Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA | Lex Fridman Podcast #242

The following is a conversation with Ben Askren, Wrestler, MMA fighter and a brilliant, opinionated and fun personality in the world of martial arts. And yes, he occasionally likes to talk a little trash. Given his wild online antics and his boxing match with Jake Paul, some people may forget just how dominant he was in the sport of wrestling and in mma. For most of his career in wrestling, he is a two time NCAA Division 1 National Champion and four time finalist in mixed martial arts. He went undefeated for 10 years with a record of 190 before losing to Jorge Masvidal with a flying knee that caught everyone by surprise. He's also into cryptocurrency disc golf and is the co host of Flow Wrestling Radio Live. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now here's my conversation with Ben Askren. Before we talk about your incredible wrestling career, your MMA career, let me ask you, I have to ask you, what did you think about The Jake Paul vs. Tyron Woodley fight?

Well, I thought, I mean I'm obviously biased. I thought Tyron won. I had five rounds of three and again this, maybe this is my bias in the way I was seeing it. I thought he was more effective with the striking and he was more aggressive. No, Jake had more volume, but that was the only thing I would give him and I guess a lot of people just didn't see it that way. They thought he landed more significantly more punches. I just didn't think him really did any damage.

It was a split decision.

Split decision?

Yeah. Were you surprised?

Well, it's the thing, so the thing I said when I went in to fight him, I said we don't really. Maybe he's good, maybe he's not. We have no, we really have no idea to this point, you know. And so I knew Tyron was a lot better at boxing than I was and so I thought, okay, Tyron's, there's, I think there's a good likelihood that Tyron beats him up, but there's a chance that Jake's kind of good at this. And I think that's kind of what played out is he's kind of good at it. Even if you saw it the way I saw it, he still was impressive in his showing and he obviously put a lot of time into it. So he's, he's not bad, we'll say that much, you know.

But isn't it surprising to you that like elite level athlete, combat athlete lost to somebody who just takes it really seriously but is nevertheless not elite level hmm.

But I think boxing is a really specific rule set, so I'll speak about Tyron, not myself. Tyron had good striking, but obviously it was his first boxing match ever. And within mixed martial arts, you have the fear of the takedown and the fear of the kick and fear of other things to go along with the punching. And so if you look at Tyron throughout his MMA career, lots of times what set up his punches were like level change fakes at a takedown, they dropped, boom. And then something comes over the top. Right. So there's many more elements to worry about in mixed martial arts, whereas boxing, there's only one. It was his first fight. Yes. I thought Tyron was going to win. I thought this was gonna happen. But like I said, I mean, it's pretty evident that Jake's. He's not bad at boxing. He's pretty solid. You know, he gets in there and works hard at it, I guess.

Out of 10 times, how many times do you think Jake wins against Heron? Against Tyron, they fight again and again and again, like iteratively.

Yeah. So I mean, I. Part of the thing is, okay, so Jake's corner said you need a knockout going into the eighth round. Right. So I think they thought maybe they're trying to motivate him, but I don't see it that way because if they were actually thought that he was winning, why would they encourage him to take a dumb risk when Tyron has clearly has knockout power? Right. It's a really stupid coaching philosophy, if that's what you're thinking. So you obviously are thinking, hey, this is actually in the balance, it's competitive. And I feel like Tyron thought maybe he was winning and didn't have the urgency necessary. And so I think there's a chance he turns it up a lot. Man, I would want to watch him again before I, I. So yeah, I have this problem with my personality. Here's my personality, Lex. I have an issue with not being able to give really exact answers. So I hate giving you an answer that, like, I don't feel like is 100 calculated. Yeah. So I would like to see them go once more because I would like to see, hey, can tyrant. Because if Tyrone can turn up the pace and NJ can't handle it, then I think it's an 8:1 or 9:2. Right. If it goes the exact same way and maybe Tyron wins a close split decision, I'm saying, oh, it's probably gonna be close every single time. We're probably gonna get a five to five type of thing, you know, so it's like, I feel like out of one match, it's not totally indicative of what the future is gonna look like.

I feel like Tyron would get a knockout and then you would still be in the same place, like not. Not knowing. Not knowing what to predict. Okay, so your fight with Jake Paul.

Yeah.

Looking back, you have had a little bit of time. Now, how would you analyze that fight?

Well, I mean, the fight specifically, I got cracked with an overhand, right. So, I mean, it kind of sucks, I would say, you know, this is where everyone's like, I, I don't. I really don't care. And everyone's like, why would you turn your reputation? It's like, well, I wanted to do it. I had an enjoyable time training, and in the buildup, obviously I wasn't skillful enough to, to, to get the win. But if even, even despite the fact that I know it's going to have. What happened if someone asked me to do it again, I probably would have done it again, you know. And so the way I was thinking about when I was deciding whether to do it or not, because I got the offer, it's like, okay, is this money? It can change my life. Yeah, it could, right? It's not gonna double my net worth, but it's gonna add significantly, make my life easier. Number two is like, when I was in high school, we used to do boxing matches for free just because we thought it was fun. We didn't have something going. On Friday night, me and my buddies would get together and we had some boxing goes in my basement and we'd punch each other in the head. So it's like, for something I think is enjoyable now, they're paying me a whole bunch of money. Yeah, sure, I'll do it.

Would you. Do you think if you got the rematch, if you did the rematch, would you. What are the odds you win? Okay, let's not.

Probably not very good. I think he's pretty good, actually, and I'm not very good now. It's probably at a low point for me because so when I started training for that, I was like £215, which is the heaviest I've ever been. I came off my hip surgery. I literally, like, when I said, yes, like, I'll do it, like, I literally started working out like the week before for the first time in my, you know, instance of surgery because I wasn't able to do anything. So could I, could I perform better? Yeah. But now after watching in Box Tyron, like, if you ask me Ben, can you beat Tyron? Probably not. I don't think I can beat Tyron in boxing. In boxing, correct. In boxing, yeah. So my chances of beating him, you know, and watching that card, it's like, damn, like, kind of be fun to box someone who I know sucks. Who I know can beat that. That's what would be fun, you know, because, like, the training, the preparation was fun, but then obviously I got my butt kicked. That. That sucked, you know? Can I swear on this podcast?

Yeah, of course.

Okay, well, I was gonna drop an F bomb. I wasn't quite sure, so I think that sucked.

Is this where you could. You could drop all. All of the F bombs you want? So preparation wise, do you think you were more prepared for that fight or. Or the Jordan Burroughs exhibition? I mean, like, how did you approach it mentally, you know?

Well, the Burroughs thing, I. Obviously, it's okay. So when I retired the first time in 2017, Burroughs was the only current, like, we'll say, really elite level wrestler that I'd never trained with. I was really good friends with Nebraska head assistant coach, still am. And I said, hey, I just want. I'm going to pay my own way. I want to come down and train with Jordan because I want to see what it feels like, you know, I want to get in there and mix it up. I mix it up with David Taylor and Kyle Dake. I mean, there's just something about wrestling that I love. And so I flew myself down there in January of 2018, and I spent four days training with Jordan. It was a really good time. It gave me some great insight into how he thinks and, you know, what a great champion he is.

What was it like training with him? Like, what. Can you get some insights? Like, of course, like, what the. Like how hard is the live training? Is it more drilling? Is it technical? Like, how does his. It seems like his style is very different than yours. So how does that match up in the room in terms of, like, what you learn from each other, that kind of thing?

We only went full live for one. I think it was like a 12 or 15 minute go where it was just go wrestle. We did a bunch of simulated live, but obviously he had. So I was a senior in college and he was a freshman in Nebraska, and so we. Our teams had dueled each other. He was obviously, like, lot smaller at that point in time, but he. He had followed my career. And so when I went in there, it was like, hey, I know you're really good at this position. What about this position? What are you trying to do. How exactly does it work? And then let's wrestle there, you know. And then, hey, what about this position? And so, you know, we would spend 30 to 40 minutes talking about that position on the ground.

Or I.

It was like one was the chest wrap, one wasn't for headlock, one was. I don't even really. It's called. We call it the Lightning Dump, but it's a.

The Lightning dump.

Yeah. My buddy's name was Lightning Luke Smith in high school and he was the first person I saw do it. So usually when I see someone do something, then I name that move after them.

Got it.

I know, right? Great name.

It's a good.

So. Yeah. But so what I said with that is like he was still trying to be the best in the world. I was just trying to go work out Jordan Burroughs because I enjoy wrestling.

Yeah.

Is like someone who at that point when he has five world titles at that four or five at that point a lot. And so I use it in my high school kids. It's like, hey, this is a guy who's the best in the world, who's bringing someone in and saying how do I do this, how do I do that? What about this? What about that? And so the level of. That's a hard word. Inquisitiveness he has is really impressive. And then it's obvious why he got to the level he did because he's figuring out all these little situations. And that's honestly one of the biggest things I think wrestlers, a lot of wrestlers fail to do as they get older. Even when they get to early college age, they say this is my style, this is what I do. I'm going to lift and work out hard and I'm. And I'm not going to add anything to my game. You know, whereas you've seen many progressions in Jordan Burrows game, he just made his 10th world team. And you know, if you have a really keen eye, you've been able to watch him change. You know, I've been watching him since 2007. He's changed so much and obviously still maintained a world class level almost the entire time.

When you say change, like what changed?

Because he's.

He's got that double leg.

Yeah. But there's not double anymore. Was that he like hit his double leg for the first time against Alex Dier. He didn't hit it in years. Yeah. So that's like when people think about Jordan Bros. They think about the double leg. Because in his early years. Fire. He had a great double leg. Right. And even in, so in those years, I would say the, the biggest thing with Jordan Bro's double leg wasn't his level of explosiveness, it was his level of persistence. He would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot. And it would, a lot of times it'd be from fun, creative angles and out of scrambles. Boop. All of a sudden he's on you, you know, and he was just super persistent with it. And I think that was probably the key. And then you saw, you know, when he came out to the, won the first World Championships in 2011, it was kind of that type of mentality. And then shortly after, then obviously everyone was starting to lower their stance, getting lower, and he developed a really good, like Mantis go behind series where he would go one way, the other way. Then he started developing a really good low single ankle pick type thing, you know. And then his hand, his hand fighting got really tremendous. Like 15, 16, 17. His hand fighting was really good. And now I just comment at the 21 trials, like a few of the defensive sequences he got into, it's like, holy shit. Like, just not from an athletic standpoint. From a technical standpoint, the things he were doing was just tremendous. So I've seen him as someone like, who's continued to reinvent themselves over the course of the last 10, 12 years.

Especially in the, As a junior and senior in college, you're exceptionally dominant. If you were to face him at the peak, both of your peaks of NCAA wrestling, could you, could you beat him? And if you can beat him, of course you can beat him.

Yeah.

How do you solve the Jordan Boroughs?

Well, so for a folk style wrestling standpoint.

Folk style, yes.

So, you know, he, he had some competitive matches his junior senior year. He had a 21 win over, or maybe it's 32 over Michael Chandler, who was my teammate, who's fighting UFC now, he had a two on win over Tyler Caldwell. So I think you can glean some insight into that. You know, he got ridden. He got so mad about this up on a podcast. So during Corona, we had to make up all kinds of bullshit to talk about.

Yeah.

And we were doing like the last 10 years, best 165s and I said Kyle Dake would ride him for over a minute.

Oh, wow.

He got so mad you wanted to come on the podcast the next day. So hopefully he doesn't listen to this. Like, fuck you, man. You know, but, you know, when was this?

This is during Corona.

Corona last year. He got mad. We were talking about before the trials. Yeah, correct. Yeah. So, you know, Michael Chandler wrote him for two minutes plus, and that was his junior year, not a senior year. Sure, right. But it's close, so I think there's some things there. I think the interesting thing would be if. If I would have stuck around. Right. So I chose to go into mixed Martial Arts After 2008, I would have been 74 and he would have been 74. So we would. Had to wrestle. And then I think that the freestyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle is a difficult to solve than the folks out Jordan Burroughs puzzle. And I think. I don't think he would. I think he would acknowledge that he's much better at freestyle than he was at folk style. You know, although he was very good, he's better.

This is like raw speed, explosiveness present a problem to you?

Well, so he was never. I mean, he didn't really excel on the mat in kind of either style. In freestyle, he has got some good lace transitions, but in folks that, like his whole, like, his entire college career think he has, like, 10 pins, which is almost nothing, you know, so he was g. Gaining no value off the top position. He was good enough on most people to get off bottom without it being an issue, but it wasn't like, oh, my gosh, this is an area where we really have to be careful. There's a lot of things here. You know, it's just. He wasn't gaining value there. Whereas in freestyle, he. I don't want to say never, but the amount of times he gets turned is incredibly rare. Very, very rare. And he does have, like, lace transitions, so he gets a lot of points there. So. And obviously freestyle is. It can be geared way more in the neutral position. Right. Where we're only doing takedowns. So.

Yeah. Were you surprised that he lost to Dake in the trials to Kyle Dake?

Oh, Kyle's so. So he's so good. Right? I mean, I think. I think his performance, the Olympics was. Was. His loss was. Was shocking to. I mean, we noticed it happened to Kyle Dake. You know, he's been a guy who's competed with Jordan Burroughs forever, and obviously he was on the losing side for a while, and now he's on the winning side. But I think a lot of people thought it was a coin flip, and I think actually Kyle Dig made it feel like it's not a coin flip. Now, to me, it feels like Kyle Dig is going to win that match significantly more times than he isn't, is what it feels like.

Yeah, I forgot which trials it was. Was it four years Ago where Kyle Dig threw him like, he, he, you saw inklings of like, yeah. Oh, wow. There might be eventually a changing of the guard.

Yeah. So 13, Kyle came out and he had the one throw, but then he lost one of the matches decisively. And then he was hurt in 14 and in 16, Kyle Dig actually went up to 86 kilograms. So in, actually in 16 at the trials we had. So Jake Herbert was number one seed. He was former as Guy Russell. I was a former world silver medalist. So you had David Taylor, who had not made a team yet, who is now a world champion, Olympic champion. You had Kyle Dake in the bracket, who was a two time world champion now. And you had Jaden Cox in the bracket who had not made any teams yet, but is now what, a four time world medalist. Two time world champion. So. And then obviously Jaden came out on top of that, won his first Olympic medal, Olympic bronze medal. So Kyle didn't wrestle Jordan in 16 and Jordan and Kyle's contention the whole time and they argued about this. So I actually did a little bit of backstabbing. Well, it was not, it's not backstabbing.

And both of them were just one.

I didn't tell any of them. Okay.

Okay.

So Jordan got mad. We talked about this fake match during Corona. Right. We had to make up something to talk about.

Yeah.

There's obviously no matches. So we talk about this fake match.

And do you stand behind that statement, by the way?

Listen, here's what I said. Kyle. Kyle Dick's four time NCA champion. Yes. I said you got to pick a. You got to pick a winner. I said Kyle Dick wins two one on a minute and six ride time, which I mean is literally we're talking.

Yeah.

As close as it gets. As close as it gets for Kyle Dick, who's a four time NCAA champion.

I'm sorry, sorry. We're talking over Jordan Burrows. Over Jordan Burrows in a folks down match. In a folks down match, college or not hypothetical now or in college, in college.

They're both of them at their peaks at 165 pounds. So completely hypothetical. And so Jordan called in. He was all pissed at me for picking Kyle Digg. He wants to come on the next day and argue his point. So I said f that that's dumb. We had to pick a winner. We had to do something hypothetical. So I called Kyle Digg and I said, hey, Kyle, Jordan's gonna come on and argue his case in the morning. If he's gonna do that, why don't you come in and argue Your case. So no one else knew Kyle was coming on the podcast. So they both show up, they went at it. But one of the contentions Kyle had for years, and there's still this rule, if you win a world level medal the following year, you sit out until the very end of the American trials. And they do. They do a best two or three. So every time previously that Kyle had wrestled Jordan, he had to come through a tournament on Saturday, probably three matches, and then on Sunday he would wrestle Jordan in the best two out of three. Right. So his contention was, I'm only wrestling Jordan at a disadvantage because I have to compete on Saturday. And then competing. Which it's a fair argument. It really is. But I also see USA Wrestling's point is, like, if someone wins a world medal, we are going to reward them because we want that person on the team again.

So it's crazy, though, that you're like, Kyle, Jake had to wrestle because he's not wrestling bums in that.

Yeah.

And yeah, I don't know. I don't know how wrestlers do it because, you know, you have to go to war, like three matches and then face Jordan Borrows.

Yeah. Especially a few of those years with, you know, Daycad, the name Andrew Howe. But those are really competitive matches. David Taylor had really competitive matches with him. Isaiah Martinez even got in there Deeringer. So he had some really competitive matches before he ever got to Jordan Burroughs. So I never answered your initial question was how did I feel? So the Jordan Burroughs match, I was not in wrestling shape at all. Meaning wrestling's heavily dependent, especially neutral positions, heavily dependent on timing and other things. I was wrestling very, very minimally because I was. I started fighting again. So, like, my. My athletic shape was great, but it was mainly for fighting. I wasn't wrestling. So I think they were actually trying to do Burrow's Dake at the Beat the Streets. It's a big. It's the biggest fundraiser in wrestling every single year in New York. In New York City, they usually raise like a million dollars. They started all these programs in New York City to get. Which I really wonder what they're doing with the money now because they probably can't have the kids wrestling because New York's crazy. Anyway.

I think New York figures out a way what to do with the money. Hence Michael Malice complaining that they're corrupt and all that.

Well, no, but it goes to the Beat the Streets organization, who then starts the clubs in New York. So I don't know what to do with money anyway. So I Was called like, I don't know, two, two weeks before the event. And said, hey, you know, someone was supposed to wrestle Jordan Burroughs. It fell out. Would you wrestle him? I said, yeah, sure, why not? You know, and it's like, listen, I, I, I trained with them for four days the year before. I had a pretty good idea how the match was going to go. It wasn't going to go so well for me. But it's like, okay, you're missing a main event I can bring because of where I'm at right now in my life. I can bring a lot of attention to wrestling. I can help you guys raise a bunch of money for Beat the Streets. My goal is, I think I thought I could get one takedown or turn on him was kind of my goal for the match. I didn't get there.

He went kind of hard.

He went hard. Yeah, that asshole didn't give me a point. Yeah, that I said, this is bullshit, Jordan. I told him during the match, like, this is bullshit. You're fucking going too hard right now. Yeah, I'm not a wrestler, I'm not a wrestler anymore. I'm a fighter. I'm coming in here. So, yeah, so I had a really good idea. I mean, we wrestle together. I think he'll probably get mad because I think in the live go, we did like the 12 or 15 minutes. I think I actually scored a takedown in that. I believe maybe, or maybe it was a turn. He'll probably say, no, I didn't, but whatever. Yeah, so I knew what was going to happen. I knew what the outcome was going to be. I knew I could probably, I was hoping I could stay competitive and maybe lose like 10, two or something. Like.

Yeah, well, let's walk back because I think I originally brought it up in terms of how prepared were you against Jake Paul versus Jordan Burroughs. So did you prepare for Jake cardio wise?

Yeah, I worked hard. Yeah, I did. But it was, I told you, I started training for my, I mean, once, once I had my hip surgery. They said, you know, for the first six weeks you can't even walk. And it was hard for me to listen to him because by week four and a half, five, I was feeling pretty good. I want to get rid of my crutches, but I'm like, you know what? This is for the rest of my life. And if you get the, so if you get the real hip replacement, there's no wrestling, there's no nothing. Right. So that's the next step. So. Okay, I'm gonna take this serious So I do my crush for the six weeks. The next six weeks, it's still like really low weight bearing, can't do anything, you know. So then I get done with the three months, which is like January, and I'm like, okay, I should start working out. So I started riding a bike a little bit and then, okay, I'm. Now I'm fat. I'm fucking fat. I'm gonna get in better shape because I haven't been able to do anything. So I'm actually start working out. And then that happened, right? So I'm like, okay, well now I got three months and this gives me a good reason to get back in shape.

And.

You know, I knew I wasn't going to be a full time boxer. So it's like, okay, how do I put a boxing camp together? So I found, you know, I had had my old teammate, Mike Rhodes. He came up and kind of lived with me, ish kind of thing for three months. I found a couple of this guy, K9 out of Michigan, he came over three weeks. He was great. I went to Freddie Roach for a week. So I kind of like, you know, try to get as many good as ideas as I could. And my thought was like, okay, well, if this dude sucks, I can just be tough and, you know, block a few punches, get him tired, and then beat him up if he's good. That's probably not much I'm going to do about in the next three months because I'm. I was never good at boxing in the first place. All of my standup in mixed martial arts was predicated on how do I get through the two or three punches that come at me in the time I need to get a hold of them. You know, it's all. You only have to make two or three of them miss and then boom, you're on top of them. At least for me, that was all my striking was predicated on. It wasn't about, hey, I'm gonna do damage on the feet in order to make something else happen. It was like, how do I clear this barrier, get a hold of you? And if you. I actually did the math one time, I think I got a takedown. If you include the knockout round against Masvidal, I got a takedown in every round except two. So it was like, it was like 53 out of 55 rounds in MMA. I got a takedown.

Wow.

Somewhere, somewhere in there.

Okay, so you're hunting the takedown. Once you once right away, once you get a. Your hands on them, you get to take Down.

Yeah.

Okay. But the incredible thing about you, I. I just recently talked. Spent a couple of days with Jimmy Pedro and he talked about his guys and just champions in general hating to lose more than they love winning. And the way you talked about losing, you lost very few times in your career. Like later, you. You were dominating both wrestling and mma. But the way you took these losses against people that are, I don't know, below elite level, it's fair.

I was going to get pissy, but it's completely fair. I thought he was a bum too.

No, that's not what I meant. I'm in trouble.

It's okay. No, it's good.

No, no, but like, what. Can you explain the psychology behind that? Like, the what, Is there a system behind this? Is there philosophy behind this?

Well, so I, I wasn't very good in the beginning, and I think that. I think that's where it all starts from. So I didn't start getting good until the age of like 13. I started at 5. I probably started competing more at age 10, 11. I didn't really get good till 13. And still at 13, I'm. I'm great. I'm getting better, right? I'm pretty good. So I actually, I've actually, I have writing this book on sports psych. But this, it's. I got. Well, I got someone write a. For me kind of thing because I've had this philosophy for years that there has to be this balance between two things, right? So on the one hand, in this category, on the one hand, you have hating to lose. A great champion has to hate to lose, like you said, right? But on this other hand, you have to have someone who seeks out challenges, right? Because if you don't have that, you're never gonna reach your full potential either. And so you have to balance these two balls at the same time, right? And so, like, for me, I always, and this is maybe because I wasn't good, but I was always like, let me go find the best people to wrestle all the time. Let me go find. I would like, literally, like, Seventh Day is great. When I was starting to get better, it was like. And this is an Internet. Well, there's no one was using the Internet. It was like a wrestling magazine. And like, hey, dad, there's a tournament here. I think that are. That kid's gonna be there. Can you take me two hours across the state today, please?

You would wrestle, like, in competition against them?

Not in competition. Yeah, yeah, in competition. Hey, I heard there's this tournament here's the magazine says this tournament. Hey, dad, will you take me over there tomorrow?

You weren't trying to win. You were trying to get the experience.

I was trying to wrestle the best guys. Maybe I win, maybe I lose. There's no. When you do a competition, there's no guarantee of a win or a loss. You're just doing competition. Right. So I wanted to go. I wanted to challenge myself against the best guys, of which I thought maybe I could come out on top. Right? So, like, eighth grade year, I won way, way, you know, I probably only lost a handful of times in the state of. Well, the state of Wisconsin is probably really, really minimal. The amount of times I lost, you know, but it was just about getting the challenge. And it's like some. Some kids, and not kids in my club, because I'll. I'll push them very hard on this, are scared of challenging themselves. They like being the big fish in the small pond. They're not willing to go say, I'm gonna. I want to go get that guy. And I want to get that guy, and I want to get that guy. And so that's like. So I think that's part of it for me is, like, I always just love the challenge. I enjoyed competing thoroughly. Right. And I understood from a young age because it wasn't very good. Losing is a part of it. You're not always going to win. And that was kind of it. It's like, hey, sometimes, you know, and for my MMA career, I never planned it to go that way, but, yeah, I didn't lose for nine years, and, like, that's. That's pretty rare. I didn't plan for that to happen. That was just what happened.

Okay, but you also didn't lose, like, the second part of your college career.

My 87. I won my last 87 matches.

Yeah. So that didn't come along with the hatred of losing. You just.

I don't like losing. I still don't like it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. But you're. You don't. You don't seem to. You. You seem to kind of shrug it off a little bit.

Okay, so, like, with. Specifically with these two instances that you bring up with the Masvidal, I. It feels definitely so. Okay.

All right, let's go.

Let's go deep. Let's go. So the Masvidal one, it feels different because.

So. Whoa, wait, let's.

For.

People don't know.

Okay.

Masvidal loss was your first loss. First loss in mma. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean. And it was a dramatic loss. Very dramatic. And there was this Kind of buildup, as you are potentially one of the greats of all time coming into this fight. And so there's pressure, all of that. So the.

No, I mean, I. I was thoroughly enjoying it. I don't feel the pressure. So the Masvidal fight is. He got one fucking move on me. It's not like he beat me. And if we do that again, I think I win at that point in my life, for sure. I think I win way, way, way more times than I lose. He knew that, too. That's why he didn't want to sign the bottle agreement. That's why I had to taunt him and why he got so mad, because I had to continue to taunt him in order to get him to sign. Right. So that one hurt because. And so for people who don't know my mma, I'll just go through it fast. I did three fights in, like, smaller leagues. I got signed by Bellator. I was undefeated for three and a half years. I was nine and zero. When I got done with that in 2012, 2013, at that point in my head, I was just going to transition to the ufc, because that's where you go. I was ranked, like, sixth in the world. I hadn't really had a competitive match at the end of the Bellator thing. And Dana White, for a reason still unknown to me, we still haven't had this conversation. I wish I could ask him. I should ask him sometime. Chose to refuse me any entry into ufc. He just said. I went to his office and he literally said, we're not interested. We're not going to make you an offer.

Did you. Did you mention something to. About him, about the ufc?

That was a year before that. That was the year before. That might play a role in it. I think so, yes. What happened the year before that was I called him a liar, which. But listen, I'm right on this one, because he said, you can't test for drugs because I'm all natural, which you could tell by my physique. And I was always put off by the fact that so many people cheated, and I was very vocal about that. And so he had made some statement like, oh, there's no way you could test. I said, bullshit. Very specifically, I said, usada does it for all other sports worldwide. You can do it. And then it was funny because they hired USADA a couple years later. So I think he took some offense to that. But that was like a year and almost a year and a half. I think somewhere it was later.

It's not like he holds a grudge or anything?

Yeah. So I. So I. I literally go to Vegas. It's a long story. You can read about it other places. I. So I got released from a belt. It's not like this is negotiation. I got released from my Bellator contract. I said, I'm out of here.

I'm going.

I'm going to go to the ufc. I go to Vegas. And then I was told, hey, there's no offer for you. Tough, you know. So then I ended up signing with one championship. I spent, what, three and a half years there. I won the belt in my second fight and retained the title the entire time. And then I just. I think dominating people, yeah, I didn't have a competitive fight, and So I retired. 18 and 0. Never, never get. And for someone who loves a challenge, never getting to really challenge myself was incredibly frustrating. And I left the door open. I said, if I ever get the chance to prove him in this world, I'd love to come back. So somehow, a year later, I get traded. Trades have never happened. And this is the one and only trade ever. I've been retired for a year. I got traded. I get to come back. I fight Robbie Lawler the first fight I win. And then essentially, they're saying, okay, if you fight, you know, if you beat George, you're going to get the title shot against Marty. And it's like this. This is what I've been working for the entire. I've been trying to prove I was the best fighter of the world for the last 10 years, and I've not been afforded this opportunity. So when I lost to George, that was hard because it was something that I had waited for for a really, really long time. It was something that I, you know, I thought I could compete for, and I never got the opportunity to do. So. That one was hard. At the same time, from, like, just a competitive logistic game, it's like, he got me with one move. It wasn't like he beat my ass for 15 minutes, and I got beat a bunch of different ways. So that was like, fuck. Like, if I get it again, I could have done it. But I'm not. I'm not. They're not gonna let me have it again. It's not like wrestling, where you could go the next year or the next week or whatever. You know, you lose a big Tens, you go to Nationals two weeks later.

Does that loss change you in any way, your psychology?

I don't. I don't think so.

It's the first loss.

I mean, had I Had I had a longer MMA career post, that there definitely would have been a lot of time spent getting better at the end. The entry point to the takedown. Right. Which I'd already spent time there. I don't, I, and I hate making excuses, but yeah, the hip, the hinging of my hip. What I couldn't do was preventing me from doing some things. And it's why if you look at the fight, I'm like bent over as I go for the double leg. Yeah.

So what happened for people who don't know you went in for a double legged. He did a flying knee. Taught you well.

Specifically the way he did that knee was kind of different than the way anyone had thrown flying knees before. Most people go more just from a stand straight vertical, whereas he took a few like running steps and went more, you know, the trajectory of the angle was different. So I think that's kind of probably why it caught. You know, I think a lot of things in combat will probably everything but I focus on happen subconsciously. Like our brain is reading what's coming at us and, and lot of times it's stuff we've seen before so we can judge how to move correctly.

You misread because it's something you haven't seen head for.

Had not seen anyone come at that specific angle. Yeah. So that was really hard with the Burroughs one. I told you. I knew I was going to lose, so it was like whatever, you know. I'm taking this because I want to put the sport of wrestling out there in a big way. I want to help them raise a lot of money. We sold at Madison Square Garden, Hulu Theater and we raised a whole bunch of money. So my goals were accomplished. Jake Paul fight. I took it because they paid me a bunch of money and I thought it was going to be fun. Did I have any illusion I was a great boxer? No illusions whatsoever. Would I have preferred to win? Absolutely. But you know, like I told everyone, whether I win or lose on Saturday night, I'm going to be back coaching wrestling on Monday because that's what I enjoy doing. And I was back coaching wrestling on Monday and once in a while these middle school kids give me a little bit of shit about it and that's it.

But where were you in terms of your shape and how you felt in the Masvidal fight? Would you say you're on the. I mean, it's a difficult question to ask of, of a world class athlete, but like, were you past peak?

Oh, yeah. I don't know why guys like to Lie about that. I mean, the peak for me was really evidently in my late 20s, and maybe they are all fueled by extra supplements. I. I don't know. But I. For me, that. That was evident. But you get this. So you get this crosshair where you're. If you're smart, like, you know, like I mentioned Joan Burroughs was, you're still gaining wisdom, you're gaining strategy, you're gaining a lot of things, right? And so while your physicality may go down, your overall skill level still may be rising, especially in mma, because people usually start later because they're gaining wisdom, strategy, all of the. Maybe more tools in their toolbox. Right? They're getting all these things. So their actual competitive peak, despite their athletic peak, might still be a few years past that. Right. Because these things are crossing. No. So I was great. Obviously, the hip was an issue. It's funny, because I knew I had a lot of pain here, and I knew it was because of this, and it was like, okay, whenever I'm done, I'll just get it taken care of, whatever. But every time I train, I would have pain kind of, like all up my back. And the day after the surgery, I woke up and there was no pain on the right side of my. The surgery is on the left side. There's no pain on the right side of my back. I'm like, that's weird. Like, every. Every morning I wake up, there's a lot of pain there. You know, like, okay, well, I'm on pain pills. Maybe it'll. Maybe it'll come back tomorrow. And this. That's never. Never been back since my.

Oh, wow.

So it's weird because it was like this. I thought this was affecting this, but it was affecting all the way across my whole back. So, you know, if I get to get a new hip, honestly, if I. If I. I don't know, it's going to change the competitive outcome whatsoever. If I had known how good the hip replacement was going to be, I would have done it. The second I retired from one championship In November of 2017, I would have had my hip surgery scheduled for December 1st. Just from a lifestyle standpoint, I could only sleep in one position. There was a lot of things I couldn't do. I was in a lot of pain, so I would have done that a lot earlier. But no, from a athletic point, I was ready. Just shit goes wrong sometimes.

I don't know how to ask this, but, you know, Joe Rogan, me, had a. Had a sense about you, similar to, like, Fedor, that you are Potentially one of the greatest ever.

Yeah.

Does it hurt that you're not in the discussion now of being in the top 10 of all time?

I didn't prove it. I don't deserve it. I mean, but I didn't. I didn't prove it. I mean, and so it's like, had I. Had I somehow gotten to convince Dana White, we go and convince him in 2013 to make me an offer, and I didn't even need a good offer, I just needed any offer. Had I gotten the offer, then maybe the outcome's different. Right. But given I would never expect anyone to think of me that way, I didn't prove it. I know. I know what I was, and I'm good with that. And, yeah, other people never got to see that. Do you think.

Well, you don't know. You can't know fully. Right. Do you think if you went to the UFC at that time instead of one championship?

I think I would have a lot of success, yeah. I mean, there's obviously certain guys. There's a lot of guys I've trained with that I had a lot of really good results against.

And who was the Walter Waite at that?

Tyron was a champion for a long time there. So I was around. Tyrone was a champion. Anthony was the champion at lightweight. I was, you know, same gym as him, and we had a lot of people coming through. Yeah.

Would you face Tyron?

Would I have fought him? I don't think so. I mean, so he was still the champion when I came into the UFC and we said, no, we're not going to fight.

All right.

Hey, so he can't change history, right? So once something happens, you got to accept for what it is and move forward and obviously hope you can continue to keep accomplishing great things, which, for me, obviously, my athletic career is over. So now it's going to be through my wrestling academies and, you know, who knows what else I get. Get into.

Oh, you might do exhibition matches, all that kind of stuff, right? Step two, wrestling and stuff.

No, I don't think so. So here's my thing with the wrestling matches is, like, just for fun, if you said, hey, Ben, just for fun.

Yeah.

Would you love to go wrestle someone? Yeah, I would. I would, right? I love. I love wrestling. I get in there. I love, you know, I love, like. So one of my guys has gotten to be pretty good. He's in college, guy named Keegan o'. Toole. He just won a junior world title this year. And so when. When I'm doing private lessons, I have Such a thing about the development of the athlete. Sometimes I can wrestle hard, but most of the time it's like, I'm just going to help them with whatever they need help with. And it's still wrestling. And it's fun, but it's helping them, you know, for, like, for Keegan comes back this summer and he's training for the junior world title. So to be able to just shake hands sometimes and say, like, I'm going to try to kick your ass. Cheer, try to kick my ass. You know, like just to go like.

Yeah, it's a good feeling.

It's so much fun. And I don't get to do that very much. So if you said, ben, would you love to do some matches? And the answer is, yeah. The problem, unfortunately for me, and maybe you can talk me off a ledge here, is like, because of where I've gotten to in my career, if I choose to do a wrestling match, people are going to be really excited about it. It's going to blow up and it's. I just want to wrestle. Just to wrestle. I'd rather just like go in a room where no one can watch and just wrestle. Just enjoy it.

Well, you could also wrestle. So there's different kinds of wrestling. There's wrestling whether it's an event and like, you know, there's a build up and an announcement.

Yeah.

And you can also do like Khabib style. Like in the room there's cameras and you're kind of going, it's like, Khabib does that. No, in.

Marcel did that. He whooped my ass a few times.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've seen Khabib some videos.

Okay.

It's not like setup up. It's just people going hard and then it's more fun.

Yeah.

You know, and it's, it's also more like presenting the beauty of the sport.

Yeah.

You know, for sure. And. And like. And there's no winning or losing, really. In that context.

Yeah.

Like, you're just, you're always joking around a little bit, even when you go super hard. So I feel like, especially in the modern day with, with the Internet, that's a compelling way to do.

So I've thought about. This is the one thing I've thought about doing, because I told you about my buddy, was the content thing. It's called rockfin. I thought about doing, you know, the old really famous Gracie Challenge.

Yeah.

Okay. So I thought about doing the Askren challenge. You want my rule set?

Yeah, let's go.

I'm not sure I'm going to do this.

People are going to show up to your, like in Wisconsin.

I have to select you. I'll start with a thousand bucks. Right? Okay, 30 minutes. You pin me or I pin you. That's it. No points, no nothing. We just wrestle. Camera. That's it, Right? Camera in the room. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe there's a referee, because we don't want there to be contention with the pin.

So one pin.

Just one pin. 30 minutes. 30 minutes. Okay. If I pin you, you don't get shit. You go home. Right. Every person I pin, it goes up by a thousand dollars. Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand and so on. If you make it the distance and I don't pin you and you don't pin me, I'll pay for your travel and give you 500 bucks. Right. Just a consolation prize for showing up. If you pin me, you get whatever the jackpot is.

Wait, who's adding to the jackpot?

I am. It's. Mine's my money.

But then what's the incentive to keep winning for you? Because the jackpots.

Well, because I would put the content somewhere and people would watch it.

Oh, so you're gonna make money.

Yeah.

So you'd make money that way it's not exponentially growing.

Right.

It's just going up by like.

Yeah. I really think there's probably only a couple people that could pin me. So I would either just not choose those people or wait till I get a really large audience and people get really excited. In that case, I'm making a lot of money.

So what do you think? How many matches would go with you? Like, Kaldik shows up?

I don't think he could hit me. Yeah, Jordan Bros could beat me, but he can't pin me. He was never a pinner. Yeah, he ain't gonna pay me. There's only a few people who have the skill level to do so. Right. It takes a lot because that was. So pinning was one of my specialties. I had the fourth most of all time, and I won the penny award the last two years, so.

And then even down on points and just pin them.

This is actually one of the issues I have with Jiu Jitsu and the point system and the Eddie Bravo thing. I actually think Eddie Bravo thing is kind of. People will get so mad at me. Sorry. Jiu Jitsu. I think it's bullshit. And you want me to tell you why it's bullshit?

Yeah.

So, like, if Jordan Burroughs whoops my ass and the score is 16 to 2, but he can't pin me, then I get to go to overtime and get a cradle on him. I'm probably going to pin him. So I'm better than Jordan Burroughs. Nah, that ain't right. He just whooped my ass, you know what I'm saying? Like if we can go the whole. Because they do submission only. So if Jordan Bros. Beats me up for, what's it, eight minutes, 10 minutes? I don't know. What's the length of an Eddie Bravo match?

Yeah, I don't know. Something like that. Yeah, yeah.

So we go 10 mean Jordan Bros. Go to me. He's gonna outscore me significantly. But he, he will not pin me. I promise you that. Okay, so now we go. We go to the overtime.

Strong words, but yeah, he won't.

Jordan Bros. Is not gonna. He's gonna beat me. I will give you that.

Kyle Dake won't pin you either.

No. Okay, okay. They'll both beat me on points very badly. Now David Taylor, he might pin me because he's a very good pinner. Also, they'll beat me very badly. They will not pin me. But now we get to overtime and we get to pick like, right. So in a Bravo, you get Rear Naked Choke or an armbar. Okay, give me a cradle. I'll probably pin them. Okay. A good cradle. You can say cradle or maybe give them. They're not. Probably not going to pin me. Right. Maybe there's a chance, but probably not because that's just not their specialty.

So for people who don't know the Eddie Bravo thing is when. And it goes into overtime, you get a dominance position on a person and you get to. Yeah, basically put them in a cradle. This is the wrestling equivalent.

Yeah.

But you take their back.

Maybe an armbar. Yeah, like a wrestling arm bar. So. And I don't think that's very fair because if someone whoops your ass, they whoop your ass and then you know. And so I think the reason why Jiu Jitsu people accept that rule set is that I don't think. I think they know this but would admit it. I don't think their point scoring system at a clue Attic adequately rewards what people value. So, like in wrestling, we value takedowns because it gets closer to the pin and the most valuable scoring is a near fall, near to the pin, because that's the ultimate goal of the sport. Whereas in Jiu jitsu, for example, like, if I were to get a takedown. So, like if I went to Gordon Ryan and he just didn't pull guard, I would probably get the Takedown. Now, if somehow he didn't submit me, which he probably would, right? But say he got close to like 12 submissions, but somehow I slipped out of all of them. Now I win 2, 0. Like, that's ridiculous. Like, he should very clearly win because he almost submitted. You know what I'm saying? Like, there. And I. And I realized the difficulty, I realized the difficulty in rewarding near submissions. But that is the most valuable thing is getting close to finishing the match. And in most competitions, they don't actually reward that.

But. Okay, so this, this isn't about the sport. This is about the Ben Askren challenge that we're talking about. Okay, what. Why 30 minutes? Why not unlimited time? Why. Why go until whenever?

Well, because then it's just a cardio thing. Because at some point then someone would just have to fall over dead, right? There's no more skill level involved. It's just who can stand up the longest.

You honestly don't think 30 minutes is a cardio thing too? How do you think that's actually gonna look? Kyle Dake going against you for 30 minutes?

So it's going to be kind of boring for the most part.

What position are you going to be?

Because you. Well, you can't, but you can't. You just can't have a gigantic amount of action for 30 minutes. So I, I related because some of my kids, when I'm teaching them wrestling, they're like, well, but I can't do that for seven minutes. And I'm like, well, you know, like say, say if I had you do hang cleans at a relatively heavy weight, as hard as you could, you're not going to last seven minutes. You're gonna, your pace will slow down, right? So my thing is like, well, your pace doesn't have to step here because in wrestling you're competing against someone. So if you're here at 100 and you go to 80, but they go to 70, that's great. And then you go to 60, but they go to 40, this is even better, right? Because the gap is growing. So we don't necessarily. If we get tired, that's fine. If they get more tired, that's better. So I think most people would know that. So they would kind of slow it down. But yeah, I think in 30, I mean, I've wrestled 30 minute goes. I've wrestled, I've wrestled hour long goes. You're not going to get so tired, you're going to fall over in that time period. But at some point, if we, if it's unlimited, someone Will get so tired that are dehydrated that they're just going to freaking fall over.

Yeah, but you think, what about making it exciting and dynamic? You think the other person is always going to be going for the pin and thereby make a dynamic.

Well, if they're working that hard, then they might exhaust themselves. Right. And obviously then if you're, if you're being that dynamic, then you're adding risk to yourself too, because you are, you know, doing that.

Well, I love this. This is a great idea.

Well, I figured I would get, I rack up like 20 pins against bums, you know, or not, not as great people in the beginning. And then I would start bringing in better people because they would be enticed by, you know, $20,000, the possibility to.

Win and not, not much fanfare, just a camera and just, that's it.

In my wrestling room.

Yeah, yeah. Like the Gracie challenge.

Yes. Yeah. And so then maybe you have like, you know, for most people, you have someone edit like the 90 seconds of the most fun things that happen, and then you can watch the entire 30 minutes if you want to. Yeah, I mean, I think most people, if they're not really, really elite, I'm probably gonna pin them if they're not really elite. So. Yeah, but I don't know, I, I, that's something I've been thinking about. This has been like, fun for me to think about. Obviously it plays to my skill sets because my cardio is good and my pinning is good also. So. Yeah.

So like you said, you weren't very good in your early days until 13, 14. What was the switch you became? You started to dominate people and your college career, you dominated and obviously you stopped losing at some point.

Yeah, so. Well, I would say so. Even when I didn't lose in collegiate competition, I would go in the summers and try to make the world team. So I would lose some, not a lot, Right. Minimally. Okay. So when I'm five, I start playing all sports. Like, I, I know you moved to America at what age?

13.

Okay, so five. So at least I don't know what it was for you. But in America at my age, you usually played like a sport every season. Right. So that's what I did. In the beginning. I had minimal success in wrestling. I was kind of chunky. And then in fifth grade, and I can't tell you, I want to be better. And I told my parents, and this is funny because now I look at other 11 year olds and very few of them are this mature and I actually think emotional Maturity is kind of one of the key indicators of how long term successful someone's going to be. And at age 11, I said, I don't want to play baseball and I like baseball, but I don't want to play baseball because I want to wrestle more, because I want to get better at wrestling. So age 11, I quit baseball so I could wrestle in a club for March, April and May because that was all that existed at that point in time. You couldn't wrestle in June, July, or any of those other months.

What was that desire to get better? What is it? So it's not about, I don't know.

Where it came from. I just want to get better, I want to get back. I want to be good at this. I want to be really good at this.

So when you're looking at kids now as a coach, you're looking for that somebody who says, you know what, I kind of suck. I want to get better.

And, and I want to try to also inspire that. I mean that honestly, I think, I think as a coach, that's probably my, my biggest job is to get a kid and get them to believe I can do this. Because if I can do this, what can I can do that I can do that too, right? And there's so many kids who unfortunately have like shitty parents or bad teachers that tell them, you suck, you can't be anything. Right? So I think my biggest goal as a coach is to get someone to believe they can do it. So actually some of the ones that believe they can do it, they're the most fun, but they're not the ones who need it the most, right? The ones who think they can are the ones that need me the most because I need someone to. Let's go. So I don't, I don't know what inspired me. I'm not sure. So, age at age 11, fifth grade, I quit. I started. So then I started having more success, you know, where I'm like, say, placing at the state tournament in high school. So you, you write fifth. So sixth grade, I placed it like the state local U, state tournament, you know, so I'm like having more success. Seventh grade was the first year I won the youth state tournament. So I'm getting better. Eighth grade, I actually feel like I got pretty good. But like, when I went to the national tournaments, I was still having really minimal success. My freshman year, I decided to quit football. Same reason. It's like, well, I need to put more time into this. My parents, we got. My dad luckily got a mat in my basement so, you know, there's no. So we have a year round club. And our impetus was that we didn't have this opportunity to go to a club year round. So we had a mat in my basement I had to go find. Hey, you want to. You want to come wrestle? Yeah. To find partners for myself.

What'd you do? Did you drill? Did you live wrestle? What'd you do in that basement?

So actually, I think you'll enjoy this. I think the start of my scrambling was. Was kind of based around that. So I got kind of. I think it's probably my freshman, sophomore. I'm kind of. The years are a little fuzzy. Right. It's been a while, but probably my freshman, sophomore, junior year, I found two kids who were really consistent, who would come out. Like you'd come out on. He'd come out on Tuesday and this dude would come out on a Wednesday. Right. And they would come every week. And they were really consistent partners for me to have in the summer. But they weren't nearly as good as me. They were way worse. So it's like, okay, how do I make this kind of like fun and compelling for them to come back? If I whoop their ass, they're not going to come back. So it's like I would let them get as close as they could, as I thought they could do a takedown before not getting it, and then tried to escape or get out. So obviously, if I let them get really close, sometimes they get it. So they're enjoying it. I don't know if they ever knew I was doing this. I have no idea. And that was kind of like the start because I had to figure my way out of bad positions because I had to try to make it entertaining for them where they still got something out of it and they wanted to come back the next week. And I also got something out of it.

Yeah, I love this.

Yeah.

Because that relationship is so important with that, like, that. I've. I've had a few drilling partners, training partners that were really important to my life. And I always wondered why it's difficult, why it's so difficult to find them. Yeah, like, I. If anyone's listening to this, I'm looking for a judo person in the Austin area. Actually, getting the reps with people is hard, even in jiu jitsu, that it's just like people want to do the fun stuff. They don't want to really put in the work, and it takes a certain kind of personality. And then you also have to make it fun for the other person. Just like you said, if there's a skill mismatch, but also if you have an interest mismatch in terms of the, the amount of drilling you want to do, all that kind of stuff, you have to figure out ways to make it fun.

Yeah, it's tricky. So you did, so. Yeah, I did that and no one told me. As I get some, I get frustrated because now we have, you know, just in my academy we probably have 50, 60 high school kids only that are year round, that they're year round. You know, maybe they're not consistent in the summer or whatever, but they're there. So when they don't have a great partner, they start whining. It's like, you little bitches. Like, you know, I, I, some days I get really mad about it because it's like I had no partners. I had to find freaking two partners. Come twice a week, you guys. There's still 22 people in the room. I'm sorry there's not the perfect partner for you, but like, go work out with that dude.

Yeah.

You know, and get, yeah.

So what was the switch that changed? Was or is this gradual or.

Gradual? Okay. Yeah. So, so ninth grade, I quit football because I want to get really serious.

What position Football?

I was actually a nose tackle and I was, but at that point. So. Okay, so I was also the other thing I kind of left over. I was really fat growing up in sixth grade. I also decided, okay, I'm really fat and if I want to be competitive wrestling, I shouldn't be fat because weight matters. I went from £130 to £100 in sixth grade. So by the time I was a freshman, I was 119. So I had, I still wasn't as heavy as I was on sixth grade, so I was pretty small too. But I was also slow, unfortunately, so they put me in those tackle. I, you know, I like the competitiveness, so I was decent at it.

So that's what you wrestle? 119 my freshman year. Yeah.

So, yeah. So then I still, I started having a lot of success state wise, but not nationally as my national success didn't come to like my junior year in high school. But yeah, I was like grinding and getting better the whole time. And then senior year I started having a lot of success nationally and I got recruited and then, but then even in my freshman year of college, I, this is where I love competing. I would go every weekend because I knew if you, if you take the emotions out of competition, all it is is seeing your failures, acknowledging them and then figuring out what you need to work on, right? If we take all the emotion out of it, that's what it is. So I wrestled 50 matches as a redshirt freshman, which is incredibly rare. I had 10 losses. So it's not. And like, to not, not so great guys, you know, so, like, my, my skill level still at that point was not that great. And then the next year I came out and I made the NCAA finals. So I made a gigantic jump in that red shirt year to the real freshman year.

So a few questions. Where did the funk style of wrestling, the creative stuff, get developed at which stage?

So I think looking retroactively, there was no intention to start when I was in high school with those kids. But I think that's kind of like what was happening, right? So what I would really say is I had one influential coach my retro year of college, named Mike Ironman. Um, great guy. But then the second thing was it was just out of necessity. I had this burning desire to be the best. And when I was getting my ass kicked every day in the room because we had, you know, Tyrone was there. We had all American 157. We had all American 184. So I was not having a tough time success. And very quickly I realized from like, a more traditional athletic perspective, strength and speed, I couldn't keep up with anyone. I was way worse. So it's like, okay, fuck, how do I. How do I do this? You know, I want to do this. How do I do this? There's got to be a way, you know? So Mike Ironman showed me a couple things, but then it was just like this creative expansion for the next, you know, say three to five years. And then even now it's like, I don't know, there's something. And maybe you feel this way about judo, or there's something that's like, fun about the way the body moves and works and. And exploring something new and thinking about, hey, wrestling's been happening at a relatively high level for, we'll say, 80 to 90 years in America. And there's still new things being developed. And so when you see something new, you're like, damn, like, that's great. Or like, jason, no, man, have to win Dixie. I'm like, how did I not think of that? Like, why did I think that's so easy? I should, I should have thought of that. You know, so there's this, like, obsession with the sport of wrestling and, you know, positions where I actually think sometimes, thank God we didn't have smartphones. Because I may have been distracted by my smartphone. Maybe I wouldn't have been because I was so obsessed. But maybe. But, you know, some days I had couldn't finish the single leg on this specific person, or they. Maybe they were finishing on me, and it was like, go home. And I just fucking obsess about that one position. Like, okay, how do. What. What am I missing here? And not just accepting, like, that whatever the coach says is the answer, but, like, what am I missing? What ways can my body move that no one's told me it can move yet? Where can my arms go? Right. Where can I do all these things? And so I would just obsess about these things. And then, you know, sometimes you come in the next day, you say, oh, well, maybe this, you know, and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it works twice and it doesn't work the next time. And so you kind of like, have this creative process, and it's like, you know, there's a lot of things that are on the cutting room floor that never made it to the light because you thought they'd be good and they failed and they sucked. And then, you know, to the point where, like, my senior year, I got to this point where the. The people. And they were just figures. Figures would wrestle in my head about positions I was thinking about. I wouldn't tell them what to do. They would just. They would go in my head and then like, something. Oh, wait, that's it. That. That's it. Like, that just happened. That's the move. And then I go try to practice, and sure enough, boom. That's the move.

That's exactly what you have. Alphazero playing, learning chess. You have. Oh, no, it's called self plays. You have. What did the figures have?

Like, no places. They were just like.

Did they have a human form or is it just like stick figures essentially?

There was not like. Yeah, it was not like humans. It was more like stick figures wouldn't stick figures exactly. Like, they were so that some volume. Yeah, it was like. It was like a gray person. And they had, you know, three dimensions, essentially, because I had to see how the things moved. And yeah.

I mean, this is exactly what OpenAI and DeepMind at Google are. I don't know if you've seen, but there's something called reinforcement learning in artificial intelligence where you have, like. They've done it for, like, sumo wrestling. You have, like, you have these two stick figures that don't even know how to get up at first, and they figure out how to stand on their two feet and then they figure out how to push the other person off of the, the pedestal.

Wait, so but what about like when you look at the, the Boston Dynamics, sometimes they have trouble with like jumping and balancing and the other stuff. So are they, are they doing that same program or. No, no, no, no.

This different. Everything Boston Dynamics is doing is hard coded. So it's not, it's not learning the, all the sophisticated movements and strategies, like high level strategies and movement. That's all something that Boston Dynamics does not do. And if it does it like the parkour stuff that's all hard coded in. Oh, the people like project and think like these robots have like discovered like how to move in sophisticated ways. They haven't.

Well, that's what. When you and John were talking about the grappling robot.

Yeah.

I mean the one thing I was, I was obsessing about in my head is that with the chess, right. If a chess piece moves, right, the horse can move like an L, right? It can only move like an L. It doesn't matter if it moves at 2 meters per second or 7 meters per second. It can only, it can only move there, right. Whereas like a single leg, I can shoot a single leg with many different velocities. I can shoot at different angles. I can shoot with different amounts of force, right. I can shoot with my, my head up versus my head. I mean, right. All these things are going to matter. If we're talking about a human being defending the single leg, all of those things are going to matter. And that's where human beings are who wrestle are calculating those things subconsciously. They're obviously not consciously calculating in their head. Oh, the force is coming at me at this. So I need to do that, right? They're just doing it.

But see the thing is. So you would absolutely. If you're doing a robot that you're wrestling, you're going to have to constrain the speed at which it moves and the power that it's able to deliver. So that presumably there'll be the limitation. So then it'll be just the same exact with as a human.

But then, but even so if we go human max force with Jordan Bros. Double max force, right? That's the highest, that's the highest we get. And then we go down from there. Even, even with, even within that. It's like sometimes I can shoot a single leg with a maximum force of. I don't. We'll just say, we'll say 20 is a number, right? I don't know. Shoot it at 20, because I feel. Sometimes I shoot at 15, sometimes I shoot it at 12. Right. Because you. You feel something in your opponent that makes you differently. So they would have to learn how. And then, you know, all these different things, and sometimes maybe I clamp a little harder. So the. The robot would have to learn all these different incoming inputs to the system and then create this reaction.

Oh, no, no. 100%. So this would be all continuous. Like, so unlike chess. It would not. It's just. Chess is discrete. There's. It's one and you move. It's a very specific set of moves. Now here you would. Those are all variables you control, and they're continuous variables. So the speed, the force, there's actuators. So there's all these joints. Right. Yeah, you can move. I mean, it's just an optimization problem.

It's kind of. It's fascinating. So I've been fascinated, thinking about it since you guys talked about was a long time ago. I listened to it probably three to four weeks ago, and I've kind of been like, obsessing about it ever since.

Yeah, it just changes when. So unlike boxing, for example, or striking, you know, once you grab a hold of somebody, it changed. You're now one body.

Right.

So, yeah, it's very complicated. It's not just shooting a. A double leg without, like, maybe doing like. Like faking a double leg and then shooting the double leg. That's very doable with robotics. But then like doing a clinch and from there doing, like, a Russian tie like that. Yeah, that's. I think that's way harder than people realize in terms of how many things are involved. Like the force of the grip, the leverage you're providing with all the different parts of the shoulder and the arm and the torso. The twist. How much of your weight are you allocating? Like, leaning on the other person, like, taking weight off of one of your legs and the other leg. All of that. I think that's the really interesting thing about humans, is we're able to do all of this calculation subconsciously. Yeah, subconsciously.

Yeah. And that's what I've been thinking about since we. It's like how many things even these high school athletes who are, like, getting medium good are subconsciously thinking about all the time or not even. Not even thinking about reacting to. But then even, like, for me, I'm, you know, I'm a few or some mag. Do better than some of these kids that player. And so when I. When I go, like, super hard, it's like I can Feel their weight moving the wrong direction. And so for me to off balance them or trip them or whatever is kind of easy sometimes, you know, because they're not feeling it the right way. Right. Or their timing's just a little bit off, or the way they're grabbing the hip, maybe they should be up a little higher. Right. These really small things.

Yeah. I think that's all easy to take advantage of for a robot. It's just there's so many things. The big problem is ethically, I don't know how many people are willing to train with a robot because you're going to get hurt.

Well, can you make a robot change the robot or no?

Yes, but then it's expensive, so.

Because they're gonna put the padding on that thing.

I know, but, but then it's not, you know, it's then that you're not capturing the full.

Why can't you put like some rubber coating on them or, you know, something to that effect?

You could. I mean, you could. Yeah, you could. I mean, you're talking about robots that are. These are humanoid robots. So we're talking about 500,000 million dollar robots. So you would have to be motivated.

Spend a lot of money.

To spend a lot of money because you have to have them wrestle for like a lot.

To get better.

Yeah, to get better. And then the, the open question is, how long does it take to get good enough to be a human? I, I don't, I don't think, I don't think we understand. I don't know. I don't think you understand how hard wrestling is.

Yeah.

Like, is it a really hard problem? Like what's harder, chess or wrestling?

By far, not even close.

That's. Yeah, that's the sense.

So because there's an infinite amount of moves. Right. And possibilities. So once I shoot the same leg. Now you have X amount of choices. Once you make your choice. Now I have a choice. X amount of choices. Now. Now you have X amount of choices on the defense. And we can just keep going back and forth. Right. And this number becomes.

Yeah, but the same happens with chess.

Correct. But then in wrestling you have to make these movements in very instantaneously. Right. Because I should have seen, like, I'm not going to wait and say, what's your defense?

Yeah, right.

It's me instantaneously. And then also again, based on the force and the vectors and, and the angles, you have to calculate that and adjust. So really, you know, if you're saying, well, I can shoot a single leg, it's not like moving the chest. It's not one move. Right. It's if you want to talk about different forces and stuff, it could be hundreds or thousands of different moves based on how hard I shoot it, the angle, the direction, all of those things.

Yeah, but wait a minute. So robots can do this kind of stuff really fast. People probably know the physiology of this. But it's the, the reaction speed for a human is maybe 100 milliseconds, something like that. I don't know from sensation to, to, to like from the, the signal traveling up your, to your brain and down. I don't know what that number is, but robots certainly could do it way faster. It you would actually have to like constrain the speed.

Well, so the robots already killing the chess people.

Right.

So yeah, theoretically they could eventually be wrestlers. But you asked what was hard wrestling in chess.

Yeah.

I think wrestling is because of the time component in it and then the, and, and the physicality of, you know, is it this force or that force? You know, because if, if I'm going to say, say we're in a seat belt side by side. Right. A wrestling seatbelt, not in jiu jitsu. Based on the pressure you're giving me, I might do a bunch of different things. Right. And so like to an untrained eye, they might both look like the same thing. From you to a trained feel, it's like well, in one case it's really evident I should go this way. In another case it's really evident I should go that way.

So the other thing to consider, just like with chess, the AI systems so human versus human play a certain way together. They actually haven't considered a really large number of strategies that AI systems discover. So one possibility with a robot, they'll discover certain ties and certain takedowns.

That's what I'm saying that like will.

Dominate no matter what the human does.

You think that so you think there's that. So this, I mean this was the wrestling so fun is there's. Even after 80, 90 years there's this continuous evolution.

So you'll be some like low single type thing like John Smith type of situation.

Well like a down buck go behind is something that has really, I would say really in the last 5ish years has really been evolved.

What's the go behind down about?

Go behind. So when you. Well there's head inside or head outside matters, but there's one for both. You shoot at me. Essentially I take my leg. Boom. And then. So that was kind of in existence when I was in college, right? You down block them and you stop. But usually you hit on this side of their head, right? And now immediately as you shoot an eye tech that shoulder and then I start hitting a go behind on you. Right. And so like that. In its current incarnation, it absolutely wasn't wrong. When I was in college, I would say it probably became popular five to seven years ago. So, yeah, there's these big things that are happening now. I really want a robot because I want to be ahead of the game. I want to know what I'm missing.

I mean, one interesting thing you have with AlphaZero that plays chess is it sacrifices pieces much more than humans do. So it'll give you a piece. And not only does it give you a piece, it will wait a bunch of moves before it makes you pay.

Because it knows that that's better for the long term.

Long term. So like, humans rarely sacrifice without getting the piece back. Like two or three moves after alpha, zero can wait like five moves. So so basically you'll have you potentially with wrestling, you might have a, a robot that like puts itself in bad positions, but in a certain kind of way that, that will actually lures the.

Opponent in to trap. Exactly what my style is based on.

You basically narrow one. One thing to do is you narrow the set of choices. You put yourself in a bad position, but it narrows a set of choices.

For them because they're not used to.

To it. Yeah, they're not used to it. And. And then you, you drag them into, into your. Yeah, so. But there's also. The problem is there's mechanical issues. Like it's actually just difficult to build robots that are able to sense because we have sensation throughout our body. Yeah, it's just difficult to build that kind of robot. It's expensive. You start talking about multi, multi million dollars, and then people start asking questions. Why did you invest all of this money?

Hello.

It could be better investment. Okay, so I mentioned John Smith. He is, if people don't know, one of the great wrestlers wrestling coaches ever. He's also creative like you. He spoke really highly of you. What do you think about that guy? Do you guys ever work together?

Not really. So. So you know what? When I was a senior and I had the people wrestling in my head, I was lucky enough to be doing. I was pretty much graduated. So I did an independent study with the sports psychologist. I was potentially gonna go to grad school for sports psych. Well, I actually did nine credits and then I decided I didn't want to do it. Anymore. I continue learning on my own. But I had an independent study with the guy who's the head of USA Track and Field Sports psych. So I guess. So the other here was the class was I got to go sit down and talk with him for an hour. And he was like fascinated by me. So he didn't really make me do homework. It was like the greatest three credits ever. We just talked. I learned so much. It was so awesome. But so I started. So one time it came up that had these robots or people wrestling in my head. And he said, well, who else do you think? I said, I bet John Smith happened. So I went and got John Smith's number. I called him, I said, hey, you ever had these people wrestling in your head? And he said, yeah, but as soon as I stopped coaching, they went away. Same thing happened to me. As soon as I started coaching, they went away. So if I really force myself now and I'm like, I see something in practice and it's really higher level because high school wrestling, I don't want to. Maybe I feel bad, but it's like, it's a little bit lower level. Right. So if like Keegan, for example, who won the Journey, if he's struggling with a problem or ask me a question and I can force myself to like, see the body's moving and think about it again, you know, kind of like I was in an early age. But it won't just, it won't just flow there anymore. So he said it went away. And for me it went away also.

By the way, if you can pause on the, on the bodies in your head. Yeah, What? Like, how are they generating new ideas? Are they just kind of.

I don't know, you tell me.

So it's just, they're just like scrambling in your head.

It would be specifically based on a problem I was struggling with or a specific position.

You know, kind of it goes in for single and then. And then go from there. Yeah.

So like I'm sitting in geography class and, you know, I don't have to work that hard because it's easy, Right. And yeah, I'm just sitting there like kind of acting like I'm looking at the board and these guys are wrestling and I'm watching them wrestle. And yeah, sometimes they come up with a really good solution.

Is there somebody you looked up to, style wise? Mark Gable, John Smith? Yeah, all these like, like legend status people are cable.

John Smith, but after the fact. So the problem with wrestling in my era was you couldn't watch it. There was no, there's no access. Right. It wasn't, it wasn't really available. Even if you want to say, go find a bunch of John Smith. They're kind of hard to find. Right. There's a couple of them on YouTube, but I've obviously seen all of those. But in, in my era, there was. There really wasn't any of it. So it was hard to be a fan of something. And that's why wrestling, Wrestling has his. The fans are going like this because now, you know, you flip on the Flow app and you can watch, you know, something that's happening in Europe. Right. We can do this easily so we can be a fan of people. So now I'm more a fan of wrestling than I was then because there just was no access. So now I can watch someone I like and say, oh, shit, like that guy's wrestling. Oh, boom. I flip my phone on, I watch them wrestle, you know, that type of.

Thing, you know, on a quick rant. It's really frustrating that you can't watch the Olympics.

Oh, my God, it's so frustrating.

I, I've been. I, I'm. I think I'm gonna go to war on.

Go to NBC's headquarters. I'll go with you. You. You gotta. You got a soldier here.

I was talking to Jimmy. Jimmy Pedro. He was surprised by this too. Most matches you can't see even. You talk about like, comeback Gable steals and you can't see the full match, you get like a crappy highlight.

So the two, the two biggest things in Rattling and really the three. The NCAA championships on espn.

Yeah.

The Olympic trials are on NBC and the Olympics are NBC. And these things, these, these companies are so big, they don't have a department dedicated to selling the rights to that footage. Right. So the, the rights to wrestling footage, which no one really cares all that much about except a niche, are the exact same as track and field or basketball in the Olympics. So, yes, all of this stuff is completely inaccessible to us. The, the ncas, the Olympic trials and the Olympics. You can't go watch old film on it. It sucks.

Yeah. All the current film. Yeah.

So you can't even watch the Gable.

Match, the Gable seals? No, they did a. You know, they do something that annoys the. Out of me.

What?

Okay, they, they, they, they do like a three or two minute highlight. So it's like they capture the most important thing, but like, it's all about the build up.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like that very beginning when you step on the mat and the nerves and you Walk out and like that. I mean, I don't know. You miss. Then. Then when the, the triumph happens or the heartbreak happens, it has that much more power.

Yeah. If you want to go to war with NBC or espn, I'm. I'm happy to join that ioc. Well, I mean, does the IOC own.

That IOC is selling the. For the Olympics is the one that's making.

Well, so NBC broadcast. So they obviously have the live rights. You would think they would have recorded if they. I mean, they're the ones recording it. You would think they keep the rights when you think.

No, no, I, they're like getting a license of it. They're getting exclusive like license. But like the, you know, for example, I've had this. I talked to Travis Stevens, the judo player, and there's a really sort of famous match. It's a heartbreak in his career from 2012 Olympics where he goes against a German. Ole Bischoff. Whatever. It's a 20 minute match to go to war. And that's not available anywhere, but it's uploaded on YouTube and set to private. The reason I know this is on the IOC channel. So they've uploaded all of these matches.

They haven't. They put it up. So actually, so my Olympic match, the one I won, got put public and so I don't know if it's private. It got put up on YouTube. I was alerted to it the week of my Jake Paul fight. It was so dumb. I'm like, why the. This is epic. 13 years later. This is bullshit. Like, this should have been up. So I mean, okay, so what about Olympic trials footage? That has to be the USOC then, or NBC. So I know, like, okay, so I know flow, right. Because I work for them. I know if flow buys your event or whatever. Right. They buy the rights generally in the contract. They'll have rights to both live stream it and then use that footage at any point moving forward. So those matches live on flo's website. That's why I would be surprised if NBC didn't have something similar.

FLO does a pretty good job of providing, like a place where you can watch all these matches. NBC does not.

Does not.

Yeah. And. And also there's an argument with Flo as well, but certainly with Olympics, there's a difference between what FLO does and what the Olympics represent.

What do you mean by that?

Like, it feels like the Olympics, which is what the charter says, should be as accessible as possible.

Yes.

Like, like you should really lower the barrier for entry for the Olympics.

You know, that's what the charter says. But those people in the ioc, those are the worst people ever.

Yeah, they're very bad. Well, they're not. They're not bad. They just lost touch of the dream they once had when they joined the ioc.

Well, I would argue. I would argue all the way back that these are rich fat cats who, like, I get so mad about the ncaa, which finally now got rid of this term bullshit, term amateurism. It's like, well, there's some holy grail where you can't make money to be an amateur athlete, but the people who own the IOC or the people who own the institutions, college institutions, are making boatloads of money off of you. That's crap.

So you competed, like you said, at the 2008 Olympics. Did you believe you can win gold?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the. Your mental game was on point?

Yeah, I was ready.

So what. What went wrong?

This wasn't good enough? That was what I said. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so at that point in time, I. It was my first year of international competition. So when I came out in 2007, it was my first time making 74kg, which is pretty small for me. I had some failures, but then quickly I turned that around and I was having success in America. I was beating everyone. I don't want to say easy, but I. Yeah, you know, I was. I was doing really well. I went international one time and I, I. There's one match I got cheated on. The Russians. They're cheaters. Excuse Ukraine, not Russia. I lost one real match where I actually lost, and it was to Dennis Sargouch, who would go on to win three world titles, but he was behind the T of that year, and it was competitive, you know, so I knew, okay, I'm like, I'm going with the best guys in the world. I beat a bunch of other guys who, you know, were. Were good, had had past decent results. So, like, I knew I was like, right there. Unfortunately, I ran this guy, Ivan Fundora, and in I had someone who scouting reports for him, actually my high school coach, who now coaches for our academy, John Messenbrink. And Fundor was the worst stylistic matchup. I got him and I lost him second round. So I just. I wasn't good enough. I. You know, I had. I decided to keep wrestling, I probably would have gotten better, but at that point, I just wasn't in the cards.

So in your division was, like you said, satiev. That guy's special.

He's very special. So that would be my other guy that you asked earlier who I enjoyed watching and that was a guy I again, it was kind of after the fact because it was hard to access footage, but he was a lot of fun to watch.

What do you think made him great? A lot of people talk about him as potentially one of the great, greatest ever.

Absolutely. I mean, six. And so he won six and three. Six worlds. Nine. Six worlds, three Olympics, nine total, which there's only one or two people above that. So again, it was. It was hard to watch any live footage of him. But from what I've seen, his. His feel is different. He was just ahead of his time. And the feel and the touch he had for certain moves and different things because obviously physically he's kind of unimposing. He's, you know, taller and skinnier, which is, you know, it can work in wrestling, but it is by less represented. Yeah, he was special. So good.

Do you take any inspiration from. Let's talk about Dagestan in general. What do. What do you think makes those wrestlers great? Yeah, it's fascinating.

Have you read the book the Talent Code? Yeah, it's great. And that kind of talks about these talent hotspots all around the world. So now obviously with our wrestling academies, we try to take some lessons from that and apply it. I got to assume they didn't cover Dagestan in that book specifically, but I got to assume a lot of the same principles that are in that book apply to Dagestan and wrestling. Right. They did South Korea and women's golf. They did Curacao and baseball. Right. They picked a lot of these other places that were really elite. I think it's maybe Moscow and women's tennis also. So I think all these things that make any group great organization is probably the same things that's happening there.

Well, the hardship, I mean, what is there something specific about wrestling that can create so many great champions from that area?

So obviously they're all. They all love. Like it's a big deal that wrestling is specifically. Is a big deal there. You know, they do Sambo also, obviously. So that's part of it is a lot of the kids are doing it. They obviously are rough tumble, tough life.

Getting a lot of fights.

And then I think that also that a lot of them, it is a way out. Right. The elite level athletes in that part of the world, from my understanding, are really well compensated compared to what the average person makes. And they're treated really well. So people see it as a way out. Whereas like. And then honestly, if America's getting better, but in 2008. The reason I went to MMA was because I didn't want to be poorer my whole life. You know what I'm saying? It sucks. Like, well, I don't want to make $20,000 for the next year, four to eight years, so I'm gonna go do something else. If I could have made even. And I need to be rich, right. If I could have made a hundred $thousand or $70,000 wrestling, I probably would have kept wrestling. So I think. I think it's. There's factors. I. And obviously now they have a really, like, a bunch of really good people in one area. So there's probably. And it's been going on for a long time, so there's probably a bunch of, like, adults and coaches that are coming back and helping that progress. So, yeah, a lot of those things that happen.

So I'm definitely going to travel there as I talk to him, because I can speak Russian. It makes. It makes it very. Makes me uniquely qualified to.

My brother can speak a little bit of Russian.

Your brother can?

Yeah.

Okay. Like a little bit. Like two squares and.

No, no, no. Like, he would. Oh, man, don't. Don't make me oversell. I think he would be able to have a conversation with you. I think. Okay, probably not all you.

What's the. What's the reason he knows Russia?

I don't know why he got obsessed with languages. And so his college degree is actually. What do they call inner dis, where you have three minors. He had a minor in Russian, a minor in Spanish, and maybe Japanese. I'm messing up. It's definitely Russian and Spanish are for sure. I don't know what the third one is. No. But, yeah, Dagestan, it's really fascinating.

But the. The emphasis on technique, the lighter drilling, like, they don't really go super hard.

Yeah. And I only spent a couple, so I was there. I was in Vladikavkaz in 2008. That was where the World cup was. We had to train there for, like, two days afterwards. So I didn't get to dig deep. Did dig deep into what was going on or anything. But, yeah, I mean, I think sparring has. Sparring is very beneficial for wrestling. Not like sparring. MMA is. We fight. Right. Sparring in wrestling is. So I always just describe it to be really simple. If we're drilling, it's relatively 0% resistance. If we're going as hard as we can, that's 100%. There's all this gray area in the middle that's sparring. Right. And so you Know if you have a good relationship, like, you know, especially in college, me and my brother, we could just go and we, we know where each other's at. We don't have to talk about it. Right. But like, in my wrestling call, we'll say, okay, hey, I want you guys to go 50% in this position. Or I want the high crotch guy, I want him to shoot and this is for him. So I want him to go 70. And defensive guy, I want you to go 40. So you're not, you're not supposed to be trying to win here. You're going to go a little lighter. I want you to give a, give him some looks, you know. So I think, I think it has really taken hold in America. I think it's really beneficial for success. And I think that's, I mean, America's doing better than we've ever done historically.

Well, that's 70 and 40. That's like an art form to find that right place. Because like, what the really good people I've trained with, they go much closer to 100 speed wise. Or like, but without like forcing things. Yeah, you would. When you're going. It's some weird combination of things that, like, if you truly earn a technique, then you're given that technique.

Yeah, yeah.

But like, if you don't, you don't.

Yeah.

And. And then it becomes much less injury prone. It becomes somehow more fun, more dynamic. You don't get stuck in positions. It's just a lot of movement. Yeah.

The one thing. So you, you and John talked about, you know, like, different ways to learn and get better. And so I think John obviously innovated within the sport of jiu jitsu. And so for us, one of the. And maybe there's a differentiator for us, I think about.

I'm so sorry to interrupt. You have this academy, you sent me this plan that you have, like a really well thought through plan for how to develop a good wrestler.

So, but, so I think it's. For me, there's four categories, right? There's the teaching, which is like, you don't know shit. You're coming in and I'm showing you the move and you're literally going out there and you're trying to. Me, that's not even drilling. That's like teaching, like you're trying to learn something. So obviously in someone's earlier periods, they're spending a lot of time in that phase because they literally don't even know how to move their bodies the right way. Once you learn the skill, then there's the drilling. Because you need to, you absolutely have to get those reps to become really proficient in that movement. And then the sparring and then the live. Right. And so like, I think obviously by the time you get to the kind of end point. Right. But further on, the time you spend teaching is. So I don't want to say I'm sorry in the learning, teaching phase is not insignificant, but so much smaller. Because to someone who's really good, who have coached for 10 years, I don't have to give this big, long, drawn out explanation. I just have to say, hey, move your hand a little differently or just do this. We don't have to spend any time there. So I think that's something that consumes for the younger kids, say 5 through 12 or 13. We're consuming a massive amount of time there on that teaching learning phase. And then as we get older, that time wanes a lot.

But that makes total sense, right?

Yeah.

It's funny because when you look at Jiu Jitsu schools, they spend a lot of time in the teaching, learning, and then the live feels like there's not enough drilling. I like how you draw a distinction there.

Yeah.

Because it feels, it feels like you're always starting from scratch. Like people have like very crappy short term memory. Like they're not like the way teaching is done is you show a technique from scratch and it seems disjoint.

It is for sure. Especially if you have a class that's been with you for a while.

Yeah.

You don't have to start from scratch. You can say, hey, let's focus on this one little thing here. Or let's. After we do this, let's do that, you know, and you kind of put. Start putting it all together. And then with Jiu Jitsu, the thing that I really struggled with was a couple things. It was. And this is not speaking for all the jitsu, my personal experience through the sport and I actually found my. So when I unretired, I found someone really great that I loved. And I really wish it was Mark Lehman. I don't know if you know him at all. I wish I would have found him earlier because he was just tremendous. But number one, there's no drilling. So it's like in wrestling, I can boil down to, I can probably name you the best six moves. Right. So we need as younger people, single leg. Right. Single legs can be the most proficient takedown. It always has been. I don't know, probably always will be unless AI figures out something different.

The robot.

The robot Fixed something different. We're going to shoot the last single legs. Why? Because we're. Because everyone's going to do that, right? We're going to shoot a lot of single legs. So just like say an armbar or some type of sweep, right. Why can't we go get 50 reps there? Hey, we. I mean, by the time I've been in your jiu jitsu school for two years, I better know. Fucking armbar. I better know it. So don't, don't spend 10 minutes teaching me. Just tell me to go hit 50 reps. And then if, when I'm hitting my reps, if there's something I'm doing wrong, then just say, hey, Ben, move your leg a little bit that way or raise your hips up a little more. Right. Like correct as you're drilling. So you're getting all these reps at it. So you're becoming more proficient. And then the other thing I really struggle with was to your point, during live, so many times it's just this five minute go, go, go. And that's not the most efficient way to learn because when you have two people, especially when they're focused on winning and you say go, they're going to go to wherever they do best. Well, if I'm trying to make you good at something, I don't want you doing what you do best all the time. I need you doing some other things. Right. If you have a great single leg, but you can't shoot to the other side of their body, we need to work on that. Right. You need to start shooting the other side.

There's some sense though, you. It's not like you should be told what to work on, but you should be told to work on the thing that you want to work on. Meaning. Because I don't know. But maybe you can comment on this. But you know, everybody develops a different game as you get better and better. There's a set of things you need to be working on. So I actually have like, when I. Especially when I'm like training very seriously, I'll have a specific technique that I have in mind. And I have a sheet of paper on the side where I literally my head keep count off how many times I put myself in that position and pulled off the technique. And that's all I care about.

Yeah.

In like training. So I'll just. Whatever it is. If it's a guillotine, it's a guillotine. Arm drag. Arm drag. But I want to make sure I don't. I love numbers, so I'LL say, like, I'll make sure I get 50 arm drags.

Yeah.

I'm not getting off the mat until I do. And that, you know, if it takes.

Drilling or live contest.

So in this. In the thing I'm describing right now is the life contest, but drilling, obviously drilling. So I feel like I can't find a drilling part. Like, it's so hard to find drilling partners, even so boring. It's. It's annoying to me that this is boring. And there's nothing more annoying to me than the look of boredom on another person's face when we're drilling.

Yeah. It's like, do you really think drilling is that beneficial to you because you said it's a job.

Yes, yes. He thinks I'm an idiot, but yes.

Why.

Why am I. Am I an idiot or why drilling beneficial?

Let's go. Let's see what your explanation is. Why is it so beneficial?

I think for me, it's. There's a meditative aspect to it where the more you drill, the more you start noticing the. The details.

Okay, let me.

Let me.

Details a little bit here. I'm not gonna push back all the way because so every time if I was wrestling, I want head crouching, like, whatever. Right. But even so, say, like, at a high level, when I'm really wrestling 10 years ago, even during that drill portion, if we talk about the resistance of our opponent from 0 to 100, it's very likely that my partner at that point, because people I'm really comfortable with, they're probably at least going 20 or 30. Right. They're probably giving me a certain look with the sprawl or, you know, I got to get through their hands. If I. If I don't set it up right, they might put their arm down. Right. So it's like we are drilling because we're. We're wrestling at a really low resistance level. But there's a little bit of sparring. The 20%.

The 20.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's not really drilling. Because I think of drilling. I think literally you're shooting and I'm just boom. You're dummy. Boom. Boom.

Yeah, boom.

Boom type of thing.

No, it's very hard to be a dummy that doesn't do 20. So you're going to do 20. Yeah, that's so. So, yes, that's 20.

But that's like sparring a little bit, then.

No, but they're not really resisting. They're just giving you the right frame. They're. They're giving you the right, like, movement and they're being, they're being an intelligent dummy, essentially. I mean, but also like the really important component of this is you pick the techniques for which it's beneficial. If the technique is, has dynamic elements to it, you don't want to be doing that with. I'm saying, like there's certain moves and I like those moves and I select the game based on those moves.

Like, so are you drilling to get better? Are you drilling just to work out?

No, to get better. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I, I believe you can become like exceptionally good, very fast by drilling.

But how?

First of all, let me, let me ask you an empirical question. Let me have. Have you actually drilled 10,000 times a particular move?

Millions.

You haven't drove millions.

Hundreds of thousands, likely.

I think you're just saying numbers.

I don't think you know what, 100,000. Astronomical. It's way more than 10,000.

I don't think there was a 10.

Year period where I wrestled every single day. That's. Yeah, that's 3,000 days. So you're telling me 10,000, that's only three of them a day. I did way more than that.

Three of them.

Probably had 30 of them a day. That's, that's a hundred thousand. Yeah, yeah. Hundreds of thousands.

I doubt you get 30 a day for.

I did four. I am for sure, 100%. There's no doubt.

All right.

Because some days I might do 100. Right. So 30 or 30 is not very many, especially if we count all reps, if we're counting drilling and live. So like our coach, college coach would make us just drill a lot and I almost hated it. So I would, I would rebel and just kind of give a little spar. You shoot a high crotch, we'll start. You coach wants to draw high crouch. Okay, we'll start. You shoot the high crotch. That's great. Then I'm going to sit the corner. I'm going to give you my hip. Or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to try something. So then you have to react. And I would argue that all skill level past, like the beginner stuff is some necessity of that. Right. I'm going to do this. Then what are you going to do? It's back and forth. I shoot a single leg. What are you going to do? I shoot high crouch. What are you going to do? And you have to start unconsciously programming these things in your head because if you have to consciously think about it, it's going to be too Slow to actually hit it at Matt.

But the drilling is the unconscious programming.

But the simple movement, the first simple movement. The first simple movement, that single leg or the high crotch or arm drag, whatever. Like, I feel like the amount you're going to get better at it is so minuscule compared to the amount you're going to gain at doing other things around it.

You see? No, but that's the key word. You feel. Okay, that's your opinion.

If we did. If we did a study on it, that I would be proven correct?

No. Perhaps. So first of all, your brain, as an exceptionally creative combat athlete, it's clear that you don't like the boredom of drilling. Like, it's obvious that you. That you have, like, you're such a creative energy that you're just not going to be somebody who's going to enjoy that. So enjoyment is probably having an active mind is really important. So the. The question is, do you have the kind of makeup that has an active mind during a drilling on a dummy? And I have that mind. Like, I can.

You really think? Okay, so if you're. Let's pick a technique. What technique do you want to draw a lot?

Are we doing jiu jitsu or wrestling?

Whatever you want.

It's hard to describe with words, but certain guard passes. Let me. Let me think. Just guard pass.

Okay, so you have a guard pass, and you get it to be as a nine and a half out of ten. Right.

Just from a.

From a technical standpoint, don't you think you need some resistance to feel? Because essentially all. All benefit after that is going to be, what are they going to try to do to me? And if they ship that way, do I need to. I need to sink here, there. So it's like I. So I. I actually think we're agreeing, but maybe terminology wise, well, the split.

Is the important thing. Like how much of each.

So I think it is sparring. I think it's a very light touch. Spar is what you're talking about, which is, in my opinion, really isn't drilling. And it's because drilling past the basic proficiency, I don't think brings much value.

No, but that's what I'm trying to tell you is I think it does. I think. I think if you're doing that same movement, I think you begin to learn more over time. Like you're saying, like, once you get the basic proficiency, then there's diminishing returns. I don't.

Yes, that's what I think.

I don't think so. I think everything has Diminishing returns when you're learning a technique, but with something.

As complex as wrestling or grappling. If. If you can have way more gains over here, why focus on going from a 9.7 to a 9.8?

If.

If you. If this other area, if you're spending so much time here that there's other areas left unexplored, you can make gigantic gains over there.

No, but you're going to lose. I. I think a lot depends on your style. I think a lot is determined by how good you are at one thing. And so if you want to become a master of a particular thing and then make your whole game where it's all pulled into that system, then, I.

Don'T know, one is too small of a number.

Yeah, small. I. I feel like you can't be easily this. Like, I. Yeah, you want.

You want to funnel. You want to create funnels.

Funnels.

Funnels. Right. Where everything goes into a few positions and then it's all feel at 100.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I feel like you can get, like drilling on a dummy 80% of the time and 20 of the time live rolling with people worse than you. Like a little bit worse than you or a lot worse than you.

Yeah. So I think so. I think. I definitely think so. My. My buildup would be teach. So we're talking complex technique, right? So by the time we're talking about, we'll say a light, late high school kid who's pretty proficient. He's probably done the drilling part. So then now it's like, okay, if I want to get something new to you, I'll probably tell you, you'll probably be able to do the basic premise within five to 10 minutes. If they're good. Right. Do this. Okay. They do it. Then it's like, okay, so now here, from here, what we're going to do, we're going to go light sparring. So I know you have success because I need you to complete the task in order to get better at it. That's something a lot of people in wrestling mess up is they just want to go to the toughest person. But if you go to the toughest person, you're not going to actually execute on any skills. You're going to get a workout, but you're not. And I need you to execute because I need you to get good at this. In order to get good at it, you have to get all the way through the technique.

Why do you need them complete? Just so they gain confidence in the technique or they go.

They have to feel all the way through. Like, if I said learn a high crotch when you're drilling with stop halfway every time, but you're not actually going to be able to do it because you're going to stop. You're not going to feel. So, you know, try it on someone. Spar lightly, get it. Do it on someone who's not as good as you. Get it. Then kind of work your way up the ladder so you can get it on someone your own skill level or maybe better than you.

Right.

In. In a live competition. So it's like, I don't know, I feel like that, that basic drilling, like, so a kid like Keegan, who I brought up a few times, like, I feel like if there's something new, I could literally tell him, like, this is what I want you to do. And he's such a great feel like he could go drill it proficiently within probably a minute or two. But then to hit it on someone high level, that's going to take quite a while longer.

And that's a mix of drilling and sparring on people a little bit worse than you.

Yeah. And then bet. Yeah. Then equal and then better. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Because there's, there's, there's just with, with grappling, there's such like a feel component to the pressure, the movement and all these things. And there's still. I said there's so many things you can throw at someone out of one position. Not just moves, but moves a different level of force or whatever.

Are you and these kids developing like a big picture strategy of like, what are the main setups and takedowns and just like a whole system.

So I kind of sent you our technique book, right. And how we kind of go at approach it. So I think in wrestling you're going to need. You're going to need a handful of things just off the word go. Right. You're going to. So I think on our feet, I need to build tech this side of the body. I need to bell tech that side of the body. I need to be able to bring you underneath me. I need to be able to go around you. Right now, we can accomplish those different ways, but we should have all of those weapons if we want to be really good some way. Right. So if I neglect one of those. So if I neglect the ability to say, pull you down. Right. Lock you. Now, if I have a good shot and you're smart, you're just going to lower your stance. So my shot is not going to be as successful. And I have the Inability to pull you down. Right. So I kind of need all of those so I can. As they get better, I can point those things out. On bottom. My folks out bottom. There's certain things like you have to be good at leg ride defense. Right. You have to. I mean, at a high level. Or you're just gonna. You're gonna. When you get it in, you're just gonna get stuck there. Not gonna be able to escape. But besides that. Yeah. There's a. There's a multitude of things that you can choose from. And I'm gonna. Depending on your body style and what you're good and bad at, I'm gonna probably develop something a little different. I might give you. Hey, you do the quad pod. You'd be better as a knee slide. Whatever. Yeah. Top kind of. Same thing.

I have to ask you about Khabib. So I remember a while ago, Rogan said that that's the perfect fight for Khabib. You are. So let me ask two questions. The first, do you think you can beat him in an MMA match when you're at your peak?

Yeah, I. I don't. Like. Yeah. I mean, this is one of those people where people, like, will get really mad at me if I say yes.

But yeah, I mean, how would you do it? How would you solve that puzzle?

Yeah, I mean, we would grapple, and I think I would be better than him, but I, you know, I feel weird saying as people. Yeah, right. You're full of. You know, and. But that's. No. No one out grappled him. Right? I mean, nobody did. And maybe I'm wrong on this, but I. If we will get the best possible candidates, I'm definitely one of them. And then obviously I have a small.

Size advantage too, so in a wrestling match. So we can just reduce that MMA match to a wrestling match. What do you think is the right strategy on him? Like, do you understand his style that the. The. His wrestling style, the pressure he applies? Do you understand?

Yeah.

How the hell he makes it happen?

Yeah, I mean, he never, unfortunately fought any real. Who I would say really, really high level wrestlers. I was actually really disappointed how bad Justin Gaethje's wrestling was, because Justin Gaethje had some solid success, but his wrestling was really bad in that fight.

Gaethje has success at cwa.

Yeah, I think he was seventh place maybe or so somewhere. He was definitely all American. It was lower, though. So, yeah, I would like to see how he dealt with someone who was like a. Who I think, oh, man, this guy's a really high level wrestler because, you know, we saw. And this is early in his career, but, you know, Glacon Tebow did give him some issues earlier in his career. So I would like to see him in that situation and see how he does. I would love to. Like, you know, like, I. I just love wrestling, grappling. Like. Yeah, I'd love if someone said, hey, Ben, you know, Khabib wants to roll with you. Okay, I'm there tomorrow. It sounds like a blast. Let's go.

It's probably competitive as hell. Yeah, you're still competitive.

I know when to be and when not to be. Like, you know, say if I'm going to high school kids or I'm not going to be competitive because then I'm just being a dick.

How would you take them down?

What, what we're talking about real wrestling.

Wrestling, wrestling, wrestling.

I would probably try to text single legs and stuff.

Single legs?

Yeah.

Okay.

No, I. Honestly, I don't have the slightest clue. I'd have to feel. I'd feel him out. But single leg's my best takedown.

People talk about his wrestling being really good, like people that trained with him.

So. Okay. So I. I grilled someone. I will not say who on the Ed Ruth thing, because Ed Ruth is very elite at folk style wrestling. He never became that great at fighting, unfortunately.

Wait, Ed Ruth wrestled Khabib?

They were on the same team for a while. Yeah.

Okay.

And there was rumors that Khabib beat him up. And I said, I sure can't believe that. And I've heard that that was. If they were just straight wrestling, Ed would get slightly the better of it.

Well, Ed Ruth is like one of the greats.

He's great. He's really good.

Yeah.

So that was what I heard. But in an MMA setting because of all the tools that Khabib would get him.

I don't know, but I agree. I agree with Rogan on this one. That would have been good to see.

Yeah, that was fun. So, yeah, if Khabib wants to work out, I'd love it. I. I love wrestling and grappling. I don't do much jitsu because I just don't have time for it anymore. I'm at the wrestling academy like every single day. But yeah, I love jiu jitsu while I did it. And, you know, if I didn't have wrestling academies, I probably would still be doing jiu jitsu.

Yeah, you did well in jiu jitsu as well. But let me ask you a ridiculous question. Who's the greatest of all time. Freestyle or folk style?

Oh, wrestling.

Wrestling.

Well, I will say my knowledge past like the year 2000 is really not that great because you can.

Which direction? Sorry?

After 2000 before because you can't find any film or anything, you know, and so you hear about.

So you need evidence.

You need direct evidence. I want to be able to watch them and see them and feel the times and feel their opponents and you know, all those things to really like. I hate giving bad answers, you know, so I would. I. There's just not enough footage of any of those people. You know, we took. We go back to someone like Alexander Medved. Like you can't find footage. You can't find anything on it. You know, it's like, who is he wrestling? You know, I'm not sure. So post 2000, I think and also just freestyle. So Americans has the. Probably the best argument. Post 2000, I think sad July of.

If he had the Russian tank. That guy is. Yeah. So who's. Who's better? Snyder or Sajula?

Said July. I just wanted the Olympics.

I understand this. I understand how that works. But it's pretty close, right?

Not really.

Not that match, but in general the matchup.

Well, so Kyle won the First 1 in 17. Said July have pinned him the following year. But then Kyle lost and took bronze in 19 and then just lost. I don't want to say fairly decisively, but it was six to three and it was a late takedown. He kind of gave it up and maybe if it was really competitive, maybe he wouldn't have. They're going to wrestle again in like two weeks here. So that, you know. Yeah, you get. I mean, you have to say SEDGW live at this point. There's nothing else to say unless Kyle proves us otherwise.

Yeah, not enough people talk about sedulife. Okay. Why you think that guy should go to mma? You think Kyle should go to mma? Some of these guys, yeah, they're making.

Enough money wrestling where they don't really feel the need to.

It's terrifying though. As a heavyweight, Central Life would probably. It's like. It's like Khabib, but heavyweight.

Well, I don't know if you remember. Do you remember Bilal Mock Off? So Bilal Mockoff actually was the Russian representative in both styles of 2016, Greco and Freestyle. And he was to my knowledge, the only person the UFC's ever signed that was zero and modern era signed. That was zero and zero. And then he actually never ended up fighting. But Weird, right? So, yeah.

No motivation.

I don't Know, I don't know what the story is, because sometimes out of Russia, I mean, maybe you have better sources than I do. Sometimes it feels like dudes just disappear. Like they're a world champ or Olympic champ, and all of a sudden you're like, wait, yeah, where'd he go?

You talked about Russia earlier in the conversation, so.

Oh, what'd I say?

I forgot, but I think steroids. I think somebody's gonna show up to your door.

I'm worried. I honestly, I've said enough bad things where I would be, you know, kind of looking over my shoulder if I wanted something.

I, for one, love the Russians.

What about Icarus? How does that make you feel?

What about it? It's fake news.

Oh, really?

I'm just kidding.

It's propaganda.

Maybe it is.

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it is anymore.

Yeah, you know, it's troublesome, man. I hate cheating in all of its forms. Any other, like, recaps from the Olympics of 2020, Tokyo that stood out to you? Gable Stevenson, like, anything like.

Yeah, no. I think America's coming to the point where we're going to compete with Russia every single year in wrestling, which obviously, you know, long, long time ago. Many, many. We did. We were great. And then kind of after that Soviet Union period, I think there was a lot of poverty in that area, and that kind of led the wrestling team going down a little bit, and then obviously, a lot of those regions, the way they found oil and gas in the Caspian Sea, I believe, and they've been really kind of on the upswing for the last 20 years. And now America, really, since 2012, has been on the upswing in wrestling, and we're kind of really competing with them, and they're not sending a couple of their best guys. So for those who don't know, the Olympics got put back of the air, so they are hosting the World 2021 World Championships, despite the fact that we just had the Olympics two months ago. So it's happening next week in Oslo, Norway. So, like, Russia's not sending their number one at 57 and number 165. So it's like, America's probably going to win, I think. I don't want to guarantee anything, but there's a really good chance.

Taylor, also competing.

America gave any of the Olympians that medaled the opportunity to not even have to wrestle off. They just got to keep the spots since it was two months later if they medaled. So the only one who's not is Gable. Gable's Moving on. We have a pretty good guy behind him named Nick Wisdowski, who's a world medalist, but then he's a. Burroughs filled in the 79 spot. Jaden Coxfield in the 92 spot, who's a world champion also. So we have.

It's a hell of a team.

Pretty good squad.

Yeah, pretty good squad.

Pretty happy.

So, given your run in Bellator and one championship that was like, one of the most dominant runs in mma, what would you say was like, key to your dominance in that long undefeated streak?

Huh? Consistency would be one. The fact that I just. I lived and trained the same way no matter where my life was. Whereas a lot of fighters, once they start making money for the first time, they have all these obligations and they travel and they really enjoy making money, and that's kind of why some of them fall off.

She had, like, the same process, like.

The same camp and my house. I didn't vacation. Yeah. Everything just. No, you know, I. And so that was a big part of it. Obviously, the. The style thing is like, no one could. There was only a few people who could stop my style. And I think I continue to get better as a mixed martial artist. And I wasn't as innovative in mixed martial arts, but there was a handful of things. Then I innovated. You're specifically in the top position where I spent a lot of time where just like, there was just once I got on top of you, it was like in a spider web and there was just kind of no way out. You know, you never felt the certain things I was doing. And so people just. They gave up eventually.

How's the level of wrestling in mma, would you say? So I. I saw somewhere, like, champions, the. The most popular martial art for current UFC champions are all wrestling.

So we just lost a bunch of the belts, wrestling as a sport. Right. But yeah, at one point we had. I think it was eight of nine maybe, or something to that effect. And I think. I think it's not just wrestling, not just the actual martial art of wrestling that contributes to our success in mixed martial arts, but other things like the way we're systemized. So most kids reach high level six have went through the high school program and the college program, and they know how to show up on time and they know how to work hard. So when they go to ATT or AKA or wherever, they know how to show up on time and they know how to work hard, and that's going to get you a really long way. Just those two things.

Right. Not even the techniques it's just the discipline, those things.

Then I think you throw on top of that, the fact that most of us have competed 1500 to 2000 times, probably by the time we get to 20, something like, that's a huge advantage too. Most of these other people from other disciplines maybe have competed 100, if that. Right. So we have this competitive process down really, really, really, really well. Plus the weight cut, the weight cut. There's all these things, right, that factor into it, I think the fact that we're really open minded. Like, I think if you would, I don't pick on jiu jitsu again, but, like, how many jiu jitsu guys have became highly proficient in wrestling versus how many wrestling guys that became highly proficient in jiu jitsu? I think that number swings one way and not that much the other way, you know, so were open to adapting and learning. And for some reason, like jiu jitsu people, how many of them have got high level wrestling or even mediocre level wrestling? The number's really small. Like, they refuse to. It's really frustrating. Like, why won't they do. This is obviously a part of it, you know, if, like, I don't pick on specific guys, but there's certain guys in the history of MMA where you're like, listen, man, I mean, Damian Maia, who's my last fight, is a great example of someone who actually did get proficient wrestling. Right. But there's some of these jitsu guys, it's like, if you just got on top, you would submit him. Why can't you learn a freaking takedown? Like, holy moly. Like, just. Just learn how to take someone down. Once you get them down, they will not get up and you win the fight. Like, it's so easy, you know, but they refuse.

How complicated is that journey? So, like Donna, her that you mentioned, Craig Jones, they're big on wrestling as part of jiu jitsu now. Yeah, like wrestling not just on the feet, but wrestling from the bottom, coming up and all that kind of stuff. So how difficult is that whole skill set, would you say, for a jiu jitsu person to learn?

Not that hard if they really put their mind to it, because they already. Like when you grapple and this is any grappling art, like, there's a certain part of it that you kind of get and it can. Might not be the exact same thing, but you understand how your body moves and how to feel certain pressures and you can adapt yourself to pretty quickly, you know, So I don't think. I think there's a Certain level of stubbornness where they didn't want to. Certain people didn't want to do it for whatever reason. I think a lot of times in, in mma, it's the I'm so macho I can stand and bang thing, you know, where they want to, you know, show how macho they are. But yeah, that was a frustrating one that, that they.

It.

There's a lot of wrestlers who became highly proficient in Jiu Jitsu and really adapted and it doesn't go the other way. And then I guess the other thing there too is they can both steal from each other, right? As. As any. As any martial art can steal from another. And like, I feel like Jiu Jitsu didn't do enough stealing from wrestling. Like they should have looked at all the wrestling possible and said, well, why, why don't we steal that and that and that, you know, and like, hey, let's take that over and maybe we'd make a little tweak because it's different, but there's something we can definitely use there. So like in wrestling, for example, you know, there's a one armed guillotine in Jiu Jitsu, right? Okay, so there's a move. Cause, well, it's got 180. It's like the oldest move in wrestling because it's what they did, the cows, where they go around the chin and they throw them on their back. I don't recall that one.

I don't know. Okay, sorry, did you just ask me what I call that one?

Yeah.

Would you take a cow and grab it by the throw?

No, but in wrestling.

In wrestling, I don't know.

Okay, we call.

Are you putting it under?

Yeah. So you grab their chin and then you go under their arm and then throw them on their back.

Okay, Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. So we call that the Honey Badger, but it's got Honey Badger. Different names. Wherever you go, it's got different names. So I would always. I would say like pre Jiu Jitsu, I was, I was average at it. Like I could do it. I. But against good people, you'd never get it for. Because I'll tell you. Because they would get the back of their head up and they're too strong, where you couldn't collapse them by going over their neck. Right. Because the forces weren't right. So then in Jiu Jitsu, you learn the one arm guillotine where you grab their chin and this is more of running along the side of their head. And then, and then you go here and you choke them. Right. Much More efficient way to move their head because the fulcrum is way down here and their head can move into that. Right. So once I learned that in Jiu Jitsu, I'm like, wait, I can do this in wrestling. So now once I learn how to grab their chin the right way and I do the honey badger, no one ever gets out. I just had to steal that Jiu jitsu, put it in wrestling and boom, there we go.

But very few people steal any direction. That takes creativity really and open mindedness.

So easy because it's already done. You just got steal it.

I mean, same with judo. If you're a Gi Jiu Jitsu person, there's so much stuff in judo that that's ripe for the stealing. Because judo is much more emphasizes explosive moves on the transition, which is something Jiu Jitsu does not do.

Because you have to mean from the takedown too.

From the takedown, but also just in general, just in the transition. The, the concept of transition. The like Jiu Jitsu is very much about like we're in this position, then we're in this position, then we're in this position. Yeah, the, the, the judo is much more in. When it, when there's chaos of any kind. Yeah, that's when you need to strike and to learn that. I mean that's why people like Travis Stevens and Judoka, when they go to Jiu Jitsu, they can dominate. But Jiu Jitsu people should steal.

Too stubborn.

Yeah, but so is every wrestlers are stubborn too.

No way. There would never be any stubborn wrestlers.

Well, I mean I was surprised. You know, all these coaches, John Smith, Dan Gable, they don't really have interest in MMA or Jiu Jitsu and so on. Like. But you would think somebody like a John Smith would like put on a white belt and roll around.

Yeah, I think he's just too focused on, you know.

Well, he's a coach, but he's a.

Coach and what he's doing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think if you, if you take him when he's or younger, he would have had a lot of fun. We actually have a really good wrestler making his MMA debut tomorrow. And if you Bo Nickel, I'm sure you've heard of him, very high level. I think he's going to have a lot of success.

I mean some people might say that like Jiu Jitsu makes you a little comfortable being in your back. And for a wrestler that could be like really bad.

I hate that take.

Yeah, but that, that's the Dan Gable take.

It's so stupid. It's so stupid. For God's sakes, we know the rules. Just wrestle. You don't go to your back in Jiu Jitsu. You can. It's like whatever.

Yeah.

You know, but like to jujitsu, for example. So I coached when I was at Rufus. I coached the wrestling for a long three, four, five years. So I'd be taking a Jiu Jitsu guy and teaching them a wrestling technique where you needed to use your feet to teach jitsu guy. So easy, so simple. Because they're. They already understand the concept butterfly guard, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? To take a wrestler who's never done any of it and teach him how to use his feet. Oh my God, it's such a beast. It's so hard, you know, because they just. That's not a weapon they're thinking about using. So it's like we understand the rules. It's like freestyle. Focus on wrestling freestyle for the man. I can lock my hands. You don't see people locking their hands all the time at folks all just because they did freestyle. It's like they, they get it. There's a rule, they understand it. So the notion that somehow you come.

From on your back but pinning, that's like a. It has a special meaning.

Yeah, I actually think so. Jiu Jitsu, you. You don't actually want to be right flat. Flat very often, right. You want to be.

I always wondered this because I did a couple catch wrestling tournaments and I did. I would put myself in butterfly guard and I wasn't going against good people, so which is why I was doing all these things. But I wondered if you could create a system of wrestling where you're butterfly guard.

So I think that there's. There's a few places where I use it, but so specifically the elevator series, which my main series off bottom it is, it's not butterfly guard. It's a butterfly guard like grip with your foot. So I boom, I go here, I catch with my. Your leg with my foot, boom. And I elevate you over, right. And then also sometimes like I think Keegan does this too from watching. But if I get double leg, sometimes if I'm accepting so freestyle, obviously you're going to give a point, focus up accepting that you've already got me. And as I go down, I'm just going to butterfly guard you up, you know, and then I'm going try to flip my hip back to the mat and get end up in a wizard position. Like I've used That quite a few times where it is kind of like a bailout mechanism that gets me back to maybe not a great position, but obviously much better than being taken down.

Beautiful. Yeah. Let me ask you quickly about crypto, because you're also, you have a, you have a show. You, you have a lot of interest in cryptocurrency. Why are you interested in cryptocurrency? Is it just a financial investment or is there a philosophy that attracts you to it?

Philosophy. So I, my friend told me about in 2017, I was actually, I went to. I was, I was. My friend met me in Shanghai. I fought in one championship and he told me. And the second he told me, I'm like, I'm so in. Because I had read Ron Paul and the Fed, I had read. I, you know, kind of had an understanding how the Fed is unfair. And so we told him about crypto, this decentralized system that no one has control over. It just made sense. And so like we've. The podcast, we had Michael Saylor on it. And I love the way he said, it's like, who do you trust more with your money? You trust the politicians or do you trust engineers? I think that's an easy choice. I don't even think, I don't even think I have to think about that. I don't trust politicians. No matter what country they come from, China, America, wherever, I don't trust them.

So, so what about into, in 2017, what was it? Bitcoin? Are you, what do you, what do you find? Which ones do you find interesting? Yeah, there's all kinds of ideas. So there's the more sort of primal mechanism of proof of work and bitcoin and then there's smart contracts ideas, and there's all kinds of innovations across the different.

So I can't say I'm in super deep where I understand the technical components of a lot of them. I understand what bitcoin can do for people. And so that's probably the one I focus the most on. And actually I think I was talking about, I was trying to convince Michael to talk about bitcoin because he hates it. Also. We didn't last night. And I think most of the main problems bitcoin solves, people in America are so American centric, they don't understand it. So like high levels of inflation, that hasn't happened in what's starting to happen. It hasn't happened in America in a long time. Right. But someone in Venezuela is like, oh, I get that, you know, or remittance payments. Right. Remittance payments to. You see it. So I saw this in when I was spending all the time in Singapore. Singapore is obviously a really wealthy country, and so you'd have Indonesian workers or Filipino, and they would all go on Sundays. They would go to these places to ship stuff back to their families. And through Western Union. Western Union gouges the shit out of these people. I mean, they're taking 8, 10, 12% of whatever they're sending, then it takes five days, and the person's gonna go pick it up. Whereas bitcoin, I could send you bitcoin person to person. Right? So, like, American people don't understand that. American people don't really understand the unbanked. Right. A decent portion of the world is unbanked. They don't have access to it. And a much, much, much smaller portion of the world doesn't have access to Internet. So if I can put a mobile wallet on your phone and we can send money person to person. So there's a whole bunch of those problems where Americans don't really think about that are really obvious that this solves. So I think that's the key one. Obviously, the fact that the value goes up is really outstanding also. But I. But if you look at it, I got in in 2017, so I got to watch it go up. I didn't sell shit at the top. Really stupid. And then the majority of my time was spent through the bear market. And so I had to love it for the principles that it provided, not the fact that actually I actually lost money in the beginning. And now. Now I'm way up. But, yeah, so I.

Just holding.

Just holding. I think at the top of this bull market, I'll probably sell a very small portion, just.

Oh, you mean like right now there's a bull market?

Yeah, most. Most people think, say, in the next three to six months will be the top of the market. And so probably when that happens, I'll probably sell a little bit.

You gotta hoddle it, Ben.

You gotta. Well, yeah, so I don't. Here's what I am. So my pod, one of my podcast co hosts, he's like, super rich, like, uber rich. So he has lost touch with the everyman.

Yeah.

So here's my argument to him. It's really simple. And listen, I'm doing well for myself in life, but if, say, someone buys a bitcoin, right? One Bitcoin of $5,000, which it was last year, and this bitcoin goes from $5,000 to $200,000, which is right around what A lot of people think the peak is going to be they bought one bitcoin and they are living in a $200,000 house. So to take half of that, Right. You started with $5,000 of bitcoin. To sell half a bitcoin for $100,000 and pay off your house, your remaining house payment, that's life changing to someone. It really is. And so you still have half a bitcoin. So if bitcoin goes to a million, you're still going to have half a million. And you're going to feel really, really rich with a half a million dollars because you bought it for having $2,500, you know?

Yeah.

So, yeah. So I would encourage anyone who's not uber rich to, if you have huge profits, take a little bit of them, because it could change your life.

And if you hold it and it goes down, you're going to feel the pain of that. Like, sometimes if you're more constrained financially, it's much more psychologically difficult to ride the ups and downs.

Yeah, it is for sure. They have these really fascinating things in bitcoin equities that the guy, one of the main guys on our podcast, it's called On Chain Metrics. So all wallet transactions are visible. And so they have all these fun categories. So actually, I think you said you don't like numbers, but I like numbers. Oh, you love numbers. I love numbers also. So they have all these different categories. Like, you can see how long a wallet has held bitcoin. Right. Or how many bitcoins are in a certain wallet. And so what they've seen during this, the downturn. Right. So April, it kind of peaked and went down, is that the. The whales are still buying. So whales, people have, a thousand or more are still buying. They've said the main group of sellers is the ones who held it from zero to three months. So, like, they don't have money. They bought it because they thought it was going up, and now they're like, oh, shit, I got to sell it. Right. Whereas anyone's had it for a long time is generally still holding on to it.

That's interesting. That's a good indicator, right? For the whole space. Yeah. Well, let me ask you for some advice. You've been through one heck of a career, one heck of a life. What advice would you give to a young person today?

Well, in wrestling, I. I think wrestling is really a microcosm of what your life's going to be. And that's why one of the things I stress, the kids is like, if we can go through this now, and you figure, I. I have a couple kids who are struggling with certain things right now. If you can figure out this now in wrestling, it's going to be a lot better figure out now and get over this mental hump than when you're 32 and you have two kids and. Right. And your job's not going well, it's going to be a lot worse, could be a lot more painful. Then let's. Let's figure it out now. So a lot of these things, a lot of these lessons we can learn from wrestling, whether it's persistence or perseverance or work ethic or. I said wrestlers show up on time and they work hard. These things. If we can learn these things at an early age, those are generally. Those characteristics. Those characteristics will generally carry on throughout our life, and those are the things that are going to make us really successful. So I would say find a great coach, someone who's going to spend a lot of time and put a lot of time into you and make sure they have a lot of wisdom and steal all the wisdom that you can from them. And then if you can be successful at one thing, generally whatever that recipe was that took you to be successful at that, apply it to everything else. Apply it to the rest of your life. Apply it to getting a wife that you enjoy. Apply it to living in a place you want to live, doing a job you want to do right. There's so many possibilities, and you just have to be bold enough to go take those chances.

It's interesting because, like, early on in life is when you have much more time. People don't realize this time to learn the lessons. Like, somehow later in life you get busier responsibilities and all that kind of stuff. Like, high school is a magical time. In college. Yeah, yeah. There's so much time.

Right.

Learn.

But you don't have kids yet.

Yeah, I don't have kids. Still fills up. Well, no, I.

On purpose.

And I did something that many people don't seem to be able to do. I walked away from a lot of responsibilities just by saying goodbye.

Oh, okay.

By, like. But, you know, meetings, like, there's everybody around me at MIT was like, meetings fill the day, and then you have more projects and you do a great job and you become successful. And then the more meetings fill the day and more responsibilities as opposed to, like, wait a minute, do I want to be involved in all these things? And instead do I want to find one or two things to really focus on? And that's What I choose, but, like, that becomes harder and harder and harder as you get older.

No, I mean, I'm sure. And. And also, the more success you have, you become sought after other places. Yeah, too. I'm sure that's happening with you.

And it's hard to say. Keep saying no, no, no.

So hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're known for roasting people with a. With a single boom roasted line. So any ideas? Maybe you want to mention Malice, but any ideas come to mind when you.

Look at me, man, I. You know what? If I was going to boom, roast someone, I would want to kind of, like, research their career and dissect them and figure out their biggest get to the core. And I did. I didn't have that notion. I figured, you know, I got a general sense of, okay, he's really successful, he's super sharp. He's really interested in some really interesting things. I bet we'll have a great conversation, but I had no intention to roast you.

Yeah, there you go. What about Malice? You had dinner with him last night.

H. For him. Oh, man.

How'd you get to know him, by the way? Just Twitter.

Where's the most magical place in the world?

Right?

I. I always tell people it's the greatest source of information if you know how to use it.

He's insane on Twitter, actually.

So I had to unfollow him on Twitter because he.

It was too intense.

Too much. It's just too much. No, it's too much. It fills up like, I want to be able to consume the content. So if I want to see something, he says I can go to his page.

Right.

But it's just too much for my timeline. I want to be able to consume who I follow. So I try to not follow a lot of people because I want to be able to consume them. And he was. He was too much. He. He fights the trolls, which. I don't know why you would ever fight the trolls. There's just too many of them.

Well, he's a troll himself. He's like the big troll fighting the little trolls. He's the king troll.

There's a million of them. So even if you kill. If you kill a hundred thousand, there's still not a hundred thousand left.

It's the. Like the night walker or whatever. Yeah, well, I'll take it. Because you had nothing. You could. You couldn't rose GSP out of respect too. So I'm just gonna take that as a sign.

What do you say? Bad about gsp now I try to roast his hair like why is he trying to grow. Grow hair now after all these years? He looked good bald. Everyone loved him with his head shaved.

Yeah.

Now it looks kind of strange. Like, why you got hair now?

Well, it was one of the more surreal moments of my life is. So he was here and he wore a black suit and tie.

Oh, really?

Yeah. We did the podcast with him. Just mirror image of me. And then we also did. I haven't released it yet, but just a video together and us doing a martial arts stuff in. In a suit and tie. That was quits. That was quite. That. That's like. Like certain moments in your life are just like, I can't believe I was part of that.

Yeah. From. With gsp. So, yeah, I don't. I don't think I have anything to roast him about. I mean, maybe the Matt Sarah thing would be the one that you get him with, you know? But, yeah, I would be. I would be really fascinated to, like, really dig deep from a sports psychology standpoint because he always talks about how much fear he had when he was competing. And I. And I find that to be interesting because obviously. So it's almost like, to me, it's almost like, was he successful despite that? Not because of that. Right. And because anxiety usually. Is it really negative performance for the majority of people? And what was it about him that the anxiety wasn't super negative? You know what I'm saying? Like, it's very interesting.

I wonder that too. So I have. I wondered that about him, but I have a huge amount of anxiety interacting especially with people, just about everything. Yeah. I wonder if that's helpful or. Or not. It feels like it's very helpful.

Well, I think so I said. Okay. I think in two different. So I think probably your everyday life. Okay. Is different than, like, in a performance or a competition. It's. You have to be, like, super in the moment of what you're doing. So anything that's pulling you away, like, oh, my gosh. You know, high school kids. Right. That coach. Oh, my gosh. My. That girl's in the stands. If I get beat, then. And they're actually. They're actively thinking about this other thing when this is going on. And I need all 100 of your focus here.

He's never. I don't think he has anxiety in the ring. That's the point. I think, like, I have the same thing. Like, if I have a really high performance thing that I have to do. I don't know, a lecture in front of a lot of people.

Yeah. That'd be A great example.

Example that there's huge amount of anxiety. Weeks ahead, days ahead, hours ahead.

So you have a system to get rid of it then.

Maybe. But it's just the body gets rid of it somehow. Yeah. There's not a system.

Subconscious system.

Yeah.

It's. So you don't actually have anxiety while you're performing. So that's like. So then. Then that problem, somehow that problem has solved itself. Right. The problem is when the anxiety is actually happening while the wrestling match is happening. That's the real issue.

Yeah, but it's. It like sneaks in there too. Is that's the difference in MMA and wrestling is there's no breaks in wrestling, right? Yes, I guess there is. You can look at the crowd a little bit. Like, you can look. So maybe. But like the. There's other things we have to perform while there's more breaks, like a lecture. You can catch yourself thinking, like in this conversation, you know. Yeah, like I'll. I've said a bunch of stuff where I think, why the hell did you say that? That's dumb, right? That that's the anxiety. Because there's a pause and that, that, that could be. I don't know. I think it just pushes me to be better. But maybe I could be way better if I let go of that. Yeah, it's scary to think that gsb, if you let go that.

But he thinks he could. He's been better or did he ever. Did. Did he have a root? Like you're saying? Like, you don't necessarily feel those. So I think certain people that I've coached, like, they would describe how they would feel literally during the wrestling match. Right. And you're saying like during the speech performance, it's mostly gone.

Yep.

And that's. So that's. It'd be interesting to see if like, you know, he talked a lot about that, but if it was all. If it was all the way somehow gone. And he means he would have a mechanism for it. So I had a really bad performance my freshman year of high school at nationals because I had. I had the ability to be anxious. And one of my coaches talked about, like. And a lot of a type personalities are kind of that way, you know, because they're trying to consider all possibilities at the same time. And, and, and while we're actually performing or competing, it's negative to performance. Right. So he said he would always leading up to the match within say an hour. He would. His thing was talking about fishing. He would get someone to talk about fishing with him because it would stop him thinking about the match and. And being uber anxious. So I always. I kind of really took that to heart and it really helped me as I would always, like, have someone to talk to and just. Just goof around about whatever. So I'm not thinking about this thing. And then once I step in, it's time to go. So I didn't have this, like, anxious build up now. It's not for me. I took it away. But like, me, you know, like you said, you have a way to get it away, obviously, because it's. Yeah, I guess so.

I guess there's a little. Little tricks you come up with.

Yeah.

You start thinking about. It's not fishing. Maybe I should try the fishing thing. But I hate fishing.

So boring.

Well, maybe. Maybe it's good to think about that. All right, Ben, this is like I told you, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of your wrestling. You're fighting your personality. Thank you for coming down. Thank you for talking today.

Appreciate it.

It's a huge honor. Bam. Let's go wrestle. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Askren. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Muhammad Ali. Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.