BTG 170 - When to call it quits

Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. We had a quite a few different style events that went on this weekend and uh some interesting results. For one, we finally got to see Jake Paul get his face smashed in. He ended up fighting Anthony Joshua who is a legit in his prime heavyweight boxing champion. Same guy who knocked out Francis Nagano and he ended up getting a knockout of Jake Paul in the sixth round. This was interesting to me because I don't know what Jake thought going into this how it would work. He shifted the the opponent dramatically. He went from Gervante Davis who was probably 20 30 pounds lighter to him or no more now that we've seen to Anthony Joshua who was 30 lbs heavier than him. So it's a major swing, right? Fighting somebody and because he was heavier than I thought. I think he was like 215 or 218 or something like that and Anthony Joshua was 240ish. I think Aronda Davis is like 150 something. So he had a lot more weight than 30 I was saying. Maybe like at least 40 or 50. So that level of fight is a much safer fight for him obviously because getting KO'ed is less likely. Uh he could he would still probably lose technically, but the power would obviously not be there. I don't know if Jake thought he could outbox the boxer. Um, what made him decide to go heavy? Maybe it was the money. Allegedly, they're getting over $90 million. So yeah, if you you're looking for the biggest payday, that would definitely I it seems to be his biggest payday from what I know about his career or just about anybody. 92 million would be the biggest payday in fight sports. It's crazy that people It It was shown on Netflix, so I guess I don't people don't have to buy streams anymore. So he did and a lot of people were saying it was faked or rigged. I don't didn't seem like it. Jake went for I believe they said 13 takedowns. He kept clinching and falling over. uh apparently landed somewhere under 20 punches where and he was doing a lot of running. It seems like how you would try to survive fighting someone who was way better and stronger than you. And the time that he did get hit, broke his jaw in two places and his teeth fell out. you. So, if you were fixing a fight, you probably wouldn't want to get your jaw broken in two places and teeth broken out. You normally want to fall and make a show of it. When he got hit, it looked pretty real. Uh he he got dropped and surprisingly was remained conscious. He got hit clean chin right a right cross straight in that was loaded up and he got sat down and he just stood there with his mouth open in retrospect that's probably because the jaw was broken not because he was dumbfounded but uh his eyes looked like he was dumb down like holy crap I didn't know someone could hit that hard so I feel like you got to give him some credit. He hearing some toughness points. He finally stepped in there with a real boxer who was a champion and got shown that he doesn't really belong there. But he's got balls and uh you can't take that from him even if you don't like him. A lot of people say they want to fight Mike Tyson, but would you would you actually step in there? It's easy to say and you're like, "Oh, yeah, because I'll get a few million dollars. I just get knocked out." Yeah, but it's not as easy to just get knocked out. It's easy to say. It's not as easy to let happen. All right. Uh so, you know, kudos to him for actually doing it. Uh it it gets him a little more respect in my opinion. Not much because he's kind of a douchebag from the impressions that I get, but hey, he took his his took his beating. Now, we had another crossover style event, which was like a celebrity boxy type deal. I don't know exactly uh who was running it, but I saw something that wasn't on my bingo card with is Tony Ferguson winning another boxing fight and I think it was by TKO or I saw he scored a knockdown in the fight which is not what uh I would have I thought you know he won that one fight and like okay good you know you can end it there but now he's got two wins in a row. Uh, who know? It's such a weird thing. I personally I would think like just get out of it while you're on top [laughter] because especially with boxing a lot of head trauma. You don't really need he doesn't need any more trauma to his head than he already has had. So, I feel like get out of there. But he pulled out another W. Good for him. Then, uh, the last two things I'll talk about, the older gentleman, we had Anderson Silva, uh, who's got to be approaching 50 and in the same event doing a boxing match with a former Jake Paulo opponent, two-time opponent, and, you know, former UFC champion. Damn, the name slips me. Oh my god, I can't believe I forgot the name. But uh this gentleman is competing now for uh Tony Ferguson's unde defeated record rather because he's now he ended up getting knocked out by the spider who he's much younger than and uh it was very clever. the the spider Anderson faked like he was going to throw a knee in a boxing fight and then threw a big uppercut and that ended up leading to the knockout sequence and once again Tyrone Woodley the opponent Tyrone Woodley got knocked down face first once again eight fights in a row six knockout or submission losses in a Bro, oh god, that's just it's such a fall from grace, man. It's just horrible. And particularly now since he's been doing boxing events and he's been getting knocked out repeatedly, it's like, my guy, stop. Like, it's you're going to have no brain cells pretty soon, you know. Uh, but good on Anderson, I suppose. Again, another guy I wish they would stop fighting, but you know, at least he came out clean, but Tyrone Woodley is not doing himself any favors either, you know, and he's taking hard knockouts cuz he's not like he's getting sat down. He's falling face first, unconscious. It's not a great look. Uh unfortunate. The other crossover event was grapplers going into wrestling and there was a matchup with it's called Real American or Real Wrestling Federation or I don't know it's RAF wrestling. I'm not sure what the acronym is for but it's prolevel wrestling I suppose. You had And um I say Andy Nol? No, I forget his but his last name is Jason Nol and he was fighting Andy Varela. That's where I got the mix. Now Andy Varela in Jiujitsu is a good wrestler. But is he a good wrestler in wrestling? Well, didn't seem like it, [laughter] which is crazy to me because he gives me a hard time with wrestling. And uh Andy Nol uh tech follow them 100 zero getting a power bomb in the process off a a double leg to the back and then just kind of closlined them and arched them through a crazy throw. And it just shows you the levels to the game, you know, and as far as jiu-jitsu wrestling's concerned, it doesn't hold up to wrestling wrestling, which is not surprising. But uh I I would wonder how the well we had kind of seen what happens when it's jiu-jitsu wrestling because Jason Nol had a really hard time with Rulo. Uh couldn't really score any takedowns. I think he got one at the end which ended up leading to the submission. So the wrestling in jiujitsu is a little trickier because of the submissions and I know some of Andy's best tools are going for chokes off takedowns and headlock positions. So uh although to be fair to N he never gave him a chance to get into a headlock. N was just very fast. even got on a few shots and it was just not seen like he was very very fast. So, congrats to Nol there and kudos to Andy for giving it a shot. And the last matchup we had another guy who's I think he's like 48 or 49. The [sighs] Oh my god, man. I I think I'm starting to age a little bit. I'm I'm slipping on the names I should know. There's Pat Downey, who obviously he's an American wrestler and he's younger, facing Cuban UFC, MMA Olympic wrestling silver medalist Yel Romero. And Yol still looks like a unit, although he's he doesn't have the thin waist anymore. He's kind of chunkier in the midside, but he's still yolked. And Yol Tech falls Pat Downey 100, which is crazy. Now, this I don't mind. And I'll tell you why. There's no head trauma, right? I don't have to worry about Yo getting concussed repeatedly. He can wrestle and grapple in old age and do all right. I don't know why personally you would want to uh besides getting money. Uh but man, he looked great. He's scoring shots, scoring throws, and he even finished doing a back handspring. [laughter] I mean, like guys, a crazy athlete. And I say like he's that much older than me, but I mean I'm 44 now, so hopefully I could have that level of athleticism. I don't know I've ever had that level of athleticism though to be honest. I mean Yo is something else, right? Like he's just freak athlete. Uh I feel that I've maintained a good level of my athleticism throughout the years. when I've always It's funny because I was asked yesterday I was training in a open mat and I keep getting that question. I tell you guys like, "Oh, when's when are you going to compete again?" Or like, "Would you ever compete?" It's like, "No, man. I'm done, dude. I've been done since 2013." Uh, and I was done before then, if I'm being honest. So it a lot of people think that you stop competing because you can't do it anymore. And that's not really that wasn't the calculus for me. It was just that I didn't want to do it anymore. I had other options that I preferred to explore and I felt like I have done everything that I wanted to do in the time that I had with a martial arts career, you know. So, am I stronger now? Yes. Am I more technical? Absolutely. How's my cardio? Not as good as it used to be. Uh speed pretty good. I'm I'm sure if I was training like hardcore I could have similar speed. Reaction time. It's definitely slower. I don't know how much slower, but it's a little slower. Uh, but I feel like I could probably still do pretty well if I was doing a training camp and taking training seriously. The only problem is I'm not sure how I'd manage that with the recovery. Uh, that would be difficult. And I guess that would be one of the things I would say like okay that I couldn't do which is I couldn't train to the standard I would want to uphold myself to. And that means that I know that I'm leaving something on the table. Like I I wouldn't be able to show what I was fully capable of just because of the physical limitations now. So, that kind of contradicts what I was saying before, but it's it's true, which is I could go out and do really well and maybe I can win matches against tough guys, but I would know in the back of my head like this is not 100% me. This is like 80% me or 70% me. So, then that begs the question, why am I coming out here to showcase a diminished version of myself? doesn't make a lot of sense to me in my opinion. Um, and but the real reason for me is just I'm just not motivated to do that anymore. I've done a lot of that. I had at least 15 years competing at the top of the game. And yeah, I've I've seen people who've accomplished, you know, the dreams that I didn't get to do and were, you know, where they are now. And it's like, yeah, I'm okay with where I'm at, right? I feel like I've done pretty well in life. Uh, and I was fortunate that I don't need uh to fight for money, you know. So, and to be to be honest, I never really did fight for money. When I started fighting and grappling and, you know, just competing in general, it was never for money. It was always for the love of the game. And maybe that's something that not everyone does. Like I think when we were training and competing in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was no money to be spoken of in fighting in jiu-jitsu or whatever you want to call it, combat sports. So, you definitely weren't doing it for the money. You were doing it because you wanted the challenge and you enjoyed the the the battle. So that really never changed for me. I enjoyed that struggle. And even when money started to trickle in, which wasn't much mind you, I mean ACC for grappling was, you know, the peak and it was 10 grand. That's not doing anything for anybody. Uh so it really wasn't ever about the money. And especially in my case, I had a successful school and I was doing the the DVD launches and stuff. So, I was doing fine without that. The the fighting was the passion project, right? The competition was a passion project. It's what I enjoyed to do. It wasn't the the bread winner. That's kind of shifted because now in today's grappling world, there is a good amount of money. There's people making 40 grand on just regular events for a oneoff. So your core incentive might be to, you know, pay off bills. And if that's the case, and I can see why you would have to fight longer and longer. I just think it's unfortunate that you would have to be put yourself in the position where you had to risk your body to support your family, right? I mean, we all do to a certain extent, but as you get older, right? Like imagine if Tyrone Woodley is fighting for another 10 years, man, that's going to be rough. Going the way he's going, not going to be great. He's going to have some serious TBI. Who knows how his cognitive ability is going to be affected. So, that type of thing I don't like seeing. Grappling is not as bad because I mean you could blow out your knee or something which would be also unfortunate but you won't be mentally impaired which is something that we really can't fix right now, right? Like if you suffer from a serious traumatic brain injury like at the moment that's going to be with you forever. So well as long as you can as you live. So not great. So, I feel like that has to be tempered a bit. But I find even guys who just compete really long, I I mean, if you're doing wrestling or grappling or submission wrestling, you can do it for longer as long as I guess you feel like you have the motivation to, I just I lost that. And I I wanted to find something else to do and I have and I I enjoy the teaching aspect of it and and I still enjoy training. So that's why people see me train and they see me doing really well and they're like, "Oh, you should when are you why are you not competing?" And it's like, "I didn't stop competing because I couldn't." It's because I didn't want to anymore. And I've talked about this before, but competing is about proving. You need to have something to prove in order to want to fight for it. And that doesn't exist for me anymore. I don't feel like I have anything to prove. So, there's nothing for me to gain out of competing other than money, which I don't really need. Like the Now, I I won't lie completely. If someone said, "Hey, we'll pay you 100 grand to do a super fight." He got my attention. >> [laughter] >> you can put me with a with somebody and I'll grapple them. It's not but short of that it's like I don't really it's not really going to do anything for me, you know. Uh and even then it's still going to it's still going to take some motivating for me to get in there. Uh so yeah there's a difference between training for fun and training for competition that I I see some people that train for competitions like I train when I'm injured or when I was injured to say so that could be the other thing is that my idea of training for competition is very rigorous very intense and it's a huge investment of time mental energy uh a lot of sacrifice. So, it has to be worth it. And if my heart is not in it, it's not something that I'm passionate about because I don't have anything to prove, then it has to be something financially that's going to be very lucrative, which realistically wouldn't be the case. Like I said, one, it would have to be a very high payday. And then two, like why would you be paying somebody who hasn't competed in 13 years a high payday? It doesn't make sense. So, uh it it's not something and I I I guess I'll keep getting asked this, but I just I I feel like if you're stuck doing the same thing, competing for decades, it's kind of weird. I don't know. But then again, I see someone like Lovado and it's super impressive him beating Bodoni who's in his prime two-time ACC champion guys, another specimen and was able to beat him soundly, you know, and 42 or whatever. Very impressive. Had some like great staying power that he has. So, I know some of the other older guys like Cyborg and Vagnner, well, those three were all silver medalists at the last ADC. Kind of funny now you think about Silver Gray, right? [laughter] Fitting, but uh all those dudes are studs and I guess they're still going at it. But I feel like at a certain point you got to like, okay, my time's done, you know? Uh but then again, if he's 50some and he's still beating Bodonis, you know, then I guess your time isn't done. Maybe you you want to write more to your story. But I I think like they're still chasing golds, you know? Uh and I mean they were close. They got to the silver. So it's hard to fault them for wanting to stay in there. They feel like they're just about getting that they're almost there. And like I said, grappling at least you're not really suffering any head trauma. None of these guys when they've lost were injured or whatnot. So safer sport to play in an older age. But yeah, at least that's my take on it anyways. Uh, I just still enjoy this just for training. It's fun to me. I'm still learning things. I like passing on things. Often when I train with somebody, I'll be sharing with them something I did to them so that they can learn from it. And I spread the knowledge going forward. Obviously with you guys, I'm always trying to share as much as I can. Um, you know, now we're I think it's been two years since I started the website. Uh, I think I started in in October, November. So, yeah, we're definitely over two years and I've kept my schedule of posting six days a week because you guys know on Sundays it's just a recap, but still six days a week posting. It does take some a good amount of effort to get all the content in there, but uh seems like you guys have been enjoying it. So far, everybody has left a fivestar review on the website, so that's that's great to see. Uh I have been posting just about one new course every month. I I'm going to try to pick that up a little bit, but it's uh not always easy to get the courses in. I'm trying to figure out, you know, what things I should share. I I try to do things that I'm working on at the moment. And sometimes that's a little harder for me because I'm so single-minded that I'll just be focusing on one thing for months. Uh but I still try to crank out at least one course a month. Uh and that's remained true for the past few months. Although some months I I turn out more and some months I I put put less. But in any case, I hope you guys have been enjoying this journey of mine and uh that's all I have for you for today. I'll catch you next week. And are we still Oh, I think we have one more episode before the end of the year. But I wish you all a merry Christmas.