Craig Jones: Jiu Jitsu, $2 Million Prize, CJI, ADCC, Ukraine & Trolling | Lex Fridman Podcast #439
- So I like to to match looks. - Thank you.
- [Craig] From time to time. - Thank you. - In an homage.
- [Lex] You look sexy. (Craig laughs) - How many legs did you
break in Eastern Europe? - Three or four. - To send a message or just for
your own personal enjoyment? - If she wins, I'll personally
give her a million dollars. If I can foot lock her, we're gonna collaborate together
in an OnlyFans sex tape. - Did she agree to this? - [Craig] She shook on it. - You do have an OnlyFans channel. Is that still up? - After August 17th, it's gonna be firing. (Lex laughs)
- It's gonna be on fire. - Honestly, when we talk
about secret investor, I think that could fund
the entire tournament. - Amidst all that, what gives you hope? - That you can still make fun of anything as long as it's funny. (intense music) - The following is a
conversation with Craig Jones, martial artist, world traveler, and one of the funniest people in the sport of submission grappling. While he does make fun of himself a lot, he is legitimately one of the greatest submission grapplers in the world. And underneath the veil of
nonstop sexualized Aussie humor and incessant online trolling, he is truly a kind-hearted human being who's trying to do good in the world. Sometimes he does so through a
bit of controversy and chaos. Like with a new CJI tournament that has over $2 million in prize money, and it's coming up this
Friday and Saturday. Yes, the same weekend as the
prestigious ADCC tournament. The goal of CGI tournament
is to grow the sport. So you'll be able to
watch it for free online, live on YouTube and other places. All ticket profits go to charity,
mainly to cancer research. So I encourage you to support
the mission of this tournament by buying tickets and going
to see the event in person. Craig gave me a special link that gives you a 50%
discount on the tickets. Go to LexFridman.com/CJI, and it should forward
you to the right place. They're trying to sell
the last few tickets now. It's a good cause. Go buy some. And also lemme say, as a fan of the sport, I highly encourage you to
watch both CJI and ADCC and to celebrate athletes
competing in both, from CJI with Nicky Ryan,
Nicky Rod, Ruotolo Brothers, Ffion Davis, Mackenzie Dern, and more, to ADCC with Gordon
Ryan, Nicholas Meregali, Giancarlo Bodoni, Rafael Lovato
Jr., Mica Galvao, and more. I have a lot of respect
for everyone involved. I trained with many of them regularly and consider many of them
friends, including Craig, Gordon, and of course John Danaher, who I will talk to many, many
more times on this podcast. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, I invite
you all to come to the pool with Craig Jones and me. When you brought the $1 million
in cash on Rogan's podcast, did you have security with you? - We had security, but only
by Joe Rogan's request. 'Cause he said, "You're
really gonna bring it?" - [Lex] Yeah.
- "Do you have security?" I said, "No." He's like, "Don't worry about it. I'll send my security." - So you were gonna do
it without security? - Yeah, we're gonna wing it. I thought, I mean, I was
told not to tell anyone. - [Lex] Yeah. - But I sent pictures of
it to everyone I know. - [Lex] Yeah. - So that was probably a security risk. - Yeah. So it's just you in a
car with a bag of cash. - Yeah, it was a company that
sponsors me, Shuffle.com. It was their friend, a friend of theirs. So a guy that's never met me before. - [Lex] Yeah. - [Craig] Just took the risk to show up to a stranger's house with a million dollars in cash. - [Lex] Yeah. - [Craig] To bring to Joe Rogan. It was a big risk of him. - [Lex] And he just put it
in the car and drove it. - Drove it over there, yeah. - Yeah, well, no security except Joe. - Except Joe. - [Lex] As common sense. - And then Joe said he'd never seen a million dollars before. - [Lex] Yeah. - [Craig] But I don't
know if I believe him. - That's what everyone says. That's what Pablo Escobar
probably says also. What's your relationship with risk, especially with the risk of death? - I would say I'm very risk averse. - You are. No, you're not. That's a lie.
(Craig laughs) - My relationship with risk,
I like a bit of excitement. I like a bit of adventure. I'm more about the adventure, but I will not let the risk
get in the way of that. And also obviously just
got back from Ukraine. I'm happy to take a few risks if it's part of what the
locals want me to do. You know what I mean? Like in Kazakhstan we did some
things that were dangerous. Like if the locals are like, come along, join in on this activity, I feel personally
obligated to go with them. - So it's not about the risk. Like you're not attracted to risk, you're attracted to adventure, and the risk is a thing you
don't give a damn about. - [Craig] Yeah. - If it comes along with it. - Sometimes the best adventures involve the most risk, unfortunately. - Speaking of which, you went to Ukraine, like you said, twice recently, - Twice, really pushed the limit there. - Including to the front. - To the front. - Tell me the full story
of that from the beginning. How did you end up in Ukraine? - So we're in Kazakhstan. We're doing some filming in Kazakhstan. And obviously Borat's still a very traumatic memory for them. - [Lex] Yeah. - And some of my jokes felt
like they don't go as well in that neck of the woods. So we had some difficulty
filming out there. So we filmed this horse game. Have you ever heard of Kokpar? - [Lex] Thanks to you, yes. - It's a game, a very, very old game. They cut a goat or a sheep. I didn't get too close to look at it, but they cut its head and legs off, and they use it as some form of bull. And then they'll have like
up to 1,000 guys on horses violently trying to pick this up and drop it in the other
end's goals basically. The goals used to be concrete. Now it's just a top. But local business owners will throw down huge amounts of money for the winners. And these horses have been
trained from a very young age. The riders have been trained. I've never ridden a horse before. We wanted to film something
that made it look like I was gonna go into the horse
pit, into the Kokpar pit. However, the drunk stunt man that we used just decided that when
he took my horse reigns, he would take me straight into the pit instead of ending the shot there. So I was in there amongst,
I guess the horse riders, the Kokpar riders. And we weren't leaving. We just were in there for quite a while. And he was just, he
could talk a little bit. He could talk English
pretty well actually. And he's like, oh, I thought
you'd wanna check it out from the inside. And then while we're in
there, someone picked up the sort of carcass, and a wave of horse riders came at me. I was quite concerned at that point 'cause they're bashing into each other, and obviously they're angry. They're seeing a foreigner in there. I was wearing like
basically Biggie Smalls, Coogi gecko looking sweater.
- [Lex] Yeah. - So I stood out. They definitely didn't like
that I was participating in a game that they probably
trained their whole life for. And that amount of money they could win is very, very significant, and there's me in there. They're also pointing out Borat, Borat, thinking I was making Borat jokes. Which again, very traumatic memory for the people at Kazakhstan. - Were you making Borat jokes? - No, but I guess it's the
same type of humor, but- - Sure. - Just, I guess, I'm not
pretending to be Kazak. I'm just there being an idiot and enjoying the local culture. But we're over there in Kazakhstan. We did that. That was obviously a bit risky. - Did they learn to love you? - I think they learned to love
me and then to hate me again. So it was like a bit of a
all encompassing relationship for the Kazak people. But we basically abandoned ship. It was proven too difficult
to film some things, some sensitive subjects over there. And I said, where should we go next? And I just looked at the map, and I was like, we're near Ukraine. Ukraine was a place that I'd been offered to teach a jiu jitsu seminar prior to, I guess the war commencing,
the full scale war commencing. And we're looking for a bit of adventure, something interesting to film. Somewhat following the news. Obviously very controversial in the news. People have very strong opinions. And I was like, let's go over there. Let's throw a charity event. Let's do something. Let's train with the people and really experience it ourselves. So we set up the seminar. Turned out to be the biggest
seminar for jiu-jitsu in Ukraine history, which is wild considering,
obviously they are at war. But everyone came together to support it. And one of the soldiers there,
one of my friends there, good friend now who's on the frontline, he made a comment on there. And he said, "Hey, like this is a seminar to donate profits to the soldiers, but we're on the frontline." And I was like, "You know
what, I'll come to you." And he is like, "Listen, I
can't promise you'll survive, but I'll promise you'll have a good time." And I said, "That's all I needed to hear." So we connected. And my friend Roman, we
went really, really close. I think we were at the
closest 0.7 kilometers from the frontline. Obviously very surreal
experience to be over there seeing basically how the battle's
fought with those drones. - How long ago was this? - I think it would've been March or April. So we went there. We went basically spent two
nights up on the frontline, went back to Kyiv, and
that was it for that trip. In terms of crazy stuff that happened, obviously just the people living. Like you download the air defense tracker. So at any time there could
be an air siren going off, an air alert on your phone. Could be like drones heading your way. Planes are in the air, missiles flying. And then those missiles will
change direction and stuff. So the air alert, you don't know if it's heading a different direction, but they just sort of warn everyone. So you live under a constant
state of fear basically. And then on that first trip, the heaviest moment was I was
going downstairs in the hotel to work out, which is honestly
a rare thing these days, doing something healthy with myself. - You are working out. - Getting in the gym, pumping some iron. And this was divine intervention that a hypersonic missile was shot down by the Patriot Defense System, just like five minutes from the hotel. So the whole hotel and the attached gym
just shook like crazy. And people started, some
people started freaking out. Most people went to leave to go outside, which I don't think is recommended, but you wanna see what's
going on out there. - This was in Kyiv? - This was in Kyiv. So it got shot down, and then some of the local
troops actually took me to the site of where
just part of the missile had landed in the ground and left this huge sort of indentation. They'd already cleared up most of the, I guess, shrapnel from the missile. I dunno if I should or if I
was legally allowed to do this, but I took some of that
missile back home with me. I don't know where I left it actually, but I thought maybe that
would raise some alarm bells and airport scans. But I took it regardless. And that was basically the crazy thing that happened on that first trip. - The Patriot Defense
System is incredible. That's an incredible piece of technology that's from the United States. It's expensive. - Very expensive.
- But it's incredible. And then so that's protecting Kyiv. - That's protecting Kyiv, yeah. That was at the time
where US hadn't voted to, I guess, keep funding
the weapons over there. So it was kind of a tense moment 'cause I think, I don't know,
everyone was thinking like, when do those air
defense missiles run out? So that was a heavy
moment for me thinking, look at what it shot out the sky. Like imagine if that didn't,
they didn't have that. But we, yeah, that was probably
the most surreal moment. But Kyiv largely, life goes on most of the time as per normal. I was faced with crazy
messages and comments. Even just posting that video, like I'm getting paid
by Ukraine and stuff. And it's just like, people
just don't understand that like life has to go on. Like Kyiv's here. The frontline's far away. Like the cities have to largely
try to operate as normal or just life, life will not go on in
those villages and cities. - Well it's human nature as well. It's not just Kyiv, it's
Kharkiv, even Donbas, Kherson. People get accustomed to war quickly 'cause it's impossible to suffer for prolonged periods of time. So you get adjust, you adjust, and you appreciate the
things you still have. - Yeah, some bolder moves out there. I love seeing like people that just, crazy stuff's going on from the war, and they don't even react to it. They don't go to the bomb shelter. It's like a bolder move. Like I'm not gonna change my lifestyle. Actually on that first trip as well, something else that I probably shouldn't have been allowed
to do was go to Chernobyl. - [Lex] Yeah. - So Chernobyl, I believe
troops came through Belarus, and there was some fighting
going on in Chernobyl. I think the whole world
got concerned at that point if any sort of radiation leaked. But Chernobyl, as it stands,
the troops backed down, and it's completely covered in mines. Very, very difficult to go to Chernobyl. Basically as a tourist or as like a, I guess, a idiot like myself, should really probably not be
allowed in a place like that. But we were able to get there. We passed like four security checkpoints. It took two attempts. First time we tried to go in there was with a special forces guy. We cleared two security gates. Then they stopped us and basically threatened us with arrest. Rightfully so. Really have no business gonna Chernobyl. We made a connection. I won't say who this connection was, but he had heard about what I had done sort of with a charity event and opened some doors for us
to be able to go to Chernobyl. So we got to see Chernobyl. We had some filming restrictions there just because it was a crazy military sort of conflict at one point. And we got to actually see Chernobyl. Chernobyl's always been
a dream of mine to see 'cause it's just such
an interesting place. And to see it under these
conditions, very, very strange. - Yeah, what was that like? So there's no civilians there now. - It's just completely empty. I guess it's kind like
the fantasy you have. I imagine people go on tours to Chernobyl back in the tourist days
when it was a tourist spot, and it would be busy full of tourists. We got basically a private tour. So we got to really feel
that abandoned sort of vibes. I guess I was interested in it from playing Call of Duty and then- - [Lex] Right. - Chernobyl series, all the
documentaries and stuff. But very, very strange place to go visit. - And it is now a minefield
like a lot of parts of Ukraine. That's one of the dark,
terrifying aspects of wars is how many mines are left. Even when the war ends, for decades after there's mines everywhere 'cause demining is extremely difficult. Then that could continually kill people. - I don't think it'll be a tourist spot for a very long time. Because if you were thinking about areas to demine when the conflict ends, an area where if you
accidentally trigger a mine could cause a radiation leak. It's probably gonna be
very low on the list. So tourism for Chernobyl, who knows how long until that returns. - Why do you think you were
able to get to Chernobyl? Is there, why don't you
think the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian soldiers
don't see you as a threat? (Craig laughs) - Maybe they were hoping
I did step on a mine. Maybe my jokes didn't go too well there. - So your connection was actually Putin. He was trying to get rid of you. - Putin, yeah.
(Craig laughs) Now, I don't know. I mean, we felt pretty
safe when we're there. There was a air alert went off. They were kind of more concerned with me dying just for the PR side of things. It's like Australian tourist- - In one of your videos actually, you know, heard Ukrainian language. They're talking about we
don't wanna lose an athlete. That's what they're saying as you're loading the rocket launcher. - Oh yeah, the rocket launcher. I shot a rocket launcher with
the troops on the first trip, but the second trip I went back to, which was only maybe
four to five weeks ago. - [Lex] Yeah. - This time we went to some crazier spots. So we went to Odessa,
which has been hit a ton. - I really enjoyed the video
of a old man stretching and like exercising on the- - Yeah, what is that? That's a local custom? - Well, Odessa people are
known historically to be wild. - That was wild. It was abrasive to the eyes, but I appreciated it. Especially a middle aged man in underwear with a beer belly doing
a sun dance at dusk. That would frighten many people. (Lex laughs) - Yeah, yeah, yeah, the
battleship would turn around. Yeah, so where else? - We went, yeah, so we went Odessa. We briefly went back to Kyiv. We, so I made a connection
with the police chief for basically the entire
country last time. And he had said to me that
if I wanted to go somewhere, sort of really heavy in terms of action, we could go to Kherson. And he's like, "I'll personally
escort you to Kherson." - [Lex] Yeah. - And I was just like, well, here we have an
invitation for adventure. I think it's a great idea to go. And I thought, you know what? I'll completely lie to my cameraman and tell him it's a safe trip to go on so that he can pass that
information onto his fiance. - [Lex] Yeah. - And she won't have any concerns. - [Lex] Yes. - So we basically take this huge journey all the way down to Kherson. We switch at a city outside,
I can't remember the name, but we had to switch to
sort of armored vehicles. And I remember the guy that
picked us up there said, "Hey, give me a phone
number for someone to call to recover your bodies." - [Lex] Yeah. - And he said that in a joking way, but I think he was serious. But I said, "Just leave it," you know. I'm not, I didn't think they need it. I didn't think there'd much left probably if we get hit over there. But we go basically into Kherson. I think Kherson's population
used to be like 250,000. Now it's like basically all
military down to 50,000. So we went into the police basically stationed in the bunker. Underneath the top of the
building was destroyed. And then one of the local guys
just took us on a city tour, which again we had some
filming restrictions. 'Cause obviously anytime something's hit, I guess the other side
wants to be able to see what damage has been done. So if you take any footage of
recently destroyed buildings, that's gonna help 'em recalibrate
and target the next shot. So Kherson being so heavily hit, it's basically within
range of every single thing Russia has, every form of weapon, drones. Before we took the tour, he put some drone blocking
things on top of the car, which didn't look reassuring. He also
(Lex laughs) took a helmet out the back of the car, which I thought he was gonna give to me, but he just threw it in the
back of the pickup truck and said, "Oh, you won't need this. You'll be dead anyway." And I was like, oh, I've
made a great life decision with this little Kherson tour. But then we took a tour of the city. And Kherson used to be
kind like a beautiful beach city by Dnipro River. But basically it's just the river that separates Russia from, well, I guess the Russian land
they've taken from Kherson. So Kherson split across that river, and there's just Russians on
the other side of the river and Ukrainians on this side. So very, very dangerous spot. Kharkiv makes a lot of press because of the long
range missiles that hit. But Kherson's just being hit all the time. So we took this tour. We went along the river. We went to within one
kilometer of the frontline. So that was the closest we got. After this point we
heard artillery strike. And because you're in an armored vehicle, it sounds further away than it is. Obviously the sound doesn't get in. So I thought it sounded far away, and we could see some smoke that actually appeared
close in the distance. The guy driving us took us to a point where a large building was blocking us from I guess the angle at which the missile would've came from. And I thought, well, I
thought everything was cool. Thought it was, that must've
been off in the distance. And then we heard two more
strikes hit very, very close. They sounded really loud. And then I think he's radioing in to see if everything's safe,
if we can leave this point. And then we basically raced back. But we, I started to
realize we were in danger at any point where he
really sped the car up or sort of took sort of
evasive movements in the car. But we got outta there, and I think I had someone
translate it later, and basically, yeah,
he was checking to see if the roads were clear for us to leave. Ultimately I ended up being, someone died, and a few were people
injured from that blast, which was less than half
a kilometer from us. And basically they were
radioing saying, end the tour. Come back to police station. - Artillery is terrifying 'cause there's just shelling, and it's, the destructive
power of artillery and insane. - Yeah, and it's constant all the time. Yeah, and you hear that
noise and you're like, is that coming or going? Very, very concerning. - Right.
(Lex laughs) You don't know. - [Craig] Yeah, I'm like-
- You don't know. And just like that, it could be you, gone. - Well, last time the village we went to, basically it was the day we left. So we stayed there overnight. The day we left it just started
getting extremely shelled, and the soldier were with
just took a selfie video of us and basically the location
we were in just hearing just artillery strike
after artillery strike. Just being like, oh, you guys
left, and the the fun began. So they take it in good spirit. I was trying to use their
energy to reassure myself. But I guess when they see it every day, they're kind of more adjusted to it. They're not like, they're
not freaking out every time something crazy like that goes on. - Well they have to, right? - Yeah. - They have to be in good spirit. You have to be joking, and laughing, and- - Yeah, the guys are
always laughing and joking. They were laughing and
joking at me quite a bit, holding weapons, trying to
shoot weapons and stuff. They got a lot of enjoyment
out of me shooting the RPG. - Yeah, they're probably
still telling stories of that crazy Australian
American that rolled in. - They helped me out though
in my marketing campaign for the tournament. - [Lex] Yeah. - We were able to secure a
Lada, classic Soviet Union car. We towed it. We painted it with the logos
of the other event, the ADCC. - [Lex] Yeah. - And we got to shoot some RPGs at it. - [Lex] Yeah. - [Craig] Great experience, great fun. - [Lex] Yeah, it's a very
creative marketing campaign. - [Craig] Very dangerous one. - [Lex] I don't think like Coke or Pepsi are gonna do that one. So it's very, very innovative. - It was a bold move. Luckily they let me get
away with posting it. But when we were there, it was at a, basically at a shooting range, and we cleared them out for a while. So we'd blown up the car. We'd set it on fire. We'd done all this sort of stuff. I remember we were trying to blow it up. It wasn't quite hitting. One of the missiles was
lodged in under the car. So it was kind of risky. That could have gone off at any moment. But we needed to get it to ignite. We needed to get a shot
where it was on fire. The logo of the enemy tournament
was basically on fire. So we poured gasoline on it. We shot the gasoline tank. That didn't work. That must be a movie trick or something. And then we decided
we'd light on fire a rag and just throw it into
the blown out back window. So I'm with this guy, special forces guy, and we throw the rag in the back. - Like soaked in gasoline rag? - [Craig] Yeah, and we start running. - [Lex] Yeah. - And he's like, "Stop, stop!" He's like, "It didn't go off." So we're sitting there quite
close to the car lighting it, trying to light more as
we walk back to the car, and then we just hear the car ignite. And he's like "Run, run, run!" So we came quite close to
death already at that point. But we wanted to get the shot with some photos in front
of the burning logos. But we had told the guys
at the shooting range to basically give us 10 minutes or so so we could take the photos. I don't know if they didn't
wait the full 10 minutes or if we took too long, but they started firing
at the targets anyway. And then the ricochets were flying very, very close to us over our head. One landed right by my leg. We're like, shit, we
better get outta here. Obviously not much safety
concerns at that point, but we survived basically
artillery strikes. We survived a bit of friendly fire with the bullets coming our way. But again, I was strangely calm because the other guys were calm. But then afterwards they
were, they said to me, they were like, "Oh bro, if you got shot, we'd just have to dump
your body at a hospital. We wouldn't be able to explain why you're here blowing up cars." - Right, right. And you're American, an athlete,
international celebrity. - They'd be like, what is
he doing on the frontline? There's no real good explanation for it. But I mean, even through
the jokes and stuff, it's good to like
highlight what's actually kinda happening over there. You know, it's obviously very, very bad. - What's the morale of the soldiers like? Is there still an optimism? Is there still a hope? - I mean, there's sort of
the battle fatigue, you know? And as they say, like, all the
heroes die early, you know? The guys that, the real
heroes that are willing to sacrifice themselves, they're the ones that are
gonna get taken out quick. Unfortunately that's the
reality for 'em over there. But their thoughts are mostly that it's gonna be a prolonged war. Like when I ask them about
how fast the frontline moves, they're like, "Oh, could take six months to move 1-200 meters. - [Lex] Yeah. - So it just feels like
it's gonna go on forever. And from the Ukrainian side's perspective, those guys talk to me about how when they hear radio
intercepts of Russian soldiers marching to the same frontline
spot is that basically they're marching into certain
death at certain locations. And based on the radio transmissions, they know that they're gonna die, but they head forth anyway, straightforward into Ukrainian position, which is just wild to me. I could say World War II, they just keep throwing troops at it. And you see a ton of footage
they take themselves. I just, it's mind blowing. Obviously some of this
footage doesn't make it to the internet 'cause it's got important sort of details in those conflicts. But like, they're showing
first person perspectives of trench warfare. It's just crazy to see what some of these guys have gone through. - So I went to a lot of
the same places as well, including Kherson. What was your sense of the place? - Kherson was like, it
was just so destroyed. I think at this point-
- [Lex] Yeah. - Most of the civilians are gone. I saw a lot of just
elderly people left behind, especially a lot of old men. And I just think they're just like, "Hey, I've lived in my whole life. I'm just never leaving." So no matter the level of
danger, those guys just remain. And then for, it's largely just
I guess military in Kherson. But that place felt very, very dangerous. I didn't realize until we got there just quite how destroyed it is. - How did that experience change you, just seeing war head on? - How'd it change me? I guess just realizing
a lot of these soldiers are just like, you kind of
distance yourself from them thinking that they're something separate. But really speaking to a lot
of the Ukrainian soldiers, like my friend Roman, he hadn't lived in
Ukraine for eight years. He lived in France, he had a life, he's got a wife over there,
he is got a daughter. He basically volunteered to come back to protect his mom and
brother who still lived there. So it's like you sort of, I
used to view them military guys 'cause in Australia and I guess in the US, they don't have this
conscription ongoing right now. You know what I mean? Like whereas obviously
there's guys like Roman who volunteered, but then there's a lot
of Ukrainian soldiers that were conscripted into the war. So it's like you just realize how a lot of these guys are everyday people. They're just in this crazy situation. Like where Roman felt
obligated to return to Ukraine, like from my perspective,
anyone in from Australia or US, just, it's just a different
perspective on like those, they feel different to the regular people fighting in Ukraine from my perspective. - Yeah, it's defending the
land that is your home. - Yeah, like Japan was
coming for Australia I guess in World War II. They attacked the North, but really there was no foot battle, and there was no soldiers on
the ground within Australia. I guess US too during World War II. So it's like a completely
different perspective from our recent histories compared to like if you were a Ukrainian, and there's Russians
within the defined border, their responsibility to
protect their homeland and their family, it's just
something you can't imagine. But also after having spent time with 'em, you can see why they feel such
a strong sense of obligation to protect Ukraine, protect
their family and friends. - And in a lot of cases, the
soldiers are using their own funds to buy equipment. Whether it's bullets, whether
it's guns, whether it's armor. Is that still what you saw? - Yeah, I mean in terms of the weapons, America provides weapons. So we saw a wide selection of weapons. Some of those would be old Soviet weapons. Like obviously the RPG we shot and what we shot out of it is all Soviet. It's very old weaponry. And then you've got US weapons
that have been given as well. But in terms of the basic
soldier's equipment, like if they want good quality stuff that might be the difference between them surviving
the winter or the summer just in the extreme temperature range, like they have to pay
for that all themselves. So they always joke about when
foreign soldiers come over to train them, or they, a lot of foreign
soldiers come to learn about sort of the drone technology
they've developed on a budget, is they always joke
with 'em about how like everything from most countries
is basically supplied. All the good quality standard
equipment they'd need is just supplied by the government. But in Ukraine, obviously
funding is very stretched. So these guys, to have the best equipment, they have to basically find
money to pay for it themselves, and they'll do that by seeking donations. Best way to get donations would be to grow social media profiles. So that's when you see a lot
of sort of social media warfare from a perspective of gaining fame to secure donations for their battalion to be able to fight better
or protect themselves. And also some of the social
media warfare I guess is psychological warfare against the enemy. - [Lex] Yeah. - You'll see like private telegram groups where they're showing what
they've done to the enemy, what the enemy's done to them. It's just crazy. - Yeah, there's telegram
groups on both sides, and it's basically, some
of it is propaganda, some of it is psychological warfare. Some of it is just the
human nature of being like, of increasing your own morale and the morale of the people around you by showing off successfully
killing other human beings which are made other in war. And the nature of this war has evolved. So drones have become
more and more prevalent. They're consumer level cheap drones. Can you speak to that? Have you seen the use of FPV drones? - Yeah, so I mean basically
like a three to $500 drone, I think it's like carbon fiber 3D printed, and they can attach different
forms of weaponry to it. Whether it's just dropping a frag, they could drop a mine out of it. I know they were talking
about how they had a liquid that could basically burn
through sort of a lot of cars and tanks so the person inside
would basically melt alive, which sounds horrible. But what's mind blowing to
me is you could have like a $3 million Russian tank that could be destroyed by a $300 drone, which is just crazy how
fast the war changes. I think they're kind of the world leaders in budget drone technology. They didn't obviously
don't have the budget for these crazy,
elaborate, massive drones. I did see some higher budget,
bigger drones over there, but for the most part those FPV drones is really how most of
the battles are fought. And you're seeing the, you're
seeing the cameras on them. So you can see like
basically KaMicaze drone will chase someone down,
and they have that footage. And that's what the police
chief said to me when he, he gifted me one of the drones they used. And he basically said, he's
like, "Artillery is scary, but a drone will follow
you into a building." And it's like kind of a
haunting thing to think about. Like they'll see the drone,
they'll hear the drone, they might try to shoot it
down, or they might try to run. But if it's a KaMicaze one, those guys are pretty good at flying them. It's gonna chase the soldiers down. A lot of soldiers like
pretending to be dead. It's really crazy some
of the footage out there of those FPV drones. - So it's a terrifying tool of war and tool of psychological war and used by both sides increasingly. - Yeah, both sides use it. I remember I was with Roman in Marseille, and he had his break period. He's allowed to leave the
country 'cause he's volun- He basically volunteered to join the army. Ukrainian men can't really
leave Ukraine right now. But Roman, I was in Marseille, and this was a surreal experience for him. We went to the beach, and there was some tourists
there flying a drone, and you just saw his instinctual reaction to that drone sounds in
the sky, flashback to that. - Currently they're all, as far as I know, all human controlled, so FPV. But to me increasingly
terrifying notion is, of them becoming autonomous. It's the best way to
defend against the drone that's FPV controlled is for AI to be controlling that drone, just have swarms of drones that are $500 controlled by the AI systems. And that's a terrifying possibility that the future of warfare is
essentially swarms of drones on both sides. And then maybe swarms of drones say between US and China over Taiwan. - That would be wild. 'Cause I mean they do those
crazy drone light shows where they do those performances
with the lights and stuff. So they're already pretty sophisticated with sort of pre-programming. - Those are pre-programmed. So the low level control, flight control of those
is done autonomously, but there's a interface
for doing the choreography that's hardcoded in. But adding increasing levels
of intelligence to a drone where you can detect
another drone, follow it, and defend yourself. Like in terms of the
military on both sides of the Ukraine war, that's the technology, that's like the most wanted
technology is drone defense. Like how are you defend
against drones on both sides? And anybody that comes up with an autonomous drone
technology is going to help whichever side uses that technology to gain a military advantage. And so there's a huge incentive
to build that technology. But then of course, once both sides started
using that technology, then there's swarms of autonomous drones who don't give a shit about humans, just killing everything
in sight on both sides. And that's terrifying
because the civilian deaths that are possible there are terrifying. Especially when you look 10,
20, 30, 40, 50 years from now. - Yes, I mean it's surreal. Like when we went to Kherson, he was like the entire
sky is just full of drones at any given time. They could decide to come and attack. So like just the, they could
just sit there forever waiting, waiting for you to come
out of that building. They'll wait a long time when
someone goes and hides inside. Or potentially if it's an open window, fly straight through the
open window to get people. - [Lex] Yeah, so you're
not even safe indoors. - Yeah, there's nowhere to hide, and they can wait for
a very, very long time. - And as far as I know, even politicians, like you're in danger
everywhere in Ukraine. So if you wanna do a public speaking thing and doing it outside, you're in danger because it's very difficult
to detect those drones. It could be anywhere. So it's a terrifying
life where you don't know if you're safe at any
moment anywhere in Ukraine. - Well sure, I mean it's crazy
with what happened to Trump. I thought maybe the next
attack on a public figure might come in the form
of drone technology, some sort of, something along those lines. I wonder how they protect
against that here. - If that happens, just imagine the insanity
they would ensue. 'Cause we understand the
idea of a gunman with a rifle shooting somebody. But just like a drone, just
imagine the conspiracy theories. Who controlled that drone? - Where'd it come from, yeah. - And now everybody, I mean
that will just cause chaos. - And the range is ever increasing. One of the battalions in Ukraine, 'cause those FPV drones have short range, pretty short range, but they were able to attach
it to one of the larger drones with a signal booster. So they could potentially
go up to 30, 40 kilometers into the distance. So the drone that hits you
could be flown by someone so far away from you. And if they did that domestically, that would be very
frightening to think of the sphere of where it could have come from. - Did they, when you've
talked to the soldiers there, did they have a hope or a
vision how the war will end? - Not really. It just seems, I guess it
just seems to everyone that it's sort of, there's
gonna be no middle ground. - When I was there, there's
a kind of optimism that they would be victorious
like definitively. And so is there still that optimism, and also are they ready for prolonged war? - I mean, I think it would be
a soldier by soldier basis. I know like each of 'em had
a different perspective. I remember I would ask
'em about like in terms of US politics and their fears. 'Cause the first trip I went there, US hadn't agreed-
- [Lex] Yeah. - To resupply weapons. So it was a very different
feeling in the air there of concern over what was gonna happen, but they still remained quite optimistic that no matter who got in, they felt would do the right thing. But in terms of prolonged war, most people think it's gonna
go for a very long time. Like the children's hospital
that just was bombing Kyiv. Anytime there's a moment like that, that reignites everything, and I think it happens on both sides. So I know that there
was an attack in Crimea. There was an attack on a beach, I guess, and I don't know if that
attack on the hospital was retribution for that, but that's sort of the
energy that is felt. Like they might have battle fatigue, but when something happens to civilians, especially kids on your side, kind of reinvigorates the energy to fight for as long as necessary. And in terms of a case by case basis, one of my friends, Dimitri, over there who trained
jiu jitsu, owns a gym. He was very passionate about
it just 'cause of the history. Like he brought out documents of his grandfather being
executed by the USSR. So I know that when the
war started he basically, he took a bicycle helmet and his AK-47, and went out into the streets. And he is like, "I'd rather
be dead than live under Russian rule again." So I mean very case by case basis, sort of personal history for them I think. - Did they comment on US politics, whether they hoped for Trump or for, in that situation Biden, now Harris, to win the presidential election? - I think they, most of
the guys tried to keep it pretty positive. You know what I mean? Like some people did think
that maybe if Trump was elected he wouldn't continue to fund it. But they really try to stay optimistic. Most of the people I
spoke to really tried to remain optimistic that
they would be protected if it comes down to it. Like, but obviously there
was a nine month period where they weren't refunded. So as that stretched,
obviously they're refunded now, but it takes a lot of time
to get that equipment back to the points at which they need it. So I mean, if ammunition had ran out, Patriot Defense System had ran out, really, really sort of
scary prospect there. I don't know what's all, I guess, no one knows what's
gonna happen there, but. - Did you lie to people and say you were close to the president so they can be nice to you, like so they can convince
you to continue the funding? - I'm an Australian diplomat of a- - Diplomat.
(both laughing) That could be a nice way in. - Yeah, that would've been
a nice side at the top. Luckily for me, most of
the place I travel to, jiu jitsu gives me access to
so many different individuals. It's super bizarre. Like oligarchs, royalty, I guess tech, where it's just this, it's
a strange group of people, like a code around the world of just, I get strange access just
for being good at wrestling, wrestling dudes. - Yeah, martial arts, there's like a code, and there's a respect, a mutual respect. Even if you don't know anything
about the other person, if you both have done martial arts, I mean, there's similar things
with judo, with jiu jitsu, with grappling, all that. I dunno what that is. - Yeah, it's like an inner circle. That's kind of like, 'cause this film project we're working on, it's kind of focused on that, is because of the history
I have in jiu jitsu, and traveling, and doing seminars and just getting access
to strange experiences from the local, strange in a positive way, and participating in those experiences. That's what I sort of wanted
to focus this travel show on was the community of jiu
jitsu people around the world kind of really has no
sort of ethnic background, religious background,
even level of wealth. Like it sounds, as cheesy as it sounds, kind of a good equalizer on the mats, and that community comradery
sort of knows no limits there. - Including like mats, the shitiest mats in some small town in
the middle of nowhere. - 100%. Even like Sheik Tahnoun who started ADCC, I know when he went to the
US and he studied there, he would train at a very simple gym. He wouldn't declare who he was. Like I watched a documentary produced about sort of the story of Sheik Tahnoon and how he studied in America
basically in anonymity. The people at his gym didn't
know who he was in his country. And he trained there. He trained with them for years, cleaned their mouths like anyone else. And then they didn't realize
who he was until he said, "Hey, I wanna invite you to my country." But he actually meant
basically as royalty, come, and then they realized who this guy was and the significance of him. - That's gangster. That's great. One of the things I love
about No Gi jiu jitsu is like you don't see rank. So on a small scale there's no hierarchy that emerges when you have
the different color belts. Everybody's kind of the same. It's nice. - You get to like see their skill. - The skill speaks, but there's just like a
mutual respect and whatever. I mean, you can quickly find out who. I actually wonder if I
would be able to figure out the rank of a person. You think you can, can
you usually figure out how long a person's been doing jiu jitsu? - I like to think with
some of the aggressive clothing choices I've made
and sold in the sport- - Yeah. - That that should be a
beacon that that person- - Is a blue belt. - Has hopefully some talent 'cause they're fearlessly
provoking the other party there. - Oh, it's like in the jungle, whenever there's like a insect that's red, that is like really flamboyant looking, that means they're dangerous. - It's a target, yeah, though.
- [Lex] Yeah. - Being flamboyant. If you come on the mats
with something pink, pink gi or something,
people are circling in fast, especially in Eastern Europe.
(both laughing) - Okay. So yeah, you mentioned the project. Can you talk about that? I saw there's a preview that you showed, Craig Jones Gone Walkabout. - [Craig] Gone Walkabout, yeah. - [Lex] And so you showed
a preview in Indonesia where you're both kinda celebrating and maybe poking a bit of
fun at Hicks and Gracie. - Hicks and Gracie, yeah. So I like to match looks.
- Thank you. - [Craig] From time to time.
- Thank you. - In an homage.
- [Lex] You look sexy. (Craig laughs) - It's comfortable actually. I enjoy it. - Yeah, you should keep it. - I'll only wear this now. I'll wear this for-
(both laughing) I'll wear this for the Gabi match. (Lex laughs) I mean, yeah, we're trying
to do a documentary series. 'Cause the way I see it is I wanna grow the sport of jiu jitsu.
- [Lex] Yeah. - And every, this sounds funny to say now 'cause I'm doing a tournament, but everyone tries to do
it through competition. But as we know, most jiu
jitsu gyms you visit, a very small percentage of people compete, let alone compete regularly. You'll go to gyms that could
be brown or black belts that don't know many of
the big name competitors. So my thoughts were, we're
never gonna grow this sport by competition. We're gonna grow it by appealing to the large majority
of people that do it, which are just people that enjoy it for the benefits it provides to them, whether health or psychological. And obviously many people
inspired by Anthony Bourdain. Basically he was looking
at what he did with food by showing the very interesting characters in the food culture, the food industries, especially with street food, and building around that. So I'm trying to look at
jiu jitsu like a giant cult. Scientology isn't starting with Planet Z. No, it's starting with John
Travolta and Tom Cruise. So if we can create a
documentary travel series highlighting the diverse,
interesting people that participate in the sport, in that sense, I hope we can grow it. But also doing some
charity work along the way. Like as, we'll release
the Indonesia Bali episode pretty soon. But as an Australian, I do do a lot of damage
culturally around the world, so I'd like to do some good as well. We've done a lot of damage to Bali, so give back to local communities. We have an a Australian
there that runs an academy, Academy Christos. He's one of the guys we're donating a portion of the ticket
sales to from our event. But he basically went
straight into a Balian slum, started teaching jiu jitsu
on a mat under a tree, and then slowly through
donations has built a gym. And his real focus is not
just taking money from people and gifting it to them
to help the community, but to teach them skills. So he'll take a lot of
the disadvantaged kids, and he'll teach 'em
things like photo editing so they can get that work
from the internet really. Incredible guy. - It's good to know that you see yourself as the John Travolta of jiu jitsu. - Many masseuses have accused me of the same thing, unfortunately. All lies. - Yeah, there's a lot-
(both laughing) There's a lot of similarities
between the two of you. So you mentioned Anthony Bourdain. What do you like about the guy? What do you find inspiring and instructive about
the way he was able to, as you said, scratch beneath
the surface of a place? - I just felt like he's very
authentic, wasn't afraid. Like this is something I had trouble with when we first started
doing the travel show. It's easy to do a travel
show if you only say positive things about a place. - [Lex] Yeah.
- You know? But he would find a very creative way to show what's good and bad, a very honest reflection of the place. So that's something I would strive to do. However, in some places
it's very difficult. You know what I mean? Like for example, Kazakhstan. If I were to say something
negative about Kazakhstan, they'd be like, "Who's this-" - [Lex] Yeah. - "Foreign idiot talking
about our culture." And I think that was what
was incredible about Bourdain is he could talk about both
the good and bad of places, and he would do it in such
a way that it was tasteful and was respected by the locals. - Yeah, that's actually a skill that you're incredibly good at. You make fun of a lot of people, but there's something, maybe
there's an underlying respect, maybe it's the accent, maybe,
I don't know what it is. There's a love underneath your trolling. (Lex laughs)
- I like to think that. Hopefully. Yeah. Gabi Garcia, there's
a deep passionate love underneath the trolling. - Yeah.
(Lex laughs) Speaking of which, let's talk about CJI. You're putting on the CJI tournament. It's in about a week,
same weekend as ADCC. $3 million budget, two
divisions, two super fights. Winner of each division gets $1 million. Everyone gets $10,000. How do you even say that? Plus one. - 10,000 plus one, yeah.
- Plus one. Just to compete. So it's August 16th and 17th. Everybody should get tickets. Same weekend as ADCC,
which is August 17th. (Lex laughs) Okay, so what's the mission
of what you're doing there? - The mission has always
been, first and foremost, increase athlete pay. So ADCC has invested a ton into the sport. Obviously I mentioned Sheik Tahnoon. Sheik Tahnoon's done so much
for the sport of grappling, particularly no-gi grappling. So he's grown it. He has funded this for
a very, very long time. But we've kind of hit a point
since 2017 where the audience, the crowd watching live and
at home behind a paywall has grown considerably. We had things like Metamoris, we had the Eddie Bravo
Invitational Polaris, all these sort of professional events that have also contributed
to growing the sport. And obviously people like Gordon Ryan have definitely increased
the popularity of the sport. But the payment for
ADCC has never gone up, despite again, the growth of it. So what I did, a lot
of fans were asking me earlier in the year, they said, "Craig, you gonna do ADCC?" And I said, "That is a
big commitment of time, energy, expenses on steroids
to get my body ready for a tournament that I'll probably lose." And if I lose on day one, I make $0. If I lose on, if I lose in the final, which I have done a couple
times, I only only get $6,000. I think third place is
3,000, fourth place is 1,000. So if you make day two you get paid. But for me, personally seeing ADCC 2022, you're looking out to a sold out crowd of like 10,000 people. It's on FloGrappling, which, you know, pay quite a bit of money for the streaming rights. I can't comment on what
that number would be. And then you go home despite
having put in all that effort with only 6,000, and they basically, the argument
is you're paid an exposure. But again, there's many
ways to expose yourself. You know what I mean? That's just one of the platforms to do so. - Yeah. - My problem was that they
announced that they were gonna go from Thomas & Mack to T-Mobile, which is a jump in quality of stadium but not a significant
jump in sort of seating. So we've gone from like 11,000 seat arena to I think a 15, 16,000 seat arena. And I knew that FloGrappling
would've had to pay more money 'cause now the sport's growing so much, and I can personally kind of
track the growth of the sport through selling instructional DVDs, instructional online products
'cause that keeps growing. And we're targeting those
white and blue belts vulnerable to internet marketing. - [Lex] Yeah. - And that audience continues to grow, and those will be the people
that largely watch ADCC, events like this. So I simply said in response
to a lot of fans asking me, are you gonna do ADCC? And I just simply made a video saying, no, probably not, probably not. It'd be nice to make some more money. And then I listed a bunch of sports such as Kokpar that you get
paid more to win Kokpar. In the villages of Kazakhstan, the payment structures higher. And I received a very aggressive response, not from any of Sheik Tahnoon's people, but from basically who
runs the event today. One of those guys amongst
giving me death threats said, "Hey, T-Mobile costs $2 million. You don't know what you're talking about in terms of business and production." And he's probably right. But to me, $2 million is a waste of money for a jiu jitsu event. I don't think we're at that level yet. Like that's where the UFC hosts events. You know, $2 million, that's
an expensive, expensive venue. So we argued a bit on the internet. And he said, "Hey, if you don't like it, why don't you go get $2 million and put on your own tournament?" And I said, "I might just do that." And one of my anonymous friends kindly donated a $3 million budget. And I actually messaged
him before the show to say, "Hey, we won't reveal your identity." 'Cause obviously anyone that has money is gonna get asked for more money, well, asked for money from others. So he wants to remain anonymous. But he basically just said to enjoy the trolling aspect of it and also contribute to
the sport of jiu jitsu. - Well, it's good to know
that the anonymous funder appreciates you for who
you are, Craig Jones. - He sees my true identity, and he wants to provoke. It's trolling for a good cause. - [Lex] Yeah. - But basically we were able to find Thomas & Mack Event Center,
which was their original venue, and it just so happened to be
available that same weekend, which we were very happy about. So we booked that out. We decided to, ADCC pays
10,000 to the winner. We were like, you know what, we'll pay $10,000 plus one to show up. So to show up in our event, you're gonna get paid
more than to win ADCC. And not only that, we're
gonna broadcast it for free. So on Meta, X, and YouTube, you'll be able to watch
this event for free. - That's amazing. - It's very considerate
to the FloGrappling streaming platform, I believe, to have also a free alternative
on the same weekend. And the brilliance of this whole thing is I was largely criticized for not knowing anything about business. But the people criticizing me
decided to host a tournament, a 15,000 seat arena. They decided to take sponsors. They decided to use a stream platforms, which sell subscriptions based on the athletes that would enter it, but not give any of the talent,
the athletes a contract. Which gave me this beautiful
position to basically say, hey, what do you prefer the prestige of an ADCC gold medal or money? And that's the feud so far. And we put that out into the world. I didn't chase too many athletes down. Obviously a lot of these
guys really need money. So you throw a million dollars out there, people are jumping on board. So initially we started getting, we got two local guys here in Austin. The Tackett brothers,
they jumped in first. And they're great kids. They really legitimized the whole thing. 'Cause if we'd pick certain athletes like just B team guys straight away, it's already looking a bit dodgy. But we got some legitimate athletes, especially the under 80
kilo divisions, full of- Minus two or three guys, that's the best people in the
world in that weight division. And as we started to grow our
roster here, what happened, I'm gonna say this
allegedly for legal reasons, is that the first move ADCC did was they matched the female
pay to the men's pay. So the women always
traditionally got paid less. I think $6,000 for first place. As soon as we had Ffion
Davies, the reigning champion, come across to do a super
fight with us, bang. ADCC raised the prize money of the women's division
to equal the men's. So me being a feminist activist throughout many of my years on this Earth, immediately got women's pay raised in the sport of jiu jitsu
equalized basically, which went counter to
everything the promoter had said 'cause he said it was out of
his control to raise money. He said only the ADCC, I guess, coming directly from the Sheik, or the Sheik's sort of guys
could raise the prize money, he got it raised. And then what happened was, once we started getting some
of these big names here, so some of the best guys from ADCC would be in this division. We got a bunch of champions, or medalists, or really the top betting favorites for their divisions there. They started, and again I
can't emphasize this enough. Allegedly paying show money, which has never historically
been done before, to keep athletes in their show. - So you're saying allegedly
there was some under the table payments by ADCC. Do you have secret documents proving this? - I do have the documents. Now some of the guys obviously
told me, you know how it is, you slap a million dollars
on the table, it looks great. That was me proving I had the money, which wasn't even my money to begin with. But it was basically me
saying, hey, the money's real. I don't know why, but strangely a lot of
people don't believe me when I'm telling the truth. - I don't know why they wouldn't. - But what logically
happens is they're like, oh, look at how much money he has. We're gonna give, like
give us more show money. So they're negotiating with me. There was one particular
Brazilian businessman, manager. I won't say his name, but he looks like the
thing from Fantastic Four. And he was a manager for
some of these athletes, and he would take a massive 20% cut. So what he, and I gotta
pay respect to this, respect to this 'cause
it actually caused trauma to the other team as well. But he would, I would
invite an athlete to CJI. He would go to the other organization, and he would say to them, "Hey, what sort of deal could
you give me to keep this guy? You wanna keep him in your event?" And he would use CJI to
leverage more show money for his guys, of which he
gets to grease the wheels with 20% for himself. However, at CJI, everyone
gets $10,001 across the board and a million dollars prize money. So there's no room for really negotiation for the tournament aspect of us. So he has a vested interest
in putting his guys in ADCC 'cause he can negotiate show money, and he can basically take
20% of that for himself. But really for the sport of grappling, this is incredible across the board, because by us stealing or at least borrowing a
bunch of athletes from ADCC, ADCC had to fill their divisions. So they filled their divisions
with many other competitors that wouldn't have ordinarily
had the chance to do ADCC. And really, although we've
scheduled it the same weekend, ours is actually Friday/Saturday, ADCC being Saturday/Sunday. Our day starts pretty late. So we start five p.m. Saturday. So really ultimately it
was a big marketing ploy to go head to head pretending like we're
making the fans choose, but the fans will be able
to watch both events. You'll be able to go
all day Friday for us. You'll sadly miss the
ADCC Hall of Fame ceremony where you'll see many of great
speakers, public speakers, philosophers, tell their
stories about hardship. Just like at the end of
any jiu jitsu seminar, or beginning if you're blessed like that. You might have a 45 minute monologue about how they're more
knowledgeable than doctors, lawyers. Classic black belt technique. But you will miss that unfortunately. - With great metaphors about lions and- - About lions, yes. About being a humble
lion, most importantly. But-
- Humility is important. - You can watch all that Friday, you could watch most of ADCC Saturday, and then Saturday night in Las Vegas I'll be doing what many
men have done before. And that is wrestling a giant woman. (Lex laughs) - Can you speak to that? How are you preparing for
this moment of violence on a Saturday night with Gabi Garcia? - So Gabi Garcia is the legend
of sort of women's grappling. I think she's won more than anyone else. So between me and her, we would at least have 15
to 20 world championships I'd imagine. - [Lex] Yeah.
- She's huge. I say that in an endearing way. She might be six foot
four, six foot three, and her weight varies depending on what time of the day it is between 220 and 275 pounds. But she's gonna be coming
in quite big and strong. Me, I am about 179 pounds
right now and five foot 11. So I've got a significant
size disadvantage. She has the credentials. But we're gonna scrap it out, scrap it out and see who's best, the greatest woman's
competitor of all time, or a guy that's never won anything. - Has it added some complexity
to the picture that, you know, there's some
sexual tension in the room whenever the two of you are together? - [Craig] Yeah. - Or maybe I'm being romantic, but it seems like there's, you've slowly started to
fall in love with each other. - It's been three years of seduction. It's been a long time. - It's inspiring for many
young men that follow you and look up to you, just the romantic journey
that you've been on, it's truly inspiring. - Yeah, I would say it's
a motivational message to the guy that keeps sending
DMs to a gal on Instagram for years. That maybe after three
years it could also happen for you too. No matter her height and weight, I think, yeah, persistence
is the key here. - Yeah. - And we do have a wager on the line. - What's the wager? - This might be the
first wager of its kind, I would hope in combat sports history. If she wins, I'll personally
give her a million dollars. If I can foot lock her, we're
gonna collaborate together in an OnlyFans sex tape. - Did she agree to this? - She shook on it. (Lex laughs) - This is great. You do have an OnlyFans channel. Is that still up? - After August 17th, it's gonna be firing. - It's gonna be on fire. - [Craig] Yeah.
- Wow. - I think that, and honestly when we talk
about secret investor, I think that could fund
the entire tournament. It'd be that successful. - Yeah, that'll be the
only paywalled thing about this tournament is your OnlyFans. - Yeah, I mean it's gonna be
a spiritual experience for me. - Yeah. Well.
(Lex laughs) What's, okay, I'm fully distracted now. Can you talk about the rule set? - So we're using the angled walls inspired by karate combat. Karate combat did those angled walls. - Those are awesome. You're calling it the alley. That's really, really interesting. So it's like in a pit I guess, and the angled walls are- - Yeah, so karate combat
have a square pit. We have a rectangular alley. We like the visual of just
you're in the alley with someone. You know, you come, we both
know what goes on in alley. - [Lex] Yeah. - Only a couple things that
could go on back there. - What's the second thing? Nevermind, I got it. - But why this is brilliant, why the angled wolves are
brilliant for grappling is because any grappling tournament, this goes without question,
goes for IBJJF, ADCC. The reset is one of the most
annoying aspects of the sport. And one of the aspects
of the sport that these, some of the sneakier
guys take advantage of. There's guys out there that are brilliant at playing the edge, open,
the ref will reset 'em, or they'll shoot a takedown near the edge. And you might watch, and again
I'm picking on ADCC here, but you might watch an ADCC match where 90 seconds of a 10 minute
match is the referee grabbing them, bringing
'em back to the center, or trying to recreate something of a position that landed outside. Not only is that sort of boring to me, and it sort of could be bias. You know, like again it's to me in events where like I've, the ref's gone, "Stop." I've stopped, he's
moved a little bit more, and then there's an
adjustment in the reset. I mean it's cheating to a certain extent. It's just more of an annoyance. They bring it back. They reset it to the best of
their ability in the center. The angled wall mitigates that, and it mitigates it in such
a way that is a disadvantage to be pushed up against the angled wall. You're very easily taken
down against the angled wall. You could use a cage like the UFC does or any sort of MMA organization. However, cage wrestling can be slow. You obviously at the vertical,
and it can stagnate there. Guys are very good at using split squats to really defend that position. So, and for me personally, I don't love the cage for grappling. I'd like to differentiate
it for grappling. What holds people back
from using the alley or a pit-like structure is the
viewing, the viewing angle. 'Cause obviously if you
are one of the VIPs, or you pay for expensive seat,
that angled wall's above you. A cage, you can see into
an elevated platform sort of stage, you can see clearly into 'cause it's basically flat, but the athletes could fall
off and injure themselves. So something happens, UFC fight passes the elevated flat stage. It's kind of scary to be near the edge. You go off, you're gonna land on concrete. You might wanna do that to the other guy if you that way inclined. But the alley, the angled wall
solves all those problems. Very minimal referee interference. Again, the only thing
that holds people back is the expense of building it. But again, when you are
spending someone else's money, you will spare no expense in production. So we've spent a lot
of money on the alley, and we've really gone out of
our way to create an experience that around the alley
we've elevated everything so that the people watching will be able to see down into it. 'Cause your instinctual thought is, oh, it sounds great, but
how am I gonna see in it unless I'm far up? Like you'd need like a
coliseum-like structure, which is basically what
we've attempted to create so that you get both a
perfect place to wrestle, to grapple in, as well as a perfect
viewing angle for the fans. - Well, I think it's an amazing idea. What about the jiu jitsu on a slant? You've triangled- - [Craig] Yes.
- Somebody on a slant. Is there like some interesting aspects about the actual detail techniques of how to be effective using the slant? - I'll be honest, I competed
for karate combat twice. Never once did I ever
step foot into the pit. Just again, like you
said before the podcast, if there's a right way of doing things, I'm probably doing it the opposite. - The wrong way. I actually no idea why
people take advice from you, but they do.
(Craig laughs) - I'm mostly an inspirational
speaker at this point, I think. - Yeah, you and Tony
Robbins are like this. - Same size at least. But in terms of the training for, of obviously the athlete's very difficult. Some of these guys have
gone out there and built their own angled walls. - Yeah, I saw that. There's a cool video of that. - They're getting into that. That's a smart thing to do. There's a million dollars on the line. You should probably invest in that. But also like a new surface
that no one's competed on. No one's gamed it yet. No one's like we're gonna see it unfold. Like when UFC, when people
started figuring out how to use the cage. We're gonna see this unfold
in front of our very eyes how the strategies work for this. The other thing we've done
too is we're doing rounds. So qualifying rounds would
be three, five minute rounds. The final would be five fives. Why I want to do that is
to incentivize action. We're gonna incentivize action
through penalizing people. But we really want, I love
a short burst, a break, and the guys can go hard again. I don't like a jiu jitsu match where the guy takes the back early, and he's like, oh, if I keep
this position, I've won. And that's something that
people that don't compete don't realize is if you take some, if you get a good position
early, get up on the points. You just sit there and go, oh,
let's ride this to the end. That's why I want rounds so
that you might take guys back. You're really incentivized
to get that finish. And the way we're trying to grow the sport is to steal the MMA scoring structure, which a lot of people are criticized because they think it's
overly complicated. They don't understand it. But to the mass audience, they
understand a 10 point mass, understand a decision in that sense. They understand it being
scored round by round. So we're trying to appeal
to a broader audience here. But we think based on the structure, based on how hard we'll
call stalling penalties, based on you wanting to
finish your opponent quick to have a better chance
at a million dollars. 'Cause it's 10,001 to show
up and a million to win. If you ain't first you're last. There's no reward for second place. So I'm punishing the one position I've only ever been able
to achieve in tournaments. (Lex laughs) - Are you worried that because of how much money is on the line, people will play careful? - A very generous friend of
mine has provided this money. I'm like, unless you guys go out there and try to kill each other
and put it all on the line, I just won't do it again.
- [Lex] Yeah. - Like I'm giving you
guys a massive platform. We've turned down offers
from streaming platforms that wanted to buy the
rights to this event 'cause the marketing's gone very well. We're turning down
money to grow the sport. The ADCC promoter said he
wanted to grow the sport. So what he did is he
put it behind a paywall, and he used the money from the paywall to buy a more expensive arena. I don't think that's
how you grow the sport. I think you grow the sport
like comedians do these days. Like guys like Mark Normand
will release a special for free. Andrew Schultz did it first,
release a special for free, and it grew his audience massively. I think that's what jiu jitsu needs. We need an exciting show
that's not behind a paywall that'll grow the sport, grow the audience, and really then ultimately
we can get to a level where it could be behind a paywall, but I just don't think we're there yet. - Yeah, I think a million
dollars is a lot of money, but the opportunity here, because it's open and freely
accessible by everyone, is to put on a show. - And then you get a million every year. If this is a crazy exciting event, the funding's gonna be
so easy year after year. And the other aspect we're doing to it is, unfortunately I'm not gonna
make any money off this thing. It's a nonprofit, and
the money from charity- - Except the OnlyFans, but whatever, yeah. - That's the real cash cow.
(Lex laughs) But that's the real work too. - Yeah, and that's not for charity. That's for your personal bank
account, the the OnlyFans. Are you also- - Oh, that'll be for
the follow up therapy. But yeah. - The therapy.
(Lex laughs) - That'll be an expensive gig for whoever takes that on board. - Love hurts. - That physically will, yeah. (Lex laughs) Ticket proceeds to charity. So like obviously we've
got the $3 million budget. We've got production expenses. We've got the team of staff to hire. But if we could sell this thing out, we could potentially donate
a ton of money to charity. One of those charities is Tap Cancer Out. And what's great about this is Rich Byrne is a black belt from New York
who's in the banking world. He used to run an event
called Kasai Grappling. He went through cancer. He basically had a very aggressive cancer. He had it treated, and now he basically has said to us that whatever we donate from
the profits of the event, he's gonna match dollar for dollar. And we've also had another guy who wants to remain anonymous, agree to match dollar for dollar as well. So the more ticket sales
revenue we can create here, the more we can actually
give back to charity. So it's really all round,
it's gonna be a great event. - Yeah, Tap Cancer Out is great, and all the charities that the athletes have been selecting are great. What's been the hardest? You are wearing a suit, so you
figured out how to do that, but- - The tie was difficult for sure. - The tie was difficult,
but you figured it out, and (Lex laughs) congratulations on that. But you've never run a tournament. Nah. - I've never wrestled a big woman either. Well I have, but not in this form. - Not in a competitive
environment for OnlyFans. (Craig laughs) What's been the hardest aspects of actually bringing this to life? - The first one was people
believing it was real. - [Lex] Yeah.
- That was quite difficult. And then communicating with athletes. That's basically my responsibility
is securing these guys, getting these guys to commit to things. They're very, it's very difficult. There's a reason a few
athletes in every sport really stand out, and it's
kind of professionalism and kind of the way
they market themselves, and I think those two
things do go hand in hand. So we're in a sport where
there's not enough money where a lot of these
guys do have managers. I think in MMA things would be
a lot easier for the promoter because you're not talking
directly to the athlete. You're talking to a guy who might, who's obviously taken a cut, but like he's, there's a middleman. So in a situation where you're talking directly to the athlete,
can be very difficult, can be very annoying, can be
very hard to reach these guys. They can be very non-committal. That, for me, has been one
of the biggest challenges. The guys that I speak to
that are like, "I'm in," and they're like, "I'm out. I'm in." Like navigating this area. One other aspect is, because we did this
basically from idea to event will be less than three months,
three and a half months. So it's like we're having to do so much in such a short period of time. Little things like, of the
show money we've given them, they're expected to basically
secure their own flight and hotel to the event. We're cutting down on staff. 'Cause that would be one of the- If I had to coordinate
getting these guys flights, I would just jump off a building. Like it's hard enough to get
'em to agree to the event, let alone coordinate, hey,
what date do you wanna come in? It's like herding cats. So really just the interpersonal
stuff's been difficult. Obviously going up against ADCC, the legacy event has been
pretty damn difficult as well. Well established, huge history. They've been selling
tickets for two years. Everyone's known it's
been coming for two years. That thing was largely sold out before we even announced the event. So we're going head to
head with this event. So from a ticket sales
perspective, very difficult. - What's been Reddit question? What's been the most surprising people who turned down your invite? - Ooh, I mean, we can name names. I mean obviously Kaynan. He was a semi in, semi out. His suggestion was actually to do a second and third place
prize rather than a million. And I'm like, no, we want all or nothing. It's all or nothing here. That's a better spectacle,
better entertainment. - [Lex] Yeah. - Probably more injuries, but it's all or nothing. Mica Galvao, the one that got away. - [Lex] Yeah.
- That's sad. But we got the Ruotolos. The Ruotolos, props to these kids 'cause Kade's the reigning champion. These are two of the
best guys in the sport. Allegedly were offered
pretty significant show money to stay. But they hit me up and they said, "Hey, promise us one thing. We're on opposite sides of the brackets, and we'll fight to the death
in the final for the million." And we know, everyone knows that. We've seen 'em compete against
each other multiple times. So that was not a surprise
'cause I know they're good kids, but to basically turn
down allegedly show money to do this event to support
the event, to me is incredible. Mica Galvao, things would
be more complicated there. Like obviously Mica officially joined ADCC before we secured the Ruotolos. Kade beat him in the final. Mica's personally motivated
to face off against Kade. So he didn't know Kade was in our event before he agreed to ADCC. There's more to that story too
in terms of Mica doing ADCC because a bunch of the kids in his team, I think they're being flown
out to do the ADCC kids events. So there's like his two teammates. Well, at least one of his
teammates will be doing the ADCC 66 kilo division. So his dad, his coach doesn't
really wanna split time between two events. That's a difficulty for athletes there. But obviously disappointing
we couldn't secure Mica. Mica said he was about the legacy. So he wanted to be the youngest guy ever to double grand slam. Which is basically win all the gi events and win the ADCC that same year. My thoughts were, if
I was in his position, and I never was obviously a
prodigy, a talent like that, is, I thought he had a position to make a statement in the sport, to kind of, as cheesy as it sounds, be on the right side of history, to have turned down a double grand slam to be in an event that
supports athlete pay. Again, I don't overly criticize him, but I think in terms of
your legacy and reputation, to be at a point and choose to do that is much more memorable than him getting that double grand slam. Which I'm sure he will win the ADCC 77 kilo division this year, but it'll be somewhat tarnished anyway. So I do feel bad for some of
the athletes that win this year and potentially people would be like, oh yeah, but that was, half the people weren't in the division. I feel bad for those guys. But at the end of the
day, most of these guys had an opportunity to
be a part of an event that really there's no downside to. You have a chance to be paid more money than you've ever been paid in your life, you are selling tickets that
are gonna go to charity, and it's not behind a paywall. So anyone anywhere in the
world can stream this event, watch it, and there's no barrier to
entry in terms of finances. - Was there ever any chance
that Gordon Ryan would enter? - I don't think so. I don't think so. - Is that something you tried? - Me and Gordon don't
text each other too often. I tag him on Instagram in
things, but he doesn't respond. - Tell me about your history
with Nicholas Meregali. - My history with Nicholas Meregali, actually it dates back
to a time where probably he does not even remember. - [Lex] Yeah. - Back when I used to wear a kimono. So I went to Abu Dhabi World Pro. I was chasing my gi dreams. - [Lex] Yeah. - I lost in, I can't even remember. Again, probably the final. Knowing me, I probably lost in the final against Tommy Langaker
in the weight division. This was the last year
they did the absolute. I went into the absolute. I made it all the way to the semis. Nicholas Meregali destroyed me in the gi. I did hit a nice little
reversal on him though. He passed my guard, and I somehow reversed
him from side control. That's the only part of the match I share. After which he swept me, submitted me. - You reversed him from side control? - Yeah.
- Okay. So that could be like an instructional. - That could, yeah, exactly. Exactly. - But right place, right
time though, right? - But then years later I left the team, Meregali replaced me. So they've brought in a
more credentialed, handsome, doesn't speak as well,
but they brought him in. He's my replacement. He's coming to the team. We faced off at ADCC. I do a heavier division thinking. I looked at the names, and I was like, that looks like an easier division. And I had two teammates at
the time that were in my 88, and I was like, those
guys will have to face off first round. I'll have to face one of them second round the way they do the seating and the structure of the bracket. So I was like, I'll do 99. I'll leave 88 for the boys. They both lost my division
first round unfortunately. So I faced off against
Meregali beginning of day two. Lot of pressure because
Danaher used to corner me, used to be my coach. Now he's cornering the Brazilians who he used to complain
about as the enemy. And I'm like, what's going on over here? It's like karate kid stuff. I face off against Meregali. I go hard early 'cause I think
he can't defend leg locks. For the first three minutes I'm just attacking legs, legs, legs. I ended up sweeping him, getting on top. No points before the points period. But I'm very tired at this point. Meregali's big. Like there's some guys that get juiced up to hit a certain weight. That's what I did to enter this division. You can't keep your gas tank. Meregali's just a big dude. I don't, who knows if
he's on the juice or not, but he's just naturally sits
around 230 pounds or even 225. When you're naturally that big,
your gas tanks a bit better. Again, if you balloon yourself up on every substance possible, gas tanks surprisingly not too good. So we have a bit of a close one. Decision goes my way. Ultimately finals next, I lose that, but that is sort of our
competitive history. We were meant to have a match that had been pre-booked
immediately after ADCC. So we agreed to this before ADCC. I was like, the price is right, I'm in. So I sign up for it,
and I'm thinking ADCC, that we're gonna face off soon after. Meregali chose instead to
have some vacation time. He wanted to go on vacation. He wanted to relax, bit of
relaxation down in Brazil. So the match is scrapped. Flo hit me up, and they
say, can you do February? And this was about the time
that Volks fought Islam in Perth. I was like, "No, I can't do February, because I'll be helping Volkanovski. That's gonna take
precedence over this match." Flo goes, "You know what we'll
do, we'll announce it anyway. We'll sell those tickets anyway. We'll get the people hyped, and then we'll just have you pull out." And I'm like, "All right, do it." I'm like, "Do whatever you want." That's probably not a good idea, but they do that. And then people keep trying
to rebook this match. But now I barely even train anymore. I'm busy being a promoter,
traveling around. So now, instead of facing
me in competition again, which I would do if the price was right. They'd have to pay me very well. Two of the shows have
offered me the match, but the money, terrible. - What do you think is a
number that would convince you? - It would have to be, I would
think half a million dollars. Otherwise I just can't be bothered. - [Lex] Yeah.
- You know what I mean? Have to be worth it. Because to put a price on
a guy that takes himself as serious as Meregali. Meregali's a very serious man. He's talking about authenticity. He's talking about words
he doesn't even understand. For me to give him the
opportunity to live in a world where he had won the
last match against me, it's hard to put a price on that. You know, when people say
it's not about the money, it's not about the money. It's about me waking up every day knowing that he knows he lost to me. - So you think you've gotten in his head? - Yes. - How do you think you would do if you were to face him
for the said 500,000? - For the 500?
- [Lex] Yeah. - I think over five minutes,
I'd beat anyone in the world. - But you still think you got it? - I still think I got it. Gabi about to find out too. (Lex laughs) - All right, so you're gonna
make a statement with Gabi like that it'll be a match she remembers. - Yeah, she, yeah, she
for sure will remember. I think the fans will remember it as well. - All right. - I'm open to, like if we do this match, I'm taking it very serious,
but we'd be open to rematches. I've always said I would
have a MMA fight with her. I wouldn't be afraid to hit a big woman. (Lex laughs) - So unlike with Meregali, if you win, you're not gonna ride off
to the sunset with Gabi. - I'm a bit of a romantic. I think she deserves a
few finishes, you know, not one and hit the bed that night. - So you think you can
actually beat Nicolas Meregali? - I think so, yeah. I think, I mean, you could
throw a riddle at him before the match. That'd fuckin' complicate things
for him for the next hour. - Will you and Gordon
ever get along again? - I think so. I think we need, the origins of MDMA was couples therapy in the
70s in Houston, I believe. I believe something like that for us could resolve these underlying issues. - You're a man of Reddit 'cause they suggested
that you should consider ketamine therapy sessions. - Just imagine a therapist
sitting down with him. They'll be like, "Clear the schedule for the next couple weeks." - With all due respect, Craig, I can't imagine a therapist
sitting down with you. That would be a terrifying patient. - I do have a therapist actually. They prescribe me Vyvanse. He's quite confident in my- - Is this, you met him
Bali, or what did you- (Craig laughs) - It's was a Russian website.
(both laughing) - It's the old Sean Connery thing. It's not a therapist, it's just something
that's spelled the same. - I think me and Gordon, a debate of some type would be awesome. - Like a political debate? - Yeah, me representing Kamala Harris and him representing
Donald Trump would be- - So intellectual sparring. - An intellectual
battle, a battle of wits. - Can you just speak to your trolling? Is there, like underneath it all, is there just a respect, the
human beings you go after? - For sure. They have to be worthy of being attacked. You know what I mean? Like if someone at
attack, that's the thing. It's like you want a worthy adversary. Not in a sense of, I
don't wanna battle someone that has better banter than
me 'cause I'm gonna lose, but I wanna battle someone
with a profile large enough that it doesn't look like you're just- - Who do you think is the biggest troll or shit talker in martial arts? Renato Laranja. - Yeah, well, you can't
even put him in the, he's in the other class of human being. (Craig laughs)
- He's overqualified. - Chael Sonnen comes to mind. - [Craig] Chael's good. - You versus Chael, who's
a better shit talker? If you look at the entirety of the career, - Chael is better. I mean, I think if you can talk in MMA 'cause there's far worse
consequences for you. If you're still willing to do it when really violent
things can happen to you. I mean, I'm getting death threats, but like he has a certainty of violence against his opponents in MMA. - So on Reddit, somebody
said you are a coral belt level troll and just happened
to be good at jiu jitsu. So what did it take for you to
rise to the ranks of trolling from white belt to to
black belt to coral belt? Like what's your journey
with talking shit? - That's a good question. Hey, I think it would've happened
after I moved to America. 'Cause in Australia, like
we just on a daily basis say some of the worst things
you could ever imagine. - Like in private life. - Yeah, we're just trying
to ruin each other's day. - [Lex] Yeah. - In a way that's so blase,
you're going back and forth, and the guy that actually gets upset and says some real shit,
that's your victory. You know what I mean? Like you're like, oh, we got you. That actually bothers you. All right, we'll take that as a victory. - Right, so when you come to America and everybody takes themselves
a little too seriously, those are just a bunch of victims that you can take advantage of. - An Australian entering American banter is like Neo getting these matrix skills. You're just like, whoa,
I see everything coming. - Do you ever look in the mirror and like regret how hard you
went in the paint at somebody? - I don't think so. (Lex laughs)
I don't think so. - So you're proud of yourself? - I think what I offer is some balance. It's like I'm bringing some justice. Ultimately it'll probably
come back in spades to me. - Yeah. I don't know as a fan of yours,
as a fan of Gordon's also, but as a fan of yours, I
see the love behind it. I don't know, it seems always just fun. The shit talking seems fun. - I wish he'd buy it back. He doesn't buy it back anymore though. - What's your relationship like with Mo, the organizer of ADCC? - I mean it's been a
love/hate relationship. I guess-
- Like with Gabi. - So like any good relationship, if you don't get blocked at the end of it, were you really in love to begin with? - [Lex] Right. - That's my thoughts anyway. But so in terms of my friendship with Mo, me and Mo were really close
friends for a long time. We talk a lot. He was instrumental in us
moving Danaher Death Squad to Puerto Rico. He lives in Puerto Rico, spends most of your time in Puerto Rico. I've spent time with him
in Florida, California. But in terms of our relationship, I'm trying to think of an
exact time where it went south. But I guess in my, him
being the ADCC organizer, in my attack of athlete
compensation was taken personally, which is obviously gonna ruin
whatever friendship you had. - And that started
around the time you were thinking about CJI, - I mean, to be honest, CJI was a result of the response of my discussion of athlete compensation. So me and Mo had been close friends. Even after the Danaher team broke up, we were still close friends
for quite a while after that. But it does complicate
things when someone is, for all intents and purposes, he, as an ADCC competitor, and
he runs ADCC, the event, he's in control of it
now, he is your boss. So that does complicate our friendship. - Have you had a conversation
since you announced CJI? - Have we had a conversation? - When did you get blocked? - I honestly didn't get blocked. I was just joking.
(Craig laughs) Nah, honestly, we had a disagreement about athlete compensation. I said, let's do a
podcast and talk about it because I'm a big fan of transparency. If you think I'm an idiot for thinking athletes should
get paid more, tell me it. Show it to me. And I've made public statements. Other people have asked why
we don't get paid more money. You can both tell me and the
world at the same time that, the grappling world at the same time, but was not interested in doing a podcast. Again, maybe he thought I
was gonna hit him with some gotcha questions or something. But really at the end of the day, I personally believe
you've got nothing to hide. If you are confident in the
business decisions you've made, then there's no gotcha moment
that I could actually do. I could easily, I would
have done the podcast if I looked like a complete idiot, would've released it anyway because it would be a good message to where we are in the sport. But again, considering what I know about Thomas & Mack's price, which I believe we're paying $200,000 for, and T-Mobile's $2 million, how do you justify no
increase in athlete pay while we have a 1.8 million
increase in venue cost? - So you're saying there
there could potentially be poor business decisions,
poor allocation of money that could be reallocated
better to support the athletes. - I've never once thought
this was some organization where Mo's like stealing
money for himself. I'm just saying that, and again, the road to Hell's
paved with good intention. So he might fully think
that what he's doing is gonna grow the sport. I'm going about it in a
completely different way. I don't think we need T-Mobile. I don't think we need it behind a paywall. I think we need cheap venue, still maintain good quality production. Release it for free. If you want something to
grow, present it for free. - Is there a future where
the two of you talk? - Yeah, for sure. He keeps insisting on
talking face to face. I don't have a problem with that, but my argument is this is a public feud. - [Lex] Yeah. - The public, like this is a,
we're having a disagreement. Let's settle the disagreement in a way that answers the question to the fans. Because if one of us is a complete idiot, then I believe the world of
people following this story are entitled to know which
one of us is an idiot. - If you talked to him,
would you be good faith? Like would you turn off the, or turn the troll down
from 11 to like a three? - Yeah, I don't even
think need to troll 'em. I'd just say, "Hey, why,
like show us the books." You know what I mean? Like honestly, when our event's done, we're gonna be pretty transparent. Obviously we are ran as a nonprofit. We're gonna be pretty
transparent about everything. And I mean, obviously
ultimately all the views we get. When FloGrapple, when an
event's on FloGrappling or Fight Pass, or any
other streaming provider, unless it's a Pay Per View, you're not gonna know
how many people watched. So that's one aspect
of what we're doing is we're gonna have a visual sort of guide to how many people off hands of grappling. - Yeah, transparency in all of its forms. That's what bothers me about
the IOC with the Olympics is that there's this organization that puts on an incredible event, but there is, it's completely opaque. It's not transparent, and the athletes don't
get paid almost at all. So it's usually from sponsorships. And they sell distribution,
broadcast distribution. And so like it's mostly
paywalled after the fact. It's very, unless you're
a super famous athlete or a famous event, it's hard to watch, I don't know, the early
rounds of the weightlifting or the judo, or all of the competitions where most of those athletes
get paid almost nothing, and they've dedicated their whole life. Like they've sacrificed
everything to be there, and we don't get to watch them openly. And you can't, in many cases
you can't even pay for it. With IOC, I've got to experience this 'cause I'll have like
podcast conversations with like Judoka, for example. And I put like a little clip in a podcast, and the Olympics channel
takes it down immediately. So they have all the
videos uploaded private. They're private. - Oh, to flag the copyright. - They just flag the
copyright automatically. From the private videos
they could release, they could release somewhere. Even if it's paywall, which I'm against, but paywall it but make it
super easily accessible. So the FloGrappling model is still okay. I'm against it, but if you do a really good job of it, okay, I can kind of
understand a membership fee, but like it should be super easy to use. But in the case of the Olympics, first of all, in the case of the Olympics, the whole point of the
Olympics is for it to be accessible to everybody. So paywalling goes against the
spirit of the Olympic games. And I will say the same is probably true for many sports like grappling, especially from major events like ADCC that I feel like that
should be openly accessible to everybody like on every platform. But you, what was the
decision like for you to make it accessible
on YouTube, and X, and- - Well, I mean just because basically it's going to grow the sport. You know what I mean? Like it's, if you have to
subscribe to a platform to watch something, you
have a mild interest in, a mild curiosity in, there's
a financial barrier there. So I wanna open it up. Because again, we have an
investor who's contributing and is happy for it to be spent this way, happy for us not to be held hostage by these sort of streaming providers. And really like, again, I'm not making accusations
against FloGrappling or UFC Fight Pass. They are making the
right business decision by not providing streamer numbers, because that's leverage
that those people can use against the streaming provider. But for me as an individual athlete that really wants to
understand the metrics of how many people
actually watch this sport to leverage that in my own
sponsorship negotiations, then if I'm in a position
to have this out free and also give every athlete involved the same metrics and information, like you'll literally be
able to see the spikes when you compete, and
you'll be able to take that and present it for
opportunities for sponsorships for businesses to say, look,
look how many views this got. I was one of the most viewed
moments of this event. So I wanna put the power
back in the athlete and take it away from the host. - And it creates a lot of
incentive for the athlete to make it exciting. - Yeah, this is your time. It might never happen again. I fully intend to run this every year. That's the goal. But again, it might never happen again. - Is there a possible
future where the 2026 ADCC is run by Craig Jones? - Could I take over ADCC? I think from an ADCC perspective, it would make a lot of sense. I think it would make a lot
of sense to wait to see if this event turns into Fyre Festival first before you commit to something like that. But I think a more modern approach to the promotion of the event. Again, I keep going back to the comedians. You know what I mean? If you want to grow your
brand, whatever that may be, provide content for free, and you can paywall or eventually
you can grow the audience, create the audience free. You know, I think the, again,
if your goal is to create a huge sport here, then it's like if we're
already a niche sport and competition aspect of
that is an even smaller niche, then we need to grow that
providing this content for free. - Well, having just chatted with Elon Musk who fundamentally believes
that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. That to me, if the universe
has a sense of humor, you would certainly, Craig Jones would
certainly be running ADCC. Which would be, I mean,
it would just be like beautifully hilarious. - It would, it would be a poetic- - [Lex] Yeah.
- Ending. It'd be a underdog story from a man that could never win the event to running the event on
behalf of the Sheik Tahnoon. - So I saw B-team videos of the CJI camp, people training super hard. So you aside who don't seem to
do things in a standard way, what does it take to sort of put yourself in a peak shape, peak performance for a huge event like the CJI or the ADCC? - I mean it's psychologically,
it's really, really brutal. Like for me, anytime I'm
leading up to any event of any meaningful significance, it's horrible on a psychological level because you're always thinking about, are you training enough,
are you doing enough? If you feel any signs of sickness, injury, the stress levels increase,
your sleep quality decreases. It's all those little subtle things that are so hard to mitigate. So like whether you feel like
you're training hard enough, you're over training, those to me are the
most difficult aspects. And I think really those
are an individual thing, and that's really something
where a coach can provide what he thinks to you is the
right amount of work, you know? And I think that's different
for different people. I think Nicky Rod could
do eight hours a day. You know what I mean? I think Nicky Ryan, eight minutes. - I saw a video of Nicky Ryan like with a trash can throwing up. - [Craig] Yes. - [Lex] And and like
the top comment is like, that's him doing the warmup. (both laughing) - That is satisfying to watch, honestly. (Lex laughs) - Yeah. But yeah, so you're supposed
to train hard enough to where you have this
confidence that you're prepared. - Yeah, I mean, and it's an
impossible thing to grasp. It's like some of the best
performances I've had, I've been called up last
minute, or I've been sick, or my camp's been horrible. And for me personally, I've
gone in there and thought, oh, relaxed. Almost like, oh well, you know, like you got called up a
week ago, you were injured, you missed four weeks of your camp, and I went in there super relaxed and accepting of the result,
and performed much better. Sometimes when I know three months out I've got an event coming up, and that event only
happens every two years, it just, the stress of that alone. Like I personally on an individual level, more of a, I'd rather wing it. I'd rather be in the
stands and just roll down. Like Gunner Nelson, I remember he had a brilliant performance in an ADCC absolute. And he was out drinking the night before. He had no idea he was
competing the next day. He was in the stands eating ice cream, and they called his name
out for the absolute, and he went out there, and
I believe he got bronze, I believe he beat Jeff Monson. So it's like, it's different
for different people. Obviously you don't want
that to be the standard. You've gotta be putting
in the work at all times. But even now in my crazy travel schedule where I don't train anywhere
near like I used to, as long as your game is technical, and as long as your
body's in good condition, I believe you can still train
well against world-class guys. You might not be able
to do an hour straight, but if you're technique orientated, you're just losing fitness. - So is it possible to
out cardio Craig Jones? Like is your game fundamentally
a technique-based game? - For sure, for sure, yeah. I've never wanted to
win anything bad enough to train properly for it. - Right, but isn't that
the secret to your success, being lazy? - I think so. I think that's the only
logical explanation, you know, and I also use it as mind games too. Like I, again, no one knows
whether what I'm saying is true or not.
- Right. - And I'm not saying this story to say anything bad about
my opponent at the time, but I booked two matches in
two consecutive weekends, and I'd been traveling. I think I'd just got back
from one of my trips. I've been on international somewhere. I don't even know where
the fuck I was, but- - Yeah. You're in Texas right now by the way, just in case you forgot. - Texas just for you, just came back. - Thank you, man. It's an honor. - But I hadn't really even trained. I couldn't train. Like I was traveling, just
had no ability to train. I trained for like a week,
had the Phil Rowe match, and I said to myself, I
was down in Mexico City and I said, you know what,
if you win this match, you gotta face Lovato next week. Don't go out and party. Don't celebrate the victory. But as a 32-year-old man at the time hitting a flying triangle submission, I thought that deemed
a worthy after party. - [Lex] Yeah. - And we got outta control that night. And it wasn't till the next day, I woke up, I was like, oh,
I have Lovato next weekend. But I'm also, people don't know whether
I'm telling the truth or not, but it's also, I'm almost too honest because I'll be like
doing interviews saying, yeah, I was out partying. I barely trained. The opponent looks into
that, and they question it. Is he telling the truth? Is he baiting me? Is he really that unconcerned? You know what I mean? It's almost a psychological
battle in and of itself, but for the most part it's true. - So to you, being psychologically relaxed is extremely important. Just not giving a nim. I wonder what that is. - Not too much pressure. I don't want-
- [Lex] Pressure. - I don't like the pressure. - But you like the
pressure when it comes to internet shit talking. - Well, I mean you get
to silently sit back and think about a good response, you know? - Yeah. How important is it to
just go crazy hard rounds leading up to competitions like that? You said sort of Nicky Rod, but like on average for like
athletes at world class level, do you have to put in the hard rounds? - Yeah, I think you have
to put in the hard rounds. It depends at what point
in your career you are. You know, like I think like
someone like Nicky Ryan might almost train too
technically too often. And when he comes to competition, it's a confronting experience
when someone hits him hard, and he feels that pressure. So I think different people
require different things. When Nicky Rod is breaking the spine of a 37-year-old father
of three bus driver, it might be time for him to train in a more technical manner. So it's like you've gotta
cater it to what they need. And again, depending on the opponent, it's a game of strategy, you know? Like for me, when I was more active, I look at an opponent that I want that I could steal some clout from, of which the clout you can make money, and I think to myself, what's the best rule
set I can beat 'em in? That's the strategy. And then how would I beat
'em in that rule set? So there's so many strategic
layers to go above and beyond just the training for me. But nowadays I like to, if I train, short duration, high intensity,
that's the best for me. I don't like this six, oh, like 10 six-minute rounds, whatever. Like, I don't like this long training. I don't like, for me, it's
too much toll on the body. I think I go to the gym, we bang, maybe the first round's slightly light, and then just bang it out. Two hard rounds tops. A little bit of problem
solving, get outta there. 'Cause you wanna feel the, a little bit of the competition intensity. That feels the best on my body. - When you're traveling,
you're doing seminars, and you're just doing
jiu jitsu with folks, are you training with them? I'm sure there's, like
from everything I see people would love to train with you. - Yeah, they wanna, I mean,
I don't know what it is. It's not, obviously you, yeah, I guess let's say
it's like people wanna play basketball with like a
basketball star or something. You know what I mean? But I guess if you played
one-on-one with a basketballer, there's no great risk of injury, you know? - [Lex] Yeah. - That's the real problem is like if you don't roll at your seminar, the seminar participants don't feel like they got the full experience.
- [Lex] Yeah. - But there's snipers at these seminars. There's these sharks that are circling wanting to attack you. And you have to look at a, you look at it from both perspectives. I think you should provide
excellent technique, excellent question and answer time, and I think you should roll a little bit. For the most part, these
days I'll just roll 30 minutes straight. I'll just do 10 guys,
three minutes, no break, 30 minutes straight. I might even get the guy to pick. 'Cause again, if you, some
of these guys come in hot. - Yeah, it's terrifying, man. Because the thing is, like
with Anthony Bourdain, sort of analogy here, like you're exploring
all parts of the world. You just wanna be there in the culture, teach good techniques and just socialize. You don't wanna like, there's
just a bunch of killers that are trying to like murder you. - Yeah, to them they're like, I get to test myself against
a world class athlete today. And to you, you're
like, oh, I'm in Odessa. I'd like to get to know the people. - [Lex] Yeah, exactly.
- Try some food. - [Lex] Yeah. - Have a couple drinks
and enjoy the place. But to them it's time to go. You gotta rope it open a bit. You know, like if I meet
pressure with pressure, I get tired.
- [Lex] Yeah. - But if I don't provide resistance where they think there
should be resistance, now, it slows their pace down. They get shocked a bit.
- [Lex] Yeah. - But 100% if I'm at a seminar and someone's rolling too hard with me, if I feel like I might get hurt, I'll 100% rip a submission on them. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you're
confronted with a threat. - [Lex] Yeah. - You have to meet it with a threat. It's like, I've spoken
about this with Ryan Hall. Ryan Hall, give him a
warning, and then gone. And I think it's perfectly acceptable. Like I won't endanger them for no reason, but if you are coming
hot, you better tap fast. If I feel a threat, you better tap. I'm not gonna break it for
the sake of breaking it. but if you do some crazy shit that might potentially hurt me, and I get a submission, and I'm tired. If you are fresh, you
can catch a heel hook. Hold it tight. The guy tries to wiggle out. You got it. - [Lex] Yeah. - If you're tired and you've
been nice with a heel hook, and then they slip out
and club you in the head, then next time is gonna be the last time. - Well, last time, see
you're another level. You and Ryan Hall just world class. But like for me, I'm trying
to find, navigate through this because I'd like to be
able to roll, you know, like 10 rounds for fun,
for cultural, like- - Oh, but they're coming for you too. (Craig laughs) - And unfortunately ripping submissions or like, you know, neon belly, some kind of dominant position, people don't like hear the message at all. Or if I let them submit
me a bunch of times, they don't calm down either.
(Lex laughs) So it's, I'm trying to figure
out how to solve that puzzle 'cause I'd like to keep rolling
with people across the world for like, for many more years to come. But it's tough. - You can't do it. If you've reached any level of notoriety, whether it's in the sport
or just as a celebrity, you're better off to just have three, four trusted training partners
and train privately. That's the sad situation. People used to say, oh,
you could be such and such. Go to any gym. Nah, those days are over now. Now, if you show up and
you have any sort of name, they're coming to kill. You better, honestly, you're better off. It's so much safer. Training is about trusting. Trust is built from safe rounds. - [Lex] Yeah.
- Strangers are scary. - I don't know. I'm trying to develop a radar
when I look at a person, trying to like figure out are they- - Are they from Eastern Europe? (Lex laughs) I'll tell you what the most dan- (Lex laughing) - Yeah,
- That's a good one. You know what, anyone that wears a pit
bull sports rash guard- - [Lex] Yeah. - Or anyone from the
country of Poland, be ready. - Oh, Polish people go hard. - People go hard. I've never had a flow
roll with a Polish person. - Somebody on Reddit asked, how many legs did you
break in Eastern Europe? - Three or four. - To send a message or just for
your own personal enjoyment? - I don't enjoy it. You know, they- - You don't enjoy the violence. - It is humorous after the fact though. I mean, it's just like, hey, like bro, I'm jet lagged, I'm tired,
I'm here for you guys. Why are you trying to hurt me? You know, like if I get a submission, tap, don't hesitate at all. Don't hesitate. You know, like, it's like, I
mean, jiu jitsu's dangerous. It's a dangerous thing. And when strangers
going crazy, it's their- They think they're getting an
invite to CJI if they tap me. It's just wild. - So, speaking of which,
just for the hobbyist, for a person just starting out,
what wisdom can you provide? Like say you were tasked
with coaching a beginner, a hobbyist beginner. How would you help them
become good in a year? What would be the training regimen? What would be their approach, mental, physical, in terms
of practice in jiu jitsu? - I mean, honestly pick
and save training partners, and trying to understand the positions, and not just freaking out. Like you might escape if you freak out, but you also might be stuck in something, and you injure yourself. So it's like, I think if you
can, it's just about longevity. You know, like if you can train, find a pace to train at and
a like sort of intensity and the right people, you
could potentially train five years without injury. It's really about how you move. If you are always moving
in an explosive way, eventually you're gonna do
that from a position in which you can't move, and then
something's gonna tear. And you also wanna be able
to trust training partners to not go too crazy,
inflict too much pain. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, I think
I've managed to avoid a lot of injuries 'cause I just
never roll too athletically, explosively. I think I'm probably incapable of moving at that rate of speed. - So that's part of it
is you, the way you move, but I guess you also don't allow anybody to put you in a really bad
position in terms of hurting you. - I let 'em put me in bad position, but I try to stay relaxed at all times. You know, that's the key here is like, I mean, yeah, obviously you got
the cheesy, keep it playful, but it's like, if you really keep, if you can remain calm in bad
positions, that is a skill. That's your confidence not in yourself, but that the other guy's
incapable of submitting you. That's the ultimate confidence. You can give 'em whatever you want. - So the thing you want
as a beginner is to focus on minimizing injury by relaxing, by not going, by not freaking out. - Yes, keeping it at a pace so you can understand what just happened. - The thing is like, how do you know if you're freaking out
or not as a beginner? It feels like a-
- If you're panicking. - Yeah, if you're, that's a good. If you're, I mean, I see a lot
of beginners kinda breathing, starting to breathe hard. They tense up. That's probably, underneath that is panic. - Yeah, if you can make someone panic, you will fatigue them. It's the same, it's like if you're, even if you're higher level and you're worried about
getting your guard passed, it's the panic that leads to fatigue and your guard retention. But if you're so
flexible, you remain calm, I think it's 'cause you're not panicked. - Fear is the mind killer.
(Craig laughs) But also you have one of
the more innovative games in jiu jitsu history. How'd you develop that? How do you continue,
throughout your career, how were you innovating? What was your approach to learning and figuring positions out,
figuring submissions out? - I mean, financial motivation. If you can hit moves that
no one else knows how to do- - [Lex] Yeah. - You can sell those instructionals. But also it keeps it interesting. 'Cause it's like, I mean, it
can get stagnant and boring. You know, like a lot of
people get to blue belt. They're good at one thing. They only do that one thing. I think it's finding
creative ways to beat people. And sometimes creativity is
in how they respond to it. So if you can find a humiliating
move to do to someone, well, not even necessarily humiliating, but a move that is unexpected. When you get hit with
someone you don't expect, I think that is sort of really one of the most fun aspects of it. You know what I mean? Like, you train to stay better than the people you're better than. That's what keeps you in the game. And finding creative
ways to beat those people is some of the most entertainment. - So that's just something
that brings you joy is by doing the unexpected. - Yeah, trying to, if you
get swept with something that you don't think should work,
I think that's fulfillment. - So your game is even a bit trolley. Interesting. So like, but what's the
actual process of like, like with the Z Guard, all the innovative
stuff you've done there? How do you come up with ideas there? - I mean just studying tape. Just study tape and try
to reverse engineer. Like if I see something
or I train with someone, and it feels, you know
when you have those moments where you're like, oh, I don't even know
what they're doing here. And if you can put someone in a position they don't understand,
that's also where they panic. So it's like creating different
ways to make people panic. But also, I mean, just innovation,
like having fun with it. You know, like I guess the
artistic aspect of it is fun. You can be creative in
how you can beat people. - Did you say artistic or autistic? - Both, both.
- Okay, just checking. What's like the most innovative
thing you've come up with? What's like some of the cooler ideas you've come up with on the mat? - I don't think I've
come up with anything, but I've popularized things. You know, like certain
styles of leg entry. I definitely didn't invent
them, but I popularized them. Octopus guard, playing more from turtle. Sort of the pinning style of game. Like as a, because of my jokes online, put me in a position of power in the sport so that when I post content,
it can popularize a move or at least an instructional,
popularize a game. But it's still, I'm not trying
to sell inauthentic products. I'm still, I want the technique
to work, be functional. - Yeah, but put some humor on top of it. Like power bottom. Your instructional names are pretty good. And But you changed that one. I saw the name of that. - Oh, I mean unfortunately Meta, the ads were not appreciating
some of that humor. So we had to soften the titles a bit. - You got a phone call from
the man, said change this. - I didn't. Allegedly-
- [Lex] Right. - The company hosting it did. (Craig laughs) - Right, right. What do you think about Zuck in general? Like the fact that he trains jiu jitsu? Have you gotten a chance to train with him 'cause you've trained Volk- - I haven't trained with him. I met him when Volks fought Ilia. We've spoken briefly. Interesting guy for sure. Loves jiu jitsu, loves MMA. He's really intending to
compete in something, I think. - Competed in jiu jitsu,
intends to compete in MMA, has a beginner's mind, is humble about it. It's interesting. Was he ever in consideration for CJI as a- - Ooh, I mean, we'd love to have him. We'd love to have him, but he's coming off of ACL surgery. I think he's returned
to sport this August, so I think he'll be back
training again soon. - Yeah. What's your relationship has
been like with Volkanovski? Like what have you learned
about martial arts, about grappling in different
domains just training with him? - I mean for me personally, what's so interesting
about Volkanovski is his, I guess where he came from. You know, like it's like
you have preexisting ideas of what a UFC champion is. Again, I would say it's similar to when I've started training jiu jitsu and I first traveled to America and got to train with
some really famous people. You realize how relatable
they are in some aspects. Volkanovski trains a freestyle, and it is humble
beginnings, humble origins. Like, it's like it's a small gym in a small sort of beach side city. They're running puzzle mats. You know what I mean?
- [Lex] Yeah. - You think UFC champion, you
don't think puzzle mat gym. You know what I mean? Like he's not training
at a American top team. He's not at one of these big gyms. So to me it just shows
what you're capable of through hard work and sort of self-educating
in such an isolated place. It's insane to me that
he's still considered probably the pound for pound
best featherweight ever, in my opinion. And he's basically come across and started late from a rugby background. But also in terms of what I've learned, on a technical level, I've
picked up a lot of stuff from him in sort of grappling exchanges. How to get back up,
obviously wall wrestling. In terms of how hard he trains, how hard he works the
cardio aspect is insane. His cardio workouts are absolutely insane. - So he is the opposite
of you essentially. - Complete opposite of me, probably publicly and
privately as an athlete, yeah. The amount of work he puts in and just his sheer sort
of mental willpower. I remember there's been a couple of times where I've watched him do weight cuts where like that's horrible. You are watching your friend. You know, obviously we started as like basically I would help him
in certain jiu jitsu aspects and then becomes a close friend of yours. But the whole process of
the MMA fight is horrible, especially when you care
about the person fighting. Because some of those weight
cuts you see are awful. Like you're basically seeing guys' eyes roll back in their head, like him just powering through
a five kilo, 10 pound cut. - [Lex] Yeah. - And just constantly
talking about how easy it is. But while clearly you, I mean, these guys look
like they're dying. You know, like to push through that, and then to push through some
of the moments in his fight, to watch him be completely relaxed until like five minutes before the fight, and then he starts talking about, you're never gonna take this
belt away from my family. Like he's singing about his
family before his fights, his kids. You know, you see the character change. It's just absolutely insane to watch. On the other side of that
is obviously watching the ups and downs. There's been so many ups. The last two have been downs. So you seeing the full
spectrum of the highest highs and the lowest lows. - How's he able to deal
psychologically with loss? - I don't know. Obviously he's still
hungry, still motivated. - [Lex] Yeah. - Obviously I thrive in
a losing environment. But him-
(Lex laughs) Him on the other hand, I'm not sure. But we don't talk too much on that level. Obviously we check in his friends, see what he's up to
see what he's planning. - [Lex] Yeah. - We were trying to get him
a grappling match at CJI. I won't say the reasons it fell through, but we were setting one
up with Mikey Musumeci, but we couldn't get it done. - And you can't say the reasons why. - I can't say the reasons, but it would've been awesome. - You think you could have set
that up if you had more time? Like set something like,
part of the challenge here is for some of these gigantic matchups, I feel like it takes time. - Yeah, being the promoter, tournament, not as bad. The super fights,
really, really difficult. I don't think we could have
set it up with more time that particular match. But that was the dream. That's what we were hoping to do. - But there's a lot of
other interesting matchups that you could have
possibly gotten through if there's more time. - Yeah, I'd love to see, I mean personally I really
wanna see Volks and Ortega have an actual grappling match. 'Cause we saw 'em get out
of those deep submissions and apply a ton of grounding power. I'd love to see 'em just
have a grappling match. I'd love to see more of the UFC stars have grappling matches, especially if they've had
any head trauma in a fight. It's like, hey, let's keep 'em busy. 'Cause as you see, some
of those guys go crazy if they can't train. - What about the fights against Makhachev? You think Volk can beat him? - I think the first fight showed
he could beat him for sure. Showed it's possible. Even in the second fight when he reversed the grappling exchange, I wish he'd tried to take Makhachev down. I really think he has a
huge strength advantage against Makhachev, and I personally believe he has
a fence wrestling advantage. You might not see it in a sense
of the technical hip tosses and things like that, like really, but I do believe Volks, one of the best, if not the best cage wrestler in the world - Who you think wins in a grappling match? - That would be interesting.
- [Lex] Right. - Be interesting. The problem is to almost to, while you are a champion like Islam is, you could just never book 'em. You could never get it. - [Lex] What do you think
makes the Dagestani wrestlers and fighters so good? - I mean, I think personally
those guys are just like, they just love it. It's just about like, it's how they train. Like it's a fight to the death. You know what I mean? Like it's just built in them. They don't wanna concede an inch ever. I think for MMA and wrestling,
that can be very, very good. I think sometimes when
those guys come over to jitsu specific events,
they get leg locked. They fall into traps, overly
aggressive or overly evasive. But I think the way they train
just is perfect for a fight. A fight, they can just forward
pressure, eat some shots, grind a guy against the wall. Fence wrestling is technical. Jiu jitsu's far more technical. There's way more things you
can do in a grappling scenario from top and bottom than
I think against the wall. So a grinding nature of how
they train works really good to walk a guy down and take
him down against the wall. And then obviously with ground and pound, very good to hold a guy down. So I think just never
conceding an inch in training, it's just, they've done that
since they were born basically. - So you learn how to grind somebody down. - Yeah, like they're just trying to break each other at all times. Trying to have some dominance over other, over their friends and
who they train with. - But you think in the grappling context, that will not always translate. - Not when you can pull guard
and submit from your back. I think that sort of negates
some of that grinding pressure. I think that has to be met with more slow technical lateral movement. I think that's the way you. Like that would be the dream for me is a guy just comes straight
forward into my guard. So that grinding approach works well if he's taken me down and
got already close to me, but if I'm laying flat on
my back and he's standing, and he has to engage, he has
all that danger at range. - [Lex] Yeah. - But if he can connect to
my body before we go down- - [Lex] Yeah. - Now we're in his world again, I think. - I wonder if it's like, you know, at his prime Khabib
versus you, for example. Who do you think wins there? - Buggy choke for sure. - Buggy choke, no way. (Craig laughs)
I know you're joking. - We'd get in with a buggy racking. - Really? So you can get the buggy
choke at the highest level? Can you educate me on that? Like if that legitimately can
work at the highest level? - Buggy Choke for sure, yeah. - [Lex] Really? - Can catch anyone
- [Lex] Really? Okay. - You're not a buggy believer. (Lex laughs) - I'm not a buggy hater either, I'm just. (both laughing) I'm agnostic on the Buggy Choke - Khabib would go to sleep for sure. - Yeah? - Yeah, there's no way he
would tap to a buggy choke. Who was it I faced recently? I faced Russian guy from Tatar. I couldn't buggy him. I was trying to close guard one though. Sort of like a, it is harder to pull off, but I had to put him to sleep
twice at the end of the match with a triangle. But he was just willing. Like, I don't know, Eastern European guys. It's like what? Like they're treating it
like a real fire, you know? - Have you ever like gone hard
with the Dagestani person, like grappling, wrestling,
any of the fighters, any of them MMA guys? - Have I, have I, have I? I mean, they do train hard. They do train hard. When I did the seminar in
Odessa, it was at a school, but another school in the city brought like 10 Dagestani guys. - Uh-oh. - All of 'em went insanely hard. - [Lex] Okay. - I was like, guys, like what's? (Lex laughs)
- Okay? - It's a small sample size, but they all wanted to be broken. - What do you think you as
the wise age of jiu jitsu, if you look 10, 20 years out, how do you think the game is
gonna evolve, the art of it? - The art of it. I mean, I think obviously people
are gonna keep innovating, perfecting certain things,
throwing out information, bad sort of techniques, bad sort of. But I mean it's so hard to predict. It's like that's the game of making money off the instructionals is
predicting where we go next. It's so, so difficult. - What do you think is gonna
be the most popular submissions at CJI and ADCC this year? Is it gonna be foot locks or rear naked? - I think, actually CJI, I think there's gonna be a
lot of guys that don't tap that take injuries. - [Lex] Yeah. - A small concern is
that a guy wins the match but it's so injured he's can
barely go on to the next match. - [Lex] Yeah. - But win the battle, lose the war. - We are gonna see that, aren't
we, people refusing to tap? - We're actually, we did
the walkthrough yesterday, and we were like, one
ambulance is not enough. Get a second one here. - [Lex] Yeah. - 'Cause if they take one
guy injured to hospital, we can't continue until
an ambulance comes back. So these guys are gonna go. Everyone will be Dagestani for a day. - Yeah. - That's what I think this
tournament will achieve. (Lex laughs) But progression, it'll
just be the integration of wrestling into jiu jitsu. You know, I think that
would be the most exciting way the sport could progress is basically folk style wrestling but an
integration of submissions from the standing position to- If you just follow the rules of you should always be
fighting to get on top, whether that's a submission that leads to a sweep or a sweep, and you should be trying
to avoid being pinned. And as long as the game
revolves around that and guys engage each other
offensively on the feet, that would be the most exciting, best way to watch the sport. - Yeah. When I show
the sport of jiu jitsu, the most exciting stuff is whenever both people wanna be wrestling, scrambling, wrestling. They wanna both wanna get on top. - [Craig] Yeah, the scramble. - That looks like fighting
versus guard stuff. - I'm a guy that totally agrees with you, but if I think the guy's a
better wrestler, I will concede. You know, like it's like
that's the hard part. - But then the whole crowd
will then mock you ceaselessly as they should for conceding. - That's what the million should be. We should have a tournament
or a round robin thing where it's like the million
goes to the most exciting man. - [Lex] Yeah.
- Who took the most risks. - I mean, in a way that's
what's gonna happen because this is quite open. So there the benefit of being exciting is you going to be glorified on social media. And if you're going to
be boring and stall, you're going to be
endlessly sort of wilified - And forget about metals. Social media glory is all that matters. - Well, in a certain sense,
on a basic human level, yeah. I mean, not what all that matters, but it's, (Craig laughs) you're not gonna, if you're gonna stall, you're gonna become a meme, I feel like, especially with CJI. And so, is there, are the refs
gonna try to stop stalling? - Yeah, we're gonna penalize 'em hard. Hit 'em hard. Get that boring shit outta here. - So what percentage of
athletes would you say are on steroids? You'd say 100%? - Anyone that's ever beaten me. - [Lex] Okay. - They're taking more steroids than me. I don't know, I wanted to test them, but not to do anything bad, but just in the name of science to see what people are running. You know, it's so hard to say 'cause you, like, you train with people, and they don't even tell
you what they're on. I tell the world what I'm on,
and they go, "Look at you. You're not taking any steroids." It's like such a secret, secret thing. I personally think it's
almost impossible to say, but occasionally you look at a guy, and you're pretty certain, you know? - Yeah, the looks of it. But it could also go the other way. Certain people are just genetically built, and they look like they are. And then there's probably
others like yourself. - It's a self-defense mechanism. 'Cause you'd rather assume
that that guy was on steroids than his genetics are so
far superior to yours. You're like, nah, it must be steroids. - Yeah, that's the part of accusations of people being on steroids that I hate. It's like without data,
people are just like, it's a way they can say that
somebody's cheating without. Because I like celebrating people, and sometimes people aren't on steroids, and they aren't cheating, and
they're just fuckin' good. - What about Gabi Garcia? - I think she's beautiful, strong, and you're a lucky man to
share the mat with her. You should be honored.
(Craig laughs) And I have, I'm betting a huge
amount of money on her, so. - Me too.
(both laughing) - Either way you're gonna get paid. - She's paying 11 to one. - I bet on love as well, so
we are aligned in that way. - [Craig] Love will prevail. - Okay, you put Alex Jones to sleep. Just to reflect back on that, (Lex laughs) what was- - He was too woke. He needed it. - So that's you fighting the
woke mind virus or whatever? - I think he was on the pulse too much. - What was that like? I didn't see the full video. I just saw a little clip. - I thought he was dead for a second, but for some strange reason
couldn't stop laughing. - [Lex] Yeah. - I don't know. I was like, please wake up. - There's something funny about it, yeah. - I was like, his blood
pressure's higher than mine. I hope that didn't cook him. - Yeah, that would be quite sad. - It's so crazy. He's-
- [Lex] To murder somebody. - Yeah.
(both laughing) He's probably the most just
entertaining human being ever, off, like he just says the cra- Like off air, he's always on. It's like, that's just, he's always ready to say something wild shit. - The craziest shit possible. What's it like going to sleep? I somehow have never gone to sleep. - I went to sleep one time. Lachlan Giles was demonstrating
a technique on me, but I woke up straight away. But for 10 seconds I
didn't know who I was, where I was, what I was doing. But that's it. That's the only time I went out. - You saw Annie. - Didn't feel good though. Some people say it feels good. Did not feel good. - Because you were like
what, panicked, lost? - Yeah, I was just, I just
didn't know what was going on. - Yeah, and then you load it in. That's a cool, that must be a cool feeling to load it all back in. Like realize where am I. I feel like that sometimes at a hotel when I'm like traveling. It's like, where the fuck am I again? Like when you wake up. Maybe that's what it's like. - Some people push it too far. David Carradine, you know? - What? (Lex laughs) I'm too dumb to get that joke. (Craig laughs) - Auto-erotic asphyxiation. - Oh good, thank you. Thank you. Now I know. So given all the places you've gone, all the people you've seen recently, what gives you hope about this
whole thing we got going on about humanity, about this world? We start war sometimes. We do horrible things
to each other sometimes. Amidst all that, what gives you hope? - That you can still make fun of anything as long as it's funny. That's what I'm fighting for. People talk about cancel culture. I just think the joke wasn't funny enough. (both laughing) Had poor delivery. - Well, thank you for
being at the forefront of making fun of everything and anything. And thank you for talking today, brother. - Thank you, bro. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Craig Jones. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Anthony Bourdain. Travel changes you. As you move through this
life and this world, you change things slightly. You leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life and
travel leaves marks on you. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.