Shadowing Practice: Justin Gaethje on Beating Ilia Topuria to Become Champ at the White House UFC - Learn English Speaking with Video

The Joe Rogan Experience

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 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 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, I thought like, this is crazy.

Like six to one is crazy.

Like Illy is really good, but so is Justin.

This is kind of nuts.

To have you win the way you won in front of the fucking White House.

Yeah.

How's it feel?

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.

Or two days ago, my dad was like, you know, what was it like waking up being the champion?

And 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.

It's fucking 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 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

or what 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 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 keep moving forward and keep trusting that you know I belong in the top of the league.

Well you you've clearly shown it throughout your career

and having a great coach like Trevor

and one of the reasons why I wanted to bring in Trevor's 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 him back When to ramp it up

when to push like you're 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 Well, hold on Just

Yeah, I think that's a huge advantage is is knowing your athlete

and you know 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 like 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're not on the same beliefs go live life

and see how it is And then when you return I'm still gonna 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 from the time

that we start we talk about you know 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 at 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 remembered 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 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, the, the, if I see it, I believe it, it'll happen to a point,

you know, it's like, I always tell people like, if you want, if you go down the ice cream aisle and you're like, Hey, I don't know what ice cream I want.

You're going to stand there and go, oh, that one looks good, that one looks good, that one looks better.

The people that are like, I want mint chocolate chip.

You get in there, you get it done, you grab that mint chocolate chip and you walk out.

Very similar to Ilya's last three fights.

He went out there and he demanded what he wanted.

His confidence got him through that.

But it makes it very hard when you get that stale, nasty, rotten milk, fucking mint chocolate chip, and you start to go, oh shit, what is going to happen now?

So I think the relationship that we have is me guiding him, me pulling him back at the the strictest situation, hey, let's pull back a little bit.

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Let's focus on what's going on.

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I don't want no distractions.

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And having someone, and he trusts that I care about him.

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I love him to death.

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I love his family.

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Like our relationship is so strong, and I need that with my athletes.

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And I'm just blessed and 100, I say honored, but more importantly humbled by someone who I've never worked mental with,

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who chose me different ways to the mental game of fighting, Which I feel I'm very high level with is it's something

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that if you put some put yourself around people that make you better This guy makes me better daily,

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and I'm very grateful for that You said something about Ilya about the fight about having expectations

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And you said you don't have any expectations when you fight that way you don't you don't get thrown off Yeah, I mean it's huge.

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I mean

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my expectations come from my hard work obviously i expect my body to perform um i understand

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that i've trained my mind to

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and you know maybe the narcissistic tendencies in me love showing off

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and performing in front of you know thousands of people on

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that stage that's um that's what i love the most about about this and that's what my personality like i'm very competitive,

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I want to win, but I'm never going to lie to myself.

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And that's how I've never had a coach in my entire

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career since four years old at wrestling have to pull me aside

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and talk about the mental aspect of competition because it's always been so natural to me.

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I'm not sure if I'm not sure if it's because they,

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they see that I'm doing good and that they agree with my approach mentally,

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or they don't, they don't understand what's going on or

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but i've just always been so comfortable and

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so content with my situation of you know this is the

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competition it's the game you know i'm very competitive i'm very petty i take everything personal

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and yeah when i go in there with x

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when i have gone in with expectations um and it's i said it before the fight you know alia like Like,

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I said so many true things to him, and I think it was such an asset to tell someone the brutal truth,

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especially someone like him, because it pushes them farther away from the truth.

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You know, even if I tell him the exact truth and exactly what's going to happen, and, you know, you're making a mistake by having all these expectations, and when we go to round two and when we go to round three,

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and it's not going as you predicted it or wanted it to or expected it to, then where do you go from there?

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And, you know, I said that exact thing to him and then that pushed him farther away from it.

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And, you know, I.

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It's almost like he wanted to prove you wrong.

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Yeah, he wanted to prove himself right.

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Yeah.

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You know, and he was unwilling to be open to opinions.

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And because obviously I don't know him.

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He knows him better than himself.

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But, you know, I got here because I am coachable.

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I got here because I listen.

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I use every, like I posted yesterday, every person, place or thing that has happened to me or for me.

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has ultimately molded my mind and my body to be able to deal with the situation that happened on Sunday night.

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And, you know, I can, I can pull so much experience from the past, my losses, my wins, setbacks, failures, accomplishments.

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I mean, there was so much to learn from it.

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You know, every day is a learning experience and I constantly try to learn and be better. And

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I don't know why I'm able to perform like that I just think it's who I am

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you know when I say I wanted to be the most exciting fighter ever it's not

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that I wanted to be the most exciting fighter ever that the thought of that was fucking cool to me

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you know but I was just being me

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and I've been blessed to be able to you know through

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my childhood through coming from a small town through having you know

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unwavering support from my family and my friends and my coaches and my teachers and everybody from,

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you know, it's just crazy to be able to come out on top.

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I mean, it's just crazy.

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One of the things I think was a giant factor in the fight is that you have been in wars.

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You've been in a bunch of wars.

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And Ilya really had only had some rough moments against Jai Herbert.

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You know use of Zalal gave him some problems, but it was nothing serious that The wars

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that you've been in these just down and dirty brawls

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that you've been in You you're comfortable with the back and forth you're comfortable with enduring

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You won't you know that you're not gonna break

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You know if your body holds up you're gonna keep fighting

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and you can endure I don't think he'd ever experienced

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that before so when you didn't break in the second round

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and I think he made a mistake and I think you're correct about that.

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You said he made a mistake by going to the ground Absolutely.

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And then he hurt you to the body.

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I told Trevor yesterday, I think

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You know Him hurting to my body was the reason one of the main reasons i won you know

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when he when he hit me

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when i dropped it wasn't the first time he hit me in the body

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that was probably like the fourth or fifth one

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and he had landed some really clean shots and he could probably sense

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that i was in trouble and hurt and i think

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that fact made him dump everything

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because it was his last chance to take me out and he almost did take me out

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But when I went down In hindsight, it's always easy to make these decisions in hindsight But when I went down,

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you know, he would be he's had way more more submissions than he has knockouts

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And so for him not to have that belief

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that he's gonna be able to go down there Especially with the Khabib fight, especially with the Charles Lavera fight Especially with all the negativity around my grappling there, you know I think he would have been foolish not to

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because I would have stood back up I would have stood back up

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and he would have charged forward try to finish me I would have jumped on his legs.

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I would have pulled guard.

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He was going to end up on top of me no matter what.

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I wasn't going to sit there and trade with him again.

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I would have front-rolled into grappling situations.

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I would have made him cover me.

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But I think me getting hit is what made him completely blow his,

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you know, Shane Carwin-esque, blow his tank and go for the win.

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And I think that was the choice he had to make because it was going to continue to get worse.

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I beat his ass in the first round like it might

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have been close on the scorecards I absolutely took the first round

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but the amount of damage that I inflicted in the first round Set up the rest of the fight.

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I do think it was a mistake and And you're saying what you're saying is so correct, but what I'm saying is from a standpoint of him Demanding it.

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He's gonna finish you in the first two Understanding the damage that he was taking he took big risks.

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He got in there.

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He kept his hands on your collarbones He was landing really good shots.

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Yeah, that the The two body shots before that, that left hook to the liver, the sound it made was crazy.

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That last one was clean.

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It was precise and deep, but you could tell it was already there.

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But if he didn't put that pressure on his self, and this is what I mean by mistake, is when you come out, you have to know that you're going five rounds.

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And he knew that he had to unleash everything right there.

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If he would have been smart in that scenario saying, hey, we got five rounds, let me step back a little bit, let me do some damage.

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But also he's like, hey, let me get you out of there quick, Justin, you know, can't grapple, can't do all these things what a lot of people think, which Justin's a great grappler.

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And what was so smart about you is when you get tired, that's where the worst decisions happen.

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That's one of my big things as coaching is we get someone tired and then we make them make bad decisions.

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And then we capitalize on that, on those mistakes.

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Justin was able to stay so composed here with being speared to the body.

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And when you take a liver shot, it is way different than the headshot.

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A headshot is like taking a shot with your buddy he's at the bar.

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It's like, hey, let's go.

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But you take a body shot, you're dying.

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Like, you're liver shot.

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You feel like you're dying.

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And Justin, all the decisions he made on the ground, from the triangle, from the armbar, from not being flat, so many good decisions were made in that scenario.

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And I do think it was a mistake.

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Obviously, there's so many different ways it could go, but those type of moments in fights are what make fights great.

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It's overcoming obstacles.

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And he had set that up.

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He had said it, he's like, hey, I'm going to overcome anything.

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I'm going out there, put the worst thing out there, like what are you gonna do to me?

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I've already been knocked out the last second of a freaking huge fight by Max.

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Like you can't do nothing worse to me.

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And that mindset I think is something to take away for all the fighters out there that always, I love how you say it, expect a war always.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Justin Gaethje on Beating Ilia Topuria to Become Champ at the White House UFC - Learn English Speaking with Video

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