check out craig and brad's conversation below

Craig: All right. We are back with another edition of Diamond's Corner. Special guest today Brad "One Punch" Pickett. UFC Vet, WEC Vet, Bodog fighting I mean everything. If you're into the sport, you know him and love him and thanks for joining us.

Brad: No problem. Thanks for having me guys.

Craig: So are you you're, you're, you're calling in from London now?

Brad: I am from my, in my office. Well, "office", we'll call it the office? My wife really it's a mind game, you know, when she's around I call it my office. Yeah, I'm calling in from South London. Yeah.

Craig: Nice, nice. So thanks for having, I mean, you've been a long time supporter of our brand, no pun intended. We've supported you too and your fights and, no thanks for coming on. And what are you up to? I mean, well, I mean obviously we're doing the Covid-19 lockdown, but tell me what's going on in your life?

Brad: Yeah. Well, well before, before this all kind of kicked off, what's going on in my life. I do a lot of Common Street, a Russian show called ACA and then I also do a lot of coaching. I have my own fight team great british top team. I mean in England. The process of opening my own gym soon, very soon, just trying to finalize the location, but I had my own fight team already where we just bounce around using other locations at the moment. But the team's doing really well. I have,I'm, I'm busy. I"M on of these people where if I wasn't busy, I'll make myself busy anyway. I,well for this comment as well, I have a very good brand Vigour8 which is a it's a antifungal bacterial wash that we use to help you, use after training really to help you begin, you know, when you were rolling on the mats it could be very daily basis at times. Get yourself, keep yourself from ringworm, staff, impetigo, that sort of stuff. So it's very good to keep yourself clean and all guests in this little current environment. It's very important to have.

Craig: Cool, how long have you been working on that for?

Brad: It's been just over a year, I think. It's a new brand, like it's growing where we sit cool very organically, you know, it's just like we're not blasting out there in people's faces. It's just like word of mouth sort of thing. I think people who haven't tried the product, love the product. It smells nice and I say people who sometimes have very sensitive skin and stuff like that, it works really well for them. I use it as obviously a normal body wash, but we use it as a bath soak, and even shower, shaving foam. You can do a lot of things if you have sensitive skin.

Craig: Cool. Yeah. I mean that's, that's our Diamond MMA crew. Just small and organic. And I've been bootstrapping this thing ever sincea and you're making a good product and word of mouth, especially within the community of combat sports and, and and all these athletes. So that's great. So tell me now, are you officially retired? Are you fighting anymore?

Brad: Well, this is the thing. I, I've officially retired from MMA. As in I'll never fight MMA again, because for me, I reached the pinnacle of what I was going to achieve it, and me I always try to get to number one, not for the one to try not wouldn't be major, you know? Obviously most of my fights are one thirty-five, in the UFC, I was, I was like, the highest rank I got was top five in the world and within that top 10 are 47 people. But every time I had that kind of like top eliminate sort of fight, get to falling over at the final hurdle. So that's why I went down a weight class to one twenty-five because obviously at that time Demetrius Johnson was the world champion. I was the first Win over Demetrius Johnson back in the WC. So my idea was going down that weight class, win a fight, then get an immediate title shot, try it again, trying to be number one in the world, going down the weight class, didn't really suit my fighting style cause you just want to say it was a little bit faster than me and uit is just hit, run, hit, run and I didn't enjoy that sort of fighting and it was one of those ones where I always get a bit prehistoric and I was fooling around. I said maybe not me in a room of any one of those guys gave one of us a key, I'd be coming out of that room, but just over 15 minutes people found a way of hit run move. But I like, I get it as part of sport. Well, I didn't like that. So soon as I lost a split position against Chico Camus, I would still want to, I'm about, I'm not bitter, but still this day I believe I won that fight just yet aganin, the aggressor that always was. Well I, h then, when I lost that fight, I kind of felt like my title chances in that weight class would diminish. So I thought that I'm gonna go back up a weight class went back up and just faught at one thirty-five again, you know, and then I carried on fighting and it got to the stage where I loved it as a job, but It felt like a bit of a job. Sometimes I'd spend a lot of time away from my family and I was getting older and I'm like, you know, able people when they were taught knowingly were tired through injury, get in the sack or something along those lines. Well, I wanted to retire on my own terms, so, decided the next cause the UFC always come to London in March every year, normally. Obviously this year it got canceled, but normally March every year. So I, I knew like when it come back to my hometown, I'm going to count a retire, well I'm gonna announce that I'm retiring, retire in front of all my fans and I did and I had one of the best sendoffs ever. You know, it was like, it was an amazing very emotional time for me. And that was it and then from that after that as in I got asked to do a Bare Knuckle Boxing Match in the UK, I say a year ago really. You know, I was like, I was getting to be itchy feet every now and again, like kind of thing, cause I wasn't really retired cause of injury, I acutally felt not too bad. And I, I felt, you know, I'll give Bare Knuckle Boxing a go. A few stories led to this decisions and then I know I'm a fighter, but I'm, I like to think I'm a little bit smarter than I look How I kind of weighed things up, It was like, well, I'll just retired literally, you know, not too long from the UFC. For me, which is the highest pinnacle fighting MMA, 100% right. And I know as if if I wanted to, I still believe I could of fought in the UFC and still competed and won fights but my taller aspirations, like I said, would diminish I always wanted to be number one. So me retiring and thinking about the fights in Bare Knuckle would give me trouble. It would be fighters that I'm not fighting Bare Knuckle. They're fighting for the WBO boxing. And they're fighting for the, in the UFC, or one chapter, they're fighting in motion not Bare Knuckle motions. So I felt, you know, I forgot how my own, so I've got offered a fight to the British belt on my weight class. So I took the fight and again business wise, it, like I say, I'm like, I'm not going to be fighting to sole caliber guys I was fighting in the UFC and also story behind it. When I got into fighting my, my mum told me I got it from my granddad. He died when I was four, so I didn't really know him, but he was a Bare Knuckle Boxer.

Craig: Really?

Brad: Yeah, that's why in my fights you'd see when I come out wearing a trilby and braces you guys over there call em suspenders. I wore those and that was cause looking back at pictures of my granddad, he used to wear a trilby hat and braces so I always paid tributes to my granddad, so I thought it'd be quite a good story for it to go full circle for me to, have a Bare Knuckle Boxing match and stuff like that. So basically I had it. I wish she lasted two punches, I didn't get hit it was the easiest nights work of my life and if anyone knows me fighting, I normally in a bit of a bad. You know, I always give myself a, always said that I'll go fight the best guy in the world. It'd be a good fight and fight the dustman, then I'll get myself into some kind of fight, you know, cause always, for me it was really weird not getting hit. Coming and winning the British belt and like strange and then so basically that was it. I went on my way. I'm lik okay cool that's fine and then I've been so busy and stuff, always busy. So I'm coaching and commentating, have two kids. So then I didn't really have time to really train for myself. So weirdly enough now with this sort of climate, that we have now, I have a lot of time to myself. So all I can do is get myself in shape in my own time and the end of the day, all I need to do to get into shape. I ain't forgotten how to fight.

Craig: Right

Brad: Nobody teach me how to throw a jab and something like that and for me eat all my body weight it was so easy to get ready for a Bare Knuckle Boxing Match cause all you have to do is hit pads give me a spine. Simple, right? You ain't gotta wrestle, you ain't gotta grapple where it's tough on your body and supply you ain't gotta do so many decicales. Me, it was quite easy to get ready for. So like, no, they, they reach out to me, say, what would I be interested in fighting again? When this all dries over and I was like, well, I don't know. So I might, I may, I may do another one on the British BKB.

Craig: Cool. Wow. Yeah, I mean you're obviously, your MMA career is, speaks for itself and you know, one of my favorite guys to always watch and it's great to see you transition from, from just everything. Not just Bare Knuckle, but coaching and business and then family. That's, that's great. What, so Bare Knuckle Boxing. How does that yeah. I don't know how many punches. You said you can't throw too many punches, but how do, how do your hands feel? I mean, is it different without the wraps? I mean, what, I know Joe Rogan talks a lot about that he thinks that's the way it should be in the UFC is no gloves just Bare Knuckle.

Brad: Yeah. For me especially, with the sort of boxing side of things Bare Knuckle Boxing, I think it really suits MMA sort of fighters striking because we used to have small gloves, right? I mean you used to like boxing, you could like use your shoulder, you have a bigger glove to protect and a bigger glove trying to hit you so with smaller hands you know with small hands they're gonna get through these little bits. So I think the striking MMA, if you're good, if you like a boxer sort of striker that I was, I loved the boxing side of MMA. I think it really suits my style most with my hands. Like I said, to be honest, you could go back you saw my Instagram page somewhere back in the day or you could just go on YouTube I guess. I threw two punches one was an overhang right we strucked him. Yeah. The 22nd count, which you get in Bare Knuckle Boxing, he go back up and then I flew a leftover looks it didn't kind of hit him but it just shows how devastating its Bare Knuckle Boxing because as I threw my left hook he was going out of the way and I kinda I clipped his nose. His nose just kind of obliterated and like he was on the floor and there was like a lot of damage and in a weird way I laugh about it now but they, they, they wrapped his face up and they kinda mummified him in the cage, he looked pretty weird you know. Yes, it just shows you how, how brutal it can be, you know, just a couple of punches landed. I like, luckily I never really had throughout my whole career fighting I've never had any problem with my hands, knock wood.

Craig: You hear a lot of fighters talking about breaking hands and having hand issues, did you do, do anything to strengthen them to prevent hand injuries? You think it's genetics? You think it's just technique and how you throw a punch? What do you tell me?

Brad: Genetics. I think genetics and also techniques, you know, punch with good technique. I mean, you're not going to break your hands. You punch with sloppy technique, you don't hit correctly you're gonna break your hands you know. I think it's a mix of both genetics and technique.

Craig: So I got to go back and watch your fight. What, what did you wear? Did you just wear shorts? Did you wear a cup for the Bare Knuckle, you probably didn't need to.

Brad: And this is the funny thing, right? I didn't wear, so I went to, I went to the the ring. This is, this is the funny thing. I went to the ring and the ref like felt my cup and go you don't wear a cup, and I'm like yeah no and he's like, no, you need to wear a cup. So I had to wait till someone went backstage to get me a cup They put it on right. So that, that took longer than the fight itself. The fight was like 24 seconds they took longer for someone to go backstage, get me a cup to where a cup, I changed in the middle of the ring like pull my pants down, put a cup on like alright, let's go. It's like pretty weird

Craig: Oh, man so they require a cup.

Brad: Yes, the next one. I honestly will wear my diamond cup.

Craig: Did do you, which way did, did you have to cut any weight for that or?

Brad: You see it was same day weigh-in and I think I, I fought at 66 kilos. No, it, it was fine. Yeah. Easy. By now I weigh about seventy one kilos. So you for starting training and getting yourself in shape. I mean I fought a flyway, which is 57 kilos. So yeah.

Craig: So now, you got all this going on and we're, we're kind of stuck at home. You've got the kids and what are you, what are you doing to stay active? I mean, are you just working on your businesses? I know you have a podcast and tell me what's, walk us through a day of your life right now.

Brad: Right, this is mine and some people could maybe take some of my own advice. I'm not one of those people to preach people, but I'll do this. I right a list, right. On what i'm going to do tomorrow, right? Well, what I had today, I did give a list. I needed to go to the post office in the morning as they open cause I needed to get some poses, done that then I had to go to eBay. At the moment, I cleaned up my loft and I bought every down, find, put stuff on eBay, some old stuff that I'm never gonna. So I've actually had, I've actually had quite a bit of money for selling stuff on eBay.

Craig: That's what Gary V talks about is just flipping that stuff on ebay and getting rid of stuff absolutely.

Brad: There's certain things I was going to through away. You know that like, no, for this forum there's like a, and this is a toy of Michael Lau, right. I was going to just through this away and I'm just I check on eBay and someone's selling this for 170 pounds, right. Not signed, so I'm like, okay, I'll show you what this is. All right, so that's one of the best ways. It's got some spray cans in there, right? So I'll just put it on there for 150. Undercut them, my competition hasn't been sold yet, but that's me. I just got a lot of, loads of old toys I used to collect. Key brooks as a fly. I've got loads of star Wars stuff over there.

Craig: Oh yeah, you've got nice collection.

Brad: I've got, I've got. I still build the millennium old Falcon.

Craig: My son built that, the millennium Falcon.

Brad: That, that one there.

Craig: He built that it took him four months and, we had to get pieces sent to it. That was a hard one. He was young too. That's hard.

Brad: Yeah. That's the biggest piece I've ever done. Yeah so.

Craig: So let me ask you a question. I want to get back to your, to do lists, because I'm fascinated by to-do lists. I have a, I have my own little book I carry around with me.

Brad: Yeah.

Craig: Cause I'm doing 10 different things at once. When you write your to-do list, do you write it in order that you want to do it or just randomly throughout? You just, I mean, when do you make it? Give me real. Walk me through real details. Do you have a checkbook, a checkmark where you scratch it off? Are their times I want to learn about this to-do list.

Brad: All that can change. Sometimes. A perfect example was on my list today I, I've done most of the things. There's a few things that I haven't achieved the day, which I'll do tomorrow, pass on to the next day. But because reason today is I'll know why I looked out my front garden. I know. So my neighbor who is I think 90 years old, 85 to 90 old and he's trimming these hedge and I went, what are you doing? I went down there and I said, look, go back in the house. Give me a Juma. I know I've done all these fun garden. Well I'll just do mine, so don't mind. See that just added to my day. So, there's always little bit of leeway here and there, but what say reason I doing this, things could always change. We not having to do this is because it gives me some sort of objective. Sometimes if you just wake up in the day and go, what am I going to do today? Straight away you've lost know cause you've had no plan and the get up and half your day goes and you go sit down and the I want to go eat some breakfast. You go eat some breakfast and you sit down or maybe, maybe I'll play some games or maybe play your video games or watching movies is fine, but plan that in, know. I normally do some, well I think the productive stuff first. So when you sit down and watch, you feel more sit down and play on your computer. You don't feel guilty. Yeah, I've had a work out. I've got up this morning, I went for a ride, now come back. Now I had a bit of fun, I'm going to watch a movie or play some video games.

Craig: You earned it right.

Brad: Yes, exactly that. So like listen I'll always go on about life for me. Everyone goes on about money. I don't, for me the currency everyone has is 24 hours in their day. Everyone has that, no matter how rich or poor you are, you have 24 hours. But what you find in successful people, they do more with their 24 hours than the next person. One person would sit there, watch all the seasons of breaking bad and don;'t get me wrong they're brilliant, but then, yeah, this time now is a really weird situation. People complain and they get wrong, but you're thinking of maybe a month or two time ways. Also, it's about people going to be crying for this time now. You have so much time to invest in yourself, learn a language. So easy nowadays to pick up a language from your phone and learn, like just do it so much. If this happened 20 years ago, yeah, I'll be screwed. There's not enough stuff like now. Here chatting she online, you know, easy. You know, like we don't have, we didn't have this. We have a ,we have a we prepared for, things like this for years to sell by slate in a way that we could do our shopping online. We could order any food from Amazon, online video games, and we can face time. No, see, we use this situation, you know, we could do just a few more. So like, for me, end of the day, I just think people should use this time wisely. You know, don't just sit in the house and mope, use it. Yeah. Again, 24 hours in a day, least do one workout. I've only got one today. I just went, on my, Peloton bike and to start off the imminent workout, I feel good. Can't find some of that. Learn how to cook, if you can't cook, save your money, then ordering loads of takeout. It's not hard, there's so much. Like my, my, my, washing machine broke down the other day. Go online, taste it. It's not that hard.

Craig: It's, so I love what you're saying. And actually we're going to, we've got a few minutes left and I'm going to word it. I want to do this again because you, you're some of this advice is great and just the way you're presenting it, and especially with the to-do list. I mean, having that to-do list. When you wake up in the morning, what you're saying is you're, you're, you're proactive. You know, you're, you're, you're not reacting, you're, you're being proactive and you're attacking the day you're, you're on the offense. Not the defense is what I'm trying to say.

Brad: I understand. A lot of people would rely depending on what they do for work, right? So when you, when you have a job, you rely on your boss to tell you what to do, so you can just turn up and your boss goes, do this, do that, do that. But at the moment, everyone is their own boss. You're going to need to tell, you need to tell yourself what you're going to be doing tomorrow. Oh well you're not gonna do nothing. And your days is going to go, and then you're gonna think, oh what have I done today. I've done nothing. What would I say for me, since this time I've cleaned up my loft, I've put flooring down in my loft. I've sorted out my garden. I've done the decorating, I've done so much stuff. I keep myself so busy. I filled up two skips in my front garden. I filled them up and they've been taken away. No two skips worth of junk.

Craig: It's, it's, it's valuable time that, you know, hopefully we'll never be able to at this time and have to be in this situation. But it is, you can make the most of it, make a to-do list and, and get your shit done. Like you're saying. I mean this, this is, there's no excuse if you want to watch a little Netflix. We all love it but earn it and plan it.

Brad: Exactly.

Craig: All right. So I want to wrap up before we get cut off. Tell people where we can find you, what we should be looking for. Give us a, give us all that.

Brad: Well, if you wanna follow me, I guess the main platform social media I'm on maybe is a Instagram is "@one_punch", You know, I do a lot of stuff there of my life and my family as obliged, quite funny up two kids who get more love over my Instagram stories than I do. I'm on there, that's my main place you can hit me up. Yeah.I'm also on Twitter and the same thing. "@one_punch", And stuff like that. I have Facebook Fan Page as well. But yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm happy to come on whenever. Yeah and stuff like that. I know

Craig: Life advice with "One Punch", I mean, I, I think I love it. You, you're getting me motive and me to do to-do lists when I have stuff to do, but make it a religion make it a habit everyday. And if something doesn't get done move it to the next day's list.

Brad: The, the fee where they say you have to do something 14 times in a row to make it habit. No. So like if you do something, if you go full, go up for a run, one day and you do it 14 days knowing now that becomes a habit in your body. And then you would do that every day for the rest of your life until something happens. But don't get me wrong doing it 14 times in a row. It's not easy. Sometimes life gets out of hand or whatever, but apparently psychologically, if you do something 14 times in a row, it becomes a habit. And when you have a habit, it's a habit.

Craig: Love it. Brad, thank you so much for coming on. We're going to do this again soon. All you guys that are liking these Diamond Corners like, subscribe and share em with your friends and we'll be back again soon. Thanks. All right.