 today's mom's day happy mom a day mom i love you so much you but did you call your mom today of course okay good yeah of course i call her every single day if i don't she'll kill me uh no happy mother's day today's the last day of our flash sale this is actually the biggest flash sale we've ever done because we've never done a flash sale with a bundle and this is for the build your butt button yeah Doug wasn't really excited about that because the bundles are already grossly discounted and then to turn around and give half off of it on top of that he was a little worried about that now the butt builder bundle has maps anabolic maps aesthetic but it also has a mod in there will be programmed out what you can do to turn your glutes back on because one of the problems that we have seen time and time again with men and women who don't who can't develop their glutes it's it's not necessarily the exercises that they're not doing it's that their glutes don't fire the way they want them to so the mod has movements and techniques that turn those glutes back on so that when you go do your deadlifts and your squats and your other traditional exercises you get more activation in the glutes and that's included with this so you get maps anabolic maps aesthetic the mod and it's already discounted and then we cut it in half again it's a flash sale so which means it's ending very actually this is the last day it's the final day right yep when this air so you go to mind pump media dot com and sign up there if you want to pump your body and expand your mind there's only one place to go mind pump mind pump with your hosts salda stephanel adam schaefer and justin andrews josh thompson great guy man stud you know did you grow up watching for a guy that's been punched in the face a lot he's a handsome motherfucker i can't believe how young he looks he's a handsome motherfucker age you know he's a good looking dude i've yeah he's uh i grew up watching the guy he's uh one of my favorite mma fighters back in the day because he was one of the earlier like pure mixed martial artists like back when he kind of started you still had guys that were either just really good grapplers or really good strikers and josh is all of that stuff and he's very athletic he's the real punk the real punk yeah so you're gonna hear us talking to josh thompson uh in this next podcast now you can find him on instagram at the real punk on facebook it's josh thompson or josh the punk thompson and you got to check out his gym he's actually got a uh a jujitsu slash mma slash place where you could work out in san jose it's nox gym uh and you can look them up online at noxjim.com that's knoxxjim.com and he also has a podcast which is pretty cool it's called sammy and the punk he's really what's really neat about this episode is if you don't know who josh thompson is his he's been in like almost every organization like all the main all the big ones so he had he shared some great old dana white stories and uh the difference between uh pride and all those different organizations i mean he's had an opportunity to uh you know fight some of the most elite athletes uh that have came through the ufc so and we got to film uh some cool exercise moves with him what's really cool was he was showing us how to do things like use a physio ball to train for jujitsu and as he's showing us um we're just like wow that's a great exercise that even if you don't do jujitsu these are great movements for proprioception for core stability for hip mobility so super exciting because dug actually put together a youtube series um that he shot and it'll be live when this goes live so when you're hearing this so make sure you guys run over there pause this right now get over to the mind pump tv youtube channel subscribe to that if you're not already subscribed and you guys will get a chance to see the series that we put together with josh i got to do a little jujitsu with him so it's kind of cool so without any further ado here's mind pump talking to josh tomson i did the blind date the show the ufc had me on the the show blind so they had a whole week of fighters and uh it was me tiki goshen pete sprat tim sylvia a couple anyways so i show up and then you know they introduce you to your girl that you're supposed to go on this day with you know and the thing was we had to do the show and i'll give you the i'll give you the rundown of the gist on that whole deal but man they fucking dana whites just stuck he called us and he was hey you guys need to do this show for me then i was like i was like i have a girlfriend man i don't know what my girl doesn't matter one of the guys was married what one of the fighters was married what a dick move then go ahead but so he just made you guys so no he made us so like guys like nick diaz turned it down if you notice nick diaz got cut from the ufc right after that no you know what's because that stupid show yeah because that's because he said no look when we sign our contracts our contract says you have to do any pr events that they set up for you okay you can't say no so he said yeah nicks like i ain't doing that fucking show there's no fucking way i'm doing that show so he didn't do the show but regard what i was trying to say was that we're talking about how we talk about all the topics beforehand when you walk on to the show blind date they separate you guys you can't talk every time the camera cuts you're not you separate you to grab her and they grab you and they pull you guys away from each other so you they catch everything on oh wow yeah they don't they don't let you guys talk even across like they say no we want her to look this way you guys can't even make eye contact they want to capture all those moments whoa yeah so maybe that's something you guys should do as soon as the guest walks in like hey you go over there in the corner fucking guy don't say one word yeah wow we'll get team on you i don't realize that they were that so controlling oh yeah a hundred percent man like i mean like and i hear a lot of rumors about you hear fighters you know some of the fight especially after they leave the UFC like they complain about how they operate um and you hear it and you're not sure if it's is that really what it's like or they're just saying that because they left and but i guess i mean i you hear enough of it it's got to be true well it goes for any company like google if i worked for google right i wouldn't talk shit about them when i worked there sure in fact my pay scale it's the same thing as soon as guys are more vocal once they leave but i mean they are controlling but you also know what you're getting yourselves into when you sign that contract let's not be mistaken man you're gonna pay me and i'm gonna go on this show i got paid to go on that show the blind date but it's like you put me in a really shitty situation oh yeah i gotta turn to my girlfriend like hey who i was with for years you know you're like yeah i gotta go on this show and i'm like i had explained to her that like literally everything you saw that's the only time we talked because i didn't talk to her in between she's like yeah yeah whatever you know but i mean the point is no we didn't we didn't talk oh my god because they want to capture they want to capture everything yeah so you got to lay this out for us i didn't even know this was a show that was at least hot you know she was hot what they do is that's actually makes it worse bro i'm going home and telling your girls like a dime piece that you had to pretend to like what made it worse was that they actually do research on the girl or whoever you girls that you've dated or girls that you're interested in and they bring in a girl that's like that this girl just so happened to be like my girlfriend oh no so my girlfriend was like what the you're boxing me yeah this is ridiculous how did they know that you like you know this kind of girls and i was like well i don't know honey i was like analytics uh yeah is this on is this on spike where is where do they air so no this is an old this is old back in the ufc days like probably 2002 2003 because i was in the ufc 2000 to 2004 so you i fought in ufc 44 i think we're on ufc like 250 right now wow and then that the two ufc 250 only counts ufcs that have been like um like what pay per view pay per views and stuff that doesn't count fox uh fight nights and things like that so there's way more ufcs that are happening i fought on 44 46 49 and then so on you're an og for sure i mean you've been doing this for a long when did you when was your first pro mma fight how old were you back i was i just turned 18 18 years old yeah just turned 18 you've been fighting that long not too many people have that kind of staying power no it's been a long time man it's been a long how are you able to do that um that's it's a brutal sport i mean you're you're gonna get hurt you know yeah i think what happened i came from a wrestling background played played soccer a lot as well so i was always in good shape i just wanted the train um it's actually a true story um you guys get the gist on this is my my little brother was a wrestler too and then i was a wrestler in high school he was he was wrestling in uh middle school and um i had started doing like muay thai my grandmother had put me in muay thai it was after school and i had some time there was between season soccer and wrestling so she put me in a muay thai and her hairdresser son had owned this place you know so i was like all right whatever i went and he also taught jiu jitsu well he was actually from san jose the bay area used to train with halve gracey oh wow so he moved up to north Idaho where i was going to high school at at the time and she had put me in my brother who was a wrestler he's like no i want to do the grappling part he want to do the jitsu so i came home one day and i was bigger i was the better wrestler at the time because he was still pretty young i came home oh he's just a mess with him head snaps you know bullying him around in the house oh i got typical brother yeah i got to his back and i put my hooks in i was like saturday and i riding him you know like fucking just putting heavy pressure on him and i crossed my feet and he caught me in a leg lock and ankle lock and he was that little smart ass kid that kind of was like this is like oh what you want me to you're tapping and you give up like he was doing that to me as he's tapping me i'm like ah i'm like freaking out ah let go let go he's like no no you're ever gonna mess with me again no no no no you know and putting more pressure not putting so it was one of those scenarios like like within a couple days i'm like no i'm gonna take the jitsu and that's how it started it all started that way yeah i mean as far as the longevity in the sport it really just comes with like i've always i never could afford to eat shit you know i always had to just eat at home and whatever i made at home is what i had and you know i could never afford you know soda and drinks and it was like i had to drink water whatever was in the came out of the faucet luckily i lived in Idaho at the time so the tap water is drinkable not here in San Jose you're sucking on pennies yeah yeah if you look young too i couldn't believe your age when i mean i know i knew your age but i forgot i saw you and you're like yeah i'm about your age like holy shit yeah yeah i'm all right is that your way of calling me old yeah hey man we're the same age so that was a shit sandwich for sure right how many organizations have you fought him so i have fought in i fought all the top organizations around the world so i fought in the ufc was my first big organization that i fought in fought in pride and i fought in dream and i fought in strike force i was the strike force world champion that's right you know and and then i came back to the ufc when the ufc bought i'm now i'm with bellator so i pretty much what people ask me like how to bounce around but the thing was is that when the ufc got rid of the weight class the lightweight division back in 2004 i had nowhere to go i could have stayed in the ufc and fought guys at 170 like some of the lightweight's got lightweight guys did and i was like fuck that i've seen matthews man the guy's a fucking huge george st pierre is huge for 170 how much they how how what do they walk around at 210 oh shit that's a big cut that much of a difference yeah john fitger trained with them like almost every fucking day that walks around 202 205 easily wow easily you know so these guys are making 170 i'm like dude i'm not going to 170 you're not your goddamn mind yeah yeah there's no way which one's your favorite organization of those well it's hard to say because like my favorite organization was strike force because i felt like we had something we finally had got something that we have we had think about all the champions in the ufc right now we have them we had strike force had them luke rockhold dc jaquere like we had kane valazquez strike he had his first fight was in strike force so we had verdum who was the champion who beat kane but like he he was with strike force also sure he was in the ufc before ufc said oh he's washed up he's done they cut him then he went to pride and then he came to strike force after that beat fedor here and uh beat fedor here in san jose you know it was like we had all the top guys we had all the best heavyweights 100 except for kane because kane went he ended up going to the ufc but we had all the top heavyweights at the time we had alistair overain we had fedor we had um what's it called verdum we had keratonov we had all the best heavyweights paul wanted to tell it we had all the best heavyweights at the time and then when the ufc bought them they got the heavyweights and that that kind of sucked you know because you had me and gill was the best lightweights you could arguably say we were probably the best lightweights in the world at the time because we went to the to ufc and fuck we he could say he arguably beat ben benson henderson then i knocked out nate deas and then he and then i fought benson next and i arguably beat him as well fucking split decision loss is the worst and i broke my thumb tore all the ligaments in my wrist you know in the first round i still fought the rest of the five rounds and everyone's so pissed that i lost do you see that being the model like because ufc i'm just gonna ask you why is that why do you see the the hopping back and forth of the athletes and like what is it about each organization i mean it can't just be dollars or is it just so for me when i went to pride i got into pride because scott koker scott koker was he used to he had a relationship with the japanese and the relationship with the japanese was he used to promote k1 usa well k1 kickboxing which is kickboxing k1 uh japan was huge man it was bigger than pride right fucking enormous way bigger and like i'm the japanese side the american kickboxing just wasn't that big the k1 usa that he used to run just p americans weren't really into kickboxing as much as they were in a boxing internet and getting into mma at the time so he decided like well okay look i'm gonna get done with k1 uh i'm gonna fold that up he had already owned strike force i was fighting after the ufc after ufc got rid of the lightweight division i was fighting for um scott koker as a kickboxer just to make money man like i was like look i still want to fight i don't know what i'm gonna do and i was like twiddling my thumbs like fuck my career's over you know and but in reality he was like hey i'll get you a kickboxing fight fighting like you know whoever but still two thousand dollars here fifteen hundred dollars here was like fuck better than nothing you know i knew i wanted to be a fighter so i fought kickboxing um just kickboxing then he called me said hey i gotta fight for you in pride well at the time you know i was the number one guy in the world when i fought my last fight in the ufc against eaves edwards and i lost but it that that fight should have been for the ufc lightweight title which is so upsetting because that fight should have been for the title and then they cut down the division right after that we were the actual official last fight why wasn't it explain that why was i was just they they were hemorrhaging money to keep the organization open oh wow so that's when they started after i had left shortly after that they started the ultimate fighter and if you watch the documentary so before that they weren't that financially successful no ultimate fighter turned it around ultimate fight and and had they not had that one fight with forest and stephan that whole thing would have been a fucking massive how crazy is that then because that was an epic i mean i've watched all the ultra i've watched every season i've been a fan of ufc since the very beginning when it was underground and uh you know and nobody really knew about it but man that season when that happened that was so big and what a power move for dana to actually allow both those guys to go in the ufc after that how could you not right after that no exactly it's a hundred percent how are you gonna tell one person no you don't get the six figure contract you gotta be fucking out of your mind right like i mean that was a fan favorite fight for years it's still when they when you go into an arena i don't know if you guys have actually been doing a ufc arena yeah when they fight that's the fight that they show when they come out to the um what's that movie shit it's real famous wait they play the song to it the like the bagpipes the bagpipes oh yeah brave heart no no no no no no no no no the other irish movie where they're killing people they're like but ah man come on justin this is your this is your wheelhouse bro you're two the two irish brothers that just kill everybody yes it's uh it's the boondock come on man come on get your name all over hurt my brain i was gonna say highlander and i'm like that's Scottish yeah i'm glad it's like one of my favorite movies to you i should have known and i just want my favorite movies yeah but when you walk into the arena and then they get ready to start the main event that song comes on and that fight comes on yeah i mean that's how popular that that's how much respect they still show to that fight because that's really what kept the organization alive being in the sport as long as you have uh from 18 till now i mean that's you've seen it change so much what are some of the things that just what are the good things and what are the bad things that you've seen the good things they are that the sport is growing kids are now doing it from the time that they start martial arts it's MMA you know i'm not a not a proponent of kids striking to the head you know and doing MMA at a young age um because now we know a lot more research and stuff that studies are shown with the cte but i i just i want them to know how to defend themselves if you want your kid to stop being bullied fucking give him some sort of martial art to protect himself and what i try to tell people that the best two martial arts you can teach your child is jujitsu and wrestling because you want to know why almost 95 percent of the fights kids they end up on the ground right why not just have your kid learn jujitsu and wrestling so the kid knows how to take the fight to the ground get to a submission position and then wait till the teacher comes to break it up right like hey i told him to stop he didn't stop i'm holding him here you know you i think there was one there was a there was this kid bullying this kid uh it's on it's like a youtube uh you know it's on youtube and it went viral this like kids pushing him hitting him this and that and the other small little skinny kid drops his backpack and just fucking lights him up not only just lights him up on the feet but then boom does like a jumping swinging armbar and then he's like holding the armbar he's like hey look are you done the guy's like get off me bitch get off me dude you're getting fucking armbar why are you talking shit you know what i mean but it's like that type of scenario where the kid's like hey are you done stop trying out you know stop trying to fuck with me like he's got him in the armbar position the kid can't move yeah you know then the kid let's go because when you teach your kids at a young age that that they don't that they can control themselves in that scenario like if you didn't teach the kid that those marshals and he saw that just off tv he would have broke the kids arm right but the fact that he's trained in that now he's just thinking to himself i've got him he's not moving i can wait for someone to come break it up or just until the kid says okay i give up that's one of my favorite things about jujitsu is that you can uh if you if you have to you can fight and you can control someone and you don't have to hurt them in order to win you know a a confrontation whereas if you're teaching your kids boxing or kickboxing which is fine too but when they defend themselves yeah they're going to be deadly and in order to defend themselves they're going to break some other kids face or nose or whatever especially nowadays with the way people see each other it's like you don't want to get that letter from you know you want to you don't want to get called from the school like your kid just broke some of the kids face like oh shit yeah i just feel like striking is not really the way to teach your child you know i just feel that jujitsu and wrestling are the main ways also an individual sport like wrestling teaches your kid to grid it out in a 90 degree room when they're exhausted so what happens what i've learned i've worked with a lot of kids actually as a matter of fact right before i came here i had two kids that i was training um that i do like sports and agility training with them but i get to know the point where they're so tired that they to the point of exhaustion where they start to cry and it's maybe it sounds really harsh but the reason why kids cry after a competition not because they lost because they've exerted so much energy and they still didn't win that's why they have no idea what it's like to be tired you know like i've seen kids run around and run around and run around right when they run around and run around they don't they don't feel it all of a sudden you see one time they're like they're sweating like they can stop whenever they want but when you make a kid go beyond that little bit extra where their body just they're not used to being exhausted they don't know what that feeling is where they can't breathe where their muscles are so tired and they don't know what to do so they just start to cry and i said like it's a normal thing so teaching the child to go that their body can do so much more because their mind all their mind has to do is will them to do that but they just have to get used to they have to develop that by training it and doing it more you know it's funny you talk about that and when you watch uh mixed martial arts the people who are known to be the toughest in the sense of like the grinders the the guys that are not going to give up that are going to fight and keep going are the wrestlers usually the wrestlers yeah and people wonder why like why why is it that the wrestlers are just so gritty and tough and if you go to like a good high school or junior high wrestling you know you go see the wrestling practice and the coaches if you figure it out like yeah at a young age they understand how to push themselves hard they understand how to you know deal with pain it's not really physically taxing wrestlers ultimate degree wrestlers are mentally very like like people who've been wrestling for a long time they're just mentally very very very tough especially when you get your hands on somebody at a super high level like in order to beat that person you have to really beat them well and there's definitely an argument too to to take you know kids and athletes to to work on their mental discipline and their fortitude and and and you know kind of establish that in order to then pursue you know greatness and so there's a smart side to training is as far as like not getting too exhausted you know to to lead up into competition but at the same time like establishing that overcoming mentality is so crucial to do well the real lesson isn't isn't even necessarily in the exhaustion aspect of it it's in what happens after and how you communicate that you know how you can communicate that and if you think about fitness like I've worked with a lot of kids here I love working with kids and the thing I love about fitness with kids is that it's such a it's such a nice clear kind of example a very small microchasm of what life kind of is like but it's simple right it's just we're moving we're exercising we're running or whatever and then they learn how to deal with that and then those lessons actually have a lot of carryover into everyday life so when they you know their girlfriend breaks up with them or like you know they lose their job or whatever they just they have that that that that skill well josh I want to I want you to go I want to go back again to the what what you've seen the good and the bad of the evolution of the sport I don't know if you listen to fighter in the kid or how well you know like Brennan Schaub I know he talks a little bit on his show about that what are your thoughts on on the evolution of the sport and UFC and specifically talking about them and where it's gone and where it was like what do you like what do you don't like um there's there's so many different there's so many different things I loved when it was five six shows a year but then I understand the importance of having it more often but I also don't like how it's every weekend sometimes two shows in a weekend three shows now you're taking the importance of the athlete who has grinded their whole life away to become popular and become a star there's there's no they're not stars anymore so back in the day when there was five to seven to ten shows a year right it was special to make that card which yeah well not just that not just to make that card but then when you knew where you were signed with the UFC you knew you were a number one you knew you were a top talent in the world now they have shows every week and like I think uh about a month ago or two months ago they had a show in Germany and they had a show in Brazil in the same night like literally both shows were the same night and then they had a show the next night here in the U.S. so three shows all within a 24-hour period now they did it because of the time change you're not going to watch the show in Germany at the you know at eight o'clock without already seeing the news and seeing what the results were and blah blah blah and it was on fight it was on a fight pass but um I just I see that what happened when you when what happens is when it grows so when it grew so fast now there's no stars and when there's no stars the the fighter doesn't get treated the way that they should the athlete doesn't get treated the way they should okay I think that's the problem that you're seeing right now in college football they're like hey my jersey was the number one selling jersey in the world why am I not getting anything for this like I'm struggling to like paint to wash my damn clothes you know and I'm not getting paid for this you know and like you're making all this money off me because you gave me a a $35,000 education you know but I'm gonna be gone in a year you know that's why I'm leaving to the NFL that's why I'm leaving the NBA is because I'm a one-off because I'm gonna make my money get out I know I'm a draw I'm gonna go to the NFL and make money I just see that in the the select that Dana Dana and the Fortitas had did a good job of making sure that Dana was the star when Chuck had left he was the last big star that they had Chuck Randy that was it he was like because I don't know if you guys know the history on Tito and Chuck they used to be managed by Dana so when I didn't know they were managed by him yeah Dana was their manager back before they had bought the UFC so he had turned and said hey when he had met the Fortitas they he knew that the UFC was for sale so he had turned to the Fortitas and said hey this I think there might be something here the Fortitas said you know what you might be right so they've decided to buy the UFC and they ran on it with that for a while but I think what Dana and them have done is what better way to make sure that you're always staying focused on the UFC is to make Dana the star because Dana's not going anywhere no he's got money invested he's not going to lose a fight and he's going to always be there no way is he leaving that organization he's got he owned 10 12 15 I don't know what the percentage was but he owned percentage of the company he's not going anywhere the other thing that you're going to do with him is you're going to make other guys um the other people you're going to make celebrities the ring girls bro have you seen the following those ring girls have and I'm not knocking them for being what you know for being what they are I think it's great but these ring girls have got you know 801 million 1.5 million followers just making money hand over oh that would actually be really frustrating if you're a fighter in there getting your ass whooped man and fighting for your life and you got ring girls making more money girls making more money than you it's the worst thing when you get on a plane as a fighter right that makes this company you get on the plane and you're walking past first class and all the ring girls are sitting oh that would piss me off I've got to be demoralizing to them I've been blessed enough to like make enough money to like yeah sure I'll upgrade you know but there's times where I'm like I'm only going to LA it's like a hour flight I'm not upgrading to first class for an LA flight like whatever you know what I mean but I've gotten on planes to get on I've gotten on as like there's Joe Rogan sitting there and there's you know the ring girls there and there's buffer there and you're like you're walking past first class and you're just like man that sucks that's a motherfucker right there bro you know especially when you got guys that are like the coming event on the card and you're walking past these these ring card girls sometimes what's even worse is when you getting on a plane and you're in the you're waiting to get on the plane and you're checking your instagram and you see the ring card girls are flying private wow oh god dude and I'm not knocking them I'm just like more power repeated hits in the nuts yeah for the athlete that is making this all possible it's really upsetting yeah you know it's got to be frustrating I've actually taken away your gear on top of that yeah right I mean like these are the deals that people don't seem to understand what that Reebok deal did that Reebok deal is killed between 60 to $80,000 every fight I made what did yep easily 60 to $80,000 whoa so now when I let when I was there my last fight with them was the Reebok deal I only had one fight with them under the Reebok deal I made five grand I had 10 fights in the UFC I made five grand $5,000 $5,000 wow that's insane horrible man whereas before that you were making I was making 60 to $80,000 just in sponsors just in sponsors that's not kind of my purse yeah holy cow do you think this move to Bellator was really like after that whole deal went down you think my more appealing that way my move to Bellator was strictly because I knew Scott Coker I had a relationship with Scott Coker Scott Coker is the reason why I got into pride when I wasn't with the UFC anymore when they didn't have a lightweight division he's the one that got me into pride I got paid good money for that fight back in the day more than any of the other guys had made then I came back and he started Strike Force he gave me a great contract I was making more than I had almost triple what I had made in the UFC fighting guys like E.J. Edwards, Hermes Franca being the number one fighter in the world he paid me more money and he had broke down the rule like literally what he was going to do is Strike Force I'm going to sign Frank Shamrock, Kong Lee and they're going to fight I'm going to sign you Josh I'm going to sign Gilbert Melendez and you guys are going to fight okay and then I'm going to build everything around you guys and that's exactly what he did cool so how do you get mad at someone who's actually stand-up guy and says and does exactly what he said he was going to do right now I mean the counter argument of course from people who represent the UFC they'd say well hey we make it all possible you know if it wasn't for us it wouldn't be this big and then you hear them say things like we've got these other stars who make shit tons of money right we've we're paid you know Ronda Rousey all this money we paid you know Conor McGregor all this money you know what's your counter to that I love Ronda Rousey I love Conor McGregor I think they're amazing for the sport I'm all for them making that money okay I just don't see why the other guys can't make a little bit more I'm just gonna say there's probably a huge discrepancy between them all massive and then the next top five oh it's like less than point zero one percent you know so if you want to take like the guys in the NFL sure maybe only like say five percent or like less than that make you know what Tom Brady makes and those guys make I get that LeBron he's making the most okay everyone understands I get those guys yeah but there's two or three of those people in the UFC on a 500 person roster you know there's only two or three of them in the NBA they're all fucking millionaires you know what I mean like this one's not like even even the the practice squad guys for the NFL make more than these guys make the practice squad yeah man we talking about practice you talking about practice you talking about practice you know what I mean like even these guys even like even those guys are making more than these these guys that are fighting their ass off what people don't understand is that I grew up on the east side of San Jose here in San Jose okay I went to Mayfair back when it's called Mayfair now it's called Cesar Chavez and I went to Mattson for a year and then I went to Joseph George and you know what I mean like I went I grew up on the east side you know where pink elephant is king and story is yeah I grew up right there literally one block away from pink elephant and Mercado the pal stadium I grew up right there you know I used to walk to school grandmother used to watch me walk to school from the sidewalk because I live on the same street as Mayfair Mattson I grew up right there man like we came from it like she'd wake me up and make oatmeal like that was I had oatmeal every morning for breakfast man or beans and rice with some eggs like dude that was my life like that's so the fact that now that I'm able to make a little bit of money and be able to do these things I'm like man I'm not having beans and rice no more you know but you know it's good with my enchiladas and tacos you know but I'm not having it for breakfast and dinner you know but um these guys have learned that they've come up the way that I came up and I see I know the struggles I know exactly what they're going through I feel bad for them because the UFC has shifted to stars and the reason why I feel like they shifted the stars because they don't have the control like they did over Chuck and Tito and you know because they had they didn't control Chuck but they he had Dana had a relationship with Chuck that gave him a little bit more leeway to do what he wanted he knew that if he told Chuck like hey can you do this appearance for me really I need you to come through for me he'd be like yeah sure because you know what Chuck is they stand up guy Chuck's one of my best friends man I say in the industry at all Chuck's one of my best friends he's one of my favorites him and Randy were two of my absolute favorites you know what what kind of advice that you if there's someone coming up uh and trying to get into this sport um and do it professionally what what advice would you give them to be able to for them to make the most money obviously people say win fights but that's not always true right because you've got people who are don't have as good a records who aren't you know fighting for championships that just earn a shit ton of money because they have a lot of a high draw like what would you recommend to people let me ask you this do you guys watch Sage Northcutt no okay so he's like uh it's like a karate style yeah yeah he's that young good looking kid shredded you know but how would you feel he's got like two or three fights I think and you have something he's got four now okay but he's got I think he's I think two and two or three and one all right one and three sorry he's got one win or two wins you know anyways how would you feel if you were had let's just say you were one of the guys that were lightweight you're like one of the top guys and he's making 50 and 50 and you're making 43 and 43 yeah how would you feel let's just say I'm ranked in the top 20 this kid's not ranked in the top it's not about the sport at that point yeah it's not a sport anymore it's like you're literally pushing guys in front of me that don't deserve to be there it's because they're marketable or whatever they're supposed to be marketable but let's talk I want to see I'm talking about fighters man yeah man like you want to be a fucking fighter let me see you be a fucking fighter okay when you find when you find guys if that lose the same way every time you know they're not a fighter you guys understand what I'm saying yeah okay if if the guy gets kicked to the body and he runs to the fence every time he gets hurt he runs to the fence and covers up and puts his hand out waits for the ref to stop it that's someone who is he's not a fighter somebody who just basically gets tapped every time it's saying almost same submission or whatever it is okay that's not a fighter okay sure maybe you're athletic sure maybe you're uh you're someone that has all the looks and all the the attributes to be a fighter but you don't have it mentally you're not you're not a fighter how prevalent is that in the industry is there do you think there's a lot of that how like a majority half how much of that well I think it's a new generation of guys that are coming up it's I don't want to call them the millennials of MMA but we're gonna go ahead and do that you know I mean it's kind of it's kind of a run because what it is they jumped in when they saw the money in the stardom was going up they jumped in now they're in it which is good and they have the look and the flashiness and uh and everything but then when it comes down when the when the going gets tough they just kind of they kind of find ways out you know what I mean so when you when you say that that makes me think that man what's that we're gonna see this transition in the next five or so years of like uh kids that were like in their young teens that have built like a large social media presence that come into the u.s.c. that are actually gonna probably get a fast track towards you know the top and getting paid well because they can't I meet Dana White and I've already got 40 000 followers that follow me because I've built this social media presence whether I'm good looking or fit or I know somebody but now I I have that going for me and now I'm in the sport there's probably a good chance I'm gonna make more money because of that is that true uh yes uh but let me ask you this how does a guy like Rory McDonald after a fight like he had with Robbie Lawler get let go didn't get let go but was able to even fucking leave yeah why how are you even able to negotiate with another company why did that happen you gotta be out of your fucking mind yeah you know and there's a lot of talk right now that Jacare and Musashi are both on their way out to Bellator Wow they they Jacare fights uh did he fight he fights this weekend okay he fights this weekend he's on his last fight in his contract Musashi has one more fight left or he just fought what two weeks ago I think he's done now so he they're gonna he's gonna go and negotiate he's got like a 60 day non-negotiate he's gotta to only negotiate with the UFC for 60 days so you have that period where you have exclusive rights to negotiate with just the UFC but he's gonna wait those 60 days he's already come out verbally and said like I'm waiting I'm gonna I'm gonna see you the free market which they all should do 100% they should all do that's exactly what I did I think if there's two companies fight out exactly which one's willing to pay you the most I don't give a shit who you are okay if you're an athlete fucking invest in yourself there's nobody else gonna invest in you but you fucking fight your fights see what the market is if it's not there there's no way the UFC's letting them go like if you're hey he's the offer of shit money still gonna be on the table right they're not gonna let you go the shit money still gonna be there I just chose to go with Bellator because the money was substantially more not just substantially more but those the show money was substantially more so let's just say if you had a chance to make 60 and 60 or 70 and 70 you understand what that is yeah 70 to fight 70 to win or yes exactly so 60,000 to show up and fight make weight show up and fight then another 60,000 if I win that's a big that's a big drop if you don't fucking win and then on top of it did you train any less hard for that fight of course exactly so then second though too is what happens if I get poked in the eye it goes to a fucking no contest I don't get paid the boat the win money yeah if it's a draw you don't get paid the win money if it's a no contest or a legal growing shot or something like that you don't get paid the win money so you're both fighters don't get paid the win money so you're you're fucking ripping them off again we're Bellator's contracts and I'm not just being I'm not just saying this this is how strike force was as well is that they are they're heavy on the show money so like if I show up and fight I'm getting 120,000 or 200,000 to show up and fight and then like a $30,000 win bonus you know or an or no win bonus but a finishing bonus if I knock you out or submit you I get a hundred thousand dollar finishing bonus like you're talking it gives me incentive to push and try and get the the finish but I'm still getting paid fucking great money I was just going to say until you said that I didn't say well then I would I would be worried that some guys would just whatever I'm not going to train very hard because I don't care if I win because I have such a big purse so I get what the ucd there but then you said that right there that you get a purse for yeah you get a per you get a your show money is higher yeah which I understand what you're saying yeah like all the show money is higher so people just don't give a shit yeah but then if I turn around and say hey I'll give you another say 50 grand if you get a finish yeah if you get a submission you're gonna fight harder oh yeah not just a win a finish if you get a finishing bonus I mean fuck right well you know I think you know for it I think today uh you know you can be a really smart I guess businessman with yourself because of things like social media and whatnot like I I look at like like we're in fitness we're in the fitness industry and back in the day if you were I don't know mr. Olympia or you could make a lot of money and you probably made more money than everybody else because you weren't you were first place today the highest paid athletes in fitness are the ones with the most social media followers so I'm wondering if fighters can start to figure that out as well so although you go in there and maybe you're just you're entertaining or when they interview you you know you talk a certain way or whatever just so you get those followers and build yourself as a business and that might give you some autonomy you know what I mean then you have the power I think I agree with you 100% I think if I was just your original question was what would I tell somebody who's coming up in the sport in this generation I would say you need to film and and um have someone archive everything that you've done okay and not just for later date but because as you're going through your workouts for everything the most views and the most viewership stuff that I get is things that I'm doing in my personal life oh and I'm not I don't like to show I don't I don't share my personal life with anyone but when it comes to my training when it comes to my running the mountains when it comes to my mountain biking things like that that's fine but my home life is my home life and it's separate from my family you won't see me at my family Easter party posting pictures and things like that well that's the difference between our generation the other one we don't we don't post like our kids and shit like that exactly that's what everybody does now yeah and I get really I actually get like disturbed when I see you like friends of mine they're posting pictures of their kids and I do that's random people I literally have had in San Jose I've had people just knock on my door hey can I get autograph oh my home I'm how the fuck did you fight me yeah like I've paid I've paid all the the dues I actually went on all the on the internet and I've actually had my stuff removed from everything on the internet you can't find me anymore but it only lasts a year and you got to redo it again every year you got to do it I'm like fuck how did someone find because I'm getting mail at my every once in a while that would trip me to get fan mail so what I do with the fan mail I don't send it back because then they know they had the right address so I don't send it back I'm like no but anyways I'm trying to keep my I just keep my life personal but as a young athlete I would tell them to um to just archive everything like just record anything you possibly can you know and let people view it like but I would start it on like a youtube channel where you can make money doing it that way as well once you hit a certain amount of subscriber once you get a certain amount of views because one of your things may just go viral like my buddy Shane Phasen who does fight tips he just did that video yesterday about the guy being drugged across the jiu-jitsu match that was his video oh wow so he did that video fucking went viral boom like he was making fun of the United he was making fun of the United where the guy's being drugged like through the thing and he's just showing the escapes jiu-jitsu escape video how to attack from that position it was fucking awesome wait wait these aren't the this wasn't the the Gracie ones because they made a video too no no so it was so it was but he did it with them oh he was the one that was saying yeah yeah that video is fucking brilliant i was cracking up but i was watching that one exactly that's excellent yeah how you were just talking about how you film a lot of your training and stuff has it changed through the years now that you've been doing this for so long does your training look different now than it used to 100% because as you get older you know your training's got to change your body changes on a weekly basis what's the difference um i'm so so some of the differences is that look when i was 28 to 32 i would just train like a fucking animal there was never there was never a moment where i wasn't fucking training like i would wake up at 6 a.m i'd fucking go do an assault bike class it might like at my own gym i'd just fucking train as hard as i could go back home and just sleep eat sleep you know shower get get up for noon training with the fighters fucking train two hours with them whether it was wrestling jiu-jitsu sparring whatever it was you know and then i would come back i go back home eat shower sleep and then wake back up 6 30 at night i go back to the gym and just fucking train until nine o'clock 9 30 at night whether it was whether it was kickboxing bike workout you know our sprints on the machine or whatever it was you know and it would change you know like throughout the week but as i got older it was like okay look two workouts a day and that's it because your body just can't do it man i'm like no matter how clean i eat no matter how you know i even brought a nutritionist in like that stay with me and live with me i don't know if you guys know who dan leeth is so um you know he does lockhart leeds so he's the nutritionist for myself came velasquez dc all these guys and so i've had um i had him actually just move in with me he makes you know breakfast lunch dinner everything he gets you all sorted out and uh he lives with you while you're in camp and so he just takes care of everything you need that's awesome and because there are certain times you need to have your macro certain times you need to have you know your sugar sometimes certain times you need to have your carbs more more on the certain ratios too like i'm afraid of hard work i you want more of a three to one ratio sugar to carbs and that type of thing so he keeps track of all that because when you're in camp you want it to be mindless you know i want someone to do everything you just want to focus on the training you just want to focus on the training like i can't my mind can't be working you know and and trying to get the best out of my performance if it's not focused on the one thing i'm supposed to be working on now with your training do you do put more time now into things like mobility flexibility or massage and that kind of shit now so with the massage yes but the uh the mobility no and i hate to say it it's the worst fucking thing ever i something happened when i hit like 34 my flexibility just shit took a shit on me it's not as what it used to be and you know it just sucks man i don't know what it is i need to spend more time on the actual mobility stuff gotta be hanging out with brinkmore huh yeah exactly he's always on me i'm sure he's drilling you on that he's always on me about how you gotta do i can't even touch my back you know i gotta get off the toy put one leg up on the thing and try and wipe my ass that way you know it's like can't do the reach back anymore it doesn't it doesn't happen man i gotta it's it's crazy now what are the advantages that an older fighter would have over a younger fighter because there's gotta be some advantages too because i remember randy couture was whooping the shit out of these young kids right and he i'm sure there was disadvantages but there's gotta be some advantage so what i try to say about with randy and with dan henderson there's another anomalies anomalies so what happens randy was so good at wrestling his game plan was always the same if you ever watch his fights they're always the same yeah it was punch punch clinch press you to the fence get the takedown if you can't if you can't get it just be the show keep you against the fence beating you up he never stood on the outside i used to hate that because i was a chuck fan man i was a diehard chuck fan and those fights are just driving me crazy like fuck you know he's gonna do that exactly exactly but no one could stop it because that his whole his whole game plan was to do that one thing and it's been his game plan ever since he started fighting but um and this the thing with dan henderson sure he was the same way but as he got older he started relying a lot on just his power and that's just something you it doesn't care if i don't give a fuck if he's 60 his fucking power still gonna be there the guy's an animal is that true we hear that like you that's the last thing you lose the last thing you lose your power yep but for smaller guys that's why there's such a big turnover in um in sports for smaller guys because the first thing to go is your speed oh once your speed is gone once your speed is gone the younger generation of uh fighters no what a great point gonna fuck you up what a great point it's a heavy way you can probably carry or the heavier classes you can probably stay a little bit longer because you can rely on that see i've experienced some of this before because i've actually you know i've done a little bit of sparring and uh if you've ever been hit by like a 50 year old boxer you see the guy and you're like oh he's a 50 year old boxer and you'll fucking kill you like he'll hit you like a car hit you and you're like well this is the soul out of your body yeah it doesn't make any sense but this i guess it's true that's because you've always hear that right have you seen that video that's viral uh with the old boxing guy he gets in their cage or he gets in the ring with this guy this younger kid i think it's i think it's in rusher like italy or something like that puts his ass to sleep and he's fucking slaps him just puts him out man the kid's like giving the look like whatever then the the old man hits him boom boom a couple big shots and people are kind of like giggling and laughing like oh you know poor old man and next you know he just fucking slaps the guy sits him through the rope and they have to like pull him off they have to pull the old guy off the young guy they're like pulling him back and he's like ah whatever you know it's like the old tie guys yeah it's like the old tie guys that are they're like okay like you're gonna go spar with that young kid so the guy like throws the fucking cigarette out of his mouth steps on it walks in there and just knocks the kid out so any other advanced are there any advantages though to be able to do you think well like are you smarter i would think i would think like the the the mental confidence the experience right right you probably walk in like no big deal i've been in here a million times yeah the experience does play a factor you pretty much have seen it all you know i mean the game changed a little bit but doesn't change that that drastically to understand but i think what it's i wouldn't say there's any advantages other than that i mean like just the experience i mean if you're an older fighter just gotta use what you know and use what you know best like that's the thing is like don't try and do anything outside the realm because you're fighting a younger guy you know the issue with the thing with the the younger fighters the older fighters with the younger ones you have to weather their storm because they're gonna exert so much energy so fast in that first round you gotta get through that first round okay and once you get through that first round that's when you slow the pace of the fight down to your level of experience where you can just okay i got this wow let's talk about the psychology of fighting uh how important is that uh to being a hope to be able to win well depends on which one you're talking about you're talking about the millennial mma guys are you talking about the the ones that are real fighters well anyway like any of i mean any of them like what is a winning psychology like what are some of the challenges going in i mean i i've never fought uh in in mma i've never i've competed in grappling uh you know competitions jitsu and judo as a kid and i distinctly remember um being exhausted going into my first match because i was so too hyped i was too hyped and too nervous and whatever going in that i would just get exhausted like way worse stamina than i did when i would train and i couldn't figure it out and as i got older i figured it out because i was too amped like let's talk about some of the psychology going into a fight and what are some of the things that you need to i guess look out for or focus on so if someone is just coming up or what i try to tell people is that you're never going to be able to train as hard as you're going to fight because i could spar as hard as i can so like let's just get ready for a three round fight i get a fresh guy every round and they come in they're fucking world world beaters right they just come in they're just trying to take my head off doesn't matter i'm still not going to fight at the pace that i'm going to fight if i was fighting somebody else in the ring for real it's just something happens when you get out there different switch it's just a different switch on both ways there's nothing you can do about it but you can try and do the best you can out on the track you know in your workouts you know and whether whatever type of workouts you do and um in your sparring you just try to always push the pace always keep the grind on but you're never going to get that that true fight feeling until you get in there and fight and like you were saying you were exhausted before your tournament um but the reason being is because it's just lack of experience learning how to rest and and learning how to relax right before that's the biggest thing i mean shit i've been fighting for almost 20 years now i mean like i go out now and it's like i don't even trip now like i have you know i've got my boys in the room in the locker room with me we're just jumping rope talking shit you know and i get ready to walk out there fucking get it get it on and move on click my check and bounce out do you remember a transition of that like was was there a time when you were super nervous overthinking and then you kind of something happened or you just over time i would say it was that way for all my fights up until my after my first fight in the ufc and i got the jitters out of like you know what i've made it you know like once you're in the ufc and you've got that first win in the ufc it's like i fucking made it you know because until you get that first win which most of the time at the time was only the biggest organization in the world you know it still is but i'm saying that it was like the only one is the only one so once you got that win and you're like oh fuck like a sense like a huge monkey off your back just a sense of relief do people uh knowing that you're a fighter and you're recognizable people mess with you in no not anymore when i was younger they did really because the sport wasn't as prevalent as it is now so it wasn't as big so when people would actually like oh yeah i heard you're a fighter and they would talk shit like oh you do that ufc shit or whatever you know they would say things like that but now fuck you go to all the clubs around san jose all the fucking guys that work the door they're all trained jitsu and they all fucking yeah they all know who the fuck i am you know what i mean so i don't have any problems like literally it's like hey get that guy out of here because he's fucking with me they're like get your no problem drush get out dude have you had to do anything like and like has anybody ever actually when i was younger yeah i mean like i got a lot of fights when i was younger man it's very unfortunate um even before you were training like when you're especially before i was trained really is that what motivated you strongly were you were you bullied were you like a so when i was a group on the east side i'm like half white half mexican i grew on the east side what do you think i look more white than i i am mexican so i yeah i got bullied all the time like people trying to bully me around then i got into wrestling and you know and then i moved away and it was like okay but in northern Idaho it's predominantly white so here i'm white up there i'm a spic so yeah it depends on what it is i'm the same way so i'm mexican and german and depending on if i'm with with white people i'm a spic if i'm with mexican people you know i'm saying i'm a guido so it's like you're the fucking one or not a guido but a freaking honky yeah one or the other you know so funny don't fit in with anybody that way exactly did you have a uh a time like growing up where you know where you're training you know you you fought someone and you beat them up or you kept them from beating you up that was that really catapulted this like oh i love this or this is something i'm going to keep going is there like a staple moment or fight that happened i'm talking about the street not inside the oh you're talking about the street yeah i'm talking about something no this because street fights is a completely different mentality i you never think about um yeah you never fight suck yeah there there's no fucking ref yeah you know but i mean just so you guys get a little more awareness of like where i come from like with my dad my dad was one of the guys like hey i got i had a girlfriend in high school when i was living in Idaho she heard i had split up and i was a ta like a teacher's assistant and i was grading papers and she was walking through the hall and she's like cussing at me while i'm grading papers the door was open teacher wasn't wasn't in the room at the time and her and i go out i said hey you didn't get out of here like get i walk out to the hall and you didn't get out i got kids in here you gotta get out of here so she starts cussing at me she slaps me well i have a couple girlfriends there in the time the high school that we were in there was theater seating but there was no doors that went into the that went into the classrooms so i had two of my girlfriends that were just friends that they saw her slap me because they had they were looking in the hall you can look back into the hall from the top desk up on the top of the of the tear scene so she looked they see that happen and they walk out and they beat the shit out of her oh shit so they beat her up and i didn't do anything i was like whatever but he was i got sent home so i was like hey you were part of this whole thing you got suspended the other two girls got suspended the my ex-girlfriend got suspended anyways i get a call from at my house i get home and i'm like i told my dad so i didn't do anything you know this and that i get a call from uh at my house from this guy who liked my ex-girlfriend's like hey i'm coming over your house you know we're gonna fucking do this you know you like to you like to push girls around huh you think it's funny that your girlfriends are beating her up and this i'm like dude who the fuck are you like so we get in this altercation he was on the phone he said i'm coming to your house i gave him my address all right come on over because that's the way my dad always told me like hey if you're gonna fight fucking bring it home you know i'm like oh fuck let's settle this yeah he's like yeah call all your buddies and i was like i got the phone i called my dad i was like hey dad come home so dad comes home from work you know and my dad's one of those like gun toting you know americans i just got the fucking so we walk they literally three carloads of fucking kids come wow holy shit trucks you know feel with the back you know you can still up an idol you could still ride in the back of the truck so truckloads come you know three truckloads and cars come you know i've got like two or three of my buddies are there my dad's there and um the kids start walking up and my dad walks out and you know the kid walks up and there's like bunch of people behind him my dad just walks out he's like okay look he's like kind of lists his shirt and he's like you know i got a gun so he's like hey any you guys if anyone jumps in you're gonna get shot let it be a one-on-one fight and we're gonna go our separate ways after the fight and that's exactly what happened so literally me and this kid just got into a fight right in the middle of the street boom neighbors came out watched fucking did our fight went our separate ways wow they leave you alone after that no we we kind of had some issues and some you know confrontations after that as well you know but um that's the kind of person that my my family was like even my mom is that way like it was always kind of that way of like hey if you have an issue with me i'll meet you at my house we'll duke it out when it's all said and done it's done okay move on so it should be so you had stuff happen you here in san jose then you move over there you had stuff happen you yeah did this drive you and motivate you when you were wrestling and fighting to like this is like were you driven by that yeah but at the time there was no there was no MMA so i didn't know what it was driven by i just didn't want to lose you know and that was the thing like being you want to ingrain your kids into being competitive you know there's no fucking participation trophies man you either win or you don't you know and uh if you're not first you're last right ricky bobby so but that's that's really what i feel with these kids like you shouldn't ingrain in them that you want to be the best because if everyone is equal then what's the point of fucking trying to excel do you do you remember like uh when you kind of got the itch i know you you mentioned the when you started getting into jiu-jitsu with your little actually having your little brother put you in a move but what about like fighting and actually like situations like that was there a time where you like i i kind of like this yeah i mean like just so you guys know i lost my very first fight like i went i showed up i paid 25 bucks to fight you paid 25 dollars and went to this local gym like you know we took a group of guys and went to this local gym we pay i paid 25 bucks to fight and it was like okay this is like almost like a smoker but it was a little more intense because we were wearing MMA gloves no headgear like mouthpiece like you know shin guards and like that was it man like i wasn't i was wearing a cup at the time you know we went out there and we fought you know i lost that fight and i was like man maybe this isn't for me you know it sucks and you know and then i was just training like on a regular basis with some guys that i wrestled with in college in north Idaho college and i got a call like on three days four days notice and i was living in north Idaho and they called and the fight was down in boise which is in southern Idaho and they said hey we want you to fight this guy and i'm like all right cool so um how much are you gonna pay you know if you're not gonna pay i'm not gonna go so they're like yeah we'll fly you down put you in a hotel give you 150 bucks i'm like fuck it so i went down i needed the money i was fucking broke you know i mean so i was like all right screw it so i went down fought got a got a knockout in like two minutes literally within like three weeks hey we got this other guy so they wanted they wanted to get me beat you know but they kept calling and they kept paying i said okay well this time i want 300 and they're like all right fine so then i but i went from being the co-main event last time on three days notice now i'm the main event boom six second knockout head kick because i fought a wrestler i knew he knew he was a wrestler all he wanted to do was wrestle me boom knocked him out done the or ran around like god done after that i was like you know what maybe there's something here we might have something so i trained and trained and then i moved down back down here to california and started training with bob cook and frank shamrock and at aka and stuff and i was like you know so we just kept doing i kept training and training every night worked from six to like four in the afternoon get off work in palo Alto and just drive all the way down here you know and just train until like nine thirty at night just till the gym would close yeah i'd have to say you know i was a big fan of yours in the early days you know when i was really big being in my man you were one of the first or one of the kind of original like true uh mixed martial artists you know in those days you had you still had a lot of pure you know grapplers pure strikers and you know who were kind of good at the other stuff but you seem to be good at a lot of it you know you were i would you would knock people out or you would submit them and you seem to be good at all angles and you said you trained with frank i know frank was probably the first i think he was the first yeah so he was more of the first guy it was well-rounded and when you're around people like that and um it makes it easier for you to realize that you need to be well-rounded and i try to explain to people that i'm not good at any one thing like i'm not great at any one thing i'm good at like all of them you know like i'm good wrestler i'm a good jujitsu guy i'm a good stand-up guy but i'm not great at any of them if i was to fight like a really good kickboxer i'd fucking get mauled you know if i fought a really good jujitsu guy i'd fucking get just destroyed you know but if i fought a good really really good Olympic wrestler i'd fucking get owned you know i mean like but i'm really good at all of them so when you say that what's your thoughts on all the hype around McGregor and mayweather that's been going off for quite some time i think it's great i honestly believe that it's great i feel that he should have left the UFC out of the negotiations because it's not MMA it's boxing and under when he got his boxing license it becomes under the Muhammad Aliak there's no reason for him to be for the UFC to be involved in negotiations at all okay like for him but i mean with him i feel like he's kind of a loyal guy you see the way he is with his camp see the way he is with his wife and things like that he's taking time off right now to focus on his baby was born and things like that i think that's a great thing for him but there was no reason he's bringing Dana along for the ride but if Dana gets in the way i don't think he'll have a problem saying like get the f*** out of the way but during that process he what's going to happen though is that it could end up biting him in the ass because Dana's going to want a little bit more than what people don't understand like Dana's going to want a bigger percentage of that so i i give an example is that a couple of the guys that i know i won't mention names because i don't want to throw them under because they're still with the organization but a couple guys that i know they had had a deal done with monster energy drink and the monster said hey we're going to pay you $180,000 for the year okay and you're going to fight two three times a year we're going to pay $180,000 for the year you rep our brand we're going to be you know one of your main sponsors okay deal was pretty much done UFC came said hey that's that's our network of sponsors that we came they went in and said look we're going to negotiate the deal for you literally like two weeks later the deal came back the fighter got $60,000 for the year fuck a third where'd the rest of the money go what the fuck do you think it went yeah right you know what i mean so that's like when you say what are the positives and the negatives of what's going on now that's a negative because you bet yeah back in the day we used to be able to negotiate those type of things sure maybe they're sponsoring maybe they're sponsoring the UFC but that doesn't mean that like we can't talk to them like you know like that what does that mean like when we bring our sponsors into the cage they have to fill out the paperwork you have all their contacts every time i bring a new sponsor into the cage you get their contact information and i know you fucking hit them up right and you say hey well you know if you want to you want to sponsor the event this and that you know like i know those things that was part of the problem back when they were doing the sponsors that we our sponsors had to pay to sponsor us even when they even before the Reebok deal so the way that happened was they were like hey we want to see your book so let's just say i had Reebok as a sponsor before they were working with the UFC they would say hey Reebok's gonna sponsor you Reebok had to fill out all this paperwork they sent it into them they called Reebok and the UFC would call Reebok and say hey well your books say you made 1.2 million dollars last year you know well we we believe that it would have been less had your athlete not wore your stuff into our ring into our cage so we think we deserve 50,000 or 100,000 or whatever the percentage was that they were asking for your year revenue how the fuck are you gonna get away with that yeah so that's what they were doing so companies just stop yeah companies stop sponsoring us because they're like well i gotta pay i gotta pay the UFC 50 to 100 grand just to fucking talk to you just to pay you to pay you five grand i gotta pay them fucking 50 to 100 grand to turn around and pay you five grand 10 grand 100 20 grand whatever it is that's crazy man that was the negative at all and then at the end that they did that for a couple years and then at the end you turn around and slap Reebok on us and then fucking take away everything so you got paid six nine whatever million dollars for like a four-year or six-year deal with Reebok and in the return you're paying the fucking athletes peanuts like guys like BJ Penn made fucking 40 grand that's it dude his deal with Ruka was fucking way better than that i know Pat the owner of Ruka okay it's fucking always taking care of BJ BJ and him are like fucking best buds you know what i mean like BJ was the first fighter to ever like rep Ruka into the fucking cage and be like hey you know like this is my voice my with my buddy's brand like i'm gonna do this for him you know what i mean like that that's just showing loyalty to where you came from when you can't do that anymore it's garbage it sounds like i can't i mean it can't continue that way if i feel like it's it's it'll fall off you know i mean it'll it'll the wheels will fall off but this is what this is what i want i we have to understand as this is that okay look the fox deal is about to come up for renewal okay the fox tv deal it's about to come up for renewal so what's going on is they sold it to um wme right william morris entertainment is who they sold it to well the guys that they rep are also like tom brady and guys at end also um i want to say robert craft the guy who owns the patriots so he's got the connection in with the nfl so what i think they're going to do is they're going to turn around and say like hey we have all these high-clouded guys that now own the ufc we're gonna we're gonna um re-ink another deal so 4.4 billion is what they paid for the ufc now they're going to turn around and go to the fox and say okay let's re-ink as soon as they re-ink the deal they've made their money back so they'll do another five-year seven-year deal with fox boom their 4.4 million is already made back it doesn't matter what they do from on they're like fuck we can hear less what happens as a fucking promotion now we've made our fucking money back done deal in the process they could have shit fighters hardly anybody watching they don't give a fuck well then how much how much of the revenue then is uh like pay-per-view and stuff like how how does that work like so that each each fighter is negotiated differently so like um some fighters will be like $2 per vapor view by some fighters are $1 per vapor view by and then it's negotiated based on like how many views so over 250 000 views you get paid a dollar over 500 000 views you get paid $2 so it depends on the fighter as well like kane's contract will be different from dc's contract and luke's contract will be different from all three of theirs you know and then like mine would be different than so how important then is like a badass agent that goes in and actually has nothing to do with being an agent though in the ufc because they don't let you know they don't and they do you can have an agent but the problem is there's no negotiation with them that was the biggest reason why these guys are fucking leaving they're like there's no negotiation when i walked in like let's just say this when i walk into the ufc and i sit down they say okay look you're a top 10 guy well this is the standard for top 10 guys because they make the market when it comes to their organization i'm going to pay you 60 and 60 63 and 63 and like per fight you know and then you're going to go if you win you're going to go up 66 66 68 68 whatever you know so that's what your pay is going to go up but if you um the negotiation there is no negotiation that's what it is if you don't fucking like it go fight somewhere else and they know it they know it like hey because every every kid growing up their dream was to fight in the ufc and they're going to hold that against you wow like not not like man we're so excited to have they definitely have the power yeah they're we're so excited to have you fucking i'm excited to get you in the cage that's me fucking amazing they're like look motherfucker we're doing you a favor you gotta you gotta think you gotta think with organizations like bellator and stuff coming up and and continuing to to gain traction and grow that sooner or later it's got to get somewhat competitive i know ufc they want to be the nfl of of fighting and and they probably look at everybody else is like canadian league or something like that but it's it look it's looking like you know it's coming around i think if jacaray and and musashi leave there's that but then you also have um you know like this whole buyout what happened was the one of the first thing they did they got rid of matt hughes and chuck ladell because they were on the payroll and so they got rid of them that put a bad taste in everyone's mouth you know and i know a lot of employees that were working for them for years like facing from the time that for time for titas had bought the company they're no longer with them yeah i feel like they would just buy them you know i mean like if you're an organization you're coming up because that's what they've done so far is they'll just buy the organization and continue their the rain they got to be careful because they were in they were in i don't know if they still are gonna actually look it but they were in a class action lawsuit against being like basically in a monopoly and then bellator came around and then uh rizan started in japan one fc is over in china but they were saying oh no we're not we're not a monopoly because for a moment there after they bought strike force it was like we bought all of our competition like oh what about bellator we're like dude fucking bellator until koga got there was fucking non-existent no idea who was fighting i didn't even know who the fuck their champions were no one cared about them you know they were on every friday did you ever fucking stay home on friday and watch them i'm sure the fuck didn't and i'm a fighter i'm like i cared to see what these guys are doing you know so it it really depends on what the market provided but they at the time bellator didn't provide any type of market to anybody it was horrible well dude what's your prediction then do you see do you see that happening do you see it becoming more competitive do you see u of c just kind of continuing to muscle people like i feel like ever since that rebog deal happened you're starting to hear a lot more backlash from it what what's your prediction well i think the luster of the rebog deal has gone away fighters now have just accepted the fact that they're gonna make shit when it comes to sponsors which is unfortunate um but fighters will always do that you want to know why because they came from a background like mine where they just don't have money like it that's why it's so hard it's so hard because you're pulling you're pulling from a pool of people who like nobody like you rarely will you see someone who comes from like super wealthy upbringing and kind of has everything done for them or like yeah i want to fight professionally usually doesn't happen that are there any top fighters like that i actually don't are there somewhere like that bj was like that stage north colors like that okay but you said top fighters so i don't want no just bj but bj pen so bj is rare too because he was actually a bro he was a fighter like you're like why is this guy fighting like this you know yeah but the other thing too as well is like his brothers were all very active in jujitsu you know so bj was the first american black belt to ever win worlds and so and then his brothers though were all really good like his brother was a blue belt and when his brother's blue belt he won worlds okay his brother jd was fucking jeff his brother jd was actually probably the most the most uh fighter fighter out of all of them really and he had a real bad neck injury so he just just couldn't get to a whole get through a whole camp and actually fight but man that guy was a fucking savage on the on the floor wow insane man yeah fight sports in general have that history even boxing you know uh has that history we see these fighters coming because you need that grit dude and it's i'm sorry who chooses to fight you were growing up and you've had it a lot of things handed to you even if you got great parents i'd feel like that's it's tough to install that grit that you need you know well these guys are pulling from a market of guys that just they don't they don't have anything and the ones that don't have anything they're gonna do whatever it is let me give you an example so i don't know the well-offness of like clay guita okay but when he when him and i had fought there was a couple deals where i was talking with some sponsors for them to sponsor me and when they were sponsoring they said yeah well look we're going to sponsor clay as well they're like look we're all we're doing for him is closing a banner i'm like fuck no i fought in the ufc i fought in pride no fucking way i'm only letting you give me clothes and banner got enough fucking clothes you pay me enough you pay me enough i'll buy my own damn clothes yeah you know what i mean so that wasn't me but that's the thing you're pulling from guys that like they really don't have much yeah so when they don't have much they'll do whatever it takes to get what their foot in the door you know so like sure you want to give me clothes you want to give me supplements you know you want to give me a year of something i'm like i don't do i buy my own fucking supplements you know you pay me enough money i'll buy my own shit you know i mean and that's what that's what fighters don't seem to understand they'll lowball stuff to get it done because they don't have the money at the time yeah so they're like what you're gonna make my banner well banner costs like six hundred bucks to make you know if you go to a print shop it costs like six hundred bucks to make so it's like unfortunate these kids they don't they're like i don't have the money to make the banner but i can't make them i can't make money if if i don't have a banner so what do i do you know so you have this company make a banner for you you know you you get supplements from um whatever it is you know to get you through your next camp because you can't afford to buy supplements because they didn't fucking pay you you know instead you should have taken the money it's very similar uh you know i don't know how familiar you are with the whole body building mince physique bikini world right now that's exploding right and i because i was a diehard fan of usc and i watched that whole growth of that the transition with rebock and then i was somebody who uh you know got into you know bodybuilding or mince physique and got up to the professional level and then realized like holy shit it's very very similar and you have these big companies they come in and they prey on all of them and they know they have all this leverage that this kid just wants to be on a cover of a magazine so fucking bad and just wants to say he sponsors so bad like they think it's like such a big deal just to say you're sponsored because they and put it in your bio here yeah and the sponsorships take advantage of it so they give these kids like some t-shirts in like 20 commission on what they sell and it's like oh my god the markup on supplements like 400 as is so you're giving them like a a percentage to hustle their supplements in some free shirts like and it's just it's it's turning into this culture where you know all these kids are trying so hard to get involved and then they get in it and they don't realize like oh shit just getting here doesn't make me a millionaire or make me rich forever it's the rules of supply and demand always uh it's just that's just what they are and i you know you blew my mind right now when you said you know they're they're pulling from these kids who grew up with nothing who this is their opportunity this is their one opportunity to succeed at life or to do something for themselves because they don't have any other opportunities so you have a supply a large supply of these kids who are like i'll fucking do anything and it's just the way it is if only they knew right yeah and you're not even see like i feel that the bikini stuff or the whatever the body that's more of an american based thing i mean sure i'm sure that it's worldwide but i'm saying it's more of a you're pulling from fighters they're they're what's worldwide you're taking guys from sweden guys from the philippines germany and philippines you know china everywhere because they fucking don't have anywhere anything you're pulling from guys literally some of them live in third world countries you know but all they want to do is train and be an athlete sure they want free shirts sure they want supplements they're like they don't have no fucking clue how to use the supplements or what they're doing you know like part of when i brought in dan lee to come in and live with me he's like okay look i was like when he's like when are you taking this when are you taking this when i told him all the stuff i was telling him when i was taking and what time he's like okay well look you can't take this during this time because you're actually it's counteracting what you're trying to do now you give that to someone who has no fucking clue there is no education on any of it and i've been doing this my whole life and i thought this was the way it was supposed to be done and he's like comes in and sits me down and goes this isn't right now like you're you're actually hurting yourself when you actually drink this before the workout then you're hurting yourself when you drink this or eat this right after your workout you should be putting more of this in your body and i'm thinking to myself these young kids they don't have a fucking chance they don't have any like people that just they come from whether they came i'm not going to say get up with it they're coming from like a family that's just not supportive yet hard times exactly hard times so they're coming from an area that's hard where they have hard times and they have no idea and you know they they're probably in their household there was never supplements or protein on the counter well fighters forever even even when you go back to boxing like they there's just notorious for you know doing their career and fighting and then afterwards just being like broke or bankrupt you know that like the old like the like the old bodybuilder excuse me not bodybuilder the old boxer who owns the bar and that's what he does now he used to be a champion but now he just owns a bar and he doesn't make any money because they don't understand that that whole process like uh you know me that might be some good advice you know god how it who's who's the one who's the boxer that uh quit and said no moss i don't know no that was uh yeah in the middle of his fight yeah he said no more he said no more oh man twice now you did a name that i see him yeah i watch it but him so he's like he made he made millions of dollars he turns around he goes home and he basically put all that money back into his country and people just took it from him took it from him he's a legend there in his you know in his uh in his country but was it reberto duran reberto duran so duran so he's made all this millions of dollars he put it all back into trying to help people that were in need and you know giving money to the government giving money to like people that were helping now he's broke fucking dead broke literally but he's like a fucking huge celebrity super star over there so he doesn't really pay for anything but he lives in like a total shithole but he still lives in his his original town is he lives at home i wonder if he made any money off the the netflix just by the way that's a great netflix documentary you haven't seen it reberto duran's uh i'll check it out it's bad yeah it's really good it's really really good and i'm i wonder now that you say that if he even made any money off of that or not i saw that i think i saw the true no it was a true hollywood story um like a 30 for 30 or something on it maybe there's a shorter version of the documentary i'm trying to think with the documentary it's not it's not named after him it's called i'll look it up i'll i'll put it in the show notes for those of you guys that are listening right now so it's it was awesome it was a great documentary i watched it maybe just a month ago which is why i was surprised i couldn't fucking think of the name when you said that i should have known that now do you do uh things on the side business for yourself uh what what are you involved in besides fighting or is or is it connected all through fighting it's kind of all connected through fighting there's a couple other things that i do you know right now like i'm just starting a podcast as well we started it's called sammy and the punk so we do it um we do it's i think we're we just filmed number 18 on tuesday okay so we we try to do one a week just for right now to get our feet wet we've done a couple times where we've done twice a week depending on the fight so i interviewed like could be uh number gone with off i've interviewed you know dc and these guys so i do a couple things shane phasen who does fight tips and i've done some other stuff you know with dan leith lockhart and leith the nutritionist who helped me help me and dc and those guys so anyways um yeah i do i do that it's called sammy and the punk you can on youtube and itunes but then i also do my own a gym here in san jose and i do strictly for mom and pops i'm not looking for fighters i don't want fighters in the gym like it's actually kind of bad for business and uh yeah because people come in they get intimidated you know um and the reason why i know this is because years we we used to train during a class at aka we would all the fighters would come in there'd be 11 o'clock class and we would train and with like 1130 class or a noon class we would train the same time some of the students were in there when you got fighters in there beating each other up and yelling and customizing like fuck you kick your fucking ass you know and like you're because they we get heated man there's some young young kid coming into your first question i don't know if i'm ready for this sparring gets fucking heated you know like there's times we throw the gloves off and we're like let's go you know it's it's it's furrow man so i mean there's times i've literally like with my Kyle paul bonatelle i've thrown the gloves off and just tried throwing down with them for real seriously like we're kicking our shin guards off i'm gonna fucking kill you you know and it's so it's furrow but i mean like we realized then that the class used to be full at aka at noon and then it went from like 25 people to like six wow so javier the owner of aka was like yeah like we're gonna move the fighting around we're gonna switch that class the fighter train's gonna be at this time and you know and then i realized that it was just wasn't good for business i bet you there's a lot of people that don't think about that i i've never even put put that think about it in a gym dude is a hardcore maniac like power lifters and bodybuilders and shit is that good necessarily for the average person no you're right yeah yeah because that's part of why a lot of people don't even like gyms like golds right it definitely appeals to a certain demographic of people that which is not your average jane or joe trying to lose 30 pounds of fat think about all the youtube videos that have gone viral right about people making fun of the people that you know it's because people it makes people uncomfortable it makes people uncomfortable it makes people feel like man the guy's dude in the gym in just created planet fitness yeah exactly in the gym business if you they're the worst customers i'll tell you why because they use your gym like crazy so they put a shit ton of wear and tear on your equipment they pay their membership fee religiously but it's cheap because the whole model is designed around getting people to not show up and then they're loud as hell and they're big and muscular and intimidating and so it's like you don't want those people if you're going to have that kind of model otherwise you charge a lot of money and then you have fewer members and you know whatever the fighters are there every day they never they never try to pay so like they don't pay their membership religiously because they don't have money so they don't pay so then they're always trying to get something for free like oh i didn't bring my gloves or i don't have a mouthpiece can i borrow some is there any loners like you know like i literally we've had a fighter one fighter came in from another um from another state he's like i didn't bring my mouth is you guys got any loner mouth pieces i'm like loner loner yeah we got one already pre molded to somebody else's teeth you want to try that one on see if it fits you know so so i own a gym here in san jose called nox martial arts and fitness and what i do is i work with like kid athletes as well as adults but it's mainly like um i got right before i came today i was working with um a little girl who's on a soccer trial like a traveling team for soccer so i do sports and agility for them things like that um for the younger kids i try not for myself i try not to do personal training with adults because i feel like the the dedication is not there as much as a as a kid it's an athlete who really wants it you know the other thing too is i feel like i've had enough experience in life in general how to try and get the most out of a kid athlete and it seems like it works like i have a really good uh jiu-jitsu program for kids and um it's pretty big and that's awesome where you guys look at it so we're on pearl and brannum right there there's like a wiener central right there in the park holy shit dude you're right by me yeah so i'm right there on pearl and brannum i'm bringing my kid by there you go oh that's excellent so i'm right there on the corner um it used to be like an old game you think i've been there for about three years and um it's been great man i'm right next to fire station 13 i know exactly my boys man the boys over there are always looking out for me so um no it's been great man like uh we've how long have you guys been open three years oh wow and it's going good it's going well like we had uh the first year was it was rough man yeah it was rough it was rough you know so it's just trying to get the trying to get and i didn't realize how hard it was to have employees man it's so rough you know you just you gotta find the right vibe and the right fit and i've got a great group of people now that are there and it's like i can trust them and rely on them and you know and we got through the hard times together in the beginning like now i'm we got the ones that weren't meant to be are gone the ones that are here they're here it seems like they're here to stay and i really love that excellent i want to hear about like who who's like the toughest fight or the toughest fighter you've ever had to fight okay so there's a couple things so there's one person that like we talked about like when did you know yeah okay the one fight was against hermes franca okay i had one that was my second ufc fight i had one the first two rounds in the third round the very beginning all i had to do is just stick and stay away and he threw a kick against the cage and i caught the kick and the guy was known for power like he'd just beat carl uno the fight before he you know he had some big wins he beat hermit he beat uh eaves edwards and he i caught the kick and he'd had some power so he just threw like a loopy punch caught me right on the button and dropped me and he beat the shit out of me for about three and a half minutes like literally there was a couple times where the ref was gonna jump in didn't jump in and you know anyways so he he i beat him the first two rounds the third round for three and a half minutes he kicked the shit out of me like to the point where i look like fucking elephant man afterwards but the last minute of the fight he had gasped himself trying to finish me so i was able to get my bearings back about me and finish the fight harder than he did which i felt made it a 10 a 10 9 round because now they're talking about making 10 8 rounds more uh more prevalent they're gonna make them happen more often but back then they didn't so i survived that round and i ended up winning a split decision which was amazing for me but that was the fight that i'm gonna tell you right now that was the fight that i knew i was a fighter that was the one fight where i looked down and i said dude there's no fucking way i'm losing this fight i always wondered because honestly as a kid growing up i always want it's one thing to beat somebody up on the street okay because you're fighting someone that has no fucking experience they're probably drunk too you know so it's one thing to beat those guys up you know and think that you're the man but you're not the fucking man okay so when i when i got into a fight against somebody that was really good it was a jitsu black belt fucking subbed everybody like super entertaining heavy hands you know and experience fought the best guys we were considered one two and three me him and edwards at the time in the world and so when i'm fighting him and he drops me and i come back and i finished a round harder than him in my mind i'm thinking to myself you are made out for this this is this is what you're this is what it's about like when i see these other guys that are and i and just so we're clear you know how much i made for that fight eight thousand dollars okay i made four thousand and four thousand jeez so had i lost or it been a draw four i would have made four grand but at the time for getting the shit beat ahead of you for three minutes but to me to me that was that was amazing man i had no money at the time like my rent i was living in another another story but i was living in a porn warehouse oh what i was living in a porn warehouse we missed this yeah wait wait what do you mean a porn warehouse i was living in a warehouse where the guy that owned the warehouse dominia yeah exactly he used to sell he used to sell he used to buy and sell and trade uh porn from this warehouse so he would buy um like old 60 70 80s porn magazines videos dvds cassettes everything and he would buy and sell them on ebay so he'd pick up like the old nina heartley dvd and like he'd hold on to it for a year and he'd turn around and sell it again for like triple the money that he bought it for holy but it was like crates and crates of stacked porn inside the this warehouse had an endless supply endless supply yes yeah your friends must have loved you anytime i need to cop a jerk bro i just walked down fucking pulled the helmet off real quick and came back i think you have to be i up until this moment i thought sal was the most versed in porn yeah i'm sure you know heartley i'm like you probably go all the way back to the 20s old school baby old school gotta go back oh my god so i used to live in this porn warehouse i paid 150 dollars a month to live in this warehouse so when i made four grand i was like man i could pay my rent for two three years easily i ain't fucking ever moving out of this warehouse but it was the funniest thing ever but at the time i only made you know four grand but that was the fight though that made me feel like i was a fighter yeah you know um and then um later on in my career just uh a couple years ago when i fought tony furgeson that was another fight like you see these i got cut up real bad in the fight i mean i had like fucking mercedes signs on my head you know from different cuts you know and i have a nasty cut here on my head here and uh i literally got i got stitched up in the back and it was took probably about two hours for him to stitch me all the way up oh wow yeah it was like it was nasty blood coming down my face like i just i look like a just i was like i jumped in fucking blood just all red you know the whole fight but there was never a moment in that fight that i was like fucking just give up never never you know so that's gotta feel good no and that's the thing is you i don't know like if you give away participation trophies i'm gonna go back on this is because then the kid doesn't feel the need to go on of course he can just give up and then move on to the next thing because yes next time i'm gonna get another trophy and i i feel bad for the kids that don't ever get to the point where they really earn the first second and third place but i feel that it's important for kids growing up if you're if you're condoning mediocrity then they're never gonna excel at anything else they want to do well it doesn't translate into real fucking life you ever gone to a job where they fuck yeah you get paid the same as the guy that's out performing up yeah because you're sure no it just doesn't work that way it's not real life yeah i just everyone's in this feel good life you know i don't i feel like like you said life's not that way you know but it's it's sad to see because i think this is what's developing our younger generation i think and if you want to develop our if you want the the strength of a strong country you need to develop the younger generation right now i feel like the ones that are already in college kind of a lost cause already they're done you got to start moving on to the kids that literally are like in elementary school in uh intermediate school you can still save them in high school i think you know you get into that point where i think you can still save them like hey let's be the best let's be the best at everything we do i'm all for the do what you want to do as long as you love it if you want to be broke be broke as long as you're doing what you love i'm all for that okay but then don't do what you love and be broke and then turn around complain that you think your college should be paid for you should get you know everything for free everything for free that to me is not they're not the same thing right okay you can't say i want to be broke and do what i love but then want someone else to take care of you while you do what you love it doesn't work that way i actually had an argument with someone about that the other day where they were just we were talking about college and uh they were saying how you know i was explaining to them like well okay here's how you know first of all it's never free somebody's paying for it so whether it's taxed or whether you pay for it yourself but they were talking about how you know it's not fair that someone with a like liberal arts degree uh you know it's not going to make as much as someone with an engineering degree or whatever and i'm like what do you mean it's not fair like that's just that's just the way it is the demand for that yeah and if you're if you're gonna you know try and get a loan to go to school like it only makes sense that that the bank should tell you hey look i know the degree you're gonna get you're not gonna be able to pay us back so we ain't gonna we can't give you the money for that because you're getting a degree in something that's not going to make you any money that's just the way life works look life is life is a choice to be successful to not be successful if you decide you don't want to be successful that's your point you chose liberal arts right i didn't fucking choose it for you your parents didn't choose it for you you chose it which means you obviously were either one of two things you really care for liberal arts or you were just looking to get a fucking degree and move on with life so one of the two things happen right like you were just looking for the the quick degree the easiest degree you could get your parents off your back and move on with life thinking you're going to get paid outside of that now that i got a degree but what what is it right like at one point at one point i don't know where where this happened but we started telling people like you know it's all about just finding your purpose and what you love and if you find your purpose and what you love that's all that matters so then you have this generation that's that's doing that but then when they they find out what what their purpose and what they love to do doesn't pay a lot of money they get pissed off and they think well i should be able to get paid that as much as that guy because he fights and he found his purpose i don't i don't desire to do that i desire to teach and do this so why don't we get paid equally but then it's not a desire anymore though right like if it's not something you love then if you're if you're not okay with getting paid peanuts it's not you're not doing it for love anymore i literally paid 25 bucks to fight my first fight because i fucking loved fighting and training script i love like the one thing i'm gonna miss the most when i retire is beating that fucking locker room with the guys being out on the mat with the guys training with those guys the the shit talking like the shit we're doing right now this is what i'm gonna miss the most man like i'm sure like when you guys were to wrap this up and be like man fuck what are we gonna do now like you're gonna miss this you're gonna miss the all the shit you guys well the good thing about what we do is we just talk so i can i can do this you're right you're you guys can do it forever but let's just say like hey if you decide to do another show or like someone's got no we talk about we talk about this all the time we talk about it all the time and and realizing that and if you're truly passionate about it then it isn't about the money it isn't about all those things you said it best right there you paid to do your fight yeah and you know what something like a liberal and i know we're picking on liberal liberal arts right now but i know i just i just randomly picked it but like my sister got a degree in anthropology corner culture well no my sister got a degree in anthropology for example and she's like there's not much i can do with that besides you know be a professor so i have to go get the phd or work in a museum or there's not much i can do with it so she actually went and started learning some other stuff but that's just that's just the reality like you said like if you really love it then just do it and but understand that you know some things are going to pay more than others and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that you know just do what you love and be okay with it what people don't understand that doing what you love means extra hustle because like i love training kids but i also don't want to have to go out there and hustle to get kids to come to my camps or get kids to come to my gym i feel like oh i've worked enough to be a fighter i want the i want the people just to come to me it doesn't work that way man as much as i would love for that to happen i've like i've got a market on you know on social media i've got a market in you know on on google i've got to do these things otherwise no one's gonna ever hear about people you have to hustle you got to put the work in i got to put door flyers on you know and you got to do it man you got to walk around the neighborhoods that you're in and be like hey you know they give you a free pass for the day or two pass for the day whatever it is you know i mean you got to be that guy walking because if you hire some kid to do it he's gonna take all those flyers you spent you know a thousand dollars on throwing the trash and collect his oh it took me three hours to drop all those and collect his hundred dollars you know for the three hours you know what i mean so you got to hustle if you want to do what you love and you want people to recognize you for doing what you love you need to hustle doing it absolutely what is it what is it now what is it moving forward what what does it look like for you you know um i don't know we'll see we'll see what happens realistically like moving forward we'll see what happens um how long do you plan on fighting for i don't know if i'm going to fight again that's up in the air i'm not making any decisions like under you know emotional circumstances i want to make sure that i take my time to really think about the other thing as well as like as far as me fighting again i fought already once this year if i fight again i mean realistically a whole five paycheck goes to taxes so what's the point you know you make a certain amount of money and then i'm gonna pay basically if i fight another one i put my body through a whole camp i fight again i pay that almost that whole check goes to taxes now what do you why do you say that is that because you've established yourself and a business for yourself with the school and you're you're making a living off of that and then basically the amount of money you would make off a purse is well there's when you make a new bracket yeah when you put your new bracket you make a you make a certain amount pretty much like three quarters of it well i try to break it down for athletes right i feel like athletes should have a different tax bracket they should have a different tax the way their taxes are done because look let's just say i'm of course i'm biased because i'm an athlete but if you take what i make and then i pay let's just say i pay 38.6 percent or 38.8 percent or whatever in taxes right then i give 20 percent to my agent 20 percent of my trainers what am i left with wow so why yeah exactly exactly nothing crickets you know it's crickets yeah exactly so that's what people don't seem to understand and i make all this money right you make all this money you make so much money yeah but you gotta pay your taxes man like you know like not just taxes but i gotta pay my agent i gotta pay my trainers i gotta pay my coaches yeah you gotta make smart businesses you've got yeah you gotta make smart business so and what i try to tell people is like look if they have the money left over they're gonna turn like for me i would have i would have probably opened another gym i would have hired more people if i had more money that i could do things with someone who like myself like for me anyways i can't speak for all athletes but for someone like me i want to open more gyms more businesses i want to do more things start a podcast do that but things like this cost money you guys know you guys built this up this is amazing i walked in the wrong like gosh damn you know there's a green screen right here you guys can see this shit it's pretty dope you know what i mean but you guys understand what i mean right like sure you you've gotta you if i had more money to um do things with i would do more i feel like i would do more good you know you have more camps for kids during the summer i would i would build more programs for kids i'd be able to give a little bit more at my gym like hey you know this parent has three kids here instead of charging them 150 a kid i'll charge you like 89 a kid you know like and then you you cut them you're cut whatever my cost is on my geese you know i give you whatever it is my cost on my geese you know like instead of charging them more for the up for the markup i one thing is it's hard for parents who have multiple kids to put them all in sports so expensive super expensive super expensive right so i think it's up to the athletes that have been there and done that and been in the places that we've been is to try and help give back and give back in the way that you can by just your donating your time you know giving your time to your community it's very cool that you have a perspective like that because you know even you talking about making more money you translate that in the ability for me to give more you know well look i don't make it i make i make good money but like when i i was i was in this juvenile hall here in san jose when i was a kid you know i got in a fight at school at middle school and i i got put in that juvenile hall so now what i do is randomly every say once every year once every six months whenever i can't one of my friends is one of the one of the sheriffs they're the worst he walks me in and i just walk around in the pause and talk to the kids really yeah and i'll take my i'll take my world title about with me too and i'll be like hey dude i grew up and when i tell the kids that i grew up on the east side of san jose they're like in shock they're like no way get the fuck out of here you know and sometimes i'll bring like a highlight video or whatever me fighting like here walking out in an arena filled with 20 000 people i fought in japan 43 000 people that's awesome it's fucking insane right awesome i know new year's eve in japan you know 50 000 people 52 000 or whatever in new year's eve in japan i walk out in this crowd's fucking enormous i'm just like looking around i mean like i was in all myself you know what i mean it's crazy but you think about you tell a kid that's in juvenile hall who just feels like this is where my life's gonna be and you show them a video like that so i grew up on the same street you did you know and they're like oh well you had this you know i'm like no i didn't have any of that i just did it i just literally got rid of all my other friends i didn't get rid of them they weeded themselves out when i just kept going to the gym every day and training and they were no longer around they're like uh they just thought they lost my number bro you lived in a foreign warehouse if that's not closing enough right i mean that i'm sold right there this whole conversation that's the one thing he's just like mother fucker paid his first fight and he lived in a foreign warehouse for 150 bucks a month like fuck you you can do it man because you could recycle enough cans to pay for that you know i'm saying every month that's fucking great well good deal man it's been good talking to you brother yeah thank you very much listen uh mind pump media dot com go there sign up it's free 30 days of coaching still free you can also find us on instagram at mind pump media you can find me at mind pump sal justins at mind pump justin and adam is at mind pump adam thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mind pump media dot com the rgb super bundle includes maths anabolic maths performance and maths aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mind pump media dot com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing mind pump to 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