“It’s very hard to control your emotions. But if you control your emotions, you’re going to win the fight.”
— Bas Rutten
Sebastiaan “Bas” Rutten (@BasRuttenMMA) is a Dutch-American actor, former mixed martial artist, kickboxer, and professional wrestler. He was a UFC Heavyweight Champion and a three-time King of Pancrase world champion, finishing his career on a 22-fight unbeaten streak with a strike accuracy of 70.6%, the highest ever recorded by FightMetric.
Rutten was co-host of Inside MMA on AXS TV from 2007 to 2016, and he has been a color commentator in several MMA organizations, including Pride Fighting Championships. He has appeared in numerous television shows, movies, and video games as an actor and continues to be involved in MMA through his coaching and publishing of instructional materials. Bas became a naturalized American citizen in the late 1990s, and in 2015 he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Brought to you by Maui Nui Venison wildly delicious venison, LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 800M+ users, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating.
This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.
Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 800 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.
And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Cover. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim or use code TIM at checkout.
This episode is also brought to you by Maui Nui Venison. I’ve been eating Maui Nui Venison for the past two years, and there’s no going back. My pantry and freezers are full of it, and I restock every month. Why? (1) If I combine Maui Nui Venison with even a little exercise, I drop body fat unbelievably quickly. (2) It tastes delicious and isn’t gamey. (3) Ethically, I feel great about Maui Nui protein, as axis deer are an invasive species on Maui, where their population needs to be managed in order to protect vulnerable ecosystems.
Harvested using stress-free methods, Maui Nui’s fresh venison is clean-tasting, tender, and one of the most nutrient-dense meats on the planet. Maui Nui is a nearly daily go-to for me, both as a supplement to my daily diet (with broth, jerky snacks, etc.) and through main courses (via their fresh-meat subscription program). I fell in love with this company so much that I ended up investing, which is a rarity.
Remarkably, Maui Nui has nearly stabilized Maui’s Axis deer population, which means the door to one of the most exclusive proteins on the market will soon be closed. The list of people waiting for invitations to become a Fresh Subscriber is long, which is why I am excited to offer my listeners an exclusive opportunity to bypass the waitlist and get instant access to one of the few remaining subscriptions. Visit MauiNuiVenison.com/Tim to take advantage of this limited-time offer and secure your subscription today. If you are currently on the waitlist, you will get immediate access. Maui Nui will stop offering subscriptions when they reach 8,000 subscribers—when the Axis deer population will have reached equilibrium—so act fast.
Want to hear another episode with someone who is harder to kill than the average human? Listen to my conversation with former UFC middleweight contender and Green Beret sniper Tim Kennedy here in which we discuss how his “hurry up and fail” mantra adapts to the situation at hand, grueling Special Forces qualifications, walkout music selections, survival basics for urban dwellers, gauging situational awareness, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
- Connect with Bas Rutten:
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
SHOW NOTES
Note from the editor: Timestamps will be added shortly.
- My first exposure to the unbridled might of Bas Rutten.
- Why is there such a strong martial arts tradition in the Netherlands?
- Breathlessness, Bruce Lee, bullies, and birds: a glimpse into Bas’s childhood.
- Why Bas walked out on a culinary career path and gave up modeling.
- How Pancrase entered the picture.
- Pancrase rules.
- Why Ken Shamrock is known as Wayne Shamrock in Japan.
- On fighting Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki.
- Underrated Japanese fighters.
- Remembering Pride, UFC’s Japanese predecessor.
- Pranks.
- Absolute monsters.
- Self-defense for beginners and bouncers.
- Why even professional fighters shouldn’t start street fights.
- Grand Theft Auto IV.
- Now a devout Catholic, Bas explains how the rosary is like meditation.
- Who picks fights with Bas Rutten these days?
- That time Bas got into a bar fight with five bouncers in Sweden.
- Re-learning how to breathe with the O2 Trainer.
- Parting thoughts.
MORE BAS RUTTEN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
“It’s very hard to control your emotions. But if you control your emotions, you’re going to win the fight.”
— Bas Rutten
“I like to see myself as a sheepdog. You’ve got wolves, you’ve got sheep, and you’ve got the sheepdogs to protect the sheep from the wolves.”
— Bas Rutten
“It’s better to have a skill and don’t need it than to need a skill and don’t have it.”
— Bas Rutten
“That’s the problem in this whole society right now. We think that pleasure is the same as being happy. It’s not. You’re just feeding your pleasures, your vices.”
— Bas Rutten
“I want to be a man who can overcome his weaknesses, vices, and imperfections. A man who’s not a slave to his passions and desires, but a real man who’s in control of himself.”
— Bas Rutten
PEOPLE MENTIONED
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 800 million downloads. It has been selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it’s been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.