Transcript for:
Insights from John Danaher's Podcast Interview

what's up guys Jake Shields here with John Donair a lot of people that watch my podcast might not know but you're um widely or a lot of people consider you the best J Jitsu trainer currently and potentially of all time and an amazing MMA trainer as well you trained greates like Gordon Ryan and Jiu-Jitsu uh Gary tonin and GSP and Chris Weidman and MMA some you know about the greatest of all time so we came straight from Jitsu so thanks for doing this my pleasure Jake it's good to see you yes so I'm to get in let's start off um before we get into Jitsu let's hear from New Zealand correct yes um I was born in the United States and uh uh New Zealand did give a quick history lesson in the 1960s obviously America was involved in the uh the Vietnam War Australia and New Zealand and I think South Korea were the few countries that actually fought alongside America in the Vietnam War um most of America's traditional allies did not join America but um New Zealand and Australia had very uh close milit ties to America because of events in World War II so when Vietnam kicked off New Zealand and Australia uh committed uh forces to to the conflict my father was a um a pilot in the New Zealand the RO New Zealand Air Force and uh he was given a station in Washington DC uh he worked in the Pentagon in the 1960s and uh I was born here in that time um sometime after that fairly short time time I was very young uh we went back to New Zealand and I was raised in New Zealand through the late 1960s 1970s and most of the 1980s yeah I did not know that I don't think most Americans know much about the New Zealand that they helped us and whatnot did you like New Zealand or not really I loved it New Zealand's a truly beautiful country um I'm always eternally grateful that I was raised in New Zealand I think uh there was a sense in which getting raised in New Zealand especially in the 1970s there was a kind of innocence to it where you uh you grew up in uh we grew up very close to the ocean there was forested land everywhere New Zealand is a physically beautiful beautiful country um and even though we were uh quite poor we were rich and experience because I don't care how much money you throw around there is nothing that money can buy that is greater than natural beauty the the ocean uh the southern sky at night things like this these are memories that um I I was truly blessed to have as a child yeah no I definitely agree because I grew up with you know no money or anything as well but you know poor financially but in a beautiful area and it makes it makes it not seem that way because we could go outside do stuff so let's switch it up real quick so you went to Columbia on a philosophy umil studying philosophy that's correct I was in uh University in New Zealand and um because I was born in the United States my father raised me with the idea that one day you'll become an American and um uh I was always curious about this land that I was born in and um when I was in the master's program in New Zealand I applied to the PHD Pro program at Columbia University uh I was accepted and uh I uh took off and found myself in the United States um uh New York was a place I'd been to uh for two weeks prior I went during the 1980s and had a look at it loved it and um I arrived in New York City in 19911 so you went from philosophy to jitu instructor do you feel like that's a completely different path or you feel like those are connected um well the strange thing about philosophy is that it it's uh of all the disciplines you can take in a university it's probably the least specific like if you do electrical engineering it's it's a very compartmentalized degree whereas philosophy is very broad-based and there's there's every aspect of of life is touched by some aspect of philosophy so I felt like um uh it's so non-specific that it could apply to pretty much any Avenue you you take and um for me I I would say I learned in philosophy the idea that uh the questions you ask in any given Enterprise are at least as important and quite possibly more important than the the attempts at answers that you furnish and philosophy gave me a question mind and an ability to take complex material break it down into parts and analyze and um and hopefully furnish rational solutions to problems and uh uh I'm eternally grateful for my study in philosophy I made many foolish errors in my life but probably the one smart thing I did was study philosophy at a young age yeah I feel like your style Jitsu and the way you come in I feel is very philosophical so I don't feel like you really completely did a uer or at 180 I feel like it's very similar and kind of I think the ability to look at uh some Enterprise that you're studying and break it down into first principles and then work from first principles is something which applies to any area in life that you care to to choose and uh that was really the gift that philosophy gave me when I entered Jiu-Jitsu so you came up through henzo Gracie which is um in New York what year did you start training uh 1994 and um compl mad house or yeah um uh when I first started jitu Hino wasn't permanently in New York he was living in Brazil he would periodically come to United States but uh he had a friend who was uh uh teaching in New York City who was who he was affiliated with and when henzo arrived then uh he set up a school the two of them set it up together they eventually went separate ways but um uh hens I stayed on with with henza and um I must say the the difference that it made when he arrived and people started training fulltime but before that you know there were three classes a week you came in it was an hour class and uh you know you made progress of course but it wasn't until you had someone who was deeply passionate about you know seven days a week training twice a day and that just made an enormous difference to the people that train there yeah I like how you say seven days a week you know twice a day because I actually I actually trained under you for like two years and it was like serious we train seven days a week it was this is already passed my athletic Prime but I was still in there seven days a week you know twice a day three times a day sometimes people don't understand the dedication and not many people do that I think um if you want you know it's pretty simple really if you want to be good at something in the least time possible you have to immerse yourself in the activity if you want to get good at language you you want to speak a language go to that country where they speak that language and just live there get immersed in it so literally every conversation you have 247 is in that language you'll get good quickly yeah I mean I fully agree that's what happened to me you know completely absolved in Jitsu and that's you know I just do it do it do it whatever I'm doing and that's if you want to be great at anything it's not easy um a very formative influence on me as a as a child um was my father and and he always used to say to me John I don't care what you do just make sure you're good at it and I think that um that's wise advice within reason of course you don't want to be the best drug dealer in town but um uh but if you are going to choose something don't go in half-hearted I Choose Wisely and then go in with everything you've got you just my life and I think you're the most obsessed person I've ever seen you'd be at the gym you know from like early morning till late night in between teaching teaching and then you'd be watching videos it's just I'll see you there just all day it's uh it's truly insane um there's a sense in which uh I'm I'm the beneficiary of the work of my students because my students compete at a very high level um almost all of them are competing at the uh the Pinnacle of the sport and have done for a very long time in various disciplines it be mixed martial arts J Didu um all of them are deeply passionate about what they do um and I felt always that if I didn't live that lifestyle I would be letting down people who I deeply cared about and people who were counting on me to to help them and um uh there's a sense in which uh people say oh you know I'm obsessed with this well uh you had to be if you just wanted to help these people achieve their their dreams and goals they're operating at a very high level where if I don't commit myself uh fully then I'm not going to be much used to them no is that when I was in there in New York even though I was past my athletic um you know let my Peak I still felt like the need because everyone was helping each other out I felt like oh I need to be there helping guys out if I was missed I would be like oh I let my guys down it's when you have that ability around each other with teammates helping raise each other up it makes it way easier and for you I think you're not a guy who necessarily expresses yourself like in a kind way but like the fact that you're always there helping people just shows that you really how much you really care yeah I've always yeah but by Nature I'm a cold person it's just um my personality I was always that way I tend to be a cold uh person who's uh who's lives according to rational principles rather than an emotional person and um but I've always believed that the people you if you want to know who you really who really cares about you in your life don't listen to what people say as people say whatever they think they want you to hear watch what they do and the people who care most about you the ones who are always there especially when things are bad that's when you really get to see who your real friends are and um so yeah watch people's actions and if someone's there always trying to help you then it's clear there that's someone who cares about you as opposed to someone who talks nice things but as soon as things get rough they're out the door you 100% ELD it you might not say the kindest things but anytime I need something from you you're there I'm kind of the same way I have the same problem I know sometimes I need to work on being nicer people think I'm like cold but it's just not it's not my nature so I can 100% relate but um yeah back to uh the training well interesting pop H off subject but we actually before we met we were actually enemies not enemies but we actually mortal enemies yeah we were mortal enemies so John actually trained George St Pierre to fight me and unfortunately when you know the the whole leadup to um uh George and uh both yourself and of course your your great training partner Nick Diaz um it's it's kind of a fascinating thing when we look back on it because because you were fighting in different organizations you two were fighting in Strike Force George was in UFC but even then even though you were in completely different organizations there was always this sense of inevitability that both you and Nick would run into George at some point um you had aced an incredible winning record there was a period where you had gone years seven years seven years like no one had defeated you um I remember you had an epic war with Dan Henderson who's a weight division above you at one point I think you were unconscious in that fight you came back and somehow woke up you woke up and then 30 seconds later you were mounted on him I couldn't believe it it was crazy um Nick Diaz uh one of the toughest guys in the history of mixed martial arts and um uh I would study you guys because I I just knew that at some point your paths would cross and I remember when you went to the UFC I think you fought uh campman was your first match in the UFC I remember watching that with George and um then it became clear that okay you guys were going to cross paths and then uh Nick came back UFC I believe bought Strike Force they bought it out and then Nick was in the UFC and then uh so my first interaction with you was studying you on video to see how George would fight you and fight Nick yes it was so cool even though I fought George I always respected him so it was great that that I was able to come friends with him at uh your gym afterwards remember I first watching your gym I was like am I going to be kicked out of here but I nervously kind of walked in and you right away greeted me you're were excited to see me and went trained and I was like okay um I still remember uh the night um George fought mcdas in in Montreal um we we had a run in over because you guys were uh coming into the locker room and I think you were asking to check George's gloves and then I I I had to go into Nick's room and check his gloves and um and so uh I thought it was funny when you came in and you know I'm not one to hold grudges and uh you came in and I've always admired your grappling ability when I started you I thought this kid he's very very well uh trained in mixed martial arts grappling and the irony of course is that when you and George train together your grappling styles are extraordinarily similar both of you uh take down step into half guard pressure pass from half guard get to the mounted possession um you both favor Guillotines as your primary uh submission from bottom position uh you're both very strong in Kimora and so when you guys train with each other it was it was hilarious for me to watch in the gym because you're literally like carbon copies and whoever got on top would would Dominate and it was a scramble to not be in bottom position feeling his guard pass was like oh this is exactly what I do and in top of me I'm like this is so hard to stop it was it was funny you guys were laughing after the session because I think uh we did a um a guard passing uh sparring round positional round and I think you passed him six times and he passed you six times and um I remember just laughing with the three of you afterwards and um those you know th those are special moments in in martial arts that uh that you know we're we're guys you know we have these temporary rivalries and then you figure out at the end of it that we have way more in common than we do exactly that could there's so many more reasons to to form a friendship than there is to to stay with a rivalry the rivalries are important because they they build your character they they elevate your your profile the without you know if it was all just friendship life would be boring um uh but I must say the best feelings come from when an old rivalry is replaced by friendship no you're right that felt really cool and yeah inter with George remember I was in New York one time visiting and there was a huge snowstorm and not naturally you know I just went to the gym I walked in it was me you and George S Pier only people there usually 100 people and Gordon couldn't get there because he had to drive and Gary they had to drive like three hours they couldn't get there but not a single other person had came over a snowstorm that yeah that just completely shocked me I was completely blown away 100 because snowstorm imagine imagine if uh you had a time machine and you could go back and tell you when you were getting ready to fight George St Pier hey eight years from now you're going to be in a gym just you John and George in a snowstorm coaching us both and having fun doing Jiu-Jitsu training you would be like get out of here this is crazy U and yet it happened yeah know it's a crazy life between it's be extremely serious and harsh at times and also extremely fun yeah and you've actually had I mean you're an amazing coach but you've also had some amazing students walk in George St Pierre you know Gary tonin Gordon Ryan you have to have that's the op not lock but it's pretty amazing to have those guys walk into your gym yes um uh I I will say this straight if for anyone who listening to this podcast uh whatever minor successes I've had in my life have come entirely because of the work of my students their dedication uh their hard work and their courage um were it not for my students no one ever would have heard my name so I owe pretty much everything that I have to my students that's why I give so much to them because they've given so much to me and uh without them I would be nothing more than an old [ __ ] in a basement playing around with some silly ideas you're amazing technician and you and you set the environment but it is but you need the students too you have amazing you know well not some not everyone's loyal but like you know Gordon Gary GSP have been extremely loyal and done so much it's just you know it's a pleasure to teach and um one of the great Pleasures for me as a coach is seeing someone getting noticeably better and the uh the joy and and the increase in confidence that they gain when they start to think that goals that maybe seemed impossible uh originally suddenly become very probable to give you a concrete example the first time George went to fight uh Matt Hughes for a title he was rushed into it you know there weren't many people in the welterweight division at that time he was a rising star they pushed him quickly into a title fight and he went into that fight just absolutely not believing he could win it um but then solid training over time uh and then uh the acquisition of new skills and he went into the second fight not believing that he would win but knowing that he would win and um and then seeing that change in character uh when he went into the second fight and then the extraordinary joy and and uh uh happiness when he attained his goal and how that translated into his family life how his mother was there um his father at the time was very sick and he went home with the UFC belt presented it to his father and and you just see the what can come out of uh building someone up and getting them to their aspirations their dreams and their goals it's it's a wonderful feeling um the joy you get out of that I believe is far greater than Joy you get from something you do alone or privately yeah you have um I heard stories you're an absolute killer in the gym but you've dealt with a lot of injuries do you feel like I don't know the proper word but like remorse or regret that you weren't able to become a top athlete yourself not really um I I've had uh people should know I I've had a crippled leg for most of my most of my life and um uh that put you know you can right now I'm seated but if you saw me stand or walk you would you would see these things um uh and as I've gotten older of course it's gotten worse um but no there's never been a time where I thought man I I wish that i' you know so even early on it didn't bother you too bad yeah by Nature I'm not someone who like seeks the the Limelight or something like that and um I'm happy to live through my students no I mean that's that's great but I mean David trell who's an absolute killer he said he spoke extremely highly of you and he didn't speak highly of most people so I'm like okay John must have been obviously your technique's insane but you must have been a killer on the mat too I I'm proud that whenever my Sensei henzo Gracie told me to go with someone all the way up to World Championship level I always made him proud yeah yeah no back training under hzo that that guy's a wild man extremely charismatic and funny but imagine that gym was was it pretty nuts back in the day it was it was a fun place um uh you must remember you you would know this as well as anyone Jake but um most people now when they go into jiujitsu jiujitsu is you know everyone knows what it is and and a guy coming into his first day in class in Jitsu now has typically seen UFC's he knows what the basic idea of Jitsu is and he goes in believing that Jitsu was a serious martial art and it's right up there with you know wrestling Boxing is one of the major components of of modern mixed martial arts um they've typically seen Judi matches on YouTube so they don't go in naive uh in the 1990s when I started my god like people you'd get like literal lunatics coming into the gym and saying like this is all [ __ ] I will fight anyone in this gym and you would have like crazy challenge matches well some people training over here there would be a fight over here it was it was maniacal and um so there were some great stories yeah yeah I remember they just like every day there'd be something and you know even the places we trained um uh you know when hzo first came to New York he had no money so one of the first gyms that we had was in a condemned building uh that was owned by some extremely Shady Chinese operators which appeared to have links to organized crime and um we went up there was this a man who had to be in his 90s who would operate one of those old elevators through the 1930s where you you need an operator who cranks an elevator the door is manually closed and you go up and you go on the fifth floor and there a bunch of people trying to kill each other on the mat it was just amazing um then we went to a uh kung fu school which used to lease out floor space to all martial arts so there would be Brazilian Jitsu in the corner then you would have Ninjutsu next to that then you would have like Wing Chong Kung Fu then you would have boxing uh then you have Krab mcar just literally every martial art working out at the same time and all of them despised each other so you know the wing Chung guys hated the karate guys the karate guys thought boxing was [ __ ] and no one had anything good to say about anybody but the only thing that United all the other martial arts was how much they hated Jiu-Jitsu and because Jiu-Jitsu at the time was the king it was kind of doing very well in mixed martial art so it was that Universal hatred of Judit and um at one point uh so many students were doing Jitsu in comparison to the other martial arts that the all the other martial arts banded together and in isted to the owner of the Kung Fu school that a giant black curtain be put around us so that we couldn't be seen curtain of Shame and um I remember one night I was wrestling with uh one of my training partners and we exploded right through the curtain twisting through like we Lally can't even see each other we're engulfed in a black curtain right into the middle of a ninja class and uh I remember some of the Ninjas like pulling the curtain and we're I'm still trying to strangle those guys we're inside the curtain and a bunch of then just just looking at us was just like you could even make the stuff up that used to happen but um crazy times I'll never forget those experiences yes you were there earlier than me in New York I think people don't believe so on my story sometimes I'm trying to tell them how different it was people come in from prison for challenge matches and obviously a lot of times I'd be the guy to get picked like all right Jak fight that guy it's I remember one of my first um private classes when H ahead me start teaching I'm teaching a guy and you know you you you want to build some kind of rapport with the guy so I'm asking him a few questions you know how how you been what do you do and he goes you know I haven't really been around for a long time and I go uh oh uh you know you been overseas he goes like no I've been in prison and I'm like oh that's cool what did you do and he goes like I murdered someone I was just like oh excellent yeah and uh so let's work on that elbow Escape um but yeah just absolute lunatics would show up I remember one time I was sitting next to a a a cop used to train with us and he was pointing out on the mat how many people here arrested on this m and he goes that you know this guy deals over here this guy works up on uh this guy's up on the upper west side and just pointed out and I was you know because when someone Works in daytime in New York that means they don't have a regular job so you're getting like cops and criminals and bouncers and Maniac yeah yeah so um the daytime classes were always my favorite that's when you see the highest concentration of lunatics yeah we had a lot of lunatics in jiujitsu but we all blend together pretty well somehow I don't know how I guess each other it's interesting how you can take the most disparate group of people you can have doctors lawyers next to drug dealers and and strippers and and and yet if you give them a unified sense of a Pursuit that they're all interested in they will form friendships and allegiances that they would never have formed in any other aspect of life and so the guy who is the $700 an hour lawyer can call the guy who cleans the streets outside one of his best friends and interact with them in that environment because they have the sheared interest in in this this art and um it builds a unity in people which is uh it's impressive to behold there's also another idea of of shared suffering you know shared suffering brings people together it's hard to suffer things alone but it's a lot easier to suffer in in in as a team and um you know all grappling whether it be wrestling or Judo or Judit so it's hard work and you know there's a lot of physical discomfort that comes with it and when you get that sense of shared suffering towards a cherished goal it builds very strong com camaraderie and you'll see people that would normally never even talk to each other become very good lifelong friends no I couldn't agree more it's it's the brings people together whether it's wrestling like you said Jiu-Jitsu fighting it brings these bonds that in the real world would make no sense people you would not expect to be friends but doesn't make a difference you know you could see like you know just is the craziest uh the craziest connections but that's why you know I encourage everyone to do it so you were in New York was the crime cleaned up by the time you got there or were you there bad um the year I arrived 1991 was the peak year for murders in New York City history so uh when uh when I first went there in 198 1988 uh just to have a look at it it was it was pretty crazy uh 1991 through 92 93 was the last years of the dinkin administration and uh they had a pretty less a fair approach to Street crime um so there was a street crime was very prevalent um there was also uh fairly widespread corruption and uh uh government jobs etc etc so um uh a guy Rudolph Giuliani was elected on a fairly conservative platform uh I think in the mid or just prior to the mid 1990s and um uh he brought in a Police Inspector who I believe was originally from Boston a guy called Bratton and they started a uh kind of very strict policing policy it was it was controversial and to this day I think it's still controversial uh you'll hear people speak good things of it and bad things of it like anything in life there's two always two sides of the story um but one thing is clear that the crime stats in New York uh they can't be contested the murder rate plummeted um Street crime in general went down a lot and the character of the city changed a lot um I'm not going to lie I I liked the old criminal New York it was an exciting place to to be in um I worked in nightclubs through both eras and um New York was an exciting place to be in the early 1990s it was more violent there's no getting around that fact um you could do things in the city then which you couldn't even conceive of doing today like if you had a problem some you just fought and uh you can't do that and sitting now with cameras are everywhere and things like this so um uh it was an exciting time and uh the city got cleaned up I remember one time I was working in a club and I came out at like 5:30 in the morning the sun was coming up uh and I I had to walk home I had um uh I didn't want to spend spend money on a cab I had very little money at that time so I walked home and part of the Walk took me through 42nd Street now 42nd street when I arrived in New York was just a mad house there were things going on there it looked like Sodom and Gomorrah when you would walk through there and um uh and I remember walking through on a Sunday morning and it was just straight up empty nothing and all the uh Street stores were just boarded up someone had just bought them out I believe it maybe actually should been Disney Corporation but I I'm not sure of this but someone had bought them up boarded them up and it was just straight up empty and everything was closed I remember being struck by this and then um uh two years later the transformation of 42nd Street it went from like straight up criminal Enterprises to uh a pretty respectable tourist destination they the turnaround of New York what was most shocking about it was how quickly it occurred like New York went from a very dangerous city to a very safe City and a very very short period of time um I believe in 1991 the the murder the total number of people murdered was well over a thousand wow and uh since then it's it's never been over like 330 so you know that's a massive drop and um uh and Street crime overall went down accordingly yeah it's crazy how fast it can drop because when I was there it seemed so safe yeah it was very safe 1996 to 2019 it was extraordin walk around by themselves night it was insane you Miss New York I think people that liked it out of all our friends like I like it you like it it's weird right everyone hat yeah no all of my students despised New York they hated it um and I remember sticking up for New York I love that City I I I miss New York every day and um uh New York was a it was a great American city but it was also great International City it was the most one of the most International cities I've ever lived in and um uh I I loved it all of my time in New York I loved it when it was dirty and grungy and criminal I loved it when it was cleaned up um I loved it through economic strong times like the mid 1990s and 2013 onwards I loved it through bad Economic Times 2008 and 2000 I saw massive changes in every aspect and it was a a great and beautiful city and I loved it the entire time most of my best friends still live in New York um and yeah I miss it a lot yeah I think most of my listeners hate New York but I loved it I remember I visit it and then uh I just love the city and I went and trained with you guys and everyone I love the environment I'm like you know what why don't I just move out here yeah yeah I think um a lot of people uh have bad opinions of New York without going there and uh of the people who do go there that have bad opinions they often go for very short periods of time now if you go to a city for one week or two weeks you if you just have three or four bad experiences you kind of hate that City you haven't lived there long enough to to really get a taste for you don't know a city and you've been there for at least a year and um uh you know if I judged New York on my first week of experience in New York I would have hated it good point um uh but like all good things in life the more you know about it the better it the better it seems it definitely has bad things too and a lot of your students were commuting in you guys were commuting like two and a half hours the problem with my students is they didn't live in New York York they they lived in New Jersey so the only thing they saw of New York was to commute in through the New Jersey Turnpike in the tunnels and that's just awful I wouldn't wish that on anybody and you know you're coming in midwinter it's freezing cold it's dark outside and there's just you know cars piled up as far as the eye can see that's a terrible experience and it's an expensive experience you know think about Gary Gordon and Nikki and the kids they they had no money at all they were coming in this expensive city costing them you know $45 a day just to park two and a half hour commute dude it's terrible and that's not even a nice part of the Gym's not a nice part of the city you know hin is in a a pretty rundown part of the city so um uh so I totally understand why they didn't like it but um uh I on the other hand I lived in Manhattan and uh you there's a big difference yeah I know I loved it too um were you there during 911 yes how was that uh it was a it was a very strange day and the aftermath was even stranger um uh I was working at a uh uh a gym teaching Jitsu uh and uh the day it occurred it was it was a beautiful blue sky day and um I was in a gym gym which is kind of a Swanky gym um and uh I would teach Jitsu there and uh one morning I was I was working out with a regular client and I looked over and a bunch of people were watching a TV and um I thought to myself man what a what lazy people they here in the gym and they're watching TV they should be you know lifting weights and working out and I looked over and then literally everyone was watching the TV so I finished grappling and I walked over and um uh the first film was coming out of the first building having been hit and they were reporting it as though a small plane had hit the World Trade Center now I'm looking at the screen and it's a beautiful sunny day there's no Cloud there's no high winds and a plane has hit the World Trade Center and this they're saying oh I think maybe like a Cessna hit first of all the World Trade Center is built very very well and people don't understand the glass that they use in those highrise Towers no cesser is flying through that glass it's going to bounce right off um and secondly in that kind of perfect where the only way a plane hits a building is deliberately yeah so I'm looking at this going I that ain't no sisna and there ain't no accident and at that exact moment the second plane went in and then people started screaming running around um uh the building that we were in was a high-rise building and uh the authorities put out an order that all buildings above a certain height had to be evacuated so we were uh kicked out of the building and I walked home because the um uh the Subways the the number one and nine line had been cut because it went through the World Trade Center so that was uh that was out of operation so um I I walked back to my place uh cell phones at that moment were just completely overloaded and weren't working I didn't actually have a cell phone in those days but um I went back and I used a landline and um uh I was calling people who I knew worked in the police force they were my students and um uh most of them were out going to the area um and then uh I uh made my way down to the the World Trade Center and had a look at what was going on at that point there was no cord and put around that wasn't till later so you could get relatively close the closer you got the more it was dominated by this crazy gray Ash that came down like snow and people were walking out from the area um uh it was clear that something truly Dreadful had happened and um uh as evening fell they they cleared the area out and people came in and started to uh demarcate it as a disaster area um but yeah it's was a shocking shocking event and uh it had the effect of unifying New York there was more unity and sense of purpose in New York City in the three to 6 months immediately after 9/11 than any other time which which I experienced in New York City it was um New York City is always you know it's so diverse that of course it's heavily fractionalized everyone's sort of add each other throats at all times but there was more unity and sense of purpose then than uh any other time I saw in New York and uh so it was both a terrible tragedy um and at the same time something very inspirational and for me as someone who's a New Zealander but also an American it was uh it was deeply impressive to me how unified the Americans became at that time and uh it was the first time I really saw like the strength of American patriotism it was deeply impressive yeah I mean obviously it was more intense in New York but that was intense watching from California and it brought people even California brought Americans together that was such a such an intense crazy moment yeah that was a was very strange day a lot of strange things happened that day yeah I know definitely a definitely a heavy thing especially for living there let's push back to martial art something fun um one one um with GSP the one fight towards the end of his career well he won two titles went up and beat um 70s and he beat bits Bing but then they were talking about both him and khabib won to fight each other that was a fight I really wanted to see I trained with them both so I'm not going to weigh in on opinions I think that'd be rude but I just think that was the one fight that I wish they' done before they both walked away what are your thoughts on that um with George there's always uh the question of what would have happened if he fought Anderson Silvera and what would have happened if he fought be great so they were both enormous fights and um uh the Anderson Silver one would have been interesting um uh obviously Anderson Silver would have had a huge size Advantage um but I've seen georgean training put down people a lot bigger than Anderson Silver and do it pretty easily I've seen him Spar UFC Champions at 205 and one5 and put them down very regularly and and hard sparring um so there's no question he could have put them down but on the other hand Anderson Silva could have uh hit him with a knee or uh front kick before he got in so it would have been a fascinating match with uh khabib that would have been more complex because that would have been very much uh at the end of georg's career would it would have gone years after the end of George's career so then you got the whole question of would that have been Pig George or would that have been four years past his prime George he was still yeah he probably past his prime but he was still phenomenal shade training a lot but yeah a couple years P your primary that's make a difference but I think um when you talk about the the greats of uh mix martial arts um there's so many incredibly talented athletes but for me personally the the three greatest MMA fighters of all time will always be George Jon Jones and kabe and uh there are many other outstanding people there people like Anderson Silva Fedor sakuraba um even people that most people wouldn't put in the conversation I always put BJ p in this conversation I thought he was an amazing fighter I thought he was badly managed I think his career was um harmed by bad judgment but in terms of of just pure fighting talent I put him way out there um but for me George kabib and Jon Jones will always be the big three and uh which one you go for is going to come down to criteria because there's they have some similarities um uh all three of them defeated every single person they ever fought George lost twice but he won decisively against both people in the rematches uh so he fought and beat everyone he ever fought uh Jon Jones ostensibly has a loss on his record but it's not knocked the guy out yeah he knocked the guy out when he lost which is I can't believe of people that hate on Jon Jones the guy's like he does some dumb things but he's spectacular fighter incredible fighter we're just talking about their fighting skill yeah um uh khabib everyone criticizes him they say well his first 15 20 fights were against nobodies well that's true but the thing about kabib is when he did in his last five fights fight the best guys in the world he just got better and better and better like it wasn't like he had an easy matches for the first 20 fights and then when he fought the tough guys it was Razer close he got more dominant as his opponents got better and better so I have a lot of respect for that guy's ability um interestingly all three of them have a roughly similar fighting style which is based around uh the ability to take an opponent down without being taken down themselves and do most of their best work with ground the pounder on the floor um which tells you something if all three of the best guys of all time have that style and you want to ask yourself what's the best style to work with there's there's a lesson there um all three of them had very long and very successful careers they had great longevity they got through their careers with very little damage that you don't see any CTE injuries in any of them they fought smart hit a lot yeah don't they don't hit very much they took relatively little damage it just tells you just what an impressive fighting style a style based around the ability to close distance effectively put someone down on the ground get top position and and uh and employ uh striking technique on the ground it's just a very effective strategy it's very hard to deal with um uh but those three amazing interestingly I've seen Jon Jones and George St Pier Train together in full spiring and um U I it's not polite to talk about it but uh uh there's a lot of evidence that Georgia would have done very very well against hiier opponents um kabib uh the whole question is do we do this as a time machine thought experiment where Pete George fights Pete kabib or is it George at age 40 fighting kabib um uh but all three of them those three will always get my vote as the best of all time is what's great is Jon Jones is still currently the champion and your students actually been going out helping him with ji Jitsu so it shows he's still learning and still Gordon Ryan he's still you know learning still absorbing Jon Jones will always be one of the most amazing people I met and uh in next martial arts I remember the first time I met him was when UFC 100 was on and um uh I was there with George George was uh the co-main event uh Brock Lesnar was the the main event of USC 100 and uh when fight week began we went in on a Tuesday night for georg's first workout the first night the the room which the UFC had allocated for the athletes was absolutely packed and you had to wait to go out onto the mat to um to go out and train so you had you know like Michael bising was training over here and um uh uh various people uh you know it's always fun when you get an international crowd because you see the training styles of different countries are very different everyone has their own approach to to training and preparation and so I'm sitting next to faras sahabi and and George is with us and he's warming up and he's waiting for his turn on the mat um finally we we finished the workout was good and in comes a very young Jon Jones now Jon Jones fought on the undercard he was wow I think it was like his second or third fight in the UFC so he was like this very talented youngster who was on the undercard and uh he came in alone and he was looking for a training partner now uh Mark Coleman was on that card and he he was a you know former Pride champion and and he was at the late stage of his career and he comes in alone and he's looking for a training partner and Jon Jones you know Mark Coleman is a legend he was like Pride champion and champ Champions like all the youngsters looked up to him and uh uh Jon Jones uh came up and he started asking uh you know the legend Mark Coleman some questions now um he was he was asking him a question about how to finish a Single Leg Takedown and he go you know I have this problem I'm holding this way and they they're using risk control and they're stopping me from from completing my comus looks at me he goes switch to a double and he goes yeah I can't do that because they're holding my wrist and my com looks goes switch to a double and he goes yeah but but what if he's pressuring down I can't bring my head up he go like switch to a [ __ ] double and everyone's just like like this so um JN Jones was like oh can I put you in and Mark com goes yeah and he starts on he starts on a single leg and just 100% explodes from a single leg into a double leg Jon Jones has the reflexes of a cat he's very very agile and he defends it they just start sprinting across the map people are just fleeing it's like the Red Sea just opens up in front of these two Maniacs who are just going now it's a Tuesday night these boys are both fighting on on Saturday night so they are just going what they go straight into a concrete wall and just go all over the M knocking people over chaos breaks out it turns into World War [ __ ] 3 and we're just looking other Frost hob I just look at each other like this is really happening and um George is going this is madness this is madness and um uh they had like a a five minute war of all wars and uh supposed to be for a fight yeah we supposed to be doing like light drilling you know like five days for a fight and um uh then they just emptied the entire gym and then they're both completely exhausted that was their workout and the next night we came in literally no one was in that room we just had an empty room stayed away from the lunatics then uh on Wednesday night everyone came back and they came back and had a second World War III this time only three days away from a fight it was amazing like you would never see that kind of thing happen in a modern everyone's too professional now like everyone's too well educated too professional but just crazy stuff would happen but um every time I met Jon Jones I was very impressed I remember teaching a seminar and um uh he was part of it it was an MMA seminar I was teaching the jitu part of it he was teaching what he does and and physically he's a truly impressive specimen you know uh hyper flexible he really uses his reach well uh he's a very very impressive fellow and the fact that again check out the longevity in his career impress figh forever still too his last couple fights at heavyweight he looks so impressive everyone trying to say he's scared of that um up andc who's amazing but he's not scared he just wants to get paid yeah of course yeah he you know he realizes he doesn't have that many fights left he wants to be compensated and if anyone deserves to be compensated it's that guy yeah he's he's been carrying the flag of the UFC for so long and um uh you know so many people say oh you know um uh his last fight he didn't look that dominant you know yeah um interesting when we go back to um those three alltime greats they share another commonality and so there's there's at least one fight in their uh in their career where everyone believes that they lost like George often gets criticized when he uh fought Hendrick because say oh Hendricks won that fight um uh kabib is often criticized when he fought uh the tough Brazilian kid um talk about of the name uh he it it was very close and you could argue that the other guy won um John had a tough fight uh uh um and uh he's said a couple of fights where the decision was very very close and you know there's always going to be this there's always going to be oh you lost that fight but um these guys were established Champions to take them out of their reign you got to come in and and do something very dominant and uh but Jon Jones man what amazing longevity what an amazing athlete and um uh it's a privilege just to still be watching him now and after all these years and still doing so well yeah I put like some reason but I don't really know him that well but like ran him recently he way of his way walk over say hi you know like extremely friendly so good to me I've never had a bad experience with with with him he's you know I'm not going to say I know him but um he's always seemed like a gentleman to me um I remember one time it was funny uh he was getting ready to fight Rashad Evans and uh it's fight week I was there and um uh I was working with one of my athletes and he comes out he goes hey hey John can you show me how to do an armar and I'm like yeah of course so uh I show him how to do an armar from from guard position now John's a wrestler doesn't I I think there's very few times he's been taken down in his career and he's spent the amount of time he spent working from bottom position has been very very low so um the fight with Rashad Evans was a pretty emotional fight for those guys because they were good friends for a long time and then you know that's right it got pretty heated between them and that wasn't fake yeah that wasn't fake yeah they they would definitely had some issues so um so he's uh he's going you know um okay show me how to do that and and I'm showing now Jon Jones is one of the most impressive athletically gifted human beings you you'll ever work out with and uh within a very short time he's doing pretty well with the yambar from God and he goes to me I'm going to win the fight with this move now it's Tuesday night the fight's on Saturday I'm like John that's that's not a good idea I go like you know new moves you need time to incorporate them they have to be brought into your repertoire it's not smart just to go out there and do the move and he's said no no I'm GNA win the fight with this I'm like no I think that's a bad idea so I I I see um uh Mr Jackson is in the room I woke up Greg John asked me to show him how to do an ambar from God and now he's saying he's gonna win the fight with it you better have a word to him and he's like oh [ __ ] so good luck convincing him so he comes over and he's like you know Aras are great they're awesome moves love them but don't really want to be fighting this fight on your back and John's like no it's not going to be an issue I'm gonna I'm just going to pull God oh my God and I'm like John you've never pulled guard in your life in a fight this is not the fight to be doing this and he's like absolutely I'm going to do it and um I remember I remember watching the fight just terrified that he was going to come out and full Guard full close guard of all things and and I'm watching the fight and I I think it was either the end of round one or round two but at some point he did jump close guard but thank God there was only like 5 seconds left in the in match but he he jumped guard he didn't go to the so it didn't come out but there was a period where he actually Jumped close gut I think on an opponent in an MMA fight but that was John he didn't give a [ __ ] he um lunatic but but that kind of self-belief it's impressive impressive and Gordon said his ability to adapt and change is like really impressive I remember Gordon texting me the first night yeah he he said exactly that he uh said man I can see why this guy's a champion he because that I show him something and he's on it and then he can improvise off of it he said he's not just following the rules I'll show him something he's improvising off that uh he said he's a very very creative person Geor uh uh George was also very impressed when he trained with him um uh but Gordon had nothing but good things to say about him he's very very emais yeah as a coach if you could show someone a move you know I coach like parttime you know if I show someone a move and they can take that move and add to it improvise that's when you're like wow this is this is great I have one kid I train who can just instantly show himself and then he's doing it differently but correct usually you want your students to do exactly how you tell them originally in the beginning but there's some guys who can take it and add to it and you're like wow that's that's so great the the goal of a of a really good coaching program is never to create robots it's to create intuitive athletes who can improvise uh according to their own measure and logic and so you never want to give students all the answers and you never want to uh as it were program them or micromanage them you want to introduce them to scenarios and getting thinking in terms of first principles and uh ask them you know what is the problem here and then have them research a problem and that's when they start figuring things out for themselves people will remember a solution to a problem that they came up with aund times better than any solution that you came up with they'll forget 90% of what you show them but they will remember every breakthrough that they made on their own accord um um those are the formative moments and you have to guide students towards those formative moments your role as a coach is more to be amused to your students where you provoke them into thought and put them into scenarios and generate experiences where they can figure out solutions for themselves even if it means pushing them in the right direction but never just spoon feeding them when you spoon feed them when you're not there you're not going to progress yeah I think that's why I love your right away I click with your coaching style because you're very precise when you're showing the moves but you give a ton of freedom to do thing differently and you realize like I'm not going to move exactly how Gordon or Gary move and you're very you adjust and I've seen you change things how you do things yourself you you'll find a better way to do things you don't get stuck on the dogma of this is how you do the move you'll find oh I found a better way to do something yeah the minute you start thinking you've got all the answers you're in trouble things change yeah yeah and there's always a better way and um even if you look at my students they when the first students came out they uh they were known mostly As leg Lockers in a world where not many people were effective leg lockers but if you look at my students all of them had very they were there was a Unity of purpose they they were leg lockers but the way they expressed that was quite unique to each one of them Gary was focused mostly on standing entries into leglocks um Eddie was uh more interested in bottom possession entries into leg locks uh uh Gordon was also bottom position but he focused more on outside Eddie more on inside um Nikki had uh ay more similar to his brother um so they they worked uh there was a unity in so far as they were engaged in the same project but their individual expression was all very different and that's uh that's a healthy thing you know you don't want everyone just to be the same or just to approach the problem with a kind of group think you want everyone thinking independently yeah I see a lot of coaches that try to make all their guys do exactly what they do you know they're like a they're having some big guy pool guard with the coach like a tall long legay guy he's teaching them the same like this is not good yeah yeah you got to adapt to your body type what you are and you were very good at that you're also yeah at the end of the day remember never lose fact never lose track of the fact that it's a martial art it's an artistic expression and like any art form it's highly individualistic and uh must always keep that in mind I think in the beginning you want to give like the fundamentals that's how you do things but then actually you get advance is like the rules don't really necessarily follow like when we came up in Jitsu member it was like never give your back never do all this stuff bring the choke to the choke side all the stuff a lot of the best guys are doing completely different now and a lot of the Dogma that th those simple principles turned out historically to be quite incorrect we're doing it a lot of us are doing the opposite of how we were taught now you've got to ask yourself like how much research really went into those principles and what you typically find is that they're taught because they were taught to someone else and that person was taught by another person and they just passed down and at no point does anyone actually expose those principles to rigorous testing um but rigorous testing is that's the great purveyor of Truth and um uh without trial and error you don't really know if it's correct and you you know even worse is a situation where you have a move which is adequate because then you'll keep it on because it's good enough but it may not be optimal just because it works doesn't mean it's not a better alternative and we get very complacent when things are working oh it's working don't fix what's not broke um but if you're always looking for that that new performance level you got to test everything even your most cherished principles even yeah it's um it's the easiest victories are when you're using technology that your opponents don't even understand and um uh it would be hard to go in just with leg logs now and win a tournament it's going to be tough you you got to you've always got to have some weapon in your repertoire which your opponents don't fully comprehend or understand and um it's easy to defend things when you know all the defenses but if you don't even know what they're trying on you very hard to defend so um yeah stay in ahead of the curve is it's an important thing yeah I think leg locks were way underused now I think they're way overused do you agree or no um I think it's starting to even out now and um uh yeah it's pushing away a little bit I think what you're seeing now is that people use leg locks tactically rather than as a submission hold and uh you can use the threat of leg locks to generate off balances and and movement which leads into other moves like the ability to wristle up from bottom position um to feed off into upper body submissions or just uh create scrambles um but the you know it's not 2011 anymore you can't just come in with leg locks leg Yeah Yeah so um uh they're used much more tactically now yeah I know guess haven't watched you in the last six months but there was a phase where all everyone doing is just sitting and trying to leg lock each other and like all right this is kind of yeah it's getting kind of lame yeah anything that's overused it's it's always a problem yeah that's what happens something becomes trendy and then people put too much time learning it before they didn't do enough then was they're doing too much and I think you're right though I think it's evening outter now I don't watch that much you justsu anymore just occasionally let's talk real quick about um Gary tonin he's um phenomenal I don't think he's been getting the respect he deserves lately because he hasn't been fighting in the US but he's probably you could say maybe the most exciting Grappler ever extremely loyal hardworking are you allowed to say what's up with this contract situation or is that um I I don't believe it's wise to talk about it it's a uh I'm no expert on contracts but lead that up to that that's for for lawyers uh I'm a Judit to coach but I'm I'm not someone who's uh conversent with law or or contract so my students when they have contracts they just do that independently usually with legal uh advice um but uh he hasn't fought in a year and terrible yeah yeah so he's been relatively inactive um so hopefully they can uh get whatever contract problems that he have sorted out yeah I would love to see him fight in the UFC or getting paid good and using him a lot over in 1fc because he's so talented so exciting just uh I said such a hard worker too he's a great his work ethic is insane and he's maintained that for so long you know it's impressive uh but he's also a great team player too I remember when um uh all the the youngsters would come in they were so young when they started he would drive he would pick everyone up at 5:00 in the morning and uh drive everyone into Manhattan uh um and made sure they were there for for morning class to train so he's he's a good person yeah it was such a he's such a good person that such a magical time when I was there he he'd round those guys up Gordon when I first came in I trained with Gordon I think he was 18 years old he was a purple belt like oh who's this kid he was tough I mean I I beat him up but it was just like I'm like this is a tough purple B and I came back like six months later and it was like I was like barely beating him and then six months later it was like we' evened out and then like he passed me it's like what the hell i' never seen anyone Excel that quick no he he's it's an amazing thing the the um the progress of all those guys is just outstanding and uh I'm very proud of everything that accomplished but they let me tell you they worked hard for it and the work eics the same yeah and Le realize they're driving if you want to make something happen you'll make it happen they were driving two and a half hours every day and then Gary was teaching at night George St Pier would fly down train with you guys that want to get great they goonna make it happen yes uh when George started he was a he was a garbage man he would take the bus from Montreal that's 6 hours to New York on Friday nights and train with us Friday night Saturday Sunday and then take the bus back home and um when you want something badly you'll find a way to make it happen I mean I was past my Prime but I likeed your Innovation so I moved across the country so I wanted to study Jitsu for a little bit because I love the art so it's like if you want to make something happen you make it happen don't make excuses I think people should realize that but yeah now I'd love to see Gary fight again soon so yeah your team's actually the team fell apart we won't get into that but there was you know after Co everyone left New York the team split into unfortunately I think a lot of people already know this but it's uh I'm really impressed with how fast you pulled the team back together yes um uh there was a split in a team uh in Puerto Rico we were in Puerto Rico training um uh during the co era and uh when we came back to the United States uh I had I actually didn't want to go to Puerto Rico I might recommendation to the team was to go to Texas they didn't want to be in New York so I said we should go to Texas um uh we had a a group vote and the vote was decisively in favor of Puerto Rico I was uh interesting the only person who voted alongside me was of all people Nikki Rod yeah clearly that was a terrible idea when you moved out there so uh uh after Puerto Rico fell apart we moved to Austin that was originally the the goal and the uh the other team members also went to uh to Austin Texas so ironically we ended up together the team that had split it up ended up in the same city um uh and then there was a whole question of what do we do I I was actually going to just retire then I was thought you know we've done a lot and um uh uh the whole breakup thing was kind of was kind of sad to be honest so um I was thinking you know this is a good time to call it quits and um I was going to go back to New York uh but at the time Gordon was very very sick and it wasn't clear that he was going to be able to compete he was actually retired at that time um and uh in Austin Texas I was teaching at a local judu school and uh I was there for a few months and I said you know maybe I'll just stay here and uh uh then some just remarkable people started coming in a youngster from South Africa Luke Griffith came in he was he was just a a kid from South Africa who' competed and lost at the European ADCC trials he came in and started training um John kab bedon who I knew from working in Boston for bday Fanatics uh wanted to come down and train um uh Nicholas merali met uh he met me originally and then um Gordon at BJ Fanatics and he expressed interest in switching from ghe to noi um a group of uh others came in and we started this training at this uh local school roer and uh everyone made remarkable progress and then they were competing very well locally and I as time went by I just stayed longer and longer and we built up momentum and then I thought you know what let's let's do another run for ADCC and uh we ended up having a even more successful ADCC as a new team called new wave um than the uh previous ADCC that we were in when the team was together so it was a remarkable turnaround in a very short period of time and again you had those same you know I hate to sound repetitive to your audience but it's that same idea of just immersion and Judit where people were coming and learning huge amounts of information a short period of time through this total immersion and technique training twice a day every day and uh and the results were there yeah I was really impressed with Nicholas I came man he was a world champion and with nogee but like he was champion in the ghee yeah with the ghee that's what I me and he I think he just started taking it off and like he did not feel World Championship noi level to me at that point I'm like oh this guy is not gonna did he win Abu D Dai that first year like that he got a silver and a and a bronze that was a short time period I was like his Improvement was I came back much later and trained with him I was like a different person I'm like a this guy's all right shortly after ADCC he went on to defeat by submission numerous ADCC Champions um um all nogee what he did in the time available jump wasn't crazy when I first came it was obviously when when he first came he was getting Tapped Out by the blue belts and with leg locks like just simple leg locking and then just uh you know four or five months after that he was a killer and then since then he's just taken off but um he he's a fascinating person to coach he's uh uh very emotional guy and very intuitive like Gordon's like coaching a mathematician and and Nicholas miral is like coaching a musician like a Mozart and very different psychologically one's a very algorithmic thinker and one's more of a hertica and um but both of them are incredible yeah I said because I mean just the the jump I Haven I've never seen anyone well I guess a Gordon too but just how how fast he he got good so quick it was impressive to me it was like shocking like oh this is not the same guy I trained with three or four months ago whatever it was and Luke too man he was again he was like a tough guy that came over and now I haven't trained with him in a while wow he's huge now too I don't know if I want to train with him anymore I don't blame you yeah look at him I'm like yeah this guy's gotten too big he looks too good did he win Abu daab last year uh he got silver medal oh yeah but it was with AIP close match with an absolute Legend so he's right there too it's like yeah you have all these world champions and right right next to world champions again just like that yes it's a remarkable thing yeah because it it was sad on the team broke up for me I wasn't there I went thinking oh maybe I could maybe I could mediate things I stopped by a B team I talk to Gordon and I'm just like a this is not happening I tried talking to the guys like hey can we patch this up and it was just no yeah you know think you know um I think when they get older they'll patch things up pretty quickly like um at the end of the day they were friends much longer than they were apart from each other and they got along great for so many years and um uh you know you know how guys are when when guys split up sometimes you you need the animosity to make the split happen more organically and naturally it's like when you and George knew each other before you know when you were fighting if you got into a room together would have been pretty [ __ ] awkward oh yeah I want to be in the room with them once you stopped fighting each other you became best friends like I I believe in the idea of that you know we all have a lot more in common with each other than we do differences and there's times when we focus on the difference and that's when conflict happens and then there's other times we step back usually time is the factor which is involved here you step back there's time to reflect and you realize there you know we had a lot of good times together there a lot there's a lot more similarities there so I'm you know I'm cautiously optimistic that time can cure most things yeah know I think I think you're right you know like I hated Mayhem for years and I talked to him on the phone the other day could Rampage he's like just give him a call I'm like like you know what why not why we why do we hate each other I could even remember why we hated each other I'm think like wait why do we hate each other okay I'll call him you how stupid it is you you know things are bad when you can't remember the reason why you hate someone hated me and then you realiz wait I know I hate this guy isn't it funny like that so I just called him they were like laughing uh yeah yeah so um and I would really like to see Gordon and Nikki his brother PCH it up they're brothers and you know they have a mother how do you think she feels when she goes to sleep at night yeah I really hope that's got to be the worst feeling in the world watching two sons not get along the good news is they they do talk now they get along a lot better than they did previously um but you know um you I remember when I was a kid I grew up with two brothers and we used to fight every day you know and uh but at the end of the day you you just hug and make up you know it's like uh so I'm as I said they they were together much longer than they were apart so I'm I'm cautiously optimistic that U time will cure most thing yeah I think you're correct um something we talk to you earlier today I hadn't drained it while and came in and remember you don't use round timers and I'm so used to training on round timers five minute rounds just that no round time like why do you do that for one yeah athlete it's hard for us to not see the time if you look at most athletic uh Endeavors they're always uh the the boundaries are set by a clock and if you look at the effect of the clock on the way the mind works it's pretty interesting um there's an old cliche that always gets thrown around that if you throw a man into the ocean and you just fly off he'll be dead in three minutes but if you take that same man you throw him into the ocean and you say we'll be back in 24 hours to pick you up you will find a way to survive and he'll be there alive in 24 hours what's the difference because time gives you hope and as long as you have that hope you'll fight but if there's no hope you'll just accept the situation and drown um same thing when you put a clock on the wall when you tell someone this is going to be a f minute around if it's going badly for them in their head they're just saying one Mantra 2 minutes left survive and they'll fight all the way through to that five minutes and they'll survive it but if you put two guys on the mat and you just say just go let's see what happens if they feel that they're losing and they fall apart mentally that's a sign of some kind of mental weakness the only thing when you're not going to get saved by the clock that will save you is your Technique and so it creates a mindset in students where they only thing they know they can rely on is their own technique they will learn the technique but when they learn to rely on the clock to save them the progress quickly dissipates yeah know it makes sense like when I'm in shape is never a problem but you know if not in shape you're like oh crap the clock and it's not there it can start messing with your head it makes you think oh what do I do and that's when you really better start relying on technique yeah and when your when your question is what should I do and you don't have the answer it's a terrifying feeling so what's your solution learn more yeah SK right you know the look at the clock oh a minute I could easily just Coast through this never see the clock as your salvation see your Technique and tactics is your salvation so when you train without a clock that's what you see yeah you also split um I already did like similar lot when I walked in you already you do a lot of things similar how you do which I love because you know a lot of things people say I'm not doing right right but then something I started copying when I teach now is you usually do like half of your rounds positionals and I think that's great starting in bad positions it usually a lot more than half yeah yeah better finishing and escaping yeah most people if you let's say you have two athletes trained with each other and sparring for 20 minutes if you actually break down the activities of that 20 minutes you will find three4 of it is spent in neutral positions where the athletes really don't engage they're looking for some kind of tactical advantage and so out of a 20 minute sparring session only 5 minutes is engaged in technique in technique which takes you through to a submission Victory if you start them in positional rounds you start someone in a winning position or from the other guys perspective a losing position then you get the exact opposite now 3/4 of the training time is spent in positions where you win or you lose and so you create athletes who spend the vast majority of their training time in winning or losing positions so they Lo they they literally learn how to win as opposed to how to engage or Skirmish with their with their opponent if you look at people who only Spar in neutral position they're skirmishers they never learn how to dominate they never learn how to control someone and potentially match winning possessions and uh uh and get the job done so I always have my students start in positions where you can either win a match or lose a match and that's where the vast majority of their training is done and then that takes down the problem of of um neutral skirmishing and reduces the Imp uh the amount of time wasted in those situations yeah things like Mount Escape for example I so rarely got mounted before I trained with you that my Mount Escape wasn't that good now putting on Mount other than like Gordon you know I can usually blow them right off everyone uh the the progress everyone manifests is directly related to the time they spend in those situations if you look at uh you know for example I've seen people like Gordon or Nicholas get mounted on worldclass opponents and if you look at those world-class opponents once Gordon or Nicholas gets mounted on them they look like they've never done a mount Escape in their life and the reason for that is simple because they probably haven't done a mount Escape in the last 15 years they're so good that when they work out with their friends no one gets mounted on them so then that one day it does finally happen they they find to their horror that they're no more experience to getting out of the mountain and the white belts in the glass they just don't practice it you're only as good as what you practice like you're a direct reflection of the sophistication and the amount of time you spend in those positions and if you haven't spent any time there and you got no sophistication you're not getting out and you'll see many times Gordon and Nicholas get mounted on people who you know they're very good but they don't look good in those positions simply because they've never been exposed to them in the last 15 years the last time someone got mounted and they were probably a white belt um whereas with my students literally every single day they start in the worst positions in the sport and the best positions so they know how to win from the best positions and they know how to avoid losing in the worst positions yeah something really impressed with Gordon he's able to put his ego away like one time a lot of times you know people be like oh I did good with Gordon it be a guy tap like 10 times so I know he didn't really do good with Gordon but one time I saw him with a top athlete he let this guy put him in his best move I ended up actually tapping Gordon first he puts him there again I think Gordon eventually got out let put him there four or five more times and Gordon's escaping like that and you see the guy realize he's the one that just got played and first he I tapped Gordon and then it's like wait a second Gordon just took downloaded my best move and can escape at ease and were watching that being like wow that was a Gordon just played this guy most people approach sparring in terms of winning and losing say I beat that guy that's their mindset you either won the sparring round or you lost the sparring round now that's good to build like you know match preparation mental toughness you know I'm not saying these things are worthless they have a value but for me the most valuable attribute in or the most valuable way in which you can use sparring time is in terms of experimentation and you have to use sparring to experiment where are your weaknesses where are your strengths what needs to be changed changed um so when you see someone who's particularly strong at a at a given move that's an opportunity to experiment and if let's say he has a a phenomenal Guillotine okay let's test our Guillotine defenses let's put our head into the Hornets Nest and see what happens Let's test our ability to defend a guar team versus his ability to employ one um and whenever you expose yourself to risks like that of course you're going to get submitted multiple times it's going to happen a lot um that's why we put you know very little wait on who gets tapped by who in the gym because nine times out of 10 it's an experiment that they're looking at and uh now if you're engaged in you know pre ADCC training where it's a competitive round starting in a neutral position where you're simulating a match well then you'll see the aame and then you'll see who the B guy in the gym is yeah I think it's important what you just said like or like if you're doing it's good to experiment but certain days you go in there and you're not experimenting and make sure you're very clear those those days you're battling and you you would do that sometimes You' have days where we go and You' actually separate the good guys together sometimes we'd be training together too much and you'd be like no no get some easy rounds yeah then we'd come in on the weekends when hardly was there and sometimes we just only good people in just battle from rough days it's just like every round he knows it's going to be a killer session yeah no it's it's you know it's tough when you've just had what you thought was like the toughest round of the week and then your next firing partner is Gordon Ryan some for yeah yeah so um uh but you know that kind of uh training is what creates very tough competitive athletes too yeah it's Sunday morning and you got train with like Nikki Rodriguez Gordon Ryan Gary Tony and you're looking at the mats being like why do I do this there's not even much well now there's money in Jiu-Jitsu finally yeah yeah that's that's a a positive thing and um but yeah back when you started jitu there was literally zero money in it you actually paid to compete and uh so um I'm I'm happy to see the athletes are getting much better compensation today than they were back in the day yeah it's nice and someone like you who's coaching has finally made some money which is nice because you've been doing it uh for a long time probably less than you would have made in a lot of careers with how intelligent you are so it's nice to say but interesting though that now that you've you know been successful you still train beginners all the time I find that I it's awesome you do but I find that a little um it's not the standard yeah um I you know to me the the real magic of Jitsu is the feeling you get when you're a beginner learning things that my Fondest Memories in jitu was when I was a white belt watching my teacher show technique where it was just like mind blowing to us like w this is crazy they've thought of everything um and uh I always want to be able to reproduce those feelings for people coming you into the sport you saw today you came to the class at Roa which is professional athletes and then you went to the class at henso Gracie which is just regular people going out to to learn jit people with jobs they come in after work and um I teach both most people think that I only teach like professional athlet but um for me you know as rewarding as it is to coach professional athletes to watch someone who works as an accountant and previously believed they couldn't uh win a fight against anyone and now they they literally go against someone who's physically much more opposing than them and through the application of technique skill and uh and strategy overcome someone that six months ago they never would have stood a chance against and that's a that's a tremendous thing yeah honestly once you started had your your DVDs out I thought you were going to stop teaching beginners and I'm still with the beginners classes that's showed you how much you love the sport and people watching you have the DVDs on BJJ Fanatics you have a whole series of I mean it's a little Advanced do you have beginner series on there oh yeah absolutely yeah because you have amazing DVDs on there so it's but you're still out teaching every day thank you yeah that's a pleasure yeah it show it shows that you true love because I'm looking at like me I'm like I wouldn't be training these beginners it could be tough it could be frustrating when you're like when you're so Advanced because it takes a long time to map out what's going on it takes almost a year to even have any understanding of what's going on my my students are uh they're they're Angels they put up with my horrible personality and my lack of patience so um uh God bless them but uh we all get along and and at the end of the day one realizes that there's something we cherish Juda there's a uh there's a vision that everyone has that in the future if they work hard and uh employ sound training methods that they can get to a level of skill which they they've set as their goals and even if you work a full-time job you may not be the next Gordon Ry but you you're going to be pretty damn good and um like uh people are often shocked by how good the some good students that weren known the first time com your gym like people work regular jobs you think you're going with some guy that num he can be a nightmare to go Brian Brian he's a classic example you look at Brian you think never done Jitsu in his life but I mean he's wrecked people who are very highly regarded probably high level UFC Pros i' imagine for sure I've actually I've seen it just rank you know wrecking these guys yeah so then there's so many cases like that like Jiu-Jitsu is a it's a remarkable thing and um it can transform people and uh and as I said it can give you a set of skills which uh can absolutely shock even a even a professional athlete I've always said Jake you know the real measure meure of a coach is not who his best students are it's who his average students are interesting the real measure of a coach is measured not by the best athletes but by the overall quality of the room that he coaches the thing I'm most proud of isn't you know the biggest accomplishments of my best students the thing I'm most proud of is that every room I ever coached was tough like you can you can go with a random dude at henzo and New York back in the day some guy as a professional you can get match up with some guy who looks like he's 45 years old looks like he just came off the night shift at the local Irish bar and that guy will give you one hell of a match and you're like damn who the [ __ ] was this guy and then you you go over the next guy shake hands with him and you get another tough match and these are people who just no one's ever going to know their name no it's true um but that's how you see a coaching program works you know someone like Gordon would have been great matter who he was coached by George S would been great L better they're both better in you but would yeah they would have been great regardless they would have been great regardless he would have probably still won a World title they ask uh but the the as I said the real measure is when you look at the room overall and when the whole room is strong then the ones who are strongest in a strong room they're going to be exceptional okay anyone could be strong in a weak room but when you when the whole room is strong and then you're incontestably the best guy in that strong room then you're something special so make the room strong and then they'll they'll the those outstanding people that uh have whatever attributes tend to propel them towards greatness will become even stronger something I've noticed or what I observed it felt like I felt like you were always very much geared towards the best person in the room and then everyone else had to kind of keep up and you also kind of expected other good guys to kind of help people under underneath them is that kind of a correct observation yes it is uh first off um everyone I teach I teach not only to be an athlete but to be a teacher as well um the second big thing that I'm proud of with my students is that I never had a great student who was a lousy teacher um uh all of them were outstanding teachers as well as athletes I've always been very proud of that and uh in the room when we all work once they start drilling together you'll see the more experienced students they work as seniors and they guide the the the Juniors the the apprentices and um there's like this sistic effect where their knowledge goes out and they they go to work um this is I think a very very important thing uh in my experience my judisu got so much better when I started teaching and it forces you to think and reason about what you're doing and uh so I teach all of my students not just to be athletes but to be good teachers as well I've always been very proud of that there was a second thing that you wanted to discuss um what was it the um they say the oh yeah you have expected the guys that yeah basically it raises everyone up you have them teach guys on anything yes um I'm I'm a big believer in coaching to the smartest person in the room the most knowledgeable person in the room I should say the the the highest level person in the room and my my take on this is most people want to be lift it up and if you put some people in a room where the most gifted are being focused on they could be intimidated by this and they got two choices you can either leave and go somewhere else or you can be you can work hard and lift yourself in a similar vein and I've always believed you get better results for the room overall when people have an aspirational mindset where their goal is to rise to the level of the best people rather than a mindset where I focus on the people who are the least gifted and Coach uh to the person who's really struggling um because that will it will create a room where the most gifted people become bored and they will leave when the most gifted people in the room leave you've got no role models if you go into a room and you see 10 people who are just unbelievably good at jiujitsu they become unconsciously or consciously role models to you like I want to be like them but if you look around the room and there's no one in there that's good you're just going to be like you don't even see the possibilities of what jit who can do you're like H and then when it gets tough you'll leave because there's nothing aspirational to look up to and so uh I coach to the best people on the understanding that they will create a vision that even the lowest person in the room can look up to and see is something that that's that's a vision that they could see themselves becoming part of so that the Gaze goes upwards rather than downwards yeah I think I think some people would sometimes view it like oh like John's cold ignoring us but I think you you know that you were trying to bring them up because you cared about them and wanted to be great so you were shooting here not down here show me a room full of people with no role models to work with and I'll show you a group of people that'll never make serious progress and when they run into adversity they'll leave because they don't have a vision of what's possible in a beneficial way for the future but if someone believes man if I stick through this and if I work hard I can become like that guy yeah you also had expectation of the other guys that were good to help I don't think you really expressed that to us but it was pretty clear like you know we come to Gordon ask him for questions like Nikki Ro Rodriguez he was every day with Gordon afterwards you know asking questions you expected the guys you to also help yeah no you you want to create that culture where um there's people that everyone looks up to and uh it's a very very important thing yeah so like you don't have time for everyone's questions it come to on an average class and hzo in New York it was between 80 to 100 people like I can't physically go to all 100 people so the question becomes which people do you go to do you go to the people who are struggling the ones who are the least gifted in the room you could take that route not saying that's wrong a lot of coaches do but the rooms don't raise to what your do yeah then the ones who are gifted are going to leave and then when they leave the even The Ungifted ones will say well why would I even do the sport like no one has any good and doesn't really seem that inspirational like if it gets tough I'm just going to quit whereas when they see something which is truly which strikes them as something which is truly desirable they're going to be I want to be like that then they will stick through through thick and thin I I think it's an amazing strategy I've just heard a few people criticize it over the years there but I think it was a great uh switching subjects real quick when Gary first started doing MMA he was smaller than me and brand new and you made him Spar me like for like five rounds 25 minutes like multiple times in a row what what was your logic um my logic was that you were predominantly a grappling MMA fighter so that it would be relatively safe you're not going to you know you you weren't going to knock him out like when you switch to MMA training your biggest fear as a coach Coes the idea of of brain damage it's doesn't really exist in jiujitsu um but in MMA it's a real problem so you were a fascinating training partner for him because first you had fought at the highest levels yeah you put him right in yes so Gary was already a very good Grappler you were a good Grappler and so that was a chance for him to do high level MMA very early in his career was someone who was safe now I would never have done that if the high LEL a guy was say Anderson Sila trying to knock him out and Stuff Plus Gary was my friend make no sense so um so you could go very hard in MMA sparring but it would be entirely safe and because Gary was already a very good Grappler even though it was MMA it was mostly MMA grappling so it gave him very early in his career a sense of okay what's the difference between just Jitsu grappling versus MMA grappling because they are significantly different yes you wanted to see the big difference and he jumped it up quick I know those first few sessions were rough for him but then he did make you know he adapted really quick yes so no yeah it makes sense throw him right at the high level so you can make you can realize it is a lot different guys don't really the first time you know doing oh I got this down oh yeah I think nowadays Sports Jitsu has veered quite a far uh far away from mixed martial arts yeah anytime you get extreme specialization that's always a risk and um you know you always have to ask yourself when what is my purpose in in going into Jitsu like uh when you started it was fighting yeah um when I started it was self-defense I was working as a bouncer um uh but nowadays I think many people uh enter Jitsu just as a sport in and of itself and uh I know there's kind of like a an argument amongst people who mostly are my age I have to say who say oh you know modern Jitsu sucks these guys if they ever got in a fight they would get killed um okay let's get a couple of things squared away here first in terms of just pure Jitsu I I truly think that the modern generation of Jitsu was significantly better than say for example my generation um and in a judu match they would annihilate them um now the counterargument many people make is that well yeah that might be true but in an actual fight these guys would get wrecked um my counter that is like listen no one would be so naive no modern judu athlete would be so naive that if they got into a real fight they would you know roll into legs underneath someone and and uh do this kind of thing no they wouldn't do that in a street fight they would just use hopefully basic technique of you know armed R get behind him trip him get on top and and hit him and then strangle him um so uh I don't think that you know the modern generation of athletes would somehow be defenseless in a in in a fight um and also uh to to be completely uh Square about this I would also say that most modern Judit who athletes especially of the last five years are significantly better in takeown and standing position than the athletes of my generation where we did almost no standing training you had the benefit of being a wrestler um but 99% of Jitsu athletes of the 1990s had no wrestling background and couldn't take down someone to save their life um they relied on the other person taking them down or and then working from guard or fighting a karate guy who had even worse takedown defense than their takedowns so I do think that modern athletes are are much more well-rounded uh than they're given credit for they have better takedowns they have excellent top control look at the evolution of Gordon Ryan like you know when he first arrived he was a leg lock guy from bottom uh then he was a leg lock guy from bottom who also had good back attacks and then he switched completely mid career to a top pressure player who did most of his best work from mounted possession um that was an evolution over time and shows what's possible and Jitsu tends to follow its role models and most young athletes today are very strong in leg locks uh they're very competent in bottom position but they also have a good pressure passing game they're very good in these top positions and they can put people down and they're going to do just fine in the fight in my opinion yeah I think the stuff that doesn't work could be adopted quick and absolutely I do think it's pulled apart a little bit but it could be adapted most people who are doing funky entries into leglocks know that okay I'm using this because I'm in a Jitsu match like I wouldn't try this if you know I was in a fight in a nightclub like um you know they're not fools and um uh so yeah I think a lot of these criticisms maybe are a little unfair that makes sense so with u as far as your moves you you go back to the Japanese name is that just to respect from where the art comes from like um uh you know people make a big issue of it names for moves and uh I know I've coed a lot of flack over this for for years um I don't care what names you give to uh to to to the moves what I do care about is that you do have names um when you when you look at uh expertise in any aspect of human life it's almost always manifested by the ability to make more fined grained distinctions than most people in that area so for example um uh if you look at uh snow to you and I snow is snow but to someone who works in an Alpine ski result they'll talk about the difference between different kinds of powder snow uh if you talk to someone who lives in Alaska like a the snow words the snow is quite native person they might have many different words for snow depending on you know for us snow was snow but for him there might be 20 30 30 different varieties of snow um so uh for us we don't know anything about snow we barely see snow but to someone who makes their living in snow they might have 30 or 40 different words for it they're as it were manifesting their their expertise their knowledge through language um and they can make more fine grain distinctions between different kinds of snow that reflects their expertise because to them whether it's this kind of snow or that kind of snow might mean the difference between living or dying if you're out there in the wilderness okay and someone like me snow for me just snowboarding I want certain type of powder so I know so I understand a little bit your know so it makes a difference to Performance and um uh so think about a situation where you have two people trying to repair a car engine um if I say to Hey Jake you know uh throw me that uh that cylindrical thing with the the gray bottom and the white top you're like what yeah that's a lot of that but if I say to you Jake throw me the spark plug yeah you know exactly what to talking about before what the hell you're trying to talk about we can communicate quickly and we can get work done quickly and efficiently we're working with language now um so uh whenever you you want to uh to to think like an expert on a subject a big part of it is making fine grain distinctions so you have to be able to have a precise nomenclature for all your terms okay people talk about a heel hook okay what kind of heel hook is it inside heel hook or is it outside heel hook is it a figure four uh hold or is it a reverse figure for and someone who's um uh highly conversent with the topic can follow instructions very very quickly they can be programmed uh through language to to act in certain ways um you know if I can if I see a situation unfolding and uh and I go left figure four my student can follow that in a second and apply it in a match situation so again it makes a difference to Performance and that's ultimately what it all comes down to can you improve performance if it disting is just arbitrary and doesn't improve performance and ignore it now your question is why do we use Japanese terms well I do think that the massive input of the Japanese into modern jahu has been greatly undersold like we call it Brazilian J 2 but it was first a Japanese art they they figured out a lot of things they gave us a lot of Technology the Brazilians did an amazing job of of going with that but a lot of the fundamental techniques were Japanese and um I try to honor them I when some moves are just obviously uh Brazilian in origin like a baron ball of course it makes sense to call her a baron ball is a a Brazilian who invented the move and it doesn't seem to have been part of the Japanese framework at all um uh there's times when I don't use Japanese words for example uh the American Lock why do I call it well the Americano the the Brazilian term why don't I call it udig gami like the Japanese well it's too close fanatically to Ashi gami so if I'm in a crowded Amphitheater calling for a move and I'm calling Ashi gami they can't be you if my student can't hear because there's a noisy crowd and they and he thinks I'm calling for Udi gami when I'm actually calling for Ashi gami that's going to be a problem so phonetically they're too close so I don't use the traditional Japanese word when there's when there's a potential problem that would lower performance um but where I can I try to show respect to the people who gave us this incredible art the Japanese were a big part of it the Brazilians were a massive part of it now some of the Young Americans becoming a big part of it now you get Australians um Europeans who and if they come up with their own words I'll use their words um so I show respect where I can but I'm also a realist if I think if I think that using the term is going to cause problems or law performance then I'll stick with another term um there are some terms that simply uh only my students seem to have used these so we have our own unique terms so you know I'm not hard and fast I'm not some crazy traditional everything has to be given a Japanese name no I'm not like that I'm um I show respect where it's due um but I'm not hard and fast but I what I do insist on is that for every move you do have terms so that you you think about the game in a different way in a very precise ordered fashion which you can relate to other people so you can make them better as well as you and as the overall level of the room goes up your level will go up with it or the old cliche is it all boats on a rising tide Will Rise um so as students can communicate to each other with more Precision they can apply moves with more precision and uh the the Precision of your of your moves is directly related to the Precision of your thinking about the moves and as your language becomes more precise your thinking becomes more precise just as instead of giving you some half muted instruction about hand me something that looks like that I can say Jake hand me the spark bugs okay um uh now we we have a Common Language and we can communicate rapidly and clearly and our task of getting the engine reconstructed is going to be much faster and more efficient that was an excellent explanation well good so I know you you study all different martial arts have you studied a lot of martial arts history as well actually no I know very little about martial arts history there's some fascinating stuff out there and sometimes students bring me just very very interesting material on um uh Japanese Jitsu the links between Judo and Brazilian Jitsu um catch wrestling that's a whole fascinating topic I'm I'm no expert in I'm not really a martialarts history I take it in and I'm you know I'm not completely a literate on these I know the basics of you know uh of the history of Judo and and Jitsu but it's it's not something you know I don't immerse myself in its history um my main thing is performance and uh I only studied history to the degree where I think it can help me increase performance yeah I remember one day I came in and someone I can't remember who they're asking you questions about different boxers and you were able to break down their defensive offensive I was watching you break it down I was extremely impressed like all these different boxers you fully understood like how they like Floyd Mayweather defense versus someone else's and their offensive attacks I'm like w it's pretty impressive just off the top of your head yeah it's um these people are incredible athletes and they they're so gifted and um uh there's so much for a student of mixed martial arts to learn from them and um so you know I I've been fascinated by boxing since I was a child and uh whenever I you know if I'm not studying Jitsu I'm probably studying boxing or wrestling or Judo someone other the martial art and they have so much to offer you did so I remember I don't watch hockey often but I was watching a hockey fight the other day and how the guy's curled and I remember some hockey guy came in was asking questions and you were actually even showing them how to grab the the Jersey how to turn how to move it and I watched the fight I'm like oh that's what John was showing memory just popped back in my head yeah there there's there's um uh it's actually quite a fascinating study watching hockey fights because they people think kind of random there's watching that memory just popped back in the head of you showing this guy I'm like oh that's what John was showing this guy I was interested in it because um when I worked as a balcer a lot of people grabed clothing and a lot of street fights turn into something like a hockey fight so it was always interesting to me yeah and you even study animal fights watching watching animal fight videos crazy place yes um but uh you know animal fights have that same idea behind mixed martial arts of of contrasting Styles interacting with each other that was like the the you know nowadays most of the athletes are pretty well-rounded but in the early days of mixed martial arts you had these extreme situations where totally different Arts were matched against each other and had something in common with with animal fights so you know what happens when a tiger fights against an antelope and um or against a a water buffalo and and these are uh it's a similar theme to the early days of MMA you think I could take a ram you fight this is a ram I think that Ram would take you right off your feet hot shell yeah I was hiking and stum across some Rams I was thinking I could take it but after surprisingly aggressive they even even it's the billy goat will just fearlessly charge and cross Rams were fighting I was trying to figure out if I could take them and then the time I was feeling confident but looking back that Ram would have launched me off the cliff I'm not going to say it's impossible in a cage maybe not I want in general humans don't do well when they go up against wild animals there's not many exceptions to that rule yeah I was looking at looking at the horns trying to figure out if I could take it but I'm not sure but yeah the interesting world of animal fights so let's go back to uh something practical what's your take on uh CGI I know unfortunately you and Craig had a little falling out out but I thought it was a great show um no it was a fantastic show they did an incredible job um in addition not only did they do an incredible job they did an incredible job against all the odds like the the show wasn't even conceived until relatively short time before it was put in place now you ask anyone who's even put on even a local martial arts show just some show in a local high school gymnasium it's tough you got to you got to do a lot of work you got to you know um got a a lot of little bureaucratic things done uh and to put on an international level show I think they had like three or four months to get it ready it's not long at all and to get it that good on the first attempt was dude it was impressive the camera work was great the the pit that they took from Karate combat was worked really well um uh the heavyweight division was supposed to be um Victor Hugo versus Nicki Rod Victor Hugo got eliminated very early so the heavyweight wasn't quite as dramatic but the the lighweight division epic fights and there was that um was it um who was that that epic match it was tacket versus um young Andrew tacket took on um uh he had many good fights but it was against Kade R yeah that was one of the best matches I've seen a great match and uh both those guys put on an amazing show and um and they were other great fights too like uh the young Australian fellow um Levi Jones Larry he had an amazing uh tournament like so many talented people especially in that late lightweight Division and they captured it well on camera they had excellent camera work and uh uh yeah they run a fantastic show there's no getting around there yeah I'm hearing rumors there gonna be another one so hopefully you guys will be in that I'm sure everyone wants to see that yeah I think the whole world's looking forward to round two they didn't amazing job yeah know that's good that you can Praise Him despite you know the falling out and stuff but you admit that was a great joy the whole thing is we we never actually had a falling out him and Gordon really H yeah you were it was all between the guys more than you you kind of got dragged into it yeah we I I could read you a text that he sent was his last text he sent to me and you'll see that there was no falling out but whatever happened after that I you'd have to ask Craig but um uh but yeah hats off to him he put on an amazing show who uh he obviously good people to help and you can't do that alone obviously uh the cameramen did great work the the event organizers did great work the athletes did phenomenal work and he did something which is very very laudable which is to get financial compensation directly to the athletes um uh of course everyone's going to criticize in terms of only one guy got paid well they you there a Million Dollar Payday for grappling which is for the sport a very significant thing that's big that's a big big deal big movement forward absolutely so um no hats off doing an amazing job got a great team together in a short amount of time and put on a great show what's your thoughts of Mikey uh musi very talented guy he's uh world champion in the G and uh and very well credentialed in noi as well yeah extremely Innovative as well yeah he's one of those guys always coming up with new stuff and pushing Innovation as well yes very intelligent young man yeah yeah a lot of really intelligent people in jiujitsu sometimes a little bit off but there's a lot of intellig people on this board high level um what you find is that uh there's intelligent people in all Combat Sports but intelligence gets expressed in very different ways like for example um one of the most interesting people I met was doing the uh The Ultimate Fighter show that George did with Josh kjic and um uh one night George called in Mike Tyson to give a speech to the to the young athletes the tough Fighters and he gave a speech he actually uh he watched one of the fights and he came into the locker room and he talked to us all for a very long time he's a very very nice person he you know he's a legend he didn't need to come in and talk to us he came in spoke with no conversation for like two hours um and there's a sense in which if you listen to a speech I could see some people dismissing what he said because he didn't sound classically smart in terms of his choice of words or what have you but he was one of the most insightful people I've met in martial arts he was very very intelligent in his own way and uh was he always able to express it perfectly of course not he you know uh he spent a limited amount of time in school but just because your vocabulary isn't perfect or just because you don't sound School smart doesn't mean you're not smart just means that you express it with whatever vocabulary you have but the insights he gave were some of the most memorable that uh I've seen among any of the extraordinary people I've met in martial arts just a very very deep person and uh but without being a you know classically well spoken in in the normal sense that we associate with you know intelligent people someone a university Professor or something like this um but uh Floyd Mayweather another example like uh you know would you say that he was like highly literate no but he's very very intelligent and he knows his craft in a way he's like a d Vinci of boxing um so there's very intelligent people but uh uh we tend to oversimplify intelligence in terms of how well spoken someone is and um but there's different ways to express intelligence than just that yeah I strongly agree with both of those guys especially Tyson I've listened to a lot of his interviews and like I say he doesn't word it in the best way but he clearly has a deep understanding very very deep and uh he was very impressively learned in his craft like uh he was talking to us about great figures of boxing his coach customar used to make him watch video of boxers and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of boxing like he would talk to us about Fighters like Harry gree like it you know if you don't study boxing no one knows who the [ __ ] Harry G is you have to know a lot about boxing to know who that guy is that's from a long time ago and um and he would talk about you know his his game and how it influenced him and and this guy was an encyclopedia at boxing knowledge and um uh so you know knowledge is always domains specific like I'm I have some competence in Jitsu but I'm a [ __ ] outside of that you know you try to get me to to drive an automobile basing things like you lived in New York for so long you were learning to drive last time I was out here like you know um one city you don't need a car so I I have you know some competence in one area but outside of that I'm pretty much freaking useless which you're pretty know want a lot of subjects but but um uh and and so you all you know uh Tyson's knowledge of boxing would would put him at the absolute top of of that category and uh but uh people tend to dismiss some Fighters intelligence in terms of well they they don't talk about you know socioeconomic problems or or uh or politics or or E economics as as well as other people but it doesn't mean they don't know their own subject matter in an encyclopedic fashion and um you know uh just because someone can't talk to you about Renaissance history doesn't mean they're not very very smart and uh I was very impressed by some of the combat athletes that you meet they're very very insightful people yeah I only met Mike Tyson once but I met him I came in h of Gracies one night and you sitting there watching his workout with like Cody no love I think brought him in it was so cool to be like oh sitting here watching and Tyson's watching his workout isn't it amazing how this there's some people you can just take one look at them and you can understand why they're a star yeah Tyson head like this AA in Aura to him you see it in certain people like Hixon Gracie interesting he watched me in cron rout one time he sitting there watching and it was like so surreal that Hixon just sitting there and watching me in his Sun train that was I was just thinking that's what's funny with Tyson those are those one of those weird moments crazy people used to see just watching it was so weird yeah and it's not just in our industry I remember um when I worked in nightclubs I um I met uh people like uh Tupac and and Biggy Smalls and and they had that same kind of uh that same kind of Aura you could see that they had some kind of Gravitas to them that made them stand out in the crowd and um you know we tend to you know romantici but there is something there there is something and I definitely agree Mak Hicks and I was literally just thinking that when you said that remember in the time that me and Crone trained it was just felt so weird with him just watching us something one part Crone must go through as a kid having him always staring watching training and it was it was a no time limit training session we were we were training for like a long time with him just watching that's awesome what year was that um time flies probably like six years I remember cron was with you that night in Montreal it was um uh when Nick Diaz fought uh George I think it was you and cron in uh in next Corner yeah he was coming in a lot training with us for for a year or two but I I haven't seen him in a while moved to Montana yeah I don't think he has the M te but still extremely talented guy yeah yeah he had great Jiu-Jitsu yeah we're doing this interview lat at night so one or two more questions and we'll wrap up something I wanted to touch on real quick you're absolutely fascinated by like swords and knives where does that come from like you have some of the most expensive coolest sharpest swords yeah um I've always believed that uh the blades are a great metaphor for what everyone does in in in martial arts um and that metaphor operates in different kinds of ways like if if you look at steel it begins its it begins its life as iron ore in the ground or in River beds and when you look at iron ore there's nothing about it that would suggest that it could be made into steel let alone a blade it just looks like a clumpy earthy object that looks like it has no potential whatsoever and yet through the process of forging which in itself is a very brutal process of uh it takes extreme knowledge and extreme hard work it can be worked over time into steel and that steel can be worked and refined ultimately into a blade and then that blade can be sharpened and Polished and it become a sword or a knife and when you look at the beginning the iron ore and then the polished blade at the end there's almost no resemblance and the martial artist goes through that same process when you first walk in the door like I did you know nothing you're a complete ignoramus and the lowest guy in the gym can beat the piss out of you but through this process of forging of hard work knowledge skill you can become something at the end where you become this sharpened blade and just like a blade it's morally neutral the blade can be used for good to save innocent lives or it can be used for murder be a terrible thing just like your Martial Arts skills they can be used to make you a better person they can maybe use to make you a worse person they're neutral you will decide how they get used and so this idea of the transformative element and then the neutrality element and how you choose to use this power you've been given I think they're they're well captured by uh this idea of the blade and so when my students do something notable I usually give them a blade as a a memory of of of that experience um um so I think it works on this kind of metaphorical level where the students see the blade and daily they're reminded of this idea of of transformation over time and this idea that knowledge and skill with hard work can change you from something unremarkable to something truly remarkable but once you be get that remarkable gift there's a responsibility that comes with it and it can either make your life something good and worthy or it could make it it could make you a man depends on how it's used yeah and you've watched and helped Forge you know George St Pierre who a lot of people say is the greatest fighter of all time and then Gordon Ryan who a lot of people say is the greatest Jitsu guy of all time you've helped Forge these men and in my opinion they're both great guys that's must be of a interesting process yeah no but again that goes back to they were both incredible people and not just them but so many of my students were when I look back it it's uh I have the deepest admiration for them and uh they went through a lot all of them and uh uh do you think they became better men as they started getting better at their Arts uh almost all of them yes it's um uh I think ultimately who we are as people is often set before we get into uh martial arts and then like any form of power it will uh uh increases in power will tend to uh manifest more clearly who you already are okay they say the power corrupts but really it doesn't it just shows who you really are and good people will become better people and bad people will become worse people with power yeah and Gordon gets like his his uh public Persona sometimes like he's a prick but really he's like because even as he passed me up he still treated me as a senior you know it wasn't like oh I'm the best in the world now and George St Pier everyone obviously know he's a great guy I think I think people tend to put way too much stock in social media their judgments of of people um the truth is if someone's just an awful person no one wants to be around them and when someone's when people stay together for many many years it's a pretty clear sign that they can't be that bad you know he's been Gordon's been such a good loyal friend to me and obviously a student to you he always Praises you yeah no he's he's been a blessing in many people's lives and um uh at the end of the day you know I've taught a vast number of people over 30 years okay there have been some people I've taught who were just awful human beings and uh none of them became famous none of them are made famous students but they were just terrible people and some of them ended up in jail and they deserve to be there and um uh but they were a tiny fraction of the number of people did most people when they come into a room and they they share hard work with like-minded people towards a similar goal tend to reform themselves and work towards that common goal and the truth is if you're a complete jerk in a room full of competitive people who practice how to strangle people and prac people's arms someone's going to hurt you you got to get your ass whipped at some point and um you can't be a complete hor a completely awful person you're going to run out of training partner if you're the strongest guy in the room and you're an awful person you can run out of training Partners if you're the the weakest guy in the room and you're an awful person you're going to get your ass whipped um if you're somewhere in between you're going to get both of those effects um so judu does have kind of a reforming process over time and if you can't be reformed they just leave they just go somewhere else I came in I got my ass whipped and made me a better person and then when guys come in the gym and they're a prick I would whip their ass either don't come back or they come back a little humbled you see that happen uh over and over Jitsu is very much a humbling experience and um uh you know just think about the whole core of what you did to is based on a submission and there's a sense in which every time you submit who are you really submitting to are you submitting to the person who submitted you to yourself we're submitting to the laws of physics biomechanics strategy and tactics that enabled that person to submit you we look at it like that guy submitted me but no that guy using physics biomechanics strategy tactics beat me if he didn't have that skill he wouldn't have beaten me so when I submit I don't submit to you I submit to Jiu-Jitsu and that General sense keeps you pretty grounded like um you learn very quickly in Jitsu that if you stop training your skills are perishable and that guy that you used to beat now he's beating you every time so you learn there's nothing special about you it's not you that wins it's your ability to apply knowledge skill technique and if you don't keep that refined and Polished just like we talked about swords and Blades you don't keep polishing and oiling the blade it'll rust your body will Rust too and your skin or rust it's another reason why I like swords as a metaphor um but in in this sense Jitsu is an intensely humbling experience you think you're the best and then you stop training well now guess what you're no longer the best um uh yeah it's evolving Sport's constantly evolving yeah yeah so in this sense it's uh it tends to uh expel people that are irredeemable and it tends to humble and prove people who are redeemable yeah I I could talk all night but I think this probably a good place to wrap it up we can do it another time maybe in the future anything you want to add or anything you want to plug I mean you have the Academy New Wave um in the works you have your BJ we already mentioned the DVDs anything else you want to mention no no it's fine it was a pleasure talking to you J it's good to see you after all this time thank you so much my pleasure