BTG 74 - Strike while the Iron is hot

Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. I'm going to go a little bit into the UFC, not too much. Uh, we have UFC 298. And again, spoiler alerts, if you haven't watched it yet, you might want to tune into this after, all right? Because I'm going to ruin the best fights in the card. Uh so going right into it, the main event you had uh Vulcganowski uh with Topia or Toporia, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Uh and and somewhat a shocking development. Toparia wins by knockout in round two. He was ahead on the cards to most of the commentators that I was uh reading from. So, uh, pretty amazing a performance by him. He's undefeated. Takes out Vulk who was defending his title for the sixth time. But there is a undertone here because again, I'm going to spoil all the fights right now. So again, the second warning here. What was interesting about this was before this fight, there were 12 fights in UFC 298 and all the favorites had won. So it was 11 and0 for the favorites. So the bookies were having a great night, but Vulk was the final fight and he was the favorite. Ended up ruining the streak. So some people I'm sure had a crazy parlay which is all favorites down the card and they were about to go crazy and Paul now at the end of the rope someone probably literally because they they ruined the parlay, right? But uh he also joined an interesting stat which is for fighters that are over 35 35 and over that are fighting for the title or defending a title are 1 and 22 in the UFC. Not a great statistic. Uh and again there's another caveat for the weight classes 170 pounds and under. Now, I think that's an important uh distinction because when you're smaller, speed, reaction time, all that stuff uh factor in a lot more heavily. And I think that is why that stat was uh cut off that way because we've already seen guys like Randy Couture well into their 40s. Uh Glover Tasheda, there's quite a few of them. Uh I think Anderson Silva was in his past 35 as well. Uh still being very successful at a later age, but for 170 and under, it's clearly not a good sign to continue past 35. And unfortunately, Vulk just turned 35. So, uh, there was some, uh, mention of this and he played into it a bit, which I think is another issue as far as he he did a whole bit which was hilarious where he dawned an old man costume, had an apartment set up like it was an old man's house and he was like pretending he would fall asleep during interview, you know, it was a whole it was a commercial I think for a gambling company, whatever. But it was very funny. But and he even went to the press conference in the same persona and faked falling asleep while Tupor was talking, right? So obviously very entertaining for the fans and it's funny. However, I feel there's a a bit lost when you start putting in time into these little like antics. I'm not sure. Like for me, I I would I never dabbled in it. I wouldn't even consider it. I think it's wasting my mental focus on getting prepared for the fight and taking this very seriously. But uh he had, you know, those little shenanigans going on. He also had u on his walk out uh Mark Zuckerberg walk out as part of his corner team. Right. So, these are all things to me which is like you're focusing on things outside of the fight and putting a particular amount of investment into it. Like, okay, I'm going to let Zuckerberg walk out because I'm probably getting paid or I'm getting some, you know, back scratching at some point, so I'm going to let him come. I'm going to put a lot into his advertisements and stuff like that. um and the marketing of your persona, if you will, versus taking the fight much more seriously. And I know there's always going to be a case of somebody who's who's done it well and uh I just don't know. I think it's better if you focus on your fight. Like if I have a fighter, I don't want them doing uh talk show gimmicks and you know, other things where they're going to get distracted about what's important like that. You're fighting because you're you're you're trying to prove something to yourself that you're the best fighter in the world and you're putting everything behind it versus I'm fighting as a vehicle to become famous and to get rich. So, when I have direct routes to doing that, I'm going to take that and try to do the fight thing at the same time, right? I I don't think you're you're not going to be able to put everything in one basket, right? Um I mean, you're not going to be able to split everything into multiple baskets and still have the same results, right? Obviously, if you want to be famous, it's better to put everything in fame. And if you want to be the best fighter, you should be put everything into fighting. when you start focusing on these side hustles, I think it takes away from the main hustle. Uh, as an example to me is a guy like Craig Jones who phenomenal grappler, but he does so many things uh, entertainment wise that I think it takes focus from becoming the best grappler in the world. And not, you know, shedding on him or anything. He's obviously done quite well. He's made himself like probably in the grappling world the second, again, ironically, the second most famous grappler in the world, right, underneath Gordon Ryan. Uh, and, uh, he's he's probably made more money than most grapplers ever will. So, I mean, from a career standpoint, he's done amazing. And maybe that's all he wanted. And well, he's he's done it. For me, when I was competing, my goal was to be the best competitor. And everything was about that. I didn't care about all the other stuff. I just wanted to prove it to myself. So, I feel if you're a serious competitor, you should be weary of jumping into all these different things, you know? Um cuz it it it's going to take some juice out of you whether you like it or not. The reality is you're going to have to put some time into, oh, I'm gonna start a podcast and then I'm going to do these silly uh, you know, antics or whatnot. And yes, you're you're going to make yourself famous. You're you're going to be doing a good job of marketing yourself and getting yourself some opportunities. I'm not saying you can't do any of it, but just be careful of how much you do, right? Because I feel like at a certain point, you're going to lose focus on what's important, right? Uh especially if you're someone like Craig who's done so well like his little gimmicks and his little things are hilarious. I mean, you know, I follow him on Instagram. He's super funny. But uh I think he loses uh some steam towards competing. And it's hard to know with him if how serious he is on one thing or not. Like on other things he seems like he doesn't care, which might be true, right? And then I guess it doesn't matter what he's doing. But uh my point being if you want to be the best competitor in the world, you should be doing everything possible to be the best competitor in the world. Try to avoid the distractions and stay focused. It's a small short path for a combat athlete, right? Like we said now, like if you're 170 pounds, they're saying 35 is a cut off, right? So I mean not a lot of time. You might think if you're 18 years old, like, oh, 35, that's such a long time. I got like 17 years. It goes like this, right? Uh, so I would put all my focus in while you can and and get it out of your system early. But I I've talked about this before also. You know, marketing is obviously important. If you have zero juice behind you, you're probably not going to get the big opportunities, right? So, and for example, if you're fighting the UFC, you have to do press conferences. You have to, you know, there's obligations that they make you do, right? Uh, and part of it is because they want to build your persona so that you become more marketable, more people want to tune in, buy the pay-per-view, buy your merch, all that stuff. So, yes, you have to have some type of charisma and flare. I'm just saying um keep the focus on being the best, right? It's easy if you came from nothing and then you start getting all these opportunities like, "Oh, I can go hang out with celebrities. I can I can be with Mark Zuckerberg, like one of the most profitable men in the world, you know, and you start losing the focus of what you came in there originally, right?" Like everybody at at some level, oh, I want to be famous. I want to be respected. that I want to be recognized. Yes. But when you start getting that very early before you've reached your ultimate goal, you might forget about that ultimate goal and you might start like, oh, you know, I can start hanging out with all these cool people now or I can start, you know, spending all this money on on trivial things instead of staying on track. So that's all I'm saying there. Um so that was with um in relation I got in this huge sidetrack here with with Bulk and Toporia. Now the other fight I wanted to talk about which is somewhat similar. You have um Henry Cejudo versus Morab. I'm not going to try to pronounce his last name. Deval should be whatever. All right. Um and again another spoiler here. Morab wins United's decision. Uh he outwrestled uh Henry at one point, took him on his shoulders, walked him around the cage, and then dumped him. It's clear that uh Morab is the real deal. Pacing is incredible and that he was able to to break Henry. And now some people like, oh, you know, now Henry is done, right? Like he's over. And uh I don't know about that. But there is something to be said about Henry's career path. Right. And this will get to me to what I would be the topic of the day, which is striking while the iron's hot. Now, so Hudo, he retired very early. he got to like double champ status uh and then decided that uh you know I'm gonna sit out until I get a big payday. And it reminds me of what Fedor did where I don't think Fedor was the guy the brains of that operation as far as his career. But if you're not familiar with him, Fedor Ameno, pride MMA legend, dominated everybody in Pride. And I believe he was kind of like uh Jon Jones where he only had one loss, which was like a cut that he had that they stopped the fight from a doctor stoppage, but other than that was just smashing everybody in the Pride circuit. But then I when Pride started to fall apart, they were trying to make a co-promotion where they his management team who I think had stake in uh another Russian league M1 wanted UFC to do like a co-event where it would be like M1 versus UFC with Fedor representing M1 then trying to build up that promotion and then that never worked out because UFC was never going to share any juice with another league. They did it once with Pride. They did that crossover event and it worked out horribly for them because they sent Chuck Liddell and Chuck Leel ended up getting smashed by Rampage. I think that left a sour taste in their mouth as it gave a lot of legitimacy to Pride saying, "Oh, we have the best fighters, right?" So, uh I I don't think after that foray into like co-promotions, UFC found any value because the UFC was essentially bringing all the eyeballs. So, why would they share it with another league? Didn't make sense. And I get that. And Fedor's people were trying to bargain and they left him on the shelf for so long trying to get this big money payday that never came that when he finally went to crossover and started fighting for like Bellator, he was way past his prime. He hadn't competed in many years and he started taking losses that honestly me and like many other fans of his didn't think he would have ever suffered at his prime but waited too long right to get that big money that never came and then he still had fighting in him so he went and then it didn't work out well right so like uh the casual American fans and UFC that see Fedor don't think much of him right but if you watch him in his prime during the pride era you know like he was was a smashing machine. He was he was leg he was amazing fighter, right? Especially at the heavyweight class, he fought some monsters and and dispatched them. Cejudo kind of could have done the same thing to himself, which is that he put himself on the shelf saying, "Oh, you know, I'm not going to come back unless I get some big fight." And started talking a lot and started training other people. And if he would have just retired early and then decided, "Oh, I'm just going to go the coaching path." and you know market myself like that then yeah you know that's fine that's his choice but if this was like a ploy to try to bring himself back in um for a bigger payday then I would say yeah you definitely messed up right again like I we talked about in the in the beginning your athletic lifespan as a combat athlete is very short so if you're going to dip in to your late 30s or even your mid-30s to try to make a comeback back, you're putting yourself at a huge disadvantage, right? Like it doesn't make sense. You need to keep on the fighting hustle the whole time. And even if you're training and, you know, and you're doing everything in training, competition is different than training. So being rusty for a few years, you know, and then trying to come back in later is going to be at a a significant disadvantage, especially when you're fighting somebody who's sharp, who's on their game, who's young, and is full of piss and vinegar. Someone like Marab, you're at a major disadvantage both physically and mentally. This is why I said you got to strike with the iron's hot, right? When you are on the top of the world and you're hungry and you're you want to get after everything, that's not the time to put the brakes and say, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to take a a little hiatus." You got to keep going because if you let that steel cool, it's going to be a lot harder to try to form that metal. Right? You you need to keep striking at that top point, right? Only if something's coming off the rails or your goals shift where like, you know what, maybe I achieved it. Maybe I just wanted to be a double champ, triple champ, whatever, and that was it. Okay, then you call it quits. That's it. That's the end of the the gig. But if you're having this type of plan where I'm like, okay, I'm going to step out for like 5 years and I'm going to come back in, man, that that's hard to execute. The only guy I can think of in MMA that's done that was GSP. And also not 170. He did it at 185, right? So remember that 35 year old cutoff he wasn't in that bracket because that was for 170 and under right uh he did it up right and uh again that was a legendary thing which is why many of us consider GSP to be the greatest of all time right he's his early losses which was funny I didn't realize were both to Matts right Matt Matt Hughes and Matt Sarah Uh he both he avenged them both and then went on to win just about every other fight. Yes, some really tough fights, some close decisions, but he won them all and was able to come back and win again. So again, that is very rare. And again, another guy who never stopped training, right? But even still, like I said, it's one thing you train for life because GSP is a martial artist. He's always going to train as as long as he can, right? But he wasn't competing. So that makes it trickier, right? To to have that much ring rust and still come out and perform nonetheless showing up for a title fight, you know, with all that ring rust. So super impressive. So I wouldn't again I think with Cejudo I think he kind of goofed up on that right when he was at the top of the world he should have if he wanted to keep in the fight game I would have stayed fighting right maybe slow down this the schedule right instead of fighting like three times a year maybe fight once a year or twice a year but like keep on the grind to back away completely man like but it's so common in fighting someone goes oh I retire and then they go, "Oh, I'm back." And then, "Oh, I'm retired again." It's like, just make up your mind, right? Uh I get some of it. I think for him it was like a negotiating tactic to say that kind of like uh McGregor and like you honestly I think if McGregor comes back, if he does, he's probably going to lose for the same reason. He's busy chasing other things. He's got movies now, you know? He's I mean, the guy is a businessman, right? So maybe he doesn't care if we lose the game because he's going to make a fortune. And then I guess that's fine, right? As long as you're happy with the outcomes and and you're they're aligned with your goals. But if you're trying to be the best competitor in the world, stepping out, stepping back in, stepping out like no, just you stay in until you achieve all your goals or you run out of time and you have to, you know, you have to shift, right? But other than that, making these like in-n-outs, right? Like I never even announced like I retired because I'm like I don't know if I'm going to come back and obviously I'm not at this point but I never wanted to have a door closed and then decide I'm going to come back in. If I'm going to step out I'll I'll step out, right? Um so I feel like it's particularly with fighters when they do it in the cage. It's to me it's somewhat cringy because you're very emotional, you're worked up. So, if you take a loss, it's very easy to say, "Oh, I'm done, right? I'm out." And if you're thinking about retiring before you're going to fight, I also think it's a little it's a little bit uh perilous because your mind's already on the way out. I feel like you want to make that decision outside of a of the fight, right? Like, I'm not going to be deciding I'm going to retire before my last fight. I I think that's silly. I think I fight and then after the fight I'm like, you know what? I'm happy with myself. I'm done, right? And then I got to announce my retirement later. I don't need to announce it in the cage, right? I think having that in your head is going to be working against you, right? So, the only thing you should be thinking about before a fight is the fight, right? Not what I'm going to do after the fight. It's it's the fight itself. we're not looking past uh the thing that we're working on, right? Because then you're not showing it the respect it needs. But if I'm thinking, okay, after this fight, I'm going to retire and then I'm going to launch a new business brand and I'm like, then I'm not focusing on the fight. I'm focusing on my retirement. And that's the wrong picture altogether. Right? So, see with both of these things I was talking about these topics, it's the it's your focus that matters, right? You have to be focused. If you're focusing on chasing fame or chasing money or chasing women or whatever, you're not going to be focused on fighting. And if you're thinking, I'm gonna step out of it for a second and then try to draw more attention to myself or make the the big boss demand that I come back in by paying me even more money. Like, you're losing the focus. The focus was being the best, right? All these other things are nice and we and of course we desire them to some extent. I want to obviously be rich. I want to be respected and famous and all that. But like ultimately it should be about the fighting. Like at least for me, I was fighting. I was paying to fight when I started, right? Uh and a lot of fights were free. So it didn't matter to me if there was a payday or there was fame. I was doing it for myself. And I think this is something that's lost on some of the the fighters coming in because now they see there's money in there. They see there's fame in there and there's uh all sorts of perks that didn't exist before and maybe they came into fighting for the perks, right? Uh these are the people I would call athletes. Whereas if you're a warrior, you're going in there for the pride, right? you enjoy the fight itself and you you welcome all the perks that come with it, but even if they weren't there, you would still be doing this because this is in in your heart. This is what you want. Uh, and there's fewer and fewer of those people nowadays, I think. And makes me a little sad. I like seeing the hardcore guys that would just absolutely annihilate themselves or anybody in front of them simply because it was in their heart to do it. So that's my take on it. I don't know what you guys think. Maybe I'm a little loopy or a little crazy, but I feel that fighting should be something that you want to do regardless of whether there's a prize or not. the prize just makes it more interesting and makes it a career path, right? Whereas before this was just like a hobby or something you did because it was a passion project, but like you weren't you didn't expect to make any money out of this. you just want to do it because you enjoyed it and you know you tie things together like mo the old school guys like myself we had to start a school and then start teaching and then you know the side hustle of actually competing kind of helped with the school a little bit and the school is what kept you afloat right or if you sell DVDs and instructionals stuff like that but the actual competing wasn't seen as oh this is going to be what makes me rich like at least when I started that wasn't even an option right like the UFC sees in the beginning only paid 65 grand and uh that was if he won first place in a 16-man tournament all fun the same day right not a great outlook right so uh and ACC for grapplers back in the day was 10 grand for first place right uh that happened once every two years so again you're not going to make a living off of that right so it wasn't the design I was competing because I had something to prove to myself right I I wanted to prove I was the and the the money didn't matter. It wasn't like, oh, I'm putting everything on winning first place, like for what, 10 grand? Because a lot easier ways to make 10 grand, right? Right. So, um, now that there's a lot more money in these sports, you can see that you can get swayed by, oh, you know, I just want to make money and be famous, and by being in this sport, I can do that. Now, being the best is not necessarily important. I can still be rich and famous without being the best. I I just need to be active. And to me, that's I don't like that, right? Uh I want guys who are in there for blood, who are in there to to win it all, to prove that they're the best. I think those are the most interesting people to watch fight because they fight with their heart. That's my take on it. Let you you guys can let me know what you think about it in the comments. Uh, thanks for tuning in and I'll see you on the next