Fightland Visits Tristar Gym: Fightland.com

-Meat animals, like these cattle raised on this grass. -This is horrible. This is like "Jaws." -My days are numbered, there's no doubt about it. -Most sheep, too, depend on grass. -Go! Go! Oh! JAMES POLODNA: There's no line when it comes to fighting. You can say this, and you can say that. But when it's time to scrap, you're going to see who's for real and who's not. Some of the best fighters and the best strikers in the world are in this place. These guys in here, they are high-level, and they train all day, every day. And when it's time to fight, these guys fight. So many walks of life in here, and everyone's got a story. Alex the Animal Garcia. Remember? And then he changed it to the Dominican Nightmare? Isn't it Dominican Nightmare? -No. JAMES POLODNA: It's just Nightmare, huh? Freddy Krueger there. Black version of Freddy Krueger. Listen. Look at him, listen, listen. Doh. Doh. Doh. I live in a gym. Do you want to see where I live? Come with me. It's a bit embarrassing, living in a gym. Some people would really like it, but they don't understand that there's no privacy here. I'm not allowed to bring girls back here. I live like a monk. I was in this place called 13 Coins in Bangkok. It was coming to the point where I was fighting so much, my body was breaking down. I was thinking to myself, man, this sport's killing me. I just came from fighting four times a month, to coming here and just training and not fighting at all. Firas really helped me. He was like look, it's going to take you at least two years. If you just give me two years of your time, I'm going to turn you into a super star. But Firas, man, what a philosopher. What a man. Such knowledge and such a good person with such a great character and such a big heart. I was truly blessed that I met that guy at 13 Coins that day and he got me over here. It was a huge blessing. Hey, man, belong to Firas very much. FIRAS ZAHABI: Master. Grand Master. The brain washing process is very tedious. JAMES POLODNA: That's Master Peter. Crazy Muay Thai coach. Definitely the one and only. FIRAS ZAHABI: Tell them the truth, how you sold Muay Thai. In Thailand, they made a pact never to teach the white man Muay Thai. He came to Canada and sold Muay Thai to the white man. He sold out. He's one of the first defectors. You train farang, foreigners. You're not supposed to train a foreigner. JAMES POLODNA: His specialty is striking, yes. Or turning people into absolute insane creatures. FIRAS ZAHABI: Started doing jujitsu and I met the Muay Thai Master, Peter Sisomphou. He started training me in Muay Thai. And I started competing in Muay Thai and became Canadian champ. I did a lot of super fights in jujitsu. I was doing MMA without really knowing it too much. Do you teach the white man the real secret of Muay Thai, or just so-so? MASTER PETER: 80%. FIRAS ZAHABI: He won't show them the real technique. CONRAD PLA: Firas was a fighter, a terrific fighter. UFC had just started, and it was still very segregated. I remember even when they did ads for it, it was almost like a Taekwondo guy against a sumo wrestler. FIRAS ZAHABI: A guy by the name of Georges St-Pierre walked in gym. Over the years, he asked me to start training him. And then the gym just keep growing and growing. Lock your hands together like this. A baseball bat. That's it. Like this. Now go like this. That's it. Now bridge on it. That's it. Now go grab his hands. CONRAD PLA: Firas has a great ability to be the general and put a system in place that produces really, really good fighters. DENIS KANG: The mecca of MMA in Canada. Tristar is a gem amongst gyms, that's for sure. UFC, when it first started, it was only martial art masters and people in their 40s and stuff. So there was no young guys. And when I first saw it, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. But I was afraid to do it, because I was 17. I was still in high school. And then as I started to train here just for fun, I decided to give it a try. And here I am. I'm here every day. RORY MACDONALD: Tristar, I consider it to be one of the best in the world, if not the best. JAMES POLODNA: You get to watch some better scraps in here than you see on the UFC. Dudes just scrapping, and it's just wicked. You can be an ordinary Joe Blow. You can come into this gym, and you can train with them. Before you know it, they're doing a fight quest. And then a few years later, next minute they're bros. That's how it works around here. DENIS KANG: When I was in Vancouver, sometimes there'd be nobody showing up for training. People got jobs that are not professionals. But over here we got a lot of guys who are hungry. They want that glory. They want that gold. FIRAS ZAHABI: Rory, today, first and last round. I'm going to put Ryan on top of you, and you're just going to do guard. And then we're going to fix any problems they might run into. He knows BJ's pass scheme very, very well. But you can't hurt him though. Don't put your glove on him. Fake it, fake it, fake it, but don't put your glove on him. You'll hurt him, he's very small. Rory's-- I think he's just turned 23. But he's so skilled, well-rounded everywhere, it's insane. Like kicks and punches and take-downs coming all over the place. LIke, ***, a new breed of fighter. RORY MACDONALD: It's embedded in my brain and muscles to be the full package fighter. And knock-outs are always the best way to win. Submissions are cool, but it's not the same feeling you get when you put someone to sleep with your fists or your knee or your kicks, or whatever it may be. I can't really put it into words. You have to experience it, that's it. STEVE SIMMS: Yeah, he's a stud. And I hate him. You meet like some *** really weird people that you wish you'd never met. And then you make friends with people that you're probably going to talk to for the rest of your life. But you go to leave somewhere, and everyone's like where are you going? Where are you going? And it's just like, I just want to leave. I just want to go for a walk or whatever. He's like, oh cool. Can I come? JAMES POLODNA: Suck up that knowledge. See, that's what I'm saying. These boys left. They're just chilling in the dorms, and the next minute, they just walk into a gym, and they're getting in world-class knowledge off high-level jujitsu dudes. And they're putting it into their MMA game, you know? And that's the difference about this place. Is that I can just come over here and just have something to eat, chill for like an hour. And then think to myself, stuff it, let's put in some work. And grab a few of the boys, and we just kid up, and we just roll for hours. We do stand up, body on body, just mess around and stuff. So it's just a different level. It's just wild. This is where it's at. KAJAN JOHNSON: It's a really good thing. The dorms-- being able to live in an environment like this. It's got its downsides. But just being immersed here, it just furthers your game so much. Somebody's watching fights. Somebody's talking about fighting. It can get to be a little much at times. Just showing moves, and counters to that move. And then oh, no, I have the counter to that one. I won my first fight. I knocked the guy out in like 24 seconds. I was scared as ***. And the right hand landed, and he just dropped. And I was just like, oh my god! Hooked, line and sinker. You're done, nothing else matters anymore. My mom was a gymnast and a dancer. My dad was a dancer. I'm very gifted with movement. I can skateboard. I can breakdance. I can do parkour. If I see it, I can pretty much do it. So I decided to move out here. First day of training camp, I eat this overhand right like boom. And I just feel this electric jolt through my face, and I hit the mat. I can just feel the jolt still just going bzz, bzz. So I'm like yeah, that's broken, totally. I get up, and everything's double. I pretty much broke the whole bottom of my eye socket off. They put a plate in there. So if I straighten my head out, it actually seems abnormal to me. It makes everything double. So I go like this all the time. So I'm always looking at people all cockeyed. It makes me angry when I see it on video, actually. I'm going to fight, regardless. I've learned too much and I've come too far to stop without reaching my goal. Or at least continuing to try to reach my goal until I'm no longer able to do so. I promised myself when it happened I'd get the best headgear I could find. It's like $460, man. *** are broke. [LAUGH], know what I mean? I've always been pretty slick, hard to hit. And I've dropped a lot of guys, but they don't sleep. This guy, he's like out. JAMES POLODNA: My goal is just to put you to sleep. That's the only goal-- to put many men to sleep. And it's because I just want to cave their face in. Make them feel that they know that they've never been hit like that before. That's how I want them to feel. KAJAN JOHNSON: He's easily, pound-for-pound, the hardest hitter in the gym. JAMES POLODNA: That's the gift, man. So I use it to my advantage. I use that gift. Just hit. KAJAN JOHNSON: Yeah, I just love that, man. FIRAS ZAHABI: One hook inside across his legs. One hook inside to the far leg. Yes. And when you step across, take him right over. KAJAN JOHNSON: You really have to know at least four different disciplines in MMA-- boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, jujitsu. You have to know a lot about all four of those disciplines. And most coaches are going to know a whole bunch about one, or a little bit about everything. Firas, his brain is just incredible to me. Because he knows so much about all of them. FIRAS ZAHABI: And the second he goes to open his elbow, you have to crush it with your hip. Don't let him get to this. If he gets to this, it's over. He's going to escape, you see? He doesn't have you, you have him. Knee. Right hand. Elbow. RORY MACDONALD: It's addictive because of the glory, for me. Everyone's got their individual reasons. Some people, it's for the defense, the rush, the adrenaline, whatever it may be. For me, it's glorifying feeling of knowing I did it right. Knowing I used my techniques properly. I'm bettering myself. So for me, it's glory. FIRAS ZAHABI: Rory, nine out of his 10 problems, he solves them with a knee to the head. A lot of guys, they want to fight after a month of training. And I screen them-- I won't let this guy fight because he's carrying my name. He's carrying the name of the gym. And if he wants to fight and I don't feel he's ready to fight, I won't let him fight. JAMES POLODNA: When I first got here, I didn't listen that much because I came from a stand-up background. So I ended up making a huge mistake in having my first pro MMA fight and losing to a wrestler. Thai fighting, there's such a difference. The tools that you have are very dangerous, but most of them are useless for MMA. I had arguments with Firas. I had arguments with my manager. I put myself in a fight that just wasn't good for me. I was being impatient. I'd been fighting since I was a kid. So if you want to stand up and scrap, we can do that. I don't fear no one. It's just, I wasn't prepared. What happened that night? What didn't happen that night? What didn't that pretty boy Jordan Parsons do to me? He was a Division 1 All-American wrestler. He pretty much beat me up for 14 minutes. And the rest of the time that I did have a chance to get on my feet, I was frozen in time. It was one of the worst feelings ever. So I took my beating like a man. I got punched in the head 307 times. And the whole time I was thinking to myself, this is never going to happen again. So I learned my lessons. And I thank Jordan Parsons a lot. I thank him a lot for what he done. I wouldn't be sitting down reading books like this if I didn't go through that fight. FIRAS ZAHABI: I think you have to be at par on every art. You can't have zero wrestling. You have to be at par. And maybe you've pummeled this guy to death, but if you have zero wrestling he'll take you down at the end of the round. But you have to use your martial arts together. If one of your aspects is at zero, it's just too much of a gap. It has to be at par. KAJAN JOHNSON: I do see it as a martial arts competition between two martial artists. But it's still combat, and that is still a scrap. JAMES POLODNA: I don't really see that martial arts side like you do. I don't know why, but I just don't. Because look where I come from, growing up on the streets and stuff. Where you've got these karate kids and all that. They're out on Friday night, Saturday night, and drinking in the parks and stuff. They're looking for scraps. They're supposed to be martial artists. You end up smashing out with one of these kids, and you ruined him because he's not from where you're from. KAJAN JOHNSON: For sure. JAMES POLODNA: He's not used to fighting for real, you know? But mixed martial arts has got some dangerous sports in it, man. It's really about marketability. It's going to get you where you want to get to. But as long as you can smash, too. You think of some of the fighters now, like Chael Sonnen, OK? He gets whooped, but people just want to hear him talk ***. Because he's got a mouth on him. He knows how to tickle people's ears. DAVID LOISEAU: That's actually not, James, like the guys you fought in Thailand. KAJAN JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. DAVID LOISEAU: I'll fight James Polodna. Failure is not an option. Ugh. JAMES POLODNA: I became very good friends with David Loiseau. Which was like, I've never told him this, but it was like a huge thing for me. Because I used to watch this guy fight on DVDs, and he was just a wicked scrapper to me. And I never knew that one day I was going to be sitting down and eating lunch with him and talking with him. And we just talk so much crap to each other it's ridiculous. DAVID LOISEAU: I train hard. Once a week, but it's hard. Once a week, on Tuesday. Real hard, once a week. [POLICE SIRENS] I got to go, man. JAMES POLODNA: Hey, he heard cops. He's like, man, I got to go! DAVID LOISEAU: Hey, word. I didn't even hear it. It's just subconscious. You saw my face, woo! JAMES POLODNA: I got to go! DAVID LOISEAU: It's kicking. It's [INAUDIBLE] you're kicking it right now. I'm out. Peace, guys. KAJAN JOHNSON: Peace, bro. If I won the lottery, I wouldn't just quit fighting. I wouldn't be traveling around the world. I would be doing the exact same ***. To be honest with you man, I would love to just live all on my own and just live off the land. JAMES POLODNA: Why you prefer that than the city and all this violence and fighting, you know? KAJAN JOHNSON: For sure. It's a more healthy lifestyle. JAMES POLODNA: Yeah, it's way better. KAJAN JOHNSON: So you'd go back to the hunter/gatherer society, that would be the best case scenario for all involved. But unfortunately, it's not really possible for the way the system's set up. JAMES POLODNA: World's all weird. KAJAN JOHNSON: Yeah. JAMES POLODNA: The world's definitely a weird place. I'm going to be honest. I don't care what people think or what they say. This is the fight sport. We're in there to hurt each other. I'm trying to hurt you, and I want you to try and hurt me. This is what we're there to do. We're entertainers. We're there to entertain. So let's not be nice to each other. Let's try and entertain by killing each other. I think that's the best thing to do. See who can kill who first. That's the honest truth.