I've been training with the BJJ world champion for a number of years now and with the exception of his first fight I've never seen a harder fighter, a better athlete, or a more intense competitor.

I know he's been training hard for years, so what I'm sure of is that the hardest part of his training camp right now is over. The guy is as intense as I've ever seen him, and he's just like a beast to work with – and to train. A big part of this intensity comes from the quality of his team.

I've been around the BJJ world for a long time – and I've been watching it evolve for the last ten years. The way I've seen this evolution is that there are dozens of people who are doing the same things, who are working hard, but doing it in different ways. You can see it in the BJJ community at large: It's much better, it's much more mature, and it's a lot faster and more innovative, but the people doing this stuff are no longer the same, and this is why some of you guys are so passionate about it. We've all seen the changes that have come over these five years. The way people train has changed: we're now seeing more traditional training, more of a traditional approach, more of a traditional style of wrestling, and we're seeing a lot more traditional conditioning and traditional sparring. And more hardening with a heavy jump rope.

🥦 🧓🏽 🚲

You guys, of course, have seen this progression even before I came on the scene. You guys have seen a lot of it in the sport – but now it's changing the sport. You may not even be aware of it, but once again, you're right – we're at a stage of it that we've never seen before. The way you guys run your gyms: it's becoming a lot more about the sport. We've seen that over the last 10 years in the way you run your camps and that is not going to change.