JRE MMA Show #149 with Dan Henderson
2023-10-24 01:54:25
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience. Stream by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day!
Hello, Dan Henderson, what's happening?
Good to see you, brother. Good to see you too.
Man, what have you been up to? Other than coaching, you're coaching a lot, I know that. I watch a lot of your videos.
Yeah, I mean I'm coaching a little bit. Got some decent up and comers, but other than that, I've been working on a project where my gym, I own the building, my gym's in, and I'm putting a brewery distillery restaurant in.
Oh, nice.
Part of it will overlook there, so we're in mid-construction right now, so it's been, it's been, we started construction, it got put on hold when COVID happened, so it's been almost the biggest fight of my life trying to get this thing done, but yeah, it's finally, finally going to be done, hopefully end of the year.
You're down in, you're still down like Temecula area?
Yeah, in Temecula, yeah.
That's a good area.
No, I love it there.
Last time I saw you was at that casino. That's a fun little casino down there.
Oh, at Patranga? Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it out there. I was born and raised in California, so it'd be hard to leave. I got so many roots there, but living in Temecula, I feel like I'm in one of the best spots in California.
Yeah, it's one of the, it's most sane.
Yeah, no, I agree.
It's pretty sane.
Yeah, pretty.
A lot of ranches, and it's like normal people.
Not a lot of craziness going on.
Yeah, you get closer to Los Angeles, it just gets polluted. Yeah. Just toxic fucking thinking.
Where did you live up there?
I lived in Bell Canyon, which was like a half hour outside of L.A., which was nice. Like, I had land and a lot of coyotes and a lot of owls and hawks and shit and mountain lions. It's good, it's good. It was good, like, juxtaposition. It was a nice relief from Hollywood.
I get there, it's quiet.
And how is the little community, though? The area?
It's fine. Yeah, it's fine.
Like it here, better, though?
Oh, yeah, way better. I'm never leaving.
Yeah.
No, this place is the best.
Yeah, I don't know if I could...
It's just the freedom that you get in Texas. It's just so much, you just get so accustomed to it.
Yeah, no, I couldn't imagine, but yeah, I don't know if I could deal with the humidity of out here.
You get used to it. I don't know, I've always liked the heat. It doesn't bother me at all. You know, I just, because I do the sauna every day anyway, so I think my body's, like, acclimated to heat.
So during the summertime, you don't really have to get in the sauna?
I get in the sauna, too. I do it every day. But during the day, like, getting ready for elk season, I was out in my yard every day for three hours at 105 degrees. I'd just bring a 64-ounce hydro flask filled with electrolytes and water and just drink that. And I would come inside, and it was literally like I went swimming.
I would just be drenched. My jeans, my shirt, everything drenched.
What are you doing out in the yard?
Just shooting.
Okay.
Just shooting, you know, getting ready. So I had to practice. So it's like, there's only one place I could practice 100 yards.
Yeah.
It's in the yard, so I was out there practicing every day.
Have you taken a 100-yard shot?
No way, never, never. I would never do that, never. But when you take a 100-yard shot every day, 50-yard shots look like a chip shot. Right. Like.
I shot my elk last week at 50, and it was easy. It was perfect. It was perfect distance, you know. That's awesome. I knew I was going to hit it.
Yeah, I've gotten a couple at 50.. I think one at 60 was my longest shot, but yeah.
My friend Cam shot one at two yards. He shot at two yards, a frontal shot at two yards. He just made a video of it. It's fucking crazy. This elk, he was on his knees, and the elk was coming up the trail, and the elk had no idea he was there.
He was just standing there at full draw, and then the elk looked down and saw him there, and whop, and it caught him right in the chest. It went right through his heart. Wow. Yeah, this is the video. Oh.
This is a real clip of it. So he's moving up this trail, and this is the elk. You'll see the shot. Well, it's very hard to see. You'll see it on his YouTube channel.
It's much better, but that's how close he was. It was two yards from it.
That's funny. My first elk I ever shot was with a bow, but it was at like 10 feet. Wow. Three and a half yards, but yeah. It was in a burn area, so there was a lot of new growth going on, and there was a little quakey tree, and I saw an elk a couple hundred yards away.
I called him, and he started coming over, and then I called again kind of in a different direction, so he'd kind of go into a nice little spot. I could shoot him, and I'm kind of jittery getting my trigger on the loop, my release on there, and by the time I look up, he's like right on the other side of this quakey, 10 feet away from me, you know, just kind of looking to see where the cow is, and just same thing, plugged it right through the middle.
I've never taken that shot. I had an opportunity to do that shot last week at 45 yards, but there was some shit in the way of him, and I don't like that shot.
Yeah, not at that distance.
That shot's like a 20 and under.
I passed right through him.
Oh, yeah. It's a devastating shot.
Just right at an angle.
Yeah, it's devastating if you hit it. There's so many videos online of guys hitting that, and they just spray blood and die instantly.
Yeah, he managed to run 20 yards down the hill and didn't make it any further.
It's a great discipline for fighters. A lot of guys, they leave fighting, and the excitement and the intensity of fighting, nothing can match that, and so the only thing that comes close for a lot of them is bow hunting.
Yeah, I can see that for sure. I mean, I've done it. I was doing it when I was fighting, too, but yeah, I mean, I grew up hunting, but never really started shooting animals until I get a little bit older and getting a little better at it, but...
It's hard.
I need to get out and bow hunt a little more. That's my favorite hunt is bow, archery elk hunt.
Yeah, no, it's the most exciting. It's also the most crazy. There's screaming, and there's so much chaos, and you've got to duck those cows and sneak around. It's fun. I love it.
To me, it's like the best. It's the best way to get meat, first of all, and then it's also the best way for me to decompress.
Right. And it's really good meat.
Oh, it's the best meat. The best meat. I ate the heart last night.
Oh, I don't know if I can do that.
You don't eat the heart?
No.
It's good, man. You just fry it up. I just put salt, pepper, and garlic on it, and butter, and fry it in butter.
I feel like it would have a different texture.
It does. It's chewy, but it's good. It tastes good.
I'm not a fan of liver, either.
I eat the liver, too.
Yeah. I can't do it.
It's good for you. I mean, it's the best meat for you.
Well, it might be good for you, but.
It's rough. I don't eat too much. I eat a couple ounces in the morning with eggs. You know, I just slice it up and vacuum, seal it, and freeze it, and then thaw it out for breakfast. It's good breakfast.
Gets you going.
Yeah, no, I'm not into that. You're more of a man than me, for sure.
That's definitely not true.
So, how have you adapted to retirement?
I feel like I'm pretty good. It's not like I have the itch to get in there and do it again. Occasionally, when I see some of these guys with a little bit different style, I feel like, oh, it would have been fun to match up or see how I do against them. I do it in practice, with no cameras. Just to see how it would be.
Not for any type of title or money. It would be fun, but.
For a lot of guys, it's so hard to not just resist that urge to come back.
Yeah. I mean, I started wrestling when I was five years old, and two Olympic teams, and then I started fighting, and I fought for 20 years. So, I feel like I did enough.
You definitely did enough. You did a lot.
A lot more than most, over that span of time, than most guys compete at that level. I felt like I was ready when I retired. Honestly, my body felt okay. I hadn't really had too many big injuries at all for a while. I just was spending too much time on the couch after practice, just too tired to do anything else during training camp.
So, family life was kind of, you know, with the kids, and not spending time doing stuff like that was taking a toll. So, I was like, you know, it's time.
Yeah. Well, you did it at the right time, and it's good that you didn't come back. It's just like so many guys come back, and you kind of wish they didn't. Right.
Well, I wouldn't be one of those guys if I did come back. I would be.
I still feel really good. But I don't plan on it. But nobody's offered me enough money to get off the couch anyway.
Well, what I'm interested in seeing is, like, there's so many different options now with guys. You know, like bare-knuckle boxing. Right. It's nice seeing a lot of guys going into that, and I felt like that would be a thing that you would excel at.
Yeah. I hadn't really watched it until I watched Chad Mendez fight last year. I'm like, man, I like those rules. That would be right up my alley. Like, I don't think I would do okay at boxing, straight boxing, but not that great.
I would do a lot better at the bare-knuckle rules with the dirty boxing. Yeah. Hold on to the guy.
Yeah, it's very different. I really like what Jorge Masvidal is doing, where he's got bare-knuckle MMA. It just shows you. It's like when you don't have, first of all, grappling is way better because you don't have the padding over your gloves that prevents certain chokes. It's just like it gets in the way of stuff.
But also it's more realistic. You know, like your hands, like. I think we talked about this before, but I think it was Tank Abbott was the first guy who figured out that if you wear MMA gloves, you actually can punch harder, because you're not worried as much about breaking your hands.
Yeah.
Wrap your hands up, put gloves on, and it's not a disadvantage. It's kind of an advantage. Right. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily protect your opponent that much. It really protects your hands.
Right. No, I agree.
Yeah. For sure. But it just seems to me weird that, you know, your elbows are unprotected, your knees are unprotected, your shins are unprotected. You can go bone-to-bone with that, but not with your hands. It just seems like it doesn't really make sense.
Right.
And when they first started UFC, there was no gloves, and that's how it was. Yeah. And when they started wearing gloves, and that was my thoughts exactly, was more to protect your hands.
You know, I guess without your hands, if your hands break or fall apart, then the fight kind of doesn't happen as well.
Yeah. It's interesting to see how effective it is too. Like Mike Perry, has done an amazing job transitioning into bare knuckle. Right. He's probably the most successful at it, definitely the most successful at it, from MMA guys.
Right. Yeah, I saw him with Luke Rockhold. Mm-hmm. Knocked some teeth silly.
Yeah, I mean, when it's just raw knuckle on your face, like a regular mouthpiece, it's not quite good enough.
Right.
And it's interesting that guys are still using the upper mouthpiece only with bare knuckle. I would think you might want to use an upper and a lower.
Yeah, I always just did the upper.
Yeah, most people do. I mean, very few people, fought in MMA with an upper and a lower, right? I don't think anybody.
Not that I know of.
Not that I know of. In boxing, you used to see it. You used to see guys who had, like, a full mouthpiece, but it just gets in the way of your breathing too much, I think.
Yeah, that's what I have a problem with. Yeah.
Do you breathe out of your nose? Can your nose work?
My nose works fine.
A lot of guys, you know.
I started snoring, so I went and got a sleep test. But they went in and put a scope up there to see how my nose was, because, you know, just like you, they thought my nose couldn't breathe. Right. And they said it was completely clear. No, it was all good.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
It's amazing that you haven't had too many big injuries. I know you broke your hand at least once, right?
Was that the Vanderlei fight?
Yeah. That was a wild one.
That was in the first round. I broke it. Wow. I just remember going back to the corner, shaking my hand, saying my hand hurts, and they started talking about something else, what I needed to do, and then I never thought about it again. the rest of the fight.
Wow. And I threw it. I was throwing it.
So, you know, just the adrenaline or whatever I had in me just didn't even feel it again.
You got some wild highlight reel knockouts. Some wild fights. I remember the first fight I ever saw of yours, I think it was in 1997.. I think you just posted it on Instagram, or someone did. It was like me interviewing you backstage right after the fight.
Yeah. 97..
That was in 97?.
I think so. I'm pretty sure. That was when I first started working for the UFC. I think that was a tournament back then. Yeah.
What year is that? Does it say?
Oh, shit.
UFC 17..
It was 17,. yeah. Yeah. That was, yeah, 1997.. No, 98..
98..
I fought in 97 in Brazil in a tournament just to make some money to keep wrestling. And then I did the UFC a year later.
Who talked you into doing MMA in the first place?
Well, you know, Randy and I were training partners forever for wrestling. And, you know, we'd always watched it on TV and said, you know, that'd be fun. But I don't know if I'd want to get in there with some of those 300 or 400 pounders, you know, those big fuckers. And Randy called me up one day and said, hey, I'm doing this tournament down in Brazil at heavyweight. And they got a lightweight tournament.
And this was like two weeks before. And you want to go do the lightweight tournament, which is like, it was like 176 or something. And I was like, well, okay. And I was wrestling 180 and a half at the time. So it was an extra five pounds.
But, you know, I went down and did it. But in the meantime, I guess Randy had already put an application into the UFC. And they said no. Which I didn't know. he put in the application.
But then he got a call. Somebody got hurt. So he didn't go down to Brazil. He went to the UFC instead. It was like within a week before or a week after that fight.
No, not that one. But the one down in Brazil, which was, I think it was UFC 13, was his first one.
Yeah, I was there for that too.
And he had a tournament against the two big heavyweights.
Yeah, he fought some big muscular guy the first fight. He had a lot of hype on him. And I don't remember who he fought in the second fight. I don't remember. But that was like when we first started seeing elite wrestlers.
First started seeing a guy, Royce, Alger, Coleman, all those.
Did Kenny Munday fight in the UFC? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Kenny Munday. No. Was it Kevin Jackson?
Kevin Jackson.
Kenny Munday fought. He fought submission. I remember Matt Hume submitted him.
Oh, yeah. Remember that? I think I wrestled with Frank Shamrock.
That's right.
And I had a screwed up ankle. I rolled it right before the world championships, a month before that. So I went in there wearing wrestling shoes so I could hide the tape that I had on my ankle.
Frank's pretty good at ankle locks. Yeah. That was me not knowing anything about it.
Well, Frank was really one of the first guys that had like a full overall MMA game.
Right. No, I agree.
He really did. I mean, when he submitted Kevin Jackson, like very impressive. He could submit you off his back. He had crazy cardio, full range of skills. He could strike.
He could grapple. He could do everything. Right. And the cardio. He was like one of the first guys that showed like cardio could be a weapon, like the Tito Ortiz fight.
You know, his cardio was a real weapon.
Yeah, for sure. And Tito's usually in pretty good shape, too.
Yeah. Well, Tito learned from that fight. I mean, I think that was a big wake-up call for him that how much cardio plays a factor.
Yeah. And it's a different pace from wrestling. So that was something we had to learn. Wrestling was a little bit higher paced, a little more action, shorter durations, though. So I had to learn to kind of pace myself a little bit when I first started doing this.
When you first started doing this, what were the distance of the rounds? Was it five-minute rounds?
No.
The one down in Brazil, I think, was a 15-minute straight round and then maybe a 15-minute overtime. if there's no submission, then they go to judges. Hmm.
But, I mean, I didn't go. I think I went like seven or eight minutes. the first fight with Crazio was my first fight. He was like a black belt, which I didn't know a whole lot about. After watching that fight again nowadays, it just, you know, I see so many mistakes that I did.
And I didn't know how to punch either. I never sparred before. I never sparred before. I fought in the UFC on that one. you just put up.
Never? Never. And then I started sparring after that. Well, no, I hit the bag and hit focus mitts. And, you know, it was just kind of awkward to punch your friend in the face, you know.
But after that, me and Randy were like, fuck, we need to start sparring.
That is so crazy. You guys didn't spar at all before the first year. That is wild. That's wild.
I was off balance a lot, you know, getting hit, falling down. Because, you know, when you don't spar, you don't have the same balance. It's just a lot better to practice the way you fight.
That's so crazy that you fought the first. So did you have a striking coach?
Yeah, we had boxing guys and kind of kickboxing guys that would come in. But there was no coaches back then, MMA coaches, I would say. And then we just started really figuring out what works really well with our styles, and, you know, take down offense and, you know, setting up strikes.
I think the first real MMA coach was probably Miletic. Probably Pat.
Pat and Matt Hume. Yeah, Matt Hume. Good call.
Those were the first guys that were really putting it all together.
Right. You know?
I mean, and even back then, guys kind of didn't know exactly what the right— I mean, now if you go to ATT or one of these big gyms, I mean, they have protocols. They know exactly what they're doing. They have training schedules, all mapped out in advance, hard days, easier days, technical days. I mean, they really have it down to a science.
Yeah.
Monitoring recovery. It's kind of crazy when you think about your first fight, no sparring at all.
Well, yeah, my first four fights, because it was two fights each one of those events.
And then the UFC, you fought, Carlos Newton, right?
Yeah, Carlos Newton and—no, Alan Goez and then Carlos.
Two very elite submission guys.
Yeah.
Yeah, Carlos Newton, people forgot about him. That fucking guy was good.
Yeah, no, he was tough.
He was good. Real well-rounded.
He broke my jaw.
Did he really?
Yeah. Just like a last minute of the fight, he kind of hit me. He didn't daze me or anything. And then, you know, shortly after, five seconds later, I took him down. And when I took him down, my chin kind of pushed against his chest and it kind of shifted.
And I'm like, ooh.
That doesn't feel right.
When did you realize that you had that kind of crazy power? Because it's kind of funny that a guy who started out grappling and didn't do any sparring at all for his first four MMA fights was one of the most dangerous strikers in the sport.
I don't know. I mean, I grew up playing baseball and threw really hard. And then, you know, when I started, and not sparring, started MMA, you know, I'd hit the focus mitts and everybody would say, oh shit, you hit hard.
It's just natural.
But, yeah, so I guess it just took me a while to figure out where to put it.
There's a few guys, I think Gomi, I think Takanori Gomi, started out as a pitcher. Which makes sense. You see the way that guy throws punches. Just fucking whips his whole body into it like a fastball.
Yeah, put a lot of weight into it. Yeah.
That's actually probably a great thing to start out with, just to learn how to put a lot of force behind your arm.
Driving with your legs and everything.
Yeah, completely makes sense if you think about it.
Your hips, yeah.
Because you think about how many guys practice with medicine balls. now. You know, they whip medicine balls against the wall to advance your punching power.
Yeah, it's hard to teach. I mean...
Yeah, you either have power or you don't have power.
Yeah, I mean, you can definitely get better at mechanics to make it harder.
Mm-hmm.
But not like what a lot of guys have naturally.
Right. Isn't it wild? That's a crazy thing, because you can't really tell sometimes by looking at guys. Like there's guys that just... Well, you look pretty strong.
But there's some guys, like, they just don't look like they carry that much power, but they have crazy power. Right. It's weird. Power is a weird thing.
No, I agree.
You either have nuclear power or you don't. You know?
And again, I think a lot of that is... It is mechanics, but a lot of the most mechanics come naturally. Like some of those pitchers that can throw the ball so goddamn fast. Yeah. And some of them are skinny as fuck.
Yeah. You know? They just whip that thing around.
And then there's also your frame. You know, like some guys, just have bigger shoulders, bigger hands. They're just naturally designed to hit things more. More leverage points. Yeah, it's just...
When you think back, like, as a pioneer in the sport, I mean, it's pretty wild what you guys did. Pretty wild. That you entered into the sport. that at the time was just kind of a way to make some money. Right.
It wasn't... I mean, when I started doing the post-fight interviews, it was banned from cable. The only way you could get it was DirecTV. I actually got DirecTV specifically.
That's when you started?
Yeah, 97..
Because it was... I feel like it was right after... It wasn't banned from cable yet. Until after I fought on UFC 17..
I think it was banned from... One of those years. it was banned from cable. And there was a lot of shenanigans with, like, Budweiser and... You remember, like, McCain?
Yeah.
McCain was trying to keep it out.
Yeah, for sure.
Calling it human cockfighting. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I wasn't a fan of his.
No. Most MMA guys weren't. Because it was so ridiculous. There was no deaths in MMA to speak of. Right.
Not like in boxing, which we have a few every year. And they were trying to say it was more dangerous. I'm like, I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I mean, they're all...
Everything's dangerous. Even combat sport's dangerous. Right. But to say that MMA's more dangerous... It's just ignorance.
You just didn't understand what was happening.
No, yeah.
I have heard that over the years, a lot of different things. Yeah. I got nothing bad to say about MMA. I mean, I grew up as a wrestler. And, you know, kind of competing is what I've done my whole life.
And, yeah, I don't feel like it affected me in a bad way at all. You know, if anything, it was positive things that made me tougher. Made me, you know, have more drive with other things in my life.
Well, you're very fortunate that you came out of it on the other end, you know, healthy.
Yeah.
We know guys who haven't.
Right. No, I know.
There's a few guys that are pretty strong.
I'm not saying that it hasn't affected some guys. Yeah. I'm just saying, unfortunately, I went through it fairly good.
No, you went through it great.
And I think a lot of it was, and Randy's the same way, just being smart in training. A lot of these guys just bang way too much in practice.
Yeah.
And I'm always an advocate of sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes in training, if you're training to fight, you have to fight in training.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do you know how to manage that?
Yeah, I think over the years, you know, you just, you definitely have one, we have one hard, solid spar day a week, and then more technical sparring another day with the big gloves on. And then the other days with the MMA gloves, you know, we're still going hard, but not with the striking part, just lighter strikes, which, you know, it's kind of hard sometimes. Some of these guys, when they go lighter, that they're, you know, they slow down their punches instead of, you know, keeping your speed there and your timing and not punching as hard. So that's kind of a hard thing to get used to. And it took me a while to have that control.
I would accidentally drop guys a lot in practice because I didn't have control when I was, you know, kind of new to the sport.
Is there a way that you do now, where you train guys, to learn how to punch fast but not hit hard?
Yeah, you yell at them to, you know, don't do it in slow motion. Yeah.
Don't do it in slow motion, but also don't connect full clip.
You don't need to hit hard, but don't go slow, you know.
Yeah.
You just got to remind them, because guys just do it naturally.
Well, it's kind of crazy for you as a pioneer, because you guys had to kind of figure it.
out. That word makes me feel old.
A pioneer? I hear it all the time now. What's a good word?
I don't know. But you are. That is a good word, but it just does make me feel older.
You're the definition of a pioneer. I mean, UFC 17?. I mean, come on, man. That was back in the dark days.
I feel like I should have a fucking panda. Do some gold mining.
Yeah. But, I mean, there's no better word for it. But back then, you guys had to kind of learn along the way as the sport evolved. I've always said this, that there's not a sport that you could ever point to that has evolved more since 1993 to 2023..
I don't know.
There's nothing even close. You watch fights today like the Makachev-Volkanovsky fight. I mean, everything's so high level now. Everyone's so good in every aspect of the game.
Yeah, that was a good. I mean, their first one was a good one. I didn't expect that.
I didn't expect it either. That guy evolved. He got better. He got better, and he figured out a lot of the things that he was doing wrong in that fight and then setting up that head kick with those body kicks.
I thought Volk was going to get him. I just felt like he had more tools and easier adjustments.
Did you ever have to take a fight like that on 10 days notice? Because that's what's crazy about it. They took it so short notice.
Yeah, a number of times, especially in Pride. That was pretty common.
Yeah, Pride, they would just call you up like a week before the fight, right?
I fought Big Nog. He was heavyweight champ at the time on 10 days notice.
Yeah, I mean, there was a couple of others. I fought Bustamante on probably a week's notice.
So during the Pride days?
Two and a half months after a knee surgery, a new ACL surgery.
No way.
They called me up, and I was hunting out in Colorado, and they tracked me down on my buddy's cell phone up in the mountains and said, hey, you need to— and I didn't have a contract at the time, and I went and had knee surgery because I tore my knee, and it's like, well, if you don't take the fight, we don't know what will happen with any future contracts. So I'm like, all right, I'll do it, but you're paying me win or lose. You know, the win bonus also. So I took the fight. Luckily, I knocked him out real quick with that knee.
So, yeah.
And who was that against?
Bustamante.
Bustamante. I don't remember that fight.
It was after he was UFC champ and then left.
That is crazy. You fought two and a half months after ACL reconstruction. Yeah. That basically means your ACL was useless.
Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, it was like a minute into the fight.
How—right. Okay, now I'm remembering that fight. See, if you can find that fight. You got it? Here.
it is right here. Now, this was—which way did they do it? Did they do a cadaver? Did they do a patella tendon graft?
I did the cadaver because it was a quicker recovery.
Yeah, much quicker. Yeah. I did the cadaver on my right knee, and I had the patella tendon on my left knee. My right knee was good to go in six months, but my left knee, it took like a year before it felt normal. That's crazy.
Which knee is it?
My left. My lead knee.
And so you're supporting on it. You already threw a kick, so you're trusting it. Do you just not think about it once you're in there?
No, yeah. I mean, I was hiking like 10 miles a day for about four days before they tracked me down up in Colorado.
That's crazy, too.
Luckily, I was—but I was also drinking beer every day.
Well, that doesn't get you in shape, though.
The beer doesn't, but the hiking 10 miles a day in the mountains, that's actually probably pretty good for your fucking endurance. Oh, there it is. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
That's it. That must have been such a relief to take a fight like that two and a half months after surgery.
Yeah, no, it was definitely a good moment for sure. I was a little nervous about it because he's a tough dude.
Yeah, very tough dude. Very tough dude.
The funniest thing about that—you know, the one week that I had at home training, I threw like a wide left hook and dislocated my thumb, and it popped out. You can see, it's still screwed up now, but when I got there, I'm like, hey, can I get a shot to numb my thumb before the fight? Because they can do that there. They don't let you do it here. Right.
They're like, yeah, but you got to go to the doctor. They'll x-ray you. So I went in there, and they got one of those things. You can see the—they took an x-ray of me doing this. There was nothing wrong.
And then I'm like—but they had the x-ray machine where you could see the bones move, and it's just so weird how the bone just comes right—the ligament is gone.
Oh.
So—.
Is it still gone? Yeah.
It's just torn off? Yeah, I just—by that time, I just taped it for about a year, and then it was good.
But my other thumb got jammed in the fight. Like, when I was trying to finish him, it got jammed, and my whole thumb was so swollen, so I couldn't even wipe my ass. I couldn't take my pants off. I had no thumbs for like a week.
So both thumbs were fucked up.
Yeah.
God.
Yeah. Wow. But yeah, that was the funny part about that.
The Pride days were so wild, because did you—when you were under contract with Pride, did you, just, like, when an event was coming up, just prepare like you were probably going to fight in the event? Because they didn't contact anybody until a couple of weeks out.
For their New Year's Eve shows, you know, I knew that I'd probably be fighting most likely on most of those shows once they started. Because that was their big event of the year.
So I think I did two or three of those.
But I was ready to go. The only ones that, really, that I noticed that was real short notice were those two, you know, against Big Nog and then—.
Against Bustamante. Remember when Bustamante fought Tom Erickson in that one crazy event? No. It was one of those no time limit things, or like a 30-minute round or something like that. And Tom Erickson was like 300 pounds.
No, it was MMA. It was an MMA fight. I think it was the same event where Oleg Tektarov fought Henzo Gracie, and Henzo Gracie KO'd him with an up kick. It was like the first time we ever saw an up kick.
Was that in the UFC?
No. No, that was—that was some one-off.
Some of the first few UFCs, they were doing goofy stuff, like they had super long fights, no time limits.
Right. The first UFC was no time limit, each fight. No time limit. They just fought.
And Pride had—Pride had—when I first got to Pride, it was two 10s.
And then they turned into 10 and two 5s, right? Yeah. Do you like that? I think the 10-minute round was a good idea.
I liked it because I thought it separated the men from the boys, really. I mean, about 7,, 8, 9 minutes in, you know, guys start breaking.
Well, also, if you're a grappler and you take a guy down with four minutes into the round, and, you know, you've got six minutes to go now instead of one minute. Right. You know, if you're—you've seen the UFC guys struggle so hard to get a takedown, and they finally get a takedown, and then, boom, round's over. Right. Whereas, I just feel like, in that situation, maybe the right move is to start them in the next round, exactly where you left them off.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
No, I would like that.
Because you think about the advantage that it is for an elite striker, like an Alex Bahadur or something like that. If you take that guy down and dominate him in the first round, and then the second round starts, and he has to go right back to side control or wherever you had him.
Or just do three 8-minute rounds or something.
Something like that, yeah. Yeah. Three 8-minute rounds for a championship round, for a championship fight.
I like that. For any fight.
Yeah. Well, it's just, I think, you know, Chael Sonnen has said this. It's just like, no one can really fight all out for 25 minutes. You've got to kind of pace yourself.
No. Yeah, and that's what I said. Coming from wrestling to MMA, I kind of learned how to pace myself. And then, you know, sometimes, like my fight against Shogun, which was five rounds, but I got tired because I tried to finish him, like, in the third round and just fucking shot my wad. Yeah.
You know, and that fight was fucking crazy. That was a crazy one.
It was probably more crazy to everybody else watching than it was to me.
Really? Was it?
Because, I don't know, I felt like I dominated him the first three rounds.
Yeah.
Like, it wasn't a close decision on those three rounds. The fourth round was kind of close, so it could have went either way, I thought. And then the fifth round, he was on top of me, but he wasn't hurting me at all. So I knew he wouldn't finish me. In my mind, I knew for sure he wasn't going to finish me, and I already won the fight.
And, you know, any time he did hit me, I'd try to get out. And he just kept mounting me again every time I'd almost get out. I was so tired.
Well, I want to say crazy in that it was entertaining.
No, for sure.
It was a very wildly entertaining fight.
But a lot of people, like, oh, they didn't know what was going to happen, if he was going to finish me or not finish me. But I knew that he wasn't going to. So that's why it wasn't as exciting to me. It definitely was a lot tougher fight than I was hoping for.
Well, because of trying to empty out the gas tank.
Yeah, that. And I thought I'd, you know, I don't know if he was coming off injuries in the past with some of his other fights, where he kind of almost quit and they broke him or finished him. And so I'm like, that was. my goal was to go out there and get on him pretty hard and try to break him and finish him.
He's a guy that I feel like maybe fought a little too long.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. And he definitely manned up and, you know, was a lot tougher than I thought he was.
Oh, he's a tough motherfucker. In pride, he was amazing. Yeah. In pride, he was fucking amazing. I think a lot of guys left their best days behind in pride, unfortunately.
You know, a lot of guys by the time we saw him in the UFC, Big Nog, Crow, Cop. Crow, Cop, yeah. Yeah, there's a few of those guys that just the war. Fedor, yeah. The wars that they had in pride were so insane.
The young kids.
Fedor didn't have big wars, though. A couple, but not. No. Not where he got hit much.
No, not really. I mean, even in the Crow Cop fight, he was basically walking down Crow Cop, which is crazy when you think about what an elite striker Crow Cop is. Right. Fedor was a motherfucker, dude. God damn, that guy was good.
I feel like some of the referees or something told me, like when they were in there, reffing Crow Cop in the UFC, he's out there saying, I'm too old for this shit, or I don't, you know. Yeah. Like, why am I here? type of thing. That's not the attitude you should have when you're out there.
Yeah. Well, I think also, I don't know what he was doing when he was in pride, but I know a lot of guys, when they're in pride, were doing a lot of shit. And then they came over to the UFC and all of a sudden they're getting tested. Right. Whereas in pride, they were saying, like, specifically, we don't test you for nothing.
Like Ensign told me.
They did P-test, but I'm not sure what they tested for.
They didn't do anything with it. They just wanted to make sure you were on steroids.
Yeah. I asked them if they would. And the answer I got, well, if we did that, it would be you and no Garrett would be the only fighters we'd have.
Yeah. I always wondered. I always wondered like, how much of what you saw was guys that were sauced up. We know some guys were sauced up, for sure. Yeah.
I think a lot of sports have that evolution in there. You know, before they get big enough to be concerned about that, they're already doing it. Yeah.
Well, then there was the testosterone replacement era.
Yeah. And I was the first one to get on that. Yeah. And I was like, there's no way I'm doing it. I don't want to do that.
And, you know, the doctor's like, well, you'd feel a lot better.
And I asked the athletic commission if I even could. They're like, yeah, if you get a doctor's prescription and, you know, they say you need it, no problem. I was like, oh, really? Okay. And then everybody started kind of abusing it.
They abused the shit out of it.
Fucked it up for everybody.
Well, those days, the VTOR days, everybody talks about TRTVTOR. Yeah. Because testosterone replacement VTOR was fucking Jesus Christ. He was scary.
When I fought him in pride, he tested positive in Vegas.
Oh, really?
Because we were in Vegas. Ah. Their first pride event in Vegas.
Well, you were one of the only guys who didn't show a performance decline when you got off of it.
Right. No, I wasn't taking much. But I was – and I always – even when they weren't testing me, like they do now, they randomly show up. And I was asking for the UFC to do that for years, even though now they're getting rid of it.
Well, they're getting rid of it, but they're implementing some sort of a new program called Drug Free Sport. Right. But I don't know what that means. Their logo might be a wink.
Yeah. It depends on how much money you're making them.
Yeah. I think they wanted a little bit more control of when the tests were going on, because you thought it would show up at 6 o'clock in the morning and test guys on weigh-in days and shit like that.
Well, I mean – and I had to deal with that when I wrestled on the national team. Top three guys are subjected to that as well, and I had that for years. And then I started – that's why I was like, oh, I don't want to do that. But they're like, oh, you can. But I would test myself at least once or twice every training camp, so I could – if anybody questioned me or how I was doing it, I could show that I'm not abusing it.
This is what my levels were during training camp. So I did that all on my own, just because, even though I would only get tested by them at the fight.
Did you have to do anything differently once you got off of it, once they removed the TRT exemptions?
No.
Didn't do anything different, just stopped taking it?
No, just – a lot of that shit's in your head anyway. So I was like, fuck it, I'm just – At that time, yeah, I mean, I didn't – I'm sure that I was a little bit affected, but I felt like, yeah, I could push through it, no problem, and I did. And as I got older, though, like in my early 40s, mid-40s, I really started feeling the age a little bit, as far as just not recovering.
Did you adjust your training to handle that?
Yeah, I mean, I would – I made my training camps like a month longer, three weeks longer, just to kind of ease into it and not really go real hard for the first two, three weeks, and then really start a hard training camp and then taper off a little bit better, but just a little bit shorter practices with more intensity.
So going back to being a pioneer, I know you hate that word, but you really are.
I don't hate it.
How did you guys figure out what's the best way to train? Like, who helped you put together camps? Because you're going from this one discipline, wrestling, which you excelled at, and now you're competing in MMA, and there's so many different ways to do it, and nobody really knew exactly the right way to do it. There was a lot of – like different camps were doing it different ways. How did you guys figure out?
I don't know. I think, you know, knowing how much there was to learn in the sport, we couldn't – we kind of broke it up into different categories. You know, one day we're going to spar hard, you know, but we also needed to learn how to grapple on the ground, you know, how to use our wrestling to control certain positions. So I think, just knowing that, we didn't spend every day sparring hard, or, you know, three, four days a week sparring hard, because we needed to learn the other shit too. So I think it just naturally went that way, and then, as we got a little bit older and more experienced in the sport, you know, kind of fine-tuned that a little bit.
On certain days we do certain harder things and really try not to beat your brain up too much every day. Just one day maybe.
Yeah, it's kind of – it's interesting that even today, there's different schools of thought. Like Sean Strickland spars basically every day. Right. Whereas Max Holley –.
He was at my gym for like three years.
Oh yeah? Yeah. Was he? He's a wild boy. Yeah.
Kind of had to let him go.
Oh, did you? The crazier days?
Yeah, no, he just kind of gets too involved talking shit about people.
I can see that.
I liked him in the gym. I liked him there. He was a great training partner. You need at least one guy in your gym that does that and goes hard and makes everybody else go hard when they're going against them. So I liked it, but –.
Other people didn't.
Yeah, he just was too disrespectful to teammates and stuff.
Oh, I see.
As the young Sean Strickland.
Yeah. No, I definitely see that.
Always rooted for him when he left. It wasn't like I was like, I hope that guy – No, I always rooted for him. I thought he had a ton of potential. I was yelling at him to go up away class because he was always trying to make 170.. I'm like, dude, you need to go 185..
You'd feel a lot better. You'd be fine competing up there, but everybody's always mentally afraid to be against the bigger guys.
Yeah, he's a different fighter at 185 than he was at 170.. At 170, you could see he was compromised. I mean, he had to cut 25 pounds. easy, right?
Yeah, no, he's big.
He's way too big for 170.. But when you saw his fight with Adesanya, were you shocked?
I only saw parts of that. I didn't see the whole thing. I was somewhere else. I didn't get to see it. Fucking amazing.
Yeah, no, I saw parts of it, and yeah, he looked great.
He looked fucking amazing. The crazy thing is how good his defense is.
I thought he would do well against him. I didn't think he'd do well just standing up with him. I mean, I thought on your side it would outpoint him a little bit,
but I thought Sean would take him down and beat the shit out of him if he got on top.
Well, that's what a lot of people don't realize. Sean has a very good ground game.
No, very good, yeah.
Very good. He just doesn't use it very often. He's black belt in jiu-jitsu, good wrestling, good takedown defense. He's solid everywhere, but he just loves to bang. He loves to stand in front of guys.
He doesn't have, like, huge power. He's probably getting better at putting it in better places now.
But he wasn't like, he's not a big knockout guy, but he definitely adds them up. And really, he's by far one of the biggest pressure fighters. that just moves forward all the time.
Well, he's also able to do that because of his defense. His defense is so underrated.
He's hard to hit, yeah.
So underrated. And in that Adesanya fight, you saw it so clearly.
He's really hard to hit.
So good at moving just out of distance and then putting more pressure back on you, checking those calf kicks.
He's quick. Yeah.
I was super impressed with that fight. Yeah.
And it's even more impressive, you know, coming back from an accident like he had, too. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And he talks about it. It's like, my quad's all fucked up on his right leg. Right. Because one leg is, just like, the quad's, not even attached.
Yeah.
Which is nuts.
Yeah, no. But, again, it just shows what the body can do if you just let it. Yeah. You know, if you're just mentally tough enough to push through something.
Well, he changed his style a little bit because of it. You know, he stands different than most people. He stands very straight up.
He always has.
Yeah? Always?
Yeah. When I'd spar him, I'd quit aiming for his head. I'd just aim for his chest, and it kind of stopped him. And then I could, you know, follow up. If I hit him in the chest, I could follow up and hit him again.
But he's hard to hit.
Yeah, it's impressive. And he's the only guy doing that sort of Philly shell style at a championship level. It's, like, very interesting seeing him out there. He looks different than everybody else.
Yeah. He's quick. That really helps him not get hit also.
Yeah, but it's just also, I think, when we're going back to the different schools of thought, in terms of sparring, he spars every day. It's most of his training is sparring.
Right.
So when you see him fight Adesanya in the fifth round, the guy wasn't even breathing heavy. I mean, he looked, like, ready to go five more after that.
He's got, like, just his natural ability is his cardio. Among, you know, he knows how to fight well too, but naturally he just has cardio for days.
Well, I got to think that has a lot to do with constantly sparring. So the sparring thing is not, there's not a lot of tension. Very loose and very composed and very efficient.
Right.
Whereas some guys, like, but then again, you look at Max Holloway, he's about as good as it gets, and that guy doesn't spar at all anymore. He says, I don't want to get beat up.
He shouldn't.
Yeah, he just says.
Especially the way his fights are. I know. They're typically wars, you know.
Oh, he's had some fucking crazy wars. Crazy wars. Crazy wars. But he's like, I want to go into those fights fresh. And I think that was something that he picked up during training camps.
Like, some of the training camps where he sparred a lot, he was a little beat up by the time he actually got into the octagon. And so now he's like, look, I already know how to fight. So I'll just do drills and hit mitts and pads and constant conditioning, and it works.
Right. Yeah, for sure.
But that's what's interesting is, like, there's no one perfect way to do it. It depends upon the athlete. It depends upon the skill set.
Right. No, for sure. And, you know, you could, like, I, set certain days to do certain things because of, you know, how tough certain things are on certain days, and you want to go hard, then you want to kind of take it easy for a day. Easier, I should say. But it doesn't work for everybody.
Some guys just need a little bit more. Some guys need less.
Do you think that's something that you just need to tune in on your own, with a coach and with the people that you work with, and just figure it out over time, multiple camps?
Yeah, I guess. But, I mean, for the most part, you get what you put into it out of it. So if someday, one day, you're not feeling it, you know, you kind of get in there and you get lazy and might get beat up a little bit. But that means you're having to push through some adversity to kind of keep going, which is also a good thing in training to have to do some days. And on the flip side, you might feel great someday, and you're the one beating the other guy up in practice.
And I think it's good for the guys that get beat up to have to see how they respond to that.
Right, and to have that experience once you actually get in the fight.
Right, because it's definitely going to happen in a fight.
Yeah, yeah. What do you think was your toughest fight? Do you have a toughest fight?
I have a toughest night of fighting. That was when I did that tournament, the rings tournament, the 32-man unlimited weight class tournament. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
How many times did you fight that night?
Well, the first event. I fought twice, and then I came back and fought three times in a night.
How much of a gap between the first two fights?
So, I fought. Gilbert Uvell, Ivo, whatever his name is, the first fight that night and had about an hour probably, which is pretty good, 45 minutes to an hour. And then I fought Big Nog, and he fucked my knee up. We were in the clinch, and he jumps the guard, and his ass landed on my leg and just popped my MCL. So, my leg really hurt, my knee did.
I made it through that fight, beat him, and then I had about 20 minutes, 25 minutes. It was one fight in between.
Oh, Jesus.
And then I had to fight Babalu in the finals, and Randy was in my corner and Ryan Parsons, and I find out afterwards that, like, oh, there's no way he's going to be able to fight. I was just a bucket of shit out there in the locker room. It hurt, and then,
you know, but that fight, I had never made that much money. It was kind of, this was in the year 2000,, so I think the most I had ever made from wrestling, you know, with everything combined, was when I fought in the UFC the year before that and made, like, $20,000.. This final fight was worth $200,000.. Wow. Just win or lose, it was a $200,000 difference.
Just the one fight?
Yeah, the finals. The champ got everything. It was basically win or take all type of thing. If I would have taken second place, I would have had five fights for about $30,000 total, and I made $230,000 instead.
Isn't that nuts?
Yeah, and I'll tell you what, when I went out there and they played the national anthem beforehand, that got me pumped up, ready to go, and the thought of $200,000..
Did you tape your knee up or anything?
No, I mean, there wasn't really much time, and I just went out there and fought, kind of defended takedowns, and this tournament was, they had a little bit different rules. It was two, fives,
and I kind of liked the ultimate fighter and the possibility of another five if it's a draw.
And Babalu was a fucking stud too.
Yeah, he was, him and Nogueira were both pretty big, like 40 pounds, bigger than me, probably 40 pounds.
Babalu had one of the most horrific KOs early in his career. He fought Brad Kohler, and he soccer kicked him with wrestling shoes on. Remember those days?
Yeah, I remember that.
Brad Kohler was like a bodybuilder.
He was a tank. Yeah, I remember him.
Yeah, he was a tank, and Babalu stuffed his shots and got him down, and soccer kicked him into the next realm.
Yeah,
I think I remember that.
Yeah, see if you can find that. Babalu was an animal.
Yeah, no, he was tough. Him and Nogueira, up to the time when I had fought them, they'd submitted everybody in the tournament that they'd fought so far. So Nogueira had finished three guys.
He hit him with a lot of low kicks. That was back in the wrestling shoes days. Very interesting. The difference when your amount of grip that you have with wrestling shoes. Big fucking difference, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, Babalu was super high level.
Yeah, he was tough.
So here it is. He gets him right here. Boom!
Soccer kick.
What show was that in? Was that in Brazil?
Boy, I don't know. I don't remember. 2000,. what does it say? World Extreme Fighting.
Okay.
February 15th of 2000..
Just different fucking rule sets.
About a month later is when I fought him in that tournament. I think it was like February, the King of Kings finals.
World Extreme Fighting, going plow. Jens Pulver was in there. No shit.
v1.0.0.260408-1-a910ba6_os