JRE MMA Show #170 with Michael "Venom" Page

Joe Rogan: The Joe Rogan Experience. All day. MVP in the house, the most enigmatic, difficult dude to solve in all of MMA. That's you, man.

Michael "Venom" Page: Bro, you know what? I want to start simply because of what you have done for me specifically. I get a lot of criticism, a lot of hate, especially obviously jumping in when I first got into the MMA world. It was new to me. I'm just like, okay, let me just be myself, do my thing. First fight goes well, land this crazy kick, goes viral, and I get nothing but hate. But then, having prominent figures like yourself that have constantly been championing my style, championing the points element of things, I just appreciate you for that.

Joe Rogan: Oh, my pleasure, brother. I appreciate you. It's almost like we called for you because there was a time in the early days of MMA, like in the early 2000s, where I was like, this is what's missing. What's missing is point fighters. And people would mock me. They'd be like, "No, no, no. I've sparred with these dudes. You can't hit them. It's a different thing." I'm like, they have a very specific skill, that skill of closing distance and being elusive.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: It's not like any other sport. It's almost like fencing and MMA combined, or fencing and martial arts combined.

Michael "Venom" Page: I always tell people that most of the combat sports, in terms of kickboxing, the full contact side of things, there's a fixation on power, knocking people out. Whereas our element is just the speed element. Getting in and getting out. Getting in touch. Like you said, the tag, tag kind of feel, fencing, similar kind of footwork. Not many people had decided to cross over to any kind of full contact world really.

Joe Rogan: And you had the likes of Wonderboy Thompson. Raymond Daniels.

Michael "Venom" Page: Raymond Daniels.

Joe Rogan: You and Raymond were the most prominent ones. Him in Glory, of course you in MMA. Well, he did a little bit of MMA.

Michael "Venom" Page: A little bit of MMA, yeah. But you're more prominent in MMA.

Joe Rogan: The point was that this was an element that... I remember when I was doing Taekwondo and I would fight in tournaments, I would occasionally fight in point fighting tournaments. I'd fight a guy like Mafia Holloway or one of these guys that were really good. I was like, this is crazy. This is such a crazy skill. Very different. And when I saw MMA where a lot of guys were just real flat-footed and waiting, I'm like, there's a giant opening here. And then you came along. And you really were the proof of concept. And I was like, okay, this is it. You get a world champion at that who figures all the other stuff out, because essentially striking is striking. You can learn throwing leg kicks differently. You can learn different stances and movements. The grappling is the big hurdle. But once you can solve the takedown defense and some of the grappling hurdles, and you've actually got submission victories, then you've got a real problem because every fight starts standing up.

Michael "Venom" Page: Exactly.

Joe Rogan: Every fight starts standing up in a big-ass cage.

Michael "Venom" Page: It's a big ass cage. And I see guys like Kevin Holland, he's like, "What the fuck do I do with this guy?" He hated every moment of it. I could feel it. But that's just part of my style, that kind of frustrating people because it's just so unfamiliar. For someone like yourself, you would kind of be in there, whether you're successful or not, you'd understand what's happening and you'd be calm enough still to be like, "Okay, I need to know how to figure this out," because you've experienced this before. For someone that's never experienced it, and because there's few of us in the MMA world, who do you go to to train? There's very few people that are really good at that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And like I said, Wonderboy Thompson. He's a friend of mine, obviously me and him. And he's even said people have contacted him like, "Oh yeah, I'm fighting MVP, I want to train with you." He's like, "I want MVP to win, so I can't help you, bro. I can't do anything."

Joe Rogan: Well, it's good for the sport. It really is, because think about it. There's certain techniques that just come along, like the calf kick. And all of a sudden, how is this? People have been kicking legs for so long. How is kicking a different spot on the leg kind of a revolution?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, we need to see that. And I think the introduction of you is going to make a lot of these guys that are high-level point guys go, "Hmm, there's a spot there for me." Because the open... Look, there's always an advantage in the fact that every round starts standing up. As long as you have takedown defense, every round starts in your realm. And your realm is different than all the other stand up. It's totally different. And if a guy is a plodding guy and he thinks, "Oh, this is my world," like, yeah, that's not your world.

Joe Rogan: It's your world against someone who agrees to fight the way you fight.

Michael "Venom" Page: One hundred percent. And I always say that because I've come up against guys and was like, "Man, he's got a big punch on him." And I agree, I'm like, "Yeah, I get it." But power only means something if you land. And my whole element is not being touched. It's also fucking with people's heads.

Joe Rogan: One of the things you did during the Jared Cannonier fight, after you hit him, you were like, "Calm down. Calm down." I was like, "Oh, no." Because you imagine just getting popped. Your eyes are running. Your nose hurts. And this dude's standing in front of you going, "Calm down. Calm down." I'm like, "No, he didn't. Oh, no."

Michael "Venom" Page: It's psychological warfare. But that's obviously part of my personality coming out, and the entertaining side of me. And a lot of that added to the criticism that I would get, because of how I would make my opponents feel in terms of their frustration, and then obviously the antics on top of it. So many people, the main term that came with me was, "Oh, he's fighting cans. He's fighting cans." My whole career was, "Oh, he's fighting cans." But I always say to people, I'm just making it seem a lot less difficult than it actually is. These guys are super talented fighters. I'm just not fighting on the same wavelength and timing as them. As you said, these guys that plod around, they're so used to it. So when they're fighting other people, it looks very even. And when they're fighting somebody that they just can't get their hands on, they get frustrated on top of that. So it's the mental side, the physical side. And you have a lot of power, so there are consequences.

Joe Rogan: It's not like you're tippy-tappy, pit-patting them. Every now and then, like the Cyborg fight, that was one of the craziest knockouts in all of MMA history. One thing I actually wanted to do, I actually brought some gifts for you. But one of the things I actually wanted to bring for you... Don't tell me you brought a piece of his head.

Michael "Venom" Page: No, he wouldn't let me have that. So yeah, I have to leave it. I actually wanted to... We basically had a Pokéball come, it was a very specific one, and they messed up on delivery, but I'm going to get it to you in Vegas. So when we go over to Vegas, I'm just making sure I get that to you, because again, it's something you've spoken about with me, and it's a big part of my history in MMA, just that Cyborg fight.

Joe Rogan: That was the most gruesome injury I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of broken bones. I've never seen someone with a caved-in head.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. The doctors were saying that what we were hearing back from them, they said he's only ever seen that in a car accident, never in MMA.

Joe Rogan: That is so crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was his last fight. And I know after the fight, he was like, "We're going to fight again." The doctor's like, "Hey..."

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think he was... Someone sent me something where he was supposed to fight again. And then I'm not sure what happened there. But yeah, he didn't. It's crazy. How could you fight again after that?

Michael "Venom" Page: I felt very bad, obviously, at the time as well. But then I didn't see him for another two years.

Joe Rogan: There it is right here. Boom. That was just crazy. And the sound. The sound of that was... It's only when I watch it back. Give me the sound, Jamie.

[Clip plays]

Joe Rogan: It's hard to breathe, so just about everything you need in a fight, you lose off the liver shot. It hits. Oh. Sarkov runs into a junkie, and it's over. Oh, it sounds like a baseball bat on a pumpkin.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Just whop.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh.

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[Discussion resumes]

Michael "Venom" Page: The thing is, I didn't know. I keep telling everybody, I didn't know what happened. Because obviously they're like, "You celebrated like throwing a Pokéball at him afterwards." I did not know. You thought it was just a knockout.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, this was a knockout.

Michael "Venom" Page: And obviously custom kicking, I'm assuming maybe I broke his nose, or because I can see he's not out, but he's in pain. It must be something like that. It's only the next day that I found out. But yeah, it was a bad one. That was a bad one.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And the thing is, like I said, I met him, I want to say like two, two and a half years later down the line. Obviously this clip's just been going crazy online and so on and so forth. I just felt awkward. I didn't want to, but also he had come over for another MMA show with one of his students. One of his students was fighting one of my teammates. And at the beginning, my coaches were like, "Oh, do you want to go on at some point, go and see him and say hello?" I was like, "Yeah, please. I'd love to." Because that's the last time I saw him. The fight happens, and my teammate is known for his leg locks and breaks his student's leg. So I'm like, "For fuck's sake." Oh god. So now we're like, "Do you want to go and see him?" I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll try." I just felt like I needed to. I kind of walked into the room. His guy's obviously upset for losing, he's getting sorted out by the medics, and he's sitting there. He just looks at me and I'm like, "Hey." What do you say? "Unlucky." I was just like... He shook my hand, but I could just feel the energy wasn't right. It just wasn't the right time. I didn't know when I would get to see him again, and I haven't since. So yeah, I just felt it was one of those things that just felt bad.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. But what do you do? There's nothing.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: What do you do? Guy's got a broken leg. You broke his head. It's just, stay the fuck away from you and your crew. I mean, at least you're nice about it and friendly.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: It's such an interesting... Because you've trained with Marius. My coach, one of my coaches, Marius. And he says to say hello.

Michael "Venom" Page: Tell me, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said he trained with you guys. I think you guys trained for about four years with Eddie Bravo.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I've known him for 20 years. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: And that's obviously a big part of my history now with them, the two brothers, Alexis and Marius. Were you at the gym when Lee Murray was there?

Joe Rogan: No, no, no. I was just after.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, luckily. But interestingly though, when I was in at the time that he was around, I was still very heavily focused on the points fighting kickboxing. But a friend of mine was training at Shoot and he was like, "You need to come and train with these guys. These guys are serious." But for me, MMA was just never going to be a thing that I'd ever see myself in really. I've always seen it as, I guess like your average fan back in the day and some fans now, of like, "Ah, brutal, man." And again, I'm a points fighter. I don't see myself being good enough or tough enough to fight these guys.

Joe Rogan: What changed?

Michael "Venom" Page: Obviously Mark had a successful career in the kickboxing, but it didn't really go anywhere. It's like you're fighting the same people over and over. The amount of times me and Raymond fought, and we were the top two guys. We'd both walk in the room and everyone's like, "Oh my god, these guys are gonna fight." We were the guys. But I'm fighting the same people, and it's just like everyone hoping that you're gonna lose, or your fans are kind of supporting you. Then I come back to reality, come off a plane, I traveled, I fought all the week, won a world title, and I've come back home to nothing. I come back home to just me being myself, just me being me, which I'm okay with. But there's no recognition, there was no sponsorship. I paid to do everything. And I loved it. If I could choose the route again, I still do it because I absolutely loved it. But there comes a point where I'm getting older, and I have to work. At the time I'm a kid, but now it's getting to the point where I have to work. So now it's like, I can't do this forever. But at the same time, I know I want to compete for a living. I just didn't know in what. So then I said to myself, "Okay, cool. Let me take a step away from this. I know while I'm in this, this will be a distraction. I'm not going to be able to focus on the thing because another competition that I'm going to want to win is going to come up and it's going to turn my attention." So I said to everyone, "I'm retired." I thought, let me say it to as many people as possible so then it's hard for me to turn back on it. So I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm okay, yeah, I'm retiring, not fighting again, yeah, this is my last fight." I started to go around looking at boxing gyms, looking at full contact kickboxing, looking at MMA gyms. The first gym I actually went to was in Miami, Coconut Creek, American Top Team.

Joe Rogan: Ah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: Because my sister used to live in that area, because I have siblings over in America as well. So I came out there, and in my head at the time, there were only a few people from the UK that were doing anything in MMA. So when I was like, "Maybe I'm gonna try MMA," I was like, "Obviously I have to go to America." And I'm lucky enough to have siblings that live over there, so I'm good. So I get to America, get to American Top Team. I go in there, I'm like, "This is where I'm gonna start." I met a couple of the coaches, just kind of general chit-chat. I didn't tell them who I was or anything, just kind of saw the vibe. The facilities are amazing. I was like, "Yeah, this is going to be my new life." And then I get back to England and a good friend of mine, Marvin Francis, was like, "Just in case, just have a look at some gyms over here. You don't know." Because obviously I've got things to sort out before I can just make the full move. So while you're doing that, let's have a look at a couple of gyms. And we did some research. We went to a couple of the Gracie gyms. We went to a few other gyms that I was around. Then I found London Shoot Fighters. I hadn't done any research. And at this time, I personally wasn't watching MMA at all.

Joe Rogan: What year is this?

Michael "Venom" Page: So, I'd have been... I was 24. So that's about 12, 13 years back. And I was trying to say that the only guys in the UK would have been Brad Pickett was fighting.

Joe Rogan: Solid fighter.

Michael "Venom" Page: Solid fighter. Michael Bisping was fighting. And nobody had achieved anything of big quality from there. Everything was in America.

Joe Rogan: Was Bisping still living in England or had he moved to America?

Michael "Venom" Page: I think he was still in England. Yeah, yeah. But again, I was only learning it as I got more into it. But initially I just thought, I made the decision without actually researching anything, which is very much like me. I'll just jump in head first. I'll figure it out afterwards. So I literally said to myself, "Okay, cool. I've got to London Shoot Fighters." And the only person I knew was Chuck Liddell that I've actually seen. And I just was like, "This guy was just knocking people out." I was like, "I could relate to that. He's a striker." Everything else I didn't really care for. I was a typical fan. When they got on the floor, I was like, "Oh, get up, stand them up." Never been to a show or anything. But he's a guy that I like watching. And then I made a decision, "I want to do it." Cool. Started in London Shoot Fighters. And for some reason, the guys there... I've had good coaching in my upbringing, so I feel like I can hear sense when I've gone to a place. I'm hearing how they're coaching and what they're saying, and I'm like, "It just makes sense to me." I was like, "Cool, I'm gonna start here. I still want to go to America, but I'll start here for now, and then just see where it goes." And I just fell in love with the place.

Joe Rogan: Was that the first time you did any grappling at all?

Michael "Venom" Page: Any grappling at all. Wow.

Joe Rogan: Didn't do any?

Michael "Venom" Page: And all I was doing every day was applauding people because I was tapping every two seconds. I was training right, but I loved it though.

Joe Rogan: You have a good mindset.

Michael "Venom" Page: It was weird. I kind of enjoyed the fact that I'm looking at this guy, like if I saw you on the street, in my head, I'm destroying you. But this guy just twisted me up into a pretzel. It's a humiliating feeling. Oh, so humiliating. But again, I crave it. If I go back to the point side, from about... You met my brother outside. He's the oldest of my siblings, sorry, of the boys. My sister's the oldest, and it's my brother. I've got two other brothers. And at the time we were fighting around, but they were winning everything. I used to get my ass kicked everywhere we went. And this is every single weekend.

Joe Rogan: That's crazy.

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[Discussion resumes]

Michael "Venom" Page: Like he was, for me, he was the more talented one. But every single weekend we're driving to Birmingham, to Manchester, to Scotland. We did trips everywhere. My dad started a gym and he was going around everywhere. And every weekend, it's three hours that way, four hours this way. They're coming back and I've just got a busted lip, and they're just... The medals are just like, they got all the medals and they're talking about how they spin kicked some guy and they did this. And I'm just like, "Yeah, yeah, cool story." And I got destroyed for four or five years. Then I got to a qualifiers in Birmingham. It was an IASCA qualifiers, and I managed to win that. That in itself was success for me. I'm like, "Oh, man, I qualified to go to the world championships. I've already done well." Everyone else, they were supposed to do it. They're good enough to have the expectation of themselves. So then I get to the world championships. And the way they seed fighters in the U.S. was very different to the U.K. at the time. So I had one fight, another fight, another fight. And I'm winning. And I'm happy. I'm like, "I must be in the finals already." And then they're like, "Okay, bring the seeded fighters in." And there's a shitload of fighters on your mat. And I'm like, "Oh." My dad would tell me, he's like, "Yeah, I think you're in the semis. I think you're in the quarters." And then he was like, "Bro, just keep fighting." He couldn't work it out. I don't know. Seriously, I genuinely don't remember. I just remember feeling tired and I didn't understand why this was still going on, because in the competitions, three, four fights, you're in a final. And I was at least 10 fights deep and still felt like I was fighting, all in a day.

Joe Rogan: Wow.

Michael "Venom" Page: So there's the AYAHUASCA World Champs in Orlando, Florida. It was the big one at the time, the biggest points kickboxing competition. There's thousands and thousands of competitors, kids, adults, doing forms, doing katas and all this stuff. And then you had the points fighting, the light contact fighting. And yeah, it just went all day. And then it literally got to this... Okay, I won a fight, and the guy was like, "Okay, you're in the final next." The referee said that to me. And I was like, "Oh, I can't believe I'm in the final." And this guy was very good. I can't remember his name. He was young. I think I was like 12 or 11 at the time. And I won the fight. I just collapsed to my back. I was just like, "Oh, my God." Everyone ran in there because again, nobody expected that of me. And I remember going in there, the trophy itself was six feet tall. And in my head, I was like, "I just want one in my house." And I managed to win that. But something in that competition clicked. So all the times I was getting beaten up, all the competitions I was getting destroyed, and I wasn't even close, I was getting destroyed. I won this competition, and I went back home, and every person I used to get destroyed by, I was smoking them. Something was different. Instantaneously. There was a weird shift that just went click.

Joe Rogan: Wow. You entered into the Matrix.

Michael "Venom" Page: I literally, to the point where when I went back home, I was like 12, and for the year of that circuit, I didn't lose a fight. And this is from getting whooped.

Joe Rogan: That's crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: And I'm fighting all the same guys that I grew up with. And they must have been like, "What the hell?"

Joe Rogan: Yeah, what the hell's going on here?

Joe Rogan: Then when I was 13, I asked my dad, I was like, "Can I please fight in the seniors?" And the seniors are 18 plus. And he said it to me later on, he was like, "As a coach, I knew you could. As your dad, I was like, hell no."

Michael "Venom" Page: I begged him every competition we got. "Please can I fight the seniors? Please." There was a big British championship competition, and I begged. I was like, "Please." He was like, "You can do this one." And again, I don't think he—these guys are 18 plus, but all different sizes as well. I don't think he knew I'd do well, but not as well as I did. So I won my senior division for my weight. And like I said, these are big men. But the problem is, when you win in this competition specifically, when you win your section, you go into the grand championship. And I'm like, "Dad, you gotta let me go." He's like, "No, this is different now. They're the winners of their division. That was your weight division. Now these guys are the winners of their own weight. You can't do this." I begged him, and I beat everybody and got to the final. The final was really, really close, and I felt like I got robbed. Even my dad was like—he could never tell me no after that, because I destroyed some of the best fighters in the UK at the time.

Joe Rogan: Do you think it was a confidence thing of having gone through that grueling tournament and proving that you could do it, and now you didn't have doubts in your mind anymore? Or was it you had just seen so many different high levels of competition that like maybe your own expectations had risen? Like what was it that made that instantaneous shift? Because it's one thing to go and compete and do really well all of a sudden, like "now I'm competing," but then you went and you were doing against people that were normally beating you and you're fucking them up. That's a 50 shift. That's a giant shift.

Michael "Venom" Page: I would say one thing, obviously I hated losing as anybody would, especially as a kid. And we also—I think as all of us—we wasn't allowed. So a lot of the kids would fight first and then the seniors would fight. But because we all traveled down together, we stayed the whole competition until the seniors were finished so we could drive back. A lot of the other kids were messing around, but my dad was like, "No, no. You represent me. You sit down and watch." So as much as we could play a little bit when he wasn't looking, I tried to get back to the mat to make sure we were watching people. I feel like I'm a visual learner, and I feel like that helped me become that visual. As much as I got my ass kicked, I was also spending time watching amazing athletes at the time.

Joe Rogan: I think it's an important thing to mention that at that time, there wasn't video readily available like there is today. I remember the first time I went to the Taekwondo World Cup, it was in Colorado Springs in 2000—I mean, not 2000, 1980, I think it was 86. The first time I went, I immediately got better just by seeing them, just by seeing everybody. I just went as a spectator.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I hadn't beaten anybody to qualify for the nationals. So when I went there, the whole experience was just absorption. I came back and I was much better. Much better. I'd never seen those guys live. But my expectations for competition, my expectations for movement and speed, everything had risen. And at the time, I was 18. So when you're 18, your brain just absorbs. And I think even more so when you're younger.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes.

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah, when you're a little kid.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. My first competition I was five years old, so that is just many years of being up.

Joe Rogan: That's incredible, though, because your body develops with that. I started a little late. I started karate when I was 14 and then wrestling and Taekwondo when I was 15. But I wished I started earlier because I was with these guys that were younger and their little bodies had grown stretching. They'd grown punching and kicking. You develop into that.

Michael "Venom" Page: Funny you say that. That's where my name came from. So Venom came from when I was nine. The only kids in my dad's class at the time—there were a few others, because at the time it was basically one class. He didn't really separate the kids and adults. It was just one class. So I'm trying my best, throwing everything in to hit adults. They're not moving, but I'm trying my best to just get some kind of reaction. Then when I started hitting people my own size, even though I was losing because they were—I was tall for my age as well, so I was fighting kids slightly more naturally developed than me—I had a whack on me. Even though I wasn't beating these guys, these guys were just way too fast for me, but when I hit them, they felt it. One of my—again, Marvin—was literally just like, "You got some venom in you, man."

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: We were very into kung fu movies back in the day. And I was very creative-minded. I loved just—even with my martial arts, I learned a jab like this, and now I have to add something. I can't do things conventional. I've never liked to do it. If everyone's walking that way, I'm like, "I want to see what's over there." I don't know what is wrong with me, but what's right with you? What's right with me? But I just got that—I was curious and creative. There's a film called The Five Deadly Venoms, old school kung fu classic. And he would be like, "Yeah, five deadly venoms, let's make a move for each thing." Because he'd be like, "Scorpion or toad." And I would make up weird moves and try to add it in. That was always my thing. I'd see something in the movies and I'm like, "I'm gonna try it in there." This is all while I'm still getting beaten up, by the way. But that never left me. So even when I started beating all these people, now I'm doing it with the style and flair of like, "What more can I do?"

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: It's so perfect for martial arts, for MMA, because a lot of MMA is pattern recognition. You get accustomed to certain types of movements. "I know this guy's going to do this. The calf kick's going to be available. I'm going to feint with this, and I'm going to throw that. I'm going to shoot that double here because I know he's going to come with the overhand right." All these patterns. You don't have normal patterns. So you're moving around, your hands are down, you're sideways, and they have to make up new patterns as they go along. So they have to think. They have to react. It's such an advantage.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, and I always tell people that the first time they're actually really going to experience this style is on the night.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And you have to figure it out on the night. Because there's not enough guys that have what you can do that also compete in MMA. There might be five or six in the whole world, which is nuts.

Joe Rogan: It's kind of nuts. It's really the—I had been saying this for decades. I'm like, "This is the one thing that's missing."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And then when you came over, I was like, "See? This is what I'm saying. This is crazy. You can't even hit him."

Michael "Venom" Page: It's weird, though. It's a blessing and a curse. Blessing, obviously, having the advantages of a fight. But sparring, headache. Earlier, a lot of people wanted to kind of like, "Let me see what this is about." Then word spreads quite quickly. I struggle with sparring. I think it's starting to come back now, people are a bit more willing. But I struggled with sparring. You just couldn't get sparring. Couldn't get sparring. And I kind of see it from other people's point of view. It's like, "Well, I'm not going to fight anybody like that. So why am I coming over here?"

Joe Rogan: But if you saw that, if you, with your mindset, you would be like, "I got to figure out what the fuck he's doing." 100%. And my teammates, they're forced to. A lot of them even say, "I'd spar you, and then I'd go spar someone else, and they feel so slow." Because when I'm with you, my eyes are like this. I'm forced to be ultra alert. And then I go and someone's throwing a punch at the ass.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's the thing too. It's exhausting. Your style is exhausting because you always have to be at high alert. There's no moment because there's so many times where you've done a shift in rhythm and it looks like you're slowing down and then you explode and crack people. You've done that so successfully so many times that if they've watched any tape, they know there's no moments where you could catch your breath. There's no moments. And you're always putting pressure on people. You're always feinting. And the feints alone—people don't even know. When you're just standing there, it looks like you're just standing there. But you're standing there and a guy's feinting, and you never know when he's going to actually launch. Your whole body's constantly tense. You can't breathe. And that's just their energy bar doing this without anything happening. Without any kicks landing. No punch.

Joe Rogan: Which is actually why I'm a big fan of Tom Aspinall as well.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: You don't really see that anywhere full stop, but definitely not in a heavyweight division. No heavyweight moves like him. No one moves like him. He moves like a 185er. It's crazy. With that kind of explosive and that power, it's crazy. Crazy speed for a heavyweight. Crazy speed. I love to see it. And that's why the Jon Jones thing was—Jon is one of the, if not the greatest fighter of all time, but he's not the fastest guy in the world.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: He hasn't, but he's just so complete, and his fight IQ is off the charts.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Off the charts. Very well-rounded. And wild. He opens up his world title fight with Shogun with a flying knee. Crazy. Wild. Just believes in himself. Goes for it. Confidence. Goes for it.

Joe Rogan: I thought that was a complicated matchup for him.

Michael "Venom" Page: It is. It is. Because that guy's not easy to get to the ground. And Aspinall, he's fast as fuck, and he's big. He's a legit 250 pounds, natural. He doesn't need anything. He's saying there's no way he can make 205 ever. He's fucking big.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I got to train with him, and I went down there, and I was like, "This guy's a tank."

Michael "Venom" Page: It's a tank.

Joe Rogan: So that's a problem. That's a problem when you're not really a heavyweight. As great as Jon is, and I think Jon beats most heavyweights that have ever existed, that guy's a problem. Francis is another problem. That's another problem because you're dealing with a real 265-pound solid, natural, grew up in the sand mines. Literally. His story is crazy. His story is something else. He told it on the podcast. He told the whole story of him going to Morocco and getting to Europe. That's a movie, man.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. A crazy movie. I'm surprised nobody has jumped on that.

Joe Rogan: I'm surprised, too. Someone needs to. It's nuts.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. But when he was a child working, digging sand in Cameroon. It's crazy. Incredible. And then you have incredible genetics.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And then you have just this fierce mindset from all the shit that guy's been through. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: That was another one. There were two fights that I was really interested with Jon anyway. Once he won the titles, I was like, "God, bring back Francis, please. Just sort out your differences." I wish I was running shit.

Michael "Venom" Page: I feel like me along great, yeah.

Joe Rogan: I just feel like sometimes it's the executives and the fighters. Dana generally gets along with people. Most fighters he gets along with. But him and Francis, it didn't work.

Michael "Venom" Page: I love the guy. I've never had the privilege of meeting him, but he just seems very sweet, like a big friendly giant outside of the cage.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, exactly. Big friendly giant.

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Joe Rogan: He's a fucking great guy.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: I'm always saying from my experiences with him.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: But as a fighter, make it happen. Keep him around. You got a gem. That's more important. It's an extraordinary gem.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And you want to talk about sellability. You want to talk about marketability. What's more marketable than a giant man who destroys everyone?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. He's the guy. Yeah, yeah. So true.

Joe Rogan: Drove me nuts. I know. Drove me nuts.

Michael "Venom" Page: I think everybody. And I think that's added to people's frustrations with the Tom Aspinall fight not happening then after as well.

Joe Rogan: Well, that was not on the UFC's side or on Tom's side. That was all Jon. Look, Jon's a wizard. He knows how to play all games. One of the games he plays: "I'm retiring. No, I'm back. Oh, now I'm hunting after you." It doesn't matter for him. He's going to get the same amount of money. He's still Jon Jones. It's all mind fuckery. Keep you guessing. And meanwhile, Jon's deadlifting every day and partying. He's just so wild.

Michael "Venom" Page: But it's like, that fight would have been amazing to see. But to me, it probably can still happen though.

Joe Rogan: I hope so. I genuinely hope so. They were talking about doing it at the White House, and Dana's like, "I can't trust Jon to show up and be fine." Which is fair. Which is fair. You gotta say, there's been a few times where things went awry.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough.

Joe Rogan: However, it would be great. Do it on a card where you have 12 other fights. That's what I say. Who gives a fuck? Let's see if it happens. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's true. That's what I would be. Let's go crazy. Let's fucking go all in.

Joe Rogan: I guess what would happen is that fight overshadows many fights. So if it doesn't happen, even though the fights are amazing still, people are like, "Ah."

Michael "Venom" Page: It does, but so what?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. I mean, you could do—I don't know who you would do—Ilia Topuria versus Justin Gaethje or something like that, something crazy like that. You'd have a few other fights. It depends on what happens this weekend with Pereira and Ankalaev. It depends on what happens with Merab and Cory Sandhagen. Those are two very complicated fights.

Michael "Venom" Page: Beast.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, very good fights. Merab is a beast, man. Beast. Such a beast. Dude, he was talking to—I forgot who he was talking to. He did an interview. Oh, he was on Mighty Mouse's podcast. No sauna, no cold plunge, no stretching. Doesn't do any of that. Just no warm up. Shows up. "I just show up, start to train." Just shows up and fucking hits the gas. He stays up to 1, 2 o'clock in the morning. His whole routine is totally contrary to everything that you've heard before. And this is how he weight cuts: "I stop eating." He just stops eating on Tuesday. He just stops eating, stops drinking water, keeps working out. The man's mind is a giant factor that I think a lot of people are looking at as cardio, which is an insane weapon.

Michael "Venom" Page: Of course, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: But the mind, the toughness, the mental toughness that is Fort Knox. You ain't getting in there. You ain't getting in there. Remember that time—who was it? He was mounted. I forget who got him. But he got him in a mounted guillotine, and he didn't—I think it might have been Ricky Simon. Or was it somebody else had him, and he got out, and then he won the fight. But he was being choked unconscious for like two minutes.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. And he's like, "Yeah." And he's like kicking his legs and moving around. There's no quitting that guy. Fucking zero quit. You have to put him out. Zero quit.

Joe Rogan: In the Marlon Moraes fight, he was basically out on his feet in the first round.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And he just came back and stopped him. He's a monster. He's a beast. He's a beast. And he keeps getting better.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, you feel like, "Oh, a guy like that is so good. Look how good he is. He's better than everybody." No, no, no, no, no. He's still getting better.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: He's not done. He's a project.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: He's like, "What can the human mind force the human body to do?" And how young is he now? He's like 34, I believe. Which is in that lightweight class. It's a little bit more of a problem in the heavier weight classes, but I don't see any small. Like you said, his mind is a fucking steel trap.

Michael "Venom" Page: But it's funny you say that, because I don't really have structure either. The weight cut I do, but that's because I came in with no understanding of weight cut, and London Shoot was like, "You do this."

Joe Rogan: You look so big for 170. How the fuck did you do that? How much are you cutting when you went to 170?

Michael "Venom" Page: So even like now, I'm massive now.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, you look like—let me guess, 220? What do you weigh right now?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, about 215.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. Because I was going to do it in KG, so yeah.

Joe Rogan: Right, okay.

Michael "Venom" Page: But yeah, I've never struggled to get down though. Because again, I was just told—I guess it's ignorance as well—but I was just told to do these things. And it's like, "Okay, you do it."

Joe Rogan: What is it? When you start, like say you get a call from the UFC. Six to eight weeks out.

Michael "Venom" Page: Okay.

Joe Rogan: So you're not going to accept any two-week fights?

Michael "Venom" Page: No.

Joe Rogan: No.

Michael "Venom" Page: Well, it depends on the fight. And it depends on—I'm always training.

Joe Rogan: But middleweight, maybe you would.

Michael "Venom" Page: Middleweight, yeah. Middleweight, yeah. I have taken some short notice fights. For middleweight, which was the first one or the second one I did. The last fight, maybe. But I would take short notice fights depending on where I am in training. But I just like to have a rough idea. Even right now, I'm bugging people because I come from a circuit where we fight weekends. Every weekend we're somewhere. It keeps you sharp.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And then this is probably the most frustrating thing for me. Obviously starting in the better tour, you're training all the time, and then you have a fight, and then you're training. And I'm just like—a lot of my fights I don't take too much damage, so I'm like, "I'm ready now. Give me a week off and I can come back." And then it's months and months. I'm like, "Who am I fighting? Do this."

Joe Rogan: The problem is you're a hard sell.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: When people get a call.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. It's a flat-footed dude. They're like, "Shit! I'm going to have to learn how to dance in six weeks. Fuck!"

Joe Rogan: And that's the thing.

Michael "Venom" Page: So I'm here, and I assumed wrongly that when I get to the UFC, that is going to disperse. Everyone's going to be gunning for me. Like, "Yeah, I'm going to show everybody that this guy is a can. He only fought people that weren't his level." It's still the same. I think, and obviously the more I fight, the less people are putting their hands up. I think even Whittaker said, which I respect to be fair—he came out, I don't even know, somebody sent me something—but he had said like, "Yeah, would it be interesting if they can't fight?"

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: At this point in his career, that's just a setback waiting to happen.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's not. And his style is very similar.

Michael "Venom" Page: Exactly, yeah. I'm a massive fan of his as well. I love his—obviously he can tie in the wrestling way better. I love his style.

Joe Rogan: I do too. And you've got to realize, that guy's been in it for a long time. He had two fucking wars with Yoel Romero when Yoel Romero was made out of metal.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: That guy's son. He's still fighting. Still, yeah. He's 48 years old, fucking people up, looking like he's 30. I'd swap bodies with him in a second.

Michael "Venom" Page: Who wouldn't?

Joe Rogan: Bro, when he was in here, he came into the studio. It was the most amazing thing because Joey Diaz translated for him. So it was him and Joey Diaz going back and forth. And Joey's Cuban as well, of course. So when he was here, he had to be 230 pounds. His neck starts at the top of his ears. One of the things that he said, man, he was talking about the Cuban system. He goes, "You have to be on my jean." Because he was talking about the system of like, you get more food if you're at a higher caliber of athlete. So the—

Michael "Venom" Page: Just to get more food.

Joe Rogan: He's like, "The athletes that are the lower caliber, they eat twice a day. In his caliber, he eaten three times a day." He like, "So every day, every day they coming for you. You have to be on my chin." And I was like, "Oh, my God." And you get to look in his eyes, man. That motherfucker is fierce. We are soft in the West, bro.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, we're so soft in the West. We're so soft in the West. What the hell is this?

Joe Rogan: I'm not a fan of communism. I don't believe in it. But damn, it creates a fucking beast. Alexander Karelin.

Michael "Venom" Page: I mean, I don't know if you get—there's two things you don't get that with. There's like substances.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's for sure taking place. And then there's also a regiment that they have, both the Cuban system and the Russian system.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Where they had figured out the balance between unbelievable hard work, but technical ability and recovery.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: They didn't go meathead style.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: In America, we went meathead style. And we burnt a lot of dudes out. But the dudes who survived were just the killers of the killers. But they probably could have made more killers like the Russians did if they did it more technically.

Michael "Venom" Page: It's the same. So, again, Shoot—they've been—again, they were the first MMA gym in the UK. I think like 95, 97, 95.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I got a T-shirt. I got a London Shootfighters T-shirt from 2003.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, crazy.

Joe Rogan: I couldn't find it. I was looking for it today. Crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: So, like I said, they've been around a long time. And obviously they've fought with every major competition that's ever been out. They've done boxing with the likes of David Haye, Derek Chisora now. Even Dillian Whyte did a kickboxing fight with them. Myself, Lee Murray, John Hathaway. Even like Carlos Ramona was the first Czech guy before Yuri to be in the UFC. That was them guys. They've done a lot. But they're the meathead style. They are like, "Yeah, everybody will learn." Anything to produce Lee Murray.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got that guy in your gym. It's a problem. Just the echoes of that guy's style will permeate through that gym for decades. That guy's just an angry man.

Michael "Venom" Page: He was an angry man. But at the same time, you needed somebody—because my coaches are beasts. You needed that kind of militant force to be able to manage that and cope with that. And that's what my coaches, they are. They're like, "Yeah." People used to come to our gym and we're just like, "Yeah, who's ready?" And if you don't do it, I'll do it myself. That's one thing I always respected about them. Even with the machines, the fitness machines that we had to do, the scores are crazy. I see people in other gyms posting their scores. I'm like, "Is that it?" And they're celebrating it. And I'm like, "We're forced to do this. The hell is that?"

Joe Rogan: But he'd push you, but he'd also do it himself. Like he'd jump on the machine and just smoke it. Fight like five fights back to back and then run in and this and that, and we're doing, we have to do all of it because he's doing it and he's not doing it. He hasn't got a fight.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's the way you lead.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: Especially with killers.

Joe Rogan: Exactly.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, that's the problem. They demand respect.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Michael "Venom" Page: And they have to know that you're real.

Joe Rogan: Exactly. Yeah. Otherwise you're just some pontificator on the sidelines with a fucking clipboard. Fuck off, bitch. Which is more nowadays, like I'm seeing a lot of like, and to be fair, I'm a fan of a lot of these guys, like the fighting nerds. And again, I'm hearing that they had a, I forget, like a data analyst or something.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, they did. And he does like this, you know, he studies this. And I think that's cool. Like, I feel like we should have like add elements of these things as well. But obviously I've just grown up by this iron, sharp iron.

Joe Rogan: It does. It's undeniable. Iron sharpens iron.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You know, there's outliers. There's a guy who will come out of a gym with nobody and he's a monster. There's just a few of those guys that exist in the world. But for the most part, like if you look at a gym like American Top Team, for example, look at how many animals have come out of that gym.

Michael "Venom" Page: So many.

Joe Rogan: Pantoja, who I think does not get the credit he deserves. I think Pantoja is one of the greatest ever. Fucking guy's a monster. When that Japanese cat came over from Rizin and he just like ragdolled him. Like he had no business. And then the Kaikara France rematch, like you see the difference between when they first fought and now the difference between a dominant, all-time world champion.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whew! People, like, when he's on a card, people don't freak out. I'm like, God damn it. Just because he's 125 pounds.

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Michael "Venom" Page: But that's the thing. It's the marketability of people. This is what I knew I had to get right as well.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Michael "Venom" Page: And a lot of, I say that to my teammates as well. I'm like, do you know how you're going to market yourself? And they're like, no, no. I just, you know, if I beat people up, it's like, it doesn't always just, unfortunately it should, but it doesn't, that's not what's gonna get you. If I have to, as a promotion owner and the person managing everything, I'm either gonna pick you that's beating everybody but nobody cares about, or this guy that's, you know, pretty decent but everyone's making noise about, gonna pick that guy. So you need to be able to market yourself. And I knew that from the jump, and this is before really social media was massive, massive, it was a thing. But I said to myself, okay, I need to look in how am I gonna market myself. Cause we don't have that much time on the mic. The interviews at the time, I don't feel like people got the recognition. People just cared about the fight. They just want to watch the fight. I didn't care what you said beforehand, unless you're arguing or shouting into it.

Joe Rogan: You know, there's beef. Unless you grab that mic and go crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. You got to go crazy. Chael Sonnen was the first.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, he's the best.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. He was, he figured it out before. He's the best. Yeah. Anderson Silva, you absolutely suck. He's the best fighter. This is why he's on the mic now. He's the best. It was perfect. He's the king. For me, there's perfect balance. It wasn't too far. It was exactly what you wanted, exactly what you need to market a fight and to promote himself.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes, I agree with you. Again, it's weird though because I think authenticity is important when you do that as well though. And Conor McGregor is the next person for me that's kind of delivered that.

Joe Rogan: Oh, 100%. He took it to a whole nother level. A whole nother level. Every time this guy's on the mic, he'll say one line and I'm like, t-shirts, easy. How about when Jeremy Stevens is yelling at him and he goes, "Who the fuck is that guy?" You can't beat this guy. Hey man, I'm just like, why did you even open your mouth, bro? It's so funny, man. It's so funny. And you need to be able to do that.

Michael "Venom" Page: Before I even had my first fight, I would, I spent hours. I was a big WWE fan and I felt like The Rock, Dwayne Johnson, out of all of them, was the best at marketing himself. He had the crowd in the palm of his hands. Every word that he said and it was simple sayings. And I was like, yeah, I studied this, studied this. I was like, okay. And even like his stances, he'd come up, like jump on the ropes and put his hand up and just stand there, look around. You know what I mean? Like he just demanded eyes. So again, I just came to, okay, what could I do? So I was like, okay, you know, Venom, snake, relate to a snake. Okay, like, okay, yeah, let me do this. Okay, okay, that's check. I got a stance that I can do. Okay, I need a saying. Okay, like, what can I say? Because again, I used to listen to people on after fights and I didn't hear anything they said. They're like, "Yeah, I'm going to see, yeah, beat that guy." And I'm like, "Here, thank you for my sponsors." Who were your sponsors? Didn't hear anything. So I like it has to be like concise. I have to say specific words and I write this stuff down. But again, I speak to my team, like, bro, what are you guys doing? You need to do this kind of stuff and understand that this is a part of your game. You've got five seconds after the fight on the mic, if that. What are you going to say? What message is going to land? What is going to make you memorable? And I do things on my walk-ins as well. I need people to remember. They're watching 16 fights on the night. Why do they remember me? Yes, my style is exciting. That's cool. There's this weird guy. He does some weird stuff with his arms and he's quite cool. But they're not going to remember my name. I need other things to keep them coming back. God, there's this guy in the weigh-ins. He stood above this guy. He put his snake hand up. Oh, that's the same guy that did the dance because now you're getting it from different places. That's the guy that threw the pokeball. Oh, what's his name? The more times you keep hitting them with different things, the more times they're more likely to really buy into you. And I think this is why I was able to create a big enough brand before even touching the UFC, just because I paid attention to that kind of thing.

Joe Rogan: You were one of the first guys to make a name for yourself in Bellator. Because Bellator, it was hard to break out. There were some wild fights in Bellator that never got recognized.

Michael "Venom" Page: At all, yeah.

Joe Rogan: How about the Eddie Alvarez, Michael Chandler fight? Beast, man. Fucking crazy fights. And I feel like those guys left a lot of who they are there.

Michael "Venom" Page: In there, yeah, unfortunately. We got them kind of after. And Chandler's still remarkably durable, but that's just a discipline thing and a hard work thing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's just accustomed to, like you said, he's trained a certain way his whole life. He's always going to have that kind of athleticism. But he's, you know, 38 now. I mean, it's like you can only, I wished he had not been in Bellator. Look, I'm all for competition. I think competition's important. I don't think there should be a monopoly in the MMA business. I think it's bad for the athletes. I love the fact that PFL overpays people. Keep doing it. Give them a million dollars. Everybody. Get a million dollars. Everybody gets a car. You get a car. I wish there was more organizations. I hope One FC succeeds. It does help. That helped me as well in my negotiation. Fucking everything. However, there's a caliber of athlete that I feel like should only be in the UFC.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, and you're one of those guys.

Joe Rogan: Thank you. There's a caliber of athlete where, like, I want to see how good they really are. You know, like, some guy, like, Patchy Mitch.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. Patchy Mitch is a beast. He's a bad motherfucker.

Joe Rogan: But so is Mario Bautista. Mario Bautista had the perfect game plan to fuck up his party. But that dude, when he was in Bellator, was of that caliber. I was like, I want to see him over here, man.

Michael "Venom" Page: I personally, and obviously because I've experienced it, for me, the first time I got nervous in an MMA fight was my first fight in the UFC. No, my first fight ever. And then after that I was like, oh yeah, this is the same as when I was fighting in kickboxing. I'm cool. I didn't have any, I didn't get the nerves again. The first time again since then was the first—no, sorry, weird enough, the second fight in the UFC against Ian Garry. Now the first fight I don't know why, I just, I don't know what it was, but I was quite relaxed. And then the second fight I was like, oh, it's something, a reality hit me of like, oh, you're in the UFC. The people are going to demand a certain thing from you and you've got a reputation of before of the knockouts, of the celebrations, of the walk-ins, of the this and that. And then I just let that put weight on me, really.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's crazy that it was the second fight. I can't even explain as to why it was the second fight and not the first one. And then even the third fight I still had that kind of, oh man, I'm not performing the way I want. And I felt like I'm eager to impress. And I never felt like in Bellator. But at the UFC I'm like, I'm trying my best. I literally have to sit—

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Same cage, cameras, people, same thing, same thing.

Michael "Venom" Page: But I just, the magnitude of it, I don't know. I'm guessing it's what we all grew up with. It's what everyone grows up with. It's like this is where, like I said, there was always question marks around my name. Even I was jump jump knees and this and that, always question marks around my name, still. But then now I'm here, it's like, oh actually, I can, these guys can respect me now. Actually respect me now because I'm here. Yes. And then I'll just like trying too hard, trying too hard. The last fight was the first time I was like, you're back, I'm back. And this is why I just keep getting me back in the cage because I swear to you, I'm back to where I used to be and how I used to feel. It's just an issue of getting guys that are willing to fight you that are of a certain caliber.

Joe Rogan: Exactly, exactly. Because you know, obviously right now you're pretty big. So for you to get down to 170 again would be a real problem. Are you committed to 185 or are you open to either one of them?

Michael "Venom" Page: I want 170. I can see a clear pathway. Even after my last fight, I messaged Hunter, and I literally like, look, let me fight. It was Morales, yeah. And I was like, look, another undefeated guy, perfect fight. Like he's a beast, like I'm ready. Let me take him then. And I said what I could do after that is in like December, I think I said, or no, March next year. I was like, yeah, give me that for November, like March next year. Usually come back to the UK, let me fight the winner of Leon Edwards and Pratas. I was like, another great fight there.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And then you've got July card. Obviously everyone's going to put their hand up to be on that. But I said if you guys want me to be on that again, I'll fight for whoever you want in that top range. Pick, I don't care who it is. Pick somebody, I'll fight them. And then I want a title shot, or you give me the title there. Like, yeah. But I'm like, I can see a clear path to what I want. And it's just everything seems slow, which I didn't expect coming to the UFC.

Joe Rogan: I think there's just too many athletes.

Michael "Venom" Page: There is a lot.

Joe Rogan: I think they have on contract more than 500.

Michael "Venom" Page: Damn.

Joe Rogan: How many athletes does the UFC have under contract? Throw that into...

Michael "Venom" Page: But then also, I think, and obviously I'm managed by Paradigm with Audi, and he said he feels like the Paramount deal is they having to integrate that now as well. And I'm like, I didn't think about that. But every time Bellator, because Bellator kept getting new partnerships, it did slow things down a little bit.

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah, that would make sense.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, that doesn't start until January. But obviously they're sorting out contracts and things from now. And then they obviously have to try and align the shows. And I'm guessing, obviously I don't know, but I'm just saying it just feels even slower than before. And I'm like, that sucks.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And I'm like, I just want to be back out there. I don't care. And this is why I'm happy to take.

Joe Rogan: 674. Wow. 674 fighters under contract. And they don't have fights every week. They have fights almost every week but not every week. I mean just think about that. So you have 52 weeks. You have all these fighters. Fighters want to fight multiple times a year.

Michael "Venom" Page: I appreciate that, but I'm MVP, man. Let's go.

Joe Rogan: I am with you. I'm with you. I always say that I wish I was a matchmaker, but I don't because it's the hardest job.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I'm sure.

Joe Rogan: I used to talk to Joe Silva back in the day when he did it. He fucking hated it. Dealing with everybody and managers and people flake out.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They fail drug tests.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. God damn it. And these guys, you know, what they're doing right now is very difficult because what Mick Maynard and Sean Shelby are dealing with is the volume is so much greater. And there's so many more really good guys. Like in almost every division, like guys are coming in from the contender series. That guy looks like a world championship caliber fighter.

Michael "Venom" Page: Talented. Talents off the charts right now. And it's because they get to watch—you know, these are the kids that are growing up watching Anderson Silva. They're growing up watching Jon Jones' first fight. They're growing up watching the early Chuck Liddell fights. It's totally different. When they're play fighting with their friends, they're in stances that look right. You know, they know what they're doing. They know the names of every submission.

Joe Rogan: This is so true. They're calf kicking each other in the fucking schoolyard. It's a totally different world. And those kids are going to grow up and that's going to be integrated into their neuromuscular system. And they're going to learn. There's guys coming along that are like elite black belt level jiu-jitsu, elite stand up, elite wrestling, takedown defense, cardio off the charts. And they're 22 and you're like, this is nuts. Now it's just about whether you can compete, whether you can pull it off and keep your head together on fighting days, which is again, I think is something that people don't speak about enough. Listen, Aaron Pico is as talented as they come, right? That dude is a fucking vicious boxer, incredible wrestling, gold chip prospect. But Lerone Murphy is another guy. I was saying before that, this is the guy that's not getting the credit he deserves. Because you've got all these loud killers at 145, but you've got this one dude that does everything perfect.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, and he's beating everybody. He's beating everything. Etching away. And he doesn't take damage, and he's clever, and he's slick, and he does things, and every technique is perfect. There's no fat on anything. No wild winging punches. Everything tight. That spinning elbow was a work of art. He just knew Aaron Pico was going to come bang.

Joe Rogan: That was crazy. But that's the difference between someone who can compete at the highest level and someone who's accustomed to it.

Michael "Venom" Page: Right.

Joe Rogan: It's the knowing when to hit the gas and when not to. Pico's just all gas, no brakes.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, go on. Like you said, it's similar to Michael Chandler again.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Michael "Venom" Page: Just in that rage mode all the time. All gas, no brakes. You need to take your time. But that's a wrestler thing too. They always want to break people because in wrestling you can do that. You can have that mentality where you're constantly hitting the gas because you're not going to get knocked out with a flying knee.

Joe Rogan: True, true. Changes, yeah. Because you get that, that's how you compete. You get this mindset of "I'm going to fucking dominate. I know what I did in training for this. My gas tank's off the charts. My aggression's off the charts. I'm a killer. I'm going to dominate. I'm moving forward. I'm moving forward." The problem is with a guy like Lerone, it's like you think he's backing up. Bam, he's coming forward.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, the timing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The timing. It was just like, oh.

Michael "Venom" Page: But Pico even stepped right into the elbow. It was ruthless. It made it ten times worse.

Joe Rogan: Ruthless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's my thing. The car crash effect when you create those collision moments. So for a guy like Lerone, who's not a big marketing guy, not a big, like, doesn't say wild shit on the microphone, just steady professional, does his job. He needs to do that, right? He needs this spectacular thing where all of a sudden everybody goes, he needs to fight Alexander Volkanovski. And that looks like that's what's going to happen now because of that one performance. Which is, I'm so happy for him.

Michael "Venom" Page: Me too.

Joe Rogan: He's a cool guy, man. I'm so happy for him.

Michael "Venom" Page: But this is why I tell people, if he had just a little bit of chat, a little bit of show your personality or something, just give me something else.

Joe Rogan: You have that, though.

Michael "Venom" Page: No, but you know what it is? I always say like everyone, like Demetrious Johnson for me is one of the greatest of all time. All time, of all time. Another underappreciated guy because of his size.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: But I feel like underappreciated because you can't market him in the exact same way as you'd market like a Conor McGregor or somebody else like that. But he's a gamer. I'm like, shed a light on there's a massive, massive community of gaming. That industry is billion dollars deep. Market this guy, because he's on, he goes back home and he's just like.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he's one of them. He's one of those guys.

Michael "Venom" Page: But again, we didn't see, I don't feel like we saw any of that until afterwards when he was kind of like doing his own thing. Now obviously doing a lot of his YouTube time. I'm so happy that he's getting the recognition.

Joe Rogan: It was kind of when he went to One that he started doing more of the gaming stuff online.

Michael "Venom" Page: No, he had been doing it though. He had been doing it in the UFC as well?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: But again, it's just more, I guess. They didn't capitalize.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's what I mean. I think certain people you have to like, what is your thing?

Joe Rogan: Not everybody is just the fighting. They have things, like things to kind of release, like wind down.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Find that out. He's killing everybody anyway, so how else can we market? Instead of being like, "Ah, can't market him, he doesn't talk, he doesn't say anything," there must be something there. There has to be something else we could look into.

Michael "Venom" Page: Well, it's interesting, because some guys, their personality is no personality. Like Pereira.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: His personality is stone face.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just stone face, destroyer, death machine. Here he comes. Amazon warrior. Like literal, actual Amazon warrior. Not a faker. His fucking family comes from a tribe in the Amazon. 100%.

Michael "Venom" Page: But then that's what he markets, though.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I guess that's what they market.

Michael "Venom" Page: But it was because he markets that as well. He works out that walk out.

Joe Rogan: Oh yeah. That's true. Bro, I do it myself. When he's walking out, I'm just waiting for him.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's true. And that's what I mean, though. You're selling your story with just something so simple.

Joe Rogan: That's a very good point that I didn't even think of.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: His walkout. His walkout's maybe the best in the sport.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And that music.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. The jungle music behind him. And you just, you just, you just, the walk. Just this Amazon warrior. It's simple. Everyone can relate to it.

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: It's consistent. So I'm always going to, oh, that's the guy. And you see kids in the audience throw the one-two hook.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, they do it.

Michael "Venom" Page: And like I said, because I'm a big wrestling fan, and I see it's those moments that everybody will remember and everybody will do.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Michael "Venom" Page: When Stylebender came into The Undertaker.

Joe Rogan: Oh, beast.

Michael "Venom" Page: But that's what I'm trying to say. It's those kind of things that people just don't.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And I'm talking the fighters themselves. Obviously, I feel the UFC can do their bit as well. But technically, you're already on the platform that's going to show you to everybody. So then it's your job to figure it out as well. Another aspect of the game.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Like strength and conditioning.

Michael "Venom" Page: Exactly. Just think about it. You're a professional. Figure out how to market yourself. You are the product.

Joe Rogan: The problem is, though, it does lead to cringe moments.

Michael "Venom" Page: Of course.

Joe Rogan: So not everybody, it's your personality. And some guys try, and it's like, "Yikes."

Michael "Venom" Page: Shit. Maybe you shouldn't have done that.

Joe Rogan: You've got to take the risk. Because if it goes well, it goes well.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. It goes well. So as you said about Alex Burrow, technically, we wouldn't care if he walked out of that and got knocked down. We wouldn't give a shit.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: But he's a killer.

Joe Rogan: That fight this weekend is very, very interesting.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: So here's the downside to fighting all the time. Fighting all the time with your style is a very different thing because you take so little damage, which is another huge element. Like I kind of would tell people that if you have a kid and your kid wants to learn martial arts and they want to eventually be an MMA fighter, I would say two things. Number one, wrestling. Take that kid and teach him how to wrestle because if you can just develop takedown defense and understanding of grappling, at least you have a base from the time you're real little.

Michael "Venom" Page: Exactly, yeah. That should be your base.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah. Because it's the most important aspect of the fight. If you can't grapple, a guy can take you down and he can hold you down. You can't do shit about it. Number two, learn how to point fight.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Learn how to point fight. Learn distance control. Because there's a different thing that you guys are doing. People think of Billy Blanks as Tae Bo. You got to go back and watch Billy Blanks when he was a fucking karate wizard.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes, exactly. He was a wizard.

Joe Rogan: And he was hitting people where you couldn't hit him. All the old school guys were all like light on the feet, bladed style. And they had this leap in ability that if you're used to a guy standing in front of you, it's a giant problem. And you don't have the timing to solve it. You could go two, three rounds deep before you start actually landing anything. You can't do anything to them. It's a giant problem. And I would say you want to be the person giving the other person that problem. Then you can learn all the other stuff too. Learn your boxing fundamentals and your ties and knees and elbows. But if they're nowhere near you and you can hit them, you can close that gap quick. You have a blitz.

Michael "Venom" Page: So I mean, understanding that distance control.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Michael "Venom" Page: And also the feints, the stutter steps. Those things change the game.

Joe Rogan: Yes. There's so much movement in that style of fighting that just gets lost when people are plodding and just teeping each other in the stomach and kicking their legs. But it's funny, people always used to go on about me and Wonderboy Thompson fighting. And I'd always say, like, it won't be as exciting as you think. For us, like me and him, there'd be moments where we're bouncing and faking and we laugh at each other because we saw what would have happened if one of us went. But the crowd is like, "The fuck is going on? Fight! The fuck are you guys doing smiling at each other?" They don't get that fight that's going on right in the moment. And I say it's not as exciting. Two pluses don't always give you that plus.

Michael "Venom" Page: Not always, but you still want to see it. Of course people always want to just...

Joe Rogan: It's also like fighting doesn't have to always be ultimate excitement. That's why I say no stand-ups ever. When a guy takes the guy down, that person on the bottom does not want to be on the bottom. They want to be up. If they can't get up, tough shit. It's only five rounds. Every fight starts, stands it up, which is a giant, giant advantage for a striker. Because otherwise they wouldn't be able to get themselves up. So none of that. See, it's got to be pure. It's got to be real. You can't have like ways that a guy won only because the rules set it up for him to get to a better position.

Michael "Venom" Page: I agree. The only thing that I find slightly frustrating in that element is I don't mind the wrestling. I think wrestling is a beautiful art and is, like you said, one of the most important arts to dictate where you want the fight to go. But if you're taking me down, try to kill me.

Joe Rogan: I agree.

Michael "Venom" Page: Try to finish the fight. Don't just take me down and just...

Joe Rogan: I agree. I've had people like grabbing my legs and looking at the clock.

Michael "Venom" Page: Here's the thing: if they're not good enough to kill you...

Joe Rogan: Right.

Michael "Venom" Page: What if they're good enough to take you down and hold you down, but then they just have to be real defensive afterwards and they'll throw a little pity pat?

Joe Rogan: I know.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's the only element that I just...

Joe Rogan: But here's the thing: they're not good enough to do more.

Michael "Venom" Page: Do you know what I'm saying? Like, but you must be, though.

Joe Rogan: Maybe not. Maybe only good enough. Like you're so good, and they're just good enough to hold you down. But if they reigned up and started reigning, and then you fucking framed off, you got to half guard, you got back up to your feet, all of a sudden we're dealing with this shit again. Fuck that. But if you just stay on top and don't take any chances, now you can't do shit.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I agree. It's boring as fuck. And it's not, for me it's not even the boring element of it. Like I still enjoy that aspect if I was watching. I only enjoy that aspect because I know what I'm looking at now. Like I'm like, "Oh, he's got, okay he's got, he's grabbed his wrist there, okay I can see what he's trying to work to, okay no he didn't get it, okay I'm still in the fight." Whereas some people, I guess the people, if you don't get into grappling, you're not going to know what's happening other than they're just lying there. So I get it for them. But for me still, it's just like the aim of this game is for me to beat you. And I mean like knock you out, put you to sleep. I'm trying to show you that I am the stronger man as a warrior. And that's not by holding you. Holding you down to get you to position to land this elbow, and hold you down to get this position to land this part.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but just to... I completely agree. However, even though I'm a fan of yours, if a wrestler who had that boring style took you down and held you down for three rounds and won a decision, I'd be like, "Damn, he did it."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, he did it because he can't do it any other way. If he can't stand up with you, he's gonna get fucked up. And he can take you down anytime. Why would he ever let you up? And if losing position is dangerous... So if you're very explosive and you're very good at grappling, you're very good on the bottom, you've gotten submissions off the bottom. If a guy reigns up and starts throwing shots, but he feels like his base is gone and he just wants to clinch and hold on and maintain position, and he maintains position with this kind of shit... You know, you're on top and you're doing this kind of shit. Just little movements. He's still getting away with that. He's still doing that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I agree. Because that might be his only path right for you. But the thing is, he's not good enough. Where then you have guys like Khabib. Khabib gets you down, you're getting fucked up. Constantly. Everybody loves that. He's talking to you, he's creating that space, but still pinning you. He's crushing your legs between his legs and he's fucking wailing on you. That I can appreciate all day every day.

Michael "Venom" Page: I can too. But some guys aren't good enough. They're still fighting, they're in there. They're like... they're not good enough. There's guys at a world-class level that are not going to be world champions, but they might be able to beat a guy who could be a world champion if they can do that thing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, just...

Michael "Venom" Page: It sucks.

Joe Rogan: I know, I know. But it's real.

Michael "Venom" Page: It's hard to class you as a world championship fighter then.

Joe Rogan: Okay, well, let's talk about Hamzat then.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Hamzat and Dricus Du Plessis is a perfect example of that. You got an elite grappler who dominated the fight with very little damage.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, when I dominated it to the point where you're in the worst position you could be in in MMA. You're in a crucifix position. Over and over again.

Joe Rogan: Over and over again. And you can't do shit about it. You let him just... you can do shit about it, but...

Michael "Venom" Page: So do you think that is he worried about him exploding? Because in my head, I like the fight ends if I keep elbowing the shit out of you right now.

Joe Rogan: I think he's worried about the chaos and Dricus getting back to his feet. And you know, they wanted to just win. This is the whole thing. Because he came back to his corner apparently, and this is told to me secondhand, but I'm pretty sure it's true, by a reliable source, that he was saying, "Can I box now?" I was like, "No."

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, okay.

Joe Rogan: "No, you're not fucking boxing." His team was like, "Take him down. He can't."

Michael "Venom" Page: Look, if you got that clear of a dominance... That I still agree with, though. As a coach is saying, "No, take him down." But I'm saying once you are in that position, smash.

Joe Rogan: Smash.

Michael "Venom" Page: Smash. Your whole thing is smash.

Joe Rogan: Smash the shit out. What the hell?

Michael "Venom" Page: I think they just wanted that win.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. No matter what. You know, because it's such a big deal. Hamzat finally got a shot at the title. What is the clearest, most intelligent... if you're betting a billion dollars on this fight, what's the best way to victory? Fucking just take him down. You can take him down anytime you want to. Hold him down, punch him a few times. Make sure you're in dominant position so you're not going to get stood back up. If the referee starts talking to you and telling you to start throwing a little bit of this, do a little bit of that, fake a submission, don't throw all your gas into it, do whatever the fuck you gotta do, but get that goddamn title.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Right? And then, then, you know, there's going to be some guys that he can't do that to.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And that's where things get interesting.

Michael "Venom" Page: Who would you say that is, though? Because his wrestling style is just crazy.

Joe Rogan: It's crazy. So Brandon Schaub had been to his training camp.

Michael "Venom" Page: Okay.

Joe Rogan: And he called me up. He goes, "Bro, we got to talk." He goes, "I just got back watching Hamzat train." He goes, "I've never seen anything like that in my fucking life." He's like, "Dude, but I'm telling you, he's mopping the floor with Division I All-Americans, world-class grapplers, jiu-jitsu black belts." He goes, "He's mopping the floor with people." He goes, "It's nuts." He goes, "They asked me if I wanted to spar with him." Schaub goes, "Fuck you." He's like, "Fuck you. I'm not going in there." He goes, "He was mauling people on the ground." He goes, "I've never seen anything like it." He goes, "It was crazy." He goes, "He's so high level."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I had the privilege of going to the gym in Dubai and training alongside him and saw it for myself. And it was... yeah, I was like... it's a shocking level of grappling.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And when you can achieve that shocking level of grappling on world MMA fighters, why wouldn't you do it? This is my thing, my take on it. Like, if you just want to win and make as much money as possible and keep doing that, you should finish guys whenever you can.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: But if you don't think you can, and the path to victory is grappling, this is still a sport.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, fair.

Michael "Venom" Page: If it wasn't a sport, there'd still be headbutts.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Right? There used to be stamps.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, stamps, soccer kicks, all the wild shit that used to be. You'd still be able to wear shoes. Who gives a fuck?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: But it's a sport. So if it's a sport, we've got some rules. I just don't think there's anything wrong with winning by the rules. It's not my favorite style.

Joe Rogan: Fair, fair, fair. My favorite style is either a knockout artist or a submission artist. I like a guy who just finishes everything.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, Oliveira when he was in his prime.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, when he was in his prime. Woo! Catching triangles and d'arces. Oh my god, he was a monster. He was so good. Those guys, when you watch a guy who's an elite, world-class submission artist, and the fight goes to the ground, it's just a totally different thing. Fabricio Werdum, when he was in his prime, when he caught Fedor with that triangle. Catching Fedor with a triangle is crazy. If you know how explosive that guy is and how fast he is and strong, what a great grappler he is. Fabricio Werdum's another guy who doesn't get his due. When you think about all-time GOATs, you think about Nogueira, you think about Fedor, and you think about Minotauro. And Fabricio Werdum tapped them all. He tapped all the greats.

Michael "Venom" Page: All of them.

Joe Rogan: Tapped them.

Michael "Venom" Page: Tapped them. All the greats.

Joe Rogan: Didn't just win by a decision. Tapped Fedor when Fedor was Fedor. People were like, "Whoa, that's crazy."

Michael "Venom" Page: Fedor's a beast. Bro, he was a monster. Stoic warrior from Russia. No expression.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the earliest, the first of his time.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, way ahead of his time.

Joe Rogan: First of his time. Way ahead of his time. Ability to catch submissions off his back with lightning speed. He had a lightning fast arm bar.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And power on the feet.

Michael "Venom" Page: Power, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bro, he walked down Cro Cop.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's crazy. Crazy. With stand up.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cro Cop's head kicks were insane. Every kick.

Joe Rogan: Every kick. But Fedor was blocking them so intelligently too. He was using that high block with the knee way up like that to catch that left kick. And they caught it shin to shin many times. That was a crazy fight. But Fedor in his prime was so good, man. Because he was the first guy other than Minotauro. Minotauro, but he was more dangerous on the feet than Minotauro. But Minotauro on the ground was like one of the first guys, super dangerous off his back.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, just super, super lethal guard. Like when he beat Bob Sapp. That was the nuttiest fight in the history of MMA.

Joe Rogan: Bob Sapp was 350 pounds with abs.

Michael "Venom" Page: I was going to say, he's kind of like your Ngannou nowadays. But way bigger.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way bigger, but not as skilled.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, no, he's gotten... yeah, Francis' improvement. Because in his earlier stages, I was just like, yeah, he's got power, but he's technically like...

Joe Rogan: Francis basically beat Tyson Fury in a boxing match. Crazy, right? Basically beat him.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Because I scored it for him. I scored it for him.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. A hundred percent.

Joe Rogan: They could not let that happen. He dropped Tyson Fury with a left hook and then danced in front of him. I mean, that's skill. I mean, he wasn't ready for Anthony Joshua because Anthony Joshua was a different thing. He's got more one-shot knockout power. It was a bad game plan as well, though. He likes to switch in. But again, this is where the boxing is. If you don't have that kind of intellect in the boxing, and that footwork and foot positioning... you put your foot on one side, you're going to get killed. You put your foot on the other side, you're safe. You can kind of manage the power and see the punches coming. But he kept switching stances by just leaving himself in just the wrong positions.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, he wasn't ready for a guy like Joshua. He wasn't ready. There was a lot of hype off the Fury fight. Also, Joshua got to watch him box in the Fury fight, see some patterns.

Joe Rogan: Fury, I think, probably took him lightly.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes, I think so.

Joe Rogan: He's one of the greatest of all time. This guy's never had a boxing match. At the beginning of the fight, he's like, "Time to go to school." Like, "Oh really?" And then he probably got stunned. He just got stunned, and that was it. He's now working. You talk to any fighter, they will tell you the worst times of their life is when they thought that a guy was nothing, and then in the middle of the fight they realize, "Oh my god, I'm losing." They took a guy lightly, and they didn't get up for the fight, and then they went in there and that dude was fired up and ready to go.

Michael "Venom" Page: You can't take anybody lightly, though.

Joe Rogan: No. Mike Tyson busted Douglas. Another perfect example.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, 100%. No one thought. This guy was partying every day.

Joe Rogan: Exactly. He did not take it seriously at all. He did not take it seriously at all. You got a big respect for Buster Douglas on that one. Oh my God, it was one of the greatest performances of any heavyweight title fight ever. To want to walk in and do that as well. The fact that that guy could do that the whole time but only did it against Mike Tyson is nuts. Because he was one of those guys, and we all know them, that is super talented and just never realizes their full potential.

Michael "Venom" Page: Like, you know, guys in the gym then. Like you'd see him spar. And I talk about this all the time. Like I've had so many people, obviously I've got to see over the years that are talented. And again, it's the same thing. But can you do it when it counts? Can you do it when the lights are on? Can you do it when there's pressure and it means something to you, your friends, your family, money? Can you still do it? That's when it counts. But I've seen guys that are... there's a guy actually, and I always talk about him just because he was super unique. And weirdly enough, he got to the UFC on a short stint, Galore Bofondo. I don't know if you ever remember him.

Joe Rogan: He only had two fights.

Michael "Venom" Page: He fought Charlie Ward. And I call it Hadouken. He just grabbed him and like threw his head into the floor.

Joe Rogan: Oh jeez.

Michael "Venom" Page: And it was a KO. And I don't... he actually never got the bonus for that. I don't know how he didn't, because I've never seen anybody just throw someone's head down. You need to watch it at some point.

Joe Rogan: Oh, fuck.

Michael "Venom" Page: Look, boom. There you go.

Joe Rogan: Oh god.

Michael "Venom" Page: And if you keep it going, and you see how he finishes... look, he's like... wow, that dude landed hard.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that dude landed hard.

Michael "Venom" Page: And if you see the finish, look at this is how athletic this guy was. Just watch. Light work. Just landed. Just landed a little. Perfect landing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, perfect landing.

Michael "Venom" Page: Now I had to deal with this every day.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And that was nothing. He's super explosive. But again, he's a striker. Very weird striker. Like his kicks are like his hands. He can... for ages, yeah. I was sparring him one time and me and him, like I'm the guy with him. When he steps in, my eyes do this, and I'm like, "Okay, I have to make sure I'm..." because a kick will come from anywhere. And we're sparring, going back, going back and forth, and I'm in my element and everything slows down for me. And I see his head drop down, and alarm bells are going off. And I'm like, he doesn't shoot. He doesn't go for takedowns. But I'm feeling alarm bells going on. Like something gone wrong. I don't know why. This felt this slow. Something is wrong. And I never done this block in my life. And I went like this, X block. I've never done this in my life. Never been taught this. But my body said, "Throw your hands." He did that and did a cartwheel kick, front flip.

Joe Rogan: Oh jeez.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. Landed on his foot and axe kicked me. If I didn't do that, I'd be sitting here in two right now talking to you about the story that I once used to do MMA and this guy split me in half. He did a front flip axe kick. That's crazy. On his Instagram, I don't know if you'll find it, but on his Instagram there's clips of him doing it on a bag. And he literally flips, lands on his foot, bah, hits the bag, and he's just standing. But he did it. I've blocked it. Now, even that alone, because I've now blocked it, you should fall off balance. He took his foot off and carried on sparring. Everyone in the gym was like, "What the fuck? What the fuck? How was that?" I never even thought anyone could do that. He's another person that in the cage he never showed this stuff. I've seen him, someone on a single leg, and he's run up the cage and slipped up the single leg and kicked off the cage and landed behind the person and started... I'm... it's always when I talk about this, it sounds like I'm exaggerating. He used to do stuff that I've only seen in games. And this is why everyone used to love just watching him do that flip.

Joe Rogan: I believe every word you're saying. He's... because that was crazy. The landing was crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, like it was like a feather. It's not like this.

Joe Rogan: No, he landed softly on one knee.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. He was insane. But just never showed it.

Joe Rogan: Wow.

Michael "Venom" Page: Is he retired? Yeah, he's like... he teaches and stuff now, but he just... and it's a shame, man. He was a fun character. Like I said, an amazing person to train with because he made me better. And he's got the few people in the gym that could actually kick me in the head and catch me because usually I'm good at seeing. I've got good eyes. And he's just... yeah, he was just something else.

Joe Rogan: Crazy that you knew it. Like you had intuition.

Michael "Venom" Page: I don't know what happened. But as I've said, if you don't do this, you're going to die today.

Joe Rogan: Wow. That's crazy. You recognize that of all movements.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. But again, he never shoots. He's a striker. He sprawls and then start doing his jiu-jitsu from there. Never really shoots. And he just went like this. And I'm like, "What's going on here?"

Joe Rogan: I don't feel like sprawling. Something's wrong, but I don't feel like sprawling.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, here you go, here you go. Oh, my God. He does one and he lands it. That's crazy. Boom. That is so crazy. Imagine doing that during sparring. It doesn't make sense. And I'm talking, he's hitting the bag. Boom, look. That's crazy. And I tell people, people feel like you're talking rubbish. You can hear that. Oh. If that hit me. That is so wild. And I wish he was able to show this stuff. What kind of explosion you have to have to pull that off. The amount of force you generate.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: And who would see that coming? I still don't to this day know how I saw it coming, but wow. If he did that, and again, he goes into these fights, and he would be relatively basic. He wouldn't show all of this kind of stuff. So he would tighten up in fights.

Joe Rogan: He'd just tighten up a little bit and just wouldn't express himself in the same way. Did anybody at that time work with like a mental coach?

Michael "Venom" Page: No. From our gym, the only person I know who did it was Alex Reed. But he's a weird character anyway, funny guy, lovely guy. He used to have therapists come and do this kind of stuff. At the time, I feel like I didn't care for it because he just made it seem lame.

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Michael "Venom" Page: I understand more so over my time the importance of the mental aspect of things as well. Maybe if someone could explain to him, or if you could have a conversation about what goes wrong when he competes.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Like what are the thought processes when he competes, and what could be done differently to change that thought, to combat them when those thoughts come up?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: To have a tool. Have a mental toolbox where you go, "No, no, no. We're not going to entertain this kind of negativity. We're going to stay positive. We're going to stay zen."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The most important things: don't ever give in to anxiety. Don't let it get to you. Don't let it follow you. You're positive. You're breathing. You're moving. You're a killer. Keep moving. And just have someone with him initially to coach him through those movements. I wish there was some, but again, also maybe the gym that he's in with us at London Shoot, that's not a thing. We beast. We're just going to go.

And the thing is, he still looked amazing up until the fight. He'd get to the fight and you'd be like, "Bro, I can't wait for people to see this." And he'd get there and you're like, "What are you doing, man?" It was frustrating because he was still super talented. He won one, I think he lost the next one, and then that was it. But even his previous fights before that, he's got some exceptional fights. Just never what he's capable of doing. I've never seen what I've seen in the gym on stage.

Joe Rogan: Wow. Never seen.

Michael "Venom" Page: And he still got signed to the UFC just because he was still talented. Obviously somebody saw his talent and was like, "Yeah, I want that." But nobody's ever seen what I've seen this guy do. All of our teammates are like, "If you'd have seen that, everybody would be throwing money at this guy. Just make sure he's on the next card." It's crazy.

Joe Rogan: It's really crazy. Because it seems to be like that in almost every sport, but in fighting in particular.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Because it's the biggest mental hurdle. There's no team to fall back on. There's no, "I guess we lost tonight, boys." No, you got fucked up in front of the whole world. That's the sport you're in. You're in the sport with the highest highs and the lowest lows. That pressure is just unexplainable to the average person.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, you can't explain it really. This is why I try my best to focus on the element of fun. I feel like when I'm dancing, smiling, laughing, joking, everything slows down and everything's enjoyable. There's no stress. Anytime I feel slightly stressed, you might see me dance. People just think I'm doing it to mock the other person, and sometimes it's just, "I need to stay chill, man. You're here. You don't need to do anything more than this." If I feel a little bit like, "Oh, that's a bit..." and my mind starts going, "No, no, no," I shake it off, get into my mode again, and then go back to enjoying yourself.

That's my way. But I know some people need to be in this angry state and psych themselves into it. I don't even need to be angry at my opponent. I think that comes from the fact that I used to have to fight my siblings. It's never based on anger. I love them. My dad used to say, "That's not your sibling on the mat, but straight afterwards, make sure you pick that person up, make sure they're good." My brother would beat me up. My other brother would beat me up. My sister would beat me up. Everybody. But I still had love for them, so I never needed anger. The fact that my family did this thing, and even my nephews and stuff now, it's generational. It keeps us all together and we're so close. It's not based on being angry, just based on learning something, enjoying something, and doing it with people that you love. So that's why I can make it fun.

Joe Rogan: Everyone loves this whole tense thing. I think what a lot of people don't understand too is the hardest part of it is the day of the fight. It's not the fight. Once a fight starts happening, you're there, you're in it, and it's not scary. Unless you're getting fucked up. When you're getting fucked up and you know the end is near, that's when it gets scary. If you want to see ultimate bravery, look at Khalil Rountree in the last round with Pereira. Pereira's putting it on him. That's ultimate bravery. He knows he's getting fucked up. He knows he doesn't have much time. There's nowhere out. His skill set is all in stand-up. He can take guys to the ground, but at this point that's not happening. His face is broken up, and Pereira is doing that cobra thing. It was terrifying. But that kind of bravery in front of the whole world, a lot of people aren't sure if they have that.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: There's just the pressure of that in front of the whole world. So maybe they're in there just like, "Just do enough, just do enough."

Michael "Venom" Page: Exactly. They're scared, which shrinks you. Sometimes super duper talented people are the most scared because it kind of came too easy for them. There's a thing about super duper talented people that for some reason, that gift comes with a curse. That curse is that it came to you too easily, so you never really developed the understanding of the grind.

Joe Rogan: The real will and drive to overcome, to make these little tiny wins every day to pile onto a skill set. You're just a lightning bolt. Then when it's time to actually fight, you don't know if you've been tested. You don't know who you are yet.

Michael "Venom" Page: I think I get that a lot, though. People are always like, "He's just naturally talented." Only when I tell people that I used to get my ass handed to me do they understand. But this is the thing I've always said: guys who grow up with brothers, especially older brothers who can kick their ass, they're ready to fight at all times. You have to be. Because they're fighting in their fucking house. They're ready to fight with guys who can beat them up their whole life. Just that alone sets you up for competition in a different way.

Joe Rogan: Someone like me, I grew up with my sister. We didn't fight. It's totally different. You're accustomed to being around hostile males who are dominating.

Michael "Venom" Page: Was it older or younger?

Joe Rogan: Younger sister. My sister was still beating me up, but I was the only one in the family who got into martial arts. If I grew up with a bunch of brothers, I'm sure we'd be beating the fuck out of each other.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. Weird enough, we had to do it. My dad would always say, "This is not for out here. This is for in there. If you've got an issue, verbalize it. If you still have an issue, we can sort it out in there." I'd be annoyed at my brother. We'd have fights every now and again, but nothing crazy. But it's just being accustomed to constant back and forth.

Joe Rogan: "How about fuck you?" It's in your house.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: I was the wind-up. But I couldn't fight, so I had to do it some other way. Talk some shit. I'm the wind-up. You also have to be a little tougher because you're the smaller one.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's part of the thing.

Joe Rogan: What's crazy about Jon Jones is his brother. He's got two older brothers, no? Well, I think one of them is younger. Isn't Chandler younger? But they're all beasts. Both NFL. So you've grown up in a house of beasts. You better be ready for some hostility. You've got to be ready for some aggression. There's a giant benefit of that as far as mindset. You're accustomed to hostility. All his brothers are super freaks, just giant athletes. He's in this house with highly competitive males his whole life. So you're totally accustomed to competition. Whereas with some people, competition is super overwhelming. It's a test you don't want to take. You almost don't want to find out if you're good enough.

Michael "Venom" Page: I think the school system has slowly over the years taken out certain things that allow challenges for people in a way that gives them that gift of being competitive. Especially in the UK, I'm not sure about in the States, but in the UK they changed the rules just after I would have left to not allow picking teams. Because people would feel bad if they got picked last. I'm like, "If you're shit, I'm not picking you. Get better." This is real life. That's how it works in real life. That bad feeling of getting picked last...

Joe Rogan: Lionel Richie was talking about that yesterday.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, serious?

Joe Rogan: Yes. Lionel Richie, before he was in a band, he was always the last one to get picked. He was talking about that openly. But look, that's what created Lionel Richie.

Michael "Venom" Page: 100%. Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I think we, over there, I'm not sure here, but we mollycoddle the kids. We surround them in cotton wool. Then real life hits them and they're just like, "What?" It's the opposite of Yoel Romero.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, yeah, exactly. "You big time on my jean." It's the opposite. I was talking to my brother earlier about how they say, I forget the saying, it's like tough men create good times, good times create soft men, and the whole cycle of that. It's very true. We're creating too much good times for people. And everybody's complaining about everything.

Joe Rogan: Exactly. When things are really good, the problem is whatever is bad, even mildly, becomes a giant thing. Then you're dealing with microaggressions at work. People get crazy. They look for all kinds of grievances everywhere they go. When you are involved in hard competition, you're not interested in any of that stuff at all. It's just a giant distraction. The real thing is so difficult. That's why I think even though it's uncomfortable for kids, wrestling in high school, any kind of competitive sports in high school, martial arts, especially.

Michael "Venom" Page: A hundred percent. I've been an advocate for ages. It's okay to lose. It's actually good for you. Very good for you. You need to learn this kind of stuff. As soon as they're out of your care, they have to experience that anyway. I used to do this even when I was teaching. We're teaching a jab, doing slipping drills, and you're jabbing like this. I was like, "You're not helping anybody by jabbing away from their face. Now this guy thinks he's amazing at slipping punches." Then we make him and he's like, "Move your fucking head. I'll do what I usually do." So I'm like, "It's better that you hit him in the gym. Then when they go out into the real world or into a competition, they're actually good at these drills I'm giving you. You're not helping by trying to be helpful. You don't have to hit hard, but be accurate. Get them used to it, then slowly speed up."

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: I say this all the time. It's exactly the same thing. People need to go through those actual trials and tribulations so they can be ready for it later on.

Joe Rogan: 100%. This idea of protecting them and everybody gets a participation trophy is so bad. That feeling of bad from losing is beneficial. It's just like the feeling of being tired after you work out. That's how you get in shape. It's all good for you. You're getting into emotional shape.

Michael "Venom" Page: This is why I feel a lot of people are trying to take shortcuts for everything. Nobody really wants to do the hard work.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: Nobody wants to do the hard work. I get it if it's really excessive, you let it get to a certain point and it's like, "Okay, you need some help to get to a certain point." But you need to work. It's good for your brain.

Joe Rogan: Your brain has, for whatever reason, a whole series of human reward systems built into it from the times we were all living in tribes thousands of years ago. Your brain requires tasks. It's enforced in your brain that if you go out and make arrowheads and hunt the deer, you have food, your family survives. You're whittling the stick and you're into it, and you better be fucking into it because if you're not, you're not going to eat. If you have a life where there's none of those things and you're sitting there in front of Netflix, of course you're depressed. Your body's not getting any of the stuff it needs. Your mind isn't getting any of the tasks it needs.

Michael "Venom" Page: Someone was telling me about the reptilian mindset that looks for dangers or seeks dangers. Because we're not in a society that has those dangers, we look at danger as "this person looked at me funny" or "this person..." Or even worse, your phone.

Joe Rogan: Your phone. It's even easier now. People are commenting on you. "Oh, the haters."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. To be fair, it's funny. The first time this happened was earlier. My comments were from YouTube initially. I had an Instagram but I didn't really use it like that. After my first fight, I was super pumped. Because like I said to you, I was so nervous after my first fight. I always say, "Look, if you watch all of my workouts, they've been like, 'Yeah, vibes, yeah, yeah, I'm just happy to be here.'" My first fight, I was like this [makes tense face]. I was dying inside, Joe. Just like, "What?" In my head, literally, I was like, "Why did I decide to do this? Why am I here?" I was stressed the whole walk. It was the longest walk. You've never seen me so tense. The second I got in there and the bell rang, I was like, "Oh yeah, same thing, okay." Then I started to feel myself. The vibe, my energy started like the MVP that we obviously come to know now. I came out and that was great. But in terms of... I lost where I was going.

Joe Rogan: You lost what you were talking about?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: No worries. It happens all the time.

Michael "Venom" Page: But that was interesting. The second fight was the one that really overwhelmed me.

Joe Rogan: The second fight in the UFC overwhelmed you?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes. The first fight you ever had was when I walked out. That was me versus Dishman. I just walked out. Seriously, I had nothing but fear inside me.

Joe Rogan: What kind of athlete was he?

Michael "Venom" Page: I'm not sure. He's a kickboxer or something. I had like three pullouts before I got to that fight. Probably three weeks before, three different people. At that level, it happens all the time. I had fights online, so my coach was like, "Can you take these down?" I'm like, "They've randomly filmed from so many random people. I wouldn't even know where to begin to try and get them taken down." So if anybody did research, they would see that I had like a 720 kick. So it made sense why people were pulling out.

Joe Rogan: For people that don't understand what that means, that's not a 360-degree kick. This is one of them. This wasn't even the first time I did it. Where is it?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes. Is it coming up? It'll be after this.

Joe Rogan: Okay, yeah. That's such a crazy kick. That dude is sitting there going, "How the fuck did he hit me with that?" He put his hands on his knees and everything. "How the fuck did he pull that off?" So I understand why people would look at that and be like, "Nah, not yet."

Michael "Venom" Page: But this guy stepped in. I just felt so bad, negative going forward, walking in. But once I was in there... If you see the walkout, I'm super tense. It was only until I started bouncing that it was even a thing.

Joe Rogan: What was the thing that was bothering you the most about doing this?

Michael "Venom" Page: Just my decision. "Why did I do this?" I don't know specifically.

Joe Rogan: But once you got loose...

Michael "Venom" Page: Once I got in there, I was like, "Oh, cool." He had an obvious game. He was trying to take me down. He wasn't strong, so I was like, "Yeah, I'll just push off." I felt good. After he felt my strength, he was like, "Okay," and stood back.

Joe Rogan: That's such a problem. I'm watching you move here and I'm thinking, "What do you do?" You can't do anything. Because he's so far away from you. When he tries to close the distance on you, he just can't get close. Look at that. That's just nuts. That's a terrible puzzle to try to solve in real life. Wow, look at that dive. That's pretty good though. He got a hold of your ankle.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. That shows you how much he wanted that takedown.

Joe Rogan: Until this happens. Oh, boy. The best part is just the standing there. That's amazing. That's the best walk-off KO ever, right? That's a standoff KO. You realize that's crazy. You didn't even look at him. That's amazing.

Michael "Venom" Page: It's funny when people ask me, "Why did you stand there? What if he came back?" I was like, "I landed the kick and I stood still. I was thinking he might come back, so I was going to spin the other way and land another kick." That was the game. Then when the referee stepped in, I was like, "Perfect. This looks good. This looks good." It did look good. It looks slick as fuck.

But that's the thing. I went, "Okay, that's where I remember I was going." I went crazy viral for that. Everyone's like, "Who's this guy?" Because of the relief I had from how tense I was, I was like, "Oh my God." That was me ticking the box that I can actually do this. I can actually make a career of this. I wasn't sure. I got home and jumped online. I wanted to see the video. Thousands of comments and this and that. Okay. Maybe the next comment. Maybe the next one. Nope.

Joe Rogan: People didn't like you for that video?

Michael "Venom" Page: I felt like I had murdered someone's child.

Joe Rogan: For that video? It just shows you why you shouldn't read comments. You're only getting the opinions of the dumbest motherfuckers alive. Let me tell you my thought when I saw that. When that clip went viral, I went, "Finally. This is proof of what I've been saying for a long time. The really elite point fighters have a totally different thing. You can't even get close to hitting that." We're seeing that now. That was the beginning of it.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. Even though Raymond had really good success in Glory.

Joe Rogan: He was amazing, yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: He had great success in Glory, but it was different. You're in a small ring, it's roped off, and he wasn't accustomed to leg kicks yet. He had that one spectacular jumping side kick, spin back kick to the face. He nearly hit me with one of those. He was very famous for his double back kicks.

Joe Rogan: Oh, my God.

Michael "Venom" Page: Every now and again he would hook it. He's knocked people out in the points game. Everyone's seen it. I remember the first time I fought him. I was young, but I had a reputation. He was the guy over in America that had a reputation. We collided. I was like, "I don't care who this guy is, man. I was feeling myself. I was killing everybody for ages." I remember faking, moving around, faking, got him in the corner. I was like, "Oh, perfect. Boom, blitz." Same thing. I was like, "Something's off." Boom, did this. Bah, bah. But both, normally the first kick is light. Both stamps. I was like, "Shit. Not only was that fast, but it was powerful as well." That just got into my head. It threw me right off. I didn't want to commit to any of my strikes. From the first moment he let that go, I was just like, "Yeah."

Joe Rogan: He was very dangerous. He was another guy that proved that this is a completely different skill set. If you don't know how to deal with that, you're in real trouble.

Michael "Venom" Page: They took the elite guys, like the Nicky Holskins and the Joseph Valtellinis, to figure it out.

Joe Rogan: Nicky was a beast. Just chop the legs. Nicky was so technical. He was tight, hands up high, chop the legs. He was a beast. Chopping the legs is a totally different ball game.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. As soon as the legs start getting chopped, you're like, "Oh, you can't bounce anymore." But that's the thing. It's weird because I started to utilize that as a way to win fights. Not obviously taking the leg kicks, but only giving you that option. Everyone's like, "Yeah, but that's an awkward style." I was like, "Yeah, but when I stand in front of you like that, you don't think to throw a punch because I feel way too far away. So you're not throwing a punch. The only thing you have in front of you is a kick." So I got used to timing kicks as you're kicking, collision going in, or just pulling just off, putting my foot in slightly deeper, then pulling off, putting my foot in slightly deeper. Now I know I can pull this trigger when I'm ready. You're getting more and more demoralized because you're throwing a kick, you're swinging around, and there's only one thing available. So you have to keep pressing that same button.

Joe Rogan: The idea of you shooting on... It feels far.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, too far. It feels very far.

Joe Rogan: Well, that's the Khamzat thing. Khamzat shoots from the middle of the fucking octagon. That guy's got a crazy shot. That shot he hit Whittaker with, and the one he went with... Who was it? Oh, the Leech. When he picked up the Leech, he carried him over to Dana White. And it's like, "I kill everybody!" Like, whoa, this is nuts. He was another guy that, how the fuck are you making 170?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, he's a big boy. When I first met him, I was like, "What are you talking about? You're not 170."

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, big boy. I fucking hate the weight cutting. I hate it with a passion. I hate it more than anything in the sport. I think it should be eliminated, but it's too late.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I think people should get down to a healthy weight and fight at the healthiest weight, whatever the hell that is. Do you think there would be a way to combat that?

Joe Rogan: Not at this point. Because obviously in boxing, you have to weigh in multiple times now. Well, some fighters make you do that. Like Gervonta Davis, he made Ryan Garcia do that because he wanted to make sure that Ryan Garcia didn't rehydrate. Mayweather did that to Canelo, too. It's just a G move.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, that's small. That's when you're the A side. You're the small or you're the A side.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. "I'll fight you, but you've got to weigh 143 when you get in that fucking ring, bitch." Guys will take that fight for that big paycheck, but it's not a good move.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: But I just think that it's legalized cheating. I just think that it's cheating. You're not—if you're a 155-pound champion but you weigh 190 pounds, that's kind of crazy.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's kind of crazy. I agree. And if I didn't have to wake up—because if you don't join in, you're fighting monsters.

Joe Rogan: That's true.

Michael "Venom" Page: But they would have to fight monsters too. Everybody would have to fight a person that weighs what they actually weigh.

Joe Rogan: No, I agree with that. But I'm just saying with the fact that people are weight cutting—yes, when I got to this arena, I'd prefer to just afford what I weighed at.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes.

Joe Rogan: But because everyone's weight cutting, I was like, "Oh, you have to." You have to. Because look, when you were fighting at 170, for people that understand, I'm short. That's 30 pounds less than me. That's crazy. That's just a giant advantage that you can't give up. And when you're doing that across every single weight class and every single world championship, the last guy that I know that didn't cut weight was Frankie Edgar when he was a 155-pound champ. When Frankie Edgar was a 155-pound champ, he weighed 155, and he moved like a ghost. He was all over the place. He was fast as fuck. He had great endurance. His recovery was incredible because he could take a great shot because he wasn't dehydrated like everybody else was.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's the thing. I actually feel great at middleweight.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. You definitely have the size for it.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I'm naturally that way. But it's weird, though, because people's body types, because they are cutting, they're still slightly stuck—not necessarily frame wise as big as me—but they're just slightly stuck here. And obviously, as you say, the guys that want to come in and just go, "Yeah, they just want to clinch and get you down," it's a giant advantage. It's an advantage if they're going to be that much heavier than me as well. Moving people—like even in my last fight when I got taken down in that last round, trying to get his cannon air, trying to move him, I was just like, "Jesus."

Joe Rogan: Cannon air is huge. He's a big boy. And he's one of the only guys that's got KOs in three different weight classes.

Michael "Venom" Page: No, no. From heavyweight, light heavyweight, middleweight.

Joe Rogan: And middleweight. Yeah, beast. He's huge for 185. But it's another perfect example. And I think, look, there's something to be said for the ritual of doing it for a lot of fighters. It means a lot. And you could choose to cut less so that you're more healthy the day of the fight. But everyone kind of concedes that you have to cut something.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And I just don't think that's smart 24 hours before a fight in a cage.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why would you deplete your body purposely? Because it's basically like getting drunk. It really is. You're dehydrating the shit out of your body. I've seen people just look a mess. And you only have three, five, 40 hours to rehydrate between the weigh-ins and the time you're actually going to fight. If you're lucky, you have 40 hours. That's not enough time.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I can do it. I don't care to do it. I can do it. I just—I agree with you. You have to do it. If everybody was like, "Yeah, okay, let's all just do it at our weights." Well, imagine if people did dehydrate and rehydrate and we started calling it cheating. You know what I mean? I mean, it would be if people got caught and they looked at it the same way people look at people getting caught with steroids.

Michael "Venom" Page: Fair, fair, fair.

Joe Rogan: Because the reality is right now you can't do it because of the weight class limitations. There's too many weight classes where you're at. So 85 to 205, that's nuts. That's 20 pounds. That's so—and for maybe people who have never grappled, they don't know what that means or never been punched, they don't know what that means. But that's a giant amount of fucking horsepower and gravity on top of you. And so if you've got weight classes at a reasonable space, like I feel like 10 pounds is good. I feel like every 10 pounds, you can go 45, 55, 65, 75. And if you're in between, you either add muscle or you lose weight. You stop lifting as much weights and do more cardio. You'll get down to that right.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, naturally.

Joe Rogan: But that's what you are, what you actually are. And if we did that, there would have to be some sort of a hydration thing where they just show up and weigh you. Like, you know, like people show up and drug test you now. Like drug sport they just knock on your door, "Hey Venom, what up? Can you pee in this?"

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense to me. Yeah, just show up. "What do you weigh? Get on the scale."

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get on the scale. "190? Bro, you're a bantamweight. This is crazy."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's dudes that are out there doing that.

Joe Rogan: Oh, I know, 100%. We always talk about Gleison Tibau. When Gleison Tibau was a 155-pounder, he looked like a bodybuilder.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: He looked like he weighed 200 pounds when he got into the cage. It was nuts. Yeah, the rehydration. I've seen people cut ridiculous amounts and then, yeah, like you said, the way they rehydrate it's terrible. But it's also a lie. You're not 155 pounds, you're 200 pounds. Yeah, that's what you actually are. And I understand why you do it. I understand why everybody does it. But there's got to be a better way.

Michael "Venom" Page: The worst I ever saw was Travis Lutter when he fought Anderson Silva.

Joe Rogan: I don't remember that one. He lost, but he had Anderson down. Travis Lutter was an elite black belt, yeah. And he was in The Ultimate Fighter, yeah. Wins The Ultimate Fighter. I mean, dominates everybody. Dominates people on the ground. Everybody I talked to, trained with him, was like, "Guy's on a whole another level as far as jiu-jitsu." Yeah. And the day of the weigh-in, he can't make the weight. And he's so dehydrated that his lips are cracked and he's not walking to the scale, he's shuffling. Yeah, he's just—and I'm watching him and he missed the first time. And this is like one of the second or third time that he tried to make weight. And he eventually didn't make weight. So even if he beat Anderson, he wouldn't have won the title. But bro, he had him down and he was on top of him in the beginning of the round. And for anybody that's ever rolled with Travis, if he was healthy and he has you down on the ground like that, you're in your fucking hell, Bill. Yeah, that guy's good.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, he was really good. But it was just the weight was way too much.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he was just drained.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. And then 24 hours later, you're supposed to fight one of the greatest fighters of all time. And it depletes the liquid around your brain as well, so you're not going to take a shot as well.

Joe Rogan: Exactly. Yeah, it's a lot.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I agree. You're tired, your endurance sucks, everything's all up.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, everything's all up. But that's why I get down very close to—like on fight week, I'm very low. Like what do you weigh? If you're fighting 185, what are you weighing fight week?

Michael "Venom" Page: 185 is easier, though, so 190.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that's great.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. I don't like to cut too much.

Joe Rogan: What about 170, when you're at 170?

Michael "Venom" Page: I get down to probably about 182, 183.

Joe Rogan: Not that bad. Not that bad, and then cut down from there.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, again, I don't like to overstress myself.

Joe Rogan: Pereira weighed in at 185 and fought at 220.

Michael "Venom" Page: He's massive.

Joe Rogan: Fought at 220.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weighed in at 85, fought at 220.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah. Like you said, that's a lot.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's insane.

Joe Rogan: That's a lot.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's insane.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so much fucking weight. And what does that do to you?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. I've seen people—I can't even remember what fighter it was in Bellator, and he was banging the sauna to get out and his coach was holding the door. "Oh God, you need five more minutes!" Oh my God, the guy is kicking the door like bumping. He's like, "Yes!" I'm never doing that. I don't ever want to feel like that. That's so crazy. Too much.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen people passing out and stuff.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. Brian Ortega was just in an interview talking about that. He essentially almost—like, how did he describe it? It was like 30 minutes where he was like in real trouble.

Joe Rogan: Oh, for his last weight cut?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. He's like, he just got really wrecked. People blacked out before. The lady that fell off the stage—I fell off the scales, wasn't it? She stepped back off the scales and then her legs just went.

Joe Rogan: Oh, I don't remember.

Michael "Venom" Page: 30-minute coma.

Joe Rogan: Oh, sugar.

Michael "Venom" Page: Due to his weight cut for Aljamain Sterling.

Joe Rogan: Holy shit. But he missed—he keeps—

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: This is too much. I don't know why doesn't he just go up?

Michael "Venom" Page: Well, that's the problem. The guys at 55 are jacked.

Joe Rogan: I think he just dialed in his diet though. He looks a lot thinner now.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. Like he showed—pull up some of those photos he's got on his Instagram. He's been taking photos lately. Like he just realized he can never do that again, so he's lost a lot of body fat.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that's good. I think sometimes it is the discipline of it as well.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, look at him now.

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah, yeah. Look at him now. Way, yeah, yeah, way leaner. Big difference.

Michael "Venom" Page: That's where he needs to be, 100%. You know, he likes to live that good life. I just say same, even when you said about having like random weight checks, he'd make me consider certain burgers sometimes.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but they would have to give you an out of shape clause, no? You know, like give you like 10, 15 pounds in between fights. But then once you start training, they should be able to randomly show up during those six weeks and go, "All right, Michael, get on the scale. 174. Okay, good to go." We're inside of six pounds. Because what you actually cut—what you're saying at 85 is perfect, in my opinion. That nothing—I don't like to be—five pounds is just a good weight sauna session. It's not that much. You're not losing a ton of weight. You're not killing yourself. Maybe you ride the bike for a half hour.

Michael "Venom" Page: What do you do? I literally do a 30-minute jog. It's like really low with a sauna suit on. Straight away, I take that off, go straight into the sauna, 15 minutes, then wrap, 15 minutes, then wrap, and I'm done.

Joe Rogan: See, that's perfect. That's actually probably therapeutic. I mean, it's not bad for you at all. That's probably actually very good for you because you're giving your body all this recovery from the sauna and you're getting a nice little cardiovascular workout but nothing crazy. You're giving yourself a lot of heat shock proteins. You're not killing yourself. But there's guys, man, I've seen them and they look like—okay, here's the worst one. The worst one, other than Travis—Travis was the worst because I watched him shuffle backstage—but the visuals is TJ Dillashaw when he went down to flyweight. He fought Henry Cejudo at flyweight and he looked like a dead man.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes, I remember this.

Joe Rogan: He looked like a hostage that had just gotten released and had not been fed.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, just fed for ages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He looked fucking terrible. Because he gets quite jacked as well.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at what he looked like on the left.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. That picture right there. That's what I mean, he's quite big there. Right, but that picture—that picture is fucking crazy. That's a prisoner of war.

Joe Rogan: You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not a guy—look at what he looks like now.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, well now he's a fucking tank.

Joe Rogan: Now he's a tank. That's the one on the right is not fair, cause that's after he retired.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, he's finished now. He's probably a buck 65 now. He's fucking jacked. He's massive. But he was—he's another guy that doesn't get the credit that he deserves. When he fought Renan Barão, I love this style. Pure flow style. Pure flow. But it's the level changes of the up and down. You don't know where he's attacking. It's not linear. It's not just "I'm going here" or "I'm going here." Switching stances constantly. I used to love watching his style.

Joe Rogan: Have you ever talked to Ludwig?

Michael "Venom" Page: No.

Joe Rogan: Oh, you should meet Duane "Bang" Ludwig and talk to him, because Duane is the one who coached him in that style. Duane, who was an elite kickboxer himself and fought in the UFC, at one point in time had the fastest ever knockout in the UFC. I think it was a five or six second knockout in the UFC. He was one of the fastest ever. Step back, one right hand, blam. But Duane was a beast. But maybe even better than he is as a fighter, he is as a coach. And he doesn't have that style. This is what's crazy. He devised that style. So this is Duane. Watch this.

[Video plays]

Thank you. There's nice. So you could call it six seconds. I don't think it was six. Yeah, I don't even think it was six. But the point is Duane's style, like he learned from Bob Roop and it's like Dutch kickboxing. Yeah. But he realized—like Duane is this consummate studier of fighting—and he realized that the best way to fight is to overwhelm them with possibilities and options, but have a whole system of how to do that. So his system is all about switching stances and combinations while you're switching and turning and moving. But he's got it mapped out.

Michael "Venom" Page: Nice, nice, nice.

Joe Rogan: The dude came over to my place with like a binder this thick of techniques. And he's full-on egghead with this shit. And TJ and him just locked up. And the fruits of that labor was the Renan Barão fight. Go to that fight, Jamie, because I feel like this was one of the finest championship performances. At the time, I thought it was the best I had ever seen of a guy who was an underdog going into a fight. Renan Barão at that time, a lot of people thought was the pound-for-pound best. It was him and Jose Aldo. They were talking about those two guys together. And TJ just went in there and worked them. I mean, it was like a sparring match. He went in there super loose, just moving around, started cracking them.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. It's a fun watch, though. Just get me in there.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. This is like Renan Barão was the boogeyman. Everybody was scared of this dude. He was so fucking good. Look how he starts. Look how he starts. Ooh, step in with an uppercut. Just movement, constant movement, overwhelming you. And look, always on the tips of his toes, moving around. He didn't back up at all. And never gave Renan Barão the chance to get some momentum going. And at the end, when he eventually stopped him, I mean, it was just a fucking ruthless combination when he took him out of there. But, like, if you knew how difficult it is to be—

Michael "Venom" Page: Beautiful shot.

Joe Rogan: Look at that right hand, right off the bat, in the first round.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: At this point, Renan Barão's like, "Oh, no."

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I'm in problems.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, because nobody had thought that TJ was going to be capable of doing this.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. TJ, you know, was a really good up-and-coming fighter, a really good contender. But this was his finest performance. And it was in a world championship fight against a guy that everybody thought was the man. And TJ just beat that ass.

Joe Rogan: And if you go further—see if you can go to the actual stoppage, Jamie, like further in the fight. When he—at this point in time, TJ is just styling on him. Just standing right in front of him and popping him. Look at that. Not getting hit, staying right in range, dropping down. Head movement. Oh, look at that head kick. Oh, my goodness. Beautiful. Look at this. And it's artistic. It's fucking beautiful, man.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I love it. Beautiful stoppage.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Like, one of the best championship winning performances in the history of the sport.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, easy.

Joe Rogan: In the history of the sport.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Woo.

Joe Rogan: But that dude, unfortunately, had two bum shoulders.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, so is that what it was?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, forever. He had—even when he won the title, his shoulders were fucked. He had torn supraspinatus in both of his shoulders. I've done one on this side. It got to the point where—he never got it fixed—so it got to the point where they're just popping out. So by the time he fought Aljamain Sterling—

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, he just like, "I ain't going to—" I told the referee in the locker room, "My shoulder's going to go out of socket."

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah, yeah. "Just let me put it back in. Just let me put it back in."

Michael "Venom" Page: That's crazy to go in there knowing that that's—

Joe Rogan: So now he had to retire, and he had multiple operations on his shoulder, and he can't even reach over his head. He gets his arm that far. Like, that's how fucked he is now. Three months ago, so he's got to get another one.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, yeah, you can see. Jeez. Oh, my God. Get another surgery. They're going to cut off the head of my humerus and turn the head into a plastic plunger.

Joe Rogan: That sounds like a bit too much. I hate doing surgery for anything.

Michael "Venom" Page: He has the worst shoulder injuries I've ever seen.

Joe Rogan: I know there's been a lot. Like, was that from before?

Michael "Venom" Page: It was from wrestling, I think. It's just from having torn shoulders and just trying to rehab them and not getting them surgically fixed. Like, if you can have some things loose in there and strengthen everything else up and kind of be functional, but not if you're going to be a world championship fighter. And the problem with a lot of those things is once it tears and pulls back, you can't get it back in place. So then you have really complicated surgeries where they have to take a piece of your hamstring and stick it up there or some other part of your body and reconstruct what was supposed to be there. And then you have to slowly build range of motion into it.

Joe Rogan: Like he got to the point where he was too tough for the injuries that he had, where he should have probably got them fixed immediately and maybe he could have prolonged—

Michael "Venom" Page: I feel like it sounds like he just went back in in terms of getting back into training a bit too quickly. So I feel like the rehab can work. I know there's certain things you're going to need surgery for, but there's a lot of my stuff I've managed to bring it back. I don't think he had surgery until after he was done fighting.

Joe Rogan: Oh, so he didn't even have surgery?

Michael "Venom" Page: No, he had surgery on one of his knees because he blew his knee out in the Sandhagen fight. Or I should say Sandhagen, after talking with Sandhagen about what happens in that 50-50 position, Sandhagen blew his knee out.

Joe Rogan: Oh, okay, okay.

Michael "Venom" Page: So he put him in a position where if TJ didn't give in, he was going to get his knee fucked up, and he chose to get his knee fucked up. But that was Corey putting him in that position. So he had to get an ACL reconstruction. But I don't think he got the shoulder surgeries until after he was done fighting. He might have gotten one and then tried to fight again. But the problem is, like, his shoulders were fucked, man. They were really fucked.

Joe Rogan: But that doesn't look fixed. Like, for you to be having to—

Michael "Venom" Page: No, no, no, no, no. It doesn't look fixed. But I think that's all they could do with it. I think it was that bad.

Joe Rogan: I'm looking at an article from right after that fight. It says his third shoulder surgery since 2019.

Michael "Venom" Page: Okay, so that's when he started getting them.

Joe Rogan: And when was that fight? What was the last fight that he had? That was like 2023. The Aljo fight, I think, was 22. UFC 280. Mm-hmm. Is it 2022? That's when this article—okay, so he had those shoulder surgeries. And then I know he's had a ton since. And since, you know, like you look on his Instagram page, it's like every few months it's him in a sling. "Well, here we go, try it again."

Michael "Venom" Page: I know guys that are like, surgery, surgery, surgery, surgery. And it never seems to—I've never, unless I'm forced to, I don't ever really go down a surgery route. I always try and figure it out a different way. Like I've had, weird enough, it was both my shoulders, but one was supraspinatus, the other one was rotator cuff, and kind of like some lat injury as well. But just slowly, to the point where I couldn't do a push-up. When, in my last couple of Bellator fights, I couldn't do a push-up. I could still hit in certain angles, I was fine, but I had no strength in that direction.

Joe Rogan: While you were fighting?

Michael "Venom" Page: While I was fighting, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Oh, no.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. So literally, I'll get like that, my arms would just start shaking. I couldn't.

Joe Rogan: Why didn't you do something about that before you fought?

Michael "Venom" Page: I was doing like rehab. I was like, as long as I can hit you, I'm fine.

Joe Rogan: That's so crazy. Going into a fight with that kind of a major handicap.

Michael "Venom" Page: I had worse. But what the worst—I don't say it as an excuse. But the day before my Ian Garry fight, I couldn't stand on my left foot.

Joe Rogan: Why not?

Michael "Venom" Page: I, up till today, I don't understand it. I had the UFC PI working on everything. They did shock therapy, they did acupuncture, they're doing everything. And I literally had—if you see the fight, I literally had ankle supports on. And they said you're allowed the ankle supports. You can't really have it taped, but I had it taped under the ankle support. But obviously if I couldn't just do one ankle, I had to do both of them. And yeah, just the day before the fight, I'm not sure if I did anything when I was cutting weight, like twinged it or something, but I don't remember anything distinct happening. But I couldn't walk on my foot.

Joe Rogan: So it was your ankle? You twisted your ankle?

Michael "Venom" Page: It was my ankle or something, and they were working on it. Literally, I was trying—I was in—

Joe Rogan: And you don't have a single instance where it went?

Michael "Venom" Page: I don't remember anything. All of a sudden, it just hurt. It hurt the night before. So on the weigh-in, it hurt. And I was walking around, and I was like, it's hurting, but it didn't feel like anything drastic. And overnight, it just got worse and worse and worse and worse. Probably exaggerated by the weight cut, right? Maybe. And then literally the next day in the morning, we had to go to the PI. My coach was like, "Bro, if you can't bounce here now, I'm going to have to pull you from the fight. There's no way." I can't get pulled from this fight. It's not happening. I was like, "It's not happening."

Joe Rogan: Wow.

Michael "Venom" Page: And I went out there. He's like, "Bouncing." I'm trying to adjust myself and bounce. And he had them do the tape that he was going to use for the fight. And he said he'll come in and do it again just before the fight. And yeah, it was just like adjusting, adjusting. And I obviously still had a great performance. My guy, my videographer, Kishan, he filmed—we're doing a documentary, so he's filmed all of it as well. I was kind of like, I'll wait till it comes out as known. But not even to say as an excuse, because I was able to—adrenaline just—I'm in it now and fight. But there were certain things I was being cautious of and not wanting to do. But yeah, it was just irritating. But I've had—that's probably the worst in terms of how close to the fight it was because it was the day before. But I had injuries in the build up. As long as I can throw a punch and throw a kick, I just make it happen.

Joe Rogan: That's the thing that people don't understand when they watch fights. Sometimes guys—this is one of the things about the rematch this weekend, Ankalaev versus Pereira. Pereira supposedly had a fucked up left hand and rotavirus before the last fight. I believe it. He looked off. He definitely didn't look himself. But Ankalaev looked really good.

Michael "Venom" Page: 100%.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to take anything away from when someone looks off. I'm always like, it's like Roy Jones. Yeah, like people, "Roy Jones didn't fight anybody." No, no, no. Roy Jones fought everybody, but he made them look like there were nobody because they were fighting exactly—

Michael "Venom" Page: Exactly, exactly.

Joe Rogan: So is that what's going on? Is Ankalaev that good? And so we don't know. I gotta see him fight again.

Michael "Venom" Page: I'd only say no just because towards the fifth round it looked like Pereira could do some stuff. Like it's like, okay, you're actually now landing that calf kick a bit more. Now you're actually starting to—it's like, why didn't you start like that? He didn't have the gas.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. So if you've got rotavirus, your gas is very low and your energy level feels very—so he's trying to conserve energy. So this is what makes this fight so much more interesting. Because hopefully he's had the camp. Ankalaev hopefully comes in looking exactly the same way he did that last fight.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, or better.

Joe Rogan: Or better. He's going to be better because he's going to be the champion. When you—I think there's a thing that happens, and Daniel Cormier has expressed this too, it's like a 30% bump when you become the champion. You just got—you got 30%, you know? Like when you were talking about when you won that tournament.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah, just boom.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I think there's that. When you get the championship, hopefully you're going to get to experience—

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes, yes. You'll get to experience that bump.

Joe Rogan: But this is—you know, I feel like that's just—we're gonna have to see. And it's a very intriguing one.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. Because Pereira, if you hurt his left hand, that's the doom punch.

Joe Rogan: Exactly. That left hook is the one. That's the one. If you look at his highlight reel, there's so many left—when he catches people with that, even when he grazed Jamahal Hill.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I still don't get it now. He grazed him. He's got a hell of a punch on him, man. You put him out.

Joe Rogan: The Yuri Prochazka one at the end of the first round, yo, and then he head kicks him in the beginning of the second.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. He's got ferocious power. That head kick was fast.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Head kick was fast as well. Boy, I hope he's healthy. But I heard he's super heavy coming into this week.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, is it?

Joe Rogan: I heard he's like 230 going into this week.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. But for him—

Joe Rogan: I guess he's got a lot to cut.

Michael "Venom" Page: Some guys can do it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what the fuck they—I guess if he was able to get to middleweight—

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. Well, yeah. But also sometimes it makes you lazier as well. Like, "Oh, I can do that. I can eat this." And then you get close to the time. "Oh, shit. A bit of work now."

Joe Rogan: Well, he has talked about moving up.

Michael "Venom" Page: Again?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. And so has Ankalaev.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, yeah. Actually, he has.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Ankalaev just said that recently, that he wants to defend the title a couple of times then move up to heavyweight.

Michael "Venom" Page: I think it's a bit too small.

Joe Rogan: Maybe. But if he puts size on and he gives himself enough time, he's got the skill set. And Aspinall's going to need some fucking challengers.

Michael "Venom" Page: But then does—yeah, fair.

Joe Rogan: Right? Unless Cyril Gane beats him, right?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. But then does he need—you know, I always say that the time that Jon Jones took off to get to heavyweight, does he need that kind of time?

Michael "Venom" Page: Because it takes a while to put on size like that. And actually, it takes ages.

Joe Rogan: Not when you're over in Russia.

Michael "Venom" Page: Fair enough.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, real difficult to get those fucking drug testing guys on a plane. If they do, everybody knows when they're landing. Good luck going into the bathroom while those guys pee. You will accept a glass of urine. "I will hand it to Vitaly. He handles it to you. This is clean urine." I'm not accusing him of doing that, but I know that for sure.

Michael "Venom" Page: Listen, I mean, there's always the joke about guys going over to Thailand. Like, why are they going over to Thailand? "It was good training." And also, really hard to get those USADA guys on a flight.

Joe Rogan: Ah, yeah. I know that. Yeah, there's a lot of speculation about that. I just don't care enough, because like I said, I don't really have a schedule for anything. Even when I'm—even the good stuff, like the things you're supposed to be doing, I'm just like, "Yeah, I'll just do it."

Michael "Venom" Page: So you're not like a supplement guy at all?

Joe Rogan: I don't eat protein shakes. No, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. That's crazy. Never, never been into it.

Michael "Venom" Page: Multivitamins? Vitamins?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, like, but again, I just forget to take them. Seriously, ADHD mind. I'm just like—you should have someone who makes like a little packet for you.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, so I'm gonna get my wife to do it soon, because she's very into that. She's very into her fitness and stuff. She's a Pilates instructor. She's got her own Pilates app and stuff. And she smartly—well, I don't even know if she even intended it that way, but she kind of blew up over COVID because she set up her app at that time and now everyone's at home. Perfect timing, and she just blew up. Her app is called Cloud Nine Collective, and she does Pilates for women.

Joe Rogan: But have you ever done Pilates yourself?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes, I have, bro. I did a video with her, and she got her to train some MMA, and then she's like, "Okay, you come and do this for lives." She killed me. It's a lot more difficult than I thought. It's so much—but I didn't know—weird muscles inside of your leg. But that's what's actually helped with a lot of my rehab side, because it's those muscles that we bypass. We go to the big muscles. We want to work these muscles, and it's all those little ones that are not getting worked, and those are the ones that are injured.

Joe Rogan: Stabilizers.

Michael "Venom" Page: Stabilizers. And I didn't know that it was a man—I forget his first name—but called something Pilates, who started it for men in war, to help recover guys in war, to get them back out to war. But it's become such a female-led sport.

Joe Rogan: Well, that goes to speak about what I was talking about with the Russians and being technical. You know who was really into Pilates? Kovalev. Remember when Kovalev was the light heavyweight champion?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: The Crusher. He was fucking everybody up. He was big into Pilates. He was doing Pilates all the time. And everybody was like, "Wait a minute, what? That guy?" The strength you can get from anywhere, because like I said, those smaller muscles that help facilitate the bigger muscles.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah. It's crazy. It's the same people that look down on yoga. Like, bitch, go to a 90-minute hot yoga class. Go do that.

Joe Rogan: Okay, I did that, yeah. It's hard. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to go to a hot yoga." I was more thinking it's just nice to kind of get the sweat going and stuff. I remember the lady, she's like, "Oh, yeah, go to—if you go to that side of the room, it's quite hot. So if you're new to it, just go to this side of the room." And I was like, "This woman, whatever man, get over that hot side. Let me go to that hot side." And she's like, "Oh, if you ever feel faint at all, you don't have to continue. You can just sit down." I'm just like, "What is she talking about? It's not that hot in here. Google me, lady." Bro, I think like three moves later, I slowly just moved the mat. I didn't want to go too far, but I moved from the hot side of the room to the middle-ish, closer to that side. And then there was one move, I was just stretching, and I literally just got lightheaded. I was like, "Shit, this is real." It's real. You see all those little old ladies in there and you think, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah." It's difficult. My wife is strong as hell, and I just like—yes, it has to be from that. And when I do a session with her—I did one this morning because she does some great sessions—she kills it. And I have to say, she's smart in how she's done it as well. Because actually, something I didn't know, because she's on her app, she's done cycle syncing specifically for women. I didn't realize that women have—obviously, I knew women have a 28-day cycle, and men have a 24-hour cycle. So there's specific times that they should be training harder than they shouldn't be training, or they should be doing this or that, based on the time of the cycle of the month.

Michael "Venom" Page: But again, in my head, I'm like, there are girls that are training our class and they have to train and do everything that we do. But we forget that. We're just doing it based on—men can kind of just keep going. Well, women should think about that when they're scheduling fights. A hundred percent. That should be a thing. And as I said, she did it for Pilates. And I looked into it and I was like, "Oh, there's actually—this is—" like even down to ice baths. Great for you. Not for women though.

Joe Rogan: Really?

Michael "Venom" Page: Not all the time. But if you look into it, there's specific times it's okay for them, but they shouldn't put their body under that kind of stress in the same way that we can.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

Michael "Venom" Page: So there's loads of things that we forget. A lot of times it's done from a male point of view, forgetting that we're just different.

Joe Rogan: I never would have thought about that in terms of their menstrual cycle and fighting. But of course. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Wow.

Michael "Venom" Page: So yeah, she's put it on so individuals can actually be like—her app is scheduled and says, "Look, you are good to train intensely today," or, "No, you need a very relaxed session." And these videos that she's got—hundreds of videos—will come up and be like, "This is for you. This was for you." But again, it just made me think about the women in MMA. Like you said, it's the same thing scheduling a fight. Even down to for them, weight cutting. You know, at a certain time, they're going to hold weight. It's just different. We don't have any of those issues to worry about, but we get them to do the same structure as we would do. That's a very good point.

Joe Rogan: You know what I mean? They should have more information about that, even for the female fighters. Their coaches should be setting fights up entirely based on—I wonder how many fights they would have won that they couldn't really train right because they were cramping up. We're just different. I've seen some videos of you. You do a lot of plyometric stuff as well, right? Is that something you've always done?

Michael "Venom" Page: Well, it kind of comes with just the—this is why I feel like I can bounce on my calves for ages, just because of that constant. And it seems to be a thing now. I didn't really understand it well enough. It was just kind of how I trained.

Joe Rogan: Did you train like that from the beginning?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, just because of the points fighting style is a lot of that shifting.

Joe Rogan: But back then when you were doing that, were you just doing the martial arts training or were you doing specific plyometrics?

Michael "Venom" Page: With plyometrics, the reason why we did plyometrics more so is because we were also doing a lot of our katas. We did martial gymnastics, so the forms. So I had to learn how to do these crazy kicks and stuff, which I would then—this is why I would try 720s. Not because I just randomly decided to throw it out today. It's because we were drilling them just for kata. And I was like, "Well, if I can do it for kata, then surely I can find the time to throw it when I'm fighting." And I would be brave enough to try and attempt these things in the points fighting world. And there's a couple kicks I keep telling people—a couple kicks that even for me, I haven't even shown you what I can actually do yet. But there's a couple kicks that I know I can land, and it's usually easier on people that are well trained. So usually the better fighter, it's actually easier to hit them, just because they are very traditional, they're very well trained, they have patterns that I can pick up on. I'm like, "Ah, you're gonna step this way and you're gonna do that." And I always tell people, I call it attaching strings. The first minute of the fight, not too much happens for me, because I'm faking this, that, that. But every time I'm faking something, you twitch. I'm like, "Ah, this means this." You twitch, this means this. And I'm just attaching strings to you. So now I'm moving you. You literally just became Pinocchio.

Joe Rogan: But that's important. This is why, like you said, all those fakes, but those fakes mean something.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yes.

Joe Rogan: You know what I mean? You're getting that information. "Okay, okay, yeah. He wants that. If I do this, he wants that. Okay, I see it. Okay, perfect. Now I got it." That's what's so important for a casual fan to understand. There's a whole game taking place. If you could play it, you would understand what he's doing. But you're just seeing movement, random movement. You're like, "Hit him. Why don't you hit him?" Meanwhile, if you knew, you'd be watching something beautiful.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, exactly. You're watching a dance. Snake charming. That's it. It's part of the identity, man. It's part of the identity. I try to tell people, though.

Joe Rogan: Do you know when you're fighting again? Have they given you any kind of an idea?

Michael "Venom" Page: Like I said, I pushed out information. I keep chasing after it and find out. I haven't really heard too much back.

Joe Rogan: They're announcing some fights now, right?

Michael "Venom" Page: That's what I'm saying. It feels like things are slowly starting to happen. Still waiting.

Joe Rogan: So, Prochazka is going to fight Leon Edwards?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, that's been confirmed.

Joe Rogan: So 170, which is what you're looking at the most, right?

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, I want to get back. I know I'm big now, but—

Joe Rogan: You can make it, though. I've seen you make it.

Michael "Venom" Page: I can make it. And you just shine advantages at 170. I want to get back down to 170, just because I feel like—I think JDM's a great, an amazing fighter. I just feel, stylistically, I can beat him.

Joe Rogan: Well, it's a very good style for stand-up for you.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: That's for sure. I mean, he's very complete.

Michael "Venom" Page: Very complete. Yeah, he's very, very good. I really like his style. And very smart. You can tell he's very smart. Like, he has been specific to the opponent. And he's like, "Okay, yeah." But like I said, that's one of the advantages. It's going to be very difficult for you, even as smart as you are, to figure that out.

Joe Rogan: Well, that's why it's exciting for you with any stand-up fighter. As soon as you're fighting a guy who likes to stand up, it's like, "Are you sure?"

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: "Are you sure you like to stand up?"

Michael "Venom" Page: I tell people this all the time. Welcome to this new thing that you've never experienced before. I make these guys wrestlers, man. I make all these stand-up guys wrestlers. And they always, everyone's like, "Oh, I'm going to strike with you." Well, listen, brother, I can't wait to see you in there again. I'm a giant fan. I'm so happy you're at the UFC now. And I know you do a lot of stuff online, so tell people how to find you.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, so again, it's all the social media: Michael Venom Page, everything. Instagram. I don't really do Twitter as much, or X, sorry. My Facebook, YouTube. I'm doing a lot of stuff. ITM, actually, I'm doing a film company. I always try to set myself up for the next stage. My creative mind won't stop.

Joe Rogan: Do you want to make movies?

Michael "Venom" Page: I'm making movies.

Joe Rogan: Really?

Michael "Venom" Page: I've already made two short movies.

Joe Rogan: Wow.

Michael "Venom" Page: And again, the same—

Joe Rogan: Congratulations.

Michael "Venom" Page: Thank you. And I want to get into acting as well.

Joe Rogan: What are they about?

Michael "Venom" Page: So the first one was actually about an athlete's mindset. One thing that I find with films, I think people are lazy watchers nowadays. They just find explosion, explosion, action, action, action, and crap storyline. But I want storytelling again. And this one is just more about an athlete's mindset. I did it through the eyes of a runner, just because it's slightly different. I didn't want to just go down the same lane as MMA. Did it through the eyes of a runner and just how toxic your want and your need to be the best can look like. And again, I'll go into that one. I'll let people watch that one. That one is just called *Runner*. The next one's called *Wait*, and it's kind of about what anxiety can look like from a position of waiting for good news and a position of waiting for bad news, and how the parallels work and look almost identical. So you're literally watching two points of view.

Joe Rogan: So this dude just freaking out, waiting for—yeah. That's fucking cool. You're doing things like that.

Michael "Venom" Page: Thank you, man. That's very cool. Like I said, I'm a creative mind. I need to express it in some way. And I know when I leave, I'm not going to be one of those guys that retires and wants to come back. If I say I'm done, then I'm done. And I need something else to go into. Nothing better than having something you look forward to that you actually enjoy and love outside of it, because it's hard. It's very hard for guys to end. It becomes your identity. And the thrill—you know more than anybody—the thrill of doing that is above and beyond almost anything else you'll experience in life. My thrill is usually, for me anyway, comes from expressing art. And we call it martial artists. As much as people see sometimes the blood, the knockouts and stuff, it's art. We just watched TJ Dillashaw's show. That was art. That was pure art. People don't appreciate that side of it. And I love to paint pictures. And I'm like, "How can I continue painting pictures after this stage of my life?" I'm like, "Okay, yeah, cool."

Joe Rogan: Well, listen, man, if you make movies like you can fight, I'm in.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah. Trust me. We're doing big things.

Joe Rogan: I believe you.

Michael "Venom" Page: My camera guy, Kishan, like, Kaney, it just worked. The synergies just work. He's directing films like he's done it for 20 years, and he's just unbelievable. So that's awesome. We're gonna do some magical things.

Joe Rogan: I love hearing stuff like that. I really do. I really do. And I got a gift for you anyway. What do you like, red or black? You can have both if you want.

Michael "Venom" Page: What is it?

Joe Rogan: Just a t-shirt.

Michael "Venom" Page: Oh, nice.

Joe Rogan: And it represents who we are. Hands Down Martial Arts. Just guys that do this, and everyone mocks all the time, but it's obviously my brand. Extra large?

Michael "Venom" Page: Large.

Joe Rogan: Large? Let me see. Large here. Thank you very much. And then I'm also—I'm into everything—but I got a beef jerky company called Snapdown Snacks. For snapping people, wrestling, snapping them down. Snapdown Snacks. So Snapdown or Snackdown.

Michael "Venom" Page: Beautiful. Thank you very much.

Joe Rogan: Alright. Fantastic. Yes. Enjoy. Let me know what you think.

Michael "Venom" Page: How do people find that company? Is it a website?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, just Snapdown Snacks.

Michael "Venom" Page: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And when you're in the UK next, let me know. I've got a Mexican restaurant as well, Ixchel.

Michael "Venom" Page: Wow, man. That's great. You invested in all kinds of things.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful. We actually had Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila featuring in there. We're going to have Jason Momoa come in end of this month with his vodka, Meili Vodka.

Michael "Venom" Page: Look at you. Moving and shaking.

Joe Rogan: We're everywhere, everywhere.

Michael "Venom" Page: All right, man. I'll see you this weekend.

Joe Rogan: Yes. Thank you for doing this.

Michael "Venom" Page: Thank you, man. My pleasure. I really enjoyed it.

Joe Rogan: I did too. Take care.

Michael "Venom" Page: Bye, everybody.

[This episode is brought to you by *The Smashing Machine* from A24. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Academy Award nominee Emily Blunt star in *The Smashing Machine*, in theaters everywhere October 3rd. The new film from writer-director Benny Safdie about pioneering UFC fighter Mark Kerr is both high-pressure sports biography and high-octane emotional spectacle, transporting viewers to the dawn of a new era as it follows the strongest fighter the sport had ever seen from the heights of fame to rock bottom and back again. Watch *The Smashing Machine* in theaters everywhere October 3rd.]