Dan Hardy - Evolution Of A Fighter

Full transcript: Dan Hardy on London Real

9:43 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dan the Outlaw Hardy, a mixed martial artist and UFC world title challenger and now television commentator for the UFC. Earlier this year you were part of Team GB in the first leg of the clipper, round the world yacht race, covering 5,300 miles from London to Rio de Janeiro. You are one of our most popular guests ever on London Real, in part because of your outspoken views and openness, discussing ayahuasca and other psychedelics.

10:11 Dan, welcome back to London Real. Thank you, it’s good to be here again. It’s good to have you back, it’s been like almost two and a half years. It’s crazy. It’s crazy because those episodes are kind of like little diary entries like from our lives.

10:24 And there’s one thing I just wanted to thank you for because we stepped our game up in a big way for your episode. And before that, we were like the old split screen, like early Joe Rogan days. And like for your episode, two and a half years ago, I was like, all right, we gotta just step our game up. And so we had like individual cameras for each person. And I had like a DOP here and we changed our lighting and all that stuff stuck.

10:46 And the later iteration was this studio. So, you know, I just wanna thank you for, you know, for that. No worries, no worries. And it was a really epic conversation we had and talked about so many things. So, you know, it’s been good to see kind of what we were like, you know, back then.

11:01 Yeah, comedy’s been so long. Right? It’s crazy. At the time, I remember we spoke afterwards and you were like, you were in conversations with the UFC to become a commentator, but it hadn’t happened. We were talking about your hiatus from fighting at the time, you were coming off of two wins.

11:17 There was, you know, the Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome that had been noted with your heart, but you were like, you know what, I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing. I think you had probably come back from Peru maybe six months or a year earlier and that’s kind of what was going on with you then. Now I see you doing after-fight interviews for every UFC fight in Europe, Middle East Africa. You’re doing commentary on BT Sport. You made quite a transition.

11:44 What’s been going on with you? Well, you summed it up pretty well. I mean, everything’s been going on. God, it’s hard to think what’s happened since the last time I was here. But yeah, I mean, the commentary job’s been the main thing.

11:57 It’s been completely all-consuming. It’s taken over every area of my life because I’m having to watch so many more fights now than I used to, but I love it. It’s great being around Fight Week and hanging out with the fighters and seeing how their weight cuts go in and chatting to their coaches. Because obviously when you’re fighting yourself, you’re kind of in a little bubble and you miss a lot about Fight Week. And I always kind of envy the people work for the UFC because I always thought to myself, it must be nice just to kind of come and hang out in a nice hotel and eat whatever you like and just hang out and be a part of it but not have to do all the sacrificing and stuff.

12:35 I mean, you know, the pros and cons, I miss being there as a fighter as well but if I’m not there as a fighter then to be there to commentate is really, really cool. Because it is kind of the greatest show on earth and I was watching Vegas this last week and it was just like, there’s so much going on, there’s the story, I don’t know know what it’s like on the ground, there must be the back story and did you see him and he looks pretty thin and the press conference this was set and then the way in someone looked like this and there’s endless drama and excitement, right? Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.

13:04 I mean obviously it’s a bit more intensified in Vegas but then again, the volume’s turned up exponentially because there are so many more people there, there are so many more cameras there, everyone’s got a camera in their pocket now. So there’s a story being built around Fight Week all the time whereas when we do a shows say at the O2 Arena in February it’s going to be far more contained because all the fights will be in one hotel and there won’t be as much kind of wandering around and shenanigans you know as there is in Vegas so the Vegas shows are a real big event I mean being there for international fight weeks you know like nothing you’ve ever seen 300,000 UFC fans all up and down the strip it’s amazing yeah Wow and when the Irish come in it’s just completely Yeah, yeah that that shows still the first Dublin show when when Connor Ford ran down in the in the the main event I Mean there were only 7,000 fans there I say only 7,000 fans But I’ve been in arenas where you’ve got 20 I’ve been in the rings we got 50,000 fans There’s not even a comparison, you know, I got absolutely soaked in beer and Guinness the you know all night and all the next day it was just celebrations and singing and yeah it was it’s a pretty special place I want to get to Connor because we’ll definitely get your thoughts on that commentating when you’re talking about knowing all the things going on in the background do you weave that into your commentary like I noticed this or I spoke to this

14:29 Trainer or because when you’re commentating on the fights there’s obviously 15 minutes if it goes three rounds where you need to add commentary what’s happening but also a little backstory in there yeah I think it’s important and I think that John Gooden does a good job contributing to that as well I mean he really spends a lot of time sitting down with fighters during fight week and talking through their training camp what they’ve been doing and you know influences and assistants that had during the training camp which are always really interesting you know if someone’s brought in a new training partner like Alexander Gustafson bought in Jimmy Mano were to help him train and that for me is just a fascinating little little piece of the puzzle and John’s really good at finding those pieces and I do as well I mean I it’s interesting because I think we work well as a team we have different accesses to fighters like fighters look at him much more as that he’s the UFC employee the one that conducts the interviews and I do all my you know this is my the presentation of my training camp for you whereas for me because I’ve been a fighter and because a lot of fighters in the UFC now were you know aiming for the UFC when I was fighting I get the much more kind you know, fighter to fighter conversation.

15:38 So I get the, oh yeah, this has been kind of bugging me, but I’ve been working around it and this guy’s helped me with this. So there are different elements that John and I bring to the table. And I think mine is much more of a, you know, being in there on the mat and being treated and spoken to like a fighter. And I think that’s a really interesting part of the commentary. I think that we need to address every area of the game and of each fighter’s training camp.

16:04 I’m very impressed with John. I didn’t know about him before. I didn’t know he had the cage warrior background. So when he sprung up, I kind of honestly was like, who is this guy? And what does he know about fighting?

16:12 But he’s very on point and you guys do make a great team because he doesn’t claim to be a fighter. And so he does his thing, you do your thing and you guys seem to work really well together. Yeah, ever since the first day we met, it was, I mean, we clicked, we did a screen test and it just worked immediately. I mean, I have a lot of respect for him in the work that he’s done on other organization shows. And because he was working for Cage Warriors and things like that, he saw the rise of Conor McGregor as he was coming up.

16:41 So John was commentating on his world title fights. So that’s a really interesting element to add into our commentary, because we’re working a lot with European fighters. And John’s got much more of a European-based knowledge of mixed martial arts, where his mind’s much more of an international, but more North America based, I’m more familiar with the fighters in the gyms there because I’ve been living there. Right, you lived in Vegas for how long? Three years.

17:07 Okay. Yeah, that adds a nice reference point for you, right? So you can kind of access that if you need to. Yeah. There’s no rule book for fighters becoming commentators.

17:17 I mean, I think of Brian Stan, Florian, of course, but like when you decide, okay, now I’m gonna be the commentator, like how did you decide how you wanted to be? I mean, obviously Joe Rogan, he set the bar very high and Joe does a really good job. I mean, you know, there are elements that I’ve looked at Joe Rogan and I’ve thought there are certain things about his commentary style that I really like, some things that just wouldn’t suit me. I can’t do the ah, scream at the top of your voice thing, I mean, I get really excited but I just don’t unleash like Rogan does and I think that he does that really well but I don’t think I could do that as well as Joe.

17:57 So that I think- Nor would the UK fans or the European fans necessarily want you to, because I think one thing the UFC recognized is that we needed our own people over here. Yeah, the market is definitely very different. And we’re much more interested in the actual, the technical aspects of the fight and the backstory. And another thing that I’ve noticed about Europe is that we like, we love an underdog story, and we love someone that’s turned their life around, turned their career around.

18:24 Okay, more so than the States. I think so, yeah. I think so, yeah. I mean, in the US, I mean, this is purely from my experience, but there’s always been more of a focus on this guy’s the winner. You know, this guy, look at this win streak he’s put together.

18:37 He’s untouchable, no one can touch him. And he’s like, super hero. Whereas in the US, in the UK, we’re much more of a, well, you know, he lost three, four fights and then all of a sudden he’s turned it around again. And there’s, you know, they like that story. Right, which is why they like your story always.

18:52 Well, I think I’ve been well received by the European fans just because I’ve been quite real about it. I mean, you know, it’s sport. Sometimes you lose. Now, I was doing breakdowns today for the Condit Lola fight and I was editing clips of my own fight against Condit when he knocked me out and, you know, it is what it is. You know, sometimes you roll the dice and you lose and then that’s sport.

19:16 I’ve never really had a problem with that and the whole bravado of no one can beat me. really had that because I never believed it. There was always an element of what is always somebody out there that can beat me. And I like that talk. Again, we’re going back to Conor McGregor, but I like that bravado that he has. It suits him. It just didn’t work for me though. I’m far more honest with myself and with everybody else for me to get kind of carried away with that type of hype.

19:43 Right. It’s interesting how you said that because you’ve always been pretty open about talking about that that loss of a conduit when you were here you talk about it really objectively and it’s interesting I think people really like your vibe I think they find they must find you really congruent because when you came to the UFC and started commentating like your first show people were like we love it we love it we love it and I think it’s because you’re not trying to be someone else you know like you said you’re not trying to be Rogan or something you’re just noting certain things that work and then yeah I mean you know I can look at other commentators and I’ve grown up with all different kinds of commentators from, you know, Steven Quadros and Mauro Enalo, you know, there are loads of different.

20:21 Yeah, of course. Great commentators out there that have been not even, you know, work for the UFC. But every commentator out there does something well and I’d be a fool not to learn from them just like I would if I was watching Fighters, you know, I’d be a fool not to watch the undercard of a UFC show because there’s going to be some champions coming through the undercard. So I could learn from that. It’s the same with commentators.

20:42 I think Bryan Stan does a fantastic job. clear that he does a lot of research, he spends a lot of time talking to the fighters and he just constructs his sentences very well. I’m a big fan of Brian’s commentary as well. I like John Anick’s commentary, I don’t know how he speaks as quickly as he does, I struggle to keep up with him sometimes and particularly post-fight interviews, that was something that I learnt from, well between Anick and Rogan, you watch Rogan and he’s much more of a, what’s the guy that does the boxing?

21:11 The old guy, that always falls out with Floyd Mayweather. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t know his name. Larry something, I don’t know. But he’s always there, because he’s still around, but he has a real way of drawing the fighters into him. He doesn’t even look at him sometimes.

21:24 He just says, well, Floyd, you know. I love it. And you know, you’ve got 20,000, 30,000 people in the crowd that have just gone absolutely mental for a boxing match, and he just managed just to bring the whole arena down, and just focus on what the fighters got to say, because it gives it an importance that not many other people can. And I quite like that and I think Joe does that really well and I would like to try and take on a bit more of that energy. I think it’s probably one of the trickiest jobs in the world because it’s almost like public speaking because like you said, you have to try to get the attention of the 20,000 people.

21:57 You have to get the attention and the respect of the fighter. I mean, Joe has a lot of people’s underlying respect and I think that’s why he gets such a quality interview. I mean, he used to get all the hugs and stuff and he used to get the Nick Diaz, Joe Rogan experience, check it out, and was it Rory McDonald chatted him out? But I think people, an outside fan wouldn’t see that. But since we know, I think that allows him to get a better post fight.

22:21 But look, it’s still such a new art. And it’s like sometimes you see even Rogan get it wrong sometimes or Anna get it wrong because you never know the energy of the fight. A lot of emotions in there. Also like Rogan has to interview the loser too and that’s a really hard interview but it’s one everyone wants to hear as well. The other thing as well is having somebody in your ear talking.

22:40 Right. Talk about that because most people don’t see the earpiece in the right ear and you talked about a famous thing. I think it was Rick Story and Gunnar Nelson and you called Gunnar Rick or Rick Gunnar. And how there’s 20,000 people, you got excited fighters and you got someone in your ear trying to give you a little direction, right? Yeah.

22:58 And depending on who’s in the truck and who’s talking to you, some people are quite succinct. to the point they say, okay, last question, or replay now, or they can be quite to the point, whereas other people, they just draw it out a bit and they say, well, we’re gonna go to the interview now and then we’ll ask him a couple of questions and then we’ll, and at the same time as this person’s talking to me in my ear, I’m trying to review the fight in my head and pull talking points from it and review the fighter’s career in my head and pull talking points from that and then the division that they’re in and where they could potentially be going, there’s a lot going on. And then when we get a crazy situation like we had in Abu Dhabi with Yahya and Bedford, and there was a clash of heads, they both went down and Bedford got up a little quicker and landed a couple of shots and thought he’d won the fight and it was a no contest.

23:50 And then in the middle of me interviewing them, they’re trying to get at each other again. So I’m trying to keep them apart at the same time. And sometimes you just never know what’s gonna happen. And that Gunner Rick thing, honestly, it goes around in my head sometimes, and I think to myself, it’s the stupidest thing. But I always feel like if other people could see my perspective in that, I mean, I know Gunner, I chatted to him for about 40 minutes after the fight.

24:15 It’s not like, I mean, I got his name wrong because I had someone talking in my ear and there’s a hundred things going on. But watching my events back and picking those things apart and improving them, it’s almost the same thing as I would do with martial arts. You just gotta kinda be open to reviewing your own performance, no matter what it is. And sometimes there is a controversial decision, and it’s almost like stand-up comedy is in that if you don’t address the elephant in the room, then it looks like it’s too slick.

24:45 So sometimes, I think Rogan’s really good about this, where he’ll be like, well, that was a controversial decision, because the audience is like booing, and it’s like you have to kind of address the people on TV and the audience and the fighters, keep it real, but also keep it on topic. Yeah, yeah, it is. And you know, we had a similar situation in Dublin when Paddy Huliham was the main event and Smoker submitted him. And you know, obviously the last time everybody was in that arena, Connor Briggaga knocked out Brandau and it just went up.

25:16 And I think everyone was hoping for a similar kind of night. A lot of weight, a lot of stress on Paddy’s shoulders and it just didn’t work out for him that night. Smoker got the finish and immediately all the crowd like that’s the show over and we didn’t get the big you know throw you Guinness in the air cheer and that’s so that’s there’s an element of getting the fighter to say the right thing to get the crowd back to listen to what he’s got to say you know what I mean we don’t have bad guys in the USC generally yeah and no one really deserves to be booed and I understand the energy of the of the fans in the arena but at the same time I kind of of feel like if someone’s given the right opportunity to speak, it can turn a career around really, if you say the right thing. Sometimes you’ll see Cornerman go, I was watching it with Arlofsky when he knocked out Bigfoot and I can’t remember where that fight was but I feel like it may have been Brazil, but he knocked him out double right hand and he ran over and he climbed the octagon and he’s cheering and stuff and his Cornerman runs up and he’s saying, and I don’t know exactly what he was saying but you can tell He’s like giving him advice like okay be nice go in and see if he’s okay. Thank his corner team You know do the right things It’s and sometimes we just forget you know the atmosphere is so so electric you just kind of get caught up in the moment

26:31 Yeah, I think there’s some famous footage of Greg Jackson saying to Jones and Greg Arlovski. It says go get some fans Something like that and like yeah, you got heat for it, but yeah, there’s a lot going on there I never thought about it that it can make or break someone’s career the way they come off there So many challenges have been thrown out You know the old Chael Sonnen where he just just cut Rogan off and say you know blah blah blah blah There’s Connor jumping over fences and there’s a lot of happens there luckily It doesn’t feel as scripted as sometimes when they bring the person in the cage I know GSP used to hate the fact yeah like someone they’d bring someone in the cage right after he Yeah, you know just defended his belt and now that was all going on again But yeah, they did it when when I was lined up to fight him I beat Swick and they brought GSP and and even he looks uncomfortably was like Like, you know, I don’t really want to be here.

27:13 And then when I was chatting to him a couple of years later, he said, yeah, I didn’t, you know, you just won and you were in Manchester. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted you to kind of, you know, have your moment. So yeah. How do you remember your relationship with GSP?

27:27 How do you remember your fight with him? I know you went and trained with him later. You know, when you saw him walk away from the sport, I think you talked about this in the episode here two and a half years ago. I think you said, I hope he walks out on a win. And I think you even said, I think he’s only got a few fights left in him, which is really pretty amazing because I didn’t see that coming.

27:45 Yeah, how do you think of him? You know, I have nothing but good things to say about George. I mean, the fight itself was one of the toughest tests of my life. You know, I spent 25 minutes fighting somebody off and I didn’t take a great deal of damage but I was always on the back foot. I never mounted any kind of offensive And that, in 25 minutes, is annoying for me, but impressive, in my opinion, for George, to be able to take somebody completely out of their game.

28:18 But I didn’t really know what kind of person he was when I fought him. And obviously, we had a few moments after the fight where he asked me if my arm was made of rubber and all that. Which arm was it?

28:30 The arm bar was this one, and the Kimura was this one, I think. Okay. It’s funny, you did grab your right arm right when you said something like that. Yeah, but it was the Camaro, okay, so armbar there at Camaro, which kept cranking that Camaro. It did, yeah.

28:43 The Camaro was the closest. I could feel the pressure in my shoulder for that one, but the armbar, I just managed to keep my arm slightly bent all the time and kept it moving. But I’ve been in Camaros, and it’s a pain that’s not a very nice pain. It’s something very primal. It tells that reptile brain that we got a real problem here, you better slowly back up, get it out of the vine, you know.

29:04 Ever think about that pain and how you were able not to succumb to it? Not really, no. It’s not, I don’t see it as particularly unusual. I think if you want something enough it doesn’t really matter what’s in your way. More than anything in that fight I was just driven to show that I wasn’t going to quit. You know, I had so many people count me out. I think I was one of the biggest underdogs in a UFC title fight that there ever has been you know I think I was like plus 900 on the day or something but that I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again the fight went exactly how it was supposed to it couldn’t have been any better because if I’d have knocked him out I would have been in the Matt Serra category and I would have never been considered a real champion which makes me sad because Matt Serra made the most of the situation that he’d created for himself and won the world title and that’s the way it goes in this sport sometimes but there was a concern that you know if I was gonna win the fight I was gonna knock him out if I was gonna knock him out it was gonna be probably a left hook that I caught as a counter which then would have become the lucky punch which then would have mean that I would have fought him straight away in a rematch and probably got out wrestled like I did in the first one you know whereas if I’d have been on board in the first round like people had predicted that was what we expected so we don’t need to think about that anymore

30:25 That’s a fascinating way about doing that fight, but a lot of guys, you know, you look at that old-school bitter boxer that we all know in the movies, he’d be like, oh yeah, that night, I never got my fair shake, it could have changed my life, but with you, you’re like, it was a fight outcome that would have happened, maybe, anyways. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It was the right thing for that night.

30:45 And so you talked to Georgia later and he was like, you got an arm of rubber and you started a relationship with him after that? Yeah. Well, at the time, not really, no. I mean, I didn’t speak to him for a couple of years after the fight and I think it was for us that reached out to me and asked me if I would come up and help him train. Just train, right?

31:03 Yeah. Yeah. They were preparing for Condit and then I helped him with the Diaz preparation as well. But it was just, it was great being up there. I mean, they flew me up there for a week and I really didn’t know what to expect.

31:18 I thought, you know, maybe there’s some demons that they need to exercise, GSP is just going to arm bar me all day for the first end and they’ll send me home or something like that. But they were great. I was involved in all their training sessions and even when I wasn’t a part of the training session, I was watching. I mean, there were some sessions that he was working with, you know, it’s like his strength and conditioning sessions and stuff and I was, you know, I would kind of stay out and watch but it was fascinating to be a part of a world champions training camp And especially for GSP as well, of all the champions that we’ve had in the sport, I don’t think there’s been many that have approached the sport as professionally as George has.

31:59 And the whole movement towards movement that we’re seeing now, across fitness generally, but specifically for mixed martial arts, George was already doing gymnastics and all that kind of stuff. I remember him doing gymnastics and kind of doing these things that you wouldn’t necessarily think applied to MMA. And you said last time that he was very linear and I guess I would throw in seems like methodical and maybe even obsessive about every aspect of his training, right?

32:25 Yeah, he was very, very single-minded. That was another thing that I noticed when I was up there training with him was that the only people that are around him on a daily basis are his coaches and his training partners. He lives on his own and he’s just entirely focused on the sport. And the good thing as well is, when I was living in Nottingham, I got a certain sense of what it would be like, but for George in Montreal, everywhere he goes, everyone knows who he is.

32:57 And everyone that knows who he is wants to talk to him about his fights. So there’s not a time, not a moment in the day where he steps away from the sport. And I guarantee you, knowing the type of person that George is, he won’t think about the sport any more than when he’s on his own. on his own he will be thinking about the fight every minute of the day. And that is unsustainable.

33:18 Yeah it’s exhausting it really is exhausting you know I mean I’ve got I’ve got other interests and it was something that I always remember reading in a book the book of the samurai and it was always it was a quote about balance and it was talking about the fact that a warrior has to be an artist and a musician and a poet and you know all these other things as well because if you’re not then you can be entirely consumed with one thing and that’s like you said it’s not sustainable and I think it just kind of consumed George it became too heavy to carry. And so that didn’t surprise you when he walked away? No not at all not at all particularly particularly the landscape of the division at the time. And I think he had some obviously underlying issues which I don’t think he thought drug testing was where it was but at the same time the way he would talk about it is that yeah he was so singularly obsessed and focused with his current opponent and then as soon as that belt was wrapped around his waist again, the next guy would be there.

34:12 And it’s probably already exhausting being the champion anyways, but being the champion as GSP where that’s just, he even admitted he was obsessive. He looks very relaxed and never seen him smile so much when he’s taking the break. Do you think GSP will be back? I don’t know now. If you’d have asked me a year ago, I’d have said yes.

34:33 But now I don’t think so. And I’m not sad about that. I’m a fan of GSP like I am of Anderson Silver and of Jose Aldo and of all the greats, but without it I want to see him have another fight. Anderson Silver I’m not so bothered about, GSP I don’t need to see him fight again. I think we’ve seen the best GSP that we’re going to see.

34:54 I think if he comes back now it’s going to be a bit forced, I think it’s going to be because people expect him to come back not because he has a drive to. I mean, from what I’ve seen, he’s still in the gym a lot, and he’s given a lot of input to new up and coming fighters. I mean, we had, for the doubling card, we had a bunch of fighters over there, a bunch of the British fighters went out there to train with him for a while, and Joe Duffy spent a lot of time at TriStar, and I think that he’s finding a place now within the sport where he’s not expected to be competing all the time.

35:28 We’ll always look at him as a champion. He’ll always be a champion. but training in the gym and training as the champion are completely different levels, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, just training generally.

35:40 Training without a fight to train for is entirely different to having a focus for your training. And I miss not having a focus, but at the same time, I’ve come to enjoy the daily process of wake up and what I feel like doing today, you know? What wasn’t working yesterday in the gym and how can I make that best today? Whereas when you’re in training camp, you don’t always have that freedom. So although he’s further away from combat than he ever has been, he’s probably closer to martial arts than he has been in a long time.

36:12 And that’s probably what’s keeping him motivated to be in the gym because he’s back learning again. And there’s no rush, there’s no pressure. Yeah, I agree. I would be okay to see him fight again, but I don’t need to see him fight. I feel like he did so much and he was just himself as an entity.

36:27 I’m not one of the people that just wants to ask him all the time when he’s coming back. feel like he is, and also he’s been at what, a year, year and a half now? It just seems like we wouldn’t get the George we knew back again, and then why are we doing it? And it’s amazing how time moves on, doesn’t it? And the division rolls on. And it’s funny how you say that, because you’ve probably become a better martial artist through your analysis.

36:50 And even when you were here last time, you said, Brian, when I take a step back and you’re not training for the immediacy of the fight, you can fall in love with martial arts again. So I guess I have to ask you, so are you a better martial artist and if you then again try to come back would that change that? Yes, yes I am a better martial artist but I’ve spent, in the last three years I’ve spent less time training martial arts than I have done for my whole life. I mean partly because I’ve had other focuses, I’ve been obviously training for the boat race, but I’ve been spending so much time sitting and watching fights, and it was something my boxing coach in Vegas, Jimmy Gifford, he said to me, because when he first came out to Vegas, he was brought out by Dana to be Dana’s boxing coach.

37:39 He was going to fight T to R to you? Exactly, that was exactly what, so when he came out, they put him in a hotel, they gave him the back catalogue of the UFC, and they said, there you go, educate yourself about mixed martial arts. And he was an old school boxing coach. He’d been cornering professional fighters since he was 13. And he just completely threw himself into the sport and learned about mixed martial arts through watching fights just over and over again.

38:04 And he said to me, when I took on a commentary job, he said, you’re gonna be surprised in a year’s time how much more you know about the sport. And he’s right, I’m seeing things that I’ve never seen before. I’ve taken myself out of the equation. See, when I was in training camp it was always me against whoever I was fighting, so say I’m fighting Carlos Condit, so I would watch Carlos Condit from my perspective and then I would go back through my fights and I’d watch my fights from Carlos Condit’s perspective.

38:34 So I’m effectively stepping into his skill set and looking at myself so I can see where the holes in my game are that he could exploit and that was always my approach when I was fighting a guy. The problem with that is that I’m only ever getting one additional skill set to look at because I’m always seeing my own perspective as well as theirs. But now if I’m breaking down Condit versus Lola, I watch Condit from Lola’s perspective and Lola from Condit’s perspective.

38:59 And I’ll even spend time, I’ll head back to the hotel tonight and I’ll be in the gym until midnight and I’ll be shadowboxing as if I’m both of those fighters so I can feel their styles, and then when I watch the fight, I’ll be knowing what to expect from both fighters. And I’ve always done it throughout my own career, but I’ve never applied it to a fight separately from myself, and it’s unbelievable what I’m learning from it. It’s almost like you’ve been training your whole life to be this super analyst, right?

39:35 Yeah. It’s crazy. just thinking about it. It’s weird. Did you know how good you would be at it?

39:40 Or how much you would love it? No. And I still don’t think I’m showing what I’m capable of. I mean, these videos that we’re doing, we’ve been doing the breakdowns for Unibet and we’ve also done a show called UFC Breakdown. We’re so limited by time that this is something that I would like to almost kind of do independently of UFC as well, is to start producing a bit more content like fight reviews or fight breakdowns, but just some kind of audio piece maybe, but there’s so much going on in these fights and I just can’t communicate it in the short breakdowns that we do.

40:16 Yeah, the problem with television obviously is it’s usually short attention spans, a very general audience, but I was watching your fight breakdown of Conor McGregor, which we’ll get into, but I didn’t notice so many things about Conor until I saw your breakdown of him and a lot of the things that you were saying, you know, he’s doing these tells and that uppercut and then that big kind of overhand left that he throws when the fighter’s actually moving away from him. And like all of these things that I hadn’t actually given Connor that much credit for some of the real technical things. And he’s always saying that I see sequences and stuff.

40:46 And I was like, after I saw your breakdown, I was like, maybe he does see sequences. But yeah, I think there’s a real need for that. But that doesn’t exist in America, that kind of a detailed analysis. Is that something that you think the Europeans like more? I don’t think it exists generally for the sport of mixed martial arts, I think that I think it’s an area that other sports are really pioneering, I mean the name I hear all the time is Gary Neville, he does, I don’t, I’m not a football fan but he basically does a similar job to me but with football and you know I think football shows obviously with it being such a huge market in the UK, we’ve always had you know football analysis shows. And I think that mixed martial arts, we’re still catching up with that. We’re still getting to the stage where, I mean, we’re still coming out of the instructionals phase.

41:38 We’re still coming out of the bit where people understand what recovering your guard is. You know what I mean? So we’ve got a bit of time before we get into the analysis phase of the sport, but I feel like I have a strong role in that, and I feel like I can help that along. And we have different people do it in different ways. Robin Black is the the other one that I hear a lot about, and I don’t know a great deal about Robin Black, I understand he was some kind of glam rocker back in the day, but he had seen his stuff in America.

42:06 I mean, you know, and that’s, they’re not, it’s not my kind of breakdown. I respect his knowledge, I think he does have an eye for the sport definitely, but that kind of, it’s much more of an American presentation, it’s, you know, he talks about flim flam and all this kind of stuff, and it’s like, his face is red as he’s talking about It’s quite intense and certainly from my experience in Europe, when that happens, somebody kind of goes, oh, it’s a bit too much. We’re a little more reserved in Europe and I think that we would rather be spoken to than scream that and I think that particularly for analysis, you can’t scream your way through an analysis.

42:48 I feel like I’m telling the story, I’m explaining what’s happening and I’ve been training for 20 something years and I see things that maybe other people don’t and if I can communicate that then that’s going to help knowledge of the sport grow, that’s going to help awareness of the sport grow and maybe this is my role of helping that along. Can you explain the difference between the American fans and the UK fans? I mean we’ve touched upon it a few times and like you know you’ve lived in the US, you fought in US fights and now you’re here, you’re commentating here, I mean in general How would you explain how those two audiences like to consume their media and then project it?

43:27 In the US, they’re far more Far more extroverted and obviously this is a generalization. Obviously, it doesn’t work across the board I know a lot of loud British people but you know You know as a generalization This is a good example is if I’m walking down the street in in the US and someone recognizes me even if they’re across the Street or in their car driving by they’ll go hey hardy outlaw or something like that whereas I can be sat next to somebody on the tube in London and they know I am and they won’t say anything but they’ll nudge their friend and they’ll show a photo of me on their phone they’ll be like this guy said you know I mean it’s it’s weird it’s kind of like I don’t I won’t say I get recognized anymore in any in any particular place but I’m spoken to a lot more in the US people come up to me and speak to me and it happens it happens a little more in London but in Nottingham I can feel people I can feel when I’m being stared at you know or like there was a time when I was in I was in a supermarket doing my shopping and I’m a I’m a one two o’clock in the morning kind of shopper I like quiet I like peace and quiet and I had a guy just took a photograph of me from behind and didn’t say anything and then an hour later when I got home and I’ve unpacked my shopping I’m going through Twitter and he took a photo of me he’s like oh so don’t hold you in the supermarkets, like, well, why didn’t you speak to me?

44:48 So that’s a bit strange. That’s the biggest difference for me. But for, I mean, I think European markets are becoming far more Americanized. I think people have become very attached to the Joe Rogan, Mike Goldberg type of commentary. And I think that there has been a little bit of resistance to me and John because of that, because we do have a different style.

45:10 But at the same time, you know, different areas of the world do have different styles of things. You know, if you watch the Road to Japan that they did for the Roy Nelson, Josh Barnett card that they did over there, he had a very Japanese feel to it, and I liked that. It gets boring if it’s all the same. Yeah, I felt like the UFC made a conscious decision to bring you guys in and to stop flying Goldberg and Rogan in here for all those shows, and I think it’s a smart, great long-term business decision to just give, to recognize and then give credit to the Europeans and European fans that they need something a little different.

45:43 It’s also tricky because Europe is big. You’ve got Abu Dhabi to Germany to Sweden to the UK to Ireland, those are some pretty different fans. So you have to cross a lot of borders there. Yeah. But the easiest thing is everyone loves fighting.

46:00 Everyone loves the UFC and no matter where I go and no matter what language I’m communicating in because I don’t speak any other languages but wherever I go I’m meeting people that I’ve got different backgrounds and different, you know, different lifestyles and upbringings, but we all love MMA, we all love mixed martial arts, so we can always have something to talk about. You know, I’ve had great conversations with fans all across the world, because that one common thing is, you know, that card that’s coming up, the next UFC card, it’s amazing, you know? Are you gonna fight again?

46:32 Ha ha ha. I think this is the question I get more than any other. Yeah, I am, I am. I mean, it’s a weird situation, because there’s been no progress since the last time I was here, I’ll be honest. I’ve not done any more tests or anything like that.

46:49 I went and had a medical done for the boat race so I had to get cleared for that and I was cleared, no problem. But I’ve been so absolutely consumed with commentary and with doing the analysis stuff and working as a UFC ambassador as well. They do have me flying to different places and stuff regularly. So I’ve just been so busy. I had a chance to put a good five, six week training camp together to get my conditioning back up to where I would like it.

47:19 But I did sail from London to Rio. If I can do 28 days crossing the Atlantic, I’m pretty sure I could do 15 minutes in the arts again. Right, so if you got that bug, you would put those six weeks in and then maybe get tested again after that six weeks. And if that was clear, then maybe go ahead and fight. So it’s got a few things that have to happen.

47:38 Yeah. I mean less of a rush about it than I was the last time we spoke, there was certainly a feeling within the first year of being kind of forced into retirement that I didn’t really have anything else, I didn’t really know myself as anything other than an athlete and I had this conversation actually on the boat with an Olympic athlete that was doing the training for the boat race as well. And she said the same thing. She said when I retired I didn’t know myself. I had to get to know myself as a regular person. So there’s been a lot of that and a lot of my drive and my determination to get back to fighting was just kind of because I didn’t really know what else I was going to be doing. But I have a lot of options now. I can do all kinds of things. I’m excited about doing other things. But at the same time I still identify that competitiveness within me. And as well as being on the side of the sport and watching it grow, I kind of want to dip my toe back in the water. I’m seeing things and I’m far more educated as a mixed martial artist now than I ever have been. Physically I feel better than I ever have been. I mean I’ve still got a little bit of Christmas around my waist from last year but I’m healed up, I’m healthy, I have no injuries.

49:00 You know you would fight at 155 or 175. I think I would 155. Yeah, I’m a lot lighter now than I used to. You’re a tall 155er, right? Yeah, well 511, 6 foot kind of a round. He’s a little saroni. He’s pretty tall. Yeah, he’s 6 foot, 6’1. Okay. Yeah, right If George St. Peter doesn’t have to come back, why does Dan Hardy have to come back? He doesn’t, he doesn’t, Dan Hardy doesn’t have to come back but he wants to.

49:23 I never feel like I showed my best in the Octagon. I never feel like I gave the best account of myself that I could have done. You know, and I was watching back that my fight with Condit. I mean, I don’t know. I was watching it today too. Great, great first round.

49:41 It was, it was really good. I was like, I remembered the KO but I hadn’t remembered you and I was like, damn, this is game on. I think it was, I didn’t feel like it was a bad performance up until the point where I got caught. I mean, he landed the volume and I landed the weight. I think my shots were heavier than his, generally, but he was landing at a higher volume.

50:03 I just got carried away with the left hook, that was all it was. I hit him twice, cleanly in the fight and I could see I’d hurt him. And then, if you watched that moment, I watched it today a few times, if you watched that moment where he caught me, I threw a left hook and he threw a body kick, I threw a left hook and he threw a low kick and I threw a left hook and he knocked me out. I threw the same punch three times in a row. It was absolutely stupid. It was a schoolboy error.

50:28 But it sent me off in a trajectory that I wouldn’t ever want to change. So it’s quite nice to be able to go back and look at it objectively and see the mistake that I made. It is what it is. I noted last time you were here is that you took full ownership for everything that happened in that fight and you took the full responsibility and a lot of fighters say it was just his night and a lot of people just move on and at any given night anyone can win and I do believe that in MMA.

50:56 So when I see these 10 to 1 underdogs and when I see the Rousey home fight, not that I knew it was going to happen, but Jesus, I mean these are two of the best, most savage people in the world going in there, but you were always like, no, I own this and own that and I could have done this and even now you’re like I threw the same punch three times a row and now that you say it that way it does look like that but that’s a very unique aspect about you I think. I just think that I have to be honest with myself you know I mean he knocked me out he caught me with a good clean left hook I made a mistake and if I hadn’t made a mistake he probably wouldn’t have knocked me out and I still feel like if I fought him ten times I could win you know a good majority of them I don’t think I was out of the fight at the time. I just think it was one of those things where we’re through at the same time, he caught me cleaner and he knocked me out. And I don’t see any reason why I would skirt around it and pretend like it’s something that it’s not. It’s like the Chris Lighten fight. I went in there, I was over-trained, I was exhausted. I didn’t really want to be in there. I wanted to fight, I wanted just to be angry because I was frustrated with where my career was at. I didn’t go in there to win, I went in there to brawl And I can look back on that and be like, there was a mistake I made there.

52:10 Every single fight, even fights that I won at, it’s good to go back and look at it and analyze it and pull it apart and see all the elements. Especially because if I can’t do it for my own career, then how can I do it for another fighters? And how could I be a decent analyst if I can’t pull my own fights apart and be honest with myself? Sometimes you have to be, even if it’s a fight that I’m a fan of or a friend of, If I’m breaking down a friend’s fight, which I’ve done a couple of times, sometimes you just have to be honest.

52:39 Yeah, Frankie Edgar, I’m a huge fan, but you crush your feet over when you step, you do it consistently. I would have exposed it in your fight. A couple of other people have exposed it. You know what I mean? Now, when I see Frankie Edgar, I don’t want it to be uncomfortable, but it’s just, that’s kind of the role I’ve taken on now.

52:55 So, honesty’s a big part of it. Yeah, and that’s an important part of being a good analyst. I’d say that one thing that’s always good, I noticed about Rogan, is even the guys he had personal relationships with, PJ Penn in the past, he was pretty ruthless when he’s looking tired in the third round. He’s like, wow, PJ’s got no gas left. You know they have a relationship.

53:12 I’ve heard you say that you’re even harder on some of your friends, because you expect them to be at a higher standard. So you maybe have to pull back a little bit on people you know. A little bit, a little bit, yeah. I’ve cornered a few fighters recently and I always expect, I expect a lot of them. But then again, I think part of that is because I kind of wish I was there and I could kind of do it for them.

53:33 Like if I watch him doing something, I’m like, let me just get in there and do it for you. And because I can’t, there’s a little bit of frustration there at the same time, but. I watched your double, the Condit and your, the double left hooks, the mirrored left hooks as I call them today. And I was, I was showing it to one of the guys here cause I remember that fight so well. And like I said, I loved the first round of that fight.

53:54 And I saw that same movement over the weekend because, you know, Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo also exchanged left hooks there. You could actually see a mark on Conor’s face at the press conference where he got hit. One dropped, the guy, one didn’t. Matter of fact, Conor was still awake enough to throw some pretty good hammer fists very quickly. What do you make of the Conor McGregor phenomenon?

54:20 I know you tweeted right before the fight, your heart says Aldo and your head said McGregor, which says so much about you as an analyst, really. You’ve obviously been in the UK, you’ve seen him coming up through the Cage Warriors The last time you were here with Patrick Vickers, he’s been talking about Conor McGregor for three, four years. Like you said, John Gooden was calling his earlier fights. If you’re in Europe, it’s not a surprise. If you’re in America, he’s quite surprising.

54:43 What do you make of the McGregor phenomenon, the recent fights, everything? I love it. I love it. It’s interesting for me because I find it, I find it as fascinating as I do challenging because a part of me is like, God, you know, I wanna be in there doing what he’s doing. He’s got the talk, he’s got the skills, you know, and I kind of feel like there was a point in my career where I was on my way to being where he was.

55:08 I didn’t have the out of control confidence that he’s got. I was always like we were saying, I was always quite honest with myself. But at the same time, I love the brash, the trash talking, the breaking fighters before the fights even started. And he’s drawn so much attention to a weight class that had before been quite stagnant. But as much as I love champions to defend their belt and to reign and be fantastic, and as much as I wanted Aldo to win on Saturday night, for no other reason other than I just didn’t want him to lose because he’s Jose Aldo, I think Connor’s absolutely fantastic for the sport.

55:51 I mean, he has the potential to take us into an area that we’ve not experienced before. I think he has. I think Rhonda did the first big push, and I think McGregor’s the next one, you know? And so you kind of love it and hate it, because there’s something also very American about it too, and over the top completely, right? Yeah.

56:10 And un-martial artist, but at the same time, Conor can be a very grounded martial artist as well. I think he is. I think he is a very grounded martial artist, and I think there was a point in his career where I think it was kind of around the world tour. It kind of got away from him a little bit. And it’s almost like in the build-up for this last fight against Aldo, he was far calmer and much more at peace with the whole situation.

56:36 I mean obviously the work he’s been doing with Ido Portel as well. I’m a big fan of Portel’s work, his movement patterns and stuff, and I feel like Mixed Martial Arts has been moving in that direction for some time, and I think McGregor has Well, he has the recognition and he has the respect to kind of change the way that people prepare for fights. I mean, the quote by John Cavanagh, you know, we’re upgrading the software without damaging the hardware, is one of the smartest things that’s probably ever been said about the sport of mixed martial arts.

57:12 Because so many times people are getting in there beating up, you know, like I used to do training camp and then the fight happened to be on the end of it. I was never in training camp preparing for a fight and I can look back and review all of my training camps in the same way. I pushed too hard, I was always over trained, there was always something that wasn’t moving well, that was sticking, that was painful, that was injured and when you watch McGregor in there now, just the way he moves you can see how, like he said, how free his movement is.

57:42 That’s a beautiful thing and I think that the phase in which I was competing mixed martial arts we’ve lost touch with that and and the direction that mixed martial arts is going now is much more where I would want to be a part of it and and that’s a lot of it is down to McGregor and bringing awareness to these you know these different alternative approaches to training I’m gonna Nelson as well we can’t this we can’t discredit him as well yeah I think you were kind of in Vegas at the time where that super hard rounds of you know sparring you know kind of the old aka type sparring’s on Tuesdays and Fridays and you go in there and get beat was kind of the thing and I think people were just starting to move away from that and think wait a second and then Connor obviously has fully embraced that and almost flipped it over 180 degrees and he even said in the press conference I don’t know he’s like I didn’t wake up that day with my foot hurting and I didn’t wake up this and and you know I had Ido Portal in here about four months ago and then we did another interview after he had actually trained with Connor in Dublin and he emailed me when they were in LA about a week ago and he’s like Brian we’re here on the beach he’s like everything is cool everything is great we are relaxed we’re having fun and I was just thinking what a great mental state to be in as a great contrast to what we saw Rousey in where you know there’s so much pressure but

58:54 They’re in this just gelled state they’re out having fun moving being free and then like and I love Aldo and I love him as a champion I remember in the WC day EC days I remember him chopping Uriah Faber’s leg down to where Master Tong was lifting Uriah up from the center of the ring and putting him on the stool because he couldn’t move. But you have to know that that kind of meme of the Thai boxer, you know, low kick, you do see that over and over in him. And with Connor you see this whole openness to a new kind of motion.

59:28 And so it’s incredible to kind of see that. And when Ido also came back here, we did this moving conversation, which we’re going to publish in a couple weeks. But he said, Brian, there’s two Conners. There’s the showman and there’s the martial artist that hangs out in the gym and likes to have fun and jokes. And then there’s the guy you see on the World Tour with Jose where he’s just completely over the top.

59:52 And that go big press conference, like I was just flabbergasted and I follow the sport and I was just like literally he went big. And you’ve got every other belt holder on the stage that is just silent. But then at the same time, when he was quiet the week before the fight with Aldo, that was completely congruent as well. And I was like, okay, here’s a guy who’s not going to put a show on for anyone else. And I was just thinking, and maybe you thought that way too, because you’re thinking he’s doing the right thing for him to win.

1:00:21 Yeah. Yeah. I just, I think that his attitude during fight week, the one just gone was, it was exactly what he needed to do. It was, we were at the point in his career where if he’d have been obnoxious and over the top towards Aldo again, I think a lot of people would have just been like, okay, enough of this, you know? Because there is a point that you get to where you just kind of don’t want to hear that anymore.

1:00:45 And he did well, I mean, the GoBig press conference, like you said, it was fun to watch, you know, he was brash, he was outspoken, I mean, he called out, what, three divisions worth of people, you know? But at the same time, it got a lot of people talking, it drew a lot of attention. I like that. On the flip side though, I didn’t want it to continue on to the point where it would damage Conor as an individual brand because he’s not going to damage the UFC.

1:01:11 People are going to still continue to tune to the UFC even if they want to watch Conor lose. 80% of the fans that watch the fight could have wanted to watch Conor lose but the money is still going in. The numbers are still going in but the actual brand of Conor McGregor had he have been that same person that was on the world tour, I think he would have done more damage to his brand than he did, than Benefit this last week. I thought he was relaxed, he was personable, he would spend a lot of time with fans.

1:01:39 Any video that you saw him in, he was laughing, he was making jokes, it was a lot more of a playful kind of, like the kind of that you would expect to see in the gym. And I think we were all ready to see some of that and I think it was the right time. What did you make of the fight and kind of the post-fight press conference and then where did we go from here? The fight was obviously disappointing, not because McGregor won, not at all, but because we didn’t get to see what Aldo is capable of.

1:02:12 I felt the same when I fought Roy Markham and knocked him out just over a minute. It’s like, well, it was great for me, you know, it was a quick knockout, it makes me look good, but he spent 8-10 weeks preparing for this and I’d be really annoyed if I was in that situation. And I think McGregor said the same thing at the press conference, you know, I’m sure that they’ll fight again and having the fight end so quickly, I’m ready to see it again as well.

1:02:39 Whereas if it had gone, even if it had gone around and Aldo would have got beaten up and knocked out, I would be ready for him to retire, but I don’t feel like I have any closure, you know. Yeah, Connor actually I think even apologized to him like when they were reading that, he was just like, oh, sorry, you didn’t get the shot, which would be a bold move for Connor. But yeah, I know what you mean. We didn’t really get to see what was gonna happen there.

1:03:02 At the same time, it was a knockout, but we didn’t get to see what happened. It was kind of strange. You had also said before the fight that if Connor lost, it would’ve been a fascinating thing to see how we dealt with that song of loss, because you never know anything about a champion until they deal with the loss. Then you know everything. GSP, great point with Sarah.

1:03:22 He came back and was better. Some people never do. Very curious to see what happened to Bones Jones, if it happens, McGregor, what do you think the next three or four years looks like for McGregor? Well, I’m interested in the idea of him going up a weight class. So really he’s a big guy.

1:03:38 He is, he is a big guy. But McGregor’s not undersized for the weight class. He has a long reach, he has a 74 inch reach, which, I mean, mine’s 76, and I have quite long arms for well to weight. So he’s quite a rangey guy, And I don’t think stepping up to lightweight, he’s gonna lose a great deal. I think the weight cut, although we’ve not seen him become quite drained by the weight cut, I think if he does get into a tough three round fight, four or five rounds with someone like Frankie Edgar at 45, I think we’re gonna start seeing him flagging a little bit.

1:04:13 Whereas at 55, I don’t think we’ll see that as much. I think he can keep the same emphasis with his weight cut as he does with his whole training camp at 55. Whereas at 45, there’s still an element of, okay, I’ve got to work now. I’ve got to push my body to a point where I don’t want to. Whereas at 55, I don’t think he would have to.

1:04:30 So I think we would actually see a bigger growth in his game there. I also think there are people that can challenge him more at 55. I think his size alone stands him above a lot of people in the featherweight division. I don’t know. I mean, I would be really disappointed if I didn’t see him against Frankie Edgar.

1:04:50 I think Edgar’s deserved his title shot now for a while. I think he had an impressive knockout with Chad Mendes. It makes sense for him to fight McGregor next. And I think even when McGregor got the title shot in the first place, having bypassed Mendes and Edgar, it’s like I wanted to see him fight one of those guys first. Now, fortunately, we’ve seen him fight Mendes.

1:05:11 I don’t think it was the best Mendes that we could have seen. And I think Mendes took him down twice in the first round. You see McGregor in the second round and he didn’t have as much spring in his step. He had slowed down a little bit, he was breathing heavy, he was bloodied. So then does a full training camp, Chad Mendes, give him more problems than he did?

1:05:31 Does Frankie Edgar give him more problems than he did? And if Conor’s talking about moving up to lightweight, he states at the press conference that he won’t be vacating the featherweight belt. He’s gonna keep both active. So if that’s the case, that going up and down weight classes, he’s gonna have a negative effect on him as well. This is maybe where his ego can get the better of him, is where he starts to think to himself, well, you know, I can hold it down in this weight class, I can hold it down in the other.

1:05:55 And the UFC aren’t gonna like that, I’m sure, because we need two belts that are active all the time. We don’t have enough fighters to go around as it is right now. You know, we need to create more events, we need to create more fighters, more main events, and having a lightweight title and a featherweight title both active by separate fighters is probably an extra two main events a year. Connor ran that press conference after the show. I was just laughing out loud in my office watching it because I never seen anything like it before.

1:06:27 And he thanked the UFC and he thanked the press. Like he worked there. I mean, we’ve never seen any fighter be that much vested or have that much input in the UFC. How does that play out? Like you said, he’s saying he wants both belts.

1:06:41 It doesn’t make a practical sense for the UFC to agree to that, but Connor has a lot of power, probably more power than any other fighter Ezzar ever has. And willing to use it. I don’t think Ronda was willing to use it, Connor is. Yeah, this is the other thing as well, is is there gonna get to a point where Connor’s interests and the UFC interests are conflicting, and then is Connor a big enough star to step out of the UFC and do his own thing entirely? Which he may be, especially if someone like, Floyd Mayweather comes and throws a box of money on the table.

1:07:12 He’s a very interesting element in the sport because he’s quite unpredictable and he’s quite headstrong and you can tell that by his negotiations with the UFC we don’t get to see what happens with his negotiations. But based on the money that he’s making and the houses that he’s living in, the cars that he’s driving, he’s negotiating hard with the UFC and he’s confident in his negotiations which means that that will cross over and it makes sense. I mean he’s been confident in the fight game.

1:07:39 Why would he not be confident in the meeting room? Yeah, and he’s putting it all on like number of 24 each time, but I’d say all on black, but he’s putting it all on one roulette wheel every time and then he’s winning every time. So he negotiates hard, delivers the goods, and he’s done that three or four times in a row now. So yeah, I agree for a 27 year old, somebody asked me in the gym, how much would he make for that fight? And I’m like, well, a normal fighter in the UFC, getting the title for the first time would make X, but Connor looks like he’s making 10 or 20 X.

1:08:08 So, which is based on previous negotiations of previous cards and sell out, so you know the deal. It’s like the press kind of knows what’s going on, even though you don’t know what’s going on, so. But we are seeing that the fight has taken a few more risks now. I mean, look at Ben Henderson. I think it’s really interesting now that he’s a free agent, just kind of testing the market a bit.

1:08:26 Yeah, I like Ben a lot. Final thing with movement, you know, you said that you’ve been kind of a fan of Ido Portal and his movement for a while. We obviously saw Ido and Connor hook up. I know Connor had been a fan of Ido for a long time and was doing a lot of the lizard walks and stuff, But them together was something that I know really well, but the UFC and the Irish fans to see on open workout, where you expect the typical de rigueur open workout is, we hit the pads, we do a couple of takedowns, if you’re Rhonda, she does some hip throws, and then you go, and Connor’s giving almost the opposite of the fans, doing the crazy things, the Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader thing, the lizard walks, which I do now because I did a two day experience with Ido, And I do think Edo has some very important things to say.

1:09:14 And it takes you a while to understand what Edo is all about. From the surface, he does look like what you used to train in China, in the hills. He looks like probably some Shaolin monk. Yeah, he does. But he’s obviously doing some great functional things.

1:09:26 And even him and O’Connor say he’s a white belt when it comes to movement. Where do you see this whole kind of Edo-Portal influenced Conor McGregor movement style taking us? It used to be John Bones Jones kind of was doing some things a few years ago that we didn’t see with flow, when Connor seems to be taking it to another level. Yeah, well, it makes sense. I mean, the sport’s been moving in this direction for a long while, and I think that, I think looking back into earlier stages of my career, particularly when I joined the UFC and I had time between training camps, between fights to, you know, cycle on, cycle off, and do my heavy lifting and my building stuff, so I got heavy, you know, big and strong.

1:10:07 There was much more of a professional rugby player’s kind of structure to the way that we would train or a professional boxer or something like that. No one really knows what we’re doing with mixed martial arts training. We know the styles that work now. We know that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is predominantly what you need for the ground game. We know if you’re a good freestyle wrestler, you can control the range of the fight.

1:10:33 We know if you’re a good tieboxer with a few additional tricks and this and that, you can be a very effective striker. But the actual underlying foundation of the sport that makes martial arts, we didn’t know how to prepare for that. I remember running down the river trend, pulling my coach on his BMX with a harness. I remember carrying logs through the forest on my back. You know what I mean? We didn’t really know what we were doing. We kind of make it up as we went along. I remember hitting bags with no gloves until my knuckles bled so I can condition my hands. I mean I think back now I think well that’s kind of backwards that was like so counterproductive and and now I think that the actual the actual the physical foundation of the sport of mixed martial arts is much more equipped to prepare somebody for a high-level fight like Conor McGregor. I think the natural movement patterns are far more applicable to the sport I mean if you think of the ground game my warm-up for grappling now is literally just to move around and to have just my hands and my feet touching the floor but to move myself in so many different planes that I’m challenging almost every muscle in my body as I’m doing it and I think that you know before when people have warmed up the jog on the spot for a bit they do ten push-ups and they run the lap around the mats and we’re like okay ready Brazilian jiu-jitsu warm up, I had to run around the mats

1:11:53 You know there are elements of the sport that we’re missing in the gym that can really be enhanced by these movement patterns. Like just people’s ability to defend takedowns, to recover guard, to create scrambles. Like if you look at a guy like Luke Rockhold, he is fantastic at defending a takedown, creating a scramble and taking someone’s back. Now powerlifting is not gonna help him do that, but intelligent movement patterns are gonna help educate his neuromuscular system to put him in the right positions be balanced. If you look at Jacare, ironing somebody out on the floor, he’s not even thinking about what he’s doing, but his movement patterns are so well adapted to the sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu that it’s second nature for him. It’s full reptiles taking over and he’s just allowing it to be. And that’s where movement patterns come in because it trains the body in a much more natural method than any other kind of training.

1:12:53 The strange thing is because of the prevalence of YouTube and now because of BT Sport and UFC on every video is that like the nine-year-olds and eight-year-olds, the seven-year-olds, these memes are going in their heads. And just like how we all used to have the UFC fighter is part Thai boxer, part wrestler, part Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And then now that’s kind of, that used to be like what you would do and what you would see. And so now when you start seeing someone flowing and moving, maybe that’s the seeds of what the sport’s going to be in 10 years.

1:13:22 And it’s not like we’ve not seen it before as well. I mean, if you watch a freestyle wrestler warming up, even go, there’s a competitor Supreme, it’s the Dan Gable documentary from years ago, and it’s about him training his team at Iowa. I mean, just watch some of the stuff that they’re doing, some of the movement patterns that they’re doing. I mean, obviously they’re just drilling techniques, but their movement patterns are very similar to the stuff that Edo Portel does.

1:13:47 All he’s done is he’s focused on the movement much more than the outcome, you know? Like when you’re shooting a double leg, you’re doing the same kind of movements, you’re lowering your level, and the transition that you’re going through with your hips is exactly the same as some of the walks that they’ve been doing on the beach that you would seem doing with Conor McGregor. But they’re focusing much more on the process of the movement than the actual outcome of getting the takedown and finishing it.

1:14:13 And that’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. It’s almost like ballet, you know? It’s like watching Tai Chi. I used to, I mean, when I was in Beijing, when I’ve been training there, there was one morning I got up specifically to go to the park just to watch all the old people do Tai Chi.

1:14:29 And I didn’t join in, but I just sat and watched and it was just, it’s like a ballet, it’s a dance. And I think any kind of controlled movement is a beautiful thing to watch. Just to finish up with MMA, because I want to talk about sailing and psychedelics. Connor, does he take the 55 belt? Not as easily as he did the featherweight one, I don’t think, and I don’t like the idea of him stepping up and getting an immediate title shot.

1:14:57 That doesn’t make sense at all. I know for the UFC marketing machine, and I know I should be entirely on board with that, being a UFC employee, but at the same time, I have to kind of think about the integrity of the sport. I mean, Damian May was talking about it the other day with the rankings. He beat Neil Magni and he’s still ranked at six whereas other people, the rankings are changing and they’re not and he’s not and that’s basically because he’s not he’s not one of the marketable guys in the division. Whereas because Connor is they can push him into a main event immediately and make a ton of money off it. But it’s not right for the sport. He needs at least one contender fight. You can’t step up into a new weight class and not fight anybody. Is there any precedent of someone of a champion moving up a weight class and not fighting for the belt, I know BJ went up to welterweight and fought on that Hughes, right?

1:15:44 I guess it doesn’t happen very often, right? It doesn’t happen very often. I mean, I guess when you’ve got a special athlete like BJ Penn or like McGregor, you know, or even like, you know, if the situation with John Jones has been different, you know, I need to decide that I want to step up and fight for the heavyweight title. I kind of wouldn’t have had an argument for it, but at the same time, because the lightweight division is so stacked, there are so many contenders in that division, it’s kind of difficult to take someone from an entirely different division and throw them right in at the top, you know? It’s such a funny marketing game because it’s not just math. No. It’s more and I told someone like Aldo’s been the champion for five years so you know if Razi was the champion for five years of course she gets an immediate rematch if she wants it but although doesn’t because in our minds McGregor’s the champion because of all the press he did and all the marketing so it’s like it’s I don’t know it’s kind of fascinating how that is a whole different part of that equation. Talk to me about sailing and that’s probably even the wrong word and when I mentioned the yacht race people think of you out there with your jacket, your hat, but like when I saw you taking this challenge on I was like man this is no joke I mean like I don’t think I’d want to be one day on one of those boats in the middle of the Atlantic let alone

1:16:54 For what you’re doing and you’re going on to a boat where they don’t know you there’s a lot of hard work and I read some of your accounts about it where you’re not sleeping much, you’re out there alone, you don’t know if the other boats are doing well, if someone’s died. Why sailing? Tell me about this adventure of yours. I’m not surprised being Dan Hart. It was a bit of a strange situation really.

1:17:20 I’ve always loved boats, even from when I was a little kid. Pirates, pirate ships, galleons, big mast sail ships. I love them, I don’t know why, I just always have them. and any tales of James Cook’s explorations or Lord Nelson or anything like that. I love naval battles and anything historical in naval.

1:17:43 And I’ve got a tattoo of a clipper ship on my arm and an anchor. And White Cliffs of Dover on the inside. It’s just, I’ve just always had a bit of a fascination with it, but I’ve never been in a situation where I could step on a boat and be a part of a race team. And, if I’m honest, the idea of being so far out at sea that I can’t get myself to land was a little bit, you know, it made me a little bit anxious. There was a documentary I watched called 180 South, it’s on Netflix, it’s definitely worth a watch.

1:18:13 And there was a point where this guy’s on a boat from Chile, he’s heading down towards Chile on this yacht, and the mast snaps, and he’s just, you know, just putting myself in that situation thinking how absolutely helpless they are. I mean, they had enough fuel to motor to Rapa Nui, which is the nearest island. And I thought to myself, if I was in that situation, how would I deal with that? And as soon as I asked myself that question, I knew that I had to put myself on a boat in that kind of situation just to find what the answer was.

1:18:42 And as luck would have it, I got contacted by a clip around the world and a woman called Julia who used to work with the UFC in Canada. And I’d worked with her previously in the past, not met her face-to-face, but she If you thought UFC guys are crazy, we’ll see if they’ve got someone that we can throw on one of these boats. So no signals from you? She just contacted you? No.

1:19:02 It was completely out of the blue. Wow. Perfect. It was almost like I manifested the opportunity of myself. You probably did.

1:19:07 Yeah, I probably did. Yeah, so she kind of talked me through it, and it’s an 11-month race, and they go around the world, but they have eight legs of the race, and the first leg is London to Rio, which was, if I could have picked any of them, that would have been the one to pick. equator you follow the trade winds down into Rio you get to sail out of London we did you know down the Thames underneath Tower Bridge it was absolutely amazing you know just the kind of experience that you only gonna get once in a lifetime but then at the same time you know you’re taking on something that could potentially work out terribly I mean it’s not a not an easy environment to live in I did four weeks of training for it for one week training out off the coast of the UK where we’re out in the Channel and just lots of different sailing drills you know sail changes and and this and that basic basic functionality of the boat but nothing really to prepare you for being out in deep ocean we had that we had the mechanics down but the idea of actually being out and and away from land was something that we wouldn’t experience until we were actually on the race. What’s the hardest part of the training when you’re out there for a week in the channel? Is it physicality, the balance, you got to stay alert all the time? Does that get exhausting mentally?

1:20:25 I don’t even know what it’s like. Yeah well there are a few different things. The shift pattern was really really hard work because you never get a full night’s sleep, you never wake up feeling rested and which was not too bad for training because obviously you know you’re only out there for a week but when you think to yourself at the end of the week of training I’m I’m exhausted now and if I had to, if I was already out, you know, off the coast of Portugal by now and I had another four weeks of this to do, I’d really beat the hell out of me, you know.

1:20:56 And we know the risks as well. We know of the injuries that have happened and people going overboard. And unfortunately in this last race, we actually lost a crew member in the first race. Wow. And if you’re overboard, is it over?

1:21:12 Or is there a chance of finding you? Yeah, it’s not. I mean, the last race they lost a guy overboard for 18 minutes and that was, had it had been somebody else, somebody of a slightly smaller statue, I mean he was quite a big stocky guy. Had it had been someone smaller and more slight, they would have probably been pulling a body out of the water. Just because of the temperatures of the water, I mean he was, there were a thousand miles off the coast of Japan heading towards San Francisco at the time.

1:21:37 And he was just hit side, you know, hit from the side by a massive wave. I mean you get hammered, you really get hammered by big waves. Particularly if you work on the bow a lot of the time and I like the adrenaline of it So I like to be on the bow or up the mast You know the extremities of the boat where it’s you get the most movement What are you doing up the mast? We do rig checks and that kind of thing. We have to go up there and make sure everything’s because everything on the boat There’s nothing there’s nothing electric electronic on the boat other than the navigation system So everything we do with regards to sail changes or anything like that like that, it’s all by hand. We have to get the sails up from the sail locker, get them out onto the deck, open the bag up, attach the sail to whatever it’s been attached to, to the halyard, to the forestay, and then we have to get it up by hand. So the physical side of it is quite difficult, but it won’t be too bad if I spend four hours sailing the boat and then I can go and get in bed and sleep for five, six good quality hours.

1:22:36 But when you’re on a bunk that’s narrower than this chair and it’s constantly rocking and moving, there’s just no rest. And that was really the most difficult part for me was feeling like I was constantly getting broken down. Because as a fighter, you cherish your sleep and you always get your sleep, right? Yeah. You might train hard and be exhausted in multiple workouts a day, but you get your sleep and you get your food in, right?

1:22:57 That’s it. That’s exactly it. And I was explaining this to people on the boat. I wake up in the morning, I have breakfast, I go and train for two, three hours. I’ve got to come home, I’ll have lunch, I’ll have a protein drink, I’ll sleep for a bit.

1:23:09 You know, I’ll get up leisurely, I’ll eat again, I’ll go and train, but I mean, the training sessions are hard, don’t get me wrong. But that only equates to about four or five hours a day. Whereas when you’re on the boat, you work for, you’re either doing four hours or six hour shifts, and then you’re off for either four or six hours. But even when you’re off shifts, you’re not off. You’re trying to get around the boat because you’re at a 45 degree angle then you have to climb everywhere you go.

1:23:35 You’re trying to cook, which is one of the most difficult things that you could ever wish to do, is to boil pasta at 45 degrees. I mean, the cooker moves, so you’ve got, but at the same time, you’ve still got a big pot of boiling water being thrown around the kitchen. And silly things like brushing your teeth is a huge effort, a huge effort, because you can’t use fresh water because all the water’s filtered, so you can get a little mug and use some fresh water and just so many little things that you take for granted.

1:24:07 Did you get frustrated? Endlessly frustrated. How long were you out there for? 28 days total from when we left South End to when we arrived in Rio. Okay, and was there a point where a couple weeks in where you’re like, I can’t go back, I own this?

1:24:22 There were a couple of real breakthroughs I had. And one of them, I was just sat in the back of the boat. I’d worked, I’d had a really long shift We’d had probably eight or nine sail changes and the weather was bad, it was really rough. And we were up at a good angle. And it was pitch black, I was sat at the back of the boat.

1:24:43 And I mean, there are saving graces in those situations. The night sky, when you’re on the equator, how do you describe it to someone who’s never been that far away from light pollution? It’s absolutely amazing. And when you’re cutting through the water and you can see all the phosphorescence behind you glowing in the water, it’s amazing. dolphins swimming at the sides of the boat.

1:25:04 Absolutely amazing. But because they only take up small parts of the day, it’s easy to get quite overwhelmed and be like, oh, how long have I gone to a Rio? 10 more days. You know, it’s like, there’s a, it becomes quite a drag. It’s like, you’ve got to kind of pull yourself through the days.

1:25:17 You’ve got to keep constantly talking yourself up. And then other times you have to rely on other people on your crew as well. And, you know, you have to talk them up or they have to talk you up. And some days you’ll see them and they’re like, yeah, great, feeling good for today. You know, the weather’s nice.

1:25:31 Feeling healthy I got three hours sleep the meal was good today I’ve ate a lot then other days you just they’re just in a completely different place zombies yeah and you have to talk them up and get them motivated because you need all eyes on you know I mean everybody needs to be switched on if they’re not putting safety turns on if they’re not clipping things on properly that’s when we start losing lives right and so a few little mistakes add up for one catastrophe exactly how many people on the boat there were 24 on my boat there were 20 crew and a skipper and two media. Okay that’s big. It was yeah. And you were also going with other boats along the way? Yeah. But you can’t see them? Not always no no that was that was strange because I’m always used to competing with someone that’s right in front of me and I’m used to immediate results. If I hit someone with the left hook I can see that hurt whereas when you’re racing over 28 days a lot of time you won’t see a boat for a look for a week it’s sometimes it’s easy to forget you’re even in a race you know you’re like sitting on the bow of the boat thinking oh this is really nice you know it’s nice and peaceful got no wind it’s peaceful for for a morning and then the skipper comes up and he’s like oh you know Ching Dao have overtaken us and they’re I don’t know we’re sitting in a wind hole and they’re about six miles you know north of us and they’ve caught some wind in there and then all of a

1:26:53 Sudden there’s a reminder oh there’s a race hang on these people that are trying to win, whereas a lot of it, a lot of the time for me, it was just a battle with myself. It was not really about the race or the other boats. It was nice that when we came in third to Rio and it was celebrating and all that, and that was nice, but the victory was making it. The victory was overcoming that challenge, which at times I didn’t think I was gonna be able to. Really?

1:27:22 Would you do it again? I would do it again, I would do it again. Strangely, when I was on the boat, although I was quite keen on getting back on the boat, there was an element of me thinking to myself, I want to do more sailing, but something different. Like, that’s a very intense environment. You’re on a 70-foot boat with 20-odd people, and pretty much everyone’s an amateur sailor. And at the time I was coming from a professional sports background, I kind of wanted a higher standard of preparation for the race. I wanted a better structure of sleeping patterns and to make sure everyone’s hydration was on point and making sure we were getting all the nutrition, all the nutritional elements that we need to keep us focused and stuff. But it’s nothing like that. I mean, it’s literally just surviving.

1:28:09 Okay. Because I thought this would be like all pro, all analyzed. No, that’s not the way this happens. It’s just surviving. It’s dangerous out there. You really have to watch out for yourself because…

1:28:18 We had a broken arm, a bad broken arm on the boat. About two weeks in, I was off shift and we had the other shift on and their watch leader was doing a rig check so he was you know a hundred feet off the deck on the mast and we’re harnessed in and we have two ropes on us for safety but you’ve got to think when the boat on the surface of the water is doing that the mast is doing that so when you’re on the top the movement is accentuated you know tenfold you and we have a strap we have to be clipped on most of the time particularly at night, you have to be clipped on because if a wave hits you, you’re gone and you’re ten miles beyond before people have even noticed. Do you have like a GPS on you?

1:28:58 Yeah, we do. We have an AIS beacon in our life jacket. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting sick because it’s a timing game. That’s it. And I got to try to find you at night.

1:29:08 That’s it. And then when you’re at a little point in a massive vast ocean and the waves are doing that, sometimes you can see the boat in the distance and sometimes you can’t. And that was something that the chap overboard in the last race was talking about. I could see the boat doing laps around me. I couldn’t communicate with them and they couldn’t see me.

1:29:26 And that’s something you’ve got to keep in mind all the time. You’ve always got to think about clipping on. And in this situation, he was clipped onto the mast, but he had unclipped himself to move up above the next spreader on the mast, basically. And just before he managed to clip himself back on, we were hit by a gust. And he was just swung around the mast.

1:29:46 And he just broke his forearm in two. And we were still, what, 10, 11 days off the coast of Rio. Too far to get any help to him. And it was broken here and here. And then he had a tear underneath his arm that was…

1:30:03 It was bad. And on a boat that’s rocking around all the time, so inexactly as painful. And it’s not the cleanest of places, as you can imagine. You’ve got 20-odd people living in a small, close environment that’s just gross all the time. So yeah, we had to get him down off the mast and getting below deck and they’d set up like a sick bay for him basically and put all blankets and sanitised it and stuff and then the skipper had to stitch underneath his arm and we had medics on the phone so the skipper would go and call and say we’ve got this situation the guy’s both bones in his forearm, the forearm was twisted so it would need resetting there was no excessive bleeding, so it was not a life or death situation, which was close as well. But the skipper stitched underneath the arm, and that was nice and clean, and that was done pretty well. And then we had to reset his forearm, so we literally just morphened him up. I held his bicep and his elbow, I held that still, and then the skipper held his wrist and his hand, and we just slowly pulled apart, and his arm just went pop, him and then we just held it there and he was like, yeah, that looks pretty good.

1:31:18 And then you tape it up and put cast on it? Yeah, it was like a, it was like a moldable splint and we just molded the splint around him and then for 10 days he was just on the boat in a sling, antibiotics. Okay, so if that was you that’s the career over pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. So you might do it again but maybe in a different capacity? I would like to get back on the same boat with the same crew. I mean the race will not be finished till mid next year. They’re over in Australia at the moment and they’ll be heading up to Vietnam soon and then yeah Vietnam and then China and then Seattle is the next stop and ideally I would like to join them in Seattle and stay on the boat and they go down through the Panama Canal and then up to New York so I would like to do that but it’s just with with timing of shows and stuff I don’t know where they will it will be able to get on or not okay we’ll see keep us posted I I have to ask you about psychedelics, one of the most incredible things when I always get stopped on the street and people ask me about you in the episode was just how honest you were about psychedelics, your psychedelic experiences.

1:32:25 And I remember I asked you at the end of the show and I was like, I knew you were speaking with the UFC about this commentary job, it’s a high profile job and yet you were open and completely honest about your use of psychedelics, what they mean to you, ceremonies how you conduct yourself and it really meant a lot to me and you said at the end you said Brian I’ve always been open and honest about myself because that allows me to have the right experiences and connect to the right people you even said I wouldn’t be even sitting here talking with you guys unless you had known about my psychedelic interests and some about me and so I’ve always talked openly about my use and we did our shows on DMT in ayahuasca, which is funny because now with the new set and the suits and the dah-dah-dah, people don’t realize that my DMT episode has 750,000 views and, you know, we’re going to be on London Live television in January and people are going to see me in a suit talking to Chris Eubank, but also with a clear, you know, a few keystrokes, they can see my before and after ayahuasca episode, they can see me talking about psilocybin mushrooms about DMT, so it’ll be interesting to see how that’s received, but with you, It doesn’t seem to have affected you and your position and your job.

1:33:35 If anything, I think fans see you as just a more congruent individual. So I wanted to ask you about, is it always just like that? Do you ever get any kind of blowback from a professional standpoint or from other people that just don’t understand? And then what’s your continuing relationship? Are you back to Peru soon?

1:33:55 And yeah, where are you at with our medicines? Well, I’ve actually just booked another trip to Peru. I’m going back after the London show. Just kind of feel like it’s time to revisit that. I’ve had a few ceremonies since the last time I was here, in and around North America.

1:34:16 I’ve had some great experiences. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had a lot of good breakthroughs and I’m starting to understand my relationship with psychedelics much better. I’ve had a little break recently, sort of four or five months, but I can feel a pull back towards psychedelics again now. I’m feeling like 2016 is going to be quite turbulent, I don’t know why, but I am much better now at trusting my instincts and I feel like getting out to Peru and going deep for a couple of weeks is going to be good for me.

1:34:56 Preparation for the year that’s going to come. When were you in Peru for your first ayahuasca ceremony? Would that have been four years ago, three years ago? You went after the Sadala fight or after the Ludwig fight? Ludwig fight, yeah. It was literally, yeah, fought on a Saturday night, Van Halen show on Sunday night, and then that flew Monday.

1:35:14 And you had planned that for a long time, right? That was something you were going to do. That’s probably four years ago? It was 2012. Okay, all right, okay. And yeah, where are you now to you were say you were then you know I don’t know in some areas I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress in other areas I feel like I’ve taken a few steps back but I don’t you know I don’t that’s necessarily a bad thing I think it would be a bad thing if I didn’t if I didn’t acknowledge it I’m certainly not as I felt like I felt like I was far more laid-back a little while ago and now I feel and maybe it’s because I’ve been spending a bit more time in London and I do feel London differently to any other place like when I as soon as I drive inside the m25 my body temperature rises a couple of degrees whether I’m in a car or a train no matter what I could just just feel London and I am been spending a lot a lot of time here so I feel like there’s a bit of a I’m a bit out of balance because of that I mean I’m sure you you exactly care you know my funny enough my our shaman that I did our ceremonies here in London with we call Susie for you know because that’s what she wants to be called But she used to tell me like like many shamans they spend a lot of time back in Peru and Brazil Like they’re almost there half the year And that makes sense and she said Brian the medicine says I have to be here because this is where everyone needs my help

1:36:40 Because you know It’s almost like you can tell by the topography of a city how much how much they need the medicine and when you get these high Rises, it’s where there’s a lot of tension aggression negative energy And so I know exactly what you’re talking about. I mean, New York is the equivalent for me, where I find it like London times five, where I just get in Manhattan. I’m just like, how can anyone relax here? Even in Central Park, I’m like, there’s buildings everywhere.

1:37:04 And so yeah, these conglomerations of cities and commerce and media, when you’re in the media business, I find it when I’m in LA, I’m Hollywood Boulevard. I’m just like, oh, this is just the celebrity factor, really warms my body temperature, as you would say. I feel like the medicines needed more there, or you feel like you maybe need help? Yeah, definitely. I feel like I need to redress the balance a little bit.

1:37:29 I still feel like, I mean, all of the progress that I made during that first trip to Peru still stays with me. I still have a really good ability to step out of a situation and view it from a removed perspective, which is kind of what we were talking about with the breakdowns, I guess, you know, removing myself from the situation. But in any situation, any kind of conflict with people or anything like that, I feel like I can manage the situation better because I can read the person, I can read the emotion and the feeling of the situation.

1:38:09 And I also don’t, I don’t get as, I get as kind of caught up in everything as I used to. I used to feel like, I think I said this on the last one, I always used to feel like my problems They’re just all around my head. It’s like wearing one of those Australian hats with all the corks. I feel like those corks were all my problems and anywhere I go, they’re smacking me in the face and I can’t get away from them. Whereas now, I feel like I can take that hat off and I can remove all of my problems from my person and view them separately.

1:38:38 And I feel like I can handle things a lot better. Because I had a habit when I was younger of just getting angry because that was the person that I was and I was angry all the time. Because don’t come near me because I’m angry because I like to be left alone and I like my space and my peace and quiet. And that hasn’t changed, but I’ve dissolved the shell that I had around myself where I pushed people away. I’m now far more open to people, but I’m also understanding of the fact that there’s a point where I need to remove myself from a situation to charge myself up.

1:39:10 I mean, people have different ways of charging themselves up. Some people like to go out to clubs and bars and stuff as they get energy from that, that charges them up. I’m the opposite. I’m the guy that needs to, I’ve been working all day, I need to go back to the hotel and shut the door and be in absolute silence and peace and quiet for a good few hours and that’s what recharges me. So my relationship with myself is improving on a daily basis.

1:39:40 I’m understanding what I need, what I have needed in the past of what I need going forward to be as productive and as happy as I can be. You had a great line from our last episode where you said, Iowaska doesn’t change a person. It just allows them to understand themselves better. And you articulated it better than anyone who’s been on here, including Rick Doblin, Dennis McKenna, some real great psychonauts, but that was a great way of saying it because a lot of people get caught up in the ceremony and the revelations and they think they come back as this new version of themselves.

1:40:14 But I think it does just allow you to understand yourself better and it’s just the start of a journey. And I still hold things from my Iowa Oscar ceremony, my second big one, but I still see things that I need to improve on. Yeah, yeah. And I need to go back every now and then. And with London Real, I get caught up in getting bigger and the set and our academy.

1:40:37 But since I’ve had that Iowa Oscar ceremony three or four years ago, I know that, okay, Brian, you’re getting a little, It’s getting a little too hectic here. You’re getting a little too caught up in the hype. It’s getting a little too capitalistic. You need to go back to the medicines, go talk to the psilocybin and just make sure that you’re not way off course here. Sometimes it’s okay.

1:40:57 Sometimes I go back and I don’t get taken to the woodshed and sometimes I get taken to the woodshed and I really get a scolding, nodding. Yeah, I’ve got a feeling I’ve got some of that coming in Peru, I’ve got a feeling that it’s gonna be a pretty intense couple of weeks. But I’m ready for it, I’m ready for it. I feel, strangely, because I was so isolated while I was on the boat for a month, I felt like I had a lot of breakthroughs just purely by having nothing else to occupy my time, just to sit and think.

1:41:32 One thing that stands out above everything on the boat was that realisation that I don’t very often live in the moment. And I look back through my training camps and I think to myself, I remember, I remember getting that contract, I remember signing it, and then every day between signing that contract and the time the fight arrived was lost. Because they were irrelevant days. Because the day that mattered was the day in the distance that I was heading towards.

1:42:01 And this is partly why I was over trained as well, I was just trying to get through the days. I wasn’t being present in the moment. And again, this is what ties all this movement, you know this movement training in as well because it forces you to be present in your body in the moment. I spent a lot of time being so far in the future that I was neglecting where I was at the time and when I was on the boat I realised I was doing the same thing. I was like woke up okay how long we got until Brazil? How many miles off Brazil are we? How long how many days have I got left on this boat until I get to Brazil and there was one night I was just standing behind the helm of the boat and I had my friend Andy was steering it was a beautiful peaceful night and I thought to myself you know I just I’ve just got to focus on sailing the boat that’s it I’m not gonna get to Rio any quicker by thinking about getting to Rio every day but when I get to Rio I’ll be thinking back of all these days that I was on the boat thinking to myself well that was a good day that was a good day but I’m not hearing this moment enjoying it and one tradition when you get off the boat is that you write on the wall of the sail locker So, I was the first person to do this, and I wrote, it’s hard to live at 45, but don’t forget to enjoy the ride.

1:43:16 And I’ve had a few people that got off the boat, and they were like, yeah, that was a good thing. Because, you know, it’s so easy in that moment where everything’s difficult when washing and cooking and brushing your teeth and sleeping is difficult, that you just kind of forget that you’re on a yacht skipping across the Atlantic Ocean. That’s amazing, you know? Yeah, I just, I lost that moment. Try to enjoy the journey, which is tricky.

1:43:39 And also you as an analyst, your job is to put your head somewhere else all the time and to get your head inside someone else’s head. So it’s almost like a, you know, a problem that comes with the job of getting back in your own head and then trying to be out of your head and being present. Yeah, yeah. Tricky. Did you ever get any blowback or any problems from being so open talking about psychedelics.

1:44:05 I mean, there’s not a lot of people like that out there, except obviously Joe Rogan, who’s always been so open. But it’s almost like you feel like Joe’s can just, Joe is Joe, he’s almost like a God in that way as in he can probably get away with pretty much anything. So it’s probably not the best example because Joe can get away with it because he’s Joe. But was there ever any blowback or anything? No, I’ve had nothing but positivity coming from it.

1:44:30 I’ve had so many people contact me And when I meet fans, it’s either one or two things. It’s either, oh my god, the armbar in the GSP fight, or tell me about Ayahuasca. You know, that’s really, they’re the two subjects that I get asked constantly. Oh, and the other one is when are you fighting again? But, you know, that’s just a standard every day now.

1:44:50 But I get a lot of people asking me about it. And people that I would never expect to. I’ve had conversations with people through all different kinds of social networking, through people that have come up to me on the street and said, oh, I watched your London Real podcast. I find it really interesting. And where could I go?

1:45:07 What do you recommend? You know, it’s amazing. It’s amazing that the reach that obviously this podcast is having, but also the medicines having, because it’s finding its way into all facets of life and all lifestyles and people are starting to become drawn towards it. Yeah, I found the same experience. Like when I went to do that ayahuasca before and after, this is like three and a half years ago and I just come from banking and I was just like, I didn’t wanna go back but I was like there’s no way the Bank of England’s gonna approve me to go trade derivatives again if I’m openly on YouTube talking about breaking the law and taking a drug.

1:45:45 Now, I probably was overthinking it and probably exaggerating it because they might not actually care but I was like, you’re not going back but I got, there was never any blowback. I got nothing but positivity and so many of the guests sit in this chair, which means they probably accomplish something great and push themselves to do something or had recognition, tell me about their psychedelic experiences or want to talk about it. And on the street, I get what is Dorian Yates like, psychedelics, and then maybe some other thing about, you know, do you miss banking or how do you do this show, but like that’s what I get asked about.

1:46:17 And so, in a weird way, it’s like these people are still in the closet a little bit. And so that’s the only frustrating thing and going back to what Graham Hancock talks about and having sovereignty over your own body and why are we still making these things not accessible. You know, you talked about your experiences with psilocybin and ayahuasca, me too. It still bogs my mind that we can’t book a trip, do we go to the hills in Wales where we can have a medicine weekend and that grandma doesn’t have to go to the hospital or go on a vacation.

1:46:48 You can go to the hills and have a ceremony and come back a different person. that that still is almost the elephant in the room here that that people can’t do that and we can’t talk about it so many people talk off-camera with me and you’d be surprised people that have had those experiences in matter of fact you would argue that those archetypal people that go to the scary places in their life are the ones that actually use the psychedelics in an intelligent way well it’s again it’s not shying away from the truth you know it’s like the amount people that I’ve spoken to that, you know, they’ve heard of ayahuasca and I explain a little bit about them and they’re like, oh no, I don’t think I want to do that. I don’t want to open that kind of worms. Well then you’re gonna have to carry that kind of worm really for the rest of your life and it’s gonna affect pretty much every decision you make, probably, you know. It’s like sometimes it’s worth opening that kind of worms and taking each worm out one by one and figuring out what the situation is and that’s the opportunity that you get with ayahuasca or with psilocybin. I have had had some of the most groundbreaking evenings in my life, just laying on my sofa listening to Pink Floyd with five grams of psilocybin. And people all over the world gravitate to all different kinds of religions and movements and this and that, and I’ll call it religion if I need to, if that’s what’s going to get it acceptance. But it blows my mind that

1:48:13 This is something that grows from the earth. It’s something that we can take from the earth and consume as it is growing out of the earth and it will give us these absolutely amazing experiences that not only connect us with the earth but with each other and how is that a negative thing I mean there are going to be some you know they’re going to be drawbacks to it people are going to do it in a stupid way every now and then and that’s what happens that’s why the the magic mushroom thing I don’t like using that magic mushrooms are for parties and this is not a party thing this is a it’s a religious sacrament in my opinion you it should be treated as such. That’s why I always refer to it as ceremony. It’s like I’m not on mushrooms, you know. I’m having a ceremony.

1:48:53 Yeah, I always say psilocybin. It’s just a better thing for me because I don’t like that word because it frames it in some movie someone saw about, you know, the Woodstock or something and they, yeah, they don’t frame it right. Luckily, because I did ayahuasca first, I treat my psilocybin like ceremonies. I’m alone. The door’s off. It’s Terence McKenna style.

1:49:12 You know take fun off the hook in the dark on your own heroic doses. Yeah frequently you go to learn There’s a line from one of my guests that says you can pay me now or pay me later It’s actually of all people it comes from the damn paying you the 50 billion dollar man But it’s kind of reminds me on a psychedelic like you said like a lot of people don’t want to go to these places But you’re gonna you’re gonna pay for that over your lifetime You can confront it now or you can realize that maybe when you’re 60 that you’ve lived your life in fear of this piece of you The whole time. Yeah, and so and it’s okay to be scared before you go into a psilocybin ceremony or ayahuasca Matter of fact, if you’re not I really wonder about you because I’m always Tentative because I know I’m gonna have some interesting hard times probably like you were on that sale on that sale journey and probably even going to Peru you know it’s gonna be a challenging time. Yeah yeah and it’s not something to be looked forward to. I remember I remember leaving the hotel and getting on the tube to head down to the docks down to St. Catherine’s docks to get on the boat and I was not looking forward to it I was like ah this is gonna be work this is gonna be work start to finish. I felt the same about Peru I feel the same about going next year and when I wake up on a morning and decide that I’m ready for a ceremony and it’s usually you know I

1:50:34 I usually kind of decide a week out and set a day and make sure my weekends planned around it but I certainly don’t wake up on the day like yeah this is going to be awesome you know it’s not like not like driving race cars and you know doing coke this is not it’s an entire different ballgame I wake up and I’m nervous I wake up like it’s a sparring session but like I’m gonna be facing the most difficult most tricky and most complex opponent that I’m ever going to be facing. Joe Silver bought me a book a while ago. He bought me and Chris Lytle the same book, same fight week. And it’s just a little book.

1:51:11 And he said, I want you to read this, both of you. And I want you to have a conversation with me about it afterwards. And I’ve had some really long, good conversations with Joe Silver. He’s a really interesting guy. He matches the fights for the UFC.

1:51:22 Yes, he does. He’s done that for 20 years or something. His knowledge of the sport’s amazing. But how it doesn’t take over every aspect of his life I don’t know he seems to have time for so many other different things and he’s such a well-educated guy and he bought me this book it’s called the myth of free will and I read it I remember reading it fight week and when I got to the end of it I kind of felt a bit depressed and the whole that the book is basically telling that you don’t have sovereignty of your decisions or your decisions are made by a complex series of calculations based on experiences that you had earlier on in your life. And I thought to myself well that’s so then it doesn’t really matter what decisions I make because the decisions are kind of made for me. On a subconscious level I already know what the you know the best option is because I’ve already weighed it up. It’s not a sporadic decision like I think it is. I’ve already weighed it up in my head in my subconscious and I made the decision based on that. So then I thought to myself well if those decisions are being made based on experiences that you had earlier on in your life, you may not even remember some of those earlier experiences that you had in your life.

1:52:30 I remember I was getting into a really deep spine stretching session in yoga and had this just kind of this flood of emotion about a martial arts class that I had taken when I was six, seven years old where my instructor used to bully me and it was almost like the the emotion had been trapped in the muscle and I’d not stretched it to that point throughout my whole life and it had always been locked in the muscle. And I start to move that muscle and it kind of released it and I was able to release that emotion with it. And I think to myself, if I didn’t remember that training session, I didn’t remember that particular moment that affected me and has affected my approach to stretching all the way through my athletic career.

1:53:16 But it was, stretching was always work, it was always a chore, I never liked it. there was always something about it that made me feel uncomfortable. And it was because early on in my martial arts career when I was six, I had an instructor that would bully us with stretching. He would like hit us with sticks when we were stretching and that kind of stuff. So I had associated stretching with this discomfort and with this embarrassment of being treated like this.

1:53:39 So I’d built this resistance to it. And having forced myself to keep going to yoga, unfortunately I met a beautiful girl who’s now my wife, I’d pushed myself to the point where I actually worked through it and I released that emotion, which felt like it was trapped in the muscle. So then going back to this book that Joe Silver bought me, I thought to myself, well, if experiences that I don’t remember are affecting my perspective on yoga now, what other experiences in my childhood are expecting decisions that I’m making in this moment now?

1:54:12 And I really, I think the only way to get to them is through a psychedelic experience. I mean, I think if you’ve got the time to seclude yourself for months or starve yourself or whatever, however you find that space, I think there are other ways of doing it. But for me, psychedelics is the most obvious, the most direct method. Yeah, it’s hard to argue with, you know, Terrence McHenry used to say, I mean, you take the five grams and something is going to happen.

1:54:40 And yeah, you can go and meditate and you can do all this stuff and it probably will happen too. but this is pretty much guaranteed it’ll happen. We’ve all been to ayahuasca ceremonies where it takes someone maybe one or two or three ceremonies, but you usually get a result. And usually the people that are arguing that there are other ways, it probably maybe is also just kind of a way of enabling some fear and some resistance. Yeah, sure.

1:55:03 Do you think 50 years from now people will watch this show and they’ll be like us looking at people smoking in the 30s everywhere and doing all this crazy stuff and they’ll be like, this was just a non-enlightened time or do you think there always will be this taboo thing? I had Amanda Fielding here who funds a lot of the psilocybin research here that David Nutt does in the UK, and she said that the society reflects kind of the ego, and sometimes it’s this kind of self-hatred or not knowing or allowing ourselves to know ourselves that keeps these things illegal. Do you think we’ll get to that state or do you think there’ll always be a fringe element to it?

1:55:38 No, I think we will, I think we will. I think there’s a natural gravitation back towards it and I think just generally if you look at how lifestyles are changing, again, we go back to the movement thing. That’s not really on treadmills and lifting dumbbells for hours and not really thinking about what you’re doing and people aren’t going and buying junk food as much as they were. There’s much more of a movement to healthy, organic, a conscious approach to living.

1:56:10 Generally across the board, and I think in every element where there is a conscious approach to living, ultimately it’s gonna take you to the same place. It’s gonna take you to decent people doing good things and speaking the truth. And ultimately when you find those people, they’re people of medicine. And I don’t mean doctors and nurses, but some of them are. Yeah, some of them are, the plant medicine, and those people usually think about the earth and the environment and think about other people and care about people that aren’t friends or even related to them.

1:56:40 Yeah, it’s funny. I mean, I get to speak with some amazing people and like, you know, Dorian Yates is a great example. You know, five time Mr. Olympia, you know, a magnificent physical specimen, at one point in his life. And when he sits down in this chair, he looks at me and says, Brian, we are all one.

1:56:54 And I’m like, well, what do you mean? And he said, you know, I know you don’t think when you see some guy cut you off in traffic and he’s being a real jerk that you’re like, he’s the same as me. But he said, Brian, we are all the same. And it’s all a vibration we’re putting out. And like, this is a man who’s evolved.

1:57:10 And so I get that message more often than not here. And I think you’re right. I do think we’re evolving. Yeah, I think we are. At the same time, though, I mean, I think as much as we are focusing on the fact that we are evolving as a species and we are taking steps forward, I think there’s almost like this shunning of the animal that we are at the same time.

1:57:32 And there’s like this kind of ridicule and there’s like, oh, well, the ego’s taken over. and you’ve lost control because you’re making decisions based from ego as well instead of a higher consciousness. But at the same time, I think we need to appreciate that we are a fine balance of these two elements. And I think that if we go too far one way, then we become the asshole driving the fast car and yelling at people in traffic and the ego goes one way, but then I think if it goes the opposite way, it can be just as detrimental.

1:58:06 I mean, you’ve probably seen it, you’ve been in enough ceremonies now. You go to a ceremony, and there’s probably 80, 85% of the people in the ceremony that are, okay, we’re here to work, we’ve got, let’s drink the ayahuasca and let’s see where it goes. And then there’s that small group of people that they have all the paraphernalia, they have all the clothes, they have the hats and the crystals and everything, and don’t get me wrong, I mean, if that’s what you’re attracted to, that’s what you’re attracted to, There’s a certain kind of reliance on that environment, just as there is a reliance on people who wear expensive clothes and drive fast cars.

1:58:43 There’s also a reliance on the paraphernalia that comes with the psychedelic community. One day you sit and chat to a guy called Dave, and he’s having his first ayahuasca experience. You wake up the next morning, log onto Facebook, and he’s changed his name to Jupiter Rising or something like that. You know what I mean? It’s almost as dangerous the opposite way.

1:59:02 Right. Yeah. Yeah, and actually if it’s one thing the ayahuasca taught me as well It’s it’s it’s to to deal with my ego self as well and as a fighter, you know When you’re in the in the cage, you have to be the ultimate egoic being right because you are protecting yourself and inflicting damage Yeah, and then after that you cannot be that guy And so for me with ayahuasca, it says it’s okay for Brian to be the super high achiever And he can be that guy as long as he can also look outside and be like, yeah, don’t be him all the time So I agree we we have to be careful that we don’t go one way or the other way which I thought you were getting to and Maybe you mean that too is the person that’s I don’t know gone to such a low resonance level where they’re not even themselves anymore They’re not true to themselves of being an animal as in like yeah, you’re not looking out for yourself anymore You’re not being true to yourself You’re not being the best you can be and you’re just kind of playing small and dissolving into the ground I’m sure you may be seeing those people at too many ceremonies Most definitely, as much as we all want to move forward into a utopian world where everything is equal and there’s an abundance of everything that we need, we’re not there right now.

2:00:10 We’re in very much a dog-eat-dog world and there’s very much an element of surviving everyday life, whether it’s just strengthening yourself in a psychological way to deal with being in a city like London, whether it’s just to put up a wall to deal with the nonsense that you see on social networking all the time, you know what I mean? We have to protect ourselves still in a lot of ways and I have this theory and John Gooden is probably the best person to speak to about it because he witnessed it first hand but I have what I call the seven out of ten and this is a beautiful thing because in my opinion I am outwardly angry, aggressive, like, on the edge of losing my shirt. Inwardly, I’m at peace, I’m reading the situation, and I’m assessing the person in front of me.

2:01:04 And my seven out of 10 theories, so basically, the seven out of 10 is the range. 10 is where someone’s going to a hospital, and one is where I lay down and kill up in a ball and cry. You know what I mean? So that’s where I’m at. So seven out of 10 is like, sometimes you gotta be aggressive.

2:01:19 Sometimes you gotta maintain order. If someone’s being a prick, you gotta maintain order sometimes. going to let them know. And this is another thing about mixed martial arts that we find a lot of people that are in the mixed martial arts community are quite righteous people. Other than the occasional Mac Hughes, most people are of a level that they understand their role in the world and they understand their role in society. And I think that one of my roles in society is to maintain order. If I see something that’s not right, if I I see a guy slapping his girl.

2:01:51 I will go and speak to him, you know? I saw it driving down the strip in Vegas. I saw a guy reach into the back of his car and start beating on his wife. I got out of the car and went over, you know? I was in a situation the other week where there was, can I swear on this?

2:02:06 Yeah, we’ll swear, okay. So I just pulled up outside my house. I live on a nice quiet street in a little village, not the end of the street, it’s a restaurant, an Indian restaurant that does absolutely amazing food. Anyway, I literally just pulled up, turned my car off, and I was sat in the car for a minute playing with my phone, and this guy had come out of the restaurant, and he was having a cigarette break. I could tell by his posture and by his movement that he’d had a couple of drinks.

2:02:30 But he walked a few paces up and just started to unzip his flies. Now this is a quiet little village in the national forest. A, you don’t piss on the wall of an old building in a village. So like a conversation in my head was like I could leave it, I could allow it just to be and he gets away with it and it is what it is, but I have a responsibility to maintain order. I’m in a position where I can tell him to stop and if I need to I can stop him.

2:02:58 So why would I not? Because he’s doing something that’s not righteous. I mean he’s pissing up the wall of a friend’s house, I have to say something. So I got out and I walked down to him and his read of the situation was this guy’s aggressive this guy’s coming coming at me but in my mind I was not at all I was completely calm with the situation and I walked up to him and I said don’t piss on my street and he turned around he started to kind of walk forward and square up to me and I said you’ve picked the wrong motherfucker do not piss on my street and he kind of stopped for a second and then I like flinched like I was gonna hit him and just for a second he like froze and he it was like like rabbit in headlights he was like sorry and he just turned around and walked away now in that situation if I wasn’t there he would have pissed on the street got away with it didn’t think twice about it went back in then enjoyed his meal the next time he was out on the cigarette break he probably done the same thing but the next time he goes out there now whether somebody’s watching him or not you might think to himself I probably shouldn’t do that do you know them yeah I’m saying also if you hadn’t have flinched then both people could have gotten hurt exactly so if you hadn’t really projected your sense in that so I guess at some point the tribal elders and the and the strongmen have to preserve order right yeah yeah and it’s their it’s their duty yeah not just be a

2:04:20 Pacifist and lay down exactly you shouldn’t you shouldn’t be rude to your elders you’re not rude to your elders that’s like a standard but that’s that’s out the window now people always rude to older people now it’s terrible but like that was kind of like a baseline standard of society you don’t not rude your elders because there was order that was established. If you’d have backchatted to my granddad back when he was in his 30s and you were a kid, you’d have known about it. And not because he likes hitting kids and yelling at them, but because there’s order to be maintained. Because then those kids grow up to be righteous people that maintain order for the lower generations. And not out of an ego. I mean, this is where it kind of got away from we were getting onto different subjects but like you know with police forces and school teachers and stuff I mean there used to be an element of corporal punishment which is now gone because we don’t feel like we can trust people to not give into their ego like the American police do at times and start beating up people that don’t need to be beaten up or being threatening or being bullying I’ve experienced it myself in Los Angeles with the police force there. Yeah it’s a different vibe of the police in America the seven out of ten meaning that you can be to a seven and still be in control and sometimes you need to be at the seven is what you’re saying I need to appear to be a seven out of ten internally I’m still I’m still at three

2:05:38 Four out ten I’m annoyed because they’re taking a liberty yeah but like there was the one that John John Goodnell tell you is we were in a hotel in Sweden and my wife and Carly Baker was sat chatting to each other on a sofa in the lobby and me and John was standing a few meters away just having a conversation about the fight the show had just finished and this drunk guy who was just coming out the bar, he just kind of like, he went over and he like kneeled down in front of, in front of Lacey and Carly and was like, oh, you’re just beautiful, just being a creep, just, you know. And I could, and I looked over and I could see them both look quite uncomfortable. And obviously I knew that, I knew that my wife didn’t know the guy and I didn’t know him. And Carly wasn’t acting like she knew him. So I, I, I walked over nice and calm and I said, Carly, do you know him? And she said, no. And then, so there’s a situation where I could have said, come on mate, you’ve had a drink, it’s time to leave.

2:06:29 And then in that moment, he has a decision to make. Okay, he’s at a five out of 10 now, do I push my look and be aggressive with him and hope he backs down so not to lose face in front of the ring girl? Or, do I back away and admit that I’m drunk and I should probably go home? My seven out of 10 just takes the option off the table. Does that make sense?

2:06:50 Because I’m not gonna attack him, he’s gonna have to make the first move if I’m gonna be physical with him. But I can be aggressive enough where he questions whether I’m gonna be physical with him first straight away and that makes him reassess the situation. Because I don’t want him to go, hmm, fight or flight, fight or flight. I want him to go, oh shit, flight. Let’s get out of here.

2:07:11 And it’s your responsibility to do that and we need to remember that. This is the human conflict we will always have, right? And then the other, just to round that whole thing out where we have the dissolving of the ego with the psychedelics, the preservation of the ego to hold order in our tribe. Now, on top of all that, we now have the internet and the mobile phones and all the social media that also is another monkey brain. The monkey brain just loves it.

2:07:35 It’s just like, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang. And it’s something that, funny enough, fighters are performers as well. And you need that connection as well. So we have to manage all these pieces because I would argue that a mobile phone pretty much takes you out of any kind an ego-dissolving situation, you know, it almost just spikes it up and makes, it increases celebrity which does all this other stuff. So while we might be evolving, we’ve got all these new challenges coming up. So interesting to see how the medicines play in that. A lot of people asked me to ask you some questions and I have to ask you before we finish up, just things that make you successful and things that you’ve done, whether it’s fighting or now commentating, you know, routines that you have or just things that you found over the years that were like, okay, if Dan does these things, then I know I can be successful in these ways.

2:08:25 The things that you picked up over the years, whether it was meditation or your diet, or I know you like to be physically active always, whether you’re training for a fight or not, are the things that you found just make you always able to deliver. These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more.

2:09:00 Now back to the rest of the show. I always ask everyone, I think I asked you last time, but I’m gonna ask you again, because perspectives change, but if you were to make a phone call to the 20-year-old Dan Hardy, I’m not sure if he was fighting yet or not, and if you were gonna give him some advice now, what would you tell him? I would tell him to enjoy every day a bit more. I would tell him to not get so caught up in the date of the fight and focus on being a martial artist every day.

2:09:35 Focus on looking after your body and yourself and making good decisions for yourself as well. Like I was talking about, I had some holdups with stretching, with like rehabilitation stuff because my introduction to them was the wrong one. So I lost flexibility throughout my training camps because I was doing a lot more strength training and I feel like that could have been a big benefit to me if I’d have looked after my body like I do now.

2:10:05 I don’t really know though to be honest. I mean the thing is if I was sat there in a room and I had that phone in front of me and I knew that the 20 year old Dan Hardy was gonna pick it up if I ran. I don’t really know what I would say to him. I don’t really wanna think I would say anything to him other than just, you know, it’s gonna be awesome. You can have a great time, but just, you know, enjoy every day as they pass.

2:10:27 Because if I look at 2010, 2010 was pretty much two days. You know, three days if you count the one, the day I lost my grandfather. You know, lost my grandfather, lost to GSP, lost to conduct. That was that year. I don’t really remember anything else from that year.

2:10:45 That’s a shame, that’s 362 days that we’ve, I can’t recall, you know, I remember what I was doing, I don’t remember whether I was enjoying myself, I don’t remember what I was benefiting from it, other than in preparation for the fights that I had coming up. Connor said the same thing about this week, about trying to enjoy that weigh-in and just to stay on that stage longer, you know, because the previous time and the previous time that, it was just all business, it’s like we get off here, we got a hydro, we got a da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and then it’s gone, right, you know, I’ve had the same experience, you know, getting ready for doing aids, getting ready, getting ready, get ready, get ready. What did you enjoy the time you had with him? Do you remember what you talked about? Like it’s an amazing moment. It’s a great spirit to be around. So best advice you’ve ever received could be from a fighter or from a trainer or just someone in passing or Joe Silva or something that you remember thinking, wow, that’s that’s a new perspective that I want to I want to think more about. Um, well maybe from the plant medicine. Well, Well, yeah, I mean, if I was to pick one thing out, it would be, I had a ceremony in the US, in Nevada, and it just wasn’t a good ceremony, it wasn’t the shaman that was holding the space, I wasn’t getting a good feeling off him.

2:12:04 Generally, the people in the room, I just wasn’t comfortable with, but because I was there, I was like, okay, I’m here, I’m doing it, and this is all a part of the process. the message that I got that came over and over again in that ceremony was no one knows you better than you, no one knows me better than me, it doesn’t matter how much time somebody spends with me, they don’t know the inner workings of my mind, so and again it comes back down to the same thing as long as I’m being honest with myself, I have all the answers right in front of me and at that moment I knew that I should have got up and walked out of that building but I didn’t and in actuality now looking back you know I mean if I hadn’t have done I wouldn’t have got that message but having having stayed there and got that message I know now going into those environments that if you don’t feel right I shouldn’t I mean I look we actually left early actually left halfway through the ceremony and it was a whole nother story I actually went home yeah it was not not easy at all but I couldn’t stay there but that was the message that I got over and over again and it’s you know nobody does me better than me. But if I’m lying to myself, I’m never going to get the truth. So establish that you turn the truth to yourself and then ask yourself the questions that you want answers to.

2:13:23 And then trust yourself. That those are the right answers. And then rinse and repeat. Yeah. Yeah.

2:13:28 I had Elliott Holson here and he said, because I always had this theory like once you have a certain number of ayahuasca ceremonies, you’ve hit the bottom, you found all the knowledge and you’re done. And he’s like, Brian, we’re always going to be dealing with demons the rest of our lives and trying to exercise those demons. And I think that’s true. So So I think it’s all about trust yourself, now find the truth, listen to yourself, trust yourself, now go do it again, do it again.

2:13:52 Last part of that question is advice to the 20 year old listening, you know, who’s seen your fights, who’s seen you commentate on TV, who sees this probably very linear trajectory that probably is anything but linear for you, you know, or who wants to be the next Conor McGregor. You know, what do you tell someone like that besides the fact that there’s a lot more involved But, you know, what do you tell them? Just go and find it. Go and get it. You know, we’re in a world now where everything is accessible.

2:14:20 You know? Like, even going back just a few years, when I decided I wanted to go and train in China, trying to set that up was a nightmare. It was so difficult trying to communicate with people on the other side of the world that don’t speak the same language and don’t have a strong internet connection and you know what I mean? All these kind of things. everything’s accessible, everything’s open and out there for you. And usually if you want to do something, there’s been someone out there that’s done it before and he’s documenting it. This is another thing, early days mixed martial arts we were watching whatever we could get our hands on. It was VHS tapes and little snippets on the internet and this and that that we could see and we’d trade techniques with other people. Now anything you need you just type it in and it’s there. Someone’s done it and someone’s kind of laid out a plan for you. If you want to be the next Conor McGregor, Conor McGregor’s done it for you now. You can see what you need to do, you know? I mean, you’re not going to go through exactly the same steps.

2:15:14 You’ve got to make it your own. But everything’s accessible to you now, no matter who you are and where you live. And the only thing holding you back is you, is the person that is actually going to put their foot on the gas and make it happen. Amen to that. I had this line in my TED talk where I said, you know, research is procrastination in disguise and so many times that people are asking advice it has to advice and like someone said something to me recently it said sometimes you just have to make a decision and like trust yourself and just go with it because ultimately you’re the only one and you need to stop asking advice sometimes you need to stop looking things up and stop reading books and it’s great advice because a lot of people would say look it’s a hard racket only a few people gonna make it but you’re only gonna know if you try so you got to go for That’s what you did you went for it. Yeah, so yeah, everyone should do that for sure We had so much ground to cover. I think we did a pretty good job Um, I think we could probably talk for another couple hours, but I’ll wrap this up again, you know two and a half years ago It was a big moment for us But like it was big because it made me step my game up, you know So I thank you for that and I think a lot of people you you’ve caused them to step their game up You know whether they see you or see a guy from nodding him or see a guy in the UK fight for a world title

2:16:26 I mean it didn’t happen a lot. So whether you know it or not, I think you’ve inspired a lot of people to step their game up and then you don’t know what you’ve affected. So maybe that obituary isn’t as blank as we think it is now. And it’s hard to see the mountain when you’re on top of it. So a lot of people ask me about you and watch that show.

2:16:46 So thanks for all the effect that you’ve had. And by being congruent and being yourself when you’re analyzing fights or fighting yourself just being here talking because you’ve influenced the show a lot, you’ve influenced me to always think about whether I’m doing the right thing or trying to be as congruent as possible. So I know that’s a lot of accolades. No, thank you. It’s been an honor to be here again.

2:17:08 I’m always happy to come and talk and you’re always going to get an honest picture with me. I’m never going to try and tell you something that I’m not. And it’s nice to think that I may have affected some people and if I have then that is awesome. But if I’ve made them step their game up, then I’m gonna have to step mine up as well. So yeah, it’s been great to be here again.

2:17:30 It’s good talking to you. Good, the journey continues. You’ve got, well, we’ve got UFC back in February. That’s gonna be fantastic. B-Spinks Fighting, Masasi, that’s gonna be a great card.

2:17:39 I love events here at the O2. It’s exciting, there’s energy. And then you’re off to Peru after that. More analysis coming, I would love to see what you do with this, you know, with these other analysis, whether it’s your own YouTube stuff, or other, I think there’s, I’m a big fan of people producing their own content, as you know. And there’s never an excuse, and you know there’s an audience for you, so looking forward to that.

2:18:02 And come back and check up in with us again in another year or two. And let’s see who we’ve both become. Sounds good. Until then, as we say in London Real, it’s about the journey. Thanks, Dan, I really appreciate you.

2:18:13 Thank you.