Georges St-Pierre is an MMA fighter. John Danaher is a martial arts coach. Gordon Ryan is a submission grappler. Each are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Georges's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgesstpierre/
John's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danaherjohn/
Gordon's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gordonlovesjiujitsu/

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:55 - Success
15:54 - Trash talk
19:02 - Doubt
27:25 - Emotions
39:21 - Gordon's beef with André Galvão
43:30 - Diet
53:31 - Training
1:21:40 - Human nature and combat sports
1:32:53 - MMA vs Grappling
1:42:12 - Gordon Ryan vs Felipe Pena
1:45:59 - GSP and shoot boxing
1:57:16 - GSP vs Khabib
2:05:16 - Pankration
2:08:27 - Effective grappling and takedowns
2:23:59 - Aliens and Mars
2:40:39 - Robots
2:44:35 - Advice for young people

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Humans are fascinated by violence and you've got to ask yourself.

talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this is gonna be rough

You were powered by McDonald's and Coca-Cola

And then I smacked him and he didn't want to fight anymore.

Pierre and Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime, who wins?

I'm here with 3 individuals, each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines.

The greatest MMA fighter of all time, George St.

The greatest martial arts coach of all time, John Donaher, and the greatest submission grappler of all time, Gordon Ryan.

You guys didn't see the question, no preparation here.

What is the key to your success, each of you?

1 thing or multiple things that come to mind?

I like that you choose John right off the bat.

Please inspire us to give the right answer.

For me, it's about finding a way to work in a world where most of the answers are already known, okay?

And in any developed sport, by the time you enter that sport, most of the basic precepts, the major techniques, the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out.

And so in a highly developed world, the key to success is to be able to identify some area of the industry that you're in which is currently undervalued.

To do what the other people are not doing.

Everyone has a view of, okay, These are the main skills of the industry I work in.

At any given time, some set of skills, attributes, will always be somewhat undervalued.

They're underappreciated by the people in the game.

You see that in any given industry there are always trends which change the nature of the industry over time.

So fashion trends in the clothing industry you'll see at any given time there's a general wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time.

What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say, here is something which is genuinely useful, but which is currently being underused, underutilized.

And I wanna bring that back in and develop it.

And because it's an inherently useful product, it will be very very successful in its initial applications against people who aren't currently using it.

If you can do this in whatever industry you're in, I believe you'll be highly successful.

So this applies both for actual specific techniques

Also tactics as well in the case of jiu-jitsu.

So for example, in my sport, leg locks have always been around.

Okay, there's no shortage of people, you can look back in history who are applying leg locks.

Nonetheless, as in across the industry, leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated.

There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport, for most of the history of the sport of jiu-jitsu tended to de-emphasize leg locks.

And when I looked at them, I said there was immense potential, but it wasn't being realized and needed to be changed.

Since then, that has more or less occurred.

Now, most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important aspect and they're no longer undervalued.

If anything, it's gone too far the other way and now perhaps they're a little overvalued.

This kind of fashion trend exists in every industry.

And the job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify, okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued?

And then look at what is their actual objective value and then work to bring them back to the forefront.

So assuming that's not the reason, is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career?

Well, of course, everybody knows the famous sensor that every athletes are saying, oh, it could be genetic.

I was maybe gifted, had certain predisposition.

But I think something that people don't talk enough is when everybody sometimes go right, I was never afraid to try to go left.

And I felt many times trying to do things that were not known to be things that would bring me success, but I tried it.

You know, I was very often, I was the first of trying new things.

And I felt many time, but certain times, it gave me a certain advantage.

And for example, I was sometime fighting guys that had much better wrestling background than me on paper.

And nobody before that fought those guys, nobody had dared to try to take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good.

And I didn't have on paper the wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight.

But when everybody tried to go right, I was going left.

And that was the blueprint to beat some of these guys, you know what I mean?

So we'll actually talk about a few fights where you did just that, it's fascinating.

But let's say at the high level, so Gordon, again, sticking on fashion, may I compliment your incredible badass hat?

We should say we're in Texas now, so he's become a Texan overnight.

So is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to

Yeah, so first of all, There has to be a rule where you don't ask us all the same questions because How am I supposed to compete with the answer John just gave?

There's nothing I can do that's gonna top that.

Yeah, but I think it's There's many things but I think the number 1 thing is just is John When I came in I was a blue belt and I was beating brown and black belts in competition already.

But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport.

I would just come in and if something wasn't working, I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively.

And that just degenerated me into degenerated into me spastically knee sliding into cross Hashi Gourami against Eddie Cummings for 6 months and then just getting heel hooked repeatedly.

And Eddie, like when I met him was like a chubby librarian looking guy.

And I'm like, there's I'm like, 6 to like a jacked like 170.

And I'm like, there's no way I'm losing to a guy who looks like this.

So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn't work.

And then John's like, well, if you learned leg locks, you might have some more success.

And then I was like, yeah, that probably makes sense.

And from then on, I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport.

Instead of doing things harder, I would actually try to get better at jujitsu.

You remember like a turning point where you became, as opposed to being mediocre, not just in technique, but in approach

I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training consistently.

Started training full time with John when I was purple belt, mid-level purple belt.

And towards the end of my brown belt days I was beating up like legitimate like ADCC champions in the gym.

So I think like brown to black belt was a big thing for me and then when I won my first EBI and I was I smitted Yuri who won ADCC and I beat Rustam.

So I think that was like my turning point as a competitor.

But I think I started to reach world level a little bit before that.

I think somewhere around brown belt, mid-level to late-level brown belt.

Like, was there a moment when you, like after a training session, you realized I can actually do this, like I can be at the top of the world, like world class.

The critical moment for me was when, I think it was right when I got my black belt, maybe a few months before I got my black belt, We had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and we did a hard round together.

And I think I submitted him like 4 or 5 times and no 1 knew who I was.

I never won anything up until that point.

And I was like, okay, like if This is like 1 of the best guys in the world and I could submit him multiple times around.

I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a career out of this.

Okay, so the actual performance was the, like you don't need to believe before you can perform.

Like a lot of Olympic gold medalists, they have to believe before they can perform because they're getting their ass kicked for a long, long, long time.

Yeah, I think, but the best way for me to believe in something is to have repeated success doing it against high-level guys.

Like I'm not gonna just believe I can do a double leg if I can't hit a double leg on anybody.

So for me, the belief came from the repeated success in the gym.

Yeah, but to get to the point where you're submitting somebody like Yuri Samoa as like 1 of the greatest grapplers ever, It's like a long journey.

Yeah, but I had the confidence, I had the belief in myself because of the success that I had in the gym prior to that.

First it's the brown belts, then it's the black belts, then it's world class, okay.

George, was there a turning point for you when you thought, like, I can actually do this?

Yes, I always dreamed to become champion, but I think the turning point, there was 2 turning point, and they were my 2 losses.

And it's after the fight when I watched the replay of the fight, I realized I was like, I was doing pretty well, but during the fight in my own mind, I was not seeing it that way.

I thought I was getting dominated by you was like a hundred percent.

But when I watched the replay, I was like, man, I can beat this guy.

I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake.

So I was very frustrating, but That's what gave me the mentally, the championship level mentality.

And then I became a little bit overconfident because I start beating everybody after that.

And I start to believe the hype of people.

When they look at me, they were like, oh, he's the new up and coming superstar.

And then when I became champion, I lost to Matt Serra.

So before I believe my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence.

And my second failure was because I was over confidence.

So I think it's there's a perfect center of confidence.

I mean, it's good to be confident because John taught me like confidence, it's like money in your bank account.

If you can have all the skills in the world, right?

And if you don't have the confidence, it's like you can be a millionaire, but you don't have access to your bank account.

So that's a little bit the analogy that John told me.

So that's how I feel confidence plays for an athlete.

But to be overconfident, I think it's always good to be aware, to be afraid of what can happen.

So to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear, to me, that's what mentally gave me the edge to become, I believe, successful in my sport.

Playing off that, John gave me a speech 1 time and he was like, you have to be able to like flip a switch and turn it off.

Where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who's super confident and He plays the character of someone who's like, no 1 can beat me, I'm the best that there ever was, and that's it.

But if you look at him, he actually trains very hard.

You can't play the persona of no 1 can beat me and have it translate into your life and just think that you're so good that you don't have to do anything and no 1 can ever beat you.

You have to be able to play that public persona of no 1 can beat me, but then you have to actually do the training to make that happen.

You can't just, you can't believe your own hype and say that, you know, I can just do whatever I want, no one's ever

You can't just, you can't believe your own hype

and say that, you know, I can just do whatever I want, no one's ever gonna beat me.

be able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete.

It's tough because you dominate such a large fraction of the world in grappling.

And then George too, just the perfect dominance after those 2.

It's hard for the confidence not to just, like how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down, where it completely deludes your mind?

For me it's just, well number 1, the guys in the gym are so tough.

So the guys in the gym that I train with are always nipping at my butt and always giving me new problems to solve.

And for me, it's really just about trying to learn new stuff over time.

And it's not really about no 1 can beat me.

It's more, what keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I'm learning new stuff all the time and working on something new and progressing to new levels at all times.

I don't just come in and do the same thing over and over again.

You just come in and you don't learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time and like, okay, this is boring.

But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals, short-term and long-term goals to reach, then it makes it interesting.

It's, for me, it's a little bit like Gordon says, is the fear, because sometime in the gym, even before when I was competing, I was getting my butt kicked, but I don't care what happened in the gym.

I mean, it hit my ego, of course, because I'm a proud person, I'm a competitor, even in the gym, but it's not a malicious competition in between each other.

When you fight, you have to be malicious.

But it hit me in terms of my pride when I get beat in a gym, of course, but that fear that I don't want it to happen in public, especially not during a fight that what keeps, help me keeps the balance between confidence and fear.

It's a mix, it's a mixture of both that I believe, to me, helped me succeed, to have the right mindset to fight.

And I talk so much shit that I'm like, man, if I lose, this is gonna be rough, so.

put a lot of, I mean, that's a hard thing to do when you talk shit, when you play the heel.

The pressure is, I mean, you have to be good under pressure.

You know, the reason I actually started talking shit was actually, like, indirectly because of George.

I won my first EBI and I didn't talk shit and everyone was like being like, oh, you know, he only beat Yuri because he was tired or you know, this or that.

And if they had to rematch under any of the rules that he would have lost.

And I'm like trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.

So I'm scrolling through George's feed 1 day and he posted a clip of him beating someone.

And I look at the comments and I'm, with this in mind, I'm like, George is the nicest person of all time and if you look at the comments it's like 10,000 comments and like 9,000 and 900 are just people calling him like all you do is lay and pray you pussy you suck you can't finish anybody And I'm just I'm looking at this and I'm like people are gonna say what they're gonna say regardless They're gonna talk shit regardless.

So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself

Is there some aspect that's I mentioned Conor McGregor he could cross the line with Khabib at least in the eyes of Khabib.

Is there something you ever regret about crossing a line or does that, do you ever feel like there is a line or do you just keep pushing the line?

I just, I basically fire back with like 1 step above

So I go, I usually go hard, like they fire a bullet and then I drop a Duke.

And then, and then after that initial shot, then we go back and forth and I'll just keep one-upping them.

So, you know, there's a lot of people that love you, but there's also a lot of people that love to hate you.

So, like, what, do those people, like, energize you, or do you just, or is it funny to you?

Like as an athlete, as a performer, you should not think about them.

It's just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied.

Like because most of them that like talk shit, they like just say stuff that's factually incorrect.

So then I just argue with actual statistics.

It's just like, you suck, or you're not gonna beat this person.

I'm like, I've already submitted that guy.

So it just, it riles them up, and it's just a fun thing for me to do on my downtime.

Yeah, your responses are usually very factual, very scientific.

Like, you actually, you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science.

I mean, on the topic of haters, or more specifically sort of doubts within yourself, or doubts around you as you're coming up.

Maybe George, you can comment on, we're just ignoring John completely in this conversation.

I was gonna ask you another question, but Let me just ask you on this topic.

Are there times in your life you had to, you were surrounded by people that doubted you?

And so is there something you could say by way of advice how you overcome the doubt, either yourself or others around you?

The first time I manifest my desire to become a professional mixed martial art athlete, everybody doubt me.

Just not even, I'm not talking about the UFC, just to become a professional fighter, everybody doubt me.

Then I fought my first fight in Montreal, I won, and I became a professional.

Then I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC.

Then I, at the time, Pete Spratt was just knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick.

And the person who was my agent at the time did a great move for me.

So he brought Pete Spratt in Montreal to fight me.

Pete Spratt came to Montreal and I believe he didn't know who I was, so he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck and I ended up beating him.

So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC.

Then after I was in UFC, I wanted to become champion of the world, you know, but Matthews was there and he seems invincible at the time.

So everybody doubt me again And I became world champion.

And after when I was world champion, I wanted to be, I was competing against other world champion of other weight class for the title, for the legacy and everything.

So I was no longer competing against my opponent.

I was, as a competitor, you always, you never want it to be, you never want to be satisfied because when satisfaction is the death, when you're satisfied, you better retire because it's over.

So always have to find motivation, what you can have more.

So I wanted to be like the best, you know, I was competing, you know, like to become the best.

And, you know, of course people doubt you all the time.

Every time you say something that it's outside of the norm, of the normality, I don't wanna say there's nothing normal, but I'm talking about when you manifest your desire to do something that takes special attribute to succeed or that is something that is hard to do, it's for sure you're gonna always have people that doubt you.

It's so strange that people don't, they don't lean into supporting, like people that love you too.

Yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me.

And I believe you need to use that as a positive thing, as a motivation to prove them wrong.

When someone doubt me, nothing gave me more energy because I want to prove him wrong.

I want to look at him in the face and say, hey, you see, I got you, man, I did it.

So John, do you ever use this in 1 way or the other by saying I don't think you can do this to motivate them to prove you wrong or more general question of, you know, the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness.

Like what's your role as a coach when you have these 2 athletes?

With regards to your first question, would I ever say to someone, you can't do this as a kind of reverse psychology?

My job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills and as Gordon pointed out earlier, if you're in any way a rational human being and you're noticing that you're getting tremendous success with a given move in the gym against high-level opponents who give a good read on what your actual opponent in a competition is like, you would have to be a moron to not recognize that kind of success and say, this is something I should be building into my game and you will carry the confidence that you earned in the gym into the arena.

So I never try to use reverse psychology.

I build up, Everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills.

I know people say, oh, there's physicality on the 1 hand, there's mentality on the other, and confidence is squarely in the mental aspect of the game.

But all the underpinnings and beginnings of confidence of physical.

Okay a rational human being will see where they're having success and where they're having failure and confidence will surround those areas with having success and will degenerate in cases with a having a failure so my job is a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills.

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Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher & Gordon Ryan: The Greatest of All Time | Lex Fridman Podcast #260