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You've been training top athletes, and you train with them. You're a
different type of manager, and it sounds like a different type of gym.
Many people come to train at our place, and many just use the facility. It's different from other martial arts place because anybody can come at any time. I train with these people and exchange knowledge. You see where we stand. You have to do this in order to get better, you have to compete with guys who have different styles, better than you, same as you, less than you, so you can improve.
Are there any well known pro wrestlers who came to use your facility?
WWE Rock, Rodney Piper and many more used our gym too.
Talking about well known pro wrestlers, you are the manager of Zero-One Matt Ghaffari, right?
I manage Matt Ghaffari, the Legend. He's the biggest thing that ever
hit Japan, bigger than Bob Sapp (laugh). Ghaffari does well, and he
really likes pro wrestling.
How did that happen?
I know all the wrestlers being on the US national team, and people know who I am. Matt Ghaffari was the silver medalist in the Olympics.
Then, do you know an Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz? He's going to be fighting in the Jungle Fight main event.
Yes, I wrestled Mark Schultz.
Did you win, or did he win?
We both won, he beat me more times than I beat him (smile). He was
actually the best guy I wrestled ever. I wrestled many Olympic champions and world champions and beat a lot of people, but he was consistently the best guy who I wrestled with. He's an amazing wrestler, strong with great balance. He had just a good balance as me, usually I out do people in balance, but this guy, I would do things, and he would still be standing. I would say, "What's he still doing there, most guys would be falling three moves ago."
You wrestled Don Frye and many fighters before they became
professionals.
I wrestled Don Frye in college. He wasn't considered a great
college wrestler, but he's done very well in fighting and made his name. He was a good amateur wrestler who was a Division-1 wrestler.
Have you wrestled anybody who is famous as a fighter now?
I've beat Rick Steiner two or three times in amateur wrestling. Rick
Steiner was an ALL AMERICAN for Michigan and his brother too. Rick was wrestling at 177 and went up to 190. Now he's humongous.....
You are going to fight in the Jungle Fight, we don't know the opponent
yet, but this will be your debut match. Are you confident?
I know myself, and I'm prepared. I don't have to know who I'm going
against, but everything will be fine.
There was a very short notice for this fight, how is your conditioning?
Short, only rumors got around, but I've been training all the time with everyone. Vladimir's going to fight in UFC on the 18th, Trigg was supposed to fight on the 13th, and Lyoto was pretty much going to fight somewhere. So we always had hard training, but this experience will be incredible because I always wanted to go to the rain forest just to visit anyway. I'm a big believer in communing with nature, that men have actually gone so far away from nature that they're beginning to destroy the environment, and the earth itself. I'm interested in the bigger cause of this event, which is to save the rain forest. For me, mixed martial arts is the highest art form, and I have to perform my art in this jungle atmosphere to help get the awareness out to the world, show them what's happening to our world and people getting beyond themselves and stupid things that they're worried about, and worry about what really is happening. I think this whole thing is fascinating.
Are you looking forward to start your career as a fighter from here on?
Using this just as an experience. I've done many things with my life,
traveled to many places since I was twelve and went through a lot of
weird strange things. My competition shelf life is not very long, this is another awareness thing where once I get into this thing. I'll be able to teach my guys better. I never fought in a MMA fight, I've done many similar training, but it's not that so we'll see what the deal is.
This fight will be broadcasted in different countries, do you have any
message to the fans?
The broadcast is for the fans, and the fight itself is for me. The
people who enjoy the fighting won't see aesthetically beautiful
fights, that's what will happen. My job is to finish the fight as soon as possible, by any means possible, it's really simple. I just want to thank all my people at RAW and Simon Inoki who helped me to get over there.
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