JRE MMA Show #172 with Gable Steveson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joe Rogan Experience – MMA Show #172 with Gable Steveson

Date: January 1, 2026
Host: Joe Rogan
Guest: Gable Steveson – Olympic gold medalist, elite wrestler, and rising MMA heavyweight
Episode Focus: Gable’s athletic journey, wrestling’s role in MMA, mental toughness, the realities of fame, and building the next dominant heavyweight.

---

Episode Overview

This episode welcomes Olympic wrestling champion and budding MMA superstar Gable Steveson. Rogan and Gable dive deep into Gable’s unique sports journey—from his wrestling roots and brief NFL stint, to WWE and now MMA. The conversation explores what makes wrestlers successful in the cage, Gable’s mindset, transitioning skillsets, the current heavyweight landscape, and lessons from Jon Jones. The tone is candid, motivational, and rich with fun anecdotes about fighting, fame, and life outside the cage.

---

Main Discussion Themes

• Athletic Identity and Origins
• Wrestling as a Foundation for MMA
• Transitioning Between Elite Sports
• Learning from Jon Jones
• Building Stardom and Navigating Fame
• Heavyweight Division Analysis & Gable’s Future
• Excellence, Mindset, and Life Lessons
• Combat Sports Culture, Conspiracies, and Dog Chat

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gable’s Name, Origin, and Destiny (00:15–01:04)

• Gable describes being named after legendary wrestler Dan Gable.

  “My mom…was at a tournament in Iowa…she kept hearing, Gable, Gable, Gable. And it was Dan Gable at the time. …she was like, why don't I name you Gable Dan? And the rest was history…” – Gable Steveson (00:26)

• Joe and Gable reflect on the legacy and importance of wrestling in the Midwest.

2. The State of Wrestling & Professional Pathways (01:04–03:13)

• Both discuss the lack of pro wrestling outlets compared to global sports.
• New ventures like “Raf” (American Freestyle) and the challenge of star-building.
• Comparison to other countries’ focus on a few sports and the difference in U.S. athletic celebrity culture.

3. Wrestling’s Excitement and Accessibility (03:13–04:31)

• Joe praises wrestling’s universality and excitement:

  “Wrestling itself is such an exciting sport...everybody understands it. It’s not complicated.” – Joe Rogan (03:13)

• Gable encourages adults and kids to be adaptable and eager:

  “Man, just be hungry because someone's gonna respect you.” – Gable Steveson (23:51)

4. Elite Athleticism: Flexibility, Toughness, and Aging (04:31–06:56)

• Conversation about flexibility in athletes, referencing Yoel Romero’s freakish athletic longevity.
• Joe spotlights what it takes to be an Olympic-level wrestler or a top MMA contender.

  “Nobody gets there easy...you gotta have everything.” – Joe Rogan (06:55)

5. Wrestling as an MMA Base & Mental Fortitude (06:56–08:19)

• Both agree wrestling is MMA’s best base, noting mental toughness and conditioning.
• Gable explains the transition from D1 wrestling to MMA wrestling:

  “...guys that are dominating and winning are kind of putting that wrestling base first, but making it MMA wrestling...” – Gable Steveson (07:22)

6. Gable’s Striking Background & Coachability (09:44–11:47)

• Gable started striking seriously only seven months ago; attributes progress to his “all ears” mentality.

  “You can’t go out there and think you can do something without putting that time and effort in…” – Gable Steveson (10:47)

• Joe underscores the necessity of being coachable for elite athletes.

  “You have to be coachable. The guys who like, ‘I'm gonna do it my way’…they never get elite.” – Joe Rogan (11:15)

7. NFL & WWE Experiences: Athletic Adaptability (11:47–17:48)

• Gable recounts his complete lack of football background before trying out PRO-level for the Bills.

  “First time you played football was professional?” – Joe Rogan (12:09, in disbelief)

• Transitioned to wrestling, briefly to WWE, but realized a deep “competitive drive” was missing there.
• Choice to prioritize “real competition” over showmanship at this stage.

8. Genesis of MMA Ambition & Jon Jones Mentorship (18:02–24:47)

• Gable shares how training with Jon Jones inspired him to seriously pursue MMA:

  “When I saw Jon, I saw that drive…damn, you know, this guy's winning. People get close but can’t get past him. And…that’s what flipped my switch right there.” – Gable Steveson (19:50)

• Jones’s processes: attention to detail, game-planning, and personal mentorship.

9. Lessons from Training Camp with Jon Jones (27:01–28:49)

• Joe and Gable discuss how Jones’s “fight IQ” and meticulous game-planning set him apart.
• Gable highlights his own shift from ignoring tape in wrestling to embracing video study in MMA on Jon’s urging.

10. Heavyweight Division, MMA Heavy Hitters & Gable’s Potential (28:49–34:47)

• Joe predicts a “revolution” at heavyweight, singling out Gable’s combination of speed and wrestling,

  “That kind of speed…incorporated with elite wrestling is crazy…” – Joe Rogan (28:50)

• Both analyze the changing landscape: Tom Aspinall, Jon Jones, Cyril Gane, Francis Ngannou, Alex Pereira.

11. Excellence, Mentality, and Skill Development (36:19–42:38)

• Joe and Gable bond over love for “excellence and evolution” in fighters.
• They discuss the importance of continually adding new skills, referencing Jones’s and Vitor Belfort’s improvements late in their careers.

12. Training Routines & Developmental Approach (61:13–63:01)

• Gable’s current training is all-encompassing, mixing all styles (boxing, kicks, wrestling) multiple rounds daily.
• Joe contrasts with other fighters’ discipline-specific focus in off-camp training.

13. Fame, Focus, and Personal Boundaries in the Spotlight (101:14–109:03)

• Joe warns about the complexities of fame, the risks of losing oneself, and the importance of private time:

  “Fame itself is very complicated…especially for fighters. When your entire identity relies on the way other people perceive you, that's not good.” – Joe Rogan (101:51)

• Urges Gable to focus on “excellence, not money or fame,” and protect his focus and mental bandwidth.
• Jon Jones’s past is discussed as a model for surviving and learning from fame’s pitfalls.

14. Life Lessons: Protecting Focus, Avoiding Liabilities (109:03–112:27)

• Joe tells a cautionary tale:

  “…anybody that's trying to steal from that [focus], like, those are liabilities. …you got a hole in the bottom of your boat. You gotta patch that shit up.” – Joe Rogan (112:21)

• Gable reflects on Jones guiding him as “the replacement.” Both stress learning from mentors’ mistakes and wisdom.

15. Fun Tangents: Fear Factor, Dogs, and Conspiracies (43:00+)

• Gable and Joe share laughs about Fear Factor gross-out moments, bull riding dangers, and their shared love of French bulldogs.
• The episode includes a quick foray into conspiracy theories, the drug war, and social responsibility in fame.

16. Gable’s UFC Timeline and Career Blueprint (134:06–136:54)

• Gable has not signed with the UFC yet; is fielding offers but prioritizes family and development. He prefers to debut at the UFC's White House card, seeking one or two more fights first.
• Outlines his goal to win and defend the UFC heavyweight belt and build the Stevenson legacy:

  “…I would like to try to beat [Stipe’s] record if I can, and if I can’t, die trying…But I’m obsessed with being the best version of Gable because if I’m the best version…you’re not gonna be able to beat me.” – Gable Steveson (136:54)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Mindset and Growth

• “That’s the worst I’ll ever be. [...] That dirty boxing is probably the weakest I'll ever be in the sport of MMA.” – Gable Steveson (60:33)
• “Protect your focus. It’s precious. Protect your time, protect that energy that you have to invest in things. It’s so precious.” – Joe Rogan (109:03)

On Excellence

• “Excellence is what brings you the money. Excellence is what brings you the fame. And the moment you start thinking about the fame and the money and not thinking about the excellence, you've lost your way.” – Joe Rogan (109:03)

Heavyweight Predictions

• “When you have that and you're 25 years old…it’s a very rare thing that you see in MMA…You’re already there, which is nuts.” – Joe Rogan on Gable’s potential (29:03)
• “I really think I can go out there and do right by this big promotion and go out there and just be fantastic.” – Gable Steveson (93:23)

On the Power & Pitfalls of Fame

• “When Hollywood gets involved…that kind of, in a lot of ways, led to the decline of Ronda Rousey.” – Joe Rogan (101:51)

---

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:15–01:04: Gable’s origin story & wrestling’s legacy
• 07:22–08:19: Wrestling as MMA’s foundation & its adaptation
• 09:44–11:47: Striking development & importance of teachability
• 18:02–24:47: Genesis of Gable’s MMA ambition; Jon Jones’s mentorship
• 28:49–34:47: Heavyweight division analysis & Gable’s upside
• 61:13–64:00: Gable’s training methodology
• 101:14–109:03: Navigating fame, focus, and stardom
• 134:06–137:59: UFC plans, blueprint for championship, and legacy

---

Tone & Style

The conversation is raw, engaging, and at times humorous. Both Gable and Joe blend candor, humility, and competitive fire, offering behind-the-scenes insights into what drives greatness both in and out of the octagon.

---

Conclusion

Gable Steveson’s episode on JRE MMA Show #172 serves as both a revealing personal narrative and a manual for aspiring athletes. It’s a must-listen for anyone curious about what it takes to leap from elite wrestling to MMA superstardom, the psychology behind champions, and the looming arrival of a new force in the UFC heavyweight division.

Transcript

[Gable Stevenson]

Joe Rogan podcast.

[Joe Rogan]

Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. All right, what's happening? Pleasure to meet you, man.

[Gable Stevenson]

How are you?

[Joe Rogan]

Great. I'm great. When you got a name like Gable and you're named after Dan Gable, and you go on to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling, that is kind of.

[Gable Stevenson]

That's crazy, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Kind of prophetic.

[Gable Stevenson]

My mom, when I was young, she was trying to find names for me, and she liked Kale Sanderson because Kayl was a guy at the time, but she was at a tournament in Iowa with my older brother, and she kept hearing, Gable, Gable, Gable. And it was Dan Gable at the time. And, you know, Dan Gable's a huge figure in the Midwest for wrestling. And so she was like, why don't I name you Gable Dan? And the rest was history, which is really crazy because his whole timeline is my timeline, which is fantastic.

[Joe Rogan]

Except the MMA part.

[Gable Stevenson]

That, too, yeah. Which I wish he would have done.

[Joe Rogan]

I think he would have been amazing.

[Gable Stevenson]

I think he would have been amazing.

[Joe Rogan]

But it wasn't around. I mean, when he was wrestling bare.

[Gable Stevenson]

Knuckle, maybe, I don't know, do it on the street or something. He could have found a way.

[Joe Rogan]

It's kind of fucked that there's no real professional outlet for actual wrestling.

[Gable Stevenson]

It is fucked. And wrestling needs a real way to go out there and be something big. And I think they have a really good one now with Raf, if you haven't heard about it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, I have.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's American freestyle. They're trying, and I think they're trying really well. And I think it's going to come to a point where, how do you make matchups continue? Because, you know, wrestling gets to the point where in fighting, in a lot of the sports, you can get to the point where, you know, maybe you draft a guy in fighting, there's a next big thing, there's the next guy out there that you can kind of create. And with wrestling, they're trying to create an atmosphere of how can you create that person? And I like it, and I think it might work. And hopefully it keeps going the way it needs to go.

[Joe Rogan]

It would be interesting if it. The problem is MMA is so huge now, and people kind of associate wrestling with either MMA or pro wrestling now. Like, those are the two things that they think of. And it's one. I think it's one of those things like soccer, where soccer should be huge in America. It's huge all over the world.

[Gable Stevenson]

Right?

[Joe Rogan]

It's A very exciting sport. But nope.

[Gable Stevenson]

You know, it's crazy how. How popular soccer players are, and I feel like in America, we have so many sports that, like, we can't hit that market for soccer, and I think that might be the biggest case. Why? Because if you go overseas, Ronaldo's paid $500 million, and if he scores a goal, he gets a million dollars a goal or something, so he's out here doing bicycle kicks. But it's. It's like we have so many professional sports that LeBron James is our biggest athlete. But even then, I think it's at a point where some people see LeBron and, you know, it's not like the. The crazy wow factors. If you saw a soccer player in Italy or Spain, it'll be like, man, it's him.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? Well, they have less sports, though, right?

[Gable Stevenson]

I think so.

[Joe Rogan]

Italy, like.

[Gable Stevenson]

I think it'll be like basketball, soccer.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, they're not really known for basketball, though. Soccer's big. Boxing. There's a lot of boxers come out of Italy, but other than that. Rome. Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

They got a couple fighters, but other than that, I think we're kind of at a halt with. With creating that. That big guy for America.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it's just. It's just strange to me because it's such a. Wrestling itself is such an exciting sport. It really is very exciting to watch, and everybody understands it. It's not complicated.

[Gable Stevenson]

I think I. I really think everyone understands it to a certain extent, I think, but they could learn points and.

[Joe Rogan]

All the other stuff.

[Gable Stevenson]

Have you ever wrestled?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, wrestling in high school.

[Gable Stevenson]

How? How?

[Joe Rogan]

Just one year, I was doing Taekwondo at the same time because I was doing Taekwondo, and I couldn't do both of them at the same time. And I was pretty good at Taekwondo.

[Gable Stevenson]

You know what's crazy? I think since you've done Taekwondo, maybe I should try.

[Joe Rogan]

You are such an athlete. You'd probably be awesome at it.

[Gable Stevenson]

I might be able to pull it off. I don't know if I can get to your level.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you would figure it out, man. You'd figure it out. Are you flexible?

[Gable Stevenson]

It depends. How and what are we doing?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you would get flexible. The thing is, like, a guy, like, you'd figure out how to get flexible. The flexibility thing drives me nuts because I've tried to show stuff to guys before, MMA fighters, and they're like, I'm not flexible. I'm like, what does that mean? What does that mean? This is not. Like, you're not tall, okay? Like, you can get flexible.

[Gable Stevenson]

Okay?

[Joe Rogan]

Like, you Just stretch.

[Gable Stevenson]

Okay, we can rewind now. And I could say, I am flexible. I am flexible.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you certainly could get flexible.

[Gable Stevenson]

You can.

[Joe Rogan]

Anyone can get flexible, but it's.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's not. Can you get flexible? Do you want to get flexible? That's a good question. Do you want to do something?

[Joe Rogan]

This is a good question. It's a lot of work to get flexible. And would it compromise anything? You know, some people say it compromises some stability, you know, like, to have, like, completely over flexible hips and flexible joints, that it could possibly compromise some stability. That maybe. But, I mean, Yoel Romero is pretty fucking flexible.

[Gable Stevenson]

And he's explosive.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy, super explosive, bro. How about that match with Pat Downey?

[Gable Stevenson]

He went out there and made Pat Downey look like a beginner wrestler. And it's crazy because Pat Downey is really good, but really good. Yoel's 48. I know, 48 shooting blast doubles like he just like he's back in 04 Olympics.

[Joe Rogan]

It doesn't make any sense. He's a freak. He's a real freak, man. And I mean, he's 48, allegedly. We don't even really know how old he is because he's from Cuba.

[Gable Stevenson]

How old do you think he is, for real?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, I don't know, man.

[Gable Stevenson]

35 at this point.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, he's obviously at least 48, but it's just crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

But you know what the best part about it is? When guys get older and they kind of get a little bigger, they don't look good in a singlet. And this is crazy to say, but Yoel looks really solid in that singlet.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, bro, he looks solid everywhere, man. He's still got a six pack.

[Gable Stevenson]

Still does.

[Joe Rogan]

And, you know, now he's doing dirty boxing, and he's still fighting mma. He's just. He's a freak. I mean, and we really didn't even get him in MMA until he was past his athletic prime.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, he really started fighting in the ufc. How old was he when he first fought in the UFC? I want to say he's like 35.

[Gable Stevenson]

I don't know that, but it was. It seemed really late because when he was going through Olympics, he was sound in every position. And like you said, I mean, in a couple interviews back, if he would have started that early. Just imagine.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God.

[Gable Stevenson]

Just imagine.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's. But that's the thing that you have, too, is athleticism. And the thing about MMA is the real freak athletes, they go to football to go to basketball. They go where all the money is. And they go where all the traditional sports avenues are, and it's just not. There's not a lot of freak athletes that wind up making their way to mma. And when they do, they really shine, you know, and when I first started seeing you competing, you know, first, obviously, in wrestling, and, you know, if you can win a gold medal in the Olympics in wrestling, I mean, you have to have everything. You have to have everything. You have to be a freak athlete. You have to be unbelievably dedicated, disciplined. Nobody gets there easy. No, that is not, you know, like, oh, he's just gifted. It doesn't exist. You got to go. You got to have everything.

[Gable Stevenson]

There's got to be a lot of tools.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, a lot.

[Gable Stevenson]

A lot of.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of tools and a lot of fortitude. The thing about wrestling that I've always said is, like, not only is it the best base for mma, because if a guy can dictate where the fight takes place, that is the most important aspect of fighting and you can learn everything else, but it's also, it's like the mental toughness that wrestlers have, the ability to grind out those practices, the, the conditioning that's involved in wrestling. It's above and beyond, I think, all other sports.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, it's. I think it's a next level thing. And then you, you see in UFC right now, the guys that are dominating and winning are kind of putting that wrestling base first, but making it MMA wrestling. You know, I feel like when a lot of guys, a lot of D1 wrestlers come to MMA, they kind of don't make the switch of how to take the right shot and how to finish the right shot and how to use your feet to trip their feet out on the cage. And if you get stuck with the. Stuck in a guillotine, how do you move from that spot? And I think you see the guys that are doing it best, the Islams, the Hamzats, are really going out there and attacking and making sure that people can understand that, hey, you gotta fear this. And then next I'm gonna come with the hands. And so I think that's the biggest thing that we're working on now, is that I've wrestled my whole life and I've done great things and won the Olympics and multiple national championships, but I think the main thing is going out there and understanding that you are that bad dude. But when you show them hands now, you got to have to respect both. And I think that's where a lot of this is going to come into play. When I finally get to that point of of reaching that that competition.

[Joe Rogan]

This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is presented by the Farmer's Dog, gently cooked fresh dog food that's clinically shown to support healthy aging. Both of my dogs take it. I personally buy it, and I bought it before they were a sponsor. New customer get 50% off your first box at the farmersdog.com rogan plus you get free shipping. DraftKings Sportsbook, America's top rated sportsbook for live betting, is the place for all the NFL playoff action. And here's an offer to make the playoffs even better. For a limited time, new customers can bet just $10. DraftKings will give you $50 instantly in bonus bets. No waiting, just instant bonus action. To make every snap, every play mean more. Download the Draft Sportsbook app and use promo code Rogan. That's promo code rogan to get $50 in bonus bets instantly. When you bet $10, use promo code Rogan. That's promo code Rogan in partnership with DraftKings Sportsbook. The crown is yours. Visit opgr.org or call 1-877-MY-TAIN to talk, text or chat about your own or someone else's. Gambling resources are free. Must be 21 and over and in Oregon to place wagers, eligibility restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms on responsible G resources, see sportsbook draftkings.com promos now how long have you been striking for?

[Gable Stevenson]

I've been going into a little. So I'm from Minnesota, Apple Valley. I'm actually from Portage, Indiana. I moved to Apple Valley, Minnesota when I was 11 years old. And in college I met a guy named Billy Simon. He's from Prior Lake. He fought. Nothing too big, just on a regional scene in Minnesota. He has a house on Prior Lake and he has a place in his basement that is built out for for MMA and stuff like that. When I was maybe 21 years old, I started hitting the pads and mind you, stiff as a board, don't really know what I'm doing. But he's kind of started and guided me along the way.

[Joe Rogan]

How old are you now?

[Gable Stevenson]

I'm 25.

[Joe Rogan]

So just four years.

[Gable Stevenson]

Just four years. But I think really, really striking. Seven months.

[Joe Rogan]

That's so crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

Like really after.

[Joe Rogan]

It's so crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

Really time consuming. Hey, this is what I want to do. I'm not gonna wrestle. I'm doing mma. I would say seven months, but when.

[Joe Rogan]

You watched your dirty boxing match, I would have never believed that. Except I know what an athlete you Are. It's just. It's so crazy how someone who really knows how to use their body can learn other things.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, I think the main thing also is. I'm all ears. You know, you can't have. You can't go out there and think that you can. You can do something without putting that time and effort in, like we talked about with the Olympics or like you talked about. But I think the main thing is if I can go out there and be all ears and soak up game from the people that are trying to show me the way, I think I can do a lot of great things, and that's all I do. I'm all ears. I want to show up twice a day. I want to do the best thing that I can. If I got to show up three times a day and I feel like it, I'm going to go do it. Because it's also.

[Joe Rogan]

To be an elite athlete like yourself, you have to be coachable. You have to really like the guys who, like, already know things. Like, I'm going to do it my way. Like, they didn't never get elite.

[Gable Stevenson]

It doesn't work.

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I think you got to put that guard down. You got to trust somebody, and if you don't trust anybody and, man, I think I do it alone. I think I can kind of wing it. I think I can maybe not practice today. You got to trust somebody, and you got to put your heart into somebody. And I feel like I have a good group of people around me to kind of put that heart into, and they're kind of. They're not even. They're kind of. They're leading me in the right direction. And I'm. Man, I'm grateful.

[Joe Rogan]

So you were doing a bunch of different things. Right. So you. You become an elite wrestler, and then for a while you were thinking about playing football. So. Played football for a short amount of time.

[Gable Stevenson]

Buffalo Bills. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. How long did you play it for?

[Gable Stevenson]

I never played football in my life.

[Joe Rogan]

Never played?

[Gable Stevenson]

No. That was the first time. That was the first time I ever played football.

[Joe Rogan]

I promise. That's crazy. First time you played football was professional?

[Gable Stevenson]

Was in NFL. My mom was always scared. The high school coaches at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota were like, hey, come play football. They were trying to call my mom and dad, and I'm like, you're not gonna convince her. She is scared to death of football the whole time I'm wrestling. So where do we bridge this gap at?

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I just get done with WWE and I go out there, and I'm chilling. I get a call saying, hey, you want to try out for the Bills? And I tell Sean McDermott and Brandon B. And I said, hey, don't expect much, but I could put on shoes. But I've never had football cleats on. I never had pads on. I don't even know how to put the tights on anything. And I went out there and I sprinted my ass off, though, in that tryout. I was sprinting down and back and forth. I said, hey, if I don't know any technique for D line, you're going to see effort. And McDermott saw effort, and that's all he needed to see. And he gave me a chance.

[Joe Rogan]

What was that like? Like jumping into a completely new sport.

[Gable Stevenson]

Hard. Because it's not just football.

[Joe Rogan]

How old were you when you did that?

[Gable Stevenson]

20. I just turned 24. Wow. I just turned 24. It's.

[Joe Rogan]

Ooh.

[Gable Stevenson]

I know you see it. You see that stance? That's the beginner stance. That's the beginner stance. But I came out there, no gloves, just winging it, and I told them, just, just give me a good chance. But football is not just football. It's the playbook. And the playbook is crazy because I went from, hey, go out there and wrestle someone one on one to see if the guard is light on his feet or see if he's leaning forward to see if the center is. Is gonna silent count, maybe, or see if he. See if the guard taps the center to snap the ball. There's a lot of different things that you gotta know. And I'm out there with this big ass helmet on. I've never put a helmet on, Joe. So I'm out there with this big ass helmet. My head's, like, down and I can't look up and I don't know what I'm doing. But I knew if I gave effort that someone would give me a chance. And I went out there and my first game, I feel like I think I had a tackle, a QB rush, and I was kind of unheard of at the time because I've never played ball before, but it was crazy. Once in a lifetime experience, most definitely.

[Joe Rogan]

And when you got cut, did you think about trying somewhere else? Did you think about doing it more?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. Once I got cut from Buffalo, I was the last one to get cut from the, from the room. I remember going in to see being in McDermott and they were going to do practice squad, but I knew they were going to do practice squad, so I was like, yo, Just send me home. I'll figure it out. I'll try again. So my plan was to go back to college and wrestle already, but I sat around for maybe a month. Baltimore Ravens called me, and Baltimore was like, hey, do you want to come to a tryout? I said, okay, you know, I never played football before. Just to let you know, like, if it's a little shaky, I went out there and I dominated the tryout. And I had like 10 minutes of work, but it was a great 10 minutes. And they're like, okay, we're going to take your physicals. You're going to be here and stay. The injury report comes back and injury report says they need a. What's the kind of. They need a D.N. and a linebacker. So you got to compensate for the spot because you need someone to play next week. And I probably needed, like, six weeks on practice squad to play. And so I get sent home, they say, give me a week, we'll bring you back. A week comes, they'll bring me back. And so I'm like, okay. I see the writing on the wall. Let me move on. I sit for a little bit. Indianapolis Colts call. They just got ran over by a team. They said, we need a run stopper. So I go out there, do the trial. I think it went well. They said, we're not taking anybody today. And then from there I was like, you know, maybe this is not it. And so I went back to Russell.

[Joe Rogan]

And did you ever think about MMA at that time? Was it in the back of your head?

[Gable Stevenson]

MMA was in the back of my head since the Olympics. But I wanted to make sure that if I was going to go to mma, that let me try things first before going all in on something that I need to go all in on. And I did my tryouts, I did my things, and now I want to go in all in on some that. That is finally here.

[Joe Rogan]

And when your mom was scared of you doing wrestling, how did she feel about you doing mma?

[Gable Stevenson]

Oh, you know, she's all over. Oh, my God. She can't even watch. She'd even watch me wrestle. And so now I'm like, mom, I got a dude about to punch me in the face. Maybe if he can get to me. Are you sure you want to come and watch? And she's like, yeah, I'll come watch. And she comes, has a good time and has her drinks, and when I step out, I'm like, where were you? Oh, I was in the back. So you didn't even see me fighting? Why you Even come then. So she. Out of the three fights I've had, she's sat in the back and. And she'll be like, John will go and get her and. And be like, gable's done. And she's like, oh, what happened? And John will be like, good, it's all day.

[Joe Rogan]

So does she get nervous? Is that what it is?

[Gable Stevenson]

Oh, my God. She's sweating. She's nervous. But I'm just like, I. I kind of. I'll give her that look of like, if it's. If this is one of them ones, I'm gonna tell you. But I haven't gave her those looks yet, so she'll know.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you make this. So you decide football's not gonna happen, WWE's not gonna happen. You did, like, one televised match with wwe?

[Gable Stevenson]

I did, yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, yeah. What was that like?

[Gable Stevenson]

Honestly, I had a great. From. From me being real and honest. I had a great experience. I have no, no, nothing wrong with anybody there. TKO was great. Triple H, Paul Levesque was great. Stephanie, Vince, everybody was great. I just had a competitive drive that I needed to get out. And so, you know, when you have that gap is there, you can't do both.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I was trying to bridge both. And I wasn't given my 100% to the business, and if I'm not going to give 100% to the business, then you might as well ex me out, because it's already over with. So I just. That's how. That's practically how it happened.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. No slight on pro wrestling, but it's just like, if you really want to.

[Gable Stevenson]

Compete, compete, you got to get it all out.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

And so I would love to go back in the future. I would love to. To. To do a sport and go out there and dominate.

[Joe Rogan]

And then, hey, after the UFC heavyweight.

[Gable Stevenson]

Champ, for sure, maybe after a couple times. And so I would love to go and if it meant well, and I would do it again, most definitely, because I have no hard feelings to them. And that's how it goes.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you make the decision that you're going to go into mma, what is that like? Like, what are the steps that you take?

[Gable Stevenson]

I got done with NCAAs, and I said, I flew down to Miami, I met with John and a couple other people, and I said, hey, I want to fight. You know? You know, Jon had me in his.

[Joe Rogan]

Camp, so we're talking about Jon Jones. And did you. Did you know Jon before this?

[Gable Stevenson]

I knew Jon because I knew John from Instagram. John, like wrestling. So I Knew John from ig. He sent me a dm. He sent me his number. And if you know John, he don't answer the phone worth anything. And it's crazy, but he sent me his number. He said, call me. So I called him. And this was before he got hurt for the first Stipe fight. He was like, I want you to come practice with us. You know, I want a wrestling partner. I left him and played football. The next year comes. No, I'm sorry. I was. I don't even know where I was at at the time. But Skip, we go. And he's like, I want you to come back for the second camp. He's going through it. Me and John hit it off like that.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Gable Stevenson]

We hit it off immediately.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you guys started training together in camp, is that when it really sunk in your head when you're like, this is what I want to do?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, he really. He really. I needed somebody to kind of engrave it in me with the wrestling. I had my father, I had the University of Minnesota. I had a lot of good people around me, kind of like, say, hey, this is how we're gonna do it. This is where you need to go, and this is how you're gonna. This is how it's gonna happen. And when I saw Jon, I saw that drive of, like, damn, you know, this guy's winning. And people get close, but they can't get past him. And why is that? So I really sat back and, like, watched his mental. And, like, how he went about a lot of things. How he talked to people, how he greeted people, how he walked, how he punched, maybe how he looked when he was in the. In the pocket, when he needed to get out, when he rested his hands. And I saw everything, and I was like, wow. Like, man, this guy's a superstar. Super superstar. And we all know that. And. And.

[Joe Rogan]

And.

[Gable Stevenson]

And people know that for a long time now. But I really saw him and I was like, damn, I want to be that. And that's what kind of. That's what flipped my switch right there.

[Joe Rogan]

What an amazing opportunity. You know, you have done any MMA and you get to go in there and train with the goat.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's crazy. This one, man. You know, it's hard to explain. I tell people, people ask me all the time, like, what was it like seeing Jon for the first time? Because I'm 25, so when Jon was like, super peak, I was, like, 12, 13 years old, and I'm looking at this guy beat Gus of San Reyes and Tiago Santos and Stuff like that. So it's different. You see a different side of people. And when I saw Jon, I was like, wow. Like, I've seen you for my whole life and now I get to see you in person. Like, how cool is that?

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, if your new Year's resolution was change everything and be a new person, good luck. So instead of pretending you're going to meal prep kale forever or do morning cold plunges, here's one actually realistic thing. AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that supports your energy, gut health, immune health, and helps fill common nutrient gaps. Just one scoop in cold water each morning and you're off. It's got over 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in there. So instead of guessing whether you need a probiotic or a prebiotic or sorting through 10 different bottles of pills and powders, you can just do one scoop and get on with your day. It's great because it feels like the grownup move, but for once it's actually really easy. It takes like 30 seconds and you'll notice the steadiness that sets you up for the day. Not wired, not crashing, just functional human being energy. I partnered with AG1 for years, and if you want to give it a try, head to drink ag1.com Joe Rogan and for a limited time, you'll get a free AG1 Duffel B tag and free AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription. Order only while supplies last. That's drinkag1.com Joe Rogan or visit the link in the description to get started. And for people that don't even know the close fights that John had, they were really only close because John wasn't training. That's really all it is. 100 John was partying and he was what I would call playing with his food. You know, like he. He didn't like to like. The Gustafson fight is a perfect example. Didn't train at all for the Gustafson fight. I mean, I talked to Greg Jackson and he was like, I swear to God, he barely showed up. I'm like, that is so crazy. And then he gutted it out in the last rounds. That's what's crazy. It's a close decision. But he wins the fight by gutting it out in the final rounds when he's done relatively no strength and conditioning, nothing. It's so crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's fantastic to see.

[Joe Rogan]

Then really gets motivated for the second fight was Gustafin. Blows him out and smokes him. Blows him out, which is what you expect when Jon is in prime form, he's the greatest of all time, Most definitely. For you to be able to be a young guy who's thinking about MMA and train with the greatest of all time now two division world champion, it's crazy, amazing opportunity.

[Gable Stevenson]

And it's amazing because you don't see the guy that's. You see the best of the best. Right away, we're back.

[Joe Rogan]

So anyway, where were we?

[Gable Stevenson]

John Jones.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So you're saying you, so you were, you're talking about like what it's like to first start training with them. So you were, you had no MMA training really before that at all. You had just been doing a little bit of striking with this guy.

[Gable Stevenson]

Joe, I kid you not, I didn't even know really how to defend punches.

[Joe Rogan]

That's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

I didn't know how to defend punches. And you, you probably saw the video of him throwing the knee at me because I'm so hard headed, I'm like, let me shoot on Jon the whole time I forgot he's a national championship wrestler, right? So I didn't know how to defend a punch, I didn't know how to defend a kick, I know how to do anything. But I went in there and I said, hey, if you need somebody, it's got to be me. And that's how hungry I was. And I feel like that's how kids should be nowadays about getting that opportunity. Man, just be hungry because someone's gonna respect you.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, for sure. But I mean, not a whole lot of people get that opportunity. That's a crazy opportunity. It's also like, Jon is an elite wrestler as well. And so like learning how to incorporate elite wrestling into all the other aspects of mma. And to be able to go right into camp with Jon is just, this is amazing, incredible opportunity.

[Gable Stevenson]

Super incredible. I'm grateful for it every day. And especially he's still here in my corner to this day. We talked this morning. He's still giving me all the pointers, all the advice, even when we're not even fighting, just telling me how I should say things, what I should say, how I need to go about life, how I need to go about business and meeting people and greeting people. So it's a true opportunity.

[Joe Rogan]

That's awesome. That's really awesome. So when you were in camp with him, you're going through the camp, were you planning on MMA then or like, how does it work? What were you thinking the moment you started training with him? Is that when it really started, the fire in you?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes, I Had a little bit of burn for it, but, like, in the.

[Joe Rogan]

Back of your mind.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes, but a little burn. You got to have the heart. You gotta have the heart. So what kind of. What was the stamp on? It was. I went to. I went to Madison Square Garden with him, and John was just doing John things, you know, just being a superstar. Everybody knew who he was. And I was like, man, you know, I got Olympic gold medal, you know, like, maybe I should be getting some, too. Like, you know, like, John showed me the way a little bit, so I'm trying to have him show me the way. He's bringing me to every place, meeting every person, you know, showing me the opportunities that he has. And he looks at me and he was like, you can have this, too. And that was kind of the cherry on the top, but we can put another cherry on the top and do a double one when he won the fight. And then I'm holding the belt with him, and I see this guy face to face, and, you know, he's just the most popular man on earth for that day. And it's kind of like, wow. Like, you don't get. You don't really get to see the backstage moments. You get to see the guy go out there on TV and fight. But I got to see the backstage of everyone taking the pictures with him, the superstars, you know, I'm walking out the Knicks game, and I see Queen Latifah, and I'm like, damn, that's Queen Latifah. And I'm taking a selfie with Queen Latifah. I'm like, yo, can I take. Can I send this to my mom? And she's like, yeah, go ahead. And I see Fat Joe talking to him and everybody, and I'm like, wow. Like, this is what it is to be, like, a real fighting star. Like, and fighting is one on one, and people want to watch someone fight. But I think in and other sports, like we talked about earlier, there's a full team with helmets on, with jerseys on. But in fighting, people want to meet that badass dude, and they want to meet the champ. And that's what I want to be.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So what is. What is training with John like? Like, what is the training camp like? Like, when, you know, you obviously haven't gone into training camp with any other elite fighters. But one of the more interesting that separates John from everybody else is, like, John doesn't take no short notice, fights John game plans for everybody. He studies tendencies. He's his fight iq. I mean, it's Obvious. Obviously he has, obviously he has everything. He obviously has all the skills, obviously has all the drive and everything else. But the fight IQ is the big one. That's the big one. Because if you don't have a good driver, who gives a how fast your car is?

[Gable Stevenson]

True.

[Joe Rogan]

It's really the mind behind it that puts it all together.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's. He's sitting in a Ferrari with Ferrari gas. A lot of people sit in a Ferrari with 87 gas and a car don't work. So when I, when I got to see those tendencies of him watching people, and he does it to me now, where he'll send me videos on Instagram of, of the top UFC guys. Big, oh, watch how he steps. You know, watch when he throws a punch, how he comes back and he doesn't reset this certain way. And he's kind of already installing, installing those tendencies in me. And so now, when I was wrestling, I never used to watch people wrestle. Like, I went out there on a limb and I was just beating guys. Even in Olympics, I never watched anyone wrestle. I never watched a film. Really? Never. I told coaches, don't show me one video because I don't want to focus on that one thing he did. And that was me being hard headed. Like, if a guy had a great double leg and I'm like, damn, how do I stop this double leg? And I'm worried about stopping a double leg instead of doing my offense. And so I never watched anybody. I went to the Olympics and I said, show me, show me the guys I'm wrestling. And I said, let's do it.

[Joe Rogan]

The only guys, right?

[Gable Stevenson]

Let's do it. Come on.

[Joe Rogan]

Banging their head against the wall. Listen to this.

[Gable Stevenson]

Damn. He did that to me.

[Joe Rogan]

That's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

I said, let's do it. I said, it's me or you as do or die. And this tournament, I'm not dying. Like, you can't beat me in any way possible. And that's when I was at my best, when I had that mindset. And he's kind of putting that back into me, and I feel really good about it.

[Joe Rogan]

That's amazing. It's amazing. So when he's sending you videos, like, do you have like a. Do you save all this? Do you have like a fold? We have all these different fighters and different moves because you're, you're basically brand new at something. But so like this, let me just tell you what I said. You had a fight, an MMA fight, where you hit that dude with a left hook and then took him down while he was out cold. I sent Dana White a text message, I said, everyone's fucked.

[Gable Stevenson]

I did well, I appreciate it, thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

Because I was like, that kind of speed is crazy. Like, that kind of speed and incorporated with elite wrestling is crazy. I'm like, what do you. The heavyweight division is so shallow right now. You got Tom Aspinall, Cyril Gone, Jon Jones, if he chooses to fight again, Francis, if some, by some miracle they can work something out and bring him back to the ufc. Other than that, there's no one compelling for like a championship caliber fighter. It's, there's basically four or five guys on earth that are in this like championship caliber, like, yes, class, and you're already there, which is nuts. And you haven't even fought in the UFC yet. When I watched you move and I watched you fight, I was like, okay, how do you stop that? Like, what, what, who is, who's got the skills to be able to stop that? And in my mind there's like only a few guys where it's going to be a problem. There's like the Francis Ngannou's, the, the, you know, the Cyril Gonz and the Tom Aspinalls. That's it. There's like a few guys and everybody else on the way up. It's. The only problem is going to be you getting fights like that. That kind of speed is just bananas for a 250 pound man, you know, and when you have that and you're 25 years old, it's like this is a, you know, it's a very rare thing that you see in mma. And it's kind of crazy because the heavyweight division is of course the most prestigious division in the world. The heavyweight champion of the UFC is the baddest motherfucker on the planet. And you know, right now it's, it's kind of a toss up, right, Because Cyril gone had this fight with Aspinall. John is kind of semi retired. Whatever he decides to do, it's, you know, it's kind of up in the air. He'll probably have one more fight, right?

[Gable Stevenson]

I want him to, I think he's got the juice in him. The White House. Yeah, he would love the White House.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's told me many times he wants, he wants to be main event on the White House and he wants me to be a couple slots behind him and kind of have us both win. And that's his last leg right there. I would love for him to do one more if he really wanted to. In his heart, he should. But if he doesn't, Jon's not going to do it.

[Joe Rogan]

They should do Alex Pereira and him at the White House.

[Gable Stevenson]

I told people, I said Alex Pereira would be a great matchup for Tom.

[Joe Rogan]

A heavyweight version of the BMF belt. You know what I'm saying?

[Gable Stevenson]

It'll be perfect. There's nothing else to it besides two guys going out there. It's Alex Pereira, the baddest light heavyweight, and that's Jon Jones, baddest heavyweight right now. And regardless if someone else has the belt, Jon Jones feel the badass heavyweight out there.

[Joe Rogan]

It doesn't. The belt doesn't mean jack. When it's Jon Jones, it doesn't mean jack.

[Gable Stevenson]

It doesn't.

[Joe Rogan]

It's. You know, there's so many fighters could do that. They could just step away from the belts, abandon the belts and then come back and all. It's really just about the fighter. Everybody knows who John is, Everybody knows what John does. It's like, people will pay to. You don't need a belt. That belt doesn't mean anything.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yo, this is a crazy story. I. I came my. I had a French bulldog that passed away. So I like to go out there and I adopt friends, bulldogs, and I kind of give them a better home and I either ship them to a new home or I keep them. And so at the time, I had a baby friend's bulldog. He passed away. And I told John. I was like, yo, my dog died. I got to go home. He let me go home. I came back and I came back on a Tuesday. I didn't see John till Thursday. And mind you, this is a week before he's going to go out there for Stipe. He's sick, like, super sick. And I watched this guy do five rounds on a Thursday, and they sent, they shark baited him, five new people, and he's dead tired. And this is when I knew he was unstoppable. He went out there, nobody could touch him. And I'm telling you, high class PFL fighters, ex UFC fighters, ex glory kickboxers were going in there after him and he was just mopping them. And I was like, damn, this dude is beyond next level. And that was like, you know, you got to see greatness. And I see it at the fight, but you also got to see it when. How does this guy be great before the fight? And I saw that and I was like, God damn. I said, excuse me, John, you think I can go in there with you? And he was like, no. And I was like, why do you think so? He Was like, you don't know how to defend. And it was kind of a funny joke because a partner got hurt. And I was like, I raised my hand, I told Greg Jackson, I said, greg, let me in there. And Greg was like, not today, Gable. And this is when I didn't know how to defend or anything. He was like, gabe, not today. And I was like, man, why? You know, I can go in there and take him down. And he was like, this is different. And when I saw that, that was like the epitome of like super greatness in my eyes. Because I like hard workers. I like guys that beat on guys. I don't like guys that go out there and, and do the little extras that they to look cool. I mean, just go out there and dominate and let's go home. And I saw that and I was like, yeah, it's over with for Stipe. It's gonna be a long night.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, unfortunately, they met when Stipe had already had a lot of miles on the clock.

[Gable Stevenson]

A lot, a lot of miles.

[Joe Rogan]

John was still elite. It's crazy that John essentially developed a spinning back kick, a real spinning back kick, when he's 36 years old.

[Gable Stevenson]

Crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

It's so nuts because, I mean, he tried it earlier in his career, but it was like he would spin instead of go straight, you know what I mean? But when he hit Stipe, it was perfect. It was per that picture. We showed a video of it and then freeze, froze the heel. It was halfway into his rib cage. It was crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

I wouldn't have got up either.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, very few people would. Very few human beings can talk. That kick is so powerful. And when it comes from a big guy like John with those long ass legs and all that leverage with perfect technique, and it goes right into the sweet spot like that, like, good luck. But it's such a brilliant think. It's such brilliant thinking on his side because he's like, okay, I have to fight heavyweights and I need something that can take them out with one shot. Like, what is that? Well, it's the most powerful kick, which is the spinning back kick. And so he trains it constantly. Constantly, you know, which is just very few people have the mindset to be able to do. Very few guys develop new skills late in life, you know, late in their career, they start incorporating new skills like that.

[Gable Stevenson]

I think that's a, that's a thing where he was. He's always all ears too. And that's kind of what he's putting into me also. I watched him do a spinning Back kick the night before at midnight when we were practicing in the hotel lobby.

[Joe Rogan]

So he was just planning on that?

[Gable Stevenson]

He was planning on. He was planning on it.

[Joe Rogan]

The showstopper.

[Gable Stevenson]

He told me he wanted to take Stipe down, and then all of a sudden he does a spinning back kick. And I was like, you sly motherfucker.

[Joe Rogan]

Did he bring in a taekwondo coach? Where. How did he develop that technique so far?

[Gable Stevenson]

He's got a. There's a. There's a kickboxing Taekwondo coach named Alex. He's got a long. He's got a long last name because I think he. He married a Thai lady, so I think he changed his last name.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, okay.

[Gable Stevenson]

But he's from New Mexico. He works out of Jackson. He's got a lot of tattoos on him, and nobody. You would. If you saw him, you would never know, but the Duke can kick hard as shit, and it's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

And so he. He worked with John on that.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. The only other guy that I would say developed a crazy new technique late in his career was Vitor. When vitor was like, 35 or 36, he developed a wheel kick. It was crazy. Out of nowhere, when he fought Luke Rockhold, all sudden he's throwing wheel kicks.

[Gable Stevenson]

Like, Vitor never crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Btorn never threw wheel kicks.

[Gable Stevenson]

Crazy. But I think it's honestly got to be cool from. Because you sit right next to the cage, so it's got to be cool to, like, see people grow up through their career, and then all of a sudden at the end, you see, like, a guy does a spinning wheel kick or a guy does a spinning, spinning back kick, and you're like, damn, like, where'd that come from? And I feel like. I feel like. Does it give you a high to kind of see, like, a person grow through a new stage of, like, seeing a new move from them?

[Joe Rogan]

I just love excellence. That's what I love. I love when someone shines, when they just figure a way to eclipse everyone else. When they figure a way to. When they just. Like the Purion, Merab, dwarves. Willi fight. When you see a guy like Peon who loses the first fight to Merab and comes back and dominates in the second fight, like, I love that shit. I love it. I love watching someone put in an insane amount of work and dedication and then shining on fight night, I love it.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's cool, too, because, you see, Peter Yan is the new blueprint for guys that are coaching kids to do moves. I mean, he went out there and threw a fake hook and liver kicked me Rob. And then he goes out there and hits a sotogari and trips. Guys, I mean, what other film tape blueprint can you use from someone else? I mean, he's done everything in all of his fights. His flow state is amazing.

[Joe Rogan]

His flow state's incredible. And he's so good at mixing up trips along with, like, inside fighting. His stand up is so good. He's so hard to hit clean, too. I think the only guy who really hit him clean was Sugar Sean. Sean hit him with a knee, like a really good knee, timed it perfectly in their fight and dropped him. But other than that, he very rarely gets hit. And when you do hit him, you're hitting him and he's kind of rolling with it. You know, he keeps that super high guard.

[Gable Stevenson]

He does the high yard.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he keeps his hands straight in front of you. He's. He's something special, man. And you know, that Dude's still only 32 years old.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's only 32.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I know, it's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

What do you think?

[Joe Rogan]

If.

[Gable Stevenson]

If he doesn't.

[Joe Rogan]

32 or 34. How old is Pyotr young? He's either 32 or 34, but, you know, we've seen him in. I think he's 32.

[Gable Stevenson]

32.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I mean, we've seen him in the UFC since he was, like, in his mid-20s. Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

If. If he doesn't lose to Morab that first time, where do you think his path goes?

[Joe Rogan]

It's a good question, you know, I mean, because he did lose to other guys as well. He lost to Sean and he lost to the Al Jermaine fight was. The first fight was. But the second fight, Al Jermaine dominated him, but I think he probably overestimated himself in the second Aljamain fight. It doesn't seem like he was just prepared. And the thing about Al Jermaine is, like, his wrestling is very good, and his back control is the best in the business. When Aljamain gets your back, you're in deep. He's so good at back control. He's so good at rear naked chokes, and, you know, Al Jermaine just really struggled to make that 135.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's got to be hard.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, but if he got it right and he got it right in that second fight, you know, and he just. He just did what he does at his best. It was one of his finest performances. So he lost that fight, but it didn't mean that he was done. It just mean, like, he realized, like, okay, he had to have a Camp like he had for Merab in order to beat Aljamain.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, and I just don't think everybody's willing to go through that kind of camp. Every, every fight.

[Gable Stevenson]

Murab went through four. Yeah, I think four in a year.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

Do you for blueprint, how do you like that? Because I know guys kind of take the two fighter, the two fight a year approach, maybe three if you're doing.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I think that's more, more sustainable. Alex Pereira did the same thing. Like he's, he's fought a lot of fights and he's fight, fought, fight short notice. You got to admire that mind of a guy who's like, I don't give a fuck, let's fight, you know, and. But Alex has fought with broken toes.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's done everything.

[Joe Rogan]

He fought with a norovirus and, you know, he had a fucked up hand the first time he fought uncle iv. But then, you know, same thing. Like he comes in for the second fight with Uncle Liah fully healthy and just smokes him, smokes him in the first round.

[Gable Stevenson]

If you, what do you think about if you gave Alex Pereira like a solid, great wrestler, like an Islam of light heavyweight. Heavyweight. How do you think that he does?

[Joe Rogan]

It'll be a problem. Yeah, I mean, I think less of a problem certainly now than early in his career. Like, if you see his first fight with, in the UFC with Nikolaitis, he gets taken down the first round. That's not gonna happen now. And if it does, he gets up. You know, it's different, but it gets up against. Who does he get up against? A guy like you? You know, it's a different. There's different levels, Right. You really saw that with Jack Della Madeleina in Islam, right? There's levels. And when you got a guy that's at Islam's level, that's just a super elite grappler, unless you've faced that before, you don't know what to prepare yourself for.

[Gable Stevenson]

I tell people all the time, that's.

[Joe Rogan]

The thing with purity on. He had been in there with Merab for the first fight, and so he knew what to expect. And he'd seen all those crazy fights. He saw the fight with Sanhagen, he saw the fight where, the rematch with Sugar Sean, where he submitted him, he's like, okay, this guy's a fucking monster. He's a monster now. You got to prepare for a monster. And he was ready. But unless you've experienced that before, and there's really no one like that in the light heavyweight division, unfortunately, there's not some like super elite grappler in the light heavyweight division. And I think that's one of the reasons why Hamza is thinking about going up the light heavyweight.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I think he should. I'm a big fan of Hamza. I love his style. I love his intensity. His intensity is the best thing ever.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, he's an animal.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's the best thing ever to watch because when I was wrestling, I like to go out there and just, you know, put the hammer down to dominate. And he's got it. He's got that touch.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah, he's an animal. And you know that that animal part of him almost killed him because he refused to stop training. When you have Covid. When he had Covid, he was just showing up at the gym and putting in two and a half hour sessions and vomiting blood like it's a nut.

[Gable Stevenson]

That's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. They said the real problem with Hamzat was that you, you couldn't get him out of the gym and he was always over trained. So then he brings in Sam Calavita and Sam Kalavita.

[Gable Stevenson]

Training lab.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, Right.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

So he's monitoring his heart rate, he's monitoring his recovery, and he's working on him with his strength and conditioning. And they're doing it scientifically. And then you've seen the Dricus du Plessis fight. I mean, he's just didn't gas at all.

[Gable Stevenson]

That was the same thing as Islam and Madeleina.

[Joe Rogan]

Very similar.

[Gable Stevenson]

They tried to do the, you know, maybe what if, what if he can outbox him? But it's hard when you got to worry about so many things. And I think Islam did a great job of showing the leg kicks, making Jack switch. Jack didn't really push. And Islam when he did shot the double or he shot an outside single. And that's hard. It's hard when you got to think about so many things.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, you know, Khabib is without doubt one of the all time greats, one of the greatest to ever do it. But the difference between Khabib and Islam is Islam is elite, stand up wise. Like Khabib was a very good stand up, but Islam knocked out Volkanovsky with a head kick. You know, that's not in Khabib's repertoire. Islam is on another level. It's like one more level above. He can knock you out standing, he can knock you out on the ground. He could submit you, he could take you down. He's huge for the weight class, especially 155, it's like, there's so many aspects, and you're always thinking about that grappling when you're striking. So when you say, like, oh, you know, who's better, Striker Islam or Jack Della Madeleina? Well, it depends. Because if you got to worry about that takedown, your striking is not going to be the same. It's just not going to be the same because you're everything he does. You're always looking for that takedown and that factor. It leads to guys getting hit all the time.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, if you go back and watch old fights, like Kevin Randleman versus Crocop. Kevin Randleman knocked out CRO Cop because CRO Cop was worried about the takedown. He was worried about the takedown. All of a sudden, randomly comes with a big left hook.

[Gable Stevenson]

And Kevin Randleman was a NCAA champ. Where?

[Joe Rogan]

Ohio State, I believe. Wasn't Ohio State. Ohio, I believe he was Ohio.

[Gable Stevenson]

184 or 197. Was he heavyweight?

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know. Three time Big Ten wrestling champ at Ohio State.

[Gable Stevenson]

What? Whoever won the tournament?

[Joe Rogan]

Heavy weight.

[Gable Stevenson]

Wow. Who do you lose to in the tournament?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that says heavyweight.

[Gable Stevenson]

I'll look that up real quick.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, but. But that was the thing about random men is, like, the speed and the takedown was always this big threat, and so because of thinking about one thing, and boom, you get hit with a big shot.

[Gable Stevenson]

I've seen Kevin Randleman wear shoes in his matches. What's.

[Joe Rogan]

What's the.

[Gable Stevenson]

What's the difference of wearing. I seen a guy wear shoes. Now, I was on Instagram and I saw maybe a kickboxing match or something like that. Why can't they wear shoes now? Is there a rule that you can't.

[Joe Rogan]

It's not now. All those things are old.

[Gable Stevenson]

Those are old.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, those are all old. Pride used to allow you to wear shoes.

[Gable Stevenson]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

Early UFC used to be able to wear shoes.

[Gable Stevenson]

I saw that. Yeah, I remember. The first. The first, like, UFC video I seen was that big, huge dude and that little dude that knocked him out. Was he the big black dude? Which guy? It was like an old video.

[Joe Rogan]

Super old. That's not descriptive enough.

[Gable Stevenson]

Okay, give me a second.

[Joe Rogan]

Big, huge dude.

[Gable Stevenson]

Bobby's hat, maybe?

[Joe Rogan]

No, that wasn't you.

[Gable Stevenson]

It was the big video. And then the white dude came out there and he was just whooping him, and the big dude tried to grab him. I might be tripping, but I saw the video.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I don't think you're tripping. I mean, there's Been so many fights. It's so hard to like, figure out what fight you're talking about. But there's. There's an advantage to wrestling shoes, for sure. Without a doubt. I mean, the grip on the ground. I mean, how many times you've seen guys?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, it is one.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, Keith Hackney. Yeah. And Keith Hackney had like a very strange style. It was like, I think he was a kembo guy. And he. He hit him with like a bitch slap, you know what I'm saying? Like, you ever see how he knocked him down? Like, look at the difference in the size. Emmanuel Yarborough, who is a sumo wrestler, but Emmanuel was probably like, look at that. See, he overhand bitch slapped him. This is crazy. He basically stepped in and palm striked him to the head.

[Gable Stevenson]

You think he looks. If he's. If he's still alive, you think he looks back at this video and be like, damn, I got slapped.

[Joe Rogan]

Probably. Damn. I mean, Emmanuel fought a bunch of different things. He fought. I think he fought in pride as well. If I'm. Oh, oh, they forgot to lock the cage. You get flew out the cage. Look thin. Big John McCarthy. He lost to Mark Ryland.

[Gable Stevenson]

Mark Ryland of Iowa.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, there you go. That's random, what we're talking about.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. The old days were wild, man. It's wild. It's. It's wild to go back and watch those fights.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's like, since you. Since you've been kind of like, like a huge figure your whole life, have you gone back and like watch Fear Factor?

[Joe Rogan]

I watched it because my kids were watching it. My kids were watching Fear Factor because there was like a whole Fear Factor channel. It was a true TV or one.

[Gable Stevenson]

Of those spike tv.

[Joe Rogan]

One of those things. They had Fear Factor on like all day long. And my kids were watching. They thought it was hilarious, man.

[Gable Stevenson]

I was watching it too. I'm just gonna tell you right now. And all the. They was doing. Hell no.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. A lot of it is in your head. Like, a lot of the stuff that they had to eat is not that bad. Some of it was disgusting.

[Gable Stevenson]

That was it. Were you trying some while they were.

[Joe Rogan]

I ate a bunch of things.

[Gable Stevenson]

What was the worst thing?

[Joe Rogan]

None of the things I ate were that bad. You know, like I ate a madagascar hissing cockroach. It's like a. A cockroach the size of like this lighter.

[Gable Stevenson]

Damn. Yeah, yeah, that wasn't bad, but it was just crunchy.

[Joe Rogan]

How much? Yeah, it doesn't have much flavor to it.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. What was the.

[Joe Rogan]

More in your head than Anything, I'm.

[Gable Stevenson]

I'm sure. What would. Being. Being on that show. What was the worst thing you saw, like, someone tense up about?

[Joe Rogan]

The worst thing was what they had to eat, you know, and watching people throw up. Like people. I watch people throw up every day. You know how, like the smell of throw up makes you want to throw up? That went away after a while.

[Gable Stevenson]

It was that bad.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I saw people throw up every week. Every week I was watching four or five people throw up. This is like totally normal to be around.

[Gable Stevenson]

It sounds like a candle for you.

[Joe Rogan]

Because they were throwing up in front of me and I was telling them that they keep going. I'm like, don't worry, you can keep going. You keep going. Don't put that out of your head. This is a task. Just you. You want to win? Okay, you can do this. I can help you. I can talk you through this. But you just gotta just you. You are in control of your body. Force yourself to eat it, chew it, swallow it, get it down. Let's go. But that was the worst, is the eating. Holding your breath underwater was hard. There's a lot of things they had to do that was hard. It's a crazy show.

[Gable Stevenson]

They. There was one where they had to jump out a helicopter and like swim and grab some while the helicopter propellers were like blowing the water so they couldn't.

[Joe Rogan]

We did a few of the things like that. Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

Were you ever scared?

[Joe Rogan]

For some of them, I was worried when they had a ride. Bulls. That one scared the shit out of me because I was like, you know, the stunt. Stuntmen are animals. If you ever meet stuntmen, they are some of the bravest, toughest dudes alive. And the stunt guys had this attitude about the bull. Like, they're like, oh, that's a stunt bull, that's a practice bull. And I go, does a fucking bull know he's a practice bull? I bet he doesn't. I bet he didn't get that memo.

[Gable Stevenson]

He don't know that he's just a bull.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a fucking huge animal. And you're gonna get a hundred pound lady to ride this huge animal. That's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's over with.

[Joe Rogan]

And they got launched and almost got kicked. And we. They rolled the dice a lot and got lucky that no one got seriously injured, I think. And the bull one was the big one for me. I was like, you can't predict that. Like, you can if you got a car stunt. You got to jump a car off a building into like this big cushion. Like, okay, cool you kind of know what's going to happen. You know, this is the thing. This could go wrong. And this is how we're going to prepare against it going wrong or prepare for it. But you can't prepare for a bull. Like, there's not much you could do. If the bull decides to stomp this person, that person could die like that. That's a real possibility. Especially people that have no business riding bulls.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Bull running is hard for bull riders.

[Gable Stevenson]

Bull riding is tough. And they got a good seven seconds on that bull. If they're great.

[Joe Rogan]

If they're great.

[Gable Stevenson]

If they're great.

[Joe Rogan]

And when you're watching it, you're like, oh, my God. You watch the bull kicking and jumping up in the air.

[Gable Stevenson]

Crazy. I know. Their lower back kills after that.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, we had one guy on Fear Factor who was a professional bull rider and his shoulder was so destroyed, he. He took his shirt off to show me. He had scars all around his shoulders. Like, my shoulder pops out all the time. He just will pop out of socket. He'd go reach for something. His shoulder will pop out of socket. It was just destroyed. It was hanging on by a thread.

[Gable Stevenson]

Jeez, that's disgusting. How do you live like that, though?

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know, man. I guess you just deal with it. I guess you just. That's the price you pay for greatness, you know?

[Gable Stevenson]

Gotta pay something.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, they all pay. Every bull rider pays. You see those guys later in their career, they're all stiff because they got fused discs and messed up bolts in their back and shit. They're all fucked up, spines rubbing. Oh, yeah. It's a terrible, messed up, terrible way to live.

[Gable Stevenson]

I can't believe that bull riding is a real thing. I know. It's fascinating though, because you could really see guys go out there and be like, you're facing the devil.

[Joe Rogan]

Literally.

[Gable Stevenson]

The bull is gonna win all the time.

[Joe Rogan]

Every time. Even if you can do is hang on for seven seconds. There's no goat who could just hang on the bull as long as possible. I'll hang on that bull for 30 minutes. He can get you off. He's gonna get you off. Everybody goes flying eventually. Everybody.

[Gable Stevenson]

Everybody. It's gonna happen one way or another.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. There's no human being that could just stay on a bucking bull.

[Gable Stevenson]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

And just like when I decide, I'll get off.

[Gable Stevenson]

Have you wrote? No. Okay. I haven't either. I don't think black people do that.

[Joe Rogan]

I think there are. Is there a couple? It's gotta be. There's gotta Be pictures I have.

[Gable Stevenson]

Let me see.

[Joe Rogan]

Mitchell. Oh, look at that dude right there.

[Gable Stevenson]

Bam.

[Joe Rogan]

Ezekiel Mitchell. Look at the size of that thing.

[Gable Stevenson]

I mean, and look at his angle. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

He is so the.

[Gable Stevenson]

The bull is so athletic that he damn near doing a handspring.

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly.

[Gable Stevenson]

With the dude on his back.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? And he weighs 2,000 pounds. He's just throwing his body up and through the air. That is. Fuck all that. Like, right there. Like, you easily get stomped to death right there. Game over. You fall wrong, he lands on your face, and that is a wrap. Your fucking head is pulverized.

[Gable Stevenson]

I wonder what the size of that thing. I wonder what the numbers are on, like, if a bull stomps, like, the velocity of and the mass of it, like, what is the degenerative force?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's gotta be insane. Guys have died.

[Gable Stevenson]

None that I know. Hopefully.

[Joe Rogan]

None that I know. But I mean, there has to be, like, an enormous number of guys that have died bull riding.

[Gable Stevenson]

What's the. What's like, the. Since. Since, like, on a crazy topic, what is. What is like, the craziest thing outside of like, maybe fighting taekwondo that you've done that you're like, damn, like, that felt good.

[Joe Rogan]

I never did anything other than I had three kickboxing fights, but other than fighting, that was the. The scariest that I ever did. Yeah. I mean, I've never done it. I'm not like a. I don't.

[Gable Stevenson]

You don't?

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Gable Stevenson]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm not a bungee jumper. I mean, I've done bungee jumping on vacation. I did zip lining. I was like, what am I doing? This is stupid. I don't like doing stuff like that. I don't like dumb risks.

[Gable Stevenson]

No. I'm big. So I went on a ziplining one time. You know you got to jump off the thing, right? You got to jump off the platform. I thought I was gonna. I. Joe, I'm kidding. Not. That might have been my last day on earth if that line didn't hold me right?

[Joe Rogan]

Because what do you weigh? About 250?

[Gable Stevenson]

Like 255. And it bounces and you're like, uh huh.

[Joe Rogan]

I was in Thailand and I went to do this thing. It was a bungee core thing. And they said I couldn't do it because I was only £200. And I was like, that's crazy. Like, what happens if you get a guy that lies about his weight?

[Gable Stevenson]

It's over with.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Because people lie about their fucking weight all the time.

[Gable Stevenson]

I seen the ones where the Guys, they got the squirrel suit on and they jump off the building or they jump off the rocks and they go down and they come up and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't come up.

[Joe Rogan]

My friend Andy did that jumping out of a plane.

[Gable Stevenson]

He made it?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

He's. He was. He held the world record at one point in time for the longest squirrel suit flight. What are they called? What do they call those things? Wingsuit.

[Gable Stevenson]

Wingsuit. He.

[Joe Rogan]

He held the record for it. It's ridiculous, but Andy's nuts. He's a Navy SEAL.

[Gable Stevenson]

18 miles.

[Joe Rogan]

18 miles. One flight.

[Gable Stevenson]

What do you think he's thinking? At, like, mile nine, maybe I drop.

[Joe Rogan]

He's a psycho. I don't know.

[Gable Stevenson]

18 miles is crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

I would never do nothing like that, ever.

[Joe Rogan]

No, I'm not interested in parachuting. Not interested in any of that shit.

[Gable Stevenson]

I might get on a wake boat and surf. That's about all.

[Joe Rogan]

You fall in the water. Not that big a deal with a life jacket. Yeah, yeah. That sounds reasonable. It's a reasonable thrill. Falling out.

[Gable Stevenson]

Hey, falling out the sky is crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Fall out of the sky is crazy, but at least falling out the sky. You have equipment. You check the equipment. You make sure you double check. You've done it before. It's done. You know when to do it. With a bull, there's no. There's no safeguards, you know? Yeah. I mean, you have, like some sort of a chest protector on some people. You have a helmet. You're not. There's no safeguards. He could land on your hip. You're never gonna walk again.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's over with that. It's game of. I couldn't. I can't fathom riding a bull.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Doesn't Donald do it? Does Donald Cerrone?

[Gable Stevenson]

He.

[Joe Rogan]

He rides bulls.

[Gable Stevenson]

So he got the name Cowboy. You better do something out of his mouth. You gotta do something with the name Cowboy.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a dude that has a real adrenaline problem. He's got a.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's rightfully so. He looks crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

He's got a real adrenaline problem. He told the story about getting trapped in a water. He was diving and he got trapped in a cave. And the guy he was with panicked because his cords got tangled up and the water was cloudy and he couldn't figure out how to get out. That was one of the most terrible. I knew he was okay because he was right here telling me the story. But it was one of the most terrifying stories anybody's ever told me. But that dude loves that. Kind of shit he loves like thrills.

[Gable Stevenson]

I can't. I don't think I can get behind thrills. I can't, no, it's too much. And especially your heart. Be like, is today my day? And I can't be my day.

[Joe Rogan]

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. So here we are. It's the new year, which means it's about time to hit reset. Just because it's January doesn't mean you need to disappear into a cold plunge and never drink again. Just rotate. In some Athletic non alcoholic beer, you get the taste, the perfect meal pairing and the night out. But you wake up without the hangover. With over 185 taste awards. They brew all kinds of styles. IPAs, Goldens, Hazies, you name it. Athletic is proud. Brewed in America and sold at over 75, 000 grocery or liquor stores, bars and restaurants across the country. You can also purchase a variety of limited styles exclusively on their website. Go to ATH, Athletic Brewing.com/rogan to find stores near you or get brews shipped right to your door. Use code rogan to get 15% off your first online order. Near beer terms and conditions and certain limitations apply. Athletic Brewing Company Fit for all times. Was fighting for the first time. Was that. What was the difference in the. The difference in the way it felt the first time you fought versus wrestling?

[Gable Stevenson]

My. When I, when I wrestle, I'm not really nervous. I'm more anxious to like, perform and put on a good show. When, when I went out there for my first fight, my heart was beating on my chest because that pin drops and it's like, it's me or you. And I always had the mentality of, like, it's me or you. It's do or die. Today's not my day. You gotta go. But that first time, you're like, I kid you not. My heart was like jumping and John had it, like looking me in the eyes like, oh, you're good. Rely on what you know. We've been here before. You've done this before. There's 2,000 people here. You've wrestled in front of 20. Just think about it like that. And when I thought about it like that, my heart rate calmed down. You know, you kind of get like.

[Joe Rogan]

Shaky a little bit.

[Gable Stevenson]

You kind of feel like your legs are not there. And that was kind of my first time fighting. After that at dirty boxing, I wanted to kill that dude.

[Joe Rogan]

Which is crazy because you couldn't even rely really on your wrestling in that, which is what.

[Gable Stevenson]

I wanted I wanted to go out there and show you that I can throw punches without having to look down at that leg. And that's exactly what we did.

[Joe Rogan]

Was that a calculated decision to try to do that as well? Just like to just have a pure striking fight just so you could show that you could do it and then in your own mind, not have your main skill set to rely on?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes. I really wanted to handicap myself because I wanted to show the people, and I kind of. Hopefully, I did show him a great show, and I was definitely did. I want to show the people. I want to show the people at home that are a casual viewer who doesn't know Gable, like, hey, can I turn on dirty boxing? And the mom and dad and kids are sitting there watching saying, hey, what is about Gable Stevenson that's special? And he's a wrestler, so what can be special besides wrestling? And then I go out there and I get this knockout, and I jump over the ring. That was crazy. And I'm doing the Arthur Jones sack dance.

[Joe Rogan]

And the crazy thing was the way you leapt over the ring like it was nothing. That was banana. What does it feel like to not have. Oh, there it is. Boom. But this is the. The nuttiest part right here.

[Gable Stevenson]

The big jump.

[Joe Rogan]

Like it was nothing. Like it was nothing. I mean, that is. That is crazy athleticism. But it's. It's. What's wild about that is you look like a. Like a really good boxer, and you have only been boxing for a very small amount of time.

[Gable Stevenson]

Just. I just. I always had very good confidence in myself. I've always spoke about myself highly. I've always, like, wanted to be over the top, you know, like. Like a wwe, you know, when he gets on the microphone to John Cena's like, you can't see me. Or Roman Reigns, like, acknowledge me, you know, when I go out there, I don't want to have to say those things I wanted to. When you see me, that's him. And I've always tried to be. That's the bigger than Gable person. But also, if we had a routine convo, you can see, like, man, he's a real human. You can talk to him. He does real things. We put on shoes the same way, we put on pants the same way. And I feel like a lot of superstars don't really show people that side of them, and it's up to them if they want to or if they not. But I've always really liked showing the families and the kids that, like, man.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at Gable, you know, He's a normal human being. But when you compete, they're special.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's different.

[Joe Rogan]

But it's just crazy to be able to do that in a sport that you're relatively new at that.

[Gable Stevenson]

I mean, just, man, just think big about yourself.

[Joe Rogan]

I get it.

[Gable Stevenson]

Every kid, I tell everybody.

[Joe Rogan]

What's crazy about that, honestly, is like, I know you're just going to get better at it. That's what's crazy. When you watch someone strike that well early in their striking career. Like, your striking journey is so new that the sky's the limit as far as your.

[Gable Stevenson]

Your potential, Joe, in the nicest way possible, I really want to say this. That's the worst I'll ever be. The worst I ever be, of course. And for whoever who's gonna watch this, that's the worst I'll ever be. Just think about it. 14 seconds and then now think about if you're gonna put some time into me, some effort into me, and I'm putting effort into myself, that, that dirty boxing is probably the weakest I'll ever be in the sport of mma.

[Joe Rogan]

I believe you. I believe you. I mean, it only makes sense if you've been training that short amount of time in striking. Now, when you train striking, are you training boxing? Are you doing Muay Thai? Like, what kind of striking training you're doing? Are you incorporating it all together in mma?

[Gable Stevenson]

I do it all. So a lot of days I go in. So I kind of have like a really good schedule right now since I'm not going to go into a fight. So I do every day besides Sunday, some days or two a days, like, because I go to Lifetime and play basketball, I go to Lifetime, I sit in the cold tub and sauna and stuff. But when I strike, I go in there. One round's maybe boxing, next round is kicks, teeps, knees, everything, elbows. The next round is what the blueprint I have of what moves I need to really do to get in, to kind of get to my shots, or I'm gonna fake, shoot and punch and. And then I probably go 10 rounds, 12 rounds of that, five minutes each.

[Joe Rogan]

So you, you always incorporate all the MMA skills together in a workout?

[Gable Stevenson]

I try to.

[Joe Rogan]

What's interesting, when I was talking to Ilya Toporia, when he's. Particularly when he's not training for a fight, he doesn't do that. That. He is very rare in that. Like when he goes and he works on his boxing, he. He'll just box, he just boxes. When he works on his jiu jitsu, he Just does jiu jitsu. When he works on his wrestling, he just does wrestling. Then he puts them all together with MMA training, but he spends an exorbitant amount of time on each individual skill by itself to really, like, hone and tighten those things up, which is.

[Gable Stevenson]

Is.

[Joe Rogan]

It's an interesting choice, and obviously for him, it's worked out spectacularly.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes, it has.

[Joe Rogan]

But there's no real, like, I guess if you want to be, like, an elite soccer player, I'm sure there's a program that they've kind of devised, like, this is the very best way to become a good soccer player. They have, you know, coaches and they game plan. They know what to do with mma. There's all these different approaches, everyone. Alex Pereira's approach is different than Merab's approach, which will be different than your approach. Everybody's got a different thing.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, it's just like you said, it depends a person, and it also depends the team that you have. I'm just really big on. I'm just still very new, so I'm really big on just trying to make sure I can absorb all the information possible. And kind of, when I go into these fights, these first few fights come kind of showcase what I can, and sadly, they have ended early. Not sadly, but and in a good way. You know what I'm saying? But just go out there and showcase who I am. And when I go train, man, I don't mind sitting in there all day. Sometimes me and. Me and John will practice for hours, just sitting there, repeating, repeating. And then all of a sudden, we go on at 8 o', clock, it's midnight. But I like that, though, because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like there's someone invested in me that makes me feel like I'm here for a purpose, and it makes me feel like this is what I'm. There's someone out of the country. There's someone in Russia. When I'm asleep, he's up, and I don't like that he's up working. So when I can get all the time possible, I'm making sure I get all that time because I don't want that dude to show up one day and he's got a little inch on me, and I just can'. I can't think about that happening.

[Joe Rogan]

I always have that thought in my head with, in terms of, like, UFC fighters, like, there's such a shallow division. The heavyweight division is so shallow. I'm like, there has got to be some elite Russian wrestlers that are thinking about going the Fedor Emilianenko route. Like they're thinking about. I know Nemkov, who just won the PFL title. He's a very high level guy. But there's, there has to be some like really high level wrestlers that are considering going into MMA right now.

[Gable Stevenson]

Russian heavyweights are really not as good as people think in wrestling. Really. They got a guy named Abdul Rashid alive. I don't know if you heard of him.

[Joe Rogan]

I have.

[Gable Stevenson]

DC told me about him. He is crazy. If he came to fighting, it's over with. Not for heavyweights, for the other groups. Because he's got to go through me if he comes, if he comes heavyweight. But Iranians heavyweights are really good. I think that's where the heavyweight field should start coming from is Iran. They got a lot of good. They got two good guys that are. One's my age, I'm 25. And another one is, I think 22. They battle for the Olympic spot every year, but the older one wins just by a little. But the time is going to pass where that guy steps up and he's going to take the spot. So I would watch out for him.

[Joe Rogan]

You know what's interesting with MMA is some guys have a background in wrestling and then they learn how to strike and then they fall in love with striking and then they hardly ever wrestle when they fight, you know, it's. It's kind of weird. Like you would see that a lot in the early. Like Josh Koscheck is a good example who's a very good amateur wrestler. And then when he fought in mma, very rarely wrestled, it was mostly striking. You know, he could knock guys outstanding and I think guys kind of fall in love with that. And then there's also the amount of effort. It's so tiring to wrestle along with all the other things that sometimes guys just put that aside and they just decided to stand and bang with people.

[Gable Stevenson]

I really like wrestling. I grew up wrestling and if I had a chance, I would love to go to 20, 28 Olympics and win a gold medal. That's how much I still love wrestling. But right now my path is mma. And I knew the first couple of times that I would get those knockouts. Like you look at your hands and it's like Spider man. You got superpowers. Like, I got lightning in my hands. I would have never thought in my 25 years of life that I would go out there and I would left hook somebody and he would be out cold and I would double leg and flip it. Who would have ever thought that would ever happen. And so like, you're right. You get obsessed with knocking people out. But I still think my base is wrestling. I just haven't used the best base yet. And that's just. I just want to show people that my best base doesn't need to be used because the second best one is just as good as the first.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, and the second best one is getting better all the time. That's the thing. So. And again, I keep going back to this but if you can get that good at wrestling, you can get that good at anything thing. It's just a matter of putting in the time and, and dedicating yourself to that thing. But it's the mindset that allows someone to become an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. Boy, if that person. That. That's a scary person. That person decides to focus on whatever the it is. Pickleball, who gives a. They'll be elite at it. They just have to. You will put their mind on it.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's 100amindset thing. It ain't nothing else. You can have athletic ability, you can hard work all day. You can be so disciplined in the world. But if your mind doesn't think it. That's why I feel like that's why I beat a lot of people before I even walked out. There is. I knew it. I just. You just gotta know. And some people ship mindset. Some people just don't feel it. And you just gotta feel it.

[Joe Rogan]

I know. You know, it's like I was talking to a friend of mine. I don't want to mention any names because then you'll connect it to the fighter. But he, he said, man, he goes, I don't want to with anybody anymore that needs a mental coach. I said, really, why? He goes, it's just like this, just too much. He goes, I want to do to. Don't need that shit.

[Gable Stevenson]

You don't need it.

[Joe Rogan]

It's interesting because some guys do and some guys that mental coach takes them over the top and then they find a way to win where, you know, maybe they'd have mental hiccups in the past, you know, but his, his mentality was I, I want a guy who has no problems. Like if I'm gonna coach a guy, I don't want a guy who's a head kick. I want a guy who goes in there and already has this. I'm gonna fucking dominate. And if I don't, I'm gonna learn why I didn't dominate and I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna Get him next time.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. And I feel like that's the person I am. I just want to go in there and dominate. And I also think that a lot of people kind of rely too much on a lot of outside things to kind of make them feel good about themselves to go out there and perform instead of just. Just putting that switch on and just saying, hey, we here.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, outside things. Like what?

[Gable Stevenson]

Like, we mean just, you know, mental coaches, you know, someone. You got to get someone else to be maybe a. A breath, working coach. Another coach. Another coach. There's so many labels for coaches out there that you don't need. And when I was wrestling at Minnesota, I had Brandon Eggam, Luke Becker, who's the assistant and head coach, and Trevor Bramble. That's all I had. I didn't have nobody else. I didn't. Because I didn't want anybody to interfere with the connection that we had. And I feel like when you get a great bond with somebody and then you bring in more people, the bonds get mixed up. People are paying attention to too many different things instead of practicing. Maybe I got to work on my mind. Instead of working on my mind, maybe I got. I got to go do something else. Maybe I got to take care of something else.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you were talking about not watching, videoing your opponents because you're thinking about his double, how am I going to stop his double? Instead of thinking about, what am I going to do?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, I would rather be productive for the team instead of productive for eight different people. And maybe three of them don't care about you as much. You know, they're there just to get a little something from you.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right, right, right, right, right. Where are you training now?

[Gable Stevenson]

Right now? I'm still in Minneapolis. I'm having a baby girl this Sunday.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, congratulations.

[Gable Stevenson]

This Sunday, my little girl's coming out. I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

That's awesome.

[Gable Stevenson]

She's gonna pop out. My lady's gonna hopefully get induced that day. If it comes early, it comes early. So that'll be really nice. So I'm in Minneapolis right now, but when I do all the main training, New Mexico, Jackson. Wink.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, so in Minneapolis, where you train.

[Gable Stevenson]

That guy with that guy Billy Simon in prior life. Same guy?

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Gable Stevenson]

I've been with him forever.

[Joe Rogan]

So you're in this little tiny gym.

[Gable Stevenson]

I'm in that little gym. Nobody sees us. We got partners that need to come in. But rather than that, I don't want the big lights. When I was growing up in Portage, Indiana, I had a wrestling mat in the garage, and me and my two brothers would wrestle. And that's where we got the most work in. My dad said, go in there and hand fight, and whoever comes out comes out. And it was definitely not me at the time, but, baby, right now is me. But we would go in there and hand fighting, if you get. My dad's philosophy was we had Iowa style wrestling, and Iowa style wrestling was. Was brutal. If you run. If his face needs to be run into the wall, run his face into the wall. And that's how we grew up. And if you don't want your face ran into the wall, you better put his in first.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. And so when you train with this guy, are you training, like, are you training, like, I could get a call in a week to fight and I'm ready to do that, or are you training, like, just, like, developing skills constantly?

[Gable Stevenson]

I just religiously train to develop skills constantly. I try not to never stop. I don't like stopping because I'm kind of a. This is crazy. I'm a thicker body, so if I sit for a little bit, I feel like I'm getting fat, and I want to feel that way. So I just try to always keep myself in shape and try to keep the best look possible. So if you need me on one week, which I don't want to do any short notice, just how. Just how me and John do it. No short notice. Like, if you need me in a week, I look good, I'm ready, but we just take our time.

[Joe Rogan]

So did John coach you about that? Like, give you some thoughts about that? Because I think that's a giant mistake that guys make, you know, and like, the Alexander Volkanovsky fight is a good example. The Islam Makhachev fight, he took that fight on 11 days notice. He's just been hanging around, drinking, partying, just being himself, just chilling. And then he also gets this opportunity for a rematch. First fight was razor thin decision. He lost. And he's like, I can do better, but you can't do better without a camp.

[Gable Stevenson]

You got to have time to be yourself.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, you have to have time to peek. And one of the things I really always admired about John is like, even a fight, like, like the chaos on and fight. They offered him chaos on. On short notice. He was like, nope, nope. And they're like, what do you. We need you to do this. He's like, nope. I'm a professional world champion. I prepare for my opponents, and I. I don't want to fight unless I'm prepared for my opponent, period.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's the smartest way.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at him, he's the goat. I mean, it's just so many guys, they get. And like, I do appreciate that Alex does take those short notice fights and he wins some of those short notice fights. But how many times he's fought injured? Like really injured. Like the first Yuri Prochovska fight, he had a fucked up knee, man. And when he, when he stopped Yuri, there's a moment when he's on top of Yuri and he's beating on him and the referee stops it and he goes to step up and he rolls off of him. The reason he rolled off him, he couldn't support himself on his knee. That's how up his knee was. And he was in a world title fight.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's bad.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, I feel like this is the only sport where they will let that happen. Just because football. You sitting on. You sitting on ir.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Gable Stevenson]

We don't have no ir.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's either you do it or you say no.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. And if you say no, they get upset at you.

[Gable Stevenson]

A lot of people get timid.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I mean, once you get past that barrier of. I think right now, since I'm. Since I'm going to have this daughter, I think a of lot my tone and mindset has changed to kind of really be more of a father figure for her, but also for like, if kids want to look at me and be like, wow, you know, Gable's normal also. But I think just you gotta say no to a lot of people. You gotta be generous in a lot of ways. But you also gotta be able to go out there and say, I don't like this. I don't feel this way about this, and this is why. And be cool on both sides. But some people get scared about that moment.

[Joe Rogan]

Are you doing. What kind of strength and conditioning are you doing?

[Gable Stevenson]

So I still lift with the college team. So everything they do with wrestling.

[Joe Rogan]

The college wrestling team, yes.

[Gable Stevenson]

Everything they do at the University of Minnesota, I still do. I still got the same strength coach with them. Bike sprints, Aerodyne sprints, Watt bike, Versaclimbers, everything. We try to mix it in all rowers, everything just to stay active. And if it's not where we're getting close to a fight, just maybe just take longer breaks in between just to keep the heart rate up. But I don't like when my heart rate takes a. Takes a break. I like to kind of keep it consistent. So when I ramp up, it's already ready to rock and roll.

[Joe Rogan]

You already have A very high baseline. Yeah. And like, when you're doing strength conditioning, as far as, like, weightlifting and stuff like that, like, are you trying to put on weight at all? No.

[Gable Stevenson]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

You like 250?

[Gable Stevenson]

I like to stay where I'm at. I do a lot of band. Band work, a lot of explosive work, a lot of jumps, a lot of light weights with high reps just to kind of keep the body moving and kind of keep the cutness and the strength there, but not also put too.

[Joe Rogan]

Much where you're stiff and you're naturally a large guy anyway. It's not like you have to put on a ton of weight, but like, when you see a guy like Francis, who's 265 natural, you know, and he used to have to cut a little bit of weight to make two, which is kind of crazy, isn't it? Isn't it crazy? But it's also crazy that the UFC has a weight limit that you have to make at heavyweight. You have to cut weight to make heavyweight.

[Gable Stevenson]

Think it would be if they didn't have 265 and it was just maybe 300.

[Joe Rogan]

It should be no weight. It's heavyweight. It should be. What they really need is more weight classes, the ufc. There's gaps that are just enormous. Like the gap between 85 and 205 is crazy. 20 pound weight gap in between categories is. That doesn't make any sense to me. £10. £10 is still a lot, but at least it's reasonable.

[Gable Stevenson]

How many weight classes boxing have, like 30.

[Joe Rogan]

Shitload. They have so many. Boxing has so many weight classes.

[Gable Stevenson]

Boxing got like eight champions for each weight, too.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a problem. That's a problem. MMA does as well, right? If you think about it, there's the one champion, there's the PFL champion, but the difference is there's really only the UFC champion in terms of the public perception, like we talked about Nemkov, who's an excellent fighter, nobody knows who the he is. Is not in America. You go to a regular kid, you know, some kid on the street, and, you know, you say, who is Vadim Nemkov? And they're like, what?

[Gable Stevenson]

But I bet you that kid knows I show speed.

[Joe Rogan]

I bet they do, right? I bet they do, right? They know I show speed. They probably know who Alex Pereira is. They probably know who Islam Makachev is. They know who the UFC guys are. The ufc, that that title is worth so much. It's so. It's, you know, it's a. It's the name. It's the. It is the combat sports leader. And if you're not in the ufc, I don't care. I mean, you look, you can go to the PFL and you can win that million dollar tournament and you can make money, and I'm all for that. And I'm very happy for those guys. They get to feed their family and they, they provide and they, they make a great living and they can retire with some money in the bank. But the reality is, part of what you're doing is you're trying to be the best. And if you're going to be the best, you kind of have to be in the ufc.

[Gable Stevenson]

Agreed.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, that's just what it is.

[Gable Stevenson]

There's so many great leagues, but like the most prestigious people. You can say pfl, you can say anything and you can go to any place and make a shit ton of money, but once you get that stamp of he's a UFC champ, people are like, damn, man, that's him.

[Joe Rogan]

That's it.

[Gable Stevenson]

That's him.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's it. They put that UFC belt on you and it's on espn and everybody sees it. That's it. The PFL is just another belt. It's like, you know, boxing has. So they have the ibf, the wba, the wbo, the wbc. It's like, it's just like so many organizations, it just gets so crazy. It's like, then they try to make.

[Gable Stevenson]

Terence Crawford pay for his belt.

[Joe Rogan]

Ridiculous.

[Gable Stevenson]

How crazy is that?

[Joe Rogan]

Terence Crawford's like, you, I'm the champ.

[Gable Stevenson]

I just wanted 300,000.

[Joe Rogan]

Everybody saw it. Is that what they wanted from 300 grand?

[Gable Stevenson]

Can we get a look on this? Because I might be tripping, but they stripped him.

[Joe Rogan]

I know they stripped him with like.

[Gable Stevenson]

Percentage of purse, and I think it was like 3% of his, whatever he made. So it was.

[Joe Rogan]

That's so nuts. That is so nuts. That is so nuts that they get paid that much. Just be a sanctioning body and what are they doing? They're not doing anything. Like, it doesn't mean anything.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, they just get the best looking guy to maybe throw a belt on you. That's about all. They don't really get nothing else.

[Joe Rogan]

You get nothing, you get a belt. But the. Everybody knows he beat, beat the brakes off Canelo Alvarez. That's it, man. I love champion. I love Canelo as well. But, you know, I love what Terrence did. Because what Terrence did was crazy. He goes all the way up from 47 to 68. He had one fight at 54. You know, wins the title at 54 and then goes all the way up to 68. And everybody's like, canelo's gonna be too big. Canelo's gonna be too big.

[Gable Stevenson]

No way.

[Joe Rogan]

No skill.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's.

[Joe Rogan]

Next level is king.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

And.

[Gable Stevenson]

But I think 38. He's 38. He could do a couple more if he wanted to.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't think he does, but he don't want to. I think he's done, and I love it. I love that he's done 300,000 dethroned over $300,000 fee. Wow, that's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

Do you think that's right?

[Joe Rogan]

No. No unpaid fees and brief reign as undisputed chairman. It doesn't matter. He's the fucking champion. You can't take the guy's belt because he's not willing to give you money. Fuck you.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

He won. Fuck off. Fuck off. He won.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, now I see that. Is there going to be a new boxing promotion? Zafa.

[Joe Rogan]

Zufa.

[Gable Stevenson]

Sorry.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So the UFC is doing something with the Saudis, and they are. I think they're launching their first event in January. I think they're launching their first event the night before, the big UFC on Paramount event.

[Gable Stevenson]

So It'll be the 23rd.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes. I don't think they've announced anything in terms of the card, who's going to be on it. I mean, that's not a lot of time. You know, that's only not even a month from now. So I don't even understand how they're doing that. But they're probably going to do the same thing that Riyadh season's doing, you.

[Gable Stevenson]

Know, which is really smart. Riyadh season's great. I mean, it's putting guys into that next level category of, hey, you are.

[Joe Rogan]

A star, and Turkey All Shake is throwing crazy money.

[Gable Stevenson]

Rightfully deserve for a lot of these guys.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah, they deserve it. Oh, they definitely do. But it's, you know, if you. You do that, you're going to get people to fight that would avoid each other ordinarily, you know, and, you know, we've seen that already. The Saudis have already been able to do that, get guys to fight, and, you know, you're going to put on the most exciting fights. You're going to put on the best matchups. And so I think the UFC is trying to do that same kind of model. And now that the Saudis own Ring Magazine magazine, so they have the Ring magazine belt, which has always been the most prestigious belt, you know, like, there's always a bunch of different champions in different weight classes. But if you're a fan of Ring magazine like I am, when you would get Ring magazine and they would have the ring champion, you know, at Marvin Hagler, like, well, that's the champion.

[Gable Stevenson]

That's him.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's it. There might be a WBO guy out there, a WBA guy out there, but the reality is that's the guy. That's the guy. And the boxing needs like a unified champion thing like that. So, like, when you see Terrence in there with like five belts, like, it's great that he's got all those belts, but why it should be one belt to be like, this is the super middleweight champion of the planet, period. All your sanctioning bodies, that's the guy. That's it. One belt is all he needs.

[Gable Stevenson]

And they all different colors too.

[Joe Rogan]

They're all. They're all cool looking. They're all cool looking. He's got them all. I mean, you go over his living room, it's probably dope. Dope.

[Gable Stevenson]

The Instagram picture look cool?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it looks great. We look great. When he was in the ring and he's, you know, got him on his shoulders and one on his waist. And I wonder if they fight over who gets to be on the waist, you know, like, I'll give you an extra 100 grand if you put it.

[Gable Stevenson]

On your waist, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

But the reality is, it's like the belt doesn't mean anything. The fighter means something. And when we all know who the champ is, we all know it's Terrence if this other guy gets the belt. Like, okay, you didn't beat Terence Crawford, so you're not really the 168 pound championship.

[Gable Stevenson]

But isn't that a hard. Do you think for a boxer like that, is that a hard shadow to live in? Or do you think it's a shadow to. Or is that labeled as a shadow? You know, because Terrence leaves and then you step up.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's different. When Terrence leaves, if he gives up all the belts and he really does decide to totally leave, which I'm not totally convinced because I think he want. They wanted to him to have a rematch with Canelo and they. I think he threw a big number at them. This is all. I'm reading rumors online. I don't know what's. See if you find out what if that's true. Did they offer. Did Terence Crawford demand like a certain amount for Canelo Alvarez rematch? Because he's coming in soon. I'LL ask him in person, but I. I feel like you could probably entice him for one more big fight.

[Gable Stevenson]

Probably could.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, one more big fight at 68 or maybe even at 54. I mean, really, he could fight at 47. I mean, when do you.

[Gable Stevenson]

When do you think there comes a point where people need to just stop and like, you know, there's always going to be money thrown at you, but when you come up, when you think there's a point that, like, it's different.

[Joe Rogan]

For every person, you know?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So here it is right here. So Bernie Davis revealed that Terence Crawford's price for a Canelo rematch, and it's massive. According to Davis, Crawford won't return to the ring with Canelo Alvarez unless he's paid $100 million. And he deserves it.

[Gable Stevenson]

Rightfully so.

[Joe Rogan]

Crawford earned $50 million for the first fight in September. But after a tactical, low action bout that disappointed many fans. Fuck off. Who the fuck did that disappear? Who the. Who did that disappoint? You got to be a casual. If that disappointed you. Tactical, low action bout.

[Gable Stevenson]

Who wrote this?

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know. Off.

[Gable Stevenson]

I think I could write a better one than this.

[Joe Rogan]

I think boxing has some very disrespectful journalists. I see some disrespectful shit they write about boxers. Go back to that little thing when it said there. So anyway, pressure now on Turkey Al Shake to decide whether the rematch is worth that kind of money. Fans already calling for other opponents. Benavidez, but Abiev Bivol fighters they believe bring real action. Oh, so this is a kind of a disrespectful.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's kind of messed up.

[Joe Rogan]

Real action.

[Gable Stevenson]

Why is she dissing? Why are they dissing them like this?

[Joe Rogan]

They do that a lot. There's a lot of talking and boxing, which I guess is fine. I like that. There's not that much that in mma. MMA is much more respectful, really.

[Gable Stevenson]

Standard and respectful.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And that guy deserves everything. He's one of the greatest to ever do it and one of the best switch hitters in the. The history of the sport.

[Gable Stevenson]

Are you putting him above Floyd?

[Joe Rogan]

It's hard. It's. You know, it's hard. You know, they. They never fought each other, which I think would have been amazing if they're both in their prime at the same time. That would have been fantastic to watch.

[Gable Stevenson]

Ain't Floyd supposed to fight Mike?

[Joe Rogan]

Yes. I think I'm tripping, but, I mean, I feel like that's gonna be like Floyd versus Or, excuse me, like Mike versus Roy or like Mike versus Logan. It kind of looks more like sparring a little more sparring really than a fight fight. How is, how is Floyd gonna fight Mike Tyson?

[Gable Stevenson]

Have you ever, have you ever spoke to Mike Tyson?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I've had him on a couple times.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. He's my favorite. He's, he's my favorite bro. He's.

[Joe Rogan]

When, when he was in his prime, there was nobody like him. Him, there was nobody like him. Cuz he had that speed, that speed. And that's something that you have the, the speed of a, of a, a lighter person in the frame of a heavyweight is an extraordinary gift because it. So many of these heavyweights, man, they got big power but like Francis big power, but they don't move like a lightweight guy. They don't move like 170 pound guy. When Mike was in his prime time, he was so fast. You could see guys trying to calculate and calibrate because it was different. They were used to fighting heavyweights and all sudden you got this guy bobbing and weaving and moving towards you and.

[Gable Stevenson]

Like, ah, it's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Your brain is being overloaded with all the possibilities. It was just, it was a totally different thing, man.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's by far my favorite.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh yeah. In his prime, he's the most extraordinary heavyweight that ever existed because. And it was, every show was an execution. It wasn't like, you know, oh my God, is Mike gonna lose this one? No, in his prime it was just all executions.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I think the best thing about that, like being popular back in the day, like he was such a big time fighter. I was watching a lot of videos, like Will Smith and Magic Johnson were showing up and Jordan and stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

You know how crazy it is nowadays that we have social media that you don't have to go and, and watch someone live. But back then, like when you see the videos of Michael Jackson in this hotel and you look out and it's like, wow, it's Michael Jackson. Like, like that wow factor is like super cool. And he had that. Oh yeah, to the highest degree.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Everybody dressed up in the best clothes. They all showed up.

[Gable Stevenson]

Chains on watches on everything.

[Joe Rogan]

Everybody. It was a, it was an event to be seen at. And if you were one of the people that was ringside, like you were, you know, you were an elite celebrity. And that was, you know, the Mike Tyson era. It was different. It was different than, it was different than any other heavyweight like since Ali. So you had Ali and then Larry Holmes, who doesn't get the credit that he Deserves.

[Gable Stevenson]

He was fantastic, too.

[Joe Rogan]

I watched all videos, too. Amazing fighter. But he lived in the shadow of Ali, you know, And a lot of people hated him, too, because he beat up Ali when Ali was already done. Yeah, that was tough to watch. And, you know, he had been Ali's sparring partner when Ali was younger, you know, and so. And everybody knew how good Larry Holmes was, and everybody knew that Muhammad Ali was older. And what's that?

[Gable Stevenson]

Would you do that if he was a sparring partner for your homie? And that's got to be a difficult combo because you burn. You burn a bridge.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, you burn a bridge with the whole society. But part of it is like, you kind of have to, right? Because if you are the heavyweight champion of the world and they want to set up a fight with Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali wants to fight you, and they want to give you $10 million and it's going to be on TV and everybody's hyped up about it. Like, what are you going to do? Say, no, I won't fight him. I'm going to relinquish my crown? What are you going to do? Like, I don't. I don't know if he had any opportunity to do anything other than fight him. But it's just like he was. Muhammad Ali was so beloved, not just as one of the greatest fighters of all time, but also as a cultural figure, that watching that man beat him up like that just beat the shit out of Ali. And then seeing Ali afterwards when he was. He had the shakes and he had Parkinson's, and everybody knew that that was trauma related. Parkinson's. And knowing that Larry Holmes dished out a lot of that, I think in a lot of people's mind that always that sort. And I think that to this day is why Larry Holmes does not get the credit that he deserves. He had one of the greatest jabs in the history of the sport.

[Gable Stevenson]

Crazy. I just saw a video. He was flicking it.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, even when he fought Mike, when he fought Mike, he was way past his prime. You know, he had been out for a long time.

[Gable Stevenson]

Mike did his thing and.

[Joe Rogan]

But you know, there was a round in that fight where Larry Holmes was popping that jab, where it made you think, like, man, what would this fight have been like if Larry was in his prime? You know, it would have been very interesting, I think. I think Mike was on another level, though.

[Gable Stevenson]

He was, he was. When I. When, when I see him, he just had the vein. Hi, it's Sam Reinhart from the Florida Panthers. Watch as we Take on the New York Rangers in the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic in Miami. The NHL Winter Classic is coming to the Sunshine State ring in the new year with me in Miami. Catch all the action on January 2nd at 8:00pm Eastern on TNT and HBO Max. That's January 2nd at 8:00pm on TNT and HBO Max. For tickets and more info, visit NHL.com Winter Classic. You know, like, that was. That's my, like, wow. He was just.

[Joe Rogan]

He was a speedy tank and just the skill, too. And also that style, that peekaboo style was just so different than anything else anybody was doing. So it was so hard to prepare for. You got most. Most of these heavyweight boxers are standing straight up. You know, they're throwing jabs and moving and moving like Foreman or moving like Ken Norton or whoever they were. But Muhammad Ali, you know, was the only guy that moved like a lighter guy. He was. He was different. But Mike Tyson was crouching and bobbing and weaving and coming at it was a totally different thing to prepare for.

[Gable Stevenson]

You can't prepare for something like that. That's like, when someone is too athletic, that's like preparing for Miles Garrett right now. You just can't. He's gonna have 25 sacks this year. And it's like, how do you prepare for something like that? Besides try to psych yourself into. Maybe I can do it. But this is not going to happen.

[Joe Rogan]

There's always going to be freaks. There's always going to be these athletic freaks that can just do things that no one else can do.

[Gable Stevenson]

Now there's more than now. There's even more. Because you see high school football, guys 6, 5, 2, 8, going to Ohio State, I'm like, damn, what they got.

[Joe Rogan]

People are bigger. Also, people are doing things for their kids at an early age to optimize their growth and making sure that they come out bigger and stronger and faster or getting them training younger, strength and conditioning and, you know, plyometrics and shit when they're real young to get them prepared for things. I mean, look, you know Vasily Lomachenko.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes. So that guy, man, he was fast.

[Joe Rogan]

That dude's dad took him out of boxing for two years to have him learn Ukrainian dance so that he have better footwork.

[Gable Stevenson]

And he was dancing on people. I see. Oh, my God. I watch his highlights on Instagram.

[Joe Rogan]

Footwork was insane.

[Gable Stevenson]

Usyk's the same.

[Joe Rogan]

Same coach.

[Gable Stevenson]

Usyk's the same person, same coach. I really like us.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Oh, my God. Crazy again. One of the greatest heavyweights of all time. And not A big guy either, you.

[Gable Stevenson]

Know, he just knows where to go and when to go, which is nice.

[Joe Rogan]

What's also, he's constantly moving. He's never right in front of you. He's constantly stepping, stepping and stepping and stuff. And you know, he's setting you up and he's always like downloading and calculating your movements and your reactions to things. It's so skillful. That to me is the most beautiful thing about boxing is that someone could stand in the fire and be so skillful that, like Crawford that, I mean, standing right in front of Canelo. There was one point in the fight where he was pity patting him. His. Here's Lomachenko when he's in his prime. Like, the movement was bananas and it was just his ease of footwork. And it wasn't footwork like trying to get away from you. It was footwork standing right in front of you and stepping off to the side and cracking like that kind of like these angles is just. Unless you have tried to do that, you don't know how ridiculously difficult that is.

[Gable Stevenson]

The conditioning on that is crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Your legs have to be in peak form.

[Gable Stevenson]

Super peak form.

[Joe Rogan]

It's just there's so many guys out there that you could learn from by watching. And they set the bar so high. And that is the difference between watching like Keith Hackney versus Emmanuel Yarborough way back in 1993 versus watching, you know, Jon Jones in 2025. It's like we get to see now these gu that have seen it all, the P Yan, the Ilot Torias, the Islam Makachevs. You get to see the elite of the elite today. And these young kids that are coming up now, they get to see that and learn from that and incorporate all these things. And you're seeing these guys that are fighting on Dana White's Contender series that are. They look like world championship caliber fighters and they're not even in the UFC yet.

[Gable Stevenson]

Most definitely the lighter guys. Most definitely the lighter guys.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. There's so many good guys now, but in the heavyweight division, it's still fairly shallow.

[Gable Stevenson]

I know.

[Joe Rogan]

Which is where Gable comes in.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yo, it's funny, I think I heard you say shallow about three times. And you know, Joe, in the most nicest way, because I like to be. I like to be humble with the words and I like to talk with the confidence. I really think I can go out there and do right by the. This big promotion and go out there and just be fantastic.

[Joe Rogan]

I think you can too. And I think you can do What Mike Tyson did, which is revitalize the heavyweight division, because, I mean, other than John, who's of course a superstar, but he's kind of semi retired. The Tom Aspinall, Cyril gone thing was a disaster. I mean, that's a disaster to. I mean, Tom Aspinall still can't see. He's got a up right eyeball still.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's really bad, right?

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, the reality is he might not ever fight again. Like, who knows? Knows, like if he has surgery on his eye and it doesn't go well and he can't see out of the eye, apparently he's still up in his right eye. There's some, some tendon damage or something. And, you know, eyes are so tricky. You never know, like, unless you're a complete psychopath like Michael Bisping, who fought 11 fights in the UFC, blind in one eye, which is so crazy that he did that. Do you know what? He did that crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

What do you do?

[Joe Rogan]

He memorized the eye chart. Chart. Like he memorized it so that he could put a. They could cover his left eye. Oh, my God. And he could just.

[Gable Stevenson]

So whenever he went to do an eye exam, he knew the letters.

[Joe Rogan]

They would say, all right, read the third chart and you would say A, B, C, D, E. He knew what the letters were.

[Gable Stevenson]

Oh, he's smart.

[Joe Rogan]

He's crazy. Oh, he's couldn't see out of one of his eyes and still fought world class fighters. I think 11 fights he had only being able to see out of one eye.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, I'm not really sure how to engage with the eye talk on Tom Aspinall, but I think he's a fantastic fighter. I think Gan is a fighter.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you mean by engage with the eye talk?

[Gable Stevenson]

You know, I feel like getting poked in the eye sucks and I just don't know how he feels that he got, you know what I'm saying? So I'm not gonna.

[Joe Rogan]

We don't know what he was experiencing.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. And nobody ever knows. But, you know, critics are gonna go online and say X, Y and Z, but I'm just gonna stand the middle ground. I say I think Tom's a fantastic fighter. Ciro is great also, and I think a lot of them are also great also. You're gonna always say it's really shallow, and I believe it's shallow too. And I believe I can go out there and do the best I can and really dominate when I need to. But just when I see Tom Aspinall, you know, Tom Aspinall reminds me of a guy From Turkey that I wrestled in the Olympics. He was a 2016 Olympic champ. His name, Taha Aguh. He was 6 4, same size as, same size as Tom, same build, same everything. And I went out there and I beat him 8 to 0. And I was in his face for that six minutes and I let him know that I was here. And I feel like in that instance, that's when the tides change. And I feel like with a guy like Tom, I think I look at him as like a guy like Taha Akul, you know, he's on top, he's the leader. You know, he's still fresh. But I think there's another hungry guy that's going to come and hopefully it's me that's going to come and go out there and do, do what I need to do.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, listen, I hope Tom gets back in because again, we don't know what's going on with his eye. And for all the critics, you need to know this, the right eye, that's the problem. But if you look at when he fought his left eye, the finger went deeper in his left eye than it did his right eye. So if you think he's faking it, he was knuckle deep in that left eye.

[Gable Stevenson]

He was all up in that eye. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean it's horrible to see, to undergo multiple eye surgeries. Multiple eye surgeries, that's horrible. By the time a statement goes out, I'll probably have surgery on one eye already. Neck surgery is coming mid January. Neck surgery. So he's having surgery on both eyes.

[Gable Stevenson]

You know, it's really messed up, but I think the way the post fight interview went, because I like to look at how people approach the world also too. And he was just upset how the people were reacting, you know, saying, why the fuck are you booing? Why are you doing this? I mean, there could have been a. They're gonna be a great approach to that of him saying, man, you know, I got my eye poked, but I, but I'm gonna come back stronger from this. But.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, the problem is people are always gonna doubt you when you get poked in the eye. You know, there's always gonna be a bunch of people like, oh, you're fine, because people have gotten poked in the eye and they have continued fighting. But is that smart? It's a foul. First of all, I think every time a guy gets poked in the eye, one point deduction immediately, instantly, maybe even two points. You should never do that to a person. Never. One thing you notice about Petr Yan's Fight with Merab, he fights like this. His hand is in a fist. So when he's got his hand up like this and the front hand's extended, he's not doing that.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's kind of guiding you. Yeah, honestly.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, he's letting you know this motherfucker's coming, you know? And he's also, like, in a shell, very well protected by having that one hand up like that and have that shoulder. He's got the chin block, and then he's doing this with this hand. It's a very good defensive position. Also very skillful, because he's so good defensively in terms of his movement and the way he's able to roll with punches and get out of the way in time. But he never pokes in the eye. He's not doing that. Cyril gone has a habit of doing that.

[Gable Stevenson]

Why do you think that is?

[Joe Rogan]

You could speculate. You could speculate all day long. You could say he wants to do it, you know? I mean, ask John. John's poked people in the eyes.

[Gable Stevenson]

He does it all the time.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

I mean, even if you would have took the points from him, he still would have won.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I know. It's just. It's one of those things. It's like, here's a problem. Why. Why are the fingers out in the first place? Like, why don't they cover that up? Like, why don't they have it like one of those Everlast bag gloves where.

[Gable Stevenson]

It'S like a mitt.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I mean, have the thumb out. Because you don't grapple with these anyway. You don't do this. You never do this. So why do. Why do the fingers have to be loose? If you grapple, you're grappling like this or like this. Like, if you're clenching your hands together, you're. You're never clenching your hands together like this. You never interlace your fingers together. So why the fuck are they open in the first place when it only causes problems? If they developed an MMA glove that covered the tips of the fingers like. Like a mitten, we would have way less problems with this shit. You'd occasionally probably have a thumb in the eye every now and again, but you would have at least 8 less possibilities for each fight of things going into your eye. So this. It just makes sense. And it wouldn't hinder grappling. You just have a thin piece of leather. Leather that, you know, the padding goes over the knuckles, the piece of leather goes over the tip of the fingers and have it come down like this like a mitten, but it's not hard to find.

[Gable Stevenson]

If it was a mitt and I'm. And I'm on top and I grab wrist control. Do you think the leather of the mitt sticks harder?

[Joe Rogan]

Probably, yeah. Probably aid grappling. It probably make fights better. It probably do stuff like, you'd probably be able to get more takedowns, maybe. I don't know, man. Maybe when the leather gets wet, maybe it becomes slippery like a finger. We'd have to find out, but at least we would have less eye pokes. And it's not gonna hinder the striking at all. There's no need to have these fingers exposed like this.

[Gable Stevenson]

No, there's no need. But two great fighters, I mean, accidents happen.

[Joe Rogan]

Happen. Accidents happen. And also purposeful fouls happen, you know, and I'm not saying that Cyril Gone did it on purpose, but he's. He did it like five times in that fight. I rewatched that fight a couple of times and every time Aspinall came towards him, he was doing this every time. Fingers outstretched, pointed towards the face. It's just, it's illegal. You're not supposed to ever do that. Your. Your fist should always be balled up when it's moving towards your fight, your opponent's face. But we don't have to have these goddamn fingers covered like that or open like that. They should be covered. It's not impossible to do. It could be really easy to design a glove like that. I don't understand for the life of me how the sport's been around since 1993 and no one has introduced gloves like that.

[Gable Stevenson]

True. No, you're right. A really good thing I wanted to ask you is for someone new coming in to a sport that a lot of people know, how do you think they should bridge the popularity of the sport and also the real life of who the person is? I might be saying this in a hard way.

[Joe Rogan]

No, I know what you're saying.

[Gable Stevenson]

Like, how do you think they should? Because, you know, I've been around a lot of people, but, you know, like, yo, it always gets bigger and always gets bigger. And how do you. How do you bridge that gap of keeping that same mind frame of, like, man, you know, I'm the guy, but I need a reset. I always need a reset. I need to make sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, it's going to be dependent upon you, right? And it's going to be a rocket ride that you're on. And the pressure and just the overall, like, not being able to go to the mall is going to be weird. You know, it's going to get weird. It'll get weird. You know, you're going to get mobbed at the airport. It's going to get weird. And, you know, you're going to have to. You're going to have to figure out a way to have your own private time. That's very important. When guys never have private time, they're always surrounded by people and they're always. You could lose yourself, you could lose your way and just fame itself. Fame itself is very complicated. It's very complicated for people, especially for fighters. When your entire identity relies on the way other people perceive you, that's not good. It's. It feels good when you're on top because everybody's like, oh, there's cable. He's the man. Whoa, you're the man. You're the man. But if you rely on other people's opinions of you for your self esteem and your self worth worth, then the moment you have a stumble, you know, what if you get eye poked? You know, what if you get eye poked and then also Gable's a Gable. And you're like, what, what? And you're dealing with the opinions of morons and they're affecting your own feelings about yourself. And then there's all the other pressures that come with money and people trying to scam you and business deals and, and this and that, and they want you to do movies and that kind of, you know, like, look, that's the, that's the, the bane of fighters existence. When Hollywood gets involved. That kind of, in a lot of ways led to the decline of Ronda Rousey. In a lot of ways, Conor McGregor. The people started, you know, throwing everything at you. You're doing cell phone commercials and all this different. And that stuff gets in the way. Yeah, it gets in the way of your training, but it also gets in the way of your ability to have that deep pressure time to be yourself and to be alone with your thoughts, which I think is very important just to solidify your own, your own understanding of who you are as a human being, you know, and you don't want to be defined by other people's opinions and perceptions. And then there's also, like, the UFC does a fantastic job of showing who a fighter really is. You know, the Countdown series, you know, the UFC Embedded series. So when they're doing stuff like that and you get to see this person interacting with their family, going through training camp, going through the weight cut, and you get to see who they are joking around with people, hanging out with their friends, laughing. That's important too, because people really want to relate to you. You know, they don't want this guy who just appears, you know, every five months. You don't know about him, and then all sudden there he is in the ring again and, you know, you're putting all these things on him and imagining what he's like. The more they can get to see behind the curtain, the better it is for you, especially if you're a good person and you're an interesting person and they get to see. It's also inspiring for people. They like you, like to talk about yourself like you're a regular guy. You put your shoes on one foot at a time like everybody else, else. But like, wow, look at the greatness this regular guy can accomplish. Maybe, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can do something like that. Maybe in whatever I'm doing in life, whatever. If I'm a skier, I'm a whatever, whatever your job is, maybe I can be great and be a normal person. Like this guy is true? No.

[Gable Stevenson]

100%. Well, that's a, that's fantastic answer because, you know, I just feel like at some point I'll get to that spot.

[Joe Rogan]

Spot, you know, of.

[Gable Stevenson]

Like, how do I. How do I know if someone's not real? How do I know if someone is in that, in that space of things change and, and there's leeches, there's, there's bad people. So, you know, it's always a nice thing to have someone that has surpassed that level that you can finally see and be like, man, like, how did you. How did you.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, John's a great guy to talk to about that. Obviously John's had his stumbles and. Which is, you know, when, when people talk about John and the things that John's gotten in trouble with, I'm like, listen, do you want a wild motherfucker or not? Okay? If you want a guy to be the greatest of all time in fucking cage fighting, he's gonna be wild. That's one of the reasons why he's great. When Jon was, What is he, 22 years old when he won the title? 23 fighting 23, Mauricio Shogun Hua, who's an all time great pride legend. He opens the fight with a flying knee. Who does that? Who does. You gotta be wild. You gotta be a wild fella. That's John. I mean, and you know, obviously there's stuff he shouldn't have done. There's, you know, a lot of, a lot of extracurricular activities, a lot of partying. It's not healthy, it's not good, but that is what comes with being that kind of a guy. And you know, John could probably tell you more about this than anybody that's ever lived. Like, what were the stumbles? What could I have done differently? And he probably could help prepare you more than anybody ever.

[Gable Stevenson]

Most definitely. He's already kind of put a big foot into it and man, he's amazing with a lot of things now. You know, he talks so well now. A lot of things are in a sense of. He's trying to look out for me in business opportunities and places that I need to go. And it's amazing, you know, a lot of people don't do that, especially when you see the peaks and valleys of that person and their public info also. And a lot of people don't want to give people the chance because you see something about someone until you finally meet them and it's like, man, like this guy's a whole different person. You would have never expected. And so, man, with John, he's just, he's just opened a lot of doors and kind of, he is doing that guiding of me.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's great too because John is essentially guiding his replacement, you know, which is really hard for a lot of people to have that kind of self awareness. Know that there's only a certain amount of time that I can do this for. And I see this young great man who's coming up and I'm going to help him and I'm going to give him some advice that maybe it would have been amazing if someone gave me, you know, because John didn't have some heavyweight champion training with him that could teach him those things. Now he's satisfied, especially not someone at that level.

[Gable Stevenson]

The level that he's at, man, I know he's honored. We're both honored. Yeah, man. He just, like I said, he called me today, he was just. Man, I really think you should just let the world know who you are and just, just kind of give people the real feel of who you need to be. Yeah, and I've always, I've always loved to have like, like you just talked about with the UMC Abettids. You know, you see the real human being and I've always liked people seeing a real human being because. Because we all do shit the same way.

[Joe Rogan]

There's nothing special.

[Gable Stevenson]

There's nothing special. Some people just have more money, some people just have more status. But at the end of the day, hopefully we can all sleep in A bed. And I know some people don't, which is sad to see, but it's just some people live different lives. And I want to live a life where it's happy and healthy with the people I have. And I can meet so many people and I feel like I'm doing a great job right now. So, man, any input I can get on how to be better, how to be more mature, how to be more sound, especially from John, I'm getting a lot but from, to hear from you, you know, you get different perspectives of you were in a different realm than John also. But you guys are also in the same place. Like you do the podcast and John's semi retired, but you see the two different lives of two different well respected people.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that mindset that you have to really want to acquire that information and really sort it out and know that these challenges are coming your way. The money and the fame and all that stuff is the thing that everybody focuses on, but really the focus is on excellence. Excellence is what brings you the money. Excellence is what brings you the fame. And the moment you start thinking about the fame and the money and not thinking about the excellence, you've lost your way. You've lost your way. And a lot of people lose their way. A lot of people, that money and that fame, it starts coming and all of a sudden you're just thinking about numbers. You're thinking about the house you're going to buy and the you going to drive and all that stupid. And you lose your way. And you know, one of the things that I always try to tell people, I try to tell those to young comedians especially, is that think of the attention that you have, like it has a number value. Like the attention. Like let's imagine like if you had $100, you know, you can only spend $100. Let's imagine your mind only has a hundred units of focus. You have 100 units of focus. Focus. Any focus that you have on other outside of the thing that brings you excellence is just robbing from excellence. That's all it is. Hey, if you're concentrating on haters on social media, or if you got a crazy in your life that's ruining everything, or you got some friend who's a hater and you think he's like, maybe like hoping you fail, like all that stuff that's distracting and it's just robbing attention from excellence, you know, and some of it's unavoidable and some of it actually strengthens your resolve to have a certain amount of like in your life just to understand how to maintain and still be excellent despite of all that. There's probably some resilience building that comes from that. But protect your focus. It's precious. Protect your time, protect that energy that you have to invest in things. It's so precious. The. The mind, focus and your drive. That is everything in your life. That's everything. And anything that steals from that. I remember this is one fighter, and he was a very good fighter that was fighting in pride, and he had this crazy girlfriend. And every time he was going to fight, like the day before the fight, the girl would start problems and she would start fights and she'd screen. She left the hotel like one o' clock in the morning and went down to the bar. She wanted him. Him to fail. She wanted to be more important than his fighting career. And his fighting career was so important and so overwhelming that she felt like she wasn't getting the attention that she needed. So she would go get attention from him and she would steal from him and brought. And it was crazy. And this guy, and he never wound up being a champion. And he was a very talented guy, too. I don't want to say his name, but it was one of those things where it's like, man, there are people in your life, you got to recognize when you're dealing with that kind of a person, you got to recognize that you got to cut them out. You got to get rid of them. They're stealing. They're stealing from your focus. They're stealing from your ability to create excellence. And that's what you're in the business of. You know, you're in the business of excellence. And anybody that's trying to steal from that, like, those are liabilities. They're. You know, that's like you got a hole in the bottom of your boat. You got to patch that shit up.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. Well, it's just like Mike Tyson kind of said, you know, once you're favored by God, you're also favored by the devil, too.

[Joe Rogan]

Ooh, that's so true, too. Yeah, the temptations will come. Yeah. And then also you start believing your own, you know, I mean, look at John when he wasn't training, you know, but luckily for John, he was so much better than everybody in the division that all it took was like a readjustment. Like the Dominic Reyes fight. He almost lost that fight, you know, And Dominic Reyes, as great as he was that night, should not have been beating Jon Jones, I think Jon Jones, with, like, a real focus and a real, like, real drive towards destroying Dominic Reyes would be on another level.

[Gable Stevenson]

I think so, too.

[Joe Rogan]

It's like, he could.

[Gable Stevenson]

He could.

[Joe Rogan]

He is the best guy to be in your corner, man, because he's made all the mistakes and still come out the goat. Like, who better to tell you how to do it, right?

[Gable Stevenson]

There's no one better, man. Probably the. The greatest. Of course. The greatest by far.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. What do you do for chill time? Like, what do you do to. To unwind?

[Gable Stevenson]

Honestly, right now, I like Call of Duty. I play. I play a lot of warzone. Ronnie, Ronnie, 2K. You know who that is? The dude that made the basketball game.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Gable Stevenson]

He. I guess. So I got my own player on 2K. And it says, like. Yeah. So when I load into the game, it says my real name. And then you're playing. People know you're playing against me. So it's either I'm playing Call of Duty or 2K. I mentioned before the French bulldogs. I mean, I like to take care of French bulldogs. I feel like Jamie's got one. You do? Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, he's so cute. You should have brought him. What? We didn't know. We didn't know you were into French bulldogs.

[Gable Stevenson]

So I had. Sadly, I had two pass away. I just had one pass away. He had IVDD in his neck. And that's a bad. It's a disc disease that happens in French bulldog because they're bred so bad. And so my first one had it in his back.

[Joe Rogan]

Back.

[Gable Stevenson]

He was playing all day. And then I turned and he was, like, paralyzed in an instant. And I was like, oh, man. Like, that's not good. So I had to put him down.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's horrible.

[Gable Stevenson]

And then I adopted one after. This is like. I adopted one a year ago. He just passed away a couple weeks ago. His name was Archie. My little guy, he had it in his neck. And I had him on painkillers for, like, six months. And I. And I looked, and one day he kind of rolled wrong and he kind of yelped again. And I was like, like, we got to take them in.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's horrible.

[Gable Stevenson]

So it's bad. You know, I got. I got bad attachments to friends. Bulldogs. Like, they're like my. Since I'm having a real baby now, that's like my second baby.

[Joe Rogan]

You're going to be amazed how much you love your real baby more than you love your dogs as much as I love my dogs. It just is.

[Gable Stevenson]

There's just another level.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's beyond. Doesn't even compare. I. My. One of my Dogs went to surgery today. He had a hern. He had a hernia. I have a. A golden retriever and I have a King Charles spaniel. He's the cutest little dog. He's so cute. He's seven months old and he was born with a little hernia. It's like some of them get that so they had to stitch him up and. But it's. When I was playing with him last night, I was so scared. I was like, what if something happens to him? Like, I can't. I can't take it, you know, because I love him so much. He's so sweet. Wheat. He just, like, when he. I pick him up, he, like, kisses me, like, constantly. And he makes noise, like. And sometimes he barks while he's kissing you. And you're like, I love you, too.

[Gable Stevenson]

I love you, too.

[Joe Rogan]

And his little tail's wagging. He wags his tail with his whole body. Like, his whole body's wag wiggling all over. Oh, yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

Mine would go after the ears.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he doesn't.

[Gable Stevenson]

He would, like. He would, like, nibble. Put a whole nibble on the ear. And then he would switch side. And then he would switch sides. Let me. Let me live for a little bit.

[Joe Rogan]

Bit.

[Gable Stevenson]

But we're. I'm the. I'm his whole world.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

And I feel like sometimes we forget that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Well, they're little love devices. They just. They just want love from you and they want to give you love. They never have bad days. They're. They're. They're never shitty. They're never in a bad mood. They're always cool. You know, every day is the same thing. Every day I see him in the morning, like, good morning, and you just. I get on the ground with them on the car park and letting them roll all over. I love dogs. If, you know, if it was up to me, I'd have 50 dogs. I wish we could make them live longer. I know.

[Gable Stevenson]

Making them live long would be crazy. Like. Like, cats are like, 20 years. Why can't a dog be 20 years?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I think they are working on that. I think there's actual startups right now that are working on animal longevity. And. Yeah, they're. They're working on different medical interventions that can allow dogs to live longer. Longer, which is fascinating. And then sometimes people. They clone their dogs.

[Gable Stevenson]

Tom Brady just did that. Yeah. I don't know how he did it, but, I mean, that's weird. Hey, have a good time.

[Joe Rogan]

That's pet cemetery.

[Gable Stevenson]

That is. That might be a hereditary.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I don't know if I'm into that.

[Gable Stevenson]

I don't know how I feel about that.

[Joe Rogan]

That. I feel like every dog has their own unique personality. And as much as I love the dogs that I have now, like. Like I had my dog Marshall old. He's almost nine or he just turned nine, rather. And I've had him since he was a puppy. I love him to death. But then I got this new dog, Charlie, and I love him to death too. He's a totally different personality. Like, I don't mind new dogs and new personalities. I don't need the same dog over and over and over again. You know what I mean? I think that's weird. You should try French bulldog.

[Gable Stevenson]

They got like, 12 different personalities.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, I love Carl. Jamie brings Carl in.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's.

[Joe Rogan]

He's a little psycho.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's got too many personalities.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, he runs at you and just wants to play.

[Gable Stevenson]

They got that bowling ball head. I know.

[Joe Rogan]

He's. He's a little ball muscle, too. Carl's jacked.

[Gable Stevenson]

Carl's got.

[Joe Rogan]

He's built.

[Gable Stevenson]

I need to see a picture.

[Joe Rogan]

You got pictures of him?

[Gable Stevenson]

Pull up a picture of Carl.

[Joe Rogan]

He's adorable. He. He plays at my golden, and he just, like, throws himself like a meat missile at my golden. Because my Golden's, like, so gentle, which is great because the. You know, Charlie is only £15. Pounds. My little dog. And so my golden is, like, playing, and he. He, like, gently puts a paw over him when they play. That's car. Look at that little face. Look at that in a face.

[Gable Stevenson]

I just know he does everything extra.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

Oh, look at him sleep.

[Joe Rogan]

He's really nice. He's. He's adorable. But when he plays with Marshall, it's really crazy. We got a video of him.

[Gable Stevenson]

Did you get his nose done?

[Joe Rogan]

Nope. No.

[Gable Stevenson]

He's just. Wow, that's perfect.

[Joe Rogan]

He had a good nose.

[Gable Stevenson]

That's really good.

[Joe Rogan]

Some of them have up noses.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, they come out. They come out like this.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no.

[Gable Stevenson]

And then they can't breathe, and so they breathe out their mouth. And sometimes they got to get.

[Joe Rogan]

They'd, like, solder. They clean that out.

[Gable Stevenson]

They make, like, a bigger hole.

[Joe Rogan]

That's awful.

[Gable Stevenson]

But some of them have it where, like, you have to go in and kind of help the. The esophagus because their face is flat. So you got to help, like, the back and kind of cut it to where the. It can go down the pipe.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no.

[Gable Stevenson]

Crazy. Crazy. I wish people. I wish those dogs could live forever. Those dogs got a million different Characters I know.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I love all kinds of dogs, man. I love working dogs. I love German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois and Cane Corso.

[Gable Stevenson]

Be cool. They're a little dangerous, but that's what I'm hearing. They only loyal to one person. If I'm not mistaken.

[Joe Rogan]

They don't like to listen.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, well, never mind.

[Joe Rogan]

My boy Mark, delegate from Sit Y'. All. Tong. Sityo Tong. Muay Thai. He coached a lot of UFC fighters. Coach Kenny Florian, great Muay Thai coach. Great guy, works for the ufc. He had a Connie Corso. They had to put him down, bit his hand, like, damn. Chomp down on him.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And he had it for years, out of nowhere. Well, you know, he's testing him. Like, sometimes those dogs, and not all of them, but some of them, they will test you, you know? And you just can't have a dog that's bullshit. Biting you like.

[Gable Stevenson]

No, because. What else?

[Joe Rogan]

Your kid. Yeah. What if it bites your wife?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. Facts.

[Joe Rogan]

What if it bites the mailman?

[Gable Stevenson]

It's like, you never know.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. When it's just like those. And it's not all of them. Like, I've had pit bulls, and I never had a pit bull that wanted. Even wanted to bite a person. They were always, like, the sweetest with people. But then you hear stories.

[Gable Stevenson]

You hear. Which is crazy. I know, because how can I go online and see a pit bull just not letting go of somebody, but all of a sudden, sudden the next video, I see a pit bull wearing a Christmas sweater with Paul shoes on.

[Joe Rogan]

I know.

[Gable Stevenson]

So it's weird.

[Joe Rogan]

I know. It's. It doesn't make any sense.

[Gable Stevenson]

It doesn't.

[Joe Rogan]

But it's just like people. Some people are born crazy, you know?

[Gable Stevenson]

Some people are born crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

Are you big into anything? Like what. What do you believe in conspiracy wise? Like, what's your big one?

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Don't open up that door, Gable. Don't open up that door. Oh, my God.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yo. I gotta tell you this one.

[Joe Rogan]

Diehard conspiracy.

[Gable Stevenson]

My dad. My dad's die hard conspiracy. If you and him had a talk, uh.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, what is his big one? What's the big one with him?

[Gable Stevenson]

I don't even know, but I know he's really bad. I think the. The biggest one right now, he just said it. But I. I don't even know. I don't even want to say it wrong, but that's my thing. But I'm big on conspiracy.

[Joe Rogan]

What is the subject? Do you remember the subject?

[Gable Stevenson]

Something about. I don't even want to say it.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Gable Stevenson]

I don't even want to say it right now.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, we'll talk off air.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. Okay. But I believe there's a lot of things we don't know as people. And I believe there's a lot of.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of conspiracies are real. That's the problem. The problem with conspiracy theories is some of them are crazy and ridiculous. But the reason why people entertain crazy and ridiculous ones is because some of them are real. And they're so nuts that you go, they did what? When you just. When you find out about US History alone, you know, you find out that the reason why we got into Vietnam was.

[Gable Stevenson]

I don't know this. You gonna tell.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. It's called the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was supposedly the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, attacked one of our ships, but it was fake. They faked it. It's not real. It's called a false flag. And they did it just to have a story so that we would have an excuse. Excuse to invade Vietnam.

[Gable Stevenson]

So we sent all those people to Vietnam for nothing.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of people died for nothing. A lot of people died for nothing. And a lot of people made a lot of money. And it probably had to do with drugs, too, because that's. They were moving heroin out of Vietnam. I mean, there was. It was. Control of the heroin trade was a big part of it. That was also why. One of the reasons why we were in Afghanistan. While we were in Afghanistan, heroin production in Afghanistan was 94% of the world's heroin.

[Gable Stevenson]

What does.

[Joe Rogan]

And it ramped up after we invaded Afghanistan. It went up, up heroin production. Not only did it go up, but we were guarding poppy fields for the Taliban.

[Gable Stevenson]

Why do we need to guard. For the farmers, rather, why do we need to guard them? Well, are we using for medical here or they're just getting used to people up.

[Joe Rogan]

It's money. It's money. There's people, there's dirty money that gets moved around. For sure when you. You're dealing with something like the drug trade and, and billions of dollars are going all over the. People want a piece of that. And there's high level people that are dirty and they get involved in that and they make decisions based on that. And, and they put people's lives at risk and people die because of it. And that probably happened in Afghanistan and definitely happened in Vietnam. And people don't want to believe that. People are hearing this right now. Oh, stop with that nonsense. But it's true. I mean, there's a video of Geraldo Rivera interviewing these military guys that were guarding poppy fields in Afghanistan. And the guy who's interviewing is very reluctant to talk about it, but it was on Fox News and he had to talk about it because everybody was aware of it. It was becoming a big conspiracy online. And they were coming up with some sort of irrational reason why they needed to guard their heroin production because, you know, we need them to tell on the Taliban and, like, really? Really. So we're letting the farmers poison young people and heroin addicts all over the world because we want them to give us information about. Is that really what's going on? Or are you motherfuckers making money out of this?

[Gable Stevenson]

They gotta be making a lot of money, too. A lot of money. A lot of money. Well, I just saw the story about that guy from. He was a football player from Australia. He was selling drugs. What was that story? He was. He's not from Australia. He went to usc. Quarterback.

[Joe Rogan]

He was selling drugs.

[Gable Stevenson]

He was selling drugs out of an apartment in Australia for a cartel that was from Tijuana. I forgot his name. It's his quarterback. I feel like a lot of people know it.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a real recent story.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's a real story.

[Joe Rogan]

A recent story.

[Gable Stevenson]

I. From recent. From what I've seen, it might be an older. It might be like a couple years older. But, yeah, he got caught because someone along the way was a middleman for.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of wild, true story behind cocaine. Quarterback, signal caller for the cartel. Wow.

[Gable Stevenson]

And they said he was making like a million dollars a day cash, and he was trying to move it through Las Vegas casinos. But the middleman, someone messed up the bet and he lost the money. So he had a loan, money from someone. And that someone was like undercover waiting for him like a year later and caught him at a McDonald's before he went across the road to Tijuana or something. It's crazy, yo. You know how drugs control a lot of things? Things and it's messed up.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it's the money. When you think about how much money gets moved around in the drug game and people get tempted by that. And then, you know, you get a hold of some legitimate businessman and say, listen, there's a way for you to get 10x return on your money. You know, you invest in this. We do that. It's simple. You'll never get dirty. All the money goes to offshore accounts. No one will know about it. You could retire when you're 45.

[Gable Stevenson]

Crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

And then people start getting roped in. It's also. It's the excitement of doing something naughty. That's part of it too. Some people just get, you know, like some people like to ride bulls, some people like to do some they're not supposed to do. They get, they get addicted to doing things that they are not supposed to do. They get addicted to the life. DEA agents, a lot of DEA agents become drug dealers.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, it's just like that show Narcos Mexico. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's the same thing.

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. Or Cocaine cowboys. Have you ever watched that documentary?

[Gable Stevenson]

No. What's that about?

[Joe Rogan]

Amazing. Cocaine Cowboys 1 and then there's Cocaine Cowboys 2. There was so much corruption in Miami during the 1980s during the cocaine crime that one graduating class of the police academy, the entire graduating class either wound up murdered or in jail.

[Gable Stevenson]

How you do that? That.

[Joe Rogan]

Cuz they were all corrupt. They were all involved in cocaine dealing, all of them, because there was so much money. Everybody's driving a Corvette, everybody's living large, everybody's doing blow and wearing diamonds.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

It's like you get caught up in that life and if you're involved in, like if you're a police officer and everybody around you is dirty, you know, like you, it's more likely you're going to be dirty too.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, now, now aren't they, aren't they kind of blowing the Ecuadorian ships up that are coming to here that are having a lot of drugs on them?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, Venezuela, right?

[Gable Stevenson]

Venezuelan ships. Yeah, they just blowing them up. I don't even know. I'm not, I'm not educated on stuff like that. But I wonder if it's for. To keep the trade here.

[Joe Rogan]

No, I doubt it. I think more likely what it is is because Trump genuinely hates that they're bringing drugs into this country. Is there other things involved too? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure some of it has to do perhaps with politics. I mean, I think that's a reasonable assumption. But Jamie, I just sent you something. Here's what's interesting. One of the things that Trump was saying is they're poisoning our kids and that 100,000 people are dying every year from drug overdoses. We have to put a stop to this. From the time Trump's been in office, deaths by overdose have dropped off a cliff. Look at the that. Look at 2024 and leading into 2025. Look at these are all deaths from overdoses. I mean, that's kind of crazy. Like, look at that. From all drugs, which is the top one. Look at that drop. I mean that's crazy. So you see the peak in. Was in 2022, or it looks like actually 2020. Between 2023 and 2024, that's the peak where people are dying. And then from the time Trump's in office, it's taking a sharp downturn. And why is that as well? Part of it's because they're blowing up these boats that are bringing in all the drugs, and not just drugs, but drugs that are tainted with fentanyl.

[Gable Stevenson]

Fentanyl is terrible.

[Joe Rogan]

Terrible because a little piece can kill you. Exactly. It's smaller than a penny and you're dead.

[Gable Stevenson]

And people are snorting lines of it.

[Joe Rogan]

And they don't even know it's in the there. And the cartel, they're. They're buying, you know, they're taking shitty drugs and mixing it with fentanyl. So it has an effect. And people are getting it from what they think is a Xanax, and it's not a Xanax, it's fake and it's got fentanyl in it. And they're dying from that. They're dying from coke that they think it's coke and fentanyls in that.

[Gable Stevenson]

It.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, it's horrible.

[Gable Stevenson]

There's so much access to things in this world right now that I feel like is a.

[Joe Rogan]

There's.

[Gable Stevenson]

There's so many attainable things that. That people don't even think about that. A lot of happens in this world that we just have no clue. And it's kind of weird and I just don't know, like, kind of the, the variety that I'm bringing to the combo, but I'm just saying it, like out of. Just to say it. But it. It's different. Just like a social media, you can meet so many people and, and. And just going to random places and meeting people, and then you can get roped up in the wrong things. And it's a downhill of the downhill starts.

[Joe Rogan]

Yep. You take a bad turn, and next thing you know, you're on a bad road and you keep going. You know, eventually I'm gonna get out of this game and can't. No. Then you're in jail or you're dead. Ed Calderon's guy who's been on this podcast many times, he used to work for the Mexican military. Now he's an American citizen, but he's a cartel expert. And you know the stories that he's told us about the fucking cartel and the amount of money they have. I mean, they essentially. They have giant military operations. It's all cartel Hell, the car. And they go to war with each other. It's crazy.

[Gable Stevenson]

Who's the. Is it Pablo Escobar that had the money in the walls of his house?

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, probably, I don't know.

[Gable Stevenson]

Or who died and he buried it all over in different places.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm sure they all do that. I'm sure Escobar did that. I think they all do that. They have so much money. That was one of the things of Cocaine Cowboys was this pilot. They had millions of dollars buried in his backyard. He would just take garbage bags, fill it with millions of dollars of cash, dig a big hole in the backyard and bury it there. Because you couldn't bring into a bank.

[Gable Stevenson]

Why not just give it away?

[Joe Rogan]

I'll give it away because they're doing coke and they want more money. They just don't know what to do with it, you know, and they can't just have it all laying around their house. And someone will break in their house and kill them and take their money.

[Gable Stevenson]

It's like, then it's over with.

[Joe Rogan]

It is a crazy game, but I can't recommend that documentary enough. Cocaine Cowboys Cowboy. You watch it, you go, what the.

[Gable Stevenson]

Where's the streamed at?

[Joe Rogan]

It's probably on everywhere. Where is Cocaine Cowboys Gotta get it sounds like Amazon. I'm sure it's on everything. It might even be on Netflix. But it's. It's incredible because you realize, like, wow, like cocaine built Miami. Miami had more banks per capita. I don't know if it still does, but at one point in time, more banks per capita than any other city in the country. And it's because those banks were laundering money.

[Gable Stevenson]

Damn.

[Joe Rogan]

They were laundering cocaine money. It was all coming in.

[Gable Stevenson]

And Miami never sleeps either, either. So it was all night affair. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That is a crazy town. That's. That is not a good town. If you want to be a fighter and live like a low key, disciplined life. No, you can.

[Gable Stevenson]

All of a sudden you're here, then you end up here, then all of a sudden it's 8am, right? You're at the beach at 12. Can't be right. No camp, right? That's a dark hole that a lot of people should not be in. But how do you get out, though?

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know. Ask John. I mean, he seems to have navigated those waters better than anybody, you know, because usually it ruins everything in your life. He's obviously had some missteps, but still comes out the greatest, you know, which is not everybody's path, you know, but obviously John is smart in that he spends a lot of time doing the things that he wants to do, Spends a lot of time training his dog, doing, you know, tactical stuff. He's always shooting guns and training. And, you know, you got to have things outside of that life, you know, that you enjoy other than just partying. Yeah.

[Gable Stevenson]

You gotta have fun. You gotta have some type of gap and some release. Yeah. And he's gotta. He's got a good release, and he's got a good mentality of what the release should be and how it should go and where he needs to go with it. And then, I mean, I've been with him now since we have this close connection. I've been with him to places, and he's always kept me on a straight path, and. Which is really, really nice. You know, a lot of people that may have. Have, you know, like to. Like to take shots or like to do something like that. You know, there's always a little man, do you want one?

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Gable Stevenson]

But there's never. There's never been a time where he's like, man, I think you should try. And it's great, because as. As an older. As a younger kid that's coming up, he sees the potential, and that's all that matters. And I just need someone to see it. And, man, he's been great with it, for sure. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

When you're around a bunch of people that party and they drag you into that world, it's so easy for people to get hooked. It's so easy for people to just get roped into that lifestyle, because people essentially, for the most part, imitate their atmosphere. And if you're around that kind of an atmosphere, those are the type of people that you're with, and those are the type of thrills that they're seeking. You can get caught up in that, you know, and it's. It's the bane of every fighter's existence is women in partying.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah. You know, he's always been like, hey, you gotta stay. You gotta stay clean. Go home. And that's been the best part about it.

[Joe Rogan]

That's great, man. That is great. So what is the timeline right now are. Have you signed a deal with the ufc? I know they're talking to you.

[Gable Stevenson]

What's going on? Yeah, they reached out many times, but I told them just, I'm kind of on the lines of right now I'm waiting for my little girl to give, my baby girl to give, to come out. So January is kind of a dead month for me.

[Joe Rogan]

But are you signed with the ufc?

[Gable Stevenson]

No, no, I'm not signing anybody.

[Joe Rogan]

But have they offered you a fight yet?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, they've reached out about a couple things, but no one specific. They just offer dates.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you want to have fights in other organizations first? One of the problems with a guy like you is that you're so talented that you could have one, two fights in the UFC and all of a sudden be fighting a top contender, you know, which I think you would do. Well, yeah, if I was a manager of, like, a boxer and a guy with your potential, I would do what customato did with Mike Tyson. You have him fight a bunch of different guys like you did with dirty boxing. Small organization MMA fights, build up those skills, get. Get a lot of experience while you're constantly training and growing and getting better. And then once you enter into the ufc, you're essentially already the champion. It's just nobody knows it yet.

[Gable Stevenson]

I would really like to debut at the White House.

[Joe Rogan]

Debut.

[Gable Stevenson]

I would like to debut at the White House. I would like to do. I would like to do one or two more fights before then, and then if I can sign, do a big release, hey, he signed. Good job. And then debuted at the White House. That's my perfect world.

[Joe Rogan]

Is it hard to get fights right now?

[Gable Stevenson]

Maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. I don't ask. I just say yes and then just keep moving. I kind of leave it up to Jon to kind of watch the people and all the coaches to kind of watch and see what goes on. But, I mean, if a guy says no, there's no hard feelings. I mean, just keep it pushing, and hopefully I can get to the guy that says yes.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the problem is that when a guy gets so much hype around him, there's a lot of guys who want to eventually be a world champion and go, I'm not ready for this guy yet. You know, it's like, even good guys or say, like, this guy's not. He's on another level right now.

[Gable Stevenson]

But just. Just when. If they do think that, just whenever you think you are ready, I will be there waiting.

[Joe Rogan]

That's terrifying. Just the way you said that.

[Gable Stevenson]

I will be there waiting. That's terrifying.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of people heard that, like, I don't want to wait.

[Gable Stevenson]

I don't want to wait.

[Joe Rogan]

But also, the smart move might be to get a hold of your neck now before you get better.

[Gable Stevenson]

You know, you can try now, too.

[Joe Rogan]

But you know what I'm saying. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I mean, like, pick your poison.

[Gable Stevenson]

I mean, Like I said, dirty boxing. And that last fight in November with that double leg, that's the worst I'll ever be. And it's kind of neat to repeat that to the world, to kind of let them get a refresher. That is the worst Gable steeps in will be, and the best is when he'll come back his next time. But after that, that's the last worst I'll ever be after that, so.

[Joe Rogan]

So do you have a blueprint, like a map of what you'd like to accomplish in your career?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Long term?

[Gable Stevenson]

Yeah, long term. I'd like to be champion. UFC champion. I think Stipe has about five defenses, if I'm not mistaken. I would like to do. I would like to try to try to beat that record if I can, and if I can't die trying, you know, I would like to. I played in NFL. I won the Olympics. I would just like to be just an overall good man. You know, a lot of people want to look at, like we just talked about, you know, a lot of people want to look at the success, the money. I just want to be excellent, man. You know, I'm saying I want to look back and be like, damn. Like, Gable did that. And I saw Dana White. He had a picture, and he said, let your last name be the reason that people remember you. And I want the Stevenson last name to be something that people remember, and I want them to look at me and be like, damn. Like, through the peaks and valleys, Gable stood up and he became someone as. As long life, and he provided for his family, and he went home healthy, and. And that's what I want. Championship's gonna come, but I feel like a lot of people are so obsessed with. I gotta do this. But I'm obsessed with being the best version of Gable because I'm the. If I'm the best version in the Gable, you're not gonna be able to beat me.

[Joe Rogan]

Keep that mindset, and you will accomplish these things. My man.

[Gable Stevenson]

Man. I appreciate it.

[Joe Rogan]

I believe it.

[Gable Stevenson]

Well, I appreciate it.

[Joe Rogan]

Thank you very much for being here.

[Gable Stevenson]

Yes. You already know.

[Joe Rogan]

Pleasure.

[Gable Stevenson]

Thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

And I can't wait to see you fight in the ufc, man.

[Gable Stevenson]

I can't wait.

[Joe Rogan]

It's gonna be fun.

[Gable Stevenson]

Thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

All right. Thank you.

[Gable Stevenson]

Bye, everybody.