Craig Jones: Jiu Jitsu, $2 Million Prize, CJI, ADCC, Ukraine & Trolling

00:00:00.000 | - So I like to match looks from time to time in an homage.

00:00:05.000 | - You look sexy.

00:00:06.720 | How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?

00:00:09.600 | - Three or four.

00:00:10.540 | - To send a message or just for your own personal enjoyment?

00:00:14.240 | - If she wins, I'll personally give her a million dollars.

00:00:19.240 | If I can footlock her, we're gonna collaborate together

00:00:23.920 | in an OnlyFans sex tape.

00:00:25.900 | - Did she agree to this?

00:00:28.720 | - She shook on it.

00:00:30.200 | - You do have an OnlyFans channel.

00:00:31.720 | Is that still up?

00:00:32.680 | - After August 17th, it's gonna be fire.

00:00:35.160 | - It's gonna be on fire.

00:00:36.080 | - Honestly, when we talk about Sugar Investor,

00:00:37.800 | I think that could fund the entire tournament.

00:00:40.040 | - I missed all that.

00:00:40.880 | What gives you hope?

00:00:42.360 | - That you can still make fun of anything,

00:00:45.160 | as long as it's funny.

00:00:46.320 | - The following is a conversation with Craig Jones,

00:00:51.760 | martial artist, world traveler,

00:00:54.080 | and one of the funniest people

00:00:55.840 | in the sport of submission grappling.

00:00:57.880 | While he does make fun of himself a lot,

00:00:59.960 | he is legitimately one of the greatest

00:01:02.640 | submission grapplers in the world.

00:01:04.680 | And underneath the veil of nonstop sexualized Aussie humor

00:01:09.680 | and incessant online trolling,

00:01:12.040 | he is truly a kind-hearted human being

00:01:15.160 | who's trying to do good in the world.

00:01:18.000 | Sometimes he does so through a bit of controversy and chaos,

00:01:22.800 | like with the new CJI tournament

00:01:24.880 | that has over $2 million in prize money.

00:01:29.000 | And it's coming up this Friday and Saturday.

00:01:31.840 | Yes, the same weekend as the prestigious ADCC tournament.

00:01:37.240 | The goal of CGI tournament is to grow the sport.

00:01:40.920 | So you'll be able to watch it for free online,

00:01:44.060 | live on YouTube and other places.

00:01:46.460 | All ticket profits go to charity,

00:01:49.640 | mainly to cancer research.

00:01:51.220 | So I encourage you to support the mission of this tournament

00:01:54.960 | by buying tickets and going to see the event in person.

00:01:58.760 | Craig gave me a special link

00:02:00.640 | that gives you a 50% discount on the tickets.

00:02:03.180 | Go to lexfriedman.com/cji

00:02:05.520 | and it should forward you to the right place.

00:02:08.360 | They're trying to sell the last few tickets now.

00:02:10.880 | It's a good cause, go buy some.

00:02:13.440 | And also let me say, as a fan of the sport,

00:02:15.880 | I highly encourage you to watch both CGI and ADCC

00:02:20.040 | and to celebrate athletes competing in both.

00:02:22.400 | From CGI with Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rod,

00:02:25.600 | Bertola Brothers, Fion Davis, McKenzie Dern, and more,

00:02:29.880 | to ADCC with Gordon Ryan, Nicholas Margali,

00:02:33.700 | Giancarlo Budoni, Rafael Lovato Jr, Mika Galvao, and more.

00:02:38.700 | I have a lot of respect for everyone involved.

00:02:41.160 | I trained with many of them regularly

00:02:42.920 | and consider many of them friends,

00:02:44.600 | including Craig, Gordon, and of course, John Donaher,

00:02:48.760 | who I will talk to many, many more times on this podcast.

00:02:52.120 | This is "Alex Friedman Podcast."

00:02:54.160 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:02:55.960 | in the description.

00:02:57.200 | And now, dear friends, I invite you all to come to the pool

00:03:01.560 | with Craig Jones and me.

00:03:03.640 | When you brought the $1 million in cash

00:03:07.120 | on Rogan's podcast, did you have security with you?

00:03:11.440 | - We had security, but only by Joe Rogan's request,

00:03:15.000 | 'cause he said, "You're really gonna bring it?"

00:03:16.720 | - Yeah. - "Do you have security?"

00:03:18.160 | I said, "No."

00:03:19.000 | He's like, "Don't worry about it.

00:03:19.820 | "I'll send my security."

00:03:21.240 | - So you were gonna deal with our security?

00:03:22.920 | - Yeah, we're gonna win.

00:03:23.760 | I thought, I mean, I was told not to tell anyone,

00:03:27.520 | but I sent pictures of it to everyone I know,

00:03:29.680 | so that was probably a security risk.

00:03:31.320 | - Yeah, so it's just you and a car with a bag of cash.

00:03:34.560 | - Yeah, it was a company that sponsors me, Shuffle.com.

00:03:37.480 | It was their friend, a friend of theirs,

00:03:39.480 | so a guy that's never met me before

00:03:42.080 | just took the risk to show up to a stranger's house

00:03:44.480 | with $1 million in cash to bring to Joe Rogan.

00:03:46.800 | It was a big risk of him.

00:03:47.640 | And he just put it in the car and drove it.

00:03:49.720 | - Drove it over there, yeah.

00:03:50.840 | - Yeah, well, no security except Joe.

00:03:52.880 | - Except Joe. - That's common sense.

00:03:54.360 | - And then Joe said he'd never seen $1 million before.

00:03:56.760 | - Yeah.

00:03:57.600 | - But I don't know if I believe him.

00:03:59.600 | - That's what everyone says.

00:04:00.960 | That's what Pablo Escobar probably says also.

00:04:03.400 | What's your relationship with risk,

00:04:05.880 | especially with the risk of death?

00:04:07.760 | - I would say I'm very risk-averse.

00:04:09.780 | - You are.

00:04:10.620 | No, you're not.

00:04:11.440 | That's a lie.

00:04:12.280 | - My relationship with risk, I like a bit of excitement.

00:04:16.600 | I like a bit of adventure.

00:04:18.000 | I'm more about the adventure,

00:04:19.000 | but I will not let the risk get in the way of it.

00:04:22.680 | And also, obviously just got back from Ukraine.

00:04:25.800 | I'm happy to take a few risks

00:04:28.280 | if it's part of what the locals want me to do.

00:04:32.400 | You know what I mean?

00:04:33.240 | Like in Kazakhstan, we did some things that were dangerous.

00:04:34.920 | Like if the locals are like, come along,

00:04:37.680 | join in on this activity,

00:04:39.280 | I feel personally obligated to go with them.

00:04:41.680 | - So it's not about the risk.

00:04:43.640 | Like you're not attracted to risk,

00:04:45.000 | you're attracted to adventure.

00:04:46.080 | And the risk is the thing you don't give a damn about

00:04:49.520 | if it comes along with it.

00:04:50.600 | - Sometimes the best adventures

00:04:51.960 | involve the most risk, unfortunately.

00:04:54.000 | - Speaking of which, you went to Ukraine,

00:04:55.440 | like you said, twice recently.

00:04:57.760 | - Twice, really pushed the limit there.

00:04:59.880 | - Including to the front.

00:05:01.560 | - To the front.

00:05:02.480 | - Tell me the full story of that from the beginning.

00:05:06.880 | How did you end up in Ukraine?

00:05:08.320 | - So we're in Kazakhstan.

00:05:09.400 | We're doing some filming in Kazakhstan.

00:05:11.040 | And obviously Borat's still a very traumatic memory for them.

00:05:15.960 | And some of my jokes felt like they don't go as well

00:05:19.480 | in that neck of the woods.

00:05:21.000 | So we had some difficulty filming out there.

00:05:23.360 | So we filmed this horse game.

00:05:24.800 | Have you ever heard of cock bar?

00:05:26.080 | - Thanks to you, yes.

00:05:27.000 | - It's a game, a very, very old game.

00:05:29.080 | They cut a goat or a sheep.

00:05:31.320 | I didn't get too close to look at it,

00:05:32.760 | but they cut its head and legs off

00:05:35.000 | and they use it as some form of bull.

00:05:37.480 | And then they'll have like up to a thousand guys on horses

00:05:40.880 | violently trying to pick this up

00:05:42.840 | and drop it in the other end's goals, basically.

00:05:45.480 | The goals used to be concrete.

00:05:46.600 | Now it's just a tarp,

00:05:47.800 | but local business owners will throw down

00:05:51.000 | huge amounts of money for the winners.

00:05:53.440 | And these horses have been trained from a very young age.

00:05:55.960 | The riders have been trained.

00:05:57.880 | I've never ridden a horse before.

00:05:59.800 | We wanted to film something that made it look like

00:06:01.760 | I was gonna go into the horse pit, into the cock bar pit.

00:06:05.920 | However, the drunk stunt man that we used

00:06:10.880 | just decided that when he took my horse reins,

00:06:13.360 | he would take me straight into the pit

00:06:15.160 | instead of ending the shot there.

00:06:16.960 | So I was in there amongst, I guess the horse riders,

00:06:20.120 | the cock bar riders, and we weren't leaving.

00:06:23.680 | We just were in there for quite a while.

00:06:25.720 | And he was just, he could talk a little bit,

00:06:27.200 | he could talk English pretty well, actually.

00:06:29.160 | And he's like,

00:06:30.000 | "Oh, I thought you'd want to check it out from the inside."

00:06:32.200 | And then while we're in there,

00:06:33.720 | someone picked up the sort of carcass

00:06:36.880 | and a wave of horse riders came at me.

00:06:38.960 | I was quite concerned at that point

00:06:41.600 | 'cause they're bashing into each other.

00:06:42.960 | And obviously they're angry.

00:06:43.800 | They're seeing a foreigner in there.

00:06:44.760 | I was wearing like basically biggie, smalls,

00:06:47.760 | coogee, gecko-looking sweater.

00:06:49.880 | So I stood out.

00:06:51.000 | They definitely didn't like that I was participating

00:06:52.960 | in a game that they probably trained their whole life for.

00:06:56.280 | And that amount of money they could win

00:06:57.760 | is very, very significant.

00:06:59.000 | And there's me in there.

00:07:00.640 | They're also pointing out Borat, Borat,

00:07:02.840 | thinking I was making Borat jokes,

00:07:04.000 | which again, very traumatic memory

00:07:06.680 | for the people at Kazakhstan.

00:07:07.720 | - Were you making Borat jokes?

00:07:09.400 | - No, but I guess it's the same type of humor.

00:07:12.360 | But just, I guess, I'm not pretending to be Kazakh.

00:07:16.160 | I'm just there being an idiot

00:07:18.200 | and enjoying the local culture.

00:07:20.480 | But we're over there in Kazakhstan.

00:07:21.560 | We did that.

00:07:22.400 | That was obviously a bit risky.

00:07:23.320 | - Did they learn to love you?

00:07:24.720 | - I think they learned to love me

00:07:26.480 | and then to hate me again.

00:07:27.560 | So it was like a bit of a all-encompassing relationship

00:07:30.400 | for the Kazakh people.

00:07:31.280 | But we basically abandoned ship.

00:07:33.440 | It was proven too difficult to film some things,

00:07:35.720 | some sensitive subjects over there.

00:07:37.920 | And I said, "Where should we go next?"

00:07:40.040 | And I just looked at the map

00:07:40.880 | and I was like, "We're near Ukraine."

00:07:42.760 | Ukraine was a place that I'd been offered

00:07:44.720 | to teach a jiu-jitsu seminar prior to,

00:07:48.360 | I guess, the war commencing,

00:07:49.400 | the full-scale war commencing.

00:07:51.120 | And we're looking for a bit of adventure,

00:07:52.800 | something interesting to film,

00:07:53.920 | something following the news,

00:07:55.800 | obviously very controversial in the news.

00:07:58.160 | People have very strong opinions.

00:07:59.440 | And I was like, "Let's go over there.

00:08:01.120 | "Let's throw a charity event.

00:08:02.240 | "Let's do something.

00:08:03.080 | "Let's train with the people

00:08:04.160 | "and really experience for ourselves."

00:08:06.240 | So we set up the seminar.

00:08:07.720 | Turned out to be the biggest seminar

00:08:09.400 | for jiu-jitsu in Ukraine history,

00:08:11.200 | which is wild considering,

00:08:13.120 | obviously they are at war,

00:08:14.480 | but everyone came together to support it.

00:08:17.320 | And one of the soldiers there,

00:08:19.520 | one of my friends there,

00:08:20.520 | good friend now who's on the frontline,

00:08:22.120 | he made a comment on there.

00:08:23.760 | And he said, "Hey, this is a seminar

00:08:27.280 | "to donate profits to the soldiers,

00:08:29.800 | "but we're on the frontline."

00:08:31.880 | And I was like, "You know what?

00:08:33.280 | "I'll come to you."

00:08:35.000 | And he's like, "Listen, I can't promise you'll survive,

00:08:37.560 | "but I'll promise you'll have a good time."

00:08:39.800 | And I said, "That's all I needed to hear."

00:08:41.280 | So we connected and my friend Roman,

00:08:43.360 | we went really, really close.

00:08:45.840 | I think we were at the closest point,

00:08:47.320 | seven kilometers from the frontline.

00:08:51.200 | Obviously very surreal experience to be over there,

00:08:54.200 | seeing basically how the battles fought with all drones.

00:08:57.160 | - How long ago was this?

00:08:58.400 | - I think it would have been March or April.

00:09:01.080 | So we went there.

00:09:01.920 | We went basically spent two nights up on the frontline,

00:09:05.720 | went back to Kiev, and that was it for that trip.

00:09:08.800 | In terms of crazy stuff that happens,

00:09:11.640 | obviously just the people living,

00:09:13.720 | like you download the air defense tracker.

00:09:17.160 | So at any time there could be an air siren going off,

00:09:19.920 | an air alert on your phone,

00:09:21.520 | could be like drones heading your way,

00:09:23.680 | planes are in the air, missiles flying,

00:09:26.560 | and then those missiles will change direction and stuff.

00:09:28.600 | So the air alert, you don't know

00:09:31.560 | if it's heading a different direction,

00:09:32.880 | but they just sort of warn everyone.

00:09:34.080 | So you live under a constant state of fear, basically.

00:09:38.040 | And then on that first trip,

00:09:39.640 | the heaviest moment was I was going downstairs

00:09:41.960 | in the hotel to work out,

00:09:43.760 | which is honestly a rare thing these days,

00:09:45.680 | doing something healthy with myself.

00:09:46.640 | - You working out.

00:09:47.680 | - Getting in the gym, pumping some iron.

00:09:49.120 | And this was divine intervention

00:09:51.520 | that a hypersonic missile was shot down

00:09:53.520 | by the Patriot defense system,

00:09:55.320 | just like five minutes from the hotel.

00:09:57.360 | So the whole hotel and the attached gym

00:10:00.440 | just shook like crazy.

00:10:02.320 | And some people started freaking out.

00:10:05.000 | Most people went to leave to go outside,

00:10:06.760 | which I don't think is recommended,

00:10:08.200 | but you want to see what's going on out there.

00:10:10.280 | - This was in Kyiv.

00:10:11.240 | - This was in Kyiv.

00:10:12.320 | So it got shot down.

00:10:13.560 | And then some of the local troops

00:10:15.360 | actually took me to the site

00:10:17.400 | of where just part of the missile had landed in the ground

00:10:20.480 | and left this huge sort of indentation.

00:10:23.040 | They'd already cleared up most of the,

00:10:26.000 | I guess, shrapnel from the missile.

00:10:28.320 | I don't know if I should,

00:10:29.200 | or if I was legally allowed to do this,

00:10:30.400 | but I took some of that missile back home with me.

00:10:33.520 | I don't know where I left it, actually.

00:10:35.120 | But I thought maybe that would raise some alarm bells

00:10:37.000 | and airport scans, but I took it regardless.

00:10:40.880 | And that was basically the craziest thing

00:10:42.960 | that happened on that first trip.

00:10:44.080 | - The Patriot defense system is incredible.

00:10:46.920 | It's an incredible piece of technology.

00:10:48.640 | That's from the United States.

00:10:50.760 | It's expensive, but it's incredible.

00:10:53.280 | And so that's protecting Kyiv.

00:10:55.400 | - That's protecting Kyiv, yeah.

00:10:57.040 | That was at the time where U.S. hadn't voted to,

00:11:00.080 | I guess, keep funding the weapons over there.

00:11:03.240 | So it was kind of a tense moment 'cause I think,

00:11:06.120 | I don't know, everyone was thinking like,

00:11:07.800 | when do those air defense missiles run out?

00:11:10.360 | So that was a heavy moment for me thinking,

00:11:12.640 | look at what it shot out the sky.

00:11:14.160 | Like, imagine if that didn't, if they didn't have that.

00:11:17.480 | But we, yeah, that was probably the most surreal moment.

00:11:21.160 | But Kyiv largely, life goes on most of the time

00:11:24.480 | as per normal.

00:11:25.880 | I was faced with crazy messages and comments,

00:11:28.880 | even just posting that video.

00:11:30.600 | Like, I'm getting paid by Ukraine and stuff.

00:11:33.040 | And it's just like, people just don't understand

00:11:35.840 | that life has to go on.

00:11:37.160 | Like, Kyiv's here.

00:11:38.480 | The front line's far away.

00:11:40.440 | Like, the cities have to largely try to operate as normal

00:11:43.280 | or just life will not go on in those villages and cities.

00:11:48.200 | - Well, it's human nature as well.

00:11:49.480 | It's not just Kyiv.

00:11:50.320 | It's Kharkiv, it's even Donbass, Kherson.

00:11:54.120 | People get accustomed to war quickly.

00:11:58.280 | As it's impossible to suffer for prolonged periods of time.

00:12:00.960 | So you adjust and you appreciate the things you still have.

00:12:04.840 | - Yeah, it's some baller moves out there.

00:12:06.080 | I love seeing people that just crazy stuff's going on

00:12:09.200 | from the war and they don't even react to it.

00:12:11.320 | They don't go to the bomb shelter.

00:12:12.960 | It's like a baller move.

00:12:14.040 | Like, I'm not gonna change my lifestyle.

00:12:16.520 | Actually on that first trip as well,

00:12:17.720 | something else that I probably shouldn't have been allowed

00:12:19.200 | to do was go to Chernobyl.

00:12:21.600 | So Chernobyl, I believe troops came through Belarus

00:12:26.000 | and there was some fighting going on in Chernobyl.

00:12:28.600 | I think the whole world got concerned at that point

00:12:30.600 | if any sort of radiation leaked.

00:12:33.160 | But Chernobyl as it stands, the troops back down

00:12:36.840 | and it's completely covered in mines.

00:12:39.160 | Very, very difficult to go to Chernobyl.

00:12:41.640 | Basically as a tourist or as like, I guess,

00:12:45.400 | an idiot like myself should really probably not be allowed

00:12:48.760 | in a place like that.

00:12:50.160 | But we were able to get there.

00:12:51.320 | We passed like four security checkpoints.

00:12:54.160 | It took two attempts.

00:12:55.800 | First time we tried to go in there

00:12:57.280 | was with a special forces guy.

00:12:58.560 | We cleared two security gates.

00:13:00.920 | Then they stopped us and basically threatened us

00:13:03.840 | with arrest, rightfully so.

00:13:06.680 | Really have no business going to Chernobyl.

00:13:09.280 | We made a connection.

00:13:10.120 | I won't say who this connection was,

00:13:11.600 | but he had heard about what I had done

00:13:13.880 | sort of with a charity event and opened some doors

00:13:16.480 | for us to be able to go to Chernobyl.

00:13:19.160 | So we got to see Chernobyl.

00:13:20.760 | We had some filming restrictions there

00:13:22.200 | just because it was a crazy military sort of conflict

00:13:26.600 | at one point and we got to actually see Chernobyl.

00:13:29.040 | Chernobyl's always been a dream of mine to see

00:13:30.800 | 'cause it's just such an interesting place.

00:13:32.800 | And to see it under these conditions, very, very strange.

00:13:35.840 | - Yeah, what was that like?

00:13:36.920 | So there's no civilians there now.

00:13:39.400 | - It's just completely empty.

00:13:40.960 | I guess it's kind of like the fantasy you have.

00:13:43.080 | I imagine people going tours of Chernobyl

00:13:46.080 | back in the tourist days when it was a tourist spot

00:13:48.520 | and it would be busy, full of tourists.

00:13:50.400 | We got basically a private tour,

00:13:51.720 | so we got to really feel that abandoned sort of vibes.

00:13:55.880 | I guess I was interested in it from playing Call of Duty

00:13:58.280 | and then Chernobyl series, all the documentaries and stuff,

00:14:01.120 | but very, very strange place to go visit.

00:14:04.160 | - And it is now a minefield like a lot of parts of Ukraine.

00:14:07.800 | That's one of the dark, terrifying aspects of wars,

00:14:12.800 | how many mines are left.

00:14:15.680 | Even when the war ends, for decades after,

00:14:19.480 | there's mines everywhere

00:14:20.560 | 'cause demining is extremely difficult.

00:14:23.200 | And that could continually kill people.

00:14:28.200 | - I don't think it'll be a tourist spot for a very long time

00:14:30.800 | because if you were thinking about areas to demine

00:14:32.720 | when the conflict ends,

00:14:34.200 | an area where if you accidentally trigger a mine

00:14:36.400 | could cause a radiation leak,

00:14:37.960 | it's probably gonna be very low on the list.

00:14:39.440 | So tourism for Chernobyl,

00:14:42.240 | who knows how long until that returns?

00:14:44.800 | - Why do you think you were able to get to Chernobyl?

00:14:47.400 | Is there, why don't you think the Ukrainian people,

00:14:52.400 | the Ukrainian soldiers don't see you as a threat?

00:14:55.440 | - Maybe they were hoping I did step on a mine.

00:14:57.520 | Maybe my jokes didn't go too well there.

00:14:59.560 | - So your connection was actually Putin.

00:15:00.920 | He was trying to get rid of you.

00:15:02.120 | - Putin, yeah.

00:15:02.960 | Now, I don't know.

00:15:05.000 | I mean, we felt pretty safe when we were there.

00:15:06.680 | There was an air alert went off.

00:15:08.400 | They were kind of more concerned with me dying

00:15:11.800 | just for the PR side of things.

00:15:13.360 | It's like Australian tourists.

00:15:15.680 | - In one of your videos,

00:15:16.760 | I actually heard the Ukrainian language

00:15:20.120 | they were talking about.

00:15:21.120 | We don't wanna lose an athlete.

00:15:22.360 | That's what they're saying,

00:15:24.200 | as you're loading the rocket launcher.

00:15:28.440 | - Oh yeah, the rocket launcher.

00:15:29.480 | I shot a rocket launcher with the troops on the first trip,

00:15:31.480 | but the second trip I went back to,

00:15:33.920 | which was only maybe four to five weeks ago.

00:15:37.640 | This time we went to some crazier spots.

00:15:39.480 | So we went to Odessa, which has been hit a ton.

00:15:42.360 | - I really enjoyed the video of old man stretching

00:15:45.320 | and exercising on the Odessa shore.

00:15:47.200 | - Yeah, what is that?

00:15:48.040 | Is that a local custom?

00:15:50.080 | - Well, Odessa people are known historically to be wild.

00:15:54.240 | - That was wild.

00:15:55.400 | It was abrasive to the eyes, but I appreciated it,

00:15:57.480 | especially a middle-aged man in underwear

00:16:00.400 | with a beer belly doing a sun dance at dusk.

00:16:03.200 | That would frighten many people.

00:16:05.000 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:07.120 | The battleship would turn around.

00:16:09.080 | Yeah, so where else?

00:16:10.480 | - Yeah, so we went to Odessa.

00:16:11.800 | We briefly went back to Kyiv.

00:16:14.600 | So I made a connection with the police chief

00:16:17.920 | of basically the entire country last time.

00:16:20.440 | And he had said to me that if I wanted to go somewhere

00:16:24.640 | sort of really heavy in terms of action,

00:16:26.960 | we could go to Kurson.

00:16:28.280 | And he's like, "I'll personally escort you to Kurson."

00:16:32.160 | And I was just like, well,

00:16:33.640 | here we have an invitation for adventure.

00:16:36.040 | I think it's a great idea to go.

00:16:38.080 | And I thought, you know what?

00:16:39.280 | I'll completely lie to my cameraman

00:16:42.160 | and tell him it's a safe trip to go on

00:16:44.640 | so that he can pass that information onto his fiancee

00:16:47.560 | and she won't have any concerns.

00:16:50.080 | So we basically take this huge journey

00:16:53.120 | all the way down to Kurson.

00:16:55.040 | We switch at a city outside.

00:16:57.400 | I can't remember the name,

00:16:58.240 | but we had to switch to sort of armored vehicles.

00:17:00.480 | And I remember the guy that picked us up there said,

00:17:02.320 | "Hey, give me a phone number for someone to call

00:17:06.040 | "to recover your bodies."

00:17:08.000 | And he said that in a joking way,

00:17:08.920 | but I think he was serious.

00:17:09.760 | But I said, "Just leave it."

00:17:11.800 | I'm not, I don't think they need.

00:17:13.120 | I don't think we have much left

00:17:14.040 | probably if we get hit over there.

00:17:15.920 | But we go basically into Kurson.

00:17:18.600 | I think Kurson's population used to be like 250,000.

00:17:21.640 | Now it's like basically all military down to 50,000.

00:17:24.640 | So we went into the police,

00:17:26.760 | basically stationed in the bunker underneath.

00:17:28.880 | The top of the building was destroyed.

00:17:30.840 | And then one of the local guys just took us on a city tour,

00:17:35.440 | which again, we had some filming restrictions

00:17:37.200 | 'cause obviously anytime something's hit,

00:17:40.520 | I guess the other side wants to be able to see

00:17:42.600 | what damage has been done.

00:17:43.920 | So if you take any footage of recently destroyed buildings,

00:17:47.920 | that's gonna help them recalibrate

00:17:50.160 | and target the next shot.

00:17:51.680 | So Kurson being so heavily hit,

00:17:54.440 | it's basically within range

00:17:55.640 | of every single thing Russia has,

00:17:58.240 | every form of weapon, drones.

00:18:00.360 | Before we took the tour,

00:18:01.680 | he put some drone blocking things on top of the car,

00:18:04.560 | which didn't look reassuring.

00:18:05.600 | He also took a helmet out the back of the car,

00:18:08.480 | which I thought he was gonna give to me,

00:18:10.320 | but he just threw it in the back of the pickup truck

00:18:12.000 | and said, "Oh, you won't need this.

00:18:13.560 | You'll be dead anyway."

00:18:14.880 | And I was like, "Oh, I've made a great life decision

00:18:17.880 | with this little Kurson tour."

00:18:20.400 | But then we took a tour of the city

00:18:22.360 | and Kurson used to be kind of like a beautiful beach city

00:18:25.480 | by the Dnieper River.

00:18:26.960 | But basically it's just the river that separates Russia

00:18:30.320 | from, I guess, the Russian land they've taken from Kurson.

00:18:35.320 | So Kurson split across that river

00:18:38.840 | and there's just Russians on the other side of the river

00:18:41.000 | and Ukrainians on this side.

00:18:42.160 | So very, very dangerous spot.

00:18:44.600 | Kharkiv makes a lot of press

00:18:46.160 | because of the long range missiles that hit,

00:18:48.280 | but Kurson's just being hit all the time.

00:18:51.240 | So we took this tour, we went along the river,

00:18:53.680 | we went to within one kilometer of the frontline.

00:18:56.640 | So that was the closest we got.

00:18:58.920 | After this point, we heard artillery strike.

00:19:03.320 | And because you're in an armored vehicle,

00:19:06.360 | it sounds further away than it is.

00:19:09.120 | Obviously the sound doesn't get in.

00:19:11.160 | So I thought it sounded far away.

00:19:13.560 | We could see some smoke

00:19:14.920 | that actually appeared close in the distance.

00:19:16.400 | The guy driving us took us to a point

00:19:18.760 | where a large building was blocking us

00:19:21.320 | from, I guess, the angle at which

00:19:23.000 | the missile would have came from.

00:19:24.760 | And I thought everything was cool.

00:19:26.880 | Thought it must've been off in the distance.

00:19:29.160 | And then we heard two more strikes hit very, very close.

00:19:33.160 | They sounded really loud.

00:19:34.880 | And then I think he's radioing to see if everything's safe,

00:19:38.160 | if we can leave this point.

00:19:39.760 | And then we basically raced back.

00:19:41.120 | But I started to realize we were in danger

00:19:43.360 | at any point where he really sped the car up

00:19:45.680 | or took evasive movements in the car.

00:19:48.200 | But we got out of there

00:19:49.040 | and I think I had someone translate it later.

00:19:51.680 | And basically, yeah, he was checking to see

00:19:53.760 | if the roads were clear for us to leave.

00:19:55.800 | Ultimately, it ended up being someone died

00:19:58.520 | and a few people were injured from that blast,

00:20:00.760 | which was less than half a kilometer from us.

00:20:03.920 | And basically, they were radioing saying end the tour,

00:20:07.080 | come back to the police station.

00:20:08.680 | - Artillery is terrifying 'cause there's just shelling

00:20:13.400 | and it's the destructive power of artillery is insane.

00:20:17.440 | - Yeah, and it's constant all the time.

00:20:18.920 | Yeah, and you hear that noise and you're like,

00:20:20.240 | is that coming or going?

00:20:21.920 | Very, very concerning.

00:20:23.640 | - Right, you don't know.

00:20:25.920 | - Yeah, I'm like-- - You don't know.

00:20:26.880 | And just like that, it could be you and you're gone.

00:20:30.360 | Last time the village we went to,

00:20:32.360 | basically, it was the day we left.

00:20:37.280 | So we stayed there overnight.

00:20:38.960 | The day we left, it just started getting extremely shelled.

00:20:43.280 | And the soldier we were with just took a selfie video of us

00:20:45.680 | and basically in the location we were in,

00:20:47.600 | just hearing just artillery strike after artillery strike,

00:20:50.760 | just being like, oh, you guys left and the fun began.

00:20:53.680 | So they take it in good spirit.

00:20:55.880 | I was trying to use their energy to reassure myself,

00:20:59.760 | but I guess when they see it every day,

00:21:01.720 | they're kind of more adjusted to it.

00:21:05.000 | They're not freaking out every time

00:21:07.760 | something crazy like that goes on.

00:21:09.600 | - Well, they have to, right?

00:21:11.480 | They have to be in good spirit.

00:21:12.760 | You have to be joking and laughing and--

00:21:15.520 | - Yeah, the guys are always laughing and joking.

00:21:17.640 | They were laughing and joking at me quite a bit,

00:21:19.320 | holding weapons, trying to shoot weapons and stuff.

00:21:21.200 | They got a lot of enjoyment out of me shooting the RPG.

00:21:24.280 | - Yeah, they're probably still telling stories

00:21:27.920 | of that crazy Australian-American that rolled in.

00:21:32.160 | - They helped me out though

00:21:33.280 | in my marketing campaign for the tournament.

00:21:35.720 | We were able to secure a Lada, classic Soviet Union car.

00:21:40.720 | We towed it, we painted it with the logos

00:21:43.000 | of the other event, the ADCC,

00:21:45.280 | and we got to shoot some RPGs at it.

00:21:48.200 | - Yeah.

00:21:49.040 | - Great experience, great fun.

00:21:49.960 | - Yeah, it's a very creative marketing campaign.

00:21:52.680 | - Very dangerous one.

00:21:53.800 | - I don't think like Coke or Pepsi are gonna do that one.

00:21:56.160 | So it's very, very innovative.

00:21:57.560 | - It was a bold move.

00:21:58.400 | Luckily, they let me get away with posting it.

00:22:00.480 | But when we were there, it was basically at a shooting range

00:22:03.960 | and we cleared them out for a while.

00:22:06.000 | So we'd blown up the car, we'd set it on fire.

00:22:08.040 | We'd done all this sort of stuff.

00:22:10.360 | I remember we were trying to blow it up.

00:22:12.040 | It wasn't quite hitting.

00:22:12.920 | One of the missiles was lodged in under the car.

00:22:14.640 | So it was kind of risky.

00:22:15.480 | That could have gone off at any moment,

00:22:17.160 | but we needed to get it to ignite.

00:22:18.840 | We needed to get a shot where it was on fire.

00:22:21.520 | The logo of the enemy tournament was basically on fire.

00:22:25.320 | So we poured gasoline on it.

00:22:27.440 | We shot the gasoline tank.

00:22:29.320 | That didn't work.

00:22:30.160 | That must be a movie trick or something.

00:22:32.360 | And then we decided we'd light on fire a rag

00:22:35.680 | and just throw it into the blown out back window.

00:22:38.520 | So I'm with this guy, special forces guy,

00:22:41.000 | and we throw the rag in the back.

00:22:42.560 | - Like soaked in gasoline rag?

00:22:44.360 | - Yeah, and we start running and he's like, "Stop, stop."

00:22:47.720 | He's like, "It didn't go off."

00:22:48.680 | So we're sitting there quite close to the car,

00:22:50.880 | lighting it, trying to light more

00:22:53.000 | as we walk back to the car.

00:22:54.560 | And then we just hear the car ignite.

00:22:56.160 | And he's like, "Run, run, run."

00:22:57.800 | So we came quite close to death already at that point.

00:23:01.440 | But we wanted to get the shot,

00:23:03.640 | some photos in front of the burning logos.

00:23:06.080 | But we told the guys at the shooting range

00:23:08.840 | to basically give us 10 minutes or so,

00:23:11.440 | so we could take the photos.

00:23:14.200 | I don't know if they didn't wait the full 10 minutes

00:23:15.840 | or if we took too long,

00:23:16.720 | but they started firing at the targets anyway.

00:23:19.680 | And then the ricochets were flying

00:23:21.600 | very, very close to us over our head.

00:23:23.320 | One landed right by my leg.

00:23:25.240 | We're like, "Shit, we better get out of here."

00:23:26.720 | Obviously not much safety concerns at that point,

00:23:29.720 | but we survived basically artillery strikes.

00:23:33.400 | We survived a bit of friendly fire

00:23:35.160 | with the bullets coming our way.

00:23:37.000 | But again, I was strangely calm

00:23:38.280 | because the other guys were calm.

00:23:39.440 | But then afterwards, they said to me,

00:23:41.520 | they were like, "Oh, bro, if you got shot,

00:23:42.960 | "we'd just have to dump your body at a hospital.

00:23:44.640 | "We wouldn't be able to explain

00:23:45.560 | "why you're here blowing up cars."

00:23:48.280 | - Right, right.

00:23:49.800 | And you're American and athlete, international celebrity.

00:23:54.240 | - They'd be like, "What is he doing on the front line?"

00:23:57.920 | There's no real good explanation for it.

00:24:00.080 | But I mean, even through the jokes and stuff,

00:24:02.080 | it's good to highlight

00:24:03.720 | what's actually happening over there.

00:24:05.800 | It's obviously very, very bad.

00:24:07.360 | - What's the morale of the soldiers like?

00:24:10.640 | Is there still an optimism?

00:24:12.080 | Is there still a hope?

00:24:13.520 | - I mean, there's sort of the battle fatigue.

00:24:16.160 | And as they say, all the heroes die early.

00:24:19.000 | The guys that the real heroes

00:24:21.360 | that are willing to sacrifice themselves,

00:24:22.920 | they're the ones that are gonna get taken out quick.

00:24:25.560 | Unfortunately, that's the reality from over there.

00:24:28.000 | But their thoughts are mostly

00:24:29.680 | that it's gonna be a prolonged war.

00:24:32.440 | Like when I ask them about how fast the front line moves,

00:24:35.160 | they're like, "Oh, it could take six months

00:24:37.440 | "to move one 200 meters."

00:24:39.680 | So it just feels like it's gonna go on forever.

00:24:41.280 | And from the Ukrainian side's perspective,

00:24:45.120 | those guys talk to me about how

00:24:47.200 | when they hear radio intercepts of Russian soldiers

00:24:50.240 | marching to the same front line spot

00:24:52.920 | is that basically they're marching

00:24:55.680 | into certain death at certain locations.

00:24:59.280 | And based on the radio transmissions,

00:25:01.760 | they know they're gonna die,

00:25:03.680 | but they head forth anyway,

00:25:05.560 | straight forward into a Ukrainian position,

00:25:08.520 | which is just wild to me.

00:25:09.560 | I guess World War II,

00:25:10.400 | they just keep throwing troops at it.

00:25:14.120 | And you see a ton of footage they take themselves,

00:25:17.200 | which is just mind blowing.

00:25:18.160 | Obviously some of this footage

00:25:19.000 | doesn't make it to the internet

00:25:20.760 | 'cause it's got important details in those conflicts,

00:25:23.920 | but they're showing first-person perspectives

00:25:27.040 | of trench warfare.

00:25:28.840 | It's just crazy to see

00:25:30.560 | what some of these guys have gone through.

00:25:32.720 | - So I went to a lot of the same places as well,

00:25:35.840 | including Kherson.

00:25:36.880 | What was your sense of the place?

00:25:41.640 | - Kherson was like, it was just so destroyed.

00:25:44.600 | I think at this point,

00:25:45.840 | most of the civilians are gone.

00:25:48.560 | I saw a lot of just elderly people left behind,

00:25:51.400 | especially a lot of old men.

00:25:53.080 | And I just think they're just like,

00:25:54.240 | "Hey, I've lived here my whole life.

00:25:55.800 | I'm just never leaving."

00:25:57.480 | So no matter the level of danger,

00:25:58.760 | those guys just remain.

00:26:00.560 | And then it's largely just,

00:26:02.920 | I guess, military in Kherson.

00:26:04.280 | But that place felt very, very dangerous.

00:26:06.800 | I didn't realize until we got there

00:26:08.800 | just quite how destroyed it is.

00:26:12.200 | - How did that experience change you?

00:26:14.400 | Just seeing war head on?

00:26:18.080 | - How did it change me?

00:26:18.920 | I guess just realizing a lot of these soldiers

00:26:21.080 | are just like, you kind of distance yourself from them,

00:26:23.960 | thinking that they're something separate.

00:26:26.880 | But really speaking to a lot of the Ukrainian soldiers,

00:26:29.760 | like my friend Roman,

00:26:31.360 | he hadn't lived in Ukraine for eight years.

00:26:33.600 | He lived in France.

00:26:34.600 | He got a life.

00:26:35.440 | He's got a wife over there.

00:26:36.280 | He's got a daughter.

00:26:37.360 | He basically volunteered to come back

00:26:39.560 | to protect his mom and brother who still lived there.

00:26:44.360 | So it's like, you sort of,

00:26:47.160 | I used to view them military guys,

00:26:49.160 | 'cause in Australia, and I guess in the US,

00:26:52.480 | they don't have this conscription ongoing right now.

00:26:56.360 | You know what I mean?

00:26:57.200 | Whereas obviously there's guys like Roman who volunteered,

00:26:59.960 | but then there's a lot of Ukrainian soldiers

00:27:01.320 | that were conscripted into the war.

00:27:04.000 | So it's like, you just realize how

00:27:05.760 | a lot of these guys are everyday people.

00:27:08.000 | They're just in this crazy situation

00:27:10.720 | where Roman felt obligated to return to Ukraine,

00:27:14.080 | like from my perspective,

00:27:15.760 | anyone from Australia or US,

00:27:18.920 | it's just a different perspective on those.

00:27:21.160 | They feel different to the regular people

00:27:23.800 | fighting in Ukraine from my perspective.

00:27:26.240 | - Yeah, it's defending the land that is your home.

00:27:30.200 | - Yeah, like Japan was coming for Australia,

00:27:32.360 | I guess in World War II, they attacked the North,

00:27:34.520 | but really there was no foot battle,

00:27:37.480 | and there was no soldiers on the ground within Australia.

00:27:40.680 | I guess US too during World War II.

00:27:42.320 | So it's like a completely different perspective

00:27:45.400 | from our recent histories compared to,

00:27:47.880 | like if you were Ukrainian,

00:27:49.880 | and there's Russians within the defined border,

00:27:53.680 | their responsibility to protect their homeland

00:27:55.800 | and their family is just something you can't imagine,

00:27:59.280 | but also after having spent time with them,

00:28:01.720 | you can see why they feel such a strong sense of obligation

00:28:05.240 | to protect Ukraine, protect their family and friends.

00:28:09.800 | - And in a lot of cases,

00:28:11.240 | the soldiers are using their own funds to buy equipment,

00:28:17.200 | whether it's bullets, whether it's guns,

00:28:19.880 | whether it's armor, is that still what you saw?

00:28:23.440 | - Yeah, I mean, in terms of the weapons,

00:28:26.280 | America provides weapons.

00:28:27.640 | So we saw a wide selection of weapons.

00:28:31.960 | Some of those would be old Soviet weapons,

00:28:34.840 | like obviously the RPG we shot,

00:28:37.040 | and what we shot out of it is all Soviet.

00:28:40.480 | It's very old weaponry.

00:28:41.680 | And then you've got US weapons that have been given as well.

00:28:45.480 | But in terms of the basic soldiers' equipment,

00:28:48.040 | like if they want good quality stuff

00:28:50.080 | that might be the difference between them

00:28:51.400 | surviving the winter or the summer,

00:28:53.840 | just in the extreme temperature range,

00:28:55.960 | like they have to pay for that all themselves.

00:28:58.320 | So they always joke about when foreign soldiers

00:29:00.920 | come over to train them,

00:29:02.640 | or a lot of foreign soldiers come to learn

00:29:05.280 | about sort of the drone technology they've developed

00:29:07.280 | on a budget, is they always joke with them

00:29:09.360 | about how like everything from most countries

00:29:12.480 | is basically supplied.

00:29:13.720 | All the good quality standard equipment they'd need

00:29:16.880 | is just supplied by the government.

00:29:18.240 | But in Ukraine, obviously funding is very stretched.

00:29:21.640 | So these guys to have the best equipment,

00:29:24.240 | they have to basically find money to pay for it themselves.

00:29:27.800 | And they'll do that by seeking donations.

00:29:30.880 | Best way to get donations would be

00:29:32.400 | to grow social media profiles.

00:29:34.400 | So that's when you see a lot of

00:29:35.800 | sort of social media warfare

00:29:37.400 | from a perspective of gaining fame

00:29:39.480 | to secure donations for their battalion,

00:29:42.000 | to be able to fight better or protect themselves.

00:29:44.600 | And also some of the social media warfare,

00:29:47.000 | I guess is psychological warfare against the enemy.

00:29:50.640 | You'll see like private telegram groups

00:29:52.360 | where they're showing what they've done to the enemy,

00:29:54.680 | what the enemy's done to them.

00:29:56.320 | It's just crazy.

00:29:57.760 | - Yeah, there's telegram groups on both sides.

00:30:02.280 | And it's basically, some of it is propaganda.

00:30:04.600 | Some of it is psychological warfare.

00:30:06.920 | Some of it is just the human nature of being like,

00:30:10.240 | of increasing your own morale

00:30:11.680 | and the morale of the people around you

00:30:13.280 | by showing off successfully killing other human beings,

00:30:17.360 | which are made other in war.

00:30:19.160 | And the nature of this war has evolved.

00:30:23.640 | So drones have become more and more prevalent.

00:30:25.960 | They're consumer level cheap drones.

00:30:29.160 | Can you speak to that?

00:30:30.040 | Have you seen the use of FPV drones?

00:30:33.080 | - Yeah, so I mean, basically like a $300 to $500 drone.

00:30:36.320 | I think it's like carbon fiber, 3D printed,

00:30:39.120 | and they can attach different forms of weaponry to it,

00:30:43.120 | whether it's just dropping a frag,

00:30:45.080 | they could drop a mine out of it.

00:30:46.680 | I know they were talking about how they had a liquid

00:30:49.440 | that could basically burn through

00:30:51.480 | sort of a lot of cars and tanks.

00:30:53.280 | So the person inside would basically melt alive,

00:30:55.640 | which sounds horrible.

00:30:56.760 | But what's mind blowing to me

00:30:58.240 | is you could have like a $3 million Russian tank

00:31:01.160 | that could be destroyed by a $300 drone,

00:31:05.080 | which is just crazy how fast the war changes.

00:31:07.920 | I think they're kind of the world leaders

00:31:10.080 | in budget drone technology.

00:31:13.080 | They obviously don't have the budget

00:31:14.480 | for these crazy elaborate massive drones.

00:31:18.080 | I did see some higher budget, bigger drones over there,

00:31:20.640 | but for the most part,

00:31:21.480 | those FPV drones is really how most of the battles are fought

00:31:25.040 | and you're seeing the cameras on them.

00:31:28.680 | So you can see like basically kamikaze drone

00:31:31.680 | will chase someone down and they have that footage.

00:31:34.880 | And that's what the police chief said to me

00:31:36.760 | when he gifted me one of the drones they used.

00:31:39.920 | And he basically said, he's like, artillery is scary,

00:31:44.160 | but a drone will follow you into a building.

00:31:46.760 | It's like kind of a haunting thing to think about.

00:31:48.680 | Like they'll see the drone, they'll hear the drone.

00:31:50.920 | They might try to shoot it down or they might try to run.

00:31:54.520 | But if it's a kamikaze one,

00:31:56.560 | those guys are pretty good at flying them.

00:31:58.320 | It's gonna chase the soldiers down.

00:32:01.040 | A lot of soldiers like pretending to be dead.

00:32:03.800 | It's really crazy.

00:32:05.120 | Some of the footage out there with those FPV drones.

00:32:07.600 | - So it's a terrifying tool of war

00:32:10.760 | and tool of psychological war

00:32:12.960 | and used by both sides increasingly.

00:32:14.980 | - Yeah, both sides use it.

00:32:16.720 | I remember I was with Roman in Marseilles

00:32:19.120 | and he had his break period.

00:32:20.800 | He was allowed to leave the country

00:32:21.960 | 'cause he basically volunteered to join the army.

00:32:25.000 | Ukrainian men can't really leave Ukraine right now.

00:32:28.160 | But Roman, I was in Marseilles

00:32:29.680 | and this was a surreal experience for him.

00:32:31.960 | We went to the beach and there was some tourists there

00:32:34.320 | flying a drone and you just saw his instinctual reaction

00:32:37.440 | to that drone sounds in the sky.

00:32:40.200 | Flashback to that.

00:32:42.120 | - Currently they're all, as far as I know,

00:32:47.040 | all human controlled, so FPV.

00:32:49.640 | But to me, increasingly terrifying notion

00:32:52.440 | is of them becoming autonomous.

00:32:54.760 | It's the best way to defend against the drone

00:32:56.680 | that's FPV controlled is for AI to be controlling that drone.

00:33:00.420 | Just have swarms of drones that are $500 controlled

00:33:03.560 | by AI systems.

00:33:05.400 | And that's a terrifying possibility

00:33:08.560 | that the future of warfare is essentially swarms of drones

00:33:11.560 | on both sides.

00:33:12.840 | And then maybe swarms of drones,

00:33:15.160 | say between US and China over Taiwan.

00:33:18.000 | - That would be wild.

00:33:18.840 | I mean, they do those crazy drone light shows

00:33:21.840 | where they do those performances with the lights and stuff.

00:33:23.640 | So they're already pretty sophisticated

00:33:25.520 | with sort of pre-programming.

00:33:26.840 | - Those are pre-programmed.

00:33:28.000 | So the low level control, flight control of those

00:33:31.560 | is done autonomously, but there's a interface

00:33:34.120 | for doing the choreography that's hard-coded in.

00:33:37.400 | But adding increasing levels of intelligence to a drone

00:33:40.480 | where you can detect another drone,

00:33:42.360 | follow it and defend yourself.

00:33:45.320 | - In terms of the military on both sides of the Ukraine war,

00:33:48.880 | that's a technology,

00:33:51.320 | that's like the most wanted technology is drone defense.

00:33:54.600 | Like how do you defend against drones on both sides?

00:33:57.000 | And anybody that comes up

00:33:58.100 | with an autonomous drone technology

00:34:00.440 | is going to help whichever side uses that technology

00:34:03.600 | to gain a military advantage.

00:34:04.760 | And so there's a huge incentive to build that technology.

00:34:07.360 | But then of course,

00:34:08.760 | once both sides started using that technology,

00:34:10.920 | then there's swarms of autonomous drones

00:34:13.880 | that don't give a shit about humans,

00:34:15.920 | just killing everything in sight on both sides.

00:34:20.160 | And that's terrifying.

00:34:22.480 | There's civilian deaths that are possible

00:34:25.240 | that are terrifying,

00:34:26.200 | especially when you look 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.

00:34:30.320 | - Yes, I mean, it's surreal.

00:34:31.240 | Like when we went to Kurslan,

00:34:32.080 | he was like the entire sky is just full of drones

00:34:37.000 | at any given time, they could decide to come and attack.

00:34:40.320 | So like just the, they could just sit there forever waiting,

00:34:43.320 | waiting for you to come out of that building.

00:34:45.160 | They'll wait a long time when someone goes and hides inside

00:34:48.800 | or potentially if it's open window,

00:34:50.200 | fly straight through the open window to get people.

00:34:52.560 | - Yeah, so you're not even safe indoors.

00:34:54.360 | - Yeah, there's nowhere to hide.

00:34:55.920 | And they can wait for a very, very long time.

00:34:58.680 | - And as far as I know, even politicians,

00:35:01.400 | like you're in danger everywhere in Ukraine.

00:35:03.600 | So if you want to do a public speaking thing

00:35:07.360 | and doing outside, you're in danger

00:35:09.200 | because it's very difficult to detect those drones.

00:35:11.280 | It could be anywhere.

00:35:12.600 | So it's a terrifying life where you don't know

00:35:17.080 | if you're safe at any moment, anywhere in Ukraine.

00:35:19.560 | - Well, sure, I mean, it's crazy what happened to Trump.

00:35:21.200 | I thought maybe the next attack on a public figure

00:35:24.960 | might come in the form of drone technology,

00:35:27.600 | some sort of something along those lines.

00:35:30.840 | I wonder how they protect against that here.

00:35:33.120 | - If that happens, just imagine the insanity

00:35:36.520 | that would ensue.

00:35:37.880 | 'Cause we understand the idea of a gunman with a rifle

00:35:41.880 | shooting somebody, but just like a drone,

00:35:45.400 | just imagine the conspiracy theories.

00:35:47.480 | Who controlled that drone?

00:35:48.560 | - Where'd it come from, yeah.

00:35:49.760 | - And now everybody, I mean, that will just cause chaos.

00:35:53.840 | - And the range is ever increasing.

00:35:55.640 | One of the battalions in Ukraine,

00:35:57.320 | 'cause those FPV drones have short range,

00:35:59.520 | pretty short range, but they were able to attach it

00:36:02.440 | to one of the larger drones with a signal booster.

00:36:05.120 | So they could potentially go up to 30, 40 kilometers

00:36:07.800 | into the distance.

00:36:08.640 | So the drone that hits you could be flown by someone.

00:36:11.600 | So far away from you.

00:36:13.320 | And if they did that domestically,

00:36:15.840 | that would be very frightening to think of the sphere

00:36:18.960 | of where it could have come from.

00:36:20.880 | - Do they, when you've talked to the soldiers there,

00:36:24.400 | did they have a hope or a vision how the war will end?

00:36:27.520 | - Not really.

00:36:29.320 | I guess it just seems to everyone that it's sort of,

00:36:33.200 | there's gonna be no middle ground.

00:36:36.120 | - When I was there, there's a kind of optimism

00:36:37.880 | that there would be victorious, like definitively.

00:36:42.000 | And so is there still that optimism?

00:36:47.080 | And also, are they ready for a prolonged war?

00:36:52.080 | - I mean, I think it would be a soldier by soldier basis.

00:36:54.800 | I know like each of them had a different perspective.

00:36:58.720 | I remember I would ask them about like,

00:37:00.240 | in terms of U.S. politics and their fears,

00:37:03.240 | 'cause the first year I went there, U.S. hadn't agreed.

00:37:07.800 | - Yeah. - To resupply weapons.

00:37:09.080 | So it was a very different feeling in the air there

00:37:10.960 | of concern over what was gonna happen,

00:37:13.240 | but they still remained quite optimistic

00:37:15.280 | that no matter who got in,

00:37:16.800 | they felt would do the right thing.

00:37:19.840 | But in terms of prolonged war,

00:37:22.480 | most people think it's gonna go for a very long time,

00:37:25.120 | like the children's hospital that just was bombed in Kyiv.

00:37:29.960 | Anytime there's a moment like that,

00:37:31.640 | that reignites everything.

00:37:33.320 | And I think it happens on both sides.

00:37:35.320 | So I know that there was an attack in Crimea.

00:37:40.080 | It was an attack on a beach, I guess.

00:37:43.040 | And I don't know if that attack on the hospital

00:37:44.880 | was retribution for that,

00:37:46.040 | but that's sort of the energy that is felt.

00:37:48.960 | Like they might have battle fatigue,

00:37:52.520 | but when something happens to civilians,

00:37:54.440 | especially kids on your side,

00:37:57.840 | kind of reinvigorates the energy to fight

00:38:01.000 | for as long as necessary.

00:38:02.680 | And in terms of a case-by-case basis,

00:38:04.680 | one of my friends, Dmitry, over there,

00:38:06.800 | who trains jiu-jitsu and is a gym,

00:38:08.760 | he was very passionate about it just 'cause of the history.

00:38:11.640 | Like he brought out documents of his grandfather

00:38:14.840 | being executed by the USSR.

00:38:17.360 | So I know that when the war started,

00:38:18.720 | he took a bicycle helmet in his AK-47

00:38:22.480 | and went out into the streets.

00:38:23.400 | And he's like, "I'd rather be dead

00:38:25.200 | "than live under Russian rule again."

00:38:28.440 | So I mean, very case-by-case basis,

00:38:32.200 | sort of personal history for them, I think.

00:38:34.360 | - Did they comment on US politics,

00:38:38.640 | whether they hope for Trump or for, in that situation,

00:38:42.320 | Biden, now Harris, to win the presidential election?

00:38:45.960 | - I think most of the guys tried to keep it pretty positive.

00:38:49.920 | You know what I mean?

00:38:50.760 | Like some people did think that maybe if Trump was elected,

00:38:53.960 | he wouldn't continue to fund it,

00:38:55.680 | but they really tried to stay optimistic.

00:38:58.720 | Most of the people I spoke to

00:39:00.400 | really tried to remain optimistic

00:39:02.120 | that they would be protected if it comes down to it.

00:39:06.520 | But obviously there was a nine-month period

00:39:08.560 | where they weren't refunded.

00:39:10.120 | So as that stretched, obviously they're refunded now,

00:39:12.880 | but it takes a lot of time to get that equipment back

00:39:16.000 | to the points at which they need it.

00:39:17.760 | So I mean, if ammunition had ran out,

00:39:20.160 | Patriot defense system had ran out,

00:39:22.320 | really, really sort of scary prospect there.

00:39:25.320 | I don't know what's,

00:39:27.200 | I guess no one knows what's gonna happen there, but.

00:39:29.400 | - Did you lie to people

00:39:30.400 | and say you were close to the president

00:39:31.720 | so they can be nice to you?

00:39:32.880 | Like, so they can convince you to continue the funding?

00:39:35.320 | - I'm an Australian diplomat.

00:39:36.880 | - Diplomat. (laughs)

00:39:38.480 | Yeah, that could be a nice way in.

00:39:39.560 | - Yeah, that would have been a nice way to the top.

00:39:42.000 | Luckily for me, most of the place I travel to,

00:39:44.800 | jujitsu gives me access to so many different individuals.

00:39:48.960 | It's super bizarre.

00:39:50.920 | Like oligarchs, royalty, I guess tech wizards,

00:39:55.400 | just this, it's a strange group of people,

00:39:58.200 | like a code around the world of just,

00:40:00.560 | I get strange access just for being good

00:40:02.960 | at wrestling dudes.

00:40:05.320 | - Yeah, martial arts, there's like a code

00:40:08.980 | and there's a respect, a mutual respect.

00:40:10.440 | Even if you don't know anything about the other person,

00:40:13.080 | if you both have done martial arts,

00:40:14.520 | I mean, there's similar things with judo,

00:40:16.840 | with jujitsu, with grappling, all that.

00:40:19.480 | I don't know what that is.

00:40:20.600 | - It's like an inner circle.

00:40:21.560 | That's kind of like,

00:40:22.400 | 'cause this film project we're working on,

00:40:23.640 | it's kind of focused on that,

00:40:25.200 | is because of the history I have in jujitsu

00:40:28.840 | and traveling and doing seminars

00:40:30.640 | and just getting access to strange experiences

00:40:32.960 | from the local, strange in a positive way,

00:40:35.580 | and participating in those experiences,

00:40:37.400 | that's what I sort of wanted to focus this travel show on,

00:40:39.680 | was the community of jujitsu people around the world

00:40:43.160 | kind of really has no sort of ethnic background,

00:40:48.160 | religious background, even level of wealth.

00:40:51.080 | I could say, as cheesy as it sounds,

00:40:52.560 | kind of a good equalizer on the mats

00:40:54.600 | and that community comradery sort of knows no limits there.

00:40:58.920 | - Including like mats, the shittiest mats

00:41:01.400 | in some small town in the middle of nowhere.

00:41:04.640 | - 100%.

00:41:05.480 | Even like Sheikh Tahnoon, who started ADCC,

00:41:07.720 | I know when he went to the US and he studied there,

00:41:11.060 | he would train at a very simple gym.

00:41:14.560 | He wouldn't declare who he was.

00:41:17.200 | Like I watched a documentary produced

00:41:19.800 | about sort of the story of Sheikh Tahnoon

00:41:21.640 | and how he studied in America,

00:41:23.960 | basically in anonymity.

00:41:26.280 | The people at his gym didn't know who he was in his country,

00:41:30.520 | and he trained there, he trained with them for years,

00:41:33.240 | cleaned their mats like anyone else,

00:41:34.640 | and then they didn't realize who he was

00:41:36.880 | until he said, "Hey, I wanna invite you to my country."

00:41:40.320 | But he actually meant basically as royalty come,

00:41:43.480 | and then they realized who this guy was

00:41:45.360 | and the significance of him.

00:41:46.840 | - That's gangster, that's great.

00:41:48.360 | One of the things I love about Nogi jujitsu

00:41:50.320 | is like you don't see rank.

00:41:51.720 | So on a small scale, there's no hierarchy

00:41:54.040 | that emerges when you have the different color belts.

00:41:56.820 | Everybody's kind of the same.

00:41:59.120 | It's nice.

00:42:00.040 | You get to like-- - See the skill.

00:42:01.760 | - The skill speaks,

00:42:02.640 | but there's just like a mutual respect and whatever.

00:42:05.000 | I mean, you can quickly find out who.

00:42:07.480 | I actually wonder if I would be able

00:42:08.880 | to figure out the rank of a person.

00:42:10.960 | You think you can usually figure out

00:42:12.880 | how long a person's been doing jujitsu?

00:42:14.680 | - I like to think with some of the aggressive

00:42:16.840 | clothing choices I've made and sold in the sport

00:42:20.060 | that that should be a beacon,

00:42:21.620 | that that person-- - Is a blue belt.

00:42:23.200 | - Has hopefully some talent,

00:42:24.880 | 'cause they're fearlessly provoking the other party there.

00:42:28.180 | - Oh, it's like in the jungle,

00:42:30.560 | whenever there's like a insect that's red,

00:42:33.480 | that is like really flamboyant looking,

00:42:36.000 | that means they're dangerous.

00:42:37.320 | - It's a target, yeah, though, being flamboyant.

00:42:40.000 | If you come on the mats with something pink,

00:42:41.760 | a pink gi or something, people are circling in fast,

00:42:45.160 | especially in Eastern Europe.

00:42:46.720 | - Okay, so yeah, you mentioned the project.

00:42:49.800 | Can you talk about that?

00:42:50.640 | I saw there's a preview that you showed,

00:42:53.760 | Craig Jones gone walkabout.

00:42:56.560 | - Gone walkabout, yeah.

00:42:57.960 | - And so you showed a preview in Indonesia

00:43:01.160 | where you're both kind of celebrating

00:43:04.220 | and maybe poking a bit of fun at Hicks and Gracie.

00:43:07.200 | - Hicks and Gracie, yeah.

00:43:08.040 | So I like to match looks from time to time in an homage.

00:43:13.040 | - You look sexy.

00:43:14.800 | - It's comfortable, actually, I enjoy it.

00:43:16.500 | - Yeah, you should keep it.

00:43:18.080 | - Oh, I only wear this now.

00:43:19.280 | I wear this for the Gabby match.

00:43:23.020 | I mean, yeah, we're trying to do a documentary series

00:43:25.800 | 'cause the way I see it is I wanna grow the sport of jiu-jitsu

00:43:29.560 | and this sounds funny to say now

00:43:31.760 | 'cause I'm doing a tournament,

00:43:32.680 | but everyone tries to do it through competition.

00:43:36.040 | But as we know, most jiu-jitsu gyms you visit,

00:43:38.640 | a very small percentage of people compete,

00:43:41.760 | let alone compete regularly.

00:43:43.560 | You go to gyms that could be brown or black belts

00:43:45.640 | that don't know many of the big name competitors.

00:43:48.440 | So my thoughts were,

00:43:49.920 | we're never gonna grow this sport by competition.

00:43:53.920 | We're gonna grow it by appealing

00:43:55.440 | to the large majority of people that do it,

00:43:58.040 | which are just people that enjoy it for the benefits

00:44:00.780 | it provides to them, whether health or psychological.

00:44:04.480 | And obviously, many people inspired by Anthony Bourdain,

00:44:08.140 | basically, he's looking at what he did with food

00:44:11.680 | by showing the very interesting characters

00:44:14.720 | in the food culture and the food industries,

00:44:16.800 | especially with street food and building around that.

00:44:20.320 | So I'm trying to look at jiu-jitsu like a giant cult.

00:44:23.240 | Scientology isn't starting with Planet Zeno,

00:44:25.560 | it's starting with John Travolta and Tom Cruise.

00:44:27.440 | So we can create a documentary travel series

00:44:30.000 | highlighting the diverse, interesting people

00:44:32.760 | that participate in the sport.

00:44:34.600 | In that sense, I hope we can grow up,

00:44:36.780 | but also doing some charity work along the way.

00:44:39.920 | Like we'll release the Indonesia Bali episode pretty soon,

00:44:43.560 | but as an Australian, I do do a lot of damage culturally

00:44:47.080 | around the world, so I'd like to do some good as well.

00:44:50.900 | We've done a lot of damage to Bali,

00:44:52.640 | so we'll give back to local communities.

00:44:55.080 | We have an Australian there that runs an academy,

00:44:57.480 | Academy Christos.

00:44:58.800 | He's one of the guys we're donating a portion

00:45:01.080 | of the ticket sales to from our event.

00:45:03.200 | But he basically went straight into a Balinese slum,

00:45:06.840 | started teaching jiu-jitsu on a mat under a tree,

00:45:09.680 | and then slowly through donations has built a gym.

00:45:13.720 | And his real focus is not just taking money from people

00:45:17.800 | and gifting it to them to help the community,

00:45:20.040 | but to teach them skills.

00:45:21.480 | So he'll take a lot of the disadvantaged kids

00:45:24.320 | and he'll teach them things like photo editing

00:45:26.560 | so they can get that work from the internet really.

00:45:29.800 | Incredible guy.

00:45:31.360 | - It's good to know that you see yourself

00:45:32.760 | as the John Travolta of jiu-jitsu.

00:45:34.360 | - Many masseuses have accused me

00:45:35.680 | of the same thing, unfortunately.

00:45:37.720 | All lies.

00:45:39.160 | - Yeah, there's a lot of similarities

00:45:42.400 | between the two of you.

00:45:43.680 | So you mentioned Anthony Bourdain.

00:45:45.360 | What do you like about the guy?

00:45:48.320 | What do you find inspiring and instructive

00:45:52.480 | about the way he was able to, as you said,

00:45:54.280 | scratch beneath the surface of a place?

00:45:56.340 | - I just felt like he was very authentic, wasn't afraid.

00:45:59.400 | Like this is something I had trouble with

00:46:00.680 | when we first started doing the travel show.

00:46:02.280 | It's easy to do a travel show

00:46:03.560 | if you only say positive things about a place, you know?

00:46:07.000 | But he would find a very creative way

00:46:10.560 | to show what's good and bad,

00:46:11.960 | a very honest reflection of the place.

00:46:13.600 | So that's something I would strive to do.

00:46:16.360 | However, in some places it's very difficult.

00:46:19.040 | You know what I mean?

00:46:19.880 | Like for example, Kazakhstan.

00:46:21.240 | If I were to say something negative about Kazakhstan,

00:46:23.040 | they'd be like, "Who's this foreign idiot

00:46:26.040 | talking about our culture?"

00:46:27.560 | And I think that was what was incredible about Bourdain

00:46:29.840 | is he could talk about both the good and bad of places

00:46:33.800 | and he would do it in such a way that it was tasteful

00:46:36.400 | and was respected by the locals.

00:46:38.400 | - Yeah, that's actually a skill

00:46:39.560 | that you're incredibly good at.

00:46:41.280 | You make fun of a lot of people, but there's something,

00:46:44.680 | maybe there's an underlying respect.

00:46:46.180 | Maybe it's the accent.

00:46:47.140 | Maybe, I don't know what it is.

00:46:49.440 | There's a love underneath your trolling.

00:46:52.680 | - I like to think so.

00:46:54.040 | Hopefully, yeah.

00:46:55.200 | Gabby Garcia.

00:46:56.800 | There's a deep, passionate love underneath the trolling.

00:47:00.080 | - Yeah.

00:47:00.920 | Speaking of which, let's talk about CGI.

00:47:05.320 | You're putting on the CGI tournament.

00:47:08.300 | It's in about a week.

00:47:10.000 | Same weekend as ADCC, $3 million budget,

00:47:13.720 | two divisions, two super fights.

00:47:16.200 | Winner of each division gets $1 million.

00:47:18.100 | Everyone gets $10,000.

00:47:22.280 | How do you even say that?

00:47:24.320 | Plus one.

00:47:25.160 | - 10,000 plus one, yeah.

00:47:26.000 | - Plus one.

00:47:26.840 | Just to compete.

00:47:28.720 | So it's August 16th and 17th.

00:47:30.600 | Everybody should get tickets.

00:47:32.080 | Same weekend as ADCC, which is August 17th.

00:47:35.960 | Okay, so what's the mission of what you're doing there?

00:47:40.080 | - The mission has always been, first and foremost,

00:47:43.040 | increase athlete pay.

00:47:44.720 | So ADCC has invested a ton into the sport.

00:47:48.600 | Obviously, I mentioned Sheikh Tanu.

00:47:49.800 | Sheikh Tanu has done so much for the sport of grappling,

00:47:54.000 | particularly no-gi grappling.

00:47:56.000 | So he's growing it.

00:47:58.160 | He has funded this for a very, very long time.

00:48:01.760 | But we've kind of hit a point since 2017

00:48:04.560 | where the audience, the crowd watching live and at home

00:48:09.560 | behind a paywall has grown considerably.

00:48:13.200 | We had things like MetaMorris,

00:48:14.880 | we had the Eddie Bravo Invitational, Polaris,

00:48:17.040 | all these sort of professional events

00:48:19.160 | that have also contributed to growing the sport.

00:48:21.440 | And obviously, people like Gordon Ryan

00:48:23.960 | have definitely increased the popularity of the sport.

00:48:26.560 | But the payment for ADCC has never gone up.

00:48:31.960 | Despite, again, the growth of it.

00:48:34.120 | So what I did, a lot of fans were asking me

00:48:37.360 | earlier in the year, they said, "Okay, you're gonna do ADCC?"

00:48:39.360 | And I said, "That is a big commitment of time, energy,

00:48:44.280 | "expenses on steroids to get my body ready for a tournament

00:48:47.440 | "that I'll probably lose.

00:48:49.240 | "And if I lose on day one, I make $0.

00:48:51.720 | "If I lose on the final,

00:48:54.960 | "which I have done a couple of times, I only get $6,000.

00:48:59.680 | "I think third place is $3,000.

00:49:02.480 | "Fourth place is $1,000.

00:49:03.840 | "So if you make day two, you get paid."

00:49:06.040 | But for me personally, seeing ADCC 2022,

00:49:10.280 | you're looking out to a sold out crowd of like 10,000 people.

00:49:14.120 | It's on Flow Grappling, which you know,

00:49:16.720 | paid quite a bit of money for the streaming rights.

00:49:19.120 | I can't comment on what that number would be.

00:49:22.200 | And then you go home,

00:49:23.560 | despite having put in all that effort with only $6,000.

00:49:26.600 | And they basically, the argument is you're paid an exposure.

00:49:30.280 | But again, there's many ways to expose yourself.

00:49:33.040 | You know what I mean?

00:49:33.880 | That's just one of the platforms to do so.

00:49:37.080 | My problem was that they announced

00:49:39.320 | they were gonna go from Thomas & Mac to T-Mobile,

00:49:42.440 | which is a jump in quality of stadium,

00:49:45.600 | but not a significant jump in sort of seating.

00:49:49.000 | So we've gone from like 11,000 seat arena

00:49:52.120 | to I think a 15, 16,000 seat arena.

00:49:55.320 | And I knew that Flow Grappling

00:49:57.200 | would have had to pay more money

00:49:58.760 | 'cause now the sport's growing so much.

00:50:00.760 | And I can personally kind of track the growth of the sport

00:50:03.000 | through selling instructional DVDs,

00:50:05.240 | instructional online products, 'cause that keeps growing.

00:50:08.880 | And we're targeting those white and blue belts

00:50:11.000 | vulnerable to internet marketing.

00:50:12.960 | And that audience continues to grow.

00:50:14.720 | And those will be the people that largely watch ADCC,

00:50:18.080 | events like this.

00:50:19.800 | So I simply said, in response to a lot of fans asking me,

00:50:24.440 | why are you gonna do ADCC?

00:50:26.000 | And I just simply made a video saying,

00:50:28.120 | no, probably not, probably not.

00:50:31.000 | Be nice to make some more money.

00:50:32.760 | And then I listed a bunch of sports such as cock bar

00:50:35.960 | that you get paid more to win cock bar.

00:50:37.760 | In the villages of Kazakhstan,

00:50:39.360 | the payment structure is higher.

00:50:41.440 | And I received a very aggressive response,

00:50:43.680 | not from any of Sheikh Tahnoon's people,

00:50:47.080 | but from basically who runs the event today.

00:50:49.560 | One of those guys amongst giving me death threats said,

00:50:52.040 | hey, T-Mobile costs $2 million.

00:50:55.200 | You don't know what you're talking about

00:50:56.600 | in terms of business and production.

00:50:58.240 | And he's probably right.

00:50:59.840 | But to me, $2 million is a waste of money

00:51:02.680 | for a jujitsu event.

00:51:04.000 | I don't think we're at that level yet.

00:51:05.040 | Like that's where the UFC host events.

00:51:07.480 | $2 million, that's an expensive, expensive venue.

00:51:10.480 | So we argued a bit on the internet and he said,

00:51:12.880 | hey, if you don't like it,

00:51:14.480 | why don't you go get $2 million

00:51:16.760 | and put on your own tournament?

00:51:17.920 | And I said, I might just do that.

00:51:21.160 | And one of my anonymous friends

00:51:24.840 | kindly donated a $3 million budget.

00:51:27.360 | And I actually messaged him before the show to say,

00:51:29.200 | hey, we won't reveal your identity

00:51:32.480 | 'cause obviously anyone that has money

00:51:34.000 | is gonna get asked for more money

00:51:35.560 | or asked for money from others.

00:51:36.840 | So he wants to remain anonymous.

00:51:39.120 | But he basically just said

00:51:41.120 | to enjoy the trolling aspect of it

00:51:43.920 | and also contribute to the sport of jujitsu.

00:51:46.680 | - Well, it's good to know that the anonymous funder

00:51:49.360 | appreciates you for who you are, Craig Jones.

00:51:52.760 | - He sees my true identity and he wants to provoke.

00:51:56.160 | It's trolling for a good cause.

00:51:59.240 | But basically we were able to find

00:52:01.040 | Thomas and Mac event center,

00:52:02.600 | which was their original venue.

00:52:04.480 | And it just so happened to be available that same weekend,

00:52:08.080 | which we're very happy about.

00:52:08.920 | And so we booked that out.

00:52:10.880 | We decided to, ADCC pays 10,000 to the winner.

00:52:15.240 | We were like, you know what?

00:52:16.240 | We'll pay $10,000 plus one to show up.

00:52:19.560 | So to show up in our event,

00:52:20.880 | you're gonna get paid more than to win ADCC.

00:52:23.320 | And not only that, we're gonna broadcast it for free.

00:52:27.120 | So on MetaX and YouTube,

00:52:30.160 | you'll be able to watch this event for free.

00:52:31.520 | - That's amazing.

00:52:32.360 | - It's very considerate to the Flow Grappling

00:52:34.720 | streaming platform, I believe,

00:52:36.200 | to have also a free alternative on the same weekend.

00:52:39.080 | And the brilliance of this whole thing

00:52:41.000 | is I was largely criticized

00:52:43.880 | for not knowing anything about business,

00:52:45.240 | but the people criticizing me

00:52:47.040 | decided to host a tournament at 15,000 seat arena.

00:52:51.240 | They decided to take sponsors.

00:52:53.240 | They decided to use a stream platform

00:52:54.800 | which sells subscriptions based on the athletes

00:52:56.520 | that would enter it,

00:52:57.600 | but not give any of the talent, the athletes, a contract,

00:53:01.920 | which gave me this beautiful position to basically say,

00:53:04.880 | hey, what do you prefer?

00:53:06.720 | The prestige of an ADCC gold medal or money.

00:53:12.000 | And that's the fuse so far.

00:53:15.160 | And we put that out into the world.

00:53:18.040 | I didn't chase too many athletes down.

00:53:20.120 | Obviously a lot of these guys really need money.

00:53:23.160 | So you throw a million dollars out there,

00:53:25.600 | people are jumping on board.

00:53:27.440 | So initially we started getting,

00:53:29.000 | we got two local guys here in Austin,

00:53:30.800 | the Tackett brothers, they jumped in first.

00:53:32.920 | And they're great kids.

00:53:33.760 | They really legitimize the whole thing

00:53:35.120 | 'cause if we pick certain athletes

00:53:37.400 | like just B team guys straight away,

00:53:39.400 | it's already looking a bit dodgy,

00:53:41.160 | but we've got some legitimate athletes,

00:53:42.520 | especially the under 80 kilo divisions

00:53:44.840 | full of minus two or three guys.

00:53:47.880 | That's the best people in the world

00:53:50.760 | in that weight division.

00:53:52.040 | And as we started to grow our roster here,

00:53:56.160 | what happened, I'm gonna say this allegedly

00:53:58.360 | for legal reasons,

00:54:00.120 | is that the first move ADCC did

00:54:03.160 | was they matched the female pay to the men's pay.

00:54:07.320 | So the women always traditionally got paid less,

00:54:09.280 | I think $6,000 for first place.

00:54:11.600 | As soon as we had Fion Davies,

00:54:13.680 | the reigning champion come across

00:54:15.600 | to do a super fight with us, bang.

00:54:17.960 | ADCC raised the prize money of the women's division

00:54:20.240 | to equal the men's.

00:54:21.720 | So me being a feminist activist

00:54:24.560 | throughout many of my years on this earth

00:54:27.080 | immediately got women's pay raised

00:54:29.760 | in the sport of jujitsu, equalized basically.

00:54:32.400 | Which went counter to everything the promoter had said

00:54:34.640 | 'cause he said it was out of his control to raise money.

00:54:37.360 | He said only the ADCC, I guess,

00:54:40.320 | coming directly from the Sheik

00:54:41.520 | or the Sheik's sort of guys could raise the prize money.

00:54:44.600 | He got it raised.

00:54:46.360 | And then what happened was

00:54:48.600 | once we started getting some of these big names here,

00:54:50.760 | so some of the best guys from ADCC

00:54:52.960 | would be in this division.

00:54:53.920 | We got a bunch of champions or medalists

00:54:57.040 | or really the top betting favorites

00:54:58.960 | for their divisions there.

00:55:01.080 | They started, again, I can't emphasize this enough,

00:55:02.880 | allegedly paying show money,

00:55:05.720 | which has never historically been done before

00:55:08.200 | to keep athletes in their show.

00:55:11.000 | - So you're saying, allegedly,

00:55:12.260 | there was some under the table payments by ADCC.

00:55:15.920 | Do you have secret documents proving this?

00:55:18.160 | - I do have the documents.

00:55:19.280 | Now, some of the guys obviously told me,

00:55:20.880 | you know how it is,

00:55:21.800 | you slap a million dollars on the table, it looks great.

00:55:24.840 | That was me proving I had the money,

00:55:26.440 | which wasn't even my money to begin with.

00:55:27.840 | But it was basically me saying, hey, the money's real.

00:55:30.800 | I don't know why, but strangely,

00:55:31.760 | a lot of people don't believe me

00:55:33.000 | when I'm telling the truth.

00:55:33.840 | - I don't know why they wouldn't.

00:55:34.920 | - But what logically happens is they're like,

00:55:38.140 | oh, look at how much money he has.

00:55:39.400 | We're gonna give, like, give us more show money.

00:55:41.320 | So they're negotiating with me.

00:55:43.080 | There was one particular Brazilian businessman,

00:55:47.720 | manager, I won't say his name,

00:55:49.820 | but he looks like the thing from "Fantastic Four,"

00:55:51.800 | and he was a manager for some of these athletes.

00:55:54.800 | And he would take a massive 20% cut.

00:55:57.960 | So what he, and I gotta pay respect to this,

00:56:00.760 | respect to this, 'cause it actually caused trauma

00:56:04.080 | to the other team as well.

00:56:05.600 | But he would, I would invite an athlete to CJI.

00:56:09.480 | He would go to the other organization

00:56:11.880 | and he would say to them, hey,

00:56:13.800 | what sort of deal could you give me to keep this guy?

00:56:16.800 | You wanna keep him in your event?

00:56:18.320 | And he would use CJI to leverage more show money

00:56:22.560 | for his guys, of which he gets to grease the wheels

00:56:25.800 | with 20% for himself.

00:56:27.480 | However, at CJI, everyone gets $10,001 across the board

00:56:33.200 | and a million dollars prize money.

00:56:34.400 | So there's no room for really negotiation

00:56:36.320 | for the tournament aspect of us.

00:56:37.680 | So he has a vested interest in putting his guys in ADCC

00:56:42.120 | 'cause he can negotiate show money

00:56:43.920 | and he can basically take 20% of that for himself.

00:56:47.440 | But really, for the sport of grappling,

00:56:49.800 | this is incredible across the board

00:56:51.040 | because by us stealing or at least borrowing

00:56:54.720 | a bunch of athletes from ADCC,

00:56:56.640 | ADCC had to fill their divisions.

00:56:59.120 | So they filled their divisions with many other competitors

00:57:01.920 | that wouldn't have ordinarily had the chance to do ADCC.

00:57:06.760 | And really, although we've scheduled it the same weekend,

00:57:10.960 | ours is actually Friday, Saturday,

00:57:13.320 | ADCC being Saturday, Sunday, our day starts pretty late.

00:57:17.000 | So we start 5 p.m. Saturday.

00:57:18.440 | So really, ultimately it was a big marketing ploy

00:57:21.680 | to go head to head,

00:57:23.600 | pretending like we're making the fans choose,

00:57:25.280 | but the fans will be able to watch both events.

00:57:28.440 | You'd be able to go all day Friday for us.

00:57:30.680 | You'll sadly miss the ADCC Hall of Fame ceremony

00:57:34.480 | where you'll see many of great speakers,

00:57:37.000 | public speakers, philosophers,

00:57:39.760 | tell their stories about hardship.

00:57:41.640 | Just like at the end of any jujitsu seminar

00:57:43.560 | or beginning, if you're blessed like that,

00:57:45.080 | you might have a 45-minute monologue

00:57:47.200 | about how they're more knowledgeable than doctors, lawyers,

00:57:50.920 | classic black belt technique,

00:57:52.560 | but you will miss that.

00:57:53.400 | - With great metaphors about lions.

00:57:55.680 | - About lions, yes.

00:57:56.960 | About being a humble lion, most importantly.

00:57:59.320 | - Humility is important.

00:58:00.760 | - You can watch all that Friday.

00:58:02.040 | You could watch most of ADCC Saturday.

00:58:04.520 | And then Saturday night in Las Vegas,

00:58:08.280 | I'll be doing what many men have done before,

00:58:11.800 | and that is wrestling a giant woman.

00:58:14.480 | - Can you speak to that?

00:58:17.120 | How are you preparing for this moment of violence

00:58:22.080 | on a Saturday night with Gabby Garcia?

00:58:24.920 | - So Gabby Garcia is the legend of women's grappling.

00:58:29.920 | I think she's won more than anyone else.

00:58:32.920 | So between me and her,

00:58:34.880 | we would at least have 15 to 20 world championships,

00:58:38.320 | I'd imagine.

00:58:40.040 | She's huge.

00:58:41.640 | I say that in an endearing way.

00:58:44.000 | She might be six foot four, six foot three,

00:58:48.560 | and her weight varies depending on what time of the day it is

00:58:50.800 | between 220 and 275 pounds,

00:58:52.760 | but she's gonna be coming in quite big and strong.

00:58:55.920 | Me, I am about 179 pounds right now and a five foot 11.

00:59:00.920 | So I've got a significant size disadvantage.

00:59:04.560 | She has the credentials, but we're gonna scrap it out,

00:59:08.120 | scrap it out and see who's best,

00:59:11.280 | the greatest women's competitor of all time,

00:59:13.680 | or a guy that's never won anything.

00:59:15.840 | - Has it added some complexity to the picture

00:59:18.920 | that there's some sexual tension in the room

00:59:21.600 | whenever the two of you are together?

00:59:23.680 | - Yeah.

00:59:24.520 | - Or maybe I'm being romantic,

00:59:25.400 | but it seems like there's,

00:59:27.320 | you've slowly started to fall in love with each other.

00:59:29.920 | - It's been three years of seduction.

00:59:32.080 | It's been a long time.

00:59:33.240 | - It's inspiring for many young men

00:59:36.140 | that follow you and look up to you.

00:59:38.920 | Just the romantic journey that you've been on,

00:59:42.360 | it's truly inspiring.

00:59:43.320 | - Yeah, I would say it's a motivational message

00:59:45.640 | to the guy that keeps sending DMs

00:59:48.120 | to a girl on Instagram for years.

00:59:50.800 | That maybe after three years,

00:59:52.560 | it could also happen for you too.

00:59:54.520 | No matter her height and weight,

00:59:58.560 | I think persistence is the key here.

01:00:00.640 | - Yeah.

01:00:03.480 | - And we do have a wager on the line.

01:00:05.540 | - What's the wager?

01:00:06.380 | - This might be the first wager of its kind,

01:00:08.240 | I would hope, in combat sports history.

01:00:10.680 | If she wins, I'll personally give her a million dollars.

01:00:16.520 | If I can footlock her,

01:00:19.200 | we're gonna collaborate together

01:00:21.200 | in an OnlyFans sex tape.

01:00:23.300 | - Did she agree to this?

01:00:26.040 | - She shook on it.

01:00:27.660 | (laughing)

01:00:29.860 | - Great.

01:00:30.700 | You do have an OnlyFans channel.

01:00:31.960 | Is that still up?

01:00:33.680 | - After August 17th, it's gonna be firing.

01:00:36.140 | - It's gonna be on fire.

01:00:37.720 | Wow.

01:00:38.560 | - I think that, and honestly,

01:00:39.380 | when we talk about "Cigarette Investor,"

01:00:40.680 | I think that could fund the entire tournament.

01:00:42.520 | It'd be that successful.

01:00:43.360 | - That'll be the only paywalled thing

01:00:44.920 | about this tournament is your OnlyFans.

01:00:47.960 | - Yeah, it's gonna be a spiritual experience for me.

01:00:51.220 | - Yeah.

01:00:52.540 | Wow.

01:00:53.380 | (laughing)

01:00:55.760 | Okay, I'm fully distracted now.

01:00:58.200 | Can you talk about the ruleset?

01:01:00.000 | - So we're using the angled walls

01:01:02.920 | inspired by "Karate Kombat."

01:01:05.100 | "Karate Kombat" did those angled walls.

01:01:07.160 | - Those are awesome.

01:01:08.000 | You're calling it the alley.

01:01:09.040 | That's really, really interesting.

01:01:10.920 | So it's like in a pit, I guess,

01:01:13.760 | and the angled walls are--

01:01:14.960 | - Yeah, so "Karate Kombat" have a square pit.

01:01:18.680 | We have a rectangular alley.

01:01:20.320 | We like the visual of just,

01:01:21.940 | you're in the alley with someone, you know?

01:01:24.080 | We both know what goes on an alley.

01:01:25.760 | Only a couple things that could go on back there.

01:01:27.720 | - What's the second thing?

01:01:29.240 | Nevermind.

01:01:30.280 | I got it.

01:01:31.120 | - But why this is brilliant,

01:01:33.300 | why the angled walls are brilliant for grappling

01:01:35.600 | is because any grappling tournament,

01:01:37.840 | this goes, without question, goes IBJJF, ADCC.

01:01:41.920 | The reset is one of the most annoying aspects of the sport,

01:01:46.160 | and one of the aspects of the sport

01:01:47.600 | that some of the sneakier guys take advantage of.

01:01:50.640 | There's guys out there that are brilliant

01:01:52.200 | at playing the edge.

01:01:53.420 | Open the ref, we'll reset him,

01:01:55.200 | or they'll shoot a takedown near the edge.

01:01:57.320 | And you might watch, and again, I'm picking on ADCC here,

01:01:59.800 | but you might watch an ADCC match

01:02:01.160 | where 90 seconds of a 10-minute match

01:02:03.600 | is the referee grabbing them,

01:02:05.480 | bringing them back to the center,

01:02:07.060 | or trying to recreate something of a position

01:02:11.160 | that landed outside.

01:02:13.000 | Not only is that sort of boring to me,

01:02:16.320 | and it sort of could be bias.

01:02:18.560 | Again, it's happened to me in events

01:02:19.880 | where the ref's gone, "Stop."

01:02:23.120 | I've stopped, he's moved a little bit more,

01:02:25.320 | and then there's an adjustment in the reset.

01:02:27.480 | I mean, it's cheating to a certain extent,

01:02:31.080 | but it's just more of an annoyance.

01:02:32.900 | They bring it back, they reset it

01:02:34.200 | to the best of their ability in the center.

01:02:35.960 | The angled wall mitigates that,

01:02:38.440 | and it mitigates it in such a way

01:02:40.600 | that it's a disadvantage to be pushed up

01:02:43.080 | against the angled wall.

01:02:44.080 | You're very easily taken down against the angled wall.

01:02:46.800 | You could use a cage like the UFC does

01:02:50.000 | or any sort of MMA organization.

01:02:52.160 | However, cage wrestling can be slow.

01:02:54.240 | You're obviously at the vertical,

01:02:55.880 | and it can stagnate there.

01:02:57.280 | Guys are very good at using split squats

01:02:59.480 | to really defend that position.

01:03:01.680 | And for me personally, I don't love the cage for grappling.

01:03:05.680 | I'd like to differentiate it for grappling.

01:03:07.880 | What holds people back from using the alley

01:03:11.240 | or a pit-like structure is the viewing, the viewing angle.

01:03:15.200 | 'Cause obviously if you're one of the VIPs

01:03:17.320 | or you pay for an expensive seat,

01:03:19.680 | that angled wall's above you.

01:03:21.200 | A cage you can see into an elevated platform sort of stage.

01:03:26.200 | You can see clearly into 'cause it's basically flat,

01:03:30.760 | but the athletes could fall off and injure themselves.

01:03:32.840 | So something happens, UFC fire passes,

01:03:35.040 | the elevated flat stage.

01:03:37.360 | It's kind of scary to be near the edge.

01:03:38.760 | You go off, you're gonna land on concrete.

01:03:41.480 | You might wanna do that to the other guy

01:03:44.200 | if you're that way inclined.

01:03:45.600 | But the alley, the angled wall solves all those problems.

01:03:50.160 | Very minimal referee interference.

01:03:53.320 | Again, the only thing that holds people back

01:03:54.600 | is the expense of building it.

01:03:56.360 | But again, when you're spending someone else's money,

01:03:59.080 | you will spare no expense in production.

01:04:01.240 | So we've spent a lot of money on the alley,

01:04:03.720 | and we've really gone out of our way

01:04:04.800 | to create an experience that around the alley,

01:04:08.280 | we've elevated everything so that the people watching

01:04:11.080 | will be able to see down into it.

01:04:12.960 | 'Cause your instinctual thought is,

01:04:14.960 | "Oh, it sounds great, but how am I gonna see in it

01:04:18.360 | "unless I'm far up?"

01:04:19.600 | Like you'd need like a Coliseum-like structure,

01:04:22.240 | which is basically what we've attempted to create

01:04:24.480 | so that you get both a perfect place to wrestle,

01:04:28.680 | to grapple in, as well as a perfect viewing angle

01:04:31.560 | for the fans.

01:04:32.640 | - Well, I think it's an amazing idea.

01:04:34.240 | What about the jiu-jitsu on a slant?

01:04:38.680 | You've triangled somebody on a slant.

01:04:41.120 | Is there some interesting aspects

01:04:42.600 | about the actual detailed techniques

01:04:44.920 | of how to be effective using a slant?

01:04:46.760 | - I'll be honest, I competed for "Karate Kombat" twice.

01:04:48.840 | Never once did I ever step foot into the pit.

01:04:52.880 | Just, again, like you said before the podcast,

01:04:55.200 | if there's a right way of doing things,

01:04:57.400 | I'm probably doing it the opposite.

01:04:59.360 | - The wrong way.

01:05:00.200 | I actually have no idea why people take advice from you

01:05:04.000 | if they do.

01:05:04.840 | - I'm mostly an inspirational speaker at this point.

01:05:08.400 | - You and Tony Robbins are like this.

01:05:10.720 | - Same size, at least.

01:05:11.920 | But in terms of the training for it,

01:05:14.520 | obviously the athlete's very difficult.

01:05:15.800 | Some of these guys have gone out there

01:05:16.800 | and built their own angled walls.

01:05:18.600 | - Yeah, I saw that.

01:05:19.440 | There's a cool video of that.

01:05:20.720 | - They're getting into that.

01:05:21.560 | That's a smart thing to do.

01:05:22.440 | There's a million dollars on the line.

01:05:24.000 | You should probably invest in that.

01:05:25.520 | But I also like a new surface that no one's competed on.

01:05:28.640 | No one's gamed it yet.

01:05:30.560 | No one's like, "We're gonna see it unfold."

01:05:33.400 | Like when UFC, when people started figuring out

01:05:36.000 | how to use the cage.

01:05:37.360 | We're gonna see this unfold in front of our very eyes,

01:05:40.040 | how the strategies work for this.

01:05:42.880 | The other thing we've done too is we're doing rounds.

01:05:46.160 | So qualifying rounds would be three five-minute rounds.

01:05:49.080 | The final would be five-fives.

01:05:51.040 | Why I wanna do that is to incentivize action.

01:05:55.080 | We're gonna incentivize action through penalizing people,

01:05:58.680 | but we really want, I love a short burst, a break,

01:06:02.560 | and the guys can go hard again.

01:06:03.960 | I don't like a jujitsu match

01:06:05.320 | where the guy takes the back early and he's like,

01:06:07.760 | "Oh, if I keep this position, I've won."

01:06:10.720 | And that's something that people that don't compete

01:06:13.440 | don't realize is if you get a good position early,

01:06:16.240 | get up on the points.

01:06:17.640 | You just sit there and go, "Oh, let's ride this to the end."

01:06:20.880 | That's why I want rounds so that you might take guys back.

01:06:23.840 | You really incentivize to get that finish.

01:06:27.000 | And the way we're trying to grow the sport

01:06:29.440 | is to steal the MMA scoring structure,

01:06:31.360 | which a lot of people have criticized

01:06:33.040 | 'cause they think it's overly complicated.

01:06:34.480 | They don't understand it.

01:06:36.240 | But to the mass audience,

01:06:38.920 | they understand a 10-point must understand a decision

01:06:41.760 | in that sense, understand it being scored round by round.

01:06:45.160 | So we're trying to appeal to a broader audience here,

01:06:48.400 | but we think based on the structure,

01:06:51.600 | based on how hard we'll call stalling penalties,

01:06:54.560 | based on you wanting to finish your opponent quick

01:06:57.880 | to have a better chance at a million dollars,

01:06:59.400 | 'cause it's 10,001 to show up and a million to win.

01:07:03.760 | If you ain't first, you're last.

01:07:05.000 | There's no reward for second place.

01:07:06.920 | So I'm punishing the one position

01:07:08.840 | I've only ever been able to achieve in tournaments.

01:07:11.440 | - Are you worried that because of how much money

01:07:17.160 | is on the line, people will play careful?

01:07:20.000 | - A very generous friend of mine has provided this money.

01:07:23.240 | I'm like, "Unless you guys go out there

01:07:26.720 | and try to kill each other and put it all on the line,

01:07:29.960 | I just won't do it again."

01:07:31.960 | Like I'm giving you guys a massive platform.

01:07:35.200 | We've turned down offers from streaming platforms

01:07:37.800 | that wanted to buy the rights to this event

01:07:39.680 | 'cause the marketing's gone very well.

01:07:41.720 | We're turning down money to grow the sport.

01:07:45.080 | The ADCC promoter said he wanted to grow the sport.

01:07:48.040 | So what he did is he put it behind a paywall

01:07:50.280 | and he used the money from the paywall

01:07:51.560 | to buy a more expensive arena.

01:07:54.520 | I don't think that's how you grow the sport.

01:07:55.720 | I think you grow the sport like comedians do these days.

01:07:59.160 | Guys like Mark Norman will release a special for free.

01:08:01.680 | Andrew Schultz did it first, released a special for free

01:08:04.720 | and it grew his audience massively.

01:08:07.200 | I think that's what jiu-jitsu needs.

01:08:08.560 | We need an exciting show that's not behind a paywall

01:08:12.600 | that'll grow the sport, grow the audience,

01:08:16.360 | and really then ultimately we can get to a level

01:08:19.040 | where it could be behind a paywall,

01:08:21.000 | but I just don't think where they at.

01:08:23.320 | - Yeah, I think a million dollars is a lot of money,

01:08:25.120 | but the opportunity here,

01:08:26.760 | because it's open and freely accessible by everyone,

01:08:29.720 | is to put on a show.

01:08:31.400 | - And then you get a million every year.

01:08:33.080 | If this is a crazy exciting event,

01:08:36.200 | the funding's gonna be so easy year after year.

01:08:39.160 | And the other aspect we're doing to it is,

01:08:42.360 | unfortunately, I'm not gonna make any money off this thing.

01:08:44.480 | It's a non-profit and the money from charity--

01:08:47.560 | - Except the OnlyFans, but whatever, yeah.

01:08:49.480 | - That's the real cash cow.

01:08:51.240 | But that's the real work too.

01:08:52.640 | - Yeah, and that's not for charity.

01:08:54.520 | That's for your personal bank account, the OnlyFans.

01:08:58.240 | Or you're also--

01:08:59.080 | - No, that'll be for the follow-up therapy,

01:09:00.600 | but that'll be an expensive gig

01:09:03.800 | for whoever takes that on board.

01:09:05.160 | - Love hurts.

01:09:06.120 | - That physically will, yeah.

01:09:08.520 | Ticket proceeds to charity.

01:09:11.080 | So obviously we've got the $3 million budget.

01:09:13.280 | We've got production expenses.

01:09:14.880 | We've got the team of staff to hire.

01:09:17.640 | But if we could sell this thing out,

01:09:21.040 | we could potentially donate a ton of money to charity.

01:09:23.720 | One of those charities is Tap Cancer Out.

01:09:25.640 | And what's great about this is Rich Burn

01:09:28.520 | is a black belt from New York who's in the banking world.

01:09:32.160 | He used to run an event called Kasai Grappling.

01:09:34.840 | He went through cancer.

01:09:37.360 | He basically had a very aggressive cancer.

01:09:39.320 | He had it treated.

01:09:40.880 | And now he basically has said to us

01:09:43.640 | that whatever we donate from the profits of the event,

01:09:47.640 | he's gonna match dollar for dollar.

01:09:49.800 | And we've also had another guy who wants

01:09:51.960 | to remain anonymous agree to match dollar for dollar

01:09:54.880 | as well.

01:09:55.720 | So the more ticket sales revenue we can create here,

01:09:58.880 | the more we can actually give back to charity.

01:10:00.560 | So it's really all round.

01:10:02.680 | It's gonna be a great event.

01:10:04.160 | - Yeah, Tap Cancer Out is great.

01:10:05.440 | And all the charities

01:10:06.280 | that the athletes have been selecting are great.

01:10:09.080 | What's been the hardest?

01:10:10.280 | You are wearing a suit.

01:10:12.760 | So you figured out how to do that, but--

01:10:14.280 | - The tie was difficult, for sure.

01:10:15.680 | - The tie was difficult, but you figured it out.

01:10:18.000 | And congratulations on that.

01:10:21.160 | But you've never run a tournament.

01:10:23.120 | Nah.

01:10:25.280 | - I've never wrestled a big woman either.

01:10:28.000 | Well, I have, but not in this form.

01:10:30.000 | - Not in a competitive environment for OnlyFans.

01:10:32.880 | What's been the hardest aspects

01:10:36.160 | of actually bringing this to life?

01:10:38.040 | - The first one was people believing it was real.

01:10:40.520 | That was quite difficult.

01:10:41.800 | And then communicating with the athletes.

01:10:45.280 | That's basically my responsibility is securing these guys,

01:10:48.960 | getting these guys to commit to things.

01:10:51.800 | It's very difficult.

01:10:53.000 | There's a reason a few athletes

01:10:55.920 | in every sport really stand out.

01:10:58.360 | And it's kind of professionalism,

01:10:59.840 | kind of the way they market themselves.

01:11:01.480 | And I think those two things do go hand in hand.

01:11:04.960 | So we're in a sport where there's not enough money,

01:11:06.400 | where a lot of these guys do have managers.

01:11:08.160 | I think in MMA, things would be a lot easier

01:11:11.120 | for the promoter

01:11:11.960 | because you're not talking directly to the athlete.

01:11:14.600 | You're talking to a guy who might,

01:11:16.360 | who's obviously taking a cut,

01:11:17.640 | but there's a middleman.

01:11:20.480 | So in a situation where you're talking directly

01:11:22.320 | to the athlete, it can be very difficult,

01:11:24.160 | can be very annoying,

01:11:25.120 | can be very hard to reach these guys.

01:11:26.840 | They can be very non-committal.

01:11:28.600 | That, for me, has been one of the biggest challenges.

01:11:31.000 | The guys that I speak to that are like, "I'm in."

01:11:33.000 | And they're like, "I'm out. I'm in."

01:11:34.840 | Like navigating this area.

01:11:37.120 | One other aspect is because we did this basically

01:11:40.360 | from idea to event will be less than three months,

01:11:44.560 | three and a half months.

01:11:45.480 | So it's like we're having to do so much

01:11:47.360 | in such a short period of time.

01:11:49.040 | Little things like, of the show money we've given them,

01:11:52.440 | they're expected to basically secure their own flight

01:11:56.960 | and hotel to the event.

01:11:58.280 | We're cutting down on staff

01:11:59.920 | 'cause that would be one of the,

01:12:01.000 | if I had to coordinate getting these guys flights,

01:12:04.080 | I would just jump off a building.

01:12:05.760 | Like it's hard enough to get them to agree to the event,

01:12:09.120 | let alone coordinate, "Hey, what date do you wanna come in?"

01:12:11.960 | It's like herding cats.

01:12:13.400 | So really just the interpersonal stuff's been difficult.

01:12:17.040 | Obviously going up against ADCC, the legacy event,

01:12:20.480 | has been pretty damn difficult as well.

01:12:22.360 | Well-established, huge history.

01:12:25.440 | They've been selling tickets for two years.

01:12:27.320 | Everyone's known it's been coming for two years.

01:12:29.680 | That thing was largely sold out

01:12:31.120 | before we even announced the event.

01:12:33.320 | So we're going head to head with this event.

01:12:36.440 | So from a ticket sales perspective, very difficult.

01:12:38.960 | - What's been, Reddit question,

01:12:40.480 | what's been the most surprising people

01:12:42.000 | who turned down your invite?

01:12:44.000 | - Ooh, I mean, we can name names.

01:12:47.560 | I mean, obviously Kynan, he was a semi-in, semi-out.

01:12:52.200 | His suggestion was actually to do

01:12:55.000 | a second and third place prize rather than a million.

01:12:57.800 | And I'm like, no, we want all or nothing.

01:13:01.600 | It's all or nothing here.

01:13:02.640 | Whether it's a better spectacle, better entertainment,

01:13:05.520 | probably more injuries, but it's all or nothing.

01:13:09.000 | Miki Galvao, the one that got away, that's sad.

01:13:13.760 | But we got the Rotolos.

01:13:15.000 | The Rotolos, props to these kids

01:13:18.040 | 'cause Cade's the reigning champion.

01:13:20.280 | These are two of the best guys in the sport.

01:13:23.240 | Allegedly were offered pretty significant show money to stay,

01:13:28.240 | but they hit me up and they said,

01:13:31.200 | "Hey, promise us one thing.

01:13:33.080 | "We're on opposite sides of the brackets

01:13:35.200 | "and we'll fight to the death in the final for the million."

01:13:38.320 | And we know, everyone knows that.

01:13:40.000 | We've seen them compete against each other multiple times.

01:13:42.360 | So that was not a surprise 'cause I know they're good kids,

01:13:46.520 | but to basically turn down allegedly show money

01:13:49.440 | to do this event, to support the event,

01:13:52.240 | to me is incredible.

01:13:53.400 | Miki Galvao, things would be more complicated there.

01:13:56.280 | Like obviously, Miki officially joined ADCC

01:14:00.320 | before he secured the Rotolos.

01:14:02.400 | Cade beat him in the final.

01:14:04.080 | Miki's personally motivated to face off against Cade.

01:14:06.920 | So he didn't know Cade was in our event

01:14:08.360 | before he agreed to ADCC.

01:14:10.560 | There's more to that story too in terms of Miki doing ADCC

01:14:13.560 | because a bunch of the kids in his team,

01:14:16.960 | I think they're being flown out to do the ADCC kids events.

01:14:20.120 | So there's like his two teammates,

01:14:22.280 | well, at least one of his teammates will be doing

01:14:24.480 | the ADCC 66 kilo division.

01:14:27.200 | So his dad, his coach doesn't really wanna split time

01:14:29.840 | between two events.

01:14:31.080 | That's a difficulty for athletes there.

01:14:33.600 | But obviously disappointing, we couldn't secure Miki.

01:14:37.520 | Miki said he was about the legacy.

01:14:39.520 | So he wanted to be the youngest guy ever

01:14:41.520 | to double Grand Slam,

01:14:43.000 | which is basically win all the Gi events

01:14:46.080 | and win the ADCC that same year.

01:14:48.840 | My thoughts were, if I was in his position

01:14:53.920 | and I never was obviously a prodigy, a talent like that,

01:14:58.000 | is I thought he had a position

01:15:01.320 | to make a statement in the sport

01:15:02.760 | to kind of, as cheesy as it sounds,

01:15:04.560 | be on the right side of history.

01:15:06.440 | To have turned down a double Grand Slam

01:15:09.720 | to be in an event that supports athlete pay.

01:15:13.160 | Again, I don't overly criticize him,

01:15:15.640 | but I think in terms of your legacy and reputation,

01:15:18.360 | to be at a point and choose to do that

01:15:21.440 | is much more memorable

01:15:23.400 | than him getting that double Grand Slam,

01:15:25.600 | which I'm sure he will win

01:15:27.280 | the ADCC 77 kilo division this year,

01:15:29.920 | but it will be somewhat tarnished anyway.

01:15:33.480 | So I do feel bad for some of the athletes that win this year

01:15:35.720 | and potentially people will be like,

01:15:37.240 | "Oh yeah, but that was half the people

01:15:39.400 | "weren't in the division."

01:15:40.240 | I feel bad for those guys,

01:15:41.480 | but at the end of the day,

01:15:43.320 | most of these guys had an opportunity

01:15:45.760 | to be a part of an event

01:15:47.560 | that really there's no downside to.

01:15:50.240 | You have a chance to be paid more money

01:15:52.320 | than you've ever been paid in your life.

01:15:54.600 | You're selling tickets that are gonna go to charity

01:15:59.200 | and it's not behind a paywall.

01:16:01.000 | So anyone, anywhere in the world can stream this event,

01:16:04.560 | watch it and there's no barrier to entry

01:16:07.120 | in terms of finances.

01:16:08.720 | - Was there ever any chance

01:16:10.360 | that Gordon Ryan would enter?

01:16:13.680 | - I don't think so.

01:16:15.480 | I don't think so.

01:16:16.320 | - Is that something you tried?

01:16:17.880 | - Me and Gordon don't text each other too often.

01:16:19.880 | I tag him on Instagram and things,

01:16:21.240 | but he doesn't respond.

01:16:22.760 | - Tell me about your history with Nicholas Maragalli.

01:16:25.360 | - My history with Nicholas Maragalli,

01:16:26.560 | actually it dates back to a time

01:16:28.120 | where probably he does not even remember.

01:16:31.960 | Back when I used to wear a kimono.

01:16:34.000 | So I went to Abu Dhabi World Pro,

01:16:36.760 | I was chasing my gi dreams.

01:16:38.520 | I lost in, I can't even remember.

01:16:41.640 | Again, probably the final, not me.

01:16:43.000 | I probably lost in the final against Tommy Langlacher

01:16:45.760 | in the weight division.

01:16:47.160 | This was the last year they did the absolute.

01:16:48.720 | I went into the absolute.

01:16:50.320 | I made it all the way to the semis.

01:16:52.280 | Nicholas Maragalli destroyed me in the gi.

01:16:55.160 | I did hit a nice little reversal on him though.

01:16:57.280 | He passed my guard

01:16:58.840 | and I somehow reversed him from side control.

01:17:00.800 | That's the only part of the match I share,

01:17:03.280 | after which he swept me, submitted me.

01:17:06.080 | - You reversed him from side control?

01:17:08.080 | - Yeah.

01:17:08.920 | - Okay, so that could be like an instructional.

01:17:12.080 | - That could, yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:17:14.280 | - But the right place, right time though.

01:17:15.920 | - But then years later, I left the team.

01:17:20.520 | Maragalli replaced me.

01:17:22.040 | So they brought in a more credentialed, handsome,

01:17:25.080 | doesn't speak as well,

01:17:26.840 | but they brought him in, he's my replacement.

01:17:28.640 | He's coming to the team.

01:17:30.320 | We face off at ADCC.

01:17:32.560 | I do a heavier division thinking,

01:17:35.520 | I looked at the names and I was like,

01:17:36.360 | "That looks like an easy division."

01:17:38.000 | And I had two teammates at the time that were in my 88.

01:17:41.520 | And I was like,

01:17:42.760 | "Those guys will have to face off first round.

01:17:44.680 | "I'll have to face one of them second round."

01:17:46.320 | The way they do the seating and the structure of the bracket.

01:17:48.720 | So I was like, "I'll do 99.

01:17:50.840 | "I'll leave 88 for the boys."

01:17:53.120 | They both lost my division first round, unfortunately.

01:17:56.920 | So I faced off against Maragalli beginning of day two.

01:17:59.760 | Lot of pressure because Dana has used to corner me,

01:18:03.520 | used to be my coach.

01:18:05.040 | Now he's cornering the Brazilians

01:18:08.120 | who we used to complain about as the enemy.

01:18:10.040 | And I'm like, "What's going on over here?"

01:18:11.360 | It's like karate kid stuff.

01:18:12.960 | I face off against Maragalli.

01:18:15.120 | I go hard early 'cause I think he can't defend leg locks.

01:18:18.760 | For the first three minutes,

01:18:19.680 | I'm just attacking legs, legs, legs.

01:18:22.320 | I ended up sweeping him, getting on top.

01:18:24.200 | No points before the points period,

01:18:26.400 | but I'm very tired at this point.

01:18:28.360 | Maragalli's big.

01:18:29.640 | There's some guys that get juiced up

01:18:31.720 | to hit a certain weight.

01:18:32.560 | That's what I did to enter this division.

01:18:34.800 | You can't keep your gas tank.

01:18:35.960 | Maragalli's just a big dude.

01:18:37.520 | Who knows if he's on the juice or not,

01:18:40.000 | but he's just naturally sits around 230 pounds or even 225.

01:18:45.000 | When you're naturally that big,

01:18:47.520 | your gas tank's a bit better.

01:18:48.400 | Again, if you balloon yourself up

01:18:50.480 | on every substance possible,

01:18:52.200 | gas tank's surprisingly not too good.

01:18:54.200 | So we have a bit of a close one.

01:18:56.040 | Decision goes my way.

01:18:58.240 | Ultimately, finals next, I lose that,

01:19:00.200 | but that is sort of our competitive history.

01:19:02.560 | We were meant to have a match

01:19:05.360 | that had been pre-booked immediately after ADCC.

01:19:08.600 | So we agreed to this before ADCC.

01:19:12.120 | I was like, if the price is right, I'm in.

01:19:14.800 | So I sign up for it, and I'm thinking ADCC

01:19:16.640 | that we're gonna face off soon after.

01:19:18.920 | Maragalli chose instead to have some vacation time.

01:19:22.520 | He wanted to go on vacation, he wanted to relax.

01:19:25.080 | Bit of relaxation down in Brazil.

01:19:26.960 | So the match is scrapped.

01:19:28.280 | Flo hit me up, and they say, "Can you do February?"

01:19:33.160 | And this was about the time that Vox fought Islam in Perth.

01:19:35.800 | I was like, "No, I can't do February

01:19:37.560 | "because I'll be helping Volkanovsky.

01:19:39.840 | "That's gonna take precedence over this match."

01:19:43.360 | Flo goes, "You know what we'll do?

01:19:44.200 | "We'll announce it anyway.

01:19:46.200 | "We'll sell those tickets anyway.

01:19:47.400 | "We'll get the people hyped,

01:19:48.320 | "and then we'll just have you pull out."

01:19:49.480 | And I'm like, "All right, do whatever you want."

01:19:52.520 | That's probably not a good idea, but they do that.

01:19:56.480 | And then people keep trying to rebook this match.

01:20:00.520 | But now I barely even train anymore.

01:20:03.400 | I'm busy being a promoter, traveling around.

01:20:07.320 | So now instead of facing them in competition again,

01:20:10.000 | which I would do if the price was right,

01:20:11.400 | they'd have to pay me very well.

01:20:12.760 | Two of the shows have offered me the match,

01:20:15.200 | but the money, terrible.

01:20:16.720 | - What do you think is a number that would convince you?

01:20:20.200 | - It would have to be, I would think, half a million dollars.

01:20:24.840 | Otherwise I just can't be bothered.

01:20:26.320 | You know what I mean?

01:20:27.160 | It'd have to be worth it.

01:20:28.000 | Because to put a price on a guy

01:20:30.760 | that takes himself as serious as Merigali,

01:20:32.480 | Merigali's a very serious man.

01:20:34.200 | He's talking about authenticity.

01:20:36.080 | He's talking about words he doesn't even understand.

01:20:38.680 | For me to give him the opportunity to live in a world

01:20:42.560 | where he had won the last match against me,

01:20:45.360 | it's hard to put a price on that.

01:20:47.280 | You know when people say it's not about the money?

01:20:48.560 | It's not about the money.

01:20:49.400 | It's about me waking up every day

01:20:51.560 | knowing that he knows he lost to me.

01:20:54.560 | - So you think you've gotten it in his head?

01:20:56.520 | - Yes.

01:20:57.600 | - How do you think you would do if you were to face him

01:20:59.440 | for the said 500,000?

01:21:02.400 | - For the 500?

01:21:03.360 | - Yeah.

01:21:04.760 | - I think over five minutes, I beat anyone in the world.

01:21:08.280 | - You still think you got it?

01:21:09.920 | - I still think I got it.

01:21:11.080 | Gabby about to find out, so.

01:21:12.760 | - All right, so you're gonna make a statement with Gabby,

01:21:17.600 | like that it'll be a match she remembers.

01:21:22.400 | - Yeah, she for sure,

01:21:24.480 | I think the fans will remember it as well.

01:21:26.600 | I'm open to, like if we do this match,

01:21:29.280 | I'm taking it very serious,

01:21:30.800 | but we'd be open to rematches.

01:21:32.320 | I've always said I would have a MMA fight with her.

01:21:35.440 | I wouldn't be afraid to hit a big woman.

01:21:38.560 | - So unlike with Meragali, if you win,

01:21:42.160 | you're not gonna ride off to the sunset with Gabby.

01:21:45.800 | - I'm a bit of a romantic.

01:21:46.880 | I think she deserves a few finishes, you know?

01:21:49.160 | Not one and hit the bed that night.

01:21:51.200 | - So you think you can actually beat Nicholas Meragali?

01:21:54.440 | - I think so, yeah.

01:21:55.480 | I think, I mean, you could throw a riddle at him

01:21:56.880 | before the match.

01:21:57.720 | That'd fucking complicate things for him for the next hour.

01:22:00.960 | - Will you and Gordon ever get along again?

01:22:04.200 | - I think so.

01:22:05.040 | I think we need, the origins of MDMA

01:22:08.240 | was couples therapy in the '70s in Houston, I believe.

01:22:10.480 | I believe something like that for us

01:22:11.880 | could resolve these underlying issues.

01:22:14.080 | - You're a man of Reddit, 'cause they suggested

01:22:16.000 | that you should consider ketamine therapy sessions.

01:22:18.920 | - Just imagine a therapist sitting down with him.

01:22:21.640 | They'd be like, "Clear the schedule

01:22:24.320 | "for the next couple of weeks."

01:22:25.360 | - With all due respect, Greg,

01:22:26.680 | I can't imagine a therapist sitting down with you.

01:22:29.560 | That would be a terrifying-

01:22:30.600 | - I do have a therapist, actually.

01:22:31.760 | They prescribed me Vyvanse.

01:22:33.360 | He's quite confident in my-

01:22:35.600 | - Is this the Metamembali, or what did you-

01:22:37.560 | (Gordon laughs)

01:22:39.080 | - It's a Russian website.

01:22:40.480 | - Yeah, it's the old Sean Connery thing.

01:22:43.480 | It's not a therapist.

01:22:44.640 | It's just something that's spelled the same.

01:22:47.280 | - I think me and Gordon, a debate of some type

01:22:50.520 | would be awesome.

01:22:51.360 | - Like a political debate?

01:22:52.440 | - Yeah, me representing Kamala Harris,

01:22:54.680 | and him representing Donald Trump would be-

01:22:56.880 | - So intellectual sparring.

01:22:59.600 | - An intellectual battle, a battle of wits.

01:23:02.520 | - Can you just speak to your trolling?

01:23:04.480 | Is there, underneath it all, is there just a respect,

01:23:09.840 | the human beings you go after?

01:23:12.040 | - For sure, they have to be worthy of being attacked.

01:23:14.960 | You know what I mean?

01:23:16.800 | If someone attacks, that's the thing.

01:23:18.400 | It's like, you want a worthy adversary,

01:23:20.880 | not in a sense of, I don't wanna battle someone

01:23:24.800 | that has better banter than me, 'cause I'm gonna lose,

01:23:27.240 | but I wanna battle someone with a profile large enough

01:23:30.440 | that it doesn't look like you're just-

01:23:32.360 | - Who do you think is the biggest troll

01:23:34.280 | or shit talker in martial arts?

01:23:36.920 | - Hernado Laranja.

01:23:37.920 | - Yeah, well, you can't even put him in the,

01:23:41.720 | he's in the other class of human being.

01:23:43.920 | (Gordon laughs)

01:23:44.960 | - He's overqualified.

01:23:46.360 | - Chael Salonen comes to mind.

01:23:48.040 | - Chael's good.

01:23:48.880 | - You versus Chael, who's a better shit talker?

01:23:52.000 | If you look the entirety of the career.

01:23:53.600 | - Chael is better.

01:23:54.960 | I mean, I think if you can shit talk in MMA,

01:23:56.880 | 'cause there's far worse consequences for you.

01:23:59.520 | If you're still willing to do it

01:24:01.120 | when really violent things can happen to you,

01:24:04.240 | I mean, I'm getting death threats,

01:24:05.480 | but he has a certainty of violence

01:24:09.080 | against his opponents in MMA.

01:24:12.040 | - So on Reddit, somebody said,

01:24:13.320 | you are a Coral Belt level troll

01:24:16.920 | and just happened to be good at jujitsu.

01:24:19.560 | So what did it take for you to rise

01:24:21.400 | to the ranks of trolling from White Belt

01:24:23.520 | to Black Belt to Coral Belt?

01:24:26.360 | What's your journey with talking shit?

01:24:29.400 | - That's a good question.

01:24:30.400 | Hey, I think it would have happened

01:24:32.000 | after I moved to America.

01:24:33.880 | 'Cause in Australia, we just, on a daily basis,

01:24:37.120 | say some of the worst things you could ever imagine.

01:24:39.200 | - Like in private life?

01:24:40.200 | - Yeah, we're just trying to ruin each other's day.

01:24:43.160 | - In a way that's so blase, you're going back and forth.

01:24:46.960 | And the guy that actually gets upset

01:24:48.760 | and says some real shit, that's your victory.

01:24:52.800 | You know what I mean?

01:24:53.640 | Like, you're like, oh, we got you.

01:24:54.880 | You're actually, that actually bothers you.

01:24:56.280 | All right, we'll take that as a victory.

01:24:58.280 | - So when you come to America

01:24:59.280 | and everybody takes themselves a little too seriously,

01:25:02.080 | those are just a bunch of victims

01:25:04.880 | that you can take advantage of.

01:25:06.240 | - An Australian entering American banter

01:25:08.760 | is like Neo getting his Matrix skills.

01:25:12.080 | You're just like, whoa, I see everything coming.

01:25:14.920 | - Do you ever look in the mirror

01:25:16.040 | and like regret how hard you went in the paint?

01:25:18.960 | At somebody?

01:25:20.800 | - I don't think so.

01:25:23.960 | I don't think so.

01:25:24.800 | - You see you're proud of yourself?

01:25:25.840 | - I think what I offer is some balance.

01:25:29.520 | It's like I'm bringing some justice.

01:25:31.720 | Ultimately, it'll probably come back in spades to me.

01:25:35.040 | - Yeah.

01:25:36.360 | I don't know.

01:25:37.200 | As a fan of yours, as a fan of Gordon's also,

01:25:39.080 | but as a fan of yours, I see the love behind it.

01:25:42.680 | I don't know.

01:25:43.520 | It seems always just fun.

01:25:44.840 | The shit talking seems fun.

01:25:46.160 | - I wish you'd buy it back.

01:25:47.240 | It doesn't buy it back anymore, though.

01:25:49.840 | - What's your relationship like with Mo,

01:25:52.600 | the organizer of ADCC?

01:25:55.080 | - I mean, it's been a love-hate relationship.

01:25:57.280 | I guess it's been-- - With Gabby?

01:25:59.480 | - Like any good relationship,

01:26:00.880 | if you don't get blocked at the end of it,

01:26:02.800 | were you really in love to begin with?

01:26:05.760 | That's my thoughts anyway.

01:26:07.720 | So in terms of my friendship with Mo,

01:26:09.680 | me and Mo were really close friends for a long time.

01:26:12.280 | We'd talk a lot.

01:26:13.760 | He was instrumental in us moving

01:26:16.080 | Dana Her Death Squad to Puerto Rico.

01:26:19.240 | He lives in Puerto Rico,

01:26:21.200 | spends most of his time in Puerto Rico.

01:26:23.160 | I've spent time with him in Florida, California,

01:26:28.440 | but in terms of our relationship,

01:26:31.000 | I'm trying to think of an exact time where it went south,

01:26:33.920 | but I guess in my, him being the ADCC organizer,

01:26:38.920 | in my attack of athlete compensation was taken personally,

01:26:44.560 | which is obviously gonna ruin whatever friendship you had.

01:26:52.480 | - And that started around the time

01:26:54.400 | you were thinking about CJI.

01:26:56.760 | - I mean, to be honest,

01:26:59.080 | CJI was a result of the response

01:27:03.960 | of my discussion of athlete compensation.

01:27:06.600 | So me and Mo had been close friends,

01:27:09.200 | even after the Dana Her team broke up,

01:27:12.280 | we were still close friends for quite a while after that.

01:27:15.680 | But it does complicate things when someone is,

01:27:19.240 | for all intents and purposes,

01:27:20.600 | as an ADCC competitor,

01:27:22.280 | and he runs ADCC, the event, he's in control of it now,

01:27:26.240 | he is your boss.

01:27:28.280 | So that does complicate our friendship.

01:27:31.000 | - Have you had a conversation since you announced CJI?

01:27:33.960 | - Have we had a conversation?

01:27:36.120 | - When did you get blocked?

01:27:38.280 | - I honestly didn't get blocked, I was just joking.

01:27:40.280 | (laughs)

01:27:41.680 | Honestly, we had a disagreement about athlete compensation.

01:27:45.080 | I said, let's do a podcast and talk about it,

01:27:49.120 | because I'm a big fan of transparency.

01:27:52.120 | If you think I'm an idiot

01:27:54.480 | for thinking athletes should get paid more,

01:27:57.280 | tell me it, show it to me.

01:28:00.520 | And I've made public statements,

01:28:02.160 | other people have asked why we don't get paid more money.

01:28:05.320 | You can both tell me and the world at the same time,

01:28:09.720 | the grappling world at the same time,

01:28:11.720 | but was not interested in doing a podcast.

01:28:14.360 | Again, maybe he thought I was gonna hit him

01:28:15.600 | with some gotcha questions or something,

01:28:17.280 | but really at the end of the day,

01:28:19.240 | I personally believe you've got nothing to hide.

01:28:21.680 | If you are confident in the business decisions you've made,

01:28:25.760 | then there's no gotcha moment that I could actually do.

01:28:29.080 | I could easily, I would have done the podcast

01:28:31.240 | if I looked like a complete idiot,

01:28:32.320 | would have released it anyway,

01:28:33.520 | because it would be a good message

01:28:34.960 | to where we are in the sport.

01:28:36.960 | But again, considering what I know

01:28:38.120 | about Thomas and Max Price,

01:28:40.200 | which I believe we're paying $200,000 for,

01:28:42.760 | and T-Mobile's $2 million,

01:28:44.640 | how do you justify no increase in athlete pay

01:28:48.680 | while we have a 1.8 million increase in venue cost?

01:28:52.160 | - So you're saying that there could potentially

01:28:53.760 | be poor business decisions, poor allocation of money

01:28:57.080 | that could be reallocated better to support the athletes?

01:29:00.600 | - I've never once thought this was some organization

01:29:04.880 | where Mo's stealing money for himself.

01:29:07.520 | I'm just saying that,

01:29:08.760 | and again, the road to hell's paved with good intentions,

01:29:12.600 | so he might fully think that what he's doing

01:29:15.840 | is gonna grow the sport.

01:29:17.920 | I'm going about it in a completely different way.

01:29:20.400 | I don't think we need T-Mobile.

01:29:22.520 | I don't think we need a behind-the-paywall.

01:29:24.240 | I think we need cheap venue,

01:29:26.680 | still maintain good quality production,

01:29:29.120 | release it for free.

01:29:29.960 | If you want something to grow, present it for free.

01:29:34.140 | - Is there a future where the two of you talk?

01:29:37.000 | - Yeah, for sure.

01:29:37.840 | He keeps insisting on talking face-to-face.

01:29:40.920 | I don't have a problem with that,

01:29:41.920 | but my argument is this is a public feud.

01:29:46.480 | The public, like this is, we're having a disagreement.

01:29:50.700 | Let's settle the disagreement

01:29:51.960 | in a way that answers the question to the fans,

01:29:54.440 | because if one of us is a complete idiot,

01:29:58.920 | then I believe the world of people following this story

01:30:03.040 | are entitled to know which one of us is an idiot.

01:30:06.320 | - If you talk to him, would you be good faith?

01:30:08.640 | Like, would you turn the troll down from 11 to like a three?

01:30:13.640 | - Yeah, I don't even think I'd need to troll him.

01:30:15.880 | I'd just say, "Hey, show us the books."

01:30:19.680 | You know what I mean?

01:30:21.360 | Honestly, when our event's done,

01:30:22.840 | we're gonna be pretty transparent.

01:30:24.680 | Obviously, we are ran as a nonprofit.

01:30:27.040 | We're gonna be pretty transparent about everything.

01:30:30.320 | And I mean, obviously, ultimately, all the views we get.

01:30:34.840 | When an event's on Flow Grappling or Fight Pass

01:30:37.800 | or any other streaming provider, unless it's a pay-per-view,

01:30:41.400 | you're not gonna know how many people watched.

01:30:45.260 | So that's one aspect of what we're doing

01:30:47.240 | is we're gonna have a visual sort of guard

01:30:51.440 | to how many people are fans of grappling.

01:30:53.760 | - Yeah, transparency in all of its forms.

01:30:56.360 | That's what bothers me about the IOC with the Olympics

01:30:59.040 | is that there's this organization

01:31:01.680 | that puts on an incredible event,

01:31:03.520 | but it's completely opaque, it's not transparent.

01:31:05.960 | And the athletes don't get paid almost at all.

01:31:09.560 | So it's usually from sponsorships.

01:31:11.320 | And they sell distribution, broadcast distribution.

01:31:15.960 | And so like, it's mostly paywalled after the fact.

01:31:19.320 | It's very, unless you're a super famous athlete

01:31:22.280 | or a famous event, it's hard to watch,

01:31:25.080 | I don't know, the early rounds of the weightlifting

01:31:28.240 | or the judo or all of the competitions,

01:31:31.480 | where most of those athletes get paid almost nothing

01:31:35.040 | and they've dedicated their whole life.

01:31:36.880 | Like, they've sacrificed everything to be there.

01:31:39.520 | And we don't get to watch them openly.

01:31:42.080 | You can't, in many cases, you can't even pay for it.

01:31:44.680 | With IOC, I've got to experience this

01:31:47.720 | 'cause I'll have like podcast conversations

01:31:50.120 | with like Judoka, for example.

01:31:52.240 | And I put like a little clip in a podcast

01:31:55.160 | and the Olympics channel takes it down immediately.

01:31:58.840 | So they have all the videos uploaded private.

01:32:03.020 | They're private.

01:32:03.860 | - Oh, to flag the copyright.

01:32:05.040 | - They just flag the copyright automatically.

01:32:07.440 | From the private videos, they could release.

01:32:09.820 | They could release somewhere, even if it's paywalled,

01:32:11.760 | which I'm against, but paywall it,

01:32:13.600 | but make it super easily accessible.

01:32:15.280 | So the flow grappling model is still okay.

01:32:17.400 | I'm against it, but if you do a really good job of it,

01:32:20.880 | okay, I can kind of understand a membership fee,

01:32:22.960 | but like it should be super easy to use.

01:32:25.400 | But in the case of the Olympics, first of all,

01:32:27.880 | in the case of the Olympics,

01:32:29.400 | the whole point of the Olympics

01:32:30.880 | is for it to be accessible to everybody.

01:32:33.480 | So paywalling goes against the spirit of the Olympic games.

01:32:37.680 | And I will say the same is probably true

01:32:39.160 | for many sports like grappling,

01:32:41.160 | especially for major events like ADCC,

01:32:44.120 | that I feel like that should be openly accessible

01:32:46.080 | to everybody, like on every platform.

01:32:48.640 | But what was the decision like for you

01:32:50.600 | to make it accessible on YouTube and X?

01:32:53.800 | - Well, I mean, just because basically

01:32:56.760 | it's going to grow the sport.

01:32:58.400 | You know what I mean?

01:32:59.240 | Like if you have to subscribe to a platform

01:33:03.980 | to watch something you have a mild interest in,

01:33:07.400 | a mild curiosity in, there's a financial barrier there.

01:33:11.360 | So I wanna open it up because again,

01:33:13.880 | we have an investor who's contributing

01:33:17.920 | and is happy for it to be spent this way,

01:33:20.200 | happy for us not to be held hostage

01:33:23.200 | by these sort of streaming providers.

01:33:25.480 | And really like, again, I'm not making accusations

01:33:28.920 | against Flow Grappling or UFC Fight Pass.

01:33:30.520 | They are making the right business decision

01:33:33.120 | by not providing streamer numbers

01:33:36.000 | because that's leverage that those people can use

01:33:39.400 | against the streaming provider.

01:33:42.040 | But for me as an individual athlete

01:33:44.160 | that really wants to understand the metrics

01:33:47.000 | of how many people actually watch this sport

01:33:49.440 | to leverage that in my own sponsorship negotiations,

01:33:52.680 | then if I'm in a position to have this out free

01:33:55.760 | and also give every athlete involved

01:33:58.800 | the same metrics and information,

01:34:00.760 | like you will literally be able to see the spikes

01:34:03.960 | when you compete and you'll be able to take that

01:34:07.760 | and present it for opportunities, for sponsorships,

01:34:10.760 | for businesses to say, look, look how many views this got.

01:34:14.120 | I was one of the most viewed moments of this event.

01:34:16.720 | So I wanna put the power back in the athlete

01:34:19.160 | and take it away from the host.

01:34:21.120 | - And it creates a lot of incentive

01:34:22.320 | for the athlete to make it exciting.

01:34:25.120 | - Yeah, this is your time, it might never happen again.

01:34:27.480 | I fully intend to run this every year, that's the goal.

01:34:30.440 | But again, it might never happen again.

01:34:33.480 | - Is there a possible future where the 2026 ADCC

01:34:38.160 | is run by Craig Jones?

01:34:39.760 | - Could I take over ADCC?

01:34:42.600 | I think from an ADCC perspective, it would make a lot of sense.

01:34:46.840 | I think it would make a lot of sense to wait

01:34:48.920 | to see if this event turns into Fyre Festival first

01:34:53.920 | before you commit to something like that.

01:34:56.520 | But I think a more modern approach

01:34:59.280 | to the promotion of the event.

01:35:00.240 | Again, I keep going back to the comedians.

01:35:02.720 | You know what I mean?

01:35:03.560 | If you want to grow your brand, whatever that may be,

01:35:07.040 | provide content for free and you can pay Waller.

01:35:11.640 | Eventually you can grow the audience,

01:35:13.360 | create the audience free.

01:35:15.280 | You know, I think the, again,

01:35:17.040 | if your goal is to create a huge sport here,

01:35:21.440 | then it's like, if we're already a niche sport

01:35:23.560 | and competition aspect of that, is it even smaller niche,

01:35:26.640 | then we need to grow that providing this content

01:35:30.120 | for free.

01:35:31.360 | - Well, having just chatted with Elon Musk,

01:35:34.400 | who fundamentally believes that the most entertaining

01:35:36.520 | outcome is the most likely, that to me,

01:35:39.080 | if the universe has a sense of humor,

01:35:40.920 | you would certainly, Craig Jones would certainly

01:35:44.480 | be running ADCC, which would be, I mean,

01:35:47.960 | it would just be like beautifully hilarious.

01:35:50.720 | - It would be a poetic ending.

01:35:53.560 | It'd be a underdog story from a man

01:35:56.320 | that could never win the event to running the event

01:35:59.480 | on behalf of the Sheikh Tahnoon.

01:36:01.800 | - So I saw beating videos of the CGI camp,

01:36:06.640 | people training super hard.

01:36:08.280 | So you aside, who don't seem to do things

01:36:12.640 | in a standard way, what does it take

01:36:16.440 | to sort of put yourself in a peak shape,

01:36:20.040 | peak performance for a huge event like the CGI or the ADCC?

01:36:25.840 | - I mean, psychologically, it's really, really brutal.

01:36:29.480 | Like for me, anytime I'm leading up to any event

01:36:32.280 | of any meaningful significance,

01:36:34.360 | it's horrible on a psychological level

01:36:37.280 | because you're always thinking about,

01:36:38.640 | are you training enough?

01:36:39.560 | Are you doing enough?

01:36:41.080 | If you feel any signs of sickness, injury,

01:36:45.240 | the stress levels increase, your sleep quality decreases.

01:36:48.080 | It's all those little subtle things

01:36:49.760 | that are so hard to mitigate.

01:36:51.760 | So like whether you feel like you're training hard enough,

01:36:54.480 | you're overtraining, those to me

01:36:57.000 | are the most difficult aspects.

01:36:59.280 | And I think really those are an individual thing.

01:37:02.160 | And that's really something where a coach can provide

01:37:04.760 | what he thinks to you is the right amount of work.

01:37:09.640 | You know, and I think that's different for different people.

01:37:11.120 | I think Nicky Rod could do eight hours a day.

01:37:13.800 | You know what I mean?

01:37:14.640 | I think Nicky Ryan, eight minutes.

01:37:16.000 | - I saw a video of Nicky Ryan

01:37:17.440 | like with a trash can throwing up.

01:37:19.400 | - Yes.

01:37:20.240 | - And the top comment is like,

01:37:21.760 | that's him doing the warmup.

01:37:23.280 | (both laughing)

01:37:25.200 | - That is satisfying to watch, honestly.

01:37:27.200 | - Yeah.

01:37:30.040 | But yeah, so you're supposed to train hard enough

01:37:32.240 | to where you have this confidence that you're prepared.

01:37:35.520 | - Yeah.

01:37:36.360 | I mean, and it's an impossible thing to grasp.

01:37:38.400 | It's like some of the best performances I've had,

01:37:42.240 | I've been called up last minute or I've been sick

01:37:44.720 | or my camp's been horrible.

01:37:46.480 | And for me personally, I've gone in there and thought,

01:37:50.800 | relaxed, almost like, oh, well, you know,

01:37:53.280 | like you got called up a week ago,

01:37:55.640 | you're injured, you missed four weeks of your camp.

01:37:58.040 | And I went in there super relaxed

01:37:59.880 | and accepting of the result and performed much better.

01:38:04.400 | Sometimes when I know three months out,

01:38:06.480 | I've got an event coming up

01:38:07.960 | and that event only happens every two years.

01:38:10.880 | It just, the stress of that alone.

01:38:14.280 | Like I personally, on an individual level,

01:38:17.080 | more of a, I'd rather wing it.

01:38:18.680 | I'd rather be in the stands

01:38:19.840 | and just roll down like Gunner Nelson.

01:38:22.520 | I remember he had a brilliant performance

01:38:24.160 | in an ADCC absolute.

01:38:26.040 | And he was out drinking the night before.

01:38:27.400 | He had no idea he was competing the next day.

01:38:28.880 | He was in the stands eating ice cream

01:38:30.640 | and they called his name out for the absolute.

01:38:32.400 | And he went out there and I believe he got bronze.

01:38:34.840 | I believe he beat Jeff Munson.

01:38:36.160 | So it's like, it's different for different people.

01:38:39.120 | Obviously you don't want that to be the standard.

01:38:41.400 | You've got to be putting in the work at all times.

01:38:43.680 | But even now in my crazy travel schedule

01:38:46.440 | where I don't train anywhere near like I used to,

01:38:50.600 | as long as your game is technical

01:38:54.920 | and as long as your body's in good condition,

01:38:57.280 | I believe you can still train well

01:39:00.400 | against world-class guys.

01:39:01.680 | You might not be able to do an hour straight,

01:39:04.120 | but if you're technique-orientated,

01:39:05.920 | you're just losing fitness.

01:39:08.520 | - So is it possible to out-cardio Craig Jones?

01:39:12.040 | Like is your game fundamentally a technique-based game?

01:39:15.160 | - For sure, for sure, yeah.

01:39:16.360 | I've never wanted to win anything bad enough

01:39:18.400 | to train properly for it.

01:39:19.720 | - Right, but isn't that the secret to your success?

01:39:22.640 | Being lazy?

01:39:23.680 | - I think so.

01:39:24.720 | I think that's the only logical explanation.

01:39:28.040 | And I also use it as mind games too.

01:39:29.960 | Again, no one knows whether what I'm saying is true or not.

01:39:34.840 | And I'm not saying this story to say anything bad

01:39:37.760 | about my opponent at the time,

01:39:39.240 | but I booked two matches and two consecutive weekends

01:39:42.800 | and I've been traveling.

01:39:45.040 | I think I just got back from one of my trips.

01:39:49.800 | I've been over in International Snow.

01:39:51.080 | I don't even know where the fuck I was, but--

01:39:52.800 | - You're in Texas right now, by the way,

01:39:54.040 | just in case you forgot.

01:39:55.440 | - Texas, just for you, just came back for you.

01:39:57.280 | - Thank you, man, it's an honor.

01:39:58.680 | - But I hadn't really even trained.

01:40:01.440 | I couldn't train.

01:40:02.280 | I was traveling, just had no ability to train.

01:40:04.960 | I trained for like a week, had the Phil Roe match.

01:40:08.640 | And I said to myself, I was down in Mexico City,

01:40:11.720 | and I said, you know what?

01:40:14.240 | If you win this match,

01:40:15.400 | you got to face Lovato next week.

01:40:17.960 | Don't go out and party.

01:40:19.440 | Don't celebrate the victory.

01:40:21.480 | But as a 32 year old man at the time

01:40:23.200 | hitting a flying triangle submission,

01:40:26.240 | I thought that deemed a worthy after party.

01:40:29.320 | And we got out of control that night.

01:40:31.360 | And it wasn't until the next day I woke up,

01:40:32.680 | I was like, oh, I have Lovato next weekend.

01:40:36.520 | But people don't know whether I'm telling the truth or not,

01:40:38.840 | but it's also, I'm almost too honest

01:40:40.720 | because I'll be like doing interviews saying,

01:40:42.040 | yeah, I was out partying, I barely trained.

01:40:44.840 | The opponent looks into that and they question it.

01:40:47.480 | Is he telling the truth?

01:40:48.320 | Is he baiting me?

01:40:49.680 | Is he really that unconcerned?

01:40:51.280 | You know what I mean?

01:40:52.120 | It's almost a psychological battle in and of itself,

01:40:54.040 | but for the most part, it's true.

01:40:56.080 | - So to you, being psychologically relaxed

01:40:58.200 | is extremely important, just not giving a damn.

01:41:01.120 | I wonder what that is.

01:41:02.200 | - Not too much pressure.

01:41:03.200 | I don't want, I don't like the pressure.

01:41:05.840 | - But you like the pressure

01:41:06.680 | when it comes to internet shit talking.

01:41:10.680 | - I mean, you gotta silently sit back

01:41:12.640 | and think about a good response, you know?

01:41:14.400 | - Yeah.

01:41:15.320 | How important is it to just go crazy hard rounds

01:41:19.680 | leading up to competitions like that?

01:41:22.040 | You said sort of Nicky Ryan,

01:41:23.600 | but on average, for athletes at world-class level,

01:41:28.000 | do you have to put in the hard rounds?

01:41:30.160 | - Yeah, I think you have to put in the hard rounds.

01:41:32.400 | Depends at what point in your career you are.

01:41:35.600 | I think someone like Nicky Ryan

01:41:37.880 | might almost train too technically too often.

01:41:41.000 | And when he comes to competition,

01:41:42.320 | it's a confronting experience when someone hits him hard

01:41:46.400 | and he feels that pressure.

01:41:48.080 | So I think different people require different things.

01:41:50.520 | When Nicky Rod is breaking the spine

01:41:53.320 | of a 37-year-old father of three bus driver,

01:41:56.040 | it might be time for him to train

01:41:57.600 | in a more technical manner.

01:41:59.360 | So it's like you gotta cater to what they need.

01:42:02.320 | And again, depending on the opponent,

01:42:03.520 | it's a game of strategy, you know?

01:42:05.480 | For me, when I was more active,

01:42:08.520 | I look at an opponent that I want,

01:42:10.800 | that I could steal some clout from,

01:42:12.560 | of which the clout, you can make money.

01:42:14.000 | And I think to myself,

01:42:14.840 | what's the best rule set I can beat him in?

01:42:17.480 | That's the strategy.

01:42:18.480 | And then how would I beat him in that rule set?

01:42:20.080 | So there's so many strategic layers

01:42:21.640 | to go above and beyond just the training for me.

01:42:26.640 | But nowadays, if I train, short duration, high intensity.

01:42:31.800 | That's the best for me.

01:42:33.200 | I don't like this six or like 10, six minute rounds,

01:42:37.520 | whatever, like I don't like this long training.

01:42:40.320 | I don't like, for me, it's too much toll on the body.

01:42:44.160 | I think I go to the gym, we bank,

01:42:47.680 | maybe the first round's slightly light,

01:42:49.960 | and then just banging out two hard rounds, tops.

01:42:53.000 | Little bit of problem solving, get out of there.

01:42:55.240 | 'Cause you wanna feel a little bit

01:42:58.280 | of the competition intensity.

01:42:59.720 | That feels the best on my body.

01:43:02.640 | - When you're traveling, you're doing seminars

01:43:04.120 | and you're just doing jiu-jitsu with folks,

01:43:06.240 | are you training with them?

01:43:08.880 | I'm sure there's like, from everything I see,

01:43:10.960 | people would love to train with you.

01:43:12.760 | - Yeah, they wanna, I mean, I don't know what it is.

01:43:17.320 | Obviously, I guess, it's like people wanna play basketball

01:43:22.320 | with like a basketball star or something,

01:43:25.120 | you know what I mean?

01:43:25.960 | But I guess if you played one-on-one with a basketball,

01:43:29.360 | there's no great risk of injury.

01:43:31.520 | You know, that's the real problem,

01:43:33.920 | is like if you don't roll at your seminar,

01:43:38.400 | the seminar participants don't feel

01:43:40.240 | like they got the full experience.

01:43:43.400 | But there's snipers at these seminars,

01:43:46.480 | there's these sharks that are circling,

01:43:48.320 | wanting to attack you.

01:43:50.240 | And you have to look at it from both perspectives.

01:43:53.520 | I think you should provide excellent technique,

01:43:56.200 | excellent question and answer time,

01:43:58.280 | and I think you should roll a little bit.

01:44:00.000 | For the most part, these days,

01:44:00.920 | I'll just roll 30 minutes straight.

01:44:03.320 | I'll just do 10 guys, three minutes, no break,

01:44:05.520 | 30 minutes straight.

01:44:07.160 | I might even get the guy to pick,

01:44:08.720 | 'cause again, some of these guys come in hot.

01:44:11.440 | - Yeah, it's terrifying, man,

01:44:13.200 | because the thing is, like with Anthony Bourdain,

01:44:16.240 | sort of analogy here,

01:44:19.360 | like you're exploring all parts of the world,

01:44:22.880 | you just wanna be there in the culture,

01:44:25.400 | teach good techniques and just socialize.

01:44:27.240 | You don't wanna like, there's just a bunch of killers

01:44:29.240 | that are trying to murder you.

01:44:31.440 | - Yeah, to them, they're like,

01:44:33.360 | "I get to test myself against a world-class athlete today."

01:44:37.800 | And to you, you're like, "Oh, I'm in Odessa.

01:44:41.080 | "I'd like to get to know the people,

01:44:43.240 | "try some food, have a couple of drinks,

01:44:45.960 | "and enjoy the place."

01:44:47.040 | But to them, it's time to go.

01:44:49.720 | You gotta rope it open a bit.

01:44:51.880 | If I meet pressure with pressure, I get tired.

01:44:55.200 | But if I don't provide resistance

01:44:57.560 | where they think there should be resistance,

01:44:59.600 | now it slows their pace down.

01:45:02.040 | They get shocked a bit.

01:45:03.280 | But 100%, if I'm at a seminar

01:45:06.600 | and someone's rolling too hard with me,

01:45:08.560 | if I feel like I might get hurt,

01:45:10.400 | I will 100% rip a submission on them.

01:45:14.080 | You know what I mean?

01:45:16.000 | Like it's like you're confronted with a threat.

01:45:18.360 | - Yeah.

01:45:19.200 | - You have to meet it with a threat.

01:45:20.480 | It's like, I've spoken about this with Ryan Hall.

01:45:23.000 | Ryan Hall, give him a warning, and then gone.

01:45:25.440 | And I think it's perfectly acceptable.

01:45:27.120 | Like I won't endanger them for no reason.

01:45:30.240 | But if you're coming hot, you better tap fast.

01:45:34.200 | If I feel a threat, you better tap.

01:45:35.720 | I'm not gonna break it for the sake of breaking it.

01:45:38.120 | But if you do some crazy shit

01:45:43.120 | that might potentially hurt me,

01:45:45.120 | and I get a submission, and I'm tired.

01:45:47.920 | If you're fresh, you can catch a heel hook,

01:45:50.560 | hold it tight, the guy tries to wiggle out, you got it.

01:45:53.480 | If you're tired, and you've been nice with a heel hook,

01:45:57.680 | and then they slip out and club you in the head,

01:45:59.680 | then next time is gonna be the last time.

01:46:04.680 | - Well, last time, see, you're another level.

01:46:06.560 | You and Ryan Hall are just world-class.

01:46:08.000 | But for me, I'm trying to find, navigate through this,

01:46:11.840 | 'cause I'd like to be able to roll 10 rounds for fun,

01:46:15.920 | for cultural--

01:46:16.760 | - Oh, but they're coming for you, too.

01:46:18.520 | - And unfortunately, ripping submissions

01:46:22.200 | or knee-on-belly some kind of dominant position,

01:46:25.600 | people don't hear the message at all.

01:46:28.520 | Or if I let them submit me a bunch of times,

01:46:31.280 | they don't calm down, either.

01:46:34.000 | So I've been trying to figure out how to solve that puzzle,

01:46:37.440 | 'cause I'd like to keep rolling with people

01:46:39.800 | across the world for many more years to come.

01:46:43.200 | But it's tough.

01:46:44.040 | - You can't do it.

01:46:44.880 | If you've reached any level of notoriety,

01:46:47.480 | whether it's in the sport or just as a celebrity,

01:46:50.700 | you're better off to just have three, four

01:46:53.320 | trusted training partners and train privately.

01:46:56.120 | That's the sad situation.

01:46:57.780 | People used to say, "Oh, you could be such and such

01:47:00.840 | "a good anti-gym nut."

01:47:02.080 | Those days are over now.

01:47:04.120 | Now, if you show up and you have any sort of name,

01:47:08.220 | they're coming to kill.

01:47:09.240 | You're better, honestly, you're better off.

01:47:11.160 | It's so much safer.

01:47:13.160 | Training is about trusting.

01:47:16.240 | Trust is built from safe rounds.

01:47:19.320 | - Strangers are scary.

01:47:22.020 | - I don't know.

01:47:22.860 | I'm trying to develop a radar when I look at a person,

01:47:25.180 | trying to figure out, are they--

01:47:27.740 | - Are they from Eastern Europe?

01:47:29.580 | I'll tell you what, the most dank--

01:47:31.940 | - Yeah.

01:47:32.760 | - That's a good one.

01:47:33.600 | You know what?

01:47:34.440 | Anyone that wears a Pitbull sports rash guard

01:47:36.620 | or anyone from the country of Poland, be ready.

01:47:40.380 | - Oh, Polish people go hard.

01:47:41.780 | - People go hard.

01:47:42.900 | I've never had a flow roll with a Polish person.

01:47:45.900 | - Somebody on Reddit asked,

01:47:46.980 | "How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?"

01:47:49.940 | - Three or four.

01:47:50.880 | - To send a message

01:47:52.740 | or just for your own personal enjoyment?

01:47:54.860 | - I don't enjoy it.

01:47:55.980 | You know, they--

01:47:57.420 | - You don't enjoy the violence.

01:47:58.600 | - It is humorous after the fact, though,

01:48:00.380 | because, I mean, it's just like, hey,

01:48:02.260 | like, bro, I'm jet lagged, I'm tired,

01:48:05.620 | I'm here for you guys.

01:48:07.420 | Why are you trying to hurt me?

01:48:09.180 | You know, like, if I get a submission,

01:48:11.860 | tap, don't hesitate at all.

01:48:14.100 | Don't hesitate, you know?

01:48:14.980 | Like, it's like, it's, I mean,

01:48:16.540 | you just see it's dangerous.

01:48:17.820 | It's a dangerous thing.

01:48:19.420 | And when strangers going crazy,

01:48:21.100 | it's their show.

01:48:21.920 | They think they're getting invites to the CJI

01:48:23.620 | if they tap me.

01:48:24.460 | It's just wild.

01:48:26.340 | - So, speaking of which, just for the hobbyist,

01:48:30.880 | for a person just starting out,

01:48:32.380 | what wisdom can you provide?

01:48:34.640 | Like, say you were tasked with coaching a beginner,

01:48:38.260 | a hobbyist beginner,

01:48:39.680 | how would you help them become good in a year?

01:48:46.440 | What would be the training regimen?

01:48:48.240 | What would be their approach,

01:48:50.080 | mental, physical, in terms of practice to Jitsu?

01:48:53.440 | - I mean, honestly, pick and save training partners

01:48:55.440 | and trying to understand the positions

01:48:58.120 | and not just freaking out.

01:48:59.600 | Like, you might escape if you freak out,

01:49:01.640 | but you also might be stuck in something

01:49:04.640 | and you injure yourself.

01:49:05.900 | So it's like, I think if you can,

01:49:08.620 | it's just about longevity.

01:49:10.360 | You know, like, if you can find a pace to train at,

01:49:15.720 | and like sort of intensity and the right people,

01:49:19.240 | you could potentially train five years without injury.

01:49:22.300 | It's really about how you move.

01:49:25.320 | If you are always moving in an explosive way,

01:49:28.120 | eventually you're gonna do that from a position

01:49:30.200 | in which you can't move and then someone's gonna tear.

01:49:34.000 | And you also wanna be able to trust training partners

01:49:37.560 | to not go too crazy, inflict too much pain.

01:49:40.700 | You know what I mean?

01:49:41.540 | It's like, yeah, I think I've managed

01:49:44.960 | to avoid a lot of injuries 'cause I just never roll

01:49:48.480 | too athletically, explosively.

01:49:52.200 | I think I'm probably incapable

01:49:53.400 | of moving at that rate of speed.

01:49:55.600 | - So that's part of it is you, the way you move,

01:49:57.800 | but I guess you also don't allow anybody

01:50:00.400 | to put you in a really bad position in terms of hurting you.

01:50:03.080 | - I let 'em put me in a bad position,

01:50:04.360 | but I try to stay relaxed at all times.

01:50:06.560 | You know, that's the key here is like,

01:50:10.000 | I mean, yeah, obviously you got the cheesy keep it playful,

01:50:14.560 | but it's like, if you can remain calm in bad positions,

01:50:19.560 | that is a skill.

01:50:20.560 | That's your confidence, not in yourself,

01:50:22.720 | but that the other guy's incapable of submitting you.

01:50:24.840 | That's the ultimate confidence.

01:50:25.960 | You can give 'em whatever you want.

01:50:27.120 | - So the thing you want as a beginner

01:50:28.480 | is to focus on minimizing injury by relaxing,

01:50:32.400 | by not going, by not freaking out.

01:50:34.440 | - Yes, keeping it at a pace

01:50:35.280 | so you can understand what just happened.

01:50:37.480 | - The thing is, like, how do you know

01:50:39.040 | if you're freaking out or not as a beginner?

01:50:41.160 | It feels like a--

01:50:42.080 | - If you're panicking.

01:50:43.600 | - Yeah, if you're, that's a good,

01:50:45.960 | if you're, I mean, I see a lot of beginners

01:50:48.240 | kind of breathing, starting to breathe hard.

01:50:49.880 | They tense up.

01:50:51.360 | That's probably, underneath that is panic.

01:50:53.000 | - Yeah, if you can make someone panic,

01:50:54.840 | you will fatigue them.

01:50:55.680 | It's the same, it's like if you're,

01:50:57.600 | even if you're higher level

01:50:59.200 | and you're worried about getting your guard passed,

01:51:01.480 | it's the panic that leads to fatigue

01:51:04.240 | in your guard retention.

01:51:05.280 | But if you're so flexible, you remain calm,

01:51:08.400 | I think it's 'cause you're not panicked.

01:51:09.880 | - Fear is the mind killer.

01:51:12.760 | But also, you have one of the more innovative games

01:51:16.240 | in jiu-jitsu history.

01:51:19.120 | How'd you develop that?

01:51:20.520 | How do you continue throughout your career?

01:51:23.520 | How are you innovating?

01:51:25.000 | What was your approach to learning

01:51:26.280 | and figuring positions out, figuring submissions out?

01:51:29.240 | - I mean, financial motivation.

01:51:30.960 | If you can hit moves that no one else knows how to do,

01:51:35.040 | you can sell those instructionals.

01:51:37.120 | But also, it keeps it interesting

01:51:38.760 | 'cause it's like, I mean, it can get stagnant and boring,

01:51:42.240 | you know, like a lot of people get to blue belt,

01:51:45.280 | they're good at one thing, they only do that one thing.

01:51:47.640 | I think it's finding creative ways to beat people.

01:51:50.720 | And sometimes, creativity is in how they respond to it.

01:51:55.000 | So if you can find a humiliating move to do to someone,

01:51:58.400 | well, not even necessarily humiliating,

01:51:59.600 | but a move that is unexpected.

01:52:01.400 | When you get hit with something you don't expect,

01:52:03.680 | I think that is sort of really

01:52:06.440 | one of the most fun aspects of it, you know what I mean?

01:52:08.400 | Like, you train to stay better

01:52:10.720 | than the people you're better than.

01:52:12.720 | That's what keeps you in the game.

01:52:14.280 | And finding creative ways to beat those people

01:52:17.760 | is some of the most entertainment.

01:52:19.360 | - So that's just something that brings you joy

01:52:21.660 | is by doing the unexpected.

01:52:24.720 | - Yeah, trying to, if you get swept

01:52:26.000 | with something that you don't think should work,

01:52:29.520 | I think that's fulfillment.

01:52:31.640 | - So your game is even a bit trolly, interesting.

01:52:35.320 | So like, but what's the actual process of like,

01:52:37.440 | like with the Z-Guard,

01:52:38.360 | all the innovative stuff you've done there?

01:52:40.080 | How do you come up with ideas there?

01:52:41.400 | - I mean, just studying tape.

01:52:43.440 | Just study tape and try to reverse engineer.

01:52:46.320 | Like if I see something or I train with someone

01:52:49.680 | and it feels, you know when you have those moments

01:52:53.160 | where you're like, oh,

01:52:54.000 | I don't even know what they're doing here.

01:52:56.100 | And if you can put someone in a position

01:52:57.840 | they don't understand, that's also where they panic.

01:53:00.860 | So it's like creating different ways to make people panic.

01:53:03.800 | But also, I mean, just innovation, like having fun with it.

01:53:06.360 | You know, like I guess the artistic aspect of it

01:53:09.200 | is fun, you can be creative in how you can beat people.

01:53:12.960 | - Did you say artistic or autistic?

01:53:15.200 | - Both.

01:53:16.040 | - Okay. - Both.

01:53:16.860 | - Just checking.

01:53:17.700 | What's like the most innovative thing you've come up with?

01:53:22.280 | What's like some of the cooler ideas

01:53:23.980 | you've come up with on the mat?

01:53:25.280 | - I don't think I've come up with anything,

01:53:27.120 | but I've popularized things, you know,

01:53:29.560 | like certain styles of leg entry.

01:53:31.800 | I definitely didn't invent them, but I popularized them.

01:53:35.640 | Octopus Guard, playing more from Turtle,

01:53:39.360 | sort of the pinning style of game.

01:53:40.760 | Like as a, because of my jokes online,

01:53:44.160 | put me in a position of power in the sport

01:53:45.960 | so that when I post content, it can popularize a move

01:53:48.920 | or release an instruction or popularize a game.

01:53:51.720 | But it's still, I'm not trying to sell inauthentic products.

01:53:54.440 | I'm still, I want the technique to work, be functional.

01:53:58.820 | - But put some humor on top of it, like Power Bottom,

01:54:03.000 | their instructional names are pretty good.

01:54:04.640 | And you changed that one, I saw the name of that.

01:54:06.960 | - Oh, I mean, unfortunately, Meta, the ads,

01:54:10.200 | were not appreciating some of that humor.

01:54:13.160 | So we had to soften the titles a bit.

01:54:15.480 | - You got a phone call from the man, said, "Change this."

01:54:18.700 | - I didn't.

01:54:19.540 | Allegedly, the company hosting it did.

01:54:22.160 | (laughing)

01:54:23.000 | - Right, right.

01:54:24.640 | What do you think about Zuck in general?

01:54:26.520 | Like the fact that he trains Jiu Jitsu.

01:54:29.440 | Have you got a chance to train with him?

01:54:30.600 | 'Cause you've trained with Volk.

01:54:32.040 | - I haven't trained with him.

01:54:32.880 | I met him when Volk's fought earlier.

01:54:35.960 | We've spoken briefly.

01:54:37.360 | Interesting guy, for sure.

01:54:38.800 | Loves Jiu Jitsu, loves MMA.

01:54:43.200 | He's really intending to compete in something, I think.

01:54:47.360 | - Competed in Jiu Jitsu, intends to compete in MMA.

01:54:50.240 | Has a beginner's mind, is humble about it.

01:54:52.800 | Interesting.

01:54:53.640 | Was he ever in consideration for CGI as a--

01:54:56.720 | - Oh, I mean, we would love to have him.

01:54:59.400 | We'd love to have him.

01:55:00.360 | But he is coming off of ACL surgery.

01:55:02.480 | I think his return to sport is August.

01:55:04.680 | So I think he'll be back training again soon.

01:55:06.320 | - Yeah.

01:55:07.520 | What's your relationship has been like with Volkanovsky?

01:55:11.800 | Like what have you learned about martial arts,

01:55:13.520 | about grappling, and different domains,

01:55:15.400 | just training with him?

01:55:17.040 | - I mean, for me personally,

01:55:18.080 | what's so interesting about Volkanovsky is his,

01:55:21.880 | I guess where he came from, you know?

01:55:23.400 | Like it's like you have pre-existing ideas

01:55:27.280 | of what a UFC champion is.

01:55:29.840 | Again, I would say it's similar

01:55:30.920 | to when I started training Jiu Jitsu

01:55:32.960 | and I first traveled to America

01:55:34.280 | and got to train with some really famous people.

01:55:36.240 | You realize how relatable they are in some aspects.

01:55:39.240 | Volkanovsky trains a freestyle,

01:55:42.160 | and it is humble beginnings, humble origins.

01:55:45.520 | Like it's a small gym in a small sort of beach side city.

01:55:50.240 | They're running puzzle mats, you know what I mean?

01:55:52.320 | When you think UFC champion,

01:55:53.960 | you don't think puzzle mat gym, you know what I mean?

01:55:56.920 | Like he's not training at a American top team.

01:55:59.360 | He's not at one of these big gyms.

01:56:01.760 | So to me, it just shows what you're capable of

01:56:05.760 | through hard work and sort of self-educating

01:56:09.840 | in such an isolated place.

01:56:12.000 | It's insane to me that he's still considered

01:56:15.040 | probably the pound for pound best featherweight ever,

01:56:17.240 | in my opinion.

01:56:18.440 | And he's basically come across and started late

01:56:20.920 | from a rugby background.

01:56:23.720 | But also in terms of what I've learned,

01:56:25.960 | on a technical level, I've picked up a lot of stuff

01:56:27.800 | from him in sort of grappling exchanges,

01:56:29.800 | how to get back up, obviously wall wrestling.

01:56:32.640 | In terms of how hard he trains,

01:56:36.760 | how hard he works the cardio aspect is insane.

01:56:40.000 | His cardio workouts are absolutely insane.

01:56:42.600 | - So he's the opposite of you.

01:56:44.040 | - Complete opposite of me, probably publicly and privately.

01:56:48.720 | As an athlete, yeah.

01:56:51.280 | The amount of work he puts in

01:56:52.840 | and just his sheer sort of mental willpower.

01:56:56.200 | I remember there's been a couple of times

01:56:57.520 | where I've watched him do weight cuts

01:56:58.880 | where like, that's horrible.

01:57:01.040 | You're watching your friend.

01:57:02.400 | You know, obviously we started as like,

01:57:04.880 | basically I would help him in certain jujitsu aspects

01:57:07.320 | and then becomes a close friend of yours.

01:57:10.320 | But the whole process of the MMA fight is horrible,

01:57:15.200 | especially when you care about the person fighting

01:57:17.680 | because some of those weight cuts you see are awful.

01:57:21.440 | Like you're basically seeing guys eyes roll back

01:57:23.400 | in their head, like him just powering through

01:57:26.960 | a five kilo, 10 pound cut.

01:57:30.160 | And just constantly talking about how easy it is.

01:57:32.480 | But while clearly, I mean,

01:57:35.000 | these guys look like they're dying.

01:57:36.600 | You know, like to push through that

01:57:38.440 | and then to push through some of the moments in his fight.

01:57:41.560 | To watch him be completely relaxed

01:57:44.240 | until like five minutes before the fight.

01:57:47.120 | And then he starts talking about,

01:57:49.080 | you're never gonna take this belt away from my family.

01:57:51.160 | Like he's singing about his family

01:57:52.280 | before he fights his kids.

01:57:54.280 | You know, you see the character change.

01:57:56.480 | It's just absolutely insane to watch.

01:57:59.320 | On the other side of that is obviously watching

01:58:01.640 | the ups and downs.

01:58:03.560 | There's been so many ups.

01:58:05.160 | The last two have been downs.

01:58:07.680 | So you see in the full spectrum of the highest highs

01:58:11.760 | and the lowest lows.

01:58:13.000 | - How's he able to deal psychologically with loss?

01:58:16.160 | - I don't know.

01:58:17.000 | Obviously he's still hungry, still motivated.

01:58:18.960 | Obviously I thrive in a losing environment,

01:58:21.200 | but him on the other hand, I'm not sure.

01:58:25.960 | We don't talk too much on that level.

01:58:27.800 | Obviously we check in his friends,

01:58:29.120 | see what he's up to, see what he's planning.

01:58:31.840 | We were trying to get him a grappling match at CJR.

01:58:34.920 | I won't say the reasons it fell through,

01:58:37.960 | but we were setting one up with Mikey Musumichi,

01:58:42.960 | but we couldn't get it done.

01:58:44.360 | - And you can't say the reasons why.

01:58:47.680 | - I can't say the reasons, but it would have been awesome.

01:58:49.360 | - Do you think you could have set that up

01:58:50.480 | if you had more time?

01:58:51.360 | Like set something, like part of the challenge here

01:58:54.560 | is for some of these gigantic match-ups.

01:58:56.960 | I feel like it takes time.

01:58:58.320 | - Yeah, that, being the promoter.

01:59:02.440 | Tournament, not as bad.

01:59:04.760 | The super fights, really, really difficult.

01:59:08.000 | I don't think we could have set it up with more time,

01:59:10.600 | that particular match, but that was the dream.

01:59:12.640 | That's what we were hoping to do.

01:59:14.200 | - But there's a lot of other interesting match-ups

01:59:15.880 | that you could have possibly gotten through

01:59:17.840 | if there's more time.

01:59:19.000 | - Yeah, I'd love to see, I mean, personally,

01:59:20.600 | I really want to see Volks and Ortega

01:59:22.840 | have an actual grappling match.

01:59:25.040 | 'Cause we saw him get out of those deep submissions

01:59:27.680 | and apply a ton of ground and power.

01:59:29.120 | I'd love to see him just have a grappling match.

01:59:31.800 | I'd love to see more of the UFC stars

01:59:33.280 | have grappling matches,

01:59:34.120 | especially if they've had any head trauma in a fight.

01:59:37.920 | It's like, hey, let's keep them busy.

01:59:40.280 | 'Cause as you see, some of those guys go crazy

01:59:42.600 | if they can't train.

01:59:43.760 | - What about the fights against Makachev?

01:59:46.640 | You think Volk can beat him?

01:59:48.160 | - I think the first fight showed he could beat him,

01:59:50.280 | for sure, showed it's possible.

01:59:52.280 | Even in the second fight,

01:59:53.520 | when he reversed the grappling exchange,

01:59:55.840 | I wish he'd tried to take Makachev down.

01:59:58.720 | I really think he has a huge strength advantage

02:00:02.640 | against Makachev.

02:00:03.520 | And I personally believe he has a fence wrestling advantage.

02:00:06.640 | You might not see it in a sense of the technical hip tosses

02:00:11.640 | and things like that, like really,

02:00:14.920 | but I do believe Volk's one of the best,

02:00:17.160 | if not the best cage wrestler in the world.

02:00:19.800 | - Who do you think wins in a grappling match?

02:00:21.760 | - That would be interesting, be interesting.

02:00:24.040 | The problem is almost to,

02:00:27.000 | while you are a champion like Islam is,

02:00:29.440 | you could just never book him.

02:00:31.320 | You could never get it.

02:00:32.520 | - What do you think makes the Dagestani wrestlers

02:00:34.800 | and fighters so good?

02:00:36.600 | - I mean, I think personally, those guys are just like,

02:00:39.960 | they just love it.

02:00:41.320 | It's just about like, it's how they train.

02:00:45.400 | It's a fight to the death.

02:00:46.760 | You know what I mean?

02:00:47.600 | It's just built in them.

02:00:48.960 | They don't wanna concede an inch ever.

02:00:51.280 | I think for MMA and wrestling,

02:00:53.680 | that can be very, very good.

02:00:55.680 | I think sometimes when those guys come over

02:00:57.560 | to Jiu-Jitsu specific events,

02:00:59.440 | they get leg locked, they fall into traps,

02:01:01.280 | overly aggressive or overly evasive.

02:01:03.400 | But I think the way they train just is perfect for a fight.

02:01:06.680 | A fight that can just forward pressure,

02:01:09.640 | eat some shots, grind a guy against the wall.

02:01:12.280 | Fence wrestling is technical.

02:01:15.400 | Jiu-Jitsu is far more technical.

02:01:17.520 | There's way more things you can do

02:01:19.680 | in a grappling scenario from top and bottom

02:01:21.800 | than I think against the wall.

02:01:23.320 | So a grinding nature of how they train

02:01:26.320 | works really good to walk a guy down

02:01:28.840 | and take him down against the wall.

02:01:30.680 | And then obviously with ground and pound,

02:01:33.240 | very good to hold a guy down.

02:01:35.160 | So I think just never conceding an inch in training,

02:01:38.200 | it's just they've done that since they were born basically.

02:01:42.120 | - So you learn how to grind somebody down.

02:01:44.120 | - Yeah, like they're just trying to break each other

02:01:45.640 | at all times, trying to have some dominance

02:01:48.920 | over their friends and who they train with.

02:01:52.680 | - But you think in the grappling context

02:01:54.440 | that will not always translate?

02:01:56.600 | - Not when you can pull guard and submit from your back.

02:02:00.880 | I think that sort of negates some of that grinding pressure.

02:02:04.000 | I think that has to be met

02:02:05.040 | with more slow technical lateral movement.

02:02:09.640 | I think that's the way you,

02:02:11.120 | like that would be the dream for me

02:02:12.920 | is a guy just comes straight forward into my guard.

02:02:15.800 | So that grinding approach works well

02:02:18.400 | if he's taken me down and got already close to me.

02:02:21.720 | But if I'm laying flat on my back and he's standing

02:02:24.240 | and he has to engage, he has all that danger at range.

02:02:29.240 | But if he can connect to my body before we go down,

02:02:32.880 | now we're in his world again, I think.

02:02:34.720 | - I wonder if it's like,

02:02:36.120 | Edis Prime could be versus you, for example.

02:02:39.760 | Who do you think wins there?

02:02:40.680 | - Buggy Choke for sure.

02:02:41.720 | - Buggy Choke, no way.

02:02:43.880 | I know you're joking.

02:02:45.000 | - We get him with a buggy, I reckon.

02:02:47.640 | - Really?

02:02:48.760 | So you can get the Buggy Choke at the highest level?

02:02:52.920 | Can you educate me on that?

02:02:53.760 | Like if that legitimately can work at the highest level?

02:02:56.880 | - Buggy Choke for sure, yeah.

02:02:58.720 | - Really? - You can catch anyone.

02:03:00.240 | - Really, okay.

02:03:01.840 | - You're not a buggy believer.

02:03:03.320 | - I'm not a buggy hater either, I'm just...

02:03:07.880 | I'm agnostic on the Buggy Choke.

02:03:11.640 | - Khabib would go to sleep for sure.

02:03:13.440 | - Yeah?

02:03:14.280 | - Yeah, there's no way he would tap to a Buggy Choke.

02:03:16.920 | I try, who was it I faced recently?

02:03:18.760 | I faced a Russian guy from Tatar.

02:03:20.720 | I couldn't buggy him.

02:03:22.000 | I was trying the close guard one though,

02:03:23.400 | sort of like a, it is harder to pull off.

02:03:26.160 | But he would, I had to put him to sleep twice

02:03:28.560 | at the end of the match with a triangle,

02:03:29.840 | but he was just willing.

02:03:31.760 | Like, I don't know, Eastern European guys,

02:03:33.640 | it's like, they're treating it like a real fight, you know?

02:03:37.880 | - Have you ever gone hard with a Dagestani person?

02:03:42.200 | Like grappling, wrestling?

02:03:45.080 | Any of the fighters on any of the MMA guys?

02:03:47.840 | - Have I, have I, have I?

02:03:49.960 | I mean, they do train hard.

02:03:51.200 | They do train hard.

02:03:52.040 | When I did the seminar in Odessa,

02:03:53.840 | it was at a school, but another school in the city

02:03:56.080 | brought like 10 Dagestani guys.

02:03:58.440 | All of them went insanely hard.

02:04:02.120 | I was like, guys, let's...

02:04:03.960 | - Okay.

02:04:04.800 | - I was like, it's a small sample size,

02:04:07.120 | but they all wanted to be broken.

02:04:09.920 | - What do you think, you as the wise sage of Jiu-Jitsu,

02:04:12.680 | if you look 10, 20 years out,

02:04:14.360 | how do you think the game is gonna evolve?

02:04:16.560 | The art of it.

02:04:17.640 | - The art of it.

02:04:18.600 | I mean, I think obviously people are gonna keep innovating,

02:04:22.480 | perfecting certain things, throwing out information,

02:04:26.040 | bad sort of techniques, bad sort of...

02:04:28.400 | But I mean, it's so hard to predict.

02:04:30.400 | It's like, that's the game of making money

02:04:31.960 | with the instructionals, is predicting where we go next.

02:04:35.160 | It's so, so difficult.

02:04:36.480 | - What do you think is gonna be the most popular

02:04:38.160 | submissions on CGI and ADCC this year?

02:04:41.400 | Is it gonna be footlocks or rear naked?

02:04:43.160 | - I think, actually CGI,

02:04:45.640 | I think there's gonna be a lot of guys that don't tap,

02:04:49.400 | that take injuries.

02:04:50.720 | A small concern is that a guy wins the match,

02:04:53.440 | but he's so injured, he can barely go on to the next match.

02:04:58.440 | Win the battle, lose the war.

02:04:59.880 | - We are gonna see that, aren't we?

02:05:02.120 | People refusing to tap.

02:05:03.480 | - We actually, we did the walkthrough yesterday

02:05:05.200 | and we were like, one ambulance is not enough.

02:05:07.600 | Get a second one here.

02:05:09.160 | - Yeah.

02:05:10.280 | - 'Cause if they take one guy injured to hospital,

02:05:13.440 | we can't continue until an ambulance comes back.

02:05:16.480 | So these guys are gonna go...

02:05:18.400 | Everyone will be Dagestani for a day.

02:05:20.440 | - Yeah.

02:05:21.280 | - That's what I think this tournament will achieve.

02:05:23.720 | But progression, it'll just be the integration

02:05:26.600 | of wrestling into jujitsu.

02:05:29.200 | You know, I think that would be the most exciting

02:05:31.280 | way the sport could progress,

02:05:32.480 | is basically folk style wrestling,

02:05:35.560 | but an integration of submissions

02:05:36.960 | from the standing position too.

02:05:39.000 | If you just follow the rules of,

02:05:40.280 | you should always be fighting to get on top,

02:05:43.280 | whether that's a submission that leads

02:05:45.120 | to a sweep or a sweep,

02:05:47.480 | and you should be trying to avoid being pinned.

02:05:50.880 | And as long as the game revolves around that

02:05:53.600 | and guys engage each other offensively on the feet,

02:05:56.640 | that would be the most exciting, best way to watch the sport.

02:06:01.640 | - Yeah, when I show the sport of jujitsu,

02:06:04.000 | the most exciting stuff is whenever both people

02:06:07.160 | wanna be wrestling, scrambling wrestling,

02:06:10.160 | they both wanna get on top.

02:06:11.520 | - Yeah, the scramble.

02:06:12.360 | - That looks like fighting versus guard stuff.

02:06:15.520 | - I'm a guy that totally agrees with you,

02:06:17.640 | but if I think the guy's a better wrestler,

02:06:19.120 | I will concede, you know?

02:06:20.520 | Like, it's like, that's the hard part.

02:06:23.200 | - But then the whole crowd will then mock you ceaselessly,

02:06:26.800 | as they should, for conceding.

02:06:29.080 | - That's what the million should be.

02:06:30.000 | We should have a tournament or a round-robin thing

02:06:31.840 | where it's like, the million goes to the most exciting man.

02:06:35.320 | - Yeah.

02:06:36.160 | - That's a dangerous risk.

02:06:37.280 | - I mean, in a way, that's what's gonna happen

02:06:38.840 | because this is quite open.

02:06:40.880 | So the benefit of being exciting is you're going to be

02:06:45.720 | glorified on social media.

02:06:47.480 | And if you're going to be boring and stall,

02:06:49.040 | you're going to be endlessly sort of willified.

02:06:52.160 | - And forget about medals.

02:06:53.680 | Social media glory is all that matters.

02:06:56.480 | - Well, in a certain sense, on a basic human level, yeah.

02:06:59.320 | I mean, not all that matters, but it's...

02:07:02.880 | You're not gonna, if you're gonna stall,

02:07:04.360 | you're gonna become a meme, I feel like.

02:07:06.280 | Especially with CGI.

02:07:07.960 | And so, are the refs gonna try to stop stalling?

02:07:11.280 | - Yeah, we're gonna penalize 'em hard.

02:07:13.040 | Hit 'em hard.

02:07:14.400 | Get that boring shit out of here.

02:07:16.520 | - So what percentage of athletes would you say

02:07:18.920 | are on steroids?

02:07:20.000 | Is it 100%?

02:07:22.520 | - Anyone that's ever beaten me.

02:07:24.680 | - Okay.

02:07:25.520 | - They're taking more steroids than me.

02:07:27.840 | I don't know.

02:07:28.680 | I wanted to test them, but not to do anything bad,

02:07:31.840 | but just in the name of science,

02:07:33.280 | to see what people are running.

02:07:36.000 | It's so hard to say, 'cause you train with people,

02:07:39.360 | and they don't even tell you what they're on.

02:07:41.520 | I tell the world what I'm on, and they go, "Look at you.

02:07:43.400 | "You're not taking any steroids."

02:07:44.600 | That's like, it's such a secret, secret thing.

02:07:47.960 | I personally think it's almost impossible to say.

02:07:52.040 | But occasionally, you look at a guy,

02:07:54.520 | and you're pretty certain, you know?

02:07:56.280 | - Yeah, it looks so.

02:07:57.880 | But you could also go the other way.

02:07:59.680 | Certain people are just genetically built,

02:08:02.360 | and they look like they are,

02:08:03.560 | and then there's probably others, like yourself.

02:08:07.000 | - It's a self-defense mechanism,

02:08:08.760 | 'cause you'd rather assume that that guy was on steroids

02:08:11.880 | than his genetics are so far superior to yours.

02:08:15.420 | You're like, "Nah, it must be steroids."

02:08:19.440 | - Yeah, that's the part of accusations

02:08:21.560 | of people being on steroids that I hate.

02:08:24.000 | It's like, without data, people are just like,

02:08:26.640 | it's a way they can say that somebody's cheating

02:08:29.200 | without, 'cause I like celebrating people.

02:08:31.920 | And sometimes, people aren't on steroids,

02:08:33.680 | and they aren't cheating, and they're just fucking good.

02:08:36.320 | - What about Gabi Garcia?

02:08:37.560 | - I think she's beautiful, strong,

02:08:41.960 | and you're a lucky man to share the mat with her.

02:08:45.440 | You should be honored.

02:08:47.120 | And I'm betting a huge amount of money on her, so.

02:08:50.880 | - Me too.

02:08:51.720 | - Either way, you're gonna get paid.

02:08:54.720 | - She's paying 11 to one.

02:08:56.520 | - I bet on love as well, so we are aligned in that way.

02:08:59.680 | - Love will prevail.

02:09:00.920 | - Okay, you put Alex Nils to sleep.

02:09:02.720 | Just to reflect back on that.

02:09:06.880 | (laughs)

02:09:09.100 | What was--

02:09:09.940 | - He was too woke, he needed it.

02:09:11.600 | - So that's you fighting the woke mind virus or whatever?

02:09:14.240 | - I think it was on the pulse too much.

02:09:15.720 | - What was that like?

02:09:16.560 | I didn't see the full video, I just saw a little clip.

02:09:20.400 | - I thought he was dead for a second,

02:09:21.680 | but I, for some strange reason, couldn't stop laughing.

02:09:24.160 | - Yeah.

02:09:25.000 | - I was like, "Please wake up."

02:09:26.640 | - There's something funny about it, yeah.

02:09:28.760 | - I was like, "His blood pressure's higher than mine,

02:09:30.120 | "I hope that didn't cook him."

02:09:32.160 | - Yeah, that would be quite sad.

02:09:34.280 | - It's so crazy, he's--

02:09:35.280 | - To murder somebody.

02:09:36.160 | - Yeah.

02:09:37.360 | He's probably the most just entertaining human being ever,

02:09:42.080 | off like just, he just says the crate like,

02:09:45.480 | off air, he's always on.

02:09:48.160 | It's like, that's just,

02:09:50.120 | he's always ready to say some wild shit.

02:09:52.880 | - The craziest shit possible.

02:09:54.720 | What's it like going to sleep?

02:09:56.520 | I somehow have never gone to sleep.

02:09:58.800 | - I went to sleep one time,

02:10:00.600 | Lachlan Giles was demonstrating a technique on me,

02:10:02.400 | but I woke up straight away.

02:10:03.720 | But for 10 seconds, I didn't know who I was,

02:10:05.600 | where I was, what I was doing.

02:10:06.640 | But that's it, that's the only time I went out.

02:10:07.960 | - Disorienting.

02:10:09.520 | - Didn't feel good though.

02:10:10.360 | Some people say it feels good, it did not feel good.

02:10:12.760 | - 'Cause you were like, what, panicked, lost?

02:10:15.240 | - Yeah, I just didn't know what was going on.

02:10:17.480 | - Yeah.

02:10:18.320 | And then you load that in, that must be a cool feeling,

02:10:20.320 | to load it all back in, like realize, where am I?

02:10:22.800 | I feel like that sometimes in a hotel,

02:10:24.440 | when I'm traveling.

02:10:25.520 | It's like, where the fuck am I again?

02:10:26.680 | When you wake up, maybe that's what it's like.

02:10:29.520 | - Some people push it too far, David Carradine.

02:10:32.360 | - What?

02:10:33.200 | What?

02:10:34.040 | (laughing)

02:10:35.100 | I'm too dumb to get that joke.

02:10:37.320 | (laughing)

02:10:38.720 | - Auto-erotic asphyxiation.

02:10:40.880 | - Oh, good, thank you.

02:10:42.720 | Thank you, now I know.

02:10:43.880 | So, given all the places you've gone,

02:10:47.560 | all the people you've seen recently,

02:10:50.040 | what gives you hope about this whole thing we got going on?

02:10:52.520 | About humanity, about this world?

02:10:55.100 | We start war sometimes,

02:10:57.680 | we do horrible things to each other sometimes.

02:11:00.760 | Wow.

02:11:01.720 | Amidst all that, what gives you hope?

02:11:04.040 | - That you can still make fun of anything,

02:11:06.840 | as long as it's funny.

02:11:07.980 | That's what I'm fighting for.

02:11:11.680 | People talk about cancel culture,

02:11:12.800 | I just think the joke wasn't funny enough.

02:11:14.920 | (laughing)

02:11:17.120 | Had poor delivery.

02:11:18.180 | - Well, thank you for being at the forefront

02:11:21.480 | of making fun of everything and anything.

02:11:24.120 | And thank you for talking today, brother.

02:11:25.640 | - Thank you, bro.

02:11:26.540 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:11:29.240 | with Craig Jones.

02:11:30.280 | To support this podcast,

02:11:31.320 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:11:33.900 | And now, let me leave you with some words

02:11:35.720 | from Anthony Bourdain.

02:11:36.920 | Travel changes you.

02:11:39.800 | As you move through this life and this world,

02:11:42.160 | you change things slightly.

02:11:43.560 | You leave marks behind, however small.

02:11:46.880 | And in return, life and travel leaves marks on you.

02:11:51.380 | Thank you for listening.

02:11:53.920 | I hope to see you next time.

02:11:55.720 | (upbeat music)

02:11:58.300 | (upbeat music)

02:12:00.880 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Craig Jones: Jiu Jitsu, $2 Million Prize, CJI, ADCC, Ukraine & Trolling | Lex Fridman Podcast #439

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