#1967 - Mike Vecchione
2023-04-06 02:41:15
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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And we're up, what's up? How are you, man? Pleasure to meet you.
Thanks for having me on, Joe. It's a pleasure to be here.
Hey, my pleasure. you're a funny motherfucker man. I enjoy your shit.
Thank you, man.
How long have you been doing it?
23.
Nice.
Started in October of 2000, did about three and a half years in Philly with Derosa, Big J, those guys, and then moved to New York at the end of 2003.
Nice.
Yeah, I was a teacher, I got a master's in special education, I was working with kids who had behavioral problems for about eight years.
You seem like a guy who would work with kids with behavioral problems. You're very calm.
Yeah, very calming, but it was very, very challenging. I could imagine that kids would flip a lot. Every day at work was something different. Oh man.
I worked in a behavioral school for a while and then went back at night and got my master's. Because I figured, if I'm going to do this, I might as well teach and then taught in a classroom in three different public school systems.
When did you decide to leave to go comedy full time?
I started going to open mics, I was in a relationship and I thought we were going to get married and it broke up. I think a lot of comics have this story, you know where? It's like a heartbreak situation. And then I was just on my own, kind of out there, finishing up my master's. So I started just going to open mics at the Laugh House, which is not there anymore.
It's a comedy club on South Street. And I just started going every Wednesday, and then I started going on Thursdays and a little bit more. And then I wasn't funny. At first, you know, at BoM, I would do Ok Bom, do Ok bom.
But I was like, you know, I'm probably not going to be able to do this. But it's going to help me public speaking wise, it's going to help me somewhere down the line, you know, I got a good vibe for it, so I was like, let me just keep doing it.
And at that point, you know, I was, you know, alone and I was going through a tough time. So I was like, I kind of don't care if I fail, I kind of just don't care. I'm going to just fail and just figure it out and just keep coming at it. And because I'm a sensitive guy, so it's like, you know, failure has been tough to take.
So I just just kept doing it, I just kind of it kind of dropped off because I was going through a tough time. I didn't care about failure, so I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it. And then at the end of 2003, I was working a job I didn't didn't want to do anymore.
And I just decided to move to New York, and that's when it really like, I'm a really. I don't know how much time you spent in New York. I know you're a Boston guy, but I'm a product of the New York City comedy clubs, really is what I like to say.
Just hopping, going from just hopping, I mean, it's not so much like that anymore, but it used to be. I don't know how much time you spent there, but it was like you would just run from club to club to club to club to make money. Yeah, and that's how I would do it.
You know, and the Big Club was a comedy seller, still is, but it's like the Boston Comedy Club. I started in New York the last days of the Boston Comedy Club with Nate and Dustin Schafe and a lot of these guys. So I started there. And then what we do is I go to an open mic first to make sure you got stage time.
And then I would go to the Boston and the Boston, different comics would run the weeknights. So you would go and hang out and see if you could get on, so I. Then I would do that. And then at the end of the night, you would go to the cellar and just hang out. And just hanging out was a big thing back then.
Because you just get your face around, get people to know who you are. And every club had their different, every city has their different scene. And in New York, we'd end up at the cellar with Patrice Keith Robinson, Jim Norton, those guys. And you'd hang out and they would just break balls at the table different time.
You know, everybody would break balls and then people would get to know you slowly.
Isn't it crazy you say 2003 is a different time, different time You talk like you're talking about the 20s?
Yeah, but it was a very different, it was a very different landscape back then. And that's what you had to do, you had to hang and get your face around. So people without, you know, maybe Mike would be good to open, or maybe so and so would be good to open for you on the road.
You know, and that's how you would get work.
Yeah, I moved to New York in 91, I think 91 or 92, somewhere around there. And I did the clubs. I did Boston, but mostly I did the road because, like, I lived in New Rochelle.
I couldn't afford to live in Manhattan because I couldn't afford a parking spot, and I did road gigs so much, and I had a car. And my thought was like, I could do these little clubs, but I don't make any money, or I could do like Long Island and Connecticut and Jersey.
And I could make, you know, $150, $200 for a show, right? and I'd have money, right, and I'd be able to do long sets.
And I was always a big fan of Hicks, and I knew that Hicks. He did mostly the road right, and he did, like, these real shitholes, yeah.
As good as he was, yeah, I always thought that, like, shitholes made shitty comics, right? But Hicks kind of changed my mind about that.
Like, you could do great comedy in front of shitty rooms, right?
And win them over. Yeah, yeah, that's really something, that's really what it is.
Because if you let the room change you, you can become a shitty comic that way, okay?
Yeah, that's a lost art. Also. Because if you're big, you know you have your own fans and stuff that doesn't come into play. But if you're good and you're on the road, you don't have your own fans.
It's like, you have to, like, keep just working them, working them, working them. I was at the Atlanta punchline when this happened, where it was the crowd, you know, they didn't know me.
And there was a drunk woman. It's my birthday, it's my birthday, making it about her. And like younger in comedy, I would have just bailed.
And just tried to score off of her and win and just, you know, do a penalty kill. Yeah, you know, just play the set out that way.
And walk away with the victory. But I decided, you know, let me neutralize her. I don't want to make it about her, she's being selfish, you know? Stay in the pocket.
And I hadn't won the other people over yet. They were still on the fence about this guy. So it's like, just keep coming, just keep coming and then working them.
And bringing them to you and bringing them to you and neutralize her because she's a distraction and just keep bringing them.
Bringing them, bringing them, and at the end, like it was good. It was a good set, but I got off stage.
I was like, Oh my god, that was so much work and nobody's going to know about it. No one's going to know what happened here. And I walked to the bar.
And there's a couple of comics at the bar and one guy looks at me and goes, I saw what happened, He goes. I saw what you did, that was great, that was masterful.
I go, thank you. At least one witness, I got one witness who saw what it was.
Who knows, like, what it is and how hard it is to do?
It's my birthday.
Oh God, there's so many of them out there.
It's really something you just go to karaoke, what are you doing? just go to karaoke.
Some lady was fucking up Ron White's set the other night in our club. She yelled out, Can I get a picture with you? She kept saying that in the middle of his fucking bits, like he'd be in the middle of the set up.
You hear, Can I get a picture with you?
Oh, it's the worst. It's really something. Because if the crowd's not on your side and you come too hard at her, you know what I mean? Then they're going to be like, whoa, what is this guy? This guy's angry.
Now it's like, they kind of don't get the dynamic of what's happening. But if you just say, Miss, I love you, I don't want you to get kicked out.
And eventually, she just went to the bathroom anyway and just whatever.
Did Coke?
Something I think she was on it before, maybe did more. Coke, yeah.
It's funny how you remember those sets like that, like one set that you feel like that was a breakthrough moment.
Right, right, but it's like the fact that it's like, Oh, I know it, I know it, and I doubt anybody else is going to know it.
But whatever, I know it.
Do you ever stop and think, like, what if you didn't break up with that girl? Like, what if you were still in that relationship and you'd never pursued comedy? Yeah?
All the time, all the time, and I just, But you know what? I could have, I would have been married, I would have had kids, you know, whatever.
And I just would have lived that life. It was a fork in the road, you know what I mean? It was really sad, cause I was teaching at times, working at a behavioral school, and I was with her.
And I was like, Oh, this is probably how this is going to play out.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't have that in the the thing in me. To go out and get spots, cause going out and get spot, getting spots is like you have to go out and you have to hustle.
Yeah.
I was already working hard and my job and he tried to get my masters. I was on a different path, so I didn't have that extra in me. To go in and try to get, you know, spots at clubs and stuff.
So when you say that like you, when, when in at that moment, did you kind of were? You weren't in a good place, right?
She broke up with me and I was really, really, uh, we were. We dated in college and then we, uh. She's from Philadelphia, so I didn't any no ties to Philadelphia, so I moved to Philadelphia to try to find a job. Be with her, she was in law school, and um, so, yeah, that's, that's what it was.
I hope she watches YouTube now.
I mean, I think she's got a good life, she had a good, she was a good person, she had her head on her shoulders and she, it's okay.
Yeah.
It hurt though, man, it hurts. It's heartbreak like that, that causes you to go, Oh yeah.
I got a it it. It makes you raw, you know, it makes you raw, and it makes you go like, I'm going to go out and take some chances and do what I really want to do, figure my life out, you know what I mean now? If it would have been a thing where I would have been successful right away, then it would have been, oh, my God.
Yeah, it's different, but it's been 20. I've had wins along the way. This is a big win by the way, but it's like wins along the way, it's like that, gradual.
I thought I moved to New York and it's like, I'll be a star or I'll just get a job. I didn't realize that it was going to be this incremental thing where it's like, get a tonight show that's good, last comic standing, that's good.
NBC Time You know, it's like this happened to Montreal Comedy Festival. It's like, gradual throughout the years. Yeah, so that becomes your life.
You know what I mean?
I describe it to people like making a mountain, one layer of paint at a time.
Yeah.
That's what it's like, yeah.
Yeah, that really is build it, build it, build it out, yeah.
It's so slow.
But you don't think that. I didn't think that at the beginning. I thought, oh, I'll just go and I'll win, or I'll fail. Either way, it's like, even if I fail, I'm in New York, I'll figure it out in New York, you know?
But um, yeah, I didn't see this, I didn't see that incremental, the incremental steps that it takes. And, and, you know, as a comic, after that, like any girl, I was so protective, so protective, and I think a lot of comics are that way over my career, yeah.
Like, I don't, nothing comes in the way of this, nothing comes in the way. It's like, you know, I'm not going to sacrifice any of my time for anything else, I'm in this.
Well, because it's so fun when it works, yeah, and the idea of making a living off of doing that is so exciting.
Yes.
That you think, like, I can't let anything get in the way of this and relationships will get in the way of this. Like the early days I dated, girls were like, You don't have to go up tonight. I'm like, Oh, I don't.
Yeah.
Like, yes, I do, like, you don't know what you're talking about. Like, if you could kill, you would know this. You would, if you know what it feels like to go up there and hit a punchline, yeah.
And have the whole room fall out right, that's a wild feeling.
Yeah, it really is.
And not a lot of people ever get to experience that.
And it is an art, it's an art form, it's an art form to be able to do that, especially over an hour.
Yeah, it's a real art form, it's an art form that sounds like you're just talking, so it's kind of underappreciated because everybody can just talk.
Right?
And most people are funny sometimes, yeah. So you see somebody up there and you're like, I can kind of do that right. And you don't really respect it unless someone's just fucking murdering you.
Right, it's a funny thing to do with your life, and, man, it tests the shit out of you. In the beginning. Because in the beginning, there was many times where I was like, this is never going to happen, I'd bomb.
Right, I'd go back home, fucking massively depressed, in whatever shitty apartment I was in, going, What the fuck am I doing?
Todd Lynn, who was a comic back in the day, he passed away since. But he used to say, it's like dating a really hot girl with really bad breath.
That's what I'm like, God. He really described it perfectly.
Sort of, but you could brush her teeth. I love you to death. Your fucking breath is whack. Yeah, you know, there's something you could do about that.
But comedy, it's just like it's the whims, it's the crowd, it's who's on before you, it's where you're at in your life, right?
Right, that's all true, and it's a process. I learned that from wrestling too, like wrestling like, I was good for my area.
Like, I learned to wrestle in Ohio, which is a great state, we had a great program. And then I moved to Florida and I finished high school in Florida, so I wrestled down there.
And it's like, I was so focused, I don't know how you were as a competitor, but I was so focused on the win. I wanted to get the win I wanted to get. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I would psych myself out before matches a lot of times by overthinking it, you know, and it's like, No, no, no, no, it's about the process. Yeah, it's about the process.
Train hard, but when it's time to compete, then I wish I would have had this back then. It's like, you have to just get yourself up and go out there and just do the things that you train to do. And I was too focused on the oh, I want to win, I want to feel the victory.
It's like, I want to win, It's like, No, no, no, it's the process, stick to the process. But I wish I would have had that before I went out and competed.
Like, go out there and just cut through this guy. I didn't have that attitude, I was tired from cutting weight. And you know, when you go to these tournaments, when you wrestle, you weigh in, you weigh in, and then you would go have breakfast.
And then there's a time where you digest and lay around on the mat a little bit and then start slowly drilling and getting ready for the match. And during that time is when you should be getting your mind right to go out there and like, take it to them. And the guys who were successful did that, and I couldn't see it back then. But looking back and having perspective on it, it's like, I wish I was that.
So now I keep that in mind in stand-up, you know, because a lot of stand-up is that, you know, being mentally prepared to go up. Yes, you know.
Yeah, I always tell comics like, don't go up, don't just go cold, warm your mind up, right?
I pace around, I breathe deep, I stretch out, I go over my notes, like, maybe you don't need to do that, but you should.
It's just like, good for the head, just get your mind right.
What do you think about before you go up? I mean, you're working these arenas now, these gigantic venues, so what do you think about before you go up?
Well, Arenas, one of the things that I do is I have index cards. So I write out, I'll get there early and I'll write out. Like, just bullet points of all the sets or all the bits, and I'll put them on cards, right, like, this is on this subject, this is on that subject, and I'll lay them out on a coffee table. And writing that out just like cements it all in my head, solidifies it all in my head, and then it's just about getting fired up.
By the time I'm getting to an arena, though, my set is rock solid. Yeah, that means I've done the clubs, I developed the hour, and then I went to theaters and I started feeling it.
Oh, that's a great way to do it, yeah.
By the time, you can't just go up in front of 16,000 people, not knowing whether or not it's going to go well. You have to be fucking, you have to be tuned in and ready to go. Yeah, and you got to go out there with a lot of energy. Because, you know, these people, like, they got fucking babysitters.
Yeah, they bought the tickets a long time in advance, it's a big deal for them. You can't. You got to treat it like it's very important, right?
Yeah.
Right, and just opening for Nate, Nate Bargatze, my friend who put my special on Yeah, you got. Theater is a different, especially than the New York City clubs, because it's intimate in New York, right? And on the road even.
But it's like those theaters, it's like it can be overwhelming and there's a lot of space to fill. It feels like, yeah, it's a different environment, you know, with the low ceilings, it's like a different, it's a different vibe.
Yeah, it's a different vibe with more people, it's a different vibe with the bigger, bigger area, like you said, with the high ceilings. And it's just it's also you're not connected to them, you're it's a show, you're up there.
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I really like is the round when you do arenas in the round, right? Because, believe it or not, it's kind of intimate, because even though there's like 16,000 people.
Yeah, you're, you're, there's people all around you, right? And you're looking at them. And they're looking at the other people on the other side too. So it's just like big circle of people.
Right, it's oddly intimate, you know, as weird as that sounds.
That's really something, that's really something I know. When I go, I was very connected to my jokes. I'm like, this is all about these jokes, it's all about these jokes.
I'd fine tune them and everything, but then I started to realize it's it is. The preparation is about your jokes, but it's also about two things one going up and having a good time, yeah.
You know what I mean, like, have fun with it. You did all the preparation, now, go up and be playful with them, go up and be playful and be loose.
I have to tell myself that because I'm connected to that. I'm just like, let's go, yeah, to the jokes. And the other thing I started doing before I would go up is what you said.
Love the crowd, love them, like, love them because they have hard lives, they're going through divorce, bankruptcy, all kinds of like problems.
And they they came out to get a break from that. And like in my joke writing, I would forget that I was like, This is about the joke, it's about me. It's like, No, no, no, no.
Connect with them because they maybe need a break in their life. Yeah, you know, and be playful, and, you know, love them before you go up, that always helps.
Even if the set goes bad and you have that mindset going up, it's much easier, it's much easier to deal with.
Isn't it interesting that stand-up is such a big thing? In terms of like, how many people go to see it and how many people love it? And you know how many shows there are on the country at any given time. It's a huge art form in terms of, like, how many people pay for it, but very few people share how they do it.
And no one teaches it right. It's like no one can teach you how to do your way right, because your way is different than Nate's way.
Right, and Nate's way is different than Ari Shaffir's way. Like, everybody's got their own style and their own thing. And you kind of got to teach yourself and all these things. You're saying, like knowing how to just go out and love those people.
Have a good time, be playful. You got to learn that on your own.
But that's my thing because I'm connected to the jokes. Like, if you're a guy with a ton of charisma and no, act like you have a different set of struggles. You know what I mean? So it's like, Yeah, my thing is like, don't be too connected, be loose with the jokes.
And as I've had more experience, it's easier, you know, obviously, you get your stage presence down.
It's a long, brutal process. And it's funny that the mindset of a competitor, like your mindset of that, can kind of get in the way sometimes.
You think?
Because you get so focused on, you know, like, you're saying, like, the jokes, the jokes. And you got to realize like, no, this is a fun thing that you're doing. Like, you can't get too intense about it, right?
That's absolutely true. But the guys I've seen, the top-level wrestlers, that I've seen, the discipline I came from, the guys who are super, super good. Cale Sanderson, that guy, it's like when he wrestles. I just watched. I went down a rabbit hole watching his NCAA finals matches. He just looks fluid.
You know what I mean? So it's like, I'm thinking that intense, intense, intense. But when a guy at that level goes out and wrestles it just, he just looks like he's flowing. You know what I mean? There doesn't seem to be any tension in his body whatsoever.
And the guys who are really good I've found do that, they're just they just flow.
They're efficient.
They're efficient. And he was like, and the guys who are really good offensive machines, like, they'll set something up, set something up and then just go to another thing. You know what I mean, fluid like water.
Yeah, I feel like wrestling is one of those things that is one of the most difficult sports to compete in, and yet one of the most underappreciated. In terms of like public perception, there's no real professional avenue other than like MMA or pro wrestling, which is like entertainment. There's no. But it's so hard to do. It's kind of interesting how many sports become really popular in terms of, like, being something that people pay to see, but wrestling never did that.
Right, it never connected.
No, I could see that, I could see why, though, I could see it, just because if you don't, to the untrained eye, it just looks like two guys just. And especially if the two guys are at a high, high level, it's very like, strategic what they're doing, and there's not. Sometimes there could be not much action because they're just trying to get position and the other guy is so good at staying in position.
It's like it can be like a standoff that way, so I understand why it's not entertaining to the eye a lot of times.
I kind of do, but I kind of feel like it could have been. It feels like, I mean, how is baseball popular? I do not.
I'm not a baseball guy at all.
I don't get it, neither do I. I appreciate it if people play it, I appreciate it if you love it, but for me, I just do not understand why it's entertaining.
Yeah.
And yet it's the big American pastime.
Right?
It's a funny thing, like wrestling is way more exciting than that.
Well, I root for all the wrestlers in the MMA. Oh yeah, how could you not? It's like, because it's like entertainment. I root for all the stand-ups. If a stand-up guy is going against an improv guy for a job, I'm rooting stand-up.
Oh yeah.
You know, you've got to root for the discipline that you came from.
Oh, for sure, yeah, and wrestling is the most important discipline for MMA, I think.
You think?
Yeah, I think it's the foundation because the wrestler can dictate where the fight takes place. You know, if the wrestler chooses to stand, he can stand. if the wrestler wants to get back up, he can get back up, right?
And the wrestler knows how to take the guy down. Whereas, like, even though every fight starts standing up and it's a big advantage for the striker while they're standing up, but the wrestler knows how to strike. The striker has to think about two different things simultaneously. Yeah, has to think, maybe this guy's going to shoot, and what if this guy punches me?
Right, what if this guy kicks me, right? So there's like so many more options that the wrestler has, and there's that threat of the takedown that looms large, right?
That, like, paralyzes guys with anticipation. It's the most important foundation, it's everything in MMA. If you can't wrestle, good luck. Because unless you can land a wild shot, like you know Jorge Masvidal and Ben Askren, unless you get that wild shot off right away and knock the guy out. It's a long night against one of the best wrestlers.
Right?
And that wild shot, are you going to be able to do that every time?
Most likely, no. Yeah, yeah. If you look at like, overall success rate, wrestlers have a huge percentage of wins in MMA and the really good guys like Bo Nickel.
Yeah.
Like, right away you see him dominating guys with like all this experience, right? Because his skill set, that one skill that he has wrestling, he's so much better than everybody else. Yeah, that it's just a massive, massive advantage.
And the training, like I took taekwondo when I was young, and it's like forms and, you know, punches and kicks and forms. But when I started wrestling in eighth grade, eighth grade wrestling practice was so intense. That I thought that the coach was punishing the football players, I thought, are we being punished for like, two months?
I had to check out my friends. No, no, no, this is just what it is. Yeah, and it's so.
I wrestled one year in high school and I couldn't believe how hard it was. I would remember going home and my legs were so sore after running stadium stairs that I could barely walk. Yeah, and I was like, This is fucking horrible and I didn't want to go to class.
And I was so tired from wrestling that I was like, Jesus Christ, like, how does anybody do this?
Yeah, it was nuts and then the cutting weight also, which I'm sure you had to make weight, yeah, for competition.
It just it's like, and we didn't know anything back then, it's just like, go eat pasta and just like, eat less. There was no like science behind any of it.
And you weighed in the day of the match too, which is terrible, terrible. One of the best things about the UFC is that they cut weight the day before. I hate cutting weight, period, right?
My opinion on cutting weight for fighting is that it's sanctioned cheating. Like, you're not really 170 pounds, you're 200 pounds, yeah, but you dry yourself out the week of.
Yeah, and then 24 hours in, you're losing 12 13 pounds, right? And then you rehydrate like crazy. Like, what is this stupid thing that they're doing 24 hours before a cage fight?
Yeah, you're literally almost dying.
Well, some guys are just naturally close to their weight. I wrestle with guys like that who are just like three or four pounds above the weight. Yeah, because they have very low body fat, yeah.
I wasn't like that, I was like a bulky guy and husky. And it's like, that means, yeah, you gotta cut a lot of weight to get that muscle mass that the other guys might have naturally.
Yeah, to make the optimal weight, you know, body weight for competing, right?
Because if you wrestle at a high, people just go wrestle at a higher weight, it's like, then you're wrestling guys who cut down from a higher weight and they're going to just be stronger.
Yeah, it's a big advantage if you can do it right. Like this weekend is Israel Adesanya versus Alex Pejeta, and Pejeta, who beat Adesanya in the last fight, is fucking huge for 185. Like, I stand next to him, like, How the fuck is this guy 15 pounds lighter than me? That doesn't even make any sense.
Yeah, he's fucking huge, but when he gets into the cage on fight Day, he's 225..
That's, it's in boxing, too. I'm a huge boxing fan me too. And I go see. I live by the garden, I go see Lomachenko anytime he's at the garden.
Oh yeah, like, I go see him fight, he's unreal, but it's like he's going to fight Devin Haney, mm-hmm.
That's a great fight, but he's like, It's a great fight. I'm so excited, I'm so happy it's happening. Yeah, I'm so excited about that.
But Haney, I think, cuts down from 150, 160, something like that. He's walking around and but that's just.
Loma's tiny, Loma's a smaller guy. Yeah, he's much smaller than those guys. And that you saw that in the Teofimo Lopez fight, like Lopez is big.
Huge, he's scary. Yeah, you know, it's just that power, it's just such a big advantage.
For a big guy who cuts a lot of weight to get to 35.
Right, but Loma won't go down, No, he won't go down to 130. He's like, Nah, I want the challenge.
I think he wants the challenge. A lot of these Ukrainian Eastern bloc guys, like they want they want the smoke man, they want the challenge.
They do. But I was a little disappointed in his perceptions of the Lopez fight after he lost, like he thought he won that fight. I was like, That's crazy.
I mean, he made a. You could see halfway through the fight, his corner must have been telling him, you're in trouble. Yeah, because he, he, he picked up the pace like halfway through that fight. It was too late, obviously.
He made adjustments and he had a big 11th round. Yeah, I remember the 11th. He was really putting it on him and I was like, Oh man, maybe Loma's going to take this.
Yeah, and then the 12th Lopez came out strong, right, right, right. That kid had such a hard jab, too. It's such a dangerous jab to get through.
He came out at the beginning of the fight and established it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I remember that, and it's like, Wow.
And Loma takes him two, three rounds to download what the guy's doing. Yeah, he doesn't, he's not. He's a slower starter because he just kind of, like, is measuring him. And almost to the point, you're like, what's happening? yeah?
You know what I mean, if you're, like, unskilled, like, I'm just a fan. But it's like, he does that for two or three rounds and then he's just like, Oh, I figured it out, and then picks it up and picks the guy apart.
It's too bad that he's so small, because if he was larger in like a natural 135 or a natural 140 or something like that. There's so many big fights for him and it would be really exciting to see. Yeah, but to see a guy like that would really should be fighting 130..
Yes, going up against these guys that are cutting down from 150, 155, it's just a big advantage.
But there's a lot of guys at 135 who are very, very tough, you know, the Tank-Ryan fight.
Oh yeah.
That's a big one. I was so happy that got made.
Yeah, me too, I'm really interested, like I'm a giant Gervonta fan. Yeah, I think that guy is so unusual.
Yeah.
His style is so unusual and his like patience. Yes, yeah.
The Leo Santa Cruz fight was really something for me because Leo Santa Cruz is a technician. He's great Mexican style like, but he's also a technician.
Mm-hmm. And that fight was very close before Tank stopped him. Yeah, but he has that power that can end it.
But he finds these openings, yeah, and he sees them, but he doesn't go after them right away, he waits for the right time.
Right, he's so patient, right? Like when you watch the early rounds of his fights, he's like, out of world champions that are competing today at the highest level, he probably has the lowest punch count in the early rounds, yeah.
Because he just waits. But he also knows he's got that nuclear option that if he can fucking crack you, most likely he's going to take you out. He's got massive confidence in that.
But the thing is, can you rely on that? Mm-hmm, you know what I mean? That pitbull-cruz fight? That was very close. Pitbull-cruz is a tough guy, Mexican, just staying in the pocket with him.
Mm-hmm, you know what I mean? So it's like a Deontay Wilder thing where you're just waiting on that one punch, right? But you can't lose every round up to that either.
Right, you know what I mean, right?
Yeah, it's interesting, right? You don't know whether someone's ever going to be able to figure that out, or whether or not he's just going to keep cracking people. Yeah, so it's part of the fun of watching it.
I've talked to a lot of real boxing purists. It's like, you can't rely on that style, right? He's got to be busier when he gets to the best guys, it's not going to work out.
Well, we'll see, yeah, we'll see, because there's so many good guys. Shakur Stevenson.
Shakur Stevenson was a 130.
I'd like to see him and Lomachenko, yes, even the guy that Lomachenko just beat Ortiz, which was a sparring partner years ago, yeah.
He looked great, I was at that fight, yeah, he looked unreal.
Yeah, he looked unreal, but for Lomachenko, that was a great adjustment after the Lopez fight, too. Right? Yeah, I mean, he really looked like he's coming. He apparently had some shoulder surgery, too.
Yes, he was hurt. Yeah, I think he got hurt halfway through the Tiafemo fight. To be honest. I think he hurt a hand or a shoulder. He wasn't himself.
Yeah.
Not that Tiafemo fought unbelievably. Yeah, yeah.
And then you see what Kambosis did to Tiafemo, yeah, and then you see what Devin Haney did to Kambosis. Two fights in a row, right, right? Jesus Christ, there's levels.
He went to Australia. I mean, I think that's a lot. Yes, you deserve a lot of credit for that. Heck, yeah.
Oh, he's so good. yeah, he's so good him and Lomachenko is going to be very interesting.
It's a great fight.
Very, very interesting.
Very technical fight, mm-hmm.
Yeah, there's so many good fighters now, it's a really good time for boxing. Yeah, and finally, they're making the Terrence Crawford Errol Spence fight.
For June 17th, right, finally. But I'm following that like crazy, yeah, but it's like they tried to do that before, so I don't get too excited.
I don't know why until they actually make it.
What's going on with that? That was weird. When Terrence decided to fight that other dude for his last fight, everyone's like, What the fuck I thought you were going to fight? Errol Spence Yeah.
Now it's all falling apart. Luckily they made it, though. So if it's signed and ready to go for June-.
But it's not signed yet, is it?
I don't know, I mean, they're announcing it, they're talking about it.
They're announcing it, they're announcing they have plans for it.
They do weird shit with boxing like that, like Usyk and Tyson Fury. I thought it was a done deal. Like, Look, it's happening, and now it gets to this point where Tyson Fury's like, I want 70%.
I'm the fucking gypsy king, I want 70 and Usyk's like, Okay, 70. And it still fell apart.
He offered him 70-30.
Yeah, and he took it. I didn't think that Usyk, no one thought Usyk was going to take that. He goes, Nah, I'll take it, yeah.
He wants a win, he wants the fight, he wants the legacy.
I mean, yeah, Tyson is more of a draw. Yeah, so I understand that, but Usyk has three belts.
Yeah, but Tyson's more of a draw. Like, if you can do 70-30 and you'll still make a shit ton of money. I mean, that's a fucking big fight, I mean, that's a worldwide gigantic, you know, $200 million fight, so he'll make 30 of that.
Fine.
Yeah, but I think the sticking point was the rematch clause. Tyson wanted 50-50 on the rematch clause, so you lose the fight and then the rematch clause is 50-50. You don't have any belts.
I would take it. I think it's still worth it, because the name, it's like what brings asses in seats, right? It's the name.
If they have the rematch and Usyk instead decides to fight, you know, whether it's Wilder or whoever. It's not going to be as big a fight. Anthony Joshua It's not going to be as big a fight. The big fight is Tyson Fury. I think that's reasonable 70-30 if you could beat me 50-50..
I think it's reasonable.
Yeah, but after the 70-30, you're going all right, you're pushing me.
But he's the gypsy king.
I know he's a huge draw.
He's the biggest fucking draw in heavyweight boxing, and he might be the best heavyweight ever. He's a fucking freak of nature he really is, and he's such a personality.
Yeah, he sings that song after the.
He sings after the fight, I'm like, this is pretty good, this song is pretty good.
Bye-bye, Miss American pie.
It's unbelievable. Yeah, he's like an entertainer, that's a Pacquiao. Pacquiao used to fight, he used to go out and do karaoke after the fights.
It's like, it's bananas.
You know, Manny Pacquiao is like a professional level pool player.
Is he really?
Yeah, like, really good. Like, if he decided to stop fighting and never box again, he can compete as a professional pool player.
That's nuts.
Yeah, he's really good man, I've watched him play.
I'd watch him and Mayweather do like one-on-one basketball, right? because they both like, play basketball, you know, like in their spare time. He's so competitive, he's so competitive.
Yeah, Mayweather's unbelievable. I mean, watching him fight. And some people don't get it. They're just like, I had a friend and he was like, he's boring.
No knockouts, I go, but he's a top-level guy, multiple-time world champion, and he's dismantling other multiple-time world champions.
And not getting hit, yeah.
Is there anything there? Yeah, I don't know, I go. it's just he's boring, I don't like him. I go. Okay, maybe is it possible that you don't know what you're watching?
Yeah, maybe could it be that? I don't know. I like knockouts.
I go then you should watch Butterbean, and he goes, Yeah, I like Butterbean. I go good, watch Butterbean. Is it being like a five-year-old argument?
Good, I will, I go, you should, I will. good.
Good.
It ends up being that, you know what I mean, but for him to just have that run is dismantling guys.
You're always going to have casuals like that.
Yeah.
In every sport in MMA, that's a big thing. People only like knockouts, they boo and fights go to the ground, right?
Okay.
But is there a thing in MMA where it's like, are they calling stalemates faster?
You mean getting people back up?
Yeah, like, if the guy's on top and he's not making progress, or the guy on bottom isn't getting a wrist or working towards a submission. Will they stop them and stand them up faster? I think that's better for the sport in wrestling. They'll hit guys with stalling quick to keep the action moving. I know that's not a thing in MMA, but it does help the optics of it.
It used to be in Pride, they would give them a yellow card and it would take 10 of your purse, so if you got a yellow card in Pride. That meant you weren't trying to win or you were stalling. And if the referee pulled that yellow card out, people were fucking freaking out. Like, you know, if you're getting paid a million dollars, $100,000 is now gone for that yellow card.
You're like, fuck.
Right?
And that's a big deal.
Is it a warning? First, they give a warning before they put that yellow card.
I think it was up to the referee's discretion in Pride. I don't remember exactly how they did it, but when they did it, it was a big fucking deal. And the crowd would cheer and then the guy would adjust accordingly. Because if you got two yellow cards, you're fucked.
I mean, I don't even know if they gave two yellow cards. I don't remember that ever happening, I'm sure it did, but I don't remember it ever happening in a fight. But in MMA, the controversy is about whether or not you should stand someone up because you have five minutes. And if someone takes someone down and they're on top of them, it's up to the person who's on the bottom to get back up.
Like, that's your job and the guy on top, it's up to him to hold you down. I don't believe in stand-ups. It might be more entertaining for the audience, but I'm a purist in terms of like. I think you should control your own destiny in there. And if a guy can hold you down and just punch you in the face while you're on the even if it's boring.
Right, he's doing what he wants to do, right, and you can't do anything about that, yeah.
That means he's winning and I think that any interference of that is against the purity of the sport.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I mean, I do understand that it could be boring if a guy can hold a guy down and control –.
It's not so much boring, but is the guy on top initiating action? Mm-hmm, I think that's the key. Well, sometimes you. Is he initiating action, is he trying to win? the is he advancing his position?
In wrestling, it's advancing your position, it is in MMA too, but punching in the face is advancing. It's a way of advancing your position in terms of winning the fight.
Yeah, but it's open to interpretation. Like, say, if he's in side control and he's only occasionally hammer fisting the guy, the guy's in no danger of being stopped. There's an argument that that's stalling, but I don't buy that argument because it's only a five-minute round.
And for a grappler, it's really hard to take someone down. Like, you're dealing with kicks and knees and punches, and you're trying to find the opening. Yeah, and then you level change, you get the shot.
Maybe you switch from a double to a single, you run the pipe, you get the guy on the ground. All that took a minute and a half. Right, right, right.
And if you're holding the guy down and then the referee comes like, keep moving action, you know, advance your position and then they stand it back up. But what the fuck is that? Right, right, like that guy couldn't get up?
If it was no one here to stop that, right? If this was just a fight out in the field somewhere, that guy on top controls the fight, he does what the fuck he wants to do.
And if that guy gets tired, eventually, he'll move to Mount and just start beating the fuck out of him. But it's important that his skill set is expressed, his skill set is his ability to control the guy, right? And if you're on the bottom and you can't get back up, I don't care if it's boring.
Tough shit, yeah. Your job is to get back up, and if you can't get back up, that guy wins, right?
Even if he wins a boring-ass fight where he just takes you down and gives you noogies for five rounds. Yeah, tough shit. You gotta figure out how to not get taken down or get back up. Or submit him off your back, or find some kind of scramble where you can get on top, right?
And if you can't do that, then you lose, because that's what the fight's all about. And of course, in terms of the people that go to pay, they are going to pay more. To see the exciting people, right? The Conor McGregors.
Right, right, the John Joneses, the people that stop people and finish people, yeah, and they're the big draws.
Yeah, but if you can, Ben askren your way to a career, and Ben did it for a long time. Yeah, he just took guys down and fucking noogied them into a coma, yeah.
Tough shit, that's my feeling. I don't like stand-ups, I'd hate them, especially like sometimes they'll stand someone up from a dominant position.
Like, someone will get to side control and the referee will stand them up. And I'm just going, What the fuck are you doing? Wow, it's so hard to get there. Yeah, yeah.
You're only giving a guy five minutes to work, yeah, and you've got to think it probably took a minute or so to get the guy down.
Not just a minute or so, but it is a lot of energy, a lot of energy. You're a lot of energy to take a guy down.
Then if you get taken out of that and stood back up again, now you're tired. And this guy, his striking, is probably a strong suit, right, right, right? And now you're in his realm. And you expended all this energy and it's taken away from you by a bad referee, right? I fucking hate it.
I think it's dumb, I think it should be eliminated. I really do. I don't like it at all. I don't think there's ever a time that they should stand people up.
I don't think there's ever a time they should separate someone. If they got someone pressed up against the cage and they're kneeing them in the body and elbowing them, sometimes, referees will decide there's not enough action, they separate them. I hate that, too, I don't believe in any of it.
I don't think you should do anything to make it more exciting for the casuals. Nothing, not really. Yeah, because the best guys are always going to be exciting, yeah.
It's just you're going to have. It's just like, everybody's like, I want blood all the time, blood. yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't always get blood. Yeah, action movies aren't always action.
Sometimes, the hero and the woman kiss.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, so it is, but that's why Dana stacks the cards, yeah.
In case you have a fight, that's not as exciting.
Well, they're very, I mean, it's obviously they're different than me because they're promoters and they're selling a product. I'm a martial artist and so what I want to see is someone compete to the full ability, the full extent of their abilities. And something that gets in the way of that is stand-ups. I don't like it, but I'm not. It's not like a universal opinion.
Right, right, most people don't agree with me, a lot of people don't agree with me.
Right, because they're casuals.
Not even casuals.
They're not understanding the technical, even fans, the technical aspect of what you just said.
Yeah, but even.
I understand that, yeah.
Even hardcore, there's a lot of hardcore fans that don't agree with me. They say, no, no, no, you can't just hold the guy down, you've got to advance position, right? Okay, why?
Tell me why? Because the guy wants to win, and if he could, just win by taking guys down. And if the audience boos and he doesn't get popular because of it, okay, so what? Willie Pepp won fights without throwing a punch, He won a whole round once without throwing a punch.
Just moving and dancing, and it was so masterful that people had to agree. It's like, what do you want him to do? Just Arturo Gatti and fucking just stand right in front of him and just throw bombs like Mickey Ward, Yes.
Sometimes it's fun.
That's unreal.
Yeah, but then you saw what happened when Arturo Gatti fought Floyd Medway. Yeah, yeah, that shit didn't work. No, against a master.
Not at all, yeah.
Not at all. It was great. Diego Corrales versus Julio Luis Castillo.
Oh my god, that fight was crazy.
I mean, I love the Gatti-Ward fights, but that fight, for me, is the greatest fight in history that I've seen in the modern era.
Because he came back.
The first ten rounds, you expected Diego because of his reach to keep him on the outside and he didn't. He just stood in a phone booth with him and they just traded and it was as the round. You're like, Oh my God, can this continue, right? They're just in a phone booth and just at a high, high skill level, working on the inside. Both of them and just trading brutal shots and nobody taking a step backwards.
Yeah, and it was unreal. And then the tenth round where he gets knocked down and Goosen spits the mouthpiece out, Goosen puts it back in and then he stops. I mean, it was just insane.
I think they play that, I'm sorry, I think they play that at corporate retreats. They play round ten of that, they should play the whole fight, but they play round ten of that fight in corporate retreats. To be like, just never give up, you never give up.
Sometimes you should give up.
That round ten, I mean, it's almost like watching a rocky movie. Yeah, there it is. It's emotional to watch.
Oh my god.
It was an incredible fight, yeah.
It was an incredible fight and he was in real trouble multiple times in that fight when he got dropped. I mean, there's several times where it looked like the end.
Look at that left hook, Oh my God, I mean –.
Did you see the Caleb Plant-Benavidez fight last weekend? Yes, fucking a man.
And you know what? And that's a good stoppage, that's a good stoppage, too. Oh yeah, he looked like he was out on his feet.
But you could make an argument that Corrales could have got stopped earlier than that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's one of those things, it's very subjective, yeah. Referees have stopped fights for way less.
Well, the Fury-Deontay Wilder fight where he's down and he opens his eyes. Yep, you know, the famous, he opens his eyes and gets back up. Jack Reiss, Jack Reiss is the ref, I think.
And Deontay's camp was complaining that he wasn't counting whatever. But it's like, Jack Reiss is great, he's a great ref, He always gives the guy the opportunity. He's like, I'm going to count to 10..
He gives the opportunity for the guy to get up.
Just you never thought Fury was getting up, no way.
His eyes were closed on the ground.
He's laying on his back, with his arms above his head, like he's just flatlined.
It's unbelievable.
And then he rises and wins the rest of the round, which is crazy, and that win for the rest of the round made the blueprint for the second fight. Because you realize Wilder has a hard time when people put him on his heels, right when people back him up.
And so then he came out the second fight, just backing him up and stopped him. Yeah, look at that. yeah, I mean, look at this.
His arms are flailed to the side. yeah, his eyes are rolled back.
And he looks like he's done, yeah.
He really does.
And he looks at the referee, the referee's counting, he goes okay, back to work, right? And I was watching at home.
I remember screaming, Oh my God, yeah, I was by myself.
Screaming, Oh, my god.
And then he got back up. I was like, wait, no way, no way, and he's like, I'm fine, let's go.
And the referee says, Okay, walk to here, that's great. Look at this fucking shot too. Jesus, my God.
And the right hand before it, too, so he cracks him with the right hand boom, and nobody punches harder than Deontay Wilder.
It's unreal.
He's got the touch of God in his hands.
I mean, those two, those two I didn't see the first, those two punches are unbelievable.
And look, Wilder's 100 convinced as he walks off that it's over. Yeah, and he makes the like the throat cut thing. Yeah, yeah, he does a little dance.
And then you see the look in his eyes. When Tyson gets up, he's like, Oh shit.
How?
Look at this, he does the throat cut thing. I mean, nobody on earth other than Tyson Fury is getting up there, which is so crazy. Deontay Wilder's the greatest knockout artist in the history of the heavyweight division.
There's no one that's had one-punch knockouts like that guy. The Luis Ortiz fight just catches him on the forehead with flat lines.
Was losing every round? yes.
Yeah, I mean, and then you see Deontay's like, I can't believe this motherfucker is still up, and then there's also like, an emotional thing that happened. Look at the wildness of Deontay, yeah.
To be able to survive that, first of all. I mean, I have a huge respect for mental toughness and the mental toughness it takes to get up. Yeah, and then, you know, the guy who just did that to you is waiting on the other side.
Yeah, of the ring, to come and do it again.
And then he moves forward, he survives the initial barrage, and then he starts moving forward. Then he dings Deontay, and you see, Deontay got rocked at one point.
And he starts pushing him back. I'm like, Oh my God, he won the rest of the round, like he literally made it, like a 9-9 round.
Yes.
Which is crazy.
I love that.
Yeah.
But I love the fortitude that it takes in that moment, the composure, first of all, the mental toughness to get up, and then the fortitude, all of these intangibles.
Like, I'm a boxing guy, but it's all of these underlying things which makes me love the sport. You know, the composure that it takes, you know, yeah, it's just really unbelievable.
That's why I love the sport so much.
Well, you're not a casual.
Yeah.
Look at him, he's dancing, he's great. Like he thought it was like, now, walk through, looking at his face when he sees Tyson get up.
Like, they start counting and he's like, This fight is fucking over. I don't know if they're going to show it here, but there's a look where you see Deontay's face, like, right there.
He's like, Oh shit, I don't believe this.
Let me start breathing differently, Let me start breathing differently because I got to go finish the job here, yeah.
And then he gets up and you know, Deontay, I'm sure, thought he was going to put him away. He puts everybody away. But they're talking now about Deontay versus I think they're talking about Andy Ruiz.
That's a great one, too, that's a great one. But they might be also talking about Deontay and Usyk, because I think Usyk is open now. I just hope they put that fight together. Just figure it out, boys.
That's the fight, yeah, the fight's Tyson, Fury and Usyk, it's the undisputed world heavyweight championship. Deontay, while they're training as promoter, cancels another Vegas date.
Okay, so Andy Ruiz Jr. potentially is now canceled. See, that's the thing that boxing does. It drives me nuts.
They set these fights up, they get your dick hard, right? and then they pull them away from you, like fucking Lucy with this football.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right, but I think the thing is like the Crawford Spence date.
It's like we're floating the date of June 17th. It's like, all right, because that gets everybody's hopes up for it. And then they go well. Now we've got to negotiate, we've got to come to the table.
And it's like, Yeah, how's that going to go? It didn't go well last time and as a result, Terrence, I think, just got frustrated with the negotiations. He's like, I'm just going to fight somebody you don't think I'm, I'll walk away.
I'll go fight somebody else.
You're saying he's April fool's because they reported it on April 1st. Is that what they're saying? I was trying to figure it out, too. This is the best I could get. Was that he last, he said, is it's April fool's. Yeah, what does that mean?
So they announced April 22nd during Javante Davis, Oh so, it will be announced, so they're hoping it will be announced. If Crawford isn't playing around, it will disappoint many fans who want to see him fight. SPENCE Yeah, that's the big fight at welterweight.
That's a big fight.
Right, but I think if they don't make the fight, then they have to fight, they have to fight the number one contender. Then there's Virgil Ortiz at 147, there's Boots Ennis.
Boots Ennis is amazing. Okay, so you've got to fight that. Why are the mandatories not being forced? is my question.
I think it's just money. They're just trying to make the biggest fights possible.
Well, the problem is that you have these individual promoters and you have these. There's too many IBF, WBC, these sanctioning organizations, and it's like, you have to force, you have to force these fights. Yeah, you can't. I understand that ticket sales and all that stuff is important, but if you want to maintain your integrity as a sport, you have to force these fights. Yeah, I agree.
Boots Ennis should not be sitting there as the number one contender for five years.
Right, exactly, good point. And also the world needs to know how good Boots Ennis is. Yes, when you watch that guy fight and switch stances.
Unbelievable, he's such an artist in there, he's so exciting. Yeah, and hopefully people catch on. But you do run the risk of a guy like that not being recognized. Because he's in this sort of weird situation where other people are getting shots and he doesn't.
Right?
But it's a weird situation because I think Teddy Atlas has said this on multiple occasions. It's structured badly, the sport is structured badly, whereas, like in UFC, it's Dana making the decisions, yeah.
And you need that, you need a guy at the top going now. This is going to happen. Yeah, and if you don't want it to happen, or if a guy's having personal problems like John Jones or whatever. That was like, Okay, I mean, you're still a legend and you will get the shot when you're ready to come back. But the show goes on.
Tom Brady, you know, gets hurt, rips his knee. Football doesn't stop, right, you know, yeah.
There's a great advantage that the UFC has in being the promoter, and so it's the organization, it's the sanctioning body, and it's also the promoter, right? But it does take away leverage from the fighters, like, you can't say I want 70-30..
You can't say, right, like the way that boxing is, there's too many promoters and there's too many world titles, right? But the opposite is the UFC, where it's like, there's really only one title.
That means something. There's Bellator titles and 1FC titles, but what everybody wants to be is the UFC champion of the world. That's what everybody wants to be, right, everybody.
Right, nobody says I'd rather be the Bellator champion. No disrespect to Bellator. Yeah, but the reality is, that's not the same.
Right, and the real reality is, there's fighters in Bellator that are World Championship UFC caliber fighters. And they might not ever get their due right, and they might lose their competitive prime. Competing against other people in an organization where less people are going to watch.
And maybe even more importantly, less people are going to respect.
Right?
So it's tricky.
But in boxing, you know, you can't fight once a year. No, you can't fight once every 18 months. And expect me to still be interested in what you're doing, like, you have to fight more.
You have to fight like three, to Canelo's credit, three, four times a year. Yeah, I understand these camps are like 12 weeks now, and that's brutal, It's brutal the preparation.
But, you know, three, four times a year, I mean, if you're fighting every two years, it's like it holds up the division. Yep, and it's, you know, it's less competition.
It does, and there's so many big fights. The Canelo thing is very interesting, right? Because he loses to Bival and then he comes back and beats Triple G and looks pretty good. But then he had to get wrist surgery.
Right, and you know, then you see what Benavidez did to plant, Benavidez beat the fuck out of Caleb Plant, and how tough is Caleb Plant?
Caleb Plant is so tough, God, and he's a very, very skilled guy. Damn, he's tough, he's so skilled guy.
He was an Olympian, you know, he was an Olympian. He's a very skilled guy and for David to do that, it was really impressive, impressive.
It's really impressive.
He's a murderous puncher, man, yeah, and Caleb has a fucking chin on him, man, yeah.
Holy shit. He stayed in it and refused to get knocked out and really tried to win the fight.
And he got battered, Yeah, I mean, he got fucking battered. I'm super impressed with Benavidez, yeah.
Like, that was a big test for him, and Caleb in the beginning was very slick, yeah, but Benavidez just kept pressing and putting on him, yeah.
Towards the latter half of the fight, that's traditionally been a problem with Caleb, that he starts to fade in the later rounds.
It's so much energy to keep a guy like that off you. I think. mm-hmm, you gotta have power to keep a guy like that off you. Yeah, and Benavidez has....
And many guys like to have a suffocating style. Yeah, they just. You can hit him and that does something to you mentally. I think where you hit a guy twice, you hit him with your best stuff and he just walks....
Mm-hmm, he's walking through it, yeah, walking forward, walking you down. It's like, all right, I guess this is gonna be....
I'm gonna have to move. Mm-hmm. All. It's a tremendous amount of energy.
I feel like.
I wonder if Caleb could do something about his strength and conditioning. That takes it to another level. Because I feel like if he could maintain the kind of pace that he has in the early rounds of the Canelo fight, right?
The early rounds of Benavidez fight. If he can do that, like, man, it's gonna be really hard for people to fuck with him. Yeah, but he has a mark. There's a noticeable slowing down ....that happens.
And I wonder if that's psychological.
I don't know how you would mimic that pressure, like I've never been in a fight camp before, so I don't know how you would mimic that pressure in sparring.
I think it would have to be in strength and conditioning. I think you would have to all out dedicate yourself to taking your VO2 Max to a completely new level. Yeah, and you would have to like, really dedicate yourself in that regard to just absolutely annihilating your boundaries and pushing your strength and conditioning to the point where you can get. Like, there was this guy, B.J. Penn, who's one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time.
And there's one point in time where B.J. Penn, he started training with Marv Marinovich, and Marv Marinovich was a fucking the Marinovichs. Like, they had a style of training where they believed that you already have the skill, and what's more important than anything is cardio, and so they would do just ruthless plyometrics.
Yeah, that was the entire camp. For whatever amount of weeks that you're doing it, most of your time was dedicated to strength and conditioning, right?
And it was very systematic, and it was very scientific. They were checking your resting heart rate, your heart rate variability, monitoring your recovery and making sure you're getting the right nutrients and rest and rehydration and all that stuff. But the most important thing was the gas tank, right?
Because you already know how to fight, yeah, and what happens in fights, you still know how to fight, but your gas tank starts to fail. And so when B.J. Penn was at his prime in Like, the. If you look at, there's a bunch of different fights, like Diego Sanchez, Sean Shirk, where he was just destroying these guys. He had a limitless gas tank.
Yeah, and he had this incredible skill set that he already had, right? And there's a good argument for that that, like, at a certain level, what's most important is cardio.
Right, so there's like, several schools of thought when it comes to that.
Right? But even with the plyometric and strength, like you have to mimic that in sparring, yes, you have to mimic that in training so that you can utilize it.
Well, they did all that, too. I mean, it wasn't like you only did strength and conditioning, but strength and conditioning was primary.
But what's that look like? Is that like a shark bait type situation? we call it in wrestling, shark bait, where one guy in the middle and they just keep sending you fresh guys?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
They certainly did that, but honestly, most of it was work like PLYos box jumps. All these different things where you just had your ability to work. It was all about your cardio, all about your ability to constantly work right? And you already had efficiency in your striking and your grappling, all these different things.
And so you would do drills for those things, right? So you keep all your weapons sharp. But the primary focus was strength and conditioning. And I'm always intrigued by that because it's the most brutal way to do it.
It's so hard to stay motivated because sparring is fun. If you're in there sparring, you know there's something exciting about it. There is nothing fun about box jumps, there's nothing fun about running hills.
Box jumps and running hills till fail, till fail is the key there. Because everybody thinks, you know, it's like, No, no, no, no, it's like the goal is to throw up, yeah.
The goal is to break your body. Yes, and then have it like right there where it's broken, and then recover, right, and then get yourself right back there again and recover.
And now, all of a sudden, your threshold bumps up a little more, right? And so now you can go an extra round, now you can go an extra minute, now you can go an extra minute 30..
Now you're really pushing it and now you're seeing these things that used to kill you. Now you can get through them and at the end you're recovering quicker, and that's the idea. And I wonder if a guy like Caleb Plant. If you could get him to an insane level of cardio, where he could compete at that pace that he does in the early fight.
Because in the early part of the fight, that guy is slick. yes, he's so slick, very skilled guy, and he's moving, nice and slick.
But then he starts standing in front of Benavidez, and then Benavidez is he's so accurate and he gets his punches around your guard.
And up the front.
And uppercuts and jabs. Yeah, I'm just I love his style.
He throws punches in bunches, too, he's not throwing one punch, No.
Yeah, he just smothers you, stays on you, and he's a brutal puncher too, and at the end of the fight, he didn't even have a scratch on him.
No, he didn't. It's crazy.
Caleb looked like he'd been through a meat grinder, yeah.
Yeah, it's really something, so I think that's the fight at 168. Yeah, I think so, too. Benavidez Canelo.
But everybody's calling for that Bival Canelo rematch and I just don't see it. I don't. I think we saw it.
Yeah.
You know, with some of these fights, it's like, I think we saw it, we don't need a trilogy, yeah, and I think we saw it.
Maybe, you know, but when you've got a champion like Canelo, he thinks he can do it better. And he thinks he's like, okay. I understand what he did. And maybe he knew coming into that fight because he did have a wrist problem that he had in the GGG fight, too.
So he probably had that problem already, right? Who knows? But I think for Bival, the big fight is Beterbiev. Artur Beterbiev is a fucking monster.
I saw him fight at the garden. Joe Smith Oh yeah, it was a pro Joe Smith. I was rooting for Joe Smith. You know, New York guy, Long Island Union, all the union guys out.
Yeah, but the atmosphere, it's just like, Joe, Yeah, let's go, Joe. And then Beterbiev comes in the ring and the fight starts.
And it's just no disrespect to Joe Smith, he's unbelievable. But it looked like just a man fighting a small child. Yeah, it was just brutal, man.
Beterbiev is an intelligence, he gets no headlines.
I know what is he like, 19-0 and 19 knockouts, Yeah, he's the only, I think it's 19. He's the only boxer at a world championship level. That stopped every single one of his opponents, in every fight he's ever been in.
And he's super skillful, but he fights like a fucking destroyer, yeah, just moves straight towards you.
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