Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Ben Askren,
00:00:02 wrestler, MMA fighter, and a brilliant,
00:00:06 opinionated, and fun personality
00:00:08 in the world of martial arts.
00:00:10 And yes, he occasionally likes to talk a little trash.
00:00:14 Given his wild online antics
00:00:16 and his boxing match with Jake Paul,
00:00:20 some people may forget just how dominant he was
00:00:23 in the sport of wrestling and in MMA for most of his career.
00:00:28 In wrestling, he is a two time NCAA Division I
00:00:32 national champion and four time finalist.
00:00:36 In mixed martial arts, he went undefeated for 10 years
00:00:39 with a record of 19 and 0 before losing to Jorge Masvidal
00:00:44 with a flying knee that caught everyone by surprise.
00:00:47 He’s also into cryptocurrency, disc golf,
00:00:50 and is the cohost of Flow Wrestling Radio Live.
00:00:54 This is a Lex Friedman podcast.
00:00:57 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:00:59 in the description.
00:01:00 And now, here’s my conversation with Ben Askren.
00:01:06 Before we talk about your incredible wrestling career,
00:01:10 your MMA career, let me ask you, I have to ask you,
00:01:13 what did you think about the Jake Paul
00:01:15 versus Tyron Woodley fight?
00:01:19 Well, I thought, I mean, I’m obviously biased.
00:01:20 I thought Tyron won.
00:01:22 I had five rounds of three.
00:01:25 And again, maybe this is my bias in the way I was seeing it.
00:01:27 I thought he was more effective with the striking
00:01:29 and he was more aggressive and Jake had more volume.
00:01:33 But that was the only thing I would give him.
00:01:35 And I guess a lot of people just didn’t see it that way.
00:01:38 They thought he landed more, significantly more punches.
00:01:40 I just didn’t think he really did any damage.
00:01:42 It was a split decision.
00:01:44 Split decision, yeah.
00:01:46 Were you surprised?
00:01:49 Well, it’s the thing, so the thing I said
00:01:51 when I went in to fight him, I said, we don’t really,
00:01:53 maybe he’s good, maybe he’s not.
00:01:54 We really have no idea to this point, you know?
00:01:57 And so I knew Tyron was a lot better boxing than I was.
00:02:02 And so I thought, okay, I think it’s a good likelihood
00:02:05 that Tyron beats him up, but there’s a chance
00:02:08 that Jake’s kind of good at this.
00:02:10 And I think that’s kind of what played out is
00:02:12 he’s kind of good at it.
00:02:13 Even if you saw it the way I saw it,
00:02:15 he still was impressive in his showing
00:02:16 and he’s obviously put a lot of time into it.
00:02:19 So he’s not bad, we’ll say that much.
00:02:23 But isn’t it surprising to you that like
00:02:25 an elite level athlete, combat athlete,
00:02:30 lost to somebody who just takes it really seriously
00:02:33 but is nevertheless not elite level?
00:02:36 Hmm, but I think boxing’s a really specific rule set.
00:02:40 So I’ll speak about Tyron, not myself.
00:02:41 Tyron had good striking, but obviously
00:02:45 it was his first boxing match ever.
00:02:47 And within mixed martial arts, you have the fear
00:02:50 of the takedown and the fear of the kick
00:02:52 and fear of other things to go along with the punching.
00:02:54 And so if you look at Tyron,
00:02:56 throughout his MMA career last times,
00:02:58 what set up his punches were like level change fakes
00:03:02 at a takedown, they dropped, boom,
00:03:04 and then something comes over the top, right?
00:03:05 So there’s many more elements to worry about
00:03:07 in mixed martial arts, whereas boxing, there’s only one.
00:03:10 It was his first fight.
00:03:12 Yes, I thought Tyron was gonna win.
00:03:13 I thought this was gonna happen.
00:03:14 But like I said, I mean, it’s pretty evident
00:03:16 that Jake’s, he’s not bad at boxing.
00:03:19 He’s pretty solid, you know?
00:03:20 He gets in there and works hard at it, I guess.
00:03:23 Out of 10 times, how many times do you think Jake wins?
00:03:26 Against Tyron?
00:03:27 Against Tyron.
00:03:29 They fight again and again and again, like iteratively.
00:03:32 Yeah, so I mean, part of the thing is,
00:03:35 okay, so Jake’s corner said you need a knockout
00:03:37 going into the eighth round, right?
00:03:38 So I think they thought, maybe they were trying
00:03:41 to motivate him, but I don’t see it that way.
00:03:43 Because if they actually thought that he was winning,
00:03:45 why would they encourage him to take a dumb risk
00:03:47 when Tyron clearly has knockout power, right?
00:03:49 It’s a really stupid coaching philosophy
00:03:51 if that’s what you’re thinking.
00:03:53 So you obviously are thinking,
00:03:54 hey, this is actually in the balance, it’s competitive.
00:03:57 And I feel like Tyron thought maybe he was winning
00:04:00 and didn’t have the urgency necessary.
00:04:02 And so I think there’s a chance he turns it up a lot.
00:04:07 Man, I would wanna watch him again before I,
00:04:10 so okay, I have this problem with my personality.
00:04:12 Here’s my personality, Lex.
00:04:14 I have an issue with not being able
00:04:16 to give really exact answers.
00:04:17 So I hate giving you an answer that like,
00:04:20 I don’t feel like is 100% calculated.
00:04:22 So I would like to see them go once more
00:04:24 because I would like to see, hey, can Tyron,
00:04:26 because if Tyron can turn up the pace
00:04:27 and Jake can’t handle it,
00:04:29 then I think it’s an eight, one or nine, two, right?
00:04:32 If it goes the exact same way
00:04:34 and maybe Tyron was a close split decision,
00:04:36 I’m saying, oh, it’s probably gonna be close
00:04:37 every single time.
00:04:38 We’re probably gonna get a five to five type of thing.
00:04:41 So it’s like, I feel like out of one match,
00:04:45 it’s not totally indicative of what the future
00:04:47 is gonna look like.
00:04:47 I feel like Tyron would get a knockout
00:04:49 and then you would still be in the same place,
00:04:52 like not knowing what to predict.
00:04:56 Okay, so your fight with Jake Paul,
00:05:00 looking back, you had a little bit of time now.
00:05:03 How would you analyze that fight?
00:05:06 Well, I mean, the fight specifically,
00:05:08 I got cracked with an overhand right,
00:05:10 so I mean, it kind of sucks.
00:05:12 I would say, and this is where everyone’s like,
00:05:16 I really don’t care and everyone’s like,
00:05:20 why would you do that?
00:05:20 It turns your reputation.
00:05:21 It’s like, well, I wanted to do it.
00:05:23 I had an enjoyable time training and in the buildup.
00:05:26 Obviously, I wasn’t skillful enough to get the win,
00:05:29 but even despite the fact that I know what’s gonna happen,
00:05:33 if someone asked me to do it again,
00:05:34 I probably would have done it again.
00:05:36 And so the way I was thinking about
00:05:38 when I was deciding whether to do it or not,
00:05:40 because I got the offer,
00:05:42 it’s like, okay, is this money, it can change my life.
00:05:45 Yeah, it could, right?
00:05:46 It’s not gonna double my net worth,
00:05:48 but it’s gonna add significantly and make my life easier.
00:05:50 Number two is like, when I was in high school,
00:05:52 we used to do boxing matches for free,
00:05:54 just because we thought it was fun.
00:05:55 When we didn’t have something going on Friday night,
00:05:57 me and my buddies would get together
00:05:58 and we had some boxing goes on, basically,
00:05:59 and we’d punch each other in the head.
00:06:01 So it’s like, for something I think is enjoyable,
00:06:03 and now they’re gonna pay me a whole bunch of money,
00:06:05 yeah, sure, I’ll do it.
00:06:07 Would you, do you think if you got the rematch,
00:06:10 if you did the rematch, would you,
00:06:12 what are the odds you win?
00:06:13 Okay, let’s see.
00:06:14 I’m probably not very good.
00:06:15 I think he’s pretty good, actually,
00:06:16 and I’m not very good.
00:06:17 Now it’s probably at a low point for me,
00:06:20 because, so when I started training for that,
00:06:22 I was like 215 pounds, which is the heaviest I’ve ever been.
00:06:24 I came off my hip surgery.
00:06:25 I literally, when I said, yes, I’ll do it,
00:06:30 I had literally started working out the week before
00:06:32 for the first time in my, since the surgery,
00:06:35 because I wasn’t able to do anything.
00:06:37 So could I perform better?
00:06:39 Yeah, but now after watching him box Tyron,
00:06:41 like if you ask me, Ben, can you beat Tyron?
00:06:44 Probably not, but I don’t think I can beat Tyron.
00:06:47 So.
00:06:48 In boxing.
00:06:49 In boxing, correct, in boxing, yeah.
00:06:50 So my chances of beating him, you know,
00:06:52 and watching that card, it’s like, damn,
00:06:55 like, it’d kind of be fun to box someone who I know sucks,
00:06:58 who I know can beat, that’s what would be fun, you know?
00:07:00 Because like, the training, the preparation was fun,
00:07:03 but then obviously, I got my butt kicked, that sucked.
00:07:07 You know, can I swear on this podcast?
00:07:08 Yeah, of course.
00:07:09 Oh, I was gonna drop an F bomb, I wasn’t quite sure, sorry.
00:07:11 I think that sucked, is a swear.
00:07:13 No, no, no.
00:07:14 You could drop all of the F bombs you want.
00:07:16 So, preparation wise, do you think you were more prepared
00:07:20 for that fight, or the Jordan Burrows exhibition?
00:07:27 I mean, like, how did you approach it mentally, you know?
00:07:31 Well, the Burrows thing, I obviously, it’s okay.
00:07:33 So when I retired the first time in 2017,
00:07:36 Burrows was the only current, like,
00:07:39 we’ll say really elite level wrestler
00:07:40 that I’d never trained with.
00:07:42 I was really good friends with in Nebraska,
00:07:43 head of the coaching team, still am.
00:07:45 And I said, hey, I just want, I’m gonna pay my own way.
00:07:47 I want to come down and train with Jordan,
00:07:48 because I want to see what it feels like.
00:07:50 You know, I want to get in there and mix it up.
00:07:51 I’ve mixed it up with David Taylor and Kyle Dake.
00:07:54 I mean, there’s just something about wrestling that I love.
00:07:57 And so I flew myself down there in January of 2018,
00:08:00 and I spent four days training with Jordan.
00:08:02 It was a really good time.
00:08:03 It gave me some great insight into how he thinks,
00:08:06 and you know, what a great champion he is.
00:08:09 What was it like training with him?
00:08:10 Like what, can you give some insights?
00:08:12 Yeah, of course.
00:08:13 Like what the, like how hard is the live training?
00:08:18 Is it more drilling?
00:08:19 Is it technical?
00:08:20 Like how does, his, it seems like his style
00:08:23 is very different than yours.
00:08:25 So how does that match up in the room
00:08:27 in terms of like what you learn from each other,
00:08:29 that kind of thing?
00:08:30 We only went full live for one,
00:08:31 I think it was like 12 or 15 minutes ago
00:08:33 where it was just go, wrestle.
00:08:35 We did a bunch of simulated live,
00:08:38 but obviously he had, so I was a senior in college
00:08:41 and he was a freshman in Nebraska.
00:08:43 And so we, our teams had dueled each other.
00:08:45 He was obviously a lot smaller at that point in time,
00:08:47 but he had followed my career.
00:08:50 And so when I went in there, it was like,
00:08:52 hey, I know you’re really good at this position.
00:08:54 What about this position?
00:08:55 What are you trying to do?
00:08:56 How exactly does it work?
00:08:57 And then let’s wrestle there, you know?
00:09:00 And then, hey, what about this position?
00:09:01 And so we would spend 30 to 40 minutes
00:09:05 talking about that position.
00:09:07 On the ground or?
00:09:08 It was like, one was a chest wrap,
00:09:10 one was a headlock, one was, I don’t remember,
00:09:13 it’s called the, we call it the lightning dump, but it’s a.
00:09:15 The lightning dump?
00:09:16 Yeah, my buddy’s name was Lightning Luke Smith
00:09:19 in high school and he was the first person I saw do it.
00:09:21 So usually when I see someone do something,
00:09:23 then I name that move after them.
00:09:24 Got it.
00:09:26 I know, right?
00:09:27 Great name.
00:09:28 It’s a good name.
00:09:29 Yeah, but so what I said with that is like,
00:09:32 he was still trying to be the best in the world.
00:09:33 I was just trying to go work out with Jordan Burrows
00:09:35 because I enjoy wrestling.
00:09:38 Is like someone who at that point,
00:09:40 when he has five world titles at that,
00:09:42 four or five at that point, a lot.
00:09:44 And so he said, my high school kids is like,
00:09:45 hey, this is a guy who’s the best in the world,
00:09:48 who’s bringing someone in and saying,
00:09:49 well, how do I do this?
00:09:50 How do I do that?
00:09:51 What about this?
00:09:52 What about that?
00:09:53 And so the level of inquisitiveness he has
00:09:58 is really impressive.
00:09:59 And then it’s obvious why he got to the level he did
00:10:01 because he’s figuring out all these little situations.
00:10:04 And that’s honestly one of the biggest things
00:10:05 I think wrestlers, a lot of wrestlers fail to do
00:10:08 as they get older.
00:10:09 Even when they get to early college age,
00:10:11 they say, this is my style.
00:10:12 This is what I do.
00:10:14 I’m gonna lift and work out hard
00:10:16 and I’m not gonna add anything to my game.
00:10:19 Whereas you’ve seen many progressions
00:10:21 in Jordan Burrows game.
00:10:22 He just made his 10th world team.
00:10:24 And if you have a really keen eye,
00:10:27 you’ve been able to watch him change.
00:10:30 I’ve been watching him since 2007.
00:10:32 He’s changed so much.
00:10:34 And obviously still maintained a world class level
00:10:36 almost the entire time.
00:10:38 When you say change, like what changed?
00:10:40 Because he’s got that double leg.
00:10:42 Yeah, but there’s no double leg anymore.
00:10:44 What’s that?
00:10:45 He like his double leg for the first time
00:10:46 against Alex Deering, he hadn’t hit it in years.
00:10:48 Yeah, so that’s like when people think about Jordan Burrows,
00:10:51 they think about the double leg
00:10:52 because in his early years,
00:10:54 fire, he had a great double leg, right?
00:10:55 And even so in those years, I would say
00:10:58 the biggest thing with Jordan Burrows double leg
00:11:01 wasn’t his level of explosiveness,
00:11:04 it was his level of persistence.
00:11:05 He would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot.
00:11:08 And it would last time to be from fun, creative angles
00:11:11 and on the screen, all of a sudden he’s on you.
00:11:13 And he was just super persistent with it.
00:11:15 And I think that was probably the key.
00:11:17 And then you saw, when he came out
00:11:20 to the won the first world championship in 2011,
00:11:22 it was kind of that type of mentality.
00:11:24 And then shortly after then,
00:11:25 obviously everyone was starting to lower
00:11:26 their stance getting lower
00:11:27 and he developed a really good like
00:11:28 Mantis go behind series
00:11:30 where he would go one way the other way.
00:11:32 Then he started developing really good
00:11:33 like low single ankle pick type thing, you know?
00:11:36 And then his hand fighting got really tremendous,
00:11:39 like 15, 16, 17, his hand fighting was really good.
00:11:43 And now I just commented at the 21 trials,
00:11:45 like a few of the defensive sequences he got into,
00:11:47 it was like, holy shit,
00:11:48 like just not from an athletic standpoint,
00:11:50 from a technical standpoint,
00:11:51 the things he were doing was just tremendous.
00:11:53 So I’ve seen him as someone like
00:11:55 who’s continued to reinvent themselves
00:11:57 over the course of the last 10, 12 years.
00:12:00 Especially as a junior and senior in college,
00:12:04 you’re exceptionally dominant.
00:12:06 If you were to face him at the peak,
00:12:08 both of your peaks of NCAA wrestling,
00:12:11 could you beat him?
00:12:13 And if you can beat him,
00:12:15 well, of course you can beat him.
00:12:18 How do you solve the Jordan Boroughs problem?
00:12:20 Well, so from a folk style wrestling standpoint,
00:12:23 Folk style, yes.
00:12:23 Folk style.
00:12:24 So, you know, he had some competitive matches
00:12:27 his junior and senior year.
00:12:28 He had a two, one win over,
00:12:29 or maybe it’s three, two over Michael Chandler,
00:12:31 who was my teammate who’s fighting in the UFC now.
00:12:33 He had a two and win over Tyler Caldwell.
00:12:36 So I think you can glean some insight into that.
00:12:39 You know, he got ridden,
00:12:40 he got so mad about this up on a podcast.
00:12:42 So during Corona,
00:12:43 we had to make up all kinds of bullshit to talk about.
00:12:45 And we were doing like the last 10 years best 165s.
00:12:49 And I said, Kyle Dake would ride him for over a minute.
00:12:52 He got so mad he wanted to come on the podcast the next day.
00:12:54 So hopefully he doesn’t listen to this and be like,
00:12:55 fuck you, man, you know?
00:12:58 But, you know.
00:12:58 When was this?
00:12:59 This is during Corona.
00:13:00 Corona, last year.
00:13:01 He got mad.
00:13:02 We were talking about, we were.
00:13:03 Before the trials.
00:13:04 Yeah, correct, yeah.
00:13:05 So, you know, Michael Chandler rode him for two minutes plus
00:13:09 and that was his junior year, not his senior year.
00:13:11 Sure, right?
00:13:11 But it’s close.
00:13:14 So I think there’s some things there.
00:13:15 I think the interesting thing would be
00:13:16 if I would have stuck around, right?
00:13:19 So I chose to go into mixed martial arts
00:13:20 after 2008, I would have been 74
00:13:23 and he would have been 74.
00:13:23 So we would have had to wrestle.
00:13:24 And then I think that the freestyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle
00:13:27 is a lot more difficult to solve
00:13:29 than the folk style Jordan Burroughs puzzle.
00:13:31 And I think, I don’t think he would,
00:13:32 I think he would acknowledge that he’s much better
00:13:35 at freestyle than he was at folk style.
00:13:37 You know, although he was very good, he’s better.
00:13:39 This is like raw speed explosiveness.
00:13:42 Present a problem to you.
00:13:44 Well, so he was never, I mean, he didn’t really excel
00:13:47 on the mat in kind of either style.
00:13:49 In freestyle, he has got some good lace transitions,
00:13:53 but in folk style, like his whole,
00:13:54 like in his entire college career,
00:13:55 I think he has like 10 pins, which is almost nothing,
00:13:59 you know, so he was gaining no value off the top position.
00:14:03 He was good enough on most people to get off bottom
00:14:05 without it being an issue, but it wasn’t like,
00:14:07 oh my gosh, this is an area where we really have
00:14:09 to be careful, there’s a lot of things here.
00:14:11 You know, it’s just, he wasn’t gaining value there.
00:14:13 Whereas in freestyle, he, I don’t wanna say never,
00:14:17 but the amount of times he gets turned is incredibly rare,
00:14:19 very, very rare, and he does have like lace transitions,
00:14:22 so he gets a lot of points there.
00:14:24 So, and obviously freestyle is,
00:14:27 it can be geared way more in the neutral position, right?
00:14:30 Where we’re only doing takedowns, so yeah.
00:14:32 Were you surprised that he lost to Dake in the trials,
00:14:37 to Kyle Dake?
00:14:38 Oh, Kyle’s so, so, he’s so good, right?
00:14:41 I mean, I think, I think his performance at the Olympics
00:14:43 was, his loss then was shocking to,
00:14:47 I mean, we understand it happened to Kyle Dake, you know?
00:14:50 He’s been a guy who’s competed with Jordan Burrows forever,
00:14:53 and obviously he was on the losing side for a while,
00:14:55 and now he’s on the winning side.
00:14:58 But I think a lot of people thought it was a coin flip,
00:15:00 and I think actually Kyle Dake made it feel like
00:15:03 it’s not a coin flip.
00:15:05 Now, to me, it feels like Kyle Dake isn’t gonna win
00:15:07 that match significantly more times than he isn’t,
00:15:10 is what it feels like.
00:15:11 Yeah, I forgot which trials it was.
00:15:14 Was it four years ago, where Kyle Dake threw him?
00:15:19 Like he, he, you saw inklings of like,
00:15:23 oh wow, there might be eventually a changing of the guard.
00:15:27 Yeah, so at 13, Kyle came out and he had the one throw,
00:15:31 but then he lost one of the matches decisively,
00:15:35 and then he was hurt in 14, and in 16,
00:15:39 Kyle Dake actually went up to 86 kilograms,
00:15:41 so actually in 16, at the trials we had,
00:15:45 so Jake Herbert was number one seed,
00:15:46 he was a former, as Guy Russell,
00:15:47 I was a former world silver medalist.
00:15:50 So you had David Taylor, who had not made a team yet,
00:15:52 who is now a world champion, Olympic champion.
00:15:54 You had Kyle Dake in the bracket,
00:15:56 who was a two time world champion now,
00:15:58 and you had Jaden Cox in the bracket,
00:16:00 who had not made any teams yet,
00:16:01 but is now, what, a four time world medalist,
00:16:03 two time world champion.
00:16:04 So, and then obviously Jaden came out on top of that,
00:16:07 won his first Olympic medal, Olympic bronze medal.
00:16:10 So Kyle didn’t wrestle Jordan in 16,
00:16:13 and Kyle’s contention the whole time,
00:16:18 and they argued about this,
00:16:19 so I actually did a little bit of backstabbing.
00:16:21 Well, it’s not backstabbing.
00:16:22 And both of them, or just one of them?
00:16:23 I didn’t tell any of them.
00:16:24 Okay, so Jordan got mad.
00:16:26 We talked about this fake match during Corona, right?
00:16:28 We had to make up something to talk about.
00:16:30 Yeah, of course.
00:16:31 There’s obviously no matches.
00:16:32 So we talked about this fake match, and.
00:16:34 Do you stand behind that statement, by the way?
00:16:36 Listen, here’s what I said.
00:16:37 Kyle Dake’s a four time NCAA champion.
00:16:39 Yes, I said, you gotta pick a winner.
00:16:42 I said, Kyle Dake wins two, one
00:16:44 on a minute and six ride time,
00:16:45 which I mean, we’re talking as close as it gets,
00:16:49 as close as it gets for Kyle Dake,
00:16:50 who’s a four time NCAA champion.
00:16:52 I’m sorry, we’re talking.
00:16:54 Over Jordan Burrows.
00:16:55 Over Jordan Burrows.
00:16:56 In a Folkestown match.
00:16:57 In a Folkestown match.
00:16:58 The hypothetical.
00:16:59 Back in college or now?
00:16:59 Completely hypothetical.
00:17:00 Now or in college?
00:17:01 In college.
00:17:02 Both of them at their peaks at 165 pounds.
00:17:04 So completely hypothetical.
00:17:06 And so Jordan called in, he was all pissed at me
00:17:10 for picking Kyle Dake.
00:17:11 He wants to come on the next day and argue his point.
00:17:14 So I said, F that, that’s dumb.
00:17:16 Oh, we had to pick a winner.
00:17:17 We had to do something hypothetical.
00:17:19 So then I called Kyle Dake, and I said,
00:17:20 Kyle, Jordan’s gonna come on and argue his case
00:17:22 in the morning.
00:17:23 If he’s gonna do that, why don’t you come in
00:17:24 and argue your case?
00:17:26 So no one else knew Kyle was coming on the podcast.
00:17:29 So they both show up, and they went at it.
00:17:32 But one of the contentions Kyle had for years,
00:17:34 and there’s still this rule,
00:17:36 if you win a world level medal, the following year,
00:17:40 you sit out until the very end of the American trials.
00:17:44 And they do a best two or three.
00:17:46 So every time previously that Kyle had wrestled Jordan,
00:17:49 he had to come through a tournament on Saturday.
00:17:52 Okay, probably three matches.
00:17:54 And then on Sunday, he would wrestle Jordan
00:17:56 in the best two out of three, right?
00:17:58 So his contention was, I’m only wrestling Jordan
00:18:00 at a disadvantage because I have to compete on Saturday
00:18:02 and then competing on, which it’s a fair argument.
00:18:04 It really is.
00:18:05 But I also see USA Wrestling’s point.
00:18:08 It’s like, if someone wins a world medal,
00:18:10 we are gonna reward them
00:18:11 because we want that person on the team again.
00:18:13 It’s crazy though that Kyle Dake had to wrestle,
00:18:16 because he’s not wrestling bums in that division.
00:18:19 Not bums, yeah.
00:18:20 And yeah, I don’t know.
00:18:22 I don’t know how wrestlers do it.
00:18:23 Because you have to go to war like three matches
00:18:28 and then face Jordan Burrows.
00:18:30 Yeah, especially a few of those years with Dakehead,
00:18:33 the name Andrew Howe.
00:18:34 But it was a really competitive matches.
00:18:36 David Taylor had really competitive matches with him.
00:18:38 Isaiah Martinez even got in there, Deeringer.
00:18:40 So he had some really competitive matches
00:18:42 before he ever got to Jordan Burrows.
00:18:44 So I never answered your initial question was,
00:18:47 how did I feel?
00:18:48 So the Jordan Burrows match,
00:18:50 I was not in wrestling shape at all,
00:18:52 meaning wrestling’s heavily dependent,
00:18:53 especially in neutral positions,
00:18:54 heavily dependent on timing and other things.
00:18:56 I was wrestling very, very minimally
00:18:58 because I started fighting again.
00:19:00 So like my athletic shape was great,
00:19:03 but it was mainly for fighting, I wasn’t wrestling.
00:19:06 So I think they were actually trying to do Burrows,
00:19:10 Dake at the Beat the Streets.
00:19:12 It’s the biggest fundraiser in wrestling
00:19:14 every single year.
00:19:14 In New York?
00:19:15 In New York City.
00:19:16 They usually raise like a million dollars.
00:19:18 They started all these programs in New York City to get,
00:19:20 which I really wonder what they’re doing with the money now
00:19:22 because they probably can’t have the kids wrestling
00:19:24 because New York’s crazy.
00:19:25 Anyways.
00:19:26 I think New York figures out a way
00:19:27 what to do with the money.
00:19:28 Hence Michael Malice complaining that they’re corrupt
00:19:31 and all that.
00:19:32 But it goes to the Beat the Streets organization
00:19:34 who then starts the clubs in New York.
00:19:35 So I don’t know what to do with the money.
00:19:36 Anyway, so I was called like, I don’t know,
00:19:39 two weeks before the event and said,
00:19:41 hey, someone was supposed to wrestle Jordan Burrows.
00:19:44 It fell out.
00:19:46 Would you wrestle him?
00:19:48 I said, yeah, sure.
00:19:49 Why not?
00:19:49 And it’s like, well, they said,
00:19:51 I trained with them for four days the year before.
00:19:55 I had a pretty good idea how the match was going to go.
00:19:57 It wasn’t going to go so well for me,
00:19:59 but it’s like, okay, you’re missing a main event.
00:20:01 I can bring, because of where I’m at right now in my life,
00:20:03 I can bring a lot of attention to wrestling.
00:20:05 I can help you guys raise a bunch of money
00:20:06 for Beat the Streets.
00:20:08 My goal is I think I thought I could get one take down
00:20:10 or turn on him was kind of my goal for the match.
00:20:13 I didn’t get there.
00:20:15 He went kind of hard.
00:20:16 He went hard?
00:20:17 Yeah, that asshole didn’t give me a point.
00:20:18 Yeah, that.
00:20:20 I said, this is bullshit, Jordan.
00:20:21 I told him during the match, like, this is bullshit.
00:20:23 You’re fucking going too hard right now.
00:20:25 I’m not a wrestler.
00:20:26 I’m not a wrestler anymore.
00:20:27 I’m a fighter.
00:20:27 I’m coming in here.
00:20:28 So yeah, so I had a really good idea.
00:20:30 I mean, we wrestled together.
00:20:31 I think he’ll probably get mad
00:20:33 because I think in the live go,
00:20:35 we did like the 12 or 15 minutes.
00:20:36 I think I actually scored a take down in that, I believe.
00:20:39 Maybe, or maybe it was a turn.
00:20:40 He’ll probably say, no, I didn’t, but whatever.
00:20:43 Yeah, so I knew what was going to happen.
00:20:45 I knew what the outcome was going to be.
00:20:47 I knew I could probably, I was hoping I could stay competitive
00:20:49 and maybe, you know, lose like 10, two or something.
00:20:51 Like, yeah.
00:20:53 Well, let’s walk back.
00:20:54 Cause I think I originally brought it up
00:20:57 in terms of how prepared were you against Jake Paul
00:21:01 versus Jordan Burrows.
00:21:03 So did you prepare for Jake, cardio wise?
00:21:07 Yeah, I worked hard.
00:21:08 Yeah, I did.
00:21:09 But it was, I told you, I started training for my,
00:21:13 I mean, once I had my hip surgery,
00:21:15 they said, you know, for the first six weeks,
00:21:17 you can’t even walk.
00:21:19 And it was hard for me to listen to them
00:21:20 cause by week four and a half, five,
00:21:23 I was feeling pretty good.
00:21:24 I want to get rid of my crutches.
00:21:25 But I’m like, you know what?
00:21:26 This is for the rest of my life.
00:21:28 And if you get the,
00:21:29 so if you get the real hip replacement,
00:21:31 there’s no wrestling, there’s no nothing, right?
00:21:33 So that’s the next step.
00:21:34 So, okay.
00:21:35 I’m going to take this serious.
00:21:35 So I do my crutches for six weeks.
00:21:37 The next six weeks, it’s still like really low weight bearing.
00:21:41 Can’t necessarily do anything, you know?
00:21:43 So then I get done with the three months,
00:21:45 which is like January and I’m like, okay,
00:21:48 I should start working out.
00:21:49 So I started riding a bike a little bit and then, okay,
00:21:51 I’m now I’m fat.
00:21:52 I’m fucking fat.
00:21:53 I’m going to get in better shape
00:21:54 cause I haven’t been able to do anything.
00:21:55 So I’m actually start working out.
00:21:56 And, and then that happened, right?
00:21:59 So I’m like, okay, well now I got three months
00:22:01 and it gives me a good reason to get back in shape.
00:22:03 And, you know, I knew I wasn’t going to be a full time boxer.
00:22:08 So it’s like, how do I put a boxing camp together?
00:22:11 So I found, you know, I had my old teammate, Mike Rhodes.
00:22:14 He came up and kind of lived with me ish kind of thing
00:22:18 for three months.
00:22:19 I found a couple of his guy canine out of Michigan.
00:22:23 He came over three weeks.
00:22:24 He was great.
00:22:25 I went to Freddie Roach for a week.
00:22:26 So I kind of like, you know,
00:22:28 try to get as many good as ideas as I could.
00:22:31 And my thought was like, okay, well if this dude sucks,
00:22:34 I can just be tough and, you know, block a few punches,
00:22:36 get him tired and then beat him up.
00:22:38 If he’s good, that’s probably not much of my do about
00:22:40 in the next three months.
00:22:41 Cause I’m, I was never good at boxing in the first place.
00:22:44 All of my standup in mixed martial arts was predicated on
00:22:47 how do I get through the two or three punches
00:22:49 that are gonna come at me in the time I need
00:22:51 to get a hold of them.
00:22:52 You know, it’s all, you only have to make two
00:22:54 or three of them miss.
00:22:55 And then boom, you’re on top of them, at least for me.
00:22:57 That was all my striking was predicated on.
00:22:59 It wasn’t about, hey, I’m gonna do damage on the feet
00:23:01 in order to make something else happen.
00:23:02 It was like, how do I clear this barrier,
00:23:05 get a hold of you.
00:23:06 And if you, I actually did the math one time.
00:23:08 I think I got a takedown.
00:23:10 If you include the knockout round against Masvidal,
00:23:14 I got a takedown in every round except two.
00:23:16 So it was like, it was like 53 out of 55 rounds in MMA,
00:23:18 I got a takedown.
00:23:19 Wow.
00:23:20 Somewhere, somewhere in there.
00:23:21 Okay, so you’re hunting the takedown once you, once.
00:23:24 Right away.
00:23:25 Once you get your hands on them, you get the takedown.
00:23:29 Okay.
00:23:30 But the incredible thing about you,
00:23:32 I just recently talked, spent a couple of days
00:23:36 with Jimmy Pedro.
00:23:37 And he talked about his guys and just champions in general
00:23:43 hating to lose more than they love winning.
00:23:46 And the way you talked about losing,
00:23:49 you lost very few times in your career,
00:23:51 like later you were dominating both wrestling and MMA.
00:23:56 But the way you took these losses against people
00:23:58 that are, I don’t know, below elite level.
00:24:03 It’s fair.
00:24:03 I was gonna get pissy, but it’s completely fair.
00:24:07 I thought he was a bum too.
00:24:09 No, that’s not what I meant.
00:24:10 I was in trouble.
00:24:11 It’s okay, no, it’s good.
00:24:12 No, no, no, but like what,
00:24:15 can you explain the psychology behind that?
00:24:17 Like what, is there a system behind this?
00:24:21 Is there a philosophy behind this?
00:24:22 Well, I wasn’t very good in the beginning.
00:24:26 I think that’s where it all starts from.
00:24:27 So I didn’t start getting good until the age of like 13.
00:24:31 I started at five.
00:24:32 I probably started competing more at age 10, 11.
00:24:35 Didn’t really get good until 13.
00:24:37 It’s still at 13.
00:24:38 I’m starting to get great.
00:24:40 I’m getting better, right?
00:24:41 I’m pretty good.
00:24:42 So I actually have,
00:24:44 I have written this book on sports psych,
00:24:46 but I got someone to write it for me kind of thing.
00:24:49 Cause I’ve had this philosophy for years
00:24:51 that there has to be this balance between two things, right?
00:24:54 So on the one hand, in this category,
00:24:56 on the one hand you have hating to lose.
00:24:59 A great champion has to hate to lose, like you said, right?
00:25:02 But on this other hand,
00:25:03 you have to have someone who seeks out challenges, right?
00:25:07 Cause if you don’t have that,
00:25:08 you’re never gonna reach your full potential either.
00:25:10 And so you have to balance these two balls
00:25:12 at the same time, right?
00:25:14 And so like for me, I always,
00:25:16 and this is maybe cause I wasn’t good,
00:25:18 but I was always like,
00:25:19 let me go find the best people to wrestle all the time.
00:25:21 Let me go find, I would like literally,
00:25:24 like seventh, eighth grade
00:25:24 when I was starting to get better,
00:25:26 it was like, and there’s no internet.
00:25:28 Well, there’s no one was using the internet.
00:25:30 It was like a wrestling magazine.
00:25:31 And like, hey dad, there’s a tournament here.
00:25:32 I think that, are the kids gonna be there?
00:25:34 Can you take me two hours across the state today, please?
00:25:37 You would wrestle like in competition against them.
00:25:40 In competition.
00:25:41 Yeah, yeah, in competition.
00:25:42 Hey, I heard there’s this tournament.
00:25:43 Here’s the magazine, this is this tournament.
00:25:45 Hey dad, will you take me over there tomorrow?
00:25:47 You weren’t trying to win.
00:25:48 You were trying to get the experience.
00:25:50 I was trying to wrestle the best guys.
00:25:51 Maybe I win, maybe I lose.
00:25:52 There’s no, when you do a competition,
00:25:54 there’s no guarantee of a winner or a loss.
00:25:57 You’re just doing competition, right?
00:25:58 So I wanted to go,
00:25:59 I wanted to challenge myself against the best guys
00:26:02 of which I thought maybe I could come out on top, right?
00:26:05 So like eighth grade year, I won way way,
00:26:07 I probably lost a handful of times
00:26:09 in the state of Wisconsin.
00:26:11 It was probably really, really minimal
00:26:12 the amount of times I lost, you know?
00:26:13 But it was just about getting the challenge.
00:26:15 And it’s like, some kids, and not kids in my club,
00:26:19 because I’ll push them very hard on this,
00:26:20 are scared of challenging themselves.
00:26:22 They like being the big fish in the small pond.
00:26:25 They’re not willing to go say,
00:26:26 I want to go get that guy, and I want to get that guy,
00:26:29 and I want to get that guy.
00:26:30 And so that’s like, so I think that’s part of it for me
00:26:32 is like, I always just loved to challenge.
00:26:34 I enjoyed competing thoroughly, right?
00:26:36 And I understood from a young age,
00:26:38 because it wasn’t a good, losing is a part of it.
00:26:40 You’re not always going to win.
00:26:41 And that was kind of it.
00:26:43 It’s like, hey, sometimes, you know,
00:26:44 and for my MMA career, I never planned it to go that way,
00:26:49 but yeah, I didn’t lose for nine years.
00:26:51 And like, that’s pretty rare.
00:26:52 I didn’t plan for that to happen.
00:26:54 That was just what happened, you know?
00:26:55 Okay, but you also didn’t lose
00:26:58 like the second part of your college career.
00:27:00 My 87, I lost, I won my last 87 matches.
00:27:03 Yeah.
00:27:04 So that didn’t come along with the hatred of losing?
00:27:08 You just.
00:27:09 I don’t like losing, I still don’t like it.
00:27:10 Yeah.
00:27:11 But you seem to, okay, but you don’t,
00:27:15 you don’t seem, you seem to kind of shrug it off
00:27:17 a little bit.
00:27:18 Okay, so like with, specifically with these two instances
00:27:20 that you bring up.
00:27:21 With the Masvidal, it feels definitely, so, okay.
00:27:25 All right, let’s.
00:27:26 Let’s go, let’s go deep, let’s go deep.
00:27:27 All right.
00:27:28 So the Masvidal one, it feels different,
00:27:29 because I had.
00:27:30 So, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:27:31 Let’s, for people who don’t know.
00:27:33 Okay.
00:27:34 Masvidal loss was your first loss.
00:27:36 First loss.
00:27:37 In MMA.
00:27:38 Yes.
00:27:38 Yeah.
00:27:39 I mean, it was a dramatic loss.
00:27:41 Very dramatic.
00:27:42 And there was this kind of buildup as you were potentially
00:27:45 one of the greats of all time coming into this fight.
00:27:50 And so, this pressure, all of that.
00:27:53 So the, no, I mean, I was thoroughly enjoying it.
00:27:56 I didn’t feel the pressure.
00:27:58 So the Masvidal fight is, he got one fucking move on me.
00:28:03 It’s not like he beat me.
00:28:04 And if we do that again, I think I win.
00:28:06 At that point in my life, for sure, I think I win
00:28:09 way, way, way more times than I lose.
00:28:12 He knew that too.
00:28:13 That’s why he didn’t want to sound the bout agreement.
00:28:15 That’s why I had to taunt him and why he got so mad,
00:28:17 because I had to continue to taunt him
00:28:18 in order to get him to sign, right?
00:28:21 So that one hurt because, as people don’t know,
00:28:23 my MMA career, I’ll just go through it fast.
00:28:24 I did three fights in like smaller leagues.
00:28:27 I got signed by Bellator.
00:28:28 I was undefeated for three and a half years.
00:28:30 I was nine and oh.
00:28:31 When I got done with that in 2012, 2013,
00:28:37 I, at that point in my head,
00:28:39 I was just going to transition to the UFC
00:28:41 because that’s where you go.
00:28:42 I was ranked like sixth in the world.
00:28:44 I hadn’t really had a competitive match
00:28:46 at the end of the Bellator thing.
00:28:48 And Dana White, for a reason still unknown to me,
00:28:51 we still haven’t had this conversation.
00:28:52 I wish I could ask him, I should ask him sometime,
00:28:55 chose to refuse me any entry into the UFC.
00:28:58 He just said, I went to his office
00:29:01 and he literally said, we’re not interested.
00:29:03 We’re not going to make you an offer.
00:29:05 Did you, did you mention something too about him,
00:29:08 about the UFC?
00:29:09 That was a year before that.
00:29:10 That was a year before.
00:29:11 And that might play a role in it, I think.
00:29:13 So yes, what happened the year before that
00:29:16 was I called him a liar, which,
00:29:19 but listen, I’m writing this one
00:29:20 because he said you can’t test for drugs
00:29:22 because I’m all natural, which you can tell by my physique.
00:29:26 And I was always put off by the fact
00:29:28 that so many people cheated.
00:29:30 And I was very vocal about that.
00:29:32 And so he had made some statement like,
00:29:35 oh, well, there’s no way you could test.
00:29:36 I said, bullshit.
00:29:36 You, very specifically, I said USADA does it
00:29:39 for all other sports worldwide, you can do it.
00:29:42 And then it was funny
00:29:43 because I hired USADA a couple of years later.
00:29:45 So I think he took some offense to that,
00:29:46 but that was like a year and almost a year and a half,
00:29:49 I think, somewhere, years later.
00:29:52 It’s not like he holds a grudge or anything.
00:29:53 Yeah, so I literally go to Vegas.
00:30:00 It’s a long story.
00:30:01 You can read about it other places.
00:30:02 So I got released from a belt.
00:30:03 It’s not like this is a negotiation.
00:30:04 I got released from my belt or contract.
00:30:06 I said, I’m out of here.
00:30:07 I’m going to go to the UFC.
00:30:09 I go to Vegas, and then I was told,
00:30:12 hey, there’s no offer for you.
00:30:14 Tough shit, you know?
00:30:15 So then I ended up signing with one championship.
00:30:19 I spent, what, three and a half years there.
00:30:21 I won the belt in my second fight
00:30:23 and retained the title the entire time.
00:30:25 And then I just, I think.
00:30:26 Again, dominating people.
00:30:27 Yeah, I didn’t have a competitive fight.
00:30:29 And so I retired 18 and 0.
00:30:32 Never, never, and for someone who loves a challenge,
00:30:34 never getting to really challenge myself
00:30:36 was incredibly frustrating.
00:30:37 And I left the door open.
00:30:39 I said, if I ever get the chance
00:30:40 to prove I’m the best in the world,
00:30:41 I’d love to come back.
00:30:42 So somehow, a year later, I get traded.
00:30:45 Trades have never happened,
00:30:46 and this is the one and only trade ever.
00:30:49 I’ve been retired for a year.
00:30:50 I got traded.
00:30:51 I get to come back.
00:30:52 I fight Robbie Lawler, the first fight.
00:30:54 I win.
00:30:55 And then essentially, they’re saying,
00:30:56 okay, if you fight, if you beat George,
00:30:59 you’re gonna get the title shot against Marty.
00:31:01 And it’s like, this is what I’ve been working for
00:31:05 the entire, I’ve been trying to prove
00:31:06 I was the best fighter in the world
00:31:07 for the last 10 years,
00:31:08 and I’ve not been afforded this opportunity.
00:31:12 So when I lost to George, that was hard,
00:31:14 because it was something that I had waited for
00:31:18 for a really, really long time.
00:31:20 It was something that I thought I could compete for,
00:31:22 but I never got the opportunity to do,
00:31:23 so that one was hard.
00:31:25 At the same time, from just the competitive logistically,
00:31:27 it’s like, he got me with one move.
00:31:29 It wasn’t like he beat my ass for 15 minutes,
00:31:31 and I got beat a bunch of different ways.
00:31:33 So that was like, fuck, if I get it again,
00:31:36 I could have done it,
00:31:37 but they’re not gonna let me have it again.
00:31:38 It’s not like wrestling where you could go
00:31:40 the next year or the next week or whatever.
00:31:42 You lose at Big Ten,
00:31:43 you go to nationals two weeks later.
00:31:45 Does that loss change you in any way, your psychology?
00:31:48 I don’t think so.
00:31:50 It’s the first loss.
00:31:51 I mean, had I had a longer MMA career post that,
00:31:56 there definitely would have been a lot of time spent
00:31:58 getting better at the entry point to the takedown, right?
00:32:01 Which I already spent time there,
00:32:03 and I hate making excuses, but yeah, the hip,
00:32:06 the hinging of my hip, what I couldn’t do,
00:32:09 was preventing me from doing some things,
00:32:11 and it’s why, if you look at the fight,
00:32:12 I’m bent over as I go for the double leg.
00:32:15 Yeah, so.
00:32:16 So what happened for people who don’t know,
00:32:17 you went in for a double leg, and he went.
00:32:19 Flying knee.
00:32:20 He did a flying knee, and it caught you well.
00:32:22 Specifically the way he did that knee
00:32:24 was kind of different than the way
00:32:25 anyone had thrown flying knees before.
00:32:28 Most people go more just from a stand straight vertical,
00:32:31 whereas he took a few like running steps
00:32:33 and went more, you know,
00:32:34 the trajectory of the angle was different.
00:32:37 So I think that’s kind of probably why it caught,
00:32:39 you know, I think a lot of things in combat,
00:32:42 well, probably everything,
00:32:43 but I focus specifically on combat,
00:32:44 happen subconsciously.
00:32:45 Like our brain is reading what’s coming at us,
00:32:48 and lots of times it’s stuff we’ve seen before
00:32:50 so we can judge how to move correctly.
00:32:53 And you misread because it’s something
00:32:54 you haven’t seen before.
00:32:55 Had not seen him come at that specific angle, yeah.
00:32:58 So that loss was really hard.
00:32:59 With the Burroughs one, I told you,
00:33:02 I knew I was gonna lose.
00:33:03 So it was like, whatever, you know?
00:33:05 I’m taking this because I want to put
00:33:07 the sport of wrestling out there in a big way.
00:33:09 I wanna help them raise a lot of money.
00:33:10 We sold at Madison Square Garden,
00:33:12 Hulu Theater, and we raised a whole bunch of money.
00:33:14 So my goals were accomplished.
00:33:16 Jake Paul fight, I took it because
00:33:18 they paid me a whole bunch of money,
00:33:19 and I thought it was gonna be fun.
00:33:20 Did I have any illusion I was a great boxer?
00:33:21 No illusions whatsoever.
00:33:23 Would I have preferred to win?
00:33:25 Absolutely, but like I told everyone,
00:33:27 whether I win or lose on Saturday night,
00:33:29 I’m gonna be back coaching wrestling on Monday,
00:33:31 because that’s what I enjoy doing,
00:33:32 and I was back coaching wrestling on Monday.
00:33:34 And once I’m out, these middle school kids
00:33:35 give me a little bit of shit about it.
00:33:38 That’s it.
00:33:38 But where were you in terms of your shape
00:33:41 and how you felt in the Mazodal fight?
00:33:44 Would you say you’re on the,
00:33:46 I mean, it’s a difficult question to ask
00:33:48 of a world class athlete, but like,
00:33:51 were you past peak?
00:33:54 Oh yeah, I don’t know why guys like to lie about that.
00:33:58 I mean, the peak for me was really evidently
00:34:00 in my late 20s, and maybe they are all fueled
00:34:04 by extra supplements, I don’t know.
00:34:07 But for me, that was evident.
00:34:09 But you get this, so you get this crosshair
00:34:11 where if you’re smart, like I mentioned John Burrows was,
00:34:16 you’re still gaining wisdom, you’re gaining strategy,
00:34:18 you’re gaining a lot of things, right?
00:34:19 And so while your physicality may go down,
00:34:22 your overall skill level still may be rising,
00:34:24 especially in MMA because people usually start later
00:34:28 because they’re gaining wisdom, strategy,
00:34:29 all of the, maybe more tools in their toolbox, right?
00:34:32 They’re getting all these things.
00:34:32 So their actual competitive peak,
00:34:35 despite their athletic peak going down,
00:34:37 might still be a few years past that, right?
00:34:39 Because these things are crossing.
00:34:41 No, so I felt I was great.
00:34:43 Obviously the hip was an issue.
00:34:46 It’s funny because I knew I had a lot of pain here,
00:34:51 and I knew it was because of this.
00:34:53 And it was like, okay, whenever I’m done,
00:34:54 I’ll just get it taken care of, whatever.
00:34:56 But every time I train, I have pain kind of like
00:34:58 all up my back, and the day after the surgery,
00:35:02 I woke up and there was no pain on the right side of my,
00:35:05 the surgery was on the left side.
00:35:06 There was no pain on the right side of my back.
00:35:07 I’m like, that’s fucking weird.
00:35:08 Like every morning I wake up,
00:35:10 there’s a lot of pain there, you know?
00:35:12 I’m like, okay, well I’m on pain pills.
00:35:14 Maybe it’ll come back tomorrow.
00:35:16 And that’s because I’d never been back since my hip surgery.
00:35:19 So it was weird, because it was like this,
00:35:21 I thought this was affecting this,
00:35:23 but it was affecting all the way across my whole back.
00:35:26 So if I get to get a new hip, honestly,
00:35:28 if I, I don’t know if this is gonna change
00:35:31 the competitive outcome whatsoever.
00:35:33 If I had known how good the hip replacement was gonna be,
00:35:36 I would have done it the second I retired
00:35:38 from one championship in November of 2017.
00:35:41 I would have had my hip surgery scheduled for December 1.
00:35:44 Just from a lifestyle standpoint,
00:35:46 I could only sleep in one position.
00:35:48 There was a lot of things I couldn’t do.
00:35:49 I was in a lot of pain.
00:35:51 So I would have done that a lot earlier.
00:35:52 But no, from an athletic point, I was ready.
00:35:55 This shit goes wrong sometimes.
00:35:58 I don’t know how to ask this, but you know,
00:36:00 Joe Rogan, me, had a sense about you similar to like Fedor,
00:36:08 that you are potentially one of the greatest ever.
00:36:11 Yeah.
00:36:12 Does it hurt that you’re not in the discussion now
00:36:15 of being in the top 10 of all time?
00:36:19 I didn’t prove it.
00:36:20 I don’t deserve it.
00:36:21 Biera, I mean.
00:36:23 But I didn’t prove it.
00:36:24 I mean, and so it’s like, had I somehow gotten
00:36:29 to convince Dana White, we go and convince him in 2013
00:36:32 to make me an offer, and I didn’t even need a good offer.
00:36:35 I just needed any offer.
00:36:36 Had I gotten the offer then,
00:36:37 maybe the outcome’s different, right?
00:36:39 But given, I would never expect anyone
00:36:42 to think of me that way.
00:36:43 I didn’t prove it.
00:36:44 I know what I was, and I’m good with that.
00:36:47 And yeah, other people never got to see that.
00:36:49 Do you think, well, you can’t know fully, right?
00:36:51 Do you think if you went to the UFC at that time
00:36:55 instead of one championship?
00:36:56 I think I would have had a lot of success.
00:36:59 Yeah, I mean, there’s obviously certain guys,
00:37:01 there’s a lot of guys I’ve trained with
00:37:02 that I had a lot of really good results against.
00:37:05 And obviously, Tyron was a champion for a long time there.
00:37:12 So I was around, Tyron was a champion,
00:37:13 Anthony was a champion at lightweight.
00:37:15 I was, you know, same gym as him,
00:37:17 and we had a lot of people coming through.
00:37:19 Yeah, I.
00:37:20 Would you face Tyron?
00:37:21 Would I have fought him?
00:37:22 I don’t think so.
00:37:23 I mean, so he was still the champion when I came into the UFC
00:37:26 and we said, no, we’re not gonna fight.
00:37:29 All right.
00:37:30 Hey, so he can’t change history, right?
00:37:32 So once something happens,
00:37:33 you gotta accept for what it is.
00:37:35 And move forward and obviously hope you can continue
00:37:38 to keep accomplishing great things,
00:37:39 which for me, obviously my athletic career is over.
00:37:42 So now it’s gonna be through my wrestling academies
00:37:45 and you know, who knows what else I get into.
00:37:48 You might do exhibition matches
00:37:51 and all that kind of stuff, right?
00:37:52 Says who?
00:37:53 Wrestling and stuff, no?
00:37:55 I don’t think so.
00:37:56 So here’s my thing with the wrestling matches is like,
00:37:59 just for fun, if you said, hey Ben, just for fun.
00:38:01 Yeah.
00:38:02 Would you love to go wrestle someone?
00:38:03 Yeah, I would, I would, right?
00:38:05 I love wrestling, I get in there.
00:38:07 I love, you know, I love like,
00:38:09 so one of my guys has gotten to be pretty good.
00:38:11 He’s in college, he got in Keegan O’Toole.
00:38:12 He just won a junior world title this year.
00:38:16 And so when I’m doing private lessons,
00:38:19 I have such think about the development of the athletes.
00:38:21 Sometimes I can wrestle hard, but most of the time
00:38:22 it’s like, I’m just gonna help them
00:38:24 with whatever they need help with.
00:38:25 And it’s still wrestling and it’s fun, but it’s helping them.
00:38:28 You know, for like, Keegan comes back this summer
00:38:30 and he’s training for the junior world title.
00:38:31 So to be able to just shake hands sometimes and say like,
00:38:33 I’m gonna try to kick your ass.
00:38:35 Should you try to kick my ass?
00:38:36 You know, like just to go, like.
00:38:37 Yeah, it’s a good feeling.
00:38:38 It’s so much fun.
00:38:39 And I don’t get to do that very much.
00:38:40 So if you said, Ben, would you love to do some matches?
00:38:42 And the answer is yeah.
00:38:44 The problem, unfortunately for me,
00:38:46 and maybe you could talk me off a ledge here,
00:38:48 is like, because of where I’ve gotten to in my career,
00:38:50 if I choose to do a wrestling match,
00:38:52 it’s gonna, people are gonna be really excited about it.
00:38:53 It’s gonna blow up and it’s just like,
00:38:56 I just want to wrestle just to wrestle.
00:38:57 I’d rather just like go in a room
00:38:59 where no one can watch and just wrestle.
00:39:00 I just enjoy it.
00:39:01 Well, you could also wrestle.
00:39:03 So there’s different kinds of wrestling.
00:39:05 There’s wrestling where there’s an event
00:39:07 and like, you know, there’s a buildup and then an announcement.
00:39:11 And you can also do like a Khabib style,
00:39:14 like in the room, there’s cameras
00:39:16 and you’re kind of going, it’s like the.
00:39:18 Wait, Khabib does that?
00:39:20 No, in.
00:39:21 Marcelo does that.
00:39:22 He whooped my ass a few times.
00:39:23 Yeah, exactly.
00:39:24 I mean, I’ve seen Khabib in some videos.
00:39:26 It’s not like set up, it’s just people going hard
00:39:28 and then it’s more fun.
00:39:30 Yeah.
00:39:31 You know, and it’s also more like
00:39:35 presenting the beauty of the sport, you know?
00:39:38 For sure.
00:39:39 And like, and there’s no winning or losing really
00:39:41 in that context.
00:39:42 Yeah, yeah.
00:39:43 Like you’re just, you’re always joking around a little bit,
00:39:45 even when you’re going super hard.
00:39:47 So I feel like, especially in the modern day
00:39:49 with the internet, that’s a compelling way to do.
00:39:52 So I’ve thought about,
00:39:53 this is the one thing I’ve thought about doing.
00:39:55 Cause I told you about my buddy was the content thing.
00:39:58 It’s called Rockfin.
00:40:00 Thought about doing, you know,
00:40:01 the old really famous Gracie challenge.
00:40:03 Yeah.
00:40:03 Okay, so I’ve thought about doing the aspirin challenge.
00:40:05 You wanna hear my rule set?
00:40:06 Yeah, let’s go.
00:40:06 I’m not sure I’m gonna do this.
00:40:07 People are gonna show up to your, like in Wisconsin.
00:40:10 I have to select you.
00:40:11 I’ll start with a thousand bucks, right?
00:40:13 Right.
00:40:14 Okay, 30 minutes.
00:40:14 You pin me or I pin you.
00:40:16 That’s it.
00:40:17 No points, no nothing.
00:40:18 We just wrestle.
00:40:19 Camera, that’s it, right?
00:40:20 It’s camera in the room.
00:40:21 Maybe there’s a referee
00:40:22 cause we don’t want there to be contention over the pin.
00:40:24 So.
00:40:25 Just one pin.
00:40:26 Just one pin.
00:40:26 30 minutes, 30 minutes, okay?
00:40:28 If I pin you, you don’t get shit, you go home, right?
00:40:31 Every person I pin, it goes up by a thousand dollars.
00:40:33 Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand
00:40:35 and so on.
00:40:36 If you make it the distance
00:40:37 and I don’t pin you and you don’t pin me,
00:40:39 I’ll pay for your travel and give you 500 bucks, right?
00:40:42 Just a consolation prize for showing up.
00:40:44 If you pin me, you get whatever the jackpot is.
00:40:47 Wait, who’s adding to the jackpot?
00:40:50 I am, it’s my money.
00:40:52 My money.
00:40:53 But then what’s the incentive to keep winning for you?
00:40:55 Cause the jackpot.
00:40:56 Well, cause obviously I would put the content somewhere
00:40:58 where people would watch it, right?
00:40:59 Oh, so you’re gonna make money.
00:41:00 Yeah, so you’d make money that way.
00:41:01 But it’s not exponentially growing, right?
00:41:02 It’s just going up by like.
00:41:04 Yeah, I really think there’s probably only a couple people
00:41:06 that could pin me.
00:41:06 So I would either just not choose those people
00:41:09 or wait till I get a really large audience
00:41:11 and people get really excited
00:41:12 and in that case, I’m making a lot of money.
00:41:14 So.
00:41:15 What do you think, how many matches would go with you,
00:41:17 like Khaldech shows up?
00:41:19 I don’t think he could pin me.
00:41:20 Yeah.
00:41:21 I mean like, so Jordan Burrows could beat me,
00:41:24 but he can’t pin me.
00:41:25 He was never a pinner.
00:41:26 Yeah.
00:41:27 He ain’t gonna pin me.
00:41:28 There’s only a few people who have the skill level
00:41:30 to do so, right?
00:41:31 It takes a lot.
00:41:32 Cause that was, so pinning was one of my specialties.
00:41:33 I had the fourth most of all time
00:41:35 and I won the pinning award the last two years.
00:41:38 So you think you can be done on points and just pin them?
00:41:41 This is actually one of the issues I have with
00:41:43 Jiu Jitsu and the point system and the Eddie Bravo thing.
00:41:46 I actually think Eddie Bravo thing is kind of,
00:41:48 people get so mad at me.
00:41:49 Sorry, Jiu Jitsu.
00:41:50 I think it’s bullshit.
00:41:51 And you want me to tell you why it’s bullshit?
00:41:52 Yeah.
00:41:53 So like, if Jordan Burrows whoops my ass
00:41:55 and the score is 16 to two, but he can’t pin me.
00:41:58 Then I get to go to overtime and get a cradle on him.
00:42:00 I’m probably going to pin him.
00:42:02 So I’m better than Jordan Burrows.
00:42:04 Nah, that ain’t right.
00:42:05 He just whooped my ass.
00:42:07 Do you know what I’m saying?
00:42:08 Like if we can go the whole, cause they do submission only.
00:42:11 So if Jordan Burrows beats me up for,
00:42:14 what is it, eight minutes, 10 minutes?
00:42:15 I don’t know.
00:42:16 What’s the length of an Eddie Bravo match?
00:42:18 Yeah, I don’t know.
00:42:19 Something like that, yeah, yeah.
00:42:21 So we go 10, me and Jordan Burrows go 10 minutes.
00:42:22 He’s gonna outscore me significantly.
00:42:24 He will not pin me, I promise you that.
00:42:26 Okay?
00:42:27 So now we go to the overtime.
00:42:29 Strong words, but yeah.
00:42:30 He won’t, Jordan Burrows is not gonna,
00:42:32 he’s gonna beat me.
00:42:32 I will give you that.
00:42:33 Kyle Dake won’t pin you either.
00:42:35 No.
00:42:35 Okay.
00:42:36 Okay, they will both beat me on points very badly.
00:42:38 Now David Taylor, he might pin me
00:42:40 cause he’s a very good pinner also.
00:42:42 They’ll beat me very badly, they will not pin me.
00:42:45 But now we get to the overtime and we get to pick like,
00:42:47 right, so in Eddie Bravo you get a rear naked choke
00:42:50 or an armbar.
00:42:51 Okay, give me a cradle, I’ll probably pin him.
00:42:53 Okay, a good cradle.
00:42:54 You can say cradle or maybe give them,
00:42:56 then they’re probably not gonna pin me, right?
00:42:58 Maybe, maybe there’s a chance, but probably not.
00:43:00 Cause that’s just not their specialty.
00:43:01 So for people who don’t know, the Eddie Bravo thing
00:43:04 is when it goes into overtime,
00:43:07 you get a dominance position on a person
00:43:09 and you get to, yeah, basically put them in a cradle.
00:43:12 This is the wrestling equivalent.
00:43:13 Yeah.
00:43:13 But you take their back or mount.
00:43:14 Maybe an armbar, yeah, like a wrestling armbar.
00:43:17 So, and I don’t think that’s very fair.
00:43:18 Cause if someone whoops your ass, they whoops your ass.
00:43:20 And then, you know, and so I think the reason why
00:43:22 Jiu Jitsu people accept that rule set is that
00:43:25 I don’t think, I think they know this, but would admit it.
00:43:27 I don’t think their point scoring system adequately rewards
00:43:32 what people value.
00:43:33 So like in wrestling, we value takedowns
00:43:36 cause it gets us closer to the pin.
00:43:38 And the most valuable scoring is a near fall,
00:43:41 near to the pin, because that’s the ultimate goal to sport.
00:43:44 Whereas in Jiu Jitsu, for example,
00:43:46 like if I were to get a takedown,
00:43:48 so like if I went to Gordon Ryan and he just didn’t pull guard
00:43:52 I would probably get the takedown.
00:43:54 Now, if somehow he didn’t submit me,
00:43:56 which he probably would, right?
00:43:57 But say he got, got close to like 12 submissions,
00:43:59 but somehow I slipped out of all of them.
00:44:01 Now I went to zero, like that’s ridiculous.
00:44:03 Like he should very clearly win
00:44:05 cause he almost submitted, you know what I’m saying?
00:44:06 Like there, and I, and I realized the difficulty.
00:44:09 I realized the difficulty in rewarding near submissions,
00:44:12 but that is the most valuable thing is getting close
00:44:15 to finishing the match.
00:44:17 And in most competitions, they don’t actually reward that.
00:44:20 But okay, so this, this isn’t about the sport.
00:44:22 This is about the Ben Askren challenge
00:44:24 that we’re talking about.
00:44:25 Okay.
00:44:26 What, why 30 minutes?
00:44:28 Why not unlimited time?
00:44:31 Why, why go until whenever?
00:44:33 Cause then it’s just a cardio thing.
00:44:34 Cause at some point then someone would just have to fall
00:44:38 over dead, right?
00:44:39 There’s no more skill level involved.
00:44:40 It’s just who can stand up the longest.
00:44:42 You honestly don’t think 30 minutes is a cardio thing too.
00:44:47 How do you think that’s actually going to look?
00:44:49 How are they going against you for 30 minutes?
00:44:51 What is that?
00:44:52 So it’s going to be kind of boring for the most part.
00:44:56 What position are you going to be stuck in?
00:44:57 Because you, well, you can’t, but you can’t,
00:44:59 you just can’t have a gigantic amount of action
00:45:01 for 30 minutes.
00:45:02 So I relate to this because some of my kids,
00:45:04 when I’m teaching them wrestling, they’re like, well,
00:45:07 but I can’t do that for seven minutes.
00:45:10 And I’m like, well, you know, like say, say if I had you do
00:45:13 hang cleans at a relatively heavy weight,
00:45:16 as hard as you could, you’re not going to last seven minutes.
00:45:18 You’re going to, your pace will slow down, right?
00:45:20 So my thing is like, well, your pace doesn’t have to step
00:45:22 here because in wrestling, you’re competing against someone.
00:45:24 So if you’re here at a hundred and you go to 80,
00:45:27 but they go to 70, that’s great.
00:45:29 And then you go to 60, but they go to 40,
00:45:31 this is even better, right?
00:45:32 Because the gap is growing.
00:45:34 So we don’t necessarily, if we get tired, that’s fine.
00:45:36 If they get more tired, that’s better.
00:45:38 So I think most people would know that.
00:45:40 So they would kind of slow it down.
00:45:45 But yeah, I think at 30, I mean, I’ve wrestled 30 minute
00:45:47 goes, I’ve wrestled hour long goes.
00:45:51 You’re not going to get so tired,
00:45:52 you’re going to fall over in that time period.
00:45:54 But at some point, if it’s unlimited,
00:45:56 someone will get so tired or dehydrated
00:45:58 that they’re just going to freaking fall over.
00:46:00 Yeah.
00:46:01 But you think, what about making it exciting and dynamic?
00:46:06 You think the other person is always going to be going
00:46:08 for the pin and thereby make it dynamic.
00:46:11 Well, if they’re working that hard,
00:46:12 then they might exhaust themselves, right?
00:46:15 And obviously then if you’re being that dynamic,
00:46:17 then you’re adding risk to yourself too,
00:46:20 because you are doing that.
00:46:22 Well, I love this.
00:46:23 This is a great idea.
00:46:24 Well, I figured I’d rack up like 20 pins against bums,
00:46:29 or not as great people in the beginning.
00:46:30 And then I would start bringing in better people
00:46:32 because they would be enticed by $20,000,
00:46:35 the possibility to win.
00:46:36 And not much fanfare, just a camera and just local.
00:46:40 That’s it, in my wrestling room.
00:46:41 Yeah, yeah, like the Gracie Challenge.
00:46:42 Yes.
00:46:43 Yeah.
00:46:44 And so then maybe you have like, you know,
00:46:48 for most people, you have someone edit like the 90 seconds
00:46:51 of the most fun things that happen.
00:46:52 And then you can watch the entire 30 minutes
00:46:54 if you want to.
00:46:55 Yeah.
00:46:56 I mean, I think most people,
00:46:57 if they’re not really, really elite,
00:46:59 I’m probably going to pin them.
00:47:01 If they’re not really elite.
00:47:04 So, yeah.
00:47:05 But I don’t know.
00:47:06 That’s something I’ve been thinking about.
00:47:07 This has been like fun for me to think about.
00:47:11 And obviously it plays in my skill sets
00:47:12 because my cardio is good and my pinning is good also.
00:47:15 So, yeah.
00:47:17 So, like you said, you weren’t very good in your early days
00:47:21 until 13, 14.
00:47:23 What was the switch?
00:47:24 You started to dominate people in your college career.
00:47:28 You dominated.
00:47:28 Yeah.
00:47:30 And obviously you stopped losing at some point.
00:47:33 Yeah.
00:47:34 So, well, I would say,
00:47:36 so even when I didn’t lose in collegiate competition,
00:47:38 I would go in the summers and try to make the world team.
00:47:40 So, I would lose some, not a lot, right?
00:47:42 Minimally.
00:47:44 Okay.
00:47:45 So, when I’m five, I start playing all sports.
00:47:47 Like I know you moved to America at what age?
00:47:51 13.
00:47:52 Okay.
00:47:53 So, at least I don’t know what it was for you,
00:47:55 but in America at my age,
00:47:57 you usually play like a sport every season, right?
00:48:00 So, that’s what I did in the beginning.
00:48:02 I had minimal success in wrestling.
00:48:04 I was kind of chunky.
00:48:06 And then in fifth grade, I don’t know.
00:48:09 And I can’t tell you, I wanted to be better.
00:48:11 And I told my parents, and this is funny,
00:48:12 because now I look at other 11 year olds
00:48:14 and very few of them are this mature.
00:48:15 And I actually think emotional maturity
00:48:17 is kind of one of the key indicators
00:48:18 of how longterm successful someone’s gonna be.
00:48:21 And at age 11, I said, I don’t wanna play baseball.
00:48:23 I like baseball, but I don’t wanna play baseball
00:48:24 because I wanna wrestle more
00:48:25 because I wanna get better at wrestling.
00:48:26 So, at age 11, I quit baseball
00:48:28 so I could wrestle in a club for March, April, and May.
00:48:30 Because that was all that existed at that point in time.
00:48:33 You couldn’t wrestle in June, July,
00:48:34 or any of those other months.
00:48:37 What was that desire to get better?
00:48:38 What is that?
00:48:39 So, it’s not about winning.
00:48:40 I don’t know where it came from.
00:48:41 I just wanted to get better.
00:48:43 I wanna get better.
00:48:44 I wanna be good at this.
00:48:44 I wanna be really good at this.
00:48:45 So, when you’re looking at kids now as a coach,
00:48:47 you’re looking for that.
00:48:49 Somebody who says, you know what, I kinda suck.
00:48:51 I wanna get better.
00:48:51 And I wanna try to also inspire that.
00:48:54 I mean, honestly, I think as a coach,
00:48:58 that’s probably my biggest job is to get a kid
00:49:01 and get them to believe I can do this.
00:49:03 Because if I can do this, well, I can do that.
00:49:07 I can do that too, right?
00:49:08 And there’s so many kids who, unfortunately,
00:49:10 have shitty parents or bad teachers
00:49:14 that tell them, you suck, you can’t be anything, right?
00:49:16 So, I think my biggest goal as a coach
00:49:18 is to get someone to believe they can do it.
00:49:20 So, actually, some of the ones that believe they can do it,
00:49:22 they’re the most fun,
00:49:23 but they’re not the ones who need it the most, right?
00:49:25 The ones who think they can
00:49:26 are the ones that need me the most.
00:49:28 Because they need someone to, let’s go.
00:49:31 So, I don’t know what inspired me.
00:49:33 I’m not sure.
00:49:34 At age 11, fifth grade, I quit.
00:49:37 So, then I started having more success
00:49:40 where I’m like, say, placing at the state tournament.
00:49:43 In high school.
00:49:44 So, you’re right.
00:49:46 So, sixth grade, I placed at the state,
00:49:48 the local youth state tournament, you know?
00:49:49 So, I’m having more success.
00:49:51 Seventh grade was the first year
00:49:52 I won the youth state tournament.
00:49:55 So, I’m getting better.
00:49:56 Eighth grade, I actually feel like I got pretty good,
00:49:58 but when I went to the national tournaments,
00:50:00 I was still having really minimal success.
00:50:02 My freshman year, I decided to quit football.
00:50:04 Same reason.
00:50:05 It’s like, well, I need to put more time into this.
00:50:06 My parents, my dad luckily got a mat in my basement.
00:50:10 So, we have a year round club,
00:50:12 and our impetus was that we didn’t have this opportunity
00:50:15 to go to a club year round.
00:50:16 So, we had a mat in my basement.
00:50:18 I had to go find, hey, you wanna come wrestle?
00:50:21 Yeah, to find partners for myself.
00:50:22 What’d you do?
00:50:23 Did you drill?
00:50:24 Did you live wrestle?
00:50:25 What’d you do in that basement?
00:50:26 So, actually, I think, you’ll enjoy this.
00:50:28 I think the start of my scrambling was
00:50:33 kind of based around that.
00:50:34 So, I got kind of,
00:50:36 I think it’s probably my freshman sophomore.
00:50:37 I’m kind of, the years are a little fuzzy, right?
00:50:39 It’s been a while.
00:50:41 But probably my freshman, sophomore, junior year,
00:50:45 I found two kids who were really consistent
00:50:47 who would come out, like you would come out on,
00:50:49 he would come out on Tuesday,
00:50:50 and this dude would come out on a Wednesday, right?
00:50:51 And they would come every week,
00:50:52 and they were really consistent partners for me
00:50:55 to have in the summer.
00:50:56 But they weren’t nearly as good as me.
00:50:57 They were way worse.
00:50:58 So, it’s like, okay, how do I,
00:51:02 how do I make this kind of like fun and compelling
00:51:04 for them to come back?
00:51:05 Because if I just whoop their ass,
00:51:07 they’re not gonna come back, you know?
00:51:08 So, it was like, I would let them get as close as they could,
00:51:11 and I thought they could do a takedown
00:51:13 before not getting it,
00:51:14 and then try to like escape or get out.
00:51:16 So, obviously, if I let them get really close,
00:51:18 sometimes they get it, you know?
00:51:19 So, they’re enjoying it.
00:51:21 I don’t know if they ever knew I was doing this, right?
00:51:23 I have no idea.
00:51:25 And that was kind of like the start,
00:51:26 because I had to figure my way out of bad positions,
00:51:28 because I had to try to make it entertaining for them,
00:51:32 where they still got something out of it,
00:51:33 and they wanted to come back the next week.
00:51:34 And I also got something out of it.
00:51:36 Yeah, I love this, yeah.
00:51:37 Because that relationship is so important,
00:51:39 with that, like, that,
00:51:42 I’ve had a few drilling partners,
00:51:44 training partners that were really important to my life,
00:51:47 and I always wonder why it’s difficult,
00:51:50 why it’s so difficult to find them.
00:51:52 Yeah.
00:51:53 Like I, if anyone’s listening to this,
00:51:55 I’m looking for a judo person in the Austin area, actually.
00:51:58 Getting the reps with people is hard.
00:52:01 Even in jiu jitsu, that,
00:52:04 it’s just like, people want to do the fun stuff.
00:52:06 They don’t want to really put in the work,
00:52:08 and it takes a certain kind of personality.
00:52:10 And then you also have to make it fun for the other person,
00:52:13 just like you said.
00:52:14 If there’s a skill mismatch,
00:52:16 but also if you have an interest mismatch,
00:52:19 in terms of the amount of drilling you want to do,
00:52:22 all that kind of stuff,
00:52:23 you have to figure out ways to make it fun.
00:52:24 It’s tricky.
00:52:25 So you did.
00:52:26 So, yeah, I think I did that,
00:52:28 and no one told me.
00:52:29 As I get some, I get frustrated,
00:52:31 because now we have, just in my academy,
00:52:33 we probably have 50, 60 high school kids only
00:52:36 that are year round.
00:52:37 They’re year round.
00:52:38 Maybe they’re not consistent in the summer or whatever,
00:52:39 but they’re there.
00:52:40 So when they don’t have a great partner,
00:52:42 they start whining,
00:52:43 and it’s like, you little bitches, like, you know.
00:52:45 Some days they get really mad about it,
00:52:47 because it’s like, I had no partners.
00:52:48 I had to find freaking two partners to come twice a week.
00:52:50 You guys, there’s still 22 people in the room.
00:52:53 I’m sorry there’s not the perfect partner for you,
00:52:55 but like, go work out with that dude.
00:52:56 Yeah.
00:52:57 You know?
00:52:58 Yeah.
00:52:59 So what was the switch, the change?
00:53:00 Was it gradual, or?
00:53:01 Gradual.
00:53:02 Okay.
00:53:03 Yeah, so I was in ninth grade.
00:53:04 I quit football, because I wanted to get really serious.
00:53:07 What position in football were you in?
00:53:08 I was actually a nose tackle.
00:53:10 But at that point, so, okay,
00:53:11 so I was also, the other thing I kind of left out here,
00:53:13 I was really fat growing up.
00:53:15 In sixth grade, I also decided, okay, I’m really fat,
00:53:19 and if I want to be a competitive wrestler,
00:53:20 I shouldn’t be fat, because weight matters.
00:53:21 I went from 130 pounds to 100 pounds in sixth grade.
00:53:25 Nice.
00:53:26 So by the time I was a freshman, I was 119.
00:53:28 So I still wasn’t as heavy as I was in sixth grade.
00:53:30 So I was pretty small, too,
00:53:31 but I was also slow, unfortunately.
00:53:33 So they put me a nose tackle.
00:53:35 I liked the competitiveness, so I was decent at it.
00:53:39 So that’s where you wrestled, 119?
00:53:41 My freshman year, yeah.
00:53:42 Mm hmm.
00:53:43 So yeah, so then I started having a lot of success
00:53:46 state wise, but not nationally.
00:53:48 It’s my national success,
00:53:50 didn’t come to my junior year in high school.
00:53:52 But yeah, I was grinding and getting better the whole time.
00:53:55 And then senior year, I started having a lot of success
00:53:57 nationally, and I got recruited.
00:53:59 But then even when my freshman year of college,
00:54:01 this is where I loved competing, I would go every weekend.
00:54:04 Because I knew, if you take the emotions out of competition,
00:54:08 all it is is seeing your failures, acknowledging them,
00:54:12 and then figuring out what you need to work on.
00:54:14 If we take all the emotion out of it, that’s what it is.
00:54:16 So I wrestled 50 matches as a redshirt freshman,
00:54:19 which is incredibly rare.
00:54:20 I had 10 losses.
00:54:21 So it’s not, and like to not so great guys, you know?
00:54:24 So like my skill level still at that point
00:54:27 was not that great.
00:54:28 And then the next year I came out
00:54:29 and I made it into the finals.
00:54:30 So my, I made a gigantic jump in that redshirt year
00:54:33 to the real freshman year.
00:54:35 So a few questions.
00:54:37 Where did the funk style of wrestling,
00:54:40 the creative stuff get developed, at which stage?
00:54:44 So I think like looking retroactively,
00:54:47 there was no intention to start when I was in high school
00:54:49 with those kids, but I think that’s kind of like,
00:54:51 well, what was happening, right?
00:54:54 So what I would really say is,
00:54:56 I had one influential coach my redshirt year of college
00:54:59 named Mike Ironman, great guy.
00:55:01 But then the second thing was, it was just out of necessity.
00:55:04 I had this burning desire to be the best.
00:55:06 And when I was getting my ass kicked every day in the room,
00:55:09 cause we had, you know, Tyron was there,
00:55:10 we had All American 157, we had All American 184.
00:55:13 So I wasn’t having a ton of success.
00:55:15 And very quickly I realized
00:55:18 from like a more traditional athletic perspective,
00:55:21 strength and speed, I couldn’t keep up with anyone.
00:55:23 I was way worse.
00:55:25 So it’s like, okay, fuck, how do I, how do I do this?
00:55:27 You know, I want to do this.
00:55:28 How do I do this?
00:55:29 There’s gotta be a way, you know?
00:55:31 So Mike Ironman showed me a couple of things,
00:55:33 but then it was just like this creative expansion
00:55:36 for the next, you know, say three to five years.
00:55:39 And then even now it’s like, I don’t know,
00:55:42 there’s something, and maybe you feel this way about judo,
00:55:44 or there’s something that’s like fun
00:55:47 about the way the body moves and works
00:55:49 and exploring something new and thinking about,
00:55:52 hey, wrestling’s been happening at a relatively high level
00:55:55 for we’ll say 80 to 90 years in America.
00:55:59 And there’s still new things being developed.
00:56:01 And so when you see something new,
00:56:02 you’re like, oh damn, like, that’s great.
00:56:03 Or like Jason Knowles may have to win Dixie.
00:56:05 I’m like, how did I not think of that shit?
00:56:07 Like, why did I think of that?
00:56:08 So easy, I should have thought of that, you know?
00:56:11 So there’s this like obsession with the sport of wrestling
00:56:14 and positions where I actually think sometimes,
00:56:19 thank God we didn’t have smartphones
00:56:20 because I may have been distracted by my smartphone.
00:56:23 Maybe I wouldn’t have been because I was so obsessed,
00:56:24 but maybe, but you know, some days I had,
00:56:27 couldn’t finish the single leg on a specific person
00:56:29 or maybe they were finishing on me and it was like,
00:56:32 go home and I was just fucking obsessed
00:56:34 about that one position.
00:56:35 Like, okay, what am I missing here?
00:56:38 And not just accepting like that whatever the coach says
00:56:41 is the answer, but like, what am I missing?
00:56:43 What ways can my body move
00:56:45 that no one’s told me it can move yet?
00:56:48 Where can my arms go, right?
00:56:50 Where can I do all these things?
00:56:51 And so I would just obsess about these things.
00:56:53 And then, you know, sometimes you come in the next day
00:56:55 and you say, oh, well maybe this, you know,
00:56:57 and maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t,
00:56:59 maybe it works twice and it doesn’t work the next time.
00:57:01 And so you kind of like have this creative process
00:57:03 and it’s like, you know, there’s a lot of things
00:57:05 that are on the cutting room floor
00:57:06 that never made it to the light
00:57:07 because you thought they’d be good
00:57:08 and they failed and they sucked.
00:57:10 And then, you know, to the point where,
00:57:11 like my senior year,
00:57:14 I got to this point where the people,
00:57:16 then they were just figures.
00:57:18 Figures would wrestle in my head
00:57:19 about positions I was thinking about.
00:57:21 I wouldn’t tell them what to do.
00:57:22 They would just, they’d just go in my head.
00:57:24 And then like, oh fuck, wait, that’s it.
00:57:27 That’s it, like that just happened.
00:57:29 That’s the move and then I’d go try to practice
00:57:30 and sure enough, boom, that’s the move.
00:57:32 That’s exactly what you have Alpha Zero playing,
00:57:34 learning chess.
00:57:35 You have, it’s called Self Plays.
00:57:38 You have, did the figures have like a clear?
00:57:43 No faces, they were just like.
00:57:45 Did they have a human form
00:57:46 or is it just like stick figures essentially?
00:57:48 Yeah, it was not like humans.
00:57:50 It was more like stick figures.
00:57:51 They weren’t stick figures exactly like they were.
00:57:55 They had some volume?
00:57:56 Yeah, it was like a gray person
00:57:58 and they had, you know, three dimensions essentially
00:58:00 so I had to see how the things moved and yeah.
00:58:05 I mean, this is exactly what OpenAI and DeepMind at Google
00:58:09 are, I don’t know if you’ve seen,
00:58:12 but there’s something called reinforcement learning
00:58:14 in artificial intelligence where you have like,
00:58:17 they’ve done it for like sumo wrestling.
00:58:19 You have like, you have these two stick figures
00:58:23 that don’t even know how to get up at first
00:58:26 and they figure out how to stand on their two feet
00:58:28 and then they figure out how to push the other person
00:58:31 off of the pedestal.
00:58:33 Wait, so, but what about like when you look
00:58:36 at the Boston Dynamics, sometimes they have trouble
00:58:38 with like jumping and balancing and the other stuff.
00:58:41 So are they doing that same program or no?
00:58:43 No, no, no, no.
00:58:44 This, everything Boston Dynamics is doing is hard coded
00:58:50 so it’s not learning the,
00:58:55 all of the sophisticated movements and strategies
00:58:57 like high level strategies and movement,
00:58:58 that’s all something that Boston Dynamics does not do
00:59:02 and if it does it, like the parkour stuff,
00:59:03 that’s all hard coded in.
00:59:05 Oh, interesting.
00:59:06 People like project and think like these robots
00:59:10 have like discovered like how to move
00:59:13 in sophisticated ways they haven’t.
00:59:14 Well, that’s what, when you and John were talking
00:59:17 about the grappling robot.
00:59:19 Yeah.
00:59:20 I mean, the one thing I was obsessing about in my head
00:59:24 is that with the chess, right?
00:59:26 If a chess piece moves, right?
00:59:28 The horse can move like an L, right?
00:59:31 It can only move like an L.
00:59:32 It doesn’t matter if it moves at two meters per second
00:59:35 or seven meters per second.
00:59:36 It can only move there, right?
00:59:38 Whereas like a single leg, I can shoot a single leg
00:59:41 with many different velocities.
00:59:43 I can shoot at different angles.
00:59:45 I can shoot with different amounts of force, right?
00:59:48 I can shoot with my head up versus my head,
00:59:50 I mean, right?
00:59:51 All these things are gonna matter.
00:59:52 We’re talking about a human being defending the single leg.
00:59:55 All of those things are gonna matter
00:59:56 and that’s where human beings who wrestle
01:00:00 are calculating those things subconsciously.
01:00:01 They’re obviously not consciously calculating in their head,
01:00:04 oh, the force is coming at me at this,
01:00:06 so I need to do that, right?
01:00:07 They’re just doing it because.
01:00:09 But see, the thing is, so you would absolutely,
01:00:12 if you’re doing a robot that you’re wrestling,
01:00:14 you’re going to have to constrain the speed at which it moves
01:00:16 and the power that it’s able to deliver.
01:00:19 So that presumably, that’ll be the limitation.
01:00:22 So then it’ll be just the same exactly as a human.
01:00:24 But then, so if we go human, max force,
01:00:28 we’re Jordan Burrows double, max force, right?
01:00:30 That’s the highest, that’s the highest we get
01:00:31 and then we go down from there.
01:00:34 Even within that, it’s like sometimes,
01:00:38 I can shoot a single leg with a maximum force of,
01:00:40 I don’t know, we’ll just say 20 is the number, right?
01:00:43 I don’t know, I’ll shoot it at 20
01:00:44 because I feel sometimes I shoot it at 15,
01:00:46 sometimes I shoot it at 12, right?
01:00:48 Because you feel something in your opponent
01:00:50 that makes you do it differently.
01:00:52 So they would have to learn how,
01:00:53 and then all of these different things
01:00:55 and sometimes maybe I clamp a little harder.
01:00:57 So the robot would have to learn
01:01:00 all of these different incoming inputs to the system
01:01:03 and then create this reaction.
01:01:04 Oh no, no, no, 100%.
01:01:06 So this would be all continuous.
01:01:08 So unlike chess, it would not be,
01:01:09 it’s just chess is discrete, there’s, it’s.
01:01:11 One and then.
01:01:12 You move, it’s a very specific set of moves.
01:01:16 Now here you would, those are all variables you control
01:01:19 and they’re continuous variables.
01:01:20 So the speed, the force, there’s actuators,
01:01:23 so there’s all these joints, right?
01:01:24 Yeah.
01:01:25 But you can move.
01:01:26 I mean, it’s just an optimization problem.
01:01:28 It’s kind of, and it’s fascinating.
01:01:30 So I’ve been fascinated thinking about it
01:01:31 since you guys talked about it.
01:01:33 It was a long time ago,
01:01:34 I listened to it probably three to four weeks ago
01:01:36 and I’ve kind of been like obsessing about it ever since.
01:01:39 Yeah, it just changes when,
01:01:43 so unlike boxing, for example, or striking,
01:01:47 once you grab a hold of somebody,
01:01:49 it changes, you’re now one body, right?
01:01:52 So it’s very complicated.
01:01:53 It’s not just shooting a double leg without,
01:01:56 like maybe doing like faking a double leg
01:02:00 and then shooting the double leg,
01:02:01 that’s very doable with robotics,
01:02:03 but then like doing a clinch and from there,
01:02:07 doing like a Russian tie, like that,
01:02:11 that’s, I think that’s way harder than people realize
01:02:14 in terms of how many things are involved,
01:02:17 like the force of the grip, the leverage you’re providing
01:02:20 with all the different parts of the shoulder
01:02:22 and the arm and the torso, the twist,
01:02:24 how much of your weight are you allocating,
01:02:26 like leaning on the other person,
01:02:28 like taking weight off of one of your legs
01:02:30 and the other leg, all of that.
01:02:32 I think that’s the really interesting thing about humans
01:02:35 is we’re able to do all of this calculation.
01:02:38 Subconsciously. Yeah, subconsciously.
01:02:40 Yeah, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about since we,
01:02:41 it’s like how many things even these high school athletes
01:02:45 who are like getting medium good
01:02:47 are subconsciously thinking about all the time
01:02:50 or not even thinking about, sorry, reacting to,
01:02:54 but then even like for me, I’m a few orders of magnitude
01:02:57 better than some of these kids that play,
01:02:58 and so when I go like super hard,
01:03:00 it’s like I can feel their weight
01:03:02 moving the wrong direction,
01:03:03 and so for me to off balance them or trip them or whatever
01:03:05 is kind of easy sometimes, you know,
01:03:07 because they’re not feeling it the right way, right,
01:03:11 or their timing’s just a little bit off
01:03:13 or the way they’re grabbing the hip,
01:03:15 maybe they should be up a little higher, right,
01:03:16 these really small things.
01:03:18 Yeah, I think that’s all easy to take advantage of
01:03:22 for a robot, it’s just there’s so many things.
01:03:24 The big problem is ethically,
01:03:28 I don’t know how many people are willing to train
01:03:30 with a robot because you’re gonna get hurt.
01:03:33 Well, couldn’t you make a robot train as a robot or no?
01:03:36 Yes, but then it’s expensive.
01:03:38 So, because they’re gonna get.
01:03:40 Put the padding on that thing.
01:03:42 I know, but then it’s not, you know,
01:03:45 it’s, then you’re not capturing the full.
01:03:51 Why can’t you put like some rubber coating on them,
01:03:53 you know, something for that effect?
01:03:54 You could, I mean, you could, you could.
01:03:58 I mean, you’re talking about robots that are,
01:04:01 these are humanoid robots,
01:04:02 so we’re talking about $500,000 million robots.
01:04:07 So, you would have to be motivated to spend a lot of money
01:04:12 because you have to have them wrestle for like a lot.
01:04:19 To get better.
01:04:20 Yeah, to get better.
01:04:21 And then, the open question is how long does it take
01:04:27 to get good enough to be a human?
01:04:32 I don’t think we understand, I don’t know,
01:04:34 I don’t think you understand how hard wrestling is.
01:04:37 Yeah.
01:04:38 Like, is it a really hard problem?
01:04:39 Like, what’s harder, chess or wrestling?
01:04:41 Wrestling, by far.
01:04:42 Not even close.
01:04:43 That’s, yeah, that’s the sense I have.
01:04:45 So, because there’s an infinite amount of moves, right?
01:04:48 And possibilities, so once I shoot the same leg,
01:04:50 now you have X amount of choices.
01:04:52 Once you make your choice, now I have a choice,
01:04:54 X amount of choices.
01:04:56 Now you have X amount of choices on the defense,
01:04:58 and we can just keep going back and forth, right?
01:04:59 And this number becomes.
01:05:01 Yeah, but the same happens with chess.
01:05:02 Correct, but then in wrestling,
01:05:04 you have to make these movements very instantaneously,
01:05:08 right, because if I shoot a single leg,
01:05:09 I’m not gonna wait and say, what’s your defense?
01:05:11 Yeah.
01:05:11 Right, you have to be instantaneously.
01:05:12 And then, also, again, based on the force and the vectors
01:05:15 and the angles, you have to calculate that and adjust.
01:05:19 So really, you know, if you’re saying,
01:05:20 well, I can shoot a single leg,
01:05:21 it’s not like moving the chess, it’s not one move, right?
01:05:24 If you want to talk about different forces and stuff,
01:05:27 it could be hundreds or thousands of different moves
01:05:29 based on how hard I shoot it,
01:05:30 the angle, the direction, all of those things.
01:05:32 Yeah, but wait a minute.
01:05:33 So, robots can do this kind of stuff really fast.
01:05:37 People probably know the physiology of this,
01:05:38 but the reaction speed for a human
01:05:41 is maybe 100 milliseconds, something like that, I don’t know,
01:05:44 from sensation to, like, from the signal traveling
01:05:49 up to your brain and down, I don’t know what that number is,
01:05:52 but robots certainly could do it way faster.
01:05:56 You would actually have to, like, constrain the speed.
01:06:00 Well, so the robots are already killing the chess people,
01:06:02 right, so, yeah, theoretically,
01:06:04 they could eventually beat wrestlers,
01:06:06 but you asked what was harder, wrestling or chess.
01:06:08 Yeah, and I think wrestling is,
01:06:10 because of the time component in it
01:06:12 and the physicality of, you know,
01:06:15 is it this force or that force, you know?
01:06:18 Because if I’m gonna say we’re in a seatbelt side by side,
01:06:20 right, a wrestling seatbelt, not in Jiu Jitsu,
01:06:24 based on the pressure you’re giving me,
01:06:25 I might do a bunch of different things, right?
01:06:27 And so, like, to an untrained eye,
01:06:30 they might both look like the same thing from you.
01:06:32 To a trained feel, it’s like, well, in one case,
01:06:35 it’s really evident I should go this way,
01:06:37 in another case, it’s really evident I should go that way.
01:06:39 So the other thing to consider, just like with chess,
01:06:43 the AI systems, so human versus human
01:06:47 play a certain way together.
01:06:49 They actually haven’t considered
01:06:50 a really large number of strategies
01:06:52 that AI systems discover.
01:06:54 So one possibility with a robot,
01:06:55 they’ll discover certain ties and certain takedowns.
01:06:58 That’s what I’m saying.
01:07:00 That, like, will dominate no matter what the human does.
01:07:03 You think that, so you think there’s that,
01:07:04 so this, I mean, this is what I’m talking about
01:07:06 with the wrestling, so fun is there’s,
01:07:07 even after 80, 90 years, there’s this continuous evolution.
01:07:11 So you think.
01:07:12 There’ll be some, like, low single type thing,
01:07:13 like John Smith type of situation.
01:07:15 Well, like a down block go behind is something
01:07:17 that has really, I would say really in the last fiveish years
01:07:20 has really been evolved.
01:07:21 What’s a go behind?
01:07:22 Down block go behind, so when you shoot,
01:07:24 well, they just, head inside or head outside matters,
01:07:27 but there’s one for both.
01:07:28 You shoot at me, essentially, I take my leg, boom.
01:07:31 And then, so that was kind of in existence
01:07:33 when I was in college, right?
01:07:34 You down block them and you stop,
01:07:35 but usually you hit on this side of their head, right?
01:07:38 And now, immediately, you shoot and I attack that shoulder
01:07:40 and then I start hitting a go behind on you, right?
01:07:43 And so, like, that in its current incarnation,
01:07:47 it absolutely wasn’t around when I was in college.
01:07:49 I would say it probably became popular
01:07:51 five to seven years ago.
01:07:53 So yeah, there’s these big things that are happening.
01:07:56 Now I really wanna roll back
01:07:57 because I wanna be ahead of the game.
01:07:58 I wanna know what I’m missing.
01:08:00 I mean, one interesting thing you have with Alpha Zero
01:08:02 that plays chess is it sacrifices pieces
01:08:07 much more than humans do.
01:08:09 So it’ll give you a piece.
01:08:11 And not only does it give you a piece,
01:08:12 it will wait a bunch of moves before it makes you pay.
01:08:18 So.
01:08:19 Because it knows that that’s better for the long term.
01:08:21 Long term.
01:08:21 So like humans rarely sacrifice
01:08:23 without getting the piece back,
01:08:25 like two or three moves after.
01:08:28 Alpha Zero can wait like five moves.
01:08:31 So basically you’ll have, potentially with wrestling,
01:08:35 you might have a robot that like puts itself
01:08:38 in bad positions, but in a certain kind of way
01:08:40 then that will actually turn out.
01:08:42 Lures the opponent in to trap.
01:08:45 Exactly.
01:08:45 That’s what my style is based on.
01:08:46 Exactly.
01:08:47 You basically narrow, one thing to do
01:08:50 is you narrow the set of choices.
01:08:52 You put yourself in a bad position,
01:08:53 but it narrows the set of choices.
01:08:55 For them, because they’re not used to it.
01:08:56 Yeah, they’re not used to it.
01:08:58 And then you drag them into your, yeah.
01:09:02 So, but there’s also, the problem is
01:09:05 there’s mechanical issues.
01:09:06 Like it’s actually just difficult to build robots
01:09:09 that are able to sense,
01:09:11 because we have sensation throughout our body, yeah.
01:09:14 It’s just difficult to build that kind of robot.
01:09:16 It’s expensive.
01:09:16 You start talking about multimillion dollars,
01:09:19 and then people start asking you questions.
01:09:21 Why did you invest all of this money?
01:09:23 They wanna see what moves they do, duh, hello.
01:09:26 It could be a better investment.
01:09:28 Okay.
01:09:29 So I mentioned John Smith.
01:09:32 He is, if people don’t know,
01:09:33 one of the great wrestlers, wrestling coaches ever.
01:09:36 He’s also creative like you.
01:09:37 He spoke really highly of you.
01:09:39 What do you think about that guy?
01:09:40 Did you guys ever work together?
01:09:42 Not really.
01:09:43 So you know what, when I was a senior,
01:09:45 and I had the people wrestling in my head,
01:09:47 I was lucky enough to be doing,
01:09:50 I was pretty much a graduate,
01:09:51 so I did an independent study with the sports psychology.
01:09:53 I was potentially going to go to grad school
01:09:55 for sports psychology.
01:09:56 Well, I actually did nine credits,
01:09:57 and then I just decided I didn’t want to do it anymore.
01:10:00 I continued learning on my own.
01:10:02 But I had an independent study with the guy
01:10:05 who’s the head of USA Track and Field Sports Psych.
01:10:07 So here was the class was,
01:10:09 I got to go sit down and talk with him for an hour,
01:10:11 and he was like fascinated by me.
01:10:13 So he didn’t let me do homework.
01:10:14 It was like the greatest three credits ever.
01:10:16 We just talked.
01:10:17 I learned so much.
01:10:18 It was so awesome.
01:10:20 But so I started, so one time it came up,
01:10:22 I had these robot, or people wrestling in my head,
01:10:24 and he said, well, who else do you think,
01:10:26 but John Smith happened.
01:10:27 So I went and got John Smith’s number,
01:10:29 and I called him and said,
01:10:29 hey, you ever had these people wrestling in your head?
01:10:32 And he said, yeah, but as soon as I stopped coaching,
01:10:34 they went away.
01:10:35 Same thing happened to me.
01:10:36 As soon as I started coaching, they went away.
01:10:38 So if I really force myself now,
01:10:40 and I’m like, I see something in practice,
01:10:43 and it’s really higher level,
01:10:44 because high school wrestling,
01:10:45 I don’t want to, maybe I feel bad,
01:10:46 but it’s a little bit lower level, right?
01:10:48 So if Keegan, for example, who won the tournament,
01:10:50 if he’s struggling with a problem or asks me a question,
01:10:54 and I can force myself to see the bodies moving
01:10:57 and think about it again,
01:10:58 kind of like I was in early age,
01:11:00 but it won’t just flow there anymore.
01:11:02 So he said it went away, and for me, it went away also.
01:11:06 By the way, if we can pause on the bodies in your head,
01:11:14 how are they generating new ideas?
01:11:16 Are they just kind of?
01:11:18 I don’t know.
01:11:19 You tell me.
01:11:20 So it’s just, they’re just scrambling in your head?
01:11:24 It would be specifically based on a problem
01:11:27 I was struggling with, or a specific position, you know?
01:11:30 It goes in for a single, and then go from there.
01:11:32 Yeah, so I’m sitting in geography class,
01:11:34 and I don’t have to work that hard, because it’s easy, right?
01:11:38 And yeah, I’m just sitting there acting
01:11:40 like I’m looking at the board,
01:11:41 and these guys are wrestling,
01:11:42 and I’m watching them wrestle,
01:11:43 and yeah, sometimes they come up with a really good solution.
01:11:47 Is there somebody you look up to style wise?
01:11:52 Like Gable, John Smith, all these legend status people.
01:11:57 Probably Gable, or it’s a Gable.
01:11:59 John Smith, but after the fact.
01:12:01 So the problem with wrestling in my era
01:12:03 was you couldn’t watch it.
01:12:04 There was no access, right?
01:12:06 It wasn’t really available.
01:12:07 Even if you want to say, go find a bunch of John Smith,
01:12:10 man, they’re kind of hard to find, right?
01:12:11 There’s a couple of them on YouTube,
01:12:13 but I’ve obviously seen all of those,
01:12:15 but in my era, there really wasn’t any of it.
01:12:18 So it was hard to be a fan of something,
01:12:19 and that’s why wrestling has, the fans are going like this,
01:12:23 because now you can flip on the Flow app,
01:12:25 and you can watch something that’s happening in Europe, right?
01:12:29 We can do this easily, so we can be a fan of people.
01:12:32 So now I’m more a fan of wrestling than I was then,
01:12:35 because there just was no access.
01:12:37 So now I can watch someone I like,
01:12:39 and say, oh shit, that guy’s wrestling.
01:12:41 Oh, boom, I flip my phone on, I watch them wrestle.
01:12:43 That type of thing.
01:12:44 You know, and a quick rant.
01:12:47 It’s really frustrating that you can’t watch the Olympics.
01:12:50 Oh my god, it’s so frustrating.
01:12:52 I’ve been, I think I’m gonna go to war on this point.
01:12:55 Go to NBC’s headquarters, I’ll go with you.
01:12:57 You got a soldier here.
01:12:59 I was talking to Jimmy, Jimmy Pedro,
01:13:02 he was surprised by this, too.
01:13:04 Most matches, you can’t see, even,
01:13:06 you talk about like a comeback, Gable Steelers,
01:13:10 and you can’t see the full match.
01:13:13 You get like a crappy highlight.
01:13:15 So the two biggest things, and really the three,
01:13:19 the NCAA championships on ESPN,
01:13:22 the Olympic trials are on NBC, and the Olympics are on NBC.
01:13:25 And these companies are so big,
01:13:27 they don’t have a department dedicated
01:13:28 to selling the rights to that footage, right?
01:13:31 So the rights to wrestling footage,
01:13:34 which no one really cares all that much about,
01:13:35 except a niche, are the exact same as track and field,
01:13:38 or basketball in the Olympics.
01:13:40 So yes, all of this stuff is completely inaccessible to us.
01:13:44 The NCAAs, the Olympic trials, and the Olympics,
01:13:47 you can’t go watch old film on it, it sucks.
01:13:49 So yeah.
01:13:50 Yeah, old, the current film.
01:13:51 Yeah.
01:13:52 So you can’t even watch the Gable match?
01:13:54 The Gable Steelers, no.
01:13:55 They did a, you know, they do something
01:13:57 that annoys the fuck out of me.
01:13:58 What?
01:13:59 Okay, they do like a three or two minute highlight.
01:14:05 So it’s like they capture the most important thing,
01:14:09 but it’s all about the buildup.
01:14:11 Yeah, yeah.
01:14:12 It’s like that very beginning when you step on the mat,
01:14:15 and the nerves, and you walk out, and like that,
01:14:19 I mean, I don’t know, you miss,
01:14:22 then when the triumph happens, or the heartbreak happens,
01:14:26 it has that much more power.
01:14:28 Yeah, if you want to go to war with NBC or ESPN,
01:14:30 I’m happy to join that.
01:14:32 I think I’m fortunate it’s the IOC.
01:14:34 Well, I mean, is the IOC on that?
01:14:37 IOC is selling, for the Olympics,
01:14:40 is the one that’s making.
01:14:41 Well, so NBC broadcasts,
01:14:43 so they obviously have the live rights.
01:14:45 You would think they would have recorded,
01:14:47 if they, I mean, they’re the ones recording it,
01:14:48 you would think they keep the rights when you think.
01:14:50 No, no, no, they’re getting a license of it.
01:14:53 They’re getting exclusive like license,
01:14:55 but like the, you know, for example,
01:14:58 I’ve had this, I talked to Travis Stevens, the Judo player,
01:15:02 and there’s a really sort of famous match,
01:15:06 just a heartbreak in his career from 2012 Olympics,
01:15:11 where he goes against a German, Oli Bischoff, whatever.
01:15:14 It’s a 20 minute match to go to war,
01:15:16 and that’s not available anywhere,
01:15:18 but it’s uploaded on YouTube and set to private.
01:15:22 The reason I know this is on the IOC channel.
01:15:26 So they’ve uploaded all of these matches.
01:15:28 They have it and put it up.
01:15:29 So actually, so my Olympic match, the one I won,
01:15:34 got put public, and so I don’t know if it was private,
01:15:37 it got put up on YouTube.
01:15:39 I was allergic to it the week of my Jake Paul fight.
01:15:42 It was so dumb.
01:15:42 I’m like, why, this is 13 years later, this is bullshit.
01:15:46 Like this should have been up.
01:15:47 So, I mean, okay, so what about Olympic trials footage?
01:15:51 That has to be the USOC then or NBC?
01:15:55 So I know like, okay, so I know Flow, right?
01:15:57 Cause I worked with them.
01:15:58 I know if Flow buys your event or whatever, right?
01:16:01 They buy the rights, generally in the contract,
01:16:04 they’ll have rights to both live stream it
01:16:06 and then use that footage at any point moving forward.
01:16:09 So those matches live on Flow’s website.
01:16:12 That’s why I would be surprised
01:16:13 if NBC didn’t have something similar.
01:16:16 Flow does a pretty good job of providing
01:16:19 like a place where you can watch all these matches.
01:16:22 NBC does not.
01:16:23 Does not, yeah.
01:16:23 And also there’s an argument with Flow as well,
01:16:27 but certainly with Olympics.
01:16:28 There’s a difference between what Flow does
01:16:30 and what the Olympics represent.
01:16:32 What do you mean by that?
01:16:33 Like it feels like the Olympics,
01:16:35 which is what the charter says,
01:16:38 should be as accessible as possible.
01:16:41 Yes, that’s true.
01:16:42 Like you should really lower the barrier
01:16:44 for entry for the Olympics.
01:16:45 You know that’s what the charter says,
01:16:47 but those people in the IOC,
01:16:48 these are the worst people ever.
01:16:50 They’re very bad.
01:16:51 Well, they’re not bad.
01:16:52 They just lost touch of the dream they once had
01:16:55 when they joined the IOC.
01:16:56 Well, I would argue all the way back
01:16:58 that these are rich fat cats who,
01:17:01 like I get so mad about the NCAA,
01:17:02 which finally now got rid of this bullshit term amateurism.
01:17:07 It’s like, well, there’s some holy grail
01:17:08 where you can’t make money to be an amateur athlete,
01:17:11 but the people who own the IOC
01:17:12 or the people who own the institutions,
01:17:15 college institutions are making boatloads of money
01:17:17 off of you, that’s crap.
01:17:19 So you competed, like you said, at the 2008 Olympics.
01:17:24 Did you believe you can win gold?
01:17:26 Yeah, absolutely.
01:17:27 So your mental game was on point.
01:17:30 Yeah, I was ready.
01:17:31 So what went wrong?
01:17:33 This wasn’t good enough.
01:17:34 That was what I said.
01:17:35 Yeah.
01:17:36 Yeah, I mean, so at that point in time,
01:17:39 it was my first year of international competition.
01:17:41 So when I came out in 2007,
01:17:43 it was my first time making 74 kilograms,
01:17:45 which is pretty small for me.
01:17:47 I had some failures, but then quickly I turned that around
01:17:50 and I was having success in America.
01:17:53 I was beating everyone.
01:17:54 I don’t wanna say easy, but yeah,
01:17:58 I was doing really well.
01:18:00 I went international one time,
01:18:02 and there was one match I got cheated on.
01:18:05 The Russians, they’re cheaters.
01:18:07 Excuse you, Ukraine, not Russia.
01:18:10 I lost one real match where I actually lost,
01:18:13 and it was to Denis Sarguch,
01:18:15 who would go on to win three world titles,
01:18:17 but he was behind the T of that year,
01:18:18 and it was competitive.
01:18:20 So I knew, okay, I’m going with the best guys in the world.
01:18:23 I beat a bunch of other guys who were good
01:18:27 and had passed decent results.
01:18:29 So I knew I was right there.
01:18:31 Unfortunately, I ran into this guy, Ivan Fundora,
01:18:35 and I had someone do scouting reports for him,
01:18:38 actually my high school coach,
01:18:38 who now coaches for our academy, John Messimerich,
01:18:41 and Fundora was the worst stylistic matchup.
01:18:43 I got him, and I lost him second round.
01:18:46 So I wasn’t good enough.
01:18:49 Had I decided to keep wrestling,
01:18:50 I probably would have gotten better,
01:18:52 but at that point, I just wasn’t in the cards.
01:18:53 So in your division was, like you said, it’s the T of,
01:18:56 if I said it’s the T of, that guy’s special.
01:19:01 He’s very special.
01:19:02 So that would be my other guy that you asked earlier
01:19:04 who I enjoyed watching, and that was a guy I,
01:19:06 again, it was kind of after the fact
01:19:08 because it was hard to access footage,
01:19:10 but he was a lot of fun to watch.
01:19:12 What do you think made him great?
01:19:15 A lot of people talk about him
01:19:17 as potentially one of the greatest ever.
01:19:20 Absolutely.
01:19:21 I mean, so he won six and three,
01:19:22 six Worlds, three Olympics, nine total,
01:19:26 which there’s only one or two people above that.
01:19:30 So again, it was hard to watch any live footage of him,
01:19:32 but from what I’ve seen, his feel is different.
01:19:35 He was just ahead of his time,
01:19:36 and the feel and the touch he had
01:19:38 for certain moves and different things,
01:19:40 because obviously physically he’s kind of unimposing.
01:19:43 He’s taller than skinnier,
01:19:45 which it can work in wrestling,
01:19:47 but it is by less represented.
01:19:50 So yeah, he was special, so good.
01:19:54 Do you take any inspiration from,
01:19:58 let’s talk about Dagestan in general.
01:20:00 What do you think makes those wrestlers great?
01:20:02 Yeah, it’s fascinating.
01:20:04 Have you read the book, The Talent Code?
01:20:06 Yeah. It’s great.
01:20:07 And that kind of talks about these talent hotspots
01:20:09 all around the world.
01:20:09 So now obviously with our wrestling academies,
01:20:12 we try to take some lessons from that and apply it.
01:20:15 I got to assume, they didn’t cover Dagestan
01:20:17 in that book specifically,
01:20:19 but I got to assume a lot of the same principles
01:20:23 that are in that book apply to Dagestan in wrestling.
01:20:26 They did South Korea and women’s golf.
01:20:29 They did Curacao in baseball.
01:20:31 They picked a lot of these other places
01:20:32 that were really elite.
01:20:33 I think it was maybe Moscow in women’s tennis also.
01:20:37 So I think all of these things
01:20:39 that make any group great organization
01:20:43 is probably the same things that’s happening there.
01:20:45 Well, the hardship, I mean,
01:20:47 is there something specific about wrestling
01:20:49 that can create so many great champions?
01:20:54 From that area?
01:20:55 So obviously they all love the big deal.
01:20:58 Wrestling specifically is a big deal there.
01:21:01 They do Sambo also, obviously.
01:21:03 So that’s part of it is a lot of the kids are doing it.
01:21:05 They obviously are rough tumble, tough life.
01:21:08 Getting a lot of fights.
01:21:09 And then I think that also that a lot of them,
01:21:12 it is a way out right there.
01:21:14 The elite level athletes in that part of the world,
01:21:16 from my understanding, are really well compensated
01:21:18 compared to what the average person makes
01:21:21 and they’re treated really well.
01:21:22 So people see it as a way out.
01:21:23 Whereas like, and then honestly,
01:21:25 if America is getting better,
01:21:27 but in 2008, the reason I went to MMA
01:21:29 was because I didn’t want to be poor my whole life.
01:21:32 You know what I’m saying?
01:21:33 It sucked.
01:21:34 It’s like, well, I don’t want to make $20,000
01:21:35 for the next 48 years.
01:21:37 So I’m going to go do something else.
01:21:39 If I could have made, even I didn’t need to be rich, right?
01:21:41 If I could have made $100,000 or $70,000 wrestling,
01:21:43 I probably would have kept wrestling.
01:21:46 So I think there’s factors
01:21:48 and obviously now they have a really like,
01:21:51 a bunch of really good people in one area.
01:21:52 So there’s probably, and it’s been going on for a long time.
01:21:55 So there’s probably been a bunch of like adults
01:21:57 and coaches that are coming back and helping that progress.
01:21:59 So yeah, a lot of those things that happen.
01:22:01 So I’m definitely going to travel there to talk to them
01:22:04 because I can speak Russian.
01:22:05 It makes it very,
01:22:08 makes me uniquely qualified to.
01:22:13 My brother can speak a little bit of Russian.
01:22:15 Your brother can? Yeah.
01:22:16 Okay, like a little bit like he swears and.
01:22:19 No, no, no, no.
01:22:20 Like he would, oh man, don’t, don’t make me oversell.
01:22:23 I think he would be able to have a conversation with you.
01:22:25 I think.
01:22:26 Okay.
01:22:27 Probably not like you.
01:22:28 What’s the, what’s the reason he knows Russian?
01:22:31 I don’t know why he got obsessed with languages.
01:22:33 And so his college degree is actually,
01:22:36 what are they called?
01:22:37 Interdis, where you have three minors.
01:22:38 So he had a minor in Russian, a minor in Spanish
01:22:43 and maybe Japanese, I’m messing up.
01:22:46 It’s definitely, it’s Russian and Spanish for sure.
01:22:48 I don’t know what the third one is.
01:22:49 No, but yeah, Dagestan, it’s really fascinating.
01:22:52 But the emphasis on technique, the lighter drilling,
01:22:57 like they don’t really go super hard.
01:22:59 Yeah, and I only spent a couple, so I was there,
01:23:01 I was in Vladikavkaz in 2008.
01:23:03 That was where the World Cup was.
01:23:04 We had to train there for like two days afterwards.
01:23:06 So I didn’t get to dig deep,
01:23:10 dig deep into what was going on or anything.
01:23:14 But yeah, I mean, I think sparring is very beneficial
01:23:19 for wrestling, not like sparring MMA is we fight, right?
01:23:24 Sparring in wrestling is, so I always just describe it
01:23:27 to be really simple.
01:23:29 If we’re drilling, it’s relatively 0% resistance.
01:23:31 If we’re going as hard as we can, that’s 100%.
01:23:33 There’s all this gray area in the middle that’s sparring,
01:23:36 right?
01:23:37 So if you have a good relationship,
01:23:40 like college me and my brother, we could just go
01:23:43 and we know where each other’s at.
01:23:45 We don’t even have to talk about it, right?
01:23:46 But like in my wrestling club, I’ll say,
01:23:47 okay, hey, I want you guys to go 50% in this position.
01:23:51 Or I want the high crotch guy, I want him to shoot
01:23:54 and this is for him, so I want him to go 70.
01:23:56 And the defensive guy, I want you to go 40.
01:23:58 So you’re not supposed to be trying to win here.
01:23:59 You’re gonna go a little later.
01:24:00 I want you to give him some looks, you know?
01:24:03 So I think it has really taken hold in America.
01:24:05 I think it’s really beneficial for success.
01:24:06 And I think that’s, I mean, America’s doing better
01:24:09 than we’ve ever done historically.
01:24:11 Well, that 70 and 40, that’s like an art form
01:24:13 to find that right place,
01:24:14 because the really good people I’ve trained with,
01:24:17 they go much closer to 100% speed wise,
01:24:23 but without forcing things the way you would
01:24:27 when you’re going.
01:24:28 It’s some weird combination of things that,
01:24:30 like if you truly earn a technique,
01:24:34 then you’re given that technique.
01:24:36 But if you don’t, you don’t.
01:24:39 And then it becomes much less injury prone.
01:24:42 It becomes somehow more fun, more dynamic.
01:24:44 You don’t get stuck in positions.
01:24:46 It’s just a lot of movement.
01:24:48 Yeah, the one thing, so you and John talked about,
01:24:51 like different ways to learn and get better.
01:24:54 And so I think John obviously innovated
01:24:55 within the sport of jiu jitsu.
01:24:58 And so for us, and maybe there’s a differentiator for us.
01:25:03 I think about it like.
01:25:04 Sorry to interrupt.
01:25:05 You have this academy and you sent me this plan.
01:25:07 They have like a really well thought through plan
01:25:10 for how to develop a good wrestler.
01:25:12 So I think it’s, for me there’s four categories, right?
01:25:16 There’s the teaching, which is like, you don’t know shit.
01:25:20 You’re coming in and I’m showing you the move
01:25:22 and you’re literally going out there and you’re trying.
01:25:24 To me, that’s not even drilling.
01:25:26 That’s like teaching, like you’re trying to learn something.
01:25:29 So obviously in someone’s earlier periods,
01:25:32 they’re spending a lot of time in that phase
01:25:34 because they literally don’t even know
01:25:36 how to move their bodies the right way.
01:25:38 Once you learn the skill, then there’s the drilling
01:25:40 because you absolutely have to get those reps
01:25:43 to become really proficient in that movement
01:25:46 and then the sparring and then the live, right?
01:25:48 And so like, I think obviously by the time you get
01:25:51 to the kind of, I don’t wanna say end point, right?
01:25:53 But further on, the time you spend teaching is so,
01:25:58 I don’t wanna say, I’m sorry,
01:25:59 in the learning teaching phase is not insignificant,
01:26:02 but it’s so much smaller because to someone
01:26:04 who’s really good, who I’ve coached for 10 years,
01:26:06 I don’t have to give this big long drawn out explanation.
01:26:08 I just have to say, hey, move your hand a little differently
01:26:11 or just do this, right?
01:26:13 We don’t have to spend any time there.
01:26:14 So I think that’s like something that consumes
01:26:16 for the younger kids, say five through 12 or 13,
01:26:19 we’re consuming a massive amount of time there
01:26:22 on that teaching learning phase.
01:26:24 And then as we get older, that time wanes a lot.
01:26:28 But that makes total sense, right?
01:26:30 Yeah.
01:26:31 It’s funny because when you look at like jiu jitsu schools,
01:26:34 they spend a lot of time in the teaching learning
01:26:36 and then the live, like there’s not enough drilling.
01:26:40 I like how you draw a distinction there
01:26:42 because it feels like you’re always starting from scratch.
01:26:45 Like people have like very crappy short term memory.
01:26:48 Like they’re not, like the way teaching is done
01:26:52 is you show a technique from scratch
01:26:55 and it seems disjoint.
01:26:57 It is for sure, especially if you have a class
01:26:58 that’s been with you for a while,
01:27:00 you don’t have to start from scratch.
01:27:01 You can say, hey, let’s focus on this one little thing here
01:27:04 or let’s, after we do this, let’s do that,
01:27:07 and you kind of put, start putting it all together.
01:27:09 And then with jiu jitsu, the thing that I really struggled
01:27:12 with was a couple of things.
01:27:14 It was, and this is not speaking for all the jiu jitians,
01:27:17 my personal experience through the sport.
01:27:19 And I actually found my, so when I unretired,
01:27:21 I found someone really great that I loved
01:27:23 and I really wish it was Mark Lehman.
01:27:25 I don’t know if you know him at all.
01:27:26 I wish I would have found him earlier
01:27:28 because he was just tremendous.
01:27:31 But number one, there’s no drilling.
01:27:32 So it’s like, in wrestling, I can boil down to,
01:27:37 I can probably name you the best six moves, right?
01:27:40 So we need, as younger people, single leg, right?
01:27:43 Single leg’s gonna be the most proficient takedown.
01:27:45 It always has been, I don’t know,
01:27:47 probably always will be,
01:27:47 unless they figure out something different.
01:27:51 The robot.
01:27:52 The robot figures out something different.
01:27:53 We’re gonna shoot a lot of single legs.
01:27:54 Why?
01:27:55 Because everyone’s gonna do that, right?
01:27:56 We’re gonna shoot a lot of single legs.
01:27:58 So just like, say, an armbar or some type of sweep, right?
01:28:02 Why can’t we go get 50 reps there?
01:28:03 Hey, by the time I’ve been in your jiu jitsu school
01:28:06 for two years, I better know a fucking armbar.
01:28:08 I better know it.
01:28:09 So don’t spend 10 minutes teaching me.
01:28:11 Just tell me to go hit 50 reps.
01:28:12 And then if, when I’m hitting my reps,
01:28:14 if there’s something I’m doing wrong,
01:28:16 then just say, hey, Ben,
01:28:17 move your leg a little bit that way
01:28:19 or raise your hips up a little more, right?
01:28:21 Like, correct as you’re drilling
01:28:23 so you’re getting all these reps at it
01:28:24 so you’re becoming more proficient.
01:28:26 And then the other thing I really struggled with was,
01:28:27 to your point during live,
01:28:30 so many times it’s just this five minute go, go, go.
01:28:33 And that’s not the most efficient way to learn
01:28:35 because when you have two people,
01:28:37 especially when they’re focused on winning,
01:28:39 and you say go, they’re gonna go to wherever they do best.
01:28:41 Well, if I’m trying to make you good at something,
01:28:43 I don’t want you doing what you do best all the time.
01:28:45 I need you doing some other things, right?
01:28:47 If you have a great single leg
01:28:48 but you can’t shoot to the other side of the body,
01:28:51 we need to work on that, right?
01:28:52 You need to start shooting the other side.
01:28:54 There’s some sense that you,
01:28:56 it’s not like you should be told what to work on
01:28:58 but you should be told to work on the thing
01:29:00 that you wanna work on.
01:29:02 Meaning, I don’t know, maybe you can comment on this,
01:29:05 but everybody develops a different game
01:29:07 as you get better and better.
01:29:08 There’s a set of things you need to be working on.
01:29:11 So I actually have, like when I,
01:29:14 especially when I’m training very seriously,
01:29:17 I’ll have a specific technique that I have in mind
01:29:21 and I have a sheet of paper on the side
01:29:24 where I literally, my head keep counting off
01:29:26 how many times I put myself in that position
01:29:29 and pulled off the technique.
01:29:30 And that’s all I care about in like training.
01:29:32 So I’ll just, whatever it is,
01:29:35 if it’s a guillotine, it’s a guillotine,
01:29:37 arm drag, arm drag, but I wanna make sure I don’t,
01:29:41 I love numbers, so I’ll say like,
01:29:44 I’ll make sure I get 50 arm drags
01:29:47 and I’m not getting off the mat until I do.
01:29:49 And that, you know, if it takes.
01:29:50 Any thrilling or live contest?
01:29:53 So in this, in the thing I’m describing right now
01:29:55 is the live contest.
01:29:56 Okay, got it.
01:29:56 But drilling, obviously, drilling.
01:29:59 So I feel like I can’t find a drilling part,
01:30:01 like it’s so hard to find drilling partners, even.
01:30:04 So boring.
01:30:05 It’s annoying to me that this is boring.
01:30:07 And there’s nothing more annoying to me
01:30:09 than the look of boredom on another person’s face
01:30:12 when we’re drilling.
01:30:13 Yeah.
01:30:13 It’s like, don’t you.
01:30:14 Do you really think drilling’s that beneficial to you?
01:30:15 Cause you said it’s a job.
01:30:16 Yes, yes.
01:30:17 Really?
01:30:18 And he thinks I’m an idiot, but yes.
01:30:19 Why?
01:30:20 Why am I, am I an idiot?
01:30:21 Or why is this drilling beneficial?
01:30:23 Well, let’s go with two trick questions.
01:30:26 Why is it so beneficial?
01:30:28 I think for me, it’s, there’s a meditative aspect to it
01:30:34 where the more you drill,
01:30:36 the more you start noticing the details.
01:30:40 Let me push back a little bit here.
01:30:43 I’m not going to push back all the way.
01:30:44 Cause every time, if I was wrestling,
01:30:47 I’ll warm up my head, crotch, shin, leg, whatever, right?
01:30:49 But even, so say like at a high level
01:30:51 when I’m really wrestling, say 10 years ago,
01:30:55 even during that drill portion,
01:30:56 if we talk about the resistance of our opponent
01:30:58 from zero to 100,
01:31:01 it’s very likely that my partner at that point,
01:31:04 and this is people I’m really comfortable with,
01:31:05 they’re probably at least going 20 or 30, right?
01:31:07 They’re probably giving me a certain look with the sprawl
01:31:09 or, you know, I got to get through their hands.
01:31:11 If I don’t set it up right,
01:31:13 they might put their arm down, right?
01:31:14 So it’s like, we are drilling
01:31:16 cause we’re wrestling at a really low resistance level,
01:31:19 but there’s a little bit of sparring.
01:31:20 Oh yeah, yeah.
01:31:21 The 20%, the 20, yeah, yeah.
01:31:22 Yeah, so that’s not really drilling.
01:31:24 Cause I think it’s drilling.
01:31:25 I think literally you’re shooting
01:31:27 and I’m just going boom, I’m like,
01:31:28 show me your dummy, boom, boom, boom, boom type of thing.
01:31:31 No, but it’s very hard to be a dummy
01:31:32 that doesn’t do 20%, so you’re going to do 20%.
01:31:35 Yeah, that’s so, so yes, that’s 20%.
01:31:37 But.
01:31:38 So that’s like sparring a little bit then.
01:31:40 No, but they’re not really resisting.
01:31:41 They’re just giving you the right frame.
01:31:43 They’re giving you the right like movement
01:31:46 and they’re being an intelligent dummy, essentially.
01:31:49 I mean, but also like the really important component
01:31:53 of this is you pick the techniques for which is beneficial.
01:31:56 If the technique is, has dynamic elements to it,
01:31:59 you don’t want to be doing that with,
01:32:02 I’m saying like there’s certain moves
01:32:05 and I like those moves and I select the game base
01:32:08 in those moves.
01:32:08 So are you drilling to get better
01:32:10 or are you drilling just to work out?
01:32:12 No, to get better.
01:32:13 That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
01:32:14 I believe you can become like exceptionally good
01:32:17 very fast by drilling.
01:32:19 But how?
01:32:22 First of all, let me ask you an empirical question.
01:32:24 Let me, have you actually drilled 10,000 times
01:32:28 a particular move?
01:32:29 Millions.
01:32:31 You haven’t drilled millions.
01:32:32 Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands likely.
01:32:34 I think you’re just saying numbers.
01:32:36 I don’t think you know what 100,000.
01:32:37 The numbers are freaking astronomical.
01:32:39 It’s way more than 10,000.
01:32:39 I don’t think you know what 100,000 feels like.
01:32:41 Dude, there was a 10 year period
01:32:42 where I wrestled every single day.
01:32:44 That’s 3,000 days, so you’re telling me 10,000,
01:32:47 that’s only three of them a day.
01:32:48 I do way more than that.
01:32:50 Three of them.
01:32:51 Probably 30 of them a day.
01:32:52 That’s 100,000.
01:32:53 Yeah.
01:32:54 Yeah, hundreds of thousands.
01:32:56 I doubt you did 30 a day for a particular technique.
01:32:57 I did, for sure, 100%.
01:33:00 There’s no doubt.
01:33:01 All right.
01:33:02 Because some days I might do 100, right?
01:33:04 So 30 of 30 is not very many.
01:33:05 Especially if we count all reps,
01:33:07 if we’re counting drilling and live.
01:33:09 So like our college coaches would make us just drill a lot
01:33:11 and I just hated it.
01:33:12 So I would rebel and just kind of give a little spar.
01:33:15 You shoot a high crotch, we’ll start.
01:33:17 Coach wants to drill a high crotch.
01:33:18 Okay, we’ll start.
01:33:18 You shoot the high crotch, that’s great.
01:33:20 Then I’m gonna sit the corner or I’m gonna give you my hip
01:33:22 or I’m gonna try something.
01:33:24 So then you have to react.
01:33:25 And I would argue that all skill level
01:33:29 past the beginner stuff is some necessity of that, right?
01:33:34 I’m gonna do this, then what are you gonna do?
01:33:36 It’s back and forth.
01:33:37 I shoot a single leg, what are you gonna do?
01:33:38 I shoot a high crotch, what are you gonna do?
01:33:39 And you have to start unconsciously programming
01:33:42 these things in your head.
01:33:43 Because if you’re too conscious to think about it,
01:33:44 it’s gonna be too slow to actually hit it at math.
01:33:45 But the drilling is the unconscious programming.
01:33:48 But the simple movement, the first simple movement,
01:33:51 the first simple movement, that single leg
01:33:53 or the high crotch or arm drag, whatever.
01:33:55 Like I feel like the amount you’re gonna get better at it
01:34:00 is so minuscule compared to the amount you’re gonna gain
01:34:02 at doing other things around it.
01:34:05 No, but that’s the key word, you feel.
01:34:09 That’s your opinion.
01:34:09 If we did a study on it, then I would be proven correct.
01:34:13 No, perhaps.
01:34:15 So first of all, your brain,
01:34:16 as an exceptionally creative combat athlete,
01:34:20 it’s clear that you don’t like the boredom of drilling.
01:34:24 Like it’s obvious that you have like,
01:34:26 you’re such a creative energy
01:34:28 that you’re just not going to be somebody
01:34:31 who’s going to enjoy that.
01:34:32 So enjoyment is probably having an active mind
01:34:35 is really important.
01:34:36 So the question is, do you have the kind of makeup
01:34:39 that has an active mind during a drilling on a dummy?
01:34:44 And I have that mind.
01:34:47 Like I can.
01:34:47 But do you really think, okay,
01:34:48 so if you’re, let’s pick a technique.
01:34:51 What technique do you want to drill on?
01:34:53 Are we doing jiu jitsu or wrestling?
01:34:54 Whatever you want.
01:34:56 It’s hard to describe with words, but certain guard passes.
01:35:00 Let me think, just guard pass.
01:35:03 Okay, so you have a guard pass
01:35:04 and you get it to be, I’d say nine and a half out of 10,
01:35:07 right, just from a technical standpoint.
01:35:09 Don’t you think you need some resistance to feel?
01:35:12 Because essentially all benefit after that
01:35:15 is going to be, what are they going to try to do to me?
01:35:18 And if they shift that way,
01:35:19 do I need to sink here or move there?
01:35:21 So it’s like, I actually think we’re agreeing,
01:35:25 but maybe terminology wise.
01:35:27 Well, the split is the important thing.
01:35:28 Like how much of each?
01:35:30 So I think it is spar.
01:35:32 Like I think it’s a very light touch spar
01:35:34 is what you’re talking about,
01:35:36 which is in my opinion, really isn’t drilling.
01:35:38 And it’s because drilling past the basic proficiency,
01:35:41 I don’t think brings much value.
01:35:43 But that’s what I’m trying to tell you is I think it does.
01:35:45 I think doing that same movement,
01:35:51 I think you begin to learn more over time.
01:35:54 Like you’re saying like once you get the basic proficiency,
01:35:57 then there’s a diminishing returns.
01:36:00 I don’t think so.
01:36:01 I don’t think so.
01:36:02 I think everything has diminishing returns
01:36:04 when you’re learning a technique.
01:36:06 But with something as complex as wrestling or grappling,
01:36:10 if you can have way more gains over here,
01:36:13 why focus on going from a 9.7 to a 9.8?
01:36:16 If this other area, if you’re spending so much time here
01:36:19 that this other area is left unexplored,
01:36:21 you can make gigantic gains over there.
01:36:23 No, but you’re gonna lose.
01:36:25 I think a lot depends on your style.
01:36:28 I think a lot is determined by how good you are
01:36:31 at one thing.
01:36:33 And so if you wanna become a master of a particular thing
01:36:36 and then make your whole game
01:36:37 where it’s all pulled into that system, then I don’t know.
01:36:41 I think one is too small of a number.
01:36:42 Yeah, it’s small.
01:36:44 I feel like you can’t be easily this, like I’ve.
01:36:47 Yeah, you wanna funnel, you wanna create funnels.
01:36:50 Funnels. Funnels, right?
01:36:51 Where everything goes into a few positions.
01:36:52 And then it’s all field.
01:36:53 Where I feel you win 100%.
01:36:54 Yeah. Yeah.
01:36:55 But I feel you can get like drilling on a dummy 80%
01:37:00 of the time and 20% of the time live rolling
01:37:06 with people worse than you.
01:37:08 Like a little bit worse than you.
01:37:10 Or a lot worse than you.
01:37:11 Yeah, so I think, I definitely think.
01:37:13 So my buildup would be teach.
01:37:17 So we’re talking a complex technique, right?
01:37:19 So by the time we’re talking about,
01:37:21 we’ll say a late high school kid who’s pretty proficient,
01:37:24 he’s probably done the drilling part.
01:37:26 So then now it’s like, okay,
01:37:28 if I wanna get something new to you,
01:37:30 I’ll probably tell you,
01:37:31 you’ll probably be able to do the basic premise
01:37:32 within five to 10 minutes if they’re good, right?
01:37:35 Do this, okay, they do it.
01:37:36 Then it’s like, okay, so now here from here,
01:37:38 what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna go light sparring.
01:37:40 So I know you have success.
01:37:42 Cause I need you to complete the task
01:37:43 in order to get better at it.
01:37:44 That’s something a lot of people in wrestling mess up,
01:37:46 is they just wanna go with the toughest person.
01:37:47 But if you go with the toughest person,
01:37:49 you’re not gonna actually execute on any skills.
01:37:51 You’re gonna get a workout and I need you to execute
01:37:54 cause I need you to get good at this.
01:37:55 In order to get good at it,
01:37:56 you have to get all the way through the technique.
01:37:57 Why do you need them to complete?
01:37:58 Just so they gain confidence in the technique
01:38:00 or they go through all this stuff?
01:38:01 They have to feel all the way through.
01:38:03 Like if I said, learn a high crotch when you’re drilling
01:38:07 but stop halfway every time.
01:38:08 But you’re not actually gonna be able to do it
01:38:10 cause you’re gonna stop, you’re not gonna feel.
01:38:12 So, you know, try it on someone, spar lightly, get it.
01:38:16 Do it on someone who’s not as good as you, get it.
01:38:18 Then kind of work your way up the ladder
01:38:20 so you can get it on someone your own skill level
01:38:21 or maybe better than you, right, in a live competition.
01:38:24 So it’s like, I don’t know,
01:38:26 I feel like that basic drilling,
01:38:28 so a kid like Keegan who I’ve brought up a few times,
01:38:31 I feel like if there’s something new,
01:38:32 I could literally tell him,
01:38:33 this is what I want you to do
01:38:34 and he’s such a great feeler,
01:38:36 he could go drill it proficiently
01:38:37 within probably a minute or two.
01:38:40 But then to hit it on someone high level,
01:38:41 that’s gonna take quite a while longer.
01:38:44 And that’s a mix of drilling and sparring
01:38:48 on people a little bit worse than you.
01:38:49 Yeah, and then equal and then better, yeah.
01:38:52 Okay.
01:38:53 Yeah, because there’s this, with grappling,
01:38:56 there’s such like a feel component to the pressure,
01:38:58 the movement, all these things.
01:39:00 And there’s still, like I said,
01:39:01 there’s so many things you can throw at someone
01:39:03 out of one position, not just moves,
01:39:05 but moves at a different level of force or whatever.
01:39:10 Are you and these kids developing
01:39:11 like a big picture strategy of like,
01:39:14 what are the main setups and take downs
01:39:18 and just like a whole system?
01:39:21 So I kind of sent you our technique book, right,
01:39:24 how we kind of go at approach it.
01:39:26 So I think in wrestling, you’re going to need,
01:39:31 you’re gonna need a handful of things
01:39:32 just off the word go, right?
01:39:34 You’re going to, so I think on our feet,
01:39:37 I need to be able to take this out of the body.
01:39:38 I need to be able to take that out of the body.
01:39:40 I need to be able to bring you underneath me.
01:39:42 I need to be able to go around you, right?
01:39:44 Now we can accomplish those different ways,
01:39:46 but we should have all of those weapons
01:39:48 if we wanna be really good some way, right?
01:39:51 So if I neglect one of those,
01:39:52 so if I neglect the ability to say, pull you down, right?
01:39:54 Front lock you.
01:39:56 Now, if I have a good shot and you’re smart,
01:39:58 you’re just gonna lower your stance.
01:39:59 So my shot is not gonna be as successful
01:40:01 and I have the inability to pull you down, right?
01:40:03 So I kind of need all of those so I can,
01:40:06 as they get better, I can point those things out.
01:40:09 On bottom, my folks at bottom,
01:40:11 there’s certain things like you have to be good
01:40:13 at leg right defense, right?
01:40:15 You have to, I mean, at a high level or you’re just gonna,
01:40:18 when you get it in, you’re just getting stuck there.
01:40:20 Not gonna be able to escape.
01:40:22 But besides that, yeah, there’s a multitude of things
01:40:24 that you can choose from and I’m gonna,
01:40:26 depending on your body style and what you’re good and bad
01:40:30 at, I’m gonna probably develop something a little different.
01:40:32 I might give you, hey, you do the quad pod,
01:40:34 you’d be better at the knee slide, whatever.
01:40:38 Yeah, top, kind of same thing.
01:40:40 I have to ask you about Khabib.
01:40:42 So I remember a while ago Rogan said
01:40:44 that that’s the perfect fight for Khabib, you are.
01:40:50 So let me ask two questions.
01:40:52 The first, do you think you can beat him in an MMA match
01:40:55 when you’re at your peak?
01:40:56 Yeah, I don’t like, yeah, I mean,
01:40:59 it’s one of those people where people will get really mad
01:41:01 at me if I say yes, but yeah, I mean, I think.
01:41:02 But how would you do it?
01:41:03 How would you solve that puzzle?
01:41:05 Yeah, I mean, we would grapple
01:41:08 and I think I would be better than him.
01:41:10 But you know, sometimes I feel weird saying this,
01:41:12 people are like, yeah, right, you’re full of shit.
01:41:14 And, but that’s no one out grappled him, right?
01:41:18 I mean, nobody did.
01:41:18 And maybe I’m wrong on this,
01:41:20 but if we look at the best possible candidates,
01:41:23 I’m definitely one of them.
01:41:25 And then obviously I have a small size advantage too.
01:41:28 So in a wrestling match,
01:41:30 so we can just reduce that MMA match to a wrestling match.
01:41:33 What do you think is the right strategy on him?
01:41:35 Like, do you understand his style,
01:41:39 his wrestling style, the pressure he applies?
01:41:41 Do you understand how the hell he makes it happen?
01:41:44 Yeah, I mean, he never, unfortunately,
01:41:46 fought any real, who I would say,
01:41:48 really, really high level wrestlers.
01:41:50 I was actually really disappointed
01:41:51 how bad Justin Gaethje’s wrestling was,
01:41:52 because Justin Gaethje had some solid success,
01:41:55 but his wrestling was really bad in that fight.
01:41:58 Gaethje had success in the NCAA?
01:42:00 Yeah, I think he was seventh place, maybe, or somewhere.
01:42:03 He was definitely all American.
01:42:05 It was lower though.
01:42:09 So yeah, I would like to see how he dealt with someone
01:42:11 who was like, who I think, oh man,
01:42:12 this guy’s a really high level wrestler.
01:42:14 Because we saw, and this is early in his career,
01:42:16 but Gleason Tebow did give him some issues
01:42:18 earlier in his career.
01:42:21 So I would like to see him in that situation
01:42:22 and see how he does.
01:42:23 I would love to, I just love wrestling and grappling.
01:42:26 Yeah, I’d love this.
01:42:27 Someone said, hey, Ben, Khabib wants to roll with you.
01:42:30 Okay, I’m there tomorrow.
01:42:32 It sounds like a blast.
01:42:33 Let’s go.
01:42:34 He’s probably competitive as hell.
01:42:35 Yeah.
01:42:36 You’re still competitive?
01:42:37 I know when to be and when not to be.
01:42:40 Say if I’m going to high school kids,
01:42:41 or I’m not going to be competitive
01:42:43 because then I’m just being a dick.
01:42:45 How would you take him down?
01:42:48 What?
01:42:49 What are we talking about, real wrestling?
01:42:49 Like wrestling, wrestling?
01:42:50 Wrestling, wrestling.
01:42:51 I would probably try to take single legs and stuff.
01:42:53 Single legs?
01:42:54 Yeah.
01:42:55 I haven’t, okay.
01:42:57 None, none.
01:42:58 No, honestly, I don’t have the slightest clue.
01:43:01 I’d have to feel, I’d feel him out.
01:43:03 But single legs is my best take on it.
01:43:03 People talk about his wrestling being really good.
01:43:06 People that train with him.
01:43:07 So, okay, so I grilled someone, I will not say who,
01:43:12 on the Ed Ruth thing,
01:43:13 because Ed Ruth is very elite at folk style wrestling.
01:43:15 He never became that great at fighting, unfortunately.
01:43:17 Wait, Ed Ruth wrestled Khabib?
01:43:19 They were on the same team for a while, yeah.
01:43:20 Okay.
01:43:21 And there was rumors that Khabib beat him up.
01:43:23 And I said, I sure can’t believe that.
01:43:27 And I’ve heard that that was,
01:43:29 if they were just straight wrestling,
01:43:30 Ed would get slightly the better of it.
01:43:33 Well, Ed Ruth is like one of the greats.
01:43:35 He’s great.
01:43:36 He’s really good.
01:43:36 Yeah.
01:43:37 So that was what I heard.
01:43:39 But in an MMA setting,
01:43:41 because of all the tools that Khabib would get him.
01:43:45 I don’t know.
01:43:47 But I agree.
01:43:48 I agree with Rogan on this one.
01:43:49 That would have been good to see.
01:43:50 Yeah, I’m fine.
01:43:51 So yeah, if Khabib wants to work out, I’d love it.
01:43:54 I love wrestling and grappling.
01:43:56 I don’t do much Jiu Jitsu
01:43:57 because I just don’t have time for it anymore.
01:43:58 I’m at the Wrestling Academy like every single day.
01:44:01 But yeah, I loved Jiu Jitsu while I did it.
01:44:03 And if I didn’t have Wrestling Academies,
01:44:05 I probably would still be doing Jiu Jitsu.
01:44:06 Yeah, you do well in Jiu Jitsu as well.
01:44:09 But let me ask you a ridiculous question.
01:44:12 Who’s the greatest of all time, freestyle or folk style?
01:44:15 Oh, wrestling.
01:44:15 Wrestling.
01:44:16 Hmm.
01:44:17 Well, I will say my knowledge past like the year 2000
01:44:22 is really not that great.
01:44:25 Because you can’t be.
01:44:26 In which direction?
01:44:26 Sorry, after 2000?
01:44:27 No, no, before.
01:44:28 Because you can’t find any film or anything, you know?
01:44:30 And so you hear of all these.
01:44:31 So you need evidence?
01:44:32 You need direct evidence?
01:44:33 I want to be able to watch them and see them
01:44:35 and feel the times and feel their opponents
01:44:36 and all those things to really like,
01:44:38 I hate giving bad answers, you know?
01:44:40 So there’s just not enough footage of any of those people.
01:44:44 You know, we go back to someone like Alexander Medved.
01:44:47 Like, you can’t find footage.
01:44:48 You can’t find anything on him, you know?
01:44:50 It’s like, who is the wrestler?
01:44:52 I’m not sure.
01:44:53 So post 2000, I think, and obviously just freestyle.
01:44:57 So.
01:45:00 Americans, Russians?
01:45:01 Oh, it’s just that T.F. has probably the best argument
01:45:04 post 2000.
01:45:04 Yeah, the Russian tank, that guy is, yeah.
01:45:08 So who’s better, Snyder or Sajilov?
01:45:11 So Sajilov just won at the Olympics.
01:45:12 Now, I understand this.
01:45:13 I don’t understand how that works,
01:45:14 but it’s pretty close, right?
01:45:16 Not really.
01:45:17 Not that match, but in general, the matchup.
01:45:19 So, well, so Kyle won the first one in 17.
01:45:22 Sajilov pinned him the following year.
01:45:24 But then Kyle lost and took bronze in 19.
01:45:28 And then just lost.
01:45:30 I don’t want to say fairly decisively,
01:45:32 but it was six to three and it was a late take down.
01:45:35 He kind of gave it up and maybe if it was really competitive,
01:45:38 maybe he wouldn’t have.
01:45:40 They’re gonna wrestle again in like two weeks here.
01:45:43 So that, you know, yeah, I mean,
01:45:45 you have to say Sajilov at this point.
01:45:47 There’s nothing else to say
01:45:48 unless Kyle proves us otherwise.
01:45:50 Yeah, not enough people talk about Sajilov.
01:45:53 Okay, well, you think that guy should go to MMA?
01:45:57 You think Kyle should go to MMA?
01:45:59 Some of these guys.
01:45:59 Yeah, they’re making enough money in wrestling
01:46:01 where they don’t really feel the need to.
01:46:03 It’s great. It’s terrifying though.
01:46:04 It’s a heavyweight, Sajilov would probably,
01:46:06 it’s like Khabib, but heavyweight.
01:46:09 Well, I don’t know if you remember,
01:46:10 do you remember Bilal Makov?
01:46:12 So Bilal Makov actually was the Russian representative
01:46:14 in both styles in 2016, Greco and freestyle.
01:46:18 And he was, to my knowledge,
01:46:20 the only person the UFC has ever signed
01:46:22 that was zero and zero, in modern era,
01:46:24 signed that was zero and zero.
01:46:25 And then he actually never ended up fighting.
01:46:28 But weird, right?
01:46:29 So yeah. No motivation.
01:46:31 I don’t know what the story is.
01:46:32 Cause sometimes out of Russia,
01:46:34 I mean, maybe you have better sources than I do.
01:46:35 Sometimes it feels like dudes just disappear.
01:46:37 Like they’re a world champ or a little big champ
01:46:39 and then all of a sudden you’re like, wait, where’d he go?
01:46:42 You talked shit about Russia earlier in the conversation.
01:46:45 So. Oh, what’d I say?
01:46:46 I forgot, but I think.
01:46:48 Steroids.
01:46:49 I think somebody’s gonna show up to your door.
01:46:50 I’m worried.
01:46:51 I honestly, I’ve said enough bad things
01:46:53 where I would be a kind of looking over my shoulder
01:46:56 if I wanted to do something.
01:46:57 I, for one, love the Russians.
01:47:01 What about Icarus?
01:47:02 How does that make you feel?
01:47:03 What about it?
01:47:04 It’s fake news.
01:47:05 Oh, really?
01:47:06 I’m just kidding.
01:47:07 It’s propaganda?
01:47:07 Maybe it is.
01:47:08 I don’t know.
01:47:09 I don’t know what it is anymore.
01:47:10 Maybe it is.
01:47:11 Yeah.
01:47:12 You know, it’s troublesome, man.
01:47:13 I hate cheating in all of its forms.
01:47:16 Any other like recaps from the Olympics of 2020 Tokyo
01:47:20 that stood out to you?
01:47:21 Gable Stephenson?
01:47:21 Like anything like that?
01:47:22 Gable’s great.
01:47:23 Yeah.
01:47:24 No, I think America’s coming to the point
01:47:26 where we’re gonna compete with Russia
01:47:28 every single year in wrestling,
01:47:29 which obviously, you know,
01:47:32 long, long time ago, many, many years ago we were great.
01:47:36 And then kind of after that Soviet Union period,
01:47:39 I think there was a lot of poverty in that area.
01:47:41 And that kind of led the wrestling team
01:47:43 going down a little bit.
01:47:44 And then obviously a lot of those regions,
01:47:47 the way they found oil and gas in the Caspian Sea, I believe.
01:47:51 And they’ve been really kind of on the upswing
01:47:54 for the last 20 years.
01:47:54 And now America really, since 2012,
01:47:58 has been on the upswing in wrestling.
01:47:59 And we’re kind of really competing with them.
01:48:02 And they’re not sending a couple of their best guys.
01:48:04 So for those who don’t know,
01:48:06 the Olympics moved back a year.
01:48:08 So they are hosting the 2021 World Championships,
01:48:11 despite the fact that we just had the Olympics
01:48:12 two months ago.
01:48:13 So it’s happening next week in Oslo, Norway.
01:48:15 So like Russia’s not sending their number one at 57
01:48:18 and their number one at 65.
01:48:19 So it’s like, America’s probably gonna win, I think.
01:48:23 I don’t wanna guarantee anything,
01:48:24 but there’s a really good chance of it.
01:48:26 Is Dave Taylor, all of those guys, competing?
01:48:28 America gave any of the Olympians that medaled
01:48:31 the opportunity to not even have to wrestle off.
01:48:33 They just got to keep the spot
01:48:34 since it was two months later if they medaled.
01:48:36 So the only one who’s not is Gable.
01:48:38 Gable’s moving on.
01:48:40 We have a pretty good guy behind him.
01:48:41 Nick Wisniewski is a world medalist.
01:48:44 But then he’s, so Burrell’s filled in the 79 spot.
01:48:47 Jayden Cox filled in the 92 spot,
01:48:49 who’s a world champion also.
01:48:50 So we have a pretty good squad.
01:48:52 A hell of a team. Pretty good squad, yeah.
01:48:54 Pretty good squad. Pretty happy.
01:48:56 So given your run in Bellator in one championship,
01:48:59 that was like one of the most dominant runs in MMA.
01:49:03 What would you say was like key to your dominance
01:49:06 in that long undefeated streak?
01:49:08 Huh, probably consistency would be one.
01:49:12 The fact that I just, I lived and trained the same way
01:49:16 no matter where my life was,
01:49:17 whereas a lot of fighters,
01:49:18 once they start making money for the first time,
01:49:20 they have all these obligations and they travel
01:49:22 and they really enjoy making money.
01:49:24 And that’s kind of why some of them fall off.
01:49:27 So you had like the same process,
01:49:29 like the same camp. Yeah, I stayed at my house.
01:49:31 I didn’t vacation, yeah, everything.
01:49:33 Just, you know, and so that was a big part of it.
01:49:37 Obviously the style thing is like, no one could,
01:49:40 there was only a few people who could stop my style.
01:49:44 And I think I continue to get better
01:49:46 as a mixed martial artist.
01:49:48 And I wasn’t as innovative in mixed martial arts,
01:49:53 but there was a handful of things that I innovated,
01:49:56 you know, specifically in the top position
01:49:58 where I spent a lot of time where it was just like,
01:50:00 there was just, once I got on top of you,
01:50:02 it was like in a spider web
01:50:03 and there was just kind of no way out.
01:50:05 You know, you never felt the certain things I was doing.
01:50:08 And so people just, they gave up eventually.
01:50:11 How’s the level of wrestling in MMA would you say?
01:50:14 So I saw somewhere like champions,
01:50:19 the most popular martial art for current UFC champions
01:50:22 are all wrestling.
01:50:24 So we just lost a bunch of the belts.
01:50:27 Wrestling is a sport, right?
01:50:29 But yeah, at one point we had,
01:50:30 I think it was eight of nine maybe
01:50:32 or something to that effect.
01:50:34 And I think it’s not just wrestling,
01:50:36 not just the actual martial art of wrestling
01:50:39 that contributes to our success in mixed martial arts,
01:50:44 but other things like the way we’re systemized.
01:50:46 So most kids who have all this have went through
01:50:49 the high school program and the college program
01:50:50 and they know how to show up on time
01:50:51 and they know how to work hard.
01:50:53 So when they go to ATT or AKA or wherever,
01:50:56 they know how to show up on time
01:50:58 and they know how to work hard
01:50:58 and that’s gonna get you a really long way.
01:51:00 Just those two things, right?
01:51:01 Not even the techniques, it’s just the discipline.
01:51:03 Those things.
01:51:04 Then I think you throw on top of that the fact
01:51:06 that most of us have competed 1500 to 2000 times,
01:51:10 probably by the time we get to 20 something,
01:51:12 like that’s a huge advantage too.
01:51:13 Most of these other people from other disciplines
01:51:15 maybe have competed 100, if that, right?
01:51:18 So we have this competitive process down
01:51:20 really, really, really, really well.
01:51:23 Plus the weight cut.
01:51:24 The weight cut.
01:51:24 There’s all these things that factor into it.
01:51:27 I think the fact that we’re really open minded,
01:51:29 I think if you would, I don’t wanna pick on jiu jitsu again,
01:51:32 but how many jiu jitsu guys have became
01:51:35 highly proficient in wrestling
01:51:36 versus how many wrestling guys
01:51:37 have became highly proficient in jiu jitsu?
01:51:39 I think that number swings one way
01:51:41 and not that much the other way, you know?
01:51:44 So we’re open to adapting and learning
01:51:48 and for some reason, like jiu jitsu people,
01:51:52 how many of them have got high level wrestling?
01:51:54 Or even mediocre wrestling, the number’s really small.
01:51:57 They refuse to, it’s really frustrating.
01:52:00 Why won’t they do this?
01:52:01 This is obviously a part of it.
01:52:03 I don’t wanna pick on specific guys,
01:52:04 but there’s certain guys in the history of MMA
01:52:06 where you’re like, listen, man.
01:52:08 I mean, Damian Maia, who was my last fight,
01:52:10 is a great example of somebody who actually
01:52:12 did get proficient in wrestling, right?
01:52:15 But there’s some of these jiu jitsu guys who’s like,
01:52:16 if you just got on top, you would submit him.
01:52:18 Why can’t you learn a freaking takedown?
01:52:20 Like, holy moly, just learn how to take someone down.
01:52:23 Once you get them down, they will not get up
01:52:26 and you win the fight.
01:52:26 Like, it’s so easy, you know?
01:52:28 But they refuse.
01:52:29 How complicated is that journey?
01:52:30 So like Donaher that you mentioned, Craig Jones,
01:52:33 they’re big on wrestling as part of jiu jitsu now.
01:52:36 Like wrestling, not just on the feet,
01:52:38 but wrestling from the bottom coming up
01:52:41 and all that kind of stuff.
01:52:42 So how difficult is that whole skill set, would you say,
01:52:46 for a jiu jitsu person to learn?
01:52:48 Not that hard.
01:52:49 If they really put their mind to it.
01:52:50 Cause they already like, when you grapple,
01:52:52 and this is any grappling art,
01:52:54 like there’s a certain part of it that you kind of get
01:52:56 and it can, it might not be the exact same thing,
01:52:59 but you understand how your body moves
01:53:00 and how to feel certain pressures
01:53:02 and you can adapt yourself pretty quickly, you know?
01:53:04 So I don’t think, I think there’s a certain level
01:53:07 of stubbornness where they didn’t want to,
01:53:09 certain people didn’t want to do it for whatever reason.
01:53:12 I think a lot of times in MMA, it’s the I’m so macho,
01:53:16 I can stand and bang thing, you know,
01:53:17 where they want to show how macho they are.
01:53:21 But yeah, that was a frustrating one that they,
01:53:24 there’s a lot of wrestlers who became highly proficient
01:53:26 in jiu jitsu and really adapted
01:53:28 and it doesn’t go the other way.
01:53:29 And then I guess the other thing there too is
01:53:33 they can both steal from each other, right?
01:53:35 As any martial art can steal from another.
01:53:38 And like, I feel like jiu jitsu
01:53:40 didn’t do enough stealing from wrestling.
01:53:42 Like they should have looked at all the wrestling possible
01:53:44 and said, well, why don’t we steal that and that and that?
01:53:47 You know, and like, hey, let’s take that over.
01:53:48 And maybe we’d make a little tweak because it’s different,
01:53:52 but there’s something we can definitely use there.
01:53:53 So like in wrestling, for example,
01:53:57 you know there’s a one arm guillotine in jiu jitsu, right?
01:53:59 Okay, so there’s a move called, well, it’s got a hundred,
01:54:01 I mean, it’s like the oldest move in wrestling
01:54:03 because it’s what they did, the cows,
01:54:04 where they go around the chin and they throw them
01:54:05 on the back, how do we call that one?
01:54:07 I don’t know.
01:54:08 Okay, sorry, did you just ask me what I call that one?
01:54:11 Yeah.
01:54:12 Would you take a cow and grab it by the neck,
01:54:14 throw it to the side?
01:54:15 No, but in wrestling, in wrestling.
01:54:17 I don’t know.
01:54:18 Okay, we call it that.
01:54:19 Are you putting it under?
01:54:20 Yeah, so you can grab their chin
01:54:21 and then you go under their arm
01:54:22 and then throw them on their back.
01:54:23 Oh, okay, gotcha, yeah.
01:54:24 Yeah, so we call that the honey badger,
01:54:26 but it’s got different names,
01:54:28 wherever you go, it’s got different names.
01:54:30 So I would always, I would say like pre Jiu Jitsu,
01:54:34 I was average at it, like I could do it,
01:54:37 but against good people, you’d never get it for,
01:54:39 because they would get the back of their head up
01:54:42 and they were too strong where you couldn’t collapse them
01:54:44 by going over their neck, right?
01:54:45 Because the forces weren’t right.
01:54:46 So then in Jiu Jitsu, you learn the one arm gi team
01:54:48 where you grab their chin and this is more of running along
01:54:51 the side of their head and then you go here
01:54:53 and you choke them, right?
01:54:55 Much more efficient way to move their head
01:54:58 because the fulcrum is way down here
01:55:00 and their head can move into that, right?
01:55:02 So once I learned that in Jiu Jitsu, I’m like, wait,
01:55:06 I can do this in wrestling.
01:55:07 So now once I learn how to grab their chin the right way
01:55:10 and I do the honey badger, no one ever gets out.
01:55:12 I just had to steal that Jiu Jitsu,
01:55:14 put it in wrestling and boom, there we go.
01:55:16 But very few people steal any direction,
01:55:18 that takes creativity.
01:55:19 Really?
01:55:20 And open mindedness.
01:55:21 It’s so easy because it’s already done,
01:55:22 you just gotta steal it.
01:55:23 I mean, same with Judo, if you’re a gi Jiu Jitsu person,
01:55:27 there’s so much stuff in Judo that’s ripe for the stealing
01:55:32 because Judo is much more emphasizes explosive moves
01:55:39 on the transition, which is something Jiu Jitsu does not do.
01:55:42 Because you have some.
01:55:43 You mean from the take down to.
01:55:44 From the take down, but also just in general,
01:55:45 just in the transition, the concept of transition,
01:55:49 the Jiu Jitsu is very much about we’re in this position,
01:55:53 then we’re in this position, then we’re in this position.
01:55:56 The Judo is much more in when there’s chaos of any kind.
01:56:02 That’s when you need to strike.
01:56:04 And to learn that, I mean, that’s why people like
01:56:06 Travis Stevens and Judoka, when they go to Jiu Jitsu,
01:56:09 they can dominate.
01:56:10 But Jiu Jitsu people should steal that.
01:56:13 They’re too stubborn.
01:56:14 Yeah, but so is every, wrestlers are stubborn too.
01:56:17 No way, there would never be any stubborn wrestlers.
01:56:21 Well, I mean, I was surprised, all these coaches,
01:56:23 John Smith, Dan Gabel, they don’t really have interest
01:56:27 in MMA or Jiu Jitsu and so on.
01:56:31 But you would think somebody like a John Smith
01:56:33 would like put on a white belt and roll around.
01:56:36 Yeah, I think he’s just too focused on, you know.
01:56:39 Well, he’s a coach.
01:56:40 Well, he’s a coach and what he’s doing.
01:56:41 Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think if you take him when he’s younger,
01:56:45 he would have a lot of fun.
01:56:46 We actually have a really good wrestler
01:56:47 making his MMA debut tomorrow.
01:56:48 I don’t know if you, Bo Nickel,
01:56:49 I’m sure you’ve heard of him, very high level.
01:56:51 I think he’s gonna have a lot of success.
01:56:54 I mean, some people might say that like Jiu Jitsu
01:56:57 makes you a little comfortable being in your back
01:57:01 and for a wrestler, that could be like really bad.
01:57:03 I hate that take.
01:57:05 Yeah, but that’s the Dan Gabel take.
01:57:07 It’s so stupid, it’s so stupid.
01:57:09 For God’s sakes, we know the fucking rules.
01:57:12 Just, in wrestling, you don’t go to your back.
01:57:13 In Jiu Jitsu, you can, it’s like, whatever.
01:57:16 Yeah, yeah.
01:57:17 But like, so Jiu Jitsu, for example,
01:57:19 so I coached, when I was at Rufus, I coached the wrestling
01:57:22 for a long, I don’t know, three, four, five years.
01:57:25 So I’ve been taking a Jiu Jitsu guy
01:57:28 and teaching them a wrestling technique
01:57:29 where you needed to use your feet.
01:57:33 To teach a Jiu Jitsu guy, so easy, so simple,
01:57:35 because they already understand the concept,
01:57:37 butterfly guard, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?
01:57:39 To take a wrestler who’s never done any of it
01:57:42 and teach him how to use his feet,
01:57:43 oh my God, it’s such a beast, it’s so hard,
01:57:46 because that’s not a weapon they’re thinking about using.
01:57:49 So it’s like, we understand the rules.
01:57:51 It’s like freestyle folks are wrestling.
01:57:52 Freestyle, if I’m on the mat, I can lock my hands.
01:57:55 You don’t see people locking their hands
01:57:56 all the time in folk style just because they did freestyle.
01:57:58 It’s like, they get it.
01:57:59 There’s a rule, they understand it.
01:58:00 So the notion that somehow you come from on your back.
01:58:04 But pinning, that’s like a, it has a special meaning.
01:58:08 Yeah, but I actually think, so Jiu Jitsu,
01:58:11 you don’t actually wanna be flat, flat very often, right?
01:58:16 You don’t wanna be.
01:58:17 I always wondered this,
01:58:18 because I did a couple of catch wrestling tournaments,
01:58:21 and I did, I would put myself in butterfly guard,
01:58:26 and I wasn’t going against good people,
01:58:28 so which is why I was doing all these things.
01:58:30 But I wondered if you could create a system of wrestling
01:58:34 where you’re butterfly guard.
01:58:37 So I think that there’s a few places where I use it.
01:58:40 But so specifically the Elevator Series,
01:58:41 which my main series up bottom,
01:58:43 it is, it’s not butterfly guard.
01:58:45 It’s a butterfly guard grip with your foot.
01:58:47 So I boom, I go here, I catch your leg with my foot,
01:58:50 boom, and I elevate you over, right?
01:58:53 And then also sometimes,
01:58:56 I think Keegan does this too from watching me,
01:58:57 but if I get double leg,
01:58:59 sometimes if I’m accepting, so freestyle,
01:59:02 obviously you’re gonna give him points,
01:59:03 you’re gonna focus on accepting that you’ve already got me,
01:59:05 and as I go down, I’m just gonna butterfly guard you up,
01:59:09 and then I’m gonna try to flip my hip back to the mat,
01:59:11 and end up in a wizard position.
01:59:13 I’ve used that quite a few times,
01:59:15 where it’s kind of like a bailout mechanism
01:59:17 that gets me back to maybe not a great position,
01:59:20 but obviously much better than being taken down.
01:59:23 Beautiful. Yeah.
01:59:24 Let me ask you quickly about crypto,
01:59:26 because you’re also, you have a show.
01:59:30 You have a lot of interest in cryptocurrency.
01:59:33 Why are you interested in cryptocurrency?
01:59:36 Is it just a financial investment,
01:59:38 or is there a philosophy that attracts you to it?
01:59:40 So I, my friend told me about it in 2017.
01:59:44 I was actually, I went to, I was,
01:59:46 my friend met me in Shanghai.
01:59:47 I fought in one championship, and he told me,
01:59:50 and the second he told me, I’m like, oh, I’m so in,
01:59:54 because I had read Ron Paul and the Fed.
01:59:56 I had read, I kind of had an understanding
01:59:58 how the Fed is unfair,
02:00:02 and so when he told me about crypto,
02:00:03 this decentralized system that no one has control over,
02:00:07 it just made sense, and so we’ve had the podcast,
02:00:09 to say Michael Saylor on it, and I love the way he says it.
02:00:11 It’s like, who do you trust more with your money?
02:00:13 Do you trust the politicians, or do you trust engineers?
02:00:16 I think that’s an easy choice.
02:00:18 I don’t even think, I don’t even think
02:00:19 I have to think about that.
02:00:20 I don’t trust politicians, no matter what country they come
02:00:22 from, China, America, wherever, I don’t trust them.
02:00:26 So. So what about in 2017, what was it, Bitcoin?
02:00:33 Are you, what do you find, which ones do you find interesting?
02:00:38 Yeah. There’s all kinds of ideas,
02:00:39 there’s the more sort of primal mechanism
02:00:44 of proof of work and Bitcoin,
02:00:46 and then there’s smart contracts, ideas,
02:00:48 and there’s all kinds of innovations
02:00:50 across the different points.
02:00:53 So I can’t say I’m in super deep
02:00:55 where I understand the technical components
02:00:57 of a lot of them.
02:00:57 I understand what Bitcoin can do for people,
02:00:59 and so that’s probably the one I’ve focused the most on.
02:01:03 And I actually, I think I was talking about,
02:01:05 I was trying to convince Michael to talk about Bitcoin
02:01:07 because he hates it also, what he did last night.
02:01:09 And I think most of the main problems Bitcoin solves,
02:01:13 people in America are so American centric,
02:01:15 they don’t understand it.
02:01:16 So like high levels of inflation,
02:01:18 that hasn’t happened in, it’s starting to happen,
02:01:20 it hasn’t happened in America in a long time, right?
02:01:21 But someone in Venezuela is like, oh, I get that, you know,
02:01:25 or remittance payments, right?
02:01:27 Remittance payments to, you see it.
02:01:30 So I saw this in, when I was spending all the time
02:01:32 in Singapore, Singapore is obviously
02:01:34 a really wealthy country,
02:01:36 and so you’d have Indonesian workers or Filipino,
02:01:39 and they would all go on Sundays,
02:01:40 they would go to these places to ship stuff
02:01:42 back to their families and through Western Union,
02:01:44 Western Union gouges the shit out of these people.
02:01:46 I mean, they’re taking eight, 10, 12%
02:01:49 of whatever they’re sending,
02:01:50 then it takes five days and the person’s gonna go pick it up,
02:01:52 whereas Bitcoin, I could send you Bitcoin
02:01:55 person to person, right?
02:01:56 So like American people don’t understand that.
02:01:59 American people don’t really understand the unbanked, right?
02:02:01 A decent portion of the world is unbanked,
02:02:03 they don’t have access to it.
02:02:04 And a much, much, much smaller portion of the world
02:02:07 doesn’t have access to internet.
02:02:08 So if I can put a mobile wallet on your phone,
02:02:11 and we can send money person to person.
02:02:13 So there’s a whole bunch of those problems
02:02:15 where Americans don’t really think about
02:02:16 that are really obvious that this solves.
02:02:20 So I think that’s a key one,
02:02:21 obviously the fact that the value goes up
02:02:24 is really outstanding also,
02:02:25 but if you look at it, I got in in 2017,
02:02:29 so I got to watch it go up.
02:02:31 I didn’t sell shit at the top, really stupid.
02:02:34 And then the majority of my time
02:02:35 was spent through the bear market.
02:02:37 And so I had to love it for the principles that it provided,
02:02:39 not the fact that I actually lost money in the beginning
02:02:42 and now I’m way up, but yeah.
02:02:45 So I think that.
02:02:46 And you’re just holding.
02:02:47 Just holding.
02:02:48 I think at the top of this bull market,
02:02:50 I’ll probably sell a very small portion, just to.
02:02:53 So you mean like right now there’s a bull market?
02:02:56 Yeah, most people think say in the next three to six months
02:02:59 we’ll be at the top of the market.
02:03:00 And so probably when that happens,
02:03:02 I’ll probably sell a little bit.
02:03:04 You gotta hodl it, Ben.
02:03:06 You gotta hodl.
02:03:07 Well, yeah.
02:03:07 So here’s what I am.
02:03:08 So one of my podcast cohosts, he’s like super rich,
02:03:12 like super rich.
02:03:13 So he has lost touch with the every man.
02:03:16 So here’s my argument to him, it’s really simple.
02:03:19 And listen, I’m doing well for myself in life,
02:03:20 but if say someone buys a Bitcoin, right?
02:03:24 One Bitcoin at $5,000, which it was last year.
02:03:27 And this Bitcoin goes from $5,000 to $200,000,
02:03:31 which is right around what a lot of people think
02:03:34 the peak is going to be.
02:03:35 They bought one Bitcoin.
02:03:36 And they’re living in a $200,000 house.
02:03:39 So to take half of that, right?
02:03:42 You started with $5,000 of the Bitcoin,
02:03:44 to sell half a Bitcoin for $100,000
02:03:47 and pay off your house, your remaining house payment,
02:03:49 that’s life changing to someone.
02:03:51 It really is.
02:03:52 And so you still have a Bitcoin,
02:03:53 so if Bitcoin goes to a million,
02:03:54 you’re still gonna have half a million,
02:03:56 and you’re gonna feel really, really rich
02:03:58 with that half a million dollars
02:03:59 because you bought it for effing $2,500, you know?
02:04:02 So yeah, so I would encourage anyone who’s not uber rich
02:04:06 to, if you have huge profits, take a little bit of them
02:04:08 because it could change your life.
02:04:11 And if you hold it and it goes down,
02:04:14 you’re going to feel the pain of that.
02:04:16 Like sometimes if you’re more constrained financially,
02:04:19 it’s much more psychologically difficult
02:04:21 to ride the ups and downs.
02:04:22 Yeah, it is for sure.
02:04:23 So they have these really fascinating things in Bitcoin.
02:04:26 Actually, one of the main guys on our podcast,
02:04:29 it’s called Onchain Metrics.
02:04:31 So all wallet transactions are visible, you know?
02:04:34 And so they have all these fun categories.
02:04:37 So I think you said you don’t like numbers, but.
02:04:39 I like numbers.
02:04:40 Oh, you love numbers.
02:04:41 So I love numbers also.
02:04:42 So they have all these different categories.
02:04:44 Like you can see how long a wallet has held a Bitcoin,
02:04:49 or how many Bitcoins are in a certain wallet.
02:04:51 And so what they’ve seen during the downturn,
02:04:54 so April it kind of peaked and went down,
02:04:55 is that the whales are still buying.
02:04:58 So whales, people of a thousand or more are still buying.
02:05:01 They’ve said the main group of sellers
02:05:04 is the ones who held it from zero to three months.
02:05:06 So like they don’t have money.
02:05:07 They bought it because they thought it was going up.
02:05:09 And I was like, oh shit, I got to sell it, right?
02:05:11 Whereas anyone who’s held it for a long time
02:05:13 is generally still holding on to it.
02:05:15 That’s interesting.
02:05:16 That’s a good indicator, right, for the whole space.
02:05:19 Yeah.
02:05:20 Well, let me ask you for some advice.
02:05:21 You’ve been through one heck of a career,
02:05:24 one heck of a life.
02:05:25 What advice would you give to a young person today?
02:05:28 Well, in wrestling, I think wrestling’s really a microcosm
02:05:32 of what your life’s going to be.
02:05:33 And that’s why one of the things I stress to kids is like,
02:05:36 if we can go through this now and figure,
02:05:38 I have a couple of kids who are struggling
02:05:39 with certain things right now.
02:05:40 If you can figure it out this now in wrestling,
02:05:42 it’s going to be a lot better to figure it out now
02:05:44 and get over this mental hump
02:05:46 than when you’re 32 and you have two kids, right,
02:05:49 and your job’s not going well.
02:05:50 It’s going to be a lot worse.
02:05:51 It’s going to be a lot more painful then.
02:05:52 Let’s fucking figure it out now.
02:05:54 So a lot of these things, a lot of these lessons
02:05:56 we can learn from wrestling,
02:05:57 whether it’s persistence or perseverance or work ethic,
02:06:00 or, you know what I said,
02:06:01 wrestlers show up on time and they work hard, right?
02:06:03 These things, if we can learn these things at an early age,
02:06:05 those are general, those characteristics
02:06:08 will generally carry on throughout our life.
02:06:10 And those are the things
02:06:11 that are going to make us really successful.
02:06:12 So, you know, I would say find a great coach,
02:06:15 someone who’s going to spend a lot of time
02:06:17 and put a lot of time into you
02:06:18 and make sure they have a lot of wisdom
02:06:19 and steal all the wisdom that you can from them.
02:06:22 And then if you can be successful at one thing,
02:06:25 generally whatever that recipe was
02:06:27 that took you to be successful at that,
02:06:29 apply it to everything else, right?
02:06:31 Apply it to the rest of your life.
02:06:32 Apply it to getting a wife that you enjoy.
02:06:36 Apply it to living in a place you want to live,
02:06:38 doing a job you want to do, right?
02:06:40 There’s so many possibilities
02:06:42 and you just have to be bold enough
02:06:44 to go take those chances.
02:06:45 It’s interesting because early on in life
02:06:47 is when you have much more time.
02:06:49 People don’t realize it’s time to learn the lessons.
02:06:53 Like somehow later in life,
02:06:55 you get busier, responsibilities
02:06:57 and all that kind of stuff.
02:06:58 Like high school is a magical time.
02:07:00 You’re in college.
02:07:01 You’re in college, yeah, for sure.
02:07:01 Yeah, there’s so much time to learn.
02:07:05 Well, you don’t even have kids yet.
02:07:07 Yeah, I don’t have kids, but that still fills up.
02:07:09 Well, no, I’m purpose.
02:07:10 And I did something that many people
02:07:12 don’t seem to be able to do.
02:07:13 I walked away from a lot of responsibilities.
02:07:15 How?
02:07:17 By saying goodbye.
02:07:18 Oh, okay.
02:07:19 But meetings, everybody around me at MIT
02:07:23 was like meetings fill the day.
02:07:25 And then you have more projects
02:07:27 and you do a great job and you become successful.
02:07:30 And then the more meetings fill the day
02:07:32 and more responsibilities as opposed to like,
02:07:35 wait a minute, do I want to be involved in all these things?
02:07:38 And instead, do I want to find one or two things
02:07:42 to really focus on?
02:07:43 And that’s what I choose.
02:07:46 But that becomes harder and harder
02:07:49 and harder as you get older.
02:07:50 No, I mean, I’m sure, and also the more success you have,
02:07:53 you become sought after other places too.
02:07:56 I’m sure that’s happening with you.
02:07:57 And it’s hard to keep saying no, no, no.
02:08:00 Saying no is hard.
02:08:01 Yeah.
02:08:03 You’re known for roasting people
02:08:04 with a single boom roasted line.
02:08:08 So any ideas, maybe you want to mention malice,
02:08:11 but any ideas come to mind when you look at me?
02:08:14 Man, you know what?
02:08:17 If I was going to boom roast someone,
02:08:19 I would want to kind of like research their career
02:08:21 and dissect them and figure out their biggest negatives.
02:08:23 Get to the core.
02:08:24 And I didn’t have that notion with you.
02:08:25 I figured, you know, I got a general sense of,
02:08:28 okay, he’s really successful, he’s super sharp.
02:08:30 He’s really interested in some really interesting things.
02:08:32 I bet we’ll have a great conversation,
02:08:34 but I had no intention to roast you.
02:08:36 Yeah, there you go.
02:08:37 What about malice?
02:08:38 You had dinner with him last night.
02:08:39 Hmm, for him.
02:08:42 Oh man.
02:08:44 How’d you get to know him, by the way?
02:08:46 Just Twitter.
02:08:47 Where’s the most magical place in the world, right?
02:08:49 I always tell people it’s the greatest source of information
02:08:51 if you know how to use it.
02:08:53 Hmm.
02:08:54 He’s insane on Twitter, actually.
02:08:56 He’s quite a lot.
02:08:57 So I had to unfollow him on Twitter,
02:08:58 because he was too much.
02:08:59 It was too intense?
02:09:00 No, it was too much, it fills up.
02:09:01 Like, I want to be able to consume the content.
02:09:03 So if I want to see something he says,
02:09:04 I can go to his page, right?
02:09:06 But it’s just too much for my timeline.
02:09:08 I want to be able to consume who I follow.
02:09:10 So I try to not follow a lot of people,
02:09:12 because I want to be able to consume them.
02:09:13 And he was too much.
02:09:16 He fights the trolls, which,
02:09:18 I don’t know why you’d ever fight the trolls.
02:09:20 There’s just too many of them.
02:09:21 Well, he’s a troll himself.
02:09:22 He’s like the big troll fighting the little trolls.
02:09:25 He’s the king troll.
02:09:27 There’s a million of them.
02:09:27 So even if you kill 100,000,
02:09:30 there’s still not 100,000 left.
02:09:31 You just gotta ignore them.
02:09:33 It’s like the Nightwalker or whatever.
02:09:35 Yeah.
02:09:36 Well, I’ll take it, because you had nothing,
02:09:39 you couldn’t rose GSP out of respect, too.
02:09:41 So I’m just going to take that as a sign of respect.
02:09:43 What do you say bad about GSP?
02:09:45 Now I try to rose his hair.
02:09:46 Like, why are you trying to grow hair now
02:09:48 after all these years?
02:09:49 He looked good, bald.
02:09:50 Everyone loved him with his head shaved.
02:09:53 Now it looks kind of strange.
02:09:53 Like, why you got hair now?
02:09:55 Well, it was one of the more surreal moments of my life.
02:09:57 So he was here and he wore a black suit and tie.
02:10:02 Oh, really?
02:10:03 Yeah, we did the podcast with him,
02:10:04 just mirror image of me.
02:10:06 And then we also did, I haven’t released it yet,
02:10:08 but just the video together.
02:10:09 And I was doing a martial arts stuff in a suit and tie.
02:10:13 That was quite,
02:10:14 that was quite, that’s like,
02:10:18 like certain moments in your life are just like,
02:10:21 I can’t believe I was part of that.
02:10:22 Yeah, with GSP, so yeah,
02:10:24 I don’t think I have anything to rose him about.
02:10:28 I mean, maybe the Matt Serra thing
02:10:29 would be the one that you could get him with, you know?
02:10:32 I would be really fascinated,
02:10:34 like really dig deep from a sports psychology standpoint,
02:10:37 because he always talks about how much fear he had
02:10:39 when he was competing.
02:10:40 And I find that to be interesting because obviously,
02:10:43 so it’s almost like, to me, it’s almost like,
02:10:46 was he successful despite that?
02:10:48 Not because of that, right?
02:10:50 And because anxiety usually leads
02:10:53 to really negative performance for the majority of people.
02:10:55 And what was it about him
02:10:57 that the anxiety wasn’t super negative?
02:10:59 You know what I’m saying?
02:11:00 Like, it’s very interesting.
02:11:02 I wonder that too.
02:11:03 So I have, I wondered that about him,
02:11:05 but I have a huge amount of anxiety interacting,
02:11:07 especially with people, just about everything, yeah.
02:11:10 I wonder if that’s helpful or not.
02:11:13 It feels like it’s very helpful.
02:11:15 Well, I think, so okay, I think in two different ways.
02:11:17 So I think probably your everyday life, okay,
02:11:20 is different than like in a performance or a competition.
02:11:25 You have to be like super in the moment
02:11:27 of what you’re doing.
02:11:28 So anything that’s pulling you away,
02:11:30 like, oh my gosh, you know,
02:11:31 for high school kids, right, that coach.
02:11:33 Oh my gosh, that girl’s in the stands,
02:11:35 and if I get beat, then,
02:11:37 and they’re actively thinking about this other thing
02:11:40 when this is going on.
02:11:41 And I need 100% of your focus right here.
02:11:44 He’s never, I don’t think he has anxiety in the ring.
02:11:47 That’s the point.
02:11:47 I think, like, I have the same thing.
02:11:50 Like if I have a really high performance thing
02:11:53 that I have to do, I don’t know,
02:11:55 a lecture in front of a lot of people.
02:11:57 Yeah, that’d be a great example.
02:11:58 That, there’s huge amount of anxiety weeks ahead,
02:12:02 days ahead, hours ahead.
02:12:03 So you have a system to get rid of it then?
02:12:05 As you perform. No, maybe,
02:12:07 but it’s just the body gets rid of it somehow.
02:12:10 Yeah, there’s not a system.
02:12:11 Subconscious system.
02:12:12 Yeah, it’s self preservation.
02:12:14 So you don’t actually have anxiety
02:12:15 while you’re performing.
02:12:17 So that’s like, so then that problem,
02:12:19 somehow that problem has solved itself, right?
02:12:21 The problem is when the anxiety is actually happening
02:12:24 while the wrestling match is happening,
02:12:26 that’s the real issue.
02:12:27 Yeah, but it like sneaks in there too.
02:12:30 That’s the difference, you know, MMA and wrestling
02:12:33 is there’s no breaks in wrestling, right?
02:12:37 I guess there is, you can look at the crowd a little bit,
02:12:39 like you can look, so maybe,
02:12:42 but like the, there’s other things we have to perform.
02:12:46 Well, there’s more breaks, like a lecture,
02:12:48 you can catch yourself thinking,
02:12:49 like in this conversation, you know,
02:12:51 like I’ve said a bunch of stuff where I think,
02:12:54 why the hell did you say that?
02:12:55 That’s dumb, right?
02:12:57 That’s the anxiety because there’s a pause
02:13:00 and that could be, I don’t know,
02:13:02 I think it just pushes me to be better,
02:13:05 but maybe I could be way better if I let go of that.
02:13:08 It’s scary to think that GSB, if you let go of that,
02:13:10 but he didn’t.
02:13:11 Could he have been better?
02:13:12 Or did he ever, did he have a,
02:13:14 like you’re saying like, you don’t necessarily feel those.
02:13:17 So I think certain people that I’ve coached,
02:13:19 like they would describe how they would feel
02:13:21 literally during the wrestling match, right?
02:13:24 And you’re saying like during the speech performance,
02:13:27 it’s mostly gone.
02:13:28 And that’s interesting to see if like,
02:13:31 he talked a lot about that,
02:13:32 but if it was all the way somehow gone,
02:13:35 and it means he would have a mechanism for it.
02:13:36 So like I had a really bad performance
02:13:38 my freshman year of high school at nationals,
02:13:41 cause I had the ability to be anxious.
02:13:43 And one of my coaches talked about like,
02:13:44 and a lot of A type personalities are kind of that way,
02:13:48 you know, because they’re trying to consider
02:13:49 all possibilities at the same time.
02:13:52 And while we’re actually performing or competing,
02:13:54 it’s negative to performance, right?
02:13:57 So he said he would always leading up to the match
02:14:00 within say an hour, his name was talking about fishing.
02:14:03 He would get someone to talk about fishing with him
02:14:04 because it would stop him thinking about the match
02:14:06 and being uber anxious.
02:14:08 So I kind of took it to heart and it really helped me
02:14:10 as I would always like have someone to talk to
02:14:12 and just goof around about whatever.
02:14:14 So I’m not thinking about this thing.
02:14:16 And then once I step in, it’s time to go.
02:14:18 So I didn’t have this like anxious buildup.
02:14:20 Now it’s how for me, I took it away, but like me,
02:14:22 you know, like you said, you have a way to get it away,
02:14:25 obviously, cause it’s there and then it’s not.
02:14:26 Yeah, I guess so, I guess there’s a little tricks
02:14:28 you come up with.
02:14:29 Yeah, you start thinking about it’s not fishing,
02:14:30 maybe I should try the fishing thing.
02:14:32 I hate fishing, so boring.
02:14:34 But maybe it’s good to think about that.
02:14:37 All right, Ben, this is, like I told you, I’m a big fan.
02:14:40 I’m a big fan of your wrestling, your fighting,
02:14:42 your personality.
02:14:44 Thank you for coming down.
02:14:45 Thank you for talking today.
02:14:46 Appreciate it.
02:14:47 It’s a huge honor.
02:14:48 Bam, let’s go wrestle.
02:14:50 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Askren.
02:14:53 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors
02:14:56 in the description.
02:14:57 And now let me leave you with some words
02:14:59 from Muhammad Ali.
02:15:01 Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated
02:15:05 can reach down to the bottom of his soul
02:15:08 and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes
02:15:12 to win when the match is even.
02:15:14 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.