Name: JRE MMA Show #17 with Yoel Romero & Joey Diaz
Uploaded: 2018-03-12T21:59:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #17 with Yoel Romero & Joey Diaz' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-03-12. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #17 with Yoel Romero & Joey Diaz' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-03-12. Transcript available.

JRE MMA Show #17 with Yoel Romero & Joey Diaz

Five, four, three, two, one.
And we're live with Joey Coco Diaz and one of the baddest motherfuckers on the
planet, Yoel Romero, in the house.
Thank you so much.
So, Yoel, you got a good grasp of English, pretty good.
Joey's going to help fill in the blanks, and we'll be able to have some good
communication here.
You guys did a podcast last night in Spanish.
Yes, Spanish, Spanglish, and English. We started in English, and it went into
Spanglish.
And I just wanted to know, I wanted people to know who the hell Yoel Romero was.
We talked about Cuba and his humble beginnings, how he went to school from
Monday to Fridays at a pyramid, and you just wrestled.
And that's how they do it in Cuba.
And then you go up the pyramid, and now he only went home on the weekends.
A pyramid meaning?
It's a pyramid school.
You, implica me a la escuela, implica-se, donde tu?
Um, de, es un sistema.
It's a system.
Es un sistema de pirámide.
Que, um, empieza de, de muy temprana edad.
It starts at about seven years old.
Cuando los niños se vienen, es un sistema para todos los deportes de Cuba.
All the sports in Cuba start that way.
Wow.
And you go up the pyramid, but you,
Tú te quedas ahí los lunes y vienes de la casa de Vierna.
Los viernes.
You stay there for the week, and they educate you, they feed you.
You sleep there, you wrestle there, you wrestle.
¿Cuántas horas el día?
Um, básicamente te levantabas en la mañana.
You wake up in the morning.
Seven in the morning.
Everything is by a schedule.
Everything is run by a schedule, militaristic style.
A seven to eight breakfast.
Eight to twelve, school.
You went to school.
History, the basic stuff, mathematics, physics, everything.
How did they decide what sport you compete in?
Like, how did you choose wrestling?
Was that just something that you loved?
Or was it, did you like other sports?
Like, how did you choose to focus on wrestling?
No, yo, in the beginning, I want to make it boxing.
Boxing.
Boxing.
My daddy, you know, for the family, for my dad,
is boxing and wrestling people.
It's my family.
Wrestling and boxing.
But I loved boxing in the beginning.
My daddy said, no, it's, I don't like it.
You make a sport, boxing, because boxing is too much punch in the face.
It's not good.
It's not good.
But, you know, in the beginning, I make it boxing.
He would hide it from his dad.
Oh, really?
Six years old, he was boxing and he would hide it from his dad.
The little Ramos, the Olympic, whatever, in 1980.
He would sneak around with him.
He would learn with him how to box, hiding from his dad.
Ah.
So, when did you focus on just wrestling?
Like, when did wrestling take over?
Okay, in my provincia, in la ciudad, in my city, Pina del Rio.
Everybody knows my family, you know.
One coach for wrestling, Jose Vizcaíno.
He sees me and I go to...
There's a lot of trainers in the pyramid.
Van a escuelas.
They go to the schools.
A buscar talentos.
And to look for talent.
You know.
Y le hacen pruebas.
And they do tryouts.
Y depende de las pruebas que te hagan, ellos pueden ver para qué deporte tú
puedes...
Depending on what, how you do in the testing.
When you go to that, so it's just like, they go, they evaluate you, and then
they decide what's best for you.
For example, you coach for boxing.
I coach for judo.
Joe is a coach for...
Boxing.
No, no.
Taekwondo.
Taekwondo, something like this.
Okay.
We say, okay, we go to tomorrow for school.
And we test the people for the kid.
You know.
You do it, you test it for the boxing, I do it for wrestling, and you do it for
Taekwondo.
Taekwondo, you know.
And now you see, see 10 kids, you got a 10 kid, and you see who is the best,
who are the talent for boxing.
Maybe you see, okay, for boxing good, maybe no good.
But you say, you see, you can see, you say, oh, for boxing no good, but for Taekwondo,
hey, Joy, this guy, I have a talent for your sport.
And now, you know, like this.
And that's the pyramid, the system in Cuba, you know.
The people take it when the kid is very young, you know.
And go to the, for the special school for sport, you know.
The lowest level.
The lowest level.
Se llama pre-eide.
Pre-eide.
Pre-eide.
El otro nivel más alto, después de ese, se llama eide.
Eide, that's the second level.
Yeah.
El tercer, el tercer, el tercer level is, um, espa.
Espa.
Espa.
Esa espa tiene, con otro nombre, un nivel más alto.
Se llama espa nacional.
Espa nacional, that's the highest level.
This is the junior.
Junior, okay.
Junior.
Después de esa espa nacional, esta selección nacional.
Then you get the selection to be national.
Yeah.
Like an Olympic center like that.
At the Olympic center.
So they take you to a different center.
So you keep going up, like, until you get to, like, the UFC training facility.
Matt Brown told me that he did his camp for, I think it was the Mike Pyle fight,
did his camp in Cuba.
Yeah.
And he said it was just tremendous talent.
He said he just couldn't believe how good the boxers were, how good the wrestlers
were.
It was just unbelievable.
Yeah.
I hear that Matt Brown stayed in Cuba.
I hear.
Yeah.
For six weeks.
Yeah.
He stayed in a mass alto.
Matt Brown went to the highest level.
He went to the highest level when he was down there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, he said he got worked.
Dicen que la me dieron gaste con cojones.
I know.
He said he was good guys, man.
He said they were good.
Ahora mismo, ahora mismo.
I think yo no puedo ir a un centro olímpico.
Así.
Tengo que ir suave porque...
He thinks he can't even go back there to that center now.
Now they would whip him.
Si, me dan, me dan, me dan.
Now they would spank him at his age.
Wow.
That's crazy.
I tease him.
I tease him.
I tease him.
I tease him.
I tease him.
It's crazy.
When you were there, Matt, one of the things that Matt was saying,
and Matt Brown had tremendous respect for the Cuban athletes,
and he said it was an amazing, amazing system that they produce great, great
talent.
But he's saying that as you get higher and higher levels,
your accommodations are better, where you sleep is better, your food, you get
more food.
It's a lot of incentive to improve.
It's true.
Yeah.
It's the reality.
It's hard to say, but it's the reality.
He's going to tell you.
He went to a lot of Olympic centers all over the world.
The number five and the number six wrestlers from those countries
eats the same as number one.
In Cuba, it's not like that.
If you're number three, you don't eat what number one eats.
And you're not going to eat the same as number two either.
The number one guy has the most privilege.
It's good and it's bad.
Because it pushes you to be the best.
You want to get more food.
Not everybody has, could be the best at what they're doing.
Right.
That's the worst part of it.
You're not going to have the privilege of eating a lobster.
Yeah.
It's rough, but if you look at how small Cuba is,
but how many great talents have come from Cuba,
obviously it's effective.
I mean, it has its merits, right?
Like that system, it's a brutal system,
but it seems to be very effective in producing super high-level athletes.
They didn't give me no trophies for second place.
There's no, yeah, no participation trophies.
You don't want, there comes a point where you don't want the trophy anymore.
You want to eat what the best guys eat.
You want to sit with the best guys eat.
I got third place, but who gives a shit?
Everybody wants to be where everyone wants to play the first.
When you come to a place, the people see the champs.
The people want to touch the champs.
The people want to stay where the champs stay.
And that's what the people want.
The number three, number four, we say, I want to stay.
Okay, I take the trophy.
I stay the medal.
Okay, but I want to feel where the champ is feeling.
You know, I want to walk where the people walk.
I want to stay, eat.
I want the people to talk like me when the people talk to the champ.
That's what the people, the system push, you know.
Right.
And that's what I say every time.
Every time that's what I say.
The system push you like this.
The more that the guy that trains the most, the system is the best, you know.
Every time, every time you see, look at this.
You stay for, because I stay in the national team for almost 15, 15 years.
Yeah, 15 years, I stay in the Olympic Center.
You can imagine it, stay with the 10 guys for 15 years.
And the 15 years, 10 guys, I want to kill you.
It's a building with a lot of rooms.
But there are times when the 4 people stay in front of you.
It's like a hotel, you know.
The 4 times they stay in my room, that's the room for another guy.
But this guy is the same, my same division.
Right.
He can see for 15 years everything what you're doing, everything what you eat,
everything what you're sick, everything.
He know you about you, everything.
So you live with your opponents.
Right, right.
They know when you're sick.
They know.
It's not like when you're fighting Matt Brown, and he's in Kentucky, and you're
in Denver training.
Nobody knows what's going on.
Right.
There, they train.
So you know what I'm doing, and I know what you're doing.
Ah.
So we're all on the same floor.
They do it like that to build adversity, you know, whatever the hell they're
building in between you.
Yeah, adversity. Yeah, for sure.
Do you know how you prepare yourself mentally for that?
How do you?
You have to become a fucking machine.
Machine, a machine.
But it's not only machine in the fight, in the fight.
No, no, no.
Machine in your life.
Yeah.
When you're sick.
This guy, not only one, he says 10 guys.
Hmm.
You know.
You have to become a machine inside and out.
And outside.
Because those 10 guys know when you're sick.
Right.
They know when you get hurt.
So now I'm training with you, but I saw that you hurt your wrist in training.
I'm going after that fucking wrist.
Right, right, right.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, it's just, it's intense.
So that's why he's the machine that he is.
He says, it only trains you to be a machine on the outside.
But it also trains you to be a machine on the inside.
And, Joe, listen.
This is very important too.
I am coming for the Pinal de Rio City.
Push this up.
Okay.
There you go.
Thank you.
I'm coming for the Pinal de Rio City.
Sometimes, you know.
Everything is with ages.
In Cuba, you don't fight, if you're 12, you don't fight a 17-year-old.
You fight somebody who's your age.
They put you always with people that are your age.
They call it categories.
11, 12, 11, or 12, just like Ken.
Yeah, like this, you know.
When you get to the highest level,
you're going to find people with different ages.
And from different cities in Cuba.
In Cuba or all over?
No, no, no.
In Cuba.
Okay.
Listen.
When you get to the room,
you can find people from those cities that you're going to fight against in
your own room.
But, but, listen, but,
ellos son
de otro peso.
Digamos, I am 184,
that's a 155.
Tu sabes.
No todos son del mismo peso.
Pues, los colocan allí,
te dicen, okay,
te dan la llave,
te dicen, vas a dormir en tal cuarto.
You understand?
Te ponen en ese cuarto,
van a ver, digamos,
un cuarto de cinco personas.
And each room,
there'll be five people.
Tu eres de Pina de Río.
You're from Boston.
Boston.
To Boston.
Yo soy de Miami.
He's the...
New Jersey.
New Jersey.
And another room...
In the other room.
It's a fight guy, too.
But, one guy is my division.
But it's the same
for you to start.
You understand now?
For the same city.
Right.
And now you're frank for him.
Mm-hmm.
I am not careful.
Because when I stay in the room,
you see everything.
Hey, you can tell him.
Hey.
Because maybe you're the friend.
You're the best in your division.
And your friend is the second best.
And he's his weight.
Yeah, so you guys get to talk.
So now you always have spies watching you.
For 15 years.
15 years.
When did you leave?
¿Cómo te fuiste?
2007.
2007.
2007.
2007.
Yo entré en 1995.
And I leave 2007.
How did you leave?
¿Cómo me fui?
I go to the Grand Prix Tournament.
Grand Prix in Germany.
And then Leipzig.
Ciudad de Leipzig.
City.
¿Cómo se d