Full transcript: Georges St-Pierre on London Real
2:57 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Georges St-Pierre, the Canadian mixed martial artist, actor and UFC champion. You are recognized as one of the best pound-for-pound MMA fighters in history, and you were named Fighter of the Year by Sports Illustrated magazine after witnessing Royce Gracie compete in the first-ever UFC event. You decided to dedicate your life to the sport of MMA.
3:19 You went on to become the two-time welterweight champion of the world and successfully defended your title on nine separate occasions. In 2017 you made a historic comeback following a four-year hiatus to defeat Michael Bisping at 185 pounds and become one of only four champions to win both welterweight and middleweight titles. For your contribution to the sport, you were recently inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. George, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me.
3:49 George, it’s great to have you here. I’ve been watching your career all throughout my own martial arts training career. You know, first off, I wanted to ask you. Nine months ago, in this very studio, I was sitting across from, guess who, Michael Bisping. You know, and he was in the chair, and I had watched Michael with you at the press conferences, and I thought, oh my gosh, I’m gonna have some guy who’s gonna come in here, he’s gonna try to hijack my show, he’s gonna be a douchebag to me.
4:17 But when he sat down, I’ll be honest, and Michael might be watching this, he was the nicest guy. He was super grateful. He was really introspective. You know, he fought through all those eye injuries, and he never quit on his title dreams. I’m just curious, now that you’ve been through that with him, what’s he really like?
4:36 Michael is a very nice guy. I mean, he’s a very competitive person. So I know when I got into the fight with him, he was going to try to play some mental warfare against me, but I was expecting it, and you know, he likes to make the fight exciting. But yeah, deep down inside, he is a very… and do you like it when the fighters, you know, kind of trash talk with you? I know Nick Diaz and you had some words.
5:08 There were a lot of fights where you didn’t have words with guys, but Bee Sting was probably one of the most vocal ones. Do you like that? Does it feel like you’d rather not do that? That seems like your character, but I don’t know. Well, first, English is not my first language.
5:23 I speak French, so if I get into a war of trash talking with someone in English, it’s his first language, I will probably lose that battle. So I choose which battle I take very carefully, and I’m just not good at it. I mean, it’s not part of who I am, and I knew it was not a surprise for me when he was trying to get under my skin, and I was ready for that. It was expected. Yeah, and coming to press conferences a little drunk is even…
5:59 I mean, I just watched the footage now, and it kind of shocked me. I was like, man, he just really brings it, doesn’t he? Thing in fighting, it’s a different sport, because you can’t say you play soccer, you play baseball, but you don’t play fighting. So you can die out there. I mean, or even the damage that you will have in a fight can cause your death, in a sort of speak.
6:27 So there’s a lot on the line, and that’s one of the reasons some guys like to play some mental warfare, because they know when some people can be good in the gym one day, but they try to perform when the lights are on that night, with the stress and everything, and they just can’t deliver. I’m the opposite. I believe I perform at my best when I’m under pressure. So by trash talking, he was giving me more strength in a way. Hmm.
6:59 And while we’re on this, how did that feel that night when you made this massive comeback after four years out of the game? You went up in weight class. We found out later, with ulcerative colitis and all sorts of stomach issues, that John Danaher said you never said anything to him about it. You really kept that to yourself. You know, what was that whole experience like?
7:23 And then to get the submission victory over a trash-talking Michael. I mean, what did that feel like? Why, it wasn’t my dream come true, you know? And I remember before the fight I had three major criticisms during my career. One was that I was not taking enough risk.
7:44 I was too much of a cerebral fighter. Another one was that I never went up a weight class to fight the champion, and another criticism was that I know it was not enough emotion, and also I didn’t finish it enough, my opener. So when I decided to come back, John John gave me the idea that I shouldn’t come back and fight the champion in a higher weight class, and the champion at the time was Michael Bisping. And Michael Bisping, we know, with him he’s gonna bring the fight to you.
8:19 He’s gonna make it exciting. I changed also the way I train. I trained myself to become more opportunist, to be more… to go more for the finish instead of going more for the safe, the more illogical method that I normally was habitually choosing. And all that happened, and a good way, you know, why I was able to answer these three criticisms. So I was very happy.
8:49 It was a dream come true for me. Hmm. And we’re talking about John Danaher, who was one of Royce Gracie’s, well, is still one of his lead instructors, one of his first black belts alongside Matt Serra, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later, who you fought a couple times. But John had this concept, I remember him talking about, of a beautiful win. There was, there was ways of turning a fight into a piece of art, right?
9:13 Yeah, and yeah, that’s why you say mixed martial art. It is to win. Of course, that’s the priority. It’s to win, but I would say if you tend to win with a beautiful technique, that’s that makes it even sweeter. In a way, that, for example, if someone never played basketball or doesn’t know anything about basketball and I take him to the game to watch LeBron James or Michael Jordan, even if he doesn’t know anything about basketball, you will see that these guys have something special.
9:49 It’s beautiful to see them play. Something iñaki Wayne Gretzky was one of the best, Connor McDavid, or in football, you know, yeah, it’s Diego Maradona and all those guys. So the idea where the artistic comes from is the beautiful win, doing not only to win but doing something beautiful that even someone who doesn’t know the sport can watch and say, wow, I like what he’s doing. You know, it’s actually pretty cool. And while we’re on that, mixed martial artists.
10:27 I mean, when I look at you, George, in the UFC, there are fighters and there are martial artists, and you were always a martial artist. For people that might not even understand what that means, what does that mean to you? Because it’s not just fighting. It’s almost a way of life, inside and outside the cage. We watch you now on Instagram, and you still conduct your life like a martial artist.
10:51 Really? Yeah, I train. I don’t only train because I have a competition ahead of me. I train because that’s the way I live. I like to feel good in my own skin, and if you feel good, you do good.
11:07 So yeah, a lot of guys train because, only because they have competition. They these guys are fighters. I’m not a fighter, and on top of that, I never really liked to fight. I was just fortunate. I was very good at it, and I started at a very young age, and I had an incredible journey in my career.
11:27 I met an amazing mentor, and I did it not because I liked to fight, but because of what the fighting gave me. You know, that freedom, of course, the money, all the access to things that most people don’t have. And yeah, so it was not about fighting. I was never excited about fighting. I was excited about winning and getting the result.
11:58 Whether you’re taking the risk for most people, this won’t make any sense, but I also think the Diaz brothers said the same thing. They both said they hate fighting, and yet all we do is see footage of you guys beating other people up. How can you explain that to a normal person? At one point, you make a right. I used to look at my training, a lot of my training partners, and they always told me, oh, George, you love to fight, stop lying to us.
12:32 And I was like, now I really don’t. And it always seems to me that I was more stressed than everybody else in the room, in the locker room before a fight. I was always asking myself what the hell I’m doing here. And I saw many sports psychologists, and most of them told me, George, don’t say you’re afraid. You’re excited.
12:54 And I was like, then excited. I don’t know what it means. I mean, I’m excited if I see a beautiful naked woman. I’m excited if I have fasted for three days and I’m about to eat my favorite dish. I miss…
13:08 I’m excited if it’s minus 20 degrees in Montreal and I’m next week going into vacation. I will be excited. I’m not excited to go in the cage and maybe be humiliated. You know, I’m not excited about that. I’m scared, and I’m not afraid to say that I’m afraid.
13:27 And that’s the thing. In everybody’s everybody’s job. Everybody works. Everybody has a job. Most people love their job.
13:39 Some people do not love their job. It’s impossible to love your job a hundred percent. So the best way I can explain it: I’m a fighter. I fight on average, in my later years, ever maybe one or twice a year. There are 365 days in a year.
13:58 The worst days of the year are the days that I fight, because I don’t like to fight. It’s very stressful, but if you put that in perspective as a percentage, you know, it’s less than 1%, in a way. So my job is, I like my job, because you know what? I don’t like it. It’s only less than 1%.
14:22 Most people, some of them, don’t like five to ten, maybe 25% of their job. So it’s not that bad. It actually, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward, right? So you enjoy the training, the discipline, even though it’s a challenge, and then that one or two times a year you have to go in and put it all on the line. If that’s the sacrifice for everything else you get, you’re willing to do it.
14:46 That’s the price to pay. It’s the life that I have, the freedom to be able to, you know, hang out with my friends, eat and do whatever I want. You know, I have no boss. I am my own boss. If I work hard and I make the right decisions, I’ll get good results.
15:05 If I’m lazy and I, you know, I don’t want to, I’m cutting corners, I will, so to speak, you know, I’m gonna see it in my results. So that’s why I love about that life of martial artists. You know, John Danaher posted something recently, and it was a picture of you, and he said that when he was training you, you were always about the preparation. The preparation was everything, and he said on the night of the fight, it actually doesn’t come down to the meal before, or how you feel, or all these other things that maybe a lot of people would expect, or fighters would think, would make a difference.
15:41 It’s really down to the previous six months of all the hard work you’ve put in. And even in your book, you talk about this day-in, day-out process of just preparing. Can you just speak on that? I think it’s probably true about most things in life. Yeah, it’s… there’s a physical preparation and the mental preparation, and both are very important.
16:04 If you only do the physical preparation, that’s, I mean, being in a gym training your techniques by rain, you’ll be in shape, you’ll be… you’ll know your stuff, but one day you get under the lights, you might freeze. In a way, it’s important to do visualization, so for me, I’ve done a lot, a lot of… of course. The way I can describe it best, it’s, I would say, it’s like a movie. The more you see the movie, the more you know, you’re able to expect what is coming next.
16:38 And when you fight, there is a different outcome. In the movie, you know, it’s like a movie but different outcome. But if you saw it and you did your homework, you’ll be ready for it, because you have seen it before. Sometimes fighters, they might be surprised, because they have not seen that or they don’t expect certain outcomes. So that’s how you can take advantage of a situation in a fight, you know, because everybody’s in shape when you get to the world level.
17:11 You know, when you fight for a title, what makes the difference? It’s not because you’re stronger or faster. It’s the little things like this, you know, stuff that you do, on a mundane basis, that he doesn’t do. You know, it’s not the night of the fight that you have an idea and boom, that clicks. You know, so the fights are always won in mundane stuff that you do every day.
17:39 They’re not won know, track, travel, or things like this. So it’s not some spectacular or low-percentage move. It’s just about these basics you do every day, mentally and physically. Absolutely. The promotion wants you to believe the opposite, in a way, because they use the emotion to drive people to buy the event, the fight.
18:04 But the outcome is not decided by these things. They’re decided by how you were training or preparing. So if you have an exam, if you’re younger than you were at school, and you have an exam and you have studied very well, so you get a… maybe if I ask you the night before the exam, if it’s a very important exam, and I ask you, are you afraid? You’ll be afraid. You’re always afraid of failure, but you’re confident, so you can be afraid and confident at the same time.
18:38 However, if you have not studied, you’ll be afraid and you won’t be confident. So that’s all fighting is. There’s no difference. You know, I watched some footage recently of you and Carlos Condit, and this famous head kick. You know, he caught you with his head kick, and I think you had said that that was a moment of realization for you, but I see you respond, and I see you in the moment, fight back, and then get back up to your feet about 40 seconds later.
19:08 I’m just wondering, I mean, you can’t teach that. You can’t train that. Or can you? Or is that something deep down inside the DNA of Georges St-Pierre that says no, I’m getting up? Actually, this is the fight.
19:25 When I fought Carlos Condit, what happened is he went on one side, so my vision followed him, and the kick hit me on the head, on the side of my head. I never saw that coming. I woke up, I was sitting on my butt on the ground, and then I saw him coming at me, like charging at me, trying to finish me. I won that. I survived that sequence with Carlos Condit because of my loss with Matt Serra, and let me explain that.
19:55 When I fought Matt Serra, I remember he hit me with a looping punch that cut me right under here, and I got very dizzy at that time. I got very emotional. I made the mistake of being emotional, because I was supposed to win that fight according to the so-called experts, and it was the first time I got rocked. So I got emotional. Matt Serra hit me, and I made a mistake too, trying to give him back, give it back to him right away.
20:28 It was a stupid slugfest with him, and I was not accurate, and he was able to hit me many times, and I finally ended up on the ground, and I lost. When I reviewed that fight, I identified the mistake that I made. I should have, when I got rocked, I should have stepped back. Yeah, you know, I accept the fact that I got rocked, and you just weather the storm and come back when I’m ready to come back. In the fight, there’s one thing: when the bell rings, the fight starts, but the fight doesn’t really start until you want it to start.
21:06 So if the bell rings and I don’t want to fight, I can just run away. The guy who cannot fight me, if I don’t want to fight. So when I got hit with the kick by Carlos Condit, I kind of woke up, and I remember a flash knockdown. I woke up and I remember all these things. Sometimes when you’re in it, you have the impression that time stopped, and it’s really like you see the movie Rocky.
21:32 Everything comes slow. That’s how it happened for me, a little bit, real life. And I remember my last with Matt Serra, and I told myself, I said, if I am a very proud person, I wanted to stand up, but I told myself if I stand up right away in the middle of this, you might get me and knock me out. So I will accept the fact that I’m hurt. I’m gonna go on my back and accept it, and you know, weather the storm.
22:04 So he came on top of me, trying to finish me. A winner in a storm, and that’s how I was able to come back in the fight and win that fight. So sometimes when you lose, you can lose and learn a good lesson from a loss. So that loss made me a much better fighter. Wow, that’s a powerful lesson.
22:23 And you know what makes a person fight back in that scenario and not just give up? Do you think that’s born? Do you think that’s made? Is that something deep down in your DNA? Does that come from when you were beat up as a kid, or your parents, or what do you think that is?
22:39 Because as a fighter, a fighter actually punishes. That’s what a great fighter does. It’s not like you give punishment. A great fighter can take it. It’s hard to say.
22:49 I don’t know if it’s genetic or a mix of, you know, of the environment, the social environment. It could be both. For example, I know that if you, you know, I’ve heard, I’m not a fan of this, of course, but I’ve heard that if the dog fights the dog that loses, you cannot fight it again, because it’s mentally broken. So in a human being, and a human being, I think if you’re if you face adversity in the past and you were able to overcome it after time, and that doesn’t mean you never lost.
23:32 You know, everybody loses in life. You lose, and you overcome it by becoming better after that loss. So I have lost before, of course, many times, but I never lost for the same mistake twice. So if you lose, what I say is, if you lose and then you give up, you can break you mentally. That’s how some people react to it.
23:55 You know, there’s many ways of reacting to failure, and I always look at failure as a way to get better and learn from my mistakes. Ya know, well said. While we’re on the subject of Matt Serra, you know, John Danaher told me when I was in New York that that was a tricky situation, because you know he’s one of Royce’s black belts, and then Dom was training you, and like you said, there was, I think, a one in eleven chance is what they gave Serra going into that bout.
24:27 You know, the oddsmakers, and obviously you went in there, and you know he surprised you with some shots. How did you deal with that loss, because it was your only or second loss, I think, in the UFC? And I I’m having a flashback here, George, but I thought I remember that you might have seen a sports psychologist. You might have carried a brick around for a while and thrown it in the water when you got over the loss. Maybe I’m wrong here, but how did you process that?
24:50 Because when you fought him again, it was almost no contest. I mean, you know, you were ready for that second fight with Matt. Yeah. I was devastated after that last. I believe the odds were 11 to 1.
25:04 And don’t forget that at the time I had just beaten Matt Hughes, who was the best fighter of his era. You know, it was like the best guy. So I’m champion. I just beat the best guy, and I’m like the new kid on the block, and everybody’s telling me how good and how great I am, and I start to believe it a little bit too much. And I’m fighting Matt Serra, a guy that the odds are, I think it was like 11 to 1.
25:33 Like I said, not that I underestimated him, but I was not as afraid as I am normally for that fight. Normally I train in the fear that my opponent trains harder than me. I always visualize all the time. I visualize him running when I run, to beat him. I visualize him eating next to me.
26:02 When I asked or visualized him, he’s firing next to me. You know, like everything I do, it’s because of him. And when I was training for the fight against Matt Serra, I was not like that. I was not seeing 220|221| That I was not visualizing it that way. I was.
26:22 It’s like I was not afraid, and I slept quite well the night before the fight, something I never did before. Every fight that I had, I never slept well. Always not only the night before, but the week leading up to the fight. I never slept well, never in my life. And I kind of slept well.
26:45 What’s surprising is I trained hard, everything, but it’s like something was missing. I didn’t feel like I was on the edge, sort of speed. So I remember, when Bert, what’s under that, there you see, I was in the locker room getting warmed up to get ready for the fight. Bert came and kicked the door and said, “Are you ready?” I told myself, I don’t know if I’m ready for this.
27:14 And then I remember seeing my face, because I watched the fight. I looked like I was going to… ass is a cemetery. You know, like when someone died. You know, it was weird. I don’t know what happened to me mentally, but you know, I give credit to Matt Serra.
27:33 You fought a very good fight. I tried my best, but you know, he beat me fair and square, but sometimes it just happens in a weird way. So I’ve heard, after a fight, I was devastated. I lost a lot of my confidence, because now everybody was saying, “Oh, George is not as good as you thought.” All the big expectations that I had for the future, now we all crumble, so it’s like, I saw a psychologist at the time, and it was a very good one.
28:09 He helped me a lot, because every fight, I wanted to come back and become world champion again, and add to my record, face other contenders before I add another shot at the title. But every time I was supposed to fight someone, I was thinking of Matt Serra. Now, he wasn’t my… I did days, all the time, so it was like a brick. The sports psychologist made me carry a brick around, and he made me write the name Matt Serra on the brick.
28:41 And he was telling me, “George, you’re carrying a brick. After days and days and days of carrying a brick, at one point it’s gonna become heavy, and you need to release it and live them. Don’t live in the past. Live the present. And after many days it was hard.
29:00 I couldn’t release it, but after many days I started thinking about it, and I went through this, near a cellar, got a river, took the brick, threw it in the water, and right away I felt relief. I know it sounds weird, but it really, it’s something that really works for me. As a… I felt relief, and I was able to focus on my upcoming fight. Then I won many other fights.
29:26 My revenge with Matt, the road, and you know, but if I would not have done that, maybe things would not have gone well for me, right? Because that brick showed you how much it was holding you back. It was like you’re carrying around this weight, pointlessly and senselessly. You’re carrying around this brick when you’ve got other things to worry about. And once you’ve felt the weight over a few days, you’re like, okay, now I see the senselessness of what I’m doing, and when you threw it out, then you could move forward.
29:53 I was just angry at myself. I couldn’t live without thinking about it. I was angry because I knew I was better than what I then, when I showed what I did. So I was very mad at myself, and I was thinking about it too much, night and days, and without focusing on the upcoming problem, a problem to solve right in front of me. I was distracted by other things that were no longer important.
30:21 I mean, so things could have gone very bad for me if I would not have released that brick that I was carrying. I also learned a great lesson after that fight. You know, when I fought Matt Hughes and I lost the first time, I was putting Matt Hughes on a pedestal. For me, it was like untouchable. Then I lost, and I realized that I could beat him.
30:51 And then I beat him. Then Matt Serra. It’s like I was not afraid enough. It’s like I put my… used to high, and Matt’s… I should have put him higher, but I put him too low.
31:04 So when you fight someone, in a way, is never as good as you think he is, but he’s never as bad as we think he is, either. He’s always different. And also I’ve learned that on the night of the fight, it’s like football. It’s not always the best team that wins the game. The teams that play the best, sometimes there is a team that surprised, that had beaten a better team.
31:29 They just played better on the night of the game. Fighting is no different. I mean, there’s so many outcomes possible. There’s so many things I can influence the result of a fight. It’s not always the best fighter that wins the fight.
31:43 It’s the fighter that fights the best. And the night that I fought Matt Serra, Matt Serra beat me, because he fought a much better fight than I did. And that’s how ego was in sport. So knowing that’s true, then how do you behave on the night of the fight? I mean, knowing that the training can help you, but you still have to be in the right mental space, the best corner people.
32:06 You still want everything to be as good as possible. You have the physical, the technical, and the emotional. You know that if you have, sometimes emotional it’s important in a way. A lot of young athletes come to me and say, “George, I don’t understand. I’m overtrained.
32:29 I’m not done. A lot of volume of training.” And I ask them, “Listen, sometimes it’s not the volume. It could be how things are going at home, or you have a problem with, for example, your girlfriend or anything, and because of it you don’t sleep well. All that helps.
32:50 It’s a whole package. All that has an effect on your recuperation, and it’s not only about physical training. It has to do with these things that could be emotional, technical, could be physical. You know, we have an injury, so it’s all a mix. It’s all together, all interconnected.
33:09 You know, you talked about how in your brain you’re always thinking about the fighter, you’re always nervous, always thinking, what are they doing, how are they training, how are they eating? And I remember an interview. Did you know, near the end of your first retirement, where you said, as soon as you got the belt wrapped around your waist again, immediately, sometimes even on the same minute, they brought the next guy in the cage, and your brain went from being completely focused and obsessed for nine months with one guy, and now you got another guy.
33:39 When you’re on the top, there’s always someone coming. And I think you were mentally and physically exhausted, maybe even manifesting in you know, stomach ulcers and stuff like that. I mean, what was it, a point where you could have only gone on so much longer, because you take it so seriously mentally? I believe it’s, it’s also my fault. Myself, I’m a very proud person, and on top of that I believe I’m, I’ve never been diagnosed with it, but I believe in a way, in terms of competition, of fighting.
34:20 I think about it all the time when I have a fight. Even if it’s a year away, or if it’s in two months, or one day, in 24 hours, I will think about it consciously, constantly. I will think about it when I eat, when I sleep. I will breathe it. I will eat it.
34:40 I will, you know, when I train. I drive my car. It became obsessive. However, if you want to have success in something, if you want to be the best at something, you need to be a little bit crazy. I believe you need to be obsessed, because if you’re not obsessed, if you don’t put as much energy into it as you would, you will not get there.
35:07 No. So after years and years of competition, I believed it got to me a little bit. I always said that I’m… I’m not really, I mean, it’s a concern about head trauma, but I’m not someone who took a lot of Cadillac, you know, especially not on a daily basis. And training, I train very smart.
35:27 I don’t… I see a lot of athletes, they leave their career in the gym, you know. They make a career at the gym, and they leave their career there. And very often, you can burn yourself in training more than in a fight, because you’ll train every day. You’re not gonna fight every day.
35:48 You’ll fight maybe two, three, four times a year, maximum, so I’ve seen a lot of guys burn themselves out. Yeah, I always train smart. I was more calm about the stress than the head trauma. For me, the stress was something that really concerned me, because I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I didn’t want to retire, or, you know, being diagnosed with a very, very bad disease. You know, now I was diagnosed my last fight with colitis, but now it’s all under control.
36:24 I can get rid of all my symptoms, and then I’m very healthy right now. Well, that’s good to hear. I’m very glad to hear that. Tell me about your early days. I mean, when people find out that you were bullied as a kid, they find it hard to believe, because everyone looks at you, and you look like the perfect martial artist.
36:44 You used to come out and the gym, and you’re like Jean-Claude Van Damme in real life, you know. But tell me about what really happened when you were a kid. Yeah, I actually started martial arts because I was bullied at school. Yeah, also on top of that I was a big fan of Chuck… Madame Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, all these guys, Norris, of course.
37:10 Yeah, big problem at school. Instead of focusing on what the teacher was explaining in front of the class, I was six. I was focusing on how I’m gonna get out of the class, take my books and reach the bus before the bullies get me and hit me and beat me up. So I had a lot of trouble in my early days in school. So that’s how I started karate.
37:42 At first, you coach in karate, then then I started, self-defense. Self-defense became a passion, because I started to collect medals, and I became very good at it. Then, after, the passion became a business, and that’s how I mixed martial arts. But I always believed that the fact that I had been bullied in school at the time made me stronger to face the mental warfare that I had to deal with in competition of mixed martial arts, because I had seen it before.
38:25 So it never really touched me. It never affected my performance in a negative way. So to speak, our bullies are just scared. Is that really the reality? Or if kids are watching us now, I mean, what should they know about bullies?
38:41 Well, I think bullies, I mean, everybody is different, and I don’t claim to be an expert in bullying, because now it’s a total different ballgame with social media and everything. But to me, I remember one day I made the mistake, because I came back from school with scars and bruises and stuff like that, and one of the guys who was beating me up on the bus. And one day when I came back from school, my dad grabbed me, was angry, and said, “Now you’re gonna tell me what happened,” because I’m tired of seeing you come back with bruises and stuff, and your school results are not going very well sometimes because of that.
39:28 And I was crying, and I said, yeah, there was a guy in the bus, a solder. Yeah, I can’t do anything, because he’s stronger than me, and my hair. My dad did the unthinkable. He found out where the kids lived, so he went to the kids, and then you know, I got the door, and so he told the dad of the kid, he said, yeah, “Can you tell your kid to stop beating up my kid, because you need to focus on school,” and when he came back, he told me that his dad looked like he smelled of alcohol.
40:03 I also found out that this kid didn’t have a mother. His mother left, and he was raised by his dad, and that’s probably the dilemma. So the way he learned to communicate with me was what was from his dad. So he communicated with me the same way he learned from his dad. So I was just collateral damage, you know, and I don’t think he’s a bad person, and as a matter of fact, I just think it’s just in terms of… you know, he was just a victim of bullying himself.
40:44 He became a bully, wanted to do something, get out of his range, out of his rage. And many, many years later, this is the true story, by the way: I was driving on Sherbrooke, and I saw the same guy. I don’t want to say his name, of course, but he was begging for money in the corner of a street. When I opened my window, he recognized me, and I was like, I saw you were scared, so I said, hold on a second, I want to park my car. And now he knew who I was, so you got scared, and I told him, I said, man, I remember, back in the day, you were the guy that everybody wanted to be like, and now look at you, man.
41:29 Yeah, you have no pride. You can do whatever you want in your life. Go get a job, do something. And I gave him the rest of their money that I had, my s***. I said, I don’t want to see you no more, I don’t want to see you ever begging like this.
41:42 Yeah, so I left, and that same guy came to my parents’ house many, like, after I did that, a few months after, and he asked my mom and my dad, “If you could talk to me?” My mom and my dad said, “Oh, George has lived, does not live here anymore.” Of course. And he says, “Hey, now I have a job. I want to say thanks to George for it.”
42:07 So he says, “You really touched me, because you made me take a ribbon.” You know, I did. I didn’t have some people ask me, did you ever have a ribbon? Your ribbon, against one of the biggest, that was for me the best revenge I can have. I was very happy about that, you know.
42:29 I didn’t need to beat them up to feel good. I just, this made me feel like I did something good. Yeah, maybe break the cycle as well, doing that. Yes. Did you ever, when you have someone like Bisping get in your face, do you ever get that trigger, that flashback to the bully days, and you’re gonna have to be like, oh, I got it, remember, that’s PTSD or not?
42:52 I’m sorry. I was so used to, when I’m getting into a fight in mixed martial arts, I’m going one on one against one guy, that I believe I’m gonna beat, even though he’s trying to get me, and some trash-talking war. I’m thinking real hard in my mind, even though I’m scared, that I’m gonna beat him. I’m very confident. When I was at school and I was bullied, there were sometimes three to four guys older and bigger than me, and they were like, when they were bullying me, I knew I had no choice.
43:31 I had no chance to beat this guy, so I never been afraid or never lost control against a bully. It makes my shot, because I knew it had nothing to do with the outcome of the result. I knew I was going to beat him, so I was used to dealing with so much more when I was young, so much, it was much more stressful, you know. So I never paid any attention. I never spent any energy to worry about the trash talking.
44:03 I was purely focusing on the fight, and that’s one of the things that’s I believe bullies helped me in my later years, about to deal with mental warfare. Right, right. When you look back on the UFC, when your career was there, from say UFC 50, you know, all the way up to 150, I mean, you were really the face of that brand as it got bigger, and the kids are, people these days don’t remember. I mean, back in the day the UFC was not that big. It was not that cool.
44:38 It was hard to get on TV. You know, I remember when it was, you know, a blood sport, and it was banned, you know, in America. I mean, can you talk about what it was like, or what you remember from those days, and how it’s different from these days? Well, first, when I saw the first UFC, I was a teenager. My karate teacher just passed away, and I remember I saw Royce Gracie at the time.
45:08 The sport was not as big, and I saw Royce Gracie, who was relatively small compared to the guy that he was fighting against. And a lot of his opponents, like Kimo and all of those guys, they were very intimidated. You know, they looked like bullies, and I was surprised Gracie winning the first UFC was beating all those big and submitted and insulting guys. So when I saw that, it really inspired me, because at the time I never really took on my physically, my revenge against the bully.
45:44 So it really inspired me, because I’d seen Royce Gracie doing it, so I knew at the time, I was like, wow, this guy is amazing, and I really wanted to become like him. And at the time, when I saw the first UFC, I saw the… I saw… so right away that the sport, I had faith that this sport would become big. You know, even when I started my career, I remember my first fight. I made like $1,100 in TKO, and then after it, another fight to go.
46:23 Then when I got into the UFC, a three thousand plus three thousand, you know, to fight in the UFC. My first fight, that had gotten bigger and bigger, but I always had faith that it wouldn’t… it would become big, and I feel very fortunate also that I came at the right time, in a way, that a lot of the great fighters before me did not make a lot of money, and they deserve way more than what they made, because the sport was less popular. I came right in there, and I came in the perfect time, and I’m very lucky to have made the money I have.
47:05 I have enough money I can, you know, live without fighting, and to whatever, almost not whatever I want. But I feel very privileged about that, but I always had faith that the sport would become big, because fighting, it’s something that is in every one of us. Even if you’re not a fan of fighting, if you’re watching a football game and there’s a fight that breaks out, you’ll stop watching the football game to watch the fight. You know, that’s what John Danaher told me, and it’s really true.
47:36 It’s something that, you know, I can take the nicest person in the world and force that person to fight, either to defend themselves or to defend someone that you want to protect. You know, it’s something that’s in ourselves, so everybody can identify with it. I always believe, one day the sport of mixed martial arts will become big. Yeah, and you were one of the first fighters to crossover and do these big sponsorship deals. You know, I think Under Armour was a big one, but you were the guy they kind of turned from what the public thought of as a blood sport, and then major brands were putting you as the face.
48:19 I mean, that was a big deal, and that paved the way for a lot of other fighters to get those endorsement deals. Was that something that was intentional, or, you know, how did that happen? Or is it because you’re… I mean, you’re kind of a clean-cut martial artist, George. Did that help at the time?
48:36 When I was in the beginning of my career, even in the UFC in the beginning, we didn’t have the recognition that fighters have now. We were not seen as real athletes. I remember when I beat Matt Serra in Montreal at the Bell Center. I still have an article in the newspaper, fast food it, and the gym, and at try, sir. It says, like, among the cover of the newspaper, like this, on top of Matt Serra, and it’s written like, “The Barbarian overthrown,” the Montreal Canadiens record assistance, because I saw he is our national sport here.
49:21 So yeah, at that time it was really bad, but I always always believed that if we want to be treated as real athletes, we need to act like real athletes. So that’s why I started to wear suits at press conferences. At the beginning some guys were making fun of me, but now it’s funny, because a lot of times it’s mandatory. They want us to be in suits, and I understand that, because that’s how it is. You’re an athlete, but you want to…
49:54 442|443| You want, you know, as a brand you want to have a good dimension and you know you want to attract other company to sponsor you, so that’s how the money come from as well. So in a business standpoint it makes sense. What’s it like dealing with the UFC as a company, Dana White as a promoter, and what advice do you have to athletes that are just getting into the sport? Yeah, well, business is business. You know, you, when you sign something, before you sign something, don’t sign it to make a favor.
50:29 You know, sign it because it’s right for you, because when you sign it, it’s your, it’s Sur fault. You decide to sign it, and I made many mistake in my career, but I was fortunate. I met great mentors in business as well, not only in training, and they took it, took charge of me, and I’m very lucky, because a lot of these guy are my personal friend as well. I knew them before I made money, so I, they were my friend, and now they jump on board and business with me to sort of guide me which route to take.
51:06 But I know that a lot of fighters unfortunately don’t have that chance, and I understand, you know, former as a, I’m a fighter as well. You know, I’m a martial artist, but I compete as a Martin mix, as a fighter, and we have no guideline. You know, if you’re a basketball player or a key player or football player, you have certain guideline, you know? You, there’s mentor that will lead you to certain paths that are good for you, but in fighting it’s a world of sharks, and it’s normal.
51:40 The organization is there to makes money, so if they propose you a deal and you’re, you’re signing it, it’s not their fault, it’s your fault, because you’re saying a bad bill. So fighter they should take responsibility for stuff like that. What they signed, it’s their responsibility as much as it is to train and to be in shape, to educate themselves on the subject. And unfortunately I still believe fighters are on are underpaid, and the condition are bad.
52:12 It could be much better, but it’s not only the fault of the, of the organization, is that all the fault of the fighter as well? They need to make the right decision. You unify. So for this, OK. And what about Dana White?
52:27 Martial art. It’s a sport where, you know, we’re very vocal, very loud when we fight, we fight hard. Even goes in the public. You know, when, when we say good things, we say good things, but we’re very vocal. That’s how our business is right, you know, and you see it on social media, knows a lot of things has been said between Dana White and I, you know, because they know I works for the best of ism’s rest.
52:54 I as a person, as an athlete, work for the best of my interest. So we’ve been very vocal, and things I don’t think they know. I know is a good person, Isaac as a fighter, I hold my freedom and my wealth to Dana White, because he took the UFC from nothing, and he made it, you know. We made it, and what it is right now. So of course I have to be, you know, I have to give it, give that to him, you know.
53:25 But as a fighter it’s my responsibility that if they know I’d propose me a deal, if it makes sense and add my team, I team that I trust, I’ll be charged this. It’s not good. I’m not gonna sign it because they know it is nice or he’s bad, you know? I know it when it’s business, business is business. So then I wait for me now.
53:46 We’re friend, everything is cool, but at that time it was hard because we were fighting for our own interests, you know, way right? When you left in 2013, you were very vocal about steroids in the sport and the fact that nothing was being done about it. And let’s be honest, nothing was being done about it then, and people don’t remember there was no USADA back in ’13, and a lot of people say that, you know, it’s they started testing, you know, because people like you, just, you know, we’re vocal about it and left.
54:16 How much of that was the reason you left? I mean, as a fighter you see things behind the scenes that we don’t see. You hear the whispers, you know, the trainers. You kind of know what’s going on, and I know that was something you always talked about and it bothered you. So maybe you can speak on that and have things changed today?
54:35 Yeah. I can’t, and I will never reveal to the public, because I don’t want to point fingers at nobody, because you know I believe if you take out one person that cheat, like another one will come. I think it need to change. They need to change the system, and they did so at the time before I took my long lay layoffs. My break had a lot of problem with that.
55:09 I was, I wanted to fight to implement testing into the sport, because you know it’s not a game. You know what we do? It’s a, it’s a sport, but it’s a very dangerous sport. It’s a, if you have drugs on top of that, the result can be a catastrophe, and I felt like the UFC knew it, but at the time didn’t wanna do anything about it. That’s why I, I was crazy.
55:38 I felt like I was fighting not only against my opener, I was fighting against the system as well, and and the entire organization, and it’s like everybody knew about it, but nobody said anything. So in in a way I took it took a long time off, and I’m glad that I don’t know if it did make a difference, but I think it did. You know that UFC made a, you know, change their stance on that, and how they they have USADA. It’s not perfect, still it’s not, but it’s much better than it is, and as you can see, a lot of their hero has fallen from that, because I knew, I knew that they would have done that.
56:18 A lot of the big name would have fall, you know, and they, it was very dimensional at first for the UFC, I believe, because a lot of their headliners, they they fall, but but on the long-term I believe it would be, it’s a good thing, because it will add prestige to the organization and to the sport. Do you think steroids help in fighting? Oh I have trained with guys that are some time on cycle, like it’s they’re not even the same guys. I like their, their, their strength, their recuperation, their power, their clarity, because when you fight and you get tired all your repertoire of techniques narrows down, because you, when you get tired or always goes back at what you’re the most comfortable to do what you do.
57:19 Did you do mess? So if you get a better stamina, a better physical attribute, it will make you, you know, it will make you a better fighter, a hundred percent. The thing is, the thing is, fighting mixed martial art, it’s a sport that you cannot measure. It’s a, you can only speculate like it’s more subjective. But take for example 100 meters or Olympic lifting, or any sport that you have an instrument of measure, of measurement, that you can measure, like the cyclist, you know, it makes an incredible huge difference.
57:58 It’s, it’s huge. It’s night and days. So if you take a guy that, instead, and the same guy who is not a Serie. It’s not even close, and I don’t blame the person, because the person sometimes, it’s a, it makes a difference in between millions of dollar or nothing, or getting into USC or not. So it’s not to point finger at a specific individual, is to, you need to change the system, and by changing the system, that’s, that’s the solution to the problem right now.
58:33 We’re talking about steroids. What about other things like high level nootropics? And then if we go into the future, it’s like gene therapy. I mean, there’s probably a lot, a lot of different substances that can affect the fight, or even a strong nootropic could change a fight. Right?
58:48 Absolutely. They have even scarier than in the, in shooting, you know? Really? It’s, and everything, it makes it make you just better. That’s where the technology is, and a hundred percent.
59:02 Have trained. I’ve worked out with many guys that are there openly, sailor than I. Oh, I’m on this, I’m on that. They’re not even the same person when they are, in words, when they aren’t. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s a huge huge game-changer.
59:19 And I am NOT against the steroid. I mean, I mean, in a way I’m against it if you sign a contract that’s simply that you will play fair, and you shake the guy’s hand, you say, I’m gonna be, I’m gonna play fair. I’m not gonna use any advanced and fair advantage. However, if you, if you’re older and you’re not competing, I don’t know, your health suffers and you need something to boost, to increase your quality of life. Of course go for it.
59:50 Hundred percent not against it. I’m against it when it’s for the sport and it’s cheating. I’m not against technology when it can increase the quality of life of someone. Okay. So back to fairness.
1:00:03 That’s the martial artist in you, isn’t it? Yes, it’s, it’s part of our martial art idea, ideally you know, it’s be fair, you know? It’s very important, and I remember, I think, at the press conference with Nick Diaz, I think you were upset because he was upset with you, but you thought he misunderstood something you said, and I could see the Mart. I could see the martial artists Georges St-Pierre coming out because you, you know, a lot of people would have just trash talked over, and like Bee Sting, but you were like, I thought I thought I remember you saying, it’s like, no no.
1:00:32 I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that. Is that true? Yeah. Using it as a known as dedicate someone, a you but I’m coming from a French background, and I didn’t understand that because he’s from a different area that I, that I live in where I learned my English, so I thought he was telling me that my biological mother was a prostitute or something like this.
1:01:10 That’s why I got as a bad, and so during that interview, but it turns out that, anyway, that’s a, we express himself. Okay. Got it. All right. So that was, those were your clarifying, and you, you have a famous line that you will your always be famous for George, and that is, I am not too impressed with your performance.
1:01:29 Am I saying that right? Victory. I want revenge, and at that time I wanted to do something to promote, because I wanted to whether a title shot against Matt, use an A, and they came on the Octagon, and yeah It was a mistake. I should not have done that. Part of this, and are you, I go happies Stein, you go, you go, you go, even the guys were like, tried to force me to promote the fight, but it turns out that now it’s, it’s a, it’s a line that it stick to me.
1:02:11 Take not impressed by your performance. Because you said that in the cage with Matt, there, right? And then he got upset. I did. Yes, I did.
1:02:21 I’ve heard a fight with BGF, and I believe, and that now it’s back to me. It’s everybody remember it for that, who the fighters thank. I, after I went to see Matt Serra in the locker room, I apologize. It’s all I’ve done it, and they know it. They know it.
1:02:43 It was kind of angry, said, why are you apologized for, its, it’s try to promote. We’re trying to promote the fight. Yeah. I know. I just, you know, it felt bad.
1:02:53 The guy, you know, we just win a fight and I’m, you know, they, you know, going, going up there and, you know, doings doing something bad, the martial artist in you comes out. Do you stay in touch with any of those guys? And who are the names from your era that you will always remember, that you will look up to, that you will salute, you know, especially as you get older in life. I have a lot of guys that, you know, the reason why I had a lot of success, I believe it’s because I have learned from, from my predecessor, all the great fighter, Royce Gracie, dancer Vern, Mark Coleman, Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell, there’s so many guys, elector character, Karev.
1:03:40 I’ve learned from all those guys, you know. These guy weren’t the real guys, you know, in the beginning, when they asked, don’t wait, last, and the pay day was miserable, and they paved the way for every one of us, and we should be, as a fighter should be all respectful for this guy. Thank you. There’s a line from, my, I’m Stein says, we stand, I stand on shoulder of giants, and it’s true in mixed martial artists. True fighters were, were good back then, but they, they were even better in my time, and now they’re even better than when I was competing in the future they will be even better.
1:04:16 So I believe as time goes, guys get better, not, not the athletes get better, but the technology get better in terms of knowledge. I remember when I wanted to learn something, I needed to go and physically be there to learn it. Learn to Jitsu in the class. Now I can learn a technique with my, with, with my iPhone, watching it from someone teaching it in Japan, for example. So technology and change everything.
1:04:44 And I remember I was on the plane and I watched a documentary on the, the Sprinter Jesse Owens and the grass. The Sprinter we have in Canada he say medal and the Olympic Games, the grass, and they made him run with the same shoes as Jesse Owens, with no starting block, same material, same surface, and just you and beat him. So it’s not that the fighter get like the athlete get better. Is that technology makes us for called better. Hmm, and who do you like watching now, and and and how do you see MMA evolving in, say, the last eight years?
1:05:33 I mean, it is changed. Oh, I don’t watch all the fight, but I watch. There’s a lot of guys I like to watch reason I like to watch, for drama, I like to watch Cody called victim. You like to create a lot of drama. I like that.
1:05:53 I like camera Huisman. Is an incredible fighter, every skill Israel Adesanya, Jon Jones, energy. So Joe, there’s a lot of good guy. Francis, and ya know, he has so much power. You never know when the fight, you know.
1:06:13 So I don’t watch it all. I’m under Nunes is another one I really enjoy watching. She’s to me like the best right now of all time, the best female fighter of all time. She’s, she seems unbeatable. Khabib know my gamma nerve.
1:06:27 So I don’t watch it all, all the fight, but I watch the one that I’m, that I want to watch. I like to watch the best and to learn from them, how they they do their things, and how did you learn? Because you know you were known for getting the best mentors, and you were known for going to, you know, train with Greg Jackson in New Mexico, to obviously trained with Frost AHA, be a Tristar. You know, jet Danaher said you used to drive down like four hours or six hours just to train with him, and you would assemble these kind of dream teams to build up to your camps.
1:07:03 I mean, that was very intentional by you. Is that something that you had to learn how to do, or was this just obvious? No. I wanted to increase my skills, so the idea is, when you’re out of competition, when you’re not in competition time, when you’re a few months away from competition, you, you want to work on your skills, like unboxing, so I had the chance to add incredible boxing trainers and as far with many world champion boxing. You want to do something in different areas of the sport.
1:07:37 Like boxing is only one area. It’s a very limited but specialized area. Jiu-jitsu, same thing. I travel all around the world. Jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, karate, wrestling.
1:07:50 However, when, when this, the fight get close, when you’re, you’re, you’re less then I would say, two months away from a fight, now your training shift from a more, more global sort of approach, you know. So you mix everything together, so you, when you’re away from a fight, you do everything very specialized sport, you know, in every discipline to get better, but when you get close to a fight, now you put it all together, and what does it help your transition, because what people don’t understand is, when you’re fighting, this is a sports and in itself, you know? It’s not, people think, oh, I know they’re wrestling.
1:08:39 It’s only wrestling that you just suit you if you make a jiu-jitsu competition Yin you allowed the strike. I guarantee you, it might not be the jiu-jitsu world champion that will win that jiu-jitsu striking competition. It will be a different guy at an ibrid type of and it’s same thing in in mixed martial art, you know. Same thing in boxing. We do boxing, but you just add for example, clinch, and you allowed to clinch the part, it won’t be the boxing, the Korean boxing champion, when you change the rules, you changed a bit the games, and and I know that.
1:09:14 So I always strongly believe that to increase my skills in mixed martial art, to mix it all together, so I was not the best wrestler, the best striker, or the best submission artist, but I was very good at footing all putting it all together and and making it, and I know, and make a making it during the fight, make it a momentum that I open, it couldn’t keep up with, and that’s how I was good at this. Was your secret to success, because yes, he saw, we saw you take down division 1 wrestlers. We saw you beat up black belts and Jiu Jitsu on the ground.
1:09:57 We saw your jab look better than you know anything in a boxing ring, and but that’s because of the threat of each of the other disciplines, right? Yes, I was, I was beating up strikers and striking, not because I was a better pure striker than them, because they were afraid of my takedown. I was beating wrestlers in wrestling, not because I’m a better wrestler than them, because they were afraid of my striking. In in a way, you know, so jiu-jitsu same thing.
1:10:28 I’d be much better, much more decorated, guiding me that I am in jiu-jitsu because not because of my jiu-jitsu, because I were afraid of my striking. So when I used to fight someone out and I wanted to get the fight where I want, I always make him think of something else, so I was using it as a decoy, you know. The keys in fighting is you want to avoid the fight where the guy is strong, and take him where is the weakest. That’s why that’s what everybody is thinking, but sometimes I was doing here.
1:11:02 I was doing the opposite, using a decoy, and that’s why we people never understood it, and it leads me to have a lot of success, because they didn’t understand what I what I was doing. A lot of guy that we’re all George is a good wrestler, because if what everybody’s down but what they did not understand, it’s, it was not only my rest that was helping me. For the technology was my karate, buy in and out movement, my decoy, my move, my all the distraction that I was using to hide what I really wanted to do to my opponent, and that all came from you, because you’re thinking all the time and coming up with these ideas.
1:11:39 I did not wait, wake up one morning thinking of it. I, it’s, it’s part of my bag of my of my experience, of my wide range of experience in martial art, of all the knowledge that I gained from all my great mentors. You know, I had a lot of great trainers, but add great great teachers as well, and I was very fortunate, because you have in sport of mixed martial art and every discipline you have trainers, but you have teachers. This is not the same thing, and I had the chance to have both.
1:12:16 What are some of the names that come to your mind when you think about those teachers? John Danaher, at her feet as a heavy Filner’s, Greg Jackson, Freddie Roach. There’s so many, so many, and have stuff good stuff, me do some other, know, nobody knows he was there in the beginning. Took me underneath his wing, and and he’s is quite a character, you know. He’s a yeah He didn’t have a lot of success at mixed martial art, unfortunately.
1:12:48 Yeah, many injuries, but he was a very good mentor. He was probably one of the best mentor for me, as in the beginning he gave me confidence, and and that’s what I needed to, to have it, that in the beginning of my career, and you know, that ever gave me the knowledge, and Fred Freddie Rhodes gave me the knowledge. Great, Jackson Faris helped me put in putting it all together, and yeah. I cannot. I’m very grateful for that.
1:13:18 I was, you know, to be successful in a sport, you know, he, you know, I was, you know, I was born a good athlete, of course. Had, you know, I work really hard, but I was fortunate. I was very lucky to, to cross paths with these incredible mentors that I had, but you also have to have the confidence and audacity to walk in the ring and the cage and think, I’m gonna take just [expletive] check down at will. You know, I’m gonna beat these guys at their own game.
1:13:47 You must be confident in yourself that you can do that. Yeah. But confidence, confidence. It’s a, it’s a little bit of a choice. You, you, it’s a state of mind.
1:14:02 I mean, you can, you know, your mind can dictate your physic. You know, if you want to drink, your mind tell, oh, I’m going to grab a glass of water and drink it. But also I do the, the opposite before a fight, even though I’m scared to death. I’m worried. It’s really unbearable, how bad it is.
1:14:24 It becomes something, what I do is I put a mask on, a little bit like, a like a superhero, like you have a Bruce Bruce Wayne/Batman. So deep down inside I’m like, oh my god, I can’t wait. I can’t believe I’m there. That’s how I feel every, before every single fight. I’m scared to death, the edge of cry, and even I remember back in the day with, with David Lewis.
1:14:54 Oh, a famous fighter in it in the mixed martial art, he paved the way for me before every fight when we were even in the beginning in TKO back in the day, we used to go eat after the weigh-in and the night before the fight and tell each other, okay, this is my last one. We were on the edge of crying, like it’s been like this since the beginning, so so it’s just not normal, you know? Too good to feel like that, because you have so much on the line, you know.
1:15:26 I think Cowboy Cerrone said the same thing when he’s walking down to the cage, he’s thinking what the hell am I doing this? This is ridiculous. What I’m about to do, then what you do is, you put on a mask, so when you’re about to perform you’re pretending as you’re walking in that it’s impossible for you to. I have a ritual that I do before every fight, very few people knows that. Before every Friday when the guy comes to get me in the locker room, I go in the bathroom.
1:16:01 I say, okay, give me 15 seconds. I go in the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror. I lock the door behind me so nobody sees. I like I used to put the bandana in the SEM.
1:16:12 Now it’s no more. I look at myself in the mirror, and I’m scared, but I’m putting a mask. I’m like, I’m the best, I’m gonna be, does get that guy, and I’m start complimenting myself and I, even though I know I do it and it’s not really real as I’m doing it, I start to believe in it, and then when I open the door I’m not the same person as that, as I was, and I play the game. I even play the game with my trainer, even though I’m scary, I would never say it to my trainer, as that, oh my god, I’m scared, I’m faking it, like fake it until you make it, and that’s the key, you know, lose if you win big or lose big, but go hundred percent.
1:17:00 That’s how I shouldn’t be done in the fight game. And there’s another ritual you do when you get in the cage, and it’s got to do with twisting nipples. What’s that all about? Come on, George. So This is, sometimes people, they get, when they get under the spotlight, they lose sense of what, what is the goal, what is the objective.
1:17:24 And I use this just to remember, okay, and am I where I’m here, and think of something that has nothing to do with what is going on, so it make you aware of what is going on, and help you also with with with how to deal with the stress, because when I’m fighting, if you’re too much focus. If you’re too much focused, it’s not good. You know, you’re too much focus on it, you lose time of what’s going on, you, you, you will forget how much time left is there, out the instruction of your coach, your instruction of this coach, and if you’re not focused enough, obviously you’ll, you know, you might get cut with something that you haven’t seen.
1:18:12 So when I get into the fight, I’m in the perfect zone. I know exactly where my my friends are sitting. I know where the clock is. I know how much time left. I hear my coach.
1:18:24 I hear his coach. I know exactly. AB, I’m in perfect control and bio on my environment. If I’m to focus on the fight, I won’t be in perfect control. So it’s very important that you know you can’t be distracted, but you cannot put too much too much focus on one thing.
1:18:45 You need to be relaxed focus, but relaxed, and the perfect zone. Okay, and twisting the nipple helps you get back to the present, focus on being you and your body and focus less on the guy in front of you. You have to kill and all the other things, the ground, a little bit of stress that is pretty hard to explain. I mean, you put a lot of underlying. So he makes you just breathe.
1:19:14 Okay. Oh, I have to do this, it’s just a reset button. Okay, what was it like when you retire from fighting in ’13 and you got four years to yourself. You know, you’re a really, you know, you’re a real cerebral guy. You have all sorts of interests, from you know dinosaurs to Jacque Fresco to Wim Hof to aliens.
1:19:37 Was this like a welcome break, and you were like, now I get to go explore things and you know all that, or was it all so anxious and difficult to be away? Yeah. I believe it’s because my, my, my obsessive nature when I do something, I just focus 100% on it, so when I took a break from the sport I was able to go on different side, different takes. I’m a big fan of paleontology, you know, dinosaurs and all instinct animals. I’ve read a lot about it for many years, and I was able to travel the world.
1:20:13 I, I even participated in a TV, TV show, it’s called Boneyard, that I was the oath, and I was able to go in a different site and learn about dinosaurs. I always very interesting why dinosaurs been different. I met many people too. I still have a lot of project in my mind, things and places that where I wanted to go. It has nothing to do with the carers, just for a personal knowledge, you know?
1:20:38 Emma, I’m an athlete, but at first I believe I’m more of a geek. I’m a Nerds sort of speech, you know, and then part of it, of who I am, why dinosaurs my boys. Like, I mean, when I was young, I remember I liked monsters when you’re a kid. I liked to draw monsters, and wet looks more than a monster than a dinosaurs is the thing that looks to me the most of a monsters, then any getting anything else, and it’s really, it exists before I guess 66 million years ago.
1:21:14 So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a true monster that I’ve lived here before. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve two young boys. They’re three and four years old, and they loved dinosaurs, loved dinosaurs, and I think little, little boys will love dinosaurs for another thousand years. There’s something about it, right? Because they’re real but they’re not here.
1:21:34 They moved over, set, and also the fact that when you studied the past, it makes you understand the present and help you predict the future, and that’s what I like about the science of paleontology. What else did you get to do, and those years off that you always wanted to do? You know, I mean, I’m involved in the big project now, add acting class, have done a fuse, a few things when I was fighting, but I was not focusing on bees. Now I look at it, and I’m not that I am embarrassed, but I could have done much better, so I’m having acting classes, because I’m working on a big project, right now, unfortunately, I can’t, I can’t say the name and everything, cause of contractual things and because of coronavirus.
1:22:31 Now it’s on old, but it will start again, and it will come out in the supposedly in 2020, so it’s a big big project, and I put a lot of em of effort into it. When I get obsess about something, I, I wanted to become good, and it’s very important for me, so this one would be better, and much better than anything before. All right, I’m excited. What’s the key to being a good actor? Well from what I’ve learned and hear from the best is to listen.
1:23:03 When you listen, when you, you’re playing the listening part is the most important. Okay. I remember, I hear, I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger talk about acting, and he, he said, you know, his whole life he shut off his emotions, you know, to be the best and to compete and to be a tough guy, and he said when he started acting, he had to actually almost go back and open up those emotions and try to tap into the things that he had shut off for so long and try to be empathetic and all that stuff.
1:23:34 Are you finding that to be true? Yeah. At leat, especially fire can be very good actors. That’s why I believe a lot of fighters now, or you know, you see a lot of athlete WWF and an athlete in fighting sport, Trent, Trent, transit change to acting after date career because we’re used to AP’s very strong emotion, and we all act every fight that I add, a Mac, I’m acting in a way, deep down inside I’m scared of, like, oh my god, what the hell I’m doing here, but I’m going to the ring like like I’m confident, which is total BS, because I’m scared to death, but we all put a mask in in our lives, you know, sometimes you have to, to be diplomatic and be with someone that you don’t like, but you force yourself to be nice, things like this, so everybody can relate to that.
1:24:32 Some, some field of work has to do more often, often than others, but in my job as a, as I was competing in F, in a fight sport, I had to do it a lot, you know? It was add to act a lot, in a way. So I just used those emotion that I have learned, putting it into acting and putting it in a good way, in and in the right, in the right configuration. Why did you come back and fight Michael? I come back because I didn’t like the way I left the sport the first time, and I came back because also the UFC change their politics, and I told myself that if I come back and they change your political welcome back, and also that I wanted to, to address the three criticism that I had, you know, the, the the beam that make the fight more exciting, fighting the champion and a higher weight less, and finish, you know, by KO or submission, and as these are were the real motivation behind it, and what next, you, you relinquish the belt.
1:25:45 Obviously you were dealing with the, with the colitis and some, some challenging things but how do you feel now? It feels like you don’t need to prove anything, but what’s it, what’s it like? Do you think sometimes about fighting again? I, I was diagnosed with ulcerative. It was very bad.
1:26:03 Very severe, crown blood, a lot of blood. It was so bad, I thought I had cancer. It was very, very bad, but I told myself, I said, you know what, I’m gonna at least make this last party that I wanted to do and finish my career good. You know, if it works, if it works like that, you know, it’s my last one. Because of that it’s cancer, but, but it turns out, after addict, it’s called a colonoscopy, they put a camera inside, and they, that got diagnosed with colitis, then I met a doctor, Jason Fong, who treat his patient with the diabetic patient with, with fasting program, and I start to learn to read a lot about fasting intermittent fasting and prolonged fasting, and it makes a huge difference for me.
1:26:54 It really changed my life, and I regret that I have not learned this these information before earlier in my life, because I believe it’s, you know, the thing is with fasting, not a lot of people make money with fasting, you know, you don’t make money with someone that, that doesn’t eat or it doesn’t follow a regime or doesn’t get any supplement. So there’s no reason why people will promote it, and the more I read about it, the more I realize it’s been a long you gain by learning about it and using it. Yeah.
1:27:38 All those old wives tales, most of them turn out to have truth in them, right? And it’s been, it’s been woven into all of the religions of the past, right? And it’s there for a reason, and you, you said that you, you noticed a lots of great increases, not to, not to mention your stomach, but your bone density went up, everything, right? Not only that, what I did is I went in a stem, in a cat scan, to take, you know, all the measurement because I wanted 12 evidence of what kind of changes he would have makes on my body, and my biggest concern was my muscle mass.
1:28:18 I didn’t want to lose muscle mass, because a lot of the so-called nutritionist. They’re not, they’re not real nutritional, but they were like, they were promoting food supplement stuff, you know? There were like oh, you’re gonna lose your muscle. So I said, okay, I’m still gonna do it, for, you know, my stomach is gonna make me feel better, for my, something I want to see, how it make me feel, and So I went after my fight with Michael Bisping. I wanted a scam, and I, and I went back like two months after, only two months, not a lot, two months after, I’ve been, I was doing intermittent fasting 16/8, and as three time a year what I do also is, I do three days a water fast, three days fasting with a Malayan salt.
1:29:07 Okay, that’s what I do. That’s hot. I don’t tell people to do that, but that, that works for me, the best for me, for my person, just three days, sir. So I, I went through the scat in the scan after Bisping, and I went back two months after, and my biggest surprise, because I noticed that my, I lost weight, I lost about 5 pounds, but my biggest surprising, the result of the scan came back, and I found out that I’ve lost a lot of water retention, and the water retention was the biggest loss that I had.
1:29:41 I had a lot of water retention the fat percentage, I lost a percentage as well. I gained a little bit of muscle mass and bone density, so even though I was lighter on the scale, I was add more muscle, and so that make me read, makes me realize, is the extra weight that I try to put on when I fight, when I fought Michael Bisping, because I myself to eat like crazy, I follow a regime that I think helped me get sick was mostly water retention, so it make me realize that there’s a weight that you have as a person that makes you an optimal to perform athletic tasks, and that’s the weight that I am right now. I just wish I would have known that before you know, would you have walked in at 175 and fought Michael there?
1:30:36 Do you think you would have been just as effective? Well, if I would have known that, I would have just said I would have stayed the same as I am I would have fought, fight him. I’m 185. I walk around on 185,185 pounds, 186 pounds, OK. So I, when I’m in fight shape, 185 pounds, you know, and I mean I’m about always 185 when I wake up in the morning, 185.
1:30:59 I would not have changed. I would just, instead of, because I didn’t know that before, I’ve learned about fasting after my fight with Michael Bisping. I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t pay attention. For me was nonsense you know, I was, because I like everybody else I’m part of that culture. Or you train, you should take a protein shake.
1:31:21 Yeah, you, you know, like, which is okay too, but with with fasting it really helped me to feel better and sleep better, as well, and recuperate at less inflammation, as well, when I, after my hardcore training, just feel better generally, even for an athlete, it’s, it’s a big improvement for me. Wow, and so sixteen eight, so that means you’ll eat eight hours of the day, so if your first meal is at 10:00 in the morning, you’ll stop eating at 6 o’clock at night, that would be like you’re in a minute fast. Realize for me that sometime we’re conditioned to eat, not because we really need it, just because, it’s oh, it’s a dinner time, we eat, but you know, we don’t really need it, you know, and and the the longest fast that I’ve done, it’s five days, and I was training the first three days, I was training, and I’ve done a water fasts of five days because I was curious, you know.
1:32:21 I always like to push myself, but after five days I couldn’t sleep very well, because you become, I was a little bit hyperactive, you know, I felt like I was hungry and thinking too much about eating, so I, I decided to stop. And the good thing about fasting, you do it, and if you feel like you’re not feeling good, you just for me it works well. Everybody is different. Everybody it works well. And I suggest to people to, to look into it, to educate themselves on the subject of fasting, because it can change your life.
1:32:58 It really did change mine for the best, and I hope you will change yours as well. No, I appreciate that. I’ve had a lot of guests that have come on and talk about fasting. I think you’re right when you’re an athlete, you know, especially a mixed martial artist, it’s like you’re eating lots of protein every three or four hours, you’re always told, like you said, the protein shake, if you ever took a day off without food, you would think it would make your training suffer.
1:33:23 So it’s the last thing you’d ever consider when you’re a martial artist, but like you said, it ended up helping you, right? Yeah. Also, as a person, I don’t like to be dependent on things. So another, another thing that it did for me, it challenged me because I didn’t want to be dependent on the sugar, because I love, you know, I love sugar. I eat a lot of bad food sometime, and I, I’m not a good example to follow in terms of, of what I eat, maybe in when I eat, but what I smell always good.
1:34:02 And in the beginning when I started fasting was very hard because I was consumed to consume a lot of sugar, so I had a lot of it, you know, insulin spike. I was hungry all the time, and it was hard, it was for me, it was also a challenge to challenge myself of hour long. I can last, and you know, I also did it always with the supervision of, it of a doctor. I was in contact with someone that, that knows about it, and then give me the right, told me the right thing to do.
1:34:36 Yeah. I did a 36-hour water fast after I had a guest on who had done like a 30-day fast, and so I did it the next day, and I realized, like you said George, is that most of the time when I was eating I was eating not because I was hungry. I was eating because, if it’s a pattern or I was bored, or I wanted to stick something in my mouth that tasted good, but it wasn’t because I was hungry, and so once I fought back those urges, I realized that my whole relationship with food kind of changed, and I was like, most of the time I’m eating, it’s not for nutrition or hunger, it’s because it’s something I do, and it’s pleasureful, and sometimes it’s just kind of a, you know, because you’re bored, it’s a weird thing, your relationship.
1:35:18 Okay, absolutely, and I know for a fact that our ancestor in untargeted times, they didn’t eat three meals a day. He spent some time days without eating, and they survived, and also had a chance to travel all around the world. I went to Africa, and when I went to get to Kenya, in there’s a tribe there called the Masai they, they wake up in the morning and they drink milk and I think blood, and at night they eat, they eat meat, 99 percent carnivorous diet, and to me, then doesn’t make sense, you know?
1:36:07 That’s what they do, and I was shocked, and they look good, right? There, they, they’re beautiful people. Very beautiful people, and you guys are diseased? Are you sick? Cancer, things like this, you know, because you don’t eat a lot.
1:36:23 The thing that you eat are opposed to me, and they were like, now we were, and I look at a tree surgeon I mean, cause I’m deaf for these people, are, are, are normally, that’s because they live far from the hospital, and they get, they get a virus or something, or a disease, it can’t go to beyond time arrive on time for the treatment at the hospital. So that’s the main cause, and I thought it was fascinating. No So fasting really is still part of untargeted tribe face.
1:36:56 Ya know, it’s, it’s interesting when you start looking at other diets. I had a guest on that was a nutritionist that said something, and I haven’t even confirmed that, but he said, you know, in in the concentration camps during World War Two they examined a lot of the survivors, and they were severely mal mal mal nourished, but they didn’t suffer from the cancers and all these other diseases that sometimes overfed people suffered from. So it was like this weird data point where it was showing that maybe less food, or sometimes food, is giving us a lot of these diseases that, you know, we just accept in our health care system.
1:37:32 So I agree. I’m, that’s what I think as well. Yeah, but like you said, it doesn’t make anybody money when you fast, and you know, I’m starting to realize lately that, a, you know, a lot of what we, we see in our media is because it’s ultimately making someone money or giving them some controls. So it’s something to keep in mind, unfortunately it’s a, it’s a world that is driven by money. Everything we do, it’s, it’s driven by that.
1:38:17 That’s how we sour your, your, your old guests, Jacque Fresco, that’s what he was talking about. It was it was right, you know, the, the system, everything is based on money, and instead they should be based on resources, and you watched our interview with Jacque Fresco back in the day? Oh, yeah I, I mean, I’ve been a big fan of Jacque Fresco, of things and also, all we explain it, because I’m not a, you know, I’m not a psychologist, I’m ecologist, or, you know, I, but the way he explained it for normal people, it makes sense to me, and you know, I had the chance to meet him in person.
1:39:08 I went to Florida EDM, and he took time to answer questions to everybody, and a, it was just a great thinker. I think it’s inevitable that one day we need to wake up, as you would be, we live, we all have the same boat. The nature, mother nature, you know, otherwise if we don’t take care of mother nature in modern modern modern modern a nature will do something to wipe us out. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a planet. You know, it’s a living thing where we’re on the same boat.
1:39:42 Wake up. What do you see when you, when you look at the world, like, what, what Concerns you. What keeps you awake at nights, you know? What do you think we need to concentrate on as a, as a species is a lot of thing that keeps me awake at night. There, I have a hard time sleeping, like just because I’m thinking too much.
1:40:02 What happened when I died, or you know, I don’t know. I have these conversation but we often with John, John De Niro, whereas, you know, they have a background in philosophy, and we have very different thoughts about it, you know. I and that’s what keep me up at night. You know, I really wonder. I wish I would know, but I don’t.
1:40:30 It’s rightly crazy, and you know, I watch your Instagram feed, and you’re just doing everything you’re doing, this incredible, you know, hydro revolution pieces. You’re fasting, you’re doing breathing exercises, you’re doing these workouts out on the football fields that look like you’re training for a fight. I mean, it feels like you’re always learning, always pushing yourself. Yeah. I mean, it’s the, that’s our journey as a human being, you know, to, to learn, to get better even if I walk away, my physicality will get, will go down.
1:41:05 I will, you know, I want my my knowledge to increase, and that’s how I can maintain myself on top, in terms of not as an athlete, but in terms of a human being, to be on the edge in terms of my life, what’s, what is necessary for me to know to, to improve my well-being, and yeah, I’ve worked with Aqua Logic. It’s a company that are, it’s a new way and I designed the workout for them. It’s a, it’s certain that powerful, that does in the water, so it doesn’t affect your, your joint, you know, it doesn’t put load on your joint.
1:41:45 It’s strictly straight on the muscle fiber, and it works very good for performance, also for rehabilitation, also, I am, I’m with Love Hemp, you know, there’s this stigma that back when, oh, it’s only for the stoners. Yes, I got some Love Hemp water right here, and I use the, the CBD I like their product. They have a cream, you know, it’s, it’s a cream that really helped me when you have, like for example, inflammation, things like this, that’s one of my favorite product that they have.
1:42:19 I also work on a different, on an app that will be, that is available on your phone, and it’s called Strike, but it’s not only a, if this happen at a fitness app, on me, it’s, I will say, it’s more well-being app, because it’s not, you know, for me, my mine is Strike. The one I’m part of is Strike, so I’m teaching people how to fight and to be in shape in the same time, but there is an others that are more made for your needs, for your point, if you’re a seven year old person, you don’t want necessarily do the same training that I, that I’m teaching, so you have certain program that are made for you, and it’s also not only for the physical or the mental. There’s there’s book that they recommend for mental health, so it’s more a well-being application.
1:43:15 And I think that’s something that will revolution eight, the the well-being of a human being. It’s a new application. It’s never been done before. It’s accessible for two, for everybody Are you gonna fight again? I’m not, listen, I, I don’t think so.
1:43:34 I wanted to fight again before I took my retirement. We try to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov because the most exciting thing, which is not exciting but scariest thing which is which is that. What fighters, one, the most exciting things, it’s the scariest thing to do, and cannabis D as the aura of invincibility for me right now is the best fighter right now, the UFC, and we try to make the fight happen, and it did not happen. And you know, I turned the page. Now it’s, it’s over, it’s over, you know, it’s a you know, and it makes sense, and for, for your sister not wanting that fight, because let’s imagine if I, if, if I win the fight, and I’m old, you know.
1:44:30 Khabib still have many other fight left he’s younger than me. I leave, and they lose their investment, you know, so in the business standpoint it makes sense for them to keep the ball rolling, you know, but you know, maybe I, maybe I’m completely out of my mind, and I would have got there. I asked, you know, there is only one way to find out, you know, and the last person to know when it’s time to stuff is the fighter itself. So who knows, you know, I’m a confident guy.
1:45:01 I believe I would have done well. I would have go back, but yeah, now I am good where I am. Healthy. Well, sweet, and I don’t leave nothing else on her yet. Okay, but if Dana White, I called you up today and said Khabib is on in six months, you would say yes.
1:45:19 I would think about it, but it’s not only the fight, you know. A lot of gay or just sing that it’s not the fight is the contract, you know. If they make a contract that’s that’s the plate, that if I win I have to, to fight again, otherwise I’m liable for liquidated damage, you know, for like, you know, they want to lock me like a prisoner. This I doubt I agree, because unboxing, some guy they come go drop the title, who cares? It’s not, who cares, a problem with this, the system, the, you see the way they, they market, the market, the UFC, the Brenda, you have see that all, they don’t go, they don’t market, the market the fighters in boxing is Mayweather versus Canelo, bang, but in fighting it’s not, for example, Guzman versus Kobe called victim.
1:46:17 It’s UFC Nana, and then on the bottom you have these two guy that fights, so you know, in in there for their, the way they promote the sport, it doesn’t makes sense to give me another shot, because they know if I, if I win, I’m not interesting a fighting, I’m done with this, you know. I’ve done for so many years, I’m to go back in line and fight twice a year with this, I would like maybe one big fight, something special that is different. You know what, and I’m not even sure, you know, we need to be under my terms, can be you go back.
1:46:58 I’m done with this. I’ve done it for a long, long time, and I’m no, it doesn’t longer interest me. How old are you, George? No, I’m 39 years old, add I was 39 years old, mate. 19.
1:47:13 Okay, I’m getting it over, but I, but that would be a fight to get excited about, because it’s a fight to get scared about, right? So that’s the, that’s the thing. It would be special goosebumps. George, what are you doing inside? I train.
1:47:38 I always train, and people speculate he’s coming back. I don’t train because I have a, have a fight, or I’m planning to fight. I will always train, and even now I still get it when I go into a gym, I still get it, you know? I could fight if I wanted to. I’m not in fight shape, because you’re, you’re never in fight shape, and unless you get ready for a fight, it’s like a sprinter, you know a sprinter.
1:48:03 You cannot go, even if you’re a world-class sprinter, you cannot go under the 10-second mark. All you’re alone, it doesn’t work. I, that it goes like this, you know, some time you beat, some time you don’t. You can’t maintain the people that all your longer, though, it’s gonna hurt yourself. I’m the same way.
1:48:20 The way I train, I train smart I don’t make wars that you don’t. When it’s time to rock and roll, I go hard, but then after, I go down, and then when it’s time to fight again, I go, well, that’s how it is, and I will, it will be possible for me to fight again, for sure, if you talk about the physicality part of the game, but sometime I, when I wake up in the morning or I go in bed at night, I’m thinking about it. I can do that drama things. I don’t want to do it, but after I get out of training at the gym, now I’m like, I could do it again, or I’m watching a fight.
1:48:58 I’m like, man, I could beat this guy. So my state of mind is not stable. No, it’s perfect for a promoter, that state of mind. What are you doing in ten years from now, in twenty thirty? What do you think Georges St-Pierre is doing with his life?
1:49:15 What kind of projects are you working on? What’s going on where are you, where are you living right now? Right now I’m working on a big project in acting. It’s, it’s enough to, it was enough to career in having class, having some class many times a week, actually I’m working very hard on this, and yeah, it will come out in 2020, and people will be very, very surprised. It just sucks that I can’t promote it and talk about it because they don’t want me to, and it’s part of my contract, but I’m very excited for this, guys.
1:49:57 All right, it will, it will, it will be big, very big. Okay, and what about 10 years from now? What are you doing? Are you an accomplished actor are you well? You don’t even seem, you don’t seem to want to train fighters.
1:50:12 That doesn’t seem to be something you want to do? What do you think you want to do? It’s not, it’s hard for me to Train fighter because I’m so obsessive, I’m so, I pay attention to the detail, and when I train fighters sometime it drive me nuts. It drives me completely insane because some guy they don’t make as much as me, the effort to correct certain of the detail, they want to cut corners and things like this, and some guys can succeed with these method, my method works for me, it works brilliantly, but doesn’t, it doesn’t mean will work for everybody, and a good coach, like for example, I, if I take for a score example, for us is very as at that thing himself.
1:51:03 John is the same ways. Freddie Roach, same thing. All the great coaches are very good at adapting themselves, their athlete, to make the best of their athlete to come out. I’ve been doing my way my entire career, and my woody was working well, so have a very hard time at that thing to someone that has a complete different ways that I am of doing things. Maybe it will work for the athlete if he’s doing it my way, but maybe it won’t, because we’re not the same person.
1:51:38 We have different brains, different physicality, different, you know, the way we do things. So that’s for this reason I think I don’t think I will be a good trainer, you know? We could, could be good to teach a seminar things like that, but to really focus on that on a full full-time schedule, it’s not really my thing, and I don’t love it as much as this, you know. I would rather learn about paleontology and things like this, instead of teaching and live in a gym, I will go, go completely insane.
1:52:07 Most of my friend are are not fighters. Most of my friend, or they have different jobs, you know? They, I know, I really hang out with fighters, you know. I like it when I train, then I, I need to get out and get some fresh air, and I need to do to change my mind. Okay, what scares you, George?
1:52:25 And it’s a lot of things that scares me Death, that I guess is that they’re worse, that, why there for me, and, or someone that I love, death I think because the insecurity of it is, I don’t know what, what happened. I mean, what do you think happened there? There is religion that comes into play, but I’m not a religious guy, you know? I’m not an atheist either. I would say, it, man, I believe we’ll, even if we live in the material world, you know.
1:52:57 And I don’t know if there is a spiritual ro my. I, I hope So I, I don’t have the good evidence of it, but I hope so, and Farris. These are things that I talk with my friend that I have a background and philosophy all the time in a good argument. Is the reason why I don’t know, is have. May everybody can relate to that?
1:53:24 For example, we always, all of us, pretty much have one day made, one night made a dream that it seems so real that we think it’s real, but when we die we wake up, you know? Like, I’m sure you have made a dream like where you die, you wake up, but maybe we live, we living the same situation, maybe we live our life, and it seems very real, but one thing, I’m gonna wake up. So for this reason, I’m like, I’m thinking, I’m like, maybe there is something after life, maybe were not only material, maybe we are, maybe we, or not.
1:54:00 I’m an agnostic. I do that, no, I wish I’m wrong, and there is a spiritual Rome. I wish I really hope so. But the, the evidence are not very strong, and 2 to 4 that, so with my heart I hope, but with my mind, I’m like, I don’t know if it makes sense. So it’s hard.
1:54:24 I’ve been between, so to speak, have you ever experimented with, you know, psychedelics or ayahuasca or anything like that, that maybe shows you my life? I, you know, of course, I’m an athlete. I never use drugs I’m not like against people that use it, you know. Either I don’t, you know, I, I, you know, some people, they’re curious, they want to make certain experience, but it could turn bad, you know, if they became a dick, addicted to it. But yeah, I never did it.
1:55:01 I, you know, I know, I know, I read the comment of certain people that maybe the exit, the experience, and they said they, they went into a different Rome, so to speak, so, but I once again we have no evidence that, if it’s because there is another or if it’s the, their brain, their physics, the physics of their, the chemistry of their brain that make them filled that waste. So that’s the, that’s a big question. You know, it’s very hard to know. The only thing I can relate this just the story I just told you about the dream, when I wake up, you know, maybe I will win because I’ve lived.
1:55:42 I’ve lived it once, maybe I will live it again, but the other things I do not know, and that’s what but that’s one of the thing that keep me up at night. Yeah. These are good questions, you know. This is the human game. How I wish, I wish we will know, maybe one day we will, we just, we just released a movie about my ayahuasca experiences in Costa Rica from two years ago.
1:56:08 It’s called Reconnect. I’ll send you a copy, or it’s on YouTube, and and I have great people with me like Dennis McKenna and Sadhguru and Gabor Maté and Dr. Jordan Peterson and all these people that talk about it as well, and even people from Imperial College in London that do all the fMRI brain scans to try to figure out what’s actually going on. But for me it was a, it was this, it was the single most profound experience of my whole life, one of these ceremonies, and it showed me a lot but I do believe it actually is in your brain, the chemistry, but some people think there’s other things.
1:56:43 So I would say, in the right situation, with the right shaman, it’s definitely something worth doing before you die. That’s what I would say George, yeah, yeah, and it’s like also, the eye is a computer can become self-aware of physics, his own existence, you know, before we never thought it wouldn’t be possible. Now Elon Musk, and somehow those great genius, they’re saying that you have to be careful with artificial intelligence, because they could, you know, it can be aware of their, you know, so what is consciousness?
1:57:19 It makes you real I realize, like people say that their soul, the country consciousness, what it is, is it something that is material in your brain, the manifestation of your brain, or it’s something really that is in a sort of speak, like spiritual. I don’t, I do not know. Maybe we’ll, maybe we will in the future, maybe the technology will reach a point that we will found out about new things that, that is very fascinating. Yeah, and we will and with Neuralink, what Elon Musk is doing, I think we’re gonna start to learn.
1:57:50 I’ve had people in the studio that say, you know, there is no intuition, it’s just pattern recognition, and the, you know, and when we understand that with computers, we realize humans are just, you know, a computer in that sense, and then other people say it’s a feeling, it’s a consciousness, its energy, and that kind of thing. So I think we will know a lot in the next 50 years a lot. Yeah, you, you, you had there when you had Jacque Fresco. I remember he says something that changed my way of thinking.
1:58:18 He was talking about determinism. He says we think we may, we make a choice but, and I, and I realize, like, I changed my mind on that, because I, I thought at the choice that’s all right. Todd, when I was young, you know, but I am convinced now that he is right, and in a way that he believes that everything is the result of the causality, and the choice that I think I made, it’s actually, it’s not a choice. There is no free will. It’s the cause and effect, and by definition, if there is a cause, there is no free will, that, which is pretty weird to think of.
1:58:58 It’s make me, give me, yeah, I remember him saying that it’s very ego destroying to realize when you say there that Santa Claus does not exist, and yeah, a very crazy good argument about it. I, and you could, I mean, I’m, I’m not as smarter, and I’m not a smart guy like, like, like him I couldn’t think of an argument about what he says. Like, I couldn’t say it, couldn’t defeat what he says. I was like, man, he’s right, he’s right, and make me realize a lot of things change my way of thinking.
1:59:42 It’s good to try to destroy the ego every now and then, you know, because it, it, it plays such an part of our lives, and it filters everything that comes in and knots, and that’s what I would say about the psychedelic experience, because they’ve done fMRI studies, and they realize that it’s actually like taking the conductor out of the orchestra, and what happens is, is you notice things that you wouldn’t normally notice through your ego filter. That’s usually, you know, to keep you alive. What’s in it for me?
2:00:09 Da da da da da. And when you reduce that you can just kind of observe more, and so that’s kind of what that experience does for me, and you know, wow you had a guest, Graham, Graham Hancock, believed also that it was part of many realized realization of culture in the past. I believe he’s right, you know, and very interesting to learn about these stuff, you know. I’m fascinated ya know, Graham was been on many times and early on, and he’s talked a lot about all sorts of things, ancient civilizations and psychedelics, and yeah, he’s, he’s definitely inspired me in a big way.
2:00:52 I, Georgia I always finished by asking a couple questions. I want to ask you, if you could pick up a phone and call up the 20 year old Georges St-Pierre, yet that young man, if you could give him some advice based on everything you know, now, what would you tell him? I would with the show. George, thank you so much for the time. It’s been a real honor.
2:01:38 I look forward to this new you know, a Avengers type movie that’s coming up with you or whatever it is. Maybe it’s a drama, I don’t know, maybe it’s some serious drama. I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s good. It’s gonna be amazing to watch. I appreciate that thank you for the Love Hemp products.
2:01:55 I got the chocolates right here. I’m gonna have them afterwards, so I appreciate that and all your workouts look amazing. I want to try that, the, the height, the hydroponic stuff looks incredible, and I got to get my back flip and front flip game on. You know, I’ve been doing breakdancing. I thought I was cool at 49 doing breakdancing, but I got to get my flips on, so, so yeah, I appreciate that.
2:02:17 I mean, you know, everything you do, George, just exudes your character. I think people really appreciate you because you’re a martial artist. You know, it’s through your core. You have a sense of honor, a sense of duty, a sense of right and wrong, and that’s why I think you have so many fans all around the world, and you know that inspired me and so many people in the early days of the UFC, and you know, you’re still that guy today. So I just thank you personally in my own martial arts journey.
2:02:41 I know, you know, how’d your Gracie here in London. I trained there many times, and I trained with Danaher back in the day, and it’s just, it’s been, you know, you’ve been a big part of all of our lives, so thank you for that. I thank you for having me on the show, and yeah, man, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, I really enjoyed it, and thanks. It’s crazy to me that you were watching us back in the day, watching Jacque Fresco and watching Graham Hancock.
2:03:06 If someone had told me GSP was watching London Real six years ago, I wouldn’t have believed them. So it’s, I watch it all that means a lot. All right, George, next time we do this, you should be in London. Next time we do this and we’ll do it in person, and yeah, thanks so much. I’ll send you this documentary Reconnect so you can think about the ayahuasca and all the best, sir.
2:03:34 For sure, in person would be much better. It’s unfortunate now with the crisis we’re all, we’re all in the same boat, so I guess I’ll see you in a near future. All right, sounds good. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you, man.
2:03:48 I think they’re right. All right, bye-bye. Take care everybody, thanks so much. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Bye you
