 Humans are fascinated by violence and you've got to ask yourself. Why is it the rash guard? Yes And I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this is gonna be rough. You're learning this shut the fuck up I got you man. You were powered by McDonald's and Coca Cola I want more and then I expect them and he didn't want to fight anymore. I'm not impressed by if George st. Pierre and And Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins? I'm Here with three individuals each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines The greatest MMA fighter of all time George st. Pierre the greatest martial arts coach of all time John Donahue and the greatest submission grappler of all time Gordon Ryan So, let me ask the first question. You guys didn't see the question. No preparation here What is the key to your success each of you one thing or multiple things that come to mind? John go first Is it the rash guard Yes, I I like that you choose John right off the bat. I seem the most nervous For me it's about Finding a way to work in A world where most of the answers are already known Okay, and in any developed sport by the time you enter that sport most of the basic precepts the the the major techniques that the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out and so in a highly developed world The key to success is to be able to identify Some area of the industry that you're in which is currently undervalued To do what the other people are not doing deeper than that you're Everyone has a view of okay. These are the the main skills of the industry. I work in at any given time some set of skills attributes Will always be somewhat undervalued they're underappreciated by the people in the game You see that at any in any given industry there are always trends which change The nature of the industry over time so fashion trends in the clothing industry, you'll see at any given time is a General wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say here is something which is genuinely useful, but which is currently being underused underutilized and I want to bring that back in and develop it and Because it's an inherently useful product It will be very very successful in its initial applications against people who aren't currently using it If you can do this in whatever industry you're in I believe you'll be highly successful successful to the supplies both for actual specific like techniques and the also tactics as well in the case of Jiu Jitsu, so for example in my sport leg locks have always been around Okay, there's there's no shortage of people you can look back in history who applying leg locks Nonetheless as in across the industry Leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated. There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport For most of the history of the sport of Jiu Jitsu tended to deemphasize leg locks and When I looked at them I said there was immense potential but it wasn't being realized and needed to be changed Since then that has more or less occurred now most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important Aspect and they're no longer undervalued if anything it's gone too far the other way and now perhaps they're a little overvalued and the this kind of fashion trend exists in every industry and The job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued and then Look at what is their actual objective value and then work To to to bring them back to the forefront. So John brought up fashion George is wearing a really sexy shirt. So Assuming that's not the reason is there Is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career? Well, of course everybody knows the famous and sort of every athletes are saying oh, it's could be genetic I was maybe gifted that certain predisposition. I worked really hard but I think something that People don't talk enough is when everybody sometime go, right? I Was never afraid to try to go left and I felt many time trying to do things that were not Known to be things that would bring me brought me success, but I tried it, you know I was very often I was the first of trying new things and I felt many time but certain times it gives me a certain advantage and for example, I was sometime fighting guys that add much better wrestling background and than me on paper and nobody before that fought those guys never nobody had there to try to Take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good and I didn't have on paper the wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight, but when everybody Tried to go right I was going left I fought them in a different way and that was The blueprint to beat certain some of these guys, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? So yeah, so we'll actually talk about a few fights where that you did just that this is fascinating But let's say at the high level so Gordon again sticking on fashion I may compliment your incredible badass hat trying to fit in here We should say we're in Texas now, so he's Become a Texan overnight. So what is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to your success? yeah, so first of all, it has to be a role where you don't ask us all those same questions because How am I supposed to compete with the answer? John just gave There's nothing I can do that's gonna top that. Yeah, but uh, I think it's uh, there's many things But I think the number one thing is just is John When I came in, I was a blue belt and I was beating brown and black belts in competition already But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport I would just come in and if something wasn't working I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively and that just degenerated me into a degenerated into me spastically knee sliding into cross hashi garami against Eddie Cummings for six months and then just getting heel hooked repeatedly and I'm like, this is not working and Eddie like when I met him was like a chubby Librarian looking guy and I'm like, there's no I'm like six to like a jacked like 170 and I'm like There's no way I'm losing to a guy who looks like this, but he just kept heel hooking me So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn't work and then John's like well If you learned leg locks, you might you might have some more success And then I was like, yeah, that probably makes sense And from then on I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport instead of doing doing things harder I would actually try to get better at jujitsu. Do you remember like a turning point where? You became as opposed to being mediocre not just in technique but an approach to To great. Um, I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training consistently So I trained full time with John when I was purple belt mid level purple belt and towards the end of my brown belt Days, I was beating up like legitimate like ADCC champions in the gym. Um, so I think like Brown to black belt was a big thing for me And then when I won my first EBI and I was I submitted Yuri who won ADCC and I beat roost them Um, so I think that was like my turning point as a competitor But I think I started to to reach world level a little bit before that I think somewhere around brown belt mid level to late level brown belt It was some of that mental like it was there a moment when you like after a training session you realize I can actually do this Like I could be at the top of the world world class The critical moment for me was when I think it was right Right when I got my black belt, maybe a few months before I got my black belt we had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and we did a hard round together and I think I submitted them like four or five times and No one knew who I was. I never won anything up into that point and I was like, okay Like if this is like one of the best guys in the world and I could submit him multiple times around I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a make a career out of this Okay. So the actual performance was the like you don't need to believe before you could perform like a lot of Olympic gold medalists they They have to believe before they can perform because like they're getting their ass kicked for a long long long time Yeah I think but the best way for me to believe in something is to have Repeated success doing it against high level guys Like I'm not gonna just believe I can do a double leg if I can't a double leg on anybody So for me the the belief came from the repeated success in the gym Yeah, but to get to the point where you're submitting somebody like your ASMO is like one of the the greatest grapplers ever It's like a long journey Yeah, but I had the confidence I had the belief in myself because of the success that I had in the gym prior to that got it Even and it's one step at a time first. It's the brown belts then it's the black belts and it's world class. Okay George was there a turning point for you when you you thought like I can actually do this Yes, I I always dreamed to become champion but I think the turning point that there was that there was two turning point and And there were my two losses First my losses to Matt Hughes I went into that fight Just to not lose I was not fighting to win and it's after the fight when I watched the Replay of the fight. I realized I was like I was doing pretty well But during the fight in my own mind, I was not seeing it that way I I thought I was getting dominated by Hughes like a hundred percent, but when I watched the replay I Was like man, I can I can beat this guy. I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake so I was very frustrating but but I That's what gave me the mentally the the championship level mentality and then I became a little bit overconfident because I start beating everybody after that and I Start to believe the hype of people when they look at me. They were like, oh, he's the new Upcoming superstar and he's gonna be unstoppable and and then when I became champion, I I lost to to to Matt to Matt Sarah, so before I believe my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence and and My second failure was I was because I was overconfidence. So I think it's there's a perfect Center of confidence. I mean, I mean it's good to be confident because John taught me like confidence It's it's like money in your bank account if you you can have all the skills in the world, right? and and if you're If you don't have the confidence, it's like you it's like you can you can be a millionaire? But you don't have access to your bank account. So it's that's a little bit the analogy that John told me So that's how I feel a confidence plays for Natalie but to be overconfident I think it's always good to to be aware to be afraid of what can happen So to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear to me That's what mentally gave me the edge to become I believe successful in my sport playing off that John gave me a speech one time and he was like you have to be able to like flip a switch and turn it off where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who's super confident and He plays the character of someone who's like no one can beat me I'm the best that there ever was and that's it But if you look at me actually trained very hard You can't you can't play the persona of no one can beat me and have it translate into your life and just think that you're So good that you don't have to do anything and no one can ever beat you You have to be able to play that public persona of no one can beat me But then you have to actually do the training to make that happen You can't just you can't believe your own hype and say say that you know, I can just do whatever I want No one's ever gonna beat me if the able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete and that made a big difference for me it's tough because like you're you you dominate such a large fraction of the world and grappling and The George to just the perfect dominance after those two it's hard for the confidence not to just Like how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down where you completely deludes your mind For me, it's just number one the guys in the gym are so tough So the guys in the guys in the gym that I train with are always like nipping at my butt and always giving me new New problems to solve and for me, it's really just about trying to learn new stuff over time So that keeps it interesting for me and it's not really about You know, no one could beat me I don't have to train or have to do it I could do whatever I want It's more what keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I'm learning new stuff all the time of working on something new and progressing to new levels at all times it's not I don't just come in and do the same thing over and over again and That gets boring you just come in and you don't learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time And okay, okay This is boring But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals short term and long term goals to reach then it makes it interesting it's a For me, it's a little bit like Gordon says is the fear because sometime in the gym even before I when it was competing I was I was getting my butt kicked But I don't care what happened in the gym I mean it hit my ego, of course because I'm a proud person I'm a competitor even in the gym but it's not a malicious competition competition in between each other when you fight you have to be malicious you go there to hurt the guy but it it hit it hit me in terms of my pride when I get beat in a gym, of course, but that fear That I don't want it to happen in public especially not during a fight that what keeps help me keeps the balance between confidence and and and and fear You know what? I mean? It's kind of weird. It's a mix It's a mixture of both that I believe I to me Help me Succeed to have the right mindset to fight and I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this This is gonna be rough. So yeah, you put a lot of I mean that's that's the hard thing to do when you talk shit when you when you play the heel is Is so massive perform. He's the pressure is I mean you have to be good under pressure It's the Conor McGregor thing, you know, the reason I actually started talking shit was actually like indirectly because of George because Because I will become the opposite of George I won I won my first DBI and I I didn't talk shit and everyone was like being like, oh, you know you only beat Yuri because because he was tired or you know this or that and if they have a rematch under any of the rules that he would have lost and I'm like trying to figure out what I'm gonna do So I'm strolling through George's feed one day and he posted a clip of him beating someone and I look at the comments And I'm with this in mind. I'm like George is the nicest person of all time and if you look at the comments, it's like 10,000 comments and like 9,000 and 900 are just people calling him like all you do is lay and pray you pussy You suck you can't finish anybody and I'm just like I'm looking at this and I'm like people are gonna say What they're gonna say regardless, they're gonna talk shit regardless. So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself Is there some aspect that's I mentioned Conor McGregor. He he crossed the line with Khabib At least in the eyes of Khabib Is there something you ever regret about crossing a line or does that you ever feel like there's a line? Or do you just keep pushing the line? Uh, I basically play it per per person I just I basically fire back with like one step above what what they do. It's always plus one. Yeah. Yeah, okay So I go I usually go hard like they fire a bullet then I drop a Duke And then and then after that initial shot then we go back and forth and I'll just keep one upping them So, you know, there's a lot of people that love you, but there's also a lot of people that love to hate you. Yeah it's so like what do those people like energize you or do you just Or is it funny to you? Like what as an athlete as a performer? You should not think about them It's like a fun thing It's like it's just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied Like because like because most of them that like talk shit they like just say stuff that's factually incorrect So then I just argue with like actual statistics. Yeah, it's just like You suck or you're not gonna beat this person. I'm like, I've already submitted that guy Yeah, so I just it riles them up and it's just it's just a fun thing for me to do my my downtime Yeah, your responses are usually very factual. It's very scientific. I appreciate Thank you. You actually you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science. Yeah, it's great. Okay. It's good mix. That's a good mix I Mean a topic of haters are more specifically sort of doubts within yourself of doubts around you as you're coming up Maybe George you can comment. Oh, we're just ignoring John completely in this conversation. I Was gonna ask you another question, but let me just ask you on this on this topic Are there times in your life yet? You were surrounded by people that that doubted you all the time And so what is there something you could say as in by way of advice how you overcome? The doubt either yourself or others around you all the time the first time I Manifest my desire to become a professional Mixed martial art athlete everybody doubt me Just not even I'm not talking about the UFC just to become a professional fighter Everybody doubt me and I became a I became a professional fighter. I had few amateur fight I won them all then I I fought my first fight in In Montreal, I won and I became a professional Then I I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC. Everybody doubt me again. So it's a normal thing So I work my way up beat a few guys then I at the time Pete Spratt was just knocked knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick and The person who was my agent at the time did a great move For me, so he brought Pete Spratt in Montreal to fight me Pete Spratt came to Montreal I and I believe he didn't know who I was So he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck and I and I end up beating him So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC Then after I was in UFC, I wanted to become champion of the world, you know but Matthews was there and he seems invincible at the time so Everybody doubt me again, and I became world champion and after when you when I was world champion, I wanted to be I was competing against other world champion of other weight class For the title, you know for the legacy and everything. So it's not no longer competing against my opponent I was you know as a competitor you always you never wanted to be you never want to be satisfied because when Satisfaction is the death, you know when you're satisfied you better retire because it's over So always I have to find motivation what you can have more. I want more don't be satisfied in life. So I wanted to be Like the best, you know, I want as I was competing, you know Like to become the best and and you know, of course that people doubt doubt you all the time Every time you say something that it's outside of the norm of the normality I want to say there there's nothing normal, but I'm talking about when you you manifest your desire to do something that takes Special attribute to to to succeed or that is something that is hard to to do It's for sure you're gonna always have people that doubt you it's so strange that people don't They don't lean into supporting like people that love you, too yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me and I believe I I you need to use that as a Positive positive thing as a motivation to prove them wrong Yeah, so for me that that was a thing when someone doubt me nothing gave me more There's more energy because I want to prove him wrong I want to look at him in the face and say hey, you see I got you man. I I did it so John do you ever use this in one way or the other by saying I don't think you can do this to motivate them to prove you wrong or more general question of You know the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness Like what's your role as a coach when you have these two athletes with regards to your your first question? Would I ever say to someone you can't do this as a kind of reverse psychology? I know My job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills and as Gordon pointed out earlier if you're In any way a rational human being and you're noticing that you're getting tremendous success with a given move in the gym against high level opponents who Give a good read on what your actual opponent in a competition is like You would have to be a moron to not Recognize that kind of success and say this is something I should be building into my game and you will carry the confidence that You earned in the gym into the arena So I never try to use reverse psychology. I build up Everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills I know people say all this physicality on the one hand is mentality on the other and confidence is squarely in the the mental Aspect of the game, but all the underpinnings and beginnings of confidence are physical okay, a rational human being will see where they're having success and where they're having failure and confidence will Surround those areas where they're having success and will degenerate in cases where they're having failure so my job as a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills and I don't have to do anything psychologically after that I just If I can set you up to be highly successful With a given move or a set of tactics ten times in a row against quality opposition in the gym I don't have to do a damn thing when it comes to instilling confidence. I Will tell people hey, you're doing a really good job with that move. It's working well for you but When they nod in agreement, I'm not trying to force anything on them They're recognized they or they already recognized that long before the words came out of my mouth but on the other hand intelligent rational people will recognize when they're failing with given moves and no amount of talk on my part can ever change that if I teach Gordon a given arm lock and 15 times in a row. It tries it over a month and all 15 of failures There's nothing I can say verbally to come up to go and say hey, you're really good at that move He's gonna look at me say bullshit I'm terrible at it and that will create a crisis of confidence where Gordon no longer believes the words coming out of my mouth So I will never compromise that but isn't there a lot you just said 15 there you have to believe that Doing this arm lock 15 times over a period of a month is worth it because eventually you might get it I think yeah, that's a separate issue that that's a separate issue There are times where I've more or less pushed athletes to go in a certain direction for example When I first met Gary tone and he never had a guillotine Strangle and I I would say don't carry, you know, you're a scrambler like one of the greatest weapons of scramble can ever develop as a guillotine like it should be in your arsenal and He was like, yeah, I just grab off of the back and I said, well, there's gonna be a day You can't take someone's back and it's always good to better strangle from front and back Okay, of course, we all prefer a strangles on the back that makes sense But there's gonna come a day where it's gonna be useful for you and so that was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said you're learning this shut the fuck up and Like literally wouldn't teach him any anything else until you got a guillotine. Yeah, Gary like asked him a question he's like, let's say you're guillotine and For the first three months as gifted as as Gary tone it is and learning most moves most moves Gary gets it like in minutes, there was something going on with Gary just couldn't get a guillotine on people and Finally after around three months, he started having some success until ultimately became one of his best weapons We had to go through like 15 different variations of guillotine until he found one which actually worked reliably for him and That was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said no Do you have to learn this the long search had to do more with the physical characteristics? I couldn't figure out the right like it made sense. It made sense in the case of Gary tone because there were more opportunities per minute Of his grappling for guillotines The investment and time was worth it for another athlete. I might have said well He hardly ever gets in the situation the front headlong so guillotine so it's not even worth investing the training time Let me ask you a question on the on the competition side mentioned haters And do you think about this aspect of the competition with athletes? If there's a great question and the answer is no I'm You can see that you could you couldn't find two more polar opposites psychologically than than George St. Pierre and this monstrosity on my left and I've I've never said to my athletes. Hey, I think this is the sort of demeanor you should carry yourself with I'm myself a very flawed character and I'm the last person on earth Who should be delving out moral advice to other people? The only thing is that I you know, of course, I believe some things are off limits But as long as it's done in the context of sport with no one's physically attacking people or do anything crazy Where it just goes completely over the top then I give almost zero Moral advice to my athletes. I'm a jiu jitsu coach not a preacher I If I can if I may We are entertainers You know, we're athletes or professional athletes, but we make We make a living because of people or want to see us perform Same thing an actor or something a singer and a lot of the time especially in the fight game An event is promoted. It needs to be with emotion Love me hate me, but do not ignore me and You know it when it's authentic and It's done. Well, I think me my personally my my favorite fighters to watch are the one that are that That I that have a sort of some sort of a bad persona I really enjoy watching those guys because They bring an emotion element into a fight, which is great You know, I I feel to me it's more interesting to watch when there is an emotion involved and I believe that's why Some fighters make more money than others, you know, you know what I mean? They would that's the reason why we may we can make a living out of this Yeah, they're better entertainers, but you're right. The authenticity seems to be really important. There's actually something very interesting there It's time to break out some some secrets Do you know who like you think of George St. Pierre you think of like the highly technical polished Martial artists. Oh, this is gonna be great. Do you know who his favorite fighters to watch were? You'd probably be thinking of probably someone who's really technically advanced Actually, it was Mark Coleman. Oh, no, Kevin Randleman and Phil Barone He used to love watching that was a hammer house. That was his favorite. He would love those guys and whenever their fights were on georgie watching the hammer house crew and It's funny what you said about how those guys bought an intensity to To MMA that was off the charts. Have you ever met those guys in? And in their prime, let me tell you it was it was something to behold and I had this crazy larger than life personality Most of the things I did made no sense whatsoever But I mean technically but that was their appeal and they were these guys and George loved to watch them more than anyone else You never know what what could happen with these guys. I remember when Mark Coleman won the Pride Grand Prix I was in my living room. I was jumping I was so happy. I was like, yeah Yeah, he beat Igor Vorchevchin. That was like I like for to me. It was amazing. You know what I mean? Because of the emotion that they brought into the fight George is actually very interested by something you said that normally when I Ask what is the appeal of a given fighter? And what makes people watch a fight you talked about the idea that fighters entertain us and that's absolutely correct that they are It's this weird weird industry where you're you're Both an athlete and an entertainer and you need to be successful in both regards to become financially successful insofar as Your favorite athletes to watch at least were people who are almost like the polar opposite of who you are I've always said that most people if you look at Say a million people watch a pay per view event What percentage of those million people have a genuine? technical understanding of what's happening as they watch a fight It's tiny It's absolutely tiny the vast majority of people who watch a professional fight have almost no technical understanding of What's going on in front of them? So how do they relate to the fight? What's the only way they can? it's through emotion and So when they get a sense that these two don't like each other then they can relate to the fight But only a tiny percentage of people watching a given professional fight can relate to it on a technical level The overwhelming majority will always form an emotional attachment to the fight That's why when you see things shows that USC primetime, they never focus on tactics and the techniques of the fight they focus on the emotional elements the Preparation the view of their own family members as athletes get ready It's always an emotional pull because that's how 99 percent of the viewers Relate to the fight if I haven't think about chess, okay, if I have minimal knowledge of two world champions Coming to fight each other in it or match up against each other in a game of chess I know so little about chess tactics and I can't really form any kind of technical appreciation of what's going on on the board But if you tell me that these two chess players hate each other's guts and they've got a rivalry which goes back five years And they've said this and that about each other in public then suddenly on my ears break up and I'm like, oh, okay This sounds interesting because I just don't have the the knowledge to appreciate what's going on on the board and a chess game to be able to to appreciate the The technical nuances of what they're doing. So any Interest that I have in the chess match is going to have to come from some kind of emotional level because I'm just not qualified To make technical assessments and that's exactly how it is in the case of both grappling and mixed martial arts That's why the ones who evoke the most attention are always the ones who can form some kind of emotional appeal Conor McGregor was the all time master of this. I believe also Emotion can be used as a weapon For example, I've learned I've learned this from my favorite boxer is sugar a Leonard Sugar a Leonard. I remember I was very young So I watched his fight later when I was older, but I know that sugar a Leonard Was the best boxer of his era to me personally and I don't think nobody could beat him I think it was skill skill wise it was the best. However, when he fought in Montreal Roberto Duran Roberto Duran Made it in a way that Leonard became very emotional he wanted to stand in front of Duran and fight a different fight that that he normally does because he wanted to show that he's a man and He lost that fight, which was a mistake so by Then later on he beat Roberto Duran in quite easy, you know, the if the fair everybody remember the no mask thing but my point is Emotion can be used in a way that it can make your derail your opponent out of his game plan And I felt a lot of my opponent trying to do that with me. So that's why I never got involved that was my way to defend myself against Some kind of bullying is to put like a like a shield in front but some other guy like Gordon he expressed himself differently. Of course, there's a language barrier, but for him he's better at Given giving giving back that says he's a better counter attacker, you know that's the way you respond to to to the aggression of An emotional attack. I think everybody is different in that regards. What's interesting that John said that he doesn't Study the tactics of this game or maybe you're not interested in the tactics of this game Because it seems like this is more than just being an entertainer It seems like it could be an effective part of the match. Yeah, I just feel like whatever investment you make in that is It's going to get negligible rewards first of all, it's probably only going to pertain to one match in front of you rather than the totality of your career and Whatever gains you get out of psychological trickery and play Typically Don't last long you you've raised an excellent example with sugar rate Leonard. He did fight outside of his usual manner in that regard, but rather than me try to tell someone hey Behave like this before a fight I would have been probably more forceful between rounds with an athlete and say no No, you're fighting this fight the wrong way and that would have a much more beneficial impact on my athletes and Psychological trickery before a fight. I believe another example of Emotion that leads to failure is a Jose Aldo against Connor McGregor. I think it was it was on purpose that Connor McGregor Did this try to bait Aldo to become over aggressive to open himself because he's an excellent counter puncher puncher That's what I believe. It made a mistake There's another great one my match against cyborg 2018 no gi worlds where he didn't even try to win He just like wanted to smack me in the face the whole time cuz he was so angry I was talking shit to him before the match and It was like the finals of the absolute it was like the biggest Match of the weekend and he just didn't even try to pass my guard or do anything He just wanted to hit me in the face and I was like sick. I just won It was incredibly fresh. It's fascinating to watch like a grown man sort of lose composure Yeah Gordon one thing I've always been very impressed with you and that's No matter how heated talk gets Before a match with you when you go out to grapple. You're absolutely cold Like I've you've never gone into a match carrying anything other than just cold blooded calculation and You've always been able to separate very well the idea of words and deeds. And I think that's always been one of your One of your strongest assets a way I often measure this is when a match is over I will ask the athlete questions about the match and If they can't answer the question, what were you doing in the fourth minute? Okay What was that set up you used in in the third minute? They got you into the Kimura law if they can't answer that that tells me they were just fighting on instincts and emotion But with Gordon, it's like a logbook It's like okay in the seventh minute you went for that Judy Gatami set up from from on the left side What were you thinking? He can always give an answer. He's absolutely stone cold Speaking of emotion Speaking of emotion Gordon you will potentially if you're healthy face Andre Galvao and the ADCC coming up super fight Who is Andre Galvao for people who don't know? Can you tell the story of your beef with? The the emotional interaction with a man. Yeah, so Andre is He's considered the greatest ADCC competitor of all time multiple time black belt world champion winningest ADCC champion ever he has six six gold medals and I've been trying to compete against him Pretty much forever like since I got my black belt in 2016. I've been trying to get matches with him he was in the first DBI that I did and he ended up pulling out and that I've been trying to get matches with him and He would always say no and give one reason or another and then After the last ADCC, I was like, hey Andre said he was retiring after this after this This competition so if he wants to retire, you know, he's he's the greatest ADCC competitor of all time And I think it's great. But if he wants to compete and that's great. I was like super nice and then he started like posting like passive aggressive Instagram Captions and then we started going back and forth in the internet and there was like one point where I saw him in person when he Acknowledged he's like I understand like what you're doing like we're gonna pump this fight up and he was like totally on board but then there must have been something that happened where like it changed from like him like going along with it to being like Actually pissed and then there was that one night at flow where I went to go shake his hand I mean he flipped me off and then he followed me backstage and started to try to fight me and then I smacked him and Then he didn't want to fight anymore and then we've been going back. He's actually blocked me on Instagram now So he just won't engage no one from Atos will engage now But it's gonna be interesting how he how he shows up if he can keep it under control or not Do you think how do you explain that level of emotion? Is this fear of losing your throne? Is it or is it just a human being like with the cyborg just Just becoming emotionally unstable. Well, it might just be me I just have a way to get and get under people's skin. It's just I don't know He's he's he was he was cool for a while and then I just I don't know it just Then everyone gets like this. They're all so emotional by the time they actually step up to compete that it's pretty easy to read them They're either so emotional that they want to actually come forward and and beat me like like Tim Sprague's is a perfect example at ADCC I posted like On my story on Instagram like ten minutes before a match I said like what I'm gonna do to Tim Sprague's is gonna be criminal and he's like a very stally guy and he came He saw that and then he came out and actually tried to fight me Like he came and actually engaged my guard and I ended up submitting him So it either has that effect or it has the effect where they know I've talked so much shit leading up to the match That they're so afraid to lose that they just get super stally and they move away So either has one effect where they come forward and they want to they want to beat me beat me or they want to just They're so afraid of getting submitted that they know if they engage they're super cagey and they just back away and don't really do anything Do you think this match happens? There's a lot of variables and what I have to see how my stomach is and to if I'm actually gonna show up and compete My stomach's healthy. I doubt that Andre will actually show up to compete I've been trying to compete against him for six years and he hasn't done it So there's no reason to think he would now is it possible for you to speak to where like your estimates are about your stomach? Or is it too unclear for now still too early to tell I have this round of treatment that I'm doing until late February And I'm pretty sure that I need to do the same test They did initially to retest all my levels and then go from there So I've been feeling a little bit better. Like it's not nearly as bad as it used to be I was explaining to someone the other day like for the last four years I would be so nauseous that every time I would walk into a new room I'd have to actively locate a garbage can in case I have to throw up So I'm like one step above that right now. I'm like doing a little bit better than that So it's definitely getting a little bit better, but it's not it's not where it needs to be Can we talk about diet for just a sec because both of you George and and Gordon? Like suffered from stomach issues different kind and have arrived for now for different places so can you maybe George speak to The general question of what is the best diet for performance for training like what have you learned through your career about this? Well, I think everybody is different to me personally I implement fasting Time restricted eating and and prolonged fasting What's the longest you've done so far? The longest I've done is five days. I do it quite often I do I do four times a year. I do three to five days water fast And I liked it. It helps me with inflammation. I think it boosts the immune system and That this about the I read papers about about this and I it helps me also feel Feel good. It's kind of Tera very therapeutic to physical and mental just mental It meant mental and physical because when I eat my when I break my fast and I sit at the table with with other people It doesn't matter what I eat if we all eat the same thing. I always tell them I said my food right now tastes better than all of yours, you know, because I you know, I I have that this thing that I think I believe sometimes you need to put yourself into suffering to realize how How Pleasurable something is and I Tent Personally like diet wise I eat whatever I want Whenever I want, I don't I no longer have any problem with this but if I would have a competition coming up like Knowing that I what I know now about my body I would orient myself more towards an animal based diet That's because I've tried different things and that's the kind of diet that I believe helped me Having less inflammation and feel better in terms of performance for for for doing something physical So high protein high fat low carbs well This is is different between animal based diet and keto. I mean there is carbs. There is a lot of fruit I got a lot of the the carbs from the fruit Okay, a lot of organs organs. I Know a little bit about paleontology and in the past About you a prehistoric human and and I I know that And not not only about that. I know because I have travels a certain place in the world I want to visit the Maasai in Africa the hunter gatherer tribe and I know that when they kill an animal They go for the organs first and I know a pretty most predatory animal. They do the same thing So organs I believe is something that normally in our culture in the western part of the world We don't really eat but it's something that is very nutritious Have you been able to convince Gordon to try fasting? Talk about diets It's a different situation. I think for Gordon because he's an heavyweight. He doesn't want to lose weight You know when the heavyweight the range of like my range was like I was a welterweight and middleweight But the heavyweight it's like some of the guys that you compete can compete against their it might be 300 pounds. So if you lose weight It's a it's a big problem. You know what I mean? So and there is things that will work for me that might not works for Gordon, you know So we have to make his own experience and and I told Gordon sometime when everybody goes left You try to go right see how you feel with certain things experiment Not not a topic That's part of your optimization Optimal performance formula. Well what I used to do before my stomach issues and for those of you listening who don't know I had recurring staph infections in 2018 and I took a bunch of oral antibiotics and it just completely wiped out my stomach So I just was diagnosed. It was misdiagnosed as gastroparesis So for those of you messaging me on Instagram who are just watching Rogan asking me about my gastroparesis. That's not what I have They misdiagnosed it and I did some other tests and for four years I didn't even know what it was and then I got this I went to this doctor in California who? Diagnosed me with H. Pylori and then a fungal and a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestines. So the issues in the small intestines so what I used to do was I used to do like Seasons where I'd have a very clean season where I was competing and I would have a lower body weight And I would do like an offseason kind of like a bodybuilder where I would eat a lot more food and a little bit Dirtier food and I would have cheeseburgers and pizza at nighttime to have the extra calories But now I can't eat those foods because they upset my stomach So now I pretty much just try to eat whatever I can and maintain the weight the best I can Based on how my stomach feels. So right now it's like rice chicken eggs fish vegetables fruits and Pretty much nothing else like anything hard to digest Anything spicy red meat fast food all that's all that's hard for me Which sucks because in Texas things? Yeah barbecue And I mean this diet is really important for you John I can tell Like is it is that something you think about for athletes at all again, that's part of the I've to be honest with you I've never seen any measurable Improvement in sports performance in jiu jitsu by change of diet. I do believe that diet is important for longevity and Human beings and I do think it makes a difference, especially once you get past the age of 40 with regards longevity For older athletes. I do believe it makes some difference. But my observation is in athletes and In their youth and working up into their prime. I've seen athletes have the worst diets God bless Travis Stevens for that guy won Olympic silver medal basically on McDonald's and candy. Yeah George St. Pierre for 80% of your career. You were powered by McDonald's and coca cola To Gina Alfredo. That was my yeah, my meal of choice before a championship fight Gordon for him his youth was just five guys hamburgers Gary Tonin the same thing I've worked with Japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and won Olympic gold medals I've worked with Russian wrestlers who just ate Whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding I've worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and Their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I've never I've never seen someone say Okay, I changed my diet and because of that there was a measurable Improvement, you know in sports performance another way to phrase it though is I have noticed with a lot of lead athletes what they eat They begin to believe that that either is not a hindrance or it's actually good Like Travis Stevenson is an example of somebody who eats shitty Because he believes it's like it's like a power because whatever he's traveling across the world He can't rely on healthy good food to be there So I'm going to eat shitty so that that's the like my body knows how to perform under whatever skittles or whatever Everywhere's got McDonald's everywhere's got McDonald's So that makes like and they've convinced themselves and you talk about Russian athletes. A lot of them have very Strong beliefs about like this Particular food being good for them, but there's no agreement among them. Exactly. No agreement. Yeah Yeah, so believe is more important than the actual time. Yeah I'm sorry if I can after You know after a night out when you're hanging over I Think the best thing and and I'm saying this and all certain sincerity I think the best thing to eat to me was like like a cheese cheeseburgers with We call that a puts in back home because it's very fat. It's greasy. So it up so the next day When you wake up, I think you feel better because it absorbed the outcome. There you go. I'm My mom told me the same story once and then I try it was like I was hung over for some party and I woke up. I was like probably I don't know 19 or 20 I woke up and My mom's like, yeah, just have it have a cheeseburger go go eat something greasy and I did and I was like Oh, I feel kind of better now. I do not know that science the exact science behind it but I I always notice and I don't know if it's placebo, but I always notice that if I I'm if I party hard and I've been drinking a lot If I don't eat before I go into bed if I don't eat Shitty food the next day will wake up and feel worse than if I eat shitty food. I feel better I know it sounds crazy. I don't know why but it works for me Yeah, but it's also hard to do science on extreme performers so the discussions we're having is amongst the very You know that this might not apply to a general like recreational athlete, but for the elite I've just seen champions in every kind of combat sport and I've never seen a Correlation between dietary habit and performance and people under the age of 30. I do believe that diet is important for longevity. However, and For that alone it may well be worth investing time in it But with regards sports performance at least in jiu jitsu, I've never seen any significant difference Well, we had a little bit of a difference of opinion on this I think what about strength training and muscle building or at least we had a discussion about this So what do you believe is the value of? Of you know training outside of the sport so fitness Lifting heavy lifting explosive all kinds of lifting Personally for me, I believe and I've learned that from from John I used to do like To train like a bodybuilder before because I thought in my early days of competition That was the most efficient way to do things to because it was like I was watching Jean Claude Van Damme Arnold Schwarzenegger, we thought back back in the day. That was the thing That that's how we should do it, you know for to get ready for a fight But I realized later on That it's all about efficiency and some guys they don't lift at all and they're doing pretty well, so I Do cross training mostly for longevity It's mostly for a therapeutic Like a therapy. It's more therapeutic than For performance is to keep my body healthy to do a certain movement that are different than what I do every day in the gym in combat sport to keep me Healthy and and athletic so all the interesting movement stuff that you've done outside the sport that was for Therapeutic mostly therapeutic. I think it does it could Transcend to performance, but it's mostly therapeutic. I do not believe that Squatting five plates or bench bench pressing three plate will make me a better fighter I do not I believe actually it could hurt me more. It could damage me more than than benefit me so Gordon as somebody who on instagram posts A lot of pictures of you being shredded and huge What's the value of of strength? So I do like a combination John got us big into like gymnastics type movements like toes to bar and muscle ups and things like that when we were young Like toes to bar because that's like the exact motion you have to do when you're retaining guard it needs to chest So I do a lot of that stuff In combination with I do a lot of Opposite of george. I do a lot of bodybuilding workouts Where I do like a basic split like a chest to chest Triceps back and biceps day. Um, and my idea is that Weight lifting should always be a supplement to jiu jitsu. So you shouldn't be missing a jiu jitsu session to lift weights So I don't do I do probably I train jiu jitsu every day and I lift three to four times a week Um, I feel like lifting seven days a week for me is is too much and the lifting takes a lot of energy When you do like hard lifts like that, um, but my idea is if you want to get good at jiu jitsu Do jiu jitsu and if you want to be bigger and stronger lift weights and uh, and eat food and um, I I generally don't go super heavy when I lift because you start putting crazy weights then start tearing muscles and stuff Um, so I usually do moderate weights with a with a very high rep rep range like four sets of 20 with a drop set at the end to fatigue the muscles break the fibers and grow Okay, so four sets of 20 that's interesting. So that that's more for endurance and raw strength yeah, and also I think close to the competition i'll pick the intensity up and While there's no real way to get significant gains in vo2 max. I think that lifting And just getting used to mentally redlining Um gets me kind of in competition shape because a lot of times in jiu jitsu the guys i'm training with They're not on a technical level where they can Physically exhaust me to the point where I feel like i'm going to die But uh, I get most of that like when i'm wrestling because i'm not as efficient in wrestling So I get a lot more tired Um and lifting when you do like if you do like four sets of 20 Leg press to squat and you go back and forth like you're like about to die at the end And I think I feel like gets me in the mental habit of redlining before competition. But does muscle help you? It's like the actual mass of muscle Like the actual mass of muscle like this. So I think being stronger will always help in a combo will always help. Yeah To some degree. It's not going to be to a degree where It overrides efficiency, but I think that It can't help being strong or can't hurt being stronger. There's a bunch of people who believe depending on the sport that The strength can quickly become a That have detrimental effects to efficiency Yeah, like I agree that certain kind of I mean if strength is purely is like very cleanly Purely applied to the exact movements of the sport. So in judo the explosiveness you need Is very difficult to replicate in any kind of way except by doing judo. Yeah, I mean for us, uh You always have to understand there's only so much technique that can overcome a certain amount of strength Like if we all try to fight a silverback gorilla, it's gonna kill us Um, but that that being said, um, I do think that Like for example heavyweights are usually the least technical because they rely on their size and strength to beat smaller people Um, but I think that if you stay with this with the discipline of doing everything very precise And I train with a lot smaller people most of the time so I get out of the habit of using uh using my strength Um, I think if you're very precise with the way that you train I think that the the extra size and strength can help you A quick question. How would you fight a silverback gorilla? I mean, is there which animal do you think you can actually defeat that would be impressive that most people would say you can't you know, I actually I don't have an uh an answer to this I thought you were gonna say I want I want I want to say that me and john had like a four hour discussion on This one time i'm like, what would win bear or gorilla? Uh, and he went into like this whole dissertation about how like jaguars spin underneath and like berimbolo silverbacks and kill them and like rip Their rip their artery and their legs out. It was amazing. I guess. Okay, so before we talk about strength john, let me ask you what Do you think people would be surprised by if two animals faced? One of them would win and people wouldn't predict that So they would be surprised by the effectiveness of certain animal at fighting in the whether it's in the forest in the jungle So let's slow down here. Okay, so there's two animals of different species fighting And and most people would pick So for example, the lion gets a lot of credit for some reason i'm not exactly sure why the king of the jungle well, I You know a lot of people told me that the lion for example, the tiger can Be a lion. Yeah, this is one of those age old debates It's okay. Yeah. Well in grappling in fighting it feels like some animals use teeth And some use other parts of their body also like bear actually, I don't even know how they They have extraordinarily powerful And long claws and in addition, they're powerful biters as well. So I wonder and the same with the silverback I don't know how much they're I love that we're having this discussion I think we need joe rogan for this discussion. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Um, so uh Your your question has gone in about five different. So it started with strength. Uh, and let's go back there, which is Do you think for for an athlete in jiu jitsu? Let's let's stick to grappling All right. Do you think strength strength is helpful or detrimental? Uh, i've always believed that two things will Uh create whatever Whatever effectiveness you have in grappling those are your skill set and your attributes And the best athletes are those who excel in both um Don't kid yourself if someone gets twice as strong By some kind of magic potion they're going to be a more effective grappler if someone gets Twice the level of endurance that they had previously they will be a more effective grappler These physical attributes have a very important outcome on the uh, sorry A very important effect upon the outcome of matches Um, it's always a good thing to be stronger. It's always a good thing to have better endurance It's always a good thing to have better balance or whatever other attribute you throw out there. Um Gordon's point was okay. Everyone agrees on that but there's a problem in order to build these things You have to carve into other elements of your training regimen and then it becomes well, which becomes more important increases in strength or increases in skill There comes a point where Investing in strength training starts to get diminishing returns I can't tell the difference between someone who bench presses 300 pounds on the mat versus someone who bench presses 400 pounds, but that's a big difference That's a hundred pound difference and for an athlete to go from bench pressing 300 pounds to 400 pounds That would require a great deal of uh of training effort and focus But if I can't tell the difference when I grapple and then why bother? Okay, once you get to a certain strength level It doesn't really help that much to go from a 400 pound bench press to a 450 pound bench press If that's the stage you you're really getting a diminishing in returns on your training investment um now skills on the other hand Experience far far less in terms of diminishing returns every new skill you develop can translate Very very well into big increases in performance. Look at the example of gary tonin that we talked about earlier investments in guillotine Made a significant improvement in his uh effectiveness in matches and led directly to some of his most important victories um But if he had invested the same amount of training time in Developing a bench press that was 25 pounds more than previously that would have had no outcome no Influence on the outcome of those matches So the question always becomes yep. Everyone acknowledges that these physical uh Attributes are important and everyone understands that becoming stronger or fitter is a desirable thing and every athlete should work on them The interesting question becomes okay at what point? Do you start to say i'm not going to be helped by further increases? in in strength training or endurance training, um And my point with my athletes is in the overwhelming majority of cases If there's any kind of doubt invest more heavily in skill training than attribute training Especially once you get to a certain level on the attributes Well, the interesting thing that I think you should account for with strength training is um There's instagram There's the world. It's uh, it seems to be more fun to build muscle mass Um, it's like an addiction that people have there's also economic elements too Like most people I I hate to say this but it's true. Most people are more concerned with image than function and uh Uh, it's hard to sell A fighter or a jiu jitsu athlete who doesn't look like one looks like fedor Yeah, it's a tough sell now You can do it in fighting and jiu jitsu because ultimately it's about whose hand is raised at the end of the match And you could even use it as a selling point You can be a guy that doesn't look like he should be winning but he is winning that is a selling point but if you give most people a choice between Looking like arnold schwarzenegger and winning matches versus looking like fedor and when he matches most people will select I wish I'd rather look like arnold schwarzenegger And so most athletes feel almost like an economic compulsion to be in good shape and in order to advance their marketability Yeah, nike's not going to sponsor fedor or tank abbott. Yeah tank abbott No Fedor, maybe Yeah, yeah, we need at the very top. There's there's something about uh aesthetic Like image of strength and power. It's also and also a personal thing if you look at yourself in the mirror Do you like what what you see? You know what I mean? Yeah, you find yourself attractive You know, what what can you do to make you look better? And I think to me to me it was something that one of the reason I work out it's also for for that Well, i'm sure if fedor looks in the mirror. He says I look damn good today Yeah, you could be too. It's also a genetic factor some people, you know, it's harder for them. I mean, yeah All right. So the question on training you guys john gordon train Often three times a day every day um, georgia had a different like, um a different approach to training so like what is uh For for no, I don't mean that in a kind of the opposite or something. It's just not every single day so and obviously you are legitimately at the very top Uh in terms of performance accomplishment in the field. So what have you learned about? What it takes to train to become not just the lead but the best well, I I um A lot of people when you say train they they see training hard. I believe you need to be very constant Uh, and uh, very disciplined you need to train but you don't need to train hard every day That's what john, uh taught me um For me is the nervous system. Sometimes I feel if I load it up too much it comes to a point that you're It's too much. There is no no more information that I can absorb so Uh, and I do believe that it's something that you can train to your the capacity your capacity of being able to learn of absorbing certain thing and uh, I did a lot of volume of training but when I when I Was getting ready for a fight, especially during sparring day I like to do it quick because my when I fight it's five round of five minutes I don't like to to spend um uh an hour or two hours in a gym because I need to know how hard I can be Going for 25 minutes, you know when I not for two hours for 25 minutes and at my last fight john and I we we we We were thinking of how could we make me more uh Of a better finisher, you know more opportunists And then john I remember we we when we were training with gordon jake shill came gary tonin my round of grappling were different than if I would be training for uh Abu dhabi, you know for for abi or like some like in grappling the round or longer but in a mixed martial art fight it's very rare that you're gonna spend more than Four minutes or four minutes and a half on the ground. It's it's very unlikely. I mean it could it can happen but so I Do you remember we did the round three minutes? We did all the round I was doing were three minute round So it gives a different Uh rhythm to the training it forced me to be more opportunist To be more of a finisher because I had only three minutes to to do what I needed to do So if I if I see something I need to to go for the kill right away. I cannot be too over patient You know what? I mean? And it it served me well in my last fight and I think it that's a good blueprint to follow um when you're a mixed martial art fighter, I if I would if the result was great and I think Maybe I should have done that before it was a great great idea that we had not to do Be very careful on doing too much volume Yes, try to get out and then try to focus on finishing and getting getting out as quickly as possible To build up your foundation. I believe you need a lot of volume But when you get ready for a competition, you need some to be something that replicate What you're gonna be facing? What do you what are we talking about? What do you think? Like is there rest days five days a week? Twice a day once a day. Is there any one formula like that? I don't know This this I don't I do not believe in overtraining. I believe in under arrest I believe You can be under arrest and people Always link that immediately to the volume of their how much volume they they train Which it could be something else. How are you feeling? I'm emotionally. Are you you having uh, Problems, uh personal problem. Do you have a have a hard time sleeping because you have a like someone died or I don't know Like you you hold money you're broke or what like, you know what I mean could be anything There is something that can affect you psychologically or emotionally That made it in a way that you cannot sleep. Well because your your stress your cortisol level is high You're you know what? I mean all these factors need to be take taken in consideration. It's not only about the volume of training people always think The volume of the training is the only thing that can affect Recuperation which is not you know. Yeah, you have to minimize the amount of stress from all kinds of factors It's a very stressful job to be a professional combat athlete whether you're a grappler a boxer a kickboxer a fighter and you need to be taking as a Into account is it more or less stressful than marriage? Just kidding Uh next question, uh So, I don't know how to ask this question given what george just said but you're training three times a day And finishing And what what have you learned about what what brings out the best in you as as the elite level grappler? Um, so over the recent years have actually changed it up a little bit um when I was Coming up through from white to black belt Uh, I felt that the volume was the most important so it would be anywhere from like three To seven sessions a day Um going from school to school from new york to new jersey. Um, and I think that the volume was very important to build the skills um where I just Didn't know how to move my body at purple belt the way that I should. Um, so I think that building the skills Is uh is super important. I think that early on volume is very important Uh now that I already have the skills built. I think that acquiring more knowledge is the most important Um, so I think that the volume is the most important Is the most important um, so I find that if I do So many sessions a day like if I do three sessions a day Um, I feel sometimes by the third session i'm just like so mentally like there's just there's so much information That's went through my head the first two sessions that I feel like i'm not even there mentally on the third session Um, so I feel like doing less volume now But having more mental clarity per session is more important because I already have the foundational skills acquired So a lot of your training is almost like Just thinking like learning a lot of it. Yeah, so i'll do like I mean our schedule has been messed up since the pandemic because henzos got shut down And they were using a french gym in puerto rico and now we're using a french gym in our and in austin Um, but once we have our own school We'll have a setup schedule where I can pretty much just be there all day long But right now I do like a lifting session in the morning and then i'll come in and help teach At henzos, so i'm there mentally i'm seeing what's going on and i'm playing around with ideas in my head Uh, and then i'm there physically and very sharp mentally for the competition class during the 1 p.m Session and then after that i'll go home i'll rest and get ready for the next day What have you learned on seeing all these different athletes is there a A universal rule that applies or is it um, athlete specific? Yeah, uh, first one thing It needs to be addressed is that george and gordon play very different sports with very different athletic demands Gordon can be in matches that range from anywhere from six minutes to literally hours long um as a result, uh the overall Pacing and intensity of matches is massively different most obviously there is no striking in gordon's sport Um striking by its very nature is a much more explosive physical action than grappling is grappling is primarily an isometric kind of uh sport based around isometric tension and endurance um george's sport is It does feature a significant amount of isometric tension, but The majority of it is based around explosion. So the physical demands of the two sports are radically different different in addition the time of application is is radically different George raised a very interesting point his matches seem long 25 minutes for a championship match Um, but always understand it It makes martial arts fight at championship level if it goes the distance is really five five minute matches each round Is a match in itself and that's exactly how you're scored. You're scored by who wins the most matches over five matches As a result the application of the techniques, especially the grappling techniques has to be done at a certain pace as george pointed out realistically the maximum application time you're going to get in most situations is somewhere between 15 seconds and three minutes Even for a specialized grappler like damien meyer. There's still a significant part of each round which is Spent in set up time to actually get the match to the ground Um, it's very likely that at some point your opponent will stand up out of grappling and you'll have to reinitiate the entire process again So that even for specialized grapplers, you might be spending only three minutes out of a five minute round Uh on the ground and as a result, you've got to get your work done in a very short time frame gordon ryan Once it goes to the ground and it can go to the ground because he chooses to sit to the ground Uh may spend the entire match in ground positions. Um As a result the matches have completely different pacing and completely different physical demands and the preparation that the two athletes go through will reflect that If george saint pierre in training for mixed martial arts becomes fatigued to a point Where he's no longer physically effective and able to defend himself the consequences for that in mma training can be very deep and deep Okay, if you make a mistake in mixed martial arts because you're fatigued and tired and you take a full power roundhouse kick to the head That's some deep consequences. A grappler doesn't have to face that you can be completely Exhausted and grappling and just sit in the bottom of the mountain. Just practice just survival skills We just don't get submitted from bottom out and that can still be an effective training session complete and utter physical breakdown and fatigue can be Can end an athlete's career in mixed martial arts the consequences of training through fatigue and mma Potentially very deep and very disturbing Um, the consequences of training through complete physical exhaustion and grappling aren't really that severe Okay, you just tap whenever there's a problem just tap Um, and so they're very very different sports in the way you you prepare for them And a grappling Athlete like gordon ryan, we can take Many more liberties with physical exhaustion and the amount of hours a day you spend training Than you could with a mixed martial arts athlete like that should be a benefit. Uh exhaustion as a As a framework of learning so like from a place of exhaustion Is there any benefit to the you on the you said being at the bottom of mouth sort of understanding? Jiu jitsu or grappling somehow deeper because you're physically absolutely Absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is the training and the training Absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is your technique and then you'll see how technical you are In addition you'll get to explore realms inside your mind that we don't spend a lot of time in And you'll learn a lot about yourself and your ability to endure which will have uh Potentially great benefits in similar situations and matches. Yeah, there's uh, I mean for me for a recreational person getting Exhaustion allows you the great benefit to experience what it feels like to really get dominated At an even greater frequency than you otherwise would And there's something there. There's some animalistic thing. That's very unpleasant and then afterwards it takes you to a nice to a place of like, um humility and I don't know you get it forces you to rethink life in positive ways There's something about dominance. It can mean if you get dominated a few times you can uh, rationalize it somehow You say okay Well, I screwed this up But with when you're exhausted and you have to do like 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour of just being dominant Over and over and over being submitted It uh, I don't know. It's it's a very good process for For other avenues of life I find it's I can't explain why because i'm i'm uh driving home crying afterwards listening to bruce springsteen, but afterwards yeah, this Afterwards somehow you can think clearer you can see clear about what is the right path through life in all walks of life Like relationships work, but also the grappling Actually, the grappling is the hardest one to see what you have to do It clarifies other avenues the humility. It's the it removes the bullshit It's like we see The world through some kind of fog and it just removes it and now you can see things clearly. I don't know what that is I think I think it's important like you mentioned to push yourself like sometimes to see How far you can go because sometimes you you can go further than where you think and it can boost your confidence You know, you can push yourself through a certain limit And maybe you thought your limit were was before that point and you push through it But like john just mentioned It's a risky thing to do in Striking because if you're exhausted you're gonna get brain damage In grappling it's you know, you tap if something wrong, but you can do it also in strength conditioning I like to run track. I do it all the time and track and feel it it helps me to To to know myself better. I think it's important. It's a it's a good point It's like it's like the scrimmage wrestling rounds we do. It's like, you know, if you stop moving That you're gonna get scored on and you know in your mind like there's no mechanical reason Why I am why I should give up a score here, but you're so exhausted that you're like, oh man, this is terrible If I if I stop moving i'm a pussy If I don't stop move if I don't stop moving i'm gonna be twice as exhausted when we actually do stand up So it's uh, it's an interesting game. You have to play inside your mind. It's it's your That keep you that keep you uh sharp, you know what I mean? Because you just want to lay down and beat it Because you're completely exhausted, you know What do you think uh is the connection john between this ego pride thing? Martial arts and actual violence in our with our ancestors. Do you think You ever plug into that? Do you think that's a good thing? With our ancestors. Do you think you ever plug into that? You think there's echoes of something going on there or like you mentioned you have flaws and demons Is it deep in there somewhere? Do you think we're struggling with those demons? Yeah, uh, you'll need to patch up your question a little bit though. It's going to say we're different donations. Wow, that was Not only might be dominating just I mean dominating interviewing. No, no, no, but i'm not Patched up that question. Uh, it's not brother seeing where they're like, okay now we interview you But you you went down the evolution I mean, do you think do you um, I don't mean just the line between what is what is martial arts and what is violence? I mean there there seems to be a gray area And that connects us to the the evolutionary ancestors. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think there's a deep recognition in all of us that um, and this is The evidence for this is is so easy to uh to see in in in daily life. Um If you're walking down the street and suddenly you hear a commotion and two people are fighting You will see literally everyone on that street stop whatever they're doing and watch the fight Humans are fascinated by violence And you've got to ask yourself why and of course, it's a recognition that for a significant part of our evolutionary history Violence was one of the most important elements in human existence As much as we curse it as much as we talk badly of it. Um Um, the juxtaposition between humans social nature and their their need to for each other to get along and to express love amongst the the various members of a given community there are Disputes between humans that can't be resolved and ultimately throughout history violence has been the number one method of conflict resolution um for better or for worse and there's a recognition in all of us that This is where we come from and there's a reason why combat sports have this thing where People will watch them and they might even be repulsed by them, but they find it difficult to take their eyes from it and um, uh I do believe that most combat athletes carry that sense of their even if it's on a subconscious level this kind of belief that This is who we are. Um george used the word pride and I believe that's a big part of it. I believe that um, Most Humans have this sense of self worth and pride which they're willing to fight for And uh, if it gets crossed by someone else they're willing to stand that Some people will stand more early and some people will be pushed further back, but everyone's got that That line beyond which they won't be pushed And there's some kind of deep recognition in all of us that we have that somewhere within us No matter how hard we try to bury it or what have you And that's why I believe there will always be this eternal interest in combat sports Now I don't believe that most people today have any kind of respect for unrestricted violence or non consensual violence um, I think most people most good people are repulsed by that now i'm I'm sure that as humanity Improves out into the future that will become more and more widespread but That's not to say we we can't exercise these these old evolutionary demons inside of us and um, uh and sometimes there are just disputes between different people different cultures different nations where ultimately it's going to come to Into into a shoving match and that will degenerate further into violence. There's always going to be a need for humans to be able to to express themselves Through violent methods and to use physical force to get to their their goals and objectives um our Our need as humans is always to find a balance between The two forces of conflict and cooperation We need cooperation because humans isolated from each other are more or less helpless and useless uh in order to advance human communities need to build and grow And so that sense of cooperation occurs in most of our daily lives But there will also be irresolvable conflicts where physical force has to be used to to form a resolution more resolution and so most human beings find themselves swinging like a pendulum between conflict and cooperation and um, uh, and that is something which Really gives birth I think to combat sports because sorry. I really have to ask you about this then. There's a guy even harvard uh named richard rangham And there's a lot of people that believe this he wrote this book that um Um, basically, there's a lot of people studying is what happened? How did we get from apes to humans? Like what was the magic thing? Right a lot of people attributed to fire and ability to cook meat There's a lot of different theories so he actually um His theory How do I describe this is basically that that the beta males won? that the the the Apes that were able to cooperate so you though the way you develop cooperation is that there's a big bad leader that uh, the the alpha male that you can only um knock off their throne if you cooperate And so we build big tribes that just excel the cooperation by practicing the overthrowing the leader and so and anytime an alpha male would rise up they would get would we would uh Develop our skill further and further of cooperation And so we're all just beta males, uh, the descendants of beta males that's this uh kind of theory that cooperation is fundamental and it's so distinct to the the rest of the neighboring animal kingdom So fascinating. I wonder what you think about this tension of violence of cooperation And how important is this cooperation to the core of yeah, uh who if you you can look at it in the uh, in a given training room, um Jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts is solo sports a solo athlete steps into the cage or steps onto the mat but all of your preparation is done in a cooperative training environment with many peers and Uh as much as it's an individual sport All of your preparation is done in as part of a group. Um There's a sense in which uh That's an interesting metaphor for humanity itself everything we do in life. We do alone, but we grow up in this Given community and and what have you? um With regards to the the whole alpha male beta male thing, um Humans are it's true. This fellow's correct. We you know, most Primates do have very strongly defined alpha males who rule the roost and determine the entire direction of the um, uh, of of uh The community they they build around themselves um Humans on the other hand Don't have an alpha male in that strict biological sense of someone who's Responsible for the next generation dominates all the female population, etc Physically dominates, but we do on the other hand have our own version of alpha males insofar as we have political and sociological Leaders who have a disproportionate impact on the direction of a of a community. Um uh, so was the cooperation allowed us to To have a greater scale of hierarchy with the alpha male on top or the alpha creature on top. Yeah. Yeah No, that's a fascinating theory In in nature, we're we're very weak as a species So we needed to cooperate cooperate in order to to evolve that I think Made us uh, the the top of the food chain if you look at um, Humanity in in nature, really the two things that seem to More than anything else determine whether or not a given human community will be Successful in a predatory world are numbers and technology Okay, the more your numbers increase and the the higher the technology of the weapons and support systems you have around you the more successful You'll be in a predatory world um, so it's not clear that just killing off the idea of an alpha male was the The the single biggest thing. Um, the rise of technology Uh and the growth of community After the imposition of language, these are other things that would have been Very very important factors and and humanity's rise george. You made an interesting point if you look at humans Just the raw material of humans. We're we're We're fucking pathetic. We did and a predatory animal kingdom. We're just the absolute bottom of the food chain Um, we don't have a single effective Weapon other than better than average endurance. That's about it um But you put us in a community who can talk to each other with language and give us the time To come up with technological advances such as metal um, and suddenly a human will go from no combat effectiveness in the animal kingdom to a A human armed with a simple metal tip spear can kill damn near any animal in the uh, In the animal kingdom and working as a group I'll beat your silver back. You know how i'll fight him in a deep water pool because he cannot swim So I don't have to touch him You'll be in a Because he cannot swim so I don't have to touch him you'll drown and I'll get him into the pool You know why because someone told me because we live in a community someone told me that information. So I know he passed it on to me Yeah, he taught you Well, you have to convince him to you have to somehow convince them to join you in the pool, which is very difficult It's very problem. Very very difficult. Um From a technical perspective john you've looked at Martial arts fighting in general and grappling. What's the difference between fighting and grappling? That's something i'd love to Ask all of you. Maybe john you can start like, um, well, uh when you talk about fighting you mean unrestricted Uh mma top type fighting. Yeah, it's funny. You said unrestricted mma type fight mma type fighting So there's there's this street fighting. Yep. Yeah, there's mma fighting and then there's grappling It's really the sport of grappling. You're saying okay. What's the difference between mma and grappling? Yes. Okay Um, see that would have been a much better question to ask. Um, well the uh, uh the single When you talk about grappling you're talking about jujitsu rules or yeah I mean you could maybe also mention different rule sets that somehow fundamentally challenge change the sport, you know Um in the sport of mixed martial arts uh You've got two Ways to inflict damage on the human body. You've you've got kinetic energy which is done through striking kicking knees elbows fists, um and you've got uh isometric tension used along the lines of lever and fulcrum Which can be used for strangulation and and joint breaking um In grappling you lose one of those you're no longer allowed to hurt your opponent with kinetic energy you can do it accidentally through a throw, but you're not allowed to just You know knock someone out with a throw in most grappling sports it can happen But it's relatively rare and it's it's not encouraged by the rule set so Yeah, you got close, um, uh, so So there's a sense in which in mixed martial arts you got twice as many problems to deal with and um, uh, and they occur in A much shorter time frame the single biggest difference between grappling technique as a weapon In human combat versus striking technique is time Grappling technique takes a huge amount of time to apply Okay The great advantage of grappling technique is certainty of outcome once you get there It takes a huge amount of time to set up a takedown Physically take them down Work their way work your way towards a dominant position culminating in your opponent's back and then apply a strangle hold that's a long chain of events as opposed to A strong punch or kick which can take A quarter of a second an application from start to finish and the match is over um and so there's a sense in which uh grappling is is it's It's fighting for the patient and the calculating Whereas striking is much more for In this short time frame where everything gets done in the in the blink of an eye There's a sense also which grappling is a much more forgiving sport. You can make a terrible mistake End up in a terrible position and still fight your way out and win In mixed martial arts, it's much much less forgiving If you get hit and stunned your chances of recovery Are minimal you're going to get swarmed on and unless it's right at the end of the round you it's very very hard to recover From getting hit and swarmed on. Um uh, so there's a sense in which The biggest difference between them is time of application of technique Uh in mixed martial arts, it's incredibly unforgiving in terms of time Even the smallest error can have the deepest consequences In grappling you can make massive errors and still come back and win um grappling will typically be won In a much higher percentage case by the more skilled and conditioned grappler. Whereas there is much more of what they call a punches chance in mixed martial arts where There's a much higher likelihood of a lesser athlete Defeating a greater athlete in mma than there is in grappling simply because of time of application of the techniques Even the smallest period of inattention In mma and the match is over gordon ryan could fall asleep for 30 seconds Have his opponent mounted on and wake up and finish him five minutes later. It's not going to happen in mma Okay, so the the stakes are much higher You can do a lot of damage in a very small amount of time and just the dynamic temporal dynamics of how things happen Is very different everything you'll see will be a reflection of that then you go further into things like rule sets In the sport of grappling if gordon ryan comes out and sits down in the middle of the mat His opponent must follow him to the ground and engage in mixed martial arts If you come to the center of the cage and sit down The other guy can just walk away from you. They're completely Oriented in different directions grappling is ground centered Mma is typically standing centered at the beginning of every round you have to start standing again If I disengage from a ground grappling situation stand up and walk away from my opponent My opponent must follow me up to the feet In grappling it's the exact opposite. If I sit to the ground my opponent must follow me to the ground It's written into the rule set and so one is inherently ground or oriented and one is inherently standing oriented So it's more it's more difficult to dictate where the fight happens in mixed martial arts Yes, you have to be able to impose where the fight is whereas in grappling you can simply choose it. So George, what is uh your sense of the the difference in terms of how you approached it? Uh between the two sports so you also are a student of wrestling and grappling so in preparing for fights What parts of grappling purely the sport that you have to leave behind well, I I uh I'm, very lucky. I had the opportunity to I train with I consider the best mentor trainer I ever ever had and I have Some of the best grapplers that I can train with they were they were there to help me through my career so uh for my training is Of course because I do not dedicate as much time in one specific area. It's hard to be You know a world class athlete and that in in only one particular area always for me Like the idea to be more well rounded to be very competent in every of those areas striking grappling Take downs and and all those areas then being just very good at one And not as good at as as others, you know, because I like the idea that It gives me more option when I fight someone I can Mold myself to become the perfect nemesis to a that person better if i'm more well rounded If I do not have those well rounded skill I don't have that option, you know You have less tools to work with less technology. What about you gordon? What um, You know, what do you think is very distinct about grappling in the way you approach it versus fighting? I think most of it was covered But I think that the the one one of the big things is the fact that when you're looking at mma You have a pretty general agreed upon and unified rule set where if you look at ufc versus bellator They're they have slight differences in the rules maybe um, but it's pretty much the same thing Whereas in grappling you have ebi rules, then you have adcc rules. You have ibgf rules. You have no time limit rules um, and Each rule set will play to the skills of different athletes. Um, if you have if you do adcc rules Uh, it generally is slightly biased towards wrestlers or if they can stall to the overtime And then hit a takedown in the overtime and not really doing jiu jitsu, but they score a takedown. They're gonna win Whereas if you have like a jiu jitsu Takedown they're gonna win whereas if you have like an ebi for example You have to finish the guy in regulation or you start in a jiu jitsu position with your back taken or in an armbar um, so I think that you have certain rule sets that play in the favor of certain athletes, um and Certain athletes can win in one rule set, but then they just have no chance of winning in the other Like when I fought yuri the first time in ebi I beat him in ebi the chances of me beating him on that night under an adcc rule set were probably pretty low Um when I fought liandra low under an adcc rule set He beat me that day, but the chances of him beating me on the same day in an ebi rules that were like next to zero So I think it's interesting that In mma you have one unified rule set which have small differences, but they're all generally the same um, and in jiu jitsu, you have a wide variety of different rule sets that um have uh biases towards a certain athlete skill sets you mentioned liandra low I gotta ask you again about adcc You have lost very very few times in your career Uh one I mean this is the same is true for george and uh, the only person who has ever submitted you is philippe penya black belt Yeah at black belt Um, he is adcc world champion multiple time abby jjf gi and no gi world champion You may face him adcc or elsewhere in the future um Will you beat him? uh, yes, I mean I have to say yes, right, um, but uh I fought him initially when I first got my black belt, um that I fought him a year later. So 2016 and 2017 Um, and despite what people remember about the match And whenever people talk about it's like oh, yeah, the guy who strangled gordon, but no one remembers that the first match was like a 45 minute war Um, and then the second match with the full 20 minutes of adcc and if I didn't get my back taken in like the last Minute and a half two minutes, it would have went into an overtime. Um that could change the outcome of the match um I think that if you look at philippe's performances Especially nogi specifically nogi since then it looks like he's almost gotten worse Whereas since that match uh in 2017 Uh, the only match I lost after that was against vinnie, uh, magalesh by by points and uh, i'm on like a 55 match win streak um over the course of four years, um winning all the major tournaments nogi and uh philippe since that match I think is like five and two uh, nogi Um, and he's lost his last two match matches one was convincingly where he was dominated by andre and one was by submission Um, so I don't think that he's progressed nearly as fast if anything He looks like he's worse than he was when he beat me in 2017 based on his previous performances Um that being said, I know he's going to come in training very hard for this one and he's he's going to be prepared but I just don't think that In terms of technical ability. He's anywhere near my level and um, he was much bigger than me both times We fought um the first time he was much bigger than me the second time. He was one weight class above me um, so now there's not going to be an advantage in Technicality and it's also not going to be a physicality advantage. So I think he's just going to be beat everywhere This is uh, this is a good example of the scientific response to a um, Um to a comment to a to a question. Yeah, so he's not um, That's a match you're you're not deeply concerned with And in terms of the set of opponents because you you have and you will be facing a lot of really difficult That's actually in my opinion one of the easier matches because of the fact that we're relatively the same size um, if I show up at 230 pounds like a lot of the guys are 260 270 plus so that extra weight does make a difference. I think out of that entire bracket. Um, Felipe is probably going to be the one of the easiest matches because of the fact that I can easily take him down And if I take him down i'm going to pass his guard Whereas I feel like the other guys because they're so much bigger and they're very cagey. Um, it may take me a while to actually Take them to the ground. Um And get on top of them And I think it may be they may be longer drawn out matches because of the fact that they're so much bigger and And stally it's hard to take them down, but flea based relatively my size and as wrestling is atrocious So i've already taken them down in the last adcc match So i'm pretty sure I can just easily put them down pass them and then finish them Well, i'm, not sure what response I was expecting but uh, that was that was that was phrased beautifully um We talked about the tiago alves fight that george had and john borrowed up in class yesterday I believe but the point is we're talking about wrestling and I think that that's a fascinating fight that um There's an incredible display of strategy of skill of heart Uh, george, could you maybe talk about that fight john? Maybe two what lessons you gained from that fight? Go ahead. It was you're fighting on mine Well, maybe it also tell what happened in terms of your injury I think third round. Oh, yeah. Um Um, so I was fighting tiago alves and uh in the third round I um Tear my adductor muscle Um, it happened when I was on the bottom and he I think he pushed my knee down tried to pass my guard and I Heard a pop I didn't know what I think you were going for an armbar You were on his back you switched to armbar and he cleared the leg by pushing on your leg And you went in with a preexisting injury and it tore Yes, and and it it it get worse and and I heard a pop I didn't know what it was, but I know it really hurt. So I came back standing up and there's a A famous video one that goes on the internet about when I go back in the corner And I tell my my coach i'm like, I don't know what it is. I think I tore my my my adductor muscle and Greg jackson is like, I don't care hit him with your groin I was very worried because I I wasn't pain, but I didn't know I didn't know what what I had So I didn't know the gravity of it and it it it plays on your mind So but I had to buy to bite down my mouthpiece and finish the fight, you know I knew I was ahead on the on the scorecard and uh, I needed to finish finish strong So what was your strategy there in terms of strikes in terms of wrestling so he's an Exceptionally difficult opponent to take down. Yeah. Well at at first I I I knew I would add a good jab a good You know to stay always From the outside, you know fight him from the outside and and use my footwork because he was like a tank He was much bigger and much stronger than me and uh I didn't want never wanted to stay in front of him So he was all the way out or all the way in and when I was coming all the way in It was with my uh proactive or reactive takedown where I myself initiated the takedown by uh, using a distraction like a jab to make it is is and goes up and then I go with a single double leg or uh to react like baiting him for him to come hit me and then While he's coming to hit me I go change level and and that's the way I like to take my time And that's the way I like to take my opponent down, you know some guys for example, like like uh, cabbie for example, he's very good at at Bringing his opponent to defense and use chain wrestling to to take his opponent down. I find it for me for myself. I specialize more into Explosive takedown in the center of the octagon because I found it more economical for me What what did you see you were you're commenting john about the wrestling That was that was quite interesting. I mean also, can you generally comment on the fact that george sanpia who don't I don't think you wrestled I wrestle I started wrestling. I was 19 years old, but I wrestled some very good russian guys. So they took me underneath their wing and but My ability to cover distance Come from karate does not come from wrestling wrestling is how I finish once I got the leg how I finish the takedown Uh, so the the timing and the movement and the explosion required for this karate. Yeah I think an important distinction to make here is um one which george uh made throughout his career and I Believe george you were the greatest innovator in mma history um with regards to this and this is uh The creation of what george calls shoot boxing which is the amalgamation Of striking technique in george's case mostly karate because that was his martial arts background um into grappling and in particular takedowns uh when most people say So and so has better wrestling in mixed martial arts You have to be very careful what they mean by this there are many highly credentialed wrestlers In the early days of mixed martial arts who went in and truly struggled to hit a takedown Now these are very very good wrestlers who in a wrestling match would easily put down their opponent but In a striking situation where the ranges are completely different and the setups are entirely different The stances are different even the the overall conditions are different. You're no longer wearing shoes People underestimate just what an impact it is for a wrestler to take the shoes off You lose like 20 of your forward drive the minute you take off the shoes um Uh, all of these make massive differences in whether or not you're going to be able to even make contact with an opponent for a takedown As george pointed out the true value of wrestling in mma is finishing the takedown once you've established contact But that's only about 20 of the action of a of a mixed martial arts takedown 80 of it is an understanding range rhythm setup opportunity, etc, etc, and That's not part of wrestling at all You're even the overall conditions are completely different in the sport of wrestling You start a very close range in a very bent over stance and you're expected to wrestle for In international stars for three minutes at a time Um now suddenly you're completely upright uh and You're not wearing shoes all the conditions the the the rhythm and speed of it is different The counters are completely different. It's just an entirely different animal And so george was an early recognizer of this And started to put the emphasis on direct training for shoot boxing In addition to wrestling so he practiced with very good wrestlers in the montreal wrestling club Just the sport of wrestling and that's what made him very good at finishing takedowns, but it was in his shoot boxing training Which he himself largely developed remember george started at a time when mma was pretty damn young and um Um, he we were when when you entered the sport of mixed martial arts george, it wasn't even allowed on tv Like it was completely banned. It was in his country. It was physically banned Uh, they had to fight on indian reservations and you know, and this is way back in the wild west days of mma and so as a as a young developing athlete he had to More or less do this by himself If you ever want to hear some incredible stories talk about teenage george saint pierre Who had a coach who used to make him put on boxing gloves now? He was 16 17 years old and just put him on a hardwood floor against a professional boxer who was in his Late 20s at the peak of his career and he said george you're not allowed to punch You just got to take him down while he tries to knock you out And it was and it was crazy darwinism, he was like It's like you're gonna you're gonna Adapt or you're gonna die Literally and he had that it could have been very bad, but it turns out to be great He's admitted but there's a sense here in which People think oh, you know what determines your takedown ability in mma as your wrestling skill that Your wrestling skill will determine your finishing ability on takedowns, but there's so much more to it than that Whenever people say, you know, what what are the broad elements that determine the outcome of a mixed martial arts fight Okay on the broadest possible level. I always give the same three things The athlete who can dominate the pace of the match The athlete who can dominate the direction of the match and the athlete who can dominate the setups will win the vast majority of fights They're in those three things The direction the pace and the setups you dominate all three of those You're going to win 90 of the matches. You're in Um, george could always dominate the direction of the fight because he could stop the other guy taking him down And he could impose his own takedowns at any point in a match So whether it went to ground or whether it stayed standing was always up to him George had the most sophisticated array of setups into takedowns That i've personally ever witnessed um, the whole distinction between reactive and proactive takedowns came very early in george's career and He excelled in both most people tend to favor one or the other Most athletes have a very hard time imposing Their setups on an opponent and as a result they have to use The cage as a crutch for their for their setups where they just bully someone towards the cage and then put them down on the cage George is one of the very few people who was equally good against the cage or in the open And could do so in both proactive and reactive situations And the scary thing is that as good as All of you saw him look in the octagon Um, anyone who knows george as a coach will tell you he was twice as good as that In the gym where he would often go against people several weight divisions above himself I could sit here all day. I won't name names, but I always laugh when people say oh, this is the greatest Uh pound for pound guy of all time and i've personally seen george Take that guy down and crush him in the gym And I can't say anything because it's rude to talk about that in public because it's just training But i've seen george go with people all the way up to light heavyweight some of the greatest names in the history of the sport Put them down Advanced position on the ground and dominate them in training. It's it's what he did during that time. I uh, george I I got to say I deeply admire many of the things I saw you do not just in the octagon but in training as well as um The the impact that you had on uh, the the degree to which Takedowns were used in the sport was absolutely inspirational That's why one of one of the reasons why I always say you're one of the the only athlete I ever met who taught me more than than I taught you because you opened my eyes to a whole new world of of shoot boxing and how I grew up in a time when uh, you I was laughing before when you talked about sugar ray lennard I was a kid watching that match and um, I grew up in a time where there was Boxing and there was kickboxing and then I came to america and I learned grappling and This young man here was the innovator when it came to the integration of the two Well, then I have to ask because george sits here uncomfortably being complimented um if george saint pierre And kabib nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins Who that's a very very loaded question how yeah, like what are the different trajectories you see? Oh, okay. How does each one win in your view if one wins or the other one wins what happened interestingly they're actually very similar in size despite the fact that George fought at welterweight and kabib fought it Lightweight if you actually see them standing next to each other the of similar height. Kabib's actually a little more thick set Yeah, he's actually heavier than you walking around. Um, uh, george walked around most of his career between 188 and 191 191 pounds And so kabib actually would ironically have a kind of size and strength advantage Uh despite being in the lighter weight division that's been the general trend as mma Has grown is that athletes will come further down and wait to make weight divisions. Um, Uh I believe that george has the best takedowns in history, uh in the open in the cage Um, kabib was his great strength was using the fence to facilitate takedowns. Um, Kabib's Other great strength was not only his ability to take people down but to keep people down for extended periods of time both of them were Powerful strikers on the ground and could do terrible damage to opponents, uh on the floor So they're both very similar in that regard Um, kabib was mostly a uh, a puncher from the back george was mostly an elbow from the front Um, but both of them could lay waste to opponents with strikes on the floor Um, both of them were highly competent with submissions on the ground They weren't submission specialists in the sense of someone like gordon ryan, but uh, they were certainly, um No slouches with submission holds. Um Um, yeah, it's just a fascinating idea. So it's almost like who gets the first takedown. Yeah, I do believe that They could probably stand up on each other I don't think either one of them would be able to hold the other down for a whole round Um, both of them are notoriously difficult people to hold down So I don't think that whoever won the first takedown wins the match. I don't think it's like that Um, I do believe that george would hold a decisive advantage in striking and distance management um, the few times that kabib did look shaky is when he Kabir was either advancing forward menacingly, but when he had to fight moving backwards There was a definite asymmetry between his ability to fight going forwards, which is very good and his ability to fight going backwards Which was noticeably? weaker Um, george would often fight both forwards and backwards. It was the giago elvis fight Most of the standing time. Yeah, it was was going backwards. Um That's probably the single biggest difference between the two athletes and skill level would be in the standing position um on the ground, uh Kabib slight edge and takedowns on the fence george slight edge and takedowns in the center um Ability to inflict damage on the floor roughly equal ability to fight off the back roughly equal Ability to stand up from bottom roughly equal. It's a very very hard match um In terms of the biggest difference in skill level is going to be in a standing position and so it would come down to um, that doesn't necessarily mean that kabib would lose in the standing position. He might just push it to the fence and just use match tactics where he Kept the fight on the fence for significant periods of time um Uh, and you can win rounds in that fashion. So it's a match that could go either way Both of them are absolutely the best that you'll ever see I've always believed the three greatest mixed martial artists i've ever seen in my life were george saint pierre kabib. Noam, get off and john jones Um, the three of them have some interesting similarities and differences all three Uh beat every single person they ever faced um I I know john jones officially has a loss by dq, but no one believes that was a loss um uh, george does have two losses, but he uh Defeated both athletes decisively Uh in rematches kabib did it by having no losses Interestingly all three athletes have at least one match which is controversial in terms of who won and who lost um John jones has had several matches which could have gone either way on the judge's scorecard kabib's Uh match against glaceon t bell could have gone either way Uh george's match with hendrix was could have gone either way They they all had matches that they won which people would dispute the outcome. So that was a similarity between the three of them. Um, all three of them Have had the ability To dominate the direction of fights when they want it to go down it goes down when they don't want it to go down It doesn't um That's why I put such a heavy emphasis on that idea that a mixed martial arts champion Must be able to determine the direction of a fight. It's the single most important attribute that they all must have um As to which of the three is the best it's going to come down to criteria You you can't pull them apart Which answer you give as to which of those three is the greatest of all time will come down to the criteria that you use Okay, is it being undefeated? um Uh, is it the amount of time was it the quality of the opponents that they had if you do it by quality of opponents? I think you probably have to give it to george if you do it by um Uh measured dominance through not being defeated and it has to go to compete um Arguably you could say the same with john jones since his one losses By dq But then you could also say the last three or four fights that john's had haven't been the same measure of dominance as we saw previously so ultimately You've got those three guys in my opinion And which one you choose will come down to who it says more about who you are as a viewer than it does about The respective label of the athletes you could throw a blanket over them. The three of them are just that good and um Uh, and which one you select will probably say more about who you are as a viewer than it does about them as athletes I I believe the best fighter the goat is not even born because the generation That is present Benefit of a huge advantage They have knowledge technology that we didn't have before And we had the the knowledge that the other generation did not have before but I believe the best the goat is not even born yet as good as they are today. I think you In sport where you can measure the performance, uh track and field Olympic lifting you can you know someone Is better than the other one because you can measure the performance fighting. It's all subjective. We always debate of who would win but 10 the tendency in sport is that Performance get better. I don't think it's because the athlete necessarily get better It's because they have access to better technology knowledge And they learn from their predecessor As long as that knowledge is transferred forward Something tells me that the greatest of all time lived a few thousand years ago and it's forgotten some of the greatest warriors Like you imagine the kind of grapplers. We just the history didn't record them There could have been small tribes where they developed many ufcs And they've developed the kind of things we you have to think of like, uh, the gracies Just a small family was able to develop so much so quickly I often As this this discussion with john and I think it's very important like to mention I asked you very several times like What would happen if we would take? A fighter of modern days facing the champion of pancration. This is an interesting question And you brought some incredible good point and and people don't don't realize it, you know yeah, no, I think um, one of the great tragedies of martial arts history is our loss of uh, the historical records of pancration like most of what we know was Uh from what i'm told is actually lost in the fires of the library of alexandria And we're left with only a pitiful amount of information on uh pancration matches But what we do know is that there was a very large uh participation in the sport and that it was Why they considered the most popular Sport in the ancient olympics and that it was represented in the ancient olympics for many hundreds of years Plus a long period of time before its introduction into the ancient olympics And so the development time That it may have had would have been very significant it Uh as far as we know most of the development would have been in the major greek city states for Uh, literally hundreds of years of development Um given its prestige as an olympic sport then the best athletes would have been doing it some of the sharpest minds that we know of In human history were involved in the sport. Um, plato the great philosopher uh Was a pancreasianist in his youth. In fact, his name plato is a nickname platus is like plate it means broad or big guy like the big guy and um Uh, he spoke often about pancreasian and in his written works Um, imagine people with the intelligence of plato thinking about Grappling technique for hundreds of years in the most popular olympic sport of that time significant numbers of people with Financial backing as city states put great prestige upon olympic success. They would have funneled athletes in And brought in the best coaches and they had that for many hundreds of years like it's quite conceivable that the best pancreasian athletes were of the absolute first quality and um, uh, it it's It's so sad to think we'll never know. What was their skill level and uh, It's interesting to think about what kind of techniques they developed whether There's stuff we haven't discovered yet in class. You're talking about the most effective Of takedown strategy in wrestling and collegiate wrestling. So maybe let me ask first, uh, because we offline talked about this, too What is the highest percentage submission in grappling overall? You have to go with the rear naked strangle strangles from the back If you look at most tournaments and most rule sets It has success across all rule sets. Um, all weight divisions All body types. It doesn't require any kind of specific Physical advantage such as height, uh in order to be effective Um, it works equally well in both fighting and grappling. Um It will work regardless of how physically and mentally tough your opponent is. Okay A heel hook is a very high percentage technique in in modern day competition But if your opponent simply makes up his mind that he's not going to tap and is willing to take the physical damage It won't result in the end of a match a strangle hold by contrast will always end the match regardless of Your opponent's mental toughness So, um, I believe it's fair to say that at the end of the day the single most high percentage method of uh submitting people and grappling is the rear naked strangle. So when you look at an athlete, maybe Gordon you could speak to this like What's the best, uh, you mentioned Gary with the guillotine What's the best submission to really invest in? Is it the rear naked choke? To really invest your development like understanding the entirety of the system that leads into that Uh, I think that I mean you have to do them all obviously But if I had like one submission that I would only one submission I could pick for the rest of my life It would definitely be a rear naked Can you explain maybe some of the actual technical details of why that's the case? Well as John spoke about they're different in joint locks. Whereas You don't have to tap you can just let your leg break and then keep going with the strangle. There's there's no, uh, There's none of that. Um, and then it's just an inherent Advantage you have being behind someone Um, whereas if you go for an armbar you stop you start from top mount and you're facing the guy and then you put them Down and you're not directly behind them with leg locks. You're facing the guy Whereas when you're on someone's back you have them in a pin where you can your chest to back You have a body triangle and you're pinning the guy in place. He can't explode out. He can't grease his way out Most of the time, uh, and there's an inherent advantage you have being behind them due to the fact that We're poorly set up to deal with threats behind us So would you say that's the most dominant position jiu jitsu like more than mount? More than yeah Sack control more than I think uh, if you look at most matches historically Most guys who get stuck in positions For long amounts of time are guys that they're back taking. Um, if you get An explosive guy from bottom mountain bridge and he can off balance you and lock half guard maybe and then work back to guard But if someone locks a body triangle on your back, um, that's where you see most guys getting pinned in place for long amounts of time Was uh was the body triangle like a well understood thing Was that an invention at some point like as a system as a as a control Yeah, um, perhaps some of your your listeners can correct me on this but I believe there was a technique banned in judo called dojime Which involved crossing feet or locking a triangle around the abdominals from the back and it was banned in judo I believe because uh of intestinal injuries which occurred in the early developmental days of of judo and in the modern era When I first began jiu jitsu body triangles were relatively rare. They were not a standard part of class Um, and sometime around the late 1990s early 2000s people started to realize hey, this is a stronger method of control um it It greatly increases the amount of control you have over your of your opponent's hips and torso over regular hooks Uh, it's not for all athletes. It's difficult for most people who are of shorter thicker statue, uh, to Employ on on on big people if your opponent's very broadly built through the stomach. It's almost impossible to apply And so because it can't be applied by all people it tends not to be taught much at beginner level So as a result, it was always seen as a kind of a speciality It was always seen as a kind of a specialist move for taller athletes at a higher level of competition rather than a broad Base move for everyone or every body type in every class to employ So it just didn't get emphasized that much but in top level competition now I think you would see that it's very apparent that the vast majority of athletes whenever they have the opportunity or a choice between Body triangle and regular rear mounts the majority of modern athletes would use a body triangle So we also had this conversation about wrestling. Maybe georgie can comment on like what what's the uh, the highest percentage? Not statistically speaking. Perhaps that's also interesting as john talked about but just for you in terms of mastery of a takedown What's what's the best way to take down a human being? in wrestling well, I Personally for me, it depends For every fighter are different. They have a different set of skill For me, I when I look someone Want to bring down a tree a big strong high tree He cut it from the base So the legs that that's what we stand on so it was to attack the leg But is it single leg double leg? Is it we talked about like, uh, Well, there's also the the john smith low single. Actually, I don't even know if that's applicable for jiu jitsu at all Applicable for jiu jitsu at all. You you can use it, but it runs into the problem with submission holds Yeah, it's it's not impossible to use but without shoes and in a situation where there's a whole plethora of submission holds in the scoring It's a little more difficult to use, you know It is interesting something being a high percentage in terms of effectiveness tells a story You're saying that every athlete is different. But if it's more effective for most people I mean, it's interesting. It's it's interesting what john talked about is that the highest percentage thing is actually, um In collegiate wrestling that he was talking about is On the defensive side, so blocking a takedown and spinning around to the to the back So that's an interesting idea then also there's all of these kind of going in for a singleness switching to a double or Or wizard position and doing knee tap like there's all these kinds of combinations that seem to be Effective when you look at the statistics and it seems like there's maybe it's a scientific way of thinking but it seems like there is Some conclusion to be drawn there. Oh, yeah, I believe you need to the high percentage move There's a reason why it works. I think it's It's made for a bigger amount of people um For example, I one of my main strength Athletic strength is i'm an explosive person So i'll use technique that are explosive if I got a single leg my my one of my thing I like to do is to go for the double power double but for uh Someone else we got for example in a single leg position. Maybe he likes Like body throw better. He's more a greco guy like so or he's a judo guy. He's gonna go for something something else. So But there there is move that are I would say like you just mentioned are universal like statistically speaking. They're The highest percentage move that works for pretty much everybody everybody pretty much can do a an adhaka jimmy, you know It's very easy But it's not everybody that can lock a triangle with their legs So so those move like a rear naked choke adhaka jimmy is the highest percentage move because it's maybe It's maybe more accessible It's accessible for a bigger range. Yeah based on the physical characteristics of the people Do you draw any wisdom from these high percentages john for like in terms of what to focus on? Yeah, absolutely Um juditsu has an ocean of moves and you can get lost on that ocean You can drift for a long period of time and and and that was very little to show for it So my whole thing is focus. We only live one lifetime And your training lifetime is even shorter than your actual lifetime so in that time I must die on the mat That is the same. Yeah Uh, I I put a very high value on Choosing what I believe to be the most high percentage Uh moves and putting an extraordinary amount of focus on them Um, the only problem is that in one generation a move which can be considered low percentage might actually turn out to be high Percentage in another generation, for example We talked earlier about leg locks when I was first started judice. They were considered the ultimate low percentage move and Uh a big part of my career has been convincing people that in fact that was That was incorrect that they can be a high percentage move if we just change our approach to them um so we can't just Follow tradition And say oh, this is low percentage. This is high percentage. It has to be part of a fairly systematic study where you investigate What are the reasons why it's high percentage or low percentage with regards to takedowns? If you look at what? We can consider the most high percentage takedowns If you're in front of someone the single most high percentage way of taking them down is to get a hold of both of their legs And push them backwards Okay, if you get a hold of one of their legs and put a force on them They can use their other leg to defend themselves and hop around and Funk their way out of takedowns and cause all kinds of problems for you I don't care how athletic your opponent is if you get a hold a firm grip Of both of his legs and start pushing him backwards. He's going to fall down to his butt Now he might be able to recover from there, but he will fall down Even easier than that is to be behind someone Takedowns from in front of someone are difficult you go right into their hips their head their hands You go into all their defensive weapons. If you're already behind someone and you're doing what in america They refer to as a mat return. This is significantly easier than taking someone down from the front If you have control of their head in a front headlock position You have already closed distance on your opponent. You already have close contact. You don't have to worry about shooting anymore There's no sprawl out of that. You don't have to worry about guillotines kimoras or the uh, standard defenses Those will intrinsically be easier takedowns out of front headlock And so if we're going to talk about high percentage technique, I always go back to the mechanics of it Rather than just historical tradition because historical tradition can be wrong. It was wrong about leg locks It can be wrong about other things too So my primary thing is okay. Talk to me about mechanics That's what ultimately is going to determine whether something is high percentage or not. Um, Gordon pointed out earlier that when you're behind someone you have innate physical advantages over the other guy the human We the human body is set up entirely to to defend threats from the front We are poorly adapted to defending threats from the rear. We don't have eyes in the back of our head We can't apply pushing strength backwards If you get behind someone take downs are 10 times easier from behind someone than they are when you're in front of someone If you have to take someone down from the front get a hold of both of their legs If you can get a hold of both of their legs and impart a pushing force, you will almost always knock them down If you can get a hold of their head And work takedowns from there again It's much easier because most of their defensive apparatus is being taken away from them before the takedown even begins and so For me, the most high percentage takedowns will always be from the front double legs From the front double legs from any takedown from the back is going to be significantly easier than any takedown from the front So all manner of matte return takedowns are going to be very high percentage um And takedowns done out of situations where the opponent is broken down in front of you and you have either front headlock or front Chest wrap position are going to be significantly easier than takedowns from the open Of course, you have to consider the full Full spectrum of mechanics involved here. It's possible that an outside low single leading to a double leg is much higher percentage It's like there's a lot of chain wrestling yet You know that needs to be considered as a possibility maybe a straight on and part of this cultural too Are people afraid of this kind of thing that they came to be the case with leg locks? Are people aware of this? Are they worried about this? Are they training for this to defend this? And and then this opponent specific of course that um, you know with jordan boros people are preparing for the double Which is why he had to develop A whole other kinds of different stuff and then the head to all the different controls all the different ties within the rule set And that's where it's so fascinating to see the effect of rule set on all this judo over the past I think 20 years went through this every olympics different changes to the rule set like fundamentally different In terms of what's allowed to grip whether you're allowed to touch the legs at all. That was a big one in 2012, I think And and that changed the sport completely and so interesting It's so interesting to watch how tiny change in the rule can change the sport At the highest when you're talking about people competing at the highest level and the cool thing there is The rule change happens on a scale of every four years So you get to see people that are at the top of their game have to like recompute So it's not like you have a new generation of people coming up with the rules. They have to figure oh shit You're not allowed to like it's it's the equivalent of saying you're not allowed to kick anymore in mma Because you were not allowed to grab legs anymore in judo interestingly if you look at the case of judo if you look at the world rankings of athletes When they went through one of the most significant rule changes in judo history where they banned any form of grabbing the legs The ranking of athletes didn't change much Yeah, that tells you that they're um, there's a reason why those guys are at the top Yeah, and it doesn't have to do that. They're specific to a rule set Yeah, think about that in terms of Imagine for example in mixed martial arts if they just said hey starting next week Instead of having three five minute rounds. It's going to be 15 minutes straight That would massively change the preparation of the athletes It's a different game at that point and judo literally was a different game before 2010 and after 2010 and yet The international rankings didn't really change that much the countries that were dominant before Remained dominant the athletes that remained before largely remained the same You would think was such a massive change all the rankings would have been thrown upside down, but they weren't and uh, again It goes back to this idea that there's a reason why the guys at the top are at the top And now for something completely different we talked about aliens earlier. Yeah, so uh, george brought up babasar. I I um, will likely probably talk to babasar on this podcast and then um Um, and then john had this a skeptical look on his face about about aliens. So let me ask uh, john and gordon Uh, do you think there's intelligent alien civilizations out there in the universe outside of our own? The universe is unimaginably large the idea that we are the only life forms in a cosmos as large as this is I think naive and foolish um There's a very high likelihood that if life could evolve on this planet that it could have done So on many many other planets around the uh around the cosmos I think anyone who puts even a moment's thought into this would realize that there's Almost certainly other forms of life out there the real question with regards the alien community is um, have they got here and are they Yeah, circling our planet in um little silver saucers and making observations and periodically stealing people For experimentation purposes doesn't have to be silver saucers. It could be different other color saucers Um, and that question i'm i'm i'm not at all convinced. No, I I don't think recently um navy footage has come out showing Some very interesting phenomena if you talk to almost any experienced pilot they will tell you they've seen things in the upper atmosphere That are very difficult to explain Uh, i'll be the first one to agree with you on this There are some things out there that are extremely difficult to explain like literally ufos unidentified Yeah, I mean we just don't know what they are but to go from the idea that there's things out there that we don't understand to there's like Little creatures running around and um, uh, and these somehow exist. Uh, I just reserve judgment. I just say i'm agnostic about these things. I think it's possible but um all the evidence that i've been showing so far was insufficient to come to any kind of definite conclusions until Aliens land in central park on tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m And get out with little alien ray guns and start shooting people. I didn't believe in Many of the stories that get told Well, what about if it's not little aliens with ray guns, but something very different very very difficult to detect for us humans That's very human central creature at that point. It's a it's a fascinating idea and it's certainly possible, but show me the evidence All right, what about you gordon Do you do you uh look at the cosmos and ponder the stars often? I think it's fair points. John raised uh, something really interesting I saw the other day was uh, Someone posted like if an alien organ or a civilization 65 million light years away Somehow managed to look at earth They would theoretically see the dinosaurs because they're 65 million light years away. So like imagine us looking at Galaxies that are 100 million light years away. That's 100 million years ago. You have no idea what it looks like now Um, so that's super interesting to me about it Yeah, the the expanse is huge and so much cool stuff could be going out there. Yeah, and um, The scary thing of course is if they haven't visited us yet the There has to be a good reason for it And the the set of scary reasons of all the fact that they maybe once you get sufficiently advanced in your development You destroy yourself naturally as humans seem to be approaching now We more and more have the tools to destroy ourselves completely in terms of our weapon systems Um, and we're developing them more and more and they're becoming better and better And then we're starting to get angry and anger on twitter and instagram at each other Those are good points you're raising History has taught us that Everything that lives one day will die. So we will we will perish one day. Yeah There's also just the the sheer difficulty of um, of Of travel through space like space is an unimaginably inhospitable environment And to the best of our knowledge This even the theoretical speeds that we can attain in space even if we could Travel at the speed of light. We're not even remotely close to that Still the distances that need to be traveled to get to even relatively close solar systems. Um, Very very long if you look at astronauts Who have spent significant amounts of time in space just orbiting the earth? It has severe health effects on them. We're just not built for space. We're supposed to be In a gravitational environment, but we you're referring to your biological meat bag that's containing the essence Of the mind that is john donahoe. Maybe we can transfer the mind alone The the the the bag the meat the meat bag is not designed for space But maybe the but again, this is all that's of the mind. It's It's possible, but what do you think of concrete evidence you folks who like difficult things? Uh, what do you think about uh, elon musk going to colonize mars? Is this something that's going to happen? Colonize mars. Is this something you find an interesting or a um, Aimless pursuit. I think it's a must or a salvation We need to leave at some point the planet because historically in the past we know that we've been bombarded by a steroid volcano There are crazy things happen here. It's very unstable. You know, we if you look at it to To a lifetime of a human being it's nothing but just look 12 000 years ago. What happened, you know, so so There is cataclysm that happen all the time. It's very unstable. So if we want to survive as a species, I think it's it's we need to get out to be able to get out and spread our seed so these are the early steps on a on a really long journey, but is there something about like You know, we we don't get that exploration from most of modern society, you know, the kind of exploring that people did throughout the centuries of uh, you know coming to the North america just throughout we were shrouded in physical uncertainty of what's out there And now we get to do the same kind of exploration with mars Is there so I mean is there any aspect of you that wants to travel out to space that wants to travel to mars? There, you know, the goal is to allow civilians to travel Perhaps in our lifetime Meaning affordably you can do so now unaffordably Traveling to space and traveling to mars are two different things. I think I would like to travel into space I don't know if I would like to travel all the way to mars because of the risks involved just because Boring Is there some part of you that enjoys the I think that if I was like towards the end of my life I would like to travel to mars because it'll be nice just die just for the experience. Yeah, but if I go to mars I'm not coming back. I think that's it one way ticket May with the technology we have now maybe in the future maybe our The children of our children will will be able to to experience that to go to the well the the weekend on mars Uh, well the the whole design of the starship that spacex is working on is supposed to come back Supposed to be reusable. So it's not it's not a one way ticket. That's the whole point It's always going back and forth back and forth. What's the time frame between two planets? Like to travel from I think the current thing you'd be stuck on mars for two years But how long does it take to get from earth to mars? Oh, it's pretty I'm not exactly sure but it's pretty quick It's pretty quick. Like, uh, I don't know and the scale of months not scale of years. You might not be healthy When you come back, you know, all the astronauts they experience health issues, you know, they lose a lot of muscle mass bone density. So Yeah, I don't think the technology is good right now. I mean Let's say that it is I would love to be doing it for a weekend if it's safe I would love to be the first one to do it for a professional fighter who sacrifices body for something So there's some sacrifice we do in life, right? I don't want to be the first I wouldn't want to I least The other one but when I know it's it's safe. Okay, count me in So one of the things that people say and this is something I wonder about is It's like having children or something once you see once you're out in space and you look out and you see earth You look back at earth. That's an experience. It's not like anything else like you can't replicate it here Um is to look back at that like blue dot And that's nerve wracking Like you see like earth disappear into the distance. Yeah. Yeah disappear Into the distance and then you get to actually stand on mars and see And just to look you're standing on the ground and you're looking out And you see the planet from which you came and where you might not be coming back But there's a challenge to the whole thing. Whereas the risk is tremendous And I don't know I find that risk really compelling for some reason but that could be just The exploration like I guess that's a genetic thing too. How much do you want to explore? There's a sense though in which even in the best case scenario where they did get the technology to whisk you to mars and in a fairly short period of time it's kind of an inauthentic sense of exploration because your participation in it is no more exciting than your Participation in an airline flight to a foreign country. You're basically you You didn't have anything to do with the creation of the of the vessel. You're not in command of the vessel. You're not In any way shape or form important to the mission You're just a person sitting in a passenger seat And you get off in a destination the same way you would if you flew to singapore or london or someplace like that Well, there's a hierarchy of there's a leadership and then there's a bunch of people that all have roles There's a hierarchy of there's a leadership and then there's a bunch of people and they all have roles You don't get to go to mars without having a skill set to contribute You made it sound like space tourism where you just pay a ticket I I don't I think it's a long time before you have space tourism to mars. We have nothing to contribute Okay, like you will have to tell what you do you go through like a training program you go training program and then there's uh, There's technical things you'll be contributing. So they would bring people You know in terms of agriculture, I don't know. Okay, so this is this is better This sounds like they're actual they're more like explorers like if you talked before about explorers and and human history where Magellan sets off on his boat and every person on the boat had a specific function. They were they were all Into the mission in a very authentic fashion if they weren't on the boat the performance of the crew would somehow suffer So this sounds much better and just with like with Magellan. I think most of the crew died A significant number did yeah And from uh, yeah from bacteria, I mean from things that are unexpected and so on and if we discover life on mars I mean, who knows what that entails because that's like a manned mission to mars Would likely be very driven by the research to do all the kind of um Exploration required to find life now from uh, mr. Musk's, uh Uh point of view as a developer presumably there has to be some kind of financial incentive here, too is there some kind of financial benefit to mars missions is is presumably um There wouldn't be that many people on earth that could afford a ticket to pay for the kind of research and development that would require This is there some kind of mining on mars of minerals that would be useful I think there's a lot of answers to this but the only honest answer is the one that looks back into human history Where we did a lot of things just because we we could A lot of hard things just because we could and that led to a lot of innovation that ultimately made our life better So this is more this is why you have nasa. This is why you have government organizations. Like what's the purpose of nasa? NASA would answer that by saying okay. Well, we're helping We're helping launch satellites up there all that they'll have a bunch of answers, but the reality is the programs were funded in large part by our desire to explore the unknown and um, there's some aspect to which we have to all invest into that because historically speaking That has produced a lot of cool things along the way that were totally unexpected Like uh, but nasa is funded by public funding the taxpayer Uh, how is mr. Musk going to fund this? Well currently most of the funding was the spacex is nasa giving money uh to So they're making a competition who can who can get our satellites. We need to go to um you know for the space station to Resupply the space station or we need to launch satellites up who's going to carry those quote unquote payloads But they just need so nasa's paying whoever the heck wants to uh get kilograms of thing up into space Why did this is nasa's specialty? Why did they just give up on that? Well, they why they realized or mr. Musk came along and then bezos and others that said we could do it for one tenth the price So why did the why should the taxpayers pay for the why don't you nasa do what you do well? You know, which is like test out cutting edge stuff. Make sure they're safe and now That we've developed um a car Let us let us ups and fedex take care of Doing this at scale doing it cheaper doing it better. I mean that's the argument And nasa took what they realized is it took way way too long to do stuff When you're investing millions if there's billions of dollars into a project the the bureaucracy builds up And the conservatism builds up to where you're I mean you really have to test everything out So projects take years and then you have somebody like ilan musk coming along and says well, let's do launches every Every week and as opposed to just throwing away the rocket. We'll reuse the rocket. That was one of the sort of cutting edge inventions It's a dumb obvious idea Like ilan says why do you throw away the play? It's the equivalent as if you flew a plane every time you threw it away Why are we every time throwing away the plane? But nasa's tried that kind of thing with the space shuttle since the 1970s And yes, well, they did that with the space shuttle, but not not at the scale here that uh, it was the space shuttle was seen as this like Majestic amazing thing that requires a huge amount of investment with ilan musk is like no every basic rocket Should be reusable Nice cut cut cost cut cost. Do you do you think like? Like the more technology we have the more advanced we become the more Specialized we need to be like is that for that reason that now they they there's different branch Like you just explained out now that so they're specialized in this but they left, you know other branch Yeah, there's there's the greater and greater specializations. We build up more stuff, which is fascinating because Is it making us? more Dumb in a way. Do you think like like like yeah, I don't know like Like you you know, but I use a cell phone, but I don't know how to build it up from that I mean, it's that beta males building up this whole society um, because we're this collective intelligence we rely on each other more and more and it I do also see sort of the rise of conspiracy theories and all those kinds of things because Like i've been talking to a few folks about flat earth recently it's fascinating it's fascinating there's a large community of people that believe the earth is flat and That idea takes hold in this day and age of all the ideas. That's the one that takes hold for a large number of people and I think that's a consequence of this kind of specialization where it's just a huge amount of experts But if you look out into our world and try to reason simply about our existence We we are losing the skills to do that because more and more people are specialized as opposed to general thinkers We're like extremely good at specific things. Are we capable now to do? A robot that is self aware That's that's one the legged one. I uh, it's self aware. It's not self aware It's been listening, but it's not self aware. But do you think a human being is self aware or that's a good question I mean I ask this question all the time when the robots move there's a sense of When they turn on Something entered that robot Wow, and when it turns off something left Uh if they move in a certain kind of way and if they're if they surprise you there's certain elements that enable us to see the magic in In a living being and some of them I mean we can care we can maybe list them but it's the ability to surprise you it's the The ability to make mistakes and learn from them visibly there's a bunch of things that you just I don't know. It just feels Like it has the magic of what is a living being And which is what humans have and I try to think about how do you replicate that into a machine? So when you turn it on enough you feel like it dies every time and he reborn So for most machines, we don't feel that way. We don't when we unplug things Things we don't feel that way. I don't know why we don't feel that way. That's an interesting question. But I think when When the robot has certain qualities like memory Like ability to recognize you Yeah, you start to feel like you're turning off an organism So so whenever I have like the robots that recognize me And remember this is important that all the things we've experienced together Then it's like holy shit That's a that's a living thing. But does he remember? It feels like a living thing. Does he remember Your robot does he remember things that happened before you unplugged it? Is it like he's sleeping? Like is he wake up or is he like that? So right now we start to zero everything. Uh, no, it doesn't start at zero It remembers everything. That's the key. Every time you like you you unplug. Wow It's storing the memory, but the memories are basic. They're like they're like, okay, we walked around the kitchen and then Um, you looked at me. I mean the memories it's like data. It's just it's not like we've experienced it's able to actually Uh experience anything deep like we humans can but just the fact of memory It's like the toaster or the microwave. Don't don't give a shit about me They don't know me. They don't know me by name. They wouldn't recognize my face As being different from gordon's they wouldn't know the difference and they wouldn't Remember the microwave currently doesn't remember, you know, the times i've been sad or happy Like what food I put into it it doesn't remember this when I was being a fat ass or what I was being in good shape and All just those memories are enough to make you feel when you turn a thing off That's like shit That's a living that's that that's a living thing disappearing. Of course, that's kind of an anthropomorphism we do to each other But uh, that's something You know that That's something that makes me believe it's possible to create. Um Systems with which we can have a connection that are nonhuman like similar to dogs and cats and so on It just makes me and that's what's interesting to me because ultimately I feel like that'll help us understand ourselves And maybe practice grappling moves anyway, um Well, let me ask the uh advice question Uh, now that we're together i've asked i've spoken to john. I spoke to george What what advice would you give to young folks whether? we're talking about sport like excelling becoming great at grappling becoming great at fighting become a great at whatever sport they take on or Life in general whether there may be in high school or in college What advice would you give them to uh, excel? At that thing they take on I don't know if i'm qualified to answer this because i'm only 26 So you're at the top you said giving advice to young people. Um for me, I think the two biggest things are Are find something that you're both talented in and you enjoy um I think that if you enjoy something, but you're terrible at it. It's going to be hard for you to be successful In life at that given in that given area Um, and it's going to be hard to do something for long amounts of time Uh if you're talented at it, but you don't enjoy doing it. Um, it's easy to come in and train hard for a month or for two months or for a year, um, you can be very talented at it But if you come in it's but it's a different story to come in every day for five years in a row for 10 years in a row for 15 years in a row, um, so I think I think finding something that you're both talented in And something you enjoy are probably the two biggest things for me How do you find the joy in it? So you've been training insane amount, you know a lot you've been doing it for a long time Um, is there's is there ways to rediscover the joy in it? Yeah for me initially It was just learning new stuff, you know You come in as a white belt and every day you learn you see a different move and you're like, oh man, it's that's awesome um, and then when I started to compete more seriously towards my professional career it was Uh the joy of doing camps and seeing the result of those camps and beating high level athletes Um, and then it got to a point where i'd beaten all the high level athletes already. So Who am I gonna compete against? Um, so now for me the joy is just being The best athlete I can possibly be until I reach my pride which i'm hoping is somewhere between 35 and 40 Um, so instead of competing against the other athletes I'll be bored already because I already beat all the rest of the guys um, but I know that now I know that I can be better in a year from now or two years from now Than I am today and that for me is exciting By the way, is there some aspect of teaching that's exciting to you? Yeah, I because you become a better and better teacher over the years. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely uh, I enjoy teaching and I used to teach um A lot before I met john and then I met john and I was like, yeah, I just have no idea how to teach Um, so that's like a completely different element, uh of the sport Um, you know doing things and being good at doing things or being good at winning uh and actually being able to communicate those skills and knowledge to To a vast amount of people is two completely different things George advice for young people like yourself well First I was I would tell them find What you want to become what you want to do? and long term Use certain things maybe sometimes you don't love but where you want to propel yourself in the future? Not what your parent your your friend wants you to become what you you you want to become So one once you find it You cannot Doing it by yourself everything that are that is big achievement in life. We cannot do it doing it by ourselves so what I would say is second thing is Try to build up your team and try to build up your team to be able to achieve your goal Of people that are competent And people that you trust You need both competency and trust I see a lot of people sometime in business. For example, they hire people they that are that they trust but they turns out to be incompetent So now you have to fire a friend or otherwise your business going down the same problem If you do the opposite you are you're someone that is competent, but you cannot trust is gonna is gonna screw you, you know So it's very important to stay away from the negative build up your team people you trust and that are competent And I would say the third one is to work to work hard to sacrifice yourself Yeah, you have to go through hell sometime, but yeah, you have to see the light at the end of of it You know to keep your dream in mind is going to give you the motivation to go through the tough time It's nothing easy to go work work work. It's nothing you can accomplish without hard work The fourth one I would say To invest on yourself constantly If you do not invest on yourself on whatever you are in which business and sport the game will catch up to you For example, if you're if you become Champion at something and if you stop improving the other guys that are trying to be champion, they're gonna catch up to you So you need to invest on yourself and most people Most athlete they make the mistake when they start to having money They buy luxury stuff and that's one thing I didn't do when I start making money I was investing of on traveling to new york trying with john gordon and the guys to learn What is new in the the game of jiu jitsu? I used to go in thailand train muay thai In las angeles to perfect my boxing skill So instead of taking that money to buy me jewelry cars and to do what a lot of guys do because it's a mistake I I invest it on myself because I know there were people coming they don't want my place So I want I didn't want them to catch me And the last one I would say it seems weird I would say To give back and it's not because i'm a nice guy and it's not that I don't say that to look good. I say that When you you make it It creates opportunity where you can help certain group of people But when I say give back not give back to everybody to anybody give back only to the the cause that you want I give back Not because i'm a nice guy. I'm kind of it's kind of selfish I only give back to the people that I want to give back Because I give back to them and I know that if i'm more successful I'm going to be able to give back to people. I loved the cause that that that count for me So it's it brings me more motivation because I don't compete For myself anymore. I compete to help people. I love in a way So when you you reach the top in your game, you need to find new motivation if you're satisfied is The end of it your success will go down. So you need to To find new motivation. What can motivate you? You know, what do you want? Oh, I want to help this so I need to to be successful. I want to You know, you need to find reason who what you want to do with your success So when I say give back it's not because i'm not because i'm necessarily it's not to be to look like a nice guy To keep your motivation to be able to Keep climbing the ladder even more That's beautiful, george, uh, john Um, first off the two responses given so far covered. I think the most important things already. Um, Gordon talked about the the need for an underlying passion and enjoyment if you don't have that You're not going to have the longevity that is required in order to build Skills, which is ultimately everything's going to come down to your ability to build skills You've got to have some kind of underlying passion and enjoyment which will keep you in the game long enough To build world championship skills. It's going to take a minimum of five years and quite possibly considerably longer than that Um, george talked about the idea of community. You're not going to make it by yourself So you've got to be able to build people around you and uh, and build a trusting environment Around you to develop those skills. Um, What I would add to the the excellent points that both already raised Alludes to what I said at the start of this podcast. You've got to be able to identify some kind of undervalued Elements in whatever industry you're in and show the world what their true value is in addition You can't go through life Doing the same things as everybody else Go through life doing the same things as everybody else And expecting to get different results This is straightforwardly irrational and worse. It's even arrogant It's essentially the statement that i'm going to do the same thing as everyone else, but I believe i'm different And so they'll work for me But they didn't work for everyone else That's like saying no i'm special No, you're not special. We're all pretty much the same And um in order to be special you're going to have to exhibit skills that other people simply don't have um Thirdly I would say if you want to become something truly impressive in life You've got to be able to focus on one or two things That you do better than anyone else in your industry You can't learn everything but you can take one or two skills and the more innovative those skills are the better And you can truly excel at them. For example at the peak of his career No one in the world was better than george saint pierre at integrating striking and takedowns No one in the world was better at integrating grappling and striking on the ground He had two things that he could confidently say He could confidently say he was the best in the world at was he the best at every mma skill? Nope but he was Absolutely the best at those two skills and those two skills were skills which he used throughout his career to win the vast majority of his matches Gordon ryan at the onset of his career could confidently say there's no one in the world better than me at leg locks He could also say there's no one better in the world than me at late stage defense to Submission holds across the board as he went through his career. He started adding more and more elements It's gotten to an extraordinary degree now where you could absolutely say he's the best at guard passing the best at guard retention the list just keeps going on and that goes back to what um Gordon said earlier about keeping things interesting over time because we're always introducing new skill sets the day you start saying I'm satisfied with my skill set is the day you get bored and bored boredom to an athlete is a precursor to Death by boredom As long as you're still growing in those directions you'll stay in the game For very long periods of time. So the main thing I would add to these statements by gordon and george is this idea of Of finding something which is currently undervalued and showing the world what its true value is Understanding That you can't just use the same training methodologies as everyone else and somehow expect to be different from everyone else. You've got to Almost every great rise in human civilization whether it be groups of people or individuals Required some kind of innovation. You've got to look for that new angle Okay, george st. Pierre found it with shoe boxing early on in his career Gordon ryan found it with leg locks early on in his career and they branched out from that from that angle Add to this the idea that you want to become the absolute best in the world in your industry In one or two things that make a difference Find out what they are and focus on those things and you'll go far John Gordon george, this is an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for your Extremely valuable time george as somebody who's become famous in part By commenting on people's performance Um, how do you think we did? How would you evaluate our performance today? I'm not impressed by Yeah, thank you. I loved it. I learned all the time. I've talked to you guys. I'm It's it's great. I loved it I was very stimulated. I and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's uh, it was it was something I really was looking forward to I was hoping that would get together It's so rare that at the same time in history There will be some of the greats together and the fact that you guys would be willing to come together and talk like this This is awesome. And that gordon he would even wear a cowboy hat. I mean, this is just historic This is like church. You're all getting together with whoever, you know, this is great and all But the next one is just going to be us just quizzing john on which animals would win in fights. Yes for the whole three hours It'll be just so we'll invite joe and you'll just be we'll we'll make it a systematic It'll be a debate between joe and john on which animal would win. John and I we have a thing that we send each other Footage all the time of animal fight where we are, uh, very intrigue about animal fight I get them like 3 30 am on it. He's like check this out Like a rhino taking a like a pig like Literally, it's not always fair. No, no, it's not ever but interesting stuff if you people would see what we send The stuff that we they would judge you harshly. Yeah Harshly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks so much guys. This is awesome Thanks for listening to this conversation with george saint pierre john donahue and gordon ryan to support this podcast Please check out our sponsors in the description And now let me leave you some words from miyamoto musashi There's nothing outside yourself that can ever enable you to get better stronger richer quicker or smarter Everything is within everything exists Seek nothing outside of yourself Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time
Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher & Gordon Ryan: The Greatest of All Time | Lex Fridman Podcast #260