Name: JRE MMA Show #45 with Justin Wren & Rafael Lovato Jr.
Uploaded: 2018-10-15T21:25:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #45 with Justin Wren & Rafael Lovato Jr.' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-10-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #45 with Justin Wren & Rafael Lovato Jr.' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-10-15. Transcript available.

JRE MMA Show #45 with Justin Wren & Rafael Lovato Jr.

five four three two one boom and we're live with my friend justin wren in the
house and one of the
baddest motherfuckers on the planet rafael lovato absolutely dude i'm bummed
that you're i'm happy
that you're doing well but i'm bummed you're fighting for bellator oh i really
am man i want
to i want to commentate your fights i i know for a fact that bellator right now
is like is high it's
a higher level than it's ever been before right i mean you look at they've got
mousasi you rory
mcdonald uh lima uh you know paul daly machida i mean it's high level now man
it's like bellator is
very close to comparable still i would love to see you over the ufc yeah well
we'll see what happens
but right now i'm i'm really happy where i'm at how old are you now i'm 35 and
you didn't start mma
until you were like 31 32 yes 31 i was four four years ago yeah 2014 was my
first fight were you
doing a lot of mma training before that because when you're you were for people
that don't know you're
one of the most accomplished brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts in the world and
when you're competing
as uh brazilian jiu-jitsu martial artist were you training striking were you
training other things as
well well uh you know that's a kind of my life story i guess um you know my
father is a lifetime
martial artist and so i had a whole martial arts upgrade upbringing well before
i ever found out
about brazilian jiu-jitsu my father was a jee kune do instructor and so growing
up um you know the main
thing that we were training it when i was a child was uh the jee kune do system
uh which was basically
mixed martial arts before mixed martial arts you know bruce lee's philosophy
was way ahead of his time
he believed in um you know learning from all the arts and creating your own
personal system of self-defense
um that involved you know each range of combat and so you know i grew up doing
uh several different
forms of martial arts um boxing muay thai eskrima wing chung pinjak silat i
mean you name it i've
probably done it and when my father discovered brazilian jiu-jitsu uh i was an
early teenager like
around 12 years old he learned about brazilian jiu-jitsu in one of the jee kune
do instructor conferences
that takes place in california they brought in the gracies um they had you know
they did like shoot
fighting and different sort of you know martial arts that included grappling uh
but it was very
you know rough and not near the the technique that brazilian jiu-jitsu has uh
so whenever he first
started learning brazilian jiu-jitsu he fell in love with it my dad's a smaller
guy at that time he was
probably like 145 150 pounds and so it was perfect for him and he fell in love
with it and he comes
home and he starts telling me about brazilian jiu-jitsu and teaching me what he
learned um and we
lived in oklahoma and the instructor conference was in california at that time
basically the only jiu-jitsu
was in california maybe a little bit in florida and then henzo was in new york
so everything was as
far as possible from us because we were right there in the middle of the
country and you know he fell in
love with brazilian jiu-jitsu and so he started making trips to california to
learn brazilian
jiu-jitsu and i was just a teenager i'm a young kid so you know i was already
uh doing some boxing at
the time uh i was competing in amateur boxing and i'm i'm used to training with
adults and once i started
learning brazilian jiu-jitsu you know i fell in love with it right away because
that gave me something
that i could do where i could be competitive with the adults right away you
know i was a long lanky kid
um and the guard just you know felt natural to me and just being on the ground
i really loved it and i
loved the the technique of brazilian jiu-jitsu how technical it was and and the
science of it um so
i fell in love with it right away and i mean uh we sacrificed a lot to learn jiu-jitsu
being in oklahoma
always traveled uh to learn the first time i went to brazil i was 16 years old
it was in 1999
uh to to train and compete in the world championships and you know we just
never stopped and we became the
first american father and son brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts uh but you know
going back to your
question the the full spectrum of martial arts was always in my blood um you
know even as a jiu-jitsu
competitor you know someone that found his passion in jiu-jitsu i still
considered myself a martial
artist first and foremost not just a jiu-jitsu practitioner and so it was
always in the plans
to one day do mma but i really wanted to go as far as i could in brazilian jiu-jitsu
you know i was
there when bj penn won the world championships in 2000 and i watched him win
and i said you know man i
really want to be the next american to win the worlds that immediately became
like my my big life
goal my first life goal and uh and i achieved that in 2007 but you know like we
all saw bj go straight
to mma after he won he never even did another tournament you know that was the
only tournament
he ever did as a black belt was the worlds and he won and then and then
switched mma and so i really
wanted to be an american you know um just kind of representing for us in brazilian
jiu-jitsu um
competing at that high level and winning as much as possible and kind of you
know at that time it
wasn't like today the worlds were still in brazil um the sport was just
dominated by brazilians and
pretty much still is today but you know now we've come a long way and i just
wanted to be that force to
show everyone like hey we can do it you know what i mean we're uh you know it's
possible you know
because at that time it was it was a whole nother scene you know the worlds in
brazil at the end of
the at the tournament you're lucky if you had a handful of non-brazilians on
the podium at all the belts
you know including blue purple brown i mean all the belts let alone black belt
and so i stayed in
the sport to really try to get a second gold that was the main thing that was
keeping me in it
um to win a second gold at the worlds as a black belt i ended up meddling eight
times never got that
second gold but uh towards the end i was just like you know it's time to switch
you know i really felt
like um mma was calling me jiu-jitsu was getting a little too comfortable um
you know and i had been
fighting too comfortable yeah like it wasn't motivating me and inspiring me the
same way that it was in the
beginning you know i kind of lost a little bit of that hunger uh just because i'd
been at the the
that level for so long and i've already you know competed against the the best
guys of my generation
so many times and uh you know it didn't take a lot for me to to get ready you
know i was kind of
just used to it you know it's the same tournaments the same season year after
year
yeah same guys uh it just stopped bringing out the fire now every now and then
i felt it you know
especially when i went back to compete in brazil uh you know the world switched
to the us in in 2007
the year that i won it and so i i stopped having that thing to to push me to go
to brazil to compete
um and so i went back a couple of times to compete in the brazilian nationals
and i had really good
performances there i ended up winning the absolute in 2013 in brazil uh the all
weight class division
uh became the first non-brazilian to ever win a major absolute title and i did
it in brazil that
was a day i was extremely inspired you know uh competing in brazil brought that
out of me but
i just didn't feel that way all the time you know uh just got too used to it
and so i just felt like
it was calling me you know i knew one day i was going to do it i had to have
one fight just as a
martial artist i had to do at least one before it was all said and done and i
really just kind of
took it as a one fight basis you know like i knew i needed to do it once and
you know the time felt
right like okay let's let's go let's switch back in uh to you know kind of
tapping into who i was
as a martial artist the the training that i had as a kid as a child um under my
father under the the
jee kune do system and um and i did one fight and i i enjoyed it and i said i
got to do more
and i got to do at least one more so were you the whole time you were doing jujitsu
were you training
kickboxing at all were you doing any wrestling like well i always uh did
wrestling you know it's a
supplement part of your training yeah supplement brazilian jujitsu the nogi
competitions adcc things like
that um you know and i just believed in training everything to judo as well um
but like what about
practicing ground and pound and all the other things in mma well whenever i was
younger uh my father he
had some fighters um that he was training and so i trained a lot with them and
then whenever i took
over the academy um we had a couple guys that were fighting then as well uh one
of which went to the
ufc and so i was sparring with these guys uh helping them get ready and in 2008
i met who is now
my main mma coach uh he's my muay thai instructor uh his name is maricio amado
his nickname is veil
he is brothers of andre dita um and they are both shoot box is that why you
were in curitiba you've
done yes camps yes exactly that's where dita lives his brother and uh did he
used to fight in pride
uh k1 uh i think he did k1 yeah k1 um he did a dream i believe he did some mma
as well
uh but he's more of a of a kickboxer yeah striker um and i i met uh maricio
and uh i really fell in love with his style of muay thai and i had some guys
fighting at that time
what's the difference in his style well it's it's totally designed for mma um
you know it's not
muay thai for muay thai you know uh they call their system evolu sound time
basically means evolution
you know and it's evolved into this system that is designed for mma you know
you're you're not just
training striking for striking you're doing striking to set up takedowns or
defend takedowns and um it
was just a you know an incredible system just whenever we fought last year he
he got to train
with my dco um and and experience it for himself and something special yeah and
matt isio himself is
just an amazing martial artist uh you know the the passion that he has is you
can't get him to stop
yeah you trained with a lot of guys like what was different for you man i think
the way that
they they move and see the punches coming and the blocks are different and the
the movement i mean
just so much movement movement movement um when you say different do you do you
mean to compensate
for the fact that you're using smaller gloves like a different way of yes
protecting yourself how
would you explain that just moving that yeah i mean the the offense and defense
is so intertwined
um you know you do everything on both sides um and it's all you know very
powerful as well it's designed
for uh you know inflicting as much damage as possible and for me it was so good
because they can work with
me as a jiu-jitsu guy much different because they don't have to worry about
someone trying to take me
down you know i can pretty much throw whatever whatever is possible everything
in the kitchen sink
and for the most part you're happy if someone takes you down yeah yeah it's
okay it's okay and and then
also i have the threat that being able to threaten someone with a takedown
which opens up a lot of
striking as well and so the the the way they have this system design you know
is just perfect for me
and manisio as a person is just an incredible guy that i really fell in love
with and uh honestly if it
wasn't for him i wouldn't be i wouldn't be doing mma he just made me feel like
i had the the right
person in place the family um to to go into mma confidently and and enjoy it
you know what i mean
because i in the beginning i wasn't sure how much i was gonna how much i was
gonna like the whole
process but you've been working with him for what 10 years yeah we've been
training together 10 years
yes and so i was bringing him out t