[Interviewer]: Can anyone beat Mat Fraser? I believe it was Anthony Hopkins who once said, "What one man can do, another man can do. I'm gonna kill the fucking bear!" [Interviewer]: Can anyone beat Mat Fraser? I'll tell you what. No. I do not think so. He is proven to be so consistent across almost everything that we do in the sport. So, I think it's his to lose this year. [Sean Woodland]: And it is obvious, he is the dominant force in the sport right now. In fact, the last two years of the CrossFit Games, if you remember, he has had the title wrapped up before the final event even started. And the scary thing is that he seems to be getting better. Mat definitely can be beaten. No one can't be. But he's good. He doesn't leave points on the table. Yes. Someone can beat Mat Fraser. I don't know who it will be or if it will be this year, but he is human like the rest of us. I think he's beatable. Someone will beat him ... eventually. I think the person that's gonna be Mat Fraser is the one who's not gonna be thinking about it. And I think it could be me. [interviewer]: How do you beat Mat Fraser? Uh. Go back to the drawing board, work really, really freaking hard. No mistakes and a perfect weekend. You have to make the same kind of sacrifices that he does. You need to do a lot of things right in order to beat Mat Fraser. I think you have to be perfect. Zero flaws. Zero weaknesses. You have to be perfect, period. That's the only way. What one man can do, another man can do. "How do you beat Rich Froning?" Well, you wait 'til he retires and then you win the CrossFit Games. If I were programming for me to lose? I'm not gonna tell you that. [laughter] I'm not gonna share that to the world. What are you texting Dave right now? Day starts with: Sammy has breakfast ready. I have a cup of coffee. Take a little time for myself just to relax, you know, let the body loosen up a little bit. Yeah, thank you. Amazing, as usual. [Interviewer]: Do you cook all his meals? Mm-hmm, I do. Yeah. He eats a lot. It's fun. I like to cook, so it gives me an excuse to try new things. You can check out my entire diet at Feeding the Frasers. You gotta have good. light. So I stand there. She thought of the clever name "Feeding the Frasers." It kinda took off. Any time there's something delicious I see on Instagram, I'll screenshot it and send it to her. Sammy, what was it called? I showed you from Bill's page. Jumbalaya ... Paella! And then we had it that night. It was amazing. Red beans and rice. Steam fucks up my lens. There was two or three pieces of CrossFit equipment that I wanted in Vermont. And then Sammy packed her stool for "Feeding the Frasers" posts. Poor Mat. If I'm making something new and I need to photograph it, he's sitting there, salivating. I'm like, "All right. Just hold on one second. I just need to get the picture." So he's sitting there, I'm getting the picture, getting the picture and then I finally give it to him. So it's literally his plate, then put in front of him. The fantasy relationship that you see in sitcoms and, basically, what you aspire to have your relationship like— that's what I have. She's awesome. The best. Yeah, I have a track workout that is planned from Chris Henshaw. I have my strength programming that's specific days of the week that I do. But then, just generic couplets, triplets— I just grab ... just pull them from wherever. Yeah, so we'll go to the gym, be there for a couple hours, then we'll probably go to the track this evening and then I'll squat tonight. Got to know one of the guys in Cookeville that runs the Ford dealership. He was like, "Yeah, I think it's pretty good promotion." So they gave me a truck. And decaled it all out. [Interviewer]: Do you usually roll around with three guns in the back? There's four there.
- Oh. [laughs] The original plan was to do Tennessee for six months, have our residency there. We have a home there. And then just do summers up here. Packed up the truck. Sammy drove. I flew. But we're just here for the summer. 20 guns ago, I was like, "Okay, my collection's good. I'm content." Then you see something else and something else ... and it's just like another one, another one, another one. Now, at this point, I'm like, "Okay. I'm sure that I'll never be content or done collecting." Pure happiness. Yes. When I first got in the sport, I got into competing to make some pocket money. That was the only interest when I first started. I was a full-time college student. I didn't want to try and hold down a regular job with a schedule. So I hit a couple competitions and it's 500 bucks here, 1,000 bucks there. For a college student with no income, it adds up. But it was never meant to be a full-time job. I always planned on still going to work as an engineer at some point. I just figured I'll have a nice little nest egg started. I was working a desk job. I just remembered just sitting in a cubicle all day and just hating it. I think that was the summer going into the '14 Games. During that summer that I was like, "I don't want this for my life." I was like, "All right. I'm gonna make a run at this CrossFit thing." And I just pushed all the chips into the middle of the table. Three years ago, there was something detrimental that I placed in, like, the bottom five percent. And I think each year, those peaks and valleys have gotten a little bit closer and a little bit closer. So, I have to hammer those. So, you know the video of Spealler in the tennis stadium pushing the sled? [Games announcer]: Chris Spealler's now marching on to his final dog sled push. [Fraser]: And he has his shoulders on the uprights, and his head on the weights and he's pushing it. So I had that dream that I was doing that. And I kept pushing and pushing and couldn't push the sled. I wake up. My head is on the headboard. I'm bear-crawling into the headboard. All the blankets and sheets are pushed off the bed from me clawing at it. I woke up with a headache like, "What is happening? ... Oh, my god. I was doing that for real." Yep. [Interviewer]: Is it true that you-- ? Is it true that I-- ? [Interviewer]: I just heard this rumor that-- [Fraser]: "There's this rumor."
- You get super nervous before workouts at the Games and you ... - Puke? Yeah.
- Puke. Usually. You've never seen me do that?
- No. Oh, man. It's not pretty. Oh like, "[repeated dry heaving sounds]." They corral us 10-15 minutes before the event. So you're done warming up and you're just watching all your competitors warming up. And ... they're fit. They're ready to go. Like, "Oh, so-and-so's gonna smash this event." I'm imagining my worst case scenario happening and their best case scenario happening. You know, I've been in the situation before where I was ahead by a large margin. The guy in second place had a phenomenal performance, I had a catastrophic performance. And just in one event—boom. That 90- or 100-point lead is gone. You're no longer in first place. I've had it happen. In the corrals, going through, saying my things to myself, the dry heaves start happening. Trying to breathe deep. "Calm down!" Half the time, I end up throwing up. Dry heaving until I get out onto the competition floor. Take my shirt off. Puke into it, and just toss it. I'm just like, "All right. I hope no one saw that one." Yeah.
- Wow. There's a lot on the line with the Games. It's not like we have a competition every Saturday night and then like, "Oh, I had an off day yesterday or last week, and I can kind of make up for it now." No, it's like: we have one competition every year. So your entire year revolves around that. So when I'm there, I'm focusing on nothing else. The most time the camera's on me is at the Games or at Regionals—basically, in competition. And it's like, I feel like I'm a completely different personality in competition and out. Just because in competition I just shut off to everything. I try not to joke. I try not to literally think about anything other than: What can I do to better my performance? And so, I come off definitely more serious than usual. Yeah, I mean that's definitely not how I want to be ... remembered. If that goes hand-in-hand with competing well, then I'll take it. You know, it's kind of price you pay. But I think outside of the gym, I usually try to be fairly light-hearted, having a good time. It's just in competition, I'm very serious and focused. That's how it comes off. I think people just assume that's how I am all the time. I definitely don't have a date on, like, "Okay, I'm gonna go three more seasons and then, no matter where I am in the rankings or ..." I don't think like that. It's more ... as long as I'm happy and healthy, I'll keep going. But then if I'm still going, I wouldn't want to take a step backwards in my dedication to it. Right now, you guys have seen what my home life was like. Sammy does anything and everything she can to take stuff off my plate, so that I can focus on just training. And she takes a lot of that burden to try to help me. So if I were trying to juggle more things in my life, I think it would take away from my performance, take away from my training. I don't want to compete if I'm gonna half-ass it, you know? So I want dedicate everything I can while I'm still happy and healthy. Yeah. And however long that is. I mean, who knows? I've had injuries before where it was completely out of the blue and that part of my body was feeling perfectly fine, and then there's just a big pop one day. And it's like, "Uh-oh. Something happened." I've always said, you can have a career-ending injury on the drive home from the gym. You don't see it coming. No one's expecting it. But I guess, be ready for it. Be okay when it happens. [Interviewer]: Now what? Where we going? We're just heading to the track. Gonna have a nice little running workout. - Distance? Or speed? Uh. It's a longer one, I think it's like four or five miles. But everything's at certain paces. You wanna just run next to me and pass me each lap, for old time's sake? I'd assume that every athlete is training to win. And you know that there's a lot of guys now that are full-time CrossFit. They have the same 24 hours every day that I have. At the end of the day, I always look back and it's like, "All right, what did I do well today? "What could I have improved on?" There's always a list of stuff that I could have done better, stuff I could have improved on. And I'm thinking my competitors probably do that. My competitors probably didn't make that flaw. Because they're training to win. [Interviewer]: Happy with that?
- Very. Yeah, that went well. Let's go swim.
- All right. A month out, I'm excited for training. I'm excited to push—see if I can get some PRs, see what I'm capable of. And you want to keep that feeling up to the Games. I want to push, I want to see what my limit is. But at the same time it's like, "Okay. After this, I get to relax." I think that's a good timing of everything. Get this last 100, then we'll go buy some land. A barn way bigger than Dan Bailey's. That's all that matters. Big-ass board. I just gotta ... I gotta grab a picture to send to Bailey. Trash-talk him. You look good, Sammy. Yeah, so it goes up to that tree line up there. And ... It's right back to that tree line right there, I think. Does the path go this way and then loop back?
- Yeah. Yeah. You guys okay to walk up?
- Yeah. Yeah, that's all common land with a couple ponds. And the common land shoots out this way, as well. - How big is this little property? Uh, like eight-and-a-half acres. We'll probably build sometime in the near future. The plan was to put in a garage with just a one-bedroom apartment.
- Yeah. But then, this property is deeded in on a clean septic, which is pretty convenient. And to stay in compliance with that, you can only have one living space. So I think we'll just end up building a house with a garage. An enormous detached garage. I think we'll probably put a fire pit right about here, and have some bitchin' bonfires. - Look at that. A little cart. Yeah, man. Good ol' three-wheeler. Yeah, that's a Harley-Davidson. - You wanna cook fish? All right, sounds good. You want to go into the Games feeling good. The Games are a beat down. For me, equally physically and mentally. You're being tested about 15 times. And each one of those is pretty draining. Obviously, Murph in 2015, I felt like my head was in a microwave for like 30 minutes. That was just the heat. Yeah. So the Run Swim Run from '16, where it was, like, a 100-meter run, maybe 500 swim, 100-meter run. I'm usually comfortable in the water, but that was-- that was aggressive. Just hold your breath and go. Do not stop. You can think about the pain when you're done. Just go. The Run Swim Run from '17 was awful. I don't think I've ever felt that bad during a workout as that Run Swim Run. People are training. People are taking notes. People are figuring stuff out. Competition's getting crazy. What's up? Energy our camera friends. Oh my god those guys over for dinner. Let's don't You gotta get some of this. All right, Sammy. Which ...? Take the maple-Bourbon ones right here. These two are the house. As soon as the Games are done, I go through and analyze every event. It's even on events that I won. I made mistakes during them. So, writing down-- Okay. What didn't I like about it? What went wrong? And then how do I fix it? Why did it go wrong? And how do I fix that mistake? Kind of going into Regionals a little underprepared for my comfort zone. [starting tone beeps] And that's usually how it is every year, because I'm not trying to peek for Regionals, I want to peek in August. I definitely wasn't happy with how some of the stuff went. Mainly just the run. [Woodland]: Yeah, Mat Fraser finishes ninth in event number one. That's his worst event finished at the Regionals since 2013, his rookie year and a year that he did not make the CrossFit Games. [Fraser]: It's not where I want to see my name on the Leaderboard. I don't like going into Day 2 not in that center lane. [Interviewer]: What did you yell when you came across the finish line? You'll have to figure that out for yourself. [male announcer]: The two-time Fittest Man on Earth Mat Fraser—7:34. Event record, event record. [male announcer]: Three consecutive event wins and back-to-back event records on Day 2 for the two-time Fittest Man on Earth Mat Fraser. Regionals went okay. [Interviewer]: Which athletes do you think are competitively on your level? All of them. Yeah. I'm scared of all of them. Every person showing up to the competition, I get butterflies about competing against. [Interviewer]: All right. So, how do you beat Mat Fraser? You know, uh, that's a tough question. Do I think someone will beat him this year? No. There's a reason he's the best. [Froning]: Mat's super fit. He's a great competitor. He's smart. He's sort of a once-in-a-generation type of athlete. You need help from the field. The field needs to fill in the holes, 'cause he's filled in all his holes. He doesn't have a lot left. - I love Patrick Vellner. I love him.
[Interviewer]: Do you think he can beat Fraser at the Games? [laughs]
I don't know. I think I'm the fittest I've ever been. And I'm having a blast doing it. [Sherwood]: If you did the same training that he did every day, you still wouldn't perform like him. Whatever that "it" factor is. [Woodland]: Mat Fraser is demolishing the competition. You ask me who I compete against. I compete against Mat Fraser in my head. Maybe having a couple kids would slow him down a little bit, who knows. I wanna work harder than Mat Fraser. He's just better. I want to have that feeling of success every day. I want to have that feeling of accomplishment every day. When I get off the Assault bike or when I finish squatting, I feel good about myself. I feel proud. You know, I'm not counting down the hours every day 'til like, "Oh my god. Six o'clock." And then check out, and then I can go do what I want. I'm doing what I want. [male announcer]: 100 more points for Mat Fraser, and he can do it walking to the platform. [Woodland]: Mat Fraser is the unstoppable force. And Mat Fraser—putting on a show—destroys the time to beat. I want to win the CrossFit Games. I can win the CrossFit Games this year.
All I learned: Absolutely do NOT pick up Frasers shirt if it's on the sidelines. Do. Not. Touch.
Pretty cool hearing how nervous he gets before events.
Seeing how much he adores Sammy was very cute.
I don't think I could ever get enough Mat Fraser content
Can’t help but like and respect the guy, on and off the comp floor
Fraser packs hammers. #GOAT
Fraser is a total freak of nature that is a joy to see in action. I also love his interviews. I made a playlist of his content from various youtube videos that I use as a pump up.
Had no clue he dipped or it at least appears he does.
Summed up best by Vellner, Panchik and Anderson: you have to be perfect across the entire games. Fraser is so rarely outside of the top 5 over the entire games that the person who is going to beat or even challenge him would need to be hanging right there with him all weekend and has to win the ones he places outside top 10. I don't see that in the guys who were top 5 last year.
Top 5 from last year:
Fraser
Fikowski - only beat Fraser in 4 events
Vellner - only beat Fraser in 3 events
Ohlsen - only beat Fraser in 1 event (cheated - assault banger)
BKG - only beat Fraser in 2 events
All of them beat him on the Assault Banger event.