Pete Irving - The Warrior Poet

Full transcript: Pete Irving on London Real

0:23 This is London Real. I am your host, Brian Rose, experiencing a wonderful post-ayahuasca glow. Mr Nick Gabriel is back from his conquest in the Mediterranean, and joining us today is Mr Pete Irving, who’s a mixed martial arts fighter with a record of “I’ve beat up a lot more guys than you have.” Is that a polite way of saying he’s lost a few? No, by no means.

0:51 Welcome, Pete. Welcome. You know, thank you. The thing I like about you, Pete, is that you would, no one would ever think you’re a fighter. You know, Jesus, did that.

1:02 I was, could kick in the comedy gene or something, man? Or the wannabe comedy. I don’t know, you know. No menacing tattoos, pearly white teeth. Can you tell us about your teeth and your art?

1:16 Yeah, yeah. It’s a funny thing. I know you’re saying I’ve sort of become the image of what I do, and I sometimes wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and think, who’s this guy? You know, it’s I mean, you know, everybody, I think, to a degree, anybody is going to look in the mirror and see themselves getting fatter or balder or wrinkled or something like that and think, “Life’s changed me.” And you know, maybe what’s on the outside doesn’t necessarily reflect completely what’s on the inside.

1:46 But I can trace back when I see myself, one of these headphones. I’ve got cauliflower ears, and my nose is Mig gr from one side of my face to the other, and then got broader. You’ve got scars and things like that, and of course my teeth being knocked out and I think, yeah, um, why did I do all this? It’s, what’s that line in Fight Club when he says “I don’t want to die without any scars”? Yeah, that’s a big line.

2:12 I mean, I look at the scars on me they’re smaller than the ones on yours, but I mean they all, I remember going through something, so for me it feels kind of good. I mean, do you have mixed feelings with a lot of that? Yeah, because some of them came from fights that I won and some came from fights that I lost. Um, actually, the majority of punishment came from training, not from the actual combat itself. Okay.

2:33 Um, it’s, I’ve rarely been hurt seriously in actual bouts. It’s almost always been throughout the process of preparation. Mhm. What does it say on your neck, Pete? This is my Latin motto for my family, Irving.

2:48 It’s Sub Ol Subance, which I’m sure that’s pronounced terribly, but it’s the Latin motto of the Irving family. My great ancestor was William Dwin, who was the bodyguard of Robert the Bruce, and the story goes that when Robert the Bruce was on the land from Edward Longshanks, he was hiding out in the Highlands, and he had to sleep underneath a holly bush, and William Dwin stood over him with his sword drawn all night to protect him. So I think it’s a yeah, that’s my ancient history.

3:21 I think. Wow, that is intense. Do you think that your tattoos help you sometimes in a fight, when the guys look across the room, I mean, and see you across the cage and see you, as opposed to someone who didn’t have any art? Perhaps. I’m not, I mean, I’ve heard some people say that they find it intimidating, I suppose.

3:38 You know, it is like warrior imagery, that it’s all, you know, that it’s all borrowed from a lot of things. Are like the script gangsta tattoos and the Japanese things associated with Yakuza and things like that. But really, I think my interest in tattooing and my interest in fighting are not strictly connected, and I sincerely doubt any of the guys that I’m getting in with at this particular level really care. You know, I’m sure I’m sure the cosmetic things pass them by entirely, I would expect.

4:08 Does to me, at any rate. Gotcha. Wow, that’s interesting, really, interesting. And, um, how many tattoos do you have, and are you getting more? Um, yeah, there, you get to a point where they sort of blur into one, so I’m not really sure where one begins and the other one ends.

4:23 So that’s, you know, that. But yeah, I’m, I’m in a continual process. Am I allowed to see my tattoos here? Can I? Give a yeah, go ahead.

4:30 I got that King’s Cross tattoo and piercing from Rob Medina, who’s a very cool Brazilian guy, who’s crazy about tribal-style tattooing and Japanese-style tattooing. He’s uh, yeah, he’s been uh, he’s been giving me some ink over the last year or two. Wow, that’s very cool. Good for you. Yeah, I think most people, um, it’s funny, Pete, when I shake your hand, you have one of the most gentle handshakes I’ve ever shook, and I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that, although I find that’s true with most fighters, that they kind of have an easy way about them, whether that translates into a handshake or not.

5:01 But yeah, is that true? I think some people, sort of maybe early in childhood, get wrongly informed that you can measure a man by his handshake, and they try to squeeze your hand as if, you know, to give themselves some sort of presence. And for me, in most fighters, you tend to have saw hands, and it’s kind of the tools of your trade, and it’s a little bit unpleasant to have people squeezing your hand you know, and you need to object, and say, “This is not really how I’m going to get my measure of you as a person.”

5:31 You know, can you stop assaulting me? No, I think eye contact’s much more powerful. Anyway, it’s true, yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, now we’re looked in, yeah, yeah. You see, we eye contact.

5:40 You know, there’s um, just holding eye contact. Making it. Tim Ferriss had this exercise in that famous book of his, The 4-Hour Workweek, which was just to hold eye contact with everyone you see for a few weeks, right, and just not look away. And if you practice this experiment, it’s astounding how few people can hold your gaze. But is that a good or a bad thing?

6:01 It is what it is. I mean, I personally think maybe it indicates that a lot of people are quite beaten down and, um, submissive, whether it be due to a spouse that breaks their balls all the time, or an angry boss, or I don’t know. It just, I always do it. If someone catches my gaze anywhere, I’ll hold eye contact till they look away, and maybe like three times in five years someone’s been in front of me saying, like, “What are you looking at?” So isn’t that aggressive, that behavior a little bit?

6:27 Remember when you told me you did this and I was like, isn’t that… Yeah, it could be, but for me it’s kind of, uh, in the animal kingdom, it is, right? Man, it’s the most fun thing, though, because you get really uncomfortable when they hold your gaze, and then there’s this kind of electricity, you know, and you think to yourself, “Don’t look away, don’t be a p***y. Don’t look away.” You know, and then it’s quite fun.

6:46 Um, I enjoy it. I’m sure you’d be pretty good at it. Maybe you probably have to be quite careful about what areas you’re doing this in, you know? Yeah, but there’s a fail-safe. If a guy comes up to you and goes, “What are you looking at?” then you just say, “I’m sorry, you look like a friend of mine,” and it always diffuses it.

7:02 Um, okay, yeah, it’s a good disclaimer from Pete, though. Yeah, I met somebody the other day, um, Sophie Cox, who fights for the British Judo team. Oh yeah, you told me about that. And yeah, yeah, and when I met her she had really strong eye contact, you know? Like, I mean, she’s obviously like a real serious competitor, like at the height of powers right now with the Olympics and stuff like that.

7:21 And with a guy, you tend to, you can ascertain certain things, you know, whether they’re like an alpha male kind of guy, and you need to decide whether you’re going to be in a conflict with them, or in, um, make some sort of accord, or whether you’re going to be socially dominant, or whatever like that. And it’s, I mean, eye contact, I think you can exaggerate what the value of it is, but it’s a good beginning marker. Um, and I didn’t know quite how to react because she was really, she was really, really strong, and actually absolutely a lovely person, and you know, we had a nice conversation and talked about Judo and things like that, but I didn’t know quite how to react there.

7:54 I thought, ’cause I’m used to it with guys, you thinking about dropping her with the right hand. I thought, you were going to drop me. I thought, okay, you know? But it was interesting, you know, the gender dynamic affects what eye contact is about. Well, I mean, in the attraction models, in um, sociosexuality, what they say is, if you if a woman catches your eye contact, if she looks down and then looks back up, it means she’s ready to be seduced or ready to be approached.

8:22 And um, I find that quite interesting. I mean, I don’t know if it works the same if you, a guy catches your eye contact. Some thinking about fighting, a lot, a lot of stuff gets put into the stown. You know, when two fighters meet in the middle of a ring, and guys like Anderson Silva were really famous for the really intense… there. He would win.

8:38 He would win a lot of fights just on pure intimidation, you know, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy after that. You know, the Tyson effect, and then fed, all you know, with his eyes, cold glare and things like that. You know, and I did. I did try to understand that a lot and think a lot about that, and always made calm eye contact, you know, with my opponent before the fights. It’s interesting, it’s something I’ve always been interested in, as well, within a fighting context as well.

9:05 It is very interesting, but I’ve had mixed results. You know, there was a guy who just looked at the floor and looked away from me and looked at the referee, and I thought, man, I’ve got this guy. This guy’s going down. Kicked my ass. It was really, I was completely wrong, you know?

9:19 Um, and but then sometimes I’ve been right, you know. Yeah, it’s, it’s not an exact, it’s not an exact science, I think you can say that about a lot of things in combat, you know. There’s something I heard about fighting. Um, you guys know, um, obviously know, um, Helio Gracie for our listeners who aren’t familiar with him. He’s supposed to be the best jiu-jitsu fighter ever lived, and he claims to have a fight record of 4 and 0.

9:48 And, um, someone said on a forum one of the rebuttals to this was that fighting is too unpredictable. There’s no way anyone, no matter how good they were, could ever get to a record that high, and I thought that made a lot of sense. This, there’s just too much that can happen. What are your thoughts on that, Pete? Uh, yeah, absolutely.

10:04 I mean, it depends what kind of fighting we’re talking about, but especially with MMA fighting or real no-rules fighting, there really are too many variables. And over any given period of time, you sooner or later you’re going to lose, and the only way that you could avoid it is really by avoiding the best competition out there. You look at all the best guys now, and even St-Pierre and even Anderson Silva have had losses in their careers, and that’s normal.

10:38 Is there a point where you’re going to say enough is enough? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I consider it all the time now. Now I’m 31, um, which is about 30, is about the mark when athletes, uh, you know, it’s not clear-cut. You know, there’s not a definitive lifespan, and it depends on your weight class and things like that, but you do go through a constant process of analysis, and everybody I know, especially people from my era, who are starting to retire or they’re considering it, you have to stop and think, why am I doing this, and is it really worth it?

11:11 You know, have I already got as much out of it as I can, or why why are you doing it? Good question. Yeah, then it’s something I consider a lot. Um, it’s not for money. I’m sure I could, I’m sure I could, you know, make more money doing something much easier, you know, but it helps.

11:32 Um, there’s, you know, there’s the pride aspect, you know, um, where it’s just good to win fights. Just it’s a good feeling. It’s a high to participate in combat, but, um, but yeah, it’s, you know, the reasons why I started doing it and the reasons why I continue to do it are not the same, and sometimes I think I just continue to take fights because that’s my job. I do that in the same way that guys who sell computers grow up, and the only problem is that the lifespan of that is so much more finite than a guy who sells computers or works in a pharmacy, because your body can only take so much.

12:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s true. Yeah, I think, um, you know, it’s sad to see fighters go past the prime, you know, and you do see it a lot, you know? Guys, they just can’t give it up. You know, in MMA, Sakuraba I think is the biggest case.

12:23 He was so good back in the day. He was so good, and fighting doesn’t… He, yeah, going and going. The problem is with Sakuraba, that is, um, his period in the sport where he’s been a shadow of himself, has now gone on longer than the period where he was, uh, where he was incredible, and now he’s going to go down in history being remembered as that guy that got beat up really badly again and again, rather than being the incredible, incredible athlete that yeah, you said that, and I was trying to remember his good days, and then I just remembered him tapping out to Royce Gracie, or breaking his arm.

12:56 But yeah, you’re right. All I remember is these later fights he’s taking, where you’re like, what? His knees are all busted up and he’s taped up and everything. So he’s a warrior at the end of the day, right? Got to have respect for Pete.

13:07 Um, could you tell us how you got into fighting? Was there one day where you’re like, this is the way I want to go in my life, you know? Was it, did you start off fighting all your life, or were you a different story? No, no. I was, um, I mean, I was, I was an absolutely different type of person, you know.

13:21 That, um, I wasn’t, uh, I wasn’t confrontational at all. I was you know, I was, um, you know, ay, and sort of hyp-sensitive to criticism and not competitive at all, and um, but I was, I was a punk rocker, you know, and I just, I just kept getting beat up on the street. Um, for real? “You just come up to you and like pick a fight?” Yeah, yeah, surp…

13:42 I mean, even now I try to look back and I think, man, that was really bad. That it wasn’t a nice way to live. I’m not really sure why I put myself through it, actually. And this was in London? No, this was when I lived in Newcastle.

13:54 Okay. Um, what were you wearing? A rough place. What were you wearing, the Mohawk? Um, I had big moan, yeah, had like a, you know, like a foot-tall mo and studded leather jacket and all these kind of things, and uh, yeah, I mean, Newcastle’s an incredible place.

14:07 Don’t get me wrong. It’s got a lot of great things going for it and a lot of fantastic people. It’s also got, it’s quite a conformist place, and if you, if you stick your head out above the crowd here in London, it’s nothing. You know, you see people dressed everywhere, people from all over the world, people from every possible subculture, and you don’t really bat an eye, um, but it’s uncommon there, and I think perhaps it’s a northern thing too, that when you stick your head above the crowd, people want to beat you back down.

14:38 And uh, yeah, so that was, um, I had some bad reactions there, and so I was getting into fights and, um, I wasn’t coming off terribly well, and I thought I really need to rectify this. It’s, you know, it’s how old were you when this was taking place? I was, I guess, like sort of, uh, 18, 19, around that time. Uh, so I just started doing some training. I wasn’t really aware of what mixed martial arts or K-1 or Thai boxing or anything like that was, you know, only vaguely, um, cause it just really wasn’t the popular entity that it is now.

15:12 Um, I mean, even now it’s still essentially quite a marginal sport. But do you feel this is a thought that I have a lot, that it’s kind of like, ’cause if you started when you were 18 or 19, pretty much the same age I started training, and um, back then, Jiu-Jitsu and stuff, no one knew what it was, right? It was like, for me to learn something in South Africa, I’d have to, like, get a video that had been taped over three or four times, handed down through a whole bunch of buddies, and now, like, to me it was underground.

15:43 It was kind of cool and edgy back then, and it feels like it’s lost something. Now when you see every Muppet walking on the street with a TapOut t-shirt on, do you know what I mean? That’s true, yeah. It did, it was a great era, um, and it’s impossible to go back and recapture it, and I wouldn’t if I could, but it was something really special about it, you know? And there was that fight club kind of thing, where if you saw somebody wearing a TapOut shirt, you’d be like, yeah, this guy trains.

16:09 Okay. But now there’s a greater chance that somebody’s wearing, you know, MMA gear. They probably don’t fight, and they probably, you know, they probably watch UFC, and that’s the thing, you know. So, yeah, but it was nice, and it kind of, you know, it did make you feel like you were doing something that was out there, and maybe now, I think, actually it’s just a sport like any other sport, and is it really as special as I thought? Props, in a way.

16:36 Yeah, mhm. Do you feel like a performer when you go out there? I was just kind of thinking of Gladiator, and I’ve never competed like that, but I just wondered when you go out there and you’re thinking, all these people, I’m I’m entertaining them, and they’re really getting, you know, excited about what I’m doing out there. I mean, yeah, yeah, there’s an element with that, and I think some people really enjoy that, and some people, um, do get involved in fighting and mixed martial arts specifically for that, you know, because people create characters for themselves, you know, and some, you know, more internally, and some more overtly.

17:12 They have the personas, in almost poor wrestling kind of style. And yeah, so you are a performer. Um, but I don’t know if I really particularly enjoy that aspect of it. I’m guessing you don’t let, you try not to let the crowd’s opinion of what you’re doing affect what you’re actually doing? I don’t know.

17:32 Um, if I get booed, it doesn’t really upset me too much. But yeah, on the other hand, I just fought at home for the first time in a couple of years, a few weeks ago, and it was great. I had so much support, and the place erupted for me, and I really think it helped me fight better. So that was great. And then when you feel that effect that you have on people, that you lift, that you lift everybody, that’s, I mean, you know, we’re in the midst of, well, at the end of the Olympics now, you know, and everybody’s thinking about that sport and ideal and how it brings people together, and in a much smaller way, when I went home, for everybody, that it did do that, and that was a great feeling.

18:11 That was really pretty special. Sure enough, it’s true. I mean, now that the Olympics are over, I’m really feeling that kind of hangover from all of it. I mean, like London, if you haven’t lived here, England can be a bit of, what’s the right word, not cynical, but people can kind of be like, oh, we’re not that excited about this, but everyone was so pumped up, and the city was so supportive, and every day in the news it wasn’t about banking or about this, it was about the British athletes and all these great things that London was doing.

18:36 It was such a good vibe to be part of. Right? It was. I’m, I’m still a little bit cynical about the whole thing, the commercial aspect of it, and, um, yeah, so I’m not sure it cured my, cured my appreciation for the, you know, the purity of the sport. That’s nothing to do with the athletes and the sports that they were going on.

18:59 But I did feel a little bit, um, the, when you attended, or just the whole thing was McDonald’s and Coca-Cola behind? Yeah, actually, when I attended it was great. It was the, um, it was the, the peripheral stuff that I really felt was, uh, it was hard. It was hard to bear. I didn’t feel any of the ads, because I watched everything on BBC iPlayer and I didn’t see a single ad.

19:21 So, okay, I just kind of saw the purity of it all, and that kind of thing. So, you know, you were talking about the stown earlier, Pete, and how you had mixed results, and you weren’t a great believer of that. Do you find that you have to get angry or get personal with your opponent over your ten years of fighting, or more, to get in there and do a better job or a worse job? Or how do you… Yeah, I mean, well, some people do.

19:43 I think probably people that are, um, that don’t participate in any kind of fighting sports, they probably assume that they probably couldn’t imagine themselves striking anybody or hurting anybody, uh, for any other reason than anger or perhaps in self-defense. Um, but personalizing it has never, it has never helped me to perform. Uh, I know some people do. You know, they engineer personal grudges and talk trash and act, and it’s just never really helped me, because your emotions cloud your judgment when you’re fighting.

20:15 Right? I think so. Yeah, yeah. Um, it’s just, I don’t, I don’t feel any particular animosity towards the people that I fight, and I don’t think that makes me fight any worse. I think some people need it and some people don’t, but no one, uh, you know, knowing yourself as an athlete, you have to figure out what the right way to approach it is, and on the same side, do you feel any um empathy towards your opponents?

20:36 Yeah, not at the time. I think it’s pretty important to compartmentalize that, you know, to get into character and, uh, be able to do the job afterwards. I certainly do, and if I’ve ever hurt anybody, I haven’t, I haven’t felt good about it afterwards. Um, and and also really, the physical is not the problem. There’s probably another thing that the people who who don’t fight, perhaps, don’t understand that the physical pain is really nothing, and it’s the emotional pain.

21:06 And you know that you feel great about your victory, and it’s taking your life forward, and your career forward, but you know that you set somebody else back, and somebody who’s, you know, probably just like me probably lives a very similar life, and trains just as hard, and has the same hopes. Um, and then you take that away from them. That’s, you know, that’s not a good thing. You have to accept that. That’s the price.

21:31 In a strange way, these are the guys across the cage or the ring from you is more like you than probably anyone else in your life. Right? Yeah, it’s very true. You have, um, you have, uh, you know, shared experiences. In the combat itself, when you fight with somebody, especially mixed martial arts fighting or Jiu-Jitsu, it’s a very intimate kind of fighting.

21:55 It’s not even boxing, it’s, you know, it’s very British, it’s very arm’s length. You know, when you’re grappling with somebody, especially in MMA when there’s no shirts on, and of course you can smell that guy, and you can read what it says on his tattoos. You can read his kid’s name on his tattoos, you know. Kind of at the end of the match, you know him, like very few people know him. Yeah, in a very specific part of that.

22:22 Yeah, you really do, and you share something that that’s a very significant moment in both of your lives, probably, you know, and you see it a lot, when guys finish fighting, even guys who’ve talked a lot before the bout, and you know, maybe said things that are a little bit, you know, even outrageous, but then they’ll hug each other. The guy who’s dropped the other guy or choke the other guy is going to pick them up. Or you see somebody who’s hurt and the guy anxiously waits over them to see if they’re okay.

22:49 It’s very, very common. Um, fighters are just better people. I think they’re just better people. That’s a strong statement. I don’t think it’s, uh, just think about it.

23:01 I mean, we, like, I agree, they are just, like, there’s a book I read called, by Sam Sheridan, A Fighter’s Heart. Yeah, and I’m paraphrasing, but he said something about, like, the thing that struck him most after hanging out with all these guys, like he hung out with Nera and, um, a couple of pro boxers, and he said they just radiated goodness, you know, and like this sense of calmness and wellbeing, and I think it’s because, you know, they’ve gone through the fire, right? They’ve become this steel, and they’ve seen, I mean, they know their own vulnerabilities.

23:33 They know how fragile they are, and they’ve accepted that, and they have integrated it into the way they moved through the world. You agree with that? It’s, I mean, it’s a strong statement to say that fighters are better people, because I know some fighters were bad guys. Um, but yeah, um, it’s, I mean, it does provide an opportunity to explore some of the better parts of your nature, and some of the, and an opportunity to explore the worst parts of your nature too.

23:58 Um, and to exercise, exercise whatever demons, or just fulfill that part of you that, that, well, actually, you know, I’ll take that back. I’m going to change it. I’m going to say fighters make better men, because I guess there’s a bunch of people, like women especially, working in hospices, helping the terminally ill and cleaning up vomit and s*** and all that kind of stuff, who probably go through way more than a fight ever goes through. So I have to retract that statement, and I’ll change it to fighters make better men.

24:28 Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I understand what you meant. Um, yeah, it, you know, I mean, I’m taking it from a man’s point of view as well, because there are a lot of incredible women fighters out there now. What’s your thought on that? What are your thoughts on that?

24:43 Um, I historically, I was quite scared then, because the quality of the fights was not good. Um, you know, women’s MMA was a little bit behind what men’s MMA is, and some of the fights were poor quality, and some of the women weren’t athletically prepared enough for this style of combat, and the fights were disappointing, and I think you shouldn’t really be patting people on the back just because they’re girls getting in there and doing it when I see good women’s fights, then I’m all for it, and when I see women who are technically and physically prepared, I’m all for it. I coach some women, um, or I have friends who are female.

25:16 That’s, it’s like that thing, isn’t it? You know, I’m not against. I’ve got friends who are women fighters. Some of my best friends are gay, black, whatever. Yeah, yeah, it’s a, you know, um, but you know, I just like to see, just like to see good fights.

25:28 Whether I really understand it, I’m not sure. I’m not sure what part of a woman’s nature drives them to compete in this form. Me neither. I understand, I understand quite well what drives a man to do it, or the various drives that a man has to do it, and yeah, it is a definite path to become a better man. Um, you know, it’s, you know, then you start asking questions about what it means to be a man, how you judge the value of a man.

25:52 I used to, um, how did you, how do you judge the value of a man? Oh, that, you know, there’s a lot of classic traits. Um, I think one of the things that men are historically judged on is the willingness to risk themselves, or the willingness to die. Even historically, I’m not, I think the risks of death in mixed martial arts fighting are very, very limited, and to the extent where, if you’re worried about that, you should be more worried about getting into a car or crossing a road.

26:22 You know, the statistics are very, very good, and nobody’s died in sanctioned bouts, you know, uh, in a long time. The instances have been very, very rare. Um, so it’s not something that really concerns me, but the experience is there, and I think it allows you to toy with, uh, you know, what it means to be very alive and what it means to come close to death. And I felt at times that the winning and losing has meant so much to me. The top was to die in a figurative sense, but uh, you know, if the guy would not let go, if there wasn’t the situation that we created, you know, with referees and judges and the understanding between me and the opponent, that would have been it.

27:07 I would, would have been killed. Um, you know, of course we’ve got that framework there, which allows us to experiment with that, to push things to that edge and then safely bring it back. But I think I now know a little bit more about what it’s going to feel like in those final moments, perhaps. Um, if I, you know, um, but yeah, I’m, historically, men have been the agenda that sacrificed themselves on the battlefield or whatever, and you know, we’re very, very fortunate that we live in this part of the world in these modern times.

27:37 And we don’t have day-to-day fears about living and dying, and to the same extent that we are, we’re fortunate, or we’re fortunate. Well, yeah, that’s my next point. We are deprived of some of those things, and you know, and there’s, you know, some people like me that probably would have been a lot more successful in times gone by, where, you know, the traits that we got would have been very, very useful and now marginalized. What’s up? Black and white movie, Sin City, where they’re talking about the Mickey Rourke character, and the voice of it says, in another time he would have been a god, you know, but in this time he just didn’t fit in.

28:14 He was just this big thug, right? Yeah, yeah. With the, yeah, so some of the qualities that make a good fighter are not good for a lot of other things, and there’s good reasons why we’ve evolved to have those, with, like, selfishness. Yeah, yeah. That’s true.

28:28 I was more thinking about self-sacrifice, but yeah, um, but yeah, I guess the two go hand in hand with preparation. Um, yeah, yeah. But the qualities that that can make a, that can make a great fighter are not, are not useful in the same way that they were in the past. Um, I mean, of course we still have conflicts, and but you know, not the same threats that we faced in a sort of tribal situation, and so people are left with a lot of of things in the primitive mind, a lot of drives that don’t really have an outlet, and unless we create a sporting one, you know, because we don’t have conflict, then we need competition.

29:11 I don’t know. For me, playing football or playing basketball, or something like that, isn’t quite enough. I think I need a violent outlet to feel good and then continue to be a good person in the rest of my life, you know. I mean, it is heavily compartmentalized, you know. I’m not, you know, I’m not a violent person in the rest of my life, but I think it’s because I explore it to a really deep extent and get all the bad things out in a very, very acceptable way.

29:37 What was the best MMA match you’ve ever seen? Best one I’ve ever seen? Um, well, uh, live. Well, not necessarily live on UFC or whatever. My teacher C was, I obviously really admired that, why I chose to study under him.

29:55 He, um, he fought a few incredible fights, but he fought against, uh, he fought against this guy Alan Cval, who, um, 93 kilos, a young guy, and CRA was a little bit older, and he was out of shape, but he took this fight on short notice, because he needed to pay the bills and, uh, to represent his family. And he fought this guy for two 30- minute rounds. Brazil, yeah, in Brazil. This was in the era of no gloves, with no weight classes. Two 30-minute rounds minutes.

30:26 Okay. It was, I mean, it’s impossible to fathom the energy that it takes to do that, and C, who’s a very small man, beat this much bigger guy for the first half of the fight, and then the guy started to come back, and CRA just didn’t have the energy anymore, but he wouldn’t give up. And that, I think, of all the fights, even though he had some incredible victories, he was really, really proud of this fight, and he was a medallion that features an image of him in this man from the fight.

30:56 That’s f***ing cool. Sir, that is f***ing cool. Wow. Gave me goosebumps. That story, dude.

31:01 He was an incredible man, you know. And he gave me a lot of, uh, a lot of inspiration with his stories, and he tried to, you know, as much as he taught me some technique about Jiu-Jitsu, he taught me a lot about sports psychology and that real warrior mentality, you know, and he is a guy from that era where people weren’t fighting for trophies and for money. They were fighting for honor and fighting for respect and for their lives. To some people, claim that, you know, they think, I think they call it gamess.

31:28 Yeah, you know, they claim that you cannot learn it. It’s just in you or it isn’t. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, what are your thoughts? Do you see guys that, you know, are going to be great fighters, or do you see some guys that just surprise you, and you can make them into great fighters?

31:40 There’s a big debate, you know, about what people say, like, fighters are born, not made, and then you’ll see another gym with a painting up saying fighters are made, not born. You know, and you can see athletic potential in people, um, but sometimes it’s hugely misleading. You see guys who just take to it and they seem natural, and you think, wow, this guy’s going to be the next UFC champion, and then they get beat once and they don’t like it. They’re going to do something else.

32:05 Things are too easy for them, and then sometimes the people who really lack, uh, lack athletic ability, you find that they’ve got mental depths that are hard for them to reach, you know, whether they’ll be willing to do anything in preparation, not in the ring. You know, just the story about Kio in this fight. C was getting beaten. He was getting beaten down badly, and his corner man went to throw the towel in, and his brother said no. So, Kio said he’d rather die than give up, which was incredible.

32:30 Fortunately, the referee stopped it, and, you know, he still gets to have the man now. But that really struck me, that it was that important. You know, that we’re really not playing games. I think sometimes now MMA is a little bit more accessible than it was back in the days of Vale Tudo, and people play it more as a more as a game and more as a sport. But that was the thing that really struck me, and that’s why I really wanted to take part in this sport, because it was, you know, it really was a serious serious business.

32:57 There’s a thing that I find fascinating, um, and it’s when you get to the point in a match, whether it’s a Jiu-Jitsu match or an MMA match or whatever it is, or in your training, where you want to quit. Like, maybe you’re exhausted and you’re like huffing, or your guy’s got you in a submission, and it’s that little window that’s, for me, the most interesting aspects of fighting. It’s like, what makes you quit, or what makes you stay? Do you know what I mean?

33:25 Like, what is that little essence? I think, yeah, a lot of it is habit. You put it into somebody’s head that it’s important not to quit. You know, they call it a restless mentality, or you just don’t give up, no matter what, and then when you start getting into that, it just becomes a point of pride that you’re the guy in the gym who doesn’t quit, and then you take it out into the rest of the world with you, and no matter what else is happening, you don’t quit.

33:49 And sometimes it’s catching a bus, that you’ll keep sprinting, and you catch that bus, or it might be something more important. It might be something really heavy, where you feel like emotionally you’re having times where you can’t go on, and life’s not worth living. But the simple lesson is that you don’t quit. You’re a guy who doesn’t quit. It’s a habit, and you go on through, and you become, you survive, and you become successful in the rest of your life.

34:10 And so it’s one of the great things about fighting, that it’s a little microcosm of everything else that goes on in life. You know, it’s a really sort of distilled, intense experience of everything else, and when you overcome that, the rest of the stuff gets easy and gets a lot more pleasant. Do you think everyone should fight? I mean, you know, kids, grandmas, men, women, invalids? Yeah, yeah.

34:36 Do you, um, no, I don’t think it’s for everybody. Um, I think, I think all men should practice combat. I think they should practice fighting. It’s a skill that’s very empowering, the ability to do it. Um, and there are a lot of people who get involved, and they only ever intend to have maybe one fight or two fights, or they might become more enamored with, um, Jiu-Jitsu or judo or something like that, which is not, not, I don’t underestimate what it takes to compete in that sport.

35:08 Um, but it’s not necessarily as intense. You can compete at a lower level and not get badly hurt or go through really terrible fear. But yeah, it is something everybody should do. Um, I think everyone should trange your Jiu-Jitsu. I’ve never met a single person that I’ve met that I wouldn’t think your life would be better if you roll some Jiu-Jitsu once a week.

35:33 Yeah, yeah, it’s definitely, definitely. It’s a great thing, and it’s physically beneficial for everybody. Um, the practice of mixed martial arts as a career is not necessarily psychologically or physically good for a person’s well-being. It can be very, very bad. There’s a, there’s a it gives you a hugely imbalanced life.

35:51 You know, it causes you, um, to deny yourself a lot of things, and sometimes it comes at the expense of relationships and jobs. I know a lot of people who’ve had marriages break down, and, uh, long-term relationships fall apart, and relationships with their families and close friends become very, very strained. The same can be said of anything, man. Like, a lot of people, that happens. Through, I don’t know, busy execs, same thing happens, or people with other esoteric hobbies.

36:16 It just happens, but, yeah, it’s true. It’s true. I think you can balance it out and still practice mixed martial arts or practice Jiu-Jitsu in a more balanced way, where that gives you, that improves your life, rather than running the risk of, uh, running the risk of, uh, what do I say? What am I trying to say? Uh, making your life worse.

36:40 But, uh, but yeah, it’s, um, if my teacher, he gave me a book. It was a fictional account of, um, Genghis Khan’s life story, and there’s a little passage where Genghis does something that’s more courageous than his brothers are willing to dare, and you say something like, um, “Uh, courage isn’t something to be saved up and spent at the appropriate moments. It’s a muscle to be trained and made stronger. It’s a blade to be kept sharp.” And it’s true.

37:09 You as a, you know, like we were talking about the qualities of a man, I think, you know, being courageous and and being willing to sacrifice yourself is one of the strong qualities of a man, and you have to continually practice that. You have to make yourself available for competition to prove that. Wow, that’s heavy stuff. Definitely. You know, you have, um, you have the tattoo, the tattoo Jiu-Jitsu, on your stomach.

37:32 Is that right? Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got the kanji, the Japanese, the Japanese, uh, telling of it, on my forum, and then I’ve got, uh, written large across my stomach, and then I make everybody who trains with me get Jiu-Jitsu tattoos on them as well. Where’s going to be Brian? Mine’s we did our ayahuasca experience. And I’m just coming back from mine from a week ago, and, uh, I finally understood some of the things Aubrey was talking about down in the, uh, when he went down to South America.

39:09 So, props to him, and a big shout out, you know, for people that don’t know what Jiu-Jitsu is. Can you kind of give a layman’s description, and then just talk about your time in Brazil, and also I know you spent some time with Anderson Silva down there. I was going to just talk about that. Yeah, um, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is, um, is not that, that doesn’t involve striking. It’s, uh, it’s all, uh, joint locks and, uh, pins, uh, submission holds, um, holds that are designed to make somebody give up or incapacitate them.

39:40 Um, and it favors, it favors, uh, leverage over brute force, um, and the efficient use of force. Um, so it was developed, um, by, uh, by the Gracie family in Brazil, uh, when, uh, when Judo was imported from, uh, or from, well, when Jiu-Jitsu and Judo in Japan started to amalgamate, and people went around the world and started to pass it on, and the Brazilian form took a very different tack to the Japanese form, which became the sport of Olympic Judo that we know now. And the Brazilians favored the ground grappling aspect a lot more.

40:17 Um, so yeah, so I went to Brazil to learn this, uh, the story of, uh, of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts as we know today. Um, are quite well combined, that, uh, it began with challenge matches between various martial arts, and now, of course, we have mixed martial arts, which is, uh, which is a competition format rather than an art in itself, but Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a specific art, and that’s what I went to Brazil to learn, um, with Kesio, who I talked about before. Um, but I was fortunate when I got there as well.

40:54 I got to spend a couple of days there at the Minor gym, and I did some sparring with, uh, Anderson Silva, the world champion that I’m sure anybody who watches UFC, um, was really, really an inspirational character. You know, you can just tell, um, even if you’d never seen him fight. I’m sure that, uh, uh, there was something about him that they really had, that command presence. You know, when he walked in the room, he knew he was somebody. You know, I guess I’m, you know, I’m, I’m skewed because I I’ve seen the incredible, the incredible fights that he’s given before, but he had a, he had a magnetism about it that I couldn’t quite explain.

41:35 Uh, could you tag him, like when you were sparring? No, you know, this was the thing he played a little bit when we started warming up, you know, and kind of called me on, and said throw a couple of punches, you know, and let me tag him. I was pretty careful not to hit too hard, cuz I thought he’s going to clean me out if I try it on here. He said okay, let’s go, and the guy was just amazing. He was doing like capoeira footwork one minute, then the Ali Shuffle, and tagging me with different things, and he did this incredible spinning elbow.

42:00 He did a bit of capoeira footwork, spun around and put his elbow just underneath my jaw, light and speed, and then just stuck right here, and just winked at me. F***ing hell, that’s unbelievable. And on one hand, on one hand, it was incredible, cuz you know, you think, man, I’m in the presence of greatness. Yeah, on the other hand, you think this is so depressing, cuz I’m trying so hard and I’m never going to be close to being as good. I know, they’re feeling very well.

42:23 Yeah, yeah. It’s, uh, it’s it’s inspirational and disheartening at the same time. It’s a, it’s a strange experience. Is that similar to training with Roger Gracie? Yeah, okay.

42:34 It’s just, okay, enough said. And how long are you in Brazil for? Um, I lived there on and off um, s of playing the Visa, the Visa-refreshing game. Um, so I think I went there first in 2004 or 2003 or 2004, and then I continued to do that until 2006, and then, you know, it just became a little bit more difficult. I never intended to stop doing that, but it just, you know, it just got harder, and I ended up getting married and different things like that, and so I ended up more based in here, so I tried to get back for a month or so every year.

43:05 I try to get my teacher to come over here for a month, um, but yeah, yeah, it was an incredible, incredible time, incredible place. What was your, um, your best career moment, if you think about it? Or was there a specific moment, or will there be a specific moment in the future? So, you know, it’s a funny one, because the goalposts constantly change. You, the, it’s one of the cruel things about mixed martial arts, that, you know, it’s incredibly hard to win and incredibly easy to lose.

43:33 Um, but maybe, maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s a feeling on my part that it’s hard to get over losses, and they stay with you for a long time. Um, but wins are very short-lived. The you know, the pleasure comes and goes in moments, and then in days, and then you have to get back and do it again. You have to prove yourself again and try to recapture that feeling.

43:59 Um, so I don’t, you know, I think I would have been very, very satisfied if he told me ten years ago that I was going to achieve the things that I have now. And now it’s, you know, I just look at all the things that I didn’t do, and it’s not that satisfying. But uh, the great times, a friend of mine gave me a book, a compilation of, um, Ph… my friend, how, from, can I tell, see his website, yeah? go, BJJHacks.com. If you’re a Jiu-Jitsu fan, BJJ is very, very cool.

44:26 A lot of content from Brazil, some great stuff there. But he’s also a professional photographer, and he made this compilation for me, and there’s loads of pictures of me like punching guys and chalking guys and stuff like that, and just looking in the background and seeing the people that were in my corner, and seeing how happy they were when we won. And, uh, I just, you know, I remember those times that united everybody. And, uh, just remember the feeling, you know, the days after, where you wake up and you think, uh, didn’t let anybody down, everything went okay, and you can just enjoy everything.

44:56 You know, it’s when you deny yourself. The training process is quite difficult. The eight weeks or ten weeks or whatever run-up you do, you know, where you can’t drink anything, you can’t eat anything, and you put yourself through this hardship voluntarily. When it’s over, the taste of everything is so much better, and your senses are heightened. You know, it just creates a platform on which you can experience pleasure in a way that you can’t without being before.

45:28 You know what I think about alpha male is, like, just think of those dudes in the UFC. Like, think of Anderson Silva. That’s probably not a good example, cuz he’s married, but, like, um, those dudes have been like, training like you said, cutting weight, then they go and perform in front of, like, 100,000 people. Like, that night they must get laid like f***ing rock stars. They must have this glow back.

45:51 Think about, I mean, like, am I right though? Just imagine how, like, everything, like you’re saying, everything must taste better you just, oh, glowing with that essence. You know he knows what I’m talking about. Yeah, I wish it did. Girls always just look at me and go, yeah, too many times.

46:08 Look bigger on television. Heavy. I mean, Chuck Liddell wrote some book, I never read it, but he was talking about all the, you know, women he would have, and all that stuff, in groupies. But is it not always that Nick always has to ask about the groupies? My experience was not that glamorous.

46:23 I think, uh, yeah, the best after party I ever went to, I went bowling. Really couldn’t get in any nightclubs, cuz my face was all busted up, and the only place I could get in was a bowling alley. Okay, I fought on the first ever legal MMA show, um, in, uh, in, in Belgium. It was a sh… show, and the first time they ever had professional MMA. And, uh, I nearly blew the whole deal by accidentally elbowing the guy, which was illegal.

46:50 It was, yeah, uh, but yeah, so we couldn’t get in anywhere. My face was all busted up like this, and I was with Leon, who’s a crazy, huge-looking guy. Even if you didn’t know he was a world champion Jiu-Jitsu fighter, you wouldn’t think you could put him out of your club. You know, so we just couldn’t get in anywhere. So we walked around town all night and then went and played, uh, went and played a game of ten-pin bowling, and it was the best time I ever had in my life.

47:12 That’s cool, man. That’s really cool. I think when Matt Serra beat GSP, he came home and he ordered a pizza, and there was like a video of him, and he’s just like, he’s like, yeah, he’s like, I order a pizza. That was like his celebration. You know, it’s fantastic.

47:24 I guess a lot of it is so mental. Anyway, you know, that’s the, that’s kind of, that’s kind of what I was saying. You know, that the small things that you take for granted, the, you can take huge pleasures, and, you know, the things that you’re denied, um, they don’t seem significant when you, when there’s no, when there’s no reason not to. If you, you know, most of the time if you want to eat something, you can eat something. That’s, you know, that’s the life that we live in this one country, which is a privilege, but at the same time it’s not the experience that human beings have had historically.

48:00 You know, we had to struggle for different things, and so those problems that we do have, you know, first-world problems, you know, they can seem hugely significant, and this is another one of the reasons that I enjoy combat so much. That puts everything in perspective. It really does, and you know, it’s the fight club thing, you know, where, you know, the guy says, uh, you know, after fighting, everything gets the volume turned down, which is quite true.

48:28 All the negative things, do you know this was a statement from a character who’s having a negative experience and didn’t enjoy his life, and all the things that irritated him just didn’t seem to bother him anymore. But then, on the flip side, if you have positive experiences in your life, the volume gets turned up on them. It’s a nice effect. You’ve talked about Plato before, and how you quoted him before, about saying that life was really about pain or denying pain.

48:54 Yeah, there’s a, there’s a proposition in Plato’s Republic, um, so that there is no pleasure, only the, only the association of pain. I think most fighters are familiar with the idea, even if they don’t know Plato, um, but yeah, I think without antecedent pain, uh, and trying to find pleasure, you wind up with hedonism, and the experience of denying yourself all of these things, and putting yourself through mental and physical hardship. to the degree that you do in an MMA fight.

49:36 Um, it really allows you to experience things in a much more pure way. We do these things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Right? That quote from Candy, it really means a lot to me. That one.

49:51 Yeah, yeah. If everything was easy, you get no satisfaction out of it. Right? So yeah, while we’re quoting, what’s it? I think there’s a check-off quote, might not be check-off, it’s probably one of those ones that’s like a really famous misquote that somebody put a picture on Facebook.

50:04 You know, I’m going to sound like an idiot. Something like Uh, you know, any fool can face a crisis. It’s the day-to-day that grinds you down, that’s power. You know, Brian, maybe you could, um, you said something to me which blew my mind the other day. We were talking about, um, taking MDMA or ecstasy, and you had some story about, um, Hannibal.

50:24 Can you relate that again, man? Hannibal, what was I talking about? Oh, oh, oh, that’s what I was talking about. This blows my mind. I don’t know what I was talking, oh, I was just saying there was a point where Hannibal was defending, defending Carthage, and, um, you know, he had like gone through all of this struggle, like all of his life, and like defended his thing and gone to battle and seen his sons and daughters die, and then he finally defended his city from the Romans, and like he had this moment in his life where he was like filled with all of this ecstasy and joy, that he had spent forty years of his life going.

50:56 And I was just comparing that to someone popping a pill in Brixton. And I’m just saying, like, you know, those feelings are meant to be worked for. You know, those feelings exist in your body because you went through all of that pain and hardship. And I don’t know, that was just cool. Think about that.

51:12 What do I think about that? Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s the truth. I’ve experienced that. Um, every, everything, everything other than fighting has felt not phony but unsatisfying, and so you know, sometimes I’m a little bit saddened with myself when I think, inevitably, everybody at some point starts to consider what else they could have done with their lives, and I look back, and I think, you know, I could have done anything. I’m not a stupid guy, you know.

51:43 I could have been a doctor if I’d really wanted. I could have studied anything. I think, look, all the fields of human endeavour, engineering and science, and I look at all these things, and it’s not bothered. I feel a certain sense of shame about it, really. I wish that I wish that I could care.

51:58 I wish that I could be interested enough to study all of these incredible things. Do you feel that fighters have a tendency to be too hard on themselves? Uh, some, a lot of the good ones. Yeah, yeah, I think once you start to celebrate things, then, uh, you stop progressing. You would have made a great fighter super hard on myself.

52:19 You know, we only got a few minutes left, but I just wanted to ask if you could call, you know, the 21-year-old Pete Irving on the phone and give him a few minutes of, uh, of advice. What would it be, and would he take it? Uh, I’d say choose your tattoos better, get a plan instead of ending up with loads and loads of different ones. But, uh, yeah, I, you know, it’s one of those things where you have to come to terms with the fact that, um, you can’t have regrets, and everything you’ve done has made you the person that you are, etc., etc.

52:53 But yeah, I would have done a lot of things differently. I’m sure anybody would, and if you say otherwise, you’re probably lying. You know, it’s it sounds nice to say, you know, it’s all made me who I am, but no, of course everybody would rethink a lot of things. Fair enough. And, um, what do you think of, like, the current state of mixed martial arts and the UFC, and everything that’s happening now?

53:14 I’ve got mixed feelings about the UFC. Um, you know, on one hand, they’ve done incredible things promoting the sport and making it what it is and giving it the profile that it has, on the other hand, they’ve essentially got a monopoly now, having bought out pretty much everything else. Uh, so if you’re not in the UFC, then you’re going to struggle to make a good living. Um, so I’ve got mixed feelings about them, but I have to say that, cuz I’m not fighting for them, you know, so I’m sure I would change my tune pretty quickly if I was.

53:44 And how do people get a hold of you, or what’s the best way for them to find you, if you want to be found? That is, yeah. If anybody wants to come and train, uh, Brazilian jiu-jitsu or mixed martial arts with me, or train Thai boxing, um, you can get me at SX Gym in Swanley, um, or you can take one-to-ones with me up in, uh, in in uh Kings Cross at Urban Kings Gym. Um, but just look me up with Facebook. Uh, I’ve got, I’ve got a Facebook page there, and I’ll have, like, a profile picture.

54:08 I’ll just be, be, G like this. P also has a column in Fighters Only magazine. Oh yeah, you want to read that? Yeah, thank. I’m going to be in trouble now.

54:17 Yeah, yeah. I really should have said that. How long have you been writing for them? I’ve been writing for Fighters Only for, uh, for a lot of years, uh, for maybe, I think, now since it began, which is great. Um, cuz they’re a Newcastle based publication, so yeah, so, uh, that’s the, that’s the secret of why I’m in there.

54:33 Do you enjoy writing? Yeah, uh, yeah, I love it. Um, it’s, uh, it’s nice to be able to pass good techniques, you know. I see a lot of, um, a lot of columns that are, are just kind of, you know, here’s the basic this and that, you know, and then it’s nice to be able to go into a bit more depth, and I think I take a lot of pride in the column that I produce, and the writing that I do there. Um, I wouldn’t really describe myself as a journalist in any other respect.

55:01 I couldn’t write about anything else. I think that’s the only thing I really know enough about to put pen and paper to. Don’t know until you try. I see a guest blog for London Real in the future, well, that’s fantastic. Um, thanks so much for the time, Pete.

55:16 I really appreciate that. Thank you for me, and, um, we’re, uh we’re going to just stop now. We’re going to actually take some viewer questions, um, right after this, but we’re hitting our iTunes limit. But, um, if you enjoyed this episode, which I’m sure you did, if you could just, um, share it with your friends, hit the YouTube button or on Facebook, and let people know about us. And, um, until then, right?

55:33 It’s about the journey. Cool, thanks a lot, guys. It’s awesome. Thank you. [music] [music]