#950 - Craig Jones - Drugged In Colombia, Escaping Jail & Defeating UFC Wrestling

That would be good. You could do like a Andrew Huberman's morning routine and my morning routine compared. Well, I think we start pretty similar by messaging five different women we missed. Are we recording? I hope that's in. Cut that in. Yeah, that's in. All right, man. Hello. Welcome back. How are you? Good to see you, mate. I'm still alive, unfortunately. Yeah. Last time we were together was CGI1.

And I think I left you at a strip club around 7 a.m. No, that was someone else that looked like me. James Smith. That was James Smith. How did you celebrate after CGI? Oh, shit. I mean, we went to Cartagena, Colombia and went on a five-day bender, pretty much. Came out very unhealthy, but survived it. Direct from Vegas.

Yeah, so we left the after party, flew straight in there. The secret investor threw us a party, and it was the hardest five days of my entire life. It was grueling. In Colombia? In Colombia, yeah. Heavy times down in Colombia. Right, so it was like an endurance sport, an endurance racing, like the David Goggins of parties. Pretty much. I mean, we didn't sleep much. The guy had it set up so he had IVs every morning. That probably kept me.

Alive, quite honestly. And we brought Volkanovski's coach, Joe Lopez, 73 years old. Didn't sleep. Did not sleep for three days. Used his poor Spanish on any woman that would listen to him. Somehow still alive. Return to his family safely. Every time I take him away, Volkanovsky calls me and is like, please, bro. Bring him back alive. He's going to die. And I'm like, that's what his family wants. They keep asking me. Right. Okay. Jesus. Fuck.

How would you, what's your synopsis of how the first one went? I mean, I think it really couldn't have gone much better. You know, like it actually surprised me. Obviously I have my personal assistant, Seth, take care of a lot. of the more mundane activities in preparing us for the event. But yeah, everything went off without a hitch as far as I'm concerned. What did you think of the show? I enjoyed it, man. I think my lifetime watching...

of Brazilian jiu-jitsu was multiplied by about 10 over that single weekend. I saw more Brazilian jiu-jitsu in that one weekend than I think I had my entire life up until that point. Day one was a marathon, that's for sure. Day two hit the sweet spot.

I think for this next one, we're going to try and make both days a little shorter. I mean, no matter how much you love something, 10 hours of it, unless it's a Colombian after party, is a lot, in my opinion. What were the best bits? What were the worst bits, in your opinion?

I mean, to be honest, my favorite part was the crowd turning positive on Gabby Garcia because she's been the villain the entire time. We made her the villain in the lead up. She's been the butt of the joke. And then like everyone's booed her whenever she's won. So then there was that heartfelt moment. I was quite happy for her to get that. That was cute. Yeah. And okay, you finish up CGI, you go to Columbia, but it took four months for you to get back into the US longer.

Yeah, it took, honestly, I don't know what it was. You might be able to imagine, but something about Columbia really struck at my heartstrings, something about the culture down there. So I went back to see my family in Adelaide. They were quite surprised I survived Colombia and then basically went straight back to South America to continue to adventure. Okay. What did you adventure? We went to Brazil. We went to Argentina.

we went back to Colombia. And I was back in Colombia for a good five to six weeks. But this time, instead of Cartagena, straight into Medellin. Okay. Did you meet Pablo Escobar's sister? i did and this is actually a weird story um so i put up a post i think i actually made quite an insensitive post i was using the cocaine sunglasses to pour some powder a prop onto pablo's grave

like one for the fallen homies, you know, but a guy messaged me on Instagram and he's like, do you want to meet the sister? And I was like, you're full of shit for sure. You know, you get one of those DMs, but then he sent me a picture. of a large quantity of a substance that made me assume that he was the real deal. So I ventured off down to meet him on a Saturday night in Columbia, and he showed me some pictures with the sister.

and later that week we went out for dinner she took us on a bit of a tour of pablo's old house and then we got hammered together on red wine and everything was going good until i tricked her into putting the sunglasses on for a photo And then we explained to her what the sunglasses were for. And it took a bit of a turn, but still we... Why? What happened then? I mean, obviously she's not into the heritage of the Escobar name, you know? Oh, right. She's completely just...

disparaged and gotten rid of that illustrious history. The family empire, yeah. I was grilling her on a lot of questions about Pablo, but obviously a lot of the notorious, nefarious activities were shielded from the family life. But have they still got access to that house, one of his houses? Yeah, I think that's actually something that she was trying to clarify me. And the guy that sort of helped connect us as well was Pablo's old driver. And they were trying to clarify that.

large stacks of cash where people were talking about like what was holding the cash together was disintegrating and stuff was like largely a myth that most of the cocaine transactions were for land or for houses. So I believe they did get to keep.

a lot of the proceeds of that as opposed to it being he spends ten thousand dollars a week on rubber bands exactly put all of the cash together that wasn't true she says no brilliant pr move you know what i mean like the government's not coming for that land if they don't think Yeah, but they're just looking for that buried calf. Oh, yeah, that is interesting. Did you get drugged? Did you unintentionally get drugged? I did unintentionally get drugged. So, like, obviously...

So to set up the story, obviously we're there on a bender, but I went down there for four or five weeks and all my friends, they hit me up, being like, you're in Colombia, I'll come down. And it's like when you live in a tourist spot, people are like, they want to do all the tourist shit when you come down.

Every time a new friend comes down, they put my body through the ringer. But those last two weeks, I tried to pace myself for a bit of survival. And then again, my personal assistant, Seth, he came down there exploiting. my name for some stem cells at a stem cell company because they get the real shit down there in Columbia. So he comes down and we decide to hit the main strip. And usually I would stay at the house, we'd get obliterated and then we'd adventure out.

into the streets of medellin see what we could find right but uh this night we went out just for a couple casual cocktails because of course you have stem cells you're not meant to drink you're meant to stay healthy So we're actually on the main street of Columbia and Seth had stem cells in his neck. So I definitely positioned him.

with his sort of back towards the crowd and his stiff neck every time I pointed out an attractive Colombian woman who's in paralysis trying to turn around. And then, so I don't know who drugged me. But have you heard about the drug scopolamine, the devil's breath? No. You haven't heard of it? No. All right. So basically, there's a substance. It's kind of mythical in its nature because...

It quite often is guys heading to a strip club or something, and what happens is they wake up with no money in their account. So it's a bit of a... It's a great boogeyman of a story for the missus. Oh no, it was the devil's breath. I must've been drugged. So like, I think it's largely exaggerated, but still a lot of people die down there.

Two jiu-jitsu guys sat next to me rambling while I was having a couple of cocktails with Seth. They met with a couple of Tinder dates. And Tinder down there is pretty dangerous because obviously these druggings and stuff.

And then I don't know who put it in my drink. Could have been the bartender. Could have been the guy's Tinder date I tried to steal that night. Could have been him. But from that point on, just basically, and usually I can handle a few drinks. I probably only had three, four drinks. And I remember just distinctly the last memory I have, we had two shots there. And Seth was trying not to drink because of the stem cells. And I was like, you're a pussy. So I drank my shot and his shot.

And ordinarily, that's something I would do because given his five foot three size, a full margarita might kill the man. So usually I'm jumping on bullets for him as it is. But what ended up happening was we went to our next destination, which was obviously a family friendly. location as you can imagine in medellin seth walks into the bathroom and finds me basically pants down i've pulled my shirt off i've gone to the bathroom i'm overheating

He thinks it's a dream come true. He's found me in the bathroom unconscious with my pants down, but he has to get me out of there. And the funniest thing is he had to carry me out of there with his stem cell ridden. Damaged neck. So he could, I mean, he could barely lift me as it is, but with the stem cell injury. So really, he carried me home, tucked me into bed.

Apparently, I was clothed. I woke up fully naked, suspicious. But he obviously wouldn't have done much damage if he did. But we basically checked the security camera footage the next day. And really the reason we realized it was Coppola, I mean, cause it has this, you're sort of like the walking dead. I couldn't walk cause I took two hits, but you remember all your banking detail. You remember numbers very well. So it like.

messes with your head, but it's great to rob people because you remember the details. So we've got the security camera footage where Seth's dragging me to the front door. We get to the Airbnb and I like perk up, put the code in and pass back out. You're kidding.

Yeah, he takes me to bed. That's insane. So it's able to... completely incapacitate people apart from their ability to do fucking mental arithmetic and remember numbers exactly so it's that shocked me seth obviously thought i just drunk too much but When we put it together, it was, yeah, definitely hit a scopolamine. We are constantly having this argument, really. Who saved whose life? He obviously rescued me from the bathroom floor, but I jumped on the bullet of his drugging shot.

Yeah, so stem cells plus scopolamine would have been... Can you just sort of run the game tape forward? What would have happened if the shots had been reversed? You'd have to look after Seth. Do you think you'd have been... Seth would not be sitting there awkwardly in the corner looking at us. He'd probably be in a grave, six feet under the ground somewhere. Okay. So what was the day after light? Is that a come down?

you know what honestly i woke up naked and saw a trash can on the like i saw a trash can there and i was just like fuck what happened last night but i felt pretty good to be honest i was like because obviously usually hangover as you well know can be very ugly the next day but i remember being like I don't remember anything that happened. And then I started to piece it together. Obviously, the camera guy that was with us at the time, he sort of showed me the videotape he took of me.

basically entering the house. I called Seth. We're trying to piece it together, really. It was a mystery. Where were you living? Were you just Airbnb-ing around? Yeah, just Airbnb-ing. I mean, yeah, luckily Airbnb and the guy at the front desk.

showed us a security camera footage to piece it together and he thought it was the funniest thing he's ever seen, eh? No pity at all from the security guard. Well, he could have, had he not known that you guys were friends, he could have assumed that it was a very forthcoming... very tanned Native American man using scopolamine and scrupulously. I mean, that's how many of Seth States go, you know? They don't call him Bill Gosby for nothing. Same complexion.

Bad timing for that joke with our team, but we'll go on. Nah, to be fair, Bill Cosby was taller significantly. Okay. What else do you get up to in Columbia? Tell me. I mean, honestly, I think that's all you can do down there is just get obliterated and try to find true love with a Colombian woman, you know, which is... I can fix it.

Very, very typical. The fantasy ends quite quickly and expensively. Someone asked me a question on a Q&A. They said, which country has the most beautiful women? And I said, that's the wrong question. The question that you should be asking is, which country's got the ugliest men? And I actually think that Columbia ranks probably top five for the delta between the quality of the women and the quality of the men.

There is no difference. Now, Dubai has a massive difference, but that gets compensated by all of the wealth that the guys have got. But very, very attractive women, very, very ugly men. I honestly broke the average down for the men over there, I think. And I was doing them a lot of good. All right. And then you went to Ethiopia? Why'd you go there?

So we got this, obviously we've got that Fair Fight Foundation. Despite everything I've just said, I do do charity work. I'm for the greater good, you know what I mean? And we partner with the Guardian Program, which has jiu-jitsu schools all around the world for... sort of kids that wouldn't have access to those programs and they provide them clean drinking water in some of the places, food and English lessons. So we went out there. Actually, where was I? Actually, we were in Peru.

And with the Guardian guys, because we're building a school out there in Peru. And one of the guys in Ethiopia that runs the Guardian program there. Calder, one of the guys guiding, got me to send a video message to him and I just winged it and I was like, because he's a fan of me, I don't know why, but I sent him a message and I was like, I'll see you soon in Ethiopia.

And then I just pursued that to the end to visit his school. And we went out there with Guardian. And these kids were basically training on concrete. It's in Addis Ababa. And we went out there. We went on a bit of an adventure. But they were training on concrete. Do you mean training on concrete?

Yeah, just like concrete with like maybe three or four puzzle mats. So like real harsh conditions for the kids out there in Ethiopia. So we generously fitted out their gym with mats and show roll, hooked them up with some... geese for them to train in but they're yeah tough conditions for them training so they're doing they're trying to do brazilian jiu-jitsu essentially on concrete not a heavy guard pulling culture as you can imagine

But yeah, I mean, Ethiopia was absolutely wild. Just the sheer scale of the poverty out there was mind-blowing. And we went to visit a couple of the tribes out there. We went to... Honestly, I can't remember the name of the tribes, but we went deep out there to see two different tribes. One of them we rolled into and they were doing a whipping ceremony, which is like a coming of age ceremony for a man in the tribe before he...

disappears for a while on some hunting expedition. But the way they celebrate that is he does his part, the male part of this is they line up seven or eight bulls and he just runs naked across them, back and forth. So that's his contribution. Across what? Across bulls, like the animal. Right. So they had a little set of steps or something like that? Yeah, they just helped him out. Well, actually, they had a smaller bull.

A little stepping stone of a ball. Stepping ball. He made it. He fell at the very end, but I couldn't post any of that footage because he was naked, unfortunately. Okay. Naked. Well-endowed. Naked, well-endowed teenager running across a bunch of bowls. Yep. And then they whipped him? No, they didn't whip him. They whipped a bunch of women in the tribe. So we roll in. We're on this full drive adventure. It is like beat him.

It's basically a grading ceremony at B team. It doesn't come easy. There's a lot of balls, a lot of whipping. Okay, so why are they whipping the women? So get this, right? And again, from my own perspective... Not a problem for men like me and you, but the women are whipped to show that they can handle physical pain to show that they're ready for sex. Okay. What are they whipped with?

So the girls, this is a crazy thing to watch. They go and they have to find branches and they run, like they're doing a song and dance and stuff. It's a celebratory day for the dude, for the women they're suffering. They go find some long branches. And they present it to a man and he like tests it to make sure it's thick enough and then just slams him with it and they have to poker face it. Absolutely brutal. They can't make any noise or show any pain.

No, that's the gap. Like if they show any pain, they're sort of like failing their part of the test. They just have to eat it. Oh, that's seen as like lack of resilience, not sufficiently strong. But again, it's like it's to prove that they can endure. the physical pain that would come with sex, which is... How old are the women that are being whipped? Honestly, probably like as young as 12. So it's pretty heavy shit to watch. And it's...

boys and men as well i'm gonna guess yeah full men just whipping them and the girls are like giving them branches and if the guy's like it's not thick enough they're like like insulted and they just like run away like the men are insulted like fuck this branch throw it away and the girls have to run and find a new one

But full, like, welted up backs and, like, just blood. And this is all to celebrate the guy that ran across some balls. Yeah, it's a bit imbalanced there, eh? He got a stepping ball and then six more balls. and the girls had the shit whipped out of them. Yeah. But presumably they have to do that each time because there can't be like 10 new girls ready to be whipped each time that one guy...

Becomes of age. Yeah, some of them had some serious scars on their back. Already from previous times doing this. So that was like, that was pretty heavy to witness. And then we went to another tribe. And this tribe was a tribe that didn't... We didn't see this only happens once a year, but this was like, this was heavy when he was telling me about it, like about the genital mutilation. So telling me about how they remove.

like the clitoris and parts of the vagina so that the women would not enjoy sex. And again, that was like something mind-blowing to me because I just assumed they weren't meant to anyway. They actually use things like anything they get their hands on. Some of the tribes don't have scissors. He's trying to keep it together. We're talking about a heavy thing here, Chris. Scissors, glass. Some tribes will have to use fingernails.

like anything to basically mutilate so they don't experience the pleasure of sex, I think, to encourage in their minds. Chastity. Chastity, yeah. But I remember the guy, like he gave me this big plug about that. And then he was like, but it's a celebration. We kill a lot of animals that day and have a big feast. And I was like, oh, fuck, well, it's fine then, eh? Yeah, okay, yeah, evens it out. How did you, were you, like, that sounds quite disturbing to see.

and hear about is that the sort of thing that affects you i know that you seem like quite a resilient guy but does stuff like that get to you yeah i mean that's yeah that's pretty pretty heavy to witness it's just the scale of it like i think if you haven't visited africa you don't understand the scale

of that really that continent so it's like just to see that within one country and how many people are in that country the scale of a would be the most affecting the just the realization that you put like pretty hard to make a difference out there

you know what i mean like how are you going to like you see that tribe participating in that and it's like you kind of would want that to not happen but how are you going to intervene you know what i mean like there were dudes rolling around with guns there and stuff he was pointing his gun at me pretending to shoot me and stuff

After Ukraine, that's just half the course for you, right? Yeah, pretty much. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely affecting, but it's pretty bleak. It gives you a bleak outlook on the world. Yeah, it's a strange one, I think.

You know, we talk about the difficulties in raising up working class areas of... america or the uk or australia or whatever we need investment we need to have cultural interventions and role models and upper aiming and all this sort of stuff yeah i'm not convinced that that is

the same solution that would work when it comes to, you know, tribes that for generations and generations have done the same sort of a thing. I wonder how widespread that is. I don't know how many Ethiopian people are still in a tribe of that type versus... slightly more contemporary version of living with you know huts and farming and stuff like that yeah i mean yeah that was like that was just two tribes i think it's like thousands and thousands of tribes just within ethiopia and then like uh

What we learned when we were with the kids at the gym they've set up there that we matted out was that there's this whole thing where guys will go to these tribes and either abduct kids. or tell the family that they're going to bring the kids to the big city, give them an opportunity and send money or resources back. And really they just take them and oftentimes they'll like mutilate the kids or hurt the kids and force them to become.

So the city's full of sort of like these escaped kids from the tribes. And to make like just how crazy it is, is it's like overran with hyenas. And there's actually quite. Another factor on that is there's quite a bit of corruption with the police. So the police, if they see any of these homeless kids sleeping, they come after them. And if the homeless kids don't sleep in packs, the hyenas eat them, even in the capital city. Inside of the city, the hyenas will pick off.

a stray child yeah i don't think they'll generally attack like uh an adult but if they see a stray child especially like a dehydrated or hungry weak child the hyenas will come from so the kids have to form these gangs to protect themselves from both hyenas And the police and some of these kids were showing up to training. So they generally sleep in the daytime because the police would give them less grief. And then at night, they'll be escaping the police and the hyenas.

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back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom. A checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. That's insane. That's crazy to think about that.

I know you think about that being real outlier, you know, the worst poverty in the world. But I know something tells me this is probably pretty representative for a lot of areas maybe around Africa that have got this kind of poverty. Yeah, and Ethiopia is like, Addis Ababa is quite like... I've flown through that. Yeah, it's quite there. There are some nice areas of that city. And there's definitely significantly worse parts of Africa.

What was training the kids like? Were you able to, like... Oh, one. Nah, it was cool. The crippled, hyena-chased, ex-tribe children, you managed to best them in the sport that you're a professional in. That's honestly, when I select matches, that's the type of match I would. opponent i would select myself you know someone who's been chased by a hyena for the last couple of weeks yeah pretty much now the kids are awesome you know we're trying just trying to they're like they're trying to use

jujitsu to give them a foundation of like uh discipline and they're teaching them english at the same time they have sort of a safe environment there but there were so many difficulties even us filming there like we were trying to film it this the jujitsu academy itself is within this apartment complex

And we were trying to film the kids' stories as they were speaking to the camera. And even the guy that ran the apartment complex comes out, being like us, grilling us, asking us questions, interrupting the filming, not wanting us filming it.

I don't want to say too much to get the guys back there in trouble. Obviously, they have to deal with a lot of corruption as well. It's mind-blowing to thank Lake, who runs the program out there, for him to see his country and try to have a positive... impact on it despite the scale of problems they have to overcome it's pretty mind-blowing yeah he's going up held on what was the ketamine thing all right so i won't say where we got it maybe i smuggled it in but uh

At one of the campfires when we were out of the tribes, right, we were obviously trying to entertain ourselves. Some of the stories you've told me off camera for sure, we're trying to entertain ourselves. So we had this ketamine nasal spray. And we were sitting around this fireplace just being idiots. We were drinking the local moonshine. So I thought that'd be a cool experience, but it basically tasted like gasoline. The local guy was like, I'm going to go get you guys some of the...

the moonshine. I was like, fuck, sick, let's get drunk. And he came back and it was in a plastic bottle and it basically smelled like pure ethanol. So I had to put that down, you know, I wasn't going to turn it away. And then we busted out the ketamine nasal spray and we were hitting that, obviously being quite reflective of the fireplace. And there was a dude there that had just left goat herding. Goat herding had been his thing for generations, his family's thing. Very proud.

of the culture of goat herding out there. And he saw what we were doing being idiots. And he looked at the spray and he was like, he didn't even speak the same dialect as the guys were with, but definitely you see a face that's interested and wants to try something. He hits the ketamine and he sat looking at the fireplace for two hours, not moving. And then the translator came out and this guy was like, never give that to me again.

And then 15 minutes later, he's like, he's like, pass that back. I don't mean it'll do that to you. Yeah, it'll put you in a hole, put you in a dark place when you come out of it. And then this guy basically gave us his speech to a translator afterwards, how he's had all these like visions and he's like, he was working for the, I wouldn't even say it's a hotel. There's really no electricity or anything. We're sleeping in some tents, but he would sort of cook for us.

And he'd only just started doing this cooking role. And following the ketamine experience, he's like, I have to live. I have to return to my roots of goat herding. He's like, I'm going to cook you breakfast in the morning and then I'm out of here. You gave a guy an existential crisis with ketamine.

I've given a few people existential crisis with a few substances, but Ethiopian goat herder in the middle of the desert is definitely a first for me. Yeah, I mean, look, he's returned to his roots. I'm sure he's probably enjoying that more. I don't think the cooking life was for him.

All right. Okay. So you're a life coach now as well. Modern wisdom. That's all we're here for. Yeah. Well, it's a hard, it's a hard pivot, but I wonder how many people would sign up to be life coached by you. Could you imagine what the sort of outcomes of clients that were life coached by you would be? Probably a few large divorce settlements, I'd imagine. Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. All right, who got arrested in Bali? What was that like?

Yeah, I mean, like, honestly, I don't know how high I haven't ended up in a prison, really, in some of these travels. Yeah, you're kind of like, you've been dodging very effectively. It's impressive. the teflon don you know we're getting to airport security obviously i look uh i don't look suspicious at all that's what i like to think you know but we've i've managed to dodge it

But yeah, I know tons of people, tons of British guys getting popped, even recently in Dubai. Two kids just got popped, the clothing company owners, right, for having this big party going on, friends. girlfriend with someone who's just in the room next door or like nearby. It's like if you're at a party and there's somebody that has drugs, it's like, ah, we'll just lock you up for two weeks and we'll see what's going on here. So not good. Really, really, really not good.

Yeah, yeah. You got to be careful in some of these countries partying. That's the problem with, I wonder whether it's the same with Aussies, but I certainly know that British people have this, like, disregard a lot of the time for the laws. It's weird because British people are very orderly. If you've ever driven in the UK, you'll notice if I'm in front of you and I indicate.

I get your lane. You back off. As opposed to in America, you guys protect the lane. You actively speed up to not allow that person to get in. It's very territorial. They defend the lane like the southern border, basically. Correct. Well, now, yeah. Whereas the British defend the lane like the southern border. border a year ago. So very, very opened up. So in some way, 97%, I think, compliance with the first COVID vaccine, like 90% with the second one. So quite a rule following the type.

nation, apart from when we leave and we go elsewhere and the sort of party culture. I remember I was at. fuck, I can't remember the name of the hotel. It was during COVID. So we'd fled the UK. Me and a friend had fled the UK because another lockdown was coming and we weren't going to be able to fly anywhere. And we just went to Dubai. And we were watching MK play a rooftop pool.

thing in Dubai. Everybody there was British because they'd all done the same thing that we'd done and fled the UK. And you think if there's... One place you really don't want to be caught with drugs, it's fucking Dubai. I mean, also maybe Bali and Thailand and stuff like that, but you really don't, they do not.

fuck about. And it was just this classic sort of leery British culture, passing bags around, leaving them out on the table. You know, bottle of Grey Goose, bottle of Belvedere, bottle of like unpronounceable pink fucking... Like powder. What was the name of this place? I can avoid it. I honestly can't remember what it was called. But I just remember thinking. This is during fucking lockdown. So it was supposed to be social distancing. It was supposed to be masking.

Okay, you get through the new rules that you can maybe say are a little bit silly, but then you get to the ones where you go, they've been around for a long time and they're going to fuck you up. And yeah, British people, but are Aussies like that? Are they kind of still go degen? disregard the laws abroad mode? I would say for sure, yeah, we're pretty reckless as well. Definitely take some chances. Eye for one.

Yeah. Okay. I'm aware that you might be an... I was assuming that you weren't representative. I think pretty representative. Yeah. All right. Okay. This is just normal. Yeah. You're not anything different. You're just Australian. Normal Bergen culture. Yeah. Okay. All right. Cool. What about this school in Peru that you're building? Yeah, so again, with the Guardian program, who's running these schools around the world for kids, we're building one in Peru because we visited...

I wish I could remember the name of the city, but it's basically a surf spot. Peru has some of the best surfing in the world. So it's kind of like a bit of a tourist spot. So there's a lot of... foreign tourists coming in having a good time partying hitting the bars and hitting the surf spots and it's created a culture of like a lot of kids dealing drugs um in the poverty stricken areas around it so

where I know it sounds a bit hypocritical, but we're building a school down there. They basically reach capacity as it is. So we're trying to build a bigger facility for them to expand so they can take in more kids. But like, I mean, Peru. The poverty was really quite severe, quite shocking. I think most people just go there, visit Machu Picchu, Lima, get out of there. But we went up to the northwest, and yeah, the poverty was real bad, like lack of clean drinking water, lack of opportunities.

through jiu-jitsu, teaching the kids discipline, and they teach them English, provide them clean drinking water. The new facility will provide them food as well. Hope it can at least make a difference within that little city. What's driving this other than tax incentives? What's? Balancing the moral. Oh, this is karmic retribution. Yeah.

Okay. Basically, yeah. After you've done what you've done to Gabby Garcia, you feel like you need to repay the world? I would say I was the victim of the Gabby Garcia thing, truth be told, but there have been many victims of Gabby Garcia. As I've told you off camera, but yeah, I mean, it does feel good to do, to, to make a change like that. And I'm trying to like, uh, change the narrative a bit on charity. Cause most of the time.

People tune in to watch some sort of charity documentary. It's almost like sadness porn or something, you know what I mean? Talking at the heartstrings, making you feel bad, here's some guilt. And then there's the guy that's like almost the savior, too good to be true type character. So I'm trying to balance it out by at least providing some entertainment value, some realness, and most importantly.

going to these areas where kids are selling drugs and buying those drugs so that they don't have... Oh, that's where the money goes. Yeah, that is actually tax deduction, I believe. Right. To reinvest into the local community. Reinvest into the community. Okay.

and improving exports. Okay, good, pretty good. What is it when you're sort of building these places, who's actually on the ground doing it? You've got to find some... fixer local person to actually operate all this stuff you can only fucking sat there i wish i could so does his family but yeah obviously as you know i'm an incredible judge of character and i've never made any mistakes hiring or

associating with people in the past so it is very difficult luckily guardian really chooses the right person because again like you're running a charity program for kids you got to be very careful discerning you got to be very careful who you put in charge of those kids, you know? So it's like, it's very, I would say that is more difficult than like, um, than any other part of the process is finding the right person for the job.

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I mean, even just helping one kid, you know, once you go down there, you meet the kids, you sort of like, obviously some of the kids are really talented, charismatic, and you see them and you think, oh. With a little bit of help, maybe they have a chance to change their life. But on the flip side of that, if kids drop out of the program that you're aware of, that's going to be quite devastating as well. What about Brazil? You spend some time now?

yeah so we went to brazil uh we did a clothing release with street x and it was basically brazil themes and we were basically trying to take some cool photos and videos so we're trying to recreate the Gracie's origin story back in the day where the Gracie's would go to, like there's a famous video of Hicks and Gracie going to the beach and slapping this dude that had been talking shit and then they brought on the beach. Our version of that was to go to the beach.

get extremely drunk with the local bartenders and then have challenge matches against the bartenders and that was that was our reincarnation of it and then the bartender we were trying to get into the favelas you know you want to see You want to see the favelas. I've heard so much about them, wild places. So I just trusted this bartender. This guy was like, oh, you want to go to the favelas? Oh, we'll take you. Drunk at the time, we agreed to do this.

Next day, picks us up, takes us into one of the favelas, drops us right at the top. On the way out, we had to stop filming. You're not allowed to film any of the dudes with guns. You know, they take photos with the guns, despite me asking many, many times. And they have some fucking impressive weaponry up there, even like RPG launchers to take out police helicopters and stuff. And I remember we get to the top of the hill, he drops us off at the very top.

Turn around, there's a guy with a gun and he's like looking at us and he basically, the local bartender introduced us and then he saw the cauliflower and was like, oh, jujitsu, jujitsu. And he is like, I competed in the last world championships when it used to be held in Brazil. So we got the free pass from there. And then I realized behind him, this was the motorcycle pickup point for all the drug pickups for people making orders, right?

And he goes, oh, do you want anything? And I was like, I went to say, obviously, yes. And he's like, no, you're a jiu-jitsu athlete. Not for you. And he's like. Okay, so first off, you were saved by being a BJJ athlete. disappointed by it too. Yeah. The Lord gibbeth and taketh away. We were like the ketamine goat herdsmen at that point, you know, back to our jujitsu roots. Yeah. But I mean, we had the free pass. I mean, I think it's, it's a lot safer and like.

the guys were quite insistent on wanting us to show that the favelas can be safe, you know, cause they just have such a bad name. So they're quite appreciative when you show the favelas in a positive light. Cause it's not. It's not as bad as people think. Like, really, when we were walking around up there, we realized there are safe points. Like, especially this one favela, I forget the name, but it overlooks basically the Rio coastline. And it's like, the favelas have a bad name.

Obviously, some of them deserve that. But for the most part, the people out there were super cool, super welcoming, super nice. So this is one of those super narrow streets, rickety, corrugated, iron, tin roof type places. Yeah, and he, like, at the very tip, at the very...

Near the very top, I would say there's some clubs and some restaurants that are probably pretty tourist friendly. But as you do the walk down, you kind of need someone there with you. So he'd given us this kid, that must have been 15, who threw the... red shirt over the shoulder which was the signal to the people above that uh don't rob these guys i assume no way because we had some expensive camera equipment with us

So that's the pass to get through. So now anybody that's got a red shirt thrown over their shoulder walking through for valor, unless they change the color code, in which case that means something else. I tend to be a blood and you're all good, eh? Wow. So it seems like you've been capturing a lot of the... content from this i haven't seen shit tons of favela brazil content is there some latent documentary thing coming at some point yeah i mean we we have the content

we have a lot of it out there but i mean mostly just social media and you know like unfortunately i would say people like you have ruined the youtube experience where it used to be incredible vlogs cinematography well artistic sort of uh things and then it's just been taken over by like guys talking by the podcast gods who have gained the algorithm for maximum ad revenue but yeah so i mostly use it for socials

or photos, things like that. Memories, when I struggle to remember them. What about Venezuela? Yeah, so Venezuela was another interesting destination. Obviously, it's a sanctioned country. U.S. citizens can't visit there.

So you're not allowed to visit there? Yeah, US citizens are not allowed to visit there. Because the Venezuelans say that you can't visit there or the American people say that you can't visit there? I think America's sanctions on Venezuela have caused Venezuela to basically... Right, yep.

I think there is a path, but it's a very difficult path for US citizens to get into. So just the sheer thought of a country without Americans, I was like, sold. That sounds brilliant. That sounds like a peaceful oasis. I set up sort of a charity seminar down there and the jujitsu scene was actually quite big. So we went down there and pretty heavy experience when you get to the airport and stuff. Like it's like. Where did you fly from? I fly from.

Medellin. I think it was straight off to Medellin. I think I went up to Cartagena again, say hello to some old friends, and then flew straight from Medellin to Venezuela Airport. And I had some guys on the ground that would help me out, but... Like it's bizarre, like the airport security, the immigration part of it is like, obviously all the Venezuelans are going through and then I'm just standing there alone for two hours while they're using WhatsApp to message the security people.

to work out whether they wanted to tame me or not. And I assumed they probably looked at my Instagram and thought, this guy's a fucking idiot. He's not going to do any harm, let him in. And then we went on a bit of an adventure there. We went out to Angel Falls, the world's tallest waterfall.

Beautiful experience out there. We stayed at a lovely resort, taken care of pretty damn well. The only thing is that obviously my friends and family, Venezuela is typically a pretty dangerous country. I think 10 million people fleet it. over the last X amount of time. Obviously, a lot of Venezuelan immigrants getting around, and it has a bad reputation. So when I went to Angel Falls, I...

I had already smashed my phone in a drunk incident, and I remember being like, oh, iPhones are waterproof. So we were walking through waterfalls and shit, and I was starting to film. Phone died, and I'm like, I was off the grid for three days with people just not knowing. where i was if i was okay what happened i think i got an sos signal out there at some point just everything was all good and then my cameraman met me at a later date in venezuela and were able to get basically uh

communication with you. Reacquainted. I imagine that was finally bliss for you, Seth, to have been liberated from having to look after him for three days. I'm sorry. I was getting calls from someone else. Oh, I see. Yeah, we had a companion send out SOS signals.

I was okay. Seth had to get me a new phone and get it hand delivered to me, I think at a later location. And then again, it was another location I brought Volkanovski's coach, Joe Lopez, to. You brought him to Venezuela? I brought him to Venezuela. Fantastic. And he, again, any excuse for him.

to use his Spanish on unsuspecting women. That is like the bat signal for him. He will arrive. And yeah, we had a bit of a blowout the last night. It was good. What's Venezuela like, generally? I mean, honestly, one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful country. I've ever seen in my life. Incredible. Angel Falls area, amazing at the north, along the coastline there, some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. I think it's a tragedy that...

It doesn't have a tourism industry for Americans because it's right. It's so close. But yeah, I would say, and I'm not just saying this to offend Americans that can't visit there, but it is the most beautiful country I've ever been to. So you were allowed...

Was that because you'd have come back into America with a Venezuela stamp on your passport, presumably? Yeah. And this is, you know, what's funny is I got cleared for global entry. I don't know how. Like if you looked at my pub, Ukraine, Venezuela, like. I should, whatever it is, the test, it's not working because I passed the initial stage, but I had to have the interview and I just left.

Colombia and Venezuela. And they forced me to do the interview at that border entry. And the guy was like, oh yeah, boss. And I was like, you think you'd leave a sanctioned country? I'm really testing the limits. I do have a tattoo reveal for you. You've got a tattoo reveal? Yeah, I'm really testing the limits of US deportation here. And really it's based on the idea that really there is an avenue out there for an all expenses paid.

trip to the beautiful country of el salvador and it just comes at the small price of a tattoo just stand up for a second for me put that Oh, you want me to get it out? Marvel at the size of the quad, too. Thank you, Pierce. You got the connections, though, if I get sent to El Salvador. You want Tim Candy to come and fix you?

Yeah, well, I mean, we need to pull in some government favors when that deportation, when they come for me. So you've got an MS-13 tattoo. And I was a bold choice. We were just down in Mexico the other day, and I thought it'd be a funny idea. And then you got your feet tattooed.

Yeah, that was a mistake, honestly. Here was my vision, right? In jiu-jitsu, people often criticize guard pullers, people that scoot on their butt along the ground, right? And they'll always do this, stand up, stand up like you're a man if you can wrestle, right? So then I had the idea that, oh, lay flat on my back. It says, fuck you. I stole this tattoo idea off a guy that trains at Scrappy MMA and just didn't credit him at all. But he had it as well.

I was waiting to shower at Scrappy where Jack Della trains and this guy comes up to me in the hallway and goes, check this out. And I was like, that's fucking genius. So when I was in Perth, I was like, I could get the same tattoo. That was one of the most painful. experiences of my entire life. And it didn't heal. It was the dumbest idea ever. Jack Dallas fighting for the belt. And I'm like, oh, fuck it, I'll get my feet tattooed. So then I had to train with him for his title while my feet.

We're in excruciating pain, healing. I was at a bad spot. Usually the tattoo's the worst part. This was like, the tattoo was very fucking bad. But the healing process was significantly worse. Why?

We're just walking on it all the time, you know? And you can't rest and you're on mats and it's ripping it back up. Yeah, and I'm not going to be like, oh, sorry, Jack. I can't help you prepare because I'm a fucking idiot. You know what I mean? I got two stupid tattoos. Yeah, so I just kept taping it up, putting socks on.

and training i've been debilitated by seven letters yeah that's one of the one of the worst decisions of my life and that says a lot well i mean the ms13 one is yet to be yeah we'll see how that goes breaking news first australian man in el salvadorian prison as a part of ms13 fuck uh i got it in mexico too which i was a bit i was in nueva laredo which is not the safest place and i remember being like

Should I be getting another gang's tattoo in Mexico? But the guy thought it was hilarious, so we're good. Okay. What's the nomadic life like for you? It seems like... You like it. I get brief windows when you're back in Austin for two days to wash your pants and then turn around and go back again. What's the best and what's the worst about it? What's good and what's bad? I mean...

I don't know. I just get bored in a place. I've been in a place too long. I just get a bit stir-crazy, want to go somewhere else. Someone sends me a message. There's an opportunity, an adventure. I like the idea of an adventure. Maybe it's a midlife crisis. I don't know, but I do love...

living out of a suitcase and just being able to travel. I think it's a totally different experience if you're staying at hostels. I think that's the vision people have, living out of a suitcase toward a European backpacking trip or South American backpacking trip. Yeah, but if you can afford a semi-decent hotel, it's actually, it's not too bad. And what's the worst parts about it? What are the things that you don't like? Carrying a fucking massive suitcase around the entire time.

That's where Seth, again, the personal assistant, comes in. He meets me in destinations for wardrobe changes and Xanax resupplies. That basically keeps me going. It's hard to pack for all climates, you know? Hard to fit a gay cowboy hat in there too. That's true. That's true. What's happening with CGI 2? We're not far off now.

CGI 2 is back August 30, 31 in Vegas, Thomas Mac Events Center. This time we're mixing it up. I think the first event, we won that battle. We proved sort of the jujitsu can be exciting. Might have to fight a woman to do it, but yeah.

It can be. That's what lured you in. You heard about me finding a woman. You were like, I'm there. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's weird because I got all of this inspiration from an Ethiopian tribe about how you should treat women and then thought, right, I'm going to get to see this play out.

On the big screen. Honestly, the worst thought I had when I saw the women getting whipped was really like, I want to be like, guys, we can do this emotionally. I was going to teach you about gaslighting. I was like, save your shoulders. You'll need stem cells in Columbia. Yeah, CGI 2 will be a team's event. So the most exciting event I've ever participated in was a Japanese event called Quintet. Did they make it up? Who made up Quintet as a format? Kazushi Sakuraba.

famous Japanese MMA fighter, and it was his contribution to grappling. And it's sort of an iteration of a wrestling meet where guys are fighting more for different divisions, but it had the last man standing sort of dynamic to it.

And I didn't just want to do CGI1, same format again. Obviously, we gave away $2 million. It was fucking expensive. I thought, how can we cheapen out a bit on this event? And I was like, all right, team's event, $1 million prize pool. Because really, a lot of people... cgi1 sort of showed who the two best athletes in the world were and there's a lot of contention about really who's the best team in the world so i was like let's try and do real teams you pick your five best guys

five sort of ADCC Olympic divisions, and we'll do a last man standing style event. And we're going to add in, we're obviously heavily inspired by Quintet. Quintet would ban heel hooks. MMA fighters are terrified. of leg locks. I don't know why they always do that. So leg locks are allowed for us and we're borrowing obviously from wrestling. So Royal Rumble style entries, entrances. So it's basically like when we do quintet.

the team lineup would already be predetermined. So you kind of like, last man saying like, you submit your opponent, you know who's next. We're going to leave that a mystery so the coach on the sideline can basically be like, his guy gets submitted, he's like, oh, send in. This guy, yeah. And it's going to be like, it's going to be a big impact for the crowd to be like, oh my God. Who's coming next? Oh, that's cool. So it's one person from each weight category?

Yeah. So like we'll put basically the ADCC weight division. It's like you take your five best guys, we take our five best guys and we'll see it. So it'll be eight teams matched up over two days. I'll be competing as well, unfortunately. I'll be facing a character that somewhat resembles Gabby Garcia, I would say. That would be Gable Steveson. Who's this guy that you're wrestling? Olympic gold medal wrestler.

american wrestler um he would be 125 kilos or for the unintelligent 265 pounds massive size discrepancy i think i think i'm weighing like man real light right now It's been a tumultuous couple of months, you know, we skipped a few meals. On a desiccated diet. Yeah. I mean, part of that is handicapping myself because I am facing a wrestler and wrestlers, all they have is takedowns. Once he hits the floor, they have no idea.

What the fuck's going on? And we basically, we've tried to prove that when Volkanovsky outgrappled Islam Makachev and Jack Della outgrappling Bilal Muhammad, Australian jiu-jitsu trumps all forms of wrestling. We've found the... the cue of the antidote. So really, for me, I'm going to face off against this giant, absolute giant human being who only has wrestling. And what's the rule set? Three by five minute rounds. Okay.

One minute break in between. All submissions legal. He's going into a career in MMA in the future. Oh, he's pivoting. He's pivoting, yeah. Okay. So it should be a fun one if my spine doesn't get... I'm really testing the boundaries of insulting his lifelong work of wrestling, tearing apart wrestling, and some slight racial innuendo jokes in there as well.

I'm scared he's going to snap one of these days and actually do some damage to me. He seems like a good sport. Yeah, he has been an excellent sport so far. We're going to release it soon, but we just recreated the dirty dancing scene together. Me lifting him, obviously.

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to upgrade your selling today. Yeah, I've heard that you've fixed the UFC's wrestling problem. I heard that you've solved it. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Everyone was, UFC's on the decline. Too many boring-ass wrestlers taking over the division, so... UFC basically called me and they said, hey, can you help us out? Can you help Jack Della beat Bilal Muhammad? And we just fixed his wrestling overnight. So now we've got exciting strikers taking their belts.

What's the strategy and how do you beat wrestling? I mean, first of all, you're not going to have the most intelligent human being in the sport of wrestling like some of us, articulate, high social skills. people in jujitsu. You know what I mean? It's basically jocks versus autistic people. We're going to win the war. You know what I mean? And really, it's just...

They have the takedown. They have the initiation, but they have no follow-up. They're confused. It's like a dog chasing a car. They don't know what to do once they get it. In wrestling, they get the pin. It's over. The referee saves them. They stand back up. That's where jiu-jitsu takes off.

So it's a huge hole in their game. We'll forget about American folk style wrestling completely. And we'll just talk about the broader type of wrestling. But yeah, for me, it's not a big problem. Get taken down. That's what we take over.

Sit down. So is sitting down a solution? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the joke of the sport. Imagine if you spent your whole life dedicated to an art where the goal was to take the other person down, but you never spent any time, thought or effort into thinking what you do. If the fight continued on the ground, that's the most funny, humiliating thing to me about the sport of wrestling. So how do you think a fight with Gable Steveson is going to go? Like, just roll the clock forward for me.

Roll the clock forward. Again, handicapping myself, I've decided to not train for this match. Just like I didn't train for the Gabby Garcia match. Show the same level of respect for both Goliath opponents there.

Really, I'm just going to come out, sit down. He's going to come forward. Well, first of all, he's going to just be like, if he could read, he'd be angry. You know what I mean? But he's a wrestler. So you're going to see that feat. He's going to be trying to read it, a bit confused, maybe a bit aroused.

comes forward and gets leg locked straight away that's basically my vision and uh i'll try and show some mercy here you know like um we've done a lot of damage this year to wrestling americans in general as well So maybe we let him out of a few, but we'll definitely take him out. But he's 265 pounds. How heavy does he need to be before it becomes hard for you to do?

as a wrestler well that's i mean that's part of the training protocol you know we're finding heavier and heavier dating partners to feel the experience of being under such a heavy creature and i know you've pointed me in the right direction at some bars in austin where we'd find those And Gable is just the next iteration of this. Yeah, basically he's like a giant athletic woman that can do hands down backflips. He can do some athletic maneuvers. So unless he...

in the midst of trying to read for the first time, falls over. All right, I see. So your feet tattoos are an attempt to try and confuse people. To confuse him, yeah. So it insults the people that can read and confuses the ones that can't. Yeah, little known fact, a lot of wrestlers are dyslexic. Okay. Does that change the way that they wrestle? I don't know, but the feet will definitely throw out.

spanner in the works room i think what was the fallout from adcc around because presumably that happens every two years every two years so that's not going to be a competition this time around so it'll be easier to get More teams, more people, more spectators, et cetera. Yeah. So like last year we went head to head. We were mildly offended by petty things the owner said. So we decided to host an event the same day on someone else's.

with someone else's money which is always the best tactic as you know at newtonic but really the fallout was i think we decisively won but this is a good opportunity actually adcc is on flow grappling And I have just signed, I would say, and it's not saying much, the most lucrative contract in grappling history to now join forces and essentially take over Flow Grappling.

So it's kind of a corporate takeover. So Flow Grappling hosted ADCC. They had the subscribers. I went on a malicious onslaught of an attack against ADCC, and as a result, Flow Grappling as well. We tore them down to a point of vulnerability, and now the only person they could call for help was me, essentially a corporate takeover. And now they've basically given me the reins to save grappling. So what have they done? What's the deal?

I can't talk too much about it. Flow Grappling usually is a streaming platform to host events and original content. CJ will remain free on YouTube. I mean, I'm basically going to run the operation now. We're going to fix the damage we did. We're going to try. get the fan base back. Okay, you've caused the problem and now you're selling them the cure. Exactly.

sounds like my dating life as well really but um that's the gaslighting coming back in the gaslighting come back yeah no but we're working we're working together with flow now you know because there are big enterprises trying to enter the sport of grappling and they're trying to lock athletes down to exclusive contracts. Again, like they're going to try to monopolize the sport of grappling and grapplers where there's barely $3 to throw together as it is.

If this big organization were to monopolize the sport of grappling, the athletes themselves would lose the leverage for negotiations and getting their true value. from the different events out there like obviously we've got one championship as well the big three would be one championship flow grappling and ufc fight boss right so if one of these were to take over completely and create a monopoly then

They would not have any incentive to pay the athletes more. You're able to negotiate. Where else are you going to go? Yeah. Or even put more effort into the spectacle of grappling. Like my thoughts are if fake grappling. is one of the most entertaining things in the world, WWE. Why can real grappling not be that? And I believe that's the root.

of professional wrestling was they used to actually have real matches, but it was too boring for the fans to watch. So they decided to have real matches behind the scenes. And then the winner of that would determine the winner of the professional show. No way. Yeah, and so we're trying to steal, I want to steal the theatrics. Obviously, Vince McMahon, personal hero of mine, I'm really trying to steal what he did for professional wrestling minus his personal life.

bring that to the sport of jiu-jitsu and i think if we borrow from professional wrestling with a spectacle even in the history of mma like in japan they used to have an event called pride pride ultimately got shut down because of yakuza connections but they used to put on an incredible spectacle of an event. They used to put a lot of effort into the production, into creative ideas to hype an event. So me being the promoter of this event, I'm trying to push the envelope in creating.

excitement in the event and i'm worried that if any one of these organizations were to get a monopoly well then there's really no this is there's no reason for them to push the envelope of the events athlete pay because they've already controlled the market. What else can be done to make grappling more exciting? I mean, here's the thing. Anything's exciting if there's a storyline, you know? Like, so the more we invest in the story...

Whether it's fake or real, the more we get people invested in each of the individual athletes or the teams or whatever, the more excited you are going to be to watch it take place. There's been some boring MMA fights and boxing fights out there, but the hype has been so good that even when you're watching the live event, you're sort of on the edge of your seat. So as long as we invest in the storyline and build up the event.

cji had a cji one had a huge benefit because it was the story was basically cji first adcc so we create this division and people were invested in picking a site so we need a

leverage storylines like that to invest people's time and energy into actually watching the event, whether the match is exciting or not. Yeah, look, I enjoyed... some of the fights at CGI, I think one of the issues that you have, the art forms are subtle, that for a muggle like me to fully be able to understand the nuance of exactly what's going on, this is where...

actually being within earshot of the commentators made it way easier because they were able to translate for me what was going on. You can tell when people are on their feet and they're spinning around, there's like, you know, Tackett Rotolo. that fight was fucking spectacular, right? And I, total idiot, normal person, like, I can tell there's something exciting going on here. But I do wonder what, and I think that you guys helped with...

slanted walls, with tighter time limits, with different modes of scoring. I think that you spoke about this last year, that that helps to incentivize people to not fight in a more boring manner, to make it more of a spectator-friendly. event. Yeah. And really, I mean, like that would be one angle of really why I'm trying to fight these exclusive contracts is like Taka versus Cade Ritola is one of the most exciting matches in history. If both these guys get locked down to exclusive contracts.

we may never see that rematch. But in terms of making grappling exciting, yeah, that is a tall order to do. But I believe the quintet format... is what will make it exciting. The last man standing style where we have teams, right? Because if there's inactivity in jujitsu, it's boring. When nothing's happening, it's boring. However, imagine like, because it's going to be different weight divisions.

Imagine it's Nicky Rod versus a smaller guy like Fabrizio Andre. So there's a massive weight discrepancy. But when you're taking the weight of the team on your shoulders as that smaller guy, suddenly him surviving.

simply surviving against a bigger opponent now becomes exciting. So I think we can, what Sakuraba did to make Quintet so exciting is you can create a style of rules that... somewhat makes the boring parts exciting just survival might mean that your team wins this uh series so we're trying to reinvent Sort of how grappling is viewed to even make those boring parts exciting. Who are going to be the teams? So we've got Atos, New Wave, Tenth Planet, B-Team, Pedigo.

And then we decided just due to the difficulty, like there's a lot of teams out there, but they might not be able to fill five divisions. We decided to add in three region-based teams. So the Americas. Australia and Asia, and Europe and the UK. So those will be filled with region-based guys because it was about making sure that we get all the good athletes in there. Because a lot of teams, like say a classic example would be...

Levi, who made it to the final against... Blue guy, blue hair. The blue hair guy against Cade Ritola last year. He trains at my old team, Absolute MMA. It'd be tough for them to put in five guys. So we're like, well, we don't want to lose a guy like Levi.

So we're going to have region-based teams. Oh, that's cool. So you'll have this sort of Avengers assemble of people that aren't usually together. Yeah. Maybe even fought against each other. It may even be from rival gyms. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So they have to come together.

and basically take on these powerhouse team names. And then one other thing we threw in there was kind of like this idea of a wild card. Because really, they were... maybe two or three teams in the world that would have five contenders at each weight division so we said to each team listen we need four of your guys to be authentic members of your team but you can pull in

a wild card. So it's like we're still keeping to the team versus team nature. Some of it's region-based, but also you can pull in a wild card. And we exploited that fully. Who's your wild card? Victor Hugo, who's... One of the biggest, best guys in the sport today. So we exploited that. We exploited it. I mean, we told all coaches out there early that, hey, you can pull in a wild card. We just got ahead of them. We jumped on Victor straight away. Right.

I saw a photo of you and John Danaher. Talk me through that meeting of the minds. Yeah, so we had our falling hour. We had the Danaher death squad, which I jumped aboard sort of late to the party, which was... Eddie Cummings, Gary Tonin, Gordon Ryan, Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rod, I jumped in. I tore that team apart.

piece by piece from the inside, turning everyone against each other, to exploit that into an opportunity to create the B team, which we have here today. And that's obviously left a bad taste in John Danaher's mouth, but in the effort. of getting them in the event because for CGI, one, they supported ADCC instead. They were going after the legacy medals and they did very good at ADCC. I will say it was a bit of an easy ADCC. We took most of the guys, but...

We've managed to put our differences aside for the greater good. So New Wave will be submitting a team. Me and Gordon, on the other hand, have not put our differences aside, but John Danaher is El Jefe. He's the boss over there. me and him have reconnected what was that like getting to chat to him for the first time in a while that was good i've ran into him a couple times we never had a full conversation but yeah it was definitely good to make the pass the pass you know what i mean like uh

Part of that conversation was Craig took things a little too far. I'm guilty of fucking around sometimes, you know. But when we had the conversation, yeah, we're friends again for sure. What do you think is the likelihood of Gordon?

turning up and fighting it cgi i mean i've got a special cuck chair waiting for him there in the audience so like i think that's that's gonna pull him in you know that's gonna call him that's just made it however likely it was i think you've just made it slightly less likely

The porcelain throne will be there waiting for him. I'm going to guess that you think that it's quite unlikely that it's going to happen then. I think he'll be there. Hey, I think ultimately, as much as you hate me, you should love your teammates more. And he is...

a great team member, great training partner, in my opinion, horrible human being, but in an effort to support his training partners, I imagine he'll want to give them the best opportunity to win and his presence and coaching ability. But not competing. Not competing. You don't think that he would compete? As far as I know, he's never going to compete again. Yeah. And although I don't like the guy, great competitor, drew in the fans. Sad to see him leave. And although I...

persistently harassed and bullied his teammate, Nicholas Marigali, who competed at ADCC, ultimately lost. He got injured in the process of losing. It is sad to lose. two of those guys for the sport. Nicolas Marigali's shoulder injury is going to keep him out for quite a long period of time. What did he have happen to? So after posting many pictures saying he's going to be the champion, he's going to win double gold.

attacking everyone else, criticizing everyone else. He got defeated by a blue belt. Was it a blue belt? Pixie was a... Actually, take that back. Cut. He got defeated by a purple belt, but in the process... Of the hip toss, he posted his arm on the ground, destroyed everything in his shoulder. Really, really bad injury. I think, unfortunately, a couple of the surgeries, difficult thing to come back from.

Might need a trip to Columbia with some stem cells. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Devil's breath. Yeah. We could all use some devil's breath from time to time, but really, yeah, he's out for a while too, so we can't have him in the next CGI. I mean, most of the, most of it's theatrics, you know, like I just like, first of all, I'm picking on Mary Garley because English is second language. He's coming in unequipped. Gordon, easy target. Most American human being on earth.

You know what I mean with the banter? So it is sad to lose them, not just from the banter perspective and the insult perspective, but they are great athletes and it would have been great to have them participate. People think I have a vendetta, I'm vindictive. There's only, and I won't say his name, there's only one person that can't compete in CGI 2, but I don't give a fuck what you've said about me, anything. Go for it. Kiss the ring.

Kiss a few things and we'll put you in the event. What is the sort of future ambition for CGI? Like what would be... A great place for it to come in to land more money, bigger brackets, more viewership. Like, where are you trying to end up? Where do we want to end up? I mean, my goal is just to grow the sport. You know what I mean? I've put so much effort into this sport. I've humiliated myself. I've been injured. I've wasted my life on jiu-jitsu maths, talking to people that have...

Can't hold a conversation. So I want this to amount to something. So I failed as an athlete. So the pivot would be as a promoter. And we've had some enemies that have now become friends for the first event. We have some... I wouldn't say enemies, but some big challenges coming up for the second event in terms of I think I contributed to the sport of jiu-jitsu in a way that brought so much attention and eyes to that one competition.

that now we've got some sharks circling, trying to take it over and monopolize it. So for me, now it's kind of a battle to make sure that we don't end up. being monopolized and just some other product on the shelf so really it's like a for me now it's to ensure that there's a viable event that doesn't have exclusive contracts

that just wants the best athletes in the world to participate, put on a spectacle, exciting, sell out for the fans, and that they have that alternative. But surely there's only so, there's going to be what, five people that win, ultimately? Which means that there's going to be... 40 people that don't win or whatever or 35 people that don't win so how are the 35 going to keep taking over is it that while there's a lot of exposure at this sort of an event you can monetize on the back of this me

being the man that's never won anything, I would say losing is just a marketing pivot. You know, it's how you, it's not, it's not winning or losing that matters. It's how you lose, how you sell that loss. So really, I mean, obviously great opportunity for exposure. I don't want to just be talking about.

we're paying them in exposure. But everyone, last year we paid everyone $10,001 to show up. This year, $10,002 to show up. So for the athletes, that sadly is a significant amount of money for a lot of them. Jiu-jitsu is like a... top heavy payment structure but there are organizations out there that will overcompensate the top of the bill and severely underpay the bottom part so really like for me it's like um protecting

the next generation of athletes that might get caught up in the allure of being attached to big brands or big organizations and let that blind them from what jiu-jitsu really is and how it's different to other sports. we have an opportunity here to kind of prevent it being monopolized. Interesting that a flagrant personal vanity project has now become some stalwart.

protective fortress against big business coming and ruining a sport? I mean, that's the thing, really. It's like everything I do is completely self-interested, selfish, and for my own benefit. But when it comes to a talk show, we can sell it any way we want. Let's repurpose that. Like you say, it's not really what you're doing or why you're doing it. It's why you say you're doing it and whether or not people believe it. Yeah, which is, I might pivot into politics too, run against it.

I only found out about Greg Souders recently. He seems like an interesting guy. What do you know about him? interesting character yeah he's the coach of the misfits team for america so he's putting together an american uh squad so like i mean i haven't gone too much into this It's a difficult conversation to listen to, you know, people talking about different learning models in jiu-jitsu. But yeah, I believe from my understanding, he's...

Thought process is that you don't need to be just doing static, repetitive drilling and being taught techniques. He's sort of giving the credence over to the... people's ability to solve problems themselves through the positional sparring. So, I mean, I don't think, I think the way, just like we do with CJI, the way we sell is to create division and create sides for people to choose on.

choose to be on and a lot of hipsters will choose to be on the unorthodox side of things so it's like I think basically a balance of the two is usually the best approach here but I believe his persistence in his argument is making people reevaluate how they teach. So I think ultimately he's a good influence on the sport. Is that too much?

You know, you're looking at somebody who has done a total of one session of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in his life. But from a lot of my friends, it seems like a lot of time is spent drilling, sort of carefully deconstructing moves and then slowly sort of building those back up.

is there a sort of tactical training hole in the world of most Brazilian jiu-jitsu coaching at the moment? Yeah, I would say that most jiu-jitsu coaches aren't actually coaches. They're just... instructors they show moves whereas a coach would be something different that's something i sort of realized uh being involved in mma camps is that like uh a coach doesn't necessarily need to be better than the person they're training and jiu-jitsu has a

This historical thought process where the better the competitor was, they assume that he's going to be a better instructor or coach for them. And I think that's sort of like a bit of a fallacy where like some of the best guys. teaching boxing, even wrestling, weren't necessarily the best competitors, but they have a great way to break things down. John Danaher would be one of the best coaches ever.

no history of jiu-jitsu competition so i think that's a massive flaw in the sport of jiu-jitsu but i personally would say that like uh in the early stages you need You need to understand those moves. You need to be taught those moves. And then ultimately, as we get to the higher level, I believe...

Problem solving for yourself is much better because if I give you the answer, quite often I think people forget it. But if I create a situation in which you figure out a solution, you'll remember it. And I always say to guys, I'm like. Look at the people leading this sport and how dumb we are. If they can figure it out, you can figure it out. You know what I mean? Come to me with a...

a more in-depth question than like, how do I escape psych control? You know, give me exact circumstances in which I can give you guidance or set you on the right path. What have you learned from all of the time that you've cornered in the UFC? How's that sort of informed the way that you look at coaching generally and sort of the world of fighting? I mean, all competition has an element of performance anxiety, but any combat sport with strikes, I think...

It's a severe element of risk, traumatic brain injury, right? So for me, the stakes are just that much higher. So when you're dealing with an athlete in those circumstances, you really do have to be very calculated. and thoughtful about how you approach coaching them and you really have to be careful about how you build confidence like a lot of people i'm brought in as the grappling coach in a lot of fights where the goal is that they don't use their grappling

I'm just carrying the bucket, right? But what really I have to try to do is give them the confidence that if it were to hit the floor, that what they're doing is good and that they're going to be okay. And once they have that confidence, when they're on their feet in those other positions, they aren't as scared to take risks. Right, because that fear...

of the thing that they don't feel the best at happening is stopping them from doing the thing that they are the best at with full commitment. Exactly. Like Volkanovsky against Islam, it's like most people would have gone into an Islam Makachev fight and been like, at all costs. Do not get taken down. Totally different thought process to be like, we're going to play our game. If it hits the ground, we know how to get back up. We're going to get back up. Obviously, no one's, Dagestan has this.

thing about them due to khabib and so many undefeated fighters some of those guys i will admit do have some padded records but they are very talented fighters like you might see a guy with 16 and 0 but he's for eight bus drivers and And there's not many bus drivers in Dagestan. So we really had to shatter that myth. No one's superhuman. No one's unbeatable. Everyone loses. If you didn't lose, you retired too early. So I think, yeah, just building confidence in the athletes.

But I would say the flip side of that is, truth be told, I really don't like cornering MMA fights because you more feel relief that your guy got out of there healthy and okay. Because I think one thing MMA doesn't show... enough is how badly hurt these guys are after the fight quite often the camera will avoid the guy that's unconscious for 30 minutes so from like a coach's perspective from a friend's perspective

When you see your guy unconscious for a concerningly long amount of time, I would say that's a traumatic experience as well. So for me, coaching, you're second-guessing everything. You don't want to... completely change someone's game because it's you don't have a lot of time to work for them work with them but you also want to build you need to build that confidence with them and stuff so it's like it's a lot on the line and how you approach helping these guys

And to be honest, it's more me doing slight adjustments or giving them confidence by reinforcing what they already do. When it comes to selling instructional, I will tell people that I taught them everything they know. But truth be told, these guys are already very, very good in what they do. Like Jack Della is one of the most incredible grapplers I've ever trained with. And he's predominantly known as a striker. So it's like I've learned things from him.

So these guys are obviously already very talented athletes. How do you come to think about confidence in the world of fighting? How can you help to build that up? When it comes to yourself, how can you sort of help to embrace that more? To be more confident? I mean, you just, you need reassurance from people you trust. You know what I mean? Like the guy, the blue belt at your gym.

that's hitting on the females in the gym, telling them they're doing a great job. You know what I mean? It's not going to be that. You're not going to have that much reassurance. But obviously, the more you respect someone's ability to teach or their ability to perform when they tell you you're doing something right.

that's going to add a hell of a lot of confidence. I think it's always better to be overconfident than underconfident in any sort of combat area. In any sport, I would say. More fights have been lost to underconfidence than overconfidence. You think that's the case? Well, I mean, walking out with that many people looking at you and so much on the line, and it's a good point to make it about striking that... I would guess that in Brazilian jiu-jitsu or sort of grappling stuff.

you're never, it can't happen that quickly. There's at least a little bit of lead in. You go, okay, I made like two mistakes here. I made one big mistake, but there was a point that this sort of went through as opposed to it does come out of nowhere when striking is. Like the fucking Ben Askren Masvidal thing. Like that's like, it's just one incident that occurs and it's like, okay, now it's over. But it is still, a lot of the time it's like, so obviously there are some.

Like there are some lucky shots, but like, like say Masvidal, he knew that if he applied pressure, he knew the way Askin would lean. So he knew sort of his habits, right? I mean, that was definitely a mistake. on Askren's end, you know what I mean? He was a great approach by Masvidal as well. You know, like he's sprinting towards him at a period of the fight where usually it's pretty tame.

Usually a feeling out process, usually a hand touch. So he's breaking sort of the rhythm there. So I think there was a bit of planning in what looked like. brilliant, accidental, lucky strike. But it was well. Yeah, I think that was calculated. They knew what Askren's reaction would be. And had you have been in his corner, you could have sold an instructional. I would have told him how to wrestle. Yep, yep.

So I'm just interested a little bit. I, again, have very little understanding about what's going on, but I'm pretty fascinated about eras or different periods within sports. How would you describe... sort of the world tactically that BJJ is in sort of what's the trend what are the popular things that seem to be working and where do you think things are going next

oh i mean you know what like it's sort of based on what competition is popular at the time so what i mean by that is adcc would allow heel hooks and there was a guy that called Husama Pajaras, who was notorious for throwing on heel hooks and not letting go when people tap and just breaking their legs. So that created an urgency, even in myself when I thought I might be in his weight division, to now learn leg locks because obviously you don't want to lose.

You don't want to be embarrassed by having a hole in your game there. And in that particular circumstance, I was quite concerned he was going to just get it, rip it, and not let go. He got banned from the UFC, I'm pretty sure, for doing that. This guy's notorious for just... being a caveman and just ripping shit but jiu-jitsu is sort of like you're looking for holes in the sport to take advantage of it so once i started training that heel hook game

Then a tournament appeared called EBI, which became like sort of a Eddie Bravo's event, became sort of this cultural movement where we had the stars from the original Tannehill Death Squad, like Eddie Cummings and Gordon and Gary Tonin, who were using moves. that a lot of the pre-existing black belts had never played with because they were banned in those competitions. So these guys got basically a head star on an area of the game that was going to become very important later.

And then once people were so scared of their leg locks, it created opportunities for other parts of their game. So it's kind of like you're trying to get ahead of the curve. So it's just trying to recognize vulnerabilities and exploit them.

at the right moments but there's been like uh 50 50 guard was a position generally speaking if the older generation of black belts hate it they hate it for a reason because it's working 50 50 guard deep half guard we had a move called the birambolo we had all the leg locks we had sort of arm traps from the back as adcc became more popular and wrestling became more important we had this scrimmage style wrestling which

basically just scrambling for top position. And that would be more reminiscent of MMA where the goal on bottom is to get up. But obviously in jiu-jitsu we don't have to worry about strikes so we can be a bit more creative in what we do. So really... There's a whole lot of eras, and usually there's like a person that made those moves popular because they came in and beat people that they shouldn't have beaten because they were using moves that were sort of cutting edge.

innovative moves and what's the era that we're in now good question i've stopped watching this no i don't know what we're in now to be honest i mean like again like i think we'll probably see some new emerging trends based on our event

because there's so much at stake. There's a great amount of prize money. There's a lot of prestige in that you're going to be able to claim your team is the number one team in the world. So I think a lot of coaches are going to be, especially a guy like Greg Soud, is going to be trying to think of some really...

creative way has he got a team that's going to he's going to control the uh team team america the america's team okay oh right because you've had to gift coaches who's looking after the other two we've got um Lachlan Giles gave me my black belt. He had a fantastic run at ADCC and he was able to medal as a 77 kilo guy in the openweight division and he heel hooked three monsters. He basically heel hooks within the game of heel hooks.

There were different positions which people could innovate. There was a guy called Eddie Cummings who was really good at outside heel hooks in a position called Outside Ashi. Gary Turner, Gordon Ryan were really good at getting this sort of inside Senkaku. I was throwing some Japanese terms around to confuse people, and they innovated that area. And then Lachlan Giles came in and innovated this position called Backside 50-50 and created a massive trend.

So he was really influential in the sport, and he's made bank off the back of that respect to him. And then in the UK, we have a guy called Farris, who I've picked because he's got good banter. He riles up the Brazilians. And I'm excited to see some of that take place. And what do you think? So it's exactly the same in terms of the walls, gauntlet style thing? Same size bit, yeah.

But people, the next competitor is going to be off to the side and no one knows. And then the coach sends them out. Yeah. And actually the pit itself. is guys that figure out how to utilize the pit. Because we've had the UFC cage forever, right? People worked out how to wrestle against the cage.

People change strategies of the cage. Typically speaking, when guys got taken down in the earlier UFCs, they tried to get away from the cage. And then it changed where guys would use the cage to get up. So I think the pit and how you use the pit. There's a huge opportunity for innovation there. And with innovation comes instructional sales. How much have you got to train over the last 12 months?

I'll be honest, not a lot. It's hard being in my position because I love training and I just want to go in and have a role. But when you're a known athlete or you're a known promoter... People see that as their opportunity. If I can impress. Yeah, they're like, oh, now's my time. And that's actually a shout-out to the new general manager, Ben Kovacs, of Flow Grappling. I would say if you guys see him at an open mat.

Fight him to the bitter end. Fight him to the death. If you submit him multiple times, I'm sure you'll get a spot on the flow grappling event. That's what everybody thinks. That's what they think.

Yeah, they comfort me. So, I mean, I don't train too much. I'll show up to a random gym and some dude will be there just trying to kill me. And I'm just like, what have I done to you, brother? Or a Brazilian beach up against a bartender. Yeah, but we choose our battles there. That guy was... i go set site you know what i mean all right so what's the next few months got installed up until cji oh do i want to say what i'm doing i don't want to say all right so we're going to london

We're running the CGI trials where we'll do three divisions, three four-man divisions. The winners are those who represent the team, Team Europe. And the other two guys, Owen Jones and who am I forgetting? Cut that. Owen Jones is in there and the other divisions will be decided by the trials. And then I'm going to do a bit of a European seminar run. So hit up Europe. We'll get some content. I'm going to try and raise a bunch of money.

for a cause, but I'll keep that cause secret now because it might cost me my life if people don't run around Europe with that much money to give to a certain group of people. Fuck yeah. Greg Jones, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, I'll see you at CJ. Thank you, bro. Hmm.

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