Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puc5pZVsFPY
I'm the number one heavyweight in the world right now and I'm scared to fight everybody. What about John Jones? I'd be an idiot otherwise. But now that I understand fear and what it does for me, it just fuels me so much in a way that nothing else can. So, I'll be prepared to do whatever I need to do. But I just don't like what he's doing because I can't function knowing that I trained for a fight and didn't actually fight somebody. Jon Jones is officially retired. Tom Aspenol is the heavyweight champion of the UFC. Did you see this coming? And do you have any idea when you'll be back in the octagon? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Tom, you're the only ever British heavyweight champion of the UFC. So, what advice can you give young men that are struggling to find that sense of purpose? It takes years to become an overnight success. I've been going since I was 8 years old and I've been up against so many tests from career ending injuries to financial struggles to mental struggles and at one point we had three kids at the age of 25 and I had no money. I mean, my first pro fight I got 200 quid. I felt the pressure trying to be a young guy but having all this responsibility on me. Having to borrow money from friends to buy nappies for my kids so I can keep living on this dream. But outlasting people and consistency is massively underrated. And in today's day and age, people just have a lot of options. But that obsessiveness of being 100% focused on something, you win. Tom, there's this black box in front of me which contains something which represents a pivotal moment in your career. What is the story behind this? It was the most devastating thing that happened in my whole career. So, ahead of showing you that interview which we recorded a while ago, I wanted to call Tom and get his first reaction to the news that he's now the UFC's undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. So, what I'm about to show you is a conversation I had with Tom hours after the news was announced that he's now the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. And then I'm going to play the long form interview that me and Tom had several weeks ago right here in the studio. Enjoy. Tom, did you um did you see this coming? Uh yes, but I just didn't expect it. Um
when it happened, I expected it. So, next week I'm going to Vegas. I'm going for the Well, they say it's the biggest fight card of the year, a fight card called International Fight Week. And I knew that I had some news coming on International Fight Week. We got wind that Jon Jones is gonna retire and they're going to announce it on International Fight Week, but for some reason they announced it um last night. I don't know what that reason is. It took me by surprise at least. Um but they announced it last night. What was your initial honest gut reaction when you found out he was retiring? Where were you? What was your first feeling when you heard that news? Well, I only knew 100% actually last night. It was always like rumors of him retiring. He's putting stuff out on the media saying that he's retiring because MMA especially at elite level is quite there's not many people like you hear rumors a lot. So I heard rumors from people close to him that he's going to retire and that he's not living like an athlete um who's fighting at the top level anymore and that he's not interested and he's not in the gym and etc. But I knew that there was going to be a decision made by the UFC coming soon whether he's going to continue and um we got it last night for sure. We we finally got it confirmed last night. So, I am uh very happy to get this part of my career behind me in the rearview mirror now. But, but how did you feel? Because I think from the conversation we had, which we're going to play in a second, it was clear to me that you wanted to have Jon Jones on your record. You wanted to fight him. What I really wanted is is the undisputed title. That's really what I was chasing the whole time. I was never really chasing one guy. Jon Jones was always just a bonus because of the sto because of the resume that he's got and because of the name that he has and the the status that he holds within the within the sport. Like he's so well respected. I think that would have been a great scalp for me to have on my resume. But uh ultimately I was chasing the belt. I was chasing being the number one heavyweight fighter in the world, which uh I am and I can say that I am now, especially with John not around and he's retired and
that's behind us. But um ultimately the thing that I wanted really was was the belt. the fact that John's left the sport. Obviously, it would have been better for me career-wise to have that name. Financially, it would have been great as well, but um the thing that I was ultimately chasing was uh the heavyweight title. And how do you think about John's decision? Do you do you view it as a strategic dodge or do you view it as a genuine sort of closing of that chapter in his uh of his legacy? I think that he's entitled to do whatever he wants to be honest. I'm not um he's done way more in the sport than I have. So, he should do whatever he feels is right. I speaking as as just a fighter here. If it was if it was so public for me personally, I don't know if my ego could take it having not done it. Um but that's that's honestly that's his prerogative. I don't hold any ill will against him for it. And I'm I'm happy to move on with my career now that it's over. Because you got to remember, I've not fought for nearly a year now because of this. And I've been healthy the whole time. I've been in the gym the whole time. I've been doing exactly what I'm supposed to do as a high level operating athlete at the elite level. So I'm glad that that is behind us. Well, do you in part, I guess, take this as a bit of a compliment that there was such huge public pressure for him to fight you and actually the route that he chose was to retire instead of fighting you? I mean, that's quite a compliment for someone of Jon Jones stature. Uh, I try not to let my ego take control of me. Um, I could see why people would think that, but to me it's just like maybe when I've retired I'll cons when I've retired myself, which is not going to happen in the next couple of years at least. Um, I'll think about that kind of stuff. But for right now, it's just like we got to focus on another fight. We've got to get me active. We got to get me back out there and doing what doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Cuz right now, I've been thinking about that whole situation and being held up and frustrated for almost a year. And it's not it's what I love doing. I've been I've been held back for the whole time and it's not been very fun to be honest with you. So my the the ego side of my
brain is like, "Yep, I've kind of beat him without fighting him." And I did say that. I've said that the whole time that I'm going to retire him without fighting him. Uh but I don't kind of want to harp on about that really. I want to kind of just put that behind me and move forward on my own path. Now I hear and you know, John Jones is a an unpredictable individual. So there's still a possibility that that retirement wasn't a legit retirement and that he might get a bit bored and end up, you know, deciding that he wants to come back and fight you. Is that something that you would consider if that were to happen? I'm sure with where he's at, he can like jump the queue anytime he wants. So, you know, this time a year down the line, we'll have another three or four contenders knocking on for a title shot, I'm sure. But anytime someone like him wants to step up and say, "Listen, I want to fight again." They're going to get an immediate title shot. So, uh, I'm never going to count that out. And I'm sure that maybe he's, you know, I'm in a spot in my career where there's not all that much footage out there on me. Maybe he sees something on me in the next few fights and he thinks, you know what, I can beat this guy. I'm going to come back and beat him. So mentally, I'm never counting that out. I think the the the fight is always it could always pop back up and come back around on me. So that's something that I would obviously accept. But as I said before, I think a lot of people get it confused over the last kind of 10 monthsish is that I was chasing Jon Jones. That was never the case. I was chasing the the undisputed heavyweight title. That's it. So, if I can if I do get the opportunity to put Jon Jones on my resume, of course, I'll I'll accept that with open arms. But if not, I'm content. I'll move forward and I'll uh create my own legacy without him. And what what has changed overnight? Is there as a UFC fan, is there anything that I'm unaware of that changes when Dana announces you as the Undisputed? Does your contract change? Does Does there anything that changes other than the fact that you've now got a sort of a clear path and you're now the one being chased? You're no longer chasing. Well, I was on uh cuz I was an interim champ cuz I was a champion in my own right as well. So, I I I was already
getting a lot of the uh a lot of the perks that come with being a champion. stuff like pay-per-view points is something that you get when you're a champion. You also get, you know, uh pay-per-view points is where you get a cut of the pay-per-view sales. Okay? So, I don't want to go into the details of my contracts, of course, but you'll get if someone pays, you know, $60 for a pay-per-view, you might get $2, you might get $5 per bar, you might get 10 people, different people have different um different perks in the contract. So, I I was already having that cuz I was a I was a champion in my own right anyway. But yeah, not nothing actually really changes. Just the fact that there isn't two belts anymore in the division, which is great. There's one face, one name, and one guy in in the division. And to me, that is what that's what separates uh MMA from other sports, other fight sports at least, is that for example, in boxing, you can have like five, six, seven, eight, even sometimes different organization. You got the WBO, the WBC, the IBO, the IBF, and all these different ones that I don't even know about. and they all have different champions in each organization. Whereas generally speaking, the number one guy in the world is the UFC champion. And before Jon Jones retired, there was two of us in the division, which is a little bit of a strange strange conundrum that I wasn't comfortable being in. I think that there should be one guy in every division. And uh now that that John's gone, obviously we didn't get to fight about it, which I would have liked. Um, but at least there's one guy and uh I'm I'm happy with that moving forward. And who's the who's the number one contender now? You're now being chased, right? You were doing a little bit of chasing in terms of trying to get that um unified, but but who in your mind is the number one contender now for the heavyweight title belt. Oh, that's uh that's I'm I'm more than happy being chased. That's fantastic. I I would rather be the hunted as opposed to the Hunter because I' i've been chas I don't like chasing fights. I like just being the guy and everyone comes to me. That's fantastic. So, most the I've actually fought a lot of the top 10. Um, one of the guys I've not fought is uh Sir Gana, French guy. That's a a fight that I was look I was
actually chasing that fight a few times before. He was he was ducking and diving around himself a little bit. So, he is due a little bit of a beating off me. I look forward to that. Um, couple more guys down the rankings. A Brazilian guy Jelton Almeida I've not fought. There's a guy I've already beat called Alexander Vulkov who's doing really well for himself as well. So, who knows? You never know in the heavyweight division. There's a couple of up andcoming guys who I've not mentioned as well. So, there's some some good fights to be made over the next couple of years for sure. If I were to say myself, it'd be great to see you fight gone in uh in London or in the UK somewhere um as your next fight. Do do you have any idea what you're doing next and when you'll be back in the Octagon? I do, but I also want to keep I also want to keep my job, so there's not much I can say it to be honest. Um, but yeah, this year, yeah, I'm going to be fighting hopefully twice this year. That's that's my plan at least. I think I think I've wasted enough time um now. So, um, we're looking for a quick we're we're looking to get a fight booked quick and it's looking like it's going to be, you know, pretty soon anyway. Um, and then hopefully if everything goes well in the first one, um, I'm uninjured, which is, you know, it's easier said than done, uh, getting through a fight with with a guy my size and and coming out with no injuries. But, um, if I if I can do that, I would like to fight at the end of the year as well. That'd be perfect. And, uh, are you off to training now? Are you you're flying out to Vegas, so I'm assuming you're you're going to the UFC center out there and starting training? No. So, I'm I'm training constantly regardless if I've got a fight or not. The only thing that changes for me is basically intensity in uh in the sessions, but I'm actually going to Vegas for well, I am the heavyweight champion of the world, so they're going to want me at the big shows. Uh so, I'm going to I'm going to be showing my face there, doing a little bit of media and stuff. I will, of course, be doing a little bit of training, you know, ju just different stuff. I'm working with a new sponsor who I'm going to be with
till the end of my career, which is Champion. So, I'll be working with them out there and uh just doing bits for the UFC, meeting fans and and doing bits of training, just being around the scene. And I don't often, to be honest, I'm so routine and I'm so routine based and goal focused that I don't like to leave my home routine and training regimen that often. So, uh, when I go to the US and do things like this, I like to do as much in a short space of time as possible so I can get back to my, uh, cuz I know what I know what I need to do to to be good and to win fights and, uh, that's be at home and be in my routine and and be focused. So, I don't like to leave my routine too much and go overseas and do all this other stuff. So, I'll be killing as many birds with one stone in this trip as possible. You're um, you're a family man, Tom. I got a real understanding of that in the conversation that I'm about to play. Um, your family very close to you. You're a father. What's the reaction been like with your your partner, your your your kids, your your father, your your parents over the last couple of hours since you've been crowned as the undisputed. Uh, to be honest, um, it didn't really make much of a difference. I think a lot of people said the same thing outside of my family as well. It was like you were kind of the champion anyway cuz I think the way that Jon Jones played it the last year or so, it just didn't a lot of people didn't see him as the the unified heavyweight champion anyway. So, I think a lot of people close to me, like I told my kids this morning, they were just like not bothered at all. Didn't make didn't make the slightest bit of difference. I said, "Look, I'm only telling you so when your friends tell you at school, you'll know." And they were like, "Okay, fair enough." That that was it. There was no there was no great reaction there. Say to them, what did you say to them? Well, it was just my my it's mainly my oldest son because my my twins, they're a little bit too young to really understand. They've just turned six, so they don't really get it. But my oldest son's nine almost. Um his friends are following MMA a little bit more. So, he kind of they started thinking it's cool now. So, I told my son, I was like, "Listen, I just let you
know, Jon Jones retired. I'm the undisputed champion now. I've got, you know, this one." And he was just like, "Oh, okay." And I was like, I'm just I know you're not that bothered. I'm just letting you know. So if your friends say anything, you know. And he was like, okay, thanks. John's probably watching this. Um he has undoubtedly had one of the greatest careers in the history of the UFC up there with the likes of Kabib and many of the legends through history. What would you say to him if he was watching this now? That's it's a great question. I I don't I don't know if he will be watching this. I'm not sure. But if he if he is, uh I think he's had an amazing career and I think he should enjoy the rest of his life. I think if he if he truly feels like he's done enough, which he keeps saying that he does, he will be at peace. He doesn't need me or anybody else to tell him uh how good he's done. He should he'll know it himself. So uh I hope that he's he's enjoying his life. He's enjoying his family and he's celebrating his career because it's been amazing. Tom, uh congratulations. I think I speak on behalf of a lot of Brits and really people all around the world when I say that um you're the champion I think the UFC especially at that the heavyweight division has really been longing for someone who wants to be active someone who is um seeking the biggest fights someone who is willing to fight anybody but also someone that's just really really relatable and I think sends a message to all of all of us that what I'd class as a very normal guy from humble beginnings can reach the very top of the professional um pyramid as it relates to sports and entertainment. So, thank you so much for representing the UK in UF in the UFC, especially at the heavyweight level, which we've never had before. But, I will all be rooting for you uh for so many reasons because of who you are, but also because of the exciting way that you've um conducted yourself in and outside of the octagon. So, I'm going to let you go. Um we're going to play the interview now that we recorded a little while ago, but um yeah, going to be watching your career very, very closely and um going to be ringside whenever you fight next. Uh, I know there's a lot of people that are going to turn out to support you. So,
thank you so much, Tom. Thank you very much for having me. And, uh, if you're there, as always, cuz we know each other now. And I know it's difficult when you know somebody personally. Um, anytime I fight, you got to strap in. Be ready for anything because it's heavyweight MMA at the highest level and anything can happen. So, thank you for having me, Stephen, and I look forward to uh to seeing you there. Thank you. Tom, if I had met you when you were a kid and I'd asked you, what do you want to be when you're older, what would you have said to me? Well, it depends on the age, of course, but I think if you would have asked me from the age of being 9 years old and above, I would have said that I'm going to be UFC heavyweight champion at 9 years old. Yeah. As soon as I kind of like went to a gym and I realized there's people in this gym who are adults and they don't have a regular job and they're just showing up to the gym every day and fighting every few months and getting money for it. Like I was I was literally like this is what I want to do. So take me back. So where do you where did you come from for someone that doesn't know who you are? They don't know your story. They don't know Tom Aspenol's origin. Where did you come from? Um, so I'm from a place I was born in Sulford, which is like Greater Manchester, and then I moved to a different part of Greater Manchester, a place called Allison. There's not a lot of stuff going on there to be honest. I mean, it's just like a normal workingass blue collar place. Do you know what I mean? A lot a lot of families like the parents work in factories, they mechanics, they plumbers. And what were your family in that context? So, my dad originally worked in IT. He got paid some redundancy money and then he decided to start teaching grappling full-time, which we're talking when we're talking like 20 years ago, the grappling industry in the UK was non-existent. And obviously, I was quite a I was a budding, but I wasn't I wasn't even like a budding prospect at the time. My dad had no fights at the time, but I was training and I was enjoying my training and my dad wanted to spend more time perfecting me to help me do what I enjoy
a little bit more. So, was he the inspiration for you to go to the gym the first time and start training or So, it's difficult to say because I had like a bit of a blurred line as to where I started actually training martial arts. So, I started training when I was young, but it was my dad's thing more and I just used to go with my dad like to spend some time with my dad and cuz I didn't really have much else to do. But I used to always go down to the gym and when I started training there were no like kids classes. Like now you can go to the end of the road and there'll be an MMA gym with kids classes on with 20 kids in the class. Like that wasn't my case when I started at 8 n years old. Like I used to go to the gym there used to be 10 40 year old guys rolling around on the floor with each other and I just used to jump in when there was a smaller guy available. Otherwise I'd just be like kicking the football around the gym or something like that. Like basically I've grown up in in gyms. But when I actually started training seriously, that was probably when I was like 14, 13, 14, something like that. And was there ever a moment in those early years where you realized or someone said something to you that you can still remember that proved to you that you were better than normal people at this thing? I do remember a few instances. Like I said, I used to train with adults even when I was a child. And I was quite aware even from being young that the adults were like taking it easy on me, you know, like they were letting me get position and letting me do certain things on them and they weren't really trying as much. And uh I remember feeling like the adults are starting going harder on me. Do if that makes sense. Does that make sense? I remember I used to just have all my own way in training because the adults a lot of the time were like my dad's friends and his students and then they would I would always be around the gym so they'd know me and they take it easy and stuff like that. And then I remember like a couple of the couple of the guys who I trained with, like I said, I was like 11, 12 years old. And I remember a couple of the guys like it became a lot more physical training. Like it became a lot more competitive whereas before they
were just like letting me do my thing and then they started fighting back a little bit more. And then I remember thinking, ah, well, I must be all right. like if if they're trying I remember realizing that people actually started trying against me and then they finish around and look like they'd done a workout a little bit rather than just played with a kid if that makes sense. And was that I'm trying to figure out as well the the thing that encouraged you to keep going at that point because at that age you can end up playing football, you can end up going and joining this club, you can end up focusing on some drama class that you're doing but there must have been something that kind of held you in this habit. I mean I definitely tried all that stuff. I definitely um I mean my area is like quite a big rugby area. So like rugby league we play up there and uh I definitely delved in that a little bit but I just never really was my thing you know. I think cuz my dad and my brother was heavily involved with martial arts and that's just where I always felt like safe to a degree is like in the gym. I know it sounds really weird, but I felt like when you're involved in martial arts, it's almost like there can be 10 guys in the room and they can all be from different backgrounds, male, female, one guy can be 12 years old, the other guy can be 65 years old. One guy's retired, the other guy's at college, one guy's black, the other guy's Chinese. It doesn't matter. Like when you're in there, it none of that matters. And everyone just respects each other and gets on regardless of like race, gender, age, what the job is. And none of that stuff matters. Everyone just respects each other the same. And I was always like drawn to that more than anything. I was that's where I always felt my most comfortable. And especially cuz I was a bit more of a shy kid. I felt like I could really express myself through martial arts. And something else about martial arts is like cuz it's an individual sport. it's like always on you if you do well or not. And I realized like the more time I put in, the more I got out of it, like mentally and physically, like I would get better the more I did it. Whereas with team sports, especially rugby because that's
the team sport I've done the most. Like there would be games where I personally had had like an amazing game, but the team had lost and I could see the next guy not trying as hard as me. or sometimes vice versa. Sometimes they'd, you know, I'd had a terrible game, but the team had won and everyone would be really happy and I'd be like, "Oh, I had a bad game." And I couldn't I could never shake that. I'd always like want to I always liked control. Control. Yeah. Being in charge of like my own thing. And MMA in particular is very much that it's like if you're not putting the work in, like you will get exposed. You will get your ego checked literally on a daily basis if you're not doing what you need to do. And I love that like it gives you a sense of like accountability for just your everyday habits like your thought process, what you're putting in your body, how much recovery you're getting, how many reps are you doing in the gym, everything like everything is accounted for publicly and I quite like that. I quite love that actually. Um, your mother in this picture, where does she fit into this picture you've painted for me? And who is she? Uh, she first of all, she is the nicest woman that has ever walked the face of the earth. I think she is such a lovely person. Yeah, there is literally, you know, when someone says the term, oh, she's not got or they've not got a bad bone in the body, that literally applies to my mom. But as far as So, my last fight that I had, which is in Manchester, my home my hometown. That was the first fight that my mom's ever been to really. And I'm already like number one in the world. I'm like, bloody hell, mom, you've lived it this long. But yeah, she she is she just stays away from the MMA side of things. She is just a mom, which is great. That's amazing. She is a really really uh lovely person. Why was that the first fight she'd ever come to? Cuz it's scary. And I You didn't want her to come or No, it's not No, it's not that I didn't want her to. I I was It's never been like her thing. So, I would never like be like, "Oh, mom, can you please come?" Because I know it's I know like firsthand, even from like teammates fighting, how scary it is for me to be in attendance. So, I would never like drag along someone who loves me because
it's it's horrendous to be honest with you. Like, it's such an unpredictable sport that you just never know. So, but I think my mom came because I was like, "Look, Mom, I don't want to tell you to come or not come, but this is probably the only time I'm ever going to fight in Manchester. Like, I don't know how many fights I've got left. And I'm I'm under the notion that I would rather retire a little bit too early than a little bit too late because I've seen the way people get late in the career. And I don't I don't want to be like that. So I'm not saying I'm going to retire anytime soon. But I'm just saying like most of my fights are in the US now and I don't think you'll ever have a chance to see me fight live again. So I think you should come to this one. And uh she came and apparently she enjoyed it. Um, as you're talking about the role that martial arts has played in your life, it got me thinking about about young men in general because young men in general seem to be really struggling at the moment when we look at a lot of the statistics around like suicidal ideiation and purposelessness and um it made me as you were speaking I was like damn I need to do martial arts. So if there is young men listening to this that are struggling in their lives in any way, what advice would you give them in terms of martial arts or those early life decisions or even later life decisions about you know something that they can do to find that sense of purpose that you so clearly found? I mean let me first of all start by saying I would be completely lost without it. I think everybody should do it honestly because I think that it puts your ego in check massively because you constantly like every time you step onto a mat to train you're getting a you're getting hit in the face with reality constantly and if you haven't been like for me it's like you're getting hit in the face with reality and if you're not consistent that reality will hit you harder and harder each time. So it creates a sense of like purpose in your life. You're almost like scared. It's not it's not fear, but it's like you don't want to miss because you don't want to get hit with the reality. Like you don't want to be inconsistent with
your training because you don't want to be hit harder by the reality next time you go. If that makes sense. Makes perfect sense. I just think that it gives you just a massive structure in your life. Not only that, not not to mention the stuff like look, I'm not going to sit here and talk about crime rates or anything like that because I don't know the the statistics, but I know that in this country especially, crime is pretty high right now. Mhm. So, my friend who's come with me who's upstairs, Charlie, he does my social media and he's also a close close friend of mine as well and he's a similar age to me. is 32 and he's literally just started training because I literally said to him like Charlie I say this to everybody who's not involved in martial arts if you need to and I'm not saying you need to be a world champion you need to train every but you need to have a general idea of how to defend yourself if it ever happens like you don't need to be good you don't need to have a fight you don't need to be preparing to fight someone in a ring in a cage or whatever but I think everybody should be comfortable with the general eneral idea of how to defend theel if they need to. Whether that be if you own a house, if you have children, if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever, if you have somebody who you might need to protect who can't protect the self or something that you might need to protect, you need to have some kind of idea on on how to protect that in my that's that's my opinion. Um because fighting is a scary thing at the best. It's like I'm the number one heavyweight in the world right now and I'm scared to fight somebody. So, like I wouldn't like to be completely clueless because it must be so scary and I think that it would be I I would recommend it to anybody of any age to do some kind of martial arts. So, there's a couple of things you said there which I'm most certainly going to ask you about. The first thing you said was about how martial arts brings the consequence of like a lack of discipline Yeah. up close but also increases the consequence. And I was I was thinking as you were saying that I was thinking, "Oh my god, this is so true." Because if I if I'm a 18-year-old guy and I'm sat this on the
sofa at home doing nothing with my life, the consequence of that is quite hard to see in the short term. What you're saying is by doing martial arts, the consequence becomes weekly and becomes you're going to get your [ __ ] nose broken. Yeah. So, so that's motivating to get you get your life together. And then the other thing you said is I'm the number one in the world and even I'm scared to fight somebody. Yeah. Who? Who? Yeah. Everybody. I don't want to fight anybody. I don't I mean I want to fight professionally. I love doing that. But I mean as far as like a a confrontation with somebody. That's the last thing I'm trying to do. I don't want to do that with anybody. So you weren't saying that you're scared to fight a particular person. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean Yeah. I'm scared to fight everybody. Yeah. And I think that that for for professional combat athletes across the board, whether that's boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, MMA, whatever you're into, I think that's like a very very uh taboo subject is like fear because everybody wants to be this like big like I'm a freaking 6'5, 115 kilo guy with like cauliflower ears and everything like tattoos and the whole lot. It's pretty difficult to sit here and say like I'm scared to fight anybody and like have that and be and be literally the number one heavyweight in the world. But kind of the realization of the fear that I've got now that I understand fear and what it is and what it does for me, it just fuels me so much to do what I do. In MMA, we have terms like a gym warrior. people call it like a someone who spars in the gym really really well and then they get under the lights and they don't fight anywhere near what they do in the gym. Now, generally speaking, that is because they don't understand fear properly. And I think I've got in a place where I completely understand that fear fuels me in a way that nothing else can fuel me and I'm completely comfortable with it. I'm super intrigued by this. So I want to talk about this um this idea of fear but also the journey that you've been on with fear. Yeah. So have you always been fearful to fight people? Yeah. And I think that if you're not, you're either lying to yourself or you're a complete idiot. Yeah. I think I
think if you are going to sit in an arena and the arena's packed to the rims with 20 plus thousand people and there's another guy over the other side of the arena waiting to fight you who's trained for the last 10 weeks and you've got to meet him in the center of the octagon with millions of people watching around the world and know that you can get separated from your own consciousness and you're not scared. You're either lying to yourself or you're just a complete idiot with your mom watching for the first time ever. Yeah. I mean, I see you guys do the walk outs and I'm just like, wow. Yeah, it's crazy. It's hard to ever comment on someone being good or bad at something that it takes that much courage to do that I've clearly not demonstrated in my own life. So, so fear. So, you've always been scared to you've always had fear when faced with an opponent, but you also alluded to the fact that there's work that you've done to overcome that fear or to put it into perspective, I guess. Yeah. What's that work? The the gym warrior and the guy who's under the lights is can be two different people. And I've seen it a lot over the years. I've seen it so much. Um, still see it now. Still see it all the time. See, when you train, this is this is my personal opinion. This is not fact, but this is my personal opinion. I would say the training aspect is probably around 80% physical and 20% mental. The training aspect on fight night when you are in that arena and you are you have got them bright lights beaming down on you and you can hear the crowd going crazy and you know that there's millions of people watching you. You've got them tiny gloves on. There's another massive guy stood across from you with his shirt off. I believe it completely flips and becomes about 80 plus% mental. I remember somebody, I actually can't remember who it was, it might have even been on a podcast or something saying, "Look, we spend all this time preparing physically because to be an MMA fighter, you have to dedicate a lot of time, and I mean a lot of time to preparing physically." So that that can be you know I train around about between three and five hours a day possibly on
the physical training and that's not to mention the stretching, the eating, the sleeping, the physio, the sauners, the all the other stuff that comes with becoming a good athlete. So I'm probably dedicating a solid most of the 24 hours a day if you're going to count sleeping as well, which I believe is a part of being a professional athlete is dedicated to me becoming the best version an athlete of myself as possible. Now you're dedicating all that time to training physically. How much are you dedicating to mental the mental aspect? And if you would ask most fighters, especially at the top level, you're talking top 10 guys in the world, what do you think is the most important aspect, the physical side or the mental side? I will guarantee at least 50% of them guys would say the mental side. Now, if you're comparing mental and physical, we're spending this much time on the physical side, but this much time on the mental side, next to nothing. And uh I could see a massive discrepancy in that. And I wanted to bring the bring the mental side up. So you're in the mental gym, too. Oh, all the time. And what is that? A lot of uh a lot of visualization. Okay. So, talk me through this. Give me I want as much detail as possible. Okay. Okay. So, I work with a hypnotherapist, which I think is very important. Yeah. I write stuff down. I have stuff where I can see it. I'll look at that a lot. Even stuff like I'm just a massive daydreamer. massive daydreamer and I can just see in my mind clearly this is something that's programmed into me for years and years and it's almost like mental see in MMA we have a term and I don't know if this goes across the board but we call it drilling so like if there's a technique if you're practicing like a want to and you're doing it repeatedly you call it drilling you're drilling a want to drilling is like repetition repetition I like mentally drill situations so when you're talking about the walk out. When I'm physically walking out mentally, I've walked out 10,000 times before I've actually physically walked out. So, by the time I'm there physically, I've been there so many times mentally that it feels quite
quite normal to me. And then I constantly tell myself that I got to enjoy it because I'm completely aware now, especially I'm closer to the end than I am the beginning now. Definitely. I don't know when I'm going to retire. I have no plans to retire right now, but I'm definitely close to the end than I am the beginning. And the moments that we have, these walk out moments, these fear moments of being stood in the cage with another guy who stood in the cage with me. And we know that once these officials get out of the ring and they close that cage, we are going to fight and someone is going to win and someone's going to lose. Like those are really special moments and you have to enjoy them because when I'm 60 years old and I hopefully I've got grandkids and I can I want to be telling them about these special moments and not wishing them away and really really enjoying them. And that's something that mentally I try and practice being in the moment and enjoying it a lot. And I feel like a lot of fighters they just they're just so stressed about the end result that they can't even focus on enjoying the self in the right now. And I know for me personally when I'm enjoying myself that's when I do my best. So I want to enjoy myself. I want to talk to you about a few things you said there. You talked about visualization was what you mentioned first and writing things down. What kind of things do you write down and like what what's your pro your whole process there? Cuz I'm sure there's people at home that would love to understand some of these practices so that they can implement them in their own life and then also speak to the the value that it's brought to your life doing these kind of things. You talk about visualization. People think about this like weird woo woo kind of thing. Sit sitting there with crystals on you and weird music and meditate. It's not like that. It's as simple as getting a piece of paper, writing down this week I will do this and enjoy it. That as simple as that. That that's all I do. This year I will win two fights. I will enjoy both of them and I will perform to my best. And just reading it every so often. And how often do you do that? Is it something you do at the start of the
year or is it just like sporadically? really I'm not it's not something I I'm not the kind of guy who goes right the beginning of the year this is my uh visualization board or anything like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That's just not what I do personally. I just write when I feel like writing stuff I'll write it and most of the time I've got it in my bedside table or I've got it somewhere that I can see it and I'll pick it up. I'll read it a few times the same sentence. I'll put it down and I feel like it's in there. I wrote recently that things are working for me. because I'm in a really weird situation with my career that I've never really been before where um there's a lot of politics involved in my my kind of next move with John Jones. Yeah. I think I said to you like off camera he's like usually it's like right get off at the fight work towards the fight fight's over little bit of downtime another fight work towards that fight over blah blah blah. Whereas now I'm just kind of like a little bit in limbo when I don't know what's happening and I'm just like ah usually I'm used to like having my life mapped out as to when I need to dedicate more time to this and how much what training partners coming there and what I need to focus on. But now I'm just in a little bit limbo where I don't know really what's going on and I wanted to really write down just to solidify that all this is happening cuz I think when when you are in those kind of situations I know me personally I start to like conspire in my own like that everyone's conspiring against me like oh this is not working out for me and I start thinking negatively but I think sometimes you just got to write down like this is going to be all right like this is whatever's happening right now I don't know what it is and I I don't know. I can't fix it personally cuz it's nothing to do with me, but I know that it's going to work. It's going to end up all right and it's going to work out for me. So, a couple of weeks ago, I remember just writing that down, putting it in the thing next to my bed. And uh sometimes when I'm waking up, I'm feeling a bit stressed. I'll just read it, put it away, and then that's it. So,
any moment, maybe today, maybe now, maybe your phone upstairs could have a text message on it from Dana White saying, "We're good to go." Yeah, pretty much. I am now like training. I'm I mean, I'm always training anyway. training is a massive part of my life, but I could get a text at any moment telling me I'm gonna fight in six weeks and that would be amazing. Um, and it would be the biggest fight of all time. Yeah, but I don't think that's going to happen because they are giving it that it's the definitely in my opinion there's a few massive fights to be made at the moment in MMA. Uh, but I think as far as thirst from fans, this is the one that people want to see the most. Um, when I say that, does it make you nervous? Uh everything I just said when I said it was the biggest fight of all time. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I want to do. Yeah. That's what I want to be involved with. Yeah. That's that's why we do this thing. We don't like I have had a lot of fights that nobody cared about in all honesty. Like I've had a lot of fights. I think don't people don't realize like they see me and other guys at the top of the division. You know, we're traveling the world. We're making money. We're winning titles. We're doing all this good stuff. Honestly, most of my fights there was a hundred people there and I came away with 100 quid cash and nobody gave a [ __ ] either way. Yeah, that's uh and that's that's the realization of it. Like MMA is such a tough sport to like a lot of kids, not a lot of kids, but a lot of parents if I meet a parent on the street whose kids involved in MMA or whatever, a lot of the time will say like, "Oh, what advice have you got for?" And in all honesty, a lot of the time I'm like have a backup plan because it's so difficult to make any money out of uh or any like I was saying I'm going to an event tomorrow actually. It's a local show. I was a amateur champion on the show. It's a great show. Do you know what I mean? There'll be there'll be a couple of thousand people there tomorrow and it's a there's got a big fight card. Like there's maybe 20 fights on. So there's 40 fighters fighting tomorrow night. I'm going to it. And uh I was chatting to to my friend last night actually said, "Oh, is there anyone uh
decent on the couch?" "Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of guys on." And he said, "Oh, will will anybody go to the UFC?" And we just got chatting about that and and how that looks and how it looks to get in the UFC. And and I said to be honest with you, if one person out of the 40 can buy a house from MMA, I would be very surprised. And that's one in 40 decent level. Like it's just so hard to make a living out I've ever made. There is absolutely no career path to doing it really, especially in this country. Like it's getting tougher and tougher. And I'm trying to I'm trying to raise as much awareness about MMA as possible. I want kids to be able to look at guys like me and other guys and be like, if he's making a career out of it, I can. But it is so hard in this country. That's why I'm doing as much as I can to try and get this thing as mainstream as possible. I mean, even in the UK, if I think there's been what, hundreds of thousands of kids that probably practiced MMA over the last couple of years, and how many of them really get to the point where they could buy a house from it, you know, you can name them like, you Conor McGregor, Ian Garry, Patty Pimlet, Leon Edwards. I mean, there there's definitely guys who who have made a lot of money out of it and and have a good living, but honestly, like I've been around gyms all my life, and I would say 95% of people have never made more than five grand for a fight. How much were you getting paid throughout your amateur career? Cuz you were an amateur fighter up until the point where you basically ran out of people you could fight. Y um I think you had nine amateur fights, right? Nine, which at the time was quite a lot. I would always recommend get as much as much experience as you can as an amateur before you move on to pro. But yeah, so as as an amateur, I was obviously getting ticket money. So I'd sell sell So the way it worked when I was fighting as an amateur at least it was like if you would sell a ticket for 30 quid, you would get a fiverr of it. So the the promoters would work off that like a little percentage thing going. So of those nine amateur fights, how much you think you all together? I was maybe making between 50 and 100 quid a fight. Okay. Okay. So, that's nearly a grand. Yeah. Nearly. Yeah.
Nearly a grand on that. And then you went you had a professional run as well. Was it seven fights as a professional in MMA? Before I got to the I have no idea. Before I got to the UFC, probably Yeah, maybe seven. Yeah. Down as seven. So, I remember my first pro fight, I got 200 quid. Okay. So, you you doubled doubled it. Smashing it. I was absolutely smashing it then. So, so that's Yeah. Another So, you probably made two grand or something there. And then the UFC pays much better. Much better. much better, which is when you can start to make a living from it. Yeah. I mean, they start off pretty good. Uh the thing I'm really lucky in the fact that I've got a fan friendly style, so people want to see me fight, especially heavyweights. People want to see a lot a lot of the people like who are not they've not got a technically trained eye. They want to see two guys punching each other and one guy unconscious. That that's that's the brutality of it. And that's the that's the reality of it. And my style, generally speaking, brings that. Well, I mean, generally speaking, don't you hold the world record for the average fastest time I do. Yeah. That a fight ends. Yes. Yeah. Which is pretty crazy. So, I mean, that's why you're such a draw, right? Cuz you're knocking everyone out within 2 minutes on average. Yep. Yeah. So, like you I progress through contracts and money quite quickly because of my style, but not everybody does. So, generally speaking, you get in the UFC, you get what's called show money, which is your money to show up, which is what what can you tell me? Usually, it's 10 grand. Yeah. Dollars. Yeah. And I mean, people's contracts are different, but I'm just speaking generally. People start off at 10 and 10. They get show money, win money. So, generally speaking, and this this varies amongst, you know, if someone's got a career in another big organization, sometimes they'll sign him for more than that, but I was coming off a regional show, so I I think I I either got 10 and 10 or 12 and 12, I can't remember. But generally speaking, it's like you get your show money, which is between 10 and 15k dollars, and then your win bonus is double your show money usually. So, 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 15. How long are you
on that contract? They usually do four fights. Okay. But the thing is they can terminate that at any time. So if you're in like a fight that's boring, it's a bit of a stinker. Even if you win, they can just be like, "Yeah, we're done. Done with that." Interesting. Yeah. So if it's four fights, you're getting 10 and 10. You could earn that's 80k. If you win, you usually go up. So it' be like 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 14 and 14, 16 and 16, something like that. Okay. The low end is you could make 80K from those first. Yeah. But if you lose, you're just getting 10. That's the uh Oh, yeah. You can make 40K. Yeah. And generally speaking, like if you go 10 and 10, you win. You go 12 and 12, you win. You go 14 and 14, but you lose that one, you go back to 12 and 12. Does that make sense? Okay. But if you have an exciting style and the UFC like you, see, I'm very lucky because I'm from the UK and people from the UK get behind the fighters a lot of the time and I'm very lucky that I've got that myself. So I did 10 and 10 and then I think 12 and 12 if I remember rightly. And then they resigned me then because I had two first round finishes. Oh. So they resigned me for a bigger contract then which was great. And then I they sign me for another four fights and then you know you win a couple more in exciting fashion and you can you can get bigger contracts. You don't have to stay for the four. So after two fights you got a new deal. Yes. And that drastically changes the money. Yes. Yeah. Like from still in the tens. Still in the tens. Yeah. Bigger tens. 50s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I thought it was 50. I thought that I thought um someone like Ian Gary who came in from uh what's the organization he came in? Cage Warriors. Cage Warriors. I also came in from Cage Warriors. Oh, okay. So he must have been I thought he was on 50. I mean he might have been he might have been like yeah maybe he was I don't know like I say it varies from person to person but from my experience I came in is either 10 and 10 or 12 and 12. I can't remember exactly. And when does the big the big like six figure show money begin? So I got a a good contract because I took the title fight on two weeks notice. So I was in a bit of a position there where like I could kind of like save the card because there was a title fight on the
card. Somebody pulled out. They asked me to step in. So you know I was in a position that the UFC was kind kind of like needed me a little bit then. So um but to answer the question, everyone's different with that. But with the money aspect, it's like when you start becoming popular and winning fights that when people want to see you basically. That's it's just as much about do people want to watch you fight. That's that's like a bit it's not just about winning fights. Winning fights is extremely important, but you you got to make people want to see you. So that was against Ser Sergey Pavlovich. That's right. In that was in the the end of 2023. Yes. November. And that was your first six figure payday because you took that massive fight on short notice. Yes. It was your biggest payday? It was my biggest paid uh at the time. I got a bigger one in my last fight. Oh, but it was your biggest payday up until that point? By far. By far. By far. By how much far? By more than double. More than double. Okay. And that was a six figure payday. Yes. Okay. The reason why that's so surprising and interesting is because you were fighting at that point for the interim heavyweight title. Yeah. So, I'm thinking about those kids back in Sulford. Yeah. And if they if they want to get a life-threatening six figure, cuz that's what it is. Six figure payday. Then the journey that you went on is from the age of what? Seven years old. You started seven, eight, something like that. Yeah. Till you were 30 years old. Yeah. So, 23 years for you to get a six figure payday from a heavyweight UFC title. It's a long time. It's a lot of work. Yeah, it's a whole lot of work. Yeah. I was thinking about your story arc and if if you were to like paint it on a graph, like draw on a graph. Am I right in thinking it's like slow, flat, and then quite sudden? Oh, yeah. There's a lot Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's a lot of that gone on. They say, don't they something like it takes years to to become an overnight success or whatever. And that's exactly what I'm dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Like you say, I've been going since I was 8 years old. And the stuff that I've gone through in that time is unbelie I'm a massive believer in like just outlasting people like just being
consistent and outlasting people a lot of the time overtakes anything else like there's so many times and a lot of it is down to my dad as well is like I've wanted to quit and he's just remind don't get me wrong I I have quit a couple of times uh with MMA and uh it's been like, "Tom, I think you really need to think about this because you've been spending your whole life doing it. Like, don't quit now." You know what I mean? Like, there's been a lot of that from my dad. And, uh, I think a lot of other dads would have just been like, "Yeah, you've done enough now. You've tried your best. Just leave it at that." Whereas, it's always been, you know, my dad's always believed in me. Uh, and my mom as well, not not just my dad. And a lot of close people around me as to be honest. I'm very lucky in that regard that uh people have pushed me to continue which is great. When was the first time you quit? I've quit quite a lot of times mate to be honest. A lot of different reasons. Um so many of the reasons injuries. Yeah. Tough. Very very very tough to deal with injuries as a professional athlete. Not getting regular fights is also tough. See now I'm like was complaining to you a minute ago about I've not got a fight this that and the other. But I'm going to get a fight. the the thirst from the fans is there that the UFC want me to fight. I've got a belt I got to defend. We got to unify this. There's there's millions of dollars at stake here. Like I'm gonna fight soon. I don't know when it's going to be. But at one point, nobody cared if I fought or not. And I had no money. And that that I think the the toughest time for me was so I I had my first kid when I was 23. Wife was pregnant when she was 22. When we were 22 and first kid at 23. And then when I was 24, we found out that she was pregnant again and which I'm very happy about, of course. I don't want to seem like it's a negative thing. And that we're having twins. And we had the twins. Everything's great. And I had no money. And I mean, I didn't have any money at all. And I'm like living on this dream of me becoming this global superstar with these millions of pounds in the bank and
with these titles and travel. I'm living on that dream, but I'm in Athen Greater Manchester. It's raining outside. I can't afford to put fuel in my car and I've got three kids upstairs crying. Do you know what I mean? That that's that's what I was on. And I really felt like at the time I don't I don't want to say like I'm some big masculine guy or anything, but I felt a little bit demasculated if that's all right. I felt like I'm here with this wife and kids and I ain't providing nothing like and that was really tough for me mentally at that time where I'm like how am I going to provide for all these people like I got to do something else because and I felt I don't think that people around me were like Tom's living in a dream world he needs to get a proper job and earn some money for his family and kids. I don't think people cuz there was a lot of people around me who actually believe believed in the dream as well which is amazing but I felt the pressure I felt like people felt like that a little bit even if they weren't saying it. So uh that I think for me was the the toughest time for me I think is when just after I've had my kids I'm away training every day. I'm I'm barely spending any time at the at home. When I am spending time at home I'm completely exhausted from training. The kids have me up all the time. They're crying. My wife's not happy. I've got no money. I train all this time, go to fight, then it gets canceled a week before. Do you know what I mean? That was really, really tough to deal with at the time. How do you from a mental health perspective, how how were you during that season of life? Not great. Very, very tough. I think first of all, I mean, everybody's different, but having three kids at the age of 25 is quite tough. I don't think I was well I wouldn't change it for the world. I absolutely love being a dad. Love my kids to death. They're the most important thing in my life. Um I wouldn't change it for the world. But I think now looking back of me like seven years ago having three children. I don't know how I did it. It was really really tough. Like I think that's really young and like I was very underdeveloped mentally to have that kind of
responsibility and raise children and a family and a house and have a wife and try and get my career off the ground. Like it was really really tough at the time. So I think I was just in survival mode to be honest with you. Actually it's funny you should say cuz I've been having these conversations recently with a couple of friends. He's like my friend now is having twins. He's just found out. He asked me, "What's it like?" And I said, "To be honest with you, and I'm going to be really honest because I I pride myself as a nice person. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I can't even remember the first year. And I can't because it was so difficult." And it wasn't just the twins. It was also the money situation, fact is not going anywhere, the stress I was under, just the trying to be a young guy, but having all this responsibility on me. But like I said, I absolutely wouldn't change it for the world. It's it's literally shaped me into the person that I am today, and I'm really really proud of where I am now. But uh at the time, it it was very tough for me mentally. Was there was there a hardest moment that you reflect on? Cuz sometimes when we think back to our lives, we can remember like a vivid rock bottom where something happened, we went to put petrol in the car or and or when we we were alone and our mind started saying dark things to us. Was there a rock bottom in that period of life? I don't I I was still like aware of how um lucky I was to have like three beautiful children and and still be chasing the dream that I was on, but I think I just hated owing anybody money. Like I felt like I just hate going to people and asking them for money. Like that was like my worst nightmare. And I had to lend like borrow a lot of money off my dad. uh to borrow some money off friends just to put fuel in the car to get to the gym to be living in what I thought at the time was like a makebelieve I I didn't think it was a makebelieve dream but I think I feel like the people on the outside thought what is he doing like what is this guy doing like he needs to like look after his family like I felt I felt that a lot and a lot of that might have just been in my own psyche to be honest with you a lot of it I don't think came from my
close circle but I remember like having to borrow money from friends to like put fuel in my car, buy nappies for my kids and stuff like that just so I can like keep living on this dream of having a fight in 6 weeks, getting 600 quid and being able to give him 20 quid back. Like that was it's to it was tough. Does that not put a lot of pressure on the relationship? Cuz I mean, bloody hell, relationships are hard enough without twins, another child, um, and everything else that makes life in relationships difficult. So, it's quite remarkable that, you know, being in a relationship is not easy in in any in any in any in any regard. Being in a relationship and sharing your life with somebody isn't easy. Um, yeah, it did. It did. But, you know what? We got through it and we're really strong and I'm really uh happy with the family unit that we've built. I try and be the best dad that I can be. Like, that's more important than anything else to me. Um, is just spending time and making my kids um as good as I can. And I'm aware that as a dad and as a parent, you can't control as such what your kids, you can't mold a kid into what you want it to be. You can't say like cuz I got three kids and they're all completely different. They're all brought up exactly the same, but they're all completely different. And you can never say this is what my kid's going to be and this is who he's going to be and how he's going to be. But just to be able to hopefully bring some kind of positive outlook on their life and and hopefully give them a positive experience on this earth is uh what I'm looking to do. Your your partner, you're married to Justina. Yeah. Did she understand? Oh, she understands more than anybody. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. If it wasn't for her, my dad, my mom, couple of friends around, I would have been Yeah. I would have been a mess. Absolute mess. Yeah. She was very understanding because I know that most women they would have been putting the pressure on big time. Yeah, she was it's because when we met I've been with her since I was 19. She was 19 also were the same age. Um that was my dream from the beginning. So she like got on board with that. Um and she's kept me she's stopped me from quitting a lot of times as well.
She stopped me from quitting so many times. Yeah. is this sport's tough and like I said there's no so in football for example I know a little bit about football you start from a grassroots team as a kid then you go to an academy and then you can get signed at the age of like 12 13 and start playing for the under 13s and professional club and there's a place where you can go and obviously football's a tough game they can cut you off like that as well but at least there's a career path of what you're going to do and where you're going to go whereas MMA you're basically shooting in the dark for 95% of it Um, and I'm very lucky to have people like my wife, my family, my uh mom and dad, and the people around me who believe in me as well. Yeah, it's I mean, we started talking about this because of that that kind of graph of your career where it's kind of flat relative to what then happened and then quick all of a sudden. And even when you think about the financials, it's like very very little. And then if you get all the right forces behind you in terms of like personality and timing and then someone drops out here, you get the interim shot, you win, then things take off. And that is it's also remarkable to me that it's happened in such a short period of time. Um relative to how long you've been doing this because yeah, when I looked down and I saw that this was 2023. Yes. But you got that shot, you're kind of a new face on the scene to some degree relative to some of some of these other guys. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think the new generation is definitely coming in now in in uh like the old guard, the old champions are kind of they're at the back end of the career and now it's time for um new guys which is that's progression. That's that's great. Quick one. I want to talk about something we all need to take seriously which is cyber security. Whether you're a first-time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional who's been through it all, staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated I have to say. And that is where Vanta comes in, who is a sponsor of this podcast. Vanta takes the pain out of security compliance, automating the tedious but essential process of proving your business is
secure across over 35 frameworks like SOCK 2, ISO 2701. Centralize your workflows, answer security questions up to five times faster, and protect your business without losing focus on growth. And this is really a critical part of this. A new IDC white paper found that companies using Vant save over $535,000 a year and it pays for itself in just 3 months. For a limited time, my community gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/stephven. That's van.com/stephven for $1,000 off. So Tom, there's this black box in front of me which um contains something which represents a pivotal moment in your career. What is in the box? We remove the belt. I mean, it's not I'll be honest, mate. It's not that exciting. Interesting. It probably stinks as well. You probably smell it from over there. I'm okay. It's clean. It's clean, actually. It's not too bad. This is a This is a knee pad. Okay. I What is the story behind the knee pad? Why did you bring that? So, first of all, I've had a knee problem for a long time. I started the knee problem when we were talking about the things that we've just been talking about, the financial struggles, and I knew that I was never kind of like one, two fights away from getting to the UFC. So, I wanted to train through the knee problems. Then I got to the UFC. I'm training. I I fight, I win. Oh, my knees knees all right. I'm doing like I'm doing pretty well here. like I can fight with one knee, fight again, I win. Then I get a new contract and then I fight, they offer me another fight. I don't want to say no to the UFC. I'm on this roll. I've still got this bad knee. I'm training with one leg. And you're training with one leg? Yeah, I train with one leg for a long time. Yeah, pretty much. I never kicked with the leg. I never went on the knee ever or anything like that. Anyway, this kept going and going. I was fighting with one leg. Then the most devastating thing that happened in my whole career was my knee just give out in front of 25,000 home fans in the Ult arena in London in what was a title eliminator fight. So if either of us would have won that fight, we would have got a title shot
next. So it's a massive fight with with title implications. And not only did I lose the fight because of the injury, uh losing the fight is one thing. Like if I go in there, I have a good fight, I I show off all my training, but I get knocked out, for example. Like even though I'm going to be sad that I've lost the fight, I am relatively satisfied that I went in there, I had a go, came up short. Like I I can live with that. Whereas with the knee, I went in there, got injured straight away. The knee was down. I couldn't walk. I had surgery and then I was unsure whether my career was going to be over or not. And that was a massive massive turning point in um in my life. Not just in my career, but in my life. um that really really gave me a chance to think and slow down and figure out what's important and what isn't. And uh that all came because of one of the biggest worst thing that's happened in my life, but one of the most important things as well. And one of the I got the most growth from that knee injury than I've got from anything else in my life, I think. What kind of growth emerged from that? At the time, I was doing a lot of things wrong in my personal life and in my professional life. like I had a lot of people around me that shouldn't have been there. I was doing some training sessions and training with people that I shouldn't have really been training with. Um I wasn't living a good lifestyle in terms of diet and my recovery. I wasn't 100% focused and I should have been but because everything was going so well and I'm a little bit uh what's like superstitious. I didn't want to change anything because I'm like well it's going well. I don't want to start changing it. And I knew that there was a lot of things wrong. I knew that there were people that I shouldn't have been surrounding myself with. I knew that there were training sessions that were just wasting my time really. And there were um toxic people around me that shouldn't have been there. And and I need they needed to go, but I didn't want to change everything because it was all going so well. And when when you talk about like a rock bottom moment, when you sat on the floor of the UFC octagon in the old arena with your leg
up in the air and there's 25,000 people who are there for you um start leaving the building, it's a bad feeling. It's a really bad feeling. So that really rate made me like reassess um some of the the decisions I was making at the time. and the Tom Aspenol before and after that moment completely different people. I feel like I completely rebuilt myself, not only physically cuz I think you can look you can look at me physically in fights before and see a physical change just in terms of my physique and the way I'm moving around. Obviously I had one leg before and I've got two legs now which is way better. But mentally the growth has been enormous is that I completely cut out anything negative that was in my life. Anything that wasn't anything or anyone that wasn't serving me to become like run parallel with my journey to becoming the best heavyweight in the world I completely cut off and because because I was so superstitious I think. But but why why did you why was it so important for you to remove those people at that particular moment? As an athlete, I needed to and not only as an athlete, as as a as a man, I needed to really slow down cuz I was on this like fast track. It's like I got in the UFC and it was just like fight fight fight and every time it's like more and more popular, more interviews, more media, more fame, more money, more this that and and I didn't really have time to like assess really what was around me and I didn't have time to like start cutting people off and start changing this and tweaking this and doing I just didn't see it because I was on this like I was just going and going and going and when I had that and next minute I'm sat on the couch for six months with this big cut on my I can't walk. I'm doing physio and doing all the rest of it. And um yeah, I just feel like as an athlete and a man, I really had that time to slow down and and really assess my life and be like, "This isn't working. It needs to change." That was actually the closest point where I was pretty close to throwing in the towel then to be honest on my career because at that point I'd not made like mega money or anything but I'd made enough money to like be comfortable and I bought a house at that time. I'd made some decent money, but nothing like
life-changing. But I'd made enough money to then, I don't know, be living my life to an all right, you know, standard for however long. Um, I was like, well, I'm financially comfortable now. I've had some fights in the UFC. I've had some success. I was I think I was just outside the top five at that time or something, maybe top 10. You know, I've gone way further than a lot of people have done. Maybe I'll just like leave it there. Was there an element of you that wondered if the public would ever want to see you again? Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah, definitely. Because I didn't have an actual fight. I felt like people thought I faked the injury or something. So, I think like a lot of people thought, yeah, he didn't he didn't really want to be in there with that opponent. I felt because especially my opponent at the time, Curtis Blaze, he was like running through everybody. Um, and I felt like a lot of people were like Tom just didn't want to fight. So I felt like very insecure about myself at the time and I really like when I came back I really had like a chip on my shoulder and I still got it that like I want to I want to prove to everybody that like I'm the best heavyweight in the world. You got six months on the sofa. Did you read things people are saying? I tried not to but I always do. I try not to but um yeah but I think I think it's quite healthy in a way though as well. I think it that fueled me a lot as well is that people started quitting on me and stuff and a lot of people even like people were like yeah you know you got a lot of ways to make money now like you've already done loads of media you know you're good you're good on the mic and stuff you can maybe be a pundit and stuff like that for a time I was like yeah maybe I can maybe I can just like you know be a pundit and you know I've been in there I've main evented a couple of times and stuff I've been fought almost the elite level yeah maybe I maybe I can just do that but And I started reading these negative comments and I was like actually I want to fight like what what is this? Well, like where am I going? I'm letting these regular people like speak like talk to me and and put regular thoughts in my mind and I'm not a regular person. So, I'm I'm an
elite special athlete and I always have that belief in myself that I'm not regular and I don't want to be regular and I can't let regular people tell me how to uh how to function. And I was almost at the point where I were I was letting regular people tell me how to function. And the the the kind of like online haters spurred me to be like, nah, I've got to I've got to come back and win this sit. there's no chance this is going to be the end of me. Did it knock your confidence at all even though even though the nature of the loss and it's your first and only loss in the UFC and you went on to beat this guy in a rematch. Um did it knock your confidence at all even though it was via injury? Yeah. No. No. Because I was really particular that so there was two things that I really wanted to do after the fight. So I lost to a guy called uh Curtis Blades. That's when I injured my knee in 15 seconds. In 15 seconds. Yeah. Right at the beginning of the fight. So I wanted to fight Curtis again. That that was really important to me is that I fight him again because I can't function as a human being knowing that I trained for a fight and didn't actually fight somebody. If I would have lost, at least I can like look myself in the mirror and be like, I tried my best. That's all I can do. But I I seriously had unfinished business. And the other thing was that the injury happened at the Alter Arena, which from anyone from the UK knows that that is like a prestigious ar like if you're if you're a UFC fighter and you're English, you want to fight at the O2, especially headline the O2. That's unbelievable experience. And I couldn't then never fight at the O2 Arena again. I had to fight at the O2. like they were the two things I wanted to fight Blades again and I wanted to fight at the O2 just so I can like mentally just tick them two things off and then move forward and uh I did both of them and I won both fights so happy with that. John Jones. Yeah. How do you feel about him? I'm sick of talking about him. I bet you are. Yeah. Because that's what people want to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. I mean a lot of people now they think like all Tom does is talk about John and it's not the case. I don't want to talk
about John, but that's all people ask me about. Do you know what I mean? Everybody, like I said before, it's what it's probably one of the most anticipated fights in UFC history, me and Jon Jones. So, obviously that's the subject that people want to talk about. That's what people are interested in. So, um John is an absolute legend of the sport to answer the way I feel about him personally is quite relevant. the the stuff that he's done in the UFC, he will be absolutely immortal forever. He will always be known as one of the best ever and I really um as a mixed martial arts fan really really respect what he's done in the sport. Are you fearful of fighting him? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I'd be an idiot otherwise. Like, he's the best um one of the best to ever put a pair of UFC gloves on. And I think, like I say, regardless of what he's done outside the octagon, and for anyone watching who doesn't know, I am referring to these legal issues that he's got. And that's not that's nothing to do with me. I I have no idea about any of that. I don't know him personally. Um I think inside the octagon, he is 100% one of the best people to ever do it. What do you admire about John Jones in terms of his fighting style? He's extremely smart. Extremely smart. The way he goes about his business in the octagon, but also his uh business outside the octagon and the matchups that he's chose for himself. Uh very smart. Very, very smart. the way that he's chose guys who he matches up stylistically really well with or who are well past the prime. I think it's genius. I think it's absolute genius. Are you saying that he's avoided people that would might have beat him? I'm not saying that. I'm saying that he's he's chose very well. He's chose very very wisely the right opponents at the right time, which is super smart. So to answer your question, yeah, I probably am saying that I'm saying that. So what about his you admire that his his sort of fighting IQ? Yeah, he's so one of the smartest fighters to ever fight in in Yeah. Explain that to me. Like I'm a muggle, so I don't Okay. Um
he will he has a certain way of making fighters fight his style, if that makes sense. So he will constantly keep his opponent guessing with kind of like different things that like he will always have a style that suits him really well and he will force his opponent to fight that way if that makes sense. It does like I guess it's kind of difficult if you're uneducated on it but he has his style and he will never come out of that and risk fighting somebody else's style ever. He will constantly force elite guys to fight his style which is really really difficult to do in in a technical perspective. Kind of saw that against uh Stipe I thought because yeah but Stipe is also 42 years old with a million miles on the clock. You have to remember that. But you are right. You're definitely right. But uh from seeing it up close cuz I was sat really like I was almost in touching distance at the octagon. Stipe was more than offbeat in that fight in terms of how how far he is away from his prime. What is it? What is what is it that Jon Jones is doing there? Because you see these great athletes who have their own really clearly defined style. Then you see them get in the ring with Jon Jones and suddenly their like their style seems to have vanished or they're scared or or he's doing something to keep them out like on the back foot in outside of their zone of comfort so they can never really get into the rhythm so they play his game. Yeah. What is it he's doing there? Like is it Well, first of all, he Jon Jones is a light heavyweight. Yeah. So he's now moved up to heavy. He's had two fighters heavyweight but traditionally he's a light heavyweight. for a light heavyweight is extremely long in terms of wingspan and and leg length and when you're that much taller and this is not I'm not saying anything about but most of the guys he's fought are from middleweight coming up so he's generally the taller guy and keeps people at the end of his reach so well like his distant distance distance management is one of the best ever he does that really well and then when he's moved up to heavyweight he's fought a guy in Surrogan who, no disrespect to him, doesn't have a ground game. Yeah,
John Jones, one of the best wrestlers ever in in MMA and a 42-y old Stipe. So, he's chose really really well what he does. But he just uses his distance management and his timing is incredible. like the way he uses the attributes that he's got is honestly like from from somebody who's studied martial arts from like I said eight years old. It's like it's it's almost like beautiful for me to watch the way he expresses different techniques under that much pressure against a league competition. It's amazing to watch. He's got an incredible set of skills in that regard because he can kick, he can punch, he can grapple, he can wrestle. I think in today's mixed martial arts, everybody has to do all that. Arguably, everybody has to be almost elite in everything. The thing that he does really well is he does everything on his terms inside the octagon. Like everybody can do all all the stuff that you just listed. Punch, kick, elbow, knee, wrestle, grapple, choke, arm bar, whatever. But he does it all on his terms. And that is something that is the elite of the elite. And like I say, all of us, all of us. And when I say us, I'm talking about the professional MMA fighter who's had one fight to Jon Jones. All of us. Everything in between that can do everything really well. You have to be able to to be able to swim. But he just does it on his terms when his opponent is not expecting it. And that is unbelievable. So, you must be thinking about how you stop that. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It's difficult because I don't want to over obsess about it because there's no contract with my name and his name signed. Yeah. But in the back of my mind when I'm training, of course, I'm thinking about that kind of stuff. But I think what I bring to the table is I'm way bigger than anyone he's ever fought. I'm close to my prime. I don't think I've reached it quite yet. I think I've still got maybe a year or so before I get there. And I think I'm just really I I don't want to say I'm athletically gifted because I'm def I've definitely put a lot of work into it, but I think when it comes to um athleticism for a big guy, I think I'm like I I don't want to sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but I'm just being real. I think that I'm like
head and shoulders above any other heavyweight. And my not only that my decision- making I think that's the difference is like a lot of people like any heavyweight put a pair of gloves on them they can knock anybody out that goes without saying we're massive guys but my decision making is elite like elite elite the best some of the best in MMA and I hate to sit here with a load of cameras around me and look you in the face and tell you that but it's the honest truth I believe that I'm also almost in my prime I'm hungry and I bring all these physical and technical astron attribute to the table which somebody like for example Steepoic who's 11 12 years older than me and a million miles on the clock doesn't bring. So when people see your fighting style and they hear that you've got the world record for the lowest average time to end fights something just over two minutes on average your fights last before you knock the guy out. They're going to be thinking right. So Tom's strategy here is he's going to storm uh Jon Jones and throw that that hand and knock him out. And Jon Jones is going to be thinking the same. John Jones is going to be like, "Right, he's going to try and finish me quick. That's his game. There's literally a world record that says that's his game." Yeah, I love that. Like, if people think that's all I bring to the table. Like, I like being a bit of a mystery. I absolutely love that. Like, there's so much of my game that I've not had the opportunity to show yet. And I I absolutely love it, you know, when people like critique the fact that I've not been into the later rounds or maybe I've not got the conditioning that other guys have got or look, that's not my problem. That's the problem of my of my opponents. They can't deal with what I'm throwing. I never ever go out there to finish the fight quick. It just happens. And that isn't actually an issue for me. That's the issue for the guy standing across the octagon from me because I have never been in a fight where I'm trying to finish really. I'm just trying to go out there, do my thing, see what comes and see what's what. Like and the fact that people are doubting what I can do and just because they don't know because they're not seeing it with their
own eyes. They think I can't do it, which to me is a humongous advantage. Humongous advantage. Like John Jones for example is known for his film study. Like he loves watching his opponent and seeing how they move, seeing the patterns that they bring up. And like good luck with doing that with me, mate, because the footage isn't out there. And I think that's also part of the reason why he's not quick to sign any contracts or to agree on anything. Yeah, the money's a factor, of course. Yeah, he's right at the end of his career and he he might want to retire. I don't know. I don't know how John's mind works, but definitely somewhere it's an insecurity of his that there isn't any footage out there of me that you can watch for longer than 3 or 4 minutes. And that is just a humongous advantage for me. Massive. Because you finished the fight so quick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much of my game that I've not even been close to showing. And I I'm very excited to surprise some of these guys when I when I do show it. I can't imagine how many times you must have played over in your head. You were talking about drilling earlier that fight. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Yeah, I've definitely replay like played it a lot. Um, but I do that with all opponents even even guys in the in the division right now who have not got any pro prospects of fighting at the moment. I think about that a lot. Like I think about how I match up physically and mentally with them. So So if you're playing that over in your head, run me through the tape. You're playing Well, that's top secret. Is that really the case that there's a particular strategy that you're replaying in your head over and over again? Absolutely. But there's there's one thing that I know for sure. This this is nailed on guaranteed. And this goes for any human being in the world. And this has been proved time and time again. Even though sometimes I don't believe that it can happen, but now I know if I punch a human being in the face as hard as I can and it lands, they will be unconscious. I know it because it's been proved at the elite level multiple times. So, I need one and that's it. Well, I wanted to test that. So, we've
got Jack here who is I won't punch you, Jack. Yeah. Just not not today. Have you had your punch power tested? Yeah, I I have had it tested. Um, there are guys that are have more punch power than me on the machine. Mhm. And probably in real life as well. What? Whatever. But I think see I don't want to tell you because I don't want people to watch it and and know my secrets. But I punch people when they're not expecting it and they're the one they're the ones that hurt. And I disguise it in a certain way. You know, I do bits on my YouTube channel and stuff about me explaining techniques and and doing different things and now I've got something called a school platform which I know you had Alex Hormosi on the channel as well who who has shares in school and I show different techniques and stuff like that but I'll never show my game if that makes sense. I'll show a generalization of what to do and strategy and what to focus on and not. But my personal game or what I do for my style, I'll never show it because that's something for only me and my coaches to know. And when you think about your routine for those six weeks, yeah, what advice can you give to like an average person about the health routine that you go through to get into elite elite shape? What other tips and tricks you've learned that you could impart on me as someone that's not necessarily a fighter, but Well, something that I'm learning as I'm getting a little bit older, and I'm not saying I'm old by any chance, by any stretch of the imagination, but as I'm getting older and I'm getting more I've been training a long time, even though I'm not um up there in age, but I can definitely feel more on my body than I used to, especially being a bigger guy. Um, generally we carry more injuries. But I think that if you're training, for example, 4 hours a day, what I found is doing at least half of that time recovering is what I'm aiming to do. So, however the recovery looks to you, whether that's stretching, breathing exercises, sauna, swimming, steam room, jacuzzi, you know, there's there's a whole you Google recovery from exercise. There'll be a million things that you can do, but
I like to try and do 50% of my training. The easiest way I can say is if I'm training for four hours, I try and do two hours worth of recovery. Um, and I think that has helped me a lot. Not to mention, massively, massively underrated. And as a heavyweight, I can kind of eat what I want really if I want to like Well, I don't have uh the smaller weights, they all have to be under a certain weight. So, weight cutting is like a big thing in MMA. People, they do extreme diets and then cut a lot of water out the last week and try and get, you know, squeeze as much as they can to get under this weight division. They weigh in, then they put the weight back on. I just have to be over 93 kilos and I do that no problem. But, but doesn't your nutrition have an impact on your performance? Of course. Of course. So that's that's kind of what I'm getting to is like it is so important what you put in your body. Like I didn't realize that until I was maybe 28 years old, 27, 28 years old. Um and it needs to be monitored. Like again going back to writing stuff down like write down what you eat in a day and eliminate one thing for the next day and write how you feel. Like that's what I did a lot is like and now I'm at the point where like I will eat similar things at similar times every day because I know how my body functions on that and I know that if I'm doing an intense session there I need a little bit more carbs before and after and what kind of carbs is something that I've worked out to how I feel before and after. And again it's just a lot of every person's body is different. So, I would never like to sit here and I'm not a nutrition expert and and start going on about what people need to eat because that's not my expertise. But I know from a personal point of view that writing things down and experimenting, taking this out and adding this in and then writing notes on how you feel and doing that every day has been massive for me. What about sleep? You mentioned sleep early on. I do like to sleep a lot. I'm just a big napper. Like if I if I train in the morning, I'm going to sleep straight after. And that takes a lot of discipline, you know? Like it takes a lot of discipline for me to be like, I'm coming home from training. I'm going to shower, eat, and sleep, and nothing's
coming in the way of that. Like it takes so especially like with kids. Like if I'm coming home and if I've done a two-hour session in the morning, I'm coming home, the kids are excited to see me. This guy's wants to play on the Xbox, the other one wants to play outside, this one wants a snack, and that one wants to play outside. And then it's just madness. And then one of them spilled a drink. You got to clean this up. And then one wants this on the TV. It's just a constant thing for me to then walk in and be like, I'm going to bed. I'll be up in an hour and a half. You know what I mean? Like that's that's discipline as well. That's But all these little increments, they just pay off massively. Because I talked about ketosis on this podcast and ketones, a brand called Ketone IQ sent me their little product here and it was on my desk when I got to the office. I picked it up. It sat on my desk for a couple of weeks. Then one day I tried it and honestly I have not looked back ever since. I now have this everywhere I go. When I travel all around the world, it's in my hotel room. My team will put it there. Before I did the podcast recording today that I've just finished, I had a shot of Ketone IQ. And as is always the case when I fall in love with a product, I called the CEO and asked if I could invest a couple of million quid into their company. So, I'm now an investor in the company as well as them being a brand sponsor. I find it so easy to drop into deep focused work when I've had one of these. I would love you to try one and see the impact it has on you, your focus, your productivity, and your endurance. So, if you want to try it today, visit ketone.com/stephven for 30% off your subscription. Plus, you'll receive a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone.com/stephven. I'm excited for you. I am. The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid. But what if you had the right question to start them with? Every single guest on the diary of a co has left behind a question in this diary. And it's a question designed to challenge, to connect, and to go deeper with the next guest. And these are all the questions that I have here in my hand. On one side, you've got the question that was asked, the name of the person who wrote it, and on the other
side, if you scan that, you can watch the person who came after who answered it. 51 questions split across three different levels. The warm-up level, the open up level, and the deep level. So, you decide how deep the conversation goes. And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms, alone at night, and on first dates, and everywhere in between. I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at the diary.com. You mentioned a term earlier on that we didn't go into, which was hypnotherapy. Yes. For someone that doesn't know what hypnotherapy is. Can you give me like a broad idea of what it is and how the role that it's played in your life and any evidence you might have seen that it actually works? Yeah. So, I'm going like quite hard on the hypnotherapy now. I actually spoke to my hypnotherapist yesterday. I'm going to start doing uh twice a week now. Um a few different reasons really, both personal and professional. I had a situation recently uh with my kid where uh my kid was in hospital and it really kicked off my anxiety massively and since then I'm struggling to relax a little bit more than than I would usually struggling to switch off. So, I think that for me personally, again, I don't want to sit here and preach about hypnotherapy cuz it's not my expertise at all, but for me personally, it brings my anxiety down a lot. So, it helps with that. Um, it also helps with sleep. It also helps with just being just in a more tranquil place in general. And when you add that those qualities into what can be a very anxietyfilled anxietyfilled sport, I think that's just a massive advantage. Not to mention the other stuff that we talked about like life and and just general stressiness as well. For someone that doesn't know anything about the hypnotherapy that you do, they might think that it's like, you know, in back in the day it was like swinging the thing in front of your face and then you fall asleep and they tell you you're a dog and you bark and stuff. used to be on TV when I was younger. But but it's not that, is it? It's What is it? Again, people are going to start thinking it's like some like like you say some woo woo
thing where you start like going unconscious and doing all it's nothing like that. It's like essentially you're just in a room the way that I do it at least. I'm in a room with a guy talking to me. I'm completely relaxed. Lay down or sat up, doesn't matter. Usually with my eyes closed. And usually he'll take you through a story of like you go into a place, you're walking down a street or what he'll set the scene kind of thing. And I used to think I need to listen and focus in on every word he's saying. Like I need to put myself exactly where, you know, follow the story, quote unquote story exactly as he's telling me to follow it. Mhm. And I actually spoke to him about it and I was like, I'm struggling to like listen for that long and because it goes on like 45 minutes. I'm struggling to like follow the path that you're leading me down for that long. And he's like, listen, don't worry. You can be thinking about whatever you want. You don't have to follow what I'm telling you. He said, cuz your subconscious is listening all the time. It's same. It's the same when a couple of times I was like fighting to stay awake cuz I was tired and most of the time I do it after training as well. So I'm tired. like fighting to stay awake and I said, "Look, I'm fighting to stay awake. I'm like getting really tired." And he's like, "Look, if you fall asleep, doesn't matter. Your subconscious is still listening, so it doesn't matter what's going on." And a lot of the time, I'm just there. I'm just like chilling out. I'm listening to what he's saying, but I'm also drifting off of my own thoughts. And I don't know how, again, I'm not like a psychologist, hypnotherapist, or anything like that. But I only know from my own personal perspective that when it comes to like anxiety and positive thinking and just generally being in a better place mentally, I just believe in it a lot. I think it really helps me. Anxiety? What journey have you been on with your anxiety? Um, it's something that I've always kind of dealt with, but I think it's not uncommon to deal with it. And I think that a lot of people think it think it is uncommon. Like I uh I'm a little bit OCD and I think that OCD and anxiety goes hand in hand. Like I think that and it used to be a lot worse to be
honest. I used to I struggled with it uh when I was a child and still struggle with it now. But I used to be a lot worse when I was younger. And how did that manifest? Oh, at one point at one point it was like I couldn't sit in a room unless the room was the way I wanted it to look. Like unless the curtains were closed the right way, the drawers were shut perfectly, everything was facing forward, the TV was on a certain angle, like I couldn't rest. Oh, really? Uh because of like I would think like something bad is going to happen unless all that's right. But after after a while, I kind of grew out of that a little bit and got a hold on it. But it still creeps back, mate. Sometimes I try and keep it at bay. Does it come out at certain moments when certain things happen? Yeah. Yeah, it does. it gets worse. Um, again, like I said, I've been through something quite traumatic recently where my son was in hospital and that's a whole another story of its own, but at one point we were really concerned about like my son's health really. Um, and that was a big traumatic thing for me and I noticed a lot that my OCD starts to come back and I want to do certain certain stuff again because my anxiety is creeping up and just got to really try and keep it at bay. And anxiety separate to that. So um your your anxiety is always been something in the background in your life but it it flares up in certain situations. Yeah. So I mean I'm in a an anxietyfueled sport. So um I think naturally there's a lot going on because of that. But it's just something I think everybody deals with it. I don't think I'm I don't think I'm uncommon to anybody else. I think especially these days it's a lot more accepted to be like talking about it and stuff. Um, it's super common, isn't it? It's very common. Very, very common. I think social media doesn't help with that. Especially for like I mean for myself it's like I have a thing now I've only done for the last couple of fights where social media is gone for my life when I've got a fight date because there is no chance that I'm thinking about my opponent all day and I'm also scrolling and reading all comments all day. It's just not I just won't deal with it. And for the next fight, I'm actually going to uh have like a training camp phone,
okay? Where only people who are actually involved in my training camp or personal life. And when I say personal life, I'm talking about my wife, my mom, and dad. And probably that's it, are going to be involved. Like, I don't want to have any outside noise coming in at all. Your son's doing okay now. Son's doing okay now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully, everything's good. puts things in perspective, doesn't it? Honestly, unbelievably. Um, yeah. I mean, it wasn't really really bad without going into too too many details, but uh spent a stay in hospital um with something that we wasn't sure what it was at first and yeah, massively. Absolutely. like nothing else really matters if as long like as long as you got your health and you know your family's health like you're in a pretty good spot I think because it's just a horrible place to be in. Is this the son that received an autism diagnosis? No, this is my So one of my twins has autism. Yeah. Yeah. This is the non autistic. Okay. Tell me about your son that was received the autism diagnosis and the sort of journey you've been on there. I I think this is really really important because I've done this podcast a while. Yeah. And I get so many DMs from parents who have an autistic child asking me to talk more about this subject because they just don't feel like the information is out there and they there's a number of feelings that they feel. I think one of them that I see in my DMs expressed is a bit of guilt to some degree, which is an interesting one, but also just a lack of people talking about the experience. So take take me on the journey from when that child was born and um the path to the diagnosis. I mean I I'll give as much detail as possible because like you say I think parents need details and there isn't a lot out about it. And now for me recently, like I say, I've been through something traumatic with another one of my kids. And the NHS has been absolutely nothing short of unbelievable. Like, we were in an emergency situation where we needed emergency treatment. And my kid got 24 hours a day looking after while there was an emergency going on. And it was unbelievable. We came away me and my wife being like we are so lucky to live in this country cuz my wife isn't from
this country as well. True. So we both came away being like we are so lucky to live here in a place where you can get free everything in an emergency level straight away. So I'm not trying to throw the NHS under the bus at all because when there's an emergency it's amazing. That being said, as far as the autistic community, we are being failed. And I don't know if that's from the NHS, from the government. I don't know who that's from, but I was in a spot. So, five, my my twins are nearly six. They're coming up to six. Um, so I was in a spot like my twins were born and they were born just before the lockdown. Then COVID hit, everything like the world went to [ __ ] as we know. And then my kids got in in a place where, you know, we had a child before and we're aware that kids hit milestones. We got twins, so they they're hitting the milestones at different stages. Um then we start to notice like may maybe two year the kids are maybe two years old. We start to notice like one kid is a fair bit beyond the other one in in terms of speech, in terms of how responsive he is, in terms of eye contact, in in terms of law. We we could see something's different. But me personally, as a dad, I was kind of like in denial as to right, this is a lockdown's fault. This kid is 2 years old. He's been in the house. He's been around me, my wife, and his two brothers, sometimes grandparents when the government would would let us. And that's it for like two years. He's not in social situations. He's not around other kids. And that kind of went on for a bit. I was kind of like heavily in denial about it. Even though now looking back, I could clearly see that things weren't moving normally, especially because he's got this twin and the twin's like, you know, he's moving at a different rate. So, it was right there in front of my face. Um, but I'm just like in this denial. He'll catch up. It's just a lockdown's fault. The government's keeping us all locked inside. Blah blah blah. Patty McInness, funny enough, who's a guy from uh my area, like from a similar area. Don't know Patty at all. Never met him. Um, but he had this program um and it was about autism. And I don't know why. One day me and my wife we sat down and
watched this program and he I believe has three autistic children. all of his all of his three children are diagnosed with autism. So anyway, I'm watching this documentary and he's he's talking about all the different symptoms because it's a massive spectrum autism. There's there's a million different things. And I'm watching he's talking about this one kid. He does this. This is this is the way that autism presents himself in this particular kid. And in my mind, I'm thinking my my son does do that a little bit. And then he's talking about a different kid who who also is diagnosed with autism the way that the the child does this. And I'm thinking anyway, he's he's going through talking about his different children. And I'm thinking, wow, he like my my child ticks a lot of these boxes and then I Google it. I don't I know nothing about autism at the time. And obviously that is the worst thing you can ever do. and I'm going through these symptoms being like, "Wow, this is when I don't know what to do. Like, we need to try and try and get help." So, anyway, we make a doctor's appointment at the GP and that is a complete mess. It's difficult to get an appointment. We go in, they put us on a waiting list. Anyway, a year or so goes by, the the child isn't developing at the speed of his twin. We can see this clearly. We are worried about what's going on and um we don't know what to do. Like we are literally we have no idea about what's going on, how to progress this child, what his future's going to look like. We know nothing about autism, me and my wife at the time. Absolutely zero about it. We don't know. It's just so such anxiety. like you don't know what your child's future's going to look like and how to help him or her on how to progress as a human being. That is some of the worst anxiety that you can ever have. You've brought this kid to this earth and you can't even point them in the right direction of where to go on how to navigate the way through life and it's it's a really really difficult thing. Anyway, I go on a question of sport the show. Patty McInness is the host.
Me and P me and Patty are chatting a little bit and uh after the show, whatever. And I said, "Look, Patty, if you don't mind me asking, uh I I watch your show about um autism." I said, "I'm trying to get my kid diagnosed. I've been I've been on the waiting list a year. Like, what should we do?" So, anyway, he gives me the number to the to the specialist. I call the specialist. We go in for a meeting. Long story short, paid for the diagnosis, got this kid diagnosed, and now my child is in a mainstream school. He has a one-to-one one-to-one teacher. He's getting the help he needs. He's doing really well. He's progressing. How the future's going to look, we don't know. We we're dealing with it dayto day. And now I am completely aware that as a person in a good financial situation I have the ability to do that is to go pay the money and get that. And now there is so many people so so many people who and I mean I get hundreds of messages about it. Hundreds of people stopping me on the street about it because I've spoke a little bit about autism who they are going to the GP. They're going for assessments and they cannot get a diagnosis. They're on a three, four, five year waiting list. And these kids are getting sent to mainstream schools and the kids are just regressing and regressing and regressing because they don't have any help and the parents of the kids have zero direction and they don't know what to do. And we're in a really tough spot with it in this country where like I said, we've got this amazing NHS. I don't know if it's the NHS that's holding this or the government, but and I don't know what's causing autism. There's a million things out there about vaccinations, about diet, about things that they're watching on TV, about the toys that they play with. You know, there's a load of different theories on it. Me personally, I don't know what it is. Obviously, I'm not a specialist with that, but I know that autism is getting bigger and bigger each year. There's more and more people trying to get diagnosed. There's more and more people getting diagnosed. and the help just isn't there. The help, especially in schools, like I'm so lucky that my son has an amazing one-to-one teacher. Every day he goes and he enjoys school and he progresses a little bit.
And we know what we're in a position where we've had help as parents that we know what kind of direction and where to navigate him in sometimes. Now, there's so many parents out there who've been on, like I say, three, four, five, six, seven year waiting list. their kids are just getting worse and worse and worse and as a penalty to that the parents life are then getting worse and worse and worse and they have absolutely no direction of where to go and what to do and it's a serious serious crisis that we've got in this country at the moment there are in this country there are 700,000 autistic adults and children um but in the US roughly 2.5% of the US population has been diagnosed with autism and it is four times more common in boys than girls and there was a 787% rise in the number of autism diagnosis over the last roughly two decades um which is on one hand awareness being is higher. So people are going and getting a diagnosis but some think there might be other factors that are actually increasing the amount of people that are autistic. Why for someone that doesn't understand autism and the process that and the plight of a parent that has an autistic child is the diagnosis so critical? Is it because you then get additional support and guidance and you can access that support if you have a diagnosis? So I was under the notion that if my kid is diagnosed autistic or not, doesn't matter. That was that was my original thing. Doesn't matter. He's still my kid. I'm still going to love him. I'm still going to guide him through whatever he needs to in life. Now I completely respect anybody who's doing that. He has 100% respect from from me and I'm sure everybody else. But the biggest issue is like me personally, I'm a professional athlete. It's like I know that for this many hours a day, I need to be in the gym and training. When I'm not in the gym, I need to be recovering. When I'm not in the gym, I need to be eating the right things. And I have this process of of things that make me successful. That's how I work in my life. If you don't have a diagnosis of autism, the only way I can describe it, because I've been there, is you're just kind of like treading water. You're just stuck in one place flailing around and not really knowing how to do them steps and
progress your family life in your child's life. That's the way that I look at it personally. I'm speaking 100% for myself, but if you not got a diagnosis, first of all, you're not getting any funding, which like I said, I'm in a financial position where I don't need any funding, but there's a lot of people out there who do need funding. And funding looks like outlets for the child, help in school, help at home, help for the parents, help for the friends, sensory rooms in school, sensory toys, you know, there's a whole host of things that can help autistic children or autistic people. And without that diagnosis, if you don't if you're a parent and you don't have that for your child, from my personal experience, it feels like you're treading water. I feel like I needed a process of this is these are the steps that we have to take to help my child progress. And I think that it's what we need is it's not about another number on the statistics that you've read out. It's not about that. It's not about me saying I've got an autistic child or whatever. It's about the help that your child can get. And right now we definitely don't have enough help in this country. I had one of my best friends was diagnosed with autism. Um he's been one of my best friends for a long time. He's actually also worked at my company um for for many many years. And he spoke to me about the sense of relief that he experienced when he got his diagnosis. But also it was kind of like like you're describing there was suddenly a sense of direction and understanding like someone turned the lights on and with the lights on he was able to make better decisions and it's not held him back in any If anything, it's done the opposite. It's helped him to understand himself. But I think for for some of us who don't understand, haven't been through that, we either don't can't relate, but but also we have no no idea that there's additional I had no idea until you just said it just then that there's additional support given in schools and stuff like that to kids who have that diagnosis. So, it's critically important and I'm so glad that you share that with us because hopefully there's some people watching in the government but also parents that can get together and that
are presumably getting together to change this. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough thing for me to talk about because I'm completely aware that there will be people watching this and thinking who is this knucklehead talking about like autism diagnosis and what the government needs to go through. But it's also an experience that I've lived and it's also an experience that I'm still living. Mhm. And that I'm fully aware just from my local area and my circle of friends and people around me that there is a [ __ ] ton of people who are in the same boat as I am and need help. And uh I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I've got the help and that we are progressing. But I know that there's a lot of people who don't and that are struggling. So I want to try and speak for those people if I can. Thank you for doing that. That's there's a lot of my audience that are going to be very very grateful for that. There's something sat next to me on the table here, which is this this belt. It's very very heavy. I know this is just a replica, but you do have the real one at home. And the reason why um you only bought me the replica instead of the real thing. Um is because the real thing costs a lot of money apparently. Apparently. Apparently. So I I heard rumors online that the real thing actually costs about 300 grand. Yeah. And you have to sign a contract when you receive this belt that if you lose it, then you have to personally pay. If it goes missing, I'm paying for it. So hopefully that won't that won't happen. But it's in a very safe spot, so it won't it won't go missing. I'm not going to ask you where you keep it cuz there's people listening. But um just what are these flags around it? I've actually never seen one before. So I'm not too sure. I know this bit this bit here. The side. Yeah. So these these little um these stones whatever they are uh you get one of those are the different so they're all I think on the real one the diamonds and this is a is is it a ruby or something? A ruby it looks like you get a ruby when you defend it. So I defended it once so I got one and then obviously that fills up the more you do it. Oh, so if you defend it one two three four five six seven times it's going to be all eight rubies. Yeah. Okay. What what does that say there? It says UFC 304 Edwards
versus Muhammad 2. My personal one has my like my name on it and the the proper details but cuz this is a replica. And when you won that interim heavyweight championship and then you woke up the next day, how did you feel honestly? Well, I woke up about 3 days later. I didn't sorry I didn't sleep for about 3 days after uh cuz I was very excited. Um, yeah, pretty good. Pretty I mean I I won it in weird circumstances. So that fight I took on really short and I will say I actually wasn't in shape for that fight at all. Um I actually just come back off a off a stagd do so I wasn't uh in my best shape when I when I answered that call. Um was there any anti-limax to it? No. No, but there's definitely an anti-limax a little bit to um like being quote unquote successful because you still feel the same like as you you still have the same um issues like issues as you had before like money, fame and titles doesn't change much in terms of what goes on inside your brain in my opinion. Maybe it does change some for some people, but uh for me, I still have the same struggles as I did before. It doesn't change anything in that regard. I think when you're younger, especially, I don't know. It's like young people, they think that rich people have no problems, and it just isn't true. It's just it's just so far from the truth. You know that. Yeah. Well, you know, they say more money, more problems, but it's just a different set of problems than some of the other Well, that's it. That's it. I mean, at one point, as we spoke about in detail, a big problem was of mine was I couldn't pay my rent and I couldn't pay fuel to put in the car. That's gone. But there there's more problems that have arose since um the money won't fix. Do you know what I mean? Are you at all concerned that when you when your time does come, you want to retire relatively early so you don't get any cognitive issues or have to fight beyond your time. Are you at all concerned about what you do next? Cuz we've seen people like Tyson Fury sort of really struggle. I I am a little bit to be honest. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. Um, just because it takes up so much of my time. Takes up so much of my time and
the time that I'm not actually actually physically training like I'm not in the gym training. I am doing other stuff towards it. I.e. even stuff like breathing exercises I would class as part of my training. Stretching, eating right, sleep like I would class this all as part of my training routine. So when I've not got that, what will my life look like? I don't know. I I don't know. And that's something as we spoke about before, I'm aware that I'm on the second half of my career now. When that's done, how does it look? And I don't know if anything can ever replace that in all honesty. What about the money side of things? So are you having to think now? Cuz what's the average age of a UFC fighter retiring? I mean, most people don't even get there, but if you do really, really well, you might fight until if you're really really lucky, you might do Stipes's age 40ish. 40. Yeah. Yeah. Bigger guys tend to go longer. I don't know why that is, but yeah, generally the heavyweights usually 40ish. So, how do you think about financial longevity? And are you investing your money? Have you got people that help you? I do. I do. I'm looking to um invest all the time. actually my team has actually been really um really good with that kind of stuff. Like a lot of my uh not a lot but a few of my sponsorships I actually have uh shares in business as well as the sponsorship and also I want to do more stuff. I really love the sport of MMA so I'm always like even though I'm retired from fighting I will never be involved I'll never be retired from MMA if that makes sense. I've definitely made mistakes in the media space before, definitely, but I'm learning. And I definitely think there's a place for me somewhere in the future to educate people on MMA, however that looks, whether it's punditry, whether it's podcasts, whether it's I don't know some something somewhere. I definitely think that I will give some kind of insight to somebody where people can um hopefully learn something from me in that regard. I think you're more than capable of doing that. I'd love to see you give uh breakdowns. I've seen some of the stuff you're doing with school as
well. So, you know, a Thank you. I've also I've also uh they've I don't know why, but they g my own show now on TNT Sport as well, breaking down fights. So, this is uh this start. I'm just getting the foot in the door. It's not something that I'm focusing on full-time now because I'm obviously really busy with other stuff, but um when I'm done, that's what I want to do. What does your dad think of all of this? He's been such a central figure in your in your life. this whole Jon Jones situation. You went in the this belt that sits in front of me here. You must have like blown his mind. I don't think so. Really? Yeah. I think that he had this firm belief. He believed in me way before I believed in myself. I always say and I think that this is also his dream as well. But I don't think for any of us, and this is going to sound super arrogant, but it's the truth. I don't think any of us are surprised by it. I think that in some way uh it was like written for us to do it. I don't know. I I I can't explain it any more than that. Like I feel like we were both expecting to be here and uh this is where we are and and this is where we're going to be till till I'm done. Did he ever tell you you were going to be here? Yeah. What did he say? Just just little. He was never like you're going to be that. But it was like, look, if you keep doing this, this is where you're going to go. If you if you keep being dedicated to training and keep living your life right and keep focused, you can be heavyweight champion of the world. And I think that especially cuz I'm from like a smaller town, a blueco collar town for sure, a workingass town that that belief is shut down so much from a young age by not just parents but pe other people surrounding in the community. Like listen, maybe don't maybe don't don't think you're going to be a Hollywood actor because you're not. Maybe maybe try and be a bit more realistic and do something a bit No, if you think you're going to be a Hollywood actor, you go for it. Like you you go 100% at that and don't let anything waver from where you're going. And I think that that is not told to especially the younger generation enough. I think that like I say I'm from a very very blue collar humble town and from my town there aren't many people
who've done anything of great magnitude in in terms of sport and otherwise. Um, and I think a lot of that, not not all of it of course, but I think a lot of it comes from the mentality of, yeah, maybe don't maybe don't aim for that. Aim for something a bit lower. And that that shouldn't be encouraged in my opinion. Always your first option should be the highest of the high. And if you land any lower, then you readjust. You change the goal post a little bit. But the first thing is shoot as high as you can. Are you special? Yes. Why are you special? I think that I have an First of all, I think I'm really physically gifted. Mhm. In terms of uh athleticism, but it's something that I have worked on a lot as well. It's not I didn't just wake up like this. I've definitely worked a lot over the years of it. But I think that aside, I think I've got a gift mentally and this this has been horned a lot by the people around me through the years. Like I said, there's been a lot of people supporting me. But I think I've got a gift to perform really, really well under massive pressure. Under massive pressure. And I don't think, like I say, it's been honed a lot for sure by my dad and the other people around me, definitely. But I think that I I have a God-given gift or whoever universe given gift or whoever you believe in that I can perform extremely well under the highest pressure situations possible. Even though you feel the fear. Even though I feel the fear because I accept the fear. I bathe in the fear. I think uh it's not the first time you've said that. No, it's something that someone told me. It's something that someone told me recently. I thought it was funny. So, when you feel that fear, is there something you say to yourself? Is there like a mantra or a system? Well, I I always say that I used to have two fights. I used to be fighting my opponent. I used to be fighting myself. I used to be trying to block out the fear trying to like But you know what? I just I just took it on board and I accepted that this this is going to help me like you. There's so many examples over the years. I I like to give this example because uh this
actually happened to one of my close friends. So, he's putting a wardrobe up and the wardrobe is like a really heavy wardrobe fell on his kid who was like not even walking at the time and he he's he's a skinny guy like he's a small slight guy. He was on his own and he he pulled the wardrobe off the kid, right? And then anyway, everything was fine. The kid was fine. everything, whatever. 5 minutes later, he went to move the wardrobe to another part of the room and realized that he couldn't pick it up. And there's only one thing that's made him pick that wardrobe up, and his fear. Fear that that kid is going to get crushed under that really heavy wardrobe. And when he actually went to pick the wardrobe up without that, there was no way he could have done it. He had to he had to wait till somebody came and and helped him move the wardrobe across the room. There was no way that he could have done it without the fear. And there's so many situations like if you're running for your life, 100% guaranteed that you're running way quicker than you would if you were just running down the street goes without saying because that fear fuels you in ways that you nothing else will and I have accepted that and took it on board and used it to help me. Because as someone that's watched your fights both on screen but in person, I one of the things that I remember about you more so than other fighters I've seen is how calm you look in the ring. Y and I don't I'm like does he just know he's like amazingly good or is there something he's doing? Because you kind of look how I look when I get to the office and I don't have some 6'5 guy that's trying to kill me. Oh, it's all it's all by design though. Really? It's by design. Yeah. Um, so one of my one of my absolute heroes in the sport of MMA is a guy called GSP, George St. Pierre. He's one of the best fighters to ever lace up the gloves. But not only that, he's one of the best humans as well. I'm lucky enough to have met him a few times and had some deep discussions with him. And he's someone I've studied a lot inside and outside of the octagon over the years. Um, and thing with GSP is he like me has always admitted how scared he was. And that's something that I've watched countless
interviews and podcasts with him and how he talks about it and stuff. and he used a method and he actually told me about the method where I'm not sure what the method's called and I don't I don't even know if there's any scientific evidence behind it but it works for him and it's worked for me on multiple occasions where if you physically present yourself in a way that even if mentally you don't feel like that like on fight day for example the last thing I feel like doing is smiling in all honesty I'm not in a smiley mood but when you smile you feel good. You relax. You enjoy yourself. You're confident. So, I will walk around fake smiling with my head held high and my shoulders back like there's nothing bothering me in the world. Not because there isn't anything bothering me because trust me, on fight day there's a lot of stuff bothering me. I have to get in there in front of millions of people and have a fight with someone and it's highly likely that I'm going to be separated from my own consciousness in front of millions of people. The last thing I want to do is walk around with a smile on my face, with my shoulders back, with my head up high, being friendly and nice to people and being in a good mood and being relaxed. That's the last thing I feel. But I purposely walk around like that all day in every situation that I can possibly be in. And sooner or later, believe it or not, my mind will actually start to follow my body's lead. And it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable the way that that can happen. And like you say, you'll see me. I'm stood there in the octagon and I am scared to death. My opponent is looking at me across the octagon like he wants to kill me. And I'm looking back like I'm in the queue for a sandwich. By design. By design, I do it. The same with the walk to the octagon. There's a million people throwing beer on me, shouting in my face, booing me, sticking fingers up in my face, saying that I'm going to die literally while I'm walking to fight another human being. And I look like I've just woke up and taken the dog for a walk by design because if your body does it sooner or later your mind will start to follow and like I say this is like a bro science thing probably but this is something that I've experienced a lot myself and
it's proven at least to me and and to to George as well that uh it can be done. We have a closing in on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. This question is hilarious as far as I'm concerned and it kind of reveals who left the question, right? The question is, it's weird saying this to you. Why don't you work harder? That's a good question. Who Who's left that? Can you Can you figure it out from what we said? I know. So, this was the last guest. I told you I was in America. Oh, Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast, why don't you work harder? That's a good question. It's a It's a good question. I like to think I work as hard as I can, but I think if everybody looks in the mirror, I think everybody could work a bit harder. I think I probably like sleep too much is the reason that I don't I think that's the only thing holding me back cuz everything when I'm awake, everything's geared towards me being the best that I can be. So, I think maybe I like sleep a little bit too much. Well, sleep makes you work harder. It does. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. Oh, that that that's uh that's still working hard as far as I'm concerned. Tom, thank you so much. Um you are such an incredible inspiration for so many reasons mainly because you're so remarkably down to earth but at the same time able to confidently say on camera which I by the way really really admire and respect that you think you're special. And I think there's a certain nonchalantness that sometimes people come with because they're trying to be like fake humble. Yeah. But I really respect people that say, "No, no, no, I think I'm special." And to be able to say that with such humility, but also with such a track record to justify that claim is in tremendously spiring because you come from, as you say, like a blue collar area. You come from a normal place. You're a normal guy that has just committed himself to something despite the any short-term or medium-term rewards in your life because you loved it and you believed in yourself. And I think that for for anybody listening should be evidence enough that we we all have a chance at at least something. It
might not be being the heavyweight champion of the world because you acknowledge you have physical gifts that you know myself I don't I wasn't born with but um but we can all do something with that obsession with that focus with a supporting group of people around us with the right mentality and with a commitment to it despite um the objective reality that we're going through. But also, I admire you so much because of everything you've said about your child with autism and the work you're doing to push harder for um to to reduce the diagnosis times in the NHS at the moment, which so many parents out there are going to really appreciate. Um and we are all behind you as a nation. You're a good guy. You'd be the first ever to do to unify the belts in such a way um as a British guy. And uh wouldn't that be something? Listen, if anybody can do it and and just saying about the special thing. Mhm. I wasn't born special. And like you said, I am from the most regular background that you can come from. And I don't mean to say I'm not saying I'm special that in the fact that like I'm better than anybody else because I believe that anybody can be special. And I think more people need to believe it. You know what I mean? I think that more people if they work hard enough and don't quit on themselves, they can be special as well. And uh I think we'll leave it at that. Amen. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you. [Music] [Music]