The following is a conversation with Khabib Nurmagomedov, one of the greatest fighters of all time, who retired from the UFC undefeated with a perfect twenty-nine and O record. It was a huge honor for me to meet him, to train together, and to have this deep conversation. We had this conversation entirely in Russian. This was my first time doing so on this podcast. And even these words I'm saying right now are spoken in Russian. So if you're hearing me in English, you're actually listening to the English dub. On YouTube, you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear icon, then clicking audio track, and then selecting the language you prefer. For the original Russian version, select Russian. And for the English dub, select English. Subtitles are also available in both languages. The translation and dubbing are a collaborative effort of translators, real human beings, including myself and AI. Thanks to the incredible team at ElevenLabs for their help. And now, please allow me to take this moment to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your love and support all these years. I love you all. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. And now, dear friends, here's Khabib Nurmagomedov. Let's try in Russian if we can, like you suggested.
I can help you out if you need.
Yeah, thanks, brother. I kind of feel it in my heart and soul, but sometimes I can't find the right words.
I know, brother. We got this.
Great. Let's start from the beginning. So that gym back in Dagestan where you trained is legendary for its spartan conditions. There was just one shower for seventy people, only cold water. And yet, this humble little gym managed to raise more than twenty world champions, including several UFC champions. Can you try to explain or maybe reflect on what factors in that gym, those training sessions, that life in Dagestan created so many champions?
Sure. So we're talking about the gym, the one located in Makhachkala. And Makhachkala, for the people who don't know, it's the capital of Dagestan. This was back around the years from two thousand to two thousand and ten, and even later on. In twenty nineteen, we opened up a big gym, a major facility that is still functioning to this day. But before twenty nineteen, we all actually trained in that gym where there was practically nothing. It was just a school gym with nothing but mats, a single punching bag, one climbing rope, and a kind of indoor basketball court. And if we go even further back, before two thousand, before we moved to Makhachkala, we lived in a village. In the village, we had a gym right inside our house. My father, he built a gym at home, and he was training all the local village kids right there. And there were times back when I was a child, let's say when I was maybe six or seven years old, I would occasionally wake up to the sound of people training, doing their drills right there in the gym. You know, like with judo or freestyle when they're drilling, one guy throwing another. Those are my first conscious memories. I was maybe five, six, seven years old at that time. So my father set up this gym in the village and trained local kids, including me, my older brother, and all our close and distant relatives, anyone who wanted to come. A lot of kids came to him.
So you would wake up and there are these sounds.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You hear the hitting, the throwing over and over. And my father's voice, how he's shouting, giving instructions, pushing someone, coaching, teaching. I lived with those sounds. But that was in the village. And later when we moved to Makhachkala, well, you couldn't say the gym there was wow either. There were only mats. And of course, the most valuable thing an athlete can have, a coach, my father. So he trained us there. And to be honest, let's say, until I became a champion and had big success, we never had a good big gym where we could, you know, all take a shower together at the same time after training. We always had just one shower for everyone, no proper amenities.
So your life story began in the mountains of Dagestan in Sildi, then Kirovaul, and then Makhachkala. And in all these situations, there are very interesting stories. But one of the things I heard you say is that the best results are born out of the worst conditions. What can you say about that? Philosophically, is it correct to say that comfort is kind of the enemy for champions?
It depends on the sport. For example, let's say in football, you have to have conditions. You can't really play if there is practically no field. Of course, you can play in the dirt, and it happens sometimes. You can start there. But when you are ten or twelve years old, you already have to be at a certain level. You must have conditions. But if we look at our sport, then what is the most important thing? The coach. You also need sparring partners who will push you in the gym, as they say, right? And you need the mats. Our sport is not expensive. You just buy your wrestling shoes, singlets, shorts, a T-shirt. And if there's a mat, you wrestle, you become a champion, you fight. But when you live too well, let's say, you know, you're never in need. For example, you were born into a wealthy family and you already have everything. Would that same wealthy father, would he force you to do such a brutal sport? A sport where you come home every day with injuries, where you come home with an exhausted body, you come home with bruises. Would he really do that? That's the question. And the kid himself, who lives a life of luxury, would he even want to do this? When we look at it statistically, the answer is no. This is where you need that hunger. You have to be in a position where you are truly in need.
And it's interesting that there's a psychological side to this as well, that you need a tough situation to create champions. But what's really interesting is how Dagestan has produced so many wrestling champions. You mentioned football. Let's look at other countries. Why has Brazil produced so many great football players? Why does Argentina have so many football players? Of course, you have Germany, France, and all that.
The whole European side. But those are completely different cultures.
Yes. Well, in Brazil, their strength is in their numbers. How many people do they have? The population is huge, more than two hundred million. And people really love it there. It's a huge tradition. Because, you know, without a real love for this sport, you can never achieve any success. You truly have to love what you are doing. So they have the tradition and they have the love for it, and that is why they play for all the top clubs. Well, I think they just win by numbers.
Yeah, that's a powerful aspect of their culture. How much people, how much the whole nation loves to play football. And if you add to that a system that creates strong teams, that's how you can produce so many football legends.
Yes. Take Dagestan, for example. We love football. I just know how much people in Dagestan love football. Yes, we have wrestlers, fighters. There are many of us. But for football players, there is no ecosystem like that. Not so well organized where a kid can, for example, play at school, then go to some academy, then get noticed there, and then get picked up by a club. We don't have that system. It's just kids running on the streets, playing on the streets, following football. Let's say playing on PlayStation. There is no system. There is no selection process where kids can go and show themselves, so they can be noticed and get signed. I think Brazil and other countries, and of course Europe, they have it. So yeah, we have big problems with football. However, in our sports where you can, where you can wrestle, where you can fight, in that sense, we have a system. For example, the gyms, you know, in Makhachkala, let's say for combat sports. I'm not even counting like freestyle wrestling or other styles. There may be forty or fifty gyms for combat sports, and all are full. If you win in Dagestan, you move on to the North Caucasus level, then to the Russian nationals. If you're champion of Russia, you go to the Worlds. In amateurs, they notice you and you make a name for yourself. There is a certain ladder here. But in many other sports here in Dagestan, we don't have such a well-structured ladder for people to climb.
Can we look at this philosophically again? I mean, you've seen so many wrestlers, fighters. Why exactly were these gyms creating so many champions? I'm just honestly curious because it's rare in any sport, one gym or a small number of gyms creating so many champions.
Well, first important factor is the competition level is incredibly high. You come to the gym, and in every spot you have good wrestlers, ten or fifteen guys right there, and the coaches are great. You know, it so happened that my father broke through in the media, and then I became a champion, and the other guys became champions too. And my father's philosophy, it really resonated, and he became known for it. But there are coaches in Dagestan that not many people know about. They are known locally, but they are very good, and actually they have the knowledge, they have the approach, they have the philosophy. They could also be at the same level as my father was. I believe there are really quite a few of them. In terms of the coaching, I think Dagestan was extremely lucky. It probably goes back to the nineteen fifties when wrestling really took off here, starting with Ali Aliyev, our legendary wrestler, a five-time world champion who went to the Olympics three times. That's where it started, with his generation. There was Zagalav Abdulbekov, Ali Aliyev. Those are the well-known names. I mean, those guys are famous, but there were so many other less known wrestlers who later on, after they retired, they all became great coaches themselves. And these coaches, they raised a very large number of guys who are really good at wrestling. And then some of those coaches, they kind of switched over to fighting, let's say to grappling, to MMA, and they started coaching in combat Sambo as well. And it just kept going like that, you know. It was moving forward step by step. And so we have a huge number of really great coaches. I believe this is one of the single most important keys to the success of Dagestani wrestlers and fighters, the coaching staff of Dagestan.
Is it more about technique or is it really just about serious, incredibly hard work?
Well, you have to look at the traditions, because generally it's just the way it is in Dagestan. Everyone wrestles. Everyone fights. It's part of our culture. You know yourself, fighting is like fifty percent wrestling. Every parent wants their children to wrestle, to be physically strong. Our approach to kids is that a child must be strong. They must be able to stand up for themselves, for their family. It's something that has traditionally always been in every single one of our clans, every family, every village. It's just in our blood.
I mean, it's worth pointing out, and you've actually written about this, that this isn't just a recent thing. It's been going on for hundreds of years.
Yes, that's right. These lands, Dagestan specifically, have seen powerful armies sweep through time and time again. Because of that, people here have always had to fight to survive.
Refusing to back down, refusing to give up their land or lose their identity.
Their homes, their villages, yeah, their families, and land. If we look back a thousand years in history, maybe fifteen hundred years, there was the Khazar Khaganate, the Arabic Caliphate, then the Iranian Empire, or the Persian Empire, I should say. Then the Russian Empire, Timur passed through there, the Mongols. And if we look at the geographical location of Dagestan, for those who don't know, the Caucasus range runs across the whole region like a wall, and then it slopes down right where the Caspian lowlands are. So you've got the sea on the right, the mountains on the left, and the Caspian lowlands right here. And there was a city there that's still standing today. It's one of the oldest cities in the world, not just in Russia. It's Derbent. It used to be called Babul Abwab. It means the gate of gates. Very major trade routes went through there. Very large armies passed through, and it was bound to leave a mark on the people. We have so many languages, more than thirty different languages, and people just don't understand each other. Take Islam and me. We have different languages, come from different backgrounds. Islam is Lak, and I'm Avar. When we talk, it's not like it's a dialect. We don't understand each other at all. But since Islam has been with us for nearly twenty-five years, he actually picked up some Avar over time. But anyway, the deep history of the region, it all left its mark. It created many different languages and traditions. Basically, of course, Islam is our primary religion, but Dagestan has actually absorbed a lot of cultures and faiths. Even our food culture, it is incredibly rich. We have European and Asian and Caucasian, our own unique cuisine. So on the people, on the people themselves, the last fifteen hundred years of history have left a huge mark. If you're into history and you start reading about Dagestan, I think you'll get completely immersed and be amazed by what a unique place it is. So all of this left a huge mark. Look at the terrain. It's a coastal plain, and then the mountains rise up. For instance, take someone like Timur. When he passed through with a huge army, he stayed in the Dagestan lowlands but never went up into the mountains. Why? Because you've got hundreds of thousands of troops, soldiers traveling with horses and supplies. If they had started going up into the mountains where it's cold and there are no roads, it would have been too tough for them. So the highlanders somehow managed to stay independent. But the lowlands, the Caspian lowlands of Dagestan, they kept changing hands. Massive empires would roll in, and all of that left a mark on the people. Gate of the gates, Babul Abwab. Historians wrote about it, say, a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago, great historians from various countries. People have written so much about Dagestan. It went by different names back then, but they wrote a ton about this exact region. Many people, many empires invaded our land.
So do you feel that inside you, in your blood, your heart, like all of this history?
Well, in the past, it's not like I really felt it. I knew Dagestan's history, but maybe with time, you start to see it in a whole new light. Every year, you change a bit on a mental and psychological level. Now I understand. I really do. You cannot just be born physically and mentally strong. Your environment shapes you no matter what, where you grew up, how you grew up, the conditions, and who you had around you. And after all, genetics are also a part of who you are. So when you add all this up, yeah, I just feel like all of this has come together inside me.
It's interesting because in sports, we know many of the names of the great fighters and wrestlers. Yet when it comes to war, there are so many people who fought, heroes, truly great warriors. Some we know by name, but most of them we'll never actually know and-
You write about Imam Shamil, that he's an important figure for this region and a hero as well.
Well, Imam Shamil, he was known for resisting an empire as huge as Russia. Dagestan is so small, and he had so few people with him. How did he get famous? He got famous because he held out for a very long time. He didn't just resist for a couple of years. He was like a regular fighter, let's say, a soldier for ten years, and then when he became the leader, he went on for another twenty-five years. So, 35 years of his conscious life he spent fighting not just some random empire, but what was then, if not the most powerful, definitely one of the strongest empires of that era. And that is what made him famous. And so there are villages in Dagestan that deeply honor the memory of particular warriors who came from their villages, from their clan, from their ethnic group. But in, well world history, they're barely known. Like, take Shamil. He's a leader, right? So everybody knows him. But there are plenty of heroes who've been forgotten. But yeah, their own people remember.
Villages hold on to history. Plus, we have to admit that conditions in the mountains are incredibly harsh. That's part of it too. Just surviving up there is a real struggle.
See, back then, people in the mountains worked all through the summer just to survive the winter, because winters are harsh, with heavy snow, completely cutting off villages. People just stay inside and try to outlast it. And in the summer, they work. Terrace farming was a huge thing for us. Our terraces are among the most, you could say, famous and ancient in the world. They're known as the Chokh terraces. Now, those are the famous ones. But every village had terraces. There's a place out there called Marghit, right across from our village. People worked over there, but here, in the village, is where they lived. I mean, you'd think, why didn't they just build a village right there, in the place where we grow all our food? Because enemies could easily ride in on horseback. An army could easily get to you there, so they'd build a village in rugged terrain- ... somewhere tough to invade. For instance, our village is Sildi. It's from the word si, which is like a castle or a fortress or a tower. They built it that way so an army couldn't reach them. You'd have to hike down one mountain and then climb up a whole different mountain. And right there, they'd plant things like grain, potatoes, basically, you know, all their food. See, if we had built over there, if we lived there and grew our crops in the same place, since it's all terraced land, an army could just walk right up, launch raids, and so on. Back in the day, that's how people lived. And so all of this took a toll on people, physically, psychologically, and mentally. And honestly, well, you just can't be born in these conditions, live here, stay here, and be mentally weak. You just have to be tough. There's no other way to survive.
So you just built a sports complex there. Pretty legendary, you know. Could you talk about that?
Yes, that was my father's whole plan. He really wanted it way up in the mountains. First, it's great for the fighters. Right now, I just flew out here to Las Vegas. We're sitting here, like, doing this podcast together, but I came out here for Umar's fight. And I should say, Umar did his main training there at the new base in Sildi. He spent almost a month at that place. And because it's 1500 to 1600 meters above sea level, man, it's tough to train there. And the thing is, when you spend about three to four weeks there, you just have more oxygen in your blood, you have more testosterone, you improve physically, you know, your stamina builds up, and so on. And this base was sort of my father's dream. He started building it back in 2016, 2017. Money was tight back then. It was really hard, but we built it little by little. In 2020, my father passed away, but I kept the project going just a little differently, on a bigger scale. Right now, the base is open, and 100 people can be there at the same time, training, eating, sleeping. And our guys hold their training camps up there. So this was sort of my father's dream that I have pretty much brought to life.
It's a powerful story. To return to the place where you were born up in the mountains in order to build a sports complex where champions train. Makhachkala Gym is a great place, but the mountains are special.
Your home village, no matter what, on some sort of deeper level, somehow gives you that, you know, like Americans love to say, positive energy. Not everything has to be done for money. And you know, you shouldn't just look for profit in everything, let's say financially. There are certain things that don't bring me anything at all except for expenses, but I still do all of it because, um, because it brings me a lot of happiness and meaning. First of all, it creates a lot of jobs. People can work and earn a living. Second, it's because my father really wanted this. Third, let's say the guys can train and improve up there, both physically and spiritually. There are just so many benefits there.
I don't know if it's okay to ask something like this, but I would dream of coming out there to Dagestan, and not just to Makhachkala, but to Sildi. Is that even possible for me?
I think we could film a really good story out there. I'm not sure about a podcast, but I'm sure we could shoot a really nice vlog there.
So can you tell me a bit about the journey from Makhachkala all the way to Sildi?
Yeah, 3:30, 3:40 through the mountains. The road is a real winding one, not an easy ride. If it gets to be too hard for you, we can just take a helicopter. It's no problem at all. Like 40 to 50 minutes from Makhachkala to Sildi. Otherwise, keeping it more down to earth, we go by car, so there's absolutely no problem.
I could never get used to a wealthy life. It's just, it's not in my blood to be like that.
All right, then we'll go by car.
Yeah, we could go on horseback, but a car is better.
No, no, by car is better. On horseback takes way too long.
Um, so you mentioned money, and we were just talking about comfort because right now there are so many champions. They win so much. Things are going so well. How much harder is it to stay a champion when the money and the fame start coming in, when all that stuff starts showing up?
Well, those are all distracting things. When you become a champion, there's a massive amount of attention on you. Sometimes it's contracts, sometimes you end up having to fly a lot, you start getting busy with things, and little by little you begin to miss your workouts. You miss one, you miss two, you miss three. And all of that takes a toll, and the person who used to train with such a drive, with a hunger to be the best, as soon as they actually become the best, they just don't know what to do next. And they live their whole life just to become, stay on the top. As soon as they get there, what are they supposed to do? That's it. They already made it. They've reached their goal, and there are just so many distracting factors: money, flights, you know, meetings, contracts, video shoots. There are just so many distracting factors. And so if a person doesn't know how to handle all of this, then that person comes down from the top real fast. And I'm saying this based on my own experience, from what I've seen all around me with the ones who came before me. And back then when I was training with my father, his students who went on to become world champions, just how they finished their careers and so on. And it's what I saw from my own observations of other types of sports, how they came back down, as far as I've learned. This is a very delicate moment. If a person climbing all the way to the top, if they can handle all of that, that already shows they have an incredibly serious mindset. Reaching the championship and staying there, reaching it is one thing, but staying a champion, that's totally different. It's incredibly tough.
You're saying that even on a local level, once you become a champion, that's already the tough moment because a lot of people who start winning, like you said, they stop fighting, they quit doing MMA and switch over to fitness. They find themselves that comfort. But holding onto it is hard, even on a local level. Every single time you become more and more of a champion, you won the Sambo championship, you keep winning more and more, and every time it gets harder.
Yes, and it depends on the person's goals. If you want to become an amateur champion just to prove something to yourself, that's one thing. But if you view amateur sports as a springboard to jump right into professional sports and become a champion among professionals, that's a whole different thing. There are different paths. First, you build an amateur career just to get into the pros and go even further from there. Second, after you've made it into the pros, you become a champion. And third, after you become a champion, you have to stay there. Not everyone has what it takes. It is incredibly tough. If you look at the numbers, you can literally count these champions on one hand. How many of them are there? Maybe 15, 20, 30 people? Let's say 50 over the last 30 years, and how many have tried? For example, 50 achieved it over 30 years, over 35 years of MMA combat sports. But how many tried? Hundreds of thousands. And look at that number. Such a tiny amount actually reached the end goal. So for you to actually make it into this tiny list, you really have to be like just a truly unique person and a fighter and, and you know, a student, and a person who can accept guidance from a coach who when they are being guided, discard the cons and take only the pros. But there are people who take criticism very hard and very negatively, and are very sensitive, let's say, when they take criticism- ... from a mentor. So it all has to click, and some accept criticism at the very beginning, but then once they become champions, it's hard for them to take it. It happens differently. A man sometimes doesn't even know what he is capable of. Sometimes he just can't really understand himself until he achieves success or becomes famous, wealthy, and powerful. That is exactly when he discovers his true qualities. When he is limited in something, in money, in power, in everything that success eventually brings him, he doesn't really know how he's going to act in this new role, doesn't know how he'll behave once he becomes big, famous, and a champion. Nobody knows. Some people say and wish, "Oh, if only I'd made it like that, I would do things this way." I think it's better if people don't throw around such big words because you never know how you'll carry yourself once you actually get there. You know, it's such a delicate thing, getting up there and still remaining human.
When it comes to you, I see that everyone here just loves you. Even early on in your career, millions of people loved you. That is also a, a tough thing to deal with because maybe you start believing it. And you can lose yourself in all of it. So is it all in the mind? I mean, what actually goes on in a champion's head? In yours when you sat alone thinking about your life, "Who am I really, and what do I do to keep being a champion or to become one?"
Well, first of all, from the very beginning, if you realize that what you're chasing isn't the most important thing in life, then it gets easier for you. And then, you know, there are some people whose, let's say, ultimate goal is to be successful, powerful, and to make it big. At the end of the day, after all, we are not really such big, important people. And, like, I believe it's wrong to just crown yourself king because, uh if we put it, to put it bluntly, if we're being honest here, we can't even control the basic need to go to the restroom. Maybe to some... Yeah. To some people this will probably seem a bit crude, but we all go to the restroom, excuse my language. If we can't control even this, so what can we actually control in this life? Look how many people we know, how many great people have left this earth. It doesn't really matter how, like, big, strong, or famous you are, how wealthy you are, champion or no champion. Either way, they put us all in the exact same grave, you know, two meters down or, like, a meter or a meter and a half. Different confessions, different religions, they bury people in different ways. So I actually believe that every single person should have this realization that we are just not some kind of big, important people here who just decide and get to control everything. We don't get to do that. In my case, I was raised under the guidance of my father. My father was a coach, and my goal was always to become... To prove to my father that out of everyone, even though he trains many other people, he trains everyone, I mean, I'm also here. I can show him. He doesn't have to look very far. I'm right there, and under his guidance, I can become a champion. I looked up to him and followed his example, trained hard, and it was like, you know, a kind of a challenge to prove to him that, "Look, I am right here, Father, and everything you teach, I will take it all in zealously, worthily. I'll follow your program, do it right, and I will become a champion." And that was exactly the kind of goal I had, to prove it first and foremost to my father and secondly to the entire world that I can become the best wrestler or fighter. But I never thought of being crowned king after I became a champion. I was never going to walk around like, "Look how cool I am." That was never in my head, and I'm really glad that the Almighty protected me from all of that because many people end up in a bad place if they act like that.
This is a profound wisdom, not thinking about being crowned. But even if you don't, a fire should burn within you, driving you to become a champion, right? As you said, hundreds of thousands, millions of people want to be a champion, but only one can be.
Yeah, but that is actually about you confronting your opponent. You've got to put a barrier inside your mind where on one side you're a humble person, but on the other side you're different because you have a goal, your goal. Of course, you should still follow a code of honor. You should be a man, a righteous man, and know what you can and cannot do. You should always do that. But in the end, your opponent is the person who wants to stop your dream. So here the boundaries expand just a little bit. Right here, you're already not playing humble. Right here, you just step out and you want to clear your opponent out of your way, and that's it, because your goal is to be the best in the world and they are blocking you. Excuse me, but in this situation, there's no way you can act all humble.
But when you were training in the gym, what was it that gave you this strength? A hatred of losing or a love for winning?
I think it was the hatred of losing. Yes, definitely. I mean, you know, of course you want to win, but for me there was always this driver like, "No way. I am not losing," you know. When they would give me a fight, I always tell this to my guys, whenever they would give me a fight on a professional level, 100 days before it I was... How do you say it? Addiction. I was fixated like when people have this addiction. But for me it was commitment, that I absolutely had to prepare perfectly for the fight. I couldn't miss any training sessions. I would literally have, like, this panic. Like, for example, I'd fly somewhere and I have, let's say, eighty-five days left until the fight. Like, I knew that I had to fly. For example, if I was flying to Moscow, I would always pick a ticket so I could absolutely do my morning training session first. Then I'd take off around lunchtime. And once I arrived in Moscow, for whatever reason, I had to fit it all around my training schedule. Either I had to meet up before my training sessions or I had to meet up after my training sessions. And I simply could not miss that evening training session because I had to train during the day from four to five hours, two in the morning and two to two and a half in the evening. And I needed to I would prepare myself that way. Looking at who was in Moscow right then, wondering who I could, like pull into a training session there. Well, they also had to-- the person had to match my level as well. Not just like I showed up there, you know, played around with him. I needed a fight back. I would arrange in advance who was gonna come. Maybe some sparring, maybe I'd do wrestling, maybe I'd hit the weights, maybe a striking workout. So I had this, let's say I always had this tough and scientific approach to it. So I believe that more than anything, I didn't want to lose rather than I wanted to win, you know? Of course, winning is also a huge pleasure, but more than anything, I just didn't want to lose.
So in all those hard training sessions, you were thinking about not losing. That's the fuel.
Four to five hours every single day.
There is a story that I heard. Sadulaev, the legendary wrestler, told a story that he went to a hotel, I think it was in Moscow, to train in the gym, and he was the only-- It was during the night, I don't know. He was the only one who was there. And you came down- ... And you actually trained together. And he said he, he said a lot of great things about you. He said that you gave him some really deep wisdom, which helped him to win the gold medal, at the Olympic Games. I'm curious, could you tell us now what you told him? What kind of wisdom did you give him?
I can't remember exactly, but we had really great conversations.
It's a great story that the two of you, like two legends like that, just met completely by chance.
Well, look, he's a two-time Olympic champion, right?
I think he doesn't skip his training either. He never missed one back then. I believe that we both ended up there because we both, you know, hate to lose, and we both really want to win. And, you know, recently I came across this idea. There are athletes who simply want to win, and then there are some for whom victory isn't enough. They want domination. I believe that he is one of those as well. They want domination. And for that, what does a person have to do? They have to train. They have to grind morning and night. And there was this thing with us. After the morning, my father never let us sleep. When I say the morning, I mean after Fajr, the dawn prayer. He just wouldn't sleep himself, so we couldn't either. So every morning, six, seven, we'd be out doing our warm-up. Some people might call it a warm-up, but when you show up at the stadium in the morning, you run five kilometers, you do sprints, you work with resistance bands, you work on the pull-up bar, you do push-ups, dips, jumps, you know the bands then work with a partner, drilling and so on. That's about two hours of work. You drop two, two and a half kilos there. Not really a warm-up, but Father always called it that, right? That was a full morning training at seven AM. Then I came home to rest, and at four o'clock, we'd head to the gym. The training would start at five o'clock and end at seven. By eight, I'd be home, and by eleven, I'd rest up. And yet I kept thinking that something was missing. Like, I know that I have a start, a competition coming up in like forty or thirty days, and I would wake up and I'd be like, "Let me go to the sea. I'm gonna go down to the sea, do some running, some sprints on the sand, work out, and so on." And so many times, I ended up going out for a third training session as well. Sometimes Father would say, "Rest. In the morning, we're gonna have a heavy workload." But sometimes I wouldn't tell Father. I'd just go out at night, head out, and train. At night when everyone's asleep, when nobody's around, I'd grab one of my close friends, give them a call, have them pick me up, then hop in the car and head to the sea. I'd train for an hour or an hour and a half, come back, and crash. Next morning, I'd get up and start all over again. And just this routine, nonstop. And when I see guys, you know, when they do just one training session or like they say, "On Wednesday, we have a morning training, then an evening sauna session." What do you mean? You have to fight in fifty days. You have a huge fight ahead and you want to take a rest in the middle of the week? Well, rest on Sunday. On Saturday, do a morning training, hit the sauna in the evening, take a complete rest on Sunday, and start all over again on Monday. That was just my approach. Everyone does it differently. I don't know. I just think it has to be in your head. You've got to want it incredibly badly.
So you believe that to be a champion, you have to train like that, you have to be that serious for the majority of people?
Let's say I believe that to be at the top, the top tier, right? One of the best in the world. A person has to always be, you know, a little bit, let's say just a little bit crazy, but in a good sense of the word. You have to be addicted to it and to want this incredibly bad. You have to take a fanatical approach to the training process. Just showing up and working out, that's what hundreds of thousands of guys are doing around the world. To stand out from that, from this crowd, let's say, who have the exact same goals as you do, to stand out from that, you have to take a fanatical approach to it.
Well, look, I'm training with John Danaher. And they train like that too. They train three times a day. And it actually feels right this way. I mean, of course, this is how you have to train.
'Cause of that, John has one of the best-
... students in the world, and after all, they don't just take some random place. I mean, they're not somewhere in the middle. They're at the top, and look at their whole approach. Some people... Look, a person with that kind of approach just can't be somewhere in the middle. It's impossible. If you have a fanatical attitude, the right attitude toward the training process, on top of that, you have to be fanatical about it. You love what you do, and in the end, there will be results. Well, just look at John and look where his guys are. He creates champions. He finds a champion in everyone, across every category, right?
He creates champions, not just one or two, but all of them. He finds a champion in everyone, across every category.
Look, the people who come to him, he has a system, let's say, right? Under this roof, under his roof, there is a system. People come here, and they become champions in this system. So there are people there who are champions. These are specific established names. And there are other people who came and left. They entered that black room, so to say, an uncomfortable place. They went in, stood for a year, a year and a half or two, and left. Nobody talks about them. These are the people who came in, broke mentally, and left, and there aren't just a few of them. There are a lot. Usually, most people give up. There are many who give up, but then there are the ones who come in and stay there for a long time. Long, long time. And after some time, they achieve success. They become the best. They prove to themselves that once they enter the system, they could stay there for a long time, endure, and become the best. They prove that they are already capable of many things. They can be trusted to supervise big, important projects. I would even say, for example, 2,000 years ago, they could easily rule entire cities. So a person who has gone through it physically, who has lived through it, who has faced challenges, passed the tests, they are capable of a lot, highly capable. You don't just walk into martial arts and become the best. It's very difficult. It means that you go through pain, you make sacrifices, you give your time, you face setbacks and failures in training. The mental strength and capacity mean a lot there. And when I talk about his system, look, I mean those schools that became the best, let's say, in football or in freestyle wrestling or, let's say, in MMA, in grappling, or in judo. It's really hard to enter one of the best schools in the world, to stay when they are breaking you, throwing you, choking you, to improve as a person and as an athlete, and to become a champion. It takes at least 12 years, 10 to 12 years, maybe 15. For some, it took longer. And to get through the grind for these 15 years and then to break through and become the best is worth a lot.
Have you had those tough moments where you're almost broken psychologically? You know, just sitting there, finding it hard to breathe, and everything is going wrong, lost in some situations. And when you were young, was there ever a moment like that? 'Cause the guys from Dagestan on the team, really great guys, by the way, all say they've never seen you broken in training, not even losing really. But when you were young, did it ever happen?
Look, I've been in this grind since I was a kid. Wherever my father coached, there were always... Let's take the year 2004, for example. My father put together the Dagestan national team for combat Sambo and in mixed martial arts, which was called no-holds-barred fighting. There were training camps, too. I was 15. It was the winter of 2004, and I was the youngest guy there. The others were, let's say, between 22 and 30, all active world champions. At that time, I was, like, 14, 15 years old. I wrestled with them, grappled, was in this uncomfortable environment for myself, where we always had the rule that the youngest has to do everything, and he is always wrong, and I had to deal with that. Especially in the gym, they throw you, hit you again and again. You have to show up morning and evening, day after day. This place hardens you. They say How the steel was tempered. Steel isn't tempered for nothing. How many times do you have to strike the steel before it becomes a sword? That doesn't just happen by itself.
Did you believe in yourself then?
Some of the guys who were at those camps back then, they're grown men now. Even then, they were older than me by 10, 12, maybe 15 years. And they always used to say, "Khabib, we honestly thought you were going to become some kind of scholar or scientist." Because my father was always making me read and write, read and write. I would copy out entire books by hand. There was always this control. It wasn't like he'd say, "Khabib, go do this", and you could just walk away and not do it. When he said, "Go do it", you did it. My father never forgot anything. He had a phenomenal memory. He'd be like, "Did you do it?" And everything he told you, he remembered. He just did.
He was like, "Come here." And he'd check. I knew it wasn't something I could get away with. So, you know, since childhood, I was lucky that my father always kept me close, and I found myself in this environment among fighters who at that time- ... were, I don't know, they just didn't compete in America and Europe back then. But in the post-Soviet space, they were the best at that time. And it helped me a lot to become mentally strong.
Tell me more about your father. You've read a lot. You didn't just fight. You were well-rounded and you told several stories about this. There was a book, what is it called? Countries and Peoples.
The approach was the same.
Tell that story because I think it's important for the parents listening to us to understand this. You're not just trying to create a champion. You're trying to raise a well-rounded person, a wise person, a person with depth.
Yes, you have to give the right motivation to kids with proper communication. My father was very good at this. I now realize interacting with my own kids how wise he was and how deeply he understood this. Because when a child is eight, 10 years old, and when they are just beginning to form as a person, it is important to have the right approach. I now understand how farsighted my father's approach was. First, he tried not to give me anything for free. Only sometimes I could get something for free. For example, before a holiday, like Eid al-Fitr or before school started, Father would give money. I'd go buy clothes at the market for back to school, that kind of thing, you know? And at other times, he always told me, "Well, if you want it, you need to earn it. You want me to give you money just like that?" There would be some work around the house and so on that I had to do. And I knew that encouragement would always be there. My father always had this kind of approach. He set a very strong personal example, very strong, and I really learnt a lot from him. Took a lot. And then, as you mentioned, there was the book, Countries and Peoples. Someone gave it to him as a gift. My father read through it, and he realized that it was perfect for me, for a child who was 10, 11, maybe 12 at the time. That book was part of my life for about two or three years, something like that.
It was about 193 countries. The geography, history, all the details.
For each country, it describes its geographical location, which countries it bordered, its major rivers, mountains, cities, history, economy, finances. Just brief information about every country. My father said, "You'll tell me about each country, and I'll give you money for it." And I thought, "All right." I knew this was like my own little capital just sitting there waiting for me. All I had to do was come, take that book, read it, understand it. Then my father would take the book and say, "Now, tell me what you read." And he would check. He would look through it. The countries were arranged alphabetically. A for Andorra, Angola, and so on. B for Belgium, Brazil, and so on. Everything went in alphabetical order. I started from A and read them all straight to the very end. Like every single time when I needed the money, I did that. And for example, I go over the first 40 countries, he'd check a box, and then I continued. That's how my father would test me. Let's just say that my knowledge of geography comes from back then.
Did you realize how big the world was?
As a child, you don't understand?
At that time, I didn't understand. But since then, I've had this desire to travel. I really wanted to travel, visit different countries, see wonders of the world, the Colosseum, the pyramids. But all of this is from childhood, from what I read and wrote. It wasn't just about reading. I also had to rewrite it. I had to write it down. I always wrote down what I read. And actually, this is very good advice for parents, you know. They can use this with their children too. They can tell them to sit down and copy books by hand. First of all, eyesight improves. Reading improves. Writing, how you write improves. Your handwriting. And it stays with you when you read and write. It really develops a child. Not only I believe that, I actually do advise parents to motivate their kids this way. You can simply create some kind of challenge that children benefit from and reward them for it after it is done. This really helps develop a child's mind.
I actually saw advice from the great writers who said that they remembered doing the same thing when they were young. When they first started writing, they just simply copied other legendary writers. You read their work and then you type it out yourself, and you start absorbing that style into your bloodstream.
Well, it needs to be done in childhood. When the child is ready to learn and his mind is open, let's say as a metaphor, when his table is clean, not occupied with clutter, then as a father, you can help them place all the right things on the table in their proper place. Let's say put the food in one place, flowers in another, something like that. It is important. That's why I believe I was very lucky. My father did the right thing. He provided me with the right kind of information, and I learned a lot just from being around him. I learned so much just from his presence. He was there at home, and then we also went to competitions. He was always there at trainings and at camps, so I absorbed a lot from him, and it was interesting for me too. Of course, when you're a teenager, sometimes you're tired, sometimes you want to break free. All of that was there. But my father had the right approach. He influenced me a lot and in the right way.
And there's the physical component too of hard work. There's a story you told about the time he made you dig a big hole just because it was difficult. There's wisdom in that. That you just need to work. You need to stay busy all the time.
These were training camps from two thousand and five to two thousand and seven. In the summer, we went to the mountains. There was a children's camp there, an old Soviet-style pioneer camp where we stayed doing our runs in the forest. Together, we built a small training area there with a rope, a punching bag, a pull-up bar. We did sprints there. We pulled resistance bands. After running in the mountains, we would come back and work there. There were almost no mats. We built the base ourselves. It had a dining room on the first floor and an attic space where we slept. We would come downstairs, eat, go outside, train in that little sports area, then run in the forest. It was somewhere around twelve hundred meters above sea level, a conifer forest. We spent the whole summer there. There we'd train in the morning, then there was nothing to do all day, and in the evening we had training sessions again. But during the day, so we wouldn't be busy with unnecessary things, my father sometimes gave us work. And we'd ask, "Why are we digging this pit?" He'd say, "Well, people used to use it like a refrigerator. When you dig two or three meters down, it is cold inside. You can put milk there, cheese, things like that, so the food does not go bad." And we were like, "Okay, but do we really need these refrigerators every day?" So in that sense, this was his approach back then. He always had this kind of unique approach.
Well, what's the philosophy here? That you gotta be busy all the time, working hard, doing something difficult.
Yes, it's very dangerous to give a child free time in adolescence. They should always be busy learning new information, improving, acquiring new skills. A person should always be busy. When you're sixteen, well, what can be on your mind? You should constantly develop and improve. And by this time, you should already, I believe, have decided what you want to become. You should already be investing in what you want to turn into.
By the way, you had several very good conversations with Nurlan, with Adam, which I highly recommend. In one of them, your brother Abubakar told a story that when you were young, there were several street fights, maybe many, I don't know. He said he was the one who got you into it. You were kind of bigger, and he needed protection at that time. You were that protection. Can you tell us these stories? How often did you fight on the streets of Dagestan?
Well, let's start with the fact that I never bullied anyone. Never. Although I physically could bully, yes, let's say I had the capability. I wasn't the kind of person who started the fights.
Well, maybe there were some moments, but mostly no. Mostly I didn't start. Abubakar, sure, he was like that. In my circle, I had some guys who were a little bit like that.
He said that he's a bit of—
He was a troublemaker. He was a troublemaker, and because of him, I got into trouble many times. When you're, let's say, fourteen, fifteen years old and your brother is fighting. You don't really ask who's right or who's wrong. You just go in, you start to, as we say, you interfere. You just have to go in, right? But when you're older, more conscious, when you're twenty, twenty-five or thirty years old, this is when you really start telling him, "You know, Abubakar, I think you're wrong here. Yes, we'll finish this right now, but in the future, I wouldn't want you to get involved because I think it's wrong, right?" Well, as kids, we just didn't ask. We just went right in. When we moved to Makhachkala in 1999, let's say the end of 1999, so there were—we were many brothers, more than ten of us. We lived in one house. Some were in school, some in college, some in university. But we all had one routine. We trained in the morning, then went to school. We'd come home, rest, do homework, then train in the evening, come home and rest, without mothers, just by ourselves. Father gathered everyone. He took in close friends and family, his nephews, cousins, relatives, those who didn't have a father, and so on. He took them in, and we all lived in one house. We cooked, cleaned, did laundry all by ourselves. It was like, well, some kind of army life, you know? And when the brothers had some problems, let's say misunderstandings, we didn't go easy on those guys. And even those who lived around there near that house, in that district, in the settlement, everyone knew that there were lots of brothers living there. So they had to be careful. And we had a football field there. It was right in front of the house, and everyone who came to play there, we constantly had fights there, misunderstandings. There were older brothers. They were always watching us, keeping us from trouble. "Don't do this. Don't do that. Watch your mouth." But we had our own little group. The age difference between us was maybe two, three years. There were five or six of us. We'd always go outside and play football. If our team was losing, then the game would just turn into a whole different sport, and that's how we were growing up. We spent six, seven years there, almost ten years. We were living together, growing, training. A lot has happened over that time, but I was never... Well, maybe just a couple of times, okay? Mostly, I was never the initiator of fights with some exceptions. I just remember since childhood, my father always told me, "You don't need to use force on the street." My father looked at all of this in a completely different way.
What is your understanding of the difference between the street fight and sports?
There is a very big difference. I saw many fights where if you put those same guys into sparring, in wrestling, MMA or combat Sambo, one guy could beat the other very easily. But the street is completely different. There are no rules, no referees, no points.
You just fight there, and it's totally different. I can say I actually had a major turning point in my life. Let's say the one that, in terms of psychology, really changed my whole attitude towards MMA. Back in 2002, 2003, my father kept me in wrestling. He trained MMA, combat Sambo, but wanted me to stay in wrestling. My cousin, who was older than me by a couple of months, he was training with my father. His freestyle wrestling was weak, so my father sent him to me, to the place where I was training. It was called the School of Higher Sports Mastery. The local guys from the city know this place. He came to practice and got into it with a guy in our gym who was heavier, maybe one class heavier. This guy was the best in his weight, winning Dagestan and the city too. So they got into a conflict. They were arguing. My brother had just joined. He was new to our freestyle wrestling gym, right? But I knew the other guy well. They paired up and they got into it. Well, that's my brother, right? So the guy goes, "Let's meet up after." And they agreed, as we say, to step outside after the training. I remember it was raining heavily, a real downpour. The guy brought his brother. I came with mine. We went outside and they started fighting one-on-one. I remember he shot in, lifted and took him down. Abdurakhman, my brother, threw up a triangle and he choked him out. When we went out, I was thinking Abdurakhman will lose to this guy. I even visualized it happening, the whole thing. Like, this guy beats him, and then I start fighting. Well, I'm not going there for my brother to lose. In my head, I was getting into a fight. But he threw him locked up in a triangle. For the first time I saw with my own eyes how someone chokes another person with a triangle and they lose consciousness.
They fought, he put him to sleep. We had to pull them apart, me and other guys. Fight's over, Abdurakhman won. And on the way home, I'm like, "Abdurakhman, wow. You impress me." I came home and immediately told my father. I said... That was in 2002 or '03, if I'm not mistaken. I am 14 years old. I said, "I'm switching to combat Sambo." I said, "What Abdurakhman did, the one he choked out, he's not just anyone in the gym. He's one of the best wrestlers, but he couldn't do anything." My father said, "You'll go to wrestling, but you'll come to me, I'll teach you. You'll learn techniques here and so on. But I want you to gain wrestling skills." I started going three days to train with my father, three days to wrestling. And at that moment, I realized that no matter how strong the wrestler is, lying on the back is where the wrestling normally ends, but MMA only begins there. And I was like, I thought, "I need this. I need this mixed style." I realized this was for me. I started going to my father's trainings, despite that he didn't let me. He didn't want me to do fighting. I think most people don't know this. My father wanted me to do freestyle wrestling or judo, but in my head, I already had this mixed style. I always wanted to compete. I was already getting tapes to watch. I always wanted to compete where there are no rules, where I could fully use my skills.
Yes, judo, Sambo, freestyle, grappling, jujitsu. More people knew jujitsu than grappling. After that, I switched, and from there my journey slowly started, which I had already begun. That's when I started the amateur journey. Then when I started getting good results as an amateur, I realized that I can switch to pro and achieve success. Sambo. In combat Sambo. Combat Sambo. I competed in all kinds of sports. Everything that involves wrestling and fighting. I competed everywhere. I competed in freestyle, in judo, in grappling, in combat Sambo. I competed in sport Sambo, in hand-to-hand combat, in pankration. My father put me in all competitions. He would say, "You have a competition here and another one there. Now you are preparing for this one. You will compete in this weight, under these rules, in this sport." And he was sending me everywhere. He would tell me, "You will need this in the future. The more competition experience you have, the more relaxed and confident you'll feel. It builds up over time." When I was young, I was losing as well. I go to a judo competition, win two matches and lose two matches. I would ask, "Father, why are you sending me there? This is not my sport." And he'd say, "No, go and compete." So, okay, I went, I cut weight. The next day you come in, you see 50 competitors in your weight class. You let this weight, this competitive energy pass through you, and psychologically you get better, better, better each time. You become more relaxed about it. And this moment really affected me, although then I didn't agree with my father. Back then I thought, "Why should I compete in other sports?" He said, "You can wrestle, right? Well, go wrestle." I was saying, "But judo isn't my sport. It's hard for me there." He says, "Well, you went on four times. Look, you won twice, then lost twice. You competed four times. You're 15 years old. You're just developing. Do you know how valuable this experience is for you? Four matches in one day." Now when I'm coaching, I understand the psychological approach, how important it is. I realize now how correctly he prepared me for the big stage. The preparation was already happening then when I was 15 years old. For example, when I went into the biggest fight in combat sports history, when I fought in 2018 here in Las Vegas. At that point, I was already at my peak, prime time. I was 30 years old. I went through all possible competitions as an amateur and a professional. And you know what? I was ready. This preparation, it started back then when I was 15. It's not like they give you a fight and you prepare for two months. Preparation starts long before you even step into the octagon.
So this experience of competitions, which started at 15, it continued, it expanded.
So can you explain what was going on in your head?
I didn't want to lose. I just didn't. It never occurred to me that I could get hurt, that someone could hurt me, that I might break a finger somewhere. I never had that in my head, that I could get hit, that I'd get a scratch, and so on. I don't know if you can call it perfectionism. I didn't want to lose. And to not lose, I knew I needed to compete a lot and improve. Training is one thing, but competing is different. I understood that the more I competed, the more experience I would gain. I had to go through it. It was constantly on my mind. This understanding that I must compete a lot came to me at an early age, since I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and I never stopped thinking about it. So it was always in the back of my mind.
Were you confident that you would win?
Yeah, in my youth, I wasn't always so sure. I just wasn't. Because I never stood out. Yes, I had a coach for a father, and how many, how many trainers have kids who compete but aren't successful? And then when I went to the big leagues, you know, I had already fought. I had done sixteen professional fights across the post-Soviet space. Later, when I was already signed to the UFC, there I already had this feeling. You know, with each fight, I was getting mentally stronger. My mind was becoming more and more solid, like concrete. When I went out there, I knew, yes, these are fights. Yes, you can take a hit. Yes, anything can happen when knees, elbows, fists are flying, when you can get caught in a choke, you know? But I thought, "If they don't knock me out, how will they beat me? I have fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes is enough to make a person tired." I'm like, "Okay, if you wanna stop me, come here. I'll give you that chance. Let's get in the octagon." I had this impatience during fight week. I wanted to go in there and feel my opponent. I just wanted to be inside the cage for them to close us in, for the referee to say, "Ready? Ready. Fight." And here I wanted to feel, to grapple with him and feel his strength, his skills, his energy, and for it not to stop. And with any opponent I felt from the beginning, and I didn't actually have superhuman strength. But from the beginning, when I grabbed them in the first minute and then in the sixth or seventh minute, I could feel them fading. I was, let's say, like squeezing this energy out of them, and I was getting better and better minute by minute.
Can you break down the technical details of your top pressure? That pressure you put on in wrestling, on the ground, all of it. How does it work? Can you explain the philosophy behind it?
Over the years, I've learned to use my strength properly. There's this sport called aikido. I don't like it much, but I like their philosophy, where your strength might work against you. I think for a lot of listeners, this is gonna be a brand-new sport. But there is this sport called aikido, and the whole philosophy behind it is using your opponent's force against them. That's what I learned to do. And I have learned to force an opponent into positions where they have to escape wasting their energy. Like when we were sparring yesterday. That's exactly what I wanted. I wanted you to feel that energy, that heavy top pressure. We could have just played around. I could have gone easy on you, but I wanted you to feel the real heavy pressure. And of course, please don't think it was a sign of disrespect. It's quite the opposite.
I just wanted you to feel that, you know, how exhausting it can be. I think you felt it yourself that it was a bit different from the kind of grappling you've dealt with before. I'm sure of it.
The only one who's even close to that is, I mean, you're the absolute number one. But the only thing is, when I trained with Roger Gracie in a different sport, you get that same feeling with him. Like, the guy is just insanely heavy.
Mm-hmm. Pressure. Pressure. Well, Roger, he's the greatest, too. He's the greatest in his own sport. What makes a person unique is his style, his style and his approach to his work. I always approach my craft very professionally, you know, respectfully. I believe that if you're gonna be in this game, in this sport, you have to completely dedicate yourself to it.
But I think you had a deep understanding of how to break an opponent, both physically and psychologically, just looking at your style.
I've always been right there, always fighting for position. I always-- Look, I mean that I just always had this thought in my head. My grandfather always told me, "A dog that latches onto that one weak spot always wins." It's the same with a fighter. When you're fighting on pure instinct, you feel your opponent's weakness. You know where they're weak, and you have to keep pressing right there. For example, let's say I'm fighting Conor, right? His strengths are his striking, his timing and his speed, his boxing. Why would I stand and strike with him? What am I supposed to do? I have to put pressure on his weak spot. So, that's what separates the fighters who reach success, the highest level of success, and become the best of the best. They know how to find an opponent's weakness, and they pressure it relentlessly. So, mm, so it all comes down to having the right strategy here.
Your fight with Conor, I think, was the biggest fight in UFC history. That's for sure. Well, actually, in all of sports. Do you think there will ever be another fight of that magnitude in the UFC? Is it even possible?
Well, let's look at the history here. I mean, our sport is still very young, say thirty-five years old, starting from the '90s. Put it this way. Take, for example, the sport most similar to MMA, which is, well, let's say boxing. How old is boxing? A hundred and fifty years? Like, when you think boxing, what pops into your head? Thrilla in Manila?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I love Mike Tyson a lot too, so.
Well, Tyson had big fights, but Mike Tyson never had that signature rival like Muhammad Ali had in Joe Frazier. Yeah, he just didn't have one. I mean, who do we have? Evander Holyfield? Look, Holyfield-Tyson is no Muhammad Ali. Take Ali and Frazier, Thrilla in Manila, right? People called it the greatest rivalry, and it still is. In the 20th century, there was nothing that could compare. In the 21st century, the only thing you could compare to it, purely based on the numbers, is Pacquiao and Mayweather. Yes, there was public interest, but there wasn't the energy that there was with Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
Yeah, if I can just pause for a second, I'll check on Perplexity. List the biggest boxing fights of all time. It's Ali and Frazier, like you said.
Well, when he lost, and then the third fight, the Thrilla in Manila.
And Foreman, I must say Ali versus Foreman.
Well, Foreman, that was the year, I think, '74, right?
The fight was watched by up to a billion people worldwide.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was one of those things. Politics got mixed into it too. Well, it was actually a very big fight.
Sugar Ray Leonard, Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard versus Thomas Hearns, Hagler versus Hearns.
Well, Hagler. Hagler and Duran in Montreal. Sugar Ray Leonard and Duran in Montreal when they fought, when he admitted after the fight that he lost the mental game and broke down before the fight. But then Sugar Ray beat him later.
Yeah, he came back and won.
Yeah. Well, if you look at it out of everything that stands out, I think, you can mention Frazier and Muhammad Ali. And there was also Joe Louis against German Max Schmeling. Hitler stood behind Schmeling, and Roosevelt stood behind Louis. For those who don't know this story, I just watched it recently. It was something incomparable. They were so big. They were two of the most, the most famous athletes of their time. Roosevelt was promoting Joe Louis, you know? At that moment for America, it was like something incredible that a white president was promoting a Black world champion. And on the other hand, Hitler stood behind Schmeling.
It was what? Nineteen thirty-six, nineteen thirty-eight. They had-
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They fought two times.
This wasn't just a good boxing match, just a good fight. This was politics. Those were nations.
This was politics. This was nations.
And it's the same thing with Ali too. Muhammad Ali with the Vietnam War, all that stuff.
And his, and even religion is tied into it. Everything here came together.
They simply went beyond sports. It was the exact same thing when I fought Conor. That fight went beyond our sport. It impacted every sport because athletes of all kinds of different sports, everyone who loves to compete, it didn't matter if it was football, basketball, soccer, or boxing, everyone was following this. And honestly, will there be a fight like that? Well, it's hard for me to say, but I think it'll happen. It'll happen for sure. There will always be champions. There will always be rivalries. But when it'll happen, that's just a matter of time.
So it's not entirely about the athletes. It's about everything combined.
Yeah. It's everything combined. The way he talked, what he stirred up, the lines he crossed, touching on family, religion. And then somehow on one side you had Conor, this really interesting champion who knew how to hype himself up, and on the other side, you had this undefeated somebody from nowhere, from the mountains. You know how it is. It all somehow, all of it just kind of happened naturally. And it wasn't staged. It was real. We had a real rivalry, unlike the way a lot of people now just hype up interest in a fight, but people feel that energy. It doesn't go anywhere. People can tell what's real and what's fake. And because of that, we went, we went beyond our own sport. That's what made this fight so massive.
Well, when you look into your heart back then and now, did you have anger? Did you have hatred for him?
Back then and even now, I'd still keep a cool head. Nothing has changed. When you let your emotions take over, when they're off the charts and you completely lose control, that's a very bad place to be. So you'll tire out faster. You'll fall. You'll fall for any kind of bait and so on. I just knew that I needed to stay calm, composed, to stick to the plan no matter what happened, and not go beyond my emotional limits. This is a very, very dangerous moment when you give in to your emotions. You have to control them. Every single detail, every little thing has to be perfectly in place. The second you let it all slip, everything becomes a total mess. So once the fight was finally done, I just let all my emotions out. I had to step right in and prove it, and punish him, and show them I'm better, that I'm better than him, and put a final end to this whole bitter rivalry. When all of that was over-
... that's when my emotions just went over the edge. But until the fight was completely finished, starting from training, you know, at the press conferences, at the weigh-ins, everywhere, in front of the media, everywhere, I kept myself completely under control, and I was very good at it. Honestly, looking back it's been almost eight years now. Looking back, well, I'm a little surprised. At that point, I was a very emotional guy, too. Over these eight years a lot has happened in my life, but I'm surprised that I kept it together. And well, you know, it wasn't easy for me to keep myself within my limits, to keep myself under control like that. But here, again, I'll come back to what I said, I was very lucky. My father called me at that time I was here two months before the fight. His advice helped me out so much because for me it was not just that it mattered, it was actually the most important thing for me back then just to know my father's reaction, how he was taking everything that was happening, because there was just so much media coverage, so I knew my father was watching. It was important for me to know his take. I'd call and ask, and my father would even tell me things I hadn't even asked him about. He'd bring it up on his own. Because you know the way it is with us, between me and my father, in our traditions, in our part of the world, in our family for generations, in our village, there's just always this distance with your father. Like, when you walk in, there are just so many things you can't let yourself do in front of your father. You have to be like, sort of like a soldier in front of a general, right? If you can even make that comparison. If a soldier stands at attention like that, then with us it's even, even stricter. Like even, just to give an example here. For instance, imagine you're a father sitting there, right? And your two-year-old kid walks up to you and wants to play with you. You can't even, like, do that baby talk thing with your own kid.
You don't have that kind of friendship.
You know it's a friendship, but-
There's a certain distance that you must keep around your father. You always have to be, like, completely buttoned up. You have to stand like a soldier in front of your father. You don't let your emotions take over. At that point, just to know what my father thought, who was, like, all the way across the ocean, who couldn't just fly out and be there to support his son and just be there by my side. But for me, since he didn't have a visa, I just had to know exactly what he thought. I didn't care what anyone else thought. I didn't care about the opinions of, like, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions watching this fight. I only ever cared about one person and his take, what he thought and what he'd say to me. But I couldn't call him and say, "Father, what do you think about this?" Well, we never had that. Well, you had to wait. I would just call and wait to hear what he'd say. And my father, he knew exactly where to draw the line because he was in the exact same position with his own father since his own father was still around. And then he had a son, too, right? And he understood me, how I felt about him, since his relationship with his own father was the same way. And in that sense, back then, my father really kept me grounded mentally. He even told me something once. Do you know how diamonds are, like, actually made? Under great pressure. He says, "You're under great pressure, and you have a choice. You can break down and give up, or you can get through it all properly, clearly, with dignity. Go in, prepare right, make weight, recover, go in, win, and settle it once and for all." And those exact kinds of moments, they really, they deeply impacted me.
So because of those words, you could cut everything off? Focus.
Mentally. Like, if a million people showed up right there and told me right outside where I was staying, at the hotel, right? Like, if a million people gathered right under my window and said, "Hey, we've got your back." And honestly, just one call from my father, it wouldn't even compare, because that one call from my father, that one piece of advice, his support, his voice, it charged me up way more than absolutely everything else combined.
But I must say, José Aldo, who is one of the greatest fighters of all time, and still Conor was arguably able to psychologically break him. But with you, it seems like Conor was not able to mentally affect you. Did he manage to get into your head even a little?
No, not at all. I had a clear understanding that physically and mentally I was just way stronger than him. I didn't doubt myself for even 1%. Well, people, they can say whatever they want. He's got a massive fan base too. Maybe they won't agree with that. But the Almighty gave me this unshakable confidence that is just really hard for me to even put into words. And I just deeply believe that I was better than him and that I was stronger than him, and that in this matchup, well, I was supposed to win. I just had this rock solid faith in myself.
Up until that moment, is it fair to say that this was your toughest fight?
One hundred percent. Because fighting's all psychology, you know? It's a mental game. Mentally speaking, that was my toughest fight. At that point, yeah. But a tougher fight came later.
There were a lot of factors that made it so tough.
So can you explain? You said somewhere that actually, unfortunately, or at least from my perspective, unfortunately, we never got to see your absolute limit. Were you, uh-
Not in fights, no. You've never seen my limit in fights.
But you said that Gaethje was the closest to it 'cause of the whole process. Can you explain why it was a tough fight, your last one?
First and foremost, it was because I had lost my father. It was hard to pull myself together. Everything piled up at once. My father was gone. And training without my father, without the person I was doing all of this for, the person I wanted to become champion for, first and foremost, to prove to him, uh, to prove to him that I could become the best. And then the training camp itself, physically I was not in the best shape. I had injury after injury after injury. But mentally speaking, I stayed completely sharp. Well, this is when you got injuries, your mental game can slip a little, or things at home are going bad. All of that impacts a person. One, two, three, four. All these things affect you. You become, let's say not, not sharp. You lose your fire. Your fire leaves you, your focus leaves you, your head is somewhere else. Even though you are physically there, mentally you are somewhere else. But I always stayed there. I knew it. Nobody had any idea that was going to be my last fight. No one knew about the talk I had with my mother.
But you knew and you were sure?
Well, I knew for myself. This is my last fight. I was never going to step into the cage again. I knew it, and I had to finish it right then and there because putting myself through all of that yet again, it would have just been too hard on me if I got injured and the fight fell through. And putting my mother through all that stress again. I knew that all the anxiety I go through for three months leading up to a fight, my mother goes through it too. I understood all of that. I wanted to put an end to it because we'd already had that talk. We already had an agreement. All of that combined, I mean, mentally it just-- I was, you know, I was right on the edge. Like, it was a fine line and I really was on the edge.
And I heard or maybe read somewhere that you said you were already starting to miss it while the fight was still going on.
Yeah, inside the octagon. I knew it would never happen again. I stepped in there and I just took it all in. I was fighting and just every single moment, every moment, every single move, I felt it deep down. And in my head, I already knew this was the final run. Everything I'd been doing my entire life, it all came down to this. That competitive rush, I'll never feel that anywhere else. I knew deep down this was my last fight.
What kind of feelings were those?
I've never felt anything like that again. Those feelings could only be experienced right there on that exact day, that very evening, with that opponent inside that cage. I've never had them before that night and never had them since. And I don't think I'll ever be able to feel that way again. I think Buvaisar said that these feelings, standing on the podium, becoming an Olympic champion, you only feel them in that moment when they announce you. You step onto the podium. That's it. They announced you. You won. You leave. That's it. You only feel them there. You don't feel them anywhere else. And athletes live for those feelings. They train their whole lives for them.
Do you ever think about that? That in our lives, if we're lucky, we only get maybe one or two moments like that at that absolute peak.
