i'm the number one heavyweight in the world right now and I'm scared to fight everybody what about John Jones i'd be an idiot otherwise but now that I understand fear and what it does for me it just fuels me so much in a way that nothing else can so I'll be prepared to do whatever I need to do but I just don't like what he's doing because I can't function knowing that I trained for a fight and didn't actually fight somebody jon Jones is officially retired tom Aspenol is the heavyweight champion of the UFC did you see this coming and do you have any idea when you'll be back in the octagon i do yeah yeah tom you're the only ever British heavyweight champion of the UFC so what advice can you give young men that are struggling to find that sense of purpose it takes years to become an overnight success i've been going since I was 8 years old and I've been up against so many tests from career ending injuries to financial struggles to mental struggles and at one point we had three kids at the age of 25 and I had no money i mean my first pro fight I got 200 quid i felt the pressure trying to be a young guy but having all this responsibility on me having to borrow money from friends to buy nappies for my kids so I can keep living on this dream but outlasting people and consistency is massively underrated and in today's day and age people just have a lot of options but that obsessiveness of being 100% focused on something you win tom there's this black box in front of me which contains something which represents a pivotal moment in your career what is the story behind this it was the most devastating thing that happened in my whole career so ahead of showing you that interview which we recorded a while ago I wanted to call Tom and get his first reaction to the news that he's now the UFC's undisputed heavyweight champion of the world so what I'm about to show you is a conversation I had with Tom hours after the news was announced that he's now the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and then I'm going to play the long form interview that me and Tom had several weeks ago right here in the studio enjoy listen to my regular listeners i know you don't like it when I ask you to subscribe at the start of these conversations i don't like saying I don't like it being in there none of us like it it's frustrating do you know what's also frustrating it's also frustrating when I go into the back end of the YouTube channel and I see that 56% of you that listen frequently to this podcast haven't yet subscribed and so many of you don't even know that you haven't subscribed because I see in the comment section you say to me you go I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe and that actually fuels the show it's basically like you're making a donation to the show so that's why I ask all the time because it enables us to build and build and build and build and we're going for the long term here and listen if this is your first time listening to the Diary of a CEO you don't have to subscribe you guys your first one's free but if you've watched this show before you're freeloading now so all I'd ask you is if you've seen this show before and you like it help me help my team here hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you that's my promise thank you to all of you guys that do subscribe means the world to me let's get on with the show tom did you um did you see this coming uh yes but I just didn't expect it um when it happened i expected it so next week I'm going to Vegas i'm going for the Well they say it's the biggest fight card of the year a fight card called International Fight Week and I knew that I had some news coming on International Fight Week we got wind that Jon Jones is going to retire and then they're going to announce it on International Fight Week but for some reason they announced it um last night i don't know what that reason is it took me by surprise at least um but they announced it last night what was your initial honest gut reaction when you found out he was retiring where were you what was your first feeling when you heard that news well I only knew 100% actually last night it was always like rumors of him retiring he's putting stuff out on the media saying that he's retiring because MMA especially at an elite level is quite there's not many people like you hear rumors a lot so I heard rumors from people close to him that he's going to retire and that he's not living like an athlete um who's fighting at the top level anymore and that he's not interested and he's not in the gym and etc but I knew that there was going to be a decision made by the UFC coming soon whether he's going to continue and um we got it last night for sure we we finally got it confirmed last night so I am uh very happy to get this part of my career behind me in the rearview mirror now but but how did you feel because I think from the conversation we had which we're going to play in a second it was clear to me that you wanted to have Jon Jones on your record you wanted to fight him what I really wanted is is the undisputed title that's really what I was chasing the whole time i was never really chasing one guy jon Jones was always just a bonus because of the stuff because of the resume that he's got and because of the name that he has and the the status that he holds within the within the sport like he's so well respected i think that would have been a great scalp for me to have on my resume but uh ultimately I was chasing the belt i was chasing being the number one heavyweight fighter in the world which uh I am and I can say that I am now especially with John not around and he's retired and that's behind us but um ultimately the thing that I wanted really was was the belt the fact that John's left the sport obviously it would have been better for me career-wise to have that name financially it would have been great as well but um the thing that I was ultimately chasing was uh the heavyweight title and how do you think about John's decision do you do you view it as a strategic dodge or do you view it as a genuine sort of closing of that chapter in his uh of his legacy i think that he's entitled to do whatever he wants to be honest I'm not um he's done way more in the sport than I have so he should do whatever he feels is right i speaking as as just a a fighter here if it was if it was so public for me personally I don't know if my ego could take it having not done it um but that's that's honestly that's his prerogative i don't hold any ill will against him for it and I'm I'm happy to move on with my career now that it's over because you got to remember I've not fought for nearly a year now because of this and I've been healthy the whole time i've been in the gym the whole time i've been doing exactly what I'm supposed to do as a highlevel operating athlete at the elite level so I'm glad that that is behind us now do you in part I guess take this as a bit of a compliment that there was such huge public pressure for him to fight you and actually the route that he chose was to retire instead of fighting you i mean that's quite a compliment for someone of John Jones stature uh I try not to let my ego take control of me um I could see why people would think that but to me it's just like maybe when I've retired I'll cons when I've retired myself which is not going to happen in the next couple of years at least um I'll think about that kind of stuff but for right now it's just like we've got to focus on another fight we've got to get me active we got to get me back out there and doing what doing what I'm supposed to be doing cuz right now I've been thinking about that whole situation and being held up and frustrated for almost a year and it's not it's what I love doing i've been I've been held back for the whole time and it's not been very fun to be honest with you so my the the ego side of my brain is like "Yep I've kind of beat him without fighting him." And I did say that i've said that the whole time that I'm going to retire him without fighting him uh but I don't kind of want to harp on about that really i want to kind of just put that behind me and move forward on my own path now I hear you and you know John Jones is a an unpredictable individual so there's still a possibility that that retirement wasn't a legit retirement and that he might get a bit bored and end up you know deciding that he wants to come back and fight you is that something that you would consider if that were to happen i'm sure with where he's at he can like jump the queue anytime he wants so you know this time a year down the line we'll have another three or four contenders knocking on for a title shot I'm sure but anytime someone like him wants to step up and say "Listen I want to fight again." They're going to get an immediate title shot so uh I'm never going to count that out and I'm sure that maybe he's you know I'm in a spot in my career where there's not all that much footage out there on me maybe he sees something on me in the next few fights and he thinks you know what I can beat this guy i'm going to come back and beat him so mentally I'm never counting that out i think that the the fight is always it could always pop back up and come back around on me so that's something that I would obviously accept but as I said before I think a lot of people get it confused over the last kind of 10 monthsish is that I was chasing Jon Jones that was never the case i was chasing the the undisputed heavyweight title that's it so if I can if I do get the opportunity to put Jon Jones on my resume of course I'll I'll accept that with open arms but if not I'm content i'll move forward and I'll uh create my own legacy without him and what what has changed overnight is there as a UFC fan is there anything that I'm unaware of that changes when Dana announces you as the Undisputed does your contract change does does is there anything that changes other than the fact that you've now got a sort of a clear path and you're now the one being chased you're no longer chasing well I was on uh because I was an interim champ because I was a champion in my own right as well so I I I was already getting a lot of the uh a lot of the perks that come with being a champion stuff like pay-per-view points is something that you get when you're a champion you also get you know uh pay-per-view points is where you get a cut of the pay-per-view sales okay so I don't want to go into the details of my contracts of course but you'll get if someone pays you know $60 for a pay-per-view you might get $2 you might get $5 per bar you might get 10 people different people have different um different perks in the contract so I I was already having that because I was a I was a champion in my own right anyway but yeah not nothing actually really changes just the fact that there isn't two belts anymore in the division which is great there's one face one name and one guy in in the division and to me that is what that's what separates uh MMA from other sports other other fight sports at least is that for example in boxing you can have like five six seven eight even sometimes different organization you got the WBO the WBC the IBO the IBF and all these different ones that I don't even know about and they all have different champions in each organization whereas generally speaking the number one guy in the world is the UFC champion And before Jon Jones retired there was two of us in the division which is a little bit of a strange strange conundrum that I wasn't comfortable being in i think that there should be one guy in every division and uh now that that John's gone obviously we didn't get to fight about it which I would have liked um but at least there's one guy and uh I'm I'm happy with that moving forward and who's the who's the number one contender now you're now being chased right you were doing a little bit of chasing in terms of trying to get that um unified but but who in your mind is the number one contender now for the heavyweight title belt oh that's uh that's I'm I'm more than happy being chased that's fantastic i I would rather be the hunted as opposed to the Hunter because I I've been chas I don't like chasing fights i like just being the guy and everyone comes to me that's fantastic so most of the I've actually fought a lot of the top 10 um one of the guys I've not fought is uh Sirro Ghana French guy that's a a fight that I was look I was actually chasing that fight a few times before he was he was ducking and diving around himself a little bit so he is due a little bit of a beating off me i look forward to that um couple more guys down the rankings a Brazilian guy Jelton Almea I've not fought there's a guy I've already beat called Alexander Volkov who's doing really well for himself as well so who knows you never know join in the heavyweight division there's a couple of up and cominging guys who I've not mentioned as well so there's some some good fights to be made over the next couple of years for sure if I were to say myself it'd be great to see you fight gone in uh in London or in the UK somewhere um as your next fight do do you have any idea what you're doing next and when you'll be back in the Octagon i do but I also want to keep I also want to keep my job so there's not much I can say it to be honest um but yeah you find this Yeah I'm going to be fighting hopefully twice this year that's that's my plan at least i think I think I've wasted enough time um now so um we're looking for a quick we're looking to get a fight booked quick and it's looking like it's going to be you know pretty soon anyway um and then hopefully if everything goes well in the first one um I'm uninjured which is you know it's easier said than done uh getting through a fight with with a guy my size and and coming out with no injuries but um if I if I can do that I would like to fight at the end of the year as well that'd be perfect and uh are you off to training now are you you're flying out to Vegas so I'm assuming you're you're going to the UFC center out there and starting training no so I'm I'm training constantly regardless if I've got a fight or not the only thing that changes for me is basically intensity in uh in the sessions but I'm actually going to Vegas for Well I am the heavyweight champion of the world so they're going to want me at the big shows uh so I'm going to I'm going to be showing my face there doing a little bit of media and stuff i will of course be doing a little bit of training you know ju just different stuff i'm working with a new sponsor who I'm going to be with till the end of my career which is Champion so I'll be working with them out there and uh just doing bits for the UFC meeting fans and and doing bits of training just being around the scene and I don't often to be honest I'm so routine and I'm so routine based and goal focused that I don't like to leave my home routine and training regimen that often so uh when I go to the US and do things like this I like to do as much in a short space of time as possible so I can get back to my uh because I know what I know what I need to do to to be good and to win fights and uh that's be at home and be in my routine and and be focused so I don't like to leave my routine too much and go overseas and do all this other stuff so I'll be killing as many birds with one stone in this trip as possible you're um you're a family man Tom i got a real understanding of that in the conversation that I'm about to play um your family very close to you you're a father what's the reaction been like with your your partner your your your kids your your father your your parents over the last couple of hours since you've been crowned as the undisputed uh to be honest um it didn't really make much of a difference i think a lot of people said the same thing outside of my family as well it was like you were kind of the champion anyway because I think the way that Jon Jones played it the last year or so it just didn't a lot of people didn't see him as the the unified heavyweight champion anyway so I think a lot of people close to me like I told my kids this morning they were just like not bothered at all didn't make didn't make the slightest bit of difference i said "Look I'm only telling you so when your friends tell you at school you'll know." And they were like "Okay fair enough." That that was it there was no There was no great reaction there you say to them "What did you say to them?" Well it was just my my It's mainly my oldest son because my my twins they're a little bit too young to really understand they've just turned six so they don't really get it but my oldest son's nine almost um his friends are following MMA a little bit more so he kind of is starting thinking it's cool now so I told my son I was like "Listen I'm just letting you know Jon Jones retired i'm the undisputed champion now i've got you know this one." And he was just like "Oh okay." And I was like "I'm just I know you're not that bothered i'm just letting you know so if your friends say anything you know." And he was like "Okay thanks." John's probably watching this um he has undoubtedly had one of the greatest careers in the history of the UFC up there with the likes of Kabib and many of the legends through history what would you say to him if he was watching this now that's it's a great question i I don't I don't know if he will be watching this i'm not sure but if if he is uh I think he's had an amazing career and I think he should enjoy the rest of his life i think if he if he truly feels like he's done enough which he keeps saying that he does he will be at peace he doesn't need me or anybody else to tell him uh how good he's done he should he'll know it himself so uh I hope that he's he's enjoying his life he's enjoying his family and he's celebrating his career because it's been amazing tom congratulations i think I speak on behalf of a lot of Brits and really people all around the world when I say that um you're the champion I think the UFC especially at that the heavyweight division has really been longing for someone who wants to be active someone who is um seeking the biggest fights someone who is willing to fight anybody but also someone that's just really really relatable and I think sends a message to all of all of us that what I'd class as a very normal guy from humble beginnings can reach the very top of the professional um pyramid as it relates to sports and entertainment so thank you so much for representing the UK in uh UF in the UFC especially at the heavyweight level which we've never had before but I will all be rooting for you uh for so many reasons because of who you are but also because of the exciting way that you've um conducted yourself in and outside of the octagon so I'm gonna let you go um we're going to play the interview now that we recorded a little while ago but um yeah going to be watching your career very very closely and um going to be ringside whatever you fight next i know there's a lot of people that are going to turn out to support you so thank you so much Tom thank you very much for having me and uh if you're there as always cuz we know each other now and I know it's difficult when you know somebody personally um anytime I fight you got to strap in be ready for anything because it's heavyweight MMA at the highest level and anything can happen so thank you for having me Stephen and I look forward to uh to seeing you there thank you tom if I had met you when you were a kid and id asked you what do you want to be when you're older what would you have said to me well it depends on the age of course but I think if you would have asked me from the age of being 9 years old and above I would have said that I'm going to be UFC heavyweight champion at 9 years old yeah as soon as I kind of like went to a gym and I realized there's people in this gym who are adults and they don't have a regular job and they're just showing up to the gym every day and fighting every few months and getting money for it like I was I was literally like this is what I want to do so take me back so where do you where did you come from for someone that doesn't know who you are they don't know your story they don't know Tom Aspenol's origin where did you come from um so I'm from a place I was born in Sulford which is like Greater Manchester and then I moved to a different part of Greater Manchester a place called Allison there's not a lot of stuff going on there to be honest i mean it's just like a normal workingass blue collar place do you know what I mean a lot a lot of families like the parents work in factories they are mechanics they plumbers and what were your family in that context so my dad originally worked in IT he got paid some redundancy money and then he decided to start teaching grappling full-time which we're talking when we're talking like 20 years ago the grappling industry in the UK was non-existent and obviously I was quite a I was a budding but I wasn't I wasn't even like a budding prospect at the time my dad had no fights at the time but I was training and I was enjoying my training and my dad wanted to spend more time perfecting me to help me do what I enjoy a little bit more so was he the inspiration for you to go to the gym the first time and start training or So it's difficult to say because I had like a bit of a blurred line as to where I started actually training martial arts so I started training when I was young it was my dad's thing more and I just used to go with my dad like to spend some time with my dad and cuz I didn't really have much else to do but I used to always go down to the gym and when I started training there were no like kids classes like now you can go to the end of the road and there'll be an MMA gym with kids classes on with 20 kids in the class like that wasn't my case when I started at 8 n years old like I used to go to the gym there used to be 10 40 year old guys rolling around on the floor with each other and I just used to jump in when there was a smaller guy available otherwise I'd just be like kicking the football around the gym or something like that like basically I've grown up in in gyms but when I actually started training seriously that was probably when I was like 14 13 14 something like that and was there ever a moment in those early years where you realized or someone said something to you that you can still remember that proved to you that you were better than normal people at this thing i do remember a few instances like I said I used to train with adults even when I was a child and I was quite aware even from being young that the adults were like taking it easy on me you know like they were letting me get position and letting me do certain things on them and they weren't really trying as much and uh I remember feeling like the adults are starting going harder on me do if that makes sense does that make sense i remember I used to just have all my own way in training because the adults a lot of the time were like my dad's friends and his students and then they would I would always be around the gym so they'd know me and they take it easy and stuff like that and then I remember like a couple of the couple of the guys who I trained with like I said I was like 11 12 years old and I remember a couple of the guys like it became a lot more physical training like it became a lot more competitive whereas before they were just like letting me do my thing and then they started fighting back a little bit more and then I remember thinking ah well I must be all right like if they're trying I remember realizing that people actually started trying against me and then they finish around and look like they'd done a workout a little bit rather than just played with a if that makes sense and was that I'm trying to figure out as well the the thing that encouraged you to keep going at that point because at that age you can end up playing football you can end up going and joining this club you can end up focusing on some drama class that you're doing but there must have been something that kind of held you in this habit i mean I definitely tried all that stuff i definitely um I mean my area is like quite a big rugby area so like rugby league we play up there and uh I definitely delved in that a little bit but I just never really was my thing you know i think because my dad and my brother was heavily involved with martial arts and that's just where I always felt like safe to a degree he's like in the gym i know it sounds really weird but I felt like when you're involved in martial arts it's almost like there can be 10 guys in the room and they can all be from different backgrounds male female one guy can be 12 years old the other guy can be 65 years old one guy's retired the other guy's at college one guy's black the other guy's Chinese it doesn't matter like when you're in there it does none of that matters and everyone just respects each other and gets on regardless of like race gender age what the job is and none of that stuff matters everyone just respects each other the same and I was always like drawn to that more than anything i was that's why I always felt my most comfortable especially cuz I was a bit more of a shy kid i felt like I could really express myself through martial arts and something else about martial arts is like cuz it's an individual sport it's like always on you if you do well or not and I realized like the more time I put in the more I got out of it like mentally and physically like I would get better the more I did it whereas with team sports especially rugby because that's the team sport I've done the most like there would be games where I personally had had like an amazing game but the team had lost and I could see the next guy not trying as hard as me or sometimes vice versa sometimes they'd you know I'd had a terrible game but the team had won and everyone would be really happy and I'd be like ah I had a bad game and I couldn't I could never shake that i'd always like want to I always liked control control yeah being in charge of like my own thing that MMA in particular is very much that it's like if you're not putting the work in like you will get exposed you will get your ego checked literally on a daily basis if you're not doing what you need to do and I love that like it gives you a sense of like accountability for just your everyday habits like your thought process what you're putting in your body how much recovery you're getting how many reps are you doing in the gym everything like everything is accounted for publicly and I quite like that i quite love that actually um your mother in this picture where does she fit into this picture you've painted for me and who is she uh she first of all she is the nicest woman that has ever walked the face of the earth i think she is such a lovely person yeah there is literally you know when someone says the term oh she's not got or they've not got a bad bone in the body that literally applies to my mom but as far as so my last fight that I had which is in Manchester my home my hometown that was the first fight that my mom's ever been to really and I'm already like number one in the world i'm like bloody hell mom you've lived it this long but yes she she is she just stays away from the MMA side of things she is just uh a mom which is great that's amazing she is really really uh lovely person why was that the first fight she'd ever come to cuz it's scary and I you didn't want her to come or No it's not No it's not that I didn't want her to i I was It's never been like her thing so I would never like be like "Oh mom can you please come?" Because I know it's I know like firsthand even from like teammates fighting how scary it is for me to be in attendance so I would never like drag along someone who loves me because it's it's horrendous to be honest with you like it's such an unpredictable sport that you just never know so but I think my mom came because I was like "Look mom I don't want to tell you to come or not come but this is probably the only time I'm ever going to fight in Manchester like I don't know how many fights I've got left." And I'm I'm under the notion that I would rather retire a little bit too early than a little bit too late because I've seen the way people get late in the career and I don't I don't want to be like that so I'm not saying I'm going to retire anytime soon but I'm just saying like most of my fights are in the US now and I don't think you'll ever have a chance to see me fight live again so I think you should come to this one and uh she came and apparently she enjoyed it um as you're talking about the role that martial arts has played in your life it got me thinking about about young men in general because young men in general seem to be really struggling at the moment when we look at a lot of the statistics around like suicidal ideiation and purposelessness and um it made me as you were speaking I was like damn I need to do martial arts so if there is young men listening to this that are struggling in their lives in any way what advice would you give them in terms of martial arts or those early life decisions or even later life decisions about you know something that they can do to find that sense of purpose that you so clearly found i mean let me first of all start by saying I would be completely lost without it i think everybody should do it honestly because I think that it puts your ego in check massively because you constantly like every time you step onto a mat to train you get in a you're getting hit in the face with reality constantly and if you haven't been like for me it's like you're getting hit in the face with reality and if you're not consistent that reality will hit you harder and harder each time so it creates a sense of like purpose in your life you're almost like scared it's not it's not fear but it's like you don't want to miss because you don't want to get hit with the reality like you don't want to be inconsistent with your training because you don't want to be hit harder by the reality next time you go if that makes sense makes perfect sense i just think that it gives you just a massive structure in your life not only that not not to mention the stuff like look I'm not going to sit here and talk about crime rates or anything like that because I don't know the the statistics but I know that in this country especially crime is pretty high right now mhm so my friend who's come with me who's upstairs Charlie he does my social media and he's also a close close friend of mine as well and he's a similar age to me he's 32 and he's literally just started training because I literally said to him like Charlie and I say this to everybody who's not involved in martial arts if you need to and I'm not saying you need to be a world champion you need to train every but you need to have a general idea of how to defend yourself if it ever happens like you you don't need to be good you don't need to have a fight you don't need to be preparing to fight someone in a ring in a cage or whatever but I think everybody should be comfortable with a general idea of how to defend theself if they need to whether that be if you own a house if you have children if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever if you have somebody who you might need to protect who can't protect the self or something that you might need to protect you need to have some kind of idea on on how to protect that in my that's that's my opinion um because fighting is a scary thing at the best it's like I'm the number one heavyweight in the world right now and I'm scared to fight somebody so like I wouldn't like to be completely clueless because it must be so scary and I think that it would be I I would recommend it to anybody of any age to do some kind of martial arts so there's a couple of things you said there which I'm most certainly going to ask you about the first thing you said was about how martial arts brings the consequence of like a lack of discipline Yeah up close but also increases the consequence and I was I was thinking as you're saying that I was thinking "Oh my god this is so true." Because if I if I'm a 18-year-old guy and I'm sat this on the sofa at home doing nothing with my life the consequence of that is quite hard to see in the short term what you're saying is by doing martial arts the consequence becomes weekly and becomes you're going to get your [ __ ] nose broken so so that's motivating to get you get your life together and then the other thing you said is I'm the number one in the world and even I'm scared to fight somebody yeah who who everybody i don't want to fight anybody i don't I mean I want to fight professionally i love doing that but I mean as far as like a a confrontation with somebody that's the last thing I'm trying to do i don't want to do that with anybody so you weren't saying that you're scared to fight a particular person well yeah yeah i mean Yeah i'm scared to fight everybody yeah and I think that that for for professional combat athletes across the board whether that's boxing kickboxing wrestling MMA whatever you're into i think that's like a very very uh taboo subject is like fear because everybody wants to be this like big like I'm a freaking 6'5 115 kilo guy with like cauliflower ears and everything like tattoos and the whole lot it's pretty difficult to sit here and say like I'm scared to fight anybody and like have that and be and be literally the number one heavyweight in the world but kind of the realization of the fear that I've got now that I understand fear and what it is and what it does for me it just fuels me so much to do what I do in MMA we have terms like a gym warrior people call it like a someone who spars in the gym really really well and then they get under the lights and they don't fight anywhere near what they do in the gym now generally speaking that is because they don't understand fear properly and I think I've got in a place where I completely understand that fear fuels me in a way that nothing else can fuel me and I'm completely comfortable with it i'm super intrigued by this so I want to talk about this um this idea of fear but also the journey that you've been on with fear so have you always been fearful to fight people yeah and I think that if you're not you're either lying to yourself or you're a complete idiot yeah i think I think if you are going to sit in an arena and the arena's packed to the rims with 20 plus thousand people and there's another guy over the other side of the arena waiting to fight you who's trained for the last 10 weeks and you've got to meet him in the center of the octagon with millions of people watching around the world and know that you can get separated from your own consciousness and you're not scared you're either lying to yourself or you're just a complete idiot with your mom watching for the first time yeah i mean I see you guys do the walk outs and I'm just like wow yeah it's crazy it's hard to ever comment on someone being good or bad at something that it takes that much courage to do that I've clearly not demonstrated in my own life so so fear so you've always been scared to you've always had fear when faced with an opponent but you also alluded to the fact that there's work that you've done to overcome that fear or to e put it into perspective I guess yeah what's that work the the gym warrior and the guy who's under the lights is can be two different people and I've seen it a lot over the years i've seen it so much um still see it now still see it all the time see when you train this is this is my personal opinion this is not fact but this is my personal opinion i would say the training aspect is probably around 80% physical and 20% mental the training aspect on fight night when you are in that arena and you are you have got them bright lights beaming down on you and you can hear the crowd going crazy and you know that there's millions of people watching you you've got them tiny gloves on there's another massive guy stood across from you with his shirt off i believe it completely flips and becomes about 80 plus% mental i remember somebody I actually can't remember who it was it might have even been on a podcast or something saying "Look we spend all this time preparing physically because to be an MMA fighter you have to dedicate a lot of time and I mean a lot of time to preparing physically." So that that can be you know I train around about between three and five hours a day possibly on the physical training and that's not to mention the stretching the eating the sleeping the physio the sauners the all the other stuff that comes with becoming a good athlete so I'm probably dedicating a solid most of the 24 hours a day if you're going to count sleeping as well which I believe is a part of being a professional athlete is dedicated to me becoming the best version an athlete of myself as possible now you're dedicating all that time to training physically how much are you dedicating to mental the mental aspect and if you would ask most fighters especially at the top level you're talking top 10 guys in the world what do you think is the most important aspect the physical side or the mental side i will guarantee at least 50% of them guys would say the mental side now if you're comparing mental and physical we're spending this much time on the physical side but this much time on the mental side next to nothing and uh I could see a massive discrepancy in that and I wanted to bring the bring the mental side up so you're in the mental gym too oh all the time and what is that a lot of uh a lot of visualization okay so talk me through this give me I want as much detail as possible okay okay so I work with a hypnotherapist which I think is very important i write stuff down i have stuff where I can see it i'll look at that a lot even stuff like I'm just a massive daydreamer massive daydreamer and I can just see in my mind clearly this is something that's programmed into me for years and years and it's almost like mental see in MMA we have a term and I don't know if this goes across the board but we call it drilling so like if there's a technique if you're practicing like a want to and you're doing it repeatedly you call it drilling you're drilling a want to drilling is like repetition repetition I like mentally drill situations so when you're talking about the walk out when I'm physically walking out mentally I've walked out 10,000 times before I've actually physically walked out so by the time I'm there physically I've been there so many times mentally that it feels quite quite normal to me and then I constantly tell myself that I got to enjoy it because I'm completely aware now especially I'm closer to the end than I am on the beginning now definitely i don't know when I'm going to retire i have no plans to retire right now but I'm definitely close to the end than I am in the beginning and the moments that we have these walk out moments these fear moments of being stood in the cage with another guy who's stood in the cage with me and we know that once these officials get out of the ring and they close that cage we are going to fight and someone is going to win or someone's going to lose like those are really special moments and you have to enjoy them because when I'm 60 years old and I hopefully I've got grandkids and I can I want to be telling them about these special moments and not wishing them away and really really enjoying them and that's something that mentally I try and practice being in the moment and enjoying it a lot and I feel like a lot of fighters they just they're just so stressed about the end result that they can't even focus on enjoying theself in the right now and I know for me personally when I'm enjoying myself that's when I do my best so I want to enjoy myself i want to talk to you about a few things you said there you talked about visualization was what you mentioned first and writing things down what kind of things do you write down and like what what's your pro your whole process there cuz I'm sure there's people at home that would love to understand some of these practices so that they can implement them in their own life and then also speak to the the value that has brought to your life doing these kind of things you talk about visualization people think about this like weird woo woo kind of thing sit sitting there with crystals on you and weird music and meditate it's not like that it's as simple as getting a piece of paper writing down this week I will do this and enjoy it that simple as that that that's all I do this year i will win two fights i will enjoy both of them and I will perform to my best and just reading it every so often and how often do you do that is it something you do at the start of the year or is it just like sporadically really i'm not It's not something I I'm not the kind of guy who goes right the beginning of the year this is my uh visualization board or anything like that not that there's anything wrong with that that's just not what I do personally i just write when I feel like writing stuff I'll write it and most of the time I've got it in my bedside table or I've got it somewhere that I can see it and I'll pick it up i'll read it a few times the same sentence i'll put it down and I feel like it's in there i wrote recently that things are working for me because I'm in a really weird situation with my career that I've never really been before where um there's a lot of politics involved in my my kind of next move with John Jones yeah i think I said to you like off camera is like usually it's like right get off of the fight work towards the fight fight's over little bit of downtime another fight work towards that fight over blah blah blah whereas now I'm just kind of like a little bit in limbo when I don't know what's happening and I'm just like ah usually I'm used to like having my life mapped out as to when I need to dedicate more time to this and how much what training partners coming there and what I need to focus on but now I'm just in a little bit limbo where I don't know really what's going on and I wanted to really write down just to solidify that all this is happening cuz I think when when you are in those kind of situations I know me personally I start to like conspire in my own like that everyone's conspiring against me like oh this is not working out for me and I start thinking negatively but I think sometimes you just got to write down like this is going to be all right like this is whatever's happening right now I don't know what it is and I I don't know i can't fix it personally cuz it's nothing to do with me but I know it's going to work it's going to end up all right and it's going to work out for me so a couple of weeks ago I remember just writing that down putting it in the thing next to my bed and uh sometimes when I'm waking up I'm feeling a bit stressed I'll just read it put it away and then that's it so any moment maybe today maybe now maybe your phone upstairs could have a text message on it from Dana White saying "We're good to go." Yeah pretty much i am now like training i'm I mean I'm always training anyway training is a massive part of my life but I could get a text at any moment telling me I'm going to fight in six weeks and that would be amazing um and it would be the biggest fight of all time yeah but I don't think that's going to happen because they are giving it that it's the definitely in my opinion there's a few massive fights to be made at the moment in MMA uh but I think as far as thirst from fans this is the one that people want to see the most um when I say that does it make you nervous um everything I just said when I said it was the biggest fight of all time i love it yeah that's what I want to do yeah that's what I want to be involved with yeah that's that's why we do this thing we don't like I have had a lot of fights that nobody cared about in all honesty like I've had a lot of fights i think don't people don't realize like they see me and other guys at the top of the division you know we're traveling the world we're making money we're winning titles we're doing all this good stuff honestly most of my fights there was a hundred people there and I came away with 100 quid cash and nobody gave a [ __ ] either way yeah that's uh and that's that's the realization of it like MMA is such a tough sport to like a lot of kids not a lot of kids but a lot of parents if I meet a parent on the street who's kids involved in MMA or whatever a lot of the time will say like what advice have you got for them and in all honesty a lot of the time I'm like I have a backup plan because it's so difficult to make any money out of uh or any like I was saying I'm going to an event tomorrow actually it's a local show i was a amateur champion on the show it's a great show do you know what I mean there'll be there'll be a couple of thousand people there tomorrow and it's a there's got a big fight card like there's maybe 20 fights on so there's 40 fighters fighting tomorrow night i'm going to it and uh I was chatting to to my friend last night actually he said "Oh is there anyone uh decent on the couch?" I said "Yeah yeah there's a couple of guys on." And he said "Oh will anybody go to the UFC?" And we just got chatting about that and and how that looks and how it looks to get in the UFC and and I said to be honest with you if one person out of the 40 can buy a house from MMA I would be very surprised and that's one in 40 decent level like it's just so hard to make a living out I've ever made there is absolutely no career path to doing it really especially in this country like it's getting tougher and tougher and I'm trying to I'm trying to raise as much awareness about MMA as possible i want kids to be able to look at guys like me and other guys and be like if he's making a career out of it I can but it is so hard in this country that's why I'm doing as much as I can to try and get this thing as mainstream as possible i mean even in the UK if I think there's been what hundreds of thousands of kids that probably practiced MMA over the last couple of years and how many of them really get to the point where they could buy a house from it you know you can name them like you you Conor McGregor Ian Garry Patty Pimlet Leon Edwards i mean there there's definitely guys who who have made a lot of money out of it and and have a good living but honestly like I've been around gyms all my life and I would say 95% of people have never made more than five grand for a fight how much were you getting paid throughout your amateur career cuz you were an amateur fighter up until the point where you basically ran out of people you could fight y um I think you had nine amateur fights right nine nine which at the time was quite a lot i would always recommend get as much as much experience as you can as an amateur before you move on to pro but yeah so as as an amateur I was obviously getting ticket money so I'd sell sell So the way it worked when I was fighting as an amateur at least it was like if you would sell a ticket for 30 quid you would get a fiverr of it so that the promoters would work off that like a little percentage thing going so of those nine amateur fights how much do you think you all together i was maybe making between 50 and 100 quid a fight okay so that's nearly a grand yeah nearly yeah nearly a grand on that and then you went you had a professional run as well was it seven fights as a professional in MMA before I got to the I have no idea before I got to the UFC probably Yeah maybe seven yeah put it down as seven so I remember my first pro fight I got 200 quid okay so you you doubled doubled it smashing it i was absolutely smashing it then so So that's Yeah another So you probably made two grand or something there and then the UFC pays much better much better much better which is when you can start to make a living from it yeah i mean they start off pretty good uh the thing I'm really lucky in the fact that I've got a fan friendly style so people want to see me fight especially heavyweights people want to see a lot a lot of the people like who are not they've not got a technically trained eye they want to see two guys punching each other and one guy unconscious that that's that's the brutality of it and that's the that's the reality of it and my style generally speaking brings that well I mean generally speaking don't you hold the world record for the average fastest time I do yeah yeah that a fight ends yes yeah which is pretty crazy so I mean that's why you're such a draw right cuz you're knocking everyone out within 2 minutes on average yep yeah so like you I progress through contracts and money quite quickly because of my style but not everybody does so generally speaking you get in the UFC you get what's called show money which is your money to show up which is what what can you tell me usually it's 10 grand dollars and I mean people's contracts are different but I'm just speaking generally people start off at 10 and 10 they get show money win money so generally speaking and this this varies amongst you know if someone's got a career in another big organization sometimes they'll sign him for more than that but I was coming off a regional show so I I think I I either got 10 and 10 or 12 and 12 I can't remember but generally speaking it's like you get your show money which is between 10 and 15k dollars and then your win bonus is double your show money usually so 10 and 10 12 and 12 15 and 15 for how long are you on that contract they usually do four fights okay but the thing is they can terminate that at any time so if you're in like a fight that's boring it's a bit of a stinker even if you win they can just be like "Yeah we're done done with that." Interesting yeah so if it's four fights you're getting 10 and 10 you could earn that's 80k if you win you usually go up so it' be like 10 and 10 12 and 12 14 and 14 16 and 16 something like that okay the low end is you could make 80k from those first yeah but if you lose you're just getting 10 that's the uh Oh yeah you can make 40k yeah and generally speaking like if you go 10 and 10 you win you go 12 and 12 you win you go 14 and 14 but you lose that one you go back to 12 and 12 does that make sense okay but if you have an exciting style and the UFC like you see I'm very lucky because I'm from the UK and people from the UK get behind the fighters a lot of the time and I'm very lucky that I've got that myself so I did 10 and 10 and then I think 12 and 12 if I remember rightly and then they resigned me then because they had two first round finishes oh so they resigned me for a bigger contract then which was great and then I they assign me for another four fights and then you know you win a couple more in exciting fashion and you can you can get bigger contracts you don't have to stay for the four so after two fights you got a new deal yes and that drastically changes the money yes yeah like from still in the tens still in the tens yeah bigger tens 50s yeah yeah yeah cuz I thought it was 50 i thought that I thought um someone like Ian Garry who came in from uh what's the organization he came in cage Warriors cage Warriors i also came in from Cage Warriors oh okay so he must have been I thought he was on 50 i mean he might have been he might have been like yeah maybe he was I don't know like I say it varies from person to person but from my experience I came in is either 10 and 10 or 12 and 12 I can't remember exactly and when does the big the big like six figure show money begin so I got a a good contract because I took the title fight on two weeks notice so I was in a bit of a position there where like I could kind of like save the card because there was a title fight on the card somebody pulled out they asked me to step in so you know I was in a position that the UFC was kind kind of like needed me a little bit then so um but to answer the question everyone's different with that but with the money aspect it's like when you start becoming popular and winning fights that when people want to see you basically that's it's just as much about do people want to watch you fight that's that's like a bit it's not just about winning fights winning fights is extremely important but you you got to make people want to see you so that was against Ser Sergey Pavlovich that's right in that was in the the end of 2023 yes november and that was your first six-figure payday because you took that massive fight on short notice yes it was your biggest payday it was my biggest paid uh at the time i got a bigger one in my last fight oh but it was your biggest payday up until that point by far by far by far by how much far by more than double more than double okay and that was a six-figure payday yes okay the reason why that's so surprising and interesting is because you were fighting at that point for the interim heavyweight title so I'm thinking about those kids back in Sulford and if they if they want to get a life-threatening six figure because that's what it is six figure payday then the journey that you went on is from the age of what seven years old you started seven eight something like that yeah till you were 30 years old so 23 years for you to get a six-figure payday from a heavyweight UFC title it's a long time it's a lot of work yep it's a whole lot of work yeah i was thinking about your story arc and if if you were to like paint it on a graph like draw on a graph am I right in thinking it's like slow flat and then quite sudden oh yeah there's a lot yeah yeah yeah yeah there's there's a lot of that gone on they say don't they something like it takes years to to become an overnight success or whatever and that's exactly what I'm dealing with yeah really yeah it's crazy like you say I've been going since I was 8 years old and the stuff that I've gone through in that time is unbeliev I'm a massive believer in like just outlasting people like just being consistent and outlasting people a lot of the time overtakes anything else like there's so many times and a lot of it is down to my dad as well is like I wanted to quit and he's just remind don't get me wrong I I have quit a couple of times uh with MMA and uh it's been like Tom I think you really need to think about this because you've been spending your whole life doing it like don't quit now you know what I mean like there's been a lot of that from my dad and uh I think a lot of other dads would have just been like yeah you've done enough now you tried your best just leave it at that whereas it's always been you know my dad's always believed believed in me uh and my mom as well not not just my dad and a lot of close people around me as well to be honest i'm very lucky in that regard that uh people have pushed me to continue which is great when was the first time you quit i've quit quite a lot of times mate to be honest why a lot of different reasons us injuries tough very very tough to deal with injuries as a professional athlete not getting regular fights is also tough see now I'm like was complaining to you a minute ago about I've not got to fight this that and the other but I'm going to get a fight the the thirst from the fans is there that the UFC want me to fight i've got a belt I got to defend we got to unify this there's there's millions of dollars at stake here like I'm going to fight soon i don't know when it's going to be but at one point nobody cared if I fought or not and I had no money and that that I think the toughest time for me was so I I had my first kid when I was 23 wife was pregnant when she was 22 when we were 22 and my first kid at 23 and then when I was 24 we found out that she was pregnant again and which I'm very happy about of course i don't want to seem like it's a negative thing and that we're having twins and we had the twins everything's great and I had no money and I mean I didn't have any money at all and I'm like living on this dream of me becoming this global superstar with these millions of pounds in the bank and with these titles and travel i'm living on that dream but I'm in Adon in Greater Manchester it's raining outside i can't afford to put fuel in my car and I've got three kids upstairs crying do you know what I mean that that's that's what I was on and I really felt like at the time I don't I don't want to say like I'm some big masculine guy or anything but I felt a little bit demasculated if that's all right i felt like I'm here with this wife and kids and I ain't providing nothing like and that was really tough for me mentally at that time where I'm like how am I going to provide for all these people like I got to do something else because and I felt I don't think that people around me were like Tom's living in a dream world he needs to get a proper job and earn some money for his family and kids i don't think people cuz there was a lot of people around me who actually believed in the dream as well which is amazing but I felt the pressure i felt like people felt like that a little bit even if they weren't saying it so uh that I think for me was the the toughest time for me I think is when just after I've had my kids I'm away training every day i'm I'm barely spending any time at the at home when I am spending time at home I'm completely exhausted from training the kids have me up all the time they're crying my wife's not happy i've got no money i train all this time go to fight then it gets canceled a week before do you know what I mean that was really really tough to deal with at the time how do you from a mental health perspective how how were you during that season of life not great very very tough i think first of all I mean everybody's different but having three kids at the age of 25 is quite tough i don't think I was well I wouldn't change it for the world i absolutely love being a dad love my kids to death they're the most important thing in my life um I wouldn't change it for the world but I think now looking back of me like seven years ago having three children I don't know how I did it it was really really tough like I think that's really young and like I was very underdeveloped mentally to have that kind of responsibility and raise children and a family and a house and have a wife and try and get my career off the ground like it was really really tough at the time so I think I was just in survival mode to be honest with you actually it's funny you should say because I've been having these conversations recently with a couple of friends he's like "My friend now is having twins he's just found out." He asked me "What's it like?" And I said "To be honest with you and I'm going to be really honest because I I pride myself as an honest person." It was the hardest thing I've ever done i can't even remember the first year and I can't because it was so difficult and it wasn't just the twins it was also the money situation fact my career is not going anywhere the stress I was under just the trying to be a young guy but having all this responsibility on me but like I said I absolutely wouldn't change it for the world it's literally shaped me into the person that I am today and I'm really really proud of where I am now but uh at the time it it was very tough for me mentally was there was there a hardest moment that you reflect on cuz sometimes when we think back to our lives we can remember like a vivid rock bottom where something happened and we went to put petrol in the car or and or when we we were alone and our mind started saying dark things to us was there a rock bottom in that period of life i don't I was still like aware of how um lucky I was to have like three beautiful children and and still be chasing the dream that I was on but I think I just hated owing anybody money like I I felt like I just hate going to people and asking them for money like that was like my worst nightmare and I had to lend like borrow a lot of money off my dad i had to borrow some money off friends just to put fuel in the car to get to the gym to be living in what I thought at the time was like a makebelieve i I didn't think it was a make believe dream but I think I feel like the people on the outside thought what is he doing like what is this guy doing like he needs to like look after his family like I felt I felt that a lot and a lot of that might have just been in my own psyche to be honest with you a lot of it I don't think came from my close circle but I remember like having to borrow money from friends to like put fuel in my car buy nappies for my kids and stuff like that just so I can like keep living on this dream of having a fight in 6 weeks getting 600 quid and being able to give them 20 quid back like that was to it was tough does that not put a lot of pressure on the relationship because I mean bloody hell relationships are hard enough without twins another child um and everything else that makes life relationships difficult so it's quite remarkable that you know being in a relationship is not easy in in any in any in any in any regard being in a relationship and sharing your life with somebody isn't easy um yeah it did it did but you know what but we got through it and we're really strong and I'm really uh happy with the family unit that we've built i try and be the best dad that I can be like that's more important than anything else to me um is just spending time and making my kids um as good as I can and I'm aware that as a dad and as a parent you can't control as such what your kids you can't mold a kid into what you want it to be you can't say like cuz I got three kids and they're all completely different they're all brought up exactly the same but they're all completely different and you can never say this is what my kid's going to be and this is who he's going to be and how he's going to be but just to be able to hopefully bring some kind of positive outlook on their life and and hopefully give them a positive experience on this earth is uh what I'm looking to do your your partner you're married to Justina yeah did she understand oh she understands more than anybody yeah absolutely yeah if it wasn't for her my dad my mom couple of friends around I would have been Yeah i would have been a mess absolute mess yeah she was very understanding because I know that most women they would have been putting the pressure on big time yeah she was it's because when we met I've been with her since I was 19 she was 19 also with the same age um that was my dream from the beginning so she like got on board with that um and she's kept me she stopped me from quitting a lot of times as well she stopped me from quitting so many times yeah there's this sport's tough and like I said there's no So in football for example I know a little bit about football you start from a grassroots team as a kid then you go to an academy and then you can get signed at the age of like 12 13 and start playing for the under 13s and professional club and there's a place where you can go and obviously football's a tough game they can cut you off like that as well but at least there's a career path of what you're going to do and where you're going to go whereas MMA you're basically shooting in the dark for 95% of it um and I'm very lucky to have people like my wife my family my uh mom and dad and the people around me who believe in me as well yeah it's I mean we started talking about this because of that that kind of graph of your career where it's kind of flat relative to what then happened and then quick all of a sudden even when you think about the financials it's like very very little and then if you get all the right forces behind you in terms of like personality and timing and then someone drops out here you get the interim shot you win then things take off and that is it's also remarkable to me that it's happened in such a short period of time um relative to how long you've been doing this because yeah when I looked down and I saw that this was 2023 yes that you got that shot you're kind of a new face on the scene to some degree relative to some of some of these other guys yeah definitely definitely i think the new generation is definitely coming in now in in uh like the old guard the old champions are kind of they're at the back end of the career and now it's time for um new guys which is that's progression that's that's great quick one i want to talk about something we all need to take seriously which is cyber security whether you're a first-time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional who's been through it all staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated I have to say and that is where Vanta comes in who is a sponsor of this podcast vanta takes the pain out of security compliance automating the tedious but essential process of proving your business is secure across over 35 frameworks like SOCK 2 ISO 2701 centralize your workflows answer security questions up to five times faster and protect your business without losing focus on growth and this is really a critical part of this a new IDC white paper found that companies using Vant save over $535,000 a year and it pays for itself in just three months for a limited time my community gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanter.com/stephven that's van ta.com/stephven for $1,000 off so Tom there's this black box in front of me which um contains something which represents a pivotal moment in your career what is in the box we remove the belt i mean it's not I'll be honest mate it's not that exciting interesting it probably stinks as well you probably smell it from over there i'm back out it's clean it's clean actually it's not too bad this is a This is a knee pad okay i What is the story behind the knee pad why did you bring that up so first of all I've had a knee problem for a long time i started the knee problem when we were talking about the things that we've just been talking about the financial struggles and I knew that I was never kind of like one two fights away from getting to the UFC so I wanted to train through the knee problems then I got to the UFC i'm training i I fight I win oh my knees knee's all right i'm doing like I'm doing pretty well here like I can fight with one knee fight again i win then I get a new contract and then I fight they offer me another fight i don't want to say no to the UFC i'm on this roll i've still got this bad knee i'm training with one leg and you're training with one leg yeah I train with one leg for a long time yeah pretty much i never kicked with the leg i never went on the knee ever or anything like that anyway this kept going and going i was fighting with one leg then the most devastating thing that happened in my whole career was my knee just give out in front of 25,000 home fans in the Ultra Arena in London in what was a title eliminator fight so if either of us would have won that fight we would have got a title shot next so it's a massive fight with with title implications and not only did I lose the fight because of the injury uh losing the fight is one thing like if I go in there I have a good fight I I show off all my training but I get knocked out for example like even though I'm going to be sad that I've lost the fight I am relatively satisfied that I went in there I had a go came up short like I I can live with that whereas with the knee I went in there got injured straight away the knee was down I couldn't walk i had surgery and then I was unsure whether my career was going to be over or not and that was a massive massive turning point in um in my life not just in my career but in my life um that really really gave me a chance to think and slow down and figure out what's important and what isn't and uh that all came because of one of the biggest worst thing that's happened in my life but one of the most important things as well and one of the I got the most growth from that knee injury than I've got from anything else in my life I think what kind of growth emerged from that at the time I was doing a lot of things wrong in my personal life and in my professional life like I had a lot of people around me that shouldn't have been there i was doing some training sessions and training with people that I shouldn't have really been training with um I wasn't living a good lifestyle in terms of diet and my recovery i wasn't 100% focused and I should have been but because everything was going so well and I'm a little bit uh what's like superstitious I didn't want to change anything because I'm like well it's going well i don't want to start changing it and I knew that there was a lot of things wrong i knew that there were people that I shouldn't have been surrounding myself with i knew that there were training sessions that were just wasting my time really and there were um toxic people around me that shouldn't have been there and and I need they needed to go but I didn't want to change everything because it was all going so well and when when you talk about like a rock bottom moment when you sat on the floor of the UFC octagon in the O2 Arena with your leg up in the air and there's 25,000 people who are there for you um start leaving the building it's a bad feeling it's a really bad feeling so that really rate made me like reassess um some of the the decisions that I was making at the time and the Tom Aspenol before and after that moment completely different people i feel like I completely rebuilt myself not only physically because I think you can look you look at me physically in fights before and see a physical change just in terms of my physique and the way I'm moving around obviously I had one leg before and I've got two legs now which is way better but mentally the growth has been enormous is that I completely cut out anything negative that was in my life anything that wasn't anything or anyone that wasn't serving me to become like run parallel with my journey to becoming the best heavyweight in the world I completely cut off and because because I was so superstitious I think but but why why did you why was it so important for you to remove those people at that particular moment as an athlete i needed to and not only as an athlete as as a as a man i needed to really slow down cuz I was on this like fast track it's like I got in the UFC and it was just like fight fight fight and every time it's like more and more popular more interviews more media more fame more money more this that and and I didn't really have time to like assess really what was around me and I didn't have time to like start cutting people off and start changing this and tweaking this and doing I just didn't see it because I was on this like I was just going and going and going and when I had that and next minute I'm sat on the couch for six months with this big cut on my leg i can't walk i'm doing physio and doing all the rest of it and um yeah I just feel like as an athlete and a man I really had that time to slow down and and really assess my life and be like "This isn't working it needs to change." That was actually the closest point where I was pretty close to throwing in the towel then to be honest on my career because at that point I'd not made like mega money or anything but I'd made enough money to like be comfortable and you know I bought a house at that time i'd made some decent money but nothing like life-changing but I've made enough money to then I don't know be living my life to an all right you know standard for however long um I was like well I'm financially comfortable now i've had some fights in the UFC i've had some success i was I think I was just outside the top five at that time or something maybe top 10 you know I've gone way further than a lot of people have done maybe I'll just like leave it there was there an element of you that wondered if the public would ever want to see you again oh of course yeah yeah of course yeah definitely because I didn't have an actual fight i felt like people thought I faked the injury or something so I think like a lot of people thought yeah he didn't he didn't really want to be in there with that opponent i felt because especially my opponent at the time Curtis Blaze he was like running through everybody um and I felt like a lot of people were like Tom just didn't want to fight so I felt like very insecure about myself at the time and I really like when I came back I really had like a chip on my shoulder and I still got it that like I want to I want to prove to everybody that like I'm the best heavyweight in the world you got six months on the sofa did you read things people are saying i try not to but I always do i try not to but um yeah but I think I think it's quite healthy in a way though as well i think it that fueled me a lot as well is that people started quitting on me and stuff and a lot of people even like people were like yeah you know you got a lot of ways to make money now like you've already done loads of media you know you're good you're good on the mic and stuff you can maybe be a pundit and stuff like that for a time I was like yeah maybe I can maybe I can just like you know be a pundit and you know I've been in there I've mainvented a couple of times and stuff I've been fought almost the elite level yeah maybe I maybe I can just do that but I started reading these negative comments and I was like actually I want to fight like what what is this like where am I going i'm letting these regular people like speak like talk to me and and put regular thoughts in my mind and I'm not a regular person so I'm I'm an elite special athlete and I always have that belief in myself that I'm not regular and I don't want to be regular and I can't let regular people tell me how to uh how to function and I was almost at the point where I were I was letting regular people tell me how to function and the the the kind of like online haters spurred me to be like "Nah I've got to I've got to come back and win this there's no chance this is going to be the end of me did it knock your confidence at all even though even though the nature of the loss and it's your first and only loss in the UFC and you went on to beat this guy in a rematch um did it knock your confidence at all even though it was via injury yeah no no because I was really particular that so there was two things that I really wanted to do after the fight so I lost to a guy called uh Curtis Blades that's when I injured my knee in 15 seconds in 15 seconds yeah right at the beginning of the fight so I wanted to fight Curtis again that that was really important to me is that I fight him again because I can't function as a human being knowing that I trained for a fight and didn't actually fight somebody if I would have lost at least I can like look myself in the mirror and be like I tried my best that's all I can do but I I seriously had unfinished business and the other thing was that the injury happened at the Alter Arena which from anyone from the UK knows that that is like a prestigious ar like if you're if you're a UFC fighter and you're English you want to fight at the O2 especially headline the O2 that's unbelievable experience and I couldn't then never fight at the O2 arena again i had to fight at the O2 like they were the two things I wanted to fight Blades again and I wanted to fight at the O2 just so I can like mentally just tick them two things off and then move forward and uh I did both of them and I won both fights so happy with that john Jones how do you feel about him i'm sick of talking about him i bet you are yeah cuz that's what people want to talk about yeah yeah i mean a lot of people now they think like all Tom does is talk about John and it's not the case i don't want to talk about John but that's all people ask me about do you know what I mean everybody like I said before it's one it's probably one of the most anticipated fights in UFC history me and Jon Jones so obviously that's the subject that people want to talk about that's what people are interested in so um John is an absolute legend of the sport to answer there the way I feel about him personally is quite relevant the the stuff that he's done in the UFC he will be absolutely immortal forever he will always be known as one of the best ever and I really um as a mixed martial arts fan really really respect what he's done in the sport are you fearful of fighting him oh absolutely absolutely i mean I'd be an idiot otherwise like he's the best um one of the best to ever put a pair of UFC gloves on and I think like I say regardless of what he's done outside the octagon and for anyone watching who doesn't know I am referring to these legal issues that he's got and that's not that's nothing to do with me i I have no idea about any of that i don't know him personally um I think inside the octagon he is 100% one of the best people to ever do it what do you admire about John Jones in terms of his fighting style he's extremely smart extremely smart the way he goes about his business in the octagon but also his uh business outside the octagon and the matchups that he's chose for himself uh very smart very very smart the way that he's chose guys who he matches up stylistically really well with or who are well past the prime i think it's genius i think it's absolute genius are you saying that he's avoided people that would might have beat him i'm not saying that i'm saying that he's he's chose very well he's chose very very wisely the right opponents at the right time which is super smart so to answer your question yeah I probably am saying that I'm saying that so what about his you admire that his his sort of fighting IQ yeah he's so one of the smartest fighters to ever fight in in that explain that to me like I'm a muggle so I don't um he will he has a certain way of making fighters fight his style if that makes sense so he will constantly keep his opponent guessing with kind of like different things that like he will always have a style that suits him really well and he will force his opponent to fight that way if that makes sense yeah it does yeah like I guess it's kind of difficult if you're uneducated on it but he has his style and he will never come out of that and risk fighting somebody else's style ever he will constantly force elite guys to fight his style which is really really difficult to do in in a technical perspective kind of saw that against uh Stipe I thought because yeah but Stipe is also 42 years old with a million miles on the clock you have to remember that but you are right you're definitely right but uh from seeing it up close cuz I was sat really like I was almost in touching distance at the octagon stipe was more than offbeat in that fight in terms of how how far he is away from his prime what is it what is what is it that Jon Jones is doing there because you see these great athletes who have their own really clearly defined style then you see them get in the ring with Jon Jones and suddenly their like their style seems to have vanished or they're scared or or he's doing something to keep them out like on the back foot and outside of their zone of comfort so they can never really get into the rhythm so they play his game what is it he's doing there like is it Well first of all he Jon Jones is a light heavyweight yeah so he's now moved up to heavy he's had two fights heavyweight traditionally is a light heavyweight for a light heavyweight is extremely long in terms of wingspan and and leg length and when you're that much taller and this is not I'm not saying anything about but most of the guys he's fought are from middleweight coming up so he's generally the taller guy and keeps people at the end of his reach so well like his distance distance management is one of the best ever he does that really well and then when he's moved up to heavyweight he's fought a Suran who no disrespect to him doesn't have a ground game John Jones one of the best wrestlers ever in in MMA and a 42-y old Stipe so he's chose really really well what he does but he just uses his distance management and his timing is incredible like the way he uses the attributes that he's got is honestly like from from somebody who's studied martial arts from like I said eight years old it's like it's it's almost like beautiful for me to watch the way he expresses different techniques under that much pressure against elite competition it's amazing to watch he's got an incredible set of skills in that regard because he can kick he can punch he can grapple he can wrestle i think in today's mixed martial arts everybody has to do all that arguably everybody has to be almost elite in everything the thing that he does really well is he does everything on his terms inside the octagon like everybody can do all all the stuff that you just listed punch kick elbow knee wrestle grapple choke arm bar whatever but he does it all on his terms and that is something that is the elite of the elite and like I say all of us all of us and when I say us I'm talking about the professional MMA fighter who's had one fight to Jon Jones all of us everything in between that can do everything really well you have to be able to to be able to swim but he just does it on his terms when his opponent is not expecting it and that is unbelievable so you must be thinking about how you stop that oh absolutely absolutely it's difficult because I don't want to over obsess about it because there's no contract with my name and his name signed but in the back of my mind when I'm training of course I'm thinking about that kind of stuff but I think what I bring to the table is I'm way bigger than anyone he's ever fought i'm close to my prime i don't think I've reached it quite yet i think I've still got maybe a year or so before I get there and I think I'm just really I I don't want to say I'm athletically gifted because I'm def I've definitely put a lot of work into it but I think when it comes to um athleticism for a big guy I think I'm like I I don't want to sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet but I'm just being real i think that I'm like head and shoulders above any other heavyweight and my not only that my decision making I think that's the difference is like a lot of people like any heavyweight put a pair of gloves on them they can knock anybody out that goes without saying we're massive guys but my decision making is elite like elite elite the best some of the best in MMA and I hate to sit here with a lot of cameras around me and look you in the face and tell you that but it's the honest truth I believe that I'm also almost in my prime I'm hungry and I bring all these physical and technical astron attributes to the table which somebody like for example Steep Mic who's 11 12 years older than me and a million miles on the clock doesn't bring so when people see your fighting style and they hear that you've got the world record for the lowest average time to end fights something just over two minutes on average your fights last before you knock the guy out they're going to be thinking right so Tom's strategy here is he's going to storm uh Jon Jones and throw that that hand and knock him out and Jon Jones is going to be thinking the same john Jones is going to be like "Right he's going to try and finish me quick that's his game." There's literally a world record that says that's his game y I love that like if people think that's all I bring to the table like I like being a bit of a mystery i absolutely love that like there's so much of my game that I've not had the opportunity to show yet and I I absolutely love it you know when people like critique the fact that I've not been into the later rounds or maybe I've not got the conditioning that other guys have got or look that's not my problem that's the problem of my of my opponents they can't deal with what I'm throwing i never ever go out there to finish the fight quick it just happens and that isn't actually an issue for me that's the issue for the guy standing across the octagon from me because I have never been in a fight where I'm trying to finish really i'm just trying to go out there do my thing see what comes and see what's what like and the fact that people are doubting what I can do and just because they don't know because they're not seeing it with their own eyes they think I can't do it which to me is a humongous advantage humongous advantage like John Jones for example is known for his film study like he loves watching his opponent and seeing how they move seeing the patterns that they bring up and like good luck with doing that with me mate because the footage isn't out there and I think that's also part of the reason why he's not quick to sign any contracts or to agree on anything yeah the money is a factor of course yeah he's right at the end of his career and he he might want to retire i don't know i don't know how John's mind works but definitely somewhere it's an insecurity of his that there isn't any footage out there of me that you can watch for longer than 3 or 4 minutes and that is just a humongous advantage for me massive because you finished the fight so quick yeah yeah yeah there's so much of my game that I've not even been close to showing and I I'm very excited to surprise some of these guys when I when I do show it i can't imagine how many times you must have played over in your head you were talking about drilling earlier that fight talk to me about that yeah I've definitely replay like played it a lot um but I do that with all opponents even even guys in the in the division right now who have not got any pro prospects of fighting at the moment i think about that a lot like I think about how I match up physically and mentally with them so So if you're playing that over in your head run me through the tape you're playing well that's top secret is that really the case that there's a particular strategy that you're replaying in your head over and over again absolutely but there's there's one thing that I know for sure this this is nailed on guaranteed and this goes for any human being in the world and this has been proved time and time again even though sometimes I don't believe that it can happen but now I know if I punch a human being in the face as hard as I can and it lands they will be unconscious i know it because it's been proved at the elite level multiple times so I need one and that's it well I wanted to test that so we've got Jack here who is I won't punch you Jack yeah there's no not today have you had your punch power tested yeah I I have had it tested um there are guys that have more punch power than me on the machine mhm and probably in real life as well what whatever but I think I don't want to tell you because I don't want people to watch it and and know my secrets but I punch people when they're not expecting it and they're the one they're the ones that hurt and okay I disguise it in a certain way you know I do bits on my YouTube channel and stuff about me explaining techniques and and doing different things and now I've got something called a school platform which I know you had Alex Hosi on the channel as well who who has shares in school and I show different techniques and stuff like that but I'll never show my game if that makes sense i'll show a generalization of what to do and strategy and what to focus on and not but my personal game on what I do for my style I'll never show it because that's something for only me and my coaches to know and when you think about your routine for those six weeks what advice can you give to like an average person about the health routine that you go through to get into elite elite shape what are the tips and tricks you've learned that you could impart on me as someone that's not necessarily a fighter but Well something that I'm learning as I'm getting a little bit older and I'm not saying I'm old by any chance by any stretch of the imagination but as I'm getting older and I'm getting more I've been training a long time even though I'm not um up there in age but I can definitely feel more on my body than I used to especially being a bigger guy um generally we carry more injuries but I think that if you're training for example 4 hours a day what I found is doing at least half of that time recovering is what I'm aiming to do so however the recovery looks to you whether that's stretching breathing exercises sauna swimming steam room jacuzzi you know there's a there's a whole you Google recovery from exercise there'll be a million things that you can do but I like to try and do 50% of my training the easiest way I can say is if I'm training for four hours I try and do two hours worth of recovery um and I think that has helped me a lot not to mention massively massively underrated and as a heavyweight I can kind of eat what I want really if I want to like really well I don't have uh the smaller weights they all have to be under a certain weight so weight cutting is like a big thing in MMA people they do extreme diets and then cut a lot of water out the last week and try and get you know squeeze as much as they can to get under this weight division they weigh in then they put the weight back on i just have to be over 93 kilos and I do that no problem but But doesn't your nutrition have an impact on your performance of course of course that's that's kind of what I'm getting to is like it is so important what you put in your body like I didn't realize that until I was maybe 28 years old 27 28 years old um and it needs to be monitored like again going back to writing stuff down like write down what you eat in a day and eliminate one thing for the next day and write how you feel like that's what I did a lot is like and now I'm at the point where like I will eat similar things at similar times every day because I know how my body functions on that and I know that if I'm doing an intense session there I need a little bit more carbs before and after and what kind of carbs is something that I've worked out to how I feel before and after and again it's just a lot of every person's body is different so I would never like to sit here and I'm not a nutrition expert and and start going on about what people need to eat because that's not my expertise but I know from a personal point of view that writing things down and experimenting taking this out and adding this in and then writing notes on how you feel and doing that every day has been massive for me what about sleep you mentioned sleep early on i do like to sleep a lot i'm just a big napper like if I if I train in the morning I'm going to sleep straight after and that takes a lot of discipline you know like it takes a lot of discipline for me to be like I'm coming home from training I'm going to shower eat and sleep and nothing's coming in the way of that like it takes some especially like with kids like if I'm coming home and if I've done a two-hour session in the morning I'm coming home the kids are excited to see me this guy's wants to play on the Xbox another one wants to play outside this one wants a snack and that one wants to play outside and then it's just madness and then one of them spilled a drink you got to clean this up and then one wants this on the TV it's just a constant thing for me to then walk in and be like I'm going to bed i'll be up in an hour and a half you know what I mean like that's that's discipline as well that's But all these little increments they just pay off massively because I talked about ketosis on this podcast and ketones a brand called Ketone IQ sent me their little product here and it was on my desk when I got to the office i picked it up it sat on my desk for a couple of weeks then one day I tried it and honestly I have not looked back ever since i now have this everywhere I go when I travel all around the world it's in my hotel room my team will put it there before I did the podcast recording today that I've just finished I had a shot of Ketone IQ and as is always the case when I fall in love with a product I called the CEO and asked if I could invest a couple of million quid into their company so I'm now an investor in the company as well as them being a brand sponsor i find it so easy to drop into deep focused work when I've had one of these i would love you to try one and see the impact it has on you your focus your productivity and your endurance so if you want to try it today visit ketone.com/stephven for 30% off your subscription plus you'll receive a free gift with your second shipment that's ketone.com/stephven i'm excited for you i am the hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid but what if you had the right question to start them with every single guest on the diio has left behind a question in this diary and it's a question designed to challenge to connect and to go deeper with the next guest and these are all the questions that I have here in my hand on one side you've got the question that was asked the name of the person who wrote it and on the other side if you scan that you can watch the person who came after who answered it 51 questions split across three different levels the warm-up level the openup level and the deep level so you decide how deep the conversation goes and people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work in bedrooms alone at night and on first dates and everywhere in between i'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at the diary.com you mentioned a term earlier on that we didn't go into which was hypnotherapy yes for someone that doesn't know what hypnotherapy is can you give me like a broad idea of what it is and how the role that it's played in your life and any evidence you might have seen that it actually works yep so I'm going like quite hard on the hypnotherapy now i actually spoke to my hypnotherapist yesterday and I'm going to start doing uh twice a week now um a few different reasons really both personal and professional i had a situation recently uh with my kid where uh my kid was in hospital and it really kicked off my anxiety massively and since then I'm struggling to relax a little bit more than than I would usually struggling to switch off so I think that for me personally again I don't want to sit here and preach about hypnotherapy cuz it's not my expertise at all but for me personally it brings my anxiety down a lot so it helps with that um it also helps with sleep it also helps with just being just in a more tranquil place in general and when you add that those qualities into what can be a very anxietyfilled anxietyfilled sport I think that's just a massive advantage not to mention the other stuff that we talked about like life and and just general stressiness as well for someone that doesn't know anything about the hypnotherapy that you do they might think that it's like you know in back in the day it was like swinging the thing in front of your face and then you fall asleep and they tell you you're a dog and you bark and stuff used to be on TV when I was younger but but it's not that is it it's what is it again people are going to start thinking it's like some like like you say some woo woo thing where you start like going unconscious and doing all it's nothing like that it's like essentially you're just in a room the way that I do it at least i'm in a room with a guy talking to me i'm completely relaxed lay down or sat up doesn't matter usually with my eyes closed and usually he'll take you through a story of like you're going to a place you're walking down a street or what he'll set the scene kind of thing and I used to think I need to listen and focus in on every word he's saying like I need to put myself exactly where you know follow the story quote unquote story exactly as he's telling me to follow it mhm and I actually spoke to him about it and I was like I'm struggling to like listen for that long cuz it goes on like 45 minutes i'm struggling to like follow the path that you're leading me down for that long and he's like "Listen don't worry you can be thinking about whatever you want you don't have to follow what I'm telling you." He said "Cuz your subconscious is listening all the time." It's saying it's the same when a couple of times I was like fighting to stay awake cuz I was tired and most of the time I did it after training as well so I'm tired like fighting to stay awake and I said "Look I'm fighting to stay awake i'm like getting really tired." And he's like "Look if you fall asleep doesn't matter your subconscious is still listening." So it doesn't matter what's going on and a lot of the time I'm just there i'm just like chilling out i'm listening to what he's saying but I'm also drifting off of my own thoughts and I don't know how again I'm not like a psychologist hypnotherapist or anything like that but I only know from my own personal perspective that when it comes to like anxiety and positive thinking and just generally being in a better place mentally I just believe in it a lot i think it really helps me anxiety mhm what journey have you been on with your anxiety um it's something that I've always kind of dealt with but I think it's not uncommon to deal with it and I think that a lot of people think it think it is uncommon like I uh I'm a little bit OCD and I think that OCD and anxiety goes hand in hand like I think that and it used to be a lot worse to be honest i used to I struggled with it uh when I was a child and still struggle with it now but I used to be a lot worse when I was younger and how did that manifest oh at one point at one point it was like I couldn't sit in a room unless the room was the way I wanted it to look like unless the curtains were closed the right way the drawers were shut perfectly everything was facing forward the TV was on a certain angle like I couldn't rest oh really uh because of like I would think like something bad is going to happen unless all that's right but after after a while I kind of grew out of that a little bit and got a hold on it but it still creeps back mate sometimes I try and keep it at bay does it come out at certain moments when certain things happen yeah yeah it does it gets worse um again like I said I've been through something quite traumatic recently where my son was in hospital and that's a whole another story of its own but at one point we were really concerned about like my son's health really um and that was a big traumatic thing for me and I've noticed a lot that my OCD starts to come back and I want to do certain certain stuff again because my anxiety is creeping up and just got to really try and keep it at bay and anxiety separate to that so um your your anxiety is always been something in the background in your life but it it flares up in certain situations yeah so I mean I'm in an anxietyfueled sport so um I think naturally there's a lot going on because of that but it's just something I think everybody deals with it i don't think I'm I don't think I'm uncommon to anybody else i think especially these days it's a lot more accepted to be like talking about it and stuff um it's super common and it's growing it's very common very very common i think social media doesn't help with that especially for like I mean for myself it's like I have a thing now I've only done for the last couple of fights where social media's gone from my life when I've got a fight date because there is no chance that I'm thinking about my opponent all day and I'm also scrolling and reading all of comments all day it's just not I just won't deal with it and for the next fight I'm actually going to uh have like a training camp phone okay where only people who are actually involved in my training camp or personal life and when I say personal life I'm talking about my wife and mom and dad and probably that's it are going to be involved like I don't want to have any outside noise coming in at all your son's doing okay now son's doing okay now yeah yeah yeah thankfully everything's good puts things in perspective doesn't it honestly unbelievably um Yeah i mean it wasn't really really bad without going into too too many details but uh spent a stay in hospital um with something that we wasn't sure what it was at first and yeah massively absolutely like nothing else really matters if as long like as long as you got your health and you know your family's health like you're in a pretty good spot I think because it's just a horrible place to be in is this the son that received an autism diagnosis no this is my So one of my twins has autism yeah this is the non autistic okay tell me about your son that was received the autism diagnosis and the sort of journey you've been on there i I think this is really really important because I've done this podcast a while and I get so many DMs from parents who have an autistic child asking me to talk more about this subject because they just don't feel like the information is out there and they there's a number of feelings that they feel but I think one of them that I see in my DMs expressed is a bit of guilt to some degree which is an interesting one but also just a lack of people talking about the experience so take take me on the journey from when that child was born and um the path to the diagnosis i mean I I'll give as much detail as possible because like you say I think parents need details and there isn't a lot out about it and now for me recently like I say I've been through something traumatic with another one of my kids and the NHS has been absolutely nothing short of unbelievable like we were in an emergency situation where we needed emergency treatment and my kid got 24 hours a day looking after while there was an emergency going on and it was unbelievable we came away me and my wife being like "We are so lucky to live in this country." Cuz my wife isn't from this country as well true so we both came away being like "We are so lucky to live here in a place where you can get free everything in an emergency level straight away." So I'm not trying to throw the NHS under the bus at all because when there's an emergency it's amazing that being said as far as the autistic community we are being failed and I don't know if that's from the NHS from the government i don't know who that's from but I was in a spot so five my my twins are nearly six they're coming up to six um so I was in a spot like my twins were born and they were born just before the lockdown then COVID hit everything like the world went to [ __ ] as we know and then my kids got in in a place where you know we had a child before and we're aware that kids hit milestones we got twins so they they're hitting the milestones at different stages um then we start to notice like may maybe two year the kids are maybe two years old start to notice like one kid is a fair bit beyond the other one in in terms of speech in terms of how responsive he is in terms of eye contact in in terms of look we we could see something's different but me personally as a dad I was kind of like in denial as to right this is lockdown's fault this kid is 2 years old he's been in the house he's been around me my wife and his two brothers sometimes grandparents when the government would would let us and that's it for like two years he's not in social situations he's not around other kids and that kind of went on for a bit i was kind of like heavily in denial about it even though now looking back I could clearly see that things weren't moving normally especially because he's got this twin and the twin's like you know he's moving at a different rate so it was right there in front of my face um but I'm just like in this denial he'll catch up it's just the lockdown's fault the government's keeping us all locked inside blah blah blah patty McInness funny enough it was a guy from uh my area like from a similar area don't know Patty at all never met him um but he had this program um and it was about autism and I don't know why one day me and my wife we sat down and watched this program and he I believe has three autistic children all of his all of his three children are diagnosed with autism so anyway I'm watching this documentary and he's he's talking about all the different symptoms because it's a massive spectrum autism there's there's a million different things and I'm watching he's talking about this one kid he does this this is this is the way that autism presents himself in this particular kid and in my mind I'm thinking my my son does do that a little bit and then he's talking about a different kid who who also is diagnosed with autism the way that the the child does this and I'm thinking anyway he's he's going through talking about his different children and I'm thinking wow he like my my child ticks a lot of these boxes and then I Google it i don't I know nothing about autism at the time and obviously that is the worst thing you can ever do and I'm going through these symptoms being like "Wow this is we I don't know what to do." Like we need to try and try and get help so anyway we make a doctor's appointment at the GP and that is a complete mess it's difficult to get an appointment we go in they put us on a waiting list anyway a year or so goes by the the child isn't developing at the speed of his twin we can see this clearly we are worried about what's going on and um we don't know what to do like we are literally we have no idea about what's going on how to progress this child what his future's going to look like we know nothing about autism me and my wife at the time absolutely zero about it we don't know it's just so such an We talk about anxiety like you don't know what your child's future's going to look like and how to help him or her on how to progress as a human being that is some of the worst anxiety that you can ever have you've brought this kid to this earth and you can't even point them in the right direction of where to go on how to navigate the way through life and it's it's a really really difficult thing anyway I go on a question of sport the show Patty McInness is the host me and Patt me and Patty are chatting a little bit and uh after the show whatever and I said "Look Patty if you don't mind me asking uh I I watch your show about um autism." I said "I'm trying to get my kid diagnosed i've been I've been on the waiting list a year like what should we do?" So anyway he gives me the number to the to the specialist i call the specialist we go in for a meeting long story short paid for the diagnosis got this kid diagnosed and now my child is in a mainstream school he has a onetoone one-to-one teacher he's getting the help he needs he's doing really well he's progressing how the future's going to look we don't know we're we're dealing with it dayto-day and now I am completely aware that as a person in a good financial situation I have the ability to do that is to go pay the money and get that and now there is so many people so so many people who and I mean I get hundreds of messages about it hundreds of people stopping me on the street about it because I've spoke a little bit about autism who they are going to the GP they're going for assessments and they cannot get a diagnosis they're on a three four five year waiting list and these kids are getting sent to mainstream schools and the kids are just regressing and regressing and regressing because they don't have any help and the parents of the kids have zero direction and they don't know what to do and we're in a really tough spot with it in this country where like I said we've got this amazing NHS i don't know if it's the NHS that's holding this or the government but and I don't know what's causing autism there's a million things out there about vaccinations about diet about things that they're watching on TV about the toys that they play with you know there's a load of different theories on it me personally I don't know what it is obviously I'm not a specialist with that but I know that autism is getting bigger and bigger each year there's more and more people trying to get diagnosed there's more and more people getting diagnosed and the help just isn't there the help especially in schools like I'm so lucky that my son has an amazing one-to-one teacher every day he goes and he enjoys school and he progresses a little bit and we know what we're in a position where we've had help as parents that we know what kind of direction and where to navigate him in sometimes now there's so many parents out there who've been on like I say three four five six seven year waiting list their kids are just getting worse and worse and worse and as a penalty to that the parents life are then getting worse and worse and worse and they have absolutely no direction of where to go and what to do and it's a serious serious crisis that we've got in this country at the moment there are in this country there are 700,000 autistic adults and children um but in the US roughly 2.5% of the US population has been diagnosed with autism and it is four times more common in boys than girls and there was a 787% rise in the number of autism diagnosis over the last roughly two decades um which is on one hand awareness being is higher so people are going and getting a diagnosis but some think there might be other factors that are actually increasing the amount of people that are autistic why for someone that doesn't understand autism and the process that and the plight of a parent that has an autistic child is the diagnosis so critical is it because you then get additional support and guidance and you can access that support if you have a diagnosis so I was under the notion that if my kid is diagnosed autistic or not doesn't matter that was that was my original thing doesn't matter he's still my kid i'm still going to love him i'm still going to guide him through whatever he needs to in life now I completely respect anybody who's doing that he has 100% respect from from me and I'm sure everybody else but the biggest issue is like me personally I'm a professional athlete it's like I know that for this many hours a day I need to be in the gym and training when I'm not in the gym I need to be recovering when I'm not in the gym I need to be eating the right things and I have this process of of things that make me successful that's how I work in my life if you don't have a diagnosis of autism the only way I can describe it because I've been there is you're just kind of like treading water you're just stuck in one place flailing around and not really knowing how to do them steps and progress your family life in your child's life that's the way that I look at it personally I'm I'm speaking 100% for myself but if you've not got a diagnosis first of all you're not getting any funding which like I said I'm in a financial position where I don't need any funding but there's a lot of people out there who do need funding and funding looks like outlets for the child help in school help at home help for the parents help for the friends sensory rooms in school sensory toys you know there's a whole host of things that can help autistic children or autistic people and without that diagnosis if you don't if you're a parent and you don't have that for your child from my personal experience it feels like you're treading water i feel like I needed a process of this is these are the steps that we have to take to help my child progress and I think that it's what we need is it's not about another number on the statistics that you've read out it's not about that it's not about me saying I've got an autistic child or whatever it's about the help that your child can get and right now we definitely don't have enough help in this country i had one of my best friends was diagnosed with autism um he's been one of my best friends for a long time he's actually also worked in my company um for for many many years and he spoke to me about the sense of relief that he experienced when he got his diagnosis but also it was kind of like like you're describing there was suddenly a sense of direction and understanding like someone turned the lights on and with the lights on he was able to make better decisions and it's not held him back in any way if anything it's done the opposite totally it's helped him to understand himself but I think for for some of us who don't understand haven't been through that we either don't can't relate but but also we have no no idea that there's additional I had no idea until you just said it just then that there's additional support given in schools and stuff like that to kids who have that diagnosis so it's critically important and I'm so glad that you share that with us because hopefully there's some people watching in the government but also parents that can get together and that are presumably getting together to change this yeah i mean it's a tough thing for me to talk about because I'm completely aware that there will be people watching this and thinking who is this knucklehead talking about like autism diagnosis and what the government needs to go through but it's also an experience that I've lived and it's also an experience that I'm still living mhm and that I'm fully aware just from my local area and my circle of friends and people around me that there is a [ __ ] ton of people who are in the same boat as I am and need help and uh I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I've got the help and that we are progressing but I know that there's a lot of people who don't and that are struggling so I want to try and speak for those people if I can thank you for doing that that's there's a lot of my audience that are going to be very very grateful for that there's something sat next to me on the table here which is this this belt it's very very heavy i know this is just a replica but you do have the real one at home and the reason why um you only bought me the replica instead of the real thing um is because the real thing costs a lot of money apparently apparently apparently so I I heard rumors online that the real thing actually costs about 300 grand yeah and you have to sign a contract when you receive this belt that if you lose it then you have to personally pay if it goes missing I'm paying for it so hopefully that won't that won't happen but it's in a very safe spot so it won't it won't go missing i'm not going to ask you where you keep it cuz there's people listening but um just what are these flags around it i've actually never seen one before so I'm not too sure i know this bit this bit here the side yeah so these these little um these stones whatever they are uh you get one of those they're different so they're all I think on the real one the diamonds and this is a is is it a ruby or something a ruby it looks like you get a ruby when you defend it so I defended it once so I got one and then obviously that fills up the more you do it oh so if you defend it one two three four five six seven times it's going to be all eight rubies okay and what what does that say there it says UFC 304 Edwards versus Muhammad 2 my personal one has my like my name on it and the the proper details but because this is a replica and when you won that interim heavyweight championship and then you woke up the next day how did you feel honestly well I woke up about 3 days later i didn't sorry I didn't sleep for about 3 days after uh cuz I was very excited um yeah pretty good pretty I mean I I won it in weird circumstances so that fight I took on really short notices i actually wasn't in shape for that fight at all um I actually just come back off a off a stagd do so I wasn't uh in my best shape when I when I answered that call um was there any antilimax to it no no but there's definitely an antilimax a little bit to um like being quoteunquote successful because you still feel the same like as you you still have the same um issues like issues as you had before like money fame and titles doesn't change much in terms of what goes on inside your brain in my opinion maybe it does change for some people but uh for me I still have the same struggles as I did before it doesn't change anything in that regard i think when you're younger especially I don't know it's like young people they think that rich people have no problems and it just isn't true it's just it's just so far from the truth you know that yeah well you know they say more money more problems but it's just a different set of problems than some of the other Well that's it that's it i mean at one point as we spoke about in detail a big problem was of mine was I couldn't pay my rent and I couldn't pay fuel to put in the car that's gone but there there's more problems that have arose since um that money won't fix do you know what I mean are you at all concerned that when you when your time does come you want to retire relatively early so you don't get any cognitive issues or have to fight beyond your time are you at all concerned about what you do next cuz we've seen people like Tyson Fury sort of really struggle i I am a little bit to be honest i'd be lying if I said otherwise um just because it takes up so much of my time takes up so much of my time and the time that I'm not actually actually physically training like I'm not in the gym training i am doing other stuff towards it i.e even stuff like breathing exercises I would class as part of my training stretching eating right sleep like I would class this all as part of my training routine so when I've not got that what will my life look like i don't know i I don't know and that's something as we spoke about before I'm aware that I'm on the second half of my career now when that's done how does it look and I don't know if anything can ever replace that in all honesty what about the money side of things so are you having to think now cuz what's the average age of a UFC fighter retiring i mean most people don't even get there but if you do really really well you might fight until if you're really really lucky you might do Stipe's age 40ish 40 yeah yeah bigger guys tend to go longer i don't know why that is but yeah generally the heavyweights usually 40ish so how do you think about financial longevity and are you investing your money have you got people that help you i do i do i'm looking to um invest all the time actually my team has actually been really um really good with that kind of stuff like a lot of my uh not a lot but a few of my sponsorships I actually have uh shares in business as well as the sponsorship and also I want to do more stuff i I really love the sport of MMA so I'm always like even though I'm retired from fighting I will never be involved i'll never be retired from MMA if that makes sense i've definitely made mistakes in the media space before definitely but I'm learning and I definitely think there's a place for me somewhere in the future to educate people on MMA however that looks whether it's punditry whether it's podcasts whether it's I don't know some something somewhere i definitely think that I will give some kind of insight to somebody where people can um hopefully learn something from me in that regard i think you're more than capable of doing all of that i'd love to see you give uh breakdowns i've seen some of the stuff you're doing with school as well so thank you i've also I've also uh I don't know why but they give my my own show now on TNT Sport as well breaking down fights so this is uh this start i'm just getting the foot in the door it's not something that I'm focusing on fulltime now because I'm obviously really busy with other stuff but um when I'm done that's what I want to do what does your dad think of all of this he's been such a central figure in your in your life what this whole Jon Jones situation you went in the the this belt that sits in front of me here you must have like blown his mind i don't think so really yeah i think that he had this firm belief he believed in me way before I believed in myself I always say and I think that this is also his dream as well but I don't think for any of us and this is going to sound super arrogant but it's the truth i don't think any of us are surprised by it i think that in some way uh it was like written for us to do it i don't know i I I can't explain it any more than that like I feel like we were both expecting to be here and uh this is where we are and and this is where we're going to be till till I'm done did he ever tell you you were going to be here what did he say just just little he was never like you're going to be that but it was like look if you keep doing this this is where you're going to go if you if you keep being dedicated to training and keep living your life right and keep focused you can be heavyweight champion in the world and I think that especially cuz I'm from like a smaller town a blueco collar town for sure a workingass town that that belief is shut down so much from a young age by not just parents but pe other people surrounding in the community like listen maybe don't maybe don't don't think you're going to be a Hollywood actor because you're not maybe maybe try and be a bit more realistic and do something a bit No if you think you're going to be a Hollywood actor you go for it like you you go 100% at that and don't let anything waver from where you're going and I think that that is not told to especially the younger generation enough i think that like I say I'm from a very very bluecollar humble town and from my town there aren't many people who've done anything of great magnitude in in terms of sport and otherwise um and I think a lot of that not not all of it of course but I think a lot of it comes from the mentality of yeah maybe don't maybe don't aim for that aim for something a bit lower and that that shouldn't be encouraged in my opinion always your first option should be the highest of the high and if you land any lower then you readjust you change the goal post a little bit but the first thing is shoot as high as you can are you special yes why are you special i think that I have an first of all I think I'm really physically gifted mhm in terms of uh athleticism but it's something that I have worked on a lot as well it's not I didn't just wake up like this i've definitely worked a lot over the years of it but I think that aside I think I've got a gift mentally and this this has been horned a lot by the people around me through the years like I said there's been a lot of people supporting me but I think I've got a gift to perform really really well under massive pressure under massive pressure and I don't think like I say it's been honed a lot for sure by my dad and the other people around me definitely but I think that I I have a God-given gift or whoever universe given gift or whoever you believe in that I can perform extremely well under the highest pressure situations possible even though you feel the fear even though I feel the fear cuz I accept the fear i bathe in the fear i think uh it's not the first time you've said that no it's something that someone told me something that someone told me recently i thought it was funny so when you feel that fear is there something you say to yourself is there like a mantra or a system well I I always say that I used to have two fights i used to be fighting my opponent i used to be fighting myself i used to be trying to block out the fear trying to like but you know what I I just took it on board and accepted that this this is going to help me like there's so many examples over the years i I like to give this example because uh this actually happened to one of my close friends so he's putting a wardrobe up and the wardrobe is like a really heavy wardrobe fell on his kid who was like not even walking at the time and he he's a skinny guy like he's a small slight guy he was on his own and he he pulled the wardrobe off the kid right and then anyway everything was fine the kid was fine everything whatever 5 minutes later he went to move the wardrobe to another part of the room and realized that he couldn't pick it up and there's only one thing that's made him pick that wardrobe up and it's fear fear that that kid is going to get crushed under that really heavy wardrobe and when he actually went to pick the wardrobe up without that there was no way he could have done it he had to he had to wait till somebody came and and helped him move the wardrobe across the room there was no way that he could have done it without the fear and there's so many situations like if you're running for your life 100% guaranteed that you're running way quicker than you would if you were just running down the street goes without saying because that fear fuels you in ways that you nothing else will and I have accepted that and took it on board and used it to help me because as someone that's watched your fights both on screen but in person I one of the things that I remember about you more so than other fighters I've seen is how calm you look in the ring y and I don't I'm like does he just know he's like amazingly good or is there something he's doing because you kind of look how I look when I get to the office and I don't have some 6'5 guy that's trying to kill me oh it's all it's all by design though it's by design yeah um so one of my one of my absolute heroes in the sport of MMA is a guy called GSP George St pierre he's one of the best fighters to ever lace up the gloves but not only that he's one of the best humans as well i'm lucky enough to have met him a few times and had some deep discussions with him and he's someone I've studied a lot inside and outside of the octagon over the years um and thing with GSP is he like me has always admitted how scared he was and that's something that I've watched countless interviews and podcasts with him and how he talks about it and stuff and he used a method and he actually told me about the method where I'm not sure what the method's called and I don't I don't even know if there's any scientific evidence behind it but it works for him and it's worked for me on multiple occasions where if you physically present yourself in a way that even if mentally you don't feel like that like on fight day for example the last thing I feel like doing is smiling in all honesty I'm not in a smiley mood but when you smile you feel good you relax you enjoy yourself you're confident so I will walk around fake smiling with my head held high and my shoulders back like there's nothing bothering me in the world not because there isn't anything bothering me because trust me on fight day there's a lot of stuff bothering me i have to get in there in front of millions of people and have a fight with someone and it's highly likely that I'm going to be separated from my own consciousness in front of millions of people the last thing I want to do is walk around with a smile on my face with my shoulders back with my head up high being friendly and nice to people and being in a good mood and being relaxed that's the last thing I feel but I purposely walk around like that all day in every situation that I can possibly be in and sooner or later believe it or not my mind will actually start to follow my body's lead and it's unbelievable it's unbelievable the way that that can happen and like you say you'll see me i'm stood there in the octagon and I am scared to death my opponent is looking at me across the octagon like he wants to kill me and I'm looking back like I'm in the queue for a sandwich by design by design I do it the same with the walk to the octagon there's a million people throwing beer on me shouting in my face booing me sticking fingers up in my face saying that I'm going to die literally while I'm walking to fight another human being and I look like I've just woke up and taken the dog for a walk by design because if your body does it sooner or later your mind will start to follow and like I say this is like a bro science thing probably but this is something that I've experienced a lot myself and it's proven at least to me and and to to George as well that uh it can be done we have a closing in on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not know who they're going to be leaving it for this question is hilarious as far as I'm concerned and it kind of reveals who left the question right the question is it's weird saying this to you why don't you work harder that's a good question who Who's left that can you Can you figure it out from what we've said to him i know so this was the last guest i told you I was in America oh Mr beast mr beast why don't you work harder that's a good question it's a It's a good question i like to think I work as hard as I can but I think if everybody looks in the mirror I think everybody could work a bit harder i think I probably like sleep too much is the reason that I don't I think that's the only thing holding me back cuz everything when I'm awake everything's geared towards me being the best that I can be so I think maybe I like sleep a little bit too much well sleep makes you work harder it does that's what I thought that's what I thought that that that's uh that's still working hard as far as I'm concerned tom thank you so much um you are such an incredible inspiration for so many reasons mainly because you're so remarkably down to earth but at the same time able to confidently say on camera which I by the way really really admire and respect that you think you're special and I think there's a certain nonchalantness that sometimes people come with because they're trying to be like fake humble but I really respect people that say "No no I think I'm special." And to be able to say that with such humility but also with such a track record to justify that claim is tremendously spiring inspiring because you come from as you say like a blue collar area you come from a normal place you're a normal guy that has just committed himself to something despite the any short-term or medium-term rewards in your life because you loved it and you believed in yourself and I think that for for anybody listening should be evidence enough that we we all have a chance at at least something it might not be being the heavyweight champion of the world because you acknowledge you have physical gifts that you know myself I didn't I wasn't born with but um but we can all do something with that obsession with that focus with a supporting group of people around us with the right mentality and with a commitment to it despite um the objective reality that we're going through but also I admire you so much because of everything you've said about your child with autism and the work you're doing to push harder for um to to reduce the diagnosis times in the NHS at the moment which so many parents out there are going to really appreciate um and we are all behind you as a nation you're a good guy you'd be the first ever to do to unify the belts in such a way um as a British guy and uh wouldn't that be something listen if anybody can do it and and just saying about the special thing mhm i wasn't born special and like you said I am from the most regular background that you can come from and I don't mean to say I'm not saying I'm special that in the fact that like I'm better than anybody else because I believe that anybody can be special and I think more people need to believe it you know what I mean i think that more people if they work hard enough and don't quit on themselves they can be special as well and uh I think we'll leave it at that amen thank you so much thank you listen to my regular listeners i know you don't like it when I ask you to subscribe at the start of these conversations i don't like saying I don't like it being in there none of us like it it's frustrating do you know what's also frustrating it's also frustrating when I go into the back end of the YouTube channel and I see that 56% of you that listen frequently to this podcast haven't yet subscribed and so many of you don't even know that you haven't subscribed because I see in the comment section you say to me you go "I didn't even realize I didn't subscribe." And that actually fuels the show it's basically like you're making a donation to the show so that's why I ask all the time because it enables us to build and build and build and build and we're going for the long term here and it listen if this is your first time listening to the Diary of a CEO you don't have to subscribe you guys your first one's free but if you've watched this show before you're freeloading now so all I'd ask you is if you've seen this show before and you like it help me help my team here hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you that's my promise thank you to all of you guys that do subscribe means the world to me heat heat n [Music] [Music]