Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Shakur Stevenson (2026) - Elite Mindset, Disciplined Training and Lasting Legacy

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Shakur Stevenson (2026) - Elite Mindset, Disciplined Training and Lasting Legacy · The Joe Rogan Recap

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Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap, and before we get going, please
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follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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our latest episodes in your feed.
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Today, we're taking a deep dive into the mindset, the tactics,
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and the frequently brutal realities of elite combat
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sports. We're going to explore all of
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this through a recent incredibly revealing conversation with the
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undefeated boxing phenom Shakur Stevenson.
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Yeah, it's a it's a really compelling look behind the
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curtain. We're moving way past just the
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physical act of throwing punches here.
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What we're really unpacking is a master class in high stakes
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problem solving and, you know, extreme discipline.
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It gives us a clear window into why the smartest, most
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successful fighters prioritize their long term brain health
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over swinging wildly to entertain a crowd for a few
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minutes. Let's get right into the
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catalyst for this discussion, which is Shakur's recent victory
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over Tia Female Lopez. This wasn't just another win on
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the record. He put on a performance that
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made a highly respected, highly dangerous world champion, a guy
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who had beaten absolute legends, look almost lost in the ring.
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Yeah, completely lost. Right.
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And Shakur described it as having this out of body
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experience where his instincts completely took over.
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That flow state is something athletes chase their entire
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careers, but it doesn't happen by accident.
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When Shakur talks about that feeling of not even consciously
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thinking about every move, he's describing a level of
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unconscious competence. He was using the subtle half
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speed jab to constantly interrupt Lopez's rhythm.
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He frustrated him to the point where Lopez couldn't initiate
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any offense without getting countered.
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But the foundation of that performance really comes down to
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a crucial distinction Shakur makes.
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He draws a very hard line between boxing and fighting.
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That stuck out to me as well. On the surface those terms seem
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interchangeable totally. But he defines them entirely
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differently. He looks at fighting as an
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emotional state. It's an ego contest.
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You get caught up in the moment, you want to prove who hits
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harder and you just abandoned the game plan.
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Exactly. Whereas boxing to him is purely
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clinical. It's about staying present,
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keeping your emotions out of it, and managing distance
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effectively that your opponent is just swinging at air.
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And think about the psychological discipline that
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requires when someone is physically trying to take your
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head off. The natural human response is
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fight or flight. Your ego flares up.
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You want to hit them back. You want to hit them back
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harder, to assert dominance. Shakur is actively suppressing
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that natural human instinct. He's stepping back, assessing
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the geometry of the ring and letting the opponent defeat
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themselves through wasted energy.
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It's wild. It is, and it forces you to look
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at your own professional or personal life.
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How often do you let your ego or sudden surge of emotion turn a
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strategic step by step task into a messy, exhausting fight?
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Yeah, that's a great point for anyone listening.
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And that emotional unraveling was actually visible in Tia Fimo
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Lopez's corner during the battle.
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Oh. Absolutely it was.
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There was a really telling moment where instead of giving
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tactical advice to deal with Shakur's distance management,
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Tia Fimo's dad, who was also his head coach, was just yelling
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Where's your power? He was essentially asking for an
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emotional, forceful fix to a highly technical puzzle.
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That highlights a really complex dynamic that Shakur brought up
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regarding father, son, coaching relationships in the sport.
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The roles often bleed into one another.
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How so? Well, a father naturally wants
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his son to assert dominance, to be the alpha, and sort of
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expects authority to be obeyed without question.
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But a coach needs to provide cold, detached technical
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adjustments. Right in the moment.
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Exactly. When a fighter is sitting on the
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stool for 60 seconds, heart rate at 180 beats per minute, they
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can't process an emotional plea. They need specific instructions,
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like adjusting foot placement or anticipating a specific
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combination. If the father can't separate
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those roles, the fighter is left without a math in the middle of
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a minefield. But staying clinical and
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tactical doesn't mean avoiding risk entirely.
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There was a moment in the Williams of Pita fight that
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seemed to contradict Shakur's entire hit and don't get hit
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philosophy. Yeah, the early rounds.
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Early in that bout, he deliberately stood his ground in
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the center of the ring and traded heavy shots.
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Why would a defensive specialist willingly take damage?
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Because he understands the subjective nature of the
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environment he's operating in. Boxing isn't scored by a
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computer, it's scored by three human judges sitting ringside.
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And there's a well known tendency for modern judges to
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reward effective aggression or sometimes just forward momentum.
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Even if a defensive fighter is landing cleaner, lighter
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counters, the judges often favor the guy walking forward throwing
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heavy leather. So we had to play the game a
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bit. Exactly.
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Shakur realized he had to strategically take a few punches
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early on just to earn Zapita's respect, halt that forward
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momentum, and clearly signal to the judges that he was dictating
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the terms of engagement. It was a calculated sacrifice of
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his preferred style to secure the larger objective.
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That level of situational awareness, it ties perfectly
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into his ultimate overarching philosophy, which is longevity.
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His goal isn't just to win belts.
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He wants to retire wealthy, keep every single one of his
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faculties intact, and be able to vividly articulate his thoughts
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to his grandkids. Which is so rare in combat
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sports. So rare he has 0 patience for
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the slug it out mentality. He openly criticized fighters
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who stand there like punching bags, sacrificing their brain
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cells for a crowd that won't be there to pay their medical bills
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in 20 years. It forces a re evaluation of who
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these athletes are actually performing for.
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Are they fighting for the cheers of the arena or are they
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fighting for their own future? Shakur points to Floyd
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Mayweather and Andre Ward as his operational blueprints.
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Two of the best defensive fighters ever.
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Right Mayweather, regardless of how you view him outside the
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sport, is a defensive wizard. Inside the ring, he rarely
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absorbed clean concussive damage.
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He understood the business of boxing, but more importantly, he
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understood the biology of it. And when Shakur actually spoke
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to Mayweather, the advice he got wasn't about a specific shoulder
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roll or some crazy footwork drill.
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It was incredibly fundamental. It was just stretching.
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Yep, stretching. It sounds almost too basic for
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an elite level, but the conversation contrast to this
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with athletes who completely ignore flexibility.
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There was that anecdote about a former MMA world champion who
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couldn't lift his leg high enough to execute a basic
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jujitsu triangle choke because he just refused to stretch.
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We so often look for complex secrets behind elite
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performance, but it usually comes down to relentless
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consistency with the boring fundamentals.
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Ligament elasticity and joint mobility dictate the kinetic
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chain. If your hips are tight, your
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footwork is compromised. If your footwork is compromised,
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you can't manage distance. If you can't manage distance,
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you take brain damage. Stretching isn't just about
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feeling loose. It's a foundational pillar of
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defensive mechanics. Speaking of performance secrets,
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there was a breakdown of Shakura's mindset under the
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bright lights that completely reframes how we look at
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pressure. He estimates that he only shows
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about 70% of his true capabilities during a televised
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arena fight compared to what he does on a random Tuesday in the
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gym. Which is fascinating.
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Right, his master class against Tio Fimo Lopez.
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He considered that just an OK day at the office.
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This is where the psychology of high performance gets really
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granular. We've all seen athletes who are
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gym superstars unstoppable in practice, but completely freeze
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when the cameras turn on the. Gym Warriors.
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Exactly. When you walk into an arena with
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20,000 screaming fans, your nervous system experiences a
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massive adrenaline dump. Cortisol levels spike, you lose
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fine motor skills, your vision can narrow, and your oxygen
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consumption skyrockets due to the fight or flight response.
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So your body is essentially fighting itself.
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Yes, operating at 70% of your physical capacity is a
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biological reality for most people under that kind of
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stress. So how?
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Does he mitigate that? How does he keep that 70% high
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enough to beat world champions? By attacking the fear directly,
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he doesn't try to ignore the pressure with positive
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affirmations or anything. He leans into the fatalistic
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reality of the situation. He tells himself, It's my life
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or your life in there. Wow, that is intense.
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It is, but by consciously accepting the absolute worst
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case scenario before he even steps through the ropes, he
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removes the paralyzing fear of failure.
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Once you accept that you might get severely hurt, the anxiety
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over merely losing a boxing match dissipates.
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It paradoxically calms the nervous system, which prevents
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that massive cortisol spike and allows his clinical boxing
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mindset to stay online. He also doesn't rely solely on
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his own internal monologue, though he actively seeks out
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knowledge from those who have mastered that state.
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He spent years starting at age 19 shadowing Terence Crawford,
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who is arguably one of the greatest pound for pound
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fighters of this generation. And he didn't just spar with
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him. No, he wasn't just in the gym to
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test his speed against Crawford. He was there to study the man's
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operating system. And the observation of
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Crawford's routine is arguably more valuable than the sparring
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itself. Shakur watched Crawford sit with
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an iPad after practice, relentlessly reviewing his own
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sparring footage. Crawford would watch where he
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got caught, make internal mental adjustments and then return the
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next day to execute the correction.
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Florida State. That is the definition of a
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closed feedback loop. And Shakur adopted that exact
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practice, which requires a massive amount of ego
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suppression. He started recording and
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studying his own bad days in the gym.
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Which is so hard to do. Most people wanted to leave the
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tape of their failures, but he watches himself as if you were
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studying an opponent. He looks at a sequence and asks,
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Why did I get hit with that left hook?
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Oh, my brain shifted from boxing to fighting right there.
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I got emotional. It's the ultimate self audit and
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what's truly indicative of a growth mindset is that his
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search for knowledge has no minimum height requirement.
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You'd expect a world champion preparing for the biggest fight
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of his life against you, female Lopez to be secluded watching
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tape of Muhammad Ali or Pernell Whitaker.
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Instead, Shakur was staring tape of an 8 year old amateur boxer
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named Tremaine Williams. That detail is brilliant.
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He's headlining a massive pay-per-view and his homework is
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an elementary school kid. Because physics and mechanics
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don't care about age. He was watching this kid
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specifically to see how a significantly shorter fighter
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manages distance against a taller opponent.
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He observed how the 8 year old was popping the jab, stepping
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off the center line and using subtle angles to get inside
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without getting clipped on the way in.
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Just perfect fundamentals. Exactly.
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Shakur recognized that flawless technique is flawless technique.
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If an 8 year old has figured out a biomechanical solution to a
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reach disadvantage, a smart champion takes notes.
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That humility seems rooted in his family dynamic.
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He talked about how as a kid, his little brothers would
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endlessly mock him whenever he lost an amateur bout.
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Oh yeah, they would memorize the names of the kids who beat him
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and just randomly drop those names around the house to
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torture him. It sounds funny, but that kind
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of relentless sibling pressure builds a certain kind of armor.
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It keeps you entirely grounded. But the foundational lesson came
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from his grandfather, who was also his coach.
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There was an anecdote about a young Shakur losing a football
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game and his grandfather attempting to shift the blame
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onto the football coach. Right, making excuses.
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But when it came to the boxing ring, the standard changed
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completely. His grandfather told him.
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In boxing, you only lose because of yourself.
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That removes all external excuses.
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It shifts the entire burden of success, failure, preparation
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and execution squarely onto the individual's shoulders.
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That level of extreme accountability is what keeps a
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fighter safe. But, and this is important, as
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much as we can praise the discipline and the tape study,
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we have to look at the darker, more visceral side of combat
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sports that came up in this conversation.
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Because not everyone relies purely on discipline.
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No, they don't. The physical extremes these
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athletes push their bodies through, specifically regarding
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weight cuts, are genuinely alarming.
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The human body is not designed to fluctuate in weight the way
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fighters force it to. We discussed the implementation
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of rehydration clauses in the deep dive, which legally limit
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how much weight a fighter can put back on between the weigh in
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and the fight, but the actual process of cutting the weight is
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a biological trauma. The example of Roy Jones Junior
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dropping from a 200 LB heavyweight title fight back
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down to 175 lbs to fight Antonio Tarver perfectly illustrates
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this. It's hard to even conceptualize
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losing 25 lbs of water and muscle in a short camp.
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The result was a shocking knockout loss for Jones, and it
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seemed to permanently alter his punch resistance.
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Because you aren't just losing sweat when you drain your body
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to that extreme, you were literally draining the
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cerebrospinal fluid that acts as a shock absorber for your brain.
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That is terrifying. The brain sits inside the skull,
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surrounded by this fluid, which cushions it against impacts.
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When a fighter is severely dehydrated from a massive weight
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cut, that fluid volume drops. The brain is closer to the skull
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wall, so a punch that a fully hydrated fighter could easily
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absorb suddenly causes the brain to rattle against the bone,
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resulting in a concussion or knockout.
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That's why manipulating your body to hit a number on a scale
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has a very real, very dangerous neurological cost.
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Which brings us to an even more dangerous manipulation,
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performance enhancing drugs. Now, it's crucial to state that
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we are impartially reporting the contents of this discussion
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here, but the source material touched heavily on the steroid
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epidemic in combat sports, specifically a substance called
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austerene, which has been in the news lately linked to Ryan
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Garcia. Right Austerene is part of a
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class of drugs known as Sarms, selective androgen receptor
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modulators. If we want to understand why
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athletes use them, you can think of traditional anabolic steroids
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like a carpet bomb. They flood the entire system,
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causing massive muscle growth but also severe, highly visible
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side effects across various organs.
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Sarms, on the other hand, act more like a smart bomb.
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They are designed to specifically target the androgen
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receptors in muscle and bone tissue, telling them to grow and
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recover without necessarily triggering the broader side
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effects. It's basically a stealth cheat
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code for athletes who are starving themselves during a
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weight cut. They can drain the water weight
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but maintain their destructive power and muscle mass.
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But in a sport like baseball or cycling, cheating means you hit
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a ball further or pedal faster. In combat sports, it's a
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different universe entirely. Boxing is the business of
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physical trauma. Exactly the point, Shakur
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emphasized. Cheating in boxing is an act of
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extreme, calculated violence. He pointed to the chilling
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reality of the sport by referencing an opponent of
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fighter Subbril Matthias, who tragically passed away after
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about. It's heartbreaking.
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The stakes are literal life or death.
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When one person steps into the ring clean and the other steps
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in as an artificially enhanced weapon with bone density and
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fast twitch muscle fibers optimized in a laboratory, it
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ceases to be a sport. That's why Shakur demands strict
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Veda and USADA testing for all of his fights.
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And the logistics of that testing highlight a constant
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invisible arms race between the agencies and the athletes trying
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to find in the legal edge. The Conversation brought up the
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Icarus documentary and the Russian Olympic doping scandal
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as a prime example of the lengths people will go to.
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It's. Unbelievable.
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We're talking about the head of a national anti doping
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laboratory literally swapping out steroid tainted urine for
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clean urine through a hidden hole in the wall of the testing
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facility in Sochi. It sounds like Cold War
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espionage, but it was the reality of elite sports testing.
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It underscores the immense logistical challenge of keeping
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a sport clean. That's why modern programs rely
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on strict, unannounced random testing.
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It's not just about taking a test after the fight when you
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know it's coming. It's an agent knocking on an
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athlete's front door at 50 AM on a random Thursday in the
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offseason to demand a sample. It's an incredibly invasive
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process, but when the alternative is fighters dying in
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the ring against chemically enhanced opponents, it's
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unnecessary perimeter of defense.
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It really puts into perspective how remarkable the purely
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disciplined, clean achievements of these athletes are.
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So let's bring all of these threads together.
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This deep dive has shown us that Shakur Stevenson's path to the
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top isn't just paved with natural talent.
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Not at all. It is an intense, unyielding mix
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of ruthless self accountability. It's the emotional control to
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treat a fight like a high speed game of chess rather than a
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brawl. It's the humility to take
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tactical notes from an 8 year old amateur and the raw
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intelligence to sit down with an iPad and dissect his own
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failures without making a single excuse.
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And if we step back from the boxing ring, the challenge for
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you listening is to apply this boxing versus fighting mentality
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to your own reality. Look at your career, your
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creative projects, or your relationships.
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Where are you swinging wildly with emotion?
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Where are you letting your go turn a situation into an
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exhausting fight when you should be stepping back, managing your
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distance, staying completely clinical and out thinking the
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problem? That shift in perspective is
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everything, and we want to leave you with one final provocative
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thought to Mull over. Shakur mentioned that he
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journals constantly. He documents his training, his
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thoughts, his adjustments. He plans to use all of this
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accumulated tactical knowledge to act as a highly paid secret
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weapon consultant for other fighters once he retires.
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Which is brilliant. It really is.
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It raises a truly fascinating question for you if you actually
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documented your daily professional battles, the
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mistakes you made, the ego traps you fell into, and the tiny
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brilliant adjustments you implemented to overcome them.
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What kind of invaluable secret weapon manual would you
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accidentally write for the next generation in your field?
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Something to think about. Thanks for joining us in this
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Dee dive.