Green Light with Chris Long - Paul Bissonnette! 'Biznasty' on NHL Playoffs, Fighting on Ice & Stories From the Russian Pro League. Best & Worst NFL Stadiums.

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

(01:22) - Welcome, Layup Line, Hammocks and Favorite 2021 NFL Win Totals. (27:42) - Paul Bissonnette on the 2021 NHL Playoffs, Social Media and Sports, Hockey Fights, Mental Health in Hockey and Bonnaroo. (1:35:09) - Reid Roulette: DK Metcalf's Track Feat, Best and Worst NFL Stadium's and Brandon Bair Receives Capes. Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42 Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was just trying to get our team going, and I ended up going up off the face off and saying, hey, let's go. And he said, no, Hitch said, no, we don't want to give up the momentum. So I was doing anything I could. So I kicked him in the back, the leg, that kind of slew footing. And, and, yeah, you could just see his wires crossed. He's like, all right, let's go. And then he just, he got me off the hop, hit me with a bomb and then slam me through the

earth's crust, basically, if you watch the clip on YouTube and the building just erupts. all the fans coming down to the penalty box from that section being like fuck you you fucking loser and and revo in the middle of the ice doing the heavyweight belt the crowd elevating their noise so that was probably one of the most embarrassing fights I experienced during the during my time this is the third day of the week Tuesday yeah you're saying Sunday is one yep technically that's true yeah I'm I don't know I guess call me old fashion call me new money. I'm a Monday guy.

New, new. Yeah, you knew. Because it started with Sunday. It's the Lord's Day. It's first. And then everything after that, unless you're just an atheist. Well, I look forward to the Lord. Like, I work for the weekend. I try to get everything out of the way. You like to earn your, your Lord. Yes. I'm deserving of his grace or her grace the first day of the week. So Sunday for me.

But nonetheless, happy Tuesday. Rochester, New York. Hello. You told me you were going to say hello to Rob. Rochester this week and I was excited. Rochester, of course, home of Rochester Big and Tall. Which is a magazine that would always be in the little thing by the toilet all the time at my house. These were big and tall guys and for a long time,

it was hard to get clothes if you were big and tall. Harder now because skinny jeans, skinny clothes put Rochester big and tall in a bad place. They're coming back because baggy clothes are coming back. So I'm excited about that. Also a few famous people from Rochester. You're gonna be shocked. You like Thespians, Whig,

Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah? You like athletes? Abby Wombach, the Jones brothers. I would say Wombach. However she wants it said. We'll go with that.

She goes with Womba. I invite her onto the pod to clarify. Well, no, to tell us how she prefers the name to be. I mean, I'm not real good at the names. Kodak.

Kodak, yeah. That was one that blew me. Kodak didn't even make the cut. That's how deep Rochester is. Garbage plate. We haven't even mentioned. You're not into sports or movies. How about like human rights?

Oh. Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas. Nice. Rochester is a, it's deep. Hey, warm up. Layup line. Snoop doggie dog. You try to see me on the TV.

Use a BGD. Go double G. Yes, I'm an OG. What was the name of the song? Well, judging by the lyrics was it W. Balls? No, it was Shizn't it. Oh, nice.

It's off the album, Doggy Style, of course. Right. Which is an absolute banger. Snoop, I want to point this out for the record. My AVI. It's Snoop right now. If you look a little closer, this is when I was good at football. He had your boy's jersey on.

And that was a bit of a lifetime achievement. Somebody texts me, hey, watching BET. Stoop Dog has your jersey on. I sent him one of the game worn jerseys and he threw it on like it was like a Mitchell and Ness. I thought it was so fucking cool, dude. Right. Way cooler than

putting it up on the wall, which yours might not have made the cut. He just threw it on his person. No, he threw it on his person, which is, I hope he knows we washed that. Shout out to Jimmy Lake and the boys in Earth City. When you give a jersey, you're wondering what happens. I am. They wash it usually.

So you exchange. the jersey on the field, then you give it to your equipment guy and he washes it. And the stupid notes you all write to each other on like the numbers these days? Does that stay in there? So that's a good question. Usually I get dudes to sign it afterwards for that reason. Like whenever I trade a jersey or traded a jersey, when I was relevant, I would, I would get bro's jersey and bro would get a jersey in return. And he might ask me to sign it. But then, like, on my end of things, I want it washed first. And then I'll send it.

So I just sent out like a batch of jerseys. I hunted down Justin Smith, dude. Mr. Anheuser-Busch Tatt himself. Mr. Legendary 49er, he was one of my favorite players. And I felt like an absolute fanboy asking him for a jersey. But we exchanged jerseys and I'm sure mine is like in a box in his basement. But I have his and for years I was waiting to retire to ask for a number of guys to sign it. And it's pretty cool. Like on the back end, guys get their addresses. We hit each other up.

If we don't have it, we ask a friend like, where's this guy live? Can you give me his address? Send it out. They sign it. Send it back. But then are you going to Philly, New England, L.A., saying, hey, can you send me my own jersey? How many do you have? So I have a couple stockpiled for trading still. A couple. That's not. Yeah, I mean, five or so. But like, at the time, I would have signed the jersey and giving it to them or given them a blank one. Not everybody likes their jerseys like signed. I would be one of those people. You want yours just like, yeah, I like mine signed until William Hayes signs it like profanely. And I have to like fucking put it in the closet, not like behind the, uh, the squat rack in the home gym.

You've got children. Yeah, I've got kids. But yeah, definitely, uh, not for nothing. I've got little kids all over America wearing my face on T-shirts these days. How about that? How about that? Yeah, I know what you're saying a little bit. Dude, the mugs, the whole nine yards.

So keep buying the merch. Right now we kind of have one shirt that sells. Yeah, when are we going to, we ever going to open the books on that? Listen, I'm buying you lunch today, yeah? Yeah, we're square. But everybody that bought this shirt posted about it. No, there's many people that bought this shirt.

I'm pretty impressed. And you're going to get all of it. There's an office building not far away where they're about six mugs. So that's. Yeah, redacted realty. Nothing like juice in the sales With your own co-workers No, I didn't tell him, hey

I didn't I didn't Do you retweet anything Where it gets around Well yeah, I'm retweeting I'm contractually obligated to retweet I've got to hit I've got to hit seven retweets a week

Wait so the contract signed It's not You have you signed it? Have you signed it? Have you signed it? I'm the one who wrote the motherfucker Yeah and have you signed it? I wrote it

I'm waiting for you to sign it There's got to be sign It's got to be counters Sign see you delivered. So I'm sort of waiting for the sign part. Your house. Huh? I'm just waiting for the...

I'll docky sign it. Oh, nice. Yeah. Little housekeeping here. A lot of housekeeping. A lot of housekeeping. Like busy broom in this motherfucker. Nice.

Magic maids. Mary maids. First off, I had a decaf coffee today. I want to cop to that. Never meet your heroes. You know, you walk in. I see a sprite can, a coffee. I was feeling a little bit, I was dragging this morning, right?

And I thought, you know, today would be a good day to break the rules. I'll pay for it later with a spike of anxiety and just general like. Malays. Yeah, malaise towards the world, dude. So just know that look at my eyes. It was the decaf coffee. It was the 15 milligrams or so of caffeine that could have been hiding in that quote unquote decaf coffee. Were you dragging at all because we did some socialization yesterday?

Maybe it was the mental stimulation of a kid's birthday party. We went to a kid's birthday party yesterday. Happy birthday to those kids. Yeah, redacted and redacted. Yeah, it was a dual birthday party. So I got something to say. I got a few things to say. Okay, hit me.

A year off from socializing, I might be not only back, but better than ever. Okay, and who told you that? You maybe? Yes, yes. Bumpy start. I roll in. I see Tom.

Tom walks away from me within 30 seconds. Then I go to you. You walk away from me within 60 seconds. And I'm like, what? You were like, what's going on here? I'm like the play. Steven Glansberg over here. But then I settled in.

And I actually, I didn't do less. I did more. I was calling people by their names. I was asking how their kids were. I was saying how their kids are looking great over there in the yard. I ate the food. Kid looks older than the last time I saw him. Yeah.

Or her. That sort of thing. I ate the food. Usually stay away from birthday party food. That was a shock for me that you ate birthday party food. I ate birthday party food. Which was quite good. Stayed quite good.

Shout out Kevin. I stayed longer than I thought I would. Oh, this is a cheat code here for socializing here for me moving forward. Now this is not new territory. People know this, but I held an open beer. Yeah. Without drinking it. And nobody gave me any flack for not drinking.

Well, it was a kid's birthday party. Yeah, but there's booze. Everybody's booze in it. except for me. And so I just held the thing. Nobody bothered me. I feel like the one place you can get away with like having a water with ice is at a kid's birthday party.

You got to be an enormous douchebag back half of 30s to be like, you're not drinking that one? You guys are like that. We are with you because you're our friend, but I'm talking about like an acquaintance. Right. Right. Our circle. You resist getting drunk. Our circle of friends cannot stand if somebody's not high or drunk or I don't know what it is.

But nobody can just be of sound. mind when we're hanging out. Maybe we're the ones with the sound mind. So you might be right. But just having that thing cracked open, I didn't take one sip. It was a beautiful thing. Again, making it was a kid's birthday party. I wouldn't even thinking like that. Let's see. Yeah, okay. That's all I have on that. You? Me? Yeah. I mean, I saw the movie Nomadland. It was terrific. Francis McDormand is amazing. I knew she was amazing. Even when I saw three billboards and hated the movie. I was just like, she's worth the price of admission.

She's in my favorite movie. Which is? Borgo. It's your favorite movie, eh? Yeah. Well, you see I said A because we've got Paul Bissonette on today. Should have said that off the top. A plus co-host, Tootie. A plus interview. He's the man.

Can't wait for you to hear that. And then, yeah, Nomad Land. It just kind of made me feel like a sedentary you know, wasteful piece of shit is what it made me feel like. But it uplifted me at the same time. And for a movie to guilt trip you, justifiably and also to uplift you at the same time, it was incredible. It was jarring.

It was a little jarring. And the director, Chloe Zow, I guess is how you would say her name, is terrific. And I had no idea that she also directed The Rider, which is a movie that you should absolutely see. anybody listening should absolutely see the rider. It's a movie about a rodeo dude, and he basically has to come to grips with the fact that he can't ride,

I guess the horse for him or the bull, one of those scary animals that you shouldn't be in your right mind riding. That's like sound metal. Yeah. You're all about deprivation. I'm all about deprivation. That's very interesting. The reason it was poignant for me was,

and not to over-dramatize retirement, but you know, it's a big deal. And so, like, I was leaving the game, and that's scary. And I think it was right before I was gonna retire, and I was like, fuck, you're watching somebody. And you identify with the fact, this guy struggled to transition into being

a quote unquote regular guy. You can't chase that dragon anymore. And I thought she captured that whole thing beautifully. See the rider, but also Nomad Land. It was awesome. I learned some compelling stuff in the biz interview about you and your transition into retirement. Candidly, I can't remember exactly what it was.

This is very candid. I'm going to go back and listen to this one. This is a very good one. It's a very good interview. I didn't know when to tell you this. I'm going to tell it to you now. Yeah. You're parked in the parking lot outside.

I forgot to fucking. You have a ticket. Fuck. Sorry. You know what? I'm walking by. I look up. You got a nice looking truck.

Bam. Reversed in, by the way, as always. As always. yellow folder where you can send your money. Don't spend it all in one place city of Charlottesville. It's fucking annoying.

You know what? All these parking apps, don't max them out at two hours. I'm a working man, okay? Two hours, I'm in show business, Charlottesville,

okay? I'm in show business. I'm in the middle of interviewing biz nasty and you're telling me my time's up. Give us a way to quickly, and you're probably like, yeah, there's a machine right over there.

But I don't know. just something on my phone. It's a little bit easier. I've got a big shout out. Okay. Cowboy Reed. Cowboy Reed for me made Mother's Day. We had the staples. You had the card, the picture of the kid, a photo album, if we're continuing on the candid street here.

At any rate, I have this bright idea to get a hammock. Now, you want to talk about stress and things. It's hammock shopping on the internet for the better part of three, four weeks. So many hammocks, dude. I've been in the middle of trying to acquire a hammock for a better part of six to eight months. Yes. Well, go to Cowboy Reed. Guy's a genius on the hammock front.

He's the hammock guy. Yeah. You got your rope hammocks traditional, you know, all weather. Uh-huh. You got your camping hammocks, more of a cocoon type deal. You got your, uh, are we putting it on a stand? Is it going between two trees sort of deal? That's the dad hammock.

So Cowboy Reed lent me a hammock, some straps. Shout out Eno, great brand, fantastic brand, E-N-O-O. He's out here trying to get ad reads from a hammock company. This is great. And my lovely wife. I'm addicted to ad reads. My lovely wife for free. Loved it, spent time in it, as did I.

We spent time in it together. We threw the baby in there. Frankly, I don't know how the, how the, well, actually, I do because it's it's such a great company. The straps, they're just set it and forget it. You don't need to worry. Has Eno contacted us already or is this just? Not yet, but I'm sure it's coming. Look at this picture. You think that's an award-winning picture. My baby is in that picture. You see that picture? That's beautiful. It's a grove of gorgeous mature hardwoods. And then look. And in the middle is a green Eno.

With a baby coming out of it. You're just nestled in there and a gorgeous baby. Yeah. horse playing in that uh i mean that's just so at any rate what a bucolic scene and so now i'm charged with okay do we go the eno route obviously how many do we get it's really the question now pick me up one will you yeah and i have uh cowboy read to thank you pick me up one i'll tweet about it you know i'll post about it on an instagram over a million people you got a bigger reach yeah but you know what we can do huh we can be the hammock pod. That's right. People come to us

when they got a question about a hammock. I've been meaning to say this for about two years. We are the number one middle school friend podcast in the world. I would agree. Sixth grade. It's like winning the XFL. There's like six teams. Yeah. You know? And we're still champions.

There's not a lot of teams, dude, in that weight class, dude, in that division, in that league. Somebody's going to come out of the woodwork. Oh, we were friends in middle school. Yeah, we're the 23rd ranked sports podcast. Oh, we don't give a fuck. We really don't. Okay.

I'm moving right along here. No, Cowboy Reed. I want something else with Cowboy Reed. Stay on Cowboy Reed. Last week, Cowboy Reed. So some of our listeners said that we sounded like we were on crack for like two different like 20 second periods.

Oh, right. The pod had slipped into two X. Bruce Ariens. Bruce Ariens started talking fast, which is unlike him. And they were like, what's wrong, what's wrong? Reed who was working his ass off

they tried something new they were trick fucking back in the edit bay it's like stick to missionary Reed wondering if I just didn't know that term jackhammering or something like it was like a scene in Team America World Police you remember that scene they were just

the equivalent of that in the edit bay and it just ended up we had two expedited segments in the Broussarians conversation which was wonderful thank you guys so much for the feedback. You guys really like that pod. We'll try to get a number one draft pick and a Super Bowl winning head coach on every week. And Reed, he had a little hiccup. I just, we wanted to officially bust Reed's balls, but also acknowledge that he works his balls off.

He does. He does. I have a statement. On Friday, May 7th, a few moments during the episode with Bruce Ariens and Devante Smith were heard in 2x. First of all, I apologize to all the greenlight faithful. I hold myself to a high standard and I didn't meet that standard on Friday's episode. I worked very hard to atone from my error and restore my reputation. To the Twitter user at

Roper underscore UNB, I apologize for audio, cocaine being included in your lunch routine. I'm sure it was a wonderful lunch and I'm sorry for not allowing it to be as relaxing as it should have been. He was chewing fast as fuck. To Crason Macon, I will own this

and be better. Thank you. Thank you for your service, Reed. I mean, talk about stand-up guys. Cowboy. Cowboy sounder. Cowboy. Hey, listen up. Yeah.

Tying a bow, bringing it home on the Ariens Devante Smith show. One set up date, still cheeks. However, you have perhaps some wallpaper in the works, which I think is going to be fire. Yeah, yeah. And then we came up with the idea for like a quote wall of fame. Yeah, we're going to a quote board wall of fame. Great idea. And the first one being either your give a fuck meter don't run hot enough or you're too

fucking dumb to play for us, Bruce Ariens. Yeah, dude. So we'll get that up in like big like the letters are coming off the wall. He's number one. College football building. Yep. He's number one. He's number one.

So Bruce, congratulations. I know you probably listen to the pod now. You're going to make the quote board. I do want to shout out Chris Berman. It's his birthday, our today. Chris Berman, happy birthday, friend of the program, legitimately one of my favorite all-time NFL personalities. So we used to wait up at night to try to see if they were going to include any St. Louis Rams' highlights.

It was usually like the back 10 seconds, but he never failed to deliver at midnight. and him and Tom Jackson, legends, and a great guy. So happy birthday, Chris Berman. Haircut. My guy is retired. I've been going to the same guy since 1997.

Charged me $20. And... Maybe some good news, bad news for you? He's retired. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I'm a loyal cat, you know? I actually don't have like a consistent barber

since I was 12 years old or haircut or individual. But what about when you get a good one? I bet, yeah, well, we lose touch a lot. You know, like I'll have a fire haircut and be like, where is that person's number? Or I'll get too much social anxiety to call like the busy salon. And they're like, hello, like, redacted salon. It's loud.

It's loud. And I'm like, oh, can you cut me a mullet? Like, or something like that. Like, I just feel like a total outsider. So I just end up not calling. I might go more modern, a little tighter on the sides maybe. You should. You should. You should.

I'll give it a shot. Before we tease Thursday, I've neglected to put any new music in last week on the Greenlight account. I'm sure you noticed make, but I will be dropping a Krung Bin playlist. I did not know people didn't know Krung Bin. You might even know them if you heard them, but. Karugan Bin. Is that how, are you sure it's Karugan bin?

How much you want to bet? Go 50. I feel, I'd go 50. I'd go 50. I'd go 50 cents, yeah, 50 cents making. I'd just do $50. $Krungbind. Now listen,

if you go Kroongbin pronunciation on Google, by the way the point is they're a terrific, terrific group. It's a trio from Houston, Texas. They did something with Leon Bridges recently, but I like they're just instrumental stuff. We're going to drop playlist. If you go Kroongbin

pronunciation, it's literally there. Capital K, capital R, capital U, capital N, capital G, dash, lowercase, B-I-N. So how would you say that? Oh, wasn't listening. Wasn't listening.

Reed, I think I win, which is rare. All right, my final matter. Oh, okay. Yeah. Our guy, Cody Benjamin, tweeted. He tweeted that Devante Smith, New Eagles wide receiver, was asked by Greenlight Pod, which young quarterback wide receiver duo is best?

Burrow and Chase, Tua and Waddle, and his answer was me and Jalen. Well, that's kind of right. And as you're about to hear yourself and Biz talk about, the aggregators of these podcasts where they take things out of context, I am now a victim as people in my mention said, are you stupid or something? When in reality, we said, hey, which of these three, including you and Jalen is best so that we could get to which is third best, which is funny? That's a funny question because he now has to say he's worst. Sometimes you've got to explain the fact that not everything's dead serious and it's an incredibly humorous pod.

But welcome to my world where everything gets taken out of context. And print looks incredibly different than what you heard, which if you're being honest, and I hold no ill will towards our guy, Cody Benjamin. You think he was intentionally taking it out of context? Oh, no, not necessarily. I'm just saying he knows the game. He knows the game.

It's an innocuous thing, though. I mean, like, who gives a fuck about it? about what, you know, that. But people on the internet are like, what do you, the reaction is either balsey or what an idiot making is. And either way, we're both like, if you're being really journalistically

on point, you go, L.O.L. Me and Jalen. Because that's the way he laughed, which I listened back and I was like, the kid really thought we were funny. Yeah, yeah, it was a fun interview. Yeah. Thursday, our Thursday, your Friday, the schedule will have been out, like in its entirety, in order.

National Football League. Yeah, we're gonna talk about the games we can't wait to see. We're gonna look at overs and unders for win totals because those are already out. And by the way, the mind fuck is there's 17 games now. So I don't even know how to look at a win total of seven and a half wins.

Like I'm two years out of league. So I got two years under my belt of being just a hawk around May on the book, How do I look at this stuff? I'd like to bet on Vegas this off season because every team I looked at, I was like, hmm, that over looks pretty good and they get another game. Yeah, right, exactly.

Because my brain is trained for 16 and they get another shot. So everybody's gonna load up on overs and the math is just not gonna shake out. Take the unders, but also look at the odds. Because you're looking at the little minus 135 and all that shit? I'm not.

That shit is, I mean, I was looking a couple of these over unders and you've got some in like damn near 150s I feel like which I don't usually look at the odds I just fire away but as I'm better at gambling I'm starting to realize that the odds matter and they matter uh in a way that you wouldn't think like oftentimes uh you know find you at 150 and and take the plus side of that because there's a reason they're juicing that thing up so we'll talk about that Thursday maybe with somebody who actually gambles and wins money Today, though, Paul Bissonet played, you know, five years or so in the NHL, fucking workhorse fighter, changed positions to be able to meet the demands of, you know,

the market and being a pro. I think he used to be a defenseman that ended up at left wing. Is that right, Cowboy Reed? Yep, accurate. Accurate. I'm super accurate today. I took my vitamins or something. Might be the decath coffee.

Which has caffeine in it. I don't know if you knew that. I know, up to 15 milligrams. Well, then you got the sprite here. Dude, I'm just like, I'm like a trucker right now. Yeah. Roll on highway. Roll on along.

Roll on daddy till you get back home. Roll on family. Roll on crew. Roll on mama like I asked you to do. And roll on 18 wheeler. Roll on. alone. They got hits, boy.

Hey, they got hits. But he played for five years in the NHL, changed positions, ultimate team guy. Every hockey player I know, I text him about Bissinette's coming on my show. Like, obviously, spit in chicklets is very popular, but popularity doesn't always equal like he's actually cool. Hey, case in point, us, not very popular, actually very cool. Right.

And if you're not into hockey, it's not going to matter with this interview. No. Fantastic interview. That's the thing. Don't tune out because it's hockey. But I love hockey and the guys I talk to, they're the coolest pro athletes of all the big four sports hockey players.

When I talk to Pat Maroon or Scott Upshaw or like any of those guys, they hear this guy's name and say he's just the realest dude. And that's why he's had success because he's real. He didn't have to be the best player of all time. He was a fucking solid player, but he's a real guy and that's his kind of brand. So excited to have him on.

Enjoy it. Stick around for some Reed Roulette, really fast, read, on the back end. All right, so Biz Nasty is here. He's the face, the beautiful face of spitting chicklets over there at Barstool. Biz Nasty, how you doing, brother? I was the last guy to join the pod, so I don't think that R.A. Grenelian would take appreciation to you saying that. You're the face to me. And I was the one who got my face caved in my whole career. So of the entire group, I probably have the worst looking face. The fists have done decent enough damage to my

face over the years from fighting in the National Hockey League. But no, we got it, we got a great group and it's, it's been going awesome. And it happened very organically. And it's, it's been an incredible ride. I mean, I'm sure you know from getting into the media side of things after you play, it's just nice to have something that you can, you can shift your attention towards, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like one of the main things when you retire is like, I have to have a plan. I have to do something. I have to be active. And like, what's more active than being a slave to your audience of however redacted. We're not going to say how many

people listen to this by. But like every day, it's like replacing the pressure of hockey for you or football for me with the pressure of I have to answer the bell every day. I would completely agree. Like I still get nervous even before I do interviews like this or whether I'm interviewing someone. So it's kind of like that adrenaline before you used to suit up and go. Do you get nervous too before you do it? Yes. Yes. He gets, I mean, my, the number

one shirt in my rotation is now ruined from a pitting situation because just too much B.O. into my number one shirt because of getting nervous interviewing people like Biz Nasty. I'm going to do it just because Paul's here and I think a lot of Paul from a distance. I think this is going to be a killer hour or so with our guy. I'm going to come out with some big personal news. I got Botox on my underarms. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It takes the sweating away, dude. And it doesn't come out somewhere else. It just keeps your shirts clean. I started doing it like four or five years ago. And all of a sudden I could go to charity events without having to worry about like my button down looking ridiculous. Yeah, you're going to have tits next month.

No, dude. My tits look better than ever, bro. I'm doing 100 pushups a day. So is my co-host. Yeah. How's that going for you, by the way? Pretty good. Well, Kate, my lovely wife, she said,

hey, actually, arms looking a little swole. Yeah. And I was like, really? And then she touched it and she was like, oh, no, that's a bone. That was your shoulder bone. Tell Biz Nasty, your height and weight. Six foot four, 162 pounds. Okay, yeah.

So we got to get them on the weight protein. Yeah. The same league. Remember one year in high school? I had to gain like 20 pounds before I started my junior career. But regarding the pinning situation, so are you going to try Botox making? Absolutely not. No.

I come as God made me. and uh do you yeah yeah and that just a stunning admission by you yeah well and honesty is the best policy i'm sure it's a weight lifted off your heavy armpits that that's our brand here right it's it's honesty it's authenticity that's what they do so that he's got me feeling authentic just being on line with biz nasty have me feeling like i needed to share but biz i am getting more comfortable like right now cool calm collected it's just the number one shirt the shirt that i loved more than any that can't find anywhere else is is now the cut grass shirt now but for pro athletes there is like you'd think hey i've played in front of 80 000 people i'm not going to get nervous when i interview something

but the thing that makes me most nervous interviewing somebody is wasting their time i don't know about you exactly you don't want you don't want to waste your time you want to make sure you're asking the appropriate questions you want to make sure you're entertaining your audience Now going back to that the armpit thing, had you tried every other, I'm so intrigued by this because that was kind of one of those urban legends if you get Botox in your armpit that it would stop it. So you're saying that it has worked. I heard that it wears off. Were there any other things that you tried in order to stop the sweating? Bro, I've tried every deodorant my whole life. Like I changed the consistency of the deodorant. Like my favorite deodorant is the speed stick, the brown one. It's like musk or something. You find it in like country club bathrooms. And it's, the most heavenly smell on earth and I tried to switch to that and my underarms would break out. Like I have very sensitive skin, big sweaty guy. So losing some LBs in retirement and getting the Botox, it's like I'm a new man. So yeah, I exhausted all the options and you do have to re-up every once in a while, but try it sometimes, guys. I'm happy for you, man. Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

Thanks for coming along on this journey, guys. Meekin, good luck finding better deodorant, but in the meantime, I'll pray for you. Have you ever like asked somebody just a terrible question on spitting chicklets that froze you in your tracks and you were like this thing go over all the time we had um elliott friedman on who does a pod hockey podcast called 31 thoughts so i asked him i said why 31 thoughts he's like oh 31 nchl teams so okay so all our fans were just all over me but the good that's not so bad about uh about our platform and our following is like the the fuck ups is actually what they embrace and we don't we cut we hit play and we record it there's not right we don't retakes it's kind of like if you fuck up, you got to own it. And usually it's the other few guys on the podcast

piling on once in a while like Grinelli's the producer behind the scenes, but once in a while, like if it's something that stupid, he might be able to chime in. But yeah, we've had some, some really ridiculous shit happen. Just, just kind of in the fuckups. And we post them the social media, then they pile on even more. And I think that, I think, I think that that's maybe what would people miss a little bit with the mainstream. It's maybe a little bit too cookie cutter where They like it a little bit more, you know, rugged and not as perfect in the backside. Well, it's funny because we got in this thing and we've had people tell us at different turns, like, a little more polish would help you, a little bit more of like a formula, that sort of thing.

But like the point of difference for us, now we listen. We're trying to work on some things here, you know, shorten in the pod. Sometimes they can be like The Odyssey from my co-hosts that's straining. Yeah, we are not one take Tommy's over here. We're not one take. I mean, we do a fair bit of editing to just keep things tight. And sometimes we'll fuck up. We try to own them.

Like one time, and he's upset about this, I edited it out at the advice of my, I'm bringing this up. One second. Hey, Paul, do you know how many weeks there are in a year? Well, I feel like it's a trick question. It's not. It's not. I would say 52 right out of the hop. That's correct.

That's correct. I went with the trick question. 51 or 53? No, I threw out some like arbitrary 40-something number. 44 is what the man said. That's a tough pill. Yeah. It's a tough pill.

And then he scrubbed it from the show. Well, no, but then we scrubbed it, but then the next week I brought it up. What I was going to do was pull a bunch of NFL players to see if they knew how many weeks in the year there were. And then we were going to play the audio the next week. But you threw a huge tantrum that we didn't, you were stomping and kicking and screaming. And then later a week later, he didn't know the words, the journey song. Which journey song? Don't stop believing.

It's not that I didn't know. We were playing Jeopardy and I got an answer wrong. Yeah, but you owned it like a man. I'll give you that one. Thanks. Yeah, no, fucking up in interviews is part of the business. And I think the real tough part about podcasting, and I know you've kind of battle back and forth with it, is like social media, you know, like being quoted.

You guys seem like you're just trying to have a good time and make good conversations, stimulate people. It's like when we make the news, I almost cringe. Oh, buddy, it's the worst. Like, I smoke weed before I jump on the podcast. And all of a sudden, like, when we first started, like, because, like, it's, It's like this is what we do with our buddies when we talk hockey. That's exactly what the show is supposed to be about.

We just be like the regular Joe's. That's how it would talk if the cameras or podcast wasn't running. Yeah, but all of a sudden it went from, you know, a pretty small following to a larger one. And like you said, your, your quotes are being used against you. They're taking being taken out of context. You also mentioned the fine line between listening to your audience, but also staying true to yourself. So it's a constant. It's a constant battle of siphoning through it all.

But I will say throughout the process of my three years on the podcast, I have definitely dialed back the Twitter time. I feel like it's just kind of this, especially during the quarantine, it became this really bizarre negative space. So I try to stay away as much as possible now. Well, the hardest part, and I've said this a bunch of times,

is we had some of the hardest conversations that were very necessary. We did it all online, which is the worst fucking place to talk to anybody. Because like how many times has anybody walked up to you in person and told you you were like a motherfucker or something? Like it happens all the time online. People are all guarded and it's like you have an audience. If you're arguing with somebody in person one-on-one, you try to have that discussion the best way you can. When you do it with an audience, you change the way you argue.

And you know, like it's just a toxic place to get anything done. One thing I started noticing too is like especially as a player who'd been in a lot of, of these situations and sometimes I would take to Twitter to try to give my experience through things that I'd actually been through on the ice and is they maybe start trying to take you away from like what they make you second guess yourself as to like where the line is like especially with like in a hockey sense is like the hits because the player safety has become such a big issue with all the concussions and I'm sure very similarly in the NFL with the way that that defense have to handle tackling now as well. So there's a lot of dialogue.

where were these 50, 50 hits. So you try to give your input. And it's very hard when you're having people who have never been in that situation, try to talk you off of what you're seeing and what you've experienced. So those are some things, yeah, those are some things early on that I was trying to figure out and also listen and keep the conversation and dialogue going with fans. I think it's tough though because, yeah, the minute you start typing in your, in your outbox or, you know, in your little tweet box and you start wondering how it's going to go over

or thinking about the, you know, like, what's this person going to, yeah, what's this person going to think about, like, you're not thinking anymore or you're not expressing yourself anymore. What you're doing is you're tailoring your expression to this online community. And it happens in sports. Yeah, you talk about with hits. Like there'll be a big hit on a Sunday and I'm like, that's not dirty. But I'll read my timeline. I'm like, what the fuck are you reading your timeline for?

Just say it. And that's where it becomes a problem and gets in the way of the analysis. So now I just wait for our point. podcast to talk about it. Like Tom Wilson just had a big issue. So we released the podcast last Tuesday. I believe it was Tuesday night that there was all that melee with the capitals and Tom Wilson. And people hate Tom Wilson. They want them out of the league. Especially here. Yeah. Like also, as far as the hockey Twitter world, it seems to be a little bit more left leaning and a lot of, you know, a lot of talking heads that have, you know, not necessarily played the game. Right. So as soon as

Tom Wilson does anything, they want him out of the league. Now, do I think he's a guy who plays on that line that moving forward? They're going to get their opportunity to put him for his day in court. There's probably going to be a time when he gets a 10 to 15 game suspension, the way he plays. It's inevitable. But in this situation, it was just a regular scrum that they get themselves worked up on. So then to the point where I don't know if the New York Rangers organizations pay attention to social media, they end up releasing a full, blown statement. The president GM get fired. And then, and then of course on Wednesday, the fact that they're playing back-to-back games because of the COVID situation, while all melee ensues,

fights off the opening face-off, I think there was seven scraps total. So it's, yeah, it's definitely a bizarre world online and can definitely shift people's opinions and create the mob mentality. Well, we had the Raiders last week who reached, you know, by a lot of people's standards for Alex Leatherwood, who's a massive guard slash tackle. The slash is the important part. And people were freaking out. Like, why did you take a guard at 17 or whatever? And the Raiders took to social media to explain,

he's also a tackle. We see him as a tackle. I'm like, since when did teams have to justify their dealings in the first ride? But you talked about the Tom Wilson thing. Tom Wilson, yeah. I mean, you would have thought he killed somebody if you don't know anything about hockey. And you certainly, I don't know the kind of. written rules, the minutia of this guy's wrong, this guy's right. So that's overblown to you,

the Tom Wilson thing and why? Yeah, I mean, I'd have to break down the scrub and how it all played out, but you see those types of scrums like night in, night out in the NHL. And I understand why Tom Wilson is so polarizing. He has found himself in these 50, 50 scenarios a lot. And he plays his game on the edge. And I think he would be willing to tell you that. Now, like, just thinking of NFL guys who's a guy that pops into mind where the minute he's involved in a 50-50 hit, the internet will explode. Dominican Sue. Right.

Okay, yeah. Well, no, but I agree with, but like he's been wrong before, but that doesn't mean he's wrong every time. Oh, exactly. You know,

like, and then there's also the vacuum situation with Miles Garrett, which was a total outlier because, like, people don't use this. What was that when he hit the guy with the hell? Yeah. Here's the deal about football fights. And I was talking to Macon about this and talking to guys who are mutual friends of

who I know like you know Pat Maroon and those guys and like upper and upy oldby all those guys like what I love picking their brains about like the fighting and kind of the unwritten rules because like in the NFL if we fight like we want to kill each other for a couple minutes and you're lucky if our relationships ever the same I'm not that way I fought with guys that I actually am cool with now but a lot of my teammates just a different culture in the NFL where it's like what you could fight somebody and then get over it like you guys are legitimately prearranging these fights yeah so it was a lot more like that back in the day as i was finishing my career you know what do you want to call them the knuckle draggers or or just the straight ice

guardians or the meatheads where where guys were a little bit more one dimensional where you would yeah where let's say i played 50% of the games when i was in the national hockey league so some games that would be a healthy scratch. And usually it would depend on if the other team's dressing their heavyweight or if they have a physical tough lineup. And yeah, in some cases, these conversations like Cam Jansett's another guy who's got a podcast, Cam and Strick. And we had during warmup, he would come up.

He's like, we go in a night, big boy. I'd say, yep. And then for sure enough, our first shift against each other gloves were coming off. Nowadays, it seems to be a lot more organic to where they've tried to weed it out just based on the concussions and everything they know about it. I think that the game has gotten a little bit faster and more skilled to where as they've eliminated that, teams don't, they don't have, they don't have room in the roster to carry a one-dimensional guy like I was on the roster.

It's like having a big man in basketball that can't run. You know, like you can't run the court. I'm not, you know, that guy was like incredibly important in the 90s and that sort of thing. But now is it to the point where it's like, well, that just gives them too much of an advantage to carry one guy that just fights or, you know. And you're, yeah, and you're eating up a roster spot. So I think that in a good way that that's happened for the league to where I like watching the organic fights. But I think that the NHL would be crazy if they ever took out fighting.

So it is a bizarre dynamic to the only one in all, probably all of pro sports where you can fight and remain in the game. Yeah. At least the four major. That's one of the debates now as well, like whether they should eventually eliminate it or make it so like you're kicked out of the game. But it's changed for the better. and I think it's in the perfect place now. And also if they pull the players, I think 99% of the guys

want to keep fighting in the game because they do believe that it polices itself to where when these fights, when these hits happen, so the Tom Wilson scenario, even Washington, New York didn't feel like they had retribution because they thought that he deserved the suspension. So what did they do?

The next game, they try to take it into their own hands where there was seven scraps. They wanted their own retribution. So how does that happen? And I was specifically the Tom Wilson thing. How do you think that plays out behind the scenes where like, okay, guys, like tonight three dudes are going to drop gloves? And then who are the, like, how do we decide who are the two dudes

who are just going to like kind of fuck off and skate into the corner while everybody's fighting? Well, going back to kind of how the whole conversation started, I really think that everybody got so riled up because of the social, the whole social media thing. Yeah. So it elevated this to where tensions grew. And I think that what Dan Quidd said for the New York Rangers in his post game press conference, after they'd had the crazy game of all the scraps,

which was the second game that they played. He said that I had no idea that these guys were going to do this off the opening face off. That's something that they'd worked out in the locker room amongst themselves, which is kind of cool because they want to protect their own. And they have that team boys club mentality. And usually when teams have that, that's one of the elements you need in order to make a run or become a successful organization. So that, yeah, it all, that's kind of how it transpired.

So that's when you had the organized fights off the hop, or these guys were well aware that this was going to happen. So Chris Barch, what does that name mean to you? Chris Barch was a solid player in the miners who worked his way up, very similarly to me, where he ended up adding fighting to his game in order to become multi-dimensional to where he could get a solid NHL career. I ended up fighting Chris Barch, I think, three or four times.

You fought him five times. Five times. He fought it more than anybody else And I wondered like what's that relationship like? Awesome. We never had any type of animosity towards one another. There was that mutual respect on the ice. We understood our job.

And we always had pretty spirited bouts too. So I think we both felt that we would get the, we would both get our teams energized. And I don't think we were going to do enough damage to each other. Everybody wins, right? Yeah. It's like, great. I got my fight in.

We looked awesome cave at each other's face in, not too much damage. Now I can enjoy my pops after the game and feel like I'm accomplished. Take us inside the logistics of an NHL fight. To the lay person, it seems like one hand on a sweater, then exchanging haymakers, as soon as you go to the ice, in official skates in and wants to break it up.

Is that how it goes? Yeah, usually you grab with your jab hand. and that it's I guess you could compare it to judo some guys when they're fighting really really big guys and they're undersized compared to their competition they tend to want to get in tighter so that's where I use more of the judo to where they're trying to keep them in tight to take their strength away which is the big bombs

like you'll see with a guy like Ryan Reeves but yes I would always grab with my left and that way you could kind of balance and you know and try to keep your stability while caulking and feeding somebody with a punch I was never a fighter coming up. I was actually a defenseman. And I played under 18 for Team Canada coming up. I played an all-star games in junior. I was a fourth round draft pick. And I got to the point in pro hockey where they

ended up saying, hey, we don't think you're going to make it as a defenseman. We think you could be useful as a fourth line winger. Mind you, the writing was on the wall of adding fighting to my bag in order if I could get to the NHL level. Because at this point in time, I was in the minors. So I had to start fighting all these juice head meatheads in the minors after not having much experience. And at the time, I think a lot of guys were using steroids in the HL. So I was getting the shit kicked out on myself. I learned to be a lot more defensive and use that jab hand a lot more to keep him at bay. And I've talked to Chris Nyland, who was an old school fighter for the Montreal Canadians.

And he even said after getting his nose blown up one time in a fight, he learned that he had to start fighting more defensive or he wasn't going to last. So if you look back at some of these old school fight tapes on YouTube, the fact that these guys are standing in there and just going straight weed whackers to the face on each other, it's bizarro land. Like you'll watch old clips of like USC when these guys are just stand in the middle of the ring just teen off on it. So now you don't get those electrifying, electrifying fights as much as possible because guys have gotten smarter. So I was one of those guys who had to adjust and figure it out. fights did become a little bit more boring compared to the people who used to watch them in the past.

But yeah, that's a great breakdown going back to what you said of how a fight would go down. The minute a guy falls, usually unless there's like really bad blood, guys aren't really gouging out eyes or fishhooking at the bottom of the pile. Did you ever get really embarrassed? I'm trying to think of one of the more embarrassing ones. I'd probably say Ryan Reeves, who I mentioned, he's probably the NHL's toughest guy right now. And I fought him earlier on when he first got into the league was saying, Louis. And then we were at Scotts trade in St. Louis one game. I believe we were down one nothing. And I was just trying to get our team going. And I ended up going up off the face off and saying,

hey, let's go. And he said, no, Hitch said, no, we don't want to give up the momentum. So I was doing anything I could. So I kicked him in the back, the leg, that kind of slew footing. And, and, yeah, you could just see his wires crossed. He's like, all right, let's go. And then he just, he got me off the hop, hit me with a bomb and then slam me through the earth's crust, basically. if you watch the clip on YouTube and the building just erupts. All the fans coming down to the penalty box from that section being like, fuck you, you fucking loser. And Revo in the middle of the ice doing the heavyweight belt,

the crowd elevating their noise. So that was probably one of the most embarrassing fights I experienced during my time. So if we were fighting Charra, we want to get in close. And by the way, we've trolled Charra. And I hope that if you don't want to fight Charra. And you know our hockey trolling bit. he actually bisonette you've never seen us troll hockey on Twitter I think you did it one time and it was about toughness maybe yeah so basically hockey Twitter jumps out of the gym if you say there's

a tougher sport and you know this right so I can't help but pump fake like I know hockey's like most people that see me retweeted when somebody takes a puck to the face and I make some snide comment about it could have been worse Bryce Harper caught a fastball baseball is just as heavy as like you know like These dudes from Saskatchewan are just ready to eat me alive. And people whose timelines these might end up on, they actually don't know I'm joking and that I'm a huge hockey fan. So I guess the question is then, settle it for everybody. What do you say is tougher?

NFL, NHL, physically tough as sport. I mean, football is probably way more damaging, just that impact. And that would probably also depend on positioning. The one thing that's weird about hockey is just the dynamic of skating and how unnatural it is to your hips. Yeah, dude. So to me, my knees and my ankles and my groins are really tight and messed up from all the years of skating and that unnatural stride. As far as the head, I would probably say NFL is a lot, a lot worse come long-term, long-term injuries.

Because most players nowadays in the NHL, they're not running around like torpedo stuff. trying to kill each other. It's not as physical as it used to be. Yeah, when somebody asked me, I defer to you guys as being tough or just man to man because everybody on the field has to be, or everybody in the ice has to be tough. You know, like, we have kickers.

We have certain positions that don't like to tackle. We have people that, you know, are more pretty boys about the way they play the game. But everybody in hockey could take a puck to the face. Everybody could get a laceration that could change your life. You know, that's the scary part. to me is, I mean, it's not just the grind. And we're going to talk about the Stanley Cup playoffs in a second, which to me is insane.

It's like another season. But I'm talking about like the fear of injury in hockey. I'm used to getting hit by a truck all game. That's one kind of toughness. The other kind of toughness is all my teeth just fell out. Like, oh, like I saw what happened to Clint Mallorchuk. And, you know, like I have to go in there with a bunch of skates flying. and you just never know what happens.

So I actually would give the edge to hockey, and here I am on the podcast making the submission. Put the quote board up on your social media, looking forward for the response here. Yeah, exactly. We've got to keep the bit going on Twitter, though. What was the injury you were always most afraid of? Early on in my career, I was always worried about knees.

And sure enough, I never tore my ACLs until my last season. I tore both my ECLs in my last year, Chris. How does that happen? It was weird. I got in a fight and my left one ended up going. I kind of fell back weird on it. And what happened was, is I knew it was going to be my last year.

So this is my 12th year pro with the Ontario rain. And I think 17 games into the season as I did it. And I knew that I was going to be my last year. So what the trainer said, he said certain guys pre-have them before they get surgery. so allow the swelling to go down and rebuild up the muscle. He said, but it's been known like soccer players have, and I think even NFL players with braces, have finished on a torn ACL.

Like a Phillip Rivers. Yeah. So I prehabed for two months to get it back ready. I tried coming back one game, and then I was like, ah, it's not stable. I needed to prehab another month. So finally it was ready. I came back five games before playoffs,

knowing it was going to be my last year. and I think it was end of the first period, go for a puck battle. I get hit on the other side. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I fell down. I got back up. The whistle went. I go over in my trainer and I remembered the feeling and I noticed that it was, it just wasn't stable.

And I said to trainer, I said, I think I just tore my other ACL and he's like, fuck off. So I ended up finishing the period. We went in between periods. I took my thing off and he did that test when they move it. And he's like, yeah, it's moving about, you know,

15 to 17 millimeters. He's like, you fight. So I was finished my last game on two torn ACLs. I ended up fighting Zach Stortini in the second period, knowing that I was basically useless and wasn't going to have many more shifts. It was like, and I think it was kind of funny looking back on it because it's like it's such a,

a biz way to end his career, like not scoring a hat trick and, you know, not winning a championship, getting beat up on two torn ACLs and being, you know, being a piece of meat done my career. I think that's much rarer than a hat trick, bro.

Yeah, looking back, I actually, I really embrace it. So it was a tough summer of rehab, but here we are. And actually, my groins were so bad. I had a hockey guy that worked on me. You know Aubrey Green? Have you heard of Aubrey Green? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've used him before too.

He's excellent. Yeah, so like he just, like, I had to go outside football because I knew that, like, who has the worst groin injuries? It's you guys. I mean, all game, you're just running the inside of, like, pushing off the inside of your legs like it's insane. insane. Well, you mentioned the grind of it, too, as far as toughness. I think it's crazy that the NHL plays 82 games. So the guys who are lugging 15 to 20 minutes every night, that's where we taught,

we were going back to toughness. NFL is 16 games, and it's, you know, once a week, and it's, it's pretty crazy, and it's at full octane. But the mental, mental and physical grind of an NHL season is probably a little bit more superior. I agree. I agree. I mean, it's a marathon. And usually Stanley Cup playoffs, or just that. It's going to be different this year? Yeah? It's going to be great.

I mean, I think hockey's in a wonderful place. I'm still interested to see how the advantages is going to be with certain fans being allowed in certain buildings to certain capacities. Like up north in Canada, there's no fans right now. Everything's locked down. Everything's closed out where from what I'm hearing,

I think in Florida, they're going to be allowing full capacity. So Tampa Bay and Florida, who are playing, they're playing in a series against each other. Yeah. And I say Florida as in the Florida Panthers, for those of you who don't follow hockey. So one team's named after the state.

The other team is named after the city. Yeah, it's a little odd, but they've never had an interstate series there. 27 years now, they've both been in the league together and they'd never played each other in playoffs. So there's a lot of different storylines going to this one. The North Division of all Canadian teams this year, I thought was excellent. And I thought that they adapted well, given the COVID situation. They were forced into it because of the border lockdown. But Canadians have been very dialed in.

Another storyline is McDavid putting, he's going to finish with over 100 points in a 56 game season. And hockey is, hockey has been introduced to its new school Wayne Gretzky. There's a player that has entered the league that is so much far superior than all the others. And now they have a relative team that I believe could end up making a run. And so they're probably going to meet the Leafs in the second round of playoffs, who are another crazy storyline this year. Well, that's the funniest thing. And we were talking beforehand.

I was like, we had talked to Jeff Passon, who's a baseball insider here. And we don't major in baseball. So we asked him, you know, like who's the face of baseball, which is a complicated answer right now. It's like kind of whoever you want to make it. It feels like there's a clearer answer in hockey, yeah? But he's in Edmonton is the one maybe problem. Okay. So he's following under the path of Crosby to where he.

I'm actually surprised he has social media, but the age gap is probably why he does have it. And he understands that he's trying to market. Crosby's completely off social media. McDavid tries to follow in the footsteps of very generic answers. He's not going to give you anything in the media where you can run with it and blow it out of proportion. So it's very vanilla.

And I completely understand why he's like that. Because you finished. going back to the start you know media can use whatever against you he wants to stay completely out of the bullshit and focus on hockey where in Toronto they have Austin matthews who's an extremely special player where he's more putting himself out there he did the gq fashion magazine um you know he he released an nft he's posting fashion picks he's hanging out with beber so as far as the face of hockey i would definitely put McDavid as the top dog, but a guy like Matthews, who's just as special, I think is just as

beneficial for the league because he's more open to showing off his personality in some ways. Is it a marketing issue or are we getting old? We're all about the same age. There was the great NHL 94 video game and other iterations. There were sports centers. Everyone had to sit through to get the scores of the game. So you just saw hockey. I feel like I can name a hundred guys from 90s NHL and now I can't and maybe that's just because we're creeping up on 40 or

is the NHL not doing enough to bring out these Yager Gretzky? Is there a marketing problem? Yeah. So hockey's traditionally been this sport where nobody stands out individually. It's more of a pack mentality

throughout the course of it. You have seen individuals who were okay doing that. Some names that come to mind. Jeremy Ronick. I mean, he was a legendary player, one of the best American-born players. I think he had over 500 goals. And he just, when the camera came on, he would, he would say exactly how he was feeling, whether he was furious about something, whether he was happy, whether he was doing skits. I think hockey has struggled to have certain individuals stand up. And when they do, there is a bit of ridicule. I think moving forward with these new TV deals, you will start hearing more and

more names and they're going to end up putting these guys the stars on a pedestal. The TNT deal is going to help out drastically the ESPN deal because when you were probably following it a little bit more, you were watching games on ESPN. That went away. Well, think of every bar in the United States. It's got ESPN on, at least on a few of the channels. So people who are just laissez-faire, you know, American sports fans never get to see in these names.

So, of course, they're not gravitating. towards our sport. So I think that through the TV deals and the fact that moving over from NBC to TNT and ESPN is going to be, is going to be able for you to hear more of these names and see some of these amazing individuals at work. Would you bring back the laser puck? No. No, I, I think, so what I think it would be smart is if they did it Nickelodeon style where they did this old school throwback broadcast. Part of part of like why I understand why they do this. And I think, these little silly things is you have to worry about your next wave of consumer. And that's where I feel like hockey was a little bit behind.

Because you look at the way that basketball has grown, not only are they putting the individuals on the podiums where it's, it's even, even to a certain degree, I watch regular season basketball and I'm very bored. I'm so much more intrigued by the personalities and off the court drama than the on the on court product. Is that,

is that the case for you? Yes. And I'm, and I'm, You know, long time Knicks fan, and, you know, I've checked out for a little bit here, and now they're good again. But, like, there's not a reason for me to watch regular season basketball. Were you dialed into Linsanity?

I was dialed into Linsanity. I had a cut off t-shirt. I was sitting in a fucking bar in Key West watching Linsanity, like, in real time. It's one of my greatest NBA memories, and it meant nothing because the team was not going to be any good, but I was, like, excited for a day and drunk. But I guess the thing about the regular season in the NBA is, and Kendrick Perkins recently made news you probably saw he was like the NBA is a tougher championship to win in the NFL stop it and let's not even talk about hockey we just did but the NBA has has told on itself

how I don't even say it's telling on itself the NBA is like listen we're doing load management we are de-emphasizing a lot of the regular season so you can't be mad when people are like I don't give a fuck about your regular season the playoffs are electric when got when the best in the world are locked in and want to win every single night, I love the NBA playoffs. But you're right, regular season doesn't do it for me. From a neutral standpoint, and I'm not the biggest NBA fan, but ultimately they're doing what's best for the sport. And I envy the fact the players have such a strong voice inside the NBA.

I mean, looking at, I don't agree with Perkins' comment, NFL is way harder to win, but it actually kind of grosses me out the way that the owners, based on profits treat the NFL players. It's actually crazy. Yeah, it's nuts, dude. It is nuts. And, you know, like we end up being kind of probably the biggest piece of meat factory in American pro sports.

But you guys, I would say is probably second. I don't know. Well, I look, yeah, I mean, the guaranteed contracts is something that I don't think the NHL will ever give up. You can get bought out of a deal, which in most cases, you're getting two-thirds of your salary. twice the length over the time that you have left on the remaining years of your contract. So if you have two years left, you're getting paid that two-thirds of your money over four years.

Got it. We're in the NFL, in most cases, they can just slick guys' throats. Oh, yeah. It's like the red wedding. If you watch Game of Thrones, like some off-season's everybody's dead. Like you show up, and I played for the Rams for a long time. So we were bad. And if you're on a bad team, like, hey, nice to know you every couple weeks.

I mean, people are gone. So there's no player security. I mean, and now you can see the guys in the off season, Joanne James for the Broncos got hurt working out to be ready for the season because if you play pro football, it's a 365 day a year thing, 365 in a year. Nice. Fuck you. And then he gets hurt and everybody.

I'll check the math on that. Well, don't do leap years. I know those too. There's a thing now where they're taking your money. So, I mean, they've always done that. But it's just ridiculous to me. full-time job you're working out you get hurt and they swipe you or they slit your throat as paul would put it hey hold on what what kind of scene do we have going on your left arm here biz

i just i have like tattoos on my arm i have i got a scarecrow uh when i was younger nice i get i get geared pretty good about that one they say that i get free cover charge once a year on Halloween and yeah that was usually the butt of a lot of jokes inside the locker room or my shitty tattoos why a scarecrow no clue because you got was you each have a long sleeve going on you guys have taken turns like reaching it above your head just kind of peacocking a little bit I don't know if you know it's not peacocking it's just I'm slouching this chair this shitty ass chair I got to get a new one no he's tatted he's yadded yeah what do you have going on I got a lot going on we don't we're here to talk hockey water jelly not jellyfish

and fucking tall ships and moons with my wife's name on it. You're welcome, my lovely wife. Scarecrow. Yeah. Scarecrow. I have a ship on my ribs here. Oh, look at him. He's yadded underneath.

I got to get it. I was going to get loose lip synch ships written on it. I don't have very good tattoos. That would be a very hip-gritty tattoo. I'm glad you brought it up. I'm glad you brought it up, Mekin. Thanks, buddy. I love me with the Canadian twist.

I'm making. Can you listen to your voice back on the podcast? No, I don't listen to our podcast. We hate our voice. But he's got such a sweet voice. He's got a cool voice. You mentioned earlier, Roanick being like one of the best all-time American dudes. And shout out in the major motion picture swingers.

Oh, yeah, dude. Which couldn't have heard. Superfan 99. You got great recall when it comes to movies that you have seen. Yeah, thank you. Like, what's the difference in the nationalities? Like, I know Russians, they take the ice a certain way. they hang out a certain way.

Canadians, they got their own idiosyncrasies, Americans. Are hockey players just hockey players? Or do you have to learn different cultures as you rise up through the ranks? Yeah, I would definitely say that the way that they were brought up in training from a hockey side of things, you could definitely tell the differences.

You're just from talking to Russians. It's almost like a survival mode when you're training over there and coming up through the ranks where I've heard stories of them not flooding the ice and having to go out for a two-hour power skating session because the the the uncut ice it doesn't glide as much you got to continually push push and work your legs so they come over with these massive legs and they can skate extremely well usually um also has been talks of how much they're how much russian gas they're pumping into their athletes as well so so and also the ice is a lot bigger over there so it becomes

a possession game. So they'll skate up ice with the puck. If they don't see anything they like, they'll come all the way back and control it. And over here, the ice surface is smaller. It's more physical, less time and space to make plays. And then when you go to Scandinavia, like Sweden, Finland, places like that, they play on a little bit smaller ice surface than Olympic size. And they play almost a hybrid game between North American and Russian. And I would say that Scandinavians tend to lean more towards the North American game. That's why you see more of them transfer over to the North American game. There was a strong wave of Russians where you don't see as many anymore.

And when you do see Russians coming into the National Hockey League, oftentimes they're not depth players. Right. Because I don't think that they, they don't really think from a puck management standpoint for the most part. they think of high-end skill, put the puck in the back of the net, the Valerie Burrase, the Alex Ovechkins, the Carrille Caprisoff, who's now in Minnesota,

who's playing in the KHL for a few years before he came over. So a lot of the times you're seeing these Russian guys are coming over and their absolute electric factories and or they don't pan out. They come here and you're thinking you're getting this star that you saw over there and it's like, eh, couldn't adapt to the North American game. So it's like an N1 mixtape, like the dudes in, rucker park doing trick shots and like you know their handles between their legs and it's like man i'd love to see this guy on on you know on the hardwood but maybe it doesn't translate what about when

americans go play in the khl because that sounds scary depending on where you play yeah we've told so many stories on our podcast from getting guys on who have went over to play in russia um i mean where do i begin it's gotten a lot better as the years have gone on when the super league existed when this was the first strong KHA. There was a lot of mob owners. Guys were getting paid in cash after practice. Stories of guys having to stuff their goalie pads with cash to bring it back over because they don't have bank accounts over there to go put the money in.

Guys who put their money in bank accounts over there where all of a sudden they go to the bank and the bank doesn't even exist. It's just like up and left. Guys who had been paid before practice in a paper because a lot of, it was a lot of cash transactions early on where they just give. be the money. Sounds like Tuscaloosa. And is that a college team?

That's where Alabama plays. Oh, yeah. Sabin fucking handing out cash after win for sure. Where guys would get paid before practice, they'd go practice. They'd come back and the money would be gone under their stall. Right. There was one famous Russian owner who would come into the locker room with like an AK-47 and be like, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then like the North American is wondering what the hell this guy's saying. same owner in a game. So the crazy owner who used to carry all the AK-47s around, if any of you were interested, it was Josh Hennessy who talked about him. Okay. He was a solid player over North America, hopped around from team to team.

I think he played in Ottawa his last year here. And he gets there, gets met by this Russian owner's bodyguards. They have guns at the airport. They grab his stuff. And he ends up meeting the owner. And he said the only reason he brought him over because Hennesse's his favorite booze. But that was the...

But other than him, as far as North Americans, he got all meatheads, all fighters. So on certain games, he would just dress the fighters and say, as soon as the puck drops, you go after and attack guys and beat them up. My team can beat your team up. He had the meathead team,

and one game, they were having a bunch of penalties called on him, and he literally came down from the press box, called the ref over on the side of the boards, and then threatened his family's life And then they didn't call a penalty on his team the rest of the game. Twitter hates Jerry Jones, but Jerry Jones is like an angel compared to this guy. I forget what team he owned and what it was called or whether he even still owns a team.

We had another guy on our podcast, Tim Stapleton, who played over there. And he was coming back from the road trips. And the road trips they take are long. In some cases, they're traveling seven time zones. So they're going all the way from like Siberia, Russia to wherever it may be. And so when you come back, you would notice that his furniture was moved. And he was questioning whether he had ghosts in his apartment. So on one of the road trips, his groin wasn't feeling well, tried to play the next game,

ended up making it worse. So they were like, hey, well, we can't use you. We're flying you back home and we're going to continue the rest of the road trip without you. Well, he gets back to where they were in Russia. and he tries to open his door and the dead bolts on. Well, the guy who'd rented him his place was staying in his apartment with his family when they were on road trips. So that's why the furniture was constantly moved.

So that night he got back, he had to spend it on the couch with the family in the house. He didn't know he had a host family. That's incredible. Yeah, this is the wild shit happening in Russia on a constant basis that are. And if you listen to some more of our podcast, there's even, even wilder stories. through the game over Russia. I'm so into Russia. Everything about it, I just want to know more.

Watch the documentary. I think it's called Red Penguin, and it gives you a breakdown of how KHL teams were ran back on the Super League. Sold YouTube tonight. You want to talk about some vodka, some. Yeah, Hennessy to Pink Whitney. Yeah, he's got some right there for you.

There you go. That's a good looking bottle, too. So this is your vodka? or spitting chicklets vodka. Spitting chicklets. We came on to our New Amsterdam vodka came on as a presenting sponsor. And they said in the first podcast, talk about what you mix with your vodka.

And Ryan Whitney just mentioned on the golf course. He loved drinking Newman's own pink lemonade mixed with New Amsterdam vodka. And he called it the Pink Whitney. And all of a sudden we noticed that there was an influx of hashtags of Pink Whitney, people sending us these drinks enjoying them. and my business partner kept saying, hey, there's like so much of this. Why don't we make our own little drink do a fun little release?

And I mentioned it to them. And Witt at first was like, guy, we're a hockey podcast. We're making a pink, a pink lemonade vodka now. What are you talking about? Right.

So he pushed it aside. And me and my business partner, we filed for the domains. We mentioned it to Barstool. There were so many moving parts at the time that it got pushed to the wayside. And one day, Witt was on his way to, to a Halloween part.

party with his wife in the car and his wife said, I see so many people talking and sending me pictures of this Pink Whitney you're talking about on the podcast. Why don't you guys do it? And it was like, ah, Biz said that. And I kind of pigeon tossed them on it. So they called me in the car. And I said, so would you do it? And he's like, absolutely, talk to them. And I said, we'd already filed for the domains. Once we reached out to New Amsterdam and Basel, they were like, okay, yeah, let's try it out. And next thing you know, I think recently they said we sold 15 million bottles. We sold 807,000 cases in the first year. The Rock sold 300,000 cases of his tequila in the first year.

We almost tripled that. We need our own alcohol. Not that it would sell like Pink Whitney, but I don't know what it would be. I would say to a beer, but the demographics of how much these kids are drinking these RTDs, ready to drinks. Oh, RTDs. Look at he's in the industry. Fuck off. He is.

RTDs, you definitely learn. You don't just fucking pick up RTD unless you're slinging grain alcohol or something. Yeah, L. Like I'll use all the lame acronyms, the lame acronyms. But all these younger kids are drinking the white claws. What are some other ones? Four local. Everybody's coming out with an answer to a white claw.

Everybody. I can't get down with the white claw. I just tried the other day, Cactus Jack. Do you know what that is? No, but I've heard of it. What? You looking like you've had one before a white claw. Boone's Farm.

Boones Farm. Mad Dog 2020, that's one I miss. We could bring back Mad Dog. The first thing that looked like from a distance was Mad Dog. But as it got closer, it looked a lot classier. And so I'm complimenting the packaging. Did you ever drink MD 2020s back in the day when you were at university? That's what you guys call it in Canada, right?

So I never went to university and I wasn't drinking in high school. I never drank. I saved all my drinking and drug abuse for my NHL career. So you didn't do any drugs in high school or in college. So it's funny to me like, okay, so you've talked outwardly about like smoking and that sort of thing and even like micro dosing. And so you started in the pros smoking or in the minors? I didn't smoke as much cannabis when I was playing in the NHL. I just I just didn't.

I was more of a drinker and I like the uppers at that time. But I wish I would have. I wish I would have been replacing all that alcohol I was drinking with cannabis because the effect. of the alcohol over the years definitely took its toll. And I mean, you're young, right? You, you tend to rebound a lot better back back in your early days, but you just find how much it deteriorate your body. So yeah, post career, I've just been smoking a ton of pot and I enjoy it. It helps with pain management. It puts me in a better mood. Same thing with the mushrooms. Yeah. I don't do, I don't do the mushrooms as much. I just on days where I'm not feeling the best,

I do it to change my mood. I think that all the, I think that all the, maybe all the concussions has played its role on some days where I wake up and I'm just not, not all there, a little bit foggy and a little below the weather as far as not feeling as positive, I guess.

I just told him I felt foggy and, and like I couldn't think this morning. And you were on caffeine? Yeah, actually, I never do caffeine because caffeine will send my, I am a guy who I don't need any up. It's okay. Like I need the town.

So for me, I even cut out coffee like in retirement because I don't need to be at like this level anymore. And it's funny because I think, you know, like we were talking about being an enforcer earlier, being a guy that fights a lot. You know, one of the main things I hear guys talking about is, well, I worry because I'm getting punched in the face. And like, yeah, how many concussions do you think you had? That's another thing that changed. We never really tested for that back then. And I didn't even know what it was. I could probably tell you 20 to 30 times during.

my couple years in the American League trying to make the NHL as a fighter to where I'm sure that when you've lined up against guys and you hit someone and then you go black and then you kind of see the little dots and then finally everything settles down and you're back and you're just like, okay, well, I'm going to line up again. You might take one play off. Whereas now I think people are starting to understand what exactly that was and the consequences of that and how much time you need off after you go through something like that. So as far as numbers, I don't know, 20, 30. Yeah. Well, that three or four documented. It's scary because like you said, when in 2008 when I came in the league, it was, and I'm sure in the minors, there was even like as you're working your way up,

it's like, fuck who like who's paying attention and who's pulling themselves out of the game. You know, like even now in football where they're like, there's more of an awareness, a consciousness, which is not a pun, but there's a consciousness around like head health and eliminating some of those hits. Guys aren't checking themselves out. I remember the first play of the NFC championship against the Vikings game before we go to the Super Bowl.

I think I had a concussion. Kyle Rudolph and I hit heads and his head is enormous. It was a minor hit, but sometimes you just get dinged the right place and it was like play action pass. And I remember sitting there, all these thoughts in my head with like, okay, I probably have a concussion I'm in Philadelphia, it's the NFC championship game,

I'm having all these thoughts and I'm like, there's no fucking way you're pulling yourself out. And I'm just saying to myself like, would I be thinking any differently if it was week 14? I don't know if I would. And I think that's a thing that, that's gonna be the hardest thing about if you wanna revamp our games is like,

you can put all the mental health professionals in the booth you want, you can have a protocol, but until like guys like you or me are listening, to the voice over the shoulder, it's like, go get help. Like, go to the bench. It's not going to change that much. It's so hard because you understand that certain players of high caliber maybe have the luxury in order to say, hey, something's not right and sit out,

where I knew I was the guy where if maybe I took some time off because I felt a little dinged up, especially at that time when I was coming up, there might have been another guy to be able to just slide in there and take my spot. So it's, it's bizarre that your thought process when you go through something like that is, okay, I know I'm not right and I probably should sit out, but like what will the perception of me be if I do from my teammates from a management standpoint? Will they feel like I quit on them? Is it actually that bad?

Can I suck it up and go out there and play? So there's a lot of self-awareness, even though you've just been through that of, of, of, of, of what is my reality and how I can handle my, I handle my own injury and concussion. I, I'd already made it up in my head that when I was feeling those things and getting pounding in the face, I didn't,

the two years in the HL, I fought 30 times back to back. I mentioned all the, the juice monkeys I was fighting. And never once did I consider taking a game off from, from fighting or not doing it, because I just was like,

I don't want to give up that spot. And a concussion is less easy to diagnose than like a tornation. like the doctor mobs your knee and he's like yeah dude 17 degrees or whatever you said like with your head it's your second guessing yourself you're like i feel off today or is light bothering me or am i just hung over and that's another thing like you're going out and getting fucked up after these concussions like i do think that the concussion stuff is very real cTE is very real but i've always said i don't want to fall into a trap of the self-fulfilling prophecy of when

When I retire, I hear all these horror stories about people losing their shit or going bankrupt or divorcing their wife and then just like follow that path because I'm worried about it and it increases my anxiety. You know, like I do think there is a huge existential void that you and I kind of hinted at earlier that we're trying to fill that void. And I think a lot of guys really struggle with that too.

So when it comes to mental health and retirement and contact sports, I think there's, well, what if it's this? That could scare you in to come. kind of losing it too. So I think we discount like guys who have anxiety or bipolar who have like very real 100% and and on top of it all like a lot of people listening who haven't ended up making it to pro going to play college and and on all that stuff is is we're kind of like kids where our schedules have been laid out from the beginning. We've been told what to do like as much as we're professional

athletes and and maybe you're being paid a decent wage like you're having your. your ass wipe for you to a certain degree. So when it's all taken from you and it's all gone, now you have to get up, you have to make your own schedule. You have to go get whatever you want. You have to be an adult. So for some guys,

that's very difficult from going to all those years where a lot of those problems were being taken care of by team personnel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now it lies in your hand. I think that that can definitely have an impact on how guys feel in post career on top of it. even listen, I think that the concussions for sure played a role, but I talked about the drinking and partying too. I think that that played an even probably bigger role.

Equal. I would say equal. At least equal. And that's where there, you know, there have been lawsuits, you know, filed against the NHL and I'm sure in the NFL, it's been crazy as well. And I respect anybody's decision as whether they want to hop on board with that or not.

My opinion was, is like, I think I was pretty aware of, of the way my body was feeling being in the process of being a fighter. But as well, I need to take accountability for all the other actions of the drinking and partying too. So I would feel like a little bit of a hypocrite if I hopped on board with these lawsuits where I played in a league where I got paid pretty well. And with the accountability,

I had to be responsible with my money as well. So to go back and try to sue the league and the infrastructure that was set up so I could have a very good living, it didn't sit well with me and that's why I decided not to join in on those lawsuits. I hold myself accountable and that's it. And also, I mean, like for me, I know that I've always been a certain way. Like if I'm being real with myself, I've always been high strong. I've always had anxiety. You know, like, making one tell you that, like from knowing me, I'm paranoid.

I'm fucking overthink things and like. Same thing. I'm an overthinker. Yeah. And that can be bad like because with more time and more idle time, What do you do? You just live in your head. And again, like all our friends, like if you go back home, your buddies have had a career for 10 years that they're going to have maybe the rest of their lives.

Like, Macon is one of my best friends in the world. He sold real estate since the time basically got out of college. And he's very good at it, by the way. Thank you. Weekly plug. You know, like he knows he can do that the rest of his life unless he gets canceled on the podcast. So thank you very much. That's true.

Be careful. Don't whip your cock out at any showings or anything. But, I mean, you know, the upside is a lot of people. in the pod. Maybe they want to buy a house from you specifically. I'm just saying that you have a job the rest of your life. So like, I think it's also a big mind fucked that the minute you hit the ground, you look out ahead of you. Your prime is over depending on like society would tell you your prime is over, right? Nobody's going to give a fuck about the next thing you do. You have to detach your thinking and your expectations from like society standard for you. And then also you have to

overcome the fact that like there's a great unknown. My buddies all have careers. They're going to work the rest of their lives are going to have stability. I have to start over at 33, 34. It's almost like it would be better if you wash out of league early outside the money because you just start your life. Yeah, I talk to buddies about this. It's almost also the desensitization. Yeah, that's a, that's a hell of a word.

That's fucking probably the longest, most syllable word I've ever used. But yeah, you're exposed to this wild life on one. And all of a sudden, when it's done, too, it's like I mean I'll you know like women the partying all the other crazy things that are exposed to that I don't think are fulfilling in the end but you all of a sudden when you stop playing pro sports it's like you went from this like mega life where you're in the news and like people are asking for your autograph to where you're all of a sudden just like a regular Joe so yeah it could it could be a tough adjustment for some even if you don't like the adulation like

even if it makes you uncomfortable being out and like you're socially a little bit like off at a bar when people are coming up to you, you still miss like doing relevant work that people deem relevant. And you miss the rush and you miss the, there's no better feeling than what we got in the arena. And you'll never get that again. Like somebody really smart told me

this is my college coach, I'll grow. He's like, don't try to replace football. Try to find something that replaces the competitive nature of football because you will never, ever, ever get that same hair standing on end feeling when you make a sack. in like a big game or force a fumble or like fight like the biggest baddest dude or score a couple of goals right so like fuck a few between but yeah but i was going to youtube them and ask you to

recount them but i didn't get there but like i um you're just never going to replace that and so the way i describe it to guys that are about to get out is sure you're never going to and for the listener i'm holding one hand up very high here you're never gonna you're never going to reach this feeling with as much regularity, but now I'm going to hold my hand way down low. You're never going to feel like the biggest failure in the world because you lost a hockey game or played bad on a football field on a Monday morning. You're never going to want to like crawl in a hole and not go to the supermarket or you're never going to be known for a bad play you made or that, well, if you make a bad enough play, this is the trade off being a pro athlete. It lives with you forever, Bill Buckner.

But like, you're never going to ride that wave. Retirement is more my hands in the middle. And you got to be okay with that life. And that's the biggest adjustment. You know, and I think it's the adrenaline. It's the team aspect. And I think it's the social structure and also being like, hey, this is where you have to be. Last year during the pandemic, I haven't said this to anybody, even you. And you know this and my producer knows this. I was smoking too much.

I was high all the fucking time. Not when I needed to do things that my life depended or my family's life depended on it, but like trying to work and that sort of thing. I just totally was my own boss. And I'm still my own boss. But you've never been your own boss. in your entire life. So you have to make adjustments that you've never had to make yourself. And I think retirement can be incredibly illuminating, but it can also be fucking terrifying.

Yeah, a little bit more self-accountability because you don't have to, you know, you don't have to go to the field every day where, yeah, you're not showing up high. But when you wake up in the morning, you're not going to the field and, you know, you see, I mean, I'm pretty sure you did pretty all right during your career. You're like, yeah, I deserve at this point to light a big fat fucking join up. Well, yeah, and you picked your spots. But like I could show up to, I could show up here and prep for a pod for eight hours and hit the volcano five times okay he's smiling he got a volcano look at his face scotty upshall introduced me to the uh the volcano i know you were on their

podcast uh yeah we've we've had some great nights with the but i can never hit the volcano five times ago to go to practice and remember my assignment so the pressure now i take this just as seriously but it's a different thing so you could go off and fuck off and still do your job you couldn't do it before by the way upper asked me to put you on the spot and say golf and hockey spitting chicklets versus uh of missing curfew. Yeah, we're going to have to get something going at some point. I think we're planning on going up to California next year. We were supposed to go earlier,

but with the whole COVID situation in California being an absolute joke as far as lockdowns, or at least before, I don't know what's going on there now, but yeah, we're going to have to. Man, Upby was an unreal teammate.

He was actually the guy who convinced me to jump on Twitter. Oh, fuck you then. You're kind of like, I don't know. Well, no, Twitter's worked out well for you, but it's also been,

torturous thing i mean for any of us so yeah yeah no but more positively there's probably never any podcast without uh upy having me started a twitter account i was very anti twitter i didn't understand it i was like what you just like update he's gonna want royalties now dude you shouldn't have admitted that and also shame oh i i text them all i tell them all the time and also talk about all the time how he he was basically the guy who started it all for me and i got to hang out with those guys at bonneroo one year i know you guys spoke of that yeah So the funny thing is you missed us at Bonnaroo. Like you were before, I missed you, we started going after you were going.

And every year, Upshaw, Joffrey, you know, Shane O'Brien, the whole gang is down there. And not to mention Ryan O'Reilly, Stanley Cup hero. handsome fucker too. Yeah, he's got it all. Mass of dick just hanging down to his knees. Well, I don't know about that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

We think he's got a Nick Foll's thing going? You think he's got a Nick Foll's thing going? think he's got a Nick Foles thing going? Yeah, we just joke around about the dicks. But that was the thing, like every, when we played, every weekend was like Bonneroo. Now it's like you get one Bonneroo a year. Do you remember how we talked about desensitization? Yeah.

I was this guy who just entered the National Hockey League and Uppie had played in Nashville in Philadelphia at the time. Uppie was a stud coming out of junior, first round draft pick. He was best friends with Joffrey Lupal, who I think was even better in junior, ended up living an even crazier life because I think he had a couple of good years and signed some big contracts. So they, they took me under their wing and showed me this, this whole life that I'd never experienced. When we went to Bonaroo, like normally I would just get a general admission ticket. Yeah. No, they had the VIP experience where they had T-Pain's

tour bus where we got to live in this enchanted forest. We would get driven around in these golf carts from stage to stage, so we didn't have to walk all the way around and miss some of the performance. Three organic cook meals. Um, if you, by chance, I ended up meeting. a girl and you needed rubbers while there was a 24 hour concierge service if you need a little seallis to get the thing up yeah 24 hour cost year service wait there's a cealis store there oh i was i was bringing it a little i put a little salt and pepper on the steak for fucksakes but but these these guys had showed me a whole different world where i was like i was going general admission to where these guys were showing me this crazy life and you know what you know when we would go out to bars

we would have our own section and like you know what the fuck is bottle service you know like what is what is this they didn't have this 500 bucks for a bottle for a bottle like are you nuts but it was just these guys were just were cool and they and they did it the right way and fortunately i was able to hang out with them and they had awesome personalities and uh yeah and i and i'm very grateful for the for the time with them the the bonneroo experience was just one of many with those guys and uh and i and i appreciate their friendship over the so before we let you go two questions number one will you come back into a volcano mailbag with me oh oh yeah 100 okay we'll do a volcano mailbag number two this is a bigger ask but you need to look at the bonner

lineup this year you should come back dude oh is it yeah it's in september so humid there it was it's not humid in september buddy it's i mean it's still who are the headliners lana del ray i don't mind lana del ray but she i would never she's i heard she's boring in concert i've seen videos it's just very monotone she's got some Okay, foo fighters, Megan the Stallion, Grace Potter, run the jewels, young thug. Come on, dude. Tame and Paula, that's right up your alley. Tame and Pallel.

Wait, let me see this. Megan the stallion, are you, are you all gung-ho to go watch Megan the Stallion before? No, but my wife is, dude, my wife is. You know who was there when I was there? Who? I think they had little Wayne was there. They had, oh, geez, here we go. Now I'm going to have a fucking brain fart listing all these off.

My morning jacket. Oh, MMJ. is one of the goats. They're there this year. MMJ, Jason Isbell, yeah. Arcade Fire was there. Arcade Fire. I believe Eminem was there that year. Then we were there the same year? Maybe Eminem wasn't my year, but Arcade Fire and my morning jacket were two of the night headliners where, I mean, that in itself I would have paid to go see. And that's another reason why the friendship with Upby was so great is he introduced me to so much amazing music. I never knew who arcade fire was. I never knew mine morning jacket. I never knew half of these bands.

I think who's who's the other one that one from overseas in Britain. God the Beatles. The Beatles. Come on. No. Uh, you got like the tango style. Tell me you don't like Mumford and Sons. You like Mumford and Sons was there. Were you there that? Dude, we've actually talked, I think. Okay. So then maybe I think we talked. I think we talked. I was wearing a big fucking like weird fur thing and Jack White was there that year maybe were you at the Jack White show no that's the year I wasn't there Jack White year I don't okay so here's the deal we've me upy as you would put it O'Reilly all those guys are MMJ groupies just like me and we've hit red rocks and the whole deal so get in this circuit man we're retired now let's get back in the circuit so I think I've lost my spot because I didn't go the

next year after Bonner's so I've been pigeon toss and also if if I had the opportunity to hang around with Ryan O'Reilly or myself I think Ryan O'Reilly no dude I got a spot I got a spot. I'm not going to fanboy because I'm a blues fan. Biz Nasty, you got a spot with on my bus. If you want to spot on my bus, the invitations is extended. You are now a part of the family and a friend of the program. Paul Bissonette, spitting chicklets. Thank you so much for the time. Dude, I had a blast.

Yeah, great conversation. Thanks for having me, boys. Yeah. And good luck with the pitters, Meecan. Thank you. See you, buddy. What an interview. As promised, it was, I mean, I could have that guy on almost every week he's he's great yeah we got some like a does like any co-hosting or with the contract stuff you just you never know what you yeah find out what his uh his fee is his fee yeah then maybe you're going to want to circle back geez yeah so uh biz i uh i uh might

lose a little sleep wondering whether or not he was intentionally getting my name wrong there in the back half or unintentional. I don't know. Who's butchered your name the funniest though since this whole podcast started? Well, the most hurtful are the people who don't try. So as long as you're trying, that's what matters to me. People that. When you say before an interview starts, hey, person, this is Macon and the person says, okay, cool.

And then I'm. It is astounding to me how many people think your name is just like Nathan Mason or something. Like, you know, like. Or Meakin. Not a big deal. Not a big deal, Meekin. Hey, let's do some roulette.

Okay. With Cowboy Reed. This weekend, D.K. McCaff ran the 100 meter dash in 10.37 seconds, finishing ninth in his heat, 15th out of 17 at the USATF Golden Games and Distance Open. Does this impress you? Also, gun to your head, year to train. What event would you be able to successfully qualify and compete in at the the Olympics. They're both great questions. The first one, let's tackle it.

Am I impressed? Are you impressed? Yeah, I'm impressed. I just ran 40 yards in six and a half seconds. So yeah, I'm impressed. I mean, even like relative to you guys in NFL player, we've seen athletes step out of their lane before and like be overconfident about it and that sort of thing. I'll tell you the real winner is Russell Wilson because his freakish receiver didn't explode his hamstring. Like that would make me super nervous. Seahawks under. Yeah, exactly. Well, Under would have been the sexy play

before he ran the race. Because honestly, I was literally thinking about Seahawks Under earlier, and then I remember D.K. Matt Caff exists. Like, he's changing. Okay, I'm just telling you. They can't play the Rams every week. Rams over.

Rams over, I would agree. Let's not give them too much. Okay, all right. Yeah, let's place these. Let's place these. But I think D.K. should be proud. I think, you know, he got off to a great start. Like, I don't know anything about track and field,

but you hear people talking about it. Like, his start was legit. It was actually, and this is counterintuitive, somebody who doesn't know track and forgot the fact that he's like 240. I thought stride would be like where he would take off, you know, and distance himself from the pack. Nah, the little dudes were catching him once they got out of the block.

And it was so funny. And 10-36 was his time. 22 miles an hour was how fast. he was running catching Buda Baker. To put things in perspective, you say bolt 27 miles an hour. You know, like that's passing lane.

So I'm not, it's like, that's Michael Scott. I'm more talking about how fast these guys are that are running with D.K. Metcalf. The impressive thing is D.K. is huge. In fact, he knocked into a guy after they ran over the finish line

and it looked like he was like a shuffleboard puck and just like DK nudged him. And he just went, oh, like off to the side. It was cool. and all the track and field guys seemed to really like him being there. I didn't feel like he was like stealing their thunder. He did an interview with one of the guys

and the guy was like busting his balls. I thought of you because he was like, oh yeah, it was awesome having D.K. He's great. I don't like what he did to my giants. But like, you know, it's just a,

it's a crazy dynamic. And then they interview DK. And he's so humble. He's literally like every question like, I'm just blessed to be out here with world class athletes. And I think that even if you're a purist and you're like,

why the fuck does this guy get to cut to the front of line to run with all these guys have been working at it for their whole lives. Well, it's because he's a respectful cat, and that makes it look fine to me. And I get to marvel at how athletic this guy is. Nick Wright made a point. In 1980, he'd be like a bronze medalist at that time in the 100 meter.

So that also goes to show how much athletes are changing since the 80s. In the NFL, in track and field, everywhere. So kudos to him. actually ended up looking good and classy doing a thing that most people look asinine doing and totally out of class. I know nothing of what you speak. Really? Well, no, I just made NASA myself a couple weeks back at our combine,

so I know precisely what you speak. Got it, got it. Yeah, Brandon Marshall said if he trains for a year, he could run a sub 10. Now, like, listen, I don't know. I feel like I'm laughing at that comment only because I saw other track and field people laugh. He could convince me, but people were like, nah.

That's kind of like, you know, maybe if we keep working at this thing, we'll break five and six. I don't know if it's going to happen. But yeah, the event that I'd probably pick up, I don't know, trampoline. That's an Olympic event? Hell, yes, it is. I must have been looking at the wrong list. I was looking at like real, real things.

So what's that based on like height, jumps, flips? No, I just feel like easy on the joints. I have a long history of doing trampoline. But what is the event? Like how are you? Oh, I was selling myself. You just do tricks. Do your tricks.

Get up there. There's a little crosshair in the middle of trampoline. You put on a leotard and you... Damn, you're right. You jump high. You do flips. You do all types of stuff. And I got a trick right now that I do relatively well where...

And I did this summer as recently as this summer. Jump really high in the air. Land on your back, right? then flip over and land on your face and then land on your feet. Ugh. I was always scared. This might surprise you. I was always scared of trampolines growing up.

Well, they were scary. And here's the thing. Like I also grew up in an era where, and we grew up in an era where trampoline wasn't, it wasn't for the feign of hearts. And we were unsupervised. Unsupervised. No fencing around the trampolines. Like, you know how.

Your ankle caught in the thingies. Yeah, you get the ankle caught in the thingies, like you fall off the thing, you bump heads with another kid. It was like the Wild West out there. And that's why I think they should start like a training center for like youth trampoline in West Virginia. Think about it.

Not to say everybody in West Virginia is, you know, like country as hell, but country-ass kids, they still don't have the fences on the trampolines. Those kids are out there just raw dog trampoline. And I really think like if you, you're going to go rural America to find the next great class of Olympians, you go to Beckley, West Virginia. You go to the kids that, yeah, hello, that don't have any fencing around their trampolines. They're out there fearless as fuck.

After they get off the trampolines, they're out there on the dirt bike. Like, those are the kids that you make the next class of U.S. trampolining. That's a great answer. And I would love to do trampolining. I landed on, you can pick mine of three. Archery. Archery, badminton, fencing. Sailing.

Oh, you'd be a killer sailor, dude. Thanks, man. Now, I wouldn't want to do anything, but I could sit there. Maybe not an Olympic sailor, but you would be cool, you would be awesome on a sailboat. Got the boat shoes. But these sailors in the Olympics, they're going like sideways, 100 miles an hour.

Oh, like I can get out of a dong thing, whatever that's called. What? Well, the thing that's the sale thing that swings back and forth. Feels like it's a dong type word. Good thing that didn't come up on the Wonder Lake. You might have out of 48.

The mass. We don't talk about that enough. Mass? Mr. 49. Yeah, Mr. 49. Yeah, it's amassed. Yeah, I think so. Okay. Right?

Yeah, I could bob and weave. All I'm saying is I think sailboating, I think like kind of a weak-ass sport. You know, it's sponsored by like... Rolex. Yeah, one of the watch. I was trying to think of how to say to Sought. Or what, how do you say that?

You say Rolex. I know Rolex, but the other one that I'm trying to conjure. I don't know. Let's say to sew. To sew. Is that what we'd say? I'm not sure. Okay. But honestly, I think you could do the sailboat thing. You just have to get a lot more like physically fit and a lot more aggressive. But if you don't want to do the Olympics, you could be a killer like just sailboat guy.

Former NFL defensive end Brandon Bear saved a man from a flaming semi-truck minutes after it had been struck by a train. circling back to our podcast about famous athletes and their rescuing accomplishments, how many capes does Brandon get? First off, awesome, awesome job by Brandon Bear. Who's 36, we're the same age. I was like, I know I remember that cat. He was an Oregon, Dien, he was a big tall guy.

And being big and tall helps when you've got to reach into a flaming motor vehicle that just got hit by a train and pull out a dude. I got to give him, like, probably, four and a half capes here because you've got everything. You've got everything, you know, like the perfect country and Western song, nothing about trucks or trains or prison.

That's right. Hey, you got all that here, minus the prison. You got trucks, you got trains, you got flames. I mean, think about it. You get hit by a train, you survive that. You're like, holy shit. Then you look up and your dashboards on fire. and then you look over and there's like former six foot seven pass rush you ready to wrangle you out of your uh your flaming motor vehicle you're very lucky that brandon bear was there and i give him four and a half capes i went not to steal your thunder i went five capes no no problem primarily because he used a very vivid descriptor of the flame which i now can't pull up i believe he said he saw the flames dripping down yeah when i heard dripping flames i was like holy shit

This is an inferno? Yes. And shoot, once he got the guy out, he took a picture of the thing. It was not a pretty picture. Five capes. Fire is nothing to joke with. These are Terminator Flames. Lifesaver.

Good for him. Better for the guy who survived getting hit by a train and dripping flames. Yeah. Adam Thieland was quoted as saying, there's nothing better than leaving Lambo with a victory. There's nothing better. The whole stadium's not nice. There's nothing fancy about it.

It's bleacher seats. He did later clarify that it is one of his favorite places to play, but the words still stand. What are your favorite and least favorite NFL stadiums? Okay, so first off, I got to hear that. That's one of those things I got to hear because maybe he said, like, how good the question was, how good does it feel to like walk out of Lambo with a victory?

So good. It feels so good. I love walking out of there with a victory, blah, blah, blah. And then like two sentences pass. And then he goes, which they do the dot, dot, dot, dot on, on the score. And then he says something effect of, you know,

it's not even that crazy a place architecturally, or it's not even like that high tech, but it's one of my favorite places to play. Like, it's just bleach your seats and then they make this little clickbait thing. I'm going to assume he was dumping on Lambo field so we can take a minute to dump on some fields.

Number one, FedEx Field. I'll go number one FedEx Field. The worst, bro. Awful. Like, what the fuck were you doing? Middle of nowhere, playing surface. A lot of the stadiums that came up around that time, including in the 90s, like age relatively fast.

But this one was like, I don't know, Mel Gibson and Forever Young, did I nail that? You wouldn't know. I don't know. I think he got old really fast, like immediately. Or the guy in Indiana Jones, who drank the wrong stuff when he crossed the Invisible. Haven't seen it.

It's like if we were in May, 2021 and a startup just put all of their energy into skinny jeans. Yeah. Making the best skinny jeans. Bad news boys. We're going back to boot cut. And also I'm not even sure their iteration of skinny jeans was ever in. It's just an ugly stadium and you can't have the same bland ass corporate partner for that long. You know like FedEx. That doesn't do anything for me. Yeah. Like yeah, it gets me my mail there quickly like a, you know, like a, you know, like a. birthday card or something, but it doesn't do anything for me. You know, they got the arrow there between the E and the X. I know, and the logo is hiding in plain sight.

A lot like the Hawks outline and the old retro Hawks thing for me for years, which was more of a me problem, I think. Yeah, FedEx sucks, dude. FedEx is the worst. Here's a deal. The reno of, shoot, everything, Joe Robbie, pro player, hard rock, now who knows what it's called. But the reno of the Miami Dolphin Stadium.

list of good stadiums. It's very well done. I love it. And also, you're starting on third base. It's warm. The grass is beautiful. You don't like Miami so much because of the location. The location. You don't like the fact that there's too many areas in Miami and you don't know when you're in Miami or not. But let's say you're a normal person who's not OCD about stuff like that. You might really like playing football in December down there. If I'm building a stadium, every seat or every staircase is tubular. Well, and now they've made a modern canopy. canopy. Don't know if it actually does anything, but they have fucking

cables that look like they're actually weight-bearing. Yeah. It's very cool. It's a very cool stadium. I think here's the problem with Lambo. If I'm playing devil's advocate, I do respect the hell out of it. I think the best thing it has going for, well, again, not to be quoted. Let me say this first. It is one of the most iconic stadiums in sports. I think it's been around for 60 years almost at this point, if not more.

you know like it also is very updated if you play there like they've done a nice job of updating it almost to the to the point where like it took away a little bit of the pop for me when we used to get a candle stick i loved it you knew it was old you had no choice but to know it was old the fucking locker rooms were dumps like everything but you could feel it it was an organism and same thing with that bill stadium which most people would probably rank towards the bottom it feels like a college stadium. Arrowhead, old, cool, built retro. It looks like the Jetsons drew that thing up. And it was like then became old fast, but like a good old, not FedEx old. Lambo to me, it should stand out more. The best thing they have going for themselves at Lambo, it's like a Sim City stadium. Remember

you used to play Sim City on the computer? I didn't. Oregon Trail. Oh yeah. Love that game. Did you die dysentery much? Yeah, I did actually. I tried to fjord everything. Yeah. But they say Fjord back then on the trail. They just said Ford. It's a SimCity vibe because there's literally a neighborhood of modest homes and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, big ass stadium. I think that's the coolest thing.

I'm not even being sarcastic about that at all. It's one of a kind. They'll never build another one like it and there probably won't be another one like it. There probably isn't another one like it anymore. I think you're right. For me, the older stadiums, and I've been to many more college,

stadiums than I have pro the older ones the ones that don't impress you but have history to them are the best like L.A. Coliseum yeah I mean the stairs are uneven yeah you talk about trip hazards but it's such a cool spot with so much history same goes for the Rose Bowl I mean you're not blown away by by what's there it's the history of the tradition the pageantry of a ball game in the Rose Bowl Notre Dame Stadium I mean inside you're unimpressed when you're at When you're on the field, it looks like nothing. Notre Dame sounds to me like Lambo. Right.

You got to see it. It's a piece of history. I've never been there. But the way you described is the way I feel about Lambo. It almost like it was like so nice and they like updated it so much. And listen, they updated the fuck out of soldier field, but I think it looks so cool. You got the columns. Yeah.

It looks amazing. It's Star Trek meets Walter Payton. It's cool. Notre Dame Stadium, I will say the concourse is gorgeous. Yes. Which is something. And you look. To one side you got touchdown Jesus, which is very cool.

But just on the field, looking up and around it, it looks like another bowl. Same thing at Lambeau Field to me. And no offense to anybody who's like a fetish person with Lambeau Field, like, you know, I'm not as into it as some people, but I respect the hell out of the place. Death Valley and Clemson.

But you know, you said it, Coliseum, the thing's a piece of shit, right? But they had a flame. Yes. And I used to stare at that flame and be like, that flame's gonna go away one day and they're gonna play games at SoFi and people are gonna love it.

but you'll never ever be able to recreate that. Not in our lifetime. Maybe someday there's a stadium that feels that old and that dingy and that like full of history, but we'll be old men. And that's like they've gone away from it. I don't think they'll ever commit to stadiums again to where one gets run down enough

to have the character necessary to give you chills for the hair to stand up on your back when you run through the tunnel. That was candlestick for me. And in the NFL, unfortunately, or fortunately, these stadiums have to be surrounded by giant, freaking parking lots. And suites.

And sweets. But so many parking lots, so you don't have a sick backdrop like you can get in college, like a BYU, which is just nuts for Boise State or some of these places. Next. Oh, I do want to shit on AT&T Stadium real quick. Okay.

As far as new stadiums, it's terrible. Futuristic, dumb, giant board, scary. Feels like it's going to fall all the time. It's stupid. The best thing they have going is that tunnel. There's like a tunnel under the stadium that the buses go. It's like a mile long. It feels unnecessary though.

We'd be remiss. Yeah. Not to mention Edward Jones don't. Oh yeah, it's one of my favorites all time. Great spot. Talk about chills. If I ever walk back in that place, it would give me chills. But then I'd be like, y'all didn't win a lot in here.

I don't know what you're so excited about. It's probably a convention center now. They got a bunch of cubes. No, they just do like monster truck stuff in there, which is cool with me. That makes sense. Forbes released the world's most valuable franchise rankings, tied for 25th. The Denver Broncos are valued at $3.2 billion and in the last five years have experienced a 65% increase in value. What other sports teams stand out on the list?

I mean, what stands out to me is that Golden State is more valuable than the Lakers. Yeah, good call. Unbelievable and hilarious to point out to Lakers fans. They picked a small guard from Davidson and boom, more valuable than the Lakers. Maybe this makes, like, it wasn't even that serious. The guys who were giving Danny Green death threats over missing that shot, like, by the way, I'm going on this podcast tonight.

Nice. Shout out Danny Green, check that one out. So if you're listening to this, you like this pod, go listen to his. Maybe it wasn't that fucking serious. You're only the seventh most valuable franchise. You're less valuable than the warriors incoming death threats for your boy. Cowboys still number one in their cheeks.

They've been cheeks for, for eons. dude. 43% their values up in the last five years in their cheeks. I mean like Cowboys are the odds. It's just like you don't have to do anything. America's team. Much like America. You don't have to actually improve. They are America's team. You can just be stuck in a 25 year rut and just like make incremental improvements and then fucking just implode on yourself and still go up in value. Only that the, I don't think the metaphor works because I don't think our dollars going up in value

or anything like that. 47% of the last five years. I will say this. The Knicks at three at $5 billion. J.A. Adonde recently said that nobody west of the Hudson cares about the Knicks. The Hudson. Ouch.

I mean, they're doing a hell of a lot east of the Hudson to pump up these numbers, aren't they? His reasoning was that the ratings for the two Knicks finals in the 90s were not very good. And to that, I would say, you ever heard of Michael Jordan and, you know, the lockout season? Talk about a place that is sort of stuck in time in a good way, that Madison Square Garden,

the Mecca. The Mecca, the home of the world's third most valuable franchise. So, J.A. Adande, I don't know about that. maybe it's China that's doing all this caring. They're east and west of the Hudson if you think about it. Think about it. I'm thinking about it. Yeah.

The only other one here that I just wanted to point out is that the Eagles are closing in on the Red Sox. And I love it. If the Eagles find a way to close the, it's just the $07 billion gap between the Bo Sox and the birds, I would just freak out if next year they find, find a way to be more valuable. Yeah, let's check back next year. I think E-A-G-L-E-S might be more like number 61 than 21.

Well, all I'm saying is they're closing in, they're swooping. All due respect. Pick up that little sock. And you're getting further away from the Super Bowl as time goes on. Oh no, no, no, no. We're now getting closer.

We're doing a boomerang thing. Okay, sick. So the birds top 25 closing on the Red Sox. What I keep seeing here though is that new stadium does wonders, right? L.A. Rams, $4 billion, as much I hate to say it, because, you know, St. Louis Rams guy, they're pretty damn valuable. And nobody, and, like, you don't even have to really, like, have a rabid, like, local

fan base. I know the local L.A. fan base is rabid, but don't act like you're the biggest show in town. You know you're not. And people care about the Lakers and all that other shit. And probably the Dodgers even before the Rams there. Somebody told me they played for the Rams. They were like, man, it's awesome, except when you go in a restaurant. Nobody cares about you.

And like, nobody, I'm like, that's not a bad thing. Right. Egotomaniac. Washington football team at 19. Brooklyn, that's not on this thing here, Reed? Nets are 40th. 2.65 billion. And, you know, speaking of value,

soon to be one of the most valuable podcasts in the land, the Greenlight Pod. We'll be back on your Friday. Our Thursday, we will be back in the lab, bringing you eaters. This is my favorite podcast. Really? Yes.

Wasn't Paul great? Yes. No. No, that's not what I meant. You just liked us. This is my favorite podcast in general. Oh. I'm not saying this particular show was my favorite.

I thought this is a great pod. I think it might be, I have to listen back. Which is not going to happen. No, it might. Oh. Yeah.

This is one of my favorite podcast. Besides the fact that I hate my own voice and myself. Yeah. It's good pod. It's nice being with you, man. Thanks, man. You too. Thanks, man.

Since middle school for the people out there. That's right. That's right. Since middle school. Y'all take care.