#427 – Neil Adams: Judo, Olympics, Winning, Losing, and the Champion Mindset

0:00:00 The following is a conversation with Neil Adams, a legend in the sport of judo.
0:00:05 He is a world champion, two-time Olympic silver medalist, five-time European champion
0:00:11 and often referred to as the voice of judo.
0:00:14 Commentating all the major events, world championships and Olympic games,
0:00:19 highlighting the drama, the triumph, the artistry of the sport of judo.
0:00:24 Making fans like me feel the biggest wins, the biggest losses,
0:00:29 the surprise turns of fortune, the dominance of champions coming to an end
0:00:33 and new champions made, always speaking from the heart.
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0:02:31 I’ve talked to a lot of Olympic athletes, CEOs.
0:02:34 I think the, it’s kind of fascinating to discuss with them because they’ve
0:02:39 already accomplished, in many cases, they’ve already accomplished a really
0:02:44 grand big things, the Olympic gold medals or running, starting, scaling,
0:02:50 running and winning at the game of business.
0:02:55 And then when they look back, the big lesson in terms of health, they often
0:02:59 go to is the value of sleep.
0:03:01 Now, it’s hard to know whether that lesson is supposed to be learned.
0:03:06 You’re supposed to fail and then you’ll learn it, meaning you spend your 20s
0:03:10 or your 30s or some stretch of time sacrificing sleep.
0:03:14 And it’s not actually a sacrifice.
0:03:18 It’s a gift to the gods of excellence.
0:03:21 So it’s not like, it’s not supposed to be that way.
0:03:25 It’s not a mistake.
0:03:26 It’s not a failure, but when they do look back in a kind of offhand way, they’ll
0:03:32 say, I learned the value of sleep that I’m just a better thinker, better performer,
0:03:37 more efficient, wiser, all those kinds of things when I get full night sleep.
0:03:45 But anyway, the moments you get with your bed, use them wisely.
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0:04:48 By the way, I got a chance to recently meet and shake hands with Leo DiCaprio.
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0:05:12 still there, burning bright.
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0:08:46 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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0:08:52 And now, dear friends, here’s Neil Adams.
0:08:56 You are a five time European champion, world champion, two time Olympic silver medalist.
0:09:18 Let’s first go to the 1980 Olympics.
0:09:22 Where was your mind?
0:09:23 What was your preparation like?
0:09:25 What was your strategy?
0:09:26 Leading into that Olympics?
0:09:27 That was my first Olympic Games.
0:09:30 So my preparation was a little bit different to how it was the ’84 and the ’88 Olympic Games.
0:09:38 And I’d kind of done part of the preparation as well for ’76 Olympic Games.
0:09:43 I wasn’t quite old enough for those, but I was first reserve.
0:09:46 So in 1980, I’d had four years build up and I was hungry.
0:09:53 And I was one of these young athletes and I see them so often now that was developing and, you know, full of…
0:10:02 I won’t say I’ve fallen myself, but I was certainly confident of my ability and I wanted to conquer the world.
0:10:08 And I’d had a couple of really tight matches with the current Olympic world champion.
0:10:14 So I knew that there was a possibility that I could get there for the ’80 Olympics.
0:10:20 So building up to the ’80 Olympics was quite interesting because I was kind of coming through the weights.
0:10:27 And I was halfway in between the 71 kilos weight category and the higher weight category of 78 kilograms.
0:10:36 And I got third place at the 79 world championships, the weight below.
0:10:44 For the whole year at the higher weight category, didn’t win a loser contest.
0:10:50 So I’d beaten everybody in the world and then I had to make a decision as to whether to drop to the weight below because I was seated in the weight below.
0:11:00 It was a different seating then, so I decided to drop into the weight below because I was seated in the top four.
0:11:08 And as it happens, I think it was probably the worst decision I made.
0:11:14 Well, because simply because, I mean, it was the only contest that I lost was the final of the Olympic Games in that year.
0:11:21 So you’re a young kid, what, like 1920 at that time, full of confidence, vigor.
0:11:28 So the decision to cut weight, how hard was it for you to cut weight to the 71 kg division?
0:11:34 I’ve got to say that it was the hardest because as I was going up, I was, you know, it was 73, then it was 74 kilos, 75.
0:11:43 So I was moving through the weight category.
0:11:45 It wasn’t like I was stuck in the middle and then I dropped the odd time to compete.
0:11:50 It was literally going up in weight by a kilo every month.
0:11:56 And then by the time I came to a month or two before the Olympics, it was really hard.
0:12:02 Fought the European Championships at the higher weight category and won that.
0:12:07 And so everybody that was in the Olympic rostrum at the Olympic Games was on my rostrum at the European Championships.
0:12:18 So was it a mistake?
0:12:21 Yeah, because I didn’t have my diet sorted out.
0:12:23 My nutrition was appalling.
0:12:25 And when I, you know, it wasn’t as kind of readily available as it is now for the nutrition.
0:12:32 And I would say that if anything lost me that final, other than the fact that I was fighting, somebody was terrific.
0:12:40 You know, he was an excellent, brilliant athlete.
0:12:43 But it definitely didn’t help that my nutrition was not very good.
0:12:48 OK, so you lost to Ezio Gamma.
0:12:51 There’s probably a lot of that we could say about that particular match.
0:12:56 Maybe let’s zoom in. What were your strengths and weaknesses judo wise in that Olympics?
0:13:02 You said you haven’t really lost the match.
0:13:04 You won the European Championship leading into it.
0:13:05 But if you had weak spots, OK, you already said diet, but specifically on the mat in terms of judo.
0:13:12 I think that none of the fights lasted time going into the final, you know.
0:13:18 So I won fairly quickly and every match by upon, you know, way before time.
0:13:24 Do you remember how you won the match?
0:13:26 I won them by throw, a couple of throws for Ipon and then arm lock for Ipon.
0:13:31 Semifinal was an arm lock against the East German Kruger.
0:13:36 And yeah, just I was flying through, you know, for the throws.
0:13:40 You remember Taitoshi Uchimata, my favorite kind of Toku was my favorite throws.
0:13:48 And and then a Jujikitami as well, you know, which was a Jujikitami role.
0:13:54 Against an East German who had beaten before, but always had a really tough match,
0:13:58 but managed to beat him well.
0:14:00 So you had a beautiful exhibition of Japanese type judo in the first two matches.
0:14:05 You threw people and then you also did the Neuazis on bar to person.
0:14:09 Great. So you’re going into the final.
0:14:12 What are the weaknesses going into the final against the Italian?
0:14:15 Like I say, taking nothing away from him as a great athlete and a brilliant judo man
0:14:20 and and left, which wasn’t good for me.
0:14:24 That was definite no, because I hated fighting lefties still do.
0:14:28 But I’ll tell you why in a minute.
0:14:30 I just did. Great. It’s one of those.
0:14:32 And but I think as I went through the contest,
0:14:37 we had an eight hour break from the semifinal to the final.
0:14:41 They took us back to the Olympic Village.
0:14:43 Then we had to come back in and then we had to start a warm up again.
0:14:47 You know, so I kind of lost my momentum.
0:14:49 I had to start again and I never I didn’t I just didn’t I had a job to get going.
0:14:54 I got halfway through, started to rescue a dying match.
0:14:57 And, you know, I was kind of one step, half a step behind all the way through.
0:15:02 So never really got into it.
0:15:05 So why do you hate fighting lefties?
0:15:07 And lefties are, we should say, overrepresented
0:15:10 in terms of the higher ranks of judo.
0:15:14 I don’t know why that is.
0:15:16 Well, you know, the thing is about a lefty is a lefty
0:15:19 will have more opportunity to fight righties, you know, right handers.
0:15:24 Because I mean, 70 70 percent of the population are right handers,
0:15:28 30 percent left.
0:15:30 So they get to fight more right handers.
0:15:33 And it’s just a fact, you know, that happens.
0:15:37 So the thing that they hate is fighting left against left.
0:15:40 They don’t like they would they don’t like it left against left.
0:15:44 Whereas a right hander will go right against right, you know.
0:15:47 But but the opposite is awkward
0:15:50 for me, because just simply I like to go on to the sleeve
0:15:56 and then I like to dominate the grips.
0:15:58 But the actual angle of the of the opponent wasn’t what I wanted.
0:16:04 You know, so I had to work hard, really hard against it.
0:16:07 What happened in that match?
0:16:09 It was a split decision in the end.
0:16:12 And so to lose an Olympic final on a split decision is is pretty,
0:16:16 you know, it’s something that’s still on my mind.
0:16:20 And, you know, I think that it’s a strange one because I can still wake up
0:16:25 that one and and four years later at the Olympics,
0:16:29 because I was silver medalist at the Olympics four years later as well.
0:16:33 And yeah, it still haunts me.
0:16:36 Do you sometimes wake up and think like, man, I should have eaten better.
0:16:40 Yeah, like or maybe like a specific grip that you’re like,
0:16:44 I shouldn’t have taken that grip.
0:16:45 I do, you know, I mean, the diet side of it is it’s difficult to, you know,
0:16:50 to to really admit that, isn’t it?
0:16:52 That you you went to an Olympic Games.
0:16:55 And the one thing that you’ve really sucked out, right,
0:16:58 was one of the most important things now at at world level sport,
0:17:04 you know, where you’ve got the nutrition, you know, we’ve got it.
0:17:07 You would think that most people have got it sorted,
0:17:09 but there’s still people making mistakes.
0:17:11 There’s still people that haven’t got it totally sorted.
0:17:13 And then there’s people like Travis Stevens, who I think doesn’t care.
0:17:19 He’ll just have atrocious nutrition and he just makes it work.
0:17:23 I think the way he spoke about it is you can’t always control nutrition.
0:17:28 So it’s best to get good at having crappy nutrition.
0:17:31 It’s a good way of looking at it.
0:17:33 I never, yeah, maybe that’s what I did.
0:17:35 Exactly. Exactly.
0:17:38 Do you remember what you were eating?
0:17:39 Are we talking about like candy or?
0:17:41 Yeah, well, I got a sweet tooth, you know, but it wasn’t it wasn’t really.
0:17:45 I mean, I didn’t have a lot of money at that particular time either, you know,
0:17:48 so the diet wasn’t steak and, you know, good nutritional salads and things like that.
0:17:56 You know, I did what I thought was best without, you know, proper advice.
0:18:00 And the crazy thing is, is that I had such good advice as well.
0:18:04 You know, when it came to kind of fitness training and things like that,
0:18:07 we’re quite ahead of our time.
0:18:09 And, you know, we’ve really had it nailed as far as the conditioning was concerned.
0:18:13 The judo training as well was a way in advance because I was a good trainer
0:18:18 and I trained more than most, I would, I can honestly say that.
0:18:23 It probably got me away with, you know, a lot.
0:18:26 Where was your mind, so mental preparation, going into that Olympics?
0:18:31 You said you were confident, but is there some preparation aspect behind that confidence?
0:18:37 I think in the early days, I didn’t think I was going to lose.
0:18:41 I never thought it was possible to lose.
0:18:43 And I think that I went into every contest expecting to win.
0:18:48 So when it didn’t quite go my way, I didn’t lose that many contests, you know.
0:18:52 So the only ones I lost were in the final of the World Championships
0:18:56 or in the final of the Olympic Games.
0:18:58 So I didn’t lose that many.
0:18:59 I never lost the European title.
0:19:00 You know, I had seven golds at the European Championships,
0:19:03 you know, five seniors, two juniors, under 20s.
0:19:07 And I never, I never lost the final, you know.
0:19:09 So it was, and then I only lost two on a split decision, you know.
0:19:13 So it was, I didn’t lose that many.
0:19:15 And my attitude was that I wasn’t going to lose and I couldn’t lose, you know.
0:19:20 So I was always surprised when I did, when I, you know, something happened.
0:19:26 In Neil Adams’ A Life in Judo written in 1986,
0:19:32 you wrote, “Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to win.”
0:19:36 It wasn’t the ordinary feeling that children have when they take part
0:19:39 in their first primary school sack race on a grass track
0:19:43 or even the keen determination of a young swimmer
0:19:46 prepared to train early in the cold winter mornings
0:19:48 in order to make it into the county side.
0:19:52 With me, the desire to win was and still is
0:19:56 as much a part of me as my arms and legs.
0:20:00 In other words, it wasn’t something I learned as I grew older,
0:20:03 but rather was deeply rooted in me.
0:20:05 Perhaps this competitive instinct is the greatest difference
0:20:09 between my public image and the view from the inside.
0:20:13 So people see the kindness, the warmth you have,
0:20:17 the charisma, the excitement, but there’s this big drive to win inside you.
0:20:24 So what’s behind that?
0:20:26 Can you just speak to that drive to win and how that contributed to your?
0:20:31 No, when I look back now.
0:20:34 There’s a lot of years ago, we should say.
0:20:36 – It is a lot of years ago, you know. – Is that true?
0:20:38 – Or are you just being poetic? – It’s not far off.
0:20:39 No, it’s not for when I think about it now.
0:20:42 Because I’d like to think that I’m a different person now.
0:20:46 And, you know, since I’ve kind of calmed down, I see athletes now
0:20:51 and I see them, you know, and they’re kind of arrogant.
0:20:56 They’re walking, it’s a strut, you know, and it’s kind of a confidence, isn’t it?
0:21:01 You know, and as we’re older and as I’ve become older, I’ve calmed down.
0:21:07 And, but, you know, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing.
0:21:10 It’s still that will to win, you know, and I’m much better at masking it now
0:21:16 if I don’t, but it still bothers me as much.
0:21:19 You’re talking about, like, I don’t know, even just like stupid silly things,
0:21:23 like, I don’t know, a game of pool or something like this or just anything.
0:21:27 Yeah, I’m still trying to win, you know, like, so my son loves to,
0:21:31 he loves to play me at bowls because I’m useless, you know,
0:21:35 and I just can’t throw a straight bowl.
0:21:38 So he loves playing me at that, you know, but it bugs me that I’m not better, you know.
0:21:42 And there are certain things that I do, it really bugs me when I’m not good at it.
0:21:48 And I guess it’s one of the reasons that,
0:21:51 you know, long after I’d finished competition, judo,
0:21:56 people still want to train with you, you know, and even at a, like, kind of an older age,
0:22:02 even now, if I do in a seminar or, you know, they’d still, you know, do you still do?
0:22:06 Do you want to still go and can I feel it?
0:22:10 And, you know, one of the things that’s in me is that I just all the way up to 40 years of age.
0:22:17 So from 30 when I finished competition up to 40,
0:22:21 I could still train with the best and I could still go with anybody.
0:22:26 And then when 40 hit, kind of things started to fall off a little bit, you know,
0:22:31 at least to get, you know, either my hips or my legs and my knees and,
0:22:35 and I realized that I had to pick my practices and that rankled as well.
0:22:39 And I had to then just calm it down a little bit, otherwise I was going to be injured and I was going to be,
0:22:44 you know, so it’s, it’s not a good thing when you get an older
0:22:47 and you’ve still got the same competitive mind, but things change.
0:22:52 So still there, you get on a, on the mat, probably even now, right?
0:22:57 You get on the mat with a world champion, you know, you still, the current world champion,
0:23:01 there’s still a little part of you that could, I still toss this guy.
0:23:04 Do you know, kids these days are soft.
0:23:06 Well, you know, some of these athletes, I mean, like, I give you a prime example, right?
0:23:12 He is Ilias Ilias, all right?
0:23:14 I mean, he is a monster, right?
0:23:17 And you just, of course you couldn’t, you know, because he just had 60 something, you couldn’t.
0:23:25 But you like to think that you could, you know, and, you know, you know, what you would do,
0:23:31 what you can do is you can cause them problems, but, and they feel it immediately,
0:23:36 but you’d last a minute, you know.
0:23:37 So you’ve trained with Ilias, the artist, I’ve gotten a chance to train with them as well.
0:23:41 He’s a really nice guy, really great guy.
0:23:43 He trained with me.
0:23:44 We were training together, every hotel that we used to go into, we’d end up in the gym together
0:23:49 and we’d train.
0:23:50 And this one time he was in there and he just wanted somebody to grab and grip hold of them.
0:23:56 So we ended up doing this kind of grappling in the middle of, you know, like the people
0:23:59 doing weight training and much, you know, the different things, watching these two madmen
0:24:04 doing.
0:24:05 I’m glad we weren’t on a mat at that particular time, but good fun.
0:24:10 What do you think about that guy?
0:24:11 He, like you, achieved a lot of success when he was young.
0:24:15 17.
0:24:16 You imagine that 17, 18 years of age and he’s able to compete with the men.
0:24:21 And there’s not many men can do that, you know, and it doesn’t happen very often.
0:24:26 It happens later with the men and often they’re not physically as developed as they, you know,
0:24:32 so from me, for example, I fought Nevzorov who was world and Olympic champion.
0:24:37 He was the current world and Olympic champion.
0:24:40 They sent me to the European championship senior at 17.
0:24:45 And that doesn’t happen very often.
0:24:47 And I fought, I pulled Nevzorov.
0:24:49 So I fought Nevzorov and I had him really worried, you know, because he expected, without
0:24:56 a doubt, to come out, throw this kid, you know, and junior.
0:24:59 And he was like thick and shredded, like, he was shredded, he’s like, there’s a picture
0:25:04 of him in his judogi and his judogi is just cut, it’s, you know, and he looks the business.
0:25:11 And there’s me in this baggy, like, yeah, skinny kid inside this baggy thing.
0:25:17 But I, you know, and the thing was, is that the more he tried and the harder he tried
0:25:22 and the more he panicked, the further it went away from him.
0:25:26 And so, you know, of course, he got, he got the decision at the end and deservedly.
0:25:33 But I worried him, you know, and so, and, and so for me, that was a massive step forward
0:25:38 because year later, I was, you know, starting to fill out and two years later, I was competing
0:25:48 for the Olympic title.
0:25:49 So I don’t know if I remember, but at least Iliadis is interesting because even at 17,
0:25:55 I feel like he was doing big throws, like, literally lifting them with the hips.
0:26:00 Just rips them out the ground, you know, and I was saying to Nicky, you know, my wife
0:26:04 and we, she said, what would you do now that was different than the way you did then, you
0:26:11 know, I never had any pickups, you know, I didn’t, that’s not, that’s not what we did,
0:26:16 you know, but you have a look at the young, you cranes or the, you know, the young Russians
0:26:22 or the young Eastern Bloc Mongolians and they’re ripping people out the ground.
0:26:27 I mean, it’s, it’s just different style of judo and it’s, it just looks different.
0:26:32 But now they’re starting to do a traditional style judo as well.
0:26:36 So can you speak to that with the different styles of judo?
0:26:38 So for you, you mentioned Uchimara, Taitoshi, these days, how would you describe them?
0:26:44 They’re like these effortless, less lifting off the ground and power and like strength
0:26:50 and explore and more timing and position, movement, momentum, all this kind of stuff.
0:26:56 That’s more traditionally associated with Japanese judo because like for Japanese judo,
0:27:01 the traditional judo, like you’re supposed to throw people in a big way without much
0:27:05 effort.
0:27:06 And of course, we, 1990, we saw the introduction of all these Eastern Bloc countries, you know,
0:27:16 there were so many more.
0:27:17 I mean, it was Soviet Union when I was competing and then of course in 1990, everything changed
0:27:22 and then there were so many more of them out there, different countries, you know, that
0:27:27 their wrestling styles were introduced into judo, put a jacket on them and let’s get
0:27:33 into judo.
0:27:34 So judo kind of changed shape.
0:27:37 It changed shape from this upright standing, you know, and having to know the technicalities
0:27:44 of how to get a body that’s weighing 40, you know, 14 stone or, you know, whatever it is
0:27:52 up into the air and using the momentum and the balance and the direction and the skill
0:27:58 to do that and knowing how to do it, you know, and how to use movement.
0:28:02 And then you get, you know, the wrestlers and the leg picks and the double legs, single
0:28:07 leg, double legs and, you know, and it kind of, by 1995, you know, judo was, was bent
0:28:14 over.
0:28:15 And so it was the IOC that went to IJF, International Judo Federation, and they said, you got to
0:28:23 change this or we’re just going to have one wrestling style.
0:28:26 It looks like wrestling with judo, with the judo jackets on.
0:28:29 So you either change it or we’re going to take one of you out.
0:28:33 By the way, we should sort of clarify, when we say people are bent over, that’s usually
0:28:35 how you see freestyle wrestling.
0:28:38 Wrestlers are more bent over to defend the legs and so on.
0:28:41 And traditional judo, people are more standing up because that’s the position for which you
0:28:45 can do the big throws and all that kind of stuff.
0:28:47 But I think the other case to make for a banding leg grabs is, you know, a lot of people are
0:28:53 using it for stalling and not for beautiful big throws and all that kind of stuff.
0:28:57 So it’s not just not to make it different from wrestling.
0:29:01 It’s also like you want to maximize the amount of epic throws and dynamic judo and exciting
0:29:09 stuff to watch.
0:29:10 Win by judo, not by wrestling.
0:29:13 And I think that the ones that were shouting about it were the wrestlers, right?
0:29:18 Because they like to compete with both.
0:29:20 They want to do both.
0:29:21 They want to do their wrestling matches and then come into judo.
0:29:25 So basically, I mean, what we’ve said is they learn to do judo and there’s nothing stopping
0:29:32 you then from doing both, right?
0:29:34 But not from the other way around, alright?
0:29:36 So rules always dictate development.
0:29:39 They’ll always dictate which direction it goes.
0:29:43 So if you introduce a rule that states that you cannot dive at the legs and just pick up,
0:29:50 then you’ll have to do it standing up.
0:29:53 And also, it increases the possibility of defense with the hips, because actually, good defense,
0:30:00 judo-wise, standing up, is with the hips as opposed to sticking your arms out and then
0:30:06 sticking your backsides out there just to defend, alright?
0:30:10 So if you attack me and I move my body in the wrong place, so I’m in the wrong place
0:30:15 at the right time, so you don’t hit the right target, and then also I use my hips, you know?
0:30:21 So again, it’s a form of judo that was being lost.
0:30:26 So now we’ve got it back.
0:30:28 So let’s go there.
0:30:29 Let’s speak about judo as if we’re talking to a group of five-year-olds.
0:30:35 So what is judo?
0:30:36 What are some defining characteristics of judo as a sport, as a martial arts, a way
0:30:43 of life, all that kind of stuff?
0:30:44 I think, you know, when you say it as a way of life, I mean, I think the great advantage
0:30:50 that we have in judo, my young grandson, so I got two little boys that are three-and-a-half
0:30:59 years of age, love going to our dojo, they love it, you know?
0:31:02 So dojo was the first word that they used.
0:31:05 It was one of the first, so when they come to see us, you know, so as I’ve seen my wife
0:31:09 and I, you know, it’s like, dojo, it’s not grandma, grandad, you know, it’s a dojo.
0:31:15 So dojo, they take their shoes off going into the dojo, you know, so they have respect for
0:31:21 where they’re at, you know, and I think it has that kind of feeling that, like, I tried
0:31:27 to build my dojo with a feeling of reverence.
0:31:32 It’s kind of almost peaceful, you know, so I’m not a religious person, but I like going
0:31:37 to old churches because when I go into an old church, doesn’t matter, you know, what
0:31:41 the religion is within the church, but there’s a reverence in there.
0:31:45 Revidence is a good word.
0:31:47 It feels like a really special place, no matter which dojo you go to.
0:31:51 It’s just you bow and there’s calmness before the storm of battle or whatever it is.
0:31:58 And respect, you know.
0:31:59 Yeah, respect.
0:32:00 I mean, look at the respect.
0:32:01 You know, we were just talking about it just before we came on air, and we were just saying
0:32:04 that we very, very seldom do we have a situation where there is animosity other than them fighting,
0:32:14 you know, so I’m not saying that they don’t fight each other because sometimes it does
0:32:18 turn into a brawl.
0:32:20 And at the end, two people bow off and show their respect, you know.
0:32:27 And one of the things that, you know, like, so a champion, I see people winning events
0:32:32 and they’re good judoka, they’re excellent, they win world championships, might even win
0:32:38 the Olympic Games.
0:32:39 But a great champion for me is somebody who treats, who does the right thing when they
0:32:47 lose, you know.
0:32:48 So when you see them lose, that’s when you see the true them, you know.
0:32:52 And actually that was one of the biggest things that I had to really cope with, you know.
0:32:57 So when I lost that Olympic Games in Moscow and also the one in Los Angeles, the hardest
0:33:05 thing is when the microphones in there and you’ve got to be respectful and nice and the
0:33:13 hardest things to smile.
0:33:15 But actually, some of the great champions, you know, they’ll go, that’s just one match.
0:33:20 You know, I remember, we’ve got one great champion, Agbeg Nanou, she’s a five-time
0:33:27 world champion, she’s an Olympic champion, she’s favourite as well to get this Olympic
0:33:33 gold medal, French.
0:33:35 What a great champion she is, you know, because she lost one of the matches.
0:33:40 I mean, she’d come back and she’d give him birth, come back after giving birth and everybody
0:33:47 was going, well, was she, you know, but then she, and then she lost one of the matches on
0:33:51 the way through.
0:33:53 And she said, well, don’t be, don’t be upset.
0:33:56 You know, it’s just one match, it’s just one contest, you know.
0:34:00 Next time I’m going to put it right, and she did put it right, and now she’s back up there
0:34:04 and she won the world title back.
0:34:07 So you know, these are great champions for me.
0:34:09 Yeah, I mean, that’s the right way to see it, but it’s also tragic to lose the Olympic
0:34:14 Games, you know.
0:34:16 Twice.
0:34:17 See, yes, it is tragic, and I do have sleepless nights.
0:34:23 I mean, that’s the magic of the Olympic Games, anything can happen, and your 1980 Olympics
0:34:29 were very different from the 1984, but if we just link on the, on 80, and just your, what
0:34:35 we’re talking about, how much you wanted to win.
0:34:40 Do you love winning or hate losing more?
0:34:43 I hate losing more, but I love winning.
0:34:46 When I won the world title a year later, and I had no doubt when I went in that day that
0:34:54 I was going to be world champion.
0:34:56 No doubt.
0:34:57 You won the 81 world championship.
0:35:00 At the high of weight.
0:35:02 At the high of the 78.
0:35:04 Yes.
0:35:05 KG.
0:35:06 Actually, can we go there, what was going through your mind?
0:35:11 You ended up arm barring a Japanese fighter.
0:35:16 I talked to Jimmy Pedro, a friend of yours, somebody who said you were a mentor to him
0:35:21 for many years, and he’s told me a bunch of different questions to ask you, but he said
0:35:25 that was a really special time.
0:35:28 That was a really special, dominant run you had, and especially finishing with an arm
0:35:36 bar against a Japanese player, so take me through that.
0:35:39 What do you remember from that?
0:35:41 I think that it was, so my weight was better.
0:35:45 I didn’t have to lose weight.
0:35:46 That was one thing.
0:35:47 So the nutritional side wasn’t as important, but probably still wasn’t as good as it could
0:35:53 be in my nutrition, although it was getting better and I was trying to eat the right things
0:35:59 at the right time, but I still trained really well and I was so confident that going into
0:36:08 that world championships that I could win it.
0:36:12 I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to win, but obviously, the corner of your
0:36:18 mind you’re thinking just don’t make mistakes, but this is the incredible thing is that
0:36:23 once you start to ask you, once I see contests change direction when I’m commentating, so
0:36:31 I can see somebody who’s in there just going forward trying to win, and that’s a difference
0:36:37 to somebody who’s trying not to lose, and there’s two different ways.
0:36:42 Sometimes when I was world champion, then I had a period of time where every time I
0:36:48 stepped out there, I was really afraid of losing, and I think that that’s what happens
0:36:56 later on in your competitive career.
0:36:59 The great champions managed to come through that.
0:37:01 Teddy Rene is one of those.
0:37:04 He puts it out there and he keeps beating them, so they can’t take it away from him.
0:37:10 It’s fantastic.
0:37:11 So stepping on the mat every single encounter, you’re trying to win.
0:37:14 You’re looking for the grips and the intention to throw, throw big, even when you’re ahead
0:37:20 on points, all that kind of stuff.
0:37:22 That’s a really good point is that if you go ahead in a match and you look at the clock,
0:37:28 it depends when you go ahead.
0:37:30 Sometimes you can go ahead in the first minute, and you’ve still got three minutes to go.
0:37:34 So I see the ones then that go into, I don’t want to lose because they go into defensive
0:37:38 mode and then sometimes they can lose it on penalties or something can go wrong, and the
0:37:43 other one comes on strong and then they can sneak the contest.
0:37:48 And so it’s really difficult, but when I was coaching, I was trying to always encourage
0:37:54 that positive attitude for the full four minutes, five minutes, then.
0:37:59 I’ve competed a lot and I’ve always hated that part of myself, when I’m up on points
0:38:03 by a lot, you look at the clock and it’s what you do when you look at the clock.
0:38:08 A minute and a half, you’re really tired, and you kind of quit.
0:38:14 You just defend.
0:38:15 Yeah.
0:38:16 And I hated that part about myself.
0:38:17 You’re saying don’t do it.
0:38:19 Yeah.
0:38:20 Well, as opposed to just go out in a, in judo, that’s a full four big throw, just keep going
0:38:25 for the throw.
0:38:26 In jiu-jitsu, it’s go for the submission, like throw caution, like win in the real way versus
0:38:32 on points.
0:38:33 And I hated that part of my, I mean, mostly underneath that is cowardice induced by exhaustion.
0:38:40 Exhaustion’s the one, isn’t it?
0:38:42 But it is, isn’t it?
0:38:43 It’s a mindset as well.
0:38:45 So actually trying to get your mind positive all the way through.
0:38:50 So I mean, if you listen, when I commentate to Noah, is I say, I hope that they don’t
0:38:56 change the mindset and that they keep on and they are going forward all the time.
0:39:01 And actually they’re then more difficult to catch.
0:39:04 We had one just a couple of weeks ago and he lost in the final second of the contest,
0:39:10 lost the final, he was the only one to score.
0:39:13 He got penalized all the way up two seconds to go and stepped out of the area and, you
0:39:19 know, but he went like that, thinking the bell was just going and the bell went one
0:39:25 second after he actually stepped out.
0:39:28 So he got penalized, lost the match and lost all of the points for qualification.
0:39:34 So it was, you know, that’s paying high price, that’s paying high price.
0:39:40 Yeah.
0:39:41 I mean, there’s a thin line between triumph and tragedy and in those competitions, but
0:39:47 especially at the Olympic Games.
0:39:50 So let’s just stick on 81 world championship.
0:39:53 What did it feel like to win that world championship?
0:39:56 Like, and also getting an on-bar, just a Japanese player, Jimmy told me your arms were exhausted.
0:40:02 Yeah.
0:40:03 I mean, you just, the thing is, is sometimes, you know, when you’re going, when it’s competitive
0:40:08 as well, you know, hours is a different intensity to like, you just, where you can take time
0:40:14 a little bit, hours is, bang, it’s transitioning from standing down.
0:40:18 You’ve got 10, 15 seconds to go in there.
0:40:21 You go in 100%.
0:40:22 It’s a bit like running, you know, full-out for 10 seconds, like, and then you’ve got
0:40:29 to decide then, especially if they’re defending it, whether you let it go.
0:40:35 Because when you get up and your forearms are blown, you know, and you’ve got lactic
0:40:38 acid in there and you’ve still got to grip up because remember, hours is about gripping
0:40:42 as well on the jacket.
0:40:44 So if you can’t grip up, then you can’t gain the advantage, then they can throw you, you
0:40:49 know.
0:40:50 So you have to decide.
0:40:51 I had a massive attack on him and we changed directions four or five times and then I wasn’t
0:41:00 going to let him go.
0:41:01 But I still, you know, when I was turning him there, I had to decide, am I going to go
0:41:07 all out for this and, and just, or, you know, like there has been occasions when I’ve kind
0:41:12 of released it to just, you know, for a minute to go and just lock out.
0:41:17 Yeah.
0:41:18 So, so what you’re saying on the feet, there was a change of direction of all different
0:41:21 kinds of attempts.
0:41:22 And then you went to the ground and that’s, so what was that?
0:41:24 Do you remember that decision of like, okay, am I going to finish this?
0:41:28 Yeah, I knew it.
0:41:29 I just, as soon as I climbed his back and, and then I thought he’s not going, he’s not
0:41:34 going, I’m not going to let him up, you know, so I was just changing, changing, you know,
0:41:38 something in my head was going, don’t, don’t, you know, just stick on him.
0:41:42 And then it’s always about pressure on the arm and, and I just, you know, and of course
0:41:47 he was like that, you know, we’re defending, you know, he was almost total bridge, trying
0:41:53 to get out of it.
0:41:54 Did it start in turtle and then like, did you start it in turtle because I, I did an
0:41:58 attack came back out of the attack and then he went on to his front and then I was on
0:42:04 his back and then I started the opening and just went for it just, I was, it was an automatic
0:42:10 transition.
0:42:11 So I mean, the transitions are what we teach, you know, because the ones that are quicker
0:42:16 down with the transitions are the ones that catch it.
0:42:18 That’s our Neuwaza.
0:42:19 You know, our groundwork is the transition from standing down to ground and very, you
0:42:24 know, we don’t have a situation where you can kind of work your way in.
0:42:29 You are in or you’re, you’re not in, you’re standing, you know, so you’ve got to make
0:42:33 sure that you’re in.
0:42:34 And so I had, I was just on his back like a leech and I never let him go.
0:42:39 So you see, I mean, yeah, so that’s where the arm bars, that’s where the attacks on
0:42:42 the ground, which is called Neuwaza happens in the transition at that level, at that
0:42:47 high world class level.
0:42:49 Yeah.
0:42:50 I mean, it was no muggy though.
0:42:51 I think he’d just got third, third place in the all Japan championships, which is all
0:42:56 weight categories.
0:42:57 So he was, he wasn’t a mug, you know, he was, he was strong and I had fought him once before
0:43:02 and, and I knew he was a lefty as well, which was really awkward for me.
0:43:08 Did it feel good?
0:43:09 Better for me than him.
0:43:11 It did.
0:43:12 It felt amazing, you know, because it was almost like all these things, disappointments
0:43:17 and everything had kind of come to this one point where I was at last kind of champion
0:43:25 of the world.
0:43:26 It’s everything I said as a kid that I had no idea how difficult it was going to be.
0:43:30 You know, so as a kid, as a 14 year old kid, I remember saying, I’m going to be world champion.
0:43:35 I’m going to be the best in the world.
0:43:36 I had no idea how difficult that was going to be.
0:43:39 Well, there’s wisdom to that, right?
0:43:41 Like there’s power and stupidity of youth.
0:43:44 I like that.
0:43:45 Right?
0:43:46 Yeah, it is.
0:43:47 Just like I’m going to be a world champion.
0:43:48 I’m going to win this without knowing how hard it is.
0:43:50 And then once you go after it, it’s your trap.
0:43:55 You’re going to have to do the work.
0:43:56 Yeah.
0:43:57 Well, I mean, you still look with parents as well, you know, parents, you know, how
0:44:01 little Johnny is, you know, he’s amazing and he’s this, that and the other.
0:44:04 They have no idea what’s, you know, out there.
0:44:07 I remember the very first time I stepped out 1974 into the European cadets.
0:44:14 And I remember that we were fighting.
0:44:18 I’d only ever fought in Great Britain.
0:44:20 I was the top, you know, I was unbeaten in the juniors kids and went out there and there
0:44:27 were these different fighters out there that were treating me with total disdain.
0:44:33 But I remember thinking, how dare they, you know, just, you know, and I’d realized when
0:44:40 I came back from that event, there’s other people out there.
0:44:43 There’s just a whole, you know, and there are different levels of, you know, the majority
0:44:47 of people are just not informed as to what’s out there and the different levels that there
0:44:52 are out there.
0:44:53 Do you remember like a certain opponent that for the first time you felt like, holy shit.
0:44:59 Yeah.
0:45:00 Like somebody just gripped you up and you’re like, this is, there’s another level to this
0:45:05 game.
0:45:06 Ed Zeo was, Ed Zeo was one of them and I fought him, you know, and I beat him in the European
0:45:12 championships.
0:45:13 I beat him in, you know, two times and then lost to him in the Olympic games two months
0:45:18 after I’d beaten him in the European championship.
0:45:20 Wow.
0:45:21 Yeah, yeah.
0:45:22 So it wasn’t, that made it more difficult, right?
0:45:25 Nemesis there.
0:45:26 Yeah.
0:45:27 Wow.
0:45:28 It made it more difficult and so Ed Zeo was one and getting hold of, I remember getting
0:45:36 hold of Nishida of Japan and he had me going up and down and I just, I thought, wow, this
0:45:44 guy is amazing, you know, and I’d never thought, first time I ever fought Japanese in a major
0:45:50 tournament, you know, and I felt the danger, I always talk about the danger when we go
0:45:56 out to Japan to train, I could go probably months without getting thrown in training
0:46:04 here in Europe and I go to Japan, you know, everybody’s throwing you, you know, and that’s
0:46:10 difficult to accept and the reason that kind of danger and that kind of a feeling of danger
0:46:19 is something that puts a real edge on, you know, and so that was first time when I got
0:46:23 hold of Nishida, I thought, oh my God, you know, this guy, you know, it didn’t matter
0:46:28 which way he was turning like that, he stretched out and I thought this, I want to do this,
0:46:36 you know, and then I ended up fighting him again in Japan.
0:46:39 So that feeling of danger is really interesting, it’s like I’ve, you know, did Rondori with
0:46:45 a lot of world-class people from different parts of the world, including Illyceliatus
0:46:51 and like there’s a certain part like Eastern European Judo, you feel like you’re screwed
0:46:57 the whole way through, like the gripping, you really feel it in the gripping.
0:47:01 It’s the gripping that doesn’t.
0:47:03 But in with Japanese, like really good Japanese style Jidoka, you don’t, it’s like, it’s a
0:47:09 terrifying calmness, at least the experiences that I’ve had, you don’t really feel it in
0:47:14 the gripping, you just feel like anywhere you step, you’re getting thrown.
0:47:18 It’s a different.
0:47:19 It’s a different thing, isn’t it?
0:47:20 It’s a different thing.
0:47:21 So, I mean, mine was kind of a mixture, I liked it to be a mixture because there was,
0:47:27 the gripping is definitely the key point.
0:47:30 So if you get high level guys that are gripping up, and I always used to put this to the referees
0:47:36 when we were doing referee seminars, when we first started them.
0:47:40 And I’d say how many, because like they would referee to their understanding of the match.
0:47:47 So they were penalizing for certain grips that were, you know, and actually, so as an
0:47:52 ex-athlete at high level, I would say, have you ever gripped up with high level, all right?
0:47:59 Because if you haven’t, you need to do it.
0:48:02 Because then you will understand why they do certain things with the grips.
0:48:06 Because these guys are like, you know, when somebody grips you and you think, you know,
0:48:12 you’re going to go, when Eliadis puts his arm over your back, all right?
0:48:15 I mean, you know, you’re going to go up and over, you know, you’re going to go over, you
0:48:19 know, that’s it.
0:48:20 It’s a cool feeling.
0:48:21 It’s like whenever.
0:48:22 Not for me.
0:48:23 I understand.
0:48:24 But it’s like, I mean, because it’s not, it feels way more powerful than it should.
0:48:31 It’s weird.
0:48:32 I don’t know.
0:48:33 You want to attribute it to strength and all that kind of stuff.
0:48:35 I mean, people say you have like immense upper body strength, but it’s probably something
0:48:39 else.
0:48:40 It’s like technique.
0:48:41 It’s some kind of weird.
0:48:42 It’s a mix of everything.
0:48:43 It’s like something hardened through lots of battles and randorian, that kind of stuff.
0:48:48 Yeah.
0:48:49 But it’s cool that humans are able to generate that kind of power.
0:48:52 It’s cool.
0:48:53 When I was 84 Olympics, but I’m just going to go there now just quickly.
0:48:58 But there was, we had a freestyle wrestler, he’s American actually, but he had the English
0:49:06 nationality.
0:49:07 So he competed for Noel Loban, his name is, and he competed for Great Britain.
0:49:12 He got third place at the Olympics in 84.
0:49:16 But he was training.
0:49:17 We were training at Budokai and he was training, he came to do some judo and put jacket on.
0:49:24 And of course he was training with some of the lower levels and he was really handling
0:49:28 himself well.
0:49:30 And then he said, I need to feel, you know, when we did “Randory”, you know, so he did
0:49:37 some “Randory” with me.
0:49:39 And I immediately thought, I got to catch it.
0:49:42 I got to stop single leg and double leg because he was really quick, right?
0:49:46 So strong as well, 90 something kilos, he was like, you know, he’s a big guy.
0:49:52 So I caught a sleeve immediately caught and controlled him and then he couldn’t start,
0:49:58 right?
0:49:59 So he said, I needed to feel the difference.
0:50:01 So then I thought, I better reciprocate this.
0:50:06 So I said, well, you know, so we did the “Randory” and I throw him a couple of times.
0:50:10 He said, I’m really glad we did that.
0:50:12 So then I said, I need to feel the difference as well.
0:50:14 So we take the jackets off.
0:50:16 So we took the jackets off and he was a nightmare.
0:50:19 This guy was a nightmare and like a monster.
0:50:22 You know, he was like single-legging me.
0:50:24 And you know, it was just totally different.
0:50:26 You know, so it was like the jacket makes a massive difference, huge difference to something,
0:50:34 you know, and people think it’s just the jacket that we’re wearing, but it isn’t.
0:50:40 It’s our only tool, actually.
0:50:42 Yeah.
0:50:43 And it’s control.
0:50:44 I mean, it’s a way of establishing control over another body and it’s a whole art form
0:50:50 and a science.
0:50:51 And I don’t even know if you understand it really, you understand it sort of subconsciously
0:50:56 through time.
0:50:57 Yeah.
0:50:58 Because I get so much involved because pulling on one part of the jacket pulls other parts
0:51:02 of the jacket.
0:51:03 Yeah.
0:51:04 So that’s probably insane to understand.
0:51:06 It’s absolutely insane.
0:51:07 And then, you know, they changed the rules for a little while and they changed the rules
0:51:11 so that you couldn’t hold, you know, that certain grips were not allowed, they only allowed
0:51:18 certain amount of time and there were a lot of penalties for them.
0:51:21 You know, and then, you know, they had some of the ex-fighters into the referee commission.
0:51:27 And so we were pushing for just let them grip, you know, because that’s our game.
0:51:34 You know, that’s what makes us different.
0:51:35 You know, again, if grip up with somebody like, so they were on about Teddy Rene.
0:51:40 Yeah.
0:51:41 Teddy Rene comes out, takes the sleeve, big arm over the top and then, you know, he throws
0:51:46 people, right?
0:51:47 So they were saying, yeah, but stop.
0:51:49 You can’t stop him doing it.
0:51:51 This guy is six foot nine and he is built like Garth, you know, he’s like, and not only that,
0:51:59 he’s skillful as well, you know, and he’s got that mentality of a winner.
0:52:03 He’s got that mentality of a winner that he just wins important matches.
0:52:07 And he goes over the top of the grip.
0:52:09 Did they, where’s that land now in terms of rules over the top?
0:52:12 Because those are some of the most epic, awesome types of grips, just like over the top, big
0:52:18 grab.
0:52:19 Yeah.
0:52:20 Well, as long as they’re throw from it, so they can take any grip, as long as you move
0:52:24 them and then catch them kind of action, reaction, really, you know, as long as you catch them
0:52:29 on the move, then you can do it.
0:52:31 So as long as you’re not using it to stall or that kind of stuff.
0:52:34 Yeah.
0:52:35 You can’t block out.
0:52:36 Yeah.
0:52:37 So I mean, if I, so like, for example, if I’ve got a dominant grip on you and I just block
0:52:41 out and I just stop, I just stop you attacking me.
0:52:45 So then what?
0:52:46 I get you three penalties, get you off and you haven’t done an attack.
0:52:50 So we’ve got to stop that.
0:52:51 You can’t have that.
0:52:52 Yeah.
0:52:53 Yeah.
0:52:54 Definitely.
0:52:55 You were the favorite to win the 1984 Olympics, but you got silver.
0:52:59 I watched that match several times.
0:53:01 You’re probably having, have it playing in your head.
0:53:04 So there is a nice change of direction by your opponent, German Frank Wonecki.
0:53:10 Yeah.
0:53:11 It was a fake right Uchimada and then to a left drop, Sayonagi.
0:53:19 How did that loss feel?
0:53:22 Devastating is not, you know, it’s not enough really because, you know, the strange thing
0:53:28 was, is coming into that Olympics was tired, really tired.
0:53:33 So my mental state wasn’t the best, wasn’t certainly the same as it was coming into
0:53:38 the previous.
0:53:42 And I, I remember thinking I just need to get this over with and then I can have a break
0:53:48 and just have a rest, you know, and, and that’s totally the wrong attitude.
0:53:53 It’s just not, not good for, for going into an Olympic Games.
0:53:58 And so I, I was coming in there with a different mindset.
0:54:03 And I remember every match that I had, I was winning well, but I was winning with a struggle.
0:54:12 You know, it was, it was really not, I’d fought Novak and I was pretty of France, who was
0:54:19 one of the strongest physically.
0:54:22 That was in the quarterfinals.
0:54:23 I beat Brett Barron by an Ipon, I armlocked him.
0:54:28 I won my first match by Ipon as well.
0:54:31 And then Michel Novak, I was fighting a France and I was lucky to, to, to win it.
0:54:38 I was up, I would scored on him, but I was like, starting to defend and just everything
0:54:43 that I talked to you about, you know, and then just about held on and, and then I won
0:54:48 and, you know, so him and I were talking afterwards, like some years afterwards and
0:54:53 he said, I was close.
0:54:54 Wasn’t I?
0:54:55 I was, but not close enough.
0:54:59 I didn’t mean it, but I had to say it.
0:55:03 Of course, of course.
0:55:06 And no, he was right.
0:55:07 You know, and it was one of those.
0:55:09 So it’s through to the semifinal.
0:55:11 I fought Lesak in the semifinal of, and I’d fought him in the semifinal of the world.
0:55:18 He holds as well.
0:55:20 I’d never gone time with him, you know, I’d never, I’d always beaten him fairly easily
0:55:25 and with by Ipon and that went time.
0:55:29 So I was, you know, I was just, just glad to get it done.
0:55:33 And I was in the final then against Frank Vinnicka of Germany and I’d beaten Vinnicka
0:55:38 before, but he was just a young German coming through.
0:55:42 And when I started the final, I was, I thought, right, I’ve just, and I started all my techniques
0:55:50 just that little bit off.
0:55:52 Nothing was coordinated just it was just, I can’t really explain why it was just a little
0:55:58 bit off.
0:55:59 I see it so often now with a lot of the guys that are going for second, third Olympic Games.
0:56:05 And I see their, their technique just not quite there and they’re struggling and and
0:56:10 I know when they’re, you know, I know what they’re going through and I kind of empathize
0:56:13 with them.
0:56:14 Well, you were, it felt like you were dominating that final.
0:56:16 I dominated it.
0:56:17 Yeah, I was winning.
0:56:18 Yeah.
0:56:19 And actually, if it had gone another minute and a half, it would have been all over and
0:56:23 I would have been Olympic champion and it would have been done.
0:56:25 He wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, right?
0:56:27 Cause he would have fought me really, really well and he would have, you know, we talked
0:56:32 about it afterwards and he said, he was just my good day for me, you know, and he knows
0:56:36 he was very respectful.
0:56:38 This guy is very respectful.
0:56:39 He was the surprised almost, I mean, you’re not almost, he was very surprised and celebrating
0:56:44 like a surprise.
0:56:45 He was jumping up and down like, you know, he just, and, you know, you can look at that
0:56:50 kind of you go, well, it wasn’t upon, but, you know, would I got it back?
0:56:53 I don’t know.
0:56:54 But it’s, I think that actually taking the pressure off because that was another thing
0:56:59 as well.
0:57:00 Pressure of being favorite, you know, and I see that with a lot of them and you know,
0:57:04 the great champions, the ones that keep coming through, Capellic, there’s a guy, you know,
0:57:09 he can look very ordinary and then comes the big tournament and he’ll win it.
0:57:18 The tragedy of the Olympic games.
0:57:20 I mean, you were the favorite and just like that, like split moment, you lost it.
0:57:26 Split moment, devastating and lived it probably not every day, but, you know, Nicky, my wife
0:57:34 will tell you that woken up in sweats and, you know, and I think they contributed as
0:57:42 well because I had a period of my, my life after where I was drinking too much and, you
0:57:48 know, and I think kind of when I look back kind of led into that kind of dark period
0:57:56 of my life, you know, and I never ever, ever, you know, did it go through my mind anything
0:58:02 else, but it definitely affected me and I was on a downward kind of spiral in a lot
0:58:08 of different ways and would still even, you know, we have an amazing marriage and we have
0:58:15 an amazing family and everything’s great, but I still wake up sometimes and I’ll say,
0:58:20 I’ve just dreamt, you know, that and it’s the same reoccurring dream where I’m trying
0:58:25 to get somewhere and I’m trying to put it right, you know, and I’ve got this chance
0:58:30 of putting this Olympic final right, you know, in, in, in this dream I’ve got a chance
0:58:35 of doing it, but I can’t get there and the traffic stop in me or something stops me and
0:58:40 I, you know, and then I wake up and I’m sweating and it’s, and you think, well, after all this
0:58:45 time, that’s not possible, but it is and it happens.
0:58:48 Yeah.
0:58:49 I mean, in the match itself, there’s that feeling for me just watching it, like you’re, you’re
0:58:54 going for throws, you’re, you’re almost getting there with the throws and it’s almost like
0:58:58 he’s going for a kind of crappy jammata and then you’re just like, you stop and you’re
0:59:03 blocking it and all of a sudden, I mean, that’s the beauty of the Olympics.
0:59:07 He finds it in himself to switch.
0:59:10 Yeah.
0:59:11 And that like against a favorite against sort of the great British judoka just finds the
0:59:18 perfect drop sandalgy.
0:59:20 Well, you know, his, his team doctor and coach, he came up to me afterwards and said, I’m
0:59:26 just really sorry.
0:59:28 And that’s all they said is I’m just really sorry.
0:59:31 They were sorry because, you know, obviously the obvious sadness about that, you know,
0:59:36 and of course everybody takes their, you know, I went actually two and a was it three weeks
0:59:44 later, the German open.
0:59:47 So he had to compete in the German open three weeks later.
0:59:51 So I went over to fight him and, and beat him in the final of the German open and it didn’t
0:59:58 do anything for me because it was a much tighter match.
1:00:02 He was a lot closer.
1:00:03 He had a lot more confidence coming in.
1:00:05 So he fought me a lot differently and then it was me pulling it back and just managing
1:00:10 to win in the final.
1:00:12 And I thought, well, that might appease, it appeased nothing, didn’t do anything.
1:00:17 When you give your whole life to judo, just, and your love of winning, that’s crazy how
1:00:23 much the Olympic games mean.
1:00:26 It means so much.
1:00:27 And I think, you know, but I, I’ve got to, and I’ve got to say this, unless it’s honestly,
1:00:32 you know, if it meant that if I’d have won that Olympic games and it had to change my
1:00:35 life into a different direction, which I probably would have not competed in the 88 Olympic
1:00:41 games then.
1:00:42 All right.
1:00:43 So if it had changed my life and then I didn’t have, I didn’t meet my wife and I, you know,
1:00:47 I didn’t have my family that I’ve got now, there’s no, you know, I would, I wouldn’t
1:00:52 swap that, what I’ve got now for anything.
1:00:55 Well, part of the demons that you’ve gotten to know because of those losses is part of
1:01:02 probably the central reason they made you the man you are, a legend of the sport.
1:01:08 You could have been not that, because an Olympic gold is just an Olympic gold.
1:01:13 Yeah.
1:01:14 And it is, isn’t it?
1:01:15 You know, and I think that there’s a lot of Olympic champions and world champions that
1:01:21 win and then are forgotten.
1:01:24 And I said to Nikki, I said, my wife, I said, I don’t want to be forgotten and I want to
1:01:30 be remembered.
1:01:31 So if I’m going to do anything, anything I do, if I’m going to do commentary or whatever
1:01:36 it is or coaching, I want to do coaching to a high level and I want to commentate at
1:01:42 a high level.
1:01:43 So the first commentary I ever did it was terrible and I just thought I’ve got to do
1:01:48 better than this.
1:01:49 And I thought, I just, I need to do it well and I’ve got to do it professionally.
1:01:56 So in the book, a game of throws, you have a chapter titled lessons and losing.
1:02:02 So what are some of the lessons here?
1:02:04 What are the some of the deeper lessons you’ve pulled out of losing?
1:02:08 I think great champions are made up of the people that handle it in the right way.
1:02:16 And you could say, well, I don’t like losing and I, you know, and you could throw your
1:02:21 dummy out the pram and you can be a bad loser in front of everybody.
1:02:26 And actually, people pick up on that very, very quickly.
1:02:28 You know what it’s like in broadcasting, right?
1:02:31 Somebody has a bad word to say about somebody and yeah, and it, but actually the ones that
1:02:37 endear themselves to you are the ones that handle it in the right way.
1:02:41 The correct way.
1:02:42 It doesn’t mean that you’ve got to like it.
1:02:44 I didn’t like it.
1:02:46 And I thought that I handled it certainly in later years in the right way and I like
1:02:53 to see athletes do it in the right way.
1:02:55 You know, and I think that’s, it’s a make or break situation.
1:02:58 It’s not all the contests they win, it’s the one that they lose and then how they pick
1:03:02 themselves up and handle themselves after.
1:03:05 So I think that that is a big one for me.
1:03:08 And also, I mean, I went through, you know, obviously a later divorce and that was difficult
1:03:16 on my son, really difficult on Ashley.
1:03:20 And then I was, and I think that some of that was the fact that I was, you know, kind of,
1:03:25 I wasn’t drinking all the time, but I was drinking in excess at the wrong times, you
1:03:31 know, and I think that that’s what a lot of people do sometimes is that they use it for
1:03:35 the wrong reasons, you know, and I used to hear it, I hear it now all the time, you know,
1:03:41 and is that, you know, I need to knock the edge off and I need to just forget and I need
1:03:46 to, you know, and you need to be in a fuzzy place for a while.
1:03:51 And I had a lot of time in fuzzy place and I needed to get rid of that, you know, and
1:03:56 I needed to clear my head.
1:03:58 Where was that place?
1:04:01 Some of the lower points in your life that you’ve reached mentally?
1:04:07 I think, you know, definitely, you know, the fact that my marriage, first marriage didn’t
1:04:16 work, you know, and that was, you know, it’s a mix of things that, you know, between us
1:04:21 and and then, you know, so that’s not where I wanted to be at the time.
1:04:27 And the effects that it had on my son, and it took a long time for him then to come around
1:04:36 and to trust me again, you know, and and to have belief.
1:04:41 He always had belief in me, but to trust me again.
1:04:45 And then I think that that was low.
1:04:48 And I think that, you know, what I look back is that a lot of my bad decisions were when
1:04:53 I was in that fuzzy kind of haze and that it got progressively worse, that got progressively
1:05:00 worse to the degree where it was, you know, trying to hide it and trying to hide how much
1:05:07 and I was kind of a functioning kind of drunk, you know, I think you could probably say that
1:05:15 and I, you know, I was functioning, I was still able to I was still training most days
1:05:21 crazily enough, you know, I was training to kind of mask it and cover it.
1:05:25 And that was probably my savior that I was still, you know, because I remember I said
1:05:30 to my wife, I said to Nikki, I’m probably the fittest if I’m, you know, a drunk, then
1:05:35 I’m a fittest drunk in the world.
1:05:37 She said, yeah, you probably are actually, you know, I was in great condition for a drunk.
1:05:42 So the fuzzy haze, what was your mind?
1:05:46 Did you have periods of depression?
1:05:50 I had periods of depression.
1:05:53 I can honestly say that my depression wasn’t that bad, although I did, you know, when it’s
1:06:00 like anything that gives you an up, you know, it gives you an even bigger down, doesn’t
1:06:04 it?
1:06:05 You know, and so I hated that feeling and also hated myself for letting it happen because
1:06:13 I have got this really, it’s a bizarre, I don’t know whether you can call it a power,
1:06:20 but I have the ability to be able to say, stop, and I can just, and that’s what I did
1:06:27 in the end.
1:06:29 In the end, there was an incident when I was working for Belgium, Judo, and there was an
1:06:35 incident, it was Christmas, it was, I tell you exactly the day, it was 20th December,
1:06:41 and me and a Belgian coach, we got absolutely hammered, but we were at the wrong place and
1:06:49 we got noticed and so I remember they pulled me up in front of this board and I looked
1:06:57 down at these guys and half of them were people I didn’t want to be in that situation with,
1:07:04 you know, they’re not people that I respected and they’re not people that I trusted.
1:07:10 So I said, if you’re going to sack me, sack me, but I’ll promise you now that I will just,
1:07:19 this is it, I’ll stop, I’m just going to stop, I’ve decided.
1:07:24 On the way back in the car, I rang Nicky up my wife and I said, whatever you’re here
1:07:30 now, whatever, I’m just going to stop.
1:07:32 So that was it, stopped.
1:07:36 You just saw the moment and said, stop, stop.
1:07:41 So that fuzzy place, what advice could you give to people about how to overcome that
1:07:48 dark place, the depression, whether it has to do with drinking or not?
1:07:52 I think if it’s to do with drinking, all I can say is that the two days or a week into
1:08:04 not drinking, you’ll feel different, you know, it’ll make a physical difference and you’ll
1:08:10 like that physical difference.
1:08:13 And then from a mental perspective as well, because I think that, you know, you have a
1:08:19 massive downer, you know, and I think that that must be because of drugs as well, because
1:08:25 I had a situation with my brother, you know, he was like, you know, he was professional
1:08:31 wrestling and the drugs was an element there.
1:08:34 And, you know, so I’d never touched a drug or even seen one in my life.
1:08:40 But you know, I’d let the alcohol side go too far and then decided never to do that.
1:08:46 So then I guess I had people ringing me up, you know, saying, you know, how can we stop?
1:08:52 You know, so when they say, can I have a word?
1:08:55 Can I discuss something with you?
1:08:57 And I know then what they want to discuss with me, you know, and the thing is, is that
1:09:02 I would say, you know, if you stop, then feel the effects of it and it will make a difference
1:09:11 to your everyday life and that will make a massive difference.
1:09:15 And I think about anybody who kind of, you know, is down all the time is to find the
1:09:20 cause of what’s pushing you down, you know what I mean?
1:09:24 And trying, trying to attack that, I mean, because it’s never, somebody once said to
1:09:32 me, they said, whatever you got, you know, we’ve got something special.
1:09:38 I mean, we have a great life and I’ve had a great competition record.
1:09:44 You know, it could have been better, but it was great.
1:09:47 But I’ve had success with my business and we’re still out there and we have a great
1:09:54 life.
1:09:55 We travel all the world and, you know, there’s people out there that would live in your house
1:10:00 at the drop of an hour, wherever you are, they drive your car, you know, no matter what
1:10:05 car it is, some people haven’t got a car, you know, and whatever food you’re having
1:10:10 and you’re moaning about food, right, that somebody out there that would take that and
1:10:14 gladly eat that.
1:10:15 All right.
1:10:16 So there’s always somebody worse off than you.
1:10:18 And I think that we tend to sometimes, you know, look at the things that we haven’t got
1:10:23 rather than the things we have gone.
1:10:25 Yeah.
1:10:26 It’s a skill probably to be grateful for the things you have, exactly as you said.
1:10:30 And sometimes the little things like food and cars and all that kind of stuff, just
1:10:37 to have gratitude for and family, all this kind of stuff.
1:10:41 But still, you know, having talked to a bunch of Olympic athletes, there is a, you know,
1:10:49 when you give so much of your life to winning and then you lose, sometimes even when you
1:10:55 win, but when you lose at the very top, it’s a tough, tough, like tough thing to go through.
1:11:04 The most difficult thing I think for anybody is when they have to decide when to stop.
1:11:09 Yeah.
1:11:10 Yeah.
1:11:11 You know, and all of a sudden, and I see the ones that are going to second Olympic games
1:11:16 and then third Olympic, and the ones that are there and they’re holding on and they’re
1:11:21 in their thirties now, different to when they were 19 years of age, you know, 30-something
1:11:28 is different to 19.
1:11:30 And then what are you going to do afterwards, you know, and then how do you become just
1:11:34 a normal person?
1:11:35 You’re never going to be a normal person as such.
1:11:39 But I think you’ve got to do normal things, you know, and then you’ve got to remember
1:11:42 the first time that when I finished competition, I had good sponsors.
1:11:46 This was, you know, 40 years ago, but I had two really good sponsorships.
1:11:53 Vitamin Company and also Judoki Company, and I had a car and, you know, I had money.
1:12:00 I just, and I was going all over the world.
1:12:03 I was successful.
1:12:04 And then I stopped and they took everything back.
1:12:08 They took my car.
1:12:10 And they did it within two weeks as well.
1:12:12 They stopped my funding, you know, and the Vitamin Company said, “Thank you very much.
1:12:16 It’s been a great, you know, we’ve done well by you.
1:12:20 Bye-bye.”
1:12:21 This was after your last Olympics?
1:12:23 ’88 Olympics.
1:12:24 Yeah, ’88.
1:12:25 You just, you know, when that finished and then that was it, you know, and then it’s
1:12:28 right.
1:12:29 Okay.
1:12:30 First time I had to go in there and buy a tracksuit and a pair of training shoes.
1:12:33 Yeah.
1:12:34 Wow.
1:12:35 Yeah, those are different.
1:12:36 It’s sitting there in the evening by yourself.
1:12:39 So you go from seven days a week or six days a week going into the gym and, you know, you’re
1:12:44 working out the dojo, and then you don’t have to do it.
1:12:49 You know, and that’s why you get a lot of, when they’ve finished competition, they’ve
1:12:53 finished that 30 to 40, it’s still, I mean, Ilias is still doing it now.
1:12:59 He’s still in there and he’s still, you know, because he can, right?
1:13:02 Yeah.
1:13:03 Okay.
1:13:04 And it’s natural.
1:13:05 I did exactly the same.
1:13:06 And then like I say, you just get to an age and you just think, “Well, I’m just going
1:13:10 to kind of take a step back.”
1:13:13 Which is why like, there’s certain athletes like, Rio Kotani, never stops, it just dominates
1:13:20 for 14 years.
1:13:22 Probably one of the winningest athletes in Judo.
1:13:26 Yeah.
1:13:27 Seven time world champ, two time Olympic champ, medaled at five Olympics.
1:13:31 So it’s always impressive.
1:13:32 Never stopped.
1:13:33 Never stopped.
1:13:34 Yeah.
1:13:35 So that’s an option.
1:13:36 Yeah.
1:13:37 If you’re like the greatest athlete.
1:13:38 It’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?
1:13:39 Just to see what they’re doing now, you know, because at some stage you have to get a normal
1:13:44 job.
1:13:45 You do have to stop.
1:13:46 You do have to stop, you know, at some stage you have to decide what you’re going to do,
1:13:49 you know.
1:13:50 And we, you know, it’s either into coaching, the Judo is either to coaching or if you’re
1:13:55 not in coaching, then it’s into something to do with the media.
1:14:02 And you know, I was lucky that I, it was just by accident really with the commentary.
1:14:06 I really said, would you do a voiceover?
1:14:09 So I did this voiceover and that was back in 1982, I did that.
1:14:14 So you’ve been commentating since 1982.
1:14:18 I did some voiceovers.
1:14:19 I wouldn’t call it commentating, but I did some voiceovers and then I did some, we did
1:14:25 some different European championships, world championship kind of events and I did the
1:14:31 voiceovers for it.
1:14:33 And the way that it was done, that it was more narration.
1:14:38 And so it kind of turned into then somebody asked me to do an event and when you listen
1:14:43 to the intonation of the voice and stuff like that, it wasn’t like it is now.
1:14:48 But I guess that’s just something that developed as a, you know, because then it was coming
1:14:52 from the heart and I, you know, started to get excited and just do my thing.
1:14:58 And it was just me really, just my style.
1:15:00 Well, I’ve listened to your commentary from a while back.
1:15:03 I don’t know if it’s the 80s, but it’s still there.
1:15:06 I think it’s timing as well.
1:15:07 Isn’t it?
1:15:08 It’s like, you know, you get your timing a bit better and know when to go in, when to
1:15:12 come out, when to say something, when not, you know, and I think that in the early days,
1:15:18 I tended to think, I tended to want to talk all the time and you don’t have to do that.
1:15:24 Oh, so no, we want to shut up.
1:15:27 That’s the key, isn’t it?
1:15:28 Yeah.
1:15:29 Part of the drama is in the silence, building up to the setup and the throw and all that
1:15:35 kind of stuff.
1:15:36 But also you’re very good at while radiating passion, being very precise and specific about
1:15:43 the details of the throw and the setup and why something worked and didn’t.
1:15:47 Yeah, I think there’s two kinds of commentating.
1:15:51 You can commentate what you see and then you commentate what people can’t see, you know?
1:15:57 And so if you’ve got somebody that is not really understanding of what’s happening in
1:16:02 the inner part of the game, so it might be a technical thing or it might be the tactical
1:16:08 part of the play here that’s going on and if you can introduce that as well, then you’ve
1:16:14 got an advantage.
1:16:17 Quick pause.
1:16:18 I need a breath and break.
1:16:19 Okay.
1:16:20 Good stuff.
1:16:21 So we just took a little break and went to judoTV.com, which is, I guess, an IGF website
1:16:27 and IGF is the organization behind a lot of the big judo events of the world.
1:16:32 And I just signed up.
1:16:33 You should sign up too.
1:16:34 It’s great.
1:16:35 Absolutely.
1:16:36 You can sign up.
1:16:37 Cheaper the price.
1:16:38 Cheaper the price.
1:16:39 Yeah.
1:16:40 And you can watch basically any match from the grand slams and go back through history,
1:16:46 I guess.
1:16:47 Yeah, I’ve got to say like, I mean, everybody, still people saying to me, “Oh, you know,
1:16:52 we need more judo on television,” they’ve got judo on television every other week that
1:16:57 they can access all of the top people in all the top events, and it costs $100 a year to
1:17:04 access everything.
1:17:05 And they can play all the videos.
1:17:07 I mean, we’ve just accessed this here, the Paris Tournament, and we’re going to have
1:17:12 a look at Teddy Rene, but it’s so cheap at the price.
1:17:17 So now at Paris Grand Slam, 2024, Teddy Rene final, by the way, super cool, like you click
1:17:22 on the draw, and you can just look at any of the matches, go to the bottom of the finals
1:17:30 and go…
1:17:31 Yeah, to anyone.
1:17:32 Any one of them.
1:17:33 That’s so cool.
1:17:34 That’s really well done.
1:17:35 Really well done interface.
1:17:37 Anyway, let me at first ask the ridiculous big question, who do you think is the greatest
1:17:40 of all time?
1:17:41 Teddy Rene and the writing?
1:17:42 He’s the greatest judo winner of all time.
1:17:46 However, that there’s no doubt.
1:17:48 I mean, and I think if you asked him whether he was the greatest judo man in the world
1:17:57 of all time, he would say, “No, I’m not,” and he’s not the greatest judo man.
1:18:03 There are people with more beautiful judo in some ways, although he’s got great technique,
1:18:10 but he is the ultimate winner.
1:18:13 That time, World Champ, two-time gold medalist in the Olympics, I guess two-time bronze medalist.
1:18:21 He’s probably going…
1:18:22 Is he’s going to Paris?
1:18:23 Yeah.
1:18:24 He’s going after it again.
1:18:25 So, he’s right here.
1:18:26 I mean…
1:18:27 He’s right there.
1:18:28 This was just a couple of months ago, and then last week, he was out again, and he won
1:18:33 again.
1:18:34 You think he gets gold medal this time?
1:18:35 There’s people getting closer to him, right?
1:18:37 Because he’s obviously, you know, he’s age-wise, and the amount of time that he’s been there,
1:18:43 he’s obviously somebody that is starting not quite at his best as he was when he was younger,
1:18:53 but he…
1:18:54 Like I say, he still puts it on the line.
1:18:55 He lays it on the line every single time, and then not only does he lay it on the line,
1:19:01 but he beats them all, you know?
1:19:02 And last week, he just beat Saito, who was a young up-and-coming Japanese fighter, and
1:19:09 he beat him in the final.
1:19:10 It was close, and he did well.
1:19:11 There are certain people, the smaller ones, actually, not the taller ones, because like,
1:19:17 you know, we’re saying about the big arm over the top that he likes, and the dominant grip
1:19:21 that he likes, there are people that can give him a hard time.
1:19:25 Now, if at the Olympic Games, he has two or three of those on the trot, it might work
1:19:30 against him, you know?
1:19:31 And it’s by no means an absolute certainty that he’s going to win the Olympic gold medal,
1:19:37 but he’s got to be one of the favorites, top favorite, you know?
1:19:41 No matter what happens now, Teddy Renea is the greatest winner that, you know, and if
1:19:46 you asked the great Yamashita, he would say the same.
1:19:50 You know?
1:19:51 There’s nobody that’s, you know, and Yamashita was unbeaten in international competition,
1:19:54 and I trained with Yamashita a lot over a two-year period, and got to know him quite
1:20:01 well.
1:20:02 And he was one of the greatest of all times, you know?
1:20:04 For me, he was one of the greatest judo men, and I’m talking about from a technical point
1:20:10 of view, from a spectacular judo point of view, understanding the fundamental principles
1:20:18 of how techniques work, sometimes having, you know, different techniques that work for
1:20:23 you, you know?
1:20:24 So if one doesn’t work, and one particular direction doesn’t work, you can change the
1:20:28 direction completely.
1:20:30 In case people don’t know, Yamashita is this legendary Jidoka, heavyweight, Teddy Renea,
1:20:36 heavyweight, that’s plus 100 kg.
1:20:39 So he–
1:20:40 He would have caused him all sorts of problems.
1:20:41 Oh, yeah.
1:20:42 That’s cool.
1:20:43 Who do you think wins, Yamashita?
1:20:44 Yes.
1:20:45 I think Yamashita would.
1:20:46 Not worse.
1:20:47 But, you know–
1:20:48 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
1:20:49 You think Yamashita beats Teddy Renea?
1:20:50 I think so.
1:20:52 Strong words.
1:20:53 You think so.
1:20:54 You think so.
1:20:55 Yamashita is on the shorter side, right?
1:20:58 Yeah.
1:20:59 And he finds it more difficult with shorter people, you know?
1:21:01 And so it was– it would have been a very interesting confrontation.
1:21:07 And I think if you asked Yamashita, he would probably say, you know, that Teddy Renea,
1:21:15 he’s very gracious, he’s really gracious.
1:21:18 It would be really good.
1:21:19 It would have been an unbelievable matchup.
1:21:23 And I’ve got to say this, that, you know, Teddy Renea is the greatest winner of all
1:21:29 time.
1:21:30 Competition-wise.
1:21:31 So it’s interesting, both of them, maybe you can correct me, but have this Asodo Gari,
1:21:37 which is kind of a trip that I never understood.
1:21:40 Yeah.
1:21:41 Like, it’s a very tricky thing to do, right?
1:21:45 It’s very easy to do, maybe as a white belt, you roll in.
1:21:49 You can understand.
1:21:50 But like, to do it at the high, high, high level?
1:21:54 You see any of the top guys now, especially if they’re second time out, you know, so like,
1:22:00 they might catch somebody by surprise.
1:22:02 They come out, they go, bang, oh, and you go, that was amazing, right?
1:22:06 But if they fought again 10 minutes later, you go, you’re not going to catch me with
1:22:11 that, right?
1:22:12 You’ve got a different situation here, and so it’s slightly different.
1:22:16 But the best fighters adapt like that.
1:22:21 And they’re able to see a situation, feel the situation, and they attack once and then
1:22:27 go again and attack second, third time.
1:22:30 And in the third time, they make it work.
1:22:32 Yeah.
1:22:33 Both Yamashita and Teddy Renea with Asodo Gari, they’ll just like hit it over and over
1:22:37 in the match.
1:22:38 Yeah.
1:22:39 Sometimes they’ll hit first time and it won’t go, and then you make a readjustment of the
1:22:42 way in.
1:22:43 It’s a little bit like, I mean, if you take a really easy way of understanding it, is
1:22:47 it if we’re shooting at a target, and all of a sudden you start moving that target,
1:22:54 you know, it’s different hitting a moving target, but it’s also different hitting a
1:22:58 moving target that’s trying to hit you as well, and that’s our game, right?
1:23:03 So we’re not only trying to throw a moving target, we’re trying to throw a moving target
1:23:08 that’s trying to throw us.
1:23:09 So it makes it even more difficult.
1:23:11 Yeah.
1:23:12 There’s a few folks who you know what’s coming.
1:23:16 It’s like over and over and over, it’s the same attack anyway with this Uchimara.
1:23:22 It’s like, it’s different.
1:23:24 It’s different.
1:23:25 And there’s not many people like that where it’s like the same attack.
1:23:28 I mean, there’s other attacks also, but they’ll just go after the same thing over and over
1:23:31 and over.
1:23:32 When I watch great athletes, most of them can throw over both flanks, not always going
1:23:38 left and right, you know, although our sport always, I mean, the cat is are always demonstrated
1:23:45 left and right.
1:23:46 So like if you demonstrate, if you do something on one side, you know, then can you demonstrate
1:23:53 it on the other side?
1:23:54 Right?
1:23:55 Okay.
1:23:56 So can you do it equally?
1:23:57 No.
1:23:58 But you do it differently, right?
1:23:59 On the other side.
1:24:00 So, you know, when I’m teaching, I, I don’t teach left and right.
1:24:04 I teach.
1:24:05 So when I was teaching you to do a technique, first thing I’d do is say I need you to take
1:24:10 a sleeve and a lapel.
1:24:11 All right?
1:24:12 So I’d let you decide what was left and right.
1:24:15 Okay?
1:24:16 Because often what happens is we impart on people whether they’re going to be left or
1:24:22 right when we start teaching, you know, you get a lot of teachers do that.
1:24:25 All right?
1:24:26 And they’ll say immediately, are you, what do you write with left or right hand?
1:24:30 And it’s no indicator actually as to how we do judo because I’m left-handed and I do
1:24:35 more predominantly right-handed because I lead off my strongest hand.
1:24:40 And actually most people do, you know, so actually left and right is a bit of a trap
1:24:45 sometimes, you know, when we’re teaching, better to get, you know, because we can go,
1:24:50 so my point was, is that a lot of people can go both flanks.
1:24:55 So they’ll do something over this side and something over this side.
1:24:58 But anyway, it was one sided?
1:25:01 He was one sided, but he could, he could switch it.
1:25:03 So he had a see an Aggie as well on the other side.
1:25:07 So he could switch it if he had to.
1:25:09 Interesting.
1:25:10 Yeah.
1:25:11 And by the way, your opponent in ’84, was he righty or lefty?
1:25:16 He was a righty.
1:25:17 So that drop left, Seyo, where did that come from?
1:25:21 Well, I mean, again, it was, you know, he could have probably in other contests, he’d hit
1:25:26 me with it several times and I just stopped it, you know, and just at the wrong place at
1:25:31 the right time for him, right place in the wrong time for me, right?
1:25:36 That’s life.
1:25:37 Yeah.
1:25:38 Yeah.
1:25:39 All right.
1:25:40 Let’s, let’s watch from Teddy Rene.
1:25:43 This is final of Paris tournament and this is against the Korean.
1:25:49 The Korean had had a great day actually, again, shorter, again, shorter.
1:25:58 So he does find that difficult.
1:25:59 Lefty.
1:26:00 Righty Rene.
1:26:01 Teddy Rene is trying to catch the sleeve.
1:26:04 He’s after the sleeve and then the right arm over the top.
1:26:07 That’s the key point for Teddy Rene.
1:26:09 And of course, what he, what he has done, if he can’t always catch the big, oh, so the
1:26:18 Gary over his right hand side, he’s been doing something to the opposite side.
1:26:27 And the Korean just went for a drop sale and Teddy Rene blocked with the hips.
1:26:35 And he’s, like I say, he has difficulty always against somebody smaller, dropping with the
1:26:43 sea and aggies.
1:26:44 Has Teddy Rene ever been thrown for Epon?
1:26:47 I’ve never seen him thrown for Epon, but he was thrown last week for a nice technique
1:26:53 and he’s being caught more and more.
1:26:55 So he’s getting close.
1:26:56 Yeah.
1:26:57 And to say of in the final of the world championships, they had a strange situation there where
1:27:03 to say of was a, was a technique down and then pulled off a counter and they didn’t
1:27:12 count it.
1:27:13 But then they over, overruled it.
1:27:15 Unfortunately, I was commentating at the time and I, I went for a score for the, for to
1:27:21 say of and anyway, they overruled it and then they awarded a second gold medal to, to say
1:27:27 of.
1:27:28 What can you say about Tamerlan Bashayev who also gave him trouble?
1:27:32 Yeah.
1:27:33 Bashayev and to say of other two that could possibly go to the Olympics.
1:27:37 So that was a close one there from Rene.
1:27:41 That was closest that he’d actually been.
1:27:43 Oh, wow.
1:27:44 So didn’t have the sleeve and he relies on the sleeve greatly.
1:27:49 Big support there in the French in the crowd.
1:27:53 And also, maybe can you explain the penalties for, for stalling?
1:27:57 Yeah.
1:27:58 So if, if they don’t attack, if they’ve got a grip and they’ve got sleeve lapel or they
1:28:02 got two hands on, um, if they’re too passive and they don’t attack, if they’ve got dominant
1:28:07 sleeve grip, they don’t attack, that was quite close as well from the Korean.
1:28:12 So the Korean here, you can see is having a real go, you know, the penalties will come
1:28:16 if they don’t attack at the right time.
1:28:18 If they step outside the yellow area, they’ll get penalized as well.
1:28:22 That, uh, that’s dedication for, uh, absolutely.
1:28:26 I mean, it was really close, wasn’t it?
1:28:28 They’re a nice little Kochi Gary there from the Korean.
1:28:32 And if they touch below the belt line with the arms, so if they, they’re not allowed
1:28:36 to grab the legs, they’ve stopped grabbing the legs.
1:28:41 Wow.
1:28:42 The Koreans really go and Koreans having a real good, uh, go at it.
1:28:46 I guess every single person in that division is probably training for Teddy Rene, right?
1:28:50 You think Teddy Rene has been there a long time, you know, and he’s got another guy here
1:28:54 in the final of the Paris tournament.
1:28:56 He’s got, uh, 18,000 people watching him.
1:28:59 They’re all on Teddy Rene’s side.
1:29:01 They want him to win.
1:29:03 And the Koreans out there on his own with his coach.
1:29:05 But also the pressure that on Teddy Rene, amazing pressure.
1:29:10 You know, we, we interviewed him after this and, uh, he said, I’ve got pressure.
1:29:15 You know, people go, well, is he going to do it at the Olympic games?
1:29:18 Can I do it in Paris?
1:29:20 He wanted to go to Paris.
1:29:21 I mean, really, I mean, the last Olympic games should have been it, shouldn’t it?
1:29:25 The last, should have been the final one, but he’s gone, no, I’ve got to do another
1:29:29 four years.
1:29:30 Two penalties are on the board already for the Korean.
1:29:33 That Korean is really having a great go.
1:29:36 He’s got a little, a bit of a lift on him.
1:29:38 He’s going after it.
1:29:40 He’s really going after it.
1:29:41 You know, it’s a, it’s an amazing effort there from the Korean and, uh, he’s getting
1:29:46 some last minute, uh, information.
1:29:49 I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his coach stood next to him like that, but, uh, it’s
1:29:53 amazing.
1:29:54 He’s six foot six and he’s, he’s about, uh, four foot six.
1:29:58 He’s a, he’s a real pitch.
1:30:00 Full of passion.
1:30:01 I love it.
1:30:02 It’s like screaming.
1:30:03 So, uh, golden score.
1:30:04 How does golden score work?
1:30:06 Can you say?
1:30:07 So the golden score, so if it goes without any point on the board from a throw or a hold
1:30:10 down, uh, or armlock strangle, uh, then it goes into golden score.
1:30:16 So it, two sheetos on the board, a piece, one more mistake now, and it’s going to be
1:30:20 all over.
1:30:21 Oh, wow.
1:30:22 And that’s it.
1:30:23 The, uh, Teddy Rene, just manages to turn it, uh, on the Korean.
1:30:27 And that went really against the run of play, didn’t it?
1:30:32 Yeah.
1:30:33 The Korean did better, you know, but, you know, Teddy Rene is a winner.
1:30:36 Yeah.
1:30:37 Right.
1:30:38 Okay.
1:30:39 Let’s have more, uh, more cheering finds a way to, uh, to score in the, I have to say,
1:30:45 you know, that even when he loses, you know, he’s always graceful.
1:30:48 Yeah.
1:30:49 He doesn’t like it, but he’s graceful.
1:30:51 Yeah.
1:30:52 There was so much love there.
1:30:53 Celebration is great.
1:30:54 It’s great to see.
1:30:55 It’s great that he’s doing it again, going after it, chasing gold medal again.
1:30:59 Well, he’s chasing the gold medal.
1:31:00 It’s going to be in Paris, which is going to be, uh, even, you know, more fantastic.
1:31:05 You know, he’s already the greatest.
1:31:06 She said, you know, what does he got to do to, to be the greatest or already the greatest
1:31:10 competitor due to those ever known.
1:31:13 And that was even, you know, with, um, with, um, the great, uh, Tany, you know, so Tany
1:31:20 was amazing as well.
1:31:22 Are you part of the commentating team for Paris?
1:31:24 I’m part of the commentating team, but it won’t be for IJF because it’s independent broadcast.
1:31:28 Have you ever had an athlete, uh, sort of come up to you and, and ask like, why, why
1:31:35 did you say that?
1:31:36 Like disagree with your commentary.
1:31:37 Do you know, I’ve got to say that 99%, 99.9% of everybody is so grateful that I’ve commentated
1:31:46 their fights all the way through.
1:31:48 They know if they’ve messed up.
1:31:50 So if I say something and I’m never disparaging, really disparaging, you know, but what I will
1:31:55 say is, you know, it was a great throw by the other guy or it was a great match.
1:32:01 And if they made a mistake, so if they walk out, they know that, um, I will say something
1:32:07 that will, um, you know, mean something.
1:32:09 So nobody really moans about it.
1:32:11 I, I, I try and talk the truth if I can.
1:32:15 So who else would you consider as, as some of the greats?
1:32:20 So I, I personally just, cause I love the standing San Agui Koga.
1:32:24 So there’s like, you know, the number of times you won the world championships and the
1:32:27 Olympic games, but there’s also like how you won and how you wanted to fight and what you
1:32:33 did.
1:32:34 You know, it’s not necessarily about getting gold medals.
1:32:37 It’s about how you fought and how you represent the sport.
1:32:41 And there’s certain athletes like NWA and Iliadas that are going after the big throws.
1:32:48 Only after they don’t want to win by upon, you know, and I think that that, that’s the
1:32:52 difference is they’re the ones that come out there and it’s a bit like, you know, when,
1:32:57 when Tyson stepped out there, you knew what you were going to get, you know, and, and
1:33:01 if they went toe to toe, if, if, if Tyson had somebody going toe to toe, somebody was
1:33:07 going to get knocked out.
1:33:08 And you know, we got the same in Judo when two people go head to head and it’s an open
1:33:13 match.
1:33:14 And I often talk about an open match.
1:33:15 I say, um, they’re, they’re, it’s an open match.
1:33:18 They’re both trying to score.
1:33:20 Somebody is going to get scored on somebody’s going to go, you know, and that’s, that makes
1:33:23 it exciting.
1:33:24 So when, when they come out and they close up, you know, then that’s not an exciting
1:33:28 match.
1:33:29 Is there a case for, uh, for Ono, Shohai Ono, three-time world champ, two-time gold medalist?
1:33:35 I think that, you know, Judo wise, he’s got to be one of the greatest because he had such
1:33:39 versatility.
1:33:40 Um, he had, uh, he could go right and he could go left.
1:33:46 He could pick up.
1:33:47 He could go to the ground as well.
1:33:49 He won a lot of his earlier matches on the ground.
1:33:51 Um, I think his, uh, empathy, uh, you know, and how he presents himself, sometimes he
1:33:59 falls down.
1:34:00 And, uh, I think that hopefully that should come with, uh, tutoring and, you know, of
1:34:06 how to, how to be a great champion after, you know, it’s not just about what you do
1:34:11 on the map, but what you do off the map as well.
1:34:13 So to you, a great champion is the whole package of how, how you present yourself when you
1:34:18 lose, how you represent yourself just every.
1:34:21 Yeah.
1:34:22 I think it’s how you present yourself afterwards, how you are with people, how much you can
1:34:26 help people.
1:34:27 I mean, people, kids, uh, and, um, you know, they look up to these great champions because
1:34:33 they want to be like them.
1:34:35 Uh, so the worst thing is when you get somebody that’s a bit of an ass and they’re, and they’re
1:34:40 not, uh, presenting themselves in the right way.
1:34:43 So I like to see somebody presenting themselves in the right way.
1:34:46 And I think that it’s something that can be taught.
1:34:49 It’s something that normally comes with a little bit of experience, a little bit of
1:34:53 age, you know, and I like to think that I’m a little bit different now than I was when
1:34:57 I was 19.
1:34:58 Not that I was bad, you know, I just think I was just, uh, you know, I see it often now,
1:35:03 you know, just full of, full of beans.
1:35:07 Your beautiful work in progress.
1:35:09 Uh, what about in the Mura, that I hear in the Mura, that’s three time gold medalist.
1:35:16 Never lost an Olympic fight.
1:35:18 So there’s nobody, nobody ever done that.
1:35:22 You know what I mean?
1:35:23 So that’s gotta be, it has to stand.
1:35:26 He took two years off in between every Olympic games and came back, did the right amount
1:35:32 of events to qualify for, not only did he having to qualify, he had to qualify through
1:35:37 Japan.
1:35:38 Now, Japan, remember, have got the greatest depth.
1:35:42 So they got people coming through all the time, you know, and they, and then he had to
1:35:46 win the Japanese trials.
1:35:47 I mean, we had a four time world champion from Japan.
1:35:52 This is when world championships was every other year and this is Shouzo Fuji.
1:35:58 And he was the greatest middleweight of all time and never got to, to participate in the
1:36:04 Olympics because he lost the Japanese trials twice into Olympic, uh, you know, uh, possibilities.
1:36:12 So, um, you know, he had to qualify for Japan and then go to the Olympic games and then
1:36:18 do it there.
1:36:19 You know, so sometimes some of the best people in Japan can’t get outside of Japan.
1:36:23 Look at the situation they had with, um, Abe and then they had, um, Mariama.
1:36:29 Mariama was, uh, you know, and Abe were both the best by far in the under 66 kilos category.
1:36:38 This is for the last Olympic games and, um, they sent one to the world championships,
1:36:43 one to the Olympic games, and they both won gold medals, you know.
1:36:46 Yeah.
1:36:47 Yeah.
1:36:48 I mean, that’s why the, uh, the all Japan championships is like legendary.
1:36:52 There’s these battles, uh, with Dimash and all of them.
1:36:56 Well, Abe and, um, and Mariama, they, they had a, a trials in the Kodakan.
1:37:03 Uh, it was 26 minutes.
1:37:06 I think it was 26 minutes.
1:37:07 They went, they were battling it out for 26 minutes.
1:37:11 That’s great.
1:37:12 If we can just go to, you’ve trained in Japan, what are those Rondori’s like?
1:37:17 What, what’s that training like?
1:37:19 Um, I touched on the danger that, that danger of being thrown when you get hold of somebody
1:37:26 or somebody gets hold of you.
1:37:28 And I often reflect, I often talk about it when I’m commentating, you know, cause I can
1:37:33 see immediately.
1:37:35 You know, it’s easy, isn’t it?
1:37:36 You’re in the commentary chair, or if you’re in the coaches chair and you don’t really
1:37:39 understand totally have absolutely what’s going on when you’re being, somebody’s being
1:37:44 out grits and when they’re in danger of being thrown.
1:37:47 I mean, you know, if you’re in danger of being thrown, the first thing you do is stick your
1:37:52 backside out and defend by, you know, by not being in the position they, they want you
1:37:57 to be in.
1:37:58 All right.
1:37:59 And so that’s danger.
1:38:00 You know, you feel the danger.
1:38:03 And so in Japan, that was the place I used to go to train because I felt the danger.
1:38:10 And so my defenses would be heightened.
1:38:16 And so somebody that was, I went to two years, one, one Olympic cycle.
1:38:20 I went two years, two months without having a score on me in any competition.
1:38:29 And then I went to one competition in the European Championships, which I won.
1:38:34 And I was struggling all the way through it and got scored on three times in my pool of,
1:38:43 you’re like my first pool of fights and I was devastated.
1:38:47 And I actually nearly lost the whole competition because I was more modified about being scored
1:38:52 on three times when I hadn’t been scored on for two and a half years.
1:38:56 I had this thing in my head about two and a half years I’ve, you know, and, and then
1:39:00 all of a sudden, right, I’m not unbeatable.
1:39:03 And then you just, you, and you go, and I, I was almost lost it, completely lost it.
1:39:09 Just so fortunate, a couple of things went my way and just came out and I scraped and
1:39:15 scratched my way to the final and won the final well.
1:39:19 All right.
1:39:20 But that was my best match, but I almost lost it.
1:39:22 Well, what do you do with the fact that if you go to Japan and you’re getting, you’re
1:39:26 saying danger, like you’re probably getting thrown, getting thrown.
1:39:29 Yeah.
1:39:30 And what’s that due to your ego?
1:39:32 Well, again, it’s my, you know, that, that was a winning ego that had to adapt.
1:39:37 I remember we went to the case, Joe, which police dojo one time and they wanted to see
1:39:43 the, they created this, the groundwork competition because they wanted to see my, me do the Jiu-Jitsu
1:39:52 like how I went in and how I, yeah, how the, the armbar, right?
1:39:56 They wanted to see how I did it from underneath or over the top and you’d just, they created
1:40:01 this event.
1:40:02 Started the creative.
1:40:03 Yeah.
1:40:04 They started it.
1:40:05 So, and then winner stays on competition was happening at the case, Joe.
1:40:09 So I did about seven, I think it was seven in and then my coach came in and said, no,
1:40:14 it’s finished.
1:40:15 It’s it.
1:40:16 No, it’s finished.
1:40:17 You know, just suddenly we realized what was going on and I was going, no, no, no,
1:40:21 don’t stop me like that.
1:40:23 You know, and, and it was one of those moments where, you know, the, the boot was on my foot,
1:40:32 you could say, you know, rather than the other side, the other way, because I had been to
1:40:36 Japan in situation.
1:40:38 I remember as a 16 year old, I got such a, I got such a drumming from one of the Japanese
1:40:48 guys, older students, and he had a gold tooth.
1:40:52 And so he was gold tooth to me, you know, and he was my nightmare.
1:40:58 And I remember kept coming out to fight him because he kept throwing me and, and I was
1:41:03 crying and I was upset and I was like, and then that was another occasion where I got
1:41:09 dragged away and I said, no, so I wanted to go back and fight him.
1:41:14 And I went back to the same dojo every year to fight him.
1:41:18 He was on my mind morning, noon, night.
1:41:22 He was on my mind.
1:41:23 Gold tooth was on your mind.
1:41:24 Gold tooth was on my mind, you know, and two years later, I was two years to me from 16
1:41:31 to 18 was totally different.
1:41:34 Eighteen years of age, I was pretty competitive with him and it was like, you know, I was
1:41:40 standing up with him 19.
1:41:43 He was in the groundwork competition and that’s when the switch happened.
1:41:47 You know, because I just, well, because I remember getting the armlock and didn’t put
1:41:56 it on immediately.
1:41:57 I needed it to last.
1:41:59 It had to last.
1:42:00 So I, I spread the whole thing lasted as long as I could possibly get it.
1:42:06 And it was a long memory as I was looking down at him.
1:42:10 And now, and now he has nightmares about you.
1:42:13 Now he has nightmares.
1:42:14 I wonder what nickname he has for you.
1:42:15 I don’t know.
1:42:16 I’m hoping that he remembers me as a photo of you.
1:42:20 You know, he probably doesn’t say, he doesn’t back an eyelid, doesn’t say a thing about
1:42:25 him.
1:42:26 Well, I mean, can you just speak to that training with those folks?
1:42:32 You know, you said crying and just the frustration of being thrown.
1:42:36 Yeah.
1:42:37 I mean, what, what, how do you, it’s such a beautiful part of the process of becoming
1:42:41 great.
1:42:42 Yeah, I think, I think it is just something that you’re, you know, that doesn’t happen
1:42:48 at this level.
1:42:49 You know, we were talking about levels.
1:42:51 And then at this level, it never happened.
1:42:53 And then I went out in my first European cadet and all of a sudden I wasn’t the, the top
1:43:01 guy I was in the mix.
1:43:03 And then I had to work myself to the top of that mix.
1:43:06 And then to the top of the next one, you know, because I went to the European senior championships
1:43:11 and, you know, again, you’re not the top and, you know, you’ve worked your way to the top
1:43:15 of that.
1:43:16 And, and I think it is a frustration, you know, but I think it’s that kind of hatred
1:43:20 of losing and, and also being out of control.
1:43:28 I think that the first time, first senior European championships I fought, I fought
1:43:33 Nevzerov, but he was only one of my contests and I had to fight a Frenchman for third place.
1:43:40 But he totally outgripped me and, and I remember I was more upset if though I won the contest,
1:43:46 I was more upset that he totally out, he did outgrip me and, and I was more upset and then
1:43:53 I fought him a year later and outgripped him.
1:43:56 All right.
1:43:57 So it was, it was one of those, you know, it was a learning process all the way through.
1:44:01 Yeah.
1:44:02 And the frustration is like whatever that does to your, your soul, the building up afterwards
1:44:11 is what actually makes you better.
1:44:14 It’s fascinating.
1:44:15 And do you think there’s, in Japan, just killers there, they’re like, just the world doesn’t
1:44:20 know about.
1:44:21 They just, just…
1:44:22 Yeah.
1:44:23 There’s world champions in the dojo.
1:44:24 You know, there’s people that never make it out.
1:44:26 Yeah.
1:44:27 You know, I remember we were training like so and everybody that’s, that goes to Japan
1:44:32 and all my friends, my, that have been world Olympic champions, right, they all know what
1:44:39 I’m talking about.
1:44:40 They know exactly who I’m, what I’m saying is that when we go to the dojos there, we
1:44:45 all get thrown by people that never come out to be world champions.
1:44:49 You know, they’re, they’re just in the mix or they’re going through three years of university
1:44:53 and then they go, we had a guy, we had a guy that came in, he came in, he was a business
1:45:00 guy.
1:45:01 Yeah.
1:45:02 He had his suitcase and his briefcase like that, he’s got his tie up like that.
1:45:05 So he decides he’s going to come in and he, he gets changed and he’s, he’s in his lunch
1:45:13 hour.
1:45:14 He’s in his lunch hour, right?
1:45:15 Yeah.
1:45:16 So he’s got to be quick.
1:45:17 Yeah.
1:45:18 So he comes in and he goes through, he’s working his way through the whole of the British
1:45:21 team.
1:45:22 We’re all lined up, right?
1:45:23 Yeah.
1:45:24 He’s just working his way through the whole of the British team and I know it’s my turn
1:45:26 next.
1:45:27 And his lunch hour.
1:45:28 Yeah.
1:45:29 I get hold of him and I throw him immediately.
1:45:32 And then it was what we were talking about when it happens in the first few, few seconds
1:45:38 of the, the, the practice.
1:45:40 So then I had four minutes of him coming at me and I’m going up into the air and I’m
1:45:45 twisting off and I’m like that.
1:45:47 And then like everybody’s laughing at the side of the map or the whole British team,
1:45:51 he’s gone through the whole British team and then he, 10 minutes later, he’s just tying
1:45:56 his tie up like that, you know, and back to work, like, you know, imagine him sitting
1:46:01 behind his desk and his computer.
1:46:03 Yeah.
1:46:04 Yeah.
1:46:05 Yeah.
1:46:06 I’m glad he didn’t get out.
1:46:11 Hopefully he listens to this.
1:46:13 Hopefully.
1:46:14 Anybody else I didn’t mention as part of the grades that just kind of jumped here?
1:46:18 Keshavazaki Sensei is, is the, the, my favorite of all favorites.
1:46:25 He is what I would call a judo genius.
1:46:29 I don’t know if you can get him up here.
1:46:31 Can we get him up?
1:46:32 Yeah.
1:46:33 So go into 1981 World Championships and, and I’ll talk you through the great Keshavazaki.
1:46:41 He was one year in Great Britain and he was, he was a guy that was so much a genius.
1:46:50 All right.
1:46:51 So you want the final of the under 60, 65 kilograms there, the one at the top.
1:46:56 This is him.
1:46:57 He is a two weight category is below my weight category that I won the World Championships
1:47:02 same year.
1:47:03 I want it.
1:47:06 So this is, I’m not sure if this is going to show his final of, watch this, this, this,
1:47:15 this he did in the final, in the final of the world.
1:47:17 For people just listening, he did an incredible sacrifice throw.
1:47:21 Yep.
1:47:22 And then he was on top for the, for the Neuase and renowned for his groundwork.
1:47:27 And he, he was on top of against a really strong Romanian guy.
1:47:33 All right.
1:47:34 His transition was just phenomenal.
1:47:37 Yeah.
1:47:38 Let me, let me go back and look at that.
1:47:40 What just happened.
1:47:41 So he’s just showing you.
1:47:42 So he does this Kochi thing just to create space.
1:47:48 And it’s his follow through into, into groundwork that is best of all.
1:47:54 And then the Romanian really strong.
1:47:57 Like I say, he’d gone all the way through to the final of the world championships winning
1:48:00 most by upon, I think the Romanian and he’s defending really, really well here.
1:48:06 And you can see that how persistent he, he knows exactly what he wants.
1:48:11 He’s just got to get his leg out.
1:48:13 Now watch, he’ll tie the arm up and then he’ll pull the top leg towards him.
1:48:18 And then he’ll push the bottom one off.
1:48:22 Always working with both feet, always working, always working, readjust the balance.
1:48:28 Still one leg trapped, final of the world championships, good referee because he’s
1:48:33 refereeing something here that’s happening, you know, that’s going to decide as to whether.
1:48:38 So he doesn’t call it to stand it up at all.
1:48:41 Watch him pull the top one now and he’ll push the bottom one.
1:48:46 There’s a calmness on his face, which is great to see.
1:48:49 Calm, calm, pushes the bottom leg, leg out, job done, all finished.
1:48:56 This is him again.
1:48:57 Watch this.
1:48:58 This is the technique that he does.
1:49:00 And then just again, sacrifice directly in, directly into the Niwaza.
1:49:07 Transition is everything, isn’t it?
1:49:08 In Judo.
1:49:09 Yeah.
1:49:10 Well, anything really, but Judo especially pays off.
1:49:14 Yeah.
1:49:15 I mean, because we haven’t got that long, I mean, we had more time here.
1:49:20 They’ve just brought more time back.
1:49:21 So we’ve got more time to transition in and to get the situation that we want.
1:49:28 And to get the attacking situation that we want.
1:49:30 Because you know, I remember I was teaching in America to some jiu-jitsu guys and they
1:49:37 were saying, “Oh, we’ll never give you our back.”
1:49:40 And I said, “With Judo rules, certain situations, it happens that, you know, when we try and
1:49:48 do throws where we’re facing away from our opponent, you know, so like, for example,
1:49:53 in Nagi’s, if they fail, then the back is there, you know, and that’s how we get the
1:49:58 back.
1:49:59 And it’s a different situation, you know, then going on your back in the guard situation,
1:50:04 totally different.
1:50:05 Well, there are Travis Stevens, I don’t know how familiar with his Judo, but he’s a really
1:50:09 interesting example because he competed at the highest level in Jiu-jitsu as well.
1:50:13 And his idea, he’s a big Saint Agi guy and he basically threw all of that away.
1:50:22 In the Jiu-jitsu.
1:50:23 Like, he took the sport from scratch for what it is.
1:50:28 So his, he almost never did a standing Saint Agi, Saint Agi’s at all in Jiu-jitsu.
1:50:33 No, because he would leave his back all the time, you know, if it failed.
1:50:37 Yeah, it would fail.
1:50:38 But he wouldn’t have the same kind of grip on the Judo guy or the Karate, the Jiu-jitsu
1:50:44 guy.
1:50:45 Yeah.
1:50:46 A little bit different.
1:50:47 And so you have to kind of consider the sport, the art of it, and also the competitors,
1:50:50 the styles, and the culture of the sport, if you want to win.
1:50:54 If winning is the most important thing, then you’re like, all right, well, let’s, you know.
1:50:57 No, but you learn the game, don’t you?
1:51:00 And that’s what he did.
1:51:01 He learned the game, you know, and I think that has credit to him, you know, and that’s
1:51:05 why I was saying about wrestling, you know, the wrestlers, I mean, we, you’re good to
1:51:10 learn the Judo and for what it is and the mechanics and how it works, and then learn
1:51:16 the wrestling.
1:51:17 I’ll do the commentary as well for the freestyle, and I will be at the Olympics for the freestyle
1:51:22 and the Greco-Roman.
1:51:23 So, and I love the freestyle, absolutely love it, but freestyle is freestyle, Judo’s Judo.
1:51:29 I like to see people doing Judo.
1:51:31 Yeah, but there’s a rhyme to the whole combat thing.
1:51:37 They’re all, I mean, the body mechanics, it’s all like fascinating echoes of each other
1:51:42 in interesting ways.
1:51:44 The details are different, but there’s still two humans clashing.
1:51:49 Yeah, we’ve got some amazing crossovers with people like the Mongolians have come in with
1:51:57 Georgians.
1:51:58 I mean, the Georgians do massive pickups and different techniques.
1:52:03 And you know, if you ask the fighters whether, you know, grabbing the legs, you know, a lot
1:52:10 of them would say some of the wrestling styles, you know, the Georgians and the Mongolians
1:52:16 might say, “Yeah, I’d like to be able to take the legs,” but, you know, a lot of them
1:52:21 just adapted.
1:52:22 You get Iliadis, for example.
1:52:25 He just adapted.
1:52:26 So, he thought, “Oh, I’ll take my arm over the top and I’ll just rip them out the floor
1:52:29 that way.”
1:52:30 Yeah, yeah.
1:52:31 You know what I mean?
1:52:32 They’re still doing the big lifts.
1:52:33 They’re still doing the big ripping, but they just don’t grab below the legs.
1:52:38 Yeah.
1:52:39 It’s weird.
1:52:40 And they figured it out like that.
1:52:42 Yeah.
1:52:43 You would think it’d take a long time.
1:52:45 No.
1:52:46 It was like a month.
1:52:47 Yeah.
1:52:48 No, exactly.
1:52:49 The highest level, which is crazy.
1:52:51 So, you mentioned Jiu Jitsu a little bit.
1:52:53 What’s used an interesting difference between Jiu Jitsu and Judo that you’ve observed?
1:52:59 Because you’re one of the greatest ever on the ground in Judo.
1:53:06 And so, Jiu Jitsu is primarily focused on similar type of stuff on the ground.
1:53:13 So, what do you use an interesting difference there?
1:53:15 They’re a different approach, different time scale to them, and they have a different way
1:53:20 in.
1:53:21 So, like where ours comes from a standing position directly in, we’ve got a time scale
1:53:27 on it.
1:53:28 So, we have to like the catch.
1:53:31 What I always talk about the catch, because in Judo terms, if you don’t get the catch,
1:53:36 the catch immediately, then the referee won’t see the transition in, and also the continuation
1:53:45 from Plan A, B, C, D, you know, if something builds, so we have to build it.
1:53:52 And we have to build it quickly, and I think in Jiu Jitsu terms, you have more time to
1:53:57 build.
1:53:58 Yeah, there’s a kind of patience like, “Oh, if this doesn’t work out, I could try a different
1:54:03 thing.”
1:54:04 Yeah.
1:54:05 There’s urgency.
1:54:06 There’s an urgency.
1:54:08 And there’s a ref watching skeptically, so you better show that you’re making progress.
1:54:13 You’ve got to show the progression, and that’s why, you know, I always had a Plan A, B, C,
1:54:18 you see there with, you know, that was 1981 there, with the great Kashiwazaki had a progression.
1:54:26 You know, everything was, he knew exactly where he had to be, it was feel, you know,
1:54:31 that wasn’t by accident, it was trained.
1:54:34 And I think that that transition there and taking control of somebody’s mistake, so
1:54:40 somebody might have made a mistake or not hit properly, or your defenses caused them
1:54:46 to make a mistake, and then you take advantage of it, and that is the difference.
1:54:51 So one of the side effects of that, I don’t know, with the chicken or the egg, but Judo
1:54:57 people on the ground are much more aggressive.
1:55:00 So probably because of the urgency, but just like there’s an intention behind the progress
1:55:06 you’re making.
1:55:07 I think Jiu Jitsu is more relaxed.
1:55:11 There’s more a culture of just finding places to relax and think of different control and
1:55:17 positions and take your time, and as a result, it’s much, much less exhausting, so you can
1:55:22 go for much longer.
1:55:23 It feels like Judo is exhausting, it’s that 10 second blast, isn’t it?
1:55:30 You know, it’s like doing sprints all the time, and that is really hard, and that’s
1:55:36 a special kind of condition you need, and you need to be able to catch it and know when
1:55:41 to go and when not to go, and I think also, I was going to ask you, you think it make
1:55:47 a difference?
1:55:48 I mean, certain Jiu Jitsu, you can’t just throw yourself on your back, you know, into
1:55:54 the guard, you have to throw into the situation, you know?
1:55:58 So you have got, I mean, I know Rudyard Gracier, he decided that he was going to learn Judo.
1:56:05 He saw the importance of being able to throw for the transition in, and so he came to the
1:56:10 Budokai and he was learning of Ray Stevens, and they were doing really a lot.
1:56:15 Yeah, well, he’s a fascinating study because he does the most basic stuff, and he does
1:56:21 it like…
1:56:22 But does it well?
1:56:23 Like we did another level of well, it’s like Yamashira.
1:56:26 I don’t know what’s coming with Haji Gracie, but he just does it anyway against the best
1:56:32 people in the world.
1:56:33 It’s crazy.
1:56:34 He’s like, everybody in Jiu Jitsu at White Belt learns the techniques he’s using, and
1:56:39 he just does it.
1:56:40 Amazing isn’t it?
1:56:41 Yeah.
1:56:42 But he has about a thousand ways in.
1:56:43 Yeah, yeah, I mean, and the thousand ways are in the details, so it kind of might even
1:56:49 look the same to people, but there’s, I mean, he finds a way to choke people, so he’s on
1:56:54 top of them, mounted in a sort of judo pin position, and everyone knows what’s coming
1:57:00 next against the best people in the world, and you should be able to defend it, but nobody
1:57:05 can.
1:57:06 It’s crazy.
1:57:07 I think there’s the power element as well, that you don’t realize how…
1:57:12 When somebody’s directed in a particular way, then you have that kind of element of absolute
1:57:19 power.
1:57:20 I feel like when Rodgers is doing a technique, I think that you would only feel it if he
1:57:26 did it on you, then you can feel it.
1:57:30 It’s not something that happens, so Trix is one thing, but actually being able to do
1:57:35 something really well from a PowerPoint of you, it’s like you say, he only does those
1:57:43 few things, but he does them really, really, really well.
1:57:46 Yeah, I don’t know what that is about.
1:57:47 Actually, judo pins is a very interesting case study as well, because people are able
1:57:52 to feel so heavy, one of the things judoka are able to do is pin extremely well, and
1:58:00 it makes you realize that it’s not about the weight, it’s about some kind of technique
1:58:05 that makes people feel like they weigh 1,000 pounds.
1:58:09 It’s about weight distribution and change of balance.
1:58:14 A lot of people don’t realize that there’s huge changes of balance on the ground, massive.
1:58:21 You know what it’s like.
1:58:22 I mean, you’re a jiu-jitsu man, and the detail of the techniques is what really interests
1:58:29 me.
1:58:30 I mean, I’m always looking, small ideas, I’m always looking at the jiu-jitsu, and it fascinates
1:58:37 me.
1:58:38 I’m not even jiu-jitsu for sure, but I wouldn’t have forgotten the judo weigh-in to the techniques.
1:58:45 I think you’ve got to differentiate the two, but I would have loved the jiu-jitsu.
1:58:52 I would have absolutely loved it, but it wasn’t as prominent then.
1:58:58 Where there was a came from, it came from a mistake, me getting beaten in a particular
1:59:04 contest and I went, “I’m not going to be beaten again on the ground.”
1:59:08 That’s how it happened.
1:59:10 Yeah.
1:59:11 Well, yeah.
1:59:12 The story of your life is like a lost creates, the phoenix rises from the ash.
1:59:18 It was 1978, and it wasn’t a mistake.
1:59:23 It was a particular movement, and I was fighting weight up from my normal weight, but I stayed
1:59:31 in the same position for one second too long, got caught and sangaku, yeah, triangle, triangle.
1:59:41 I said, literally, just the same as I said to you when I said, “I’m not going to drink
1:59:47 anymore.”
1:59:48 I came off and I said, “I’m never going to get caught on the ground again, and I never
1:59:53 lost in my whole competitive career again.”
1:59:58 Oh, wow.
1:59:59 Yeah, I shouldn’t mention that there’s nothing like a pin from a judo person.
2:00:04 I don’t actually know if people in judo have made sense of that, like loaded that in.
2:00:11 But it’s not part of the game, is it?
2:00:15 The pin, it’s submission.
2:00:17 Yeah, but control is part of the game, and nobody controls a human body the way judo
2:00:25 people do on the ground.
2:00:27 They have understood the science of control, and I think that control is extremely useful
2:00:32 in jujitsu as well, just that people don’t, because there’s so many other domains of exploration,
2:00:39 but the- It’s interesting.
2:00:40 I mean, especially when you apply jujitsu to the fighting setting, so mixed martial arts,
2:00:48 that control, that side control, that pin control, is really, really, really important.
2:00:53 But then you add punching to the thing and it becomes-
2:00:56 That puts a whole different thing on it, doesn’t it?
2:00:58 I mean, there’s an alternate history where you would have been part of the early UFC’s.
2:01:03 If time was a little different, maybe a few years later, because your style of judo and
2:01:13 jujitsu and the transitions and the aggression, all of that would have worked really well
2:01:18 in the early UFC’s.
2:01:19 I’m sure I was being set up at one stage by one of the graces.
2:01:24 That was when he was winning all the matches, but he came with a couple of the cousins to
2:01:31 one of my seminars.
2:01:35 He was one of the first ones, wasn’t he, that’s how I love to see the kind of UFC, because
2:01:43 it was different martial arts, different skills, and I mean, he’d get close and he’d
2:01:49 just choke them out or armlock them or armbar them.
2:01:54 That was brilliant.
2:01:55 That was, for me, that was a revelation.
2:01:58 That was how I saw it.
2:01:59 Yeah.
2:02:00 It’s a fascinating science experiment, which aspects of different martial arts work well
2:02:04 and not when they clash together.
2:02:07 It did turn out that Neh Waza worked well.
2:02:10 It was the key, wasn’t it?
2:02:12 Yeah.
2:02:13 It was a big missing link in our conception of fighting.
2:02:17 It’s the neutralizer of size and a lot of other components and it just blew people’s
2:02:22 mind.
2:02:23 Okay, it’s not just about size, it’s not just about big guys swinging hands.
2:02:31 It’s a lot of other components and the groundwork is really, really important.
2:02:36 Of course, there’s a few judoka that succeeded in the UFC since then, which is always interesting
2:02:42 how they adapt.
2:02:43 Without, you know, when you take off the gi, how can you still throw people?
2:02:46 How can you still do control?
2:02:48 How can you still take advantage of the transition on the ground?
2:02:51 Rhonda Rouse is a good example of somebody that took advantage of that.
2:02:55 Yeah.
2:02:56 I think one of the biggest things for the judoka is we’ve never, you know, there’s no strikes
2:03:04 and I think that’s the biggest shock, if you wish.
2:03:10 You know, when you get punched in the face and you’re not used to that, you know, that’s
2:03:17 not what we’re used to.
2:03:18 Some people are able to get punched in the face better than others, yeah, for sure.
2:03:23 Then again, there’s Rhonda Rouse who doesn’t need to get punched in the face.
2:03:26 She just gets in close, throws a person an armbar right there.
2:03:29 Yeah.
2:03:30 And Kayla.
2:03:31 Kayla Harris, and that’s another incredible person.
2:03:34 She could have probably been just winning Olympic gold medal after Olympic gold medal,
2:03:39 but chose to…
2:03:40 Whatever, you know, she decides, I mean, Rhonda as well, you know, whatever they decided
2:03:44 to do, they’re great athletes.
2:03:46 They hate losing.
2:03:47 I don’t know, anybody that hates losing more than those two, you know, they don’t like
2:03:52 it.
2:03:53 Yeah.
2:03:54 And Kayla Harris, I don’t know anybody that works as hard as her.
2:03:56 That’s a crazy, crazy, crazy work ethic.
2:03:59 Well, let me ask you about training.
2:04:01 Again, Jimmy Pedro said he learned a lot from you.
2:04:06 He learned how to do a tight ocean, the armbar jijikotami, but he also learned from you
2:04:12 training methodology.
2:04:14 So what’s he talking about?
2:04:17 He told me about this.
2:04:19 What’s your approach to training throughout your career and as it developed?
2:04:23 I always wanted to train harder than anybody else.
2:04:26 I still train now every day.
2:04:28 If I don’t train, do something, I do an hour of my physical work and I still go on the
2:04:34 mat a little bit, you know, I’m 65 now.
2:04:37 So I’m not doing really heavy stuff on the mat, but I still like to train.
2:04:42 And when I was 21, 20, up to 30, I was one of the best trainers.
2:04:48 But you know, Jimmy Pedro was one of the best trainers as well.
2:04:51 He was one of the, he’s one of your dream athletes, you know, when Jimmy Pedro stepped
2:04:57 through your door and he was just a kid, you know, he was like, he was just young when
2:05:01 he stepped through my door and I had a lot of full-time trainers.
2:05:06 So I had up to 20 really good athletes that were training hard and I only wanted hard
2:05:12 trainers.
2:05:13 Give me 10 that train hard rather than your one pre-Madonna that, you know, your skillful,
2:05:18 you know, the one that, you know, could do it.
2:05:21 I just, I wanted 10, you know, or 20 really hard trainers because you can do so much with
2:05:29 them.
2:05:30 You know, champions.
2:05:31 You can make them world champions.
2:05:33 You know, if you got somebody that was a special talent and they wanted to work hard, then
2:05:38 you had a special athlete.
2:05:40 Well, when you say hard trainers, what do you mean?
2:05:42 Are these people, they just like, every single day are able to just grind it out, do a randoi,
2:05:47 do the training, do the boring things, just keep coming back.
2:05:50 Yeah.
2:05:51 When they’re going, it’s tough, you know, and I think that, that was him.
2:05:54 He had a special mentality and, you know, and the thing is, you see, when you’ve got
2:05:58 him in your dojo, all right, even when you’re tired, when somebody’s tired and when, you
2:06:03 know, what an example to the others.
2:06:05 So he’d pull the other ones in as well, you know.
2:06:09 So I had somebody that, when everybody was tired and everybody was sick of it and everybody
2:06:15 just wanted to, you know, and he’d still be there, you know, so they had to do it.
2:06:20 So that was for me a win-win, you know.
2:06:23 So I had all the Americans actually, I had Bobby Berland and I had Michael Swain and
2:06:29 I had Ed Liddy and I had them all coming to visit me at different times, Jimmy was there,
2:06:38 you know, they wanted to be the best.
2:06:40 In the end, we had such a great club atmosphere, they wanted to come for the hard work.
2:06:48 And they knew that if they came, they were going to be dragged out and we were going
2:06:52 to do physical training and physical training like they hadn’t done before, but it wasn’t
2:06:57 just physical training with the judo and the skill side of it as well.
2:07:02 And so I always had a great empathy with the US team, Olympic team.
2:07:09 So a lot of your Olympic medalists have been through with me, you know, and so I’m proud
2:07:14 of that because we had, you know, some great times and they’re still great mates now.
2:07:18 And so in New York, a couple of weeks time, I’m going to have everybody is going to be
2:07:24 there.
2:07:25 They’re all coming in.
2:07:26 All old friends.
2:07:27 All old friends.
2:07:28 All new friends.
2:07:29 So what’s the tough week look like at your peak, physical training, Randori, is there
2:07:36 days off?
2:07:37 Are you training like twice a day?
2:07:40 Twice a day.
2:07:42 So we do the preparation training, we do the running, we do the weight training, we
2:07:45 do the skills in the morning as well.
2:07:48 The skills is, for me, one of the biggest advantages that any full time trainers can
2:07:54 have because what happens is, is that with most clubs, you’re trying to fit everything
2:08:00 into that hour and a half or two hours, you know, you fit your skills, you fit your physical
2:08:06 training and your sparring and your, you know, everything’s in there all grouped in.
2:08:12 So the biggest advantage is of having a full time group is that you can split your skills
2:08:18 and your skills lay your foundation.
2:08:21 So the biggest advantage is being able to work specifically on things without having
2:08:27 to worry about getting to do your free, you know, your Randori or your, your sparring or
2:08:34 then you got to go out for, you just do the skills.
2:08:37 Well, when you talk about skills, like what is it, say your specialty is atayatoshi.
2:08:41 What are we talking about Uchikomi doing a bunch of fits, working with bands?
2:08:46 Are you doing throws?
2:08:47 Are you actually just having conversations about like specifically like tiny details
2:08:52 of throws?
2:08:53 Like what, what does skills mean?
2:08:54 All those things about doing your repetition practice, making sure the repetition’s correct.
2:08:59 You know, there’s good repetition.
2:09:00 So when we say good repetition, does it, Uchikomi, when you’re just fitting the throw versus
2:09:05 doing the throw, where do you land on the value of moving, you know?
2:09:08 So one of the biggest, most important things is getting it moving.
2:09:12 If we do something static, again, it’s that static target.
2:09:15 You need to get it moving.
2:09:16 So you need to do a repetition.
2:09:18 And also you need to do a correct repetition because if you’re doing 100, the repetitions
2:09:24 that are not correct and repetitions under pressure, too much pressure without somebody
2:09:31 overseeing those skills to make sure that you correct the skills.
2:09:36 Because if you’re doing a skill, if you’re doing it 99 times incorrectly, all right,
2:09:42 then repetition doesn’t make perfect.
2:09:45 Repetition makes permanent.
2:09:47 So you’ve got to make it as perfect as you possibly can.
2:09:50 So actually that skills group there is the most important thing.
2:09:54 And what I used to do is oversee it.
2:09:57 So I’d oversee it to make sure that it was done properly.
2:10:00 So you’re watching the footwork, you’re watching the gripping and then just constantly adjusting
2:10:06 the people.
2:10:07 I’ll give you an example.
2:10:08 Jimmy Pedro, Jimmy was one of the hardest.
2:10:10 When he was 19 years of age, right?
2:10:12 So I was always asking me to practice, always.
2:10:16 So he’s always on me all the time.
2:10:19 So I did groundwork with him and could I put him on his back?
2:10:23 No.
2:10:24 I was all on him and he’ll tell you, you know, but he just wouldn’t go.
2:10:29 He was just, it was going to be great without a doubt, all right?
2:10:34 So I wanted everybody on with him, everybody.
2:10:36 So everybody went on with him, you know, and only improved their game and it improved him.
2:10:42 And then we’d, you know, small technical things that have stayed with him that we were doing
2:10:46 with the Jujigatami that was passed on to Kayla and then gone on, you know, to Ronda.
2:10:51 And it’s all small things that I can see sometimes that, you know, it’s passed on.
2:10:57 What about the Taitochi?
2:10:58 He said he learned a lot from you from that.
2:11:00 And he does it differently.
2:11:01 And so I should mention that’s one of the trickier, I mean, I don’t, I still don’t understand.
2:11:07 It is a tricky throw.
2:11:09 I don’t understand.
2:11:10 So for people who don’t know it, boy, how would you even explain it?
2:11:15 It doesn’t make any sense.
2:11:16 It’s when you just look solo, the movement you make is very, is quite simple, but how
2:11:25 you get person to be off balance, how you actually get them to be thrown.
2:11:30 And when you do throw it successfully, it looks like a whipping motion that’s effortless.
2:11:36 It makes no sense.
2:11:37 It makes no sense.
2:11:38 Other than it’s, every technique starts with the hands.
2:11:42 So it’s what we call Kizushi and, you know, you’re pulling somebody off balance, getting
2:11:46 the moving, pulling them off balance, Taitochi means body drop.
2:11:50 So it’s basically two legs across your partner’s body, I’ve got my back to you, all right?
2:11:58 And I’ve already pulled you off balance with my hands, and then I’m going to just flex
2:12:01 my legs up just as you’re coming onto my back.
2:12:05 And then you’re going to go over, you know, if I coordinated all right, if it, if it doesn’t
2:12:10 get coordinated, right, then you’re going to come right on my back and try to rip my
2:12:14 arm off, you know?
2:12:15 So, yeah.
2:12:16 What was, if you can put, convert it to words, some secret ingredients that allowed you to
2:12:24 pull it off at the highest levels, the Taitochi.
2:12:27 The hands start every technique.
2:12:31 So getting the repetition right, first of all, so you need to get the repetition right.
2:12:36 You need a good partner.
2:12:37 So actually training your partner to react in the right way is just as important as
2:12:42 learning the throw.
2:12:44 So actually what happens is, you know, I, we could get a lesson of beginners.
2:12:49 We teach the throw and then go right off you go.
2:12:53 And 90% of them will get it wrong because their partner’s not reacting in the right way.
2:12:58 So half of it is to get the person to react as they should.
2:13:03 So if I was doing it with you, you and I, first thing I teach you to do is to react
2:13:09 the way I want you to react.
2:13:10 And then I’d react the way that you want me to react, all right?
2:13:14 So then we’d have success with it rather than you leaning back in the wrong way or
2:13:19 resisting or frightened you, going over, so, you know, so actually that’s why nine times
2:13:26 out of 10 people get the technique wrong.
2:13:28 It’s actually fascinating to me because in the United States where I came up, Judo,
2:13:32 I mean, the level of Judo is not comparable to the level of Judo in the rest of the world.
2:13:38 Of course, the, the Pedro Center is an exception to that.
2:13:42 Certain athletes, yeah.
2:13:43 Certain athletes like, I mean, when I trained recently with Jimmy Pedro, it’s like even
2:13:49 like the 16-year-old kids are just all deadly.
2:13:53 So it was terrifying.
2:13:56 But you know, I remember the Russian national team came through Philadelphia.
2:14:02 And one of the things that really impressed me is just how much easier Judo was training
2:14:07 Judo with them.
2:14:08 They moved correctly.
2:14:09 Because like, okay, as the people getting thrown, every aspect of their body movement
2:14:15 was correct in terms of, it felt right to be throwing them, to be training with them,
2:14:20 everything about the gripping, about the position of their hips, about the shoulder, everything.
2:14:24 It was, it was fun.
2:14:25 It was easy and like, and I always felt like I was learning.
2:14:29 So I think all of that is loaded in, I guess, into proper training.
2:14:34 So you’re developing through the throws, you’re developing the right technique.
2:14:37 Yeah.
2:14:38 And you have to develop between, you know, I always had training partners that I trained
2:14:42 with up to each Olympic Games and we, we worked together for the, we did the skills together
2:14:49 and then we, you know, we, we worked together in order, in order to make techniques work.
2:14:53 And we got it moving as quickly as we could.
2:14:56 And one of the worst things that I see is, and I see a lot of YouTube stuff with coaches.
2:15:02 Here we go.
2:15:03 Oh, okay.
2:15:04 Don’t even start me on that.
2:15:06 Don’t even start me on that, but, um, you know, you’re laughing because you know what
2:15:13 I’m talking about.
2:15:14 Yeah.
2:15:15 I’m actually laughing because I’m enjoying you talking trash, but, uh, but you’re talking
2:15:22 about technique.
2:15:23 Yeah.
2:15:24 Just, well, you know, the, you know, the coaches and their clipboard guys, you know, with the
2:15:29 clipboards and the stopwatches and, you know, they got these kids running up and down the
2:15:33 mat and, and then doing Uchikomi of, of something that’s technically incorrect, um, you know,
2:15:40 10 times and then running up and doing another 10 at the other side, you know, and actually
2:15:45 mixing everything together and it’s just a mess, you know, just technical mess.
2:15:51 That said, some of it is conditioning type stuff that you were doing.
2:15:54 So what, what, what is like the hardest type of physical conditioning you’re doing?
2:15:58 Probably ran too much, you know, when I was a, you know, when I was a kid, if I could go
2:16:02 back now, I wouldn’t run as much and I ran hard and I ran strong and I remember doing
2:16:08 London marathon one time and, uh, I said, I’m never going to do it again.
2:16:14 I’ve never, I then, but I ran, you know, and I, I was trying to, the problem was when I
2:16:19 did the London marathon is I was trying to beat three hours.
2:16:23 It’s a desire to win again.
2:16:24 It’s totally insane, you know, it was insane and I went out through half marathon in what
2:16:30 I thought was a good time.
2:16:31 Anyway, I got to 16, 17 miles and totally blue and so you went out too fast.
2:16:37 Yeah.
2:16:38 I went out too fast.
2:16:39 And then you just.
2:16:40 I died.
2:16:41 Keep going.
2:16:42 Absolutely.
2:16:43 Just.
2:16:44 I died.
2:16:45 I got in.
2:16:46 I, I crossed the line.
2:16:47 I remember seeing this bridge over there, right?
2:16:49 And the bridge, uh, it was the finishing line over the bridge and I had to get those.
2:16:53 It was the longest bridge I’ve ever, ever walked over and like walk, run, like, so I got over
2:16:59 the bridge and I took one step over the, the line like that and there was a guy over there
2:17:05 and he was trying to rush everybody through, you know, and he was going, come on, come
2:17:08 on, come on.
2:17:09 There was people behind you.
2:17:10 Get your hands off of me now because we’re going to fall out, you know, and I couldn’t
2:17:20 move.
2:17:21 I couldn’t move.
2:17:22 Yeah.
2:17:23 I was white and.
2:17:24 It was amazing that you made it to the finish line though.
2:17:27 I did.
2:17:28 I got over there and, um, you know, yeah, Donald duck passing me was, was a, was a tell.
2:17:34 Oh, there’s a person what dresses Donald duck.
2:17:37 Donald duck.
2:17:38 Yeah.
2:17:39 Yeah.
2:17:40 But the thing was I still crossed over 338.
2:17:42 I crossed over 338, but I lost 38 minutes in the last four miles to that bridge.
2:17:48 Longest bridge ever.
2:17:49 You see, you regret the run.
2:17:51 So anyway, I would do the running a little bit differently, but we ran, we ran hard.
2:17:55 We did the weight training.
2:17:56 We did good weight training.
2:17:58 It was all conditioned.
2:17:59 So I mean, it was never the same training all the time.
2:18:02 So it was always, um, we, uh, have certain phases building up.
2:18:07 It was scientifically done.
2:18:09 It wasn’t just out there run weight training, Judo, same Judo all the time.
2:18:14 It was always pretty scientific.
2:18:16 Good variety.
2:18:17 It was a good variety and it had build up and it had a speed phase and it had a power
2:18:21 phase and it had, um, you know, uh, like a base condition.
2:18:24 What about the inventory?
2:18:26 Was there, uh, uh, a method to the madness there, how much rendering did you do a lot?
2:18:32 So the most important thing for me, um, I mean, I see now that there’s a lot of people
2:18:38 out there that are not getting enough rendering.
2:18:40 They’re not rendering enough.
2:18:42 And there’s a lot of sports science people and they’re, they’re running in their weight
2:18:46 training and they’re, they’re doing it all to death and there’s not enough Judo.
2:18:51 And the only ones, if you know, like you have a look at some of the, um, the Eastern block
2:18:56 countries, uh, uh, getting together, they have in these mass camps and the Japanese,
2:19:02 they have, you know, just massive people that they can do there.
2:19:06 They’re doing probably 50, 60 Randa is a week, 50 or 60 a week.
2:19:14 Wow.
2:19:15 The average person is getting together.
2:19:17 I mean, when I was doing Randa is, uh, when I went to Japan, it was just purely for 60
2:19:24 Randa is a week.
2:19:25 How much is each one?
2:19:26 How long is it?
2:19:27 So they were five minutes then they’re four minutes now, but that’s a lot, especially
2:19:31 given the level of the, the competition there, where you can do it in Japan because it’s
2:19:35 fairly light.
2:19:36 If they throw you, they throw you, you throw them.
2:19:39 There’s like a level of like you’re moving at like a close to a hundred percent, but
2:19:43 the actual power in the force is not quite different in Korea.
2:19:48 Korea was harder.
2:19:49 It was more physical.
2:19:51 So you couldn’t do 50 Randa is in Korea.
2:19:54 You do die.
2:19:55 Yeah.
2:19:56 So you do 30.
2:19:58 Wow.
2:19:59 But you need, you need the Randa and, uh, so I chased the Randa is so I chased them into
2:20:04 training camps.
2:20:05 I traced them all over my country.
2:20:06 So I, I was getting 40 to 50 a week in my club and then I would go to training camps
2:20:13 and had more and I honestly don’t think that they do enough now.
2:20:20 A lot of countries, somebody who doesn’t know Rando is live training.
2:20:23 So yeah.
2:20:24 Sparring.
2:20:25 Was there a few people you’ll remember that were just like really tough to go against?
2:20:29 You mentioned go tooth.
2:20:30 Is there others like it was pretty horrific.
2:20:34 Yeah.
2:20:35 Oh, you got him in the end and yeah, I suppose I should say not just tough, but just good
2:20:46 training partners that you like.
2:20:48 Great training partners.
2:20:49 So I was sort of an initiative and initiative was I mentioned him earlier said he was one
2:20:53 of the best.
2:20:54 I mean, he was just such a great technician.
2:20:57 So I, I would go there to his dojo and he’d asked me to practice and he’d always finished
2:21:03 the practice and you, you know, that he would always say another one.
2:21:06 We’ll do another one.
2:21:07 Right.
2:21:08 So you’d go, yeah, because you had to make out that you weren’t that bothered that you
2:21:13 had to do another one.
2:21:15 So you do another one back to back and then he goes sometimes let’s do another one.
2:21:18 So he’d end up doing 15 minutes with the same guy who could possibly throw you at any time,
2:21:23 you know, and, and that was hard, you know, so, but I remember those particular guys and
2:21:30 there were plenty of those.
2:21:32 What do you do with the exhaustion that you’re feeling in those like how deep did you go
2:21:37 in terms of like?
2:21:38 Deep deep.
2:21:39 And I think that that was the great thing about having certain like European training camps
2:21:44 were more physical.
2:21:45 So I remember, you know, that we would have a European training camps where you’d fight
2:21:51 Germans and then the Dutch and then the French.
2:21:55 And then, you know, the Russian or the, you know, you’d have all sorts of different styles
2:22:00 and people there to fight.
2:22:03 And that, that was something then you’d have to dig in at a different place.
2:22:08 Come out of there.
2:22:09 Well, where do you go mentally when you, you know, how many times have you gone there
2:22:13 or like you’re really in deep waters exhaustion wise in, in competition, actually?
2:22:20 Competition, it’s happened, you know, so sometimes you go past where your forearms are absolutely
2:22:26 blown.
2:22:27 I remember the final of Czech tournament that we had and for the Frenchman in the final
2:22:36 and my forearms were so blown, I couldn’t shake his hand, you know.
2:22:41 And then I remember they were, they were solid, absolutely solid and they had lactic acid
2:22:47 in them.
2:22:48 And, and I remember I stood on the rostrum this and, and they were giving me things and
2:22:53 I couldn’t grip them properly.
2:22:56 So I was saying, put it under my armpit or, you know, chin, trying to hold, I couldn’t
2:23:01 hold anything, you know.
2:23:03 So there, there are times when I really had to go really deep.
2:23:06 I remember fighting two East Germans the same day, one of the competitions and the
2:23:12 number one and the number two East Germans.
2:23:15 And that was another day where I had to really dig deep.
2:23:19 That’s the, the fascinating thing about some of these tournaments is if you get, if you
2:23:24 go full distance on several matches in a row, the way you’re seeing in the finals are two
2:23:30 people that have like fought a lot that day.
2:23:33 Yeah.
2:23:34 So we have golden score now, you know.
2:23:35 So we, we see a lot of guys, you know, that going into golden score and they’ve done one
2:23:39 contest of four minutes and then they go another four minutes.
2:23:42 And then, you know, we’ve had some go into a third four minutes.
2:23:45 That is all back to back.
2:23:47 It might be in the first round, it might be in the final, you know, and we’ve got some
2:23:50 now that are coming out and you can see the stats and the ones that win in golden score.
2:23:57 So we got Japanese Hashimoto, he’s the Japanese representative for now, instead of Ono, because
2:24:04 Ono’s finished.
2:24:05 So Hashimoto’s coming out.
2:24:07 He was in a tournament last week and he went to look up, yeah, just have a look at him.
2:24:12 So Hashimoto’s in white here.
2:24:14 All right.
2:24:15 And there’s a great example there.
2:24:18 Well, I’m glad we got onto that.
2:24:19 You know, so I mean, he has got great technique.
2:24:22 Efferless.
2:24:23 Hashimoto.
2:24:24 Efferless.
2:24:25 There’s the title, right?
2:24:26 So you can see exactly what we’re talking about that great timing.
2:24:32 And again, you know, sometimes he backs them up to the edge and then he’ll wait for them
2:24:37 to come back in towards, they don’t want to step out to get a penalty.
2:24:41 I guess that’s a cross grip title, should I say that wrong?
2:24:43 Yeah.
2:24:44 Cross grip, different grips.
2:24:45 Yeah.
2:24:46 Oh, great examples there.
2:24:47 Just what we were talking about.
2:24:48 Making it look so easy.
2:24:51 Wow.
2:24:52 So he’s going to be their representative at 73 kilograms, looking him back him up again.
2:24:57 And again, just catching him as he pushes back.
2:25:01 To push, push, push, and then.
2:25:03 Yeah.
2:25:04 Action, reaction at his best there.
2:25:05 Yeah.
2:25:06 And slight change of direction, he sometimes goes down onto his knee there, which is siatoshi.
2:25:12 It turns from taiyatoshi, which is springing up to siatoshi that’s going down.
2:25:18 Oh, the title of the video is, his taiyatoshi is a work of art.
2:25:22 Yeah.
2:25:23 This is him at his best, showing him doing what he does best, but he had to go three
2:25:29 times into golden score last week and dig deep and lost one of them, I think.
2:25:35 But you’re still going at it.
2:25:37 You talk about all those training sessions.
2:25:40 Nikki, your wonderful wife told me that you were going all over, like from target to target,
2:25:44 looking for workout clothes, because your luggage got lost, because you had to get
2:25:48 workout in.
2:25:49 Yeah.
2:25:50 You know what?
2:25:51 I just, I realized that if I’m a miserable get, right, then she’ll get me into the gym,
2:25:57 you know, so.
2:25:58 And the thing is, is that I’m better if I get in there for an hour and I just do something,
2:26:03 at least 30, 35 to 40 minutes cardio, and then I do some weights and more high repetitions.
2:26:11 It’s not so much heavy weights now, but more functional stuff.
2:26:14 I mean, you travel all over the world for the commentary of the competitions.
2:26:18 So is it sometimes a challenge to figure out how?
2:26:22 Well, you know, during COVID, then they closed all the gyms.
2:26:27 But we were still going out.
2:26:28 We were, so one of the first ones out, the judo were some of the first out, the competitions
2:26:34 were behind closed doors.
2:26:36 So we were in the hotel, the gym was closed, so we couldn’t use the gyms.
2:26:42 So we had to look for other ways that we could work out.
2:26:46 So most of the hotels that we were in were high rise hotels.
2:26:51 So we were in the steps, we were doing the steps, all right, the way up, you know.
2:26:56 So I started it.
2:26:57 And so I started off with me going up and then one or two of the others and the referees
2:27:03 started to go up with me.
2:27:05 So in the end, we’d have this trail of people going up the steps and down and every place
2:27:10 we went to, we had the steps.
2:27:13 So yeah, that was an interesting situation.
2:27:16 So we were sick of steps in the end.
2:27:18 What advice would you give to beginners, people starting out in judo?
2:27:24 How to develop their game?
2:27:29 How to find the beauty in the sport and the art of judo?
2:27:34 If you put 10 people in a room and said, right, get on with it, you’d have mayhem, right?
2:27:42 And I think that whatever sport you’re doing, you need good instruction, good teaching and
2:27:49 a good club atmosphere, you know, somewhere that’s not so intense that winning is the
2:27:57 only thing.
2:27:58 And I think that if you look at 90% of the people that practice martial arts are doing
2:28:03 it for pleasure.
2:28:04 So they want to get pleasure.
2:28:05 So you need a club that’s got a bit of a mixture, you know, they’ve got a direction to go into
2:28:11 competition if they want and then the rest, it’s for fun and to enjoy it, but with really
2:28:18 good instruction, because with really good instruction and a good foundation and a good
2:28:22 base, you get more enjoyment because you have more success.
2:28:29 And let’s be honest, you know, the more success we have with something, the more we like it.
2:28:33 Yeah.
2:28:34 And great technique is a way to really discover the beauty of the art.
2:28:38 And so great teaching is really important there.
2:28:40 Great teaching is so important.
2:28:43 What about, what does it take to get from the early days when you started judo to world
2:28:50 class level?
2:28:52 I think that with most, I mean, you do hear, don’t you, you know, if somebody’s been doing
2:28:57 judo for eight years and then they’re in, and I think it happened, one of the French
2:29:02 Chameo, she went to the Olympic Games in 2012 and she’d been doing judo for eight years.
2:29:10 But then she started to lose, you know, so she had a relative success early on.
2:29:14 The Olympics was one of them.
2:29:15 She got a silver medal, but then she went off the boil and then she came back and now
2:29:21 she’s been there for, she’s still competing and she’s been there for well over 13 years
2:29:27 at the very top.
2:29:29 So I think that, you know, any foundation is like anything.
2:29:33 If you lay a really solid foundation, it generally lasts longer.
2:29:38 Yeah.
2:29:39 Well, that foundation, again, is that technique or is there, what does it take to build that
2:29:44 foundation?
2:29:45 I think technique, you get away with murder, you know, with technique, you can get away
2:29:51 with, you know, having bad condition, you know, but, I mean, you get found out in the
2:29:55 end, but you can, you know, you can go out and you can win certain things by doing really
2:30:01 nice technique.
2:30:03 But I think if you’ve got the mixture, if you’ve got the whole package, then you can,
2:30:06 you know, go the whole way.
2:30:08 So for people who somehow don’t know, you’ve commentated some of the greatest judo matches
2:30:13 ever.
2:30:15 You’ve done Grand Prix, you’ve done all these events, Olympics, World Championship, everything.
2:30:21 So what, just looking at the history of judo, what like stands out to you, what events stand
2:30:26 out to you?
2:30:27 What are some good memories that popped your head?
2:30:30 I think, you know, some of the Paris tournaments are amazing because the crowd, they’re there.
2:30:37 You know, they’re on the mat there, they’re all judoka, they’re all, they’re well educated
2:30:41 to the sport.
2:30:42 Every time somebody twitches, you know, they’re very biased towards their own, which is kind
2:30:47 of what you expect.
2:30:48 But, you know, sometimes I haven’t been able to hear myself speak and that’s very unusual.
2:30:53 You know, you’ve got headphones on and you’re blocked out, you know, like sometimes telly
2:30:58 Rene has been walking out there and the crowd are going crazy and they’re on their feet,
2:31:03 you know, when somebody twitches and, you know, and then you get the crowd silences.
2:31:08 We had one of those last week, you know, everybody’s cheering their man and then bang, their man
2:31:12 goes over.
2:31:13 Yeah, silence.
2:31:14 Silence.
2:31:15 Nothing like that.
2:31:16 And of course, we were commentating, we were going, that was a bit of a crowd silence,
2:31:21 you know, but yeah, that happens.
2:31:23 Yeah, that is a surprising thing that at least it was to me that Paris and France is really
2:31:29 big on judo.
2:31:30 Massive.
2:31:31 And there’s always surprises, you know, it’s like Paris is great.
2:31:38 In Japan for the Olympic games, the biggest surprise was Ono getting beaten in the team
2:31:43 event.
2:31:44 Now, Ono is the greatest judo man, pound for pound, probably one of the best.
2:31:48 And he won the Olympic title and then they went into the team event against France.
2:31:53 And Ono lost to a, he’s not run of the mill German, but the German, you know, he wasn’t
2:32:00 certainly Olympic title isk and be Ono managed to throw him.
2:32:08 The team stuff is fascinating.
2:32:09 Yeah.
2:32:10 It’s fascinating.
2:32:11 It changes the dynamics of the whole thing.
2:32:12 Yeah.
2:32:13 And it’s, I mean, it’s funny to say Paris, it really makes it really big deal that this
2:32:19 Olympics is being held in Paris.
2:32:22 And they’ll be the team to beat French team because they have the best balance of the
2:32:27 weight categories.
2:32:28 They have the best balance with their people that are world and Olympic champions and qualified
2:32:35 men and women.
2:32:36 So three men, three women, they have the best balance out of anybody and educated audience,
2:32:42 educated audience, home grounds.
2:32:43 It’s going to be awesome.
2:32:45 It’s going to be super fun.
2:32:46 It will be super fun.
2:32:47 You’re nervous.
2:32:48 Yeah.
2:32:49 All right.
2:32:50 Do you get nervous?
2:32:51 I get nervous.
2:32:52 I get nervous.
2:32:53 I get nervous right now, but given, especially because it’s the Olympics and you don’t want
2:33:01 to, you want to celebrate people properly, right?
2:33:05 And it’s like, it’s everything for them.
2:33:07 And a lot of people, especially like the finals matches, it’ll be watched millions of times,
2:33:16 the highest of stakes, all of this.
2:33:18 Played over and over.
2:33:19 Yeah.
2:33:20 But, you know, with mine, I’m now a little bit more careful, you know, with, like, so
2:33:24 I’ll celebrate a massive throw and then have an empathy to the one that’s been thrown,
2:33:29 you know, because it’s not the best feeling in the world, especially in Olympic finals.
2:33:34 Yeah.
2:33:35 Can you imagine that?
2:33:36 Yeah.
2:33:37 It must be terrible.
2:33:39 Must be terrible.
2:33:40 Yeah.
2:33:41 We’re just reflecting.
2:33:43 So I know I have a bit of empathy there and I just, I try and say the right things because
2:33:49 they always do come up to me and say, “You commented in my fights.”
2:33:53 Yeah.
2:33:54 You’re the voice of the biggest triumphs and the biggest tragedies for these athletes,
2:33:58 for the world that watches and admires these athletes.
2:34:01 No pressure.
2:34:02 You’re the voice.
2:34:03 Don’t screw it up.
2:34:04 Yeah.
2:34:05 Don’t screw it up.
2:34:06 Your voice is in my head when I watch these, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating.
2:34:11 It’s fascinating, but you’re, you’re a master of it.
2:34:14 It’s, it’s a huge honor that you would talk with me.
2:34:20 Thank you for everything you’ve done for the sport of judo, for the Olympics, for just
2:34:24 sports in general, just celebrating greatness in all of its forms.
2:34:29 Thank you for talking to me.
2:34:30 Keep going.
2:34:31 I can’t wait to listen to you in Paris.
2:34:33 Thank you for having me.
2:34:34 And it’s just been an honor to, to be here with you.
2:34:39 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Neil Adams.
2:34:41 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
2:34:46 And now let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Masashi.
2:34:50 There’s nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger,
2:34:55 richer, quicker, smarter.
2:34:57 Everything is within.
2:35:00 Everything exists.
2:35:01 Seek nothing outside of yourself.
2:35:05 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
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