Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRd4U0gADas
[Laughter] [Music] all day jordan pleasure beach man yeah good to meet you bro really really pleasure to meet you i'm a big fan i i think what you're doing first of all i think it's amazing that no one's talked you into doing mma it's incredible i've been close how close mostly the lady outside my wife lauren really is the one that's talking me out of it really yeah bro like when i graduated from college in 2011 university of nebraska wrestling was still on the brink of it was in its infancy of marketing and branding and really making it a professional career so mma was the new kid on the block and it was growing and expanding and we had a lot of our guys transitioning in henry cejudo ben askren daniel cormier and so i really thought about it i was like okay i'm gonna wrestle the olympics in london 2012 win the gold and then i'm gonna make the transition to mma i'll be 25 years old i'll have plenty of time and then i met lauren and she's like listen you're doing well in the sport stay here you're comfortable this is a different it's a different sport mma in comparison to wrestling but it's a good thing it is a different sport and it also has a lot more head trauma and there's a lot of things to consider 100 that's what i think about all the time listen i think about going to mma until i see a guy like platinum mike perry get his whole thing split nose crooked i'm like i'm good it's like in wrestling you lose you get taken down pushed out you know you get pinned and fighting you lose you get something broken choked out tap you know it's unconscious it's a very very different sport wrestling it's much it's a you score as many points as possible with doing the least damage as possible and mma i feel like it's it's different it's a shame that there's not more attention put on the professional like
like at one point in time professional wrestling was actual wrestling yeah yeah it wasn't like wwe entertainment it was professional wrestling and it was done for why can't they do that i know they tried to do that a few years back there was uh an organization i think was it kevin jackson that was doing it yeah yeah he was doing something where he was doing a professional wrestling organization but it just didn't catch on for some reason but yet golf is on tv for sure baseball and all these things bags bro cornhole i was watching the cornhole championships on espn the other day i'm like bro this is wild like corn hole is on espn more often than wrestling but isn't that just now because of there's no crowds and covid and there's all the weirdness and there's a lot of [ __ ] that's on like if you follow sportscenter on instagram like half the [ __ ] they do is like people in their backyard like doing crazy dunks and stuff i think the the invention of the internet has definitely changed the game for our sport we are in an epic time where anyone can be famous all you need is an iphone cell phone period like if you can film footage and upload it and it's funny it's inventive it's disruptive like you have an audience and people are gonna follow it so people that are going viral now becoming superstars aren't even the most particularly talented people in society they just have a niche and they know how to stay consistent with it well sometimes it doesn't even make sense like something just catches like remember the dude that was on the skateboard uh doing fleetwood cranberry juice just for whatever reason everybody's like that guy looks like he's having get this man a truck get him more cranberry juice and now he's on i look he's always on podcasts he's all over the place he bought a house he bought a car i mean it's really incredible the beauty of it yeah that's the beauty of it is it gives people an opportunity there it is right
there yeah so it was it was professional wrestling league that they established and you know when people reference what we do i call it olympic wrestling honestly i don't even call it professional wrestling because that is kind of an ode to the wwe and old time wwf so it's a it's a unique thing that we had at this time this is tommy rowland's daniel cormier both extremely competitive both uh great wrestlers okay one year state this probably was around 0405-ish um so i was still in high school real pro wrestling that's right so they had different cities across the country that had their own teams it was almost like xfl-esque it kind of had that vibe and you said that's rulon gardner yeah riley gardner and who's the tim johnson in the middle he works for the big ten network and also for espn he does commentary for the uh ncaa championships yearly and then the last guys nate carr who was a ncaa champ world medalist and roulon is another guy that made the transition he made the transition to mma diddy yeah yeah yeah he fought a bunch of times over in japan and actually crazy i think what stopped him was he lost a toe in a frostbite accident he's a former cornhusker so we went to the same university and i got a chance to kind of spend some time with roulette but he was out when i was kind of transitioning in and so he's an interesting cat and he is one of those guys that's like shrouded in this mystery but there's so many like epic stories about who he was what he's done how much he's eaten he's you know gorilla dude realizing man the size of that guy massive man um and then obviously him beating corellon which is pretty much considered the most legendary victory in wrestling history does that's a weird victory right because it's like corellon all he did was get corellon to break his grip yeah and it was a new rule right the
rules are evolving all the time in wrestling so it's uh one of those rule changes that year in particular which wasn't it didn't translate well to the average fan so like the toughest thing about wrestling is that the rules change so often that a non-traditional wrestling fan can't really keep up you watch a football game you know listen you put the ball into the end zone it's six points extra point a point field goal three points right safety two you watch basketball you know if you're behind this arc it's three points if you're within it it's two points in wrestling there's so many different subjective rule sets that you're like okay well if you unlock your hands here or if this guy gets pushed out of bounds it's a point but if you shove him out of bounds it's no point if he's grounded it's no points but if his knees off the mat then it's a point so there's so many different like little nuances in the sport that make it difficult to follow and even if you're within it like sometimes you have to address what the rule set is before you even compete in a tournament there are times where we're meeting with uh administration and referees before we compete at the olympics world championships just so we can stay current on the rule set for that year because it's just that much always evolving always evolving that is that something that plays in your head while you're actually competing do you have to think like oh wait a minute what is what's the rule for this place you know that's a good question i think in the heat of the moment sometimes i imagine you've seen it a lot in mma whether it's a guy you know hitting someone in the back of the head or you know kicking them when they're down on a knee like all these little things that when you're in the battle and you're fired up and you're trying to put this man out like you don't even think about the rule set you just you know it has to be programmed i think
experience just uh multiple times within this position there's a certain level of savviness and mental toughness that you have to have to get there they've had a hard time getting people to watch any kind of grappling that don't grapple i think that's that's a part there's a problem with jiu jitsu and one of the things they did with jiu jitsu they've come up with this new thing called combat jiu-jitsu eddie bravo came up with it okay it's basically jiu-jitsu with slapping it's kind of [ __ ] crazy what yeah man it's crazy it's crazy like in the face yeah yeah or elsewhere the the thing is like in you know you can punch to the body and you slap to the face the thing is with jiu jitsu positions there's a lot of unrealistic positions when it comes to mma yeah where like guys are hanging on an ankle and the guy's right over him and he can just start blasting him in the face there's the thing about leg lockers are much more sophisticated now than they were back in the day but early in the ufc you saw some cases where guys would go for leg locks and see this is this is combat jiu jitsu see they got that yeah come on brother [Laughter] two siblings fighting over the last rice krispies that's kind of a crazy well that's wagner rocha who's uh fought mma before and he's he's a beast is he tough yeah he's a bad [ __ ] he's a bad [ __ ] and he wound up winning the uh i think he won the whole tournament because he's got so much experience with strikes and jiu jitsu as it is and he's uh stopped like would that really make you release your lock to have your arm potentially broken is getting slapped in the face like if i have my hands locked and i'm preventing the arm bar like with a slap in the face really make me like oh i gotta unlock protect my face bam you're done it's a good question there's you never know where a person's brain is at right right yeah you know sometimes dudes just give their arm up yeah there's there's situations where guys give their arm up and
sometimes give guys give their arm up in mma too when they're getting pounded on you'll see guys reach up when someone's in the mount and you know that they're giving their arm out and then they get tapped and you know i've talked to guys who actually told me that they did it they just said i just let him take my neck or i let him take my arm right but wagner's stopped guys he's got like a he's got a like a palm technique too it's not just like a open-handed one yeah he's just kind of going palm to the face so well he's a like i said he's a real mma fighter and he's you know he's an elite mma fighter bro but does that look funny to you i respect these dudes this dude looks like an absolute monster but the slapping just reminds me of my sister and i back in middle school when my mom and dad were at work and we had a snow day yeah and we would be fighting over the last sip of the two-liter pepsi in the fridge yeah that was it right there that's how they slap at each other if you use gloves the thing about gloves is if they put the mma gloves gloves change a lot of positions like it's harder to get certain chokes because the gloves are thick and they get in the way you can't get them under the chin as easy yeah but that would probably be the most realistic but the reason why they use slaps it actually there's a history that goes back to the original mma like when they were first starting to do mma tournaments yeah one of them one of the really early ones was called pancreas it was in japan and boss rootin was the master at pancras and what boss rootin would do he's got crazy flexible hands and he's an elite striker so he would pull his hands like i don't know how the [ __ ] he does it but he can get his hands way pulling back himself basically throwing punches he was basically going boom boom instead of everybody else was slapping he was smashing dudes and ko and dudes with palm strikes see if you can find some boss rooting
like boss rooting versus funaki he ko'd him with an uppercut a palm strike palm strike uppercut yeah because the thing about celia oh yeah that's it give me a rewind on that so you could see is this a boss root and highlight yeah boss was smashing people over there but again he's an elite striker so he's a guy who came from holland and you know they're like in the kickboxing world holland as well so this was this is like early early 90s i'm interested in like the the apparel here right because it's got like a professional wrestling vibe right that was a bit of the problem because there was some some rigged fights see japan is famous for for having rigged fights they would do weird [ __ ] in the early days in particular they would do weird [ __ ] where like you would seek like i don't want to name names but uh some elite fighters were paid off to take dives and they'll admit it now like you see him like literally like pro wrestling a guy's going for a heel looking like oh no oh yeah yeah okay i want to tap of course but you can tell that it's fake so there was real fights and then there was also some [ __ ] and there there was always a question about pancreas because some of them like when boss rooting's ko and people well that's 100 real that's real that's real as [ __ ] he's in pain right there yeah yeah that was tight yeah hamstring was yeah he get his name you know what's interesting i feel like uh man that's crazy i feel like the japanese love combat yes love combat yeah and so that's what makes us excited for the postponed olympic games right this summer tokyo 2021 is wrestling is going to be one of the premier sports because of their love for combat sports there so whether it's mma kickboxing boxing itself wrestling judo sumo they love the sport and so we're really excited about that
opportunity so that's going to be this summer they don't do it with crowds that's a good question i don't know yet so the japanese prime minister made an announcement public statement saying hey listen we're going to host the olympics this summer no matter what one of the interesting things about it is although it's happening in 21 they're still calling it tokyo 2020. i think they were saving face for all the marketing material that they already made that cost them billions of dollars right zero to a one is that really worth five billion dollars or whatever it is interesting but it's going to be interesting how they figure it out because the olympic village is like a town there's 10 000 coaches and athletes from every country on the face of the planet all put into a one-mile radius on this olympic campus and there's just so much interaction engagement i'm talking the the cafeteria at the olympic games is five football fields long they've got a mcdonald's like a full-size mcdonald's in the cafeteria in the olympic village they've got foods from all different parts of the country you've got an italian station a japanese station american station you know and a pan-african station they have it's insane you have literally thousands of people swirling in at all times it's 24 hours you can go get a big mac at the mcdonald's bro like for if you're coming from america you can go down the street there's a mcdonald's within you know a mile of anybody while you're here stateside but if you're coming from one of these smaller countries are you coming from guinea basal or you're coming from i don't know qatar like you're like damn mcdonald's sounds pretty good i don't get this at the crib let me go hey grab me a little quick couple mcchickens couple double cheeseburgers put them in the room
but you would think that someone competing in the olympics would want to fuel their body with the best possible food but they're available some of them know they can't win like okay you know like everyone going to the olympics isn't expecting to win a medal like 90 i say 90 percent large very large percentage of the competitors at the olympic games it's a long shot for them to get on the podium they're going with the expectation like hey listen i'm representing my home country with pride i am going to a country that i've never been before hopefully i can be on tv my family will be watching me back home the opening ceremonies is the best experience for them because they get to be in a full packed arena around all the athletes that they've seen on tv but they know that realistically they're not going to win so when that mcdonald's is open 24 hours they're like let's go bro we're going here do they have to pay for it free oh that's everything's free that's good so it's it's a it's an interesting perspective being the olympic village it's it's a cool spot it's got to be a wild experience to be there it must feel so real it's it's wild so they're really strict with the way that they administer athletes and and people to get in you have to have a guest list if you want to bring anyone in they have to be approved seven days in advance so let's say my wife i'm like hey i want my wife to come into the olympic village check out our living space check out the free mcdonald's then i have to put her on the list seven days in advance and it has to be approved by the usopc and then also you know the ioc wow and so it's it's a it's a very they're literally an athlete bro they're not playing dog i'm telling you i'm telling you joe like they get it after and he's like oh after he was done well that makes sense well he's taking that out he's taking that home with him he's put he's putting that all in his
suitcase he's going to go start him a little mcdonald's of his own when he gets back to the crib but it's uh so when you get in the village you have to it's almost like going through tsa at an airport you got to show them your badge they scan it you got to get all your bags checked and make sure that you're good to go you don't have any you know thing lethal in your bags you get inside and it's literally like an apartment complex huge apartment complex look look at that mcdonald's is the most popular restaurant that's crazy there listen they're not getting salads and chicken selects no you know they're getting cheeseburgers and mcchickens and let's you're saying but i i listen hey whatever you need to do to be the fastest man in the world do your thing well i guess also like when you're done you probably just want to treat yourself you're probably eating very strict for a long period of time yeah crazy i that was my when i won the gold in 2012 my first meal afterwards was mcdonald's very first i had a double cheeseburger with a high sea orange to drink and a large fry so crazy story i'll tell you the story so i win the olympic gold and right after you win they take you back to what they have like a media house so it's got all of the publications from all over the world you've got ap sports illustrated nbc you know just pretty much everything and so you go back and you just bounce from room to room it's like okay we got al michaels here we got bob costas here we got you know joe rogan here and so you go you show your medal you tell them about your experience where you're from who you are what you're gonna do with all this money and fame that you've just won and then so as soon as you're ushered out of there you competed at eight o'clock and you don't get out of there to close to midnight so by the time it's midnight in london really the only thing open is mcdonald's right so i'm still in my podium outfit like
literally what i wore on the podium i'm still in it at midnight and so we go down to like piccadilly in in london and only things open is a mcdonald's and so we went to like a club for a little bit one of my sponsors at the time had like bottle service they wanted to celebrate me so we leave there we go to mcdonald's i get inside and packed clubs just let out everyone's like hungry they're hungover they just got done for the night full of drinking they're all in line line's crazy i go into the mcdonald's my damn i've been this long day i wrestled all day long i do not want to stand in line i just want to see if i can work my way to the front so i go and ask the guy i'm like yo bro listen i just wrestled all day at the excel center i just won an olympic gold like you think i can get in front of you and he's like you ain't winning what stop and i'm like bro i'm like i won the olympics he's like no you didn't i had my medal in my pocket i had my gold medal in my pocket so i pulled my gold medal out and show this guy he's like starts going nuts oh my god this guy so he's yelling everyone he's pushing people out of the way in this mcdonald's he's like this guy just won an olympic gold medal led him to the front of the line led him to the front and so he's pushing people in the out of the way gets me like literally escorts me to the front of the line to get me my quarter pounder and my large fry it was wow it was wild that's the craziest cheeseburger fry story ever it was it was dope it was awesome that had to be very memorable it was fun wow winning the gold medal what i mean you i know you've won the world championship what four times four worlds one olympics but how much difference nothing like it olympics are the best it's it's rare it only happens every four years it's a single day event so you have to be your best on that single day you only get one
cycle to prepare for so we think of our careers like cyclically where like in a if you're a mma fighter you're like okay i can get an opportunity to fight for the belt as long as i continue to compete at a high level like keep my brand awareness um at a at a good place but in wrestling the pinnacle is the olympic game so no matter how many world championships you win you want that olympic gold and the crazy thing is the worlds are harder than the olympics so the olympics are a little more condensed in terms of the qualification process so at worlds it's much easier to qualify so you have 42 guys in your weight class or in your bracket at worlds you only have 16 at the olympics so in the world championships i won in 2015 i wrestled six matches the olympics i won in 2012 i only had four matches and so and it's it's a random draw too so you could wrestle russia first round which would suck or you could wrestle puerto rico first round which would suck less so it's a it's a really interesting experience the way these brackets are drawn and i think that the olympic games has become so special because of everything surrounding it you get more money more notoriety uh more recognition moving forward like winning the goal in 2012 catapulted me to where i am right now like when i'm recognized or announced in an event it's always affiliated with that olympic gold olympic gold medalist jordan bros like they always tell you whenever you step off the podium you will forever be an olympic gold medalist you can't lose that you can lose your belt right you can never lose your gold right it always comes home with me at the end of the day no matter what i do moving forward so that's pretty cool that is an interesting perspective right because if you're a fighter you win the title and then you lose the title in your next fight you're a former world champion but uh olympic gold medalist from 2012 is an olympic gold medalist yeah so that's
it's dope yeah you made it through you did it and that's it but then there's a another guy who was it four years later yeah it's uh it's interesting it's got to be a crazy experience but the world championships being more difficult is the world championships held in a two-day is it a two-day event yeah so they changed the format in 2018 wrestling used to be a single day you weigh in the day before and then you'd wrestle all day you start in the preliminaries and then you wrestle all the way through to the finals by the end of the day five six matches you knew if you're a world champion olympic champion or not now they've made a transition where you weigh in same day competition starts two hours after weigh-ins and then it's a two-day event you wrestle through the semi-finals and then finals and metal matches or the second day now if you weigh in the same day do you cut any weight a ton like so i wrestle at 74 kilos or 163 and this morning i weigh 183 right so that kind of gives you perspective as to where we are in terms of what my walking around weight is when i'm just chilling and getting ready for competition or if i'm actually wrestling at my competition so when you were supposed to be wrestling in town um this this wrestling match i'm going up a weight class would that be that is 189 which i can't even get to oh okay because i'm too so i'm wrestling the guy that i'm wrestling is david taylor wrestled at penn state he is a two-time ncaa champion world champion at the weight class above me 86 kilos or 189 pounds in 2018. so i'm the world champ at 163 he's the world champ at 189. that's a big gap it's a big gap it's a big gap and so there are only six olympic weights at at the olympic game only six right so you've got 57 kilos or like 120 so you got let's 125 143 163 189 213 and then heavyweight and so only six
weight classes and then in the world championship year you have 10 weights so they give you a little more flexibility but in the olympic games they try to condense them they're adding so many sports every single cycle you got golf and break they they're adding break dancing to the olympic games in paris 2024 that's pretty crazy but brave dancing if they have rhythmic gymnastics i don't see why they shouldn't break dancing but at the expense of other sports like wrestling where you only have well that's six weights that's a single a single athlete or a single representative from each country per weight class do me a favor go to stance elements on instagram i want to show you this dude that i just saw there yesterday this is sick they're on another level it's it's pretty dope bro it's like i can't i'm just saying i'm just a hater because it it has kind of affected wrestling it shouldn't affect wrestling um but i i do agree with it not not this gentleman there's a guy in a red uh sweatsuit so you can find him down there there he is that's it watch this guy i mean watch this this dude is crazy damn look at this i mean he might as well be an elite gymnast i mean the way he's doing those those uh backhand springs and [ __ ] i mean this guy's incredible look at this [ __ ] look at that on one hand i mean he's incredible and and then stopping perfect all to music bro like what is this dude's name jamie that's the one thing i can't deny you you gotta you're you're like b-boy tata yeah yeah he's nice with it b-boy looks like he's from jersey shout out to b-boy tata well that's right you're from camden right yeah so i grew up south jersey sicklerville um new jersey right outside of philly my hometown is 20 miles from philadelph that's what that's nuts bro look at that i have some friends that started out in break dancing and then got into jiu jitsu yeah my friend richie martinez it might be
they probably transition well amazingly wow they're so [ __ ] strong and so athletic they can move so well yeah it's like gymnasts like gymnasts do well transitioning as well i guess if you have that perspective right it's very similar to rhythm gymnastics just a lot more there's some goofy [ __ ] in the olympics but you can't get rid of wrestling wrestling is one of the original sports it's literally one of the original olympic sports and that's what i love about wrestling and i and and this this here's been like my comparison to mma for a long time is i'm always weighing the pros and cons okay wrestling is here mma is here mma has so many amazing things i love the toughness aspect my favorite sport outside of wrestling is boxing i'm a big boxing fan i love just the warrior element i love how you come from the gutter from the mud and these dudes are just like gritty warriors precision um it's an art form i look at mma as a an alternative to wrestling right and i and one of the things that i've seen i've seen so many guys that i've trained alongside that have gone on to have immense success in mma so that's what always kind of pulls me on my team like what guys i've trained with uh i've trained been alongside daniel i've been alongside marty or kamara usman i've been alongside henry cejudo i've wrestled justin gaithy numerous occasions mike chandler lance palmer like all these guys i've wrestled these guys and i've i've seen but it's different right just because you're a great wrestler doesn't mean you're going to be a great fighter and just because you're you know an average wrestler doesn't mean you're going to be an average fighter i've seen guys who i thought were average wrestlers become great fighters and guys who i thought were tremendous wrestler can't fight their way back so some guys
interesting adapt quickly to the striking aspects and some guys really struggle there's some really strong grapplers yeah that for whatever reason they have terrible hand speed okay their hand speed is terrible they don't have any power it's very strange yeah it's it's power's a weird thing like you either have it or you don't and one of the interesting things that i think about about the transition is like in wrestling if you're a righty usually lead right leg yeah but in fighting right if you're a righty you're gonna lead left that's true but in boxing they're actually training a lot of people opposite now really yeah like oscar de la hoya he fought southpaw but he's a right-handed fighter huh and there's a few or uh was it opposite yeah i think he was a left-handed fighter and he fought orthodox de la hoya fight southpaw or orthodox i can't even remember now but he let like emmanuel stewart started having guys do that because the idea would be the one of the most important punches in boxing is your jab and you should use the most dominant hand for jabs so there's a few fighters so the yeah he's a converted southpaw that's right so he was a left-handed fighter and they they had him use his left hand forward and that way his power hand was his most dominant hand which was his front hand what he jabs around it's a lot of work well that's it's the most important punch in boxing and so there's a lot like bruce lee believed in that as well there's a lot of people that think that maybe if a wrestler does fight that way with that right leg forward or wrestle that way rather they should fight that way as well yeah and i think i think the transition would be different there'd be a lot to learn and that's part of the reason i mean there's so many reasons amongst others but i'm the best in my field at wrestling i'm one of the best wrestlers in the world it is a completely different transition and
learning curve to getting to mma right you've got to start from the bottom so you go from this heralded space where you're a legend an icon to just another guy and yes you have the pedigree you've got the chops to go on and you know kind of excel here but it takes time bro well you have the most important skill set in my opinion it took henry a decade bro it did but i don't have that type of time the same way in the beginning yeah henry turned a corner somewhere in the ufc he wasn't seeing the fruit like it's hard to turn the corner when you don't see the fruit when you start to see celebrities sitting ringside you got holly berry here matt mcconaughey here and then you see those those payouts you're like damn let me get my stuff together let me get right well he also got really good at marketing and talking [ __ ] yeah and you know the cringe king [Laughter] but i respect him undeniably good as a fighter and so when the last half of his career when he became like super dedicated i mean he was crushing people crushing people with stand up do you think he's done i don't think so i think i think he's so competitive and yeah and how old is he now 33 32. how old is henry cejudo i think 33. 34. okay so he still got years ahead of him in his prime his athletic prime and i think he's just a guy like that who's a conqueror he's just so good let me ask you this why do you think that mma fighters have a much later prime than pretty much any other sport if you look at the champions in mma it's very hard to find someone below the age of 30. why is that it's hard to put everything together because if you're a specialist in in one aspect of mma someone generally the person that's going to figure out a way to beat you is a person who's a specialist to the thing you're not good at like say if you're a wrestler
and you're really good at wrestling and then you'll come into a guy you come in a fight with a guy who's a really good striker who's got excellent takedown defense and then you're kind of [ __ ] like that happened when brock lesnar fought alistair over him because brock lesnar couldn't get alistar down and alistair is a k1 grand prix champion sure and just a [ __ ] beast and also an enormous man too of course and brock couldn't get him down and he was just getting torn apart standing up so that was the guy who solved his his puzzle it was a guy who was much bigger or as big as him but much better striker what's interesting because i think that's why wrestlers translate well is because we i started wrestling at six years old most guys start the sport of wrestling from infancy yeah like if if it's in your bloodline you're on the mat three four five years old right where a lot of the sports you're not doing that right whether it's judo jiu jitsu kickboxing boxing like you don't do that for the entirety of your life maybe eight nine ten you start to dabble in a little bit and i think wrestling actually wrestling is i'm sure wrestling is the only sanctioned sport collegiately of all combat sports so we have a very high level of pedigree in comparison to other places yeah so you know i started wrestling at six years old wrestled through middle school high school went to the university of nebraska earned my degree there training twice a day for five years took the medical red shirt to get better and then got to this place where i started to continue to sharpen my chops at the olympic training center in colorado spring so if i made that transition i would be so regimented in what i had done for such a long period of time i don't think that any other sport can compare with that and i don't really follow a ton so i don't really know the dynamics of what it's like on a scholastic level in let's say jiu-jitsu but i have to imagine that wrestling has the strongest
pedigree in the highest level of preparation for mma because of its ability to you know be popular within the contents of an actual school university that type of thing for sure and wrestlers that dedicate themselves to jiu jitsu transition very easily like wrestlers that figure out choke holds and arm bars and stuff like that they already know how to control bodies and they already know how to drill protect yeah and they already have discipline like crazy discipline one of the things that i think separates wrestlers from other sports is mental toughness that's right because it is a badge of courage there's a thing that wrestlers all have is they embrace the suck they all do they all know how to push then there's no prima donnas that are successful wrestlers sure they don't exist i mean you could say that about other sports there's prima donners in basketball there's guys that you know they'll fake injuries and other sports and soccer they fall down that [ __ ] is never gonna happen in wrestling because it's free yeah and it's not sexy you don't make any money exactly so we've done it for nothing for so long that when you get to this level it's just all about pride yeah i mean it's not saying there's no mentally tough people in soccer i'm sure there are of course but but there's no flopping in wrestling there's no one in wrestling that's successful it's not mentally tough it is like it's a universal standard yeah and when they translation transit uh transition rather to mma you see it immediately you see it in the training room you see it in the way they fight yeah on a scale you see it they know how to make they know how to cut that weight i wanted to ask you about that too like when you're cutting weight for something or like a world championships and you have to compete two hours later how do you do that you've got to be dialed in for a long period of time so i've dabbled in
a numerous and a lot of diets right i see you're on the carnivore diet yeah like how is that going great is it good the last time i did i did it last year i had only meat yeah only only meat well i eat eggs and fish like like last time i had lobster only animal products so eggs any type of meat yeah any type of meat yeah no that's it no vegetable carbs no some people will eat like a little piece of fruit here and there you know if you feel really feel like you need it that's it for a workout but i'm telling you man it's crazy you feel [ __ ] great your energy level with no carbs is like this it's flat all day it stays the same it's essentially sugar-free yes exactly exactly energy you don't have those crashes no uh insulin crash no weirdness um bro your belly's got to be feeling awful no how are you i'm telling you this stuff i feel like i'd be like bogged down like oh i couldn't train no i'm telling you it's pretty easy it seems like it wouldn't be but it really is it's just like crazy rafael del sanchez i think went on this kind of a diet for uh his last fight when he fought paul felder and i think that's how he won up making 155 again um but some guys have tried it in mma i know um it's it's similar to like a ketogenic diet a lot of ketogenic diets guys are mostly eating uh meats and fats and getting their their um their fuel from fat or from glucogenesis glucogen neogenesis which is like when your body uh i think that's how you say it when your body processes protein and turns that protein into glucose your body can do that but it's the thing about it is like there's no crashing after eating it's real interesting and i think that's the i i try to eliminate sugar that's number one i always try to eliminate sugar because i like sweets i'm a sweet guy who does right so i want the pastries and i love who i love bread
right so those are the first things i cut out i cut out all the extras number one so any sort of let's say juice um bread potato chips cereal cereal is like my my thing right late at night what is it now or when i was like if you want to like if you want to go off the rails now i just do granola like i'm a granola guy yeah yeah when i was a kid right it was fruity pebbles and cinnamon toast crunch i'm a captain crunch you're captain crunch bro i want to see the roof of your mouth if you're a casual crunch guy cause listen bro it's like chewing on straight up fiberglass bro like come on man you might as well smash up this mug and throw it in a bowl pour some milk on it so it's uh i know i dabbled in cap and crunch a little bit when i was a kid all berries you ever had oops all berries i don't think i did no listen you ain't lived until you had the oops all berry so none of the little yellow boys whatever those are what was the peanut butter one there was a peanut butter breakfast cereal trying to remember what that was i don't know fruit loops was always a good one can't go wrong lucky charms yeah i can't go if i'm gonna go completely off the rails like i saw i had some friends of ours who live actually in texas and dallas the ribbon family they sent me after i made the world team last year a huge box of all the little tiny cereals and it had apple jacks fruit loops frosted flakes you know cocoa pops cocoa everything like literally everything that you ate as a kid and so we only do our shopping at whole foods now so we have a pretty much organic all-natural diet so that's why i'm kind of into you know the kashi like as as far as we go now it's like honey nut cheerios that's like as far as will that's a big splurge so that's going crazy right like damn you getting wild tonight jv is going with the honey nut cheerios the rails
um so i try to cut out the bad stuff first and then it really is about portion sizing so i dabble in intermittent fasting i cut down the portion sizes of my meals and i go sugar-free so typically i wake up in the morning let's say 7am i have a smoothie in my smoothie i put plant protein collagen protein i'll do maybe like some chia seeds almond milk spinach and peanut butter and that'll be my breakfast and this is pre-training that's pre-training so you do this at seven and what time is your first training session and my first training session is at 8 30. and how many training sessions you generally have in a day two two just two and how do you break them up what do you do do you choose how you train and what you do it depends now yes a little bit more so than i had in the past so at this age i'm 32 years old i've been in it for a while i have a connection with my coaches that is more of a partnership as opposed to like a coach athlete relationship so i'm like okay here's what i need here's what i want to work on and then they give me kind of the autonomy to figure out what my schedule is going to look like because i got three kids at home a wife so my schedule's a little more busy than the average college guy that we're training with so i still train at the university of nebraska we have an rtc there which a regional training center in conjunction with the college program so i'm wrestling with those guys often in their room out in lincoln but uh yeah so i have my smoothie at usually like 7 30 i'm in the wrestling room by 8 30 to train we're usually on the mat in the morning so we'll get like a light drill in just get our bodies moving get feeling good or we'll lift in the morning so i typically lift three times a week then in the afternoon i'll have depending upon how close i am to my weight cut itself like if i'm trying to stay light and i'm getting close like week of i'll
skip lunch period i won't even have lunch or i'll do like a handful of cashews or something relatively small and then i'll go back to practice at two and we'll do either live wrestling or we'll do some sort of conditioning now is that hard to do with just like a handful okay it sucks bro but you have to shrink your body a little bit because if you want to compete to like unlike boxing mma where you have an entire day to rehydrate replenish your body and get ready for competition two hours it's a different beast bro like if you step on the scale and you just sat in the sauna for an hour and you've been in a hot tub with a sauna suit and a beanie you're finished you you you're finished you can't recover it's impossible because if you think about that two hours that two hours encompasses multiple things it's one it's you have to eat then two you've gotta get warmed up and then three you gotta get your mind right and prepare to compete so you never know you could be an hour in or you could be the first match on mad a it really just depends on how the brackets shake out so you're shrinking your body no matter what no matter what you have to you i or at least that's what i feel so the most i ever want to lose on in the day the 24 hours before competition is six pounds six seven pounds so that's doable for you let's do it that's manageable and then so when you get off the scale what's the first thing you take in your body liquids liquids liquids yeah do you do with electrolytes yeah electrolytes um aminos liquid aminos i'll do uh and is there like a protocol do you do it slowly like how do you how do you get rehydrated i don't i don't do it slowly i mean i don't slam it but i think i do it with moderation because my weight cut is not really hard because i don't do you know 15 20 pounds right so it's not like my body is so
shocked that any input nutritionally is going to okay so yeah it's relatively mild because i still want to be able to recover you've got your electrolytes and your fluids and then fruits so like i try to slam then i try to re-energize with all the carbs and the sugars that i've kind of pulled back from because you get time the tournament is going to last throughout an entire day so let's say you wrestle two hours later but then your next match isn't going to be for another hour hour and a half and then the same thing for your next match and then the semi-final so between each match you're gonna have about an hour so you know that the longer the day goes the more you win the more recovery time you get so where you might start the day at i wrestle or sorry i weigh in at 163 and then by the time i compete my first match let's say i'm 169-ish 170 drank a couple gal maybe a gallon of water had a smoothie ate some fruit maybe some honey and some peanut butter and then i'm wrestling about six seven pounds over and so then as the day progresses you're eating a little bit between each match but then you also have to remember you've got to make scratch weight again for day two oh my god day two so you got to be back down to 163.0 for day two of the finals oh no but that's a different beast because then the finals are in the evening so if you can just make it down weigh in at 8 30 you don't have to wrestle until but that's gotta beat you up to do that two days in a row so when you when you step off the mat after the semifinals you wrestled four matches that day and then you go step on the step on the scale so like for example this year world championships made weight saturday morning wrestle four matches after the semifinals you're like okay i gotta make weight tomorrow since i'm a medalist you go step on the scale i'm seven pounds over so now i gotta get ready for tomorrow i
can't eat dinner after wrestling four matches i've gotta go straight to the gym get on the bike get on the song get in the sauna get on the treadmill get the seven pounds off and then go to sleep hungry and then way away and again and then oh no it's rough i think i hope wrestling will change it so if you do that say and then you don't have to wrestle into the evening you weigh in the morning you don't have to wrestle into the evening like yeah then what do you do do you immediately start eating it it's the same thing yeah fluids first yeah you do some fluids first you do relatively similar protocol to the day before but then you start to you train at some point during the day like if i have a match at night i always like to get my body moving at some point during the day so maybe i'll have breakfast and then around noon one o'clock i'll come and get a light drill in just get my body moving taking a couple shots maybe do a couple sprints ride the bike for a little bit just to make sure that i'm on point when it is go time that i'm not just sitting around all day accumulating all this weight all of a sudden i'm 10 12 pounds heavier than i was eight hours ago and i got to be ready to go out and compete so i can't believe you out there there's a balance there's a balance there i don't know how the guys do it in mma bro like you're 15 20 pounds heavier than you were the day before yeah how can you even be ideal it's not like terms of your movement like it's not it's like i'd be weighed down well i mean i feel like there's guys that are getting away from that now and a lot of guys are trying to just do what you were just saying get to about six pounds and cut that and then as the day before and they perform better that way yeah but the real concern is against elite grapplers like someone who's really bigger than you and stronger than you
and to take you down but i'm just thinking i can't believe that you have to wrestle all those matches in a day and then train afterwards to cut weight that night you gotta cut again and then don't eat so if you yes listen if the ufc has a tournament and right mcgregor's wrestling cerrone on saturday night yeah and then or fighting cerrone saturday night then he's got to fight you know gaithy sunday he's going to make weight on saturday morning before the fight and he's gonna make weight again on sunday before the fight because you got to rehydrate like you got it when you're not thinking about weigh-ins tomorrow you're thinking about the day why do they make them weigh in twice because they want to stop guys from cutting too much weight like you've seen it guys almost died yeah trying to get down the weight like crazy stuff you had day before weigh-ins people are like i can cut anything because i can be ready in 24 hours right so you got guys literally getting carried to the scale oh i've seen it they can't even walk they're discombobulated they're all over the place their coaches carry them sit them on the scale make weight and then all of a sudden they just lay them out they're pumped they're pouring fluids into their mouth chewing their food for them it's nuts they're on death's door i think i think that's what they're trying to avoid they don't want to be liable for someone killing themselves while trying to make weight for an event well there's an mma organization called one fc in asia they're trying they're trying to avoid that and they're doing hydration tests i'm not exactly sure how they do it i don't like that you don't like that i don't how come because there is a certain level of accountability that you have to provide for your athletes but some weight classes are impossible like there are only six weight classes in what i do in wrestling so the next weight class above me is 189 i'm at 163 so that's a 26 pound jump that weight class below me is 143 that's a 20 pound 20 pound drop so i'm a
tweener i can't go up i'm too small i can't go down i'm too big right so the only weight class i can make is 163. so now not only are you trying to beat the scale and beat your opponent but now you're also trying to beat the hydration test it's just another way for people to cheat and then you know potentially suspensions and well what they're doing well fighting has a couple more weight classes but it's still pretty limited but what they're doing is they're just telling guys like if you fight at 170 and you're cutting 10 15 pounds just go up to 185. yeah and they're and they're making sure that these guys fight and compete healthy so they're they're trying to eliminate weight is that possible though like it's going to tell someone hey listen i know this is a struggle for you joe i know you really want to fight at 170 your bmi says that you can but you cannot get hydrated and fight at 170 you've got to go up to 185 and you weigh 185 and you're like i can't compete here but the other guys would be 185 as well they're doing the same thing as well the whole idea is to eliminate weight cutting across the board but some guys have better teams some guys have science behind them like that's true you look at connor like now that conor's made this insane amount of money he's got an entire team behind what he does yeah and so most guys that are trying to compete with him don't have those type of resources so where he is has science and they're going to make sure he's on point you're just you got your water bottle you're just drinking as much as possible and trying to manage it but if you're not cutting weight that would kind of eliminate the significance of having this big team behind you in terms of like the science of weight cutting and preparing getting yourself ready if no one's cutting weight then you're just dealing with skill
that's the idea yeah but that would be like the whole steroids argument if everyone's on steroids and no one's on steroids right so it's like no it's not possible it's the opposite of that argument the r that would be the argument for weight cutting saying look everyone's on steroids so just take steroids everyone cuts weight so just cut weight yeah but but if there's you can't cut weight that's like saying you can't do steroids yeah yeah i got you so it's like the opposite of that argument so but i'm curious as to how you would prevent everyone from doing hydration tests i know but there's certain ways not not no everyone's not going to cheat right like i'm just saying they're get a guy you'd measure his body mass measure his his body fat composition do hydration test on him and say look at 170 you are you're sitting here you have 10 body fat yeah and then just have your body weight and your mass tracked so like you you're capable of competing at 170 pounds and this is how we know you really can't make 155 and that's the weight classes in mma 155 to 170 i think the tough thing for us is we have eating disorders like combat athletes have eating disorders bro and it's you know for us it's we have an unhealthy relationship with food where we kill ourselves to get down to weight so we can compete at a high level and then we trash our bodies with all the things that we've been missing out on for such a long period of time so if you look at the average fighter where they are in the offseason is much higher than where they typically are when they're training if you look at a guy with his shirt off when he's getting prepared for a fight like damn that dude looks good you look at him on a beach with his family in the summer time you're like damn that dude looks fat and so you we have to have a better relationship with food where
it's more of a lifestyle because at this point this is why you see most guys after their careers are done they've gained an excessive amount of weight they look unhealthy yeah like bro what did you do to yourself that's true it's a good point i even i feel it personally there are days where i'm like i'm not even hungry but i haven't eaten what i want in two months i'm having this french toast you know what i mean and so it's it's a very very different aspect of life that we have never really tapped into because we've been able to make it but just because you're making it doesn't mean it's healthy so you know it's almost like one of those things that until we start to register it and track it over a long period of time we'll never really know the effects mentally psychologically and physically well i think for mma the one of the solutions is more weight classes because i don't think there's nearly enough weight classes i think the jumps like 85 to 205 that's 20 pounds that's a giant and then 205 to 265 is heavyweight that's too big that's a giant job that's a big jump i think they should have weight classes basically every 10 pounds i think that'd be good that might get me interested because i'm a 160 i wrestle at 163. right so i'm literally smack dab in between two weight classes yeah between 55 and 70 then you have me so i feel like i'm too big for 55. so you're still considering honest my wife's watching so i'll tell you when they cut the cameras off i'll tell you how much training have you done like with striking never never never hit pads or anything nothing whoa nothing wow that's but i think i just i'm just confident well you should be one of the best wrestlers ever certainly confident so you're a [ __ ] olympic gold medalist you have to you have to be confident but uh striking is a different animal i just want to roll with a couple of guys um well that would be easy to set up yeah i want to roll with connor is probably my dream guy that just like
get my hands on and just feel a little bit i think it would be fun um gsp what was it like doing that thing with askren that you guys uh yeah it was a crazy wrestling match it was interesting i i i respect ben a ton he's uh i do too try this you ever have a kill cliff no it's good cbd it's my own drink oh i can't have my face no i'm i'm usada the cbd it doesn't have any thc in it i'm good i understand you know um but thank you i appreciate it hey make sure you guys are drinking kill cliff whatever you want i don't give a [ __ ] i just want you no you're good bro pineapple and jalapeno this looks good kill cliff you're with killcliff i had a it's crazy i had they sent me like a package of their stuff years ago were you in the their inception or did you just get recently on board within the last year or so that's dope bro congratulations yeah we started uh i came up with this idea for a pineapple jalapeno drink they're they're growing yeah then it's all sugar-free small company it's got 25 milligrams of cbd in it are they still in like the uh the crossfit space yeah they do a lot of different stuff yeah yeah that's awesome bro um so at wrestling asgren it was when i got i was in college in 2008 he was on the olympic team going to beijing i was on the junior world team i was 20 years old at the time he was on the olympian so i'm like damn like that's been asking like yo look what it is and so super cool for me to kind of have that experience i remember he took me for a ride to walmart in his prius and he let me sit shotgun and so like from that day on i like idolized them and then you know you get to this point where idols become rivals and i'm like well this guy is doing extremely well in the mma world he's a former wrestler but he still has his hand in wrestling and he's still a competitor so you know
for him he's like why not i'm going to do my best to elevate wrestling's profile but i knew i could beat him so you know it wasn't really like a risky match up for me but it was a lot of fun bro we drew a ton of fans we sold out the hulu theater in times square this place was rocking bro like crazy arena um and it was it was a ton of fun it's a ton of fun it's interesting that like for someone to compete in mma you have to do so many different things you have to strike you have to jujitsu you have to work on all these different aspects that you you know you're wrestling you're just wrestling that's what you do you're an expert at it yeah with ben he was really elite at it but at a certain period oh [ __ ] there goes ben he's got a [ __ ] up hip too and i'm i'm sure he's still out he's he was all smiles though listen he was like he loved it there was one point he loves match where i took him down and he was like bro i thought you said you were going to let me score or like actually give me a chance i was like no i'm not the i'm not the guy listen if you want to build your confidence or if you want to like get prepared for an event by you know letting someone throw you a bone i'm not that guy uh but it was fun you know what i gotta i i love ben for allowing me to to compete in this match you know what's crazy is this was my most viewed match in my entire career wow wrestling been asking who hadn't wrestled competitively in almost a decade it's pretty wild wild he's an interesting guy in mma too because he it's a bummer that he made it to the ufc when he did because he had really taken a long time off the sport and decided to come back and and fight in the ufc and i just don't think he was the same ben askrick when ben askren that was the
bellator champion or when he went over to one fc yeah he was he was manhandling [ __ ] and the best part about it is you got to see a guy who is elite at wrestling and really not elited anything else yeah just dominating with with pure he's a great wrestler he's a great wrestler great wrestler and he's one of those guys if he gets attached to you he's dangerous yeah right if you get your head underneath of him front headlock position you forget about it he's ridiculously strong does despite he's deceptively strong right yeah shaped like a pair wrestle like a bear that's a good way to describe it so he's uh he's a man he's got the ultimate dad bod but i tell you what you don't want to let that dude end on your leg for years but when he was undefeated before he went into fought in the ufc for years he would get a hold of guys you could see this surprised look in their face like they were confused yeah when he fought like korskov and we fought douglas lima these [ __ ] murderers over in bellator he those guys were killing people but he just got a hold of him like not today yeah on your back yeah take these nuggies yeah it was it was wild because and it maybe it worked out perfectly for him because he got to establish himself here in these lesser leagues excuse me and then made the transition at a good time where you know he was knocking on uh dana white's door for so long that it almost became comical it's like you got to let this guy in here true i just wish that we could have seen him when he was in his athletic prime compete against the guys that he competed against like guys like robbie lawler and guys like you know but he's vidal he he was a guy that there was he had dwelled here for so long that when he finally got to ufc they gave him such elite a competition yep that he never really had a chance to even get his feet wet in the ufc is like all right lawler well that's what the ufc well he
won that fight here you go the mossberg fight was crazy yeah but lawler fight was crazy too crazy like the first 45 seconds it was not looking good for you i know he got hit with some big shots oh really it was a crazy fight but it was you know it's ben has made a lot of money and he's done very well for himself and he's still well respected in both spaces so i mean i really guess that's all you can ask for from his perspective he's done extremely well he has multiple wrestling clubs back up in wisconsin he works for flo wrestling down here in austin who he you know dabbles in commentary and as an analyst for our sport he's well respected in the mma community he's been a champion in one fc and bellator and you know fought in the ufc like he's done he's done well and he's also like he's a fun guy he takes a lot he took that loss with against miles with all better than anybody like immediately gets on twitter well that sucked bro i was scared it was i was legit scared we were at buffalo wild wings watching that fight yeah um and we were sitting down like all right let's go let's go ben because it was only a couple weeks after i had wrestled him so i was i wanted to see him win i you know of course he just i just wanted to see him win um because i was affiliated with him so i always want to see the wrestlers win but it was kind of crazy that he took a wrestling match a couple of weeks before a big mma i was i threw him off the stage that was a bad idea that was a bad i'm an idiot bro like i would almost cost this man a lot of money just because you know i was being stupid yeah so it was uh yeah we're good well it worked out okay yeah yeah that the shot that he landed that uh mozville landed on him was
horrific and that's why yeah i still wrestle yeah well if you've done no striking at all i think you you've made a good choice yeah bro it's it's different and i think you know it's funny i got i took a shot the other day in practice right into someone's knee bam and i was like maybe that's what a punch feels like and i'm like if i can take that shot from a knee to the face shooting at full speed i can take a punch i can take a punch i don't know maybe it's maybe it's just a little ego right this is like a little ego i'm like i want to see what i'm made of i've never fought i know i'm tough i'm gritty i'm mentally tough i can do this um but again like i don't feel like i have anything to prove i've got to kind of step back into like this spiritual sense of contentment like i've done plenty god has me where he wants me and i've done so much to elevate the profile of the sport of wrestling i don't have to make this transition like yes it would be great to be glamorous i'd have celebrities ringside i'd get a big purse and all this cool stuff i have you calling my fight but would it be true to what i really believe in who i really want to be and desire for myself or would it just be a cash grab and you know this futile pursuit of something that is not meant for me bro like if you go into anything without a spirit of contentment and true purpose it's always going to be a feudal or a pursuit so if like for me i'm like is it really worth it i really want to be in here when they lock that gate behind me am i going to be like this is what i wanted like right what am i doing here right yeah i mean like you got raging fans at the bar like yeah kill him kick his ass pearls um so it's it's this is a different vibe um i'm thankful for where i'm at it's a good place well that's beautiful that's perfect man you don't need to make any other
decisions then listen listen and you also have a very unique opportunity to bring a lot of attention to wrestling yeah actual real elite wrestling post college post olympics and to let people know there's still people competing there's viable options to compete no one knows no one knows what happens in wrestling they're like what are you doing between the olympics i'm like well there's they're still wrestling there's world championships everyone's like do you still wrestle i'm like bro i just i have one of the biggest matches of the year coming up i just wrestled in one of the biggest matches of the year you're like yes i still compete but people don't really follow yeah that's it just wrestlers we're such a niche sport where the ufc's brand has exploded because you guys were in this kind of limbo era for a period of time and now you guys are you know one of the biggest sports in the world and so it's been cool to kind of see the transition and we've tried to take cues from you guys from you know broadcasting weigh-ins to making you know these match-ups in these cards one of the hardest things about wrestling is their tournaments and so within a tournament it can be hard to market the best matchups because there's upsets and a lot of things happen injuries injuries things just might not happen right so if you've got all the best 170 pounders in the entire world you know how do you know that gsp and kamar usman are going to meet up because they're one and two seed you don't you never know right anything could happen right right and so i think that you guys have done a really good job with marketing the sport you've brought in brand sponsors and it has gone from this you know red-headed child to boxing where it's brutal and barbarian to this sport that it's seen as more of an art form and there are a lot of guys that are responsible for that and it's been it's been cool to see we're
trying we're trying to replicate it but it's it's much harder because well it's one of those things where i think for wrestlers it's fantastic to be able to watch elite wrestling they love it it's very enticing but to people that have never wrestled before it's kind of confusing what's happening and that's what i was saying about jiu jitsu that's one of the reasons why i combat jiu jitsu is it's literally the most popular thing that eddie's come up with because he's come up with these ebi tournaments or a sort of a different jiu jitsu format but combat jiu jitsu people understand people getting hit and that's the thing about the ufc when people people understand the striking it's simple a guy punches the guy you get it the guy kicks the guy you get it but when fights go to the ground and people start going for submissions to people that have never grappled they have no idea what's happening yeah they want that that's what they want they don't understand it so it's just a scramble tangle of limbs they don't really understand what's happening we live in like a bloodthirsty society right so people want to see that even if you watch a boxing fight like if you watch let's say bud crawford versus earl spence you're like these dudes are the very best in the entire world at their craft if there's not a knockout and there's a draw unanimous decision after 12 rounds you're gonna be like that sucked i want to see someone get knocked out but the chances are when you have two high-level guys like that like they're not gonna knock each other out they're just gonna be they feel each other out right throw a couple jabs maybe hit each other with a couple power punches but they're just too tough and too precise with their movements that they'll never knock each other out so i think in wrestling it's the same thing like you have to be a wrestler to truly appreciate the crap like you know what it takes to be the best but you
can't really respect it unless you're within it plus it's not just a recreational sport wrestling is it's taboo right it's kind of weird a little bit like you wear singlets and like you just roll around like jiu jitsu i feel like you can go to a gym as a 40 year old man that hasn't competed in 20 years put on your ghee and roll around with your co-worker and it can be completely normal but you wouldn't do that you wouldn't wrestle your co-worker like you should be like bro like get off me and so it's uh it's just it's it's different i feel like wrestling is one of the few sports that you can't just do um yeah you can't just go to the you have to yeah you have to have gone through high school or college yeah you like you you want to watch it but you don't really want to be in it so yeah like for mma fighters that have never competed in wrestling at all and they want to like learn how to wrestle it's uncomfortable for them that's what i want to do like i want to have when i finish up my career i'm going to make a high performance training center and i'm going to invite all the best ufc fighters all fighters but i like the ufc's brand to come train with me and help them sharpen up their skills and preparation for their big fights so where would you do that that's a good question i'm from jersey um i'm actually moving to philadelphia next year with my family but i want to be somewhere with shines the sun shines all year round i want to be somewhere warm with salt on my car i hear you i can just sit outside and grill and hang out with the fam um so i don't know that was that's a good question it's got to be a desirable destination if you're going to get the best guys in the world to come but i've got some invitations from some ufc fighters to come and train with them i've got some invitations from jiu-jitsu guys to come train with him from you know rory mcdonald to you know tyron woodley i've spent some time with gsp
from vitor belfort i've gotten invitations from like gordon ryan and you know johnny torres and all these guys so jiu-jitsu guys as well yeah some jiu-jitsu guys as well and i'm just always wrestling you know wrestling takes up so much of my time and i've got little ones at home so it's really hard to do but when i transition out of the sport which i'm kind of in that phase now i've got one more olympic cycle in me and then moving on to i'd like i really like to help fighters because i feel like although i don't strike and i don't really i'm not familiar with my striking it's something i'll pick up later just so i can know kind of how to incorporate your striking into your wrestling offense and defense but i think i can be a really good asset for a lot of fighters is to try to help them make that transition oh for sure i mean they would jump at the chance yeah be fun bro it'd be fun plus it's my wheelhouse right yeah so it's like it'll be cool to kind of rough them up a little bit there yeah so 2021 is japan that's that's your next your next uh cycle and so that is uh august is that what august yes i still got to make the team i still got to make the team so basically our olympic trials are in april i was a world medalist in 2019 they'll have a tournament for like 10 competitors they'll wrestle whoever wins out of those 10 will wrestle me in the finals best two out of three so i've got to wrestle one guy beat him best two out of three to make the olympic team at 163 pounds so it's a it's a big task but it's a big task it's fun it's fun i'm excited 2021 in japan is going to be very fascinating it's going to be interesting to see if they have any kind of a they just they had a pretty good record with covid for a while but lately they've had a big surge it's wild bro like i think i don't know if there's going to be fans and if there aren't fans then it kind of eliminates
what the games are all about like yeah there's a certain spirit in the village and on the buses and the railways and the train stations people bustling in and out of the olympic stadium that just makes it special you've got your flag draped over your shoulders and your country scarf it's it's a pretty cool experience when you're at the olympic games that's what i love about it man like where else can so many countries come together despite the political turmoil and you know whatever may be happening within your own country when you get together at the olympic games like it transcends everything yeah politics race gender religion like it's nothing like it in the world man it's it's epic there was a picture i had back in 2012 where i in the gold medal match i beat a guy named sadie gadarzi from the islamic republic of iran and i've got my arm around him on the top of the podium and on the back of our warm-ups said the united states of america and you know islamic republic of iran and so like we're like arm in arm and it was just like a super special photo because our governments hate each other and i've been iran on multiple occasions and they love us like literally rock star status when we're in iran they're following us at the airport they're waiting for us outside the arena they're trying to give you kisses like hugs here's the picture epic like epic photo bro because what you see that's personified in the media and what you experience when your boots are on the ground in a particular country like iran is is much different than the perception and so the iranian people man they're the best wrestling fans in the world outside of our own right i'm partial because i'm an american but best wrestling fans in the world super knowledgeable love the sport they want the heroes to win in america we build up our heroes just so we can see if they can get knocked off in iran they always want the hero to win everybody so it's this they wait for us at the airport joe
so like when we land on the tarmac we walk out to the airport they've got media there they've got wrestling fans they're giving us flowers and they are coming to our hotel room we've got armed guards on the floor of our hotel just to make sure nobody gets to our floor because they are waiting for us in the lobby just to take photos like that's good it's amazing it's absolute insanity are they the most rabid fans in terms of like the most there's no question about it they've got chant leaders that come with bells and whistles and drums and like like they got their wisp bro and you know what's even crazier joe is because of their strict islamic religion they don't allow women into the arenas wow so if you look in this picture this is a sold out stadium 8 500 men men and boys only no women allowed in the arena at all so it's it's pretty insane as to how much love and admiration they have for the sport and particularly americans because i've beaten iranians i've never lost an iranian and wrestled a dozen of them and they still love me it's wild but it's cool wow it's cool that has got to be a trip to i mean one of the things about your career that's probably one of the most educational parts of it is this travel aspect yeah i mean how many different countries have you been to i've been to i believe last time i was 22. wow 22. um that's wild you've wrestled at 22 different countries 22 different countries and so i had never i didn't get my passport until i was 20. so crazy you have kids yeah how many three three very nice how old uh 24 12 and 10. 20 how old are you 53 you gotta get the hell out of here i didn't i never would expect that you look young thank you very much you look young you look good man um appreciate it so i've got three little ones my oldest is a little boy named beacon he's six my middle child aura is a girl and then our baby rise she just turned
one yesterday actually congratulations thanks man and so all three of them had a passport before their first birthday so it's wild like you are who you are based on who your parents are yeah what they do or a lot of it is is is nature and so i didn't get my passport until i was 20 years old left the country for the first time went to istanbul turkey my kids have all had passports before their first is my son we counted before he was one he was on 42 flights 42 flights before his first birthday that's great traveled the world they've been to rio they've been to you know canada they've been to the world championships to the olympic games they've been to pan am games like everything all over the world so it's wild to me to kind of experience that because i'm like man i never had this like i grew up in a small town in south jersey and like so whenever people are like man like how do you maintain this certain level of sustainability and excellence over a long time was like because i never expected it so when i arrived here i wanted to cling to it to see how long i could maintain it because i never grew up desiring to be an olympian i hear a lot of the olympians like man i watched the summer games in atlanta in 1996 on my grandma's couch and i knew from that day forward that i wanted to win olympic gold medal and i'm like bro that wasn't my story i didn't know i could make the olympic team until i was damn they're on the team and i was like man i'm pretty good like i'm gonna i'm gonna wrestle with the olympic trials like i'm gonna see if i can do this and so my kids have kind of had the direct benefit of all of the work that i've put in through this sport and so it's been a tremendous blessing for me to kind of just see it rub off on my oldest beacon and my middle aura they just started wrestling three weeks ago and so i'm trying not to be the crazy dad the crazy wrestling dad got to be hard i'm sending them to to
their training facility and they've got great coaches but when they're on the mat like you know there's 14 other kids there so coaches are focused on everyone in the room right they can't show special attention to my kids just because i am who i am and so i'm trying not to be the dad i won't i want to get on the map i'm like bro b you're not doing that right dude like your head needs to go here your hands need to be locked here but then i need to like kind of back off back off like you know what if he's going to love it he's got to love it on his own yeah that's a tricky bouncing act right like you don't want to push him too hard because then you might push him away from the sport or make them resentful because when you grow up and your dad is jordan pearls your wrestling is a lot of pressure yes i mean i remember when marvis frazier fought mike tyson and joe frazier was in the corner and i'm like imagine growing up with joe frazier's your dad and you gotta you gotta become a boxer too and you gotta fight mike you gotta fight mike monster when he was on his way to the title it was one of the most he didn't want that fight it was a terrible fight did you ever see that fight i did it was one of the most frightening mike tyson performances of all time and that's saying a lot you know what i think there's two there's two ways i look at it there's a a guy that i know um his name is elias de la diacoma hollis and he told me he was like his sons are great wrestlers wrestle at cornell and he's like my boys wanted to wrestle i wrestled and i wanted to teach them what i knew best it's like imagine you being the best in the world at something and you letting your kids escape your home at 18 without you ever telling them or teaching them about what you were the best in the world that would be a travesty you let your kids escape your home without teaching them something that you were the
absolute best in the world at so you don't have to push them or pressure them to do something you allow the love to grow on their own but if there's something that you are particularly great at you have to give that knowledge and that information to the world and so you become a man of the people a man of your family you're the best in the world at the sport of wrestling give that to them then let the decision be their own to decide if they want to take it further and you know i don't know wrestle the olympics it's so hard man like everyone's like oh you're next olympic champ i'm like yo bro because then i feel the pressure right so i'm like not only is my boy everywhere he goes it's like damn you're wrestling now you better be good and he's feeling the pressure and then i'm feeling pressure i was like oh your son's wrestling now damn i can't wait to see how great he's gonna be because now i'm like well there's an expectation like let's go yeah six years old push-ups no dinner until you do five rope climbs you know i mean so it's like you have to always manage expectations particularly with kids because you want them to be so much but also you have to prepare for normalcy the hardest thing you have resources joe like you've done so much you've been successful at your craft you've got so much exposure so many more resources than i imagine you had growing up how do you not allow that to trickle down to your kids to give them more opportunity but also a company that with expectations like look what i've become with nothing so now look what you have the access to sky's the limit like how do you how do you balance that it's very tricky and it's also tricky because the most interesting people that i know have come from nothing they've all come from struggle because i think struggle builds character having to overcome adversity is one of the
cornerstones of becoming like a an actualized person yeah you have to get through something to realize what you're capable of and it gives you confidence to be able to get through other things and when your life is kind of easy but you don't want your kids to go through hardship either right so it's like this weird balancing act like but you can if you facilitate it you gotta have yeah you gotta but how do you do that it's hard because you want it easy too it's like are you gonna i'm thinking about this from my perspective as a kid the hardest moments that i had were associated with sport it was very rare that i had a difficult time in my life from 1 to 18. that wasn't because i had to train hard or had to wrestle hard or i cried because i got beat or choked out or slammed on my head it wasn't it wasn't hard i didn't grow up on a farm i grew up in a middle class family in south jersey in a suburban town so my lifestyle was different and my parents both raised in the city my dad was from philly my mom was from camden so they wanted me to see a different side of what they didn't experience as a kid so they wanted to kind of shelter me from that they've done a tremendous job i mean i've i've achieved a level of success that they dreamed of for me but also you know there were a certain amount of grit that i had to develop just because of the contents of where we were like it was suburban but it was still kind of edgy um but now i want to i kind of want to chill a little bit too right i'm like right i've done well like i want to send my kids to the best school i think though you will lead by example because one of the things that your kids will undeniably understand is how hard you work to get to where you are yeah and that rubs off on your children there's one thing where you teach them things you know you show them you tell them and you you give them advice and
talk to them but another thing is they learn just from seeing what you do when you have a dad who does what you do which if you to be an elite wrestler if maybe people don't understand this it is one of the most physically demanding pursuits in the world period it's a fact in in terms of athletics there's very few things that are as difficult and as grueling as wrestling and to be elite at it to i mean it's not like it's a in an insurmountable sport it's not like something that takes a ton of equipment it's not like something it's not like formula one race car driving when you need a million dollars to get a car no it's it's something that just requires a mindset and also what you were saying before there's no real money in it right so it's not like there's it's something like basketball where there's this gigantic pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow no it's it's just toughness and grit and your kids are going to understand that there's no there's no way they're not going to they will understand that there's a level of discipline and focus that you have that maybe they're gonna see their their friends parents don't have so let me ask you this then it's easy for them to see what i do because it's tangible right it's visible you see dad lift weights wrestle cut weight how in a guy like your position someone is extremely successful but you can't there's no physical grueling activity that's associated with it so they may not be able to visibly see what it is that you are thinking about aspiring to be what you're doing right they're long hours away from home maybe long hours at night in the morning but how do they see what you do and how are they able to associate that with how they need to live moving forward like how what are the ways that you've been able to kind of teach your kids well they do see me work out which helps too yeah good because i don't have to
you know right it's not like i'm doing it for a job but i do it just i eat an only steak they're like this let's go this is the life i want dad i want steak and lobster every night carnivore diet [Laughter] but i think um i i say this and i live this that i think you need to struggle physically in life because it makes life easier because i think there's a lot of struggles that people go through psychologically mentally with work with just relationships with civilization i think when you struggle physically i mean like really struggle physically i think it makes those things easier because there's you're putting yourself through something you don't really have to do it's not part of your job but if you put yourself through grueling workout routines i think it makes things easier and my kids see that because we have a gym in the house they see me work out do they work out yeah they work out and one of my daughters is really into gymnastics and the other one is really into basketball but when when they were young they also were in the martial arts and uh you know i would take them to uh mar when they were younger or so young but i would take them to martial arts gym and i would even demonstrate some things with the teacher and do some stuff and you know they got into jiu jitsu they got into a little bit of kickboxing and so they got to see that i'm i'm very i do a lot of [ __ ] you know and so and i've reached a high level of proficiency at those things that i do yeah so they get to see that it's not even a part of my job necessarily other than like calling mma fights but they get to see oh well this is you could be lazy you could just sit back and just count your money and just eat food all day but i don't eat steaks i get after it you know what's funny is my kids don't even realize that what i do is what makes a living for us they're just like oh yeah dad wrestles because like for them they see they wrestle
right so like what's the difference between what you do and what i do like i go to practice and get coach you go to practice and get coached so where do they think the money's coming from yeah they just exist bro they're just like we just have a roof over our head and a cabinet full of snacks and i'm happy man so do you get paid to win tournaments we do yeah so like the bull here's the bulk of a wrestler's income or olympian's income one for us is we built what we call rtc's regional training centers that are in conjunction with collegiate programs we get paid pretty much to train there because they use our name and likeness to kind of elevate their programs to help with recruiting but also we're in the room with their guys daily so we kind of teach the college guys we're sharpening them helping them develop so that's number one number two sponsors right so primary sponsors i'm sponsored by asics ralph lauren bridgestone um comcast and xfinity so like you have corporate sponsors that'll align with you during olympic years not olympic years to provide you with product they'll pay you to create digital marketing campaigns and really just align with what it is that you're doing if your brand you know kind of fits their spectrum of what they're trying to create and then lastly that is if you win they have what they call the living the dream fund so you get money for world championship medals olympic medals going to like all these tournaments and then what we're doing saturday night so if you go to these cards for like flow wrestling it's pretty much like the ufc like you have deals where it's like okay this guy is this level of opponent it's going to be watched by these many viewers you're going to get this number of subscribers here's what we feel like we can pay you um so yeah i mean there are numerous ways that you can get paid but it's definitely changed i was talking to daniel the other day he said that when he was with adidas he
when he was an olympian back in 04 and 08 he was getting 12 000 a year 12 000 a year thousand dollars a month he was getting to wrestle and he was like i just had to retire from the ufc because my back was just killing me had to have back surgery he was like you know why my back hurts from wrestling for 25 years shooting it on guy's legs and being stuck underneath of him and i was like damn and he's like man there's so much money in ufc he's had two lives it's literally two lives two careers um and he's become amazing at this and he always had this character and personality but you just were unable to utilize it financially you could monetize that in wrestling it just didn't work so we're in the precipice of doing something extremely cool wrestlers are now actually earning a living by doing this you don't have to transition to mma and that's why i think that a lot of guys have stayed in the wrestling sport like we have some really great athletes myself kyle snyder kyle dake david taylor jayden cox james green like all these amazing athletes but you know what i think would be great fighters but wrestling now you can earn a living yeah dc a lot but daniel's such an unusual human being because not only does he have two careers like he had the wrestling career than an mma career but he also has a commentator career because he's so good he's so funny he's fun man he's so he's the best he's so fun to do it with like me and him have the best and john anak we have so much fun together yeah one i called him the other day and you know daniel's the man right he's done so well in his ufc career and although he knew me within wrestling now that he's made this transition you kind of you're weary like you don't just cold call people and like have expectations for what it is that they can provide for you but i'm like bro like i would like to call you like is this
okay my wife's just like call him call him like you're he'll answer your call and i'm like i'm not just calling this man this man's a big deal and so she's like just call him so i text him and he's like yeah just call me tomorrow so i call him and like i thought it was gonna be like a quick really short conversation and he's like we're on the phone for like 30 45 minutes just kind of shooting the breeze and chopping it up and i'm just like damn like i felt like a lot of joy after that call because he just has the ability to make you smile and to make everyone that he encount or encounters feel valuable yes that's something that he really does well and that's what i want to possess that when you make people that you see feel value regardless of their status that's a special trait to possess and i don't think everyone has that because you're so busy bro like everyone wants a hold of you made an instagram post a few weeks ago it's like once you become successful in anything you become a man of the people the people want so much of you because they're essentially who pays your bills not technically but they watch your show and they elevate your ratings they buy my wrestling shoes and watch my wrestling matches so it's just a different vibe so i always try to feel a certain level of obligation and responsibility to the people while still maintaining a certain level certain level of privacy for myself and my family but it's it can be hard so sometimes you're like yo joe what's up bro like let me let me get a picture i want i love you you're a big fan the problem is when i'm with my family you're like bro or when you're eating here give your kids hey excuse me kids yeah like i need to take a picture with your dad people i had a guy my daughter was sitting on my lap and we were at a restaurant and this guy came over and he was trying to get a
picture on his knees right here while my daughter is on my lap and i'm like you don't think this is kind of [ __ ] up you don't think it's what it is he goes yeah it is i go this is not the way to do this man we're all sitting here eating how do you come on man how do you balance that though because it's hard you it's tricky sometimes you have to take a certain level of privacy for yourself yeah for sure to just say i cannot not not right now yeah i i usually say when i'm done eating when i get up i said i'll be happy to take picture with you but if you let everybody interrupt your meal then you can't go out now i can't go out because then you can't sit down and just eat are you do you just go out and about like in the city yeah then you go out and like girl parents were like yo joe yeah and you're like everybody's friendly it's it's mostly just a bunch of people saying hi that's mostly what it is it's mostly like what's up hey what's up i say hi too it's all good that's 99.99999 percent good and every now and then you run into a drunk you know that's that's sometimes that's a pain in the ass but and that's why even they're usually pretty good it's just sometimes people just don't understand privacy they don't understand personal space they just get weird but just also they get like if someone's a gigantic wrestling fan and they meet you they're probably bugged out they don't understand how to behave they're all nervous and weird tangibles of being really good at what you do yeah well especially if you are trying to do a sp if you're aspiring to be a great wrestler as well and you have these guys all in your head and you watch matches on youtube and you know you idolize these certain wrestlers and then all sudden you're in front of one of them and you didn't expect it i mean you know you might just babble out something
stupid one day i'm gonna pin you man [ __ ] what the [ __ ] did i say i told jordan i'm sorry bro i didn't mean that i just really wanted to fix you up yeah they just sometimes people just get nervous they don't they don't know how to behave they don't know what to say and they make you uncomfortable even though they don't want to they invade your space when they just want to show admiration that's a good that's a good perspective you gotta like kind of exhibit a certain amount of grace when dealing with the public and especially in your position um but i imagine that some days it's like it's it's a little tough it's just most the time it's easy the vast majority of the time but occasionally like someone you have a bite of food in your mouth and someone hey man can i get a picture and you're like come on dude that's a blessing though that you have that perspective because there are a lot of people who don't and by the time that they realize it it's too late and they've already burned so many bridges and had so many bad encounters with the people yeah that that's just not good for it's not good for pr yeah it's not good for how people look at you it's not good for you either for how you feel about yourself you know like if i have a bad encounter with somebody i don't feel good about it it makes me feel bad too i don't want i want all encounters with all humans that i encounter to be fun yeah i'm a fun person i like i'm friendly i like to be friendly to everybody that's what i want and making people feel good is like a it's a cool experience it is like for them it means the world for you it's just like hey what's up bro like yeah good to meet you man let me take a photo with you like tell your friend i said what's up and yeah they're like oh my gosh you'll never believe what happened to me today and for you you're like oh yeah yeah it's all got chipotle are you that's good yeah there's a
responsibility and i'm sure you experienced that as well right there's a responsibility of being someone that people look up to like you're you're you're not just a regular person you're a person that a lot of people are aware of and they're following what your career is they're following what you do they follow you the olympics they follow the world championships they pay attention online when they're not watching it they're trying to figure out you know how you're doing what you're doing and they want to emulate you and that's why i'm asking you about your training routines and what you're eating and things like that because i'm sure people are listening like how often does he train how how does he approach his mornings like what does he eat first that's good yeah i mean that's that's how that's funny that's one of the things that i kind of want to discuss i i'm not taking too much of your time no ma'am come on it's what i do is it's mindset yeah it's mindset it's i've now i'm i've transitioned to follow sustainable success like guys who have been able to do it for a really long time tom brady lebron james yeah rafael nadal roger federer serena williams you know i don't know sue bird like so many athletes that it's easy to do it early on in your career hard to do it over a long period of time especially with all of the distractions you get bread you get fame you get this recognition you start winning championships easy to become complacent how do you maintain a certain level of success for a long period of time that's something like people ask me that daily particularly because i'm in this fatherhood element too so this adds like an extra layer of depth because in wrestling i'm considered the old guy i'm the oldest guy on the team now no one else has three kids you know so it's it's a very different avenue that in lane that i'm within so
i'm trying to balance these things all together but i really have now transitioned from this young upstart trying to be this hot shot guy get my name out to now i'm like this old wise yogi where i'm like hey listen you can be successful at multiple things my friend and so it's been a really cool transition for me is going from this place where you know you're young you're just trying to get your name out too now you're balancing multiple principles and parts of your life where it's like okay can i be a great husband great father and be driven you know what i think you could do too what's that corporate speaking i appreciate it i think you'd be fantastic yeah i've dabbled in it a little bit you know what my wife's gonna kill me for saying this but we're think we're we're considering a fourth right so we're in that position now where we're like do we attempt to have a fourth right we've blessings beautiful bring joy to us every day we see him except when it's bedtime right like no one's thirsty or hungrier than a toddler at bedtime i'm hungry i'm thirsty i gotta go to the bathroom i want to give you a hug but we're in that realm now we're like do we have another can we balance this can we maintain it and can i still do what i do at a high level right there's a certain responsibility that i feel to my family where they need me and i want to have a really special relationship with all of them and i want to be integral in each of their development but can i do that with an additional slice of the pie a fourth child and also still being ambitious or ambitious um and that's like that's a tough balance and so we're trying to figure that out it's like is the joy weighed against you know kind of the lifestyle that we have now can we maintain this certain level of that we've become comfortable with and it's good um so you know i'm always trying to figure those things out on the fly and so kind of watching you and hearing
that you have three kids and you're still moving and shaking and from la to austin to you know doing the ufc and flying all over the world it's a really interesting perspective how do you manage the things that you have on your plate in regards to being successful in so many different realms and still also having healthy relationships well i've been really really lucky first of all what i everything i do i like doing it's easy married yeah how long uh 10 11 years now 11 years but it's easy like it's easy doing this is easy yeah doing stand-up it's it's not easy it requires work but it's enjoyable i love it i love doing it i love doing ufc commentary i wouldn't say it's easy but it's enjoyable it's it's it's either easy is the wrong word like even podcasting like it requires focus and thought and preparation not everybody can do it a lot of people could do it if they put the effort into it but it's it's just a matter of is it something that you enjoy doing and is it something you look forward to even after all i've been doing this podcast for 11 years now i still love doing it it's still fun it's fun i enjoy it so it makes it easy yeah it makes it easier so in that regard like it's not something that's a labor to me right all these things are not something that's a labor so i'm very fortunate in that regard but i think that's like one of the keys to success is finding the thing that excites you always finding a thing that's challenging always the thing that you really enjoy doing a thing that like works for your personality clearly you've got that with wrestling and i feel like with a guy like you what you have is like this this incredible vehicle meaning your mind your
focus your discipline and all what what you've done with wrestling you could do with anything you just have to find a track so the thing is like some people don't find a track some people they get really good at fighting or whatever it is and they they they become this bad [ __ ] but they that's their identity and they can't figure out a way to focus that like miyamoto musashi he's a famous samurai wrote this book the book of five rings it's a great book on strategy and he has this great quote that i that i remember i read this when i was a little kid when i when i first got into martial arts said once you know the way broadly you can see it in all things and i think that once you get you you find excellence in something like you have in wrestling you can be excellent in anything especially wrestling because it's so [ __ ] hard there's a level of excellence that yes you have to have to kind of weed yourself out right there's a certain level you can be successful with just talent and hard work whatever but then there gets to a place where you have to maintain a multi-faceted balanced lifestyle yes discipline mental endurance freaking structure and a great team everything has to be on point and to be at your level to be at a world championship level there can be no holes in your game yeah you don't you don't have the luxury of all slacking margin of error between victory and silver metal or no metal no metal yeah i mean these margins are gold and going home with a towel over your head yeah and that can translate into anything you can do that with any business that you start anything that you pursue whatever you want to do that's good that's good because you know one of the things for me that for a long time made me nervous about the transition out of sport
most people at 30 34 are settling into what they're going to do forever or at least until retirement long term right so you spend your 20s having a good time after college you're making a little bit money you move to a new city meet new people you start to settle down you finally get that job you get that promotion and now you have this path that you're going to go through until you're 59 and a half but most athletes you're phasing out of what you've done for your entire life at the same time that most people are transitioning into what they're going to do for the next 30 years so it's a very difficult proposition that we are experiencing where i've wrestled since i was six my first weight class is 45 pounds now all of a sudden here i am and my wrestling career is over i hang my shoes up and i'm like what now right you're in the prime of your life what now right because you have to find something that you're passionate about and my fear is that there may be nothing that i ever experienced that i'm as passionate about as i am the sport of wrestling i'm a competitor naturally that's just by nature and i have to kind of broaden my horizons where i'm going to enter with this certain level of excellence into everything that i do which i know if i enter something and i'm going to do it wholeheartedly i'm gonna be successful at it but the question is do i really love it right so you're trying to find what you love when most people have just found it so the athletic experience is much different than the average joe experience and so i've seen so many athletes post career spend all their money get depressed you know go into addicting substances and it's a very difficult place that you arrive in when you don't know who you are for so long our identities have been tied to our success everywhere i go people call me champ like i'm not jordan i'm not burrows i'm not jb i'm champ and so when i go out of this phase
and i'm no longer looked upon as this iconic wrestling guy who is going to beat the hell out of you every time i deem i need to and i'm just a normal human being how do i make that transition and find what else it is that i am passionate about and so i think now for a long time i've been afraid to think of other things because people are like no no like you'll have time like keep the main thing the main thing just focus on winning the more you win the more opportunities you have but then that's how you have the guy that is won't retire overstays his welcome right diminishes and tarnishes the legacy that he's built for himself because they just won't leave i don't think you have to worry about that i don't i don't fortunately you're right but just listening to what you're saying right now you've you've already laid out all the people i've got i've got a great team um i'm a a man of faith i've got a great wife who keeps me level-headed uh but yeah so i'm always thinking about these things like as we're making this transition so i see athletes and i also see the ones who've done it for a long time but not only that the ones who go on to success after their careers that's what i'm most impressed about how can you elevate your profile when no one's watching you shoot hoops anymore right yeah play like kobe and you know magic johnson and michael jordan all these athletes that have parlayed their success as athletes into corporate success elsewhere like that's that's what i love to see that's dope well you just have to find the thing that's that's the difficult thing and you can't look too hard right now because right now you have to focus on wrestling and your family and all the other obligations that you have but how do you find it that's it's hard you have to you have to dabble yeah simultaneously because you can't just
wait until it's over because right then and even if you have done success you have been successfully enough financially where you can buy yourself times like listen i'm good i made a couple million bucks my house paid for my cars are good kids are in good schools i'm fine for five years right and you'll find alternative ways to make money and still do what you love but the one thing i don't want to do is do stuff for money or do things that i don't believe in right like i want to do things that are truly honorable and that i really find are noble pursuits like this is what i want to do because i want to do it um and so trying to find that thing i've had to kind of dabble in these other kind of perspectives because as wrestlers like you have this generalized idea of what a wrestler is right it's like okay it's kind of like a meathead guy from the midwest that grew up on a farm right and freaking eats t-bone steaks even the eats the bones too um and so it's it's a trying to kind of step outside of wrestling one of the things that i've always tried to do is transcend sport or at least transcend the wrestling it's how can i broaden our audience and bring it all back to wrestling so everyone wins we all elevate our profiles simultaneously it's a difficult thing to do but it's almost been a responsibility that was early on just placed upon me because i was just winning and now like i've taken on the responsibility because i want to do it but now i'm like okay well i have to also be the first guy to move on and have success outside of the wrestling forum that's not a coach most the if you look at the college landscape and college wrestling the head coaches most of them are olympic champions tom brands kale sanderson john smith you know you've got
all these guys that wrestled at iowa wrestled at you know some of the best universities in the country and world most head coaches were the division one national champions or olympic and world medalists it's just a natural progression you're a good wrestler you go on and coach and take over university and build this program up but very few people want to kind of explore outside of the realm of just coaching itself and so i'm trying to get to a place where i'm i feel comfortable with being counter cultural and doing something different that's almost it's it's opposed to where i am as a wrestler because most olympic champions just coach what kind of things are you considering that's a good question i want i i told you about my high performance training center right i'd like to dabble in that seems like it's right in your wheelhouse that's that's in my wheelhouse that's something i want to create like this is the mothership for all things and it will be multifaceted like in capturing all areas of human identity from you know nutrition to spirituality to self-developing all these things because i want you have to create good men and women in order for them to be good athletes i think and we still at the highest level you can find it sometimes but i feel like they're weeding themselves out the best athletes that have sustained success are men and women of integrity at least to some degree right like you might see some individuals that you know have a bad rap or are engaged in controversy regularly but they eventually start to lose whatever zest it was that they have for their sport and they can't win for a long period of time but the best they're not embroidering controversy look at lebron and tom brady like when have you ever seen them in the news for something crazy they did at home true you just don't see it right and
that's why they're still those guys yeah um and so i think that for me it starts with a certain level of discipline that you have to give to the youth like hey listen i'm going to teach you how to have mental toughness i'm going to teach you how to be accountable i'm gonna teach you how to be disciplined and then we're gonna learn athletics how to be great wrestlers afterward because if i can create men and women of character and integrity then essentially they'll become champions naturally because the people i respect most weren't the best athletes like i've wrestled with hundreds of wrestlers in my lifetime and the ones that had the best leadership qualities weren't the ones that were the best wrestlers it was the ones that were low maintenance that did the right things came to practice on time they were good teammates they did well in school they were good leaders they were guys that you just trusted all these things you're saying to me i feel like what i was saying earlier about you doing corporate speaking engagements i think you would be really good at that thanks any corporations out there that are looking for somebody but you can think about what you've accomplished let's go and again i mean i don't want to belabor this but to become a world champion wrestler to win four world championships to win an olympic gold medal you have a mindset that very few people will ever be able to understand without hearing it come out of your voice they don't they're probably not going to understand what it takes to be a person like yourself but you can articulate it and the way you articulate it's very inspiring thanks man and you also have a very like you have you have an ethical and a moral vision for the kind of children you want to raise the kind of athletes you want to train the kind of people that you admire all that stuff translates into any other business any other pursuit those those are
like these are like these are key components for success it's not just wrestling right like what you've achieved in wrestling is because of all these other things because of the hard work because of the discipline because the the focus and the intelligence and all these other aspects of what makes you you but those things you could teach to people yeah and you teach clearly by example because of your achievements but also because the way you're able to express yourself yeah and for you to be able to do something like that to have a training center like you you you envision it would be dope but also i really think you could be very valuable speaking to corporations and and you could all these things that we're talking about today you could structure this in some sort of uh like a plan where you get in front of these people and give them real tools that they can apply to their life that can improve them yeah in everything they do that'd be that'd be fun man i'd love it i think that's your thing i love it you know i really do you have to i've been taught for so long because i'm an athlete so naturally i've never worked i had one job when i was 19 years old between myself your whole life one job for one summer two months i worked at a beer distribution factory back in south jersey we go around on the big trucks every day and we go to all the liquor stores and bars in the town and we would drop off kegs and spike them off the truck and bring them and set up displays inside liquor stores that was what i did for once wow and i made 13 an hour and so each week i make about 550 bucks and i remember at the time like i thought i was a rich man bro i was like let's go i would go to i take my girlfriend to the mall we go to we go to aeropostale at the time that's what we were wearing abercrombie and fish and we would buy a bunch of clothes and we'd go to the movies and we'd hang out and i would
spend all 500 in a single week living life and so i had to i have to see myself as this person that can implement different levels of advice and ideas to people that aren't necessarily peers it's easy to talk to a peer it's easy to talk to someone who's younger than you that admires you but it's hard for you i have like this inferiority complex where it's like okay if this person is successful then they already have the tools they don't need me like they know what they're doing so i think that for me finding that niche into where i'm like okay listen you've done well you know things you've experienced them you've lived them firsthand how can you use all of the knowledge that you've gained on your journey to actually help other people they will be willing to listen if you teach it they will listen this is how you do it you teach what you learned yeah what you learned in your life that helps you and just say you don't have to teach them like you need to do this yeah you don't have to do that you say if i did this if they asked yeah i'm i'm really scared of unsolicited advice that that is one thing that i'm always like really weirdo cause bro like who wants to hear from someone that you didn't ask for right you know it's like i didn't sin for you ro like why are you giving me advice i don't want it right so i'm always trying to be like oh giving unsolicited advice where i'm like i'm the guy that i i have a hard time with telling people what they need to do or what they should do what i think will help improve their lives because that would insinuate that i have a better life and i know more well it's also a tricky thing because when you're doing that like if you have to do the type of person that needs that information that's really going to use it they're going to ask you yeah they're going to say hey man i really respect you what you've done is amazing
uh how do you do this what are you doing what do you what is your day like yeah how do you start because they want to know because they want to do it not the the if if you you know like if someone doesn't have the desire if someone doesn't they don't want to like seek out the information like you don't want to give it to them because they're not going to do anything with it anyway right it's like you're not going to really you're not going to get into someone's head unless they want to let you in yeah right and the people that want to let you in they're the people they're going to want to ask first the other people are going to want to listen to you talk on this podcast so the people that if you did have like some sort of a seminar that you did uh for corporations or for for anybody that wants to be motivated and you can explain what you've done in your life and what what what led you through discipline what gave you the focus how you you kept that fire alive those things are inspirational to people inspiration is fuel fuel it's one of the greatest things that i personally use like i i'm inspired by so many different people i'm inspired by people's discipline and people's achievements discipline's a big thing man it's everything i tell my kids all the time be disciplined or be disciplined right so i'm like hey listen like that i have to teach you son like if you decide to do this it's a great phrase you will choose discipline i got that from our our pastor love church in west omaha um todd dockson so he says be disciplined or be disciplined because we have to t i have to teach my son like hey bro like there's this world it's hard it's hard dad like that fig bar that you just ate for a snack before bed i had to work hard to get that you know me double legs i had to shoot to get this house but no honestly i
always want to give him perspective because as kids they don't really understand i read a book by dr meg meeker called raising uh ungrateful kids in an entire world and or raising great excuse me raising grateful kids in an entitled world so basically the premise behind the book was how can we provide for our kids a life in which we're creating character but also give them more than we had there's just so much expectation like my kids sometimes they're like just because i exist this should be afforded to me i'm like bro like no that's not how things work here like first of all if you treated any one of your friends the way you treat mom and dad and your sister sometime at home they'll beat you up and they wouldn't want to spend time with you like it's just the bottom line and so i'm always under this mindset and this premise and i try to do a greater job every day at being a better father that you know i don't think people are born good i think people are born bad and then they are constructed to be people of integrity you know you see the videos and the cute little anecdotes of kids hugging and smiling with each other it's like oh see kids love each other from jump it's like if you think people are inherently good you've never had one rice krispie treat left in your cabinet with two hungry kids because when there's one treat that comes out they get sick they're scrapping they're scrapping bro it's a fight it's a straight-up fight and so i have to continuously always try to sharpen and refine them because in our human profile we're just innate we're in within the flesh like we're always going to want to please ourselves and so there are so many times where i'm like bro listen if you just give her the bigger piece now i promise you that you'll be rewarded for it later if you can just treat your mom with
character and respect now i promise you that i will reward you later but it's so hard because in their flesh they're like ah i don't want that she doesn't have the bigger piece you know i don't want to go to bed why does she get a two christmas presents and i got one so i'm just always trying to figure out ways in which that i can implement the things that i've learned but it's hard because no one gives you an instruction manual for parenting right like i had my my son at i think i was 25 26 and i was fresh out of college and i left home at 18 and everything that i learned after 18 was learned in an environment where i was just trying to figure things out on the fly isn't it crazy so you leave the hospital there like here you go no one trains you i'm like wait we gotta leave we gotta take this thing with us they're like sir you gotta bring the car seat up put the baby in the car seat and then you gotta walk them down and you're 25. that's it and like i was still a baby yeah i was still a baby and i i was growing and developing myself so i think you get better with each kid each kid gets a better life than the original right the first one's the hardest that's the test that's the test so the baby is like the the baby of your family is always going to be the one that gets the best version of you the oldest is going to get the more the roughest the rough draft of yourself and then you're just kind of working from there sometimes the youngest kids are the ones that achieve the most though that's what's interesting yeah it's because like it's a more casual way of raising the kids you're not as worried about them because the first one you're like don't touch that yeah what did he eat but so we got to watch the third one you're like yeah you could do a backflip go ahead do a backflip listen sometimes all we tell them was like we don't want to go to the urgent care
this weekend please my dad just doesn't want to go to the hospital just as long as there's no blood you can play the floor's lava and jump from couch to couch just please don't get hurt don't get caught up yeah yeah it's hard and no one teaches you how to do it and it's the most important thing in the world and that's the the weirdest thing about being a parent it's like it's so easy to get someone pregnant so harder harder marriage or parenthood well parenthood is more complicated because you're taking a person who is a tiny little baby and you're teaching them about life and you're talking to them and you're explaining things and you're experiencing all the little troubles that they go through and try to talk them through it and try to discipline them and keep them from doing things but the i i got very lucky with my wife and she's a that's cool great person and she's a nice person just one of the best things about her she's so nice she's just so nice she's a nice person and i get along with her you're so nice she's such a she's rogan she's a sweetheart she really is but she's also really funny really smart i got lucky yeah and i have friends that are not lucky that's a blessing bro it's a blessing i have friends that are in a bad marriage you know what you know what i was talking about this with my wife if and this is twofold i don't want to blame this completely on the women because men are the one that decide to court and pursue women but um could you imagine how much further or how much lower the divorce rate would be if women said no during the proposal like how much lower would divorce rate be if women said nah too many red flags nah like i'm i'm good like i saw what you did the other day or i ran i went through your phone or this won't make things better this won't improve our relationship i'm pregnant
but i i don't want to get married and if men you know consciously thought about the proposal process but i think that this has become such a uh a heralded event that when you get proposed to naturally you're like yes we'll figure it out later where if you just said no now and then you'll figure it out from there there's a christian author jefferson bethke says always say no first and then convince yourself otherwise but don't say yes and then convince yourself not to do it because once you say yes you already you're so much of the world's problems become from people saying yes when they don't really want to with everything with everything with everything there's so many responsibilities we take on and we don't really want to do it but we feel like there are things that people romanticize right marriage is definitely one of them and then certain jobs are one of them you know like certain jobs like becoming successful at a job that's not interesting to you but everybody's telling you hey it's a good job you should do it yeah and you wind up doing it and then you're stuck and you don't know how to get out of it and now your life is out of your hands yeah but you've got a great wife and that that was a blessing for you because you see firsthand your buddies that are going through struggles and difficulties at home yeah and it's not necessarily just because of their wives either it's because of them too well yeah no it's not the wives it's it's the men yeah but we we over burden the women when we should be the lead so it's like hey i want to marry you because i promise to change and do better and reflect on the red flags and eliminate them but the women we put them in a position where there's so much pressure that they can't say no so you're like we know that this is something that they desire to have so i think you also just presented to
them and say here i'm gonna dangle this carrot out in front of you joe because i know this is what you really want so please forget everything that i've done in the past like i'm a man like before i was married like i came with a lot of baggage but because of the excellence that i wanted to kind of characterize and have i wanted to change because i wanted to be a good husband i wanted to be a good father i think you're going to do that with everything though i think a person like yourself that has this sort of integrity and focus you're going to do this with everything you do yeah yeah that's what makes a champion i mean really what you want to be is a champion in everything right a champion in life a champion as a father a champion as a parent a champion as a husband a champion as a neighbor a champion as a friend i mean what you're doing is like you're just operating at the highest standards yeah yeah that's why i think you would be amazing at public speaking i appreciate it i really do i think because if you really do and i get like i want to take a video like hey listen joe rogan endorsed me he said that you have to have me look at this conversation we're having you're so good at this you're so good how many podcasts have you done before no not many you're [ __ ] great at it man look how great you are expressing yourself yeah it's fun it's fun right but you're great at it you're great at expressing yourself and you really do live the life that you're talking about and you have the achievements authenticity yes it's important you've got to be authentic authenticity is everything people can see through the facility through the [ __ ] yeah because they they see them right they see i want to talk to you about this this when you're talking about authenticity i want to talk to you about have you ever
seen the movie icarus i have dabbled i'm honestly i don't want to watch it entirely because i would be so angry afterwards it's crazy because i've lost to russians and some of the biggest matches of my career and i know if i saw that i would be so pissed off because they have changed my life in terms of being an olympic champion being multiple winning more world titles more golds they've taken money out of my pocket notoriety and fame away from me and it has it'll really upset me so that's why i've decided not to it's a good thing to watch just to understand the sophistication let me explain to people that don't know what we're talking about uh icarus is a documentary by brian fogle and brian was a cyclist and what he did was he decided to do a race and it was for for the documentary he did a race completely natural recorded his results and then he hired this russian gentleman who is a part of the russian supposedly their anti-doping association well he eventually as time went on it got exposed but he just completely lucked into this this situation where he hired this guy to tell him what should i do his name was grigory richenkoff thank you jamie um he is a man um and grigory told him exactly what he should take and when he should take it and do this and do that and this is how and then he was going to do the same race again the following year but juiced up and see what the difference in performance was along the way the sochi olympics gets exposed that the russians had cheated and what they had done was it was a super sophisticated scandal where they cut a hole in the wall and they were like transferring the dirty piss through one hole and and giving them the the clean sample to replace so they had found that there was microscopic scratches in these
supposedly impossible to open bottles so the russians had figured out a way to open these bottles and have you seen the real ones have you ever no you've seen one of the real bottles no i haven't seen them in the flesh you cannot open them yeah you can you will break them if you open them impossible they like have this sophisticated system in there where it's locked into the interlocks with the glass so once you close it as tightly as possible you cannot reopen it well they somehow or another figure to work around to get in there and open it and when they did that they achieved an unprecedented number of gold medals i mean they just they dominated the sochi olympics in russia i'm pissed bro i'm hot because i'm hot and you we know it like we know it pull up i don't even want to get into please get into it so pull up the i lost in the quarterfinals of the olympic games in 2016. there's a guy named anwar godoyev i just want you to see a picture of this guy you tell me was this clean this was in rio and rio weren't a lot of the russians they were kicked out of rio because of sochi they so they did uh the most russian the most failed test by russia in all olympic sports first was track and field second was weightlifting third was wrestling wrestling was number three out of all olympic sports however many programs are i'm sure there are a ton of sports you've talked about it wrestling was third they pro date all these samples so they're getting popping guys from 08 2012 and they're saying you know what this guy was on a substance he was on you know some sort of performance-enhancing drug so we're going to strip of him him of his metal we're going to give the guy that took fifth place the bronze medal instead but at that point it's such a different experience you never got to stand on the podium
you never got to travel the world and tell everyone about your medal you never got to get that check that was associated with whatever success that you had someone taking away someone's gold medal and then giving it to you is not it's not the same it's not the same so it's it's life-changing experience that you miss out on because these guys are being unhealthy and just straight up cheaters so like i like i there's a certain amount of disdain that i have for russia i respect them because they're tremendous wrestlers not everyone cheats not everyone cheats but there are those who do and it's well known in the wrestling community and so at this point we have had to just accept it and try to beat them you're just like you just gotta beat them because it doesn't matter they are so powerful the ioc is so powerful that regardless of what they do thomas bach and the ioc will never make a stance in which they will completely ban russia so they've banned russia from the olympic games but the athletes that test cleanly can still compete under a different flag so ultimately it'd be like the independent republic of russia that they can still compete in but the russian flag will not be visible in tokyo or in paris in 2024 really you cannot compete under the russian national flag really done wow so it's they've been banned from the olympic games their governing body russia itself so all russian athletes will have to go through a testing process and then they will be able to compete on as independent athletes um under a different flag but not the russian flag and that's how far we've come bro and like i've seen so many athletes in track and field and weightlifting and wrestling that have seen other athletes get stripped and then have been given their medals years later and all they get is an instagram post yeah it's not bro like you didn't get a chance to win
it's not cool it's not the same and it's it's sad because it it it's the butterfly effect right because it messes up the the ripple of the entire bracket right so it's like you beat this guy and then all he loses here and this guy goes here and this guy retires or he changes weight classes like there's just so many things that just happen because of this so it doesn't make me happy it doesn't sit well with me but at this point like what do you do like i mean you blow the whistle enough times but you just got to do what you can to to avoid it and that the only way to do it is beat them i think in wrestling we have kind of like the biggest margin of error because just because someone's in great shape doesn't mean you can't beat him in wrestling there's so much precision and technical skill that's associated with it that you can still overcome that steep hill but that's a problem with the russians as well because they're very proficient they're freaking very good they're freaking so attacking the wrestlers in these you know provinces and caucuses are insane insane at the sport like they from birth they are competing and training at the highest level it's unlike right like here you got youth sports and you play games and you know i mean you play freeze tag with your buddies at practice and you do a couple of rope climbs you're done like these guys are training like olympians at eight years old they're doing backbridge kickovers and they're learning five-point throws and they're just technically savvy at a much earlier age because they're bred for this we think we have it hard here like poverty here is nothing like poverty in other countries especially you know in like ossetia or chechnya and all these places like it's just a different vibe there so they they have some amazing wrestlers an amazing motivation too with that poverty oh yeah it's life-changing they're tied into the government the u.s is the only country that their olympic team is not government funded
the only country in the world where really our olympic team is funded privately by donations corporate sponsors that's it we're only country in the entire world everywhere every country in the world has the government funding the way that they operate and making sure that they are competing at a high level that's got to be an incredible disgrace for russia to be eliminated from the 2020 and 2024 olympics yeah when you stand on top of the podium bro there's a certain amount of pride that comes with seeing your flag raised above all else that is a special moment and so for them i don't know because is it pride or is it is it financial incentive is it just be an olympic champion let me ask you this what if a guy wins in 2008 okay and and and pops like they retroactively test the samples yeah and then he is he still capable of competing in the future or is he eliminated forever well that it depends i mean if if you popped from a few years ago then maybe i don't know maybe they prodate your suspension and say okay every let's say if you guys suspended on that day for two years post that day all your results in that period of time will probably be eliminated but i don't think that they would say argument but i've also heard the argument that if you're cheating you should be eliminated for life for life and that that's the only way to stop cheaters is that like if you want to stop someone from doing something it's prestigious is the olympic gold medal that's the deal that's it i know it's death sentence but i mean you you are you're cheating yeah you're cheating or cheating it's a thing like the whole reason to win the olympics is for glory and for the opportunity for sponsorships for americans and that's why that's why they're doing it man yeah like well it's political glory and when russia had it in the sochi olympics yeah that was it's not like a coincidence they're following that closely bro don't let anybody fool you that mental count
every year at every olympic games is something that us in the village as athletes and the presidents of each particular respective country they're following that they want to win they want to be the best of course that's that's big to them so above all else some people are willing to take some crazy chances to be successful because they know the incentives that will follow them getting their hand raised but yeah you know some people operate with character and they're like you know what win or lose i'm not doing these things i think though with russia and this was pretty clear because of this dog they don't have a choice they don't have a choice yeah they don't have a choice exactly what was this wrestler that you wanted to say what was the video it was uh anwar godoyev just pull up a photo there's like a very there's a photo of him he's like super vast how about corellon i mean corellon's one of the craziest examples ever his parents were tiny little folks they were like five five and he was built like a human panther that's a big fellow that's a guy that's achievable naturally with superior genetics i mean it is possible but if you look at any other look at all the other russians that i've wrestled over the last over the last decade none of them have that that level of stature but it's it is whatever man like we've exchanged matches he's beaten me i've beaten him um but he beat he beat me when it counted at the olympic games and so he does look pretty stacked he's uh he's tough man he's a stud and this was in rio this was in rio um this is is a a game changer so and you are suspicious i'm a little yeah yeah i am i'm gonna be honest i'm a little suspicious i probably get a lot of heat for it and russians probably won't be happy with it but even if he didn't test positive then the odds of him using steroids up before then or using some sort of performance
whether it's epo for training to get to where he got to like physically yeah you know you keep a lot of the gains no matter what that's the hard part about it is within that space if you don't have a choice fine right you know joe listen if you want to be on a podcast you have to right do this right if the government tells you hey you want to compete for the russian team you have to take or you can go be a construction worker for the rest of your life making minimum wage you're like i'll take that podcast give me that right so i think it's it's a very different vibe there like they don't have opportunity outside like they can't go to university they don't go to school russian wrestlers don't go to college they don't go to universities and get four-year degrees and get masters and go on to the corporate world they don't do that it's either you are an olympic champion or they will choose a job for you and it's probably not one that's super enticing or you will work in some sort of organized you know syndicate yeah it's just different it's different you know but you know that's that's that's the way they operate there and it's got to be infuriating for you though to see the results like the sochi olympics and i understand why you wouldn't want to watch that documentary but i i encourage you to watch that i got to watch it yeah i it's so intense it makes me uncomfortable because it's hard to i'm not a guy that like is going to accuse someone of something that i can't prove right and that's not proven right it's like this whole election fraud thing it's like no i'm telling you it happened i'm like okay so you know for me to claim that this guy is on steroids just because he's vascular and muscular is a difficult thing for me to do but i've heard so many grumblings for such a long period of time that i'm like bro like come on like at this point after
you know all of the the conversations that happened after icarus and after them being suspended and wada and usada covering up all these tests and all this crazy crazy happening in all sorts of sports i'm like bro this state-sponsored doping is a real thing they're killing people that are blowing the whistle in russia like killing people so i'm like well this grigory guy is in witness protection in america he's hiding they took all his money away they they took his his family's home away in russia he can't see his family again for the rest of his life like it's terrible situation is terrible yeah man it's wild um yeah it's funny because i know this is going to cause like a stir within the wrestling wrestle russian wrestling community so i'm like anticipating the backlash that's going to happen immediately after this goes on but well you are it's my knowledge we're skilled too though you're doing both listen they're tremendous wrestlers but i stand by what i said that's how i feel and it is what it is like otherwise there wouldn't be if so many people that have been accused of it like if enough people say bad things about you chances are it might be happening it's like you're always the common denominator like how is that possible um so i'm a guy that i'm a purist i always want to operate with integrity because just what i do number one i love my body so i'm not going to just put nonsense in it number two i want to protect the integrity of the sport right like it's the spirit of the sport we compete to see who really has trained the hardest who's done the most sacrificed the most and been disciplined that's why we do what we do like if you're bringing peds within the sports world like it is very difficult to really judge who the best competitor is and that's what we're trying to do so it's like
playing a video game if i'm playing madden and i got a cheat code and all my guys stats and attributes are up to 99s and i'm trying to play you with an average roster how can you win right how can you win you can't win you can't win bro so it's it's it's it's really hard to experience because i've sacrificed all my life to be great at this and so when someone does it the improper way and i don't know what they're doing i don't know how hard they're training but i know what i do personally so yeah it bothers me have you ever had a conversation with a russian that spoke english about any of this no i have not um but i probably will soon i know honestly i invite i invite someone from the russian delegation to have this conversation with me like but a understandable one not one of denial right right like yeah not one of denial like one like hey listen we have had some guys this is they have dabbled in it's like we can i'm not gonna be like see told you go get em you know i mean it's like i want a conversation we're like damn okay i understand but why but how okay now can we is it possible that you guys have guys that are not doing this are they just amazing wrestlers do they just have the technical superiority and that's why they've been so successful for a long period of time like is that what you have or is this a large part of what you do and are they forced into it and you know their backs are against the wall and you know their hands are tied there's nothing they can do about it so i'm willing to have an open conversation to understand it i'm not just out here accusing them for the sake of making them look bad because i've seen them train they work hard i've seen them learn technique and i've seen the structure and the system and systematic approach they have to their sport they're great at their craft but i also have seen guys that have been jacked up and then i've seen them post career and they look puny
and i'm like man how's that possible right so i'm just i'm trying to navigate the different dynamics of this whole experience without being this jerk that's like hey you guys are no good because they're good wrestlers well they're great wrestlers and they're very technical but they're also a part of a program that has been proven to be corrupt yeah i mean i don't think that's an unfair thing to say particularly when you pay attention to what happened at the sochi olympics and pay attention to the fact what you just said that in 2020 and 2024 they can't fly the russian flag that's not discrimination it's a punishment punishment it's punishment from mass mass state-sponsored doping it's hap it's happening yeah it's real it's real 100 real it's real bro yeah i mean the documentary i'm telling you man please watch it it's bonkers i watched it like this the whole time my mouth was wide open like what oh and the guy just stepped in [ __ ] the guy making the dot brian fogle just walked into the crazy story that's state sponsor here usada they don't care about us like they don't care about the athletes so whoever pays wada there whoever you know is taking the test they either are so fearful or they're just in cahoots and they're getting well the ioc and wada they they switch executives back and forth that was also part of the thing that they discussed it's like people from water go to work for the ioc ioc people go to work i've never gotten any breaks here and i've i've never seen anyone in the wrestling community at least american wrestling get any breaks from usada they are always at our heads same with the ufc so i'm sorry to test the ufc fighters they i've never seen a break so when i see that i'm jealous bro because i'm like this dude probably has to train less he probably doesn't have to update his whereabouts i mean he doesn't have someone following
him around doesn't have to you know have a phlebotomist take blood and you know collect urine samples all the time and you know there's one day one week i got tested like four times in the same weekend why and i'm like i i'm asking the same thing but i'm like why i tested yesterday yesterday how what could i have taken between yesterday and today that it would have enhanced me so much that i could have won today i'm sure there are some things yeah but the fact that i might want to take that risk so they're probably thinking like oh let's see if someone does it right after we test them we'll test them again the next day just in case just in case that's crazy they're not doing that in russia so i'm like no i guarantee that whoever i have to compete against is not up at 5am with the dude banging on their door that's a problem too though why the [ __ ] do they think that that's okay to interrupt your sleep i actually do that purposely so i put them early because at any other time of the day you have to let them know where you are so let's just say you you tell them um i'm going to be at the crib today then all of a sudden you're like shoot i ran out of batteries i got to run the target real quick and then they show up at your house as soon as you pull off your block and now they're waiting for you and you're gone and the there's traffic and the line's long and all of a sudden you takes you an hour and a half what you thought was going to be a 20-minute ride and they only give you an hour window so now you get back when they're gone report all of your whereabouts all of your whereabouts what city you're in all of your whereabouts oh that's so you have to give them an hour time that you're at home every day so there's an hour window every single day and you test quarterly so or you put update your whereabouts quarterly so every three months you do your whereabout update you give them an hour slot i try to put it as early as possible because i'm like
i'm gonna be in bed there's no way i'm gonna be out of my house between five and six a.m i'm always oh my god but then they interrupt your sleep they do and they knock like the police shout out dave carl boom boom doorbell doorbell boom boom boom oh my god kids are up they're crying they're in our bed they're downstairs but i try to do it early so two things i know i'm home and i know i'll have to pee they wake me up out of my sleep i haven't taken my first pee of the morning is it a blood test in the morning as well sometimes it depends they've just recently started doing blood tests over like the last year or so and so like they're on you so there have been a lot of people that have been suspended just because they didn't update their whereabouts so like you go somewhere and you'll be like um right here i'm like i'll be home today and then all of a sudden our podcast runs along i'm here for three four hours and they're at the crib waiting and no one's home well i've talked to finders that when they had to choose between ufc and bellator there was two decisions two two things that led them towards bellator one sponsors they could have their own sponsors whatever sponsors they like they don't have to be tied to reebok and two no usada so they don't have anybody banging on their door they just get normal drug tests normal drug tests when they have uh weigh-ins and that so crazy story one time i got tested i was just graduating from college i was living in an apartment on my own i was still single and i went out lat the night before i was like out with some friends at the bar having a few beers and i left my keys in the bar lost my keys so i had to sleep in our locker room i slept in our locker room at the university and so i remember waking up the next morning it was the guy from you saw to dave like hey jb i'm at your house and you have an hour
to get here and i'm like i don't have my keys i can't even get into my house and so i called dave i'm like dave i lost my keys last night i really don't know where they are if there is there any way else we can get tested and he was like yeah like if you can just find a bathroom somewhere else you can get tested so there's a panera bread right down the street from my house so i'm like all right panera we go to panera bread we get there so if you know anything about usada testing they have to watch you watch you pee and so spro super random i'm in panera bread down the street from my house with two dudes this guy's behind me it's like all right i need to wash your hands put your cup up here all right pull your pants down to your knees i got my pants down tomorrow down to your knees yeah cause they they have to admit you can't just make sure it's not a rubber dick fly like it's got to be and they need to see you actively pee in this cup that's hilarious i'm in panera bread with this guy behind me pants down to my knees like down the street from my crib like super embarrassing like please god no one will walk in um are you in a stall at least in a stall yeah okay because if you're in front of the urinal everybody like what are these are you okay do you need help i'm like i'm good i know this guy do you still need he's just checking to make me pee uh yeah it was it was interesting times bro but yeah you know i've i pride myself on what i put into my body taking care of what i do and and that's why i'm always weary out of respect to you know kill cliff and what you guys provide oh i get it i guess i'm always just like if i don't know it and it's not my own i don't eat it it should be wary yeah but look a lot of ufc fighters been popped for accidental uh crazy stuff contamination yeah dick pills yeah a lot of things happen yeah i'm okay in that department there's i'm real concerned about uh
gene therapy i'm really concerned about that what we're we're ready for soon because of uh there's things like crispr and these gene editing tools i'm concerned with super athletes that are going to be produced by other countries before we get a chance to do that yeah i really think that i think the kids that are they're developing right now there's there's all sorts of different genes that they could alter switch on switch off myostatin inhibitors all these different things can enhance is it that serious though what do you mean like is why has i mean there's a ton of billions of dollars in athletics there's so much money well think about it this way how about this way put it this way think about how much money they earn in the olympics and how little they give to you just think of that think of the athletes who the [ __ ] who's making money in the olympics i'll tell you who should be making the money that works the athletes should be making most of the money but they're making none of it it's crazy it's the biggest scam in all of athletics do you get you have this thing oh nice got a beautiful medal how much does that cost you got to think about how much attention you you're if you have the olympics you have a guaranteed audience people who want they want to see it there's nationalism and pride and and and everybody wants to see all these different sports that maybe they enjoy maybe it's gymnastics maybe they used to swim they want to watch wrestling and no one's getting paid and they're just raking in all the cash they got [ __ ] commercial after commercial it's sponsored by this company and their banners are here and there's so much money and the athletes don't get any of it it's crazy i get it so when you have all this nationalism all this national pride from russia and china and all these different countries
you don't think they're going to do some gene editing you don't think they're going to take look look let me tell you a story about yoel romero you know yo romero right yo romero is tested by usada all the time right he's clean and nobody believes he's clean because he is one legitimate freak of nature if you look at him joel romero went to a doctor once because the ufc he had fractured his orbital in a fight joel romero uh they brought him to his doctor the doctor examines him and then calls ufc and goes where did you get this guy and they go what do you mean he goes he is a specimen and they go yeah he's amazing right he goes no no you don't understand i've never seen a human like him the guy's like i've been working on people for decades he goes the tendons in his eye are three times larger than a normal person's like everything about him is freakish but that's just genetics some women are born with giant tits some people have crazy big noses right yeah joelle romero is just a freak what if you developed a whole army of yoel romeros yeah i mean it's possible yeah what have you figured out how to turn on all these genes what if you looked at what he does what it what i mean he's a perfect physical specimen what if you took that perfect physical specimen he took a shot recreation yes or kobe or lebron james lebron james a giant super athlete what if you took that and just made thousands of them and you populated your whole team i bought and put them all on fight island made your own country like a bruce lee movie i mean i don't think that's outside of the realm of possibility and that's what i'm concerned with what i'm concerned with is that over here we're using usada and knocking on doors at five o'clock in the morning and the there's countries that have less morals like 2040 already and they're what i'm thinking about right yeah
our country's trying to bust our athletes their country is trying to help them cheat i mean how crazy is that balancing act yeah that's a crazy balancing act and even though the united states is obviously very competitive in the olympics and does amazing and and wins a shitload of gold medals and has amazing athletes you got to think that these countries that are using these new tools if they get ahead of us with this kind of [ __ ] i mean it could be really good forever lose though bro like we have i mean that's cause you got that championship mindset yeah i mean [ __ ] listen we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna get it and that's what america stands for what we have is we are always in great shape and we're tough tough as nails we're going to fight to the death every single time so like no matter how savvy you are technically skilled how much access to the resources you have it's always going to be a fight whenever you wrestle an american right but remember how you feel about that russian that might have been on some [ __ ] and if he was in your head when you lay in bed and you think you lost that guy and you look at how he looked you look at how muscular and vascular he was you know maybe he's a yoel romero or maybe he's a test maybe he's a science project yeah that's true that's true i i we have so much access here that i can't ever imagine a country being better than us at anything just because we have so much structure we have such great coaching and we just have such a melting pot of individuals that are making freakish babies all the time so it's like if you go to russia you go to any of these countries they're not melting pots like we have so does athleticism and the genetics have not
been broadened so much so because there's just a small pool of small gene pools that have kind of interbreeded with each other for thousands of years but here in america we have people from everywhere that have interbred and created such amazing athletes that's a very good point the smallest athlete in the world like simone biles who's considered one of the best athletes in the world to the biggest like lebron james you know it's amazing what we've been able to create here domestically because no other country has that sort of interracial breeding that we have and we have such a profound focus on sport too like everyone plays sports like who very few people that you ever meet that never played a sport in their entire lives that's true i mean you're making real good points and uh listen no one is more pro america than me people have to say that america america i love america i just love the concept of it i love the fact that it's a country filled with immigrants that literally everyone came here i mean obviously the origins suck but what it is now is the best idea of people coming from all other parts of the world trying to seek opportunity and trying to do better for their life and their families that's the best part of what america is but i'm just saying when it comes to competitive international sports i'm really worried about gene doping i'm really worried about that [ __ ] i'm going to see you 20 years from now we'll see when they finally unleash their army genetically modified a [ __ ] diesel careless i really think it's inevitable with this technology i think it's inevitable whether it's 20 years from now or 30 years from now or whatever it is yeah i think i mean i think it's going to be inevitable for the public for people too i think you know like right now because how would you do that here sounds expensive well i think it's expensive in the beginning
but i think like cell phones when they first came out were expensive yeah and now everybody has one you know remember the old do you ever see that movie um wall street with gordon gekko he had the big giant purse like what the hell the big brick and everybody was like look at him he's talking it doesn't even have a cord he's out on the beach now look at this now everyone has a little phone yeah and it's way more powerful technology always improves and then eventually trickles down to everybody else the problem is the advantages the people who are the initial early adopters will have will allow them to accumulate so much wealth and so much success that by the time it trickles down the game will already be rigged that's a real worry it's a real concern when it comes to the haves and have-nots when it's implementing technology that changes your biology yeah and i think that's coming man i really do the thing is the alt what's the alternative right let's say you are because there's so many things that you can't you can't trigger yourself so if you just because we put lebron james and serena williams together doesn't mean that they're going to create a freak like chances are they may they're going to create a freak more opportunities present themselves but every person is different i want you to go and take families like that you have some for example right people say the mannings and the gronkowskis and the joneses but there are a lot of families that have a tremendous athlete and then they have an average athlete yeah yeah or no athlete period my parents didn't even play sports in high school my parents didn't play sports in high school really no that's crazy and like now given my dad had a tall my dad's six two he had like a tall frame long arms um my mom's short but what they created was was me and my my sister so i have three older siblings i was i
came from a non-traditional household kind of like a fragmented family my dad had two my mom had one they were married they had me and so i have no full-blooded relatives only halves only half siblings um but all of us vary an athletic degree my sister and i who were raised in the same household she dabbled in basketball a little bit was decent my brother he was always the better athlete of the two of us he was solid he played football ran track and then my oldest sister never really played sports at all she grew up in the city but anyway for me growing up i was the runt like i was always small i never was really strong never was a physical specimen but i'm still not a physical specimen but in relation to wrestling i am so like if you saw me play basketball like this dude it's terrible he's all he's not an athlete but if you see me wrestle you're like damn so it's like there's it's in relation to what you do you would consider yourself an athlete right so you know while i always wonder what pulls or helps someone gravitate to a particular sport did i am i great at wrestling because i just had the frame for it or did wrestling for so long help me to establish these certain dynamics of my athleticism that were unleashed and unfolded once i actually committed to the sport of wrestling i think you're great at wrestling because of your mind i mean i think obviously there are some physical yeah like attribution sure you have but a lot of people have those that's true and they never get anywhere that's true too it's your mind it's it looks like at the elite level at the elite level and this is the same with mma you have to have everything yeah you can't get by you can't beat a jon jones unless you have everything you have to have everything you can't just consistently yes consistently you can't just be a good physical specimen you have to
have the mind there are a lot of specimens a lot of specimens not a lot when you get to like a real like world-class level everybody's a [ __ ] specimen they're all specimens so you can't just attribute it to your body which obviously you're gifted athletically but it's the mind and i think because i didn't grow up as a specimen helped me to develop my mind because i was never the biggest right i always had to play catch-up with my older siblings i always wanted to prove myself to my dad and so it was always a different level of experience that i had in comparison to my teammates where i would see them skip runs i see them hide in the hallways during you know mile runs inside of our high school i would see them you know hang out in the locker room long when we were doing conditioning after practice and i was like i didn't have that luxury because i thought in order for me to win i had to outwork everyone because i was small right i was small so it took me a long time to be the best like i only won one state title in high school and it was my senior year i didn't win a state championship until i was a senior i've won more world championships than i did state championships that's crazy crazy because i that's a joke to this level like i was i wasn't the best girl i was never the best so i had to develop like mentally and it was just like something that through years and years of concerted effort it was never like this aha moment like damn i'm really good now well that is a thing you see with really really talented people yeah that sometimes really talented people that are just natural they never go far yeah and sometimes you always have yeah and it comes too easy that's what you hear the gamers like oh this guy's a gamer don't worry about him he'll be ready he'll be on when the lights arrive and you lock the cage behind him but
how often can you do that well you the problem is other people are gamers and they're all so disciplined and that guy's gonna [ __ ] you up discipline gamer it's like this like when you get a guy like michael jordan like what creates a guy like michael jordan extreme competitiveness plus physical gifts plus discipline plus the mind the intelligence to figure out the correct path to get to the hoop the intelligence to figure out what's the right strategy to trick someone and and go this way when you want to go that way what's what's the right tactics to implement in a fight what's the what's the right move to use at the right time there's so much so much so these gamers well this guy's a [ __ ] gamer too but he's been working and you've been slacking you know you've been doing things you shouldn't have done you've been partying you've been doing whatever you thought you can get by because you think you're the [ __ ] man well he thinks he's a [ __ ] man too but he's been sleeping he's been eating right there's certain pre-ruckus re prerequisites that you have to possess in order to be great yeah so let's say you have a guy that is those things all of those things tremendous success that you have a guy who's just a gamer super talented doesn't really want to work hard has moderate success can become a champion loses his belt the very next defense and then you have a guy who works significantly hard but he just has he's not a specimen yeah he just doesn't have the athleticism so i've seen some of the hardest working guys ever do everything that i do but they just can't do it yeah they just can't win because life is not fair it's not fair it's not and that's what's scary for me with my boy because i'm like i'm olympic champ expectations are for him to be an olympic champ there's no father-son olympic gold medalist combinations it's impossible but i want him to be great at something
what that's going to be i don't know he plays soccer i never play soccer he plays violin i never played an instrument so there's so some things that he's fine-tuning that i never got a chance to have access to so i'm hoping that we can find something that he'll be great at but he loves wrestling well i think the best wrestling that you can give him is just encourage him to find his path yeah yeah the problem isn't even the shadow of a great man you know like that's a it's a quote i forget who said it but find me a great man who's the son of a great man it's very hard that's hard it's very hard it's very nice but when you say that success begets success you want to be you want to be who you are and you have so many inspirational people sit in this chair yeah but that's a different animal they're not my dad i know but it's the thing is growing up developing your developmental cycle with a great man it's very hard for me because men want to be the lion right that's why that's why the lion kicks the young lions out of the [ __ ] den like get out of here [ __ ] right because you can't be the king i'm the king you can't be the king well this is a part of growing up as a man you know and some some men know how to navigate that with their children and they figure it out they figure out a way to let their son it is deep that's deep you gotta know when to like back it's a heavy burden but you also have to have the respect of your son too like they have to respect you they can't disrespect you and there's an instinct to disrespect the the man to prove that you're the man so it's tricky that's right it's not they're not even being a bad person it's a genetic instinct that my wife's got to kind of curb me a lot too because she's like listen do you want your son to be a great athlete do you want to have a great relationship with him
and she's like you have to that's deep she's you have to treat him with respect so the thing that we're on now is don't humiliate him especially in front of people you talk to him the way that you want him to be addressed by other men would you want another man talking to your son that way and so she always challenges me that way it's like hey listen that's very wise if you want him to be a leader at some day someday he can't have this subservient attitude and bow to authority because you've always been at his head for so long you have to allow him to grow up and for him to operate as a man and you have to treat him with respect you can't humiliate him in front of people you can't belittle him you have to treat him like a man i know it's hard i know he's frustrating and hard to raise but he's sick [Laughter] he's not doing this despite you he's just sick he doesn't understand so at some point you know do you want him to love and hug you as an old man or do you want him to say what's up dad you know i want hugs i want an intimate relationship with my son i hope that your wife is very wise yes very woman that's a great perspective too he's a good woman because sometimes it's hard when you're in the middle like you know i have children i know what it's like when you're in the middle of raising kids like there's chaos and this one wants attention while you're upset with this one and then there's another one behind you breaking glasses the kids are crazy they're wild they're little people and they have their own little challenges and they have their own i mean every little child is the master of their own little world and it's very difficult to manage all of those simultaneously and but what she said about your kid that's very wise and i think that's whatever your kid does he's going to understand like i said about what you do that there's there's a certain requirement for excellence
yeah you know and who you are as a man not just as an athlete but who you are as a man is going to reflect yeah that's real that's real that's the hardest part about this is not only how do i want to present myself to the world how do i want to present my kids to the world i put some pressure on my boy you know i'm like hey listen when you leave this house you represent the borough's name and that's that's big shoes to fill ba bro like listen people do either one of two things they either fold because of pressure or they rise to expectations you have the ability to be great i'm gonna put you in position to be great i promise you if you listen to your mom and dad you will have a great life because i'm gonna do my due diligence with my faith with my reading with the things that i learned to make sure that i put you in position to be successful all i ask is that you work hard and that you treat people with respect and that you listen to mom and dad you listen to us your life will be great and so i'm trying to teach him that but he's still you know it's he's sick so he's combative a little bit and he's trying to figure things out bro every six-year-old is yeah yeah i know right he says you take it personal sometimes though you're like no there's no other six-year-old kid like that he did down purpose he spilled the milk on the floor because he knew i had a long practice last night sometimes a little of that too sometimes they cause a little trouble just to get some extra attention yeah that's it bro that's it and it's it's rewarding too though man i mean when your kids hug you i'm sure like for me when i come home and they run to me and hug me it's the greatest feeling on earth it's these little people that you created and they love you people they love you so much they just can't wait to hug you i know and you have fun with them it's like it's a beautiful thing man and a lot of people you know they're they're going through it with varying
degrees of stress in their life and bad relationships and you and i are both very lucky that we have good relationships yeah yeah you need them bro yeah you need that man that that helps you more than anything in life to achieve and i remind my wife for that all the time that she's one of the reasons why i can be successful yeah because i don't i don't have this other conflict that i have to deal with all the time like i say i have friends that are in bad relationships and it it hampers other things they do in their life are they successful some of them are and some of them aren't you know and some of them probably should be more successful than they are and i think that bad relationship thing that extra conflict like if you only have you have a certain amount of bandwidth for your resources like yeah i use this point all the time but i'll say it again if you have like a say if the the amount of resources you have in your mind and put it in a number like a hundred units well if you have a [ __ ] relationship that's just eating up 30 units no matter what you do you only have 70 units and then the guy down the street who has a great relationship with his family and his wife that guy's got a hundred units and that guy's has an advantage if you're both doing the same things he has more resources to apply to his thing because he doesn't have this constant throbbing distraction and angst in this thing like he can't wait he doesn't want to go home his [ __ ] wife's home he wants to go to the bar and pound shots oh what the [ __ ] am i doing man why did i do this that's a lot of people you know what's crazy though is like you need a wife that understands your your ambition understands that you're driven and that's why my wife's been such a blessing because i was an olympic champion before we were married and so initially when we were when i was courting her we're like okay where are we going to live
what are we going to do am i going to be able to continue to pursue my career and for a while it was a battle because you know she extremely smart master's degree from columbia in journalism wrote for the buffalo newspaper and she had to make this transition where she had built this reputation for herself to now all of a sudden she leaves her home at buffalo new york comes to live with me in lincoln nebraska and no one knows her and so there was times where we would conflict and battle because people would be like man you're so lucky like you married jb and she'd be like well i had a life of my own right i was an individual that was driven and i had people that recognize me and i've won awards and done tremendous things it took a while for us to really kind of settle into this space where i encouraged her to come alongside with me and where she could kind of be that help me and make the necessary sacrifices for our relationship and man women lose so much in marriage bro like i love what we're able to do and provide as the breadwinners and make sure our families are taken care of but women lose so much bro of their identity they lose their name they lose their families and whatever dreams it was that they possessed before they married us a lot of times they lose that because now they're home with the kids taking care of them while we're out pursuing our aspirations and so for me it was important to bring my wife alongside me it was like this isn't just my thing this is our thing when i wrestle we all wrestle when i win we all win as opposed to hey i gotta go to practice see you later like that's why wherever i go my family comes with me all competitions training camps because it's easy to have that conflict where when i'm in the wrestling room i feel like i need to be with my fan when i'm with my fam i feel like i need to you know be in the wrestling room training so i think the great thing about having a
great wife is she understands that this is what i love to do this is what makes me feel purposeful and passionate and so she allows me to do that because she knows that when i return home i'm going to give my best effort because i'm whole because i've been able to do what i love and there's no resentment built up but if she's taking me away from that she's going to be i'll be half of myself and it'd be really hard for me to coexist there yeah i mean i totally understand and i i think it points to what we're saying earlier that you are a champion in life yeah you and you apply the same principles that led you to become a champion wrestler to become a human being that does the right thing a human being that behaves their best that thinks their best that does the right things and that is why i think you should go into public speaking because i think you can teach that [ __ ] there it is again that's three times it's got to go down think you can man that's what i listen i always think of athletes in terms of like what they're going to do when when it's over because i've seen a lot of bad stories it's particularly with fighters well particularly fighters with nobody wants to talk about a lot of them are mentally compromised after their career is over they're dealing with depression they're dealing with headaches they're dealing with traumatic brain injury some of them get treatment some of them don't some of them start drinking so you think c cte exists it's 100 real ufc 100 there's no no doubt about it if you're getting hit in the head you're getting traumatic brain injuries there's no doubt about it i mean you watch some of these fights that are so exciting like look for the majority they're going to be fine and they'll know when to get out and there's there's modalities there's different recovery methods there's different things you could do to try to help yourself and to to achieve a healthy life and it can be
done but there's guys who don't do that and there's guys who stay in too long and there's guys who take those extra shots to the head when they shouldn't and there's guys who they have bad training methods where they slug it out in training that's real common as well so they're they're going into fights already concussed they're going into fights with already taking too many shots that some guys lose their career in the training room because in the training room they just they're they're they're going to war they're beating the [ __ ] out of each other they're going full blast and then there's other guys are training and fighting intelligently and they have much longer careers that's why i love what conor's doing right now um and i i i just follow him on social so i don't really know personally but it seems like he's very strategic about what he does now because he's got a lot of money right when you get money you start to think about things differently you don't have to grind like you used to but you also can bring a certain level of professionalism around what it is that you do so you know wrestling is kind of a primitive sport where you just get in the room bang it out for a couple hours do a bunch of sprints on the bike and you go home where i feel like guys like connor now or they're starting to they have a nutrition or a nutritionist or a dietitian they've got wrestling coach boxing coach jiu jitsu coach and then he the camp is surrounded around him like he's not in a room with 12 15 other guys that are just like rolling around and you know with a single coach he's like i need one training partner for each discipline and that's it and i think that that's how it goes and that's how it should go you shouldn't have to take reps you shouldn't have to have people punching you right you shouldn't have to have people double legging you you know into the wall and putting you down you should be doing all of the reps well you can
they're gonna have to do that too though you need mma sparring you need something but that's but control because you need someone who's going to come into the room and say listen this is connor bro yeah like you're not here to film this and become a star on the internet that's true but let me tell you something for us the hobby who's like one of the greatest mma coaches of all time faros used to pay people to try to knock george saint pierre out and he said you have to put george in danger he goes he goes you can't just let him think that he's going to be okay and let him coast he goes i want you to put george in danger he's like i will i will give you more money if you could knock him out yeah i will give you a reward did george no no i don't know if he told george george no i think that would be he might have told him that would be pretty cool actually he might have told him i'm not sure but i know that george is aware of it now and uh i know that it made george one of the greatest mma fighters of all time but not always they don't always like george all right it's gonna be easy light sparred just have a good time like kill him [Laughter] no he wouldn't lie to him but his feroce is very intelligent and feroci's perspective was you have to you have to simulate danger you have to produce danger you have to there's you're going to experience danger inside that octagon and it can't be a unique thing it can't be a foreign thing that you're not accustomed to so you have to reproduce real danger in sparring so that when they get into the octagon their instincts are already they're already razor sharp i like that but you can't do it too much because you don't want to get brain damage but you look at george now at 30 i think he's 37 38 years old he's lucid he speaks well he's great he's super healthy he got out early too though well he did the right thing he felt his enthusiasm waning because he was
overworked he was tired he fought so many times he just squawked by with a real close decision to johnny well he's thinking about fighting again he's not sure if he wants to he wants i think they were talking about trying to set up a fight with him and khabib nurmagomedov and if they could do that i think george would come back but i don't think george would come big money crazy but that might be the biggest fight in the history of the sport it's the biggest bro even if you're not even a fight fan no you're everyone knows gsp gsp was the original superstar and he stays in shape gsp never gets fat he's rich he just posted a picture just a few days ago of him after a three-day fast he's what's he doing it's like what's he done in the last five six years works his martial arts he's constantly training he's constantly doing jiu-jitsu always he's like i'm really i'm waiting for the right offer look at him that's the right guy just a couple days ago bro he shredded he always trains so when he fought michael bisping and won the middleweight title three days of no water what's the benefit no no that's not what it is he just drinks water yeah just three days but they said three days no water no that's ridiculous that's an idiot that's that's some dummy bro what 38. i think so i think he's 37 or 38. damn i don't shredded that he's shredded five six years well you know he's dedicated to health and wellness and he's also dedicated to martial arts like he trains because yes he's been lurking waiting for the right opportunity to present it that's what he did with michael bisping so why didn't he fight connor well he's too big george is too big george how big is connor connor legitimately should be fighting at 155 pounds he won the title at 145. there's no [ __ ] way in hell george st pierre is ever making 145 pounds yeah he's much bigger than that he's tall right he's wide he's a thick
dude i mean connor has fought at 170 he fought cowboy at 170 but cowboy's not really a one-sided cowboy he fought nate diaz at 170 and nate diaz is not really 170 either these guys are capable of making 155. i mean obviously they weighed 170 when they fought but i think connor's tomorrow oozman you're like exactly exactly the big 170s the real strong powerful wrestlers they're too big and i think george is there george is at that 170 i mean look uh maybe if camaro wins against gilbert burns and they that would be a crazy fight too but i think the real big money is in khabib because it's a super fight khabib is undefeated he's i think he's 29-0 he's dominated everybody he's the most spectacular example of a champion we've ever seen yeah i mean he just dominates that [ __ ] guy just it's workmanlike he's a monster that's what i appreciate about khabib is that he is very intentional and deliberate with his precision like almost surgical in the ring he just walks you down punch all right i'm good well the geichi fight really show what he was made of because geichi has been able to chop everyone's legs apart and he was landing shots on because he lost and khabib just kept chasing him down chasing him down it's crazy because i drank the kool-aid i'm like well damn maybe khabib is in trouble here maybe this is going to be well he was in danger but he wasn't in trouble he was in a dangerous situation yes his leg was in trouble his left leg was getting kicked have you ever been kicked in the calf it's a crazy feeling not i don't desire it it's hard don't do it it's horrible it's horrible man it makes you like it's like a jolt like the the the nerves gets it's such a sore area like when you get hit there you get hit there once or twice and you you lose a lot of your ability to move correctly
a lot of times your feet go numb and that happened to michael chandler in a fight once he got kicked low it happened to um henry cejudo against right now chandler he couldn't even get his footing back i remember your nerves stop working and your your foot drops it's just like you can't get it to work and you you try to step on it it just gives out on you crazy i remember it happened to henry when henry cejudo fought mighty mouse in the second fight in the first round mighty mouse kicked him with a low calf kick and henry's leg went numb there's nothing you could do about it it's a crazy kick well just engage he's the best at that he's the best at that and khabib was chasing him down and justin kept chopping at that leg and it was in a bad place i mean he he'd hurt him man but khabib is such a [ __ ] monster turned out after the fight khabib was fighting with a broken foot so he was doing all that with a broken foot they x-rayed his foot as a crack bone so that's why you and i i agree with you but mindset is the most important to everything whatever being a champion because khabib obviously is like he's got a great body physically yeah he's physically very strong he's very athletic but there's a lot of guys that have that it's the mind the mind the mind's everything mine's a powerful yeah so that's why if you're building if you're building the perfect fighter you have to build their mind that's everything that's what custom model used to hypnotize mike tyson he said tell mike tyson that you don't exist the task exists and he said tell him this when he was 13 years old i like that teach him how to break people down it's not about you you don't exist that's just nonsense it's gonna get in the way the task exists you have to break this man i like that i'm gonna i'm gonna use that that's it's heavy you don't exist the task the task exists jordan burroughs we just did three hours flew back bro hey
my pleasure let me give a shout out to those phil bills though you're playing well you football fan nope no you don't watch i don't watch this my wife's from buffalo so i became i grew up in south jersey so everyone where i'm from are eagles fans and when i got married met my wife buffalo i'm like damn i want to be affiliated with that team her uncle thurman thomas played for the bills bill's bill's mafia bill's mafia so i'm sure you've seen the bills mafia there you go um new york state buffalo bills old school new school great great year in the playoffs won the afc's for the first time since like in like 25 years something crazy something crazy and they're playing soon so beautiful saturday well listen good luck in your match it's either this week or next week whatever it is yeah we're going to make it happen we're going to try to figure it out make it happen um it's difficult during these coveted times right it's it's wild it's a wild time it is tracing to it's i'm ready for it to be over well thank you brother it's been an honor i really appreciate it thank you appreciate you being here appreciate you good luck everything you do and seriously think about what i'm saying yeah man i got you you could do great things with those i'm listening ladies and gentlemen bye everybody you