The transcript below is from the video “Robert Downey Jr. on How Martial Arts Have Improved His Life | Joe Rogan” by JRE Clips.
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“And honestly, particularly in the last 15 years when I started really taking martial arts seriously. Half the stuff that I’ve been able to do right in my creative life are principles that I learned on the mat with my Sifu. You know, guard your center. Keep your eye on the lead elbow. Get to the blindside, you know.”
Joe Rogan:
“How often you do that?”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Well, I started I think in the 15th or 16th year. Sifu was over day before yesterday… So you know a bunch of times a week and if I’m working on something or if he can make it the location, we’ll have long stretches where we’re doing it every day. There’s gradings, so you got to prep for those, you know?”
Joe Rogan:
“So what are you doing? You’re doing Kung Fu? Like is it a very particular style?”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu.”
Joe Rogan:
“Really?”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yeah, which is…”
Joe Rogan:
“Very underrated art form.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yes, also so many trade secrets and so different than how I see it when I’m looking at videos, and that in UFC everything is out in the open. It’s discussed and you see, and a lot of the Eastern stuff. There was turf wars and were not really going to show them our footwork. We’re not going to do this, so but anyway. It’s been a real deep dive with my Sifu Eric Oram, who’s Sifu Micigong as Grandmaster William Cheung.
Renowned, kind of Hong Kong rooftop fights, all that stuff. Amazing lore, but very technical, difficult to build and easy to use.”
Joe Rogan:
“You know, you very rarely see that in the UFC. One of the best fighters in the UFC uses it regularly, Tony Ferguson. Tony Ferguson uses trapping hands.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“The Mook Jong.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yep.”
Joe Rogan:
“He grabs wrists and comes over the top of the elbows. He does straight Wing Chun. He does it all the time and he even practices on a wooden dummy.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yeah, I got my ass kicked by a wooden dummy for about three years and then I finally understood the principle of don’t fight force with force, and you know it’s just nuts. So anyway, half the time if I would be in a critical artistic situation, I would just say because Wing Chun problems are life problems; life problems are Wing Chun problems. I would just go back to how did this kind of relate to…? Because I don’t like getting clocked and getting my teeth knocked in because we tend to… Sometimes we glove up but we’re not wearing mouthpieces. It’s very…”
Joe Rogan:
“Why do you wear a mouthpiece?”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“It’s certainly not because he’s very good at pulling his punches and he’s also even better at making sure that I don’t accidentally hit him, but we get as close as we can to what the real experience would be. But again, it’s like everything. I’m sure a few clicks back down the road, there’s things that instructors were doing that would be considered illegal to do to a group of students nowadays.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah, for sure.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“So…”
Joe Rogan:
“Not just a few clicks, why I was coming up.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“That’s what…”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“That’s what I would imagine.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah, oh there’s, yeah. They’d hit each other. The students would get beat up. It was a normal thing.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yes.”
Joe Rogan:
“So did you start training for Sherlock Holmes or did you start training before that then?”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“It’s certainly not because he’s very good at pulling his punches and he’s also even better at making sure that I don’t accidentally hit him, but we get as close as we can to what the real experience would be. But again, it’s like everything. I’m sure a few clicks back down the road, there’s things that instructors were doing that would be considered illegal to do to a group of students nowadays.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah, for sure.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“So…”
Joe Rogan:
“Not just a few clicks, why I was coming up.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“That’s what…”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“That’s what I would imagine.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah, oh there’s, yeah. They’d hit each other. The students would get beat up. It was a normal thing.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yes.”
Joe Rogan:
“So did you start training for Sherlock Holmes or did you start training before that then?”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah, he’s fucking 60 years old there.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Geez, his aged!”
Joe Rogan:
“What’s really crazy is there’s a picture of him walking down the street and I think they were in Rome. He has no shirt on and he’s fucking ripped. Anthony Bourdain, full six-pack…”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Really?”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah, dude. He was obsessed! He would take a private every day. Look at him. Look at that photo. That’s crazy!”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Amazing, eh?”
Joe Rogan:
“He’s like 60-something years old there. So, he would take a private lesson every day and then he would take a class. So he would take a private lesson, sharpen up techniques and then he would roll…”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Take a group class, yeah.”
Joe Rogan:
“He’d take group classes too, which is very, very critical. You got to roll with different people.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Hundred percent.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah and so he was in there like… It became a good thing for him to sort of become addicted to this positive thing.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yeah, I mean for me, it wasn’t going to be golf because it wasn’t going to be something passive like that.”
Joe Rogan:
“Right.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Even though I hear it’s great but it’s just been a great gift, and it’s also the thing where you’re just never done. I made black belt five years ago for another grading and now we’re doing a lot of weapons stuff, and it’s just…”
Joe Rogan:
“That’s awesome!”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“I just adore it.”
Joe Rogan:
“Congratulations! Yeah, my Taekwondo teacher said something to me when I was very young. They said that it is “a tool for developing your human potential.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Wow!”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah and I never forgot that because I’m like guys it’s really difficult to do. Like all martial arts are… It’s really difficult to get your body to move that way and to be able to be effective in a conflict situation. If you can do it, you can do it over and over again and if you can overcome that difficult thing and you thought it was insurmountable, and then you figured out how to do it. Eventually, you get to this point you realize, well, everything in life is like that.
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yeah and just the humility, too. I mean if I’ve noticed anything in the last couple of years, just in UFC, which by the way, I was doing a Robert Altman film called the Gingerbread Man back in the 90s. UFC had just started off and I was getting the VHS tapes…”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“…and watching them. So, when they go back on the “25 years ago,” I was like, “I’ve been there from jump.”
Joe Rogan:
“That’s awesome!”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“But we watch… It’s just that thing of no matter what you think, the tides are changing quickly and…”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“…and you just got to keep working.”
Joe Rogan:
“Well, that was a real wake-up call for a lot of martial artists who was the UFC because a lot of the stuff they were doing really wasn’t effective.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yeah.”
Joe Rogan:
“They thought it would be if everybody was playing by the rules in the dojo and sort of following along, but once you really saw the actual caged event where people were just going balls out. You realize a lot of this stuff just doesn’t work.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“Yeah.”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“I love how messy it was at the beginning, too…”
Joe Rogan:
“Yeah.”
Robert Downey Jr. (American actor, producer, and singer):
“…because the style matchups were so… they were almost crazy! Laughable until you saw the violence.”
Joe Rogan:
“No weight classes.”
