Lex Fridman Podcast
#328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives
10 Oct 2022
John Danaher is one of the greatest coaches and minds in martial arts history. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Audible: https://audible.com/lex to get 30-day free trial - Calm: https://calm.com/lex to get 40% off premium - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off - Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings EPISODE LINKS: John's Instagram: https://instagram.com/danaherjohn Watch full matches at FloGrappling: https://flograppling.com PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:51) - Road to ADCC (26:23) - Danaher Death Squad (35:07) - Mental preparation (59:52) - Gordon Ryan (1:56:50) - Giancarlo Bodoni (2:21:57) - Garry Tonon (2:35:54) - Nicholas Meregali (2:51:21) - Ruotolo brothers (3:01:00) - Takedowns (3:05:19) - GSP (3:13:48) - Renzo Gracie (3:18:24) - Boris (3:22:15) - Ali Abdelaziz (3:24:41) - Khabib Nurmagomedov (3:28:33) - Joe Rogan playing pool (3:31:47) - Advice for grapplers (3:41:43) - Day in the life (3:48:25) - Bear vs Gorilla vs Lion vs Anaconda (4:26:12) - Tom Hardy (4:37:46) - Emojis (4:40:15) - Love (4:45:38) - Fighting to the death (4:49:25) - Knives
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with John Donaher, his third time on this podcast. He's widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in martial arts history. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We've got Audible for audiobooks, Calm for meditation, Indeed for hiring, Masterclass for learning, and Aidsleeve for napping. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
This episode is brought to you by Audible, an audiobook service that has given me thousands of hours of education, enlightenment, inspiration, wisdom. I can keep going. All of that through listening to audiobooks. It's becoming increasingly my favorite thing to do when I'm running. I listen to audiobooks.
And given a lot of things that I'm doing in my life on the technical side, but also on the podcasting, the people I'm interviewing, I actually prefer not to listen to the audiobooks about the upcoming guests, or from the upcoming guests, or about the topic that the upcoming guests are covering, because... What happens is I get so full of ideas and I want to stop and write them down.
I want to record audio notes, all that kind of stuff. But that gets in the way of running. So I try to listen to non-fiction books that... are bigger picture relevant to my life. So I'm talking about history. I'm talking about technical topics that are outside of my particular focus at this particular moment. That's when I listen to a few audio books on rocketry, for example.
Anyway, all of that is available in Audible. I highly recommend it. New members can try it free for 30 days at audible.com or text Lex to 500-500. This show is brought to you by Calm, a meditation and mental wellness app. Over 100 million people around the world use Calm to take care of their minds.
Some folks tell me that Calm is the destination they arrive at when they listen to my particular voice. And it is true that the voice of the podcaster, no matter what it is, honestly, becomes a kind of comforting
blanket or maybe a comforting path towards calmness so i'm definitely a big believer into the intimacy or whatever you want to call it of podcasting a long-form podcast where it's not like over edited where it's just the raw human being before you in conversation or alone i love all of it like Dan Carlin, that's alone, or Joe Rogan, that's in conversation.
I just draw a lot of contentment and peace from listening to those conversations. Anyway, if you want to do that kind of thing, but do it more systematically and rigorously, you should definitely be doing guided meditation. I'm a huge fan of that, and Calm is a great app for that. You can get a discount on Calm's premium subscription, which includes hundreds of hours of programming.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did John Danaher face during the team's transition?
Well played, John. Well played. But you see what they're trying to do. They're trying to create theater and pageantry when, in fact, it's just a grappling match. It's just two athletes, a referee, and a rule set. That's the reality. Now, what they try to sell you is something which is not reality, which is this is somehow bigger and different.
And they reinforce this with pageantry and theater so that it becomes not just a grappling match, but a grappling performance, the same way you have a theater performance. And my goal as a coach is to dispel that and say, when you go out there, There's only one reality. You, him, and the referee reinforcing a rule set. That's it.
Everything else you see, the smoke, the fire, the music, is an illusion. And it's put there intentionally to make you feel a certain kind of way. And your whole goal is to see this as an illusion and walk out and see only the reality, which is that this is the same damn thing you do every day in the gym. The only difference is you're going with a guy you've never grappled before.
So the actual act of removing the illusion or realizing that it is an illusion How do you practice that?
So when you step on the mat... Once you're aware of it, I always have them... It's like when you see a magician and you have his tricks explained to you, you never see the magic again. The first time you see a good card trick from a good magician, it's like, oh my God. Then when they explain it to you, I did this, this and this, step one, step two, then you look at it like, it's not that special.
And when you explain to people this idea of the pageantry as an illusion, then just as when you watch the magician and you learn the trick, all the magic flies out the window, so too with the nervous response.
So that's for the pageantry, but what about maybe the physical intensity of competition? Isn't there...
an extra no it's the same in every competition it's not like you know they're twice as strong and adcc is there and the ibgf world championships it's the physical intensity is always pretty much the same they experience it every day in the gym and um uh like you know if you go out and you grapple gordon ryan it's not like the next guy you grab is going to be twice as strong sam or twice as fast
This could be a little stronger, a little faster, but not so much so that it completely changes your approach to the game. There's not that much difference between the human bodies out there on the stage. So if you've felt intensity before, you're not gonna be shocked by ADCC.
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Chapter 3: How did Gordon Ryan's health issues impact the team's journey?
And as a result, Many people have forgotten the value of straight Ashigurami base leg locks and undervalued them. Gordon has outstanding heel hooks from both straight and cross positions and His opponent was probably more concerned about the danger of a cross ashigurami, left the right leg undefended for far too long.
And as a result, Gordon goes into a very classical ashigurami you would normally expect to see from five or six years ago and gets a very, very quick finish. So lifts his opponent. There's the ashigurami, the entanglement of one of his opponent's legs with two of his. Now he's got to turn and expose his opponent's heel. So there's an initial off balance to the left to get a defensive reaction.
The opponent overcompensates, exposes his heel, and then there's the submission. There's a danger of a leg being broken here. Gordon has an absolutely ferocious outside heel hook. Until you felt it, it's quite different.
So the opponent, probably before he even felt the heel hook, felt the control and that it's screwed.
Yeah.
That he's screwed there. He doesn't even want to.
When someone who knows what they're doing, gets a bite on your leg like that, you feel it deep inside your knee and ankle tendons immediately.
And it's... There's a sense in which you almost tap. He got a couple of taps, almost like as if they're early, because the opponent knows... People came up to us, obviously, this guy tapped early.
It's like... No, he knew.
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Chapter 4: What was Andre Galvao's strategy against Gordon Ryan?
So what was the strategy going into this match? What were you thinking? What were you thinking?
Okay. For Andre Galvan, there's a sense in which Andre Galvan had to fight literally the perfect match to win this. Okay. This is a match that's going to be 20 minutes long and potentially 40 minutes long. Okay. Andre Gaumont cannot win by submission. Gordon's submission dominance here is just too great. It would be exceedingly difficult for him to win on the ground.
Gordon's ground positional game is just too advanced. And so for Andre Galvan, he had to win. If he was going to win, it was going to be in a standing wrestling exchange where most people assessed him as having a measure of superiority over Gordon Ryan. The problem is that it's hard to just keep a potentially 40-minute match on the ground, sorry, off the ground that whole time.
It's very, very difficult indeed. So he would have had to fight literally the perfect tactical match to make it happen. And he would have to do it without getting called for stalling points. Gordon has the luxury that if at any point they go to the ground, he has... complete dominance, but Gordon too has a problem that he can't pull guard without being penalized.
And if Andre Galvan can play this tactical game of forcing Gordon to pull guard and then staying at a distance where he's doing enough action not to get called for stalling, but not so much to engage with the dangerous Gordon Ryan on the ground, then it's feasible he could have won.
but it would have been, as I said, it would have required the most perfect application and integration of technique and tactics that he's capable of.
How much intimidation was there? Or are these athletes already beyond that? When you say intimidation, be more precise. do you think there was some degree, if you were just to empathize with Andre Galvao, do you think there's some degree in which Gordon was in his head? Because of the trash talk leading up to certain events, because of the level of dominance that Gordon has shown,
in this competition and in months and years leading up to it. Also the fact that Andre Guevara is also a coach of a large team. So there's some pressure to demonstrate to the team that the old line still got it.
Yeah. I can't speak for Andre, but I know for Gordon, it's hard to be intimidated when you know the other guy has no method of finishing you. It just takes so much pressure off. When you just go in there saying, there's literally no way this guy can finish me. And there's no way this guy can pin and control me. I can't be finished. I can't be pinned and controlled.
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Chapter 5: How did intimidation factor into the match between Andre Galvao and Gordon Ryan?
The only way I can lose this is if this guy plays a tactical game. So in his best case scenario, I lose by a tactical game. But from Andre's perspective, it's like if I make one screw up, this kid could finish me. You can see which way the intimidation game goes. Now, for the start, things get interesting here. We've already said, if you could just freeze it right there.
Andre's only realistic path to victory is standing grappling. That would require him to take Gordon down, presumably multiple times after the first 10 minutes, and not be taken down at all by Gordon. So it's a tall order. It's possible, but difficult. And here's where things get interesting. I told Gordon before the match, just go out and offer him the leg. Same way he did with Nicky Rod.
And that's where things get interesting. I must say that I loved what Andre Galvan did at the start of this match. He's a little crazy here. This is...
There was just so much energy in the room at this point that his hand finding got a little... For people just listening, there's a bit of hard slapping.
Yeah, that's fine. That could be considered a strike. It's fine. There was just a lot of electric atmosphere in the room. So now things settle down a little bit. But here's where things get interesting. Andre throws the whole tactical game out the window right from the start. He goes for the takedown. Gordon doesn't try to fight the takedown because it's in his interests to go to the ground.
But I love this about Andre. He's literally like, fuck you, kid. Let's see how good your ground game is. So he shoots the takedown and Gordon accepts it, obviously, because it's to his advantage to accept it. But I love the fact that Andre was like, I'm not even going to try and stall this out. I'm just going to bang. There it is. So he's like, okay, let's see what you got, kid.
They say you're good on the ground. Let's see what you fucking got. And I love that about Andre.
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Chapter 6: What lessons can be learned from Giancarlo Bodoni's journey in grappling?
Unfortunately, he's entered the hornet's nest now. What happened there real quick? Because that was very fast. Gordon immediately went into Ashigurami. Not just any ashigurami, but ashigurami where he's holding both legs. There's an open guard and he's scooted forward.
Oh, wow. That's really nice.
So he splits the legs. Now he dominates the space between the knees. So there's a guaranteed straight ashigurami here.
He split the knees against André Gaval, like effortlessly right there.
So already Gordon's in his preferred domain now. So he's starting to off-balance his opponent. He's looking for reaction to get heel exposure. He does get heel exposure. Andres does a good job of monitoring the feet to try and reduce the breaking pressure. But the brute fact is it's in Gordon's realm now. This is where he has all the advantage.
And the match is going to be 20 minutes in Gordon's realm. That's going to be a very, very tall order.
Was there a moment here, again, Gordon's on the legs. Are you impressed that Andre was able to get out from this?
I'd expect this. Andre's been preparing for this for two years. And remember, Andre has gone against some of the greatest leg lockers in grappling before and prevailed. So he's not naive. He knows how to defend himself. The big problem is that he's going to create defensive reactions, which lead into other aspects of Gordon's game, in particular back exposure.
So here, Ashigarami goes to like a single leg type of position where Gordon runs to Andre's back.
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Chapter 7: What unexpected moment did John Danaher share about Boris?
He never gave any reason for this. It was just ridiculous. So one day, now this is a guy who came in literally every day, 6 a.m., every day. One day, he comes in, he comes up to me at the end of the train, he goes, hey, John, I just turned 40, so I won't be seeing you again. And I thought, he's joking. So I'm like, I'll see you tomorrow, Boris. He's like, no, you won't, and walks off.
How gangster is that? And then he never came back. I've never seen Boris since. He came in, was one of the best grapplers I ever saw. And that's it, buddy. I'm out. And to this day- No one to walk away. Yeah.
I also got to hang out, got to meet, hang out with Ali Abdelaziz. He's a Henzo Gracie black belt, fourth degree judo black belt, and friend and manager of Khabib Nurmagomedov, who's coming down to Austin soon. We'll do a podcast. Hopefully we'll get on the mat and have a bit of brainstorm. Also, he's a manager and friend of many other amazing fighters. I really love the guy.
The loyalty, the fact that he looks for loyalty and has that inner, close inner circle and integrity and character in people. I really liked him. I connected him really quickly. But any fun stories about Ali?
Did you train together? Yes, he trained for many years in the basement of my classes. He's great. His story is one of the most unlikely stories. Like, if someone wrote a movie plot about his life, they'd be like, it's absurd. We're throwing out the door in a second. And yet it all happened. You're absolutely correct. He is...
from the unlikeliest possible starts, created a situation where he's, I think it's incontestable now to say he's the most successful manager in mixed martial arts history.
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Chapter 8: How does John Danaher describe Ali Abdelaziz's impact in MMA?
He has more champions under his care than anyone else I'm aware of. And respected and influential.
So on all dimensions, yes.
Now, many people aren't aware of the fact that he was actually a very good judo player. Jidoka first, yeah. Yes, yeah. He had very good nogi judo. He had an excellent haraigoshi, very good taniyatoshi. And he threw many people who were highly credentialed wrestlers back in the basement, back in the glory days of MMA training.
He was a good example of a guy who had very, very good judo hips and often used it to counter wrestling and was a fine demonstrator of the idea that when judo is adapted to nogi gripping, it can provide a very effective foil to many of the standard forms of wrestling attack. And he would often use Uchimata to counter leg tackles and do so in very, very spectacular fashion.
Well, what do you think about Khabib? Is there something from just watching him or is there something you can imagine if he comes down to the gym that you might learn from the way he moves, the way he approaches wrestling?
Oh, absolutely. He's one of the greatest combat athletes of all time. If you can't learn from someone like that, there's something wrong with you.
So he emphasizes control.
Yes, he does. And he's absolutely a master of exerting control. The amount of grappling control, he was able to put over some of the most difficult people in the world to control. It was truly astounding. He beat people from every style. He beat wrestlers, he beat jiu-jitsu players, he beat kickboxers, and he controlled them all in more or less the same way. He has a very underrated bottom game.
People think, oh, he's just about stifling top control. But people forget he was taken down on several occasions and ended up in bottom position. And he showed excellent guard work from bottom. He was able to get into submission holds readily on opponents from bottom position. He's got an excellent bottom game. People say, oh, he's just a positional guy. No, he's not. He's got great submissions.
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