Mark Kerr
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
And that's one of those where that is.
That's like one of those things where it's like you can't teach it.
You can't teach that stuff.
So Benny, from the beginning, said the only way we're going to be able to do this is have that authenticity to the point where I sent them
So realizing, like, watching it going, Canelo has such a bully style.
He's going to bang with you.
And watching Canelo, or Crawford, just box.
Like, I watched the whole thing.
You know, one of those rare, like that's history, obviously, right?
Watching somebody do, you shouldn't be able to do that.
You shouldn't be able to fight at that weight for the first time ever.
Undisputed greatest of all time.
It is beyond, like my favorite, an outlier.
You're beyond an outlier.
You're something, you're an anomaly.
One of those where you shouldn't be able to do that by any account.
37, my body was so wrecked.
The Russians, oh, they're manufactured.
Biologically manufactured.
He totally looked like a Russian experiment in that movie.
watches, rings, necklaces, posters, everything I could find picture-wise, everything to their props and production.
I was on a VersaClimber two days ago.
I do an Aerodyne, VersaClimber, a rower, and then a skier.
All the things that suck.
But it's one of those where I'm like, you know what?
i don't have to do it for anything other than the challenge of just doing it yeah you know i think everybody needs a little bit of a challenge and just getting over the challenge of doing like i'm doing 45 minutes on this elliptical machine period that's it yeah that's good for you oh it's huge yeah it's huge it's giant because it's just like when i trained it come small wins right i just need to win it's like some days i just need a win
You know, I just need a win.
Being nice to my wife, you know, being nice to, you know, just whatever it is.
I just need something that day.
You know, it's like, fuck, I'm going to go to the gym.
I'm going to get on a fucking thing that I hate and I'm going to fucking do it for 45 minutes.
And I'm, and that's a win.
And that's – for me, that's the link to get to where I am today is that I didn't understand how huge those components were.
And they reproduced everything.
Because when you're competing and stuff, it's easy because every day you need to get wins.
And you're stacking them, right?
I need every day – I need a good training day.
I need a good training day.
And then you get to regular life.
Yeah, what's my win letting somebody in on traffic?
And you're supposed to go to normal life now?
So this is, again, we're fucking this idea of like...
Of like, I didn't understand how much of myself was tied up in it and how much I needed to go.
So Joe, I mean, like when I went up to Vancouver,
It's what I did, not who I am.
And understanding like this, who I am has a lot longer career than this fighter.
It's, it's, it's understanding who I like really getting into the fact that, you know, I'm much more than just a fighter.
You know, and understanding like, okay, what is that?
You know, I'm a compassionate person.
You know, I try to be kind in understanding the people around me.
I try to bring, I call it emotional sobriety, right?
Like if I'm emotionally honest with the people in my life, everybody else fits in.
Like, and walked into some of these sets, like, literally going, holy fucking shit, man.
If I'm emotionally dishonest, people get fucked up.
My environment gets all fucked up, right?
So it's understanding these aspects about my life going, oh, God, man, I need to make these the important parts of where I'm building and what I'm building in my life.
Some days I'm like, fuck this, man.
And other days I'm like, that was just a day.
Well, in my Hall of Fame speech, I call it, you know, like when I was first getting sober, it was like I just I would try to get through a minute.
I just need to make it through this minute.
And I just need to make it through this next minute.
I just need to get through this next.
Some of them are fucking hard because I just wanted to fuck this because I'm so uncomfortable.
you know and i get through that minute i go i just need to make it through this hour i need to just make it through this day and then it'd be this week you know and then all of a sudden it's like a month goes by but i'd still have to go back i just need to get through this minute right you know like it like so like it's just it's just how i'm built you know like this this just self that just is so restless inside you know it's like you know amazing
Like, you'd walk into a room, and there would be from one corner all the way to the other on the wall just pictures of me and my house and my this and this outfit and this and these in my house and this.
I think it was accelerated by fighting.
You know, a lot of it just, you know, I'm a competitor.
Being a competitor allowed me to fight, but fighting was like hurting another human being to the level that I had to hurt them.
That was a whole other experience.
You know, it's like I could wrestle, I can compete, I can do grappling, but to physically beat, I had to flip a switch and turn into this other person that I'm like, fuck, I'm glad I know he's there.
But it's like, that's not, that's not me.
You know, it's just this weird dichotomy or this weird... That nobody ever really gets to experience except for someone like you.
That's... I mean, that's... You know, I understand why there's, you know, a lot of the veterans and what they go through.
It's like that's... Normally, it's not...
How you're built as a human being.
Because it's just one where it's like it's not how I'm built.
You know, I have a lot more compassion for other human beings.
But, you know, I was glad to know that if I got put in a fucking room with another dude, I was coming out, motherfucker.
That was a good thing to know.
It's a good thing to know, right?
It's a good thing to know.
And then production saying, okay, was this accurate?
Cause, cause that was, you know what?
Like, if people understood, like, that time period, like, I got sober, I fought Ensign, and then I went and did Abu Dhabi, and I won my weight class, won the all-around, which was a big deal for me.
At the time, it was a huge deal.
And then if I would have won that championship...
How did this – it was this –
if I would have won the Pride Grand Prix, it would have been mic drop.
I could have walked away and it could have been a Khabib moment where it's like, oh, I wonder how good he, fuck, I wonder how good he could have been.
You know, it would have been a complete fucking mic drop, right?
but it's just at that moment i i knew that something had changed in me that i didn't didn't have that thing in me that i needed to do it because you need a thing in you to do that you do and that's what we're talking about like a gear you need a different gear you need a different component to get to that level um and if you if you don't have it it's like you know say in the nfl if you're thinking about retirement you shouldn't be playing the game
was this unbelievable painstaking they rebuilt my life 25 years ago so when dj got into carrot got into me he actually was that was he was me wow yeah
Because, I mean, just I had to I had to just get to a place which is just, you know, just a place that I just didn't like being.
Yeah, and that's the – I answer that question for myself, right?
And it's one where it's like, okay –
You know, and to get for me to get there was was so not difficult, but like I would watch film of me walking out and I couldn't even recognize myself.
Like my facial expression, how I walked, how I carried myself.
I look at it and go, well, it doesn't even look like me.
like transforming like into a completely different person and it's understanding like like compartmentalizing everything like no emotions no nothing singularly focused to one thing and that thing was i'm gonna impose my will on you till i fucking take yours that's it
And for me, it just was a darker place for me to go.
I mean, it's just one where... It's a nutty requirement of someone.
Because it's fucking... You talk about vulnerable, like vulnerable, like fucking bearing your soul.
Because you get to a place of exhaustion.
You know, you're showing everybody you're in there.
You weren't strong enough to train to the capacity you need to train to, to fight.
He's beating the fuck out of you.
And you got fucking hot pants on.
To add a little fucking insult, right?
Got fucking hot pants on you beating the fuck so I mean there's that whole thing It's it's very fucking vulnerable to fight because there's it's just it's just Very like the loneliest place of two loneliest places in the world is walking into the ring and after the fights over mmm The two loneliest places I've ever been in my entire life are those two places Because there's no help when you're walking into the ring.
It's just fucking you and you know that and after the fight It's just you
And you have to live with whatever experience you just had, win, lose, or draw.
You know, times I won, I felt empty because it felt like I needed to go do something again.
It felt like I needed to go achieve something again.
Like everything was so focused on this thing.
Once this thing's over, I need another thing.
I need to go chase that thing.
Like for me, it was this never ending because I was trying to be enough.
I was just trying to be enough, and I could never get there.
Because I know it doesn't only apply to fighters.
I know it's actors, and I know it's artists.
Do you think Steve Jobs had fucking...
I mean, that's, again, singularly focused.
I mean, it's just this... It's the, you know, madness and brilliance, you know, are almost of the same vein, right?
And, you know, this driven component of me, the bane of that is that once that...
thing was over i had to go fucking chase something else and i can never fucking sit in that moment and be okay with whatever and you know again it's one of those things where it's like thankfully i am designed the way i am you know because i'm finally in a place where i'm like i'm okay with me i'm completely okay with me you know and it's taken me a long time to get here
So first time I saw him in –
in Vancouver, like nobody told me, nobody said, Hey, listen, we're going to do prosthetics.
He, I mean the rock Emily, you know, she nailed it.
She nailed crazy with it.
No, I appreciate it, man.
We're going to give him your cauliflower ear.
We're going to make his brow.
And then nobody told me this.
So I was up there for fight week and, uh, they're getting ready to shoot, uh, the scene where they're introducing everybody to the finalists for the grand Prix.
And so DJ is the last one to walk in and I'm watching the ring.
And I turn around, and it's like this... Like, I see him as me.
Like... Joe, this is what I did.
And it's this moment where I'm looking at him, and I'm looking at, like, myself.
I can still see him in there, but I'm, like, looking at, like, a mirror picture of myself.
Experience where I'm like, oh my god, man like Wow, like you like you're going like this is you going to a place that nobody even thought you could get to right and
With DJ, I kept trying to say to him, you don't have to do this, dude.
Like, you don't have to do this.
And he would stop me and he would go, yeah, I do.
You don't have to totally be me?
So Benny signed him before he beat, before he became the Undisputed Champ.
So it's one of those things where...
Everything just kind of lined up in a way where you're like, all right, this is manifest destiny, right?
This is like Joe Dispenza, you know?
Like you're really tapping into something that's bigger because it's pulled all these people together.
Uzek did a great job, too.
He's at a place in his life where he can just keep doing blockbusters and be perfectly fine with it.
Oh, he did a phenomenal job.
Oh, my God, he did that spinning back.
You know how many rounds he trained prior to fighting Tyson Fury?
With three different training partners.
So every dude came in every third round.
He had a fresh guy on him.
So that's one that I didn't hear that, but he said he would do rounds where he wasn't allowed to punch.
He just had to bob and weave in defense.
I mean, he says it himself.
He just takes it to a level that is just unbelievable.
There's always a place for that.
Like literally like understanding.
There's always going to be a place for blockbuster movies and for that.
He's not the biggest dude in the world.
He's big, but he's not like 6'9".
He's not Dubois size either.
But he needed to do something different.
And it's just consistently an overachiever.
Consistently an overachiever.
That makes actually more sense.
Actually, it's my son's birthday today.
I go, it's a birthday to wait for, but he's already doing all this stuff that you've
So my son loves the science of boxing.
Even 10 years ago, when he was like 11, 12 years old, he'd be on YouTube watching the footwork of boxers.
Because I didn't get into that science of it and footwork and all that until I started doing MMA.
Like, understanding, like, I understood wrestling.
But boxing on that level is just, it's a whole nother complex set of skills.
It's almost like you can't...
Well, go down any rabbit holes.
And that's one of those where, you know, my mentor, the guy that that really brought me to another level is a guy named Chris Campbell.
He was Dan Gable's first NCAA champ when Dan Gable's coach at Iowa.
He made the 1980 Olympic team that was boycotted, won the 1981 World Championships, voted best technician in the world and then retires.
and then decides he's gonna make the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.
So he's, at 37 years old, he wins a bronze medal that year in Barcelona.
I think still to this day, he's the oldest Olympic medalist.
Because you just don't, you just, I mean, wrestling's just so demanding physically.
So he ends up, he ends up, he ends up
just really taken me by the hand and, and understanding like singular devotion to something.
It's, he would, back then he did tape study, which wasn't a huge, huge deal, but literally watching the Russians wrestle in some of the tapes, his nemesis was this guy, Kdartsev.
And you look and watch the tapes and go, I don't see anything.
Once you slowed it down, you go, you can't move him out of position.
When he attacks and retreats, he's never out of position.
And, you know, you look at it and go, wow.
Because it was just these little things, little things that made a difference.
You know, and it's and again, I would think that somewhere in there, there's a root.
There's a common like there's coaches and mentors because the only way I've learned how to wrestle or MMA is through mentorship.
You know, somebody really going, hey, let me let me show you.
And they had a mentor and they had a mentor.
It's this lineage that's passed along.
And I know I went from being a good wrestler to being a really good wrestler when Chris took me under his wing.
You know, we'd drill the same thing thousands of times, and it would be like the difference between holding my hand here and holding it here.
And I'd go, it's two inches.
when you speed it up to full speed, those two inches become six, right?
And so- The leverage points.
And so I need them to be here, perfect.
Because once you go full speed, you're going to miss it, but you're only going to miss it by this much.
GSP, I was just talking to a friend of mine and I said he's probably in my book one or two.
I mean, part of what, like, Jon Jones, right?
Like, when you get somebody at that level, at his peak, right, and he can make other professional fighters look like they're amateurs.
To the point where, like, Emily, unbelievable.
Sometimes I get a little upset because I'm like, you know how many fights he probably – as a spectator, as a fan.
Like how many fights we missed because of – His shenanigans.
Yeah, I know how that feels.
So when John Greenhalgh, who's the producer, I went to Syracuse with him.
We were on the wrestling team together.
He's the one that called me, said, hey, I want to do a documentary.
She's so good at playing crazy.
Vision of what it was was a little Best Buy camera where they're like little flip screen and they show up and they go, OK, we're filming a documentary.
I got changed tape, you know, and they show up in Japan for my Volchanchen fight with two 10,000, 15,000, whatever they were, digital Sony cameras.
boom mic in like five people I'm like oh fuck you're you're like you're really gonna make it like you're gonna make a documentary
And so he was right from the get go.
John could see John could see what was the contrast like me as a fighter and me as a person, that contrast.
And so that's what he was after is like to to really show this contrast.
And like you can do this for a living and be this kind, sensitive, you know, that was what was weird about you.
into the cage and it's like who the fuck is that guy you know you know what the feeling is the feeling is like the question i always had in my head is going okay if somebody's gonna go you me in a room who the fuck's coming out and i never was able to answer that question for myself i know i was competitive right but i didn't know if i had that switch that thing and then start fighting and going oh fuck man they're
There's a switch in there.
And I figured through that process, what I was really trying to get is your will.
I was trying to take your fucking will.
And most people don't want to give it.
Like when you get a high level fighter, it's like Fabio Gajal didn't want to give me his will.
Headbutted him, dug into cuts, did all this, beat him mercilessly.
And he didn't want to give me his will.
He wouldn't give it to me.
I didn't know how to take it from him.
I'm going, I'm out of answers.
And it's still to this day.
I mean, the next day his wife calls me and I have lunch at his house.
So here's what was... So I saw an 80% complete version of the film in January of this year.
which was crazy because my first fights, don't know, everybody in the audience was there for him.
And when his wife calls me in the next day, I literally go, oh, fuck, man, here it is.
He's going to have all his boys up at the house.
He's going to fucking get his due, right?
And so I go, okay, where do I got to live?
And so I go up and we sit down just like we're sitting here.
And his wife interprets the whole entire time.
It was actually beautiful.
Here's what it set for me.
It set a standard of how I was going to carry myself as a fighter.
What happened in the ring is in the ring.
The second you're out, that's different.
For me, it was one of those revelations of like, okay, this is how you do this.
And then the first time I see a complete version of it was in Venice.
And so I'm in Venice, and there's Benny on my right, and there's DJ on my left, and there's Emily next to DJ.
i mean culturally understanding way different and that's like the okay i'm gonna carry myself you know part of it was you know i wanted to change the narrative of like when you looked at the early ufcs it looked like some some guys were just scraped off a bar stool and thrown into the octagon right and so when i came there i was like okay i want to be considered professional right
I want to carry myself as a professional.
I'm going to be articulate.
I'm going to dress as a professional.
I'm going to because I wanted up the ante.
I wanted to like raise the standard.
Especially when I went to Japan.
It's like, you know, press conference.
Everybody's in sweatsuits.
I couldn't afford it, but I was in a $1,000 Calvin Klein suit that I had put on a charge card.
But I wanted to change the narrative.
I wanted to be a professional.
Because if I was a professional and treated like a professional, I could ask for pay like a professional.
Not like some dude that was just scraped off a bar stool and thrown into a ring.
And the last scene of the movie, right, that intensity of that scene...
So, oh boy, this is so I signed a three fight tournament deal with the UFC.
I did 14 and 15 and I still had one tournament obligation on the contract.
So after 15, the Japanese had seen enough footage and I got contacted by Pride.
They're like, hey, we want to fly you over.
We want to we want to have you as a key piece to build this organization.
So they fly me first class over first class hotel.
I meet with a guy named Mr. Ishii Shaka, who his real name is Kim Duxu.
And Mr. Ishii, who owned K1.
I'm just telling you, it was like, I said it was therapy for me.
You had to have a Japanese name.
You couldn't do business in Japan without a Japanese name.
He signed all of his documents, legal documents, Kim Duxu.
But every single person called him Mr. Ishii Shaka.
And it's still with an accent because he spoke Korean too.
So it's just one of those were understanding like the, the culture back then just, it was still stuck, you know, and hadn't really progressed.
Um, so Mr. Ishii owned K1 and Mr. Jaka started pride and it was called KRS at the beginning before it turned into dream stage.
And so here's where it gets a little sticky.
I take for Pride 2, it's supposed to be me and Hoist Gracie.
Because I think for the first time I could actually see my part in it.
Him and I, there's still fight posters that I've signed of him and I facing off with each other.
Signed the contract to fight for Pride.
way more money than was being paid in the UFC.
And when I get back to the States, I get served with papers to appear in court in New York City, the UFC suing me.
It's when Bob Meyerowitz still owned it and Art Davis was involved.
And so they're assuming for breach of contract.
And it was like one of those things where I was like, OK, I didn't, you know, like one of those experiences where I was like, oh, shit, you know, and the Japanese said, OK, we still want you.
You need to sort this out.
So it took it took four months, five months to sort out the differences between what the UFC needed and if they're going to let me go and all this other stuff.
And in that time frame, Hoist got hurt.
And so Hoist had to step out, and they put Bronco Ciccate in there, and I ended up fighting Bronco in Pride 2.
Like I could see my part, how fucking hard I was on the people around me.
So if everything would have went as everything, I would have fought Hoist Gracie in the Tokyo Dome.
Him and I main event me at my peak hoist still in his prime Wow, that would have been insane.
Oh my god It would have been like thinking about it going because people have asked like over to one I'm like, I don't fucking know but I would have given it every single thing I could that's it.
That's the poster Yeah signed inked everything
You know, how just singularly driven I was to accomplish something at all cost.
This is the transition from not knowing what I was getting into, going, I can't fucking carry that much weight at all and be cardiovascularly.
What were you at your heaviest?
If I didn't fucking get a hold of you and fucking squeeze the life out of you in the first couple minutes, I was fucked.
I was in the corner when he lost.
I was cornering him when he lost to Marie Smith.
Oh, that changed the narrative for everything.
Frank and I used to talk about heart rate training.
Like literally like functional training and going, okay, how do you approach something and come up with a formula where you can get through a training camp and still be viable at the end of that training camp when you have five-minute rounds?
And the person that paid it the most was Dawn.
There wasn't a formula for it.
So Frank was like, I started doing this heart rate training and heart rate recovery and all this stuff.
And then I run into these trainers when I was in California at Gold's Venice.
Goodman and he was training hockey players.
And hockey players have to have that burst recovery, burst recovery.
She paid a heavy price, you know.
Very similar cardiovascular system to fighters.
So TR took over my training when I was in California and that was a whole nother level because I had never really had the functional training implemented the way he did.
And that's when my weight came down.
It's like I really tried to fight between like 230, 235 and 240 was ideal.
And, you know, anybody that's successful, you know, for me, I was trying to raise everybody up, you know, everybody around me.
For me, that was – like I knew I had a good training camp if I came in 235, 240.
If I didn't train hard enough, I was 250.
If I over-trained, I was under 230.
You know, like for Pride Grand Prix, I think I weighed in at 229.
Because right before that – And you felt overtrained?
I felt overtrained because in between when I fought Ensign and the Pride Grand Prix, I did Abu Dhabi.
And so I won my weight class that year and I won the all-around.
And it was just a selfish endeavor.
But you lose – I lost a little bit of what I needed was that physical dominance.
You know, I could have the endurance, but again, it's one of those where it's like going into it.
When I fought Fujita, there's so many factors that were just, you know, that I didn't account for.
And my calorie intake just wasn't where it needed to be.
And like a lot of times leading up to a fight, like my appetite just diminishes as I get towards it, especially that fight week.
And I could see it in those moments.
It gets to a point where it's like that morning, I know, like fight morning, I have a small little window where I could digest food or I could take food in.
I could see it in what, who DJ was, you know, and who Emily was in the intensity.
It's not like I could sit and eat all day.
It just starts kicking in like literally, and it's controlled focus, right?
Because it's like I can't have all my nerves running everywhere, but it's controlled focus.
But that controlled focus, my body goes, I don't need digestion.
What the fuck do I need to digest food for?
So that last scene against Fujita as 100% hypoglycemic, crash, laying there, can't move my body.
And if you watch the documentary, what I'm saying on the way back is, I need sugar, I need sugar.
That's all I could think about was, like, I need sugar, I need sugar, I need sugar.
Because my blood sugar levels had just crashed to this, like, I can't fucking move.
Because it's a short time frame because, again, it's asking the question of like, okay, championship fight, 25 minutes, five five-minute rounds.
So this is like observationally.
Usually in a championship fight, if it's a striker against a wrestler, usually the first two rounds, strikers usually have that advantage.
if you go back and watch this third round the grappler starts to impose a little bit more on him right and then fourth fourth and fifth round is the grappler completely just takes that fight over because it's one of those things where you it's that grind yes it's that it's also a big part of being able to stuff take do you want some coffee yeah the big part of being able to stuff takedowns is having energy oh my god it's everything guys trying to you up and take you down
I'm just going to grind you into a pulp, and that's that control thing, right?
Part of what I go... Like, if I look at my fighting going, I was never going to be the best striker.
Like, never going to be the best kicker, puncher.
But if I could turn you into a wrestler...
That's that was the secret sauce for me.
Yeah, I just need to make you wrestle me Yeah, and I'm good right because I know I can fucking beat the fuck out of you wrestling.
Yeah The key was transitioning to make you wrestle me.
Hamza, that's the example.
That's elite, elite, elite wrestler.
And like I was saying, that Russian, Dagestan, Uzbekistan, it's this ability to sustain an attack repeatedly.
Because it's that cardiovascular system born at 6,000 feet in altitude, 7,000 feet in altitude, a little bit more of an advantage, right?
And so you end up with these attacks where you can sustain them beyond your ability to defend them.
Dude, 97, that's like 30 years ago almost.
I literally... I text my son.
I text my son and go, this is what an elite wrestler could do to a professional fighter.
So this is what's fucking crazy.
So trying to describe what I did back then, like people, their jaws would hang open.
You're like, I would never pretend stepping into the octagon that I would be able to get elite striking skills.
You know, it's like that gap could just it's constantly just something you never can get to.
You know, it's like Sean O'Malley, right?
The only way that he's going to be able to get a championship back is somebody else needs to beat... Murab.
That's that conflict of match-up.
Because skills, you're not going to do that.
I would think that it's one where there's going to be a lot of people that think they can, but that's just a different animal.
They would go, you do what?
But then, you know... That's an anomaly.
You can't... Like, there was a period of time where I couldn't watch.
I didn't watch the UFC, probably about, like, seven, eight, nine years.
And over the last five, six years, I've watched it almost religiously, right?
realizing the fighters today oh my god man they're they hit a level and it's that it's that mutation it's like this first generation second generation yes and they're advancing so fast that you're looking at these new fighters you're like where like it's such a unique set of skills to do this incredible set of skills unique to any other sport in the world
It's like playing soccer, football, and baseball at the same time.
It was, you know, one, like being in the Hall of Fame and being in the Pioneer League and understanding that, like I said to myself, you know, even if I advance a sport, you know, this much, it needed this much at the time to get to where it is today, right?
Like Coleman advanced a sport this much.
Like people, I, you know, they watch it now and, and, you know, this, this film, right.
It gives, it gives people a little bit of a look inside of like what it was.
And, and, you know, for, for me, the.
the cool part about it is understanding like i'm like i said i'm just a little piece but that little piece is necessary to be able for me to watch some of the guys do what they do now well it's different than any other sport in that these little pieces had to be there before people could figure out what to do yeah well dana put them all together yeah you know when when i actually talked to him when i was in newark that's one thing i said i said look what you built
You can feel however you want about him personally.
Like no one could even imagine this.
That's the fight that changed everything.
Because that's one of those, if you ask just a marginal fan, they'll refer to that.
I mean, there's so much shit in there.
When you watched him, like me watching him, he was so awkward when he held his hands and punched.
It was so, like even watching now going, he was just hunting.
And loading up with everything.
It was every single thing was thrown with intent.
It just, you can't, you can't sustain it.
It's just one where, um, so when the Fertitta's first bought the UFC, um, I was living in California and a friend of mine who has helped me at the time said, Hey, listen, uh, they're up at big bear having a training camp.
I'm like, okay, let's go up.
So get my truck, drive up.
They're going to do their first big push with Tito.
I get hit by a drunk driver at 11 a.m.
in the morning on the way up.
So my attorney was in the car with us.
Literally, the tow truck takes us up to the top of the hill.
I still get to talk to Dana.
I still get to talk to Frank and Lorenzo.
And I'm like, yeah, I got hit by a drunk driver.
He's like, well, we're going to Beverly Hills Wilshire tomorrow.
Why don't you just jump in the limo with us and we'll take you down.
So I get like this three hour drive down the mountain with Frank and Lorenzo, the new owners of the UFC.
And we're just sitting there talking.
They're like, hey, you know, how is it working in Japan?
They knew everything about me.
How is it working in Japan?
And it was just this really cool conversation, really cool experience to be able to go, OK, maybe this has landed in the right spot.
I mean, they say what fatigue makes cowards of us all.
I mean, it's just one of those.
And again, this goes back to what I was saying about Frank and I having conversations back then about heart rate training.
25 years ago, you go heart rate, like little polar, you know, watch and, you know, keep in like, oh, we need to recover this many beats in a minute, but actively recover.
Like you had to still continue to do shit and recover.
And this is what Frank was saying.
Yeah, I started doing this.
This is like, again, we're saying, like, taking somebody's fucking will.
Like, when he did to Conor.
You talk about humble pie, like, fucking having to sit back and, like.
Because that's at a level where, because you're a bad motherfucker to begin with.
And somebody that's even a badder motherfucker.
He could just literally choke you unconscious.
And just keep choking you till you're.
That was, so part of my first fights in Brazil, I was still brainwashed by the idea that, oh shit, he's seven foot tall or 6'9".
That, like, that stuff, one watch is good enough.
It was so, when Weidman's was so loud.
You don't need to pull that one off.
And Weidman's, yeah, don't pull that one.
No, some of that stuff is just like, gosh, man, it's other level.
First, the only one still exists is the submission by chin and eyeball choke.
I don't know if you call it choke.
I'd never seen anybody do that before.
And I know it hurt like a motherfucker for him.
Why is it okay to elbow the eyeball, but it's not okay to shove your chin in there?
He's the toughest dude in the room.
So when I'm down there, I could hear him.
Because that's how I grew up, right?
Or 10th degree black belt, same thing.
So part of my participation ADCC was was to represent wrestling
Because the first year when I got approached to go over there, I'm like, what like what is that like a submission grappling like I'm like Gila's grappling Gila's Jiu Jitsu.
Oh, no, no, no, don't mess with him.
They're like, hey, listen, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to give you X, you know, come over.
It was like fifteen thousand dollars to go over.
He's like, fuck, I don't know.
Yeah, while I was fighting.
And so I'm like, okay, I just go.
Just as a sort of surprise.
It was one of those where I was like, okay, now that it's explained to me, I go, well, wrestlers need to be represented there, right?
And in one where that first time I fought, I was still under the delusion that that was the truth.
And so I go over there and it was one of those things where it was like, well, I can actually show everybody here in this world that thinks their shit's dominant.
Like, no, this is a skill set you need.
You need elite wrestling skills, right?
You can have jujitsu, black belt and all this stuff.
But if you're missing this piece component to it, you're fucked.
And so it was all about control.
And so my trainer kept going, trust me, you're going to you're going to do fine.
And that's that gap we were talking about.
There's no way to fucking make that up.
There's not enough time in your career to be able to do that.
I, like, I can't explain it.
Trust me, you're going to do fine.
And it's just like he understood what what what I was as a wrestler, you know, that I can impose.
Yeah, that's, you know, and again, this is one of these things where fundamentally also wrestling gives you a cardio base that you can build off of.
Not only, because that's the other missing component, right?
It's like this, because at an elite level, it's fucking intense.
Like Kurt, when he was on your show, he was talking about, yeah, I trained till exhaustion and then I trained.
You know, it's like that's how he, because at one point when Kurt and I were competing against each other, like 93, 94, I just was bigger, stronger, and I could just defend his attacks.
Bro, he won the Olympics with a broken neck.
I was there at nationals when he literally hit the mat, and I'm like, literally, I watched when his neck broke at freestyle nationals.
Like I tell you, the best definition I've ever had for a wrestler is I can hold a grown ass man where he doesn't want to be held for as long as I want to hold him there.
And he got hit with an arm spin, and he gets arm thrown, and his head gets almost like separated.
And I'm in the stands going, oh, fuck, he's not going to be in the trials.
Like, there's no fucking way he's going to be in the trials.
And sure enough, fucking like five weeks later, he's in the trials.
I'm like, what the fuck, man?
There's no way he should be fucking able to wrestle.
He was so good and small for a heavyweight.
So he was always undersized.
But, like, the years that I beat him and then 95 when we wrestled in the Freestyle Nationals, and I beat him four times in a row at that point.
So we wrestle in the 95 Freestyle Nationals, and I get a hold of him for the first time, and something was different.
Like, wrestling going, oh, man, something's different with Kurt.
And he ends up beating me in the Freestyle Nationals in 95, and I'm like, oh, fuck.
And he can't do a fucking thing about it.
There was just something different.
I'm like, because he could stay on and attack longer, stay on and attack longer.
He had a gear that I didn't fucking have.
Like, looking back on it, I'm going, oh, shit, I totally missed that.
Like most guys at 220 pounds, which you're wrestling at, they would have these attacks that they would initiate.
It's like grab a hold of you, hold on to you, and then initiate an attack.
Kurt was constantly probing and attacking and attacking.
So it was these attacks that he just sustained and he'd just wear you out of position.
So it just counts in attack, attack, attack.
And all of a sudden, it was just this little angle that he was hunting for the whole time.
And then he hits that attack and fucking takes you down.
There's levels of discipline.
I mean, Kurt was one of the, where he opened my eyes, I was like, fuck, there's another gear.
I thought I was training fucking hard.
I keep using the word surreal, but it doesn't describe it.
Somebody that size, it's an anomaly.
It's the most important skill.
And that's why there's so much success for the deck.
He would be one where I wouldn't want to look at him because I think I'm lazy.
I'm going to blank on the names, but the deck.
So, so again, this is like, that's a level which is just exceptional.
Cause there's just a weird level.
It is cause that's a pocket.
It's just a pocket of people that have that.
The wrestlers are, it's a resurgence of like really what a foundational piece it is.
That's like one of those where it's like, you know, the wiring that exists in him, it doesn't happen by chance.
That's you have this genetic ability.
But he was fat when he was young and he was lazy.
And how important it is when you have a high, high, you know what they're able to do too as a wrestler.
So they'll eventually be...
I always just look at the Russian wrestlers and go, what makes them so good?
A fighter that can do that.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
And because it's just one more.
Like I was saying, from where I started from 25 years ago and the training methods and how archaic they were and how little knowledge was out there.
Right now, knowledge is advancing at such a rapid rate and they're understanding how to recover.
Understanding all these different factors that just weren't there.
They could flurry in succession more times than I could.
There's guys that'll do it.
yeah i mean it's becoming it's becoming to a point now where the financial benefit is worth the sacrifice right yes that you'll end up going okay because what what started to happen when i was fighting is that once the financial piece started getting in there it started attracting more talent right right right
So that talent, it brings the level of everybody up.
And then all of a sudden, it's like a little bit more money, talent that could have maybe went and did something else.
They're going, no, I'm going to go do this because I can make money.
Like Kurt Angle, right, when I wrestled against Kurt.
Seriously, I fucking play baseball on a heartbeat, man.
Kurt trained at a level that I wasn't training at.
It's one of those things where it's like what I expect to start at Microsoft, right?
He could sustain a flurry to the point where I would just make mistakes because I would be to exhaustion.
And going, yeah, I get a million dollars a year.
And that's one of the things about the sport.
As long as it has the opportunity to let somebody grow into it.
You know yeah and still gives them financial incentive to grow into it right right and just one more It's like I wouldn't expect like hey.
I'm a good fighter pay me a million dollars.
So here's where my career transitioned.
I call it internally funded.
Like I was saying, my son, when he watched it, and just flipping out, like talking to me, like on the side, like I was saying, like literally just going, Dad.
My first four fights, I was using that money to get to the next fight, to get to the next fight, to get to the next fight.
Then all of a sudden, I get in Japan, and they pay me enough money for the one fight
That the next day, I woke up and I was a professional fighter because it was the only thing I had to do was train as a fighter.
A little over half a million.
They'll string these moves together and string them together.
How did you get it out of the country?
How did you get a half a million out of the country?
Here's what's fucked up about it, right?
So my first couple times over there, I'm like, I put, like first time I got, I put 40 something thousand in one cowboy boot with two socks.
I put 40,000 in the other cowboy boot with two socks.
It was straight out of the fucking cartoons how you got paid.
Because the next day you would go up to a room
And you literally would have a room.
Like Hamza Chamaya is a great example of that.
You'd have an adjacent room used to Japanese guys in black suits smoking.
And then you'd have this room, which is where you get paid.
They had these, you know, suitcases that had your pay.
You could choose your currency.
I'm getting paid in American dollars.
So they have your contract, slide your contract over, and they go, okay, this is why you get paid.
This is the dollar amount, blah, blah, blah.
And they would literally take it out, count it, you would sign on it, and then they would just hand you the cash.
First time they ever did that, I'm like, it's $150,000 in cash.
Unbelievable because you'll see him shoot, reshoot, shoot again, get up, stand up, fake, shoot again, and you can't keep up with it.
I'm like, I'll be right back.
I go to the bedroom that's in the hotel room, and I grab the fucking...
case to the pillow and i go over and i fucking just scrape the fucking money put it in the pillowcase and i go okay thank you it's just i don't know what to fucking do that you know i'm like down i'm like down in the elevator like fucking holding the money like i don't know what to fucking do i didn't know what to fucking do big giant guy with 150 grand that's not what
No, no, it does not round.
It's it's like what did they expect you to do with it?
No, no, no, that was not that was it was your responsibility So literally I'm like, oh fuck man, I get on it and like in my head I'm playing all these movies right like on this movie got caught at the border You know, I'm like fuck, you know, I know that's gonna be this one, you know, it's like so I end up fucking just going Oh
Like fucking 40 grand in one boot, 40 grand in the other.
Put it in a fucking, and like walk and like, you got anything to declare?
And just like walk through it.
But realizing that eventually when I claim the money,
um they hand a claim form they go okay you're claiming 140,000 okay thank you have a good day oh you just have to claim it you have to claim it because they want to send it they want to send that receipt to the irs oh oh so when you go through customs i thought it was just a function of not being able to take that much cash so no no when you declare it when you declare it there's that situation too right but when everybody's gonna go where's you're
Inevitably, you just make mistakes or you just give in to the exhaustion of the moment, right?
You couldn't say, look, this is me, man.
This is how I really did win.
Back then, it was hard to get paid.
The example I give is like the corner video store next to the shutters where all the porn was.
Right next to that was the VHS tapes.
That's Faces of Death, UFC.
Literally, those were where the UFC tapes were.
Those were where the Pride tapes were.
And it's just like, okay, nothing you can do about it.
Judo Gene LaBelle he got with.
He got with all these other.
That was the first thing, like the symbol is a kanji for a dragon, right?
Bruce Lee was enter the dragon, right?
Dragon is all these parts to make one mythical thing.
And that's that enter the dragon.
Bruce Lee was the first one, if people don't realize it, he was the first one to go, fuck, this is incomplete.
So this is going to be way back when.
So this is Mark Coleman and I did a clinic in North Carolina that was a judo Gene LaBelle clinic that he brought us in for.
It's an extra set of hands.
So, I rolled with Higgin Machado.
You imagine just not understanding what you're agreeing to.
And that's the crazy part.
You always find, like me being a fan of MMA and UFC and watching it, there's always an outlier, right?
Always an outlier that you go, that doesn't make sense.
How the fuck is he getting to there?
And that's like, fuck, he's just found a new way to do it.
He's found a new, you know, way to just go, OK, this is this is what I'm going to do.
It's like a Dave and Goggins thing.
I'm just going to run 125 miles.
Well, I used to tell my fucking training partner, I'd go, fuck, the getting there, that's one thing.
Fucking staying there, that's the secret.
It's so hard to stay at that level because everybody else is building on your experience, right?
They're going, well, this is what he did.
This is what he's incorporated.
These are the things he's doing.
You know, I'm just going to build on it.
Because it's one of those things where it's like Greco.
He would have fucking been totally jazzed on it.
That's one of those things where, you know, again, it's just somebody being ahead of their time.
I mean, it's one of those things where I look back on it and I've read like part of part of the history and stuff.
And you understand, obviously, way better than I do.
But, you know, like ahead of his time, just like when Gracie came along ahead of his time, you know, in presenting something where he's knocking down all these stereotypes.
yeah and they have rigid stereotypes back oh well you'd have you'd have to like get in gang fights to protect the the style that you were like do you know do you know like like so i started training at beverly hills jiu-jitsu club right in california so so so uh so boss would have me boss would have me out there avi rubin is a guy that owned it and i would go out there and i would teach wrestling a couple days out of the week it's how i got introduced to boss
Oleg Tatarov, Marco Huas, and Pedro Rizzo.
They were training out of there as well.
So you would get these guys, jiu-jitsu guys, that would sit on the outside, wait until the other students were gone, draw all the blinds, lock the doors, and go, can you teach us wrestling?
because they were so afraid that if they got caught there with me, it was like a traitor.
So you would get like... That's so crazy.
It didn't make any sense to me because you would figure sharing information would be better.
So this is kind of, again, one of these things where there are certain athletes that have a gear that nobody else has.
And it was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Jiu-jitsu, we're not sharing shit.
It was so fucking archaic, like the outlook.
And it's like looking back on it and going, wow, that's dogma.
Like, why don't you just show him something that works?
I rewound that tape probably 50 times.
I'm like, what the fuck is he doing?
Like, what the fuck is he doing?
Like, you could figure it out.
Like, what the fuck is he doing?
Because all of a sudden, Severin goes from beating the shit out of him going, he's fucking tapping out.
I didn't know there was a name for it.
You could submit a guy off your back with your legs?
But if you look at it, like the space where he had Dan's head and arm is like that big.
It's like that fucking, like when you do a triangle like this, that's not a very big space.
It's like to have fucking Dan because he's a big dude going, oh, I get it.
And your legs, you can hold your legs in place for a long time.
And then he's like pulling on the fuck.
And it's just how they're built.
It literally, I still remember to this day just looking at it with my mouth hanging open going...
It's just how they're built.
So, you know what's a good... So crazy.
I had a conversation with Hoist probably about four or five years ago, and I'd never spoken with him outside of a competition or event or anything like that.
He's such a good person, man.
Like, he was so just, like, talking to him, and he was just so powerful and so inspirational, and just having this conversation with him was just, like, amazing.
I was just left the conversation.
Wow, what a, just an amazing human being.
And he wears that fancy gi thing.
Watching that for the first time, literally it was like, oh, this is fucking new.
Because you've never seen it before.
So we were we were on me and my brother.
We were on our way to see a UFC event in New York and it got canceled and it got moved down south.
We were on our way to go see it.
I was on my way to work at it.
You know, I went to the first sanctioned.
The UFC flew me out to go to New Jersey.
When they had their main, main, main card in New Jersey.
Their first big event that was sanctioned by the New Jersey Boxing Commission with Tito.
And they flew me out to that event.
Yeah, flew me out to that event.
And actually, this is at the time they offered me to fight.
After that, they offered me to fight Pete Williams.
Dad, he's got your mannerisms.
And it was one of those where they go, yeah, we're offering to fight Pete Williams.
You might have to take a little bit of pay cut, but you have to believe in what we're doing.
And I'm like, okay, what's the pay cut?
They're like, we'll give you like an appearance fee of like 15 grand.
And then it would be doubled if I won.
And I'm like, I'm making, you know, a lot more in Japan.
Like, why would I go do it?
That's one of the worst offers I've ever heard.
And it's one where the whole idea behind it would be, hey, we just, if you believe in us and you believe in the direction we're going, look, we just got sanctioned in New Jersey, right?
So that's the steps we're taking to move this to Vegas and to do this.
So that night was my last UFC.
And one is like, you know, like most fighters, it's like I have X amount of fights and I don't have more.
I only have X. So that would have been one off my X number.
And I'm like, oh man, I can't do it.
At that time, the UFC was like, we're going to ask once.
Just leave that one alone.
Why not ask me a second time?
Hemorrhaging money is still... Oh, gosh, man.
I mean, one is they didn't have... If anybody else was in charge of it, it probably would have failed.
So you know what's crazy with Japan?
Here's what I ended up doing.
And that's when Randy beat Vitor.
I said, listen, I said, they said, what do you need?
And I said, I need consistency.
And they go, okay, what does that look like?
And I said, pay me X dollars per month.
And then every time I fight, pay me a bonus on top of that.
And they go, okay, how much do you need?
And I said, okay, I need this amount per month.
And that was just another stabilizing thing where I knew that every month I had X amount of dollars coming in that I could pay my bills.
And it was one of those where I'm like, oh, just wait.
I could do my stuff, not worry about that because it allowed me to transition to like, it's not a hobby, you know, I'm not like fighting.
And then I go to work, you know, it's like, this is what I do for a living.
Because I know what Randy is.
It's investing in what your product is.
And your product is elite athletes.
In order to get elite athletes, they need funding.
He's got your speech mannerisms.
Randy is like, he can take it.
The only way they can get tools is through money.
You know, better coaches, better recovery facilities.
And I don't know the... You know, I obviously... Let me ask you this.
And it was one of those things where I was like, I don't think Victor's going to win.
You fundamentally you need to build a base of what you what you're going to become.
If a young kid like 16, 17 year old kid, even 18, 19, 20 year old kid, I go, you need submission grappling because you can participate in those at a competitive level that teaches you how to compete.
It teaches you how to prepare to compete.
And it teaches you without the impact of striking and punching and all of this.
And that's what we called him back then.
So that's like the first foundational piece.
And this is just my opinion.
Foundationally is like if you you have to have a mechanism out there which allows you to compete without having the physical impact.
So that would be the first thing like submission grappling, ADCC stuff, you know, all of that really teaches you how to compete, to train, to compete.
And it starts building that base.
And then you start adding pieces in going, okay, I understand this.
But you imagine, like, I'm picturing my son.
Let's add the striking components and do it now.
And let's do these little like PFLs or let's do this.
And it just allows you to build out something where you're not just thrown into the fire because that shit doesn't work.
I mean, the fighters have become so good now that you can't just throw somebody in there because it you get fucked up.
It might fuck your confidence up.
You've been ringside for this.
You see when a young fighter, when he clicks and he gets it.
And he understands how to compete at that level.
Like watching it, you're like, oh, my God.
It gives me goosebumps to think about it because it's the moments that I can look at and go, oh, fuck.
It's even, and this just brought this up just as a thing, like DJ playing me in the movie, you just don't get there.
It doesn't happen by magic, right?
For him to become you, he became you.
We were talking about this the other day with DJ.
you know through the history of like you know movie making there's been actors that have like i'm getting big and they go eat you know ben and jerry's ice cream and then there's like watching the whole transition of what dj was doing and how he's like well i just don't need to be big because that's one thing i need to be big but put on quality of what i'm doing and so it's these fast twitch it's like a wrestler fast twitch fibers you look at him and go
He put on specific muscle for what he was doing, you know, and to be able to go through everything and understand going.
He literally locked himself away for 11 weeks up in Vancouver and didn't bring his family up, which I guess he normally does, and just went through his training camp.
Like going, like going fuck.
You know, like every day, same routine, get up, do the same routine, do this.
I was up there for fight week, got all of his stunt guys all like, this is, this is foundationally.
Cause I'm not going to teach him wrestling 25 years of wrestling in fucking a month.
Or two weeks or a week or an hour.
It's like, okay, but let's get foundational pieces.
Cause the people are going to watch it.
They can look at the film and tell whether you put the work in or not.
right especially someone like you oh god yeah it was one where where that was the biggest deal uh for benny is to be able to shoot these scenes without a stunt double going how because because it just detracts from what he's trying to do as a filmmaker right how do you shoot this whole entire well well i'm going to give dj foundational pieces of like changing your level for a double here's where you get and like certain foundational pieces you have to have and then like i told them
Rumble on the Rock stuff or whatever it was.
Once you get to a certain point, everything from that point on is your own.
It's like when you watch wrestlers going, oh, he changes his level.
And then all these little nuances, that's individual.
He's in New York when he watched that.
Like Michael Jordan, it's like the structure for a jump shot is the same, right?
But all these little nuances of like how to get to the position to hit a jump shot, that's Michael Jordan.
So I go like a like when I shoot a double leg like lowering your level that's foundational fundamental, right?
It's like attacking without my arms out in tight.
That's fundamental But once I hit the person with with the attack right double leg everything from that point going on is my own Whether I tip him this way till them this way run them for running backwards sit down change it It's all these little new I go we need to do foundational and then you're good.
So it was a lot of work for him to get to that foundational point.
And once he got there, it was like, okay, you're good.
That was the one thing we're talking about going.
There's always going to be a space for a Rocky fight.
Literally nothing wrong with nothing wrong at all.
But that's not the film they were shooting.
They were shooting like this is how do we create something that pays homage to.
And something you can build off of and somebody can look at and go.
I think it's important if we're talking about Rocky, though, we have to say Rocky 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever the fuck they got out to.
I literally, I remember being in the theater and literally watching it and just like as a kid watching it and like,
He won an Oscar for that, right?
Because that's the classic underdog.
And so I'm picturing him in the corner of the lobby of the theater talking with his back to everybody going, oh, my God, Dad.
I mean, all of it is, right?
I mean, just like you're saying, like the outliers, it's a mental thing that they have a level or a gear they can get to that everybody else just can't.
Like, you can be fast, and that's one thing, but fast and actually hitting the target when the target's bobbing and weaving, it's like, oh, my God, man.
That's the ability to be able to be just have the self perspective.
This in-depth honesty, because a lot of it like I literally before Chris Campbell.
I was just talking about I thought I was training fucking hard.
I thought I fucking, I thought like I'm training fucking hard.
And he just grabbed me by the hand.
He goes, no, let me show you what hard is.
And so it was this routine where it's like it's in college, my senior year, 6 a.m.
I get up, he would pick me up and I wouldn't be a minute late.
I had a chair that I put next to the door that I slept in for the last, because one time being late, he just throttled me and I'm like, it ain't never happening again.
Ain't fucking ever happened again, man Slept in the chair next to the door, you know, I'd be like, all right because he would just give two beeps beep beep and All right, I'm up, you know in fucking out the front door.
We go to the gym We train in the morning.
So we do wrestling drills stuff like that.
And then I'm gonna do cardio or strength He would go to work.
He was a full-time attorney.
You go to work all day I would start practicing with the the wrestling team warm up and then I'd wait for him to get off of work five o'clock and
And then we train for a couple hours and then get up and repeat.
But it's this level of intensity with everything had intention.
There wasn't anything that was left without intent.
You know, from how we drilled, how we trained, everything was very focused and intentional.
There wasn't anything like, I'm going to do this today.
You know, it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
This is why you're doing this.
This is why you're doing that.
This is why you're doing this.
It's this intention of every single thing you're doing has this intention for an end purpose.
And that's that is somebody who's living their life intentional.
And it's why he's been able to do what he's been able to do.
I mean, I've looked at it going.
If he existed when I was doing ADCC, I would never won.
You know, cause it's just, it's just a different level.
And, and that's, that's a skillset I had wrestling, but he's got a skillset that incorporates that plus 20 things more.
So when DJ and I connected again in 2023 when this got kicked off green light for the film, he sends me this picture of Panther videos, Panther martial arts, seek and destroy videos.
He's got like 10 of them in the picture, right?
And it's Mark Kerr, Seek and Destroy.
Benny had found them and sent them to DJ, and he's like, study him.
So it's this videotape series that I did for Panther Production.
So this is one of these things where... Seek and destroy.
And so DJ sends me this picture, and it was fucking... I was literally like, okay, I'm in.
Dude, look at the size of you.
You look like a superhero.
Oh, dude, I had such, this is, I call it phone booth fighting, right?
Like I could, in a very small space, I could generate a fucking shit ton of power.
You're like, Phil, I'm turning in my gi.
Higgin Machado, I've rolled with him, John Jock and Higgin, and Higgin, it was like giving him an extra set of hands.
yeah i i go dude i literally sewed the so on torrents when i train with him there's like uh there's one room and then another room and there's a door between them and so he had half of his class kind of all stacked up in the door watching us train and it was like five minutes with a gi and i just looked at higgins i go i ain't never fucking wearing this thing again
Take the key off man fucking here have it back cuz it's like fuck.
Those guys are terrifying They get that thumb behind your neck Christ it was like he was getting me position He would tie up an arm like with the game and I'd be like fuck now now he's got like like yeah like what the fuck dude and
Oh, it's been a minute since I've been.
I mean, you literally it's all friction.
I mean, it's like, you know, slip.
And that's again, that's the evolution of it's why like foundationally Gila scrappling.
Because it just teaches you fundamentally what you're about to do if you're going to get an MMA.
Foundationally, it's like that's where you need to start.
You know, because even to the point where it's like you because you have a lot of wrestling in there and you have a lot of moves.
Like my first times at Abu Dhabi, the only thing I kept saying, small moves, small moves, small moves.
Like I didn't like like I literally if I felt uncomfortable, it was these small, tiny moves.
It wasn't this like explosion because it's like, fuck, I don't know what I'm going to explode into.
You know, so it's foundationally it's it's yeah, geese are it's a different sport.
Yeah, I mean, it really could be.
God, man, I can't believe you've been involved in this this long ago.
I mean, you're a spectator to history.
You know, back then, because there was so much myth surrounding mixed martial arts, that you felt like if you didn't do something, it was like the saying is like, oh, you're going to a gunfight with a knife, right?
While this fight is happening.
And if you watch that today, it's bizarre.
So I even thought like my first fights in Japan, how quiet the crowd was, but not that quiet.
It was like totally quiet.
It was that type of mentality back then.
I need to go back and watch that.
The thud of shins hitting me.
So I've sat there with a group of people that like watching somebody check a kick in here, shin on shin.
And just me, nobody in the room getting it, but me going...
That's like a big fuck you.
That is just one of those where, you know, again, money can't buy that.
I mean, it's just one of those experiences like I've had a couple through this process of filmmaking where it's like no money on earth could buy that experience.
Like in Venice, standing there, like literally, like I'm crying because like I said, it was at the end of that, it was like therapy.
Watching me and literally settling into like, wow, man, I was a dick.
You know, I just was really hard on everybody around me.
And then having Benny next to me, DJ next to me, feeling their emotions and feeling DJ's emotions, because they'd never experienced anything like it either.
Like, it's like a doppelganger.
Yeah, I tell people it's hot pants.
I go, fucking, I'm in hot pants.
You want to know the truth?
I'm like, no, I was a selfish, self-absorbed, and I look at it, I go, okay, all right, I can accept that and understand that I was trying to raise everybody up.
And if you couldn't get with a fucking program, I didn't have patience for you.
And that's that's part of it.
Like understanding like like I just didn't have patience for it because I didn't have time.
I didn't have time for it.
It's understanding like like I know that X I only have X amount of fucking fights in me and I got to try to maximize.
And that's not going to work.
You know, because a lot of that was assembling people that were accountable to me.
And, you know, money can hold people accountable in a certain degree.
They would hand you a cup and go, urine.
But at a certain point, it's like, you know, the training partners I had around me, it was like, hey, I can help you get to the next level.
That was kind of the enticement.
You just need to make a commitment to me.
Make a commitment to me and I'll give you that little piece that you're missing.
You know, and that was kind of the part that I helped, you know, go, OK, my training partners be accountable to me and I'll help you with that little missing piece of how to be a professional.
You know, and so I just didn't have patience.
And it's one where I'm nice, I'm cordial, all this other stuff.
But, you know, at the end of the day, I was like, I was demanding.
You know, part of it was that...
You know you almost like I almost buy into the bullshit and I can never be this perfect being that I was trying to be and so I'm always falling short and that feeling of always falling short in this just like You know, I couldn't live up to what I thought I needed to live up to right and so that was hiding and you know I'm just gonna get a little relief from it.
You just look around and you just hand the cup off going, can you piss from here?
You know, it's gonna so I can unplug and
You know, and it was just one of those where it started with pain, you know, realistically started like a fuck.
I'm doing something inherently.
You know, and it was this progression from that of like, you know, from pain to I didn't know what an opiate addiction was.
He's got all of it, you know, like full-blown, like, it was like the, because a lot of my saying for myself is I can't see the forest through the trees.
Really crazy, which I didn't know fuck I didn't understand like I didn't understand like when I took at the level that I took it when I Stopped you tried to stop.
I didn't understand what being dope sick was I didn't understand like getting like physically sick because I don't have the substance in my body Like I would get diarrhea.
And you literally walk back to the medical and go, here's the P. Yeah, here.
I couldn't walk from here to the end of the room without having to sit down for a half hour It's almost like a parasite
That crazy part is the first recognition of like that I'm stuck, that I don't know the answer of like because I'm caught between, you know, like, all right, I'm going through this physical withdrawal and everything else that comes with it.
I mean, that's the, but that's the era it was.
Or I'm just going to go seek the thing that's causing the physical withdrawal because it makes me feel better.
You know, so you're caught in this loop of just bullshit.
I just need to feel better just a little bit.
And, you know, so it's one of those where it's like there wasn't the internet back then.
I couldn't fucking get on and like, oh, let's Google something.
You know, it's like, it wasn't that.
I always from probably age 14.
Yeah, I knew when I first drank.
first had a drink that I drank until I was drunk.
Like, cause that was this taste of Jack Daniels.
And it was like, Oh, this feels good.
It was like not a normal reaction.
Looking back on it going, oh.
So I've always had a propensity towards it.
And then, you know, it functions both ways because I get addicted to the sport.
I get addicted to the routine.
I get addicted to getting in a ring and taking someone's will.
I get addicted to the crowd, the championship, the adulations, the this.
It's like that's who I am, right?
And it's a contributor to my success, but it's also a contributor to my demise, right?
You know, in both ways, it's like, you know, from an early age, I understood like, hey, you know, this could be a problem, you know?
And then when wrestling came along, I didn't drink during wrestling.
Like during that whole season, I didn't drink.
In college, I didn't drink during wrestling season.
Like when it's like, okay, I'm in recovery.
I have seven years of sobriety now.
For me, it's one of those foundational things of like, oh, that's what I've been missing my whole life.
I mean, because it's one of those we're understanding like those are the building blocks.
Because if I don't have those things in place, nothing else fucking stands up.
You know, I mean, it sounds like the duh.
Figuring out my son, what makes him function, structure.
He goes, you should have been harder on me.
I'm going to give you four stars, dad.
I could have given you five, but you weren't fucking hard on me.
But he functions best with structure.
He's just one of those individuals that are built like that, right?
oh my gosh it's like yeah well jupiter's orbiting around my saturn and i always wondered like why are they so into this there's something to this because if there is i would feel real stupid if i was ignoring it the whole time you know what um listening to joe dispenza some of his stuff it changed my whole it's changed some of my perspective of how like just having um we're energy right we're energy and your your emotional energy is transferred to me
It's like why I was addicted to dawn because of that exchange of negative energy right yeah back and forth It's like it being an addict right.
Just just to make up hell.
I mean it's the whole process Yeah
So it's that really fucked up part of, like, understanding, like, looking back on it going, oh, shit.
It's how Emily flips that switch of, like, fuck you, motherfucker.
So I was in Vancouver for the set when they had the set up.
I've used like I haven't found another word to explain.
It seems like there's not a word that there's not because it's just one where it's like, you know, on the other side of it.
And this is just me going, you know what?
I have a sense of just being like deep, profound gratitude that DJ Emily Benny, everybody involved in the film wanted to take this on.
Because I looked at it going, like a lot of it's self-worth going, you really want to do a movie about my life?
And then understanding like what they see.
I was laughing with Benny about it going.
in me and the belief they have in the story and everything that's around it because at the end of it it's redemption it's like where i am today i'm so thankful that i have my health i'm so thankful that i have my sobriety i'm so thankful that i get to experience these things and share you know my experience strength and hope they call it right you know with other people and give them going look look at all the bullshit i went through and i'm on the other side of it
all right, who came up with the pyramid and the door opening with fog machines?
So whatever you're going through, anything's possible.
happy that you were getting on film so like maybe this like would make you get clean was there any of that oh there's a little bit of that yeah because part of it is that i didn't i didn't at that point the only person on the planet that knew what i was doing was dawn
Nobody else on the planet knew what I was doing.
And so when John had put the camera down, he's like, dude, what the fuck are you doing?
Like, you're not being truthful with us.
And I'm like, well, at that moment, I kind of went, fuck you.
Get the fuck out of my house.
And there was this there was this moment where it was like I needed to tell somebody and I go, fuck.
Because it's like, I can't even imagine the brainstorm going, you got any bright ideas on how to introduce the, yeah, let's do a pyramid and let's have a trap door fog machine.
okay, like, here's what I've been doing.
And I don't know who to tell.
I don't know how to tell it.
I'm just going to show you.
And that's when it shows me shooting up.
It was that moment where I'm like, you want to know what I'm doing?
Well, I'm going to show you.
because it was one of those where it's like, it felt like a weight got lifted.
Like all of a sudden it's just like, Oh fuck.
Did you ever think about not going through with the documentary?
So here, here's what they ended up doing.
So I didn't see one stitch of footage at all until I saw the complete documentary in Los Angeles at the Dolby sound studios.
So it was like a couple of years.
So I sit down the documentary as it appeared on HBO.
And the filmmakers aren't watching the fucking film.
They're watching me watch the film.
There's like eight of us in the in the movie theater.
Lights come up and I literally stand up and John Greenhall goes, what do you think?
And I go, I don't have to get back with you.
And I just walk straight out.
Don't say another fucking word.
Get in my truck, start driving.
Back then the phones, you know, like in the car, he's calling me on the phone and I'm, and he goes, you're going to be okay.
I go, I have no fucking clue.
Because the agreement we had in place was I had final veto over the content of it.
But he never showed you the content?
Until that day I saw it in the Dolby Sound Studios in Los Angeles.
The content, the whole film, I didn't see any of it until that moment.
So literally I drove home and John was like...
I go, you have to give me a day.
You have to fucking give me a day.
Where in the bigger picture is stuff going?
I don't know if I can go forward with that.
It's just too fucking much.
What made you decide not to?
Um, John had said something to me like, um, I guess it's like a parable where it's like, if you live your life and you've saved one person's life, you've had a worthy life.
Meaning that if somebody watches this and sees your struggles that you've gone through and sees the hope that you have in that in your recovery, it gives them hope.
But they reproduced it to the T. It was perfect.
Because what keeps you addicted is shame.
The shame of what I was doing.
Who the fuck am I going to tell?
No, you don't want them to know.
And so that shame is what usually keeps people... But if they see me in the film go through this process and this deep, revealing process of what was going on with me, it gives them an opportunity to go, well, I can ask for help too.
When you got through the film, how long did it take you to get clean?
I got clean off of morphine, off of the Nubane I was doing right after, all the way through the Volchancin, or all the way through the Fujita fight.
And I was clean for, started drinking, which is a whole nother topic.
But, you know, I hadn't done narcotics in years.
know probably like three years after that and then i started up again and then it was this process of like start stop start stop start stop and then the thing that predominantly dominated me was alcohol because it's socially acceptable easily accessible you know all these different factors of it and so that's eventually like i like i've said uh my so my mom passed away september 3rd um 1996.
And, uh, so my son knows this.
And so my sobriety date, September 4th.
And so my son asked me that day, September 3rd, he's like, dad, I know you need to drink today.
Um, but would you stop tomorrow?
At the time, I thought it was just another empty promise of like, yeah, yeah, I'll stop.
And next day I got up and there's just something a little different or whatever it was that day.
And I stopped asking the questions.
And from that day till today, I'm sober.
Cause it's one of those where I thought I literally woke up Joe and this is no shit like waking up going, okay, I don't know what's wrong with me, but there's something fucking wrong.
Like there's something wrong with me and understanding like all this different stuff, head trauma and all these different things and factors.
I literally thought I was like going off the deep end.
Like I was like, OK, alcohol or drugs was the only relief I got for what the fuck was going on in my head.
It was, it was literally towards, it was after 2006.
It's like 2006, 2007, 2008.
I stopped fighting in 2009.
I didn't know what else to do.
All my identity was tied up in being a fighter.
You know, and understanding like these simple words of like fighting is what I did.
right i'm much more than that right i'm much more than a fighter and understanding once i got to that point you know it's like that's when some of the relief came in but part of it my head like there's something i don't know what it is and so i was just seeking relief because of like there's something that's up in my head
And I didn't know what it was.
Still to this day, I look at it like, you know, I call it a God shot because it was one where it's like something needs to change because this is unsustainable.
You know, unsustainable with the alcohol, unsustainable with what's going on in my head.
Get sober, things quiet down.
That first year of sobriety, it took to clear out all the bullshit that was in my head, going, I just need neutral.
And once I hit neutral, it's like, oh, wow, I can build on this.
It makes no sense at all, but it makes perfect sense.
Am I looking at it objectively?
Like I said, you know what I understood, like giving them the permission for the documentary, saying to John, going, okay, if this could change or help one person, then my life has value, right?
Because I helped another person.
And then when it premiered at HBO at the studios, this was like the whole crowning moment is having like a 65-year-old grandmother come over to me who I would have nothing in common with.
and say to me, you know what, that was beautiful.
My grandson, he's got a drinking problem and I don't know what to do.
It's like this door had been opened where she felt comfortable to sit down and talk with me about her grandson.
And it was like this moment of like, oh fuck, this is what it's about.
It's about opening that door up so people can connect and go, well, if he can do it, I can tell my truth.
You know, because it's difficult and addictions are just, I mean, shaming and they keep you in a box and it's just this, it's a horrible existence.
So they've talked about the neuroplasticity of drugs like that to create new pathways instantaneously.
You know what I mean when I say them?
Yo, so, you know, that was a huge part from the beginning of this when DJ and I talked back in 2019 is just the, like the trust factor.
Yeah, none of that makes sense, man.
I mean, it just, that's, so that's a whole other rabbit hole.
It really doesn't make any sense.
Because it's just one where it's like, if that stuff existed back then, it would have cut short a decade.
So that's, again, in the last five, six years, alternative perspectives has been just paramount in my, just in opening me up, you know, to...
to having a better understanding of like how rigid I was and how how just this thin line of thinking I had had for so long about stuff like this, you know.
And so, you know, it's just been this incredible
experience to get to here because I've had to open up.
I've had to go, okay, I'm going to do meditation.
Or am I seeing something and hear my son say, oh, my gosh, Dad, he nailed it.
I did meditation for fighting, but it was visual meditation.
How the fuck I was going to dismantle a dude in the ring.
I would sit and do, but this is meditation to access different parts of my brain.
right to try to get into delta waves and you know theta beta you know all these different things so i could open different spots in my brain up right now and so it's just been this you know my wife she's nietzschean buddhist you know what is it what is it she chants every morning duncan does that yeah so the buddha you have the buddha the gold buddha you have yeah we have one in our house not quite that big but we have yeah so she's nietzschean buddhist and
It's one of those things where she got me to start chanting.
I don't do it as much now, but the first three, four years we were together, it's like I chanted with her regularly.
And it's one of those where it's like harmonics and vibrations and frequencies, you know, and understanding like, man, we know so little.
But realistically, all this stuff through like all the different stuff they discovered in Egypt with the sound chambers and all the different things.
I mean, it's a whole different thing where we just ignored everything.
And it's like, well, shit, we we don't even we're so archaic in our thinking that
So, so he says, Hey, you know, we're going to move forward with this.
Because sometimes it's wrong.
That's the part where I can't believe how much I've opened up and been just receptive.
And a lot of it's because I'm sober and it's like, fuck, I don't know shit, man.
Like when you look at the bigger picture stuff, I know so little.
And, and I, so for me, I hadn't even thought about any of this, like it being a movie.
You know what I've actually done the last couple years?
I've literally hugged trees.
It really is like walking barefoot, right?
Like on grass and getting connected.
He would have said to me 10 years ago, I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever, Dad.
He wants to play me in a movie and he goes, I'm going to make the announcement.
But it's like, okay, who says it's not?
That originated a while ago.
Madison Square Garden at the BMF belt.
He goes, this, we had this beautiful conversation and it was just like this.
The farmer had to feed his cow some anti-mushroom.
I want to see him still there.
I was supposed to actually go down to Brazil and ayahuasca.
A friend of mine, we actually went down to stem cells in Panama.
And so we go down there and he starts explaining like this.
For him, it was like seeing the face of God.
He said it changed his whole entire being.
And he's like, it's in the jungle.
So there's no like, it's...
And he goes, it's life changing.
I just picture Alex Pereira walking towards me.
Like, that's a scary motherfucker, man.
That music starts playing.
It's this like, I'm coming to get you and nothing you can do about it.
I bumped in him in Chicago and it's like, he's built for one thing.
Weird, weirdly strong guy.
Like, like literally it's like, like, like he shouldn't be able to do what he's doing.
By the way, he says, say hi.
It's like, you know, I go, there's no wind up in his kicks, his low kicks.
He left me a great message on the way over here.
And that's the whole thing is you go, okay, you're thinking you're going to pick up on it.
And it's like, no, you're never going to.
I was listening to him, and he's just, he's a rare human being.
I can't believe that even a thing is that nerve.
Yeah, it's a horrible nerve.
Like looking at it going, oh, my God, he's taking him out.
Look, it's like five kicks in.
Like, where, like, who discovered it?
That's a really good thing.
Because it's unbelievable you would think that something that looks that innocent is so debilitating.
I mean, that's the copycat league, right?
Like watching another Friday going, yeah, I'm going to try it.
No, no matter who you are.
I mean, it's just one of those where I'm so vulnerable.
It's, it's one of those where it's like there's, there's other than checking it or getting out of the way, there's not a fucking shit you can do.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
I still think Sean O'Malley's got the best feints.
I mean, just, so I remember watching him before he got to the UFC,
And a friend of mine was like, no, no, no, you got to watch this kid.
And watching him going, it would be like this just again and again and again and just realizing, oh, fuck, that's what he was setting up.
It was 14 feints, right, to get to what he wanted to get to.
And then it was like a feint here, feint on this side, feint here.
And all of a sudden he's got a tendency and now it's like attack time.
Yeah, he's done some stuff.