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Reading Log: 9 takeaways from Mark Hunt’s “Born to Fight”

1. He grew up in a nightmare of a home

Nothing good happend in that home: he and his brothers were physically abused by his dad and his sister was sexually abused by his dad. On top of that, they never had food.

I try to remember any light, fun moments we shared as kids, but it’s hard to find anything. If there were any board games, or holidays, or trips to the movies, or the rugby, or the museum, or anything that parents and little kids do together then I don’t remember them. All I remember about that house is a shitload of beatings and what felt like endless days of hunger.

2. He became a Japanese celebrity very fast

He won the K-1 tournament which pretty much made him one of the greatest fighters in the world. He had commercial gigs that he enjoyed doing.

3. K-1 was kickboxing, Pride was MMA

So, yes, I’m a casual. I didn’t know the difference between the different Japanese organizations. He talks about the transition from K-1 to Pride. Basically: ground game. He had no ground training and everyone let him know it coming in. They’d seen a lot of people try to transition and they couldn’t do it.

4. Multiple fights on the same day

It’s really crazy how they’d just do tournaments in the same day. So with that K-1 tournament that he won, he actually lost one match by decision but moved on because his opponent was injured.

5. No 12 week camps (or 1 week camps)

He would pretty much take fights and train between them. It didn’t sound like he’d go off with a team and train for a few months leading up to fights. And often times he’d find out about fights pretty late. Being a heavyweight, he wouldn’t need to cut until later years when he was even beyond the heavyweight limit.

It was just one of those things. I fucked up in that Miočić fight. I fucked up the weight cut and I went in to the fight weak and powerless. At the top of the tree it’s a long way down to hard ground if you lose your grip like that. I used to be able to just kind of roll into my fights. I used to be able to turn up fat or underprepared, knowing my fists would get me through. It’s not like that anymore, though. The fight game’s changed, and I’ve changed too.

6. What if (but oh well)

He talks about how little he trained for some fights and kicks himself for some of it. He didn’t always take ground training as seriously as he should have for transitioning to MMA. But he’s happy with the career he had. Fighters respect him. He has a happy family.

7. Ongoing battle with fighters on steroids

Pride basically said, hey, we don’t test for anything. You can take whatever you want. He stayed away from them though because he knew he was strong enough and had power and was worried about losing coordination.

At the time I believed that if I worked harder I could beat anyone in Pride, but I now realise there was another aspect of professional Japanese MMA that I hadn’t embraced, which probably put me at a disadvantage.

When I first met with Sakakibara-san and the Pride officials in Japan after signing my contract they gave me a rundown of the guidelines the company expected me to stay within, but there was no mention of performance-enhancing drugs.

When I asked what the story was with PEDs, they laughed uniformly. ‘Mark, you can take whatever you want,’ one of them said.

8. Videogames were a constant in his life

He mentions Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Counter-Strike, and probably a few other games. Here’s how he spent money from one of his early large paydays:

I wanted a ‘Cribs’ crib, man. I found a guy to build a completely specced-out computer for me and set up a dedicated gaming room. That year I managed to put 40 Screaming Eagles on my Counter-Strike account, an honour that’s only possible with more than 60 hours of play a week.

9. He always wanted to challenge himself

He had the mentality that he was the best fighter in the world. When he switched to Pride, he had his eyes on getting the championship. That meant going through Fedor. (He lost to Fedor, but got some shots in!) Toward the end he had his eyes set on fighting Cain. Even when Cain vacates the title, Mark is considering the paths that would lead to being able to fight Cain and get a chance to test himself against the best. (He’d have to beat Stipe, but he got destroyed. He details getitng destroyed in the book.)

The Listener #8 (by the Notepod (by Active Recall (by Francis (typing at his computer(but sometimes talking to it so a robot can turn it into text)))))

Some of what I listened to this week. With some notes. 

Chris Best founded Substack, which makes it easy to create subscription newsletters. In part of this interview, he talks about how social media has become this thing that you’re addicted to but often times wish it was better. He describes the information diet and how he wants to give people choice:

“But our job is not to sit here and make you eat your vegetables and say, you know, you should be reading high-fiber information dense scientific reading and nothing else. Our job is to let to put the decision back in your hands and let you make it as your best self. So instead of deciding what you’re going to spend your time on by, you know doing one more scroll through your Twitter feed as you’re about to fall asleep and clicking on the thing that you know that pokes your lizard brain the hardest we like to take a step back and look at your life and think.”

Pat Flynn and Dan John discuss fat loss. Movement guidance: High intensity followed by long walks. Nutrition guidance: More protein, more fiber. Plenty of plans will get you to something like that, so it’s a matter of seeing what works for you from there.

Shaan and Sam talk about how they go about generating startup ideas. Some concepts mentioned: James Altucher’s tip for writing 10 ideas a day, looking for old solutions and applying them to new problems, and reverse engineering things (and actually going and just talking to people about it!)

Kevin Systrom talks about Instagram and has the full experience of taking a startup from a pivot of another idea through to selling it and now talking about it with some separation after leaving Facebook.

They also revisit his podcast appearance nearly a decade ago to discuss what he thinks about the advice turned out to be correct. He’d double down on the importance of people.

And he has some advice for his younger self as well: enjoy it a little more and relax.

In 2012, Daniel Ek talks about starting Spotify. It needed to be better than pirated music. Since then, Netflix has made streaming movies better than pirating movies and then moved into original content. Spotify made streaming music better than pirating music. And now they’re moving into original content by getting exclusive podcasts. Ear domination.

This is a great one because Seth gives a stock answer for the “talk about your failures” where it’s the sort of “my rough drafts are failures”. The host starts suggesting Seth’s failures are all in private (mostly referring to the blog).Seth then starts listing off his private failures—he even tried like selling videos with footage of aquariums.

I’m going to interrupt you. This is your lizard brain talking; you’re looking for an excuse, right? I started more than 100 businesses before I had one that really worked. I was three weeks away from bankruptcy for six years in a row. I went window shopping in restaurants. I launched a video tape with fish swimming back and forth for people who couldn’t have an aquarium. I had a business selling light bulbs door-to-door to raise money for marching bands. There’s a really long list of failures.

Great solo episode that goes over a written list of different ways to get the most out of your workout. Lots of tactics worth trying out. (As always: consistency is key!.)

Podcast Notes

Chris Best founded Substack, which makes it easy to create subscription newsletters. In part of this interview, he talks about how social media has become this thing that you’re addicted to but often times wish it was better. He describes the information diet and how he wants to give people choice:

“But our job is not to sit here and make you eat your vegetables and say, you know, you should be reading high-fiber information dense scientific reading and nothing else. Our job is to let to put the decision back in your hands and let you make it as your best self. So instead of deciding what you’re going to spend your time on by, you know doing one more scroll through your Twitter feed as you’re about to fall asleep and clicking on the thing that you know that pokes your lizard brain the hardest we like to take a step back and look at your life and think.”

Notes: “Hyperfocus” The College Info Geek Podcast

In this episode of The College Info Geek Podcast (“Hyperfocus”), Thomas and Martin talk about Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey.

A few notes.

  • People are super super distracted (distracted every 40 seconds, probably by email) — People find a hard time getting any work done during the majority of time working. They mention the stat that work email is opened, on average, within 6 seconds of receipt.
  • Scatterfocus (hard to connect the dots if you don’t have dots to start with) — Here’s how it’s described in Hyperfocus, by Chris Bailey

”Just as hyperfocus is your brain’s most productive mode, scatterfocus is its most creative. Entering scatterfocus mode is easy: you simply let your mind be. Just as you hyperfocus by intentionally directing your attention toward one thing, you scatterfocus by deliberately letting your mind wander. You enter this mode whenever you leave attentional space free around what you’re doing in the moment—whether going for a run, biking, or investing time in anything that doesn’t consume your full attentional space.”

  • Connection: Range by David Epstein — Thomas mentions this book and says he’s halfway through it but he completely recommends it. It’s about top performers in fields getting there by integrating experience from many disciplines. There’s a sampling period before specializing.
    • Something Epstein mentions is that one of the working titles was Woods vs. Federer. Tiger Woods being a poster child for starting to specialize when you’re still in a crib and Federer is an example of someone who tried a bunch of different sports before becoming the greatest tennis player of all time.
    • And I’m going to continue my recent run of Starcraft mentions in blog posts by dropping an excerpt here from Range:

In 2019, in a limited version of StarCraft, AI beat a pro for the first time. (The pro adapted and earned a win after a string of losses.) But the game’s strategic complexity provides a lesson: the bigger the picture, the more unique the potential human contribution. Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly. According to Gary Marcus, a psychology and neural science professor who sold his machine learning company to Uber, “In narrow enough worlds, humans may not have much to contribute much longer. In more open-ended games, I think they certainly will. Not just games, in open ended real-world problems we’re still crushing the machines.”

This also relates to the notes I wrote yesterday about a Quentin Tarantino interview. They talk about the importance of enjoying things from different genres and different mediums. You’ll be able to pull from all those different things you’re taking in and use them in your own work. Thomas Frank mentioned how the main character in Avatar learns new skills from different regions. I’m currently reading Born to Fight, and recently read a part where Mark Hunt (MMA fighter) describes switching from K1 (kickboxing) to Pride (MMA) early in his career. Everyone in Pride knew the importance of the ground game. He had no experience with the ground game.

From Born to Fight:

A few months later I returned for my first Pride fight, which was to be part of an event called Critical Countdown at the 50,000-seat Saitama Super Arena. I would end up fighting more than half of my MMA fights at this arena.

In the press conference preceding the fight I was asked how much time I’d had fighting on the ground, and I replied honestly.

‘About eight hours.’

There was a ripple of laughter through the crowd, and also from my fellow fighters up on stage. The one who was really giving out a good old belly laugh was Fedor.

‘It was a good eight hours though,’ I said. That was the moment I realised eight hours probably wasn’t enough.

  • Reading, audiobooks — He mentioned that if there’s a book that he’s taking notes on he’s not going to listen to it as an audiobook. Except for a current experiment wehre he’s currently listening to Hit Makers and will read the book after listening to it to see how that goes.
    • My own experience has been that if I listen to a book first and try reading it afterward, I just have no motivation to read it. But if I read the book first and then listen to it, it helps reinforce things a lot and is just a better way to review a book.
  • Be intentional by picking fewer things to do today — It’s really important to set a deliberate intention for every working session. I’ve found the pomodoro technique can be useful for this. I also find that I never stick to doing the pomodoro technique for too long.
  • Create a distraction-free ritual — Set up a sequence of steps to get into a focus mode. Those things that distract you probably aren’t complete surprises. You can plan for those things. If most of your distractions come through your phone, then you can set things up so that you don’t have access to your phone for some period of time that you want to focus.
  • Summary of Thomas‘s focus ritual:
    • Blocking sites (with Freedom)
    • Setting a timer (with Be Focused)
    • Letting people know he’s going into a focus period and asks to not be interrupted

Notes on Quentin Tarantino 2014 Interview with Robert Rodriguez pt 2

Notes from 0:00 to 21:00 in this interview with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

  • Used to see himself as a director who writes himself stuff to direct – 1992 “I don’t want to write. I never consider myself a writer. I consider myself a director who writes stuff for himself to do.”
  • Now sees how writing became more and more and more important – The first real flash of excitement is when inspiration comes and the story takes a turn for the unexpected. Doesn’t feel like he was put on earth to adapt other people’s novels.
  • He’s here for the blank page – You take a blank page and pen and pull a story out of yourself.
  • Rodriguez’s experience with the Kill Bill reading (8 years before work on the movie) – I just really liked this because Rodriguez has footage of this reading. (You hear Rodriguez next to the camera saying things like, “Oh shit.”) He just loves documenting things through his journaling and through his camera. In “Rebel Without a Crew” he writes about his first experiences with Hollywood luxury. One of his actors from El Mariachi is going to join him on one of these trips and he takes his camera just to record the actor’s first experience with that luxury.
  • Is reading to other people part of the process? – The only feedback he wants at that point is: it’s great. He does those readings because he’s excited about it. He can hear what’s wrong with it as he’s reading out loud. He doesn’t need the feedback from the audience at that point, he just needs the audience. This is an important thing when making an effort to get more feedback: make it clear to people what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Even if it’s just “It’s great.”
    • Connection: Koppelman talks about feedback with Tim Ferriss – He can give really harsh feedback to people who are seeking that. For other people, he knows to just be supportive. And he respected that Tim Ferriss in that when he’s asking for it he’s really asking for that tough feedback and will truly use it.

Brian Koppelman: And so the thing I said to you, I now have learned to say to somebody, “Describe the kind of feedback you want. Is this finished?” If it’s finished — Penn Jillette said this to me once — he said, “If you tell me it’s finished, all I’m going to say to you is ‘Congratulations,’ because you can’t do anything about it, and I don’t want to –” and this is important, right? But I said, “Is this finished?” If they say — because if I show you something and it’s finished — a finished movie that I’ve just made, but it’s not out yet — honestly, what is your feedback? Really, all I need at that point is a pat on the back for accomplishing something, right? But if somebody should — the first thing I say to somebody is, “What kind of feedback are you looking for?” Now you preempted that because your initial note, you said, “I want harsh feedback.” That’s great. So I’ll say to somebody, “Do you want the kind of feedback I will give to a peer? Because the feedback I give to a peer has very little positive in it, not a lot of praise.”

  • Rodriguez: Strange being your friend – He talks about how it can sometimes be weird knowing someone as just that normal person. You’re friends with Clark Kent. Then once in a while you’re reminded: oh yah he’s Superman.
  • Doing a Hong Kong style movie the Hong Kong way – He wanted to do it their way. For a big fight, can’t keep it all in your head. You break everything into 2-4 fight moved. The doubles redo it a few times for you to look at it. Then you set up the cameras. If you do 4 movies then that becomes the first move of the next 3-4 moves. It’s shot in continuity but you can still keep some flexibility. You’re not planning every single thing before hand. You add to the chaos in a regimented way.
  • Robert Rodriguez: If you can work for Quentin Tarantino for $1, do it (and write stuff down!) –  Rodriguez scored off of the movie. Rodriguez made sure to write things down when Tarantino would come into a room and give some orders. You mention something as a perhaps, but you don’t  remember it was a perhaps. You remember it as a direct order as the director.