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What's happening, my friend? Great to see you.

Life is good in my world.

Yeah, life is good in your world. It's always good to see you, man. But I know you're you, and I know you're just Hoi's Gracie. You're who you are. But for most human beings, you are one of the most unusual people that's ever lived. The original ultimate fighter, the number one, the guy, the reason why this whole thing is so big, you're the fucking man.

It's because of my father. I'm a product of his work.

For sure. But for most people, our introduction to Brazilian jiu-jitsu was you in UFC One. I grew up in martial arts, but we didn't know about Brazilian jiu-jitsu until UFC won in 1993.

That one, Ródeon had a vision. Back then, we used to teach in the garage, private class is one student at the time. And Hornon had the vision, how can we spread out throughout the world? It's once America find out, we got to put on TV. Once America find out, the whole world will find out.

The world found out so quick. I have never seen a martial arts spread through the country like Brazilian jiu-jitsu did in the 1990s.

A lot of people thought the graces are arrogant. They were trying to put down the other martial arts. But it was not. It was like, put up or shut up.

Yeah.

Karate against kung fu. Everybody claims that their style is the best. There's only one way to find out. We're willing to try to find out. We're not saying that we're the best. We're just like, Hey, you say you're the best. I'm the best. There's only one way to find out.

Well, the thing is, you guys had already tried it in dojos. You'd already gone to gyms. You'd already had challenge matches. Gracy in Action videos were an eye-opening video for a lot of martial artists because they saw these karate guys who were the guys who thought they were these badass fighters, and they just got taken down in a triangle, taken down in a strangle, taken down in an arm bar.

But again, That was in Brazil. A lot of that would happen in Brazil. When we came to America, it was a different level. It was, okay, this guy is the world champion in karate, the number one boxer, the number one kickboxer. Well, let's see if our stuff work against them. And they're bigger, too.

When you grew up with this, you started jiu-jitsu when you were very, very young. So when you grew up with this, when was the first time you saw one of those challenge matches?

It was Hixon fighting Zulu. I was young. I couldn't get into the stadium. So I watched it through a crack on the door. It's like outside the stadium because there was an age to be in there. I think it was 16. And I was 15, I think, when he fought or 14 when he fought. So Reuler got in because he did a demonstration, I guess, before. But I had to stay outside and I was looking through the crack, could barely see it. Wow. Yeah. Sorry. Even before that, there's a black and white video of Horium, Herson, Horlish, and some of the students fighting against karate guys on the tile. I was there. I was present on that day. But I always heard stories of the family fighting, and, Yeah, we got to fight this guy on the beach. The guy show up at the school, and we had to fight. I always grew up listening to them, the stories of my father fighting, my uncles, and my cousins. I was like, I want to be one of them. I want to do this.

There's always rumors about why you were chosen to be the representative for the first UFC. What's the actual truth behind it? Why did they choose you?

It was going to be on national TV.

It looks.

It looks. Imagine if they put an ugly brother with an ugly... They all could have done the same thing, my cousins. They all could have done the same thing. But come on, by the looks. No, I think my father in the hoarding knew I was going to obey my father's order. It was like, Do not hurt your opponents. The other brothers and cousins, all of them, bigger, smaller, they could done the same thing. It was very raw back then. It was one style against another. But I think my father knew I was a little more calm personality. It was going I was going to obey his orders, and his order was like, Do not hurt your opponent.

Now, why was that so important to him?

To show the true art of jiu-jitsu. If a cousin gets in there, he beat the guy up with an elbow across the opponent's face, it would have been impressive. Oh, my God. He would shock everybody but wouldn't show the technique. My father and my father were concerned about showing the technique of Jujutsu, what we can do by dominating somebody bigger, stronger without having to hurt them.

That's so amazing that you guys had so much confidence in jiu-jitsu that they wanted you to not hurt someone.

That's the conversation I remember having with my father. I was like, But dad, the guys, it's bare-knuckle. They're going to hit me. He's like, Don't worry, they will never hit you. They're not going to touch you. Don't worry. That's how much confidence he had.

Wow.

He's not going to... Don't take me wrong. My mother's order was totally different. My mother was like, Your father doesn't know what he's talking about. I want to see some blood. Send him to the hospital. Mom was a mean one. That's crazy. Dad was No, don't hurt your partner. They're not going to touch you. Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen. You're going to dominate. Mom was like, I want to see some blood. Send him to the hospital.

Your family, it's so unusual because I have always said that your family, your father, Carlos, everyone, the whole family, it's the most important family in the history of martial arts. There's no family in the history of martial arts that's had the same impact that the Graces have had.

I I think that jiu-jitsu landed with them for a purpose. They're from the north of Brazil, persistent people, and the vision that they had of having a lot of kids. Uncle Carlos had 21 kids, 11 boys, 10 girls. My father had nine kids. They had seven boys, two girls. So it could have been all girls. And you just wouldn't be where it is today.

It is crazy because your father was so unusual. He had such an unusual mindset. And the fact that he had had those early matches, like the matches with Kimura, Santana, all those different early matches that a lot of people don't even know about that you could see online.

They want to test themselves. So Kimura haven't lost. I'm not Not just not lost, but nobody lasts more than three minutes with him. My father was like, Okay, I want to try. Heavier, younger. Valdemar Santana, heavier, younger. They fought for three hours in 40 minutes, one round straight.

Wow.

They want to put it to the test. That was the main thing. They want to see what they can do. But my father always said, he wasn't on how can he beat the opponents. He always told me, Don't walk in to win. Walk in not to lose. If you don't lose, the question is how you're going to beat him. He makes a mistake. But the mentality was always not to lose.

So always be defensively minded.

We're giving the weight advantage to the opponents. So if I don't lose, We're going to... He always used to explain that way, we're going to play a ping-pong game. So every time you put the ball on my side of the table, it doesn't matter where you put that ball. I'll put it back on the center of it. I'll catch that ball, put it back on the center of the table. What am I doing? Playing the perfect defense game. When am I going to lose? Never. So when I'm going to win? Now we have to change the question. When you missed the table, did I win? No, you're the one who made a mistake. You're the one who lost. If you're not, we're going to play forever if you don't make a mistake. So it was a very It's a defensive art. It's not a very aggressive.

I've heard Helson describe jiu-jitsu in that way. He said, Jiu-jitsu is I do this and then you do that, and then I do this, and then you do that forever.

Until somebody make a mistake. Until somebody make a mistake. I could make a mistake, too. But if I don't make a mistake, if you don't make a mistake, we're going to play forever. You know how it is. We're going to play until somebody gets tired make a mistake.

It was also perfect for you to be in it because in the first UFC, what did you weigh? About 176 pounds?

178.

178. Crazy. And you were in there against It's gigantic, guys. What a chemo way.

250?

250, roided to the gills.

There was no testing.

No testing, carrying a wooden cross into the octagon.

That was crazy. He was a raw. He was probably the strongest guy I fought. He was huge. He was raw strength. Not the most technical, but he was pure strength. I messed up on that one because I tried to match strength with him. He got me tired. I heard he was very strong, and I tried to match strength with him.

Walking in with the cross. I remember everybody was like, What the hell is going on here? Taekwondo.

I was like, Go ahead, carry that cross. It was solid I thought it would, by the way.

That was heavy. I'm sure. Probably a good warm-up. And there's you. How old were you then?

That was a steady FC. I was 27. Wow. Look at his eyes, man. It's like, Yeah.

Yeah, just jacked, full of juice, enormous Jesus tattoo on his stomach. The early days, my man. What is it like when you watch these?

Bare knuckles. Sometimes I think what my father was thinking in the audience on putting me rockers. And I had a fight before.

That was your first fight? It was UFC1.

Ufc1 was the first fight. I had to say, How many fights you had? I said, 51. Those tournament matches, when I was a kid competing in tournament, elements. Professional fights? Never. On the street? Never.

Wow, that's crazy.

I got jumped on the street once when I was 14 years old because I want to be a fighter. My brothers never had a fight. I heard all of them fighting. So I was 14, 15 years old. I went to a very bad neighborhood. Got my bike stolen, my nose broken. Got jumped, like five guys. Daytime, took my bike. But I came home and I was like, Okay, I had a fight. I got my ass kick. So I can be one of them. I want to be one of my cousins, one of my brothers, man. I want to be part of them, the Gracie. Never had a fight. It's like, ah.

When you first When you guys fought, did you have striking training at all?

Yes. Very little. I had students showing me some stuff.

That's crazy.

More for me to know what's coming in me than for me to use. It's more for me to know how they move. It wasn't like, I'm going to learn your striking to learn boxing to fight against a boxer. It was more for me to know what's coming, how they're going to move, when they're getting ready to throw a kick, a punch, for me to understand their movements.

Yeah, Hicksons talked about that the same way. He said he didn't learn kickboxing to be a kickboxer. He just learned kickboxing to understand what they're doing, the distance, the timing.

Distance, that's management. Distance management. That's very important. Some guys you see plant their feet and just exchange firepower. You can go either way. So I like more of a lieu to style, hit and don't get hit, get away.

When you look back on this now, when you watch these old matches from 1993, what does it feel like to see that?

Crazy. I think my father was crazy to put me there, man.

No one had ever done it before on television, in America, at least. It had never been a thing. And then all of a sudden, to have this.

No time limit, no division, no gloves.

No rules.

No rules, everything. No biting, no eye gouging.

Yeah, you could punch the nuts, everything.

But if you do a goug or bite like Gerard Gordou, as soon as I took him down, he beat my ear on the first year in the finals, on the first UFC. But there's no punishment. There's no, Okay, you're going to get disqualified. It's like, Don't do it again, sir.

It's so crazy. But then from that moment, from UFC One, Brazilian jiu-jitsu exploded across the country.

Exploded. Gracie Academy double size after the first UFC. After the second UFC, we double again size.

This is in Torrance? Torrance. I started at Hixon's place, and then I went to Carlson Gracie's place because I didn't know any better. It was closer. It was closer to me. It was on Hawthorn. That was when Vitor was making his debut in the UFC, back when they were calling him Victor Gracy. It was UFC 12. I remember the feeling of the first class, the feeling of how humiliated you are when you don't know jiu-jitsu and you spar with someone who knows jiu-jitsu. It's like you think you know how to fight, and then you get in there, and then all of a sudden you're on your back, you don't know what to do, and all of a sudden, you're getting choked. You're like, Oh, no. This is crazy.

You've been doing martial art for a long time already. I had a completely distorted idea of my ability to fight.

Completely distorted. I remember my first class, I was like, Oh, boy. Now I know.

It's like back in the garage days. There was always a student that bring a family friend or a family member or a coach from different styles of martial art, and they'll come in, and they'll come in to fight us. But we, Jorge and I, would be like, Okay, we're going to control and turn him into a student. So we take the guy down, mount, and pretty much talk to him, maybe choke, maybe arm bar, let it go, not hurting. And the guy will go home and goes, Oh, man, can I sign up? Can I learn?

Because of the fact that you didn't hurt them, you could convert them into a student. If you beat the fuck out of them and just broke their face.

They would never come back. So we were more concerned about gaining a student than trying to beat them up. But they were coming to fight. We were converting them.

Wow. Was it your father that was the mastermind behind doing it that way?

I think that was Horium because Horium was like my second father. I came live with him. I was 17 going on 18. I came to America to live with Horium.

So Horium was a lawyer, very smart, very calculated.

We were teaching back in the garage days, teaching every day, private classes, half an hour private classes. Place looked like a crack house. Half an hour, there's a person coming in and leaving, come and go, come and go. The name was like, What are they doing over there?

It's amazing what started in that garage, if you really think about it. But it's also amazing, his vision that he had so much belief in jiu-jitsu that he knew that he just... It wasn't like it had to be developed. It was already there. You just have to show people. They just need to know.

We try advertisements, and so he finally figured out we have to put on TV. And once the American people find out, the whole world will see it. And that's what happened. Put on TV, second UFC, people coming from everywhere. There was applications coming from different parts of the world.

It's crazy. There's never been Other than, maybe, one thing that had Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee movies. People saw Bruce Lee movies. They all wanted to learn martial arts. But other than that... But that was movies, right? So that was like you wanted to do this thing that wasn't real. This guy was fighting 10 people. They were all coming out in one at a time. But it wasn't real. Watching you in UFC One, it was like so many people had this light bulb moment.

I thought a lot of people thought it was fixed. It was like, no, there's no way this thing is for real. Even though Taylor Tulio lost a tooth by Gerard Gordou, got kicking in the face right off the first fight. But a lot of people thought, second How can you see still people are like, I think the fourth one is when people said, Okay, this thing is for real.

Martial artists knew right away. Yes. In the martial arts community, right away. I didn't see UFC One first. I saw UFC 2. That was the first one that I saw. Because UFC 1, for whatever reason, I think it was some licensing thing. It wasn't available as a VCR tape. So the VHS tape, when it was released and you could get it in a store, a friend of mine had told me about it, and I had just moved to California. It was 94, and I got a hold of UFC 2, and I watched it in my apartment. I remember going, Oh, my goodness. It just changed my mind about fighting. Fighting for me was always stand-up fighting. I mean, I wrest a little bit in high school, but fighting for me was kickboxing. When I saw that, I was like, Wow. I remember everybody, all my friends that were into martial arts, everybody was scrambling to try to find a jiu-jitsu school. There had never been a moment like that where one martial art had emerged with such force.

Jiu-jitsu, judo, wrestling. I had a lot of wrest and judo guys that came up to me. I was like, Man, thanks for putting us on the map. Going back to the old Black Bell magazines, Inside Karate, Inside Kum fu. That was all stand-up martial arts. They wouldn't consider wrestling judo part of martial art.I know, it's not crazy?That's not. It's all stand-up.

We used to share a gym. Back when I lived in Boston, there was a guy that I used to work out with, and he had a gym that he would share with the judo class. On one side, there was a judo guy, and the other side was kickboxers. I remember thinking, What are these guys doing? What a waste of time. Practicing, throwing each other around. What's the point? And no one knew. It's so interesting that everyone... See, from the time I first got into martial arts when I was a little kid, there was always this thought, What would happen if a karate guy fought a judo guy? What would happen if a boxer fought a wrestler? And everybody had an opinion. But until UFC One came around, no one really knew. It was just theoretical. I always maintain that since '93 to today, martial arts have evolved more over the last 30 years than they have over the last 30,000 years.

Everybody had that, what would happen. But Nobody would have challenged the other one. Nobody wanted to step on anybody's toes.

Well, nobody was willing to take the chance.

What if I lose? I don't want to bother. I don't want to beat the other guy, too, because if I beat him, he's going to feel bad. There was a lot of that. We were like, Hey, we're willing to find out.

Yeah. Well, thank God you did that. I mean, thank God it came along, because who knows where martial arts would be today if that hadn't happened?

You would have still people thinking the death touches. Yeah.

All that shit.

I'll touch you right here in the shoulder, and a week from now, your arm will paralyze. It's like, okay.

You'll grab your collarbone, you go to sleep. Yeah, there was a lot of that stupid shit. There's There's still that stupid shit out there. There's still a lot of people out there that believe that stuff. It's crazy, isn't it?

But, hey, UFC came along.

Yeah, but most people know now.

Show the world.

Most people know now. I mean, now, if you want to fight, you have to know jiu-jitsu. You have to because there's no if, and, or, buts about it.

If you take jiu-jitsu away, it goes back to the old style. Stand up, karate against kung fu, jiu-jitsu the bond between the striking arts and the grappling arts and all of them.

I mean, there's still guys who only understand jiu-jitsu in a rudimentary sense. They understand defense, but you have to at least understand defense. You have to at least know what someone's doing. You can't compete without understanding it because you'll get caught.

You got to know. Yeah. Not just on the grappling part, but on the stand-up part. You have to know how to defend yourself. It's not just come up and start to hit the opponent. No, I got to manage distance. I got to know when I'm too close and he's going to hit me. So I got to play defense all around.

What is it like for you, having been there for UFC1, to see what it is today? To see UFC300, which was just insane. This thing where millions of people are watching it around the world. It's this huge phenomenon. It's like the most exciting sport in the world now. To know you were the original. You're number one. There's only going to be one original ultimate fighter. That's you.

I don't look at that way. I don't look at that way. I look as a... Yeah, I was part of it.

You were the part of it. If it wasn't you, if you didn't exist, if they had the UFC one and there was representative of jiu-jitsu, some big, strong guy would have won.

Or what if I lost?

Right. What if you lost?

Yeah. So I said the other day, I said, I'm not part of the history. I am the history.

Yeah, you are the history. Yeah, you were the original representative of jiu-jitsu. And the reason why the UFC became so exciting was not just because you get to see these wild fights inside of a cage, but you see a smaller guy with better technique beat the bigger, stronger men, which is what martial arts was always supposed to be. Jiu-jitsu, I always tell people, is the only martial art that delivers as advertised. Because if you're a kickboxer and you're a small guy, and another guy is a kickboxer, but he's like 250 pounds. You don't stand a chance. You're fucked.

He's going to hit you. A boxer? Yeah. Lightweight boxer against a heavyweight. Doesn't stand a chance.

Doesn't stand a chance. But jujutsu, if you are really good, and that guy doesn't know what he's doing, you're going to fucking kill him. He doesn't have a chance.

Or even if he knows what he's doing. The lightweight, they have a chance to survive and play defense and end up choking or on board the bigger opponent.

Which is why absolutes in jiu-jitsu matches are so interesting. When you watch a small guy beat a big guy.

Win the heavyweight championship, it's a lightweight.

No, it's the only martial art that really delivers as advertised. Where technique triumphs over everything.

That's what my father and Uncle Carlos and their brothers always tried to show people that you don't have to be the biggest, the strongest, the fastest. You just got to know what you're doing. My father used to say, Give me the right leverage and I'll lift the world with one hand. Just got to have the right set up.

That was also the brilliant thing about jiu-jitsu. And your father was a smaller guy. He weighed 147 pounds or something, right?

About 145, yes. Crazy.

Crazy.

And challenged everybody, wrest that came from boxers who would go to vacation in Brazil, he will be at the airport waiting for the guy. The old Joe Louis went to Brazil. Really? Excuse me. And went to Brazil, and my father challenged him. Wow. Hornel had a letter that was given to my father saying, Joe Luz boxed against anybody. Boxing against boxing, not an MMA match. My father was like 145 pounds. Joe Luz was 220, 200 pounds, the heavyweight champion at the time.Wow. The old man was crazy.

Imagine if he took that on, if he was willing to do that, that would have been exciting.

But back then, there was no the Internet. So a lot of people probably wouldn't find out. It would be very small. It didn't happen. Yeah, no one would understand. There was no tapes.

Right. Yeah, you'd have to set that up. You'd have to set that up, bring a camera crew and the whole deal. What was it about your father that had this mentality, that had this desire to challenge himself and prove How did you see how to improve Jujutsu's effectiveness?

I think he was being smaller, being peak on it. And once he learned He had that power. He learned Jujutsu, he got that power with him. So he wanted to show others. I would say, as a fighter, He always says, If I fell on top of the opponent, I would be nice. I would have choked him out. I'll subdue him. Use submission, make him tap. Technique. If he was on top of me, I would have beat him up. He used to say, Hit him. Get off me. Get off me. He should have listened. He should have got off me in the first punch. He would tie you up and beat you from the bottom.

Well, that was one of the more interesting things about jiu-jitsu because of what your father did was because your father was smaller, he developed much more technique off of his back. Because in these other styles of judo and Japanese jiu-jitsu, it wasn't really emphasizing fighting off of your back.

Yeah, he was playing defense. So he always said, tie your opponent up. If you have to beat him up from the bar, but if you get on top, there's no reason to beat him up. You're under control. You control the You just subdue him. Well, there's a lot of defense.

It's interesting now.

A mean defense, I would say.

A very mean defense, yeah. But it's interesting now when you see the rules. The Rules are set up much more for strikers and for wrest because I've been talking about this lately. Say if you're a jiu-jitsu guy and you're fighting in the first round and rounds are five minutes long and you take the guy down 4 minutes and 30 seconds. You only have 30 seconds to work. I feel like a fight should be, even if you're going to make it rounds, the fight is the fight. I don't think someone should be able to get up. I don't think you should stand people up ever. I think once a guy takes you down, the fight is on the ground. If it's boring for the audience, tough shit. If you're on the bottom, get up. And if you can't get up, tough shit. And if the round ends and then the new round begins, I think they should start you right back in the same place.

I think because they're on the same weight division. Back then, there was no weight division. But since the... I would say the fight doesn't favor one person, one style or another.

It doesn't favor it, but it gives a distinct advantage if you let a person stand up that didn't stand up. If you start the second round, say if you take me down with 4 minutes and 30 seconds to go and you're dominating me and you're closing in on me and you're about to tap me, but then the round ends. And then we start, but now we start standing up. But I didn't earn that stand up. I just got to stand up because of the time. I feel like the fight should be a fight. So if a fight is five rounds, that's a 25-minute fight. And I think whatever position that you're in at the end of that first round, you should begin in the second round. That's what I think.

I'm in favor of doing one round straight through.

Well, that would be wild, too. I think one round, and maybe even no time limit.

No time limit is not good for the TV.

No, but good for the Internet.

One 15-minute round. Yeah. It's like, that's it. One 15 straight through. Go straight. No rounds. Start, 15 minutes later, we'll stop.

They should try that.

Hey, if nobody wins, another five minutes or 10 minutes.Right..

Overtime round.You.

See, overtime.

Well, I think pride had rules. A 10-minute first round was better. I think 10 minutes is better, especially if someone works really hard. Again, 4 minutes, 30 seconds, you finally take the guy down. Now you're on top, and now you're trying to set things up, but the bell rings, and then you start standing up again.

Yeah, I started standing up again. But then, yeah, I think you put a 10-minute round, 15-minute, one round straight through, man.

But I think the problem is they've stopped changing the rules. The rules are the rules now, and they've solidified them and established them. But I don't think the rules are right. I think if a guy takes you down, you should have to earn a stand-up. You have to get back up to your feet. So if the fight ends-With one mounted on top of the other or on the back.

Yeah.

If that's the end of the round, you start from the same position. I think they should show it up on the screen what the position was, and then everybody agrees. Okay, so he had an overhook, he had half guard, go.

Or how about they play in football, American football? If the five-minute finish and the guy is on the mountain position, you got to let it go until they break away. Yeah. So you're going to go and tell somebody to score.

Yeah.

I like that. It's like if the position end up on such an advantage position, That was something to think about it.

Yeah, it's something to think about. If you want to make things more realistic.

If we finish the round and I'm on your back about to choke you or with a gilet tail, the choke where I'm barbed, caught. Okay, the bell doesn't ring. Until you get away and get up, then we take a break.

Yeah, that's not bad either. I just think that having a fight start. If you start, you start standing up. But I think round to round, you should resume the position whatever you were in in the previous round. I think that's the only thing that makes sense because otherwise, you didn't earn a standup. But if a guy takes you down and mounted you, and he's setting up a head and arm choke, and he's sinking it in, and then the buzzer rings. You should go right back to that spot when round two starts because you didn't get out of that. Now, if the guy's a kickboxer, now he goes, Oh, shit, I almost got caught. Now you start that next round standing up. He has an advantage because now he's standing up. But he didn't earn that stand up. You earned the takedown. You got him down. You got in a superior position. You were about to finish him.

I like it.

Yeah, I think it makes more sense.

I like it.

No one's going to listen to me, though. Especially me. They go, You're biased towards jiu-jitsu. I'm like, Yeah, I am. But I'm not, though. Because I feel like if it was the other way, if you start a fight, if a guy stood up and got back to a standing position, you would never take them back down again and start to-But if it was a switch around, just playing devil's advocate over here. Okay.

The kickboxer or the stand-up guy hit, almost knock him out. Bell rings. Saved by the bell. Right. How do we restart that one?

Well, you restart it standing. It You're still standing. I mean, the round, you have the minute rest, but you're still standing. The kickbox is still-I would say let it go.

Let it go. The clock goes until, hey, until he recover, getting a clinch and got away.

The right way to do it then is one round, one 15-minute round or one 25-minute round in a championship fight. That's the right way to do it.

That would be wild. Well, 15, 30 seconds. So 30 second minute break? Yeah. And then 10 minutes.

That's not bad.

First round, 15.

Yeah. That'd be crazy.

It'll be an early night. Yeah.

I mean, how many finishes would there be? It'll be a lot more finishes.

I think so.

I wonder how different-People have to work on the endurance, too.

Oh, yeah. Because a lot of guys, I see they finish the fight. One is fresh, the other one is done for the night. But then the one that's fresh lost because he doesn't have that quick twitch, that fast twitch muscle in The one that explode everything on the first round, the second, third round, that's it. This guy is ready to go for five, six, but his time is over. Right.

That's an interesting thing, too. It's a matter of... What people don't understand that just watch it and don't do martial arts is that it's really just about pacing yourself, too. Knowing when to hit the gas, when to back up, knowing that you have to fight for five rounds, and knowing when to push. Some fighters, they'll back off in the beginning because they know that a guy is going to come out fast and hard, and they're just going to wait. Okay, he's slowing down now. Now I start to press. Now I start to put on the gas.

And it becomes a mental, too. Like Harding used to say, If I drop you off in the middle of the ocean and tell you, I'm coming back in an hour, all you got to do is thread the water for an hour. But if I drop you off and say goodbye, find your way home, now you got to pick a direction, start swimming. Yeah. Most people will drown before an hour.

Yeah, true, right? Mental.

It's a lot of mental. There's no round to save you.

Yeah. That's the most interesting thing about the early UFCs is that it was just no time limit. Just, Here we go.

This is like Dan Severn on top of me for 15 minutes. I beat him on the final 16 minutes. But 15 minutes, if it was today, he would have won. He was on top of me, took me down, got on top. Would have won the decision.

I remember that day. I remember when you caught him in that triangle. Most people didn't even know what was going on. They were like, What is he doing? What the hell is happening here? What is going on? Nowadays, everybody would be going, Oh, he got the... The audiences are so educated now.

That was a perfect example of playing defense right there. I totally played defense against him. Just first trade the opponent until he made a mistake. I tried a triangle early on in the fight, but he was able to get out. Then I defend, defend, defend, defend. He couldn't do anything. I can see him getting frustrated. He didn't know how he was going to win. I can't feel that. There's no way I can't beat this guy.

Because you were so good defensively.

Just plain defense. He couldn't hit me. He tried, but I knew he didn't have any finishing holds. He didn't know any finishing holds. He was just trying to put pressure. Okay, I'll take it. No problem.

It was also the Gee. The gui was so smart, too, to fight with the gui on because guys would just grab that gui. When you would close the distance and get a hold of them, they would grab your gui instinctively.

I prefer them to grab. A lot of Brazilians were like, Man, but then they grab, they make it harder for you. No, I prefer them to put their hands on me because I know where their hands are. At least if they're not punching me, if they have nothing to grab, they're going to be swinging on me. Right. Go ahead, grab that gui all day long. I don't mind.

Well, guys who weren't even grapplers would grab your gui. I remember watching that guy. It's human instinct. Yeah, human instinct. Yeah. And also you have all that friction. It's so good to hold on the guys when you have the guy.

And I dry them. My father's like, Use the guy to dry the guys because if you want to be slippery, it's not like today. They put oil on their body.

Oh, yeah, they definitely They definitely do.

The kickboxers all put Vaseline all over. That's to warm up the tiger barn, to warm up. That thing's slippery, man.

Oh, yeah. Guys take baths in baby oil. They would lie down in a bathtub and put water and put baby oil in the water and just soak themselves in baby oil. So even if they're dry, then the moment they start to sweat, they're just like, whoop, like holding on to a salmon. They slip right out of your fingers.

It's crazy. Good Good old days. Good old days. No rules.

And then they slowly started implementing rules. They slowly started implementing weight classes and then mandating gloves and then taking away shoes.

I understand. You it became a show, let's say. Yeah. So in the beginning, it was a style against a style.

Yeah.

Today is more of a... I would look at it more as like it's an athlete against an athlete. Yes.

Now it's a sport. It's It's a real sport. And it's still a sport that there's still a lot of rules that I don't agree with. I don't agree with no knees to the head on the ground. I think that's ridiculous. I think that doesn't make sense because they're very effective. Don't be in a position where you get knee in the head. Don't stay in a turtle. When guys just stay in a turtle and a guy has got a hold of him, man, that's a terrible place to be. In the street? Oh, my God. If a guy has got a head and arm on you and he's holding you and you're in the turtle and his knees are free and you're not blocking your head? Oh, this fight is over. But in the UFC, you can't even do anything. That seems to me to be crazy.

They tried to make it, I think, to last long, the fights.

Well, I think it's less brutal, too. The idea is that you can't defend yourself against knees to the head of the ground. But you can, obviously. You guys did them.

I can elbow the back of the head.

Right. The back of the head from the back, if you have the back mount. Remember when Enzo, when your cousin fought Stryker, that guy in Was it World Kampf League? Oh, my God. He got his back and just boom, boom, just fucked him up. You didn't even need to put the choke in. You couldn't do anything. You just flattened out with your face on the mat and the guy's pounding the back of your head. You just tapped.

So They're trying to put a little bit to protect the fighter. Yes. I understand.

I understand, too.

I don't agree with it.

I don't agree with it either. Also, it's weird that you can't hit the back of the head because the back of the head gets hit a lot, a lot accidentally, especially with head kicks. A lot of times head kicks wrap around the back of your head, and it's totally legal. If two guys are standing and one guy feints and the guy throws a punch and the guy throws a head kick and the head kick hits him, bang, it wraps right around the back of the head. It's okay. The shin. That's okay. That's okay. And that's a legal KO, which is crazy. But if you get a guy on the ground and you punch him in the back of the head, the referee take a point away, stand you up, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I would say, let it go. Yeah, let it go. Back in the old days. That would be good to see.

You got to protect the back of your head. The back of your head is vulnerable. If you're in a situation where a guy can punch the back of your head, you should be blocking the back of your head. And if now he can punch the front of your head, now you got to block the front of your head.

Turn the face in the opponent. Don't turn your back.

We're talking about the sport of effective fighting, and it's very effective to punch someone in the back of the head. And they say it's more dangerous, but we're talking about a very dangerous sport. It's effective to punch the temple. That's okay. That's fucking vulnerable. That's a thin little piece of bone.How.

Many ounces are the gloves?Four.

Yeah.

They're there just to protect your fingers.That's all it does.Protect your knuckles.

It just helps you hit harder. It just protects you from cuts a little bit, a little bit. But still.

The cast that they put underneath, all that taping and the gloves, it's just to protect your hands so it don't break your Exactly.

Do you think that they should be bare-knuckle?

I think it should go back to the old ways. Just tie out one time.

One time, right? One time would be great.

No time limit, no weight division.

Why doesn't someone do that? Why doesn't someone do that? I don't know about the weight limit thing. Guys are too good now. The problem is guys are too good.

But if there's no weight division, if there's no weight division, you cannot have time limit. If you take the weight, you got to take the time. My father used to say, I'll give you the weight division, you got to give me time. You got some of the light weights over here, man. The 170s, 180s. They will fight the heavy weights. Also, With no time limit.

Most of these guys, if they're jiu-jitsu guys, but also a lot of these guys are not really... That's the other thing is the weight cutting. Like Kamara Usman is a great example. He was the 170-pound champion, one of the greatest ever. Never weighed 170 pounds. He weighed 170 pounds for about five minutes.

Walk around 200. Yeah, easy. Jacked. All of them.

Everybody. Everybody. You can't fight, except for B. J. Penn. B. J. Penn was the last guy who fought at 17. He probably weighed 165 when he beat Matt Hughes. He just didn't cut any weight at all. He just weighed what he weighed and just went in and went after it. But again, jiu-jitsu guy.

But everybody have to know jiu today. Some are more proficient than the others. Yes. But everybody have to know.

Yeah, you have to know what's going on. You have to.

Everybody have to know a little bit of wrestling, judo, the kick-boxing, the boxing, the karate, Everybody has to know a little bit of everything.

Yeah, it's a different sport. It's totally different.

But would it be fun to do once? See who can sign up for it?

Yeah. No time limit, no weight class, no gloves. Yeah, old school. I think they should take away the cage. I think the cage helps people, too, because it helps people stand back up. If you get a guy down and you get a guy down in an open room, say, a basketball court, there's nothing to help him get back up.

Okay, hold on. Time out over here. Now you brought some memories over here. First, UFC, it was John Miller, the producer for Conan, the destroyer, the father of Dirty Harry, the Clint Eastwood, he's in charge of creating the cage. But before the cage, they come up with some ideas. They present to me. I was like, Wait a minute. Hold on. They're like, How about if we make a round ring with a pet with a pit with sharks.

I was like, Hold on.

Imagine if I fight a sumo wrestler and just bump me off and fall off the sharks, we eat you. Yeah, we should put piranhas because you're from Brazil. What? The ideas they had. How about a bowl? People tried to get off, but you can't because it'll be slippery. You can't climb off the walls, the side. But then they didn't have the angles for the camera. And how about putting the... They tried the octagon, but with bob wires. Oh, God. I was like, Dude, imagine if I got somebody big and just push me against and hang me on top. Oh, yeah, that's right. Let's make an electrical fence. I was like, Really? The ideas they had, man. I was like, Everybody I'm going to fight is going to be bigger than me. The guy pushed me against the fence, he fried me against the fence. Come on, really? That's crazy. I keep viruling the ideas, man. They had all kinds of crazy ideas.

God, I imagine if they went through with those.For the first UFC. That's so ridiculous. I've been saying for a while that they should do... If you could watch a basketball game, basketball games on this massive court. Why can't there be a fight on a basketball court? Just flat mats, no walls. So everyone can see everything that's going on.

There's even a basketball, the guys will go to the edge.

Yeah, but you have a warning track. So you have a warning track of 15 feet on each side.

Let's make that The hole. The hole is not a bad idea.

The hole is not a bad idea.

The hole, so the guy can climb off. It's like with the walls, the edges.

Have you seen Karate Combatt? How Karate combatt is doing it? No. Karate combatt is doing it like that, where they have a flat surface and it's on the edges. There's mats that go to the edges, like at an angle.

In the angle, people cannot climb out.

They go up against it, but then they get pushed and then they fall down. They fall down because I think a wall is actually better than the angle because it's just too easy to fall. As someone's pushing you up against that thing, it's a slope. It's hard. If you see how they do it, see how they have that wall? Yes. See the angle? I don't necessarily think that that's the best idea because as soon as you go up against that, a lot of times guys wind up falling down and the guy just falls on top of them. Oh, you can't back up? Yeah, you can't back up. I think it would be better if it was like a basketball court, just a flat mat and a basketball court, and there's a warning track. So if you know you're in the red zone, you have to get out of that red zone. And if you keep retreating to the red zone, maybe they take a point away from you. It's a lot of room. A basketball court is a big space. There's plenty of room. You start in the center, and then that's how you fight.

I'm just trying to eliminate all the factors that aren't another human. The other human, if a guy takes you down and you could scooch up to the to the wall, and then you start using the and you press against the wall, now you're standing up again. But you use the wall. If that was just flat, no wall, you're not getting up. Now you have to go under hooks, you have to deep half, you have to do something to try to reverse the position, you try to get back up on your feet. You have to earn a stand-up. Much more difficult than if you're just using the wall to help you stand back up.

Shock.

Yeah, shock. Shox, Farranas, Electrical Fence. I remember the first UFC I worked was UFC 12. This was when I was on a television show. I was on this television show called Newsradio. It was a sitcom. I was hired to go do the post-fight interviews. I remember the people that I was working with on the sitcom were like, What are you doing? Why are you being involved in this? This is brutal. I was telling them, I was like, No, this is going to be the biggest in the world. They're like, Sure, out of your fucking mind. You're crazy. No one's going to like this. This is insanity. You're going to watch people fight in a cage.

And I'm like, That was one of the challenges that Horton had, and a lot of people did not believe in him. He was like, People are like, Man, you cannot fight on the streets. How are you going to put this on live TV? That was one of the challenges that the Horn figured out, pay-per-view.

He must be happy now watching it, right? Oh, yeah. Look, I was right. His baby. Yeah. Look at his baby now. His baby's on ESPN. Yeah.

Crazy. Yeah, a national TV.

When was the last time Horian went to a UFC?

I don't know.

Does he still watch them?

I think so. I think he does watch. I talk to him once in a while. Once a month, we talk.

It must be crazy for him to see this thing that was his idea, this branch off and become this huge-All over the world. Is he mad that he didn't get a piece? No.

Because it sold for billions of dollars. He never talked to me about that.

They should have cut him in. They should have cut him in. When you think about it, if anybody deserves a piece, that guy deserves a piece.For.

The vision that he had.Yes..

If it wasn't for his vision and the way they decided to go about doing it, also your father, your father's vision for it, you're like, Don't hurt him. Just use jiu-jitsu. Show everybody. Because that's one of the things that made it so appealing. It wasn't that it was just so brutal. It was that the guy who won wasn't brutal. The guy who won was just better, technical.

That's why I think the first second, third UFC. Until I didn't finish on the third UFC, and first and second, people were like, There's no way. He's the smallest one. Beat everybody without hurting them. I don't know. Everybody thought, I was like, Yeah, A lot of people are the non- martial artist people.

Yes.

Martial artist people knew. It was like, Oh, oh.

Yeah, martial arts people-We got to learn this. Well, everybody who took jiu-jitsu knew right away because it was so eye-opening. Like I said before, my first classes, the ideas that you had in your head of how competent you are versus the reality that you're confronted with. And you saw that in all the Gracian action tapes, too. These guys, they wanted to do it again. How did you do that? Let's try it again. No way. And then, take down again. Arm bar.

Like Gérald Gordou, after the first UFC, he went back to Holland and prepared Remco Pardou to beat me. Ramco Pardou, judo player, knew some stand-up. When I beat Remco Pardou, they went back to Holland. They're like, Okay, we have to learn this jiu-jitsu thing. We have to learn this.

Remember when Remco Pardou fought Orlando Veat? Yes. And he got him in side control and just elbow him unconscious, and everybody's like, Oh, wow.

Like, Whoa, that was crazy because Orlando Veet was scary.

That guy was scary.

Yes. Lightweight, very good kickboxer.

Yeah. Nasty. Nasty Muay Thai. And Remco Parduch just took them down. Elbows, boom, boom, boom. And then stopped. He stopped. He stopped. He's like, Hey, look.

He's out. He was done. That's it.

That's a wrap. Such an educational moment for martial arts. Again, martial arts has changed so much since 1993. People's understanding of martial arts, just the general public, what they know. If you see street fights today, guys go to the ground all the time. You see street fights today. Guys get guys in heel hooks. It's crazy. Street fights. Here it is. Here's Remco. Boom, boom, boom.

The first one, he was already out. Remco is like 260 pounds.

Yeah, he was a big dude. But it was just like no one Understood what was going on. No one understood anything.

That's the same takedown that he tried to do to me, but I ended up on his back. Yeah. I knew he was going to do that takedown, trap the arm, roll over. So I ended up on his back, and that's when I choked him.

Such a strange time for martial arts, really. If you really stop and think about it, such a strange time. Because all these years, thousands of years of people fighting, thousands of years of people having this idea of how to fight, and then all of it comes together in the UFC. And then we go, okay, now we have new data. Now we have new understanding. Okay, now we get it. Now we get it. And then you see it evolve to what it is now, where you see these guys like Alex Pajeda, the kickboxer who comes in, and now he's got his style.

I think today is more of a lot of strategy, too, because both fighters are practicing the stand-up and the grappling. They do jujitsu, they wrestling, everybody does kickboxing, karate, everybody practices all of them. So it's a question of who have the best strategy.

Yeah, who has the best strategy. And then there's people like Pajira who has a unique skillset, like a scary boxer. Dangerous. He just hits you once, you're unconscious. That guy presents a very unique challenge. If you don't grab him and you don't get him to the ground, you are fucked. Because if you're standing up with him at any moment, that guy is going to set you up, move, and boom, like we did with Jamal Hill in that last week. All it takes is one shot from that guy. So these guys now, everyone has their own unique skillset. And it's so interesting seeing how that skillset matches up with Another guy's skillset. With Paheda, I want to see what happens if he fights against an elite wrestler, a really good who is really good at takedowns who knows jiu-jitsu. And we haven't seen that yet.

But he trains a lot of grappling, too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he just got his black belt from Glover.

From Glover, yes.

Yeah, which is huge. And Glover is good. Yeah, and Glover says he's very good on the ground now.

No, Glover himself is tough as fuck.

People don't know how good Glover is because Glover could not fight in the US for 6 years because of visa issues. During his prime, Glover was stuck in Brazil. He couldn't come to America because everybody knew about... Glover was the boogie man. Everybody talked about Glover. Glover was the guy that, out of all the elite guys that weren't in the UFC, Glover was the number one guy that everybody talked about. He was so good when he was younger. By the time he got to the UFC, he was already like 36 years old. He won the title, I think he was 41 or 42 when he won the light heavyweight title.

And Alex trains with him.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's a good combination.

Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect combination. I mean, it's an amazing, exciting time for the sport. It really is.

It's good. There's still a lot of countries, a lot of places that are against, so we still can open up more doors.

What countries are against MMA now?

European countries are still like, It's starting to make its way. This guy is from France. Just now, last year, I think starting France and Spain.

Well, France has some great guys, too, now, though. Cyril Ghan and Cedric Dumbé, who fights for PFL, who's an elite kickboxer. And then, of course, you got those guys from Daghestan. That's an interesting element, too. Those Russian wrestlers.

I don't think this Because of their wrestling. I think it's because of their discipline. I tell a lot of people that those guys don't think about anything else. Just train. They're disciplined about it.

Very religious, very disciplined, very focused. Just, yeah.

The girlfriend or wife, they're not thinking about any of that.

No partying.

There's no partying. That's all they do. Get up, train, sleep, eat, train. So, yeah, they don't think about anything else. They're just more, I think they're more disciplined than this side of the world.

Yeah, I was watching this interview with Khabib where he was talking. It was a conversation that he was having with someone who was talking about young people That it's so important that they maintain focus because a young guy who's really talented and is above and better than everybody else when he's 18, sometimes they'll slack off and then they come back to it when they're like 22. But then by then, they're average and everybody else has gotten much better and they lost that advantage and they won't be special. But the guy who is 18, who's above and beyond everybody else in the gym, that guy, if he can maintain that discipline and maintain that focus, then he can go on to become a champion.

I totally believe on that. It's the discipline. It's not because they're better wrest or they're better strikers. You find very good wrest everywhere in America Top wrest in the world over here. Olympics. But I think the discipline is what's missing a lot of people. They don't take Sunday offs.

Right. Right.

It's Sunday. We're going to rest. No, not for them, not for those guys.

What was training like for you during UFC1?

Training. I never really party. I understand because I'm on that philosophy. I would say good. Before, like two months before the fight, a month before the fight, when I was fighting in Japan, when I went to fight in Japan, a month before the fight, I would have to move out of the house. So I don't have to deal with the kids, with the woman, nothing. So month before. And Jorge would come over and have a talk with me and my father. And it's like, okay, there's no babysitting, there's no hanging out with the kids. Yep, none of that.

Just Spartan training. Yeah.

Pretty much. Yeah. And I understand. I was like, okay, I'm a soldier, man. You tell me to do it, I'll do it. There's not a doubt. They say, Do it, done. So you cannot hang around with the kids and babysit them. The kids are little. They're all grown now. But it's like, No, okay. I can cut it off. Not a problem. A lot of discipline on that. Say goodbye to the family. You got to go train. You got to go spend a month away.

And what was a day's training like? Did you do any strength and conditioning back then, or was it all just jiu-jitsu training and position training? Training and drills?

It was a lot in that order. You have to know what you're doing. That's how I learned from my family. You have to have endurance, then becomes power. Yes, I did a lot of strength and conditioning, but a lot of endurance. Endurance was before the strength. So even till today, it's knowledge. If you don't know how to fight, you have no business in the cage. But then you know how to fight and you have a lot of power, but you can't last more than two minutes.

You're in trouble.

So you have to know what you're doing. You have to have endurance to last at least the first round, five minutes, then becomes power.

And what endurance training would you do?

Endurance, everything, from running to swimming to... Strength coach and I one time got up and was like, okay. The guy, he used to be the strength coach for USA for the Rams when they were in LA. James, man, went for a 41-mile run.

41 miles?

One day, seven hours later, I told him, Stop. My calves are both cramped up, man. I can't take it like a step.

That seems crazy.

Yeah. So just not too long ago, a couple of years ago, a bunch of friends of mine from the Navy Seals asked me, Hey, let's go swim across. Let's go swim at Tampa Bay. I was like, Sure. Let's do it. I figured out it was across Tampa Bay. It's like three hours later. Three hours of swimming? I made it, but my God. Jesus Christ. I was having frost bite on my fingers. It was January. Very cold water. Brazilians are not made for cold weather. It was not the distance. It was not... I can make it. It was not carrying extra 40, 50 pounds of weight dragging behind us. No, it was the cold water that got to me. I was like, But I did it, got to the other side.

Did Did you train for that or did you just do it?

I swim about maybe a dozen times. I thought we were just going to go to the beach and just hang out, swim on the beach. Yeah, cold water. Okay. Yeah. Come in, come out. No. Three hours. By the time they said, It's across Tampa Bay. I was like, Now I cannot back down, man. I got to do it. So I went to a pool, swimming a nice warm pool, dozen times, maybe a dozen times.

Just to get ready for that?

Yeah. Oh, fuck. It was pretty much just on heart, man. We climb up Cactus to Clouds. That's in Palm Springs. Strength coach is like, Yeah, we're going to go for a hike. Dude, it's like cactus to clouds. It's bad. We did it. We got up there.

How long did that take?

All day. All day. Left like three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning. We started, finished by four o'clock in the afternoon, three, four o'clock in the afternoon.

Cactus to clouds, 21 miles. Difficulty, class one, two, highly strenuous. 10,400 feet change of elevation Jesus Christ.

That's nuts. Yeah. I always did endurance stuff.

With fighting, if you don't have endurance, you don't have anything.

Sakurabe and I, we I fought for an hour and 45. Was that an hour and 45? Yeah. It was six rounds of 15 minutes. It was a two-minute rest. I think it was two-minute rest between rounds. Fifteen minutes, rest for two, 15.

Crazy.

Yeah.

Is that the longest fight you had?

Yes. 945, that's the second longest fight in history.

What's the longest fight in history?

My father. 340. 342 or something like this. Yeah.

Fighting.

But he It was one round. Yeah. That was six rounds of 15 minutes.

What was the longest fight in the UFC that was one round?

I think Dan Saver and I. Oh, wow. No, Kesham Rock and I. One round of 30 minutes on the UFC 5. We did one round of 30 minutes.

What about other organizations? Remember when Marillo Bustamante fought Tom Erickson? Tom Erickson, yes. That another one that was crazy because Marillo was 185, and Tom Erickson was 300 pounds. He was fucking huge.

A very good wrestler.

Powerful guy, too. People forgot about Tom Erickson.

He was a very good wrestler.

He was a scary motherfucker. Big They would call him the Big Cat because he moved like a cat, but he was 300 pounds.

The wrest were taking over and trying to fight against... Showing the Brazilians that jiu-jitsu was nothing. So they had the heavyweights. It was Tom Erickson, Kerr, Coleman.

Royce Alger, too. He entered into the UFC. And Enson Inoué, Armbard him, remember? Yep. Broke his arm.

And all those guys went to Brazil to fight in Brazil. Yeah. Kevin Randleman.

Randleman, Mark Kerr. Tom Erickson.

Tom Erickson. Chuck Liddell. They fought Fábri Gurgel.

Chuck Liddell fought Pele. Remember when they used to have the ring with the netting? Underneath the bottom row so people can't slip out. Yeah. Crazy. It's crazy when you think about it, how much the sport has changed and how many just... What's amazing is you could watch all those matches, too. Back then, trying to watch a match was very hard to do. You had to find a tape.

Yeah, I remember people saying, Yes, man, you fought in America. We had to wait a week or two weeks until somebody bring the tape over. The VHS, they had to bring it, not even send. They had to somebody come over here, record it, and then take it back to Brazil and make copies and pass around to people.

Well, it's also like people had to understand where the level was at, too, because if you didn't watch it, you didn't understand where the level was at. I remember there was a match between Hixon and Hegan. There's a jiu-jitsu match between Hixon and Higan. At the time, it was the highest level Jujutsu, black belt match we had ever seen. We were watching Hixon and Hegan going after him like, Oh, my God.

They were both studs. Studs. Higan was not easy, man.

He was so good.

He was a stud.

Oh, my God. And watching those guys go at it in their prime. It's like you get to see that level. You got to watch a tape if you were going to see that. Because we weren't in Brazil, so someone has to film it. They have to get it over to us. Yeah. Crazy. How come Hixon never fought in the UFC? We did Was there ever a moment where it almost came over?

I think because I was fighting there in the UFC. If not, it was tournament back then. So if both of us fought, we end up facing Chad. It's like,. So I think that's why he decided to go to Japan.

But when you stopped fighting in the UFC, was there ever a moment where they were trying to get Hixon to come over?

I don't know if they approach him, but he was already successful. He was successful in Japan, and they kept him busy over Yeah. Hicks was beating up the heavyweights in Japan.

Yeah, he was beating up everybody over there. That's the thing that, unfortunately, in America, people weren't aware of Japan Valley Tuto and all the different Then the original Pride when he fought Takeda, then he fought all those guys over there and Funaki.

The first Valley Tudo, yes.

Yes. Well, that's... Fortunately, we have Choke, the documentary, so people get a chance to see it from that.

Hixon was a beast, man.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, that was the crazy thing when you were winning the UFC. You were telling everybody, Hey, my brother's even better than me. And everybody was like, What?

By a hundred times. Not by a little bit.

That's crazy. By a lot. That's crazy. Why was he so much better?

I don't think it was just physique. It was the way he move, put his weight, the way he position himself. It was all position. Wasn't people say, Oh, because he was stronger, he was more athletic. No, he wasn't because I don't think he ever used strength against me when we were training, it was not like, Okay, I'm stronger than you. I'm going to just rely on strength. It was just body weight.

Just the knowing position. Knowing. So he just had a special talent. Yeah.

I would say a special talent. Yes.

But that was so confusing for us because we would hear like, What? His brother is better than him? How is this possible?

Not by a little bit, by a lot.

It's crazy.

But Hoelah, too. Hoelah was lighter weight than me. But like you said, sparring with Hoelah is like a grab me a salmon. He's all over the place. It's like, and he's little, man.

It's like, Well, he was the most successful in tournaments, right?

Yes. He used to win the open weight divisions and fighting all the heavyweights. Hoelah was a beast, man.

What a family you have. What a family.

All of them. Bunch of studs.

All of them. Everyone.

Enzo.including the girls. Sure.look at Kyra now.Yeah, sure.

Look at Kyra. Look at even the ones that are not involved on teaching. Dude, they're vicious.

It's just so incredible that this one family produced so many champions. There's never been anything like it in all of combat sports. There's never been anything even remotely close. There's no even second place that you could bring up. There's a few times where two brothers were really good at fighting, but it's never been anything like you guys.

A bunch of brothers and cousins.

Yeah, everybody.

Uncles.

Yeah, everybody. When you heard the Racy, everybody's like, Oh, shit.

It's going to be a problem. I think it was Hansel that said once, Hanzo, man, is not the beast on the family, said, We are not a family. We're a factory of fighters.

Yeah, in a lot of ways. Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, so many. Hyan, Enzo. I mean, just so many, so many. It's just really incredible when you really stop and think about it.

The amount of people that we all created that came, that learned from us at one point.

Yeah, it's extraordinary. It really is. When you watch jiu-jitsu now, do you watch jiu-jitsu like nogi jiu-jitsu? Do you watch these guys? When you see guys like Gordon Ryan.

I'm not big in tournament. Gordon Ryan is awesome, man.

That's his belt up there. That's his Abu Dhabi belt.

We met up with a friend of ours, Derek. We met up with him. We were teaching him in Chicago, and he's very respectful. Gordon Ryan came up. He was like, Man, can we roll a little bit? I was like, Sure, let's roll. I was Because it wasn't too long ago, maybe a year ago, less than a year ago. The guy's a beast, man. I was like, I know him. He's very respectful. We're going very light, and he's going easy on me. I was like, Okay, Okay, go ahead, catch me. He wouldn't.

Really?

He turned around, and I can feel him giving to me. It's like, No, you take me without talking. I was like, There's no way I'm going to take because it shouldn't be believable. There's no way I can tap him. I'm, Okay, and I give it to him back, something. And he's like, Pretend he doesn't see it. He gave it something back to me. At the point that I start laughing. I was like, Dude, really? I'm giving the arm He's giving me the neck and I'm giving him the triangle. He's giving me this. We're both giving each other. I have a very respect for that. That's funny.

When you talk about discipline, that guy works out 365 days a year. There's no Christmas. Christmas, fuck you. Your birthday, fuck you. Every day. They train every day.

I told him people misunderstanding what he's saying. He's challenging people. I said, That's good. Yeah. That's what my family did. You say you're good. I'm saying I'm good. There's only one we find out. And I told him, Keep doing it because they'll push people. You see? Yeah, that's us trading. We're going so light. He's going so easy on me, and I'm giving to him, Go ahead, catch me. And he put the hand and doesn't catch me. I was like, Really? And then he'll give me something. I was like, Okay, you take it.

Nice and smooth and slow. But that's the thing that He's capable of rolling like that because he's so fucking strong, but he doesn't use it. It's just all technique and movement and understanding. Obviously, he came from Enzo school. John Donaher taught him, and Donaher came from Henzo. It's all that same lineage.

But there's a lot of good talent people out there right now.

Oh, my God. It's incredible. The level of just jiu-jitsu now is so high. Mikey Moussa Ecebeche and the Mutolo brothers and all these different guys out there. There's just so much high level.

There's somebody that trains with him, with Gordon Ryan. I can't remember his name right now, man. But I heard the kid says, I'm going to catch you on the left arm, and he catch you on the left arm.

It's like, Fuck.

I'm going to catch the right foot, and he catch you. And he tells you how long and timing. It's like, Wow, that's impressive to be able to pull such a thing. It's not easy.

No. Well, that's what guys do when they get past the level of everybody else, right? They just start challenging themselves by giving themselves one thing they're going to try to do.

I ask people around, people say, yes, this kid is- Which guy is this? It's a training partner for Gordon Ryan. Jim Carlos?

Who is it? Do you know which guy it is?

I can't remember the name. He's one of the guys that trained with Gordon Ryan, man. He's on that level.

Well, there's a very high level guys now. But it's also iron sharpens iron. These guys are so good now, and everybody's competing with guys that are so good. You go to Abu Dhabi and you watch the level. It's just so amazing.

They've been doing since little kids, too. People in the beginning thought, Well, the graces are good because they keep in secret. No, we just stick to it. We just start as a young age and we grew up on this.

Well, this is the thing that Gordon always says. He says, My jiu-jitsu is 10 years advanced of everybody. I could show you everything I'm doing. It doesn't matter. You're not going to catch me. Because I'm in the gym 365 days a year. Discipline.

Discipline. Boreals down to discipline, what he eats.

John Donoher talks about kaisen. Kaisen is this Japanese phrase for doing something over and over and over again, just constantly focusing on this one thing and continuing to perfect it over and over and over and over again. That's what they do. Their thought is, if you work out five days a week, but I work out seven days a week, in a month, I've worked out four times more than you. In a year, you add that times 52, 52 weeks. You keep going over and over and over again. After 10 years, I have extra years of training on you. When you think about it that way, it's really the way to do it. If you want to really be the best of the best, and you know there's a guy like Gordon out there that is training 365 days a year, you have to.

And we go back to Dougie understands. Same thing. There's no Sundays for them. Yeah. There's no, Today's my birthday. Today is it's holiday. No, there's no holidays for them. No. It's just discipline.

If you're not getting better, you're getting worse.

So You got to have discipline. That's what I tell everybody. You got to have discipline. You can be the most talented person. Without discipline, you're not going to stay on top forever.

Mike Tyson said that. He said, Without discipline, you're nothing. And he said, And discipline is doing things that you hate to do, but doing them like you love it.

Yeah. I just love it to do it anyways.

I mean, that's the thing about jiu-jitsu, too. It's so fun. It's so much fun to do. Even when you're losing, it's fun.

I love a challenge, man. Let's go for a swim across Tampa Bay. Okay, fine. Let's run 41 miles, climb cactus to clouds. Okay, no problem.

Speaking of challenges, you recently He went into bow hunting. How did that start? How did you get into that? I know you met John Dudley, and I know you did John Dudley's podcast because I listened to you with John Dudley, and John Dudley taught me. So he's an amazing coach, amazing archer coach.

When I first met him, he came up to me I was shooting the Black Raffle coffee, and the challenge, I didn't know what I was doing. He came up to me. He's like, Hey, come see me. I'll make you a bow. I was like, What the fuck is this guy, man? I was like, I don't know him. I was like, Who is this? I was looking around. I asked around there like, He's the hoist-grace of bow hunting.

Yeah, he's the fucking man.

So I went spend some time with him, show me some stuff, build a bow. Not like yours. Yours is how many pounds to pull?

I have a 90-pound bow. 90-pound?

I can't even carry that thing.

Well, it's not 90 pounds to wait. It's the pulling is 90 pounds. I can even carry that bow.

Mine is like 60.

Sixty is good enough. But if you could pull 90, it's better.

Yeah. No, I don't have the...

Well, the way I felt, people say that there's this controversy in the bow hunting community where they said, You don't need 90 pounds. 70 pounds is all you ever need. And I'm like, Okay, but 70 pounds for you is not 70 pounds for me. 70 pounds for me is easy. 90 pounds for me is not hard. So 90 pounds for you is almost impossible, but 90 pounds for me is pretty easy. There's a video of me pulling my 95-pound bow back. I just fucking pull it back because I lift a lot of weights. So if you lift a lot of weights and you have all this muscle, why not use it? Yeah, I agree. That's a lot more power. With the 95-pound bow, I was shooting a 520 green arrow at 301 feet per second. When that thing fucking hits, man, that is going through everything. The amount of penetration you get with a bow like that is insane. And that power, that's better. Because if you hit bone going in, you're going to go through the bone. It's going to go through everything. You're not going to worry about penetration. You're not going to worry about lethality.

It's going to be very lethal. So You wouldn't use a 20-pound bow.

I wish I had those muscles. I can pull a 90-pound. I wish.

Start lifting weights. Let's go. Start lifting weights. I do a lot of rows, a lot of chin-ups. But if you could do that, and it's not hard, I always say, pull the thing back that you could shoot. I have an 80-pound bow that I practice with, and I'll shoot that bow for three hours. I'll be out in my yard for three hours just shooting hundreds of arrows.

Man, I love- But it took forever. I love guns Any weapons, swords, bowls.

You've gone to Tarrant tactical, too, right? Yeah. That's great, right? That place is great.

He's awesome.

He's awesome.

Tarrant is amazing. Good teacher, too.

Oh, amazing teacher.

He knows how to push you. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, again, it's like learning from a real master and seeing... When you see him shoot, you're like, Jesus Christ. He's like, fast, super accurate, Perfect technique. And you see that, you go, Oh, that's what it looks like when it's done right.

But we got into bow hunting, a bow in general, not too long ago. I would say four or five years ago. I started to play with it. When did you think about hunting? Oh, I've been hunting for a while. I keep that quiet.

You keep that quiet because of Brazil? No. Because Brazil has a very anti hunting attitude as opposed to United States.

It's not just Brazil, saying, The crazy family.

The crazy family.

A lot of them don't like hunting, and they give me a hard time.

You would tell us about your WhatsApp group chat.

Yeah. They post a picture of somebody was eating some sushi and somebody posted a picture in a in a Brazilian barbecue place, and they all started posting about eating. And I posted a picture holding an elk. There's no guns. There's no blood. Everybody give me a hard time, man.

Crazy hypocrites.

Give me a hard time. I give them an hour. Then I came back and was like, That's a bunch of hypocrites. You all eat meat, give me a hard time. But then they start to, Oh, but you just kill for the fun. No, I did not. The meat is at my house. The hides is at my house. The heads is at my house. And the leftovers, the cuts that we don't eat, the other animals went to eat. So I had to educate a lot of them on that.

Yeah, that's the thing. Most people are just uneducated about it, and they have this stereotype view of hunting as being this cruel thing that people do for fun.

No, I do it for the meat because I want to eat.

It's the best meat in the world.

If I'm not going to eat, I don't kill it. I'm not going to shoot a cat.Of course.I don't eat cats.

Exactly. Yeah, people have asked me to do some hunts where they don't eat the meat. I'm like, Sure. There's a helicopter hog hunts they do. They fly around the helicopter, they shoot wild pigs out of a helicopter. I'm like, I know you have to do it.

You can go back and get it.

Well, you could, but I mean, how many of them you're going to get? One day they shot 250 of them.

No, not that many.

You're not going to really butcher. And some of them, they donate to Hunters for the Hungary, which is a great organization that feeds a lot of homeless shelters and stuff. And they'll take that meat and bring it to a butcher shop and give it to hungry people. And it's very good meat. It's the best meat for you. But when you shoot out of a helicopter shooting 250 pigs, you're not going to go and take those pigs.

No, I have a friend of ours in Texas that take us out to have his helicopter, Ryan Ashcraft. And we shoot, but then we go back down, we collect. We don't shoot like 250. Okay. A couple. We shoot four or five. We go back, get the best ones. We cut it up and take the meat.

Wild boar is delicious. So good.

Sometimes we even give out to churches, and they take care of feed people. That's great.

Yeah, that's great. But wild game meat, man, it is the best meat in the world. When I eat it, I just feel so much better. It's not just the best, but the feeling of you went there.

You got that meat. It's something that you brought home. You went in the garage, you went hunting. And hunting, I tell people all the time, it's not catching. I would say 70% of the time, I come back home with nothing. So it's Not every time that I go out that I come back with something.

No, it's very difficult.

I would say for me, it's about 70% of the time, and I come back home empty-handed. But it's like, okay, I was there for a whole day. Peace of mind. There's no cell phones. There's nothing. Nobody bothered me.

It's difficult. You're in the woods, you're hiking. You need endurance. You need strong legs to get you around those mountains. The first time I ever went hunting, I got that mule deer with my friend Steve Rinella. He took me hunting in Montana, and I was in really good shape. I was like, I do jiu-jitsu every day. I'll be fine walking up these hills. I was like, This is fucking hard. I didn't think of it as a physical thing, but mountain hunting is very physical. You have to be fit. You have to be in shape.

I just got back from bear hunting in Idaho, and up and down the mountains, hot sun, Yeah. Hot sun. Yeah.

Up and down the mountains. Idaho, that is rugged terrain, too. Very rugged. Beautiful terrain, too.

Last year, my first elk that I got with a bull, shot the elk with the bull, 30-yard shot. Got the elk loaded up, took it back to the house. We're taking the skin off and taking the skin and the hide and taking the meat. I went to help the guy. It's 11:00 at night, there's three of us. I went to help my friend to cut because he have knives everywhere. As soon as I start to lift the hide, I put my finger, my hand on the wrong spot. The guy cut my finger to the bone. It's like, okay. He's like, Did I cut you? I was like, yes. He felt the knife touching the bone. We went to... The other friend was like, Hey, do you have a hospital nearby? He's like, Hospital is two hours away.

Got a vegetarian?

Veteranian? He's like, No, it's 11 o'clock at night. Everybody's asleep, man. He's like, Do you have a super glue? He's like, No. He's like, You got a stapler?

Oh, so you stapled it? That's crazy. He's on my finger. Oh, my God.

Put four staples on my finger.

I was like, Okay. Wow, that's crazy. But it worked.

It worked.

Wow.

Then a half later, I get home and my son decides to take it off. I have to take the staples off. Look what he's using to take it off.

A pair of wires.

From the garage, from the motorcycle, pick up the wires. I can't believe I still have my finger, man. We didn't clean anything. He just picked up the wires and started to pull the staples off.

And How long after the injury was this that he was doing this?

A day and a half later.

Okay, so it healed up a little bit.

That was when I got back to Florida. I was in Montana. I got back to Florida. My son is like, No, you're not going to the doctor's. I I can take this off.

Are you living in Florida now? Yes. Where do you live? What part of Florida?

South Florida.

No kidding. When did you move there?

I moved there about almost two years ago.

What made you decide to do that?

I can see myself getting arrested if I was in California.

Really?

California. People got so... I love California. Don't take me wrong. I think California is the best state in the world. And I travel eight months of the year. I love California. But the people over there, man, they just get on your face. It's like this. It's my right to be here, okay? What are you going to do about it? It's like, Dude, it's my right to knock your teeth out. Oh, my God. He's violent. Call the cops. I asked him. People was disrespectful. Got to a point, you got disrespectful.

It got weird, right?

It's hard. And I love, don't take me wrong, I can't say enough how much I love California.

It's the only place where you could be in the ocean and then in the mountains in an hour.

And on the desert.

Yeah, and the desert.

You can surf, ski, and spend the night in the desert on the same day.

The climate is beautiful. And a lot of great people there, too, but they've lost their fucking minds.

But the people, they're damn and so... To me, it's just disrespectful.

Yeah, disrespectful, and they've emboldened a lot of really stupid people. To act like idiots. You know? And just the whole... The way they're dealing with the homeless situation is fucking insane. You know, they've lost $24 billion that they can't account for. That was Is that what the story is? There was some controversy about $24 billion missing that was allocated towards the homeless crisis.

Yeah. So I was on a trip and I called my son. I was like, Dude, we got to We got to get out of here. We got to get out. So all the kids are grown. So everybody's in a different location.

So how did you pick Florida? So here it is. California spent $24 billion tackling homelessness over five years, But didn't track if the money was helping the state's growing number of unhoused people. So they spent $24 billion, and they can't figure out what the fuck it did. God, it's ridiculous. And it's not getting better at all. It's getting worse. Every time I go back there, I'm like, oh, God, it's worse. And I only go back once a year now. I go back once a year. I love it.

I hope it gets better. I would love to move back, but It's not going to get better.

Yeah, I have hope. It's not going to get better for a long time. It's going to take generations.

I used to joke with people and say, I'm a front line of resistance. But he got to a point, it's like, man, it's too out of control.

Well, it's also crazy things are happening. A guy got arrested because someone broke into his house and he shot the guy, and they arrested him. Okay, you can't even defend yourself in your own home? What is the fucking point? What's the point of the Second Amendment? What's the point of having a firearms? Isn't it to protect your family? Are we supposed to assume that someone who's willing to break into your home violently, that that person is not going to harm you? You got to call the police. How long is the police going to take to get there? What if you have a family? What if you have children? What if you have a wife? You're supposed to just let this person break into your house?

You can't do anything about it.

It's insane because they're hiring the most insane district attorneys, and they're making it easier and easier for people to get out of jail who've committed violent crimes. I mean, they've lost their fucking minds. And I don't know how it comes back. Other than they have to get some hardcore Republican governor who starts cleaning things up and just cuts back on all the waste and cuts back on all the bullshit and just put their foot down.

It's going to take a long time, but I have hope. But I have hope.

Well, that's beautiful.

I got time. I got plenty of time. I'm not going anywhere.

I hope that you're right, but I don't have that much hope. I just see that they're indoctrinated into this liberal ideology, and they just believe that this is the only way to think and behave. And until it bites them in the ass, I've met a lot of people there that I knew that were really hard core liberals who have now completely turned around and now they're Republican, and now they've moved out. They moved to Tennessee, they moved to Florida, they moved to Texas. And like, no, no, no. I see where this is going.

But then it's like, sometimes I keep thinking, what's the end game? What's the goal for the people that are doing this?

Well, the real question is who's funding it?

More power?

It's not even necessarily more power. More money?

Do you see? It's like, what's the end? What's the goal?

It's very confusing. But I think, generally, there are people, genuinely, there are people that are funding this that want to see Western society collapse.

My daughter was going to school in University of Vermont. Beautiful over there, but she already had it. She's moving to Tampa now. Really? She's like, to be closer to us. It's like so people are doing all these protests against American army, against Silence. She's like, I have a son, one of my sons is in the army, and she's like, no. So she put an army shirt, sweatshirt, and walked right through the protest. And the other girls would come over and give her looks and she just look at them and people go, Yeah, it's like, Silence is violence. Flip them the finger. It's like, What about that for violence?

Silence is violence is one of the dumbest fucking things. Silence is not violence. Violence is violence. If you say silence is violence, you've never seen violence. Unless someone's being quiet while they're beating the fuck out of you. Silence is No silence. It's not violence. Violence is violence, you fucking idiots.

It's like, my God. She had her over there. She spent one year. She's like, Man, I can't put up with this anymore. The teacher was talking trash about... She's like, I didn't pay to hear the teacher.

And the political beliefs. Yeah.

So she would get up and leave class. She's like, I had it. I'm done. I'm moving. I was like, All right, let's go.

It happens everywhere. I mean, it even happens here. There's certain teachers that just feel that they have this ability to enforce their political beliefs on kids, and they'll be very angry. One kid got kicked out of school here because he had a Make America Great Again hat on. Whether or not you support Donald Trump, the sentiment behind making America great, everybody should be on board with that. The idea that making America great in a hat is offensive to people. It's like, What? How? Help me out. You're not saying anything bad. You're saying, make America great. Wouldn't it be awesome if America was great? Who disagrees with that? How could you disagree with that? Great means everybody does well. Your family does well. The streets are clean. Everyone's safe. There's less crime, less violence, more jobs. That's great. Why would you be against that? How could you be against that? How could you think that that sentiment is offensive? That's what's so twisted about the world that we're living in today.

That's why sometimes I keep thinking, again-What's the end game? What is in for whoever is behind all this? More money, more power, more than what they have already. I don't know. To destroy society for What? What's the purpose? I don't know. That's why I keep thinking.

I wish I knew. I wish it made sense. It doesn't make sense to me. I think a lot of it is influenced by foreign governments. I think foreign governments influence universities by supporting people with very ridiculous ideologies and then making sure that those people with ridiculous ideologies enforce those things in children. And then you have social media, which social media is also propped up, especially TikTok, which is essentially owned by China. And they promote all these ridiculous things. And these things get into kids heads, and they're on TikTok every day. And then they start thinking that this is the only way to think and behave.

But the way Sometimes, for sure, it's the way I think in the business of martial arts business. If your school have 100 students or a thousand students, it doesn't make a difference to me. I prefer that you succeed and have a thousand students. What would be the goal for me to make you have no students? Do you see? It's like, I want you to go because if you grow, I grow. But then on the world society and people trying to destroy one country, trying to destroy the other, for what?

But you're thinking, logically. To have more Power to have- It's also people are trapped in an ideology. They're trapped in this woke mindset. You can call it woke, whatever you want to call it. But this ideology of what we're seeing with these young, ridiculous kids in universities today. It's like They're trapped in this way of thinking, and they don't think about the end game. First of all, because they're very young and they don't know anything. And they want to rebel against society, which all young people want to do. They want to rebel against the people that are older, and they want to think that they know better than the people that are older. And then eventually they get older. And as they get older, they start to realize, you know what I think the problem is? People are fucking lazy. You know what I think the problem is? People don't have discipline. You know what I think the problem is? People don't plan for the future. People don't work hard. Everybody should have the opportunity to work hard and get better and move ahead and try to better your life and better the life of your family.

And if you think that way, you're going to have a good society. But if you think that society is evil and it's all colonists and we got to destroy it and take it all down and capitalism is evil, okay, what are you going to replace it with? They didn't even thought this thing through. What are you going to replace it with? Communism? You ever been to a communist country? It's fucking hell. You know what happens in a communist You have to enforce it. How do you enforce it? With the military. And if nobody's armed but the military, now you have a dictatorship. Now you have a brutal military dictatorship that decides what you can and can't do. That's what Cuba has.

Decides for you. Yeah, that's what Venezuela has. You have no say whatsoever.

No say. That's what China has. That's what North Korea has. Good luck. Good luck with that. There's plenty of examples of that. None of them are good. There's no examples of communism working anywhere where it's for the betterment of everybody.

One thing that come into America from Brazil, it was a lot... In Brazil, they put you down a lot. I remember when I won the USA, there's a thousand guys that will do better than him. This is nothing. Really? Everybody was like, man, it's not a lot of people were like, His accomplishment is not that big of a deal. Different than America, they push you up.

Yeah.

You see, they change their mentality now in Brazil. Oh, really? But back then, it used to be like this.

That's interesting that the mentality changed. Why did the mentality change in Brazil?

Don't know, but they changed. I can see that now. People try to push you up now instead. But back then, when I won, it was like, No big deal. These are guys that will do much better than him. And they came over and they got beat up over here badly in the EFC. But that's one thing that attract America culture It was like they're trying to always push you up. It seems like that change now. They're trying to push you down now.

In some places, in some circles. Yeah. But there's still quite a few people in America that still believe that. Oh, yeah. I think that That's more prevalent here than anywhere else in the world, this attitude that we want people to succeed and we celebrate success.

But then this whole thing, what's going on right now, it's almost like they want to crash. It's like, why?

It's usually losers. Losers who don't have anything going on, and they want other people to be losers as well. They don't want people to succeed. And also they connect success with the worst examples of success. They connect the idea of financial success with people being oppressed. Obviously, people being oppressed is terrible. But all financial success is not oppression. That's ridiculous. If you have a school, for example, if you have a jiu-jitsu gym, if you have a jiu-jitsu academy and you have a thousand students, there's nothing oppressive about that success. That's all beneficial. It's beneficial to your students. It's beneficial because if you have a thousand people, then you have a place that's run well and you have staff You have people that are employed there. Also, you have plenty of classes. I can get a class at 6:30 in the morning before I go to work. 6:30 AM class, I'm done by 8:00, I shower up, I'm in the office at 9:00. I feel good. I got something done today, and getting better at jiu-jitsu. Like, oh, this is amazing. Then you have classes all day long and everybody's getting better and the level is high because there's guys that are good in the gym, so you get excited and you're thinking about your game, you're thinking about constantly improving.

There's nothing oppressive. The person who runs that gym, they're making a good living, and they feed their family, and they have a nice house.

There's nothing oppressive. And employing other people.

Yes. There's nothing oppressive about that success. We're not talking about the success of the military-industrial complex or the oil companies polluting the ocean. No, you're talking about there's a lot of people that work hard and their success is not even remotely oppressive. So when people connect all capitalism to degradation of the environment and controlling of people and oppressing people, that's ridiculous. That's just a foolhardy way of looking at the world.

Like I said, if your school have no your students or a thousand students, I don't make any more money. But I want you to have a thousand students. Because if you have a thousand students, if I come to teach, if you don't have any students, if you I don't have any students. I'm not going to come over. Exactly. But I want you to succeed. Yeah, exactly. So I want to fill up your school.

Are you primarily doing... Do you do like, seminars now?

Do you do a lot of seminars? I'm building a school in Sara Soa.Oh, nice.Yeah. I haven't had a school. I used to teach with Jorge until 2000. Then I stopped teaching at the school, at the Academy, at the Gracie Academy, and just went to do seminars. But now I'm building a school for my son and I.

Oh, wow. That's great.

I love to travel, to see the world. But I'm going to be building a place. We got a place, a location already, just waiting for permits.Oh, that's great.Be my first headquarters.

That's great. That's going to be awesome. Boy, that's going to be successful.

And the location is awesome.

Boy, a Hoi's Gracie School in Florida, that's going to be big. Right away. I bet first day, you'll be full. Yeah.

We got a lot of students already just on the standby ready to go. Waiting for us.

How long do you think before you open?

About good eight months. Nice. We're just waiting for the final permits.

And then you start building.

We're going to tear down the building and then build up. The build up is fast. It's just a permit. Takes forever in Florida.

Takes forever, a lot of places. And how big is this place going to be?

Big enough. Big enough? Very big, yes. We're talking three floors.

Oh, wow. So is it going to be different things in there?

Yeah.

What is the plan? Do you want to give the full details? Not yet. Not yet? Okay. Well, you let me know. Let me know when you're about to open. We'll let everybody know.

The location is awesome. That's great. Five minutes from the beach.

Oh, that's beautiful. That's exciting. That's very exciting. That must be really exciting to look forward to something like that. Five minutes from the beach, too.

Beach and Florence, a lot of fucking sharks. My son...

No?

Shox on the East Coast, right? Oh, are they? I'm on the West Coast. There's no sharks? I'm on the West Coast. On the West Coast? No, we're in the Gulf.

Aren't there sharks in the Gulf, too?

Sharks don't like Brazilians, man. No? Maybe they're sharks for you. But Brazilians, they look at the Brazilians and go, nah.

They're They don't like Italians. They don't like Brazilians. That's hilarious. I don't think they can tell a difference between us, buddy.

They look at me like, Hold on, there's too many bones on this one, man. I'll choke on this one. Let me get that meaty one over there with all the muscles. Look at that.

That's a fucking shark. That's Sarasoda. Jesus Christ, voice. That's a shark in Sarasoda. It's not a shark.

That's a pat. Look, he came to eat on the boat, man.

You came to eat your fucking head.

We hand feed those.

Look at that. Jesus Christ.

We swim with those across Tampa Bay. What is he doing?

What is that thing doing? Just pulling up to someone's boat? Oh, my God. Saying hi.

Those are pets.

Fuck, sharks. Do you surf?

No, not as much. Not like Hoelah, no.

Hoelah surfs a lot. Is he in San Diego still?

Hoelah is in San Diego, yes.Yeah, a lot of surfing down there. He surfs a lot. He goes to Bali every year. He spend a month over there.

There's sharks down there, bro.

Yeah. A lot of sharks down there. Where?

San Diego. Yeah.

There's sharks everywhere, man.

He's like, There was a group of people that were training for a triathlon, and they were in the ocean doing a swim, and one of them got killed by a great white. And my friend went swimming there the next day because he had to prepare for the swim that he was doing.

The shark was already stomach full.

I don't know if I get full that easy. I think they keep eating. I don't think he probably told his friends, Hey, I got a swimmer the other day. A lot of swimmers over here.

A lot of swimmers over there.

That scares the shit out of me. Sharks scare the shit out of Oof. That's what the... Like, bears, to me, are not as scary as sharks. If there's bears, you got a gun, you got bear spray, you know what you're doing, you're careful. I think you probably...

Hey, the bear is hunting you, too.

That's true. You could... Well, it depends on what bear, too, right? If you run into a polar bear.

And they move so quiet, man.

I know, for such a big animal.

200 pounds, 250 pounds. You don't hear them coming right behind you.

When you were bear hunting, were you using bow or rifle?

This one was rifle. I haven't done a bear bow hunting yet because that's a very close shot, man. As far as I can go, it's like 30, 35 is pushing for me. So I'm not as proficient on the bow yet. Do you have a range in your yard where you could practice? No, I don't.

Do you have a yard that's big?

How big is your yard? It's not that How far? Got a pool.

How much distance do you have that you could shoot in your yard?

Ten.

Oh, 10 yards?

Yeah, 20. It's Florida where I am, the yard is open.

I see. Next door neighbors. So the neighbors will be like, Hey, don't point that boat.

Even though it's Florida. It's like, yeah.

Is there an archery range near you? No. No?

I haven't found one yet.

So where do you go to practice?

When I go, man.

Oh, only when you hunt? Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, that's why you're going to shoot 30 yards.

I'll get there and I'll practice shooting for like two days a day, two days and practice. Let's go. I jump first and I figure it out later.

That would freak me out because I have to practice. When I go hunting, say, if I'm five weeks out, I'm shooting hundreds of arrows every day for five weeks. I want to make sure Because I've shot the larmin.

It's like the swim. I swim about maybe 10 times and then swim across Tampa Bay.

But I want to feel confident. If I have a 75-yard shot on an elk, I want to be confident that I can make that shot.

Seventy-five?

Yeah, I've shot an elk at 75 yards. I've shot an elk at 80 yards.

We saw some elk last year about 89 yards, but I was like, nah. You finally came 30 yards.

If not moving, if you know they're feeding and they're not moving and there's no wind and you know you practice at 100 and you know you can make it, but you have to be like... You know what it's like? I'm like a high-level Purple Belt, Brown Belt in bow hunting. I'm not a black belt. I'm a white belt. Yeah. 30 yards is good for a white belt.

White belt with one stripe. I found the spot.

Sarasota Archers. Look at this. You can go, too. Look at that.

I don't know how good it is, but you could send me that address.

Private Club requiring membership. Hey, Sarasota Archers, why don't you let in the goat? Hoi's Grace, you need a place to practice. That's nice. I'm sure they will. Yeah, I'm sure they'll let you. That'd be great. There you go. Now we got you a spot. Now you just go there. You only need a few hours a day. You just need that muscle memory. You need that feel, that feel of the relaxed shoulder, just no anticipation of the shot pull through. To me, I have to get that ingrained in my head, that technique. It has to just be over and over and over again where it's ingrained in my head so that when I'm drawing on an animal, it's just I know exactly what to do. There's no questions.

Sometimes it's almost like shooting. I shoot quite a bit. Sometimes I've done some competition, and I see the guys studying and looking at the target and shoot is ready, and they're concentrating the target. When they say, shoot is ready, I look away. So set, go. I look up and shoot it. Just pick it up and find it. Yeah.

But don't you think that because you've fought so many times and because of all your years of jiu-jitsu and things like shooting and things that involve technique and concentration, they come naturally?

I think so.

Yeah, I think so, too.

I think so. I'm very I know how to control my breathing. I don't get excited. You see, like when I draw for the elk, it was a cow. I draw. It was last day of hunting. We were four days hunting the elk, man. I draw on the cow. A bull showed up, so I just turned fire on the bull. But I was going to shoot a cow. I was like, I got to take some meat home. It's been four days chasing. Nothing came close. And that cow came close 30 yards. As soon as the cow got in front of me, I draw, and the bull came over. I just turned. Just perfect shot. Bam, done.

What brought What heads are you using?

That was the local guy at the farm where I was, gave me the broadheads.

I can't remember which one was in this. Mechanical or is it a fixed broadhead?

Mechanical. Rage? Was it a rage? It was the blade wanted to open up.

Yeah, probably a rage. Yeah, I like those. John Dudley has his own Broadhead now. He made a better version of a Rage, a more durable, sharper version of a Rage. It's a G5 is making them. It's called the E2. It's a new mechanical that he designed, that John designed, that they're just starting to release now. I think they just started to sell them. But he sent me some prototypes. I like it a lot. It's a great broadhead.

Yeah. The guy that farmed where I was, he supplied. That was last year.

Where was that?

Montana.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, Great Falls. A lot of elk in Montana.

Montana is so beautiful.

And deer and got everything.

Isn't it just so amazing being out there, too, in the wild? It's just so peaceful.

Even if I don't hunt, if I don't catch, I tell the guys when they take me out, sometimes I feel they're under pressure of catching some It's like, Dude, if I don't catch anything, I'm happy just being here.

It's like, awesome. Just the pursuit. Knowing that sometimes you're going to go home empty-handed. It's difficult. It's a very difficult thing to do. That's what makes it good.

Like I said, 70% of the time, I come home with nothing.

Yeah, but that's part of why it's fun because it's hard to do. And some people don't understand that. They just want results.

But then when I eat, it's like, I got this. Yeah.

I cooked some milk the other night, and as I was cooking it, I was thinking like, yeah, I remember where I was. I remember where it was, 52 yards, shot down into a canyon. Perfect shot. I watched the elk go 30 yards, pile up. I watched it die. I went up, quartered it, carried it out. We carried it over the mountain, got it into a four by four, drove it back to the lodge, took it apart. I remember everything about it. So being there, I have photos. I have photos of the impact shot. I have photos of the animal. It's in my mind, this meal has a history.

I thought all my kids, talk them out. I didn't teach. I took them out and the local guys will teach them how to hunt from a young age, all of them.

That's great.How to skin a deer.

How to skin a deer, how to stab a hog with a knife.

Oh, Jesus. That's heavy. The stab of the hog is wild. The hog hunting with dogs.

With dogs with a knife. The first time I talk my daughter, I asked her, she was maybe 13, 12, 13. I asked her, Hey, do you want to go? She's like, No, dad, I'm going to stay on the ATV. Okay. So I'm over there, I'm stabbing the hog, and when I back off, I look and she had her knife open behind me. She's waiting there and I was like, Oh, you decided to come? She's like, No. In case the hog got you, dad, I would jump on him and catch him, stab him for you. I was like, Okay, you You didn't want to do it, but you were backing me up. You were my backup. Nice.

That's nice.

All my boys, they all did it from a young age. Everybody started 12, 13.

It's a good thing to learn. And it's also the best meat that you could ever eat. The best meat. The best meat in terms of the healthiness of it, how good it tastes. It's so good for you.

And shooting, teaching them from a young age, they all respect the gun. They all respect the The weapon.

Yeah. I think everybody should know how to shoot a gun. Worst case scenario, you should always know how to defend yourself. You should always know how to operate a gun. At least you should know gun safety. You should understand-Yes.

What the gun can do. So they all respect that. They all know how to check and out of the point. And from a young age, they all learn that at home.

That's beautiful. It's very important. There's a lot of people that are scared of guns, and that's just because of ignorance. They just don't understand.

I love my guns, man.

The laws in Brazil are very different, right? You cannot just...

You cannot buy guns very hard. I think the max you can get is a.380 caliber.

So a hunting rifle?

No, no. No hunting rifles.380 is-380, the handgun.Oh, okay. The 380, the small.Okay, small.

Small Smaller than a 9m.

A 9m is considered to be a military weapon.

Really?

So you can buy 9m, 45, nothing above that. Wow. Shot gun, if you own a farm, yes, but no hunting rifles. No, none of that. No 223s and ARs.

That sucks.

No, it's very hard, man. Very hard. It's almost impossible to buy. But all the bad guys have it.

Yeah, great.

It's unbelievable. Terrible. They got RPGs, grenades.

Jesus Christ.

But you cannot buy guns in Brazil. Very hard. It take a long time. And the price It's like $500 gun over here in America. Over there, it costs $2,000.

Wow. So when you come to America and you have this ability to just buy guns because of the Second Amendment, it's pretty nice.

Very nice. Yeah.

Especially if you're in a place like Florida that really supports the Second Amendment.

Yeah, not in California.

California is nuts. Well, in California, they're starting to hand out concealed carry permits to people in Los Angeles again because the crime is so bad. And they realize, look, no, I'm not going to come.

But if you have it, if you shoot somebody- You're going to go to jail. Even though you're inside your house, and they walk in and they have guns, you shoot them, it's your fault.

What's crazy is if you shoot them, you'll go to jail. But if they break into your house and they rob you and beat you up, they'll get right out. If they get arrested, they'll put them right back out on the street. It's insane. It's almost like it's designed to destroy society. If you wanted to destroy society, that's how you would do it. Yeah, it's pretty fucked up.

And I keep telling people, if America falls, I think the whole world will fall. The rest of the world will fall.

Yeah, maybe that's the plan.

Where would you go Right.

There's no place that has this freedom.

Leave America. Where would you go? It's tough to pick a place.

I used to think Australia. Then I saw how they handled the pandemic. I was like, Oh, fuck that. Well, that's What happens when no one has guns? The army just rolls in and tells you what to do and put you in concentration camps because you have a cold.

It's crazy. Where would you go? It's like, that's the question I ask my kids and let them think for a little bit. It's Where in America you're going to go? Because outside, man, it's tough. It's a tough world out there.

Yeah. Well, a person like yourself that's been everywhere, you really do understand that this is a special place. We're very fortunate to be here.

That's why I defend it. I'm pro police, pro army.

Me too.

I defend the cops and the army.

It's also from jiu-jitsu. We know a lot of police officers. We know a lot of army people. We know a lot of military people because they're always training.

Yes. Traveling the way I travel, I'm not home to defend my family. So who is going to defend them? It's the police. So I'm in favor of them. So I try to help them out as much as I can. Who is going to defend? Is it going to be the police, the army? They're going to defend if some crazy country decides to invade us. It's not going to be the average Joe next to next door. They're going to come over and... No. You got to be Joe Rogan to get his bow and Be rumble out there.

Shooting bowls a nine yards, a hundred yards.

I'll be like, I'll wait until they get a little closer.

Too far. Or maybe that's Sarah Minnesota Archers Club, you practice your long range shots.

They're too far. I'll wait a little bit.

Well, listen, Hoice, you're a legend, and it was great running into you at the UFC. I'm so glad we got a chance to talk to each other because I've been wanting to make contact with you, get you on the podcast for a long time. I'm glad we finally did it, man. I appreciate you very much.

And when the school open up in Florida, you got to come over.

Fuck, yeah. I will come.

You're going to choke me out once.

Sounds good. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you very much.Thank you.Thanks for being here. All right.

Bye, everybody.