Name: JRE MMA Show #138 with Cory Sandhagen
Uploaded: 2023-04-07T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #138 with Cory Sandhagen' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #138 with Cory Sandhagen' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-07. Transcript available.

JRE MMA Show #138 with Cory Sandhagen

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Mr. Sam Hagan, how are you?
I'm good, how you doing?
You're on top of the world right now, dude.
I'm a pretty happy guy right now.
What a fight that was.
What a fight.
That was, in my opinion, one of the most technical
and one of the finest performances in that division.
That 135-pound division, to have a guy like you and Marlon
go after it like that, that was a fucking great fight.
Thank you.
Really great fight.
And you're on top of it right now, man.
It's really exciting to watch.
Yeah, I'm getting pretty good.
Yeah, for real.
I've really been just plugging up some holes,
figuring some stuff out.
I feel like I'm at the part in the martial arts journey
where I've gotten really good at being a really good learner.
I can learn super fast and super efficiently now.
And it's big time paying off.
Not only that, but the space I was in before that Cheeto fight
was unlike one that I feel like I've ever been in in my life.
How so?
You know, have you read a decent amount of sports psych books?
Yes.
Where they'll sometimes talk about how you're almost having this out-of-body
experience
where you're almost like floating above the court or the field or whatever.
It was almost like that, except I wouldn't use the word like floating above.
But I got to a space in that fight where I felt like all of the thoughts and
all of the distracting
things that sometimes happen in a fight were completely ignored.
And this higher being, better version, best no thinker, just actor was running
the show.
It's almost like I was watching the thing happen while I was in the fight.
And there would be bits of me hopping in and being like, hey, throw this
combination.
Hey, take a little bit more of a risk.
Hey, do this.
And then that would get completely just watched.
And this, whoever was fighting that night that didn't even feel like me, was
the person that was fighting.
It was fucking cool, man.
Wow.
It was cool, dude.
It was like, you know, like a psychedelic experience feeling type of thing.
It was cool.
What do you attribute that to?
How did you get to that mindset?
It's a lot of, you know, messing stuff up.
Like, I remember the last time I was on was right after I had beaten Frankie.
And I was in, it's just a bunch of different parts of the journey.
And in that part of the journey, I was really in this space where if I could
make myself more war,
if I could make myself more angry, if I could make myself be up here, I would
have success.
That kind of stopped working a little bit after, like around the TJ fight and
then kind of during the Yon fight.
And then definitely I tried to be that guy against Song.
And it was like too much of a distracting feeling where now my mindset's going
into the last fight
because it was such like a distracting feeling, just feeling like I have to get
myself to a point of anger or upness
before a fight where it just became distracting, where it was helpful before it
became distracting in that song fight.
I bailed on that and I just tried to be as mindful and as present as I possibly
could for like,
and I know that those are like kind of corny words now, but there is some real
substance to them when they're like really done well.
And I would say maybe about six weeks before the fight, I had this moment where
I was sitting on the couch
because I put a lot of pressure on myself and I want to be a world champ real
bad.
Where I was to the point where I wasn't enjoying any part of the camp, any part
of the experience of fighting or anything.
And I was sitting on the couch and I just like, I think I was crying a little
bit.
And I was like, I can't fucking do this for the next five years of my life.
You know, like I can't do this for the rest of my career.
And I was like, well, what's got to change?
And I was like, I got to lose.
I got to take this pressure off of me.
And I got to start enjoying every day a lot more than I am right now.
And from that, like six weeks before the fight, I started doing that.
And I really think that that carried into the fight and it made me be a lot
less tense, a lot less tight.
And it made me be able to fight with just like a completely free way of being.
Wow.
And is this something that you had previously thought that you could get to
that space or wanted to get to that space?
Or is this something that you kind of experimented along the way and found this
path?
I'm a self-learner.
And I think that I think that there's ways of being in life that like you just
kind of have to be at certain times.
Like when you're a young kid, like you have to be like going and hitting it
hard.
Like you have to remember all of the hundreds of thousands of people on the
other half of the world that are trying to accomplish the same goal as you.
And you have to be a little bit, in my opinion, you have to be a little bit on
the neurotic side of like, am I doing every single thing correct?
Am I doing, am I putting the right amount of pressure on me?
That's totally a part of the journey, but I'm kind of more in the part of the
journey where I've matured a lot as a fighter.
I've matured a lot as a person.
I'm getting married this year.
Like I'm a little bit older.
We're looking at kids probably in the next couple of years.
And so I had to start thinking like, what's sustainable, like what's like a
sustainable way to continue doing what I love, but also becoming like a more
mature adult.
And that's just part of the journey that I'm in right now.
And I don't think that anything was wrong with the way that I was doing before,
but it just is like a moving target all the time.
So it's like, you're just finding new ways to approach it and then realizing
this way is better than the other way, even though the other way was effective,
this is even more effective.
So you're constantly trying to tweak it.
Yeah.
And I think that everything kind of has its purpose.
Like, uh, in those times where I would, I was really embracing this like war
mentality, this like very like bloodthirsty, vicious type of fighter that I was
trying to be when I would go into the cage that totally had its place because I
had to experience what I've, what I thought that had to feel like in order for
me to be the best martial artist that I can.
Because I do feel like I've pointed all of my energy in my life and my mind and
my spirit and everything towards the direction of being the best martial artist
that I can be.
And so going through that had its purpose, man.
Like I had to figure out what it was like for me to be like a vicious killer,
you know, because in society that's like not cool, you know?
So like almost like, uh, the shadow self or whatever, uh, is like the
subconscious term for it.
Um, I had to like experience that I experienced it.
I figured out that it was no longer serving me.
It was being distracting.
So what do I need to do now?
Now it's like, okay, you figured that part out.
You can be that guy whenever you want to be that guy, but now we're being
present.
Now we're enjoying it and you don't really need to be that guy until you walk
into the cage.
And even when you do walk into the cage, you don't need to be this like really
dramatic, super emphasized, like vicious guy, like be that guy, but you don't
have to overdo it.
And, and when you're learning something, I almost feel like you have to
completely overdo it in order to learn like where that cutoff is.
Like even in technique, like if you could do an arm bar and win every single
time with an arm bar, why would you ever stop doing arm bars?
Right.
It'd be stupid.
So like you figure out how to like do something way overdo it, figure out where
the cutoff is and be like, ah, okay, I can't do it in like those situations.
You pull back, you figure out what situations you need to do it in and then you
move forward.
What was this, what happened?
What happened?
I lost.
Can you hear me?
My headphones cut out.
Hold on.
Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.
Something happened over here, Jamie.
I don't know what's going on, but I lost the headphones.
We'll be right back, folks.
Sorry about that.
No, that's okay.
So, so where were we at?
So what was it about the other way you were approaching it where, you know,
last time you were here, you had just embraced this idea that you went in there
with the intention to fuck people up.
What was distracting about that?
It's, it's like a, it's like a hot burning flame.
You know, like, I feel like it's, I can only hold on to it for so long.
Like, I can't really, like, it's a lot of energy to be that up.
And so when I would be in the back and warmed up, because you kind of, you don't
know exactly when you're going to walk.
So I try to be ready, you know, like 20 minutes before.
I spend like 30, 40 minutes warming up, trying to be that guy.
And then for 20 minutes trying to sustain that guy.
And that's like a long time to be that up, you know?
So even in the, in this fight, uh, because there's no preparing for that last
hour before you go walk.
Like, I don't care what type of guy you are, how Zen you can be, or how
confident you are that, that last hour before a fight, like your mind's going
to fuck with you a lot.
And it's going to go to you thinking that you're the God of the universe to you
thinking that like you're about to go get slaughtered.
And, uh, in the back before, if I started to feel like I was, you know, having
those like impulsive thoughts of like fear or you're about to go get slaughtered.
I try to just cover that shit up real quick by getting like real pissed.
Um, and that's like a lot of energy to do.
So before the Cheeto fight, I was super proud of the way that I was able to
handle those feelings because those feelings are like real as hell when you're
in the back.
And how do you handle them?
Well, I just watched them, man.
Like, uh, I just realized like, ah, okay.
Like I'm having, I'm having the sense of fear in me and I would just kind of
sit there and be like, okay, well, I'm not really fighting right now.
So just let the fear be there right now.
Your job is to get warmed up.
And so I just took it.
Okay.
Right now I'm getting warmed up.
Okay.
They said 10 more minutes till we walk.
Okay.
I'm having the sense of fear still.
That's okay.
I'm still in the back.
And then step by step by step.
Okay.
I'm, I'm, I'm walking out now.
Cool.
Okay.
Looking across from them.
Okay.
Touch gloves.
Now we're fighting.
It's literally, it sounds super fucking simple, but it's just step by step by
step, man.
Just like, okay, I'm having that sense.
I'll just watch that and not really, I mean, you acknowledge it, but you don't,
I didn't, I don't try to cover it up or I don't try to like be someone else.
I just kind of watch it as if it was just someone else.
It happened into someone else and then just move on.
It doesn't sound super simple at all.
Not to me at least.
It's, I know what you're saying.
And that feeling has got to be like riding a wild wave.
Like you just got to maintain your balance.
And to watch you go into that fight, what was so impressive, um, besides the
fact that you're fighting a world-class guy in Marlon Vera and you were, you
were controlling the action was the overwhelming, like the amount of
information you were throwing at him.
You were constantly changing levels, constantly threatening takedowns,
constantly switching stances and everything was, you know, there's fighters
kind of, sometimes they'll fall into a pattern and you can kind of predict that
pattern.
There was no pattern with you.
It was all over the place and it was so overwhelming.
When I was watching, I was like, Jesus Christ, like this is so high level.
And I don't, I mean, for like a casual, I don't know if they're seeing that.
But for someone who watches a lot of fights and has been around martial arts,
you know, my whole life, when I was watching, I was like, this is about as high
level as it gets.
Thank you