Name: Joe Rogan Experience #616 - John Wayne Parr
Uploaded: 2015-02-24T11:41:26.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #616 - John Wayne Parr' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-02-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #616 - John Wayne Parr' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-02-24. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #616 - John Wayne Parr

The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
by night.
All day.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, my phone shit the bed,
officially.
iPhone 6, done.
I think I dropped it too many times.
Or it got scared when it saw
John Wayne Parr.
My phone decided to just give up.
It was a very fun working out with you today.
That was very enjoyable.
John Wayne Parr, for those who don't know,
multiple time Muay Thai champion.
Very famous in the world of combat sports,
both for your accomplishments in Muay Thai.
And a lot of people in the UFC know about you
for your work with George St. Pierre.
You did a lot of training with George for
some of his MMA fights and got to show him
some of your Muay Thai techniques,
which I really learned a lot today,
watching you explain how you do things.
You have a very specific style that is very uniquely your own.
Yeah, I was lucky enough to go to Thailand
to live for four years.
So I took the Thai concept.
And then I retired from Muay Thai and went to boxing for a year.
And then I just concentrated on my hands.
And then I liked boxing, but then it sort of got a bit stale
because the crowd's a little bit older.
And the Muay Thai crowd really pumped you up.
So I decided to come back to Muay Thai again.
And I sort of blended the two together with the top half of the boxing,
the bottom half of the Muay Thai.
And then I just sort of created my own concept.
And yeah, it's been very cool.
I've been very successful with it.
It seems like you also, like we were talking today,
you incorporated a lot of the way Ramon Deckers used to throw combinations,
who was a Dutch guy, who became probably one of the most famous ever foreigners
to fight in Thailand, one of the most successful in the lower weight classes
especially.
Yeah, he was a beast.
And then because he was the first white person to beat the Thais,
he was such a role model.
And I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Still to this day, I still try and emulate everything that he's done.
And just to be that guy that went to Thailand and beat the Thais at the Roan
Sport,
it's something that I look up to him even though he's passed.
I still, yeah, he's still my hero.
In the world of Muay Thai and the world of fighting,
there's guys who have gigantic names that like,
if you were thinking about a sport like hockey,
it would be like a Wayne Gretzky or like a Bobby Orr.
That's where like Ramon Deckers was.
Most casual people, casual fans,
they're not aware of like some of the greats in this sport.
It's really unfortunate.
Because America, like kickboxing, for whatever reason, never really caught on.
And Dana White has a really good theory.
And he thinks it's because that in like the 1980s and the 19, like the early 19,
I guess it wasn't even the 90s, like mostly the 80s,
they had that PKA kickboxing on TV,
which is where Rick Rufus came from, who turned out to be a great fighter.
Yes.
But a lot of those guys were like sloppy boxers who had to throw a certain
amount of kicks per round.
Like they would make you throw like six, seven kicks per round.
I forget what the number was.
And so they would throw like these little flippy kicks with no power.
And then they were just kind of sloppy box.
Yeah.
Benny the Jet and Peter Cunningham.
Who else?
Well, Peter Sugarfoot Cunningham, he became successful outside of PKA.
He did Muay Thai.
He fought a lot of different styles.
He was a more complete fighter.
I think there was a lot of fights that like they had on an ESPN at two o'clock
in the morning.
You watch these two white dudes kickboxing.
You're like, what the fuck am I watching?
It just, it just wasn't at the level that it's unfortunate that people,
some people still have that in their mind when it comes to kickboxing or to Muay
Thai,
because in other countries, like especially in Holland and in,
you were one of the guys who carried it over to Australia at a very young age.
It's very popular over there.
Yeah.
Like in Australia, Fox Sports, we were showing the fights at least once a week.
And that one, that was from 1996 and up until last year.
And then they've just stopped showing the broadcast now.
And now UFC's flooded the market and there's no exposure for the kickboxes
anymore.
It's hard for us to shine now.
Really?
Because of MMA?
Yeah, well, UFC's, they're doing the pay-per-views and they're doing the roads
through the UFC
and they're showing all the replays.
So every time you put the Fox Sports on, it's just saturated the market and
there's no real...
If I was a young fighter now and they said, what would you want to do?
Do you want to kickboxer and UFC?
I was like, UFC for sure, because look at the superstars.
Right.
Like in Muay Thai, there's no elite sort of place to go anymore.
The K1's dead.
Before it was K1, the K1 was the dream.
Right.
And now that's disappeared.
Well, there's glory.
Glory, but glory is amazing.
But it's not what K1 was, if that makes sense.
Not yet, no.
And still, look at UFC.
You look at the George St. Pierre's and the John Jones' lifestyle.
It's like, holy shit, that's a different league.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Well, the world champions, that level is very different.
The Anderson Silvers and they're rocking the sports cars and they're amazing.
Well, you could look at it that way.
Yeah.
I guess so.
I think that technique-wise, the kickboxing world is at a very high level
though.
Yes.
With the Muay Thai world, very, very high level.
Yes.
Which is what was missing, like when they were putting it on ESPN.
Which is too bad, because it's like, if you watch Glory, like the level of
fighter is there.
It's a very high level of fighter.
Yes.
You know, but it's just, people are just not aware of it yet.
Yeah.
We need the media exposure.
Let's say, for the Joe Shillings, for example.
Mm-hmm.
We need to go to his house and see what he is like a person, instead of just
seeing the bell ring,
have his fight, put his hand up.
Right.
And then he disappears.
Whereas the UFC, I know everything about George St. Pierre without even meeting
him.
I know everything about John Jones without meeting him.
I know everyone, and then when they fight, I feel I have that emotional
connection.
And I really want to cheer for that guy, because I feel like I'm emotionally
involved.
Right.
Whereas the Glory guy is like, I can't tell you who's who, and how many
daughters he has,
or what kind of pets he has at home.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
One of the things that I really love about just striking, about -- I'm
obviously a big fan of MMA,
but when you've got to think about takedowns, and when you have to think about
submissions,
and there's so many different things that a fighter has to consider, they're
not as open with their striking.
They don't have as many moments to just freely exchange without worried about
being taken down.
So when you watch, like, real high-level Muay Thai, real high-level kickboxing,
you get to see this next-level fluidity,
and this next-level technique.
And just -- I mean, you see it in boxing as well.
Like, I've had conversations with people that say, like, boxing is better.
You never see people land those combinations in the UFC.
And I'm like, well, it's because they're going to take you down.
Yeah, yeah.
Really, you can't stand sideways with your shoulders like that against a really
good wrestler,
because they're just going to shoot in and take you down.
But that style against someone, if you make that agreement, like, it's only
going to be stand-up,
it's only going to be hands, you get to see the really high-level, the Manny
Pacquiao's,
the Floyd Mayweather's.
You get to see this just next-level technique.
And I feel that same way with kickboxing.
I feel like with Muay Thai and with kickboxing, you don't get to see the real
high-level stuff
unless it's just two straight, pure strikers in a Muay Thai match.
When I got the opportunity to work with George, for instance, the first time
that we sparred,
I think George is so used to throwing one-twos, one-two-threes.
And then I was literally chasing him from one side of the cage to the other,
doing a U-turn,
and then going straight back at him again.
And then after the spar, he told me, guys, it felt like I was sparring four
guys at once
because it was just relentless.
That's what I felt like today.
We were playing around today.
There was no pause.
It was just continuous because there's no fear of being taken down.
So I can stand in the pocket and just keep punching and punching and punching
and punching.
I've always equated it to, like, a conversation.
Like, if you have a very crude grasp of the language and you try to have a
conversation with someone,
it can be very frustrating because you're searching for the words.
You don't know exactly what to say.
You're trying to figure out what that person's saying.
But if you're like you or me who speak English very fluently, you and I could
have a conversation.
We could be rattling back and forth.
Well, you're that way with striking.
You could tell, like, striking is like a part of your body's language.
So it's so normal to you.
You're so used to it that the combinations just flow like water.
Whereas, like, you were trying to teach me some things today about the really
unique style that you have of, like, when you were trying to teach me that
crazy power jab and then the setups to those knees.
Like, you have a very specific way of moving that I was trying to emulate.
But to you, this is ingrained in your nervous system.
For you, it just flows out of you, you know?
Yeah, I've spent my lifetime.
That's why I can't go to MMA because I've spent my whole life learning stand-up.
And I'm in fear that I have to spend another lifetime on my back if I want to
reach the same sort of level.
And I wouldn't do it unless I had that perfection on the floor, too.
So, yeah.
It's ten years.
At least, at least.
Yeah, it's ten years of jiu-jitsu.
So, I've invested 20, 25 years of stand-up striking alone.
And I don't have any other hobbies.
This is my life.
All I do is go to the gym and come home.
And then what do you do for fun?
Well, that is my fun.
I don't have to do anything else.
I don't surf.
I don't ride motorbikes.
I don't do anything besides watch UFC and train myself.
It's my life.
And I love it.
And I wouldn't change it for nothing, either.
Do you have any desire to train jiu-jitsu?
Just for fun?
Just for a goof?
No.
No?
That's why I come up with the cage Muay Thai idea.
Because I want to fight in the cage.
And I want to experience the little gloves.
But I didn't want to learn the ground.
Because as much as I respect it, I'm not good at it.
And I want to be at a high level.
So, we do promotions in Australia already between me and my wife.
And I said, well, instead of hiring a ring, why don't we just hire a cage?
So, I studied a little bit on the YouTube.
And I've seen it done before.
And they wore boxing gloves.
And I thought, well, how am I going to get the respect from the MMA crowd if I
wear boxing gloves?
And they wear little gloves.
Right.
I'm going to look like a pussy.
So, I thought, well, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it properly.
And I'm going to wear the MMA gloves just to show that I'm just as a warrior as
the MMA guys are.
So, so far we've done five shows and it's amazing.
That's interesting that you say that because I can't imagine that you would
have to feel like you, at this stage of your life, with all your
accomplishments, that you still feel like you have to prove yourself.
Oh, every time.
I still now.
I still don't believe I'm there yet.
That's hilarious.
Yeah.
That's actually hilarious.
Yeah.
I mean, do you ever look at your own resume?
Yeah, but --
Want to pull it up real quick?
Let's pull it up real quick.
I'll just let you know what you've done just so you feel better.
Yeah.
I'm quite content where I'm at, but it always feels like I want to be more
famous, if that's a word.
Yeah, no.
Well, definitely makes sense.
I mean, just -- I get that -- I mean, all high-level athletes will tell you