Georges St-Pierre: The Science of Fighting #179

Transcript

00:00:00 The following is a conversation with George St. Pierre, considered by many to be the greatest

00:00:05 fighter in the history of UFC and MMA, but even more than that, one of the greatest martial

00:00:11 artists ever.

00:00:13 Quick mention of our sponsors, Allform, ExpressVPN, Blinkist, Theragun, and The Information.

00:00:21 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

00:00:25 As a side note, let me say that getting the chance to hang out with George, talk to him

00:00:30 on the podcast, record a quick self defense video that I’ll release soon, all while

00:00:36 both of us wearing suits was one of the most memorable days of my life.

00:00:41 In setting all this up, I talked to Joe Rogan and originally we couldn’t schedule a chat

00:00:45 with him and George on the JRE, which allowed me to pretend for a brief time that George

00:00:51 came down to Austin just to see me.

00:00:54 Who the hell am I?

00:00:57 In truth, him and Joe probably conspired to make me feel special, but that’s the point.

00:01:01 It’s inspiring to see George and Joe, who are at the top of their field, treat others

00:01:07 as equals, as human beings, no matter who they are, even silly Russians in a suit.

00:01:13 Meeting George was an honor for me beyond words.

00:01:17 This is the Lex Friedman Podcast and here’s my conversation with my longtime martial arts

00:01:23 hero and now my friend, Mr. George St. Pierre.

00:01:29 In your fighting career, were you more motivated by the love of winning or the fear and hatred

00:01:36 of losing?

00:01:37 I like to win better than I hate to lose because if it would not have been the case, I would

00:01:44 never have fought in the first place because I don’t like to fight at all.

00:01:50 But you talked about the anxiety, the fear that you experienced leading up to a fight.

00:01:55 So to you, ultimately the reason to go through that difficult process is because it feels

00:02:03 damn good to have your hand raised?

00:02:06 There is that.

00:02:08 There is also the fact that martial art, I’ve been introduced when I was very young and

00:02:15 it’s probably the best thing I can do in my life, fighting, that’s what I do best.

00:02:21 Also, it provides me of freedom, of access of things that most of people do not have,

00:02:32 but all that as a price and a lot of money, I made a lot of money, of course, with it.

00:02:38 I was maybe predisposed with certain abilities.

00:02:43 I met incredible mentors throughout my life.

00:02:48 I worked really hard and of course, I had a lot of chances.

00:02:53 The stars were all aligned and in order to keep that those advantages of freedom, money

00:03:03 and glory and access of things that most people don’t have and have these dream life that

00:03:09 I have, I had to sacrifice myself and fight in order to keep it.

00:03:16 It’s very hard to understand because I also believe most fighters are not like me.

00:03:23 A lot of guys, because I corner a lot of guys and it seems to me that they love their job.

00:03:29 They enjoyed to go fight in the cage.

00:03:32 I love to train.

00:03:34 I love the science of fighting, the sport, to be in good shape, the confidence that training

00:03:40 and mixed martial art give me.

00:03:43 However, I do not like the feeling of uncertainty, the stress that I have, not knowing if I will

00:03:51 be badly injured or humiliated or winning the fight.

00:03:59 To me, I’m bearable and that’s what takes the most out of me.

00:04:04 More than brain damage, more than anything.

00:04:06 That’s what takes the most out of me.

00:04:08 But the thing you get from it is the freedom that you get because of the money, but because

00:04:15 of the celebrity, because of everything that comes with it.

00:04:18 So you can be the best version of yourself because of fighting.

00:04:21 But at the same time, you’ve said that, quote, I don’t believe there’s pleasure in life.

00:04:27 I believe there’s only a relief from pain.

00:04:30 We have to suffer to be on top.

00:04:32 So isn’t there something to just the suffering in itself?

00:04:35 Just doing really difficult shit just to get to the top?

00:04:39 To explain that and so people can relate to it because not everybody’s a fighter.

00:04:45 I think the best example I can give is let’s say you’re, you haven’t eat for a long time

00:04:53 and you’re craving, right?

00:04:56 So you’re suffering.

00:04:58 And then when it’s time to eat, finally, you’re about to eat your favorite dish.

00:05:04 It’s going to taste so much better.

00:05:06 So that’s why I believe there is always some sort of sacrifice before the pleasure.

00:05:12 And the more sacrifice you do, like they say in fighting, the bigger the risk, the bigger

00:05:19 is the reward.

00:05:20 And I feel that’s how it is for me.

00:05:23 Yeah, I feel that with, I started fasting a little bit in the past couple of years.

00:05:29 And there’s nothing as amazing as a delicious meal or anything, actually anything, any food

00:05:35 when you haven’t eaten for several days.

00:05:39 It’s kind of incredible.

00:05:41 It’s not incredible in this simple way of finally I get to eat.

00:05:45 You get to truly experience the beauty of what it is to be alive.

00:05:51 Like that little piece of food, you see all the flavors, you feel just the experience

00:05:58 of it is ultimately of gratitude of how awesome it is to be alive.

00:06:04 But when you eat many times a day and you’re pigging out and you don’t get to experience

00:06:08 that.

00:06:09 And it’s fascinating.

00:06:10 It’s really like fasting is one of the most accessible things for people, I think to experience

00:06:16 that kind of pairing of hardship to pleasure.

00:06:21 I agree.

00:06:22 And in my case, it changed my life on a good way.

00:06:26 I cannot recommend it to people because everybody is different.

00:06:30 But to fight Michael Bisping, my last fight was against the champion in the heavier weight

00:06:39 class that I used to compete at.

00:06:41 So I thought that if I would gain weight, it would increase my performance.

00:06:48 And I struggled a lot to gain weight.

00:06:50 I gained about eight to 10 pounds.

00:06:54 Normally I walk around 185 pounds.

00:06:56 And for that fight, I was walking around 195.

00:06:59 However, I forced myself to eat like six times a day.

00:07:04 I was on a very strict diet and it didn’t feel right to me because I feel like I was

00:07:13 carrying like a little bit like I was carrying a bag on my shoulder.

00:07:18 And I think it was a bad idea for me because when I did the weigh in and I went on a scale

00:07:29 at 185, I couldn’t go back to my initial weight that was 195 that I worked so hard for several

00:07:35 months to get there.

00:07:38 So I was 190 pounds, but I couldn’t get back.

00:07:42 And the morning of the fight, I got sick.

00:07:46 We didn’t know what it was in the beginning because in order to know, to find out what

00:07:53 it was, I needed to do what they call a colonoscopy.

00:07:55 They put a camera inside of you and to do that, they give you something that makes that

00:08:02 empty you.

00:08:03 And I was trying to gain weight, not to lose weight.

00:08:06 So I told myself I’m going to wait after the fight, whatever it is, because it was pretty

00:08:12 bad.

00:08:13 It was blood.

00:08:14 And I didn’t know what I was.

00:08:15 I was very concerned.

00:08:16 I thought I had maybe cancer.

00:08:17 I was freaking out.

00:08:20 So I said, I’m going to do that fight.

00:08:22 And then after right away, I’m going to make a checkup.

00:08:25 So I did the fight.

00:08:26 Everything went well.

00:08:27 I won the fight.

00:08:28 I went back home.

00:08:29 I did a colonoscopy and I got diagnosed with ulcer colitis.

00:08:33 Then I got on very severe medication to get better.

00:08:37 And I’m not a big fan of medication.

00:08:39 I was trying to look for more natural way to get better.

00:08:46 And I found out about fasting and it really changed my life.

00:08:50 I met Dr. Jason Fong, who was one of the world authority of fasting.

00:08:59 He treat diabetes patient with fasting and he gave me a program of fasting and it really

00:09:07 changed my life.

00:09:08 And right away what I did is I went in a CAT scan to see the difference because it was

00:09:15 right after my fight with Michael Bisping and I did the CAT scan.

00:09:19 So I had my muscle mass, bone density, fat percentage, water retention.

00:09:26 It’s pretty amazing.

00:09:27 It can show you which harm has more muscle than the other.

00:09:30 It’s very precise.

00:09:32 And I did it like two months after.

00:09:35 So I started doing time restricted eating, 16 eight.

00:09:40 But right away when I started, I did three days water fast.

00:09:46 And the Dr. Jason Fong, he said, because I like to train during those days, I consume

00:09:52 Himalayan salt to make sure, because when you sweat, there’s a lot of minerals to make

00:09:57 sure you don’t deplete your mineral.

00:10:00 And when I compared the two results in the CAT scan, I found out my biggest concern was

00:10:06 to lose muscle mass.

00:10:07 I found out that I did not lose muscle mass.

00:10:11 Instead of losing it, it increased a little bit.

00:10:14 Even though my weight on the scale was lighter, I kept the same muscle mass even increases

00:10:21 a little bit.

00:10:22 My bone density increases a little bit.

00:10:25 My water retention is the biggest thing that decrease.

00:10:30 So my inflammation and my fat percentage.

00:10:33 So basically by looking at the data, I found out that by eating so much, trying to gain

00:10:41 weight to fight Michael Bisping, it only increases my water retention, which is not good because

00:10:47 it’s like dead weight and inflammation on you.

00:10:50 So what was the actual process of fasting?

00:10:54 You said 16, eight time restricted, so intermittent fasting.

00:10:59 But you also mentioned the three hour, the three day water fast.

00:11:03 What did that feel like?

00:11:04 And you also said training during the three day?

00:11:07 Yes.

00:11:08 How did that feel?

00:11:09 Can you give me some details of, this is fascinating.

00:11:12 So I do three days water fast, four times a year.

00:11:17 Nice.

00:11:18 For me, I do it, everybody is different, but for me, I do it after New Year’s.

00:11:24 Because during the holidays, that’s when I eat bad foods and I drink.

00:11:29 I see it more like a cleansing, like a detox, so to speak.

00:11:34 Mental too, like psychological.

00:11:35 Yes.

00:11:36 I do it after the New Year’s, right before the summer, cut for the beach.

00:11:43 After the summer, because of the summer, I’ve been partying a little bit sometimes, let

00:11:47 myself go.

00:11:48 And right before the holidays.

00:11:51 And I’ve tried, Dr. Phuong, he says to me, said, George, everybody’s different because

00:11:57 I’m a very active person and everybody has a different genetics.

00:12:01 So for me, I feel that three days is the sweet spot because I still train during those three

00:12:08 days.

00:12:09 The first day, the first two days, I don’t change nothing.

00:12:11 I train on my regular schedule.

00:12:14 However, on the third day, I modify a little bit.

00:12:19 I do something more easy and that’s how I do it.

00:12:25 And I’ve tried before, because when I say three days is my sweet spot, I’ve tried to

00:12:31 go up to five days.

00:12:33 But the problem is after my third days, I found out that I had a big problem sleeping.

00:12:39 I get into a hyperactive mode.

00:12:41 They call that the hunter gatherer mode, you know, like your brain, I mean, it’s amazing.

00:12:48 Your creativity is at its peak, but you cannot sleep very well.

00:12:53 And sleeping for me, I think it’s very important.

00:12:56 So that’s why I do three days for me.

00:12:57 It’s my sweet spot.

00:12:58 That’s interesting.

00:12:59 You’re right.

00:13:00 It’s the four or five days when you start, see sleep is not important for me.

00:13:04 So the creativity is really important.

00:13:07 So it’s very interesting the places your mind goes after a few days.

00:13:11 You’re right.

00:13:12 But I mean, what does it do to your mind?

00:13:16 So you mentioned your body likes it.

00:13:18 In terms of training, do you find that it helps you focus and think?

00:13:23 I mean, you’re one of the great strategic thinkers in terms of martial arts.

00:13:28 Does it help with learning?

00:13:30 Does it help with thinking?

00:13:31 Does it help with strategizing and all of that?

00:13:34 Well, unfortunately, I got into fasting after I retired.

00:13:39 I really wish people asked me, would you have done it during the time that you competed?

00:13:45 And the answer is yes.

00:13:48 I think we live in a society that we’re bombarded by publicity.

00:13:52 Oh, buy this, eat protein, this, that.

00:13:56 And fasting, nobody makes money with it because there’s nothing to sell.

00:14:02 I think that’s why a lot of people have not heard about it.

00:14:06 And even for myself, if someone would have talked to me about the benefits of fasting

00:14:13 when I was training before I got sick, I would probably have ignored him because it’s hard

00:14:23 to believe.

00:14:24 It sounds ridiculous.

00:14:25 Don’t eat.

00:14:26 Yes.

00:14:27 It’s going to help your mind and you’re going to gain muscle potentially.

00:14:30 Exactly.

00:14:31 And perhaps people have talked to me about it, but it went in one of my ears and got

00:14:37 out from the other side, you know?

00:14:39 But it really changed my life.

00:14:42 And I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and it helps me get rid of all my symptoms.

00:14:49 What I do is, I know a lot of people have ulcerative colitis and for me, I cannot recommend

00:14:55 it to other people because everybody is different.

00:14:58 But for me, I made a lot of research of how people from ulcerative colitis got better.

00:15:05 And I found out that a lot of people that got that condition get better in the natural

00:15:10 way through fasting, eating fermented food, collagen and bone broth and stuff like that.

00:15:17 And it made a huge difference in my life.

00:15:20 I just wish I would have known that before.

00:15:22 So do you have a specific diet wise stuff you like?

00:15:26 So I’ve recently, another ridiculous sounding thing, but it makes me feel really good is

00:15:32 very low carbs.

00:15:33 So keto, even carnivore, it sounds ridiculous.

00:15:37 It doesn’t make any sense.

00:15:39 But it makes me feel really good, even for performance.

00:15:42 Is Rogan has influenced you?

00:15:44 He’s a carnivore diet.

00:15:45 I was influenced actually by people, yeah.

00:15:49 There’s I’ll tell you where, because I was doing it before he was doing it.

00:15:54 It was popular in the endurance athlete community where it was fat adapted athletes, people

00:16:00 who insane people who run 50 miles, 100 miles, they figured out that they could fuel their

00:16:07 body by with fat that can go to fat as the source of energy as opposed to carbs.

00:16:13 So I remember hoping that I’ll be able to learn how to run 50 miles and so on.

00:16:20 I’ve never done more than 22, but it, I just remember switching away from carbs and feeling

00:16:29 really liberated.

00:16:30 Like I wasn’t thinking about food as much.

00:16:33 I’m able to eat once a day and feel really good.

00:16:37 I mean, I think every everybody’s body is different, but I think carbs make me lazy.

00:16:44 Maybe it’s because the crash, yeah, it’s the crash, but also just psychologically something

00:16:51 it it forces me to also think about food too much.

00:16:54 Like it starts becoming, you know, our logistic, you said our society is so much about food.

00:16:59 There’s so many ads, so much advertisement and so much of our social life is about food.

00:17:03 And so it’s very easy to live life, like live day to day thinking, when is the next meal?

00:17:10 Like what am I going to eat for lunch?

00:17:11 What am I going to eat for dinner?

00:17:12 What am I going to eat for breakfast?

00:17:14 And if you’re not careful, that’s going to get in the way of you doing cool shit for

00:17:21 like liberating yourself and thinking like, what am I actually passionate about in this

00:17:25 life?

00:17:26 Like creating and forgetting to eat those kinds of things and still being able to fuel

00:17:30 your body.

00:17:31 I don’t know.

00:17:32 It’s been fascinating to, to figure out like later in life that carbs aren’t necessary

00:17:39 to function.

00:17:40 Well, it makes me think like, we don’t know anything about nutrition.

00:17:44 That’s right.

00:17:45 Yes.

00:17:46 You know, personally, I don’t think I could have a diet without carbs.

00:17:53 I love chocolate too much.

00:17:54 For me eating, it’s a, it’s a pleasure of life.

00:17:57 I love my carbs.

00:17:58 I love my sugar.

00:17:59 However, if you talk about that, I don’t have a specific diet, but recently I, what I’m

00:18:06 trying to do is the days that I do not work out, I only eat once.

00:18:13 That’s kind of my rules.

00:18:14 Plus I try to respect 16 eight and do my three day fast, uh, uh, four times a year.

00:18:22 But the rest of the thing, I, I, I, I let myself loose because I, I don’t think I would

00:18:28 be happy if I, if I, uh, if I, if I don’t give myself the, the, the, the right to, to

00:18:35 eat for me personally, I love to eat so much next.

00:18:38 And you talk about a diet, carnivore diet is very interesting because I, um, a few years

00:18:45 ago I went to Africa in, uh, Masai Mara and, uh, it’s a tribe in, uh, in, in, uh, East

00:18:53 Africa and, um, I want to visit them.

00:18:56 I did a safari and I talked to them and these guys, they, their diet is 99% carnivore.

00:19:05 They they, that’s crazy.

00:19:07 And you should see they’re very beautiful people shredded.

00:19:10 Some people would say, Oh, it’s genetic.

00:19:12 I’m like, yeah, maybe it’s genetic.

00:19:13 But I mean, think about the Eskimos also that like most of their diet is on, on fish, right?

00:19:21 They, they, so I believe it can be done, you know, like, I believe it can be done and like

00:19:26 an exclusive carnivore diet.

00:19:28 And I, I think I’m going to try it pretty soon just to have the experience, you know,

00:19:33 to see how it feels like.

00:19:34 Well, you’re going to hang out with Joe, uh, be careful bringing it up because he’ll convince

00:19:39 you to, uh, forever switch to carnivore.

00:19:41 Definitely.

00:19:42 He loves it.

00:19:43 I mean, but just like you, I think he loves food.

00:19:47 So he’s, he can’t ever stay on carnivore.

00:19:50 It was funny cause we went to an Italian restaurant together and I still only eat meat.

00:19:55 Like I love, um, I love the constraints of discipline.

00:20:00 That’s, that’s partially why I like carnivore.

00:20:03 I like saying no to food that is delicious.

00:20:09 But a part of the problem is that I don’t know how to moderate.

00:20:12 You said chocolate.

00:20:13 I don’t know how to have one chocolate.

00:20:15 Is that something you’re able to do?

00:20:17 Have like in moderation?

00:20:19 No, it’s when it, when I have an opportunity, I do it.

00:20:22 I don’t have any, I’m an extremist person, uh, Lex, I, I, that’s the thing I, when I,

00:20:29 when I have a chance, I, I like, I, I just eat, I go too much.

00:20:33 And that’s why I like about my life, you know, that’s what I like about fasting.

00:20:37 Because probably if I would not have discovered fasting, eating chocolate would give me cramps

00:20:42 and all sorts of problems because people on ulcer colitis, normally they cannot eat chocolate.

00:20:48 They cannot drink alcohol.

00:20:49 But I believe because I’m fasting, that’s the reason why I’m medication, medicine, medication

00:20:57 free.

00:20:58 I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, but I have to do that, that fasting, you know,

00:21:02 and now it becomes to a, it became to a point that it’s no longer hard for me.

00:21:07 It’s like normal.

00:21:08 I don’t even force myself.

00:21:10 I don’t, it’s easy.

00:21:12 You know what I mean?

00:21:13 Some of my friends thinks I’m, think I’m, I’m insane, you know, but I tell them it’s

00:21:17 like with, when you get used to it, it becomes like an habit.

00:21:21 And, and I’m, and I know that hunter gatherer, like our ancestor did not eat three times

00:21:26 a day.

00:21:27 It’s, it’s, it’s not true.

00:21:30 They, they ate one day they could, and when they eat, they, they, they, they feed themselves

00:21:35 as much as they can until that, because the next time, because they didn’t know when they,

00:21:39 they could eat again.

00:21:40 Right.

00:21:41 So it’s, I think that’s how we’re, we’re, we’re built, you know, to, to, to have this

00:21:47 similar lifestyle.

00:21:50 If we could take a step back to the discussion about fear a little bit.

00:21:54 So Mike Tyson talks about this process of him walking to the ring.

00:22:00 He sounds similar to you in many ways of the anxiety and the fear that he experiences.

00:22:05 And he has this sort of story that he tells about walking to the ring and being supremely

00:22:12 afraid.

00:22:14 But as he walks and gets closer and steps in, he finds the confidence and becomes supremely

00:22:19 confident.

00:22:20 I think he calls himself like a God.

00:22:21 I feel like a God in the ring.

00:22:24 Is, is, do you go through a similar process of finding the confidence?

00:22:28 Well, it, yes.

00:22:31 And I use, I use a James Lange theory that they did.

00:22:38 So what I do is because I’m, I’m, I’m not afraid to admit that I’m afraid.

00:22:44 And in the beginning of my career, I really thought I asked myself, because I was very

00:22:51 good in mixed martial, but I, I really thought I wasn’t made for this because the idea of

00:22:57 fighting didn’t, was, was, didn’t make me happy.

00:23:03 It’s something like I, I was, I was forced to do in order to keep that lifestyle that

00:23:09 I have and achieve my goal.

00:23:12 Perhaps one day to make enough money to retire and you know, that, that was my dream.

00:23:17 But when I was looking around the gym where I was training, most of my training partner,

00:23:22 they were happy.

00:23:23 They were excited.

00:23:24 And sometime I corner, I corner a lot of guys and they’re happy and they’re in the locker

00:23:27 room.

00:23:28 They don’t react the same way I do.

00:23:30 Some perhaps does, but if you see me in the locker room, like when I get like my last

00:23:37 fight with Michael Bisping, just to give you an example in my last fight with Michael Bisping,

00:23:42 because it’s fresh, it’s the one that is the most recent and, but it’s always the same

00:23:46 thing.

00:23:47 My last fight in Bisping, I get in the locker room, I like three guys that I train with,

00:23:55 Mickey Gall, Eamon Zahabi and Joseph Duffy.

00:23:59 They all lost.

00:24:00 It was like, like my, my locker room was basically cursed.

00:24:05 You know, when you’re in a locker room and people from your locker room leave for a fight

00:24:10 and then they come back, it’s kind of a momentum, you know, you, you, you shake and yeah, good

00:24:14 job.

00:24:15 Now it’s my turn.

00:24:16 You know, it’s kind of a team brotherhood sort of thing.

00:24:19 So the, the, the, the atmosphere in my locker room was pretty bad.

00:24:26 It was like going to a, you know, like a funeral.

00:24:32 So I was very scared and before every fight, I asked myself, I asked myself always, shit,

00:24:39 what the hell I’m doing here?

00:24:41 Why did I choose to come back?

00:24:43 Oh my God.

00:24:44 And I’m freaking out.

00:24:46 However, I’m putting on a mask like I’m acting because if I don’t do that, it will reflect

00:24:53 on my coaches.

00:24:54 And if my coach, my, my, the confidence of my coaches is affected, it will reflect, reflect

00:24:59 on me.

00:25:00 So I need to feel strong.

00:25:02 I need to make them believe that I’m excited to be there and I’m happy to be there.

00:25:09 So this sort of play start when I get, when I first step in the locker room, even though

00:25:15 I feel completely different, but that’s how I play it.

00:25:20 Normally the day, the fight day, I never fell, feel a hundred percent.

00:25:24 I always feel exhausted, tired.

00:25:27 My highs are hitching because I don’t sleep enough the few nights before, because I’m

00:25:32 constantly rehearse, rehearsing scenarios that might happen in the fight.

00:25:37 So mentally it’s not that I’m not on top, but you keep all that to yourself.

00:25:43 I keep it to myself and I’m lying to everybody around me.

00:25:48 But everybody knows, you know, fair ass John De Niro, they know Freddie Rose, they’ve

00:25:54 been with me for a long time, so they know what’s going on, but at least I’m lying to

00:25:58 them.

00:25:59 I’m like, I’m feeling great.

00:26:00 So, and seeing all my training partner, like very disappointed because they lost our fight.

00:26:05 Some were badly hurt as well.

00:26:08 It was hard.

00:26:10 So I remember I started to warm up and everything.

00:26:15 And as you start to warm up, you become a different person because we know that certain

00:26:22 posture and yoga can affect your mental state.

00:26:27 But I would say it’s a little bit the same thing in fighting, you know, like when you

00:26:30 started hitting the pads, your muscle memory, your instincts comes back and you remember

00:26:37 that you’re good at this, you know, and your confidence start to grow.

00:26:42 And as seeing your trainers holding the pad and repeating your moves, it makes you also

00:26:47 remember all the sacrifice you have done through your training camp and confidence come from

00:26:53 how you prepared yourself.

00:26:55 And even you’re afraid, you can be confident in the same time.

00:26:59 Being afraid and being confident is two different things.

00:27:03 And before every fight, just right before I walk in, when I’m scared, I go in the bathroom

00:27:11 and I look at myself in the mirror.

00:27:12 I used to have a bandana and a gi, but now I didn’t have this for my last fight because

00:27:18 of the new Reebok deal they had.

00:27:22 But I did the same rehearsal that I always do.

00:27:24 I look at myself in the mirror and I start to compliment myself.

00:27:28 Like even if I don’t believe it, I’m starting to trying to believe it as I am.

00:27:32 I’m finding all the reasons why I’m going to win the fight.

00:27:36 And all my trainer knows that before every fight, when the guy from the UFC goes and

00:27:41 Steppen Maroon says, St. Pierre, you’re up next, I always take a few minutes to do that

00:27:46 same rehearsal.

00:27:47 And I tell myself I’m going to win this fight because I’m better and I’m very cocky about

00:27:52 myself.

00:27:53 I’m telling all the reasons that I’m going to win.

00:27:55 I got a better team.

00:27:56 I made more sacrifice, you know, I’m faster, I’m more powerful, way more athletic.

00:28:01 My fighting IQ is better than him.

00:28:03 I got a strategy on point that he’s never going to be able to keep up with and this

00:28:08 and that.

00:28:09 And I was telling myself, I’m going to show these young kids how things should be done.

00:28:14 You know, I’m trying to boost myself.

00:28:16 Try to boost yourself and you start to believe in it.

00:28:19 You become a different person.

00:28:21 So when you walk out the bathroom, now rock and roll, now I really believe it for real.

00:28:28 You know, like I’m still scared, but I believe it for real.

00:28:31 And that’s the transformation that happened for me right there.

00:28:33 And from that from now, from from there to the fight, it’s until the fight is over.

00:28:39 It’s called I call it cruise control because you don’t have time to think in a fight.

00:28:44 If you’re trying to think, you’re missing the opportunity.

00:28:47 So that’s how I see it for myself.

00:28:49 So at that point, you stop thinking and you just go cruise control, autopilot.

00:28:53 Trust yourself, you know, trust yourself because you repeated all the scenarios, you know.

00:28:59 So everything that you have done, it’s inside your computer.

00:29:02 Your computer, your brain is programmed to react accordingly to certain situations.

00:29:07 And it’s not the night of the fight that you will tell yourself, oh, finally, I’m going

00:29:12 to do this.

00:29:13 If you do this now.

00:29:14 No, if you have not practiced it before, you’re screwed.

00:29:18 The preparation, the repetition that makes it happen, you know.

00:29:22 What about like the really difficult moments in a fight where you are tested to your limits,

00:29:31 essentially?

00:29:32 Usually it’s cardio related exhaustion, right?

00:29:34 Where you have to ask yourself that same question is like, why the hell am I doing this?

00:29:39 Do you experience those or are you able to ride through the autopilot?

00:29:44 And if you do, like, what do you do in those moments?

00:29:47 Never in a fight.

00:29:48 In a fight when the fight is on, I never change my mind, I go until the end.

00:29:56 However, for example, my first fight with BJ Penn, I had a terrible first round.

00:30:03 So I had to switch gear.

00:30:05 That happened sometimes, but it’s part of my plan.

00:30:08 I always have a plan B, plan A, plan B, plan C. You need to have that.

00:30:13 If fighters go into a fight thinking, oh, I’m going to do this, this, this, and they

00:30:18 don’t have a plan B, if this doesn’t work, that means they’re not well prepared.

00:30:22 If you talk to me before every fight, I can, like in 30 seconds, give you my old strategy.

00:30:29 You know, for BJ Penn, my first fight with BJ Penn was, oh, I’m going to keep it standing

00:30:33 up, keep the fight from the outside, you know, because I’m faster than him.

00:30:38 Then the fight with BJ Penn started.

00:30:40 I found out that I was not faster than him.

00:30:44 And I found out that his reaction time was better than mine.

00:30:49 So I got beat up the first round and I got a bloody nose and everything.

00:30:54 So my plan B was now I’m going to wrestle him, you know, I’m going to wrestle him and,

00:31:00 you know, make him tired and trying to put him down.

00:31:02 And that’s how I beat him because I switched gear, you know?

00:31:06 But if you can’t do that, if you cannot find a way to become the perfect nemesis to your

00:31:10 opponent, you might win a few fights, but you’re going to find, you’re going to fight

00:31:17 someone sooner or later that will, that will give you a lot of, a lot of trouble.

00:31:23 So that’s where the anxiety pays off.

00:31:25 You’re anticipating all the ways it goes wrong.

00:31:26 So you’ve developed a plan B and plan C. You know, we talked a lot with, like John Donoher,

00:31:34 who you work with.

00:31:35 It’s interesting.

00:31:36 I don’t think I’ve heard him talk about plan B and plan C. He usually has a really clear

00:31:41 plan A, an entire system of plan A. I don’t think I’ve heard him, we’ve had a good discussion

00:31:50 about it in, over some cheeseburgers.

00:31:56 And he’s, he was kind of espousing the value of mastering escapes.

00:32:02 So when you find yourself in bad situations, being exceptionally good at finding ways out

00:32:08 of those bad situations, and that’s a way of dominance.

00:32:11 There’s nothing, there’s no better way to dominate your opponent according to him than

00:32:16 to show that they can’t possibly hurt you no matter how bad the position is.

00:32:21 It’s like, it’s a, as opposed to a physical dominance, it’s a psychological dominance.

00:32:25 It’s very interesting.

00:32:27 But I wonder if he has plan B and plan C in his mind too.

00:32:32 You know, in mixed martial arts, sometimes it’s like in science, sometimes you can make

00:32:36 a mistake, you know, like every human can make mistakes, you know.

00:32:42 There’s certain sport or a certain situation that you, if there’s a mistake made, that’s

00:32:48 it exactly.

00:32:49 Sometimes it’s the case in MMA, but sometimes you’re able to redeem yourself.

00:32:55 And if you look the fight with BJ Penn 1 that I had, which was probably one of the most

00:33:02 competitive fight and it was probably the, it was the fight that I got the most damage

00:33:08 and I was messed up.

00:33:09 It took me three days, like two, three days to recuperate from that fight.

00:33:13 I was really damaged.

00:33:15 And my first fight versus my second fight, I made a lot of adjustment because I have

00:33:20 learned from my first fight.

00:33:22 And also I had a guy, one thing people don’t know, like they talk about fighters having

00:33:28 secret weapons.

00:33:29 See, for me, my secret weapons was not like some is that they use like certain, like different

00:33:34 things.

00:33:35 For me, it was knowledge.

00:33:36 I had a guy in Montreal, he was measuring frames.

00:33:40 He’s not a scientist, he’s a friend of Ferras and I.

00:33:44 And what he does, he watch fight and he measure frames.

00:33:47 The way he does it is when you watch a fight and one of the guy throw a punch, he cut

00:33:52 the picture by frame, the video by frame.

00:33:56 So he’s able to see which fighter has better reaction time than others.

00:34:02 And BJ Penn, he found out that BJ Penn of all the UFC roster at the time when he was

00:34:08 in his prime, he had probably the best reaction time of all.

00:34:13 According to him, Lyoto Machido was the second one, but BJ Penn was the first one.

00:34:17 So I knew that if I would try to go first, because I always been the fastest guy normally

00:34:23 when I fight someone.

00:34:25 But when I fought BJ Penn, I tried to go first and he was always able to like, I never was

00:34:32 never able to touch him with my jab and he came back with a counter punch.

00:34:37 However, because of what he told me, I knew that BJ Penn has a very fast reaction time,

00:34:43 but had a very poor reset time.

00:34:47 To him, the way he described it to me is like your nervous system is like a muscle.

00:34:52 BJ Penn was so fast, but he’s like more like a sprinter.

00:34:55 So when I did the second fight, when I fought BJ Penn, I made him flinch.

00:34:59 Like I fake a lot.

00:35:00 So I make him react and flinch.

00:35:02 So all that reaction time that he used to flinch was not used properly to avoid my punches.

00:35:10 So I burn, I load up his nervous system with a lot of information and fake and to make

00:35:17 him flinch and pretending I was kicking and wrestling.

00:35:21 So he got overwhelmed and he got tired very, very fast.

00:35:25 So that’s how I beat him.

00:35:27 People sometimes they don’t know really what’s the strategy behind the thing.

00:35:31 They only see the physical part.

00:35:32 But when you fight someone, if I fight you, I look at you in the eyes, there’s a lot of

00:35:36 things that going on between you and I.

00:35:39 I can look down here, bam, jab you in the face.

00:35:42 The audience will not see these little detail, but you will see it.

00:35:47 And that’s what makes the magic during a fight.

00:35:50 The relation that you have with the opponent, you know, like the mental game, what you make

00:35:55 him believe.

00:35:56 Those little things, I use a lot of those.

00:35:58 If you talk to a lot of my opponents, they’ll tell you, like, I use a lot of these little

00:36:02 things, you know, like I look down at Banner, I go up or I am pretending I want to attack

00:36:06 you so I make you flinch, but in reality, I’m just doing this because I want to rest.

00:36:12 I want to recuperate and I’m tired.

00:36:15 How much is, you know, people talk about that with poker, for example.

00:36:18 How much is the value of this?

00:36:21 You know, so like some people argue that poker is more about the betting, you know, just

00:36:26 the money.

00:36:27 It’s just how much you bet and so on.

00:36:29 So that would be more like the analogy there with with fighting would be just strictly

00:36:35 the physical movement of your body.

00:36:37 And then a lot of people argue that there’s a lot here in the way you look and the little

00:36:41 movements in the face.

00:36:42 So do you think there’s, do you think you’re communicating with your opponent when you

00:36:47 look at them?

00:36:49 There’s no way to know for sure, 100 percent.

00:36:51 And I’m by no, no mean psychic, nothing like that.

00:36:54 And I don’t believe in that at all.

00:36:56 The only thing is I know through looking through the eyes of my opponent when he’s afraid and

00:37:01 when he gives up on me.

00:37:03 I’ve been accused very often in my career to not take enough risk, to not finish my

00:37:09 opponent.

00:37:10 But the reason why I didn’t finish my opponent is because I saw in his eyes that he gave

00:37:14 up.

00:37:15 He gave me the fight and I’m winning the fight.

00:37:17 So it’s not up to me.

00:37:21 It’s not to me to make it, to try to sacrifice myself trying to finish him.

00:37:25 Perhaps if I do that, I will open up for him to capitalize on my mistake.

00:37:33 It’s up to him to make a risk.

00:37:35 So people sometimes they don’t understand that is the art of fighting, my friend, you

00:37:40 know, like if I’m winning the fight like an hockey, an ice hockey, if you’re winning the

00:37:45 game and it’s the third period, it’s at the end of the third period, you’re not going

00:37:49 to take out your goaltender trying to score another goal because winning five to three

00:37:55 or five to four is the same thing.

00:37:58 Same thing in MMA.

00:37:59 We make a living out of this.

00:38:00 And sometimes as bad as it can be, you want to save yourself for another day, you know,

00:38:06 you want to minimize the damage.

00:38:09 But if he knows he’s losing the fight, it’s up to him to take the risk.

00:38:13 It’s not up to me.

00:38:15 So I’m a good counter fighter.

00:38:17 I use a lot of my attack or counter strike or reactive take down or proactive take down.

00:38:23 That’s my specialty.

00:38:25 So I’m not going to I have no desire to sacrifice myself trying to try to finish my opponent

00:38:31 if he want to, if perhaps I might give him the opportunity to capitalize on me.

00:38:38 It’s not it’s not smart to do that.

00:38:42 And very often when I fight someone, I can read him, I see the fear in his eyes.

00:38:46 Now I’m like, I got you now.

00:38:48 He’s very desperate.

00:38:49 That doesn’t mean I have to put my guard down because he’s going to be desperate.

00:38:54 But I know I’m beating you.

00:38:56 And I know I’m beating you.

00:38:57 I’m just going to do what I need.

00:38:58 You know, if I have a chance, of course, I’ll knock him out.

00:39:00 But I’m not going to try to sacrifice myself to knock him out.

00:39:04 And if you do that, maybe one day you’ll make a mistake and you’ll get dropped and you’ll

00:39:10 you’ll tell yourself, I shoot, I just got brain damage.

00:39:14 Maybe I’m never going to come back the same.

00:39:16 Maybe you know, I ruined my career or, you know, it’s a it’s a very serious game that

00:39:21 we’re playing.

00:39:22 It’s very dangerous.

00:39:23 In the face of that risk, I mean, Mike Tyson talked about, you know, when the opponent

00:39:30 looks away, he knows he’s got him, right, that that he’s broken.

00:39:38 For a person like me who has trouble making eye contact with people, there’s truth to

00:39:44 that.

00:39:45 I mean, there’s truth to that, that there’s an animal nature to us looking away.

00:39:49 I mean, you could see that the way the body language, the way the eyes move between two

00:39:54 animals going at it in the wild when like two lions fight or two whatever fight.

00:40:01 There’s a certain beta move when you’ve you’ve been defeated.

00:40:06 Yes.

00:40:07 Or one thing when I know that, that when it happened, one of the signs is when I just

00:40:13 like make a faint and the guy flinched like crazy.

00:40:16 That’s mean he’s really scared of me.

00:40:17 It’s a little bit like you’re you’re you’re doing this, that guy flinched a little bit

00:40:21 or you’re doing this.

00:40:22 He’s like, oh, that’s mean you hurt him and he doesn’t want to get hurt again.

00:40:26 So he’s really trying to run away and not not winning the fight anymore, but not losing

00:40:34 sort of surviving the five round.

00:40:36 And it’s hard to to finish a guy who does doesn’t want to fight a guy who’s not fighting

00:40:42 anymore to win in this fighting to not lose.

00:40:45 And the proof of that, if you don’t believe me, just look the reign of all the greatest

00:40:48 champion in UFC.

00:40:49 I don’t care who they are, John Jones or like you could clearly see that in the beginning

00:40:55 of their reign, they could, you know, finish a lot of their opponents, the same as me in

00:40:59 the beginning.

00:41:00 I was finishing a lot of my opponent.

00:41:02 But there is a time that the entire UFC roster is studying you and they found ways to perhaps

00:41:08 not beating you, but they found a way to navigate to the fight in a way that they minimize the

00:41:15 damage.

00:41:16 You know what I mean?

00:41:17 So it’s a big difference between fighting to win and fighting to not lose.

00:41:22 You said that there’s a difference between a fighter and a martial artist.

00:41:26 So now we were talking about fighting.

00:41:28 You’re considered by many to be one of the greatest fighters of all time.

00:41:32 But you said that there’s a difference between a fighter and a martial artist.

00:41:37 A fighter is training for a purpose.

00:41:39 He has a fight.

00:41:41 I’m I’m a martial artist.

00:41:43 I don’t train for a fight.

00:41:44 I train for myself.

00:41:46 I’m training all the time.

00:41:48 My goal is perfection, but I will never reach perfection.

00:41:52 So what to you does it mean to be a martial artist?

00:41:57 Martial artist is because that lifestyle that I have has been introduced to me and the seed

00:42:04 has been planted to my mind a long, long time ago by my father.

00:42:09 I am I do not train because I have a fight.

00:42:15 I will always train.

00:42:16 Even now, it kind of amused me that to see that a lot of people, because I’m still training,

00:42:23 because I love the science of fighting.

00:42:25 I do not like to fight, but I love the science of it.

00:42:28 And I will always do it as long as I can do it.

00:42:31 People think I’m going to make a comeback and everything.

00:42:33 I’m I’m about to get to have 40 years old.

00:42:36 You know, like it’s I’m, you know, like I don’t want to fight in a cage at 40 years

00:42:44 old.

00:42:45 I mean, some people have done it.

00:42:46 They did it very well.

00:42:47 But I’m not one of them.

00:42:48 I’m I feel a little bit to me that.

00:42:52 And you never say never feel like to me like it’s a little like a kid that you play with

00:42:57 the strain when he’s young, like when he’s five years old, six years old, seven years

00:43:02 old, eight years old.

00:43:03 But then I was like, what the hell I’m doing here?

00:43:07 And I’m too old for this.

00:43:08 I like it.

00:43:09 So I have done it, you know, and and I got out of it on top.

00:43:16 And I’m I’m healthy, which is the most important thing right now, touching wood.

00:43:20 And I’m I’m wealthy.

00:43:22 I beat the game.

00:43:23 You know what I mean?

00:43:24 In a way, like that’s not to be cocky, but I did it.

00:43:27 And I wish more more fighters could do the same thing.

00:43:31 I wish, but it’s unfortunate because a lot of them, they stay there and hang out for

00:43:36 too long and they get badly hurt.

00:43:39 They get beaten and broken, you know, and they finish broke as well, because the lifestyle

00:43:48 you have when you’re a pro athlete, it’s crazy, you know, it’s it’s it’s unbelievable.

00:43:53 However, everything that goes up and life goes down and you need to plan your future,

00:43:59 you know.

00:44:00 And for for me, what if some guys have the same mentality as me and they’re watching

00:44:04 us right now, I would say if you do it because you’re just good at it, you like the money,

00:44:10 the advantage, the freedom that it gives you, but you don’t necessarily like to fight.

00:44:14 When you’re done, you finish on top, you know, go go cash out and get out of the way.

00:44:20 Yes.

00:44:21 Hard to do.

00:44:22 However, actually, it’s not everybody that does it for that reason.

00:44:25 Some people generally love to fight, love to compete.

00:44:28 So they do it because they love it, you know, or they do it because of the money.

00:44:32 But if you don’t love it, if you don’t like to fight because it’s very stressful and you

00:44:36 don’t enjoy you, you enjoy the training, perhaps, but you don’t like to fight.

00:44:39 You do it because it’s part of what you need to do in order to keep that lifestyle.

00:44:44 And you know, like you don’t need the money to get out of here, man.

00:44:49 If you’re in your you’re in your prime, get out of here.

00:44:51 Because if you don’t, you’ll hurt your own legacy, you’ll damage your health.

00:44:56 It’s very sad and it’s a it’s a sad business, you know what I mean?

00:45:03 It’s like a lot of what one of the place where is the one of the most happiest place for

00:45:12 me to go and the most saddest place for me to go.

00:45:15 It’s in the gym, Tristar in Montreal, because it’s one of the happiest place for me to go

00:45:20 because I can go train and do what I love to do.

00:45:24 But it’s also a very sad place for me because after when I’m about to leave, there’s always

00:45:28 a bunch of young kid that comes or guys that are around 30, 33 years old.

00:45:35 And they come to me and say, hey, George, you have some advice for me.

00:45:38 And I look at them.

00:45:41 And if they’re my friend, they’re real close friend of mine, I’ll tell them the truth in

00:45:45 their face.

00:45:46 And I’ve done it many times and it was not well received.

00:45:49 But if they’re not my friend, I have to, you know, you know, it’s always an advice about

00:45:53 fighting and I answer their question.

00:45:55 It’s my pleasure.

00:45:56 But the truth, if they they want me to tell the truth, the big majority of them, I would

00:46:02 tell them, I said, listen, man, you’re in maybe three, like on a losing street of three

00:46:10 fight.

00:46:11 You’re 30, 33 years old, you know, I think you should think about doing something else

00:46:16 in your life.

00:46:17 You know, I have other goals, you know, because you’re not going to make it.

00:46:21 And, you know, I’ve seen that movie before and it’s a very sad ending.

00:46:26 And I’m I’m sad to tell you the truth because you’re not going to make the money.

00:46:31 You just choose some.

00:46:32 But if I tell them that they’re going to be angry at me because they’ll be like, oh, you

00:46:35 you make it and you think I cannot make it.

00:46:37 So it’s kind of they’re going to think I’m cocky.

00:46:40 But I was lucky to make it.

00:46:42 You know, at the start, we’re all aligned.

00:46:43 But at one point, you need to be able to to have a plan B, you know, like like some parent

00:46:49 they come to see me with their kids and this is the future world champion in the UFC.

00:46:56 And what advice would you give him?

00:46:57 I always tell the same thing.

00:46:59 And it does not make everybody happy.

00:47:01 When I said I say I go to the case, a are you good at school?

00:47:05 Say stay at school.

00:47:07 School is very important for you.

00:47:08 Stay educated.

00:47:09 Yeah.

00:47:10 Do boxing, martial arts, a great sport.

00:47:13 Stay in shape, but don’t put your eggs all in the same basket.

00:47:17 And the parents sometime are angry when I’m not angry, but I can see in their eyes, they’re

00:47:20 like they kind of surprised.

00:47:24 And it’s not because I made it that I will tell the kid to follow the same path that

00:47:30 I did.

00:47:31 I went to school to I’ve studied, I dropped off school when I had my first world championship

00:47:37 fight against Matt Hughes.

00:47:39 But before that, I was in school.

00:47:41 Quite another, you know, another way to go if things would not have gone the same, the

00:47:48 way I wanted.

00:47:49 But the problem and I’m saying that it’s not only about boxing in MMA, I’m talking about

00:47:53 hockey, basketball, baseball, same, same thing.

00:47:56 Maybe it’s the one on the hundred thousand that make it.

00:47:59 And I’m saying I’m saying that make it when I’m saying I make it.

00:48:02 That’s mean they can retire and have enough money for the rest of his life because it’s

00:48:08 a sad story.

00:48:09 The only people only heard about the people that makes it.

00:48:13 But a lot of fighters, even a UFC champion in boxing, champion, even in football, basketball,

00:48:18 I don’t I don’t I don’t care.

00:48:19 Big names when they retire, they have zero.

00:48:22 They’re bankrupt, my friend.

00:48:23 And it’s a very sad, sad story and a sad reality that most people are not aware of.

00:48:29 But having other paths in life actually can also increase the chance of you dominating

00:48:36 and like reaching the highest peak in your main thing.

00:48:39 I mean, Jimmy Pager, I don’t know if you know who that is, is a judo coach in in America.

00:48:45 He was he says that to all of his athletes is to make sure that you go.

00:48:49 He has a lot of, you know, Kayla Harrison, two time Olympic gold medalist.

00:48:52 He has a lot of Olympic medalists.

00:48:55 But basically, there’s something about going to school, like having an forget school, any

00:48:59 other avenue in life that gives you the freedom to go all out in your main like that, you

00:49:07 know, you’re doing it for the right reasons.

00:49:09 You’re not stuck.

00:49:11 It clears the mind to where you’re free to be the best in the world as opposed to kind

00:49:17 of you have to.

00:49:18 I mean, different people are motivated by different things.

00:49:21 So sometimes some people like having their back to the wall and that’s the only option

00:49:26 they have.

00:49:27 But most people, I think, excel when you have other options.

00:49:30 I think it’s a distraction and I think it’s important to have a distraction.

00:49:35 When you say that, I think about one of my coach, John Danaher.

00:49:38 He put his academic background experience into jiu jitsu.

00:49:43 And that for me, that’s why he’s the best teacher I ever had is incredible.

00:49:49 He start teaching me when I even couldn’t speak much English at the time and I was able

00:49:56 to communicate and understand, you know, that’s how good he is.

00:50:00 But I truly believe that most of the athletes, especially in sport like mixed martial arts,

00:50:07 train way too much.

00:50:08 If I could go back and talk to a young George, I would tell him, you do way too much volume.

00:50:16 You train way too hard, train smarter, it’s more important.

00:50:20 And I think sometimes we underestimate the benefit of recuperation because I think we

00:50:29 assimilate the information that we learn during a training when we recuperate and not during

00:50:35 the training itself.

00:50:37 And this whole mentality of harder, heavier, you know, it’s good for someone who’s lazy.

00:50:47 And if you’re an elite athlete, most of the time, you know, like you’re not always, but

00:50:51 most of the time is because you’re not lazy.

00:50:54 And a lot of guys, sometimes they’re elite athletes, champions, and you’ll hear people

00:51:00 say, oh, I can’t believe he’s very gifted, but he doesn’t work.

00:51:05 But perhaps it’s not really because perhaps it’s because we don’t understand, perhaps

00:51:09 he’s doing the right thing and it’s us who’s working too much and too hard.

00:51:14 That’s what I think.

00:51:17 There’s a guy I train with, he made me think about it.

00:51:21 His name is Mansour Barnaoui, he’s going to be a future star, he’s an incredible fighter.

00:51:28 He trained once a day.

00:51:31 And he asked me some time advice when he came to Montreal, he’s from France.

00:51:34 You’ll hear about him, he’s very good.

00:51:37 And I saw him in the morning at TriStar and I said, okay, I’ll see you perhaps later in

00:51:43 the other trainings.

00:51:44 He said, no, I only train once a day.

00:51:46 And he kind of waits for me to give him like, not an approval, but like to see how I react

00:51:54 or, you know, I don’t know, it was kind of a strange feeling, but I told myself at that

00:51:59 point I kind of had an awakening and I told myself, man, maybe he’s doing the right thing.

00:52:08 Because a lot of people would say, for example, oh, that’s a lazy way of doing it, but perhaps

00:52:14 it’s the best way to do it.

00:52:15 I’m not saying that training once a day is the best way to do it.

00:52:18 That’s what I’m saying.

00:52:19 I’m saying that everybody’s different, but for him, it works beautifully.

00:52:26 And I wouldn’t change anything, you know, like if I would be him because he’s improving

00:52:31 like crazy.

00:52:32 Yeah.

00:52:33 And ultimately the bigger picture there is to do something that everyone else says is

00:52:39 stupid.

00:52:40 It’s like the fasting thing that a lot of people would say, a lot of nutritional experts

00:52:45 would say that that’s a dumb way.

00:52:48 You know, if you want to be an MMA fighter, you should be eating like many times a day.

00:52:52 You should be starting every day with oatmeal.

00:52:55 You should be carving up constantly, but that’s not necessarily true for everybody.

00:53:00 And it’s possible.

00:53:01 I’m sure there’s actually now a few MMA fighters that are carnivore only.

00:53:04 It’s possible.

00:53:05 I used to eat right before training and it didn’t bother me.

00:53:11 However, now my first training that I do normally in average around noon, 11 a.m., I haven’t

00:53:23 eaten anything when I do my first training.

00:53:26 And it feels to me that I’m much more clear in my mind.

00:53:32 I’m much more creative.

00:53:33 I feel better.

00:53:34 Yeah.

00:53:35 Yeah.

00:53:36 It’s a big difference.

00:53:37 I just wish I would have known that before.

00:53:38 Well, it’s fascinating, the role of the mind in all of this.

00:53:42 How important is it for your mind to be clear, to really think deeply?

00:53:48 There’s a judoka American named Travis Stevens.

00:53:53 I remember he said something that the right kind of practice is when your mind is exhausted

00:54:01 at the end of it, that you were constantly thinking through things like your body shouldn’t

00:54:08 be exhausted first, your mind should be exhausted first.

00:54:12 It’s really fascinating.

00:54:13 So people think about training hard, you know, a successful practice is where you walk away

00:54:20 just overwhelmed how much you had to think.

00:54:23 It’s fascinating framing of a successful practice.

00:54:27 It’s true.

00:54:28 Travis Stevens was one of my main training partner when I got ready for my fight with

00:54:32 Nick Diaz and Carlos Candit.

00:54:38 He drove every Friday from, I believe, Boston.

00:54:44 It’s like a six hour drive.

00:54:47 Drive to the gym in Montreal, train with us an hour and a half, drive back.

00:54:58 He’s got such an amazing discipline.

00:55:01 I was so happy for him when he won the medal at the Olympic game.

00:55:06 And what a well deserved, you know, accomplishment.

00:55:12 It’s unbelievable.

00:55:13 It paid off.

00:55:14 You know, I was so happy for him.

00:55:16 And every time we got to the gym, he was waiting for me in the kneeling position like a soldier.

00:55:26 I was like, my God, this guy is made of steel, you know.

00:55:31 And after training, I always offer him, I say, Travis, I know you like to train with

00:55:36 that because in Montreal, they have very good judo team, Nicholas Gill and all those guys.

00:55:41 And I say, if you want to stay, I’ll get you at the hotel, you know, like anything

00:55:45 you want.

00:55:46 He’s like, no, no, I got to go back.

00:55:47 I have another training later.

00:55:48 I’m like, not only did he train with us, he had to go back because he had another training.

00:55:53 I’m like, this is insane.

00:55:55 And he’s gone through a huge number of injuries.

00:55:57 So he’s also an innovator because, I mean, it’s difficult to say, but for American judo,

00:56:04 there’s not many high level judoka.

00:56:06 So if you want to be the, like fight with the best in the world, you have to be alone.

00:56:12 It’s a lonely journey, actually.

00:56:14 It’s kind of sad.

00:56:16 It’s much easier to be in Japan where everybody’s a killer.

00:56:19 When you’re alone at it, it’s a difficult journey.

00:56:23 And you know, it’s funny we talked about kind of, there’s some sports where a mistake is,

00:56:31 that’s it.

00:56:32 You can’t recover from a mistake.

00:56:34 I think judo oftentimes is one of those sports and added on top of that is the Olympics only

00:56:43 every four years.

00:56:45 And Travis’s story, he’s the reason I, when I saw him in 2008, cause I started martial

00:56:50 arts.

00:56:51 I switched from like wrestling and street fighting to doing jiu jitsu and judo.

00:56:58 And I just saw so much guts.

00:57:00 And the, in 2000, I might be messing up the years here, but in the next Olympics he fought

00:57:07 and he lost on just the referee call.

00:57:11 Yeah.

00:57:12 And just, he went to war and he just so much guts and just everything on the line and to

00:57:18 lose and then to still persevere through all the injuries, through all of that, through

00:57:23 incredibly difficult training sessions to go another four years and then compete and

00:57:28 then win a medal.

00:57:29 I mean, that guy’s just, and like he clearly could have been very successful.

00:57:35 He’s also an incredible jiu jitsu competitor.

00:57:37 So he could have switched to that, but he’s stuck.

00:57:41 In a lot of sport, when you’re in elite, like for example, in Canada, ice hockey is the

00:57:49 number one sport of the countries.

00:57:52 Kids when they’re in elite, when they’re young, they get chosen and they’re kind of already

00:57:57 known as a superstar.

00:58:02 The school where they go and the program they follow, like I’m sure it’s the same thing

00:58:06 in the US and basketball, baseball, perhaps American football, because they already chosen.

00:58:14 So they grew up with that, that it’s secure, that superstar stardom, so to speak.

00:58:21 And it’s already sort of glamorous.

00:58:25 However, in MMA, there’s no MMA, judo, wrestling, like in America, because it’s not our national

00:58:34 sport, it’s actually, it’s not like, even when I first started, it was not really well

00:58:40 received by the media.

00:58:42 There’s no glamor into it.

00:58:45 Now I don’t know, it seems like it’s another era now.

00:58:48 And I feel sometimes that some people do it for the wrong reason.

00:58:55 You know, some people do it because of the glamor, because of the money.

00:59:00 But even if you’re an elite and very good, the glamor and the money won’t come in the

00:59:06 beginning.

00:59:07 It’s a very long grind before, you know, it starts to come in.

00:59:13 And you need to make those sacrifices.

00:59:16 And it’s a journey where you will be tested, you will be hurt repetitively.

00:59:23 And you’re going to have to reach the down deep and come back up.

00:59:28 And then once you finally think you made it, you’re going to go back in the down deep again.

00:59:33 It’s a very exhausting and decaraging adventure sometimes.

00:59:39 But if you hold on to your dream and you believe in it, you know, and you have the stars aligned,

00:59:46 you’re going to make it.

00:59:47 That’s why it’s only a few people that make it, you know.

00:59:51 And that’s why I feel sometimes that a lot of people in the new generation do it for

00:59:57 the wrong reason.

00:59:58 In my generation, because of sport, at first there were no rules.

01:00:02 I thought it was more pure.

01:00:04 The people that did it was really because of the passion.

01:00:08 We didn’t seek money, fame.

01:00:11 We did it because we wanted to be…

01:00:14 I did it because I wanted to be the man, you know.

01:00:16 I like to have the confidence that when I walk somewhere, you know, I have the confidence

01:00:21 that, you know, it’s an illusion because nobody is faster than a bullet.

01:00:26 But I wanted to achieve it for myself.

01:00:29 Which today now, because I don’t know if it’s social media and all that, the world has changed.

01:00:36 The glamour, you know, I feel it’s a different thing right now.

01:00:42 Yeah, if you get in it for the glamour or the money, you may not have the right amount

01:00:47 of fuel to persevere through all the ups and downs, for sure.

01:00:51 You know, when you talk about motivation of money and glamour, a guy comes to mind, and

01:01:00 I don’t know how many wrestlers, you know, but in Russia, there’s a guy named Bovassiy

01:01:06 Satiev.

01:01:07 The Satiev brothers, one of the greatest freestyle wrestlers of all time, but he also has…

01:01:15 It’s funny that he doesn’t have many interviews.

01:01:16 One of my goals is to go out and talk to him in Russian, do an interview with him because

01:01:21 he’s exceptionally poetic and a deep thinker.

01:01:24 He’s the kind of martial artist that you are in the way that it’s not just about the different

01:01:29 battles you’ve been through or whatever.

01:01:31 It’s about the philosophy behind the way he approaches life.

01:01:35 Now, he has spoken quite a bit about that the glamour, the fame, the money are all things

01:01:41 that get in the way of the purity of the experience, the art, that the way to achieve greatness

01:01:50 is to just lose yourself in the art of the actual combat, in his case, it’s wrestling,

01:01:58 and then kind of not to worry and actively make sure that you block out anybody who,

01:02:05 you know, feeds you the narrative where you’re supposed to be this famous person and all

01:02:10 those kinds of things that he basically says, let others write your story.

01:02:16 Make sure that you just focus on the art.

01:02:19 And another person from that side of the world is, of course, Khabib, so he represents that

01:02:25 side of the world.

01:02:26 And we were talking about walking away and most people not being able to walk away at

01:02:32 the top as you have, but also now Khabib has, it looks like, incredibly so.

01:02:39 I mean, maybe you can comment about what your thoughts are about Khabib Nurmagomedov being

01:02:45 able to just walk away.

01:02:47 You know, we talk about the GOAT very often, Khabib is, you know, one of, isn’t the argument

01:02:53 because he has the most dominant carrier of all martial art, the guy, you know, some guys

01:03:01 can be named the GOAT for different reasons, but Khabib for that reason, and he’s undefeated.

01:03:07 I don’t even know if he lost, he might have lost a round, but he dominates all his opponents.

01:03:15 It was ridiculous and such an incredible career that he had.

01:03:22 I love to watch him fight, he’s incredible.

01:03:27 And when you talk about the art, when you say mixed martial art, the idea of a flawless

01:03:35 performance, for me, everybody often, when we say flawless performance, thinks about

01:03:43 a knockout, a brutal knockout.

01:03:46 But for me, it’s to be able to showcase beautiful technique, like a beautiful takedown, beautiful

01:03:55 submission, like something beautiful that, you know, when you look at, for example, Wayne

01:04:04 Gretzky or Michael Jordan or like Stephen Curry, even if you don’t know nothing about

01:04:13 basketball and you watch Michael Jordan, you’ll be like, wow, that’s beautiful what he just

01:04:18 did.

01:04:19 Like, we talk about fighting and trying to say the word beautiful in fighting for certain

01:04:25 people, it could sound kind of crazy, you know, but I’m talking about the technique,

01:04:31 a beautiful technique, you know, for me, that’s the goal.

01:04:35 You know, when I was fighting, it’s no need to have a brutal knockout because some people

01:04:39 are more gifted than others.

01:04:41 I’m saying gifted, some people are better than others in certain phase of fighting.

01:04:46 But for me, it was that it was to showcase, to win, of course, but to showcase some beautiful

01:04:51 technique that you can watch it and be like, wow, that was incredible.

01:04:56 The timing, he did it.

01:04:58 And when I think about Khabib Nurmagomedov, I see all the detail of his work, especially

01:05:06 when he’s got his opponent against the fence, that’s like, that’s his area of expertise

01:05:11 where he’s, to me, he’s the best that ever did it in terms of that fighting style, that

01:05:18 particular expertise that he has, it’s just incredible.

01:05:22 The flawless execution of that particular set of techniques.

01:05:25 And Conor McGregor had the accuracy.

01:05:31 The Spider Anderson Silva was like, was, I would say, the most flamboyant of all, you

01:05:37 know, like he was moving like the Matrix.

01:05:40 Jon Jones was incredible in terms of creativity, spinning elbows and that, and he faced incredible

01:05:45 adversity.

01:05:46 Dimitrius Johnson was so complete.

01:05:51 You could bring, like he was slamming a guy to an armbar.

01:05:54 It was just unbelievable.

01:05:55 Like, like he was like the complete fighter.

01:05:59 BJ Penn was like so flexible.

01:06:02 He did stuff with his body that like nobody could do his, the dexterity of his hips was

01:06:07 just unbelievable.

01:06:10 Dominic Cruz, to me, was incredible, his footwork, his distance control.

01:06:15 So when you talk about like the GOAT, Royce Gracie, another one, he did things that I

01:06:20 think for me is the number one.

01:06:21 Yeah, I gotta, I gotta, and sorry to interrupt, Royce is a fascinating one.

01:06:25 I’d love to hear what you think about him, but many people consider you, most people

01:06:31 consider you to be the number one greatest mixed martial arts fighter ever.

01:06:38 So it’s fascinating to remove you from that list and continue this discussion and asking

01:06:44 like, who do you think is the greatest fighter ever?

01:06:46 You listed some amazing ones, Royce.

01:06:49 You somehow skipped Fedor.

01:06:51 I’m very, as a Russian, I’m very offended.

01:06:53 No, I was, I was going to, there’s so many.

01:06:55 Fedor is one as well.

01:06:57 Fedor, I think in his prime was like, when you say, when you talk about a name, for example,

01:07:02 like we talk about him when he was in his prime.

01:07:07 Like when I talk, for example, about Anderson Silva, I’m not talking about the Anderson

01:07:10 Silva who fought, who fought his last fight against Uriah Hall.

01:07:14 I’m talking about the Anderson Silva who knocked out Victor Belfer.

01:07:18 Yes.

01:07:19 BJ Penn, same thing.

01:07:20 The problem is when fighters hang on for too long in the sport.

01:07:25 That’s what happened.

01:07:26 They kind of make, make people forget how good they were.

01:07:32 And it’s very sad.

01:07:33 We talk about Fedor and just, just think about Stipe Miocic.

01:07:38 Miocic is probably the greatest heavyweight of all time.

01:07:41 With Fedor, I would really wonder who would have won this fight, the both guys in their

01:07:46 prime.

01:07:47 I tend to lean towards Fedor because my heart was with Fedor, but he could have gone the

01:07:52 other way.

01:07:53 But just because Miocic lose his last fight, now everybody’s like, oh yeah, they forgot

01:07:57 about him.

01:07:58 It’s crazy, man.

01:08:00 It’s one fight.

01:08:01 You zig when you should zag, boom.

01:08:04 That’s the reality of mixed martial arts.

01:08:06 Well, that’s why the thing is the mixed martial arts isn’t just the performance, the strictly

01:08:13 who won and who lost.

01:08:14 It’s also the stories we tell ourselves.

01:08:16 And so, I mean, there’s beautiful stories being weaved.

01:08:20 And that also is part of who is the greatest of all time is what were the battles, what

01:08:27 had to be overcome?

01:08:29 What was the flavor of the flawless performances?

01:08:35 You know, all of that plays into it and you’re right.

01:08:39 Being able to walk away at the top is also part of that.

01:08:42 A lot of people ask me about Khabib and that fight.

01:08:48 I want it to happen.

01:08:50 Khabib wanted to happen, but UFC did not want to happen between you and Khabib.

01:08:55 Yes.

01:08:56 And we tried to make it like about three years ago when I retired, two, no, three, no, it

01:09:00 was after two years ago and it never came to fruition.

01:09:05 The UFC were clear.

01:09:06 They said they have other plan for Khabib and it makes sense for the business standpoint

01:09:12 because they want to keep the ball rolling.

01:09:15 Now Khabib retired and like everybody else, after Justin Gaethje, I was doing the commentator

01:09:21 in French for the UFC and I had Butterfly, I thought he was going to call me out.

01:09:26 If there is one guy that I would have said, yes, it would be him, because for a fighter,

01:09:30 the most exciting things to do, it’s often the scariest one.

01:09:37 And Khabib was, you know, the scariest macho.

01:09:40 Yes.

01:09:41 But he was worth the risk because nobody has ever been able to solve them.

01:09:47 How would you solve the Khabib Nurmagomedov puzzle?

01:09:50 Well, Khabib is very good against the fence.

01:09:56 I would have to establish a game plan and everything, but I think what I would need

01:10:01 it to do is take the center of the octagon right away.

01:10:05 Use a lot of think and faith.

01:10:08 Keep the fight all the way, all the way out or all the way in.

01:10:11 And when I say all the way in is when you close the gap, use my proactive and reactive

01:10:16 takedown and perhaps my superior explosive to put him down.

01:10:20 I like to use those proactive and reactive techniques because for me, I feel it’s more

01:10:25 economical.

01:10:26 Khabib is a much better chain wrestler than me.

01:10:30 Chain wrestler is when you got that guy to the fence, it’s pure wrestling.

01:10:34 What makes my takedown very efficient?

01:10:36 It’s my karate.

01:10:37 It’s not my wrestling.

01:10:40 I’m very good at timing my opponent and getting in with my explosivity.

01:10:47 So if you watch my takedown, it does not demand often, it does not demand a lot of work.

01:10:52 When I use the, I call it proactive takedown.

01:10:56 When he’s coming to punch me and I react, I mean, proactive is when I’m faking it.

01:11:03 So I instigate the takedown by a fake, then I take him down.

01:11:08 And reactive is when I’m baiting him to throw something, then I’m going.

01:11:13 It’s a counter.

01:11:14 Yeah.

01:11:15 Yes.

01:11:16 But all my takedowns…

01:11:17 In the center of the octagon.

01:11:18 Yes.

01:11:19 My takedowns are more in the center of the octagon.

01:11:20 Like for example, another guy that does it well is Gleason Thibault that did it well

01:11:24 in his best days.

01:11:26 Khabib has more a style of chain wrestling, I would say like Kamaru Usman, so to speak,

01:11:31 kind of guy.

01:11:32 It’s a different style.

01:11:33 You cannot compare both styles.

01:11:36 And that’s the kind of takedown I’m good.

01:11:38 And if I would have fight Khabib, that’s one of the strategy I would have adopted.

01:11:42 I would not have been afraid because everybody that I fought, I was able to put them down

01:11:46 and I have the pedigree to prove it in my fight resume.

01:11:52 So you would have perhaps seen him on his back and I would have perhaps be on my back

01:11:56 as well.

01:11:57 So it would have been a very interesting fight.

01:11:59 How hard do you think he is to takedown?

01:12:01 I mean, a lot of people speak about his wrestling being just…

01:12:04 It has nothing to do with the wrestling because…

01:12:07 It has to do with the karate.

01:12:08 If I got that timing and I got my both hands around his knees, he’s going down the other

01:12:13 way.

01:12:14 Everybody goes down.

01:12:15 Yes, yes, he goes down.

01:12:16 And I had a lot of that.

01:12:18 That’s what I would have adopted.

01:12:19 I would not have been afraid of his wrestling.

01:12:23 I would have be the instigator.

01:12:24 I would have forced the fight forward.

01:12:28 And that’s how I would have approached that fight, which I believe most of his opponent

01:12:35 were afraid of his wrestling because they didn’t have the tools that I have to put him

01:12:38 down.

01:12:40 I would not have forced the wrestling.

01:12:41 I would have…

01:12:42 In the clinch, I would have tried to disengage.

01:12:44 I have many ways to disengage a clinch.

01:12:47 I would have wanted to force the fight in a fighting distance, like in a shoot box distance,

01:12:54 not in a wrestling distance.

01:12:57 Is it possible this fight still happens?

01:13:02 You’re young, you look great in a suit.

01:13:06 Well, there’s a lot of problems now.

01:13:10 And the thing is, now I made peace with it.

01:13:14 I no longer don’t want to fight and I don’t…

01:13:17 It’s not going to happen.

01:13:18 UFC was not interested and I’m bound by contract with the UFC and by exclusivity.

01:13:24 Some people says to me, oh, how about if a wealthy Russian guy come with the money?

01:13:32 I said, I’m going to be in court with UFC.

01:13:37 And also, I’m older now and when I go home and I’m like, I don’t want to do this, you

01:13:43 know?

01:13:44 But you were always like this.

01:13:45 No, I don’t want to do this.

01:13:46 But like, for example, I was training with Freddie Roach a few days ago and I’m hitting

01:13:50 pads, you know?

01:13:53 And Freddie is looking at me and he’s like, hey, you have the hitch back.

01:13:56 I’m like, yeah.

01:13:57 If Dana White would walk in the room, in the gym at that precise moment with the UFC contract,

01:14:03 I would sign it in the blink of an eye.

01:14:07 But when I go home, I’m like, hell no, my belly is full, I’m healthy, I’m wealthy.

01:14:15 Why would I want to fight for?

01:14:17 I made peace with it.

01:14:19 But the minute I go back in the gym, because I still get it inside me when I train with

01:14:22 the young guys, I still get it.

01:14:25 And a lot of guys think, hey, tell me the truth, you’re preparing a comeback because

01:14:29 I still get it.

01:14:30 You know, I’m a little bit older, but I got more knowledge, I can compensate.

01:14:36 I become a different animal because, you know, it changed you.

01:14:40 But then after you go home and you’re like, man, no way I’m doing this.

01:14:45 It’s very hard to explain, you need to be a fighter to understand that it’s very, very

01:14:51 hard to explain.

01:14:53 Well, from your perspective, I think Khabib is one of the rare, one of the few fascinating

01:14:59 scientific puzzles yet to be solved.

01:15:01 So from that aspect, as a martial artist, it’s just a fascinating journey to try to

01:15:06 solve that puzzle.

01:15:07 There is a thing too, like we say, oh, who’s the best fighter, people, Lex, they don’t,

01:15:12 like I am this, I realized that later in my life and I’m sure a lot of young guy will

01:15:18 say, oh, I say, Pierre, it’s not, don’t speak for me, but I’m telling you right now what

01:15:24 I’m about to say, you will realize it later.

01:15:27 When I was young, I think you can proclaim yourself the more, the badass man on the planet,

01:15:33 you know, like nobody can beat you at, it’s an illusion, man.

01:15:37 That’s the sad thing about, for example, DC, Daniel Cormier does probably one of the greatest,

01:15:43 it’s not the greatest of all time, you said Neotish, but like, it’s almost because of

01:15:49 that little matchup with John Jones, it’s difficult for people to conceive of him as

01:15:55 the greatest of all time.

01:15:56 It’s all about matchup, it’s all about timing, and also you make a fight, you make both guys

01:16:02 fight 10 times, the result might be different, like every time, you know, I mean, maybe he’s

01:16:11 gonna win eight out of 10, but that night, he’s gonna lose, why?

01:16:17 Because we don’t know, the universe made it like that, you know, maybe he got sick, maybe

01:16:21 he had the emotional issues, he didn’t sleep well, and it makes him lose focus and he got

01:16:26 caught, you don’t, we don’t know, but that’s the thing, people ask me, would you have done

01:16:32 it with Khabib, what would happen?

01:16:34 I don’t know, maybe out of 10 times, I don’t know, maybe as a fighter, I hope I would have

01:16:39 won more than him, he thinks the opposite is only one way to find out, but that night,

01:16:45 if there is a fight, the guy that’s gonna win doesn’t mean he’s the best fighter, that’s

01:16:49 mean that he’s the one that fought the best the night of the fight, same thing in basketball

01:16:55 or hockey, the team that wins the game, it’s not necessarily the best team, it’s the team

01:17:01 that played the best the night of the game, and fighting is no different, so being the

01:17:07 baddest man on the planet, it’s an illusion.

01:17:11 I mean that’s the tragic thing about it, is on any one night, anything can happen and

01:17:17 then that tells a story for all of human history, it’s sad to think about, but that’s what makes

01:17:24 it beautiful, that there’s so much at stake, like entire lives, all the dreams you’ve had

01:17:30 growing up, all the hard work, all of it is decided in a single night, even though that

01:17:34 means nothing in terms of who’s actually better, I mean that’s the beauty, that’s why people

01:17:41 love the Olympics especially, because it happens so rarely, and dreams are broken, or like

01:17:48 triumph is achieved by the unlikely hero, all like right there, I mean that’s why we

01:17:55 love it, right, that’s why we love it.

01:17:58 If we wouldn’t know always the result before, it would be boring, that’s why we do it, you

01:18:02 know, watch the odds, like sometimes I like to watch the odds before a fight, you know,

01:18:12 because there’s things, I believe in causality, everybody believes different things, but I

01:18:20 believe everything is because there’s a cause to everything, that’s personally what I believe,

01:18:26 I don’t believe that I have like free will, I think I have the illusion of free will,

01:18:31 but I believe there’s a cause for everything, and if I’m doing something because of something,

01:18:37 because of a cause, by definition, there’s no free will in a way, if there’s a cause,

01:18:41 by definition, there’s not.

01:18:43 How does that make you feel by the way, like the idea that if we just look outside of even

01:18:49 just human psychology and fighting and so on, if we look at like physics, if everything

01:18:53 is predetermined, if all of these little molecules interacting, it’s all already, like your story

01:18:58 is already written.

01:19:00 I mean, it depends, it’s written, but I wouldn’t need to know all the data and it’s impossible,

01:19:06 right?

01:19:07 Like it’s kind of weird, I gotta say, but to me, I don’t see any argument to counter

01:19:15 that idea, maybe I’m ignorant, but I haven’t seen nobody and everything that I’ve read

01:19:24 so far, there’s nothing that counter that idea, because in a mechanical world, if your

01:19:31 car broke, or we don’t say, oh, the car decided to broke, or a tree is fall, there’s reason

01:19:39 why the tree is fall, we don’t say the tree is decide to fall, right?

01:19:43 So because us human being, I think it’s our ego, we decide, and I’m no different than

01:19:49 anybody when I make a decision, I decided to do this, I choose to do this, but I’m aware

01:19:56 that there is causes that make me do certain things, and by definition, I think if there

01:20:04 is a cause, there is no free will, by definition, right?

01:20:09 Yes, but the thing is, just like you said, we understand so little about human intelligence,

01:20:15 the human mind, and especially consciousness, that this giant mystery, this darkness, that

01:20:25 we don’t understand how it feels like to be something, to be a conscious being, that because

01:20:33 of that, we’re not able to really even reason about free will, or not, because there might

01:20:39 be some magic that comes from consciousness, the consciousness might be the thing that

01:20:46 makes us different from a car that breaks down.

01:20:49 There might be something totally fascinating, totally undiscovered yet, that will make us

01:20:58 realize that free will is actually real, and is somehow fundamental to the human experience.

01:21:03 So it’s, sometimes I think we forget when we talk about free will and physics and it

01:21:11 all seeming to be predetermined, we forget how little we actually understand about the

01:21:16 world, and I think in that mystery, there could be totally new ideas that are yet to

01:21:23 be discovered, and will make us realize that it’s not just an illusion, it is something

01:21:29 that is like at the core of how the universe works.

01:21:33 Some people believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like

01:21:39 it’s one of the forces of physics, like consciousness permeates everything, it’s in everything.

01:21:46 Like this table is conscious, but it’s not as conscious as us, and we’re this little

01:21:51 peak of consciousness, and if that’s true, and if we get to understand that, maybe there’s

01:21:56 something, there’s an extra bonus we get in terms of free will once you become one of

01:22:03 those entities that are super conscious.

01:22:05 So I tend to be sort of humbled by the mystery of it.

01:22:10 Do you believe one day with the technology that keep improving, we will make robot that

01:22:20 will be able to be somehow conscious?

01:22:25 Absolutely, that’s been my dream, that’s been, I hope to do just that.

01:22:31 First of all, I believe that all people are capable and want to be good to each other,

01:22:37 and I think love is a really powerful thing that connects us and can create better and

01:22:45 better worlds, sort of like create better and better societies that improve both the

01:22:52 technology, the quality of life, and just the basics of human experience.

01:22:57 And I think creating AI systems that are conscious, that are human like, can enable us to be better

01:23:04 to each other.

01:23:05 Like they can, it’s almost like adding more and more kindness to the world through the

01:23:12 systems we interact with will inspire us to be better and better to each other.

01:23:16 In terms of them being conscious, I think that is an absolute requirement that entities

01:23:23 we interact with communicate some element of consciousness to us, like that’s how we

01:23:30 connect to each other.

01:23:31 The reason we, you and I connect is that we believe that each of us are conscious.

01:23:37 And to me, what consciousness means is the ability to hurt, the ability to suffer, to

01:23:44 struggle in this world, because just like you said, without the struggle, you don’t

01:23:51 have the love, you don’t have the pleasure, and ultimately consciousness is an entity’s

01:23:57 ability to struggle, to suffer, and from that arises the pleasure.

01:24:03 And us together being able to appreciate the highs and experience together the lows, that’s

01:24:17 how we form the deep connections.

01:24:19 I personally think we can create that in robots, and I personally believe it’s a lot easier

01:24:24 than we think.

01:24:26 Does it make you afraid sometimes about the fact that one day AI, like artificial intelligence

01:24:35 could hurt us?

01:24:40 Because of Hollywood, of course, the movies we watch, but it seems like when I hear sometimes

01:24:45 Elon Musk talking, you know?

01:24:48 Yeah, so Elon talks about with AI, we’re summoning the demon.

01:24:53 He is very concerned, and I talked to him about it quite a bit, he’s very concerned

01:24:58 about all the different ways AI could hurt us humans.

01:25:03 I tend to believe that there’s a lot more ways in which AI can make our lives better

01:25:08 and can make life awesome for humans.

01:25:11 I think humans are the ones that can do a lot of evil things.

01:25:16 So I’m less worried about AI, I’m more worried about humans.

01:25:20 If I look at what humans have done on the course of history, for example, in regards

01:25:28 to the planet to the scale of the universe, I think what I’m afraid is that we have more

01:25:36 of a destructive force than a beneficial force.

01:25:41 So if AI take that in consideration in order to protect us against ourselves, it could

01:25:49 hurt us in a way.

01:25:50 I don’t know if you understand, what do you think about that?

01:25:54 Does it makes you afraid sometimes, not because of AI, but because of what humans are doing

01:26:00 that AI could do to us to prevent us of hurting ourselves, you know?

01:26:06 Yeah, I mean, definitely it can bring out the worst in human nature and provide tools

01:26:15 for evil people to do evil things at a larger scale.

01:26:19 But I just think it depends what you think human beings are.

01:26:24 I tend to believe that as we get more intelligent, we start to see the value, the evolutionary

01:26:34 value and the value in terms of happiness of being good to each other.

01:26:38 And I think AI, if you look at AI as an optimization problem of how to create a civilization that

01:26:43 works well and expands throughout the universe, I think love is much more effective.

01:26:50 So AI will help us maximize that.

01:26:53 I think there’s going to be always spikes throughout, as it has been through human history,

01:26:58 where charismatic leaders will do evil onto the world in the name of good.

01:27:03 You have the Stalin and the Hitlers and all of that.

01:27:07 But ultimately over time, I think technology will give the good people power and the evil

01:27:19 people less power.

01:27:21 Now there’s a lot of ways that that won’t be the case.

01:27:26 There’s a lot of ways for it to go wrong and Elon talks about them, but I honestly think

01:27:32 in terms of intelligent AI, that’s going to bring more love to the world.

01:27:37 The thing I’m concerned about is dumb AI.

01:27:40 So there’s been a lot of discussion between China and the United States recently on autonomous

01:27:45 weapons system.

01:27:47 This is something people don’t, they’re afraid to talk about, but there’s now a race where

01:27:56 the United States has officially said that they’re not against adding AI to its weapon

01:28:02 systems.

01:28:03 So now the US military is adding automation, adding intelligence to its drones, to anything

01:28:14 that can create damage.

01:28:16 And so of course, and they did this so in response to China doing that.

01:28:21 So you can imagine this is Terminator.

01:28:24 You think about Terminators and intelligent systems, they’re not, they’re pretty dumb.

01:28:30 The point is they’re efficient at doing what they do.

01:28:34 And in the space of war, efficient at doing what you do means killing.

01:28:39 So that I’m really afraid of, but those are dumb AI.

01:28:43 Those aren’t your loving, deep, fulfilling relationships.

01:28:49 That’s like efficiently being able to fly, to plan the trajectory of dropping bombs,

01:28:55 of missiles, of how to do counter attacks, of how to maximize the destruction of a particular

01:29:01 facility instead of individuals.

01:29:04 And then that can just escalate.

01:29:07 And as opposed to the cold war with the Soviet Union, this could be a hot war.

01:29:12 And then the consequences, once you allow, it’s kind of terrifying because currently

01:29:19 the drones are operated by humans.

01:29:22 So you have say, you have information about, intelligence gives you information about a

01:29:30 particular terrorist located in this area.

01:29:33 And then you use drones to maybe the automation there is to help you figure out what is the

01:29:40 best trajectory to strike at that location.

01:29:44 So you still have a human that pulls the trigger at the end and dropping the bomb.

01:29:49 Now automation and AI and autonomous weapons systems might be where you say, there’s a

01:29:56 bad guy over here.

01:29:58 You figure out how to get rid of the bad guy.

01:30:02 So then of course the systems will be very good at finding the right trajectory and so

01:30:06 on, but there’s bugs that can happen.

01:30:11 Unexpected bugs that the system might figure out that there is this bad guy might actually

01:30:16 be in these other five locations.

01:30:20 So might make sense to cover the entire area, right?

01:30:24 And so you might drop bombs on the entire area and then that’s just okay.

01:30:31 So that’s going to lead to a lot of destruction at the scale of a city, but then you can immediately

01:30:35 take that to nuclear weapons.

01:30:37 If you add automation to responding to counterattacks to nuclear weapons, somebody, you might get

01:30:43 information that somebody is planning a nuclear attack on the United States and the AI system

01:30:48 will immediately respond and you know, it can respond at a scale of launching nuclear

01:30:53 weapons itself.

01:30:54 And so there’s all of these possibilities that don’t require much intelligence.

01:30:59 And that’s exceptionally concerning.

01:31:04 I’m like you, I do not believe there is babies that are born bad.

01:31:09 I think people do bad things because of their experience.

01:31:14 However, if I look through my experience and from what I can see is some very often, man’s

01:31:23 of power wants more power.

01:31:29 That’s what makes me afraid with, you know?

01:31:32 Absolutely, listen, I’ve come from the Soviet Union.

01:31:37 Stalin is arguably one of the most powerful humans in history.

01:31:41 He’s not talked often enough about by the evils he’s done.

01:31:44 Hitler gets all the attention, but Stalin has done arguably much more evil than Hitler.

01:31:49 Yeah, well, this is human nature.

01:31:52 It wants power.

01:31:53 We see that with institutions, we see that with governments and nations.

01:31:57 I think you see this with the internet, people are really hungry for the distribution of

01:32:04 power.

01:32:05 Like you see that people are very much distrustful of centralized places of power, of institutions

01:32:11 and so on.

01:32:12 So I think successful organizations, successful companies, successful governments will be

01:32:19 run by people who distribute the power.

01:32:22 Like I don’t trust myself with power at all.

01:32:24 And I think you have to build into the system that no one person can have power and that

01:32:32 you distribute it.

01:32:33 That’s where you have in the financial sector, you have cryptocurrency right now with Bitcoin

01:32:37 and all those kinds of things.

01:32:38 People are exploring, how can we avoid the central bank to have the control?

01:32:44 How do you put the power in the hands of people, thousands of people, millions of people?

01:32:49 And same way with military, with any kind of, with technology, I think the future looks

01:32:58 very distributed.

01:33:01 What do you think about militarizing space?

01:33:05 The space force, I don’t think about it often because right now I’m filled with excitement

01:33:12 about space exploration, which is the positive aspect.

01:33:15 So Elon, I was born in an era where it was exciting.

01:33:22 I don’t know about you, but for me it’s exciting to look up to the stars and dream about us

01:33:28 humans colonizing Mars, colonizing other planets, expanding out to the galaxy, into the universe.

01:33:35 That’s really exciting.

01:33:38 So the possibilities there are endless.

01:33:43 I don’t think, because also the resources are endless.

01:33:47 And so I think we get into trouble with militarization, with wars when the resources are very constrained.

01:33:55 So I think for a while we’re not going to be fighting, the only wars we’ll be fighting

01:34:01 in space are the ones that kind of help us.

01:34:05 Another nation to compete, who goes to the moon first, I guess.

01:34:10 Those kinds of things are maybe for satellites and all those kinds of communication and maybe

01:34:15 in assistance for cyber warfare, which is also very dangerous.

01:34:19 But in terms of the wars out in space, I think everything out in space will be positive and

01:34:28 inspiring.

01:34:29 It’s very hard, but all good things are hard, I think.

01:34:33 This is where I’ve been talking to a bunch of people about extraterrestrial life.

01:34:38 I’m really excited by, I don’t know, it’s the other thing.

01:34:45 When I look out to the stars, it’s exciting to me.

01:34:48 I know I think you’ve spoken about it being scary, but to me it’s exciting that there’s

01:34:53 intelligent creatures out there far beyond perhaps the intelligence of our own that are

01:34:59 just too far away to explore yet, but we might one day come in contact with them.

01:35:04 So that to me is the ultimate motivator is to meet other intelligence life forms out

01:35:11 there and connect with them.

01:35:13 Have you ever meet Jacques Vallée?

01:35:15 No, but I’ve been in communication.

01:35:17 I want to, I hope to talk to him.

01:35:19 He’s an amazing…

01:35:20 French, yeah.

01:35:21 I know that there’s many theories about, you know, if there’s alien, we don’t know, right?

01:35:27 But some people think it’s from another star systems and Jacques Vallée has like to make

01:35:34 a long story short, he has a different theory, thinks it’s perhaps beings that could be living

01:35:43 in a different dimension than us.

01:35:44 And the reason why he says that is when he makes an experiment, when there is a sightings

01:35:49 very often of a UFO, let’s say I’m the UFO that you have three guys, they are looking

01:35:58 at the UFO very often, one experiment that you can do, and sometimes that is the case,

01:36:06 you ask your two friends to walk on the side and there’s a point that it’s like a corridor,

01:36:11 you see the UFO and then you stop seeing it like a corridor.

01:36:14 And that’s one of the reasons why he’s saying that it’s perhaps dimension.

01:36:20 And I found that fascinating, you know?

01:36:23 This is what, you know, to the discussion of consciousness and all that, it feels like

01:36:27 we might be just experiencing a very particular slice of this universe, we might not be understanding

01:36:33 what’s at the higher dimensions or, yeah, I mean, higher dimensions in whatever form

01:36:37 that means, you know, there’s all these physical theories now that describe a world with dimensions

01:36:44 that’s much higher than the four dimensions of the three dimension of space and the one

01:36:47 dimension of time.

01:36:49 So whatever the hell is going on in those other dimensions, it could be something, unfortunately,

01:36:56 this is the sad part, it might be something we can’t even comprehend with our human brains,

01:37:02 that the limitations are just, I mean, we’re just descendants of apes, so like it might

01:37:09 not be possible to even understand.

01:37:10 Is there alien?

01:37:11 Is there another dimension?

01:37:12 Are they human from the future?

01:37:14 Is there perhaps Chinese or another, you know what I mean, a group of people that are working

01:37:19 with technology far behind?

01:37:21 But you know what, Lex, I had the chance to meet, you know, because of the sport I’m doing,

01:37:26 I met a lot of people in military and politics sometimes that I ask them every time.

01:37:34 I met one this week and I asked him, I say, is it true about the UFOs there?

01:37:42 And he says to me, he’s like, even before I asked him, I say, sorry, I have to ask you

01:37:47 a question.

01:37:48 I was in Los Angeles and I said, sorry, I have to ask you a question.

01:37:52 He said, oh, you want to ask me about UFOs right away, you do.

01:37:55 And I say, yes.

01:37:56 He saw it in your eyes.

01:37:57 He said, yeah, there is things that flies that we don’t know.

01:38:00 But he didn’t tell me, he doesn’t know it, they don’t know if it’s alien or whatever,

01:38:04 but there’s things apparently that are detected.

01:38:07 And I know you met Fravor, you know, like Fravor is fascinating.

01:38:11 It’s crazy.

01:38:12 It makes me sad that we live in a different era now that it used to be a subject that

01:38:17 was ridicules and now it’s so cool that it’s, you know, I’m very excited to live in to that

01:38:23 era, you know?

01:38:25 Yeah, it’s really exciting, but still the governments are kind of behind the times on

01:38:29 that aspect is they’re not transparent and they don’t communicate well.

01:38:35 You know, it saddens me to think the possibility that, that, you know, like the US government

01:38:40 might be in possession of something that they don’t tell the world about because they’re

01:38:46 just scared is because they don’t know what the hell it is and they don’t want the Chinese

01:38:51 to gain the technology or all those kinds of things.

01:38:54 Do you think the president of the United States, for example, because the president comes and

01:38:58 go every, right, four or eight years, do you think he would know all the secret or it would

01:39:04 be a guy like, for example, Vladimir Putin would know much of, you know what I mean?

01:39:09 I don’t think the president even know, like even knows all the secret.

01:39:14 The US president.

01:39:15 I don’t think so because he goes, they go back and forth, you know, every four years,

01:39:20 you know, they have the terms, right?

01:39:22 So I, you know, I wasn’t sure before, but I think I could trust the previous United

01:39:29 States president of Donald Trump that if he knew, he would probably tweet about it.

01:39:36 So I think from the, you know, I’ve worked with DARPA, I worked with DOD at a clearance

01:39:45 and I think from the perspective, if you, if you see the world as fundamentally a dangerous

01:39:51 world where secrets are important to have from a military perspective, I think it’s

01:39:58 very unsafe to tell the president of the United States that you have this kind of technology.

01:40:06 So if you think of the world in that way, I hate that that’s how that world is viewed

01:40:11 because ultimately I think what’s more powerful than the military secrets, and I hope that

01:40:16 actually is what will happen in the 21st century, is what’s more powerful is inspire people.

01:40:23 Inspire the young Elon Musk’s of the world to create cool new things.

01:40:29 If we have technology that we’ve have come, have encountered that we don’t understand

01:40:35 that should only be inspiration to develop that kind of stuff.

01:40:40 It shouldn’t be seen as military, as a military threat, as a secret to hold on to.

01:40:46 I think secrets, I hope we more and more let go of the idea that there are secrets that

01:40:53 give us advantage, you know, like in the tech sector, people are more and more releasing

01:40:59 the software and making it open source.

01:41:03 Like secrets don’t make sense.

01:41:05 They share the knowledge, right?

01:41:07 Share the knowledge.

01:41:08 Like being afraid to share the knowledge, I think, I hope is an old idea.

01:41:13 It’s more, yeah.

01:41:14 When you make it, things more compartmentalize, you know?

01:41:16 Yes.

01:41:17 Well, yeah.

01:41:18 That’s the other thing is the bureaucracy of government is like people only know their

01:41:23 own little thing and they don’t spread the information.

01:41:25 It doesn’t travel well.

01:41:26 I mean, there’s a lot of just inefficiencies that are, it makes me sad.

01:41:30 It makes me sad because the science, the engineering that happens in governments, like Lockheed

01:41:37 Martin developing the different airplanes that they use for military applications is

01:41:42 some of the most incredible engineering ever.

01:41:45 And it’s secret because they’re afraid to share it with the Russians and the Chinese

01:41:49 and so on.

01:41:51 But on that topic, I do think somebody like Vladimir Putin probably knows some stuff.

01:41:58 My God.

01:41:59 My God.

01:42:00 I would love to know what he knows.

01:42:01 But then again, you never know because even he is, you know, people think of him as an

01:42:06 exceptionally powerful person, but he’s also just managing a bunch of tribes.

01:42:12 His power is very limited.

01:42:14 He’s trying to hold together a bunch of greedy, power hungry, mad men.

01:42:21 That’s right.

01:42:22 Okay.

01:42:23 And he’s trying to establish a balance.

01:42:24 He might not know everything.

01:42:26 So I hope this changes because I think there’s nothing more exciting about.

01:42:31 I don’t even know if there is a human that knows.

01:42:35 You know what I mean?

01:42:36 Like this idea that there is some civilization, alien civilization that that land on the White

01:42:42 House and say, hi, I come to meet the president.

01:42:44 And like, why would they do that?

01:42:46 You know what I mean?

01:42:47 It’s kind of absurd.

01:42:48 You know?

01:42:49 Well, I do think that actually, I mean, that’s one possibility, right, is LART, you know,

01:42:56 if an alien civilization really wanted to contact us, I think everybody would know.

01:43:01 So I think what we’re, if there’s any kind of interaction between humans and aliens,

01:43:08 I think most likely what we’re interacting with is a crappy like probe drone thing that

01:43:15 kind of just like, like, it’s like this, this dumb thing, you know, we’re not interacting

01:43:22 with the aliens.

01:43:23 I think just like, just like for us, I think humans aren’t when we venture out into space.

01:43:32 The first thing that’s going to meet aliens is our robots.

01:43:35 It’s not us humans because we keep sending robots out.

01:43:38 So they’re going to like, they’re going to make decisions about humans by looking at

01:43:43 the robots.

01:43:44 I say the famous grays, the grays, maybe they are robots.

01:43:49 Maybe it’s all BS too, you know?

01:43:51 Yeah.

01:43:52 I don’t know, I don’t know what that interaction actually would look like if aliens really

01:43:58 wanted to reach out, really communicate.

01:44:00 And I don’t know if we’re able to actually communicate with them.

01:44:02 That’s one of the sad things.

01:44:03 We may not be able to, that we might, the aliens might already be here and we might

01:44:09 just not even know, know how to see them or know how to communicate with them.

01:44:16 There’s so much misinformation and sometimes there is peoples that are very credible that,

01:44:24 that made crazy claims, you know, like, you don’t know what to believe, you know, like,

01:44:29 like Paul Aylor, the minister of defense of Canada said like some, that there is many

01:44:36 alien rays that ever, that’s what he said, research it and that scientists from, I think

01:44:43 Israel recently have said something about Trump, he was keeping secret or Medvedev,

01:44:49 you’re from Russia, Medvedev have been caught in a, like during a break in between interviews

01:44:54 to talks about like, oh, it’s like men in black, so to speak.

01:44:57 I don’t know.

01:44:58 He didn’t look like he was joking, but I don’t know if he was saying the truth.

01:45:01 I didn’t know about this.

01:45:02 Yeah, you can check on YouTube.

01:45:03 It’s a, it’s, it’s, it went, it went viral.

01:45:05 Yeah.

01:45:06 There’s a lot of things like that sometimes I’m like, or, or Bob Lazar, I’m like, imagine

01:45:11 if it’s true, man.

01:45:13 Yeah.

01:45:14 Imagine if we’re like a fish in the water, we live in our own world and sometimes there’s

01:45:19 a fisherman that grabbed the fish, take him out of the water and threw it back in the

01:45:25 water and the fish goes back to the other fish and say, Hey, there’s someone that, that

01:45:30 take me out of the water.

01:45:31 Then I’ve seen things that I did not like.

01:45:33 Imagine if it’s true.

01:45:34 Like we like, yeah.

01:45:36 And one other thing, like I wanted to ask you because you were consciousness, how about

01:45:42 dreams?

01:45:43 What is a dream?

01:45:44 Yeah.

01:45:45 Well, I, I, I more and more, I don’t know if you’re paying attention to this.

01:45:48 There’s no, it’s become more acceptable in the scientific community to do large scale

01:45:52 studies of psychedelics, for example, and there’s a lot of connection between psychedelics

01:45:56 and dreams.

01:45:57 There’s very similar states.

01:45:59 There’s, there’s a lot our mind does when it detaches itself from reality that it can

01:46:04 just explore a lot of different ideas.

01:46:05 It’s very possible that dreams is you’re traveling somewhere and the same thing with psychedelics.

01:46:10 You’re traveling somewhere in a different, not traveling to physical space.

01:46:15 It’s the other dimensions that we’re talking about.

01:46:17 You’re traveling some other through some other dimension to meet some other creature.

01:46:22 People talk with DMT that they meet some elves.

01:46:24 I’ve never done, I I’d like to, I don’t know if there’s a safe legal way to do it, but

01:46:31 they all talk about meeting elves and creatures like entities and like, who are they?

01:46:39 What’s what is this?

01:46:42 Is it because they’re high or it’s because they’re actually meeting something and maybe

01:46:46 there’s no difference.

01:46:47 I mean that who knows exactly and that’s takes us right back to us not being able to really

01:46:52 understand how our mind works.

01:46:54 You know, I work in artificial intelligence.

01:46:58 It’s clear that we understand so little about intelligence, some basic things about intelligence

01:47:04 just at the, at the very sort of basic first principles level.

01:47:09 We don’t understand what it means to, to reason, to think, to assimilate pieces of knowledge

01:47:17 together from the, from the basics to the complex.

01:47:21 We don’t understand it.

01:47:22 We don’t understand how the human mind does it.

01:47:25 We don’t understand how the human mind is able to take incredible waterfall of information

01:47:30 and filter cleanly into just like clean.

01:47:34 You only see the things that are important and are able to stitch them together and be

01:47:37 able to reason about the world.

01:47:40 And at the same time have moments of like genius of creativity.

01:47:44 Like what is that?

01:47:46 That also, you know, people, writers talk about that, that they’re, you know, they’re

01:47:50 almost like communicating with a muse, like where do ideas come from?

01:47:54 This is the Joe Rogan philosophy.

01:47:56 But I do know that past civilization where a lot of them were based on shamanism.

01:48:01 And you know what?

01:48:02 I think it’s sad is if someone drink alcohol and when he’s drunk, he’s going to commit

01:48:10 like create like, like murders or something.

01:48:13 We’re going to blame the person.

01:48:14 Right?

01:48:15 You’re going to say that’s his fault.

01:48:16 It’s not the fault of alcohol.

01:48:17 However, if someone does psychedelic or any things that is illegal and you do something

01:48:23 crazy, now we’re going to put the fault on psychedelic.

01:48:28 You know what I mean?

01:48:29 And perhaps the person itself is the reason why, you know, he’s been doing these things,

01:48:36 you know what I mean?

01:48:37 So yeah, it’s fascinating how like society, you know, like in Canada, they just legalize

01:48:43 marijuana.

01:48:44 Oh yeah?

01:48:45 Yeah.

01:48:46 Marijuana is legal.

01:48:47 But before that, before they did it, like if you talk, for example, to my dad, my dad

01:48:51 is against it, like, because the whole mentality is like, it’s drug, it’s bad.

01:48:56 But drinking a glass, you know, drinking a beer, it’s fine.

01:48:59 I mean, what is, you know what I mean?

01:49:02 What is good?

01:49:03 What is bad?

01:49:04 And I guess eating chocolate could be bad as well for your health or, I mean, I’m going

01:49:09 to the extreme now, but what is good?

01:49:12 What is bad?

01:49:13 If you use it for recreation, you use it for an experience, to learn about yourself, it’s

01:49:20 a, the line is very tiny, you know, there’s some countries that drugs are all legals,

01:49:26 you know what I mean?

01:49:27 And I don’t know the stats, but I would be interesting to know if they have more crimes

01:49:35 there than other countries where it’s more strict.

01:49:39 I would be interesting to know about that.

01:49:41 It’s fascinating to me, you know?

01:49:43 Yeah.

01:49:44 And I mean, we humans kind of just come up with arbitrary lines of what’s good, what’s

01:49:47 bad that applies with drugs, that applies with anything, that applies with animals,

01:49:53 for example.

01:49:54 We talked about carnivore diet.

01:49:56 Maybe the time we live in now will be remembered for the cruelty to animals, for example.

01:50:02 And I believe this, the 21st century will be remembered for our cruelty to robots.

01:50:11 That eventually there’ll be a civil rights movement for robots where the ones who choose

01:50:19 to be conscious, the ones who have consciousness will say, we deserve rights too.

01:50:25 We deserve to be treated with respect too.

01:50:28 How about the people we put in jail?

01:50:30 People put in jail.

01:50:31 I mean, I think in the future we’ll look back and we’ll think of ourselves being stupid,

01:50:38 you know, to put people in jail instead of, you know, like trying to fix the problem at

01:50:45 the base, you know?

01:50:46 Of course now we’re, or I guess it’s our ignorance that made it in a way that we cannot sometimes

01:50:52 understand what makes sometime a psychopath, a psychopath or a murderer, a murderer, but

01:50:58 you know, if we can pinpoint the problem and take care of it before, you know what I mean?

01:51:03 Or made it in a way that we can reestablish that person in the society.

01:51:09 You know, who knows, you know, what was the future’s hold.

01:51:12 It’s interesting.

01:51:13 We live in an interesting time.

01:51:15 You mentioned your father.

01:51:17 What have you learned from your dad?

01:51:20 You mentioned he was an important part of your childhood.

01:51:22 My dad is amazing.

01:51:25 I grew up, we didn’t have a lot of money, but it doesn’t mean if I’m born in a nice

01:51:29 country that always nice thing happened, you know?

01:51:33 My dad for me is a big role model because I see him through to my life facing a lot

01:51:40 of adversity.

01:51:41 You know, he stopped drinking when I was a teenager, he was an alcoholic and I seen him

01:51:48 struggle through that, you know, and it was very, very hard and I’ve seen him work like

01:51:58 crazy hours, like come leave in the morning, come home at night, burned out because of

01:52:05 work through almost all his life to the point that it became a slave of the system.

01:52:15 It became an habit and a normal way of living and it made me realize that I have learned

01:52:21 a lot through my father.

01:52:23 He taught me perseverance, hard work, you know, when you face adversity, you know, to

01:52:28 never give up until you achieve it, but also he taught me a lesson that in a way that I

01:52:36 don’t want to be like him, even if he is happy, it’s because I realized I don’t think he knows

01:52:43 anything else.

01:52:44 Like he works through all his life and I don’t want to live to work.

01:52:50 I want to work for, you know what I mean, I want to decide when I work, you know, I

01:52:54 feel like like he lived to work instead of working for a living.

01:53:00 And perhaps it’s because he did not have choice, he was the older of his family, they were

01:53:06 nine kids, his dad, my grandfather died when he was young, so he had to become the father

01:53:12 of the family and work to put money on the table.

01:53:16 So perhaps that’s what made him that way and it became like an habit for him.

01:53:24 My dad taught me when I was at school, I was bullied at school, he’s the first one who

01:53:30 initiate me to martial art.

01:53:32 He taught me karate, my dad was a black belt in Kyokushin karate as well.

01:53:37 But because he was working too much, he didn’t have time to teach me and I needed self defense

01:53:43 in order to defend myself.

01:53:46 I have a winning, a great career in mixed martial art, but in the school yard, my record

01:53:55 is not very good.

01:53:57 When you’re a kid and you’re about seven, eight years old and you’re facing bullied

01:54:05 bullies that are two to three years older than yourself, it’s not the same thing than

01:54:13 when you’re 25 and the guy is 28.

01:54:15 So there was a big discrepancy in terms of maturity.

01:54:21 So my dad taught me, introduced me to karate, then he didn’t have time to teach me.

01:54:29 Then he put me in a school with a teacher, it was Jean Couture.

01:54:37 And I grew up with a lot of anger and there were two persons I was afraid growing up.

01:54:44 It was my dad, my dad was very severe, very strict with me.

01:54:49 And I’m glad he was because I could have become very bad.

01:54:53 I could have become chosen on a different path.

01:54:57 People see me as a nice guy and I am a nice guy, I try to be a good role model, but I

01:55:02 could easily have turned towards a wrong path.

01:55:06 There’s darkness somewhere in there.

01:55:08 Yes, there are a lot.

01:55:09 And a lot of my friends have chosen that path and unfortunately they are not with me today.

01:55:19 Even if I’m from Canada and Canada seems like the nicest country in the world, like I said,

01:55:25 even if you live in a nice country, it’s not always a nice thing, it depends on the situation.

01:55:30 But that’s what my dad taught me.

01:55:32 And he gave me that because I’m very good at learning by observing people and by observing

01:55:41 him I see the struggle he had with alcoholism and what he did, the pain sometimes that he

01:55:47 inflicted to us, to my family.

01:55:50 But how he turned, he did a 180 degree and I really admire that.

01:55:59 And I know it was very, very hard for him and he did it and for me that’s a great role

01:56:05 model for me.

01:56:07 So with your dad being an engine of basically hard work and you finding a balance of being

01:56:13 able to work your ass off, but also to be able to enjoy a piece of chocolate, what is

01:56:19 a perfect day in the life of George St. Pierre look like?

01:56:24 So like if you were to go through a day that’s very productive, but also one that makes you

01:56:30 sit back and enjoy and say that was a good day, what’s that look like?

01:56:34 What are we talking about?

01:56:36 When do you wake up?

01:56:37 What do you eat?

01:56:38 What do you do?

01:56:39 It changed over the years.

01:56:41 When I was younger, I have a good day.

01:56:42 It was like a good training session or, you know, achieving good thing in my training,

01:56:47 you know, and that’s why I was very good at it because when I, I was obsessed, you know,

01:56:52 I think to be good at something, you need to become obsessed.

01:56:56 And to me, performing in my training was everything, you know, like when I had a bad training session,

01:57:03 I didn’t tell my training partner, I was acting like a, like because of my ego, I didn’t,

01:57:08 you know, I didn’t tell nobody, I was like, Hey, then I go in the locker room and like,

01:57:13 man, then I’m playing the, the, the, the training in my mind and I’m saying, okay, I should

01:57:20 have done this, should have done that, and it haunt me.

01:57:23 It haunt me, man.

01:57:25 It’s a training and it haunt me until the next training session when I can redeem myself.

01:57:31 That’s how it is.

01:57:33 When we used to train in, in all together, back in the day in Canada, we had David Loiseau,

01:57:42 we had Patrick Côté, we had Dennis Kang, Steve Vignot, Jonathan Goulet, there was all

01:57:49 like the best guy in Canada that were training with each other before we were training in

01:57:55 different gyms.

01:57:56 But once a week, I made it in a way that I contact everybody that we all join force and

01:58:02 we exchange ideas and we train with each other.

01:58:06 So a friendly, I would say friendly competition.

01:58:09 It was not malicious, but it was hard training, you know, like not, our goal was to improve,

01:58:14 you know, but it wasn’t very competitive.

01:58:17 And when that day you used to get out of the training session with a bad performance for

01:58:23 me, it used to haunt me until the following week when I could give it back and perform

01:58:29 better with the guy that I had the most trouble with.

01:58:33 That’s how it was.

01:58:34 And that’s how you get better, you know, but, but it was not a training where we were trying

01:58:41 to do malicious thing to one another.

01:58:43 You know what I mean?

01:58:45 You need to be playful, but playful, but competitive.

01:58:49 That when I had a good training session, because the sparring was on a Friday, I had the best

01:58:53 weekend in the world.

01:58:54 I was going out with my friend, drinking and partying and have fun.

01:58:57 That that was, that was my, my, my, my ideal day back in the day.

01:59:05 Today has changed.

01:59:06 You know, my, my, my, my life has changed.

01:59:09 You know, like I, I am not the same person I used to be when I got, went on my knees

01:59:17 and beg the UFC for title shot.

01:59:20 You know what I mean?

01:59:21 I am a, I’m wealthy, I’m healthy.

01:59:25 Most importantly, that’s the most important thing.

01:59:28 And as, and I’m going to tell you the truth, as good as my career was, man, my private

01:59:35 life, man, is a million times better, man.

01:59:39 I, and, and people ask me sometimes they always wonder, they, they try to ask me and it’s

01:59:45 normal.

01:59:46 It’s a lot of people is curious and the reporter and in the sport of mixed martial art, we

01:59:54 say we play basketball, we play soccer, but you don’t play fighting.

01:59:58 So when you expose your private life, we seen that happen in the fight with sometime Conor

02:00:04 McGregor and Khabib, your competitor knows that he cannot get to you.

02:00:09 So what he will do, he will try to get to someone that you love.

02:00:13 So may I never expose my, my private life.

02:00:16 I never post Instagram of my family or my stuff.

02:00:21 That’s the reason why, because I’m in a, I’m in a business of fighting and people know

02:00:26 that they cannot get to me.

02:00:29 And I believe because I was bullied when I was young, I didn’t realize that when I was

02:00:37 young, but it helps me deal with the mental warfare that I need, that I had to face later

02:00:44 on in my life and mixed martial art, because it’s a very egotistic sport.

02:00:48 And there’s a lot of, a lot and a lot of intimidation.

02:00:54 And I was used to, I’ve been used to this thing when I was young.

02:00:57 So it does not get to me, however, the good way to get to me, go, go, go, go try to get

02:01:05 to someone I love now, man, I’m going to go crazy.

02:01:09 You know what I mean?

02:01:11 And I’m aware of that.

02:01:12 So in order to protect myself, I always, because I’m aware I’m a public person.

02:01:18 So I try to always keep my surrounding like in the private.

02:01:22 You know, one of the ways that like your friend and mine, Joe Rogan has been an inspiration

02:01:31 that he’s got like an incredible family and he, for the most part, it started to change

02:01:35 recently.

02:01:36 Actually, it’s kind of interesting, but for the most part, throughout his life, he kept

02:01:39 it pretty secret.

02:01:41 Doesn’t talk about it in his, he’s a comedian, comedians talk about everything.

02:01:44 He doesn’t really talk about it.

02:01:46 And there’s something to that.

02:01:48 It like preserves the magic of the silence of the private life.

02:01:52 And I think it can affect the development of the kid.

02:01:57 If the kid grow up being, oh, he’s the son of that guy instead of being his own person.

02:02:04 You know what I mean?

02:02:06 So for me, it’s very important.

02:02:08 Like my parents are older, it’s fine.

02:02:11 But it taught me a big lesson.

02:02:13 When I’m with my friend at the dinner or anything, I talk with person, always share a thing.

02:02:18 But when I’m talking, I’m aware of the audience where I’m in front.

02:02:23 Yeah.

02:02:24 And I mean, but oftentimes those people are just incredible.

02:02:26 It kind of makes me sad that, you know, there’s a lot of people that love you, right?

02:02:31 And there are a lot of really incredible people and you’ll never get to really know their

02:02:35 story.

02:02:36 I mean, I don’t know, for me, it makes me sad.

02:02:38 You see them like at airports and stuff.

02:02:40 People will tell me they listen to this podcast or something like that.

02:02:44 And I could tell they’re incredible people.

02:02:46 It makes me it’s like a little goodbye of a possible friend.

02:02:50 I don’t know.

02:02:51 It makes me sad.

02:02:52 All right.

02:02:53 It makes me it’s lonely.

02:02:55 It’s almost like celebrity is a lonely thing.

02:02:57 So the higher the celebrity, the more lonely you become in some kind of way.

02:03:02 But of course, you have that little gem of a private life where you can personally, I

02:03:06 believe every relationship I like, I don’t like to use this term, but it’s always a give

02:03:14 and take relationship, you know, like you can gain something and the person like it

02:03:20 could be something like not materialist materialistic, like something always a good, confident like

02:03:26 someone that can give me good advice or.

02:03:30 It’s a word I would say, like extensional, like if a pilot as a copilot is the copilot

02:03:35 is extent as an extensional relationship with him, you know, so he knows if he gets sick

02:03:40 or faint, he’s there to make sure, you know, he’s there to help.

02:03:45 And I think in every relation it’s about compatibility, but it’s about extensionality, right?

02:03:50 In a way that if that person is extensional and sometimes we talk about about love, you

02:03:56 know, like sometimes I think is it is it a BS word or not?

02:04:01 Because I myself sometimes look at I look at myself in the mirror and when I do stupid

02:04:08 thing, sometimes I love myself a lot and sometimes I don’t.

02:04:12 You know what I mean?

02:04:13 Because I’m angry at myself, I’ve done stupid thing.

02:04:17 So that means sometimes you could love could be fluctuating.

02:04:20 You know what I mean?

02:04:21 How about in relationships?

02:04:22 Sometimes people, they say, oh, they love each other, but then when they divorce, they

02:04:26 go, oh, I want the house and the dog and the kids stay with me.

02:04:30 And you know what I mean?

02:04:32 If you love, by definition, if you really love someone and let’s say you’re an old man

02:04:38 and you love a woman and she decides to leave you for a younger man, if you really love

02:04:43 her, you’re going to help her pack and leave.

02:04:47 But in our society, sometimes we want to hone something.

02:04:51 To me, love includes the missing somebody, the losing somebody, the anger at somebody.

02:04:57 It’s all the passion, feelings towards somebody.

02:05:00 That’s all love.

02:05:01 I, you know, it’s all part of the thing.

02:05:03 It’s the ups and downs.

02:05:05 It’s the sad thing is when the feelings towards a person, the ups and downs go away, the forgetting.

02:05:13 That’s the opposite of love.

02:05:14 So the opposite of love isn’t hate.

02:05:16 To me, the opposite of love is forgetting.

02:05:19 And that’s a much bigger, that’s the depth of human connection.

02:05:23 That’s how I see love.

02:05:25 Sometimes I try to stay positive and I’ve been asked how I try to, because I have the

02:05:30 image of someone who’s positive.

02:05:33 But I go through my own demon as well sometimes.

02:05:36 However, when we talk about love, when I was young, you know, like, I didn’t love who I

02:05:46 was at first.

02:05:47 That’s how I love, I learned to kind of love myself.

02:05:51 Like I didn’t, when I was going to bullying, I was, I believe I was bullied because I didn’t

02:05:57 love myself because I project a very bad image of what I think of myself.

02:06:03 I was a kid that lacked a lot of confidence.

02:06:06 I was looking down when I was walking.

02:06:08 I shrugged my shoulder.

02:06:10 When someone was talking to me, I was avoiding eye contact.

02:06:14 So I was a very easy target for bullies.

02:06:17 And I think bullies are like a predatory animal in nature.

02:06:22 They will hunt the easier prey.

02:06:25 They don’t go, the lion don’t go for the alpha bull.

02:06:30 They go for the one who’s old or who’s sick, the weakest one.

02:06:33 And bullies are the same in society, I believe.

02:06:36 And I didn’t like to be bullied, of course, but I didn’t like the person that I was.

02:06:42 But I found out through martial art, the respect and my coach was extraordinary to me.

02:06:53 He taught me discipline and self strength.

02:06:56 And I found out that I needed to, in order to love myself, I needed to change myself.

02:07:03 Because I didn’t, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t like what I saw.

02:07:07 So I decided to become like someone that I would love.

02:07:12 So I tried to look people straight up and try to showcase a more confident image that

02:07:23 I had.

02:07:24 And it was hard in the beginning because I didn’t really believe in it, but I fake it

02:07:29 until kind of I make it.

02:07:31 So when I was walking at school, more and more I was learning how to become more confident

02:07:37 and I was like taking charge.

02:07:40 The teacher was asking questions, at first I was never answering, I was like this, waiting

02:07:44 always to be the last.

02:07:45 Then I was, hey, I know what the answer, this is the answer.

02:07:49 I got out of my comfort zone, so to speak.

02:07:55 And I wish I would tell you that I got out of bullying because a Hollywood story, I used

02:08:01 martial art to beat up all the bullies.

02:08:04 But it’s not how it happened to me.

02:08:06 It happened because I changed myself from the inside out.

02:08:11 And I learned how to, because I didn’t love myself in the beginning, I learned how to

02:08:18 become like someone that I love.

02:08:21 And even now, like I’m by no mean perfect, I do a lot of stupid things, but I learn as

02:08:28 a person.

02:08:29 And even I do as something stupid, I’m like, shoot, I did something stupid.

02:08:34 At least I can apologize to the person if I realize, and then I know that I’m not the

02:08:39 person I was in the past, I’m the person that I am right now.

02:08:45 So I can learn and become that image of the person that I love.

02:08:49 So in a way, the reason I’m trying to be positive and I’m able to stay positive sometime in

02:08:55 life is because I’m always trying to be like that person that I love.

02:09:03 And I think if you don’t look yourself in the mirror and don’t love yourself or don’t

02:09:07 see any positive future for yourself, how can you change your environment if you cannot

02:09:12 change yourself?

02:09:13 You know what I mean?

02:09:14 You will never be happy if you’re not happy when you look at yourself in the mirror.

02:09:18 So change yourself first, then change, you know, it’s not the environment that’s going

02:09:22 to change for yourself.

02:09:24 You have to go from the inside out, you know.

02:09:29 This I learned through martial art.

02:09:30 I had a coach who was incredible, used to drill these ideas in my head and give me confidence,

02:09:38 you know, like this, telling me all these beautiful things about myself and how he’s

02:09:44 dead now, unfortunately, peace to him.

02:09:46 But he was incredible, incredible.

02:09:49 He was very, very strict.

02:09:50 I was afraid of him.

02:09:51 I was afraid of my dad and afraid of him.

02:09:53 He couldn’t teach nowadays like he used to teach me because he would be probably in jail,

02:09:58 you know.

02:09:59 But I’m glad he did it because for the time being, that’s what I needed.

02:10:04 And I would never have had the career I had in mixed martial art without this because

02:10:10 I would never have got out of my comfort zone, would have been impossible.

02:10:15 And in order to improve in life, you need to get out of your comfort zone.

02:10:19 It’s hard, very hard to do.

02:10:22 And strive to be the person that you can love, that’s beautifully put, George.

02:10:28 If you were to give advice to a young person today about life, what would you tell him?

02:10:34 If he takes life with the same mentality that I do, if he has the same taste of things that

02:10:47 I have, I would tell him, you know, for sport, for life in general, I would say, if you will

02:10:58 have a dream, you know, like make everything in your power and work very hard, you know,

02:11:08 never take no for an answer and go through hell in order to achieve it.

02:11:18 Don’t work hard only, but work smart.

02:11:23 That’s I think the problems with a lot of people, they work hard, they can work hard,

02:11:27 they burden themselves, they don’t work smart.

02:11:30 Whether it is in science and business, they make bad choices or they’re badly informed

02:11:38 in sport.

02:11:39 How many guys I’ve seen ruin their career in the gym, they spar so hard, they ruin themselves

02:11:47 in the gyms, they leave their career in the gyms.

02:11:51 What I would say to, for example, because my field of expertise, it’s in sport of mixed

02:11:55 martial art, I would say to a young kid, make your training playful.

02:12:05 You know, when you get ready for competition, you need to train to recreate those elements

02:12:14 that makes you go outside of your comfort zone.

02:12:18 But in everyday life in general, make your training playful.

02:12:23 What makes it like a hardcore competition about who’s winning, who’s losing, make it

02:12:29 playful.

02:12:30 So it will increase your, because you will not be afraid of getting hurt or losing.

02:12:39 You will be tempted to try more things and it will make you become more creative.

02:12:49 You know, that brings up another question about learning.

02:12:53 So you value knowledge and you’re exceptional at basically being very good at learning and

02:13:00 figuring stuff out, new things or going deeper on the things you already know.

02:13:05 So what advice would you have for how to learn effectively?

02:13:10 How you say work smart, how do you figure this game out?

02:13:16 I believe the best way to learn is learning from other people’s mistake.

02:13:23 However, I’m not perfect and I’ve learned from my mistakes as well.

02:13:30 And sometimes it took me a few mistakes to learn the same thing.

02:13:37 But especially in the sport of mixed martial art, because we’re talking about the failure

02:13:44 could have very serious outcome on someone’s life and wellbeing.

02:13:51 So it’s crucial to trying to learn from other people’s mistakes.

02:13:56 Do you study others?

02:13:59 Every fight I’m studying my opponent and I’ve studied myself as well to know how my strength

02:14:09 mix versus my opponent weaknesses and how can I make the fight go in a way that I’m

02:14:17 taking my opponent outside of his comfort zone.

02:14:22 Very often people are good at studying their opponent, but they’re not good at looking

02:14:25 at themselves in the mirror and knowing what they should do in order to maximize their

02:14:31 odds of success, right?

02:14:34 That’s why I always thought for me, it was important to not be the best at one thing,

02:14:42 but be very good at everything.

02:14:47 That’s why I always seek advice, advices from the best in every discipline.

02:14:54 I wrestle with the best wrestler I could be with, I box with the best boxers, I practice

02:15:02 karate with the best karate fighters.

02:15:05 Same thing in Jiu Jitsu.

02:15:06 I train Jiu Jitsu with the best Jiu Jitsu guys.

02:15:09 However, when I mix everything and mix martial art, because I’m very competent in every area.

02:15:19 So when I’m fighting someone, I’m very good at identifying where is the less competent.

02:15:27 And I know for a fact that because I’m competent everywhere, if I can bring the fight where

02:15:33 he’s outside of his comfort zone, it increased my odds of winning.

02:15:36 There is no certainty.

02:15:38 It’s all about odds, I believe, because there is always X factor that you do not control.

02:15:43 Yeah, it’s fascinating to see you actually, because you’ve been a student of movement.

02:15:48 You’ve been exploring all kinds of, I mean, gymnastics, all that kind of stuff.

02:15:53 There’s something reminiscent to, like Conor McGregor is one other martial artist that’s

02:15:59 kind of explored movement, been a scholar of movement.

02:16:03 At least from my perspective, it’s very sort of Bruce Lee like, it’s almost making a study

02:16:09 of the human body and all the possible things you can do.

02:16:12 Is there a philosophy behind that, that you have?

02:16:15 You talk about Bruce Lee, man, you said it best.

02:16:20 He changes my life too.

02:16:23 He was ahead of his time.

02:16:25 Yeah.

02:16:26 Incredible.

02:16:27 A lot of people talk to me and ask me, hey, is Bruce Lee would have been able to fight

02:16:30 in UFC?

02:16:33 I don’t think so.

02:16:34 I don’t know.

02:16:36 I think he was a martial artist.

02:16:38 He could have defended himself, but to say that he could have competed amongst the elite

02:16:43 of the elite fighter, perhaps in his time, but for sure, if you put him in UFC right

02:16:48 now, the sport has improved incredibly since then.

02:16:55 But in terms of philosophy, Bruce, he was amazing.

02:17:00 One thing that just to prove that he was ahead of his time, he was talking about using your

02:17:04 longest weapon against your opponent nearest point.

02:17:08 And we see that kick, it got popularized by John Jones, the sidekick to the tie, his longest

02:17:17 weapon against your nearest point in boxing is the jab.

02:17:20 But in MMA, when you can use it, all your weapon, that’s the kick to the tie.

02:17:26 And there is, I felt there is like kind of three dimension in martial art.

02:17:32 There is the philosopher, like Bruce Lee.

02:17:34 There is the choreography, the choreographed people, like for example, you see in movies

02:17:40 that stun people.

02:17:42 They’re incredible.

02:17:43 Or the one that does like forms and karate, like jumping, spin kick, back kick, like acrobatic

02:17:49 stuff, mixed martial art.

02:17:50 They are unbelievable.

02:17:52 And there is also the one that competes in fighting.

02:17:57 That’s what I do.

02:17:58 I personally specialize in.

02:18:01 Well, you also do the philosophy.

02:18:03 I do a little bit of philosophy, but that’s the consequence of the fighting.

02:18:07 I guess we are all like we all practice the three dimension because martial art is I would

02:18:14 say it’s whether you want it or not, you have to touch these three dimensions.

02:18:20 But you will specialize in one.

02:18:21 I specialize through my life in fighting like the real thing in terms of fighting, competition.

02:18:29 Of course, if you do martial art, you’ll be able to defend yourself because it’s a self

02:18:32 defense.

02:18:33 However, you might not be able to fight as an elite and the most prestigious organization.

02:18:39 And you might not be able to perform the stunt that, for example, the stuntman I’ve done

02:18:44 in the series I was playing in the Falcon and Winter Soldier, these guys are incredible.

02:18:50 They’re like real life superhero.

02:18:52 Things they do, to me, like it’s fascinating.

02:18:57 It’s amazing.

02:18:58 And also Bruce Lee, the philosophy.

02:19:01 How many hours he took like thinking about these stuff, you know, I’m sure he did not

02:19:08 just came out of nowhere, you know, like he was thinking that’s mean he slept on this.

02:19:16 How many hours?

02:19:17 It’s just unbelievable.

02:19:18 He’s like water, my friend.

02:19:19 How many times has he thought about water going to bed before he said that?

02:19:24 Well, let me ask a very important fundamental question about martial arts.

02:19:27 We’re both wearing a suit and tie.

02:19:30 Joe Rogan thinks that wearing a tie is a huge disadvantage.

02:19:35 Is it a clip on or is it an actual tie?

02:19:37 It’s an actual tie, I really want it.

02:19:39 So do you agree or disagree with Joe Rogan that wearing a tie is a martial arts significant

02:19:47 disadvantage in terms of combat, in a combat scenario?

02:19:51 In a fight, I think it would be a disadvantage.

02:19:53 Yes.

02:19:54 Okay.

02:19:55 I work as a security bouncer in nightclubs and event when I was 18 years old.

02:20:02 And sometime I had to work in certain event that I was in suit and tie.

02:20:09 I never had to use my force to take someone out when I was in suit and tie.

02:20:17 But if I would have had to before going to the table to physically take the guy out,

02:20:22 I would have removed my tie and I would have removed my vest for sure.

02:20:26 And I would have called back up for sure.

02:20:29 And I would have probably used the element of surprise to be first on the guy.

02:20:36 When you’re in a bar, same thing, you call back up first and you make sure you ask the

02:20:41 waitress before to clean the table before you go.

02:20:46 And when you go, you have to use the element of surprise.

02:20:49 Because fighting, fighting in mixed martial arts and fighting in the street, it’s two

02:20:54 different things.

02:20:56 And yes, I’m a mixed martial arts competitor.

02:21:00 That’s what I’ve done all my life.

02:21:01 But I had a lot of street fight in my life, a lot when I was in…

02:21:04 What’s the difference?

02:21:05 What’s like the…

02:21:06 Oh my God.

02:21:07 It’s a huge difference.

02:21:08 There is guys that if I would have a choice, you know, to fight, like, for example, certain

02:21:16 guys in UFC in a street fight and fight like other guys that are not in UFC, I would maybe

02:21:20 sometimes pick guys that are not in UFC, not necessarily.

02:21:24 Because in a street fight, there’s no referee that says go.

02:21:28 It’s the element of surprise.

02:21:29 And when you’re a nice guy, you’re not the aggressor.

02:21:33 You always have the element of surprise.

02:21:35 That’s what it taught me.

02:21:36 Oh, interesting.

02:21:37 Yes.

02:21:38 Because if the person will not come punch you without warning, it needs to, it needs

02:21:45 to trigger some…

02:21:46 It’s something that needs to be triggered before.

02:21:49 So if someone comes because he’s looking for trouble, there is a sign that he’s looking

02:21:54 for trouble.

02:21:56 So I was just talking with Bas Rutten this weekend about it.

02:22:00 I saw that.

02:22:01 Every martial art comes from…

02:22:04 Like some martial art are from Exclusivik for competition, like sport karate, like certain

02:22:11 martial art.

02:22:12 But traditional martial art are for the street, are for self defense.

02:22:17 And I start my background in Kyokushinkarate, so it’s for…

02:22:21 And I did Japanese Jiu Jitsu.

02:22:22 So my background, before I even start training for mixed martial art, my background is in

02:22:27 self defense.

02:22:30 And it’s very important to understand that in a street fight, the element of surprise

02:22:33 is everything.

02:22:34 And there are no rules.

02:22:35 You can go for the eyes, the necks, the…

02:22:39 It surprises everything.

02:22:40 Total, total ballgame, you know what I mean?

02:22:43 You have the chair, the beard, there’s so much more thing going on.

02:22:48 So the idea of…

02:22:50 Because you are a UFC fighter, you think you’re invincible.

02:22:52 This is BS.

02:22:55 Anybody can come.

02:22:56 Like if a big guy who punch very hard, most people don’t know how to punch.

02:23:00 By the way, they don’t know how to make a fist and throw it in a forward direction.

02:23:02 But if someone knows how to do it, I don’t care who you are.

02:23:06 If you could be Francis and Genu, someone come behind your head and bang.

02:23:10 Or let’s say there’s an argument and you get surprised by a punch.

02:23:14 You can be drop and lose a fight, that doesn’t matter.

02:23:17 The element of surprise is everything.

02:23:20 So you were saying remove all the sources of the elements of surprise, clear the bar,

02:23:25 remove the tie.

02:23:26 I still disagree with you about the tie.

02:23:30 Just for your information, if someone comes looking for trouble and you see me do this

02:23:38 and going sideways a little bit, that’s my position that I’m thinking maybe something

02:23:43 will happen and I’m about to punch you or to do something to take care of this situation.

02:23:52 To flip the table on you then, wearing a tie is communicating the nice guy image.

02:23:58 So it actually gives you the freedom for more elements of surprise by wearing the tie.

02:24:03 If you take it off, you’re limiting your options because nobody’s going to expect the guy in

02:24:09 the tie to do anything.

02:24:10 I’m a big believer that sometimes it’s not only materialism, it’s what you project.

02:24:19 Let’s say I had troubles in a bar and I was able to deflect, the guy was looking for trouble

02:24:24 talking to me and I was able to deflect his whole aggressivity by saying like, hey, man,

02:24:30 that’s a nice shirt.

02:24:31 Where did you get it?

02:24:32 Like saying like something or stupid like this, then it kind of breaks the momentum

02:24:38 and he, you know, but the guy was looking for trouble.

02:24:40 I don’t want to fight you.

02:24:42 I don’t want to fight you, but I’m not going to wait until you pull, you make the first

02:24:48 move because the minute you touch me, you push me or you touch me, you declare war and

02:24:54 the war is unleashed, my friend, and I’m taking you out of order with the necessary force,

02:25:00 of course.

02:25:01 You know what I mean?

02:25:02 That’s the thing with martial art.

02:25:05 If you use the necessary force to take care of the problem, it’s okay.

02:25:09 But if you, you know, you take advantage of it, that’s when it’s not all right because

02:25:13 it’s a weapon.

02:25:15 So if someone comes up to me, that’s my position and now I’m assessing the situation, you know,

02:25:22 that’s how they teach in self defense here.

02:25:25 Never put your hands down.

02:25:26 Always hand there because I’m down or boom, like what this is, this is very important

02:25:33 and you never, you always your center line on the side like this.

02:25:38 If someone knows martial art, he will recognize that pattern.

02:25:42 But if you go like, if someone talked to you and you go like this, that’s mean you’re telling

02:25:46 the guy that you want to fight.

02:25:47 You don’t want to do that.

02:25:48 You don’t want to, oh yeah, you know, that’s, that’s the position because your hands are

02:25:55 here, you know, whatever you can do, you’re here.

02:25:57 Well, also your ear tells a story.

02:26:01 It’s not everybody that knows that, however, it’s some people might think that it’s my

02:26:05 mom grabbed me by the ear and pulled me because I didn’t listen to her, you know.

02:26:09 A real fight in the street and a fight in mixed martial art is a different ball game.

02:26:15 What do you think is the best martial art to prepare you for street fighting?

02:26:19 You know, people often kind of have this discussion of Jiu Jitsu, maybe boxing, maybe wrestling.

02:26:24 Do you think, when you talk about a young person studying martial arts to prepare themselves?

02:26:29 For a street fight, it’s often much different than a mixed martial art fight.

02:26:35 And I know there is a lot of BS in the world of martial art, like self defense stuff that

02:26:40 like, but I believe self defense is very important in a way to understand the situation, to understand

02:26:50 those situations that might occur, how to deal with it.

02:26:57 Because not necessarily that we talk about the technicality, we talk about the tacticality,

02:27:04 the tactics, you know, like when I’m talking to you about the element of surprise is important.

02:27:09 This is not technique, technique is a punch or techniques that I physically will use to

02:27:15 enable my opponent, my aggressor.

02:27:20 Tactic is the tactic I’m telling you about is in a street fight, if someone is looking

02:27:24 for trouble and I feel the heat rising as the conversation goes, that’s the position

02:27:28 I’m going to take and I have to be first.

02:27:32 I cannot let him go first.

02:27:34 So I have to strike first or do something.

02:27:36 This is the first thing that generally I have to agree on.

02:27:45 After that, of course, there is the knowledge.

02:27:47 If you’re a professional fighter, you have a huge advantage.

02:27:51 Once the fight is started, the war is declared.

02:27:53 Now it’s everything goes.

02:27:56 But generally speaking, the person that will intervene, that will have the first blow or

02:28:02 the first, you know, the first punch will have a huge disadvantage.

02:28:08 It’s like doing a hundred meter race and having a head start, you know, and that you can’t

02:28:12 prepare for with any martial arts.

02:28:14 Yeah.

02:28:15 And if I’m a smart guy, I know how to fight.

02:28:17 If a guy like an heavyweight champion comes to me or like, like, like, you know, I know,

02:28:23 I know what to do to disable him, like boom or here or the neck, you know, like, and if

02:28:32 you blind him, what is he going to do?

02:28:33 You know what I mean?

02:28:34 So, so or a bottle, you know what I mean?

02:28:37 So the element of surprise is it’s everything.

02:28:40 So that’s why it’s always, always good to be the nice guy and not looking for trouble.

02:28:45 Because if you’re not looking for trouble, you have the head start, you have the option

02:28:48 of having a head start.

02:28:50 So what you’re saying is being a nice guy is the best form of self defense, maybe a

02:28:54 little humor.

02:28:55 Yes.

02:28:56 And you know, I have learned that I’ve learned that when I was a kid, I was about maybe

02:29:01 seven or six, six years old.

02:29:04 We used to play in Montreal, there’s a lot of snow, we used to play king of the mountain.

02:29:08 Yeah.

02:29:09 That’s the first combat lesson that I’ve learned in my life.

02:29:13 And I managed somehow, it was a lot of kids, I managed to get on the top of the mountain

02:29:17 and another guy came in, come in on top of the mountain and he was angry that before

02:29:22 I was there before him.

02:29:24 When you play king of the mountain, it was a mountain of snow.

02:29:29 You don’t strike each other, we just wrestle and push.

02:29:32 And I managed to be first.

02:29:33 And when he came, he says to me, say, OK, you want to, you want to fight?

02:29:38 And I said, yeah, I don’t know what he means, like I want to fight, I want to wrestle.

02:29:43 I say, yes.

02:29:45 He punched me right in the face.

02:29:46 Boom.

02:29:47 And then I and then I fall on the bottom of the mountain.

02:29:51 Then when I fall down, I remember that vision in my life because it’s I will remember that

02:29:57 for the rest of my life.

02:29:59 I’m about to stand up and I see the blood coming out of my nose, I see that the snow

02:30:03 is red because my nose is bleeding.

02:30:06 Now I remember the element of surprises, everything.

02:30:11 My first street fight, I lost it.

02:30:13 I got I didn’t get knocked out, but I got dropped on the bottom of the snow mountain.

02:30:19 And I was like, oh, you got me because I wasn’t expecting my hand, I was not expecting a punch.

02:30:25 So from there, when I felt the heat of an injury, an argument or something was not right,

02:30:31 I always stroke first.

02:30:33 I didn’t win all my fight because sometimes there were more than one guys on me, you know.

02:30:39 But I think it’s important to not be the aggressor.

02:30:43 So you have the element of surprise and always use that in your favor.

02:30:47 That’s so brilliant.

02:30:48 Let me go from the very practical to the most impractically huge question about the meaning

02:30:54 of life.

02:30:56 You said that when great depths of unrelenting sorrow are punctuated by great peaks of joy

02:31:03 and liberation, the result is delicious.

02:31:07 So what do you think is the meaning of this whole journey that we’re on this life?

02:31:13 What makes life delicious?

02:31:16 To me, you know, satisfaction is the M for me.

02:31:23 Like I always, if I’m satisfied, that means I have nothing to live for.

02:31:30 I’m not talking only about my career, I’m talking about my life.

02:31:33 What do you want in your life?

02:31:35 You want kids, you want a family, you want to be champion.

02:31:37 What do you want in your life?

02:31:38 You have like a long term goal, short term goal.

02:31:45 In mixed martial arts, I achieve what I needed to achieve.

02:31:48 I’m satisfied.

02:31:50 I’m no longer the same George St. Pierre than when I was begging for a title shot on my

02:31:54 knees.

02:31:55 I move on from it.

02:31:59 Now I had a chance to go into movies.

02:32:02 Now that same insane drive that I had to be the champion in the world, now I put it into

02:32:14 acting.

02:32:15 Like I’m having a lot of acting class now and luckily for me, the timing was amazing.

02:32:20 I got cast for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier that is on Disney Plus channel.

02:32:26 It’s a huge, huge project to be part of for me because it’s like you play basketball,

02:32:34 you have a chance to go for the NBA right away.

02:32:37 I was very lucky.

02:32:38 The timing was just too perfect.

02:32:41 And so you need to constantly challenging yourself and having goals to achieve, you

02:32:48 know, like that.

02:32:49 Keep your brain activated, like keep working.

02:32:53 And the proof of that is that you see sometimes some old people, like when they retire, very

02:33:00 often sometime you see that they got sick and they die or because they it’s either because

02:33:08 sometimes we think we we certainly may benefit, we do something good for them by making that

02:33:18 work and giving them a break.

02:33:20 So in our mind, we’re like, oh, he’s going to be able to relax.

02:33:23 But in their mind, it’s not good because they’re not busy.

02:33:26 They have nothing to live for.

02:33:28 Like my dad is used to work all the time and he has always something to do.

02:33:32 He’s retired now.

02:33:34 I myself now call him by force to find him some job.

02:33:39 Hey, dad, can you come in my house?

02:33:42 Have this thing to repair?

02:33:44 I don’t know how to do it.

02:33:45 So it gives him it gives him a reason not to live on because he has other things to

02:33:50 do.

02:33:51 But but what I mean is also in life, I think you always don’t be afraid to aim high.

02:33:58 Don’t don’t be afraid to fix your objective very high and never be able to reach it.

02:34:03 Be afraid of reaching your goals, essentially.

02:34:06 I mean, you always have to keep moving it out.

02:34:08 You think there’s a it’s an interesting question because you’ve been acting in some really

02:34:13 exciting things.

02:34:14 Do you think there’s a dramatic role where it’s basically, you know, you go full Robert

02:34:21 De Niro in Taxi Driver?

02:34:24 Do you think there’ll be a full length feature film with George St. Pierre?

02:34:28 I liken there is level to this thing.

02:34:31 Am I aware that I have to restart as a white belt white belt?

02:34:35 And for some people, it could be discouraging.

02:34:38 But for me, man, it’s great.

02:34:39 I love it.

02:34:40 I freaking love it.

02:34:41 I embrace it because everybody told me like I would never be able to do it and it’s fine.

02:34:47 But the and also the outcome of a failure in the sport of mixed martial art is much

02:34:55 more serious than the outcome of a failure for a movie, for example, for for if you think

02:35:01 when you should zag in a fight, you get knocked out if you zig when you should zag and on

02:35:05 set.

02:35:06 Oh, cut.

02:35:07 We’ll do it again.

02:35:09 And I know that I will be most likely be to chosen for action martial art roles because

02:35:18 that’s my background.

02:35:19 There’s this new trend in Hollywood now when they want someone to play an Italian guy,

02:35:24 they’re going to choose a real Italian person.

02:35:27 When they want someone to play a Russian guy, they’re going to choose someone who has a

02:35:31 real Russian background.

02:35:33 Now they want a real martial art fighter.

02:35:36 I’ve done fighting all my life.

02:35:38 I just need to improve my acting skill.

02:35:41 But when I train in acting, I get myself out of my comfort zone.

02:35:46 I’m not playing a role of a martial art guy.

02:35:48 I’m playing like romance, comedy, drama.

02:35:52 So when I go on set and playing the role of a badass martial art guy, it’s it’s easier.

02:36:00 So like in training for a fight, I always make my preparation harder than the actual

02:36:07 task.

02:36:08 I would love to see where I don’t know if you’ve seen the wrestler with Mickey Rourke.

02:36:13 Oh, yeah.

02:36:14 Those types of films.

02:36:15 I would love to I would love to you do something like that.

02:36:19 If not now, then in 10, 20 years, I could see that that would be amazing.

02:36:23 It’s levels to the game, right?

02:36:25 Yes, it’s gradual.

02:36:26 And I don’t and I’m aware that I don’t want to take something on my shoulder that I won’t

02:36:31 be able to deliver.

02:36:32 It’s like a fighter wants to go for a title shot right away.

02:36:35 It could very well break him, you know, and I don’t want to do that because I know I’ve

02:36:41 done some gigs in the past, but I was not focusing on it because I was focusing on competing

02:36:47 as a martial art martial artist in competition in MMA.

02:36:52 But now I take it very seriously.

02:36:53 So I cannot do the same mistake again because I’ve done some stuff.

02:36:57 I’ve done it for the money and it was good.

02:37:00 It was fun to be beat up by Jacque Van Damme, Steven Seagal and everything.

02:37:04 But my acting was not on point, you know, at that time.

02:37:08 So if I ever every time I’m going to come back from now on, on screen, you need to be

02:37:14 sharp because you cannot mess it up.

02:37:16 If you mess it up, it’s like a loss on your record.

02:37:19 You’re not taken seriously.

02:37:21 So so that’s how I see it.

02:37:23 And it’s very fun because I had a chance to talk to a lot of guys on top of all the class

02:37:29 that I’m having.

02:37:31 Like a few days ago, I was with Danny Trujo.

02:37:36 And I always seek the advice of actors when I when I see some of them that because I really

02:37:41 admire how they do, you know, how they project their emotion.

02:37:44 And I asked him, Danny Trujo, I said, I said to him, he’s an amazing guy, by the way.

02:37:48 Very nice guy.

02:37:50 And I asked him, I say, how how do you do to be?

02:37:55 Because you scared the hell out of me.

02:37:57 How do you do to be so scary?

02:38:00 Like what is your trick?

02:38:03 And he tells me, he’s like, George, if you’re threatening, if you’re threatening someone

02:38:08 and you scream at him, I’m going to kill you.

02:38:12 It’s not as scary if you’re smiling and you say, I’m going to kill you like and he says

02:38:19 also to me that another advice he gave me is like when you say this, think about you

02:38:26 killing him for real, that how you hate him and how you’re going to kill him.

02:38:31 So the camera will take the emotion out.

02:38:35 Don’t try physically to do that.

02:38:36 That’s the mistake I used to do before.

02:38:38 I used to physically show that I’m strong and angry and to be mean.

02:38:44 So these are just an example of tricks that I learned sometimes when I met an actor.

02:38:49 I always try to learn from everybody that I met in my life.

02:38:53 It’s a difficult journey because then you have to go to some dark places as a person

02:38:57 because you really have to imagine imagine some dark things.

02:39:01 It’s fascinating, actually.

02:39:02 I think a lot of the actors, they have sometimes problems because of that, because now I understand

02:39:09 why it’s like if you work on your bicep, your bicep will grow.

02:39:13 Right.

02:39:14 It’s because it is the stress that you put on it that will make it grow.

02:39:20 Right.

02:39:21 Emotions are, I believe, are the same way.

02:39:23 If you used to dig inside of you down deep to to to to make your negative emotion, depressive

02:39:32 emotion comes out, if something bad in your life happened, you will fall into those emotion

02:39:39 much more rapidly than someone who does not that every day.

02:39:43 You know what I mean?

02:39:44 Because it will.

02:39:45 It’s like a muscle memory.

02:39:46 Like if you program yourself to react a certain way, you will reach that point very often.

02:39:51 So that’s why sometimes you see some some guys that we often blame it on drugs.

02:39:56 But I think it’s also because of the acting that I used to be so hot on the hot tub and

02:40:02 sometimes they go to the down deep so they they they they they the boat extreme, you

02:40:07 know.

02:40:08 You got to be psychologically tough.

02:40:09 And that’s life.

02:40:10 So I’m so excited to see you challenge yourself in that direction.

02:40:14 That’s one thing that I’m a little bit afraid.

02:40:18 That happened to me.

02:40:19 I really hope I’ll always be, you know, like a problem, having a problem to control my

02:40:26 emotion be too much extreme.

02:40:29 I hope it does not happen to me.

02:40:31 And if I feel that I’m going towards that, I’m going to, you know, give up on my new

02:40:39 objective and find something else to to achieve.

02:40:43 But in your personal life, you want to be real with your emotions.

02:40:46 You don’t want to.

02:40:47 It doesn’t, you know, just like with biceps, you don’t want biceps that are too big.

02:40:52 You are real, but you are extreme real.

02:40:56 And that’s the that’s the that’s what I think something that could happen to actors sometimes

02:41:02 when they go too much into their emotion.

02:41:04 Like we talk about like something guys that that that commit commit suicide, perhaps,

02:41:09 you know, I don’t know.

02:41:10 It’s because I don’t know their real life, but it could be something that they get so

02:41:15 much into their character.

02:41:17 I didn’t understand it at first because I never had acting class.

02:41:20 But after a while that you have acting class, now you start to realize that, yeah, I understand

02:41:25 why some actor get caught up in their emotion, because that can have an influence on their

02:41:32 life.

02:41:33 Right.

02:41:34 You’re on a fascinating journey, George.

02:41:36 I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’ll be so nice to me, that you’ll give

02:41:41 me so much respect.

02:41:42 Just that that tells everything I need to know about you as a human being with everything

02:41:46 you’ve accomplished.

02:41:47 You waste all your time and you’re so nice to me just as a fellow human being, man.

02:41:53 I have so much respect from so honored and the energy you give me by just even showing

02:41:57 up here.

02:41:58 I’ll carry that forward for a long time to come, George.

02:42:00 I love it.

02:42:01 Thank you so much for talking to me.

02:42:02 Now, thank you, Lex, for having me on the show.

02:42:05 You know, I’ve been looking to talk to you for a long time.

02:42:07 For me, talking to a guy like you, it’s it’s a great learning experience because I always

02:42:12 learn.

02:42:13 And it’s life is fascinating to me.

02:42:16 And all the experience that we have in life, you know, it’s something that can make us

02:42:21 grow.

02:42:22 And this experience for me just, you know, make me grow as as well.

02:42:26 You know?

02:42:27 Plus, we look pretty damn sharp today.

02:42:28 So.

02:42:29 Man in black, my friend.

02:42:30 Man in black.

02:42:31 Thanks, George.

02:42:32 Nice.

02:42:35 Thanks for listening to this conversation with George St. Pierre.

02:42:38 And thank you to Allform, ExpressVPN, Blinkist, Theragun, and The Information.

02:42:45 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

02:42:49 And now let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi.

02:42:53 Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

02:42:57 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.