Gareth Davies - The Pen is Mightier

Full transcript: Gareth A Davies on London Real

3:01 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. With me today is Peter Irving, who is an MMA fighter and also a writer for Fighters Only Magazine, and our guest today is Gareth A. Davies, who is a boxing and UFC mixed martial arts correspondent for The Telegraph. He’s also the host of the ESPN UFC podcast, which I’ve listened to. He also does television reporting for the UFC on Fuel coming up next week. And unbeknownst to me, until a few weeks ago, he also has a history of covering the Paralympics. Welcome. You also have a history of saying, I hasten to add. And a few people have wondered how many times you might say that. Well only once today because the hasten to add tally is going to be one and we just said it. Oh man, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. You know we spoke on the phone last week and you said you had a history of championing sports that weren’t mainstream and you mentioned specifically Paralympics and MMA and I was just wondering what you meant by that. Well it was weird really when I started it’s 20 years since I’ve worked for the Telegraph and I’ve always been what’s called a retainer contract, which is kind of a freelance, but I’m commissioned to cover certain sports for the entire year.

4:34 So I’m on a salary, if you like, but I’m free to go and broadcast and write for other people who aren’t direct competitors of a telegraph. And when I began my career in the telegraph, there’s a strain of stories and subjects that I’ve always covered. And one is grassroots sports, school sports, and the other is Paralympic sport, because at the time they wanted to cover in politically as well as in sporting terms, the grassroots sport, because there’d been kind of a paradigm shift in the way that under John Major, who was the prime minister then of the way school sport would be delivered, but also at the same time, the Telegraph wanted to take a big interest after the Barcelona Paralympics where it had just come alive, there were big crowds, big stages of the Paralympics.

5:21 Since the 80s. Ninety-three. Ninety-three, I started with the term. It was 1993, after Barcelona. And in a weird way, the Paralympic, to get to the point, the Paralympic coverage that I used to do was that there were some amazing stories and amazing people, but it was almost like the rest of the world weren’t seeing it.

5:43 And they weren’t seeing the value of the story. I can remember There was a woman called Margaret McAlaney whose trachea was collapsing at poolside at the World Swimming Championships and her trachea collapsed, she was taken to hospital, she came back, she won a gold medal, she came out in the pool, her trachea collapsed again, she went back to hospital, she came back again, won a gold medal, the same thing happened another day, she won four gold medals. And I remember reporting on this and saying to the office, no, we need this in tomorrow.

6:18 You’ve got to start listening. I was ringing the desk. We ring the desk and we got a story. We’re fighting for space every day with football, rugby, cricket, blah, blah, blah, who get the big space. And the sports news editors not listening.

6:29 This is a story. I mean, this is a real story. And what comes back is, well, you know, space is a bit tight today. know, listen to me, listen to me, fighting to get those stories into the paper, getting people to understand Paralympic athletes who are misperceived, yeah, has been a long 20-year journey for me, culminating last year with Paralympic Games in London, with people finally realising when they watched it live, when it was in our country, where there were 2.7 million tickets sold, that this was something of great value.

7:10 Was that the best one ever? It was the best one ever. It was the best one ever. It received the best. It received the best.

7:15 It made the most money. It had the biggest impact. It was embraced. All the tickets were sold to it. In Beijing, I mean, I’ve been to the last five Paralympic games, the summer games.

7:27 The Beijing games was full, but the Chinese were busing in spectators and giving them packed lunches. And so they were manufacturing big crowds. Australia, they bust in millions of schoolchildren from the surrounding areas. This was genuine. And this was within, and I was working with Channel 4.

7:46 I was on a breakfast show every morning during the Paralympic Games. And we had 15 writers that we never normally have. We had three writers, myself a feature writer and a photographer normally cover the Paralympics for the Telegraph. We were running around 22 events, trying to cover the thing, cover four or five pages a day during the games, whenever the game’s on. I had a big team of 15 people I was helping to organize this time, doing a TV stint in the morning, BBC in the afternoon, and in the middle, just trying to coordinate everyone and letting the egos chase the big story.

8:16 What do you say to people when they’re like, I can’t watch Paralympics, do you get upset with them? No, my straw poll is this, and it’s rather like, you know, people like Pete, who I respect, and I see Paralympians and mixed martial artists a very similar vein. They’re in an area where human beings are hard-wired to judge them in a certain way. And until you open the curtains, on your eyes, until you pass through the door and actually embrace it yourself, your ignorance precludes you from growing as a human being basically. Because what I realised straight away when I went to the Atlanta Paralympics which was terribly organised by the, it was split from the Olympic and Paralympic Committee in Atlanta. They didn’t want anything to do with it. The stories are incredible.

9:04 96. 96, my first games. I remember being in the stadium and just watching a one legged high jumper doing one metre 95 over a high jump. One legged volleyball players from Bosnood lost their legs on landmines, kind of leaping up steps in the Olympic stadium past me. You You know, these six foot four guys with one leg just bounding up past you on their way to something.

9:27 I just remember standing there after the first or second day of the Paralympic Games, the first one I’d been to, and I’d covered some small minor events in the UK before I got there, and just thinking, oh my God, I can’t believe this, I’m the only national newspaper journalist here, and yet this is the most amazing sporting event I’ve ever been to, or will probably ever go to in many ways, because you’ve got these human beings in in front of you who are just extraordinary. And physically, it was like an epiphany. I thought, look at that guy down there, half a leg, no leg, half an arm, bit of arm.

10:04 And yet he’s doing that, kind of jumping into a pit two and a half meters, getting down that track on prosthetic limbs, jumping two and a half, three and a half, four and a half meters, whatever it is. And his spirit is exactly the same as if he’d had a whole body. But it’s actually even stronger. And it was this thing that occurred to me straight away, which was the motto of those games, the triumph of the human spirit. And for me, it’s kind of, it became my motif for being a journalist.

10:35 I like writing about the triumph of the human spirit. And I think this translates to MMA. I know it’s a long story to tell this, but it translates to MMA. I started writing about mixed martial arts, and it’s mainly the UFC, and I do get knocked for it quite a lot in the UK, they don’t cover the MMA scene in the UK very much, but to my board, to my company, it’s very new for the Telegraph, and if I just keep it simple, it’s like I’m covering international soccer in the Champions League if I do it just the UFC, it’s simple, they understand, and I need to keep reporting to get it into the the consciousness of the people that really count.

11:16 Does any major newspaper cover the U.S.C.? Yeah, the mirror has a column. Well, I think they do. I think they’ve all got online coverage. The New York Times won’t touch it. The Wall Street Journal won’t touch it.

11:26 Yeah, but that’s because that’s what I’m talking about. It’s almost the same thing as, well, you say that. I mean, NBC do retrospective reporting of the Paralympic Games minimal hours and send very few journalists. For me Pete, my rehearsal of having to battle and battle and not worry that I lose a column is fine now because there’s online, but years ago there was no online. So when you didn’t get the story in, the story disappeared into the ether, but you still had the knowledge.

11:57 That was the important thing. And I think for me, as soon as I stepped through the door and I spent time around fighters and I’ve played a lot of sport myself, I’m a fat 48 year old now, but believe me, my teammates knew I was there when I played rugby and cricket. Believe me, I was there. I put my head in. I don’t care. I die in the field for my teammates. And you can ask anyone I ever played sport with. And that’s a fact. But I think, you know, the thing is people like yourself who take part in this sport are often, you know, inspiring people, very grounded and very wise. There’s a lot of wisdom in fight sports. There’s a lot of respect in fight sports and I don’t think we value that enough in our society.

12:39 There’s some of that, I mean there’s a lot of the other as well, you know, I mean I feel like I should be you know being the advocate for MMA here and saying oh yeah there because there is a there is all those things that you say there’s there’s the flip side as well you know and there’s there’s a lot of idiots you know there are a lot of idiots in football as well right? Yeah yeah well almost exclusively as I understand it but that’s another thing. Talk to us a a little bit about the idiots in it then? The idiots in MMA? Well, I don’t know, there’s, you know, it’s, I’m on the spot now. I guess you are. I dropped the names or? No, no, no, just in terms of, you know, I get a bit of abuse. I don’t cover this. I don’t cover that.

13:23 You know, I get a bit of abuse on Twitter. I’ve got a bit of following on Twitter. I mean, but my, my judgment is I don’t, well, I don’t judge people till I meet them. It’s It’s one of the credos in my life. I try not to judge people based on what I see of them on a program or this, that and the other.

13:37 Because if you meet me today and you don’t like me, I don’t have a problem with that. But don’t judge me before you meet me. I think that’s a very important thing for us. And I haven’t met many people in MMA who I didn’t either find interesting or who I couldn’t say to, well, I don’t agree with you there. I think that’s giving the wrong message, you know?

13:56 Yeah, as soon as you’re out there as a personality and as a performer or as a journalist or anything like that, I think people very quickly feel entitled to make judgments about you personally. Maybe it’s a phenomenon of the internet age that people don’t separate personal criticism and professional criticism in the same way as the props used to. Are you going to answer his question, which is as an MMA insider, you said sometimes a sport, what, gets a fair shake or doesn’t always get a fair shake?

14:29 It’s difficult for me to get a sense of it because I’m so familiar with it. You’re so inside. Yeah, that’s it. Every day I go to the gym, I work, I train, I’m around MMA fans and MMA fighters and so it’s hard for me to get a sense of where it actually is in the public consciousness. People keep promising me saying that, oh I’m amazed, the next big thing or it’s the sport of the future and that it’s just going to continue to grow at this exponential rate and now I’m a little bit dubious I don’t know how I don’t well I don’t know how big it really is. That’s my next question. Dana White says that MMA is going to be the biggest sport in the world in the next five years do you agree? All right okay we’ve got to approach this on different levels I think. I think as a televisual product I think the UFC it’s already it can already reach 500 million homes can’t it in terms of globally it has the capacity. It’s in a lot of countries as well. It’s in a lot of countries. But I think it’s at the moment, and I appreciate what Pete’s saying, and I think at the moment there’s a disjoint between MMA as a cottage industry and the UFC as a kind of polished television production with the best, in a sense it is the best, 450 fighters in the world on a especially selected roster, of marketable, but 90% of those guys are the best fighters in the world, in mixed martial arts at the moment. I think it’s still a small niche sport.

16:08 But the reason why I, to go back to the original point, want to pioneer the sport is because I think I don’t agree with you. There’s dickheads wherever you go. It’s generally men and they need to mature. That’s all it is. There are people who will use a small niche sport to drive their own ego, to run their organisations, as long as they’re run properly and as long as they are the community gym that boxing always was in the past. I think it’s a great thing Pete. But I think that the difficulty, and it’s the difficulty for the UFC as well because they’re leading a whole industry and trying to bring a sport in through the back door, if you like, into the main frame, into the main frame of sport, into the Olympics perhaps, into the Commonwealth Games perhaps, is it’s got mudsticks and there are perceptions about MMA that it is, you know, is it these guys on drugs who are big bodybuilders? Is it a dormant sport? Is it a sport where athletes are coming from other sports and training in martial arts and becoming hybrid fighters? Is it a pure fighting sport? I don’t think the public really, in general, really knows what it is. I mean, I don’t think the public in general you know I think we’re a small I love I love fight sports I’ve loved them for years and years and years I did judo as a kid I spent a year in China in Beijing learning to fight with a stick wuxu with a quid it was brilliant I had an 80 year old teacher in Beijing and I lived there for you

17:47 It was amazing and we learnt one move every week you know over over eight hours one move but you And I love martial arts, and that’s why I love it, but I think the sport at the moment revolves around hype and promotion, and a television product. So it’s reaching a lot of people, and I think it’s got a growing market in terms of people who subscribe or buy through pay-per-view in the whole world outside America, because I I think it’s different in America, but in general it’s very, very embryonic still. And you see that reflected in the pay structures.

18:27 You know, Ian McCall fighting for $9,000 last weekend on the UFC event, that’s what he was paid. It’s not a lot of money, you know, for a guy that’s one of the top level flyweights in the world at the moment. So lots of different kind of stages of development around MMA, but I think it’s very worthy. And I think just because of my personal experience of being around these guys, I think you’re inspirational and I think you can reach out, I think you reach kids that perhaps I would take four or five sessions for them to get to kind of understand and listen to.

19:02 You would have respect from them straight away, perhaps in certain communities when they come in your gym. Yeah, so what was that one day, did you have one day where you woke up and went into your editor and said, I wanna cover this sport and I’m gonna cover this sport? Was there an event? I’ve been writing about boxing since, you know, beginning of my telegraph career as well I’ve had two reigns as the correspondent if you like I’m not giving it up this time and I went to the tough gym in we used to talk about the Gracie brothers years ago I mean they were there was something amazing about the Gracie brothers and what they could do with edgy the Gracie family rather and what they could do with edgy jitsu against bigger guys I remember we used to talk about it at school even years ago, you know, we knew about the Gracie Brothers and I always had rough mates, do you know what I mean? I wasn’t kind of a guy that fought in the street but I was always with like the roughest guys in the school, I was always hanging out with because they were my mates, you know, and I was often breaking up with fights, you know, because it’s not, I need to be, I don’t want to encourage anyone here but I need to be hit a few times to get going, do you know what I mean? And no, I’m just like that.

20:09 Yeah, I’ve got that problem, like Forest Griffin. You do have that problem, right? Yeah, I’ve been thrashed a couple of times for that reason. For that reason. Yeah, yeah.

20:20 But I went to, I’ve had, slowly, I think there’s relationships between the boxing industry and the MMA industry, and people don’t realise this, that a lot of real fight fans are both sports, Sports, because boxing is a martial art. And I knew people in MMA, and I was out in Vegas, I think 2005, 2006, covering Ricky Hatton Fight. And I went along to the tough gym. I met Dana White. I met Chuck Liddell.

20:53 Then I spent a week in at, I went then, I said to my editors, can I go to UFC 70? Was it 78, maybe something like that? Inuit Michael Bisping was fighting Rashad Evans and I spent a week, an entire week with the fighters, Marcus Davies, B.J. Penn was there and I just thought this is an amazing group of people and I came away from there. I did one big story in the paper, in the build up and one big story afterwards but I thought when I go and cover a boxing event we generally focus on two guys and it’s the top of the card and that’s who we write about but I went away from there with the frustration that I could have written eight or nine amazing stories there, amazing back stories, just amazing guys. The quotes are amazing. The eloquence of the fighters was different to boxes.

21:46 You didn’t find that kind of amazement in a boxing undercard? I think you can. I think there’s more of a symmetry and a synergy of stories in boxing than there is in MMA. I think there are more varied stories in MMA. It’s something to do as well with the UFC business model, isn’t it?

22:06 The way that you see the stories inevitably going to focus on the marquee headline fight in boxing, that’s the way that boxing is structured. The undercard is there as a bunch of support acts, whereas the UFC card is, well, I mean, you can point to examples where it’s hinged on the one big super fight, but in general, it’s the entire card that’s spread out, that’s the appeal. But also, what I think has happened over time is that we’ve changed in terms of what we want for entertainment now.

22:37 So if I’m paying $150 or 70 quid or 80 quid, and it’s myself and my wife and two friends, if we’re spending 400 quid to go out for the night and stay in a hotel or 600 quid to travel down to big events, a big weekend, we want to be in there and watch 10 fights that entertain us. and I think because people like Dana White and the fatigue you know remember one of the fatigue is Lorenzo was on the the Nevada State Boxing Commission wasn’t he you know and Dana White was a huge boxing fan they understood that business model for boxing is now struggling and it’s become outmoded and outdated in this present time young people want a night of entertainment the most successful I think boxing that will come is when they do prize fighter events eventually where they have eight boxes in three round fights quarter-final, semi-final, final and then a title fight because then you’ve got four hours of entertainment because people are really fighting over three rounds rather than an undercard where no one’s really watching and it’s some prospect from San Jose and someone from you don’t really know who they are are, there’s, I don’t know, 300 spectators sometimes in an auditorium of 10,000 seats and it slowly builds. Whereas I think what the UFC have created, and they’re lucky in being the kind of oligarch promoter, that they can create this event where there’s meaningful fights right down the bottom of the card. So you get the audience in, the atmosphere

24:14 Builds you can lessen the atmosphere you can have a break you can have a bit of music and it’s an entertainment experience rather than coming to watch one fight. Yeah it’s a great show. And I think around that obviously they’ve got a stack of money and that’s helped so you know they’ve been able to throw millions and millions of dollars into a black hole till the wave burst with with with Bonner and Griffin and they suddenly had that audience of seven million in the US for the final of that tough series back in when it was 2006, 2007.

24:47 And I think what they did was they looked at the way boxing was run and they said we can’t go down that line. The problem with boxing at the moment, it’s exactly the same in the national newspapers here as it is in America. New stars tend to come out of the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games or an exceptional athlete from somewhere. Anthony Joshua, the heavyweights from the Olympics who won the gold medal, is a star in waiting because everybody knows who he is because of the Olympics.

25:19 Pete could be the greatest fighter in the world, but if no one writes about him and no one puts him, promotes him and no one puts him… That’s what went wrong. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I should have met Gareth earlier. But if no one puts him… Fight sports have always, from the very, very beginning, hype and promotion.

25:35 And hype is just as important as promotion. You know, people knock Chale Sonnen today. There were Chale Sonnens 150 years ago, you know? Muhammad Ali, all these guys, you know, Muhammad Ali was seen as a braggart when he first came around, but he was the right man in the right place at the right time. I think, and I remember doing an interview with Bob Arum about this, the octogenarian promoter from Top Rank, Inc., the great promoter he is and a great man to speak to, that he reckons that Muhammad Ali paved the way for Barack Obama to be elected.

26:06 And I think he’s right, among other people, Bobby Brown, other people in the past, black men in America forging through sport, through that force of personality, through their athletic endeavor to change the society. Because what you had in America, we haven’t had over here in the same way, you know? And you know that, it’s a very different, black and white with each other are very different over here to what they are in America. Let’s not go all the way down that road now, but it’s complex.

26:34 Yeah, there’s no history of the whole. whole slave trade, which you can learn a lot about in the movie Lincoln, which I was watching last night. Well, I got a history lesson from my own daughter on that, that it’s actually adverse, the way they’re presenting Lincoln. Adverse as far as. Well, that he wasn’t trying to get rid of slavery.

26:52 Right, he was just doing a political move. Yeah. Yeah, it was fascinating to see what was going. Yeah. It’s my interpretation.

26:58 You got that Lincoln look going on there, didn’t you? Thank you. Yeah. Some people say it’s an Amish look. No, no.

27:03 But when I have the full beard, it’s like an Amish look. No. Daniel Villaluis wasn’t it? Between the two? Yeah he did do very good but anyways so Gareth what do you prefer more? Do you prefer more being on radio? Do you prefer more writing? I’ve definitely got a face for radio. I don’t like seeing myself on TV but I don’t mind doing it but I don’t know if I know that I’ve got a good voice because I only know that I only know that because whenever I go on Radio 4 they say oh it’s great you know we really love the sound of your voice or people like the sound of my voice I don’t know what I sound like because you don’t hear your own voice in your own head do you but if it works it works I love talking I think I’m a good observer I’m not an expert on MMA never have said I am one I don’t really don’t think I am I think I know more about boxing but I but I’m a very quick learner and I don’t think you need to be a fighter to understand fighting that’s my next question do you think an MMA journalist needs to train in MMA? No. Not at all? No. Okay. Why? What about a referee? Does the Queen’s Gynecologist need to give birth? Okay. I don’t know where that came from. No, but does the Queen’s Gynecologist need to give birth, Peter Ervin? I’ll be the Queen alone, but yeah. What are your thoughts?

28:22 Journalists? No, I wouldn’t necessarily say a journalist has to be trained. I mean, it to be familiar, you know, if you look at like, you know, the sort of Rogan Goldberg dynamic, you know, where you, you know, the announcers, yeah, it gets a lot wrong. Well, yeah, but he knows what he knows. He is absolutely brilliant on that. I mean, some people think that if you listen to Rogan on a fight, then you could actually pick the other guy because if you turn the volume off, you might actually choose a different guy. I understand that. I really really liked. I think Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberger are phenomenal. I mean, it’s incredible how people criticise them. I think they are an absolutely phenomenal team.

29:00 Do they get a lot of criticism? Yeah. This is what I’m saying. This is the peculiar thing about MMA that I’ve noticed above all other sports I’ve ever covered. And I have, you know, covered Tyson fights.

29:12 I’ve got on yachts that are sailing around the world. I’ve covered football matches in the Azadi Stadium in Tehran for World Cup qualifying. That was amazing. Half-time, 145,000 people called to prayer, lit cauldrons all around the stadium and guys with semi-automatic machine guns standing around. It was amazing. And we smuggled two Australian girls in with the press corps because women weren’t allowed in. They really wanted to see the game. I’ve been all over the place and in no sport more than MMA is their criticism of every fine detail of the sport. And I think it’s the kind of viral internet era that’s created that.

29:52 Because the sport was born in that era? Because it was born then and that’s where it kind of proliferates and it kind of germinates all online. In fact, it’s almost moving too quickly sometimes. MMA has always been very internet driven in a way that other sports weren’t. And maybe it’s something to do with the, you know, it’s a marginal sport and its emergence came at the same sort all the time that people were starting to use it in their forums and things like that.

30:18 It just seemed to cotton on, even more so than Thai boxing or anything like that, but hang on, what was it? Two journalists need, I study it all the time and I learn from people all the time. It’s very important, I realize that, but do we need to fight? No, journalists, I think it’s more important than that you can write. A lot of fighters could probably analyze a fight very well and just just couldn’t express it you know but analyzing what’s technically going on in a fight and reporting on it not necessarily the same thing the the officials this is the thing that we’re that we’re nearly touched on their officials like referees and judges there’s some terrible terrible things going on I think it’s partly due to the way that the American athletic commissions are set up but you’ve got the most grossly unqualified people do they need to train I mean should you Do you have a blue belt to be a referee or a judge?

31:12 I mean, personally I would really like to recruit them from ex-fighters, you know, like we’ve got… There’s quite a lot of that going on, you know. Ricardo Almeida, I think, was a judge and one of the jersey fans. Yes, that’s good news. You know, Mark Goddard’s a referee, you know, experienced ex-fighters.

31:30 I think that’s a really good one. Mark Goddard, I’d just like to say, is a lunatic and I love him for it. I’d say in a good or bad way. Oh, in a great way. In a great way. He’s a lunatic. I love him for it.

31:40 What do you think about that, Gareth? Do you think those people that close to it need to train? Announcers, refs, judges? Look, I know I’m a good judge of a fight. I know I am, because I’m not saying that technically sometimes on, and I’ve learned a lot over the years, but I agree, but I’m not making, it doesn’t matter what I say about a fight, frankly. I’m just writing a piece or doing a broadcast or doing an interview to entertain. What my opinion on a fight is irrelevant frankly. You read it or you don’t. It doesn’t materially affect the… I could do an investigative report that could materially affect the sport. But if I have an opinion…

32:27 For example, let’s go back to Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar last weekend. It wasn’t really a close fight. But you could have a bit of controversy that judges scored at 49-46. But when all is said and done, I don’t want that fight. And there’s not really that much you can dispute about it. There are some fights where I cannot believe the decision I’ve seen.

32:50 And I think that’s what Pete said. For example, when Clay Weider got 30-27 over Hatsu Hayoki the other day, clearly he hadn’t won three rounds there. And I just wonder if they, it’s difficult at the moment because if you’ve got ex-fighters, the sport is so young that all those ex-fighters have relationships with gyms. That’s the problem at the moment. And as the sport develops, once I’m 60, you know, when you’re 60 and the youngsters are 20 You’re so far removed then in terms of generation that you could be judging the gym down the road, frankly, a guy from the gym down the road because you’re removed from it. Whereas at the moment if you get Chuck Liddell judging and Frank Maria retires and he’s judging, they’re a little bit too close. So I think the real problem though is then you’ve got no really strong criteria for judging MMA fights. It is, you know, like you’re seeing like you have an opinion as a journalist, these guys sitting behind the desk, marking their cards, are just seeing their opinion.

33:56 And then you’ve got, you know. There’s a feel, isn’t there? But you judge a fight. Yeah, you do, but it’s based on your own prejudices and opinions and feelings about what a fight should look like and what’s good fighting. But we’ll never get away from that, though, Pete, because judging is a subjective business.

34:14 We’ll never get away from controversy. That’s one thing. But if you look at, say, like, you know, I don’t want to get into, you know, too technical about it. But if you look at wrestling or judo or anything like that, any sport that scores and awards takedowns, how the person lands from that throw is granted a certain amount of points. There’s very clear criteria for how that should and should not be judged.

34:36 But a takedown in MMA, it’s worth something, but how much? In my mind, if I’m throwing now… What counts as a takedown? Well, in my mind, if you get a takedown, I think it’s worth about, in my mind, about 10 jabs. Yeah.

34:49 The way I score it now because that’s the way they seem to score it. So if it’s a close ish round and someone’s got five jabs on the other guy but the other guy’s taken him down I’ve probably given it to the guy who’s got the takedown because that’s the way they score it. But where is that spelled out? You know they’re fighting sports, you know? Well it’s an American biased sport at the moment, it’s a wrestling biased sport.

35:13 But also when you have those details you also see in the Olympics people then fight for the points and then the sports almost ruined sure yeah yeah but you get that you get the same thing you know where yeah takedowns are being rewarded and so guys fight in a way that makes fighting less entertaining do you remember and then get rewarded for it do you remember the fight between Demetrius Johnson and Miguel Torres yeah Torres was on the ground a lot doing damage from a jiu-jitsu position right and the guy who’s John the guard with And Johnson was on top a lot, and Johnson got the decision in that fight. Now, I felt that was one of the fights where I was watching it in the right way, and judging it in the right way, Torres was winning it from the bottom.

36:00 But those are the kind of things that don’t happen in MMA. But if you just see this technical stuff really, isn’t it? Yes, I know. And that’s why I’m in love with Solari. Okay.

36:07 But it’s very interesting as well. But these are good points. Now, I have something I got to ask you about, and we were going to talk about it anyways, I don’t want to spend the whole time talking about UFC because I want to ask him about being not cotically challenged Yeah, well that and and and your ego and my ego, but we’ll get to all that But I saw two weeks ago Vito Belfort kicks Michael B. Sping in the head, right? Do you want some more water?

36:28 Yeah, you trust me. I have cooties. No, I don’t I don’t even know what cooties is. Hey, there you go Do you know what it is? I think it’s American for the lurgy Really? All right. I was on a roll here. I was thinking crabs or something So we saw Vitor, we saw Vitor head kick him and they’re interviewing him after that and he’s like, I’m going to go to the, I’m going to take it to the top. I’m going to go the best. I’m going to kill. I’m going to kill. And there’s like a 10 minute medias come with Vitor. And then I hear now he is one of many fighters on TRT. And now I just wonder, okay, I met Vitor back at the Brazilian top team in like 2005. He’s a nicest dude. He came up and said hi to me when I was on the mat and, and he’s 35 now. And now he, are we, are we making, I just want to know, Are we making these guys cyborgs now because they can’t produce their own testosterone?

37:12 Yeah, well, I’m unclear about what the difference is between testosterone replacement therapy and just using. I don’t really know what the difference is. That’s why we have a guarantee. Well, listen, I mean, you know, I just want to get totally crude here, really, but maybe I won’t. if you haven’t got it why should you have it is my view why go look like if I have days when I’m a bit more sluggish than other days and presumably my testosterone level is low that day or whatever you know but you know I well look the bottom line is this they’re cheating that they’re finding a way they found a way it’s now admissible to go to you see a doctor and say my testosterone levels are low I’m I you know I need them because I can’t do my job and is it not usually a result of abusing well I don’t well I mean I’m not on here to cost I know but there is allegations Brian Rose well I sue you anyway because you’ve got the rights to this so you’re now my agent on this on this show you can come work for us yeah yeah I’ll have to live in your studio though because we’ll have no home to go to I think for me it’s it’s it’s sneaky It’s a way, they’re allowing people to maximize their physical potential, enhanced, and it doesn’t break rules at the moment if you’ve got permission to do it medically.

38:44 So that is the only difference then? It’s just taking testosterone with a doctor’s note? Yeah. Like, was it with the recent fight of Tiago Alves is dinged? Up to a certain T2E ratio in your body, that’s the point.

38:55 It can’t go beyond, you know, it’s patches or they can insert, it’s a synthetic drug. It’s a synthetic drug that enables you to not feel, you know, huge levels of exhaustion to train properly. I don’t think it’s the kind of drug that is giving you the ability to kick people in the head and knock them out. I don’t think recently with Lance Armstrong, with just today, the day we spoke, Australian sports been blown open as several sports investigated by a criminal commission in Australia and now they’ve blown the doors open on several sports taking drugs. Let’s not beat about the bush about in this drug taking when athletes at a very high level can get away with it is going on it’s going on everywhere it’s going on in so many sports it’s prevalent in boxing at the moment several world champions tested positive last year that you know to the naked eye when you get used to seeing people physically a lot you know I can tell what weight I can look at someone I know always know in boxing and MMA what physically what weight division they fighting but when someone strips off I mean there are people who have amazing physiques naturally and I’m not saying that you can’t enhance that with your lifestyle and some some weights and you know the way you live but you look at some bodies and you look at bodies change sometimes and um…

40:32 Overeem, what do you think of him? Well I mean it’s like a pee on a muscle looking at him sometimes isn’t it it’s like a pea on a muscle. And, do you know what I mean? His head is like a pea on, it’s like he’s being drawn like a cartoon cat. Except for the last fight where he looked physically very different.

40:53 Along here, yes. Along here, he looked different. He wasn’t as broad and he wasn’t as… Chiseled. Chiseled, yeah, exactly.

41:03 But, you know, look at, you only have to, his head is utterly out of proportion with his body. So has Bigfoot Silver come to that, that’s for other reasons but it is here to stay at TRT and it seems like to give guys like Vitor and guys like well everyone’s taking it out, Rampage and Griffin I think, it gives like people an extra five years at the end of their career when they’re quite intelligent because Beau Ford has all the experience and now his body’s giving him out and it gives him an extra five years. So I’m really interested in your view on it because you’re involved in it, what if you’re fighting a guy, are you on it? No. Have you been tested?

41:34 I’ve been tested, well quite several years. Have you been tested as to whether your testosterone levels are low or not? If you found out they were low, would you get some? Well, it’s a difficult question because I’m still competing. It strikes me that if you can manipulate the ratio that accurately, if you could just manipulate everybody to the same level, then you do in fact create that level playing field. No, I’m just speculating because I don’t know nothing about the science, so I’m probably not the most qualified to but if everyone else is doing it I guess yeah I mean well this is this is the problem isn’t it and then athletes are in that in that position you know where you know you you get you you just get the the scapegoat you know the Lance Armstrong now where the you know heroes get torn down and then you know as if they were the only one who was cheating it’s you know and it’s it’s a complex issue I’m probably not the best qualified person to talk about it you Are you dodging the question?

42:32 Well, I’m still competing, so, you know, I can’t really say, oh yeah, I’d love to take this first one, and then I’ll have questions that’ll be asked about me. So this is the problem, you know, that the problem goes beyond, and in some respect, athletes are not powerless, but not completely in control of this issue, but it comes down to the individual, you know, and if you get busted, then that’s it, your career’s ruined. Well, it’s always an unwritten rule that you have to do this, but I’m not taking that so I’m okay I don’t know But Gary do you think it’s an unwritten rule that you have to do this to be successful in an organization like the UFC?

43:07 Although you look at the top you look at the top people in each division Kane Velasquez doubt it John Jones doubt it Anderson Silva doubt it Yeah, but you know why but there’s such a high skill level. No, you know, no when you look at their bodies Yeah, when you look at their bodies, you can tell that it’s an there’s something to the to the mind’s eye that the body is more natural. But that’s what I mean, isn’t it? It can be, but it’s not the typical, okay, it can be, but you wouldn’t be necessarily signing them up first for the first test. I could take human growth hormone, okay, and you know, I’m about 16, 17 stone, you know, I’m just under 6 foot, I’m a couple of stone overweight for me, I’m quite big built, but I could take human growth hormone, do weights, work out really hard now and I could be a hard, I’m not quite hard as it is apart from a belly, but I could be a hard 20 stone man within a year and a half, couldn’t I? Like completely beef. Now there are people that do that and I’m not saying fighters do it, but it’s it’s part of culture now. You go to America, I see people who are like that and they’ve done that, it’s very common to take it because it’s it’s good to be big in that way and you know the guns with your t-shirt and we don’t particularly have that in UK culture but I notice in America it is part of culture and there’s I think well where I come from it’s part of the culture like the Jersey Shore look yeah that’s what you’re saying yeah yeah well you know then of course we

44:32 Have Jordy Chauno and it’s very very much the same yeah and it is part of the culture yeah yeah so there’s a you know that it’s considered it’s considered normal in some in some circles you know speaking of culture I just want to get Gary’s opinion about MMA in the UK I mean it’s It’s been adopted now in the U.S. quite obviously by the rise of the UFC, but here it still seems to have all this weird stigma, and I know a lot of local organizations have a hard time selling tickets. Will that change in Britain, and for people in the States listening, why is Britain such a tougher nut to crack when it comes to selling this sport?

45:06 Well, because we’re a kind of weird island culture, but that’s for sure. It will eventually, this is a culture that, and there’s certainly a large percentage of sports followers who are into fight sports. The casual sports fan in the UK, traditionally, and this is born out in research, the casual sports fan likes their football, to a lesser extent rugby, but that has a big following internationally, horse racing and traditionally big boxing matches and I think exactly the same thing will eventually come with MMA but we need perhaps two or three people to really become global stars first of all people who can go on kind of primetime television and do interviews and like go on with Jonathan Ross and you know we need a UFC world champion yes a UFC world champion would help. Is B speaking that guy? Maybe not. I’m not with Anderson Silver there. I mean, is he the guy that could represent? No, I don’t think so. I think I think I would say I’m friends with Michael. I followed his whole kind of journey in the UFC over the last few years. I think he’s been horribly underrated by a lot of the Yanks show to use that word. I just love to wind them up with that bit. It’s a great word. There’s smelly t-shirt wearing cap-slung yanks. Pete gets this, it’s all parody but Bisping is very very good. Every fighter I’ve ever spoken to in the UFC about Mike Bisping says that he is phenomenal. He’s so talented but his problem is he’s had an issue whenever he

46:56 Comes up against a guy with one punch KO power and we saw it against Henderson. We We even saw against Van der Ley when Van der Ley was very much in the tail end of his career and Sonnen outwrestled him, Rashad kind of outbaked him just and of course in the last fight against Vitor he wasn’t expecting a head kick, no one was frankly so it was a very unusual method for the fight to end but I hoped that Bisping would outpoint him but I think in that division, you know, if Michael Bisping was a welterweight with his style, I think he could beat GSP, for example, but Mike’s too big to make welterweight. But I think in that division, with the skills he’s got, and because he’s naturally a southpaw, by the way, his jab is his strong hand, because he stands orthodox, but he’s naturally a southpaw, his left hand is the strong hand.

47:56 So that’s why his jab is so good. So his power hand, his right hand is actually his less strong hand. That’s why he doesn’t have a big right hand. And I think if he had a lot of power in his punches and stayed in the pocket more and then threw his punches, I think he should have done that against Belfort because I don’t think moving around against Belfort was wise. He should have gone in there, taken him down and ground him out from the very beginning.

48:27 I think Michael has struggled to be a world champion, he probably won’t speak to me now for a couple of years. Well it’s a big answer, but I don’t think you can point to anyone else who’s capable of doing that either, so it’s not a criticism of Michael Bispin, it’s just, how is anybody going to get rid of honestness? But Pete, it’s not just winning the title, it’s being able to, I mean, Mike’s been a brilliant poster boy for the UFC up to this point in the UK. But, you know, if you rolled Dan Hardy and Mike Bisping into one, you could sell that, you’re saying. You could get the guy who can go on and talk about the Austrian artist Schiller and who’s got the fine art degree, who’s made these abstract drawings or abstract kind of constructions for his dissertation where he hit a plate of plastic over six months and left bits of skin and blood on it and made a shape out of it and, you know, you need what like GSP is to Canada or Anderson is to Brazil, you need the guy. I think you do. The country wants to embrace.

49:38 You look at the way sport is covered in this country. We have Lewis Hamilton in Formula one. We have Andy Murray in the tennis. We have, you know, we have Amir Khan or, I don’t know, Karl Froch or David Hay in the boxing. We like to single focus in this country on certain people. Nicola Adams in women’s boxing. We don’t go for a panoply of people. One person stands out and the kind of raise on depth, the modus operandi is to really cover that one person and through them cover the sports. So having a champion would be brilliant but I think having someone who transcends the sport is what would make a big difference.

50:20 Other than that it’s just going to be a slow burn. It will become a big sport in this country but people have got to see it and people have got to see the fight going to the ground and get used to the fight being on the ground because as Pete knows that’s very unusual in this country to see a fight on the ground yeah it’s a it’s not it’s not part of the the English the English style you know it’s once again it’s about me being unsure exactly where MMA stands in in the in the popular consciousness but when people when people do ask me about it they’re still deeply suspicious of grappling in a way that it you know in Brazil the culture is you know it’s very physical like people embrace each other you know but you know perfect strangers or more hope and it’s just it’s just not it’s just not British and that translates to yeah lack of wanting to understand the grand game it’s not English it’s Celtic it’s quite you see I played a lot of rugby and there’s a lot of there’s a lot of physical in that and rugby and the rugby following I think are coming over to MMA I think it’s your football handbags not touching each other culture that doesn’t understand it and unfortunately that’s the biggest sport in the country. I mean and I you know I genuinely have known a lot of rugby players who are fascinated by you guys absolutely fascinated by the sport and in fact kind of sneakily using some techniques in rocks and malls and you see

51:52 Chokes coming into malls now don’t you? And the referees don’t know what it is it’s quite funny really. Tackles and rugby have improved in in terms of the way they look like wrestling and how they land and position themselves because obviously in rugby I don’t know if you know this Brian whether you follow rugby at all but the way you tackle someone if you bring them if you turn them the right way in the tackle when you take them to the ground you’ve got more chance of getting a penalty on winning the ball because once the ball’s on the ground you’ve got to release once you’re tackled and on the ground you’ve got to release it so if you can turn your man as you tackle him which is obviously a power but very much a wrestling thing isn’t it you know or even a judo move you know but you do see it now Is that where the English star could come from, if we could pull somebody from professional rugby in the MMA?

52:36 Yeah, that’s potentially. Yeah, I do, I do. I could see like a James Haskell or a, you know, the boy Farrell who’s number 10 for England, if he suddenly became a lightweight fighter. Yes, I do. That’s a very, very interesting point.

52:49 I think you need a homegrown guy like a Rory McDonald that grows up living all of those sports. Yeah, but he’s got a lot of growing up to do, frankly. I mean, I love him, but he’s got a lot of growing up to do. You know, one thing I love about MMA are the big personalities, you know, and Dana White’s one of them. I actually, I hate to admit it, but I think I love watching him in the media scrum, sometimes more than I love watching the fights.

53:11 Call me crazy. And Gareth, you’re a pretty big personality. When people think UK MMA, it’s you pretty much. And in- As a journalist, yeah. Yeah, as a journalist.

53:21 And in New York, we have Mr. Halwani who- Well, big nose, you mean. Big nose. your friend slash nemesis, I don’t know, who continually wins this… Nemesis, please!

53:30 This MMA journalist… If I took Ariel on, I’ve already thrown the head kicker at him several times and he run… Like figuratively or… No, no, no, no. Physically.

53:40 No, I’ve got some good head kicks on me, believe me. Why would you kick him? That’s not very… No, no, but he runs down the street. He’s like Larry David’s, you know, remember Curb Your Enthusiasm, he’s like Larry David’s rogue nephew, isn’t he, Ariel?

53:54 Exactly. That’s what he is. Well look at him, Ariel, listen, if we had Ariel in here now, you would fall off your chair laughing because when I throw him a head kick at him and he runs off down the street, it’s like watching like the red rooster running or something. He’s got really weird, his arms hang down by his, I love Ariel, he’s a great guy, he’s doing a brilliant job. He’s doing a brilliant job in America. He’s won the journalist of the year, which is the MMA journalist of the year. He keeps winning it, it’s like enough right yeah he loves rubbing in cuz I’ve been nominated every year and I know well it’s it look it’s on a voting basis he’s more popular I do think that this is an interesting point actually and I always have this argument with Ariel and we are friends that the way he covers MMA is very much for the modern age in in the US I still like to write about it as well he doesn’t write about it and I think there’s still a place for writing about MMA even though people want video clips and little interviews. I like to craft a well-written piece about it as well.

54:56 Yeah, you can tell, and you’re right. But I deliberately do it because we do need to keep some of that in the sport to make it more of a mainstream, you need to track the mainstream readers, otherwise it’s always niche. But it’s also a deeper analysis by definition when you write about something, that when you just want that sound bite in an interview, or am I wrong? No, some of the interviews, I mean, there was a great interview that Ariel did with Mayhem Miller.

55:25 He was like an extra. He walked through Central Park, yeah. And you know, I mean, I don’t want to knock anyone today, but Miller’s a kind of bit of a strange character, to be honest. It depends what mood you meet him in, you know. I did a massive cover story, Fudders Only on him, I don’t know, before he fought Bisping.

55:41 And it was, I think it was the best story anyone’s ever written on him in terms of the depth. I kind of went deeply into his personality psychologically and when I saw him in Chicago, I think it was last year, all he could remember was one little bit that he disagreed with. I said, oh, go and do one. Do you know what I mean? And let’s be honest, he’s average, very, very average. He’s a great personality, but he’s very lucky to be in the UFC.

56:11 His career has been, it’s not anymore, based on the strength of his personality, the gimmick of mayhem, the crazy guy and other people. And I didn’t like, I see, I had a go at Ariel, just to finish with Ariel, I had a go at Ariel, I thought that was a fantastic interview he did in New York, in the park. The interview before was shocking. The interview in the studio. He ran out of his studio.

56:34 No, I interviewed Stefan Struev once, and it’s last year, and he broke down during the interview because he hadn’t told him his father was crying and I actually felt genuine empathy for the man and I wanted to see Ariel in that interview, in that studio, either reach out to Mayhem or kick him out of the fucking studio because his behaviour was frankly ridiculous. He was on something, you know, it’s easy to see when someone’s on something. Get him out. I can’t tell, he said she can act like crazy. He was in character, wasn’t he?

57:03 What I disagreed with Ariel, I told Ariel this was, you know, it was painful to watch. I don’t like TV like that. I don’t want to watch that. I want to see someone kind of collapsing in front of my eyes. Get him out of the studio.

57:14 So he dragged it on a bit much. Yeah, I thought he was, but, you know, his behavior, he claimed he was being the character from the film, but his behavior frankly was idiotic and unacceptable. Didn’t do anything for MMA, I’ll tell you that. No, no, no. But you think Ariel should have just cut it off a little earlier.

57:30 Well, Ariel sits back and enjoys it, doesn’t he? And I don’t agree with that style of journalism. interesting interviewing style obviously he’s come up really quick and but now you I just I love her it’s a submissive style isn’t it he asked the hard question but it’s not a submissive is it he asked the hard question in a submissive way yes he does which works for fighters does it it’s not your style obviously no I think I’m quite honest about things you know I mean you know but I do consider myself to be a bloke I might not kind of have a fight with Pete now in the oxygen but I’m a bloke you know as I said to you before we started if I had to put an axe through your head I would do it if I had to for no reason either I said for the right I said for the right reasons I would do I would I would have to do something oh okay what’s it not for the wrong reasons what’s it like on fight night in the States in the UFC I mean sometimes I hear Dana White being like oh Ariel not a quite another question from you but as a journalist what’s it like when you have to stay up all night after the fights and go get interviews. Do you enjoy the events? Or is it just like Jesus it’s a hard day at work? No I just it’s just nice earning those millions of bucks to keep the Bentley and nine properties and you know no. I don’t seem glib about this because I love my job and I’ve worked really hard to get where I am. You know I said I’ve been doing this 20 years and they’ve been really hard

58:58 Days when you are kind of doing stuff for nothing and I do get a lot of letters and young people writing to me and I don’t really know what to tell them sometimes because I think journalism as an industry is shrinking, newspapers are shrinking, circulation and sales are shrinking and I do think that the cream on the internet will rise to the top. Everyone’s got an opinion, there’s so many idiots out there on Twitter it’s a filter for mental illness, frankly, if I didn’t have to do Twitter, which I’d just do is to put my stories up there and put the podcast and this, that and the other. I may leave Twitter at some point.

59:34 Really? You don’t enjoy it? Not particularly. I don’t, I enjoy conversations during fight nights when people are really, because you can do Twitter without being yourself, can’t you? And you know, you can kind of just be someone on Twitter with a handle.

59:47 Okay. I don’t have to be myself on there, do I? You mean you’re, you can be this character? Well, there’s lots of, no, no, what I mean is, I can just call myself G, there’s lots of people who are anonymous, and just you can just watch people on Twitter and listen to other people, can’t you? And you know, it just, I think sometimes, I just wish I could say to loads of young people, just join this academy and come and help me, but I’ve got money to pay them and I’d love to have a hired hand the whole time working with me.

1:00:21 What I miss on fight night because there’s so much to do because I’ve sat in after parties before with my laptop you know shandella looking over my shoulder going what are you doing I’m trying to get my story written but I’m quite enjoying the music in the nightclub here so I brought my laptop with me it is really hard work I think there’s um I think it takes a lot of stamina to be a journalist there’s a lot of travel yeah are you up all night after those Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then leaving the next day and it’s quite hard work and I think That there’s two things that I’ve kind of tried to say earlier that I put my neck on the block for MMA with the telegraph Really because I think it’s not really understood yet in the newspaper It’s a Tory or conservative broadsheet newspaper. That’s you know, the small C conservative newspaper And you know MMA is right out there in terms of the spectrum at the moment So I’m trying to bring it in and in some ways I’m putting my neck on the block because I’m saying it’s worthy, you know, I’ve given myself to it in many ways. And I would like people to know that because I have sacrificed to do that, you know, as I chose to do with the Paralympics, because I think it’s worthy. I think it has a place in society. Does the Paralympics represent, I know he’s talking about the sport and ideals and the human qualities that it represents, but is it good sport?

1:01:45 The Paralympics? Yeah. Right. Yeah, it is, because it’s people at the forefront of their own physicality. It’s what we were talking about earlier, you’re in weight divisions.

1:01:55 These are people banded together in very similar bands of physicality. I think that’s what troubles me slightly about the Paralympics as a sport in a format I’m not criticising. Well, there’s no blind heavyweight wheelchair fighting. It’s not the lack of combat, which is normally my criticism of other sports, but it strikes me that there’s too great a disparity between people who are competing in the same category and then you have to apply sort of, what would you say, different penalties to…

1:02:32 Yeah, you didn’t want to use the word handicaps, yeah. Well, they are bandied together, and what they’re bandied together in, it’s like you have a dwarf against a paraplegic, for example, in swimming. So the way it’s done, it’s very complicated, the classification system, and it’s evolving all the time, is it’s done on disability and functionality with that disability within the sporting discipline, which is why you have a dwarf who gets lactic acids in their smaller limbs quicker than someone who’s paraplegic. I think there’s a duality to the Paralympics and this is why I cover it really. It’s the triumph of the human spirit and we are seeing people at the forefront of their own physicality and the backstories are incredible. Very often the amazing thing about Paralympians is the journey they’ve gone through to get to where where they are, the journey.

1:03:33 There’s a boy I wrote about Paul Blake, whose dad was actually Paul Blake as well. He was Greedo in Star Wars, his dad. And Paul’s twin, I think it was Alex, his twin, stole all the red blood cells at birth. So when Paul was born, he had liver failure. He had seven or eight baby blood transfusions in the first weeks and months of his life.

1:03:59 He’s on an incubator. His brother was like six pounds heavier than him. He was like, you know, weighed a couple of pounds when he was born. He couldn’t walk till he was three or four. He couldn’t feed himself.

1:04:10 And yet he, when you saw him sprint age 21 around the Olympic stadium in 46 or 48 seconds, it was just incredible. And I, my delight was in writing that story, that whole story where I’ve interviewed his mother where she said, we prepared for his death several times when he was a baby. We even talked about how we would have the funeral, what we would do with his body, how we would do things. And yet you see this human life, this journey, the journey, your journey, I bet your journey to here today, journey to fighting is fascinating.

1:04:53 Well, mine’s not, but my life is bad. No, no, we’re playing the heel today as well. But it’s that it’s not always a new you hit on it Brian It’s it’s what what people don’t realize when when they say you got the picks wrong You know monkeys about the picks frankly. I don’t pick in boxing you I do one line sometimes on one fight It’s just part of the culture. We need to know your picks. It doesn’t matter sometimes. I don’t want to pick fights I just want to concentrate on what’s going on in the fight not who’s gonna win is that pick right?

1:05:25 It’s irrelevant. I don’t look at odds, I don’t bet on fights, I never have. Because my ideal is to try and have a very neutral, and I’m not always neutral because I find myself horribly biased sometimes for British fighters in the UFC, purely because I want them to succeed. And there’s a strain in me that I can’t avoid. It’s a bit like getting very close to fighters.

1:05:51 It is the cardinal sin in my job. but you do get close to people and you get great stories about them sometimes and you do feel for them, you do feel empathy for them. You know, I was speaking to Cub Swanson who’s fighting over here next week, couple of nights ago. We were talking about his sister who’s got Down Syndrome and the work he does with disabled kids and it drew me closer to that man straight away, you know? And, you know, the biggest privilege, and what I’ll say is this, yeah, Dana White’s great.

1:06:18 He’s a fantastic guy, he’s a phenomenal man. He’s a brilliant entrepreneur And he’s fantastic to me as well. And when he gives me time, I appreciate it because I do wanna be a part of this movement. I feel it’s a movement going forward that the moment I really appreciate most of all, and I’ve always felt this in boxing as well. And sometimes it’s the hardest moment is being with a fighter just after they’ve fought.

1:06:42 It’s a very, very intimate moment. And it’s a great privilege to be around those people in that time. And I respect every fighter and I hope I write that way. sometimes I’m critical and I hope I write that way because I really do respect every fighter. How do you interview someone right after they’ve lost and is there things you won’t do or will do?

1:07:05 When a guy has lost and he thinks he’s won, he’s fine. You can just do a normal interview, but when a guy’s lost, I know what it’s like to win and lose in sports and I did play cricket and rugby to a very decent level and it’s with you for days, you go home, you know, you can’t get rid of it, you can’t get rid of the feeling. None of it, you know, if you want to, I’m a winner, I want to win, yeah? When you lose, you don’t feel great. And it’s a bit like when someone doesn’t love you anymore, isn’t it?

1:07:35 It’s that feeling, it goes eventually, but it’s very hard to get rid of it. And so that’s the way I feel when I’m around a fighter. When the soul has been hurt, when the soul is damaged, because the soul of that person quite damaged after a fight. Sometimes I leave fighters alone if I feel that I can’t press them too hard or just leave them because sometimes you’ve got to leave a man in that situation. But other times it’s cathartic for them to talk about it. It’s good for you as a human being to kind of experience that because you’re reaching out to someone and you’ve got to be sympathetic. It’s like when your children are upset, you have to be a different way.

1:08:17 You can’t say, no, we’re on, we’re going. Come on, boots on. It’s… I remember Forrest Griffin got really badly criticized one time when he got knocked out and he started to cry and ran out with the ring before the announced it was over. And so, yeah.

1:08:30 Oh, that was one of… Yeah, yeah. That was a tough moment. People were very cruel about it and saying, ah, he’s a wimp, he’s not a man. I thought, well, man, the guy cared so much that he couldn’t bear it.

1:08:42 Yeah, I thought, I appreciated that, you know? And I’ve seen, like, I used to work in security were in nightclubs where the footballers were coming afterwards, the guys were being like thrashed 5-0. And they come in, they’d order champagne and they’d sit with the girls and they just didn’t care. They weren’t bothered that they’d been beaten, at least not to the extent that it stopped them from partying. And I thought those guys were low-likes because I knew that my family were at home, my brother and my father, who paid tickets to go and see these guys and they were devastated that the team had lost and the players themselves didn’t care. I liked it that Forrest Griffin couldn’t contend his disappointment. I appreciated that.

1:09:22 The thing is, I think just reflecting on what you’re saying, the reason why you can’t get away from the honesty of Paralympians because you can see, for example, in the swimming pool it’s like a Fellini movie. These bodies, Fellini made films, he tried to get the most grotesque looking actors he could find. When you’re at the swimming in the Paralympics, it is the human body stripped bare. And I remember they were, they don’t compete anymore. I remember these two Colombians. One was a dwarf and one was the kind of guy with like bits of limbs missing and he took off, you have to walk down the swimming pool, one on a little scooter and one was a dwarf. They’re chest puffed out like they were the kind of coke dealers from Bogota. Do you know what I mean? They were like, they walked down the pool like Oh the place, you know down beside the pool on one guy tiny tiny little arms legs almost like a thalidomide Boom the Hoota goes and he’s into the water like seal man. He’s like a seal in the water and I think There’s an honesty about that. There’s an honesty that you you sit there and you go. Oh my god that human being is just Amazing and it’s the same with fighters that honesty because there’s no you know So you can hide in team sports, I can have a phenomenal game at Scrum Half, but if the pack don’t deliver we lose the game.

1:10:44 I can have a phenomenal game in cricket and I can give my all, I can get half their team up, bowl half the overs, you can take the ball all over your body, but if you don’t pull together as a group you lose. As a fighter you win or you lose or you draw and it’s you alone in there, it’s you. I think that honesty and that’s why I respect the sport, that’s why I really love it so much because apart from the hype and the promotion and the drama and the performance, it’s the primeval honesty of that moment.

1:11:26 Because we all have fear sometimes and I just love the way that that fear has been embraced and then let go, and then compartmentalised, and now, now’s the time. You know, I’m sure you’ve got Celtic blood, you look like you’ve got Kelty and you’ve got, and you know, I’ve got a lot of Welsh shimmy. I’ve got Welsh and Italian. I’ve got Celtic blood too, God damn it. I don’t often say this on air, but you know, as a Celt, I mean, my deep fighting dreams, you know, I believe that we’ve been around a long time, and you know, my deep fighting dream I’ve fought in other lives I feel you know I know I feel like I know that feeling of giving it all up giving it all up to go now just and it you don’t you don’t mind what’s gonna happen to your body but you’ve got to keep your mind on the job of what your body’s gonna do do you know what I mean yeah and and you know when people talk about that slowing process and when things are in sync in any physical activity you do where adrenaline is involved and there’s fear and you find a focus that you don’t normally find. I mean you get it in journalism sometimes when you’re on deadline and you have to deliver, you know, and you go that wasn’t a decent, that wasn’t a bad piece and I had 10 minutes to write that at the end of the bout to get in the paper, you know, tomorrow 800 words. That was not bad but at the time you’re just in the moment and you’ve trained for it, you’ve worked

1:12:50 Hard for it and we must never forget the journey you guys make to get to that moment and it might be you know it might be a difficult childhood it might be the fact that you never fulfilled yourself as a young person but you have later in life it might be because you needed to deal with how you dealt with fear I dealt with fear in my life by going to Africa a few years ago and I went down river rafting for three or four weeks and I’ve never been as frightened in my life. I’d never slept out in little tents by the riverbank with 20-foot crocodiles and monkeys throwing things on you and storms and not being able to contact my kids and it was amazing and I’ve you know I literally couldn’t wank myself to sleep do you know what I mean I was so frightened you know and these big bugs. It’s a nice image. Yeah exactly but no No, but tossing and turning, you know.

1:13:45 But, you know, we all, it’s almost like we all, it was a long time ago, really, it was 14, 15 years ago, but it was a most amazing journey. And we ended up with these people called the Omer Mursi people after 20 days on the river, and they were Aboriginal Africans. And, because I’m a nutter, really, I got on really well with them, but the river guides I was traveling with were frightened of them. But we hadn’t seen people for 19 days, and it was amazing, Because I thought, people, I can speak to people.

1:14:14 I can’t reason with crocodiles. I can’t reason with hippos coming up on the bank and the rivers being low and them having had babies and more aggressive because we’re having to zigzag on the river. We all in our lives grow through experiences that challenge us. I like the nerves sometimes before doing TV or even before this today. You know, you get up for it, don’t you?

1:14:35 You get up for it and because you’ve got to deliver because everything we do should be a performance, I think. Really? Yeah, why not? Yeah, you made me a good point there. You perform when you fight.

1:14:45 Yeah, I guess so. So tell us about ego. That’s a bit of a conversation stuff, really. Yeah, it’s a good one. Tell us about ego and when does it serve you and when does it work against you personally?

1:14:56 I don’t know, you know, I feel like, if you’d asked me that question 20 years ago, I’d have gone, ah. But you know, I’m 48 coming up. You know I’ve got one daughter who’s already through university and you know is about to do a PhD. I’ve got another daughter who is in her second year at university. I’ve got properties with nine sets of tenants. I’ve got, you know, I feel quite responsible for a lot of people. I want to keep my properties up to a certain standard. I want to, you know, I help my daughters I you know I hopefully I’m a good husband I work very hard in my job for me ego is I’ve given up I know it seems strange to me because I know how I come across sometimes as full of myself but I’m only full of myself because I’ve just got this energy in me you know it’s just energy and it’s passion for things I don’t think I have a particularly strong view on ego anymore. I even have learned as I’ve got older to try and not worry about kind of trying to teach people when their egos not if it’s working for you it’s fine if you’re if you’re if you’re damaging other people if you’re damaging relationships then your egos probably in the way. I mean there’s a great, more indebted to my wife than me for this, I don’t read very much. There’s a guy, there’s an author who was into Eastern philosophy called Paul Brunton, have you ever come across Paul Brunton?

1:16:40 And he brought yoga to the West as well and you know my wife is a teacher but you know in a private school, but she’s also a yoga instructor and it’s the thing about, and I think this sounds like ego now, but being egotistical, but I think when you’re very busy in your life and you’ve achieved a certain level of things, I’m trying to reach what he would call in his book, and my wife’s described it as the over-self, where you’ve embraced who you are and what you are, and you’re actually trying to do things for other people. I’m trying to do things for other people most of the time. I’ve given up my time for you today in my mind.

1:17:24 I didn’t need to do this, do you know what I mean? It’s, and I don’t mean that in any rude way, but you know, I work for money, I work to pay my mortgages off, I work to stir up my children, I’ve stayed true to things I’m passionate about, I cover things I’m passionate about, and I think ego… The word itself is negatively loaded though, isn’t it? Yeah, I think it is, I think it is. That’s an ego, you’re talking about somebody with an ego that’s out of control or anything that’s defective.

1:17:57 Yeah, you know, I do charity work, I’m really, you know, I hold charity cricket games. I think if, I think sometimes, I said it to you earlier, you know, that I don’t like to judge people really before I meet them and I don’t like other people’s judgements about other people before you meet them. I think we all are guilty sometimes of listening to what some people say about other people before we’ve met them, but I think it’s a failing. When we spoke the other day, and this is what I live by, and I have lived by this since my 20s, I’m a fairly eclectic person, I’ve got lots of spiritual beliefs.

1:18:40 That’s what it is, that’s what it is, that’s what I actually think. Ego is bound up in your spirituality for me, or for me it is anyway. I live by three things and they are, and they’ve been there for a long time now, you are who you mix with, you reap what you sow in this life and be yourself, and that’s all I try to do. And if you don’t like me, do one, do you know what I mean? Because I’m not out there doing harm, I just think that ego is different in how we interpret it.

1:19:14 An Italian playwright who I loved when I was younger, Luigi Pirandello, who his theory was there are as many, you have as many personalities as people who meet you. Because everyone may perceive you in a different way, in a different moment, from that moment they meet you. Well that goes back to what you say, you know, you can’t judge someone until you meet them, right? No, but you might have met me when I had this most stressful day in my life and I’ve I’ve come in here and I’m in a bonkers mood where I’m feeling really aggressive.

1:19:45 You think, God, that guy’s a bit of a loon. You might think this anyway, but that guy’s a bit of a loon. So I’m not gonna be in my studio again. Whereas, you know, because we’re not all like this all the time, are we? We’re all different, you know?

1:19:57 You have to flick a switch when you go into the octagon. Or into the cage. When I was in this scene, I think we discussed something very similar about how you meet somebody on fight day and you meet a very different person. Right, and you try to become a different person on fight day, right? Yeah, yeah, I think it’s sort of automatic to, you know.

1:20:16 I do. I remember when I played sport, Saturday was war. It was as simple as that. And I took my rock violin with me. I took the Land Rover.

1:20:25 If we were away from home, I’d take eight boys in the Land Rover with me, all the kit on the top, and on the way we’re even feeling combative driving down the motorway. Do you know what I mean? Saturday is war, simple as that, boom, end of. And then I’m driving home to the family thinking, fuck, I wish my mates really knew what I was like, who I play sport with, because I was down there for sports, not for the drinking afterwards, and I played with these guys for a long time and I always said I’m not down here to make friends, I’m down here for the sport. And honestly, I genuinely, over the years you get to know people, but it’s a different part of yourself, isn’t it?

1:21:00 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You say the MMA is going to make it in this country and in the world and and my question is are you gonna be are you gonna see it make it in five years time or ten years time well I don’t know I don’t really I don’t really think about that to be honest journalism a young man sport or not really or is it all perception are you getting ageist here now Brian not at all I’m almost as old as you not really but you look it ah no you don’t you look brilliant and handsome and you seem you have enough energy you could do this forever you Yeah, I mean, my biggest problem, genuinely, is I work so hard that I don’t exercise enough at the moment, and I’ve put on kind of a good 30 pounds in the last four or five years playing less sport. And I think the work-life balance is the thing that I’m going to get in order in the next few years.

1:21:52 I’d love to be around in, I’ve got to say, and I’ve probably said quite a few negative things about MMA today. I think the community in MMA, both in the UK and in America, and in fact globally, I really, really enjoy meeting the people. I genuinely mean that. The fans are just incredible. The lifestyle that they’re displaying, I think, is going to get more important for the wider society and I think people will aspire to the way you live as fighters. Rather like me they’ll be hitting the bag in the gym rather than sparring or getting into the octagon or the cage but the lifestyle you lead is phenomenal and I think a lot of people in working life aspire to trying to do that when they finish work and I think that will grow. I think that way, that aspect of MMA will become quite a big part of our society. And I think it’s one of the ways that acceptance will actually take place. But I’d love to be around. I wonder why you asked that question. Do you mean I’m going to make my fortune and leave? What do you mean in five or ten years’ time? What do you mean?

1:23:16 I was just wondering how you relax, because you do seem to be on 24-7. Well rather like Jack Nicholson, I, no, no, no, no, God, no, do not say that. I don’t see you unplugging from the computer for like a day and being like, I’m not going to check what’s going on. Do you know, we’ve got, you know, my wife and I, we live in a nice place, like I said, our kids are at university and I like lighting fires and sitting around the fire and contemplating and I like, you know, I like thinking about the universe because at the end of the day this is a job and it’s also a passion. I’m kind of into the universe, I’m kind of freakily into what existence itself, you know, because it is amazing.

1:24:04 Have you always been that way? Yeah, I’ve always been a bit of a freak, yeah. It’s probably definitely since 13 or 14. Wow. Do you not think about it? Yeah, I do.

1:24:13 Do you not think? Yeah, of course. Somebody asked me a question about this. One of our guys said, are you going to ask Gareth if you’re going on an ayahuasca retreat like 90%? You probably can’t answer that, but I thought I’d leave that.

1:24:27 Listen, I, I, I, I, Dan Hardy did, your boy, Dan Hardy did, who hopefully is going to come on the show. I, I, um, yeah, I’ve already been there kind of thing. Okay. Yeah. Um, I, I believe in mind expansion.

1:24:44 I’ll put it that way. Um, I think, um, I just think it’s you know don’t as I get older I do think you know it’s interesting you talk about five ten years sometimes I think God how much longer am I gonna be alive make the most of it every day every minute I mean there’s some amazing people are amazing in this life don’t be negative towards people make friends I mean you know it’s it doesn’t take a lot with we have such a and negative culture in so many ways and you know you know those days when you are skipping and you go down the street and your energy is bouncing into other people and you just know we all have dark days as well but you know it this life is amazing and I am happy to breathe in and breathe out and that is basically what we do at the end of the day we breathe in and we breathe out and if we don’t breathe in and we don’t breathe out we don’t do fuck all. Do you know what I mean? It’s well said. It’s such a contrarian thing though because like covering in the media and covering fights and doing a blog every day and then pondering the universe is a very contrasting thing.

1:25:57 For media here. Well I mean you know I can remember doing a lot of, I did a lot of traveling when I was younger. I was very lucky. My parents were in the, my dad was in the RAF and my mother worked obviously in wherever we went and then you know he transferred over to the to the foreign service the foreign office and I did a lot of traveling as a kid you know and I was very lucky because I did tons of sports in a boarding school in England I was on a behavioral card for many years and because I was so hyperactive and it wasn’t till I was in the first team for a couple of for cricket you know at the age of 16 that I never got another detention but before that piece I was in detention every detention I could be in and it was for top button not done up, or running on the grass, or running to lunch, or cheeky to a prefect, or…

1:26:45 You too? No, no, I was… Okay, okay. Yeah, but the thing is, weirdly, I think for a lot of us, once you find your niche in that little society, it kind of takes over and you find your place. Yeah.

1:26:59 And that’s where, I mean, I think, you know, just digressing that that’s where I think the MMA gym is brilliant for lots of young men who are hyperactive. I needed sports when I was younger, you know, sport and shagging, obviously, and a lot of that. But I was very lucky to travel a lot and I think it just opened my mind on the world and I think fighters often say that they really enjoy travelling to different gyms and different cultures and it’s part of your education, isn’t it?

1:27:32 It’s part of going to the University of Life, isn’t it? Yeah, I mean, that’s a big part of your appeal for me, you know, just to live the life that’s ordinary for as long as possible and get out there seeing the places and meeting the people when you say about you know the days where you feel like your energy’s bouncing off other people that’s that’s fight day or big training day when you go somewhere else so I have a big group of people together and friends together yeah so that you know the MMA gym being an important place for young people back to the issue the the ego issue you know that’s that’s where you that’s where you explore that and keep it in check and develop it in in the right way, because you’ve got to have an ego to be competitive, to survive in there.

1:28:15 But you get it checked all the time. There’s always somebody bigger, always somebody who gets harder, always somebody who can pin you and you can’t get out. So that’s the value of it, I think. The thing is, I think it was the Benedictines who said this. I think it was the Benedictines.

1:28:33 The thing about ego is that if you don’t, you know, ego, I am, isn’t it? The literal translation is being, I am, yeah? But it’s seen as being looking in on yourself and being self-obsessed, isn’t it, ego? But I know that Benedictines was saying that if you don’t, the way they believed was that if you love yourself, you love your life, and if you love both those things, you’ll be able to love God and therefore you get the whole action because if you don’t have an ego in any way, if you don’t like what you are, I mean I’ve got massive insecurities about myself, we all have if we’re honest, you all have insecurities about yourself in certain stages of your life with certain things or if you’re not feeling well, but if you embrace them, if you’re honest about them, you can use your ego to grow as a person, you know?

1:29:34 And I think where ego is interesting in this conversation is how a fighter, the situation you talk about, Peter, is how a young guy, you know, the young cock of the walk comes into the gym, thinks he’s the fucking bee’s knees. Do you know what I mean? And what you’re talking about is, I talk about that situation if a young, really talented sportsman joins my team, and I say, you know, I’m the old sergeant in the team, yeah, and I’m saying, you run for me today, every ball, every ball, and I’m going to give him a harder time than the opposition will give him. And I’m going to give him a harder time until he starts talking back to me yeah and I know I’ve done my job do you know what I mean but what I’m doing is I’m cutting him down to size and reminding him that there’s experience in here that you just haven’t got yet that you can’t deal with and when a guy comes in a gym and does that are you molding his ego in a sense to make him a better fighter sure yeah yeah that’s that’s the point you know I I saw that, you know, I saw maybe that, you know, you just teach a jerk a lesson.

1:30:49 Yeah. But the other side of that, Brian, is that when a fighter loses in a certain way, when he when he doesn’t perform, you know, anyone can get knocked out in the first few seconds, make the wrong move, physically move the wrong way, go in a straight line and get hit by, you know by a long right hand or how do you deal with a fighter who how do you deal as a fighter with a situation where your ego is affected by taking a bad beating in a fight yeah hmm a lot of guys a lot of guys they blame the coach you know you see quite a lot of guys up guys will get beat and then they start looking for excuses and then they move calm boy you know he didn’t treat me right he stitched me up you know it’s a you know cuz I coach guys as well you know It’s a big responsibility.

1:31:38 Sometimes when somebody screws up fairly or unfairly, they turn on the coach or on the team. You see it a lot. Or you get guys that are like, you see a lot of guys who are really successful and they lose once, and they make a mammoth effort to get to the next way class down, because that was the answer. It wasn’t me, it was in the wrong weight division. Something like that.

1:31:58 So a lot of the times, there’s another ego function. Guys sometimes find it hard to say, I just screwed that up. There was some external factor. But you can’t just say, oh well, the answer was I suck because you’ll never get back in there and do it again. But do you think- You do have an ego to compete, right?

1:32:19 Yeah, sure, yeah. I agree with that. I think that’s about everyone. And if you don’t have an ego, you’re not gonna keep yourself to that standard. Just like Gareth said, he even got up for this show because you wanna represent.

1:32:27 Well, you know, I didn’t come here, I rang you, didn’t I, the other day and I said, what are we gonna talk about? You didn’t really tell me. But I didn’t know we were gonna be having this fascinating conversation. Yeah, well, I hope so. It’s kind of normal though, I think we are three people who probably talk like this a lot anyway, because I feel like it’s a very natural thing to talk, we’re talking about things we would naturally talk about.

1:32:52 Yeah, if the mics were normal, just be having this talk if we find ourselves in the same place. We could, but the mics are on, and I’ve got two more questions before I ever wrap this up. And they’re for you. Okay. These are the two questions.

1:33:05 Gareth, if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Gareth and give him a piece of advice, and please don’t say, keep going, son, because that’s what people are saying lately and it’s killing me, if you give him a piece of advice, what would it be? And then the second question is, what would you say to that same 20-year-old listening right now who wants to, you know, be like you someday, be like Mike, be an MMA journalist or a Paralympic journalist? Well I think I’m gonna answer this with someone else’s words actually because I think that’s what I did at that age. Carlos Castaneda yeah he was a beatnik and Carlos Castaneda said you know in your life you’re going to come to a point and you’re gonna have to choose a path yeah because it’s all a journey I I think this is all a journey.

1:34:00 I think life is a journey, a very, very long journey. And this is maybe the short bit of the journey, this particular life. And Carlos Castaneda says, at some point you’re going along the road and you come to a large crossroads and there’s four roads there. And the most important thing in all of it is that you choose the path with a heart. Yeah. Your heart’s got to be in what you pursue. If you, I was poor once, you know, I had kids at 24, you know, I joined lots of people against the police in the poll tax riots in the early 90s, you know, I was a bit of an anarchist in, and living in a squat with loads of South Americans.

1:34:49 Another anarchist in the house. Yeah, not anymore. I’m not really political, to be honest. You know, I, they all, they’re all liars that yesterday they were telling us lies today they’re telling us the truth this that and the other I mean I’m not into I was in the House of Lords last night believe it or not with a launch for Special Olympics Great Britain and trying to speak to some of the people in the Lords there to get Michael Gove to rescind his withdrawal of money for school sports funding believe it or not but anyway path with a heart if you choose a path with a heart, it doesn’t matter that you begin with nothing. Because if you’re on the right path in that way, you will find riches. And it’ll be riches in reward, in being recognised and giving it your all. Because I am not cynical about what I write about.

1:35:48 I am a journalist, but I’ve studied language and journalism and I’ve been involved 20 years I’ve been involved in some very hard-hitting stories, but the core is that heart thing, doing what you believe in, staying with what you believe in, not covering football because it’s going to make you the most well-known correspondent in the land and you’ll get the most prestige and you’ll earn more. Stick to what you believe in. And also, this is to the 20 year old coming up now, this is all this advice. I may be getting old and I may be wrong on this but I think I’m a bit old school about this. Graft. Learn to graft.

1:36:34 Because the internet age has stopped people grafting in some ways. You mean hustle? Yeah, I do. Graft is about getting your hands dirty, about getting nowhere when you’re scrabbling yeah about you know what I mean the hard yards in the gym when you are fucked but you want more in the bank so you keep going you find that in yourself so that and I think you can find that in sports and I hope my teammates always knew that if I needed to get a project finished the next day I’d have no sleep to make sure the projects finished that kind of graft yeah you know what I mean because some of my best pieces have been written when I’ve I haven’t slept.

1:37:16 Some of my best sport was played sometimes when I’d been out all night, weirdly, because you’re in a different zone sometimes. So learn to graft, choose a path with a heart. And if it’s journalism, one of my kind of phenomenal journalists, Samuel Johnson, one of the credos that I always use of his, which is if you’re writing a story about someone or something, research meticulously, simplify and exaggerate, and it always works. And it’s a great way of doing it.

1:37:57 And also don’t just try and do MMA journalism. Learn to do journalism. And if you have a passion for MMA, then transfer. But it’s a very hard time in journalism, and it’s a very hard time to make a living for young people. But create your own blog, write well, don’t give up writing to papers.

1:38:24 There’s still papers, you know, the national newspapers, who have internet sites where they need coverage online. There’s nothing wrong with offering your services free for a year, but not after that, I think. I wrote for nothing for a year back in, when I was 91 or whatever, covering Rugby League and cricket for the local paper up in North London. And eventually one of those guys, Abi Okoku, his name was, who was a discus player, number two discus thrower in the UK, was also a Rugby League player.

1:39:00 And I managed to get a big story in the Telegraph, probably the first story I got in there I think. those are the things that to me, God I can’t remember my 20s, um what would I say to me, just don’t be so arrogant, I think I was arrogant in my 20s, see I’m bigger now, I used to be kind of you know built like an athlete, you know kind of 15 stone and I was very, I could be very rude and arrogant in my 20s but it was just that energy I had then, I wasn’t a complete cock but I just had an energy and I think when my first daughter Mia was born I’d never spent a day indoors in my life you know and it was the first I’d spent all day indoors I’ve never held a baby before you know and I was 25 and um and don’t get me wrong I’m so pleased I have my children young what would I say to myself just just to be a bit more relaxed with people I think and to listen a little bit more Because even though I talk a lot, still, I can listen and talk at the same time, believe it or not.

1:40:03 That’s good advice. You know, I’m in danger of starting to like Gareth. Yeah, I know. There’s not many people that do, so… You too, that’s right.

1:40:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want me over. Dammit. Yeah. Gareth, thanks so much for the time. But even though I said I’d stick an X in your head, and even though I said I’d stick a bomb under your car…

1:40:20 It was figurative. Really? Yeah, metaphorical. Kind of. kind of. I’ve had my life threatened quite a lot of times but I normally did something first. How do people get a hold of you? It’s the best way.

1:40:34 No, just leave me alone. Not so easy. I’m not giving out my email address or my no, at Gareth A Davies DT. What’s DT by the way? Daily Telegraph. Of course, of course. You can hound him there. I’m on Facebook as well.

1:40:54 You said it earlier, and I know we’ve got to finish, but isn’t it interesting how people are different on Twitter to what they are on Facebook? Yeah. Well, there’s an anonymity there on Twitter that doesn’t exist on Facebook. Same with YouTube and Facebook for comments about our shows. When I get YouTube comments, some can be quite vile, some very nice, but on Facebook, I don’t get those as much.

1:41:15 YouTube is weird for, you know, we had James Thompson the other day, and I looked at his video and there was, you know, the video that was sort of set up to mock him about his loss to, uh, uh, to, uh, no, federal, no, no, federalist brother. Sorry. Um, and, uh, and there was like hundreds and hundreds of comments, like we had links to white power websites and crazy, crazy religious statements. We would just had no relevance to the thing. It was, it was terrifying. It was like beyond anything that you’d even get on Twitter and Facebook. It’s pretty crazy. So you were making that point. I just got some good news.

1:41:52 Oh no, anyway, I’ve been on record. No, you stay off that mobile. All right. And your podcast, it is, what is it called? The ESPN UFC podcast? It’s the ESPN UFC podcast. I’d also say to anyone that likes to follow MMA that I think Fighters Only is a really good magazine and it’s staying traditional in terms of not putting all its magazine stories online. Pete does a phenomenal job in it. Rob Hewitt, the owner of the magazine, is incredibly dedicated to making a success along with Train Hard Fight Easy. They’re great magazines. I’m very proud to be involved in them. I work for a huge corporation. They’re one of the main brands. If you look at brands in the UK, the Telegraph is a major brand. For that reason, I didn’t swear lots today.

1:42:39 In a way, my Twitter’s branded with DT. Maybe it shouldn’t be, because people say all views my own, don’t they, on those things? And they are my own, but I must say I’ve really enjoyed it today and I think it’s just, again, I know it came about through MMA, really. Your interest in jujitsu, you know, you’re following this kind of long head freak from the UK a little bit. Oh, he’ll be interesting. He’ll say, he’ll be entertaining because he’ll batter on about himself and talk crap. But to be honest, I think that the format you have for this show is phenomenal because I think you just want to encourage openness more than anything, don’t you?

1:43:25 It’s strange because there’s nothing revolutionary about a long-form conversation but everyone seems to really enjoy it and the things they might have seen with you in the past might have been a 10 minute interview where you interviewed someone else or I saw Ariel Hawani interview you. But it’s 15 minutes. I was in a funny mood that day. And it’s 15 minutes of soundbites. Plus you’re talking about something that’s your work.

1:43:44 And so it’s always nice to talk to the guy behind the guy, which is kind of what we have with you. And I’m really glad you came. So thank you very much. You could have easily not come. So I appreciate it.

1:43:54 My pleasure. This is like, you know, you’re saying the hard copy magazine has something just about it that just… It just beats the online, the same with this long radio, this long podcast conversation just kind of beats that sound bite thing. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s a moment in time, isn’t it?

1:44:20 Sure. It is. Well, to those listening out there, if you are listening to us on iTunes, which I’m sure you are, you can click and subscribe. If you want to see the extremely good looking Garrett Davies, you can come to our YouTube channel. Bono’s fatter, younger brother.

1:44:33 Wow, it’s quite an honor. Well, our YouTube channel is not Jesus But Jesus Wow is London Real TV if you want to watch this and we’re on Twitter and Facebook come join the party and our Website’s London Real TV until then guys. It is about the journey. That’s our tagline not yours, but you obviously agree and Thank you very much. My pleasure. All right. Peace guys. Thank you. Thank you by the way you trip far enough up Right, you’re that close to being a loser you don’t drive You don’t gotta miss it.