JRE MMA Show #109 with Gordon Ryan

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day well uh welcome man thanks for doing this I appreciate it thanks for having me long time coming how the [ __ ] did you rise so far ahead of everyone else in the Jiu-Jitsu World let me just tell everybody before things get started um Gordon is undeniably the best pound-for-pound Jiu-Jitsu player on Earth not just the best but pretty pretty it's a pretty good statement to say that you're the best ever well you're only 25 yeah

that's crazy how the [ __ ] does that happen uh so I'm gonna go ahead and give give credit to John I mean uh I think that without him I maybe would have been successful I would have been I would have been you know maybe the best in the world at some point in my career but I don't think that without JN uh I would Be where I am right now and I don't think that I would have gotten this good uh in in this amount of time you know I've I've been training 10 years

I've been competing uh professionally for five years and uh I think that you know a big part of the reason why I am where I am is because because of John's coaching yeah and we we're talking about John Doner for people who don't know who is a a literal genius and a mastermind in jiujitsu and a true mad scientist and Watching him Coach you guys is very fascinating because he's so serious and stoic and Gordon Ryan pass over the left leg Gordon Ryan post like the way he talks like it's really he says your full

name too it's it's real it's very interesting Gordon Ryan Gary tonin Craig Jones it's always it's always the full the full name yeah why what is he's such an odd duck he does it to address us um because a lot of times like you got like Nikki for example like there's a lot of Guys named Nikki so he makees sure he Mak sure you know he's talking to you when he says Nicki Ryan nck Rod Craig Jones Gordon Ry so you know that you know that when you hear your name being called your first and

last name you know that okay this person is addressing you in a room of you know 5 10,000 people he's such an unusual human being there is not a single person on the planet Earth like John Don her one of the most brilliant guys I've ever met obsessed With jiujitsu mostly like that's if you you had a pie chart of his brain it would be like he's like 20% room for other [ __ ] 80% of his brain is jiu-jitsu yeah I mean it's not it's not even just Jiu-Jitsu it's just martial arts in general

like I mean people who know J on a personal level and have trained with JN know that Jon knows just as much just as much about MMA as he does or even more about MMA than he does about Jiu-Jitsu um he's been coaching MMA with George and with Chris widman for longer than he's been coaching Jiu-Jitsu I mean he's only been coaching professional Jiu-Jitsu athletes for five years uh and I've watched him personally teach Judo privates to Judo Olympians watch uh teach him have him I watched him teach wrestling privates to wrestling world team members

wrestling Olympians um you know he knows a just as much about the other martial arts as he does about jiujitsu it's crazy yeah and never walks Around without a Rashard on which is also correct which is the honest thing ever I've seen him one time ever with a r with a with a t-shirt on because uh we went to Long Island to train with Chris uh Chris wman one time and uh he forgot his change of rashu guards so he had Street rash guard on and he didn't have a second rash guard to change into

and Chris didn't have a Rashard for him so they gave him like this pink flamingo t-shirt that he ended up we did a whole Session with Chris Weidman it was right before he was going to fight Luke rockhold the second time which ended up never happening but uh we did this whole session with John with like this pink tropical t-shirt on and then he changed out of the T-shirt to get back into a street rashu guard and leave to go home like it was just like I'm just like okay this is happening I posted it

everyone was freaking out about it just how crazy is it that he has a street rash guard Yeah he's got his he's got Street rash guards he's got uh training rash guards and he's got like his nighttime like dinner date rash guards like he's got like a like a date rash guard he's got a dinner rash guard like he's got it all he's got it all sorted out so if he goes out on a date with a woman he wears a rash guard oh yeah he's got like he's got like this really nice like underarm

like this gray Under Armour sweatshirt that or um rash C that he puts on and Like you know like when John comes out in one of his fancy rash guard you're like okay he's not [ __ ] around now you're like this guy's like you got to like all right this guy means business tonight but you has anybody ever asked him what the [ __ ] is going on yeah I mean so he just he just likes to wear rash guards because of the fact that they dry fast um the fact that they're cool they

keep you cool they keep you warm if they get wet they dry fast um And they're just tight fitting he likes tight fitting clothes um so he just he just prefers to wear them he thinks they're more efficient than t-shirts are it's just so odd but that's part of John Doner always has a fanny pack respect I respect the fanny pack yeah one of the great Mysteries of the world is what he has inside that fanny pack it's kind of thick it is large he's got a lot of stuff inside there he's uh it's just

it's so Fascinating to watch what he's done in coaching this Don her death squad and create like he's unquestionably the greatest Jiu-Jitsu coach on Earth and this is also widely regarded like the way you're widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound Grappler he's widely regarded as the best Jiu-Jitsu coach and it's it's um it's really interesting to see that you guys just have been dominating the grappling scene and to watch all this play out and to see People study you guys but still not be able to catch up yeah I mean what most people do is

they just see like a general outline of what we do but no one no one looks at what the specifics of what we're doing they say oh you know Gordon's a good l locker let me try to do lug locks or Gordon's trapping hands from the back let me try to do that but they don't see the very specific spefic details and the specific details are what's going to be The difference between finishing a highle guy and having a high level guy Escape um so whatever and does is they just see the general idea and

have the general outline of what we're doing and they try to just copy that uh but when you just try to copy the best guys if you just try to copy everyone else you get the same results as everybody else you have to go further than what the best guys are doing and you have to innovate and you know I I look at the Other best guys in the world and I say what are they doing you know that works against the other highle guys and how can I make that better not just let me

try to arbitrarily copy what they're trying to do now what is missing in like if you take the rest of the people that are in the top 10 like what are they doing differently what everyone does in Jiu-Jitsu is they try to do the least amount of work possible to win a Jiujitsu match right so they try to jump past your guard they score an advantage they score a couple points and then for the next seven minutes they do nothing whereas what we try to do is we try to take the hardest route to a

victory and we try to submit the guy so what you see is a complete there's just a complete different mind completely different mindset between what the rest of the guys are doing and what we're trying to do we're trying to Go out and we're not we're not satisfied unless we hit a submission and in my case sometimes I call the submission and I'm trying to you know go out and hit a a specific submission um but you know they're happy just going out and having a match for this 10 minutes in the feet they just

hang on each other's collar ties and then they win a ref decision and they run around beating their chest like they just they they they did something um so just the mindset in the Mindset for winning in competition is completely different now how did that happen how did Jiu-Jitsu get to be this sport where you have so many stalemates you have so many guys that do this thing where they run around just collar tiring each other and pushing each other around and no one ever takes a chance no no one ever realizes that you know

hey we've only got four minutes to go I got to make something happen I I think it's training program I think that the rule Sets mean very little um if you look at a guy like hoder Gracie no matter what rule set he competes in he's trying to finish you uh if you look at me no matter what rule set you go into I'm trying to finish you if it's ebi rules I'm trying to finish you if it's ibjjf rules I'm trying to finish you and uh you know I think that most people's training programs

are built around positional control and doing the least amount of work possible to win you know People train stalling tactics you know we don't we don't we don't do that we just try to get better at juu and better at submissions um whereas our training program is built around control that leads to submission no matter what no matter what rule set we go and to compete under we're always trying to control the guy and then submit him whereas most people they have a training program built around positional advances where they're just trying to do whatever

They can to win and a win's a win and if however they win they're happy with it and what what year did you start with John how long ago uh I started training with him the first time I ever started training with him was 2014 but I was that the first time you trained or you somewhere else no I started training um 200 late 2010 almost 2011 11 with uh with Miguel bitez um he was uh one of r one of Ricardo alida's brown belts owned the school and this guy Miguel bitez was A blue

belt under the guy who owned that one one of Ricardo's affiliate schools and I started training under him from like white to mid-level blue belt and then Gary actually took over Gary tonin took over the school when I was like a purple belt and then uh Purple belt I started training part-time with cuz I just graduated high school and I had to go to college and work to afford to get to the city um but then somewhere around mid-level purple belt I think it was Like 2 mid to late 2014 is when I started training

with John full-time so I've been training with John full-time like you know six years or so and has the training changed since you first started like and if you you discussed this with John because he's got such a complex system of of training and and taking people through positional dominance to submission like has this evolved during the time that you've been with him like What was it like at the beginning yeah at first it was just he was just trying to get better at Jiu-Jitsu specifically better at leglocks because the big hole in the highlevel

competition Jiu-Jitsu a scene was leg locks nobody really knew how to do leg locks well so the first couple years of us training was just him trying to get us competent and then eventually to be the best in leg locking um and then and then once we once we got there and once we could beat the best Best guys in the world or at least hang with the best guys in the world then it was more specific towards um winning under certain rule sets you know ebi came along and you know okay how can now

you guys can do Jiu-Jitsu you're competent everywhere how can you how can you succeed and how can you beat certain players or how can you win under specific rule sets so it went from just a broad idea of initially getting better at Jiu-Jitsu just as a whole and then More specifically how can I win ADCC how can I win ebi how can I beat this guy how can I beat that guy but his training program evolved in terms of like how he takes people through advancements like how they how they start out in learning and

then get to a place of a position where they're a black belt in competition like does he have this all written out like how's he how is he doing this yeah I mean he doesn't tell us too much about it he kind of just Comes in and he shows up and he teaches moves and you're like okay this is what John's teaching this is what we should be we should be uh we should be doing um but uh a lot of it has we used to just do all open rounds now we have a lot

more positional rounds in place uh where we start in certain positions so that if we get to those specific positions even though people have been training for twice as long as us we've been training a lot longer in those specific Niche Positions uh than they have so we actually have a lot more experience in those positions than than they do even though they've been training Jiu-Jitsu for much longer than we have so our whole thing is to is to get to our key positions where we know where if we have one breakthrough if I can

get to the guy's back or I can get to the GU left legs we've been in those static positions a lot longer than the other guys have and even though they've been Training twice or three times as long as we have we've been having we have a lot more experience in those domains than they do now did that start with ebi where they have that very specific two option positions after the the first initial time period that was that was a big a big part of it um you know when ebi came out we actually

came into the gym uh one day and we tried to do back escapes and it was just the worst workout ever like we had 0% Escape rate Nobody escaped and uh John's like [ __ ] like this is going to be a real problem if someone locks a body triangle on you you know like none of us figured out how to get out he comes in the next day and he finds a match between hoder Gracie and Tim Kennedy in MMA and Tim Kennedy successfully escaped hoder back control multiple times during the match so this

guy went home and spent the entire night looking for matches where guys high level guys can escape the back and he Came in and he taught escapes that Tim Kennedy used versus hoder and we went from one day having a 0% Escape rate to like an 80% Escape rate the next day and then we kind of just built it from there and everything snowballed and then you know we ended up dominating the ebis so it really takes a combination of things it takes obsessed athletes and it takes an obsessed trainer and and an obsessed trainer

in in one way there's something interesting about John in that he's he's Injured like his knee's all [ __ ] up he's had a hip replacement and from rugby right yeah yeah and you he can't compete but when he was training early in his career like everybody's talk about how what a [ __ ] he was like I remember it early in his his even even being all [ __ ] up like he was still beating up like the best guys in the world it was crazy like imagine only being able to use one of

your legs like I tore my LCL and I was like there's no Way I can train with a blue belt right now never mind having to train with the best guys in the world yeah it's um it's pretty remarkable but his mind is so unusual it's so extraordinary and when you take the two the combination of that like he's got such a dedicated crew of Assassins too this is also interesting because it seems like his dedication and his obsession is at least partially contagious yes and then you guys also motivate each other and the success

Obviously the Donna her death squad is so welln and so successful that must be motivating as well and it's also attracting a lot of other killers that want to be like you guys to come there to train and Learn and Grow but it's a it's such a it's such a unique combination yeah I mean you see a guy like John who's injured um and he's just miserable some days because he's in so much pain he comes in every single day 7 days a week 365 days a year and he gives His best every single session

so you know you as an as an athlete you know this guy's giving you all that he can for not asking anything in return the only thing he's asking for is that you show up so like you have basically a a a series of cheat codes in front of you and they're there all year round every single day you kind of feel like a [ __ ] bag if you don't show up the train so it's like you know this guy this guy's giving you everything it's like okay if I don't show up like I'm

kind of an [ __ ] we went to dinner after the last uh event that they had here when you uh fought Vagner roacha and uh John was outlining what happens when guys come to train like guys have never been there before he's like all right I'll see you tomorrow and the tomorrow yes tomorrow like you guys train like this every day seven days a week seven days a week that's what's crazy like there's no days off no days off um is there an argument Against that um I don't really think so I mean if

we're if we're tired we just train lighter um you know there's no even if I feel like I'm just completely beat up and I just I don't want to get up and go to training even if you I just go there and I train really light and I'm I'm there mentally and you're thinking about the sport I mean you're getting better um whereas if you just spend the day on the beach or something then you're not Thinking about the sport and uh it hinders progression so I I think that you know some people argue you

need a rest day you need this you need that I mean if I have a rest day I can rest and I cannot train hard and I I just go lighter maybe I work on submissions maybe um I'm playing defensive the whole time and I get submitted 10 times during the session who cares you know you're training lighter but you're you're actively resting and you're still Thinking about the sport so you're there mentally that's very controversial though because most trainers in most sports will tell you that you need rest days that you need days where

you do nothing and that even days where you don't even think about your sport because that's actually going to refresh your enthusiasm yeah John's the exact opposite like for us he says like in order to stay interested in the sport you need to be constantly working Towards goals and you constantly need to be innovating so that you're working on new things I mean people get bored with jiu-jitsu when they're working on the same thing for 6 months at a time a year at a time they're not getting any better they hit a plat to and

then they feel like uh you know I've been doing the same [ __ ] for the last 2 years I'm bored of it I don't really want to do this anymore whereas with us every day it's something new you know every week it's Something new every six months you turn into a completely different Grappler um so it's it's easy to stay interested in a sport that you come in and you know that you're going to show up to a session and if you don't show up to that session that John's going to teach something that

you probably have never seen before something that's new and you know you're going to come in the next day and everyone's going to be trying to hit it on you like what the [ __ ] is this When did you teach This and like oh yesterday when you weren't here and it's like oh okay that makes sense wow so it really does demand a Synergy between an obsessed trainer and obsessed students yeah like John goes home like we're like bullshitting right now talking or like you go home and watch TV and relax John goes home

and he studies tape like John just like what he does for fun is he studies tape on on various martial arts like you you reference any fight or any Wrestling match or any boxing match or Jitsu match like John give you like a full background story on the whole like he just he knows everything not even just about martial arts he just knows everything about everything he's like the closest thing to Google that you can get in my opinion um like you just ask him a question about any any given subject and he knows something

about it um so you know when he goes home every night and he studies tape you you you Know for a fact that the next day he's coming in and he's showing you something that he watched from like the U like the other day he showed us something that a uh an Asian kid hit from the U23 World Championships in like 2018 that he was like that uh that he was he was taking people down with in the in the Wrestling Championships and it's just like this guy like went home and like started watching the

U23 worlds from like 2018 like who does that he and Lex fredman Had a conversation while we were at dinner where Lex brought up some obscure wrestlers from dagistan and John was like oh yes yes and he know about them going into detail about these people that's crazy and also he studies why they're successful like that's that's a fascinating thing too you know he he doesn't just study the fact that this is a group of people doing things he like why are they outliers and so he analyzes what what causes an outlier yeah why are

These guys the best in the world and and then he applies that and he really does I mean that's the the crazy thing is that when you look at the the domination of your team and you look at it over the course of you know six years it's it's Rel Relentless like it's continual it's it's constant and it keeps going and because of this philosophy of s days a week training and constant Innovation and always refreshing the mind with new techniques and and always stimulating The athletes with new options you're you're seeing this NeverEnding progression

where as I look at other teams and you get these Elite guys who are at a world championship level and even Elite guys at a world championship level even though they win World Championships and they they do really well they they are stagnant in their progress at least observationally yeah you know they don't look any different what most people do is they get to a Certain level usually in Jitsu it's black belt and then they Coast on that technique and they get a little bit more physically mature most the most high level competitors get their

black belt at 22 23 24 and they get physically more mature until they're 30 but they don't ever progress technically whereas with us like every six months like if I fought myself at 2019 2019 ADCC right now I Crush myself um so that's the thing it's always constant constant Progression working towards new goals and and and New Heights what is your ultimate end goal do you have an ultimate end goal now you're here you are so young to be not just the best on the planet but arguably the best of all time at 25 yeah

um I just I just want to finish my career and I want people to think that okay there's just absolutely no chance that anyone could ever touch what you've done In your career like right now sure I'm arguably the best of all time but you know people can surpass my records um when I finish my career I want people to sit back and think wow like no one's ever going to get close to that that's that's a Wild goal but that keeps you motivated yeah I mean since you're already the best because you're in a

weird situation I should tell people that don't understand Jiu-Jitsu or don't know the the landscape you Can't get fights you're having a really hard time getting fights I mean props to it's been tough vag for stepping up because he's a smaller guy and you know and he's one of the rare elite black belts that did choose to step up because you're you're in this weird position right now where people are worried about their reputation yeah I mean it's crazy because like I'm like one of the nicer guys to compete against like I don't rip submissions

I'm not like smacking you in The face or poking you in the eyes like I I'm I'm pretty mild as far as like you know being like very physical when I compete against you I'm actually pretty nice when I compete against you if you look at a guy like Tyson like he was just murder ing people and he had no short of fights like everyone wanted to fight him it's just so strange that there's not even strikes involved and I just can't get people to actually step up to compete it's it's a weird you Think

that's a financial thing though cuz when Tyson was involved at least you get a couple million bucks if you get your head knocked off it could be like people are fighting me for like6 $6,000 so I mean it's definitely it's definitely uh you know that if you're if you're if you're going to get out get knocked out by Tyson for $10 million is a little bit than it's a little bit different than getting embarrassed by a [ __ ] talk shitalking [ __ ] Gordon for Like five grand that's the other thing that's unusual about

you is that when people think about successful Mar martial artists they think of these stoic Warriors who bow to each other and show respect you talk so much [ __ ] and you talk so much [ __ ] to people online you go back and forth with people online you post pictures of them looking stupid you make like memes you have all these things you put you use social media and most people who do things the way you do It suck yes that's what's crazy it's like to be the best of the best but also

to be talking mad [ __ ] all the time it's one of those combinations where I'm sure your opponents are like [ __ ] yeah well if you talk [ __ ] and you don't have the skills to actually back it up you just look like a clown yeah like you're like a guy like Dylan who just talks [ __ ] on Instagram but then he's like 18 and 16 as a black belt like he has like two like two fights against Some guys in belor um but if you can go out and you can

you can talk [ __ ] you can say I'm going to do this like you can say I'm going to finish this sub Mission I'm going to finish this match by triangle and then go out and finish match by triangle like people like oh [ __ ] like even if they hate you they have no choice but to listen to you and respect you well I like what you did with your first one of your matches that I saw you uh it was a couple matches ago You said you going to fish finish with a

mounted triangle but you said that before the match a mounted armar mounted armar excuse me and then this last match you drew a picture of a triangle put it in an envelope and then gave it to the commentator and said don't open this until after the match yeah and you finished by triangle but but that time you didn't let him know did the first time you said it in advance though right I said it right before the match so he Probably didn't see it oh okay I I I posted it right before the match but

the the chances of him looking at it when he was like getting ready to walk out were probably pretty low whereas the one with Vagner there's no way could have seen it because I just I put it in the envelope and they didn't open it until after the event yeah because there was there was times when you had him in good positions where I was wondering like if you were letting him go cuz you said that you Wanted to Maul him yeah I want I wanted to I wanted to abuse him for like the first

20 minutes and then finish him with like 10 minutes left which is what I did um if I wanted to Triangle him before that I could have probably done it pretty easily um especially on the back but uh that's just not what I wanted to do why did you want to punish him like that uh just cuz we have some history he used to whenever we competed he would always be like super dirty and Like you know putting his hands in my face and he's just like a very aggressive style competitor um and when I

was like 18 19 he always he wouldd always like walk around backstage and like knock my crowns off my head like when I you used to he used to wear for folks need to know this used to wear a Burger King Crown Burger King crown and now I have updated to a plastic Crown I walk around tournaments with like a robe like a a king's robe and a crown on my Head and then everyone's like who's this [ __ ] I'm like I'm the [ __ ] who's going to win the tournament tomorrow um so

I show up and it's just like super obnoxious and then I just show up and I just beat everybody up and everyone's like wow that [ __ ] [ __ ] with a cra but it's such a weird combination like like the first picture with with the with the robe on I showed up to noi worlds like that and I was coaching the day before so I show up and I'm just Walking around the the pyramid in California like that and I'm everyone I'm just coaching like my like blue belt students like the team members

that are like in that and people are like wow this guy's really like dressed like that right now and I'm like yep I'm really dressed like that and then I just show up the next day in double gold and everyone's like wow that [ __ ] [ __ ] just did that have you always been like that have you Always been a guy who talked a lot of [ __ ] no um it all started when uh when I won my first ebi and people were giving me [ __ ] about how I shouldn't have

beat Yuri and when people started hating online I'm like you know what [ __ ] this I'm not going to be quiet I'm just going to go back at them because I realized early on that no matter how nice you are people are always going to talk [ __ ] no matter what you do people are going to talk [ __ ] like George is the nicest guy Ever and people are like what a [ __ ] [ __ ] that guy sucks he just lays and prays and you people give George [ __ ]

and George is the nicest guy ever so I'm like you know well if people are going to talk [ __ ] regardless I may as well just say and do what I want and just be authentic and and have fun with it that's funny it's uh but it's just it seems almost out of place for someone's who's as good as you are yeah I mean most people with this kind of talent Don't do it but it's fun for me and I just feel like it just upsets so many people and they take it so seriously

and I don't and I'm just just sitting there like I'm sitting there like laughing behind my keyboard and everyone's like pulling their hair out on the other side of the screen and I know that it upsets so many people and uh you know it's just it's easy to run with it it's just when you see people react like cyborg in particular the second Fight that you have with cyborg how many times you twice twice twice okay the second one the first one you submitted him but the second one he's literally swinging at your head like

making it look like he's touching your head but he's actually smacking you yes he's just he smacked me like I think I think it was 14 times in the match and then finally like the last second of the match they they dced him for it last second of the match 9 minutes and 59 Seconds the Brazilian refs all waited until the last possible second and they dqd him for smacking me and then I won by DQ because he was smacking me did you talk to him about it afterwards uh we talked we kind of squashed

our beef and now we're cool like uh I was like you know this is all fun for me like don't take it like they all take it so personal it's like you can't take like it's just business like you can't you can't take it personally Like sure some things that I do I like first of all I only attack guys who you have started [ __ ] with me or started [ __ ] with my team or inadvertently or passive aggressively um you talk [ __ ] about you know our team or myself um the

problem is I just go way further than is necessary like they started like level two and I could just go to level a thousand like right away and I just don't stop like it's like they like they like they like talk [ __ ] about me like 2015 and we're like 2021 and I'm like still just berading them every day so it's just I just go way overboard and that's what people get upset about um but I never actually attack someone who hasn't who hasn't started with me first it's just funny the dedication to [

__ ] talking yeah I mean it's a it's a full-time job but now I can't even do it because Instagram just erases all my post yeah Instagram I just stopped pretty much using Instagram I just like Post like once a day or once every other day now but Instagram deletes like if I go on and I comment something and I like attack a hater who attacked me and retaliate like 60% of my posts just get a race now so it's like it's not I would spend hours a day on Instagram it's like a full-time job

but now it's like not even worth my time because I know that if I go on and I write you know 30 comments 20 of them are going to get erased so it's not even worth my time Dealing with it anymore what do you think is going on you think someone's reporting them I think it's a combination of people reporting it and I think it's just the algorithm is like Had Me Like has a hit on me and I think that like like is it shows you your violations I have like hundreds of violations like

300 violations like I tell people to kill themselves stuff so like it now they just started threatening to uh delete my account and They delete like all my comments so it's not even worth going on and attacking people like because normally it's fun for me to to entertain the fans by attacking the haters yeah but now it's just like Instagram just erased like 60% of my [ __ ] so it's not even worth attacking people cuz you spend six hours online and four hours of them are useless cuz all your comments just get get erised

so even if you just have a post and they leave the post up if you Have comments on the under the post they'll delete your comments they delete my comments yeah what yeah I didn't even know they did that yeah yeah they they delete comments all the time like people attack me I retaliate and then they start to uh and then we go back and forth and then like the whole comment section gets erased so you spend like four hours on a comment thread and then the original comment gets erased and then before you know

it like you just Spent four hours on Instagram and it was all useless what the [ __ ] is wrong with them that just it just drives me nuts I just I don't understand why they do it and it's just getting worse it's not it's not getting any better so now I just go on like once every once every day or so once every other day I just promote like a fight coming up or an instructional that's coming out and then I just I don't even bother arguing with people what about videos can you make

Videos like YouTube videos or or talking [ __ ] in uh Instagram video will they delete that uh depends on depend I mean if people report it they pretty much just because I have so many strikes against me they pretty much just if someone reports it they just instantly delete it and they don't even give me a chance to fight it anymore they're just like yeah [ __ ] you you had so many viol that they uh they just erase it but um I defin I I can do some stuff uh but it's It's getting

the window of what I can work with is getting smaller and smaller by the day so it's just like I it's just it is one of the weirdest problems to have to be the best in the world at something and then to have someone like Instagram like deleting comments and posts and like I'm like Perma band on Facebook like I get like 30 banned days I'm okay for like 2 days and then they just ban me for 30 days and they'll go back and they'll find [ __ ] from like 2015 they like this goes

against Community standards banned for 30 days banned for 30 days Bann I've been like the last year I probably had like four active days on Facebook and then I'm just banned for the next 30 days every single time it's just like I can't even I can't even use it anymore I how do you have time to do that though with all the training so that's what I do for fun like most people watch TV I just go on Instagram and I attack people Like I get home I eat my food I'm like eating my food

and I go on and I'm typing and I'm like I like tell I tell that I'm like man I just I just crush this guy on Instagram I read the thread she's like yeah it's going to get deleted and then 30 minutes later like oh this is goes against hate spe hate speech so it's just like I would I always used to do it for fun but now it's not even fun because it just waste my time doing it now obviously the next Course of progression for a guy like you would be MMA yeah now

I know that you talked about doing MMA in the past but now it seems like it's actually G to happen yeah um so Jon doesn't want me to compete in MMA because he feels like Jiu-Jitsu is just about to break into that next level of professional sports uh so for me at least right now I feel like I need at least someone from my team to be able to do the things that I'm doing before I can kind of move away From Jiu-Jitsu into MMA because right now we have Gary MMA he's carrying our flag

our team's flag in MMA we have me at the top of the Heap and Jiu-Jitsu so like if Craig or Nicki Rod or my brother um can start doing the things that I'm doing and they win in atcc absolute maybe or you they go out and they start beating and submitting all the highle guys then I feel like maybe I can leave uh Jiu-Jitsu because if I start fighting MMA I'm going to focus on MMA um so I Feel like if one of my teammates can kind of take my place then I can start moving

into MMA and then and go from there so you look at it as a you really do genuinely look at it as a team effort you're not looking at just as your as an indivual most athletes are very selfish and they just take take take whereas we have we have a we have a very GR a very good team cohesion and uh you know we're always looking out for one another and you know I find that that's the way that People operate best um if you look at most teams it's basically just a bunch of

tough guys in the room who train together who have no loyalty and if someone offers them a better deal they're going to go somewhere else and and train there um whereas that's like whereas with us we're very loyal to JN and uh you know everything that everything that we do is the same like my game is very similar to Jon's very Similar to Gary's very similar to Craigs we all are taught by John and we all follow the same ideas and the same philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu so the Loyalty within the team is uh is very

strong and uh you know I I feel that it's it's always going to be a team effort um you know without without John I wouldn't be as good as I am without Gary I wouldn't be as good as I am without Nikki it's the collaboration of Minds in the gym that that really pushes you forward um So you know I feel like we're different in that in that sense that we're not a team that recruits people we're a team that builds that builds athletes from almost the ground up like you see like a you know

a lot of the big MMA teams uh or even the big jitu teams like OS for example they recruit guys guys who are already successful they recruit them they give them a place to live they give them a training program and they they just recruit tough guys but if you look At a guy like Andre and you look at his black belts they all have vastly different games kanan's game is different than Andre Hanger's game is different than Andre's Keenan's game is different than than Andre's and it's basically just a team of recruiting guys who

are a bunch of tough guys training in the same room whereas John we have a team of homegrown guys who all do the same thing like they all have discernible games that all mimic what Jon teaches uh and they just have you know slight changes and variations due to our physical attributes and and uh and personalities now when you say you think of it as a team you mean this has taken into a completely different level cuz you're not willing to progress your career outside the realm of Jiu-Jitsu until someone else can carry the Crown

yes that's that's next level commitment to the team philosophy yeah I mean like I said you have a guy like John who's like the most selfless person in the world like he shows up every day and he gives you everything like you know I want I want what's best for the team uh even if it's not what's best for me you know I want to I want what's what's best for for for Jon's team uh you know I want him to go down in history as being the guy who had the absolute best team in

the world and um you know right now you can make the argument that sure you Know Gordon's the best in the world but the rest of the guys don't win as much as him so I want to get those the rest of the guys on my team to to my level so that you don't have the argument anymore of sure Gordon's good but he's the only one who really wins when it counts um you know I want I want to go into ADCC with my team and I want to win every single division so that

would be insane that you know that's not outside the realm of Possibility either that's what's crazy yeah I mean next year we have Gary might cut to 66 kilos so if Gary's at 66 my brother will be at 77 Craig will be at 88 I'll be at 99 if they let me do the division and then Nicki Rod will be at 99 plus what do you mean if they let you do the division so for ADCC when you win the absolute you go to the Super fight so this the the the the super fight Champion

fights the winner of the absolute now I won the absolute last Year so I'm only supposed to have one fight but I've requested to do the weight division as well because you normally would just do the super fight but I want to do the super fight and I also want to do my weight division so I have instead of having one match I'd had five matches no one's ever asked to do that people have asked to do the absolute before but the problem is if I win the absolute and then I win the Super fight

the super fight winner is Supposed to fight the absolute winner so you can't fight yourself right so you it doesn't make sense to do the super fight and the absolute but it does make sense to do the weight Division and the absolute so if I if I if they let me do the weight division I'll be the first person in history to ever to ever do the weight division plus his super fight at the same time wow now how is Gary juggling training for MMA and and Jiu-Jitsu as Well that guy's a machine he basically

just he didn't he didn't do Les Jiu-Jitsu to do MMA he just added MMA on top of jiujitsu sessions so he trains MMA seven days a week and he spars lightly seven days a week and then he finishes that and right now we don't have a gym set up in Puerto Rico so we're working around the schedule the class schedule of the gym owner so we have M he does MMA at 9 and then he trains for like an hour spars then he Has like a 30 minute break and then he does uh and then

he does Jiu-Jitsu at 11 and he just adds the session on so he does MMA and Jiu-Jitsu s days a week and like within like two hours of each other and when he's training MMA he's also grappling yeah so he's grappling twice yeah most most of the MMA training is is shoot boxing is standing to take Downs because he's already so good on the ground he needs to get needs to work on fence wrestling and and shoot boxing uh But he definitely he definitely is some grappling when he does MMA so he grapples and and

spars and then he pretty much goes right to Jiu-Jitsu and has to do that so I mean that's definitely not an easy thing to do and seven days a week is definitely not an easy thing to do and how is he doing it in terms of striking coaching like is he did he bring someone with him to Puerto Rico was he using a different person in New York what was he doing he uses JN JN Is our striking coach really I'm telling you John knows just as much about every martial art as he does Jiu-Jitsu

like John is our wrestling coach John's our Jiu-Jitsu coach John's our striking coach John's our MMA coach like John coaches J Gary for every aspect of MMA wall wrestling everything holy [ __ ] yeah so he coaches him for kicking and everything yeah dude people don't know this about JN Jon's first martial art was Muay Thai JN did Muay Tha for over a Decade when he was growing up and he studied all the best Muay Thai guys I mean John knows a lot about striking I mean he he coach like I said like people don't

know this about John they think he's just a leglock guy or just the grappler like he coaches Gary and like Gary's like he's progressing fast as far as the Striking going um he's only been striking for a year and a half now and he's uh you know he looks he looks comfortable out there he does um and uh That's shocking that he's only been doing it a year and a half year and a half two years maybe uh but yeah John's his coach John John John coaches everything so does he have different training Partners to

train with him in the MMA aspect yeah so he has a couple guys who live there uh and then he has a couple guys who he brings in who stay with him he's a a three-bedroom apartment so he brings in guys from New York and then he has like one or two Guys that live there and he spars with them every day wow so that was his that was his approach from the minute he started competing in MMA cuz he's had how many fights now six I think six yeah and this is all in one

Championship right all his fights are over there Y which is um the biggest uh thing out outside of the United States they're they're gigantic in Asia they're are they back to crowds I don't believe so I'm not Positive but I don't believe so um when Gary does this he's still doing it seven days a week and he's still doing Jiu-Jitsu seven days a week cor so the same approach that you guys have just for Jiu-Jitsu training he's doing with everything but double yeah I mean if he's very tired maybe he'll take off drilling sometimes and

just uh and just train live and Jiu-Jitsu MMA is his main focus and J jitsu's his secondary Focus but he still does two sessions a day Every single day like every every every day now what are you guys doing for Recovery do you do anything specific do you have deep tissue massage do you have cold ice baths do what do you do I get massages sometimes just when I feel like I'm really tight mostly just use a guy to help me stretch because I'm not disciplined enough to stretch like I should normally you saying you're

not disciplined enough to do anything is [ __ ] hilar like the stretch like I I Like I hate stretching um and a lot of people hate stretching it's weird in in our like in our sport like I we spend all of our time doing this with concave shoulders so like anything where I round my shoulders I can do perfectly but anything where I have to bridge like this because most people just explode explod I don't ever explode everything's everything's always like this contraction so when I have to like open myself up like this like

if I try to put My hands over my head and do a squat like my hands end up like almost parallel to the floor like my shoulders are just like the most inflexible things uh so I I I work with the guy who helps me helps me stretch occasionally and that helps me stretch occasionally um but the the big thing for me that I neglected for a long time was sleep I feel like that if I can get like 6 to eight hours of sleep um I can recover you know pretty well I feel like

for a Long time I would just get like 3 four hours of sleep at night and it was okay when I was 19 years old but now I feel like I need the extra sleep and I feel like if I can get a decent night's sleep uh you know I can sleep forever so it's easy for me to have a good night's sleep and not have to wake up in the middle of the night um but if I can get a good night's sleep I feel like I can recover pretty pretty well so is the

issue just going to bed on time yeah I mean I Usually we we finish pretty early so um you know I do the MMA session with with uh with Gary either now since I signed with one I've been doing a lot of fence wrestling John's been coaching me and Craig with fence wrestling because Craig's competing in Su and I'm competing at one in the cage so I want to wrestle people on the fence a lot uh so i' usually do the MMA session with Gary and then I do the jiujitsu session uh after that and

then we come home I Eat food I relax for a little bit I lift weights and then I'm usually in bed by like you know 9 10:00 and the Jitsu the MMA doesn't start till 9: so I mean I sleep for 8 to 10 hours every night usually so you generally like to lift weights at night because I've seen videos of you getting up in the morning and lifting weights in the morning I do yeah sometimes I go through kind of Cycles where I'm like man I feel really good when I get up and I

lift weights Early because then it's it's it's out of the way but uh I'm I've never been a morning person I hate waking up in the mornings so I do it for like three weeks and then like I travel to like compete or something and then the routine gets [ __ ] up and then I get back home and I'm like I'm not waking up tomorrow at 5:00 a.m. to lift so then I end up going back into a routine where I lift at like 8:00 p.m. and I I go back and forth between when

I lift sometimes it's Before sometimes it's after so if you train at night like what time is you training over I usually train from like 8:00 to 9:30 oh and so then you'll lift weights after that no so I'll I'll lift weights from like 800 to 9:30 but if we trange if we we TR Jitsu at 11:00 a.m. oh okay every day yeah so we're so we're finished by 2 so you have enough time to recover and eat and yeah you go home you shower if you want to hang out at the beach for a

little while you can and Then you know you eat food when you digested you maybe take a nap and then you wake up and you lift now do you do anything else like ice bath sauna no no I've never done that I've never um I'm not oppos I ice path uh ice baths I'm definitely opposed to I hate cold water I just will not knock it in like any anything below 80° uh but I'm not I'm not opposed to anything else I'm not opposed to T saas and stuff like that I just it's something that

I've never done But there's physical advantages of using those things I'm sure there is do you think that that would even take you like another level pass where you're at now I could but I don't think the gains are I think the games gains are going to be marginal I think that uh the the big thing is going to take me to the next level is just getting better at Jiu Jitsu so that's what most of my focus is on that's why I have to hire someone to help me stretch because I I'm very Disciplined

with jiu-jitsu and I'm relatively disciplined with weightlifting but with anything else I'm just like that's like the two things I'm good at in life is like being able to lift weights and being able to do Jiu-Jitsu and everything else I'm just like a complete child like I just like I just refuse to do anything else besides what I have to do for my career but I think it would help you I think ice bath and sauna would help you I know SAA Would help you I mean Dan Gable was uh in here recently and just

ranting and raving about what a gigantic impact sauna has had and how you know he recognized it from all these uh athletes overseas competing in the Olympics how they utilize the sauna and a big impact on them yeah I'm definitely not opposed to saunas I actually like sitting in saunas uh and and hot tubs but uh I just something that I don't have a sauna and I've just never I've never done them but If I if I one day I have a sauna if I buy a house uh again I'll definitely I'll definitely think about

putting a sauna in there cuz they're not that expensive in there no you get those Barrel they're reasonably inexpensive in terms of like the value that you get from them yeah and if it if it'll help then you know I'm definitely I have to do some more re research but if it'll help I I'll use it I'll send you the research okay because I'm a a son of Freak okay I I live by that [ __ ] thing I'm an old man I always I always see the Photoshop Steve photoshopping you in sauna so yeah

he's got a lot of good stuff to work with but uh I do it every day at least five days a week if not seven yeah I know I know I know many people who use them who swear by them as as well I just I I've never I've never done consistently it it's got a host of benefits but uh it's really good for your endurance too believe it or not it Actually has a mild effect that's akin to like an EPO oh okay yeah it increases your red blood cell count but the big thing

is the heat shock proteins and the decrease in inflammatory markers like they can monitor all this stuff and and prove it with blood work so I'll look more into Zas then yeah it's it's legit now in terms of uh striking how much striking you done uh a minimal amount I'm a white belt equivalent um I I've done it uh but the problem is when I was Getting ready to initially fight MMA it was uh it was like 2018 I started I started working with John and uh then in 200 early no sorry 2019 and then

early 2019 I tore my LCL and I came right back from that surgery and I had to jump right into an ADCC Camp so my thing was I had to get my knee better and then I have to prepare for 2019 ADCC uh and I did 2019 ADCC and then uh you know after that I sat down with John and John's like you know this is a huge ADCC I Think grappling is going to start to go into a direction where it's going to start to be like a real professional sport um I think you

should stick with grappling at least for a few more years before you do before you decide to move to MMA like what John doesn't want is for uh for me to leave grappling just as it explodes Lo into the next level so I think that uh you know after I was I was actually getting ready to uh to start talking to Promotions about about Fighting MMA and then uh then I hurt my knee and then I had to do the ADCC camp and then we did the ADCC camp and John's like dude like you have

a super fight next year it's going to be in Vegas like it's going to be huge so he's like just focus on that for now and then see where we go after that now you started competing with when you tore your knee you started competing before it was really 100% yeah so I competed 6 months to the day uh after the LCL Reconstruction uh in my first tournament and then I competed at ADCC s months to the day after the Reconstruction so it definitely wasn't 100% but it was okay enough to to compete at least

what did you do for rehab I just work with a with a PT who my surgeon recommended um my big issue was that my hip on the one side locked up so my hip on my left hip I tore my left lcf my left hip locked up and was like was losing all of its flexibility to kind of overcompensate For the LCL being torn so big thing was like opening up my hip and my whole left lower back was all tight so a lot of it like the first few months of rehab was just him

just working on flexibility and getting range of motion back and then um they used uh for the rehab they used that uh that bfr the Blood Flow Restriction where they put that thing around your around your uh they put a thing around my quad and it cuts off 80% of the blood flow and then you do like Very mild exercises like body weight squats or lunges and stuff and the idea is that it stops the blood flow from getting down to your leg and then when you take it off the blood rushes down to the

bottom of your leg and it promotes healing so they use that and I used that for a few months and it it seemed to help and then you I just was like I actually we do a 12we ADCC camp and I was just miserable the whole camp like I started wrestling again and my timing Was off I was getting exhausted I just felt terrible and like 10 weeks into the 10 10 weeks into the camp I was like John there's no way I'm going to be able to do this and then like on the 11th

week I just like from a Friday to a Monday I just came in and I just started beating the [ __ ] out of people and I was like wow I I think I might be able to do this so like like the whole 12we Camp I was just miserable and I was like there's no way I can do this and then Like a 3-day span I went from like just being terrible and then all my timing started to come back my hand fighting from standing position started to come back and I was like I

think I might be able to do this and then by like the time ADCC rolled around I was like all right I'm in and it ended up working out what do you attribute that to like how did you do that uh I mean I don't know I think it was just I was I was doing rehab like like I Was supposed to and the knee itself wasn't really the issue it was just my body lagging behind for like you know you don't train for four months your all your timing you know your timing is all

off you get you start wrestling and your hand fighting is off your day a day late and a dollar short and your shots you just feel you feel like you know there's nothing physically that there's nothing that that bad physically wrong with you like my knee wasn't like going to going To buckle or break in half or anything but I just felt like my overall timing for everything was off and then uh like when I started wrestling hard for like two weeks and everything started to come back and then like you know from one day

to the next almost it seemed like I was like okay I feel like everything's kind of coming back now and the last like week or two before ADCC was when like I really started to feel like I was I was who I was before I Hurt the knee I think John has a real point in terms of uh saying that grappling is on its way to becoming a legitimate professional sport like a much bigger professional sport I think he's right but I think it needs you I think it needs you I think it needs someone

like you and needs a big personality who's also doing [ __ ] up things like writing a triangle down on a piece of paper putting in an envelope and handing it to The commentators before the match and then finishing someone with that yeah the thing is like it needs more of me one guy that's the isue it's like everyone's talking you have to be humble and respect and nobody wants to come out and watch an interview that where the guy's like oh you know I trained really hard for this fight I'm sure he trained hard

too he's really tough it's going to be a great like everyone says that nobody Wants to [ __ ] listen to someone coming out and know there's 20 matches and all 20 guys say the same thing like they want a guy who's coming out and like you know [ __ ] this [ __ ] I'm going to beat the [ __ ] out of them like people are like all right I can get behind that so you know they can kind of live vicariously vicariously through you because they want to do that you they want

to go out they want to go uh you know up to their boss tomorrow and be Like you know [ __ ] you I'm going to beat the [ __ ] out of you you know they can kind of they can kind of get behind that because they can't do that in their in their in in their in their lives um but you know there's there's always going to be a limit on how big grappling can get as a sport because uh grappling is a participant based sport where most people who watch grappling either participate

in grappling or they have family members who are doing it and They're watching their cousin compete um whereas you know the UFC or the NBA or the NFL like most people who watch MMA aren't showing up the next day to get punched in the face like people are just watching it because they they they want to they want to be entertained it's a spectator sport so I I do believe that it's going to get much bigger in the coming years but I also believe there's going to be a cap on like it'll never be the

size of football for example or the UFC for example yeah it might not be but I think it can be bigger than people give it credit for because of the submissions because people are so accustomed to seeing submissions in MMA yeah and to see people pull off submissions in Jiu-Jitsu it's like a knockout in boxing yes yes especially when you have good commentary which uh who's number one does you know and a lot of these commentators are really educated now because they're such fans Of the sport so they could talk people through submissions and let

people know exactly what's happening and when someone's in danger and when they're free but I think you're right in terms of we need more big personalities and more competition the fact that you're having a hard time getting matches is weird yeah you know with all these big heavyweights out there there's a lot of guys who are your size who they're not stepping up yeah and another thing you Need too is you need a training program that pushes you towards some missions like nobody wants to watch two guys in 50/50 fighting to [ __ ] scissor

back and forth until someone gets an advantage and then you come up and you know people people want to see movement which is exciting okay ultimately what people are looking for is is movement M because the people aren't moving there's no excitement they want movement and they want they want submissions Submission is equivalent to a knockout yeah um and if you have a training program like I said before built around just doing the absolute minimal amount of work to win then you're going to be boring but if you if you want to take the hardest

route and you say okay how can I fight to a submission there has to be a lot of movement to get a submission you got to work through various you know positional gains to get to a submission in most cases um and you submit a guy And you're like okay people okay I can get behind that like people see an arm break people see a guy get strangled unconscious and they're like wow that was [ __ ] that was intense is John does he have a game plan to try to elevate the status of grappling

or to elevate the profile of it um so he's talked about us he's talked about this to us um I remember I had one of the most important conversations of my career um when John Told us that you just you have to be exciting in one way or another um if you look at a guy like chel sunon for example he doesn't have you know he hasn't defended the UFC title for 10 years in a row but he was entertaining outside of the ring so even though he didn't have the skills to beat the best

guys consistently people wanted to watch him because he was entertaining and he was different um where if you look at a guy like George George wasn't really Entertaining outside of the ring but he would just go in and just beat everybody for you know over the course of two or three generations and he's like if you look at notoriously who the most remembered and highest paid highest paid people it's the people that were entertaining in the competition and outside of the competition you look at Tyson you look at Muhammad Ali look at uh Connor you

know guys that uh have the skills to back up what they're saying so That they're entertaining outside before the fight people want to watch that like he Conor goes to a press conference everybody wants to watch it um you know George go George go goes to a press conference and everyone's know what's knows what's going to happen George is going to be like oh you know he's you know he's very tough I'm excited to fight him but Conor goes to a press conference [ __ ] throwing monster cans and [ __ ] at people um

who the [ __ ] is That guy like people people want to watch that um but you know at on the same token the [ __ ] talk is the easy part and it only takes you so far like you only get so far with [ __ ] talk uh so that's why you need to have the skills in order to actually be able to back up the [ __ ] talk and John John told us that we need to be exciting either on or off the mat we need to be different and we just

need to focus on being the best in the world he's like all the all all the You know pre-fight Antics and all the [ __ ] talk and all the all the interviews that's the easy stuff the hard part is being the best in the world like if you just focus on being the absolute best in the world and that's your primary focus everything else comes easy so he set me down when I was like 17 and he talked to he talked to us about this and I was like you know what that that makes

sense and then like a few years later I was like man maybe I should create like this King Ryan Persona like it's different people can get behind it it's entertaining and then you know ended up working out so it was a sort of calculated effort yeah yeah it's it's got to be so weird to have a guy like that as a mentor cuz you know there's only one of them out there yeah and it's just like you know on the mats it's like literally like a cheap book like you ask John a question about anything

you asked him about a striking question you ask Him about a grappling question doesn't matter you ask him about a frisbee question and he knows the answer um and then you have a guy who's there all day long all year long and he knows everything about everything and you're just like wow like this is this is like nothing you're ever going to find anywhere else and he doesn't he doesn't have he doesn't have kids or a wife he doesn't have he doesn't compete himself so his primary focus is on just making Us better like that's

what he loves to do like most coaches they go home and they're in their they're in the camp for one of their own fights they're focusing on themselves they go home they have a family to raise like that's not JN like John goes home and he watches tape from a 1956 boxing match and he comes in the next day and teaches Gary something you can't compete with that yeah it's it's tough there's no no other guy like that yeah especially a guy like that who's Isn't he a PhD in philosophy as well yeah yeah from

legitimate University Columbia he was a teacher at Columbia that's imagine yeah where are you going to get one of those that's there's one of those on Earth yeah I mean it's it's tough I mean if if you like he's he's applied like you have like a like an actual genius competing against like most instructors that like you know a lot of the a lot of the top Level coaches that are coaching Jiu-Jitsu in the US grew up in like a FLL in Brazil and there's nothing wrong with that they they moved to America America they

became successful but like to compete against a guy like John who's like a legitimate genius and is you know teaching at Columbia University in New York and then just applies that intelligence to the sport of Jiu-Jitsu it's just not fair in most cases like the the the the level of intellect is Just there's just no comparison but it's also the level of intellect and this obsessive dedication to teaching people like the only thing he enjoys is knives he collects knives and and martial arts yeah he found one of my knives on my Instagram he's like

I love that knife he start what are you a knife freak dude he's he he gives out knives for black belts right yeah he moves he so whenever we win a big tournament I remember when I won 2017 ADCC he came in with a katana That's this big that was custom made by one of the best kn makers in Japan and he goes this Katana is designed to cut the heads off horses in battle and if you lined up three male human beings back to back it would chop them in half of the Torso with

one swipe and I was like wow that's [ __ ] awesome so I just have like a collection of knives like sitting in my room I have I have to get stands for them still but whenever we like win something big he gives he Gives out knives he loves he's like a knife freak that's interesting so he has knife makers that he hires commissions he like he like he knows all the best world's like all the world's best knife makers like he's like friends with them like texts him he's like hey can you do this

he like designs his own knives like he's he's crazy obsessed with knives well he likes pig hunting knives those big ass Pig stickers yeah cuz he you know he used to hunt pigs in in New Zealand right that that was like his childhood like Pastime like he used to go out and used to hunt pigs with with dogs dog dogs that's how they do in Hawaii too yeah that's a that's a down home way to do it yeah yeah they do it that way here too I got invited to do one of those hunts I

asked them one time and I'm like I'm like uh I'm like John like what was your favorite like you know TV show Growing Up he goes we didn't have TV we hunted Hogs and I'm Like okay he just tell me about that but uh yeah my friend I I had a buddy in Dallas we went out with had like night vision goggles and we and and uh and we were he's like he's like you want to go hunt some Hogs tonight I'm like yeah sure and we went out like night time and we were looking

for pigs yeah Hennessy just invited me to do that and Tim Kennedy's always invited me to go hunt them on planes or on helic yeah that that that's crazy cuz then they're all Running through the field you have like this giant gun it's nuts but I I have to eat it like I I'm not going to kill him and leave him there like but apparently they're a big problem here right it's a giant problem huge problem but there's still delicious yeah they are so if I'm going to go out and I'm going to gun down

10 Hogs I am you want to eat at least one of them I'm going to at least eat one the other ones I'm either going to donate to the hungry like there's pro Programs called hunters for the hungry you could donate it but I just they a lot of times they just leave them there and let them rot because they they their idea is just eradication they just want to eradicate them and it's really hard to do yeah there's so many and they're pretty smart too they're smart as [ __ ] they're smarter than dogs

yeah it's a weird animal man because uh you know they were brought over here in like you know [ __ ] 1600s or whatever it was whenever the European explorers came over here they brought over pigs and they've just run a muck now they're everywhere and like Texas is one of the worst places out here for them they up one Road in Texas and the day they opened up the road like they did construction on this road lay all the T the day they do the the open up the road they had 40 car accidents

with pigs oh my God I mean I I was like talking to my buddy in Dallas and he would like he went on like a 15minute rant about how the pigs just destroy everything in Texas and I was like who that's like kind of sensitive for you I didn't realize how bad it was oh it's bad I think overall this let's see like how much damage do wild pigs cause in Texas per year I think it's in the billions yeah that's insane yeah it's definitely in the hundreds of millions of dollars I Know for sure

because I know ranchers who have said like on their personal property it's over a million dollars of damage per year by Hogs because you say if you're growing something that's crazy to think about yeah 52 million that's it that's the money that's it why am why am I so exaggerating feral Hogs CA more than 1 .5 billion oh Okay click on that I mean it's the same article I don't know why it says it differently yeah that's what I had read I had read that it was uh hundreds of millions and so it's actually 1.5

billion each year but the most hated animals in Texas have their charms oh well that makes sense because there's a lot of farms here what are their charms they're delicious baby back ribs but it's one of the most ethical animals to hunt because you literally have to hunt them because they've destroyed ground nesting Birds they decimate Populations of other yeah man and they ruin people's Farms like if you want food like if you want people to grow food if you're a vegan okay and you love corn guess what [ __ ] face you got to

kill those pigs if you don't kill those pigs you're not going to stop them from eating all that corn and they're going to keep multiplying three four times a year they breed yeah so they'll I think it's three I think they have litters three times a year and they'll have you Know three four babies every time and then next thing you know you got a swarm of pigs just devastating crops it's crazy and you can't keep an eye on all of them have you driven through Texas before I haven't not not I mean to some

degree yeah but not I shoulders it's Bonkers when you drive you just go this is all still Texas right and you just 6 hours later this is still Texas right 10 hours later we're still in Texas like what the [ __ ] and so it's just there's So much land and when you have millions and millions of these wild pigs I'm goingon to guess let's guess how many millions of wild pigs just in Texas yeah I bet oh that's a tough one I bet there's five million I'm reading through this the 1.5 billion is from

the Department of Agriculture and then it does say 52 million in Texas does that mean that there's rest is throughout the rest of the country is that what that and then There's must be somewhere there's more pigs I I'm trying to $50 million a year is an insane amount that's pretty minor in compar cuz this guy was me I think it was 1.4 million on his property um maybe has a giant Ranch though or maybe he's a liar I don't know people love to exaggerate I certainly do um I think California is a giant problem

for sure I know they're into San Jose now people are getting they're they're having Problems in San Jose where they're eating their lawn they're pulling up their lawn in San Jose like right in the middle of their it says there's 2 million wild pig excuse me roaming uh Texas that's it mhm there the 2 million pigs caus the 52 million in damage and there must be 30 million pigs roaming everywhere else I don't know that's fairly reasonable if you think about it right like each each pig is causing about 25 Bucks worth of damage that's

not that bad that's not too bad like really this is when you put it like that like maybe we don't have to kill the pig similar did you see this yesterday Grand Canyon NP seeks skilled Hunters to reduce bison population inside the park they're causing damage there too I guess inside the park yeah this article I just was looking at it those uh bison have grown from the Bison BR 115 years ago and it says that they're causing a Nuisance and they're going to have a hunt this year oh wow they want to reduce the

population by 200 I feel like they should capture them and just move them to other places I I think you know having a hunt on the park is a that's a touchy subject because they've worked so hard to make that place you know a wildlife refuge it's real weird cuz it's not a hunt you just assassinating them cuz I was there and dude you could just get right like I was Real careful that we did it behind a fence and I was like literally ready to grab my kids and run behind a car because when

they turn if they just decide to turn like if the the dude has a heart on he feels like you're [ __ ] blocking they'll just [ __ ] come charging at you and send people flying through the air they send themselves flying says they have moved up to like it says 88 of them have been moved on to tribal lands since 2019 so that's only In the last two years well that's a good sign it's a good sign that there's uh good grow those [ __ ] are so sturdy they're so hardy they nothing

kills them other than it's it's crazy how feeble a human being is compared to the other animals yeah even a guy like you I mean we're basically like water balloons like this is so their skin is so thin and to think about the fact that the animals now like compared to the dinosaurs are just like it the hunter Whoever gets this uh Lottery tag do you have to take it out without motorized assistance itself says you have to carry that out is that what that means yeah you can use horses oh okay that's yeah you

want to use horses anyway you could there's there's terrain that you really want to use mules yeah I say donkeys and mules mules are the best that's a cross between a donkey and a horse cuz uh they there the mo they're like a perfect combination apparently for like these uh Back Country Hunters they love mules because you could pack a lot of [ __ ] on them they don't give a [ __ ] if it's hot out or if it's cold out they don't drink as much water they they're just like super animal and they

got useless loads like the only way you can make them is you have to have a donkey [ __ ] a horse like you you can't make a mules can't [ __ ] other mules they're going to have a applicants have to meet some certifications and one of them Self-certify a high level of physical fitness have a firearm safety certification and pass a mark proficiency they should have that anyway by the way for hunters they should have to pass a a Marksmanship proficiency they have that in some states for getting a bow hunter license uh

three to five shots inside a 4in circle at 100 yards that's it that's I didn't know if that's good bad a uh well you're fighting well You're you're hunting a bison 4in circle's pretty good but that's so easy at 100 yards because you're probably using a rest like all you have to do is just not flinch and if you're uh if your rifle zeroed in you should be able to put them all inside like a couple inches I mean the only variation is you moving like with a really good rifle you just squeeze squeeze squeeze

squeeze boom like if you just keep like with a rifle rest like a Lead Sled which is most of The time they use a Caldwell or something like that you're rested you just don't Flinch but uh they should have that period for hunters because it's there's a lot of places where you don't even have to have a a Marksmanship uh you don't have to any kind of test but a high level of physical fitness implies that they want to make sure these people can carry out these animals so either you're going to carry it out

or just be Able to hoist it up like if you're quartering a bison do you know how much a [ __ ] bison leg must way guessing a lot like it's got to be hundreds of pounds if you kill that correct like and there's a photo of me when I shot a moose um it's on the cover of um carnivore magazine I think it is I think that's what it's called is just hunting oh Peterson's hunting that's right look at this that is not even a big Mose that was a fairly small Mose And that

was I don't know people don't realize how big moose moose are they're big as [ __ ] they're enormous and that thing on my shoulder is probably 150 lbs it was hard as [ __ ] to carry I had to hoist it up and sling it over my shoulder it was like I was it was like I had a small dude on my shoulders now a bon is like probably twice as big as that so you I mean I would imagine like a a a grown male bull bison it's probably a 300 lb leg they're

[ __ ] huge man you don't realize how big they are you see say they weigh up to 2,000 lb yeah what in the [ __ ] that's so big but the good news is you shoot one of those you eat that [ __ ] for two years you know that's two years of the best meat on planet Earth and you can give it to a lot of families like if you shoot one one life of one bison will sustain four or five people for 2 years I mean really that's a lot of meat it's

a lot of [ __ ] meat especially if you Use it right like you take the bones and you make bone marrow out of the bones you make asabuko out of the shanks all the parts that people like oftentimes leave behind I mean you can and then you get this [ __ ] crazy rug cuz if you shoot them in the winter time you have the most amazing fur yeah you know like American Indians they were pretty goddamn Smart in what they hunted they didn't [ __ ] around shoot one of those bad boys and

they just they're they're That's the thing about hunt air quotes hunting them in Yellowstone like they're so used to just being around people they just look at you like all you'd have to do is just pull out a rifle and just oh here we go They're not going to run I mean that was the problem when uh the settlers first started making their way across the PLS like they didn't know what a rifle was so when bison were dropping around them they'd be like what the [ __ ] is going on they just kept Eating

and then guys would shoot like 10 12 bison in a time because they didn't budge they were just in this exactly and they're they're not used to being in danger from hundreds hundreds of yards away they used to like an Indian would have to come sneaking up on them with a bow or a spear they'd have to ride at them with a horse and Jab them they'd have to do something to get close pigs are pigs are different like when I went hunting pigs like if you were upwind From them they smell you they run

away like they're they're they're hard to hunt yeah yeah if they're downwind and they catch your scent they will [ __ ] haul ass from hundreds of yards away same with bears they smell you they're like [ __ ] this they just haul off they have crazy senses of smell it's amazing and pigs can't see [ __ ] though if you just freeze yeah they don't know what the [ __ ] you are like if you're walking up on pigs and they just look at you all You have to do is freeze and they don't

see you they have terrible Vision but they can smell really good they smell really good and they hear really good yeah we were trying to position ourselves in the right spot and we just couldn't get it and they just [ __ ] kept moving moving moving so you guys didn't get one we didn't we didn't kill any of them we we only saw like three or four but they it was hard to keep track of them and then uh whenever we would Position ourselves they would move in the opposite direction yeah you got to go

to a place that's basically infested yeah there wasn't too many where we were yeah it's you know it really varies and they move around a lot too but uh have you been hunting at all before I just hunted the pigs the one time that was it I've never I didn't grow up hunting or anything like that but I'm not not a would love to do it I just never have it's a great way to get meat man and the Meat is fantastic what what does your diet consist of um so I actually have a condition

called gastroparesis where your stomach isn't that doesn't uh push the food through down to your intestines how it's supposed to so food basically just sits in my stomach for longer than it's supposed to uh and I've had this for like three years which is why I'm just constantly nauseous and just can't eat the amount of food that I need to uh so I'm basically limited to like chicken And rice and eggs that that's all I can eat I can't eat any red meat because it's hard to digest I can't eat anything fried I can't eat

cheeseburgers I can't eat anything spicy like there's a very select amount of foods that I'm actually able to eat that's crazy and when did this just started three years ago yeah so I had uh recurring staff infections and it was like I would take oral antibiotics and then i' would be on antibiotics for a week 10 days two weeks And then like 4 days later staff infection or antibiotics staff infection and I just had like four or five staff infection infections within the course of like 3 to 4 months and uh they don't know what

causes gastroparesis they don't really know too much about it um but I seem to think it was that and ever since then it's just I wake up in the morning I'm nauseous I go through the whole day extremely nauseous and then I just go to sleep nauseous so you're Nauseous right now yeah all the time really so all the time you're like yeah so like normally normally how it goes is like there's at least one hour of the day where i'm just like so incapacitated from being nauseous that I have to just sit in the

bathroom cuz I'm just so nauseous I just can't deal with it um so the problem is when I eat food like you can manage it with diet what you eat and how often you eat so normally what I should be doing is fasting so my stomach Is empty the whole day and then I just have a meal at night time but I would just waste away if I was fasting so I go kind of in these waves where my stomach's okay for a few months and then it starts to and then it get goes into

a bad dip and when I travel a lot to like compete or to teach or what ever the case is I'm usually forced to eat at restaurants and what restaurants do to make all the food taste better they put grease and butter and you end up I end Up like eating for four or five days at restaurants or you know the all this shitty food and then I'm [ __ ] up for like two weeks where I just can't eat anything so that's why my weight fluctuates depending on how bad my stomach is but I

have to eat every 3 hours like or else I just I can't get enough calories to maintain my size so I'm basically just piling food on top of food that's already in my stomach and just not getting pushed through to my Intestines and this is just to compete at the weight class that you're yeah I just I just generally think that it's better for me to be bigger because my game isn't based on on speed or explosion it's based on negation of movement so uh you know negation movement comes with just being positioned well having

sticky grips and Ice metric strength so if I even if I get heavier and I end up slower it's not really going to matter for my game and People don't realize like I'm big but I'm not I'm not crazy like big compared to like your average heavyweight um in grappling like buesa is like 63265 like guys like guys like him like people I'm competing against are like 250 260 270 when I fought BHA ADCC I think he weighed in like 263 and I was 210 so 50 lbs is 50 lbs uh and I think that

you know if I was able to get up to like a weight where I was like walking around like 260 and then cutting to 240 I think I would be much better than I am right now but the problem is I just can't get the calories because of the gastroparesis wow so I know George St Pierre has had some gastrointestinal issues as well colitis yeah is he the one who talk to you about fasting because I know he's a big proponent of fasting so I talked to him about it and I've just done my own

research and uh you know I I do think that fasting would help because the the Main thing that makes me nauseous all the time is the fact that the food is sitting in my stomach longer than it's supposed to so if I just went through my day with an empty stomach and then ate at night time it would be a lot easier for me um but the problem is I would be like 180 lbs if I did that so I have to just wake up in every 2 to three hours I have to just shove

my face of food and try to get the calories in um but I actually found out that I had gastro Praus when I did a gastric emptying test and they do uh they basically take eggs and they put this radioactive dye in it and they make you eat eggs and toast and then in increments takes like it's like a 5 hour long test every like hour or so they put you between this machine and it takes images of the radioactive Dy and it tells you how long it takes your stomach to empty the food and

I was retaining food like way more than a normal person should be so my stomach Doesn't Contracting the right way to push this food through so when I go to eat my second meal I'm already full from the first meal and it's always a big problem with people that have done antibiotics where there's always a rebound period where you have to take a lot of probiotics and your gut biome has to sort of ref flourish well that's what I thought I was like I mean 2018 and I was just nauseous all the time and I

was like H you know it'll get better I'm It'll be fine and then like 6 months went by and I like at first it was so bad I like couldn't even train like I would just show up and I just I was like couldn't do anything and uh and I got an I got an endoscopy and that was fine and the doctor's pretty much just like you know you're fine here's some nausea medicine so he gave me zofran and uh I never really thought much of it after that I you know I tried some probiotics

those didn't work I tried some yogurts And what everyone tells you to do those didn't work and uh then I pretty much just accepted it because John used to teach a used to teach privates to a guy who was regarded as one of the top three gastro doctors uh either in America or in the world and he's like he told him like once the food goes in your mouth and down your throat we basically have no idea what's going on we just basically take our best guess and we do some trial in our trial in

our Medications so I'm like I'm not going to waste my time at doctors hopefully it just gets better so I basically just took the the Zofran the nausea medication uh whenever I could whenever it was unbearable to get it back to manageable and uh then I just did it I just managed it like that but then recently before the Roberto gimz match where I called the mounted armbar uh it got so bad to where two days before I was going to fly To compete like four days before the competition I hadn't I wasn't able to

eat in like 5 days I could hardly eat anything I had to go to the hospital and get an IV because I just couldn't eat any food um so I went to the hospital I got the IV competed in the match and then I'm just like you know I can't I can't live like this I got to find something that I can I can do to manage this better so I went back to New York I found the doctor a buddy of mine who Actually cared about helping me um and wasn't just like yeah you

know you're fine and push me through he was like you know we're going to find the we're going to find the the cause of this uh so I went to the started going to a few different doctors they did a few different tests for H poori and then they did the did the uh the gastric emptying test and they were like yeah you have gastri Priestess so now they're just like you know try these they have Like some few medicines that they try and you try one for a few weeks doesn't work you try the

next one doesn't work you try the next one um so I've been on this medicine now for like four weeks and it's helping a little bit takes the edge off but it could just be a coincidence because I could just be on that kind of Up Cycle that my stomach's doing okay right now but in a few weeks may be bad again so we'll see how it goes has anyone recommended like taking A break off of competing like like a month or so where you just fast and try to eat at night and and rebalance

it uh I actually I tried uh I well I didn't compete in like the whole first almost the whole year of 2018 because I just couldn't even train jiujitsu I was just so it just was so terrible um now I've I haven't tried fasting for a month but I've tried fasting for a week where I just my stomach was so bad that I just couldn't Eat and uh it doesn't it doesn't seem to do much like I feel less nauseous because my stomach's empty but then the second I start to eat again it just I

just get nauseous again so it's something that I've been dealing with the last three years that's incredibly infuriating but you just do what you got to do cuz nobody cares that your stomachs are hurting and there's no there's no like uh there's no cure to it they just have treatments that they Use that if if it if it works great if it doesn't then you're kind of [ __ ] have you researched people that have had your same situation that have gotten through it and now they can eat normally yeah so uh I've done some

research and just you know went on some forums and pretty much what everyone says is the same thing as me like I can't eat at restaurants uh I can't I can't have anything you know fried or greasy I can't have any red meat um all the fun Stuff yeah all the stuff that you want to eat I can't eat um and then some people have some different uh some different experiences with different medicines they have like three or four things that they try um and some people say that you know this one worked and this

one didn't or that one worked and this one didn't and it basically varies person to person on what on what helps them [ __ ] so yeah it's uh it's the hardest thing For me is just knowing that I believe that I would be better if I was heavier I don't I don't necessarily think that I need to be 240 250 pounds um to beat the best guys but my my goal at this point isn't focused around beating the best guys um if I was just concerned with how do I beat the next best guy

I would have I would have had to have done half the work that I've done to get to the point to to just be better than than than the number one guy in the world um but my Goal now is focused around how can I be the absolute best athlete that I can by the time I hit my Prime and I just believe that being a 250b Gordon would be better than being a 220 PB Gordon and having to having to deal with the fact that I may never reach my full athletic potential because of

the stomach problem is what's like the most frustrating for me and that the stomach problem was likely caused by antibiotics yeah that was when I first started having problems I just had recurring staff infections and it was just oral antibiotics oral antibiotics every single time and uh ever since then I've just been [ __ ] up yeah I I've had staff a couple of times and when I took the antibiotics I was amazed at how much they wreck your endurance oh yeah like especially back drum I took backr a few times and then I never

took it again after that but like you you go to like lift lift weights or do Jiu-Jitsu like your first set on your First exercise like you're 100% exhausted yeah um and like I I like I'm like okay I have staff I can't do Jiu-Jitsu but at least I can lift weights and it's like no you can't like you go into left weights and you're like about to have a heart attack after your first five reps yeah it's crazy to think that all that is what's going on in your gut that you're yeah the gut

biome controls so much of the body and that the body really is some sort of weird Ecosystem it's like if one thing is [ __ ] up it just throws everything off yeah um I know you got into kombucha did that help at all I did I tried kombucha for a little bit and it seemed to help I actually I had like I had like two or three months where my stomach was okay it was like probably 80 to 90% better and uh I could eat food and I actually went from like 220 like I

got to like 240 245 like I if I can eat food I get big quickly I just can't eat food um but I I tried it for a few months and it seemed to be okay and then it started to get bad again I think it was probably just a coincidence because when my stomach started to get better it was when the pandemic hit and I wasn't traveling to compete I wasn't traveling to to teach uh seminars or film instructionals so I was on a routine where I was eating clean food like just chicken and

rice plain chicken and rice and eggs at home for like two months Straight and my stomach started to get okay what really messes me up is when I have to travel and eat like shitty Foods that's not that's not homecooked um so I think that the kombucha helped but it was just more of a coincidence that I was eating the food that I needed to be eating for a longer amount of time so do you still do the kombucha or did you stop no I still drink the kombucha I feel like it helps me I

feel like the main issue I have is that I get full Fast and I feel like the food sitting right here and I feel like I need to burp but I can't to like make room for more food so the kombucha or anything really carbonated uh helps me like the bubbles like help me digest it and it helps me burp and I can make room for more food have you thought about traveling with like someone who can cook for you like wherever you go I could but the problem is whenever I go to travel I'm

always always put in hotels where I Don't have kitchens that's that's the problem like if you want to you know get a kitchen in a hotel room you have to get like some crazy Suite that like cost a [ __ ] ton of money what about a Airbnb or something I could get airbnbs that would that would make sense um I have to maybe talk to flow when they book my next hotel if they can Airbnb me something but uh that's the that's like the main thing is getting off the routine and eating like shitty

foods From like IHOP or like restaurants and stuff right cuz I feel like most there's a lot of airbnbs in most cities you know you can get a probably pretty decent house yeah and bring everybody in there and it might be better anyway because you could you know bring some portable mats lay them out in the living room and you know maybe go over positions and stuff in your actual house everybody sleeps in the same house instead of being in a bunch of different hotel Rooms and you could cook yeah that might that might make

make a lot more a lot more sense like even even like yesterday I taught a seminar and then I finished I did an interview and there was like only like one place open and I got like the healthiest thing I could I got like eggs on toast and it shows up and it's just like loaded with butter and it's like soaking wet with grease and I'm like if I don't eat this I'm not going to be able to go to sleep cuz I'm so hungry But if I eat it I'm going to be [ __

] up so I eat it and I was you know you're okay you eat it a half hour later you're fine I wake up this morning I'm like yep my stomach's not happy so like we get here I'm like super nauseous like halfway through the podcast I'm still super nauseous and now it's like just starting to wear off to like where it's I'm normal again I like talking probably hungry again I'm hungry again and then when I eat I get nauseous so it's just Like a it's just it's just so frustrating [ __ ] and

so was it a series of like trial and errors that led you to chicken and rice and yeah so like what would what I would find is like I would be like on an upcycle and my diet used to be like first of all I used to be able to eat a incredible amount of food like you know five six Big Macs at the same time like I used to be able to eat more than most people but it used to be just terrible like like I used to just Eat fast foods all the time

so I love like a nice McDonald's cheeseburger so my stomach would like start to get better and I'm like you know what I've been feeling good these last few weeks let me try to have McDonald's and then I'd eat McDonald's and I'll just be [ __ ] up for like the next week and a half and uh you know then I I kind of realize that anything that's really hard to digest or really processed um is is is not good for me and I would usually Find that with eggs or with chicken and rice things

that digest easily um that's relatively easy for me handle I still can never eat as much as I used to so I have to eat just as just in smaller increments so I have like you know 6 ounces of chicken and rice here and then you know two hours later I have a little bit more and then two hours later I have a little bit more sometimes it's really bad I like can't even finish a meal I have to like eat a few spoonfuls and Then 20 minutes later I go to eat a few more

then 20 minutes later I go to eat a few more and it takes like 3 hours to eat a meal wow that's crazy what about salads vegetables vegetables are usually okay yeah vegetables yeah they're not um I usually just mix them up uh or Nat Cooks my food she usually just mixes them up and chops them up into little pieces with the chicken and rice and I kind of mix it in and it's usually it's usually not bad have you tried like hemp Protein have you ever done that I haven't no that might be a

good move because it's easy to digest i' I found it's the best for me in terms of like drinkable protein shakes hemp hemp protein is the most digestible real easy it's the one that doesn't give me gas like whenever like I like whey protein but every time I do like I feel sorry for anybody who's in the car with me yeah so I'm light that fire it's just your body just goes what is this like How did you get all this stuff in one [ __ ] drink you know what I mean it's like it's

not in a normal form like if you eat a piece of meat or if you eat a piece of chicken like your body's going oh I know what this is you drink a a thick ass whey protein shake your body's like what is happening here yeah it's like you don't put you don't put enough you don't put enough water in it it's like mud right you put like a little bit too much and you're like eating yogurt Basically yeah that's how I like it too I like the thick but uh hemp to me is the

easiest one of all those pea protein's pretty good too that's pretty easy to digest but hemp protein seems to be the one that gives me the least problems and it's one it's one of the only ones that I could eat and then legitimately train an hour later CU a lot of times if I eat like a good meal I can pull it off an hour later but you know I still feel it you're not happy About it right I still feel it moving around in there and I'm like [ __ ] you should have waited

and that's one of the biggest things for me too it's like it takes me so long to digest a meal so I have to try to eat every couple of hours but you have two training sessions a day and a lifting session so you can't eat right before them because then you're nauseous and you haven't digested it and it takes you longer to digest the food so you're trying to schedule your you're Trying to schedule a day your day around your nausea and what you can eat and build it into your training sessions like if

I just had to eat food all day it's easy but you can't I can't eat a full meal like Nikki Rod could eat like two steaks and like two like 24 round stakes and then next thing you know 5 minutes later he's like wrestling as hard as he can like I can't do do that like if I have like a lollipop and I have to train 5 minutes later I'm like Oh I just can't do this um so it's like trying to trying to manage and trying to fit as much as many calories I can

into a day and having to train three times a day is is is difficult what about fruit fruit is usually okay I I can do fruits I can do fruits and vegetables the main things I have to stay away from is like red meat steaks cheeseburgers anything greasy or fried like fried foods are the worst for me anything fried just it just [ __ ] me up so what do you eat like Pre-training like say if you're going to train in an hour and a half so normally we train in the uh in the in

the morning so I'll wake up and I'll have a light breakfast like three or four eggs and like two pieces of toast that's usually just plain scrambled eggs and toast uh and then between between the MMA and the Jiu-Jitsu I'll have like maybe uh a protein shake and like a granola bar or something or I'll have like a little thing of chicken and rice something That's easy to easy to digest and then that holds me over and then I focus on most of my eating after the jitu session where I can I have the rest

of the night to eat and I try to stuff my face from then until I go to sleep that's crazy I'm I'm hoping this is my hope that someone's going to listen to this that has a solution and there's someone out there that just you haven't been in contact with and they're going to reach out to you and they go I think I'm going To fix this yeah I've been posting and stuff on my Instagram and people have been helping but obviously this is a a much larger platform uh the medicine that I have now

it's like 4 weeks in it seems to be taking the edge off a little bit um whenever I eat terrible Foods it's still just it [ __ ] me up but does the medicine [ __ ] with you at all does it do anything bad no it's actually um it's a it's a medicine that originally they used they tested as an Anti-depressant um like Viagra was supposed to be for for blood pressure medicine but then they just found that it was better for a dick pill um so they they use this uh they started testing

it for anti-depressants I still think they use it for anti-depressants but they also use it in like cancer and age P age patients who can't eat they're so nauseous they use it it's very good at decreasing nausea and increasing increasing appetite so one of the side Effects is you you want to eat more and you gain weight um what about weed weed is actually an interesting thing uh everyone says smoke some weed and you know it'll relax you and you'll be able to eat more it's actually the exact opposite for me the second I start

to get high I just instantly get twice as nauseous wow I don't know what it is but like the second the the second either I eat an edible or I try to smoke something I haven't I haven't smoked in Like 3 years because every time I would get high I would just instantly be twice as nauseous crazy what a weird predicament yeah so somebody whoever you are out there Master of the gastrointestinal tract reach out to Gordon Ryan fix this I mean it's it's frustrating but at the end of the day no one cares you

know what problems you have so you just work through it and manage it but um it's definitely something that you know it's Been 3 years now and I'm just uh I'm managing it pretty well I can I can kind of you know eat my food around I can plan my meals and and plan my day around it but it's still something that you have to deal with every day and it's it's annoying well it's just one more credit to you that you were able to reach these insane Heights in competition while being so compromised yeah

I mean everyone has their problems but uh uh this is definitely something That's day-to-day is very very frustrating to deal with so you're on the same training regiment as Gary then so you're doing MMA training in the morning and then you're doing right afterwards yeah and then I lift weights at night so this thing with one FC like what is do they have you set up for grappling matches so the way my contract works is I'm exclusive for MMA not exclusive for grappling so if I want to fight MMA I can't fight in any other

Organization um now I'm not obligated to fight uh MMA in my contract my gra my contract is just for grappling matches but if I choose to fight MMA it has to be with one but not obligated to go out and and do any any MMA fights um so right now my plan is my focus is the ADCC super fight 20122 and that I want to I want to use the 1fc uh deal to Rebrand myself as a fence wrestler right now I'm the best open m Grappler but I want to be able to put Experienced

MMA guys on the fence put them down and finish them on the fence now one FC with its resources if they had exclusive grappling matches maybe they could find you competition yeah so I think what they want to do cuz they have they don't just have MMA they they have every martial art where they have the belts in each in each martial art what I think with their ultimate goal is is they want to make a Jiu-Jitsu belt and they want To have divisions for Jiu-Jitsu like an MMA like you win the title you win

a belt um so it's going to be interesting to see what their approach is going to be because what I think they thought was going to happen was you know oh we'll just sign him and we'll get him to fight guys like buesa or guys like Andre goal or uh you know these these top level jiujitsu guys but then I I think what they're going to realize pretty soon is that it's going to be incredibly hard to Get a jiujitsu guy to fight me and even harder to get a guy to fly to Singapore and

uh and you know fly across the world to compete against me um because the guys just won't compete against me in and now it's on TV now they're doing it on TNT so regular people in America get it as well are are going to watch it yeah um but I it's going to be interesting now because they're going to start to realize that the Jitsu guys just won't fight me and then who else am I going to compete against I'm going to do a grappling match against an MMA fighter um you know especially in in

in these Asian countries most people are known for their striking like there's not grappling isn't uh isn't at the level in most of these Asian countries that it is uh you know in the US so what are they going to do put me against an Asian MMA fighter in a grappling match it's going to be it's going to be tough to find someone who is really Competitive in a grappling match in a cage uh you know with me for them because the J guys just won't do it well I know that some people have priced

themselves out theyve said yeah I'll I'll have a fight with you but I want a million yeah that's that's Andre so the funny thing about that is uh I'm pretty sure there's an interview of Andre saying I would fight my grandmother for $40,000 um and then he's just like no I won't fight Gordon for less than a Million which is amazing because every one of his ADCC fights prior to this it's the ADCC purse is 10,000 to lose 40,000 to win so it's like you're looking for what a however many x t uh increase uh

to go from $40,000 to a million do like it's just like it's not like 40,000 to 100,000 like 4,000 to a million dollar it's like the whole the whole ADCC event isn't even going to generate a million dollars in Revenue how did This get started this beef between the two of you guys cuz uh for people don't know there was an event here a few weeks ago and he came up to you and he what what did he say to you uh so the whole thing originally started when you know I was petitioning for matches

against the best level against the top level guys in like 2016 when I first got my black belts and uh you know I was like I want to compete against Andre or something along those lines and his wife was like Well win the ADCC absolute and then you'll have a chance to compete against Andre so you know I go in I lose the absolute uh 2017 to fipe Pena and then I go out and I win double gold and I win the absolute in 2019 so now Andre had originally said that he was retiring after

his fight with Felipe Penna for 2019 ADCC but then I win the absolute so it kind of sparked everyone's interest everyone wants to See this match now so then I didn't talk [ __ ] to Andre I didn't do anything I was like super nice after I was like listen if Andre want to compete against me I'd be more than happy to compete against him he's a legend he's done he's done a lot for the sport but if Andre chooses to retire like he said he was going to then that's fine with me too you

know he's he said he was going to retire and it's not like he's ducking the match and now he's just going to suddenly retire After he wins he said before the match this is my last match I'm retiring and then he like kind of passive aggressively would start posting like videos of him winning ADCC with captions like I'm the real king or you know just like passive aggressively nudging me so I'm like okay like you know we can start to do this so then we started going back and forth online and you know he there

must have been a turning point where he started taking what I was saying Personally because you know I I I knew that in the beginning he knew it was just kind of to build the fight and to Hype the fight but then I think it really started to get to him so after the last match where Craig submitted his student Ronaldo uh we went up to shake their hands in the corner after and John shuck Andre's hand and I went to go shake their hands and Ronaldo wouldn't shake my hand Andre flipped me off so

I was like okay you know this is fine I Just started laughing and I walked it off and then we go backstage and I go to start I go to walk to do an interview and Andre is waiting for me like past the curtains in the backstage area and I don't think he realized the camera was there but I saw the camera was there and I was like this is kind of Jamie go find find the video because there's a video of this I was like this is kind of out of character for Andre to

be like talking [ __ ] to me When nobody's around cuz nobody was there and it was just like one obscure camera way in the back and he started calling me a [ __ ] and a [ __ ] and I just I just laughed I was like you know what this is this is what it is and I think what he was thinking what was he was going to come up and punk me in person and be like look Gordon's a [ __ ] he only talk [ __ ] online so he called me

a [ __ ] and a [ __ ] there it is give me some volume do It from the beginning why am I running and he's like why are you running why you running he's like why you running why you running and I turn around he pushes me and I was like okay well we're going to fight let's start off with the spec so you smack him in the face twice he pushed you he called called you a [ __ ] he pushed you you smacked him in the face twice and then then it's weird

he's kind of just following you yeah so I was going to do my interview so I was like I was like listen look at this person grabbed the camera she bolted over there come back into the US he looks like he's limping you notice that I think he was just really shook from the smack what the only person who stock grew more than mine was John daners this [ __ ] guy just walked in like a stone cold [Laughter] Killer it's so confusing cuz now he's saying I want to talk to you like a man

front everybody in this room keep talking why why you want to do that why do you want to do that talking because always [ __ ] that's pry you always talk [ __ ] you should show respect after he called you a [ __ ] and then you smacked him I think he's rattled right he didn't expect you to just haul off and smack him in the face and then do it again I mean reality Hits quick um like if you walk up to someone call him a [ __ ] and push them um that's

that's like pretty much as far as you can go before you get into a fight so I'm like okay there's going to be a fight let me start off with a smack and then I I hit him and I realized that he wasn't retaliating and I was like okay this guy doesn't want to fight so then I went to go walk away a second time and he started following me and I was like okay maybe he change his mind Wants to fight again so I smacked him again and he just backed up and I just

like okay he clearly doesn't want to fight so I'm just going to walk away go do my interview and then he kept walking towards me and then he started to get more bold when he was when everyone was around so I was like well we can we can fight right now like we can doesn't doesn't make a difference to me and then uh he just he clearly wasn't interested in fighting and I think what he thought Was going to happen because the outto guys are always like you know Gordon always always always talk [ __

] online but then he's nice in person which sure I am uh you know but I'm I'm not like a [ __ ] like if you walk up to me and you start pushing me like we're gonna get into a fight like you're you're talking [ __ ] online because it's part of your strategy for marketing yourself yeah I mean I want to I want to make money I want I want yeah it's fun for me I want To get paid as much as I can I want the other guys to get paid as much

as they can um and what I what I do when I talk [ __ ] is I I really don't even talk [ __ ] I just I just talk about facts like I just I post things that are just they're just statistics like when I talk [ __ ] about Dylan and I say like hey like this guy's 18 and 16 is a black belt like that's not talking [ __ ] that's just saying how terrible his record is black belt like I just people get upset Because I talk about the numbers that I

have and the numbers that these guys have and nobody wants to hear that and they just get upset about it um so you know most of what I do unless someone like attacks me personally is just talking about like how everybody sucks and I'm the best you hit him with your right hand that's a hand that's been busted a bunch of times too right yeah so this one I broke this one three times most recent one was a week before ADCC I Had a crazy so this ADCC was like the worst for me because I'm

7 months off the LCL surgery I had food poison the day before so I was like all [ __ ] up and a week before the before the uh before the tournament I lived in New York and I had super 73s the little electric bikes and I used to ride those to training and it was like late September so it was getting kind of cold and I'm like this is the last time I'm going to use these bikes before I put Them away for the winter and I was going to take them to the gym

back home to the shop to get serviced and then I was going to not them that was like the last time last day of the year I was going to use them coincidentally on the way there Nat's bike gets a flat tire and I'm like okay let's take it to the bike shop so I'm carrying this thing and my lower back is getting really sore so it's like four blocks away I have to carry this Bike to the shop so I'm like [ __ ] this I'm like let me just put it on my shoulders

so I picked the bike up I gra by the handlebars and by the by the back uh the back railing and I got to put it on my on my on my back and I I didn't realize that it was still on so as I went to throw it on my back my like arm hit the throttle and it sucked my hand in between the fender and the tire and just like spun it like 25 miles hour on my hand and it just destroyed my hand Was like swollen like a like a like a baseball

met for the tournament and I tore some ligaments in my wrist I actually you can still see it swollen and then uh I I broke I broke one of the bones and I tore a few ligaments I shut up like all bandage for ADCC and everyone's like what the [ __ ] happened I'm like I don't want to talk about it it was a bike accident so that that's what did it to your hand so you've broken it three times three times uh Since then so no no no not since then two times before that

and then that yeah [ __ ] so is do you have full use of it yeah the only time I feel like it's not as strong as my left wrist is when I do workouts where I have like a barbell or any kind of bar and I have weight on it and I have to go like do curls like this I feel like it's not as strong holding weight like this but grappling it's fine day-to-day it's fine and it feels just as strong as I needed to be to do Anything in in jju but it

must be hard to get gloves on uh gloves and watches yeah like to slide over the big scar tissue wow and what are the doctor saying about it it's fine now I got an x-ray and actually didn't even get it checked out before ADCC because I'm just like I'm just going to show up and hope for the best um but I got an x-ray and an MRI and they're like you know it's fine it's it's all healed now so it's just insane that you competed with a Broken hand I mean the worst part was I

I I heard it and then I didn't really train until ADCC so it was kind of resting but then I had to compete at ADCC I had eight matches and then a week after that I had to compete against PA harus so I got [ __ ] up from competing at ADCC and I had to try to compete against B harus the week after that and then after that it got like really bad and I I took like a few months off and it healed other than that in the uh LCL Have you had any

other like significant injuries from Jiu-Jitsu I had just small things I've had uh I've always had like some neck problems um if my neck gets like Snapped hard in the wrong way it gets sore for a few a few days or a few weeks depending on how bad it is you ever used the iron neck I haven't used iron neck really I haven't oh my God I'm getting one for you okay right away I'll definitely that those and saunas I'll definitely look into I just gave one to Gabe Tuttle from 10th plan I [ __

] love that goddamn thing it's the for grappling there's no better exercise for your neck you seen it right yeah yeah I'll definitely I'll definitely try that but it's it's okay most of the time it hurts like it hurts to some degree pretty much just walking around dayto day you want to see bro esa's neck this is what I want to avoid with you and with a this is what I sent to Gabe as well because he broke his neck bro has Two fake discs in his neck and uh Alaine Sterling now has a fake

disc in his neck and Chris Weidman has a fake disc in his neck too yeah and I believe Rick story has a couple of them as well so he had broos had two discs replaced yeah it's not it's not quite that bad yet but it's definitely it's it's getting there it's a [ __ ] number one thing for Grapplers is the neck and the back it's like those are the ones that when you [ __ ] them up you can't really fix them the way they Can fix like an LCL and it's not it's not

even most of the time it's wrestling it's like when I'm wrestling and guys are heavy in the head that's what fatigues it um and other than that I just had a a grade two MCL tear when I was like 16 but I've been I've been pretty lucky as far as catastrophic injuries go just the one LCL was the was the big one what was that weird match that you had with Pat Downey so I had a you had like a dual match like one So what I what I proposed was to do an ADCC rule

style takedown match because an ADCC style rules takedown match is wrestling but it's not wrestling in a traditional sense there's some there's submissions involved and the scoring for ADCC uh in order to score points by either taking someone down or taking their back is completely different than any kind of wrestling scoring so yes he has the he has the advantage in the standing position he can take me down But the scrimmage to the first Point actually starts when you hit the ground so what I proposed was we do an ADCC takedown match where you have

an advantage that you're a better wrestler but I have an advantage that I know I know what the rules are I know how to score under ADCC explain to people ADCC is Abu Dhabi combat club and the way they have it set up is for the first how many minutes you don't score any points so for the for the regular matches it's Five and five it's five minutes no points and then five minutes points and unfortunately the idea behind that was they were going to encourage people to go after submissions yes but unfortunately what happens

is people stall for five minutes and then the last five minutes to try to score points yes yeah so in some cases in some cases yes um and then you have the finals matches which are 10 minutes no points 10 minutes with points and then two Possible 10 minute overtimes so you have possible possible 40 minutes of wrestling in the finals of ADCC so the pace is much different the stanes much are much different um and the criteria for scoring is is vastly different um and he's like no I don't want to do that I

just want to do one match which is no time limit submission only Jiu-Jitsu and one match which is a freestyle wrestling match and I'm like well we can do that but I mean it's not going to be like Exciting because you're clearly going to beat me in the wrestling match and I'm clearly going to beat you Jiu-Jitsu match so I was like how can I make this more exciting so my goal was explain who Pat Downey is to so so Pat Downey is an Olympic level guy from the USA he's a wrestler um and he's

just like he's just a guy from USA who he just competed at the Olympic trials he lost but he's like a legitimate guy who's beaten legitimate guys and he's Won and he's he's operating at a high level in wrestling um and he wants to start fighting MMA and he wants to start you know dabbling in Jiu-Jitsu but um he's known for his wrestling and he's primarily a wrestler um so he's like I want to do one wrestling match and one ji- Jitsu match and I'm like okay we can do that so I didn't want to

just go out and submit him because that wouldn't prove anything what I wanted to prove was that under an ADCC rule rule set I Would be able to out what we call is scrimmage wrestling where you scrimmage for the first point whoever gets the first point or submission wins what I wanted to prove was that he wasn't he wouldn't be able to score on he wouldn't be able to score on me under an ADCC rule set and that I would eventually Tire him out and I would be able to score on him and take him

down multiple times and we just got to the Tipping Point of when he was starting to get Exhausted somewhere about 20 minutes in and I I I took him down twice and then I locked in a power half Nelson which isn't a submission it's a very common in wrestling and he tapped to the power half and I just [ __ ] lost my mind because I was like just on the cusp of like starting to take him down and embarrass him and he just basically gave up and quit like in the middle of the match

so I was like just furious about that because I went out to prove Something and I wasn't able to cuz he just he just stopped in the middle of the match and then we did a freestyle wrestling match and he like teched me uh with uh he like rolled me through like a bunch of times and he he teched me in like 20 seconds because and tech means 11 points in a row yeah he just 11 to Z yeah he he scored 11 points in like 20 seconds cuz he he got behind me took me

down and then I didn't belly out I was like just trying to like do what I would Do in Jitsu would just get on top so he's just rolling me through rolling me through rolling me through and I'm like oh he's scoring this whole time and then before you know it the match was over yeah um so he did one freestyle match and one jiujitsu submission only match and uh you know obviously he won the wrestling and I won the I won the Jiu-Jitsu match but I didn't win the Jitsu match how I wanted to

I wanted to take him down a bunch of times and then Submit him yeah yeah I watched that I it was weird like yeah you know the way he was what what what what would have been more what would have made more sense is uh match uh a rule set like I had with b nickel where it was you could do Jiu-Jitsu but you weren't allowed to pull guard so I had to wrestle him for the I had to wrestle him until one of us got a taked down and I wasn't allowed to sit to

guard and I wasn't allowed to do leg locks so you got a little bit of Jiu-Jitsu you got a little bit of wrestling where he has the advantage standing and I have the advantage uh on the ground h yeah that that is definitely more interesting maybe with something like 1fc having you over there they could entice some Elite Grapplers in other disciplines like wrestling or maybe Judo or something like that yeah I mean that's definitely uh that's definitely an option um and I think that you know Wrestlers are always out to prove that wrestling is

the best um but I do think there's something to be said for uh you know like competing under an ADCC rules because if you think about it if you're ultimately looking to transition to MMA the scoring criteria for ADCC is the most like grappling in MMA if you take someone down in a normal Jiu-Jitsu match there's pretty much an unspoken rule where the bottom guy plays guard and the top guy tries to pass but In MMA if a guy gets taken down what does he try to do he tries to stand up so then he

your whole thing is you have to hold him down to actually score a taked down or if he turns his back you have to take his back it's the same thing in ADCC you you have to get held down for 3 seconds so what everyone does in ADCC is they they don't try to they don't just sit and accept accept the take down they try to pop back up to their feet so it's very like MMA there's Just not punches but there's submissions and guys are trying to Heist up and get away from you you

have to be able to hold them down or take their back so I mean if you're if you're looking to prepare for an MMA career scrimmage wrestling under ADCC rules makes a lot of sense because it's very similar to what you do in MMA and there are a lot of guys that are considering transitioning from wrestling into MMA because it's really one of the only Viable professional Outlets like I know Flo grappling has put on some professional matches for Grapplers and I know Jordan Burrows is making a living just doing grappling competitions but it's not

it's not like MMA it's not as prevalent yeah of course yeah and it's very different like in Freestyle Wrestling if you gramy and expose your back you get scored on like in MMA you can gramy you can do all these things you can do submissions um so you know Wrestling under an ADCC rule set like to have a wrester who practices that kind of MMA wrestling it's much different than just a traditional you know freestyle or or Collegiate wrestling yeah um what about geek competition I know that uh you were you were doing something the

other day where you were talking about a g sponsorship and you were asking if somebody was willing to do something with you with a G are you thinking about competing in I'm not Going to compete in the ghee but I'm going to teach in the G and I just basically wanted a sponsor to um to to sponsor me to wear their GES during what I'm teaching um for me I'm not opposed to competing in the ghee but the thing about the ghee is it's just not as fun for me to train in the ghee as

it is to train no ghee I find it's much more enjoyable for me to train noi than it is in the ghee so I I feel like if I don't enjoy doing it why am I going to do it In the first place like I'm already so good noie I feel like I'm uh you know the the best in the world debatably the best ever um why would I take time away from that Legacy to pursue something that I'm not even really particularly interested in and honestly that's dying in America like in the next 10

years the ghe is pretty much going to be phased out as far as competitions in America it's going to be like a novelty where they have like some competitions here And there but um noi the as far as number support noi is the is the way of the future as far as you know grappling professional grappling goes well it translates to MMA everybody understands the grappling in MMA the same grappling applies to Jiu-Jitsu with no ghee and you see people with the ghee and they're doing all this crazy [ __ ] where they're pulling the

collar around the back of the head and nobody understands that and matches the boring where people just Have grips nobody moves and the scoring is strange and um it's it's it's hard to watch even as a fan of jitu it's hard to watch some of the matches but it is even Jean jacqu said that to me it was like you know done it forever he's like these guys you know like a lot of them that's what they do they play that kind of game where they stall out but that might be a place where before

you can get competition oh if I competed in the G I would definitely have a lot of Competition but that's the argument nobody understands is everyone's like oh we can never be the best you know unless he competes in the G well that's not what I'm trying to do I'm not trying to be the greatest of all hoder is the greatest of all time I'm trying to be the best noi submission Grappler of all time I'm not interested in doing both and everyone's like well the only reason why you're good at noi is because you

train all the time noi and I'm like yeah That's the point that's that's the point of specializing in one domain so you can be the than the rest of the guys who don't do that um and it's a pretty [ __ ] dumb argument against you and the best is the argument now is you are only good noi because you spend all of your try all all of your time training noi but what did everyone tell us coming through the ranks if you want to be good at noie you have to you got to train

the ghee where did that Argument go argument where did that argument go that argument's gone if you want to be good at wrestling you don't train Judo if you want to be good at Judo you don't train you don't you don't train wrestling um if you want to be good at noi train noi Jiu-Jitsu um and so specializing in noi Jiu-Jitsu yes of course I'm going to have I'm going to be better than the rest of the guys CU I specialize in this that's the whole point that's why I'm doing it yeah Eddie Bravo was

always like furious with that argument that if you want to be better at noi you have to train the ghee he's like that doesn't make any sense like they're saying this because they're good at the ghee he was like they're only saying this CU they're good at the ghee and they don't want to give up the ghee because they give up the ghee they lose whatever 40% of their game yeah and if you look at like the old ADCC it was basically Just an unspoken rule where it was dominated primarily by Brazilians they would they

would train the ghee they would show up and they would take off their ghee and they would just hope for the best but then you have a guy like Dean lisst who comes in who's a specialist who only really trains noi who comes in and starts heal hooking people and you're like oh [ __ ] this is different than what we're doing we have to either adapt or we're going to lose And I mean people have done a pretty poor job overall at adap thing to be honest yeah that's one one of the other things

I was going to to has any other team sort of looked at the system that you guys have put together and adopted something similar or quasi similar um I mean you have you have some guys who try to emulate what we do with leg locks um you have some guys who try to emulate what we do with back attacks but it's a very Rudimentary version of what we're doing like they they copy like the just the general outline of what we're trying to do it's like I talked about before it's nothing specific it's everyone just

looks at okay these guys are doing leg locks and they're great at attacking the back um or they're great at body lock guard passing so they start to play around with it but they don't they don't see the nuances that make the difference between hitting it on the best on the Best guys in the world and having having it completely failed on the best guys in the world they just look at the general outline and they try to copy the best they can and they fiddle around with the position and they hope for the best

but no one's really no one's really even doing a good job of not even just copying us but uh no one's no one at all is going beyond what we're doing like what Jon does he looks at the best guys in the world and he says okay this is a Great move how can I make it better and how can I go beyond what they're doing what everyone's just trying to do is just a shitty version of what we're doing they're not trying to look at us and be like okay this is good what they're

doing but how can I make it even better than what we're doing but Craig Jones was the only guy that before he was training with you guys was looking at what you were doing and figured out a way to successfully emulate a lot of it Yeah I mean Craig Craig was very successful before he started training with us I remember Craig Craig may be one of the dumbest people I know because he lived in beautiful uh sunny and beachy Australia and he moved to this [ __ ] hole that is New York to just take

a train or a car through the Lincoln Tunnel every day and he would come to that basement and train with us and when he first got here we do a lot of positional rounds so he wasn't Used to doing that so he just moved to this miserable City to just get beat up every single day by all the guys in the room and uh and I'm like Craig I'm like why would you make a move to New York like why would anyone moved to New York City and he's like he's like I just want to

get better at Jitsu I'm like okay you got to respect that um and now he's far better than than he was but he was already doing some of the stuff that uh that we were that we were doing before He started training with us and then he came to train with us and he he just instantly picked up all the other things that we were doing so he was one of the smarter guys who you know he fully in he's like these guys are doing something different I want to fully envelop myself in what they're

doing and I want to be a part of that and he's had a lot more success um than he's had a lot more success now than he did when he was uh when he when he wasn't with us so have You always hated New York City oh yeah oh yeah it's it's it's it's awful um so I'm originally from Central Jersey I grew up in Monroe Township and then uh my parents got divorced and I was driving an hour and a half like a th000 miles a week uh to get to the city with Gary

thousand miles a week yeah this it was far um and uh so my my parents got divorced and then the house got sold so I'm like let me move to New York so I I was like kind of I was against it at First but you know I got convinced to to move to New York and I was like let me give it a try so I was in New York for 2 years and I just absolutely I hated it I just could not stand this city um and you know for me you pay all

the New York City prices but you don't get to enjoy any of what New York is like I didn't never got out to go to sightsee I never got out to go I never went out partying or to the clubs like that's you know New York is famous for the night life I get To wake up at 6:00 a.m. and go to training the next day like I'm not going out and partying so I'm paying all the New York City taxes I'm paying all the New York City prices I'm I'm dealing with all the crazy

homeless people on the subway and I'm not getting to enjoy any of the good parts in New York so I I hated New York from day one and then I actually ended up moving back to North Caldwell New Jersey I bought a house in New Jersey and uh that was when I was Convinced that John was never going to leave New York so I was like let me just buy a house I'll be here for the next 10 years of my career and then like eight months later he's like all right we're moving out of

we're moving out of New York and I'm like great let me just put my house up for sale that I just bought so uh uh New York was I've never I've never jived with New York um you know it's something that's okay to visit here there but I just I never liked the big City I never liked that everyone was always so you know pissy and aggressive I never liked being verbally and physically attacked by homeless people on subways um which I think is pretty normal for anyone to not want to be you know pay

50% tax and not you know not go out of your house and have a homeless guy [ __ ] on your sidewalk I think it's a pretty normal thing to to request I think it's reasonable yeah and so John his response was to the way New York City was treating the pandemic yeah I mean so mean you basically have a city that comes out and they're like you guys cannot train like it was crazy when the when the lockdown first happened because you know we were still training uh and we were driving to New York

City and there was just nobody there like to drive to New York City and just see Zero people besides the homeless people on the streets was just like it was is like almost surreal like you walk into Time Square and there's just nobody there like it was like a ghost town New York um everyone was afraid to leave their houses and uh you know we just we're like yeah we're just going to keep training because what else are we going to do so um they're like you guys can't train you got to shut down the

gym and by the way we're raising taxes and you know we're everything's going to cost more money because now we need to make up for the lost money that we have in Taxes because we shut down all the businesses so it just like every business was getting shut down they kept making more more rules they kept raising prices on everything and it's like why am I going to stay here if I can't even legally go to train jiujitsu and I'm just paying all these absurd prices for no reason just doesn't make sense and so John

came up with the idea to move to Puerto Rico like whose idea was it no I came up with the idea to move to Puerto Rico because um so the biggest thing for us was that we weren't sure how covid was going to affect uh was going to affect opening up a school so originally what we we planned was to move to Puerto Rico as kind of a semi-permanent location because we had a friend in Puerto Rico who had a private mat space like in his house that we could train at if we needed to

so we we were afraid of we were looking at Puerto Rico Texas Florida but we were afraid to move to Texas because there were so many uncertainties at the time we didn't want to move to Texas spent $200,000 opening up a school and then having the government be like you guys can't run this school shut it down and then we're like what the [ __ ] do we do so so we kind of use Puerto Rico as an intermediary step where we move there in worst case scenario we would still have a place to train

and match to train on at a at a friend's place so that the Competition guys could train and get ready for competition if they needed to and now we're working on opening up a school there and it's a little bit more permanent for now and so where are you guys training now when I see you training this you're looks like you're in a gym yeah so we're in combat 360 a buddy of ours Juan um that I know we know we know through one of our mutual friends um he has a school down there in

uh in guabo and uh we we're currently Training in his gym the problem is it's pretty much only big enough for just the competitor so everyone's asking oh when can we come train when can we come train well whenever we get the school opened is when you guys can come train uh because right now it's a relatively small mat space and you put 15 people on the mat and it's crowded so right now we're just working at a friend's gym we're working on opening up a gym for us and then once the gym gets open

it'll be A lot a lot easier what led you to Puerto Rican Puerto Rico versus New York or versus rather Texas or Florida uh for us it was just originally the uh the co restrictions like I said there was so many uncertainties as far as moving like you know was Biden going to win or not if he got into office what was he going to do with the co restrictions um and we didn't want to move to Texas where I don't mean and have them shut everything Down have them shut everything but Florida was pretty

open at the time right Florida Florida was starting to open but was I think it was still closed with they still had masks going on and you know we we we didn't know if Biden got elected would Governors listen to whatever he was trying to say whatever he was trying to make them do so we we didn't really know we didn't have any close friends in Texas or Florida that had a private space for us to train Provided a school wasn't going to be an option um but in Puerto Rico we had friends there that

just said okay we can lay mats down in my house my garage or whatever the case is and we have enough mat base for 20 people to to train on if we need if a school is is an option anywhere in the country um so the fact that we had a sure fireplace to train even if gyms were getting shut down was the reason why we moved there so how many months went by before a competition Was was held so everything shut down in March when did you guys start competing again I think it was

probably I'm not sure I think it was probably five months I mean they were they were talking about doing it and they they couldn't find venues to allow anyone to even with no crowds like to to to put 50 people in a room you have all the you know the production team and the the referees and the athletes and the corners um it was it was hard for them to find the venue To let to allow them to do that uh and then the first events that started popping it back up I'm pretty sure with

the flow the flow grappling events uh and the who's number one came and then I think it's like somewhere five or six months into the uh into the lockdown they started doing uh no spectator shows and then it kind of just kicked off from there and where do you anticipate like so the the regulations the way they have it set up In Puerto Rico you can kind of do whatever you want right um yes they're still kind of I mean we have our buddy who we train with um is very good he teaches like um

he teaches all the police he's like the instructor for the police there so they they kind of they kind of leave them alone but uh they're they're they sticklers like for Mass like you need to have mass everywhere you need to they actually have a law you need to wear a mask Outside and if you don't have a mask outside you can get fine $5,000 10,000 $10,000 for $10,000 for the second offense uh you need to have mass on the beach provided you're not swimming I me nobody listens to these rules and they're not enforced

but those are the actual rules that are in place right now so they're they're they're pretty bad as far as masks uh go as far as what their actual rules are but no one enforces them everyone pretty much just does what They want you still have to wear masks inside uh you know inside all buildings and stuff but other than that it's not really that big of an issue what does it feel like living in Puerto Rico I mean it's awesome it's definitely a huge change of pace going any if you go anywhere in the

country and you're coming from New York everything seems slow but going to an island going to Puerto Rico it's like 10 times worse like everyone's just it's just like you Feel like it's almost a joke like everyone just moves so slowly there everyone shows up late it's just like I you got to get used to it if you don't accept that this is the way that things work you're just going to drive yourself crazy crazy coming from a place like New York um yeah I was talking to Craig about when he bought a car and

the brakes didn't work oh yeah so we have like we've had like four people buy cars from there and they've all just Fallen Apart in the first three days I'm like so there's one thing I can recommend to anyone if you're moving to Puerto Rico buy a car new um or have it shipped In from from the mainland don't buy it from from one of the locals there and do what you did and get something that's Japanese yeah yeah I bought that little Miata and I Shi my truck my Tacoma there so I've had no

problems yet so far well the thing is those cars are pretty bulletproof yeah so I have like this Little Miata that's a convertible with a six speed in it and I just like beat the [ __ ] out of it and it just I mean I only have 1,000 miles on it but it it's it's going to be it's going to be Rock Solid those are the most underrated little sports cars in the world because they're so small and they're so fun to drive they're so light yeah everyone everyone knocks on them but until you

drive one you can't really talk [ __ ] about them they're they're by no means fast but it Feels like you're going fast no matter what speed you're going cuz it's so tiny a go-kart it has just enough power to where if you like pop the clutch at like 8,000 RPM you can like get the tires to break loose and it's perfectly balanced 50/50 with the weight in the back so if you like if you pop the clutch and you get the tire spinning and you want to like do a little drift like you can

hold the drift easily without any experience because the car is it's giving you Everything that it has as far as power go so you can't like overshoot it and spin around it's like just impossible to do and it's perfectly balanced so you can like hold it in drifts you can can do burnouts with it it's like the best F best car ever reporter have you ever seen that company that called uh flying Miata I have yeah they they're ridiculous yeah what I wonder what those are like to drive because it's got to upset the balance

of the car a bit no Yeah they put they have all kinds of crazy stuff they put Hellcat engines in the front of them like it just they have like a 2,000 2,000lb car with 700 horsepower really yeah but me the [ __ ] engine must be so much heavier than the what is it a four cylinder in the Mi I think it's a four cylinder I think it's a 2.5 lit two two or 2.5 lit I believe I'm not positive but it's got like 181 horsepower but it's actually pretty quick it's got like a

5.70 to 60 Which really uh yeah and it actually is faster than that because you have to shift into third gear in order to actually hit 60 so if second gear carries you through 60 miles hour it would be like a like a mid five like a 5'4 or something like that but uh you have to shift into third to hit 60 so it's it's quick but it's not it's definitely not fast like you're not not going to get in the car like oh my God this car is fast but it's fun to drive The

engine though in comparison to like I wonder what those flying Miatas are like to drive because it's got to [ __ ] with it a little bit it's got to make it like an old muscle heavier in the front yeah yeah it has to be right unless they do something to the rear like is there a way to do that where they could beef up the the rear end I'm not sure but I mean if you drop a huge engine engine in the front of it I mean it's going to be heavier in the front

yeah but I mean a Miata with 500 horsepower 700 horsepower is a Miata with 700 horsepower so it's just so ridiculous going to be fun no matter what well it seems like maybe a turbocharge 6 you could kind of get it closer get away with it yeah yeah whereas but people are like dropping huge V8s into them I would like to see what see I want to see what that looks like because they must do something to the tires as well right do they flare the wheel wells and Put they put a lot of uh

wide body kits on them they like put the they put like the extra Fender like they either bolt on or weld the fender so that you can get wider tires in the back a friend of mine had one of those Honda what were they called 2000 s2000s yeah and that was uh an interesting little car too real super underrated that's what everyone told me to get and told me if I was a real man I should have got a S2000 and not a Miata and I'm like yeah but Does the S2000 have apple carplay good

good car I'm like like the Miata is like it's just modern enough to has like apple carplay and has like all the things that you need but it still gives you like this raw Driving Experience of like of like an older like ' 80s or 90s car where it's just like you feel like it's just you in the road and there's not much else to be distracted by a mechanical feeling yeah yeah that's the thing like it's hard to Get a mechanical feeling with these uh newer cars like one of my favorite cars that I

have is a 2005 BMW M3 the old M3s are amazing it's not nearly the fastest car that I have but it's so mechanical like everything about it like you feel everything when you're Shifting the gears and you're you know you're driving it like you you feel where the when the tires are about to break you could really feel it yeah there's nothing better for me than like the old muscle Car feel like I have like uh I have the CTSV that I bought from my dad the 2017 CTSV and just like the fact that if

you just stomp on the gas you're not sure whether or not you're going to die has one look at that [ __ ] thing 520 horsepower and like a 2,000lb car it's insane that is so crazy that's crazy let me give me some some juice on this let let me see what happens when he takes off go from the beginning when takes off it different god listen to it yeah It's a CR engine that GM because we're not going to go on the Super Y I got to see what that's like we're going to go

this way it's going to be like me in 3 weeks we're not going to go on the super million million mph Road we're going to make sure that the balance is maintained uh gearbox you said T56 well that's he's a good guy to listen to because really understands cars the whole Drive let's put the windows up so We can get audio the whole drivet trin's built for this right 4000b car completely undressed okay so they they adjusted a lot of [ __ ] with those cars and they overb it yeah this is going to be

very nice so it's got an 520 horsepower LS3 that's the goal this is fantastic the sh even feels nice that's wild okay I wonder how much one of those cost to do that kind of a swap way this feels Like yeah I mean it's not it's not crazy expensive but it's not cheap yeah but I mean it's worth it um I would imag in three weeks yeah well if it's 2,000 pounds even if you add a couple of hundred like yeah with that kind of power that must be Preposterous they mean they make like a

supercharger and turbo kits that geted up like 50 and you have like a sub five 60 like it's they get pretty quick yeah well I'm imagine that that's probably quite a bit quicker Than that yeah I was going to bring in a muscle car but uh I know it's raining today yeah it's that's the one thing about uh this place versus California is it rains all the time but it's also why it's so [ __ ] pretty yeah everything's so green like when I go back to California I'm like what is wrong with you people

yeah why are you all still here the TR TRX is a good replacement I've been I ever since ever since they announced that I've been in love with That thing and uh I don't want to trade my truck because I just love driving manuals my trucks a six-speed uh but the TRX is definitely a truck that I if I ever moved to a place like Texas I definitely want one of those big trucks yeah that's a ridiculous car yeah and then when Hennessy takes it and makes it even more ridiculous it's like like Dodge is

amazing they're just putting hcad engines in everything like like let's Put in the Durango let's put in the Jeep let's put in the truck they haven't put it in Wrangler yet like a Jeep Wrangler no but they put they put the SRT one in the Wrangler it's like 470 but there's some guys that'll do that they do Hellcat conversions for twoo Wranglers yeah like that's insane it is insane but I just love the fact that people are doing that I'm like you I love uh I'm a I mean I love all cars I'm a fan

of cars but I'm a giant fan of the old muscle Cars yeah like uh I was talking about just the fact with the CTSV where if you like you get into a nice Mercedes or a BMW or like an all-wheel drive Audi and you stomp on the gas like it's fun but you you you know what what's going to happen you're going in straight line it's going to be fast like with a Cadillac like you hit the gas and you're like at any moment I could die and like that's what that's what I what I

like like you have like 700 horsepower rear Whe drive and it's like it's like sounds this bomb's gone off behind you I have like a CO of exhaust on it and the t is just moving it tires are spinning the car's moving everywhere and you're just like wow this is like this is what I signed up for it's just so funny that it's Cadillac if you could if anybody from like the 1960s could see a Cadillac today they'd be like what the [ __ ] happened did you see the new uh ct5 Blackwing no they're

coming out with so they're coming out with the new ct5 Blackwing and uh it comes with 670 horsepower it's like it's like Catal it's like GM's last shebang with like a big supercharged V8s I think and uh it comes in a 10-speed Auto or six-speed manual really yeah and that's sixspeed manual and like a a luxury American muscle car is is [ __ ] awesome how many doors is it it's four doors wow you can get that in a manual that's Nuts 2022 that will be their last shebang because they are going to move to

Electric everything's moving to Electric yeah that's that's definitely the future but there's nothing like a [ __ ] look at that [ __ ] like an old V8 that is crazy that they're doing that in a manual I wonder how many they're going to sell well if they're going to sell any of them they're going to sell them here in America the only other company that is like hanging in there with Manuals other than American cars is Porsche yeah they're the only ones those [ __ ] are still going strong with with manual transmissions I

mean it's 668 horsepower that's Bonkers top speed 200 over 200 miles hour and and then you know the 10p speed is way faster but a sixspeed is a sixspeed it's just more fun to drive people just it's way more enjoyable for me yeah most of my cars are manual transmission it's just way more fun yeah yeah and I get it People want convenience but I've always feel like those are people that don't truly appreciate cars yeah like you just want to get in a car and go go to work point A to point B yeah

I get it you want a nice car and you want to be able to do that in a nice car I get it but when you're doing like when you get in a car to drive it it's different yeah you feel like you're in a [ __ ] movie yeah yeah it's it's awesome I I love it I'm a Giant fan have you um taken your car to a track ever I haven't no I ne it's on my one time I did back when I was doing Fear Factor but not for a long it's on

it's on my wish list I uh I actually have a buddy in Puerto Rico who's going to you can rent the track for like 200 bucks a day or something and Puerto Rico and I'm to when I get back actually like like one of the first days I get back I'm going to take the Miata to a track and I'm going to try to see if I can [ __ ] around a little bit there with it uh but it's definitely something that I want to do I just have never done it what do you

think you're going to be doing when you're done with all this competing uh when I finish competing I don't really know um when I finish competing and when I finish my uh my competitive career I want to compete until I'm 35 to 40 um that's what my goal is now as long as my body and my stomach are okay uh but maybe I'm going To be I'm definitely going to have enough money where I don't need to have need to open up a school to support myself but maybe I'm just going to be bored maybe

I just want to run a school to you know help other people and and uh and just because I love ji- Jitsu so much I just want to teach um or maybe I'm just going to be like you know what I've done ji Jitsu for the last 20 years [ __ ] this I don't want to have anything to do with it and I just like buy a House in the middle of the woods somewhere and not have to deal with anybody um so like I it could go either way um right now with the

current the current series of events that's happening in America I feel like I'm just going to want to buy a house like in the middle of the woods in Montana that like you can't get to unless you helicopter in and just never like not be surrounded by anybody um but uh it's it's it's tough to say um don't you Think you get bored yeah I would but I think uh one of the things I also want to do when I retire it's like on my bucket list is uh I want to have like a rooftop

tent on a truck and I want to travel around teaching seminars to all 50 states and see which H see which states I want to buy houses in like see which states are the most enjoyable so that's one of the things I want to do when I retire that's not a bad move um yeah the the retirement thing you how Much money can you make doing Jiu-Jitsu right now uh how much money can I make or how much money can most people make can you make a couple million dollars a year really is that what

you're doing right now yeah wow and is that seminars as well it's mostly instructionals um most of my money uh well actually most of my money comes from a series of Investments that I have um but as far as just u- Jitsu um most of the money I make comes From instructionals probably probably about 90% of my income in the sport of Jiu-Jitsu comes from comes from instructionals instructionals make far more than sponsors competitions and seminars all put together um really so your competitions in a sense are like an advertisement other than your career you

know in defining your legacy they're an advertisement for your instructionals yeah though like for example I'm going to be releas releasing uh a series Called attacking from Top pins um with BJJ Fanatics that's my next instructional coming out um so like my last couple matches I've hit attacks from Top pins like I hit the kimmore from a top half guard I hit the mounted armar so I basically just use my matches now to Market whatever instructional I'm going to be coming out with soon and these instructionals now here's the big question how come people aren't

seeing these instructionals and then utilizing Your system and then why don't we see like a bunch of clones of the Don her death squad out there you see them in the upand cominging generations the guys who are already established are too arrogant to watch them and it's just like I talk about like most people get to a certain level usually it's black belt and then they Coast with that level of technique and they don't really get any better um so if you go to like ADCC worlds you see your typical 2010 Jiu-Jitsu if you go

to ADCC trials with all the upand cominging guys you see pretty much just a mimic of what our game is everyone uses Ashi grammies into leg locks people are trapping arms from the back so you see a lot of the younger generations and the new school guys trying to do what we do but the old school guys the guys I'm competing guys who I'm competing against currently won't even bother that it's too lazy to watch to watch an 11 11h hour Instructional on back attacks um and they just were like you know what [ __

] this guy I'm going to do the same [ __ ] I've been doing for the last you know 25 years how long do you think they can last to in that though that it seems like with the new guys coming up you do see these more complex games you do see these more diverse games well you see a general pattern in in Jiu-Jitsu you see a guy get to a certain level he wins a few competitions or few big competitions Then he coasts on the technique he has and the only progression that he makes

from the age of 25 where he wins his first ADCC to the age of 35 is everyone just takes more steroids so they just get they just get bigger and stronger and they just Coast on the same technique they have and then by the time they're 35 to 40 they Peak physically and then after that they kind of degenerate and then that's the end of the career um so I Mean what what what we're focused on is progression uh is rapid progression over a small amount of time so that by the time I'm like myself

at 35 won't even be competitive with myself now like whereas most guys a 25-year-old competitor versus a 35-year-old competitor they're relatively the same in technique but the 35-year-old guy has just 10 more years of juice and he's just a little bit bigger and stronger so he's going to win the Match yeah that that's that is a problem with jiu-jitsu today is that there's the whatever drug testing they do is basically intelligence test yeah you just and there's there's none I mean if you look at actual Jiu-Jitsu in most competitions there's not even a rule where

you can you can't use steroids like it's it's legal like and then and then if they do have testing it's like the UFC like the ibf test for test for uh they do they don't do random testing They do one test on the day of the event for every other winner for uh every other division winner so they test a one we class and then they skip one we weight class and they test another weight class um and no one says you can't can't use steroids they just say you can't get caught using steroids it's

it's a big difference um you know do I think that everyone who pass suici tests are natural absolutely not um so you know the the the competitions who do Test in Jiu-Jitsu don't say you don't have to use steroids they just say you don't have to get you can't be caught using steroids or will penalize you and there's only one competition that I know of that test which is the IBG Jeff worlds and then they don't nobody else test for it so I used to think naively that usada had basically cleaned up the sport and

then I watched this video from uh this guy Derek is uh YouTube uh shows more plates more dates yeah you know That guy yeah he did a thing on me did he yeah he did a he did a he did a video Nat or not what did he conclude uh well actually he did a thing about me and Lan Giles cuz we were arguing about about him him being on uh on steroids and um I forget I forget what he actually concluded cuz it was it was more about it was like a Nat or KN

but it was also like talking about the argument between me and llin and you know building Gaining mass in a in a sport where you're basically just doing cardio all day so it was like a n or not but it was mixed with some other arguments that I had with some guy online um but his argument well his video about uh Paul Costa and Jon Jones and all these guys that have you know uh either failed tests or you know had had issues in the past was very enlightening cuz I I didn't know what the

how much wiggle room there was there's a lot yeah And like if you if you think about it like usada has a certain amount of resources uh and wada has a certain amount of resources but beating drug tests like for the Olympics is like a multi-billion dollar industry and you have countries behind beating drug tests like you want to like your wants to win the Olympics like you have the country of Germany the country of the US the country of Russia dedicating scientists and billions of dollars to getting these Guys to pass the drug test

to win the Olympics like the the industry for for beating drug tests has a lot more money going through it than the than the industry for for drug testing itself yeah well if you've seen the documentary Icarus you you have you seen that it's amazing it's um a documentary that they basically got very lucky and the guy Brian Fogle who's the director of the documentary and he created it he Was going to do uh bike race clean and then do it the next year Juiced and so and document it and see how much of an

effect it actually has on cycling so he does it clean and then he hires this guy who's the head of the Russian anti-doping agency well when he does that it is right at the same time where they get busted for the Sochi Olympics so what they did with the SOI Olympics is the Russ team had this really elaborate scam where they put a hole in The wall and they were passing clean urine through and taking the dirty urine so they had all the urine stored in this one room and they had figured this out by

doing a microanalysis of the glass that the urine was in they found scratches that indicated that they figured out a way to get past this very sophisticated locking mechanism that was previously thought to be impossible to open up and so these guys had done that and they had swapped urine out And then they got busted and now this guy Gregory renov had to escape Russia in [ __ ] the cover of night and come over to America they uh they did this now he's under W Witness Protection Program right now they want to kill him

like they they've targeted his family back in Russia they took all their their their funds away they took their house away it's crazy and he went into detail about how the Russian athletes all of them across the board were Juiced he Said the only people that weren't Juiced were the figure skaters because they didn't find any benefit in juicing them and with the F their fine motor skills deteriorated and they also found that the females look too manly yeah the um it's uh it's always funny to see uh guys that are competing at like 35

years old that are like twice as jacked and twice as cut as they were when they were 25 years old like that's not supposed to happen What about y Romero yeah he's he's the freak of all freaks I mean he's twice as he's twice as big and twice as cut as he was when he was like an Olympic level athlete like it's insane um and it's the same thing like uh like Lance Armstrong like if they wanted to give the prize to the next guy who wasn't doping it was like the 76th person or something

like it was way down the line that like it doesn't even make sense to like give it to the next guy um so it's really Interesting uh you know how everyone how everyone thinks that if you if you can pass you out a test that you're like 100% clean and I just don't believe that's the case at all yeah um yel Romero just got pulled from his fight with Rumble Johnson I saw that they said that he failed some sort of pre-fight medical but I wonder what that would be about have they released that yet

um what do you think is going to happen do you think that you're going to Continue with John donar's plan and and go into just Jiu-Jitsu from now on and just dominate Jiu-Jitsu or do you think they be a time where you're going to be tempted enough to compete in MMA if you had a guess it's it's to early to tell yet um you know I've always wanted to fight MMA I think it's going to be a big a big deciding factor is going to be how 2022 ADCC goes um you know how big is

the sport going to be after that event um who's going to win the absolute like Where are they holding that Vegas really Thomas and Mack no [ __ ] yeah re what month I said September late September it's in the Thomas and Mac Arena it's going to be they're going to be huge like they're they're getting uh I think they want to get Billboards like in the strip and put like all like the whole ADCC poster on there it's going to be it's going to be a big event I would say I'm definitely going to

be there but September's elk hunting season okay so September's tough to give up September if you can make two days ah I don't know if I can 24th through6 oh that's terrible time of year that's when they're screaming that's when the elk scream what the [ __ ] you doing ADCC you non-el hunting [ __ ] it's always in it's always September always late September oh that's that's literally Prime elk hunting time [ __ ] so yeah that's going to be that's goingon to be a big one like and there's A good chance like my

brother or Craig like there's a good chance that one of one of my teammates wins the absolute so what am I going to do am I going to fight him uh am I going to relinquish the title and move to MMA am I going to relinquish the the super fight title and move back to division and do the absolute um you know it's it's kind of it's kind of hard to tell have you ever gotten into a situation like that where you had To compete against a teammate I had to compete against Gary tonin the

last that's right everybody thinks that match was fake but that was like the most heartbreak that's like the the thing that annoys me the most is everyone thinks it was fake but it was like 100% real and it was like the most heartbreaking thing I've ever had to do because Gary is one of my first coaches like Gary was a black belt when I was a blue belt and he was like one of the First guys who really helped me you know move up through the ranks and he introduced me to John and you know

he was a big part of my of my career my early career and even my career now um and that was the first year that they allowed two people to be in the same division uh two people from the same team to be in the absolute uh but the way that ADCC does it is because there were used to be so many fake fights in the quarter in the semi-finals or the Finals that they make all the teammates fight second round now so you can't you can't fake a fake a fight and then go to

the finals being fresh or you can't fake a fight in the finals so they make all the all the teammates fight uh second round so I had to go out and compete against Gary second round and everyone thinks it was fake because it looks like he just gave me his back but Gary knew that his one his one chance of like definitively beating me was to leg lock Me so he tried to back step into my legs I knew it was coming and then I just exposed his back and I took his back and I

had his back like the first minute in and then I ended up finishing him and everyone thinks it was fake but I'm like I did this to everybody else in the tournament like I I submitt everybody else like up until this point why do you guys think it was fake well they think it's fake cuz so many of them were doing it fake yeah of course yeah that that is That's always been the case with uh when Jiu-Jitsu teams meet up I mean they would make agreements yeah yeah and now they have like what they

do is they have like they have like threeway agreements where like not even guys on different teams will uh will make agreements to you know to beat one guy on the other side of the bracket they don't like like who has the best chance of beating the guy we don't like or if it's this guy then we'll do two fake matches and this Guy will go to the finals really like it's crazy yeah so they'll do two fake matches so the guy's fresh when he faces that other guy yeah why is how did Jiu-Jitsu fall

short in this way like what is what went wrong it's so crazy because first of all everyone talks about you know you need to you need to follow the roots of Jiu-Jitsu and talk they talk about you know being humble and having respect it's like you know where Brazilian Jitsu Started from right it started from like the Gracies like [ __ ] going in and beating the [ __ ] out of karate instructors are F taking over their schools like what are you guys talk yeah what are you guys talking about um and you know

it's just it's a group of guys and a crowd of people fighting over peanuts so there's every promoter for the most part in Jiu-Jitsu every highle athlete for the most part in Jiu-Jitsu are just Scumbags because they're all fighting over a small amount of money and they'll do anything they can to get that small amount of money so it's like you have like 10,000 people fighting over $1,000 and everybody wants $1,000 to do whatever they can to get to get there um so there's a lot of scumbaggery that happens you know both in competitions and

both you know negotiations on the mat off the mat so it's just uh it's it's the complete opposite of what most People tell you ju justu is like you you know have to be hardworking and be humble and respect and all this [ __ ] it's like it's [ __ ] most of it um um so it's it's just funny to watch you know coming up to the ranks and seeing you know all the crazy [ __ ] that happens um when people are either you competing or or negotiating to do competitions it's just it

is funny when you go back and look at the old school Jiu-Jitsu matches or you know just old school Fights like when Hicks and Gracie fought Hugo dwarte on the beach smacked him in the face and started the fight and then they're fighting on the sand and then like the camera cuts out next thing you know he's on top of him like that was like that was like normal day for those guys yeah and now like uh now like I smack Andre after he like assaults me and everyone's like Andre should sue him I'm like

what like where where how do we get from here to where We are now it's just insane well it's there's a video of him pushing you first yeah um if you go back in time and compete against any Jiu-Jitsu player would it be Hixon uh no I mean the gr the best Gracie by far is hoder so and not even compete against him I just want I've never trained with hoder uh hoder is by far the most accomplished Gracie as far as Jiu-Jitsu goes um and I think that hajer is also by far the the

best Technically um as far as um not even just the Gracies but just competitors in general like hoder hoder went out and hoder finished people like consistently went out and he just like he mauled people like I'm mauling people today like he just went out you know he's going to cross collar strangle you from Mount he goes out he passes your guard he mounts you and he finishes you like it's just it it looked like a guy who was just far ahead of his time competing Against guys from that era so um hoder someone that

I really respect and I would really love to you know he's retired now but I'd love to train with him one day at least yeah does he is he still training on a regular basis a lot of these guys they get to in their later years and their their bodies are so [ __ ] up it's hard for them to actually train hard yeah most of the I don't know about hoder but most of the competitors even the active competitors are just Fighters like they just they do a camp um whereas like you know if

you're a real martial artist Like You Train full-time like most most of the guys that compete at the highest levels train less than some of the hobbyists I know like they do they do like four or six week camps then they do an ADCC and they take two months where they just don't train at all like train not training for two months is like the most insane thing ever like this is your job like they Don't treat it like a job they treat it like a hobby where they want to make money doing it but

they don't actually put in the work to be able to achieve the things that they want and maybe they win a tournament here maybe they win ADCC there but it you know in order to make money doing Jiu-Jitsu there's a lot more to it than just going out and winning a few tournaments like that you know you have to you have to Market yourself well you have to be present on Social media you have to be able to teach people you have to speak well um there's a lot more than just winning competitions I couldn't

agree more and I think that your drive and your accomplishments and the Excellence that you're pursuing it doesn't just apply to Jiu-Jitsu I think there's a lot of people that don't even plan on doing Jiu-Jitsu that are going to get a lot out of this conversation because I think to be a person like you you have to be a Person like you there's no half stepping there's no part-time All or Nothing it's all or nothing and look what it's accomplished for you I mean it's it's it's pretty extraordinary and uh you've also set a pace

and um a a workload that it's so daunting there's a lot of people that are not not going to even try yeah yeah I mean it's it's it's it's hard to keep up and that's one of the things I pride Myself on the most is that I you know I work I work harder and I work smarter than than all the rest of the guys and you know it shows uh and I just feel like I'm at a level now where I'm getting better faster than I ever was and I feel like the more time

that goes on it's just going to get worse and worse for everybody um so why are you getting better faster because the more you know about the sport the more you can understand the mechan and the biome Mechanics the easier it is to go back and fix mistakes from day to day like when I was a brown belt for example if I had a problem from mou and I I would either have to sit in the position and try to figure it out I'd be there for 30 minutes or an hour trying to figure out

what the best options are or I would go to John and I would ask him the question but now I understand how everything works so if I run into an issue I can Just think about okay what are the rational ideas I can play with here that will get me to a solution that work Works um so the more you know about Jiu-Jitsu the easier it is to go back and kind of reverse engineer what issues you have and you can solve problems by yourself so that you're an independent Problem Solver rather than someone who

just has to go and ask somebody else a question and you get an answer from the guy so you can innovate stuff and you Can create stuff on your own and you can go beyond like John's whole thing is he wants to go beyond what he he he uh he teaches us he doesn't want to create a bunch of robots who just try to copy what he says so he gives us an idea and then we run with that idea and we innovate on our own and we end up creating something completely different completely new

from what he was originally showing us well whatever you do whether it's MMA or Jiu-Jitsu I'm Going to watch I appreciate you I love that there's people like you out there I think it's it's it's just cool as [ __ ] I I love people that are all in on anything it's hard to find authentic people nowaday it is it's very hard um and uh when do you have a scheduled match coming up uh yeah so I actually have a match on this upcoming uh upcoming who's number one on Flow grappling it's May 28th they

haven't released the name yet so I'm not going To release it here um but I do have a match coming up and then I have uh a match uh in July which is verbally agreed upon against an ADCC Champion so that should be fun um so I have I have a few matches coming up they're trying to find they're trying to uh you know gather people to compete against me uh but I have a few things coming up and uh I'm excited I hope the guys actually sign the contracts and show up and we can

have a match but I got a few things Coming up and then the big ones ADCC next year obviously beautiful well I can't wait for all of them thanks brother appreciate you very much man thanks for coming in here all right bye everybody [Music]