A Masterclass - Part One

https://admin.headliner.ai/a-masterclass-part-one-mp3

Uyi

Welcome back to The Point of View. Today's episode is part one of a two part special where I sit down and speak with Mauricio Gomez, a legend in Jujitsu circles. He is the father of Jujitsu goat, Roger Gracie. It's such an honor and a privilege to have a guest. I hope you enjoy the show.

Mauricio

We can't plan stuff too much ahead now.

Uyi

All the changes, all changes the rules.

Mauricio

I call it COVID years. It changed humanity. People change. Their are different. Some people are struggling. Still. I can see that. I have friends. Last Saturday, I went for breakfast with a friend of mine. He hasn't left his house since Lockdown, practically. We went to a restaurant, maybe four tables being used.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

Said, I got to get out of here in order to go and eat in a flat.

Uyi

Really?

Mauricio

Yeah.

Uyi

So we had a conversation the other day. You brought it up, actually, and it got me thinking about it. We were doing a seminar for the police and I came in and said, There are some of the people there and you're introducing me to some of the people. And he said, I've known him for over 20 years. I thought, that's true. I've known you for over 20 years.

Mauricio

Yeah.

Uyi

22 longer than some marriages, right? Yeah. Time flies. So how long have you been in the UK?

Mauricio

I got here in October, 1998, landed in Birmingham.

Uyi

How was that experience of all the places to land in Birmingham?

Mauricio

You know what? I didn't know any better. So for me, that was England. I didn't know any difference from Birmingham, London, Newcastle or what have you. For me, it would have been all the same. I think what made the Birmingham experience really devastating in my life. Patrick's birth was hard. It was extremely traumatic because Patrick was born in Winter, 16 January, actually. His birthday was the day before yesterday. He's 23 years old. He was born with only £1.

Uyi

He was permitted.

Mauricio

He was born with five and a half months. He had £1 and then he had to have a heart surgery. It used to be the Woman's Hospital and they had the Children's Hospital in Birmingham. Those people were extraordinary. I was waiting for a bus once to come back from the gym. Patrick was already home and I saw the doctor at the bus stop. I went up to him, I said, Doctor, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but I wanted to thank him. He saved Patrick's life. I couldn't stay in the hospital because I had to teach. If I didn't teach, I wouldn't have money. So I woke up at 06:00 in the morning. Used to go to the hospital with Juliana. Stayed there till 930, get the bus, go to the gym, teach till two, get the bus, go back to the hospital, stay the rest of the day. Juliana would go home, I would go back to the night class and then go back home. And the next day, the same day. And this went on. January, February, March, April. In May, Patrick left the hospital. So this was every single day, Sunday to Sunday, every single day. In the very beginning, in the first days, I had to leave the hospital, not knowing what I would find when I come back, what kind of scenario it would be.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

It was hard, man. And it was winter. It was getting cold, and it was dark. It's always dark.

Uyi

Yeah. And you're in a new country. New country. I have no support.

Mauricio

No friends, no nothing. It's just you. Nobody to have a talk or give me a ride somewhere. Nothing.

Uyi

How soon after you came to England was Patrick born?

Mauricio

We arrived in October. He was born in January.

Uyi

Wow. Okay.

Mauricio

Yeah. He wasn't even supposed to be born here. We were going to go home. Juliana was going to have the baby in Brazil. And then she would stay there. I would come back. It was a mess. They messed up all us. And I think that in the end was so hard on us. And it happened in an awfully hard time for me as a immigrant. I had a work permit. All right, you go. You work. But I had no support. Remember that? We were talking about how hard it is to run a gym alone. You go to the gym on a Monday morning and you teach every single day of the week and different times of the day. Sometimes you have time to go home, sometimes you don't. There wasn't anything or anywhere to go to. The Bull ring was an awful place. It is really nice now.

Uyi

It's different now Birmingham.

Mauricio

But it's a lot better today. It was rough. It was not a place that you can go and hang out. No way to come here and to do what I was doing with a family. Nowadays it's easier. People know what it is. Everybody wants to do it. And you have help everywhere. That time, it was hard. The money that I was getting paid would only cover my rent. Every other Penny for anything else, I would have to work extra somewhere else. I have to do seminars, find a way to do Privacy.

Uyi

Everyone knows what Jujitsu is today.

Mauricio

Yeah.

Uyi

And when you came, very few people knew what Jiujitsu was. There was no framework.

Mauricio

Yeah. Don't get me wrong. People keep saying I wasn't the first one here. Shane was already here, Mark was already teaching, and there were other small groups around. It just didn't come together as a group yet. It took its time. What we found in the very beginning, most of your students were already a martial artist in their own martial arts.

Uyi

When you came, people who did know what you did see was they wanted to see if it was real.

Mauricio

You had a lot of that.

Uyi

They came to you to fight.

Mauricio

Oh, yeah, everybody.

Uyi

Which doesn't happen today, but people literally came to your school.

Mauricio

Well, don't understand what we went through in the beginning. I remembered very vividly one day I turned the corner and I looked. I said there were three guys that you could see that there were fighters. And I saw Monday morning. I did a seminar over the weekend, so I was tired and it was a Monday morning. I thought I was going to have an easy going afternoon session, and I had to fight all three of them. And they were tough. But I did my job. You were tough at the time. It was a good day.

Uyi

I don't think people realize that you were having real fights every day in a class where you're teaching Judiciary. But these people weren't here to learn. First, they want you to prove to them that it was real.

Mauricio

That you are good enough to be there in short, and then they will come. Okay, you convince me. Yeah, I'll say.

Uyi

And it wouldn't be like after the one round, it would be, let's go again.

Mauricio

You would have to either hurt the person or exhaust them to a point where they were nearly throwing up. And that happened quite a few times.

Uyi

And you had to do this every day?

Mauricio

Yeah.

Uyi

At what point did it get where people would not come in to challenge you? They actually generally just wanted to learn.

Mauricio

It doesn't stop till this day.

Uyi

Oh, really?

Mauricio

You go around to do seven, but there's always one. It just doesn't work.

Uyi

That's true. It happens all the time.

Mauricio

Not with the same intensity. Right. And I believe the people in the past, these challengers were better than today. In the old days, there were fighters that came and. All right, let's see what you got.

Uyi

They wanted to fight.

Mauricio

Yeah. After seminars, sometimes I had to spot with 1015 people. After 4 hours seminar, there was 2 hours seminar, three to 4 hours to have a break in the middle. So you would try to sell your goods to make a little bit more cash because the seminar money would barely cover the trip to go there and back pocket everything out, put everything back in the back, continue the seminar. Okay. Can we have a go? What are you going to say? You say, no, your reputation is down to drink. You have to spawn. You have to try.

Uyi

Brazilian jujitsu was still relatively unknown unless you had seen UFC or you'd seen Pride or something like that. Those events, those organizations, they had shown up, judiciary was beaten every martial art. They were karate guys, and it was Gracie. We choked someone out, and they were like, what is this, a karate guy? And this is a wrestler and a kickboxer. So they were doubters. They doubted what they were seeing was real. And so when you came, they wanted to test and say, okay, is it real? I want to see if you really can do what these guys say they can do.

Mauricio

It's funny. Nowadays it's more difficult because they don't get to you that easy. I'm not on the front line anymore. There's loads of Blackbird there's, my son there's what have you. But in the past, sometimes you had somebody that came to your gym with the specific intent of seeing what you were made of to test you.

Uyi

Yeah. Having said that, I've done lots of seminars of you and Roger. And I always remember that every day there'll be a point in the day where there's a queue of people waiting to Spar with Roger.

Mauricio

Yeah, that used to be me.

Uyi

But these guys know a little bit of jujitsu, right? Yeah. It's a strange thing. Instead of them saying, oh, I want to roll, I want to see how it's nice to roll with a world champion. Now they want to see if they can beat the world champion.

Mauricio

Well, you know what, I thought about that and I've seen that. And you're right, there's a lot of cases like that. But sometimes they want to prove to you that they know something. They're good too.

Uyi

Right?

Mauricio

So it's just them trying to show you in an odd way. Look, I'm good. I know. I know how to do this. I can get out of these things. I can survive.

Uyi

Sometimes it's not with bad issues.

Mauricio

Sometimes. No, it's not malicious. It's in the spirit of each and every person. And you can tell being in the gym for so many years, you can relate to each and every individual how they are in their lives, by the way they act in the gym where they Spar.

Uyi

Oh, really? You can tell straight away their character comes out.

Mauricio

Their character comes out. They will recall as many enemies. I have to be sure of what that you are the one could have just asked. No, you don't actually know someone until you find them. Come. She's waiting. I learned to read people. You can tell a lot by the person, by the way they behave in society, especially in ours.

Uyi

You do get to know someone.

Mauricio

Yes.

Uyi

With jiu jitsu, the bonds become really tight.

Mauricio

Oh, it's for life. It's for the rest of your days. I have friends that we've been friends since we were teenagers. A guy posted a photo the other day in one of these worlds. I think it was the first world in California, 2007. And there are a bunch of us old guys. Pedro Sauer.

Uyi

I still have.

Mauricio

And it is.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

We've known each other. We're all old now. We're all in our 60s and this was some years back, so we'll probably be in our late 50s or something like that. Even that late 50s means we've known each other since we were teenagers. So that makes what, 40 years, even our friendship. We've known each other a long, long time, but the friendship is there. It doesn't go away. You cannot see the person for a long time. But the minute you get together, it's like that space never actually existed. You were together yesterday. The friendship is there. It's a nice, very comfy feeling. Yeah.

Uyi

It's a grappling martial art. You have to roll around. You have to wrestle each other. When you wrestle with someone, it's intimate. You're so close that how can you not get to know the person? No, you can do some martial arts, and it's at a distance. There's a distance. There's like a space that you respect. Even boxing, which is quite close. When you get too close, you get to the clinch. They separate you. You got to respect the boundaries. When you do grappling, you're all on top of each other. You're sweating. They're sweating. So you really get to know the person.

Mauricio

Like, honestly, you do. Oh, you're using that lotion today.

Uyi

I've had that. I'll tell you a story. I remember years ago, I think we were in Latino Road, and then guy walks in, Guy Ritchie, and we've known him for years. And then go train a guy. So I'm going to train a guy. Guy is good. He's a good martial artist. And we're rolling. And guy goes, Start smelling me. He goes, you smell really nice. And I didn't have the heart to tell him that day before I came to the Academy, I had a shower and I wanted to put some body lation on. I'd run out of body lation. So I used my other half, my wife's body lation, which is like, really scented. He's like, you smell really good.

Mauricio

Very good. Smelling an individual.

Uyi

Yeah. That's how close you are, how close you get to people. But I think that helps form those bonds. You really get to know someone.

Mauricio

Yeah. Those roles that you do with the person day in, day out, and the friendship that you see building up throughout that process, because it takes years. So we've been at it for years and years and years and training and helping each other. I find that so nice.

Uyi

I think jujitsu is the longest martial arts for someone to get a black belt.

Mauricio

You think so?

Uyi

I think it is. I don't know any other martial art, but it takes so long for you to achieve a black belt. What would you say is the average time roughly.

Mauricio

It can vary a lot from eight to 14 years.

Uyi

That's a long time.

Mauricio

It is. Eight years is a long time to get a black belt. Yeah. And eight years is reasonable. A year in the white, two or three years in the blue, a minimum of two in the purple. So right there, that's six years, another two in the Brown to get the black. That's a minimum.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

And that's being quick.

Uyi

And this is not someone turning up once a week to train.

Mauricio

No, this is everyday kind of person.

Uyi

You do a degree, you take a degree. It takes you three years to get a degree. You do your Masters. After that, it takes another two years. Maybe you do your PhD. It might take another three or four years for you. You spend the equivalent of getting a PhD.

Mauricio

It's kind of the same.

Uyi

It's the same in jujitsu. That's just to get to your black belt.

Mauricio

Yeah.

Uyi

And then after the black belt, you get your degrees. I know, but you explained the system. How long does it take for someone to get their degree or their Dan after black belt?

Mauricio

Well, there are different groups out there that follow different rules. We follow the IBJF rules because we've been with them since the beginning. So according to their rules, for the first three stripes is three years each to get to your third stripe, which will allow you to give a black belt because you're not allowed to give black belt before your third stripe. That's nine years.

Uyi

Nine years after you have a blackout. Yeah. So say you do it quickly. That's 17 years.

Mauricio

Yes. Now you're allowed to reward your student the black belt, which you wouldn't before, or you would need somebody above you to be in the gym with you to validate that act.

Uyi

And then after your first three stripes.

Mauricio

Oh, yeah. Then you have five years for the fourth stripe. And if I'm not mistaken for the fifth and the 6th, it's seven years. Another five, and then seven it's a total of 31 years to get to the 8th degree. And then you change belt, they give you a red black belt. That's for the 7th stripe.

Uyi

So by that point, you've got your red and black belt, which they call the Coral coral belt.

Mauricio

Yes.

Uyi

31 years after your black belt.

Mauricio

Yes. And then you get that funny color belt, and then you stay on that belt for another seven years, and then you get a red and white belt after that. So that's 38 years as a black belt to get the red and white, and then you got to stay on that 110 years to get your red belt. Goddamn. You got to be fit or you're going to die in the process, which is probably why we do this. Almost got it. It's like an OMB.

Uyi

I can imagine there's some people with a gravestone in it says, I almost got it.

Mauricio

Almost got it. He almost tapped seven and a half strikes.

Uyi

But having said that, now you're close to getting your red belt.

Mauricio

Five years.

Uyi

Five years. The red belt is the final belt.

Mauricio

Yeah. That's my goal. Because you said it's a goddamn long process. It is. I think they tried to do that to validate and to make that belt so worth it. That all right. That guy really did the time and put the effort in because you can't get your black belt, go home, never train again. And three years later, I said, oh, wait, a minute. It's time for my stripe. Go back to the gym. Oh, it's time for my strength. No, sir. Fuck you. Go home.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

It doesn't work like that. No, you have to be you have to be active. You have to be in the gym. They wouldn't have given me my belts, my red and white belt, or my red and black. If I was an active teaching, I would not have gotten the others that got with me.

Uyi

They all have their school teaching and training.

Mauricio

Teaching and training.

Uyi

You're rolling on the mats?

Mauricio

Yes. Every day. It's like with people in any other sport, surfing. People still surf. They still play their volleyball or what have you. Football.

Uyi

I don't meet too many 60 year olds playing football, though.

Mauricio

Probably not. You see in Brazil.

Uyi

Okay.

Mauricio

Yeah, you do see in Brazil. They love their ball, but they call it the Sunday ball. It's a reason to get together and have beer afterwards. The real reason. The real reason is not the football. We just brought the ball.

Uyi

Where's the beer?

Mauricio

It's the barbecue and the beautiful. Now we're talking.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

That's an excuse to get together like we do.

Uyi

Yeah, we do. Yeah. I think also with Jujitsu, it's a very humbling martial art. You come in and like you said, there'll be guys there who beat you up.

Mauricio

Oh, yeah. There will always be that. There's always somebody that will beat you up. You know what? That's why I relate Jujitsu to life so much in so many occasions. And for everything, every situation that you can compare, you can compare it to life. Like the difficulties and obviously the good things about you had a win or you had a good day and then the next day is awful. Life is like that as well. It is, isn't it? If you have ups and downs and problems, these are what I couldn't pass that guy's guard today. Sometimes you have these blocks in your life that you can't get through injuries. We'll help you with that.

Uyi

It does.

Mauricio

It will give you that, too.

Uyi

There's a lot of correlation. I agree. Just like when you go to the gym, if you want to get strong, you have to lift weights to the point that your muscles fail and then the rebuilding happens and you get stronger. You don't go into the gym and you're strong straight away. You have to push yourself past the point where your muscles give up and then your muscles start to learn to get stronger again. And so there's the constant cycle of failing and rebuilding and failing and rebuilding. And in Jiujitsu, you have to go in and learn. It's okay to fail.

Mauricio

Yeah. It's okay to make a mistake.

Uyi

It's okay.

Mauricio

Yeah. I couldn't get that right. No, I can't understand that. Come back and do it again and again. How many times I showed some stuff. Zillion, you can't even count. Same thing over and over again. And funny enough, you might find a little thing to better it every single time, even though you think, oh, this was perfect.

Uyi

How old were you when you first started?

Mauricio

I was younger. My dad got me into it. He used to take me to the Academy. I was the oldest. He used to take me first. I just loved it. From day one, I just fell in love with the art. I liked the fighting. I always liked to grapple. It's funny, since I was tiny, I was five, six years old. My dad used to take me to the gym. Then we moved to America. I remember Sundays, we used to go have picnics in parks. He used to take his key, put his Gee on, and I'd Spar with him in the grass. Oh, I remember that so vividly. That's what I learned with Gardas. He used to put me in his garden, trying to make me pass it get so frustrated because I couldn't do anything, and I get really angry. I remember from very little, when we went back to Brazil, there was a gym on my block. Academy on my block. Professor Bernard. He was from the south of Brazil. A massive human or. I was too little to see that. Maybe he wasn't that big, but he was funny because the gym was on the corner of the beach, and I still live in the middle of the block, so I have to pass by the gym to get to the sand. He had a massive arm just to do a lot of pressure. He used to drink some tea, and he used to do that on the window. We were scared of being him either way or just not. He's a funny dude. But listen, he gave me some basic things that I learned in that gym that I applied till the state teaching funny state. And then I started training with John Beth. And then I stayed till Jean Barth closed his gym.

Uyi

How old are you when you went to Holes?

Mauricio

21, 22. I've been training for years. When I got to Halls, I might have been a white dog, but I wasn't actually a white dog.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

So when I got to Halls, he immediately probably saw my potential because he said on the very first day, Buy a blue belt, come with tomorrow for fighting Saturday, and I won. I was state champion. That was my entry to Halls Academy.

Uyi

Halls was amazing, right?

Mauricio

Yeah.

Uyi

You've been training since you're a kid. You've been training with good guys, and then you meet holes. What was the difference?

Mauricio

The difference was the precision that he had and the approach as a martial art. I remember sparring with him as purple, Brown, and then black, and how amazing he was, how quick he developed things. It was just another level, like Roger is today. Halls was like that to us.

Uyi

Halls was different. He was different.

Mauricio

Yeah. He was different. I know that sometimes at night he used to ask us to hold him, like just high from the floor 3ft and we would hold feet on and let him go. He would turn around before he hit the fall.

Uyi

Really?

Mauricio

Yeah. That was his test. It was like a cat and time. So quickly and precision for the kill, for the submission.

Uyi

Both.

Mauricio

It was there. It was the man.

Uyi

And you received your black belt from him.

Mauricio

Yes, Sir, I did. Very few of us did.

Uyi

You're part of the famous five. But you have a funny story about the famous five.

Mauricio

Yeah. Because it's not five. It's six. I don't know why they call it famous five. There are six of us. We're five now because one died.

Uyi

But it was the famous five before that happened.

Mauricio

Yeah. But we don't know why they got this five number, because it was now I'm regaining my name again because for all these years I was just Rogers Foggy. Now I'm back being very soon, right? Yeah.

Uyi

It's an interesting experience because, like, Roger is different. When did you notice?

Mauricio

You know, when you see that guy can go far is when they love what they're doing. And you could see in Roger the light that he had to train. You could see that in him. He has beautiful. Roger has early on, you could see that.

Uyi

But there are levels. There are levels in everything in life and even in jujitsu, there are levels. There are people who are good. There are people who are really good, and then there are people who are like Roger, in my opinion of Roger, he's an outlier completely. You've obviously seen it and I've seen it. I've seen people who are very good world Champions come into the gym and Roger has rolled with them. And it's like there's a complete difference here in the levels.

Mauricio

Yeah. You can see that throughout the years of him competing, you've seen so many guys walk out of the map nodding their head like this, what the hell happened? They're good in their gyms. And all of a sudden you face a guy in the world level and you got taken down, then submitted in like minutes, and you didn't do anything. Well, how the hell did that happen? And what I always liked about him specially was him going for the submissions and actually getting them. They made a survey. I think it was 2011 or something like that. Gracie Mage Mag came with a survey that they did in the world of submissions. Roger was so high that the second place was Shanji with 50% of the submission. That my son. You know what that represents? That's nearly 100% of submissions throughout years and years of years of competing on the word level.

Uyi

Yeah. And Jan G is no joke.

Mauricio

No, John G is really good. Really good. He's number one. Yeah. And you see people now, loads of people celebrating good for you.

Uyi

What do you think about that? Do you think it's because of the sport that people are now winning by advantage because they want to win rather than they want to submit?

Mauricio

Yes, of course. It became in some aspects, if you go against a fighter that is seeking to submit, you, that is a dangerous fight. The guy that stalls, that holds and just wants to win according to rules. They read the rules and they memorize everything. Oh, if I do this, I'm going to get an advantage and they look at the board all the time. So I got an advantage. I'm going to hold this for a few minutes, and then you get another advantage and you hold for another few minutes. And now he's a strategic fighter. What the hell is that? Fights are made to win. You go there and you try to submit. Yeah, that's what it is. What they claim is that the sports is affecting Juju jutu as a whole. But that will always rely on the instructor of your gym. It's your gym. The reason why we're here. And I say that's all the white Bell clown, the reason why we're here to submit that opponent. Do you want to finish the fight and start again? That should be your main goal.

Uyi

How did you feel watching Roger compete?

Mauricio

In the beginning, I was always extremely nervous, always agitated. It got to a point where I drive him to the competition. It didn't last very long. I was stressing him out, and I didn't notice that I should have because I'm older. But you're a father. You just want the best. All you want to do is make sure do you need what? Do you need anything. Can I get you something or what have you. It's funny enough, it got easier when we moved to America in 2007.

Uyi

Why is that?

Mauricio

For some reason, every time they called Roger's name in Brazil, they would boo him all the way to the map. I don't know why. Pablo Joe even wrote an article once on Racy Magnum about that. People boolean on you. I don't know why.

Uyi

At what color belt?

Mauricio

All the belts.

Uyi

Really? Even at black belt?

Mauricio

Yes. Obviously you had our team, which wasn't big at all. The entire rest of the Stadium was against us.

Uyi

So they were booing. Not because of him, but he was the champion. He was the fret.

Mauricio

Yeah. He was the person to be beaten.

Uyi

That must have been hard for him and for you.

Mauricio

Yeah, it was soreful.

Uyi

Nobody likes that.

Mauricio

No, of course not. What has he done? Nothing. He was always so elegant, polite and always behaved.

Uyi

Roger is a real sportsman.

Mauricio

He always behaved very gentlemen in a sport that's not at all like that. He always accepted anything that the rep said. Because people have to understand, no matter what happened in that fight, once the fight stops, the ref raises one of the arms that's it gone. Dust it get over it. That's the result. Oh, let's see. It's gone, man. Gone next. And that was his mentality. If you looked back said, oh, well, then work. I'll see you next year. Yeah.

Uyi

Rogers.

Mauricio

That'S very strong minded set person.

Uyi

Now, you've told me that you would boo him always. I didn't know that.

Mauricio

Always. It stopped in America.

Uyi

Oh, it stopped in America.

Mauricio

It stopped in America. Okay.

Uyi

Yeah, maybe that's why I didn't know. Because when I see the videos and most of the videos are from the US.

Mauricio

Yeah. No, because they only stop when they did. In 2007, they started filming it properly in Rio. I think they were still building up the Championship. So I think maybe in the last year, maybe they had people filming it. But if you look at the videos, they're reasonable. They probably had some guys filming it, but it wasn't with the technical resource that they had when they went to the States. And they probably hired a proper company to do it. Maybe they did in Brazil, but in a small terms. And things got different when they went to America. I know things got better. The Championships got not fancy. The rep started using uniforms, and then they came to with the suit. So things were well represented.

Uyi

They became more professional.

Mauricio

A lot of people say bad things about them, but, man, what they did for the sport and they still do is amazing. I tip my hat for them, man. They do a lot. They did a lot for the sport to be recognized as it is because we weren't. It's a sport. Coming from a third world country, man, I have to understand, he made the world. Thanks to Gracie, some family that escalated a level. How many Brazilians out there working, making money with jujitsu, and all over the world, there are people working and living off jujitsu everywhere, everywhere. Where did it start? Starting with a family area.

Uyi

It's a crazy story, almost unbelievable. Yeah, but it's real. Yeah, it's true.

Mauricio

We're here.

Uyi

It's true. Exactly. Rogers a success in jujitsu. You used to watch him as you said, you would feel nervous. And then he moved to MMA. How did you feel about that?

Mauricio

That was even worse. God damn it. His first MMA fight was in Canada. He stopped training on a Friday, so we would have to go from New York to Vancouver. So Roger caught a cold, really bad cold. So when we got to Vancouver, it was Sunday night. Me, Roger and his uncle, Helium, and it was snowing minus eleven a week to go to the fight. And he was a fever and feeling awful. Car was sliding all over the place. We got to the hotel, and then he was really sick. And that week would have been intense because these fights, you have a whole schedule for the pre week of the event. The event at the time was Bulldog you had interviews you have training the way in on Friday all sorts of different kinds of things throughout the week and on Monday we can get them out of bed. Try to give him garlic to eat the garlic. I hate garlic eventually and he lost weight. He couldn't train at all. We took a guy with us to train with Roger because Waterman was a massive guy so we got this guy from henzoshim really sweet guy. He died a few years later. Really nice guy. 160 kilo guy. Wow huge. And he was a funny dude. Brian his name. He used to walk around with a little plastic cup and he liked to chew tobacco. I never saw that in my life. You see that in films like a cowboy, right? So you walk around with a paper cup.

Uyi

Yeah.

Mauricio

But anyway we got there. Roger lost weight. He was bad Friday came way in man. I tell you when I saw that guy take his T shirt off to go for the wind. Let's go home.

Uyi

He's a big guy.

Mauricio

Oh a big eye man. And Roger seemed skinny and coming out of the flu so God damn my son has to fly like that guy.

Uyi

Okay guys I was in a part one tune in next week for part two.