When Conor McGregor knocked out Jose Aldo, a man who hasn’t lost a fight in over a decade, in just 13 seconds during the main event at UFC 196 on March 5, people also began to take notice of Ido Portal, the movement coach famously hired by The Notorious to help him prepare for the mixed martial arts competition.

Portal does not have any brazilian jiu jitsu belts nor a formal background in any of the typical mixed martial art disciplines like wrestling, boxing and kickboxing. He is however an expert at Capoeira, a traditional Brazilian martial art with combined elements of dance, acrobatics and music characterized by high-flying kicks and flashy spinning movements. In fact, he even taught Capoeira at a local university before he got called to Israel’s compulsory military service, something which he says forced him to change his perspective. He told the Daily Mail: “I had to get very physical to get ready for special operation tests and drills. It changed my physicality. Martial arts take a bit of weird angle after you do stuff in the military.”

Following his military stint, Portal segued away from Capoeira and founded his own “Movement Culture,”an entirely separate discipline that is focused entirely on the science of movement. He became a self-proclaimed “movement coach.”

Now, what does a movement coach do? In a talk with Chuck Mindenhall at MMA Fighting, Portal explained that his job entails rfining the gray areas between the strength requirements, the conditioning requirements and the technical requirements of martial arts training. He said: “The movement game takes the technical side, and takes the strength and conditioning side, and takes the mobility, and takes the pattern and the re-patterning work, and it blends everything together. So at times, I was taking some technical aspects of the game and tuning them up, working and refining that, and other times I was more of the strength and conditioning guy, and at other times I was the therapist, and at other times I was the nutritionist.”

“You [are] not a specialist, you [are] a generalist,” he continued. “[But] you see the big picture much better than anyone else in many ways. That requires a lot of study into a variety of fields. The movement teacher must be a martial artist. The movement teacher must be a dancer. The movement teacher must be a strength and conditioning coach. The movement teacher must be an acrobat. The movement teacher must be a therapist. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of study into these fields, learning to see the common things and to see the important things and to let go of the less important things.”

The preparations leading to the fight with Aldo was Portal’s first time to work with McGregor. He said The Notorious reached out to him after watching footage of his promos and seeing his interviews. He said he is hoping to work with Conor more in the future, but he admits that he has also been receiving an overwhelming amount of requests from other athletes following the spectacular conclusion to the Aldo-McGregor fight.

Portal is also reluctant to claim full credit McGregor’s win. He told Bloody Elbow: “It [his role] was about coming and supporting and putting full throttle behind it, although the amount of work we got to do was minimal for me. A week-and-a-half here, and another few days in Dublin and that’s nothing to blame or to really take credit for, yet. They are a small chain of decisions, decisions that must be made right. And I was a part of those decisions. What to take, when to do, what to do, what to not do. It’s a huge part, what to not do in training, in a session. Keeping them fresh, keeping them in tune, keeping the body very soft, which is very misunderstood.”

As for McGregor, he told Daily Mail that he believed that mixed martial arts techniques had already stagnated. He brought Portal on board in line with his long-held fascination with movement. He said: “I study all types of movement. I just like the way the body moves. I like looking at people who have complete freedom of movement and complete control of their frame. I feel it is to do with more than their body, I feel it is something in their mind as well. I’m fascinated by it so I study all forms of movement, animals because they are graceful and beautiful, I just enjoy movement as a whole. But anyone who is doing anything; I will analyse a man walking down the street to see how they carry themselves. I feel you can tell a lot about someone by the way they carry themselves so I try to move cleanly and efficiently.”

In another interview, this time with Esquire, McGregor talked some more about his fascination with movement. He said: “I learned a lot more about how important balance is, how important control of the body is. From the moment I open my eyes, I’m trying to free my body. I’m trying to get looser, more flexible, to gain control. Movement is medicine to me. We’re the only animal that wakes up and doesn’t stretch. Wake up and stretch. Start there.”

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Conor McGregor, the 26-year-old reigning feather weight champion who also want to take Rafael Dos Anjos’ lightweight crown on March 5 at UFC 196, is an eclectic when it comes to the fighting arts. “I’ll train in any style,” he once told Steph Daniels of Bloody Elbow. “I always love to learn. I always look at everything. I spend all day looking at videos, or in the gym working on the things that I’ve seen. I started out doing some kickboxing and boxing, then a little Capoeira, Tae Kwon Do and Karate.”

“The human body can move in many ways, and that’s what I’m trying to do,” McGregor continued. “I’m looking for my body to move in all ways, to attack and defend. That’s translated into my fighting style. Looking back at the way I used to fight, and the way I fight now, it seems to always change, so I don’t know, I just keep trying to learn new shit.”

Indeed, from what’s already been written about The Notorious, McGregor apparently never had any formal training in any of the more traditional martial art forms. He had never put on an aikido gi, a judo gi, a kung fu gi nor any other fancy martial art uniform in his youth. While he did take some boxing and kickboxing classes, maybe some jiu-jitsu at the nearby neighborhood boxing club. it’s doubtful whether he managed to earn some brazilian jiu jitsu belts, krav maga belts nor any other official proof of completion of any other formal martial art training course ever. Instead, it seems he just spends a great deal of his time at the gym teaching himself to fight in as many fighting styles as he can.

Born to a mid-range working-class family, McGregor trained at the Straight Blast Gym in his native Ireland during his off-hours as a plumber’s assistant at a construction site. Every day, he worked 10 to 12 hours at the site, from where he’d proceed straight to the gym for training. On weekends, he fought across Ireland. After eight consecutive flashy wins in less than two years, Dana White finally took notice, came to Ireland and signed McGregor on for a match with Marcus Brimage on the UFC’s April 2013 show in Stockholm. The Notorious knocked Brimage out in just over a minute of his debut UFC fight.

In less than two years, after just five fights, McGregor had become one of the UFC’s biggest stars. His victory over Brimage was followed by his wins over Max Holloway, Diego Brandao, Dustin Poirier, and Dennis Siver. On Dec. 12, he knocked out Jose Aldo in a bout that lasted all of13 seconds, making it the fastest finish in any UFC title fight ever. He is currently on a 15-fight win streak, 14 of which have not made it past the second round. He is now he is No. 3 in the official UFC pound-for-pound rankings. He’s also become one of UFC’s biggest money magnet. Even his weigh-ins are now filled to capacity events.

So what is it about McGregor that makes him such a big crowd drawer? Aside from having a genuine Irish gift of gab, he is quite fascinating to watch in his fights. Hs movement seems to mesmerize not just his opponents but also the watching crowd. Strange, even comical, his movements although always fluid are often unpredictable. And he is doing it deliberately. In fact, in his Bloody Elbow interview, he revealed: “To me, the most important thing is to be creative, to be spontaneous, to be fearless and to approach it without a plan. Approach the contest with no plan, with no set movement and just let it flow. Do shit that has not been done before, and trust me, I have shots that have not been shown before. I have shots in my book that have not been seen before, and I look forward to showing them.”

“I’m a martial artist, and I’m open to all styles of combat,” he declared. “If someone wants to wrestle, then let’s wrestle. Wherever the contest takes place, the contest takes place. I’m prepared for it all. I fear no man. If you breathe oxygen, I do not fear you. People think I’m just a stand-up guy, well that’s great. Let’s see, you know?”

McGregor is obsessed with movement. At the gym or at his parents house, he’d been seen doing bear crawls and swaying like a gorilla around by himself. After his fight with Holloway, which he won but wherein he got his ACL torn badly, he became even more focused on his movement and fluidity trainings. On fighting tactics, he told reporters, “If it doesn’t involve controlling the human body or manipulating it into a position where it is forced to submit, I don’t want to know. To be able to control someone with your own pressure and movements … that’s a science right there – to shut down another man’s body.”

Before his fight with Aldo for the UFC featherweight crown, McGregor famously hired globally renowned movement expert Ido Portal to help him prepare for the fight. Portal was an Israeli teacher of Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art with combined elements of dance, acrobatics and music, before he segued and founded his own “Movement Culture,”an entirely separate discipline that is focused entirely on the science of movement.

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Previously undefeated after 12 professional mixed martial arts fights, Ronda Rousey famously got knocked out by Holly Holm at UFC 193 on Nov. 15 with a swift, solid kick to the face. Can she recover from that spectacular loss? She can and she will according to the retiring Kobe Bryant who’s now on his farewell season with the Los Angeles Lakers.

In an interview with Mike Bohn of USA Today’s Sport, Bryant admitted reaching out to Rousey after the loss and telling her that “it’s a beautiful thing.” He said: “To be a true champion sometimes you have to get knocked down. It happens to the best of us. It happened with my Achilles (when I tore it), (Muhammad) Ali got put down several times – it happens to the best of us.”

“I think the true mark of a champion is how you get up from that,” added the Black Mamba. “If she goes through her entire career undefeated, she becomes this mythical figure that nobody can relate to. She got beat. We all get beat at some point or another in our lives. Now it’s a matter of how she bounces back from that. I think that’s what makes her a true champion.”

Current UFC feather weight champion Conor McGregor who”ll be challenging Rafael Dos Anjos’ lightweight crown on March 5 at UFC 196, previously also shared his own take on Rousey’s prospects at rebounding back from her loss to Holm. In a snap interview with X17 Online [according to Sports Joe], The Notorious said: “This is the fight business, things happen. Ronda will be back. True champions come back. Defeat is the secret ingredient to success. True champions can conquer that, overcome it and come back. So I wish her all the best and that’s it.”

Rousey is no stranger to life’s challenges. Born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, she nearly died from oxygen lack. She sustained slight brain damage which impeded her ability to speak until she was 6. As if that wasn’t enough, her beloved father Ron committed suicide when she was 8. Ron broke his back while sledding with his daughters. He committed suicide after learning that he would be a paraplegic for the rest of his life.

Ronda struggled in class and was homeschooled for parts of elementary and high school. Her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, persuaded her to learn judo to give her an outlet for her frustrations. Herself a  gold medal–winning judoka at the 1984 World Championships, she taught Ronda some fundamentals of the sport. She progressed quickly through her judo studies, eventually becoming a 4th degree black judo belt holder.

At 17, Rond became the youngest judoka in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. That same year, she also won a gold medal at the World Junior Judo Championships in Budapest. In 2006, she became the first U.S. female in almost 10 years to win an A-Level tournament, going 5-0 to clench the gold at the World Cup in Great Britain. At 19, she won the bronze medal at the Junior World Championships. She became the first U.S. athlete to win two Junior World Medals. In 2007, she added a silver at the World Judo Championships and a gold at the Pan American Games. At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, she won the bronze medal, becoming the first American to win an Olympic medal in women’s judo since it became an Olympic sport in 1992.

Following her stint at the 2008 Olympics, Ronda opted to hang her judo gi in the closet. She became a bartender to make ends meet. She lived at her car for a while. Eventually, after seeing a Gina Carano fight on TV by chance, she decided to join the Glendale Fighting Club in Los Angeles. She made her mixed martial arts debut as an amateur in 2010, winning her first fight by way of an armbar in just 23 seconds of the match up. Two more amateur bouts followed, both ending via armbar submission after 57 and 24 seconds, respectively. After turning pro in the sport, she continued her run of domination, reeling off four straight wins, all in under a minute matches. In March 2012, she defeated Miesha Tate in four minutes and 27 seconds, becoming the Strikeforce Women’s Bantamweight Champion.

Ronda became the first woman to sign with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the world’s largest mixed martial arts league. She was designated Bantamweight Champion. She easily successfully defended her belt in the inaugural UFC women’s bout in February 2012, submitting Liz Carmouche via armbar in four minutes and 49 seconds. At that point, Ronda was her own best publicist, always taking it upon herself to go after and get attention to women’s sports. With her good looks, her brash personality and her penchant for talking tough, she became a cross over star. She was featured on a cover of ESPN The Magazine‘s 2012 Body Issue, and appeared as a guest on Conan O’Brien’s talk show. In 2013, she appeared in a sexy photo spread for Maxim. She also starred in the 2014 movie ‘The Expendables 3’ and the 2015 film ‘Furious 7.’

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