Neil Adams: Judo, Olympics, Winning, Losing, and the Champion Mindset | Lex Fridman Podcast #427
- When we go to the dojos there, we all get thrown by people that never come
out to be World Champions, you know, they're just in the mix, or they're going through
three years of university, and then they go. We had a guy, (Lex laughing) - [Lex] Yeah. - We had a guy that came in. He was business guy. Came in with his suitcase
and his tie up like that. And he's in his lunch hour. He's in his lunch hour, right? So gotta be quick. - [Lex] Yeah. (laughs) - So he comes in and he goes through. He's working his way through
the whole of the British team. (Lex laughing) We're all lined up, right? Ten minutes later, he's
tying his tie up like that, and, oh, back to work, like that. Imagine him sitting behind
his desk and his computer. - Yeah, yeah. - [Neil] I'm glad he didn't get out. (Lex and Neil laughing) - Who do you think wins,
Yamashita versus Riner? - I think Yamashita, but. - Wait, whoa whoa whoa! You think Yamashita beats Teddy Riner? - I think so. - Strong words. The following is a
conversation with Neil Adams, a legend in the sport of judo. He is a World Champion, two-time Olympic silver medalist, five time European champion, and often referred to
as the voice of judo, commentating all the major events, World Championships and Olympic Games, highlighting the drama, the triumph, the artistry of the sport of judo, making fans like me feel the biggest wins, the biggest losses, the
surprise turns of fortune, the dominance of champions
coming to an end, and new champions made, always speaking from the heart. This is the "Lex Fridman Podcast." To support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Neil Adams. You are a five-time European champion, World Champion, two-time
Olympic silver medalist. Let's first go to the 1980 Olympics. Where was your mind? What was your preparation like? What was your strategy
leading into that Olympics? - That was my first Olympic Games, so my preparation was
a little bit different to how it was the '84 and
the '88 Olympic Games. And I'd kind of done part
of the preparation as well for '76 Olympic Games. I wasn't quite old enough for those, but I was first reserve. So in 1980, I'd had four years' build up, and I was hungry, and I was one of these young athletes, and I see them so often
now that was developing, and, you know, full of. I won't say I was full of myself, but I was certainly
confident of my ability, and I wanted to conquer the world. And I'd had a couple
of really tight matches with the current Olympic World Champion, so I knew that there was a possibility that I could get there
for the '80 Olympics. So building up to the 80
Olympics was quite interesting because I was kind of
coming through the weights and I was halfway in between
the 71 kilos weight category and the higher weight
category of 78 kilograms. And I had got third place at
the '79 World Championships the weight below, fought the whole year at
the higher weight category, didn't lose a contest, so I'd beaten everybody in the world. And then I had to make decision as to whether to drop to the weight below because I was seeded in the weight below. It was a different seeding then, so I decided to drop into the weight below because I was seeded in the top four. And as it happens, I think it was probably
the worst decision I made. (Lex laughing) Well, simply because, I mean, it was the only contest that I lost was the final of the
Olympic Games in that year. - So you're a young kid, what, like 19, 20 at that time? - Yeah.
- Full of confidence, vigor. So the decision to cut weight, how hard was it for you to cut
weight to the 71 kg division? - I've got to say that it was the hardest, because as I was going up, I was, you know, it was 73, then it was 74 kilos, 75. So I was moving through
the weight category. It wasn't like I was stuck in the middle and then I dropped the
odd time to compete. It was literally going up in
weight by a kilo every month. And then by the time I came to a month or two before the Olympics,
it was really hard. Fought the European championships at the higher weight
category and won that. And so everybody that was
on the Olympic were rostrum at the Olympic Games was on my rostrum at the
European Championships. So was it a mistake? Yeah, because I didn't
have my diet sorted out. My nutrition was appalling. And when I, you know, it wasn't as kind of readily available as it is now for the nutrition. And I would say that if
anything lost me that final, other than the fact that I was fighting
somebody who was terrific, you know, he was an
excellent, brilliant athlete, but it definitely didn't help that my nutrition was not very good. - Okay, so you lost to Ezio Gamba. There's probably a lot
of that we could say about that particular match. Maybe, let's zoom in. What were your strengths and weaknesses, judo-wise in that Olympics? You said you haven't
really lost the match. You won the European
Championship leading into it, but if you had weak spots, okay, you already said diet, but specifically on the
mat in terms of judo. - I think that none of
the fights lasted time going into the final, you know, so I won fairly quickly. And every match by ippon,
you know, way before time. - Do you remember how, do you remember how you won the matches? - I won them by throw, a couple of throws for ippon, and then armlock for ippon. Semifinal was an armlock against
the East German, Krueger. And, yeah, I was flying through. - What were the throws? Do you remember? - Tai otoshi, uchi mata, my favorite kind of tokui waza, were my favorite throws. And then juji gatame as well, which was a juji gatame roll, against an East German
who I'd beaten before, but always had a really tough match, but managed to beat him well. - So you had a beautiful
exhibition of Japanese-type judo in the first two matches. You threw people, and then
you also did the newaza, you armbarred a person. Great, so going into the final, what are the weaknesses
going into the final against the Italian? - Like I say, taking nothing away from
him as a great athlete and a brilliant judo man, and left, which wasn't good for me. That was a definite no, because I hated fighting lefties. Still do, but I'll tell
you why in a minute. - [Lex] Great. - It's one of those. But I think as I went through the contest, we had an eight-hour break from
the semifinal to the final. They took us back to the Olympic Village, then we had to come back in, and then we had to start a warm up again, so I kind of lost my momentum. I had to start again,
and I never, I didn't. I just didn't. I had a job to get going. I got halfway through, started to rescue a dying match, and I was kind of one step, half a step behind all the way through, so never really got into it. - So why do you hate fighting lefties? And lefties are, we should say, overrepresented in terms
of the high ranks of judo. I don't know why that is. - Well, you know, the
thing is about a lefty is a lefty will have more opportunity to fight right-handers, because, I mean, 70% of the population are
right-handers, 30% left. So they get to fight more right-handers, and it's just a fact, that happens. So the thing that they hate
is fighting left against left. They don't like it, left against left, whereas a right-hander will
go right against right. But the opposite is awkward for me because just simply I like
to go onto the sleeve, and then I like to dominate the grips. But the actual angle of the opponent wasn't what I wanted, so I had to work hard,
really hard against it. - What happened in that match? - It was a split decision in the end. And so to lose an Olympic final on a split decision is pretty, you know, it's something that's still on my mind. And I think that it's a strange one because I can still wake up, that one and four years
later at the Olympics, because I was silver medalist at the Olympics four years later as well. And, yeah, it still haunts me. - Do you sometimes wake up and think like, "Man, I should have eaten better." - Yeah. - Or maybe a specific
grip that you're like, "Ah, I shouldn't have taken that grip." - I do. I mean, the diet side of it, it's difficult to really
admit that, isn't it? That you went to an Olympic Games and the one thing that you
really sucked at, right, was one of the most important things now at world-level sport, where you've got the nutrition. We've got it. You would think that most
people have got it sorted, but there's still people making mistakes and still people that haven't
got it totally sorted. - And then there's people
like Travis Stevens, who I think doesn't care. He'll just have atrocious nutrition and he just makes it work. I think the way he spoke about it is you can't always control nutrition, so it's best to get good
at having crappy nutrition. - That's a good way of looking at it. I never, yeah, maybe that's what I did. - Exactly, exactly.
(Neil laughing) Do you remember what you were eating? Are we talking about like candy, or? - Yeah, well, I got a sweet tooth in, but it wasn't really. I mean,
I didn't have a lot of money at that particular time either, so the diet wasn't steak
and good nutritional salads and things like that. I did what I thought was best without proper advice. And the crazy thing is that I
had such good advice as well when it came to kind of fitness training and things like that. We're quite ahead of our time, and we really had it nailed as far as the conditioning was concerned. The judo training as
well was way in advance because I was a good trainer and I trained more than most. I would, I can honestly say that. And it probably got me away with a lot. - Where was your mind, so mental preparation,
going into that Olympics? You said you were confident, but is there some preparation
aspect behind that confidence? - I think in the early days, I didn't think I was going to lose. I never thought it was possible to lose. And I think that I went into
every contest expecting to win. So when it didn't quite go my way, I didn't lose that many contests, so the only ones I lost were in the final of
the World Championships or in the final of the Olympic Games. So I didn't lose that many. I never lost a European title. I had seven golds at
European Championships, five Seniors, two at
Juniors under twenties, and I never lost a final, so it was. And then I only lost
two on a split decision, so it was, I didn't lose that many. And my attitude was that
I wasn't going to lose and I couldn't lose, so I was always surprised when I did, when something happened. - In "Neil Adams, A Life in Judo," written in 1986, you wrote, "Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to win. It wasn't the ordinary
feeling that children have when they take part in their first primary school
sack race on a grass track, or even the keen determination of a young swimmer prepared to train early in the cold winter mornings in order to make it into the county side. With me, the desire to
win was, and still is, as much a part of me as my arms and legs. In other words, it wasn't something I
learned as I grew older, but rather was deeply rooted in me. Perhaps this competitive instinct
is the greatest difference between my public image and
the view from the inside." So people see the kindness,
the warmth you have, the charisma, the excitement, but there's this big
drive to win inside you. So what's behind that? Can you just speak to that drive to win and how that contributed to
your competitive journey? - [Neil] When I look back now. - There's a lot of years
ago, we should say. - It is a lot of years ago. - Is that true or are
we just being poetic? - It's not far off. No, it's not, when I think about it now, because I'd like to think that
I'm a different person now. And since I've kind of calmed down, I see athletes now, and I see them, and their kind of arrogance. They're walking. It's a strut, you know, and it's a kind of a confidence, isn't it? And as we're older and
as I've become older, I've calmed down. But, you know, it doesn't
matter what I'm doing. It's still that will to win, and I'm much better at
masking it now if I don't. But it still bothers me as much. - You're talking about, I don't know, even just
stupid, silly things, like, I don't know, a game of pool or something
like this, or just anything? - Yeah, I'm still trying to win. Like so my son loves to, he loves to play me at bowls, because I'm useless, and I just can't throw a straight bowl. So he loves playing me at that, but it bugs me that I'm not better, and there are certain things that I do. (Lex laughing) It really bugs me when I'm not good at it. And I guess it's one of the reasons that, long after I'd finished competition, judo, people still want to train with you, and even at kind of an
older age, even now, if I do it in a seminar, or they're still, "Do you still do, do you want to still go? And can I feel it?" And one of the things
that's in me is that I just, all the way up to 40 years of age, so from 30, when I finished competition, up to 40, I could still train with the best, and I could still go with anybody. And then when 40 hit, kind of things started
to fall off a little bit, and I used to get either my
hips or my legs and my knees, and I realized that I
had to pick my practices, and that rankled as well. And I had to then just
calm it down a little bit. Otherwise I was going to be injured, and I was going to be, you know, it's not a good thing
when you're getting older and you've still got the
same competitive mind, but things change. - So it's still there. You get on the mat,
probably even now, right? You get on the mat with a World Champion. You still, the current World Champion, there's still a little part of you. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - Could I still toss this guy? Kids these days are soft. (laughs) - I do think, well, you know what? Some of these athletes, I mean, I give you a prime example, right? Is Ilias Iliadis, all right? I mean, he is a monster, right? And you just, of course you couldn't, because just at 60
something, you couldn't. But you like to think that you could. - Yeah, you could. You never know. You'll never find out. - You know what you would do? What you can do is you
can cause them problems and they feel it immediately, but you'd last a minute, you know. - So you've trained with Ilias Iliadis. I've gotten a chance to
train with him as well. He's a really nice guy, really great. - He's a good guy. He trained with me. We were training together. Every hotel that we used to go into, we'd end up in the gym
together and we'd train. And this one time he was in there and he just wanted somebody
to grab and grip hold of. And so we ended up doing
this kind of grappling in the middle of the people
doing weight training and different things, watching these two madmen doing. I'm glad we weren't on a
mat at that particular time, but good fun. - What do you think about that guy? He, like you, achieved a lot of success when he was young. - 17, you imagine that? 17, 18 years of age, and he's able to compete with the men. There's not many men can do that. And it doesn't happen very often. It happens later with the men, and often they're not
physically as developed as they, so from me, for example, I fought Nevzorov who was World and Olympic Champion. He was the current World Olympic Champion. They sent me to the European
Championship Senior at 17. That doesn't happen very often. And I fought. I pulled Nevzorov, so I fought Nevzorov. And I had him really worried, because he expected, without a doubt, to come out, throw this kid, a junior. - He was thick and shredded. - He was shredded. There's a picture of him in his judogi, and his judogi is just cut, and he looks the business, and there's me in this baggy, - [Lex] Skinny kid. - Yeah, skinny kid
inside this baggy thing. And the thing was, is that the more he tried, and the harder he tried, and the more he panicked, the further it went away from him. And so, you know, of course he got the decision at the end, and deservedly, but I worried him, and so for me, that was a massive step forward, because a year later I
was starting to fill out, and two years later I was competing for the Olympic title, so.
- I don't know if I remember, but Ilias Iliadis is interesting, because even at 17, I feel like he was doing big throws, like literally lifting them with the hips. - Just rips them out the ground. And I was saying to Niki, my wife, she said, "What would you do now that was different than
the way you did then?" And I said, "I never had any pickups." I didn't, that's not what we did, but you have a look at the young Ukraines or the the young Russians or the young Eastern Bloc Mongolians, and they're ripping people out the ground. I mean, it's just different style of judo, and it just looks different. But now they're starting to do traditional-style judo as well. - So can you speak to that? What are the different styles of judo? So for you, you mentioned
uchi mata, tai otoshi, these, how would you describe them? They're like these effortless, less lifting off the ground and power and strength and explosion, and more timing and position, movement. - Yeah, momentum. - Momentum, all this kind of stuff that's more traditionally associated with Japanese judo, because for Japanese judo, the traditional judo, you're supposed to throw people in a big way without much effort. - And of course, 1990, we saw the introduction of all
these Eastern Bloc countries. There were so many more, I mean, it was Soviet Union when I was competing. And then, of course, in
1990, everything changed. And then there were so many
more of them out there, different countries, that their wrestling styles
were introduced into judo. Put a jacket on them,
and let's get into judo. So judo kind of changed shape. It changed shape from
this upright, standing, and having to know the technicalities of how to get a body
that's weighing 14 stone, or whatever it is, up into the air, and using the momentum and the balance and the direction and the skill to do that and knowing how to do it
and how to use movement. And then you get the wrestlers, and the leg picks, and the double-leg,
single-leg, double-legs. By 1995, judo was bent over. It was the IOC that went to IJF, International Judo
Federation, and they said, "You've got to change this, or we're just going to
have one wrestling style. It looks like wrestling
with judo jackets on, so you either change it or we're going to take one of you out." - By the way, we should sort of clarify. When we say people are bent over, that's usually how you
see freestyle wrestling. Wrestlers are more bent over
to defend the legs and so on. And traditional judo
people are more standing up because that's the position for which you can do the big throws and all that kind of stuff. But I think the other case
to make for banning leg grabs is a lot of people are
using it for stalling and not for beautiful big throws and all that kind of stuff. So it's not just not to make
it different from wrestling. It's also like you want
to maximize the amount of epic throws and dynamic judo and exciting stuff to watch. - Win by judo, not by wrestling. And I think that the ones
that were shouting about it were the wrestlers, right? Because they like to compete with both. They want to do both. They want to do their wrestling matches and then come into judo. So basically, I mean, what we've said is they learn to do judo and there's nothing stopping you then from doing both, right? But not from the other way around. All right, so rules always
dictate development. They'll always dictate
which direction it goes. So if you introduce a rule that states that you cannot dive at
the legs and just pick up, then you'll have to do it standing up. And also it increases the possibility of defense with the
hips, because actually, good defense judo-wise, standing up, is with the hips as opposed
to sticking your arms out and then sticking your backsides
out there just to defend. All right? So if you attack me and I move
my body in the wrong place, so I'm in the wrong
place at the right time, so you don't hit the right target. And then also I use my hips, so again, it's a form of judo that was being lost. So now we got it back. - So let's go there. Let's speak about judo as if we're talking to a
group of five year olds. So what is judo? What are some defining
characteristics of judo as a sport, as a way, as a martial
art, as a way of life, all that kind of stuff? - I think, when you say
it as a way of life, I mean, I think the great
advantage that we have in judo, my young grandson, so
I got two little boys that are three and a half years of age. They love going to our dojo. They love it, you know, so dojo was the first word that they used. It was one of the first. So when they come see
us, see my wife and I, you know, it's like dojo. It's not grandma, granddad,
you know, it's dojo. So dojo, they take their
shoes off going into the dojo, so they have respect for where they're at, and I think it has that
kind of feeling that, like, I tried to build my dojo
with a feeling of reverence. It's kind of almost peaceful, you know? So I'm not religious, I'm
not a religious person, but I like going to old churches, because when I go into an old church, it doesn't matter what the
religion within the church, but there's a reverence in there. - Reverence is a good word. It feels like a really special place. No matter which dojo you go to, it's just you bow and there's a calmness
before the storm of battle or whatever it is. (laughs) - And respect, look at the respect. We were just talking about it
just before we came on air. We were just saying that
we very, very seldom do we have a situation where there is animosity
other than them fighting. So I'm not saying that
they don't fight each other because sometimes it
does turn into a brawl. And at the end, two people bow off and show their respect. And one of the things, so a champion, I see people winning events,
and they're good judoka, they're excellent. They win World Championships, might even win the Olympic Games. But a great champion for
me is somebody who treats, who does the right thing when they lose. So when you see them lose, that's when you see the true them. And actually, that was one of the biggest things that
I had to really cope with. When I lost that Olympic Games in Moscow and also the one in Los Angeles, the hardest thing is when
the microphone is in there and you've got to be respectful and nice, and the hardest thing is to smile. But actually, some of the
great champions, they'll go, "That's just one match." I remember we've got one
great champion, Agbegnenou. She's a five-time World Champion. She's an Olympic champion. She's favorite as well to
get this Olympic gold medal. French, what a great champion she is, because she lost one of the matches. I mean, she'd come back, and she'd given birth, come back after giving birth, and everybody was going, "Well, will she?" And then she lost one of the matches on the way through, and she said, "Don't be upset, you
know, it's just one match. It's just one contest. Next time I'm going to put it right." And she did put it right, and now she's back up there and she won the world title back. So these are great champions for me. - Yeah, I mean, that's
the right way to see it. But it's also tragic to lose the Olympic Games, you know. - Twice. (Neil laughing) Yes, it is tragic. And I do have sleepless nights. - I mean, that's the magic
of the Olympic Games. Anything can happen. And your 1980 Olympics were
very different from the 1984. But if we just linger on the '80, and just your, where we're talking about, how much you wanted to win. Do you love winning or hate losing more? - I hate losing more, but I love winning. When I won the world title a year later and I had no doubt when
I went into that day that I was going to be World Champion. No doubt. - So you won the '81 World Championship. - At the higher weight. - At the higher, the 78? - [Neil] Yes. - Kg. Actually, can we go there? What was going through your mind? You ended up armbarring
a Japanese fighter. I talked to Jimmy Pedro,
a friend of yours, somebody who said you were a
mentor to him for many years, and he told me a bunch of
different questions to ask you. But he said that was
a really special time. That was a really special
dominant run you had, and especially finishing with an armbar against as a Japanese player. So take me through that. What do you remember from that? - I think that it was,
so my weight was better, I didn't have to lose weight. That was one thing. So the nutritional side
wasn't as important, but probably it still wasn't
as good as it could be, my nutrition. Although it was getting better and I was trying to eat the
right things at the right time, but I still trained really well and I was so confident there going into that World Championships
that I could win it. I had no doubt in my mind
that I was going to win. But obviously, corner of
your mind you're thinking, "Just don't make mistakes." But this is the incredible thing is that once you start to ask, I see contests change direction when I'm commentating, so I can see somebody who's in there just going forward, just trying to win. And that's a difference to somebody who's trying not to lose. And there's two different
ways there, you know, so sometimes when you, so when I was World Champion, then I had a period of time where every time I stepped out there, I was really afraid of losing. And I think that that's
what happens later on in your competitive career. You know, the great champions
managed to come through that. Teddy Riner is one of
those, you know, he just, he puts it out there and
he keeps beating them, so they can't take it away from him. You know, it's fantastic. - So stepping on the mat every single encounter
you're trying to win, you're looking for the grips, and with the intention to throw, throw big even when
you're ahead on points, all that kind of stuff. - That's a really good point, is that if you go ahead in a match and you look at the clock. It depends when you go ahead. So sometimes you can go
ahead in the first minute and you've still got three minutes to go. So I see the ones then that
go into, I don't want to lose, because they go into defensive mode. And then sometimes they
can lose it on penalties or something can go wrong and the other one comes on strong and then they can sneak the contest. And so it's really difficult. But when I was coaching, I was trying to always
encourage that positive attitude for the full four minutes,
five minutes then. - I've competed a lot
in judo and jiu-jitsu. I've always hated that part of myself. When I'm up on points by a lot, you look at the clock, and it's what you do when
you look at the clock, - I see. (laughs) - Minute and a half, you're really tired, and you kind of quit. You just defend. Yeah, and I hated that part about myself. - It's saying, "Don't do it." - Well, as opposed to just go out in judo, that's for a big throw. Just keep going for the throw. In jiu-jitsu, it's go for the submission, like throw caution, like win in the real way versus on points. And I hated that part of myself. I mean, mostly underneath that is cowardice induced by exhaustion. - Exhaustion's the one, isn't it? But it is, isn't it? It's a mindset as well. So actually trying to get your mind positive
all the way through. So, I mean, if you listen, when I commentate, is I say, I hope that they don't change the mindset and that they keep on and they are going forward all the time. And actually they're then
more difficult to catch. We had one just a couple of weeks ago, and he lost in the final
second of the contest. Lost the final. He was the only one to score. He got penalized all the
way up, two seconds to go, and stepped out of the area. But he went like that, thinking the bell was just going, and the bell went one second
after he actually stepped out. So he got penalized, lost the match, and lost all of the
points for qualification. So it was, you know,
that's paying high price. That's paying high price. - Yeah. I mean, there's a thin
line between triumph and tragedy in those competitions, but especially at the Olympic Games. So let's just stick on
'81 World Championship. What did it feel like to
win that World Championship? And also getting an armbar
against a Japanese player. Jimmy told me your arms were exhausted. - Yeah, I mean, you just. The thing is sometimes when you're going, when it's competitive as well. Ours is a different intensity to jiu-jitsu where you can take time a little bit. Ours is bang. It's transitioning from standing down. You've got 10, 15 seconds to go in there. You go in 100%. It's a bit like running
full-out for 10 seconds, and then you've got to decide then, especially if they're defending it, whether you let it go, because when you get up
and your forearms are blown and you've got lactic acid in there and you've still got to
grip up because, remember, ours is about gripping
as well on the jacket. So if you can't grip up, then
you can't gain the advantage, then they can throw you. So you have to decide. So I had a massive attack on him, and we changed directions
four or five times, and then I wasn't going to let him go, but I still, when I was turning him there, I had to decide, am I going to go all
out for this and just, or there has been occasions when I've kind of released
it to just, you know, if I got a minute to go,
and just lock out, yeah. - So what you're saying on the feet, there was a change of direction of all different kinds of attempts, and then you went to the ground. - [Neil] Yeah. - So what was that? Do you remember that
decision of like, okay, am I gonna finish this? - Yeah, I knew it. I just, as soon as I climbed his back, and then I thought, he's not going. He's not gonna. I'm not gonna let him up, you know, so I was just changing. - [Lex] Little voice in your head? - Something in my head
was going, "Don't, don't. You know, just stick on him." And then it's always
about pressure on the arm, and I just, you know, and of course he was like that, defending. He was almost total bridge
trying to get out of it. - Did it start in turtle? And like, did you flip? - It started in turtle
because I did an attack, came back out of the attack, and then he went on to his front, and then I was on his back, and then I started the whole thing. - [Lex] Saw an opening
and you just went for it? - Just, it was an automatic transition. So, I mean, the transitions
are what we teach, you know, because the ones that are quicker down with the transitions are
the ones that catch it. That's our newaza. You know, our groundwork is the transition from standing down to ground. It's very, you know, we don't have a situation where you can kind of work your way in. You are in or you're not in. You're standing, you know? So you've got to make sure that you're in. And so I had, I was just on his back like a leech, and I never let him go. - So that's where the armbars, that's where the attacks on the ground, which is called newaza, happens is it? In the transition. - [Neil] Yes. - At that level, at that
high, world-class level. - Yeah, I mean, he was no muggy, though. I think he just got third place in the All-Japan Championships, which is all weight categories. So he wasn't a mug. He was strong. I'd fought him once before, and I knew, he was a lefty as well, which was really awkward for me. - Did it feel good? - Better for me than him. It did. It felt amazing, because it was almost
like all these things, disappointments and everything had kind of come to this one point where I was at last kind
of Champion of the World. It's everything I said as a kid that I had no idea how difficult
it was gonna be, you know? So as a kid, as a 14-year-old kid, I remember saying, "I'm gonna be World Champion. I'm gonna be the best in the world." I had no idea how difficult
that was gonna be. - Well, there's wisdom to that, right? Like, there's power
and stupidity of youth. - I like that. - Just like, I'm gonna be a World Champ. I'm gonna win this without
knowing how hard it is. And then once you go after it, it's you're trapped. You're gonna have to do the work. - Yeah, well, I mean, you see it a lot with parents as well. You know, parents, our little Johnny is, he's amazing, and he's
this, that, and the other. And they have no idea what's out there. I remember the very first
time I stepped out, 1974, into the European Cadets, and I remember that we were fighting. I'd only ever fought in Great Britain. I was the top, I was
unbeaten in the juniors, kids, and went out there, and there were these
different fighters out there that were treating me with total disdain. And I remember thinking, how dare they, you know? And I realized when I
came back from that event, there's other people out there. There's just a whole, and there are different levels of. Majority of people are just not informed as to what's out there and the different levels
that there are out there. - Do you remember like a certain opponent that for the first time,
you felt like, holy shit? - [Neil] Yeah. - Like somebody just gripped you up and you're like, this is, there's another level to this game. - Ezio was one of them, and I fought him, you know, and I beat him in the
European Championships. I beat him two times, and then lost to him in the Olympic Games two months after I'd beaten him in
the European Championship. - Wow. - Yeah, yeah. So that made it even
more difficult, right? - That's literally your
nemesis there, wow. - Yeah, so that made it more difficult. And so Ezio was one, and getting hold of, I remember getting hold
of Nishida of Japan, and he had me going up and down, and I just, I thought, wow, this guy is amazing, and I'd never fought, first time I ever fought
Japanese in a major tournament, and I felt the danger. I always talk about the danger when we go out to Japan to train. I could go probably months
without getting thrown in training here in Europe. And I go to Japan, and everybody's thrown you, and that's difficult to accept. And the reason that kind of danger and that kind of feeling of danger is something that puts a real edge on. So that was the first time, when I got a hold of Nishida, I thought, "Oh, my God." This guy, it didn't matter which way he was turning like that. He had me stretched out, and I thought, I want to do this. And then I ended up
fighting him again in Japan. - So that feeling of danger
is really interesting. Like, I've, you know, I did randori with a lot
of world-class people from different parts of the world, including Ilias Iliadis. And there's certain part,
like Eastern European judo, you feel like you're screwed
the whole way through. Like the gripping, you really
feel it in the gripping. - It's the gripping that does it. - But in with Japanese, like really good Japanese-style judoka, you don't, it's like, it's a terrifying calmness, but at least the experiences I've had, you don't really feel it in the gripping. You just feel like anywhere you step, you're getting thrown. It's a different. - It's a different thing isn't it? - It's a different thing. - So, I mean, mine was kind of a mixture. I liked it to be a
mixture, because there was, the gripping is definitely the key point. So if you get high-level
guys that are gripping up, and I always used to
put this to the referees when we were doing referee seminars when we first started them. And I'd say, how many? Because, like, they would referee to their understanding of the match. So they were penalizing for
certain grips that were, you know, and actually, so as an ex-athlete, at high-level, I would say, "Have you ever
gripped up with high-level?" All right. Because if you haven't, you need to do it, because then you will understand why they do certain things with the grips, because these guys are like, when somebody grips you, and you think, you know you're going to go. When Iliadis puts his arm
over your back, all right, and you know you're
going to go up and over, you know you're going to go
over. You know, that's it. - It's a cool feeling. - Not for me. (laughs) - Well, I understand. But it's like, I mean, because it's not. It feels way more powerful than it should. - Yeah. - It's weird. I don't know. You want to attribute it to strength and all that kind of stuff. I mean, people say you have
immense upper body strength, but it's probably something else. It's like technique. It's some kind of weird. - It's a mix of everything. - Just like something hardened
through lots of battles and randori and that kind of stuff. - [Neil] Yeah. - But it's cool that
humans are able to generate that kind of power. It's cool. - When I was, '84 Olympics. But I'm just gonna go
there now, just quickly. But there was, we had a freestyle wrestler. He's American, actually, but
he had English nationality. So he competed for,
Noel Loban, his name is, and he competed for Great Britain. He got third place at the Olympics in '84. But he was training. We were training at Budokwai,
and he was training. He came to do some judo,
and he put jacket on. And of course, he was training with
some of the lower levels, and he was really handling himself well. And then he said, "I need to feel," you know, when we did randori, so he did some randori with me, and I immediately thought, I gotta catch it. I gotta stop single leg and double leg. Because he was really quick, right? So strong as well, 90-something kilos. He was like, you know, he's a big guy. So I caught his sleeve, immediately caught and controlled him, and then he couldn't start, right? So he said, "I needed
to feel the difference." So then I thought, I better reciprocate this. So I said, well, you know, so we did the randori and I
threw him a couple of times. He said, "I'm really glad we did that." So then I said, "I need to
feel the difference as well." So we take the jackets off. So we took the jackets off. And he was a nightmare. This guy was a nightmare. And, like a monster, you know, he was like, single legging me, and it was just totally different. So it was like the jacket
makes a massive difference, huge difference to something. And people think it's just
a jacket that we're wearing, but it isn't. It's our only tool, actually. - Yeah, and it's control. I mean, it's a way of establishing control over another body. And it's a whole art form and a science. And I don't even know if
you understand it, really. You understand it sort of
subconsciously through time. - [Neil] Yeah. - Because there is so much involved, because pulling on one part of the jacket pulls other parts of the jacket, and like the physics of that is probably insane to understand. - It's absolutely insane. And then they changed the
rules for a little while and they changed the rules
so that you couldn't hold, certain grips were not allowed. They only allowed certain amount of time. And there were a lot
of penalties for them. And then they had some of the ex-fighters into the referee commission. And so we were pushing for just let them grip,
because that's our game. That's what makes us different. Again, if grip up with somebody. So they were on about Teddy Riner. Teddy Riner comes out, takes a sleeve, big arm over the top, and then he throws people. So they were saying, "Yeah, but stop." You can't stop him doing it. This guy is six-foot nine, and he is built like Goliath, you know? - Yeah. - And not only that,
he's skillful as well. And he's got that mentality of a winner. He has got that mentality
of a winner there. He just wins important matches. - And he goes over the top of the grip. Where does that land
now in terms of rules? Over the top? Because those are some of the most epic, awesome types of grips, just like over the top, just big grab. - Yeah, well, as long
as they throw from it, so they can take any grip as long as you move them
and then catch them, kind of action-reaction, really. You know, as long as you
catch them on the move, then you can do it. - So as long as you're
not using it to stall or that kind of stuff. - Yeah, you can't block out. So, I mean, so for example, if I've got dominant grip on you, and I just block out, and I just stop you attacking me. So then what? I get you three penalties, get you off, and you haven't done an attack. So you've got to stop that. You can't have that. - Yeah, yeah, definitely. You were the favorite to
win the 1984 Olympics, but you got silver. I watched that match several times. You probably have it playing in your head. So there is a nice change of
direction by your opponent, German, Frank Wieneke. - [Neil] Yeah. - It was a fake right uchi mata, and then to a left drop seoi nage. How did that loss feel? - Devastating is not enough really, because, you know, the strange thing was
coming into that Olympics, I was tired, really tired. So my mental state wasn't the best, wasn't certainly the same as it was coming into the previous. And I remember thinking, I just need to get this over with, and then I'm going to have a break and just have a rest. And that's totally the wrong attitude. It's just not good for
going into an Olympic Games. And so I was coming in there
with a different mindset. And I remember every match that I had, I was winning well, but I was winning with
a struggle, you know, it was really not. I'd fought Nowak, and I
was pretty, of France, who was one of the strongest physically, that was in the quarterfinals. I beat Brett Barron by an ippon. I'd armlocked him. I won my first match by ippon as well. And then Michel Nowak I was fighting, of France, and I was lucky to win it. I was up. I would score on him, but I was like starting to defend, and just everything that
I talked to you about, and then just about
held on, and then I won. So him and I were talking afterwards, some years afterwards, and he said, "I was close, wasn't I?" "Yeah, but not close enough." (Lex laughing) I didn't mean it, but I had to say it. - [Lex] Of course, of course. - And no, he was right, and it was one of those. So it's through to the semifinal. I had fought Lescak in the semifinal, and I'd fought him in the
semifinal of the Worlds as well. I'd never gone time with him. I'd always beaten him
fairly easily and by ippon, and that went time. So I was just glad to get it done. And I was in the final then against Frank Wieneke of Germany. And I'd beaten Wieneke before, but he was just a young
German coming through. And when I started the final, I thought, right, I've just, and I started, all my techniques just
that little bit off. Nothing was coordinated. It was just, I can't really explain why
it was just a little bit off. I see it so often now with a lot of the guys that are going for second, third Olympic Games, and I see their technique
just not quite there, and they're struggling, and I know when they're, you know, I know what they're going through and I kind of empathize with them. - Well, you were, it felt like you were
dominating that final. - I dominated it. Yeah, I was winning. And actually, if it had
another minute and a half, it would have been all over and I would have been Olympic Champion and it would have been done. He wouldn't have batted an eyelid, because he would have fought
me really, really well, and he would have, you know, we talked about it afterwards, and he said, "It was
just my good day for me." And he knows, he was very respectful. This guy is very respectful. - He was surprised almost. I mean, not almost. He was very surprised and celebrating. - Yeah, jumping up and down. And, you can look at that, can't you go, well, it wasn't ippon, but
would I had got it back? I don't know. I think that actually
taking the pressure off, because that was another thing as well, pressure of being favorite, and I see that with a lot of
them. And the great champions, the ones that keep coming through. Krpalek, there's a guy. He can look very ordinary, and then comes the big tournament, and he'll win it. - The tragedy of the Olympic Games. I mean, you were the favorite. And just like that, like
split moment, you lost it. - Split moment, devastating. And lived it probably not every day, but, Niki, my wife, will tell you that I've woken up in sweats, and I think they contributed as well, because I had a period of my life after where I was drinking too much, and I think kind of when I look back, kind of led into that kind
of dark period of my life, and I never, ever, ever, did it go through my mind, anything else, but it definitely affected me. And I was on a downward kind of spiral in a lot of different ways, and would still even, you know, we have an amazing marriage, and we have an amazing family, and everything's great, but I still wake up sometimes, and I'll say, "I've just
dreamt, you know, that," and it's the same reoccurring dream where I'm trying to get somewhere and I'm trying to put it right, you know, and I've got this chance of putting this Olympic final right. You know, in this dream, I've
got a chance of doing it, but I can't get there and the traffic's stopping
me or something stops me. And then I wake up and I'm sweating, and you think, "What, after all this time, that's not possible." But it is, and it happens. - Yeah, I mean, in the match itself, there's that feeling
for me just watching it. Like you're going for throws, you're almost getting
there with the throws, and it's almost like he's going for a kind of crappy uchi mata and then you're just like
stopping, you're blocking it. And all of a sudden, I mean, that's the beauty of the Olympics. He finds it in himself to switch like that against a favorite, against sort of the great British judoka, just finds the perfect drop seoi nage. - Well, you know, his
team doctor and coach, he came up to me afterwards and said, "I'm just really sorry." And that's all they said
is, "I'm just really sorry." They were sorry, because the obvious sadness about that, and of course, everybody takes their, I went actually two and a half, was it, three weeks later, the German Open. So he had to compete in the
German Open three weeks later. So I went over to fight him and beat him in the
final of the German Open. And it didn't do anything for me, because it was a much tighter match. He was a lot closer. He had a lot more confidence coming in. So he fought me a lot differently. And then it was me pulling it back and just managing to win in the final, and I thought, "Well, that might appease." It appeased nothing. Didn't do anything. - When you give your
whole life to judo, just, and your love of winning, that's crazy how much
the Olympic Games mean. - It means so much. And I think, but I've got to, and I've got to say this,
and this is honestly, if it meant that if I'd
have won that Olympic Games and it had to change my life
into a different direction, which I probably would have not competed in the '88 Olympic Games then. All right, so if it had changed my life and then I didn't have, I didn't meet my wife, and I didn't have my
family that I've got now. There's no, you know, I wouldn't swap that, what I've got now, for anything. - Well, part of the demons
that you've gotten to know because of those losses is part of probably the central reason that made you the man you are, a legend of the sport. You could have been not that, because an Olympic gold
is just an Olympic gold. - Yeah. And it is, isn't it? And I think that there's
a lot of Olympic Champions and World Champions that win and then are forgotten. And I said to Niki, I said to my wife, I said, "I don't want to be forgotten,
and I want to be remembered, so I'm going to do
anything, anything I do, if I'm going to do
commentary or whatever it is, or coaching, I want to do
coaching to a high level, and I want to commentate at a high level." I remember the first
commentary I ever did. It was terrible. And I just thought, "I've
got to do better than this." And I thought, I just, "I need to do it well, and I've got to do it professionally." - So in the book "A Game of Throws," you have a chapter titled
"Lessons and Losing." So what are some of the lessons here? What are some of the deeper lessons you've pulled out of losing? - I think great champions are made up of the people that handle
it in the right way. And you could say, "Well,
I don't like losing." And you could throw
your dummy out the pram and you can be a bad loser
in front of everybody. And actually, people pick up
on that very, very quickly. You know what it's like
in broadcasting, right? Somebody has a bad word
to say about somebody. - [Lex] Yep. - Yep, but actually, the ones that endear themselves to you are the ones that handle
it in the right way, the correct way. It doesn't mean that
you've got to like it. I didn't like it. And I thought that I handled
it certainly in later years, in the right way. And I like to see athletes
do it in the right way, and I think that's it's a
make or break situation. It's not all the contests they win, it's the one that they lose and then how they pick themselves up and handle themselves after. So I think that that is a big one for me. And also, I mean, I went through, obviously,
a later divorce, and that was difficult on my son, really difficult on Ashley. And then I was, and I think that some of that was the fact that I was kind of, I wasn't drinking all the time, but I was drinking in
excess at the wrong times. And I think that that's what
a lot of people do sometimes is that they use it for the wrong reasons, you know, and I used to hear it. I hear it now all the time, and it's that I need to knock the edge off and I need to just forget, and I need to, you know, and you need to be in a
fuzzy place for a while, and I had a lot of time in fuzzy place, and I needed to get rid of that, you know, and I needed to clear my head. - Where was that place? Some of the lower points in your life that you've reached mentally? - I think, definitely, the fact that my marriage, first marriage, didn't work, and that was, it's a mix
of things between us. And then, you know, so that's not where I
wanted to be at the time, and the effects that it had on my son. And it took a long time for him then to come round and to trust me again and to have belief. He always had belief in me, but to trust me again. And then I think that that was low. And I think that when I look back, is that a lot of my bad decisions were when I was in that
fuzzy kind of haze. And then it got progressively worse. That got progressively worse
to the degree where it was, you know, trying to hide it, and trying to hide how much. And I was kind of a
functioning kind of drunk. I think you could probably say that. And I was functioning. I was still able to, I was still training most
days, crazily enough. I was training to kind
of mask it and cover it. And that was probably my savior, that I was still, you know, because I remember I said to my wife, I said to Niki, "I'm probably the fittest. If I'm a drunk, then I'm a fittest drunk in the world." She said, "Yeah, you
probably are actually." I was in great condition for a drunk. - So the fuzzy haze, where was your mind? Did you have periods of depression? - I had periods of depression. I can honestly say that my
depression wasn't that bad. Although I did, you know, when it's like anything
that gives you an up, it gives you an even
bigger down, doesn't it? And so I hated that feeling and also hated myself
for letting it happen, because I have got this really, it's a bizarre, I don't know whether
you can call it a power, but I have the ability to
be able to say, "Stop." And I can just, and that's what I did in the end. In the end, there was an incident when I was working for Belgium Judo, and there was an incident. It was Christmas. I can tell you exactly the day. It was 20th of December, and me and a Belgian coach, we got absolutely hammered, but we were at the wrong
place and it got noticed. And so I remember they pulled
me up in front of this board and I looked down at these guys and half of them were
people I didn't want to be in that situation with. You know, they're not
people that I respected and they're not people that I trusted. So I said, "If you're going to sack me, sack me, but I'll promise you now
that I will just, this is it. I'll stop. I'm just going to stop. I've decided." On the way back in the car, I rang Niki up, my wife, and I said, "Whatever
you hear now, whatever, I'm just going to stop." So that was it. Stopped. - You just saw the
moment and said, "Stop." - Stop. - So that fuzzy place, what advice could you give to people about how to overcome that, that dark place, the depression, whether it has to do with drinking or not? - I think if it's to do with drinking, all I can say is that the two days or a week into not drinking, you'll feel different. It'll make a physical difference, and you'll like that physical difference, and then from a mental
perspective as well, because I think that you
have a massive downer, and I think that that must
be because of drugs as well, because I had a situation with my brother. He was like, he was professional wrestling, and the drugs was an element there, and so I'd never touched a drug or even seen one in my life, but I'd let the alcohol side go too far, and then decided never to do that. So then I guess I had
people ringing me up saying, "How can we stop?" So when they say, "Can I have a word, and can I discuss something with you?" And I know then what they
want to discuss with me. And the thing is that I would say, "If you stop, then feel the effects of it, and it will make a difference
to your everyday life, and that will make a massive difference." And I think about anybody
who is down all the time is to find the cause of
what's pushing you down, you know what I mean? And try and attack that, because it's never, somebody once said to me, they said, "Whatever you got, we've got something special." I mean, we have a great life and I've had a great competition record. You know, it could have been
better, but it was great. But I've had success with my business and we're still out there. And we have a great life. We travel all the world, and there's people out there
that would live in your house at the drop of a hat, wherever you are. They'd drive your car,
no matter what car it is, some people haven't got a car. And whatever food you're having, and you're moaning about food, somebody out there that would
take that and gladly eat that. All right, so there's always
somebody worse off than you. And I think that we tend to sometimes look at the
things that we haven't got rather than the things we have got. - Yeah, it's a skill, probably, just to be grateful for
the things you have, exactly as you said. And it's sometimes the little things like food and cars and
all that kind of stuff, just to have gratitude for it, and family, all this kind of stuff. But it's still, having talked to a bunch
of Olympic athletes, there is a, when you give so much
of your life to winning and then you lose, sometimes even when you win, but when you lose at the very top, it's a tough, tough, like, tough thing to go through. - The most difficult thing, I think, for anybody, is when they have to decide when to stop. - Yeah, yeah. - You know, and all of a sudden, and I see the ones that are
going second Olympic Games and then third Olympic, and the ones that are there and they're holding on and they're in their thirties now, different to when they
were 19 years of age. 30-something is different to 19. And then what are you
going to do afterwards? And then how do you become
just a normal person? You're never going to be
a normal person, as such. But I think you've got
to do normal things, and then you've got, I remember the first time that
when I finished competition, I had good sponsors. This was 40 years ago, but I had two really good sponsorships, vitamin company and also judogi company, and I had a car, and I had money, and I was going all over the world. I was successful. And then I stopped, and they took everything back. They took my car, and they did it within two weeks as well. They stopped my funding. And the vitamin company said, "Thank you very much. It's been a great. We've done well by you. Bye bye." - This was after your last Olympics. - '88 Olympics. When that finished, and then that was it, and then it's, right, okay. First time I had to go in there and buy a tracksuit and a pair of training shoes, and wow. - Yeah, those are different sitting there in the evening by yourself. - So you go from seven days
a week or six days a week, going into the gym, and you're working out the dojo, and then you don't have to do it. And that's why you get a lot of, when they finish competition, they finish, that 30 to 40. It's still, I mean, Ilias is still doing it now. He's still in there, and
he's still, you know. Because he can, right? Okay, and it's natural. And I did exactly the same. And then, like I say, you just get to an age, and you just think, "Well, I'm just going to
kind of take a step back." - Which is why there's certain athletes like Ryoko Tani, never stops. Just dominates for 14 years, probably one of the
winningest athletes in judo. - Yeah. - Seven-time World Champ,
two-time Olympic Champ, medaled at five Olympics. So it's always impressive. - Never stopped. - Never stopped. So that's an option, if
you're like the greatest ever. - It'd be interesting, wouldn't it, just to see what they're
doing now, you know? Because at some stage you
have to get a normal job. - Right, you do have to stop. - You do have to stop. At some stage you have to
decide what you're gonna do, and it's either into coaching. The judo is either to coaching, or if you're not in coaching, then it's into something
to do with the media. And I was lucky that I, it was just by accident,
really, with the commentary. Somebody said, "Would you do a voiceover?" So I did this voiceover. And that was back in 1982. I did that. - So you've been commentating since 1982? - I did some voiceovers. I wouldn't call it commentating, but I did some voiceovers, and then I did some, we did some different
European Championships, World Championship kind of events and I did the voiceovers for it. And the way that it was done, that it was more narration. And so it kind of turned into, then somebody asked me to do an event. And when you listened to
the intonation of the voice and stuff like that, it wasn't like it is now. But I guess that's just
something that developed, because then it was coming from the heart, and I started to get excited
and just do my thing. And it was just me, really. Just my style. - Well, I've listened to your
commentary from a while back. I don't know if it's the eighties, but it's still there. - I think it's timing as well, isn't it? It's like, you know, you get your timing a bit better and know when to go in, when to come out, when to say something, when not. And I think that in the early days, I tended to think, I tended to want to talk all the time, and you don't have to do that. - Also knowing when to shut up. - That's the key, isn't it? - Yeah, part of the
drama is in the silence, building up to the setup and the throw and all that kind of stuff. But also you're very good at, while radiating passion, being very precise and specific about the details of
the throw and the setup and why something worked and didn't. - Yeah, I think there's
two kinds of commentating. You can commentate what you see and then you commentate
what people can't see. And so if you've got somebody that is not really understanding
of what's happening in the inner part of the game, so it might be a technical thing or it might be the tactical part of the play here that's going on, and if you can introduce that as well, then you've got an advantage. - Quick pause. I need a bathroom break. (laughs) - Okay, good stuff. - So we just took a little
break and went to JudoTV.com, which is, I guess, an IGF website. And IGF is the organization behind a lot of the big
judo events of the world. And I just signed up. You should sign up, too. It's great. - Absolutely, sign up. Cheaper the price.
(Lex laughing) Cheaper the price. - Yeah. And you can watch basically
any match from the grand slams and going back through history, I guess. - Yeah, I've got to say,
Lex, I mean, everybody, still people are saying
to me, "Oh, you know, we need more judo on television." They've got judo on
television every other week that they can access all of the top people in all the top events, and it costs $100 a year. You know, it's to access everything. And they can play all the videos. I mean, we've just accessed this here, the Paris tournament, and we're going to have
a look at Teddy Riner. But it's so, it's cheap at the price. - So we're now in Paris Grand Slam 2024, Teddy Riner final. By the way, super cool. Like, you click on the draw and you can just look
at any of the matches. You can go to the bottom of the finals. You can go. - [Neil] Yeah, to anyone. - Any one of them. That's so cool. It was really well done, really well done interface. Anyway, let me at first ask
the ridiculous big question. Who do you think is the
greatest of all time? Is Teddy Riner in the running? - He's the greatest
judo winner of all time, of that there's no doubt, you know. I mean, he is the, and I think if you asked him whether he was the greatest judo man in the world of all time, he would say, "No, I'm not." And he's not the greatest judo man. There are people with more
beautiful judo in some ways. Although he's got great technique. But he is the ultimate winner. - [Lex] Ten-time World Champ. - [Neil] Yeah. - Two-time gold medalist in the Olympics. I guess two-time bronze medalist. He's probably going, is he going to Paris? - Yeah. - He's going after it again. So he's right here. - He's right there. This is just a couple of months ago. And then last week, this last week, he was out again, and he won again. - Do you think he gets
gold medal this time? - There's people getting
closer to him, right? Because he's obviously, age-wise, and the amount of time
that he's been there. He's obviously somebody that is starting not quite at his best as he was when he was younger. But, like I say, he still
puts it on the line. He lays it on the line every single time. And then not only does
he lay it on the line, but he beats them all. And last week, he just beat Saito, who was a young, up-and-coming
Japanese fighter. And he beat him in the final. It was close, and he did well. There are certain people. The smaller ones, actually,
not the taller ones. Because we're saying about the big arm over
the top that he likes. And the dominant grip that he likes. There are people that
can give him a hard time. Now, if at the Olympic Games, he has two or three of those on the trot, it might work against him. And it's by no means an absolute certainty that he's going to win
the Olympic gold medal. But he's got to be one of
the favorites, top favorite. No matter what happens now, Teddy Riner is the greatest winner. And if you asked the great Yamashita, he would say the same. You know, there's nobody that's, and Yamashita was unbeaten
in international competition. And I trained with Yamashita
a lot over a two-year period and got to know him quite well. And he was one of the
greatest of all times. For me, he was one of
the greatest judo men, and I'm talking about from
a technical point of view, from a spectacular judo point of view, understanding the fundamental principles of how techniques work, sometimes having different
techniques that work for you. So if one doesn't work and one particular direction doesn't work, you can change the direction completely. - In case people don't know, Yamashita is this legendary
judoka heavyweight. Teddy Riner, heavyweight,
that's plus 100 kg. - He would have caused
him all sorts of problems. - Oh, yeah, that's cool. Who do you think wins,
Yamashita versus Riner? - Yes, I think Yamashita. - Wait, whoa whoa whoa! You think Yamashita beats Teddy Riner? - I think so. - Strong words. You think so? You think so? Yamashita is on the shorter side, right? - Yeah. And he finds it more difficult with shorter people, you know? And so it was, it would have been a very
interesting confrontation. And I think if you asked Yamashita, he would probably say, that Teddy Riner, he's very gracious. He's really gracious. It would be really good. It would have been an
unbelievable matchup. And I've got to say this, that Teddy Riner is the
greatest winner of all time. - Competition-wise. So it's interesting, both of them, maybe you can correct me, but have this osotogari, which is a kind of trip
that I never understood. - [Neil] Yeah. - It's a very tricky thing to do, right? It's very easy to do
maybe as a white belt, you roll in, you can understand, but like to do it at the
high, high, high-level. - You see any of the top guys now, especially if they're second time out, so like they might catch
somebody by surprise. They come out and they go bang. Oh, and you go, that was amazing. But if they fought again, ten minutes later, you go, you're not going to catch
me with that, right? You've got a different situation here. And so it's slightly different. But the best fighters adapt, (Neil snaps his fingers)
like that, and they're able to see a situation, feel the situation, and they attack once, and then go again and
attack second, third time, and in the third time they make it work. - Yeah, both Yamashita and Teddy Riner, with the osotogari, they'll just like hit it
over and over in the match. - Yeah, sometimes they'll hit
first time and it won't go. And then you make a
readjustment of the way in. It's a little bit like, I mean, a really easy way of understanding it is if we're shooting at a target, and all of a sudden you
start moving that target, you know, it's different
hitting a moving target, but it's also different
hitting a moving target that's trying to hit you as well. And that's our game. So we're not only trying
to throw a moving target, we're trying to throw a moving target that's trying to throw us. So it makes it even more difficult. - Yeah, there's a few folks who, you know what's coming. It's like, over and over and over, it's the same attack
anyway with this uchi mata. It's like. It's different. It's different. There's not many people like that where it's like this, the same attack. I mean, there's other attacks also, but they'll just go after the same thing over and over and over. - When I watch great athletes, most of them can throw over both flanks, not always going left and right, although our sport always, I mean, the catters are always
demonstrated left and right. So, if you demonstrate, if you do something on one side, then can you demonstrate
it on the other side? Okay, so can you do it equally? No, but you do it differently
on the other side. So, you know, when I'm teaching, I don't teach left and right. So if I was teaching
you to do a technique, first thing I do is say, "I need you to take sleeve and lapel." All right. So I'd let you decide
what was left and right. Because often what happens
is we impart on people whether they're going to be left or right when we start teaching, you get a lot of teachers do that, and they'll say immediately, "What do you write with, left or right hand?" And it's no indicator, actually, as to how we do judo,
because I'm left-handed and I do more predominantly right-handed, because I lead off my strongest hand. And actually, most people do. So actually, left and right
is a bit of a trap sometimes when we're teaching. Better to get, because we can go, so my point was that a lot
of people can go both flanks, so they'll do something over this side and something over this side. - But anyway, was one side? - He was one-sided,
but he could switch it. So he had a seoi nage as
well on the other side. So he could switch it if he had to. - Oh, interesting. And by the way, your opponent in '84, was he righty or lefty? - He was a righty. - So that drop left seoi, where did that come from? - Well, I mean, again, he could have, probably in other contests, he'd hit me with it several
times and I've just stopped it, and just at the wrong place
at the right time for him. Right place and the
wrong time for me, right? - That's life, you know? - Yeah. - All right, let's watch some Teddy Riner. (crowd cheering) - This is final of a Paris tournament, and this is against the Korean. The Korean had had a great day, actually. - [Lex] Again, shorter. - Again, shorter. So he does find that difficult. Have a look at Teddy Riner. Teddy Riner will try and catch the sleeve. He's after the sleeve, and then the right arm over the top. That's the key point for Teddy Riner. And, of course, what he has done, if he can't always catch the big osotogari over his right-hand side, he's been doing something
to the opposite side. - [Lex] And the Korean
just went for a drop seoi. And Teddy Riner blocked with the hips. He's, (laughs) he's a big boy. - Like I say, he has difficulty always
against somebody smaller, dropping with the seoi nages. - [Lex] Has Teddy Riner
ever been thrown for ippon? Do you remember? - I've never seen him thrown for ippon, but he was thrown last
week for a nice technique and he's being caught more and more. - So he's getting close. - Yeah. And to say of in the final
of the World Championships, they had a strange situation there where Tasoev was a technique down and then pulled off a counter and they didn't count it, but then they overruled it. Unfortunately, I was
commentating at the time, and I went for a score for Tasoev, and anyway, they overruled it, and then they awarded a
second gold medal to Tasoev. - [Lex] What can you say
about Tamerlan Bashaev, who also gave him trouble? - Yeah, Bashaev and Tasoev are the two that could possibly go to the Olympics. So that was a close one there from Riner. That was closest that
he'd actually been there. - [Lex] Oh, wow. - So didn't have the sleeve, and he relies on the sleeve greatly. Big support there from
the French in the crowd. - And also maybe, can you explain the
penalties for stalling? - Yeah, so if they don't attack, if they've got a grip, and they've got sleeve lapel
or they got two hands on, if they're too passive
and they don't attack, if they've got dominant sleeve
grip, they don't attack. That was quite close as
well from the Korean. So the Korean here, you can
see, is having a real go. The penalties will come
if they don't attack at the right time. Step outside the yellow area,
they'll get penalized as well. - [Lex] (chuckles) That's dedication for, - Absolutely. I mean, it was really close, wasn't it? Nice little kouchi gari
there from the Korean. And if they touch below the beltline with the arms, so they're not allowed to grab the legs. They've stopped grabbing the legs. - [Lex] Wow, the Korean is really going. - The Korean is having
a real good go at it. - I guess every single person in that division is probably training for Teddy Riner, right? - You think, Teddy Riner
has been there a long time, and he's got another guy here in the final of the Paris tournament. He's got 18,000 people watching him. They're all on Teddy Riner's side. They want him to win. And the Koreans out there
on his own with his coach. - But also the pressure on Teddy Riner. - Amazing pressure. We interviewed him
after this, and he said, I've got pressure. People go, "Is he going to
do it at the Olympic Games?" Can I do it in Paris? He wanted to go to Paris. I mean, really, the last Olympic Games
should have been it. Shouldn't it be your last? Should have been the final one. But he's gone, "No, I've got to do another four years." Two penalties are on the
board already for the Korean. That Korean is really having
a great go at Teddy Riner. - He's got a little bit of a lift on him. He's going after it. (laughs) - He's really going after it. You know, it's an amazing
effort there from the Korean, and he's getting some
last minute information. I don't know if you've ever seen his coach stood next to him like
that, but it's amazing. He's six-foot six, and
he's about four-foot six. (Lex laughing) - He's a real pitch. - Full of passion, I love it. He's like screaming. - So golden score. - How does golden score work? - So the golden score. So if it goes without any
point on the board from a throw or a hold down or armlock strangle, then it goes into golden score. So two shidos on the board apiece. One more mistake now, and
it's going to be all over. - And that's it. - Teddy Riner just manages
to turn it on the Korean. And that went really against
the runner play, didn't it? Because the Korean did better. But Teddy Riner is a winner, and he says, "Right, okay, let's have more cheering." - Finds a way to score. - And I have to say
that even when he loses, he's always graceful. He doesn't like it, but he's graceful. - Yeah, there is so much
love there in celebration. It was great, it's great to see. It's great that he's doing
it again, going after it, chasing the gold medal again. - Well, he's chasing the gold medal. It's going to be in Paris, which is going to be even more fantastic. He's already the greatest. You said, "What has he got
to do to be the greatest?" He's already the greatest
competitor judo has ever known. And that was even, you know, with the great Tani. So, Tani was amazing as well. - Are you part of the commentating team? - I'm part of the commentating team, but it won't be for IJF, because it's independent broadcast. - Have you ever had an
athlete sort of come up to you and ask, "Why'd you say that?" Or disagree with your commentary? - Do you know, I've got to say that 99%, 99.9% of everybody is so grateful that I've commentated their
fights all the way through. They know if they've messed up. So if I say something,
and I'm never disparaging, really disparaging,
but what I will say is, "It was a great throw by the other guy," or, "It was a great match," and if they made a mistake, so if they walk out, they know that I will say something that will mean something. So nobody really moans about it. I try and talk the truth if I can. - So who else would you
consider as some of the greats? So I personally, just because I love the
standing seoi-nage, Koga. So there's like, you know, the number of times you
won the World Championships and the Olympic Games, but there's also how you won, and how you went into fights, and what you did. It's not necessarily
about getting gold medals. It's about how you fought and how you represent the sport. And there's certain athletes
like Inoue and Iliadis that are going after the big throws. - Only after they just want
to win by ippon, you know, and I think that is the difference is they're the ones that come out there and it's a bit like when
Tyson stepped out there, you knew what you were going to get. And if they went toe to toe, if Tyson had somebody going toe to toe, somebody was going to get knocked out. And we got the same in judo. When people go head to head
and it's an open match, and I often talk about an open match, I say it's an open match. They're both trying to score. Somebody is going to get scored on. Somebody's going to go. And that makes it exciting. - That's great. - When they come out and they close up, then that's not an exciting match. - Is there a case for Ono? Shohei Ono, three-time World Champ, two-time gold medalist. - I think that, judo-wise, he's got to be one of the greatest because he had such versatility. He could go right and he could go left. He could pick up. He could go to the ground as well. He won a lot of his earlier
matches on the ground. I think his empathy and how he presents himself, sometimes he falls down. And I think that hopefully
that should come with tutoring and how to be a great champion after. You know, it's not just
about what you do on the mat, but what you do off the mat as well. - So to you, a great
champion is the whole package of how you present yourself when you lose, how you represent yourself,
just even off the mat. - Yeah, I think it's how you
present yourself afterwards, how you are with people, how much you can help people. I mean, people, kids, and they look up to these great champions because they want to be like them. So the worst thing is
when you get somebody that's a bit of an ass and they're not presenting themselves in the right way. So I like to see somebody
presenting themselves in the right way, and I think that it's
something that can be taught. It's something that normally comes with a little bit of experience, a little bit of age, you know? And I like to think that I'm
a little bit different now than I was when I was 19. Not that I was bad, I
just think I was just, you know, I see it often now, just full of beans. (laughs) - You're a beautiful work in progress. What about Nomura? Tadahiro Nomura, that's
three-time gold medalist. - [Neil] Never lost an Olympic fight. - [Lex] There's something there. - Yeah, nobody ever done that. You know what I mean? So that's got to be. There has to stand. He took two years off in
between every Olympic Games and came back, did the right amount of events to qualify for, not only did he having to qualify, he had to qualify through Japan. Now, Japan, remember, have
got the greatest depth, so they got people coming
through all the time. And then he had to win
the Japanese Trials. I mean, we had a four-time
World Champion from Japan. This is when World Championships
was every other year. And this is Shozo Fujii. And he was the greatest
middleweight of all time, and never got to
participate in the Olympics because he lost the Japanese Trials twice in two Olympic possibilities. So he had to qualify for Japan and then go to the Olympic
Games and then do it there. So sometimes some of the best people in Japan can't get outside of Japan. Look at the situation they had with Abe and then they had Maruyama. Maruyama and Abe were
both the best, by far, in the under 66 kilos category. This is for the last Olympic Games. And they sent one to
the World Championships, one to the Olympic Games, and they both won gold medals, you know? - Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why the
All-Japan Championships are legendary. There's these battles with
Yamashita and all of them. - Well, Abe and Maruyama, they had a Trials in the Kodokan. It was 26 minutes. I think it was 26 minutes it went. They were battling it out for 26 minutes. - That's great. If we can just go to, you've trained in Japan. What are those randoris like? What's that training like? - I touched on the danger, that danger of being thrown, when you get hold of somebody or somebody gets hold of you. And I often reflect, I often talk about it
when I'm commentating, because I can see immediately. It's easy, isn't it? We're in the commentary chair, or if you're in the coach's chair and you don't really understand totally, absolutely what's going on when
somebody's being out-gripped and when they're in
danger of being thrown. I mean, if you're in
danger of being thrown, the first thing you do is stick your backside out and defend by not being in the position
they want you to be in. All right? And so that's danger. You feel the danger. And so in Japan, that was the place I used to go to train because I felt the danger. And so my defenses would be heightened. And so somebody that was, I went two years, one Olympic cycle, I went two years, two months without having a score on me in any competition. And then I went to one competition in the European
Championships, which I won, and I was struggling
all the way through it and got scored on three times in my pool, my first pool of fights. And I was devastated, and actually nearly lost
the whole competition because I was more mortified about being scored on three times when I hadn't been scored
on for two and a half years. I had this thing in my head
about two and a half years, and then all of a sudden,
I'm not unbeatable. And then you just, and you go. And I almost lost it, completely lost it. Just so fortunate. A couple of things went
my way, and just came out, and I scraped and scratched
my way to the final and won the final well. All right, but that was my best match, but I almost lost it. - Well, what do you do with the fact if you go to Japan and you're getting, you're saying danger, like you're probably getting, - Getting thrown. - Getting thrown in Japan. What's that do to your ego? - Well, again, it's my, that was a winning ego that had to adapt. I remember we went to the kasejo, which, police dojo, one time, and they wanted to see the, they created this groundwork competition because they wanted to see me do the juji. How I went in and how I.
- [Lex] Armbar. - Yeah, the armbar. They wanted to see how I did it from underneath or over the top. So they created this event. - Study the creature. - Yeah, they started it, so. And then winner stays on. Competition was happening at the kasejo. So I did about seven, I think, seven in, and then my coach came in and said, "No, it's finished. That's it now, it's finished." You know, suddenly we
realized what was going on, and I was going, "No, no, no, don't stop it." (Lex laughing) Like that, you know. And it was one of those moments where the boot was on
my foot, you could say, rather than the other side, the other way, because I had been to Japan in situations. I remember as a 16-year-old, I got such a drumming from one of the Japanese guys, older students, and he had a gold tooth, and so he was Goldtooth to me, and he was my nightmare. And I remember I kept
coming out to fight him because he kept throwing me, and I was crying and I was upset, and I was like, and then that was another occasion where I got dragged
away, and I said, "No." So I wanted to go back and fight him. And I went back to the same
dojo every year to fight him. He was on my mind. Morning, noon, night, he was on my mind. - [Lex] Goldtooth was on your mind. - Goldtooth was on my mind, you know? - Did you ever get him? - Two years later, I was. Two years to me, from 16 to
18 was totally different. 18 years of age, I was pretty competitive with him, and it was like I was
standing up with him. 19, he was in the groundwork competition. - Mm-hmm. And that's when the switch happened. - Switch happened, you
know, because I just, well, because I remember
getting the armlock, and didn't put it on immediately. I needed it to last. It had to last. - Sure. - So I spread, the whole thing lasted as long
as I could possibly get it. And it was a long memory as I was looking down at him. - And now he has nightmares about you. I wonder what nickname he has for you. - I don't know. I'm hoping that he remembers me. He has a photo of you. He probably doesn't say, he doesn't back an eyelid. Doesn't say a thing about it. - Well, I mean, can you just speak to that
training with those folks, you know, you said crying, just the frustration of being thrown. - [Neil] Yeah. - I mean, what, how do you? It's such a beautiful part of
the process of becoming great. - Yeah, I think it is just something that doesn't happen at this level. You know, we were talking about levels, and then at this level, it never happened. And then I went out in
my first European Cadet, and all of a sudden I wasn't the top guy. I was in the mix, and then I had to work myself
to the top of that mix, and then to the top of the next one, because I went to the
European Senior Championships, and again, you're not the top. And you work your way to the top of that. And I think it is a frustration, but I think it's that
kind of hatred of losing and also, being out of control. I think that the first time, first Senior European
Championships I fought, I had fought Nevzorov, but he
was only one in my contest. Then I had to fight a
Frenchman for third place, but he totally outgripped me. And I remember I was more upset, though I won the contest, I was more upset that he totally, he did outgrip me, and I was more upset. And then I fought him a year later, and I outgripped him. All right, so it was one of those, it was a learning process
all the way through. - Yeah, that frustration is like, whatever that does to your soul, the building up afterwards is what actually makes you better. It's fascinating. And you think there's, in Japan, just killers there that are
the world doesn't know about? - Yeah, there's World
Champions in the dojo. There's people that never make it out. I remember we were training like so, and everybody that goes to Japan, all my friends that have
been World Olympic Champions, they all know what I'm talking about. They know exactly who I'm what I'm saying is that when
we go to the dojos there, we all get thrown by people that never come
out to be World Champions. They're just in the mix while they're going through
three years of university. And then they go, we had a guy, (Lex laughing) we had a guy that came in, he was business guy, came in with his suitcase
in his briefcase like that. He's got his tie up like that. So he decides he's going to come in, and he gets changed, and he's in his lunch hour. He's in his lunch hour, right? So got to be quick. (Lex laughing) So he comes in and he goes through, he's working his way through
the whole of the British team. We're all lined up, right? So he's just working his
way through the whole of the British team. And I knew it was my turn next. - On his lunch hour. - So I get hold of him, and
I throw him immediately. And then it was what we were talking about when it happens in the first
few seconds of the practice. So then I had four minutes
of him coming at me, and I'm going up into the air, and I'm twisting off, and I'm like. And then everybody's laughing
at the side of the mat, or the whole British team. He's gone through the whole British team. And then he, ten minutes later, he's tied his tie up like that, you know, and oh, back to work, like that. Imagine him sitting behind
his desk and his computer. - [Lex] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'm glad he didn't get out. (Lex and Neil laughing) - Hopefully, he listens to this. - Hopefully. - Anybody else I didn't mention as part of the greats that
just kind of jump to your mind? - Kashiwazaki Sensei is my
favorite of all favorites. He is what I would call a judo genius. I don't know if you can get him up here. Can we get him up? - Yeah. - So go into 1981 World Championships, and I'll talk you through
the great Kashiwazaki. He was one year in Great Britain, and he was a guy that
was so much a genius. All right, so you want the
final of the under 65 kg there, the one at the top. This is him. He is two weight categories
below my weight category that I won the World
Championships, same year I won it. So this is, it's not, I'm not sure if this is
going to show his final. - [Lex] This is a highlight. - Oh, watch this. This he did in the final.
- What! - In the final of the World.
- For people just listening, he did an incredible sacrifice throw. - Yep, and then he was
on top for the newaza and renowned for his groundwork, and he was on top of against
a really strong Romanian guy. All right, so his transition
was just phenomenal. - Yeah, let me go back and look at that, what just happened. - So he's just showing you. So he does this koji thing
just to create space. - Oh, wow. - And it's his follow
through into groundwork that is best of all. And then the Romanian, really strong, like I say, he'd gone all the way through to the final of the World Championships, winning most by ippon,
I think, the Romanian, and he's defending
really, really well here. And you can see that,
how persistent he is. He knows exactly what he wants. He's just got to get his leg out. Now watch, he'll tie the arm up, and then he'll pull the
top leg towards him, and then he'll push the bottom one off. - Always working. - With both feet. Always working, always working. Readjust the balance. Still one leg trapped. Final of the World Championships. Good referee, because he's
refereeing something here that's happening that's going
to decide as to whether, so he doesn't call it
to stand it up at all. Watch him pull the top one now, and he will push the bottom one. - There's a calmness on his face. It's great to see. - Calm, calm. Pushes the bottom leg out. Job done. All finished. This is him again. Watch this. This is another technique that he does. - [Lex] The sacrifice. - And then just again,
sacrifice directly in, directly into the newaza. - Transition is everything, isn't it? In judo. - Yeah, well, in anything, really, but judo it especially pays off. - Yeah. I mean, because we haven't got that long. I mean, we had more time here. They've just brought more time back. So we've got more time to transition in and to get the situation that we want and to get the attacking
situation that we want, because I remember I
was teaching in America to some jiu-jitsu guys, and they were saying, "Oh, we'll never give you our back." And I said, with judo rules, certain situations, it happens that when we try and do throws where we're facing away from our opponent, so for example seoi nages, if they fail, then the back is there, and that's how we get the back. And it's a different situation than going on your back
in the guard situation, totally different. - Well, there Travis Stevens, I don't know how familiar with his judo, but he's a really interesting example because he competed at the highest level in jiu-jitsu as well. And his idea, he's a big seoi-nage guy, and he basically threw all of that away. - [Neil] In the jiu-jitsu? - In the jiu-jitsu. Like, he took the sport
from scratch for what it is. So he almost never did
a standing seoi nage or seoi nages at all in in jiu-jitsu. - No, because it would
leave his back all the time, if it failed, you know what I mean? But he wouldn't have the same
kind of grip on the judogi or the the jiu-jitsu gi. A little bit different. - And so you have to kind
of consider the sport, the art of it, and also the competitors, the styles, and the culture of the sport if you want to win. If winning is the most important thing, then like, all right, well, let's. - But you learn the game, don't you? And that's what he did. He learned the game, and I think that is credit to him, and that's why I say about wrestling. The wrestlers, I mean, good to learn the judo and for what it is and the mechanics and how it works, and then learn the wrestling. I mean, I do the commentary
as well for the freestyle, and I will be at the
Olympics for the freestyle and the Greco-Roman, so. And I love the freestyle. Absolutely love it. But freestyle is freestyle. Judo is judo. I like to see people doing judo. - Yeah. But there's a rhyme to
the whole combat thing. They're all, I mean, the body mechanics, it's all like fascinating
echoes of each other in interesting ways. The details are different, but they're still two humans clashing. - Yeah, we've got some
amazing crossovers with people like the Mongolians have
come in, the Georgians. I mean, the Georgians do massive pickups and different techniques. And, you know, if you ask the fighters whether grabbing the legs, a lot of them would say some
of the wrestling styles, the Georgians and the
Mongolians might say, "Yeah, I'd like to be
able to take the legs," but a lot of them just adapted. You get Iliadis for
example, he just adapted. So he thought, "Well, I'll
take my arm over the top and I'll just rip him
out the floor that way." You know what I mean? - They're still doing the big lifts, they're still doing the big gripping, but they just don't grab below the legs. - [Neil] Yeah. - It's weird. They figured it out. (laughs) - And they figured it out like that. - Yeah, you would think
it'd take a long time. No, it was like a month. (laughs) - Yeah, no, exactly. - The highest level, which is crazy. So you mentioned jiu-jitsu a little bit. What to you is an interesting difference between jiu-jitsu and
judo that you've observed? Because you're one of the greatest ever on the ground in judo. And so jiu-jitsu is primarily focused on similar type of stuff on the ground. So what to you is an
interesting difference there? - They're a different approach, different time scale to them, and they have a different way in. So, like where ours comes from a standing position directly in, we've got a time scale on it. So we have to, like the catch. I always talk about the catch, because in judo terms, if you don't get the catch immediately, then the referee won't
see the transition in and also the continuation
from plan A, B, C, D, if something builds. So we have to build it, and we have to build it quickly. And I think in jiu-jitsu terms, you have more time to build. - Yeah, there's a, there's
a kind of patience, like, oh, if this doesn't work out, I could try a different thing. Just with judo, there's like an urgency. - [Neil] There's an urgency. - And there's a ref watching skeptically. So you better show that
you're making progress. - You've got to show the progression. And that's why, you know, I
always had a plan A, B, C. You see there with, that was 1981 there. The Great Kashiwazaki had a progression. You know, everything was, he knew exactly where he had to be. It was feel. That wasn't by accident. It was trained. And I think that that transition there and taking control of somebody's mistake, so somebody might have made a mistake or not hit properly or your defense has caused
them to make a mistake, and then you take advantage of it, and that is the difference. - So one of the side effects of that, I don't know with the chicken or the egg, but judo people on the ground
are much more aggressive. So probably because of the urgency, but just like there's an intention behind the progress you're making. I think jiu-jitsu is more relaxed. There's more a culture of
just finding places to relax and think of different control and positions and take your time. And as a result, it's
much, much less exhausting. So you can go for much longer. It feels like judo is exhausting. - It's that ten second blast, isn't it? It's like doing sprints all the time, and that is really hard and that's a special kind
of condition you need, and you need to be able to catch it and know when to go and when not to go. And I think also, I was going to ask you, you think it'd make a difference? I mean, certain jiu-jitsu, you can't just throw yourself
on your back into the guard. You have to throw into the situation. So you have got, I mean, I know Roger Gracie, he decided that he was
going to learn judo. He saw the importance
of being able to throw for the transition in, and so he came to the Budokwai, and he was learning off Ray Stevens, and they were doing really a lot. - Yeah, well, he's a fascinating study because he does the most basic stuff. - But does it well. - Like, what another level of well. It's like Yamashita. Everyone knows what's
coming with Roger Gracie, but he just does it anyway against the best people in the world. It's crazy. He's like, everybody in jiu-jitsu at white belt learns the
techniques he's using, and he just does it. - Amazing, isn't it? But he has about a thousand ways in. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, and in the thousand ways, there's in the details, so it kind of might even
look the same to people, but there's, I mean he
finds a way to choke people, so he's on top of them, mounted in a sort of judo pin position. And everyone knows what's coming next against the best people in the world, and you should be able to
defend it, but nobody can. It's crazy. - I think there's the
power element as well. You know, that you don't realize how, when somebody's directed
in a particular way, then you have that kind of
element of absolute power. You can only feel, like when Roger's doing a technique, I think that you would only
feel it if he did it on you. You know, then then you can feel it. It's not something that happens, so tricks is one thing, but actually being able to
do something really well from a power point of view, it's like you say, he only does those few things, but he does them really,
really, really well. - Yeah, I don't know what
that is about, actually, judo pins is a very
interesting case study as well, because people are able to feel so heavy. One of the things judoka are able to do is pin extremely well, and it makes you realize that
it's not about the weight. It's about some kind of technique that makes people feel like
they weigh 1,000 pounds. - It's about weight distribution
and change of balance. A lot of people don't realize
that there's huge changes of balance on the ground, massive. You know what it's like. I mean, you're a jiu-jitsu man, and the detail of the techniques is what really interests me. I mean, I'm always looking
small ideas, you know, I'm always looking at the jiu-jitsu, and it fascinates me. I would have done jiu-jitsu for sure, but I wouldn't have
forgotten the judo way in to the techniques, you know what I mean? I think that you've got
to differentiate the two, but I would have loved the jiu-jitsu. I would have absolutely loved it, but it wasn't as prominent then. Where the newaza came from, it came from a mistake, me getting beaten in a particular contest. And I went, I'm not going to
be beaten again on the ground. (Lex laughing) That's how it happened. - Yeah, well, yeah, the story of your life is like a loss creates the
phoenix rises from the ashes. - Well, it was 1978, and it wasn't a mistake. It was a particular movement, and I was fighting weight
up from my normal weight. But I stayed in the same position for one second too long, got caught and, - Choked. - Sankaku, yeah, triangle, triangle. - Triangle, wow. - And I said, I literally just the same as
I said to you when I said, "I'm not going to drink anymore." I came off and I said, "I'm never going to get
caught on the ground again." - [Lex] Yeah, never going
to lose on the ground. - And I never lost in my whole
competitive career again. - Wow. But yeah, I should mention that
there is nothing like a pin from a judo person. And I don't actually know if people in jiu-jitsu
have made sense of that, like loaded that in. - But it's not part of, it's not part of the game, is it? You know, the pin, it's submission. - Yeah, but, you know, control is part of the game. - [Neil] Right. - And nobody controls a human body the way judo people do on the ground. Like they have understood
the science of control. And I think that control
is extremely useful in jiu-jitsu as well. It's just that people don't, because there's so many
other domains of exploration. - [Neil] It's interesting. - I mean, just, and especially when you apply jiu-jitsu to the fighting setting. So mixed martial arts, that control, that side control, that pin control is really,
really really important. But then you add punching to
the thing, and it becomes. - Yeah, puts a whole different
thing on it, doesn't it? - I mean, there's an alternate history where you would have been
part of the early UFCs if time was a little different. Maybe a few years later, because your style of judo and jiu-jitsu and the transitions and the aggression, all of that would have worked
really well in the early UFCs. - I'm sure I was being set up at one stage by one of the Gracies, and that was when he was
winning all the matches. But he came with a couple of the cousins to one of my seminars. - Nice. (laughs) - He was one of the first ones, wasn't he? That's how I love to see the kind of UFC, because it was different
martial arts, different skills, and I mean he'd get close, and he'd just choke them out or armlock them or armbar them. And that was brilliant. For me, that was a revelation. That was how I saw it. - It's a fascinating science experiment. Which aspects of different
martial arts work well and not when they clashed together? And it did turn out
that newaza worked well. - It was the key, wasn't it? - Yeah, it was a big missing link in our conception of fighting. It's the neutralizer of size. - Yeah. - And a lot of other components, and it just blew people's mind. Like, okay, it's not just about size. It's not just about big
guys swinging hands. It's a lot of other components. And the groundwork is
really, really important. And, of course, there's a few judoka that
succeeded in the UFC since then, which is always
interesting, how they adapt. When you take off the gi, how can you still throw people? How can you still do control? How can you still take advantage of the transition on the ground? Ronda Rousey is a good example of somebody that took advantage of that. - Yeah, I think one of the biggest things for the judoka is we've never, you know, there's no strikes. And I think that's the biggest shock, if you wish, when you get. - Punched in the face. - When you get punched in the face and you're not used to that. That's not what we're used to. - Some people are able to get punched in the face better than others. Yeah, for sure. Then again, there's Ronda Rousey, who doesn't need to get
punched in the face. She just gets in close, throws a person, armbar right there. - And Kayla, you know, Kayla as well. - Kayla Harrison, that's
another incredible person. She could have probably been
just winning Olympic gold medal after Olympic gold medal, but chose to. - Whatever she decides. I mean, Ronda as well, you know, whatever they decided to do, they're great athletes. They hate losing. (Lex laughing) I don't know anybody that hates
losing more than those two. They don't like it. - And Kayla Harrison, I don't know anybody that
works as hard as her. That's a crazy, crazy, crazy work ethic. Well, let me ask you about training. Again, Jimmy Pedro said
he learned a lot from you. He learned how to do a tai otoshi, and the armbar juji gatame. But he also learned from
you training methodology. So, what's he talking about? He told me about this. What's your approach to training throughout your career
and as it developed? - I always wanted to train
harder than anybody else. I still train now every day. If I don't train, do something, I do do an hour of my physical work, and I still go on the mat a little bit. I'm 65 now, so I'm not doing
really heavy stuff on the mat, but I still like to train. And when I was 21, 20, up to 30, I was one of the best trainers. But Jimmy Pedro was one of
the best trainers as well. He was one of the, he's one of your dream athletes. When Jimmy Pedro stepped
through your door, and he was just a kid. He was just young when he
stepped through my door. And I had a lot of full-time trainers, so I had up to 20 really good athletes that were training hard, and I only wanted hard trainers. Give me ten that trained hard rather than your one prima donna, that you're skillful, the one that could do it. I just, I wanted 10 or
20 really hard trainers because you can do so much with them. You can make champions. You can make them World Champions. You know, if you got somebody
that was a special talent and they wanted to work hard, then you had a special athlete. - Well, when you say hard
trainers, what do you mean? Are these people that just, like, every single day are able
to just grind it out? Do randori, do the training,
do the boring things, just keep coming back? - Yeah, when they're going gets tough. And I think that that was him. He had a special mentality, and the thing is, you see, when you've got him in
your dojo, all right, even when you're tired, when somebody's tired, what an example to the others, so he'd pull the other
ones in as well, you know. So I had somebody that
when everybody was tired and everybody was sick of it and everybody just wanted to rest, and he'd still be there. So they had to do it. So that was for me, a win-win. So I had all the Americans, actually, I had Bobby Berland,
and I had Michael Swain, and I had Ed Liddie, and I had them all coming to
visit me at different times. Jimmy was there. You know, they wanted to be the best. In the end, we had such
a great club atmosphere, they wanted to come for the hard work, and they knew that if they came, they were going to be dragged out and we were going to do physical training, and it was physical training
like they hadn't done before. But it wasn't just the physical training, it was the judo and the
skill side of it as well. And so I always had a great empathy with the US team, Olympic team. So a lot of your Olympic medalists have been through with me, and so I'm proud of that, because we had some great times, and they're still great mates now. And so in New York, in
a couple of weeks' time, I'm going to have everybody
who's going to be there. They're all coming in.
(Lex laughing) - All old friends. - All old friends. - And new friends. So what's a tough week
look like at your peak? Physical training, randori? Is there days off? Are you training like twice a day? - Twice a day. So we do the preparation training, we do the running, we do the weight training, we do the skills in the morning as well. The skills is for me, one of the biggest advantages that any full-time trainers can have because what happens is
that with most clubs, you're trying to fit
everything into that hour and a half or two hours. You fit your skills, you fit your physical
training and your sparring, and everything's in there all grouped in. So the biggest advantages
of having a full-time group is that you can split your skills, and your skills lay your foundation. So the biggest advantage is being able to work specifically on things without having to worry about
getting to do your free, your randori or your sparring, or then you got to go out for
a run, you just do the skills. - When you talk about skills, say your specialty is a tai otoshi, are we talking about uchikomi,
doing a bunch of fists, the working with bands, are you doing throws? Are you actually just having conversations about specific tiny details of throws? What does skills mean? - All those things about doing
your repetition practice, making sure the repetition is correct. You know, there's good repetition. - So when we say good repetition, is it uchikomi, when you're just fitting the
throw versus doing the throw, where do you land on the value of both? - I'm getting it moving. So one of the biggest, most important things
is getting it moving. If we do something static, again it's that static target. You need to get it moving. So you need to do a repetition. And also you need to do
it correct repetition, because if you're doing
a hundred repetitions that are not correct, and repetitions under pressure, too much pressure, without somebody overseeing those skills to make sure that you correct the skills, because if you're doing a skill, if you're doing it 99 times
incorrectly, all right, then repetition doesn't make perfect. Repetition makes permanent. So you've got to make it as
perfect as you possibly can. So, actually, that skills group there is the most important thing, and what I used to do is oversee it. So I'd oversee it to make sure
that it was done properly. - So you're watching the footwork, you're watching the gripping, and then just constantly adjusting. - I'll give you an example, Jimmy Pedro. Jimmy was one of the hardest. When he was 19 years of age, right? So he was always asking
me to practice, always. So he's always on me all the time. So I do groundwork with him, and could I put him on his back? No, I was all on him, and he'll tell you, but he was just, wouldn't go. He was just. He was going to be great, without a doubt. All right? So I wanted everybody
on with him, everybody. So everybody went on with him, you know, and so they only improved their game, and it improved him. And then with small technical things that have stayed with
him that we were doing with the juji gatame that
was passed on to Kayla and then gone on to Rhonda, and it's all small things
that I can see sometimes that it's passed on. - What about the tai otoshi? He said he learned a
lot from you, from that. - [Neil] And he does it differently. - And so I should mention that's
one of the trickier throw. I mean, I still don't
understand it. (laughs) - It is a tricky throw. - I don't understand. So, for people who don't know, it, boy, how would you even explain it? It doesn't make any sense. When you just look solo, the movement you make is quite simple, but how you get person to be off balance, how you actually get them to be thrown, and when you do throw it successfully, it looks like a whipping
motion that's effortless. It makes no sense. - It makes no sense, (Lex laughing) other than it's every technique
starts with the hands, so it's what we call kuzushi. And you're pulling somebody off balance, getting them moving, pulling them off balance. Tai otoshi means body drop. So it's basically two legs
across your partner's body. I've got my back to you, all right? And I've already pulled you
off balance with my hands. And then I'm going to just flex my legs up just as you're coming onto my back, and then you're going to go over if I coordinate it all right. If it doesn't get coordinated right, then you're going to come right on my back and try to rip my arm off, you know? So, yeah, gotta get it right. - What was, if you can
convert it into words, some secret ingredients that allowed you to pull it
off at the highest levels, the tai otoshi? - The hands start every technique. So getting the repetition
right, first of all. So to get the repetition
right, you need a good partner. So actually training your partner to react in the right way is just as important
as learning the throw. So actually, what happens is, we could get a lesson of beginners. We teach the throw, and then go, "Right, off you go." And 90% of them will get it wrong because their partner's not
reacting in the right way. So half of it is to get the
person to react as they should. So if I was doing it with you, you and I, first thing I'd teach you to do is to react the way I want you to react, and then I'd react the way
that you want me to react. So then we'd have success with it, rather than you leaning
back in the wrong way or resisting or frightened
you're going over. So, actually, that's why
nine times out of ten, people get the technique wrong. - It's actually fascinating to me because in the United States, where I came up, judo, I mean, the level of judo is not comparable to the level of judo in
the rest of the world. Of course, the Pedro Center
is an exception to that. - [Neil] Certain athletes, yeah. - Certain athletes. When I trained recently with Jimmy Pedro, it's like even the 16-year-old-kids
are just all deadly. So it was terrifying. But I remember the Russian National Team came through Philadelphia. And one of the things
that really impressed me is just how much easier judo was, training judo with them. They moved correctly as uke, as the people getting thrown. Every aspect of their
body movement was correct in terms of it felt right
to be throwing them, to be training with them. Everything about the gripping, about the position of their hips, about the shoulder, everything. It was fun, it was easy. And I always felt like I was learning. So I think all of that
is loaded in, I guess, into proper training. So you're developing through the throws. You're developing the right technique. - Yeah, you have to develop between, I always had training
partners that I trained with up to each Olympic Games, and we worked together for the, we did the skills together, and then we worked together in order to make techniques work, and we got it moving
as quickly as we could. And one of the worst things that I see is, and I see a lot of YouTube
stuff with coaches. - Here we go. - Don't even start me on that. Don't even start me on that. But, you know. (Lex laughing) - What? - You're laughing because you know what
I'm talking about, right? - Yeah, no I'm actually laughing because I'm enjoying you talking trash. (Lex and Neil laughing) But talk about technique. - Yeah, just, well, the coaches and the
clipboard guys, you know, with the clipboards and the stopwatches, and they got these kids
running up and down the mat and then doing Uchikomi of something that technically
incorrect ten times, and then running up and doing
another ten at the other side, and actually mixing everything together, and it's just a mess. - [Lex] Yeah, technique is important. - Just technical mess. - That said, some of it
is conditioning-type stuff that you were doing. So what is like the hardest type of physical conditioning you were doing? - Probably ran too much. You know, when I was a kid, if I could go back now,
I wouldn't run as much. And I ran hard and I ran strong. And I remember doing
London Marathon one time, and I said, "I'm never
going to do it again." I never. But I ran, you know, and I was trying to, the problem was when I
did the London Marathon is I was trying to beat three hours. - It's that desire to win.
- It's totally insane. You know, it was insane. And I went out through half marathon in what I thought was a good time. Anyway, I got to 16, 17
miles and totally blew. - So you went out too fast.
- Yeah, I went out too fast. - And then you just wanted to keep going. - I died, absolutely. I died, Lex.
(Lex laughing) I got in. I crossed the line. I remember seeing this
bridge over there, right? And the bridge, it was the finishing line over the bridge. And I had to get over. It was the longest bridge
I've ever, ever walked over. Like walk, run. So I got over the bridge, and I took one step
over the line like that. And there was a guy over there, and he was trying to rush
everybody through, you know, and he was going, "Come
on, come on, come on. There's people behind you." Get your hands off me. (Lex laughing) I said, "Get your hands off me now." Like that, because
we're going to fall out, and I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I was white. - And it's amazing that you made it to the finish line, though. - I did. I got over there, and yeah, Donald Duck
passing me was a tell. - Oh, there was a person
dressed as Donald Duck? - Donald Duck, yeah. But the thing was, I
still crossed over 3:38. I crossed over 3:38, but I lost 38 minutes
in the last four miles. - To that bridge. Longest bridge ever. So you regret the run. - So anyway, I would do the running a little bit differently, but we ran, we ran hard, we did the weight training, we did good weight training. It was all conditioned. So, I mean, it was never the
same training all the time. So it was always, we'd have certain phases building up. It was scientifically done. It wasn't just out there
run, weight training, judo, same judo all the time. It was always pretty scientific. - Good variety. - It was a good variety. And it had build up, and it had a speed phase,
and it had a power phase, and it had like a base condition. - What about the randori? Was there a method to the madness there? - [Neil] Yeah.
- How much randori did you do? - A lot. So the most important
thing for me, I mean, I see now that there's a lot of people out there that are
not getting enough randori. They're not randori-ing enough. And there's a lot of
sports science people, and they're running and
they're weight training, and they're doing it all to death, and there's not enough judo. And the only ones, like you have a look at some of the Eastern Bloc countries that are getting together, they're having these mass camps, and the Japanese, they have just massive people
that they can do there. They're doing probably
50, 60 randoris a week. - Wait, what? - 50 or 60 a week? - Wow. - The average person is getting together. I mean, when I was doing randoris, when I went to Japan, it was just purely for 60 randoris a week. - How much is each one, how long is it? - So they were five minutes then. They're four minutes now. - But that's a lot, especially given the level
of the competition there. - Well, you can do it in Japan,
because it's fairly light. If they throw you, they throw you. You throw them. - There's like a level of, like you're moving at close to 100%. But the actual power and the
force is not quite there. - Different in Korea. Korea was harder. It was more physical. So you couldn't do 50 randoris in Korea. You'd die. Yeah. So you do 30. - 50 to 60 randori, wow. - But you need the randori. And so I chase the randoris. So I chased them into training camps. I chased them all over my country. So I was getting 40 to
50 a week in my club, and then I would go to
training camps and add more. And I honestly don't think
that they do enough now, a lot of countries. - Somebody who doesn't know,
randori is live training. - Yeah, sparring. - Was there a few people you remember that were just really tough to go against? You mentioned Goldtooth. Is there others like him? - Goldtooth was pretty horrific. - [Lex] Yeah. (Lex and Neil laughing) - He was. - [Lex] Well, you got him in the end. - He did pretty all right. I got him in the end. And, yeah. (Lex laughing) - Is there, I suppose I should say not just tough, but just good training
partners that you liked? - Great training partners. I remember Nishida. And Nishida was, I mentioned him earlier,
said he was one of the best. I mean, he was just
such a great technician. So I would go there to his dojo, and he'd ask me to practice, and he'd finish the practice, and you know that he would
always say, "Another one. We'll do another one." So you'd go, "Ah, yeah," because you had to make out that you weren't that bothered that you had to do another one. So you do another one back to back, and then he goes, sometimes, "Let's do another one." So he'd end up doing 15
minutes with the same guy who could possibly throw you at any time. And that was hard, so. But I remember those particular guys, and there were plenty of those. - What do you do with the exhaustion that
you're feeling in those? Like, how deep did you go, in terms of? - You have to dig deep. And I think that that was the great thing about having certain, like European training
camps were more physical. So I remember that we would
have European training camps where you'd fight Germans, and then the Dutch, and then the French, and then the Russian, or the. You'd have all sorts different styles and people there to fight. And that was something. Then you'd have to dig
in at a different place, come out of there. - Where do you go mentally? How many times have you gone there where you're really in deep waters, exhaustion-wise, in competition actually? - Competition, it's happened. So sometimes you go past where your forearms are absolutely blown. I remember the final of a
Czech tournament that we had, and I fought a Frenchman in the final, and my forearms were so blown I couldn't shake his hand, you know? And then I remember they
were solid, absolutely solid, and they had lactic acid in them. And I remember I stood on the rostrum and they were giving me things, and I couldn't grip them properly. So I was saying, "Put it under my armpit." Or, you know, chin like that, trying to hold it.
(Lex laughing) I couldn't hold anything, you know? And so there are times when I
really had to go really deep. I remember fighting two East Germans the same day one of the competitions, and the number one and the
number two East Germans, and that was another day where
I had to really dig deep. - That's the, the fascinating thing about some of these tournaments is if you go full distance
on several matches in a row, the way you're seeing in the finals are two people that have
fought a lot that day. - Yeah. And we have golden score now, so we see a lot of guys that
going into golden score, and they've done one
contest of four minutes, and then they go another four minutes, and then we've had some go
into a third four minutes. This is all back to back. It might be in the first round. It might be in the final. And we've got some now that are coming out and you can see the stats and the ones that win in golden score. So we got Japanese, Hashimoto. He's the Japanese representative now, instead of Ono, because Ono's finished. So Hashimoto's coming out. He was in a tournament last week. - Is there anything to look up? - Yeah, just have a look at him. So Hashimoto's in white here. All right. And, there's a great example there. (Lex laughing) Well, I'm glad we got onto that, so, I mean, he has got
great technique, Hashimoto. - Effortless, effortless. - There's the tai otoshi. So you can see exactly
what we're talking about, that great timing. And again, sometimes he
backs them up to the edge, and then he'll wait for them
to come back in towards. They don't want to step
out to get a penalty. - I guess that's a cross grip tai otoshi or did I see that wrong? - Yeah, cross grip, different grips, great examples there. Just what we were talking about. (Lex and Neil laughing)
- They make it look so easy. Wow. - So he's going to be their
representative at 73 kg. Look at him back him up again, and again, just catching him as he pushes back. - So push, push, push, and then. - Yep, action-reaction at his best there. And that slight change of direction, he sometimes goes down
onto his knee there, which is seoi otoshi. It turns from tai otoshi,
which is springing up, to seoi otoshi, which is going down. - Oh, the title of the video is, "His Tai Otoshi is a Work of Art." - Yeah, this is him at his best, showing him doing what he does best. But he had to go three times
into golden score last week and dig deep and lost one of them, I think. - But you're still going at it. You talk about all
those training sessions. Niki, your wonderful wife, told me that you were looking, you were going all over
like from Target to Target looking for workout clothes, because your luggage got lost because you had to get a workout in. - Yeah, you know what, I just, I realize that if I'm
a miserable git, right, then she'll get me to get me into the gym. And the thing is that I'm better if I get in there for an hour and I just do something. At least 30, 35 to 40 minutes cardio, and then I do some weights
and more high repetitions. It's not so much heavyweights now, but more functional. - I mean you travel all over the world for the commentary of these competitions, so is it sometimes a challenge to figure out how? - Well, during Covid, then they closed all the gyms but we were still going out. We were one of the first ones out. The judo were some of the first out. The competitions were behind closed doors. So we were in the hotel, the gym was closed, so we couldn't use the gyms. So we had to look for other
ways that we could work out. So most of the hotels that we were in were high-rise hotels. So we were in the steps. We were doing the steps
right the way up, you know? So I started it. And so I started off with me going up, and then one or two of the others, and the referees started to go up with me. So in the end we'd have this trail of people going up the steps and down, and every place we went
to we had the steps. So yeah, that was an
interesting situation. So we were sick of steps in the end. - What advice would you give to beginners, people starting out in judo, how to develop their game, how to find the beauty in the
sport and the art of judo? - If you put ten people
in a room and said, "Right, get on with it," you'd have mayhem, right? And I think that whatever
sport you're doing, you need good instruction, good teaching, and a good club atmosphere, somewhere that's not so intense that winning is the only thing. And I think that if you look at 90% of the people that practice martial arts are doing it for pleasure, so they want to get pleasure. So you need a club that's
got a bit of a mixture. You know, they've got a direction to go into competition if they want, and then the rest, it's for fun and to enjoy it, but with really good instruction, because with really good instruction and a good foundation and a good base, you get more enjoyment
because you have more success. And let's be honest, you know, the more success we have with something, the more we like it. - Yeah, and great technique is a way to really discover the beauty of the art. And so great teaching is
really important there. - Great teaching is so important. - What about, what does it take to get from the early days when you start judo to world-class level? - I think that with most, I mean, you do hear, don't you, if somebody's been doing
judo for eight years and then they're in, and I think it happened, one of the French, Tcheumeo, she went to the Olympic Games in 2012, and she'd been doing judo for eight years, but then she started to lose, you know, so she had a relative success early on. The Olympics was one of them. She got a silver medal, but then she went off the boil and then she came back. And now she's been there for, she's still competing, and she's been there for well
over 13 years at the very top. So I think that any foundation, it's like anything, if you lay a really solid foundation, generally it lasts longer. - Yeah, well, that foundation again, is that technique, or is there, what does it take to
build that foundation? - I think technique, you get away with murder, you know? (Lex laughing) - [Lex] Yeah. - With technique, you can get away with
having bad condition, but I mean, you get found out in the end, but you can you can go out and you can win certain things by doing really nice technique, but I think if you've got the mixture, if you've got the whole package, then you can go the whole way. - So for people who somehow don't know, you've commentated some of the
greatest judo matches ever. You've done Grand Prix. You've done all these events, Olympics, Championship, everything. So what, just looking
at the history of judo, what stands out to you? What events stand out to you? What are some good memories
that pop to your head? - I think some of the Paris
tournaments are amazing because the crowd, they're there, you know? They're on the mat. They're all judoka. They're well-educated to the sport. Every time somebody twitches, you know, they're very biased towards their own, which kind of you expect. But sometimes I haven't been
able to hear myself speak, and that's very unusual. You know, you've got headphones
on and you're blocked out, and sometimes Teddy Riner's
been walking out there, and the crowd are going crazy, and they're on their feet
when somebody twitches. And then you get the crowd silencers. We had one of those last week, you know, everybody's cheering
their man, and then, bang, their man goes over. - And they're just silent. (laughs) - Silence, nothing like that. And of course, we were commentating. We were going, "That was a bit of a crowd silencer." But, yeah, that happens. - Yeah, that is the surprising thing that, at least it was to me, that Paris and France
is really big on judo. - Massive. And there's always surprises. You know, it's like, Paris is great. In Japan for the Olympic Games, the biggest surprise
was Ono getting beaten in the team event. Now, Ono's the greatest
judo man, pound for pound, probably one of the best. And he won the Olympic title. And then they went into the
team event against France, and Ono lost to a, he's not run-of-the-mill German, but the German, you know, he wasn't certainly Olympic titlist, and beat Ono. - Yeah, well, the team
stuff is fascinating. - [Neil] Yeah, fascinating. - It changes the dynamics
of the whole thing. And I mean, it's funny you say Paris. It really makes it a really big deal that this Olympics is being held in Paris. - And they'll be the team
to beat, French team, because they have the best
balance of the weight categories. They have the best
balance with their people that are World and Olympic Champions and qualified men and women. So three men, three women. They have the best balance out of anybody. - And an educated audience. - Educated audience. Home ground. - It's gonna be awesome.
- It's gonna be a mat. - [Lex] It's gonna be super fun.- - It will be super fun. - Are you nervous? - [Neil] Yeah. - All right. (laughs)
- [Neil] Do you get nervous? - I get nervous. - [Neil] I do as well,
I get really nervous. - I'm nervous right now. (laughs) But, you know, given, especially because it's the Olympics, and you don't want to, you want to celebrate people properly. And it's everything for them. - [Neil] Yeah. - And a lot of people, especially like the finals matches. - [Neil] Yeah. - It'll be watched millions of times, the highest of stakes, all of this. - Played over and over. - [Lex] Yeah. - And I find that with mine, I'm now a little bit
more careful with like, so I'll celebrate a massive throw and then have empathy to
the one that's been thrown, because it's not the best
feeling in the world, especially in Olympic Finals. Can you imagine that? - Yeah. - It must be terrible. - It must be terrible, yeah. - Just reflecting. So, no, I have a bit of empathy there, and I just try and say the right things, because they always do
come up to me and say, "You commentated my fights." - Yeah, you're the voice
of the biggest triumphs and the biggest tragedies
for these athletes, for the world that watches
and admires these athletes. - No pressure. - You're the voice. Don't screw it up, Neil. - Don't screw it up. - Your voice is in my
head when I watch these. You know, it's fascinating. It's fascinating, but
you're a master of it. It's a huge honor that
you would talk with me. Thank you for everything you've
done for the sport of judo, for the Olympics, for just sports in general, just celebrating greatness
in all of its forms. Thank you for talking
today, and keep going. I can't wait to listen to you in Paris. - Thank you for having me, and it's just been an
honor to be here with you. - Thanks for listening to this
conversation with Neil Adams. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi. "There's nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself." Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you next time.