Roger Gracie: Greatest Jiu Jitsu Competitor of All Time | Lex Fridman Podcast #343
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Roger Gracie is a legendary jiu jitsu competitor and MMA fighter. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Roger's Instagram: https://instagram.com/rogergracie/
Roger's Website: https://rogergracie.com/
Roger's Online Jiu Jitsu: https://rogergracietv.com/
Roger's match against Marcus "Buchecha" Almeida: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L-Ni7bFAHg
Watch full matches at FloGrappling: https://flograppling.com

PODCAST INFO:
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Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:25 - The moments before a match
8:16 - Confidence
22:41 - Greatest jiu jitsu match of all time
44:03 - Renzo Gracie
56:20 - Braveheart
57:43 - Self-belief
1:11:49 - Cross-collar choke
1:15:52 - Mount position
1:32:06 - How to progress in jiu jitsu
1:34:21 - Best submission in jiu jitsu
1:38:54 - The greatest competitor of all time
1:41:00 - Roger's statistics
1:48:56 - MMA vs jiu jitsu
1:57:24 - Gordon Ryan
2:09:50 - John Danaher
2:12:22 - Bear fight
2:15:20 - Tie
2:25:52 - Advice for beginners
2:35:12 - Drilling
2:43:08 - Roger vs Bear, Lion, Gorilla, and Anaconda
2:48:13 - Advice for young people
2:58:01 - Love

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 In my mind, I have to tap everybody else. Winning is not enough. The following is a conversation with Hajar Gracie, widely considered to be the greatest Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Hajar Gracie. Let's start with possibly the greatest match in Jiu-Jitsu history, your second match against Buccecia. Let's go through the details. Let's go through the whole thing. So the walk leading up to it. You always do this walk, this epic walk. You post that on Instagram, Hanzo posted on Instagram, this calm walk towards the mat. Well, let's go to that match in particular, what was going through your mind? You've been away from competition, facing probably one of the greatest, and at that time, many people considered the greatest Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time in Buccecia. Here's the old man, the old timer, getting back out there. What were you thinking? Yeah, I think that's the first time since probably I got my black belt that I wasn't the favorite walk into a fight, I have to say. Like a lot of people thought, considered him the favorite. I mean, understandable. You know, I was out of competition for a while. He was just winning everything. So, you know, saying about the walk, like for me, you know, the fight starts way before the referee say go, you know. It's all the focus and concentration that I think is very important for me to start before. Like, you know, I almost walk blind to the mat. Many times I passed, like great friends, and I couldn't see anyone, you know, they're trying to talk to you, and I'm like, I'm 100% focused on my opponent already, even though that I cannot even see him in front of me. So I think that's for me was always very important to try to clear my mind out from everything. Are you visualizing the opponent? Or are you just clearing? Not at that time. Is there, what's in your head? Is it like a calm river with birds chirping? It's blank. Just blank. Darkness. Yeah, darkness. Okay, and that's what we see in that calmness, is just blankness. How hard is it to achieve that blankness? It's difficult to say because I think I don't remember when I'll say probably as a black belt, I try to focus like that, not to think, because it's probably something you learn is the more you think, the more nervous you get. And there's nothing that you're gonna gain by thinking of the fight or the possibilities, what you can do, what can go wrong, what can go right, because it's unpredictable. You have absolutely no idea, it's impossible to predict the fight. And you discover that if you just let those nervous feelings go and empty your mind, it actually is pretty effective. It is. It makes you feel better. It's, you kind of control your emotion, control the adrenaline on your body up to a level. So it absolutely helps you focus in the fight. I've learned that in jiu-jitsu and in general in life, that whenever something feels really shitty, you can just take that thought and not think about it. Like I do that on long runs or a fast run or, yeah, in jiu-jitsu, especially when I get older, out of shape, that feeling of exhaustion, well, you can always get to the feeling of exhaustion. You can just not think about it, not think about being exhausted. Yeah. And that somehow relaxes you. I think maybe in the face of exhaustion, all the fears start to creep in, maybe your muscles tighten up, I don't know. This is for the amateur jiu-jitsu person. But it's kind of funny how you can just take that thought and let go of it. So you get, as a black belt competitor, you get used to, you get good at letting go of any thoughts. Yeah. When you mention to exhaustion is, that's another good example of it. It's, you know, there's a lot of times in the fight, you're getting tired and you're getting pretty tired. So it's like the last thing you want to think of it is how tired you are. It doesn't matter because it doesn't. What are you gonna do, quit? I mean, it doesn't matter. It's how tired you are. It's- Yeah, there's no value thinking about it. There's no value. You just have to go through it. So when you're like, you know, many minutes into the match and you're slowly moving, as you sometimes do, tying your belt, catching your breath, you're not thinking about anything. You're trying to let go of thinking. I'm trying to like to save everything to the fight. Like nothing goes to waste. It's, you know, every move unnecessary, it's just gonna make you more tired or it's gonna take something out of you. Like, you know, I try to calculate every single move I make, save as much energy as I can. So I can fully, you know, be focused 100% in the fight with no waste, especially energy-wise. And that's instinctual. Like minimizing the amount of moves. You're not like explicitly thinking, should I do this or not? It's just, don't move unless it's absolutely required. Yeah, because fight, you cannot really, there's not really time to think much, you know? It's like your instincts are playing. It's like, you know, you already have your, you know, your weapons, let's say, you know, the things that you do, it's just to wait for the perfect moment. The beauty of it is, you know, there's the right moment to everything. If you feel one second too late, doesn't work. No, it get messy. So it's, you know, you're trying to catch that moment. That's just, you know, and for that, you have to be fully focused in what you're doing because one second is, you're out. It won't work. But you're not exactly known as somebody that moves super quickly. So the moment, it's not about how quickly you move, it's about the right moment. So you move slowly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not like it's speed. It's not like you have to move the speed of light. It's the move itself or the precise moment. It doesn't have to be super fast because your opponent's not moving super fast, you know? So it's a combination of moving with you and him. I mean, the same thing happens in judo and the movement can be really small. Yeah. But judo is a bit more explosive. You know, the moves are slightly faster. So it does require a bit more explosiveness in judo. But even just the right timing for an off balance. Just a little tug. Yeah, it's not that the, you know, moving the speed is not gonna count that much. It's the timing that you initiate that move. You see that with foot sweeps. There's nothing more beautiful than like Olympic level of athletes going at it in the Olympics and a perfect foot sweep. And somebody whoosh. And it's just, and you see one man's life flash before his eyes and realize, like I'm supposed to be the top three person in the world that I just find. They have this look on their face, like I don't know what just happened. It's beautiful to see. You don't see that, I guess you see that in boxing, knockouts and stuff like that. You don't know what the hell just happened. Yeah, it's that precise moment of movement that you get caught. Like it's that one split second, that's it. Do you get that in Jiu-Jitsu at all? Cause Judo has, because of the explosiveness, because of the point scoring system that incentivizes these giant throws, has these moments where everything just turns on a single moment. Do you have that in Jiu-Jitsu too? Not really because then it's points. Yes, you get like, you know, two points. So it's, because I think regarding the submission is not just one precise movement that change everything. I think Judo is the take down that counts as a submission. Like Ipong, fight over. Jiu-Jitsu don't have that. So you will score points, but I think in terms of submission, you need to get to a dominant position first and then the submission will come slowly. It's a process. Yeah. Okay, let's go back to that guy with his mind. So actually in the weeks leading up to it, in the days, in the hours, in the minutes, is there some fear in you leading up to this? I mean, I'm not gonna say that I'm fearless because everybody fears something, you know? The fear is there, but it's like how much you let that control you. I think I was a lot more confident than fearful. For sure, walking to that fight. Like I was pretty confident that I could beat him. Where's the source of that confidence? My belief on me. I can take the world. You can take anyone in the world, but is there specific strategic, like talking to Donaher, he believes that there's no such thing as confidence, or rather the way you get confidence is through data. Like that you have proven yourself effective in previous situations, but with Buccecce, you don't have much data. It was a very, the first time you faced him was a very tough, that was also one of the greatest matches of all time. It was very tough. So doesn't that creep in, like that doubt, because you don't have enough data to be confident based on. Yeah, I mean, okay, if I never had fought before, you know, suddenly walk into a fight with someone like that, then would I be that confident? I mean, probably no. You know, so that history, what you've been doing, what you've been achieving does give you confidence. If that was my first fight ever, I wouldn't, probably I wouldn't be that confident. But the time off? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You don't have the fear or the actual physical ability to be confident, to be confident. You don't have the fear or the actual physical experience, the psychological experience of being rusty, of being out of the competition. That will come out on training. So you, okay, so you simulate some aspect of that. Yeah, I mean, the training will tell you how you are. Okay. Did you increase the intensity of the training leading up to this? Yeah, I mean, I trained normal. Let's say compared to the first fight, the second one's a lot more confident because, you know, like I said on training, you were terrible. So. What do you mean? I think I was focusing MMA for a while, for a couple of months, and I wasn't really focusing the gear. And, you know, by the time I accepted the fight, didn't start training. Like all my responses on training were off. Like all my training partners that I used to train with that I destroyed. I mean, now they like, they're beating me. You know, it's like I cannot beat them the way I was used to. But, you know, so I knew something was not right for the first fight. But then it's, you know, no points is submission or draw. So. Yeah, for people who don't know, it was in one of Morris, which is a 20 minute match, submission only. So there's no, the winner's determined only by submission. Otherwise it's a draw. So physically I was, I wasn't myself on that fight. I was tired. My body wasn't responding. Anyway, so that, so the conflict was different from the first, the second. I think I was confident enough that I wouldn't get tapped out on the first, that I was still going to fight because he has to tap me out to beat me. And I trust on my defense. I'm confident enough on my defense that he will not tap me out. But in terms of winning, you know, walking to the second fight, I was a lot more confident. What can you say about that feeling when something's not right? Isn't that a thing that breaks people? It is, it breaks. It's weird. Like people crack, they give up. You know, this is, it's a big test because it's like being really tired. It's the same thing. It's like a lot of people crack because they just feel they cannot give it more. They have nothing more to give. So they just like give up. It's too hard. So what do you do? Just again, take the thoughts out. There is no giving up. I mean, I don't mind. I don't care. Like just giving up is not enough. It's not. That's always the way you thought? Yeah. Yeah. I've never gave up. I mean, I tapped. It's, you know, not giving up is not tapping. That's just stupid. Especially, you know, during training, like I get caught, I tap. I've never ever hurt myself by not tapping. I get, you get angry, you know, train hard, you know, improve, make yourself better. You got caught. Accept that you made a mistake, give up, tap, then try harder. So, you know, the not tapping, it's you're sacrificing your body and, you know, you will never be the same. Like if you let your elbow popped, the elbow will never ever be the same ever. You let yourself go to sleep, your resistance drops. So it's everybody has a limit of resistance until they, you know, to resist the choke before you pass out. The moment that you go to sleep, that resistance will dropped. I've never heard anyone say that. That's awesome. That's true. So tap, so that's the reason, because people usually say it's- No, it's the same way you get knocked out. You get knocked out the first time, your resistance dropped. Your jaw gets weaker. So just for the record, I've never gone to sleep in just a few days. Which means my resistance is high, right? I don't know. Yeah, mostly. Or your defense is pretty good. I don't know about that. No, I wouldn't. Because it doesn't make sense to me. Or maybe in my case, I think my understanding of when I'm screwed is pretty good. Yeah. Like there's no- You're not in trouble. Yeah. One of the things I regret the most about my Jiu-Jitsu journey is not having given enough time to being in really bad positions. Like the better I got, I think the less I started being in bad positions, which is terrible. It's because you spar. That's like the, that is how you train. Yeah. Because you used to just spar. When you spar, like it's difficult to be in bad positions a lot. You train with better people, but I mean, let's say five, six minute rows, how long you're going to be in a really bad position? Not long, right? So you don't really have time to develop. That's why people, they don't, you know, they don't train being in bad positions. Cause you have to start there over and over again to be used to it. Yeah, or put yourself there. I just didn't have that mindset. I think, I think you start, I mean, part of the fun of Jiu-Jitsu is as you get better and better, you have certain people you go with, you have these puzzles that you figured out, that you're playing very specific details, you're working out, you're trying to improve your main like techniques and so on. But yeah, just the percentage of time you spend being submitted or being, or trying, even going against like lower ranks, trying to escape basic submissions is low. I don't know if that's true for most people. Probably is, right? Most people have very bad defense. Because they don't allow themselves to be there because, I mean, who wants to get tapped? Because you will, until you, you know, to work on your defense, of course you're going to get tapped or, you know, you're not going to escape. You're going to struggle to escape. So people, they don't want to be there. I regret it most because of the effect it clearly had on how I competed. It was clear that my competition was constantly driven by conservative thinking. Like don't take risks. I think because of a weak defense, honestly. And I think a lot of the, any of the fear, like for example, exhaustion was accompanied by fear because of weak defense, I think. If I were to psychoanalyze myself, and I regretted it, I regretted it a lot. But speaking of which, I don't think anyone's ever submitted you in competition. So you're- Well, I was a juvenile, yes. Yes, so it's when you were a young person. Yeah, 60. Does that still haunt you? No, it's, first I was winning that fight by a large, I mean, I think by six points or four, something like that. But I was like, I was- You don't remember it though, huh? By the details. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. You ever beat him again? He never competed again. Whoever you are, please, let's do a podcast. I know, I know. We'll talk shit about Hajar the whole time. No, but what do you attribute to that too? You're saying you're confident, you're confident that the top of the world, the number one, Buccecia would not submit you. So where's that confidence grounded and what do you attribute the fact that nobody was able to submit you? First, it comes on training. I train a lot, bad position. My defense is good because I practice over and over again. As much as I practice all my offensive position. So it's, you have to train both equally, not just being in a good position, you have to be in bad. So I think that's a very strong part of my game. You know, to be a complete fighter, you know, a complete martial artist, you have to be good in every single position, every single one. Those that you're not, you have a weakness. So it's, you know, to be complete, you should have no weakness. So that was always my, you know, I was always very particular on that. Like it's where my weakness, where I don't feel good at it. If you put me in a position where struggle, how do I escape, how do I get out? Everything, any submission locked, pinning position, you know, back mount, everything. It doesn't matter which position I have, I practice over and over again. So when I, if I get there in a fighting situation, I will know how to get out. At least I'll have a direction, you know, I will know this is my way out. Do you practice both escaping a bad position and the transition into the bad position, avoiding it? Because that's how it happens. You know, Jiu-Jitsu, you start in a neutral position. No, the transition then becomes the fight itself. It's being there is the most important. It's when you're there, then you have to know how to get out. That's your weakness. How, you know, stopping the person getting there is something different. So there are two different things. It's either you practice one or the other. So both are important, I guess. But the stopping the person is easier to practice because that comes naturally in training. What was the actual process? Like what was your biggest weakness throughout your, like you just remembering what was annoying to you to figure out? I mean, outside control is always, Bottom of side control. Bottom. It's regardless how much you practice, it's not ever easy. You'll never be easy. But. It's so annoying. It makes no sense. Yeah, someone pins you down. This is someone who move much. It's a big and strong guy, regardless of who is not gonna be easy to escape. So some situations are just hard. That must be the, sorry to interrupt. I'm interrupting Hajar Gracie. He discusses Jiu-Jitsu. But you just made me realize, if you're really good, if you're going against like the perfect Jiu-Jitsu competitor, probably side control might be one of the hardest positions to escape. Is it the hardest position to escape? It is one of them. If the person doesn't wanna progress, it's just concern about opinion. Yeah. Like the best pinners in the world. I mean, partially because I've just seen judo people that know how to pin. Yeah. They. Go skip their side control is a nightmare. It's a nightmare. Doesn't matter how much you practice. Yeah. It's a nightmare. And it's also just frustrating. Yeah. I think, I guess it is also frustrating because a lot of people in that position will be about maintaining control, not progressing. Yeah. And usually people when they're in mount and in back control are usually trying to progress towards a submission, which opens up opportunities for escape. So what's the actual process of just time and time again, putting yourself in side control, a bottom side control. Yeah. Over and over again, starting there, escape, get back, escape, get back. If it mount you, get back. Any situation outside that stops, start again, and stops that again. And it has to be, I'll say five minutes because it's the repetition that will teach you. If you train like three minutes on top, you have time to one thing and then time out. It's the repetition there over and over again. When you try the same move over and over again, then you'll see what can go wrong. And is it understanding the details of the movement or actually doing the movement and feeling it? It's both. First you have to understand the movement and practice, but most important thing is defense. Escape coming second. Because he's attacking you. The one thing is if he's not trying to submit you, but the other one, if it is, let's say if it's a person is very good, has a very good attack, the first thing is defense, not just escape and expose yourself to an even worse position because that is very risky. When you're trying to escape, you'll always expose yourself to a worse position. So avoiding that, first is defense, not getting caught. And then when you're escaping, don't be in a worse position. So defense in Jiu-Jitsu when you're wearing a gi, what does defense entail? Is it mostly grips? Is it mostly the positioning of your hips and legs? It's everything together because it's a whole body movement. It's a constantly moving your arms, legs, body. It's, you know, they have to, everything works together. Going back to the mind of that guy, so confident, no fear at this point. Is there a bit of ego in there too? Yes. Like I say, no, I'm not gonna say I'm fearless. Of course this concerns, that fight, I would have to say, was probably the fight that I got nervous the most walking in because I knew what that meant, that fight. I mean, everything for me, all my legacy was on the line because if I lost that fight, I'll forever be number two. Yeah. Forever. And I mean, Boshieche is a great guy, great competitor. Jiu-Jitsu is very good, but I'm better than him. I knew that. But he's competing nonstop at that point. No, no, he's a great competitor, you know, taking nothing out of him. He's super tough, very, very tough, very good. He's probably the best competitor in Jiu-Jitsu. He won 13 times the World Championship, I won 10. So as a competitor, you know, he has more titles than I do. But in terms of analyzing the game, I consider technically better than him. So knowing all that, everything that I build, all my legacy, it's... If I lose... All writing in this match. If I lose this fight, I'm forever number two. And none of that is going through your mind? No, I knew, I mean, it's not at that moment. I already knew that. I remember just before, you know, the curtains open, I'm standing in before they call my name. And I mean, my legs were like... I feel the adrenaline kicking on my legs. And I'm like, you know, I'm hitting the legs. I'm like, wake up, you know, get off, get the adrenaline off me, you know. So it was intense. It was intense. And this was in Rio. That was in Rio. So... My hometown. So this is... Huge town. And, you know, Rio is not exactly known for its calmness in its fans. So this is like... So this is like, wherever they hosted the Olympics, the year before. So this is like... I mean, this, like the whole, basically, martial arts community is watching this. Watching that fight. Yeah. I mean, is there some... Was Hanzo there? Yeah. Yeah, he was there. Some people are just... I mean, there's a tension. It's also... I mean, I don't know if you felt that in part, but you're also fighting for the Gracie name. Yeah. In our hometown. The greatest... Where the Gracie really established. Gracie competitor of all time, arguably, in the hometown. Yeah. I mean, okay. All my family, my best friends, my friends, everybody watching, everybody there. There was a lot of pressure. A lot. And then, were you thinking that you would be able to submit him? No, it's at that point, like I don't predict how the fight will go. That I never did because it is unpredictable. I never tried to set any strategy for any fight. I think, oh, okay, that I did. But that was the only time that I set any strategy into a fight. There was a 15-minute fight then. And I said, first five minutes, I'm gonna play defense. He's bigger, stronger, younger. I don't wanna play his game. And I know he comes in very fast. Every single fight he had, he comes very aggressive. So my strategy walk into the fight, I say, five minutes, I'm gonna play defense. I'm not gonna try to attack. I'm not gonna try to match his pace. I already expected, maybe I'm gonna start losing the fight because if he comes in, there's a risk of me maybe getting takedown or something happened. I'm like, I'm gonna stick to the game plan. Five minutes, I'm gonna start picking up the pace because then it's 10 minutes to go, which 10 minutes a long fight. So I don't need to start fast, but I'm gonna start being more aggressive and then try to take him down or pull guard. By then I'm like, that's as far the strategy goes. There's no specific stay on the feet. Were you comfortable being both bottom and top in this strategic clip? I was comfortable being bottom and top. I prefer to be on top because being in the bottom, the person on top dictates the pace of the fight because he's on top over you. So I always prefer to be on top because I can dictate the pace. I can implement my own pace. And being the bottom, they can slow me down. So it's harder. So if I can choose, I will always be on top. But I think by then I was like, it's five minutes, hit it. I'm like, he's pretty big and strong. I'm gonna spend a lot of energy taking him down. I pull guard. How did it feel? So here you're stepping in, by the way, puzzle math, this is old school, as old school as it gets. So calm and relaxed here for people just listening. We're watching the early minutes of the match. So just feeling it out. He seems pretty calm too. He must be nervous too. I wonder how, did you ever talk to him? You guys are friends. Yeah, yeah, we're friends. Did he ever say how nervous he was? No, we never spoke about that fight. No? No. He probably lays late at night thinking about it. Maybe, I don't know. That SOB. Yeah, I mean, so you see the first five minutes. No, he kept, I knew what he was going to do. And I studied his game. His stand up is most basic, is basic in takedowns, leg attacks, double leg. So he goes single or double and he charges in. That is pretty much his stand up game. So you would try, you get a grip. Yeah, we got penalized. So do you like to use the, do you like to post with your left? You have a right foot forward usually. You're a righty, right? I'm righty, but I know he wants my leg. So I'm playing my stance just because of his game. Oh, you know, all my grips at that, the first five minutes was to kind of try to neutralize his attacks. So he wants to get your left leg. Yeah. Yeah, right there. Yeah. So how hard is that to stop that? I mean, he felt pretty strong coming in. So I'm pushing the head down, trying to play with his balance. Yeah, wow. If you see it, there was a pause. Go back there. He charged in. There's a pause, me standing in front of him. Yeah. I did that on purpose. What do you mean? Just in front of him, because he tried. Yeah. And I'm like, you fail. I'm here. There's a, okay. So you could feel the frustration. I could feel his frustration, not be able to take me down. Okay. So now, and this is just psychological battles. And you see me walking straight into the middle of the mat and he's circling out. Yeah. See, I'm going very slow, I'm going very slow, I'm recovering. And he's computing like, shit. Yeah. Because he just made an effort, trying to take me down. He needs to recover. And I mean, you need to recover. The other guys there are waiting for you. And do I go for another take down? Because this one failed. Do I need to recalculate the strategy? Yeah, and he kept trying over and over again and keep failing. I think that frustrate him a lot on that fight. I felt him kind of slowing down suddenly because he was getting nowhere. So we're five minutes in. Yeah, he keeps, so he never got that take down in the early. No. Let's see. So at this point, do you pull guard? Yeah, okay. So that's when I felt like he's mentally, he's not, he's worried now. Did you try to pull close guard here? No, I knew he was going to bring Danny in. Okay, because that's the defense against pulling close guard. Yeah, but I like that. I like people bringing Danny between my legs. Because see, I'm going to close my guard, even with his leg in. Okay, he's stopping the, well, this is awkward, but I guess. I was holding his arm, that's why he fell. He had no hand to post. Got it. But still it puts a leg in, but you're able to close your guard around. You're okay with that? I do that really well. I sweep people from that position a lot. What's the sweep? I just pushed. Okay. He's just a push. Like to your left side? Yeah. Okay, because he has no, oh, it's almost like, you mean you're basically around his back a little bit. And he knew that, like I swept a lot of people with that sweep. So you see he kept leaning to his left, to my right. So I want to push them to my left. So you see him leaning over to my right a lot. What's the right answer for him? To like roll or something? No, I mean, he's stuck. He does not really, he's stuck there. But the one thing he did, he kept off me completely. See that he's leaning, like he's too afraid of my attack now because he should lean on me. Yep. You should bring the fight to me. So when I fell him, I knew he was like, he's too worried about my attacks now. Oh yeah, that's right. So he can't, if he comes back to the center, he has no- So he's not engaging now. At that time, he's a hundred percent just defending. So I felt that. I'm like, he doesn't want to engage. And he's looking. I knew at that point, he wants my foot because our first fight, I had the exact the same position. I wasn't holding his arm and he went to attack my foot, which he did. He got into attack. Like a toe hold or what? Okay. Yeah. So I knew he's looking at my foot. Which foot? Sorry, the left, your right foot? Yeah, my right foot. Okay. And so how you defend? You're hiding it? I'm holding his arm. And now you're going to the back as an arm drag type of thing. So the moment that I came off, now I'm holding his arm so he cannot come up. So I'm holding his left arm so he cannot post a hand on the floor and come up. And he's holding your right to try to get you, basically to prevent you from attacking. Yeah. Oh, that's an interesting. And he rolls. Yeah. He tried to get me off balance. So see now I'm switching. I switched the grip on his arm so I can free my left arm. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Was there a chance he sweeps you here? I mean, there's always a chance, but very hard. Like that. Yeah, but see my left arm is free. Oh, so you can post. Yeah. Why was your left arm free? Oh, because you were using it. You got it, got it. Okay. So I tried the hook. Now you will see. He still got your arm. Yeah, but when I knew he's panicking because he didn't move, that he completely opened himself up. Like I'm holding his left arm. So by holding their arm, that prevents him from defending the hook on that side because his arm is being held across. So their arm cannot block the hook. And I mean- The hook with your left leg? Yeah. So you'll see when he come up. But I would say, I mean, that's my guess, but Bousheche, he's a big guy. He was like 110 kilos, 112, something like that. Which is- 245. Yeah, all right. Yeah. So- What were you at the time? Less? 220, yeah, 220. A nice slim 100 kilo, okay. Yeah. So his defense are not amazing. He's good, but he's not known to have amazing defense. So by being the big guy in the room when you train, you used to get out of situations because of your size. You shake people off. Because of your size, you shake them off. You get off some bad positions. You can, I mean, I could feel on the first fight, I'm side control, you know, suddenly he explode out. So, you know, I've seen him doing that a few of his fights. No, not in the most technical way, just I'm getting out. And he did because of his size. So, and he did the same thing. He tried to stood up when I'm on his back. He completely opened up the hooks. He will see the next move, his head gonna come up and he gonna try to get off the floor. So basically come up, shake you off kind of strategy. There was no difference for the hooks. I put both hooks in straight away. Oh, his arm is- Yeah, I'm off balance. Yeah, see, I didn't bring him up, he came up. Yeah. And now I'm attacking his neck and he's worried about the hooks. That's fatal mistake. That's like defense always come first. Remember what I just said now? Defense first, cape second. So he's not worried more about the points than his neck. So it was like a progression of mistakes. That's why I think he got frustrated when he couldn't take me down. And then when I pulled guard, he was frustrated that the fight wasn't going his way. He's very good about taking down. He tried over and over again for five minutes. And here he was frustrated about the hooks. So he's like, it's almost like the frustration things like, no, no, no, these hooks shouldn't be here. Like I pull guard on the grips that I want. He's not comfortable inside my guard. He's not in the position that he wants to be. He's over leaning to his left. He's not engaged, not trying to pass. He's trying to get the foot, but his arm is trapped. He's gonna get nowhere. And then when I swept him, suddenly his world start collapsing. He couldn't take me down. I pull guard, I'm swept in. He tried to roll me over. No, it didn't get me anywhere. The first movement that he tried to escape, I'm on his back. I mean, now he's lost. Yeah. That, if you just go back to him standing up. See, both hook goes in no difference. Like there was nothing on the way of those hooks. Because he tried to come up. As he's coming up, you're high enough on him to where the weight was just probably immense. It just felt too heavy. I mean, you're already going for the choke. There's no time to lose. Look at that. So you're not like worried I'm gonna get shaken off. You're going for the choke. You got your right hand on the foot. I'm not shaking you off. I'm on your back now. Wearing this together. And your right hand is opening up the lapel. My right hand is holding his arm. I'm still holding the sleeve. Oh, sorry. You're holding the sleeve, but. I'm holding the sleeve and I'm already going for the neck. Because it's timing. At which point do you let go of the sleeve and open up, help with the lapel? Or do you not need it? No, I did that. But first I wanna try to make a grip. Then I need to establish control before I let go of his arm. Got it. So I kept holding that a bit longer. And then when I fell, okay, I have a good control over the back, then I let go. Do you, okay, so you have like a light grip on his lapel, but you're thinking. No, I need to adjust that. You need to adjust that. Yeah. You're like holding it there and you're thinking, okay, at some point I need to adjust. All I need, all I want is to get under his chin. Then I know, I mean, now I can't go for it. Because if it's over, there's no choke, right? The wrist needs to be under. Can you choke Bucceso over the? No, I can't. That's just not right. Okay. It's not right or it doesn't work? Both. It's not right and it doesn't work. I mean, would you tap to choke on your chin? No, it's just pressure. You hurt, but it's not gonna choke you out. I don't know, I don't know. I'm not, let me argue this. I love this. Arguing with Haji Gray, he's about chokes. This is great. Okay, like clock choke. It was always interesting to me, because in judo it's illegal to have the gear on the face. And so it was kind of liberating for me to be allowed to have a gear on the face. No, it's just- Liberating. No, you don't have to worry about it. Of course it's more effective to go under the chin, but I'm surprised just because the amount of pressure. It's all about how much you can take it. You can take a lot. But it feels like- No, it doesn't feel comfortable. I mean, sometimes on your mouth, it cuts your mouth. Now you're bleeding, it feels horrible. No, but that's not the feeling. The feeling, it might not be a choke, but the feeling like it's a pressure that everything's just closing in. But it doesn't take you anywhere. Like you're not gonna go to sleep. You might not go to sleep. So it's just pressure. Yes. So pressure, it hurts, it's uncomfortable, but it's not gonna break your face and it's not gonna put you to sleep. So if I don't get the neck, I don't go for the kill. I'm holding his, his collar. My wrist is almost under. It's, I'm trying to kind of dig in. If I can't dig in, then I will adjust the collar, but first I need to dig in. Dig in first and adjust. Can you do all that with one hand or no? I did. So you can tighten the choke with just one hand? No, I need the second one to open the lapel. To open the lapel. But you're like digging in with one hand. I'm digging in under the chin. Under the chin, now I need to go deeper. But that, the going deeper requires a second hand. It does. Okay. It does. But that requires you letting go of the other hand. Yeah, I have to let go eventually. Yeah, see? All right. Well, that's over. Yeah. Because I'm already under his, like the first hand got under the chin. Do you need the hand on the second lapel? Of course, otherwise he turns and he's out. That's the control of the turning versus the tightening of the choke. Yeah, it does both. It helps tighten the collar and stop the person rolling out. Were you feeling pretty good about this position? Yes. I just felt it's getting tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter. Because it wasn't super tight from the beginning. It wasn't like the perfect choke. So it was still, I mean, I knew it was like he's very close to the end, but you know, I still need to adjust. There was still the risk of maybe he escaping. Is it possible for his head to slip out? Yeah, it's possible, yes. But I'm closing that gap. Yeah. Right here. What did that feel like? Relief? Relief, like awesome. Amazing. Somebody on Reddit asked, asked him about the cross grip he used to sweep followed with a genius grips, which when Buchescha was inverted, did you use a cross grip when you sweep? I guess the cross grip in the arm, that must be it. Oh, that's the cross grip. Okay. What's the genius behind that? Or was that just the, do you like that kind of grip? Yeah, because I always liked close guard and no one wants to be in anyone's close guard, right? It's open guard is the step to pass. So everybody, when you try to close the guard, they bring the knee in the middle. Like if you're not standing, if you're lower on the ground and the open guard, if you're close to me, you need that knee between. So it's a must. That's when I start developing the attack. You know, I managed to have long legs to close my legs around people even with that. And then I just developed that sweep. When did you start developing that? I don't remember when, but I would say before black belt. Okay, so your answer to that is not to figure out how to prevent them from putting the knee in. Is there an answer to that? No. The good guys will always try to get the knee in. Remove the leg out of the way. That's not possible. Well, maybe off balance them enough to where it's not. No. Okay. I mean, you can try, but like it's hard. If you can off balance, you sweep them. All right. So that knee is gonna, so you're gonna have to solve that. That's a full sweep, yeah. Because that's, it's extremely common to have that. I mean, if I'm on your guard, open guard, you know, if you have your legs, if I'm between both of your legs in the open guard, my knee will be between your legs. Cause it's a must. My knee cannot be on the floor. Since Hanzo was there, what did he tell you before? I think just motivate you. I think that Hanzo always did that fantastically well to motivate me. Like before in fight, the match. I think that, you know, the confidence, you know, his energy being around you, it's, I think that's the, it's the great thing to have Hanzo in your corner. It's the motivation that he gives you. What did you learn about Jiu-Jitsu in life from Hanzo Gracie? We got to hang out with him in Vegas a little bit. He's a character. He's one of the historic coaches and Jiu-Jitsu competitors, but also personalities in the martial arts world, in the world in general. There's very few like him. Hanzo is a fantastic person. It's, you know, what I've learned most from him is like, it's, you know, you can't take any challenge. It's, you know, doesn't matter where and where, or you know, who. It's, you know, you have to be ready. And, you know, with the warrior spirit that he has, he, you know, he always took any challenge, ready or not ready. Was it you that said it or he said it where, not until you go in, you know, to do something difficult, do you discover the strength that you have? So like, if you really think about it, you might think that you don't, you're not good enough. You don't have the strength to take on something difficult. I fully agree. I think we are measured not when we're on the strongest, but when we are on the weakest. That's when we truly measure ourselves or character, who we are, not when we're in a position of power or when we're in a position of weakness. Have you surprised yourself? Like how damn good you are? Like, is this really how good I am in this situation? Where in retrospect, you might think, how the hell was I able to accomplish this? Not how good I am because otherwise I wouldn't be there. So, you know, being there in the first place, it's already not a great thing. But I say, you know, every single time I found myself there, I was super proud that I've never cracked. Like I've never gave up ever, any second, any fight, never. Never been broken in competition? Never. Even, it's not about winning or losing, it's about you giving up. I've never doubt myself. I always fought to the very end. Always. That I'm most proud of. Because there was moments, you know, it's in a terrible position, you know, mainly like there was moments that I was super tired, but like exhaustive tired when it was easy to give up. Like I had nothing more to give, but I pushed. I took energy out of my soul, I'll have to say, because when my body had zero, my spirit, my soul, pull it out. Is that in part just not allowing yourself to have, to ever quit? Yeah. I have one other thing I regret. I remember like a blue belt match. I remember, I'm not gonna say who it was against, but I remember just being extremely exhausted and just being exhausted. And just constantly fighting. A guy was really good mount, really good guard passing. And I just remember him passing my guard eventually. So it was just like a finals of one of the IBGJF tournaments. And then right away going to mount and just, I don't know, the level of frustration. I mean, I quit at that point. I remember that still. Like I, it's not about losing, winning or losing, but I just remember I was like teary-eyed frustrated. And then I knew there was a lot of fights still left in there somewhere and I quit. And I regret that to this day. Because I think the reason I regret that is because it gave me an option to now quit in every other aspect of life. This is an option. Yeah, it is. It sucks. Yeah, it teaches you, you know. It makes us stronger. It's like you said. I think it made you stronger. Yeah, it makes you stronger that you did that to learn that don't do that again. But still, like you said, just going to sleep and training. I do think it made me weaker. It did make me weaker in the rest of my life too. Those, you know, I've quit a few times in my life on small things and you realize, okay, it's not that big of a deal. It's fine. Like who cares? But what you learn over time is that voice always comes there. Like obviously, maybe it does for you too, even at the highest level of like, it's not that big of a deal. Like it's okay to quit here. Like it makes sense. Everybody would understand. You know, in some sense, like you're, you know, many people would say you're past your prime in this match with the Brutusia. Like it makes sense. You've been focusing on MMA. It makes sense. No. It makes sense to lose. Yeah. I don't know that that's a weird voice. And in some sense, it's that voice and a voice that says like, why are you doing this? Like, this is silly. Does it make any sense? Just stop, just stop, just stop. And shutting that voice down and never allowing yourself to quit. That's a really powerful thing. Like everybody I've met, everybody that's successful. Yeah, down to the, even engineers, CEOs, Elon Musk, just never quitting. Like when everybody around you says quit, never quitting. It's weird. I don't know what that is. Might be genetic. It might be like using the stubbornness to just never allow yourself to develop that. It's basically developing a callous to that voice that tries to tell you to quit. You never quit, huh? What would you attribute that to? It's like how much you want to get to the destination you chose. Like, you know, it's how badly you wanna get there. If you quit, you're never gonna get there. And you always wanted to. I always wanted to. Is there some thing you remember from that match? Some things that happened before and after that stand out to you? Just since in Rio. Yeah, there was an interview, you know, like prior to the fight, you know, there was a big fight. We were doing like media every day before. We were meeting, you know, me and him, we were meeting for media. And like five days before, you know, five, six days before, I'm quite chatty. It's, you know, the closer we get to the fight, the more focus I get, the less I start joke around playing, you know, with people. But I remember, I think it was maybe three or four days before we were doing an interview together. I think my cousin Kira was there. She was doing one of the interviews with us. And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but I just remember we're talking about the fight, of course. And then it was, you know, we're standing beside each other and I'm like, and then, you know, suddenly I chop him and grab him by the neck. I say, I'm gonna tap you by the neck. And then he's like, you know, very shy. And then I let go, I say, no, I'm gonna tap you by the arm. And I could feel he was like, he wasn't comfortable, you know, with being there. It was, you know, me saying that I'm gonna tap him out. There was like, I was so relaxed, joking about it, but I'm joking that I'm gonna tap him out in a fight that we're gonna have in four days time. And yeah, I felt he was like, not comfortable at all. Do you think you got in his head a little bit? Yeah, I did. Did it give you a little bit of confidence? Yeah. You've said that Jiu-Jitsu is a reflection of your personality. So both your Jiu-Jitsu and your personality, there's a calmness. What is that? Why are you so calm? Is there like an ocean underneath that's boiling? Is this developed or is this your personality? Are you basically leveraging who you are already to develop a game around the Jiu-Jitsu or did Jiu-Jitsu make you calm? I think both. I was always very calm since I was a kid, you know, since very young. I was never very fiery person. So that is a reflection, you know, you reflected on my Jiu-Jitsu, my life, on my fights, the way I fight. So it's a direct influence of my personality. And I think it's also in the day, you know, you develop the more you practice, the more you fight. It's like, you know, you don't want to get nervous. You don't want the adrenaline in. So you just learn how to shut that off from your mind. So the less I thought about it, you know, it's like how many times I fought. You know, let's say the week before the fight, that's when you start more, when you're concerned the most, because now it's getting very close. Before it's just far away. You know, it's normal to think of the tournament. You get a bit nervous, but it goes away quick. But the fight, you know, the week before, now you're constantly thinking of that day. And every time you think, adrenaline pumps in, your heart accelerate. You know, it doesn't, you know, it makes it, it's like, why am I feeling this? What difference will it make? So you kind of, you're shutting that thought out of your mind, because you don't want to feel the adrenaline, your heart accelerating. It's not going to add you anything. So it's, you know, it's the practice also that I think it helped me to shut that off my mind. Has that helped you in regular life? Yeah, of course. It's, you know, it's suddenly when you go into any, any situation that might be stressful, you know, like an important meeting, you know, super, whatever it is, it's like, how much would you worry about that before? Worry is not going to help you anywhere. It's the opposite. Just going to make you more nervous, your heart accelerate, your ability to think clearly is going to be damaged by that. So it's like the more calm, the more relaxed you are, the better you can think of. Do you ever get angry? Yeah. Like in traffic? Do you ever get like not calm, just like you're screaming? Not in a screaming, no. But just angry? What does angry look like? Is it still calm? Yeah, like a few seconds of complaining, but then it goes away. Have you ever like thrown a cell phone at a wall or something like that? No. No, I never get that angry. But that's just silly. It's like, it's, it's, it's, if I would have done that, I would not be able to control my emotions prior to a fight. That would be a reflection. Letting yourself lose. Yeah. Losing control that will reflect other times. Do you think it has make, in part, made you more emotionally closed off from the world? Like you're, you're, it's harder for you to be vulnerable to others? Probably. Yeah. But I heard that a few times. I'm emotionally closed. It's, yeah. Maybe that, I think that influenced it. Yeah. Have you ever cried in a movie? Yeah. For not for many years before that thing, maybe I'm getting older. You remember the movie? Something that's, I don't know. For the movie? Something that's a silly movie. I mean, it's not, no, I mean. Is it the notebook? No, I mean, I would say the last few years I've been crying more than before for some reason. I don't know why. Like silly movies, like nothing suddenly brings tears to my eyes. Yeah. Well, I've already, I already just having met you and interacted with you, I can see that you're kind of opening your heart and mind to the world. You could see like, here's this historically great athlete. Now like the wars have been fought and you're now like waking up to the world. It's cool to see. Probably I'm bringing my guard down now. I don't have to keep it up all the time. Yeah, that's a good fight. You can even do some podcasts. You said you watched like movies beforehand sometimes. You mentioned Braveheart. What were you doing? Did you watch something beforehand? Like the day before? I used to, yeah, I was like, I think Braveheart and Gladiator. I mean, there's a few others that I've always watched the day before, because the day before I used to do nothing. I just want to be at home in bed watching TV, like saving energy, stretching by myself. So it's like, it's just want to save energy. I don't want to waste my energy going out, going around. So, you know, those are the movies that I always like to watch, kind of try to bring some, you know, hyper excitement, like, you know, I'm getting ready to war tomorrow. So I'm like, let me watch some movies that like brought that, you know, some, that warrior spirit into me. Yeah, what is that about human nature? Braveheart I love even more. Should you put your life on the line for a thing that matters or run away just so you can live? It's like running, you may live, but like years from now, when you look back at this moment, would you trade all the days just to come back to this moment? And tell the English. You could take our lives, but you can't take our freedom. I mean, man, what is that about human nature? Is there some aspect of like the glory you were able to achieve being more important than anything else? There's some aspect of that. That's greatness, you know? Yeah, I never pursue glory. So it just came, you know, it came with it, but that was never my goal. I never care for glory. Were you able to experience like, like I'm at the height of this thing, whatever humanity is able to achieve in various things, holy shit, I'm flying. I felt like no one can touch me. I can destroy people. Yeah. Prolonged periods of time or just momentarily? I always knew, you know, from before I got to a black belt, the like, you know, I can be great because my, you know, I used to train with the best in the world. I used to, you know, for many years, and I used to see my progression with, and everybody else. So I knew I was getting somewhere. I knew I could be the best. And that was, that was always my goal since very, very young. And I always believed that I could be. And that over the years, that kept telling me over and over again, because I'm getting better and better, faster than everybody else. So it's, I just need to carry on with what I'm doing. But I think you've said that you wanted to, and maybe you thought you could be the greatest of all time, like at the very beginning, like when you sucked. Yeah, not the greatest of all time, because I never really thought about that. But I thought I'm gonna be the best in the world when I sucked, when I sucked. Okay, so what is that? What is that? Like that self-belief. Is there a component to that self-belief being a prerequisite? It's difficult to say because that was a decision, I think. Like, why did I believe I could be? I can't tell you that, because I don't know. But you think you decided to be? I decided to be, I decided to be, and I believed I could. You think there was like a day somewhere when you were young where you were like, huh, you're sitting on a couch eating Cheetos. I don't think it was a day, like a moment, because for many years, I wasn't really training much as a child. I used to train and then stop, done a bit of Jiu-Jitsu, never stay away from it much, but until, you know, like from 10 to 14, I barely trained Jiu-Jitsu much. I used to, there was no Gracie school near where I used to live. And there was a Jiu-Jitsu, a Jiu-Jitsu school, I used to go twice a week. I went to a Jiu-Jitsu tournament, I lost in five seconds, left crying. The guy, he pulled me in five seconds. Anyway, so when I was 14, I went to the south of Brazil to see my uncle, William, to spend summer holidays. I was there for like four weeks, I think. And when I got there, my cousin Hollis were living with him. Hollis like bigger than me. It was, I think it's four years, four years older. So I was 14, I was already 18, 17, 18. Purple belt competitor. And I think that was the first time in my life that I felt what it mean, what it meant to be a Gracie in terms of having a school, teaching, training, you know, living that, you know, Jiu-Jitsu lifestyle, what a Gracie mean to be. And I've just, I've loved that. I was out of shape. My uncle was like, you know, incentivizing me to lose weight, to train, but you're not training, why? You know, it's like, you're out of shape, you need to diet. So I used to run every day, I was eating super well. I start, you know, I start, that when I start changing. So when I go back to Rio, I was super motivated to follow up, carry on. And he, you know, he invited me to go back there to live with him, but I couldn't, it was too soon to change schools and everything. My mom say no, but maybe next year, if you wanna go, you can. So I kept that in my mind. Next year, I moved to the South to live with him. I was 15. And it was him, my uncle, Hylian, and my uncle, Karlin. They both used to live very close to each other. They used to have their own schools close to each other. So I was with both. And I stayed there for almost a year. I mean, I was the youngest in the academy. There was some, you know, blue, purple bells, normal guy, but they're very competing, training ahead of me. And I just joined the group of training. I didn't compete while I was there because there was no competition at that time. And I wasn't really ready, but it's not about competing. It's more about the training. And I started training every day, started improving. And a year after that, when I came back to Rio, I was already on a mission. I was like, I love this. I'm just carrying on training every day with my uncle, Carlos, Carlos Gracie Jr., Gracie Barra. And the one I got there, I was training a little bit there before, but I was just 14, 15. But when I got there, there was one of the most competitors, one of the biggest jujitsu schools at the time. There were so many high-level world champions, competitors in every single belt. And so I've kind of joined in with that. And I've carried on. I don't remember when, but I remember, you know, looking and saying, I'm gonna be the best in the world. But I used to be, I was at the bottom of the stairs. You know, no one really believed me. I didn't shout, you know, to disguise, but I told a few people, I'm like, I'm gonna be the best. And that's, I think, I was just losing, but I've never ever doubt. I've never diverged from that mission, I would say. Did anyone believe you when you said you can be great? Nobody. Did it matter? Didn't matter. I don't care. I don't need. Even people that like love you? Everybody, my mom, my dad, I mean, no one thought, no one in my family thought I was gonna be here today. Nobody. Because I just started late. You know, I've never had any start that people, oh, that kid's gonna be really good. No, my mom was a chubby kid that didn't barely train. I mean, people used to look at me, he's just another grace, you know, one more. What do you learn from that? Do you think most people lose that self-belief? They quit? When everyone around them doesn't believe? Yeah. I think if those that need approval, yes. I see you shouldn't have approval. I never need approval from anyone. I don't care if you believe me or not, if you're not my problem. It's tough, it's tough. I don't need approval, but you're surrounded by people older, wiser, better than you, and they're kind of directly or indirectly saying, you stop being silly kid. No one ever told me that because that was not something that I used to say all the time. I maybe say it just very, very few times. You know, maybe that's the secret. Of course, I mean, if you start shouting, then you've just been silly. Then it's not what you really want. Then you're saying that for another reasons, if you say it over and over again, because you shouldn't. I mean, why? Well, to push back, one of the reasons you might want to say it is to find the right people that believe in you. Yeah, but no, if you say over and over again, then you're just bragging. Sure. Because one thing is to say it, but the other one is to do it. So it's, you know, you say that once or very few times, but now you have to do it saying it's not helping you getting there. Was there sacrifices you had to make? Everything, everything. That was my priority in life. Everything was secondary. Like social life. Career paths. Yeah, everything. And from 14, 15, 16, as you get better and better and better and better, it was just becoming sharper, the focus on this thing. Yeah, it's just over and over again, over and over again. It's just training, training, training. And I mean, how many times I lost, I have no clue. So on the mat, you were getting beat up. I'm getting smashed by everybody. People my age, I was chubby. I was physically weak. I mean, I'm tall, but physically, I'm not physically strong. I'm normally strong for my size, but physically, if you want to measure strength, I'm weak. Because, you know, we can measure strength, living weight, I'm weak. I don't lift, I lift weight same as people much lighter than me. Everybody, my weight, lifts heavier weight. And then people that train with you often talk about how strong you are. They think I'm super strong. Yeah. Because I generate a lot of strength. I can create, I put myself in the right angles so that I can be strong. I'm not strong. And the only person who I listen to saying that is a competitor, one guy that I fought, Rodrigo Medeiros. I fought him a few times. And he's the only one that I heard saying about me, that's like, no, Roger's not strong. He's not, he's technical and he can create strength, but he's not strong. He meant that as a compliment? Yeah, I think so. No, I think he was honest because he, I think he's the only one who could see that. Yes. So I think that's a compliment. So he's technically really strong. So you had an incredible match with him. Yeah. Is there insight you have about how you went from a person who was not very good, but had a dream, a confident dream, a vision to somebody that was actually good? Was there something to the practice sessions? Were you getting reps on specific techniques? I'd never done anything special because I mean, I'm in a gym training equally with everybody else. So I've never did anything on the side different than anybody else. So I was in the school training exactly the same way as everybody else. Wow. In terms of schedule, yes, but what was, can you reverse engineer what was going through your mind? Because there's so many different ways to actually mentally approach the same exact training session. I'm gonna try to beat you. Okay. So in some part it's competitive. Yeah. Like at the core of it is I want to be better than these particular people. You're gonna keep beating me. I'm gonna keep coming back at you. And to do that, I have to solve problems. I have to figure out how to do stuff. You catch me once. I'm gonna keep on coming, trying to not get caught in that. At which point did you develop a game that was basically the famous white belt game of the very basics, the very fundamentals of Jiu Jitsu? Like saying, I'm going to beat you. Never. There was never a conscious decision to try to have a basic Jiu Jitsu. First, I think there's a big misconception there. Okay, what's the misconception? My Jiu Jitsu is not basic. Mr. Haji Gracie, it's not right. It's not basic, it's not old school. I think people, they just don't see that. It's extremely complex in a way that people they cannot copy. I teach people, I can teach you the cross-collar choke, but the one thing that people they don't realize is not the move, is you need to practice the movement you learn. Is the practice over and over again. Like it took me years. When I say years, years after I was a black belt, I was able to choke people out with a cross-collar choke in the mouth, effectively. Years after I got my black belt. So that's something that you learn first day, first week. So I can teach you, it makes no difference. You know the theory, but until you apply it, you help you, of course, the more details you learn, the more tools you have to practice, but it's still very complex. Because it's not about the move itself. It's about how can you control the movement of the other person. He's resisting, you're blocking. You cannot predict what he will do. And he's doing a whole bunch of moves to block you. Every single move you do a step of the way. Because it's a progression of move from beginning to end till I apply the choke. It's a progression of move. And there's not one way to get that. There's many ways because how many ways can you block? You can put your arm in every single angle. We have both arms, you can bridge. So it's dealing with all that. That is the complexity of the position. But that goes for everything. Like every single move, my strong moves, I would say, it took me years developing them. Years. So it's, and you're gonna tell me that's basic. So go try and do it. What the other person is defending. That's the thing, because most of the things that I do, I've been doing them for years. And they know that I'm gonna do and I can still get it most of the times. That's the hardest. It's when they know what's coming, you can still do it. And you said that the way you're able to do that, you just have to do it right. Yeah. What do you learn by doing all the steps along the way? And just for people who don't know, cross-collar choke from the mount. So, the jiu-jitsu starts in a neutral place. There's people on their feet. And then you either, then you get to the ground somehow. And then there's the person on top and on bottom. And then there's a guard with the legs between the two people. And then you can get past the guard. As you get past the guard and you into side control and so on, you get more and more and more dominant positions. And so mount is considered to be one of the most dominant positions. It's when you're past their legs, sitting on top of their stomach, putting pressure on them. And cross-collar choke is using their jacket to, how would you explain that? To choke them with their jacket. You have the collars, I put my both hands on your collars. And when I squeeze, it press your neck, so it blocks the vein. You go to sleep. So, you choke people with your hands in the wrist. You put them, you grab the collar, so you got the wrist around people's neck and you squeeze. The discovery of that is fascinating. I mean, it's interesting. It's like, you can imagine there's all kinds of ways to choke a human being. What animals do with their mouth, right? They put their jaws around the, and the fact that you can kind of discover this methodology of the right kind of positioning, and then it becomes an art form. Like, why this? Why not this, right? Or why not this or something? Like, to figure all that out. We practice, that will come easy. Over time, you figure out what works and what not. And then more, further and further details and subtleties start to emerge. Anyway, on that process of beating, of being able to beat some of the best people in the world and the thing they know is coming, what's the difference between the white belt doing that and Hajra-Greicy doing that? The thing that's so hard to explain. What do you think you're picking up? Is it some tiny, tiny details of muscle movements? It is. It's many tiny details because it's the whole movement itself is the perception from beginning to end. Like every step of the movement, it's important and precise. So it's, you know, you miss one detail on the way, it collapse. So when it's with the black belt, the black belt has no control over the whole movement. He's thinking beginning and end. So he goes straight to your neck, regardless he cannot read the other person. If it's time to let go, if it's the time to go for a neck, should I be pushing here before I get my hand in? You know, is this the right time to go deep or should I deal with this first before the second hand? That's at the beginning. So it's at the white belt, at the very beginning of the journey. Yeah, the white belt, you just think, finish. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then as you get progressed, you see that there's like this giant tree of possibilities that you're almost feeling your way down. I mean, would you be able to teach? Explo... Do you even know what you're doing? By the details. Okay. But it's hard to convert into words probably. No. That's possible. Then you don't know what you're doing. Okay. So what is some most important details that you could say maybe positioning of the hand, the gripping, is it the positioning of your body, the posture, is there some interesting insights that people must understand? It's a combination because first you have to put your body in a very strong position that you don't require your hands to hold the mount. So the choke is that first because I cannot use my hands on the floor to stop you escaping. Yeah. So if I have to, my body has to handle that. The way I position myself, I have to do it in a way that don't require my hands for balance. Okay. Why is the mount such a dominant position? It doesn't make any sense, right? You're just sitting on top of the stomach of a person. It makes all sense. If you think what's... Forget fighting. Forget Jiu-Jitsu. Like you've never trained. What's the one position, the most dominant position you can get over another human being? One. The most. For you, which one it is? Like the most dominant position that you can get over another human being. So if we were just... Because the way I think about it is putting myself in like a six, seven, eight year old self without knowing any martial arts. And I had an older brother who would beat the shit out of me. Yeah, it probably was mount. What? But, well, yes. Okay. So we both didn't know. But if we knew something, it'd probably be back control. If in the back control, you're under the other person. The thing being under is the most dominant position that can be over another person. You mean like a back control? If I'm on your back, you can move. You can roll. I cannot stop you rolling. Yeah. Maybe you can even stand up. How dominant is that? Yeah, but if we're the same size, both untrained. If... Doesn't matter. Have you seen kids, do they do that? Okay. Mount looks and feels like dominance when you're two eight year olds fighting. Okay. I don't know. I don't know why it feels that way. It could be some animalistic thing. Maybe it is actual dominance. I don't know, but it feels like if you're untrained, you can just buck your way out of it. It feels unstable. It feels unstable to hold mount unless you know what you're doing. Right? No? If you're mounting, put both of your hands on the floor. Yeah. Just your hands. To think it's easy to take somebody off. Yeah, maybe not. To think it's easy to remove the hand and bring them out. The hands on the floor. Arms straight, I'm leaning and... Yeah, you're right. It's hard. I mean, you don't need to know fighting to hold yourself there. Yeah. But you're right. When you take the arms off and balancing, then it gets tricky. Because when you're trying to... I think what happens, I'm thinking back to eight year old. Because my brother's five years older than me and he would do the usual like, stop hitting yourself thing. And I think he would be in mount, like hitting me with my own hands. From out of place of love, of course. I love him deeply. And it was very formative and a positive experience for me. Okay. I think, yeah, the weakness is when he takes... When the person who has the mount takes their arms off to do something. But even if you keep your hands up in the air, when I'm falling... Yeah, you can. When I'm falling, so... I'm speaking about untrained people. I feel like they get greedy. They try to do stuff. The other day I watched my nine year old daughter. We're in a friend's house. There's a whole bunch of kids there, they're playing. And when I looked, she's mounting a boy, her age, her size. He cannot escape. Wow, she probably has seen some footage. She's been training for, I'll say, a year and a half. But she's not much. I mean, she's a nine year old daughter, a girl over a boy. Has she seen footage of you? Maybe she picked up from that. No, but she's been training for a year and a half. So she has an idea what a mount is. But I mean, in terms of our skills, I never taught her the mount. She has lessons at the academy, like any other kid. Did she make him cry? No, but he couldn't escape. Which other position would she be able to hold the boy? In the back, he would roll her out. That's true. Like he couldn't come out from underneath her. She's... They're kids. Like there is no other most dominant position that you can pin the other person. Couldn't you argue from that perspective, side control? No. No? Because side control, you have to hold the other person. And you're not free. You cannot release them. But in side control, your hips are not on top of theirs. So they can't buck you off, right? If you're holding them a little bit and you can hit them with one hand. But his head is here. You're gonna hurt him here. By the time you're doing that, but then he has his arms free. And if you turn towards your legs, then he's away from your arms. You don't even have the perfect angle. I mean, it is a good position. You can hit, you can dominate, but it's not the best position to be over the other person. He can knee you in the head. At the same time you punch him, then there's a knee coming to your head. I love playing devil's advocate with Roger Gracie about two eight year olds fighting. And your head is closer to his head. Maybe he can give you a punch. Would you choose to be in side control over mount? Getting in the head. Well, for a person who in competition prefers knee on belly over mount, but that's my weakness. That's my failure as a human being. Holding mount can be tricky. It's very hard. Of course it's hard. But what is easy? Side control and knee on belly is easier. But to submit- Knee on belly is easy. Easier, I'm not saying black belt level. I'm saying, well maybe even black belt level. Easy for what? To hold somebody? To make them squirm and hurt, to create openings. Yeah, but go do that with a big guy. Yeah, you can't. You can't. Yeah. He's gonna push you back and come up. In the mount, he can't sit up. Not when you mounted him. The thing is also about mount is people on the bottom of mount panic more. So they fight harder. Of course they panic. They're exposed. It's the most exposure you have. Because the person's arms are free. You cannot touch him. His head is too high. There's nothing he can do. His legs won't get you anywhere. Might touch your lower back. It's like nothing. You're most exposed being in the mount. I really hope you hold me side control a thousand times. The amount of me having to look up for your face coming down on me. Yeah. Side control, I hug you, you cannot hurt me. Okay, hold me, but I'm hugging you. If I hug you tight, what can you do against me? Hold. It seems maybe it's just from, and again, I'm arguing just for the fun of it. But it seems like a more difficult skill to learn to apply a huge amount of pressure and weight from mount. You don't have to apply pressure and weight from mount? Not apply pressure, but be heavy, right? You don't necessarily need to be heavy. You don't? No. Why do you, as people say, you feel extremely heavy? If I'm putting, if I'm being heavy, I cannot attack. I have to choose. I can be heavy just to pin them, take the energy out to make them suffer. But the moment that I decide to attack, I can only be heavy if I'm sitting up straight. That's when my, all my weight can drops down. If I'm high, then I'm sitting on your chest and on your solar plexus. That's the worst position to be seated on the person because that's where he breathes. So you're in a high mount, sitting up straight. That's when you can, I can be very heavy. I can make people feel my weight and be very uncomfortable, but I'm not in a position to attack. The moment that I wanna attack, my body has to lean forward. I have to approach the neck or the arms. The moment that I do that, my weight comes off my hips. It goes to my knees, the weight is off you. But at that point, if you have- Now I'm attacking, I'm no longer heavy on you. But you want to be at that point to remove any of the defenses they have or some of the defenses by getting their elbows- Now I'm like either getting, trying to get your collar or bringing your elbow across to attack the armlock. So what are some interesting details along the way that are tough to get to figure out? What were the big leaps for you from white belt to the best in the world? It's, you're trying to attack the neck, putting one hand in the collar. You're priving yourself the hand to pace it on the floor. So now you're vulnerable to get breached, to get rollover. Cause if your hands are free trying to roll you over, you're stopped. The moment that you put your hand in the person's collar, now you have to be very careful with your body positioning. Very careful. The distribution of the weight. Yeah, and how high you sit, how tall your upper body goes. And then the biggest challenge comes as you're trying the second hand. That's the, for the choke, that's the biggest challenge. The second hand. Because you already have, you know, you already don't have one hand. Now you are trying the second hand. And if one of my hand is in, you as a, defending yourself have two hands. One hand is already on one side. This side is getting attacked. You have two hands blocking that. I have one hand. There's no help for that hand. I cannot remove anything. That's the biggest challenge. Getting one hand getting past two and not getting rollover. But I also have two hands on bottom. I have two hands and can also turn and do all kinds of stuff. Yeah. And my whole mind and everything is focused on that second hand. Yeah. It's a big challenge. It's hard. Very hard. Is there an art to getting the first hand into a place where you... It's less of an art because it's easier. I'll say most times I get my first hand in is when you're trying some move. You're trying to scape, you're pushing. I get the first hand in as an opportunity. And it's gonna sit there for a while. And now... And I go as deep as I can. So the first hand, because the second hand is the hardest, I have to compensate the first hand to be as deep as I can. If I cannot get the first hand in deep, I won't try the second. I need that first hand deep. Then I go for the second. And it's deep and everything is super tight? Super tight. The first hand has to be super tight. Otherwise, the chance of failing is very big. Okay. Does the opponent usually feel like they're screwed at that point also? Not as you put in the first hand in. The moment that I position myself just prior to attempt the second hand, I think the way my body is positioned, the way I'm collapsing with my weight and they feel this like this is terrible. Yeah, how long did it take you to figure out how to reposition your weight once the first hand is in? Very quickly. Because the weight get breached out. Okay. So that there's a good feedback loop there. Because one mistake you're out. Like one off positioning you out. But you still have to do that against the best people in the world. Yeah. Where's the way out for most people? Like if you were in Mount against Prashasha or some of the best defenses in the world. The way out is to, obviously is to defend themselves and prevent the first hand to get deep. And I'll say the best thing that they could do is try to change my positioning on the mount in a way that push me to a very low mount. Try to change the way I'm dominating you not to be, get me off the high mount pretty much. Are you always, is it a slow, is it a fast thing to go from low to fast mount? A high mount. Slow, very slow. Because I need to beat your arms. Because you're holding me down. And the arms need to come out. It's a slow process. Okay. And you just, is there like a... Yeah. It's so I use my legs against your arms. So it's my legs pushing your arms. But how do you get them? How do you get your legs into the elbows? As long as it's, you know, it has to come under the tip of your elbow. Cause now the legs will start forcing your arms up. So your legs aren't like spread out there. No. They're in. Your elbow cannot get inside my leg. Because that means I'm in a very low mount. And then I cannot attack. Cause I cannot ignore that. Cause the moment that I attack, that will, you will start pushing my leg to push me up. What's the secret to getting the second hand in? There's two ways. Either you go four fingers inside, which is the hardest because with the moment that your two hands are defending, you'll be blocking the way. And I cannot clear and attack two hands against one. So I go thumb and I go behind the ear. Yep. So my grip goes, because for you to defend, you need to get there. Yep. And when you get there, you elevate your elbow, expose the arm lock. So it's hard. So you put the thumb in and then there's the dreaded, like the other person just waits for you to loop the arm over. Yeah, but that, this over. Once you get the thumb in, it's over. Okay. No. But when I'm there, it's, if I get the, cause they're bridging, you know, they try and, I'm not using their hand to post. Now your head is, My head is very close to the floor. When I'm there, I'm not using my hand to post. So when I'm on the floor, when I've tried to bridge, and you know, my forehead would touch the floor, that would be used as a hand. But it's not on the floor? Not necessarily. Okay. Because if it's on the floor, my body's collapsed over you. Yeah. So there's no place for my hand, for me to work on your neck. So I need some space between us. So I don't completely collapse. Maybe you can bob up and down. Yeah, yeah. But I try to keep a gap between us. Okay. So that pursuit that takes many, many, many, many years, you're a dream of sushi. The, doing the simple thing, that's not so simple, but it kind of looks simple, over and over and over and over and over, and presumably getting much better over time. It becomes very simple. It becomes very simple. But you're picking up details probably along the way. There's wisdom along the way. What is that? Is that, there's like lessons that you just kind of accumulate over time. Like one training session you'll see, maybe like the positioning of the thumb, like this detailed positioning of the thumb or something like this. And then you like, okay. You like load that in. That will be very basic because there is not that many different ways. Maybe one, two. I just do one. Any other is not as strong. Because it's about getting a strong grip on your collar. I mean, the thumb is, the thumb goes inside, you know, either the thumb in or four fingers in, but it's getting a strong grip on the collar. As long as, you know, this is just holding and feeling strong. So that's just two options. So it's the dynamic stuff along the way. And then some of that is timing too. It's timing. Are you also like making people, like faking them out, making them think about something else? No, not at that point. That's not, because I cannot fake anything else at that point. Because I will have to change my positioning to, you know, maybe to fake an armlock. Then I have to move out from that. So then I will lose the control I have. So what's the process towards mastery? If you were to convert that to something that generalizes beyond Jiu-Jitsu, how can you get that good at a simple thing? Practice. And what- That simple. The same exact thing over and over. It's just a matter of how long it will take. It will take you. So all- Ha ha ha ha. That's true. That's true. I mean, like I said, look how long it took me. People give up along the way. There is intricacies to that journey towards perfection. There's a lot of people that do Jiu-Jitsu for decades and don't get better. No, because they don't train the way they should. They don't train to get better. They train to get tough. That's a big difference. Most people, they train to get tough, so they are tough. Like we were talking before, they don't practice their weakness. You wanna be good at, you wanna be really good at Jiu-Jitsu, you have to practice your weakness, not your strength. You have to practice everything, but you have to be equally strong in every position. They all exact the same. Your guard top-bottom, side control top-bottom, turtle, half guard, mount, back. I mean, you pick, take down. And then you get into details of escaping triangle, applying the triangle, escaping armlock, different scenarios of, the one thing is defending the armlock when you have your arms very close to your body. The other thing is to defend the arms when your arm is almost getting, and then when he got your arm. So there's so many things to practice that you need to repeat them over and over again until you're confident enough that when you get there, you have a chance. And you can do the same kind of thing for even the final stages of a cross choke from mount. Everything. I mean, of course, like you don't practice escaping the armlock with a full arm straight, because that's gone. I mean, you practice, you practice escaping the armlock when he takes your arm, you have a chance of trying to escape, but you don't practice. You know, okay, take my arm. When I say go, go, I mean, you got, you pop the arm. That is like you get injured doing that. Escaping the cross collar choke, it's, I mean, escape not letting the person get there. You can escape, you can practice escaping triangles, because it's like, you have a way better chance of escaping triangle than, okay, mount to me, put both hands in my neck. I mean, it's over, you know, don't be there. What's the best submission in Jiu Jitsu? The choke, I would say. From which position? If I gave you a billion dollars to start in a position, like in a submission, and you only get the billion, if you get the submission, which one would you start? Cross collar choke and mount. Cross collar choke and mount. Not from the back? No, you have a better chance escaping from the back. Really? Yeah. Even with the hooks? Even with everything. Do you think some people will disagree with you? I don't care. I have a better escape. I have a better chance escaping from the back than if you mount to me, put my hands on my neck. So, if you were facing yourself, and I will give you a billion dollars to escape, you would pick? From the back. Thousand times over. Like, really? No comparison. You have like with hooks, with like a triangle? Doesn't matter. You can do whatever you want. Like a body triangle? Okay. Okay. Really? Like a thousand times over. No questions. So, to you, the mount is a super controlling position. It's not just... Because cross collar choking the mount, the moment they put both hands on my neck, you know, you have to, your arms needs to be very close to your body to attack. So, that means there's very little space between us. So, that means there's very little escape space for you to work on your escape. And the moment that you cannot bridge, let's suppose I have, you know, the person has a good mount, so you cannot bridge him off. What else? You don't have space to try to work on your defense. Being in the back, I have all this space around me to work on my defense and my arms. I have the mobility to bring them anywhere. So, I, because of that, it gives you and me a much better chance. And you cannot, I can move my body. If you're on my back, you cannot pin me. I cannot take you off my back. First, I need to defend the choke, but you have no control over my body. So, that means there's still a lot of movement that I can try to use to escape. In the mount, there's no movement. I'm pinned down, I cannot move, and I have no space between us to escape. Well, the argument against that, this is great, is that on the bottom of mount, I do have my hands between, so you're saying they're pinned, there's nothing. Between where? I mean, you could get them in theory. You could somehow, you could. But there's no, you can't, but then there's no space. They will be squeezed between our bodies. If it's an incredible mount. No, it does not mount. Like, how standing, if I put both hands on your neck, if I'm gonna go for the cross collar choke, after I get my hands in, the next step is to pull you close to me. So, it's this, my arms need to be close to me. But I can put, there's the hands that could do something. They can come in, but they are very limited space between us. Yes, yes, no, I mean to push your body away, to decrease the power of the choke. Only if we're standing, not if your back is against the floor. Okay, the argument against the mount is, or the argument for back controls being the most dominant position, is even though I have hands, I can't really use them effectively, as effective. Not in the mount. There's no space. In the mount, there's no space. There's no space. You can try. I mean, you can squeeze your hand in. I mean, there's still things that you could do, but they're so limited. So, if you pulled the 100 best competitors of all time, what do you think they would answer to that? Do you think most would agree with you? I don't care. You will show me their skills, their ability to see. Okay, so the perfect mount versus the perfect back control. There's no question. Okay, there's no question. For me, I mean, argue with me, like show me, because I'm not being stubborn, because I'm being- Scientific. Exactly. So, explain it to me why the back, it would be harder. It would be better to your position to finish the mount. If you can explain it to me why, I might change my mind. I was trying to, but I don't have the cred. I'm like a middle school science student trying to talk to Einstein here. Okay, besides you, who do you think is the greatest Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time? Can you make the case for some of them, Marcelo, Buccecha, Leandro Lowe? I'll have to go with Buccecha, because look at how many titles he has. I mean, he has by far more than Marcelo. Marcelo stopped quite early. Leandro Lowe has eight, but Buccecha is better than him. What do you think makes Buccecha so good? He's a heavyweight that moves like a lightweight. He moves very fast, but he's very agile for his size. So the agility combined with aggression. Yeah, so it's very hard to control him, because he moves fast and he's 112 kilos, 115 sometimes, or 110, I'm not sure, but he's about around that. So 240 in pounds. So when you're agile, 240 pounds, that makes it very hard to control you. What about making the case for some others? What about the little guys? What about Marcelo, if you were to make the case for him being the strongest? What makes Marcelo good? Marcelo Garcia is extremely technical. I mean, I think he's one of my favorite Jiu-Jitsu fighters, because in a technical way, I think he's probably one of the best. So raw technique and a bunch of different positions for submissions. He's not very powerful. Physically, he's not very strong, but he can make himself very strong, and his technique is very, very high level. Have you ever trained with him? No, I fought him twice. Yeah. But he's much smaller than me. What happened in those matches? The first fight, I tapped him, I think, five minutes. In which submission? Choke from the back. Collar choke from the back. And the second time I beat him by points, but a very large, I think 12-2. Actually, just to continue, I wonder if John Donahue would agree with you about mountain back. I can't wait to hear. This is a bear versus a lion conversation. But I'm looking, there's statistics about, I'm not letting this go. There's statistics about, oh, look at that, Hodger. What do you know, looking at Hodger Gracie's statistics for most successful submissions? Choke from the back is the most. So how do you explain that, Mr. Scientist? Because people panic when I'm out. They turn the back. I choke them out. That's one explanation. But for people, it is interesting that, of course, this doesn't capture, but this captures a lot of your major matches. And we should say that you've submitted most of your opponents, so you rarely win on points. You usually win submissions. Choke from back is most of them, then cross choke from mountain. Arm bar is a lot, too. So 18 from choke from back, 12 cross choke, 10 arm bar, five RNC, rear naked is for no gi. Okay. So Ezekiel. Ezekiel is very powerful. I took, I used, he's a strong weapon. Yeah, also from mountain. Also from mountain. Also from mountain. That's when you can't get the one hand in. No, because the Ezekiel, most times I use against people, is the attack that as soon as I get to the mount, when they're trying to escape the open up, and I get them. It has to be at that initial timing. So it's not a thing you use to bother them in order to create. Either I get it right away, or I don't bother trying much. Because you need to keep one hand behind the head. And you're naturally on that position as soon as you mount, most of the times. And the moment that you mount someone, no one accept that they go mounted, they're gonna explode to get out. So holding the head, it gives you a better way to dominate them initially, to deal with that explosiveness on the initial, on the beginning. And then, but then you have to let go to try it. You're very limited holding the head. In terms of goats, Shandji, I feel like he doesn't get enough credit that he deserves. He had an extremely dominant performance in competition. What about Salo and Shandji Hibero? What are your thoughts about what makes them so good? You had a bunch of tough matches with Shandji and Salo. Eight times. Yeah, for eight times, Shandji. I fought Salo once. I think I'm bringing up a sore point. Oh, did Shandji tap when you, or did the time right out? And that was the last time you guys faced each other. Yeah, 2008. That was incredible to watch also. I think you pulled guard with one minute left working towards attacking. I mean, it's probably very tough to get anything. And for people who don't know, time ran out. You had something that looked like an arm lock. And Shandji looked like he may be tapping, but it looked like he might be just celebrating, which is most likely. I'm not sure. I'm not sure because I think his arm was just straight as an arm time finish. So I'm not sure if he was tapping to let go, time is up. Because I would say most likely the time was up. Yeah, and also there's a thing where you start, you realize there's only three, two seconds left. You just kind of start celebrating. You realize that Hadrian's not gonna be able to finish his arm bar in the time left, so you start celebrating. No, I think he tapped to say the time is up. The time is up. Anyway, what do you think, the longevity especially is impressive with Shandji? How long? I think he doesn't get credit as much as he deserves because he pushed his career very far. And the last few years, he was on his best. So if he would have stopped before, people would remember him on his highest, but he kind of pushed more than his peak, let's say. How hard is it for you to walk away? We'll talk about the journey into MMA as well, but you basically, especially with the second match against Pucheshi, basically walked away on top, beating arguably the greatest competitor of all time, and just walking away. It wasn't that hard, to be honest, because that was something that I was considering for a while, because the last few years of my career, let's say, it was fighting MMA at the same time I was fighting Jiu-Jitsu, and it's very challenging to do both. Like, there's not another person who ever did that, because the training is a confliction with the way you train. Everybody who start doing MMA, start focusing on MMA, their Jiu-Jitsu gets worse, because they stop training with the gi. Everybody, no exception. Was your Jiu-Jitsu also getting worse? No, because I made sure I kept training with the gi, and I kept fighting at least the World Championship once a year. That was my goal. I'm like, I'm gonna go for MMA, but I love Jiu-Jitsu, and I still wanna fight at the highest level. So I kept fighting once a year for a few years. It was a challenge, especially because the two or three times when I competed at the Worlds, it was right after I MMA fight I had. And no gi, you don't have the grips. So my grips, it made a big difference on my grip. So I was weaker grip-wise. So I felt that. So I knew it was like, it's unnecessary risk, because if I cannot be 100%, so why am I doing this? But I'm stubborn, I love Jiu-Jitsu. It's like I love fighting Jiu-Jitsu. I never loved MMA. I've liked it, but I think if it were Gracie, I wouldn't have done it. So the thing you felt the most is the grips. Yeah. Because you won a gi World Championship without gripping. No. Like just pretending it's no gi match, they get to grip you, but you don't. No. So grips are essential. Of course. I mean, how can you choke someone? Like if your grips are weak, your forearms will fatigue, and then you will have no power, and then you cannot do anything. Yeah. You can still arm lock. So I meant more not for the submission, but for the control of the game of it, the dance. But you need to grip to get there. To get there. And if your grips are weak. But you also have grips in no gi. Can't you use those grips? No. It's a thought experiment. So like I'm trying to understand how essential. When I get a no gi guy go fight with a gi, they panic. They panic? Of course. Everyone panics. A bear panics when they're in the water with a shark, but that doesn't mean the bear can't still win when it stops panicking and relaxes. It's not possible. That's another discussion. Can a bear beat a shark in the water? Actually, I need to, maybe a polar bear, because they're pretty good at swimming. Okay. I say not possible for the no gi guy to win. The bear is a further discussion. What was to you the biggest difference between mixed martial arts and jujitsu? What are some interesting differences, some interesting insights, even just about the grappling within both sports? So the biggest difference for me between MMA and jujitsu is first is the speed. Like jujitsu, you know, like a 10 minute match, I can take my time. There's no dangers that forces me to move fast. MMA, you have to be 100% sharp in fast from first second of the fight, because punches are coming, you can get knocked out anytime. One mistake, you're out. Jujitsu don't have that. Like it's, I don't have to worry about quick submissions, because it's all about the way my body's positioned. You know, my grips is easy to avoid, it's easier to see it coming. Like it's like a quick submission, a surprise, it only works if you make a mistake, if you're not correct positioning. Otherwise it's impossible. It's extremely difficult. MMA is not, I mean, one split second mistake, and when the person comes, you have to respond. You have to match his pace. I mean, you can slow down, but it's like you're forced to respond. So it's much faster. It's a lot more physical, a lot more. And you need to be physical, much better conditioning, faster, it's explosiveness, it's much harder. Is it possible in the MMA to calm things down? If they change the rules, yeah. Five minute rules, no. Ah, I see. So like, I just meant actually technically speaking, is there a ways to take an opponent that's being exceptionally aggressive? You can, clinch. But then he takes you down, he keeps moving. Something is hard to control that pace. You can, you don't, if you play defense, you save more energy than if you try to be the aggressor. You respond. And even getting to the clinch is very difficult. Yeah, you have no way to hold yourself there. So that was the biggest challenge for me in MMA, is the speed, because I'm a very slow start fighter. If you look at my matches, I start very slow, because if I go hard, I fatigue faster. So for me, that was the hardest part of is to start fast. What about on the ground? Is there something different, more challenging on the ground? Being in the bottom, yes. There's punches, punch coming. How fundamentally different is Jiu Jitsu with punches on the ground? Changes everything, everything. Which parts? The distance that you allow your opponent to be on you, the techniques that you choose to apply. Your body has to be aware of the punches, and you are a lot more limited on your attacks. So you're known for your close guards. How does your close guard have to adjust? How does the positioning of your hands have to adjust when you're on the bottom of close guard? So in the guard, especially in the close guard, you have to either keep the person very close to you, or you have to kick him away. That's in the guard, it's either I'm hugging you, or get away from him. And in Jiu Jitsu, you're allowed to have a middle? Yeah, in Jiu Jitsu, you can allow the person to be. What about getting armlock or triangle submissions from the guard? Is that fundamentally different? Because you don't have the middle game? It's much harder. There's barely no open guard in MMA, very little. Because the open guard, there's a distance between you and him. There's a distance, you cannot control. It's much harder to control that punch coming. And I have to position myself a way to block that. And it limited my attacks, my options of attacks. Is there a reason, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you do open guard much in Jiu Jitsu and Nogi. Is there a reason for that? It's harder with the explosive person. Because when they're moving fast, then you have to try to slow them down. So you like guards that allow you to control the person? Yeah. And closed guard is the ultimate control? Yeah. It's not ultimate control, but closed guard puts you in a position that I'm attacking and you're defending. You cannot attack me from my closed guard. I'm... We can agree that there might be one or two attacks, but it's like very, very, very limited and depends who you're fighting against. I hate the closed guard. Being on top against a good closed guard is very... No one likes it. It's terrible. It's horrible. Yeah, it's one-sided. So you're in the guard and it's one-sided. The person at the bottom has the advantage. I can be completely relaxed in my closed guard and I cannot be completely relaxed. You know what the most annoying thing is? It's somebody who is both good and extremely confident with the closed guard. Because they have that smug energy about them. They know how much unpleasant, how much work it takes to pass this. Anyway, especially people with longer legs. Is there something you wish you did differently in how you started training at MMA in that trajectory, in figuring out how to train, how to get good? Like what have you learned about getting good at MMA from having done it? If you were to start now, for example. I think I would have to dedicate it more. I didn't dedicate enough. Both like literally time, number of training sessions. Training, yeah. But also mental. Training wise, physical. I think a lot more the physical part of it. The strikes, everything. The strikes from the beginning. It's because, I mean, I love Jiu-Jitsu. I truly love all the aspects of it. Fighting, training, the practice, the competition. I don't have that for MMA. So it's hard to give your heart to it. Something that you don't have the passion to it. Like Jiu-Jitsu, I gave my heart to it. I did everything that I had to. MMA, I never, I didn't do that. So that's why it was... I won't say it was wrong for me to do it because I don't regret doing it. I always, looking back as a kid when I decided to take Jiu-Jitsu for life, I already knew that some point I would have to do MMA. It's almost like that's the path of a great see. When you're ready, you go do MMA. So there was a duty versus a love. Yeah, there was not a choice. There was like, I have to. It's just the life I took, it will lead that way. Are you proud of that step? Go against the natural love and towards more duty. I think I don't regret it because if I hadn't done it, I would feel there was something missing. So I don't regret doing it. I would regret not doing it. The tricky thing is the choice to go to MMA could have compromised your ability to win against Buccecha, and it didn't. And it's a fascinating case study. It still doesn't make sense to me. After all those years, you're able to come back and go against the best person in the world and beat him. Yeah, and I had to because the first fight we had, I had something stuck in my throat for a long time. So you think about that. Oh yeah, I'm like, as soon as that first fight finished, I had something that got stuck in my throat that I already, at that point I knew I'm gonna have to fight him again. I knew, I always knew. There's no choice, I have to. Oh man, all right. Well, in terms of Nogi, who do you think is the best Nogi competitor of all time? There's no question, it's Gordon. I don't think it's right to say the best competitor of all time because he's still very young. I think that's something that he can be, either in the end of when the person... You don't want him to get lazy. You know what I'm saying? No, no, I mean, but you cannot praise someone in the middle of his career. So you cannot call him the best ever. He's 26 or 27. So it's, I mean, he's great, he's very good. He's ahead of all of other competitors, I think. And I mean, he's having an amazing career. He's doing amazingly well. So I mean, when he finished, when he finally retired, then you can argue like... You know what, there's wisdom in that. It matters how you finish, right? Of course. It's very interesting. I think that Nogi is relative new, that Nogi scene. That was not a scene before. I think he started now on his generation, his time. Because before, when I was competing, Nogi was just ADCC. There's nothing else. Every two years, first was only in the Emirates. You had to go there to compete. So there was not even a scene. There was like this one tournament that gives a lot of money to competitors, to fighters. And brings fighters from other modalities. Mark Carr, Van Arsdale, some wrestlers, Greco-Roman. They can compete against each other. And they create that set of rules, try not to favor anyone. So that was it. So you cannot be called the greatest Nogi of all time if you only have one tournament every two years. Only in the Emirates, they have to be invited to. But I think now, it grew a lot. Now we have so many different tournaments. Now we have a scene. You have people that only train Nogi, they're fully dedicated to Nogi. And you have supervised different tournaments. So now it's professionally. You can do just Nogi now, which before was unheard of it. Because you have one or two tournaments. If you cannot be called a Nogi fighter, fighting once every two years, twice every two years. Yeah, now there's entire systems that are optimized for Nogi that could be fundamentally different. Like what do you think about the body lock? Like this passing with the body lock. I don't know if you get an understanding of it. Yeah, I think it's okay. It's a popular way to, what is it? Maybe to apply. To stay tight. To stay tight. Very close to your opponent. So he can't create distance, he can push away. But somehow it shuts down the hips as well. Yeah. Makes it more difficult to. Yeah, kind of trap your legs. Your back gets stuck on against the floor. Are you like scientifically curious about these new developments? Do you think, do you have answers in your head to them? Most. So body lock is one interesting one. Obviously foot locks is another. And that don't mean just the foot locks, but the whole like control aspect of foot locks. That's interesting. And there's other interesting stuff. John is really into the wrestling aspect. But not wrestling wrestling, but wrestling everywhere. Jiu-Jitsu at all levels of the plane. That's very interesting because obviously Jiu-Jitsu has not really been, unlike like freestyle wrestling and so on, has not been like a systematic, scientific, rigorous exploration of wrestling. It's like you're on your feet and you're on the ground. Not, not into mix. There's a lot of interesting. John is academic. He tried to, you know, numbers, mathematics, everything. Well, you kind of are too. Yeah. No, I mean, I am. Because you have to understand what you're doing. You know, there's a, everything there's a step by step. Like logistically, like details, every single move. There's a reason for it. You know, there's things around that happens. It's the more you know, the better you are, right? The more knowledgeable compare it or whatever. So I think with the foot locks, with the no-gi, like if you look back, you know, if you think of, used to be seen as a really bad thing to attack the foot. It wasn't seen as a good options of attack mainly. What is that? Respectable gentlemen don't attack the leg or what? No, because if you look back, you know, the tournaments, the, when they were created, all the rules and everything else was to simulate a real fight with no punches. But now having a gi. I mean, if you ask what is Jiu-Jitsu? Like what are you trying? What's the main goal of Jiu-Jitsu? To dominate your opponent. What's the main goal of fighting? It's we're fighting, it's of course, submission is the ultimate goal. But the, you know, before that, the main goal is to dominate you. Like we're fighting, I have to dominate you. And then the submission comes. And foot locks, it's, I don't require any domination on you. I don't need to be in a dominant position to attack your foot. And if I attack your foot, you're still free to knock me out. If your body goes down to my foot, I can still come close to you or stand up and I'll punch you. So it's not a good position to be in a real fight. Yeah, to attacking the foot. I mean, how many times you've seen that going bad? That went bad in MMA fight. I mean, of course you had, you know, some sort of success with the hiru-hiko. It's no questions, but how many times went wrong? People were knocked out attacking the foot. So you can't say it's the best position to be. It's okay to go, but it's a very high risky position to go. So that's why it's not in a real situation. It's not seen as a good thing. So when you translate that to Jiu-Jitsu, when attacking the foot, it's not seen as a good thing because when you reflect that to a real situation, it's not gonna go down well. So it was always seen as a easy way out, you know, easy cut. You're trying to do the easy path. You can't pass my guard, you can't dominate me. And then you're trying to attack my foot. That's why it was always seen as a, you know, not as a best, a great submission, a way to win. But the sad side effect of that is it was completely underdeveloped because of that. Exactly. Of course. So people never really developed that. But now the tournaments, the fighting, it got completely, not completely, but it got some, it's not longer seen as, you know, as a simulation of the real thing. Now it's a sport. It's only seen as a sport. So now it doesn't matter if you attack my foot, you cannot punch me. So why is it bad now to attack the foot? It's just not seen as a bad thing anymore. And now it got really developed. I don't know. That's another bear versus shark question, but you know, there is, in a street self-defense situation, it's possible to imagine where foot locks would be effective for a highly, but I guess if you invest 10,000 hours, it's better to invest it in chokes. Yeah, to dominate. If I'm, you know, if I were fighting, it's way better for me to be on your side control, on the mount, where I can pin you, be completely safe, than to stay inside your legs trying to attack your foot. But- People would argue that there's a lot of very dominant controlling positions in the whole foot log game, right? It is, but it can go bad very quickly. Yeah. Just- No, I mean, there's some great ways to control someone that he cannot escape, but he can go bad very quickly. That's the thing. Well, even back control can go bad very quickly on the street. So mount, I don't know. Is mount a really good position? But then there's no good position then. There's no good position. There's no- Every position, there's a risk, okay? Attacking the foot is a way higher risk than side control, mount, back. As I'm saying, the back is not the best way to pin someone unless you underneath me. Because if you try to rotate, I can sacrifice the back and just allow you to be in the mount. Okay, there you go. Would you prefer mount or back mount where they're flattened? Like- Still mount. That's all right. Thought I'd get you. No. So yeah, going back to Gordon, what do you think makes that guy so good? We were just at ADCC, you get to see him historically dominate performance. First, his dedication, the way he trains and how much he trains. And of course you have to add his mind, his belief to really try to be good, the best. So I don't know what his goals are, but I know he's tried to be better than his opponents. So his belief are very strong. His dedication, he probably trains more than everybody else. I mean, I haven't seen firsthand it, but from what I hear interviews with him and everybody else training, the way everybody trains. Yeah. Trying to, for my little knowledge I have, I'll bet he trains more than everybody else. And most important, how he trains. I kind of already knew, but when I heard John podcast with you the other day, John was explaining the preparation, the training for the ADCC, and that kind of gave me a very strong idea how they've been training all these years. So when we said, you have to work on your weakness, so you have no weakness, he trains a lot on his weakness. Which not everyone does that. If you look other, I'm not gonna name, but other main schools, like very strong competitors, great competitors, super tough people, but super tough, not great. Because they train, they spar very hard, that makes them tough. If you wanna be good, you have to work on your weakness. Because when you spar, like we're saying, how many times you're gonna practice escaping a bad position, like a submission hold or a pinning position, side control, mount, it's very little the amount of time you get to spend on those positions if you don't start there. So that, he's very smart the way he trains. And part of that is also cerebral, it's not just putting yourself in those positions, but talking through different ideas. Like they talk, they like experiment. It's very like, at first glance, it's like philosophical almost. You're trying to create systems constantly, you're trying to understand how this fits into this big picture. And then he goes back to what is Jiu Jitsu, what is fighting, is fighting for dominance. He's fighting for the ultimate dominance positions, which is back and mount, there's no others. And from that you finish. So if you look back at his, over the years of his past fights, before he used to mainly focus in legs, and over the past few years, now he's mainly focusing in finishing from the mountain back. But that's when he became really good. So part of that is Mr. John Donahue, what do you think, you've known John for a long time, what makes that guy interesting, special, and good? What have you learned about Jiu Jitsu and life from John Donahue? He's super smart, I mean, eccentric, and he lives through Jiu Jitsu. He's 24-7 thinking better ways to teach how to make his competitors better. And that as a coach, when you have that dedication as a coach, that it makes the most difference for your athletes, like which other big team you have that coach with that motivation. All the other schools is either someone that competes, that push the training, like André Galvao, he's one of the competitors, so he brings the hype in everyone else, but he doesn't have the time, he doesn't spend the time working individually. I mean, I'm sure he does, but it's limited because he's also a competitor. And looking most of the other big schools, like you don't have that, now all the leaders, the main coaches for the other big schools, they have other things in their lives, they don't fully dedicate it to the athletes. John does, look at the interview, he spends hours and hours a day studying how can I wait the system to make his athletes better. Look at the results. I enjoy just sending back and forth, you can actually just get him, you control him essentially by sending interesting videos and you could just see his mind, he's gonna do research on that. I kept sending him videos of bears, because he claimed that a lion would beat a bear, because, I'd love to get your take on this, okay. So the bear is much bigger, much stronger, but his take is that the bears don't have experience of fighting to the death, that's not part of the culture, they're more scared. In fact, he keeps sending me footage of even a small mountain lion scaring a bear away, because they don't want to fight. So his idea is that it really matters your life experience, how much you fight, it's not necessarily the skill, like the dimensions, the characteristics you have. But then I send him, yeah I'll show you. People should Google this, it's bears fighting of any kind. It's pretty much the most epic thing ever. Here I'll show you. Like look at these guys, the cardio though is interesting. You know it's funny, I was gonna mention that, because I was flipping through internet, I came around that video. Look how big these guys are. No they're huge, but see they don't bite each other. You think it's just play? They're trying to, no intimidating, because they don't want to get hurt. So they try to size each other up, you see the whole fighting is sizing each other up. There's a lot of pushing, and the fur is so thick, so the claw doesn't really damage much. They're using the tree, so maybe they, yeah. I mean there is bites, but see there's very little. So the whole time they're trying to intimidate the other one, like winning the fight by their size. And mostly about, like the way drunk college kids fight, which is like some kind of display of dominance versus actual. Yeah, they're not fighting to kill. And bear or tiger, they fight to finish. Unless the other one runs away, like one will die. Yeah, well lions and tigers. Yeah, but look at the cardio, look how bad their cardio is. I wonder how, my favorite part is when one of them just like stands behind a tree, and says, all right. He's holding. He's. He's getting the breath. Let me catch my breath here. He sits down, he's like, all right, you can't, it's over. It's like, it's the equivalent in the forest, tapping out, all right, all right, you got me. Let me just, just catch my breath. Look, they're both like, just shot. But see, the thing is that I was trying to make an argument for is that we get this rare footage. It's not rare, I mean, there's like hundreds of videos, but it's not millions of videos, because there's a huge number of bears. And I was trying to say that there's some bad ass bear we don't know about, because he just goes in there and just does work. And we just don't know about it, because he's like, see, the thing is, if you kill a lot of other animals, you probably have a territory that nobody's gonna mess with you, so it's very hard to catch the, like the Hodge Gracie of bears, you know? He's just gonna be sitting there doing nothing. So, I don't know, I don't know. I feel like, of course, when you corner him, John will say that if you put a bear and a lion in a cage, the bear will win if it's like, if it's, if they're forced to be to the death, but I don't know. Oh, let me ask you another ridiculous thing before I ask you serious questions. So, Joe Rogan thinks that a tie is an effective way to attack somebody. I don't know if, I can't believe I haven't, in the time in Vegas, I didn't talk to you about this. I think it's not. Have you ever explored this as the best choker in the world? Have you ever explored the use, because like, Jujitsu has the jacket, but the tie, to me, is a pretty shitty way to choke somebody. Like, intuitively, he thinks like it's a good way, but it can slide around. It feels like, it feels like there's no, there's no way to really pin. You would need to. Right, so you use it the way you use a belt, essentially. Yeah, but then. I would guess so. Yeah. I don't think it's, and I think if it gives you, it actually has the reverse effect, which it gives you the false sense of confidence that you can use it, and instead, it'll just distract you. So he think it's a stronger way than the collar? Or just a stronger way? Yeah. Stronger than the collar? Stronger than the collar, yeah, yeah. I don't see how, maybe, just like. Well, in a street fight scenario, right? Like. But by the time you grab the tie, the guy goes punch your nose. Yeah. What George St. Pierre thinks is the best use of the tie is to actually, what do you call that? So basically to off balance them. Which is an interesting point to like. I mean, could that can be used to. Yeah. Well, you could use the jacket for this kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't really fully tested it. I'll say jacket or tie for that perspective of off balancing the person. It can be, yeah, because you have control of the person's neck. The collar, the jacket moves. So for the purpose of off balancing the person, I would agree with George. See, the thing is, that's the thing about martial arts, is you can say all kinds of bullshit. But until you really test it in over a period of years, the competition, you won't really know. I think like, that's where my gut says, just how easily the tie moves. My gut says the collar. There is something really powerful about the jacket. There's like the way it sits. I mean, the fact that the arms trap it from rotating. Like it's a weird piece of clothing. It's a really dangerous piece of clothing that we put on ourselves. Yeah. And it's kind of cool that we've developed this whole martial arts system that allows you to use that to do a lot of damage. It's very interesting. So when we're saying something that you develop over the years of practice over and over again, going back to the fissures of the mantle back, by experience of attacking people, people always had a much higher chance of escaping from the back than from my mount. So it's, I feel if I mount and you get both my hands on your neck, you cannot escape. If my hands are deep, it's over. Like that, I don't remember anyone escaping, but I do remember if my hands are deep on your collar, or even your naked choke is still a hassle, like it's not clean. You have some data on this. Is there some aspect to how your body is, the characteristics of your body, that fits a particular set of techniques? So if we just look at Jiu-Jitsu broadly, do you see most techniques being able to work for most people? Like what you're saying about mount versus back control, is this, is it possible for a different body type the mount is not as effective? Yeah, of course. I'll say very big people, they should mount. You don't think of yourself as big? No, big, I mean fat. Oh. They should stay off the mount. Why is that? That's a car. It's mobility. It's like, it's, I think, you know, you don't see any, you know, like there was a few ways, like 160 kilos, like, you know, two pounds, I don't know, 270 pounds of a lot of fat. It's, you need a bit of mobility, and that would, it would play against you. So a great- Even back. A great mount. Back is the same. Requires mobility. Yeah. Okay. So even though it doesn't look like you're moving very much when you're doing mount, that requires mobility? Yeah. Because you have to reposition and weight redistribution. Constantly adjusting your body. All right. The legend goes, you got very good by training mostly with lower ranks. What was your training like in that environment? So when I first moved to London, I was 20 years old. I opened my school there, and I had nobody to train with. I had one guy that was teaching with me, a black belt, middleweight. He was good. And that's it. Barale was, he moved to the same, he moved to England the same time as I did, but he was in Birmingham. So we did got together, maybe twice a week, closer when we were preparing for something. If not, then not very often. As often as we could, but let's say not that often. And I had just color belt students. There was no one high level. There was no one world champion in any belt to train. Then you need to create a scenario that simulates, that can simulate, like a realistic fighting. So I think on that aspect, when people ask why do I have such a basic game, I think that also influenced me sharpen up all my skills when I moved there. Because if you practice with people lower level than you, you cannot, there's nothing to learn from them. Or you can learn things and practice with them. But I would say very complex things on them. It is not the best. So I sharpen up all my skills. So that when I really improved everything that I already knew to a higher level. But how can you sharpen something if the resistance is much lower level than? A purple belt can make it very hard for you to skip side control. Doesn't have to be a world champion black belt. It's, if it's one is holding you, it can be very hard. What about on the attack? How do you become literally by far the best person at the cross stroke from Mount by training with purple belts? It's sometimes purple belts defense way better than black belts. Okay, see a lot of people listening to that would be like that makes no sense, Hajo Gracie. How does that make any sense? Because like a lot of the black belts, even world champion, they get to the black belt, they're really good in what they do. Let's say in the guard, on top or in the bottom position. But their defense are not. Like very, very few people high level have a very good defense because they don't practice. Then that goes back to how you train. You can be very tough. Very tough will make you terrible defense because you're not gonna practice your weakness. So your weakness still gonna be terrible. You can have the best guard in the world, impossible to pass. The day people pass your guard, you're nothing. Like your guard is the highest level, but your side control defense are not. Your mount defense are not. So some purple belts, they practice the mount way more than the black belt did. So naturally the difference is better. So they get to experience the defensive position much, much, much more. And especially training with you, they get really good at defending. And then- Over and over again, you attack them with the same thing over and over again. They know what's coming, they will block. They will develop a defense over that. Way better than most other high level black belts. So both put yourself into really bad positions with lower ranks and just keep attacking the same way over and over and over. Yeah. And with that, you're able to be at the top of the world at the world championships. Yeah. I mean, can you give some, what was the preparation like to a world championship with lower ranks? I mean- I did a lot of boxing, a lot of conditioning. No, but the- So conditioning is a big part of it. Conditioning, yeah. But the one thing that helped me extremely living in England, in London, was training judo at the Budokai in London. That helped me massively because it gave me the motivation to learn something new. Because by then at the Budokai, the standup was, I'm sure today it is too, but by then it was even higher than it is today. Like there was some very high level judo guys training there. And the first time I went there, my standup was terrible compared to theirs. I mean, it was bad, but compared to them it was terrible. So I was getting thrown like a child. And that motivated me to keep coming back and get better. So that made my jiu-jitsu much stronger. I became, my base got better, my top game improved, my pressure game improved. Did, does Neil Adams train? Ray Stevens. Ray Stevens. No, when he, I've never met Neil Adams. Ray Stevens was- Have you met Neil Adams? Is that, he's the voice of judo. I don't know if you watched the tournaments. He's incredible. Yeah, Ray Stevens is a, you know, silver medalist in the Olympics. He won European, he won a lot. So you did some judo training. What's your favorite throw, like a Soto? Like you don't- Uchi Mata, I'll say. Uchi Mata. If I would pick one. So that made you better at jiu-jitsu as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And back then, like for the first, I'll say maybe three years, maybe four, I went to Brazil for like two months before every major tournament. So I say, you know, I moved away from the school and I really focused. I was really well prepared with my judo and everything else, sharpening up my skills. And then went to Brazil to train with like really high level people. So that way I would manage to compete in the highest level. What advice would you give to, let's start with a complete beginner. So, you know, a bunch of people come up to me. They still want to start doing jiu-jitsu. What advice would you give them? Try to absorb as much technique as you can and try to be as relaxed as you can. Don't, you know, don't desperately try to fight so hard. Like learn and move slow. Move slow and relax. That's the hardest thing to do. The hardest. You know what I find with people, it seems like it's hard to even know that you're not relaxed. It's like the introspection. They don't even know what it feels like to relax. Not even know they tense. Yeah, right. They try to relax you. Look how you see. What? What do you mean relax? I'm relaxed. Exactly, exactly. The arms are shaking. You feel it. And in terms of going slow, they're like, yeah, I'm going slow. No, you're not. Yeah, there's a grace and elegance of movement that you can probably pick up from a lot of other disciplines. Like for me, I think that came from just learning piano at a young age. That's for, I think any mobility thing to learn how to move efficiently, you have to know how to relax. So it's just the fact that you can, like the body can be tense or it could be relaxed. Just knowing that fact. Now imagine you show the stance. Yeah. You think you'll play piano well. No, everything has to be relaxed. I guess some of that is mind too, but just knowing that and being self-aware. But see, like even me approaching a thing, I'm not, I don't know anything about being a beginner. You're going to tense up. And like it actually takes a conscious effort to think to relax. I mean, that's- Massively. That's why learning things as an adult is much harder than as a child. Like it's very hard. And as an adult, it's like to get to the highest level, it's not possible because you will never relax the way you should. Yeah. Relax in the way that you become like water, but then you solidify in the right places. Yeah. Yeah. Is there advice you can give to an adult? So like somebody that has a job, like a hobbyist, like how to progress, how to get- I mean, train. There's just need to train as much as you can. Not, you know, five, seven days a week because you're going to get injured. I mean, two or three times a week to start is the best way to initiate your Jiu-Jitsu journey and practice the same thing over and over again. When they don't work, it's just because you're not doing well, not because you have to learn something else. Do you see some value in just picking a set of techniques that seem to draw your heart in? Like for example, I'll give you an example, you're going to yell at me. But I never learned the close guard well. It just never connected with me. You could say it's body mechanics, whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is it's just like my heart never connected with it. You know, the way I justified it to myself is I felt like when you're bad, you're using the close guard, just think you could use the half guard to stall. So I was really drawn to the butterfly guard as a beginner because I thought, or open guard in general, I have no options to stall, so I'm going to learn. My thinking was, let me do the guard that enforces me to learn. And then I fell in love with the butterfly guard and the open guard and so on. And I never really understood the close guard. And the other thinking was, do I really need to understand the close guard? Because it's always by choice that I go there. So I can avoid not really- And you can avoid anything you want. I mean, you don't have to do anything. In this life, yes. It doesn't make you complete. That means you have a- You want to be complete as a, this is the question. How valuable is it to be complete to get good? Depends how good you want to be. Okay, let's go. Well, there's several questions there. Yeah, okay, like to be the best in the world, do you need to be complete? Of course, the best in the world, of course you have to be complete. Otherwise somebody's going to be better than you. But what about like, so to understand to defend, you have to be also good at the offense in every single position? Otherwise you have a weakness and someone can capitalize in that weakness. Okay, what about to be like a hobbyist? Then you don't have to. But can you, or is it still bad? I mean, it's not bad. I mean, nothing is bad. I mean, if you've as a hobbyist, you start late. I mean, it doesn't matter how far you're going to get. As long as you enjoy it, just train as much as you can. If it's twice a week, twice a week it is. You'll be limited how good you will be training twice a week, of course. Then the guy that trains twice a day, you know, the more you train, the better you get. But you have to select what you train. That's what I'm asking. I don't know, yes, but like for how long? Like there would some point in your life that you might try something, see if you like it. You know, there's some point in your life that you might, okay, let me try close guard. You might not like it now, maybe in two, three years from now. Still don't like it. I kept trying it. Listen, because listen, it's very difficult to get any respect in Jiu Jitsu. It's hard to get to black belt and beyond in Jiu Jitsu at a respectable place and not have a good close guard. Close guard is- I mean, then don't do it. It's not necessary. I'm being a rebel. No, it's not. I'll say because it's not a position that you want the pressure, that if you don't know you'll be in trouble. You're not gonna be in trouble not to know the close guard. You're just gonna go straight for open guard. I mean, the- It's not a problem. The main limitation is if you don't do close guard a lot, that you don't quite, you don't get a full, complete picture of understanding how to attack close guard when somebody puts you into a close guard when you're on top. So it's nice to know both sides of it, just to understand. Yeah, but you can have a pretty good understanding of how to defend from the top and not having any bottom. I mean, some of it is also just like the length of legs and just the geometry of your body. Nick, I'm sure Marcel Garcia has a good close guard, but- I've never seen it. That's exact. That's the point I'm trying to make. In theory, you can imagine it. But for a hobbyist, I think it's interesting to think of that. Like, is it possible to, is it possible to focus on a small set of techniques that help you to develop- Yeah, of course. Still into a good Jiu-Jitsu player. Yeah, of course. And still enjoy and still be able to- Most people hobbies. In the Jiu-Jitsu world, 99%. I mean, people there compete. Yeah, even the people that compete. 1% max. And you have high level competitors. Have no clue what close guard is. Okay, thank you for- No, I think you would say that most people don't have- Close guard is such a difficult position to understand, for me. Maybe one day we'll brainwash. Yeah, good. I felt it's too easy to stall versus attack. That was my main concern. I wanna be forced in every way to always be attacking, to always be moving, to always be. And it felt like if I got really good, I've seen it happen with half guard too. It's like when people get really good at half guard, it just feels stally. If you just look at the matches and so on, you just slow things down to a thing that's not, you don't get reps on learning. You don't get action in interesting ways. So that was my worry, that I'll get old and fat and just sitting in close guard all day, holding onto the white belts trying to kill me. Cause it's also, I mean, that's the other thing for hobbyists and for everyone is to, when you first start, I think you have to relax in the face of the fact that you're just getting your ass kicked nonstop. That can also be really tough on the ego. I think probably the right way to see that is you're growing as a person. You see that clearly when they are like in a bad position, let's say side mount or mount. Like a beginner, he will never relax on those positions. The moment that you say go, they like trying to push you out and explode. There's no relaxation and work on the defense. It's like, no, it's out and go until I have zero to give, until I'm exhausted, my arms cannot move. It's kind of fun to watch actually. What's the role of drilling? Do you like drilling? I do not like drilling, but I'll tell you why. I think, fighting is mechanic, right? So it's very important to drill a move until you learn the mechanic. Of course it's important. If someone wanna teach you an armlock, you wanna practice that movement until you learn the mechanic of it, but the guy's not resisting, so it's easy to apply, right? So you apply as many times as you have to until you know the mechanic of the moves, until you can apply the mechanics. The moment that you know how to apply, there's no more point in drilling. Now you have to practice. Now you have to practice with resistance. Of course you're not gonna practice with the guy fully resisting, the guy's better than you because he's not gonna give you a chance to practice that move, but you have to practice with resistance. So where does drilling comes on that? It's most of people, they flow, drill and everything. Whatever you do, you condition in your body to do something. You repeat the same move over and over again. Your body's conditioning to apply that movement or the technique. Drilling is not realistic because the other person's not resisting. The flow movement or whatever. After you go beyond, when you already know the mechanics, the drilling with no resistance is not gonna teach you anything because you will never know how to apply the movement with resistance. So it's pointless to carry on drilling after you learn the mechanics. See, but you're making it sound easy to learn the mechanics. I would argue. You can drill as many times. I'm not limiting how much you drill. You drill as long as you had to. I mean, it doesn't matter how long. The benefit of drilling, I'm just playing devil's advocate with you. The benefit of drilling is that you can more efficiently get a higher number of reps in. What are you gonna gain with those reps? Understanding the mechanics of the movement. And what I would like to argue is you don't necessarily need a resistance to deeply understand the mechanics of something. Now, I don't mean, there's some moves. Like I bet you, you could drill your way to an incredible mount. Mount is a good example of that. You don't really need a resist. I can imagine a world in which the resisting opponent is not essential for developing some of the very fine details of the mechanics. Which one? Because I don't know any. What? You say mount. Yes. What you're gonna achieve by drilling with no resistance after you learn the mechanics in mount. But see, what I'm trying to tell you, the learning of the mechanics isn't a thing where you get a certificate and you're done. You're gonna learn the fine details of the way you redistribute your weight. You're going to learn how to move your, I don't understand my own. It's like a dead body. Like everything you do is a slow process and timing. You have to understand moving. It's the guy's resisting. Like he's not, I'm not gonna grab you and apply the movement. I need to grab you and feel when is the right time to do. Like that only comes with movement. If you're not fully resistant, how would I know? You couldn't infer through it. It's like a... With no movement, with no resistance. Like armlock. There's some resistance. Okay, armlock. Let's see armlock. Okay. Okay, let's say you've been drilling for a week. Yeah. Five hours a day. You should be an expert with the mechanics. But now, how are you gonna carry on drilling with no resistance? No, you have to. Exactly. After that week, drilling five times, five hours a day, the armlock, you still have no clue how to apply the armlock against a resisting opponent. No clue, zero. Yeah. So you don't know the movement, you know the mechanic. Which is, you know, it's like how long you have to drill and how, that doesn't matter. It varies of the person. You can do for a month. After that month is over, you should understand how the mechanic works. You still have no clue how to apply the movement against a resisting opponent. You will never ever know how until you apply with a fully resisting opponent. That's the only way to know, to really learn a movement. Yes. Well put. But the question is, can you have a small percentage of time when you go against a resisting opponent to get the wisdom and the insight of what it takes to perform that movement, and you spend a large percentage of other time just practicing the mechanics of it? So like, do you need to, as you get better and better at technique, to basically drift away completely from drilling and more into the sparring? I'd like to, I just. You like drilling? No, I don't like drilling. I see, I, well yes, I like drilling, I would say. But I just see, it always bothered me in the jiu-jitsu community, how few people really saw the value of drilling. I see in wrestling, especially in the Russian style of wrestling, like the value of drilling. I don't necessarily mean that it's like a dead body or like a dummy or something like that. But just getting the reps in. Really focusing on the high amount of reps? I agree in wrestling and judo. I agree that drilling is very important. Initial drill a thousand times each move. Yeah, judo is a really big one for that too. It is, because it's the movement, the timing, you know, it's the precision of the movement. It has to be perfectly, because it's one movement. Then it's, you learn about the timing of the movement when you're fighting, but during fighting you only need to know the time. Because your body movement is exactly the same when you drill. That's really well put, yeah. The mechanics is much more important there. Yeah, but it's completely different for jiu-jitsu. Because let's say from jiu-jitsu, like the arm lock, for example, we use that as an example. Let's see from the clothes guard. Even my clothes guard, before I go for the arm lock, I need to have a set of grips. Let's say I have your collar and your arm, right? And then, you know, when you're drilling, I'm gonna grab your arm, I'm gonna grab your collar, and I'm gonna drill my body until I can apply the arm lock and finish. And I can do that a thousand times. Okay, now we're fighting, we start with the grip. The moment that I initiate the arm lock attack, you will defend the arm lock, it will not work. So it's not the one movement that will get me to attack the arm. There's a combination of other things that I need to do. I need to feel about your weight, you know, I need to get you close to it. There's so many other things involved that I need to feel that only comes with life, with a fully resistant opponent. Yeah, so pretty quickly it has to be live. Yeah. And then it comes how you practice, how you train. You're starting on that position and just saying, let's go. And the moment that we disengage from that position, we go back, that's when you really learn. Because everything that you do wrong, you're gonna go back there and you're gonna try again, try again, try again. And the repetition, it will teach you, have a feeling of timing when to go, if there's other combinations, which you always has to go with it. By the way, for the internet that's currently yelling at me for arguing with Haji Grace about drilling, that's called playing devil's advocate to strengthen, to explore ideas. I'm not actually arguing. Okay. I forgot to ask you, if you had to fight against the bear, lion, gorilla, or anaconda to the death, which one would you choose? And would you be able actually to win against any of them? Well, a bear, a lion, a tiger, or an anaconda. Oh, a gorilla too, gorilla. You can go gorilla. I'll probably choose the anaconda. That's easy. I mean, you're not allowed to run away though. So you're in a cage. Do you have to kill? Still the anaconda. Okay, so the other one. I think I have no chance against any other ones. Zero chance. What's with John's thing? I think I have a tiny little against the anaconda. Just wait it out. You don't think it's possible to be, it feels like technique can do something against these animals, but they have so much strength, so much aggression. You know, the real naked choke, translating to Portuguese is cute, the lion. So everything so as a kid, I always thought that maybe if I get behind a lion, the real naked choke, which in Portuguese says mata leão. So mata leão means kill the lion. So I always thought that that's the only way to kill a lion or to, you know, if you're fighting against a lion, go behind and put the real naked choke, I think you put him to sleep. The name mata leão is like kill the lion. Someone came up with the name. Why? Somebody must have. Someone was going to fight with the lion, choked him up. There you go, John. There you go. I honestly, do you think, actually, yeah, you understand controlling positions. Do you think like animal, like a gorilla or a lion, would shake you off? If you had back full, you're locked in. Well, I'll say the one that'll have the biggest chance of staying there is the lion, because it's just in their body. It's smaller than a tiger, I guess. Think tigers are bigger? Yes. So do you think they can shake you off, though? I think I'll have a bigger chance of staying against a lion's back than any other animal. Still not answering the question. Do you think you have a chance? If I start on the back? You gotta start full locked in, full controls. Let's say it's a small enough lion that you can actually have a full. Oh, I'll guess so. I mean, I would like to believe so. Okay. Well, like just like you said, somebody must have been able to do it. Throughout your journey in jujitsu, have there been low points? I guess there have been points where you really doubted yourself. No, I've never really doubted myself. There's low points in defeats. Those are the low points when I lost. How did you deal with defeats? I just went back to the gym next week and said I need to get better. Every time I lost, I'm like, I need to get better because I need to choke them out. I need to submit them because, you know, I don't want to win by points. As a black belt, I have very, very little loss. I would say, I mean, I don't like to sound like a crying baby, but I'll say most of those loss was very, very controversial. Yeah, it was not a dominant, clear performance. It has to be about referees and points and so on. Everything, since I was very young, I always fought against my opponent and the referee. If there was ever in my whole life, since I was a kid, there was ever a doubt, you always go to my opponent. Always, always. That was just something that I had to deal with my whole life. What's the motivation behind, what led to the fact that you win most of your matches by submission or in dominance? Like, are you chasing? Because that's the only way to prove you better. And I never fought to win tournaments. That was never my goal. That was the consequence of me trying to be the best. Like, I don't care how many titles I have. I care about, I need to beat all my opponents and not win because win is not enough. I have to submit them. That's the only way to prove I'm the best, to submit them. If I win by advantage or a point, that means I was better than them that day. That does not mean I'm better than them. If I take you down, pass your guard, mount you, and submit you, there's zero questions who's the best. Like, there's nothing you can say about it. If I foot sweep you, you put your butt on the floor, I get an advantage. We're carrying a fight and I win. It means nothing. Not even means I'm better than you. And if that happened, that would haunt you? It is for me, it's not enough. I wouldn't be happy. What advice would you give to young folks who look at you, who are able to accomplish from a place where you're not very good to becoming the best in the world at a thing? What advice would you give them to have a journey like that, to have a journey where they could be successful in their career and their life to such a high level? Determination is the key. Determination is the most important thing. You need to know where you're going to get there. So you need to have a goal, whatever that goal is. Like, you need to set that goal for yourself so you know where you wanna go. And to have the determination to get there and be sure that you will fail many times. Like, you cannot let your failures brings you down because you will fail many times, everybody does. So you said you didn't look to external sources of belief. You just believed in yourself. Is there something to that where you have to try to, be your own source of belief, flame the fire within yourself? Was that something difficult to do? Like... But that was just very natural for me. I said, you can surround yourself with great people. That is extremely important. Don't surround yourself with failures because they're not gonna push you to... They don't know what it is, how to get there. I mean, everybody knows, but when you surround yourself with winners, you know what, you took them to get there. You used them as an example. Yeah, there's a certain kind of aura to people that just achieve great things and being around them. But it's still, it's hard to find people that, especially at that early stage. Any area. Yeah. Any area. That's right. Yeah, greatness has a certain... I think it's almost humbling just to see, okay, any human... Like, at least that's the lesson I learned. Almost any human can do, can be great. I mean, one, I've used Muhammad Ali as a great example. Look at his belief. Look at how much he believed himself before he was Muhammad Ali. Look at the determination he had, the way, the confidence he had fighting, even on his loss. It never changed him. Not when he fought Foreman, George Foreman. Not one person in the world thought he was gonna win that fight by himself. He never doubted himself. Everybody else did. He won over all odds against him. So it's, I mean, when you look at people like that, you can, you don't have to be a boxer to try to follow his example. But see, those are like epic, giant battles, but I feel like you fight the same kind of battle when you're young and your parents tell you that, you know, just with their whole energy that this is silly, don't be silly, don't be silly, they chase. It's harder. It is harder. But as a kid, it's harder to deal with that because, I mean, to go against adults, especially parents telling you otherwise, like the amount of strength you need is gigantic. I don't even know how much strength you need because that was not my case. So I can understand what you have to go through with the force of your parents telling you otherwise. But it's how much you want, it will dictate how far you're gonna go, where you're gonna go. So it's, you know, if you can break through that, you'll get nowhere. It's that simple. And actually, one of the really nice things the internet does that I would give advice to young people is like you can find, even if your parents are not a source of that, your teachers, your community, you can find people on the internet who believe in you. It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool how the internet opens a possibility of like a community of like 10, 11 year olds, like building shit. I see this all the time, engineering. I mean, they're fueled by belief. They want to be like, they want to create the next trillion dollar company. Right? There's a fire in their eyes. And not for the money, obviously, but to do something really impactful. And I think that fire is extinguished often by teachers and parents. Because I think the logic that parents have and teachers, they look at a kid and they don't, on the surface level, they don't see greatness. Right? They just see kind of mediocrity. And so to them, it's like, no, right. The world is more complicated than that. In order to get great, you have to, like they somehow kind of always try to be reasonable with you. And in so doing extinguish the flame. It's weird. I think most people afraid. So to even try. So you can call them cowards for not trying because you are a coward for not trying, not putting yourself at risk. Right? So I would say a big part of society are cowards for never trying, never pursuing what they really want. It's so it's, there is, you know, a weight of pressure, everyone, most people, a lot of people I'll say around you that because they were afraid to try, they don't incentivize people to do so because they want everybody to be like them. Because imagine if everybody around you suddenly are not afraid and everyone is trying. And you look yourself in the mirror and say, I was too scared. I've never tried. So you feel really bad about yourself. So it's easier to have people around you that think exactly like you than otherwise. So that reflect a lot on the kids. It's, you know, society almost like pressed them down to be like everybody else, to have a normal life, normal job. It's, you know, don't take risk because you can lose it all. I mean, that's the worst thing you can tell everybody. Take all the risks, lose it all a few times. That's how you're going to build things. Especially when you're young. Yes. You can recover much faster. Exactly. What's the point of not trying? You should try and you will lose everything. Doesn't matter what it matters to lose at everything. It does matter. It will teach you resilience, you know, try harder, go after, you know, it's don't live a normal life because otherwise you know what we're here for. Yeah. Take big risks, take a lot of them, fail and fail and fail. Fail you a thousand times until you succeed. And then you're going to be the most proud of yourself. Like it's this, that's, that's, that's not be priceless. It's that then we'll change the world. It is true that most people are not necessarily cowards, but have cowardice in them. It's most people are just afraid to try, you know. And a lot of it comes from a place of love because, you know, if you try and you fail, you get hurt. And it hurts. I mean, it's not, it's not a pleasant thing to fail. I mean, you feel terrible to think, you know, when I lost any tournament was a good thing. You know, when, take when I was getting beat up at the gym over and over again was a good thing. When I was getting there and getting smashed by all the good guys, I think I liked it. Well, I hate it, but it's my resilience that, you know, make me carry on until I succeed. Think I like to get tapped. Well, I'm the most competitive, one of the most competitive persons you know, I hate to lose, but it's, I accept. I mean, I just need to get better. Every single time I lost in the championship, I hate it. I've never screamed. No one never saw me screaming, shouting that, you know, I got robbed. You know, I should have won the referee. Yeah, boy, you know, screw me over. I mean, it's okay. It happen, shit happens. I need to get better because I don't want to be in that position ever again. So when I fight, if I'm better, if I tapped him, there's no question. I don't need to wait for the referee to decide that there was points or no points. If, you know, his interpretation, that made me better because I was even more determined to be better. In my mind, I have to tap everybody else. Winning is not enough. It's just objectively speaking, what you learn the most from is really wanting to succeed and then failing and doing that often. That's the reality from a parent, from a teacher perspective, from anybody, from people you love. If they really want to do something, help them do that thing. If you think they're going to fail, good. Help them do that faster so they fail faster. Of course. They're going to learn. The only way to succeed is failing. There is no other way. That's what people have to understand. Without failing, there is no success. Since you've gotten a little softer, a little more emotionally open, what's the role of love in the human condition, Hajo Gracie? Probably the most important thing. That's the basic of everything, right? It's, I mean, love brings the best of us. It's if we had more love and compassion from the other person, I think we would be a more evolved species. The world would be a much better place than it is now. Did Franz's family help you along the way? Yeah, a lot. I always had a lot of love and help from many people. That's why I succeed. I never got here by myself. I had a lot of people who loved me, believed in me, and helped me get to be here today. Well, I'm glad they did. I'm glad you're here today. I'm a huge fan. It was an honor to meet you. It was an honor to hang out with you in Vegas, to hang out with you again today. I've just been a huge fan for a long time. My pleasure, man. Thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you for this conversation. It was awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Haji Gracie. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Haji Gracie himself. Jiu-Jitsu is simple. You just have to do it right. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
 In my mind, I have to tap everybody else.
 Winning is not enough.
 The following is a conversation with Hajar Gracie,
 widely considered to be the greatest
 Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time.
 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
 To support it, please check out our sponsors
 in the description.
 And now, dear friends, here's Hajar Gracie.
 Let's start with possibly the greatest match
 in Jiu-Jitsu history,
 your second match against Buccecia.
 Let's go through the details.
 Let's go through the whole thing.
 So the walk leading up to it.
 You always do this walk, this epic walk.
 You post that on Instagram,
 Hanzo posted on Instagram,
 this calm walk towards the mat.
 Well, let's go to that match in particular,
 what was going through your mind?
 You've been away from competition,
 facing probably one of the greatest,
 and at that time, many people considered
 the greatest Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time in Buccecia.
 Here's the old man, the old timer,
 getting back out there.
 What were you thinking?
 Yeah, I think that's the first time
 since probably I got my black belt
 that I wasn't the favorite walk into a fight,
 I have to say.
 Like a lot of people thought,
 considered him the favorite.
 I mean, understandable.
 You know, I was out of competition for a while.
 He was just winning everything.
 So, you know, saying about the walk,
 like for me, you know, the fight starts way before
 the referee say go, you know.
 It's all the focus and concentration
 that I think is very important for me to start before.
 Like, you know, I almost walk blind to the mat.
 Many times I passed, like great friends,
 and I couldn't see anyone, you know,
 they're trying to talk to you,
 and I'm like, I'm 100% focused on my opponent already,
 even though that I cannot even see him in front of me.
 So I think that's for me was always very important
 to try to clear my mind out from everything.
 Are you visualizing the opponent?
 Or are you just clearing?
 Not at that time.
 Is there, what's in your head?
 Is it like a calm river with birds chirping?
 It's blank.
 Just blank.
 Darkness.
 Yeah, darkness.
 Okay, and that's what we see in that calmness,
 is just blankness.
 How hard is it to achieve that blankness?
 It's difficult to say because I think I don't remember
 when I'll say probably as a black belt,
 I try to focus like that, not to think,
 because it's probably something you learn is the more
 you think, the more nervous you get.
 And there's nothing that you're gonna gain
 by thinking of the fight or the possibilities,
 what you can do, what can go wrong, what can go right,
 because it's unpredictable.
 You have absolutely no idea,
 it's impossible to predict the fight.
 And you discover that if you just let those
 nervous feelings go and empty your mind,
 it actually is pretty effective.
 It is.
 It makes you feel better.
 It's, you kind of control your emotion,
 control the adrenaline on your body up to a level.
 So it absolutely helps you focus in the fight.
 I've learned that in jiu-jitsu and in general in life,
 that whenever something feels really shitty,
 you can just take that thought and not think about it.
 Like I do that on long runs or a fast run or,
 yeah, in jiu-jitsu, especially when I get older,
 out of shape, that feeling of exhaustion,
 well, you can always get to the feeling of exhaustion.
 You can just not think about it,
 not think about being exhausted.
 Yeah.
 And that somehow relaxes you.
 I think maybe in the face of exhaustion,
 all the fears start to creep in,
 maybe your muscles tighten up, I don't know.
 This is for the amateur jiu-jitsu person.
 But it's kind of funny how you can just take that thought
 and let go of it.
 So you get, as a black belt competitor,
 you get used to, you get good at letting go
 of any thoughts.
 Yeah.
 When you mention to exhaustion is,
 that's another good example of it.
 It's, you know, there's a lot of times in the fight,
 you're getting tired and you're getting pretty tired.
 So it's like the last thing you want to think of it
 is how tired you are.
 It doesn't matter because it doesn't.
 What are you gonna do, quit?
 I mean, it doesn't matter.
 It's how tired you are.
 It's-
 Yeah, there's no value thinking about it.
 There's no value.
 You just have to go through it.
 So when you're like, you know, many minutes into the match
 and you're slowly moving, as you sometimes do,
 tying your belt, catching your breath,
 you're not thinking about anything.
 You're trying to let go of thinking.
 I'm trying to like to save everything to the fight.
 Like nothing goes to waste.
 It's, you know, every move unnecessary,
 it's just gonna make you more tired
 or it's gonna take something out of you.
 Like, you know, I try to calculate every single move I make,
 save as much energy as I can.
 So I can fully, you know, be focused 100% in the fight
 with no waste, especially energy-wise.
 And that's instinctual.
 Like minimizing the amount of moves.
 You're not like explicitly thinking,
 should I do this or not?
 It's just, don't move unless it's absolutely required.
 Yeah, because fight, you cannot really,
 there's not really time to think much, you know?
 It's like your instincts are playing.
 It's like, you know, you already have your,
 you know, your weapons, let's say, you know,
 the things that you do,
 it's just to wait for the perfect moment.
 The beauty of it is, you know,
 there's the right moment to everything.
 If you feel one second too late, doesn't work.
 No, it get messy.
 So it's, you know, you're trying to catch that moment.
 That's just, you know, and for that,
 you have to be fully focused in what you're doing
 because one second is, you're out.
 It won't work.
 But you're not exactly known as somebody
 that moves super quickly.
 So the moment, it's not about how quickly you move,
 it's about the right moment.
 So you move slowly.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Yeah, it's not like it's speed.
 It's not like you have to move the speed of light.
 It's the move itself or the precise moment.
 It doesn't have to be super fast
 because your opponent's not moving super fast, you know?
 So it's a combination of moving with you and him.
 I mean, the same thing happens in judo
 and the movement can be really small.
 Yeah.
 But judo is a bit more explosive.
 You know, the moves are slightly faster.
 So it does require a bit more explosiveness in judo.
 But even just the right timing for an off balance.
 Just a little tug.
 Yeah, it's not that the, you know,
 moving the speed is not gonna count that much.
 It's the timing that you initiate that move.
 You see that with foot sweeps.
 There's nothing more beautiful than like Olympic level
 of athletes going at it in the Olympics
 and a perfect foot sweep.
 And somebody whoosh.
 And it's just, and you see one man's life
 flash before his eyes and realize,
 like I'm supposed to be the top three person in the world
 that I just find.
 They have this look on their face,
 like I don't know what just happened.
 It's beautiful to see.
 You don't see that, I guess you see that in boxing,
 knockouts and stuff like that.
 You don't know what the hell just happened.
 Yeah, it's that precise moment of movement
 that you get caught.
 Like it's that one split second, that's it.
 Do you get that in Jiu-Jitsu at all?
 Cause Judo has, because of the explosiveness,
 because of the point scoring system
 that incentivizes these giant throws,
 has these moments where everything
 just turns on a single moment.
 Do you have that in Jiu-Jitsu too?
 Not really because then it's points.
 Yes, you get like, you know, two points.
 So it's, because I think regarding the submission
 is not just one precise movement that change everything.
 I think Judo is the take down that counts as a submission.
 Like Ipong, fight over.
 Jiu-Jitsu don't have that.
 So you will score points,
 but I think in terms of submission,
 you need to get to a dominant position first
 and then the submission will come slowly.
 It's a process.
 Yeah.
 Okay, let's go back to that guy with his mind.
 So actually in the weeks leading up to it,
 in the days, in the hours, in the minutes,
 is there some fear in you leading up to this?
 I mean, I'm not gonna say that I'm fearless
 because everybody fears something, you know?
 The fear is there,
 but it's like how much you let that control you.
 I think I was a lot more confident than fearful.
 For sure, walking to that fight.
 Like I was pretty confident that I could beat him.
 Where's the source of that confidence?
 My belief on me.
 I can take the world.
 You can take anyone in the world,
 but is there specific strategic,
 like talking to Donaher,
 he believes that there's no such thing as confidence,
 or rather the way you get confidence is through data.
 Like that you have proven yourself effective
 in previous situations,
 but with Buccecce, you don't have much data.
 It was a very, the first time you faced him
 was a very tough,
 that was also one of the greatest matches of all time.
 It was very tough.
 So doesn't that creep in, like that doubt,
 because you don't have enough data to be confident based on.
 Yeah, I mean,
 okay, if I never had fought before,
 you know, suddenly walk into a fight with someone like that,
 then would I be that confident?
 I mean, probably no.
 You know, so that history,
 what you've been doing, what you've been achieving
 does give you confidence.
 If that was my first fight ever,
 I wouldn't, probably I wouldn't be that confident.
 But the time off?
 It doesn't matter.
 It doesn't matter.
 It doesn't matter.
 It doesn't matter.
 You don't have the fear or the actual physical ability
 to be confident, to be confident.
 You don't have the fear or the actual physical experience,
 the psychological experience of being rusty,
 of being out of the competition.
 That will come out on training.
 So you, okay, so you simulate some aspect of that.
 Yeah, I mean, the training will tell you how you are.
 Okay.
 Did you increase the intensity of the training
 leading up to this?
 Yeah, I mean, I trained normal.
 Let's say compared to the first fight,
 the second one's a lot more confident
 because, you know, like I said on training,
 you were terrible.
 So.
 What do you mean?
 I think I was focusing MMA for a while,
 for a couple of months,
 and I wasn't really focusing the gear.
 And, you know, by the time I accepted the fight,
 didn't start training.
 Like all my responses on training were off.
 Like all my training partners that I used to train with
 that I destroyed.
 I mean, now they like, they're beating me.
 You know, it's like I cannot beat them
 the way I was used to.
 But, you know, so I knew something was not right
 for the first fight.
 But then it's, you know, no points is submission or draw.
 So.
 Yeah, for people who don't know,
 it was in one of Morris, which is a 20 minute match,
 submission only.
 So there's no, the winner's determined only by submission.
 Otherwise it's a draw.
 So physically I was, I wasn't myself on that fight.
 I was tired.
 My body wasn't responding.
 Anyway, so that, so the conflict was different
 from the first, the second.
 I think I was confident enough that I wouldn't get tapped
 out on the first, that I was still going to fight
 because he has to tap me out to beat me.
 And I trust on my defense.
 I'm confident enough on my defense
 that he will not tap me out.
 But in terms of winning, you know,
 walking to the second fight, I was a lot more confident.
 What can you say about that feeling
 when something's not right?
 Isn't that a thing that breaks people?
 It is, it breaks.
 It's weird.
 Like people crack, they give up.
 You know, this is, it's a big test
 because it's like being really tired.
 It's the same thing.
 It's like a lot of people crack
 because they just feel they cannot give it more.
 They have nothing more to give.
 So they just like give up.
 It's too hard.
 So what do you do?
 Just again, take the thoughts out.
 There is no giving up.
 I mean, I don't mind.
 I don't care.
 Like just giving up is not enough.
 It's not.
 That's always the way you thought?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I've never gave up.
 I mean, I tapped.
 It's, you know, not giving up is not tapping.
 That's just stupid.
 Especially, you know, during training,
 like I get caught, I tap.
 I've never ever hurt myself by not tapping.
 I get, you get angry, you know, train hard, you know,
 improve, make yourself better.
 You got caught.
 Accept that you made a mistake, give up, tap,
 then try harder.
 So, you know, the not tapping,
 it's you're sacrificing your body and, you know,
 you will never be the same.
 Like if you let your elbow popped,
 the elbow will never ever be the same ever.
 You let yourself go to sleep, your resistance drops.
 So it's everybody has a limit of resistance until they,
 you know, to resist the choke before you pass out.
 The moment that you go to sleep,
 that resistance will dropped.
 I've never heard anyone say that.
 That's awesome.
 That's true.
 So tap, so that's the reason,
 because people usually say it's-
 No, it's the same way you get knocked out.
 You get knocked out the first time, your resistance dropped.
 Your jaw gets weaker.
 So just for the record, I've never gone to sleep
 in just a few days.
 Which means my resistance is high, right?
 I don't know.
 Yeah, mostly.
 Or your defense is pretty good.
 I don't know about that.
 No, I wouldn't.
 Because it doesn't make sense to me.
 Or maybe in my case,
 I think my understanding of when I'm screwed is pretty good.
 Yeah.
 Like there's no-
 You're not in trouble.
 Yeah.
 One of the things I regret the most about my Jiu-Jitsu journey
 is not having given enough time
 to being in really bad positions.
 Like the better I got, I think the less I started being
 in bad positions, which is terrible.
 It's because you spar.
 That's like the, that is how you train.
 Yeah.
 Because you used to just spar.
 When you spar, like it's difficult
 to be in bad positions a lot.
 You train with better people, but I mean,
 let's say five, six minute rows,
 how long you're going to be in a really bad position?
 Not long, right?
 So you don't really have time to develop.
 That's why people, they don't, you know,
 they don't train being in bad positions.
 Cause you have to start there over and over again
 to be used to it.
 Yeah, or put yourself there.
 I just didn't have that mindset. I think, I think you start,
 I mean, part of the fun of Jiu-Jitsu is
 as you get better and better,
 you have certain people you go with,
 you have these puzzles that you figured out,
 that you're playing very specific details,
 you're working out, you're trying to improve your main
 like techniques and so on.
 But yeah, just the percentage of time you spend
 being submitted or being, or trying,
 even going against like lower ranks,
 trying to escape basic submissions is low.
 I don't know if that's true for most people.
 Probably is, right?
 Most people have very bad defense.
 Because they don't allow themselves to be there because,
 I mean, who wants to get tapped?
 Because you will, until you, you know,
 to work on your defense, of course you're going to get tapped
 or, you know, you're not going to escape.
 You're going to struggle to escape.
 So people, they don't want to be there.
 I regret it most because of the effect it clearly had
 on how I competed.
 It was clear that my competition was constantly driven
 by conservative thinking.
 Like don't take risks.
 I think because of a weak defense, honestly.
 And I think a lot of the, any of the fear,
 like for example, exhaustion was accompanied by fear
 because of weak defense, I think.
 If I were to psychoanalyze myself,
 and I regretted it, I regretted it a lot.
 But speaking of which,
 I don't think anyone's ever submitted you in competition.
 So you're-
 Well, I was a juvenile, yes.
 Yes, so it's when you were a young person.
 Yeah, 60.
 Does that still haunt you?
 No, it's, first I was winning that fight by a large,
 I mean, I think by six points or four, something like that.
 But I was like, I was-
 You don't remember it though, huh?
 By the details.
 Yeah.
 That's funny.
 Yeah.
 You ever beat him again?
 He never competed again.
 Whoever you are, please, let's do a podcast.
 I know, I know.
 We'll talk shit about Hajar the whole time.
 No, but what do you attribute to that too?
 You're saying you're confident,
 you're confident that the top of the world,
 the number one, Buccecia would not submit you.
 So where's that confidence grounded
 and what do you attribute the fact
 that nobody was able to submit you?
 First, it comes on training.
 I train a lot, bad position.
 My defense is good because I practice over and over again.
 As much as I practice all my offensive position.
 So it's, you have to train both equally,
 not just being in a good position,
 you have to be in bad.
 So I think that's a very strong part of my game.
 You know, to be a complete fighter,
 you know, a complete martial artist,
 you have to be good in every single position,
 every single one.
 Those that you're not, you have a weakness.
 So it's, you know, to be complete,
 you should have no weakness.
 So that was always my, you know,
 I was always very particular on that.
 Like it's where my weakness,
 where I don't feel good at it.
 If you put me in a position where struggle,
 how do I escape, how do I get out?
 Everything, any submission locked,
 pinning position, you know, back mount, everything.
 It doesn't matter which position I have,
 I practice over and over again.
 So when I, if I get there in a fighting situation,
 I will know how to get out.
 At least I'll have a direction, you know,
 I will know this is my way out.
 Do you practice both escaping a bad position
 and the transition into the bad position, avoiding it?
 Because that's how it happens.
 You know, Jiu-Jitsu, you start in a neutral position.
 No, the transition then becomes the fight itself.
 It's being there is the most important.
 It's when you're there,
 then you have to know how to get out.
 That's your weakness.
 How, you know, stopping the person getting there
 is something different.
 So there are two different things.
 It's either you practice one or the other.
 So both are important, I guess.
 But the stopping the person is easier to practice
 because that comes naturally in training.
 What was the actual process?
 Like what was your biggest weakness throughout your,
 like you just remembering
 what was annoying to you to figure out?
 I mean, outside control is always,
 Bottom of side control.
 Bottom.
 It's regardless how much you practice,
 it's not ever easy.
 You'll never be easy.
 But.
 It's so annoying.
 It makes no sense.
 Yeah, someone pins you down.
 This is someone who move much.
 It's a big and strong guy,
 regardless of who is not gonna be easy to escape.
 So some situations are just hard.
 That must be the, sorry to interrupt.
 I'm interrupting Hajar Gracie.
 He discusses Jiu-Jitsu.
 But you just made me realize,
 if you're really good,
 if you're going against like the perfect Jiu-Jitsu competitor,
 probably side control might be one of the hardest positions
 to escape.
 Is it the hardest position to escape?
 It is one of them.
 If the person doesn't wanna progress,
 it's just concern about opinion.
 Yeah.
 Like the best pinners in the world.
 I mean, partially because I've just seen judo people
 that know how to pin.
 Yeah.
 They.
 Go skip their side control is a nightmare.
 It's a nightmare.
 Doesn't matter how much you practice.
 Yeah.
 It's a nightmare.
 And it's also just frustrating.
 Yeah.
 I think, I guess it is also frustrating
 because a lot of people in that position
 will be about maintaining control, not progressing.
 Yeah.
 And usually people when they're in mount
 and in back control are usually trying to progress
 towards a submission,
 which opens up opportunities for escape.
 So what's the actual process of just time and time again,
 putting yourself in side control,
 a bottom side control.
 Yeah.
 Over and over again, starting there,
 escape, get back, escape, get back.
 If it mount you, get back.
 Any situation outside that stops, start again,
 and stops that again.
 And it has to be, I'll say five minutes
 because it's the repetition that will teach you.
 If you train like three minutes on top,
 you have time to one thing and then time out.
 It's the repetition there over and over again.
 When you try the same move over and over again,
 then you'll see what can go wrong.
 And is it understanding the details of the movement
 or actually doing the movement and feeling it?
 It's both.
 First you have to understand the movement
 and practice, but most important thing is defense.
 Escape coming second.
 Because he's attacking you.
 The one thing is if he's not trying to submit you,
 but the other one, if it is,
 let's say if it's a person is very good,
 has a very good attack, the first thing is defense,
 not just escape and expose yourself
 to an even worse position because that is very risky.
 When you're trying to escape, you'll always expose yourself
 to a worse position.
 So avoiding that, first is defense, not getting caught.
 And then when you're escaping, don't be in a worse position.
 So defense in Jiu-Jitsu when you're wearing a gi,
 what does defense entail?
 Is it mostly grips?
 Is it mostly the positioning of your hips and legs?
 It's everything together
 because it's a whole body movement.
 It's a constantly moving your arms, legs, body.
 It's, you know, they have to, everything works together.
 Going back to the mind of that guy, so confident,
 no fear at this point.
 Is there a bit of ego in there too?
 Yes.
 Like I say, no, I'm not gonna say I'm fearless.
 Of course this concerns, that fight, I would have to say,
 was probably the fight that I got nervous the most walking in
 because I knew what that meant, that fight.
 I mean, everything for me, all my legacy was on the line
 because if I lost that fight, I'll forever be number two.
 Yeah.
 Forever.
 And I mean, Boshieche is a great guy, great competitor.
 Jiu-Jitsu is very good, but I'm better than him.
 I knew that.
 But he's competing nonstop at that point.
 No, no, he's a great competitor, you know,
 taking nothing out of him.
 He's super tough, very, very tough, very good.
 He's probably the best competitor in Jiu-Jitsu.
 He won 13 times the World Championship, I won 10.
 So as a competitor, you know, he has more titles than I do.
 But in terms of analyzing the game,
 I consider technically better than him.
 So knowing all that, everything that I build,
 all my legacy, it's...
 If I lose...
 All writing in this match.
 If I lose this fight, I'm forever number two.
 And none of that is going through your mind?
 No, I knew, I mean, it's not at that moment.
 I already knew that.
 I remember just before, you know, the curtains open,
 I'm standing in before they call my name.
 And I mean, my legs were like...
 I feel the adrenaline kicking on my legs.
 And I'm like, you know, I'm hitting the legs.
 I'm like, wake up, you know, get off,
 get the adrenaline off me, you know.
 So it was intense.
 It was intense.
 And this was in Rio.
 That was in Rio.
 So...
 My hometown.
 So this is...
 Huge town.
 And, you know, Rio is not exactly known
 for its calmness in its fans.
 So this is like...
 So this is like, wherever they hosted the Olympics,
 the year before.
 So this is like...
 I mean, this, like the whole, basically,
 martial arts community is watching this.
 Watching that fight.
 Yeah.
 I mean, is there some...
 Was Hanzo there?
 Yeah.
 Yeah, he was there.
 Some people are just...
 I mean, there's a tension.
 It's also...
 I mean, I don't know if you felt that in part,
 but you're also fighting for the Gracie name.
 Yeah.
 In our hometown.
 The greatest...
 Where the Gracie really established.
 Gracie competitor of all time,
 arguably, in the hometown.
 Yeah.
 I mean, okay.
 All my family, my best friends, my friends,
 everybody watching, everybody there.
 There was a lot of pressure.
 A lot.
 And then, were you thinking
 that you would be able to submit him?
 No, it's at that point,
 like I don't predict how the fight will go.
 That I never did because it is unpredictable.
 I never tried to set any strategy for any fight.
 I think, oh, okay, that I did.
 But that was the only time
 that I set any strategy into a fight.
 There was a 15-minute fight then.
 And I said, first five minutes, I'm gonna play defense.
 He's bigger, stronger, younger.
 I don't wanna play his game.
 And I know he comes in very fast.
 Every single fight he had, he comes very aggressive.
 So my strategy walk into the fight,
 I say, five minutes, I'm gonna play defense.
 I'm not gonna try to attack.
 I'm not gonna try to match his pace.
 I already expected,
 maybe I'm gonna start losing the fight
 because if he comes in, there's a risk of me
 maybe getting takedown or something happened.
 I'm like, I'm gonna stick to the game plan.
 Five minutes, I'm gonna start picking up the pace
 because then it's 10 minutes to go,
 which 10 minutes a long fight.
 So I don't need to start fast,
 but I'm gonna start being more aggressive
 and then try to take him down or pull guard.
 By then I'm like, that's as far the strategy goes.
 There's no specific stay on the feet.
 Were you comfortable being both bottom and top
 in this strategic clip?
 I was comfortable being bottom and top.
 I prefer to be on top because being in the bottom,
 the person on top dictates the pace of the fight
 because he's on top over you.
 So I always prefer to be on top
 because I can dictate the pace.
 I can implement my own pace.
 And being the bottom, they can slow me down.
 So it's harder.
 So if I can choose, I will always be on top.
 But I think by then I was like,
 it's five minutes, hit it.
 I'm like, he's pretty big and strong.
 I'm gonna spend a lot of energy taking him down.
 I pull guard.
 How did it feel?
 So here you're stepping in, by the way,
 puzzle math, this is old school, as old school as it gets.
 So calm and relaxed here for people just listening.
 We're watching the early minutes of the match.
 So just feeling it out.
 He seems pretty calm too.
 He must be nervous too.
 I wonder how, did you ever talk to him?
 You guys are friends.
 Yeah, yeah, we're friends.
 Did he ever say how nervous he was?
 No, we never spoke about that fight.
 No?
 No.
 He probably lays late at night thinking about it.
 Maybe, I don't know.
 That SOB.
 Yeah, I mean, so you see the first five minutes.
 No, he kept, I knew what he was going to do.
 And I studied his game.
 His stand up is most basic, is basic in takedowns,
 leg attacks, double leg.
 So he goes single or double and he charges in.
 That is pretty much his stand up game.
 So you would try, you get a grip.
 Yeah, we got penalized.
 So do you like to use the,
 do you like to post with your left?
 You have a right foot forward usually.
 You're a righty, right?
 I'm righty, but I know he wants my leg.
 So I'm playing my stance just because of his game.
 Oh, you know, all my grips at that,
 the first five minutes was to kind of try
 to neutralize his attacks.
 So he wants to get your left leg.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, right there.
 Yeah.
 So how hard is that to stop that?
 I mean, he felt pretty strong coming in.
 So I'm pushing the head down,
 trying to play with his balance.
 Yeah, wow.
 If you see it, there was a pause.
 Go back there.
 He charged in.
 There's a pause, me standing in front of him.
 Yeah.
 I did that on purpose.
 What do you mean?
 Just in front of him, because he tried.
 Yeah.
 And I'm like, you fail.
 I'm here.
 There's a, okay.
 So you could feel the frustration.
 I could feel his frustration,
 not be able to take me down.
 Okay.
 So now, and this is just psychological battles.
 And you see me walking straight into the middle of the mat
 and he's circling out.
 Yeah.
 See, I'm going very slow,
 I'm going very slow, I'm recovering.
 And he's computing like, shit.
 Yeah.
 Because he just made an effort,
 trying to take me down.
 He needs to recover.
 And I mean, you need to recover.
 The other guys there are waiting for you.
 And do I go for another take down?
 Because this one failed.
 Do I need to recalculate the strategy?
 Yeah, and he kept trying over and over again
 and keep failing.
 I think that frustrate him a lot on that fight.
 I felt him kind of slowing down suddenly
 because he was getting nowhere.
 So we're five minutes in.
 Yeah, he keeps,
 so he never got that take down in the early.
 No.
 Let's see.
 So at this point, do you pull guard?
 Yeah, okay.
 So that's when I felt like he's mentally,
 he's not, he's worried now.
 Did you try to pull close guard here?
 No, I knew he was going to bring Danny in.
 Okay, because that's the defense
 against pulling close guard.
 Yeah, but I like that.
 I like people bringing Danny between my legs.
 Because see, I'm going to close my guard,
 even with his leg in.
 Okay, he's stopping the,
 well, this is awkward, but I guess.
 I was holding his arm, that's why he fell.
 He had no hand to post.
 Got it.
 But still it puts a leg in,
 but you're able to close your guard around.
 You're okay with that?
 I do that really well.
 I sweep people from that position a lot.
 What's the sweep?
 I just pushed.
 Okay.
 He's just a push.
 Like to your left side?
 Yeah.
 Okay, because he has no,
 oh, it's almost like,
 you mean you're basically around his back a little bit.
 And he knew that,
 like I swept a lot of people with that sweep.
 So you see he kept leaning to his left, to my right.
 So I want to push them to my left.
 So you see him leaning over to my right a lot.
 What's the right answer for him?
 To like roll or something?
 No, I mean, he's stuck.
 He does not really, he's stuck there.
 But the one thing he did, he kept off me completely.
 See that he's leaning,
 like he's too afraid of my attack now
 because he should lean on me.
 Yep.
 You should bring the fight to me.
 So when I fell him,
 I knew he was like, he's too worried about my attacks now.
 Oh yeah, that's right.
 So he can't, if he comes back to the center,
 he has no-
 So he's not engaging now.
 At that time, he's a hundred percent just defending.
 So I felt that.
 I'm like, he doesn't want to engage.
 And he's looking.
 I knew at that point, he wants my foot
 because our first fight, I had the exact the same position.
 I wasn't holding his arm and he went to attack my foot,
 which he did.
 He got into attack.
 Like a toe hold or what?
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 So I knew he's looking at my foot.
 Which foot?
 Sorry, the left, your right foot?
 Yeah, my right foot.
 Okay.
 And so how you defend?
 You're hiding it?
 I'm holding his arm.
 And now you're going to the back
 as an arm drag type of thing.
 So the moment that I came off,
 now I'm holding his arm so he cannot come up.
 So I'm holding his left arm
 so he cannot post a hand on the floor and come up.
 And he's holding your right to try to get you,
 basically to prevent you from attacking.
 Yeah.
 Oh, that's an interesting.
 And he rolls.
 Yeah.
 He tried to get me off balance.
 So see now I'm switching.
 I switched the grip on his arm
 so I can free my left arm.
 Can I ask you a question?
 Yeah.
 Was there a chance he sweeps you here?
 I mean, there's always a chance, but very hard.
 Like that.
 Yeah, but see my left arm is free.
 Oh, so you can post.
 Yeah.
 Why was your left arm free?
 Oh, because you were using it.
 You got it, got it.
 Okay.
 So I tried the hook.
 Now you will see.
 He still got your arm.
 Yeah, but when I knew he's panicking
 because he didn't move,
 that he completely opened himself up.
 Like I'm holding his left arm.
 So by holding their arm,
 that prevents him from defending the hook on that side
 because his arm is being held across.
 So their arm cannot block the hook.
 And I mean-
 The hook with your left leg?
 Yeah.
 So you'll see when he come up.
 But I would say, I mean, that's my guess,
 but Bousheche, he's a big guy.
 He was like 110 kilos, 112, something like that.
 Which is-
 245.
 Yeah, all right.
 Yeah.
 So-
 What were you at the time?
 Less?
 220, yeah, 220.
 A nice slim 100 kilo, okay.
 Yeah.
 So his defense are not amazing.
 He's good, but he's not known to have amazing defense.
 So by being the big guy in the room when you train,
 you used to get out of situations because of your size.
 You shake people off.
 Because of your size, you shake them off.
 You get off some bad positions.
 You can, I mean, I could feel on the first fight,
 I'm side control, you know, suddenly he explode out.
 So, you know, I've seen him doing that a few of his fights.
 No, not in the most technical way, just I'm getting out.
 And he did because of his size.
 So, and he did the same thing.
 He tried to stood up when I'm on his back.
 He completely opened up the hooks.
 He will see the next move, his head gonna come up
 and he gonna try to get off the floor.
 So basically come up, shake you off kind of strategy.
 There was no difference for the hooks.
 I put both hooks in straight away.
 Oh, his arm is-
 Yeah, I'm off balance.
 Yeah, see, I didn't bring him up, he came up.
 Yeah.
 And now I'm attacking his neck and he's worried
 about the hooks.
 That's fatal mistake.
 That's like defense always come first.
 Remember what I just said now?
 Defense first, cape second.
 So he's not worried more about the points than his neck.
 So it was like a progression of mistakes.
 That's why I think he got frustrated
 when he couldn't take me down.
 And then when I pulled guard, he was frustrated
 that the fight wasn't going his way.
 He's very good about taking down.
 He tried over and over again for five minutes.
 And here he was frustrated about the hooks.
 So he's like, it's almost like the frustration things like,
 no, no, no, these hooks shouldn't be here.
 Like I pull guard on the grips that I want.
 He's not comfortable inside my guard.
 He's not in the position that he wants to be.
 He's over leaning to his left.
 He's not engaged, not trying to pass.
 He's trying to get the foot, but his arm is trapped.
 He's gonna get nowhere.
 And then when I swept him,
 suddenly his world start collapsing.
 He couldn't take me down.
 I pull guard, I'm swept in.
 He tried to roll me over.
 No, it didn't get me anywhere.
 The first movement that he tried to escape,
 I'm on his back.
 I mean, now he's lost.
 Yeah.
 That, if you just go back to him standing up.
 See, both hook goes in no difference.
 Like there was nothing on the way of those hooks.
 Because he tried to come up.
 As he's coming up, you're high enough on him
 to where the weight was just probably immense.
 It just felt too heavy.
 I mean, you're already going for the choke.
 There's no time to lose.
 Look at that.
 So you're not like worried I'm gonna get shaken off.
 You're going for the choke.
 You got your right hand on the foot.
 I'm not shaking you off.
 I'm on your back now.
 Wearing this together.
 And your right hand is opening up the lapel.
 My right hand is holding his arm.
 I'm still holding the sleeve.
 Oh, sorry.
 You're holding the sleeve, but.
 I'm holding the sleeve and I'm already going for the neck.
 Because it's timing.
 At which point do you let go of the sleeve
 and open up, help with the lapel?
 Or do you not need it?
 No, I did that.
 But first I wanna try to make a grip.
 Then I need to establish control before I let go of his arm.
 Got it.
 So I kept holding that a bit longer.
 And then when I fell, okay, I have a good control
 over the back, then I let go.
 Do you, okay, so you have like a light grip on his lapel,
 but you're thinking.
 No, I need to adjust that.
 You need to adjust that.
 Yeah.
 You're like holding it there and you're thinking,
 okay, at some point I need to adjust.
 All I need, all I want is to get under his chin.
 Then I know, I mean, now I can't go for it.
 Because if it's over, there's no choke, right?
 The wrist needs to be under.
 Can you choke Bucceso over the?
 No, I can't.
 That's just not right.
 Okay.
 It's not right or it doesn't work?
 Both.
 It's not right and it doesn't work.
 I mean, would you tap to choke on your chin?
 No, it's just pressure.
 You hurt, but it's not gonna choke you out.
 I don't know, I don't know.
 I'm not, let me argue this.
 I love this.
 Arguing with Haji Gray, he's about chokes.
 This is great.
 Okay, like clock choke.
 It was always interesting to me,
 because in judo it's illegal to have the gear on the face.
 And so it was kind of liberating for me
 to be allowed to have a gear on the face.
 No, it's just-
 Liberating.
 No, you don't have to worry about it.
 Of course it's more effective to go under the chin,
 but I'm surprised just because the amount of pressure.
 It's all about how much you can take it.
 You can take a lot.
 But it feels like-
 No, it doesn't feel comfortable.
 I mean, sometimes on your mouth, it cuts your mouth.
 Now you're bleeding, it feels horrible.
 No, but that's not the feeling.
 The feeling, it might not be a choke,
 but the feeling like it's a pressure
 that everything's just closing in.
 But it doesn't take you anywhere.
 Like you're not gonna go to sleep.
 You might not go to sleep.
 So it's just pressure.
 Yes.
 So pressure, it hurts, it's uncomfortable,
 but it's not gonna break your face
 and it's not gonna put you to sleep.
 So if I don't get the neck, I don't go for the kill.
 I'm holding his,
 his collar.
 My wrist is almost under.
 It's, I'm trying to kind of dig in.
 If I can't dig in, then I will adjust the collar,
 but first I need to dig in.
 Dig in first and adjust.
 Can you do all that with one hand or no?
 I did.
 So you can tighten the choke with just one hand?
 No, I need the second one to open the lapel.
 To open the lapel.
 But you're like digging in with one hand.
 I'm digging in under the chin.
 Under the chin, now I need to go deeper.
 But that, the going deeper requires a second hand.
 It does.
 Okay.
 It does.
 But that requires you letting go of the other hand.
 Yeah, I have to let go eventually.
 Yeah, see?
 All right.
 Well, that's over.
 Yeah.
 Because I'm already under his,
 like the first hand got under the chin.
 Do you need the hand on the second lapel?
 Of course, otherwise he turns and he's out.
 That's the control of the turning
 versus the tightening of the choke.
 Yeah, it does both.
 It helps tighten the collar and stop the person rolling out.
 Were you feeling pretty good about this position?
 Yes.
 I just felt it's getting tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter.
 Because it wasn't super tight from the beginning.
 It wasn't like the perfect choke.
 So it was still, I mean,
 I knew it was like he's very close to the end,
 but you know, I still need to adjust.
 There was still the risk of maybe he escaping.
 Is it possible for his head to slip out?
 Yeah, it's possible, yes.
 But I'm closing that gap.
 Yeah.
 Right here.
 What did that feel like?
 Relief?
 Relief, like awesome.
 Amazing.
 Somebody on Reddit asked,
 asked him about the cross grip he used to sweep
 followed with a genius grips,
 which when Buchescha was inverted,
 did you use a cross grip when you sweep?
 I guess the cross grip in the arm, that must be it.
 Oh, that's the cross grip.
 Okay.
 What's the genius behind that?
 Or was that just the, do you like that kind of grip?
 Yeah, because I always liked close guard
 and no one wants to be in anyone's close guard, right?
 It's open guard is the step to pass.
 So everybody, when you try to close the guard,
 they bring the knee in the middle.
 Like if you're not standing,
 if you're lower on the ground and the open guard,
 if you're close to me, you need that knee between.
 So it's a must.
 That's when I start developing the attack.
 You know, I managed to have long legs to close my legs
 around people even with that.
 And then I just developed that sweep.
 When did you start developing that?
 I don't remember when, but I would say before black belt.
 Okay, so your answer to that is not to figure out
 how to prevent them from putting the knee in.
 Is there an answer to that?
 No.
 The good guys will always try to get the knee in.
 Remove the leg out of the way.
 That's not possible.
 Well, maybe off balance them enough to where it's not.
 No.
 Okay.
 I mean, you can try, but like it's hard.
 If you can off balance, you sweep them.
 All right.
 So that knee is gonna, so you're gonna have to solve that.
 That's a full sweep, yeah.
 Because that's, it's extremely common to have that.
 I mean, if I'm on your guard, open guard,
 you know, if you have your legs,
 if I'm between both of your legs in the open guard,
 my knee will be between your legs.
 Cause it's a must.
 My knee cannot be on the floor.
 Since Hanzo was there, what did he tell you before?
 I think just motivate you.
 I think that Hanzo always did that fantastically well
 to motivate me.
 Like before in fight, the match.
 I think that, you know, the confidence, you know,
 his energy being around you, it's,
 I think that's the,
 it's the great thing to have Hanzo in your corner.
 It's the motivation that he gives you.
 What did you learn about Jiu-Jitsu in life
 from Hanzo Gracie?
 We got to hang out with him in Vegas a little bit.
 He's a character.
 He's one of the historic coaches and Jiu-Jitsu competitors,
 but also personalities in the martial arts world,
 in the world in general.
 There's very few like him.
 Hanzo is a fantastic person.
 It's, you know, what I've learned most from him is like,
 it's, you know, you can't take any challenge.
 It's, you know, doesn't matter where and where,
 or you know, who.
 It's, you know, you have to be ready.
 And, you know, with the warrior spirit that he has,
 he, you know, he always took any challenge,
 ready or not ready.
 Was it you that said it or he said it where,
 not until you go in, you know,
 to do something difficult,
 do you discover the strength that you have?
 So like, if you really think about it,
 you might think that you don't, you're not good enough.
 You don't have the strength to take on something difficult.
 I fully agree.
 I think we are measured not when we're on the strongest,
 but when we are on the weakest.
 That's when we truly measure ourselves or character,
 who we are, not when we're in a position of power
 or when we're in a position of weakness.
 Have you surprised yourself?
 Like how damn good you are?
 Like, is this really how good I am in this situation?
 Where in retrospect, you might think,
 how the hell was I able to accomplish this?
 Not how good I am because otherwise I wouldn't be there.
 So, you know, being there in the first place,
 it's already not a great thing.
 But I say, you know, every single time I found myself there,
 I was super proud that I've never cracked.
 Like I've never gave up ever, any second, any fight, never.
 Never been broken in competition?
 Never.
 Even, it's not about winning or losing,
 it's about you giving up.
 I've never doubt myself.
 I always fought to the very end.
 Always. That I'm most proud of.
 Because there was moments, you know,
 it's in a terrible position, you know,
 mainly like there was moments that I was super tired,
 but like exhaustive tired when it was easy to give up.
 Like I had nothing more to give, but I pushed.
 I took energy out of my soul, I'll have to say,
 because when my body had zero,
 my spirit, my soul, pull it out.
 Is that in part just not allowing yourself to have,
 to ever quit?
 Yeah.
 I have one other thing I regret.
 I remember like a blue belt match.
 I remember, I'm not gonna say who it was against,
 but I remember just being extremely exhausted
 and just being exhausted.
 And just constantly fighting.
 A guy was really good mount, really good guard passing.
 And I just remember him passing my guard eventually.
 So it was just like a finals
 of one of the IBGJF tournaments.
 And then right away going to mount and just,
 I don't know, the level of frustration.
 I mean, I quit at that point.
 I remember that still.
 Like I, it's not about losing, winning or losing,
 but I just remember I was like teary-eyed frustrated.
 And then I knew there was a lot of fights still left
 in there somewhere and I quit.
 And I regret that to this day.
 Because I think the reason I regret that
 is because it gave me an option to now quit
 in every other aspect of life.
 This is an option.
 Yeah, it is.
 It sucks.
 Yeah, it teaches you, you know.
 It makes us stronger.
 It's like you said.
 I think it made you stronger.
 Yeah, it makes you stronger that you did that
 to learn that don't do that again.
 But still, like you said, just going to sleep and training.
 I do think it made me weaker.
 It did make me weaker in the rest of my life too.
 Those, you know, I've quit a few times in my life
 on small things and you realize,
 okay, it's not that big of a deal.
 It's fine.
 Like who cares?
 But what you learn over time is that voice
 always comes there.
 Like obviously, maybe it does for you too,
 even at the highest level of like,
 it's not that big of a deal.
 Like it's okay to quit here.
 Like it makes sense.
 Everybody would understand.
 You know, in some sense, like you're, you know,
 many people would say you're past your prime
 in this match with the Brutusia.
 Like it makes sense.
 You've been focusing on MMA.
 It makes sense.
 No.
 It makes sense to lose.
 Yeah.
 I don't know that that's a weird voice.
 And in some sense, it's that voice and a voice that says
 like, why are you doing this?
 Like, this is silly.
 Does it make any sense?
 Just stop, just stop, just stop.
 And shutting that voice down
 and never allowing yourself to quit.
 That's a really powerful thing.
 Like everybody I've met, everybody that's successful.
 Yeah, down to the, even engineers, CEOs,
 Elon Musk, just never quitting.
 Like when everybody around you says quit, never quitting.
 It's weird.
 I don't know what that is.
 Might be genetic.
 It might be like using the stubbornness
 to just never allow yourself to develop that.
 It's basically developing a callous to that voice
 that tries to tell you to quit.
 You never quit, huh?
 What would you attribute that to?
 It's like how much you want to get
 to the destination you chose.
 Like, you know, it's how badly you wanna get there.
 If you quit, you're never gonna get there.
 And you always wanted to.
 I always wanted to.
 Is there some thing you remember from that match?
 Some things that happened before and after
 that stand out to you?
 Just since in Rio.
 Yeah, there was an interview, you know,
 like prior to the fight, you know, there was a big fight.
 We were doing like media every day before.
 We were meeting, you know, me and him,
 we were meeting for media.
 And like five days before, you know, five, six days before,
 I'm quite chatty.
 It's, you know, the closer we get to the fight,
 the more focus I get, the less I start
 joke around playing, you know, with people.
 But I remember, I think it was maybe three or four days
 before we were doing an interview together.
 I think my cousin Kira was there.
 She was doing one of the interviews with us.
 And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about,
 but I just remember we're talking about the fight, of course.
 And then it was, you know, we're standing beside each other
 and I'm like, and then, you know,
 suddenly I chop him and grab him by the neck.
 I say, I'm gonna tap you by the neck.
 And then he's like, you know, very shy.
 And then I let go, I say, no, I'm gonna tap you by the arm.
 And I could feel he was like, he wasn't comfortable,
 you know, with being there.
 It was, you know, me saying that I'm gonna tap him out.
 There was like, I was so relaxed, joking about it,
 but I'm joking that I'm gonna tap him out
 in a fight that we're gonna have in four days time.
 And yeah, I felt he was like, not comfortable at all.
 Do you think you got in his head a little bit?
 Yeah, I did.
 Did it give you a little bit of confidence?
 Yeah.
 You've said that Jiu-Jitsu is a reflection
 of your personality.
 So both your Jiu-Jitsu and your personality,
 there's a calmness.
 What is that?
 Why are you so calm?
 Is there like an ocean underneath that's boiling?
 Is this developed or is this your personality?
 Are you basically leveraging who you are already
 to develop a game around the Jiu-Jitsu
 or did Jiu-Jitsu make you calm?
 I think both.
 I was always very calm since I was a kid,
 you know, since very young.
 I was never very fiery person.
 So that is a reflection, you know,
 you reflected on my Jiu-Jitsu, my life,
 on my fights, the way I fight.
 So it's a direct influence of my personality.
 And I think it's also in the day, you know,
 you develop the more you practice,
 the more you fight.
 It's like, you know, you don't want to get nervous.
 You don't want the adrenaline in.
 So you just learn how to shut that off from your mind.
 So the less I thought about it, you know,
 it's like how many times I fought.
 You know, let's say the week before the fight,
 that's when you start more,
 when you're concerned the most,
 because now it's getting very close.
 Before it's just far away.
 You know, it's normal to think of the tournament.
 You get a bit nervous, but it goes away quick.
 But the fight, you know, the week before,
 now you're constantly thinking of that day.
 And every time you think, adrenaline pumps in,
 your heart accelerate.
 You know, it doesn't, you know, it makes it,
 it's like, why am I feeling this?
 What difference will it make?
 So you kind of, you're shutting that thought
 out of your mind,
 because you don't want to feel the adrenaline,
 your heart accelerating.
 It's not going to add you anything.
 So it's, you know, it's the practice also
 that I think it helped me to shut that off my mind.
 Has that helped you in regular life?
 Yeah, of course.
 It's, you know, it's suddenly when you go into any,
 any situation that might be stressful,
 you know, like an important meeting, you know, super,
 whatever it is, it's like,
 how much would you worry about that before?
 Worry is not going to help you anywhere.
 It's the opposite.
 Just going to make you more nervous,
 your heart accelerate,
 your ability to think clearly is going to be damaged by that.
 So it's like the more calm, the more relaxed you are,
 the better you can think of.
 Do you ever get angry?
 Yeah.
 Like in traffic?
 Do you ever get like not calm, just like you're screaming?
 Not in a screaming, no.
 But just angry?
 What does angry look like?
 Is it still calm?
 Yeah, like a few seconds of complaining,
 but then it goes away.
 Have you ever like thrown a cell phone at a wall
 or something like that?
 No.
 No, I never get that angry.
 But that's just silly.
 It's like, it's, it's, it's, if I would have done that,
 I would not be able to control my emotions prior to a fight.
 That would be a reflection.
 Letting yourself lose.
 Yeah.
 Losing control that will reflect other times.
 Do you think it has make, in part,
 made you more emotionally closed off from the world?
 Like you're, you're, it's harder for you
 to be vulnerable to others?
 Probably.
 Yeah.
 But I heard that a few times.
 I'm emotionally closed.
 It's, yeah.
 Maybe that, I think that influenced it.
 Yeah.
 Have you ever cried in a movie?
 Yeah.
 For not for many years before that thing,
 maybe I'm getting older.
 You remember the movie?
 Something that's, I don't know.
 For the movie?
 Something that's a silly movie.
 I mean, it's not, no, I mean.
 Is it the notebook?
 No, I mean, I would say the last few years
 I've been crying more than before for some reason.
 I don't know why.
 Like silly movies, like nothing suddenly brings tears
 to my eyes.
 Yeah.
 Well, I've already, I already just having met you
 and interacted with you, I can see that you're kind of
 opening your heart and mind to the world.
 You could see like, here's this historically great athlete.
 Now like the wars have been fought
 and you're now like waking up to the world.
 It's cool to see.
 Probably I'm bringing my guard down now.
 I don't have to keep it up all the time.
 Yeah, that's a good fight.
 You can even do some podcasts.
 You said you watched like movies beforehand sometimes.
 You mentioned Braveheart.
 What were you doing?
 Did you watch something beforehand?
 Like the day before?
 I used to, yeah, I was like, I think Braveheart
 and Gladiator.
 I mean, there's a few others that I've always watched
 the day before, because the day before I used to do nothing.
 I just want to be at home in bed watching TV,
 like saving energy, stretching by myself.
 So it's like, it's just want to save energy.
 I don't want to waste my energy going out, going around.
 So, you know, those are the movies that I always like to
 watch, kind of try to bring some, you know,
 hyper excitement, like, you know,
 I'm getting ready to war tomorrow.
 So I'm like, let me watch some movies that like brought
 that, you know, some, that warrior spirit into me.
 Yeah, what is that about human nature?
 Braveheart I love even more.
 Should you put your life on the line for a thing that matters
 or run away just so you can live?
 It's like running, you may live, but like years from now,
 when you look back at this moment,
 would you trade all the days just to come back
 to this moment?
 And tell the English.
 You could take our lives, but you can't take our freedom.
 I mean, man, what is that about human nature?
 Is there some aspect of like the glory you were able to
 achieve being more important than anything else?
 There's some aspect of that.
 That's greatness, you know?
 Yeah, I never pursue glory.
 So it just came, you know, it came with it,
 but that was never my goal.
 I never care for glory.
 Were you able to experience like,
 like I'm at the height of this thing,
 whatever humanity is able to achieve in various things,
 holy shit, I'm flying.
 I felt like no one can touch me.
 I can destroy people.
 Yeah.
 Prolonged periods of time or just momentarily?
 I always knew, you know, from before I got to a black belt,
 the like, you know, I can be great because my, you know,
 I used to train with the best in the world.
 I used to, you know, for many years,
 and I used to see my progression with, and everybody else.
 So I knew I was getting somewhere.
 I knew I could be the best.
 And that was, that was always my goal since very, very young.
 And I always believed that I could be.
 And that over the years,
 that kept telling me over and over again,
 because I'm getting better and better,
 faster than everybody else.
 So it's, I just need to carry on with what I'm doing.
 But I think you've said that you wanted to,
 and maybe you thought you could be the greatest of all time,
 like at the very beginning, like when you sucked.
 Yeah, not the greatest of all time,
 because I never really thought about that.
 But I thought I'm gonna be the best in the world
 when I sucked, when I sucked.
 Okay, so what is that?
 What is that?
 Like that self-belief.
 Is there a component to that self-belief
 being a prerequisite?
 It's difficult to say because that was a decision, I think.
 Like, why did I believe I could be?
 I can't tell you that, because I don't know.
 But you think you decided to be?
 I decided to be, I decided to be,
 and I believed I could.
 You think there was like a day somewhere
 when you were young where you were like,
 huh, you're sitting on a couch eating Cheetos.
 I don't think it was a day, like a moment,
 because for many years,
 I wasn't really training much as a child.
 I used to train and then stop,
 done a bit of Jiu-Jitsu, never stay away from it much,
 but until, you know, like from 10 to 14,
 I barely trained Jiu-Jitsu much.
 I used to, there was no Gracie school
 near where I used to live.
 And there was a Jiu-Jitsu, a Jiu-Jitsu school,
 I used to go twice a week.
 I went to a Jiu-Jitsu tournament,
 I lost in five seconds, left crying.
 The guy, he pulled me in five seconds.
 Anyway, so when I was 14,
 I went to the south of Brazil to see my uncle, William,
 to spend summer holidays.
 I was there for like four weeks, I think.
 And when I got there,
 my cousin Hollis were living with him.
 Hollis like bigger than me.
 It was, I think it's four years, four years older.
 So I was 14, I was already 18, 17, 18.
 Purple belt competitor.
 And I think that was the first time in my life
 that I felt what it mean, what it meant to be a Gracie
 in terms of having a school, teaching, training,
 you know, living that, you know, Jiu-Jitsu lifestyle,
 what a Gracie mean to be.
 And I've just, I've loved that.
 I was out of shape.
 My uncle was like, you know,
 incentivizing me to lose weight, to train,
 but you're not training, why?
 You know, it's like, you're out of shape,
 you need to diet.
 So I used to run every day, I was eating super well.
 I start, you know, I start, that when I start changing.
 So when I go back to Rio,
 I was super motivated to follow up, carry on.
 And he, you know, he invited me to go back there
 to live with him, but I couldn't,
 it was too soon to change schools and everything.
 My mom say no, but maybe next year,
 if you wanna go, you can.
 So I kept that in my mind.
 Next year, I moved to the South to live with him.
 I was 15.
 And it was him, my uncle, Hylian, and my uncle, Karlin.
 They both used to live very close to each other.
 They used to have their own schools close to each other.
 So I was with both.
 And I stayed there for almost a year.
 I mean, I was the youngest in the academy.
 There was some, you know, blue, purple bells, normal guy,
 but they're very competing, training ahead of me.
 And I just joined the group of training.
 I didn't compete while I was there
 because there was no competition at that time.
 And I wasn't really ready, but it's not about competing.
 It's more about the training.
 And I started training every day, started improving.
 And a year after that, when I came back to Rio,
 I was already on a mission.
 I was like, I love this.
 I'm just carrying on training every day
 with my uncle, Carlos, Carlos Gracie Jr., Gracie Barra.
 And the one I got there,
 I was training a little bit there before,
 but I was just 14, 15.
 But when I got there, there was one of the most competitors,
 one of the biggest jujitsu schools at the time.
 There were so many high-level world champions,
 competitors in every single belt.
 And so I've kind of joined in with that.
 And I've carried on.
 I don't remember when, but I remember, you know,
 looking and saying, I'm gonna be the best in the world.
 But I used to be, I was at the bottom of the stairs.
 You know, no one really believed me.
 I didn't shout, you know, to disguise,
 but I told a few people, I'm like, I'm gonna be the best.
 And that's, I think, I was just losing,
 but I've never ever doubt.
 I've never diverged from that mission, I would say.
 Did anyone believe you when you said you can be great?
 Nobody.
 Did it matter?
 Didn't matter.
 I don't care.
 I don't need.
 Even people that like love you?
 Everybody, my mom, my dad, I mean, no one thought,
 no one in my family thought I was gonna be here today.
 Nobody.
 Because I just started late.
 You know, I've never had any start that people,
 oh, that kid's gonna be really good.
 No, my mom was a chubby kid that didn't barely train.
 I mean, people used to look at me,
 he's just another grace, you know, one more.
 What do you learn from that?
 Do you think most people lose that self-belief?
 They quit?
 When everyone around them doesn't believe?
 Yeah.
 I think if those that need approval, yes.
 I see you shouldn't have approval.
 I never need approval from anyone.
 I don't care if you believe me or not,
 if you're not my problem.
 It's tough, it's tough.
 I don't need approval, but
 you're surrounded by people older, wiser, better than you,
 and they're kind of directly or indirectly saying,
 you stop being silly kid.
 No one ever told me that because
 that was not something that I used to say all the time.
 I maybe say it just very, very few times.
 You know, maybe that's the secret.
 Of course, I mean, if you start shouting,
 then you've just been silly.
 Then it's not what you really want.
 Then you're saying that for another reasons,
 if you say it over and over again,
 because you shouldn't.
 I mean, why?
 Well, to push back,
 one of the reasons you might want to say it
 is to find the right people that believe in you.
 Yeah, but no, if you say over and over again,
 then you're just bragging.
 Sure.
 Because one thing is to say it,
 but the other one is to do it.
 So it's, you know, you say that once or very few times,
 but now you have to do it saying
 it's not helping you getting there.
 Was there sacrifices you had to make?
 Everything, everything.
 That was my priority in life.
 Everything was secondary.
 Like social life.
 Career paths.
 Yeah, everything.
 And from 14, 15, 16, as you get better and better
 and better and better,
 it was just becoming sharper, the focus on this thing.
 Yeah, it's just over and over again,
 over and over again.
 It's just training, training, training.
 And I mean, how many times I lost,
 I have no clue.
 So on the mat, you were getting beat up.
 I'm getting smashed by everybody.
 People my age, I was chubby.
 I was physically weak.
 I mean, I'm tall, but physically,
 I'm not physically strong.
 I'm normally strong for my size, but physically,
 if you want to measure strength, I'm weak.
 Because, you know, we can measure strength,
 living weight, I'm weak.
 I don't lift, I lift weight
 same as people much lighter than me.
 Everybody, my weight, lifts heavier weight.
 And then people that train with you often talk about
 how strong you are.
 They think I'm super strong.
 Yeah.
 Because I generate a lot of strength.
 I can create, I put myself in the right angles
 so that I can be strong.
 I'm not strong.
 And the only person who I listen to saying that is
 a competitor, one guy that I fought, Rodrigo Medeiros.
 I fought him a few times.
 And he's the only one that I heard saying about me,
 that's like, no, Roger's not strong.
 He's not, he's technical and he can create strength,
 but he's not strong.
 He meant that as a compliment?
 Yeah, I think so.
 No, I think he was honest because he,
 I think he's the only one who could see that.
 Yes.
 So I think that's a compliment.
 So he's technically really strong.
 So you had an incredible match with him.
 Yeah.
 Is there insight you have about how you went
 from a person who was not very good,
 but had a dream, a confident dream,
 a vision to somebody that was actually good?
 Was there something to the practice sessions?
 Were you getting reps on specific techniques?
 I'd never done anything special because I mean,
 I'm in a gym training equally with everybody else.
 So I've never did anything on the side
 different than anybody else.
 So I was in the school training
 exactly the same way as everybody else.
 Wow.
 In terms of schedule, yes, but what was,
 can you reverse engineer what was going through your mind?
 Because there's so many different ways
 to actually mentally approach
 the same exact training session.
 I'm gonna try to beat you.
 Okay.
 So in some part it's competitive.
 Yeah.
 Like at the core of it is I want to be better
 than these particular people.
 You're gonna keep beating me.
 I'm gonna keep coming back at you.
 And to do that, I have to solve problems.
 I have to figure out how to do stuff.
 You catch me once.
 I'm gonna keep on coming,
 trying to not get caught in that.
 At which point did you develop a game
 that was basically the famous white belt game
 of the very basics, the very fundamentals of Jiu Jitsu?
 Like saying, I'm going to beat you.
 Never.
 There was never a conscious decision
 to try to have a basic Jiu Jitsu.
 First, I think there's a big misconception there.
 Okay, what's the misconception?
 My Jiu Jitsu is not basic.
 Mr. Haji Gracie, it's not right.
 It's not basic, it's not old school.
 I think people, they just don't see that.
 It's extremely complex in a way that
 people they cannot copy.
 I teach people, I can teach you the cross-collar choke,
 but the one thing that people they don't realize
 is not the move,
 is you need to practice the movement you learn.
 Is the practice over and over again.
 Like it took me years.
 When I say years, years after I was a black belt,
 I was able to choke people out
 with a cross-collar choke in the mouth, effectively.
 Years after I got my black belt.
 So that's something that you learn first day, first week.
 So I can teach you, it makes no difference.
 You know the theory, but until you apply it,
 you help you, of course, the more details you learn,
 the more tools you have to practice,
 but it's still very complex.
 Because it's not about the move itself.
 It's about how can you control the movement
 of the other person.
 He's resisting, you're blocking.
 You cannot predict what he will do.
 And he's doing a whole bunch of moves to block you.
 Every single move you do a step of the way.
 Because it's a progression of move from beginning to end
 till I apply the choke.
 It's a progression of move.
 And there's not one way to get that.
 There's many ways because how many ways can you block?
 You can put your arm in every single angle.
 We have both arms, you can bridge.
 So it's dealing with all that.
 That is the complexity of the position.
 But that goes for everything.
 Like every single move, my strong moves, I would say,
 it took me years developing them.
 Years.
 So it's, and you're gonna tell me that's basic.
 So go try and do it.
 What the other person is defending.
 That's the thing, because most of the things that I do,
 I've been doing them for years.
 And they know that I'm gonna do
 and I can still get it most of the times.
 That's the hardest.
 It's when they know what's coming, you can still do it.
 And you said that the way you're able to do that,
 you just have to do it right.
 Yeah.
 What do you learn by doing all the steps along the way?
 And just for people who don't know,
 cross-collar choke from the mount.
 So, the jiu-jitsu starts in a neutral place.
 There's people on their feet.
 And then you either, then you get to the ground somehow.
 And then there's the person on top and on bottom.
 And then there's a guard with the legs
 between the two people.
 And then you can get past the guard.
 As you get past the guard and you into side control
 and so on, you get more and more and more
 dominant positions.
 And so mount is considered to be one of the most
 dominant positions.
 It's when you're past their legs,
 sitting on top of their stomach, putting pressure on them.
 And cross-collar choke is using their jacket to,
 how would you explain that?
 To choke them with their jacket.
 You have the collars, I put my both hands on your collars.
 And when I squeeze, it press your neck,
 so it blocks the vein.
 You go to sleep.
 So, you choke people with your hands in the wrist.
 You put them, you grab the collar,
 so you got the wrist around people's neck and you squeeze.
 The discovery of that is fascinating.
 I mean, it's interesting.
 It's like, you can imagine there's all kinds of ways
 to choke a human being.
 What animals do with their mouth, right?
 They put their jaws around the,
 and the fact that you can kind of discover this methodology
 of the right kind of positioning,
 and then it becomes an art form.
 Like, why this?
 Why not this, right?
 Or why not this or something?
 Like, to figure all that out.
 We practice, that will come easy.
 Over time, you figure out what works and what not.
 And then more, further and further details and subtleties
 start to emerge.
 Anyway, on that process of beating,
 of being able to beat some of the best people in the world
 and the thing they know is coming,
 what's the difference between the white belt doing that
 and Hajra-Greicy doing that?
 The thing that's so hard to explain.
 What do you think you're picking up?
 Is it some tiny, tiny details of muscle movements?
 It is.
 It's many tiny details because it's the whole movement
 itself is the perception from beginning to end.
 Like every step of the movement, it's important and precise.
 So it's, you know, you miss one detail on the way,
 it collapse.
 So when it's with the black belt,
 the black belt has no control over the whole movement.
 He's thinking beginning and end.
 So he goes straight to your neck,
 regardless he cannot read the other person.
 If it's time to let go, if it's the time to go for a neck,
 should I be pushing here before I get my hand in?
 You know, is this the right time to go deep
 or should I deal with this first before the second hand?
 That's at the beginning.
 So it's at the white belt,
 at the very beginning of the journey.
 Yeah, the white belt, you just think, finish.
 Yeah.
 Mm-hmm.
 And then as you get progressed,
 you see that there's like this giant tree of possibilities
 that you're almost feeling your way down.
 I mean, would you be able to teach?
 Explo...
 Do you even know what you're doing?
 By the details.
 Okay.
 But it's hard to convert into words probably.
 No.
 That's possible.
 Then you don't know what you're doing.
 Okay.
 So what is some most important details
 that you could say maybe positioning of the hand,
 the gripping, is it the positioning of your body,
 the posture, is there some interesting insights
 that people must understand?
 It's a combination because first you have to put your body
 in a very strong position that you don't require
 your hands to hold the mount.
 So the choke is that first because I cannot use my hands
 on the floor to stop you escaping.
 Yeah.
 So if I have to, my body has to handle that.
 The way I position myself, I have to do it in a way
 that don't require my hands for balance.
 Okay. Why is the mount such a dominant position?
 It doesn't make any sense, right?
 You're just sitting on top of the stomach of a person.
 It makes all sense.
 If you think what's...
 Forget fighting.
 Forget Jiu-Jitsu.
 Like you've never trained.
 What's the one position, the most dominant position
 you can get over another human being?
 One.
 The most.
 For you, which one it is?
 Like the most dominant position
 that you can get over another human being.
 So if we were just...
 Because the way I think about it is putting myself
 in like a six, seven, eight year old self
 without knowing any martial arts.
 And I had an older brother who would beat the shit out of me.
 Yeah, it probably was mount.
 What?
 But, well, yes.
 Okay. So we both didn't know.
 But if we knew something, it'd probably be back control.
 If in the back control, you're under the other person.
 The thing being under is the most dominant position
 that can be over another person.
 You mean like a back control?
 If I'm on your back, you can move.
 You can roll.
 I cannot stop you rolling.
 Yeah.
 Maybe you can even stand up.
 How dominant is that?
 Yeah, but if we're the same size, both untrained.
 If...
 Doesn't matter.
 Have you seen kids, do they do that?
 Okay.
 Mount looks and feels like dominance
 when you're two eight year olds fighting.
 Okay. I don't know.
 I don't know why it feels that way.
 It could be some animalistic thing.
 Maybe it is actual dominance.
 I don't know, but it feels like if you're untrained,
 you can just buck your way out of it.
 It feels unstable.
 It feels unstable to hold mount
 unless you know what you're doing.
 Right? No?
 If you're mounting, put both of your hands on the floor.
 Yeah.
 Just your hands.
 To think it's easy to take somebody off.
 Yeah, maybe not.
 To think it's easy to remove the hand and bring them out.
 The hands on the floor.
 Arms straight, I'm leaning and...
 Yeah, you're right.
 It's hard.
 I mean, you don't need to know fighting
 to hold yourself there.
 Yeah.
 But you're right.
 When you take the arms off and balancing,
 then it gets tricky.
 Because when you're trying to...
 I think what happens, I'm thinking back to eight year old.
 Because my brother's five years older than me
 and he would do the usual like,
 stop hitting yourself thing.
 And I think he would be in mount,
 like hitting me with my own hands.
 From out of place of love, of course.
 I love him deeply.
 And it was very formative and a positive experience for me.
 Okay.
 I think, yeah, the weakness is when he takes...
 When the person who has the mount
 takes their arms off to do something.
 But even if you keep your hands up in the air,
 when I'm falling...
 Yeah, you can.
 When I'm falling, so...
 I'm speaking about untrained people.
 I feel like they get greedy.
 They try to do stuff.
 The other day I watched my nine year old daughter.
 We're in a friend's house.
 There's a whole bunch of kids there, they're playing.
 And when I looked,
 she's mounting a boy, her age, her size.
 He cannot escape.
 Wow, she probably has seen some footage.
 She's been training for, I'll say, a year and a half.
 But she's not much.
 I mean, she's a nine year old daughter, a girl over a boy.
 Has she seen footage of you?
 Maybe she picked up from that.
 No, but she's been training for a year and a half.
 So she has an idea what a mount is.
 But I mean, in terms of our skills,
 I never taught her the mount.
 She has lessons at the academy, like any other kid.
 Did she make him cry?
 No, but he couldn't escape.
 Which other position would she be able to hold the boy?
 In the back, he would roll her out.
 That's true.
 Like he couldn't come out from underneath her.
 She's...
 They're kids.
 Like there is no other most dominant position
 that you can pin the other person.
 Couldn't you argue from that perspective, side control?
 No.
 No?
 Because side control, you have to hold the other person.
 And you're not free.
 You cannot release them.
 But in side control, your hips are not on top of theirs.
 So they can't buck you off, right?
 If you're holding them a little bit
 and you can hit them with one hand.
 But his head is here.
 You're gonna hurt him here.
 By the time you're doing that,
 but then he has his arms free.
 And if you turn towards your legs,
 then he's away from your arms.
 You don't even have the perfect angle.
 I mean, it is a good position.
 You can hit, you can dominate,
 but it's not the best position to be over the other person.
 He can knee you in the head.
 At the same time you punch him,
 then there's a knee coming to your head.
 I love playing devil's advocate with Roger Gracie
 about two eight year olds fighting.
 And your head is closer to his head.
 Maybe he can give you a punch.
 Would you choose to be in side control over mount?
 Getting in the head.
 Well, for a person who in competition prefers
 knee on belly over mount, but that's my weakness.
 That's my failure as a human being.
 Holding mount can be tricky.
 It's very hard.
 Of course it's hard.
 But what is easy?
 Side control and knee on belly is easier.
 But to submit-
 Knee on belly is easy.
 Easier, I'm not saying black belt level.
 I'm saying, well maybe even black belt level.
 Easy for what?
 To hold somebody?
 To make them squirm and hurt, to create openings.
 Yeah, but go do that with a big guy.
 Yeah, you can't.
 You can't.
 Yeah.
 He's gonna push you back and come up.
 In the mount, he can't sit up.
 Not when you mounted him.
 The thing is also about mount is people
 on the bottom of mount panic more.
 So they fight harder.
 Of course they panic.
 They're exposed.
 It's the most exposure you have.
 Because the person's arms are free.
 You cannot touch him.
 His head is too high.
 There's nothing he can do.
 His legs won't get you anywhere.
 Might touch your lower back.
 It's like nothing.
 You're most exposed being in the mount.
 I really hope you hold me side control a thousand times.
 The amount of me having to look up
 for your face coming down on me.
 Yeah.
 Side control, I hug you, you cannot hurt me.
 Okay, hold me, but I'm hugging you.
 If I hug you tight, what can you do against me?
 Hold.
 It seems maybe it's just from,
 and again, I'm arguing just for the fun of it.
 But it seems like a more difficult skill to learn
 to apply a huge amount of pressure and weight from mount.
 You don't have to apply pressure and weight from mount?
 Not apply pressure, but be heavy, right?
 You don't necessarily need to be heavy.
 You don't?
 No.
 Why do you, as people say, you feel extremely heavy?
 If I'm putting, if I'm being heavy, I cannot attack.
 I have to choose.
 I can be heavy just to pin them,
 take the energy out to make them suffer.
 But the moment that I decide to attack,
 I can only be heavy if I'm sitting up straight.
 That's when my, all my weight can drops down.
 If I'm high, then I'm sitting on your chest
 and on your solar plexus.
 That's the worst position to be seated on the person
 because that's where he breathes.
 So you're in a high mount, sitting up straight.
 That's when you can, I can be very heavy.
 I can make people feel my weight and be very uncomfortable,
 but I'm not in a position to attack.
 The moment that I wanna attack, my body has to lean forward.
 I have to approach the neck or the arms.
 The moment that I do that, my weight comes off my hips.
 It goes to my knees, the weight is off you.
 But at that point, if you have-
 Now I'm attacking, I'm no longer heavy on you.
 But you want to be at that point to remove any of the
 defenses they have or some of the defenses
 by getting their elbows-
 Now I'm like either getting, trying to get your collar
 or bringing your elbow across to attack the armlock.
 So what are some interesting details along the way
 that are tough to get to figure out?
 What were the big leaps for you from white belt
 to the best in the world?
 It's, you're trying to attack the neck,
 putting one hand in the collar.
 You're priving yourself the hand to pace it on the floor.
 So now you're vulnerable to get breached, to get rollover.
 Cause if your hands are free trying to roll you over,
 you're stopped.
 The moment that you put your hand in the person's collar,
 now you have to be very careful with your body positioning.
 Very careful.
 The distribution of the weight.
 Yeah, and how high you sit, how tall your upper body goes.
 And then the biggest challenge comes
 as you're trying the second hand.
 That's the, for the choke, that's the biggest challenge.
 The second hand.
 Because you already have, you know,
 you already don't have one hand.
 Now you are trying the second hand.
 And if one of my hand is in, you as a,
 defending yourself have two hands.
 One hand is already on one side.
 This side is getting attacked.
 You have two hands blocking that.
 I have one hand.
 There's no help for that hand.
 I cannot remove anything.
 That's the biggest challenge.
 Getting one hand getting past two
 and not getting rollover.
 But I also have two hands on bottom.
 I have two hands and can also turn
 and do all kinds of stuff.
 Yeah.
 And my whole mind and everything is focused
 on that second hand.
 Yeah.
 It's a big challenge.
 It's hard.
 Very hard.
 Is there an art to getting the first hand
 into a place where you...
 It's less of an art because it's easier.
 I'll say most times I get my first hand in
 is when you're trying some move.
 You're trying to scape, you're pushing.
 I get the first hand in as an opportunity.
 And it's gonna sit there for a while.
 And now...
 And I go as deep as I can.
 So the first hand, because the second hand
 is the hardest, I have to compensate the first hand
 to be as deep as I can.
 If I cannot get the first hand in deep,
 I won't try the second.
 I need that first hand deep.
 Then I go for the second.
 And it's deep and everything is super tight?
 Super tight.
 The first hand has to be super tight.
 Otherwise, the chance of failing is very big.
 Okay.
 Does the opponent usually feel like they're screwed
 at that point also?
 Not as you put in the first hand in.
 The moment that I position myself
 just prior to attempt the second hand,
 I think the way my body is positioned,
 the way I'm collapsing with my weight
 and they feel this like this is terrible.
 Yeah, how long did it take you to figure out
 how to reposition your weight once the first hand is in?
 Very quickly.
 Because the weight get breached out.
 Okay.
 So that there's a good feedback loop there.
 Because one mistake you're out.
 Like one off positioning you out.
 But you still have to do that
 against the best people in the world.
 Yeah.
 Where's the way out for most people?
 Like if you were in Mount against Prashasha
 or some of the best defenses in the world.
 The way out is to, obviously is to defend themselves
 and prevent the first hand to get deep.
 And I'll say the best thing that they could do
 is try to change my positioning on the mount
 in a way that push me to a very low mount.
 Try to change the way I'm dominating you
 not to be, get me off the high mount pretty much.
 Are you always, is it a slow, is it a fast thing
 to go from low to fast mount?
 A high mount.
 Slow, very slow.
 Because I need to beat your arms.
 Because you're holding me down.
 And the arms need to come out.
 It's a slow process.
 Okay.
 And you just, is there like a...
 Yeah.
 It's so I use my legs against your arms.
 So it's my legs pushing your arms.
 But how do you get them?
 How do you get your legs into the elbows?
 As long as it's, you know, it has to come under
 the tip of your elbow.
 Cause now the legs will start forcing your arms up.
 So your legs aren't like spread out there.
 No.
 They're in.
 Your elbow cannot get inside my leg.
 Because that means I'm in a very low mount.
 And then I cannot attack.
 Cause I cannot ignore that.
 Cause the moment that I attack,
 that will, you will start pushing my leg to push me up.
 What's the secret to getting the second hand in?
 There's two ways.
 Either you go four fingers inside,
 which is the hardest because with the moment
 that your two hands are defending,
 you'll be blocking the way.
 And I cannot clear and attack two hands against one.
 So I go thumb and I go behind the ear.
 Yep.
 So my grip goes, because for you to defend,
 you need to get there.
 Yep.
 And when you get there, you elevate your elbow,
 expose the arm lock.
 So it's hard.
 So you put the thumb in and then there's the dreaded,
 like the other person just waits for you to loop the arm over.
 Yeah, but that, this over.
 Once you get the thumb in, it's over.
 Okay.
 No.
 But when I'm there, it's, if I get the,
 cause they're bridging, you know, they try and,
 I'm not using their hand to post.
 Now your head is,
 My head is very close to the floor.
 When I'm there, I'm not using my hand to post.
 So when I'm on the floor, when I've tried to bridge,
 and you know, my forehead would touch the floor,
 that would be used as a hand.
 But it's not on the floor?
 Not necessarily.
 Okay.
 Because if it's on the floor, my body's collapsed over you.
 Yeah.
 So there's no place for my hand,
 for me to work on your neck.
 So I need some space between us.
 So I don't completely collapse.
 Maybe you can bob up and down.
 Yeah, yeah.
 But I try to keep a gap between us.
 Okay.
 So that pursuit that takes many, many, many, many years,
 you're a dream of sushi.
 The, doing the simple thing,
 that's not so simple, but it kind of looks simple,
 over and over and over and over and over,
 and presumably getting much better over time.
 It becomes very simple.
 It becomes very simple.
 But you're picking up details probably along the way.
 There's wisdom along the way.
 What is that?
 Is that,
 there's like lessons that you just kind of accumulate
 over time.
 Like one training session you'll see,
 maybe
 like the positioning of the thumb,
 like this detailed positioning of the thumb
 or something like this.
 And then you like, okay.
 You like load that in.
 That will be very basic
 because there is not that many different ways.
 Maybe one, two.
 I just do one.
 Any other is not as strong.
 Because it's about getting a strong grip on your collar.
 I mean, the thumb is,
 the thumb goes inside, you know,
 either the thumb in or four fingers in,
 but it's getting a strong grip on the collar.
 As long as, you know, this is just holding
 and feeling strong.
 So that's just two options.
 So it's the dynamic stuff along the way.
 And then some of that is timing too.
 It's timing.
 Are you also like making people,
 like faking them out,
 making them think about something else?
 No, not at that point.
 That's not,
 because I cannot fake anything else at that point.
 Because I will have to change my positioning to,
 you know, maybe to fake an armlock.
 Then I have to move out from that.
 So then I will lose the control I have.
 So what's the process towards mastery?
 If you were to convert that to something
 that generalizes beyond Jiu-Jitsu,
 how can you get that good at a simple thing?
 Practice.
 And what-
 That simple.
 The same exact thing over and over.
 It's just a matter of how long it will take.
 It will take you.
 So all-
 Ha ha ha ha.
 That's true.
 That's true.
 I mean, like I said,
 look how long it took me.
 People give up along the way.
 There is intricacies to that journey towards perfection.
 There's a lot of people that do Jiu-Jitsu for decades
 and don't get better.
 No, because they don't train the way they should.
 They don't train to get better.
 They train to get tough.
 That's a big difference.
 Most people, they train to get tough, so they are tough.
 Like we were talking before,
 they don't practice their weakness.
 You wanna be good at,
 you wanna be really good at Jiu-Jitsu,
 you have to practice your weakness, not your strength.
 You have to practice everything,
 but you have to be equally strong in every position.
 They all exact the same.
 Your guard top-bottom, side control top-bottom,
 turtle, half guard, mount, back.
 I mean, you pick, take down.
 And then you get into details of escaping triangle,
 applying the triangle, escaping armlock,
 different scenarios of,
 the one thing is defending the armlock
 when you have your arms very close to your body.
 The other thing is to defend the arms
 when your arm is almost getting,
 and then when he got your arm.
 So there's so many things to practice
 that you need to repeat them over and over again
 until you're confident enough
 that when you get there, you have a chance.
 And you can do the same kind of thing
 for even the final stages of a cross choke from mount.
 Everything.
 I mean, of course, like you don't practice
 escaping the armlock with a full arm straight,
 because that's gone.
 I mean, you practice,
 you practice escaping the armlock
 when he takes your arm,
 you have a chance of trying to escape,
 but you don't practice.
 You know, okay, take my arm.
 When I say go, go, I mean, you got,
 you pop the arm.
 That is like you get injured doing that.
 Escaping the cross collar choke,
 it's, I mean, escape not letting the person get there.
 You can escape, you can practice escaping triangles,
 because it's like,
 you have a way better chance of escaping triangle
 than, okay, mount to me, put both hands in my neck.
 I mean, it's over, you know, don't be there.
 What's the best submission in Jiu Jitsu?
 The choke, I would say.
 From which position?
 If I gave you a billion dollars
 to start in a position,
 like in a submission,
 and you only get the billion,
 if you get the submission,
 which one would you start?
 Cross collar choke and mount.
 Cross collar choke and mount.
 Not from the back?
 No, you have a better chance escaping from the back.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 Even with the hooks?
 Even with everything.
 Do you think some people will disagree with you?
 I don't care.
 I have a better escape.
 I have a better chance escaping from the back
 than if you mount to me, put my hands on my neck.
 So, if you were facing yourself,
 and I will give you a billion dollars to escape,
 you would pick?
 From the back.
 Thousand times over.
 Like, really?
 No comparison.
 You have like with hooks, with like a triangle?
 Doesn't matter.
 You can do whatever you want.
 Like a body triangle?
 Okay.
 Okay.
 Really?
 Like a thousand times over.
 No questions.
 So, to you, the mount is a super controlling position.
 It's not just...
 Because cross collar choking the mount,
 the moment they put both hands on my neck,
 you know, you have to,
 your arms needs to be very close to your body to attack.
 So, that means there's very little space between us.
 So, that means there's very little escape space
 for you to work on your escape.
 And the moment that you cannot bridge,
 let's suppose I have, you know,
 the person has a good mount,
 so you cannot bridge him off.
 What else?
 You don't have space to try to work on your defense.
 Being in the back, I have all this space around me
 to work on my defense and my arms.
 I have the mobility to bring them anywhere.
 So, I, because of that,
 it gives you and me a much better chance.
 And you cannot, I can move my body.
 If you're on my back, you cannot pin me.
 I cannot take you off my back.
 First, I need to defend the choke,
 but you have no control over my body.
 So, that means there's still a lot of movement
 that I can try to use to escape.
 In the mount, there's no movement.
 I'm pinned down, I cannot move,
 and I have no space between us to escape.
 Well, the argument against that, this is great,
 is that on the bottom of mount,
 I do have my hands between,
 so you're saying they're pinned, there's nothing.
 Between where?
 I mean, you could get them in theory.
 You could somehow, you could.
 But there's no, you can't, but then there's no space.
 They will be squeezed between our bodies.
 If it's an incredible mount.
 No, it does not mount.
 Like, how standing, if I put both hands on your neck,
 if I'm gonna go for the cross collar choke,
 after I get my hands in,
 the next step is to pull you close to me.
 So, it's this, my arms need to be close to me.
 But I can put, there's the hands that could do something.
 They can come in,
 but they are very limited space between us.
 Yes, yes, no, I mean to push your body away,
 to decrease the power of the choke.
 Only if we're standing,
 not if your back is against the floor.
 Okay, the argument against the mount is,
 or the argument for back controls
 being the most dominant position,
 is even though I have hands,
 I can't really use them effectively, as effective.
 Not in the mount.
 There's no space.
 In the mount, there's no space.
 There's no space.
 You can try.
 I mean, you can squeeze your hand in.
 I mean, there's still things that you could do,
 but they're so limited.
 So, if you pulled the 100 best competitors of all time,
 what do you think they would answer to that?
 Do you think most would agree with you?
 I don't care.
 You will show me their skills, their ability to see.
 Okay, so the perfect mount
 versus the perfect back control.
 There's no question.
 Okay, there's no question.
 For me, I mean, argue with me, like show me,
 because I'm not being stubborn, because I'm being-
 Scientific.
 Exactly.
 So, explain it to me why the back, it would be harder.
 It would be better to your position to finish the mount.
 If you can explain it to me why, I might change my mind.
 I was trying to, but I don't have the cred.
 I'm like a middle school science student
 trying to talk to Einstein here.
 Okay, besides you, who do you think
 is the greatest Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time?
 Can you make the case for some of them,
 Marcelo, Buccecha, Leandro Lowe?
 I'll have to go with Buccecha,
 because look at how many titles he has.
 I mean, he has by far more than Marcelo.
 Marcelo stopped quite early.
 Leandro Lowe has eight, but Buccecha is better than him.
 What do you think makes Buccecha so good?
 He's a heavyweight that moves like a lightweight.
 He moves very fast, but he's very agile for his size.
 So the agility combined with aggression.
 Yeah, so it's very hard to control him,
 because he moves fast and he's 112 kilos, 115 sometimes,
 or 110, I'm not sure, but he's about around that.
 So 240 in pounds.
 So when you're agile, 240 pounds,
 that makes it very hard to control you.
 What about making the case for some others?
 What about the little guys?
 What about Marcelo, if you were to make the case
 for him being the strongest?
 What makes Marcelo good?
 Marcelo Garcia is extremely technical.
 I mean, I think he's one of my favorite Jiu-Jitsu fighters,
 because in a technical way,
 I think he's probably one of the best.
 So raw technique and a bunch of different positions
 for submissions.
 He's not very powerful.
 Physically, he's not very strong,
 but he can make himself very strong,
 and his technique is very, very high level.
 Have you ever trained with him?
 No, I fought him twice.
 Yeah.
 But he's much smaller than me.
 What happened in those matches?
 The first fight, I tapped him, I think, five minutes.
 In which submission?
 Choke from the back.
 Collar choke from the back.
 And the second time I beat him by points,
 but a very large, I think 12-2.
 Actually, just to continue,
 I wonder if John Donahue would agree with you
 about mountain back.
 I can't wait to hear.
 This is a bear versus a lion conversation.
 But I'm looking, there's statistics about,
 I'm not letting this go.
 There's statistics about,
 oh, look at that, Hodger.
 What do you know, looking at Hodger Gracie's statistics
 for most successful submissions?
 Choke from the back is the most.
 So how do you explain that, Mr. Scientist?
 Because people panic when I'm out.
 They turn the back.
 I choke them out.
 That's one explanation.
 But for people, it is interesting that,
 of course, this doesn't capture,
 but this captures a lot of your major matches.
 And we should say that you've submitted
 most of your opponents, so you rarely win on points.
 You usually win submissions.
 Choke from back is most of them,
 then cross choke from mountain.
 Arm bar is a lot, too.
 So 18 from choke from back, 12 cross choke,
 10 arm bar, five RNC, rear naked is for no gi.
 Okay.
 So Ezekiel.
 Ezekiel is very powerful.
 I took, I used, he's a strong weapon.
 Yeah, also from mountain.
 Also from mountain.
 Also from mountain.
 That's when you can't get the one hand in.
 No, because the Ezekiel, most times I use against people,
 is the attack that as soon as I get to the mount,
 when they're trying to escape the open up,
 and I get them.
 It has to be at that initial timing.
 So it's not a thing you use to bother them
 in order to create.
 Either I get it right away, or I don't bother trying much.
 Because you need to keep one hand behind the head.
 And you're naturally on that position
 as soon as you mount, most of the times.
 And the moment that you mount someone,
 no one accept that they go mounted,
 they're gonna explode to get out.
 So holding the head, it gives you a better way
 to dominate them initially,
 to deal with that explosiveness on the initial,
 on the beginning.
 And then, but then you have to let go to try it.
 You're very limited holding the head.
 In terms of goats, Shandji,
 I feel like he doesn't get enough credit that he deserves.
 He had an extremely dominant performance in competition.
 What about Salo and Shandji Hibero?
 What are your thoughts about what makes them so good?
 You had a bunch of tough matches with Shandji and Salo.
 Eight times.
 Yeah, for eight times, Shandji.
 I fought Salo once.
 I think I'm bringing up a sore point.
 Oh, did Shandji tap when you,
 or did the time right out?
 And that was the last time you guys faced each other.
 Yeah, 2008.
 That was incredible to watch also.
 I think you pulled guard with one minute left
 working towards attacking.
 I mean, it's probably very tough to get anything.
 And for people who don't know, time ran out.
 You had something that looked like an arm lock.
 And Shandji looked like he may be tapping,
 but it looked like he might be just celebrating,
 which is most likely.
 I'm not sure.
 I'm not sure because
 I think his arm was just straight as an arm time finish.
 So I'm not sure if he was tapping to let go,
 time is up.
 Because I would say most likely the time was up.
 Yeah, and also there's a thing where you start,
 you realize there's only three, two seconds left.
 You just kind of start celebrating.
 You realize that Hadrian's not gonna be able
 to finish his arm bar in the time left,
 so you start celebrating.
 No, I think he tapped to say the time is up.
 The time is up.
 Anyway, what do you think, the longevity especially
 is impressive with Shandji?
 How long?
 I think he doesn't get credit as much as he deserves
 because he pushed his career very far.
 And the last few years, he was on his best.
 So if he would have stopped before,
 people would remember him on his highest,
 but he kind of pushed more than his peak, let's say.
 How hard is it for you to walk away?
 We'll talk about the journey into MMA as well,
 but you basically, especially with the second match
 against Pucheshi, basically walked away on top,
 beating arguably the greatest competitor of all time,
 and just walking away.
 It wasn't that hard, to be honest,
 because that was something that I was considering
 for a while, because the last few years of my career,
 let's say, it was fighting MMA at the same time
 I was fighting Jiu-Jitsu,
 and it's very challenging to do both.
 Like, there's not another person who ever did that,
 because the training is a confliction
 with the way you train.
 Everybody who start doing MMA, start focusing on MMA,
 their Jiu-Jitsu gets worse,
 because they stop training with the gi.
 Everybody, no exception.
 Was your Jiu-Jitsu also getting worse?
 No, because I made sure I kept training with the gi,
 and I kept fighting at least the World Championship
 once a year.
 That was my goal.
 I'm like, I'm gonna go for MMA,
 but I love Jiu-Jitsu, and I still wanna fight
 at the highest level.
 So I kept fighting once a year for a few years.
 It was a challenge, especially because the two or three times
 when I competed at the Worlds,
 it was right after I MMA fight I had.
 And no gi, you don't have the grips.
 So my grips, it made a big difference on my grip.
 So I was weaker grip-wise.
 So I felt that.
 So I knew it was like, it's unnecessary risk,
 because if I cannot be 100%, so why am I doing this?
 But I'm stubborn, I love Jiu-Jitsu.
 It's like I love fighting Jiu-Jitsu.
 I never loved MMA.
 I've liked it, but I think if it were Gracie,
 I wouldn't have done it.
 So the thing you felt the most is the grips.
 Yeah.
 Because you won a gi World Championship without gripping.
 No.
 Like just pretending it's no gi match,
 they get to grip you, but you don't.
 No.
 So grips are essential.
 Of course.
 I mean, how can you choke someone?
 Like if your grips are weak, your forearms will fatigue,
 and then you will have no power,
 and then you cannot do anything.
 Yeah.
 You can still arm lock.
 So I meant more not for the submission,
 but for the control of the game of it, the dance.
 But you need to grip to get there.
 To get there.
 And if your grips are weak.
 But you also have grips in no gi.
 Can't you use those grips?
 No.
 It's a thought experiment.
 So like I'm trying to understand how essential.
 When I get a no gi guy go fight with a gi, they panic.
 They panic?
 Of course.
 Everyone panics.
 A bear panics when they're in the water with a shark,
 but that doesn't mean the bear can't still win
 when it stops panicking and relaxes.
 It's not possible.
 That's another discussion.
 Can a bear beat a shark in the water?
 Actually, I need to, maybe a polar bear,
 because they're pretty good at swimming.
 Okay.
 I say not possible for the no gi guy to win.
 The bear is a further discussion.
 What was to you the biggest difference
 between mixed martial arts and jujitsu?
 What are some interesting differences,
 some interesting insights,
 even just about the grappling within both sports?
 So the biggest difference for me
 between MMA and jujitsu is first is the speed.
 Like jujitsu, you know, like a 10 minute match,
 I can take my time.
 There's no dangers that forces me to move fast.
 MMA, you have to be 100% sharp in fast
 from first second of the fight,
 because punches are coming,
 you can get knocked out anytime.
 One mistake, you're out.
 Jujitsu don't have that.
 Like it's, I don't have to worry about quick submissions,
 because it's all about the way my body's positioned.
 You know, my grips is easy to avoid,
 it's easier to see it coming.
 Like it's like a quick submission, a surprise,
 it only works if you make a mistake,
 if you're not correct positioning.
 Otherwise it's impossible.
 It's extremely difficult.
 MMA is not, I mean, one split second mistake,
 and when the person comes, you have to respond.
 You have to match his pace.
 I mean, you can slow down,
 but it's like you're forced to respond.
 So it's much faster.
 It's a lot more physical, a lot more.
 And you need to be physical, much better conditioning,
 faster, it's explosiveness, it's much harder.
 Is it possible in the MMA to calm things down?
 If they change the rules, yeah.
 Five minute rules, no.
 Ah, I see.
 So like, I just meant actually technically speaking,
 is there a ways to take an opponent
 that's being exceptionally aggressive?
 You can, clinch.
 But then he takes you down, he keeps moving.
 Something is hard to control that pace.
 You can, you don't, if you play defense,
 you save more energy than if you try to be the aggressor.
 You respond.
 And even getting to the clinch is very difficult.
 Yeah, you have no way to hold yourself there.
 So that was the biggest challenge for me in MMA,
 is the speed, because I'm a very slow start fighter.
 If you look at my matches, I start very slow,
 because if I go hard, I fatigue faster.
 So for me, that was the hardest part of is to start fast.
 What about on the ground?
 Is there something different,
 more challenging on the ground?
 Being in the bottom, yes.
 There's punches, punch coming.
 How fundamentally different is Jiu Jitsu
 with punches on the ground?
 Changes everything, everything.
 Which parts?
 The distance that you allow your opponent to be on you,
 the techniques that you choose to apply.
 Your body has to be aware of the punches,
 and you are a lot more limited on your attacks.
 So you're known for your close guards.
 How does your close guard have to adjust?
 How does the positioning of your hands have to adjust
 when you're on the bottom of close guard?
 So in the guard, especially in the close guard,
 you have to either keep the person very close to you,
 or you have to kick him away.
 That's in the guard, it's either I'm hugging you,
 or get away from him.
 And in Jiu Jitsu, you're allowed to have a middle?
 Yeah, in Jiu Jitsu, you can allow the person to be.
 What about getting armlock or triangle submissions
 from the guard?
 Is that fundamentally different?
 Because you don't have the middle game?
 It's much harder.
 There's barely no open guard in MMA, very little.
 Because the open guard, there's a distance between you and him.
 There's a distance, you cannot control.
 It's much harder to control that punch coming.
 And I have to position myself a way to block that.
 And it limited my attacks, my options of attacks.
 Is there a reason, correct me if I'm wrong,
 but I don't think you do open guard much in Jiu Jitsu and Nogi.
 Is there a reason for that?
 It's harder with the explosive person.
 Because when they're moving fast,
 then you have to try to slow them down.
 So you like guards that allow you to control the person?
 Yeah.
 And closed guard is the ultimate control?
 Yeah.
 It's not ultimate control,
 but closed guard puts you in a position
 that I'm attacking and you're defending.
 You cannot attack me from my closed guard.
 I'm...
 We can agree that there might be one or two attacks,
 but it's like very, very, very limited
 and depends who you're fighting against.
 I hate the closed guard.
 Being on top against a good closed guard is very...
 No one likes it. It's terrible.
 It's horrible.
 Yeah, it's one-sided.
 So you're in the guard and it's one-sided.
 The person at the bottom has the advantage.
 I can be completely relaxed in my closed guard
 and I cannot be completely relaxed.
 You know what the most annoying thing is?
 It's somebody who is both good
 and extremely confident with the closed guard.
 Because they have that smug energy about them.
 They know how much unpleasant,
 how much work it takes to pass this.
 Anyway, especially people with longer legs.
 Is there something you wish you did differently
 in how you started training at MMA in that trajectory,
 in figuring out how to train, how to get good?
 Like what have you learned about getting good at MMA
 from having done it?
 If you were to start now, for example.
 I think I would have to dedicate it more.
 I didn't dedicate enough.
 Both like literally time, number of training sessions.
 Training, yeah.
 But also mental.
 Training wise, physical.
 I think a lot more the physical part of it.
 The strikes, everything.
 The strikes from the beginning.
 It's because, I mean, I love Jiu-Jitsu.
 I truly love all the aspects of it.
 Fighting, training, the practice, the competition.
 I don't have that for MMA.
 So it's hard to give your heart to it.
 Something that you don't have the passion to it.
 Like Jiu-Jitsu, I gave my heart to it.
 I did everything that I had to.
 MMA, I never, I didn't do that.
 So that's why it was...
 I won't say it was wrong for me to do it
 because I don't regret doing it.
 I always, looking back as a kid when I decided
 to take Jiu-Jitsu for life,
 I already knew that some point I would have to do MMA.
 It's almost like that's the path of a great see.
 When you're ready, you go do MMA.
 So there was a duty versus a love.
 Yeah, there was not a choice.
 There was like, I have to.
 It's just the life I took, it will lead that way.
 Are you proud of that step?
 Go against the natural love and towards more duty.
 I think I don't regret it
 because if I hadn't done it,
 I would feel there was something missing.
 So I don't regret doing it.
 I would regret not doing it.
 The tricky thing is the choice to go to MMA
 could have compromised your ability
 to win against Buccecha, and it didn't.
 And it's a fascinating case study.
 It still doesn't make sense to me.
 After all those years, you're able to come back
 and go against the best person in the world and beat him.
 Yeah, and I had to because the first fight we had,
 I had something stuck in my throat for a long time.
 So you think about that.
 Oh yeah, I'm like, as soon as that first fight finished,
 I had something that got stuck in my throat
 that I already, at that point I knew
 I'm gonna have to fight him again.
 I knew, I always knew.
 There's no choice, I have to.
 Oh man, all right.
 Well, in terms of Nogi,
 who do you think is the best Nogi competitor of all time?
 There's no question, it's Gordon.
 I don't think it's right to say the best competitor
 of all time because he's still very young.
 I think that's something that he can be,
 either in the end of when the person...
 You don't want him to get lazy.
 You know what I'm saying?
 No, no, I mean, but you cannot praise someone
 in the middle of his career.
 So you cannot call him the best ever.
 He's 26 or 27.
 So it's, I mean, he's great, he's very good.
 He's ahead of all of other competitors, I think.
 And I mean, he's having an amazing career.
 He's doing amazingly well.
 So I mean, when he finished, when he finally retired,
 then you can argue like...
 You know what, there's wisdom in that.
 It matters how you finish, right?
 Of course.
 It's very interesting.
 I think that Nogi is relative new, that Nogi scene.
 That was not a scene before.
 I think he started now on his generation, his time.
 Because before, when I was competing, Nogi was just ADCC.
 There's nothing else.
 Every two years, first was only in the Emirates.
 You had to go there to compete.
 So there was not even a scene.
 There was like this one tournament
 that gives a lot of money to competitors, to fighters.
 And brings fighters from other modalities.
 Mark Carr, Van Arsdale, some wrestlers, Greco-Roman.
 They can compete against each other.
 And they create that set of rules, try not to favor anyone.
 So that was it.
 So you cannot be called the greatest Nogi of all time
 if you only have one tournament every two years.
 Only in the Emirates, they have to be invited to.
 But I think now, it grew a lot.
 Now we have so many different tournaments.
 Now we have a scene.
 You have people that only train Nogi,
 they're fully dedicated to Nogi.
 And you have supervised different tournaments.
 So now it's professionally.
 You can do just Nogi now, which before was unheard of it.
 Because you have one or two tournaments.
 If you cannot be called a Nogi fighter,
 fighting once every two years, twice every two years.
 Yeah, now there's entire systems that are optimized for Nogi
 that could be fundamentally different.
 Like what do you think about the body lock?
 Like this passing with the body lock.
 I don't know if you get an understanding of it.
 Yeah, I think it's okay.
 It's a popular way to, what is it?
 Maybe to apply.
 To stay tight.
 To stay tight.
 Very close to your opponent.
 So he can't create distance, he can push away.
 But somehow it shuts down the hips as well.
 Yeah.
 Makes it more difficult to.
 Yeah, kind of trap your legs.
 Your back gets stuck on against the floor.
 Are you like scientifically curious
 about these new developments?
 Do you think, do you have answers in your head to them?
 Most.
 So body lock is one interesting one.
 Obviously foot locks is another.
 And that don't mean just the foot locks,
 but the whole like control aspect of foot locks.
 That's interesting.
 And there's other interesting stuff.
 John is really into the wrestling aspect.
 But not wrestling wrestling, but wrestling everywhere.
 Jiu-Jitsu at all levels of the plane.
 That's very interesting because obviously
 Jiu-Jitsu has not really been,
 unlike like freestyle wrestling and so on,
 has not been like a systematic, scientific,
 rigorous exploration of wrestling.
 It's like you're on your feet and you're on the ground.
 Not, not into mix.
 There's a lot of interesting.
 John is academic.
 He tried to, you know, numbers, mathematics, everything.
 Well, you kind of are too.
 Yeah.
 No, I mean, I am.
 Because you have to understand what you're doing.
 You know, there's a, everything there's a step by step.
 Like logistically, like details, every single move.
 There's a reason for it.
 You know, there's things around that happens.
 It's the more you know, the better you are, right?
 The more knowledgeable compare it or whatever.
 So I think with the foot locks, with the no-gi,
 like if you look back, you know, if you think of,
 used to be seen as a really bad thing to attack the foot.
 It wasn't seen as a good options of attack mainly.
 What is that?
 Respectable gentlemen don't attack the leg or what?
 No, because if you look back, you know,
 the tournaments, the, when they were created,
 all the rules and everything else was to simulate
 a real fight with no punches.
 But now having a gi.
 I mean, if you ask what is Jiu-Jitsu?
 Like what are you trying?
 What's the main goal of Jiu-Jitsu?
 To dominate your opponent.
 What's the main goal of fighting?
 It's we're fighting, it's of course,
 submission is the ultimate goal.
 But the, you know, before that,
 the main goal is to dominate you.
 Like we're fighting, I have to dominate you.
 And then the submission comes.
 And foot locks, it's, I don't require any domination on you.
 I don't need to be in a dominant position
 to attack your foot.
 And if I attack your foot, you're still free to knock me out.
 If your body goes down to my foot,
 I can still come close to you or stand up and I'll punch you.
 So it's not a good position to be in a real fight.
 Yeah, to attacking the foot.
 I mean, how many times you've seen that going bad?
 That went bad in MMA fight.
 I mean, of course you had, you know,
 some sort of success with the hiru-hiko.
 It's no questions, but how many times went wrong?
 People were knocked out attacking the foot.
 So you can't say it's the best position to be.
 It's okay to go, but it's a very high risky position to go.
 So that's why it's not in a real situation.
 It's not seen as a good thing.
 So when you translate that to Jiu-Jitsu,
 when attacking the foot, it's not seen as a good thing
 because when you reflect that to a real situation,
 it's not gonna go down well.
 So it was always seen as a easy way out, you know, easy cut.
 You're trying to do the easy path.
 You can't pass my guard, you can't dominate me.
 And then you're trying to attack my foot.
 That's why it was always seen as a, you know,
 not as a best, a great submission, a way to win.
 But the sad side effect of that is it was completely
 underdeveloped because of that.
 Exactly. Of course.
 So people never really developed that.
 But now the tournaments, the fighting,
 it got completely, not completely,
 but it got some, it's not longer seen as, you know,
 as a simulation of the real thing.
 Now it's a sport.
 It's only seen as a sport.
 So now it doesn't matter if you attack my foot,
 you cannot punch me.
 So why is it bad now to attack the foot?
 It's just not seen as a bad thing anymore.
 And now it got really developed.
 I don't know.
 That's another bear versus shark question,
 but you know, there is, in a street self-defense situation,
 it's possible to imagine where foot locks
 would be effective for a highly,
 but I guess if you invest 10,000 hours,
 it's better to invest it in chokes.
 Yeah, to dominate.
 If I'm, you know, if I were fighting,
 it's way better for me to be on your side control,
 on the mount, where I can pin you, be completely safe,
 than to stay inside your legs trying to attack your foot.
 But-
 People would argue that there's a lot of very dominant
 controlling positions in the whole foot log game, right?
 It is, but it can go bad very quickly.
 Yeah.
 Just-
 No, I mean, there's some great ways to control someone
 that he cannot escape, but he can go bad very quickly.
 That's the thing.
 Well, even back control can go bad very quickly
 on the street.
 So mount, I don't know.
 Is mount a really good position?
 But then there's no good position then.
 There's no good position.
 There's no-
 Every position, there's a risk, okay?
 Attacking the foot is a way higher risk than side control,
 mount, back.
 As I'm saying, the back is not the best way to pin someone
 unless you underneath me.
 Because if you try to rotate, I can sacrifice the back
 and just allow you to be in the mount.
 Okay, there you go.
 Would you prefer mount or back mount
 where they're flattened?
 Like-
 Still mount.
 That's all right.
 Thought I'd get you.
 No.
 So yeah, going back to Gordon,
 what do you think makes that guy so good?
 We were just at ADCC,
 you get to see him historically dominate performance.
 First, his dedication, the way he trains
 and how much he trains.
 And of course you have to add his mind, his belief
 to really try to be good, the best.
 So I don't know what his goals are,
 but I know he's tried to be better than his opponents.
 So his belief are very strong.
 His dedication, he probably trains more than everybody else.
 I mean, I haven't seen firsthand it,
 but from what I hear interviews with him
 and everybody else training, the way everybody trains.
 Yeah.
 Trying to, for my little knowledge I have,
 I'll bet he trains more than everybody else.
 And most important, how he trains.
 I kind of already knew,
 but when I heard John podcast with you the other day,
 John was explaining the preparation,
 the training for the ADCC,
 and that kind of gave me a very strong idea
 how they've been training all these years.
 So when we said, you have to work on your weakness,
 so you have no weakness,
 he trains a lot on his weakness.
 Which not everyone does that.
 If you look other, I'm not gonna name,
 but other main schools, like very strong competitors,
 great competitors, super tough people,
 but super tough, not great.
 Because they train, they spar very hard,
 that makes them tough.
 If you wanna be good, you have to work on your weakness.
 Because when you spar, like we're saying,
 how many times you're gonna practice
 escaping a bad position, like a submission hold
 or a pinning position, side control, mount,
 it's very little the amount of time you get to spend
 on those positions if you don't start there.
 So that, he's very smart the way he trains.
 And part of that is also cerebral,
 it's not just putting yourself in those positions,
 but talking through different ideas.
 Like they talk, they like experiment.
 It's very like, at first glance,
 it's like philosophical almost.
 You're trying to create systems constantly,
 you're trying to understand how this fits
 into this big picture.
 And then he goes back to what is Jiu Jitsu,
 what is fighting, is fighting for dominance.
 He's fighting for the ultimate dominance positions,
 which is back and mount, there's no others.
 And from that you finish.
 So if you look back at his, over the years
 of his past fights, before he used to mainly focus in legs,
 and over the past few years, now he's mainly focusing
 in finishing from the mountain back.
 But that's when he became really good.
 So part of that is Mr. John Donahue,
 what do you think, you've known John for a long time,
 what makes that guy interesting, special, and good?
 What have you learned about Jiu Jitsu
 and life from John Donahue?
 He's super smart, I mean, eccentric,
 and he lives through Jiu Jitsu.
 He's 24-7 thinking better ways to teach
 how to make his competitors better.
 And that as a coach, when you have that dedication
 as a coach, that it makes the most difference
 for your athletes, like which other big team
 you have that coach with that motivation.
 All the other schools is either someone that competes,
 that push the training, like André Galvao,
 he's one of the competitors, so he brings the hype
 in everyone else, but he doesn't have the time,
 he doesn't spend the time working individually.
 I mean, I'm sure he does, but it's limited
 because he's also a competitor.
 And looking most of the other big schools,
 like you don't have that, now all the leaders,
 the main coaches for the other big schools,
 they have other things in their lives,
 they don't fully dedicate it to the athletes.
 John does, look at the interview,
 he spends hours and hours a day studying
 how can I wait the system to make his athletes better.
 Look at the results.
 I enjoy just sending back and forth, you can actually
 just get him, you control him essentially
 by sending interesting videos and you could just
 see his mind, he's gonna do research on that.
 I kept sending him videos of bears,
 because he claimed that a lion would beat a bear,
 because, I'd love to get your take on this, okay.
 So the bear is much bigger, much stronger,
 but his take is that the bears don't have experience
 of fighting to the death, that's not part of the culture,
 they're more scared.
 In fact, he keeps sending me footage of even
 a small mountain lion scaring a bear away,
 because they don't want to fight.
 So his idea is that it really matters your life experience,
 how much you fight, it's not necessarily the skill,
 like the dimensions, the characteristics you have.
 But then I send him, yeah I'll show you.
 People should Google this, it's bears fighting of any kind.
 It's pretty much the most epic thing ever.
 Here I'll show you.
 Like look at these guys, the cardio though is interesting.
 You know it's funny, I was gonna mention that,
 because I was flipping through internet, I came around
 that video.
 Look how big these guys are.
 No they're huge, but see they don't bite each other.
 You think it's just play?
 They're trying to, no intimidating,
 because they don't want to get hurt.
 So they try to size each other up,
 you see the whole fighting is sizing each other up.
 There's a lot of pushing, and the fur is so thick,
 so the claw doesn't really damage much.
 They're using the tree, so maybe they, yeah.
 I mean there is bites, but see there's very little.
 So the whole time they're trying to intimidate
 the other one, like winning the fight by their size.
 And mostly about, like the way drunk college kids fight,
 which is like some kind of display of dominance
 versus actual.
 Yeah, they're not fighting to kill.
 And bear or tiger, they fight to finish.
 Unless the other one runs away, like one will die.
 Yeah, well lions and tigers.
 Yeah, but look at the cardio, look how bad their cardio is.
 I wonder how, my favorite part is when one of them
 just like stands behind a tree, and says, all right.
 He's holding.
 He's.
 He's getting the breath.
 Let me catch my breath here.
 He sits down, he's like, all right, you can't, it's over.
 It's like, it's the equivalent in the forest,
 tapping out, all right, all right, you got me.
 Let me just, just catch my breath.
 Look, they're both like, just shot.
 But see, the thing is that I was trying to make
 an argument for is that we get this rare footage.
 It's not rare, I mean, there's like hundreds of videos,
 but it's not millions of videos,
 because there's a huge number of bears.
 And I was trying to say that there's some bad ass bear
 we don't know about, because he just goes in there
 and just does work.
 And we just don't know about it, because he's like,
 see, the thing is, if you kill a lot of other animals,
 you probably have a territory that nobody's
 gonna mess with you, so it's very hard to catch the,
 like the Hodge Gracie of bears, you know?
 He's just gonna be sitting there doing nothing.
 So, I don't know, I don't know.
 I feel like, of course, when you corner him,
 John will say that if you put a bear and a lion in a cage,
 the bear will win if it's like, if it's,
 if they're forced to be to the death, but I don't know.
 Oh, let me ask you another ridiculous thing
 before I ask you serious questions.
 So, Joe Rogan thinks that a tie
 is an effective way to attack somebody.
 I don't know if, I can't believe I haven't,
 in the time in Vegas, I didn't talk to you about this.
 I think it's not.
 Have you ever explored this as the best choker in the world?
 Have you ever explored the use,
 because like, Jujitsu has the jacket,
 but the tie, to me, is a pretty shitty way to choke somebody.
 Like, intuitively, he thinks like it's a good way,
 but it can slide around.
 It feels like, it feels like there's no,
 there's no way to really pin.
 You would need to.
 Right, so you use it the way you use a belt, essentially.
 Yeah, but then.
 I would guess so.
 Yeah.
 I don't think it's, and I think if it gives you,
 it actually has the reverse effect,
 which it gives you the false sense of confidence
 that you can use it, and instead, it'll just distract you.
 So he think it's a stronger way than the collar?
 Or just a stronger way?
 Yeah.
 Stronger than the collar?
 Stronger than the collar, yeah, yeah.
 I don't see how, maybe, just like.
 Well, in a street fight scenario, right?
 Like.
 But by the time you grab the tie,
 the guy goes punch your nose.
 Yeah.
 What George St. Pierre thinks is the best use of the tie
 is to actually, what do you call that?
 So basically to off balance them.
 Which is an interesting point to like.
 I mean, could that can be used to.
 Yeah.
 Well, you could use the jacket for this kind of thing.
 Yeah, I don't know.
 I haven't really fully tested it.
 I'll say jacket or tie for that perspective
 of off balancing the person.
 It can be, yeah, because you have control
 of the person's neck.
 The collar, the jacket moves.
 So for the purpose of off balancing the person,
 I would agree with George.
 See, the thing is, that's the thing about martial arts,
 is you can say all kinds of bullshit.
 But until you really test it in over a period of years,
 the competition, you won't really know.
 I think like, that's where my gut says,
 just how easily the tie moves.
 My gut says the collar.
 There is something really powerful about the jacket.
 There's like the way it sits.
 I mean, the fact that the arms trap it from rotating.
 Like it's a weird piece of clothing.
 It's a really dangerous piece of clothing
 that we put on ourselves.
 Yeah.
 And it's kind of cool that we've developed
 this whole martial arts system that allows you to use that
 to do a lot of damage.
 It's very interesting.
 So when we're saying something that you develop
 over the years of practice over and over again,
 going back to the fissures of the mantle back,
 by experience of attacking people,
 people always had a much higher chance of escaping
 from the back than from my mount.
 So it's, I feel if I mount and you get both my hands
 on your neck, you cannot escape.
 If my hands are deep, it's over.
 Like that, I don't remember anyone escaping,
 but I do remember if my hands are deep on your collar,
 or even your naked choke is still a hassle,
 like it's not clean.
 You have some data on this.
 Is there some aspect to how your body is,
 the characteristics of your body,
 that fits a particular set of techniques?
 So if we just look at Jiu-Jitsu broadly,
 do you see most techniques being able to work
 for most people?
 Like what you're saying about mount versus back control,
 is this, is it possible for a different body type
 the mount is not as effective?
 Yeah, of course.
 I'll say very big people, they should mount.
 You don't think of yourself as big?
 No, big, I mean fat.
 Oh.
 They should stay off the mount.
 Why is that?
 That's a car.
 It's mobility.
 It's like, it's, I think, you know, you don't see any,
 you know, like there was a few ways, like 160 kilos,
 like, you know, two pounds, I don't know,
 270 pounds of a lot of fat.
 It's, you need a bit of mobility,
 and that would, it would play against you.
 So a great-
 Even back.
 A great mount.
 Back is the same.
 Requires mobility.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 So even though it doesn't look like you're moving very much
 when you're doing mount, that requires mobility?
 Yeah.
 Because you have to reposition and weight redistribution.
 Constantly adjusting your body.
 All right.
 The legend goes, you got very good by training
 mostly with lower ranks.
 What was your training like in that environment?
 So when I first moved to London, I was 20 years old.
 I opened my school there,
 and I had nobody to train with.
 I had one guy that was teaching with me,
 a black belt, middleweight.
 He was good.
 And that's it.
 Barale was, he moved to the same,
 he moved to England the same time as I did,
 but he was in Birmingham.
 So we did got together, maybe twice a week,
 closer when we were preparing for something.
 If not, then not very often.
 As often as we could, but let's say not that often.
 And I had just color belt students.
 There was no one high level.
 There was no one world champion in any belt to train.
 Then you need to create a scenario
 that simulates, that can simulate,
 like a realistic fighting.
 So I think on that aspect,
 when people ask why do I have such a basic game,
 I think that also influenced me sharpen up all my skills
 when I moved there.
 Because if you practice with people lower level than you,
 you cannot, there's nothing to learn from them.
 Or you can learn things and practice with them.
 But I would say very complex things on them.
 It is not the best.
 So I sharpen up all my skills.
 So that when I really improved everything
 that I already knew to a higher level.
 But how can you sharpen something
 if the resistance is much lower level than?
 A purple belt can make it very hard
 for you to skip side control.
 Doesn't have to be a world champion black belt.
 It's, if it's one is holding you, it can be very hard.
 What about on the attack?
 How do you become literally by far the best person
 at the cross stroke from Mount
 by training with purple belts?
 It's sometimes purple belts defense
 way better than black belts.
 Okay, see a lot of people listening to that
 would be like that makes no sense, Hajo Gracie.
 How does that make any sense?
 Because like a lot of the black belts,
 even world champion, they get to the black belt,
 they're really good in what they do.
 Let's say in the guard, on top or in the bottom position.
 But their defense are not.
 Like very, very few people high level
 have a very good defense because they don't practice.
 Then that goes back to how you train.
 You can be very tough.
 Very tough will make you terrible defense
 because you're not gonna practice your weakness.
 So your weakness still gonna be terrible.
 You can have the best guard in the world,
 impossible to pass.
 The day people pass your guard, you're nothing.
 Like your guard is the highest level,
 but your side control defense are not.
 Your mount defense are not.
 So some purple belts, they practice the mount
 way more than the black belt did.
 So naturally the difference is better.
 So they get to experience the defensive position
 much, much, much more.
 And especially training with you,
 they get really good at defending.
 And then- Over and over again,
 you attack them with the same thing over and over again.
 They know what's coming, they will block.
 They will develop a defense over that.
 Way better than most other high level black belts.
 So both put yourself into really bad positions
 with lower ranks and just keep attacking
 the same way over and over and over.
 Yeah.
 And with that, you're able to be at the top of the world
 at the world championships.
 Yeah.
 I mean, can you give some,
 what was the preparation like to a world championship
 with lower ranks?
 I mean-
 I did a lot of boxing, a lot of conditioning.
 No, but the-
 So conditioning is a big part of it.
 Conditioning, yeah.
 But the one thing that helped me extremely
 living in England, in London,
 was training judo at the Budokai in London.
 That helped me massively because
 it gave me the motivation to learn something new.
 Because by then at the Budokai,
 the standup was, I'm sure today it is too,
 but by then it was even higher than it is today.
 Like there was some very high level judo guys training there.
 And the first time I went there,
 my standup was terrible compared to theirs.
 I mean, it was bad, but compared to them it was terrible.
 So I was getting thrown like a child.
 And that motivated me to keep coming back and get better.
 So that made my jiu-jitsu much stronger.
 I became, my base got better, my top game improved,
 my pressure game improved.
 Did, does Neil Adams train?
 Ray Stevens.
 Ray Stevens.
 No, when he, I've never met Neil Adams.
 Ray Stevens was-
 Have you met Neil Adams?
 Is that, he's the voice of judo.
 I don't know if you watched the tournaments.
 He's incredible.
 Yeah, Ray Stevens is a, you know,
 silver medalist in the Olympics.
 He won European, he won a lot.
 So you did some judo training.
 What's your favorite throw, like a Soto?
 Like you don't-
 Uchi Mata, I'll say.
 Uchi Mata.
 If I would pick one.
 So that made you better at jiu-jitsu as well.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Okay.
 And back then, like for the first,
 I'll say maybe three years, maybe four,
 I went to Brazil for like two months before
 every major tournament.
 So I say, you know, I moved away from the school
 and I really focused.
 I was really well prepared with my judo
 and everything else, sharpening up my skills.
 And then went to Brazil to train
 with like really high level people.
 So that way I would manage to compete in the highest level.
 What advice would you give to,
 let's start with a complete beginner.
 So, you know, a bunch of people come up to me.
 They still want to start doing jiu-jitsu.
 What advice would you give them?
 Try to absorb as much technique as you can
 and try to be as relaxed as you can.
 Don't, you know, don't desperately try to fight so hard.
 Like learn and move slow.
 Move slow and relax.
 That's the hardest thing to do.
 The hardest.
 You know what I find with people,
 it seems like it's hard to even know that you're not relaxed.
 It's like the introspection.
 They don't even know what it feels like to relax.
 Not even know they tense.
 Yeah, right.
 They try to relax you.
 Look how you see.
 What?
 What do you mean relax?
 I'm relaxed.
 Exactly, exactly.
 The arms are shaking.
 You feel it.
 And in terms of going slow, they're like,
 yeah, I'm going slow.
 No, you're not.
 Yeah, there's a grace and elegance of movement
 that you can probably pick up from a lot of other disciplines.
 Like for me, I think that came from just learning piano
 at a young age.
 That's for, I think any mobility thing
 to learn how to move efficiently,
 you have to know how to relax.
 So it's just the fact that you can,
 like the body can be tense or it could be relaxed.
 Just knowing that fact.
 Now imagine you show the stance.
 Yeah.
 You think you'll play piano well.
 No, everything has to be relaxed.
 I guess some of that is mind too,
 but just knowing that and being self-aware.
 But see, like even me approaching a thing,
 I'm not, I don't know anything about being a beginner.
 You're going to tense up.
 And like it actually takes a conscious effort
 to think to relax.
 I mean, that's-
 Massively.
 That's why learning things as an adult
 is much harder than as a child.
 Like it's very hard.
 And as an adult, it's like to get to the highest level,
 it's not possible because you will never relax
 the way you should.
 Yeah.
 Relax in the way that you become like water,
 but then you solidify in the right places.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Is there advice you can give to an adult?
 So like somebody that has a job, like a hobbyist,
 like how to progress, how to get-
 I mean, train.
 There's just need to train as much as you can.
 Not, you know, five, seven days a week
 because you're going to get injured.
 I mean, two or three times a week
 to start is the best way to initiate your Jiu-Jitsu journey
 and practice the same thing over and over again.
 When they don't work, it's just because you're not doing well,
 not because you have to learn something else.
 Do you see some value in just picking a set of techniques
 that seem to draw your heart in?
 Like for example, I'll give you an example,
 you're going to yell at me.
 But I never learned the close guard well.
 It just never connected with me.
 You could say it's body mechanics,
 whatever, it doesn't matter.
 The point is it's just like my heart never connected with it.
 You know, the way I justified it to myself
 is I felt like when you're bad,
 you're using the close guard,
 just think you could use the half guard to stall.
 So I was really drawn to the butterfly guard as a beginner
 because I thought, or open guard in general,
 I have no options to stall, so I'm going to learn.
 My thinking was, let me do the guard
 that enforces me to learn.
 And then I fell in love with the butterfly guard
 and the open guard and so on.
 And I never really understood the close guard.
 And the other thinking was,
 do I really need to understand the close guard?
 Because it's always by choice that I go there.
 So I can avoid not really-
 And you can avoid anything you want.
 I mean, you don't have to do anything.
 In this life, yes.
 It doesn't make you complete.
 That means you have a-
 You want to be complete as a, this is the question.
 How valuable is it to be complete to get good?
 Depends how good you want to be.
 Okay, let's go.
 Well, there's several questions there.
 Yeah, okay, like to be the best in the world,
 do you need to be complete?
 Of course, the best in the world,
 of course you have to be complete.
 Otherwise somebody's going to be better than you.
 But what about like, so to understand to defend,
 you have to be also good at the offense
 in every single position?
 Otherwise you have a weakness
 and someone can capitalize in that weakness.
 Okay, what about to be like a hobbyist?
 Then you don't have to.
 But can you, or is it still bad?
 I mean, it's not bad.
 I mean, nothing is bad.
 I mean, if you've as a hobbyist, you start late.
 I mean, it doesn't matter how far you're going to get.
 As long as you enjoy it, just train as much as you can.
 If it's twice a week, twice a week it is.
 You'll be limited how good you will be training
 twice a week, of course.
 Then the guy that trains twice a day,
 you know, the more you train, the better you get.
 But you have to select what you train.
 That's what I'm asking.
 I don't know, yes, but like for how long?
 Like there would some point in your life
 that you might try something, see if you like it.
 You know, there's some point in your life
 that you might, okay, let me try close guard.
 You might not like it now,
 maybe in two, three years from now.
 Still don't like it.
 I kept trying it.
 Listen, because listen, it's very difficult
 to get any respect in Jiu Jitsu.
 It's hard to get to black belt and beyond in Jiu Jitsu
 at a respectable place and not have a good close guard.
 Close guard is-
 I mean, then don't do it.
 It's not necessary.
 I'm being a rebel.
 No, it's not.
 I'll say because it's not a position
 that you want the pressure,
 that if you don't know you'll be in trouble.
 You're not gonna be in trouble not to know the close guard.
 You're just gonna go straight for open guard.
 I mean, the-
 It's not a problem.
 The main limitation is if you don't do close guard a lot,
 that you don't quite,
 you don't get a full, complete picture
 of understanding how to attack close guard
 when somebody puts you into a close guard when you're on top.
 So it's nice to know both sides of it, just to understand.
 Yeah, but you can have a pretty good understanding
 of how to defend from the top and not having any bottom.
 I mean, some of it is also just like the length of legs
 and just the geometry of your body.
 Nick, I'm sure Marcel Garcia has a good close guard, but-
 I've never seen it.
 That's exact.
 That's the point I'm trying to make.
 In theory, you can imagine it.
 But for a hobbyist, I think it's interesting to think of that.
 Like, is it possible to,
 is it possible to focus on a small set of techniques
 that help you to develop-
 Yeah, of course.
 Still into a good Jiu-Jitsu player.
 Yeah, of course.
 And still enjoy and still be able to-
 Most people hobbies.
 In the Jiu-Jitsu world, 99%.
 I mean, people there compete.
 Yeah, even the people that compete.
 1% max.
 And you have high level competitors.
 Have no clue what close guard is.
 Okay, thank you for-
 No, I think you would say that most people don't have-
 Close guard is such a difficult position to understand,
 for me.
 Maybe one day we'll brainwash.
 Yeah, good.
 I felt it's too easy to stall
 versus attack.
 That was my main concern.
 I wanna be forced in every way to always be attacking,
 to always be moving, to always be.
 And it felt like if I got really good,
 I've seen it happen with half guard too.
 It's like when people get really good at half guard,
 it just feels stally.
 If you just look at the matches and so on,
 you just slow things down to a thing that's not,
 you don't get reps on learning.
 You don't get action in interesting ways.
 So that was my worry, that I'll get old and fat
 and just sitting in close guard all day,
 holding onto the white belts trying to kill me.
 Cause it's also, I mean, that's the other thing
 for hobbyists and for everyone is to,
 when you first start, I think you have to relax
 in the face of the fact that you're just getting
 your ass kicked nonstop.
 That can also be really tough on the ego.
 I think probably the right way to see that is
 you're growing as a person.
 You see that clearly when they are like in a bad position,
 let's say side mount or mount.
 Like a beginner, he will never relax on those positions.
 The moment that you say go, they like trying to
 push you out and explode.
 There's no relaxation and work on the defense.
 It's like, no, it's out and go until I have zero to give,
 until I'm exhausted, my arms cannot move.
 It's kind of fun to watch actually.
 What's the role of drilling?
 Do you like drilling?
 I do not like drilling, but I'll tell you why.
 I think, fighting is mechanic, right?
 So it's very important to drill a move
 until you learn the mechanic.
 Of course it's important.
 If someone wanna teach you an armlock,
 you wanna practice that movement
 until you learn the mechanic of it,
 but the guy's not resisting, so it's easy to apply, right?
 So you apply as many times as you have to
 until you know the mechanic of the moves,
 until you can apply the mechanics.
 The moment that you know how to apply,
 there's no more point in drilling.
 Now you have to practice.
 Now you have to practice with resistance.
 Of course you're not gonna practice
 with the guy fully resisting, the guy's better than you
 because he's not gonna give you a chance
 to practice that move,
 but you have to practice with resistance.
 So where does drilling comes on that?
 It's most of people, they flow, drill and everything.
 Whatever you do, you condition in your body to do something.
 You repeat the same move over and over again.
 Your body's conditioning to apply that movement
 or the technique.
 Drilling is not realistic
 because the other person's not resisting.
 The flow movement or whatever.
 After you go beyond, when you already know the mechanics,
 the drilling with no resistance
 is not gonna teach you anything
 because you will never know
 how to apply the movement with resistance.
 So it's pointless to carry on drilling
 after you learn the mechanics.
 See, but you're making it sound easy to learn the mechanics.
 I would argue.
 You can drill as many times.
 I'm not limiting how much you drill.
 You drill as long as you had to.
 I mean, it doesn't matter how long.
 The benefit of drilling,
 I'm just playing devil's advocate with you.
 The benefit of drilling is that you can more efficiently
 get a higher number of reps in.
 What are you gonna gain with those reps?
 Understanding the mechanics of the movement.
 And what I would like to argue
 is you don't necessarily need a resistance
 to deeply understand the mechanics of something.
 Now, I don't mean, there's some moves.
 Like I bet you, you could drill your way
 to an incredible mount.
 Mount is a good example of that.
 You don't really need a resist.
 I can imagine a world in which the resisting opponent
 is not essential for developing some of the very fine details
 of the mechanics.
 Which one?
 Because I don't know any.
 What?
 You say mount.
 Yes.
 What you're gonna achieve by drilling with no resistance
 after you learn the mechanics in mount.
 But see, what I'm trying to tell you,
 the learning of the mechanics isn't a thing
 where you get a certificate and you're done.
 You're gonna learn the fine details
 of the way you redistribute your weight.
 You're going to learn how to move your,
 I don't understand my own.
 It's like a dead body.
 Like everything you do is a slow process and timing.
 You have to understand moving.
 It's the guy's resisting.
 Like he's not, I'm not gonna grab you
 and apply the movement.
 I need to grab you and feel when is the right time to do.
 Like that only comes with movement.
 If you're not fully resistant, how would I know?
 You couldn't infer through it.
 It's like a...
 With no movement, with no resistance.
 Like armlock.
 There's some resistance.
 Okay, armlock.
 Let's see armlock.
 Okay.
 Okay, let's say you've been drilling for a week.
 Yeah.
 Five hours a day.
 You should be an expert with the mechanics.
 But now, how are you gonna carry on drilling
 with no resistance?
 No, you have to.
 Exactly.
 After that week, drilling five times, five hours a day,
 the armlock, you still have no clue
 how to apply the armlock against a resisting opponent.
 No clue, zero.
 Yeah.
 So you don't know the movement, you know the mechanic.
 Which is, you know, it's like how long you have to drill
 and how, that doesn't matter.
 It varies of the person.
 You can do for a month.
 After that month is over,
 you should understand how the mechanic works.
 You still have no clue how to apply the movement
 against a resisting opponent.
 You will never ever know how
 until you apply with a fully resisting opponent.
 That's the only way to know, to really learn a movement.
 Yes.
 Well put.
 But the question is, can you have a small percentage
 of time when you go against a resisting opponent
 to get the wisdom and the insight of what it takes
 to perform that movement,
 and you spend a large percentage of other time
 just practicing the mechanics of it?
 So like, do you need to, as you get better
 and better at technique, to basically drift away completely
 from drilling and more into the sparring?
 I'd like to, I just.
 You like drilling?
 No, I don't like drilling.
 I see, I, well yes, I like drilling, I would say.
 But I just see, it always bothered me
 in the jiu-jitsu community,
 how few people really saw the value of drilling.
 I see in wrestling, especially in the Russian style
 of wrestling, like the value of drilling.
 I don't necessarily mean that it's like a dead body
 or like a dummy or something like that.
 But just getting the reps in.
 Really focusing on the high amount of reps?
 I agree in wrestling and judo.
 I agree that drilling is very important.
 Initial drill a thousand times each move.
 Yeah, judo is a really big one for that too.
 It is, because it's the movement, the timing,
 you know, it's the precision of the movement.
 It has to be perfectly, because it's one movement.
 Then it's, you learn about the timing of the movement
 when you're fighting, but during fighting
 you only need to know the time.
 Because your body movement is exactly the same
 when you drill.
 That's really well put, yeah.
 The mechanics is much more important there.
 Yeah, but it's completely different for jiu-jitsu.
 Because let's say from jiu-jitsu, like the arm lock,
 for example, we use that as an example.
 Let's see from the clothes guard.
 Even my clothes guard, before I go for the arm lock,
 I need to have a set of grips.
 Let's say I have your collar and your arm, right?
 And then, you know, when you're drilling,
 I'm gonna grab your arm, I'm gonna grab your collar,
 and I'm gonna drill my body
 until I can apply the arm lock and finish.
 And I can do that a thousand times.
 Okay, now we're fighting, we start with the grip.
 The moment that I initiate the arm lock attack,
 you will defend the arm lock, it will not work.
 So it's not the one movement
 that will get me to attack the arm.
 There's a combination of other things that I need to do.
 I need to feel about your weight, you know,
 I need to get you close to it.
 There's so many other things involved
 that I need to feel that only comes with life,
 with a fully resistant opponent.
 Yeah, so pretty quickly it has to be live.
 Yeah.
 And then it comes how you practice, how you train.
 You're starting on that position and just saying, let's go.
 And the moment that we disengage from that position,
 we go back, that's when you really learn.
 Because everything that you do wrong,
 you're gonna go back there and you're gonna try again,
 try again, try again.
 And the repetition, it will teach you,
 have a feeling of timing when to go,
 if there's other combinations,
 which you always has to go with it.
 By the way, for the internet that's currently yelling at me
 for arguing with Haji Grace about drilling,
 that's called playing devil's advocate
 to strengthen, to explore ideas.
 I'm not actually arguing.
 Okay.
 I forgot to ask you,
 if you had to fight against the bear, lion, gorilla,
 or anaconda to the death, which one would you choose?
 And would you be able actually to win against any of them?
 Well, a bear, a lion, a tiger, or an anaconda.
 Oh, a gorilla too, gorilla.
 You can go gorilla.
 I'll probably choose the anaconda.
 That's easy.
 I mean, you're not allowed to run away though.
 So you're in a cage.
 Do you have to kill?
 Still the anaconda.
 Okay, so the other one.
 I think I have no chance against any other ones.
 Zero chance.
 What's with John's thing?
 I think I have a tiny little against the anaconda.
 Just wait it out.
 You don't think it's possible to be,
 it feels like technique can do something
 against these animals, but they have so much strength,
 so much aggression.
 You know, the real naked choke,
 translating to Portuguese is cute, the lion.
 So everything so as a kid, I always thought
 that maybe if I get behind a lion,
 the real naked choke, which in Portuguese says mata leão.
 So mata leão means kill the lion.
 So I always thought that that's the only way
 to kill a lion or to, you know,
 if you're fighting against a lion,
 go behind and put the real naked choke,
 I think you put him to sleep.
 The name mata leão is like kill the lion.
 Someone came up with the name.
 Why?
 Somebody must have.
 Someone was going to fight with the lion,
 choked him up.
 There you go, John.
 There you go.
 I honestly, do you think, actually, yeah,
 you understand controlling positions.
 Do you think like animal, like a gorilla or a lion,
 would shake you off?
 If you had back full, you're locked in.
 Well, I'll say the one that'll have the biggest chance
 of staying there is the lion,
 because it's just in their body.
 It's smaller than a tiger, I guess.
 Think tigers are bigger?
 Yes.
 So do you think they can shake you off, though?
 I think I'll have a bigger chance of staying
 against a lion's back than any other animal.
 Still not answering the question.
 Do you think you have a chance?
 If I start on the back?
 You gotta start full locked in, full controls.
 Let's say it's a small enough lion
 that you can actually have a full.
 Oh, I'll guess so.
 I mean, I would like to believe so.
 Okay.
 Well, like just like you said,
 somebody must have been able to do it.
 Throughout your journey in jujitsu,
 have there been low points?
 I guess there have been points
 where you really doubted yourself.
 No, I've never really doubted myself.
 There's low points in defeats.
 Those are the low points when I lost.
 How did you deal with defeats?
 I just went back to the gym next week
 and said I need to get better.
 Every time I lost, I'm like, I need to get better
 because I need to choke them out.
 I need to submit them because, you know,
 I don't want to win by points.
 As a black belt, I have very, very little loss.
 I would say, I mean, I don't like to sound
 like a crying baby, but I'll say most of those loss
 was very, very controversial.
 Yeah, it was not a dominant, clear performance.
 It has to be about referees and points and so on.
 Everything, since I was very young,
 I always fought against my opponent and the referee.
 If there was ever in my whole life, since I was a kid,
 there was ever a doubt, you always go to my opponent.
 Always, always.
 That was just something that I had to deal with
 my whole life.
 What's the motivation behind, what led to the fact
 that you win most of your matches by submission
 or in dominance?
 Like, are you chasing?
 Because that's the only way to prove you better.
 And I never fought to win tournaments.
 That was never my goal.
 That was the consequence of me trying to be the best.
 Like, I don't care how many titles I have.
 I care about, I need to beat all my opponents
 and not win because win is not enough.
 I have to submit them.
 That's the only way to prove I'm the best, to submit them.
 If I win by advantage or a point,
 that means I was better than them that day.
 That does not mean I'm better than them.
 If I take you down, pass your guard, mount you,
 and submit you, there's zero questions who's the best.
 Like, there's nothing you can say about it.
 If I foot sweep you, you put your butt on the floor,
 I get an advantage.
 We're carrying a fight and I win.
 It means nothing.
 Not even means I'm better than you.
 And if that happened, that would haunt you?
 It is for me, it's not enough.
 I wouldn't be happy.
 What advice would you give to young folks
 who look at you, who are able to accomplish
 from a place where you're not very good
 to becoming the best in the world at a thing?
 What advice would you give them to have a journey like that,
 to have a journey where they could be successful
 in their career and their life to such a high level?
 Determination is the key.
 Determination is the most important thing.
 You need to know where you're going to get there.
 So you need to have a goal, whatever that goal is.
 Like, you need to set that goal for yourself
 so you know where you wanna go.
 And to have the determination to get there
 and be sure that you will fail many times.
 Like, you cannot let your failures brings you down
 because you will fail many times, everybody does.
 So you said you didn't look to external sources of belief.
 You just believed in yourself.
 Is there something to that where you have to try to,
 be your own source of belief,
 flame the fire within yourself?
 Was that something difficult to do?
 Like...
 But that was just very natural for me.
 I said, you can surround yourself with great people.
 That is extremely important.
 Don't surround yourself with failures
 because they're not gonna push you to...
 They don't know what it is, how to get there.
 I mean, everybody knows,
 but when you surround yourself with winners,
 you know what, you took them to get there.
 You used them as an example.
 Yeah, there's a certain kind of aura to people
 that just achieve great things and being around them.
 But it's still, it's hard to find people that,
 especially at that early stage.
 Any area.
 Yeah.
 Any area.
 That's right.
 Yeah, greatness has a certain...
 I think it's almost humbling just to see,
 okay, any human...
 Like, at least that's the lesson I learned.
 Almost any human can do, can be great.
 I mean, one, I've used Muhammad Ali as a great example.
 Look at his belief.
 Look at how much he believed himself
 before he was Muhammad Ali.
 Look at the determination he had,
 the way, the confidence he had fighting,
 even on his loss.
 It never changed him.
 Not when he fought Foreman, George Foreman.
 Not one person in the world thought he was gonna win
 that fight by himself. He never doubted himself.
 Everybody else did.
 He won over all odds against him.
 So it's, I mean, when you look at people like that,
 you can, you don't have to be a boxer
 to try to follow his example.
 But see, those are like epic, giant battles,
 but I feel like you fight the same kind of battle
 when you're young and your parents tell you that,
 you know, just with their whole energy that this is silly,
 don't be silly, don't be silly, they chase.
 It's harder.
 It is harder.
 But as a kid, it's harder to deal with that
 because, I mean, to go against adults,
 especially parents telling you otherwise,
 like the amount of strength you need is gigantic.
 I don't even know how much strength you need
 because that was not my case.
 So I can understand what you have to go through
 with the force of your parents telling you otherwise.
 But it's how much you want,
 it will dictate how far you're gonna go,
 where you're gonna go.
 So it's, you know, if you can break through that,
 you'll get nowhere. It's that simple.
 And actually, one of the really nice things
 the internet does that I would give advice to young people
 is like you can find,
 even if your parents are not a source of that,
 your teachers, your community,
 you can find people on the internet who believe in you.
 It's kind of cool.
 It's kind of cool how the internet opens a possibility
 of like a community of like 10, 11 year olds,
 like building shit.
 I see this all the time, engineering.
 I mean, they're fueled by belief.
 They want to be like,
 they want to create the next trillion dollar company.
 Right?
 There's a fire in their eyes.
 And not for the money, obviously,
 but to do something really impactful.
 And I think that fire is extinguished often by teachers
 and parents.
 Because I think the logic that parents have and teachers,
 they look at a kid and they don't, on the surface level,
 they don't see greatness.
 Right?
 They just see kind of mediocrity.
 And so to them, it's like, no, right.
 The world is more complicated than that.
 In order to get great, you have to,
 like they somehow kind of always try to be reasonable
 with you.
 And in so doing extinguish the flame.
 It's weird.
 I think most people afraid.
 So to even try.
 So you can call them cowards for not trying
 because you are a coward for not trying,
 not putting yourself at risk.
 Right?
 So I would say a big part of society
 are cowards for never trying,
 never pursuing what they really want.
 It's so it's, there is, you know,
 a weight of pressure, everyone, most people,
 a lot of people I'll say around you
 that because they were afraid to try,
 they don't incentivize people to do so
 because they want everybody to be like them.
 Because imagine if everybody around you
 suddenly are not afraid and everyone is trying.
 And you look yourself in the mirror and say,
 I was too scared.
 I've never tried.
 So you feel really bad about yourself.
 So it's easier to have people around you
 that think exactly like you than otherwise.
 So that reflect a lot on the kids.
 It's, you know, society almost like pressed them down
 to be like everybody else, to have a normal life,
 normal job.
 It's, you know, don't take risk
 because you can lose it all.
 I mean, that's the worst thing you can tell everybody.
 Take all the risks, lose it all a few times.
 That's how you're going to build things.
 Especially when you're young.
 Yes.
 You can recover much faster.
 Exactly.
 What's the point of not trying?
 You should try and you will lose everything.
 Doesn't matter what it matters to lose at everything.
 It does matter.
 It will teach you resilience, you know, try harder,
 go after, you know,
 it's don't live a normal life
 because otherwise you know what we're here for.
 Yeah.
 Take big risks, take a lot of them, fail and fail and fail.
 Fail you a thousand times until you succeed.
 And then you're going to be the most proud of yourself.
 Like it's this, that's, that's, that's not be priceless.
 It's that then we'll change the world.
 It is true that most people are not necessarily cowards,
 but have cowardice in them.
 It's most people are just afraid to try, you know.
 And a lot of it comes from a place of love because,
 you know, if you try and you fail, you get hurt.
 And it hurts.
 I mean, it's not, it's not a pleasant thing to fail.
 I mean, you feel terrible to think, you know,
 when I lost any tournament was a good thing.
 You know, when, take when I was getting beat up
 at the gym over and over again was a good thing.
 When I was getting there
 and getting smashed by all the good guys,
 I think I liked it.
 Well, I hate it, but it's my resilience that, you know,
 make me carry on until I succeed.
 Think I like to get tapped.
 Well, I'm the most competitive,
 one of the most competitive persons you know,
 I hate to lose, but it's, I accept.
 I mean, I just need to get better.
 Every single time I lost in the championship, I hate it.
 I've never screamed.
 No one never saw me screaming,
 shouting that, you know, I got robbed.
 You know, I should have won the referee.
 Yeah, boy, you know, screw me over.
 I mean, it's okay.
 It happen, shit happens.
 I need to get better
 because I don't want to be in that position ever again.
 So when I fight, if I'm better,
 if I tapped him, there's no question.
 I don't need to wait for the referee to decide
 that there was points or no points.
 If, you know, his interpretation,
 that made me better
 because I was even more determined to be better.
 In my mind, I have to tap everybody else.
 Winning is not enough.
 It's just objectively speaking,
 what you learn the most from is really wanting to succeed
 and then failing and doing that often.
 That's the reality from a parent,
 from a teacher perspective, from anybody,
 from people you love.
 If they really want to do something,
 help them do that thing.
 If you think they're going to fail, good.
 Help them do that faster so they fail faster.
 Of course.
 They're going to learn.
 The only way to succeed is failing.
 There is no other way.
 That's what people have to understand.
 Without failing, there is no success.
 Since you've gotten a little softer,
 a little more emotionally open,
 what's the role of love in the human condition,
 Hajo Gracie?
 Probably the most important thing.
 That's the basic of everything, right?
 It's, I mean, love brings the best of us.
 It's if we had more love and compassion from the other person,
 I think we would be a more evolved species.
 The world would be a much better place than it is now.
 Did Franz's family help you along the way?
 Yeah, a lot.
 I always had a lot of love and help from many people.
 That's why I succeed.
 I never got here by myself.
 I had a lot of people who loved me,
 believed in me, and helped me get to be here today.
 Well, I'm glad they did.
 I'm glad you're here today.
 I'm a huge fan.
 It was an honor to meet you.
 It was an honor to hang out with you in Vegas,
 to hang out with you again today.
 I've just been a huge fan for a long time.
 My pleasure, man.
 Thank you for everything you're doing.
 Thank you for this conversation.
 It was awesome.
 Thank you very much.
 Thanks for listening to this conversation
 with Haji Gracie.
 To support this podcast,
 please check out our sponsors in the description.
 And now let me leave you with some words
 from Haji Gracie himself.
 Jiu-Jitsu is simple.
 You just have to do it right.
 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.