JRE MMA Show #168 with Khalil Rountree Jr.

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

SPEAKER_3 (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:13)

Check it, check it, check it, check it.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

What's up?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:15)

What's up?

Joe Rogan (0:16)

How you feeling? What's going on?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:17)

Oh man, back from a amazing Thailand vacation.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

Oh, really?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:24)

After that, after the fight, it just feels like I've been on like just a great vacation journey. Baku was amazing. Let me start off there.

Joe Rogan (0:34)

Please.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:35)

Let me start off with Baku, Azerbaijan. Oh my God. What a place.

Joe Rogan (0:41)

I heard it's amazing there.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:42)

Absolutely incredible.

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Everybody who went there was raving about how great it was.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (0:45)

Absolutely incredible. When we got the news like, okay, the fight's going to be postponed, it's going to go into Baku. I had never heard of the place in my life. I agreed without even looking it up. But in my mind, I was thinking like, okay, this is a place I've never heard of. I started thinking like, I don't know, it's probably going to be something similar to Saudi, and it's probably just like a lot of desert, blah, blah. And I get there and my mind was absolutely blown. Amazing treatment from Baku City Circuit welcomed us in. The fans were some of the best I've ever encountered, man. They were so happy to have the UFC there.

Everyone in the streets, like people who weren't even fight fans, were just excited that the UFC was in Baku. So like that added to the experience. And then it's just beautiful, man. It's like, what does it look like? So where we were, yeah, so that's Old Town. So I did a tour through there.

Joe Rogan (1:47)

Whoa, how old is Old Town?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (1:49)

I forgot, so I forgot, but I know that 4,000 people still live in Old Town. There's boutique hotels in there. There's just so much history.

As like when it was built, kind of what they're known for. I don't remember what that building is. But the architecture there is one of the things that that's the flame towers. So at night, there's just projections and it'll be like the flag, or it'll actually be like flames. Because Baku is known for oil, like being one of the first oil countries. This is the carpet museum, an amazing place full of carpets that are century years old.

Joe Rogan (2:33)

They built it to look like a carpet. How fucking wild is that?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (2:36)

It's crazy. All these carpets are handmade, passed down generation after generation. So they tell you how deep the culture and the stories of these carpets and how, oh my God, and clean, friendly people.

Joe Rogan (2:54)

I know a bunch of people that went there and decided to stay for a few days.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (2:58)

Honestly, I wish that I would have stayed longer. I've already booked family trips. I've told everybody we're going back to Baku.

Joe Rogan (3:06)

Wow.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (3:09)

Just thinking about it, I'm like dude, this is a place that I want to, I want to visit for the rest of my life. I want to just keep going back to Baku, man.

Joe Rogan (3:16)

That's dope.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (3:17)

Yeah. So.

Joe Rogan (3:19)

And obviously you had an amazing result there, too. Yeah.

Khalil Rountree Jr. (3:22)

I think, I think that the, you know, I think that it really played into just my performance. I was just in a really good place. Let me, okay. I was in a good place, but I was also in kind of a fucked up state, like, not going to lie.

I was just so happy to be across the world doing what I love to do and to be, like, treated like we're actually appreciated for, you know, like for what we do. And so that helped me get through all the other shit that I was doing.

Joe Rogan (3:53)

What was the other shit? What was going on?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (3:55)

Oh, man. So I knew that we were going to be jet lagged no matter what. I knew it because we're traveling, you know, super far.

Joe Rogan (4:03)

16-hour flight, right?

Khalil Rountree Jr. (4:04)

Yeah, super long flight. So I knew we were going to be jet lagged. So I made sure that we got there two weeks early to adjust. It took about six, almost about a week to fully adjust. And then so during fight week, it's a second day, first day of fight week, I'm like thrown up and shit and nonstop. Oh, no. And I'm like, okay, this is great. That is exactly what I want to be feeling right now. You know, pressure's on. I got to fight. You know, like I'm super motivated.