Eliot Marshall is BJJ black belt and a former professional mixed MMA fighter who also appeared in Season 8 of The Ultimate Fighter show. He now helps run Easton Training Centers and the Elevation Fight Team.
In today’s episode of my podcast (The Strenuous Life Podcast) we talk about how to run a successful BJJ school, the financial incentive structures in MMA fight teams, the physical and mental attributes you need to be a good fighter, making a living off of jiu-jitsu, Elliot’s experience with anxiety and depression, his rules for raising kids, and his Gospel of Fire book coming out soon.
Listen to the Conversation with Eliot Marshall Here…
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Find out more about Eliot, his teaching, his podcast and his book at eliotmarshall.com.
The full transcript of the podcast is posted below:
ELIOT: You know, he knew exactly what death was like. He almost died of Cancer. So when everyone else is riding up that hill and is like, you know, “I’m dying but I’m gonna go” Vance can say “Oh no, I’m NOT dying. This is very hard, but I’m not dying. I’ve been dying, you know. I’ve been dying…”
STEPHAN: Today we’ve got Eliot Marshall who is the head coach for Team Elevation at the Easton Training Centre and, you’ve got like 50 fighters fighting on your team, right?
ELIOT: Yeah man we have a lot, we have a good amount of fighters you know, both amateurs coming up, professionals and guys in the UFC along with you know, I have my Jiu-Jitsu fighters too so I have a lot of athletes around me.
STEPHAN: Lot of competitors.
ELIOT: Yeah, a lot of competitors.
STEPHAN: So, something that I’ve been thinking about, and I know you’ve been thinking about, are the differences between sort of the physical attributes that it takes to make a great fighter, and then the mental game. Sort of the mental maturing, or the immaturing, or whatever it is. The mental process that you need to get in there and swing for the fences and kick people in the head, and be willing to kick people in the head. So what do you see as a common denominator among your athletes who succeed, versus those who struggle, shall we say, with reaching their potential.
ELIOT: It’s so tough to find that and I’ve been talking about this a lot. Like you’re talking about like, that thing we say that athletes have. Like, what is “it”, how do we define that. And, for me, I think most of “it” comes down to you have to be happy in your life.
STEPHAN: Really?
ELIOT: Yeah. I think you even see guys –
STEPHAN: Guys are fighting from bad places, logically?
ELIOT: Yeah I think that’s why they crumble. I think they might have some success but then they crumble. But when you look at the best, when you look at the absolute best of the best, the George St. Pierres, the Anderson Silvas, I think the only outlier might be John Jones.
STEPHAN: Um hmm. Wee bit of a troubled individual.
ELIOT: Yeah a wee bit. You know, a little touch. But you know they get very very satisfied in their life, and even like, you know I was just listening to Tyson on Rogan, and if no one has listened to that one it’s amazing. Like that Rogan episode, just listening, just hearing Mike Tyson you know and the questions that Joe asked, you know. But like, he reached greatness but then he fell so hard. You know. And the difference is happiness, I believe. Are you in that, can you be happy so that can actually harness the physical potential that you’ve been given by the universe.
STEPHAN: Are we talking maybe more about sustainability at your peak, as opposed to getting to the peak, because Tyson did shoot up the ranks, he did make it to Heavyweight Champion of the World. And stay there for a while. It just wasn’t sustainable because he imploded down the road.
ELIOT: He imploded, and like you know, Cus died. You know that was a huge part, I think Cus made him happy. Like in his life, it gave him that stability that somebody loved him and cared about him and that he was able to perform really really well with and after Cus went away, passed, you could see how it started to crumble a little bit.
STEPHAN: His entourage started encouraging him down “positive paths”, good life choices, “Buy a tiger, Mike!”
ELIOT: He talks about that, you know he talked about all of that
STEPHAN: Did he? I’ve only heard bits and pieces of this podcast, I haven’t heard the whole thing, I gotta
ELIOT: Oh it’s so good! It’s probably one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to.
STEPHAN: Ok. That’s a strong endorsement.
ELIOT: The entertaining, like, Mike’s just such an entertaining guy, I don’t think there’s too many people that interview better Joe Rogan, so the two of them combined is really great.
STEPHAN: So where have you seen this in your fighters. Like, you’re dealing with a lot of guys coming up, so do you see that sort of fire in the belly, or haunted by demons propelling them initially?
ELIOT: We have this one guy, he just fought, Corey Sandhagen and he’s been with us since he was 16 years old. And for the last, for several years we could see his potential physically. And then he would get in the cage and fight and we’d be like what was that bro. Like, in our heads, we’d never say that to him obviously. But man that is not even close. Like, you just gave TJ Dillashaw hell in practice, because you both had, like they both fought the same weekend once you know. And he gave TJ Dillashaw hell the whole time, and TJ is the champ at this point. This was before he lost to Dominic Cruz, I think it was the Dominc Cruz fight actually. But, and then we, you know, TJ was fighting on Saturday, Corey was fighting on Friday, and we watched Corey fight this guy that was not that good and you’re just like, what the f***, like huh? Huh?
STEPHAN: It’s maddening when people you know, and to some extent love, don’t perform up to their potential and you know they’ve got it, you know it’s there. You’ve seen it
ELIOT: Yeah
STEPHAN: And they shit the bed.
ELIOT: Yeah so frustrating. And even like, I mean like, we’re not talking about like, I mean like, I think TJ would say this too, they went round for round sometimes, during, in camp. So that’s not easy to do with TJ right. Like that’s very difficult. Like you have to be very good to be able to do that. And I’m not talking about practice. I try not to be like “Oh that guy kills everyone in practice” and you know “I knocked him out in practice” I think that’s a bad road to go down. You know. But over a long haul when you can take a real long look at things in practice, they were rather even. And to watch him go and then, you know so he won that fight Corey did, but then he lost his next fight. And we were in the back, and he was crying, this was the first time he’d ever lost. And he’s like “Yeah I just didn’t want to be in there” You know. He’s like “I didn’t want to be in there and I don’t even know if I want to do this”. So we took a break, you know.
Talked, talked a lot just about how to find yourself and be happy in your life and you know, I’m not his, I’m one of his main coaches. I’m his Jiu-Jitsu coach, but the person that made him really really good and a ninja is Christian Allen. Like on the feet and the movement and all these things. You know. But I have this other role and like, my role, obviously its grappling. But my role came into play here of like just being a little bit of a mentor with him about like, because I had just gone through my own personal struggle. I call it my spiritual awakening/mental breakdown.
STEPHAN: Dark night of the soul.
ELIOT: Yeah my dance with the devil. You know. I’m not a super religious person but I believe in heaven and hell. Well I don’t know if I believe in heaven, I believe in hell. And I believe that hell comes for us when we’re alive. You know I don’t know what happens after we die. So I don’t like to talk about it but I think we get in the depths of hell, here.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: You know. Um, so , we just, we talked a lot you know. And he got a sports psychologist and he found, like he found some inner peace. You know, he found some inner peace and uh, when he found that inner peace man he has not looked back. And he is, I mean, go watch his last five fights. No one’s, you know, I think one person made it to the second round?
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And three of them in the UFC!
STEPHAN: Everybody’s got a rate limiting step, somewhere in their process. I mean maybe, you see some fighters and they do great and they just gas out. And they’re rate limiting step is endurance
ELIOT: Right
STEPHAN: You have some fighters who move well and flow well but they just don’t have the strength. Because you do need a certain amount of strength, this whole idea that you know, you don’t need strength for technique is crap, when it really comes time to perform. So, everybody’s got, I mean there could be techniques where the limiting step is flexibility. But for some people, the limiting step, and it sounds like you’re arguing it at a high level, limiting step really ends up being more internal.
ELIOT: I think for everyone the limiting step for most people becomes, at the top. Right, when you’re looking at the best athletes.
STEPHAN: For sure
ELIOT: Like, you know
STEPHAN: So we’ve already weeded out the people who are gonna be great gas jockeys and just –
ELIOT: Right, we’ve weeded out, for example, the “me’s” of the world, you know. I got into the UFC, I fought in the UFC, but I am not the athlete that these guys are now. Like, the people at the top –
STEPHAN: What was your limiting step?
ELIOT: Athletic ability and my mind, two things, you know? Both. I do not have, I have never had the athleticism, one, and two, I never figured out what “it” was. I could never harness it until recently, now I believe I can. I believe I understand how to understand how to harness my very physical best. But if you’re going to talk about being the very very best ever, in the world, like you have to have the athleticism.
STEPHAN: George St. Pierre has taught a lot about struggling with the sort of psychological aspect and coming back from a loss, it doesn’t mean you don’t have these problems, it means that you’ve to some extent succeeded in your struggles with these problems.
ELIOT: Right, yes, but George’s was his mind, because look it, he’s a freak athlete, right
STEPHAN: Sure, 100%
ELIOT: So that’s what I’m saying, I’m never, I do not have the athletic ability of the St. Pierre’s or the John Jones’ or the TJ Dillashaw’s, I mean we can just go down the list of every single champion that there is. Right. Those motherf***s are athletes. The Henry Cejudo. They are, I mean pick a sport that you want them to play and they’ll be great.
STEPHAN: Um hmm. The only thing I can think of that they wouldn’t excel at is something like marathon running because they might not have the slow twitch fibers.
ELIOT: Right. For sure.
STEPHAN: But anything requiring anything kind of coordination or fast twitch fibers or something like that, they’re going to excel at.
ELIOT: Of course.
STEPHAN: So, there are so many directions we can go here, Eliot. But let’s just go down the athletic direction one for a little bit.
ELIOT: Yeah
STEPHAN: What would you define as athleticism. Like, how would you measure it if they weren’t doing the sport. Could you take a guy into a lab and say ok this guy on a scale of 1 to 10 is a 7 athletic, this guy is a 3, and this guy is a 10.
ELIOT: Run fast, jump high, good hand/eye coordination, good VO2 Max, you know things like that. Good recovery.
STEPHAN: Umhmm. Some of which is trainable. But it’s all trainable within parameters.
ELIOT: It’s all trainable in parameters, yeah. Some people are only going to get so high. You know?
STEPHAN: Yeah you can take the VO2 Max of 40 and turn it into a 50, or 55, you’re never going to make an 80.
ELIOT: No one’s going to be Lance Armstrong.
STEPHAN: Umhmm
ELIOT: You know, he’s, we can…for example the Lance argument. It’s not, come on we’re riding a bike. How good can you get at riding a bike. His physical performance that he was able to do, his VO2 Max was better than everyone’s and in my opinion he knew what death was like. You know, he knew exactly what death was like. He almost died of cancer. So when everyone is riding up that hill and they’re like I’m dying but I’m gonna go, Lance can say oh no I’m not dying. This is very hard but I’m not dying.
STEPHAN: Been there done that.
ELIOT: I’ve been dying, you know, I’ve been dying. So yeah I mean I think we can take the steroid argument out of it because there’s not a single one of those guys that wasn’t on them, every single one.
STEPHAN: Of course, and there were guys who were on more and there were guys who were on less.
ELIOT: We know that that’s a non-factor because every single person was on steroids if you wanted to even have a chance at competing.
STEPHAN: For sure. It’s like bodybuilding.
ELIOT: Yes
STEPHAN: Everyone on the Mr. Olympia stage is heavily juiced.
ELIOT: Yeah. Has to be.
STEPHAN: But if you took, if all steroids and all growth hormones and all supplements vanished tomorrow and stayed vanished for two years –
ELIOT: The best would still be the best.
STEPHAN: It’d be the same guys up there.
ELIOT: Yeah, it’d still be the same ten guys, you know. It’s not like all of a sudden you and I would be up there. Come on. This is what I hate about like, this is –
STEPHAN: You’ve never seen me with my clothes off sir. Posing in little tiny posing trunks.
ELIOT: Sounds great, but you know I want to say, how old are you now?
STEPHAN: 49. I got a chance I think.
ELIOT: Yeah, not happening, yeah not happening. But uh, but you know like I think this is a huge misconception for most people and I think sports writers get this the most wrong because they want to be athletes so badly. This is why they demonize, like in baseball they won’t let any of these guys in the Hall of Fame. Because like they want to demonize, Barry Bonds was like somewhere in the back of their minds they could have been like Barry Bonds. It’s like Jesus man. No.
STEPHAN: Um hmm.
ELIOT: Get over it.
STEPHAN: Well, let’s go to this dark night of the soul. What was your dance with the devil, what was your dark night of the soul.
ELIOT: God, man, I don’t even know. OK I made it. That was my dance with the devil, my very very worst dance with the devil was, I had made it right. I had retired from fighting, I made it to the UFC so that was an accomplishment, right. I won a ton in Jiu-Jitsu so that was an accomplishment. And now I teamed up with my Jiu-Jitsu teacher, we had these successful Jiu-Jitsu schools, we had two ten-thousand square foot schools, we had some little ones, you know. I have a great wife, great kids, I live in a nice house, I can take vacations, um, you know I’m not talking private jet money right. But, you know, I made it.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And then I fell the f*** apart. I don’t know why, you know. I couldn’t sleep. I was up for nights. I was up 4 nights in a row in this dance, panicking, pacing the house crying, not sure what to do. Not sure how to do it. You know. And then I got with my doctor and started going down the path of getting better.
STEPHAN: What did that look like?
ELIOT: That looked like therapy, twice a week, that looked like for nine f***ing months man I took sleeping pills every night, to get to sleep. And sometimes I mean, my dance with the devil was so – my anxiety was so bad that I could take two prescription sleeping pills, I’m not talking that over the counter shit, I’m talking prescription, AND then Xanax. I could take all of that and I’d stay awake sometimes.
STEPHAN: Oh wow.
ELIOT: A milligram of Xanax. If I take 0.25mg of Xanax now I’m fucking out. Go ahead, try it. Sometimes like on a plane.
STEPHAN: I never have, but maybe I’ll try and get some from you for my next long plane ride.
ELIOT: A plane ride, right, you want to go out, you want to just chill out.
STEPHAN: I want to be drooling on my neighbour’s shoulder.
ELIOT: Yeah. Exactly. That’s what 0.25 Xanax will do to me now. Because I have to travel sometimes for these long flights so I take it. Because you want to stay adjusted. But then, I was taking a milligram of that AND two sleeping pills, awake. On the phone with my friends crying about I don’t know f**ing why.
STEPHAN: Amazing. A lot of fighters have a really tough time retiring. I don’t know if it’s been part of their identity for so long and then they’ve lost their identity. Or I don’t know if it’s all the residual banging in the head that sets them up for depression and maybe you know, long term concussion effects.
ELIOT: Yeah you know for me, you never know with the concussion stuff. So we’ll be unsure of that right. But for me it was a couple things. I think it was one thing, I don’t even think it was so much retiring. Um, I was you know I was bullied as a young – I wasn’t bullied, I was picked on and I had no friends. I shouldn’t say bullied as a kid. And what got me friends, what seemed like, I lost a little weight, I got in shape, I looked tough, you know. And then I gained actual tough skills, Jiu-Jitsu, you know and that made me.
That gave me this confidence, that gave me this, I got friends. Because now you’re confident right. And a whole host of other things, and I got girls now, all this stuff. And um, but when you fight in the UFC and you’re not the champion, you’re not that tough, right. Like, that’s thrown right in your face, how tough you’re not. And when I retired I tried to scream, with my actions, of how tough I still was.
STEPHAN: What did that look like? Like going and sparring with the guys, or doing stupid shit on the side?
ELIOT: No, no, just like some shit talking, just the way in which I chose to lead. Because I had schools, and I was the coach of the team. The way in which I chose to lead, nothing stupid, nothing crazy, but just these little actions. You know I’d be like “Let’s f***ing go you p****s” you know and like that’s just, I wholeheartedly disagree with that and I don’t understand why I was doing it, and It made me crumble. Like that, that made me fall apart. And I had to find a different way to scream how tough I was to the world.
STEPHAN: Now, a lot of people who run the school and fight are worried about losing, because they fundamentally they’re worried about losing their bread and butter.
ELIOT: Uh huh
STEPHAN: Right, they’re worried about it having an effect on students. Did you find any of that to be the case?
ELIOT: When I was fighting professionally, like in the UFC, I wasn’t an owner. I was just a…
STEPHAN: Oh ok
ELIOT: But I am now. And I talk about this, so I’m competing in the fight to win again. You know. And I’m doing the trials next weekend, I try to compete a lot. Because man you have to. I agree with you. People are so scared of what their students will think of them with a loss. And you have to, you’re resting on your ego. You need your students to love you because you’re great and that’s not why your students should love you. You know, your students should love you and respect you because of what you do for them. Not because of the medals that you have on the wall.
They should love and respect you for how you make them feel, the community that’s created in your school, not because you can beat them up. Because if we’re playing a game of who can beat everyone up, then the 20-year olds that walk in today or the 15-year old that walk in, everyone who owns school today, they’re going, like if you’re 30/35 years old yeah you might beat them for a little bit but guess what’s coming for you. You know, you’re creating a dog eat dog world. What are you never gonna train with them? You know?
STEPHAN: Have you heard about or talked to any of the guys who used to train with Shogun or Wanderlei back in the day with Shootbox? It sounds like that was the ultimate dog eat dog environment. Sparring, full contact, small gloves, couple of days before a pride fight. It sounds like it was just an absolute madhouse of dog eat dog…
ELIOT: But this is how my school, not my school, but my grudge. You know. I came up with the Grudge Fight Team, Me, Shane Carwin, Brendan Schaub, Nate Marquardt, Duane Ludwig, Cody Donovan, you know. We fought. We f***ing fought man. There was no learning. We f***ing fought. And that was it.
STEPHAN: Which makes you tougher but might not make you better.
ELIOT: But then it leads to this. You know. And look all of this falls apart – that team is gone. You know? The Grudge Fight team, gone.
STEPHAN: Wanderlei, not doing so great.
ELIOT: Wanderlei, done. You know. Right. They all go their separate ways. Even if you look at AKA right now, right, the team that was AKA, the AKA is you know, Cormier, DC, Cain, and Khabib. But then, and they’re doing great those three guys, but like what AKA was, remember a couple of years ago they had this huge, everything you know?
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And now they got a couple guys because that’s not sustainable. But the fight teams are very hard to sustain because of that. You have to…you know it’s a difficult thing, you have to come about it from a different reason other than money. Which is hard in the fight game, you know. But in the Jiu-Jitsu school, it’s a little easier and that’s what my Jiu-Jitsu school with Amal at Easton,my business partner, and all of my managers and everyone that’s working for us, that’s what we do. You know. We try to create a place for growth, for long term growth of a human being.
STEPHAN: Well what are the economics of fight games. I mean obviously the head trainer takes percentages of the purses. Of the wins. And the showing up. So if you ran a fight team around Connor McGregor, obviously you can make pretty decent living just being John Cavanaugh.
ELIOT: yeah that’s the problem
STEPHAN: Assuming you’re getting a certain percentage. But of all the fight teams around the world, whether we’re talking AKA or Shoot box or your team, or Team Grudge or whoever, how much of the head coach’s income is coming from his fighter’s fighting and winning, versus the average Jiu-Jitsu boxing person coming through the door. If you had to speak for all teams everywhere, all over the world.
ELIOT: I would say this is the major problem. Yeah it’s hard right. I would say this is the major problem with the fight game. Is that the coaches are relying on the fighters to make a living, you know, and so who’s going to make good decisions for you. You know. Who’s going to make good decisions. So right now my fighters –
STEPHAN: Yeah, who’s going to say “Hey man, it’s time to hang up the gloves” Because even if that guy goes out and fights and loses he still gets some money to show.
ELIOT: Who’s going to say “Hey man let’s not take this fight, let’s take a different fight. Because I gotta pay the mortgage this week so I f***ing need you to fight”
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: Right? I got bills to pay. So you know, that’s how most fight teams are structured. We do not structure ours that way, the only people that coach on our team, uhh, we have our own things going, Every single person has their own school, we come together, and we train the guys out the Easton, most people are under the Easton banner. My one friend Vinny was a coach on the team, he has his own gym like a regular workout gym. But you know, the fight thing is a little extra side money. It’s not, you know like, I have times when I tell the guys not to pay me if I don’t feel like I did a good job. Because it’s not going to make any difference to my bottom line because I set it up so –
STEPHAN: What’s a typical coaching fee in this sport? I’m not saying what’s yours, but –
ELIOT: Yeah, 5 to 10%.
STEPHAN: So, a fighter makes, he’s got a really good night, he makes $100,000, right he’s at that mid level, rank 10th in his weight class. Making about let’s say $100 Grand to make the math easy. How much of that money does he have left a week after he wins it?
ELIOT: Oh, yeah so. Yeah so. It depends how many coaches you have, but you’re going to pay about 15% of your purse to coaching. You know?
STEPHAN: So maybe a striking coach, a Jiu-Jitsu coach, a conditioning guy?
ELIOT: Or a wrestling coach, whatever it may be.
STEPHAN: Sure
ELIOT: Right, so something like that, you’re going to pay about 15% of your purse to coaching. You’re going to have to pay most likely your manager, so that’s going to be another 10-20%, let’s just call it another 15% , so you’re losing 30% off the top. And then you’ve got to pay for fight week. You’ve got hotels, and dinners, and you know? Not much.
STEPHAN: Not to mention tax.
ELIOT: Yep. So you can get a lot of tax written off there with those expenses. But you’re going to lose 30-40% of your money right off the top.
STEPHAN: Um hmm. Yeah it’s such a tough, the incentives in the game are so difficult.
ELIOT: It’s terrible.
STEPHAN: There’s nothing incentivizing, I mean, guys making a transition out of fighting. Because you’re been fighting, you’ve been learning how to land that jab, you’ve been learning how to sprawl, you’ve been learning how to sweep from the guard, and ground and pound properly. Nobody, the incentivization isn’t there to say “Hey, Joe, what are you going to do after you fight? Maybe you should learn to, I don’t know, sell cars. Or maybe you should learn to get your real estate ticket while you’re doing all this.” Said nobody ever.
ELIOT: Yeah. Everyone thinks they’re going to have a school afterwards.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And look, people don’t, nobody –
STEPHAN: Fighting skills and teaching schools are two different things.
ELIOT: Yeah nobody comes to people’s, nobody stays at someone’s school because they were a champion. They might come there, they might come. Yeah they might come. Nobody stays. People stay because of how you make them feel, not because of who you are or were.
STEPHAN: True. Well, Mike Tyson’s cash crunch, various cash crunches have been well publicized. He has talked a lot about that and being absolutely broke. So how many times did he start coaching? Zero.
ELIOT: Zero.
STEPHAN: And on the flip side, Custom Auto. How many world championships did he have again? Oh, it was zero.
ELIOT: Yeah. For himself.
STEPHAN: Like. A good coach isn’t necessarily a good fighter and a good fighter isn’t necessarily a good coach.
ELIOT: That can happen, it CAN be, but not necessarily true.
STEPHAN: It seems to be more common in Jiu-Jitsu than in striking.
ELIOT: Ummm
STEPHAN: Maybe?
ELIOT: I don’t know.
STEPHAN: Because I can think of lots of good coaches who were world champions. I can’t think of that many heavyweight fighters.
ELIOT: Well we are still it the early stages of Jiu-Jitsu, right
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: You know, so. And there, it’s very hard to learn from anywhere. Still. I think we’re just coming out of the dark ages right where the internet came and now everyone can learn on the internet, and yadda yadda. You know. But…
STEPHAN: How to do that Berimbolo to crab ride again, Oh yeah, I’ll search it with this YouTube site.
ELIOT: Exactly you know, so we’re going to see. We’re going to see how this continues, but with Jiu-Jitsu there are still some people that have the secrets. Uhh, yeah so that’s still few and far between so, we’ll see. I agree and they are tightly kept still. You know, like, for example Danaher’s done something very special for his athletes. You know. He’s done something very very special and they have the secrets in No Gi, I think it’s pretty evident, you know, I think it’s pretty evident. He’s got monsters that are big and small all doing the same exact game, you know, no different in the game.
STEPHAN: Yeah. I mean it will be interesting to see if that’s the exception to the rule, that it’s tough to maintain a fight team. But again, I would argue that Jiu-Jitsu teams tend to be more stable than MMA teams, maybe it’s just a level of attitude, is a little –
ELIOT: Less money. Nah it’s just less money.
STEPHAN: Less money? Ok. I’ll take that.
ELIOT: Start getting millions in Jiu-Jitsu and you’ll see things crumble really fast, for a Jiu-Jitsu fight. You know? Nobody goes “I’m going to be a Jiu-Jitsu fighter for my life, to make a living” That’s not a very, it’s almost not doable.
STEPHAN: You know who does do that though, and they’re kind of a rather stable team is Alliance. With Fabio Gurgel
ELIOT: Right
STEPHAN: Because if you become a Black Belt under that system and you win some titles, they can, they, the team, works at sending you out on the seminar circuit. They, the team, help set you up with schools.
ELIOT: Right
STEPHAN: So it’s an incentive structure that actually encourages people to stay, for the most part. I’m sure there are exceptions. And the podcast I did with Fabio Gurgel, he talked about losing it all and the team just shattering. I want to say in the early 2000’s and then rebuilding it. For 18 years after that.
ELIOT: Right.
STEPHAN: But the incentive structure now is that you stay with the team and you don’t actually lose money, it’s not like oh ok nobody’s calling, saying “hey December’s affiliation fee is up and you may as well pre-pay January as well”. You’re going, here’s an opportunity, do you want to go teach in the Netherlands for a week followed by two weeks in Germany, followed by three weeks in Italy.
ELIOT: Yeah, so, I see it, with Easton we do it a little different. We don’t do it based on competition, you know. We try to show you a path for your life, how do you going from being a cleaner to a GM, and then after the GM you get some private sharing and ownership and you know. How, whether you’re the cleaner or whether you’re the front desk person, you know and most of the people come in doing, and they just get bought into the culture. It’s a path to a career. You know. Rather than a path to a job.
STEPHAN: You don’t mean people just training though, you mean people who come and train there and they say, look Eliot I really want to make Jiu-Jitsu my life.
ELIOT: Yeah, so you know ok, you want to make Jiu-jitsu your life, sounds great. You’re gonna start cleaning. You know.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And we’ll see how you do. You know? We’ll see how you do.
STEPHAN: Can you show up on time? Yes or no.
ELIOT: Yeah! Or sometimes we get like these, sometimes these front desk people come in and they, you know, just to be at the front desk. Because we have full time front desk at all of our schools. And that’s just a job, and they get engulfed in the community and they start training and nobody that works for us doesn’t train. It doesn’t exist. And then we hire within, only, after that. You know. After that first initial, like, maybe you might come in as a front desk person, that can happen. But no other job in the school is like that. If you want to stay, it’s about a community and how you make people feel so they can see that path to be like man, I know I can probably go do something but I really like it here. I like what they do here.
STEPHAN: So you’ve got what, you said, two 10,000 square foot schools which is huge.
ELIOT: Yeah we have two 10,000 and five you know, five smaller versions.
STEPHAN: Ok, so that’s huge. So clearly you’ve got a lot of you know, a lot of mass. There are a lot of people. Of the people who train there, only a small percentage is interested in making a life in Jiu-jitsu, the rest of them I would imagine are just stockbrokers who want to wrestle men wearing pajamas
ELIOT: Oh yeah for sure. Yes. So those people, yeah our student base is not who we are talking about but our employee base.
STEPHAN: Ok
ELIOT: Our student base, like they come in and they, but that’s most schools, that’s even Alliance right. The students of Alliance that go to the Alliance schools –
STEPHAN: Of course
ELIOT: Like we’re talking, but the people who are going to be your fighters and the yadda yadda are a small percentage, the people that are going to work for you is a small percentage. But you know, uh, yeah most of our students just come in and enjoy the mats and enjoy the time.
STEPHAN: So I know you probably can’t release all your secrets here –
ELIOT: I’ll tell everybody everything man, I’m in the process of making a course of exactly how we do everything. I’m not scared man, we’re not scared.
STEPHAN: Yeah. Because that’s exactly what, I mean I can hear them already. I can already hear the school owners yelling at me going “what did they do”, you know, you and Amal and your other partners, to develop such a large student base and such large schools. What was the one easy trick that you did?
ELIOT: You truly care about the individual and you have some core values. You set a reason why…
STEPHAN: I said easy trick. I said easy trick, I want to know the one ad you run on Facebook.
ELIOT: No, it doesn’t exist. It’s a hard trick, it’s not easy.
STEPHAN: So let’s go further into this hard trick then.
ELIOT: It’s the same thing you have to do with your life, why do you exist. That’s it. You have to have a “why”. Why does Easton exist in the world? What we came up with is we are here to change how people see martial arts in the world. From, and every aspect, from the way the school is cleaned, to how the phone gets answers, to your experience on the website, to your experience when you walk in the door, to your experience in class, to your experience when you’re quitting. When you’re exiting the school and saying you don’t want to do it anymore, you know. So we define a “why”. And then after you define a why, you have to, you have to set some core values. Like, I have some core values for my life that my kids and my wife and I live by, you know.
STEPHAN: And, what are those?
ELIOT: Rule #1, you have to do Jiu-Jitsu. Rule #2 is you have to swim. Rule #3 is you have to look people in the eye, demand respect and give it back. Rule #4 is if you’re scared you have to do it. Rule #5 is you make your money work for you and you don’t work for your money. Rule #6 is you ride or die, if my brother goes down then I go down. That’s it. That’s my life, you know, and then we do the same thing with the business, we have some core values for the business.
STEPHAN: What are the core values for the business? I just want to see how they correlate to your personal core values.
ELIOT: Ok, yeah. Some of them include things like, we ensure safety. We lead by example in the school We put other people first rather than ourselves first, you know. Things like that.
STEPHAN: What is ‘ensuring safety’ mean. Because injuries are the devil, really. Of all the people who start Jiu-Jitsu, a huge percentage of them quit because they got their shoulder tweaked in their 2nd week, or it just makes their knees hurt worse and worse, or there’s some moron who decided it’s ok to do a heel hook in D class, or somebody got dropped on their head when they got swept in the open guard. Injuries are the devil. So what do you do to minimize those?
ELIOT: So, there’s no training when you first come in, you know, there’s no live training.
STEPHAN: No sparring, you mean?
ELIOT: No sparring. No sparring when you first come into our schools. You do class, you might, we create flow drills. We have flow drills where you’re putting, and I think it’s even a better way to learn. I teach the advanced class this way, where you’re never learning a particular move, you’re learning how TO move, you know. Um, so that you can see where things get put together, it makes you go a little less, we talk about it. We talk about how we touch our partner, we talk about all the things you don’t like to talk about. We make sure we address them, hey when you’re working with the girls, how do you train with the girls, you know.
You go about talking about them, but the heel hook thing it’s just a very simple rule. Look there’s no heel hooking in the Gi, one. There’s no heel hooking white belts, two. And after that, it’s on both people’s ends to ensure, like everyone’s so scared of the heel hook you know. But it’s simple, if my two hands are on your heel and I have your knee inside the knee line, and you’re not tapping, well then I let go and I move on. And we talk about it afterwards.
And then two when the heel hook is getting done to me, when both of their hands are on my heel and my knee is inside the line, well then I tap. So if you get hurt, it’s your fault and it’s all your fault, and if you hurt somebody it’s all your fault. We just talk about these things, a lot. Then, um, we drill them. We drill them over and over and over again. We drill everything over and over and over again. And like, since you brought the heel hook up, because everyone’s so scared of them in Jiu-Jitsu again, you know the rule is, is like –
STEPHAN: I’m not scared of heel hooks, I’m scared of a crazy guy with heel hooks.
ELIOT: Right
STEPHAN: I’m scared of, I tap heel hooks all the time and use them very safely, but I will not usually spar them with somebody that I don’t know.
ELIOT: Right, yeah, so we do them all the time. Because I’m always tapping, all the upper belts are always tapping all the time, we’re playing. It’s all, like we train hard but we train in a way that, and it starts with the top like you have to, your students need to see you tapping.
STEPHAN: Right.
ELIOT: Because that means you’re working on things, you’re trying to get better. This is a very big part of our school. I can remember the first time I ever tapped Amal, I was a blue belt and I thought I was the f***ing man. And I was like, wait a minute, but that’s been the symbol of our school forever. You know, is him as that leader, before I came was a part of like the business end of it, when it was just him.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And now, you know, I train with my you know, I train before my last competition I trained with a 120 pound girl. My last training, you know one of my last training sessions that was supposed to be hard, but you know I had –
STEPHAN: I hope you crushed her.
ELIOT: Yeah, you know. Exactly, you know, exactly. I tap all the time, my students see me tap, it’s not a big deal.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: It’s just not a big deal. How are you going to learn and get better, we’re telling them to do that. Right, you’re telling all your students to not go that hard, you’re telling all your students to make sure that they’re paying attention to how it’s being applied, but are WE doing it as the leaders of the school. You know?
STEPHAN: Do as I say, not as I do. Doesn’t work.
ELIOT: Does not work.
STEPHAN: It really really doesn’t. Leading from the front is the only way to do it.
ELIOT: And to get back to your question you asked about, what’s the secret sauce is you have to understand what a core value is. And a core value is something you’re willing to lose money and friends over. And the big thing for school owners and business people is the money part, right, like nobody wants to lose money.
STEPHAN: Yeah but you can’t be all things to all people. If you try to be all things to all people you’re going to be nothing to nobody.
ELIOT: Yeah
STEPHAN: It’s almost if you said, yes, we teach, people call “Hey, do you guys teach Kendo” If you said yes we teach Kendo, “Oh do you also teach ninjutsu?” Yes we teach ninjutsu. Jiu-Jitsu? Yes. What type? All of them.
ELIOT: All of them.
STEPHAN: Yeah, you’re not going to have, I promise you you’re not going to have a school if that’s your answer to everyone calling in, you’re going to be nothing to nobody. Or if you do try to then open your, you know every 2nd week we’re going to have a ninjutsu invisibility class at midnight on a Friday night but then we gotta close it up before we do the Kendo class. You know, no. You’re going to teach all of them badly. Now, you mentioned the whole idea of harnessing “it”.
ELIOT: Yep.
STEPHAN: And you said that now you think you understand how to harness it, at least for yourself
ELIOT: Yeah.
STEPHAN: So what does that mean, how did you do it for yourself?
ELIOT: I learned how to live in the moment. There’s no such thing as one moment being bigger than another moment. So, um, me talking to you on this, right now, is as important as ADCC trials next week. And I try to give my best in every single moment that I’m in. Because it’s the only thing that I really have. I don’t really have anything else, you know, like everything else is the past or the future. So if you can learn the skills of how to do that, you know, then when big moments come you can treat them like any other moment and that’s it. Right. Being as present as possible, is what “it” is.
STEPHAN: I think some people are scared of that, at least when it comes to competition. Because it seems antithetical to dealing with nerves. Like, living in the moment, Oh my god look at all the people watching, Oh my god look at the monster on the mat across from me, Oh my god look at what just happened on the other mat. They kind of get worried that being in the moment means feeling all the fear and ruminating on it almost.
ELIOT: Being in the moment means feeling all the fear and accepting it, it’s like anxiety. You know. Everything for me relates back to that, or I can get it back to that, that breakdown. So, the worst part, have you ever had anxiety or depression?
STEPHAN: Not anything lasting. I think there’s a big difference between something that sticks around –
ELIOT: But you’ve had it for like a minute, right.
STEPHAN: Oh, yeah, Well I mean, if somebody close to you dies and you’re depressed…but certainly I have lived with and had a lot of experience with people who are stuck in depression.
ELIOT: What happens? What happens when somebody close to you dies, you’re depressed, what happens. It moves, right, it goes away.
STEPHAN: Eventually.
ELIOT: What happens when your girlfriend breaks up with you? It goes, you know.
STEPHAN: You either feel a huge sense of relief, or you feel very very sad.
ELIOT: It passes. Right. We are the ones who don’t let it pass because we’re so stuck on oh god am I depressed today, am I anxious today, Ok yeah I’m supposed to be nervous. Am I nervous yet? Am I nervous yet? No I’m not f***ing nervous yet but it’s coming. If I’m nervous, I’m nervous. I know it will go away. Relating back to competition now, it goes away. I’m just going to do my day exactly like I would do my day anyway. When I compete, I don’t think about anything. I do all the preparation work, right, all the preparation work. And then when the time comes to actually compete. What do I want to f***ing do today? What do I want to do? Because you can’t tell me that whatever I do, I mean outside of running a marathon, you know I’m not gonna get crazy. You can’t tell me that whatever I want to do is going to affect this 8 minute match that I’m going to have later on tonight. Nothing.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: Right, like nothing. If I’m going to get, ok sure I’m not going to go try some rare food that I’ve never had before. I’m going to go eat some food that I like, you know. And if you get sick you get sick, what are you going to do. Your stomach’s going to get messed up anyway, you know, you’re nervous. So whatever. You just understand, like, living in a moment is understanding that this will pass. Whatever I’m feeling, this is where I am right now, let me do this to the best of my ability and worrying about things that are 100% out of my control is pointless.
STEPHAN: So essentially the serenity prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, God grant me the strength to change the things I can and the wisdom, sorry the serenity to accept the things I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference.
ELIOT: Yeah man I pray everyday. To god, uh sure. I don’t, you know, like I said before I’m not religious, but I take that time for me and my Creator. Every morning I mediate and I just, you know, I talk to whatever. I used to care a lot, like naming that, but I can care less. I say thank you. For me, we’re all talking on a personal level now. I have a reason for competing again, it’s two-fold. It’s rule #4 for my kids, I have to show them what fear looks like and doing it anyway. And then 2, I have students that are trying to be great, so, let’s go.
STEPHAN: I understand where the “do Jiu-jitsu rule” comes from. I don’t understand where the swimming rule comes from.
ELIOT: Two-fold. What’s the #1 death, #1 cause of death of children under 10 years old, between 2 and 10 years old?
STEPHAN: Wow, uh..from the context of our conversation I would guess drowning.
ELIOT: Drowning. So you better know how to swim. And, two, sometimes what swimming is, is you have to be able to tread water. Because when life comes for you, when your dance with the devil comes and he’s coming for you, you might not be able to get away from him right away. You might have to chill. So you might just have to tread water. You know. And just stay alive. When you get stuck out in the ocean and you’re stuck in the swell – you can’t swim out of a swell, right like you’re just stuck there. You try to swim, you turn around, what happens, you went nowhere.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: You gotta be able to tread water until that passes, that you can actually swim. But if you freak out, and you lose it, all these things that our mind will take us in another way, then man you’re fucke***d. You’re f***d. When somebody takes your back, you know, when somebody takes your back in Jiu-jitsu, you better be, you might not get out right now, they lock that body triangle down, they have a solid seatbelt grip, you’ve got to chill for a second.
STEPHAN: Right, don’t panic.
ELIOT: Don’t panic. Swim, you have to tread water.
STEPHAN: Although, in both the fire department and in swift water rescue, both of which I’m pretty heavily involved in, there is the idea of panic. Right. You’re about the get washed over the lip of a waterfall.
ELIOT: Right.
STEPHAN: I’ll go with swift water this time. Panic means flailing all directions, spending a ton of energy without really having a plan, right, because just freaking out.
ELIOT: Right.
STEPHAN: Reverse panic, its when you get super super calm when you shouldn’t be calm. The reality is you should be swimming in a straight line, as fast as you can to shore or to some boulder or somewhere you can get up. So by that definition panic is not achieving anything effective but it is wasting a ton of energy and reverse panic is not doing anything at all when in fact you should be working really really hard.
ELIOT: Yeah
STEPHAN: So, Jiu-Jitsu is the same way, know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. Know when to bridge like crazy and know when to settle in for the long grip fight.
ELIOT: Right. It’s like that joke, you know about, like your town is being flooded, your house, the whole town is flooded and you’re standing on your roof and the guy comes by in this boat and he’s like oh no I’m waiting for God to save me, you know.
STEPHAN: Then the Rabbi paddles by, jump in my boat
ELIOT: Yeah you know, then they’re up there and you die and you’re up there with God and he’s like you know, I thought you were going to save me and he’s like I did man, I mean what the fuck did you want. I sent a boat, I sent a plane, you know. It’s time to go right now.
STEPHAN: I’ve heard the same joke but it’s a priest, a Rabbi and a minister that come by in various forms of watercraft. “What, I sent you a priest…”
ELIOT: I sent you everything, man, I sent you everything, what do you mean I was here to save you. So, yeah, you know, you have to understand the game you’re playing and where you are. Where you are. And if you’re not in a present moment then you can never understand that.
STEPHAN: So you’re competing in Abu Dhabi in one week.
ELIOT: Yeah.
STEPHAN: What’s your plan going in there. Do you have a, I can hold off on releasing this until Abu Dhabi.
ELIOT: Nah man release it whenever. I’m going to sit down, I’m going to pull the guard and I’m going to attack. I’m going to try to get on your legs or get your back, that’s always the plan. Go watch, I follow –
STEPHAN: You’re not worried about giving up points by pulling the guard. By pulling guard?
ELIOT: I can pull without a negative point, before the points start.
STEPHAN: Oh, right right right. I thought, wasn’t there a time –
ELIOT: Only in the finals. Only in the finals.
STEPHAN: Ooh. Ok. Well that’s my bad for not…know the rule system you’re competing under, boys and girls.
ELIOT: Yes, but man look. You can watch all of my matches recently, everyone knows what I’m going to f***ing do, you know. But what am I going to do? I’m going to have fun. I’m going to really really enjoy my time, because it’s the only thing that I’ll be doing that day. So I may as well not waste it being fucking scared and nervous.
STEPHAN: And the week after that, hopefully you’re releasing your book.
ELIOT: Yeah.
STEPHAN: Which I’m assuming is talking about the inner aspects that we’ve been talking about on this podcast.
ELIOT: Yeah, the Gospel of Fire. It’s what my podcast is called, it’s what my book is called. I believe that the true Gospel is that we do hard shit. That we go deep into the fire and we forget ourselves in that blue flame that’s at the base, right, we get really really tested. Because everything that any of us have ever done in our lives that mean anything, and that was great, was hard. So,yeah. You know. The Gospel of Fire. Comes out on Amazon February 12, I’m really excited. It was really hard. It was not an easy process, you know.
STEPHAN: To write it?
ELIOT: Well I work with a company called Scribe, so I had a ghost writer, and it was like, it takes like 60 hours on the phone with these people. You know. And they’re like more more, and like basically, my book Is not about how great I am and look at me, I fought in the UFC and yadda yadda. My book is about man, look how kind of shitty I am, and like these are the worst parts of me. So like going through the worst parts of me again, uhh sucks.
STEPHAN: Um hmm.
ELIOT: To say nothing less, it fucking, it’s terrible.
STEPHAN: But I mean hopefully there are take-home lessons there.
ELIOT: It’s already one. I, my book has already been successful. All I wanted was for one person to reach out to me and say I changed their life. And that’s already happened so, I have a successful book.
STEPHAN: Sorry, you probably can’t talk about the other person in specifics, but how did it help them? Like, that’s very nice to say it changed their life, but what action did they take.
ELIOT: They were racked with anxiety. They were racked with anxiety and depression and in a very very bad spot in their life. They had been so for years, you know. And uh, hearing that somebody who they’re like, god damn that guy fuck, you know, like, this is the point that, yes I fought in the UFC, something that, I don’t know what percentage of the people are going to do that. Um, that I do too and that the way I went about it is to ask for help. And I let myself be very very vulnerable in that time of asking for help, and they were like ok maybe this pushing it down and just going to work and yadda yadda, this isn’t the way to do it.
STEPHAN: So if this big tough fighter guy can do it, then I can do it too.
ELIOT: Then I can do it too you know. And this person went and reached out and got some help and is now on a better path and is like –
STEPHAN: I should have asked this before, have you suffered from anxiety and depression before you retired?
ELIOT: My whole life. Yeah my whole life. I had a couple bouts with it before, you know. In my late teens.
STEPHAN: Oh ok, so it was an old enemy coming back but it was just way worse after you retired.
ELIOT: Yeah, you know, because when you beat it down and you don’t deal with it, every time it comes back it gets a little worse, right. And it came to a, and this last time it came to a head. And I can’t say I haven’t had bouts since the last time but, um, not like that because I am, I just say “hi”. I say hey what’s up homey, you’ll be here for a little bit, we’ll see how long you stay.
STEPHAN: Yeah.
ELIOT: So you know, to get back into the part, you know the helping. Like, yeah that’s why, we have to help eachother. We’re in a very weird time in the world. I think we have an adult problem, mostly in my opinion a man problem. Maybe that’s because I’m a man trying to raise two boys. I might be a little biased.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: But, we don’t know how to, we don’t, in my opinion we scream about how great we are too often. When we might not be that great. We might actually have to work on things. And we don’t let our children fail, because that’s again, where all of us have been successful is in the failure of things and how to get out of them. And now we can’t even keep score at our kids’ basketball games, right.
STEPHAN: Have you done much travelling, Eliot, in the world?
ELIOT: I have been to Brazil, I have been to Asia. I mean obviously Canada, I’ve never been to Europe though. Oh no I was, I was in England this year. Um. Not like, you know. Yeah, I’ve travelled, but not crazy, why do you ask.
STEPHAN: I ask because there’s such different cultural ways of being a man and yelling about how great you are. I think about the time I spent in the Arctic among the technically it was Inuvialuit, but we’ll go with Innuit, historically you really really really wouldn’t boast at all. It was considered incredibly bad form, and some people think it was because they had this belief in sorcery. So if you were jumping up and down going “yes, I Nanook, killed 14 narwhal yesterday and the day before that, I’ve got enough caribou to feed the whole family for a year” an enemy sorcerer would say “Ahh it’s Nanook I need to take out” and he would cast a spell and basically, an extreme version of the Japanese “the nail that sticks up gets pounded down”.
ELIOT: Um hmm
STEPHAN: So, when I spent time in that culture, being a man actually meant under-representing yourself and belittling yourself. It was kind of a contest, a race to the bottom. Like you would just tell stories of how stupid you had been.
ELIOT: I don’t know if I agree with that, like how stupid you’ve been, but like you try to help people you go about your day. And if you’re great, then great, people will find out. People will find out.
STEPHAN: Um hmm. I think that was also the subtext of that culture. Let everybody else boast how good you are, don’t do it yourself.
ELIOT: You screaming that you’re great doesn’t make you great. You can tell all the people in the world, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Other people telling other people that you’re great, that’s what greatness is. Who’s the best basketball player ever? We might have a disagreement here, don’t say the wrong name. I’m asking…Who’s the best basketball player ever?
STEPHAN: Man, I don’t follow basketball at all, so I’m going to say LeBron James just because –
ELIOT: Oh, god, Ahhhh. You got the answer wrong!
STEPHAN: He’s one of the three basketball names that I know, I’m just proud that I remembered A basketball name.
ELIOT: Look, they’re not saying me and you. We can scream to the world how good we are at basketball right and it’s not going to do us any good. Because it’s out there, you can see who’s the best. It’s down to two, is where we are now. But everyone –
STEPHAN: Most people would agree with one of us.
ELIOT: Yeah, people will tell you when you’re great, trust me. Trust everyone. You don’t have to, you know.
STEPHAN: The obvious exception to this, that comes to mind immediately is Mohammed Ali yelling “ I am the greatest, I am the greatest of all time”.
ELIOT: Um hmm
STEPHAN: I mean certainly he was the greatest trash talker of all time, I’ll give him that. And possibly the best boxer of all time.
ELIOT: Yep.
STEPHAN: So how do we square that into your theory. Because he was yelling it and people were saying it.
ELIOT: Yeah, so people, he was telling himself that if you look at, it’s what he was telling himself to be able to go out there and be able to perform.
STEPHAN: Hmm.
ELIOT: you know that was for him. And then yeah he made it happen. He made it happen. But let me tell you if he started losing he would have to stop that, everyone would laugh at him. That was his way of self-motivation.
STEPHAN: Like Connor McGregor is sort of an obviously trying to channel that kind of positive self-talk, and also selling the fight and selling his whiskey.
ELIOT: Yeah.
STEPHAN: Um, but you can’t have too many losses in a row and still pull that off, I think he’s right at the cusp of maybe being able to do it one more time but that’s it.
ELIOT: I don’t think he can lose again. You know, I don’t think he can lose again. But look, Mohammed Ali was great, like the reason Mohammed Ali gets this pass with everyone is Mohammed Ali changed the world. Connor McGregor ain’t changing the world. He ain’t doing anything for anybody else. Like, when you sit down and you look at Mohammed Ali, you’re like god damn, that motherf*****r gave up the prime of his career for a cause.
STEPHAN: Um hmm
ELIOT: And whether you agreed with him or not, you can be like damn that’s some shit huh. That’s some shit.
STEPHAN: He stood up for what he believed in.
ELIOT: He had some core values and he stood on them. Right.
STEPHAN: And he lost money, and friends
ELIOT: Money and friends, there it is. Right. He lost money and friends. So he stood on some core values, he was going to go to the grave with it. He might not be Mohammed, but it, it worked out.
STEPHAN: Um hmm.
ELIOT: So that’s what the greatness of Mohammed Ali is. Connor McGregor isn’t going to light the Olympic torch someday and if he does it will be a sham and no one will care. Right. Like, but when Mohammed Ali, it’s one of the greatest things any of us have ever seen, Mohammed Ali shaking right and lighting the torch.
STEPHAN: Yes.
ELIOT: Right, it was amazing because of what the man did with his life. Whether you agree or don’t agree. With what he stood for.
STEPHAN: 100%
ELIOT: That’s why a bunch of white people in the South in the 60’s and 70’s respected that guy, right.
STEPHAN: Well. I don’t think we can end this on a better note than that, because we have talked about the greatest and uh, there you go.
ELIOT: Yeah.
STEPHAN: We’ll be watching you in Abu Dhabi, and uh, how people can get the book, The Gospel of Fire on Amazon in a couple of weeks? Can they pre-order it now?
ELIOT: No, so you cannot pre-order. It gets released, it’s going to be on sale the first week for 99¢, too, the Kindle version. So yeah, so super cheap. So yeah, Amazon, The Gospel of Fire, my podcast The Gospel of Fire is on iTunes as well. Stitcher, wherever, Spotify, wherever you listen to Podcasts.
STEPHAN: Wherever you find podcasts are distributed.
ELIOT: I am firemarshall205 on Instragram and Facebook and Twitter. Don’t ask me if I’m 205 pounds anymore, I’m not. So. And yeah, my website, eliotmarshall.com, you can keep up with everything there. You can sign up for my mailing list and things like that so. I appreciate the time.
STEPHAN: Well thank you so much and good luck with your training. What’s on the training agenda for today? You’re getting close, you have to be tapering.
ELIOT: Nah, man I just train like I always train. I’ll train like I always train through Wednesday next week. I do this for fun, Stephan. I do this for fun. And if I’m not having fun with my life then I’m not going to go out there and do well at the competition. So I do, I do me all day every day. That’s, you know, the things that make me happy. I spend time and be a good dad, I spend time with my wife, and I do Jiu-jitsu and I train. I’ll do nothing different because yeah. It doesn’t produce the best Eliot.
STEPHAN: Awesome. Awesome. Well, go forth and be the best Eliot you can be my friend.
ELIOT: That’s all we do every day, right.
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