Joe Rogan & John Danaher on Georges St-Pierre

the gyro can experience now when you work as a coach for George you weren't just working as a jiu-jitsu coach you were working in almost like a mastermind sort of a position you I mean I saw some conversations that you had with him where you discussed various things and in fact one of the things you came to me about was you asked me if I knew anyone who was proficient at the spinning back kick and that's how I got to working with George you're you're you're coaching with him was not just simply like the these are the principles of jiu-jitsu this is what I want you to work on when the fight goes to the ground you were working on a lot of different aspects like you're a guy that sort of put it together now when you don't have a background in striking and you know you or you're looking at all of these various disciplines and trying to formulate a strategy for a guy who's just such a supreme athlete like George how did you how did you formulate that did you do it based on the individual based on their physical strengths and limitations and sort of formulate what you think would be the best approach did you work it out with him in conjunction the wooden when George comes to train with me there's a bunch of considerations first of all George lives in Montreal I live in New York so time is always an issue well he does go down it goes down a bit quite often but but it's not like a squad the squad seven days a week three times a day George was never like that so in the time available we'll work on on what we can so everything's always done with Georgian okay how much time is available and what is the scenario that's coming up for George almost always it was an upcoming mixed martial arts fight okay so a lot of people often ask me say you know how come he didn't teach teach Georgie and PLA clogs well why wasn't he leg locking everyone in MMA oh that's a good question first off leg locking as you saw from the Gordon Ryan clip requires if it's not done well leg locking is one of those things where if it's done well it's amazing but if it's done badly it's the worst looking thing in the world a disaster so secondly Georgia's game because his takedowns are so strong it's almost always done from top position on the ground it's rare for George to be in bottom position on the ground and in a fight situation if you're already on top of someone and you've got the striking prowess of Georgia champion I was happy to to coach him more and what we call a grapple boxing this the the skill of grappling - punching on the ground I've just made more sense for him he's competent in leg locking but he's not like Garrett on Eddie coming so Gordon Ryan he could he finished most lack balance here absolutely but why would you stake a fight with literally millions of dollars I mean for these a legacy on the line why would you take that risk when you could just stay on time to punch him out if you did would say John fetch for example you know right so it didn't really make sense to push that hard on George your question though was okay what about these other skills what about standing position well I'm fascinated not just about you just about my martial arts in general and I've always believed all the various sport martial arts in the world have areas where they are particularly strong for example I've always people make fun of Taekwondo you know there are you don't want to talk with our enemy you'll back me up on this joke there were some Taekwondo players out there at Olympic level who can kick with a skill level that most people can't even imagine I've seen people like her Perez kicking demonstrations where if you're looking at this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in my life and this is the guy who if he hits you is gonna take your head off it's impressive too but I was there when her Perez was in his prime I watched him ko quite a few people I watched him ko one of the u.s. national champions with an axe kick some of the worst chaos have ever seen in my life came from Taekwondo hmm like they tend to involve like jump spinning kicks with his just huge amounts of kinetic energy but you know you see the same second point fighting karate see some terrible knockout some point fighting people make fun of these sports like do well on their own is the issue that's the issue that's huge on their own they've got problems but if you can integrate that to a well-developed complete skill set they could be incredibly effective and I always saw tremendous potential for Taekwondo x' jump spinning banking then no one does spinning back-kick is better than taekwondo yeah that's one of the main things and they do it incredibly well the setups are fantastic the application the mechanics everything's super impressive so I always thought that would be a you know George had a good spinning back-kick but I thought that would be a nice addition you always want to be building new skills into a pond you know you don't want to be that predictable guy where everyone knows what you're doing and and I know you came from a Taekwondo backgrounds and so I thought that'd be interesting for you to work on with him well it was a funny conversation because that was my specialty yes and so when you brought in I always wanted to talk to you I was found you a fascinating guy so when he came up to me and you said do you know anyone it's almost like a trick question it was a tricky one besides joy what I said I was like I was hesitant I was like okay you're not gonna believe this but the truth is I knew you had a good jump swing pancake I was trying to subtly did you know yeah how did you know would gets around town okay I thought you were just [ __ ] with me I mean I but I felt like when I was telling you like man I don't even want it I wish I knew someone who did it as well as me you should have just been like yeah I got the base jump spinning back you can [ __ ] not really I did jump spinning back-kick quite a bit but I prefer a regular spinning back yeah I want my foot on the ground because I just shot that good yeah there's a significant amount of force in the left leg forcing pushing off that back interestingly you've seen some some guys out there now having good success in MMA yeah same back because I've never seen Michael page had a beautiful one he's got everything that guy very impressive he's another guy who came from that point fighting background wins you know you see Raymond Daniels and him and a lot of these guys from that background but Raymond Daniels worked with George for his last two fights very very impressive got phenomenal yeah and and again it's he had just the point fighting skills and now he's developing real boxing skills and he's you know you've seen him in Bellator kickbox you know you see you see the integration of the two it's and phenomenal I mean he could just do things physically that most kickboxer just really don't know what he's doing you know he'll he'll jump up and do what's called like a touch spinning back-kick like he'll jump up and touch you with the front leg yes I saw that he hit it and a glory fine I believe yes and yeah he's phenomenal he's phenomenal but again when you see that it's like those things by themselves you're just gonna get taken to the ground and smashed and most people it's unless you land one of those catastrophic spinning back-kick right away the odds are you you need all those other things as well in order to be particularly effective which is why George was such a jerk George you get away with anything yeah yeah but that was a that was a fun moment it was interesting because like I've always wanted to like show somebody this it's because it's a weird little thing that I know how to do going back to your original question the idea of George and shoot box you'll see that George's entire methodology and the standing magician is built around the concept of a dilemma the dilemma is always between his jab and his takedown people always talk about proactive and reactive takedowns okay this guy's a reactive to discuss a proactive takedown guy the thing about George is he would use his jab proactively but he would use his takedowns reactively now that's interesting because George would literally provoke people you're saying let's sit down I just want to point this out past tense you're saying this like you know something I don't know no it's George just won the middleweight title relinquish the title and then the great speculation is will George fight again yeah the truth is that no one knows because comes down to medical problems Georgia is a it's got a problem in his stomach and it's like colitis yeah and what what is that exactly it's I'm not gonna claim to be a medical expert but it's one of the most frustrating things the Georgia's had to deal with where there are certain parts of the human body that is out of your control and the stomach is one of them just things happen in your stomach you can't control it things like stress seem to make it worse and the truth is that no one really knows at this point so wherever this doubt my instinct is to think well you really want to come back George you've done all this and what a great way to cap off career - it was amazing was in grace and I gotta tell you when he came back this is what was really interesting about that fight George had said I'm better I'm a better martial artist than I was before and he looked better yeah I mean he definitely looked like he was a little out of competition like there was a mole for years he should how many fighters you know came back after a four-year layoff very few but skilled wise he looked phenomenal I mean his striking looked incredibly smooth and I think you could see it in Bisping's face like pretty early on him like this guy is this is not a rusty George st. Pierre it's not a small welterweight who's you know making his way in a middle way he looked huge he looked phenomenal his technique the way he was landing leg kicks and his sharp jab and then ultimately that left hand that he used to stun Bisping and get him on the ground I mean he looks sensational yes you were there the night George went into his first retirement and you'll recall the whole retirement thing was kind of the speech was vague it wasn't yeah it was confusing and because he didn't in truth he didn't know if he wanted to retire the whole thing was actually contrived in the Octagon right there in front of you I would been a hard fight took training camp hadn't been the best game though the five for Hendricks was George was unclear if he wanted to fight at all there's all kinds of controversies involved in the fight and then when the fight was over it was it was a very close fight and he wasn't sure he wanted to do it was a language miscommunication and ultimately he essentially he walked away from the game and he walked away for four years that's a long time to be out of a sport that as young as in Maine which is evolving all the time every year the sport changes and the bells tend to change hands very very quickly so when George started talking to me about the idea of okay I want to come back I think I've still got convey I want to come back this a desire passion my point to him was first off you sure you really want to do this like you know the last two five camps stuff you didn't seem to have the same kind of drives he used to have he's sure you want to do this is this like a middle-age fantasy he's going through here and he said no no I feel this I want to come back so my question to him was if you're gonna come back are you just gonna do the same thing you just gonna come back to welterweight and do what you always did which is come out and beat the bass welterweights and just hold the title it's gonna be doing the same thing I thought if you're gonna come back let's do something significant something you haven't done before and so the way I put it to him was what are the three most persistent criticisms you always hear about George st. Pierre number one he never fought up a weight class he never went up number two you fought so tactically sound was such an emphasis on strategy and techniques or what have you that mattress could become dull that the average fan was like well yeah he's winning easily installment but doesn't do it for it's not exciting no drama and the fights conk on so he had this idea that on one hand he was very technically sound strategically deep but the fights weren't as exciting as they ought to be the idea that he'd never gone up a way category in the third most persistent Kris and we didn't finish fights okay he was a very skilled fighter it wasn't finishing fights so my point is okay if you're gonna come back let's do it in a way where you address those three things okay George's is always concerned about its legacy as a fighter and if there were three persistent criticisms of George ATPase legacy it's those three things you're not finishing fights you never went up a weight class and you're to tactical okay you know you're not providing the drama that a fight should so I said let's change things we got in there four years previous to that whenever I was training George I was training him for a fight he was not with fights fighting Nick Diaz is finding Carlos Carlos fine you know whoever and it was always getting him ready for a fight you fighting Matthews in two months let's get ready now you're a tired I'm not gonna train you to fight some dude I'm gonna train you and Jitsu Freddie Roach is gonna train you in boxing in this sense we could say we hit the time now to start working on finishing skills a significant change occurred where my primary emphasis in training George in that four-year layoff was in submissions now happily that happened at what time the timer squad was coming out so I had a group of some of the best submission peoples in the world for George to work with so his submission started getting better suddenly George st. Pierre he got on your back is a problem he's submitting people in the gym I could run off some names I won't do it cuz it's not the thing to do but I could run off some names of people he submitted in the gym they would shock you like well-known jujitsu people and for the first time he's our primary versus wasn't on gravel-walk scene it was a submission Freddie Roach was working on with on the mechanics of punching George always had good in our movement he always had I get karate movement the the ability he always had a strong jab but now he's teaching him how to sit on a punch suddenly George had a left hook a guy who can integrate left left hand between jab and leave took that's a dangerous man everyone was worried you know there's so much overreaction to George's jab this suddenly left hook opportunities worked you know but now he was sitting on that left talking people getting hurt so now for the first time you got a guy who's got submissions and he's heading worth of genuine power as he came back there was a question of who's gonna be the opponent and the next thing I say it is well you never went up a weight division go up to 85 now was any consideration about going up to 85 because the fact that Bisping was the champion no George was trained with his pitch that decision was made before Bisping was the champion real him how far in advance was a decision made because Bisping a defendant against Henderson remember this is one against Rocco year project okay I just know during initially initially I couldn't make that decision because another student of mine Chris Klieman was the 185 pound champion and Chris and George would never fight each other but once that was no longer an issue then was like hey this this could work this could be interesting so D during the entire four years he was talking about eventually coming not the entire four years no okay but he was training the whole time mm-hmm and I was pushing him okay you don't fight anymore let's do some submission grappling right okay he stuck with Freddie Roach he loves working with Freddie Roach and so the training was was going in different direction who is this Muay Thai coach mostly he works at for us a hobby in trice now but that's more integrated mmm for us is a black belt of mind so he often does jiu-jitsu was for us we had I teach for us and trust that does a good job there but for us ties things together that's his principal function and I know he trained with film nurse for a while as well yeah then he trained with a lot of guys who came out of Thailand itself from Tiger muy Thai Yod that's a shortening of his actual name they all have very long names but Yad was one of his trainers they trained him prior to Condit and Diaz did a fine job so there's never been a shortage of coaches in his life but there are certain things that seemed to gel with them more than others interestingly during that four-year period George had a strong rebirth into karate and worked with a lot of specialized karate people including Raymond Daniel's and others they came from the mostly from the European point fighting karate circuit and he was working with them a lot and so summer the they crossed a certain period of time where you're dealing with a different athlete now this guy's had four years off and in the trainee had gone in different directions his finishing skills in both fisticuffs and grappling had gotten considerably better he was toying with the idea of going up to 85 and experimenting with diet that Sarah to get his body weight up that's never an easy thing to do and tactically he was working more that got on the idea have been an exciting fighter through movement and pushing harder for the finish and and I thought those were three very very healthy directions to go and and this would as it were if he did come back this would be offer a genuine opportunity to address the three most persistent criticism are of his career initially there was a lot of resistance from the USC I don't think they were fond of the idea at all they wanted him to go to 170 and and do what he had done and but George pushed hard for the for the fighter 85 and ultimately it happened in a rather strange way tyron woodley had a fight at 171 wasn't the most crowd-pleasing fight and George st. Pierre was supposed to find tyron woodley and then the US is you know what fibers mean it's on so they we chose the Madison Square Garden that's one of the great fight capitals of the world and that's how it happened so there was consideration in fighting 170 yes and so this was the UFC's idea but what about your plan for I thought first of all I'm not the matchmaker I'm not that the main policy maker I don't want to say that I was the guy I was the guy that suggested those ideas and George seems to like the idea he said if I'm gonna come back if I gotta take the risk of a four year layoff and company it's a big risk yeah I mean Mohammed Ali came back after three years and had to warm up fights and still lost his title fight yeah but Muhammad Ali really wasn't working out yeah that was that was when the Vietnam War thing it happens mostly doing tours if college game wasn't real just working out the whole time and improving you'd see the difference in Muhammad Ali's body when he came back but still there's many other examples like Sugar Ray Leonard came back after layoffs he had one successful and one very unsuccessful yeah I'm back and he was working hard the whole time so coming back is it it's a hard it's a tricky tricky thing yeah on many levels too not just physical but also psychological so now this colitis thing is throwing a monkey wrench into the errors yeah actually it threw a monkey wrench during the camp really yeah I could tell you some stories about that that camp was as good as the four years was the camp itself I can say it now because it's over was a disaster it's be the worst camp I've ever been involved in really I was coaching of course the squad for a DCC so a DCC I believe was around six weeks before George's fine so I was in Finland and communicating with George and he's like feeling good let's get the moment I get back I was cooking on a plane from Finland to Montreal and start the camp George sees a me I've got stomach issues and I was like what do you mean stomach issues what does that even mean now [Music] about two weeks into the camp the issues got so bad that George literally could not no this is a six-week fight camp it's a very short camp back in the day we used to do eight to twelve weeks but George thought a shorter camp would be better he is getting older he wanted to short again first two weeks were okay but I was in the aftermath of the Finland expedition even when I first went up George said I got a cancel okay I can't train my fines for weeks away and George took two weeks off it was a critical moment on a Friday evening where I said to Faraz a hobby this is the second time I've had to say this too for us I'll be the other was the carlos condit camp I said if George isn't training by Monday we're gonna pull the plug there's no other way everybody talking at a four-year layoff and this camp just lost it's dead in the water so four weeks out he takes two weeks off I I believe it might mean five check the dates later but I'm very close there was a critical two-week period during that two weeks what is he able to do essentially nothing nothing yeah just no training light drilling some movement and he was it occurred the worst possible time it wasn't at the start of the game was in the middle of the camp so that the first two weeks were lost because then we had two weeks of inactivity then his two weeks left and I remember the first time I went up I brought Jake Shields Gary Turner and Gordon Ryan with me and we came up and we went through some drills on the ground and I was happy you know George looked okay on the ground he did fine against the score guys and we worked on some specialized grappling stuff and in the next day he went to a shoe box workout now I could sit here all day and tell you Adventures of George st. Pierre doing shoe box training with people I've seen him spa everybody okay I'm not gonna mention names but I've seen George st. Pierre take down effortlessly some of the biggest names in mixed martial arts in weight divisions far above of his own so many times per round you just lose count I get I I'm afraid to even tell you the stories because people wouldn't believe me I'm used to seeing George st. Pierre shoot boxing Babette bangs down right again I've seen that since the side of his career I watched your Saint Pierre to a shoe box workout where he couldn't score a takedown this is a fights two weeks away I'm just looking going like holy hick what is this he's getting hit he's getting frustrated he's getting tired and I said too for us you know this is this is a crisis this is one of the biggest ufc's of the year it's Madison Square Garden he's the headline the USC had to pull some big things to get this fight to happen they didn't originally didn't want it if we pull out now it's gonna look like a disaster it's kind of great George let the USC down and to his everlasting credit George said I'll be back on Monday and I'll be better we went up and he is he dug in deep what can I tell you he's a trooper he he trained every day those last two weeks and as each day went by there was significant improvement and I remember it was a distinct moment about five days before the end of the camp I saw him do a shoe box workout and he looked like the old George I was okay I believe in this kid again you can do it Jamie will you please google colitis I don't know enough I believe what the Google ulcerative colitis yeah I don't know it so it's something to do with stomach ulcers I'm not gonna claim to be an expert yeah I can tell you what the symptoms were it's extreme stomach pain and inability to eat it screwed up his entire diet and when does it start it started early in the camp and got progressively worse and then before the camp there was no issues ulcerative colitis is usually only in innermost lining of the large intestine colon and rectum forms range from mild to severe having ulcerative colitis puts a patient at increase risk of developing colon cancer symptoms including rectal bleeding bloody diarrhea abdominal cramps and pain that sounds like a party yeah if you read the can you bring it back read the first fool treatment can help but this condition cannot be cured requires a medical diagnosis lab tests or imaging always required chronic can last for years or be life long it's incredibly frustrating for him to deal with and so the treatments include medications and surgery you know so it's a surgery but it appeared to back off a little bit in the last two weeks he came back he this is the kind of person George st. Pierre is the morning is a fight Saturday morning were in New York City in the hotel room for us a hobby Freddie Roach and myself are at the breakfast table George comes down for breakfast he's weighed in he looks at his breakfast he's originally the plan because it was a fight at 185 was to have George come in at a higher body weight but he ended up weighing 191 pounds which is exactly the same as he used to find it at welterweight the same body weight so that was kind of a disappointment you know and he quietly excused himself and went to the bathroom everyone else went away to do their things and I said then I realized he's in the bathroom for an hour he came out I was I George you okay and he looked at me said I'm fine Frank knew he wasn't and then he went out for word and then afterwards he told me I was in so much pain and he was afraid to tell me because he would worry that if I cornered him and I thought he was compromised I wouldn't corner him the way I normally would that I would doubt him so he kept it all inside I didn't say a word and he's a good kid you know you can't help but admire a kid like that Wow well that's what makes him a champion yeah it's one of the things that's in it's less than perfect conditions he could still rise to the occasion less than perfect it was a very far from perfect now you said that the Johnny Hendrix fight during the camp for that fight when he decided to impromptu retire inside the Octagon that there was talk during the camp that he didn't want to fight yeah what was that about I really centered around two things one I can just I can not discuss because it involves a personal life Joe Sam PA there were some things you're not in his personal life that deeply affected him and he was deeply unhappy with some circumstances in his personal life and it's not appropriate for me to talk about those and the second was the whole idea that had become an obsession with George at that time which was the use of anabolic steroids in mixed martial arts and he was deeply unhappy with what he perceived as the prevalence of the use of anabolic steroids in mixed martial arts as a whole and among his opponents in particular and he wanted a testing program to be bought in for that fight there was talk about it but nothing came of it and it became like this psychological obsession during the camp and between those two issues there was a lot of unhappiness he he came in he did a strain you know he's a professional athlete it's not like he missed workouts or anything crazy like there wasn't going out at night or anything foolish but there was a degree of unhappiness where I'm looking and thinking how much longer can this go on now there was some talk about the tyron woodley fight and then Tyron had this bad performance but if George did get healthy and was confident enough in his health that he could get through an actual training camp would he be interested in considering a fight with tyron woodley absolutely I think tyron woodley is a great champion I know he gets a lot of stick a lot of flack that kid is talented very good very very good and he doesn't think George wants to fight him he was on the podcast the other day I think people say that for reason so that they can motivate someone to fish or ladders there's there's a political aspect to it I think that both athletes have a deep respect for each other [Applause]

Channel: JRE Clips

Views: 1,732,355

Keywords: Joe Rogan, JRE, Joe Rogan Experience, JRE Clips, PowerfulJRE, Joe Rogan Fan Page, Joe Rogan Podcast, podcast, MMA, Joe Rogan MMA Show, UFC, comedy, comedian, stand up, funny, clip, favorite, best of, GSP, John Danaher, Georges St-Pierre, Tyron Woodley, Michael Bisping

Id: B8TR7k3M0qQ

Length: 30min 17sec (1817 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2018