Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5jBgMQsj8
[Music] well what a journey mikey we were supposed to be doing first of all thank you to red band for saving the day if it wasn't for you once again yeah we'd be yeah you saved the day with kanye and you saved a day with mikey musamechi so jamie got the cooties ladies and gentlemen again again for the second time he looks great he doesn't seem like he's that sick so we're stuffing them full of iv vitamins out there and uh so you've had covert how many times i think two or three times now two or three did you get tested or you just i got tested two of them so for sure too but i think i had it three the third time you think you had yeah delta was the worst one though did you get it bad i could barely walk from delta like my lungs and like a good month of like dying really yeah wow well you were probably training the whole time weren't you i was training during the omicron one but uh the delta one like my muscles i couldn't lift my arms and legs like it got really bad wow that's crazy because you're in really good shape and you're you're young yeah i run six miles every morning and i could barely walk a mile when i had it wow yeah so it got you hard really messed me up did you do you think you were getting it and then you kept working out and it got worse was it one of those deals i think so but i think the residual effects of it from after being sick or what messed me up like with the muscles mm-hmm felt like my body was like decomposing wow yeah how long did it take before you like fully got over it a few months like completely like where my body didn't feel messed up so did you take any medication while you had it were you on anything no just just your immune system yeah just drinking a lot of water a lot of sauna yeah and like just dealing with it yeah yeah there's that's not the best strategy yeah [Laughter] vitamins are very important to deal with it but if you can get access to monoclonal antibodies that's really the best way to handle it yeah because i had the vaccine three times and i still got it really bad so wow yeah damn it was so yeah it's uh it's a tricky disease so anyway uh jamie
who has successfully avoided it for 21 months he got it and he's had very strong antibodies this entire time but then we just got back from vegas for the ufc and we did a big show out there and uh he got the cooties yeah when i was in singapore i had to get tested like every week because i was going to indonesia a lot in malaysia so i knew i didn't have it at least during that time so when you were what are you doing in singapore you were training in singapore and living in singapore yeah so the last four months i've been living in singapore um i moved there to train at evolve which is the most the coolest gym i've ever been in my life yeah it's huge and like the facility is amazing and um i moved there because i wanted to train and see uh shatri the owner of one championship um i met him one time and he was like the most amazing person i've met and like um he's a true martial artist he loves jiu-jitsu muay thai and what he stands for with martial arts like it really moved me and it was um i moved to singapore it changed continents and i've been living there the last four years for four years no four months sorry oh okay for four months yeah so for four months like how do you live out there like what are you doing so i'm training every day there and um just experiencing the asian culture you know i love learning about cultures and um i'm learning indonesian also are you really yeah is that the language they speak in singapore they speak malay but indonesia is right there also so bella so you speak portuguese yes right fluent right yeah fluent i taught myself portuguese just how did you do that so i was around brazilians my whole life so um i just used google translate for so many years that i learned portuguese that way no one ever taught me no way yeah really just using google translate that's insane and then brazilians always correcting me when i made mistakes wow that's nuts so i even know like the slangs of the different parts of brazil
because i would just talk in portuguese on my phone like all day with brazilians the how i've never even heard of someone like learning from google translate how much time did you spend on google translate lots of hours that's insanity yeah because you just over time just keep using it you start seeing the words and you start remembering the words did you train much in brazil no i've only i learned portuguese completely out of brazil wow and so just talking to brazilians every day yeah words you didn't know or understand going through google translate 100 and wow but what about like the grammar and how things are structured did you speak spanish at all before no i just um over time i just kept learning it more and more and more wow it was like just a long process well you started training when you were four right so 21 years i'm 25 now yeah so 21 years of being around brazilian yeah just how long did it take before you actually could speak portuguese uh like like fluent like to this level or just like just i knew some words as a kid you know and then um i would for fun try to pretend i was brazilian at like tournaments like with the refs it would help if you're brazilian with the refs right so i would go in as an undercover spy and i would go up to the refs say something in portuguese i didn't know any words and the ref would think i'm brazilian so i would finish the tournament and then the ref would come up and talk to me i wouldn't know he's saying and then he would look at me with betrayal and then you eventually learned how to talk so now you talk to the refs in portuguese yeah now i talk to everyone in portuguese you know can you read it too rewrite it write speak wow no formal training no formal training that's very impressive it's just i loved learning languages and cultures you know so um for me jiu jitsu came the jitsu i do came from brazil so the brazilian culture is so big in jiu-jitsu so i really wanted to learn portuguese um and even to communicate with all the brazilians it's so interesting it is interesting it's a beautiful language
the way it sounds yeah it's like a poetic flowing language it's more emotional like i feel like in portuguese i'm almost a different person than in english like you're it's all feeling based you know i'm more like confrontational in portuguese i'm a whole different personality it's weird hilarious that's hilarious no do you know any other languages right now i'm learning indonesian that's it yeah i'm getting better with that spanish is so similar to portuguese that i could understand it and um read it do you um learn indonesian from just the same way you learned portuguese from just like google translation so you can't because because indonesian is has a formal and informal and nobody talks informal but google translates only formal for indonesian so i have to learn it from friends and um i'm just learning it like that so the the process of you going over to singapore so you meet chauchari yeah and then you just just decide to go to singapore just decided and just decided to move there yep it was um so my whole life i lived very close to my parents you know and um 25 years and then i leave and just change continents you know um again with shatri's vision with martial arts and um i saw like the future of jiu-jitsu when i was talking to him and it was something i wanted to be a part of you know so i got my stuff my four royal shirts and like two geese and moved to singapore that's it yeah so did they get an apartment for you or something yeah i have an apartment there right now i'm staying in a hotel but um yeah i'm spending time here in vegas still and there you know and so are you planning on making this a long term thing or yes yeah yes wow you know because what one championship is doing um now they're getting into jiu jitsu yeah which is so interesting um they're gonna have belts and divisions i actually have my uh i'm fighting for the belt in one championship september 30th um and it's gonna be on amazon prime in the u.s because now they're getting into the u.s oh interesting yeah and
what's really cool about them is how they're spreading martial arts all over with kickboxing muay thai mma and jiu jitsu on the same card yeah i think that's really interesting so fans will like learn about all the martial arts you know like i could watch muay thai and kickboxing as well as jiu jitsu yeah so the viewership for it just increases so much you know well it's it's it's also interesting right because they're showing all the different styles by showing grappling only and striking only you get to see like the purest version of each individual style yeah and they could appreciate it right yeah they're getting guys in there like nikki holdskin like you know world-class kickboxers and you know giorgio petrosian and all all these like elite fighters and to have the elite strikers and then guys like you and i know they signed gordon ryan and gary tonan so there's uh the rotolo brothers so there's all these like elite uh grapplers as well and then they're putting on these amazing shows very interesting i love the fact they're doing that i love the fact that they've by doing that they've really separated themselves from all these other organizations as well yeah it's incredible and um again the exposure it's giving jiu jitsu which is growing so much um my last match with iminari was the most viewed match in jiu jitsu history um it was over 25 million views wow so it just shows how their platform which is huge could help jiu-jitsu expand so much you know and that's why i want to be a part of it and the growth of jiu-jitsu we played that match on the show we were talking about your back take that back take you did was so slick is that a thing you do all the time that we did yeah so um it's just a move i've been working a lot and the week of the tournament i was just doing it over and over and over and then when i went into the match like it was a i was able to do it well it was very sweet i've seen a lot of back takes but that was a slick one that was very slick you're known for being a guy who trains a ridiculous amount of hours a day yeah is has that always been the case with you yeah um well when i was in college like obviously my hours were limited
with training but um since i've been out of college like i have so much more time now so i'm just studying jiu jitsu so many hours and drilling you know so you i heard you tweet you drill sometimes 12 hours a day yeah sometimes i'll end up drilling like all day you know if i'm studying a move or a position and i want to find an answer for it like sometimes it takes a long time you know and um the puzzle of it is what makes me so interested in jiu-jitsu well that's what's fascinating to me it's one of the things that i really like to try to let people know about yeah is that jujitsu in many people's minds that don't train jiu jitsu they think of it as like a we were talking about it before like a brutish very physical aggressive thing but it's not it's super technical it's really intelligent and people like yourself excel at it people that become obsessed with it and then and just like really concentrate in focusing on the finer points of it and drilling until you have something just laser sharp so i see jiu-jitsu like a math problem it's so reaction based so you do a position and your partner will give you a reaction to defend your position so it's up to you to have an answer to your react up to the partner's reaction right so every reaction they give you have to have an answer so it's so literal like that you know and what i love about it it's the truth if you could do your position or not it's based on that you know right so it's just so fascinating to me that and it never ends the reactions or the variables of the person's body the size of their limbs will alter the position you know yeah so always been so fascinating to me that and it never stops so it keeps my mind every second having to figure out new things so when you're working a drill like say if you're tr you're drilling for 12 hours in a day are you like say there's a position that maybe you got stuck in or a position where you someone defended and you feel like there's a way to get through that what do you do do you set up like with where your opponent does like minimal resistance do you set up for them to try to get out of something like how do you how do you do it so i'll have my partner giving me
like a lot of resistance and i have to find the answer and i'll just keep observing what they're doing um typically what i'll do is i'll even do the reaction myself defending the move so i could see what is the strength of it and then once i find the strength of it i could figure out how to stop it you know and just mechanically like reverse engineering it yeah so you back engineer the move i saw the mikey lock too that's very interesting that's a really interesting leglock i watched you uh demonstrate that and i was noticing there was a lot of people that were like legit black belts that were like oh [ __ ] like that really works like there's something to that yeah using your neck instead of your armpit yeah it's kind of wild it's just so interesting how in jiu jitsu we could alter positions with our body you know and just instead like a heel hook so people understand is using your armpit so what i figured out was using my neck instead of my armpit which is also like a pit and then it's the same efficiency as a heel hook yeah and it really works yeah and you just invented that yeah i was training and just figuring out different uh ways to control the the foot to get to a heel hook and then people started tapping when i was doing this and i didn't even know i had a submission and then i was like oh my god and then that became a submission wow that's pretty wild have you done that with other moves um that's typically how it happens um i'll be training and then i'll subconsciously do something a movement and then i'll like what just happened and then we'll break down what i did and then we'll discover positions you know it's creativity jiu-jitsu is an art right yeah so there's a form of creativity to it and discovering things in the art it really is an art and it's an art that is very much appreciated by people who practice the art and it's kind of hard for people who don't practice do you appreciate it because they don't understand it when i first started doing commentary for the ufc one of the biggest challenges was explaining jiu jitsu in a digestible way like when i
would when the fight would go to the ground a lot of times people would boo or like they didn't know what was going on and so it was my job to try to explain the progression and like okay now he's got to clear the right arm now he's in trouble and then i would like talk people through right up into the submission right up until the person taps so they would go oh i see so it made jiu jitsu more digestible to them and more exciting because they instead of just like seeing a bunch of legs and arms all tangled up they got to see what the person was trying to accomplish yeah like um even my friends that started jiu jitsu they all start they're like oh i want to do ufc or mma and then they go to the gym and they look at the jiu jitsu stuff they're like no and they'll do muay thai right and then they'll just keep seeing the jiu jitsu class and then one day they'll try jiu jitsu one time and then they switch just jiu jitsu no muay thai yeah well it's it protects you uh from brain damage too the the thing about the problem with muay thai and so much impact it's a lot of impact even if you're just sparring light you're still getting touched you're still getting thumped in the head yeah do you have any desire at all to ever fight mma so i did muay thai for seven years as a kid yeah so i love muay thai i think it's awesome um and i'm in evolve right now which has like the best muay thai program in the world so i'm interested in it you know and maybe in the future if i keep learning but again brain damage sucks yeah but if i could take minimal damage i don't know what the problem is like can you is it possible to take minimal i think about running into someone who's as good at striking as you are at jiu jitsu so you're gonna take a lot of attention yeah you know what i'm saying like think about like how much you can control people like i first saw you in who's number one uh who is the bald guy marcel cullen that's right marcelo cohen and uh i made a bet and i bet on you it was me and lex friedman lex friedman bet on marcelo i bet on you and i won ha ha but uh you you you when i was watching your technique i was like this guy is super advanced like this is really interesting and you were
setting him up like the entire time like there was so many times it's almost like you were like allowing him to put you back in half guard and moving back to mountain like he is like setting up something very specific and then when you had the opportunity for the triangle you took it yeah i'm always baiting my partner to give me certain reactions so i can do the move you know right and um that's what's so beautiful about youtube how we could set things up and bait them to give us something yeah you know the problem with you going into mma is like you could find someone who's like that but with striking yeah like like style vendor like someone who's like of course who's like setting you up and then you know but just learning a new skill is so awesome and um that's what i love learning you know oh it's probably it's great for everything learning i mean just learning a new martial art just in turn in terms of just learning new moves it's just great for like understanding different ways that your body can move and be effective yeah totally so your concentration now right now is just on jiu jitsu yeah and because of one fc and who's number one and there's there's quite a few professional mma jiu-jitsu opportunities now which is kind of cool that didn't really exist before yeah that's what's so amazing about jiu-jitsu like the generation before us they didn't have these opportunities so they had to go to mma yes you know now there's professional jiu jitsu and it's getting so much exposure that you could be a professional athlete just doing jiji yeah and then there's of course things like bjj fanatics where you put out videos and like people sell them and you know gordon from that and seminars on he's making a couple million dollars a year no it's amazing it's crazy yeah it's like you'd be crazy to not do anything else but that yeah and now that one is like putting it on you know on television and in asia it's gigantic right yeah um i was going to go to law school two years ago i had a full scholarship to law school in las vegas and from jiu jitsu and making the money i'm making it was more beneficial to stay in jiu jitsu and i become a lawyer you know so it just shows how like jiu jitsu is
so great now and how you could do it as a career also it's more fun oh so much more fun being a [ __ ] lawyer no my sister's a lawyer is she yeah is she tammy yeah she's enjoying it yeah she likes it she's sister's really good too yeah she's she beat me up my whole life she's really good at jiu jitsu yeah i'll never be able to get her back for the amount of time she's tapped me my whole life she's like smashed me so um she trains every night after working as a lawyer wow she'll work from like six a.m to like seven at night and then she'll train at night wow yeah that's a lot of energy yeah but it's her passion right she does jiu-jitsu is great for everyone to do no i agree but if you went into law school or if you went and became a lawyer like that would really suck yeah we need you out there no yeah i have this angie too yeah you're a fun guy to watch man you're very interesting and it's interesting to see what you can do with your body when we were outside and you were like on your heels just do that on the chair just so people can see how ridiculous this is like here like that is crazy that your legs the people that don't know mikey is sitting his butt is totally on the ground and then his heels are totally on the ground and his heels are beside his legs so your whole it doesn't even look physically pot like i tried to get like even close to that position my legs there's no room for that movement in my legs they don't they're not gonna go like that yeah i think because i've been training jiu-jitsu 21 years my body could just bend in certain ways that like it's so natural for my body yeah well for sure it's a weird that's a weird amount of movement that you can do yeah that has to have come from i mean you don't even probably remember your first classes do you no it was i was too young to remember so you've always been doing jiu jitsu like as far as your memory goes back yeah 100 my whole life yeah that's all i know so your body has developed and matured while learning jujitsu yeah so that's why i feel like i'm so bendy and like it's made for jiu jitsu from all the
years you know you uh you had surgery fairly recently i just had my appendix removed oh jesus yeah it's out of nowhere i was training normal you know i was doing everything normal and then all of a sudden i had this sharp pain and i thought i had a stomach virus you know i was in so much pain and then i was actually with saturday and shot he's like no that's not a stomach virus that's your appendix because it was like one spot so we go to the hospital and they said if i went a few hours later i could have died like it was pretty intense so it burst apparently yeah like i had to have immediate surgery so so i'm recovering from that now do they speak english there yeah uh singapore they speak english so it's an english-speaking country so mostly speak english and then occasionally you hear people speak other languages yeah like malay and mandarin mandarin is mandarin like the third most popular is english most popular english is most popular like that's the working language of singapore so that makes it pretty easy yeah so it definitely makes it easier for me uh but yeah they speak mandarin there because a lot of chinese people move there from china and malaysia is right there too so how long do you think you're going to stay there i think i'll spend a lot of time there and vegas still to see my family you know just back and forth but why do like why there just because it's new and unique and this opportunity trusting and being around chacha really yeah to be to be around chatri and learn from him um we train like three times a week together oh wow yeah he's he trained so much and he's so awesome like he just loves learning martial arts you know so i get to spend time with him and learn from him and just experience a new culture like it's so amazing i'm eating all the food in asia too you know and what is the caliber of training partners over there yeah the training in asia is actually really high level you know um in vegas where i train
i just train with hobbyists in my garage my the last five years or six years i've been doing that you trained with hobbyists hobbyists only so meaning just people that are friends just people that do jiu jitsu as like fun like for like they get out of work and they train for fun so you haven't been going to a formal school um i would represent big teams but 100 of my training would just be with hobbyists because i like their energy better than competitors um so if you train with a competitor they have the vibe of like a nine to five job uh when i train with the hobbyist they actually want to be there because they're having fun so how i train i train more like hobbyists like my energy yeah so i prefer being in an environment like that so i surround myself with mostly hobbyists wow i would imagine there's some sort of negative to that in that you're not you're not being pressured by elite grapplers but the way that i train i'm more just teaching everyone around me to give me certain reactions that i need to work on so i'm more observing so if i'm having if i'm doing a position and i feel like something stops it i'll teach everyone i train with how to stop what i'm doing and then i have to figure out how to uh solve it again and again and again so you basically just piece that all together once you actually get into a match and when so it's like you're making you're creating like building blocks while you're training yeah and i control all the different variables and i just add different things in wow so no major gym where you go there and and that's incredible so you could easily recreate that in singapore i could train anywhere yeah exactly uh the training in singapore is the same level as if not higher than my training in vegas so
it's sufficient you know when did you start doing it that way like when did you go to just basically training on your own with hobbyists um so basically since i was like 15 16 years old i lived in florida like um i moved there when i was like 10 11 from new jersey where did you start training jiu jitsu what was the place you started at a gym called fagio's martial arts under fernando kabisa in new jersey and i trained there for six seven years and then i moved to florida and in florida i trained that american top team oh so i was with a lot of carlson gracie black belts and many people like that but basically it was me and my sister we would drill for hours on our own and we would just focus on our own training you know like i've basically been my coach since i'm like 15 years old that is crazy and uh what we would do is i would go to high school and uh before high school i'd wake up like 4 30 a.m 5 a.m drool my sister in my garage and then i would go to high school and then right after school i would go train again and when you would train again then you would go to other gyms and just train with the people at the gym too yeah and then when did you decide to start training in your garage um well i've always had mats in my garage to train with my sister right so it helps so much having a sibling that also trained you know sure so my sister tammy musumichi we would just train every day together just drilling for hours and then but this decision to train primarily in your garage even though you have access to all these gyms yeah vegas has a lot of jiu jitsu yeah so i trained out a lot of local gyms in vegas with friends that also train in my garage a gym called ftcc and methods jiu jitsu so all these people trained in my garage also local people but um we just started doing it especially during covet time but uh every night i trained in my garage in vegas and a bunch of black belts and uh friends that i built up the last five to six years come to my garage do you think there's any benefit at all for you to be coached by someone else as
well like if you found like if you came here and trained with john donahue or something like that um so i definitely get support from people you know um like heath pedego is a good friend of mine and he gives me like a lot of mental support and stuff but um that's from dave yeah yeah uh but basically i i just know um the biggest thing i learned in jiu jitsu is learning how you learn and learning how you exceed succeed and i feel like every blackboard world champion is a little different how they do well some need a structured format by an instructor other people do better in other environments for me i feel like i do the best in this style of learning you know i'm just more efficient with how i train so do you think it's that because you've been doing jiu jitsu since you're four years old you have such a deep understanding of what it takes to get good and what what you need to do what steps you need to take to improve that you really don't need anybody formulating things for you or creating structure you could do it all yourself basically you know um i feel like i'm at the point now where i could just focus on that and organize everything and obsess about all the things on my own you know and you're just self-motivated as well yeah i'm well this is my passion you know i really love jiu jitsu uh so when i'm training it's my favorite thing in the world and you supplement your jiu jitsu training you were talking we were talking about cardio where you do a lot of air dyn bike stuff a lot of air dying and running um long distance cardio i feel like it helps me a lot mentally for competition um so i train a lot with like the hobbyist and i'll do a lot of cardio um and that's pretty much it how does it uh how does the long distance cardio help you mentally so what's interesting about running an aerodyne what i've noticed is the first 10 to 15 minutes you have that voice in your head that's like you're tired stop like it fights you right and you fighting that voice in your head after 15 minutes it gets quiet like it
goes away so when you compete that voice in your head is always there so it gives you the skill of being able to shut it off when you're fighting or competing because it's jiu-jitsu right and so like when you run are you running and having specific things on your mind like are you trying to think about matches and think about competition are you just trying to breathe and keep moving so i think the biggest thing about jiu jitsu is control being able to control your opponent but also yourself so i feel like mastery of controlling yourself is what i'm trying to do with running and master your thoughts master all the different variables that i have to deal with when i compete you know so i channel that when i'm running like as if i was competing and do you incorporate any weightlifting or anything else calisthenics nothing no because um i lifted weights a little bit when i was a kid but as i got older and i got to black belt i stopped doing that because all the people i'm fighting are so strong and i didn't want to have to rely on strength with them or to overpower them so i wanted to make my jiu-jitsu where if i don't it doesn't matter the strength it matters your body positioning right and do you play i mean you you've moved around weight classes too right yeah like what are you wait what are you competing at now right now i'm competing at 135 um i fight 125 in the u.s uh because you're allowed to cut water but in the one championship they test for hydration so uh it's actually healthier so 135 in one and you but you've gone up as high as like what 155 um i did open weight in 2020 20 yeah 2020 at the euros so i fought those big guys and um it's fun fighting the heavier division sometimes just to like see like how um just it desensitizes you to your division when you fight the monsters in the heavier divisions you know so sometimes i'll do it just so then when i go back to my division i feel like superman from fighting those guys you know
do you worry at all about injuries because people are that big yeah totally that's the [ __ ] up thing about training with big people that's why i don't train with big people anymore yeah when i was younger i was forced to train with only big people and i was always injured my body was always messed up but now that i'm training with little people like my size it's like zero impact so i could train every day and i could keep studying and learning jiu-jitsu i think that's a huge reason why i could do such high volume yeah i think so too i think when people get into like real high pressure like very intense training and you have a lot of people that are very heavy that you're training with yeah that's where neck injuries and back injuries and [ __ ] starts happening and even like the energy of the people you're training with if they're there like to hurt you or are they there to like like good vibes right are they there to get better because i've trained in so many gyms as a kid where like the energy is so bad in the gym and it's a fight you know where people are stomping you in the face people are trying to like break things um everyone would be injured all the time i'll go in before training on the side of the mat praying uh god please don't let me get hurt today so many days like this well i've always found that people that are smaller like yourself generally tend to be the most technical because they have to be yeah there's a real benefit to being a smaller grappler in that if you really pay attention to the guys like the hoyler gracies or eddie bravos or these guys that you know as they start out the career smaller they're they're more technical they just kind of have to be yeah it's actually that's why also you'll see kids when they become adults they're so technical um it's one thing is experience the years they're training but also because when they're kids they're not strong right they don't have strength so then when they become adults they have the strength so they gain the technique when they didn't have strength so it's easier for someone to become more technical if
they don't have strength yeah because you'll naturally force things yes i always say that about striking too like when little kids learn striking when they learn striking early on it's so good because they're not afraid to get hit because they can't hit hard so they kind of just touch each other but they learn how to do things the proper way like and they don't muscle everything because like if you teach a big strong guy how to hit things they try to like really they try to really wind up but little kids like they'll just do this like the way you tell them to so they'll keep their hands right by their cheeks and they'll throw punches the right way whereas they don't open up to try to get like extra horsepower into it and i feel like it's the same thing with jiu jitsu techniques yeah they'll be in the right position before they try to execute as opposed to try to like force their way through something yeah i feel like there's always going to be like the natural strong guy that will not will it's very hard for someone that's just learning jiu-jitsu not to use their strength right yeah it's their ability just like a flexible guy it's hard for them not to use their flexibility yeah so any ability that you have you're going to use so i think that's why the small people get away with becoming more technical because they're forced to a hundred percent yeah it's you want to learn small man jiu jitsu you know i tell that even to big guys like when i meet big guys i'm like learn how to fight off your back even though you probably won't be on your back because you're so big but if you can just learn how to fight off your back it will 100 percent benefit your top game yeah it's interesting because i've talked to both bouche and gordon who are like two of the best um have big people most technical right and um they both say that they train mostly with small people because they want to have like the technique like the small people yeah and they don't use it like if you watch gordon roll he's not using strength at all so he's just using pure technique yeah pure technique and knowing what you can and can't get away with in certain positions yeah when you when you look at the overall scope of jiu jitsu like the
the jiu jitsu environment today i'm so impressed with the level of technique it it is like if you go back to jiu jitsu from the time the ufc entered the picture in 1993 if you go back then and you can see plenty of jiu jitsu matches you see a really good technique i mean you watch like hicks and gracie and you know he's going against higa machado like they're fun those matches are fun to watch they're very exciting but the level of jiu jitsu today across the board is extraordinary no yeah it's growing every year now and i think it has to do with how the internet and yes the instructionals like now all the moves that people are doing it's getting spread and then people figure out new things and if the growth is insane you're right like it's insane it's beautiful like i i have a folder on my phone that's just for jiu jitsu moves that i've learned like off of instagram where i have like links to like like different videos it's um it's amazing the just the depth of it it's like there's no end to it you keep thinking they're gonna run out of techniques you keep thinking like well we've figured out basically all the different ways to break a limb and to screw up your neck like we've got it all down now let's just refine it nope no it's something new there's always something new it's crazy but it is it's sort of like noises that you can make with your mouth that lead to sentences that lead to paragraphs that lead to books like there's so many different ways you could put them all together and that seems to be the same thing with jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu seems to be like a language that you learn with your body on you know how to submit people and manipulate their joints and you know and put them to sleep yeah and um i feel like especially with the way that jiu jitsu is that it will never stop growing because it's infinite possibilities yeah no i think so too where what do you see for yourself as a competitor you're 25 years old how much longer do you think you're going to be doing this like at an elite level and do you have like long-term goals
so yeah so i've won every title there is in the gui in jiu jitsu you know um so right now i'm focusing on nogi and one championship especially because now they're going to have belts and divisions and i my goal in jiu-jitsu isn't about the titles it's about helping the next generation and impacting people in the next generation you know because a title you win next year someone else will win it next year someone else is winning but our impact on people training jiu jitsu our impact on inspiring people that's my goal with jiu-jitsu you know and when did you decide that that was your goal um after i won my first black belt world i won the title and in my mind i thought i was going to be so happy winning this title you know your whole life you trained for it and then i felt nothing winning blackboard worlds really i got very depressed you know because if you make in your mind a goal like a title um you realize once you win it that it doesn't make you happy it doesn't feel anything inside of you but what fills inside of you is helping people um like anything with helping people teaching people that's why jiu-jitsu instructors are so awesome how they could um teach people and get them to train you know having an impact gives us a purpose in life you know so that's my goal with jiu jitsu to have an impact on others so you've recognized that your own individual success doesn't give you enough it doesn't give me any fulfillment wow that's wild do you think that's because you've been doing it so long that it's been just a part of you for so long that it's just maybe um i feel like it is so natural for me to compete and everything you know because it's my whole life doing it right but um for sure i feel like uh when i see someone message me like that they're training you to because of me or that i've inspired them and they enjoy it and they're doing jiu jitsu and not doing bad things you know to me that's everything that gives me a purpose to live you know are you
have you always had this like level of discipline that you have now this level of focus so when i decided i wanted to be a world champion jitsu i was like 10 11 years old wow so it's so crazy at that age uh becoming like in your mind like a professional athlete you know you um i had this uh insane instructor that um that made that disciplined me like uh his name was shark and he was like you can't eat cookies or brownies i was like 10 11 years old you'll never be a world champion if you eat this cookie uh you can date girls you can like all these things so i skipped basically being a teenager and just went to being an adult jesus so it was a lot of sacrifice you know but uh looking back at it it made me who i am today the discipline that's great but it's nice to have fun too right and that's what i'm learning as i got older totally so at 25 years old you're trying to make up for lost time yeah now i'm a teenager that's crazy so you see your future um perhaps as being a coach or running a school or something like that uh i think so you know i'm only 25 now um my body's so healthy like i never did anything bad to hurt my body so i'm very healthy so i could continue competing probably another 15 years if i wanted to but i want to help more people i want to do more seminars meet new people learn about new cultures you know that's what i really love um and yeah maybe in the future also teach people and have a gym and yeah and i love learning so i don't know where i'll end up i end up in a different continent now so who knows do you have any have you had any injuries that are you know other than the appendix that required surgery from jiu-jitsu never think nothing no wow so i've been very healthy in 21 years basically that's very lucky yeah and again i feel like it's the way i train now that i've had some feed injuries knee injuries but overall thank god nothing crazy
yeah the way you train it's very extraordinary i've never heard of anybody doing that just training with basically hobbyists like at what level these hobbyists like purple bell blue purple brown black okay but um originally they're all like blue purple belts you know but you build the program by just training with them every day you know and then as they get more skilled they give you more better and better training is this program something you wrote down like do you write your training down um not really i just know what i need to be working at the right times you know like i'm basically my own coach in that way um and i just had everyone i train with i teach them to try to beat me that's literally my training well that's a sign of a healthy ego that you do that yeah i have no ego in training um i get obsessive that i need to have an answer to everything so i need i'm very ocd so i if there's a position that i don't have an answer to i go insane so i need an answer to everything i'm doing you know so when you have a position that you have an answer to do you consult with other people ever no i'll just have okay this scenario i have an answer like this and then there's always what if and then a certain grip changes or a certain base changes and then the thing i'm doing is ruined so then now i'm like in panic mode and i have to figure out how to deal with it now right right right and then you know another thing that's really unusual about you is your diet yes you're famous you're famous for eating pasta and homemade pizza and only eating once a day every night i eat like this so how this started was um i've been cutting weight and dieting my whole life right right and you almost developed an eating disorder from always dieting and cutting weight for so many years of your life right it just naturally happens so i would binge eat i would starve you know what i mean like it was very unhealthy the way i would live how much weight were you cutting uh just at a young age cutting weight
you know i would always be cutting like five pounds 10 pounds nothing crazy but i've done crazy cuts also so you just die from those also but um all that time it just messes up your brain where you never feel like you're satisfied and you never full you know so that part of your brain that says oh you're full stop eating i stopped having from cutting weight so much right so what i started doing was intermittent fasting um so i would just not eat during the day because honestly i don't like eating before training i feel bloated when i eat so i would just eat at night but i started just eating the foods i love i'm italian so i grew up just eating pizza and pasta so i make pizza and pasta every night i have a pizza oven in my house and i roll out the dough make everything and then for dessert i'll eat a pint of acai and my weight would be lighter doing this diet than eating like no carbs and all these things so my mind i was like wait i could eat all the foods i love if i eat once a day at night you know so it was a no-brainer for me and my weight is lighter and i feel better because i'm fasting so i started doing it wow so there's no issue with performance at all that i mean given your blood sugars and everything like that when you're training for extraordinary amounts of time during the day and not eating so how i see it is i have to earn the food at night so training all day is like me working for the food at night you know right like how people used to hunt and gather for food so that's my mentality um and my best performance in world gui worlds was in december um i had my best performance ever and it was on that diet and i made 125 easy and so when you do like day of competition same thing you won't eat all day day of competition i'll change my diet and i'll eat a piece of bread and like a little honey just you need some food in your stomach to deal with the nerves and adrenaline that changes for me at least yeah um so all bread and honey huh bread honey rice
cakes just very mild and some sugar uh but nothing's too heavy and when you are getting where is your protein coming from what i ate a lot of cheese cheese is that basically all your protein basically um i eat a lot of mozzarella um a lot of parmesan a lot of pecorino romano do you put any animal products in your pizza chicken or meat or anything like that no meat no meat at all no i love seafood and meat but um when i'm training for competition i feel cleaner when i'm not eating meat interesting and your body doesn't feel like do you feel like the protein that you're getting from cheese is enough i feel the best when i'm doing this like i feel like most energy like cleaner i don't understand how but it works that's such a crazy diet for you to just eat pasta and pizza and only eat at night and then train all day mo i would most people if you tell that to they'd go what are you talking about like if you brought that to a performance coach oh they would be so ridiculous what are you doing have you talked to anybody about that or they try to talk you out of it yeah a lot of people said oh that's so catabolic right because you're breaking down your body doing it but for me it's sustainability and i could sustain eating and training and keeping a routine doing this and i love my food so i don't think i would be able to compete how i do if i ate normal have you tried different ways of eating like different different diets and different kinds of combinations of food before yeah i've done every diet before honestly no carbs high protein a lot of meat you know but none of them are sustainable for me this i don't have to change how i eat when i train right i could just eat like this and i love what i'm eating i go to bed with a full stomach you know that's i'm happy i'm always smiling when i'm eating like this most people look at you like i've seen pictures of you without your shirt on you're so ripped most people don't believe that that's possible if you're just eating peach pizza and pasta yeah well i train all day every second you know so if you're fasting for 20 24
hours and you just train every second like your body just burns all the fat on it right so you're basically eating for like one hour i guess yeah and i watch a movie and i cook and just eat wow and that's just your daily routine every day you know and i enjoy cooking pizza so after training i'll get like i'll start making the dough and so that's my routine every day and how many pizzas do you eat tonight one big pizza like like that fits on the in the pizza oven you know and about half a pound to a pound of pasta and a pint of acai i i once calculated it it was like 7 000 calories 7 000 calories and do you know how many grams of protein are involved in that i eat so much cheese that it was actually a really high amount of protein interesting i've never heard of anybody getting cheese as their primary protein source yeah but you need to be an elite athlete it's sustainability yeah it's keeping me able to train and enjoy my training and keeping me sane well i'm already insane but it's keeping me more sane how did did you read about this and decided to give it a chance or was it something that you you'd seen other friends do so i just i hated eating what happened was i started doing this because i was doing a lot of seminars and i would be traveling all day and i would never be able to eat when i was traveling then i'll eat a big meal at night and then when i started feeling was a lot of clarity when i started fasting so i stopped eating breakfast and i started feeling better training not eating before training i'll just drink caffeine so i drink caffeine during the day and i feel like that gives me the energy and i eat so much at night that in the morning i'm still full from the night before and i'm just working off the food and then by the time i'm hungry again it's nighttime and i'm ready to eat wow and so who taught you how to make pizza um my grandma taught me how to make pizza uh she passed away um like four months ago but um she taught me how to
make pizza and when you do it are you making the dough do you have like a starter like how does that work so i could make the dough but with um all the things but it takes too long i don't have patience so i just get pizza dough from like whole foods or like trader joe's and i'll start with that though but then i'm really particular with the cheeses and like i go to like three different supermarkets for like cheese basil all the different ingredients so it comes out really good damn making me hungry yeah me too i love pizza and there's something about like a good pizza that you make yourself in one of those ovens that you have it's so satisfying yeah well it's so satisfying to even did watch you know yeah and you slice it up and the melted cheese as you pick up the first slice oh my god how much more time before you get to eat um probably tonight again like it's where it's like 3 22 right now like depends on the day probably after this i'll eat like seven o'clock six o'clock so have you trained at all today not at all um no because my appendix so oh so i'm just doing a lot of cardio right now and i'm training a little bit but just very safe when can you go back to full rolling well the doctor told me like hard full rolling like middle of august beginning of august so i could start then but uh right now just lighter training just keeping your body drilling still studying but i just maintaining right and so this um one of the things i saw a video of your whole pizza setup like it seems like there's a company that you use and they they send you certain pizza dough yes what company is that um it's called kavita for olive oil they send it from italy um it's an olive oil from italy and i also have a pasta that i use and they send it from italy too so it's just way better quality what's the difference um i feel like the pasta from italy seems like it's less gluten it seems cleaner like when you eat it you don't feel as bloated um i it's just different you know the olive oil apparently they don't change the ph levels in it so in america all the olive
oils have to be like a certain ph like this is just so natural they have to be in america i think yeah because what i've noticed about american food it's more processed and every time i travel out of america i get lighter naturally just not eating the processed american food it is wild when you go to italy um because my family and i used to go to italy basically every year before covid and uh everyone's thin yeah like italians in america are so fat and that's how i eat my pizza and pasta it's almost like someone from italy you know not like american italian food right so i think that's why i'm so skinny eating like that does this company sell pizza dough as well no they don't i'm getting my pizza dough usually from like whole foods so what are they using for the dough though do you know just regular pizza dough like i don't care like i think i whole foods makes it healthier right because it's whole foods is that real no i don't think so no but um just to say that but um yeah it's just regular pizza though i use and so um you have basically been doing it this way for how long i've been doing it this way since 2019 20 the last three years wow three years of just pizza and pasta and just strangling everybody i feel like i'm better eating like this i'm happier happier makes you better in life right maybe i wonder you know i mean i used to be miserable dieting all the time yeah the dieting i think is terrible and i think that there's some real benefit to intermittent fasting and there's definitely some real benefit to giving your body some time to digest whatever food that you have i think there's a lot of people that are like packing food on top of food yeah you know there's like this constant cycle through their system where their digestive system is always processing things yeah i really enjoy intermittent fasting generally i don't like to eat before podcasts i like to get a workout in in the morning and then i don't eat until dinner that's mostly how i do it oh so you only eat once a day also pretty much but every now and then i'll have like fruit like i'll have like bananas or apples or something like
that before i work out but the only time i deviate is when i'm really hungry like there's something going on like maybe i just worked out too hard and i'll there's a um there's a snack company called carnivore snacks and they make these um rib eyes it's like a sliced rib eye that's dried but it's not like beef jerky it's got like it's soft and like chewy it's [ __ ] delicious and i'll just grab a bag of that after working out yeah okay like have some water drink that and then i want to have a meal meal until dinner yeah yeah some people they fast at night and they go to bed hungry i could never do that yeah that's not that's not enjoyable going to bed hungry is not fun like being hungry throughout the day at least you know at one point in time you're gonna eat later and i feel like when i drink caffeine like it makes me full also you know yeah definitely yeah so it definitely helps that now what about for recovery do you would you do any ice baths or saunas or like what kind of stuff do you do for recovery so i have an infrared sauna in my house and every night i'll typically go in infrared sauna and i feel like that helps my aches in my body so much um what temperature do you put it at like 140 um so i go in like 30 40 minutes and i feel so much better after like a detox almost yeah um have you ever gone into regular dry sauna like that i've got enjoy i've gone in dry saunas also i just feel like it's way faster and more impact like the intensity of it yeah but um infrared i feel like is less impact so i could stay in longer and it's less like you're suffering i wonder what's better for your body overall though because all the studies that have been done i think have been done primarily like the big ones they cite all the time have been done on a dry sauna like there's one that was done out of finland that's really fascinating where they found that four times a week 20 minutes a day at 175 degrees the people that participated in that had a 40 decrease in all-cause mortality wow so it's 40 decrease in heart attacks strokes cancer everything across the
board everything that's crazy and it's directly attributable they believe to um the release of cytokines these heat shock proteins from your body being in that intense heat environment i wonder like that intense heat environment though 175 is very different than 140. like you know the 140 the in the infrared is tolerable yeah like i do 185 oh wow yeah it's not tolerable i don't enjoy it like especially like the last 10 minutes really [ __ ] sucks like i could go in for an hour in the 140 watch a movie you know what i mean so um yeah i'm curious the benefits of what i'm doing compared to the hotter one yeah if it's like i wonder if it's like sprinting versus like a long cardio session like long cardio like base level like you know structure cardio is like very important to have like this this very strong base of cardio where you know you always are going to recover quicker like that's one of the real benefits of guys who run like six eight ten miles like a lot of mma guys are finding that out now that they they have this extra gear by putting in those long cardio runs these long cardio sessions multiple times a week as opposed to just exploding because so much of mma is anaerobic but if you build that cardio base it really like sort of strengthens the whole picture okay and i wonder if that's the case with sauna like i wonder if there's some benefit to going really hot for like 20 minutes like like i do but also some benefit to going 140 and doing like an hour and maybe just like slow like your body just has like a slow trickle of these proteins well for sure when the hotter one that you do you sweat faster right yeah so it's definitely more intense so yeah it might be like sprinting in long distance running yeah even on your nervous system right it would also build your cardio what's interesting about um the really hot sauna is it increases your red blood cell count and it has a mild effect that's akin to epo wow yeah so it increases your red blood cell count probably also helps your nervous system recover yeah it's also helps you deal with stress because it sucks so hard
you get numb well it's just you have the ability to just suffer like your self-imposed suffering is so much more difficult than most of what the world will give you because you literally can't survive it for very long the temperatures that i go into when i hit 20 degrees or 20 minutes rather at 185 degrees i'm i don't have much left you know i'm really like my my physical being is in trouble like it's it gets to that point where i'm like okay maybe i can do another 15 minutes if i really wanted to show how tough i am but when i get out of there at those 15 minutes i'm gonna collapse yeah i've done so many water cuts with epsom salt baths where like you go in you're screaming because the water is burning your skin yeah so it's like that also but it's interesting that you said it gets for distress because every time i do like an epsom salt bath i'll fight way better because the pain from the bath is way worse than the anxiety of fighting well the pain from the bath must be because of abrasions right from scratches from jiu jitsu well just the pain of like you're in such a hot water right and you're like you feel like you're burning yeah i i have a float tank have you ever done that sensory deprivation tank the sensory deprivation tank is filled with a thousand pounds of epsom salts it's you float in it is that the one with the temperature that your body is the same temperature as the water oh yeah i have it here that's so cool you should climb in it yeah so it's uh the temperature of the water is 94 degrees which is the same temperature as the surface of your skin so as you climb in there and then there's a thousand pounds of epsom salts you just float and then you close the door so you're in total silence and total darkness and just floating and it feels like you're flying because you can't feel where the water begins and the temperature and the air ends it's just it's all the same temperature yeah so it just doesn't feel like you're connected to gravity it feels like
you're just flying that's so cool it's really and it's really good for your muscles like you get out of there you feel like everything feels like relaxed because there's so much epsom salts in the water yeah i know epsom salt gets rid of aches in your body yeah it's very good for you and a lot of people use it when they cut weight too right yeah yeah it just opens your pores to like sweat more how much weight have you what's the most weight you've ever cut the most weight i ever cut was 35 pounds in like two weeks what was your walking around weight i was lighter but what happened was i got really sick from over training and i couldn't train for a week and i was eating like crap and um my weight went up to like 160. like very bloated what are you wearing right now uh right now like 138 139 oh wow so um this turn three weeks later i made 125 from 160. jesus christ man so you had to learn to not over train that's my problem like i don't my tolerance for pain is really high so i don't know to stop training i'll just keep training training training until my nervous system like gets fried and then walking you could barely do how do your parents feel about this well they're like you need to rest you need to rest you know so um i'm getting better as i get older with this right just wiser about do you use any sort of electronics like a whoop strap or anything to sort of gauge your resting heart rate yeah so i know like the soviets would do that right when you wake up like you're heart rate they could like measure it to see if you're over training yeah but um for me now it actually helps me with over training is running like the active recovery of like jogging i remember reading something that if you run at like 1 30 and you keep your heart rate at 1 30 it restores your nervous system so whenever i'm running i actually could train more than when i rest really it's like weird like so if i am tired from training if i lay down and
rest i'll actually be more beat up than if i go for a run wow that's so counterintuitive but it for some reason helps your nervous system restore faster than just laying down it kind of makes sense right because like you're forcing your body to work and you're pumping all that blood through your system but you're not really taxing it in a way that's like like exhausting it because 130 is kind of like you know one day that's like breathing at 1 30 right it's like not that big a deal it's not like you're burning out yeah that's what i've noticed like um that always makes me able to train more mm-hmm you know a lot of guys who do long i forget what they call it but it was like heart rate training where the long slow training and i was like god didn't you feel like a [ __ ] like don't you want to like push yourself and be exhausted and they were like yeah but you can't you're really just supposed to like just kind of just kind of and the thing about the sauna is when i'm in there like uh my friend burt did put a heart rate monitor on himself uh in the sauna recently i noticed that when i was using the my zones thing too is that i would get into the yellow so i would get into like the 80 max heart rate like in 140s when at the end of my sauna session so if i'm doing 185 that was i was back then i was trying this laird hamilton protocol where he was doing like in the 200s he was doing like 210 and 215 degrees so i'd crank it up to 205. i was just trying it but i was cooking my mouth like i was having a hard time like with my throat and i realized hey you [ __ ] idiot you're cooking your throat oh my god because i was in there at 205 degrees for 20 minutes it was so i'm like basically like a brisket um but it's ridiculous but when i would get out of there i just it was too much you know the impact yeah it was too much i was i was over exhausting myself well when i would do like epsom salt bats and i would cut a lot of water you want to cry but you have no water left in your body to cry
now how would you rehydrate did you use iv no uh just electrolytes um but in jiu jitsu especially in ib gtf you have to fight right after weighing in so i got so you cut the weight and then you fought dehydrated yeah oh no yeah so that just makes like your skill level has to be so good with using no energy that you could fight on your deathbed but wouldn't wouldn't it be better if you just fought at a higher weight class no i fought at higher weight class too like i won worlds at 141 and 125 yeah but um just the experience of going down to a lighter division and challenging yourself where you feel like so weak and no energy and being able to overcome that like was fascinating to me and when you did those um you had to weigh in right after competition or you have to wait right before competition how much time exactly do they give you like right before so there's three matches before you when you weigh in but if those matches go fast and people don't show up you have to fight immediately so with my luck when i did this um this one time it was 2019 i won worlds in 141 two years in a row and this year i went down a weight class and i fought 125. and i was 160 three weeks before i made 125 i had to cut my hair on my head to make the weight at the end jesus christ and i weighed in and immediately i had to fight of course right away right away so did you get a chance to guzzle some water i just jugged down some fruit drink or something and um when i was fighting the thing in my mind i was like just don't faint don't faint did you get close no i was fine i wonder if you would tap or black out quicker like if you got caught in a triangle or something like that i'm maybe less blood in your body makes sense if you have less water right if your face that's interesting yeah i never thought of that i would think that you would be like more susceptible to blacking out right you just go to sleep faster right like say if like you're fighting your way out of a triangle right yeah you think in normal normally you'll be able to fight out and this time just you have no blood to [ __ ] yeah it kind of makes sense doesn't it yeah it really does how much of an impact do you think that
has on your performance when you're losing that kind of weight um 40 30 that one tournament i was fighting like 30 percent but i still won worlds like 30 and then my last worlds i doing my diet i do now i made weight like with zero problem like i was eating pizza pasta and acai like two days before making 125. wow so uh it definitely has a significant impact because when i didn't do that it was my best performance have you had anybody else try to mimic this diet of yours so some of my friends at daisy fresh my friend george uh he lost like 20 30 pounds doing this diet also and now he's having people eating pasta in the gym at night it's just a matter of like a very small feeding window yeah consume as many calories as you want during that time and then the rest of the day you just grind out wow i would like to talk to like a legitimate nutritionist about this the science of what's happening yeah one i'd like to have like some like andrew huberman follow you around and like sort of analyze what's going on with your body while this is happening well i think another thing is cortisone um cortisol i think with um with stress when it makes it harder to lose weight like always cortisol affected me with losing weight um from not being happy what you're eating and stuff oh interesting but when i'm like this i'm happier and you don't have as much cortisol so i don't know if that's true i'm not a nutritionist but um i i've noticed these things with me well i mean what's important is what works right yeah no one knows their body better than a professional athlete so i'm sure your understanding of what works and doesn't work for for your body is pretty finely tuned yeah you're so in tune with our bodies i think it's also like a great example of how much people vary in their nutritional needs you know like there's some people that don't feel good unless they're eating a
lot of meat and then there's some people who don't feel good unless they're not eating meat and they're just eating like the way it sounds like your body is like very carb-centric yeah so what's interesting about myself when i was a kid my parents couldn't get me to eat anything except pasta pasta with butter olive oil there's a lot of kids like that some kids they were like they were like trying to give me a toy they're like if you eat this steak will give you this toy but my whole life all i ate was like pasta and pizza so what's interesting is me eating the food that i ate since i was a little kid my body absorbs it the best and i feel the best eating it so is it because i ate that for so many years as a kid that my body just knows how to deal with it kind of makes sense yeah it's interesting it's like how alcoholics can process alcohol better yeah they're homeostasis yes so when you go to a restaurant do you just order pasta always pasta pizza that's it that's a crazy diet man i don't think there's anybody that i've ever heard of that's like a legitimate professional athlete at the highest level that eats like that do you know of anybody else i really don't i don't but it works for me it does work for you but it's kind of crazy that you have the courage to try this out and to do it because a lot of like elite athletes they will essentially mimic the patterns that other elite athletes in terms of like diet recovery you know oh that guy won a gold medal in wrestling and this is what he does so i'll do that yeah totally um and i've tried all the diets like i've been on every diet but it's not sustainable for me like um where i could keep training like i am you know like i feel like i would want to quit jiu jitsu if i had to eat like like those diets because i did it too many years what have you done you've done like keto keto i've done i've done like like five meals a day like protein small amount of carbs or where you're deficient in just fat you're deficient in carbs you're deficient in protein you know i've done all of them have you done them under a nutritional supervision yes and this was like while you're trying to
cut weight yeah and i feel like a big thing is because of the eating stuff i've had since i was a kid i have a hard time with portions because of that so because i don't have to have portions with this diet i'm able to do it yeah i saw a video of you at a restaurant with a giant bowl of pasta and a jug of olive oil you're just pouring the olive oil all over the pasta but i guess you need that those fats from that olive oil too right yeah and um it's funny because i once got kicked out of a pasta restaurant and all you could eat pasta restaurant for eating too many pasta bowls come on so i go in kicked you out they told me i'm done they like so i go in uh this place was in san jose i go in it says unlimited possible so the first thing i say to the person at the front desk what's the record they're like what do you mean like how many possibles has someone ever had and they're like five so now i'm on both six and the manager comes over to me like angry and he's like you're done no more i'm like but it's unlimited possible he said your max has been you're expired wow what a stupid thing to do but then that restaurant like a month later went out of business so i might have ate them out of business i'm sure you didn't but their attitude probably ate them out of business yeah that's a shitty attitude like if you say unlimited that means unlimited exactly and you don't make someone feel bad for adhering to the boundaries that you set up especially i'm not this big fat guy i'm this small skinny guy i know that's probably what's really crazy right you're walking in there 135 pounds eating six giant bowls of pasta what a dumbass restaurant yeah all those all you can eat things are just like it's such a risky move like you you get the wrong dude in there and just crush your business yeah yeah a big fat guy goes in or someone my size i know you don't eat meat but uh i love meat too though i do love meat you ever eat at a football photo shop oh my god i love brazilian barbecue i do too it's the best yeah and that's all you can eat i mean they just keep coming as long as you can eat powers yeah if you you have those
the green on one side and the red on the other the card and when the green is up they give you all the food you want and they come by with chicken wings and you know just different cuts of beef and lamb and oh it's fantastic it's one of the best ways to eat yeah it really is no limit's the best but some people can put it away some people could just keep eating keep eating and so they have to like sort of get they have to figure out how much profit they're going to make if it's all you can eat they have to figure out like what how much can i charge this guy like you know what i mean like you have you can't you have to everyone has to get paid have everyone rather has to pay the same amount so it's like it's a risky proposition for them and it's interesting how like in those places they'll sometimes make the meat come out slow like so you'll eat a lot and then they'll disappear for a while so you get full right yeah so you like me you just don't eat it because of performance so for performance it doesn't help you yeah i feel more bloated when i'm eating meat i feel cleaner when i'm not eating as much meat that's interesting i love seafood too though yeah i feel like seafood's a little cleaner do you occasionally at least a little easier to digest you mean yes yeah do you occasionally have moments where you feel like i need some more extra protein like i'm really training extra definitely yeah if i feel like i'm like a little lightheaded or something i'll have a little more meat or seafood do you throw seafood on the pasta or some seafood on the pizza sometimes i'll make like shellfish like squid clams mussels nice you know i love shellfish that's like really sicilian that my family is so yeah mine on my grandfather's side too i i love uh seafood and one of my favorite things that sounds disgusting but one of my favorite pizzas is uh anchovies and pineapple what yes but you're eating pineapple on pizza you'll get canceled from italians i don't give a [ __ ] i ate regular pizza but i also eat pizza with anchovies and pineapple what is that like fantastic it's so good is it like grilled pineapple like in a
brazilian barbecue yeah they is it like that tasty cook it with the pineapple on it so but i it's got cheese and tomato sauce like normal right mozzarella cheese you know tomato sauce on it but also pineapple and anchovies a lot of pineapple and a lot of anchovy so it's a [ __ ] thick heavy slice yeah and it's so salty and sweet and savory and then you got the sauce and the cheese and the crust and the saltiness to all the different senses that's my favorite pizza wow i know people people say there's something wrong with me i don't care i don't care i'm accustomed to it i'm comfortable with it but yeah that's my favorite pizza pineapple and anchovy try sometimes it's a weird combo give it a shot yeah anchovy's got to be good for you a lot of protein in anchovies yeah right you don't like them no i made a face yeah yeah definitely a little salty [ __ ] i'll eat them right out of a can i bought a can of anchovies the other day ate the whole can wow i love them it's a lot of protein yeah yeah for sure so when you are um eating this way you eat whatever you want you kind of have it set up you do it all yourself so it's like it's very repeatable yeah and when do you find a difference if you go to a restaurant do you feel different when you when you vary from that if i go to like a high quality restaurant like i feel like it'll be very similar how i cook at home but like if i go to like a lower quality one like you could feel the difference like physically when i train like you could feel like less energy you feel bloated if you're not eating good quality foods with a guy like you with this incredible schedule that you have is is it seems like sustainability is like a theme with you it's like the biggest thing so it's you've got to be comfortable and happy with everything in order to be able to put these kind of numbers in 100 because if you're suffering you can't sustain it right but people would think that just training that many hours a day is suffering if you're training with a purpose you know like if you go into training jiu jitsu and you're going in as a workout i
think that it would be very hard to train like i am but if you're going in like you're solving a math problem and you're trying to figure out answers to the math problem then it becomes easy because you're just so focused on one thing you forget that you're even training well you're you're very good at breaking down the steps to uh to accomplish a submission yeah i like watching your videos that you do explain like the mikey lock or some other techniques that you that you go your go-to techniques um that sort of systematic way of analyzing things and then being able to express that to other people that seems to be very important to you to me it's so important because if we could subconsciously do something that's cool but if you could explain what you're doing like it's just so interesting to me how the body works yeah and the correlations in the body so that's what i enjoy about jiu-jitsu the science of it um sometimes i'll go to my friends that are in medical school or doctors and i'll be like why is the body when i do this this happens and like how did you figure that out but it's just because i understand how the body works and manipulating the body gives us certain positions in jiu jitsu brian you're very intimately connected to your body if you're like getting it to the point of death multiple times a day yes you know you get a rear naked choke you're kind of getting someone to the point of death yeah right there just a few steps away multiple times a day do you think that this is one of the things that i felt from martial arts myself and then i've recognized in other people too that there's something that happens when you start teaching where you get better 100 because now you're like seeing all the details you never realized yeah so you'll do a move but then when you start teaching it you'll notice oh my god wait i'm doing this detail and then now you're way more technical to move and then you evolve with the move yeah that helped me so much there was a friend of mine from my purple belt days my friend brent and we
used to always train together we always had fun sessions but i was like a little bit better than him and then he started teaching and then i had enrolled with him in like six months and then i roll with them and i was like what the [ __ ] is going on like he immediately caught me to kimura and i [ __ ] my elbow up not tapping trying to get out because i was like he doesn't catch me like this like i'm gonna get out of it so i'm like oh my god i'm in [ __ ] trouble and then but you know i couldn't do chin ups for like two months afterwards and i was like god damn you got so much better what the [ __ ] happened he's like dude it's teaching teaching just got me so much better everything just got sharper and fine like he looked the same that was the thing it's not like he got in greater shape yeah like to me he was the same guy but he wasn't the same guy like his pathways were very clear in his mind from position to position and he probably got stronger also not physically but just because he's so much more efficient with how he's doing the positions it makes you stronger right yeah his leverage i'm sure was better his understanding of the positions and also like not not holding on when he's about to get reversed and abandoning positions and reestablishing control yeah like his probably understanding of where the errors are where things could go wrong was a little bit more finely tuned yeah and that's what i love about jiu jitsu like um that's what's interesting when i stopped lifting weights and doing conditioning i actually got stronger in training because i started learning how to become more efficient with how i use my body so i'm interested then people are like wow you got stronger but i didn't get stronger i just got more i got more technical that's interesting so do you feel though that all of your muscles that you use in jiu jitsu like they get enough of a workout in doing just the various techniques that you really don't need to add anything exactly i feel like it's a full body workout right so we don't need to do extra things i
supplement it just with some light running like for my nervous system but i don't need to do anything more than that like card like air dyn running some people did you uh did you try this oh i'll try it it's a kill cliff it's got that one's got caffeine in it this one's got cbd in it caffeine's awesome you're you're a caffeine junkie i love caffeine cheers caffeine for me helps me focus more i'm sure well i think for everybody that's the whole point of it what form do you take your caffeine in green tea extract yeah like this this has green tea extract in it yeah yeah yeah so every time i drink green tea extract i feel way more focused and better that's your stuff do you drink coffee or just green tea extract coffee i don't feel the same energy from as green tea extract so i stick more to green tea and guarana obviously you like uh excuse me he gave perfect portuguese pronunciation yeah uh guanana you uh like also right from acai yeah guadalup that's what makes acai taste so good yeah well people in the north jazz yeah people in the north won't say that because they don't believe northern brazil they don't believe in guadalajara and acai really they eat it like bitter without any guarana in it what yeah it tastes horrible but that's like so bad i'm saying that to them oh because it's like it's like cranberry juice or something like that it's like not the natural one oh i see i see and then in rio sao paulo they add guadagna to it and it tastes amazing so the guarana is what makes it sweet yes really it's the sugar in it oh i didn't know that so the acai berries themselves are not that sweet it's bitter because god when i get an acai bowl like one of those health food places i'm like am i just eating the [ __ ] ice cream it's so good it's so good it just tastes like i'm eating sherbet like this can't be good for you and that's why i eat acai every day because it gets rid of my sugar craving ah so that's your dessert yeah i eat a pint of it jesus so how much caffeine is in that how much caffeine is in a pint of acai i don't even know but i eat it before sleeping and i'm able to sleep so
well you're probably so tired by the time you hit the sack it doesn't matter yeah i mean if you're training 12 hours in a day i mean even if you're just drilling but but you're probably not just drilling you're live drilling and you're rolling yeah you're doing all these different things for 12 hours during the day i just can't imagine how you do that without eating something just snacks or you never like have a snack or piece of fruit or anything no because at night i'm just so excited to eat what i get to night time and you've been doing it this way for how long okay so many years i've been training a lot like high volume but um this particular way like the last like four five years so this is the one that's the one diet the one meal a day one meal day three four years three or four years wow i guess you've got it down it's working yeah and there's no one else that other than a couple of guys over at uh daisy fresh that are trying to imitate that not that i know of um onto something he may be you might be onto something i'm wondering because like i've seen your performances and i watch you eat and first of all it there's i think there is something to the fact that you're enjoying your food so much enjoyment so important for me yeah yeah if i was not enjoying my food i'm miserable and then i'm training pissed off you know then you're just angry all day well you also enjoy training right so your your life is filled with things you enjoy that's very fortunate yes i mean that's the like if you didn't care about jiu jitsu those 12 hours would be horrible because you would just be doing something you don't give a [ __ ] about and then waiting to eat pizza yeah but you're enjoying what you're doing because you love jiu jitsu and then you're enjoying your food yeah exactly enjoying is we only live once right so we have to enjoy what we're doing what's the least enjoyable part of your life um when i'm doing this lifestyle i really just enjoy everything everything competing i hate sometimes um why do you
hate competing i'm a very introvert person so fighting in front of people people watching me just talking the random people i get anxiety right so but i also love it because i hate it so really i love pushing myself to do things that make me uncomfortable so that's why i love competing but i hate at the same time love hate do you love the challenge of it or do you love the accomplishments do you love the success so what i love about competing is valid um that i'm able to make the positions i'm doing valid so my goal when i compete is to do a move or a position that i'm working and if i could hit that move or position then i feel like it's a valid move because i can do it in training but i don't count it unless i do it in the top level so like say if you have like the marcelo cohen fight yeah so if you see if you have a match like that do you go into that match saying i want to get this guy in a mounted triangle yes really always i have a goal that i want to do a move and um that's what i guess because i've been competing so many years that's the last the thing that satisfies me now is hitting a thing that i'm working in the tournament it like validates it and what if you get like you're in a match and it's like very close like it's like neck and neck and you see some opportunities for something else other than this move that you set out to do oh totally i'll then do the other moves but i'll be upset that i couldn't do the move i want but then i'll take the other move you know um but yeah like with imminari what did you go into that match wanting to do because he's a leglock fanatic yes and a master of leg locks so do you think i'd like to leglock in minari my mindset going into the match was i wanted to give him my leg and then attack his back or pass his guard off of that i knew that he could do some damage in that spot but i was so comfortable in those exchanges that i knew i could and eventually i passed his guard off of him attacking my leg well he was attacking your ankles i was getting nervous yeah because it looked pretty strong it's really good it was [ __ ] tight
but you have crazy flexible ankles yeah so i knew that he wouldn't have enough leverage to finish my foot so i knew that i could slowly work to take the back how did you know he wasn't gonna have enough leverage just because of the fulcrum you have in nokia to finish a straight footlock his fulcrum was so small and um i was able based on the position or just in general based on the position that he was doing um his fulcrum was very low and i controlled his hips in a way that he couldn't bridge enough to finish me so i knew this going in that i could stop him from finishing me and i could slowly work to pass his guard and then take the back does it also help the fact that your ankles are so flexible that you have like a little bit of extra give that other people don't have i feel like because the straight ankle lock is one of my best positions um i won blackberry world's finals in 12 seconds with it oh so that's like one of my best moves so i'm really knowledgeable in the straight footlock so him doing the position on me like i know all the ins and outs of it and what makes it hard to finish when you tap a guy like iminari what is that like like for a guy like you who was probably watching him compete when you were a little boy uh so when i after like right immediately after like the match i really said to him you're such a legend it was such an honor to fight with you like i felt his powers like when i just started like rolling with him you know so it was incredible well he's responsible for such a revolution in in leg locks in mma uh outside of the donahue death squad and dean lister and all those people that are responsible for bringing leg locks into jiu jitsu and making him such a primary part of people's attacks if you go and you watch imminari in the early days like immanuel he was tapping everybody george gergel he tapped him [ __ ] his leg up with the with a heel hook that imminari roll i mean he's literally named after like a primary technique for entering into leglock positions yeah now even in high school wrestling people are doing imminari roles i saw that yeah it's wild it's crazy so he's having such an impact
on this generation from his which is my goal to eventually have an impact on the next generation well i think you opened up a lot of people's eyes with that mikey lock i guarantee you that i mean i'm sure you're gonna have more to come but that one alone a lot of people are examining that and like holy [ __ ] this is very legit yeah um but he did his role in jiu-jitsu he had an impact on my generation you know so he's such a legend props in minori are you lined up to compete against someone else and like once you beat a guy like iminari is there like pressure to like it's that's the top of the food chain such a legend yeah especially with mma and jiu-jitsu and especially in asia like iminari is like enormously popular so i know that in the end of the year i'm probably having a match with mighty mouse yes wow interesting props to mighty mouse no he's the true martial artist doing all the disciplines muay thai mma jiu-jitsu how about the fact that he fought rod tang in that mixed match so he he goes one round with a muay thai and then one round of mma rules takes him down and strangles him insane but he was holding his own and and muay thai or at least enough defensively to not get [ __ ] up because a lot of people thought like man how is he going to get through that first round with raw tank because raw tank is going to know that it's going to go to sacramento to be mma but the first round he can't take him down he's going to go full out no yeah it's horrifying fighting rating muay thai but isn't that fascinating that one is interested in doing something like that i really wish the ufc would take chances like that and have those kind of matches where you have a mixed match where you have one round mma one round full uh muay thai rules one round back to mma like to do it that way is amazing well what it's doing is it brings the muay thai audience and the mma audience together and it like shows two martial arts and i feel like one championship really does that so well and they just are joining amazon prime usa now so then americans will be able to start watching and they'll be able to
see these macs so it'll be streamed on amazon prime right yes and when does that start that starts uh that starts september 30th my first my fight for the belt so by september 30th you're gonna be good to go with your your appendix issue and all that jazz well hopefully it seems that way uh right now but um because the doc i could start training hard again like mid-august so that's enough time for you yeah i'll be fine because i'm staying in shape right you know um i right out of the hospital i ran like 10 miles the next i wasn't supposed to the doctor was like you could lightly walk and jog and that turned wild that's hilarious but it doesn't seem like i injured myself so congratulations thank you so who are you uh going against in september um i think i'm competing with clebur souza his name is he's a high level person from brazil okay he's gonna be a great match nice and so this is for the one championship uh jiu jitsu bell the first belt in one championship history in jiu-jitsu and how many belts are they gonna have how many weight glasses for jiu-jitsu it's gonna be the same as muay thai kickboxing and mma they want it so they're fly away yeah interesting so jiu jitsu is going to be like that now and it's the biggest platform ever you know yeah well i saw they did that match with uh gary tonin and was it and he caught him in a darts choke damn those kids those twins are [ __ ] amazing amazing amazing they're so talented and they're so young good they are twins right yeah they're twins yeah they're so [ __ ] talented yeah they're so uh aggressive too like the way they attack attack attack it's like their style is so fan friendly yeah well it's like how i see it is we're a part of this generation that's spreading jiu jitsu to a new platform right so it's we have a responsibility to make our matches exciting you know so the guys that are fighting not submitting or finishing like i feel like um who's gonna want to watch that that doesn't know jiu-jitsu right it's so boring so one championship the format is uh the winner is whoever has the most submission catches and
and real submissions like legit submissions so it forces you that if you want to win the match you have to be going for the finish right and that's what's going to make people that don't know what jiu jitsu is like muay thai kickboxing able to appreciate gg2 you know and then if you stalling you got a yellow card and now you're losing money from your fight like your salary that you're getting paid to fight you start losing a percentage of it as you get yellow cards oh so they do yellow cards in one yes have they always done yellow cards in one i'm not sure but now they do that was one of the more controversial yet interesting aspects of pride the fact that they did that yeah the old prizes the old pride when they gave people yellow cards you know they i think they took away ten percent of your purse every time they did that it gives you an incentive that you have to fight you're there to perform right and yeah the only way jiu jitsu will get to this platform and stay here is if we're finishing matches and we're making it exciting right like i remember with my match with minari like muay thai people kickboxing people that don't even know jiu-jitsu were able to watch it and like they they thought it was cool so to me i did my job and the routers are doing that also and gordon will do that like everyone that fights on the one championship platform we have that responsibility win or lose you have to fight well when you look at the rotolo brothers when you look at gary tonin and you and gordon one thing that you guys all have in common is you are very attack based styles and you take chances and you re you go for the finish the problem with jiu jitsu in tournament format form is when there's points involved for takedowns points involved for passing and points involved for just positions there's a lot of people that get really good at positional control but they don't get good at submissions and they win world championships so they don't submit anybody well i think it has to do with the rule set and the the incentive to submit someone is not that high in those formats like if it's to submit someone is the only way you win right like whoever has the most submission catches it forces you you have to go finish the fight yeah yeah that and i think that's really what
jiu-jitsu is all about jiu-jitsu is all about submissions it's not about like passing guard and holding side control like that doesn't mean anything so if you don't do anything that doesn't mean anything totally i agree now when you think about the future of jiu jitsu do you think that like this kind of one fc format thing is where it's gonna go to where you're gonna see like larger crowds and then and integrated into like mma cards like this i really think that this is the future jiu-jitsu it's going to be like how ufc um all the major mma uh organizations it's going to be that with jiu-jitsu athletes so jiu jitsu athletes will be able to make a living just competing at the biggest stage endorsements everything is going to grow so much like this you know it certainly has potential right because we see how much better it is now like uh i started training in 96 and there was tournaments and everything like that when i was born yeah well you're a little baby i was born in 1996 perfect so there was no um professional option really as like a professional jiu jitsu fighter there's no way anybody could actually count on paying their bills and no one no way anybody could pump become like actually famous like gordon like it's kind of crazy yeah it's so crazy you know and um all my old jiu jitsu friends all had to go to mma back in the day because there was no money in jiu-jitsu right so they had to go to mma now it's like do you have to go to mma not really right do you uh spend time working on wrestling do you spend time working on takedowns or judo or anything like that so when i was a kid i did a lot of wrestling um i actually got second place in florida sea horse wrestling tournament when i was a kid so i love wrestling but um when i started training in the gym with just all these big guys like i felt like i was gonna get hurt wrestling these guys because they would just throw me right so i started becoming a guard player just training with so many big people i got forced to be a guard player right you know but i do appreciate and love wrestling and i am learning it actively still well the one thing about the guard for
especially when you're dealing with like wrestlers is like they they will willingly go into that position like it's not a position that people avoid yeah like if you pull guard guys will get on top of you yeah and then if you are accustomed to that and that's where your game starts like that's where you go you know when you see guys like uh jeremiah vance do you know jeremiah vance he's one of the 10th planet guys that has this [ __ ] wicked guard okay his guard is red he's like you know there's guys where you roll with them and their guard is so scary yeah so many attacks yeah it's just so different than everybody else's and other guys you roll with their god is basically a good time for you to take a break yeah you could like hang on just like as long as you're like defensively responsible you're okay but jeremiah is terrifying from his back and that's always very interesting to me to see guys who have this one position down to just such a science well such an efficient position you know especially in competing uh competing jiu jitsu obviously in a self-defense situation um our knowledge of wrestling we need knowledge of wrestling to take someone down and someone that does no combat experience that's in a fist fight on a street we could all take down that do you get too right right so but in competition it's more efficient to be on bottom in terms of that i don't have to take someone down and then progress right you could just sit down and immediately start attacking the person in submissions yeah so i feel like if i take someone down i have to do one extra step but if i'm already in my guard i could already start attacking submissions so it i could get to the point yes it's funny that there's like a negative stigma or stereotype about guard pulling yeah that's weird it's very weird like um they're like oh if there were punches thrown but again if there were punches thrown in a street fight the person has no experience in fighting right like we would kill the person yeah we would be able to take them down and like all of our knowledge and jitsu we would all be able to take them down there's something to be said for the fact that you are vulnerable to strikes in certain
positions and that one of the things that's really interesting that has kind of kind of emerged recently is combat jiu jitsu yeah and you see that from from eddie bravo's uh invention like what happens with palm strikes and open slaps like a lot of guys are getting [ __ ] up i see someone get knocked out even yeah props eddie bro he's awesome it's a great idea right isn't it yeah it's like an in-between mma and jiu-jitsu yeah and it's also in my eyes it's sort of like a proving ground for technical positions because there are some positions where someone really could just punch you in the face because you're committing two arms to one leg and you're struggling to try to secure it and as you're struggling you're kind of turning towards them and you're too close they could just pummel you in the face and now we're seeing that like oh yeah this is probably not realistic this is not sound yeah and i feel like it's a whole other element and variable that we don't think about in gta 2. uh that there's punches like oh if i'm holding here boom right and people are forced to think about those things when they actually do mma but this is like a really interesting sort of a middle ground i think for someone transitioning the mma it's actually a great format because it teaches you okay if i'm doing this i'm gonna get hit in the face yeah and it's really popular yeah and for viewers it's way more exciting oh yeah right very exciting yeah it's just fun um what do you do outside of jiu jitsu like what is fun for mikey musamechi i love uh hiking i love going on hikes um in vegas i go to this place called gold strike it's like the best hike you were telling me about this this is nuts like tell me the story about your covid experience there so i had covid in january again i've had it a few times now and when i had coven in january i lost this my taste and smell so i was doing sauna i was doing many things nothing was bringing it back and i was trying to eat pizza and i couldn't taste the pizza like it was a hard time for me that's when life got really hard so bland cardboard pizza yeah and like i i felt like i knew what it tasted like
but i couldn't taste it wow so i go hiking in gold strike and i was out for like three hours and i went hiking a long hike and i come back from this hike and all of a sudden my taste and smell came back after doing this hike i don't know the science to that maybe someone listening to this will be able to explain that time you've done other hikes where there's the during the same time where you know no sense this is your first hike my first hike but i was training with another friend that had kovit in my garage we both had it so we just stayed together and just trained we were doing sauna like sauna and nothing my my taste and smell were gone but were you when were you still positive yes 100 i was still sick with kovitt so do you think you guys were giving each other covet back and forth like you're about to recover and then you give it to each other again i don't know we got over that time you know i wonder if you both had different strains of covid maybe like combining strains to some [ __ ] super virus and oh my god in my garage in your garage you're gonna laboratory because it's it it's interesting that if that was in january is that when you said you got yes that should have been the omicron strain i believe yes which is not necessarily known for taste and smell that's usually the delta or the original i wonder if you guys had another one another one okay yeah i don't know all i know is i tested positive and um when i did that hike in gold strike i came back and my taste and smell came back to me so it was like the best thing ever but you were saying that that area is very unusual like the energy of it like um it's next to the hoover dam so the energy from the rocks like it like goes through you if that makes sense like you just feel the energy from the place just from all the water flowing and yeah so i felt like um it just cleansed me i don't know what happened but maybe the fresh air but after that hike i felt so much better so maybe it was coincidence but maybe there's something to being yeah i mean maybe like there's real science to being
in nature and that being in nature is good for for human bodies no more vaccines just everyone go to gold strikes can you imagine well there's no real protocol for restoring your smell and your taste after you've had covert that i'm aware of yeah i've heard uh alpha lipoic acid that was huberman said that alpha lipoic acid has some positive benefits and um some people have said that nad drips or they've done iv drips if nad that's restored their their sense of taste and smell but it's not like there's like a medical procedure or medical protocol that you could follow yeah i don't really know but um i all i know is that helped me and um covet sucks yeah well it sounds like it sucked for you i got lucky i i got on the right meds monocle antibodies and iv vitamins and i was better in a couple days i had delta yeah well i had it in september that was the worst one i had and in september like i run six i would run six miles every day during this time when i had coveted i couldn't walk a mile because my lungs my muscles all of my body felt like it was deteriorating for many months i felt like do you think you ignored it when it first started coming on you kept training maybe see that's the thing i'm at the reason why i'm asking this is the people that i know that are young and healthy that wind up getting covered really bad they tried to keep working out like hamza hamza chemiev he's a ufc top contender he had kovit very very bad yeah but one of the things that he did was he wouldn't stop training so he got coveted and he kept training and then he was supposed to recover and rest and relax back to the gym keep training spitting up blood coughing out blood yeah and he wound up getting hospitalized on more than one occasion crazy just too tough just too tough and not being smart about it not taking the time off and letting your body recover so i wonder because you got it so bad it seems so crazy because you're so healthy and all you do is basically work your body out and exercise yeah and um like you said like um not resting like in our minds we always are pushing we're always pushing so our tolerance the pain is a lot higher i
guess as athletes yeah so we think okay we're okay we're just under the weather let's keep training right that's what i'm saying because like with you you're also i mean also another guy that that happened to was cody garbrandt in the ufc he did the exact same thing he got coveted he just kept training kept training and he didn't even know he had coveted until he went to mike tyson's uh hot boxing show so he was going to be a guest on mike tyson's show and they swabbed him they said hey man you got [ __ ] covet and he's like oh that's what's been going on for the past month so the like for more than a month he had coveted and he kept training and his body just kept it in and he was just exhausted all the time yeah so tough though he kept training and that's probably you because you're so used to doing it you're so used to first of all talk about competing after you dehydrate the [ __ ] out of yourself and competing at 30 so you're used to that like the mental toughness involved in just being able to grind through and then you think about this wacky diet you have where you're only eating at night so like you're going all day long training with nothing in your stomach you're probably tired you're probably beaten up so an extra level of beating up to you is probably like you weren't even noticing it yeah like you just think okay i just have to keep pushing yeah totally and so when did you know that you had it i knew i had it when i couldn't walk and i couldn't lift things and my body was just so messed up you know and had you been training that whole time up till that point yeah yeah that's probably you probably killed yourself yeah and then that was it oh my god so it seems like your but your life is so dominated by jiu jitsu yeah it's like your whole life right now at this time in my life it is you know um it's my passion and i'm trying to have in like live my passion to the fullest i have a gift i feel like god gave me this gift and i want to use the gift he gave me and now other than like learning languages and hiking and stuff like that do you have any other hobbies do i don't even know how you would have time for them well i love climbing also indoor climbing is so much
fun that's got to be good for jiu jitsu right that's the most similar thing i've felt to jiu jitsu and vegas is like the mecca besides colorado and america for climbing yeah alex honold lives there yeah so i would climb a lot for fun hiking climbing physical things um i love studying languages um i love just learning in general anything i can learn i really enjoy how do you have the time to even learn things i don't like but if i have a like a second free like i'll read things like i just enjoy learning and you know when you're competing at such a high level have you ever uh done any um mental training have you worked with a sports psychologist or have you read anything about sports psychology um i've read some things about law of attraction and things like that but i've always just tried to work hard on just uh embracing the things you know um i once worked with a guy named eric parker and he explained some of the feelings were competing to me when i was a kid was he a sports psychologist not a sports psychologist just a coach yeah just a coach and a friend and mentor and um that helped me a lot but besides that nothing really so it's just a lifetime of competition and you're accustomed to it and you've devised your own strategies to mitigate the issues yeah so um in my mind like i told you before anytime i feel discomfort i have to do it so i had this healthy part of me i don't know if it's healthy but it's crazy anytime i felt like um i didn't want to do that i had to do it you know so with competing i always felt this push and it's not natural for me to compete in front of people like i said like i'm really introvert but because of that i want to do it and i also represent a different part of jiu jitsu i feel like a lot of the people in jitsu are big like alpha buff guys you know like i am kind of like a like a nerd like you wouldn't think that i would be a jiu jitsu person and i feel like um i show people that you don't have to be like a tough guy like a big tough guy yeah i always like to talk about that the nerd
assassins yeah because there's so many of them yeah you know and i think it's really unique like uh gabe tuttle the guy who is the uh head instructor the tenth planet yeah he's so technical and so smart and if you saw him you just think he's a regular guy but he's a [ __ ] stone cold killer totally he's a small guy and just like really smart and really understands jiu jitsu and like yourself is just enamored with it and loves it yeah like um that image of jiu jitsu that people think you have to be a fighter this and that yeah it's not really that way you know and that's what's so beautiful about it it is what it's beautiful about it is that there's so many levels of complexity and that when you see a guy like yourself that is at this very very high level in world class competition you see these levels of complexity playing out in terms of offense and defense and to someone like myself that's been doing jiu jitsu forever it's it's so thrilling i really really love it who's number one when they do that in austin i'm in my glory i love it because they get to sit down there and and watch people like yourself and gordon ryan and the rotolo brothers and all these incredible competitors and it's like it's so high level and when they have it in that format i really enjoy that format that who's number one format is great yeah and uh something interesting you said about um like strength and size in jitsu um i think it's interesting how many of the world champions they all train differently and um you don't have to have like a high iq you could have a low iq but then you have to be more athletic like there's a certain box that you use to your advantage right so like some one person could just be physically really strong by lifting a lot of weight and then they use that another person can be a freak athlete yep and not really that smart and they could use that another person could be a higher iq not really athletic at all and then they could use that so i feel like every so it's not a one size fits all for jitsu right and i feel like that's why people are like oh how could you train that way how could you train that way it's because everyone's different and embracing your strength is what makes
the top people the top people do the top do you get together with any of the other top people and compare like how you handle training and how you handle you know learning and deciphering certain positions well just from training 21 years i've been able to observe all like many of the top people and how they train and from that gave me ideas how they trained you know and like i said i've noticed all of them trained a little differently yeah none of them exactly the same so that shows you how everyone is individual in jiu jitsu and they have to learn differently do you know anybody that's on your level that trains like you where you basically are in charge of your own training and you devise your own strategies for dealing with various problems i think hodge gracie does he i think that when he lives he lives in london um the uk right and i think that he like is known for just training with lower belts and he made his own training right and isn't it crazy that that's when he reached his peak yeah training with lower belts when when he was at it like eddie bravo used to tell me that when i was first starting out he said just train with blue belts yeah he goes just strangle blue belts all day long i go really he goes yeah it's like live drilling but this might really stop you from doing it because like if you're rolling with a black belt he's going to have an answer for all the things you're doing and you won't really be able to practice any offense you're just going to be defending yourself all the time but if you roll with the blue belt you'll be able to just cut through all this stuff and just keep tapping them over and over again and for them it's good because they get to understand like hey this is what happens when you roll with a black belt yeah and for you it's great because you get to sharpen your moves in a much better way and he's right 100 that is the best way to get better yeah totally um you have live resistance it's like live resistance drilling and you slowly could build your game but also helping them get better at the same time yeah and making the room everyone improve in the room well it's uh yeah it's very important even like with this idea of like rolling with uh lower class
belts the lower belts where they don't have the skill to compete with you it's very important for them to know that they're people out there that can do that to them because i remember the first time that happened to me when i first started doing jiu jitsu it was super delusional and i was like i'm a good athlete i'm [ __ ] strong i'll be fine and i roll with this guy who's my size who just manhandled me he just did whatever he wanted to me tap me armbard me some purple belt guy and i remember leaving class going wow i didn't know that that was possible like that it would be so easy for someone to just roll over me just stomp me into the dirt and then i realized like oh i could get to where he's at because it's not he didn't have like crazy physical attributes he wasn't bigger than me or stronger than me we were kind of the same size so it was a real wake-up call he got to feel his level yes i get to feel his level and i also get to realize that he's only a purple belt like his level was not nearly like black belt level which is even more intriguing to me and it got me obsessed with jiu jitsu that one ass kicking early on when i was a wipeout just like like a little light bulb went off my head i was like oh my god like this is a wild sport like the levels because in striking like i feel like so much in striking once you know the technique so much of it is timing and movement and so much of it is if you're if you have a really good athlete with like natural power they have certain advantages there was no advantages to be had in jiu-jitsu like all of it is like you didn't know what the [ __ ] you were doing and some guy's just gonna come along and do whatever he wants to you but it's i think it's important for the beginner just to know that that's down the road 100 they have to feel that level and it inspires them like okay one day i could be like this yes one day yeah yeah so you don't know how much longer you're going to keep doing this do you think you're going to keep doing this like another 10 years do you have a goal of when to stop training competing it's my lifestyle right now so
right now this is my path in life so i'm competing i have no idea so no safety net just keep going no see well at any point i could go to law school i could go to i could in the future like i but right now right now jiu jitsu is it do you think that's what you'll do when you retire from competition i don't think so i think i want to just do jiu-jitsu being a lawyer is going to be hard that's boring yeah yeah with a bunch of cases you don't give a [ __ ] about i think that being an instructor that's what's so cool about youtube the amount of people you could bring to to and help make their days better you know like if they're having a hard day or yeah jiu-jitsu is a place for them to go instead of doing something negative right so i feel like instructors really deserve recognition for that oh i think so too and i think jiu jitsu gyms schools and academies they become like a central place where people feel home they feel comforted they feel like they're with like-minded people and comrades and people they train with and you know it's like very much like a family totally and um you could train your whole life so there's people training that like you'll see on the computer there's people training like 80 years old yeah like so you could do this your whole life so do you know uh dave mustaine from megadeth no you know that guys yeah he's like uh he's he's training in jiu jitsu he started when he was 58 years old wow apparently he has a black bone karate black belt in taekwondo and now i think he's a purple or a brown belt in jiu jitsu crazy i'm like [ __ ] yeah dude and then there's maynard keenan from tulle he's a brown belt in jiu jitsu very close to getting a black belt he's working his way there so it's exciting when people like they do it later in life and you know they get obsessed with it and it's yeah there's never a time that you can't do jiu jitsu right no it's beautiful it's a beautiful heart and you represent it very well my friend thank you sir you really do it's very it's fun to see you out there and it's very exciting and i know a lot of people that
don't like my friend brian simpson who knows who you are who doesn't have [ __ ] to do with jiu jitsu he's not training at all but he's seen a bunch of your videos online and he gets gets excited about it that's so cool it's cool but that's one of the cool things about youtube today and social media is that you can have like you can have a real fan base that has zero training they're not training at all they just enjoy watching you compete and get things done it's fun yeah and um then when they watch they'll start doing jiu jitsu and then we could get more and more people in it you know that's why i'm so blessed for shatri with one championship for what he's doing to jiu-jitsu and um that's why i'm in singapore right now like i want to be a part of that growth that's [ __ ] cool man so uh tell everybody how to find you on social media yes what is uh your instagram is mikey musamechi yes mikey moussa please m-i-k-e-y and then m-u-s-u-m-e-c-i uh that's my instagram page um it's a lot of pizza and pasta on the page besides youtube do you use uh facebook at all yeah i um i have a facebook page also but primarily instagram and twitter at all no good for you yeah yeah and uh so the who's number one match will be september what uh my one championship oh i'm sorry yes one championship that will be september 30th and i'll be fighting for the belt are you doing any more who's number one matches are you just not right now one championship right now one championship because i'm living in singapore right so you do that you that's september fighting for the belt and then you said somewhere around the end of the year maybe the mighty mouse mount yes and also for one championship there's just so many interesting things going on right now so i'm so excited that's awesome i'm excited too i'm a fan and uh it was really cool to have you in here and uh talk about this man thank you it was an honor to be on your show sir thank you so much my pleasure honored to have you thank you very much thank you all right that's it bye thank you everybody [Music]
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