Humans are fascinated by violence and you've got to ask yourself. Why is it the rash guard? Yes

And I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this is gonna be rough. You're learning this shut the fuck up

I got you man. You were powered by McDonald's and Coca Cola

I want more and then I expect them and he didn't want to fight anymore. I'm not impressed by

if George st. Pierre and

And Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins? I'm

Here with three individuals each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines

The greatest MMA fighter of all time George st. Pierre the greatest martial arts coach of all time

John Donahue and

the greatest submission grappler of all time

Gordon Ryan

So, let me ask the first question. You guys didn't see the question. No preparation here

What is the key to your success each of you one thing or multiple things that come to mind?

John go first

Is it the rash guard

Yes, I

I like that you choose John right off the bat. I seem the most nervous

For me it's about

Finding a way to work in

A world where most of the answers are already known

Okay, and in any developed sport by the time you enter that sport most of the basic precepts the

the the major techniques that the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out and

so

in a highly developed world

The key to success is to be able to identify

Some area of the industry that you're in which is currently undervalued

To do what the other people are not doing

deeper than that you're

Everyone has a view of okay. These are the the main skills of the industry. I work in

at any given time

some set of skills attributes

Will always be somewhat undervalued they're underappreciated by the people in the game

You see that at any in any given industry there are always trends which change

The nature of the industry over time so

fashion trends in the clothing industry, you'll see at any given time is a

General wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time

What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say here is something which is genuinely

useful, but which is currently being underused underutilized and I want to bring that back in and

develop it and

Because it's an inherently useful product

It will be very very successful in its initial applications against people who aren't currently using it

If you can do this in whatever industry you're in I believe you'll be highly successful

successful to the supplies both for actual specific like techniques and

the also tactics as well in the case of

Jiu Jitsu, so for example in my sport leg locks have always been around

Okay, there's there's no shortage of people you can look back in history who applying leg locks

Nonetheless as in across the industry

Leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated. There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport

For most of the history of the sport of Jiu Jitsu tended to deemphasize leg locks and

When I looked at them I said there was immense potential but it wasn't being realized and needed to be changed

Since then that has more or less occurred now most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important

Aspect and they're no longer undervalued if anything it's gone too far the other way and now perhaps they're a little overvalued

and

the

this kind of

fashion trend exists in every industry and

The job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify

okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued and then

Look at what is their actual objective value and then work

To to to bring them back to the forefront. So John brought up fashion

George is wearing a really sexy shirt. So

Assuming that's not the reason is there

Is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career?

Well, of course everybody knows the famous and sort of every athletes are saying oh, it's could be genetic

I was maybe gifted that certain predisposition. I worked really hard

but I think

something that

People don't talk enough is when everybody sometime go, right? I

Was never afraid to try to go left and I felt many time trying to do things that were not

Known to be things that would bring me brought me success, but I tried it, you know

I was very often I was the first of trying new things and I felt many time but certain times

it gives me a certain advantage and

for example, I

was sometime fighting guys that add much better wrestling background and than me on paper and

nobody before that fought those guys never nobody had there to try to

Take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good and I didn't have on paper

the wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight, but when everybody

Tried to go right I was going left I fought them in a different way and that was

The blueprint to beat certain some of these guys, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?

So yeah, so we'll actually talk about a few fights where that you did just that this is fascinating

But let's say at the high level so Gordon again sticking on fashion

I may compliment your incredible badass hat trying to fit in here

We should say we're in Texas now, so he's

Become a Texan overnight. So what is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to your success?

yeah, so first of all, it has to be a role where you don't ask us all those same questions because

How am I supposed to compete with the answer? John just gave

There's nothing I can do that's gonna top that. Yeah, but uh, I think it's uh, there's many things

But I think the number one thing is just is John

When I came in, I was a blue belt and I was beating brown and black belts in competition already

But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport

I would just come in and if something wasn't working

I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively and that just degenerated me into a degenerated into me

spastically knee sliding into cross hashi garami against Eddie Cummings for six months and then just getting heel hooked repeatedly and

I'm like, this is not working and Eddie like when I met him was like a chubby

Librarian looking guy and I'm like, there's no I'm like six to like a jacked like 170 and I'm like

There's no way I'm losing to a guy who looks like this, but he just kept heel hooking me

So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn't work and then John's like well

If you learned leg locks, you might you might have some more success

And then I was like, yeah, that probably makes sense

And from then on I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport instead of doing doing things harder

I would actually try to get better at jujitsu. Do you remember like a turning point where?

You became as opposed to being mediocre not just in technique but an approach to

To great. Um, I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training consistently

So I trained full time with John when I was purple belt mid level purple belt and towards the end of my brown belt

Days, I was beating up like legitimate like ADCC champions in the gym. Um,

so I think like

Brown to black belt was a big thing for me

And then when I won my first EBI and I was I submitted Yuri who won ADCC and I beat roost them

Um, so I think that was like my turning point as a competitor

But I think I started to to reach world level a little bit before that

I think somewhere around brown belt mid level to late level brown belt

It was some of that mental like it was there a moment when you like after a training session you realize

I can actually do this

Like I could be at the top of the world world class

The critical moment for me was when I think it was right

Right when I got my black belt, maybe a few months before I got my black belt

we had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and

we did a hard round together and I think I submitted them like four or five times and

No one knew who I was. I never won anything up into that point and I was like, okay

Like if this is like one of the best guys in the world and I could submit him multiple times around

I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a make a career out of this

Okay. So the actual performance was the like you don't need to believe before you could perform like a lot of Olympic gold medalists

they

They have to believe before they can perform because like they're getting their ass kicked for a long long long time

Yeah

I think but the best way for me to believe in something is to have

Repeated success doing it against high level guys

Like I'm not gonna just believe I can do a double leg if I can't a double leg on anybody

So for me the the belief came from the repeated success in the gym

Yeah, but to get to the point where you're submitting somebody like your ASMO is like one of the the greatest grapplers ever

It's like a long journey

Yeah, but I had the confidence

I had the belief in myself because of the success that I had in the gym prior to that got it

Even and it's one step at a time first. It's the brown belts then it's the black belts and it's world class. Okay

George was there a turning point for you when you you thought like I can actually do this

Yes, I I always dreamed to become champion

but I think the turning point that there was that there was two turning point and

And there were my two losses

First my losses to Matt Hughes I went into that fight

Just to not lose I was not fighting to win and it's after the fight when I watched the

Replay of the fight. I realized I was like I was doing pretty well

But during the fight in my own mind, I was not seeing it that way

I I thought I was getting dominated by Hughes like a hundred percent, but when I watched the replay I

Was like man, I can I can beat this guy. I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake

so I was very frustrating but but I

That's what gave me the mentally the the championship level

mentality and then I became a little bit overconfident because I start beating everybody after that and

I

Start to believe the hype of people when they look at me. They were like, oh, he's the new

Upcoming superstar and he's gonna be unstoppable and and then when I became champion, I I

lost to to to Matt to Matt Sarah, so

before I believe

my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence and

and

My second failure was I was because I was overconfidence. So I think it's there's a perfect

Center of confidence. I mean, I mean it's good to be confident because John taught me like confidence

It's it's like money in your bank account if you you can have all the skills in the world, right?

and and if you're

If you don't have the confidence, it's like you it's like you can you can be a millionaire?

But you don't have access to your bank account. So it's that's a little bit the analogy that John told me

So that's how I feel a confidence plays for Natalie but to be overconfident

I think it's always good to to be aware to be afraid of what can happen

So to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear to me

That's what mentally gave me the edge to become I believe successful in my sport playing off that

John gave me a speech one time and he was like you have to be able to

like flip a switch and turn it off where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who's super confident and

He plays the character of someone who's like no one can beat me

I'm the best that there ever was and that's it

But if you look at me actually trained very hard

You can't you can't play the persona of no one can beat me and have it translate into your life and just think that you're

So good that you don't have to do anything and no one can ever beat you

You have to be able to play that public persona of no one can beat me

But then you have to actually do the training to make that happen

You can't just you can't believe your own hype and say say that you know, I can just do whatever I want

No one's ever gonna beat me if the able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete and that made a big difference for me

it's tough because

like you're you you dominate such a large fraction of the world and

grappling and

The George to just the perfect dominance after those two

it's hard for the confidence not to just

Like how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down where you completely

deludes your mind

For me, it's just number one the guys in the gym are so tough

So the guys in the guys in the gym that I train with are always like nipping at my butt and always giving me new

New problems to solve and for me, it's really just about trying to learn new stuff over time

So that keeps it interesting for me and it's not really about

You know, no one could beat me I don't have to train or have to do it I could do whatever I want

It's more what keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I'm learning new stuff all the time of working on something

new and progressing to new levels at all times

it's not I don't just come in and do the same thing over and over again and

That gets boring you just come in and you don't learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time

And okay, okay

This is boring

But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals short term and long term goals to reach then it makes it interesting

it's a

For me, it's a little bit like Gordon says is the fear because sometime in the gym even before I when it was competing

I was I was getting my butt kicked

But I don't care what happened in the gym

I mean it hit my ego, of course because I'm a proud person I'm a competitor even in the gym

but it's not a malicious competition competition in between each other when you fight you have to be malicious you go there to hurt the

guy

but it it hit it hit me in terms of my pride when I get

beat in a gym, of course, but

that fear

That I don't want it to happen in public

especially not during a fight that what keeps help me keeps the balance between confidence and and and and fear

You know what? I mean? It's kind of weird. It's a mix

It's a mixture of both that I believe I to me

Help me

Succeed to have the right mindset to fight and I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this

This is gonna be rough. So yeah, you put a lot of I mean

that's that's the hard thing to do when you talk shit when you when you play the heel is

Is so massive perform. He's the pressure is I mean you have to be good under pressure

It's the Conor McGregor thing, you know, the reason I actually started talking shit was actually like indirectly because of George

because

Because I will become the opposite of George

I won I won my first DBI and I I didn't talk shit and everyone was like being like, oh, you know

you only beat Yuri because because he was tired or

you know this or that and if they have a rematch under any of the rules that he would have lost and

I'm like trying to figure out what I'm gonna do

So I'm strolling through George's feed one day and he posted a clip of him beating someone and I look at the comments

And I'm with this in mind. I'm like George is the nicest person of all time

and if you look at the comments, it's like 10,000 comments and like

9,000 and 900 are just people calling him like all you do is lay and pray you pussy

You suck you can't finish anybody and I'm just like I'm looking at this and I'm like people are gonna say

What they're gonna say regardless, they're gonna talk shit regardless. So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself

Is there some aspect that's I mentioned Conor McGregor. He he crossed the line with Khabib

At least in the eyes of Khabib

Is there something you ever regret about crossing a line or does that you ever feel like there's a line?

Or do you just keep pushing the line?

Uh, I basically play it per per person

I just I basically fire back with like one step above what what they do. It's always plus one. Yeah. Yeah, okay

So I go I usually go hard like they fire a bullet then I drop a Duke

And then and then after that initial shot then we go back and forth and I'll just keep one upping them

So, you know, there's a lot of people that love you, but there's also a lot of people that love to hate you. Yeah

it's so like what do those people like energize you or do you just

Or is it funny to you? Like what as an athlete as a performer? You should not think about them

It's like a fun thing

It's like it's just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied

Like because like because most of them that like talk shit they like just say stuff that's factually incorrect

So then I just argue with like actual statistics. Yeah, it's just like

You suck or you're not gonna beat this person. I'm like, I've already submitted that guy

Yeah, so I just it riles them up and it's just it's just a fun thing for me to do my my downtime

Yeah, your responses are usually very factual. It's very scientific. I appreciate

Thank you. You actually you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science. Yeah, it's great. Okay. It's good mix. That's a good mix

I

Mean a topic of haters are more specifically sort of doubts within yourself of doubts around you as you're coming up

Maybe George you can comment. Oh, we're just ignoring John completely in this conversation. I

Was gonna ask you another question, but let me just ask you on this on this topic

Are there times in your life yet?

You were surrounded by people that that doubted you all the time

And so what is there something you could say as in by way of advice how you overcome?

The doubt either yourself or others around you all the time the first time I

Manifest my desire to become a professional

Mixed martial art athlete everybody doubt me

Just not even I'm not talking about the UFC just to become a professional fighter

Everybody doubt me and I became a I became a professional fighter. I had few amateur fight

I won them all then I I fought my first fight in

In Montreal, I won and I became a professional

Then I I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC. Everybody doubt me again. So it's a normal thing

So I work my way up beat a few guys then I at the time Pete Spratt was

just knocked knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick and

The person who was my agent at the time did a great move

For me, so he brought Pete Spratt in Montreal to fight me Pete Spratt came to Montreal

I and I believe he didn't know who I was

So he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck and I and I end up beating him

So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC

Then after I was in UFC, I wanted to become champion of the world, you know

but Matthews was there and he seems invincible at the time so

Everybody doubt me again, and I became world champion and after when you when I was world champion, I wanted to be I

was competing against other world champion of other weight class

For the title, you know for the legacy and everything. So it's not no longer competing against my opponent

I was you know as a competitor you always you never wanted to be you never want to be satisfied because when

Satisfaction is the death, you know when you're satisfied you better retire because it's over

So always I have to find motivation what you can have more. I want more don't be satisfied in life. So I wanted to be

Like the best, you know, I want as I was competing, you know

Like to become the best and and you know, of course that people doubt doubt you all the time

Every time you say something that it's outside of the norm of the normality

I want to say there there's nothing normal, but I'm talking about when you you manifest your desire to do something that

takes

Special attribute to to to succeed or that is something that is hard to to do

It's for sure you're gonna always have people that doubt you it's so strange that people don't

They don't lean into supporting like people that love you, too

yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me and I believe I I you need to use that as

a

Positive positive thing as a motivation to prove them wrong

Yeah, so for me that that was a thing when someone doubt me nothing gave me more

There's more energy because I want to prove him wrong

I want to look at him in the face and say hey, you see I got you man. I I did it

so

John do you ever use this in one way or the other by saying I don't think you can do this to motivate them to

prove you wrong or more general question of

You know the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness

Like what's your role as a coach when you have these two athletes with regards to your your first question?

Would I ever say to someone you can't do this as a kind of reverse psychology? I know

My job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills and

as Gordon pointed out earlier if you're

In any way a rational human being and you're noticing that you're getting tremendous success

with a given move in the gym against high level opponents who

Give a good read on what your actual opponent in a competition is like

You would have to be a moron to not

Recognize that kind of success and say this is something I should be building into my game and you will carry the confidence that

You earned in the gym into the arena

So I never try to use reverse psychology. I build up

Everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills

I know people say all this physicality on the one hand is mentality on the other and confidence is squarely in the the mental

Aspect of the game, but all the underpinnings and beginnings of confidence are physical

okay, a rational human being will see where they're having success and where they're having failure and

confidence will

Surround those areas where they're having success and will degenerate in cases where they're having failure

so my job as a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills and

I don't have to do anything

psychologically after that I just

If I can set you up to be highly successful

With a given move or a set of tactics ten times in a row against quality opposition in the gym

I don't have to do a damn thing when it comes to instilling confidence. I

Will tell people hey, you're doing a really good job with that move. It's working well for you

but

When they nod in agreement, I'm not trying to force anything on them

They're recognized they or they already recognized that long before the words came out of my mouth

but on the other hand intelligent rational people will recognize when they're failing with given moves and no amount of talk on my part can

ever change that if

I teach Gordon

a given arm lock and

15 times in a row. It tries it over a month and all 15 of failures

There's nothing I can say verbally to come up to go and say hey, you're really good at that move

He's gonna look at me say bullshit

I'm terrible at it and that will create a crisis of confidence where Gordon no longer believes the words coming out of my mouth

So I will never compromise that but isn't there a lot you just said 15 there you have to believe

that

Doing this arm lock 15 times over a period of a month is worth it because eventually you might get it

I think yeah, that's a separate issue that that's a separate issue

There are times where I've more or less pushed athletes to go in a certain direction for example

When I first met Gary tone and he never had a guillotine

Strangle and I I would say don't carry, you know, you're a scrambler

like one of the greatest weapons of scramble can ever develop as a guillotine like it should be in your arsenal and

He was like, yeah, I just grab off of the back and I said, well, there's gonna be a day

You can't take someone's back and it's always good to better strangle from front and back

Okay, of course, we all prefer a strangles on the back that makes sense

But there's gonna come a day where it's gonna be useful for you

and so that was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said you're learning this shut the fuck up and

Like literally wouldn't teach him any anything else until you got a guillotine. Yeah, Gary like asked him a question

he's like, let's say you're guillotine and

For the first three months as gifted as as Gary tone it is and learning most moves most moves Gary gets it like

in minutes, there was something going on with Gary just couldn't get a guillotine on people and

Finally after around three months, he started having some success until ultimately became one of his best weapons

We had to go through like 15 different variations of guillotine

until he found one which actually worked reliably for him and

That was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said no

Do you have to learn this the long search had to do more with the physical characteristics?

I couldn't figure out the right like it made sense. It made sense in the case of Gary tone because there were more opportunities per minute

Of his grappling for guillotines

The investment and time was worth it for another athlete. I might have said well

He hardly ever gets in the situation the front headlong so guillotine so it's not even worth investing the training time

Let me ask you a question on the on the competition side mentioned haters

And do you think about this aspect of the competition with athletes?

If there's a great question and the answer is no

I'm

You can see that you could you couldn't find two more polar opposites

psychologically than than George St. Pierre and this monstrosity on my left and

I've I've never said to my athletes. Hey, I think this is the sort of demeanor you should carry yourself with

I'm myself a very flawed character and I'm the last person on earth

Who should be delving out moral advice to other people?

The only thing is that I you know, of course, I believe some things are off limits

But as long as it's done in the context of sport with no one's physically attacking people or do anything crazy

Where it just goes completely over the top then I give almost zero

Moral advice to my athletes. I'm a jiu jitsu coach not a preacher

I

If I can if I may

We are entertainers

You know, we're athletes or professional athletes, but we make

We make a living because of people or want to see us perform

Same thing an actor or something a singer and a lot of the time

especially in the fight game

An event is promoted. It needs to be with emotion

Love me hate me, but do not ignore me

and

You know it

when it's authentic and

It's done. Well, I think me my personally my my favorite fighters to watch are the one that are that

That I that have a sort of some sort of a bad persona

I really enjoy watching those guys because

They bring an emotion element into a fight, which is great

You know, I I feel to me it's more interesting to watch when there is an emotion involved and I believe that's why

Some fighters make more money than others, you know, you know what I mean?

They would that's the reason why we may we can make a living out of this

Yeah, they're better entertainers, but you're right. The authenticity seems to be really important. There's actually something very interesting there

It's time to break out some some secrets

Do you know who like you think of George St. Pierre you think of like the highly technical polished

Martial artists. Oh, this is gonna be great. Do you know who his favorite fighters to watch were?

You'd probably be thinking of probably someone who's really technically advanced

Actually, it was Mark Coleman. Oh, no, Kevin Randleman and Phil Barone

He used to love watching that was a hammer house. That was his favorite. He would love those guys and

whenever their fights were on georgie watching the hammer house crew and

It's funny what you said about how those guys bought an intensity to

To MMA that was off the charts. Have you ever met those guys in?

And in their prime, let me tell you it was it was something to behold and

I had this crazy larger than life personality

Most of the things I did made no sense whatsoever

But I mean technically but that was their appeal and they were these guys and George loved to watch them more than anyone else

You never know what what could happen with these guys. I remember when Mark Coleman won the Pride Grand Prix

I was in my living room. I was jumping I was so happy. I was like, yeah

Yeah, he beat Igor Vorchevchin. That was like I like for to me. It was amazing. You know what I mean?

Because of the emotion that they brought into the fight George is actually very

interested by something you said that normally when I

Ask what is the appeal of a given fighter?

And what makes people watch a fight you talked about the idea that fighters entertain us and that's absolutely correct that they are

It's this weird weird industry where you're you're

Both an athlete and an entertainer and you need to be successful in both regards to become

financially successful insofar as

Your favorite athletes to watch at least were people who are almost like the polar opposite of who you are

I've always said that most people if you look at

Say a million people watch a pay per view event

What percentage of those million people have a genuine?

technical understanding of what's happening as they watch a fight

It's tiny

It's absolutely tiny the vast majority of people who watch a professional fight have almost no

technical understanding of

What's going on in front of them? So how do they relate to the fight? What's the only way they can?

it's through emotion and

So when they get a sense that these two don't like each other then they can relate to the fight

But only a tiny percentage of people watching a given professional fight can relate to it on a technical level

The overwhelming majority will always form an emotional attachment to the fight

That's why when you see things shows that USC primetime, they never focus on

tactics and the techniques of the fight they focus on the emotional elements the

Preparation the view of their own family members as athletes get ready

It's always an emotional pull because that's how 99 percent of the viewers

Relate to the fight if I haven't think about chess, okay, if I have minimal knowledge of two world champions

Coming to fight each other in it or match up against each other in a game of chess

I know so little about chess tactics and I can't really form any kind of technical

appreciation of what's going on on the board

But if you tell me that these two chess players hate each other's guts and they've got a rivalry which goes back five years

And they've said this and that about each other in public then suddenly on my ears break up and I'm like, oh, okay

This sounds interesting

because I just don't have the the knowledge to appreciate what's going on on the board and a chess game to be able to

to appreciate the

The technical nuances of what they're doing. So any

Interest that I have in the chess match is going to have to come from some kind of emotional level because I'm just not qualified

To make technical assessments and that's exactly how it is in the case of both grappling and mixed martial arts

That's why the ones who evoke the most attention are always the ones who can form some kind of emotional appeal

Conor McGregor was the all time master of this. I

believe also

Emotion can be used as a weapon

For example, I've learned I've learned this from my favorite boxer is sugar a Leonard

Sugar a Leonard. I remember I was very young

So I watched his fight later when I was older, but I know that sugar a Leonard

Was the best boxer of his era to me personally and I don't think nobody could beat him

I think it was skill skill wise it was the best. However, when he fought in Montreal Roberto Duran

Roberto Duran

Made it in a way that Leonard became very emotional he wanted to stand in front of Duran and

fight a different fight that that he normally does because he wanted to show that he's a man and

He lost that fight, which was a mistake

so by

Then later on he beat Roberto Duran in quite easy, you know, the if the fair everybody remember the no mask thing

but my point is

Emotion can be used in a way that it can make your derail your opponent out of his game plan

And I felt a lot of my opponent trying to do that with me. So that's why I never got involved

that was my way to defend myself against

Some kind of bullying is to put like a like a shield in front but some other guy like

Gordon he expressed himself differently. Of course, there's a language barrier, but for him he's better

at

Given giving giving back that says he's a better counter attacker, you know

that's the way you respond to to to the aggression of

An emotional attack. I think everybody is different in that regards. What's interesting that John said that he doesn't

Study the tactics of this game or maybe you're not interested in the tactics of this game

Because it seems like this is more than just being an entertainer

It seems like it could be an effective part of the match. Yeah, I just feel like whatever investment you make in that is

It's going to get negligible rewards first of all, it's probably only going to pertain to one match in front of you rather than the

totality of your career and

Whatever gains you get out of psychological trickery and play

Typically

Don't last long you you've raised an excellent example with sugar rate Leonard. He did fight outside of his usual

manner in that regard, but rather than me try to tell someone hey

Behave like this before a fight

I would have been probably more forceful between rounds with an athlete and say no

No, you're fighting this fight the wrong way and that would have a much

more

beneficial impact on my athletes and

Psychological trickery before a fight. I believe another example of

Emotion that leads to failure is a

Jose Aldo against Connor McGregor. I think it was it was on purpose that Connor McGregor

Did this try to bait Aldo to become over aggressive to open himself because he's an excellent counter puncher puncher

That's what I believe. It made a mistake

There's another great one my match against cyborg

2018 no gi worlds where he didn't even try to win

He just like wanted to smack me in the face the whole time cuz he was so angry

I was talking shit to him before the match and

It was like the finals of the absolute it was like the biggest

Match of the weekend and he just didn't even try to pass my guard or do anything

He just wanted to hit me in the face and I was like sick. I just won

It was incredibly fresh. It's fascinating to watch like a grown man sort of lose

composure

Yeah

Gordon one thing I've always been very impressed with you and that's

No matter how heated talk gets

Before a match with you when you go out to grapple. You're absolutely cold

Like I've you've never gone into a match

carrying anything other than just cold blooded calculation and

You've always been able to separate very well the idea of words and deeds. And I think that's always been one of your

One of your strongest assets a way I often measure this is when a match is over

I will ask the athlete questions about the match and

If they can't answer the question, what were you doing in the fourth minute? Okay

What was that set up you used in in the third minute?

They got you into the Kimura law if they can't answer that that tells me they were just fighting on instincts and emotion

But with Gordon, it's like a logbook

It's like okay in the seventh minute you went for that

Judy Gatami set up from from on the left side

What were you thinking? He can always give an answer. He's absolutely stone cold

Speaking of emotion

Speaking of emotion Gordon you will potentially if you're healthy face Andre Galvao and the ADCC

coming up super fight

Who is Andre Galvao for people who don't know? Can you tell the story of your beef with?

The the emotional interaction with a man. Yeah, so Andre is

He's considered the greatest ADCC competitor of all time

multiple time black belt world champion

winningest ADCC champion ever he has six six gold medals and

I've been trying to compete against him

Pretty much forever like since I got my black belt in 2016. I've been trying to get matches with him

he was in the first DBI that I did and he ended up pulling out and that I've been trying to get matches with him and

He would always say no and give one reason or another and then

After the last ADCC, I was like, hey Andre said he was retiring after this after this

This competition so if he wants to retire, you know, he's he's the greatest ADCC competitor of all time

And I think it's great. But if he wants to compete and that's great. I was like super nice and then he started like

posting like passive aggressive Instagram

Captions and

then we started going back and forth in the internet and there was like one point where I saw him in person when he

Acknowledged he's like I understand like what you're doing like we're gonna pump this fight up and he was like totally on board

but then there must have been something that happened where like it changed from like him like going along with it to being like

Actually pissed and then there was that one night at flow where I went to go shake his hand

I mean he flipped me off and then he followed me backstage and started to try to fight me and then I smacked him and

Then he didn't want to fight anymore and then we've been going back. He's actually blocked me on Instagram now

So he just won't engage no one from Atos will engage now

But it's gonna be interesting how he how he shows up if he can keep it under control or not

Do you think how do you explain that level of emotion? Is this fear of losing your throne?

Is it or is it just a human being like with the cyborg just

Just becoming emotionally unstable. Well, it might just be me

I just have a way to get and get under people's skin. It's just I don't know

He's he's he was he was cool for a while and then I just I don't know it just

Then everyone gets like this. They're all so emotional by the time they actually step up to compete that it's pretty easy to read them

They're either so emotional that they want to actually come forward and and beat me like like Tim Sprague's is a perfect example at

ADCC I posted like

On my story on Instagram like ten minutes before a match

I said like what I'm gonna do to Tim Sprague's is gonna be criminal and he's like a very stally guy and he came

He saw that and then he came out and actually tried to fight me

Like he came and actually engaged my guard and I ended up submitting him

So it either has that effect or it has the effect where they know I've talked so much shit leading up to the match

That they're so afraid to lose that they just get super stally and they move away

So either has one effect where they come forward and they want to they want to beat me beat me or they want to just

They're so afraid of getting submitted that they know if they engage they're super cagey and they just back away and don't really do anything

Do you think this match happens?

There's a lot of variables and what I have to see how my stomach is and to if I'm actually gonna show up and compete

My stomach's healthy. I doubt that Andre will actually show up to compete

I've been trying to compete against him for six years and he hasn't done it

So there's no reason to think he would now is it possible for you to speak to where like your estimates are about your stomach?

Or is it too unclear for now still too early to tell I have this round of treatment that I'm doing until late February

And I'm pretty sure that I need to do the same test

They did initially to retest all my levels and then go from there

So I've been feeling a little bit better. Like it's not nearly as bad as it used to be

I was explaining to someone the other day like for the last four years

I would be so nauseous that every time I would walk into a new room

I'd have to actively locate a garbage can in case I have to throw up

So I'm like one step above that right now. I'm like doing a little bit better than that

So it's definitely getting a little bit better, but it's not it's not where it needs to be

Can we talk about diet for just a sec because both of you George and and Gordon?

Like suffered from stomach issues different kind and have arrived for now for different places

so can you maybe George speak to

The general question of what is the best diet for performance for training like what have you learned through your career about this?

Well, I think everybody is different

to me personally

I implement fasting

Time restricted eating and and prolonged fasting

What's the longest you've done so far? The longest I've done is five days. I do it quite often

I do I do four times a year. I do

three to five days

water fast

And I liked it. It helps me with inflammation. I think it boosts the immune system and

That this about the I read papers about about this and I it helps me also feel

Feel good. It's kind of

Tera very therapeutic to physical and mental just mental

It meant mental and physical because when I eat my when I break my fast and I sit at the table with with other people

It doesn't matter what I eat if we all eat the same thing. I always tell them

I said my food right now tastes better than all of yours, you know, because I you know, I I have that this

thing that I think I believe sometimes you need to put yourself into suffering to realize how

How

Pleasurable something is and I

Tent

Personally like diet wise I eat whatever I want

Whenever I want, I don't I no longer have any problem with this

but if I would have a competition coming up like

Knowing that I what I know now about my body I would

orient myself

more towards an animal based diet

That's because I've tried different things and that's the kind of diet that I believe helped me

Having less inflammation and feel better in terms of performance for for for doing something physical

So high protein high fat low carbs

well

This is is different between animal based diet and keto. I mean there is carbs. There is a lot of fruit

I got a lot of the the carbs from the fruit

Okay, a lot of organs organs. I

Know a little bit about paleontology and in the past

About you a prehistoric human and and I I know that

And not not only about that. I know because I have travels a certain place in the world

I want to visit the Maasai in Africa the hunter gatherer tribe and I know that when they kill an animal

They go for the organs first and I know a pretty most predatory animal. They do the same thing

So organs I believe is something that normally in our culture in the western part of the world

We don't really eat but it's something that is very nutritious

Have you been able to convince Gordon to try fasting?

Talk about diets

It's a different situation. I think for Gordon because he's an heavyweight. He doesn't want to lose weight

You know when the heavyweight the range of like my range was like I was a welterweight and middleweight

But the heavyweight it's like some of the guys that you compete can compete against their it might be 300 pounds. So if you lose weight

It's a it's a big problem. You know what I mean?

So and there is things that will work for me that might not works for Gordon, you know

So we have to make his own experience and and I told Gordon sometime when everybody goes left

You try to go right see how you feel with certain things experiment

Not not a topic

That's part of your optimization

Optimal performance formula. Well what I used to do before my stomach issues and for those of you listening who don't know I had

recurring staph infections in

2018 and I took a bunch of oral antibiotics and it just completely wiped out my stomach

So I just was diagnosed. It was misdiagnosed as gastroparesis

So for those of you messaging me on Instagram who are just watching Rogan asking me about my gastroparesis. That's not what I have

They misdiagnosed it and I did some other tests and for four years

I didn't even know what it was and then I got this I went to this doctor in California who?

Diagnosed me with H. Pylori and then a fungal and a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestines. So the issues in the small intestines

so what I used to do was I used to do like

Seasons where I'd have a very clean season where I was competing and I would have a lower body weight

And I would do like an offseason kind of like a bodybuilder where I would eat a lot more food and a little bit

Dirtier food and I would have cheeseburgers and pizza at nighttime to have the extra calories

But now I can't eat those foods because they upset my stomach

So now I pretty much just try to eat whatever I can and maintain the weight the best I can

Based on how my stomach feels. So right now it's like rice chicken eggs fish

vegetables fruits and

Pretty much nothing else like anything hard to digest

Anything spicy red meat fast food all that's all that's hard for me

Which sucks because in Texas things? Yeah barbecue

And I mean this diet is really important for you John I can tell

Like is it is that something you think about for athletes at all again, that's part of the I've to be honest with you

I've never seen any

measurable

Improvement in sports performance in jiu jitsu by change of diet. I do believe that diet is important for longevity and

Human beings and I do think it makes a difference, especially once you get past the age of 40

with regards longevity

For older athletes. I do believe it makes some difference. But my observation is in athletes and

In their youth and working up into their prime. I've seen athletes have the worst

diets

God bless Travis Stevens for that guy won Olympic silver medal basically on McDonald's and candy. Yeah

George St. Pierre for 80% of your career. You were powered by McDonald's and coca cola

To Gina Alfredo. That was my yeah, my meal of choice before a championship fight

Gordon for him his youth was just five guys hamburgers Gary Tonin the same thing

I've worked with Japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and won Olympic gold medals

I've worked with Russian wrestlers who just ate

Whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding

I've worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and

Their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I've never I've never seen someone say

Okay, I changed my diet and because of that there was a measurable

Improvement, you know in sports performance another way to phrase it though is I have noticed with a lot of lead athletes what they eat

They begin to believe that that either is not a hindrance or it's actually good

Like Travis Stevenson is an example of somebody who eats shitty

Because he believes it's like it's like a power because whatever he's traveling across the world

He can't rely on healthy good food to be there

So I'm going to eat shitty so that that's the like my body knows how to perform under whatever skittles or whatever

Everywhere's got McDonald's everywhere's got McDonald's

So that makes like and they've convinced themselves and you talk about Russian athletes. A lot of them have very

Strong beliefs about like this

Particular food being good for them, but there's no agreement among them. Exactly. No agreement. Yeah

Yeah, so believe is more important than the actual time. Yeah

I'm sorry if I can after

You know after a night out when you're hanging over I

Think the best thing and and I'm saying this and all certain sincerity

I think the best thing to eat to me was like like a cheese cheeseburgers with

We call that a puts in back home because it's very fat. It's greasy. So it up so the next day

When you wake up, I think you feel better because it absorbed the outcome. There you go. I'm

My mom told me the same story once and then I try it was like I was hung over for some party and

I woke up. I was like probably I don't know 19 or 20 I woke up and

My mom's like, yeah, just have it have a cheeseburger go go eat something greasy and I did and I was like

Oh, I feel kind of better now. I do not know that science the exact science behind it

but I I always notice and I don't know if it's placebo, but I always notice that if I

I'm if I party hard and I've been drinking a lot

If I don't eat before I go into bed if I don't eat

Shitty food the next day will wake up and feel worse than if I eat shitty food. I feel better

I know it sounds crazy. I don't know why but it works for me

Yeah, but it's also hard to do science on extreme performers so the discussions we're having is amongst the very

You know that this might not apply to a general like recreational athlete, but for the elite

I've just seen champions in every kind of combat sport and I've never seen a

Correlation between dietary habit and performance and people under the age of 30. I do believe that diet is important for longevity. However, and

For that alone it may well be worth investing time in it

But with regards sports performance at least in jiu jitsu, I've never seen any significant difference

Well, we had a little bit of a difference of opinion on this

I think what about strength training and muscle building or at least we had a discussion about this

So what do you believe is the value of?

Of you know training outside of the sport so fitness

Lifting heavy lifting explosive all kinds of lifting

Personally for me, I believe and I've learned that from from John

I used to do like

To train like a bodybuilder before because I thought in my early days of competition

That was the most efficient way to do things to because it was like I was watching Jean Claude Van Damme

Arnold Schwarzenegger, we thought back back in the day. That was the thing

That that's how we should do it, you know for to get ready for a fight

But I realized later on

That it's all about efficiency and some guys they don't lift at all and they're doing pretty well, so I

Do cross training mostly for longevity

It's mostly for a therapeutic

Like a therapy. It's more therapeutic than

For performance is to keep my body healthy to do a certain movement that are different than what I do every day in the gym

in combat sport to keep me

Healthy and and athletic so all the interesting movement stuff that you've done outside the sport that was for

Therapeutic mostly therapeutic. I think it does it could

Transcend to performance, but it's mostly therapeutic. I do not believe that

Squatting five plates or bench bench pressing three plate will make me a better fighter

I do not I believe actually it could hurt me more. It could damage me more than than benefit me

so

Gordon as somebody who on instagram posts

A lot of pictures of you being shredded and huge

What's the value of of strength? So I do like a combination

John got us big into like gymnastics type movements like toes to bar and muscle ups and things like that when we were young

Like toes to bar because that's like the exact motion you have to do when you're retaining guard it needs to chest

So I do a lot of that stuff

In combination with I do a lot of

Opposite of george. I do a lot of bodybuilding workouts

Where I do like a basic split like a chest to chest

Triceps back and biceps day. Um, and my idea is that

Weight lifting should always be a supplement to jiu jitsu. So you shouldn't be missing a jiu jitsu session to lift weights

So I don't do I do probably I train jiu jitsu every day and I lift three to four times a week

Um, I feel like lifting seven days a week for me is is too much and the lifting takes a lot of energy

When you do like hard lifts like that, um, but my idea is if you want to get good at jiu jitsu

Do jiu jitsu and if you want to be bigger and stronger lift weights and uh, and eat food and um,

I I generally don't go super heavy when I lift because you start putting crazy weights then start tearing muscles and stuff

Um, so I usually do moderate weights with a with a very high rep rep range like four sets of 20 with

a drop set at the end to fatigue the muscles break the fibers and

grow

Okay, so four sets of 20 that's interesting. So that that's more for endurance and raw strength

yeah, and also I think

close to the competition i'll pick the intensity up and

While there's no real way to get significant gains in vo2 max. I think that lifting

And just getting used to mentally redlining

Um gets me kind of in competition shape because a lot of times in jiu jitsu the guys i'm training with

They're not on a technical level

where they can

Physically exhaust me to the point where I feel like i'm going to die

But uh, I get most of that like when i'm wrestling because i'm not as efficient in wrestling

So I get a lot more tired

Um and lifting when you do like if you do like four sets of 20

Leg press to squat and you go back and forth like you're like about to die at the end

And I think I feel like gets me in the mental habit of redlining before competition. But does muscle help you?

It's like the actual mass of muscle

Like the actual mass of muscle like this. So I think being stronger will always help in a combo will always help. Yeah

To some degree. It's not going to be to a degree where

It overrides efficiency, but I think that

It can't help being strong or can't hurt being stronger. There's a bunch of people who believe depending on the sport that

The strength can quickly become a

That have detrimental effects to efficiency

Yeah, like I agree that certain kind of I mean if strength is purely is like very cleanly

Purely applied to the exact movements of the sport. So in judo the explosiveness you need

Is very difficult to replicate in any kind of way except by doing judo. Yeah, I mean

for us, uh

You always have to understand there's only so much technique that can overcome a certain amount of strength

Like if we all try to fight a silverback gorilla, it's gonna kill us

Um, but that that being said, um, I do think that

Like for example heavyweights are usually the least technical because they rely on their size and strength to beat smaller people

Um, but I think that if you stay with this with the discipline of doing everything very precise

And I train with a lot smaller people most of the time so I get out of the habit of using uh using my strength

Um, I think if you're very precise with the way that you train I think that the the extra size and strength can help you

A quick question. How would you fight a silverback gorilla?

I mean, is there which animal do you think you can actually defeat that would be impressive that most people would say you can't

you know, I actually

I don't have an uh an answer to this

I thought you were gonna say I want I want I want to say that me and john had like a four hour discussion on

This one time i'm like, what would win bear or gorilla?

Uh, and he went into like this whole dissertation about how like jaguars spin underneath and like berimbolo silverbacks and kill them and like rip

Their rip their artery and their legs out. It was amazing. I guess. Okay, so before we talk about strength john, let me ask you what

Do you think people would be surprised by if two animals faced?

One of them would win and people wouldn't predict that

So they would be surprised by the effectiveness of certain animal at fighting in the whether it's in the forest in the jungle

So let's slow down here. Okay, so there's two animals of different species fighting

And and most people would pick

So for example, the lion gets a lot of credit for some reason i'm not exactly sure why the king of the jungle

well, I

You know a lot of people told me that the lion

for example, the tiger can

Be a lion. Yeah, this is one of those age old debates

It's okay. Yeah. Well in grappling in fighting it feels like some animals use

teeth

And some use other parts of their body also like bear actually, I don't even know how they

They have extraordinarily powerful

And long claws and in addition, they're powerful biters as well. So I wonder and the same with the silverback

I don't know how much they're I love that we're having this discussion

I think we need joe rogan for this discussion. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Um, so

uh

Your your question has gone in about five different. So it started with strength. Uh, and let's go back there, which is

Do you think for for an athlete in jiu jitsu? Let's let's stick to grappling

All right. Do you think strength strength is helpful or detrimental? Uh, i've always believed that

two things will

Uh create whatever

Whatever effectiveness you have in grappling those are your skill set and your attributes

And the best athletes are those who excel in both

um

Don't kid yourself if someone gets twice as strong

By some kind of magic potion they're going to be a more effective grappler if someone gets

Twice the level of endurance that they had previously they will be a more effective grappler

These physical attributes have a very important outcome on the uh, sorry

A very important effect upon the outcome of matches

Um, it's always a good thing to be stronger. It's always a good thing to have better endurance

It's always a good thing to have better balance or whatever other attribute you throw out there. Um

Gordon's point was okay. Everyone agrees on that but there's a problem in order to build these things

You have to carve into other elements of your training regimen and then it becomes well, which becomes more important

increases in strength or increases in skill

There comes a point where

Investing in strength training starts to get diminishing returns

I can't tell the difference between someone who bench presses

300 pounds on the mat versus someone who bench presses 400 pounds, but that's a big difference

That's a hundred pound difference and for an athlete to go from bench pressing 300 pounds to 400 pounds

That would require a great deal of uh of training effort and focus

But if I can't tell the difference when I grapple and then why bother?

Okay, once you get to a certain strength level

It doesn't really help that much to go from a 400 pound bench press to a 450 pound bench press

If that's the stage you you're really getting a diminishing in returns on your training investment

um now skills on the other hand

Experience far far less in terms of diminishing returns every new skill you develop

can translate

Very very well into big increases in performance. Look at the example of gary tonin that we talked about earlier

investments in guillotine

Made a significant improvement in his uh effectiveness in matches and led directly to some of his most important victories

um

But if he had invested the same amount of training time in

Developing a bench press that was 25 pounds more than previously that would have had no outcome no

Influence on the outcome of those matches

So the question always becomes yep. Everyone acknowledges that these physical

uh

Attributes are important and everyone understands that becoming stronger or fitter is a desirable thing and every athlete should work on them

The interesting question becomes okay at what point?

Do you start to say i'm not going to be helped by further increases?

in in strength training or endurance training, um

And my point with my athletes is in the overwhelming majority of cases

If there's any kind of doubt invest more heavily in skill training than attribute training

Especially once you get to a certain level on the attributes

Well, the interesting thing that I think you should account for with strength training

is um

There's instagram

There's the world. It's uh, it seems to be more fun to build muscle mass

Um, it's like an addiction that people have there's also economic elements too

Like most people I I hate to say this but it's true. Most people are more concerned with image

than function and uh

Uh, it's hard to sell

A fighter or a jiu jitsu athlete who doesn't look like one looks like fedor

Yeah, it's a tough sell now

You can do it in fighting and jiu jitsu because ultimately it's about whose hand is raised at the end of the match

And you could even use it as a selling point

You can be a guy that doesn't look like he should be winning but he is winning that is a selling point

but if you give most people a choice between

Looking like arnold schwarzenegger and winning matches versus looking like fedor and when he matches most people will select

I wish I'd rather look like arnold schwarzenegger

And so most athletes feel almost like an economic compulsion to be in good shape and in order to advance their marketability

Yeah, nike's not going to sponsor fedor or tank abbott. Yeah tank abbott

No

Fedor, maybe

Yeah, yeah, we need at the very top. There's there's something about uh aesthetic

Like image of strength and power. It's also and also a personal thing if you look at yourself in the mirror

Do you like what what you see? You know what I mean? Yeah, you find yourself attractive

You know, what what can you do to make you look better?

And I think to me to me it was something that one of the reason I work out it's also for for that

Well, i'm sure if fedor looks in the mirror. He says I look damn good today

Yeah, you could be too. It's also a genetic factor some people, you know, it's harder for them. I mean, yeah

All right. So the question on training you guys john gordon train

Often three times a day every day

um, georgia had a different like, um

a different approach to training so like what is uh

For for no, I don't mean that in a kind of the opposite or something. It's just not every single day

so

and obviously you are

legitimately at the very top

Uh in terms of performance accomplishment in the field. So what have you learned about?

What it takes to train to become not just the lead but the best well, I I um

A lot of people when you say train they they see training hard. I believe you need to be very constant

Uh, and uh, very disciplined you need to train but you don't need to train hard every day

That's what john, uh taught me

um

For me is the nervous system. Sometimes I feel if I load it up too much it comes to a point that you're

It's too much. There is no no more information that I can absorb

so

Uh, and I do believe that it's something that you can train to your the capacity your capacity of being able to learn of

absorbing certain thing

and uh, I did a lot of volume of training but when I when I

Was getting ready for a fight, especially during sparring day

I like to do it quick because my when I fight it's five round of five minutes

I don't like to to spend

um

uh an hour or two hours in a gym because

I need to know how hard I can be

Going for 25 minutes, you know when I not for two hours for 25 minutes and at my last fight

john and I we we we

We were thinking of how could we

make me more

uh

Of a better finisher, you know more opportunists

And then john I remember we we when we were training with gordon jake shill came gary tonin

my round of grappling were different than if I would be training for uh

Abu dhabi, you know for for abi or like some like in grappling the round or longer but

in a mixed martial art fight

it's very rare that you're gonna spend

more than

Four minutes or four minutes and a half on the ground. It's it's very unlikely. I mean it could it can happen but

so

I

Do you remember we did the round three minutes? We did all the round I was doing were three minute round

So it gives a different

Uh rhythm to the training it forced me to be more opportunist

To be more of a finisher because I had only three minutes to to do what I needed to do

So if I if I see something I need to to go for the kill right away. I cannot be too over patient

You know what? I mean?

And it it served me well in my last fight and I think it that's a good blueprint to follow

um when you're a mixed martial art fighter, I if I would if

the result was great and I think

Maybe I should have done that before it was a great great idea that we had not to do

Be very careful on doing too much volume

Yes, try to get out and then try to focus on finishing and getting getting out as quickly as possible

To build up your foundation. I believe you need a lot of volume

But when you get ready for a competition, you need some to be something that replicate

What you're gonna be facing? What do you what are we talking about? What do you think?

Like is there rest days five days a week?

Twice a day once a day. Is there any one formula like that? I don't know

This this I don't I do not believe in overtraining. I believe in under arrest

I believe

You can be under arrest and

people

Always link that immediately to the volume of their how much volume they they train

Which it could be something else. How are you feeling? I'm emotionally. Are you you having uh,

Problems, uh personal problem. Do you have a have a hard time sleeping because you have a like someone died or I don't know

Like you you hold money you're broke or what like, you know what I mean could be anything

There is something that can affect you psychologically or emotionally

That made it in a way that you cannot sleep. Well because your your stress your cortisol level is high

You're you know what? I mean all these factors need to be take taken in consideration. It's not only about the volume of training people

always think

The volume of the training is the only thing that can affect

Recuperation which is not you know. Yeah, you have to minimize the amount of stress from all kinds of factors

It's a very stressful job to be a professional

combat athlete whether you're a grappler a boxer a kickboxer a fighter and you need to be taking

as a

Into account is it more or less stressful than marriage? Just kidding

Uh next question, uh

So, I don't know how to ask this question given what george just said but you're training three times a day

And finishing

And what what have you learned about what what brings out the best in you as as the elite level grappler?

Um, so over the recent years have actually changed it up a little bit

um when I was

Coming up through from white to black belt

Uh, I felt that the volume was the most important so it would be anywhere from like three

To seven sessions a day

Um going from school to school from new york to new jersey. Um, and I think that the volume was very important to build the skills

um where I just

Didn't know how to move my body at purple belt the way that I should. Um, so I think that building the skills

Is uh is super important. I think that early on volume is very important

Uh now that I already have the skills built. I think that acquiring more knowledge is the most important

Um, so I think that the volume is the most important

Is the most important um, so I find that if I do

So many sessions a day like if I do three sessions a day

Um, I feel sometimes by the third session i'm just like so mentally like there's just there's so much information

That's went through my head the first two sessions that I feel like i'm not even there mentally on the third session

Um, so I feel like doing less volume now

But having more mental clarity per session is more important because I already have the foundational skills acquired

So a lot of your training is almost like

Just thinking like learning a lot of it. Yeah, so i'll do like

I mean our schedule has been messed up since the pandemic because henzos got shut down

And they were using a french gym in puerto rico and now we're using a french gym in our and in austin

Um, but once we have our own school

We'll have a setup schedule where I can pretty much just be there all day long

But right now I do like a lifting session in the morning and then i'll come in and help teach

At henzos, so i'm there mentally i'm seeing what's going on and i'm playing around with ideas in my head

Uh, and then i'm there physically and very sharp mentally for the competition class during the 1 p.m

Session and then after that i'll go home i'll rest and get ready for the next day

What have you learned on seeing all these different athletes is there a

A universal rule that applies or is it um, athlete specific? Yeah, uh, first one thing

It needs to be addressed is that george and gordon play very different sports with very different athletic demands

Gordon can be in matches that range from anywhere from six

minutes to literally hours long

um as a result, uh the overall

Pacing and intensity of matches is massively different most obviously there is no striking in gordon's sport

Um striking by its very nature is a much more explosive physical action than grappling is grappling is primarily an isometric

kind of uh sport based around isometric tension and endurance

um george's sport is

It does feature a significant amount of isometric tension, but

The majority of it is based around explosion. So the physical demands of the two sports are radically different

different in addition the time of application is is radically different

George raised a very interesting point his matches seem long 25 minutes for a championship match

Um, but always understand it

It makes martial arts fight

at championship level

if it goes the distance is really

five five minute matches each round

Is a match in itself and that's exactly how you're scored. You're scored by who wins the most matches over five matches

As a result the application of the techniques, especially the grappling techniques has to be done at a certain pace as george pointed out

realistically

the maximum application time you're going to get in most situations is somewhere between

15 seconds and three minutes

Even for a specialized grappler like damien meyer. There's still a significant part of each round which is

Spent in set up time to actually get the match to the ground

Um, it's very likely that at some point your opponent will stand up out of grappling and you'll have to reinitiate the entire process again

So that even for specialized grapplers, you might be spending only three minutes out of a five minute round

Uh on the ground and as a result, you've got to get your work done in a very short time frame

gordon ryan

Once it goes to the ground and it can go to the ground because he chooses to sit to the ground

Uh may spend the entire match in ground positions. Um

As a result the matches have completely different pacing and completely different physical demands and the preparation that the two athletes go through will reflect that

If george saint pierre in training for mixed martial arts becomes fatigued to a point

Where he's no longer physically effective and able to defend himself the consequences for that in mma training can be very deep and deep

Okay, if you make a mistake in mixed martial arts because you're fatigued and tired and you take a full power roundhouse kick to the head

That's some deep consequences. A grappler doesn't have to face that you can be completely

Exhausted and grappling and just sit in the bottom of the mountain. Just practice just survival skills

We just don't get submitted from bottom out and that can still be an effective training session

complete and utter physical breakdown and fatigue can be

Can end an athlete's career in mixed martial arts

the consequences of

training through fatigue and mma

Potentially very deep and very disturbing

Um, the consequences of training through complete physical exhaustion and grappling aren't really that severe

Okay, you just tap whenever there's a problem just tap

Um, and so they're very very different sports in the way you you prepare for them

And a grappling

Athlete like gordon ryan, we can take

Many more liberties with physical exhaustion and the amount of hours a day you spend training

Than you could with a mixed martial arts athlete like that should be a benefit. Uh exhaustion as a

As a framework of learning so like from a place of exhaustion

Is there any benefit to the you on the you said being at the bottom of mouth sort of understanding?

Jiu jitsu or grappling somehow deeper because you're physically absolutely

Absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is the training and the training

Absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is your technique and then you'll see how technical you are

In addition you'll get to explore realms inside your mind that we don't spend a lot of time in

And you'll learn a lot about yourself and your ability to endure which will

have uh

Potentially great benefits in similar situations and matches. Yeah, there's uh, I mean for me for a recreational person

getting

Exhaustion allows you the great benefit to experience what it feels like to really get dominated

At an even greater frequency than you otherwise would

And there's something there. There's some animalistic thing. That's very unpleasant

and then afterwards it takes you to a nice to a place of

like, um humility and

I don't know you get it forces you to rethink life

in positive ways

There's something about dominance. It can mean if you get dominated a few times you can uh, rationalize it somehow

You say okay

Well, I screwed this up

But with when you're exhausted and you have to do like 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour of just being dominant

Over and over and over being submitted

It uh, I don't know. It's it's a very good process for

For other avenues of life I find it's I can't explain why because i'm i'm

uh driving home crying afterwards listening to bruce springsteen, but afterwards

yeah, this

Afterwards somehow you can think clearer you can see clear about what is the right path through life in all walks of life

Like relationships work, but also the grappling

Actually, the grappling is the hardest one to see what you have to do

It clarifies other avenues the humility. It's the it removes the bullshit

It's like we see

The world through some kind of fog and it just removes it and now you can see things clearly. I don't know what that is

I think I think it's important like you mentioned to push yourself like sometimes

to see

How far you can go because sometimes you you can go further than where you think and it can boost your confidence

You know, you can push yourself through a certain limit

And maybe you thought your limit were was before that point and you push through it

But like john just mentioned

It's a risky thing to do in

Striking because if you're exhausted you're gonna get brain damage

In grappling it's you know, you tap if something wrong, but you can do it also in strength conditioning

I like to run track. I do it all the time and track and feel

it it helps me to

To to know myself better. I think it's important. It's a it's a good point

It's like it's like the scrimmage wrestling rounds we do. It's like, you know, if you stop moving

That you're gonna get scored on and you know in your mind like there's no mechanical reason

Why I am why I should give up a score here, but you're so exhausted that you're like, oh man, this is terrible

If I if I stop moving i'm a pussy

If I don't stop move if I don't stop moving i'm gonna be twice as exhausted when we actually do stand up

So it's uh, it's an interesting game. You have to play inside your mind. It's it's your

That keep you that keep you uh sharp, you know what I mean? Because you just want to lay down and beat it

Because you're completely exhausted, you know

What do you think uh is the connection john between this ego pride thing?

Martial arts and actual violence in our with our ancestors. Do you think

You ever plug into that? Do you think that's a good thing?

With our ancestors. Do you think you ever plug into that?

You think there's echoes of something going on there or like you mentioned you have flaws and demons

Is it deep in there somewhere? Do you think we're struggling with those demons?

Yeah, uh, you'll need to patch up your question a little bit though. It's going to say we're different donations. Wow, that was

Not only might be dominating just I mean dominating interviewing. No, no, no, but i'm not

Patched up that question. Uh, it's not brother seeing where they're like, okay now we interview you

But you you went down the evolution

I mean, do you think do you um, I don't mean just the line between what is what is martial arts and what is violence?

I mean there there seems to be a gray area

And that connects us to the the evolutionary ancestors. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think there's a deep

recognition in all of us that

um, and this is

The evidence for this is is so easy to uh to see in in in daily life. Um

If you're walking down the street and suddenly you hear a commotion and two people are fighting

You will see literally everyone on that street stop whatever they're doing and watch the fight

Humans are fascinated by violence

And you've got to ask yourself why and of course, it's a recognition that for a significant part of our evolutionary history

Violence was one of the most important elements in human existence

As much as we curse it as much as we talk badly of it. Um

Um, the juxtaposition between humans social nature and their their need to for each other to get along and to express

love amongst the

the various members of a given community

there are

Disputes between humans that can't be resolved and ultimately

throughout history violence has been the number one method of

conflict resolution

um for better or for worse and there's a recognition in all of us that

This is where we come from and there's a reason why

combat sports have this

thing where

People will watch them and they might even be repulsed by them, but they find it difficult to take their eyes from it

and um, uh

I do believe that most combat athletes carry that sense

of their

even if it's on a subconscious level this kind of belief that

This is who we are. Um george used the word pride and I believe that's a big part of it. I believe that um,

Most

Humans have this sense of self worth and pride which they're willing to fight for

And uh, if it gets crossed by someone else they're willing to stand that

Some people will stand more early and some people will be pushed further back, but everyone's got that

That line beyond which they won't be pushed

And there's some kind of deep recognition in all of us that we have that somewhere within us

No matter how hard we try to bury it or what have you

And that's why I believe there will always be this eternal

interest in combat sports

Now

I don't believe that most people today have any kind of respect for unrestricted violence or

non consensual violence

um, I think most people most good people are repulsed by that now i'm

I'm sure that as humanity

Improves out into the future that will become more and more widespread

but

That's not to say we we can't exercise these these

old evolutionary demons inside of us and um, uh and

sometimes there are just disputes between different people different cultures different nations where

ultimately it's going to come to

Into into a shoving match and that will degenerate further into violence. There's always going to be

a need for humans to be able to

to

express themselves

Through violent methods and to use physical force to get to their their goals and objectives

um

our

Our need as humans is always to find a balance between

The two forces of conflict and cooperation

We need cooperation because humans isolated from each other are more or less helpless and useless

uh in order to

advance human communities need to build and grow

And so that sense of cooperation

occurs in most of our daily lives

But there will also be irresolvable conflicts where physical force has to be used to to form a resolution

more resolution and so most human beings find themselves

swinging like a pendulum between conflict and cooperation

and um, uh, and that is something which

Really gives birth I think to combat sports because sorry. I really have to ask you about this then. There's a guy even harvard

uh named richard rangham

And there's a lot of people that believe this he wrote this book that um

Um, basically, there's a lot of people studying is what happened? How did we get from apes to humans?

Like what was the magic thing? Right a lot of people attributed to fire and ability to cook meat

There's a lot of different theories

so

he actually um

His theory

How do I describe this is basically that that the beta males won?

that the the

the

Apes that were able to cooperate so you though the way you develop cooperation is that there's a big bad leader

that uh, the the alpha male

that you can only

um knock off their throne if you cooperate

And so we build big tribes that just excel the cooperation by practicing the overthrowing the leader

and so and anytime an alpha male would rise up they would get would we would uh

Develop our skill further and further of cooperation

And so we're all just beta males, uh, the descendants of beta males

that's this uh kind of theory that cooperation is fundamental and it's so distinct to the the rest of the

neighboring animal kingdom

So fascinating. I wonder what you think about this tension of violence of cooperation

And how important is this cooperation to the core of yeah, uh who if you you can look at it in the uh,

in a given training room, um

Jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts is solo sports a solo athlete steps into the cage or steps onto the mat

but all of your preparation is done in a cooperative training environment with many peers and

Uh as much as it's an individual sport

All of your preparation is done in as part of a group. Um

There's a sense in which uh

That's an interesting metaphor for humanity itself everything we do in life. We do alone, but we grow up in this

Given community and and what have you?

um

With regards to the the whole alpha male beta male thing, um

Humans are it's true. This fellow's correct. We you know, most

Primates do have very strongly defined alpha males who rule the roost and determine the entire direction of the um, uh,

of of uh

The community they they build around themselves

um

Humans on the other hand

Don't have an alpha male in that strict biological sense of someone who's

Responsible for the next generation dominates all the female population, etc

Physically dominates, but we do on the other hand have our own version of alpha males insofar as we have political and sociological

Leaders who have a disproportionate impact on the direction of a of a community. Um

uh, so was the cooperation allowed us to

To have a greater scale of hierarchy with the alpha male on top or the alpha creature on top. Yeah. Yeah

No, that's a fascinating theory

In in nature, we're we're very weak as a species

So we needed to cooperate cooperate in order to to evolve that I think

Made us uh, the the top of the food chain if you look at um,

Humanity in in nature, really the two things that seem to

More than anything else determine whether or not a given human community will be

Successful in a predatory world are numbers and technology

Okay, the more your numbers increase and the the higher the technology of the weapons and support systems you have around you the more successful

You'll be in a predatory world

um, so it's not clear that just killing off the idea of an alpha male was the

The the single biggest thing. Um, the rise of technology

Uh and the growth of community

After the imposition of language, these are other things that would have been

Very very important factors and and humanity's rise george. You made an interesting point if you look at humans

Just the raw material of humans. We're we're

We're fucking pathetic. We did and a predatory animal kingdom. We're just the absolute bottom of the food chain

Um, we don't have a single

effective

Weapon other than better than average endurance. That's about it

um

But you put us in a community who can talk to each other with language and give us the time

To come up with technological advances such as metal

um, and suddenly a human will go from no combat effectiveness in the animal kingdom to a

A human armed with a simple metal tip spear can kill

damn near any animal in the uh,

In the animal kingdom and working as a group

I'll beat your silver back. You know how i'll fight him in a deep water pool because he cannot swim

So I don't have to touch him

You'll be in a

Because he cannot swim so I don't have to touch him you'll drown and I'll get him into the pool

You know why because someone told me because we live in a community someone told me that information. So I know he passed it on to me

Yeah, he taught you

Well, you have to convince him to you have to somehow convince them to join you in the pool, which is very difficult

It's very problem. Very very difficult. Um

From a

technical perspective john you've looked at

Martial arts fighting in general and grappling. What's the difference between fighting and grappling?

That's something i'd love to

Ask all of you. Maybe john you can start like, um, well, uh when you talk about fighting you mean unrestricted

Uh mma top type fighting. Yeah, it's funny. You said unrestricted mma type fight mma type fighting

So there's there's this street fighting. Yep. Yeah, there's mma fighting and then there's grappling

It's really the sport of grappling. You're saying okay. What's the difference between mma and grappling? Yes. Okay

Um, see that would have been a much better question to ask. Um, well the uh, uh the single

When you talk about grappling you're talking about jujitsu rules or yeah

I mean you could maybe also mention different rule sets that somehow fundamentally challenge change the sport, you know

Um in the sport of mixed martial arts

uh

You've got two

Ways to inflict damage on the human body. You've you've got kinetic energy which is done through striking

kicking knees elbows fists, um

and you've got

uh isometric tension used along the lines of

lever and fulcrum

Which can be used for strangulation and and joint breaking

um

In grappling you lose one of those you're no longer allowed to hurt your opponent with kinetic energy

you can do it accidentally through a throw, but you're not allowed to just

You know knock someone out with a throw in most grappling sports it can happen

But it's relatively rare and it's it's not encouraged by the rule set

so

Yeah, you got close, um, uh, so

So there's a sense in which in mixed martial arts you got twice as many problems to deal with and um, uh, and they occur

in

A much shorter time frame the single biggest difference between grappling technique as a weapon

In human combat versus striking technique is time

Grappling technique takes a huge amount of time to apply

Okay

The great advantage of grappling technique is certainty of outcome once you get there

It takes a huge amount of time to set up a takedown

Physically take them down

Work their way work your way towards a dominant position culminating in your opponent's back and then apply a strangle hold

that's a long chain of events as opposed to

A strong punch or kick which can take

A quarter of a second an application from start to finish and the match is over

um

and so

there's a sense in which uh grappling is is it's

It's fighting for the patient and the calculating

Whereas striking is much more for

In this short time frame where everything gets done in the in the blink of an eye

There's a sense also which grappling is a much more forgiving sport. You can make a terrible mistake

End up in a terrible position and still fight your way out and win

In mixed martial arts, it's much much less forgiving

If you get hit and stunned your chances of recovery

Are minimal you're going to get swarmed on and unless it's right at the end of the round you it's very very hard to recover

From getting hit and swarmed on. Um

uh, so there's a sense in which

The biggest difference between them is time of application of technique

Uh in mixed martial arts, it's incredibly unforgiving in terms of time

Even the smallest error can have the deepest consequences

In grappling you can make massive errors and still come back and win

um grappling will typically be won

In a much higher percentage case by the more skilled and conditioned grappler. Whereas there is

much more of what they call a punches chance in mixed martial arts where

There's a much higher likelihood of a lesser athlete

Defeating a greater athlete in mma than there is in grappling simply because of time of application of the techniques

Even the smallest period of inattention

In mma and the match is over gordon ryan could fall asleep for 30 seconds

Have his opponent mounted on and wake up and finish him five minutes later. It's not going to happen in mma

Okay, so the the stakes are much higher

You can do a lot of damage in a very small amount of time and just the dynamic temporal dynamics of how things happen

Is very different everything you'll see will be a reflection of that then you go further into things like rule sets

In the sport of grappling if gordon ryan comes out and sits down in the middle of the mat

His opponent must follow him to the ground and engage

in mixed martial arts

If you come to the center of the cage and sit down

The other guy can just walk away from you. They're completely

Oriented in different directions grappling is ground centered

Mma is typically standing centered at the beginning of every round you have to start standing again

If I disengage from a ground grappling situation stand up and walk away from my opponent

My opponent must follow me up to the feet

In grappling it's the exact opposite. If I sit to the ground my opponent must follow me to the ground

It's written into the rule set and so one is inherently ground or oriented and one is inherently standing oriented

So it's more it's more difficult to dictate where the fight happens in mixed martial arts

Yes, you have to be able to impose where the fight is whereas in grappling you can simply choose it. So

George, what is uh your sense of the the difference in terms of how you approached it?

Uh between the two sports so you also are a student of wrestling and grappling so in preparing for fights

What parts of grappling purely the sport that you have to leave behind

well, I I uh

I'm, very lucky. I had the opportunity to I train with I consider the best

mentor trainer I ever ever had

and I have

Some of the best grapplers that I can train with they were they were there to help me through my career

so

uh for my training is

Of course because I do not dedicate as much time in one specific area. It's hard to be

You know a world class athlete and that in in only one particular area always

for me

Like the idea to be more well rounded to be very competent in every of those areas striking grappling

Take downs and and all those areas then being just very good at one

And not as good at as as others, you know, because I like the idea that

It gives me more option when I fight someone I can

Mold myself to become the perfect nemesis to a that person better if i'm more well rounded

If I do not have those well rounded skill

I don't have that option, you know

You have less tools to work with less technology. What about you gordon? What um,

You know, what do you think is very distinct about grappling in the way you approach it versus fighting? I think most of it was covered

But I think that the the one one of the big things is the fact that when you're looking at mma

You have a pretty general agreed upon and unified rule set where if you look at ufc versus bellator

They're they have slight differences in the rules maybe um, but it's pretty much the same thing

Whereas in grappling you have ebi rules, then you have adcc rules. You have ibgf rules. You have no time limit rules

um, and

Each rule set will play to the skills of different athletes. Um, if you have if you do adcc rules

Uh, it generally is slightly biased towards wrestlers or if they can stall to the overtime

And then hit a takedown in the overtime and not really doing jiu jitsu, but they score a takedown. They're gonna win

Whereas if you have like a jiu jitsu

Takedown they're gonna win whereas if you have like an ebi for example

You have to finish the guy in regulation or you start in a jiu jitsu position with your back taken or in an armbar

um, so I think that you have

certain rule sets that play in the favor of certain athletes, um and

Certain athletes can win in one rule set, but then they just have no chance of winning in the other

Like when I fought yuri the first time in ebi

I beat him in ebi the chances of me beating him on that night under an adcc rule set were probably pretty low

Um when I fought liandra low under an adcc rule set

He beat me that day, but the chances of him beating me on the same day in an ebi rules that were like next to zero

So I think it's interesting that

In mma you have one unified rule set which have small differences, but they're all generally the same

um, and in jiu jitsu, you have a wide variety of different rule sets that um have

uh

biases towards

a certain athlete skill sets you mentioned liandra low

I gotta ask you again about adcc

You have lost very very few times in your career

Uh one

I mean this is the same is true for george and uh, the only person who has ever submitted you is philippe penya black belt

Yeah at black belt

Um, he is adcc world champion multiple time abby jjf gi and no gi world champion

You may face him adcc or elsewhere in the future

um

Will you beat him?

uh, yes, I mean I have to say yes, right, um, but uh

I fought him initially when I first got my black belt, um that I fought him a year later. So 2016 and 2017

Um, and despite what people remember about the match

And whenever people talk about it's like oh, yeah, the guy who strangled gordon, but no one remembers that the first match was like a 45 minute

war

Um, and then the second match with the full 20 minutes of adcc and if I didn't get my back taken in like the last

Minute and a half two minutes, it would have went into an overtime. Um that could change the outcome of the match

um

I think that if you look at philippe's performances

Especially nogi specifically nogi since then it looks like he's almost gotten worse

Whereas since that match

uh in 2017

Uh, the only match I lost after that was against vinnie, uh, magalesh by by points and uh, i'm on like a 55

match win streak

um over the course of four years, um winning all the major tournaments nogi and uh philippe since that match I think is like five and two

uh, nogi

Um, and he's lost his last two match matches one was convincingly where he was dominated by andre and one was by submission

Um, so I don't think that he's progressed nearly as fast if anything

He looks like he's worse than he was when he beat me in 2017 based on his previous performances

Um that being said, I know he's going to come in training very hard for this one and he's he's going to be prepared

but I just don't think

that

In terms of technical ability. He's anywhere near my level and um, he was much bigger than me both times

We fought um the first time he was much bigger than me the second time. He was one weight class above me

um, so now there's not going to be an advantage in

Technicality and it's also not going to be a physicality advantage. So I think he's just going to be beat everywhere

This is uh, this is a good example of the scientific response to a um,

Um to a comment to a to a question. Yeah, so he's not um,

That's a match you're you're not deeply concerned with

And in terms of the set of opponents because you you have and you will be facing a lot of really difficult

That's actually in my opinion one of the easier matches because of the fact that we're relatively the same size

um, if I show up at 230 pounds like a lot of the guys are

260 270 plus so that extra weight does make a difference. I think out of that entire bracket. Um,

Felipe is probably going to be the one of the easiest matches because of the fact that I can easily take him down

And if I take him down i'm going to pass his guard

Whereas I feel like the other guys because they're so much bigger and they're very cagey. Um, it may take me a while to actually

Take them to the ground. Um

And get on top of them

And I think it may be they may be longer drawn out matches because of the fact that they're so much bigger and

And stally it's hard to take them down, but flea based relatively my size and as wrestling is atrocious

So i've already taken them down in the last adcc match

So i'm pretty sure I can just easily put them down pass them and then finish them

Well, i'm, not sure what response I was expecting but uh, that was that was that was phrased beautifully

um

We talked about the tiago alves fight that george had and john borrowed up in class yesterday

I believe but the point is we're talking about wrestling and I think that that's a fascinating fight

that um

There's an incredible display of strategy of skill of heart

Uh, george, could you maybe talk about that fight john? Maybe two what lessons you gained from that fight?

Go ahead. It was you're fighting on mine

Well, maybe it also tell what happened in terms of your injury I think third round. Oh, yeah. Um

Um, so I was fighting tiago alves and uh in the third round I um

Tear my adductor muscle

Um, it happened when I was on the bottom and he I think he pushed my knee down tried to pass my guard and I

Heard a pop

I didn't know what I think you were going for an armbar

You were on his back you switched to armbar and he cleared the leg by pushing on your leg

And you went in with a preexisting injury and it tore

Yes, and and it it it get worse and and I heard a pop

I didn't know what it was, but I know it really hurt. So I came back standing up and

there's a

A famous video one that goes on the internet about when I go back in the corner

And I tell my my coach i'm like, I don't know what it is. I think I tore my my my adductor muscle and

Greg jackson is like, I don't care hit him with your groin

I was very worried because I I wasn't pain, but I didn't know I didn't know what what I had

So I didn't know the gravity of it and it it it plays on your mind

So but I had to buy to bite down my mouthpiece and finish the fight, you know

I knew I was ahead on the on the scorecard and uh, I needed to finish finish strong

So what was your strategy there in terms of strikes in terms of wrestling so he's an

Exceptionally difficult opponent to take down. Yeah. Well at at first I I I knew I would add a good jab a good

You know to stay always

From the outside, you know fight him from the outside and and use my footwork because he was like a tank

He was much bigger and much

stronger than me and uh

I didn't want never wanted to stay in front of him

So he was all the way out or all the way in and when I was coming all the way in

It was with my uh proactive or reactive takedown where I myself

initiated the takedown by uh, using a distraction like a jab to make it is is and goes up and then I go

with a single double leg or uh to react like baiting him for him to come hit me and then

While he's coming to hit me I go change level and and that's the way I like to take my time

And that's the way I like to take my opponent down, you know some guys for example, like like uh, cabbie

for example, he's very good at at

Bringing his opponent to defense and use chain wrestling to to take his opponent down. I find it for me for myself. I specialize more into

Explosive takedown in the center of the octagon because I found it

more economical for me

What what did you see you were you're commenting john about the wrestling

That was that was quite interesting. I mean also, can you generally comment on the fact that george sanpia who don't I don't think you wrestled

I wrestle I started wrestling. I was 19 years old, but I wrestled some very good russian guys. So they took me underneath their wing and

but

My ability to cover distance

Come from karate does not come from wrestling wrestling is how I finish once I got the leg how I finish the takedown

Uh, so the the timing and the movement and the explosion required for this karate. Yeah

I think an important distinction to make here is um one which george

uh made throughout his career and I

Believe george you were the greatest innovator in mma history

um with regards to this

and this is uh

The creation of what george calls shoot boxing which is the amalgamation

Of striking technique in george's case mostly karate because that was his martial arts background

um into grappling and in particular takedowns

uh

when most people say

So and so has better wrestling in mixed martial arts

You have to be very careful what they mean by this there are many highly credentialed wrestlers

In the early days of mixed martial arts who went in and truly struggled to hit a takedown

Now these are very very good wrestlers who in a wrestling match would easily put down their opponent

but

In a striking situation where the ranges are completely different and the setups are entirely different

The stances are different even the the overall conditions are different. You're no longer wearing shoes

People underestimate just what an impact it is for a wrestler to take the shoes off

You lose like 20 of your forward drive the minute you take off the shoes

um

Uh, all of these make massive differences in whether or not you're going to be able to even make contact with an opponent for a takedown

As george pointed out the true value of wrestling in mma is finishing the takedown once you've established contact

But that's only about 20 of the action of a of a mixed martial arts takedown 80 of it is an understanding range

rhythm setup

opportunity, etc, etc, and

That's not part of wrestling at all

You're even the overall conditions are completely different in the sport of wrestling

You start a very close range in a very bent over stance and you're expected to wrestle for

In international stars for three minutes at a time

Um now suddenly you're completely upright

uh

and

You're not wearing shoes all the conditions the the the rhythm and speed of it is different

The counters are completely different. It's just an entirely different animal

And so george was an early recognizer of this

And started to put the emphasis on direct training for shoot boxing

In addition to wrestling so he practiced with very good wrestlers in the montreal wrestling club

Just the sport of wrestling and that's what made him very good at finishing takedowns, but it was in his shoot boxing training

Which he himself largely developed remember george started at a time when mma was pretty damn young

and um

Um, he we were when when you entered the sport of mixed martial arts george, it wasn't even allowed on tv

Like it was completely banned. It was in his country. It was

physically banned

Uh, they had to fight on indian reservations and you know, and this is way back in the wild west days of mma

and so as a as a young developing athlete he had to

More or less do this by himself

If you ever want to hear some incredible stories talk about teenage george saint pierre

Who had a coach who used to make him put on boxing gloves now?

He was 16 17 years old and just put him on a hardwood floor against a professional boxer who was in his

Late 20s at the peak of his career and he said george you're not allowed to punch

You just got to take him down while he tries to knock you out

And it was and it was crazy

darwinism, he was like

It's like you're gonna you're gonna

Adapt or you're gonna die

Literally and he had that it could have been very bad, but it turns out to be great

He's admitted

but there's a sense here in which

People think oh, you know what determines your takedown ability in mma as your wrestling skill

that

Your wrestling skill will determine your finishing ability on takedowns, but there's so much more to it than that

Whenever people say, you know, what what are the broad

elements that determine the outcome of a mixed martial arts fight

Okay on the broadest possible level. I always give the same three things

The athlete who can dominate the pace

of the match

The athlete who can dominate the direction of the match and the athlete who can dominate the setups will win the vast majority of fights

They're in those three things

The direction the pace and the setups you dominate all three of those

You're going to win 90 of the matches. You're in

Um, george could always dominate the direction of the fight because he could stop the other guy taking him down

And he could impose his own takedowns at any point in a match

So whether it went to ground or whether it stayed standing was always up to him

George had the most sophisticated array of setups into takedowns

That i've personally ever witnessed

um, the whole distinction between reactive and proactive takedowns came very early in george's career and

He excelled in both most people tend to favor one or the other

Most athletes have a very hard time

imposing

Their setups on an opponent and as a result they have to use

The cage as a crutch for their for their setups where they just bully someone towards the cage and then put them down on the cage

George is one of the very few people who was equally good against the cage or in the open

And could do so in both proactive and reactive

situations

And the scary thing is that as good as

All of you saw him look in the octagon

Um, anyone who knows george as a coach will tell you he was twice as good as that

In the gym where he would often go against people several weight divisions above himself

I could sit here all day. I won't name names, but I always laugh when people say oh, this is the greatest

Uh pound for pound guy of all time and i've personally seen george

Take that guy down and crush him in the gym

And I can't say anything because it's rude to talk about that in public because it's just training

But i've seen george go with people all the way up to light heavyweight some of the greatest names in the history of the sport

Put them down

Advanced position on the ground and dominate them in training. It's it's what he did during that time. I uh, george

I I got to say I deeply admire many of the things I saw you do not just in the octagon but

in training as well as um

The the impact that you had on

uh, the

the degree to which

Takedowns were used in the sport was absolutely inspirational

That's why one of one of the reasons why I always say you're one of the the only athlete I ever met who taught me

more than than I taught you because you opened my eyes to a whole new world of of shoot boxing and how

I grew up in a time when uh, you I was laughing before when you talked about sugar ray lennard

I was a kid watching that match and um, I grew up in a time where there was

Boxing and there was kickboxing and then I came to america and I learned grappling and

This young man here was the innovator when it came to the integration of the two

Well, then I have to ask because george sits here uncomfortably being complimented

um

if george saint pierre

And kabib nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins

Who that's a very very loaded question how yeah, like what are the different trajectories you see?

Oh, okay. How does each one win in your view if one wins or the other one wins what happened interestingly they're actually

very similar in size despite the fact that

George fought at welterweight and kabib fought it

Lightweight if you actually see them standing next to each other the of similar height. Kabib's actually a little more thick set

Yeah, he's actually heavier than you walking around. Um, uh, george walked around most of his career between 188 and 191

191 pounds

And so kabib actually would ironically have

a kind of size and strength advantage

Uh despite being in the lighter weight division that's been the general trend as mma

Has grown is that athletes will come further down and wait to make weight divisions. Um,

Uh

I believe that george has the best takedowns in history, uh in the open in the cage

Um, kabib was his great strength was using the fence to facilitate takedowns. Um,

Kabib's

Other great strength was not only his ability to take people down but to keep people down for extended periods of time

both of them were

Powerful strikers on the ground and could do terrible damage to opponents, uh on the floor

So they're both very similar in that regard

Um, kabib was mostly a uh, a puncher from the back george was mostly an elbow from the front

Um, but both of them could lay waste to opponents with strikes on the floor

Um, both of them were highly competent with submissions on the ground

They weren't submission specialists in the sense of someone like gordon ryan, but uh, they were

certainly, um

No slouches with submission holds. Um

Um, yeah, it's just a fascinating idea. So it's almost like who gets the first takedown. Yeah, I do believe

that

They could probably stand up on each other