#32. Kyle "Kyote" Rozewski: Animal MMA
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back. It's The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe. Now, today's guest is the founder and owner of Animal MMA. It's a mixed martial arts gym in Shanghai and a regular training location for some of China's most elite professional MMA fighters.

This gym is producing some serious combat athletes, and I'm pretty sure we're going to see some more champions coming out of this gym in the very near future. Our guest is also still an active professional fighter himself. American born, he is the ICKF MMA World Featherweight Champion, CKF MMA International Featherweight Champion, and two-time reigning and defending FKI MMA Lightweight Champion.

This list goes on and it's too long for this intro, but you get the idea. This guy is a badass. Along with running the gym, coaching and fighting, he is also a new father. So we got to chill with him and talk about his journey. He shares some cautionary stories and we get to understand a little bit better what it is to be a modern day combat athlete, basically fighting for your life.

We had a lot of fun talking to him, and it's been very inspiring seeing him set an example for the younger generation of fighters coming up here. So, without further ado, please welcome Kyle Rosefsky. Kyle Rosefsky

Nice. What do you think? It's nice. Yeah? You're a pretty big whiskey drinker, right? I enjoy the whiskey. Yes, I do. I'm a single malt lover. Well, thanks for being on the show, Kyle. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Let me ask you, because since we're drinking, you know...

You're kind of like the first real legit kind of professional athlete we've had on the show. We've had trainers, nutritionists, and people who are very serious sports hobbyists. We've had marathon runners, trail runners who are pretty elite here. But you're a combat fighter, I guess. Is that how you say it? Combat fighter? Combat athlete, yeah. Combat athlete, right. Yeah, yeah.

So in the professional athletic world, I've always wondered, like, how often do these athletes, like, drink, like, alcohol, you know? It really depends on where you're from. I think a lot of it has to do with your upbringing and where your camp is. When I started in New York, there wasn't – it was still illegal there. Like, nobody was doing it. Nobody could compete legally in MMA in the state of New York at the time. So there weren't too many training camps there.

The ones that were, everybody was super serious. You either were, that guy in the room always smells like cigarettes that nobody wants to be partners with, or you were just balls out with it and you ended up moving to either Toronto or I went to Ohio. When you get to Ohio, there's just so many people that are fighting. There's so many people going all through school with this wrestling goal in mind, but then when you get to college, where's your money going to come from? You know what I mean? You can't.

Be a professional wrestler. There's no money in Olympic wrestling. Unless you were a gold medalist, kind of level. Your future sort of ends right when college does. So these guys, people like me, transitioned into the next logical thing where you can implement your skills that you've learned over the last 13 whatever years. And that happens to be MMA. So in Ohio, being so many of them...

those dudes party and admittedly I party like you know when I'm out there I mean when we had a fight we wouldn't drink that month maybe like for training camp but you wouldn't you would live very cleanly but after like that's after your fight oh man I mean even a couple guys that I thought and this is when I was commentating not when I was fighting you know I was kind of going around getting information on the guys in the card so I would have more topics to jump off of and segues available to me a little background some of these guys I thought were church boys like when they fight they're the guys who are always

touching hands, make sure you don't follow anybody kind of thing. These are the guys, like, they get done with weigh-ins the day before fights. They're having, like, beers with their dad. Like, this one kid, I can't remember his name, Pennsylvania. But, I mean, he was, like, the cleanest cut. He looks like the pastor's son, you know what I mean? Badass fighter. But he came in, and his family was there, and we ended up being at the same place after weigh-ins for eating. And he must have had, like, three beers with his dad, like, the day before a fight. Well, what do you think that is? You think it's, like, just all the pent-up...

Like pent up energy from like having to like be so disciplined during a training camp and be so disciplined with your body. That's a shred of it. I mean, again, like I said, it depends on kind of who you are before it starts. You know, my family and myself included, we're inclined to be like partiers. We like to have fun. So...

When I get done with a fight, like the first thing I'm doing is I'm looking for a drink. Like, you know, I tell my friends that, you know, bring the bottle with you. Yeah, yeah, we're good. Let's get it in. So I am very much that way. And even beyond that, like with the food discipline, stuff like that, that you take for granted. For like a month, you're dieting hard. You're not eating after eight o'clock. You're not eating this at all, all day. Like one of your favorite things, maybe dairy or sugar is gone. And like for four weeks, you don't touch it. When weigh-in is done,

That literally is the fight itself. That's way worse than 15, 25 minutes of punching somebody in the face. It really is. That is like a whole fucking month of just denying yourself willingly of your biggest craving, your biggest desire. I mean, man, I remember I had nothing but dry chicken for this Dustin Kemp fight.

And I just moved in with this guy who was also a fighter. And he was already one of those disciplined dudes. Like year round, doesn't matter, fight or not. He's got like 20 abs. He just like walks around, takes his shirt off. It's like, cool, man. So he kind of had me on this track, you know, where I would feel bad if I put ketchup on anything.

And he'd be like, he didn't say shit. Well, to that level, you can't even put ketchup on shit. But this is not from him. It's just like he set this example for me. And I'm just like, he's looking at me. He's trying to get the sauce out. You know what I mean? Like I'm feeling bad about it. So he got me into this amazing shape, whether he knew it or not.

And I started beasting out in these fights. I'm like, okay, maybe this is what I'm missing or something, you know? Well, that's got to be such an important part of training camp. I mean, I guess really for any sport or even for life, it's all about who you surround yourself with in the environment or the ecosystem you build yourself. That's going to set good examples and a good structure for you and make it a lot easier for you to kind of achieve certain goals.

That's the normal thought in case, but that's the wild thing. A lot of guys I know from back in the day, we'd get done training in Ohio and some of these dudes would be outside like, you smell that? Yeah, somebody's staying around after practice, I guess. I'm not dropping any names, but at least one of those guys is a UFC champion as of last year. These dudes are getting done with training. They're partying.

I mean, literally, they're not even waiting to get home and they're partying and they're winning UFC titles. Like, that dude's world champion. So when you said you were smelling, you were smelling weed? Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's a very prevalent thing in America, especially among the fight community, because nobody wants to keep dosing themselves that have it all day. Yeah, well, that's a point of a lot of debate now, right? Is marijuana use? Because there seems to be a double standard in the United States now. Obviously, we're not going to talk about China in terms of drug use, because we know where that story goes. But in America, because it's so largely legalized now,

There's this huge double standard because no one's going to bat an eye if they see an athlete or a fighter drink, have a few beers or wine or a shot of whiskey. I mean, no one's really going to bat an eye at that. But they puff a joint, then all of a sudden there's this huge controversy. Yeah.

So it's like there's really this double standard in terms of, but then you talk to a lot of people and they find like real legitimate benefits from smoking weed or even CBD oils and things like that. That started to become really big as a CBD just because the criminal element is taken out of it. But there still is all that beneficial side of the plant itself that is being used and, you know, hooray for that.

Not everybody is as advanced. Like, I come from a real back-ass area. Like, people there are still dropping hard-ends and, you know, like, just Confederate flags hanging up. It's like, okay, welcome to our century. Whenever you get there, let me know. And where is this? Attica, New York. So in New York, really? Yeah, oh, dude. Oh, damn. Upstate, right? Oh, yeah. That's a big misconception. I mean, even in America, but especially here, I come here, oh, you're from New York City. Wow, no, no, no, no, no. Like...

New York City is an eight hour drive from here. Canada is like 40 minutes away. Like literally there's more cows than people where I'm from. - But even me, like I'm from the East Coast, right? United States, grew up in Jersey.

But even me, I had this idea of even all New Yorkers, including New York State, were more liberal in that sense. And I felt like the Confederate fags were more down south, like the Midwest. I felt like that was kind of more where it is, but it's not. - It's small town, small minds, you know what I mean? A lot of these people are just very comfortable in their surroundings to the point where they don't want to get out of that area code. The moment they do, everything's weird.

you know what I mean like I grew up with terms like city it's like just because somebody from the city like literally like they come maybe they need gas or whatever and you can just tell they're not from here so like they leave and they look down upon those people yeah you hear the cashier like yeah and then thank god the city it's just passing through it's like

I don't know, man. It's a very weird area. And now here you are in one of the largest cities on the planet. Right, right. So, yeah, it's a bit different. That's got to have been a big change for you, though, coming over here. Yeah, yeah. But it's been all for the better. I mean, if I had stayed where I was, who knows? Maybe I'd be like the people I'm talking about now, you know? So this has definitely been a growth experience for me. The whole...

I mean, the first week you're here is obviously different than the fifth year that you're here. You guys know. Even now, I'm just noticing, as a new parent, developments I would have that are different here as opposed to if I was in America. Like what? Can you give a couple examples? Well, just like here, you're not supposed to have your kid outside or whatever. We are...

scolded daily by our local neighbors like why is your baby outside why is there not 10 blankets on them but the whole time they're like blowing cigarette smoke into that stroller it's like you know we have some cultural differences here clearly like one thing is okay for you but it's not for me I like to bounce my daughter you know she likes it she sings with it or whatever

Somebody comes by, taps me on the shoulder, no, no shake, no shake. No shake? Yeah, it's like, what do you think I'm doing? I want to get done just like spike or like escort a touchdown. Oh, I've never heard that. So is that a thing? I mean, apparently, I'm not too sure. All I know is I've been scolded several times for it. For not shaking. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know that. Well, cheers. Cheers.

Glad you're here again. Can we talk about this dip? Yeah. So Kyle, you brought this dip. Yes, I did. It is fucking delicious. It's really good. So we're having chips and dip. So you're saying this chips and dip with whiskey and ginger ale, by the way, changes your religion, huh? Dude, yeah. It's a nice balance. I brought extra too, by the way. If you guys want some ginger, get down. All right. It's just a nice, like, the flavor balance. The saddest thing about where I'm from...

I'm from a place that somehow found a way to make chicken unhealthy. Oh, like by frying it? Yeah. The one place in the world is like, this is delicious. This is healthy. This is great food. Let's make it fat. Buffalo did it. Here comes your chicken wing, you know? So this is another bastard of that. And it makes you even fatter. So that's what I do, being this professional athlete that I am, coming and spreading the love of booze and dirty dicks. So how does...

I mean, this is going to be a more general question, but I think there's a lot of depth into it in the sense that like, what makes someone choose fighting as a career in the first place, right? Because from the normal, like average Joe, right? A person who doesn't really know anything about combat sports, who's not really involved in that world,

You look at someone choosing to fight professionally and you're like, there's got to be a screw loose. That's what you think. This guy must be wired differently to want to choose this. What's your response to that? That's all in how you're wired. I think some people need it. Some people really need that release initially and that's how they find combat sports and martial arts or whatever. They have some rage or some anger issues they got to deal with. Get it out. Cool. Me...

I just, I miss team sports, believe it or not. And like I was saying before, you know, you get done with wrestling or whatever, but

what do you do? It's like going to school with the cheerleading scholarship. What do you do after that? If you're not an LA Laker girl, good luck on the extra pro pole, I guess. There's got to be another option. It's like how do you utilize and leverage your skills that you learned then to further a career, you mean? No, I'm saying as far as choosing to fight, it's really, it's a mixed bag. For me,

I missed that camaraderie of a team environment. There's no way I'm going to be drafted in the NBA or anything like that. So starting to play basketball is kind of pointless. So when you say team environment, do you mean with, let's say, coaching staff? Well, yeah, everything. For years, all through high school and early college, I played soccer. I played soccer and wrestled since I was very little.

And then all of a sudden it was just gone. And I was very happy. I was teaching music when I started fighting. And I remember being happy with the job. And it's just like, you know, people are paying me this amount of money just to go jam for an hour, basically. But it wasn't enough. And I realized what was missing was that I don't have a constant rapport of like...

A true peer. And I mean that in the sense of somebody who's physically, spiritually, and emotionally going through everything that you're going through. Like when you're cutting weight, and I don't know, I can't speak to what it's like in the military, but when you're cutting weight, like that shit sucks so bad. You're barely sleeping. You're grumpy at the world. Like the wind pisses you off. You're hungry. And all this just, you can go potentially get in a fight that lands you up in the hospital. Yeah.

But then there's a guy going through the same shit next to you. It's just so fulfilling. It's so rewarding. I don't know. To have that understanding from another human being to let you know you're not crazy, I guess.

Well, is that why you started your own MMA gym, Animal MMA? Is that kind of why you started it? So you can start maybe teaching the next generation or have that group mentality? Mainly, the gym started, my wife and I were sick of working for people who kept screwing us over. I mean, our fight managers were stealing from us. We worked from a gym owner. They'd be like, oh, yeah, this is great. Do this price, this class, whatever.

We think it's wonderful because that's our first opportunity. And then you find out like two weeks later when you've already signed a contract that's like condemning you to indentured servitude that you're being grossly underpaid and taking advantage of. And it's just a continual, continual thing here. And on top of that, we got sick of traveling all over the city. So, you know what? Fuck it. Let's just take everything we got, invest in the gym. I mean, that's what we love. It's what we do. It's what we both know.

She is smart enough to have a background where she's able to teach and digress, and she's doing other things as well as far as financial support and everything for the family. But my dumb ass only knows fighting, and I can only get hit in the face for so long. So it just seemed like a natural progression. Your wife is a fighter as well, right? Yeah, yeah. Wow. So you're a fighting couple. Yeah. Well, I mean, since the baby, she hurt her shoulder in her last fight out in Singapore. So since that happened, she hasn't had one. That was like two years, two and a half years ago.

And then we had the baby and there's been no fight since then. But yeah. So I bet you're like, you're kind of happy about that though, right? Oh yeah. It's gotta be tough having, I hate it. I'd rather get my ass kicked for six rounds and watch my fight or watch my wife fight for one round. Is it tough to watch? Oh, it's the worst thing in the world. Like even when I know she's okay, like I, cause there's no controlling it from my end.

You know what I mean? At the very worst, if somebody is really rocking me and putting me in bad spots, I know, well, shit, most of it's coming from his right hand. I guess at least circle this way. I can control that at least. I can control the damage. If it gets bad enough, tap out. Shit's done. My stubborn ass wife will not give up for anything. So it's like the best I can do is just try to coach from the corner and say things I'm seeing, be a good corner man.

But when someone is as smart and independent and like already well versed in the sport as she is, for me it becomes a worry because it's like, is she thinking of my voice now as a corner man or a husband that's being really irritating during her fight? Most likely the husband. Right? Yeah. So it's like, I don't know if I'm helping her hurting at some time. So I just shut my mouth. I mean, I still coach, but there's a very distinct difference in the volume. Like you watch some of my old fight videos and hearing her voice.

as opposed to mine. You know, like she is just more determined and more confident and like bound than anything. And me, I'm like, oh shit. You're like panicking on the side. Yeah, I'm like trying to keep my heart in my chest. Like she holds it down, dude. I cannot. Well, given that, like let's say, you know, when your kid grows up and let's say your kid

gets fascinated by combat sports and wants to go into it. How are you going to feel about that? I don't want her fighting at all. She can learn all that stuff, but I just used to be so much prettier. I spend enough time in the hospital. My wife has spent enough time in the hospital. I don't ever, ever want to see my wife

I'm just thinking about it now. All I see when I think about my daughter now is just how she celebrates when she gets a bottle of milk. That's it. That's as far as I want to go. How old is she right now? She is six and a half months. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Oh, dude, it's awesome. It's awesome. I love it. I don't think I've ever been this fat, but I'm so happy to be fat for that reason. You know what I mean? I'm rocking that dad bod. I'm cool with it. So...

Ups and downs, I guess. Congrats on that, though. That's amazing. It's crazy. But yeah, I never want her to fight. If I can avoid that, I mean, I don't... There's obvious jobs I don't want her to have as a father, you know? But so what if she just really has a passion for it? What's your stance? Is this a solid line you're going to draw there? I'm not going to draw any lines. I mean, she's going to make her own decisions. I'm going to...

the best I can. When it comes time to where she's even talking about competing, I'm going to show her every fight I lose and lose badly. Like, look where daddy got bloody. Do you want that? You're going to scare her. Oh, dude, yeah. I hope so. It's like the opposite of the Al Bundy syndrome. It's like instead of the glory days, it's like I lost here. Exactly. I spent the hospital for two weeks here. For real, I should...

I should just make a laundry list of everything that's gone on. No celebrations whatsoever. It's all the negatives. For real, I had the same license picture. Because in America, you don't have to change your license picture for a long-ass time. So I had a little bit of time when it was expiring the last time around. So I didn't get it changed. And this was... The picture has now got to be 10 years old. So this is like 80 stitches before...

my ears were normal before so like now if i had this license and i go to the airport or anything and people are like it's that big of a difference a glove snaps like okay it's like oh here we go again dude if every time i go to the airport for real every time uh with that license or uh anytime i've broken my hand because casts are different here in china they they put this weird metal rod like every time i've broken my hand here

Like the bottom side will be this metal rod that just kind of like traces up the inside of my middle finger. Some like weird like half Elmer's glue plaster drywall bullshit. And then like a real cast on this side. But just a bar and like clay over here. So I'm trying to get a flight home. Are you smuggling anything, sir? Like beep, beep, beep, beep. No. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Look at my license. Look at me. Snap. Like, oh, I hate this room.

What's like the worst injuries you've gotten fighting? Oh. My hand, I guess, is reoccurring. It's never going to get fixed. I don't know if you can see. This bone is not permanently dislocated over. It's like a bump. Yeah, you see that. So it's kind of just like fused over. I have to break it. I have to re-break it in order for it to get fixed or get surgery. So that's like the long-term one, but.

I mean, my face, man. Really, there are 80 stitches at least in my head. My orbitals have both been broken when my eyes sag down like sloth from Goonies. You know what I mean? It's really nasty. Oh, damn. Yeah. I think everything else, like toes and stuff, I have a couple of permanent small things, but livable.

Well, like with the cauliflower, it's called cauliflower ear, right? Yeah. Like how does that happen? Because all like the wrestlers, grapplers, or, you know, a lot of like MMA fighters, you see them with like really heavy cauliflower ear. Yeah, it's dirty pop. It's terrible. So your ears are mainly cartilage. That's what they're comprised of mostly. When that cartilage gets abused and misshapen and like basically moved, wherever it settles is where it settles.

So it can be swollen and then relocated. And if it's not drained and taken care of properly, it's cartilage and blood pockets that just keep resettling and relocating and moving until it becomes hard. Does that come more from just grappling on the ground when you have your face planted to the ground? Or does it come from strikes? See, I don't know. I did wrestling from four years old until...

I was 18. You see wrestlers have it all the time. I used to wrestle in high school. Yeah, I never had it in high school. And I'm thinking how long that... I remember having the ear protectors and it was okay, but in practice we didn't always. Jiu-jitsu I did for two years before anything happened. My third MMA fight, I got a few hammer fists. My ear just... I looked like Mickey Mouse going home, dude. It blew up. It was crazy. And then since then, it's just been like every time it gets twicked, it just gets nasty and resettles. Cool.

Going back to kind of something you mentioned a little bit earlier was kind of like you were alluding to kind of like the corruption in the fighting world. Right? Like managers being dishonest and things like that. I've been hearing, I've heard from multiple other sources that

A lot of nightmare stories and things like that. How prevalent is that in the combat sports world? Oh, huge. I mean... Is that all over or is that just specifically here? The thing is, like you were saying before, to fight, you kind of got to have a screw loose. Even if you're not crazy, there's some sort of desperation. Like there...

One of the first things you learn in life is to run from a fight. You're taught fight or flight. Those are two responses you have in your id. Everybody almost predominantly is run, be safe, just get the fuck out. To go in willingly and do something like that, especially to make it a career, you have to be desperate or be lacking skills. It's one of those things. So managers are well aware that a lot of these people lining up

are not the brightest bulbs in the box like that kid just said he would fight this amount of rounds against this guy who's a killer for this amount of money well that next kid said he would do the same fight for half the money well that kid at the end of the line will do it for a tenth of the money okay every time we go with kid number 10 you know and whether he's the best most qualified least qualified most likely to get hurt whatever the case is he's the cheapest

So if that's the case, keep the line going. Cause there's always going to be another one. There's always going to be one, two, three, 10 more kids waiting for that same opportunity, willing to do it for less. And that's why like it's, it's going to be forever perpetuated because there's never going to be a fighter's union. You know what I mean? Like these are the same guys I'm competing against. You want me to shake hands with you and go into a meeting? Well, fuck you. I'm going to be fighting you next month. Like what do I have to gain from you getting better? If you don't even get the chance,

I get a better career opportunity because you don't. So because of that lack of unification, we walk in and we're basically lambs to the slaughter. It's like, I need a job. Yeah, apparently you do. You're willing to get punched in the face for it. Okay, so just give us one second. You know, the door will close. The fighter will wait in here while the manager and the promotion talk inside. Whatever deal is made in there, that kid already said he's going to fight for this amount of money, whatever X is equal to. And X might be a fraction of a fraction of what is actually getting paid.

And that's how the game keeps going and keeps going. Like, I mean, I don't even want to get, like, how much I should have gotten paid for my first 11 fights here with the manager we had. Here. Yeah. And like I said, this is a guy from America, so he spoke Chinese. We knew nothing about the culture. The whole fight came out here at all, and it was just— This was an American manager? Yeah. Yeah.

So we came out, and it was just like, oh, trust me. Don't worry. I got you guys. Fellow Americans, I got you. Don't worry about it. Oh, shit. That's the worst. Yeah, and I remember conversations now and stuff that I thought was so funny. It was like we were on a bus one time. I think we were going to Shandong. And I made the joke to my wife when I got home. It's like, yeah, I was talking with him today, and he was on the phone talking about some guy named Joe Chen.

You know, they say, I couldn't tell exactly what, but I heard my name, then I heard something about this Joe Chen guy, Joe Chen. And that fight ended up getting paid $2,000. My manager, who was talking to Joe Chen, turns out to be Joe Chen, $9,000 Joe Chen. So out of like $9,000, whatever, which may have been just the show money, not even like a fight bonus or win, was like the bottom line I was supposed to be getting paid. But then he's turned around and given me two because that's what he's able to tell me is only available to us. Like, oh, you only get this much.

Really, it's this much, but... So he's creating other entities in the contract that are really just him. Is that what it is? If anybody finds a contract of anything, you're lucky. Oh. Yeah. We never had any contracts. So was it mostly verbal? Verbal contracts? Everything was. When we first came out here, it was on three months. We got this email after a few fights in America went well. You know, come out and try China. See what you think about it. And being from a small town in New York, I'm like, oh, when am I going to get this opportunity ever again? You know, like...

And the guy was telling us, you know, this is provided. We train three times a day. We live right above the gym. Everything's provided for you. Don't worry about it. So we get there and my wife and I are sharing like this tiny little like, I don't even know if you call it a single bed, but whatever. Before that, actually, the visa we got was for a shipping company. My job out there is supposed to be a consultant for a shipping company. So it's like, that should have been a red flag. That should have been the first thing I noticed. But again, dumb fighter.

Doesn't know any better and just looking for an opportunity. And you didn't know him from before? Nope. Only I met through some messages online and we're from the same fight area, like in Ohio. So I was doing well there. And then I get an email one day inviting me out and said, okay.

It just shows, I mean, human beings in general are just fucking assholes. They always say, right, you get gouged by your own kind. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because they play that card with you, right? Because they play that card because you feel safe. And when you feel safe, you're like a lamb, you know? And it's like, boom, the claws come out and you're down. It's much easier for you to feel safe around someone and be like, hey, we're Americans. I'm not going to fuck you over. Come on, let's do this together. And then there you go.

Yeah. I mean, what happened after that? Like after a couple of, you know, these fights, what happened? So we had, I think the total was like 11 or something fights that I had. My wife also fought a few times for him as well.

And did you come here together? Yeah. Yeah. We weren't married yet. We had engaged over here, actually. But we came together as boyfriend, girlfriend, and both fighting. So that's like a double commodity. You know what I mean? Send one email, you get two fighters. Bam. This guy was in. Yeah. He's like jackpot. Yeah. For real. Because, I mean, we had this small, shitty apartment in Yongpu. And basically, there was like the Ukrainian kid and his girlfriend slept...

In the living room. And they didn't even have a bed. It was weird, full of cot. He fought and she was a ring girl. So again, it's like a package deal. And then my wife and I had this tiny little crap room. And two for one. So he basically got like four people he could send to a fight at any time, get paid for, for the price of two. Wow. So yeah, I get his logic and the economy there. But yeah, we had...

A lot of fights. And then we went to Kazakhstan and his visa was bad. Like he used to have to borrow one of the fighters passports just to get around. Like he would borrow somebody's passport to go on a train because, oh, you're white, whatever. It looks the same. Go ahead. Literally, I mean, for a long time. And he flat out told me it was one of the first things like, I got a bad visa. I can't go with you. So I had to fight in Kazakhstan. He couldn't go with us.

So he literally, he would just say, like, don't talk to anybody. Whatever you don't talk to anybody, don't talk to the bosses there. Like, that's fucking weird. Like, I'm a grown man. I wouldn't talk to whoever the fuck I want to talk to, you know? He just didn't want you, like, reaching out and making other relationships. Exactly. He didn't want to be putting pieces together. Outside of his control, right? So we're there, and...

I'm cutting weight. And Kazakhstan's elevations is crazy. Kazakhstan's no joke, man. The fighters there are no joke, too. It's up in the mountains, you know? Those are some tough motherfuckers over there, yeah. So, yeah, it was a rough weight cut. And I remember we walked into this sauna. It was freezing. This kid, Karim, and I, we walked in. And like, how does anybody lose weight in here? And this guy comes in with a bucket and these two bricks. And he just like, he puts one brick in the bucket, like dunks in and looks at us like...

I'm not going to say threatening, but it was like the fucking air changed around this guy. Like his aura was like super stained up. But he's like stares and it's dead in the eye. Takes the brick out. Shakes it. I'm like, Crim, is he going to throw that shit at me right now? I don't know. He turns slowly. Looks down. Bam! He like...

He grips. I don't know how to say it. He just like grip claws. His bricks are hard. It sounded like the ceiling was going to fall down. He stares at us again, picks it up, slams in the bucket of water, shakes it around, picks it up.

Picks up the other one. How are you guys today? Good. Yeah. It was like his little ritual. He took me on some weird roller coaster. I don't know. That guy was about to crap my pants and all of a sudden I want to give him a hug. You want to go to roller coaster? It was so weird. It was so weird. So these are really hot bricks, right? Yeah. So how do you hold on to them? Like with his hand? I don't know. This one, it's like, he's like, there was a little weird, like wooden half picket fence thing. He puts the bricks down, dumps the water in.

The whole room smelled like this metal. It was like I was ground zero at Chernobyl or something. And it got so freaking hot immediately. I literally went from talking shit about this refrigerator to like, Karim, I need help getting my underwear off, bro. It was that bad. Just from a few bricks? I don't know. I don't know what this mechanism was, some kind of ancient alien technology. But he put these bricks behind this little wooden fence, dumped a bucket of water in, and the entire place, it smelled and tasted like aluminum.

But I thought my skin was melting. It was crazy. Wow. We had this technique of using a driver's license or a credit card to scrape the sweat off so your pores open up and you keep going. I literally couldn't do it fast enough. I was like a windshield washer on a car on a rainy day. It was just up and down, and it kept falling off. It was ridiculous.

How much weight did you cut just from that? That water weight must have gone down. Yeah, no, that was like 5 kg in like two hours. Yeah, that was dirty. But anyway, so I apologize. I'm listening to me ranting here. No, no, that's good. So I'm doing this and I didn't have my phone with me, but I took a little break from the song. I go and check my phone in my locker. I get a message from my wife like, we need to talk now. I'm like, oh, shit. What happened? I'm like,

Did I do anything wrong? No, then you're cutting weight. And I'm going over the stuff in my head that like could possibly be the matter. And I can't think of anything. So I'm freaking out. I'm like, okay, great. I fight in two days. I just lost like 12 pounds. Like what the hell is going on? I get back to the room and like my wife is beautiful. She's got these wild eyes. Like when she gets her aggression up, like fight day or something,

It's like these little green hurricanes just waiting to pop out of her head. And she's all, wow, when I get home, she shuts the hotel door real quick. You're never going to believe this. She shows me this napkin. The promoter always takes the fighters to eat and stuff. So he knew that my fiancée at the time, where we married at? Fiancée, yeah, she was my fiancée at the time. She was just in the hotel by herself. Let's go get some food. Don't worry about paying for anything.

And just, like, unsolicited, he's like, do you know how much Kyle's making for this fight? Because I heard some things about your manager, and I just wanted to make sure. And she's, like, gave him the number that I agreed to fight for and I'm getting paid for. He writes down a number on a piece of paper, and literally it was, like, five times as much. Like, not even, like, a bullshit number, like, five times. Five times as much. Yeah. So it's...

I was dumbfounded, and I'm thinking, is there something wrong with me? Like, am I a piece of shit that this guy is just, like, doing this to me? Is there something wrong? Is my karma messed up? What's going on? But we decided that night, and this was, like, two days before I fought, that as soon as we get back to Shanghai— well, we were in Suzhou at the time, actually. As soon as we get back to Suzhou, we're leaving. Like, we're just packing our shit up, whatever we have accumulated over the past few years, and we're gone. And we're going to try to do it on the sly, so—

Yeah, I actually ended up losing that fight in the third round. Like, early stoppage kind of thing. Whatever. Like, shit happens. It's something. But we get back, and, like, I remember being a little nervous. Like, is he sleeping yet? Pack our stuff. You know, we're trying to be all secretive about it because we didn't want to have any interference. But we had nothing. I mean, because this guy kept doing this to us, we were already living literally on peanuts some weekends. Like, I was taking fights, like, sometimes three in a week just to pay for food. Shit. Ridiculous human being. So...

That's part of the reason we opened the gym. That's like what everything comes back to is like all the stuff that we were going through, even from this initial interaction, I guess, out here is like full circle to where we can prevent this from being somebody else's story at least one time. That's a win, you know? Mm hmm.

So do you have a manager now or do you self-represent or what's going on? Well, it's still been pretty much me. Like I have a lot of friends I've made over the years who would just kind of like slide me. Oh yeah, there's this fight, let's wait, whatever. But now I'm kind of trying to be more manager. There's a lot of younger kids at my weight who I want to help and, you know, they're training in my gym. So it's like, yeah, you take this fight instead. Yeah.

Well, Kevin, you know, Kevin Yu, he's a partner now. So his left hook management and animal MMA partners now. So we basically have this whole stable of young kids that they're ready to fight and they've been doing their stuff practically ever since.

You can go fight. - Yeah, shout out to Left Hook Management. What do you see of the, what do you see, how bright do you see the future is here for like local talent, local fighters? - Oh man, I'm still amazed there's only one champion. I mean, really if you think about how many people are here and how many are fighting that I've seen, there's just, the talent pool is so deep. It's ridiculous. I think in the next few years it's gonna be even better. Right now it's just there's a lack of proper training and proper, I should say experienced guidance.

More often than not, a lot of people here, without any kind of experience in martial arts or combat sports, just like, oh, I know this guy. They got some guanxi. It's like, oh, I'll be your fight manager. They're going to talk to one rich guy up in northern China. They get one or two fights that are very high paying. But the moment that kid loses, they ditch him because they don't understand. It's not just a one-way street. There's losses. There's wins. You've got to come back. There's just...

There's no perfect MMA career now. There can't be. There's too many people doing it, and there's too many ways to win and lose. Well, do you see trends happening here in terms of commonalities, in terms of the young fighters here coming up, what they're usually good at and what they're usually not good at? Well, yeah. I mean, for a long time, China's had a problem with jiu-jitsu. There's been a very big lack of it here.

Now it's booming. I mean, every gym in Shanghai now has a boxing trainer and a jiu-jitsu trainer. Yeah. Really. So they're catching up, but it's still very different. This is always a touchy subject because I have so many friends who are in the jiu-jitsu community but not in MMA, so I try not to piss them off because I still respect both communities. But getting punched in the face while trying to do an armbar is very different than doing an armbar. It's just... It is. It is.

Does it get really heated, though, between these? Because I've heard stories. I'm not so deeply involved. I box as a sport mostly. But when it comes to mixed martial arts, I really don't know too much about it and grappling and jiu-jitsu. I'm not in that world. But from a lot of my friends who are, I hear that there is a lot of...

Almost like animosity or like tribalism in terms of like my gym your gym or like my sport your sport um and like the principles and in the fundamentals and Like it's really weird MMA is still with a lot of people in the martial arts community is not considered its own sport and that's that's one of the big problems is that initial point of communication is never adhered to so it's like I

If you go into a supermarket, all the ingredients for a pizza are there. That's not a pizzeria. You wouldn't call it that because they're not together. When you put them all together, now it's a pizza and now you're a pizzeria. There's a very big difference. I know it's a poor analogy, but if you go to a boxing gym that has wrestling classes and jiu-jitsu classes, you're not an MMA gym. How many MMA classes are there? How many guys are in there competing in MMA? Whatever. Even if there's nobody competing...

Mixed martial arts is the mixing of the martial arts. That's the whole thing. You might be a Division I wrestler. How good is your takedown when somebody's kneeing you in the mouth? You might be a world-class striker. How good are your kicks when you're on your back? So there's always that. Like that practicality in terms of. And that's what sucks is like I don't know if there are such things in MMA purists because everybody has a background. Everybody started in one different thing. Some people actually did just start in MMA.

And those might be the closest to what a purist is, but even... Well, those would probably be the younger generation now, right? Right, right. The people who go to MMA gyms because now... Back in the day, there was really no such thing. Exactly, exactly. And that's part of where I'm getting to is now like there has to be a separation somehow because even though...

You might be an MMA fighter. You got 20 knockouts. That guy's got 20 submissions. Like you didn't come from the same schools. And there's going to be a little bit of animosity. So what's better at the end of the day? The only way to prove that is having those two guys fight. And that's what sucks is you can never have this conversation without having to physically prove it. So it's like we can't have opinions all day long. Like my black belt's better than your black belt. Well, I can do this. I can do that.

But even in China, I forgot what the guy's called, but this guy got really viral in China as well. For challenging all the martial artists. Yeah, challenging Wing Chun. Yeah, the Beijing guy. He's a very divisive character. A lot of people love him, a lot of people hate him. I've been watching a couple of his videos because he's also now been commentating on one of his friends who's missing in Wuhan because he's been reporting some real shit.

Really? Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to talk too much about it for obvious reasons, so you can go look it up. But on his own YouTube channel... I'm not looking that shit up. I don't want to go missing. What are we talking about? I'm encouraging this kind of stuff. But yeah, on his own YouTube channel, I didn't know his background. I just knew him from revealing information about this missing reporter. And all of a sudden, I look at his videos, and I'm like, oh shit, he's challenging Wing Chun and Kung Fu and...

like CCTV like like TV stations and he's winning and like you know beating them down a lot of people see him as like a huge bully though because a lot of people he challenged we're kind of like older folks who weren't like really into like wanting to like really fight you like in the street fight that's the tangent that that's like the weird why this conversation never comes to a peaceful and it's gonna give him a Napoli you never really finished game of monopolies about somebody flipping the board yeah so same shit

But this guy is like calling out like, oh, you're going to backflip and like throw a fireball at that dragon? Okay, come on. Show me how you do it. Show me your chi force. Like that's what he was calling out. And what he didn't realize before he was doing that maybe was that he's attacking an entire culture, not just like... History. Yeah. I mean like...

You can't go after religion. That's basically what it is here. All that stuff is revered to the point where some of these people are deities. This monk you're talking about is like a god level here. You can't just go and shit on that. You can't do that.

Well, the videos also, I think, played a heavy hand in that too because no matter how you felt about it before, once you saw some of the videos where he's just completely beating up a clearly smaller person because he's not a small guy. He's a pretty big guy. He's built. He's big. He's intimidating. And then you see him just completely like...

beating motherfuckers up. And then so that instinctively, like you see that image and then you're like, oh, this guy's a fucking bully. You know what I mean? So that didn't really help his cause either from that respect. Here's a weird devil's advocate on that. It's now how many kids, let's say practice Wing Chun, saw that video and decided all of a sudden, maybe I'm not going to say that shit I was going to say in school tomorrow.

You know what I mean? And this is kind of where I can't say I'm a fan or I'm against him. But it's like if someone's really full of shit in your line of field work that you do, whatever, you are justified to call him out. His issue was he was literally unknowingly. It's going after an entire culture.

You know, like that's like going up to an Irish guy, like you shouldn't drink beer. Like that's just stupid. And the guy gets drunk. Maybe he wins a fight, but you don't show a drunk person like why or an Irish person might not drink. It's just. Yeah, I get you. You know what I'm saying? Like he's like calling out like Wing Chun. He's calling out an entire art form, not just the practitioner of that guy, not just that dude, but he's like beating him in hopes to represent the entire martial art that he doesn't believe in. And that's where the problem lies.

You make a really good point with that. Also, I think like, but it's a difference in application, right? So like, if you're like a mixed martial artist and you're thinking more practically, like you're thinking about, okay, I'm learning these skills in this martial combat to defend myself or to have an advantage in a fight, whether it's a sanctioned fight or a street fight or whatever it is, right? Whatever your arena is. So he's, their application of those skills is very clear.

But a lot of people, let's say, who practice Wing Chun or Shaolin Kung Fu or these things are not thinking to, their first priority is not to apply this into a literal fight with another person. It's more of an art form or an exercise or something that they just like doing. You know what I mean? So the application in their mind is very different from a person who typically might be practicing martial arts. It's also very philosophical, you know, a lot of these martial arts.

So when you're studying MMA, if you want to put that as an umbrella, I mean, it's a very...

Direct course of what you're wired learning right is for combat for self-defense Yeah, you know well the whole the whole birth and correct me if I'm wrong But the whole genesis of mixed martial arts in the first place Was because there was so many different schools of thought in terms of which martial art is the best which one's the most effective? And so they were like, okay. Well, let's put everything to the test Yeah, this this guy against me the grappler against the striker right? No, whatever it is

And then came the birth of mixed martial arts because you have to use all those skills to

to the best of your ability and that was kind of the whole genesis of the sport in the first place was to kind of use all the martial arts in a very practical and applicable fashion. Can I say something though? Because I'm gonna admit something, I'm not a huge MMA fan, like I don't watch it all the time. When I do see it, it's entertaining but I'm not one of those like die-hard fans.

But when UFC or when MMA first started getting popular, one thing I really liked, I think it was when I was younger and liking video games, is kickboxer versus ninjutsu.

You know what I mean? Because that resonates with everyone. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, that's cool. But then now... Because it plays on curiosity. You're like, okay, which one is better? It's like Wing Chun versus boxer, you know? And then, you know, it's really like Taekwondo versus whatever. And it's like really stylistically different. And then people are battling. And they were dressed in their uniforms and stuff like that. I thought it was fun. Like, it was pretty fun. But now, obviously, it's not like that anymore, right? Yeah.

So that's, I don't know. I think that that was, it was like showmanship as well. Right. And like, like you said, that battle of my school versus your school, you know, I feel like it's kind of lost. Well, that's where like the original, I guess I would call it like the economic superpower that is mixed martial arts originated before that the sport started in pancreation. So the first Olympic sport was wrestling without doubt. Like back in the day, Greek, you know, everybody was wrestling in Greece, Greece,

And Roman Greco wrestling, it all comes from the same place. So after wrestling, we're in a time when people are killing each other, like gladiator style. So if you watch somebody getting beheaded, then you have to watch a wrestling match.

after that you know what I mean like think about your entertainment level as far as like the spectator in whatever BC you just watched a fucking sword fight like someone lost a limb that dude got eaten by a lion okay is that loincloth guy gonna wrestle that other oily loincloth guy and I'm supposed to sit here and enjoy that so like don't quote me but like this is where the pancreation starts coming in

Pancration is basically wrestling with open-handed striking aloud. You're not punching anybody, but you can just cough the shit out of them with your palm and stuff like that. So pancreas is the first real sport to mix the two. And this is thousands of years old. And the sport is called pancreation? Pancration, yes. So this has existed for a long fucking time. Even in the 70s or 80s, Muhammad Ali fought a wrestler from Japan.

Did you guys know this? There's a boxing versus wrestler match, and it was fucking terrible because Muhammad didn't want to get close enough to get grabbed. That guy didn't want to get hit. It ended up being really boring. Yeah. Oddly enough, that dude is a badass MMA fighter now. Oh, dude, yeah. Sakuraba, I believe. Yeah, Sakuraba. So the two styles just in themselves, like one guy kept getting close, falling on his back. Muhammad, he's kind of standing over him. Like what? Yeah, talk shit, walk around, but nothing really fucking happened.

So the Gracies, these are the guys that started it all. They had the same, like, well, jujitsu is just the best. Like, nobody can beat it. So they just started verbally calling people out. And then they made a fucking TV show out of it, the pay-per-view, UFC 1.

was basically Gracie's idea they brought it to Dana White oh was it yeah Dana White brought it to the Fertitta brothers and they made this big production about it was it the ultimate fighter back then no this was just called ultimate fighting championship one okay yeah and and literally and it was like no weight classes it was Royce Gracie yeah it was yep hoist hoist Gracie so it would be like jujitsu versus kempo karate

shoot wrestling versus Taekwondo. And he was beating a lot of people. He was beating everyone, right? He beat everybody. And he's like the much smaller, clearly the much smaller guy. Because nobody knew Jiu-Jitsu back then. He was the first big badass of Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. He put Jiu-Jitsu on the map, right? Yeah. Legitimate Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Especially even now where I'm from. Like I mentioned, I come from Hicktown. So if a UFC fight's happening on a bar, let's say in Western New York...

I'm not surprised at all when the two guys get on the ground and all I hear are, like, homoerotic comments behind me. Like, oh, yeah, look at these nut huggers kissing each other. Like, dude, if you even knew what was going on right now, you would not be saying this shit. So, basically, like, Gracie's kicking the shit out of everybody for, like, the first three, four UFCs, whatever. Nobody knew jiu-jitsu. But he started armbarring everybody. Like, he...

I think there was one fight the dude was like 300 pounds or something. There's that big highlight. The guy in the karate gi just takes him down. That's crazy. So everybody started learning jiu-jitsu. And then all of a sudden, this is where all the arguments come in. It's not so easy to win a fight off your back. I mean, that's just common sense. So if jiu-jitsu is your main style, there's got to be a few key points that you can do or a few small steps you can take to avoid getting armbarred or just basically having an anti-jitz kind of...

fight style or game plan and people started doing it and wrestlers figured it out and wrestling being the oldest sport in the world like all of a sudden like everybody started leveling the playing field on each other okay so everybody's wrestling got better shit well now there's gonna be one amazing striker you know in comes anderson silva and he starts fucking murking people in the first round these guys are diving in and trying to take him down he's knees him in the face and they fall and crumple

It's like, well, shit, I guess I got to do my striking better. Got to add that. Yeah. So like everybody, every generation keeps up in the next one. And now we're in this like crazy time where there's guys like, you know, John Jones, there's dudes like Zabit and they're just doing these crazy things. Guys flying off the cage and kicking each other in the face. Like, did you think that was going to happen? Like doing cartwheels in the middle of the fight? Yeah. I was like, what the hell is going on? So, yeah.

Every year it gets more and more. And that's why I think MMA is going to be, like you mentioned before, the umbrella of it all because you can argue about your jiu-jitsu, but that's basically come to a stance though without MMA. You know what I mean? We have all the same positions for thousands of years training karate, training boxing, training wrestling, training jiu-jitsu. Everybody has the same stances and starting points because this happened. It's very A happens, so B is a response. All of a sudden MMA is like, well, what if I punched you instead of wrestled?

Or what if I shot a double leg takedown instead of throwing a head kick? Like, what's your reaction then? So everybody kind of stifled each other and then started improving each other. And instead of seeing that as like the nice come together on the conversation, it's like, well, my martial art did more in this. My martial art is this. And this is a very, very big, I guess, arguing point, especially in grappling more so than striking arts. Yeah. Yeah. I get that feeling, too. Yeah.

So, but like, let's say just for like the normal person, right? Not a professional fighter or nothing. But for a normal person, like from you as a professional fighter, what combat form or technique or, you know, martial art do you think is the most effective for self-defense? Wrestling, without doubt. Self-defense. Yeah. Yeah.

So wrestling, so that's not jiu-jitsu, that's just wrestling? Correct. Why? Because every fight eventually ends up on the ground? Yeah, I mean, every fight starts in the feet no matter what. But then wouldn't jiu-jitsu play a big role in that too then? Yes and no. I mean, think about how many street fights you've seen in your life. And we're going from the common eye, not like fighter in cage perspective. Yeah, the street fight. Okay, so think about how many you've seen in your life. How many of those ended in a triangle or an armbar?

None. Right. Because none of them knew how to use it. But if you know, you can then fight very quickly. But this is, again, where that point comes in. It's different, for sure, getting punched in the face. But if that guy can pick up a shattered glass, shard, he's got a knife, whatever. Or he's got his boys, he outnumbers you. Anything. Yeah. There's rules in MMA, for sure. I'm more of a submission guy myself. My wins are far more jiu-jitsu-based than striking-based, without doubt.

But I'm not going to pull guard if I ever get in a street fight. If I'm defending my wife and my child in the street, no fucking way am I going to go on my back and call you in. Chances are, especially because smaller people are not going to start fighting with me. I'm already a little dude. You know what I mean? So it's going to be a big guy. I'm not going to try to knock you out. That'd be silly. Especially if you're tall and I have to jump to hit your chin. That's just foolish.

So instead, I'm going to go right at your hips, try to get you down on the ground where I can control you, and then it's my choice what happens next. I don't have to worry about it. If I have control, I can leave it all on my wife or my child. Get her away, do whatever you got to do, keep that safe. But if I'm trying to throw up a triangle, I don't know. Well, you would use wrestling to try to maybe get him down on the ground, but then once you get him on the ground, you would use probably jujitsu to try to submit him, right? Yeah.

Well, wrestling also has a lot of moves as well. Or choke them out. Yeah, I mean, like, I feel... Well, in wrestling, you're not really, like, choking people too much, right? Well, I'm not going to... I haven't had to use it since I started fighting professionally, but I would do whatever didn't leave bruises or permanent damage. Like, if I can put somebody to sleep just by squeezing their neck a little bit and then everybody's safe. Yeah. Cool.

But if I'm like hammering, you know what I mean? So you're going to be nice to that. It does no good to anybody. Again, I can't even think about my daughter watching my fights, let alone like, oh, this is when daddy went to jail in China. That guy should have ran that red light. Don't you hold some sort of record for the most chokes or triangle chokes or something like that? I'm like third all time right now.

Really? For triangle chokes? For finishing fights in triangle chokes? Correct. How many is that? I have 10. Wow. But the number one guy has like 24. It's like Joe the Triangular Strangler. Somebody asked me about it one time. I had like five in a row at one point in my career. It'd be kind of a cool stat actually, so we looked it up. This dude, I don't know, he was fighting in the late 90s before everything really started.

but he's got 24 triangle finishes and then jeremy horn is the next one and that guy's got like over 100 fights he's like ufc veteran chuckle dell twice i think you know just he's a name so it's like kind of a cool little community to be in but yeah uh what's a triangle what is that yeah basically is think about like a swimming position where you have one arm in one arm out okay so

On the side where the arm is not, the inside of my thigh is going to cut off your carotid artery. He's talking about his opponent is one arm in, one out. Correct. So my leg will go over the shoulder and come behind the back. So this is on the ground? Yes. Okay. So this is my back on the ground. It's like a figure four. Yeah, it is. Exactly. It's a figure four. So yeah, my shin and my foot will be sticking out on the other side. And then the arm that is tucked in here...

My other leg, my free leg, goes over and locks on top of my foot. So my thigh compresses this carotid artery, and his own shoulder compresses this carotid artery. Wow. So he's literally choking somebody with his legs. Yeah. Basically. Oh, wow. And then they pass out.

Your last fight, I saw, yeah, the one in Macau, right? Yeah. You triangle choked the guy in the first round. Yeah. And I saw, like, because he took you to the ground, and you seemed pretty calm and collected, and then you were like, okay, and you were sliding up on him. And then, I don't know what he does, but I guess he screwed up, and then you were able to get your legs around him. Yeah. Is that called a rubber guard now, with the whole Eddie Bravo thing? No, no. Is that what it's called? That is a position.

a position, but it's similar, but that's not the rubber guard. Rubber guard is like when both arms are in. This was just basically like two-thirds of my triangle was in. So this was in Macau, right? And then this was... When was this fight again? That was in August 2018. Yeah, I saw this fight online. And then this is the first round and he gets his legs. And so he gets his legs in the figure four. He gets triangle choke, right? And his opponent...

I don't know if he knew he was screwed at that point or not, but then you saw him kind of get desperate and he was like trying to like hammer fist you in your face. He was like, he looked really desperate. And then, and then all of a sudden, like he's hammering him, hammering him. And all of a sudden you see this guy just go like limp.

Just out. And then they stopped the fight and then he wins. Like, when you get in that position very early on, before he even started hitting you in the face, like, did you already know, like, okay, I got this. This is over now. Yeah, yeah. Because you had it in deep, right? Well, that was...

number nine of my ten. So it's like... So you already knew the fight was over. Yeah, I'm positive. When I get a certain feeling, it's just something I'm very used to. It's something I practice quite a bit. So you feel like you're locked in. It's tight. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, and that's what sucks. You see the guy just punching and then all of a sudden he's just like... I should show you some pictures. Well, there's a couple where literally, I mean, the dude is... My nose is just folding underneath his fist. It's one of those things where...

That is an MMA thing. You know what I mean? That doesn't happen in jiu-jitsu, so it's very different. Like this, it's small little damage, but it doesn't mean a whole lot in a fight when your adrenaline is going. If you're in practice and somebody just keeps touching your face like that, it's super fucking annoying. You want to tap or you get pissed. Yeah. Is that part of training? Yeah, that's what I'm getting to. That's why MMA is so...

fucking awful and beautiful though it's just like shit like that you don't understand yeah i'm doing jiu-jitsu yeah i'm doing boxing but i'm doing them at the same time so like while you might be awesome at one if you're not used to the other it's like i don't care if you're a world champ at either one once the other element is added that you're not used to at all you're not a black belt anymore yeah and that's something that i like to like it's a it's kind of a joke is like i i'm so good at getting my ass kicked

you know like i'm kind of like a black belt mma and but there is no mma belting system

It's just that that's one of those things fighting off your back. I couldn't do, I wouldn't fight in the street how I would in a cage, even though that's what I'm well versed at and used to it. It would be completely different. Well, would you, what would it take for you to even fight in the street? Cause I have this, um, I, I posed this question to other people before and it's this idea of like, like people who really train in combat sports who really know like yourself, um,

and who understand the brutality of it and understand the discipline and have that level of appreciation for it,

They're actually, it makes them in their day to day lives like much less violent people. - Oh for sure. - Just like a race car driver. A race car driver isn't driving on normal streets in their Mercedes or their Buick or whatever, like racing other people. They save that for the racetrack solely. And they hardly even drive on the streets. Maybe they have their chauffeur or like, you know when they do drive on public streets, they're very tame, very calm, very safe, 'cause that's just like not worth it for them, right?

So I have that same philosophy towards fighters like yourself. Do you find that to be true? Well, my thought is why would you go out and do your job for free after work has ended? Mm-hmm.

What's the point? You know, like I'm not going to go out in the street and get in a fight. Well, obviously you're not going to go out and provoke a fight. But like if there was a confrontation where someone was, you know, provoking you or putting you in some sort of danger or putting someone in you in some sort of danger, like, you know, what's your reaction then in terms of like just completely walking away or defending yourself, you know? In five years here, that has happened four times. One time I did nothing.

One time I went to just go kind of check and see what was going on with it. I ended up getting hit in the back of the head and then tased for my efforts. I did nothing. Tased by who? It was security at a KTV. Ooh. Yeah. I still, to this day, don't know how exactly it all started, but I was like, it was my friend's birthday. Next thing I know, he's freaking out. Those KTVs don't fuck around, do they? Dude, yeah. I lost my shoes. I peed my pants. I tried to call my wife and explain what happened. I can't find my phone. It's like...

It was a rough one. But yeah, I did nothing there. Another time, some guy was like pushing me. I was trying to take my scooter up to my old gym. And he was just like literally pushing me and said some not so nice words in my limited Mandarin speaking I understood about my mother and things I should do.

So, like, that time I was kind of heated, but I didn't do anything. Wait, this guy was talking about your mother? Well, I got the tiny ma, you know what I mean? Yeah, tiny ma. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, that's not really usually what Chinese people do. Like, your mama's so fat. I was thinking, like, mama jokes or something. We start roasting each other. I was like, what, a local did that to you? Your mama's so fat. Your mama's so fat.

No, that guy just had to stick up his ass for whatever reason this one day. And then the other one, the only time I actually did something, this dude in a scooter, like he almost hit this lady in her baby stroller. This is before daddy time. So I was not even thinking clearly, but like almost hit the stroller. And like the lady kind of said something to him. He screeches on his bike, turns around, starts yelling at her. And like he came over and like acted like he was going to hit her.

So I was just walking by, and I don't know what was exchanged as far as verbally what was said. I don't speak well enough yet, or even at that point, not even close. But I thought he was in the header, so I just, you know, then. Knocked him out cold? No, he slumped down. He got back up relatively quickly. It wasn't like dead to rights knockout, but I think I flashed him. And he just got up, and he didn't say anything. He's like,

So like wobbled over to his scooter, waited a second, texted a little bit and took off. I wonder what he was texting. I can't imagine what he was texting. But the weird thing to me is like if that motherfucker is in such a hurry that he has to almost kill a baby, like how do you have time to stop and yell at them and then come back and like physically threaten the lady? So then I'm like, oh, you know, I feel good about myself. But then the lady starts like filming me.

Yeah, like she followed me over to my next bus stop and I'm like... What do you think? Because you were like the low way. Well, I'm like, I'm going to jail now. Like, I'm trying to help this lady. I have to be honest about it. In my head at this point, I'm like, I'm trying to help this bitch and she's doing this to me. No, are you kidding me? And she didn't say thank you or anything like that? Well, maybe she just thought you were a hero and wanted people to know you were a hero. I don't know why. I still don't know why. I'm hoping that's why because like when I left, I did get a smile, be it fake or not. I don't know. I don't know. But she's like...

But she taped me the whole way. And it was like, it was like over a five minute walk. Yeah. So I don't know where she was going or how it ended up. But only time I've hit somebody here and I was, I was fucking terrified. Like I was sure I was going to jail. I was like, this bitch is getting me on camera right now, even though I helped her and I'm going to get over this shit. Like I was thinking the whole way. I'm like, how do I explain this to my wife? Like, what does this phone call start with? Like, Hey, hi, how are you doing? Yeah.

Bad news! There's no shining way to explain that. So like looking back on your whole career,

as getting into professional fighting and your whole path and coming out here to China and everything you've accomplished out here. Looking back now, the man you are now, what do you take away from that experience? Are there lessons you feel like real, like the main lessons you feel you've learned from your struggles and everything? Yeah, nothing in combat sports business is face value anywhere. Nothing. And while it sucks...

I want to trust people, but I can't. And now it's mainly out of, like, protective, you know, because I understand the consequences after living them. I could have saved my wife and I a few years of some bullshit just by, like, seeing red flags instead of catering to my ego. Like, yeah, they're being nice to me. This is great. They want to take pictures. You're only getting 4,000. I don't care. Shut up. It's okay. This fight's fine. I wouldn't do all that. I would take better care of my injuries. I don't know. Like, I think I wouldn't change much besides just, like...

I can't believe I'm saying this. The things my wife told me to take care of. You should go to the doctor for that. I'm good. Don't worry about it. Like that shit. I listen to my wife more, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of like principles on life from a fighter. Because I'm always interested in hearing...

people's philosophy because we talked to a lot of people on this show we talked to entrepreneurs you know business people and all sorts of people like and they come from a very obviously um their their perspective on life and things that they've learned through their trade and their business but I'm always interested to learn from like a fighter because like I said this in a previous podcast like fighting is the most literal depiction of

of the struggle of life. It's the most literal thing. You're literally fighting. You yourself in the ring, in the octagon, wherever, in the cage. So I'm always interested to hear like coming out of it and you're still fighting now but like looking back like are there certain philosophies and lessons on life that you think you've learned from this career?

Honesty is the best policy. If you lie about your resume in fighting, there's very real consequences to pay for that. And here, they don't check as much. There's not a governing body over the sport. There's not the athletic commission that there is state by state and nationwide in America. So here you can tell somebody, oh, I have 50 fights. I have 19 belts. Cool. Go fight this guy. He's got 49 fights and 17 belts.

The thing that blows is that second guy is legit. The first guy is talking out of his ass. But at least now he's going to learn a lesson when he goes in there and fights that guy. It's like, well, you got that 17 belt whipping, didn't you? Like, that's what you talked your way into. In my sport, I don't think there's room for faking like that. What's like the toughest thing you think you've had to overcome in your career? Just being injured. And not the injury itself, but when...

You have like a bad manager or something like that who doesn't actually tell you what life entails with this or what you're supposed to do or what costs what. And you are basically at their beck and call because you don't know what the hell is going on. Ignorance, I guess. So not the injury, but the ignorance of it all is just like, if I'm hurt and I can't make money, how do we survive? You know, like if nobody fights for two months, three months, whatever.

what are we eating this weekend kind of thing. And we had two years like that. And that was terrible. I mean, we came out the better for it, but I still feel remiss for having put us through that. You feel a certain sense of guilt? Oh, for sure. It's like if I had not been so gung-ho about how it'll be okay, I'll just fight, don't worry about it. And then not even understanding injuries can happen. There's more to life than the next three months we have to worry about kind of thing.

That foresight isn't there. If anybody thinks about starting fighting, like I said before, there's either something missing or some form of desperation, whatever you're looking for, it's coupled with ego. And I say this because it takes an ego to go out and be the center of attention to that degree.

To think you're going to win, right? Yeah, I didn't even like that. To think you won't die. There's ego in that. To think that you're going to go out and dominate another human being, right? It's weird. It's weird. You're talking about the guys go to sleep. That's the worst thing. That's...

That's when my fighting stopped being so aggressive is like when the fourth or fifth guy like woke up and you just look at him and like the first second when somebody comes back to consciousness, there's this really weird, wild searching. I don't know how else to say it, but it's like they literally don't know where they are and you can...

you can like feel it. Like you, you can see it. And to know that you were responsible for that. it's, it's the dirtiest feeling. I think I, I felt like I wanted to wash my skeleton. I don't know how else to say it. The first time I saw it happen, like I, I wanted to scrub my skeleton. So was it like a euphoria of winning mixed in with a sense of like guilt and responsibility or like? The guilt didn't come till later. Like, uh,

The euphoria of the adrenaline in the moment of that is unmatched. There's not a drug or a drink I've ever had that is the same. But that being said, later when the heartbeat slows down, when your blood flows normally again, I'm in the shower, win or lose. Every time I cry. When I have something like that, when I think about the guy's look in his face when he wakes up, and then I remember like, oh shit, we talked yesterday and he's got a daughter. Yeah.

His kid has to watch that eventually. It makes me feel terrible. I don't know. It's just dirty. And I love the sport, but I hate it at the same time. That's got to take a toll on you, right? The weird thing is I want to tell myself it did, and that's why I'm having more decisions later in my career because I don't want to have that effect on somebody. But then the reality is I'm just punching them more, kicking them more. So it's like the gentleman's way out.

is to give somebody the polite nap in jiu-jitsu, but I hate the feeling when it happens. But at the same time, if I don't do that, if I'm nice, I pay for it. Physically, financially, emotionally, it's just emasculating and you don't want to go back and do it again as much. That ego takes over.

Well, now you got Animal. Yeah. That you can focus. So what do you feel like you're teaching the next generation of fighters coming up? What's your philosophy towards combat and competition? Respect is the main thing. Anybody who trains in my gym, I always have a rule. If you knock the guy down in any way, you have to help him up. You have to. It doesn't matter if it's wrestling or punching, kicking, whatever. That's the rule. I don't think...

That is going to be as easily spread here as it was back home. Why is that? Because there's so many more people here. I do think that's a huge part of it. But do you feel people in terms of ego, like fighters walking into the gym or young kids walking into the gym, do you feel like they have more of an ego here or less of an ego here compared to the States? I think the ego level is about the same. It's just the desperation here is more because there are so many people. It's like...

The competition is... Yeah, like in America, I would complain about... I wouldn't complain about it. I thought it was a beautiful thing. It's how many... Like Ohio is the number one or now maybe number two behind California. But per capita, the state with the most registered MMA athletes. So that's where I came up. You know, like a lot of world champions, the current heavyweight world champion in UFC is from there. Like my wife and I watch a UFC card. Oh, I know that guy. Oh, I taught that guy. You know, like every single card we can do that now. So...

I feel good. That's where it came from, you know, but there was not the depth that there is here. So maybe that line of 20 that ends with like, you know, that guy won't fight, that guy won't fight, he will. It maybe only goes to 20 people in Ohio. Here, it's like two fucking hundred. There's just so many more people. So these guys here have to be more cutthroat. Absolutely have to be. There's 199 people trying to take your job. 19 I can beat. I can eye you all up like, okay, I like my chances in this room. Okay, but...

199 you can't even see every motherfucker there yeah so here especially now in the developing years i think it's very different than america as far as people's attitude like my my coach is my daughter's godfather here it's like if your coach doesn't do what you like that first day same thing next gym on the next one on the next one well what do you see like on to the next one like what do you see as like the competition with gyms now there's a there's a because i feel like um

Combat sports in general are getting a lot more popular here in China overall. And there's a lot of new gyms sprouting up, whether it's jujitsu gyms, boxing gyms, or just kind of white-collar fitness combat gyms. But the sport in general is becoming a lot more popular. How do you see that landscape evolving in terms of the competition of other gyms? It's weird now because there's starting to be a trend of, I don't know how to say it, boutique gyms marketing as fight gyms.

So, actually, E-Long. You know E-Long? He's been to my gym a few times. We're friends. We talk about things, just like life in general. We like to shoot the shit. That dude's so real. He sat me down. He's like, you know, the more professional you are, the less money you make here in this business. I don't know what that means for any other kind of work anybody can do. The more professional of a fighter you are, the less money you will make here. I thought about it. I'm like...

My classes in America, we were fucking killing ourselves and we paid money to go kill ourselves. Here, everybody's kind of happy with like, okay, one, two, one, two. I'm going to have a cigarette. I'll be right back. Skip some rope for five minutes. Are you talking about like normal students? Yeah. So it's kind of weird. I mean, as an idiot, I have to dumb it down, so to speak. Like I can't.

I can look at, even just like one takedown, depending on the position, where it is in the gym or where it is in the cage, how many different options or angles you have in that. And I can just piece it down. There's an hour right there. We can go with just like your approach from where, ending where, and why. What body parts are you using? What is the main weight distribution? All that shit. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. Here it's just like, am I sweating? Is the music good? Boom, there's your money. Like, all right.

So it's kind of weird. I mean, the market, I guess, I can't put it down to people. The market itself doesn't appreciate the level of it yet because it's not as popular yet. UFC gyms just started popping up in America recently.

City by city by city. But UFC just started popping up in general. Just the awareness of the UFC. Exactly. So this is, it's almost like... And with Zhang Weili, it's going to get so much more popular. Oh, dude. Because the NBA had Yao Ming, right? Yeah. Now the UFC has someone like Zhang Weili. So they need that star to really boost the popularity. Now here's a question for you guys, because you've been here longer than me. And you know the culture better than I do. In, forgive my saying this, audience, a predominantly misogynistic country,

How is that going to be having a female champion as opposed to a male champion? Is this better or worse? I think it's okay. I think it's completely okay. Perfect example, like, you know, coming over here, my work chat, right? Just my coworkers and stuff like that. It's like 90% male in my company.

And they were talking about the fight. They're like, did you see the fight? And they're like sharing links and stuff like that. I was like, I heard she's, she's crazy. Just, they love it. Honestly here. I think it helps that she's a woman because it's out of the ordinary, you

you know, in the traditional way of thinking for a lot of people because they're like, oh, like if a guy wins, like it'll be huge. Yes. But it'll be like, it'll be like, okay, you know, guy wins. He must be good. But, but when a girl like almost like it's, it's like it's shocking in a way for them because it's, it all of a sudden becomes real, like,

like curious news because it's like, oh, she's the, you know, she was strawweight, right? Strawweight champion. UFC, such a internationally recognized organization, the champion, and she's a woman. That makes it even more exciting, I think, for people. So I think it helps. I think it helps the population. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, I think the future is really bright for MMA, for gyms in general here. You know, I think it just takes time for, like you say, a lot of these things to become more mainstream. And, you know, the culture of fighting, the culture of mixed martial arts, the culture of how to train well, you know,

is evolving here. And I think the one thing that China has really going for it is the speed at which it can adapt, right? That's kind of almost undeniable. So yeah, I agree. It's a little bit behind right now in terms of those cultural aspects, in terms of combat sports. But

I think give it a few years, it has a very bright future here. It has already. I mean, when I first got here, I said with complete confidence, in a country of 1.6 million... I mean, you opened a gym here, so you have to have some confidence here. Well, I mean, this is as a fighter, and this is that ego playing again. When I got here, I said to my manager before, I don't think anybody here in this entire country can beat me in a cage. So I don't care who the fight's against, just make it in a cage and we're good. And I literally felt that way. Five years ago, not a question.

Two years ago, I'm starting to see some kids. It's like... Pretty good. I guess it would be 61 kg. The 135-pound champion for Rebel right now. Kid named Wang Shuo. My God. I saw him first. We fought in the same company two or three years ago. And I was impressed. And it's... I've had a shit ton of fights. And...

it doesn't happen here i'm like damn that could get arrested like damn that could get straight damn that kid's got jujitsu it's like i'm watching him and my favorite part my favorite part about it before and after the fight he just goes back to the locker room puts his glasses on real quiet kid doesn't say you would never think it you would never dude's a world champion right now like if he doesn't end his career in the ufc i'm going to be amazed he's awesome

But you would never, ever think twice about being in a bar or something. If you're an asshole American... You might pick a fight with him not knowing at all. Seriously, one of those in the bar, what's up, small fry? How you doing? You know what I mean? He'd say shit. This little librarian assistant looking motherfucker is the sweetest person I know. But he's a killer. He's such a nice guy. I love him to death. But my God, he's smaller than me and I'm a world champion fighter myself, but I'm like...

I don't know if I say that to him. Shit, man. Kid's a little beast. You hear me, Wong Shuo? We hug. We're hugging. That's high praise coming from Kyle. There's no punch. We're hugging, bro. Hey, Kyle, man. I had a blast. Thank you for coming. Thank you for making the time to be here. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's been nice. The whiskey's nice. Yeah, cheers. Let's finish this up. Cheers, guys. Much love.

All right, that was Kyle. I'm Justin. And I'm Howie. That's it for today, guys. Peace.