Michael Chandler. Welcome to the show, man.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a long time coming. It has been watching you from afar, so it's awesome.

We've been kicking this back and forth for what, about probably close to six months now. And, you know, I know you're a busy guy. Totally, totally get it. And I'm just happy to have you here and honored to have you sitting across from me.

Absolutely, man.

But everybody starts off with an intro, so here we go. Husband and a father to two adopted sons, a christian american professional mixed martial artist, four time NCAA qualifier. 2011 20, 1316, 2021 and 2022 fight of the year nominations. You're a three time Bellator lightweight champion. 2021 UFC debut of the year. You're ranked currently number five in the world, from what I understand. Four UFC performance of the night bonuses. Record is 23 wins, eight losses. Host of Walk on Wisdom podcast. And you own a gym here in Nashville. What is the name again?

Nashville mMa.

Nashville, MMA. Quite the. Quite the intro here.

Yeah. Thank you, man. That's really cool to see it all ironed out right as hard. Chargers was like, we'll keep on going. I don't care about what I've accomplished. We'll keep on going. You know, that's pretty cool.

You know, that's one thing that I notice a lot about ultra success stories, is you don't have time to gloat with the winds. It's just go, go, go. And that's how I am, and that's how a lot of it's just. There's no time.

You know what I mean?

It's just keep going.

Great.

We did a win.

Yeah. And I've learned to. I've learned that one of my downfalls was actually not putting enough stock in being proud of myself for what I have accomplished. So I have learned to take the time every now and then to pat myself on the back because I was a guy who struggled with self image and self confidence and not believing in myself enough or not believing I deserved it enough. So you can kind of get caught in that rut of, well, okay, I won this, or I made this, or I did this, but I was supposed to. I got to keep going, going. And if you don't ever stop to smell the roses, stop to pat yourself on the back, not sit there and rest on your laurels, so to speak, but, you know, really look in the mirror and say, I am proud of you. Right? So I've learned to do that as I've gotten older. But for the most part, it's like, okay, yesterday was yesterday. It's time to go.

That's, you know, I'm glad you brought that up because I'm not necessarily saying that's a positive attribute.

Yeah.

Because I think it can also be a poison. And it's just a commonality that I see amongst overachievers. Just call them overachievers. And I'm 100% with you. I want to be able to celebrate the wins. The thing that kind of helped me do it is I've always been, I grew up doing individual sports, like wrestling. A lot of the stuff that I've done in the teams and the agency are, you know, it's very team oriented, but you're always evaluated as an individual. And the same with business from doing the podcast now. And what kind of slowed me down is now I've built this big enough to where I can have a team around me, and the team deserves, and the team deserves recognition. And so that has forced me to slow down and celebrate the wins because I want them to be able to celebrate that and they deserve it.

That's awesome. But, yeah, you definitely start. Yeah, you definitely start to realize you can't grow without people, right? Obviously an individual sport. I've always been in individual sports, but without the team, I'm going into the cage by myself. I'm going onto the wrestling mat by myself. It was everybody who had a little piece of. A little bit of, you know, a little bit of sprinkle in there, whether it be the coaches, the training partners, the management, whatever. That even though I am the one who decides whether I get my hand raised or not, it was all the individuals with me on the entire, on the entire process, the entire journey, no matter what.

Yeah, yeah. But before we get too into the end of the life story, I have a Patreon account, and I always give them an opportunity to ask a question. They're my top supporters. They're the reason I'm here. They're the reason you're here, and they've been with me the whole time. So this is one thing that I'm able to do for them. And so this is from Frank Lewis. What is one of the weirdest things that an opponent of yours has done to you, either pre fight or during the fight, to get into your head?

Oh, man, there's been so many, you know, it's such an interesting sport, right? Because there's the trash talk leading up to it. There's the, there's the post are the pre fight press conferences and all those different things that we have to do. Media obligations. I think when I fought Tony Ferguson, we were at the. We were at the press conference, and then they pull the. They pull the tables away, they pull the chairs away, and then we do the face off. And it was really funny. And if anybody knows Tony Ferguson, you probably do. He's a legend in the sport. He's just a funny, quirky guy. He's known for saying weird, off the wall things, doing weird off the wall things. His training videos are just kind of off the wall. But we were standing. We had faced off, and then we faced the crowd. Kind of give one of these numbers, crowd goes crazy. And he. He was standing there, reached over, went down, and touched my foot, like, really, really fast. Like he was going to ankle pick me. Because he always talked about an ankle pick, which is a. One of the traditional wrestling takedowns, right?

And then later on in the interview, said, yeah, I touched his ankle. I would have been able to ankle pick him, right? And it's just. It's really funny because it kind of. It was kind of hilarious, but it was also kind of serious. You can't ever tell if Tony is, you know, being serious or not. But he reached down, touched my foot, and I looked down, and I thought, what, the world just happened here? I've never had this happen. You know, we're supposed to be serious, right? Like, hey, Udah. But then also in his mind, he's like, okay, I got one up on him right now. I touched his ankle. He wasn't ready for it. I'm like, of course I wasn't ready for it, bro. I was standing here looking at the crowd doing what I'm supposed to do. So I think that was. That was probably the most off the wall thing leading up to a fight. And then inside of the fight, there's been numerous times where we're talking back and forth, or you hit somebody and they're kind of making that noise where it's like, oh, you know, it's just. It's an interesting sport because you are locked in and you are focused on creating bodily damage to another human being, but it's still a human being, right?

So it's. I'd say. But I'd say the Tony Ferguson thing was probably the funniest thing that's ever happened.

Interesting. I mean, how much of that is real? The trash, chalk talking and the mind games and stuff? I mean, how much of that is theatrics for show business? Cause there has to be a certain aspect to show business within the UFC and how much of that is real?

You know, I think it's a great question. Cause I've gotten asked it a decent amount. Cause obviously there's the crossover kind of a little bit between WWE and UFC when it comes to how the WWE builds up wrestling matches and fights and rivalries and whatnot. Mixed martial arts is 100%. It's 100% real. It's 100%. You know, whether it is, hey, I'm going to play this character to take this route, to talk this much trash, to say, hey, this is the guy I'm fighting. And I believe these three angles are the angles that I can do, say b to get in their head, right. I actually just listened yesterday to an interview with Conor McGregor, who was talking about his return, and they've talked about how he's changed. He now has four kids. He and his fiance d have been together for over a decade, and he went back to whenever he fought Jose Aldo. And he was using almost an opposite tactic that somebody could use on him now and say, hey, I don't have any kids, I don't have a wife. I am solely focused on fighting. And that was his way of getting in Jose's head, hey, you're not 100% focused on fighting.

Cause you have a wife, you have children and all these things, right? So there's all these different tactics you can use, if you will. Cause the mental warfare really is part of it. It's really 100% of it, until we actually step inside of the octagon in it and some of that trash talk and some of that build up, that stuff transcends into the. The cage and translates into the cage about how aggressive a guy is. Do you want, do you want him to be, do you want to lull him to sleep with, being friends with him and being nice and cordial? Or do you want to get him so far out of his comfort zone, make him see red, so he then makes a mistake. And I think that's what happened in that fight between Conor and Aldo. Aldo got very over eager, over anxious through an overhand right, got knocked out. But it's all real. It's all, hey, me and you, I gotta do my research on you. If I want to be interesting, I have to be interested in you, who you are as a man, a person, a human being. And then let me dissect it, let me peel back the layers, let me do my research.

And then, of course, yeah, some of it's a little bit over sensationalized when you're on the microphone to get. To get eyeballs and to get the chatter going. Do you guys.

I mean, do you have a. Do you have a psychological training aspect to your regiment, you know, that goes into that, or is that all just spur of the moment? That's the fighter that's trying to get inside the head, or is there a little bit more that goes behind it?

It's a good question. There's, I think, some of the best to ever do it. Chael Sonnen, Conor McGregor. Sean O'Malley's doing a pretty good job of it right now these days. It also goes to. Goes back to who your opponent is, right. You know, my last opponent, Dustin Poirier, there wasn't going to be a lot of trash talk that I needed to worry about. Right. He wasn't a big trash talker. Now, the complete opposite. Now I'm going up against the biggest and best and baddest trash talker in the game, and Conor McGregor, or at least he used to be. I think he used to be a lot better at it than he is now, but so, preparing myself for, you know, I've never had to really prepare myself for press conferences, prepare myself for media obligations, prepare myself for being in the same room as a guy, because I've always felt like I was on par linguistically as my opponent. But you going up against a guy like Conor McGregor, there's a little bit more research, a little bit more visualization. I've never really visualized the trash talk aspect of things like I have now.

After spending five, six weeks with him in Vegas, doing the ultimate fighter, being around him, doing my research on him, his career, what he's done, where his faults are, where his cracks in his armor are, where his chinks in his armor are. So there's. I don't have a psychological trash talk, coach, but I am my own, you know, my own little encyclopedia of who my next opponent is. Connor. And I got it all right here to be able to hopefully pull it when I need it.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, thank you for answering that. Of course. So. All right, so we're going to do a life story going from childhood through college, little bit of Christianity, adopting kids, fighting career. We're gonna cover it all.

Sure.

But before we do that, everybody on the show gets a gift. I almost feel guilty giving this to you. Cause I know you're probably cutting weight, which isn't gonna help you, but those are vigilance league gummy bears, legal in all 50 states.

All right.

Made in the USA. It's just candy, man.

I love it, dude. No, hey, I am not cutting weight yet, so we can still enjoy these gummy bears big time. And this next fight hopefully is at 185 or 170, so I might even be able to eat them in training camp.

Right on. There you go.

Thank you.

Well, if you need some more, let me know.

Well, and I have a gift for you if it's perfect. So I actually. So we are almost coming up on the one year anniversary of the covenant school shooting that happened last march, which actually happened a half mile from my house. I heard the helicopters flying by. I heard my wife was calling me. I was filming a podcast. It was just a crazy tragedy, obviously. And I was fortunate enough to be a part of a benefit concert that they did. I got on the microphone, I was able to say a few things. And I introduced Morgan Wallen, Jason Aldean was there, need to breathe, a bunch of different artists. And they gave me this hat that said covenant on it. And I loved it. Wore it all over the place. But then I have my friends at Melon and I said, hey, guys, I think there's something bigger here. Let's create a thousand of these things. So we put up a website and for $100 donation, you get an awesome melon covenant hat. And you can wear it with pride here in Nashville and around the world. And it goes toward ongoing resources for emotional support, financial support for the school, added security, and different ways that we can help the Covenant fund.

And it's, you know, fitting because it's about one year ago of a crazy tragedy. My son's baseball coach, his son went to Covenant, his kids went to Covenant. So it was very cool to have him wear it. And it's just the way Nashville, and you probably saw it, the way Nashville stood up and stood in solidarity and supported during that tragedy. It was something to behold, obviously. It's never, never something that you want to see happen, but the shining light through it, the way that this city, our city, stood up, I wanted to be a part of it and help with the healing. So we call it the hat that heals. And covenanthats.com and man, that's raising some cool funds.

I'll donate. That's awesome. Yeah, I remember when that happened. Believe it or not, my nanny's father is head of security there and was head of security there. She got married there, very close ties to the church. So I offered up my expertise and gave them a down and dirty security assessment on what I thought they could approve on immediately after that happened. And, man, like, I'd seen a lot of stuff. I've been to 14 years of war, but it had been a long time since I've walked into, walked into the aftermath of something like that happening. And never before had I seen it in my own country with little kids, and it was all still there. Man. Tough sight to see.

Yeah. And anything we can do for the Covenant fund, I mean, it goes toward things exactly like you, people like yourself who says, hey, here's how we can make it an easier transition for those students, the faculty, to walk across that threshold again, you know, because maybe the last time that they did, you know, it was an absolute nightmare. So then the transition back in and then even being able to raise funds for more security, increased security measures, whatever it may be, people like yourself coming in and saying, hey, this is how we can facilitate things that will and different protocols that will make people feel more comfortable, because our children need to feel comfortable, you know, especially in this beautiful country that we have that sometimes feels like it's going in the wrong direction. You know, we, our children, we. We can handle it as adults, as men, you know, but our children, man, safeguard them at all costs, safeguard the helpless. And that's kind of the mission behind what we're doing with covenanthats.com. And, you know, I think it could turn into a nationwide mission as well. Obviously, like we said, you don't want these kind of things to happen, but lo and behold, in a fallen world, these things are going to happen, and we can stand up something very quickly to be able to help raise funds.

And it's been cool so far.

Yeah, I just want to say one other thing, too, is when that happened, there's, all these businesses always come out of the woodworks after these tragedies. And one thing I love about the Nashville area is this is the volunteer state, you know, and not everything has to be a business. Not everything has to be about money. And, you know, it's good to serve your community and donate to your community and not make it about business and just make where you live a better place. And people like you and I who are, I think, being a good example of that by, you know, hey, there's a lot of ways that people could have capitalized on this, but people have come out and donated their time, their money, their expertise on preventing that from ever happening again. And I hope that people take that example back to where they live and start to do the same thing.

It was really cool to see the way this city stood up. And, yeah, like you said, it's one of those tragedies. It's one of those tragic events that you never want to see happen, ever. But in the light of it, in the wake of it was, there was a lot of solidarity between this whole city.

Yeah, yeah.

But.

All right, well, let's get into your life story, sir. I know you grew up in Missouri. You're a Missouri boy.

St. Louis, Missouri High Ridge, Missouri. Jefferson County, Missouri.

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Well, I am uneducated. How the heck did I not know that man?

Born in Kansas City, grew up in a really small town called Chillicothe, Missouri, and then went off to the SEAL teams and did some agency work and actually moved back to St. Louis for a couple of years before I left.

That's crazy. My whole family lives in St. Louis, except for my two brothers. My one brother's in Oakland and my other brothers here in Nashville. My entire family lives in St. Louis.

Well, let's get back to you. So, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. What was the home life like?

Yeah, we, you know, my first home was in house Springs, Missouri. And then we moved. My dad built our house with his bare hands. He's a carpenter, union carpenter in St. Louis. Still is a carpenter. He's actually up in upstate New York right now. So you can kind of see where my hard work comes from. The blue collar. I was a blue collar kid, dad is a carpenter, and my mom worked for my grandpa's family business. Still own a scrap yard in high ridge, Missouri. And we were just three rambunctious little boys running around. We had probably 100 acres of woods around us until the woods got developed and turned into a neighborhood. So we kind of lived out in the woods. My dad had us in the woods every single weekend, basically because we had this little property in union, Missouri, place called Fawn Lake, because my mom would work, you know, 08:00 a.m. To 05:00 p.m. At the scrap yard. And then my grandpa also owned a. And had an italian restaurant. So then my mom would then become switch out her regular clothes, put on her apron and her waitress clothes, and then work five till midnight, basically.

So my mom and dad were working two and three jobs to give me and my brothers every opportunity. So my dad would take us out to the woods and we'd go camping. He always talks about being in diapers. We were in the woods since we were in diapers. So there's three rambunctious kids running around trying not to kill ourselves, falling out of trees and stuff.

Yeah. I mean, what kind of stuff were you into as a kid?

So my dad did. I mean, we did a lot of fishing, did a decent amount of hunting. I actually fished, used to fish tournaments with my dad. So we were something. We were a part of a group called the Potosi Bass Masters. We fished from Lake of the Ozarks table, Rock Lake, Kentucky Lake, all the different kind of midwest lakes. And me and my two brothers were in sports. We played a lot of baseball, some football. And then I really started getting very, very serious about the sport of wrestling when I got into high school. And that was kind of my forte because I wasn't going to be. I was four foot eleven, 103 pounds. I wasn't going to be the star quarterback or the starting point guard on the basketball team, so 103 pounds. I was a wrestler at 14 years old.

Man, you know, that's. I found that very interesting. I grew up wrestling. I started in 7th grade, didn't have a great career by any means, but one thing that, when I was doing my research on you, I just, I knew about your wrestling background. I just assumed you probably started at five years old like most of the state champs, and. And I was very surprised to see you didn't start until your freshman year. Yeah, I mean, you really excelled at a pace that I've not heard of.

Yeah, my dad was a. My dad wrestled two or three years when he was in middle school. And I think that was kind of the first moment what the sport of wrestling gave me. It was the first moment where I realized, okay, I have a duty to my mom and dad because of the opportunity that they're giving me. My dad could have been a great wrestler, but he had to quit wrestling because his mom in St. Louis said, either you keep wrestling and you walk to school or you work and you get your own car. So he had to quit all sports to be able to start working early in high school. And they gave me an opportunity to wrestle and support me, and they bought me a car and all those different things. I knew from a very young age that there's a duty to my parents and every single thing that I have right now in front of me, it all stems back to Mike and Betty Chandler back in Jefferson County, Missouri, working two and three jobs. So every day when I wake up, I have an opportunity to honor them. And now, obviously, I have a wife and two kids, and I am now passing it on and showing them through an example of what being a good man is, what being a hard working man is.

So my dad wrestled a couple years, and then he became a volunteer coach for the Northwest High school Northwest Wrestling Little League team. So I did wrestle a little bit when I was five and six and seven, but back then it was. I barely competed. And we're just running around and playing jokes on kids. You weren't really actually learning technique, and I picked it back up as a freshman, and, yeah, I just. It just. I think we were created for massive focus, and if we can massively focus on something, we can. The sky is the limit. We can do anything we want, and I made it my life. I was the only one who wrestled 365 days a year. Guys would start wrestling in, you know, October, quit wrestling in February after the state tournament, and I just kept going and going and going. I would just. I'd find a rival team to go train with, even if it meant my teammates were mad at me because I was training with the Fox guys or the Secman guys or the Hillsboro guys, the guys that we were going to be wrestling. Like, I don't care if you're mad at me that I have friends on other teams, because this is about me, and I need to.

I need to hone my craft, and that's what turned me into being a pretty decent wrestler, man.

That's. You know, one thing I love about wrestling is it is all. It all comes down to you, and it teaches you how to lose very quickly. It teaches you humility, teaches you how to lose, teaches you how to handle yourself when you win. I mean, what are some of your favorite attributes that come from that sport?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's. You watch people these days not being able to handle the pressures of life, and I will concede and admit the way the world is today. We have so much undue pressure put on ourselves because of the digital world, the media world, the fast pace of the world, and these different societal norms and societal pressures. But when it all gets boiled down to the pureness of me and you stepping on that line, shaking hands, and then one of us is going to win. One of us is going to lose. I might get absolutely flat backed and absolutely embarrassed in front of this entire gymnasium back in the day, and now it's the entire world, right? You know, millions of people buying a pay per view and hundreds of millions of people around the world in these different bars and restaurants and all of these in depth. It's just so massive. But I'm okay with the uncertainty that's about to happen because I know I've done everything, every single thing that I need to do in order to be in the best position possible to be successful right now. And if it's not in the cards for me to win, it's not in the cards for me to win.

And I'm okay with. Like you said, you learn how to lose. If you're not, if you're not willing to brave the unknown and be the man in the arena and be willing to get laughed at and fingers pointed at you and mocked, then you're really not stretching yourself outside of your comfort zone. And I think the sport of wrestling, slowly, as things got bigger and bigger, you know, high school was a lot less impactful or pressure filled than college was. And now college wrestling is less impactful and pressure filled than mixed martial arts is on a world stage. But it's slowly grown me and slowly expanded my human and slowly added layers to myself and who I am. And also, I think it's just, I think it's a beautiful blessing to be in the position to let people into the world of what you have to deal with isn't as bad as me getting knocked out in front of hundreds of millions of people. Right. Getting submitted in front of hundreds of millions of people. Yeah. You might lose your business account. Yeah. Your next podcast, your next show might not have the viewers that you want.

Right. But it's just not as painful. Right. Sometimes as the public, the public embarrassment of the loss. Right. And I think that's it started with the sport of wrestling. And it really comes back to, if you're not the hardest worker in the room, you're really bastardizing the blessings that you have. And I just always felt very, very fortunate and very, very full of gratitude and grateful for the opportunity to have two capable arms and two capable legs. And so I went out there and lost. I went out there and lost. And yesterday really did end last night, and today is a new day to get after it.

What? What? I mean, how fast did you excel in wrestling? I mean, let's talk just freshman year. How far did you take it?

Decent. Decent. You know, I qualified for state.

You qualified for state on your first year?

Yeah, I actually, my first ever. It actually was. I came in, I should have been a 103 pounder, but I couldn't beat our 103 pound guys. Name was Matt Moore. He was a year older than me, already had a couple years of experience on me, so I couldn't beat him, but I could beat the 112 pounder. So I was actually about 105 pounds wrestling. 112, which obviously we know guys are cutting weight, so those guys were probably 125, cutting down to 112. So I was a little bit outmatched. I was wrestling, you know, seniors who were 130 pounds, cutting down to 112. And my, actually, my first match ever in high school, I got thrown into the mix right before the season wrestle offs. I beat the 112 pounder and wrestled varsity. My first ever match. And it was one of those high school, one of those high school little gymnasiums where they shut off all the lights and there's just one big light over the mat. And I'm like, what am I doing? This is. How did this happen? And I'm like, all right, I guess I'll split. Strap up. Went out there, and I actually won my first match, actually pinned the guy.

And it was just one of those pivotal moments in my life where I thought, man, I don't know if I was supposed to be here, but I was here and I was successful. And I'm gonna just. This is my calling. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Two arms and two legs. I understand this thing. And the man in front of me, he might be better than me, he might have better shots than me. It might be better on top, better on bottom, might have more skills than me. But he doesn't have a bigger heart than me. He doesn't have a bigger heart than Mike. And Betty Chandler instilled in me over these last 14 years of my life, turning me into the young man that I am. And then now here we are 20 something years later.

What kind of. I mean, what kind of. Did you have any struggles as a child?

I mean, man, you know, not really. You know, and I probably did, but I think I've been given the gift of, you know, sometimes it's a blessing. Sometimes it's a curse. Sometimes we are over, I think, overly optimistic or overly. And maybe sometimes we just ignore past traumas or we ignore things that we've had to go through, which is a blessing and a curse, because sometimes there should be some confidence that you have drawn from the things that you've gone through. But no, man, I. That's where my, my confidence and my hard work and my dedication comes from. Knowing that if my dad had to wake up every single morning at 430 and strap on his, his drywall dusted work boots and his whites and then come home at thermos in his hand, lunch pail in his hand, if he needed to go do another job and another side job and build our house with his bare hands, he was going to do it right. So my mom and dad made those sacrifices. We were not rich by any means. We were low middle class, living in Jefferson County, Missouri. Didn't have a lot of nice things, but we didn't have a lot.

But we weren't missing a dang thing. We weren't missing. We had love, we had support. We had a roof over our head. We had hand me down clothes, but we had clothes. We didn't have the best food, the most nutritious food, but we had Salisbury steak, and we had Stouffer's lasagna, and we had hot dogs, and we had cheap pasta, but we had enough. Our bellies were full. Our hearts were full, and we were taken care of. And that's something that you can very easily take for granted, because until, you know, back when I was 14, I saw that kids around me were struggling, and I had friends who were dirt floor poor. Literally dirt floor poor, because I've been to their houses, and the floor of their house would have holes in it, or they'd have to walk across a two by four across this little ravine to get into their house, because their little house by the river didn't have a front deck on it. So I had seen it. But you're just so young, and you're so innocent, and you're so naive until the world beats you down and really starts to open your eyes to the evil in the world.

You know, we were just young kids trying to, you know, trying to squeeze every ounce of life that we could every single day. And I had a great childhood. And, you know, and I can still say to this day, I haven't had much loss of people in my life truly, truly blessed by that. Both of my parents are still alive. My grandpa is now past. But for the most part, man, I've been truly, truly blessed. And you get to a point where you see where you're at and you see the platform that you have and you see the great crowd of witnesses, and you realize that the entire time, God has had you in the palm of his hand through every single season and through every single up and down, and you have no choice but to be extremely grateful for it. And if you can connect your gratitude and why you do something to what you do, the sky really is the limit. And I've done that since I was 14 years old.

Man, that's, you know, that's amazing. And one thing that I'm glad you recognize, you know, how God has been with you all this time, because just in these interviews, I realized so many kids go through so much trauma, you know, that's. That's that's never been told. They hide it. They suppress it, you know, and there's even been people on the show that they'll talk about their childhood trauma off camera because they don't want it on camera. And it's. It's. I would say the majority of people I've interviewed have grown up with a. With a. With a rough childhood, some type of trauma, whether it be sexual or abuse or. Or whatever. And it's. It just seems to be happening more and more, you know? So.

Yeah. And especially, you know, and like I say, I believe I'm in a unique. I'm not in a unique position. There are a lot of people who have luckily scathed or been. Been saved through things and been protected through things, to not have those traumas. And if you do or you don't, it's still just part of your journey. But those that don't, especially those that don't, realizing that there is so much pain and so much neglect and so much abuse and so much downtroddening of the human spirit in this world that the devil lurks among us, and he's constantly trying to know you more and distract you more and beat you down more and lie to you more. So those who have been saved from those things and can say, I truly look back and say, I don't have a lot of things that I can say I've had to go through. It's a duty of mine to spread positivity and also don't feel sorry for myself, because anything that I've gone through is nothing compared to what so many people in this world have gone through and so many people are currently going through right now as we speak.

Yeah. You know, I've read that you grew up. Up to a certain age, pretty devout Catholic, and then something changed. What was that?

Yeah, so we. We grew up on high Ridge Boulevard. There was a little catholic church. We went to PSR every Monday night for years. Public school, religion. Kind of our duty to go there and learn Bible verses and kind of that. Hey, learn this and learn that, because this is what God wants. God wants you to. God wants you to know this, and God wants you to live this way. And if you don't live this way, then where the heck, you know, what's gonna happen to you? Type of deal. Got my first holy communion by the time I was. I think it was 1213 years old. But then we stopped going to church for a couple years once we fulfilled our duty of finishing the PSR stuff. And the first holy communion in confirmation of us being good enough to be, you know, the next level of Catholicism. And then my sophomore year, my sophomore year of high school, I wrestled with a guy named Kenny Bowen. And he was like, hey, man, I go to this church called twin rivers up over in south county, and we have this really cool youth group thing.

You know, we sing some songs, and someone goes up there and gives a message, and we talk about, you know, jesus and God and our faith and all these different things. And I was like, oh, man, I'll go. Sounds cool. Like, Kenny was a year older than me. I respected him. I wanted to be like him. He was a. Had a great reputation in our high school. Good looking dude, you know, it's like he had the it thing. It's like, yeah, dude, I'll go. Let's go. I went and immediately felt something different. It was the first time I'd been in a spirit filled church that was different than kind of the x's and o's in scriptures and verses of what you're supposed to be as a good little boy in God's eyes. And it was all about grace, and it was all about expanding your mind, and it was all about the beauty of this life being reserved for God's people, not the devil's bunch. And then, yeah, a couple months ago into that was when I really got saved there. You know, they had an altar call, and it was the first time I really felt the holy spirit working inside of my body and working inside of my heart.

And it was just. It was so much different because it wasn't about. It wasn't about me and what I need to do. I don't need to do anything. The deed was already done when Jesus died on the cross for us. And it was the first time that I felt it. And it was the first time I thought, man, I can just be me, and I can just love him, and I can try to live for him. And yes, I will fall flat on my face, and yes, I will sin. And no, I am not perfect, but there is no striving. There is no more that I can do besides just be me and try to be a good person and try to. Try to squeeze every ounce of this life that I can and then be a light. Light for others. Did you.

So you were the first one of the family to make the jump?

I was. Did they follow you? Yeah. It was kind of crazy. So then my mom and dad started going to that church and then bringing my two brothers along, and they started going to the youth group with me, and we became really good friends with the pastor's kids. And then we just had a really cool group of young, you know, spirit filled kids there and being around the adults, and it was more community focused. Right. And it was. It was so. It was very interesting. I think either at that time I had a car and I drove myself or kenny picked me up and we went up there. And then a couple more kids started going from our high school team. And then my mom and dad started going, and now they go to a different church in town, but they still go to a spirit filled church. It's a faith church in St. Louis. David Crank and Nicole crank. And so, yeah, it was kind of crazy that I was the first one who started going to spirit filled church at six or 15 years old or whatever it was. And then mom and dad followed suit, and then now we're all living the dream, man.

That's awesome. That's. Let's get back to the. We'll dive more into faith later, but let's get back to your wrestling career. So let's breeze through sophomore, junior year. Let's get into your senior year. What weight were you wrestling?

I was wrestling 152 my senior year, so I was about 160 pounds. So I didn't really need to cut much weight. And I was number one, number two kid in the state. And I had, you know, there's been a recurring theme that happened in high school and then into college of, I was good enough. I worked harder than anybody else, but I never gave myself permission to be the best. I never gave myself permission to stand on the top of the podium.

What do you mean by that? Didn't give yourself permission?

You know, I think so many times in life, it's so easy for us to say, you know what? I've gotten to this point, and I don't deserve the next point. Right? I can look at that guy and say, hey, that's a champion. That way. That guy carries himself, the way he believes in himself. But that's not me. I don't have that right. Or him, or him, or him. And I qualified all four years in high school and never gave myself permission to win and win and win. I fell short freshman, sophomore, junior year, and finally my senior year, I'm the number one kid in the state. It was my opportunity to either grasp or let go. Made it to the state finals. So finally I was going to place for the first time, finally as a senior, and I lost in the finals to a guy who was very good, named Laramie. Schaeffer. So I fell short again and didn't get any scholarship offers to any division I schools.

You didn't get a scholarship?

I walked on to the University of Missouri.

You walked on, let's go under that.

Yeah. So I won't say I didn't get any scholarship offers, but I didn't get any division one scholarship offers. There was being from Missouri, you've heard of Lindenwood and Missouri Baptist, Central, Missouri State, division two, division three NAI schools, and there's nothing wrong with those schools whatsoever. But something in me, for some reason, said, if you're going to wrestle, you have to wrestle at the highest level. And once again, it goes back to Mike and Betty Chandler. If they had not given me the permission and said, you know what? Yeah, I'll pick up an extra shift or I'll pick up an extra side job and we'll help you with college or we'll take out loans or whatever. I had the permission to do that, even though, quite frankly, they thought it was a crazy idea. Love my high school coaches. They were pumped up for it because now they had a guy who was going to go walk on a mizzou, but did they truly believe that I could compete there? All my teammates, nobody had really wrestled division one, and I was going to try to be the first one to go out and do it.

So I said, man, something in me says I need to go walk on. I don't care. I didn't get a scholarship. Coach Brian Smith, who I actually just talked to this morning because our Mizzou boys just headed out to Kansas City for the NCAA tournament this weekend. And he kind of knew who I was but didn't really know who I was. And he's a very quiet, stoic man who didn't really look at me or talk to me for the entire first year I was there. Everybody else got three, four sets of workout gear. I got one set of workout gear. You know, I was kind of the low guy on the totem pole, but part of me loved that. Part of me loved being behind the eight ball. Part of me loved. Loved that I was around all these state champions, this state champ from Pennsylvania, this state champ from California, this state champ from Illinois, this state champ from all these different places. And I was just a lowly little runner up kid from Missouri who walked on and actually the guy who beat me in the state finals, Laramie Schaefer, came to Mizzou as well and got a scholarship, and he ended up making it the first year and then moved on.

Or quit. But something in me, thank God, said, you gotta go there. Even if you go and you ride the bench the entire time, even if you quit, even if you don't make it, even if you never get to strap on the black and gold singlet and go out there and compete for the Mizzou Tigers, even if you're just a human dummy and punching bag for five years, go do it. And for some reason, at 18 years old, I had that. That vision in my heart that I was going to go try to do it. And then college career ended up going pretty darn well.

How did it go?

So I came in and I went, you know, 500 my freshman year, my true freshman year, which was a red shirt year. So you have a red shirt year and then your four years of competing went 500. Actually, I think I went worse than, I think I went 14 and 16 my freshman year at wrestling, at open tournaments. And then I beat out a guy who was a sophomore and junior for the 157 spot. My red shirt freshman year, and I was a four year, ended up being a four year starter, four year national qualifier, three year team captain, and an all american my senior year. I think some of us, I have this saying in my life that's been constantly reoccurring. It's not that we don't do the right things, it's that we don't do the right things for long enough. I wasn't supposed to maybe be the state champion in high school, so then it would propel me to college, and then maybe I wasn't supposed to be the national champion or the multiple time all american in college. So that it will add layers to me to then keep me hungry for the sport of mixed martial arts, to be a world champion, to be in this position at the biggest fight of the last decade that we're going to see between me and Conor as he comes back from this injury and the greatest, the greatest comeback in combat sports, right?

So I saw myself continuing to self sabotage myself. I saw myself just like in high school, making it to the dance four years and then finally, you know, becoming a state placer, runner up my senior year. And I saw it in college four years. I worked harder than I can. I can say without a shadow of doubt, nobody lived a cleaner, more championship lifestyle, worked harder, put more hours in than I did physically. I can honestly say that without a shadow of a doubt because I saw the way the guys trained, I saw the way that guys lived their lives, and I was head and shoulders above them when it comes to time put in, reps, put in, sets put in, and the belief in working hard. But it was the lack of self belief, the battle between my ears, the mental battle, the mental struggle, that was really what gave me permission to self sabotage myself too many times in college, but became an all american my senior year, and it kept me even more hungry for the sport of mixed martial arts. Moving into fighting in a cage for the last 15 years.

What were you studying in college?

So I was personal financial management services with a minor in real estate. You know, when I graduated with that degree, I could have went off and started managing people's finances and investing in real estate and getting a job in the financial market. But something in me said, I still want to keep competing. God gave me some rocks in these hands, and I was very fortunate, too, once again, with the people that were in my path the entire time. I wrestled with a guy named Ben Askren, a guy named Tyron Woodley, both of which went on to mixed martial arts. They were like my big brothers, and I figured, well, I can join the workforce whenever I want. I want to keep competing. And then graduated in May of 2009 with no training. Fought my first fight in August of 2009 at Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, at some Holiday Inn ballroom, first blood promotions. And I figured I'd try this mixed martial arts thing. Turns out I've been trying it for 15 years.

Before we get into that, I do want to get into that, but before we do, I want to talk about your wrestling style. You know, most people have. They're either a takedown artist, they're good on the mat. What was yours?

Mine was just nonstop pressure and nonstop offense until about my junior senior year, when I had got good enough on top that I was able to get riding time, ride guys out, hold them down for an entire period, pick them up, put them down, push them out of bounds. The tiger style mantra was, we had these ten different things that we did. You know, we were the first to the line. We push a harder pace. We wrestle seven minutes. We don't wrestle part of the match. We wrestle the entire match. We push guys out of bounds. We run back. It was more of a. It was more of a blood and guts hard nose in your face. I might not be the most talented, but I am the most tough. I am the toughest guy on the mat right now, between me and you, and I'm going to put a pace on you. And it translated really well to wrestling. But I also took that translation into fighting, and I've had to make some adjustments. But I was, I wanted to get takedowns. I wanted to score points. I didn't like to keep matches close.

I like to get bonus points. So bonus points is getting a tech fall or a pin or a major decision where you get extra points for the team. And I was just a hard nose, hard cardio, high pace, nonstop, keep my hands on you at all times. You might beat me, but you're not going to want to wrestle me again. You might outscore me, but you're going to go through hell and you're going to walk through fire trying to do it. And I kept that mentality through my entire wrestling career and then into my.

Fight career and so moving in. So you graduate college, you're an all american. I mean, how did mixed martial arts even come up on the map for you?

So I was solely focused on being the best wrestler that I possibly could be in college. Until about my senior year, I was still focused on it, but that was when I started opening my mind to, well, my style of wrestling wasn't very slick and flowy and fluid. It was like a hammer, you know, it was. It was absolutely in your face headbutt. You smack, you make you hate the seven minutes that you're wrestling me. And as I mentioned earlier with Ben Asker and Tyrone Woodley, both of those guys who were like my big brothers, had started mixed martial arts and they said, hey, man, I think you'd be a hell of a fighter. I think you, you love bleeding, you love, you love headbutting, you love car crashes on the wrestling mat. I think people will throw punches at you and you will not shy away from them. You will keep a pace on people. You are strong, you're athletic. I think you'd be a hell of an MMA fighter. And I thought, well, yeah, I mean, I don't get paid to wrestle. I barely. Finally got a scholarship my senior year, a full ride where I was actually getting a check from the university.

So I can go into mixed martial arts and I can basically do what we're doing with wrestling, hand to hand combat, except I get to punch and kick and knee and elbow people.

Did you know how to do that yet?

No, because people ask me, so did you? Rough childhood. You get in a lot of fights and I never got in street fights, quite frankly, I was afraid of getting in trouble. I was afraid of confrontation. I was afraid I never would have gotten a fight at school.

You were afraid of confrontation.

Yeah, big time.

I was totally not expecting big time.

Like, it scares me to death. Now, if something happens and I need to step up and be the guy and safeguard the helpless and protect people, yeah, it's in my nature. But when it comes to me and you, all of a sudden we start to have a little confrontation here. Like my. My innate sense is say, I'll let you win this one. That's fine. I'm not really worried about it, you know, so. Never gotten fights. Never. There was times where stuff would boil over in wrestling matches, and I was known as a guy who was a hard charger guy, but I never wanted to be looked at like that guy who was just a punk. Right. You know, I always wanted to be, probably too much, a good little boy, right? I wanted to be a good little boy. And so it was. It was definitely against my nature, the actual fight aspect of it. But inside the confines of competition, I will rip your head off and I will spit down your neck. You know, like, that's. That's the mentality that I have when it comes to actually in the confines of competition. Now I get my hand raised.

You get your hand raised, the fight's over. And someone wants to pick a fight at a bar, wants to pick a fight at a restaurant, it's like, dude, no, I'm out. I'm not trying to get in trouble. So that's kind of how it happened. And Ben and Tyron thought it was going to be. I was going to be pretty good at it. And I stayed very focused until March 8 or whatever. It was my senior year when NCAA's ended and there was still a, there's a. An interview out there, I still got my headgear on, still got my ankle bands on, still got my singlet pulled up of me talking about, I just took fifth, beat Matt Moley from Bloomberg or something, I believe, and took fifth at the NCAA's and started talking about my mixed martial arts career, how it was Saturday and on Monday I was going to start hitting mitts and rolling around and doing jiu jitsu.

No kidding. What year is this?

This is 2009, March of 2009. Graduated in May and then fought my first fight, August of 2009.

Were you watching MMA? Were you watching Pride and UFC and.

Man, any of that stuff? It's actually really funny. Once. Once again, it goes back to how it all gets orchestrated by a higher power. Man. I had a, one of my favorite human beings that I will ever come into contact with is a man named Raymond Jordan. And you want to talk about a guy who's been through some stuff? You want to talk about a guy who has suffered loss. You want to talk about a guy who, if what I had was very, very average or below average, he was down at the very bottom and was barely given anything. He was from New Bern, North Carolina, came in with me at the same year. We roomed next door to each other at the dorms. The next year, my parents bought a condo in. In Columbia, Missouri. We became roommates, and he would. Didn't have a car, didn't have anything, had no money, had nothing. He would walk almost a mile to the blockbuster down the road, would go there, and he would rent vhs and DVD's of pride and UFC. And so that was my first introduction to mixed martial arts, and I wasn't really keen on it.

I wasn't a big fan of it. But he'd be like, hey, man, watch this fedor fighting Noguera and watch this. Watch this pride fight. You can throw kicks and knees and elbows. And he loved the sport. I was like, raymond, yeah, that's cool, man. But I don't know. I'm more of a wrestling guy. But he ended up becoming a couple time all american, and just a sweet, sweet, amazing human being. And that was how I first, really saw my first fight at my own house, from a rented VHS or DVD from Raymond Jordan in Columbia, Missouri. And as I got a little bit older and watched Ben and Tyron start to transition into mixed martial arts, and, you know, you kind of want to do what your big brothers do, right? I looked at those guys as my big brothers. I'm like, okay, maybe I'll start taking a more of a look at it. And Raymond would keep walking a blockbuster. Walking back, walking a blockbuster. And that's how I kind of got introduced to it and started watching it a little bit. And we always thought Raymond was going to fight, I was like, man, I feel like Raymond, he loves the sport, and he was in Atlanta for a while, trained with Brian, Stan, those.

Those guys in Atlanta, but never gave it a shot. But that's how I was introduced to it.

Who did you. I mean, who did you look up to? Who did you like watching?

Yeah. So, yeah, so when I first kind of got into the sport, it was the. It was the heyday of. Of Matt Hughes, George St. Pierre, Matt Serra. Frankie Edgar was a couple years older than me, another wrestler, Gray Maynard, a couple years older than me, another wrestler, chael son. And, you know, obviously, I gravitated toward and leaned towards the american wrestlers, right? Because that's who I was, and thought, hey, if they can do it, I can do it, or if that's their style, I know what they went through between the four walls of their wrestling room for five years at whatever college that they were at or whatever Olympic training center they were training at. And, yeah, so those were kind of the guys. And it was very interesting how I went from across the mat against Jordan Burroughs or Jordan Lean or some of these guys that I was wrestling, Mike Poeta, some of these guys I was wrestling in college and thought, yeah, dude, I deserve to be here, but I don't deserve to beat you straight to walking into the sport of mixed martial arts and then just two years later, standing across the cage from Eddie Alvarez, who's the number three guy in the world, and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to beat that man.

So there was just this transition. And almost sometimes, too, we have to ask ourselves if a bad thing happens but a good thing comes from it. Was it really a bad thing? So I look at the shortcomings I had and the lack of belief I had in the sport of wrestling, it transitioning into massive self belief in mixed martial arts, being right where I was supposed to be with the self confidence and self image and self, self concept that I had because of my shortcomings, because I was tired of falling short. So it was just, it was such a cool transition to be able to almost rebirth myself, you know, because we can get caught in the rut of this one lane that we're in, and it's hard to see growth until a shift happens. And when I shifted over to mixed martial arts, I was able to give myself permission to be a successful mixed martial artist because I wasn't as successful of a wrestler as I should have been.

I mean, you're a phenomenal wrestler, obviously. You get into the ring where now you can hit, kick, headbutt, whatever. I mean, what is that had to be, now you can be on your back, fight from your back. I mean, there's a lot of differences.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, did you, did you struggle with that at the beginning or did that come naturally?

I think it, it came pretty natural. You know, I make no qualms about sitting here and acting like I have overcome so many things, man. I picked it up and I can, I can watch. I was watching Tyron Woodley hit mitts, and then I was able to go do it and be able to mimic him and his style and the way that he moved. I was able to pick things up very quickly. Athleticism was not a problem. Strength was not a problem. Cardio was not a problem. A lot of that has to do with the wrestling that I had just done for the last ten years prior to that. But the sport of mixed martial arts is very intricate in a lot of ways, but it does get boiled down very, very easily to punches and wrestling. Right. You know, I was gonna be, I was gonna throw hard punches. I was gonna throw a lot of punches. I was gonna be able to throw. I think my first fight, I went out there, took the guy down, and threw about 250 punches on, on top of the guy in the first round, and ended up getting a tko.

One of those deals where I was like, I'm just gonna beat on this drum until the, until the referee comes and pulls me off of him. And that's exactly what happened. Second fight, very similar. The crazy thing about my mixed martial arts beginning of my career was I, in the first couple years, I ended up fighting for the world title within two years of starting the sport.

Two years.

Two years, yeah. So I was twelve and 00:12 and o with nine first round finishes, which is great, but also not the best thing from a experience standpoint. You know, sometimes it's great. You want to go out, go out there, get a knockout, collect your paycheck, and get out of there. But as you're starting, you need those rounds inside the cage. You need to feel the pressure. You need to be in competition. You need to get hit a couple times. You need to. To second guess yourself a little bit. A little bit and be able to pull yourself out of a bad situation. I didn't have a lot of that until I, I had my first, I had my first decision, I think my 9th or 10th fight in the Bellator tournament. And then I had another decision, and then I had a quick finish and a quick finish, and then I fought Eddie, my 12th fight, who was the number three guy in the world for the Bellator world title in 2011. Started in 2009. Fought for the world title in 2011.

Wow.

Wow. We came out hot. We got shot out of a cannon.

When is the first time that.

I.

Mean, maybe you doubted yourself in the ring, if that's ever happened. I mean, maybe it was getting hit in the face. I mean, when did you know? Your attention?

There's actually a really interesting story and season I went through because I really had zero doubts, zero apprehensions, zero lack of self belief until I beat Eddie. I win the world title, and then I start putting so much pressure on myself, because what we can do from outside, external forces, we hear the media, we see the newspaper clippings, we see the op eds, and we see what people are saying about us. The new kid on the block, the next big thing. The guy can't wait to see him transition from Bellator to the UFC and fight Benson Henderson and Anthony Pettis. And who is the best lightweight in the world? Is it Michael Chandler? He's fighting in Bellator. We got the guys in the UFC. Who is it? So immediately, I win that world title tonight, I started putting so much pressure on myself that it wasn't about being successful anymore. It was about being perfect. I needed to be perfect. So that meant if you and me were about to go do a training session and I shoot for a takedown, and I don't get a takedown, okay, I'm a loser. You hit me a couple times, and I win four minutes and 43 seconds of that round.

But you hit me a couple times and you do a little bit where you look a little bit good, and I didn't absolutely dominate you. Okay? I'm a loser if I didn't have a great strength and conditioning session. Okay, you're a loser because you're not perfect. It's either perfect or failure. So I started putting this crazy amount of pressure on myself, and I won my next fight. Won the next fight. But then I rematch Eddie Alvarez for the world title, and I lose a split decision. Great fight. Fight of the year, one of the ones that you mentioned earlier. And immediately in that moment, I said, I knew it. It's, you know, my time is up. All the doubters were correct. That little voice inside of you that said, you're not that good. He is right. You're not a champion. You're not supposed to be a champion. No. You were not created for all this great glory that you thought you were going to because of that one loss. And in that loss, I forgot how good I was. I wanted to hide from everybody. And then I started really finding myself in this jail cell of self pity.

And, you know, as I mentioned, the fight was up for fight of the year. ESPN's calling me, and Ariel Hawani and all the big MMA media outlets are calling me. The world MMA awards are calling me. They want me to present the award there and also accept the award for fight of the year. I didn't answer the call, didn't call them back. I hid from everybody. I confined myself to my home in San Diego, California, and hid from everybody. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed because I had never experienced loss. Yet. It had been two years over two years now since I had experienced losing, lost in wrestling, but I hadn't lost in mixed martial arts yet. So I made those three big mistakes and then actually was supposed to rematch Eddie for a trilogy. He ends up getting hurt the week before. Opponent switch. I lose to a guy named Will Brooks. I had a back injury but wasn't going to pull out of the fight, even though I probably should have pulled out of the fight because I had no good training that entire time, but my ego and also just, I got to right this wrong.

I had lost my last fight. I need to win this next one. I'm going out there and I'm going to right this ship, lose that fight, and then I lose a rematch to Will Brooks. I went 688 days without winning a fight.

Oh, man.

Almost two full years without winning a fight. And for that, you know, for, for a mixed martial artist, it could be a career death sentence. You know, that's when the doubt from everybody plus yourself, continues to compound on itself. So I hired a sports psychologist. I really started realizing I can do all the reps and all the sets and all the push ups and all the lifts and all the sparring and all the sessions. I can do all the physical stuff, but if I'm not building up the mind, I'm really just making a bigger, faster, stronger, more dangerous subpar version of the man that I am supposed to be if I don't start doing the work inside my mind. So that's when I really started taking hold of what's going on inside my mind, because you're what you are and where you are because of what is going on inside of your mind between your ears. And we took a, you know, we took another fight. I got back on the winning track and then won a couple fights in a row, got the world title back, lost the world title again, won the world title back, and that's how I ended up becoming a three time champion, which is great, it sounds great, but really, you have to lose the champion, you have to lose the belt to then win the belt again to be a three timer.

So, man, it's just been ups and downs. And that was when the self doubt really crept in. And it's funny how I look at failure now because to me, back in the day, back when I was undefeated and I put all this pressure on myself, it was so easy to be a failure if I wasn't perfect. Whereas now I realize it's all just part of the journey. Every single day is just part of the journey. Your wins are going to come, your losses are going to come as long as you stand here with ten toes on the ground, head up, chest up, proud of yourself, you can come back from anything.

Wow, man. 688 days.

Yeah. When I write a book someday, it's gonna be called 688 days. I bet that's the vision I have.

I mean, it's just. It's interesting to me that you'd never been in a street fight. I mean, you were full contact sport wrestling, but I mean, just walking into a ring where. I mean, had you ever been in a fight before?

No. I mean, little spats here and there in the wrestling room, but they were, you know, it gets broken up very quickly, and it wasn't like big punches or blows. It was more just very hard wrestling, you know, very hard clubbing of the head, not actual punches.

Did you feel a lot of anxiety walking into that? I mean, zero.

Zero anxiety. Serious? Yeah. You know, I think my two favorite. There's been three really, really amazing moments in my career where you really know that you're doing exactly what you're called to do. And that was my first fight when it was something brand new, tons of new traps and things that could go wrong in this new skill set called somebody punching and kicking and kneeing and elbowing, all these different things that I wasn't quite used to yet. I'd never done it before. I felt zero pressure and zero anxiety. Zero apprehension going into my first fight after losing those three fights in a row, that 688 days without winning a fight. The next fight that I won, I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be, and I needed to go through what I had just gone through the last almost two years in order to be the man that I was supposed to be that night to get back on the winning track. And then my UFC debut, January 23 of 2021, which happens to be my son's birthday as well. That was my UFC debut. The biggest opportunity of my life.

A huge crowd of witnesses, pay per view, co main event. It was Conor McGregor versus Dustin Poirier as the main event, myself versus Dan Hooker, the number five guy in the world at the time. All of the pressure, all of the lights, all of the camera, all of the. All of the. All of the ability to take hold of making the right decision, of going to the UFC or making the worst decision of my life, and it not going well for me. But I had the american flag draped over me, and I skipped to the cage with so much joy, so light, so airy, so. So ready for the opportunity that was probably those were the three best walks I've ever taken in my entire life. The first fight ever right after the worst time of my life, and then the greatest opportunity of my life, all with great amount of pressure to win because my life or my, my career really was either gonna make or break me in that moment. And that's when you know you're doing what you were called to do. When your greatest moment of opportunity, you're able to answer the question, am I enough?

And I knew that I was enough. And sometimes you got to go through the valleys to get to that mountaintop, man.

That's excellent. Excellent. Let's take a quick break. Before we get into UFC, I want to talk about how you met your wife, your adopted children. Some of that's some of the family life that you got going on, but.

That'S a great story.

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It'll be ten years this September.

10 years.

Ten years.

Congratulations, man. And I know you have two children. I want to talk about them as well. But how did you meet your wife? When did she come in the picture?

It's a little bit longer and more interesting story than most, but the cliff note version is I've got a chipped tooth right here in the front, though. It's funny how everything goes back to Mizzou wrestling in my life, basically. So my wife is from Columbia, Missouri, where mizzou is right in the middle of the state. And it was after my freshman year of college, I chipped this tooth. And there's a man named Kent Willett who was a dentist in town who a lot of the Mizzou athletes would get sent to for dental work. Whether it be normal routine cleaning or like mine, I needed an actual new tooth put in my head. Um, and I knew of his reputation because going back to our, uh, you know, talking about faith, I, our orthopedic surgeon, bus tarbox, and a couple other guys, we started a Bible study that was only just three or four guys. And now it's. It's grown over the years, and there's like 20 guys on the team that go to it. But our team doctor, orthopedic surgeon bus tarbox was mentored by Kent Willett was a spiritual mentor. So I knew of his reputation, and I was excited to maybe meet a cool guy, and he was going to fix my tooth.

But I walk in, and I'm sitting in his waiting room, and I see pictures of him, and I'm like, oh, it's a cool dude. But there's this cute little brunette girl in all these pictures, and I'm like, man, he's awesome. He'd be. I've heard of him and his reputation and the man he is. I wonder if she's anything like him because she is gorgeous and she's got this smile and these eyes. And I fell in love with a picture of this girl that I had never met. So then I actually immediately go from, okay, this would be cool to meet a cool guy who I've heard about to like, okay, act like anything other than an awesome dude or maybe just don't say anything. So I probably didn't say anything throughout the entire time you fixed my tooth or whatever. But then I also went to another bible study with some other people who were friends with this Bree Willett girl. And they kept talking about this Bree Willett girl, and I kept thinking, I'm like, that's that girl. That's Kent Willett's daughter. So I had been to her house before. I had been to Kent Willett's house because he's got 60 acres a little bit north of town, and he held a.

He hosted a birthday party for one of the guys in our bible studying. And I seriously walked or drove up to this place, and I'm like, this is that girl's. This is that girl's house. Like, this is where she grew up. I saw more pictures of her, and I even went on the back deck, and I looked out on this pond, and I thought, man, I feel like I'm going to be fishing on this pond someday, and I really, really feel like I want to marry this girl. And I've never even met her before. And obviously, at that point in time, Facebook stalking, you know, I had seen her every picture, just absolutely gorgeous. What she stood for, who she was, how she carried herself. She was an ER physician assistant.

Let's talk about that. Before you had met her, what did she stand for? How did she carry herself, man?

Just the epitome of the woman that I wanted to be with, like a phenomenal, just a beautiful soul. A christian woman, had a great family. She was an athlete. She was a three sport athlete in high school, could have played softball in college, but decided to go the medical route. She was going to go to medical school, ended up going to Taylor University for undergrad, and then went to southeast, I'm sorry, SIU Carbondale in Illinois for pa school. And then she had moved back to Columbia to work at the University of Missouri Hospital in the ER as a physician assistant. But you could just. It sounds so crazy because I sound like a borderline stalker, but I honestly had this vision. I thought I'd be like, for some reason, I can see a life with this person in 2d, or whatever you call it, on a piece of paper, on a picture, on a printed out picture. And part of it had to do with the man her dad was. Part of it had to do with what she looked like. I was attracted to her, but there was just this weird inkling inside of me.

So she checked every single box of what I thought without ever meeting her. So then years go by. We did become Facebook friends, but we hadn't ever talked. Thank God I had some very respectable mutual friends of hers in this Bible study. So, you know, back then it would be like, oh, I'll accept this friend request, even though I don't know that person. But finally, years later, I was living in Las Vegas, she was working at the University of Missouri er. And I was like, man, I figured I also, I was wrong about one thing. I was wrong about the fact that we were going to cross paths. I seriously had this vision in my mind that at some point, stay on guard because at some point you're going to run into this girl, you can't think about her for this long. You can't have this vision on your heart and it not just happen. So I was wrong about that. We never, ever crossed paths. So finally, Facebook. I said, I sent her a message on Facebook and just something very out of the blue, obviously, but luckily she saw that we had some mutual friends.

She responded, but then also said, hey, I'm applying to residencies at different places and I need, I'm going to deactivate my Facebook account. Here's my email. So I emailed her. She waited about two months to get back to me. Then I email her right again back. And then she waited about another month to get back to me and then email her back. Finally, a couple years later, we emailed back and forth for two years. And it was mainly me emailing and then her taking however long she wanted to, to respond to me because she knew I was a fighter. At that point in time, she didn't really know what fighting was, but she didn't because she didn't know it about it. She probably thought the typical things of what a fighter is or the girls that are throwing themselves at me, or I was some player, or I was, you know, the professional athlete guy, right? And finally I asked her to coffee. Called his coffee in Columbia, Missouri, January 24. And she walked in the door and I saw her silhouette. And I knew that I was, I knew that my wife was walking through the door.

And she. I like to joke that she fell in love with me right there. Cause, you know, she didn't. But, you know, I also had given, not really given up on it, but I had stopped putting so much pressure on it. Once again, going back to stop putting so much pressure on and just let it happen because I was like, man, at some point, I'm just ready to either nix this and get this vision out of my life and I can move on, or she's my wife. So I didn't put any pressure on it. We just sat there and we talked about life and, and we, and she gave me, as a typical brie fashion, she gave us 1 hour. I said, hey, I need to be done by about, you know, 250 or 03:00 so I can get to Mizzou wrestling practice at 330. Because at that point in time, I was coaching, or I was, I was going to go train with the. I was fighting already, so I was gonna be kind of coaching and helping out and training with the guys. So she's like, okay, we'll meet about 215. So I'm like, okay, so you're gonna give us 45 minutes?

She gave us 45 minutes. And I knew it was the most important interview of my life to try, to try to convince this girl that we should be together. And we've been together ever since. And ten years later, still in love, like, was, wow.

So you, so you waited two years to make contact.

Oh, man.

And then another two years just to meet off of a, off of a photo.

It actually turned out to be seven years from seven years. Seven years. Because I went, I went basically four years, four years in college, and then over two years of us talking back and forth between Facebook and then two years with email. So it was about six, seven years.

Wow.

And I didn't put my life on hold. I had other dates and, and that kind of stuff. Of course, I wasn't that weird about it, but I just. I could never, ever get her out of my. Out of my mind. I could never. I. I knew I needed to at least. There was too much passion for it to. To not at least check it off in checking it off and saying, well, she's not the right one. I didn't like this about her. She didn't like this about me, whatever. But obviously, that did not happen. And. And I needed. I needed to find out. It was the most interesting quest I have ever had in my entire life, and it's the most impactful thing that has ever happened in my entire life.

So you wait seven years to meet this woman at a coffee shop in Columbia, Missouri?

Yeah.

I mean, what do you say when she sits down?

I actually failed miserably because anybody who knows my wife, and I love this about her, she does not like to be the center of attention. She is Uber, uber confident in herself and her abilities, but she is very reserved and shy and doesn't like to. Interviews aren't her thing. She's not this type of person. Right? So we walk up, and the first mistake I make is. Cause I didn't care. I'm not there for the coffee. I'm there for. I want to meet my wife. I want this date with this girl. So we walk up, and the awkward little hug or whatever. Not awkward for me. I was like, give me. I'm trying to get this. Let me. Let me feel for a second. And then she walks up and. Okay, what do you want? She says. She says, vanilla Breve latte, which I had never had one. And she orders that, and I'm like, I'll take the same thing. And in her mind, she's like, dude doesn't have an opinion. Dude doesn't stand up for himself. He just ordered what I ordered. I need a man with a backbone. I need a leader. I need a head of a household.

So I fail. I failed right there. But really, I didn't care what I was drinking. I was going to set it in front of me and maybe take sips and act like I liked it, but really, I just wanted to fall in love with her even more. Second mistake I make. They go, okay, what's the name for your order? And I said, bri. And as I just got done saying, she does not like to be the center of attention. We're in this tiny little town of Columbia, Missouri. She works at the University of Missouri eR. It's called his coffee downtown, right by the ER. So the chances of her, somebody knowing her in that coffee shop or working with her now, being with some guy on a date. It's just awkward now. I just said her name, so in three minutes time, they're gonna yell, order for Brie, you know? So I failed miserably within the first couple minutes of us meeting. And then the third thing is, she had two pugs at the time. And I said I didn't really like pugs. I wasn't a big pug guy. Turns out we ended up getting married and getting another pug.

So we had three pugs at one time, and I love pugs, but so that's how it went down at the very beginning. And then we sat down, and luckily, I was so nervous because I had built this up in my mind and my heart for so long, yet I felt so comfortable and confident, very similar to what I said making my UFC debut. It's so massive. But for some reason, you're at peace in the midst of the massiveness of the moment. And that's how I felt sitting right there. And I can close my eyes, and I can see her walking through the door in the silhouette. I see right where we're sitting over on the wall at the little two person table. I can envision the entire thing. I can envision her just sitting there looking at me like this, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this girl might actually like me. And then she, you know, and she was married to medicine. She was in love with medicine. She loved her job. She still, to this day, works two jobs, actually, because I never want to take that away from her. That's her passion.

That's her what she likes to do. But. So she was kind of dating guys here and there. Kept her options open, but wasn't really looking for anything spectacular. Would, you know, leave guys on red or ghost them for a little while, just like she did for me with months at a time with the emails and stuff. But she said she admitted a couple, you know, as we got into it and really kind of fell in love, she was like, I regretted only giving you 45 minutes or 50 minutes of our time because it was the first time I had been on a date in my entire life that I thought, oh, no, what am I going to do if this guy doesn't call me? Or what am I going to do if this guy doesn't call me back? And then I was just like, okay, well, shoot. Maybe this whole crazy stalker vision I had, my heart is actually the way that God has it planned for us. Here we are, about to celebrate our ten year anniversary.

Wow. Congratulations. What was it that you said that you think that grabbed her attention?

I think I needed to. Well, number one, I just needed to be myself. Sometimes we try to be something that we think we need to be in order for something to happen, when really if I would have been myself and she didn't like me or I didn't like her, that's not the girl I was supposed to be with. But I just needed, I needed the confidence to just be myself. But I also had to dig myself out of the hole of the preconceived notions that she already had of what a guy who fights in a cage for a living is. You know, at that point in time, I had already. I had already won the world title, had these big fights. There was highlights on YouTube and all those different things. She could do a quick Google search and see the way I looked, see the way I carried myself, see how I fight and think, okay, I didn't have this vision of me being with a guy who fights in a cage. I don't. I don't want to be in the spotlight. I don't want to be a professional athlete's wife. Even if he becomes a millionaire, 100 millionaire, and has this big, successful mma career as a professional athlete.

I know I want to work. I like to work. Work is my passion. It's what makes me tick. It's part of my worth. It's what I like to do. I don't want to give everything up to be a professional athlete's wife and sit at home and be a trophy wife. She had all these different things of things that I had to overcome, and those are all completely normal thoughts. I don't hold those against her, but it's what a lot of people think. But my goal has always been to change people's mind of what a mixed martial artist is, of sitting in front of them and talking to them, whether it be the grace that I show them or how I carry myself or the little bit of love I have in my voice compared to what they think I am, and then them leave the interaction thinking, wow, I didn't realize a mixed martial artist could be so fill in the blank with a positive superlative, you know, so I had a lot of. A lot of catching up to do to prove that I could be a suitable mate for her. But here we are, almost ten years in.

Other than being a professional athlete.

The.

Violence within the sport, I mean, was that a hurdle for her?

No. It's actually kind of funny because people make a joke. Like, you know, she has set broken arms, she has stitched up people. She has done central lines, and she has cut people open and sewed them back up, saved. She has seen trauma, she has seen amputations. She has seen dead bodies. You know, I thought about that the other day, and sometimes I still, I still, I can't think of it because I have. Yet to this day, I've never seen a dead body except for at a funeral once or twice here and there. But she lived in the ER, right? She saw an ambulance pull up and someone come in on a gurney or whatever you call them, a stretcher and just mangled in blood and all that stuff everywhere. So the vi, it's more the violence of obviously, somebody that she loves and the possible long term repercussions of what I'm putting my body through. But the broken arms or the, the broken orbital bones or the cuts, the stitches, the blood and the guts, all that stuff, she's, she's so used to that stuff that she's, you know, she has taken my stitches out.

She has stitched me back up. She's done, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. So she was cool with it all.

Does she have any fear for you in that ring with injuries? I mean, concussions? A lot is coming out with concussions, both in, you know, NFL, UFC, obviously, the veteran community from, from explosions and blunt force trauma. I mean, is that a topic of discussion?

Not really. I think. I think she knows. You know, it's no secret there's a certain way that I fight that is a little bit a lot more violent and a lot more injury prone head trauma compared to most people. But I think that's why I'm, it's why I'm such a fan favorite. It's why I've become a pillar in the industry because of the way that I fight and my willingness to engage. I think her and I have always. We have this, we have this immense amount of trust with each other when it comes to, hey, I know when you're overworking yourself, and I'm going to not say anything for a very long time until it's time for me to say something for you to then take an introspective look on maybe slowing down or cutting this off or cutting that off, and her, the same for me. She knows we have an immense amount of respect and trust in each other. And I've always said I was going to be more like Barry Sanders than I was going to be more like one of those guys who, who continues to fight until the wheels fall off.

You know, I did just watch the Barry Sanders documentary one the other day, and watching the way that he stepped away in his prime, watching him step away and people being mad at him, watching him step away for his own, on his own, on his own terms. He didn't let the sport chew him up or chew him up and spit him out. He left on his own terms, and I think I will do that. I think essentially, most of us end up doing that. Well, not as many as probably should. You get caught up in the golden handcuffs of whether it be your ego and you need the adrenaline, you need the fight, you need the fame and the notoriety or you need the money or whatever it might be. So, luckily, I've shown no signs whatsoever. I'm sharp as I ever have been, and I take really good care of my body, but we'll know when it's time to hang it up. And I've made a promise to her and my sons that I will leave before most people want me to.

Do you have any inclination of when that will be? I had read a quote that said that ten or 15 years. We're going on 14 years.

Yeah. You know, I think. I think. I think that was a quote that came. That I. That I came out with years and years ago. You know, I kind of looked at 35 and thought, yeah, if I fight from 22 to 35, that's a solid career. I came into the UFC at 34. I'm about to be 38. I still feel like I'm 28. My body, it's really hard for people to take me seriously and think that I'm not just kind of Jedi mind tricking myself into being confident, but I truly feel better now than I did when I was in my mid twenties. Maybe it's my lifestyle. Maybe it's God given gifts, maybe it's how well I've taken care of myself, but I still feel absolutely at the top of my game. So that's a blessing and a curse, right? Because I really could probably fight another five years if I want to, unless I came, unless I went downhill pretty quickly. But, you know, I. Obviously, we've got this huge fight coming up, huge platform, which once again, will be a whole golden handcuffs moment, where now it's. Okay, we had this huge fight, this huge win, this huge platform, and now it's going to lead to another one.

And, you know, we'll have to sit back and. And get on the drawing board and say, okay, hey, what are the options? What? You know, I still believe I'm gonna wear UFC gold by the time I retire. I still believe I'm gonna get another title shot. I still believe I have the abilities and the skills, and I still believe that's God's calling on my life.

Do you think I was. This is where I was going, let's say. Let's say you beat McGregor. That would be ending it on an extreme high note. Have you considered that?

You know, it doesn't get any bigger than that. It really doesn't. You know, it's an enviable position. This is a huge fight. The entire world will be watching, and that could definitely be a Barry Sanders moment. Right. You know, I probably won't send a fax in to the UFC, but. Which. That's how it happened, and I think that's why so many people were ticked off about it. But if you knew Barry Sanders, that's how he. He wanted to operate. That's how he wanted to do it. And he went off to London. Right. I mean, I've considered it, but I just don't. I'm not even. I feel like I'm not even close to the end yet. Right. And I'm solely focused on that fight and that opportunity and that. And beating this man. It doesn't get any bigger than this. So at some point, you think, well, the only thing left to accomplish after this is the UFC title. And if I have to fight one more fight after this to get the UFC title shot, or if I get the title shot after this fight, because of the magnitude of it, because of. Still, my only losses inside of the UFC have been to the top two guys in the world at any given moment.

Charles Oliveira, Dustin Poirier, Justin Gashy. All number two guys in the world, or number three guys in the world at the time of me fighting them. So I'm right in the mix. I think I posed problems for Islam Mahachev, who is our champion at 155. I think with the devastation that I am going to create when I fight Conor, I think people are going to see. People have been starved for what I bring to the octagon for the last 13 months. When other people fight inside of the octagon and step inside the octagon, it's entertaining, it's fun, it's mixed martial arts, but it's not a Michael Chandler fight. So I think when I'm able to put that on display to the entire world, a title shot could happen. So we'll see.

I won't press any further back to your wife. How long did you guys date before you got married?

We dated for eleven months. Got married or, sorry, got engaged. We were engaged for five months. So once again, I had already made up my mind, you know, I was like, hey, if you are any, it was kind of like when we got, when we had our first date, in my mind, it was almost like, if she's anything like I think she might be, she's probably my wife. But she actually exceeded my expectations of what I thought, even what I thought she could be. So then it was just trying to convince her to, you know, to be with me. And we dated for about 1011 months. And I got that on one knee and San Diego, California. And then we, then we got married in San Diego, California, five or six months later.

When did you and your wife decide to adopt?

2017. So that's actually, you know, and it all goes back full circle. You know, one of the pictures that I saw her, one of the pictures that I saw of her was with her and a little boy from Jamaica. So they used to do. So her dad, being a dentist, they used to do medical mission trips down to Jamaica where he would go down and serve and pull people's teeth or fix people's teeth for a mission trip. So she grew up doing that. She worked at an interstate mission in Columbia as well. And ever since she was like 13, 1415 years old, she always told people that she wanted to adopt. Obviously, she wanted to have a husband and a family and that kind of stuff, but she always knew that she wanted to adopt. So her parents knew it, her friends knew it, everyone knew it. And then when we got together, of course I was on board because I wanted to marry her. I would have said anything for her to be with me. And I had never really thought about it much, but as soon as it became a real thing, after we got married and spent a couple years, just us two together, loving life and dating each other and being young newlyweds for a couple years, she really felt like, hey, I think, I think this adoption thing, on my heart, I feel like it's becoming more and more and more real.

How are you feeling about it? I was like, no, I haven't really thought about it. I've just been, you know, I know we're going to create a family, but I haven't really thought about it. And we, we started praying about it more, seeking wise counsel, doing a little bit more research, and then decided to do it. And then it's a huge stack of paperwork and all the background checks and all these different, all these different things that takes about a year long process. It's a very intricate process, as it should be, you know, to make sure that these children are going to a great home. And at 01:40 p.m. On a day, on a certain day, we got an email saying, congratulations, you're eligible to adopt. And then at 01:46 p.m. We got a phone call saying, hey, congratulations. But by the way, hey, there's this opportunity. Would you guys like to present? So it's kind of funny. Full circle. It goes back to wrestling. It was a six minute match, you know, like, just like a high school wrestling match. It was a six minute match. And a couple days later, we were on a, at an undisclosed location, adopting our first son.

Hat.

So how did that feel? I mean, actually, we'll start there. How did that feel?

It's the scariest. You know, it's. It's scary, it's crazy. It's. It's. It's exciting. It's all of the emotions, you know, because it was also me becoming a father for the first time. And I sometimes I know how much pressure I put on myself to be a good man, to be a good husband, to be a good father. And it's the most important thing that I will ever, ever do in my entire life. I could win the world title a million times over and make all the money and be, be the guy that the whole world wants to, wants to be like or wants to follow or wants to emulate. But being a father, being a man, being a man that your children get to look up to is the most important thing that I will ever do in my entire life. And I know how much I've wanted to be a father for a very, very long time. It needed to be the right time. So it was a scary embarking on a new journey, and it all happened very, very quickly. It was all perfectly timed the way it was supposed to be. There was even little delays here and there that, once again, a delay is not always a bad thing.

God's timing works out exactly the way that it's supposed to every single time. And as human beings, we question it and we second guess it, or we're mad at God because this didn't happen. Or this door closed. But so many times, doors close or doors stay closed or stay locked until the exact right time that they're supposed to. And it was, it all happened very quickly, and we spent, you know, we spent two weeks in a hotel room and bought a bunch of baby stuff because it all happened so fast. And it was. It was just. It was chaotic, and it was. And it was. But it was, but it was. But we were right where we were supposed to be. The timing worked out perfectly. I wasn't in a training camp, and she was. Bree was able to take time off work and, you know, so where is he from? So people always ask, too, is it, you know, foreign or domestic? And it was. Both of our boys are domestic.

So how long after. What's your son's name?

Hap. H a p. Hap.

How long after Hap came into the picture did you and your wife decide to adopt again?

It was years. You know, there was a. There was a time where we thought we might just be one and done, you know, because, you know, she's a career woman and I'm a career man, and we take it so seriously that it's so important to us that, do we have the amount of resources that we need? Do we have the amount of bandwidth that we need? And she's cut back, and I've cut back or made certain sacrifices. Like, even, you know, I train in Florida, but I fly home every single weekend on Friday and then hop on the Sunday flight. And that's a physical sacrifice that I make on my body to make sure that I am home and present with the boys for a couple days during training camp. It doesn't matter. I made the decision that if my fight career suffers because I want to hop on a plane every single weekend and brave the unknown of possibly being a little bit extra sore or stiff or a little bit more injury prone, or maybe I get a little bit sick or whatever it might be. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make because time with them is the most important time that I will have.

So it was a couple years. There's a five year age gap right now. So Happ is seven and ace is two. He'll be two next month. So a little bit of an age gap, but I think it was perfect. Once again, if you can look back and see how it was orchestrated, there was times that we thought about it, it just never really made. Made sense, never really worked out. But the time that we got with Hap, him being an only child for years, was probably exactly what he needed from his own unique perspective and how he is. And he's a wonderful, wonderful big brother. And ace is a little firecracker, man. He is just a. He's a little tank, you know? So we got a. We got a seven year old in a bunch of sports, and we got ace, who actually, today he's almost two. He's not even two yet. He's got his first private lesson with a little basketball coach today. So we got soccer. I mean, it's. That's why Nashville's so great, too, you know, I mean, the, the ability to have all these different groups and little sporting events and little things.

We've had ace in soccer before. He was a year and a half. You know, he's not really getting taught basketball, but he's going to play with coach Kyle for 30 minutes today to go throw a basketball in a hoop or whatever, you know. So just keeping them. Keeping them both active and busy and around other people.

I have a tough question to ask you, but I think it's important. So your adopted children are black.

Yep.

I would imagine if it hasn't happened already, there are going to be issues that. Tough issues that you're going to encounter with them both. A lot of questions, maybe things that you can't relate to. I mean, have you thought about how you're going to tackle stuff like that when it arises?

Yeah. Well, number one, you'd never know when the tough questions are going to come, when the situations are going to arise. So it's more praying for wisdom every single day. James one five. He who lacks wisdom, ask for it, and the Lord your God will give it abundantly. Because whether it be me and my family, my children being a father or my fight career, my business, whatever it might be, just asking for wisdom and just asking that I will have the right answers to the questions in the moment and give them to me. Give me the wisdom in the moment, because situations will arise. And there is, it's so obvious, obviously, if you look at the way my boys look compared to me, you say, okay, well, their skin is darkened, his skin is light. We are a biracial family, but when I see them, they look exactly like me. When I see them, I can't imagine my son's not looking not like me as the world would see it. Right? So it's praying for wisdom and asking for wisdom, and it's also trying to bulletproof them as much as possible when it comes to their mindset and their self esteem and their self concept, you know, because there's been moments, I'm sure, that has a rose.

And my son and sons who want to be just like me, they want to be just like me, but they know that their skin color is different than me. You know, that's the way that God made them. They, you know, my son happ is going to be probably six inches taller than I am because he's already, you know, much taller. Right. So we are going to look different in a lot of different ways, but we're so similar in all the ways that matter. We're so similar in all the ways that matter. And you get this question, too, where it's like, well, hey, you're a white dude from Missouri living in Nashville. How are you going to raise black children? And my thought is, and it probably rubs people the wrong way, and it's probably the wrong answer that people want to hear, is, I'm not raising black children. I'm raising children. I'm not raising black men. I'm raising men. And whether you are black or you are white, no matter what race that you are, there are certain things about being a man and being a good man when it comes to character and integrity and safeguarding the helpless and sticking up for those who need it and being a good man, a good man of reputation.

None of that has to do with skin color. Everything has to do with the character of the man. Like I said, it's probably the. Probably not an answer that some people would say is important, but that's where the world has gone, where we think that the most important thing about us is our skin color or our gender or our. Or our sex or our political affiliation or all these different identity politics or the identities that we put on each other, when really we're just human beings on this earth. And there are certain. There are certain things about being a good person that transcend skin color and age and sex and religion and all of those different things.

I love that answer how, yeah, it's.

Hard, but it's what I feel, too. You know, I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's. But it's me. It's uniquely. That's how I feel about it.

So have you had any tough questions as of yet from your seven year old?

Yeah. You know, I mean, there's. There's questions about skin color, obviously, you know, I mean, because it makes a lot of sense. Right. It's. It's like whether and just a call to action for men, you know? Right. We grew up on cowboys and Indians and GI Joes and superheroes and stuff, and we. We all want to feel like a superhero, right. As that. The male. The male gene. We want to feel like a superhero. And we are a superhero to our children. Right. We are a superhero to our children. We are a godlike figure to our children. And we get that opportunity with each and every one of our children that we have. And it doesn't matter if you're. It doesn't matter where you're at on the socioeconomic ladder or what you have accomplished or who you are, you are a superhero to them. So, yes, when my son sees me and he sees me like a superhero, and he can. He could even watch me on tv, and his kids at school say, your dad's gonna beat up Conor McGregor. So I'm like a superhero to him. Yet he knows he can't be exactly like me because of skin color, right?

I'm sure, in his seven year old brain, which, really, he'll understand someday when he's a little bit older. Right? So there's the skin color difference, obviously.

How do you handle that? I mean, with one on one with.

Him, you know, I think one on one. I think it's the beauty of being a man of faith is we were called for a time in a family such as this. This is exactly how God created us to be. This is exactly how my family unit was supposed to be before I was even born. This is exactly how it was supposed to be before you were even born. He knew that you were chosen for me and mommy, and he knew that you were going to have your skin color, and he knew that I was going to have my skin color. And there's beauty in that, and it's unique to a lot of people. It might be foreign to some people, but it's absolutely beautifully, beautifully God ordained, and it's something that is going to be a part of our testimony. It's something that is making impacts through a butterfly effect that we don't even understand stand yet, whether it be people that see me from afar, people that see the way that I love you, the differences that we do have compared to if we did have the exact same skin color, the exact same eyes, and the exact same hair, this is exactly the way God created you.

And you were created in God's image, and you were created for so much more than you can ever think or imagine. And God has commissioned me and chosen me to be your dad. And the most important thing that I can be is your dad. And I tell him every single night, I whisper it into his ear, and he probably gets tired of hearing it, but I thank him. I'm like, I thank you so much for being my son, and I'm so proud to be your dad. And I just think. I just think I didn't get that as much when I was a kid. My parents loved me so much, but they didn't really make me feel like I could run through that wall. They didn't really make me feel like I could go across those county lines and go anywhere across the world and do anything I want to. And I want my children to unlock something inside of themselves to make them believe that they can do anything. And I pray that prayer over them every single night. You are hap Chandler. You are Ace Chandler. When you walk into a room, people take notice.

When you speak, people listen. When you walk in a certain direction, people will follow. You are a child of God. You are the head, not the tail. You are above and not beneath. And you are chosen for a time such as this. And I am so proud to be your father. You know, and the best thing that we can do is pour into these kids, because if I could be a superhero to him, but somehow that superhero believes in him more than the superhero believes in himself, then what can't he accomplish, you know? And it's so much bigger and so much deeper and so much more impactful than our differences, our skin color, the things that are different about us, because we're so much more the same than we are different.

You are, man. You are just a great example to the world.

Thank you.

I love this discussion. Is there anything that you are anticipating or are fearing that's going to come up in the future with your sons?

No. I think the biggest thing is a call to action. There really is. Like I said, I am not raising black children. I am raising children. I'm not raising black men. I am raising men. But with that, I do. There is a certain commission for me to be more educated on things that my white friends with white children don't need to study as much. Right. I do need to know more about history. I do need to know the answers to tough questions. I do need to educate myself more than your average person who has just their biological children of the same race. So that is something that my wife and I have taken seriously. We have chosen our school based upon the number of people with skin like our sons, the number of adopted children in the school. That's how exactly the most important thing of how we chose our school that our sons will go to. Um, having, you know, obviously pouring into more and more friendships, um, you know, I think. I think it's just for me continuing to try to be the best man that I can, but also realizing that I do have a.

I do have the most important people watching me at all times and how I love people um, and what I can do and just constantly putting them around people where there are not the odd man out, they are not the minority all the time. Right. But, yeah, I mean, it's. It's. I think parenting as a whole is the most challenging thing that we will ever do, if you care.

Yeah.

With, you know, I got a couple extra wrinkles in mind, but it's all. It's all a challenge and it's all fun.

Yeah. Yeah. Moving on with your children. I mean, you are, you know, you are the greatest example they'll ever have. You are their superhero. You are in a profession that is. I mean, you're a modern day gladiator. It's the most primitive sport you could possibly enter. Blood, aggression, violence. Do you want your kids to follow in your footsteps? Would you want them to become fighters?

If it is. If it is in their calling and if it is the calling on their life, absolutely. But I'm not. I don't really have any visions of what I want them to be, necessarily. I do want them to try everything. I do want them to definitely, for now, enjoy. Enjoy the team sports. Right. I think. I think sports in general are, and obviously, I'm an athlete, so I'm biased, but I think sports in general are just the most amazing activities that we can put our children in at a young age. You know, the group sports, the team sports, the. The ups and the downs, the failures and the wins. You know, everybody kind of gets a trophy at the very beginning, right? And then all of a sudden now my son is seven and he's starting to play a little bit more, which sounds crazy. These kids are only seven, but it's eight and under, and it's. It's about to get a little bit more, you know, hey, if you're not the best kid on the team, or you're. Or you are the worst kid on the team, you might sit on the bench a lot more.

You know, it's not everybody gets to play the equal amount of time you. It's a meritocracy. You have to earn the right to play right, which. There's so many lessons in that and learning at a young age, falling down and picking yourself back up, hard work, dedication, going to practice when you don't want to, you know? And some days they do, sometimes they don't. We got a scrimmage tonight at 430, so it'll be, you know, that'll be fun. And maybe we win. Maybe we lose. Maybe he wants to go, maybe he doesn't.

I guess I'm asking. I ask a lot of, you know, I interview a lot of my former colleagues, special operations guys. And one question that I'm always interested in talking to him about, whether it's on camera or off camera, is, you know, since I was a kid, I was infatuated with GI Joes. I was always reading the desert storm stuff, Vietnam stuff. I wanted to become an operator. I wanted to go to war, and then I experienced war, and I experienced everything that comes after war. And while I wouldn't necessarily steer my son away from becoming a seal, becoming a CIA guy, I don't necessarily want that for him. Does that make sense? I don't want him to because it is like, from the outside looking, looking in, it's all glory and it's spectacular and it's. I mean, it's what a lot of boys want to be. And then you get there and there's a whole other side of that that people don't see. They don't see the trauma that comes after. They don't see the visuals that you carry for the rest of your life. They don't see the, you know, the record number of suicides that are happening within the veteran community.

You know, if he wanted to do that, I would make damn sure that he's educated on both sides of that coin and not just, yeah, buddy, go get it, you know, go fight the enemy. Like, go for the glory. It's not, it's a very small aspect of it. And so, you know, being a professional MMA fighter, I think that's about as close as you're going to get to that, experiencing that kind of violence. And, I mean, and within MMA, maybe you don't have any of the injuries, but, you know, there are a lot of injuries that you cannot see. You know, traumatic brain injury is a very serious injury that will take a major toll on you.

Yeah.

You know, and so that's kind of why I'm asking.

Yeah, I mean, I think the way I see it, too, and I would never in a million years compare it to actual combat and what our men and women in uniform have to go through. But it definitely does take a toll on your body. We don't get paid very well compared to what we probably could be getting paid compared to what a lot of people think. Right. It takes a while. You can make a lot of money. It just does take a while. And it's a very small, a small percentage that will make it there. Right. I think by the time my sons are, would be of age to go into the UFC or one of these major organizations, I think they're gonna be getting paid more, and they'd have a little bit. They would have grown up around it enough to make the educated decision, which is what I did not have. I think my wife would say, absolutely not. I would say, man, it'd be kind of really fun. I'd be scared to death, but I would love to watch my boys go out there and get after it, you know? But I'm also scared to death every time my little seven year old in his little coach pitch baseball game steps up to the plate, I'm scared to death for him of the embarrassment or the strikeout or whatever, even though I know in my heart of hearts, I love you, but I need you to fail.

You're gonna. I need you to fail and fail often and learn and move forward. Right. Because failure is so important for us. Right. I don't want him to fail, but I know it's a byproduct of success, or success is a byproduct of the failures that we have to go through. But even though I know, I, you know, I want him to go through those things so he will grow and grow and grow, I'm still scared to death for him every single time he steps up to the plate as a seven year old, let alone if he was 25, fighting in a cage in front of millions of people. Right. So I guess my answer is, I wouldn't be opposed to it, but I definitely would not encourage it. You know? I definitely am not going to encourage it. I want him to try. I want them to try it all and enjoy it all.

Good answer. Good answer. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get jump back into your UFC career, your debut, and get into Conor McGregor.

Yes, sir.

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And here's two other products that I'm a fan of. Laird superfoods creamer. Guess what contains functional mushroom extracts? Put this in your tea or coffee. And most of you know, I'm not a caffeine or coffee drinker, but a lot of you are. And they just happen to have layered superfoods coffee, organic peruvian coffee, with, you guessed it, functional mushrooms that support and regenerate your brain. Go to laird superfoods.com. Use the promo code srs. You'll get 20% off. Guys, this is the real deal. These are the finest of ingredients. Check it out. Laird superfoods.com promo code srs 20% off. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, Michael, we're back from the break. Had a great segment about your family. Probably my favorite part so far. But I want to get into your UFC debut. And so let's go back just a little bit. What was it like when you got the call that they wanted you to move up to the UFC?

So, you know, I made a really, really great career outside of the UFC. I've always looked at myself as a guy who, if I'm a great employee, if I do the right things, if I keep my nose clean, I make myself an indispensable asset. That's what I did. What's what I did outside of the UFC? I was with Bellator, the number two organization in the world, for a very long time. I was there for almost ten years. Champion numerous times. The biggest name there. Largest social media following, biggest, you know, biggest athletes, biggest star in Bellator. Signed two or three different contracts, but decided to fight out my last contract and move into free agency. All very, very interesting timing. COVID hits, the whole world gets shut down. Every sport gets shut down. Even fighting gets shut down. But the UFC is the first sport back on tv. They figured out little fights at the apex. A thousand different COVID tests, everyone masked up in the corners and all these different things. All these different protocols. And so my fight got pushed back. My last fight on my contract got pushed back and pushed back.

But I went out there finally and had a first round finish with Benson Henderson, and I knew I was going to go at least test free agency, but most likely end up in the UFC. And I was willing to take a pay cut. I was willing to go to the UFC even if it meant getting paid less, because I knew I always had this vision of myself, knowing how good I was, how I lived my life, the champion lifestyle that I lived, my abilities, and my deservedness to be put on a huge platform. But I wasn't doing that if I wasn't in the UFC. I had never tested myself against the best guys in the world. I had never been on the biggest platform with the brightest lights. So I always had this vision of myself as a. As a retired me laying on my bed at night and putting my head on a pillow that felt like a cinder block and I was going to toss and I was going to turn because I knew that I didn't take that chance on myself to leave the relative security and the virtual certainty of finishing out my career and getting paid really well outside of the UFC to go take a chance on myself like the little 18 year old Michael did when I took a chance to walk on to Mizzou, even if it meant going to the UFC.

And maybe I lose my first two fights and I brave the unknown and I get cut, and everybody once again laughs at me and everybody once again says, I knew you weren't that good. I at least knew that I could lay my head on the soft pillow of putting myself out there if I went to the UFC for the rest of my life. So we go through all the negotiations and stuff. Obviously, the UFC makes an offer, Bellator doesn't match. They let me out of the. Out of the contract. I had multiple offers from other organizations around the world, great offers, but I knew I needed to be in the UFC. I needed to go take that chance. And that was September of 2020 when it, you know, Dana White got on ESPN and announces it. The whole, my whole world flips upside down and everybody goes crazy with it. Then a month later, I immediately go into training camp and I become the backup for the world title fight in October on Fight island in Abu Dhabi. So we fly 16 hours there. I do the weight cut, do everything, show up, flex on the scale, and, and I'm the backup fighter making weight.

Obviously, both, both those guys made it to the scale, made it to the fight, Gaethje fights Khabib. Khabib retires that night. So Khabib Nurmedov was undefeated number one guy in the world. Pound for pound, number one guy in our weight class. He retired that night. So immediately we get back to the States, and we say, okay, where's my debut going to be? What's it going to be? And then they lined me up with Dan Hooker for January 23 of 2021 as the co main event of Conor versus Poirier. And that was my debut.

What, when you get yourself in the mindset for something like that, do you have. Do you have a ritual or a routine or. I mean, how do you get yourself in there?

Man? I. Mentally, I'm not a huge music guy. You know, like in the locker room, I usually actually listen to. For a long time, it was one song. It was called Wash by the water, by need to breathe. It's a christian song. You know, it really just wells up everything inside of me, of what I. The journey I've been on, how truly blessed I have been, what I have in my life. I'm sure my team gets sick of it because they're like, holy cow, dude. This song has been on now 20 times in a row as we're warming up and stuff. But it's, for me, it's just been a soothing song for me for the last decade or so of my fight career, and. But it's just. It's a warm up hard. It's get sweatin, get the juices flowing. You kind of want to get that first round out of the way before you get into the first round of the fight so you don't go out there cold and stagnant. I want to be already muscles firing fast twitch muscles. I want to inflict damage ASAP and put pressure on whoever I'm fighting. But that fight in particular was.

Was so different and special and almost an out of body experience, because I had, you know, it's hard to explain to anybody the position that I was in. I mean, I had everything I needed. I was getting paid really well. I had the security, the love and adoration from my colleagues outside of the UFC and Bellator. And I was taking a huge, huge risk because I was leaving a very, very secure organization that I had built my name under. I had helped build their promotion. But it just felt right for me to go, and I was going. At 34 years old, I was no spring chicken by any means. A lot of people have no idea that I'm almost 38 years old because they thought I came over to the UFC, as most people do in their late twenties. But I came over as a 34 year old man with a wife and a child and multiple world titles and the scars to prove it. But it was the exact right time. The door stays stayed closed until it was the exact right time. And then it was the perfect storm of everything happening when it came to Khabib retiring and Poirier and Connor tied up in the trilogy thing that they were going to do.

And I had my UFC debut and then fought for the title my next fight, you know, so I was. The UFC knew what they had. The UFC knew my potential. They knew the stock of myself and how quickly it could rise given who I am, how I carry myself, you know, the attributes that I have inside the cage and outside of the octagon. But that. That was a very, very special one because it was almost the most defining moment of my. It was. It was definitely the most defining moment of my professional life, because I was either going to brave the unknown and it pay off immensely and me sitting here exactly where I am, or it was going to. It was going to absolutely crash and burn. And it was the worst career decision I could have ever made in my entire life. But it's in the galvanization of that fire that the human spirit wells up and you're really doing what you are called to do. You're really on the outskirts of your comfort zones. And I think people saw it, and there's definitely people around the world who saw it and saw the chance that I took and are hopefully taking more and more chances because I was willing to bet on myself, and hopefully more people are betting on themselves by watching the way that I conduct myself.

When you're preparing for that, I mean, are you envisioning violence at all? Are you envisioning what you're going to do to your opponent? I mean, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, visualization, for me is so important just because I am. I mean, as human beings, we are prone to wander. We are prone to look out for the possible drawbacks, the setbacks, the footholds, the stumbling blocks, the negative. We are prone to look at and gage the risk aversion of every single decision that we make. So for me, I have to, I talk about my practice of talking to myself instead of listening to myself also. So a lot of times when you see me walking to the cage, you'll see my mouth moving. I'm not singing the lyrics to my song. I'm actually talking to myself about how much I deserve what I'm about to accomplish how much I deserve to be right where I'm at, that I am chosen for a time such as this, because if I am talking right now, I can't hear anything else. I can't hear negativity. I can't hear that small guy from that small town who was taught to do small things inside of my brain because he's still in there. I'm never going to be able to get rid of him. But if I'm talking, he can't talk at the exact time.

Yet if I am silent, I can start to hear him. So talking to myself and visualizing myself in there, things going perfectly, things going better than I expected, but also moments that I have to overcome adversity and moments that I have to overcome bad situations, get out of certain positions, be dead dog tired, sit down, get back up with my heart full and my eyes open and my ears open. So visualizing it all because it is chaos. It's absolute chaos. It's like you're tied onto a tornado and you just gotta be there for the ride. You gotta pull your hat down tight and hope that the best happens.

That's exactly what I was hoping for. When you get in, I'm just. I'm fascinated by this stuff because, I mean, totally different. But, you know, we would have things that we do before we go on an op. You know, in the SEAL teams, we'd have things we would do before we go on an op at CIA. And, and there was always some type of a process to get your, to get your mind into what you're about to walk into. And then when we would get into it, it was like a switch was flipped. And so what I want to ask you is, when you do step in that ring and when that bell rings, is there a switch that's flipped? Is it a different you?

Yes, it's absolutely a different me. And it's, and it doesn't, and it doesn't actually flip until you hear the clank of that cage door closing because you've got, you know, you walk in and either you get introduced first or you get introduced second. Either way, there's an announcer there. You know, it's Bruce Buffer there, and he's announcing you and your opponent, and you're still there, you're still present. I'm still Michael Chandler the man. But then he gets done and he walks about faces and goes straight behind him, walks out that door, and you hear the cling, cling, cling where they lock it in and it's steel on steel. And it's in that moment that I go from Michael Chandler the man to Michael Chandler the warrior, Michael Chandler the savage, the guy who doesn't want to. But I am willing to die inside of this cage. I am willing to inflict bodily harm or have bodily harm inflicted upon me because that is what I was called to do. So inside the confines of that. And that's when that happens. As soon as the announcer leaves or Bruce Buffer leaves, he's announcing our names. That's when the fight officially kind of starts.

And then. Then it's the referee. Are you ready? Are you ready? And whether you're ready or not, they're gonna. They're gonna send you guys toward each other, and you're about to go to battle. And throughout the entire process, I am talking to myself. I am still visualizing. I am feeling the canvas on my feet. I am running my hand, my elbow, my back, my butt, my knees across the fence. Get a little bit of abrasion on me, get a little bit of. Get a little bit of pain going, elbowing the cage a little bit, squeezing the cage, kind of punching myself a little bit, because you're. Because you're about to, whether you like it or not, those fists are flying, those knees are flying, those elbows are flying. There's another man across the cage who, he might not hate you, but he loves his job, and he wants to take something from you. And that includes inflicting bodily harm in whatever way that he can inside the confines of the. The rules of mixed martial arts. And, yeah, it's really, to me, you know, you're called, you know, you're doing what you're called to do when you're able to live on both extremes.

For me, and I've. I've been given the ability to live within one extreme outside of the octagon, of trying to be a man of service and love my family, be a family man, be a positive light, be a. Be a man of influence. A positive influence. But then, on the complete other end of the spectrum, be something so ridiculously violent that people can't understand how one man can be both, you know, and you've experienced it. Right. You know, it's something that few are called to do. I think a lot of us have it in us that it never materializes, but few, few are able to capture it and take it and use it and use it for good. And I think as soon as the gage door opens again, clink, clink, clank, and the fight is over, I'm able to limp out and go kiss my wife and get my paycheck and go back to normal and truly win, lose, or draw every single time. Those have been some of the best moments of my life. After you get done with that crazy of a crazy chaos and you're able to just let your guard down and just be normal again, you've just experienced something so crazy that we were called to do.

We were called for so much more. You know, it doesn't have to be violent. It doesn't have to be firefights. You know, it doesn't have to be these big, crazy, life altering moments. But we were called for big, big things as human beings. And this is my masterpiece that I'm able to paint 30 something times now inside of the confines of mixed martial arts. And the world gets to see and win, lose, or draw. I get to be the man in the arena whether I win or lose, and I'm fulfilling my calling, and it's right where I'm supposed to be every single time.

When you do flip that switch, when it's. When it's on, do you envision yourself hurting your opponent?

You know, it's funny, I never look at it like hurting. You know, it's. But it is. I know it is the Michael, the normal person here, I know it's the hurting, right? But in there, it's. It really is the X's and o's. It's not even a person to me. You know, it's not a soul, it's not a brain. It's not. It's not the firing of synapses and all of the. All the biological stuff. It's two arms and it's two legs, and it's. And it's a mission, and it's a job to do. It's targets, it's a face, it's a head, it's arms, it's legs, it's a body, you know? And I think, for me, that's the best way. I have had a couple fights in my career where there was too much of a feud, there was too much of a personal. It was too personal. It was too much more like, I do want to hurt you, but I've always looked at it like, I'm not trying to prove anybody wrong or I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I'm just trying to prove myself and my supporters correct and go out there and perform my job to the best of my ability.

I know, hurting somebody, cutting them open, possibly knocking them out or choking them out or making them quit in front of millions of people is a byproduct of what we do. But actually in there, it's just kind of ice cold. And it has nothing to do with humans. It has everything to do with just the punching bag in front of me.

Very similar. When you say it's just two arms and two legs, there's no soul. It's not a human. It's a very similar mindset as to what a lot of us get into. And have you ever seen this documentary, the smashing machine with Mark Kerr?

I have not, but I know they're coming out with a movie, correct?

Are they really?

I think they're coming out with a movie. I think the rock is playing the lead.

Well, I started watch, I watched that documentary probably 20 years ago, damn close to it. And that documentary, it's one of my favorite documentaries of all time. And at the very beginning, it talked, Mark Kerr is talking about, you know, kind of his mindset in the middle of a match and in the middle of a fight. And he is discussing, you know, he's basically saying, you know, what are you willing to do to win? Are you willing to dig your finger into a cut and pull it open a little bit wider, you know, to get that win? And he's talking about the, you know, the, what it takes, you know, to win. And so I'd like to see what, what you have to say. What are you willing to do to win? I mean, it was so descriptive and so real. I mean, I must have watched that part a hundred times because I'm like, man, this guy just, he gets it.

Yeah. And it's funny, too, because if you, you see the man being interviewed, and to me, at least, because I've lived it and you've lived it in a different arena, is I look at that man and I'm like. And I don't think, well, he's a crazy person. No, he's a normal person. But the person that steps inside of the confines of competition or the confines of a firefight or a mission, that's a different side of him, and that's what needs to be done in that moment. Right. Just like we are. I'm a different person with my family as I am with you, and I'm a different person inside of a cage than I am in the practice. And we're different. There's these different arenas that we live in, but the man in that arena, the man inside of that cage, is willing to do anything within the rules that we have set for ourselves to get the win and push himself past what he thinks he's capable of and be willing to brave the unknown and be willing to go to where he needs to go. And it's a place where so many people just have not experienced that side of them, or they've experienced it in different ways that really just manifested itself as coming unhinged or having a psychotic break or seeing red, so to speak.

I'm not seeing red when I'm in there. I'm trying to be. It's more about the x's and o's and what I need to get done in front of me. But I know. I mean, it's the overarching theme to believing in yourself and having self confidence is the trust that we have with ourself and making promises to ourself and keeping those promises at whatever cost it needs to be. I trust the man who steps inside of that octagon. I trust him. I trust his heart. I trust his soul. I trust every ounce of his being to be an absolute savage at every single moment that he needs to be. Just like I trust myself to be soft and sweet and kind and loving to my family when I'm in the confines of my home, right? So I look at that guy. I know him, but I don't really know him. And he only comes out for 15 to 25 minutes a couple times a year when he needs to. But I have an immense amount of trust for him because we have built him to where he needs to be every single time we step inside the cage.

Have you ever done anything like. Have you ever done anything to put yourself on top or to get the one that maybe was out of character for you, that maybe surprised you afterwards where you're like, man, I didn't think I could do that, but I did.

No, because I've. Now there's times. And now there's times in a fight, which it's unfortunate, right? Like, even. Even my last fight. So I was. I was drilling this move. I was drilling this kind of series of movements where if I have a guy's back and I'm on top, I reach down and I grab underneath the chin, pull up the chin and throw in a. Throw in a choke. Last fight, I did that. Did it once, unsuccessfully. Didn't work. Tried it again. The second time, I actually reached down. And when a man has a mouthpiece in, it feels exactly like the chin. It's the same shape. So I actually stuck my fingers inside of my opponent's mouth, but in my mind, all I felt was chin. I thought I reached deep enough to grab the chin. I thought I was on the chin, but I was actually breaking the rules illegally, not knowing it, with my hand inside of my opponent's mouth, pulling his upper jaw up to then sink a choke in. Now you go back and watch it. And I didn't even know it in the moment. I still thought I was on the channel.

You go back and watch it. And then everywhere on social media, everybody's like, Chandler's a cheater. Stuck his hand in his mouth and it's like, yes, I did cheat. It looks like. But did I knowingly cheat? Do guys accidentally go for a go for a takedown in their hand, grabs the shorts and they grab it? Are they reaching back? Do they grab the cage? You got to remember, too, it's once again, we're not human beings. We're human beings. We have heartbeats and brain things, but we are inside the confines of the competition and it's chaos. So there are certain things, certain times you can look and say, okay, well, that was maybe a cheap shot or that was this. But these people, when we're inside the confines of competition, things are going to happen. We're moving, right. And I've been public and said, hey, was that a cheating move? Yes. Was it intentional? No. Are you going to believe me that it's intentional? Probably not. Depends on how much you like me or don't like me, whether or not you believe me or not. But no, I've never, never intentionally done something illegal because now, like what Mark Kerr was saying, you know, sticking your finger inside of a cut to rip it open even more.

I don't know if that's legal or illegal, but if it's legal, it's pretty crazy. It's pretty nuts, but I wouldn't fault a man for it. Right. But it's just, you know, it's so chaotic and it's, and it's, you know, there's been times where, where I have definitely, you know, done things where you're just in it and something happens, whether it's kicking a guy in the nuts or anything like that, where you're like, well, it wasn't, it was inadvertent, wasn't on purpose, but it's going to happen. We're in a, we're in a sport where we are winging our limbs at each other and grabbing things to try to choke people and manipulate joints and stuff. But no, within the confines of the rule set, I'm willing to be as absolutely vicious as possible but never want to cross that line intentionally. At least, right?

Earlier, you discussed, we were talking. I was talking about blunt force trauma to the head, traumatic brain injury, and you had mentioned that your style kind of opens you up. It sounded like you were saying that maybe vulnerable to that. How would you describe your style?

Yeah, I mean, it's something I've had to adjust a little bit because the wrestling style I had was very, you know, and actually, our first line of defense for wrestling was our head. Your head, then your hands, then your. Then your arms, then your. Then your hips. Right. That's the kind of the progression of stopping a shot, stopping an attack. In mixed martial arts, you don't want to use your head as the first line of defense. However, you know, my inside the competition, when I first started, I was just like, okay, I'm gonna go forward. I'm gonna keep on coming forward. Get in his face. And if I take a couple shots, and take a couple shots. When you're fighting the best guys in the world in four ounce gloves, they can put your lights out pretty quick, right? And I still have my moments where I look back and think, man, just keep your. Keep your hands up a little bit more. Protect yourself a little bit more. But, you know, my style is all gas, no breaks. It is fast. It is. I know I'm fighting against flesh and blood, but I really am fighting against the spirit of a man, too.

Right? I'm fighting against his mindset. I'm fighting against his spirit, his soul, his heart. It is X's and O's. And your lights can be put out at any given moment, and I can put his lights out at any given moment. But this idea of me beating on you and putting so much pressure on you and making you take a step backwards and second guess yourself as much as I possibly can to then wilt your spirit and watch your spirit break right in front of me, that's always been kind of my style, you know? And I think it goes back to wrestling. I started out as a guy who I didn't have all the skills. You were more skilled than me. So on paper, you were supposed to beat me. But when it comes to heart, when it comes to cardio, when it comes to pushing the pace, when it comes to being the tougher human being right now, the more indomitable spirit, I believe I have that. So maybe you take me down a couple times and I get back up, and then by the third period, I'm going to watch you wilt, and I'm going to break your spirit.

And sometimes that works in mixed martial arts. Sometimes it doesn't when you're fighting literally the toughest guys in the world, the best guys, and most skilled guys in the world at your weight class. And it's bitten me a couple times, but it's also gotten me a lot of finishes and a lot of knockouts and gotten me to where I am.

What do you think you need to work on for this McGregor fight coming up?

So, if I was, if I was them, I would say he's the better striker from a crisp, longer, more sniping standpoint. He's got that great step back left. He has had great success with guys who, who aggressively fight him, who are a little bit shorter than him, stocky wrestlers with an overhand, he calls it. You know, there was Khabib, there was Chad Mendes, there was Eddie Alvarez. So I think my, what I need to work on for this fight is continue to be the best version of myself, maybe a little bit more tactical, realizing that I've earned this, realize that I am the better fighter. I am the tougher fighter, and the guy who deserves it more, whether that be getting in his face, putting him up against the cage, picking him up, putting him down, wilting his spirit a little bit more, taking the wind out of the sails a little bit more. I don't need to be getting into a firefight with a guy who has got a bigger rifle than me, right? I think I hit harder than he does. I think. I would venture to say his time out of the cage has lent itself to his timing not being what it used to be, his movement not being what it used to be, his reflexes not being what they.

What they used to be. Being out of the cage now for. It'll be three years by the time we fight. So I'm just gonna, from the first exchange, hit him, hit him with big punches, make him second guess himself. Keep my hands up a little bit more than I have in the past. Pick him up, put him down if I want to choke him, if I want to go out there and get the finish and just absolutely outclass and dominate him, because I've deserved this, and I've earned this.

What do you think he needs to work on? He's gonna.

I mean, when he gets back into the training cycle, he's gonna be exactly who I think Conor has been when he was in his heyday. When you watch the combinations he put on Eddie Alvarez, his ability to just barely miss a punch and then fire back with two or three catching guys off guard, great angles, fast left hand, powerful left hand southpaw, his movement and his navigation and negotiation of the distance between us two, that's where he's gonna. That's where he thinks he can excel. That's where he can excel. If I'm not on the top of my game and we don't have our game plan right where we need to be to suck all the oxygen out of the octagon. The goal is to suck all of the oxygen out of the octagon. He's already ready to drown with a lifestyle that he has lived and the work that he has not put in over the last couple of years. I believe we suck the oxygen out of the octagon. He looks for the exit sign somewhere in the second round, and I usher him toward the door.

When you. I'm sure you're visualizing the fight already. I mean, is this, is this. Would you consider this to be your biggest fight ever?

This is. Yeah, this is by far the biggest fight ever. You know, for a lot of different reasons, obviously, the, the platform, you know, it's going to be a huge fight against the biggest name that the sport has ever seen. We have the ultimate fighter that we did. We, it was on for twelve weeks in a row on ESPN every single week, the ultimate fighter reality show that we did. So we got to spend some time together. There was bad blood that boiled over there. There was an animosity there. The rivalry really started there. He and I have an immense amount of respect for each other, but we love to finish fights. He loves to get the knockout. I love to get a knockout or a choke and break him. It's also been the coiling of the spring over the last 13 months. Now that I've had to wait on this opportunity, it was always the right decision. I have battled the critics, I've heard the critics, a lot of people, and it's a compliment. People want to see me fight because of what I bring to the octagon, the excitement that I bring to the, to the platform and the stage.

But this was always the fight that was going to happen. This was always the dotted line that we signed on. This was always the opponent. This was always the showdown. This was always the comeback that people want to see for him. And this is also the manifestation and the marination of what we have been waiting for for this entire last year, all of 2023, building this thing, and now, summer of 2024, the biggest fight in the last decade, I believe, is happening. And it's about to be a really fun one. And it's also it's the greatest moment of opportunity for me, and I have to ask that question, Michael, are you enough? And I wouldn't have been ready five years ago. Wouldn't have been ready two years ago, wouldn't be ready a decade ago. But I am ready. And I was born for a time such as this, and it's about to be absolutely masterful, and the whole world gets to see it.

How many times have you visualized how.

This goes right now? A couple thousand, probably.

How does it go in your head, man?

I think, like I say, you can. You can have a ton of respect for somebody, and you can. You can even have admiration for somebody. I admire what the man has done. I respect what the man has done. But I don't see any universe where I'm not able to put my hands on him and I'm not able to have him feel my spirit inside there and know that I'm the toughest man that he has ever fought. That when we meet in the center of the octagon and I'm standing in front of him and the first time my leather lands on his face and the first time my leather lands to his body and the first time I get my hands locked around him and he feels the pressure and he feels the squeeze, he feels his feet leave the ground and his neck and head hit the canvas, I think he's going to immediately know that he's outmatched. And the good thing is going back to trust. I trust myself to know where the fight is going to go. And we will be prepared and we will outclass him in every single aspect of the mixed martial arts competition.

It's a contest of skill. It's a contest of spirit and will. And I believe I'm the better man. And I don't just believe I'm the better man by a little bit. I believe I'm the better man by a long shot. And then it's to the moon after that.

I'm sure Conor's gonna watch this. I'm sure he's watching everything you're doing up to the fight. And so what I want to ask you is, what do you have to say to Conor McGregor right now?

Unfortunately for him, I believe he is stepping inside the octagon with a man who has been on a journey that culminates with his losing at the hands of myself. You know this. You got to be the hero of your own story. And there's been times where I've been the. The pauper. There's been times where I have been lowlier than thou. There's been times where I have failed, but every single aspect of my journey has led me to the greatest moment of opportunity. This is so much bigger than mixed martial arts. This is so much bigger than the UFC. This is so much bigger than the X's and O's and punches and kicks and knees and elbows. This is. This is a man versus another man. And one man has earned it. And one man knows that he hasn't. One man that will talk a big game and get the people behind him and. But in the confines of his own mind, in the confines of his own home, when in the quiet. In the quiet moments, he knows he hasn't earned it. But in my quiet moments, I know that I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

And I know that I was destined for this. And sometimes you got to go through the mud and the muck to get to the mountaintop. And I've gone through more. I have worked more. I've put. I've put a million more reps in, a million more hours in. I don't just talk a big game. I do the work. And I just truly believe I'm not just the better, the better athlete. I just. I believe I'm the better man in this scenario. And it's time that the good guy wins. It's time that time that the better man wins. And that's where I'm at. And it's an unwavering confidence and belief in myself, trying not to go overboard with the narcissism and the self gloating. But I was born for a time such as this, and I will absolutely break this man. And the whole world is going to get to see it, and it's going to be the best moment of my professional life.

Well, Michael, I can't wait to watch. And we're wrapping up the interview now, and I just want to say how much I appreciate you coming here and telling your story. But more importantly, I want to tell you that I just really appreciate how you carry yourself, the role model that you've become. There's not a lot of people in your position that I think are positive role models for the youth today. And you just got so many positive attributes, man. And it's just really nice to see somebody in your position that's grounded, that's a Christian, a man of faith, who is setting a positive example for all of humanity. And I think that's more important than your fighting. And thank you for being that. Of course, man.

Thank you for the opportunity to sit down and the platform, man, we're just, just a guy trying to chase a dream, and it's working out pretty well.

So my pleasure. It's an honor. Best of luck.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Mike Carruthers shares little pieces of intel.

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