Dan Hardy - Uncut

Full transcript: Dan Hardy on London Real

11:04 Dan, welcome to London Real. Thank you. Thanks for coming. No worries. In a weird way, you’re kind of like a quintessential London Real guest.

11:10 Is that right? Yeah, because we talk about consciousness, and we had a before and after ayahuasca episode as well, We talked about it before we did the ceremony and we’re always talking about martial arts. So it’s great having you I’m honored to be here. I’m looking forward to it. Thanks You know, I was watching your Twitter feed recently and you tweeted out exhale desert inhale home I think it was before your flight out from Vegas. It was that was just as I landed I think okay, I may have tweeted that and then you said this is a quote over Tania how I’ve missed your fresh air and Grace guys yes I was wondering if you could tell me what do you miss about England and what don’t you miss about England oh that’s a tough question what do I miss well obviously my family at the top of the list the fact that T’s you know such a part of the culture you know you walk in somebody’s house they put a mug of tea in your hand and before you leave there’s at least one more mug of tea in there so I’m a big tea drinker and I just kind of get away from it when I’m when I’m outside of the UK which you know which I don’t like I don’t like to sweat when I’m not training either so living in Vegas is not not a great place for me because like I’m already dehydrated before I got to the gym just driving there in my truck so I like the cold I like the gray sky my perfect my perfect day is a cool sunny day in England you know cuz so much

12:26 Green so much life everything’s growing everywhere and people are just in a good mood you know these people are friendly and everyone’s trying to help each other and I don’t always find that everywhere else in the world I think I I mean, I’ve said this before, but a sunny day in London, I think it’s the greatest city in the world. It kind of blossoms. I mean, you said you were at Camden earlier today. I mean, when the sun’s out, everyone’s just like, it’s like the flowers come out and everyone’s super cool.

12:48 The flip side of that is sometimes when it’s raining, it can be a little down, but maybe you’re used to that because you grew up here. I don’t mind the rain, I really don’t. I mean, well, I have a deck at my apartment in Nottingham and it was, we had thunderstorms the other week and I was just standing outside in the rain and I did the same thing in Peru in China when it rained and I just I like being out in the rain but I think it was Billy Connolly that said there’s not there’s no bad weather it’s just the wrong clothes I’m a big Billy Connolly fan and that was a good quote I think weather’s a state of mind too if you’re complaining about the weather then you’re not doing something right in your life maybe how long have you lived in America I did nearly five years in Los Angeles and then two years in Vegas up to now and then before that I was back and forth for two months here and there and subleasing places, and living on peanut butter.

13:37 If you had to explain America, and I’m American, to an alien who landed on this planet, how would you describe the country? It’s like taking the diversity of Europe and spreading it around on one island and turning up the volume. It’s the extreme of everything in America. And everything is trying to be louder than the last thing. So it’s just, it’s a constant sensory overload.

14:05 It’s the people, everything, the marketing. Yeah, marketing, obviously, you know, the advertising, it creeps into everything. But the people, everyone’s more animated. Everyone’s so, so what we were talking about earlier with Eddie Bravo, how animated he is. And you wouldn’t see that.

14:22 We’ve been kind of hanging out and we were looking at cabins the other week in Castleton and picking up crystals and rocks and stuff. and the tour guides are so different. This tour guide was like a games workshop nerd, kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, and he was really cool. He was a great tour guide, very knowledgeable, but he was kind of like a little bit crass and a little bit creepy, and he didn’t mind letting his personality kit come through, whereas in America, it’s like there’s a way to do that job, and everyone seems naturally very good at it.

14:54 I mean, obviously, Disney World’s got it nailed, but- That’s the thing I thought of, Disney. Yeah, but it filters down, And like, you know, Starbucks, you walk into any of these massive monstrous corporations and they have everybody trained like clones. Right, it’s a pitch. Yeah. Where it’s a bit more individual here, as far as the people, I guess.

15:13 Yeah. Actually, Lacey was asking me what it’s like to be an American in England, and I think I get like a pass because I’m American, so I’m allowed to be a little bit more rash. Because if you are English, I don’t know what your experience is, but everything is a little more reserved. Yeah. You agree with that?

15:29 Yeah, well, I lived in New York for three years. New York’s slightly different because it’s a little bit more cosmopolitan than, say, Las Vegas, for example. But it’s still, I think, the way that I look at America is that, as you said, everything is more extreme. Look at the weather. You have a much bigger weight.

15:46 It’s much colder, and it’s much warmer. There’s animals that can kill you in America. The most dangerous snake that we have here is the adder, and that will give you a nasty itch. And we have that beast of bobbin that roams around that nobody’s ever really seen and has never hurt anyone, where you have bears and mountain lions and genuine shit that can kill you over there. So that kind, there’s a lot more, it’s a lot more extreme, as you mentioned.

16:09 I was thinking about that the other day, I was hanging out with a friend at the end of their garden. It was like, it was about midnight, we were out there looking at stars and passing around the ceremonial joint. And I was just thinking to myself, how nice it is that I just don’t have to worry that there’s gonna be something that’s gonna bite my, because I had bare feet like I’d be most of the time. It was just so nice that nothing in England’s gonna kill me.

16:31 I would like the reintroduction of wolves just for my entertainment, but other than that, I’m quite comfortable with wildlife here. Yeah, we’ll get into the wolves, definitely. When I was preparing for this, I remember, I remember your big rivalry with GSP before that fight, and I remember a piece of footage. Actually, I remember a statement you made where you said, I’m more of a martial artist than he is, and I remember first thinking, Okay, here’s the English guy with the red mohawk.

16:56 And I’m like, that’s quite a thing to say to a guy that comes in in the gi. You know, I mean, GSP comes in with the headband and everything, right? And then they played footage of you, I think you were 11 and you were training in China. No, I was old, I was, it was 2000, I was 20. 20, okay, when you were in China.

17:12 You just looked 11. Yeah, I looked really young. That was just how skinny and, yeah, I had my head shaved, they shaved my head. Because I went out there with long hair as well. Really?

17:20 I was, I think I was 19. I had long hair and I was there for like two days and they sat me down and shaved my head. And I lost, I went down to like 10 stones, three or something, which I can’t even convert to pound on my head. 143. 943, yeah.

17:36 Wow. So we- I got banked here. Yeah, I know, that’s scary. That’s how he does it. So was that the start of your martial arts journey or did it started much younger?

17:45 I started when I was six. Wow. Yeah, I was into the Ninja Turtles and I was at school And I’m running around, fighting with kids, not really with the intention of hurting them most of the time. And it was just, my parents were like, okay, we need to find a place where he can go and do this. So Take Wonder was the most available.

18:04 And I started with that and I was doing that for, well, I did it for 17 years, totally. But throughout my early teens, like from 13, 14, 15, I was starting to go to different martial arts schools And just really to find other people to train with, people to challenge me in different ways. Because I’d like to go to a Kung Fu class and do the first 40 minutes of the class. So then people in the room have started to get an idea of, well, he looks like he knows what he’s doing, but it’s not Kung Fu.

18:33 So then when sparring comes, everyone wants to try and take your head off and beat the new guy up. So I kind of went looking for fights in martial arts gyms. And not in him anywhere. Yeah, anywhere. I mean, if I could get to another city, I would go with a friend and we would travel and do different tournaments, you know, traditional jiu-jitsu and I’ve done all sorts of karate and judo and different styles of kung fu.

18:57 And it was just anything I could find, you know, a combative challenge really. How long were you with a shell in monk school? Just two months. My intention was to go out there for two months and check it out, kind of get a feel for the place and then come back and, you know, finish university and then go and do three years. But while I was out there, I realized that as much as I was enjoying the process of learning the weapons and all the traditional styles that we will learn at the time, and the strictness of it, the stretching and the early mornings and prolonged days of training, that was all great.

19:32 But the actual content was no real use to me in a combative situation. So when I got back, I started to focus much more on Muay Thai because I really thought that I wanted to, I was so into Confu, I saw the 36 Chambers of the Shaolin and I was like okay I want to do that, sign me up three years with the knives on the elbows and all of it holding the buckets of water and I just wanted that experience and it was good that I went to fill it out before because it changed my journey entirely, it took me towards the actual combat side of it. Which is what you always wanted, which is why you toured those schools because you wanted a reality, you wanted what works in sparring.

20:10 And to be honest, Thai boxing, I think it’s the most brutal of all the combat sports on your body. Especially if you’ve got elbows and knees, it’s ridiculous. Your shins get busted up, your hands get busted up, and the way that they judge it is it’s not by what you land, it’s about the impact that you have on the guy. So if you stand there, take the guy’s best off and you don’t move, it doesn’t score. Whereas if I tip you and you go back, even though that’s not really damaged you anyway, you’ve been moved, and there’s been an impact, and that scores very highly.

20:43 So basically, if you’re really tough, you can do really well in Thai boxing. Yeah, and that was my limit for Taekwondo. That was where I started to fail, because I trained up to a point where I was fighting at 69 kilos, so I was quite skinny and lean when I was a teenager, and I was competing a lot. I was doing as many Taekwondo tournaments as I could. But then, when it became an Olympic sport, and they started to tweak the rules, it became much more of like a game of tag.

21:10 And the way I was trained was to walk the guy down and use punches to the body to bring his head down so I could kick him, because it was full contact and we had no pads on our hands or feet. You couldn’t punch to the head. So it was all body shots and head kicks. So I would get in the pocket and make a fight out of it. And as soon as it came to the point scoring, the fast game of tag that they have now, which I’m not saying it’s not dangerous, but it’s not the fight that I was looking for.

21:38 Have you seen that viral video of those two little Japanese kids that are doing the taekwondo dance? They’re basically fighting taekwondo, except they never get anywhere near each other. They’re doing like- Just crazy spinny stuff. But no, but they’re like six-year-old kids, and so it’s quite a parody of the- Do you think the Olympics can kill a sport because it comes a point venture, and then it bores the hell out of people? Yeah, well, the problem is, as soon as it becomes a part of the Olympics, it has to be politically correct for a much wider audience.

22:04 And the thing is with mixed martial arts, It’s brutal, it’s a brutal sport. We fight with enough padding so we don’t break our hands. And the reality of it is that it’s a fight, it’s a full contact fight, but I don’t see a reason why that can’t be accepted as it is, because some people feel a pull to that. But the people that don’t feel a pull to that are the ones that say that nobody else can do it either. So you add, like, bring up the Olympics.

22:32 If we had to mix martial arts to the Olympics, we would then have shingards, bigger gloves, headgear. The amateur. Exactly, it changes everything. Couldn’t have more than one bout, you know, at a time and all that stuff. I mean, you’ve been doing MMA in the UK for 10 years.

22:48 I mean, you talked about the acceptance of the sport. Do you still find that you’re having to justify the sport to some people when you come back home? Less now, less. And I don’t think it’s because opinions shifted. I just think it’s because people are more aware of it now.

23:03 And because, I mean, there was always such a huge fan base for mixed martial arts that it was just a case of getting the word out there that it was happening. But they’re always gonna be the people that oppose it. It’s just that when it was starting up, they were more vocal because it was in a situation where they thought they might be able to affect it and shut it down. Whereas now I think it’s big enough that it’s, they just kind of like, they just accept that it’s part of their society now.

23:29 So we’ll always have those people that don’t like other people doing what they like to do, but I think that it grows to a point where they can’t stop it anymore and they just almost give up. It’s encouraging. We’ve had Bama on Channel 5, so it’s terrestrial television, which is encouraging. And you’ve got BT Sport, which has just kicked off. And they’ve actually, instead of just being ESPN, which just shows the UFC and doesn’t have any, doesn’t provide any commentary, they had Rosie Sexton down, John Jones, and they had a panel of guests interviewing them, and obviously that’s bringing everything to the mainstream and so the more that happens, the bigger the sport, I think, will grow and the more acceptance that they’ll be.

24:07 Yeah, and it looks like I’ll be doing some work with them as well. I was speaking to Lorenzo before I left Vegas and he seems keen to have me involved in that, so that’d be fun. Perfect. Yeah, and they’ve just signed a deal with Virgin as well. Yeah.

24:19 Because I know there are a lot of people annoyed that they signed with Virgin to get the UFC and now it’s switched to BT and they won’t even get it, so now it’s available for everybody. So that’s a huge step. And that’s really all we need and that’s what Lorenzo was saying, is we just need an outlet in Europe and we need someone that’s consistent. Because we had Satanta and then we had ESPN. Yeah, it’s hard to get here sometimes, or it used to be hard to get here.

24:39 It’s also on a crazy times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s like two, three o’clock in the morning, the cards begin. So it’s, obviously you have the diehards, but in terms of appealing to the masses, it’s difficult. I was funny, I was in Australia at the end of last year, and they have more UFC and MMA on TV than they do over here, and the sport is growing exponentially because of that.

25:01 Because you don’t even have to show the live events. If they just repeated the UFC up from one to, wherever we are now, 160, every couple of days, you have just so many more people getting into the sport. That’s just like in the States, right? It’s only like multiple cable channels at the same time. And so they have the same channels in, so they have all the Fox channels in Australia that they do in the States, so it’s exactly the same program.

25:29 See, we’re missing out on all that. But BT Sports are talking about a Tuesday night show, I think, at like seven. Perfect. If you could get that on TV, then it’s going to be really big for the sport, I think. And with the frequency of the shows as well, they could do a weekly round-up now.

25:45 I mean, there’s so much happening, so many athletes, even if there’s not a fight at the weekend just past, there are stories from the previous weekend’s fights or fighters pulling out, opponents changing. Well, there’s, you know, Ella Tallworths, who’s a Fighting Cake Warriors, Bama, there’s a load of, you know, there’s a load of different shows, and if you, it’s still beneficial for the UFC to get exposure to mixed martial arts as a whole, not just, you know, not just its product, I think. Definitely.

26:10 Definitely. You mentioned Lorenzo Fertitta, which people don’t know, he’s one of the owners of the UFC, and he’s been a big fan of yours for a long time, and I remember him tweeting out, you know, I’m never going to cut Dan Hardy, because I love that guy, because he goes to war, And this was during your four fight losing streak, which was, I know, a tough time for you and a tough transition in the sport. I remember you mentioning that you had tweeted something in Las Vegas like a picture and someone tweeted back like, why aren’t you working on your takedown defense?

26:38 And you were like really frustrated with that. And I just wanted you to talk us through that, I don’t know, dark period or is it dark in retrospect? Well, yeah, it is. I mean, still dark, but I’m thankful for it. It was a weird time because I never, well, to start with, I never saw myself losing my first fight, I saw myself going on a winning streak straight off and so I lost my first fight and that was immediately a reality check.

27:03 Your very first MMA fight? Yeah, we were talking about that earlier, but then once that was out of the way, my next thing was, oh, I’m never going to lose more than a couple of fights in a row. It’s just kind of, they’re just things that I just expected myself. So I lost the title fight, I wasn’t too hard on myself for that because I wasn’t expected to win. I knew I was outmatched on the night. It was just one of those things. He had the experience and the money behind him and obviously the talent, as everybody knows.

27:31 And in a way you said that’s a win, kind of, because you went to five rounds. It wasn’t that knockout. There wasn’t that submission. No. I didn’t get beat up. I didn’t get damaged in any way, but I also didn’t put up any real fight. I just couldn’t. I was outmatched. He’s a better athlete and he’s a better wrestler And he used exactly what he needed to to win the fight.

27:50 And people will look back on GSP as a pivotal time in the sport where it shifted and an athlete started to take over. Because in 10 years’ time, the sport’s been entirely different. And when we’ve got guys that would normally leave college and sign with the NFL or the NBA and they’re coming over to the UFC, then we’ve got a whole bunch of monsters. And that changes. But I think GSP was one of the first ones.

28:16 I’m not an athlete. I’ve always said that. I’m not an athlete, I’m a fighter that’s trying to be a martial artist. Okay. And GSP works on that explosive strength and all that.

28:25 Yeah, and he’s very linear in his approach to it as well. I mean, I’ve spent a couple of weeks up with him now and see how he puts his team around him and how it’s structured and it’s very direct, very linear. There’s no- Did you train with Phil Nurse? I did, I didn’t train with him. I was present while he was there working with GSP.

28:43 Really good coach. Yeah, so he has a gym in New York that my first ever martial arts experience was with him just completely random me by walking into his gym. But you can see the stuff that he does and how it translates through to GSP and Jon Jones in the actual fights, those Superman punches, followed by those sort of like rangey kicks to take down. So I think he’s quite an influential guy in this scene. And I think that because he doesn’t spend the whole training camp with them as well, he’ll like come in sporadically and give them a few nuggets of information and leave.

29:14 So they have them bouncing around the head And I think it sinks in a bit better, you know, because obviously in training can be so monotonous. You’re in there for like eight, 12 weeks and you see in the same faces every day. So when you get a different person with a different voice, sometimes I think you pick it up better. You say linear. What do you mean by linear?

29:30 As in? Well, he’s very direct. He has, you know, he’s very good at following his game plan. He’s very good at knowing what he needs to do to win the fight. And I, it’s not that I don’t want to win the fight.

29:43 I’m just less interested in it. I’m more interested in fighting. Okay. Do you think there’s a difference between New George and Old George in terms of the way it is approached? Definitely.

29:54 But I think in his earlier days, he had an aggression to get to the belt. Because he wasn’t getting the respect that he’s getting now and obviously he wasn’t getting the money. I mean, it’s not… GSP’s not a money guy. I thought he would be when I met him and he’s not.

30:08 He just loves life and money’s there as a lubricant, basically, he just enjoys himself. But now he’s respected as a successful and an accomplished athlete. So now he’s not really got that aggression that he used to fight with, you know? And it’s good to keep the belt, as we’ve seen recently with Anderson. He’s doing his job.

30:30 There’s something about keeping the belt that’s kind of nice. And he knows that. Of course. Of course. I mean, it’s always better to step away and hand the belt back and say, I’m done defending now, you can give it to somebody else, but yeah.

30:43 I think GSP is winding down. I think he has a couple more challenges for himself within the sport, but other than that, I think he’s done. Do you think he’ll walk away before he gets beat? I hope so. Okay, okay, so sorry, I hate to bring this, but back to your losing streak.

30:57 My worries. Was it worse and worse and worse, or was there a whole transformation going on in your head at the time? Yeah, it’s so much changed because, yeah, so with the GSP fight, I wasn’t too hard on myself. With the Condit fight, I knew I was going in there against a respected champion, but ego kind of got the better of me. We were just discussing this before we started recording.

31:24 The problem was that after a title fight, the UFC generally give you quite a long gap before they schedule you another fight. To let you kind of decompress and wind down and obviously recover if you need to. And there’s usually a lot of promotional stuff to do after a title fight as well. Whether you win or lose, a lot of people are trying to get their hands on you depending on the performance. And I was quite in demand because they’d done the three-part prime time.

31:48 So I had loads and loads of people just coming up to me in the street being like, oh yeah, work on your takedown defense and you’re beating them up. And after like three or four months of this constant trickle of a little bit of wrestling, you’ll be the champion, a little bit of wrestling, you’ll be the champion. I came up against Condit and I was like, I’m gonna run through this guy and then get to the title again. And I don’t think it was quite that extreme, but that was where my ego was at at the time.

32:12 That was where my other confidence was at. So in the conduct fight, it was just a case of waiting for me to land my left hook to knock him out. It’s kind of how it felt when I walked in there. And I remember hitting him with a left hook and I felt that it was a good punch. I felt that it might have hurt him.

32:26 So then I just, I think I threw like another two or three left hooks in a row, which is a schoolboy area. I was just showing him exactly what I was gonna do. And because Greg Jackson in his corner is a good analyst, they obviously looked at my fights and were thinking, okay, left hook counters. And he just got it perfectly in the split second before I landed it. So after that, it was a real wake up call, because then I realized that the thing that I thought I was good at, I could get beaten at as well, because that was my first knockout.

32:55 I’d never really been outstruck before. I never really felt like I had. So then all of a sudden, there’s this urgency going into the next fight, like, OK, I’m too down now. Three fights and you’re cut is generally the rule. And in my heart, I was hoping they were going be more forgiving because I’d fought GSP and Condit you know I mean you know I’m not fighting numbers. Number one and number two. Yeah exactly and then they gave me Anthony Johnson. I’ve got this monster to deal with now and I remember seeing him like a couple of weeks before I got off of the fight against him like a tap outside and he was like 235. Yeah he looks like a linebacker for NFL team. Used to cut huge, well he’s had problems cutting. He’s fought a heavy weight now. Yeah. Broke So he was a beast and you were like…

33:41 Well, so the problem was that I… It was a lay and pray, basically. Yeah, we had this conversation going back and forward on the private message on Twitter. Because we’ve been friends and I always had this joke, you know, like, every time I saw him I’d make a joke about his weight. Like, are you still in my weight class or something, you know, something like that.

34:00 And we were always quite good friends, we always got on. And so we had this kind of back and forth on Twitter, especially when Tito had pulled out and they brought in Phil Davis. We were like, okay, we’re gonna steal the show. We wanna make an impact to steal the show and have a war. And I was thinking, he’s a big puncher.

34:17 I’ve just been knocked out. He’s thinking, okay, I’m gonna knock this guy out again. So I kind of put all my eggs in one basket and thought we were gonna have a brawl. And I was just gonna stay active and wear him out and wait for his weight cut to catch up with him and then beat him up. That was my plan.

34:34 Or even catch a submission, because he kind of gives up when he gets tired, as far as his takedown defense. And he just punked me, nailed me. It was great. It was perfect, because he came out, and he knew exactly what he was going to do. And I knew he cut weight hard, because I’d said a lot in the media about him not making weight, about me not expecting him to make weight.

34:57 So then I was thinking that would put extra emphasis on him cutting the weight, and then he’d exhaust himself for the fight. This was my thinking behind it. This is how you deal with a guy that’s far too big for the weight class. So yeah, and I’d seen him and he cut weight Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night and Friday morning. In the sauna.

35:14 Yeah, sauna in. I had one guy tell me, they saw him laying in the elevator on the way back up to his room on Wednesday night. Jesus. So I knew he was exhausted. So I was thinking, okay, this is gonna work out.

35:26 I’ve got a good feeling about this. And in the fight, there was a stumble. he knocked me with a good head kick, I was kind of off balance. And then when I got back to my feet, if I remember it right, he kind of rushed me with a takedown and I landed on my thumb and dislocated it. And then it took me a little while because I had to like kind of get my thumb moving and working again because I was working a lot of kimoras, that was one of my game plans if I was on the bottom. And he was just so strong, it was just twisting out of the kimora. And the problem was that then I’m on the bottom And I’m carrying like it was two to ten to fourteen on the night So I’m like carrying a huge amount of weight and trying not to take too much damage So then I was getting tired at the same time and I was just exhausted by the end of the first round And it was just you know and I just kind of I think I just kind of gave up in my head Was it a boy watching a bad movie where you’re like this this isn’t happening, but this is happening Yeah And I just I really didn’t feel like I could do a great about it and then the last round there was a moment where I I thought I’m just gonna go for it and I think I just started throwing and he engaged me for a second but by that point I just had nothing left.

36:33 You talked about the media like about getting in his face or making fun of him. You were notorious for getting kind of GSP riled up and then you called Marcus Davies the fake Irishman which like in the US they might be like what do you mean but like we understand what you’re talking about in the UK because there’s Irish people and then there’s everyone in America who says they’re Irish on St. Patrick’s Day and then they go back to being whatever they are normally.

36:55 But I mean, how much of that is your game plan? Because you don’t really seem like that guy. So is it all fabrication? Is it something you plan on? Yeah, well, see the thing is, the thing is fans have kind of a weird view of this.

37:10 Like now if I say yes, it’s all fabrication, then they think I’ve like done them wrong in some way. But it’s not, it’s game plan. I’m like, I’m fighting. As soon as I’ve signed the contract, I’m at war with this guy. So any way I can get inside his head and kind of weaken him a little bit, I’ll do it.

37:25 And Marcus Davis is a very, very passionate Irishman. I mean, you know, he wasn’t born in Ireland, but obviously, you know, he’s got ancestry from there and he’s passionate about it. And I don’t have a problem with that. People can claim whatever heritage they want. You know, it makes no difference to me.

37:42 But because I knew he was so passionate about it, I knew that it was gonna be something that he would button it, because he bit on that one. Yeah, so it affected his performance it did we made him more aggressive and there’s a there’s a there’s a there are two different Marcus Davis There’s the Marcus Davis that comes to grapple and the Marcus Davis that comes to strike and if you watch him against someone like Was it Jay Taney for in simply Liverpool? He beat Jess Leo down by not by a big knockout Yeah, I was in Newcastle was it and he fought Jason Tann as well one of Jason Tann’s only fights in the UFC And there was somebody else he fought And you can tell that he shows up looking more like a boxer.

38:19 He doesn’t look quite as muscular. He looks leaner and smaller and quicker. And they’re the fights he normally knocks people out. So, and I thought that obviously because I was known for not being a particularly good grappler, I thought that he would, again, invest in a grappling heavy takedown and show up looking very muscular and strong like he does when he’s got a grappling game plan, which he did. So when I saw him at the weigh-ins, I was like, okay, it’s worked, he’s gonna grapple.

38:45 It’s in the first round he did, you know. So there are different, like you can kinda, it’s kinda like striking. Like if I’m standing in front of somebody and I’ve got a flat wall behind them, and I’m standing directly in front, they’ve got a 50-50 option of which way to go. If I step to my left, even an inch, immediately that side looks more enticing. So you can do that with fighter’s game plans as well.

39:07 I’m giving away all my tricks now, but I’m effectively retired, which I’m sure you’re gonna wanna talk about. I think you should say that. No, I’m not. I’m not. Not at all.

39:16 Anyway, so that was all I do. I just see how I can influence their options a little bit, so I can kind of play up the fact that I’m not a very good grappler or talk about the fact that I want to stand and trade and have a war. Even though in secret you’re training the 10th planet, you do your turn on it. I used it. I used it really well.

39:37 Your last point, you were taking the guy down in like rounds three, two and three, right? Yeah, that surprised him, but I used it early days, Cage Warriors, against Matt Thorpe. I was fighting him for the first world title shot, I was so nervous, and Matt Thorpe’s like six foot four, and he’s good at everything, he’s a good grappler, he’s a good striker, he’s got kicks and knees, and I was predominantly a striker, and I knew that they would bank on that. So I took him down for five rounds and just held onto him and beat him up. And I didn’t do a great deal of damage, but I won the belt. But that was the same thing because like, you know, but as soon as you, if you’re known as a striker and you start taking people down, they think as soon as you shoot, they drop their hands and then you can, then you can clock them. So it’s just another string to your bow, right? And it sows uncertainty in their mind. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So, so fourth loss, how’s your mentality and what are you thinking now yeah well my approach my mentality before the fight is mortality really because because after the Anthony Johnson fight I got back to the dressing room and I sat on the floor with my hand in a bucket of ice and I looked at my striking coach Steve and I said I’m done I’m done I’m not enjoying it anymore this is not fun for me anymore I’m not getting anything out of it I’m just getting damaged so I was just like I’m just I’m done over it and

40:55 And he said, all coaches would, take some time, I would think about it, let it settle in, let the swelling go down. But I’d already started planning for other things. In my head, even before the Anthony Johnson fight, just to stay relaxed in the fight, I was trying to think, if this doesn’t go right, what are my other options? Because I’d never really thought about it before. I was going to be the UFC champ, that was the goal.

41:22 That was the goal when I signed with the UFC. before the UFC, it was to be a UFC fighter. I had to kind of reconfigure my approach. But anyway, so yeah, so I was done. I’d given up and I’d already been looking at things that I was gonna do after.

41:37 I wanted to go back to university and study philosophy. I had a list of places that I wanted to travel, different experiences that I wanted to have and different things that I wanted to do because mixed martial arts, martial arts in general has been very productive for me. and it’s given me a lot of good connections, I’ve met a lot of good people from it, but the actual sport of mixed martial arts is quite destructive, you know what I mean? And I’ll be listening to Simon and Garfunkel or walking around an art gallery and I’m like, these people just created, they just created something that was powerful and beautiful or a good book or whatever.

42:15 And I felt that I kinda wanna like create something better. Yeah, leave something more of a contribution than… Because the way I look at it is like this, and this was something that came up a lot when I was in Peru. There’s no point to any of this, you know? Like the UFC, there’s no point to it.

42:35 And if you look at the champions, and this is by no means meant to be an insult to anybody, but they’re all very linear in what they’re doing. They don’t think outside of the box, you know? They learn martial arts, they eat right, and they thank Jesus, and you know what I mean? And it’s very much, this is what I’m doing. this is what I’m doing.

42:53 And in my head, I’ve always been kind of, oh, that over there, that over there, you know what I mean? So I’ve never been, it’s probably quite difficult to be a champion though if you’re not intensely focused. No doubt, no doubt. So that’s why I’ve kind of put it to one side. Was the ayahuasca something planned before your fourth loss?

43:14 That was my treat after the Ludwig fight. Regardless of how it went, I knew that the ayahuasca experience was gonna help me with what came next, whether it was to continue fighting or to do something else. Do you think the fact that you had actually already convinced yourself you were gonna go on that journey helped you at peace at that fight? Helped you relax in that fight? That you had made a decision on where to go?

43:37 I think so, I think so. And the thing was, I wasn’t really fighting for myself then, because the fights, the title fight and well, all the fights up until the vital fight were for me, I wanted to win. I wanted to be better and to be more successful. With the light will fight, I just wanted to fight. I wasn’t even interested in winning.

43:58 I didn’t go in there with any real intention of winning. Obviously I wanted to, there’s no doubt you’re always going to fight wanting to, but I wasn’t making the decisions to win the fight. I was making the decisions to have a fight because Anthony Johnson had bored the life out of me so much and I really felt like I’d wronged the fans in some way because I’d not given the performance that they wanted. And I had fans that had traveled from all over the US, from the UK as well, that have flown to Seattle.

44:26 The stars make fights, right? So if someone’s not prepared to stand in front of you, you can’t do your thing. But at the same time, as a mixed martial artist, it’s my responsibility to create that fight as well. Like I can’t, and this was always a misconception when I, I never complained about wrestlers, about wrestlers using wrestling to win fights. Like I feel, if I got taken down, my responsibility to get back up and get myself in a situation where I can win the fight.

44:54 But at the same time, I don’t think a wrestler should use wrestling to hide from the fight, which to a certain extent in that fight, I felt like Anthony Johnson did. It was the easiest thing for him to do to win the fight, and he knew how close he was to losing his job. So he made the right decision, and I’m still friends with him, we’re still cool, but that was a decision that that he made, whereas with the Leitel fight, I just wanted to fight. I just wanted to go in there and just feel that adrenaline.

45:20 But also a great opponent for you to do that as well. And a great opponent, yeah. He bangs, he’s got great submissions, but he’s not a big, heavy, you know, middleweight posing as a well-told man. And you have nothing to lose, it’s your fourth, so if it’s a loss, you’re gone initially. And this was it.

45:36 And I’d already like, okay, September I’m going to go back to university, and you know, I had things I was planning. And then when Lorenzo tweeted and he said that they were keeping me, and then the backlash from that small cultish group of fans that demand fighters’ heads on a spike when they lose too many fights, you know what I mean? I was like, wow, now I need to fight to prove Lorenzo made the right decision. This is not about me winning fights anymore.

46:03 Now I’m kind of on borrowed time. And so that was where I was at going into the Ludwig fight. I’m on borrowed time. So if this works out then great and if it don’t, all the plans that I’ve got in the pipeline just fall into place. Right.

46:17 Talk about out of the box. Now you have all these other options. And fight of the night follows. Yeah. Yeah.

46:23 Great fight. And Loebwerk is, well, Loebwerk is no joke and he’s been famous now as the head trainer of Alpha Male and now he’s getting like so many kudos and stuff. So all right, let’s talk psychedelics a little bit. Okay. We, about two weeks ago, we released an episode called DMT Before and After.

46:38 We basically filmed here with myself and an ayahuasca filmmaker. Our thoughts on DMT, we went and smoked DMT, we came back and told people what happened. And then about a week later, I released a training video of me training with an MMA fighter named Peter Irving, just me kicking pads and stuff. And somebody tweeted, they’re like, wait a second, you do psychedelics and then you want to be still living shit out of something. And I was like, yeah, they go hand in hand in my opinion, but can you explain why you wanted to go drink ayahuasca and then after you drank ayahuasca you went back into the cage and got another win and can you explain that to people is that is there something strange there or is that um it’s different it’s difficult it’s very difficult to explain ayahuasca to someone that’s never that’s never like had that it had a psychedelic experience i mean how do you explain psychedelia it’s it’s out there but the thing is like ayahuasca doesn’t necessarily do anything to change the person. It just helps the person understand who they are so they can make the changes themselves. So I still like fighting, I still feel aggressive and get angry and the psychedelic experiences have not changed that, they just help me understand it and help me distinguish between that cross chatter between different parts of my brain where the reptilian brain’s going yeah go and hit him, hit him, he deserves it. And my higher

48:03 Consciousness is like no no come on no one’s gonna like that that’s the stupid thing to do and everyone’s gonna be upset and you’re gonna look like the asshole you know so so like now I and now I can hear this cross chatter and I can choose which one’s the best whereas before everything was was fighting it was all fighting and they were the decisions that was making without thinking about it. So so all that the all that the ayahuasca ceremonies did was just helped me connect with the different parts of my personality and helped me understand what each part needs, you know, what do I need to do to feed reptile and what is my higher consciousness need to, gonna need to like, to level up again to keep evolving. And you talked about you want to get more in touch with the reptilian part of your brain because I think you even said when you’re in a fight and you’re in your reptilian brain is the perfect thing, you know, almost like you said, no mind earlier in that Tom cruise movie. And do you think psychedelics or meditation is a way to get there further?

49:03 No doubt, no doubt, yeah. There are different ways of doing it, obviously, but like for me psilocybin is one of the most powerful and useful tools for that kind of thing. Because Antares McKenna talks a lot about how the integration of psilocybin into the diet affected people’s edge and depth perception so they were you know more able to survive. And this is part of the stone date theory. Exactly. I’m just curious have you over trained on low doses and have you ever noticed that? I have. Okay. I have.

49:36 Every subject’s on the table so feel free to ask away and I have an interest in actually trying it during a fight. I would like a gram or a gram and a half to see the difference but then again that might be an unfair advantage you never know. Is it illegal? I’m sure it’s not on the band list. I’m sure it’s not on the band list. They wouldn’t even know what it was. They just think you were crazy for doing it. Does it affect your respiratory system or your heart rate or anything like that? No, not at all. I had a psilocybin experience a few months ago and I remember looking at my iPhone because I was playing music and it was all of a sudden in HD and it was in the first 30 minutes and I noticed all the little details. That’s what Terrence is talking about. Low dose makes you a better hunter.

50:19 A medium dose, you don’t think about hunting anymore, so that’s a fine line. A high dose, a heroic dose, that’s where I go. Is that what it’s known as, heroic dose? Heroic dose. So Terence McKenna’s theory is high doses vary infrequently, and I completely agree with him.

50:36 So if it’s psilocybin, five grams dried, go really big, learn about yourself, apply that maybe in your life for the next six months, as opposed to let’s take some mushrooms and go to a rock concert. Not that I have anything wrong with that, but also Terrence says, do it at your house alone in the dark, and I kind of agree with that too. Of course, ayahuasca is kind of a corollary on that because you’re doing it with a shaman in a group, in the jungle. So you have experience with both.

51:03 Is there one you prefer or do you find one slightly different? I find ayahuasca to be more avatar for me, you know, it’s like more about the community and how I love it. Is that a heroic dose then? Ayahuasca is always a heroic dose. You’re usually given enough where you’re going to go there, but I just find I’m more of like mother earth and community in Silicideman. Yeah, I still have parts of that I’m sorry. I’m interviewing you know what are your experiences when those two? There’s no diet with silicideman either. So yeah, well That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be okay, you know With ayahuasca that’s it’s much. It’s much more. It’s much less of a frequent thing. I think I’ve had six ceremonies now now, three of which are in Peru, and each one’s very, very different, but I prefer psilocybin.

51:55 I prefer it, if I’m honest, because I’m much more of a solitary person. I like to have a powerful experience like that on my own, where I’ve got ahold of the circumstance that I’m in. And I mean, we did this so many little while back, and there was a guy guy in the corner that had a bottle of water, and it was one of those shitty plastic bottles that’s not got any structure, and he had the wrapper on it, and just that, like four hours into the ceremony, you reached over to grab it, and as he’s undoing it, not even thinking about it, he’s undoing it to take a drink, the crackling and rustling immediately just like pulled me away from where I was at, you know?

52:37 So to a certain extent, there is a benefit in having that in those ceremonies because it also brings up other things that you need to assess, you need to, I mean, I did a ceremony recently with 32 people and it was, I mean, there were families there and it was awesome and it was such a cool environment. First time I’ve had a day ceremony as well, because usually they’re at night indoors, this was daytime outside, more country, I’d rather not say. I didn’t even know they did date with these animals.

53:07 I just assumed it was always nighttime, so. Do you feel a group energy? I’ve never done it in groups. Do you feel like a collective? Yeah, and different groups and different environments are very unique as well.

53:20 Like, my experiences in Peru were, that was much more of a solitary experience, because I had space. We were in quite a big, it was a big wooden building called the Malacca. And we were affected, most of it was net, So we were effectively right outside anyway. And it was in the jungle. It was silent, apart from all the wildlife.

53:39 And I had plenty of space. And in Peru, obviously, it’s very accessible. So they just give you a mug full. And you just drink, and drink, and drink. And then there’s a second dose if you want it, and a third dose.

53:51 And they really pushed the envelope in Peru. Whereas here, it’s a little bit more of a, OK, have a shot and see how you go. But they’re different, and the medicine’s different every time depending on who’s made it and I mean there must be so many different things that change it but for me like with the psilocybin I can spend a weekend with psilocybin and have just just a power weekend just feel like I’ve leveled up it’s like a video game I’ve just jumped a level because like my whole weekend becomes about the ceremony and I don’t wake up see this is the thing with the party thing like there are circumstances like I’ll go hiking I’ll I’ll have my grandma too and go hiking and just, you know, take my shoes off and stand in the water and just touch the leaves and just be connected, be, you know, be grounded.

54:41 And it’s very, very good for that. It helps me appreciate what I don’t see right in front of my face sometimes. Whereas with the heroic though stats, I have it like 11, 11 30 at night. And then it’s, so it’s coming on at like, like 12 30 or one o’clock. And I have my music set up and I’ve got my crystals and my candles, my joints rolled and I’m ready to go.

54:59 I’ve got everything I need. So then for the first like, you know, two or three hours, I’m not present anyway, you know. And then as it starts to come out, I have a little routine I like to, you know, first thing I do when I kind of, I’m starting to connect with my space again, I’m starting to become more conscious. I’ll sit up, I’ll kneel and I’ll sit in front of the mirror and this is where I start working on this connection with reptile thing because the weird thing is, when I look at myself in the mirror during one of these ceremonies, I don’t recognize myself as such.

55:32 I understand that this is the body that I’m in, but I don’t really feel like I have any necessary ownership over it. It’s just the vessel that’s helping me experience this life. So I don’t see myself, I don’t recognize myself until I look right into the black in my eyes. And then it’s like, oh, there I am. It’s really weird and I get it now because I’ve experienced it altered.

55:55 But before, I’d never, I look at myself and I can look at my house, my hand is my hand, you know, and I recognize myself, but with those situations it’s very different. Because your ego is so dissolved. Yeah, and because you’re so aware of all the other, all the other, the extremities of the reality that we’re in as well, I can’t think of a better way of explaining that. And this is an experience you can repeat, kind of, which is, unlike ayahuasca, it’s more of a crapshoot. You don’t know who’s around you, but when you’re at home with psilocybin, this is a kind of a pattern you can come. And I can focus my intention. And Terence McKenna really helps with the setup of it as well. So my day, before set, and I always select the day. I would never wait upon the day and be like, okay, I’ve got nothing to do today. I’m gonna eat some mushrooms. I like to plan it out, so I I make sure I’ve got the weekend clear and that there’s gonna be nobody bugging me.

56:57 And I wake up on the Saturday morning and I’ll have, I do like a bikram yoga session or I’ll run. I like to get a good sweat and a good workout so my body feels very open and very clean. And then I’ll have two small vegan meals, just something snack, something light. And then I’ll fast for four or five hours and then have them at about 11 o’clock. And then, so by one or two o’clock, I’m right where I need to be.

57:21 3 or 4 o’clock, I’m sitting in front of the mirror, smoking a joint, thinking about the things that I’ve experienced. And marijuana, they go hand in hand, and I know a lot of people talk about ayahuasca and marijuana being very separate, and I don’t necessarily feel the same, which we can talk about as well. But yeah, there’s kind of a process, and then I start to feel hungry, and then it’s Brazil nuts and bananas, that’s my post ceremony snack. But at this, I’m still very much in it.

57:51 I mean, after a heroic dose, you feel it for six, seven, eight hours. But I’ve got my pink Floyd on, or my girlfriend Lacey’s got me into future primitive recently. And if you’ve not heard future primitive, it’s just, it’s DMT music. It’s amazing. Okay.

58:09 What’s the heroic dose for you? Five, five’s good. Five’s good. I’ve tried more, but it didn’t really, it didn’t really enhance it in any way. It’s interesting how you talk about the low dose on your heights, because when you take a big dose, it’s just so much information that you can’t, you’re not really in the present anymore for a couple of hours, so you can’t appreciate the little things.

58:29 I play Terrence when I’m coming back down, and I play the same Terrence track I’ve listened to 10 times and I hear completely different things. I’m like, oh yeah, oh yeah, but it’s just my little ritual. See, I like, Pink Floyd was made for Psilocybin, in my opinion. I mean, I can listen to Dark Side of the Moon 10 times through and cry through all of it, and it’s overwhelming. But at the same time, it depends on what I’m trying to achieve, because it’s not like I’m doing it for fun, because I always get anxious, and it’s always like, okay, this could be a rough one tonight, because sometimes it is, sometimes it takes you to a place that you might be hiding from.

59:07 You should be scared before you do this. I mean, people say they’re scared before an ayahuasca sermon, I’m like, you should be scared. Yeah, but that’s part of the respect, and that’s the most important thing. It’s just, it’s the approach to it, it’s the respect. So like my weekend being dedicated to it, so my Saturday I like cleanse myself and I make sure my body’s clean and empty and open, ready for the, you know, and then I get five grams and grind it up and mix it into orange juice, like nice organic fresh orange juice, and then 30 minutes later it’s like, it’s starting to, it’s starting to speak.

59:38 You’re quite open about this stuff but you’re still a UFC fighter and a UFC representative, I mean, you know, you’re gonna be doing TV and things like that for them. Is that a conscious decision you made, or look, I am gonna be out of a psychedelic closet? I just don’t, we were actually talking about this earlier in Camden. I don’t see the point in being closed with anything, because my intention with life is to have as much experience as possible, to connect with as many people as possible.

1:00:09 So like, if I hadn’t have said, oh yeah, I went to Peru and had ayahuasca, I wouldn’t be sitting there talking to you guys. So unless someone comes and takes me away and locks me up, I don’t really see any reason why not to be. And all I’m saying then is I’ll talk about it and tell everybody about it and you just gotta come and fetch me if they lock me up, that’s my deal. I don’t mind talking about it, it’s not, as Terence said, if you hide your stash, you’re doing the man’s work for him.

1:00:35 And I’m not doing the man’s work for him. We had Rick Doblin sitting there who runs MAPS, which is a foundation started in 86th, It’s been trying to get MDMA legal for PTSD sufferers and stuff, and that’s the last bit of advice he gave is like, you know, if everyone just came out of the closet and told your coworker that I do this and it’s okay and everything, that was the one thing he said more than politicians or anything, so. The problem is we have to work so hard right now.

1:01:02 It’s just like mixed martial arts. We had to work so hard in the beginning to establish some kind of respect for it, some kind of acceptance, you know, because it was kind of out of the mainstream and people weren’t sure about it and there was blood and, you know, and it’s the same with this, like psilocybin, and I always try and say psilocybin, all mushrooms, I don’t use magic mushrooms at all. I hate that phrase, I hate that phrase. The problem is like, you say magic mushrooms and everyone thinks, oh, you know, you down it with a beer and go and have a laugh and it’s to respect it, it’s a medicine and there’s a process to it, you know?

1:01:38 So as I was saying, as it’s starting to wind down, then I’ve got my note pad out and I’m drawing and writing and making as many notes as I can while it’s still fresh in my mind. And then I’ll go and meditate and that’ll take me very much back into that space again until five, six in the morning when the sun’s starting to come up. And then I like to do kettlebells or go and run a trail. Because at this point, it’s starting to wind down. So you’re about the same, you’re about as altered as you would be if you add a couple of grams, gram and a half.

1:02:09 So by the time I’m out at the trail that I want to run, I’m like, I’m right where I need to be to run this trail and feel like the Hulk. It’s really weird, because I run up the trail and I’ve got my music playing. And I go through different phases of listening to stuff that’s really heavy, like I like my Sugar. They’re very like heavy, like they’re a Swedish metal band and it’s like math metal. So it’s like really weird beats and stuff.

1:02:37 And it just kind of, it’s just constant. It keeps me going. And again, Future Primitive is a good one to use a massive attack. I never thought I would run to massive attack, but I use that quite a bit now. And then like binaural beats, they’re quite good.

1:02:51 It’s just like a, well, you can get different types that communicate with different brainwaves, but yeah, that kind of stuff’s very good. Just to keep, it’s just one more thing I can shut out is the noise from the outside. the birds and the people talking and stuff. And I just get down this trail at full speed. And sometimes I eat shit, and that’s part of the fun.

1:03:14 But I can feel very, I feel so aware and so connected. I know where my foot’s going next. And I know that when it lands there, the kind of stability that it’s got, and there’s much more of a presence there than I experience normally. Which I don’t get that connectedness in any other experience other than, Well, I never got that connectedness before I had these experiences, and now I’m aware of it. I can do it to a certain extent, but not to the same extent as I could if I did have some in my system, for sure.

1:03:44 And how often are you doing these things? Is it very infrequently, or does it depend? It varies. I’ve been jumping around quite a bit recently. It’s been like kind of ayahuasca, San Pedro, psilocybin, psilocybin, ayahuasca, just kind back and forth but at least once a month. Do you think you get desensitized to it?

1:04:04 No. Your tolerance grows towards it? With psilocybin there is a tolerance which is I don’t know exactly I don’t know the science behind it but I know it’s about a week but out of respect I wouldn’t do it back-to-back anyway which is which is why I’m kind of on the fence about DMT which would be another good thing to talk about because it is synthesized it goes through a process there’s no you don’t earn it like you do ayahuasca. Interesting. I found the DMT to be a, I call it the crap cocaine of psychedelics, which is a horrible thing to say, but I was, I was up and back down, but I didn’t have any deep meaningful lessons, things I needed to change in my life. I felt like I was showing something and then I was back. So I honestly wasn’t wasn’t rushing back to it because I didn’t feel like I had to do that pain and do that hard work. Yeah. What are your thoughts? Well with ayahuasca there’s an understanding of the process that comes with it.

1:04:57 So the ayahuasca diet, which is very, very restrictive. If you stick to it hard, as they want you to, it is a very restrictive diet. And then there’s the ceremonial aspect of it, which, and I don’t like all the paraphernalia that comes with it, I’ll be honest. And you see this quite consistently in ceremonies. And particularly Westerners gravitates was the paraphernalia, all like the Ketchum and stuff and the Peruvian.

1:05:24 And they’ve got like a blanket in front of them with all kinds of trinkets and crystals and sage and just piled on top. And it doesn’t annoy me. I mean, it’s to each their own, but I do feel like that kind of makes a little bit of a religion out of it. You know what I mean? But the actual ceremonial aspects itself and the process of the Acaros singing and the shaman coming around working on different people and the ceremonies I’ve been doing recently, There have been two, sometimes three or four people that go around and work with different people in the group because I’ve been in very concentrated ayahuasca groups and there’s apprentices and it’s a very, very cool network and everyone’s helping each other.

1:06:12 Whereas with Peru it was the shaman and the people that were the patients effectively. So you could have multiple people coming over and working on you and you liked that? I did like that because everyone offers something different. I mean, there was a guy, a guy in one of them that just plays the didgeridoo and it was awesome. I mean like as soon as he started playing that didgeridoo I was it took me to an entire different place and it was it was really really energizing and and as soon as he stopped it was it was like I kind of sat up and started to look for where it looked look for where the sound had gone I know that sounds stupid but you know what I mean you’re kind of like you know especially because the room’s pitch black you can’t see a thing but like sorry the ceremonial aspect of it is important the respect that you that you have to give the plant, you know?

1:06:53 We talked about it with Graham Hancock and he thinks there’s a very strong link between religion and psychedelics. And the experience that you get is a religious one even if you don’t believe in sort of traditional views of gods. See, so like when somebody says religion, that is like saying Walmart, you know what I mean? Like Catholicism is asda. Because basically what they’ve done is they’ve taken what they think people want and they’ve packaged it in a way that’s accessible.

1:07:23 So you can go and get your fix once a week at church and you can be nice to those people for those two hours and then you can yell at them from your car the next day. You know what I mean? And there’s no like, there’s no real integration with religion, whereas with, it’s a spiritual experience. Like, but for me spirituality is a personal journey anyway. So I don’t need to go to the same building once a week and speak to the same people once a week and read the same book as those people to get this because that might not be right for me, but everyone’s kind of told that that’s what’s right to do, so that’s what they do.

1:07:56 So, Terrence always said that the beauty of it was an experience, and it was pure that way, and so no one can tell you that you just have it, and it’s yours and personal. Exactly, and if you go through most of the, I mean Graham Hancock’s the best person to talk to about this, but if you go through most of the religious books and ancient cultures and stuff, There’s a heavy presence of what could potentially be psychedelics in any environment. And every culture’s got their own altering substance.

1:08:29 Unfortunately, in the Western world, we gravitate to alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, which really don’t do a great deal for you. Well, alcohol and caffeine can be used as a good training tool if you’re using it right. But a Starbucks a day is not going to help you at all. You might enjoy it, but other than that, it’s not going to elevate you in any way. Whereas you go to South America, and there’s ayahuasca, and salvia, and mushrooms, and there’s this iboga, and numerous amounts of it.

1:09:02 And then you go way out to the Far East, and they’re doing the same kind of things with self-flagellation, and meditation, and fasting, and vision quests. This is another thing that people don’t talk about a lot. I read a book called Grandfather by Tom Brown, Jr. And it was about a Native American medicine man that kind of taught him the skills that he had, all of the survival skills. And some of the stories about this guy are like going on vision quests where he’s like wandering for three weeks with no clothes or anything.

1:09:35 What is a vision quest? It’s basically just a kind of isolation. You just kind of, you basically cast out of your tribal group, you center way into the wilderness to survive, to fend for yourself. Occasionally you’ll have something to keep you warm, occasionally you would have a knife, but the hardcore way of doing it is just to wander out into the desert with your bare ass and figure it out. So like Batman Begins.

1:10:01 Yeah, exactly. They trained shamans that way a little bit in Peru with the young ones that just like go, and you come back for some ayahuasca, and then go. Yeah, and give them little doses every day, and leave them on their own as well, and plant dieters. That’s another thing that, again, there’s so much to this culture, it’s not just like magic mushrooms and DMT, there’s like a whole wealth of stuff that’s all connected. And like the plant dieters, where you would diet a plant for a month, two months, three months, and this is like being on the ayahuasca diet for a prolonged period of time.

1:10:36 No sugar, no salt, no sex, no spice, no fun, none of the stuff that people kind of reach for to make them comfortable. And then at the same time, you would focus on one particular plant and you would integrate that into your diet with the hopes of taking on the lessons from that plant. And if you think of the variety in nature of plants that we’ve got, there must be so many more psychedelic plants out there and so many plants that you could just integrate to your diet that you would glean something from.

1:11:08 Even if it’s just like marijuana and it just helps you be nice to people for the day. Yeah, you talked about how that, some people say it’s a female energy and so is ayahuasca and they don’t combine. Do you agree or do you disagree? Well, this was something that kept coming up for me because I don’t ever like to feel like I’m doing something because I want to do it, solely because I want to do it. I don’t eat Chinese food because it doesn’t do anything for me other than the fact that I like to eat it until I finish it and I regret it.

1:11:44 So I don’t want to be the guy that smokes marijuana because he likes to smoke it. I want to smoke it because it’s a medicine and I have that respect for it. And people get away from this quite a lot with all kinds of teacher plants and it’s listening you’re in a guardian and knowing when when it’s right to say I don’t need it right now. Well Graham Hancock said he was basically abusing it for 24 years. Yeah. But will you not eat a chocolate bar? I don’t. I don’t. But will you not have sex?

1:12:15 Oh I would have sex. But that’s the same thing isn’t it? That’s but that’s it’s not no because because sex one is a very organic thing and two is a good way of connecting to that euphoric space that you get from psychedelics and connecting to the reptilian brain. So there’s there’s a lot going on during sex. So it’s not just for pure enjoyment. You think you learn something from it as well?

1:12:36 Yeah, for sure. If it’s with the right person anyway. Back to marijuana really quick and then start talking wolves. Okay. So you think marijuana should be something that’s taken seriously and used as a plant teacher as opposed to just self-medicating.

1:12:51 It’s very big in the U.S. now. I think we don’t have a good… What was it? Some fighter tested positive and he was like, everyone smokes weed in California. Is that true?

1:13:00 Yeah, it’s very widespread. I felt really bad for Pat Healy. He beat me early on in my career. He won $150,000 of bonuses and then he failed his test and he had to give it back and you’ve got to think, $150,000 to a guy that’s just, I don’t know how many fights he’s in, but maybe he’s earning $15,000 and $15,000 or something like that. That’s so much money.

1:13:21 He deserved that money as well because he’s been at it for a long time. The most frustrating thing is that a week or two later then they adjusted the limits so then he wouldn’t of tested positive. Really? Yeah. I mean, I know they’ve adjusted them recently from 50 to 150 of whatever unit it is.

1:13:37 Does that bother you or do you just kind of say that’s just the way it is right now and I have to work within those guidelines when it comes to, you know, state commissions and stuff like that? It is what it is. You know, I’m not a part of the UFC because I have to be, I’m there because I want to be and there’s a set of rules that are laid out to be a part of that and I choose to abide by those rules and I understand that there’s you know they’re a drug testing whether I agree with it or not is beside the point because I’m choosing to be in that environment I accept what what’s you know what’s on the table and then and with marijuana you just try to treat it as a teacher and yeah yeah and this and going back to the ayahuasca thing the ayahuasca diet what whatever’s written on it is not necessarily written written for everybody it’s not you know Lacey does a lot of yoga and her experience with ayahuasca is that if she doesn’t keep some salt in her diet, she’s dehydrated all the time and then obviously if that affects the experience, so it’s got to be adaptable but you’ve got to be honest with yourself.

1:14:50 You’ve got to be like, I need salt because I need salt, not I need salt because these chips are kind of bland. You know what I mean? That’s the difference. It’s not what you do. My intention is not to smoke marijuana because I want to smoke it.

1:15:03 My intention after a ceremony is to smoke it because it helps me put all the pieces into place. And how long have you walked this path? You were never like a Nottingham lad that would go to the pub and get in fights and then go and eat bad food? I did for a couple of years in my teens, yeah. Because I stopped drinking just before I turned 18.

1:15:20 So it’s 13 years now. So I kind of had two years where I did that like 15 to 17 I just kind of put my foot on the gas and just went nuts and you know and you made a conscious decision to stop yeah it just because of your career it wasn’t suiting me I was making bad decisions because because alcohol tends to bring out the reptile in everybody and makes like it’s the ultimate bad decision maker yeah it is yeah but that’s the reptilian brain he’s the bad decision maker the one you want to get closer to yeah okay yeah you can make the right decisions in certain situations yeah well he’s very useful he’s very very useful in some circumstances in critical crucial situations but I’ve got an I’ve got to know where to listen to him when to turn him on yeah yeah all right well you were down in Peru and I remember you saw like a spirit animal and it was almost like a premonition because it was a wolf kind of weird right yeah yeah kind of weird and there’s something else weird as well is about my nickname my nickname is the outlaw which we were talking about and came completely organic to me I didn’t really pick it for any other reason other than it was it was kind of fitting at the time.

1:16:23 I was training with a guy who I wasn’t really connecting with very well. So I left, and he called all my training partners to tell them they couldn’t train with me. So I’d been outlawed. And that’s where it came from. Obviously, the Robin Hood thing ties in.

1:16:38 But if you dance from Nottingham, which is where Robin Hood’s from, just in case anyone doesn’t know. And my Outlaw Army shirts, one of the Outlaw Army shirts, it says Outlaw Army across the front. It’s got a big fist on the back. Across the bottom, it has a scroll, and it says, and I usually get it wrong, it’s, I put Gerat Lupinum, it’s Latin, and that’s the law for outlaw, let his be the head of a wolf. That’s what outlaw means, so outlaws were called wolf heads.

1:17:06 So, and I didn’t know this until I was reading a, it was a Robin Hood comic book, and it was like right inside the first thing they said, let his be the head of a wolf, so. That’s a weird coincidence. So you fight in California and they hook an EKG up to you, which is probably the only state that does that, perhaps. Yeah, I think maybe Florida as well. And that was the first time you fought in California.

1:17:31 And all of a sudden, they give you some interesting news. I’m abnormal. Big surprise. Big surprise. Yeah.

1:17:38 So I guess they call it Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome, and it’s, correct me if I’m wrong, an abnormal electrical pathway in the heart. And while instances of fatality are extraordinarily low, they’re concerned. Is that what it is? So it’s kind of an extra heartbeat in there, or just something? Yeah.

1:17:56 And it’s quite common. I was surprised how common it was. About one in every thousand people have it in some capacity, and a lot of people are born with it, and the extra cells die off in the first couple of years of birth. After birth, sorry. But most people don’t ever find out about it, because they don’t have any symptoms.

1:18:16 And I’m in this boat, I’ve never had symptoms, dizziness, palpitations, panic attacks, there’s all kinds of stuff that could potentially happen because of it, but a lot of people live their whole life without having any idea. And that’s not called Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome, that’s called Wolf-Parkinson-White pattern. And that’s what I have. But the difference is, and I don’t know whether this is partly to do with the fact that I’ve been an athlete for so long and I’ve always been in an active state.

1:18:44 But I have my regular heartbeat which is very strong and I’m always in fairly good shape. So when I went and did the test, my resting heart rate was 42 and it maxed out at 191. But usually in these circumstances the second heartbeat, the second bunch of cells is quite sporadic and quite weak but mine’s quite powerful so that went up to 183 that’s where it maxed out. So I effectively kind of have two heartbeats that beat at the same time. high rates yes okay and their concern is that the way that the doctor described it to me is is well you know imagine you’re 12 minutes into the fight and you know your adrenaline’s up and and all of a sudden the current in your heart loops back on itself and causes cardiac arrest you’re probably sick of these analogies yeah I was like oh okay right so how likely is that oh well no it’s not it’s not likely so can you claim it’s a fight well no no we’re gonna have to go to your heart and have a look, and it was just this weird kind of like, no one gave me a good explanation of why I couldn’t fight other than the fact that I’m slightly more of a liability now than I was before.

1:19:54 And is your heart rate up around those levels when you’re fighting five rounds with GSP? I would think so, not consistently, because I couldn’t keep it up. But I would certainly think 170 range, 170, 175. It’s just interesting because you’ve been training at the top level of athleticism which is mixed martial arts for 15 years more and you’ve never had any issues. Never had any symptoms or anything and the other issue that I’m having is that everybody that I speak to about it that’s had the procedure has had it because they needed it.

1:20:29 Can you describe this procedure? It’s called a catheter ablation and they feed, whether it’s a wire or something, your femoral artery and then one into your neck but they said to me that it’s not that they can treat me they want to study it because it’s quite it’s kind of abnormal because of how strong it is and because of the job that I do so they don’t know whether they can fix it they want to feed the wires in into my heart so they can measure the second heartbeat and if it’s a if it’s strong and be if it’s in a safe place they can then burn it. Burn the cells out. Yeah, burn the cells. But if it’s not very strong, which we already know that it is, so they don’t really need to give me that option, then they can claim me to fight. And if it’s in a place that’s not safe, if it’s too close to my regular heartbeat, they can’t touch it anyway because then that would just shut my heart down and I would have to have a pacemaker. But the issue is that obviously the easiest option for everybody is just for me to go and have it done.

1:21:32 Because that’s what everybody wants, the fans all want me to go and get it done. I get tweets constantly, my six year old’s just had this done, you should just go and get it done and get on with it, but yeah, your six year old needed it done and I don’t. So the only reason I would have it done is if I really want to fight a few more times. Yeah, so that’s the question. Do you want to get this done and fight or do you just want to go and live your life?

1:21:57 Well, the thing is, I would love to fight again, that’s the problem. but not to the point where I would go through something like that that I don’t feel I need to do. It just doesn’t seem right to me. It’s not an option in that procedure. No, I’m comfortable, I’m healthy, I’ve never had a symptom.

1:22:15 So then what if somebody goes in and starts messing about with it and it causes more issues, you know? I’ve heard of people that have had ablations that have had to go back three or four times to have more work done. I don’t want this to be a part of my life And because it’s not affecting my life right now, other than my career, I don’t really see a point. And I don’t hang that much value on my career, to be honest with you. Right, that’s my question.

1:22:40 I think it’s back seven years, and you get the same diagnosis, and UFC says, look, you wanna keep fighting, you gotta have the surgery, with Dan Hardy of seven years ago, had a different decision. You wanted to be champ then, so. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t, no, you’re right, I would’ve made a different decision, I’m sure. It would have taken somebody like my mom or my dad to talk me out of it, right? You know the sensible side. Yeah, but and how much do you think it maybe this is a strange question?

1:23:08 But how much do you think that the the psychedelics have a part in expanding your mind and and showing you that? What does any of this matter to a certain extent as far as the ultimate thing isn’t your fighting career? Well other things in your life Yeah I mean I haven’t I mean partly because of the losing streak I am aware of my other options because I’ve already explored them And partly because of the ayahuasca and well because the psychedelics experiences in general I have an acceptance now of just what is you know sometimes it just is what is and just accept it and Keep moving very Buddhist. Yeah. Yeah, I guess yeah But I mean my mom said to me when I when I called her up and I kind of explained she said well, you know you’ve been talking about retiring in 12 months, but we both know that it would take something like this to stop you fighting and And the thing is, and it’s gonna sound strange, but it’s my comfort zone.

1:23:58 Like training camp and fighting’s my comfort zone. I can do it every day, all day, and it’s easy because I know what to do. And you know you’re good at it, so you get that positive feedback. Yeah, yeah. So the idea of actually saying, I can carry on doing this if I choose to, but I’m done with it now, I’m gonna go and do something entirely different.

1:24:17 There’s a lot of anxiety that comes with that. So I think it might have taken something like this to pull me out of the situation anyway. So have you made any decisions? University starts in September? Yeah, not this year.

1:24:30 LSE has a great philosophy program. Is that right? I looked into it, yeah. I might have been punched too many times in the head to go accept it though, that’s the problem. You know, I have so many options on the table for me right now and I’m kind of in a bit of limbo with the UFC because obviously they’re very keen to keep me on board and they want me to carry on fighting which I do and the fans do, but I have made my decision about this, and unless there’s some kind of flexibility on their side, it is what it is.

1:24:58 But why could you not fight in a jurisdiction that’s not going to test your EKG? Because it’s not about them, it’s not about not passing the test, it’s about the liability of letting me fight. The problem is, I mean they could let me fight in London, and you can wear shoes in London to fight, and no one cares, you know what I mean? It’s ridiculous, but we have no athletic commission, So you can do what you like effectively. So the UFC is only answerable to themselves, but then in the very, very highly unlikely circumstances, something does happen.

1:25:29 Their insurance failed. Exactly, and they already knew about it. That’s the problem. Now they’re aware of it. Yeah.

1:25:34 And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to put that on, I don’t want to put that on the sport. I wouldn’t want that for the sport of the UFC because the MMA is still very fragile, you know? And a recognizable athlete fatality in the sport would do too much damage, so I wouldn’t want that. And if I felt like I was a liability, I would be like, all right, I’m done, I’m too much of a risk. You’re obviously very eloquent and intelligent.

1:25:58 Could you work on the other side of the camera? Well, there are options, and like I was saying, the BT sports thing, I’m talking with the UFC at the moment about possibly doing something quite consistently with that, which I would like. And there is talk about more shows in the UK. I know that’s always coming up, but it is definitely a focus in their plans to be out in Europe more. So there is scope for me.

1:26:21 I feel as though there’s a book in you as well somewhere. A what? A book. There’s a few, I think. They say there’s a book in everyone, but in some people it should stay.

1:26:29 Yeah. This one, I think people will want to read. Yeah, that’s part of it. And you’re doing some stuff with the US military coming up as well, right? Yeah, yeah.

1:26:36 They contacted me about doing some traveling and the odd 10, 12 day trip and go and meet some troops and teach some seminars. And I always get so much from those experiences because you meet people with crazy life experiences. Some people would find that surprising about you. You were supporting military. A very patriotic look at the…

1:26:55 Yeah. I thought it was a little bit of a juxtaposition was the patriotism and then sort of the very liberal view on certain things, but I think you can reconcile it within yourself. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, you know, yeah, I could be like, no, I’m not doing anything for the US military and all that, but it’s not about the military. It’s about the people making their decisions for the military I don’t agree with. Just generally, I don’t agree with war generally.

1:27:19 I understand why it happens, but there’s no need for it ever. But it’s not the people that, they’re just doing a job. Just like I’m doing mine and people complain about that. But there’s so much to learn from these people. An example, I went out to Germany before I fought Marcus Davis, and I was with Mike Swick and John Fitch.

1:27:41 We had a blast, the great guys. This was before I thought, well, Mike, as well. So we were on this bus for a few days, driving around the military bases and meeting troops and stuff. And we went to a hospital and there was a guy in one room and he had his arm in a cast. And basically what happened was he was driving through a built-up area and he was the gunner on the Hummer that they were driving.

1:28:04 And a rocket-propelled grenade had hit the front of the Hummer and blown up the gun and a piece of it had gone through his arm and broke both bones and pinned his arm to the roof of the vehicle. So he obviously was going through a lot of rehabilitation to like, you know, get the use back in his hand and his wrist and he was like so excited that we were there because obviously he’s a big UFC fan and the UFC are really good at like getting the UFC to the military. Fight for the troops, they’ve done that a couple of times.

1:28:33 That’s really good, because I’ve seen how much it means to them. But the only other thing you could talk about was getting healthy so he could get back to his group of guys. He just wanted to get back there. And he was upbeat and he was in high spirits and he was happy and he was like, I’m just disappointed I’m not out there with them because I kind of feel like I’m letting them down. And then in the room next to him, there was a guy that works on the base in Germany that for some reason or another, someone had forgot to put the handbrake on the truck that he was working on.

1:29:02 He was an engineer and the truck rolled over his legs and broke both of them. And he was the most miserable dude I’ve ever met. You know what I mean? The injuries really, I don’t really consider to be too much different. This guy broke both his legs below the knee, and the other guy had pretty much smashed his arm to bits.

1:29:20 But in combat, and by accident, and the guy in combat was like, because he’d been much closer to death, and that was what I got from it. The guys that have been in combat that have been much closer to death have so much more of an appreciation for life, and so much more of a lust for it is where you can get get some real good conversation out of these people. Whereas the guy on the other side that had just been fixing a truck and it had run over his legs, he was like, just sulking, I can’t believe it.

1:29:49 Do you know who Pat Tillman is? I know the name. So he was an American football player and I think he was playing for the Atlanta Falcons. And he’d just been offered, he was always like, he was a defensive player, always struggling to make it to college and then he made it to the NFL. And he’d just been offered a multi-million dollar contact September 11th hits, he’s a patriot, he rejects the contract, goes to Afghanistan, so signs up as a ranger, goes to Afghanistan to fight because he’s a very patriotic guy, goes to his brother, and then gets killed by friendly fire.

1:30:25 And they do a big, because he’s such an emblem for the war, and for like, this is what a patriot should be, this is what he should go and do, They completely lie about the circumstance of his death and it’s a very sad story which eventually comes out, but he was a very, very patriotic guy that gave up a lot to go and do something that he believed in. He didn’t believe in war, he didn’t like necessarily the whole ethos, but he felt that he should defend his country. So I thought that might resonate with you a little bit.

1:30:56 Yeah, definitely. And it’s definitely worth reading. It’s a very, very interesting book. I think it’s where Men Win Glory is the name of the book. I’ll write that down after this.

1:31:04 Did you ever consider military service? I did, I did. Yeah, I was interested in being a PT. That’s what I would like to have done. It was just a way of dedicating my life to training, really, and that was the only time I really thought about it.

1:31:20 But I have a problem with people who are in positions of authority that I don’t feel have, what, they don’t have my respect, you know? That could be a problem, even though I’m saying. Yeah, well, it’s a problem, generally. It’s a problem, generally. Like, I got a speeding ticket the other week for doing a speed on a road that I thought was completely acceptable, but it happened to be a little bit quicker than the speed limit.

1:31:42 But the guy that gave me the ticket, I don’t necessarily agree with him. And the guy that gave him his job, I might not agree with him. And the person that set the rules on the speed limit, I might not agree with him. So I just kind of go with what I feel is right, you know? But anyway, that was a bit of a diversion.

1:31:57 But anyway, going back to what you were saying, that’s a good example of why I don’t have a problem with the military, because the guys in the military are only acting off the information that they’re given. So if he was told, yeah, terrorists attacked America and they’re in Afghanistan and we’re gonna go and get them, then if you had no reason to question that, then why would you? So then there’s just kind of a, And I don’t want to use the word ignorance, but I can’t think of a better way of using it.

1:32:30 It’s a lack of lateral thinking. It’s a lack of, hang on a minute, maybe what I’m being told is not quite as accurate as they’re pitching it on Fox News, you know what I mean? But in 2001, we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have this whole sharing of information, which I think enables us to make a lot more educated decisions now. Whereas then, all you saw was your compatriots being killed under tons of rubble and it was a very big impact upon your life and it was very difficult to discern what was truly happening here and abroad.

1:33:07 So I think we’re in a much better place to make those calls now. Yeah. Definitely. But with the US, it’s much less like that in the US, I think. If you watch the news during some kind of conflict, it’s like they cover it like the NFL.

1:33:28 It’s like watching the Super Bowl. It’s like, so this is where we’re at, Operation Desert Storm or whatever it is. And they’re like, so we’re gonna bring these tanks up here and we’ve got a group of insurgents there. And then you’ve got like graphics with like helicopters flying in and like troops running and explosions. And people are like, oh, this is really happening.

1:33:47 I’m seeing it on TV. In front of me, it’s like, it’s animation. And this stuff’s sinking into people’s subconscious, and they’re accepting it as truth. And it’s the same thing with crime statistics. So the media is used to make people scared and constantly on edge to enable government to take more and more control out of their lives.

1:34:05 And if you look at actual crime statistics, they’re down. There are less gun crimes. There are less than nine crimes in London. Yeah, we had all guessed it was talking about that, how crime has gone down significantly. I want to ask you a couple London Real questions, these might be a little weird, but if you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Dan Hardy and give him some advice and it can’t be keep going dude you’re doing good yeah what would it be um wrestle more no you know what I don’t think I would I don’t think I would you wouldn’t make the call I don’t I think I’d ask him questions okay I don’t think I don’t think I would have anything to say to him you know because I because I don’t think I want to give anything away it’s about the journey yeah what would What did you ask him?

1:34:51 I’d ask him how he was doing. I’d ask him what he was doing and why he was doing it. Because these weren’t questions I was asking myself at the time. I was just doing what I felt was right to do. I went to university and I enjoyed it while I was there, I had a great time, but I went to university because I was supposed to go to university.

1:35:09 Where’d you go? Nottingham Trent, I did the contemporary art. You always have a sketch pad on you, they say. I did, I did, I used to carry one around all the time. but you didn’t know why you were doing what you were doing.

1:35:20 No, not really. Not really. I mean, martial arts just appealed to me from a very young age. From the Ninja Turtles, straight away I was hooked and then it just all the way through. And it was your favorite?

1:35:31 The Ninja Turtles. Well, I started off with Michael Angelo when I was a kid and this was where my maturity came as a martial artist. Like, Michael Angelo was the fun one that was good at the Nunchaka and I was like, yeah, love Michael Angelo, he’s a party guy. And then when I was a little bit older, I started to realize that Raphael was the one everybody respected, he was like, everyone listened to what he said, he was calm and level-headed and had a lot of common sense, and he was more of the martial artist of the group, so then it was Raphael. Not many people analyzed Ninja Turtles.

1:36:00 Do you think martial arts is ultimately the path of asking yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing? I mean, in a way where you aren’t maybe pursuing that subconsciously all your life? I think so. I think everybody starts off that way, though. Everyone does as a kid. I’ve I’ve just spent a couple of days hanging out with Dean Amherst Singer and he’s got a beautiful little daughter who’s four next week and she’s just fascinating to watch because she’s like, you’ll say something and she’ll repeat it straight away.

1:36:25 It’s a brand new word for her and she’s trying it and she’s tasting new things and touching and feeling and constantly trying to grow. And we get to a stage and some people get to that stage at nine, some people get to it in their 40s where they just, they get to a stage where they’re like, I’m good with this now. It’s kind of consistent. There’s no surprises coming tomorrow unless it’s a flat tire or, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas there are other people and they’re the foot and the gas people that do, and it can be anything.

1:36:55 Martial arts is just one path. It can be psychedelics, it can be yoga, it can be rock climbing, whatever it is, it’s about the path and about the journey. And it’s just riding it till the wheels fall off. Will you have children? I’d like to.

1:37:09 Do you think it’s an essential part of the human experience? It’s a part of the human experience that I would feel like I’d missed out on if I got old and I’d not. I know what you mean. Yeah, back to this, I’ll finish out the advice question. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

1:37:27 Guys, I get these questions sometimes and they’re just so difficult because it’s, I don’t know, take a few days. Yeah, this will be it. Tweet at me. I’ll be sitting on the underground on the way back to my hotel and all of a sudden it will come to me. Just tweet me.

1:37:41 All right, last question is, and this is a really interesting one considering your situation and your history, But what advice do you give to the 20-year-old out there who’s listening to this and who maybe wants to be a UFC fighter someday? Or maybe who wants to go down to Peru and drink ayahuasca? Or wants to grow up and be like Dan Hardy? What do you tell him? Just go and do it.

1:38:04 Just go and do it. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing as long as you’re doing something. I really, genuinely feel that now. There was a sort of cyber experience that I had where I felt like I got a real clear picture of the earth as an organism. And the fact that, I mean, we’re all, it’s obviously the cliche of we’re all one.

1:38:29 I mean, Genki Sudow was banging on about this years ago. And he’s right. And now, Mike Danzig with his new shirts is the same. It’s all, we’re all one. We’re all the same species.

1:38:39 We’re all effectively on the molecular level. the same as the trees in the photograph on the wall. And this was something that Albert Hoffman talked about a lot as well. He cured himself of depression with logic. Just like, well, I’m molecular, on a molecular level, I’m the same as the tree.

1:38:51 There’s just minor differences. So, ultimately, what’s the point? Well, I think it’s to create energy, to create noise. We’ve got to create vibration. We’ve got to be doing things, connecting with people and going places and leaving awake.

1:39:08 Burning brightly. Yeah. Yeah. So inactive people frustrate you. They don’t frustrate me.

1:39:13 I just, I don’t see the point in them. They just, I don’t. Do things, make mistakes, that kind of thing. You want people to, you kind of advise to do things. Make mistakes.

1:39:23 Do anything. There’s so many people in a rut that just like go from one day to the next just repeating and repeating and repeating and you know they may think that they’re happy but it feels to me that it’s just quite a sad experience and you need to get out and. I’m not talking about yourself, are you? No. We’ll talk about that off camera.

1:39:41 Yeah, you mentioned Mac and I loved his podcast. I think it was all three episodes of, so please ask him to continue. Okay. I think it was just you and him and then Forrest jumped in there for that one. Yeah, it was wild.

1:39:51 Well, obviously he lost his last fight. It was against Melvin, who’s a beast. I saw you shake Melvin’s hand afterwards and you shook Mac. Mac looked great before that. I just wondered how that made you feel emotionally Or is that just part of the fight game?

1:40:07 Again, from the ayahuasca, from the Peru trip, the acceptance of what is is really helping. And immediately when it happened, I felt the upset and the pain and the anger that Mack would have felt if he was conscious when it happened. Do you know what I mean? It was like it kind of leapt out of him and it came out of me. And I was like, just for a second, I was furious and angry and saddled at the same time.

1:40:33 Is that lizard? Is that lizard at that point? Yeah, yeah, no doubt, but but it’s yeah. Yeah, no doubt red tile comes out immediately and then but there’s straightaway I can I Can step away and see it as what it is and it’s a sport and it doesn’t matter and and there’s nothing you can do about It anymore. No, so as soon as you can’t do something about something that’s painful in your life What’s the point of worrying about it because you can no longer influence it? Yeah, so just let it go and let’s move on to the next thing yeah wise words yeah definitely but it’s true like I can’t fix it the situation has already happened and it’s over and I’m without getting into the argument about whether times linear or not we can’t go back you know it’s happened and we accept it and we move from it and we had a good conversation that night I went and hung out with him for a few hours and in his hotel room and we talked about it and surprisingly he was in a much better place than I’ve ever seen him before, and I don’t really know why, because he was in such a good place before the fight.

1:41:35 He was physically in great shape, mentally he was there, and sometimes you just lose. Sometimes you just lose, it’s a sport, and you roll the dice, and sometimes you’re on the receiving end. And against a guy like Gullard, he cracks you one time, and that’s all it takes. So I’m just really excited about what comes next for Mac, because he’s, again, he’s another one of those people that’s just so talented and he can do so many things. It’s just the case of choosing which one he’s going to do and pursuing it.

1:42:04 I mean, listening to that podcast, you know, all three of you talking, it seems like, you know, all three of you kind of mentally, partially are kind of moving away from the sport sometimes, you know, and, and, and thinking about other options, you know, I know Mac does a lot of photography and things like that. So when I saw him that game that night, it was really exciting to see that he was still in the sport. He’s got the skills and the ability and the talent to be the champion and I’m not saying that because he’s my friend.

1:42:35 I believe it. I don’t work with people unless I feel that I’ve got that potential. He came across as quite angry and intolerant in the Ultimate Fighter and you think he’s developed on from that? He has but that’s really just Mac, that’s just Mac’s like, it’s weird because he’s walking around like a lizard with a higher consciousness inside whereas most people are walking around with a higher consciousness with a lizard inside, you know what I mean? But he has a firm grip on his lizard or not?

1:43:03 Yeah he does, he does unless it’s in the gym and then he likes him. That’s kind of, that’s where you’re supposed to let him go. But going into that fight with Melvin and knowing that Mac could walk away with him that victory quite comfortably, the only way he can lose it, and on that level it’s the same with most guys, the only way they can lose it is if mentally they’re not in the right place. And it’s a roll of the dice. Mac was in a great place, but we knew that if he went into the fight and he got too drawn into the fight, that’s when Melvin’s at his strongest.

1:43:42 Because then Mac’s in the pocket not really thinking about his head movement and his rolling and he’s just throwing punches and that’s what he does in the gym like you know and I spent and he probably hates me as well but I spent most of his training camp when I was there trying to like like rile him up in the gym try and get a reaction out of him to see how much of a handle he had on it because I knew that Melvin was going to frustrate him yeah you know um so you don’t chalk that loss up to chance you chalk it ultimately up to not being present at that moment it’s isn’t it in my opinion it’s not that he wasn’t it wasn’t present it was that he was too present and this is this is again going back to the Rep city and brain stuff Mac Mac was over analyzing everything that he was doing I think he was he was there was too much of a thought process and I had this during the Sedala fight I was going backwards and forwards in and out of this space but with the Ludwig fight I started off being very analytical and and like and genuinely like having a dialogue in my head of okay I can see moving that way I should set up this combination. Whereas about a minute into the fight he cracked me on the chin with a good right hand and it rocked me for a second and I rushed him to the fence and as I was as I was having a conversation in my head about okay I’m a little bit rocked I should kind of take my time here. I’m already reacting to what he’s doing without thinking

1:45:02 About it. I’m controlling his body up against the fence and then I created that room for the elbow left hook that I landed off the fence and that wasn’t I wasn’t thinking about that. We’ve talked about this before as well. It’s the flow. It’s like you don’t even think…

1:45:15 When you get busy with something and you don’t think about it, it just happens and then suddenly it’s the end of the fight or you’re two hours in and you’ve just written your paper or you’ve just completed the spreadsheet that you were building or you’ve just decided how you’re going to market your new product and you’ve got all these things and you don’t realize how it happened. It’s just happened. Yeah. It’s essentially the flow in a fight effectively.

1:45:35 Yeah. And for me with the fighting, that’s the reptile. the reptilian brain because I always kind of talk about it like it’s separate because I can’t function in my regular daily life if I listen to it too much because it just causes me too much trouble. So if I talk about it like it’s separate I can kind of, it’s almost like training it like a dog. You know what I mean?

1:45:57 I’m like okay so there’s my reptile and I want him to be better at wrestling and I want him to be better at jiu-jitsu so I’m going to train and train and train and then when the fight comes reptile will immediately draw on these techniques that I’ve I’ve drilled into my subconscious, exactly. But if you start fighting, how do you continue to develop the reptile brain? Well, I’m gonna stop training now, are you? No, I’m not, I’m not gonna stop training. I’ve started Wolfcam, Hardy’s Wolfcam on YouTube, so that’s, it’s been a little bit slight while I’ve been training, while I’ve been traveling, but that’s gonna be quite a continuous YouTube channel of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and it started off more as a training blog, but I’m gonna start integrating much more of this stuff into it, and help people understand the thought process behind the actual stuff I’m doing in the videos.

1:46:39 Because at the moment it’s like kettlebell stuff and gymnastics or whatever. I think you’ve gotten a whole new fan base in the last year, 18 months, you know, when you start talking about whether it’s Peru or all these other things that, you know. But this goes back to what we were saying before about just being open about it, you know. I wouldn’t have those, I would have made those, and I don’t like the whole celebrity and fan thing. I still, I’ve never adjusted to it.

1:47:05 I still find it very strange. But I appreciate that those people are interested in what I’m doing. And if I hadn’t talked about these things, then I wouldn’t have made those connections. And there have been so many connections along the way that I’ve made just by being open and being forthright about what I’m interested in and what I feel is important to me as a being, regardless of what the law says. I don’t know, respect to that man.

1:47:29 So no surgery, no chance, no matter how many tweets. I saw Dana White’s ear surgery for his Meniere’s disease. I don’t know if you saw it, but it was really gruesome. And then later he found out it wasn’t necessary and he flew to some crazy, I don’t know, stem cell place in Germany and they fixed him up. And I’m wondering if you’d see that and you’re like, yeah, yeah, why would I do a surgery?

1:47:50 And this is the president of the UFC who’s got the best doctors in the world and they’ve just done this nasty looking thing where they pulled his ear off his head and saw it in there and yeah. No, not for me. But the thing is that was affecting his life. It was uncomfortable for him. So I understand that if there’s an option to possibly make your life a little bit easier, then why not?

1:48:10 But it’s not affecting my life. It’s just affecting my career. So it’s not really a big deal for me. I don’t feel, and this is my argument, and I kind of put a fun spin on it when I first found out, because obviously it was a weird situation with me being like seven weeks into training camp, and you know what it’s like when you train him for a fight, and you’re like, you’re ready to go at six weeks, and you just gotta kind of hold yourself back for a few more.

1:48:34 So I was already in the flow of fighting, and when I was told I couldn’t, there’s like an excess of energy that you don’t really know what to do with. But, so I kind of started to like, I kind of gave it like a fun spin, call start calling it Wolf Heart and all that kind of stuff. But I’m not convinced that this is not an evolutionary advantage. I mean, I tweeted about it, and I tweeted, it was a very tongue in cheek tweet. I said something about the fact that California won’t clear me because they think I have an unfair advantage because I have a second heartbeat and you’ve got to kill me twice.

1:49:07 But any kind of abnormality that worked out as a benefit eventually became commonplace in a revolution. That’s how we- Darwinian evolution. Exactly, if you buy into that, which I’m fairly on board with. So then why would that not be a secondary evolution? Something that maybe it is an unfair advantage.

1:49:29 Maybe that’s why I just don’t like giving up, you know? Maybe it’s gonna take you to a level much higher than the UFC. Exactly, exactly. So I personally, I think they’re just trying to get me, you know, they’re trying to downgrade me so I’m on their level, I’m not playing the game. Right, some J. Edgar Hoover type shit.

1:49:43 Yeah. Just like get him out of the picture. 10 years from now, do you think we will, Dan Hardy will be on television or on Twitter, or do you think you might just disappear from like the public eye? I think I would find it very difficult to disappear because I think there are so many people looking at me now. so many people, so many eyes on me.

1:50:00 And I feel it, you know, like every day, like if I don’t tweet for the day, at the end of the day, I’ve got 100 tweets. Where are you? You know, what we’ve been doing and why are you not tweeting? You know, people are hungry for, you know, to find out what I’m doing. And I don’t think that’s because that’s, it’s not nothing to do with me.

1:50:14 It’s just, it’s just about my approach to life. Because there are a lot of people that see the way I live my life and they’re like, God, he’s living the life. And I’ve been back to Nottingham and every time I go back, there’s always a couple of people that are a little bit resentful, you know, living Las Vegas, you know, dating his hot yoga teacher and fighting in the UFC, and you know, and this is kind of like, this is resentment, but it’s not, they don’t resent the fact that I’m doing it, they resent the fact that they’re not, you know?

1:50:43 So that’s one side of it, but the other side are the people that are just excited because someone’s doing it, you know? They’re like, what have you been doing? Tell me what you’ve been doing, I’m fascinated. And that’s the kind of fan base I’m cultivating, just because I’m just doing what I feel like I want to do. And I’m fortunate enough to be in a situation where I can.

1:51:02 And that’s entirely through mixed martial arts. I’ve made a little money, so I don’t have to worry about getting a job at Sainsbury’s just yet. How do you deal with Vegas, though, as a place? It seems like the most undone, hardy place I could possibly find. Yeah, but I don’t buy into the whole Vegas thing at all.

1:51:19 You’re out in the desert somewhere? I don’t drink or gamble, so the point in going down to the strip is, But other than showing family and friends around, I don’t go down to the strip at all. And I have a spot right on the edge of town over near Red Rock Canyon. So it takes me two minutes to be out and into the desert. And I love it.

1:51:41 And Vegas, you say Vegas and everybody thinks of the strip. Yeah, but there’s a lot more to it. There’s so much more. I mean, Lake Mead, Valley of Fire, Mount Charleston’s awesome. They’ve got snow a lot of the year.

1:51:51 Like I’m like down in the desert sweating my ass off And then at weekends, I got to Mount Charleston and I’m hiking through snow. That’s crazy. And the good thing about Vegas is that because everyone wants to come there, it’s easy to get out. There are so many flights to and from that I can live in Vegas and get anywhere in the world really easily. So it’s kind of a good base camp for me at the moment.

1:52:13 Awesome. Dan, it seems like you might’ve made your decision for your career, but we won’t pin you down here. But thanks for being so open about all this stuff. No worries, no worries. Thanks for asking the questions because people obviously want to hear them.

1:52:25 Yeah, they definitely do. For Twitter, you’re Dan Hardy MMA, that’s right. Twitter and Instagram now as well. You’re an Instagram fan, aren’t you? Yeah, yeah.

1:52:33 Yeah, it’s getting a little addictive. I just started recently. Yeah, it’s good fun. And YouTube channel. I’m a big fan of YouTube channel.

1:52:37 Yeah, Hardy’s Wolf Cam. Hardy’s Wolf Cam. I’ve got about 10 or 12 videos up now, and I’ve got three more ready to upload when I have a decent Wi-Fi connection and then about six ready to go. And it’s all West Coast road trip. I went out to spend a week with Mac in Los Angeles and then drove up the West Coast to Seattle for the fight and stopped at loads of different places.

1:52:58 They just legalized marijuana in Seattle. They did. Well done. Hey, did you see, I’ve tweeted this the other day, actually, it’s still on my Twitter. The Seattle Police Department are handing out Doritos at Hempfest.

1:53:10 Really? How cool is that? Well, because they’ve got a little message on them about, I think, like safe practice or something, not because they think people are hungry, but it’s a way of advertising their message on the Doritos. safe practice of marijuana. And the police sergeant was like you know what people think it’s funny because you know like now police are handing out munchies you know you know it’s like it’s great. It’s great for PR. It’s really good. Doritos. Yeah. Yeah although that’s the problem Doritos are. Yeah.

1:53:37 They’re a better option. Do you have an orange? Yeah. Yeah. Any nuts?

1:53:42 Cale’s shape or something like that. Awesome. Patrick thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me again. You kind of set this up via WOD and everything so thanks to him and all that stuff via the message and yeah if you’re listening to us on iTunes and you want to see Dan with normal colored hair we’re on YouTube channel London Real TV and that’s it we’re on Twitter or on Facebook and you know what can I say it’s yeah it was better than I expected meeting you so thanks for coming thank you appreciate it all right guys until then it’s about the journey peace if you like alternative history which is what I do then expect everything that you say to be turned over forensically, very, very closely by large numbers of hostile academics.