JRE MMA Show #170 with Michael "Venom" Page

Michael Page (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

SPEAKER_3 (0:06)

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

Michael Page (0:15)

MVP in the house. The most enigmatic, difficult dude to solve in all of MMA. That's you, man.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

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

Michael Page (1:08)

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. There's what's missing is point fighters and people would like mock me. No, no, no, no, no, like 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. Yeah, it's not like any other sport. It's almost like fencing and MMA combined or in martial arts combined.

Joe Rogan (1:37)

Yeah, I always tell people that like most of the combat sports in terms of kickboxing, the full contact side of things is more to do with the, there's a fixation on power, not the people else. Whereas our element is just the speed element.

Michael Page (1:52)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

Getting in and getting out. Not getting in touch. Like you said, the tag, tag kind of feel, fencing, similar kind of footwork and, yeah, just not many people had decided to cross over to any kind of full contact world really. And he had the likes of Wonder Boy Thompson.

Michael Page (2:10)

Raymond Daniels. Yeah, you and Raymond were the most prominent ones, and him and Glory, of course you.

Joe Rogan (2:15)

Yeah, yeah. Well, he did a little bit MMA.

Michael Page (2:18)

A little bit of MMA, yeah. But you're more prominent in MMA.

Joe Rogan (2:21)

Yeah.

Michael Page (2:21)

The point was that this was an element that when, I remember when I was doing Taekwondo and I would fight in tournaments, I would occasionally fight in point fighting tournaments. Yeah. I'd fight a guy like Mafia Holloway or one of these guys that were really good. I'm like, this is crazy. This is such a crazy skill.

Joe Rogan (2:37)

Very different.

Michael Page (2:38)

And when I saw MMA where a lot of guys were just like, like 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 know, you can learn throwing leg kicks differently. You can learn, you know, different stances and movements. The grappling is the big, that's the big hurdle. But once you can solve the takedown defense and some of the grappling hurdles, and you've got actually got some mission victories, then you got a real problem because every fight starts standing up. Every fight starts standing up with a big ass fucking cage. It's a big ass cage. And I see guys like Kevin Holland, like he's like, what the fuck do I do with this guy?

Joe Rogan (3:27)

He hated every moment of it. I could feel it. But that's, that's just part of my style is 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 I've experienced this before.

Michael Page (3:50)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:50)

For someone that's never experienced and because there's few of us in the MMA world, who do you go to to train?

Michael Page (3:57)

There's very few people that are really good at that.

Joe Rogan (3:59)

Yeah. And like I said, I wonder by Thompson, he, a friend of mine, obviously me and him and us getting on. And he's even said people have contacted him, like, oh yeah, I'm fighting MVP, like I want to train with you. He's like, I want MVP to win.