back to indexBen Askren: Wrestling and MMA | Lex Fridman Podcast #242
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The following is a conversation with Ben Askren,
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wrestler, MMA fighter, and a brilliant,
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opinionated, and fun personality
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in the world of martial arts.
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And yes, he occasionally likes to talk a little trash.
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Given his wild online antics
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and his boxing match with Jake Paul,
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some people may forget just how dominant he was
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in the sport of wrestling and in MMA for most of his career.
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In wrestling, he is a two time NCAA Division I
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national champion and four time finalist.
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In mixed martial arts, he went undefeated for 10 years
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with a record of 19 and 0 before losing to Jorge Masvidal
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with a flying knee that caught everyone by surprise.
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He's also into cryptocurrency, disc golf,
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and is the cohost of Flow Wrestling Radio Live.
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This is a Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, here's my conversation with Ben Askren.
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Before we talk about your incredible wrestling career,
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your MMA career, let me ask you, I have to ask you,
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what did you think about the Jake Paul
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versus Tyron Woodley fight?
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Well, I thought, I mean, I'm obviously biased.
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I thought Tyron won.
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I had five rounds of three.
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And again, maybe this is my bias in the way I was seeing it.
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I thought he was more effective with the striking
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and he was more aggressive and Jake had more volume.
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But that was the only thing I would give him.
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And I guess a lot of people just didn't see it that way.
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They thought he landed more, significantly more punches.
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I just didn't think he really did any damage.
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It was a split decision.
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Split decision, yeah.
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Were you surprised?
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Well, it's the thing, so the thing I said
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when I went in to fight him, I said, we don't really,
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maybe he's good, maybe he's not.
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We really have no idea to this point, you know?
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And so I knew Tyron was a lot better boxing than I was.
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And so I thought, okay, I think it's a good likelihood
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that Tyron beats him up, but there's a chance
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that Jake's kind of good at this.
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And I think that's kind of what played out is
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he's kind of good at it.
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Even if you saw it the way I saw it,
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he still was impressive in his showing
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and he's obviously put a lot of time into it.
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So he's not bad, we'll say that much.
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But isn't it surprising to you that like
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an elite level athlete, combat athlete,
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lost to somebody who just takes it really seriously
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but is nevertheless not elite level?
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Hmm, but I think boxing's a really specific rule set.
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So I'll speak about Tyron, not myself.
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Tyron had good striking, but obviously
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it was his first boxing match ever.
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And within mixed martial arts, you have the fear
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of the takedown and the fear of the kick
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and fear of other things to go along with the punching.
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And so if you look at Tyron,
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throughout his MMA career last times,
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what set up his punches were like level change fakes
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at a takedown, they dropped, boom,
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and then something comes over the top, right?
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So there's many more elements to worry about
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in mixed martial arts, whereas boxing, there's only one.
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It was his first fight.
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Yes, I thought Tyron was gonna win.
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I thought this was gonna happen.
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But like I said, I mean, it's pretty evident
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that Jake's, he's not bad at boxing.
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He's pretty solid, you know?
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He gets in there and works hard at it, I guess.
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Out of 10 times, how many times do you think Jake wins?
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They fight again and again and again, like iteratively.
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Yeah, so I mean, part of the thing is,
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okay, so Jake's corner said you need a knockout
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going into the eighth round, right?
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So I think they thought, maybe they were trying
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to motivate him, but I don't see it that way.
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Because if they actually thought that he was winning,
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why would they encourage him to take a dumb risk
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when Tyron clearly has knockout power, right?
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It's a really stupid coaching philosophy
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if that's what you're thinking.
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So you obviously are thinking,
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hey, this is actually in the balance, it's competitive.
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And I feel like Tyron thought maybe he was winning
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and didn't have the urgency necessary.
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And so I think there's a chance he turns it up a lot.
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Man, I would wanna watch him again before I,
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so okay, I have this problem with my personality.
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Here's my personality, Lex.
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I have an issue with not being able
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to give really exact answers.
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So I hate giving you an answer that like,
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I don't feel like is 100% calculated.
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So I would like to see them go once more
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because I would like to see, hey, can Tyron,
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because if Tyron can turn up the pace
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and Jake can't handle it,
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then I think it's an eight, one or nine, two, right?
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If it goes the exact same way
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and maybe Tyron was a close split decision,
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I'm saying, oh, it's probably gonna be close
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every single time.
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We're probably gonna get a five to five type of thing.
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So it's like, I feel like out of one match,
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it's not totally indicative of what the future
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is gonna look like.
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I feel like Tyron would get a knockout
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and then you would still be in the same place,
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like not knowing what to predict.
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Okay, so your fight with Jake Paul,
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looking back, you had a little bit of time now.
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How would you analyze that fight?
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Well, I mean, the fight specifically,
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I got cracked with an overhand right,
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so I mean, it kind of sucks.
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I would say, and this is where everyone's like,
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I really don't care and everyone's like,
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why would you do that?
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It turns your reputation.
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It's like, well, I wanted to do it.
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I had an enjoyable time training and in the buildup.
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Obviously, I wasn't skillful enough to get the win,
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but even despite the fact that I know what's gonna happen,
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if someone asked me to do it again,
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I probably would have done it again.
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And so the way I was thinking about
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when I was deciding whether to do it or not,
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because I got the offer,
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it's like, okay, is this money, it can change my life.
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Yeah, it could, right?
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It's not gonna double my net worth,
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but it's gonna add significantly and make my life easier.
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Number two is like, when I was in high school,
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we used to do boxing matches for free,
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just because we thought it was fun.
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When we didn't have something going on Friday night,
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me and my buddies would get together
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and we had some boxing goes on, basically,
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and we'd punch each other in the head.
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So it's like, for something I think is enjoyable,
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and now they're gonna pay me a whole bunch of money,
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yeah, sure, I'll do it.
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Would you, do you think if you got the rematch,
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if you did the rematch, would you,
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what are the odds you win?
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I'm probably not very good.
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I think he's pretty good, actually,
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and I'm not very good.
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Now it's probably at a low point for me,
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because, so when I started training for that,
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I was like 215 pounds, which is the heaviest I've ever been.
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I came off my hip surgery.
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I literally, when I said, yes, I'll do it,
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I had literally started working out the week before
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for the first time in my, since the surgery,
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because I wasn't able to do anything.
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So could I perform better?
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Yeah, but now after watching him box Tyron,
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like if you ask me, Ben, can you beat Tyron?
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Probably not, but I don't think I can beat Tyron.
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In boxing, correct, in boxing, yeah.
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So my chances of beating him, you know,
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and watching that card, it's like, damn,
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like, it'd kind of be fun to box someone who I know sucks,
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who I know can beat, that's what would be fun, you know?
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Because like, the training, the preparation was fun,
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but then obviously, I got my butt kicked, that sucked.
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You know, can I swear on this podcast?
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Oh, I was gonna drop an F bomb, I wasn't quite sure, sorry.
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I think that sucked, is a swear.
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You could drop all of the F bombs you want.
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So, preparation wise, do you think you were more prepared
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for that fight, or the Jordan Burrows exhibition?
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I mean, like, how did you approach it mentally, you know?
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Well, the Burrows thing, I obviously, it's okay.
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So when I retired the first time in 2017,
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Burrows was the only current, like,
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we'll say really elite level wrestler
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that I'd never trained with.
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I was really good friends with in Nebraska,
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head of the coaching team, still am.
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And I said, hey, I just want, I'm gonna pay my own way.
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I want to come down and train with Jordan,
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because I want to see what it feels like.
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You know, I want to get in there and mix it up.
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I've mixed it up with David Taylor and Kyle Dake.
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I mean, there's just something about wrestling that I love.
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And so I flew myself down there in January of 2018,
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and I spent four days training with Jordan.
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It was a really good time.
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It gave me some great insight into how he thinks,
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and you know, what a great champion he is.
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What was it like training with him?
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Like what, can you give some insights?
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Like what the, like how hard is the live training?
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Is it more drilling?
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Like how does, his, it seems like his style
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is very different than yours.
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So how does that match up in the room
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in terms of like what you learn from each other,
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that kind of thing?
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We only went full live for one,
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I think it was like 12 or 15 minutes ago
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where it was just go, wrestle.
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We did a bunch of simulated live,
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but obviously he had, so I was a senior in college
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and he was a freshman in Nebraska.
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And so we, our teams had dueled each other.
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He was obviously a lot smaller at that point in time,
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but he had followed my career.
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And so when I went in there, it was like,
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hey, I know you're really good at this position.
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What about this position?
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What are you trying to do?
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How exactly does it work?
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And then let's wrestle there, you know?
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And then, hey, what about this position?
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And so we would spend 30 to 40 minutes
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talking about that position.
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It was like, one was a chest wrap,
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one was a headlock, one was, I don't remember,
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it's called the, we call it the lightning dump, but it's a.
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The lightning dump?
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Yeah, my buddy's name was Lightning Luke Smith
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in high school and he was the first person I saw do it.
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So usually when I see someone do something,
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then I name that move after them.
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Yeah, but so what I said with that is like,
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he was still trying to be the best in the world.
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I was just trying to go work out with Jordan Burrows
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because I enjoy wrestling.
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Is like someone who at that point,
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when he has five world titles at that,
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four or five at that point, a lot.
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And so he said, my high school kids is like,
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hey, this is a guy who's the best in the world,
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who's bringing someone in and saying,
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well, how do I do this?
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And so the level of inquisitiveness he has
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is really impressive.
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And then it's obvious why he got to the level he did
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because he's figuring out all these little situations.
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And that's honestly one of the biggest things
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I think wrestlers, a lot of wrestlers fail to do
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as they get older.
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Even when they get to early college age,
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they say, this is my style.
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This is what I do.
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I'm gonna lift and work out hard
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and I'm not gonna add anything to my game.
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Whereas you've seen many progressions
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in Jordan Burrows game.
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He just made his 10th world team.
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And if you have a really keen eye,
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you've been able to watch him change.
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I've been watching him since 2007.
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He's changed so much.
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And obviously still maintained a world class level
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almost the entire time.
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When you say change, like what changed?
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Because he's got that double leg.
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Yeah, but there's no double leg anymore.
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He like his double leg for the first time
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against Alex Deering, he hadn't hit it in years.
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Yeah, so that's like when people think about Jordan Burrows,
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they think about the double leg
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because in his early years,
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fire, he had a great double leg, right?
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And even so in those years, I would say
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the biggest thing with Jordan Burrows double leg
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wasn't his level of explosiveness,
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it was his level of persistence.
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He would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot.
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And it would last time to be from fun, creative angles
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and on the screen, all of a sudden he's on you.
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And he was just super persistent with it.
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And I think that was probably the key.
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And then you saw, when he came out
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to the won the first world championship in 2011,
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it was kind of that type of mentality.
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And then shortly after then,
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obviously everyone was starting to lower
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their stance getting lower
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and he developed a really good like
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Mantis go behind series
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where he would go one way the other way.
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Then he started developing really good
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like low single ankle pick type thing, you know?
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And then his hand fighting got really tremendous,
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like 15, 16, 17, his hand fighting was really good.
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And now I just commented at the 21 trials,
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like a few of the defensive sequences he got into,
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it was like, holy shit,
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like just not from an athletic standpoint,
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from a technical standpoint,
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the things he were doing was just tremendous.
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So I've seen him as someone like
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who's continued to reinvent themselves
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over the course of the last 10, 12 years.
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Especially as a junior and senior in college,
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you're exceptionally dominant.
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If you were to face him at the peak,
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both of your peaks of NCAA wrestling,
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could you beat him?
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And if you can beat him,
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well, of course you can beat him.
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How do you solve the Jordan Boroughs problem?
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Well, so from a folk style wrestling standpoint,
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So, you know, he had some competitive matches
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his junior and senior year.
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He had a two, one win over,
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or maybe it's three, two over Michael Chandler,
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who was my teammate who's fighting in the UFC now.
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He had a two and win over Tyler Caldwell.
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So I think you can glean some insight into that.
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You know, he got ridden,
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he got so mad about this up on a podcast.
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we had to make up all kinds of bullshit to talk about.
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And we were doing like the last 10 years best 165s.
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And I said, Kyle Dake would ride him for over a minute.
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He got so mad he wanted to come on the podcast the next day.
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So hopefully he doesn't listen to this and be like,
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fuck you, man, you know?
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This is during Corona.
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Corona, last year.
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We were talking about, we were.
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Before the trials.
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Yeah, correct, yeah.
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So, you know, Michael Chandler rode him for two minutes plus
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and that was his junior year, not his senior year.
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So I think there's some things there.
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I think the interesting thing would be
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if I would have stuck around, right?
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So I chose to go into mixed martial arts
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after 2008, I would have been 74
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and he would have been 74.
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So we would have had to wrestle.
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And then I think that the freestyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle
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is a lot more difficult to solve
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than the folk style Jordan Burroughs puzzle.
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And I think, I don't think he would,
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I think he would acknowledge that he's much better
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at freestyle than he was at folk style.
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You know, although he was very good, he's better.
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This is like raw speed explosiveness.
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Present a problem to you.
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Well, so he was never, I mean, he didn't really excel
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on the mat in kind of either style.
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In freestyle, he has got some good lace transitions,
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but in folk style, like his whole,
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like in his entire college career,
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I think he has like 10 pins, which is almost nothing,
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you know, so he was gaining no value off the top position.
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He was good enough on most people to get off bottom
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without it being an issue, but it wasn't like,
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oh my gosh, this is an area where we really have
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to be careful, there's a lot of things here.
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You know, it's just, he wasn't gaining value there.
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Whereas in freestyle, he, I don't wanna say never,
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but the amount of times he gets turned is incredibly rare,
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very, very rare, and he does have like lace transitions,
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so he gets a lot of points there.
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So, and obviously freestyle is,
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it can be geared way more in the neutral position, right?
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Where we're only doing takedowns, so yeah.
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Were you surprised that he lost to Dake in the trials,
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Oh, Kyle's so, so, he's so good, right?
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I mean, I think, I think his performance at the Olympics
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was, his loss then was shocking to,
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I mean, we understand it happened to Kyle Dake, you know?
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He's been a guy who's competed with Jordan Burrows forever,
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and obviously he was on the losing side for a while,
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and now he's on the winning side.
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But I think a lot of people thought it was a coin flip,
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and I think actually Kyle Dake made it feel like
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it's not a coin flip.
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Now, to me, it feels like Kyle Dake isn't gonna win
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that match significantly more times than he isn't,
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is what it feels like.
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Yeah, I forgot which trials it was.
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Was it four years ago, where Kyle Dake threw him?
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Like he, he, you saw inklings of like,
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oh wow, there might be eventually a changing of the guard.
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Yeah, so at 13, Kyle came out and he had the one throw,
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but then he lost one of the matches decisively,
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and then he was hurt in 14, and in 16,
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Kyle Dake actually went up to 86 kilograms,
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so actually in 16, at the trials we had,
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so Jake Herbert was number one seed,
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he was a former, as Guy Russell,
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I was a former world silver medalist.
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So you had David Taylor, who had not made a team yet,
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who is now a world champion, Olympic champion.
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You had Kyle Dake in the bracket,
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who was a two time world champion now,
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and you had Jaden Cox in the bracket,
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who had not made any teams yet,
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but is now, what, a four time world medalist,
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two time world champion.
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So, and then obviously Jaden came out on top of that,
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won his first Olympic medal, Olympic bronze medal.
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So Kyle didn't wrestle Jordan in 16,
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and Kyle's contention the whole time,
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and they argued about this,
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so I actually did a little bit of backstabbing.
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Well, it's not backstabbing.
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And both of them, or just one of them?
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I didn't tell any of them.
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Okay, so Jordan got mad.
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We talked about this fake match during Corona, right?
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We had to make up something to talk about.
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There's obviously no matches.
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So we talked about this fake match, and.
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Do you stand behind that statement, by the way?
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Listen, here's what I said.
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Kyle Dake's a four time NCAA champion.
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Yes, I said, you gotta pick a winner.
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I said, Kyle Dake wins two, one
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on a minute and six ride time,
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which I mean, we're talking as close as it gets,
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as close as it gets for Kyle Dake,
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who's a four time NCAA champion.
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I'm sorry, we're talking.
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Over Jordan Burrows.
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Over Jordan Burrows.
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In a Folkestown match.
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In a Folkestown match.
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Back in college or now?
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Completely hypothetical.
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Now or in college?
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Both of them at their peaks at 165 pounds.
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So completely hypothetical.
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And so Jordan called in, he was all pissed at me
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for picking Kyle Dake.
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He wants to come on the next day and argue his point.
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So I said, F that, that's dumb.
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Oh, we had to pick a winner.
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We had to do something hypothetical.
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So then I called Kyle Dake, and I said,
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Kyle, Jordan's gonna come on and argue his case
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If he's gonna do that, why don't you come in
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and argue your case?
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So no one else knew Kyle was coming on the podcast.
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So they both show up, and they went at it.
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But one of the contentions Kyle had for years,
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and there's still this rule,
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if you win a world level medal, the following year,
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you sit out until the very end of the American trials.
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And they do a best two or three.
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So every time previously that Kyle had wrestled Jordan,
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he had to come through a tournament on Saturday.
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Okay, probably three matches.
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And then on Sunday, he would wrestle Jordan
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in the best two out of three, right?
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So his contention was, I'm only wrestling Jordan
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at a disadvantage because I have to compete on Saturday
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and then competing on, which it's a fair argument.
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But I also see USA Wrestling's point.
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It's like, if someone wins a world medal,
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we are gonna reward them
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because we want that person on the team again.
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It's crazy though that Kyle Dake had to wrestle,
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because he's not wrestling bums in that division.
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And yeah, I don't know.
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I don't know how wrestlers do it.
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Because you have to go to war like three matches
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and then face Jordan Burrows.
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Yeah, especially a few of those years with Dakehead,
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the name Andrew Howe.
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But it was a really competitive matches.
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David Taylor had really competitive matches with him.
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Isaiah Martinez even got in there, Deeringer.
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So he had some really competitive matches
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before he ever got to Jordan Burrows.
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So I never answered your initial question was,
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So the Jordan Burrows match,
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I was not in wrestling shape at all,
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meaning wrestling's heavily dependent,
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especially in neutral positions,
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heavily dependent on timing and other things.
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I was wrestling very, very minimally
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because I started fighting again.
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So like my athletic shape was great,
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but it was mainly for fighting, I wasn't wrestling.
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So I think they were actually trying to do Burrows,
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Dake at the Beat the Streets.
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It's the biggest fundraiser in wrestling
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every single year.
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They usually raise like a million dollars.
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They started all these programs in New York City to get,
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which I really wonder what they're doing with the money now
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because they probably can't have the kids wrestling
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because New York's crazy.
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I think New York figures out a way
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what to do with the money.
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Hence Michael Malice complaining that they're corrupt
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But it goes to the Beat the Streets organization
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who then starts the clubs in New York.
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So I don't know what to do with the money.
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Anyway, so I was called like, I don't know,
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two weeks before the event and said,
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hey, someone was supposed to wrestle Jordan Burrows.
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Would you wrestle him?
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I said, yeah, sure.
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And it's like, well, they said,
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I trained with them for four days the year before.
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I had a pretty good idea how the match was going to go.
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It wasn't going to go so well for me,
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but it's like, okay, you're missing a main event.
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I can bring, because of where I'm at right now in my life,
link |
I can bring a lot of attention to wrestling.
link |
I can help you guys raise a bunch of money
link |
for Beat the Streets.
link |
My goal is I think I thought I could get one take down
link |
or turn on him was kind of my goal for the match.
link |
I didn't get there.
link |
He went kind of hard.
link |
Yeah, that asshole didn't give me a point.
link |
I said, this is bullshit, Jordan.
link |
I told him during the match, like, this is bullshit.
link |
You're fucking going too hard right now.
link |
I'm not a wrestler.
link |
I'm not a wrestler anymore.
link |
I'm coming in here.
link |
So yeah, so I had a really good idea.
link |
I mean, we wrestled together.
link |
I think he'll probably get mad
link |
because I think in the live go,
link |
we did like the 12 or 15 minutes.
link |
I think I actually scored a take down in that, I believe.
link |
Maybe, or maybe it was a turn.
link |
He'll probably say, no, I didn't, but whatever.
link |
Yeah, so I knew what was going to happen.
link |
I knew what the outcome was going to be.
link |
I knew I could probably, I was hoping I could stay competitive
link |
and maybe, you know, lose like 10, two or something.
link |
Well, let's walk back.
link |
Cause I think I originally brought it up
link |
in terms of how prepared were you against Jake Paul
link |
versus Jordan Burrows.
link |
So did you prepare for Jake, cardio wise?
link |
Yeah, I worked hard.
link |
But it was, I told you, I started training for my,
link |
I mean, once I had my hip surgery,
link |
they said, you know, for the first six weeks,
link |
you can't even walk.
link |
And it was hard for me to listen to them
link |
cause by week four and a half, five,
link |
I was feeling pretty good.
link |
I want to get rid of my crutches.
link |
But I'm like, you know what?
link |
This is for the rest of my life.
link |
And if you get the,
link |
so if you get the real hip replacement,
link |
there's no wrestling, there's no nothing, right?
link |
So that's the next step.
link |
I'm going to take this serious.
link |
So I do my crutches for six weeks.
link |
The next six weeks, it's still like really low weight bearing.
link |
Can't necessarily do anything, you know?
link |
So then I get done with the three months,
link |
which is like January and I'm like, okay,
link |
I should start working out.
link |
So I started riding a bike a little bit and then, okay,
link |
I'm going to get in better shape
link |
cause I haven't been able to do anything.
link |
So I'm actually start working out.
link |
And, and then that happened, right?
link |
So I'm like, okay, well now I got three months
link |
and it gives me a good reason to get back in shape.
link |
And, you know, I knew I wasn't going to be a full time boxer.
link |
So it's like, how do I put a boxing camp together?
link |
So I found, you know, I had my old teammate, Mike Rhodes.
link |
He came up and kind of lived with me ish kind of thing
link |
I found a couple of his guy canine out of Michigan.
link |
He came over three weeks.
link |
I went to Freddie Roach for a week.
link |
So I kind of like, you know,
link |
try to get as many good as ideas as I could.
link |
And my thought was like, okay, well if this dude sucks,
link |
I can just be tough and, you know, block a few punches,
link |
get him tired and then beat him up.
link |
If he's good, that's probably not much of my do about
link |
in the next three months.
link |
Cause I'm, I was never good at boxing in the first place.
link |
All of my standup in mixed martial arts was predicated on
link |
how do I get through the two or three punches
link |
that are gonna come at me in the time I need
link |
to get a hold of them.
link |
You know, it's all, you only have to make two
link |
or three of them miss.
link |
And then boom, you're on top of them, at least for me.
link |
That was all my striking was predicated on.
link |
It wasn't about, hey, I'm gonna do damage on the feet
link |
in order to make something else happen.
link |
It was like, how do I clear this barrier,
link |
get a hold of you.
link |
And if you, I actually did the math one time.
link |
I think I got a takedown.
link |
If you include the knockout round against Masvidal,
link |
I got a takedown in every round except two.
link |
So it was like, it was like 53 out of 55 rounds in MMA,
link |
Somewhere, somewhere in there.
link |
Okay, so you're hunting the takedown once you, once.
link |
Once you get your hands on them, you get the takedown.
link |
But the incredible thing about you,
link |
I just recently talked, spent a couple of days
link |
And he talked about his guys and just champions in general
link |
hating to lose more than they love winning.
link |
And the way you talked about losing,
link |
you lost very few times in your career,
link |
like later you were dominating both wrestling and MMA.
link |
But the way you took these losses against people
link |
that are, I don't know, below elite level.
link |
I was gonna get pissy, but it's completely fair.
link |
I thought he was a bum too.
link |
No, that's not what I meant.
link |
It's okay, no, it's good.
link |
No, no, no, but like what,
link |
can you explain the psychology behind that?
link |
Like what, is there a system behind this?
link |
Is there a philosophy behind this?
link |
Well, I wasn't very good in the beginning.
link |
I think that's where it all starts from.
link |
So I didn't start getting good until the age of like 13.
link |
I started at five.
link |
I probably started competing more at age 10, 11.
link |
Didn't really get good until 13.
link |
I'm starting to get great.
link |
I'm getting better, right?
link |
So I actually have,
link |
I have written this book on sports psych,
link |
but I got someone to write it for me kind of thing.
link |
Cause I've had this philosophy for years
link |
that there has to be this balance between two things, right?
link |
So on the one hand, in this category,
link |
on the one hand you have hating to lose.
link |
A great champion has to hate to lose, like you said, right?
link |
But on this other hand,
link |
you have to have someone who seeks out challenges, right?
link |
Cause if you don't have that,
link |
you're never gonna reach your full potential either.
link |
And so you have to balance these two balls
link |
at the same time, right?
link |
And so like for me, I always,
link |
and this is maybe cause I wasn't good,
link |
but I was always like,
link |
let me go find the best people to wrestle all the time.
link |
Let me go find, I would like literally,
link |
like seventh, eighth grade
link |
when I was starting to get better,
link |
it was like, and there's no internet.
link |
Well, there's no one was using the internet.
link |
It was like a wrestling magazine.
link |
And like, hey dad, there's a tournament here.
link |
I think that, are the kids gonna be there?
link |
Can you take me two hours across the state today, please?
link |
You would wrestle like in competition against them.
link |
Yeah, yeah, in competition.
link |
Hey, I heard there's this tournament.
link |
Here's the magazine, this is this tournament.
link |
Hey dad, will you take me over there tomorrow?
link |
You weren't trying to win.
link |
You were trying to get the experience.
link |
I was trying to wrestle the best guys.
link |
Maybe I win, maybe I lose.
link |
There's no, when you do a competition,
link |
there's no guarantee of a winner or a loss.
link |
You're just doing competition, right?
link |
So I wanted to go,
link |
I wanted to challenge myself against the best guys
link |
of which I thought maybe I could come out on top, right?
link |
So like eighth grade year, I won way way,
link |
I probably lost a handful of times
link |
in the state of Wisconsin.
link |
It was probably really, really minimal
link |
the amount of times I lost, you know?
link |
But it was just about getting the challenge.
link |
And it's like, some kids, and not kids in my club,
link |
because I'll push them very hard on this,
link |
are scared of challenging themselves.
link |
They like being the big fish in the small pond.
link |
They're not willing to go say,
link |
I want to go get that guy, and I want to get that guy,
link |
and I want to get that guy.
link |
And so that's like, so I think that's part of it for me
link |
is like, I always just loved to challenge.
link |
I enjoyed competing thoroughly, right?
link |
And I understood from a young age,
link |
because it wasn't a good, losing is a part of it.
link |
You're not always going to win.
link |
And that was kind of it.
link |
It's like, hey, sometimes, you know,
link |
and for my MMA career, I never planned it to go that way,
link |
but yeah, I didn't lose for nine years.
link |
And like, that's pretty rare.
link |
I didn't plan for that to happen.
link |
That was just what happened, you know?
link |
Okay, but you also didn't lose
link |
like the second part of your college career.
link |
My 87, I lost, I won my last 87 matches.
link |
So that didn't come along with the hatred of losing?
link |
I don't like losing, I still don't like it.
link |
But you seem to, okay, but you don't,
link |
you don't seem, you seem to kind of shrug it off
link |
Okay, so like with, specifically with these two instances
link |
that you bring up.
link |
With the Masvidal, it feels definitely, so, okay.
link |
Let's go, let's go deep, let's go deep.
link |
So the Masvidal one, it feels different,
link |
So, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
link |
Let's, for people who don't know.
link |
Masvidal loss was your first loss.
link |
I mean, it was a dramatic loss.
link |
And there was this kind of buildup as you were potentially
link |
one of the greats of all time coming into this fight.
link |
And so, this pressure, all of that.
link |
So the, no, I mean, I was thoroughly enjoying it.
link |
I didn't feel the pressure.
link |
So the Masvidal fight is, he got one fucking move on me.
link |
It's not like he beat me.
link |
And if we do that again, I think I win.
link |
At that point in my life, for sure, I think I win
link |
way, way, way more times than I lose.
link |
That's why he didn't want to sound the bout agreement.
link |
That's why I had to taunt him and why he got so mad,
link |
because I had to continue to taunt him
link |
in order to get him to sign, right?
link |
So that one hurt because, as people don't know,
link |
my MMA career, I'll just go through it fast.
link |
I did three fights in like smaller leagues.
link |
I got signed by Bellator.
link |
I was undefeated for three and a half years.
link |
I was nine and oh.
link |
When I got done with that in 2012, 2013,
link |
I, at that point in my head,
link |
I was just going to transition to the UFC
link |
because that's where you go.
link |
I was ranked like sixth in the world.
link |
I hadn't really had a competitive match
link |
at the end of the Bellator thing.
link |
And Dana White, for a reason still unknown to me,
link |
we still haven't had this conversation.
link |
I wish I could ask him, I should ask him sometime,
link |
chose to refuse me any entry into the UFC.
link |
He just said, I went to his office
link |
and he literally said, we're not interested.
link |
We're not going to make you an offer.
link |
Did you, did you mention something too about him,
link |
That was a year before that.
link |
That was a year before.
link |
And that might play a role in it, I think.
link |
So yes, what happened the year before that
link |
was I called him a liar, which,
link |
but listen, I'm writing this one
link |
because he said you can't test for drugs
link |
because I'm all natural, which you can tell by my physique.
link |
And I was always put off by the fact
link |
that so many people cheated.
link |
And I was very vocal about that.
link |
And so he had made some statement like,
link |
oh, well, there's no way you could test.
link |
You, very specifically, I said USADA does it
link |
for all other sports worldwide, you can do it.
link |
And then it was funny
link |
because I hired USADA a couple of years later.
link |
So I think he took some offense to that,
link |
but that was like a year and almost a year and a half,
link |
I think, somewhere, years later.
link |
It's not like he holds a grudge or anything.
link |
Yeah, so I literally go to Vegas.
link |
It's a long story.
link |
You can read about it other places.
link |
So I got released from a belt.
link |
It's not like this is a negotiation.
link |
I got released from my belt or contract.
link |
I said, I'm out of here.
link |
I'm going to go to the UFC.
link |
I go to Vegas, and then I was told,
link |
hey, there's no offer for you.
link |
Tough shit, you know?
link |
So then I ended up signing with one championship.
link |
I spent, what, three and a half years there.
link |
I won the belt in my second fight
link |
and retained the title the entire time.
link |
And then I just, I think.
link |
Again, dominating people.
link |
Yeah, I didn't have a competitive fight.
link |
And so I retired 18 and 0.
link |
Never, never, and for someone who loves a challenge,
link |
never getting to really challenge myself
link |
was incredibly frustrating.
link |
And I left the door open.
link |
I said, if I ever get the chance
link |
to prove I'm the best in the world,
link |
I'd love to come back.
link |
So somehow, a year later, I get traded.
link |
Trades have never happened,
link |
and this is the one and only trade ever.
link |
I've been retired for a year.
link |
I get to come back.
link |
I fight Robbie Lawler, the first fight.
link |
And then essentially, they're saying,
link |
okay, if you fight, if you beat George,
link |
you're gonna get the title shot against Marty.
link |
And it's like, this is what I've been working for
link |
the entire, I've been trying to prove
link |
I was the best fighter in the world
link |
for the last 10 years,
link |
and I've not been afforded this opportunity.
link |
So when I lost to George, that was hard,
link |
because it was something that I had waited for
link |
for a really, really long time.
link |
It was something that I thought I could compete for,
link |
but I never got the opportunity to do,
link |
so that one was hard.
link |
At the same time, from just the competitive logistically,
link |
it's like, he got me with one move.
link |
It wasn't like he beat my ass for 15 minutes,
link |
and I got beat a bunch of different ways.
link |
So that was like, fuck, if I get it again,
link |
I could have done it,
link |
but they're not gonna let me have it again.
link |
It's not like wrestling where you could go
link |
the next year or the next week or whatever.
link |
You lose at Big Ten,
link |
you go to nationals two weeks later.
link |
Does that loss change you in any way, your psychology?
link |
It's the first loss.
link |
I mean, had I had a longer MMA career post that,
link |
there definitely would have been a lot of time spent
link |
getting better at the entry point to the takedown, right?
link |
Which I already spent time there,
link |
and I hate making excuses, but yeah, the hip,
link |
the hinging of my hip, what I couldn't do,
link |
was preventing me from doing some things,
link |
and it's why, if you look at the fight,
link |
I'm bent over as I go for the double leg.
link |
So what happened for people who don't know,
link |
you went in for a double leg, and he went.
link |
He did a flying knee, and it caught you well.
link |
Specifically the way he did that knee
link |
was kind of different than the way
link |
anyone had thrown flying knees before.
link |
Most people go more just from a stand straight vertical,
link |
whereas he took a few like running steps
link |
and went more, you know,
link |
the trajectory of the angle was different.
link |
So I think that's kind of probably why it caught,
link |
you know, I think a lot of things in combat,
link |
well, probably everything,
link |
but I focus specifically on combat,
link |
happen subconsciously.
link |
Like our brain is reading what's coming at us,
link |
and lots of times it's stuff we've seen before
link |
so we can judge how to move correctly.
link |
And you misread because it's something
link |
you haven't seen before.
link |
Had not seen him come at that specific angle, yeah.
link |
So that loss was really hard.
link |
With the Burroughs one, I told you,
link |
I knew I was gonna lose.
link |
So it was like, whatever, you know?
link |
I'm taking this because I want to put
link |
the sport of wrestling out there in a big way.
link |
I wanna help them raise a lot of money.
link |
We sold at Madison Square Garden,
link |
Hulu Theater, and we raised a whole bunch of money.
link |
So my goals were accomplished.
link |
Jake Paul fight, I took it because
link |
they paid me a whole bunch of money,
link |
and I thought it was gonna be fun.
link |
Did I have any illusion I was a great boxer?
link |
No illusions whatsoever.
link |
Would I have preferred to win?
link |
Absolutely, but like I told everyone,
link |
whether I win or lose on Saturday night,
link |
I'm gonna be back coaching wrestling on Monday,
link |
because that's what I enjoy doing,
link |
and I was back coaching wrestling on Monday.
link |
And once I'm out, these middle school kids
link |
give me a little bit of shit about it.
link |
But where were you in terms of your shape
link |
and how you felt in the Mazodal fight?
link |
Would you say you're on the,
link |
I mean, it's a difficult question to ask
link |
of a world class athlete, but like,
link |
were you past peak?
link |
Oh yeah, I don't know why guys like to lie about that.
link |
I mean, the peak for me was really evidently
link |
in my late 20s, and maybe they are all fueled
link |
by extra supplements, I don't know.
link |
But for me, that was evident.
link |
But you get this, so you get this crosshair
link |
where if you're smart, like I mentioned John Burrows was,
link |
you're still gaining wisdom, you're gaining strategy,
link |
you're gaining a lot of things, right?
link |
And so while your physicality may go down,
link |
your overall skill level still may be rising,
link |
especially in MMA because people usually start later
link |
because they're gaining wisdom, strategy,
link |
all of the, maybe more tools in their toolbox, right?
link |
They're getting all these things.
link |
So their actual competitive peak,
link |
despite their athletic peak going down,
link |
might still be a few years past that, right?
link |
Because these things are crossing.
link |
No, so I felt I was great.
link |
Obviously the hip was an issue.
link |
It's funny because I knew I had a lot of pain here,
link |
and I knew it was because of this.
link |
And it was like, okay, whenever I'm done,
link |
I'll just get it taken care of, whatever.
link |
But every time I train, I have pain kind of like
link |
all up my back, and the day after the surgery,
link |
I woke up and there was no pain on the right side of my,
link |
the surgery was on the left side.
link |
There was no pain on the right side of my back.
link |
I'm like, that's fucking weird.
link |
Like every morning I wake up,
link |
there's a lot of pain there, you know?
link |
I'm like, okay, well I'm on pain pills.
link |
Maybe it'll come back tomorrow.
link |
And that's because I'd never been back since my hip surgery.
link |
So it was weird, because it was like this,
link |
I thought this was affecting this,
link |
but it was affecting all the way across my whole back.
link |
So if I get to get a new hip, honestly,
link |
if I, I don't know if this is gonna change
link |
the competitive outcome whatsoever.
link |
If I had known how good the hip replacement was gonna be,
link |
I would have done it the second I retired
link |
from one championship in November of 2017.
link |
I would have had my hip surgery scheduled for December 1.
link |
Just from a lifestyle standpoint,
link |
I could only sleep in one position.
link |
There was a lot of things I couldn't do.
link |
I was in a lot of pain.
link |
So I would have done that a lot earlier.
link |
But no, from an athletic point, I was ready.
link |
This shit goes wrong sometimes.
link |
I don't know how to ask this, but you know,
link |
Joe Rogan, me, had a sense about you similar to like Fedor,
link |
that you are potentially one of the greatest ever.
link |
Does it hurt that you're not in the discussion now
link |
of being in the top 10 of all time?
link |
I didn't prove it.
link |
I don't deserve it.
link |
But I didn't prove it.
link |
I mean, and so it's like, had I somehow gotten
link |
to convince Dana White, we go and convince him in 2013
link |
to make me an offer, and I didn't even need a good offer.
link |
I just needed any offer.
link |
Had I gotten the offer then,
link |
maybe the outcome's different, right?
link |
But given, I would never expect anyone
link |
to think of me that way.
link |
I didn't prove it.
link |
I know what I was, and I'm good with that.
link |
And yeah, other people never got to see that.
link |
Do you think, well, you can't know fully, right?
link |
Do you think if you went to the UFC at that time
link |
instead of one championship?
link |
I think I would have had a lot of success.
link |
Yeah, I mean, there's obviously certain guys,
link |
there's a lot of guys I've trained with
link |
that I had a lot of really good results against.
link |
And obviously, Tyron was a champion for a long time there.
link |
So I was around, Tyron was a champion,
link |
Anthony was a champion at lightweight.
link |
I was, you know, same gym as him,
link |
and we had a lot of people coming through.
link |
Would you face Tyron?
link |
Would I have fought him?
link |
I mean, so he was still the champion when I came into the UFC
link |
and we said, no, we're not gonna fight.
link |
Hey, so he can't change history, right?
link |
So once something happens,
link |
you gotta accept for what it is.
link |
And move forward and obviously hope you can continue
link |
to keep accomplishing great things,
link |
which for me, obviously my athletic career is over.
link |
So now it's gonna be through my wrestling academies
link |
and you know, who knows what else I get into.
link |
You might do exhibition matches
link |
and all that kind of stuff, right?
link |
Wrestling and stuff, no?
link |
So here's my thing with the wrestling matches is like,
link |
just for fun, if you said, hey Ben, just for fun.
link |
Would you love to go wrestle someone?
link |
Yeah, I would, I would, right?
link |
I love wrestling, I get in there.
link |
I love, you know, I love like,
link |
so one of my guys has gotten to be pretty good.
link |
He's in college, he got in Keegan O'Toole.
link |
He just won a junior world title this year.
link |
And so when I'm doing private lessons,
link |
I have such think about the development of the athletes.
link |
Sometimes I can wrestle hard, but most of the time
link |
it's like, I'm just gonna help them
link |
with whatever they need help with.
link |
And it's still wrestling and it's fun, but it's helping them.
link |
You know, for like, Keegan comes back this summer
link |
and he's training for the junior world title.
link |
So to be able to just shake hands sometimes and say like,
link |
I'm gonna try to kick your ass.
link |
Should you try to kick my ass?
link |
You know, like just to go, like.
link |
Yeah, it's a good feeling.
link |
And I don't get to do that very much.
link |
So if you said, Ben, would you love to do some matches?
link |
And the answer is yeah.
link |
The problem, unfortunately for me,
link |
and maybe you could talk me off a ledge here,
link |
is like, because of where I've gotten to in my career,
link |
if I choose to do a wrestling match,
link |
it's gonna, people are gonna be really excited about it.
link |
It's gonna blow up and it's just like,
link |
I just want to wrestle just to wrestle.
link |
I'd rather just like go in a room
link |
where no one can watch and just wrestle.
link |
Well, you could also wrestle.
link |
So there's different kinds of wrestling.
link |
There's wrestling where there's an event
link |
and like, you know, there's a buildup and then an announcement.
link |
And you can also do like a Khabib style,
link |
like in the room, there's cameras
link |
and you're kind of going, it's like the.
link |
Wait, Khabib does that?
link |
Marcelo does that.
link |
He whooped my ass a few times.
link |
I mean, I've seen Khabib in some videos.
link |
It's not like set up, it's just people going hard
link |
and then it's more fun.
link |
You know, and it's also more like
link |
presenting the beauty of the sport, you know?
link |
And like, and there's no winning or losing really
link |
Like you're just, you're always joking around a little bit,
link |
even when you're going super hard.
link |
So I feel like, especially in the modern day
link |
with the internet, that's a compelling way to do.
link |
So I've thought about,
link |
this is the one thing I've thought about doing.
link |
Cause I told you about my buddy was the content thing.
link |
It's called Rockfin.
link |
Thought about doing, you know,
link |
the old really famous Gracie challenge.
link |
Okay, so I've thought about doing the aspirin challenge.
link |
You wanna hear my rule set?
link |
I'm not sure I'm gonna do this.
link |
People are gonna show up to your, like in Wisconsin.
link |
I have to select you.
link |
I'll start with a thousand bucks, right?
link |
You pin me or I pin you.
link |
No points, no nothing.
link |
Camera, that's it, right?
link |
It's camera in the room.
link |
Maybe there's a referee
link |
cause we don't want there to be contention over the pin.
link |
30 minutes, 30 minutes, okay?
link |
If I pin you, you don't get shit, you go home, right?
link |
Every person I pin, it goes up by a thousand dollars.
link |
Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand
link |
If you make it the distance
link |
and I don't pin you and you don't pin me,
link |
I'll pay for your travel and give you 500 bucks, right?
link |
Just a consolation prize for showing up.
link |
If you pin me, you get whatever the jackpot is.
link |
Wait, who's adding to the jackpot?
link |
I am, it's my money.
link |
But then what's the incentive to keep winning for you?
link |
Cause the jackpot.
link |
Well, cause obviously I would put the content somewhere
link |
where people would watch it, right?
link |
Oh, so you're gonna make money.
link |
Yeah, so you'd make money that way.
link |
But it's not exponentially growing, right?
link |
It's just going up by like.
link |
Yeah, I really think there's probably only a couple people
link |
that could pin me.
link |
So I would either just not choose those people
link |
or wait till I get a really large audience
link |
and people get really excited
link |
and in that case, I'm making a lot of money.
link |
What do you think, how many matches would go with you,
link |
like Khaldech shows up?
link |
I don't think he could pin me.
link |
I mean like, so Jordan Burrows could beat me,
link |
but he can't pin me.
link |
He was never a pinner.
link |
He ain't gonna pin me.
link |
There's only a few people who have the skill level
link |
Cause that was, so pinning was one of my specialties.
link |
I had the fourth most of all time
link |
and I won the pinning award the last two years.
link |
So you think you can be done on points and just pin them?
link |
This is actually one of the issues I have with
link |
Jiu Jitsu and the point system and the Eddie Bravo thing.
link |
I actually think Eddie Bravo thing is kind of,
link |
people get so mad at me.
link |
I think it's bullshit.
link |
And you want me to tell you why it's bullshit?
link |
So like, if Jordan Burrows whoops my ass
link |
and the score is 16 to two, but he can't pin me.
link |
Then I get to go to overtime and get a cradle on him.
link |
I'm probably going to pin him.
link |
So I'm better than Jordan Burrows.
link |
Nah, that ain't right.
link |
He just whooped my ass.
link |
Do you know what I'm saying?
link |
Like if we can go the whole, cause they do submission only.
link |
So if Jordan Burrows beats me up for,
link |
what is it, eight minutes, 10 minutes?
link |
What's the length of an Eddie Bravo match?
link |
Yeah, I don't know.
link |
Something like that, yeah, yeah.
link |
So we go 10, me and Jordan Burrows go 10 minutes.
link |
He's gonna outscore me significantly.
link |
He will not pin me, I promise you that.
link |
So now we go to the overtime.
link |
Strong words, but yeah.
link |
He won't, Jordan Burrows is not gonna,
link |
he's gonna beat me.
link |
I will give you that.
link |
Kyle Dake won't pin you either.
link |
Okay, they will both beat me on points very badly.
link |
Now David Taylor, he might pin me
link |
cause he's a very good pinner also.
link |
They'll beat me very badly, they will not pin me.
link |
But now we get to the overtime and we get to pick like,
link |
right, so in Eddie Bravo you get a rear naked choke
link |
Okay, give me a cradle, I'll probably pin him.
link |
Okay, a good cradle.
link |
You can say cradle or maybe give them,
link |
then they're probably not gonna pin me, right?
link |
Maybe, maybe there's a chance, but probably not.
link |
Cause that's just not their specialty.
link |
So for people who don't know, the Eddie Bravo thing
link |
is when it goes into overtime,
link |
you get a dominance position on a person
link |
and you get to, yeah, basically put them in a cradle.
link |
This is the wrestling equivalent.
link |
But you take their back or mount.
link |
Maybe an armbar, yeah, like a wrestling armbar.
link |
So, and I don't think that's very fair.
link |
Cause if someone whoops your ass, they whoops your ass.
link |
And then, you know, and so I think the reason why
link |
Jiu Jitsu people accept that rule set is that
link |
I don't think, I think they know this, but would admit it.
link |
I don't think their point scoring system adequately rewards
link |
what people value.
link |
So like in wrestling, we value takedowns
link |
cause it gets us closer to the pin.
link |
And the most valuable scoring is a near fall,
link |
near to the pin, because that's the ultimate goal to sport.
link |
Whereas in Jiu Jitsu, for example,
link |
like if I were to get a takedown,
link |
so like if I went to Gordon Ryan and he just didn't pull guard
link |
I would probably get the takedown.
link |
Now, if somehow he didn't submit me,
link |
which he probably would, right?
link |
But say he got, got close to like 12 submissions,
link |
but somehow I slipped out of all of them.
link |
Now I went to zero, like that's ridiculous.
link |
Like he should very clearly win
link |
cause he almost submitted, you know what I'm saying?
link |
Like there, and I, and I realized the difficulty.
link |
I realized the difficulty in rewarding near submissions,
link |
but that is the most valuable thing is getting close
link |
to finishing the match.
link |
And in most competitions, they don't actually reward that.
link |
But okay, so this, this isn't about the sport.
link |
This is about the Ben Askren challenge
link |
that we're talking about.
link |
What, why 30 minutes?
link |
Why not unlimited time?
link |
Why, why go until whenever?
link |
Cause then it's just a cardio thing.
link |
Cause at some point then someone would just have to fall
link |
There's no more skill level involved.
link |
It's just who can stand up the longest.
link |
You honestly don't think 30 minutes is a cardio thing too.
link |
How do you think that's actually going to look?
link |
How are they going against you for 30 minutes?
link |
So it's going to be kind of boring for the most part.
link |
What position are you going to be stuck in?
link |
Because you, well, you can't, but you can't,
link |
you just can't have a gigantic amount of action
link |
So I relate to this because some of my kids,
link |
when I'm teaching them wrestling, they're like, well,
link |
but I can't do that for seven minutes.
link |
And I'm like, well, you know, like say, say if I had you do
link |
hang cleans at a relatively heavy weight,
link |
as hard as you could, you're not going to last seven minutes.
link |
You're going to, your pace will slow down, right?
link |
So my thing is like, well, your pace doesn't have to step
link |
here because in wrestling, you're competing against someone.
link |
So if you're here at a hundred and you go to 80,
link |
but they go to 70, that's great.
link |
And then you go to 60, but they go to 40,
link |
this is even better, right?
link |
Because the gap is growing.
link |
So we don't necessarily, if we get tired, that's fine.
link |
If they get more tired, that's better.
link |
So I think most people would know that.
link |
So they would kind of slow it down.
link |
But yeah, I think at 30, I mean, I've wrestled 30 minute
link |
goes, I've wrestled hour long goes.
link |
You're not going to get so tired,
link |
you're going to fall over in that time period.
link |
But at some point, if it's unlimited,
link |
someone will get so tired or dehydrated
link |
that they're just going to freaking fall over.
link |
But you think, what about making it exciting and dynamic?
link |
You think the other person is always going to be going
link |
for the pin and thereby make it dynamic.
link |
Well, if they're working that hard,
link |
then they might exhaust themselves, right?
link |
And obviously then if you're being that dynamic,
link |
then you're adding risk to yourself too,
link |
because you are doing that.
link |
Well, I love this.
link |
This is a great idea.
link |
Well, I figured I'd rack up like 20 pins against bums,
link |
or not as great people in the beginning.
link |
And then I would start bringing in better people
link |
because they would be enticed by $20,000,
link |
the possibility to win.
link |
And not much fanfare, just a camera and just local.
link |
That's it, in my wrestling room.
link |
Yeah, yeah, like the Gracie Challenge.
link |
And so then maybe you have like, you know,
link |
for most people, you have someone edit like the 90 seconds
link |
of the most fun things that happen.
link |
And then you can watch the entire 30 minutes
link |
I mean, I think most people,
link |
if they're not really, really elite,
link |
I'm probably going to pin them.
link |
If they're not really elite.
link |
That's something I've been thinking about.
link |
This has been like fun for me to think about.
link |
And obviously it plays in my skill sets
link |
because my cardio is good and my pinning is good also.
link |
So, like you said, you weren't very good in your early days
link |
What was the switch?
link |
You started to dominate people in your college career.
link |
And obviously you stopped losing at some point.
link |
So, well, I would say,
link |
so even when I didn't lose in collegiate competition,
link |
I would go in the summers and try to make the world team.
link |
So, I would lose some, not a lot, right?
link |
So, when I'm five, I start playing all sports.
link |
Like I know you moved to America at what age?
link |
So, at least I don't know what it was for you,
link |
but in America at my age,
link |
you usually play like a sport every season, right?
link |
So, that's what I did in the beginning.
link |
I had minimal success in wrestling.
link |
I was kind of chunky.
link |
And then in fifth grade, I don't know.
link |
And I can't tell you, I wanted to be better.
link |
And I told my parents, and this is funny,
link |
because now I look at other 11 year olds
link |
and very few of them are this mature.
link |
And I actually think emotional maturity
link |
is kind of one of the key indicators
link |
of how longterm successful someone's gonna be.
link |
And at age 11, I said, I don't wanna play baseball.
link |
I like baseball, but I don't wanna play baseball
link |
because I wanna wrestle more
link |
because I wanna get better at wrestling.
link |
So, at age 11, I quit baseball
link |
so I could wrestle in a club for March, April, and May.
link |
Because that was all that existed at that point in time.
link |
You couldn't wrestle in June, July,
link |
or any of those other months.
link |
What was that desire to get better?
link |
So, it's not about winning.
link |
I don't know where it came from.
link |
I just wanted to get better.
link |
I wanna get better.
link |
I wanna be good at this.
link |
I wanna be really good at this.
link |
So, when you're looking at kids now as a coach,
link |
you're looking for that.
link |
Somebody who says, you know what, I kinda suck.
link |
I wanna get better.
link |
And I wanna try to also inspire that.
link |
I mean, honestly, I think as a coach,
link |
that's probably my biggest job is to get a kid
link |
and get them to believe I can do this.
link |
Because if I can do this, well, I can do that.
link |
I can do that too, right?
link |
And there's so many kids who, unfortunately,
link |
have shitty parents or bad teachers
link |
that tell them, you suck, you can't be anything, right?
link |
So, I think my biggest goal as a coach
link |
is to get someone to believe they can do it.
link |
So, actually, some of the ones that believe they can do it,
link |
they're the most fun,
link |
but they're not the ones who need it the most, right?
link |
The ones who think they can
link |
are the ones that need me the most.
link |
Because they need someone to, let's go.
link |
So, I don't know what inspired me.
link |
At age 11, fifth grade, I quit.
link |
So, then I started having more success
link |
where I'm like, say, placing at the state tournament.
link |
So, sixth grade, I placed at the state,
link |
the local youth state tournament, you know?
link |
So, I'm having more success.
link |
Seventh grade was the first year
link |
I won the youth state tournament.
link |
So, I'm getting better.
link |
Eighth grade, I actually feel like I got pretty good,
link |
but when I went to the national tournaments,
link |
I was still having really minimal success.
link |
My freshman year, I decided to quit football.
link |
It's like, well, I need to put more time into this.
link |
My parents, my dad luckily got a mat in my basement.
link |
So, we have a year round club,
link |
and our impetus was that we didn't have this opportunity
link |
to go to a club year round.
link |
So, we had a mat in my basement.
link |
I had to go find, hey, you wanna come wrestle?
link |
Yeah, to find partners for myself.
link |
Did you live wrestle?
link |
What'd you do in that basement?
link |
So, actually, I think, you'll enjoy this.
link |
I think the start of my scrambling was
link |
kind of based around that.
link |
So, I got kind of,
link |
I think it's probably my freshman sophomore.
link |
I'm kind of, the years are a little fuzzy, right?
link |
It's been a while.
link |
But probably my freshman, sophomore, junior year,
link |
I found two kids who were really consistent
link |
who would come out, like you would come out on,
link |
he would come out on Tuesday,
link |
and this dude would come out on a Wednesday, right?
link |
And they would come every week,
link |
and they were really consistent partners for me
link |
to have in the summer.
link |
But they weren't nearly as good as me.
link |
They were way worse.
link |
So, it's like, okay, how do I,
link |
how do I make this kind of like fun and compelling
link |
for them to come back?
link |
Because if I just whoop their ass,
link |
they're not gonna come back, you know?
link |
So, it was like, I would let them get as close as they could,
link |
and I thought they could do a takedown
link |
before not getting it,
link |
and then try to like escape or get out.
link |
So, obviously, if I let them get really close,
link |
sometimes they get it, you know?
link |
So, they're enjoying it.
link |
I don't know if they ever knew I was doing this, right?
link |
And that was kind of like the start,
link |
because I had to figure my way out of bad positions,
link |
because I had to try to make it entertaining for them,
link |
where they still got something out of it,
link |
and they wanted to come back the next week.
link |
And I also got something out of it.
link |
Yeah, I love this, yeah.
link |
Because that relationship is so important,
link |
with that, like, that,
link |
I've had a few drilling partners,
link |
training partners that were really important to my life,
link |
and I always wonder why it's difficult,
link |
why it's so difficult to find them.
link |
Like I, if anyone's listening to this,
link |
I'm looking for a judo person in the Austin area, actually.
link |
Getting the reps with people is hard.
link |
Even in jiu jitsu, that,
link |
it's just like, people want to do the fun stuff.
link |
They don't want to really put in the work,
link |
and it takes a certain kind of personality.
link |
And then you also have to make it fun for the other person,
link |
just like you said.
link |
If there's a skill mismatch,
link |
but also if you have an interest mismatch,
link |
in terms of the amount of drilling you want to do,
link |
all that kind of stuff,
link |
you have to figure out ways to make it fun.
link |
So, yeah, I think I did that,
link |
and no one told me.
link |
As I get some, I get frustrated,
link |
because now we have, just in my academy,
link |
we probably have 50, 60 high school kids only
link |
that are year round.
link |
They're year round.
link |
Maybe they're not consistent in the summer or whatever,
link |
but they're there.
link |
So when they don't have a great partner,
link |
they start whining,
link |
and it's like, you little bitches, like, you know.
link |
Some days they get really mad about it,
link |
because it's like, I had no partners.
link |
I had to find freaking two partners to come twice a week.
link |
You guys, there's still 22 people in the room.
link |
I'm sorry there's not the perfect partner for you,
link |
but like, go work out with that dude.
link |
So what was the switch, the change?
link |
Was it gradual, or?
link |
Yeah, so I was in ninth grade.
link |
I quit football, because I wanted to get really serious.
link |
What position in football were you in?
link |
I was actually a nose tackle.
link |
But at that point, so, okay,
link |
so I was also, the other thing I kind of left out here,
link |
I was really fat growing up.
link |
In sixth grade, I also decided, okay, I'm really fat,
link |
and if I want to be a competitive wrestler,
link |
I shouldn't be fat, because weight matters.
link |
I went from 130 pounds to 100 pounds in sixth grade.
link |
So by the time I was a freshman, I was 119.
link |
So I still wasn't as heavy as I was in sixth grade.
link |
So I was pretty small, too,
link |
but I was also slow, unfortunately.
link |
So they put me a nose tackle.
link |
I liked the competitiveness, so I was decent at it.
link |
So that's where you wrestled, 119?
link |
My freshman year, yeah.
link |
So yeah, so then I started having a lot of success
link |
state wise, but not nationally.
link |
It's my national success,
link |
didn't come to my junior year in high school.
link |
But yeah, I was grinding and getting better the whole time.
link |
And then senior year, I started having a lot of success
link |
nationally, and I got recruited.
link |
But then even when my freshman year of college,
link |
this is where I loved competing, I would go every weekend.
link |
Because I knew, if you take the emotions out of competition,
link |
all it is is seeing your failures, acknowledging them,
link |
and then figuring out what you need to work on.
link |
If we take all the emotion out of it, that's what it is.
link |
So I wrestled 50 matches as a redshirt freshman,
link |
which is incredibly rare.
link |
So it's not, and like to not so great guys, you know?
link |
So like my skill level still at that point
link |
was not that great.
link |
And then the next year I came out
link |
and I made it into the finals.
link |
So my, I made a gigantic jump in that redshirt year
link |
to the real freshman year.
link |
So a few questions.
link |
Where did the funk style of wrestling,
link |
the creative stuff get developed, at which stage?
link |
So I think like looking retroactively,
link |
there was no intention to start when I was in high school
link |
with those kids, but I think that's kind of like,
link |
well, what was happening, right?
link |
So what I would really say is,
link |
I had one influential coach my redshirt year of college
link |
named Mike Ironman, great guy.
link |
But then the second thing was, it was just out of necessity.
link |
I had this burning desire to be the best.
link |
And when I was getting my ass kicked every day in the room,
link |
cause we had, you know, Tyron was there,
link |
we had All American 157, we had All American 184.
link |
So I wasn't having a ton of success.
link |
And very quickly I realized
link |
from like a more traditional athletic perspective,
link |
strength and speed, I couldn't keep up with anyone.
link |
So it's like, okay, fuck, how do I, how do I do this?
link |
You know, I want to do this.
link |
There's gotta be a way, you know?
link |
So Mike Ironman showed me a couple of things,
link |
but then it was just like this creative expansion
link |
for the next, you know, say three to five years.
link |
And then even now it's like, I don't know,
link |
there's something, and maybe you feel this way about judo,
link |
or there's something that's like fun
link |
about the way the body moves and works
link |
and exploring something new and thinking about,
link |
hey, wrestling's been happening at a relatively high level
link |
for we'll say 80 to 90 years in America.
link |
And there's still new things being developed.
link |
And so when you see something new,
link |
you're like, oh damn, like, that's great.
link |
Or like Jason Knowles may have to win Dixie.
link |
I'm like, how did I not think of that shit?
link |
Like, why did I think of that?
link |
So easy, I should have thought of that, you know?
link |
So there's this like obsession with the sport of wrestling
link |
and positions where I actually think sometimes,
link |
thank God we didn't have smartphones
link |
because I may have been distracted by my smartphone.
link |
Maybe I wouldn't have been because I was so obsessed,
link |
but maybe, but you know, some days I had,
link |
couldn't finish the single leg on a specific person
link |
or maybe they were finishing on me and it was like,
link |
go home and I was just fucking obsessed
link |
about that one position.
link |
Like, okay, what am I missing here?
link |
And not just accepting like that whatever the coach says
link |
is the answer, but like, what am I missing?
link |
What ways can my body move
link |
that no one's told me it can move yet?
link |
Where can my arms go, right?
link |
Where can I do all these things?
link |
And so I would just obsess about these things.
link |
And then, you know, sometimes you come in the next day
link |
and you say, oh, well maybe this, you know,
link |
and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't,
link |
maybe it works twice and it doesn't work the next time.
link |
And so you kind of like have this creative process
link |
and it's like, you know, there's a lot of things
link |
that are on the cutting room floor
link |
that never made it to the light
link |
because you thought they'd be good
link |
and they failed and they sucked.
link |
And then, you know, to the point where,
link |
like my senior year,
link |
I got to this point where the people,
link |
then they were just figures.
link |
Figures would wrestle in my head
link |
about positions I was thinking about.
link |
I wouldn't tell them what to do.
link |
They would just, they'd just go in my head.
link |
And then like, oh fuck, wait, that's it.
link |
That's it, like that just happened.
link |
That's the move and then I'd go try to practice
link |
and sure enough, boom, that's the move.
link |
That's exactly what you have Alpha Zero playing,
link |
You have, it's called Self Plays.
link |
You have, did the figures have like a clear?
link |
No faces, they were just like.
link |
Did they have a human form
link |
or is it just like stick figures essentially?
link |
Yeah, it was not like humans.
link |
It was more like stick figures.
link |
They weren't stick figures exactly like they were.
link |
They had some volume?
link |
Yeah, it was like a gray person
link |
and they had, you know, three dimensions essentially
link |
so I had to see how the things moved and yeah.
link |
I mean, this is exactly what OpenAI and DeepMind at Google
link |
are, I don't know if you've seen,
link |
but there's something called reinforcement learning
link |
in artificial intelligence where you have like,
link |
they've done it for like sumo wrestling.
link |
You have like, you have these two stick figures
link |
that don't even know how to get up at first
link |
and they figure out how to stand on their two feet
link |
and then they figure out how to push the other person
link |
off of the pedestal.
link |
Wait, so, but what about like when you look
link |
at the Boston Dynamics, sometimes they have trouble
link |
with like jumping and balancing and the other stuff.
link |
So are they doing that same program or no?
link |
This, everything Boston Dynamics is doing is hard coded
link |
so it's not learning the,
link |
all of the sophisticated movements and strategies
link |
like high level strategies and movement,
link |
that's all something that Boston Dynamics does not do
link |
and if it does it, like the parkour stuff,
link |
that's all hard coded in.
link |
People like project and think like these robots
link |
have like discovered like how to move
link |
in sophisticated ways they haven't.
link |
Well, that's what, when you and John were talking
link |
about the grappling robot.
link |
I mean, the one thing I was obsessing about in my head
link |
is that with the chess, right?
link |
If a chess piece moves, right?
link |
The horse can move like an L, right?
link |
It can only move like an L.
link |
It doesn't matter if it moves at two meters per second
link |
or seven meters per second.
link |
It can only move there, right?
link |
Whereas like a single leg, I can shoot a single leg
link |
with many different velocities.
link |
I can shoot at different angles.
link |
I can shoot with different amounts of force, right?
link |
I can shoot with my head up versus my head,
link |
All these things are gonna matter.
link |
We're talking about a human being defending the single leg.
link |
All of those things are gonna matter
link |
and that's where human beings who wrestle
link |
are calculating those things subconsciously.
link |
They're obviously not consciously calculating in their head,
link |
oh, the force is coming at me at this,
link |
so I need to do that, right?
link |
They're just doing it because.
link |
But see, the thing is, so you would absolutely,
link |
if you're doing a robot that you're wrestling,
link |
you're going to have to constrain the speed at which it moves
link |
and the power that it's able to deliver.
link |
So that presumably, that'll be the limitation.
link |
So then it'll be just the same exactly as a human.
link |
But then, so if we go human, max force,
link |
we're Jordan Burrows double, max force, right?
link |
That's the highest, that's the highest we get
link |
and then we go down from there.
link |
Even within that, it's like sometimes,
link |
I can shoot a single leg with a maximum force of,
link |
I don't know, we'll just say 20 is the number, right?
link |
I don't know, I'll shoot it at 20
link |
because I feel sometimes I shoot it at 15,
link |
sometimes I shoot it at 12, right?
link |
Because you feel something in your opponent
link |
that makes you do it differently.
link |
So they would have to learn how,
link |
and then all of these different things
link |
and sometimes maybe I clamp a little harder.
link |
So the robot would have to learn
link |
all of these different incoming inputs to the system
link |
and then create this reaction.
link |
Oh no, no, no, 100%.
link |
So this would be all continuous.
link |
So unlike chess, it would not be,
link |
it's just chess is discrete, there's, it's.
link |
You move, it's a very specific set of moves.
link |
Now here you would, those are all variables you control
link |
and they're continuous variables.
link |
So the speed, the force, there's actuators,
link |
so there's all these joints, right?
link |
I mean, it's just an optimization problem.
link |
It's kind of, and it's fascinating.
link |
So I've been fascinated thinking about it
link |
since you guys talked about it.
link |
It was a long time ago,
link |
I listened to it probably three to four weeks ago
link |
and I've kind of been like obsessing about it ever since.
link |
Yeah, it just changes when,
link |
so unlike boxing, for example, or striking,
link |
once you grab a hold of somebody,
link |
it changes, you're now one body, right?
link |
So it's very complicated.
link |
It's not just shooting a double leg without,
link |
like maybe doing like faking a double leg
link |
and then shooting the double leg,
link |
that's very doable with robotics,
link |
but then like doing a clinch and from there,
link |
doing like a Russian tie, like that,
link |
that's, I think that's way harder than people realize
link |
in terms of how many things are involved,
link |
like the force of the grip, the leverage you're providing
link |
with all the different parts of the shoulder
link |
and the arm and the torso, the twist,
link |
how much of your weight are you allocating,
link |
like leaning on the other person,
link |
like taking weight off of one of your legs
link |
and the other leg, all of that.
link |
I think that's the really interesting thing about humans
link |
is we're able to do all of this calculation.
link |
Subconsciously. Yeah, subconsciously.
link |
Yeah, and that's what I've been thinking about since we,
link |
it's like how many things even these high school athletes
link |
who are like getting medium good
link |
are subconsciously thinking about all the time
link |
or not even thinking about, sorry, reacting to,
link |
but then even like for me, I'm a few orders of magnitude
link |
better than some of these kids that play,
link |
and so when I go like super hard,
link |
it's like I can feel their weight
link |
moving the wrong direction,
link |
and so for me to off balance them or trip them or whatever
link |
is kind of easy sometimes, you know,
link |
because they're not feeling it the right way, right,
link |
or their timing's just a little bit off
link |
or the way they're grabbing the hip,
link |
maybe they should be up a little higher, right,
link |
these really small things.
link |
Yeah, I think that's all easy to take advantage of
link |
for a robot, it's just there's so many things.
link |
The big problem is ethically,
link |
I don't know how many people are willing to train
link |
with a robot because you're gonna get hurt.
link |
Well, couldn't you make a robot train as a robot or no?
link |
Yes, but then it's expensive.
link |
So, because they're gonna get.
link |
Put the padding on that thing.
link |
I know, but then it's not, you know,
link |
it's, then you're not capturing the full.
link |
Why can't you put like some rubber coating on them,
link |
you know, something for that effect?
link |
You could, I mean, you could, you could.
link |
I mean, you're talking about robots that are,
link |
these are humanoid robots,
link |
so we're talking about $500,000 million robots.
link |
So, you would have to be motivated to spend a lot of money
link |
because you have to have them wrestle for like a lot.
link |
Yeah, to get better.
link |
And then, the open question is how long does it take
link |
to get good enough to be a human?
link |
I don't think we understand, I don't know,
link |
I don't think you understand how hard wrestling is.
link |
Like, is it a really hard problem?
link |
Like, what's harder, chess or wrestling?
link |
Wrestling, by far.
link |
That's, yeah, that's the sense I have.
link |
So, because there's an infinite amount of moves, right?
link |
And possibilities, so once I shoot the same leg,
link |
now you have X amount of choices.
link |
Once you make your choice, now I have a choice,
link |
X amount of choices.
link |
Now you have X amount of choices on the defense,
link |
and we can just keep going back and forth, right?
link |
And this number becomes.
link |
Yeah, but the same happens with chess.
link |
Correct, but then in wrestling,
link |
you have to make these movements very instantaneously,
link |
right, because if I shoot a single leg,
link |
I'm not gonna wait and say, what's your defense?
link |
Right, you have to be instantaneously.
link |
And then, also, again, based on the force and the vectors
link |
and the angles, you have to calculate that and adjust.
link |
So really, you know, if you're saying,
link |
well, I can shoot a single leg,
link |
it's not like moving the chess, it's not one move, right?
link |
If you want to talk about different forces and stuff,
link |
it could be hundreds or thousands of different moves
link |
based on how hard I shoot it,
link |
the angle, the direction, all of those things.
link |
Yeah, but wait a minute.
link |
So, robots can do this kind of stuff really fast.
link |
People probably know the physiology of this,
link |
but the reaction speed for a human
link |
is maybe 100 milliseconds, something like that, I don't know,
link |
from sensation to, like, from the signal traveling
link |
up to your brain and down, I don't know what that number is,
link |
but robots certainly could do it way faster.
link |
You would actually have to, like, constrain the speed.
link |
Well, so the robots are already killing the chess people,
link |
right, so, yeah, theoretically,
link |
they could eventually beat wrestlers,
link |
but you asked what was harder, wrestling or chess.
link |
Yeah, and I think wrestling is,
link |
because of the time component in it
link |
and the physicality of, you know,
link |
is it this force or that force, you know?
link |
Because if I'm gonna say we're in a seatbelt side by side,
link |
right, a wrestling seatbelt, not in Jiu Jitsu,
link |
based on the pressure you're giving me,
link |
I might do a bunch of different things, right?
link |
And so, like, to an untrained eye,
link |
they might both look like the same thing from you.
link |
To a trained feel, it's like, well, in one case,
link |
it's really evident I should go this way,
link |
in another case, it's really evident I should go that way.
link |
So the other thing to consider, just like with chess,
link |
the AI systems, so human versus human
link |
play a certain way together.
link |
They actually haven't considered
link |
a really large number of strategies
link |
that AI systems discover.
link |
So one possibility with a robot,
link |
they'll discover certain ties and certain takedowns.
link |
That's what I'm saying.
link |
That, like, will dominate no matter what the human does.
link |
You think that, so you think there's that,
link |
so this, I mean, this is what I'm talking about
link |
with the wrestling, so fun is there's,
link |
even after 80, 90 years, there's this continuous evolution.
link |
There'll be some, like, low single type thing,
link |
like John Smith type of situation.
link |
Well, like a down block go behind is something
link |
that has really, I would say really in the last fiveish years
link |
has really been evolved.
link |
What's a go behind?
link |
Down block go behind, so when you shoot,
link |
well, they just, head inside or head outside matters,
link |
but there's one for both.
link |
You shoot at me, essentially, I take my leg, boom.
link |
And then, so that was kind of in existence
link |
when I was in college, right?
link |
You down block them and you stop,
link |
but usually you hit on this side of their head, right?
link |
And now, immediately, you shoot and I attack that shoulder
link |
and then I start hitting a go behind on you, right?
link |
And so, like, that in its current incarnation,
link |
it absolutely wasn't around when I was in college.
link |
I would say it probably became popular
link |
five to seven years ago.
link |
So yeah, there's these big things that are happening.
link |
Now I really wanna roll back
link |
because I wanna be ahead of the game.
link |
I wanna know what I'm missing.
link |
I mean, one interesting thing you have with Alpha Zero
link |
that plays chess is it sacrifices pieces
link |
much more than humans do.
link |
So it'll give you a piece.
link |
And not only does it give you a piece,
link |
it will wait a bunch of moves before it makes you pay.
link |
Because it knows that that's better for the long term.
link |
So like humans rarely sacrifice
link |
without getting the piece back,
link |
like two or three moves after.
link |
Alpha Zero can wait like five moves.
link |
So basically you'll have, potentially with wrestling,
link |
you might have a robot that like puts itself
link |
in bad positions, but in a certain kind of way
link |
then that will actually turn out.
link |
Lures the opponent in to trap.
link |
That's what my style is based on.
link |
You basically narrow, one thing to do
link |
is you narrow the set of choices.
link |
You put yourself in a bad position,
link |
but it narrows the set of choices.
link |
For them, because they're not used to it.
link |
Yeah, they're not used to it.
link |
And then you drag them into your, yeah.
link |
So, but there's also, the problem is
link |
there's mechanical issues.
link |
Like it's actually just difficult to build robots
link |
that are able to sense,
link |
because we have sensation throughout our body, yeah.
link |
It's just difficult to build that kind of robot.
link |
You start talking about multimillion dollars,
link |
and then people start asking you questions.
link |
Why did you invest all of this money?
link |
They wanna see what moves they do, duh, hello.
link |
It could be a better investment.
link |
So I mentioned John Smith.
link |
He is, if people don't know,
link |
one of the great wrestlers, wrestling coaches ever.
link |
He's also creative like you.
link |
He spoke really highly of you.
link |
What do you think about that guy?
link |
Did you guys ever work together?
link |
So you know what, when I was a senior,
link |
and I had the people wrestling in my head,
link |
I was lucky enough to be doing,
link |
I was pretty much a graduate,
link |
so I did an independent study with the sports psychology.
link |
I was potentially going to go to grad school
link |
for sports psychology.
link |
Well, I actually did nine credits,
link |
and then I just decided I didn't want to do it anymore.
link |
I continued learning on my own.
link |
But I had an independent study with the guy
link |
who's the head of USA Track and Field Sports Psych.
link |
So here was the class was,
link |
I got to go sit down and talk with him for an hour,
link |
and he was like fascinated by me.
link |
So he didn't let me do homework.
link |
It was like the greatest three credits ever.
link |
I learned so much.
link |
It was so awesome.
link |
But so I started, so one time it came up,
link |
I had these robot, or people wrestling in my head,
link |
and he said, well, who else do you think,
link |
but John Smith happened.
link |
So I went and got John Smith's number,
link |
and I called him and said,
link |
hey, you ever had these people wrestling in your head?
link |
And he said, yeah, but as soon as I stopped coaching,
link |
Same thing happened to me.
link |
As soon as I started coaching, they went away.
link |
So if I really force myself now,
link |
and I'm like, I see something in practice,
link |
and it's really higher level,
link |
because high school wrestling,
link |
I don't want to, maybe I feel bad,
link |
but it's a little bit lower level, right?
link |
So if Keegan, for example, who won the tournament,
link |
if he's struggling with a problem or asks me a question,
link |
and I can force myself to see the bodies moving
link |
and think about it again,
link |
kind of like I was in early age,
link |
but it won't just flow there anymore.
link |
So he said it went away, and for me, it went away also.
link |
By the way, if we can pause on the bodies in your head,
link |
how are they generating new ideas?
link |
Are they just kind of?
link |
So it's just, they're just scrambling in your head?
link |
It would be specifically based on a problem
link |
I was struggling with, or a specific position, you know?
link |
It goes in for a single, and then go from there.
link |
Yeah, so I'm sitting in geography class,
link |
and I don't have to work that hard, because it's easy, right?
link |
And yeah, I'm just sitting there acting
link |
like I'm looking at the board,
link |
and these guys are wrestling,
link |
and I'm watching them wrestle,
link |
and yeah, sometimes they come up with a really good solution.
link |
Is there somebody you look up to style wise?
link |
Like Gable, John Smith, all these legend status people.
link |
Probably Gable, or it's a Gable.
link |
John Smith, but after the fact.
link |
So the problem with wrestling in my era
link |
was you couldn't watch it.
link |
There was no access, right?
link |
It wasn't really available.
link |
Even if you want to say, go find a bunch of John Smith,
link |
man, they're kind of hard to find, right?
link |
There's a couple of them on YouTube,
link |
but I've obviously seen all of those,
link |
but in my era, there really wasn't any of it.
link |
So it was hard to be a fan of something,
link |
and that's why wrestling has, the fans are going like this,
link |
because now you can flip on the Flow app,
link |
and you can watch something that's happening in Europe, right?
link |
We can do this easily, so we can be a fan of people.
link |
So now I'm more a fan of wrestling than I was then,
link |
because there just was no access.
link |
So now I can watch someone I like,
link |
and say, oh shit, that guy's wrestling.
link |
Oh, boom, I flip my phone on, I watch them wrestle.
link |
That type of thing.
link |
You know, and a quick rant.
link |
It's really frustrating that you can't watch the Olympics.
link |
Oh my god, it's so frustrating.
link |
I've been, I think I'm gonna go to war on this point.
link |
Go to NBC's headquarters, I'll go with you.
link |
You got a soldier here.
link |
I was talking to Jimmy, Jimmy Pedro,
link |
he was surprised by this, too.
link |
Most matches, you can't see, even,
link |
you talk about like a comeback, Gable Steelers,
link |
and you can't see the full match.
link |
You get like a crappy highlight.
link |
So the two biggest things, and really the three,
link |
the NCAA championships on ESPN,
link |
the Olympic trials are on NBC, and the Olympics are on NBC.
link |
And these companies are so big,
link |
they don't have a department dedicated
link |
to selling the rights to that footage, right?
link |
So the rights to wrestling footage,
link |
which no one really cares all that much about,
link |
except a niche, are the exact same as track and field,
link |
or basketball in the Olympics.
link |
So yes, all of this stuff is completely inaccessible to us.
link |
The NCAAs, the Olympic trials, and the Olympics,
link |
you can't go watch old film on it, it sucks.
link |
Yeah, old, the current film.
link |
So you can't even watch the Gable match?
link |
The Gable Steelers, no.
link |
They did a, you know, they do something
link |
that annoys the fuck out of me.
link |
Okay, they do like a three or two minute highlight.
link |
So it's like they capture the most important thing,
link |
but it's all about the buildup.
link |
It's like that very beginning when you step on the mat,
link |
and the nerves, and you walk out, and like that,
link |
I mean, I don't know, you miss,
link |
then when the triumph happens, or the heartbreak happens,
link |
it has that much more power.
link |
Yeah, if you want to go to war with NBC or ESPN,
link |
I'm happy to join that.
link |
I think I'm fortunate it's the IOC.
link |
Well, I mean, is the IOC on that?
link |
IOC is selling, for the Olympics,
link |
is the one that's making.
link |
Well, so NBC broadcasts,
link |
so they obviously have the live rights.
link |
You would think they would have recorded,
link |
if they, I mean, they're the ones recording it,
link |
you would think they keep the rights when you think.
link |
No, no, no, they're getting a license of it.
link |
They're getting exclusive like license,
link |
but like the, you know, for example,
link |
I've had this, I talked to Travis Stevens, the Judo player,
link |
and there's a really sort of famous match,
link |
just a heartbreak in his career from 2012 Olympics,
link |
where he goes against a German, Oli Bischoff, whatever.
link |
It's a 20 minute match to go to war,
link |
and that's not available anywhere,
link |
but it's uploaded on YouTube and set to private.
link |
The reason I know this is on the IOC channel.
link |
So they've uploaded all of these matches.
link |
They have it and put it up.
link |
So actually, so my Olympic match, the one I won,
link |
got put public, and so I don't know if it was private,
link |
it got put up on YouTube.
link |
I was allergic to it the week of my Jake Paul fight.
link |
I'm like, why, this is 13 years later, this is bullshit.
link |
Like this should have been up.
link |
So, I mean, okay, so what about Olympic trials footage?
link |
That has to be the USOC then or NBC?
link |
So I know like, okay, so I know Flow, right?
link |
Cause I worked with them.
link |
I know if Flow buys your event or whatever, right?
link |
They buy the rights, generally in the contract,
link |
they'll have rights to both live stream it
link |
and then use that footage at any point moving forward.
link |
So those matches live on Flow's website.
link |
That's why I would be surprised
link |
if NBC didn't have something similar.
link |
Flow does a pretty good job of providing
link |
like a place where you can watch all these matches.
link |
And also there's an argument with Flow as well,
link |
but certainly with Olympics.
link |
There's a difference between what Flow does
link |
and what the Olympics represent.
link |
What do you mean by that?
link |
Like it feels like the Olympics,
link |
which is what the charter says,
link |
should be as accessible as possible.
link |
Like you should really lower the barrier
link |
for entry for the Olympics.
link |
You know that's what the charter says,
link |
but those people in the IOC,
link |
these are the worst people ever.
link |
Well, they're not bad.
link |
They just lost touch of the dream they once had
link |
when they joined the IOC.
link |
Well, I would argue all the way back
link |
that these are rich fat cats who,
link |
like I get so mad about the NCAA,
link |
which finally now got rid of this bullshit term amateurism.
link |
It's like, well, there's some holy grail
link |
where you can't make money to be an amateur athlete,
link |
but the people who own the IOC
link |
or the people who own the institutions,
link |
college institutions are making boatloads of money
link |
off of you, that's crap.
link |
So you competed, like you said, at the 2008 Olympics.
link |
Did you believe you can win gold?
link |
So your mental game was on point.
link |
Yeah, I was ready.
link |
So what went wrong?
link |
This wasn't good enough.
link |
That was what I said.
link |
Yeah, I mean, so at that point in time,
link |
it was my first year of international competition.
link |
So when I came out in 2007,
link |
it was my first time making 74 kilograms,
link |
which is pretty small for me.
link |
I had some failures, but then quickly I turned that around
link |
and I was having success in America.
link |
I was beating everyone.
link |
I don't wanna say easy, but yeah,
link |
I was doing really well.
link |
I went international one time,
link |
and there was one match I got cheated on.
link |
The Russians, they're cheaters.
link |
Excuse you, Ukraine, not Russia.
link |
I lost one real match where I actually lost,
link |
and it was to Denis Sarguch,
link |
who would go on to win three world titles,
link |
but he was behind the T of that year,
link |
and it was competitive.
link |
So I knew, okay, I'm going with the best guys in the world.
link |
I beat a bunch of other guys who were good
link |
and had passed decent results.
link |
So I knew I was right there.
link |
Unfortunately, I ran into this guy, Ivan Fundora,
link |
and I had someone do scouting reports for him,
link |
actually my high school coach,
link |
who now coaches for our academy, John Messimerich,
link |
and Fundora was the worst stylistic matchup.
link |
I got him, and I lost him second round.
link |
So I wasn't good enough.
link |
Had I decided to keep wrestling,
link |
I probably would have gotten better,
link |
but at that point, I just wasn't in the cards.
link |
So in your division was, like you said, it's the T of,
link |
if I said it's the T of, that guy's special.
link |
He's very special.
link |
So that would be my other guy that you asked earlier
link |
who I enjoyed watching, and that was a guy I,
link |
again, it was kind of after the fact
link |
because it was hard to access footage,
link |
but he was a lot of fun to watch.
link |
What do you think made him great?
link |
A lot of people talk about him
link |
as potentially one of the greatest ever.
link |
I mean, so he won six and three,
link |
six Worlds, three Olympics, nine total,
link |
which there's only one or two people above that.
link |
So again, it was hard to watch any live footage of him,
link |
but from what I've seen, his feel is different.
link |
He was just ahead of his time,
link |
and the feel and the touch he had
link |
for certain moves and different things,
link |
because obviously physically he's kind of unimposing.
link |
He's taller than skinnier,
link |
which it can work in wrestling,
link |
but it is by less represented.
link |
So yeah, he was special, so good.
link |
Do you take any inspiration from,
link |
let's talk about Dagestan in general.
link |
What do you think makes those wrestlers great?
link |
Yeah, it's fascinating.
link |
Have you read the book, The Talent Code?
link |
And that kind of talks about these talent hotspots
link |
all around the world.
link |
So now obviously with our wrestling academies,
link |
we try to take some lessons from that and apply it.
link |
I got to assume, they didn't cover Dagestan
link |
in that book specifically,
link |
but I got to assume a lot of the same principles
link |
that are in that book apply to Dagestan in wrestling.
link |
They did South Korea and women's golf.
link |
They did Curacao in baseball.
link |
They picked a lot of these other places
link |
that were really elite.
link |
I think it was maybe Moscow in women's tennis also.
link |
So I think all of these things
link |
that make any group great organization
link |
is probably the same things that's happening there.
link |
Well, the hardship, I mean,
link |
is there something specific about wrestling
link |
that can create so many great champions?
link |
So obviously they all love the big deal.
link |
Wrestling specifically is a big deal there.
link |
They do Sambo also, obviously.
link |
So that's part of it is a lot of the kids are doing it.
link |
They obviously are rough tumble, tough life.
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Getting a lot of fights.
link |
And then I think that also that a lot of them,
link |
it is a way out right there.
link |
The elite level athletes in that part of the world,
link |
from my understanding, are really well compensated
link |
compared to what the average person makes
link |
and they're treated really well.
link |
So people see it as a way out.
link |
Whereas like, and then honestly,
link |
if America is getting better,
link |
but in 2008, the reason I went to MMA
link |
was because I didn't want to be poor my whole life.
link |
You know what I'm saying?
link |
It's like, well, I don't want to make $20,000
link |
for the next 48 years.
link |
So I'm going to go do something else.
link |
If I could have made, even I didn't need to be rich, right?
link |
If I could have made $100,000 or $70,000 wrestling,
link |
I probably would have kept wrestling.
link |
So I think there's factors
link |
and obviously now they have a really like,
link |
a bunch of really good people in one area.
link |
So there's probably, and it's been going on for a long time.
link |
So there's probably been a bunch of like adults
link |
and coaches that are coming back and helping that progress.
link |
So yeah, a lot of those things that happen.
link |
So I'm definitely going to travel there to talk to them
link |
because I can speak Russian.
link |
makes me uniquely qualified to.
link |
My brother can speak a little bit of Russian.
link |
Your brother can? Yeah.
link |
Okay, like a little bit like he swears and.
link |
Like he would, oh man, don't, don't make me oversell.
link |
I think he would be able to have a conversation with you.
link |
Probably not like you.
link |
What's the, what's the reason he knows Russian?
link |
I don't know why he got obsessed with languages.
link |
And so his college degree is actually,
link |
what are they called?
link |
Interdis, where you have three minors.
link |
So he had a minor in Russian, a minor in Spanish
link |
and maybe Japanese, I'm messing up.
link |
It's definitely, it's Russian and Spanish for sure.
link |
I don't know what the third one is.
link |
No, but yeah, Dagestan, it's really fascinating.
link |
But the emphasis on technique, the lighter drilling,
link |
like they don't really go super hard.
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Yeah, and I only spent a couple, so I was there,
link |
I was in Vladikavkaz in 2008.
link |
That was where the World Cup was.
link |
We had to train there for like two days afterwards.
link |
So I didn't get to dig deep,
link |
dig deep into what was going on or anything.
link |
But yeah, I mean, I think sparring is very beneficial
link |
for wrestling, not like sparring MMA is we fight, right?
link |
Sparring in wrestling is, so I always just describe it
link |
to be really simple.
link |
If we're drilling, it's relatively 0% resistance.
link |
If we're going as hard as we can, that's 100%.
link |
There's all this gray area in the middle that's sparring,
link |
So if you have a good relationship,
link |
like college me and my brother, we could just go
link |
and we know where each other's at.
link |
We don't even have to talk about it, right?
link |
But like in my wrestling club, I'll say,
link |
okay, hey, I want you guys to go 50% in this position.
link |
Or I want the high crotch guy, I want him to shoot
link |
and this is for him, so I want him to go 70.
link |
And the defensive guy, I want you to go 40.
link |
So you're not supposed to be trying to win here.
link |
You're gonna go a little later.
link |
I want you to give him some looks, you know?
link |
So I think it has really taken hold in America.
link |
I think it's really beneficial for success.
link |
And I think that's, I mean, America's doing better
link |
than we've ever done historically.
link |
Well, that 70 and 40, that's like an art form
link |
to find that right place,
link |
because the really good people I've trained with,
link |
they go much closer to 100% speed wise,
link |
but without forcing things the way you would
link |
when you're going.
link |
It's some weird combination of things that,
link |
like if you truly earn a technique,
link |
then you're given that technique.
link |
But if you don't, you don't.
link |
And then it becomes much less injury prone.
link |
It becomes somehow more fun, more dynamic.
link |
You don't get stuck in positions.
link |
It's just a lot of movement.
link |
Yeah, the one thing, so you and John talked about,
link |
like different ways to learn and get better.
link |
And so I think John obviously innovated
link |
within the sport of jiu jitsu.
link |
And so for us, and maybe there's a differentiator for us.
link |
I think about it like.
link |
Sorry to interrupt.
link |
You have this academy and you sent me this plan.
link |
They have like a really well thought through plan
link |
for how to develop a good wrestler.
link |
So I think it's, for me there's four categories, right?
link |
There's the teaching, which is like, you don't know shit.
link |
You're coming in and I'm showing you the move
link |
and you're literally going out there and you're trying.
link |
To me, that's not even drilling.
link |
That's like teaching, like you're trying to learn something.
link |
So obviously in someone's earlier periods,
link |
they're spending a lot of time in that phase
link |
because they literally don't even know
link |
how to move their bodies the right way.
link |
Once you learn the skill, then there's the drilling
link |
because you absolutely have to get those reps
link |
to become really proficient in that movement
link |
and then the sparring and then the live, right?
link |
And so like, I think obviously by the time you get
link |
to the kind of, I don't wanna say end point, right?
link |
But further on, the time you spend teaching is so,
link |
I don't wanna say, I'm sorry,
link |
in the learning teaching phase is not insignificant,
link |
but it's so much smaller because to someone
link |
who's really good, who I've coached for 10 years,
link |
I don't have to give this big long drawn out explanation.
link |
I just have to say, hey, move your hand a little differently
link |
or just do this, right?
link |
We don't have to spend any time there.
link |
So I think that's like something that consumes
link |
for the younger kids, say five through 12 or 13,
link |
we're consuming a massive amount of time there
link |
on that teaching learning phase.
link |
And then as we get older, that time wanes a lot.
link |
But that makes total sense, right?
link |
It's funny because when you look at like jiu jitsu schools,
link |
they spend a lot of time in the teaching learning
link |
and then the live, like there's not enough drilling.
link |
I like how you draw a distinction there
link |
because it feels like you're always starting from scratch.
link |
Like people have like very crappy short term memory.
link |
Like they're not, like the way teaching is done
link |
is you show a technique from scratch
link |
and it seems disjoint.
link |
It is for sure, especially if you have a class
link |
that's been with you for a while,
link |
you don't have to start from scratch.
link |
You can say, hey, let's focus on this one little thing here
link |
or let's, after we do this, let's do that,
link |
and you kind of put, start putting it all together.
link |
And then with jiu jitsu, the thing that I really struggled
link |
with was a couple of things.
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It was, and this is not speaking for all the jiu jitians,
link |
my personal experience through the sport.
link |
And I actually found my, so when I unretired,
link |
I found someone really great that I loved
link |
and I really wish it was Mark Lehman.
link |
I don't know if you know him at all.
link |
I wish I would have found him earlier
link |
because he was just tremendous.
link |
But number one, there's no drilling.
link |
So it's like, in wrestling, I can boil down to,
link |
I can probably name you the best six moves, right?
link |
So we need, as younger people, single leg, right?
link |
Single leg's gonna be the most proficient takedown.
link |
It always has been, I don't know,
link |
probably always will be,
link |
unless they figure out something different.
link |
The robot figures out something different.
link |
We're gonna shoot a lot of single legs.
link |
Because everyone's gonna do that, right?
link |
We're gonna shoot a lot of single legs.
link |
So just like, say, an armbar or some type of sweep, right?
link |
Why can't we go get 50 reps there?
link |
Hey, by the time I've been in your jiu jitsu school
link |
for two years, I better know a fucking armbar.
link |
So don't spend 10 minutes teaching me.
link |
Just tell me to go hit 50 reps.
link |
And then if, when I'm hitting my reps,
link |
if there's something I'm doing wrong,
link |
then just say, hey, Ben,
link |
move your leg a little bit that way
link |
or raise your hips up a little more, right?
link |
Like, correct as you're drilling
link |
so you're getting all these reps at it
link |
so you're becoming more proficient.
link |
And then the other thing I really struggled with was,
link |
to your point during live,
link |
so many times it's just this five minute go, go, go.
link |
And that's not the most efficient way to learn
link |
because when you have two people,
link |
especially when they're focused on winning,
link |
and you say go, they're gonna go to wherever they do best.
link |
Well, if I'm trying to make you good at something,
link |
I don't want you doing what you do best all the time.
link |
I need you doing some other things, right?
link |
If you have a great single leg
link |
but you can't shoot to the other side of the body,
link |
we need to work on that, right?
link |
You need to start shooting the other side.
link |
There's some sense that you,
link |
it's not like you should be told what to work on
link |
but you should be told to work on the thing
link |
that you wanna work on.
link |
Meaning, I don't know, maybe you can comment on this,
link |
but everybody develops a different game
link |
as you get better and better.
link |
There's a set of things you need to be working on.
link |
So I actually have, like when I,
link |
especially when I'm training very seriously,
link |
I'll have a specific technique that I have in mind
link |
and I have a sheet of paper on the side
link |
where I literally, my head keep counting off
link |
how many times I put myself in that position
link |
and pulled off the technique.
link |
And that's all I care about in like training.
link |
So I'll just, whatever it is,
link |
if it's a guillotine, it's a guillotine,
link |
arm drag, arm drag, but I wanna make sure I don't,
link |
I love numbers, so I'll say like,
link |
I'll make sure I get 50 arm drags
link |
and I'm not getting off the mat until I do.
link |
And that, you know, if it takes.
link |
Any thrilling or live contest?
link |
So in this, in the thing I'm describing right now
link |
is the live contest.
link |
But drilling, obviously, drilling.
link |
So I feel like I can't find a drilling part,
link |
like it's so hard to find drilling partners, even.
link |
It's annoying to me that this is boring.
link |
And there's nothing more annoying to me
link |
than the look of boredom on another person's face
link |
when we're drilling.
link |
It's like, don't you.
link |
Do you really think drilling's that beneficial to you?
link |
Cause you said it's a job.
link |
And he thinks I'm an idiot, but yes.
link |
Why am I, am I an idiot?
link |
Or why is this drilling beneficial?
link |
Well, let's go with two trick questions.
link |
Why is it so beneficial?
link |
I think for me, it's, there's a meditative aspect to it
link |
where the more you drill,
link |
the more you start noticing the details.
link |
Let me push back a little bit here.
link |
I'm not going to push back all the way.
link |
Cause every time, if I was wrestling,
link |
I'll warm up my head, crotch, shin, leg, whatever, right?
link |
But even, so say like at a high level
link |
when I'm really wrestling, say 10 years ago,
link |
even during that drill portion,
link |
if we talk about the resistance of our opponent
link |
it's very likely that my partner at that point,
link |
and this is people I'm really comfortable with,
link |
they're probably at least going 20 or 30, right?
link |
They're probably giving me a certain look with the sprawl
link |
or, you know, I got to get through their hands.
link |
If I don't set it up right,
link |
they might put their arm down, right?
link |
So it's like, we are drilling
link |
cause we're wrestling at a really low resistance level,
link |
but there's a little bit of sparring.
link |
The 20%, the 20, yeah, yeah.
link |
Yeah, so that's not really drilling.
link |
Cause I think it's drilling.
link |
I think literally you're shooting
link |
and I'm just going boom, I'm like,
link |
show me your dummy, boom, boom, boom, boom type of thing.
link |
No, but it's very hard to be a dummy
link |
that doesn't do 20%, so you're going to do 20%.
link |
Yeah, that's so, so yes, that's 20%.
link |
So that's like sparring a little bit then.
link |
No, but they're not really resisting.
link |
They're just giving you the right frame.
link |
They're giving you the right like movement
link |
and they're being an intelligent dummy, essentially.
link |
I mean, but also like the really important component
link |
of this is you pick the techniques for which is beneficial.
link |
If the technique is, has dynamic elements to it,
link |
you don't want to be doing that with,
link |
I'm saying like there's certain moves
link |
and I like those moves and I select the game base
link |
So are you drilling to get better
link |
or are you drilling just to work out?
link |
No, to get better.
link |
That's what I'm trying to tell you.
link |
I believe you can become like exceptionally good
link |
very fast by drilling.
link |
First of all, let me ask you an empirical question.
link |
Let me, have you actually drilled 10,000 times
link |
a particular move?
link |
You haven't drilled millions.
link |
Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands likely.
link |
I think you're just saying numbers.
link |
I don't think you know what 100,000.
link |
The numbers are freaking astronomical.
link |
It's way more than 10,000.
link |
I don't think you know what 100,000 feels like.
link |
Dude, there was a 10 year period
link |
where I wrestled every single day.
link |
That's 3,000 days, so you're telling me 10,000,
link |
that's only three of them a day.
link |
I do way more than that.
link |
Probably 30 of them a day.
link |
Yeah, hundreds of thousands.
link |
I doubt you did 30 a day for a particular technique.
link |
I did, for sure, 100%.
link |
Because some days I might do 100, right?
link |
So 30 of 30 is not very many.
link |
Especially if we count all reps,
link |
if we're counting drilling and live.
link |
So like our college coaches would make us just drill a lot
link |
and I just hated it.
link |
So I would rebel and just kind of give a little spar.
link |
You shoot a high crotch, we'll start.
link |
Coach wants to drill a high crotch.
link |
Okay, we'll start.
link |
You shoot the high crotch, that's great.
link |
Then I'm gonna sit the corner or I'm gonna give you my hip
link |
or I'm gonna try something.
link |
So then you have to react.
link |
And I would argue that all skill level
link |
past the beginner stuff is some necessity of that, right?
link |
I'm gonna do this, then what are you gonna do?
link |
It's back and forth.
link |
I shoot a single leg, what are you gonna do?
link |
I shoot a high crotch, what are you gonna do?
link |
And you have to start unconsciously programming
link |
these things in your head.
link |
Because if you're too conscious to think about it,
link |
it's gonna be too slow to actually hit it at math.
link |
But the drilling is the unconscious programming.
link |
But the simple movement, the first simple movement,
link |
the first simple movement, that single leg
link |
or the high crotch or arm drag, whatever.
link |
Like I feel like the amount you're gonna get better at it
link |
is so minuscule compared to the amount you're gonna gain
link |
at doing other things around it.
link |
No, but that's the key word, you feel.
link |
That's your opinion.
link |
If we did a study on it, then I would be proven correct.
link |
So first of all, your brain,
link |
as an exceptionally creative combat athlete,
link |
it's clear that you don't like the boredom of drilling.
link |
Like it's obvious that you have like,
link |
you're such a creative energy
link |
that you're just not going to be somebody
link |
who's going to enjoy that.
link |
So enjoyment is probably having an active mind
link |
is really important.
link |
So the question is, do you have the kind of makeup
link |
that has an active mind during a drilling on a dummy?
link |
And I have that mind.
link |
But do you really think, okay,
link |
so if you're, let's pick a technique.
link |
What technique do you want to drill on?
link |
Are we doing jiu jitsu or wrestling?
link |
Whatever you want.
link |
It's hard to describe with words, but certain guard passes.
link |
Let me think, just guard pass.
link |
Okay, so you have a guard pass
link |
and you get it to be, I'd say nine and a half out of 10,
link |
right, just from a technical standpoint.
link |
Don't you think you need some resistance to feel?
link |
Because essentially all benefit after that
link |
is going to be, what are they going to try to do to me?
link |
And if they shift that way,
link |
do I need to sink here or move there?
link |
So it's like, I actually think we're agreeing,
link |
but maybe terminology wise.
link |
Well, the split is the important thing.
link |
Like how much of each?
link |
So I think it is spar.
link |
Like I think it's a very light touch spar
link |
is what you're talking about,
link |
which is in my opinion, really isn't drilling.
link |
And it's because drilling past the basic proficiency,
link |
I don't think brings much value.
link |
But that's what I'm trying to tell you is I think it does.
link |
I think doing that same movement,
link |
I think you begin to learn more over time.
link |
Like you're saying like once you get the basic proficiency,
link |
then there's a diminishing returns.
link |
I think everything has diminishing returns
link |
when you're learning a technique.
link |
But with something as complex as wrestling or grappling,
link |
if you can have way more gains over here,
link |
why focus on going from a 9.7 to a 9.8?
link |
If this other area, if you're spending so much time here
link |
that this other area is left unexplored,
link |
you can make gigantic gains over there.
link |
No, but you're gonna lose.
link |
I think a lot depends on your style.
link |
I think a lot is determined by how good you are
link |
And so if you wanna become a master of a particular thing
link |
and then make your whole game
link |
where it's all pulled into that system, then I don't know.
link |
I think one is too small of a number.
link |
I feel like you can't be easily this, like I've.
link |
Yeah, you wanna funnel, you wanna create funnels.
link |
Funnels. Funnels, right?
link |
Where everything goes into a few positions.
link |
And then it's all field.
link |
Where I feel you win 100%.
link |
But I feel you can get like drilling on a dummy 80%
link |
of the time and 20% of the time live rolling
link |
with people worse than you.
link |
Like a little bit worse than you.
link |
Or a lot worse than you.
link |
Yeah, so I think, I definitely think.
link |
So my buildup would be teach.
link |
So we're talking a complex technique, right?
link |
So by the time we're talking about,
link |
we'll say a late high school kid who's pretty proficient,
link |
he's probably done the drilling part.
link |
So then now it's like, okay,
link |
if I wanna get something new to you,
link |
I'll probably tell you,
link |
you'll probably be able to do the basic premise
link |
within five to 10 minutes if they're good, right?
link |
Do this, okay, they do it.
link |
Then it's like, okay, so now here from here,
link |
what we're gonna do, we're gonna go light sparring.
link |
So I know you have success.
link |
Cause I need you to complete the task
link |
in order to get better at it.
link |
That's something a lot of people in wrestling mess up,
link |
is they just wanna go with the toughest person.
link |
But if you go with the toughest person,
link |
you're not gonna actually execute on any skills.
link |
You're gonna get a workout and I need you to execute
link |
cause I need you to get good at this.
link |
In order to get good at it,
link |
you have to get all the way through the technique.
link |
Why do you need them to complete?
link |
Just so they gain confidence in the technique
link |
or they go through all this stuff?
link |
They have to feel all the way through.
link |
Like if I said, learn a high crotch when you're drilling
link |
but stop halfway every time.
link |
But you're not actually gonna be able to do it
link |
cause you're gonna stop, you're not gonna feel.
link |
So, you know, try it on someone, spar lightly, get it.
link |
Do it on someone who's not as good as you, get it.
link |
Then kind of work your way up the ladder
link |
so you can get it on someone your own skill level
link |
or maybe better than you, right, in a live competition.
link |
So it's like, I don't know,
link |
I feel like that basic drilling,
link |
so a kid like Keegan who I've brought up a few times,
link |
I feel like if there's something new,
link |
I could literally tell him,
link |
this is what I want you to do
link |
and he's such a great feeler,
link |
he could go drill it proficiently
link |
within probably a minute or two.
link |
But then to hit it on someone high level,
link |
that's gonna take quite a while longer.
link |
And that's a mix of drilling and sparring
link |
on people a little bit worse than you.
link |
Yeah, and then equal and then better, yeah.
link |
Yeah, because there's this, with grappling,
link |
there's such like a feel component to the pressure,
link |
the movement, all these things.
link |
And there's still, like I said,
link |
there's so many things you can throw at someone
link |
out of one position, not just moves,
link |
but moves at a different level of force or whatever.
link |
Are you and these kids developing
link |
like a big picture strategy of like,
link |
what are the main setups and take downs
link |
and just like a whole system?
link |
So I kind of sent you our technique book, right,
link |
how we kind of go at approach it.
link |
So I think in wrestling, you're going to need,
link |
you're gonna need a handful of things
link |
just off the word go, right?
link |
You're going to, so I think on our feet,
link |
I need to be able to take this out of the body.
link |
I need to be able to take that out of the body.
link |
I need to be able to bring you underneath me.
link |
I need to be able to go around you, right?
link |
Now we can accomplish those different ways,
link |
but we should have all of those weapons
link |
if we wanna be really good some way, right?
link |
So if I neglect one of those,
link |
so if I neglect the ability to say, pull you down, right?
link |
Now, if I have a good shot and you're smart,
link |
you're just gonna lower your stance.
link |
So my shot is not gonna be as successful
link |
and I have the inability to pull you down, right?
link |
So I kind of need all of those so I can,
link |
as they get better, I can point those things out.
link |
On bottom, my folks at bottom,
link |
there's certain things like you have to be good
link |
at leg right defense, right?
link |
You have to, I mean, at a high level or you're just gonna,
link |
when you get it in, you're just getting stuck there.
link |
Not gonna be able to escape.
link |
But besides that, yeah, there's a multitude of things
link |
that you can choose from and I'm gonna,
link |
depending on your body style and what you're good and bad
link |
at, I'm gonna probably develop something a little different.
link |
I might give you, hey, you do the quad pod,
link |
you'd be better at the knee slide, whatever.
link |
Yeah, top, kind of same thing.
link |
I have to ask you about Khabib.
link |
So I remember a while ago Rogan said
link |
that that's the perfect fight for Khabib, you are.
link |
So let me ask two questions.
link |
The first, do you think you can beat him in an MMA match
link |
when you're at your peak?
link |
Yeah, I don't like, yeah, I mean,
link |
it's one of those people where people will get really mad
link |
at me if I say yes, but yeah, I mean, I think.
link |
But how would you do it?
link |
How would you solve that puzzle?
link |
Yeah, I mean, we would grapple
link |
and I think I would be better than him.
link |
But you know, sometimes I feel weird saying this,
link |
people are like, yeah, right, you're full of shit.
link |
And, but that's no one out grappled him, right?
link |
I mean, nobody did.
link |
And maybe I'm wrong on this,
link |
but if we look at the best possible candidates,
link |
I'm definitely one of them.
link |
And then obviously I have a small size advantage too.
link |
So in a wrestling match,
link |
so we can just reduce that MMA match to a wrestling match.
link |
What do you think is the right strategy on him?
link |
Like, do you understand his style,
link |
his wrestling style, the pressure he applies?
link |
Do you understand how the hell he makes it happen?
link |
Yeah, I mean, he never, unfortunately,
link |
fought any real, who I would say,
link |
really, really high level wrestlers.
link |
I was actually really disappointed
link |
how bad Justin Gaethje's wrestling was,
link |
because Justin Gaethje had some solid success,
link |
but his wrestling was really bad in that fight.
link |
Gaethje had success in the NCAA?
link |
Yeah, I think he was seventh place, maybe, or somewhere.
link |
He was definitely all American.
link |
It was lower though.
link |
So yeah, I would like to see how he dealt with someone
link |
who was like, who I think, oh man,
link |
this guy's a really high level wrestler.
link |
Because we saw, and this is early in his career,
link |
but Gleason Tebow did give him some issues
link |
earlier in his career.
link |
So I would like to see him in that situation
link |
and see how he does.
link |
I would love to, I just love wrestling and grappling.
link |
Yeah, I'd love this.
link |
Someone said, hey, Ben, Khabib wants to roll with you.
link |
Okay, I'm there tomorrow.
link |
It sounds like a blast.
link |
He's probably competitive as hell.
link |
You're still competitive?
link |
I know when to be and when not to be.
link |
Say if I'm going to high school kids,
link |
or I'm not going to be competitive
link |
because then I'm just being a dick.
link |
How would you take him down?
link |
What are we talking about, real wrestling?
link |
Like wrestling, wrestling?
link |
Wrestling, wrestling.
link |
I would probably try to take single legs and stuff.
link |
No, honestly, I don't have the slightest clue.
link |
I'd have to feel, I'd feel him out.
link |
But single legs is my best take on it.
link |
People talk about his wrestling being really good.
link |
People that train with him.
link |
So, okay, so I grilled someone, I will not say who,
link |
on the Ed Ruth thing,
link |
because Ed Ruth is very elite at folk style wrestling.
link |
He never became that great at fighting, unfortunately.
link |
Wait, Ed Ruth wrestled Khabib?
link |
They were on the same team for a while, yeah.
link |
And there was rumors that Khabib beat him up.
link |
And I said, I sure can't believe that.
link |
And I've heard that that was,
link |
if they were just straight wrestling,
link |
Ed would get slightly the better of it.
link |
Well, Ed Ruth is like one of the greats.
link |
So that was what I heard.
link |
But in an MMA setting,
link |
because of all the tools that Khabib would get him.
link |
I agree with Rogan on this one.
link |
That would have been good to see.
link |
So yeah, if Khabib wants to work out, I'd love it.
link |
I love wrestling and grappling.
link |
I don't do much Jiu Jitsu
link |
because I just don't have time for it anymore.
link |
I'm at the Wrestling Academy like every single day.
link |
But yeah, I loved Jiu Jitsu while I did it.
link |
And if I didn't have Wrestling Academies,
link |
I probably would still be doing Jiu Jitsu.
link |
Yeah, you do well in Jiu Jitsu as well.
link |
But let me ask you a ridiculous question.
link |
Who's the greatest of all time, freestyle or folk style?
link |
Well, I will say my knowledge past like the year 2000
link |
is really not that great.
link |
Because you can't be.
link |
In which direction?
link |
Sorry, after 2000?
link |
Because you can't find any film or anything, you know?
link |
And so you hear of all these.
link |
So you need evidence?
link |
You need direct evidence?
link |
I want to be able to watch them and see them
link |
and feel the times and feel their opponents
link |
and all those things to really like,
link |
I hate giving bad answers, you know?
link |
So there's just not enough footage of any of those people.
link |
You know, we go back to someone like Alexander Medved.
link |
Like, you can't find footage.
link |
You can't find anything on him, you know?
link |
It's like, who is the wrestler?
link |
So post 2000, I think, and obviously just freestyle.
link |
Americans, Russians?
link |
Oh, it's just that T.F. has probably the best argument
link |
Yeah, the Russian tank, that guy is, yeah.
link |
So who's better, Snyder or Sajilov?
link |
So Sajilov just won at the Olympics.
link |
Now, I understand this.
link |
I don't understand how that works,
link |
but it's pretty close, right?
link |
Not that match, but in general, the matchup.
link |
So, well, so Kyle won the first one in 17.
link |
Sajilov pinned him the following year.
link |
But then Kyle lost and took bronze in 19.
link |
And then just lost.
link |
I don't want to say fairly decisively,
link |
but it was six to three and it was a late take down.
link |
He kind of gave it up and maybe if it was really competitive,
link |
maybe he wouldn't have.
link |
They're gonna wrestle again in like two weeks here.
link |
So that, you know, yeah, I mean,
link |
you have to say Sajilov at this point.
link |
There's nothing else to say
link |
unless Kyle proves us otherwise.
link |
Yeah, not enough people talk about Sajilov.
link |
Okay, well, you think that guy should go to MMA?
link |
You think Kyle should go to MMA?
link |
Some of these guys.
link |
Yeah, they're making enough money in wrestling
link |
where they don't really feel the need to.
link |
It's great. It's terrifying though.
link |
It's a heavyweight, Sajilov would probably,
link |
it's like Khabib, but heavyweight.
link |
Well, I don't know if you remember,
link |
do you remember Bilal Makov?
link |
So Bilal Makov actually was the Russian representative
link |
in both styles in 2016, Greco and freestyle.
link |
And he was, to my knowledge,
link |
the only person the UFC has ever signed
link |
that was zero and zero, in modern era,
link |
signed that was zero and zero.
link |
And then he actually never ended up fighting.
link |
So yeah. No motivation.
link |
I don't know what the story is.
link |
Cause sometimes out of Russia,
link |
I mean, maybe you have better sources than I do.
link |
Sometimes it feels like dudes just disappear.
link |
Like they're a world champ or a little big champ
link |
and then all of a sudden you're like, wait, where'd he go?
link |
You talked shit about Russia earlier in the conversation.
link |
So. Oh, what'd I say?
link |
I forgot, but I think.
link |
I think somebody's gonna show up to your door.
link |
I honestly, I've said enough bad things
link |
where I would be a kind of looking over my shoulder
link |
if I wanted to do something.
link |
I, for one, love the Russians.
link |
What about Icarus?
link |
How does that make you feel?
link |
I don't know what it is anymore.
link |
You know, it's troublesome, man.
link |
I hate cheating in all of its forms.
link |
Any other like recaps from the Olympics of 2020 Tokyo
link |
that stood out to you?
link |
Like anything like that?
link |
No, I think America's coming to the point
link |
where we're gonna compete with Russia
link |
every single year in wrestling,
link |
which obviously, you know,
link |
long, long time ago, many, many years ago we were great.
link |
And then kind of after that Soviet Union period,
link |
I think there was a lot of poverty in that area.
link |
And that kind of led the wrestling team
link |
going down a little bit.
link |
And then obviously a lot of those regions,
link |
the way they found oil and gas in the Caspian Sea, I believe.
link |
And they've been really kind of on the upswing
link |
for the last 20 years.
link |
And now America really, since 2012,
link |
has been on the upswing in wrestling.
link |
And we're kind of really competing with them.
link |
And they're not sending a couple of their best guys.
link |
So for those who don't know,
link |
the Olympics moved back a year.
link |
So they are hosting the 2021 World Championships,
link |
despite the fact that we just had the Olympics
link |
So it's happening next week in Oslo, Norway.
link |
So like Russia's not sending their number one at 57
link |
and their number one at 65.
link |
So it's like, America's probably gonna win, I think.
link |
I don't wanna guarantee anything,
link |
but there's a really good chance of it.
link |
Is Dave Taylor, all of those guys, competing?
link |
America gave any of the Olympians that medaled
link |
the opportunity to not even have to wrestle off.
link |
They just got to keep the spot
link |
since it was two months later if they medaled.
link |
So the only one who's not is Gable.
link |
Gable's moving on.
link |
We have a pretty good guy behind him.
link |
Nick Wisniewski is a world medalist.
link |
But then he's, so Burrell's filled in the 79 spot.
link |
Jayden Cox filled in the 92 spot,
link |
who's a world champion also.
link |
So we have a pretty good squad.
link |
A hell of a team. Pretty good squad, yeah.
link |
Pretty good squad. Pretty happy.
link |
So given your run in Bellator in one championship,
link |
that was like one of the most dominant runs in MMA.
link |
What would you say was like key to your dominance
link |
in that long undefeated streak?
link |
Huh, probably consistency would be one.
link |
The fact that I just, I lived and trained the same way
link |
no matter where my life was,
link |
whereas a lot of fighters,
link |
once they start making money for the first time,
link |
they have all these obligations and they travel
link |
and they really enjoy making money.
link |
And that's kind of why some of them fall off.
link |
So you had like the same process,
link |
like the same camp. Yeah, I stayed at my house.
link |
I didn't vacation, yeah, everything.
link |
Just, you know, and so that was a big part of it.
link |
Obviously the style thing is like, no one could,
link |
there was only a few people who could stop my style.
link |
And I think I continue to get better
link |
as a mixed martial artist.
link |
And I wasn't as innovative in mixed martial arts,
link |
but there was a handful of things that I innovated,
link |
you know, specifically in the top position
link |
where I spent a lot of time where it was just like,
link |
there was just, once I got on top of you,
link |
it was like in a spider web
link |
and there was just kind of no way out.
link |
You know, you never felt the certain things I was doing.
link |
And so people just, they gave up eventually.
link |
How's the level of wrestling in MMA would you say?
link |
So I saw somewhere like champions,
link |
the most popular martial art for current UFC champions
link |
are all wrestling.
link |
So we just lost a bunch of the belts.
link |
Wrestling is a sport, right?
link |
But yeah, at one point we had,
link |
I think it was eight of nine maybe
link |
or something to that effect.
link |
And I think it's not just wrestling,
link |
not just the actual martial art of wrestling
link |
that contributes to our success in mixed martial arts,
link |
but other things like the way we're systemized.
link |
So most kids who have all this have went through
link |
the high school program and the college program
link |
and they know how to show up on time
link |
and they know how to work hard.
link |
So when they go to ATT or AKA or wherever,
link |
they know how to show up on time
link |
and they know how to work hard
link |
and that's gonna get you a really long way.
link |
Just those two things, right?
link |
Not even the techniques, it's just the discipline.
link |
Then I think you throw on top of that the fact
link |
that most of us have competed 1500 to 2000 times,
link |
probably by the time we get to 20 something,
link |
like that's a huge advantage too.
link |
Most of these other people from other disciplines
link |
maybe have competed 100, if that, right?
link |
So we have this competitive process down
link |
really, really, really, really well.
link |
Plus the weight cut.
link |
There's all these things that factor into it.
link |
I think the fact that we're really open minded,
link |
I think if you would, I don't wanna pick on jiu jitsu again,
link |
but how many jiu jitsu guys have became
link |
highly proficient in wrestling
link |
versus how many wrestling guys
link |
have became highly proficient in jiu jitsu?
link |
I think that number swings one way
link |
and not that much the other way, you know?
link |
So we're open to adapting and learning
link |
and for some reason, like jiu jitsu people,
link |
how many of them have got high level wrestling?
link |
Or even mediocre wrestling, the number's really small.
link |
They refuse to, it's really frustrating.
link |
Why won't they do this?
link |
This is obviously a part of it.
link |
I don't wanna pick on specific guys,
link |
but there's certain guys in the history of MMA
link |
where you're like, listen, man.
link |
I mean, Damian Maia, who was my last fight,
link |
is a great example of somebody who actually
link |
did get proficient in wrestling, right?
link |
But there's some of these jiu jitsu guys who's like,
link |
if you just got on top, you would submit him.
link |
Why can't you learn a freaking takedown?
link |
Like, holy moly, just learn how to take someone down.
link |
Once you get them down, they will not get up
link |
and you win the fight.
link |
Like, it's so easy, you know?
link |
How complicated is that journey?
link |
So like Donaher that you mentioned, Craig Jones,
link |
they're big on wrestling as part of jiu jitsu now.
link |
Like wrestling, not just on the feet,
link |
but wrestling from the bottom coming up
link |
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
So how difficult is that whole skill set, would you say,
link |
for a jiu jitsu person to learn?
link |
If they really put their mind to it.
link |
Cause they already like, when you grapple,
link |
and this is any grappling art,
link |
like there's a certain part of it that you kind of get
link |
and it can, it might not be the exact same thing,
link |
but you understand how your body moves
link |
and how to feel certain pressures
link |
and you can adapt yourself pretty quickly, you know?
link |
So I don't think, I think there's a certain level
link |
of stubbornness where they didn't want to,
link |
certain people didn't want to do it for whatever reason.
link |
I think a lot of times in MMA, it's the I'm so macho,
link |
I can stand and bang thing, you know,
link |
where they want to show how macho they are.
link |
But yeah, that was a frustrating one that they,
link |
there's a lot of wrestlers who became highly proficient
link |
in jiu jitsu and really adapted
link |
and it doesn't go the other way.
link |
And then I guess the other thing there too is
link |
they can both steal from each other, right?
link |
As any martial art can steal from another.
link |
And like, I feel like jiu jitsu
link |
didn't do enough stealing from wrestling.
link |
Like they should have looked at all the wrestling possible
link |
and said, well, why don't we steal that and that and that?
link |
You know, and like, hey, let's take that over.
link |
And maybe we'd make a little tweak because it's different,
link |
but there's something we can definitely use there.
link |
So like in wrestling, for example,
link |
you know there's a one arm guillotine in jiu jitsu, right?
link |
Okay, so there's a move called, well, it's got a hundred,
link |
I mean, it's like the oldest move in wrestling
link |
because it's what they did, the cows,
link |
where they go around the chin and they throw them
link |
on the back, how do we call that one?
link |
Okay, sorry, did you just ask me what I call that one?
link |
Would you take a cow and grab it by the neck,
link |
throw it to the side?
link |
No, but in wrestling, in wrestling.
link |
Okay, we call it that.
link |
Are you putting it under?
link |
Yeah, so you can grab their chin
link |
and then you go under their arm
link |
and then throw them on their back.
link |
Oh, okay, gotcha, yeah.
link |
Yeah, so we call that the honey badger,
link |
but it's got different names,
link |
wherever you go, it's got different names.
link |
So I would always, I would say like pre Jiu Jitsu,
link |
I was average at it, like I could do it,
link |
but against good people, you'd never get it for,
link |
because they would get the back of their head up
link |
and they were too strong where you couldn't collapse them
link |
by going over their neck, right?
link |
Because the forces weren't right.
link |
So then in Jiu Jitsu, you learn the one arm gi team
link |
where you grab their chin and this is more of running along
link |
the side of their head and then you go here
link |
and you choke them, right?
link |
Much more efficient way to move their head
link |
because the fulcrum is way down here
link |
and their head can move into that, right?
link |
So once I learned that in Jiu Jitsu, I'm like, wait,
link |
I can do this in wrestling.
link |
So now once I learn how to grab their chin the right way
link |
and I do the honey badger, no one ever gets out.
link |
I just had to steal that Jiu Jitsu,
link |
put it in wrestling and boom, there we go.
link |
But very few people steal any direction,
link |
that takes creativity.
link |
And open mindedness.
link |
It's so easy because it's already done,
link |
you just gotta steal it.
link |
I mean, same with Judo, if you're a gi Jiu Jitsu person,
link |
there's so much stuff in Judo that's ripe for the stealing
link |
because Judo is much more emphasizes explosive moves
link |
on the transition, which is something Jiu Jitsu does not do.
link |
Because you have some.
link |
You mean from the take down to.
link |
From the take down, but also just in general,
link |
just in the transition, the concept of transition,
link |
the Jiu Jitsu is very much about we're in this position,
link |
then we're in this position, then we're in this position.
link |
The Judo is much more in when there's chaos of any kind.
link |
That's when you need to strike.
link |
And to learn that, I mean, that's why people like
link |
Travis Stevens and Judoka, when they go to Jiu Jitsu,
link |
they can dominate.
link |
But Jiu Jitsu people should steal that.
link |
They're too stubborn.
link |
Yeah, but so is every, wrestlers are stubborn too.
link |
No way, there would never be any stubborn wrestlers.
link |
Well, I mean, I was surprised, all these coaches,
link |
John Smith, Dan Gabel, they don't really have interest
link |
in MMA or Jiu Jitsu and so on.
link |
But you would think somebody like a John Smith
link |
would like put on a white belt and roll around.
link |
Yeah, I think he's just too focused on, you know.
link |
Well, he's a coach.
link |
Well, he's a coach and what he's doing.
link |
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think if you take him when he's younger,
link |
he would have a lot of fun.
link |
We actually have a really good wrestler
link |
making his MMA debut tomorrow.
link |
I don't know if you, Bo Nickel,
link |
I'm sure you've heard of him, very high level.
link |
I think he's gonna have a lot of success.
link |
I mean, some people might say that like Jiu Jitsu
link |
makes you a little comfortable being in your back
link |
and for a wrestler, that could be like really bad.
link |
Yeah, but that's the Dan Gabel take.
link |
It's so stupid, it's so stupid.
link |
For God's sakes, we know the fucking rules.
link |
Just, in wrestling, you don't go to your back.
link |
In Jiu Jitsu, you can, it's like, whatever.
link |
But like, so Jiu Jitsu, for example,
link |
so I coached, when I was at Rufus, I coached the wrestling
link |
for a long, I don't know, three, four, five years.
link |
So I've been taking a Jiu Jitsu guy
link |
and teaching them a wrestling technique
link |
where you needed to use your feet.
link |
To teach a Jiu Jitsu guy, so easy, so simple,
link |
because they already understand the concept,
link |
butterfly guard, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?
link |
To take a wrestler who's never done any of it
link |
and teach him how to use his feet,
link |
oh my God, it's such a beast, it's so hard,
link |
because that's not a weapon they're thinking about using.
link |
So it's like, we understand the rules.
link |
It's like freestyle folks are wrestling.
link |
Freestyle, if I'm on the mat, I can lock my hands.
link |
You don't see people locking their hands
link |
all the time in folk style just because they did freestyle.
link |
It's like, they get it.
link |
There's a rule, they understand it.
link |
So the notion that somehow you come from on your back.
link |
But pinning, that's like a, it has a special meaning.
link |
Yeah, but I actually think, so Jiu Jitsu,
link |
you don't actually wanna be flat, flat very often, right?
link |
You don't wanna be.
link |
I always wondered this,
link |
because I did a couple of catch wrestling tournaments,
link |
and I did, I would put myself in butterfly guard,
link |
and I wasn't going against good people,
link |
so which is why I was doing all these things.
link |
But I wondered if you could create a system of wrestling
link |
where you're butterfly guard.
link |
So I think that there's a few places where I use it.
link |
But so specifically the Elevator Series,
link |
which my main series up bottom,
link |
it is, it's not butterfly guard.
link |
It's a butterfly guard grip with your foot.
link |
So I boom, I go here, I catch your leg with my foot,
link |
boom, and I elevate you over, right?
link |
And then also sometimes,
link |
I think Keegan does this too from watching me,
link |
but if I get double leg,
link |
sometimes if I'm accepting, so freestyle,
link |
obviously you're gonna give him points,
link |
you're gonna focus on accepting that you've already got me,
link |
and as I go down, I'm just gonna butterfly guard you up,
link |
and then I'm gonna try to flip my hip back to the mat,
link |
and end up in a wizard position.
link |
I've used that quite a few times,
link |
where it's kind of like a bailout mechanism
link |
that gets me back to maybe not a great position,
link |
but obviously much better than being taken down.
link |
Let me ask you quickly about crypto,
link |
because you're also, you have a show.
link |
You have a lot of interest in cryptocurrency.
link |
Why are you interested in cryptocurrency?
link |
Is it just a financial investment,
link |
or is there a philosophy that attracts you to it?
link |
So I, my friend told me about it in 2017.
link |
I was actually, I went to, I was,
link |
my friend met me in Shanghai.
link |
I fought in one championship, and he told me,
link |
and the second he told me, I'm like, oh, I'm so in,
link |
because I had read Ron Paul and the Fed.
link |
I had read, I kind of had an understanding
link |
how the Fed is unfair,
link |
and so when he told me about crypto,
link |
this decentralized system that no one has control over,
link |
it just made sense, and so we've had the podcast,
link |
to say Michael Saylor on it, and I love the way he says it.
link |
It's like, who do you trust more with your money?
link |
Do you trust the politicians, or do you trust engineers?
link |
I think that's an easy choice.
link |
I don't even think, I don't even think
link |
I have to think about that.
link |
I don't trust politicians, no matter what country they come
link |
from, China, America, wherever, I don't trust them.
link |
So. So what about in 2017, what was it, Bitcoin?
link |
Are you, what do you find, which ones do you find interesting?
link |
Yeah. There's all kinds of ideas,
link |
there's the more sort of primal mechanism
link |
of proof of work and Bitcoin,
link |
and then there's smart contracts, ideas,
link |
and there's all kinds of innovations
link |
across the different points.
link |
So I can't say I'm in super deep
link |
where I understand the technical components
link |
I understand what Bitcoin can do for people,
link |
and so that's probably the one I've focused the most on.
link |
And I actually, I think I was talking about,
link |
I was trying to convince Michael to talk about Bitcoin
link |
because he hates it also, what he did last night.
link |
And I think most of the main problems Bitcoin solves,
link |
people in America are so American centric,
link |
they don't understand it.
link |
So like high levels of inflation,
link |
that hasn't happened in, it's starting to happen,
link |
it hasn't happened in America in a long time, right?
link |
But someone in Venezuela is like, oh, I get that, you know,
link |
or remittance payments, right?
link |
Remittance payments to, you see it.
link |
So I saw this in, when I was spending all the time
link |
in Singapore, Singapore is obviously
link |
a really wealthy country,
link |
and so you'd have Indonesian workers or Filipino,
link |
and they would all go on Sundays,
link |
they would go to these places to ship stuff
link |
back to their families and through Western Union,
link |
Western Union gouges the shit out of these people.
link |
I mean, they're taking eight, 10, 12%
link |
of whatever they're sending,
link |
then it takes five days and the person's gonna go pick it up,
link |
whereas Bitcoin, I could send you Bitcoin
link |
person to person, right?
link |
So like American people don't understand that.
link |
American people don't really understand the unbanked, right?
link |
A decent portion of the world is unbanked,
link |
they don't have access to it.
link |
And a much, much, much smaller portion of the world
link |
doesn't have access to internet.
link |
So if I can put a mobile wallet on your phone,
link |
and we can send money person to person.
link |
So there's a whole bunch of those problems
link |
where Americans don't really think about
link |
that are really obvious that this solves.
link |
So I think that's a key one,
link |
obviously the fact that the value goes up
link |
is really outstanding also,
link |
but if you look at it, I got in in 2017,
link |
so I got to watch it go up.
link |
I didn't sell shit at the top, really stupid.
link |
And then the majority of my time
link |
was spent through the bear market.
link |
And so I had to love it for the principles that it provided,
link |
not the fact that I actually lost money in the beginning
link |
and now I'm way up, but yeah.
link |
And you're just holding.
link |
I think at the top of this bull market,
link |
I'll probably sell a very small portion, just to.
link |
So you mean like right now there's a bull market?
link |
Yeah, most people think say in the next three to six months
link |
we'll be at the top of the market.
link |
And so probably when that happens,
link |
I'll probably sell a little bit.
link |
You gotta hodl it, Ben.
link |
So here's what I am.
link |
So one of my podcast cohosts, he's like super rich,
link |
So he has lost touch with the every man.
link |
So here's my argument to him, it's really simple.
link |
And listen, I'm doing well for myself in life,
link |
but if say someone buys a Bitcoin, right?
link |
One Bitcoin at $5,000, which it was last year.
link |
And this Bitcoin goes from $5,000 to $200,000,
link |
which is right around what a lot of people think
link |
the peak is going to be.
link |
They bought one Bitcoin.
link |
And they're living in a $200,000 house.
link |
So to take half of that, right?
link |
You started with $5,000 of the Bitcoin,
link |
to sell half a Bitcoin for $100,000
link |
and pay off your house, your remaining house payment,
link |
that's life changing to someone.
link |
And so you still have a Bitcoin,
link |
so if Bitcoin goes to a million,
link |
you're still gonna have half a million,
link |
and you're gonna feel really, really rich
link |
with that half a million dollars
link |
because you bought it for effing $2,500, you know?
link |
So yeah, so I would encourage anyone who's not uber rich
link |
to, if you have huge profits, take a little bit of them
link |
because it could change your life.
link |
And if you hold it and it goes down,
link |
you're going to feel the pain of that.
link |
Like sometimes if you're more constrained financially,
link |
it's much more psychologically difficult
link |
to ride the ups and downs.
link |
Yeah, it is for sure.
link |
So they have these really fascinating things in Bitcoin.
link |
Actually, one of the main guys on our podcast,
link |
it's called Onchain Metrics.
link |
So all wallet transactions are visible, you know?
link |
And so they have all these fun categories.
link |
So I think you said you don't like numbers, but.
link |
Oh, you love numbers.
link |
So I love numbers also.
link |
So they have all these different categories.
link |
Like you can see how long a wallet has held a Bitcoin,
link |
or how many Bitcoins are in a certain wallet.
link |
And so what they've seen during the downturn,
link |
so April it kind of peaked and went down,
link |
is that the whales are still buying.
link |
So whales, people of a thousand or more are still buying.
link |
They've said the main group of sellers
link |
is the ones who held it from zero to three months.
link |
So like they don't have money.
link |
They bought it because they thought it was going up.
link |
And I was like, oh shit, I got to sell it, right?
link |
Whereas anyone who's held it for a long time
link |
is generally still holding on to it.
link |
That's interesting.
link |
That's a good indicator, right, for the whole space.
link |
Well, let me ask you for some advice.
link |
You've been through one heck of a career,
link |
one heck of a life.
link |
What advice would you give to a young person today?
link |
Well, in wrestling, I think wrestling's really a microcosm
link |
of what your life's going to be.
link |
And that's why one of the things I stress to kids is like,
link |
if we can go through this now and figure,
link |
I have a couple of kids who are struggling
link |
with certain things right now.
link |
If you can figure it out this now in wrestling,
link |
it's going to be a lot better to figure it out now
link |
and get over this mental hump
link |
than when you're 32 and you have two kids, right,
link |
and your job's not going well.
link |
It's going to be a lot worse.
link |
It's going to be a lot more painful then.
link |
Let's fucking figure it out now.
link |
So a lot of these things, a lot of these lessons
link |
we can learn from wrestling,
link |
whether it's persistence or perseverance or work ethic,
link |
or, you know what I said,
link |
wrestlers show up on time and they work hard, right?
link |
These things, if we can learn these things at an early age,
link |
those are general, those characteristics
link |
will generally carry on throughout our life.
link |
And those are the things
link |
that are going to make us really successful.
link |
So, you know, I would say find a great coach,
link |
someone who's going to spend a lot of time
link |
and put a lot of time into you
link |
and make sure they have a lot of wisdom
link |
and steal all the wisdom that you can from them.
link |
And then if you can be successful at one thing,
link |
generally whatever that recipe was
link |
that took you to be successful at that,
link |
apply it to everything else, right?
link |
Apply it to the rest of your life.
link |
Apply it to getting a wife that you enjoy.
link |
Apply it to living in a place you want to live,
link |
doing a job you want to do, right?
link |
There's so many possibilities
link |
and you just have to be bold enough
link |
to go take those chances.
link |
It's interesting because early on in life
link |
is when you have much more time.
link |
People don't realize it's time to learn the lessons.
link |
Like somehow later in life,
link |
you get busier, responsibilities
link |
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
Like high school is a magical time.
link |
You're in college.
link |
You're in college, yeah, for sure.
link |
Yeah, there's so much time to learn.
link |
Well, you don't even have kids yet.
link |
Yeah, I don't have kids, but that still fills up.
link |
Well, no, I'm purpose.
link |
And I did something that many people
link |
don't seem to be able to do.
link |
I walked away from a lot of responsibilities.
link |
By saying goodbye.
link |
But meetings, everybody around me at MIT
link |
was like meetings fill the day.
link |
And then you have more projects
link |
and you do a great job and you become successful.
link |
And then the more meetings fill the day
link |
and more responsibilities as opposed to like,
link |
wait a minute, do I want to be involved in all these things?
link |
And instead, do I want to find one or two things
link |
to really focus on?
link |
And that's what I choose.
link |
But that becomes harder and harder
link |
and harder as you get older.
link |
No, I mean, I'm sure, and also the more success you have,
link |
you become sought after other places too.
link |
I'm sure that's happening with you.
link |
And it's hard to keep saying no, no, no.
link |
Saying no is hard.
link |
You're known for roasting people
link |
with a single boom roasted line.
link |
So any ideas, maybe you want to mention malice,
link |
but any ideas come to mind when you look at me?
link |
Man, you know what?
link |
If I was going to boom roast someone,
link |
I would want to kind of like research their career
link |
and dissect them and figure out their biggest negatives.
link |
And I didn't have that notion with you.
link |
I figured, you know, I got a general sense of,
link |
okay, he's really successful, he's super sharp.
link |
He's really interested in some really interesting things.
link |
I bet we'll have a great conversation,
link |
but I had no intention to roast you.
link |
Yeah, there you go.
link |
What about malice?
link |
You had dinner with him last night.
link |
How'd you get to know him, by the way?
link |
Where's the most magical place in the world, right?
link |
I always tell people it's the greatest source of information
link |
if you know how to use it.
link |
He's insane on Twitter, actually.
link |
So I had to unfollow him on Twitter,
link |
because he was too much.
link |
It was too intense?
link |
No, it was too much, it fills up.
link |
Like, I want to be able to consume the content.
link |
So if I want to see something he says,
link |
I can go to his page, right?
link |
But it's just too much for my timeline.
link |
I want to be able to consume who I follow.
link |
So I try to not follow a lot of people,
link |
because I want to be able to consume them.
link |
And he was too much.
link |
He fights the trolls, which,
link |
I don't know why you'd ever fight the trolls.
link |
There's just too many of them.
link |
Well, he's a troll himself.
link |
He's like the big troll fighting the little trolls.
link |
He's the king troll.
link |
There's a million of them.
link |
So even if you kill 100,000,
link |
there's still not 100,000 left.
link |
You just gotta ignore them.
link |
It's like the Nightwalker or whatever.
link |
Well, I'll take it, because you had nothing,
link |
you couldn't rose GSP out of respect, too.
link |
So I'm just going to take that as a sign of respect.
link |
What do you say bad about GSP?
link |
Now I try to rose his hair.
link |
Like, why are you trying to grow hair now
link |
after all these years?
link |
He looked good, bald.
link |
Everyone loved him with his head shaved.
link |
Now it looks kind of strange.
link |
Like, why you got hair now?
link |
Well, it was one of the more surreal moments of my life.
link |
So he was here and he wore a black suit and tie.
link |
Yeah, we did the podcast with him,
link |
just mirror image of me.
link |
And then we also did, I haven't released it yet,
link |
but just the video together.
link |
And I was doing a martial arts stuff in a suit and tie.
link |
that was quite, that's like,
link |
like certain moments in your life are just like,
link |
I can't believe I was part of that.
link |
Yeah, with GSP, so yeah,
link |
I don't think I have anything to rose him about.
link |
I mean, maybe the Matt Serra thing
link |
would be the one that you could get him with, you know?
link |
I would be really fascinated,
link |
like really dig deep from a sports psychology standpoint,
link |
because he always talks about how much fear he had
link |
when he was competing.
link |
And I find that to be interesting because obviously,
link |
so it's almost like, to me, it's almost like,
link |
was he successful despite that?
link |
Not because of that, right?
link |
And because anxiety usually leads
link |
to really negative performance for the majority of people.
link |
And what was it about him
link |
that the anxiety wasn't super negative?
link |
You know what I'm saying?
link |
Like, it's very interesting.
link |
I wonder that too.
link |
So I have, I wondered that about him,
link |
but I have a huge amount of anxiety interacting,
link |
especially with people, just about everything, yeah.
link |
I wonder if that's helpful or not.
link |
It feels like it's very helpful.
link |
Well, I think, so okay, I think in two different ways.
link |
So I think probably your everyday life, okay,
link |
is different than like in a performance or a competition.
link |
You have to be like super in the moment
link |
of what you're doing.
link |
So anything that's pulling you away,
link |
like, oh my gosh, you know,
link |
for high school kids, right, that coach.
link |
Oh my gosh, that girl's in the stands,
link |
and if I get beat, then,
link |
and they're actively thinking about this other thing
link |
when this is going on.
link |
And I need 100% of your focus right here.
link |
He's never, I don't think he has anxiety in the ring.
link |
I think, like, I have the same thing.
link |
Like if I have a really high performance thing
link |
that I have to do, I don't know,
link |
a lecture in front of a lot of people.
link |
Yeah, that'd be a great example.
link |
That, there's huge amount of anxiety weeks ahead,
link |
days ahead, hours ahead.
link |
So you have a system to get rid of it then?
link |
As you perform. No, maybe,
link |
but it's just the body gets rid of it somehow.
link |
Yeah, there's not a system.
link |
Subconscious system.
link |
Yeah, it's self preservation.
link |
So you don't actually have anxiety
link |
while you're performing.
link |
So that's like, so then that problem,
link |
somehow that problem has solved itself, right?
link |
The problem is when the anxiety is actually happening
link |
while the wrestling match is happening,
link |
that's the real issue.
link |
Yeah, but it like sneaks in there too.
link |
That's the difference, you know, MMA and wrestling
link |
is there's no breaks in wrestling, right?
link |
I guess there is, you can look at the crowd a little bit,
link |
like you can look, so maybe,
link |
but like the, there's other things we have to perform.
link |
Well, there's more breaks, like a lecture,
link |
you can catch yourself thinking,
link |
like in this conversation, you know,
link |
like I've said a bunch of stuff where I think,
link |
why the hell did you say that?
link |
That's dumb, right?
link |
That's the anxiety because there's a pause
link |
and that could be, I don't know,
link |
I think it just pushes me to be better,
link |
but maybe I could be way better if I let go of that.
link |
It's scary to think that GSB, if you let go of that,
link |
Could he have been better?
link |
Or did he ever, did he have a,
link |
like you're saying like, you don't necessarily feel those.
link |
So I think certain people that I've coached,
link |
like they would describe how they would feel
link |
literally during the wrestling match, right?
link |
And you're saying like during the speech performance,
link |
And that's interesting to see if like,
link |
he talked a lot about that,
link |
but if it was all the way somehow gone,
link |
and it means he would have a mechanism for it.
link |
So like I had a really bad performance
link |
my freshman year of high school at nationals,
link |
cause I had the ability to be anxious.
link |
And one of my coaches talked about like,
link |
and a lot of A type personalities are kind of that way,
link |
you know, because they're trying to consider
link |
all possibilities at the same time.
link |
And while we're actually performing or competing,
link |
it's negative to performance, right?
link |
So he said he would always leading up to the match
link |
within say an hour, his name was talking about fishing.
link |
He would get someone to talk about fishing with him
link |
because it would stop him thinking about the match
link |
and being uber anxious.
link |
So I kind of took it to heart and it really helped me
link |
as I would always like have someone to talk to
link |
and just goof around about whatever.
link |
So I'm not thinking about this thing.
link |
And then once I step in, it's time to go.
link |
So I didn't have this like anxious buildup.
link |
Now it's how for me, I took it away, but like me,
link |
you know, like you said, you have a way to get it away,
link |
obviously, cause it's there and then it's not.
link |
Yeah, I guess so, I guess there's a little tricks
link |
Yeah, you start thinking about it's not fishing,
link |
maybe I should try the fishing thing.
link |
I hate fishing, so boring.
link |
But maybe it's good to think about that.
link |
All right, Ben, this is, like I told you, I'm a big fan.
link |
I'm a big fan of your wrestling, your fighting,
link |
Thank you for coming down.
link |
Thank you for talking today.
link |
It's a huge honor.
link |
Bam, let's go wrestle.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Askren.
link |
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors
link |
in the description.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words
link |
from Muhammad Ali.
link |
Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated
link |
can reach down to the bottom of his soul
link |
and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes
link |
to win when the match is even.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.