Full transcript: Rosi Sexton on London Real
8:18 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My co-host today is Peter Irving. He is a professional fighter who prefers K-1 rules, but I think recently he posted that after watching a certain female fight in the UFC, you might be headed back to MMA. I’ve been giving that to him before recently, yeah.
8:33 Okay. I’d like to see that. Pete’s also a writer for Fighters Only Magazine, and he is a pretty frequent co-host on London Real. Um, I think I was guessed on one and I’ve done three three cents. Yes, of course in three times. Yeah, it’s all good Most recently with John Ronson, I’m glad you were here because I hadn’t read his books and you know, yeah Yeah, it was great because I think I would have been yeah I wouldn’t have been cool if I’d just done it because I didn’t know enough about him So well, thanks for being here Pete our guest today is miss Rosi Sexton Who is a mixed martial arts fighter and the very first British female ever to fight in the UFC also known as the Ultimate Fighting championship. She has a mass degree from Cambridge and a PhD in theoretical computer science and she’s also a sports therapist, an osteopath, and a writer for the Huffington Post and Fighters Only magazine. What have we been doing with our spare time Pete? I know, get on it. Rosi welcome to London Real. Hi there. Thanks for coming. You’re welcome, it’s good to be here. You know I met you this morning when I was training with Pete and I train with Pete a couple times a week you know at Urban Kings and so Rosi comes in and I get to meet her and then she watches me train with you and he puts me through this kind of cardio circuit at the end of every training session and I’m pushing the the trawler and hitting the tire
9:48 With a sledgehammer and then Rosi’s watching me and I’m just thinking Rosi’s probably like that’s some weak ass shit Brian. So I just didn’t think Rosi was very impressed with my workouts. She’s like no I’m not. They’re good. I think we needed a video I was just like Rosi’s like that’s what I do before I brush my teeth so but no it was it was a it was great meeting you today you’ve had a crazy few months I would say probably one you wouldn’t have predicted a year ago let alone five years ago or ten years ago that you would have had this yeah I mean or at the beginning of this year to be honest I didn’t I really didn’t see this coming at all and just for people that don’t know this is basically you got a call from the UFC which is the biggest you know martial arts organization in the world that you know by far you know you were one of the I think you were the first MMA fighter ever to get BBC coverage is that correct I’m not absolutely sure possibly very possibly I’ve done various bits of media over the years and for people that aren’t familiar with mixed martial arts the role of women’s in MMA is just huge right now and it’s it’s taking the sport like almost much further than the men could have taken it you know with you and the press you’re getting and then the Ronda Razi phenomenon and everything it’s like it’s amazing to watch and I think everyone’s gonna owe a big debt of gratitude to the women in five years time because they’re gonna be
11:09 Like wow now the whole pay structure is gone and popularity is gone because of the women and I don’t think anyone predicted that including Dana White you know he said two years ago he would never have women in the UFC I think so anyways um I was wondering if you walk us through your last few months from getting the call to doing your preparation to go into Winnipeg with Pete in your corner a few weeks ago I watched it I’ll talk about that later but Well what’s it been like? Yeah it’s all been pretty crazy I mean it all started I think it was it was the Monday after the Ronda Rousey-Liz Karmush fight and I’ve just turned up to training and my coach up in Liverpool Paul Rimmer he sort of sat me down kind of said what do you think about the fight we don’t know it It was all right, it was a fight.
11:54 You watched it? Yeah.
12:00 He sort of got this, well, what are you doing with yourself at the moment? And I said, no, I’m training a bit, working. Where are we going with this? And he sort of said, well, what do you think about fighting for the UFC? I said, well, it’s not really my weight class.
12:18 He goes, yeah, but if the UFC called you and said, do you wanna fight, would you do it? Well, yeah, of course I would. Did this smell fishy when he’s asking these questions? Because Pete, Pete says you’re pretty wise. I had an idea, there’s something going on here.
12:32 OK, well, leave it with me. And then I spoke to him and I said, you’ve got me thinking now, and he goes, well, it’s too late because I’ve just spoken to Graham as my manager, and we’ll see what happens, sort of thing. The next I heard back was a few months later when Graham calls me his number comes off my phone I just had a feeling when that number came up it’s like there’s something going on here he calls me and I go you got five minutes okay what’s going on he goes I’ve got your UFC fight if you want it so Alexis Davis 15th of June call me back later when you’ve had to think about it yeah there’s a big sort of adrenaline rational you go well okay shit just got real yeah scary yeah a little scary but I don’t know I mean I think it’s something that I thought about for so long now ever since I started fighting wouldn’t be great the UFC had a women’s division but I never really got any further than that I always assumed it would happen at some point but I never really thought it was going to happen in time for me yeah I thought it I’d be retired by the time that finally came around and then even when it did happen you know I hadn’t really given it that much consideration I thought it’s not my weight class it’s unlikely that I’m gonna get that shot so when it finally did come round it was it was somewhere between a dream come true and completely terrifying yeah I bet maybe since you thought about it for so long you’d probably compartmentalize it into
14:21 Something that’s not gonna happen yeah exactly more than that I mean that was around about the time where you were starting to run out of options, when it didn’t look like there was a UFC. I pretty much decided that I wasn’t really going to fight again unless something big came up. I’m not sure I even thought about what I meant by something big coming up. I hadn’t considered the UFC as an option really. So it’s like a retirement frame of mind.
14:49 Yeah, I kind of said, well, maybe I’m going to concentrate a bit more on grappling now. It reached the stage where it wasn’t really making sense for me because every fight camp I did, I sort of put my life on hold for two months to do that fight camp and train for that. And it just reached the stage where I couldn’t commit to doing that, the way things were. Did you have to think about it before you said yes, or did you have to rash? Did you write like a pro’s and con’s list?
15:16 You seem like the kind of person that might write the pros and cons list, or did you just go with a feeling? No, I mean there really was no way I was going to turn that down. It wasn’t a real question. You’re going to fight in the UFC, aren’t you? I was explaining it to my girlfriend.
15:36 I was like, you get the call to fight in the UFC and I told her that if I ever got that call, I would have to say yes. And she was laughing and I’m like, but I would have to, no matter what shape I was in or anything. You don’t get that phone call very often. Yeah, it’s true. It’s true.
15:50 Anybody would. once out was this when they called. That was I think 10 weeks out. Jesus. It was the beginning of April. I remember thinking if that had been two days earlier, you know, I’d have been thinking this is an April 4th. And now you naturally fight normally at 125 pounds or are you, that would be your ideal weight? That’s the weight class I’ve been fighting at for the last few years anyway. Before wrestling at what, you wrestled at 150? Yeah, I toyed with the idea of making the cut to 115 at one point and I did a test cut for a wrestling competition it what it didn’t work out that great for me I mean I think I could probably have tweaked the cut you know I think I could have done it better you know I probably if the incentive was there to do it I mean if the UFC said we’ve got a 115 weight class then probably sit down and look at it and no doubt I could I could make that weight but that’s not the way things turned out okay and I mean from the from the get-go I mean you know Alexis Davis, your opponent, you know, she was kind of like the story and it was in Canada, she’s Canadian and it was this whole primed thing and then all of a sudden Rosi’s in the mix and like you get this whole feeling it’s like okay, you know, are they putting her in there with Rosi, are they building her career, are they building your career, and I didn’t know what was going on and then you were like this wild card with this whole varied background you have, you
17:11 Know, with the mass degree and the PhD and then you started getting lots of press and then Ariel Hawani interviews you and he’s like you’re the most talked about fighter on the card which is saying a lot it was a big card so what happened yeah well I mean I think when I got the call you know after the initial excitement of one off and sat down looked at okay I’m fighting the Canadian fighter in Canada and you know this is one of the girls they’re grooming for a title shot yeah I’m going up a weight class and let’s read between the lines here you know I think I mean I think a lot of people had the idea that I was being brought in to lose that fight you know that was that was very much the the impression that people had got. The odds may have suggested as much. Even though in fairness to the UFC they don’t unlike boxing they don’t seem to set up these fights to build careers like almost every fight seems like everyone’s almost fighting for their careers from what I see in the past it doesn’t seem like they’re like let’s give this this person or every fight seems hard so. I mean I always saw it as a pretty reasonable matchup, you know, I think the way things, the way things worked out, I think it was, it was perhaps a bit more even than, than maybe some people assumed going into it.
18:25 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think a lot of the, I mean, as soon as things kicked off, really started getting a lot of interest from the media, one with it being the first, first UK female fighter, and also sort of my background and everything, I think that’s something has always appealed to journalists. I suppose the incongruity of my educational background and the fact that I’m a fighter and these two things don’t seem to mesh very well in people’s heads. Yeah for the casual fan that doesn’t understand the sport then it’s a great headline because they’re like what this doesn’t make sense even though it makes a lot of sense if you delve a a bit deeper. Yeah, are there any other well-educated UFC fighters? There’s quite a lot of fighters who’ve got college degrees and reasonably well-educated and they’ve got people from professional backgrounds. So I don’t think, you know, I’m certainly not the only well-educated fighter there. But when you drop Cambridge in there and PhDs, then that’s a little bit above. I mean, they always just say, Chuck Liddell had a university degree in accounting.
19:35 That would always throw that out there, but they’re probably not extremely highly educated. I think I maybe have a few, maybe a bit overqualified for the job, say. So, and did the UFC push this PR on you, or did it just kind of come naturally with people just finding you? Or are they a machine when it comes to that? A bit of both, really, a bit of both.
19:58 I mean I think obviously the USC have people who take care of that sort of stuff and PR guys who would like you to do this interview and that interview, but at the same time I think there’s quite a lot of people who got in touch with me directly and I said how would you be interested in doing an interview? We always seem to have been like the go-to person for a bit of MMA stereotype busting. Whenever somebody takes a picture of some kids having a grout with a match in a cage and then you know you know cage fighting kids headline you know then you turn up on turn up on tv a couple of days later trying to go oh no we’re not all savages are you on slide are you some like uh on a on a list somewhere for like go to people for for media types or do they just possibly i think you know various people have my phone number so it’s a great story yeah so but so you go to the ufc you’re fighting for the biggest organization ever you’ve been fighting for a long time, right? Like 11 years? Yeah. Your first professional fight was O2? Yes, that’s right. Right around when Brawl in the Hall was happening. That was my first UFC.
21:05 It was, I think it was either just before or just after that event. Okay, and I mean, we’re gonna get to the fight, but in the fight you could see that, you know, Rosi’s a seasoned professional and you’ve been in these situations before and that was obvious to me, but you know, I’ve watched the sport for a long time and it was just like, you know, after that first round, She’s like okay now she knows what she’s really gotten herself into you know Which is someone who’s been there and done that but for you you fought all around the world What was the UFC experience like you know those those those couple days before the fight and then the fight itself It was it was all pretty crazy really. I mean we flew out on the on the Tuesday, and I got into Winnipeg about 11 o’clock at night got the hotel 1130 and First thing that happens take you into an office give you a big stack of paper right read that and sign it I could have signed anything at that point you know I think I’m I may have confessed to being a terrorist so yeah and then it’s all from that point on you know it’s you’ve got a schedule of immediate engagements and be here at this time and you know all the usual press stuff at the same time you know making weight and getting your last few training sessions in so So it’s a pretty full-on few days.
22:23 It’s not the funnest time, is it the worst part of the camp? I don’t know, I mean it’s, you’re being asked to sort of present yourself and to be your best at a time when you really don’t feel like doing it, you know, I think for any fighter at that point. I mean fortunately I didn’t have a big weight cut to make, so you know it wasn’t like I was dehydrated and starving, but those last few days, you know, your mind’s on the fight, making weight, I’ve got a lot to think about and it’s not necessarily the time when you want somebody sticking a camera in your face. I’m actually in the same question. How are you feeling about it? How are you coping with all these UFC nerves? I wish I could tell you. How many media engagements did you have that week? Like how many separate ones? I lost count. It was 20 plus. I mean the week The week before I flew out, I counted it up, I think it came to about 20, that was a week before I flew out and then when I was out there, there were quite a few phone interviews as well as sort of the regular press conference and things like that.
23:34 A lot of the time it’s getting asked the same questions, you know, how’s the fight camp going, how’s your preparation, how do you see this fight going and for me as well it’s like, you know, what are you doing at £135? You’ve fought all your career at £125. Again, you know, just going into the fight,
23:56 Some of those questions are a bit tricky to answer, you know, especially when you’re getting asked about how you’re going to deal with all the, you know, the first-time nerves being in the UFC and everything. And, yeah, it’s right at the point when I’m wondering that myself. So those questions get into your head a little bit. So you start thinking how am I going to deal with it you know I don’t know I’ve not been there before. And was there cage jitters?
24:24 I read your piece in the Huffington Post but I was just wondering you know yeah when you went in did you feel any kind of adrenaline dump or anything like that? I think to be honest from the point where I started the warm-up I think that was the calmest I’ve been you know. Yeah it really was it was I was kind of expecting you know things to be like a little more tense you know but actually compared to compared to relatively small issues when I’ve been there it was like there’s nothing it was just really cool he was nervous yeah I was a little I was a little bit nervous before you flew out I’m just gonna ask you then what was it like that last six hours before she went in and getting all that and how was it how was she you said she was home yeah Rosi really stepped the game up you You know, the whole week that we were there, it just got better and better every day.
25:13 We went to the press conferences and stuff like that and went through the whole rigmarole of the media stuff. Just took it all in a stride. It was really, you know, I didn’t really have anything to do. I was kind of, you know, before I went, I was thinking, God, man, we’re going to have to give some kind of, you know, Al Pacino or any given Sunday a pair of talk. You know, it’s really going to have, you know, it didn’t have to do anything.
25:33 It just kind of held the water, held the bucket, you know, and go. What do you chime that up to? Is that just experience, because you’ve been there and done that? Yeah, that’s a big plus of fighting around the world. I think it’s just knowing that process. I know what I need to do now once I start warming up and you just sort of slot into that rhythm. You’ve got that process that you go through and it’s just sort of step by step and you know where you are. And it was almost like Once that happened, it’s like, OK, I know where I am now.
26:08 This is a slightly bigger venue. There’s more people out there. There’s more people watching. There’s all the media stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s me and somebody else in there.
26:20 And it’s a fight like any other fight. And that’s all I have to take care of. In a very real sense, what’s going on outside of that octagon, that’s none of my business. I just have to take care of what’s going on inside. which sounds very obvious but getting your brain to focus on it is a different thing.
26:39 I mean it almost makes it… that’s kind of the almost the easy bit it’s the bits beforehand where you’re having to deal with all the media and the pressure and it’s kind of this slightly unfamiliar aspect to it once you get in there it’s like well this is what I do, you know. I think I mean it also helps some of the shows I’ve fought on, I mean in particular Cage Warriors you know they run a very professional show and in a lot of ways it felt felt very similar. I think in the way it was run, I remember getting into the arena the day before when we did the weigh-ins and just having a look at the arena, looking at the octagon. This feels just like the Cage Warriors show at one point. I think that really helped because it was just knowing this is really no different.
27:27 Those, just the few extra people in the big vibe, I just thought it was really good fun. So I think that, I don’t think I fall in front of more than like, I think 4,000 was probably the biggest venue I’ve ever been in. That’s a lot of people. It was still like, it was enough to make it like, there’s something physically tangible about like the noise of the crowd, you know, where it’s like, actually like, kind of vibrates your body you know it’s yeah which like just it’s just a bit more of a rush you know when the crowd stopped it louder yeah I think your frontal lobe can tell you it’s just the cage but I think your back and your lizard brain is telling you okay something’s going on here I mean you do definitely feel that energy there you know I mean I think I mean the Canadians were great you know I think it felt like quite a friendly crowd even though I was there fighting a Canadian fighter. It didn’t really feel hostile at any point. If you were in Brazil it would have been different.
28:25 I think if you’re going to be the away fighter anywhere then Canada is probably the place to do it. Beforehand somebody was asking me what do you think it would be like getting booed by Canadians. Aside from anything I think you just feel the energy. It doesn’t really matter whether they’re cheering or booing. It kind of all feels the same once you’re in there.
28:46 It was the most polite booing I’ve ever heard. I mean, it was always the way they did boo. Yeah. There was a little bit, but it was sort of, you know, it was, I think it was sort of a talking boo. And they were like, oh, nice.
28:58 They were nice. They were really nice to Canadian people. It was just like, even like the days running up, you know, everybody was so pleasant. Yeah. Before and after as well, you know, there were a lot of people coming up to me and just being really nice.
29:10 Okay. So you get in there with Alexis. She’s got a little bit of a height advantage, a little bit of a size advantage, because she fights it this way naturally. What surprised you and what didn’t surprise you in that first round was that you started throwing hands right away, and you … I think that surprised me.
29:32 I don’t know. I mean, I think it was kind of what we were expecting. I think she’s naturally a little bit bigger than me. felt strong about something that I was expecting and I’ll be honest with you I don’t remember a lot of the fight. I remember little snatches here and there I’ve not watched it back yet. Okay interesting. I keep putting that on. That’s yet a con word. Yeah I hate watching my performances back because you always look at them and you think I should have done that. Even wins you don’t like watching? Yeah any performance because I mean anything however well you did there’s always something that you you could have done better you could have done differently you look at it you go oh that wasn’t very good Johnny Depp is the same thing yeah he doesn’t watch his own movie so you’re in good company I always do watch them eventually but it sometimes takes me a little while to actually I need to get a bit of distance from it before I can sit down and okay let’s look at that now okay so I remember the for Ivan watch it I only watch the fight that night but in that first round I mean it was it was quite obvious that she was attempting a triangle on you for a good two or three minutes of that round probably the last two minutes and anyone who watches MMA knows that these days if someone kind of gets that foot folded underneath the knee it’s a pretty high hit ratio I mean I would say it’s over 80% for getting taps not a lot
30:53 Of people get out of it when it’s that deep and you were in that deep and yet you kept punching her in the face with a triangle on and even I am point was Like, I don’t know if she can last, but she did. So what happened there?
31:09 I’m struggling to remember now exactly how worried I was, how close it felt. From memory, I don’t think it felt as close maybe as it might have looked from outside. I’m generally pretty hard to triangle. I’ve had some pretty good people triangle me. And generally it takes them a fair bit to actually finish it.
31:30 But I think my attitude to that sort of thing is well if I’m not unconscious it’s not a problem which I get shouted at by my corner team. You know what I mean Paul and Danny were on the on the other side of the cage so it wasn’t easy to see exactly how exactly how it was positioned and we couldn’t we didn’t really realize maybe or I didn’t realize how effective the punches were going in there so when I watched it back on the video and you see there was like a danger zone for like, it was like there for about five seconds or maybe a bit more, which you actually locked the foot in, like on the shin and not on the foot, but a lot of the time it was on the foot or the foot was slightly open and Rosi edged around and positioned it and stacked her a little bit against the cage and so she was just eating flush shots, you know, so it actually, you know, fights look very different when you’re in them and then when you’re watching them from the corner or a referee in position and then when you When you see them on TV from a more objective camera angle, fights can really look very different and you can score them very differently as well.
32:35 A lot of times judges get panned and I’m quite a vocal critic of a lot of judging that goes on but when you watch things on TV and when you watch things on live they look very different. You don’t always perceive the same things. So did the judges agree you won that first round? I’m not sure how they scored it by round actually, I’m not sure, but I mean I think I was doing a reasonably good job of keeping enough space to breathe while I was, I wasn’t just letting a triangle meet, I think there was some stuff going on there that may not have been immediately obvious.
33:12 Well just after that first round broke I was just like that is like the essence of Rosi because that’s like total experience because anybody, a lot of people would have tapped with the excitement and the lights and all this stuff but you’d obviously been there and done that and you were just like this is not going to happen. I mean I’m almost more surprised that people are surprised that I didn’t tap. Okay we don’t know you that well. To me I don’t quite understand the point of tapping to a triangle this might just be me but the worst case you’re going to wake up and okay well that didn’t really go to plan but up until that point you’re still in the fight you know a lot of times it’s psychological you know people get caught in the submission and then I think oh god no I’m getting submitted here I got caught and they start having you know sort of having guilt about getting caught in the panic you know starts making them choke before the you know before the air runs out I think I think a lot of people do panic I think a lot of people tap out of fear as well yeah there might it might not be necessarily that close and also I think with chokes as well I mean I’ve said a few times I think the last 10% of the submission, the difference between it being sunk and you being out or breaking the joints in the case of a joint lock, I think a lot of the time people don’t really understand that portion that well because it’s not something that people typically
34:34 Train and for good reason, I’m not advocating going away and choking your mates unconscious on a regular basis, but I think just because something’s sunk doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna go out from it and I mean in my experience the times I’ve been put out have been the ones I wasn’t expecting to go out from you know it’s just been something that’s just called funny angle or something like that and there’s been a few when I thought I probably was going out and I didn’t so for me you know it’s always worth taking a taking a shot at it you know it’s like well let’s let’s see what happens yeah I’ve heard a lot of fighters say that as well like from chokes it’s no point tapping because I suppose the The other way to look at it is, who would you rather fight?
35:17 Would you rather fight somebody who’s going to tap when you get the choke sunk, or would you rather fight somebody who’s going to make you put them out? People who’ll do that are a lot harder to finish. So after that first round, you go back to your corner. How are you feeling? Are you feeling good about that?
35:34 You obviously hit her in the face repeatedly. How are things? Or do you remember? Probably don’t remember. I don’t remember.
35:42 I don’t remember. It was just an autopilot at that point. Yeah, I’m just trying to think back now. I’ve seen this before. I’ve just got flashes of it.
35:54 I remember seeing Rich Franklin one time and they drove him into the decision, did the interview. He had lost a decision and then right after Rich Franklin turned to his corners and he’s like, okay, what happened? And it was just like the weirdest thing. He had no idea what had happened the last three rounds. It’s common.
36:10 Our first ten fights have only had like the vaguest bits of recollection or you get confused about You know the order in which things happen and even now I still get like a little bit of time distortion You know things that seem to take forever or over in seconds and then and vice versa, you know, that’s it Yeah, so yeah, it’s it’s it’s pretty it’s pretty common. Yeah, I remember I remember Paul saying to me Okay, you won that round. We just need another two Okay Great another two of them. No problem. So if we fast-forward to two more rounds It’s a decision loss. Did you expect that when the judges did that? Did you think it was very close and then how did it?
36:48 How did it make you feel? I mean at that point I honestly wasn’t expecting to win that decision, you know, I think I I think I realized at that point I probably haven’t done enough it I think it was I I mean a lot of people say, I think the feedback afterwards suggested it was maybe closer than it felt to me at the time. I think it’ll be interesting watching it back to see what I think when I actually see it. Yeah, I doubt it myself because also the build-up makes a difference, like we build this girl up and we build her against Rosi and then you’re like, oh yeah, I guess she did probably win.
37:29 And then a couple days later I was like, maybe that was closer than I thought it was, fight and then I think it was very close. When I watched it back, you know, I mean, you know, I’m not complaining, you know, and at the time, okay, you know, it was a great fight so, you know, you want to win but, yeah, it’s not, there’s not only one kind of victory, you know, so I went away feeling victorious afterwards, you know, I felt like partying. I felt victorious even though I wasn’t part of the team. I was just like, that was awesome.
37:58 What a great introduction. I mean, so, but I don’t know, can you weigh those? Can you you feel good afterwards and be like, yeah, even though the decision wasn’t yours? I mean, in all honesty, in all honesty, it didn’t really feel like a loss. I think it was close enough that I think it could have gone either way without being a robbery. And I felt like I’d given a pretty good account to myself. All things considered.
38:25 Definitely. I’ve never seen anyone get interviewed by Joe Rogan and she was so tired that she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t talk. She was just dead tired and just looked like she was just like man I didn’t see that coming. That was kind of satisfied you know. I think getting the opportunity to prove a few people wrong I think because I mean I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff. I kind of try not to look too much in the run-up to a fight but some of it sort of filters its way through to your consciousness and you know there’s a lot of stuff going about how I’m too more for the weight class you know I’m gonna get beat up pretty easy you know all this stuff you know and well what you mean I try not to look I don’t even search in there hashtag what was your sex time no come on apparently you have a bit of a social media I don’t admit to Pete that I’ve been looking yeah that’s a thing that’s dangerous I mean as a fighter that can yeah I mean it really can as well you I think there’s times when you kind of don’t want to think too much about what everyone else is saying.
39:32 Okay. So after the fight, are you rubbing elbows with Dana White and hanging out with all the people? And did you get a lot of love from the UFC? There’s quite a few people, you know, I think. I think it remains to be seen how things are going to pan out from this point, you know, official has been said. We’ll see. I’m reasonably hopeful that they’re going to have me back.
40:02 I wouldn’t think so. It seems like a no-brainer. You could argue that you’re one of the most famous British fighters in the UFC. That talks. I mean, the UFC is all about…
40:14 I think they’re like media coverage I’ve been getting. I think that definitely goes in my So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about women in MMA and the fact that you’re getting BBC coverage, you know, Ronda Rousey’s getting ESPN coverage where the sport could never get that coverage before no matter what kind of super athlete you have whether it’s Jon Jones or Anderson Silva and now all of a sudden these new media outlets are coming in and women are coming in and getting main events and stuff like that. What are your thoughts on that? I mean there’s been no history in the last even like 500 years of everyone on watching women compete in such a high level of fighting.
40:52 Do you think we’re not ready for it? Do you think people are not used to it? I mean, I think the thing with women’s fights, particularly with the way the UFC have done it, I think it gets a certain amount of attention from the mainstream media because it’s something that people don’t expect to see. And I think one of the problems that maybe mixed martial arts has had as a sport is that people from outside look at it And they think they know what it’s about.
41:19 Guys fighting, it’s got all the stereotypes attached to it. And people make a lot of assumptions based on that. And I think when you put women in there, it goes against some of those stereotypes and maybe doesn’t fit as neatly with people’s assumptions about what fighting is about. And it makes people look twice. And I think that’s the thing maybe that gets the media attention.
41:46 So much more with women’s MMA than women’s boxing or women’s Thai boxing. I think particularly at the moment you’ve got the whole phenomenon of the USC and with Ronda Rousey as well. I think she’s got a lot to do with the current interest in women’s MMA. I think the fact that she’s come across from being a highly successful Olympic athlete And also she’s got a personality which is very media friendly, I think a lot of people are very interested in what she’s got to say, she’s got a character there, I think.
42:27 Lover or hater, she’s someone that people are going to be interested in. So I think that definitely gets a lot of attention as well and maybe opens some people’s eyes to women’s MMA who hadn’t really considered it before, possibly even within the UFC itself I think, and that’s kind of opened some doors for the other female fighters, and I think one of the interesting things about the women’s division is that there are so many people with so many different stories, so many different backgrounds, and I think it’s a lot harder to stereotype female fighters than it is to stereotype male fighters, at least from the perspective of an outsider coming into the sport you know I think MMA fans you know know that fighters are all different and they’ve got everyone’s got their favorite and like that but I think from outside the danger is that people just assume you know it’s two thugs beating each other up in a cage I mean that’s the perception issue that the MMA has struggled with really from day one yeah they’re all bald guys tattoos on their hands and face and and call others, no it is a strange thing, it’s like when you see guys you know in the cage then people kind of like oh yeah yeah that’s what these weird guys do but when they see a woman they’re like well maybe we should find out what’s going on.
43:47 I mean I don’t think it’s it’s no more true for the guys you know I think there’s a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds who come to the sport but I think it’s much easier to make those assumptions when it’s when it’s two men right when you throw women that it’s almost like it doesn’t quite fit with the way people’s brains work, people’s stereotypes and so it makes people look twice and then as soon as people start looking and start looking into the sport they maybe see a little bit more, a little bit deeper than they saw before and they start to look at it a bit differently. I love watching women’s fights, I mean I’ve talked about this before with you, is it Because when they’re in there, the women really just lay it all out on the line.
44:31 It’s just like they don’t have to be there. It’s not considered a byproduct of their manhood. Like you really had to go out of your way to fight MMA. You know, you really had to tell everyone to fuck off and you’re going to do this with your life and then you have to get beat up and probably not paid very well and you still do it and you still do it and you still do it and so when I see two women fight on any card, usually it’s a fantastic fight and they lay it all on the line where sometimes Sometimes I see guys doing it and maybe they don’t know why they’re doing it.
44:59 I don’t know. Maybe I’m being really unfair to a lot of male fighters, but sometimes I see two guys in there that don’t seem to want it as bad as the women. I think that’s a good point actually. I mean I think people have often said, you know, the women always come to fight. I think it does have a lot to do with the fact that at this point in time anyway the women who are there, they’re not there because they didn’t get into the sport with the expectation of making a lot of money or becoming famous.
45:28 Right, or even being cool, or being accepted by their peers, the opposite. I think the people who are there at this point in time, they really love the sport. It would be interesting to see if that changes over the next few years. Now women’s MMA is trending. It would be interesting to see the next generation coming through. I think we’re going to see a lot of talent, but it’d be interesting to see whether people are getting into it for those same reasons, you know, or whether that changes a little bit.
46:00 Pete, what do you think about it? Yeah, I mean, we talked about the same thing when I was a guest, you know, we’re talking about what’s your motivation and stuff like that, and I had to concede, I don’t know why girls do it, I don’t know, I mean, to be honest, I wasn’t interested in women’s at all, you know, I just ended up meeting Rosi and that was basically how come I ended up following women’s MMA at all. But if it wasn’t for Rosi, I would never watch the girls fight until this day or something.
46:35 Wow. I’m glad you laid out. This is what makes a follow game, as they say in the States. So why do you fight? I wish I could tell you. I think my reasons have changed over the years. I think the do it now aren’t the same as the reasons I started out. Going back to when I started out in martial arts, when I was a naive 14 year old kid, I think it was initially about self-defence. I wanted to know that, I want to say self-defence, but I think when people talk about self-defence in a martial arts context, what they really mean is they want to know that they can fight, not necessarily because they want to fight, but in order to know that they can.
47:28 So it’s not self-defense, it’s really just offense, just knowing they could beat someone up. Or in a physical confrontation, you can come out on top, I suppose. Not necessarily that you want to initiate it, but… Just say you want to beat people up, it’s all right, you know? Yeah.
47:50 Don’t call me. Don’t, don’t let her, don’t let her back to me. I’m trying to put my finger on exactly what it was about the appeal to me, you know, at that stage. But some, you know, I started doing that and I enjoyed doing it. I wasn’t very good at it.
48:09 For a long time, I wasn’t very good at it. Which is a recipe for addiction, isn’t it, if you’re not good at it. And I mean, eventually, I started out in Tuck one day, eventually I got to the stage Okay, well there’s probably a bit more to fighting than this, so I started looking around a few other martial arts. And this was long before I’d heard of mixed martial arts or had anything to do with UFC. And I mean I think it was, I’m just trying to think in terms of timeline, I mean this must have been sort of right back in the very early days of UFC anyway.
48:45 And after doing a few other martial arts, I was at university and I kind of got to the stage where I was maybe thinking about teaching martial arts and people were asking me about doing self-defense and things. I just didn’t feel like I knew enough. I realised at that point that I’d spent a long time doing this but I’d never actually been in a fight and I knew a lot of moves but I had no idea whether any of this actually worked. And that kind of bothered me.
49:16 So that was roughly the time when I first saw a documentary about mixed martial arts. And as soon as I saw that, I thought that was something I want to do. Do you remember the documentary? I think it was Natural Born Fighters or something like that. It was Ian Freeman and Lee Remedios.
49:34 Okay. Yeah, I might have seen that. Yeah, I saw that one. Yeah. Lee Remedios.
49:39 He was back in the day, wasn’t he? Yeah, yeah. It’s quite funny because they’re both, you know, they’re both friends of mine now but yeah so that’s the documentary I saw and that’s when I started thinking okay well this is something I need to do and at that time it was it was about proving to myself that I could do it, you know, the idea was I was going to go out have a couple of fights and then get on with the rest to my life, whatever that was, and I found myself a gym to train at, you know, a couple of years later, had a couple of fights, and somewhere along the line I kind of got hooked on it and I started thinking, I wonder how good I could get at this, and that’s I suppose that’s what kept me in it.
50:27 You must have enjoyed those fights because you wouldn’t go back otherwise. I’m not sure whether or not I enjoyed the fights, I think I enjoyed the process. and the test. Yeah and that feeling of I suppose what I got out of, what I got out of training for it and what I got out of doing it, it’s a good question whether I actually enjoy the fights themselves, I don’t know. Okay. I’ve discussed this with Pete actually. Yeah, we feel differently about this. Yeah and me, I like to fight. If I could fight without training I really would.
51:05 If I didn’t really care if I won that much you know that I could just get away with not preparing for it you know I mean I prepared diligently you know because I’m a professional you know and you know I like sparring and stuff like that because it’s almost like a fight um but then yeah the training training is a drag and it eats up too much time you know and it dominates your life you know you know you end up missing everything you know like you know to the point where you know people start getting used to you saying no I can’t come no I can’t have a drink no I can’t yeah stop inviting you you just stop getting invited yeah yeah you do you know then people only want to know you when they need you to defend them you know it’s in court yeah yeah self-defense so let me shoot a question Pete um I’ve known you for like a year I think I don’t know but you seem like not the kind of guy that um you don’t seem to suffer fools you seem to probably not spend your time with a lot of people but yet you do spend your time with Rosi and and obviously you cornered her for this fight and you speak very highly of her and I was just wondering why and why would you do that and when did you meet her and was it something right away where you were like, I don’t know, it makes time for me to help train this person or I don’t know.
52:17 It might have been you actually though, I was talking to you about who’s the American psychologist that said you are the sum total of the seven people you spend? Yeah, I think it’s the average of the five people you spend time on. Okay, yeah, so I’ve blown the court but the idea is interesting, I mean I’m not entirely convinced that it’s how true it is. But there’s certainly something to it. The people that you surround yourself with, the effective way that you see the world, and the way that you comport yourself. So when you find something in other people that you, not that you want to imitate, but like a standard you want to live up to. So they’re the people that you should surround yourself with you know which is the good thing about the good thing about MMA and jiu-jitsu and you know entire books and those people are those people are abundant you know there’s always there’s always you know some some some first-class human beings kicking around and in those circles true you know so what was it with Rosi yeah I’m sorry you don’t have to talk about your feelings today. Damn it. Damn it. Yeah, you know what, I mean, you know, we were talking about the fight before, you know, just, you know, just wouldn’t top, you know, and that, that’s the, you know, the, that’s the determination that put a lot of value on, you know, and, you know, you know, not being mean, but you’re not, you’re not the best,
53:54 You’re not the best athlete, you know, I’m not the best athlete, a lot of the best fighters I know are not the best athletes, they’re not the most well coordinated, it doesn’t come that easy to a lot of the best fighters, but you put them in the ring and you put them on the duress and then they shine, you know, the quality of human beings is really outed under that kind of pressure. I mean, gyms all over the world are full of guys who would kick my ass, guys and girls who would probably kick your ass too, in the gym. You put them in the ring with an audience watching and they’re nothing, they crumble with all the pieces.
54:43 And then, like we’re saying, every step of the way, you raised your game and you stepped up to the more pressure that was mounted, the tougher and tougher you got. All the people that I really hold dear that I’ve met through martial arts, like Craig Joes from my type, training partner and coach up in Newcastle and PTOX, the guy, he was cage rates, champions, stuff like that. All those guys, when you put them in hard, hard fights, they just thrive on it, you know, really just expose the real deep quality. So yeah, so that anyway, that’s what I wanted.
55:29 That’s pretty good. That was a good answer. That was pretty good. I think, what I remember is, I remember training with Pete. When was this?
55:37 Let me think, it must have been 2009, something like that. That would be the first time you guys started training a guy? I think we’ve kind of known each other longer than that. I used to go and see Rosi because she was for osteopathy treatments. That was how come I got no way through howl from BJJ Hacks that I mentioned every time that I come on.
56:01 Oh yeah, you do sometimes. Yeah, so yeah. And then you were training at O9 together. I think I was between training camps at the time. I went up to do some training with Pete in Newcastle.
56:15 He kicked my ass all over the place. And he goes, you’re all right, but you’re not as good as you could be. That’s nice. OK. Were you guys rolling, or just MMA training?
56:31 We did a bit sparring. Yeah. Okay, go on then, show me what you’ve got. And I think that’s the best time I’ve got. Yeah, exactly, because I didn’t know if she was any good or not because I’ve never watched any of her fights.
56:45 Okay. Yeah, yeah, that was so, you know. So you became, you started training her after that? Yeah, you literally? We trained together, on and off, I think.
56:54 You know, we’ve worked together a lot over the years. I think, sort of, developed from that, really. Okay, deal. So, now we see Ronda Rousey and Misha Tate, they’re on the Ultimate Fighter, they’re in the house, there’s all this crazy stuff going on, and I was just wondering if, so say Misha gets in a train wreck, hopefully not, and you get the phone call and it’s like, you’re gonna fight Ronda, what do you say? Obviously you say yes.
57:23 You know, there’s no real question there. True, all right, so the money. I mean, I very much doubt that’s gonna happen, but it’s one of those things, you know, with a chance like that, you gotta take it. Okay, and could you beat Ronda Rousey? I’d give it a damn good go.
57:39 I believe you. I texted Pete, I was like, Rosi’s tough as nails, that was my text. The next day, it’s just like, yeah, I feel like I was there in a way, because I felt a lot of pride, and you learn a lot about someone in a hard role, and you see who taps and who doesn’t tap, and it’s a huge indication of character. That’s kind of the beauty of the fights as well, where you kind of, the people around you get raised up by it too, you know, you share in the defeats, but you share in the victories too, you know, you can, you know, you can change just, what am I trying to say, like, you know, people’s experience of the whole lives gets raised by your victories or by your efforts.
58:34 I think I understand. I think I understand. I want to find out more about just you and your normal day life, but I just want to ask one more question about women’s MMA, why we’re on this topic, and I’m just going to go a little bit deeper. I mean, we’ve seen Ronda Rousey, the phenomenon, the personality that she is, and we also see the way that she does media before a fight, and she’s got the hair done and the heels on and she knows exactly how to work the media in that way and sometimes I see that and I’m like that’s so smart and then sometimes I see that and I’m like what does that say of us as a species that we need her to be pretty and then we respond to her being pretty even we know that we know it’s a fight and even though I know MMA very well and the most the most startling contrast to me is way in day where you have two female fighters facing off and behind them are the ring girls. And you have two females and they’re completely different personas.
59:26 You know, one is there to look glamorous and one is there to fight, but then she also looks glamorous in the meantime. So I’m going to ask your thoughts on this. And what do you think about what Rhonda does and what does that say about us as humans? When we want our women fighters to be pretty, but then we want them to punch each other in the face. So what’s your read on that?
59:44 I’m not sure what it says about us as a species, but Rhonda’s smart, she knows how to play the game and she plays the game and it’s worked out very well for her. Sometimes I think I should be better at playing the game. But you couldn’t do it with a straight face. I don’t know, it’s just maybe I put a little too much value on being me. I’ll go so far.
1:00:16 I think we all play the game to some degree, I don’t think it’s possible to say, I’m not going to play at all, if you’re in there that’s what you do, but I think we have a limit as to how far we’re going to go and that’s different for everyone. I find it very difficult to present myself as something other than what I am, you know. I am who I am, flaws and all. And, you know, I’ll put on a front, up to a point, but they kind of put me and say, well, you know, this is me, take it or leave it.
1:01:00 I think in some ways, you know, sometimes I sort of think I’d do better if I was more like, you know, Mischa Tate or Ronda Rousey, you know. But then I think I may not have as many fans on Twitter as they do. I may not have as many people following my career, but the people who are there generally appreciate me for what I am and not for something that I’m pretending to be. Personally, I like that. It probably holds me back to a degree. I think I’d probably do better if I was more like that, but it works for me. I’m pretty happy with where I am, you know, where it’s got me.
1:01:49 Pete, what do you think? Yeah, I’d say the Ringgos is a funny thing. I always found that weird. You know, I wanted to see ghost fights, and then you got these two very, very different feminine ideals being presented at the same time. I think the Ringgos look kind of stupid standing there.
1:02:04 They do. They do. Yeah, but I don’t know what it says about the species.
1:02:17 Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know. Okay, fair enough. Do you like Green Girls? Do you hate Green Girls or do you not care?
1:02:28 I largely don’t care. You know, I think it kind of depends how they’re presented. You know, I think you can take these things too far. I’ve seen MMA shows where it’s bordered on adult entertainment. I think that’s that’s probably, you know, well put, no, nobody really appreciates that.
1:02:54 Yeah, I can say I’ve heard a lot of a lot of guys actually say that, you know, if I want to see that sort of thing, there’s other places I can go to see it. I don’t want to see it in a fight show. But I think, you know, if you’re about a couple of pretty girls walking around holding I don’t really have an opinion on that you know I think it’s it’s kind of traditional in the fight game it’s something something’s been there I think it would be probably be more trouble to get rid of than it is to yeah but I don’t know yeah I don’t have any very strong feelings about it okay I wanted to know the UFC does it really intelligently I think yeah I mean I think it’s done with good taste yeah I think Dana made that decision first on You know that they were they don’t wear heeled shoes It’s it’s relatively tasteful and it’s like and that’s very the smart I think what they’ve done and then I kind of like the way that they do it and like I like you said it probably I don’t know. It’s something that probably will be around for a while. I guess yeah I mean, I don’t think is it it’s not one of the things that I feel strongly enough to to make an issue of I guess Yeah, it is what it is. Okay, fair enough enough. I was wondering, you know, you’ve got this PhD in Theoretical Computer Science, I was wondering have you ever wanted to work in that field or not? I kind of got to the end of my PhD and I think my thought process was I don’t
1:04:23 Want to spend the next 40 years my life sat behind a desk. I mean I enjoyed math, I enjoyed doing the degree and to some extent I enjoyed the PhD. I mean it got to be a bit of a drag towards the end as PhDs tend to but yeah I think I kind of got to the stage where I thought what else is out there you know I’ve spent the last what seven years of my life doing this you know maybe it’s time for time to do something else for a bit and that was the time when I was starting to get into into MMA in fact I think I’d had a couple of fights already and things were going along that line so I thought well I’ll stick with this for a bit and see where it takes me and it was sort of in that period that I developed an interest in sports injuries mostly because you hang around MMA gyms long enough you run into a lot of injured people and I thought I’d like to learn more about that again that that led me down the osteopathy route and I suppose here we are so that’s kind of how that happened. Okay and that’s your full-time job. Well at the moment I divide my time between being a professional fighter and doing osteopathy. The beauty of doing that is you can create your own client’s blade. Something wrong with your neck here. Yeah, all that you specialize in neck attacks isn’t it? I don’t actually do that, that would be unethical but I just I think it’s enough to hang around MMA gyms. I think people come to you you don’t need to create more injuries. Yeah that’s probably true. There’s
1:06:10 Something I definitely want to ask you about because you know people in the UFC probably don’t know but a year ago you know you had a fight scheduled with Sheila Gaff right and you were a very big proponent of the vada testing and the drug testing and that fight never happened and people have different theories on that and I was just wondering if you could talk about about your whole mentality of having Vada involved and how you think that affects the sport right now as far as drug testing and everything? I think a lot of sports have issues with drugs and sport. I think the problem is when there’s a big incentive to be the best in the world or one of the best in the world then people are going to do what it takes within what they think they can get away with and I think it puts people in a very difficult position I think when the possibility of taking drugs is there. Whether that’s because there’s no drug testing or because the drug testing is for whatever reason not on a level to discourage that kind of use. So it gives people the
1:07:23 People are a big dilemma. It’s like, if you feel like all your competitors are using drugs, then what do you do? Do you tell yourself, ah, I’d only be levelling the playing field and do it as well? Or do you not do it and then maybe not get as far in that sport as you would otherwise? So I think it’s a particularly an issue in combat sports where one person’s actually trying to do damage to another person.
1:07:56 It’s a bit different in athletics or swimming or cycling where you’re competing to be the fastest. I mean, I think it’s still a big issue when you’ve got careers and money on the line. I don’t think it’s not negligible by any means, but I think in mixed martial arts it does raise an extra issue there. Are you happy with what the UFC does right now, as far as their drug testing? I mean, as I understand it, most of the drug testing the UFC has run by the athletic commissions in the US.
1:08:29 And my personal feeling is that they could be doing more. You know, that’s my personal feeling, you know. I don’t want to get into the politics of it or anything like that. But I think the problem is, at the moment, it’s largely done with in-competition testing, you know, they’ll test you immediately after the event. And they’re doing some out-of-competition testing, that’s how they got out of the ring.
1:08:54 Some of the states are doing, are moving in that direction, which I think is a good thing. But it’s not consistent from seeing the state. This is it. I mean, you’ve got, I mean, you’ve got wildly different standards from one state to another. I mean, I think there was a female fighter who tested positive.
1:09:11 This wasn’t USC, this was a local promotion, I think, tested positive. I think it was in Ohio. The second time she’s tested positive and they gave her a six month ban and they fined her $500, I believe. And you look at that and you think, well, why bother testing at all, if that’s what you’re going to do. You’re saying it’s not enough?
1:09:34 Yeah, I mean, I think that’s not going to discourage anyone from using drugs. they’re banning the male fighters like one year like the jail sonnets and stuff usually out for a year I mean I think again I mean the problem is there’s no consistency there’s this fruit from from one state to another you know from one situation to another and so I think that makes it very difficult because at the moment I don’t feel like there’s a real disincentive for fighters to use drugs I think you know a rational person looking at the situation could quite easily come to the conclusion that it’s worth their while taking that risk. Right.
1:10:13 Do you ever think that there will be a sport or an Olympics or anything where drugs will be allowed, where people will be able to make themselves the best athletes they can be? It’s called prize, wasn’t it? Well, there’s strong man, you know. There’s, you know, there’s sports where this sort of thing goes on. If not openly acknowledged, then at least tacitly condoned.
1:10:36 I mean cycling was the big obvious one, people talked about it for years and yet I believed in Lance Armstrong when he said he was not taking it and I still believed him until a few years ago. But then you have to sort of feel sorry for being the sacrificial lamb, you know, and everybody turns around and says oh that’s terrible, but it really was in fact level in the playing field. And again there is a lot of that goes on in MMA as well, I think there’s every sort Often somebody tests positive and everyone jumps on their case and, oh, isn’t this terrible?
1:11:10 And they’re the devil. And I think there’s an awful lot of people who are doing just the same thing, but not getting caught. What is it then that is the defining characteristic of substance that’s legal and not legal? I mean, because if one of my athletes comes in and says, oh, I’m not taking my glutamine, I’m not taking my fish oils, I’m not taking my zinc, I say, you’re crazy. What are you doing?
1:11:32 You know, that just seems like good common sense. But then, is there like a chemical definition? Well, I mean, with most sports, you look at the World Anti-Doping Association, they have a banned list. If it’s on the banned list, then you can’t take it. But how does it get on there is the question.
1:11:53 Yeah, I mean, that’s the interesting question. I mean, I think- And then it comes from marijuana metabolites right now. I mean, I think the, as I understand it, and again, I may be wrong here. I believe the criteria are, one, it’s got a potential for abuse and it’s got the potential to be harmful or dangerous if abused. I think that’s what they’re looking at.
1:12:17 Like you say, there’s a lot of things that people think, I mean, caffeine used to be a restricted substance on the wider band list until I think it was about 2004 when they took it off because I think there was a thought that it may be dangerous if used in performance enhancing quantities but then I’m not sure exactly why I think maybe some further studies were done or something like that and people decided that actually we’re not that worried about this go ahead take what you like with regard to caffeine so I mean there is that ongoing debate as to what should or shouldn’t be on the banned list I think ultimately once you have a list of substances that’s you that’s your definition you know yeah but it seems arbitrary is what you’re saying. Yeah I mean I think I mean and to some degree I think I think there is an element of arbitrariness you know I think at some point you have somebody has to decide is that gonna be on or off but I mean it’s it’s codified in the rules of the sport I mean it’s no more arbitrary than saying you can’t keep people in the head on the ground for example you know I mean that’s an arbitrary rule but it’s in the rules or you can’t grab the cage or 12 to 6 elbows, or any of these other things which are pretty arbitrary when it comes to … there may be a rationale for having them in there at some point, and you could argue about whether they should be or shouldn’t be, but at the end of the day I think you go by
1:13:39 The rules as they’re written, not as you think they should be. You don’t kick people in the head on the ground and then argue, oh, well, it’s not really any different from kicking them in the head on the feet. It’s illegal, so you don’t do it, and I think that’s how you have to look at it with banned substances. It’s just going to be interesting over the next like five, ten years where you start getting all this crazy technology coming in, whether it’s stem cell research or gene therapy or you know, people say there’s blood doping going on in the UFC and that would be very hard to test for and then also the growth hormone is hard without a blood test.
1:14:11 There’s things like modafinil, which is like a narcolepsy drug that Tim Ferriss is saying and then Usain Bolt takes just to be faster for the, you know, a hundred yard dash. I think it is a very difficult problem and I’m not sure there’s any very easy answers. I think you can certainly make it a lot harder for people to abuse steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. I think if you do proper random out of competition testing, the sort of testing where somebody shows up on your doorstep unannounced, this is the sort of testing that Vada do as well.
1:14:46 You give them your address, you let them know where you’re going to be and somebody will show up without telling you in advance and will take a urine and blood sample there. That sounds like a lot of fun. I mean personally it’s not an issue for me but I find that intrusive. I don’t think I would appreciate living my life like that. I get maybe perhaps the necessity of it but I don’t think that would be worth it for me to feel like I was being policed.
1:15:18 I mean, I can see where people are coming from on that. I mean, for me, the benefits of knowing that everyone else is doing that as well outweighs the cost of a bit of personal inconvenience. Right, right, right. Yes, I mean, that’s my take on it. I’d rather have it knowing that all my opponents are being tested, too.
1:15:39 I suppose that’s the price you pay. Or I mean, you could go the other way and say, we don’t care. Everything’s legal. take what you like. I think, personally, I’m not a fan of that approach, but I think at least that would be consistent, that would be honest. I think the problem is when you have a situation where on paper things are illegal, but everyone knows that stuff goes on, I think that’s the worst of both possible worlds. I think that makes it very difficult.
1:16:11 Kind of like what the Tour de France was. I think the people who suffer in that situation, the fighters, because they’re put in that position of having to say, well, do I or don’t I? And if a fighter in that situation makes a decision, well, I’m going to take drugs, and then they get caught, nobody’s going to back them up on it. Nobody’s going to say, oh, well, everyone else was doing it. They’re on their own, and they pay the cost for it.
1:16:34 So like I said, I think I would like to see things go one way or the other. I mean, ideally, I would like to see a better standard of testing and I think a combination of making it more likely that they’re going to catch people and also tougher penalties when people do get caught, you know, I think that would discourage a lot of people from doing it. You’ve done it, yeah. Yeah. You got anything to add to that?
1:17:05 I watched the documentary when I was in Russia. The only channel that was in English was the BBC, so I had this BBC documentary. It was really good. It was about the evolution of sprinting and they showed how technique changed and stuff like that. And times kept going up because they changed the surface and times skyrocketed up and then guys started figuring out how to lean on time to get a couple extra seconds.
1:17:28 It really made big differences. And then there was another point in time, I don’t know exactly what it was, but within more recent history, where all of a sudden, all the time skyrocketed again and all guys from Jamaica or from the same coach or from the same team you know and I had always like you know I could forget who it was you know but but serious athletes sitting there going yeah well you know Jamaicans are very relaxed so I think they just chill out at big events and you know oh you know come on Jamaicans are relaxed so they’re shaving you know previously unheard of milliseconds of the times, it’s absurd, you know, like I’m personally I’m for transparency, you know, I can make it a lot, make it a lot easier for everybody, but that’s just me. Okay, fair enough, well we’ll leave it at that, you know, before we wrap up, I want to hear about your social media addiction and I want to know how you deal with haters and how have people responded to you since you’ve come back and since you put your life on the line with the UFC and put your life on exposure I mean. Yeah I mean generally speaking people have been very positive actually I’ve had a lot of support so you know I’m it’s one of those things I think if there’s you can’t please all of the people all over time and there’s always going to be people out there who’ll pick holes in anything I think if you spend too much time focusing on that and
1:18:59 And thinking about that. I think the danger is it’s very easy to pick up on the few negative comments, even though the overwhelming majority might be positive, to pick out on the few negative and dwell on that. It’s the sort of thing that I tend to do, tend to focus on. A lot of people do that. I think it’s pretty common. What’s your favorite social media platform I’m on Twitter a lot and Facebook as well I need to I need to cut down yeah yeah it’s always riffing into me for this yeah yeah Rosi’s one of those dreadful people that starts looking at a foreign whilst in company that’s not good right now it’s totally unacceptable I’m glad we’re on airplane mode now yeah yeah it’s tricky I mean that we get we get hate here at London Real and it’s it’s it’s some people have find that unfathomable you know because we’re Just doing these free shows every week. But uh, it’s not lately when someone actually writes something I’m just thinking you went out of your day to take some time and send me this and I was just like wow I feel really bad for this person, you know, and yeah, I just end up not reading a lot of comments I think the hardest thing is that my instinct is to is to argue with them. Okay, you don’t know what you’re talking about I think I’m really trying hard just to realize but just let it go also on Twitter I think when you get into that argument Twitter, then you raise that relevancy to the world
1:20:27 Yeah, yeah, and it’s so it’s just like Twitter Wars I mean, you know Dana and gauges them all the time Dana white and it could be some dude with seven followers And they’ll be like doing a pay-per-view cards too expensive and he’ll be like, what are you talking about? But there’s you know, there’s nothing uglier than a bad Twitter war. Yeah Was a 12 year old kid That’s, yeah, that’s really the problem, isn’t it? The anonymity of it. I mean, it’s the beauty of things like Twitter, and it’s equally the downfall of them.
1:21:01 Everybody shouldn’t have equality. You put those same people in a room, and you’re not necessarily going to pay any attention to their opinion at all, and people would probably be ridiculed in person, and probably wouldn’t even dare open their mouths. They feel like they can’t insult fighters, and that’s why I don’t look at any of these things because I just get furiously angry. Okay. I think Ice T said what he’s like, if you ever said any of these things out loud that you wrote down on Twitter, most likely you would get beat up in real life.
1:21:36 If you ever actually said to someone, hey, you, I mean, so it’s unfathomable that people seem to be. It’s okay to type it out. It’s curious to me because I don’t know, I’d sort of perceived anything that I’d ever written on a form or anything like that as something published. Whereas people, I think the trend is to feel like what you write online is like, it’s not real life, it’s another world and it’s less, you don’t have to stand by it in the same way as something that you said in person, whereas I think there’s all sorts of things that you see in conversation. Now, for example, we’re being recorded. I’m a little bit more careful about what I would say now because I know that there’s a record of it. In the same sense, it’s published as if I’d written it publicly. That means a lot more. There’s all sorts of things that you can say in context in a conversation that you go, oh, that didn’t really mean it. And you can assume fairly with people that they’ll pick up on whether you really mean something or whether you’re just being flippant or whether you’re being ironic. If you write something, there’s no inflection and there’s no guarantee that the people who are reading it know who you are and there’s a permanent record of it forever.
1:22:51 So that’s why I don’t look on forums anymore. You’re turning into a grumpy old man. I really am. No, it’s terrible. Kids these days.
1:22:57 You’re turning into. You’re turning into. Yeah, yeah. All right, Rosi, I got to finish on asking you a very London Real question. And this is this if you could pick up the phone and call the 20 year old Rosi and give her a bit of advice and it can’t be keep doing what you’re doing what would you tell her? Many people have taken pause. You won’t believe what the next 15 years is going to look like.
1:23:29 Advice. Advice. Is there anything you would tell her to do differently? It’s a good question. I mean, this is along the lines of those questions where you’d say, if you could change something, what would you change? And I mean, the difficulty with that is you don’t know if I’d done X or Y differently, where I’d be at this point. You know, I don’t know whether things would have worked out better or would have worked out worse. It’s very hard to say, because I think at this point, I’m the sum total of the choices I’ve made up till now. And really, overall, I’m pretty happy with where I am at the moment.
1:24:12 I think, you know, there’s maybe, maybe something, looking back there’s some things that I might think I could have done that differently or I could have handled that better or, you know, if I turned left I said I’m right at that point where it would be interesting to see where things have ended up. But I can’t really say that I’m, I regret getting to this point and so it’s, it’s hard to say what I should have done differently along that way. Okay fair enough.
1:24:40 What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Surround yourself with good people. And who told you that? I can’t remember who first said that. Okay, that seems like you guys do that a lot.
1:25:00 I think so. Yeah, I think that makes probably a bigger difference. Okay, and then the last one is, what do you say to that 20-year-old woman out there that’s listening to us right now that wants to be like Rosi Sexton one day, wants to be a professional mixed martial artist? What advice do you tell them of what they should do or not do? I’d say make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.
1:25:42 It’s got to be what you want to do, not because you think it’s going to make you famous or get you lots of money, or make people love you or anything like that. I think it’s almost the case that you should only be a professional fighter if you can’t imagine yourself not being, if you can’t imagine not doing it. I mean, especially now, now women’s MMA has become trendy and I think there’s people getting in, you see people sometimes getting into it because they might be expecting to get to the top and make a lot of money and things like that.
1:26:19 There’s a lot easier ways to make a living, there’s much easier ways to make money. The only reason to do it really is if you love the sport and if you couldn’t imagine not doing it. It seems like if you go in for those other wrong reasons, then you’ll be tapping from that triangle. That’s the way it seems to me. But if you’re there because you really want to be there and you’re doing what you do.
1:26:46 Yeah. Like I said, I think there’s much easier ways to make money. That I believe. That’s awesome. Thank you so much for coming.
1:26:57 Great. It’s been great. Chat to you. It’s good. And Pete, thanks for being here.
1:27:02 Thanks for having me, Greg. And it’s nice to see you guys, just your reflections on her. If people want to harass you on social media, how do they get a hold of you? Twitter’s probably the best way. Rosi Sexton, R-O-S-I-S-E-X-T-O-N.
1:27:16 And yeah, shoot me a message on there. Okay, that’s better, Facebook too? Yeah, Facebook’s okay, if you look me up on Facebook, I’m on there fairly regularly. I don’t always get to my friend requests on Facebook because I get a fair few randoms. But if you shoot me a message or say hi, then I’ll always try to get back to you.
1:27:36 No, don’t leave her alone. Get out of the gym. Bagged in the gym. Bagged in the gym. Yeah.
1:27:42 That’s awesome. I hope we see you in the UFC again soon. You made me proud to be British. Thank you. That’s always my joke because, you know, but I do have a British passport.
1:27:51 But yeah, I hope we see you back there again. She’s French anyway. I know. I’m not French. I know.
1:27:57 Born in France. I’m not French. Born in France. I’m sure you can use that in the gym sometimes. There’s news to me Fantastic if you are listening to us, please subscribe on iTunes if you want to see all of our faces We’re on our our YouTube channel London Real and we’re on Twitter. I’m a big fan of Twitter I’ve got all my all my money on Twitter now I’m coming coming off of Facebook, but I’m finding it’s a great way to kind of interact with new people and that kind of thing So follow us there and awesome, you know, thanks guys for coming. I appreciate Alright, until then, it’s about the journey, take care of yourselves.
