JRE MMA Show #181 with Justin Gaethje & Trevor Wittman

**Justin Gaethje** (0:01)
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

**Joe Rogan** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Gentlemen, first of all, thank you for being here. I couldn't wait to talk to you. Congratulations on one of the most epic accomplishments in the history of combat sports, and that's not an understatement. I mean, it might be an understatement. I mean, it's not an overstatement. It's perfect. That was one of the greatest nights I've ever experienced of watching anything in my life. It was amazing. And to have you cap it off and win the title when you're facing a guy that everybody thought was at least number two pound for pound. It was like him and Islam are number one and number two.
And some odds had you at six to one, which I thought was very disrespectful. I thought like, this is crazy. Like six to one is crazy. Like Ilya is really good, but so is Justin. This is kind of nuts. Like to have you win the way you won in front of the fucking White House.

**Justin Gaethje** (1:03)
Yeah.

**Joe Rogan** (1:05)
How does it feel?

**Justin Gaethje** (1:07)
Oh, you know, it's really not real yet.
I was expecting to have like an internal sense of relief that like I don't have something to chase. Because I was always chasing this belt. And I was expecting to wake up with like some kind of natural release of pressure. But I don't know, I don't feel that. As the days go by, every day I feel a little bit more, a little bit more. Two days ago, my dad was like, you know, what is it? What was it like waking up being the champion? And I like, I was like, I haven't even thought about that.
And then I was, you know, on the shitter like 10 minutes later, and I was sitting there thinking about it. I was like, wow, I'm the fucking champion. Like, it's crazy. And yeah, it's just, I mean, I've just been on the grind for so many years now. My dad dropped me off 19 years ago in Colorado. I knew nobody to wrestle. And yeah, to see where I'm at now is just absolutely incredible. I mean, there's really no way to explain how or why, you know, or like why I deserve it. I mean, I worked my ass off. I have made mistakes. You know, I've done things the wrong way, but I've always corrected and got back on the path. And, you know, I think the coaches, the mentors, but mostly the coaches that I've been, you know, the team that I have around me is a huge reason why I was able to stay on track and just keep moving forward and keep trusting that, you know, I belong in the top of the league.

**Joe Rogan** (2:40)
Well, you've clearly shown it throughout your career. And having a great coach like Trevor, one of the reasons why I wanted to bring in Trevor is because you guys have a very unique relationship. First of all, I love the YouTube series, The Art of Violence, fantastic.
And what's great is watching you two guys work together and Trevor, you being like very acutely aware of when to pull them back, when to ramp it up, when to push. Like you guys, having a relationship like that is so critical because you guys know each other so well. You've seen him perform so many times. You've seen him fight and perform in the gym that you know where he's at all the time. And having that sense of where your fighter is at any given time in camp because you know him so well, boy, that's a giant advantage.

**Trevor Wittman** (3:28)
It is.

**Joe Rogan** (3:29)
Well, hold on.

**Trevor Wittman** (3:34)
Testes, testes, one, two, three.
Yeah, I think that's a huge advantage is knowing your athlete. And I've been doing this for a long period of time, but there's lots of coaches out there that consider their fighters their friends. I do consider them one of my best friends, but I put myself more in a father position of I need to know when to tell them the truth.
And I've got myself in trouble with that, with fighters, where you tell them the truth so hard that you have to let them go, like a child. Like, hey, if we were not in the same beliefs, go live life and see how it is. And then when you return, I'm still going to love you. Having that type of thing where I have to be dead honest for your career, not because it helps us now and it feels good right now at the moment. I have to look at that from the time that we start and we talk about what are his goals. And then my job is to be an advisor, be a mentor to get him to that place as best as I can, because these are his goals and I want to support those. And in the beginning of his career, his goals were to be the most violent guy out there, the most remembered, the guy that every time someone bought a ticket, they remember Justin Gaethje selling that show. And then it turned into, no, I want to have this belt. And that was hard because we did go and not get the belt twice. And you know, it's so cool to be in the kind of those scenarios where it's like, damn, you had two opportunities, now it's never going to happen. And that's what life is. Life is one of those things that you keep getting up and chase your goals. You never know how it's going to happen. And yes, you want to dream and you want to have a plan. But I'll tell you right now through all the times that I've had championship fighters in business and in life, the plans never work. You always have to adjust them. But it's that dream and that vision to get you to the top of the stairs. You have to get up each one of those steps. So, you know, Justin went out there and wrote a story that I don't think will ever be forgotten. And he did it one round at a time. And that's what impresses me because his mindset. I love the mental game. I love to talk about the mental game, even like Ilya. Ilya is a special guy with how he uses his mental, the secret. If I see it, I believe it, it'll happen.