Lindland: No union because fighters are whores, cowards
On BJJ Well, absolutely, I mean just being a wrestler you know you can say yeah I’m proud of my…
On BJJ
Well, absolutely, I mean just being a wrestler you know you can say yeah I’m proud of my roots and my background and my sport and still, you know, add the submission hooks and the catches to that because that’s really what it is, it’s wrestling. They can call it Brazilian jiu-jitsu or whatever they want, it’s still going back to wrestling. You take it and put on a Gi and I guess you can really call it Jiu-jitsu, but as soon as the gi comes off and those techniques are essentially wrestling holds.
It’s all different styles of wrestling, in my opinion, and it always has been. That’s kind of always been has my philosophy that it’s all different styles of wrestling and you know people ask you ‘do you do jiu-jitsu training? and my answer always has been ‘No, I’ve worked with jiu-jitsu guys before’ you know but I never really done jiu-jitsu training, you know, that was up until about a year ago I put on a gi probably five or six times and got into gi classes at the gym just to observe and be a part of those classes and see what’s going on, but not really to study the sport of jiu-jitsu, just to observe some of my coaches, the way they’re coaching in the classes and you know get involved in the classes down at the gym but not necessarily because I think the gi is going to help in what I’m doing.
UFC not interested
“You know the time I signed the deal with Strikeforce I reached out to UFC and was trying to find out if there’s any interest at the time and coming off a loss to Vitor I don’t think they were interested in signing me at the time.
I don’t know (who made the call), I can’t answer for anybody else. I don’t know who is making those decisions at the time, the matchmakers or the owners, I couldn’t tell you, I don’t know those answers.
Well, the reason was ‘we don’t sign guys coming off of losses’ and I was coming off a loss to Vitor and so you know I went to Strikeforce.
On a fighter’s union
Unless you can get the top athletes and you’re not going to do that. I mean the fighters, they’re all whores, they just fight for the biggest purse and it’s going to be tough unless you could somehow get all the fighters to agree to something like that and you know there’s always somebody going to come up underneath who’s not willing to do it. Like I said, it doesn’t matter who the best guys are, it only matters what the announcers are telling you who the best guys are and the fans are going to believe it.
There’s enough support (for a union) but these guys, outside of the cage or outside of the ropes, these guys are cowards, you know they would not dare stand up to the powers-that-be.
You only have a finite amount (of years) that you can compete and you want to make as much money as you can in that time and you don’t want to mess around with the politics of the sport.