"They Wanted A Bad Guy, So I Became One" - Ryan Garcia - #1097

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
I'm fascinated by you saying that you don't think when you're in the ring. What's happening?

**Ryan Garcia** (0:05)
I'm just picking up on cues, really.
And then kind of like there's these instincts and intuition that are just kind of there. You know, like, oh, maybe, like, you kind of get a feeling where, okay, I need to start putting pressure on this man, or I need to, you know, move a little bit. It's just like kind of momentum shifts that you're kind of noticing little by little. And then there's obviously times where I'm thinking, like sometimes I'll just have like mantras in my head, like that I've done in camp, you know, stay focused, like our last fight the whole time when I was fighting him, I would just say like, stay focused, stay focused, stay focused, you know. So it was just like little things that I would say in my mind, but I'm not really necessarily thinking.

**Chris Williamson** (0:43)
Not thinking.

**Ryan Garcia** (0:46)
But thinking.

**Chris Williamson** (0:46)
But yeah, of course. Does that mean when you look back on a fight, how much of it can you remember?

**Ryan Garcia** (0:54)
The pivotal moments, like my last fight, I remember I started getting comfortable in the 11th round, just messing with the guy, smacking him, looking at the trainer, and then lowering my hand a little bit, and then, you know, tasting the right hand. I was like, don't do that. Then kind of like stabbing myself back in. So I remember those moments. I remember when I dropped them. But I mean, for the most part, I have to like look back at the fight to really recall most of it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:24)
Isn't that strange?

**Ryan Garcia** (1:25)
It is weird.

**Chris Williamson** (1:26)
It's so strange. So I'm friends with musicians, comedians, sportspeople, and I do live stuff too, these conversations. Once you get into a flow state, and you're not thinking that much and things are just happening, that's what people want to get to. It's really enjoyable. It's where your performance is at its best. You're moving quickly. Your brain isn't getting in the way of what you're supposed to do.

**Ryan Garcia** (1:48)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (1:49)
But it's also the thing that kind of robs you of your memory, because you're not thinking and you're just doing. Yeah.
You can't remember. It's so funny. I mean, obviously, your job is not to have a good time. Your job is to win. Yeah. Winning requires you to be in the best state possible. But it is funny that the mental state that humans perform best in is also the one that they can remember the least. So I wonder how many people that are elite performers, comedians, artists, musicians, sports stars look back on their career and they go, I'm glad that it was video, dude, because I kind of wasn't really there for it all that much.

**Ryan Garcia** (2:26)
Yeah. I mean, it is an interesting thing. But then also you have like guys like, I guess, I don't know if it's like a necessary sport, but you know, chess, guys like Magnus Carlsen and just like all those top chess players, they could memorize games from, you know, when they were like five and you're like, oh, shit, like, you know, where does that come from?

**Chris Williamson** (2:45)
That's a different kind of sport, maybe.

**Ryan Garcia** (2:47)
It is, it is. I mean, you have to use your brain there.

**Chris Williamson** (2:49)
Yeah. Yeah. But I wonder even if in that you go, okay, you know what the movements were, but can you tell me what you were thinking, how you were feeling, what you were wearing? Can you tell me where people were sat? Can you tell me what emotions were coming up? Maybe not. They're just optimized for one very specific thing, which is what are the exact movements on the chessboard.

**Ryan Garcia** (3:06)
Right, right. It's funny. Yeah, it is funny.

**Chris Williamson** (3:09)
Yeah.

**Ryan Garcia** (3:11)
Well, all I know is I like to win. That's all I, you know, I mean, the joy comes after the fight, right?

**Chris Williamson** (3:18)
You've got a job to do. You're a professional.

**Ryan Garcia** (3:19)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (3:20)
I think I like the idea of people treating their pursuits as a professional, even people that aren't doing it in that way. But, you know, you're...

**Ryan Garcia** (3:30)
I like the journey of understanding, like, how much the levels there actually is to anything, right? Like, say construction or some of that's their profession, but like there's levels to it. People that can construct, like, these huge buildings, people are constructing, you know, a little table. But there's also levels to building a table.