling when you get thrown
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because you hope to do the same thing to another person.
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It's like, you just hit the ground hard
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because it's not, you didn't see it coming.
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It wasn't a big throw that got loaded up.
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It's like all of a sudden the surprise.
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And then like this, like feeling your back just slams
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and there's like the air is up.
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Yeah, and the worst is when you get hit twice
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with one throw, right?
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Because sometimes like the guy throwing you
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didn't expect you to leave either.
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So you hit and then that guy comes down
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like a second and a half later and it's like, boom, boom.
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And then the wind is just gone from you.
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Those are the worst.
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And then there's the disappointment.
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Like then the intellectual, the cognitive part comes in
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where you're like, oh shit, I just lost.
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And you don't have like a connection to why, right?
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It's almost like you've just,
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like you didn't literally get a concussion.
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Like you understand and remember everything,
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but you can't figure out how this just happened, right?
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Those are the tough ones to deal with.
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Actually, have you had moments like that
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where you don't understand how it happened?
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You have to watch footage to understand what happened?
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Even when you watch it, you're just like, I don't get it.
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Like, why wasn't I in a position to stop this?
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It makes zero sense.
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Conceptually, when you watch it, you're like,
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I understand how to play defense.
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I understand, it looks like I'm in a defensive position,
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but at the end of the day, I still got thrown.
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Yeah, you were talking about, what is it, a 2008 match.
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You have a non traditional gripping style.
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Is that accurate to say?
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And then you were going against another right handed player
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and then there was some kind of fake that he did
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and then he caught you.
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Can you describe the throw he caught you with?
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He caught me with a drop sale,
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but he kind of like, we were engaged.
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We were looking at each other
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and we were kind of at like a stalemate, right?
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He couldn't really advance, I couldn't really advance.
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And he kind of just let his gaze like wander off
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to the right, like he was looking at something.
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And then I kind of like, what's over there?
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And then I got thrown and it's like.
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So first of all, for people who don't know,
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Seio's Seinagi drop means when you drop to your knees
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and Seinagi is one of the fundamental throws of Judo.
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There's just a handful, but does that actually ever work?
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I always wondered that about like boxing or Judo.
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Does the head movement of the person work?
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Cause we're still like kind of dogs at heart.
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If you look somewhere with a dog,
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the dog is going to look that direction as well.
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Does that actually work ever?
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It does, but on a greater sense,
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what you try to do is not necessarily get
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like a physical reaction of a look,
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but a lull of security where like,
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they've almost like relaxed for that split second
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because you've lured them into like a sense of comfort.
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And then that's when you can strike.
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So you have this, speaking of Seinagi,
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you have this gigantic standing Seinagi.
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And you have a specific grip.
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One of our challenges is there's a large number of people
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that listen to the audio version of this.
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So we're gonna have to try to describe some of this stuff.
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I'll do my best to try to describe with words,
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but you have, you grip with your left hand
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on the lapel of the jacket or like that area.
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And there's kind of a lean into the person.
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And I suppose, is there a feeling of a lull there
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that you're trying to get to where you're just,
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it feels like you're both calmly dancing
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before you turn your hips and go in for the throw?
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I'm actually trying to create a sense of weightlessness
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for my lead leg, which would be my right leg.
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And a sense of resistance from my partner.
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So aren't you both kind of leaning into each other?
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And it creates like an A frame.
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But when the A frame is held together at the top half,
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which would be my left hand and their right hand
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posted on each other's chest,
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it means our legs are free to move
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and our hips are free to move.
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And they're not gonna feel your leg move.
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Because of the weightlessness.
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And is there a feeling like, for them,
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is there a feeling like nothing bad can happen here?
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We're all relaxed, everything's fine?
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And then they're standing off at a funny angle
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and before they know it, I've spun
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and my back is on their chest and they can't go anywhere.
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How did you first develop that throw?
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So for people, it's called Ippon Seinagi,
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which means your right hand goes under their armpit area.
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And that's like a vice that connects you to them.
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And then they go on for the ride.
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The interesting thing with the standing one
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is as opposed to drop Seinagi version,
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the drop Seinagi, you kind of drop under them.
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And because there's a vice,
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they're like pulled under and like over.
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With the standing one, I suppose there's some similar physics,
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but you're kind of loading them onto your hip.
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And so they're in the air while you're standing still.
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There's a sense in which they're like,
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you're lifting them above where they started.
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That's how you get the really big air.
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If obviously, if everything is right.
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So how did you first develop that?
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How did you first?
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I first learned just learning like the very basics
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of the throw, you know, foot placement,
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all that kind of stuff.
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And then, you know, like anything, the basics are nice,
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but once you get good at the basics,
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it's very easy to stop,
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but it gives you a good like fundamental platform
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to learn off of and to expand off of.
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And then I expanded when I first started watching Koga,
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the new wind, right?
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Cause he's the one that first like introduced
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that split hip style Seinagi that I do.
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Once I learned that one,
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I built about eight different variations of Seio
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off that one start position.
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That way I could, regardless of your defense,
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I had an answer for a throw.
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So why that one though?
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Why, can you describe love to me, Travis Stevens?
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Why'd you fall in love with that throw in particular?
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It was really a sense of, you know,
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one of my shortcomings as a kid, like,
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I hate leg day in the gym.
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I hate it with a passion.
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I, if you asked me to do a squat, I'll get it done,
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but I will bitch and moan every step of the way.
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I remember one time I was at the gym with my trainer
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and he goes, okay, we're going to do front squats.
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And I want you to put 225 on the bar.
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And I was like, I can't do that.
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And he was like, what do you mean you can't do that?
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And I go, I physically, I can't do that.
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And he was like, are you serious?
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So he's, he didn't believe me.
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We put 225 on the bar and I bottomed out.
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And then he was like, okay, let's go down to 185.
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And I was like, I can't do that.
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I just, that's not happening.
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You probably could, strength wise, you just refuse.
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I just mentally, I cannot wrap my head around like,
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this ain't happening.
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So I ended up with like 95 pounds on the bar.
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I got you at a front squat, no problem.
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By the way, body weight squats are rough too, psychologically.
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So yeah, I just, when it comes to my legs,
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like I want no part of like leg pressing,
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single leg squats, split squat,
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any of that, I want no part of it.
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So you think like the more traditional variants
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of Sanagi require you to have that leg strength,
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Like when you watch Japanese Judo players,
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like their thighs and their hips, they're thick.
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They got a lot of power there.
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So you're almost like always dropping a little bit
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into a squat position.
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No, no, no, not you, sorry.
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For the traditional ones.
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And so the split hip,
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the split hip actually allows me to keep my legs straight.
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And the farther I split my legs,
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the lower my center of gravity goes.
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Now I don't need my legs.
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So that's the way you were thinking about it.
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But it's, you know, the interesting thing about it
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is because, you know, as I mentioned to you,
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I've gotten to Judo after first watching you
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in the Olympics and then watching Koga as well.
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And so you start imitating the people you foresee
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and then you take it to Judo coaches
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and they're like, no, no, no, no,
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that's the wrong way to do it.
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And happens all the time.
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It drives me nuts, drives me nuts.
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I was in Poland one time teaching a camp
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and I had two coaches anti coaching,
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telling their kids not to do Seio the way I do it
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because it never works.
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How do you have the fortitude and the guts
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to just go on with a throw that's not traditional,
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a variant that's not traditional?
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If you think about it, you know,
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from a very basic like root of it,
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there's a philosophy and a mentality of Judo
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of how the throws work, right?
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There's a mechanical structure there of like,
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If I follow that principle, I can do anything I want.
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Nothing else matters.
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As long as we follow those core principles.
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So in the early days, even then,
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you were able to think on your own.
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Yeah, and I was able to develop a pattern
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for my foot placement based on my opponent's height.
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Because the number one thing any Judo coach would tell you
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is you need your center of gravity below yours.
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Well, now I know exactly where to put my feet
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because the shorter you are, the bigger the split
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because the lower I need to get.
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The taller you are, the less of a split I need.
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Is there something you could say
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about fundamental principles of Judo?
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Is there, over all that time,
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not over 20 years that you've been doing Judo,
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it's not approaching 30, is it?
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Yeah, it's getting there.
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Okay, it's getting there.
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We're a couple years away, but it's getting there.
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Is there some like principles that have emerged?
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Like you said, you have to have your center of gravity
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Is there other kind of, both on the gripping side,
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the footwork side, leverage, anything you can speak to?
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There's some that have withstood like time,
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like you have to be able to get below
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their center of gravity
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because you have to be able to rotate them
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around their center of gravity.
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And then the other one is,
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that was always a principle when I was growing up
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and I didn't change until later on in my career was,
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you have to be able to pull.
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You need to be able to pull to get them off balance.
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But when you think about that statement as a whole,
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it ended with, they have to be off balance.
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I don't need to pull to get you off balance.
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I just need you off balance.
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And when you think about it that way,
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it allows you to open up the doors to,
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what do I need to do to get you off balance?
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I could push, pull, I could flinch, I could fake,
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and you could put yourself in your own off balance state.
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When you think about people who wrestle,
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if I fake shoot, it causes you to over lean forward,
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which means you're off balance.
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There's no pull, there's no push, there's no nothing.
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I just get a reaction that leaves the opportunity
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in the door open for an attack.
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And that off balance could be very subtle?
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Could be very subtle.
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And the better you get and the more skills you get,
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the less subtle it is.
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So we should also mention that there is something called
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forward throws, where you throw the person,
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they're gonna fly facing forward,
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they're gonna fly forward.
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And then a backward throw, they're gonna fly back.
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Yep, and then there's lateral,
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they actually go sideways over, like a cartwheel almost.
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Okay, so the forward throws,
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there's the one we've been talking about,
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which is Seinagi, and there's a bunch of different variants,
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Ippon, Marote, Seinagi.
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There's drop and there's standing versions of them.
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And that all, I don't know if there's a way to summarize it,
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but that's like as clean as getting your center of gravity
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under theirs as it gets.
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And then the rest is just gripping variations.
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I guess it's all gripping variations
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on all of these throws, but.
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And then there is, in terms of forward throws,
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there's the other big one in competition is Uchimata,
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which is, I don't know, we can try to explain that one.
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But it ends up being where one,
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you're standing on just one of your feet,
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and the other one is up in the air.
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And I don't know if you would put in that same category,
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Harai Goshi, like those kinds of throws
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where you're kind of a little bit single footed.
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Yeah, so there's two footed techniques
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and then there's single footed, yeah.
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Oh, Goshi, where it's like you're doing a mix
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between the Uchimata and the Seinagi.
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You hug a person and then you turn your hips around
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such that you're now hugging facing the same direction.
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When it comes to forward throw,
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there's, regardless of the name of the throw
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or the gripping variation that you're using,
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the whole principle is how do I get this person
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to do a forward roll in midair and land on their back?
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The more of a forward roll I can get, the bigger the score.
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If I get like a quarter of a turn
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where like you land on your side
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and you don't go over your back, it's a half score.
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But they all require me to get you
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to do that forward rolling action.
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So just if we think of one person,
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if they do this nice leap forward and they do a roll
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and their back nicely rolls over the ground,
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you're trying to do the exact same thing
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with you connected to them.
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Well, and if it's nice and it's smooth,
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it's probably not a full score.
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It needs to have like somewhat of a violent impact.
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So if you think of a drop, say Nagi,
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if I'm moving too slow and you still roll over your shoulders
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and there's no direct impact, it's only a half score.
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They want the force.
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The force, the violence.
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So then in terms of backward throws, the traditional ones,
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there's stuff where you trip them from outside their body,
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It's a trip where you hook your leg onto their leg
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and you trip them, but your hook goes outside of their legs.
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And then there's the trips from inside their body.
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There's a one foot is called kuchi gari
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and then the other is ochi gari, it doesn't matter.
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The most important thing is outside and inside.
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Inside and then there's like,
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I don't even know how you throw them sideways
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except foot sweeps.
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And then there's the foot sweeps
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where you can sweep one of their legs from out of them
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or both their legs at the same time.
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And like we're talking about this kind of is
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when timed perfectly, it's effortless for everybody involved
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and the ending, like you said, is big, dramatic and violent.
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Is there other kind of, oh yeah.
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There's a sacrifice techniques.
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There's a bunch of them.
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And that ultimately the variations have to do with gripping,
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but you're basically you, the attacker fall onto your back,
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sticking your legs somewhere onto their body,
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which is like this fulcrum over which they fly
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and do that same kind of roll that you mentioned.
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You basically sacrifice your back to the mat
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in order to throw them into that circular pattern.
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So they hit their back.
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Sometimes we use a foot,
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sometimes we don't.
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And so we should probably say,
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it's okay for you to go onto your back
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as long as you're clearly demonstrating control
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over the other person's body.
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You can't go to your back in the same direction
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that your opponent is trying to put you to your back.
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You have to go the other way
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or you have to initiate you going to your own back.
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And then there's all the counters
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which almost kind of have a whole group of their own,
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even though they have echoes of the same types of techniques,
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it seems like they're their own whole thing.
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Yeah, but they follow the same principles.
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It's just most counters.
link |
Like if you wanted to counter Ennuchi Mata, for example,
link |
you're trying to throw me in a somersault
link |
over my right shoulder.
link |
Therefore, I would counter you
link |
by throwing you over your left shoulder.
link |
It goes in the opposite shoulder direction,
link |
but in the same somersault idea.
link |
And there used to be, I already at this point,
link |
forget the years, but it might be before the 2012 Olympics
link |
where they banned, you used to be allowed to grab legs
link |
in the same way you do in wrestling.
link |
So you have basically all the techniques
link |
you would have in wrestling available to you
link |
if you would like.
link |
It's just that some of the techniques in wrestling
link |
are not that effective
link |
for getting your opponent to their back.
link |
Wrestlers wanna take the other person down
link |
in any way possible and have control.
link |
Judo wants to take you down, like we said,
link |
in a big fashion where your back slams on the ground.
link |
Yeah, it has to be to the back.
link |
A lot of wrestling takedowns happen
link |
because they get behind them and then they parterre out.
link |
Yeah, so, but Judo banned all touching of the legs,
link |
which is a very dramatic change at the sport.
link |
After, it was after 2012?
link |
In 2012, so 2008, I fought the games
link |
and everything was free.
link |
In 2012, we could only touch the legs
link |
as a defensive action or in response to an attack.
link |
So I could try to throw you with a normal throw
link |
and then when you try to counter, I could grab your leg.
link |
So there had to be a secondary technique.
link |
And didn't, like, didn't they disqualify
link |
on a first offense?
link |
First offense was a direct disqualification,
link |
which happened at the 2012 games to the 57 Brazilian
link |
She was DQed and I think the quarters.
link |
And it was like, I wouldn't say it was blatant
link |
as much as I don't think the act changed the outcome
link |
of the match had they not disqualified her.
link |
So that's not that dramatic.
link |
And by the way, you say 57, that refers to weight divisions
link |
and that's in kilograms and kilograms is the measure
link |
of weight that the rest of the world uses
link |
and the United States does not.
link |
So, and there's, we should say the divisions for guys,
link |
I don't know what the 70, I don't know if the lower level,
link |
60, 66, 73, 81, 90, 100 and heavyweight,
link |
which has no ceiling.
link |
No ceiling, as we'll talk about.
link |
It's an important distinction.
link |
Yeah, it is an important distinction.
link |
And you competed most of your career at 81 kilograms.
link |
All, you never did 73.
link |
Well, you had to cut big for 81 anyway,
link |
especially towards the end of my career, yeah.
link |
I overly grew into the division.
link |
What's, I'm trying to remember, is it about 180 pounds?
link |
And you have to weigh in with the gear.
link |
You're not allowed to wear anything
link |
except for your underwear, weigh in.
link |
Confusing digits, that's right, that's right, that's right.
link |
That's which is very nice.
link |
Okay, so we, would you say we covered
link |
most of the throws or no?
link |
So there's the forward and the backward,
link |
there's the sacrifice throws and the counters.
link |
And then there's the leg grabs.
link |
And we should say for the leg grabs that were effective,
link |
it's like the big pickups
link |
where you just kind of pick them up
link |
and try to figure out once they're in the air
link |
what the heck to do with their body
link |
to get them to the ground.
link |
You just kind of figure it out as you go.
link |
I think the really nice one
link |
that was to me heartbreaking as a fantasy go
link |
is I guess what's called a fireman's carry,
link |
which is, it does lead to judo like beautiful throws.
link |
And the fact that that was gone is,
link |
that one I missed a little bit,
link |
but then a bunch of people I guess came up with the variance
link |
where you don't need to grab the leg.
link |
It's definitely not as effective as being able to grab it,
link |
but I'm also on the side of the fence
link |
having competed in all three.
link |
It was definitely better for the sport
link |
to remove it as a whole.
link |
It's probably good to cover sort of
link |
the whole spectrum of rules of judo
link |
is there's groundwork.
link |
So you do all this stuff on the feet
link |
where you're trying to murder each other
link |
with a giant throw.
link |
But then if the throw doesn't succeed,
link |
you go to the ground and you stay in the ground
link |
for some amount of time, like short amount of time.
link |
You have to move quickly, you have to be attacking.
link |
And two of the ways you can win
link |
is similar to people who do jiu jitsu
link |
is you can submit them, chokes, arm breaks,
link |
all that kind of stuff, no footlocks.
link |
And you can also pin them,
link |
which is get around their legs.
link |
And this is very, no, this is not like wrestling.
link |
You have to actually get around their legs
link |
and pin them in what in jiu jitsu is called
link |
side control mount, all kinds of ways
link |
that doesn't involve their legs.
link |
And then you pin them for like whatever,
link |
20 seconds, 25 seconds.
link |
Yeah, 20 seconds now.
link |
I think the distinction is their back
link |
has to be facing the mat.
link |
You have to be past their legs
link |
and your chest has to be on the same plane as theirs.
link |
So it doesn't have to necessarily be on top,
link |
but it has to be on the same plane.
link |
And all of this is, I think different sports
link |
have different versions of this,
link |
but it's like an approximation
link |
of what dominance looks like.
link |
So pin and wrestling is dominating your opponent.
link |
Presumably if you were in a street fight,
link |
that position allows you to then do a lot of damage.
link |
Obviously submissions is dominance
link |
cause you're breaking their arm or choking them to unconscious.
link |
And then obviously the throw,
link |
which is not often talked about,
link |
but like if you talk about a street fight situation,
link |
a throw is like the best way to murder somebody.
link |
Like this could end anyone's life.
link |
It's terrifying actually.
link |
So, okay, so these are all elements of dominance.
link |
So going back to set of principles,
link |
you were mentioning getting your center of mass under theirs,
link |
which I think applies for type of like the forward
link |
say Nagi throws, is there other stuff?
link |
Oh, so you mentioned off balance.
link |
Yeah, there's the off balance one
link |
where you can either pull to get an off balance
link |
or you can give way to the force,
link |
which can also lead to an off balance.
link |
You can amplify somebody's force to,
link |
so for example, if you push me,
link |
you expect a certain reaction that you're ready for.
link |
But if you push me and I pull you,
link |
now you didn't expect that much force coming out of you.
link |
Therefore you're off balance.
link |
The thing that's distinctly recognizable about Judo
link |
is like when done at the highest level,
link |
like it seems effortless when the big throw happens.
link |
Like that's just, it doesn't,
link |
there is no other sport like it in the combat sports
link |
where it's like when the timing is right,
link |
everything just is perfect.
link |
I think you get that out of my mate
link |
and boxing sometimes when this is a perfect strike,
link |
just like, but it's not just like a hard hit.
link |
It's like, it's almost like with Conor McGregor and Aldo,
link |
for example, when you just catch him just right.
link |
You didn't look like you hit him that hard,
link |
but you hit him just right.
link |
And then you get to see this all the time in Judo.
link |
And so the beginning part of that
link |
is because there's a jacket,
link |
there's also this whole thing that you're a master of,
link |
which is like, which is gripping.
link |
So is there something you could say about,
link |
are there some fundamental principles of gripping
link |
that you can speak to?
link |
Like what the hell is gripping?
link |
Gripping is having the ability to hold your opponent
link |
in such a way where you have the ability to be offensive
link |
and also the ability to be defensive at the same given time.
link |
And it's a distinction because I can hold you
link |
in such a way where I might be able to feel offensive,
link |
but if you can take a purely defensive grip
link |
and then I can't be offensive, we are no longer gripping.
link |
We are holding each other.
link |
And so like that would be the act of being able to grip
link |
is to be in a situation where you have me and I have you,
link |
and I can play both offense and defense at the same time
link |
where you can only play defense.
link |
So Donaher talks about like Jiu Jitsu that way,
link |
but maybe you can see if there's a distinction.
link |
So you have a set of weapons.
link |
The other person has a set of weapons.
link |
You wanna sort of maximize the use of your weapons
link |
and shut down the set of weapons that they have.
link |
Do you see gripping the same way on the feet?
link |
I do if we wanna include body positioning
link |
with our gripping.
link |
Because I can give you any grip you want
link |
and you still can't throw me.
link |
Because I can put myself in a position
link |
that nullifies your ability to use those grips
link |
in a successful way.
link |
And those, would you say the hips are critical to that
link |
or is it everything?
link |
Hips, shoulders, chin position, head position,
link |
the angle of your foot.
link |
Yeah, where you lean.
link |
And so, and there's a bunch of places you can grip.
link |
Obviously, if people like kind of think of a jacket,
link |
like there's a bunch of places you can grip
link |
that are interesting.
link |
So you can grip on the collar,
link |
you can grip on the sleeves,
link |
you can grip like the elbow joint.
link |
And then you could do those bad ass,
link |
like Eastern European, Georgian, over the back.
link |
Over the back, over the opposite sides of the heads.
link |
The Koreans that grab on one side
link |
around the head with their hands together.
link |
There's something really nice about just those,
link |
I mean, especially George just keeps throwing that hand.
link |
Just over the person and just,
link |
you're not actually gripping a belt or anything.
link |
You're gripping just the entirety of like,
link |
as opposed to being all nice
link |
and I'm gonna grab this part of the jacket,
link |
this part of the jacket.
link |
You're just like taking the whole fucking jacket
link |
and just launching somebody.
link |
For those people that can't picture judo,
link |
think about it in like,
link |
if you understood like what a boxing match looks like,
link |
and you thought about that as like traditional gripping,
link |
when you throw like a Russian grip over the back,
link |
that's more like a hockey fight.
link |
Like I'm just grabbing you and we're just gonna,
link |
we're gonna be throwing punches left and right.
link |
Cause when we have that grip,
link |
somebody has to get thrown.
link |
There's no, we don't walk around with this grip.
link |
It's go time once somebody throws it.
link |
To me, as a fan and sort of amateur practitioner,
link |
there's two styles of Olympic level judo.
link |
One is where you're trying not to get thrown.
link |
And the other is where you're trying to throw.
link |
More specifically, when you're trying not to get thrown,
link |
there's like the strategy that you're using gripping
link |
to nullify their offense and all those kinds of stuff here.
link |
You're being very clever and strategic and all that,
link |
maybe using conditioning.
link |
And then there's people who just like step in the pocket
link |
and they almost don't care if they're getting thrown
link |
cause they have the confidence
link |
that they're gonna throw first.
link |
And those, like there's a clear distinction
link |
between the people that do one or the other.
link |
And I think both can be done extremely successfully
link |
at the highest level.
link |
It's just like, obviously you admire the people
link |
that step in the pocket.
link |
And I think when you look at the people
link |
who do judo the best,
link |
like if we wanna talk about like the top 10%
link |
of the people who would compete at the games,
link |
And they do both really well, but they favor one.
link |
Because if you look at a player like
link |
Lutepe Tilliani of Georgia, for example,
link |
there's a guy that stands in the pocket.
link |
But we can find numerous occasions
link |
where he's hustled some people
link |
for like a short period of time
link |
to get out of scenarios, to elongate the match,
link |
to make somebody tired.
link |
So you want both sides of the coin,
link |
but you better pick the one that 80% of your strategy
link |
is gonna be built around.
link |
Sorry for the romantic question,
link |
but I talked to Dan Gable
link |
and he always looked to the Russians
link |
as the artists in wrestling.
link |
And he always wanted to be an artist.
link |
But I think he's known for being that sort of guts,
link |
aggression, mental toughness guy,
link |
but he always was drawn to the artistry of wrestling.
link |
It's hard to know when you just watch you,
link |
because it looks like you're aggressive
link |
and you got the guts and the mental toughness,
link |
but there's also obviously a mastery of technique.
link |
Which would you lean towards in terms of
link |
what accounts for your success
link |
and just the way you approach judo?
link |
Is it the guts, the aggression, the mental toughness,
link |
or is it the mastery of technique, the artistry?
link |
Mine would be my aggressiveness
link |
if I'm gonna pick those two areas.
link |
But I think there's a third area in there
link |
that I would put myself in where I'm more of a strategist.
link |
I look at all of my opponents
link |
and all I ever see is their faults.
link |
And the way I do judo is built around their faults.
link |
And it's just, I put myself in scenarios
link |
where I don't even know how I'm gonna win.
link |
But what I've done in those scenarios is
link |
I've made it very difficult for you to win.
link |
And then I figure out the rest as I go.
link |
Like how do you study an opponent?
link |
Are there bins you can put them in?
link |
Like there's a lefty and a righty or this kind of stuff.
link |
How many bins are there in judo in your mind
link |
that you put your opponents in?
link |
Yeah, there's probably about 20.
link |
There's like certain players who you could put
link |
in a category of like, they're only good
link |
for the first two thirds of the match.
link |
After that, they turn into a different player
link |
where they're either falling into a sense of panic
link |
And you can, if you were to take a video clip
link |
of let's say Church's Philly, right?
link |
They got Georgia and I beat in the Olympic semi.
link |
He's somebody that would beat you
link |
in the first three minutes.
link |
And if you clipped out all of his matches
link |
and you only watched the first three minutes
link |
of every match, you would see one style.
link |
If you found all the matches where he got taken
link |
into the last minute and he wasn't winning by a major score,
link |
you would see a completely different fighter.
link |
And so going into like my Olympic semi,
link |
I put him into that category of like,
link |
I wanna get to this guy, cause this guy is beautiful.
link |
The trick is, how do you get there?
link |
How do you get there?
link |
And by the way, we're talking about the 2016 Olympics
link |
where you won the silver medal.
link |
You were part of three different Olympics.
link |
But the cardio aspect of it,
link |
have you faced exhaustion often in your matches
link |
where you have to go deep and go like past?
link |
Yeah, but that's not from the judo side of it.
link |
That's from like, I did a very bad job of making weight.
link |
It's always the weight cut.
link |
Yeah, it's always the weight cut.
link |
And I think people really struggle with that.
link |
They blame cardio and training and everything else.
link |
But when it really comes down to it,
link |
like we train for an hour and a half, two hours,
link |
How are you tired after five minutes?
link |
Right, it becomes into a mental struggle,
link |
your anxiety, your stress, your lack of belief in yourself.
link |
Or in my case, sometimes it's poor nutrition.
link |
Sometimes I had one too many McDonald's meals.
link |
It just, it happens.
link |
Okay, so let's talk about weight cutting real quick.
link |
So I've seen weight cutting break
link |
some of the toughest fighters, wrestlers, grapplers ever.
link |
Like burnout break,
link |
like where it makes you wanna quit the sport.
link |
So this is what people don't often talk about,
link |
but mentally it's one of the hardest things,
link |
especially when you're doing it kind of wrong.
link |
Because it becomes a mental war.
link |
So you competed, like you said,
link |
your whole career at 81 kilograms.
link |
You walked around at?
link |
So about 15 pounds, sometimes 20 pounds over that.
link |
And so what was your process like mentally and physically?
link |
First of all, maybe you can comment on
link |
when the weigh ins are relative to the matches.
link |
And then what was your process like leading
link |
like a week ahead, a day ahead,
link |
an hour ahead, minutes ahead of the weigh in?
link |
Man, everyone varies tremendously
link |
because we're not like most sports
link |
because you're dropped off in foreign countries
link |
with who knows what, right?
link |
Some places have saunas, some places have treadmills.
link |
I went to a place one time in China
link |
in the middle of winter where the roads were frozen with ice
link |
and we had to use our hotel rooms
link |
because you couldn't sweat outside
link |
because it was too cold.
link |
And every one of my Olympics,
link |
the weight cut was different just given my mass.
link |
When I went to 2008,
link |
I was probably like 82, 83 kilos walking around.
link |
So weight cutting wasn't a thing for me.
link |
In London, we actually weighed in the morning of.
link |
So weigh ins were at like 6 a.m.
link |
And the Olympics were always beneficial to me
link |
because they actually don't start until like 10 or 11.
link |
So you actually were able to recover.
link |
Where on the circuit you would weigh in at 6 a.m.
link |
and the competition started at 8 a.m.
link |
It's like, well, I was cutting weight at 5 a.m.
link |
And most of it for people who are not familiar,
link |
but maybe you can also correct me,
link |
most of it, you're really just getting the water
link |
out of your system.
link |
At that point, yeah.
link |
Like 24 hours before even, like.
link |
Like an hour before.
link |
But yeah, but like leading up to it.
link |
And have you eaten the day before?
link |
Do you try to minimize the amount of food in your system?
link |
My weight cutting process was a little bit different
link |
than most people because I like to eat.
link |
I'm not the type of person that believes
link |
your athletic career is determined by your nutrition.
link |
I don't believe that.
link |
I think some sports are built that way.
link |
But when it comes to combat sports,
link |
like, you know, your ability to knock somebody out
link |
has nothing to do with whether you had a cheeseburger
link |
My ability to throw you is not determined by that.
link |
I may be able to perform better
link |
because I've eaten a certain way,
link |
but not enough to justify an entire diet change.
link |
Your body is built and my body is built
link |
to operate with certain things
link |
that I've had in my system for years.
link |
Yeah, I think I'm with you,
link |
but I also believe that there's a mental aspect.
link |
So if you're surrounded by people
link |
that tell you diet matters,
link |
then if your diet is off,
link |
you're gonna believe you're going to be off
link |
because the people around you tell you
link |
your diet should be good.
link |
So yeah, I think it's like,
link |
it's the same, I've had an argument with Matthew Walker,
link |
who's a sleep scientist about sleep.
link |
And it's like, if you believe sleep is essential,
link |
it's essential to get eight hours of sleep
link |
every single night perfectly,
link |
then you're going to be very stressed when you don't get it.
link |
And then I think it will negatively affect,
link |
the stress will negatively affect your longevity
link |
and all kinds of aspects of your life.
link |
If you actually just learn to truly listen to your body,
link |
become a scientist of your own body with sleep and food,
link |
it might end up that it will be the eight hours a night
link |
or whatever, but it might be something else
link |
and probably diet error.
link |
I remember when I was meeting
link |
with the USOC nutritionist after London,
link |
it was probably around 2014, I think.
link |
And when we had our team meeting
link |
at the beginning of the year and I was talking to him,
link |
he was talking about the nutrition plans
link |
that he could put us on.
link |
And I was like, time out.
link |
I've done the USOC thing, like I've done the couscous,
link |
I've done the lemon in my water.
link |
I go, I'm full of shit.
link |
The couscous? Yeah.
link |
Like there was just,
link |
cause there's like a cookie cutter plan, right?
link |
And I was like, look, here's what I want you to do.
link |
I go, I'll listen to you,
link |
but you're going to walk into the 711
link |
across the street from the USOC.
link |
And if you can't buy it in that 711, it's not on my plan.
link |
I go, because I go to places where
link |
the only thing I can eat is Pringles and a Snickers bar.
link |
Like I've flown to Azerbaijan,
link |
stayed in a hotel where the restaurant is closed.
link |
USA Judo hasn't paid for the meal plan.
link |
And the only thing that's available
link |
is the thing across the street.
link |
So you were eating Pringles.
link |
Before fighting a Grand Slam event,
link |
while cutting 20 pounds.
link |
And a Snickers bar.
link |
I just, the visual of that, that's some like,
link |
that's some Rocky shit.
link |
Give me a nutrition plan.
link |
Cause I'm not paying my own way
link |
to travel with 14 days of food.
link |
I mean, that's, that's one of the magic of your whole career
link |
I mean, I'm sorry to say, of course,
link |
you want athletes to be super rich
link |
and super well funded from an athlete perspective
link |
and the sport to be popular and managed
link |
in an ultra competent way.
link |
That's not reality.
link |
But as a fan, it's fun to watch somebody like you
link |
who's exceptionally driven,
link |
has to suffer in all these different interesting ways.
link |
But it's only suffering if you expect the other side.
link |
I don't expect it.
link |
I accept it for what it is,
link |
which is why I write off nutrition for athletes.
link |
Cause it can be done without it.
link |
As long as, you know, to what you said before,
link |
like you don't believe you need it.
link |
Some people believe they need it.
link |
The mind, getting your mind right
link |
is the most important thing.
link |
You know what I believe I need?
link |
A Snickers bar when I'm tired.
link |
I want a little bit of sugar.
link |
It makes me feel better.
link |
What do you want me to do?
link |
what are you going to do?
link |
I just love the visual of you eating a Snickers bar
link |
before a grand slam.
link |
But that became part of my nutrition plan.
link |
When the USOC guy wrote my nutrition plan,
link |
I was eating a burrito bowl with brown rice,
link |
white meat chicken, black beans, guacamole, cheese,
link |
two chocolate chip cookies and a Diet Coke.
link |
This is like Chipotle or?
link |
It was Beloco, but same concept.
link |
Same concept with two chocolate chip cookies.
link |
Cause I needed the sugar.
link |
I was 88 kilos when I stepped on the scale
link |
Now I got to make 81.
link |
And the USOC was like,
link |
Hey, you know, you can't, you can't fight 81 anymore.
link |
You have to fight nineties.
link |
And I go, I'm already into the quad.
link |
I go, build me a plan where I can do this.
link |
And now we have to have an acceptable weight cut.
link |
Like it just, what do you want me to do?
link |
I can't just change the fact that it takes two years
link |
I know where I'm at.
link |
I know what I have to go through
link |
and I accept the consequences.
link |
What do you want me to do?
link |
All right, so what was the process?
link |
I mean, can you, can you speak to,
link |
so you, you wake up early in the morning,
link |
the day of the weigh ins, a few hours before.
link |
Technically my weight cut never started
link |
until I got off a plane and to a hotel.
link |
And how many hours?
link |
So it's a three day cut.
link |
It's a three day cut.
link |
Mentally you're thinking of it that way.
link |
And then you're still eating.
link |
And then like, what do you load up on water?
link |
Maybe as you start and then the water stops.
link |
So you, I mean, it's a slow,
link |
you're not actually like sweating all three days.
link |
But then it's like torture to sleep.
link |
Part of the process.
link |
Are you able to sleep?
link |
So you're dehydrated, further and further dehydrated
link |
with six, 7% body fat, trying to lose 10 pounds.
link |
I even developed a way to drink water out of a bottle
link |
where I don't drink anything,
link |
but I feel like I have swishing it.
link |
So like, I take like a bottle of water
link |
and like, if we were to like, to draw a line on it,
link |
I would tip it and I would go like this.
link |
And you would draw that line,
link |
but like I've drank now water for 20 seconds or whatever
link |
And I feel, I get the fix.
link |
Brain told me I got there.
link |
That's amazing, man.
link |
You just, your mind's a very powerful tool.
link |
And the problem a lot of people have is
link |
they don't accept the reality of the situation.
link |
They bitch about the reality of the situation.
link |
First of all, you could always quit, right?
link |
So like, you're not.
link |
Never missed weight.
link |
Never missed weight.
link |
You can perform poorly.
link |
You can't miss weight.
link |
Don't miss weight.
link |
Don't miss weight.
link |
Because you can always win
link |
regardless of how bad the weight cut is.
link |
You can never win if you miss weight.
link |
But your brain is also really good.
link |
Maybe not your brain,
link |
but I know my brain,
link |
I think most people's brains are good at generating,
link |
the more desperate things become,
link |
the better at generating excuses.
link |
So what were you doing with your mind
link |
that resulted in you never missing weight?
link |
So like I said, like my weight cut would never start
link |
until I got to the hotel
link |
because I didn't check my weight the morning of,
link |
I didn't check my weight when I got there.
link |
I just, while I'm traveling,
link |
I'm doing things at like a minimal level,
link |
but I'm never not giving myself something I'm craving.
link |
If I'm thirsty, I'm drinking a Diet Coke.
link |
If I'm hungry, I'm buying a Snickers bar.
link |
I'm buying a sandwich.
link |
And I accept the consequences when I get there.
link |
And then when I get there,
link |
if I step on the scale and it says 88 kilos,
link |
I instantaneously know exactly
link |
what it's gonna take to be 81.
link |
And then you just follow like a robot,
link |
follow a very specific process.
link |
cause there's a lot of seconds in three days,
link |
seconds and minutes and you just.
link |
I just know exactly what it takes from my body.
link |
I know exactly what a one hour gym workout
link |
wearing a sauna suit is gonna take.
link |
I know exactly what I'm gonna lose on day one.
link |
And I know exactly what I'm gonna lose on day three,
link |
because they're not the same.
link |
So I can instantly look at a hotel,
link |
decide is there a bathroom, sauna, gym,
link |
temperature of the gym, access to the gym and when it is,
link |
access to the judo mats, my training partners,
link |
the roads versus streetlights, the weather outside.
link |
I can take a look at that environment and say,
link |
this is my weight, this is weigh ins.
link |
And instantaneously in my head,
link |
there's a plan to make weight.
link |
And you have a sense of how much sweat adds up to 10 pounds.
link |
How much sweat plus time.
link |
And I make sure in my plan,
link |
all of my meals and how much water I need in between
link |
is allocated to still make weight.
link |
Cause you have to eat or drink during that time.
link |
Are you incorporating like mental exhaustion into this?
link |
That doesn't exist.
link |
Do you like meditate or something?
link |
What did the thoughts come, especially three days.
link |
We're not talking about four hours of suffering.
link |
This has broken some of the toughest people in the world.
link |
The hardest weight cut I ever had.
link |
I fought Pan Am games in 2015 in Edmonton, Canada
link |
on a Wednesday and I won.
link |
So I've made weight on Tuesday.
link |
I fought on Wednesday where I had to weigh in
link |
5% of my weight class, so 84 kilos.
link |
On Wednesday I was 84 kilos.
link |
I got on a plane on that Wednesday night
link |
and landed Friday morning in Sochi.
link |
Okay, so I've traveled now.
link |
I got on the scale, all my bags got lost, everything.
link |
So somehow I flew from there to here, no bags.
link |
And I threw all of my stuff in my bag.
link |
I wore sandals, one pair of pants and a T shirt
link |
on the plane because I was like, I'm just tired.
link |
I don't even want to carry it.
link |
What are the odds that I get there and my bags are gone?
link |
Sure enough, it's gone.
link |
I get all the way to Sochi.
link |
I check into the hotel.
link |
There's one sauna.
link |
You have to reserve it and you're only allowed
link |
to reserve it for an X period of time.
link |
Guess in a small tangent, when you phoned out,
link |
your bags are gone.
link |
This is something I'll often think about.
link |
There's like people that are helping you, right?
link |
Like there's a person at the airport who goes.
link |
And then the person at the hotel who tells you
link |
that you have to reserve the sauna and looks at you like
link |
you're, they don't care that you've been suffering.
link |
They don't even understand why you need it.
link |
Oh, you know, oh, this, like this little kid reserved it
link |
for five hours or something to block it off.
link |
Is there a frustration that gets in there?
link |
You just accept reality.
link |
Don't even hinder on like the things you can't change.
link |
Because the second you get frustrated,
link |
the second you think you can change it,
link |
you'll harp on it.
link |
And that breaks most men.
link |
That like little thing in the back of their mind thinking,
link |
There's no what if.
link |
There's only right here right now.
link |
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
link |
Let's just quickly come up with a solution
link |
to fix the problem.
link |
By the way, as another small tangent,
link |
all the greatest people I've interacted with
link |
at the highest level think like that.
link |
They don't linger on the, it's like the next thing.
link |
Because like, if you want to do something great,
link |
hard stuff is going to keep happening to you.
link |
And if you're going to let that affect you,
link |
you're not ever going to do the great thing.
link |
It's fascinating actually.
link |
Like that's the one skill you have to learn.
link |
Elon Musk is great at this.
link |
Constantly dealing with emergencies.
link |
Okay, this happened.
link |
What's the next step?
link |
It's not that big of a deal.
link |
Every problem has a solution.
link |
And if I can't solve it, it's not my problem.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
So what, so how'd you figure it out?
link |
Get this, I get to the hotel.
link |
I don't even know about the sauna yet.
link |
I go, I need to find a clothing store.
link |
I'm in the middle of Russia.
link |
I open up Google Maps and I'm like, sports store.
link |
I find an Adidas sports store
link |
in the middle of Sochi, Russia, right?
link |
I spend like $500 on like average sweats.
link |
No plastics, no nothing, and no running shoes
link |
cause they don't have any.
link |
What's the temperature outside?
link |
It was kind of like springish.
link |
So it wasn't cold, but it wasn't hot.
link |
So you still need a lot of layers preferably.
link |
You would need a lot of layers just to cut
link |
the amount of weight I'm about to tell you I have to cut
link |
because after I bought that stuff that next morning,
link |
and mind you, it's a Friday, it's a Friday morning.
link |
I go to the venue where we have the mats open to train
link |
and I step on the scale.
link |
And then Sagan Batar of Mongolia goes,
link |
oh, pretty good, you're almost there.
link |
And I go, no, I'm not.
link |
I stepped on the scale at almost 94 kilos.
link |
And I looked at him and I was like, I'm 81.
link |
And he went, good luck.
link |
You're almost there.
link |
For the next weight class above.
link |
Is this on a Saturday or Sunday?
link |
No, no, no, sorry.
link |
Friday morning, the competition is when?
link |
I weigh in Sunday.
link |
I'm like, holy crap.
link |
I throw on all my layers and there's one other person
link |
with me there, Kalita, who was my girlfriend at the time,
link |
now my wife, we start doing judo.
link |
Cause I'm like, this will be the easiest way to knock off
link |
like three or four kilos.
link |
I have no gi and I'm working out with a female.
link |
I can't get overly physical to really get my muscles
link |
going to really break that sweat
link |
because she has to compete in a day or two.
link |
She's not a training partner.
link |
You can't just use this person.
link |
I stepped on the scale.
link |
So I went, well, I was a nice den, but like,
link |
yeah, I go, that's not going to fly.
link |
So sure enough, the clothes are now ruined.
link |
They didn't help me lose any extra weight.
link |
So I go back to the hotel and I start reserving the sauna.
link |
Do you know how hard it is to lose that much weight
link |
in a sauna by yourself?
link |
So it's harder on many levels,
link |
but one of them is just mental.
link |
You're sitting in heat.
link |
Heat, and you're not doing anything.
link |
Like if there had been a bike or like the sauna
link |
was big enough to use a jump rope
link |
or you could do some sort of activity,
link |
but you just sit and you stew and you're there mentally.
link |
At one point during the weight cut,
link |
I actually had my mouth on the bottom part of the door
link |
where there was a little gap and my legs up on the benches
link |
and Kalita holding the door so that it didn't open
link |
so I couldn't open it so that I could lean against
link |
that thing and have fresh air.
link |
Cause I was like, I was struggling.
link |
And we're talking about, I mean, how many hours is that?
link |
And then the thing is,
link |
is because you have to reserve the sauna.
link |
I can't even take like a 30 minute break
link |
because the sauna is not going to be mine in an hour,
link |
which means you have to use the sauna and the heat
link |
for that allotted time period.
link |
And I hate saunas.
link |
That is always my last resort.
link |
I would use a bath.
link |
Sauna is like, oh, let me do that for 10 minutes
link |
after all of my gym workouts,
link |
just to keep the sweat going while I stretch and cool down.
link |
That's never like the, hey,
link |
I'm going to do five, 10 minute sessions
link |
because I need to lose two kilos.
link |
That is never the plan.
link |
But I mean, so I've done plenty of sauna for weight cuts
link |
to know I can't even imagine what you went through.
link |
And the seconds slow down.
link |
That's one way to achieve immortality is like
link |
the time slows down to like a stop
link |
and you're left alone with your thoughts.
link |
You can't do anything.
link |
Just like you said, you can't.
link |
There's nothing worse than sitting in that kind of heat
link |
for 10, 15 minutes.
link |
And then you walk out and you're not even sweating.
link |
There's nothing worse than that.
link |
And if you like, and maybe if you weigh yourself,
link |
which you probably shouldn't be doing
link |
because it'll break you.
link |
You haven't lost anything.
link |
And I was weighing myself every time
link |
because I only get breaks
link |
when I was hitting weight allotments.
link |
And so if I could lose 0.3 in 10 minutes,
link |
I'd give myself a break, but I had to hit certain numbers
link |
because I only have the sauna for a certain amount of time.
link |
And I remember one time I went downstairs
link |
to get my key to the sauna
link |
and the Japanese team had reserved it and took it from me
link |
because the guy didn't put my name on the list
link |
when I called down to get the sauna.
link |
So I lost an entire session that I had to get made up
link |
towards the later part of the day
link |
because I still have no running shoes.
link |
And then sure enough, my bags show up 30 minutes
link |
That's like the universe just kind of giving you
link |
a little wink there.
link |
I think like, because so few people do this weight cut
link |
at this high of a level, people don't often realize
link |
because people get a sense of how hard it is
link |
to run 200 miles in the desert.
link |
Like they, cause they go outside here in Texas,
link |
you can run five miles.
link |
But like the weight cut is really,
link |
I, can you, so you just, like, how did you do it?
link |
Just fucking not refusing to.
link |
You have to make weight.
link |
You have to make weight and you just, that's.
link |
I am astounded when I hear like UFC fighters like miss weight.
link |
Like when Jaden Cox missed weight at the Olympic trials,
link |
I was like, at least his was understandable
link |
because he missed the actual weigh ins.
link |
He didn't, he wasn't like not on weight.
link |
But when UFC fighters like miss weight,
link |
I'm like, how did that happen?
link |
You clearly like gave up a long time ago.
link |
There were times where I was like, well, I can't do this.
link |
There've been times where I've been in a sauna suit
link |
wrestling with a training partner who's probably 60 kilos
link |
who fought earlier that day to lose point three.
link |
Did lose point three.
link |
Like, are you considering your mortality in this moment?
link |
Like, aren't you thinking you're going to die?
link |
Because like, it's severe dehydration.
link |
You could damage your body.
link |
Are you thinking about any of this or is it just, man.
link |
But see, I'm on the other level too where like,
link |
I've been in Belgium, right?
link |
Belgium, there used to be a B level tournament.
link |
And the tournament used to go on.
link |
And because I was always on the heavier side,
link |
like 81s fights on the second day, which is the heavyweight day,
link |
weigh ins were always at like, let's say,
link |
2 p.m. the day before for that tournament.
link |
Well, there was a sauna at the tournament.
link |
I remember like being in the sauna and like, oh, I'm 80.9 kilos.
link |
Weigh ins aren't for three hours.
link |
Fuck it, I'm going to have lunch.
link |
Because I mentally understand that what I eat right now
link |
is going to fuel me for tomorrow.
link |
So I don't want to skip it.
link |
I have the time to put it into my system and still lose it.
link |
It's almost like a computer program.
link |
You're running through the process.
link |
I get it, but like that all relies on your ability to be.
link |
To get it back off.
link |
Yeah, I mean, but also just like go through this process,
link |
It's like those monks who meditate while sitting in a fire
link |
kind of thing or something, right?
link |
Yeah, it's really interesting.
link |
Is there other people that are critical to this
link |
or is this all internal to you?
link |
Are there people that?
link |
Everybody has their own way of doing it.
link |
Some people don't cut that much.
link |
Some people can't weight cut at all, right?
link |
They would rather have been like 83 kilos fighting 90
link |
than, you know, be 83 kilos fighting 81.
link |
So why did you never move up to 90?
link |
What's your sense?
link |
Is it from your deep understanding of your own judo
link |
and like the judo opponents you would face at 90 and 81?
link |
Cause 81 is probably the hardest,
link |
if not the second hardest division in the history of judo
link |
compared to 73 and 81.
link |
You know, when I was a kid, like I always wanted to be
link |
like the middleweight Olympic champion,
link |
like the 81 kilo Olympic champion.
link |
When I was in high school, I made a decision
link |
when I was trying to make weight for 73,
link |
I was like, I was cutting weight for 73
link |
like I was cutting weight at the end of my career, right?
link |
And I was like, I'm just gonna bag it.
link |
I'm gonna accept the fact
link |
that I may not make a junior world team,
link |
I may not make this team, but I'll grow into the division
link |
so when I'm a senior player, like I'm ready to go
link |
and I'll naturally be stronger.
link |
There's an understanding of like a growth process
link |
when you move up a weight class.
link |
Most people can't just, oh, I'm gonna fight 90s
link |
and I'm gonna win because I wanted 81.
link |
The style of judo is different, how you move is different,
link |
how they do things is different.
link |
There's like a learning curve that goes into it.
link |
And because the weight cut didn't really happen
link |
until I was getting ready for Rio,
link |
I wasn't about to have my last Olympic games
link |
be at a different weight class
link |
that I may or may not be able to grow into.
link |
I mean, this is an awesome story of you kind of decided
link |
that this will be your life's work
link |
in terms of judo competitor is like the 81 division.
link |
I'm going to, I mean, I don't know if you saw it that way,
link |
but you're talking about three Olympics
link |
and it's like this story of, I would say tragedy and triumph
link |
of just wars and 81 kilograms with the usual cast
link |
of characters of the top five in the world kind of thing.
link |
So you just became a scholar of that,
link |
let your body grow into it and then let your body outgrow it
link |
and still suffer through it to keep it in the 81 kilograms.
link |
You never competed at like at the highest levels at 90.
link |
I entered one tournament at 90 kilos.
link |
And that was because before Rio from the end of 2014,
link |
all the way up until Rio's, every time I fought,
link |
I got hurt every time there was no time where I made weight
link |
and got injured because my body weight was so high.
link |
My body fat was so low that by the time I dehydrated enough
link |
to get down there and you take the physicality of judo
link |
and throw that into the mix, something broke every time.
link |
It was like nature of the beast.
link |
So the plan was before Rio,
link |
we made an agreement with USA judo
link |
that Travis, you're gonna fight 90 kilos,
link |
but you're not gonna weigh in at 90 kilos.
link |
Like, hey, there's no like, you get to be 94 kilos
link |
and cut to 90s, there's like a,
link |
you're gonna step on the scale at 84 kilos,
link |
like a little bit of a weight cut, but not a full one,
link |
just so that you feel like you get into like the tournament.
link |
Because when I, around 2012,
link |
when I was talking with the USOC nutritionist,
link |
I actually got my weight down so much
link |
that I didn't really need to cut weight.
link |
The problem is, is I wasn't cutting weight,
link |
I didn't feel like I was competing.
link |
Right, you have to go through like that mental process.
link |
And I never really reworked that,
link |
it was easier to just cut the weight and be ready to go.
link |
But when I entered into the 90 kilo division,
link |
I was rushed to the hospital the night after
link |
because my body broke out in hives, like full body.
link |
They said it was stress induced.
link |
So a month before the games, I was hospitalized and hungry
link |
and filled with steroids to get the hives to drop.
link |
And every couple days, my body, when I got back home,
link |
I would end up in the hospital
link |
because my whole body would break out again.
link |
I wonder if it's like deviating from the process
link |
that you so like perfectly crafted already.
link |
Or it was stress from my mind thinking,
link |
like even though it's not top of mind,
link |
there's probably a portion of me that like the Olympics
link |
is coming around and it could be my last, that like my body
link |
just reacted to something chemically.
link |
So I was breaking out in hives.
link |
I actually bought like a 600 euro Hugo boss suit
link |
because when I was in the Netherlands training at the time,
link |
I thought I had bed bugs
link |
because I was getting bit everywhere.
link |
Then I thought there was something in the detergent
link |
at the local thing, so I threw away all my clothes.
link |
Like I was paying for showers
link |
because I was trying to get the detergent off my body
link |
and buying new clothes at the airport.
link |
Trying to figure it out.
link |
Trying to figure it out and just go, yeah,
link |
accepting the situation.
link |
I mean, but the level of stress is exceptionally high here.
link |
Can we talk about the other side?
link |
People are gonna love this.
link |
But you have a long history of persevering through injuries,
link |
through insane amounts of injuries.
link |
My ability to tolerate pain
link |
is probably more than most people.
link |
But see, injuries aren't just pain, right?
link |
It's like, it's also mental, like psychological.
link |
Like again, like the weight cut,
link |
it can make a lot of people quit.
link |
Can you tell your history of injuries?
link |
What are the biggest injuries,
link |
the toughest injuries in your career?
link |
Starting from what, your early teens?
link |
My early teens, I actually got out of sports
link |
from 11 to, I wanna say like 15 years old, 16 years old,
link |
because a kid shot a double leg through my kneecap
link |
and I partially tore all the ligaments in my knee,
link |
cartilage, meniscus, the whole nine yards.
link |
And I had to learn how to walk again.
link |
I spent two years in a leg brace, crutches,
link |
hobbling around the school yard.
link |
That one was a challenge to come back from.
link |
I've broken most of my ribs.
link |
I won nationals with nine broken ribs.
link |
I was actually getting Novocaine shots into my chest
link |
to avoid feeling the pain
link |
and then wrapping them to try to
link |
make sure I didn't pop alone.
link |
I've broken my collarbone.
link |
I have five herniated disc in my neck.
link |
I fractured my back twice.
link |
I've broken my tailbone.
link |
I tore my SI joints.
link |
I've torn my right hamstring twice, my left one once.
link |
Broken my ankles a few times.
link |
I spun it once in a 360 that had dev surgery.
link |
Fingers, toes, elbows, shoulders.
link |
So all of these are, first of all,
link |
you're a tough dude, man.
link |
So each of those have a story behind them.
link |
So if you're talking about the collarbone or the ankles
link |
or the back, the neck,
link |
is there interesting stories here
link |
that are behind these injuries?
link |
Hard training, hard competing, jiu jitsu, judo.
link |
So ground stuff like sparring in the dojo
link |
or like drilling or all that kind of stuff.
link |
If you were to sort of break it down,
link |
your understanding of the landscape
link |
of injuries you went through.
link |
I've never had one in jiu jitsu, ever.
link |
I mean, I might've like torn a fingernail
link |
or like gotten key burned,
link |
but I've never been like seriously injured.
link |
I know when Ponza straight ankle locked me at Copa Podio,
link |
that hurt, but I wasn't injured.
link |
Like it felt sore, but if I had to run, I could run.
link |
I can now understand probably exactly
link |
what the injuries came from then.
link |
You very quickly excelled at jiu jitsu.
link |
You achieved another level in judo.
link |
And I think that means the intensity
link |
with which you approached judo.
link |
To achieve that world class level
link |
probably is the source of the injuries.
link |
Yeah, because the mentality of how I approached judo
link |
Jiu jitsu to me is like a game that like we would play.
link |
Like if you wanted to like grab a basketball
link |
and like go play a game of one on one,
link |
that's like jiu jitsu to me.
link |
Like I can't take the sport in its entirety seriously.
link |
Cause I feel like the community of jiu jitsu
link |
doesn't take it seriously.
link |
So just for people who don't know,
link |
just to set some context,
link |
you're a black belt in jiu jitsu,
link |
but more importantly,
link |
you've beaten a lot of world class jiu jitsu people.
link |
You've done very well at the highest levels of competition.
link |
Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say I've beaten them
link |
as much as I've trained with them.
link |
And they understand whoever it is
link |
that through training with me,
link |
that like, I'm not just a judo guy.
link |
Like I know how to do jiu jitsu, right?
link |
And if any one of them were to come to me and like say,
link |
hey, I wanna feel what it feels like to do judo with me.
link |
They would quickly understand
link |
that like the way I approach one
link |
is very different than the way I approach the other.
link |
Like we probably wouldn't be friends
link |
if they did judo with me versus if they did jiu jitsu with me.
link |
I'm curious asking for a friend
link |
because mostly because I'll do a little judo with you today.
link |
So you clearly, cause you're a great instructor and teacher,
link |
you have a mode where you can demonstrate a technique.
link |
Do you know how to like spar where you're going like 50%?
link |
It's hard to put like a percentage to it
link |
because I've never in all of my jiu jitsu ever gone 100%.
link |
Like I had a conversation with Salo one time
link |
where we were talking about like jiu jitsu and training.
link |
And I was like, well, if I got his arm, I would just break it.
link |
And he was like, but what if he tapped?
link |
I go, that's not my responsibility.
link |
If he taps and the ref doesn't say anything,
link |
you just break it.
link |
You just keep going.
link |
He goes, but the tap means it's over.
link |
And I said, no, the ref tells me when it's over.
link |
I go, I never give you the opportunity to tap.
link |
Cause if you have the opportunity to tap,
link |
that means you had the opportunity to think about
link |
how to get out, make a decision that you can't, then tap.
link |
I clearly operated too slowly.
link |
So there's a, it's either broken or I don't have it.
link |
You're a terrifying person to go against in Judo.
link |
Like on the ground, like everything you did, that's amazing.
link |
That's really amazing.
link |
That's what made you a really fun person to watch.
link |
Cause you really went to war with these people.
link |
So you know what it's like to go a hundred percent in Judo.
link |
Cause I know what it's like to train with somebody
link |
under the mentality of,
link |
I'm going to do everything I want to do.
link |
You're going to do nothing you want to do.
link |
And you're going to accept that.
link |
Do you ever train in Judo where you let people get stuff?
link |
Of course, all the time.
link |
Even when you're sort of building up the four years,
link |
building up to the Olympics,
link |
like there's smaller guys that are throwing you in the gym
link |
and that kind of stuff.
link |
No, I never said that.
link |
That never came out of my mouth.
link |
I said, I let people do stuff.
link |
I never said smaller people throw me.
link |
Oh, you mean you let them get a grip,
link |
but then you'll position yourself on such a way
link |
that it's hopeless.
link |
The number one skillset that Judo is going to teach you
link |
is the ability to give people false hope.
link |
I'm really looking forward to the video
link |
we're going to shoot later today.
link |
Like I can let you take a grip.
link |
I can let you think that there's opportunity,
link |
but what you don't understand is
link |
by the position and angle that I'm in,
link |
it's actually false hope.
link |
Like, as long as you don't know that it is,
link |
then now I'm free to operate and do what I want.
link |
See, I competed in Judo against black belts
link |
where I would go in and it looks like
link |
I could should be able to throw them.
link |
And then you just hit a wall.
link |
And then I also saw you destroy those black belts.
link |
So there's levels to this.
link |
It's the cliche thing of there's black belts
link |
and there's black belts.
link |
You're unique in this.
link |
There may be a couple other Jidoka in America,
link |
but you're really like unique.
link |
I then get to see people that really
link |
I felt like were 10X better than me.
link |
It just feels like that sometimes.
link |
I've learned that madness and it said it'd be truly
link |
might only be just a little better,
link |
but I saw you destroy them.
link |
And it was like, holy shit.
link |
There's a thing in Judo, right?
link |
Where, you know, imagine like you as like just an adult,
link |
And I hope people can like conceptualize this
link |
when they hear this,
link |
but imagine like you're a full grown adult,
link |
even male, female, it doesn't matter,
link |
but there's a little kid in front of you,
link |
like call him five or six years old and he's acting out.
link |
Like, do you think you have the physical capability
link |
of with one hand grabbing that person or that kid
link |
and making sure that they freeze?
link |
Like they feel like they're nervous
link |
and like they can't do anything.
link |
When you fight a good Judo player, when they grab you,
link |
that's what it feels like as an adult.
link |
And even I've felt that from like certain players in Japan,
link |
like when they get a grip,
link |
I'm like, I've now lost the function of this one.
link |
That's a really good way to put it.
link |
I think I could potentially beat some of the people
link |
I've went against, but certain groups they took,
link |
it made me feel powerless.
link |
I was like, I didn't know this was possible.
link |
That kind of power was possible.
link |
And you don't even know where it originates from.
link |
Cause you're like, how does one person's hand do this
link |
where I can't use my whole arm?
link |
Or like, I can't pick up my right foot
link |
because he's holding onto my right sleeve.
link |
It was kind of on a basic animalistic sense,
link |
kind of terrifying.
link |
It's, I mean, you don't want to,
link |
part of this is like ego,
link |
but you realize that there's a food chain
link |
and you're not at the top of it.
link |
That's part of the humbling process,
link |
I think of martial arts.
link |
It's like, I think everybody,
link |
like a lot of people think they're much higher
link |
in the food chain than they are.
link |
Than they really are.
link |
And then when you realize,
link |
this is why it's a really healthy process for people
link |
that are not even competing in the Olympics
link |
to practice martial arts.
link |
Cause you realize, okay,
link |
that like putting yourself more accurately
link |
in the food chain is really good way
link |
to sort of place yourself in the rest of the world.
link |
It humbles you to the reality, the harshness of the world.
link |
It's kind of like when people look at like survival
link |
in the wilderness, it's like, oh, it's not that hard.
link |
No, you'd probably be dying in a couple of days.
link |
Same thing with like judo and martial arts.
link |
Like, yeah, it's really not that hard,
link |
but you don't know what to do yet.
link |
And so when you find out that first time
link |
that you don't know what to do,
link |
it's devastating to a lot of people,
link |
but those that like stick through it and like start to learn,
link |
it's a very powerful, like feeling that now,
link |
like you can take care of yourself.
link |
And I think I want to talk to you a few times before
link |
you talked about that.
link |
There's like, like the top three, the top five in the world.
link |
I don't know where you put them,
link |
but they're, they're another like level above.
link |
They're a whole nother tier, yeah.
link |
And the fact that you're, I mean, it's,
link |
it's so exciting to me probably
link |
because I just felt all the levels here
link |
and I've seen you and others at that height destroy those.
link |
I've seen the exponential levels to this game.
link |
It's incredible that you're, didn't quit,
link |
didn't doubt yourself and just persevered
link |
through three Olympics to get to that highest,
link |
always fighting at that like very highest of levels,
link |
but just like, you know, from the top 10 to the top five,
link |
like really breaking in through that, I don't know.
link |
What would you say it took to get to that highest of levels?
link |
Like if you, when you look back to all the weight cuts,
link |
to just the insane amount of injuries, believe it or not,
link |
I didn't really think I was there until 2013.
link |
I thought I was recognized as one of the best
link |
because I was able to fight for Oppensburg,
link |
which was the professional Bundesliga team for Germany,
link |
which is one of the top clubs in all of Europe.
link |
When they asked me to, I felt like Europe had like accepted
link |
me as like, oh, I'm a top level judo player,
link |
but I don't necessarily think that when I signed on
link |
to compete for them, that the division or the world
link |
of judo saw me as a top level judo player, right?
link |
There's a mental shift that happens along that point.
link |
And for me, my mental shift really came into play
link |
in December of 2015 before Rio.
link |
That was like, when I lost in Japan,
link |
that's when I realized like the world respects my abilities
link |
and they compete against them.
link |
They don't compete against me as a person.
link |
They compete against the idea or the persona
link |
that I've been able to establish over the years
link |
of competing in the division.
link |
Wow, so you're the, they probably have a nickname for you.
link |
You're the system of ideas and thought that they study.
link |
But they're studying me as a conceptual whole,
link |
not me as the human.
link |
Is your style relatively unique in the 81 kilogram division?
link |
It was relatively unique for Kayla, I and Jimmy
link |
Now since 2016, you can see a lot of what we used to do
link |
throughout most of Europe and even Asia.
link |
Like you're starting to see some of those techniques
link |
that you didn't see before starting to get implemented.
link |
Because when I was gearing up for 2015,
link |
I had such a slew of injuries that entire calendar year
link |
that I never should have made it to Rio.
link |
I should have called it quits at the end of 2015
link |
because I suffered that major concussion in February.
link |
I stepped on a mat in May for the first time.
link |
I lost five straight tournaments.
link |
I left the national team, went to Japan, won Pan Am games,
link |
got a bacterial infection at the Worlds,
link |
almost had my leg cut off, tore my SI joint later
link |
on that year, and then took fifth in Japan.
link |
And when you look at like the calendar year as a whole,
link |
like the world should have treated me like I was washed up.
link |
Like this guy hasn't been training,
link |
he hasn't been doing anything, but I took fifth in Japan.
link |
Now, how does a guy that hasn't trained all year
link |
take fifth at one of the hardest tournaments in the world
link |
on two weeks of training?
link |
Because they were fighting the guy I used to be,
link |
not the guy I was at the tournament,
link |
which means they were competing under the idea of like,
link |
what is he really capable of?
link |
Not what have I brought to the table today?
link |
And that just gave you the confidence.
link |
And that told me that like, well, if I can take fifth
link |
and I'm this bad at judo right now,
link |
wait until I'm healthy and I'm back in shape,
link |
then they're not gonna know what hit them.
link |
One of the essential components of being the number one
link |
in the world or up in that place is that confidence,
link |
And the rest of the world believing it.
link |
You can have all the confidence in the world,
link |
but if the rest of the room doesn't buy it, it's nothing.
link |
It's like, there's certain people, right?
link |
Oh, Tyson, Mike Tyson.
link |
They all understand he could not train
link |
and they're still scared, right?
link |
Like he doesn't have to work out that hard anymore.
link |
There's several judo, you know this way better,
link |
but from a spectator perspective,
link |
like Ilias Iliadis is like that.
link |
He's portrayed over the years.
link |
Why is everyone so scared of that guy?
link |
People were scared of you too.
link |
People just gave a certain level of respect to my skillset
link |
and whether I had a bad weight cut
link |
or didn't have a bad weight cut
link |
or not trained for the last three months,
link |
which never happened, I'm just saying,
link |
they were gonna fight the persona.
link |
And it's an important distinction
link |
when you're looking at the top five
link |
because everybody coming up,
link |
they're training against the persona, not who you are.
link |
Even I did that at a younger age.
link |
That's why I would always go to people's hometowns
link |
because I don't care about the persona.
link |
I wanna know what you do day in and day out.
link |
When I couldn't beat a Russian,
link |
I told Jimmy, send me to Russia.
link |
I need to understand and see it with my own eyes
link |
what they do, outperform,
link |
so that I can believe that I can beat them.
link |
Can I ask you on this, a small tangent.
link |
Dagestan has produced some incredible wrestlers.
link |
I don't know what the story with judo is,
link |
where the source of greatness in Russia is for judo,
link |
but what do you make of Dagestan?
link |
Why, what is it in the culture of there or Russia broadly
link |
that produces greatness?
link |
Specifically in the combat sports.
link |
I don't know, yeah, specifically in the combat sports,
link |
sorry, but I don't know if you wanna draw a distinction
link |
between wrestling and judo.
link |
I'm almost curious,
link |
do you understand the differences there in the culture?
link |
It's still a combat sport to them.
link |
They're still in that same like realm
link |
of they're taking young kids and that's what they do.
link |
So Khabib speaks very highly of judo.
link |
It's funny, Khabib, Vladimir Putin.
link |
People don't get it,
link |
but like judo is like one of the premier sports
link |
in the world, but we just don't understand it.
link |
It's not just popularity, so definitely popularity,
link |
but also like this respect.
link |
And there's a certain thing,
link |
which is why I really value judo internationally.
link |
You don't get this in the United States,
link |
but internationally there's an understanding,
link |
like later in life,
link |
when you're a scientist meeting a businessman,
link |
when you both have done judo,
link |
there's this like nod of respect.
link |
It's so interesting.
link |
There's very few sports like that.
link |
Basketball doesn't have any,
link |
I don't know almost any sport like that.
link |
And it's fascinating.
link |
Wrestling has that in the US, but it's the US only.
link |
The rest of the world doesn't do that.
link |
There's a few, like you could see that in like Iran
link |
or something like that.
link |
They'll respect wrestling in that kind of way.
link |
But judo on like a global scale
link |
is probably that only one,
link |
due to its like physicality and the hardships
link |
that you have to go through to reach that upper level.
link |
So why do you think Dagestan,
link |
why do you think Khabib is as good as he is?
link |
Is this just the raw genetics of the human
link |
or is there something about the system?
link |
It's all has to do with the system.
link |
So they grow up around fighting in all forms.
link |
They're also, I mean, their technique is exceptionally good.
link |
Because they grow up in it.
link |
They grow up in it.
link |
They don't understand anything else.
link |
So you don't have to,
link |
it's almost like you with the weight cutting.
link |
It's not like a big dramatic thing for them to fight.
link |
It's like, this is just part of life.
link |
And when you're, I don't wanna say bred into it,
link |
but when you've done it for,
link |
I wanna say like 90% of your life
link |
by the time like Khabib probably has,
link |
right from the time he could crawl,
link |
he's probably even grappling in some fashion thereof, right?
link |
When you, as grapplers,
link |
like you can look at a wrestler and having never seen
link |
this person before and go, you wrestled.
link |
It's because he's probably wrestled since he was like six.
link |
So the way he carries himself,
link |
the way his body is built,
link |
the way he grew into it was framed around wrestling, right?
link |
So the people in that culture are framed
link |
around fighting and grappling.
link |
First of all, philosophically, psychologically,
link |
but also just like the way you move your body.
link |
That means like when you're young,
link |
the people you admire move their body
link |
in a certain kind of way.
link |
And then genetically, it just, as they keep doing that,
link |
they're just gonna get better and better every generation.
link |
It's just gonna keep improving
link |
because they just keep building into that system
link |
of turning them out.
link |
And part of it, there's like cultural stuff where,
link |
I mean, it's such an interesting approach to wrestling.
link |
I really wanna travel to Dagestan and just talk to them
link |
because I happen to be able to speak Russian.
link |
Because there's less value
link |
for this kind of materialistic success
link |
that I think sometimes can get in the way of greatness,
link |
It makes coaching more difficult.
link |
It makes like following orders as an athlete more difficult.
link |
We struggle with that in USA judo.
link |
Cause you want more money,
link |
but then more money, if not applied correctly,
link |
can corrupt the system.
link |
Somehow it can split people up.
link |
It's just, it's same thing with the prestige
link |
around certain medals over others
link |
because athletes start chasing fame instead of development.
link |
Yeah, that's, I mean, the Setia brothers
link |
are famous for this, like ignoring fame,
link |
ignoring all of this, like focus on the art itself.
link |
Not even, so it's not even the medals,
link |
exactly like you're saying,
link |
just the purity of like when you're in it
link |
and let everybody else figure out their stupid medals
link |
and money and all that.
link |
Like it's not that you don't appreciate it,
link |
but you know that it comes if you focus on the art.
link |
There's a distinction when you're talking
link |
about your athletic career or really any endeavor, right?
link |
The problem with goal setting is nobody teaches the athletes
link |
or the people how to transition
link |
from the goal to reality, right?
link |
So when you look at my career as a whole,
link |
like when I was getting ready for 2008,
link |
I actually forgot to train for it.
link |
I was so happy at such a young age
link |
that I became an Olympian that that in and of itself
link |
was a goal that I thought had to be admired,
link |
had to be celebrated that, you know,
link |
the games are right around the corner.
link |
I didn't really come down off that high.
link |
You're the local optimum of just winning the trials.
link |
It's a huge thing.
link |
But then you're just focusing on the accomplishment,
link |
But at some point, right, when I went into London,
link |
I actually went into London going with,
link |
I'm gonna prove I'm the best in the world
link |
cause I believe I'm the best in the world.
link |
And I believe it from like the bottom of my soul
link |
that I'm winning this.
link |
And then you're almost like trying to tell the universe,
link |
like I'm accomplishing this thing because it's a goal.
link |
But when I went into Rio,
link |
I just accepted the fact that I was winning.
link |
Like this is happening.
link |
Like this is no longer a goal anymore.
link |
Like I anticipated, like this is happening.
link |
I can see this coming down the path
link |
because I'm anticipating that the games is happening
link |
and I'm gonna win.
link |
It's an anticipation.
link |
And there's a distinct distinction there
link |
Okay, so for people who are just watching the video of this,
link |
there should be an overlay of Young Travis.
link |
This is, you still had to make 81.
link |
Is this still a tough cut here?
link |
No, this one was relatively easy.
link |
This is going all the way back to 2008.
link |
So this is the summer before the games.
link |
This probably happened in June, I would say.
link |
So this is the Olympic trials.
link |
So in the United States,
link |
you have to, I mean, similar to like wrestling,
link |
you have to win the trials to qualify
link |
for that particular division
link |
to represent the United States.
link |
So this is, you said June before an August Olympics?
link |
So here, I just wanted to show this match
link |
because what was, there's another one.
link |
I think you do a pin,
link |
you do some nice ground work in the other one.
link |
Fighting a teammate.
link |
Fighting a teammate.
link |
Oh, there's an old school double leg.
link |
I forgot about that.
link |
And it's weird to see.
link |
So there, the Travis's opponent,
link |
and Travis is setting up here
link |
that Sayonagi posting his left arm and getting it done.
link |
That's a big, that's a big throw.
link |
You don't have too many of those big throws on video.
link |
Cause like you often on video,
link |
you're going against the best people in the world.
link |
It's tough to get like that much air.
link |
And a lot of times the ones that we do see
link |
and the part that a lot of people don't experience
link |
is a lot of those times
link |
where I threw people with that throw,
link |
it was in training camps.
link |
So by the time I got to the competition with these guys,
link |
they were playing a hundred percent defense
link |
to never let me do that.
link |
So you do this here.
link |
Are you kind of pulling him down?
link |
No, he's, I'm trying to get him to come up.
link |
But are you pulling him down to get to fake him out?
link |
I'm not doing anything with my left hand.
link |
So here the opponent is.
link |
So what I'm doing right now is his head is like in my chest.
link |
I'm pressing him to get his head to lift with my chest.
link |
So I'm pressing his hand down so I can use my chest
link |
to like pinch my scaps and roll his head up
link |
so that he wants to pick it up.
link |
And then he, I mean, doesn't he know what's coming here?
link |
Oh no, he might not.
link |
Oh no, he knew, he was a former teammate.
link |
He knew exactly what I was trying to do.
link |
And that was a really big step with your right foot.
link |
It covers about four feet in distance.
link |
And your left catches up in like perfect position.
link |
Yeah, you back it up a little bit.
link |
Keep going, keep going.
link |
Right there, this is like an important distinction
link |
between mine and everybody else's
link |
is because I split his hip,
link |
I actually, once I'm able to split,
link |
I no longer need his center of gravity below mine.
link |
Right, and when you say split,
link |
you mean you put your foot in between.
link |
I do that split, that four foot split.
link |
And then when I get my feet back together,
link |
it doesn't matter that I'm under his center of gravity
link |
That's why my chest is right around his sternum height
link |
Yeah, so there, I mean, how does he get,
link |
for people just listening to this,
link |
Travis Steps does a big, huge step, gets.
link |
Like my hip is probably right around his nipple
link |
because he's sprawled back so much.
link |
Yeah, that's right.
link |
So like, so you're, how does the physics of this work?
link |
You're violating the principle of your center of mass
link |
being under, oh, I guess somehow it is.
link |
I don't know, but he has nowhere to go.
link |
Yes, that's the kicker is the way mine works is
link |
in order for him to play an effective defense,
link |
he needs to have his feet firmly planted on the ground
link |
Otherwise he can't press into me to stop it.
link |
So when I get him to sprawl back, when I split his legs,
link |
he effectively loses that contact with the floor.
link |
Even though his feet are on the floor,
link |
they're not in a position where he can drive from them.
link |
So therefore when I flip, he flips.
link |
So there's a natural like flailing here.
link |
So he's not falling forward.
link |
You're falling forward.
link |
He's just attached to you.
link |
So like you can keep him up there
link |
and then like legs would be just flailing.
link |
Yep, one of my golden rules when I'm training
link |
and I get really tired, one of the like mantras
link |
I would always tell myself is I'm gonna put my back
link |
on your chest and then I'm gonna put my back on the floor.
link |
It's gonna be underneath me.
link |
That's a good principle to.
link |
And it, regardless of like all the chaos
link |
and how quickly things are happening,
link |
it's something I can just dumb everything down to
link |
Regardless of the gripping situation, the footwork,
link |
all of that, get my back to your chest
link |
and then put my back on the floor.
link |
So this step of getting your back to their chest,
link |
like for people who are sort of more,
link |
like for example, for people like me,
link |
who are just like amateur Judo people,
link |
like there's all kinds of ways to prevent this turn
link |
from happening, the gripping and just everything.
link |
How difficult is it at the highest level
link |
to get into this position?
link |
I mean, you make it look effortless often,
link |
but like to get to the position where you're
link |
from facing them to your back is to them.
link |
Is that like strategy?
link |
It's like anything, like if I wanted to punch you
link |
in the face, like how hard is it to really do that
link |
if you know you can just play defense and block it?
link |
The trick is to get them to play defense
link |
to something that never happened.
link |
And then you go through like another way.
link |
And then you just go through what would technically
link |
be your first plan if you planned on them playing defense.
link |
So I set the stage from the very beginning for this to work.
link |
So then this, you're celebrating here,
link |
it's a huge sort of, once a big accomplishments,
link |
big relief to qualify for the Olympics.
link |
And then you go into the Olympics
link |
and this is where I first saw Judo.
link |
And I kind of thought of them as the same
link |
as Judo and Jiu Jitsu.
link |
And I was really impressed by your performance
link |
The footage nowhere to be found these days,
link |
but at that time I think you could still,
link |
you could watch it live on NBC Olympics
link |
or somewhere like that.
link |
And I remember watching several of your matches.
link |
One of them was the match against Ole Bischoff, the German.
link |
And I remember being, it'd be nice
link |
if you can talk to that match because I don't remember it.
link |
All I remember is being frustrated.
link |
By him not letting you play Judo.
link |
So obviously you faced him again four years later
link |
and there's a lot of frustration there as well.
link |
But I remember being extra frustrated in 2008.
link |
What was that match like?
link |
So he might've been number one in the world at the time
link |
He was up there for sure, especially going into 2008.
link |
He was really high up there.
link |
And did he win gold at that Olympics?
link |
Because he silvered in London.
link |
It was the same Olympic final both in 2008 and London.
link |
Okay, so you're facing him there.
link |
Were you intimidated?
link |
What was the strategy?
link |
Can you talk to that match?
link |
Because it kind of sets the stage for the rematch in 2012.
link |
Yeah, he was somebody that I had trained with in the past.
link |
And for some reason, when it comes to him and I,
link |
when we train together,
link |
it's more of a physical altercation
link |
than a Judo training session.
link |
It's just the coaches have had to break us up a few times.
link |
Or you guys get almost angry too?
link |
It always goes farther than it should.
link |
We say hello to each other.
link |
But for some reason, when we train together,
link |
there's something about him and me that just oil and water.
link |
I don't know what it is.
link |
Could it be also the gripping?
link |
Because he's a great gripping strategist.
link |
Does he frustrate you with certain kinds of grips
link |
and then you get pissed off and then you frustrate him?
link |
And then he gets pissed off
link |
and then before you know it, somebody's kicked somebody
link |
or punched somebody in the mouth or done something.
link |
Yeah, so one of the only evidences we have online
link |
of you fighting him is your foot in his groin area
link |
is the only thing we have from that Olympics.
link |
And to answer everybody's question, yes, it was deliberate.
link |
Now you can say this.
link |
But yeah, I remember there being a lot of frustration.
link |
You're actually going for a lot of stuff
link |
like sacrifice throws.
link |
I mean, maybe you're not going
link |
for the highest scoring epons,
link |
but you're just trying to shake things up,
link |
if I remember correctly.
link |
Yeah, because when he, I was so young then that,
link |
and he was in his prime really at that time, right?
link |
He must've been 24, 25, 26,
link |
world medalist, European champion at the time.
link |
And when he would grab me,
link |
I had that sense of feeling stuck.
link |
Like I was strong enough if I used all my strength
link |
to not let him do anything,
link |
but then you can't be offensive
link |
when you're using all your strength
link |
to hold onto the situation.
link |
So I was getting really aggravated
link |
because I couldn't generate any offense
link |
with every time I felt like I gained an advantage
link |
in the gripping scenario,
link |
he would take some obscure grip somewhere that was like,
link |
well, now I've got to go address this thing,
link |
give up what I gained and I have to go back.
link |
And if I were to think about watching the match now,
link |
it probably looked like a lot of flailing
link |
because we're just trying to generate enough
link |
to not get a penalty,
link |
but also not enough to where he could counter it.
link |
Did you think you could beat him
link |
like when you were walking into the match?
link |
Until I gripped him for the first time,
link |
like, cause I had trained with him before,
link |
he felt stronger and more in shape
link |
than I've ever felt him that day.
link |
At that Olympics, which begs a whole nother question.
link |
But I remember when he grabbed me for that first time,
link |
I went, this is different.
link |
And there was a sense of panic at the time
link |
cause I was like, holy crap, where did this come from?
link |
This is not the guy that I've trained with that I expected.
link |
Cause it was a definite like level change
link |
in like his ability, strength, speed, and stamina.
link |
Like looking back at that, can you explain that?
link |
Is it just you being more, less confident
link |
because it was the Olympics?
link |
It was, is there some kind of routine that he followed
link |
to like really level up in intensity
link |
for this particular event?
link |
I've been told that he only gets to like his prime
link |
for like really big events.
link |
Like he doesn't train like year round like I would train,
link |
but when it comes to like the games,
link |
he doesn't do social media, he doesn't work,
link |
he lives, breathes, eats his training for the games,
link |
which could institute that level.
link |
Is there a, like Dan Gable famously said,
link |
like the one loss he had in college,
link |
he was doing a lot of media and stuff.
link |
Back then there was no social media.
link |
That was a huge mistake for him.
link |
Do you do social media, do you do like?
link |
At that, at this point?
link |
Well, at that time it was like AOL.
link |
I don't know, what's 2008?
link |
I didn't even have a Facebook page, a MySpace,
link |
nothing at this point.
link |
I got my first Facebook page from the USOC in 2012.
link |
When I went through the media thing,
link |
the lady was like, you have to have it.
link |
I go, I don't want it.
link |
I don't like people.
link |
I want to deal with the people.
link |
What am I supposed to do?
link |
You know, like the social part of the social media.
link |
I have to bring this up because,
link |
and then you went on to face Tiago Camilo.
link |
You lost that match, but he went on to win bronze.
link |
That's also an interesting one, but we can skip ahead.
link |
I just remember being really impressed
link |
both by your groundwork.
link |
That was a match I should have won.
link |
I should have won that.
link |
I was, if you don't know judo,
link |
you would visually watch that and be like, I'm winning.
link |
But he was technically winning on the scoreboard.
link |
So it is what it is.
link |
But the point that he got that solidified his win,
link |
yes, it was a point back in those days.
link |
So I can't say anything, but like my shoulder
link |
nicked the ground.
link |
So it's like, I don't know.
link |
Yeah. A lot of the stories of your Olympic career
link |
is like from a fan perspective,
link |
it seems like you should have won
link |
or you very close to could have won.
link |
And there was a lot of frustration in you
link |
and your game being like shut down in certain ways.
link |
But like the thing that immediately grabbed me in 2008
link |
was how much, something about the way you approached judo,
link |
how much you wanted to win.
link |
Cause I was young then.
link |
I was, when I was at this time of my career,
link |
I was out to like win.
link |
Like there was no like, I'm going to grab you,
link |
I'm going to throw you.
link |
And if not, you're going to go through a battle.
link |
You're going to make sure you earned it.
link |
It so happened that you competing in 2008,
link |
I was, I became a fan of yours at that moment.
link |
And since then, I kind of knew about judo.
link |
My university had a judo club
link |
and I kind of knew about jujitsu from mixed martial arts.
link |
And obviously I wrestled for many years before
link |
and I love wrestling,
link |
but there's something about you competing that made me,
link |
well, there's no other way to say it,
link |
but it like changed the direction of my life.
link |
Cause it forced me to say, you know what?
link |
I'm going to start judo and jujitsu.
link |
And first of all, for that, I'm really grateful,
link |
but it's fascinating to think,
link |
because this kid who's 22 years old,
link |
I'm sure I'm not the only one that you've influenced,
link |
like you've changed the direction of my life.
link |
And there could be huge number of others like that.
link |
I mean, that's the power of you as an individual
link |
at the, on the Olympic stage.
link |
You ever think about the pressure of that?
link |
Did you, did you think as a 22 year old,
link |
there's a bunch of people,
link |
like I know I'm not the only one who changed.
link |
I just happened to have like a microphone recently.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
Like, is that, it's fascinating to think about, right?
link |
Like you, perhaps you didn't think about this.
link |
It's just, it's just a judo match,
link |
but you like, you influenced hundreds of thousands of people
link |
Is that interesting?
link |
It's, it's not something that really hit me
link |
until 2012 when I lost,
link |
because that's when like,
link |
I would say like the world felt bad for me at that point.
link |
And that's when you knew that like people were watching
link |
and people were inspired by the loss
link |
because of how much went into that match.
link |
Because, you know, the 99% of us who watched it
link |
thought I won, except for the 1% of the people
link |
who were considered judges at that day in the event.
link |
But I mean, that's the, the win or lose,
link |
that, that was a really inspiring match.
link |
And that's when it, that's when it dinged that like,
link |
because I don't, I don't watch something
link |
and really get inspired by like the person and the act.
link |
It's like a, it's an accumulative thing.
link |
But for a lot of people, like when they watch
link |
how much goes into it,
link |
and then when I broke down on the match,
link |
like the amount of suffering that happens
link |
when you lose a match like that.
link |
And then, you know, really coming back and winning in Rio,
link |
there's a trend of people who were inspired
link |
that knew about London.
link |
And then when they found out I won in Rio,
link |
that's when like people like in droves felt like
link |
they could overcome their own personal obstacles
link |
to still achieve something
link |
because they've witnessed somebody who's fallen
link |
and gotten back up.
link |
But it's not something that you think about like on the day.
link |
It's when you look back and you go, oh, cause and effect.
link |
I wonder if you can comment on that.
link |
I'm trying to realize and live up to the fact
link |
that there's like young people that come up to me
link |
and I'm starting to realize like certain words I say
link |
will have a long lasting impact on them.
link |
Cause you say it as like, you don't even,
link |
it doesn't just, the whim.
link |
Some of them might come back 30 years later
link |
and a word I said was the reason they quit a thing
link |
and started the new thing that led them
link |
to become their true self, like to find success,
link |
all that kind of stuff like.
link |
On the flip side though, some people based on the actions
link |
that we do today, even with this cast
link |
will alter the course of their lives forever.
link |
I had a guy one time, was it after London?
link |
It must've been after London.
link |
He actually found me on Instagram,
link |
wrote me what seemed to be like a dissertation on Instagram
link |
about how much I disrespected him
link |
14 years earlier because I didn't step on a podium
link |
to take a picture after winning a tournament
link |
And I'm thinking to myself, like at the time,
link |
like having dinner with my family
link |
because I had to leave the next morning
link |
was more important to me as a person,
link |
not thinking about who you potentially will become
link |
and the actions of whatever you do today,
link |
if you do become quote unquote famous
link |
or somebody in a spotlight,
link |
that that could come back to bite you.
link |
To me, I don't know about you,
link |
that's super motivating,
link |
like not to be a lesser version of myself ever.
link |
Just be on top of your game, whatever that game is,
link |
be on top of your game when you interacting with people
link |
and when you're just in your own private life.
link |
I'm trying to make sure
link |
that I'm the exactly same person privately
link |
as I am publicly and like making sure I'm on point.
link |
I see like just hanging out with Joe Rogan a lot.
link |
I see how he's, first of all, the exact same person.
link |
And second, he like walks around
link |
and there's like a huge number of fans
link |
and you'll just take pictures and like, it's very cool.
link |
And it's very cognizant of like certain words he says,
link |
especially young people, like they're going to take that.
link |
And that's going to be a memory for them
link |
for a couple of years that might be influential
link |
for the rest of their life.
link |
So I don't know, that's a cool responsibility,
link |
not to fuck it up.
link |
But anyway, I bring all that up to just say, thank you.
link |
So even if you like were frustrated
link |
that you didn't win a medal,
link |
at least you influenced one silly Russian kid
link |
to get into the martial arts.
link |
And what happens when you get into martial arts,
link |
it alters the direction of your life.
link |
Mine for the better.
link |
Okay, so let's go to London 2012 Olympics.
link |
One of the most dramatic judo battles of all time rematch.
link |
So you've reached the semifinals once again
link |
to face the German, Ole Bischoff.
link |
Do you mind if we step through that match a little bit?
link |
Yeah, by all means.
link |
I've only ever watched the entire thing one time
link |
just because, fucking.
link |
So for context, for the listener,
link |
Travis, first of all, you don't like losing.
link |
I think that's fair to say.
link |
You know, the hard part with this match
link |
is because I went into this Olympics thinking,
link |
I'm gonna fucking win the Olympics.
link |
I'm the best in the world.
link |
I never in my right mind thought,
link |
oh, I'm gonna win a medal.
link |
Like that never crossed my mind.
link |
So it's like, I would have rather him just fucking beat me.
link |
Because then I lost.
link |
So here the referees, as many people thought,
link |
robbed you of a victory,
link |
but it was also a really close battle.
link |
Again, with many of the elements of frustration as 2008
link |
in terms of strategically and gripping wise.
link |
And it was just a fascinating battle that went to overtime.
link |
So can you set the context?
link |
So what did the bracket look like?
link |
Who were the players here?
link |
Who did you beat leading up to this match?
link |
As you walk onto the mat, what happened the hours before?
link |
As you're standing there.
link |
How bad is it when two people are standing like this?
link |
That fucking guy, man.
link |
But this bracket was really interesting
link |
if you look at like the backstory of 81 kilos,
link |
like leading up to the Olympics, right?
link |
Because at this point in time,
link |
I was inside the top 10 at all times,
link |
eight, seven, five, four, sixes.
link |
I fell out of there sometimes due to injuries,
link |
but I always climbed back in.
link |
There was another guy from Azerbaijan
link |
that was the Olympic champion at 73 kilos in 2008.
link |
And the entire division got rocked by match one
link |
because his first match was with Antoine Valus Fortier
link |
And everybody who saw the draw come out was like,
link |
the Azerbaijanis gonna win it.
link |
He's the former Olympic champion.
link |
He's pretty much won most of the major events,
link |
including at 90 kilos, because he just had smooth judo.
link |
And match one rolls around, match two rolls around.
link |
Antoine's in the shoot and he's looking around
link |
and he's like, the Azerbaijanis not here.
link |
Well, where is he?
link |
No joke, he runs into the venue a match before,
link |
throws his gi on and runs onto the Olympic platform.
link |
Loses to the Canadian
link |
in like a three minute golden score battle.
link |
So do you think he warmed up?
link |
He literally ran into the venue,
link |
threw his gi on and ran out, did no judo.
link |
And there you see Antoine losing in the quarters.
link |
So how good was Antoine?
link |
At this point in time, this is,
link |
I believe his first international medal
link |
was the Olympic games.
link |
So I don't think he'd ever meddled in Paris.
link |
He went into this bracket unranked,
link |
beating the ranked guy first round because he,
link |
I don't know if he missed the bus.
link |
I don't know if he was off his cycle and planned on losing
link |
cause he didn't want to test positive.
link |
There's a lot of like questionable things out there
link |
that could have potentially caused him to,
link |
run onto the Olympic platform for match one.
link |
But it catapulted Antoine into like a belief
link |
that like, I beat the seated guy, I'm ready.
link |
And that was like a turning point in the Canadian's career
link |
just as a whole, right?
link |
That's that everybody has a defining moment.
link |
Like mine was when I beat Bischoff in Dusseldorf
link |
at the grand prix for Germany after 2008, right?
link |
I beat the Olympic champion in, on his home soil
link |
to go win the entire tournament.
link |
So we all have like those moments.
link |
It's just when it happens at the games,
link |
it throws the bracket like into a tailspin.
link |
Cause typically you'd know like who's going to beat who,
link |
where it's going to happen.
link |
And when you look at my quarter final against the Brazilian,
link |
what most people don't know is I was,
link |
I was so thankful I had that match.
link |
Most people would never in a million years be like,
link |
I want to fight the world number one at the Olympic games.
link |
That's what I want to do.
link |
I want to be the eighth seed fighting the world number one
link |
cause I'm going to win.
link |
I was pissed off at him.
link |
I was so angry because we,
link |
we were at the Pan Am's I think the year before
link |
and there was a team tournament and I wanted to fight him.
link |
I had lost the quarters to a Cuban, I think.
link |
In like the first gripping exchange,
link |
he threw me with a drop sale out of nowhere.
link |
So I wanted my hands on the Brazilian and the team match.
link |
Well, the Brazilian team is warming up.
link |
So I walk up to him, no joke.
link |
I walked up to him and I go, you're fighting.
link |
And he goes, not today.
link |
And I went, are you fucking kidding me?
link |
I taped up that you're the only fucking guy I want to fight
link |
and you're going to fucking sit in the stands
link |
and read a goddamn book.
link |
I carried that anger cause I never fought him until this day.
link |
I was fucking pissed.
link |
I was ready to beat him.
link |
That's right, I forgot he was the world number one.
link |
Cause I remember being really excited at that match.
link |
How did you beat him?
link |
I threw him with two hands on the same side, collar,
link |
I cross gripped, I yanked him behind me and I threw him.
link |
And then the match ended 30 seconds later.
link |
I thought, okay, if I'm remembering correctly,
link |
I thought, okay, this guy might actually win gold.
link |
That's what made, for me as a spectator,
link |
remembering now the next match that much more like painful.
link |
And then the fans of judo that really followed the sport,
link |
the stats, when you look at the games and my draws,
link |
I had the worst possible draw
link |
as you ever could have imagined.
link |
At both London and Rio, I fought the world number one
link |
to get to the final or into the semis or past the semis.
link |
And everybody I fought in the draw
link |
either beat me the last time we fought
link |
or I had never fought before.
link |
So I always held a loss going onto the mat
link |
at the Olympic games.
link |
How'd you feel about that, by the way?
link |
Like what were your feelings
link |
about facing the Brazilian first?
link |
Well, that was match three.
link |
In London, I fought the Slovenian guy first round
link |
Where'd he beat me?
link |
Was it the Worlds?
link |
Might've been the Worlds.
link |
And then, Church's Ville, I fought in the second round
link |
who threw me for Wazari in Japan.
link |
And then, Leandro, who I don't think I ever fought,
link |
who was world number one.
link |
That avoided fighting me at the team tournament.
link |
But I mean, every single Olympics you've fought
link |
and you really stepped up.
link |
It's the only tournament I've ever prepped for.
link |
Mentally and physically and just the whole thing?
link |
We never trained through this tournament
link |
like we did for the others.
link |
Or I would go into it injured.
link |
All right, well, let's talk about,
link |
you're standing there next to the German.
link |
He looked always smaller than you,
link |
but you said like strong.
link |
So what are you feeling now, Jimmy Pedro behind you?
link |
I was fucking ready to take his head off.
link |
Did you have an idea of what you're gonna do?
link |
Did you try to, do you're thinking of winning by Ypon?
link |
Were you thinking like going for big throws,
link |
or take him in deep waters, outgrip him?
link |
What were you thinking?
link |
We were about to have a battle
link |
and I wasn't gonna throw him until he broke mentally.
link |
That was, there was no like,
link |
oh, this is gonna be a clean throw.
link |
That was never, that was never the thought process.
link |
So here, you know there's going to be a lot of gripping.
link |
So we're seeing a shit ton of gripping.
link |
And right here, he throws it, bang, close fisted.
link |
You got a lot of adrenaline.
link |
Like, you don't look serious, you just look like.
link |
I'm looking at the ref like,
link |
cause he keeps telling me to get up.
link |
I'm like, I have blood running down my face.
link |
Here, there's blood.
link |
See, and he's like, oh yeah, go fix it.
link |
And that's on your eyebrow somewhere?
link |
Yeah, he split it just underneath it.
link |
So you split your eyebrow.
link |
And so in judo, they don't, they're allergic to blood,
link |
probably for a good reason.
link |
But they, so now you have to try to figure out
link |
how to tape that up.
link |
Which already sets up one of the most bad ass
link |
looks in judo history.
link |
First 15 seconds, busted my eye open.
link |
Was that getting in the way of your eyesight at all or no?
link |
Damn, he looks good at gripping.
link |
How difficult is it to get a grip on that guy?
link |
Like I'm struggling just to get my hand in the collar
link |
and he wasn't even blocking it.
link |
Is he being cagey?
link |
Remember like, is he interested in offense?
link |
He's a very cagey, you know, methodical player.
link |
Like he, he never opens himself up.
link |
You grabbed the leg as part of a combination.
link |
And people have told me that he's actually very good
link |
at throwing people.
link |
So, but he just doesn't show it at these.
link |
Cause he, he doesn't care how he wins.
link |
He cares that he wins.
link |
Which makes him very difficult to beat.
link |
Cause he knows when you've strategized to do that,
link |
where you look at the rule set and you develop a plan
link |
to get through the matches,
link |
then you've really got to figure out a way
link |
to get that person off that game plan.
link |
You know, whether you get ahead by a penalty or something.
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Like, he wouldn't give me the sleeve,
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so I grabbed all of his fingers.
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In which I open like, like this way or?
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I grabbed them the other way and I started lifting them.
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Like I start, nice.
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Reverse play and mercy.
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Oh, this is great.
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Cause he wouldn't give me the sleeve
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and I needed an attack.
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And then I'm like, okay, I can't hold onto this forever
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cause that judge is going to see it.
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So let me just do a quick throw here
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while I'm using the fingers in the mercy grip.
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You're holding on.
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And then I just sit out.
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And then he goes to get up and I go to get on top
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Yeah, it looks like I elbow him.
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Did you do it kind of?
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At the time, I never knew this happened
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until after I watched this like three or four years later.
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Didn't even know, I didn't even feel it.
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So he's legitimately angry here.
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And of course you can't, you can't move.
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Why would you move?
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This moment right there is gold.
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If you're not watching this on video, you're missing out.
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You never get this in judo.
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No, I don't know if that's ever happened.
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That little face off.
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Especially on a stage like this.
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And then he brings us in to like talk to us
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and he's like, hey, we're good, right?
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Like, you guys aren't about to do
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what I think you're about to do.
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And he's like, hey, shake hands again.
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Cause the first time we did it, that wasn't good enough.
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Well, you gotta do it again.
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The heartbreaking part about this
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and why the IJF switched it to an unlimited golden score.
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Because we fought five minutes
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through the entire normal part of the match.
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And then we did the entire overtime period of three minutes.
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Not one penalty was given.
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No gripping infractions, no false attacks,
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like no stallings.
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Nobody was really backing up.
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I mean, he was, you know.
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So what was Jimmy telling you here?
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Or was he talking to you at all?
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He's not allowed to talk during medical things
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and my nose is now broken.
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But he's also, oh, the nose is broken.
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I caught an elbow from him.
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Glad his face is clean.
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And right here, I was pissed.
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I was so angry at the medic
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because he's fumbling around and I'm like,
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my whole plan is to break the German mentally.
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You gotta hurry up with the tape, man.
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He's supposed to be tired.
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He's not supposed to be resting.
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Is Jimmy yelling here?
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No, not here, not here, but during the match.
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And you can see I just take it from him
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and I'm like, give it to me.
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I'm gonna do it myself.
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How scared is the medic?
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He's like, this guy's gonna kill me.
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He can't even tear the tape.
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Look how nervous he is.
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We made fun of him for this so much throughout the years.
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Still do to this day.
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All right, here we go.
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Oh, you look great getting geared up.
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Can't really see, don't care.
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Was there some outcome in your mind
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that you could possibly beat him on the ground
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with a submission or a pin?
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You knew you were gonna have to throw him.
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I knew I was gonna have to.
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If I was gonna throw him or armbar him
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or pin him, whatever the case may be,
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it was gonna be his mental like, I'm just tired of this.
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He's too cagey of a player.
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He's too experienced.
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He has to mentally make that choice to give that inch.
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And then you just have to be ready to take it.
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So I was just waiting for it.
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And so now this is four minutes in, one minute left.
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Oh, is that in your game plan two potentials
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like sumi gaeshi, like the sacrifice throws to him?
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Cause the whole point of that technique
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and the sacrifice throws wasn't
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because I thought I was gonna throw him,
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but it disrupts the pattern enough
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to like get him to make a potential mistake.
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Like see, he should have gotten Ashido there.
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Hands in the face.
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But again, that's just part of judo.
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He poked me in the elbow.
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This is a rough match.
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Does he act at all or no?
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Like, was he acting frustrated or anything like that?
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It was all like, he's like acting for the ref.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, oh, that, all that kind of stuff.
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You're just going in hard, nonstop,
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like angry, aggressive, feeling cardio here at all.
link |
I don't, I didn't get tired during this.
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And then just always pressing for.
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Now we're into golden score.
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12 minutes and 38 seconds later.
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Yeah, you think about every judo exchange, right?
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Every time we grip up, every time we attack,
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sometimes it can take longer to get back to the line
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than the entire exchange.
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So the more aggression, the more exchanges you have,
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the longer the time stretches.
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Then here, the six seconds left in golden score,
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your tape is now yellow and red
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with sweat and blood, literally, and time is out.
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Now, what are you thinking here?
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Do you think you won the match?
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I thought I won the match a minute ago.
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I remember thinking to myself,
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like if this goes to the flags, I won.
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No doubt in my mind.
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Because I felt like the whole time,
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like I was going to him, right?
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He was never coming at me.
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Yeah, that's the way it felt.
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And like, that's the way it felt body language wise,
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just the intensity, how fast you're moving towards him.
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You're constantly going for throws.
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Now, if you want to rewind that,
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we can talk about the whole,
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because it's a part of this clip.
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So wait a minute, they all went blue.
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So in judo, there's three referees,
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two on the side, one in the center,
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and they all vote on who won.
link |
And now let's pause it right there.
link |
Now, the way this is supposed to work,
link |
they raise their flags, they do like a one, two count,
link |
and then on three, they all raise it together.
link |
Now, as a little pretext to this entire match,
link |
up until this point, not one match at the Olympic Games
link |
has ever been a split decision.
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Meaning out of three people,
link |
not one of them voted against the other group members.
link |
So they were all unified blue or all unified white.
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Which is statistically difficult to imagine.
link |
It's almost like they had a referee meeting and said,
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it's better for the Olympics.
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To never have a split.
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So the question becomes,
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if you would click that frame by frame, right?
link |
So right now we have all the refs with their flags out
link |
and then click that.
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So the middle guy starts.
link |
He is all the way up.
link |
The other side judges haven't moved.
link |
We now have one side ref all the way up.
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Then we have a third side ref all the way up.
link |
So there's a time point
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when the middle guy has the flag all the way up.
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If not 80, 90% of the way there.
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Then the other one does.
link |
And then the third one goes.
link |
So now the question becomes who really,
link |
like did the outside refs really have an opinion?
link |
Or were they told to wait for the center one to start
link |
and then lift whatever flag the center ref picked?
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This is very unfortunate.
link |
It's very, honestly, it's very possible
link |
that they had this meeting.
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This is the problem with the Olympics.
link |
They sometimes, it's also the problem in the Soviet Union
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They think the committee knows what's good for the people
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So they decide universally
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as opposed to letting the magic of the Olympics
link |
But nevertheless, in this case,
link |
the center ref decided blue.
link |
Like what do you think?
link |
Do you think it's just a shitty call?
link |
He has the right to pick.
link |
But the problem is the other two I don't think did.
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And so when you do this frame by frame again,
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I can see from my own perspective two of the refs.
link |
And I see them both blue.
link |
So when you fast forward that a little bit
link |
to get to all the flags, I see the two go blue.
link |
And I go, I look over and I look at the other guy
link |
and I'm like, really?
link |
I fought for eight minutes and I can't even get a vote.
link |
I didn't even get a penalty.
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I can't even get a vote.
link |
And that's when I broke.
link |
I like, oh, I couldn't believe it.
link |
And I'm not gonna lie, he looked shocked.
link |
And here you're on your knees.
link |
But I think it's the end.
link |
That was such an amazing match.
link |
It was such a war.
link |
I mean, both people can't believe what happened.
link |
That's the, and like, honestly,
link |
I wish we had the rules that we do today,
link |
as far as the unlimited golden score,
link |
because I would have loved to have seen
link |
what would have happened.
link |
What was Jimmy saying here to you?
link |
I mean, I guess there's nothing to say.
link |
He was kind of apologizing for the way
link |
Cause he knows how badly you want it.
link |
And he felt I deserved to win it.
link |
Based on like, you know, what happened.
link |
But he probably with all his experience
link |
knows that this is what the Olympics are about.
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The refs sometimes.
link |
I mean, that's the magic of it, man.