Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Frank Mir On Brock Lesnar, His Daughter Bella Mir's MMA Dominance, Why He's Not Ready To Retire

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Frank Mir (@thefrankmir) is a former 2-time UFC Heavyweight Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the Blue Wire Studios in Las Vegas to talk about his legendary career, being part of Freedom Fight Night, his fights with Brock Lesnar, Junior dos Santos, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Tim Sylvia and others, his daughter Bella Mir's MMA career, his recent boxing match against Kubrat Pulev, his time working as a bouncer at Spearmint Rhino, what he thinks about Jake Paul's boxing career and much more! For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com Create a beautiful website for your podcast in just 5 minutes: https://www.podpage.com/?via=cvv If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Bleas! So good to see you and welcome back in here to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm CVV Chris Van Fleet and I love that Frank Mears back on the show. Former two-time UFC heavyweight champion and the man who holds the record for the most finishes and most submission victories in UFC heavyweight history. It's been like two and a half years. since he was on the show last. And a lot's changed since then, but the biggest difference between

this interview and that one is he put me in a rear naked choke during this one. No joke. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, if you want to actually see it, go check out the interview on my YouTube channel. We also have a clip on the CVV clips channel. I'm assuming you're subscribed to both of those. But if you're not, please take a second to subscribe to Chris VanVLead on YouTube, see to the Eclipse on YouTube and then subscribe wherever you're listening to this right now.

If you're not following Frank, he's at the Frank Mir on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Chris Van Fleet, and without further ado, I'm trying to make these intros as short as possible. I think we're doing a decent job of that. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Frank Mir.

Frank is a pleasure to see you again. Thank you so much for coming by. That's nice, man. It was like two and a half years ago. I came to your house for that interview. Yeah. That was so cool. Thank you.

Thank for that invitation. It was awesome. You're welcome. Well, that's what we were just talking about. Different house now. So when you had to come by again, I'll change it up a little bit. This is nice. Congrats to the new house.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, one of a few people actually bought a house recently. I mean, it's even more rare than I have you bought a house in California. It's very difficult to do. And you got a half basketball court? Like, you're living large here. Yeah, well, I mean, I've done okay in life and stuff. So like, the kids, the wife was like, you know, I want to get them a basketball court.

And I was excited because we have a bunch of mats. And I want to build a gym back there, but we haven't built the gym yet. So the basketball courts, I'm like, oh, look, a nice flat area to put mats on and use this for appropriate sport. It's funny when most people talk about building a gym, they're talking about with weights and stuff. You might be talking about, like, mats to roll around. Yeah, mats and bags. And I will have a limited bit of weights there. But, you know, for the most part, when I lift weights, it's kind of my, I don't really go to the bar.

You know, like my weightlifting time is actually my social time. I go and hang out, you know, the general manager of a lifetime is actually a good friend of mine. He's at my house all the time, you know, Steve and his son, Sean. And so, like, you know, like, I go to the gym. I hang out. So I'll have weights there for times it's inconvenient to get to the gym if I'm traveling or whatnot. But it'll be a skeleton type system.

I'm not going to, you know, some people try to build this beautiful, you know, facility. It's like, eh, but you're all by yourself. I mean. Would you say that your workouts are similar to they, to how they were like 20 years ago or way different now? More specific, way different. I mean, I think before I wasted a lot of time, you know, training like a strength athlete when I was lifting weights and then trying to be a marathoner when I was doing cardio or,

you know, now I realize it's kind of, the way I try to explain everybody is as a mixed martial artist, I'm a decathlet. You know, I mean, that's what we are essentially. So a decathlete can't sit and go, well, I need to make sure that I put on 10 pounds so I can throw a farther. So, well, yeah, you can throw the implements farther, but now you're going to screw up your time on the, on your 1500, you know, I mean? So, you know, when you take from one area, you give to another, So there's a lot trying to be very specific and realizing that it's really the basics of everything. It's not real complicated. If people come and watch me lift weights and hang out of me, they'll be like, this is it.

Well, yeah, but I mean, we have to spar today and we're going to roll. And, you know, there's so much to do that if you go ahead and you have a two-hour workout, I'm like, well, that's great. But are you doing a strong man? Are you a bodybuilder? Like, you know, let's be, you know, what are our goals here? You know what I mean? I mean, you can go and I want to get stronger. I'm like, well, what I mean?

Does that mean that you want to be overall stronger? want to just be able to hit a certain number on the bench press or deadlift your squat or you're trying to like accelerate the bar faster you jump higher i mean all those different questions you know lead to different types of workouts ufc fighters are built so differently now like they were built like frank barone or kevin randleman back in the way yeah yeah yeah phil barone geez frank mear you know it's right yeah but they were built like that they were built like almost like many bodybuilders well yeah because at the time that was kind of where our fitness was if you walked in a lot of my workouts It's probably looked more like a body roller workout.

And then for many years, training with Dick Best, I learned a lot about strength training. And then it got really into like power lifting into strong man competitor type of workouts. And I probably look more like that now, except for I just don't lift as intense. And, you know, I just realized that like, you know, the nervous system can only handle so much.

I don't care how great of the multivitamins you're on. You can only train so hard. The body can, you know, can only get so many hours of sleep. and so to recover. And so, you know, maybe once every two or three weeks, I'll lift heavy on something. The rest of the time, I go pretty light, you know, and I just, you know, I try to do form and mobility and function. And there's a lot, you know, some of the times I do workouts where I'm like, all my, right, today's a 50 rep day. People are looking at 50 reps.

I'm like, yeah, two sets, 50 reps. You're not going to be to lift that heavy, but it's just going to be, you know, you're going to do a blood pump and just, you know, help the body heal. And there's other days, I'm like, all right, we're lifting, you know, three to five reps, you know. So, like, let's warm up, you know, and, you know, we're going to try to see what the max we can do. And those are farther and few between just because they wreck the nervous system so bad. People who, I think, are so used to that old school idea of you need to be in the gym for 60 minutes. It's 10, 10 reps of everything, three sets of everything, and then kind of move on from there. But it feels like it's evolved so much.

Oh, completely. Yeah, I know my workouts are much shorter now. And, you know, it's funny before, you know, man, I would do like, you do chest. So I'm bench press, incline, flies. I'm like, you know, three to four sets each. I'm like, 12 sets for just one muscle chest, huh? It seems like a lot. And then guys will go and do like, all right, I'm going to do rows.

So you have all those muscles in your back. But you know, and your peck is major, major, peck, major, peck minor, but so has only one insertion, right? You know, and so it's like the balance. And so my back workouts probably look a little bit more intensive and take me 90 minutes just because there's so many movements that when you pull and the way the shoulder is for shoulder health, so much about the pulling aspect.

respect of us. My pushing workouts, as far as, you know, and I do a push-pull legs type of format, they're very short, you know, because, I mean, there's only so many ways you can push the bar forward or up, you know, push it down, you know, or push it out, you know, so to gain strength there, it's much easier, you know, I see guys, you know, they'll do a chest, you know, push workout. And also, they're doing shoulder raises, you know, front raise. I'm like, man, your front deltoids are fried, you know, you did, you did, you know, bench, you did incline, you did military press. I mean, you don't think your front deltoid was. activated the whole time. Now you're doing a whole separate set just for that. So I think a lot of

people overtrain the pushing side. And you can see it in the way their builds are. Their shoulders are rotated forward, pulling the humorous, you know, into the shoulder capsule, you know, forward. And I think a lot of shoulder health, which I, you know, was a victim of. That's why I actually specialize so much on it now. This sounds like the whole idea of like, if I knew now. Oh, geez, I do then. How much of a better fighter would you pay? Oh, I'd be underfeeling. With my talent, my abilities, and my mindset, and I've been my own coach and broke things down the way I break things down to my daughter. No. I mean, because even now,

when I'm not injured, I'm sparring in the gym, I still don't really have much of a problem with anybody. But that's because of my skill set. And I'm not the athlete I was. I'm injured, you know, much more injuries and hurt and pain. And if I can do what I do now with the car that I have now on the body, I couldn't

imagine what I could do 15 years ago with my skill set, my mindset. Just because, I mean, really, like, even when it comes to throwing a punch, I watch guys and just no one knows very few people understand that concept to the level that I do. And then you add in, okay, I also know the grappling aspect and the distance and a kicking the knees, the elbows, you know, and then the physical conditioning aspects, you know,

there's just really when it comes to MMA, I haven't sat down with anybody in a long time that's made me go, oh, shit, you actually are my equal, let alone my superior in the knowledge of the sport. So if we look back at the course of your career in all of the fights, what was the one fight where we can look at it and go, oh, that's where he really started putting it together. you know what uh the check congo fight was pretty much an understanding of of going from striking to submissions to striking going back and forth and you can see in that fight how quickly i was able to transition from thinking about hitting somebody to choking them uh before that i trained a lot of individuals you know i did what most fighters did back then i mean famous you know interview

tito or tis gave where i trained you know an hour and a half of boxing out and a half a tie hour and a half of wrestling hour and a half a weight train and that was very much the mainstay of our our training back then was, okay, I'm going to work with a boxing coach, I'm going to do boxing. And if you sparred that day, you sparred boxing or kickboxing or on your feet, you know, and then even towards the end of my career, we got to the point where, you know, I would go to the gyms and, you know, and they would train stand up with takedowns. But the many you took someone down, they stand back up. It was rare and now more recent, like, you know, at Syndicate when I'm coaching, Tuesday of the

pro class, right? I'm the coach. Johns in Singapore, so he usually takes the head roll and I took over for Tuesday. And so we spar five, five-in-a-round with M-MA. So we have MMA gloves, but we wear the eight-ounce puffies, we call them. So they're twice the size of a regular MMA glove. We'll be more padding on the knuckles. So for sparring.

Some guys choose to wear head gear. I think you should because of the cutting, not because of concussions, but just, you get more scar tissue. So I make my daughter wear head gear. And so shin guards, knee pads, and, you know, mouthpiece. And so that way, does it make rolling hard? Yeah, it's not easy to roll with shin guards on, but we still do it.

And so I make them go full gambit. And then also on top of that, only the first and last round do I don't interfere. Rounds two through four, I actually will go ahead and say, okay, for example, Tuesday, I had everybody start off, not neutral, but on the back.

So we're going to spar, but you're going to start off with me in the seatbelt position, hooks in, and go. And wherever it goes from there, it's fine. If you can get away really quick, if you can't,

we're going to go there in the two and a half minute mark, regardless of what occurred. You know, if you reverse position, and don't reverse position, I call out switch. And so everybody knows wherever you're at, stop what you're doing, go back. So essentially it's almost like there's two rounds within one round.

And now, if I was on your back, you're on my back now. Now we have to start from there. And that gives people more exposure, more reps to being in those positions. Before we didn't get a lot of exposure of reps, I used to always say that, you know, MMA was the craziest sport because it was the only sport that you only really did the night of the fight. And that's not really the same anymore. But back in the day, especially during the peak of microremen,

I never sparred MMA. I sparred kickboxing with takedowns, and then I would roll jiu-jitsu with some striking. I never did MMA rounds until the fight, you know, and put it together. So that's why I think, you know, that's why you see the evolution of the sport increasing so much more is that guys are actually and girls are sparring MMA. So with the knowledge that you have and you're bestowing all of this on Bella, she's going to be unstoppable.

Yeah, she is unstoppable. I mean, I mean, obviously there's nothing 100% life, you know, you know, death and taxes, right? but I would put Bella being an undefeated champion is probably number three. How long until she's in the UFC, do you think? If she wanted to be there right now, she could have been already back in July. But we held off because she was 17 at the time,

and she had two pro fights, and I just want to take our time. And right now, she probably would jump into it now, but she wants to follow a college career. She's a national champion in wrestling. she's an All-American, you know, four or five times over. Multiple times, you know, four, she could have been a five-time state champion because she won in eighth grade, but COVID took her one of the years away from everybody.

And so she wants to really pursue wrestling in the Olympics. Wow. She's taking on freestyle now. Because I didn't have her, actually, girls in college wrestling, you know, they only wrestle freestyle. So they only wrestle folk style, which the guys in college can do. They're not Greco-Roman. Right, right. So they don't do folk style in college like they do on the high school level for the girls.

Now, guys, once we go to college, U.S. colleges still do folk style. If you're, you know, U.S. national, you know, if you're NCAA national champion, it's in folk style. And then you can, for freestyle is international competition, which you can do also, obviously. And then that's what we compete in the Olympics and international Pan Ams, all that. So I don't have Bella and I don't have my sons trained in freestyle. I feel that folk style is much more effective for a base in MMA because there's the element of control. In freestyle, they have takedowns,

but they do so much parterre and different movements on the ground that have no carry over, you know, to fighting. It isn't like I can sit there and go, like, if you know how to work the referee position, you know, in wrestling, I can use that in the fight. Like, okay, you're stand-ups and Gramby's and all that, you know, sit-outs. Those are all things we're going to use when we fight. And controlling a person who's trying to get up to their fight,

feet from their knees is an essential skill in MMA. You know, like, hey, you take someone down and they go to their hands and knees. They're coming up. You better know how to break them down and flatten them back out again. That's freestyle. Excuse me, that's folk style wrestling. Freestyle, they don't care about it. They're belly down.

They go to the Parterra position. And so I didn't push it. So she's only been wrestling freestyle now for a little over a year. She competed only a three. She competed in the World Team Trials. I think she got fourth to first year out. And I think the sixth this last year. but both times she lost, she loses the parterre position.

No one takes her down, you know, and so she, or I think she got taken down once the whole tournament, and everybody else she takes down, but then the partare position she needed, both times she lost, she just got rolled, you know, back exposure of her ankles, you know, ankle laces, and the one I never seen before because I don't really follow freestyle. Once they hit the ground, I could care less too, because it just, again, it has no, no fight value to me.

Yeah. You know, it's kind of like, you know, it'd be the same as like, hey, how much you know about Barambolo and Jiu-Jitsu? I'm like zero. I couldn't even show you how to begin to show you. Like, I watched it one time and it was like, my brain goes, poop, I can't use it. Useless.

She's such an interesting case of, is it nature or nurture? Both. Yeah? Is she this good because her last name is mere? Well, I mean, genetically, you know, she's a freak. So, you know, she's stronger and faster than everybody that she faces. She did the, she trains at the PI and she did the fitness test. And she is the most explosive, strongest female under contract in the UFC.

There's not a woman in the UFC. see who's stronger than her. So she's under contract? Well, no. Dana lets her train there to P.I. You know, force set it up. So she does all her rehab there and training. She trains the P.I. So, I mean, we have that relationship.

So she's able to go there and train us when they tested her. Yeah, the only thing she lost out onto it, she's still there, but she wasn't the number one. You know, obviously it wasn't conditioning. There's other girls that are pretty well conditioned. So she was competitive there, but nowhere near. I mean, when it came to the power output, she's a number. number one. I mean, I just tells you that. I mean, here she's on my training program and, you know, 17 years of age, jumps in and does the PI. She might have already turned 18.

Maybe she was already 18. But she was, you know, if she was in a contract with UFC, she was the strongest fighter physically, most explosive. They do this bar test where they push a bar, how fast they can push it with weighted, you know, basically a landmine type with the, with the straight bar. And yeah, she's the most explosive. So no girl hits harder, can pick someone up, lift more weight, run with it. With the career that you've had and the pedigree that you have, how much pressure do you think there is on her to try to live up to that? I wish that was the only pressures that was worried about.

It's the pressure she puts on herself that bugs me. I have to sometimes really rein her in and check out. Like, hey, no, like, it was, I think this is last year she got second in nationals. And, you know, there's things that I don't understand about female athletes. It's sometimes, you know what I mean? Because I'm not a woman. So, I mean, there's certain aspects of that happen monthly that, you know what I mean, that I need to learn more about.

And so I am nutrition-wise and trying to figure that out. So we didn't understand that. And so both times that she didn't compete successfully was during that time. And we didn't realize why she was so trained. We thought it was a bad weight cut.

You know, I don't know why. Like we were basically having like, you know, drag her out of the bedroom, you know, to get her off the beds. What's going on with you right? And later on we found out that was the case. It's like, oh, our iron is just plummeted. We've done blood work.

And now we understand how to fix it. But she ended up getting second place at nationals. and it was distraught. It was just, the end of the world, my wife was like, I'm like, guys,

let's chill from sec. You know what I mean? Like, I know, like, first place is great, but I mean, like,

you just got second best wrestler in the country. It's you're here. I mean, like, you lost to one girl. Like, I mean, like,

I mean, let's just, you know what I mean? And you're not a full-time collegiate high, you know what I mean, this isn't your, I mean,

I guarantee everybody else you wrestle, that's all they do. My daughter wrestles, Then she does kickboxing and striking with me, and then we do jiu-jitsu. She's doing, you know, Nogi grappling classes at night at Driesdale. And, you know, and then training, it's like she has four or five different disciplines that she's focusing on. I'm like, so, I mean, like, this is the big picture is for you to be very good at this to help us out for MMA. You know, it's not for us.

I don't want to lose sight and go, okay, let's not train, you know, our submissions anymore. Let's not train our stand-up so we can be the best at wrestling. If that's what we want to do, we can do it. but at the same time, we can't be frustrated that, you know, if you're a part-time wrestler, getting second in the nation and having a first place also under your belt, that's not the worst thing. And so sometimes, like, that pressure should really, it was like, I'm like, hey, you know, like, let's look at this. You know, I mean, I love that you're driven, but like, that's awesome.

But, I mean, you know, you spend 40% of your day being a wrestler and you're out here in the finals, you know what I mean? I mean, like all these other girls are spending 100% of their day. You know what I mean? That'd be like me right now with the amount of kickboxing. she does entering into a K1 tournament and she's in the finals. It's like, wow, you only really spend about 20% of your time doing this. You know what I mean? It's like 40, 40, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20. And she's only 18. Yeah. She's going to be unstoppable in her 20s.

Yeah. It'd be pretty crazy. Yeah. And she has a lot of things also, too, we're talking about the nurture versus nature. I don't make any bones about my own weaknesses that sometimes come with being a talented athlete. You know, look, I land on my feet no matter what. My whole life I've been that guy. You know, I can show up almost anywhere and I'll fake it until I make it. You know, my intellect and whatnot, my ability to stay calm and has helped me out. But it also is a curse because then it's like, hey, man, don't you know, aren't you

supposed to prepare for this? I got this. You know what I mean? Like it drives my wife nuts. But the problem is that I'm still successful now. You know, and so I told my daughter, it's like, hey, like, if I could change something about me, that's what I would change. Let's not be this person.

So all my deficits and my fallacies and my shortcomings, I make sure she sees them. I don't try to sugarcoat her like, no, no. Just because I'm successful, it doesn't mean this is still not a problem. It's like a guy who's lean who eats like, eh, let's not full it. You're genetically gifted. You're not good at dieting. You do okay at it, but the rest is genetics.

So let's acknowledge that so that people don't sit there and go, well, I'll just do what you do. I'm like, it might not work that way for you. You know what I mean? So she is extremely disciplined. In fact, one of the things that are probably most proud of her, of is that in her whole scholastic career so far, you know, from kindergarten to graduating high school this year right now, she never missed an assignment. Never had not one missing assignment. And, you know, I mean, she's near a straight-A student and she graduated like a 3.86 or something like that. And but

but what's more impressive than that being a straight-A student is not missing an assignment. I'm like, that's impressive. That's what's going to, that's my weakness. That, that, that's my weakness. that now you've now overcome as you don't, you sign all, you cross all the other T's and dot the eyes. Yeah. That attention to detail and that's just,

and that's just discipline. It's not hard. We just, are you going to do this monotonous, boring thing day in and day out and not make that mistake of not doing it? And, you know, I'm not that guy.

You know, I don't, you know, make the bed first thing in the morning, you know, unless someone's coming over, you know, I don't see the, you know, but I see that, I point out to her. So her discipline is on a different level. So your lack of attention to detail, that's your weakness?

Oh, absolutely. Would that have been what happened in this boxing fight that you just had? Oh, no. Boxing fight is, I'm sure you can see there. There's a major difference in my right arm and my left arm. And I just now got to the point to where I was willing to wear a T-shirt because it's actually twice the size as it was. About two weeks before the fight, well, back in August, I was trained with Nick.

And my goal was to bench press over 400 pounds again. Like, I'd be nice, you know, I'm in my 40s. You know, I'll pull back on some of this. I'm going to go ahead. And I would like to finally break 700 on a squatter deadlift and break. Yeah, I've been in the 400s before, but I'm not there. I wasn't there currently. So I hit like 385 in August.

And I was feeling pretty good. I'm like, oh, cool. You know, by October, I should be over 400. The next week, the following Monday, you know, when it came back to it, it was 14 days later. I had another max out there. And I struggled like 365, cut me in half. Like, I just couldn't, you know, unwracked it. just fell on my chest.

Wow, that felt weird. Like, I mean, huh, all right, you know, I spa, I wrestle, you know. I'm a little overtrained, maybe. I mean, nervous system shot. But my leg workout, my back workout was strong. But my back, I focus so much on it right now is exceptionally strong in the gym. When it comes to rowing, you know, I'm one of the stronger guys. Benchrests now so much.

And so I just wrote it off. Like my levers, where my tendon insertions are, you know, they're just, you know, I don't know, maybe not. By the time of the beginning of October hit, Cage, my son, and all of us, Ronan, Bella, we all work out together. In Cage right now, he already benched rest 315 before the start of his freshman year of high school. Wow. That was that summer right there because he just, this was his freshman year. And so he has two and a quarter on the bench, and he benches it 10 times.

He racks him. So I get under it, and I go to do it. I get to about rep four, and I rack it. Realizing that if I drop for a fifth rep, it's not coming off my chest, you know? You know, like I sat up, I don't know what's wrong with me. My strength level was just, just plummeting. What the hell? I got scared.

I actually went to the doctors because I thought, you know, I made the mistake of going on the internet. And I'm like, I got a mess. I got my, like, look, shit, first sign stages. I'm like trying to think about my balance off, you know what I mean? And sure enough, I'd close my eyes in the shower and I'd get a little dizzy. I'm like, that's not normal. Like, I do a lot of closed eyes drills for balance and stuff. I'm like, man.

So I go in and they do an x-ray. And the first MRI is just of my brain, but they were able to do low enough that they actually caught the neck. So they made me go in for a neck MRI, at least more specific. They found out that basically my neck was fusing together. I lost so much cartilage between vertebraes 4, 5, 6, that my bell was bone on bone. And because of that,

it was pinching the nerves off to my arm. And so I needed to have my neck fused. But so I was like, oh, you know, shit sucks. You know, they told me that like, you know, I can still have a career, still train, still fight. But, you know, just, you know, people even do disreplacements and still have a

career and fight. Look at, you know, Sterling. And so then I got a call from my manager about taking the boxing fight with Pulep. And I was like, oh, I'm injured. I almost said something. I was like, well, how much? And then they told me it was about a million dollars. It was like, yeah, I'll take it. So then my wife was like, you know, what are you going to do?

I'm like, well, you know, it's not that bad because I, you know, I can still, you know, it's boxing, grappling technique. It's like, you know, we'll see, you know. But then like every workout, it got detrimentally worse and worse. By the time the week of the fight came, I, I could. couldn't lift a towel up. Like I was brushing and doing everything with my left hand. My right hand, I probably could curl a bath towel four times before I couldn't curl it anymore. In fact, during the standoff, so on one of the first days, he went to shake my hand, he pulled. And, you know, of course,

it's my right hand to shake hands. And like, I had no ability to pull my arm back that it's, I was like, fuck, he's going to know, you know, like, you know, that my arm is shocked. And so the next day, when we had a space off, I turned away and walked off. And everybody's, oh, you know, like, show him and shit, like, well, no, I just don't want him to feel how weak my arm is. He can drag me all over the stage. I can't fight back. I couldn't out pro my, you know, my 12-year-old now. You know, even picking a phone up to my face, I couldn't do it.

So what I did were to compensate in the fight was I switched to fight purely right hand. I was like, I'll just put my left side forward to be all right. Not knowing and not thinking, it's like, well, you know, the way I block a left hook is I covered my ear. And, you know, I probably should have trained some different tactics. And I did and tried to do some roles. But my natural instinct took over. So every time I left hook, I wanted to lift my arm and it didn't lift. So I just kept.

So I took a lot of. bad shots and actually made the neck injury much worse when I went to the hospital afterwards. They almost didn't let me leave because I actually, I guess I fractured C6 because, again, with no cartilage, there was no movement. So when I got hit, it actually caused a fracture through it. So I broke my neck. And so they were like, you know, if you get turbulence or, you know, anything, you know, you get rear-ended on the way home right now, you know, you'll be paralyzed. You'll be done. I mean, you could have been paralyzed in the fight. So that was more or less where I was dealing with that. So about the following Tuesday, I said,

seen the surgeon and now we're back. Do you remember anything from that fight? Oh, yeah. You were knocked out on your feet. No, yeah. No, I mean, it's foggy, but yeah, I was still, you know, until, you know. The call is so interesting to me. Like, I think the announcer is saying what we were all thinking, like, what's more

way out of doing? Like, you look like you were knocked out and the fight just kept going. Yeah, no, I took some hard shots. I just didn't want to go to my butt, you know, I was sitting there. Like, I kind of like a moral, you know, victory. I was like, I'm just not going to, you know, I'm not going down. I mean, like, you know, which in hindsight, taking the fight with the injury, I probably should have just, you know, after, you know, hey, give it your good knowledge try, go out there. And if it's not looking good, you know, just, you know, I don't think I'd have lost anything.

Just taking a knee on one of those shots. You were basically a one-arm fighter in that fight. Yeah. Did you think you had any chance of winning it? Yeah, that's the ego still. Oh, wow. Yeah, well, still, you can catch and land a shot, you know what I mean? Yeah.

If I could just land one and just get the fight going that direction. But still, you know, you know, I wanted to go out. there. I had my kids even corner me to show them that life doesn't always just line up for you, you know, and just because I didn't go out there. And the reason why I didn't take a knee just off of one shot, because I think that looks cowardly. Like, hey, you took the fight injured. You honestly didn't think you could win. And if I said, well, no, I knew I could win. I just went out there paycheck. I think that's, you know, almost criminal. But my point was like, well, no, I still felt like there was a chance. I could have pulled it off. And I'm going to try to find a way, even though

if the odds are stacked against me, which is life. You know, there's times you look at a situation, hey man, the odds are not in your favor. It doesn't mean you quit. It's like, all right, well, odds are not in my favor. Guys succeeded with worse odds, you know? Yeah, and people not knowing the full circumstances around this, thought like, because you weren't blocking that you just threw the fight. That's what people thought.

Oh, really? Well, I mean, and I guess it makes sense if you can't raise your right arm to do anything. Yeah, no, I wasn't trying to prove anything by taking shots from pool. I mean, it's pretty hard, obviously. No, I just, yeah, like the signal to my brain, like when people were asking, What was it like? I'm like, oh, it got to the point to where actually the pain went away because all the nerves are so compressed. But it was like, when you said to move your arm, I was like, it'd be like, me tell you to move the microphone.

Like, okay, move it. You're like, what do you mean? Look at the microphone and make it move. I'm like, it ain't moving. When I, in fact, when I first came back, the first month, man, this injury has been taken forever to heal to regain my strength. Even right now, I only curled 10 pounds in my right arm. When I first started off, I worked out with my hand. I had my trainer, Sean, would sit there, and I would lift my, my, and I would lift my,

He would help me lift my hand up, and then I would fight it on the way down. And then lift my hand up, and I would fight it on the way down. I couldn't hold my hand up. That's how much. It's atrophied a lot. Oh, yeah. No, and this actually now is I'm willing to go ahead and wear a t-shirt now, because this is way better than it was before.

Before, it was, I had a 12-inch arm, you know, at least now it's back to like 15. I mean, your right arm is still bigger than most people's arms. But it was funny, my son brought that up. He's all, you know, it's funny because when it was really bad, we were looking, he goes, Your arm's still bigger than most people, but on you, it looks funny, you know, because, you know, if I walk around the house with no shirt on, it was really obvious, you know. And so, yeah, that was kind of the joke, you know, the one arm. What's going on with your leg?

Because you were, like, limping in here. Oh, I just started feeling good. The arms healed enough to where I can train enough about six weeks ago. I started rolling around and something popped in my hip, so I got to go get it checked out. So that's causing. Jeez. Yeah. So now it's to the point of, like, what's the least injured thing on you?

Yeah, pretty much. When I go there, it's funny, you know, when you go to the doctor, they tell you there list all your surgeries or list your injuries. I was like, hey, man, I can tell you what doesn't hurt, more than I can tell you what hurts. Like, my left wrist is good, never had a problem. But every other joint on my body is screwed up, messed up, on some degree of recovering or on its way to major injuries.

So when you go to bioaccelerator and get stem cell, like, are they just putting those everywhere in you? Yeah, I did my knees last time, my shoulders, which helped out drastically because on my left arm, I had torn my labrum, and I opted not to get the surgery. and it was so painful. And then until I did the stem cell through them, about four to six weeks later,

my left arm is fine now. In fact, I haven't had an MRI of it. I'm sure it's still torn. But the range of motion and my ability to train now, it's light, night and day. So it helped out majorly with my knees because I had stopped squatting and lifting there.

And that's actually why I was back to thinking that, let me try for 700 because the, you know, train with Nick, who also went down to a bioaccelerator, I felt so great afterwards that I'm like, oh, it re-injuvenated my ability to want to go ahead and start. You know, I can lift a little heavy again and start doing these. So my body was less broken, you know, and things are less painful. It's easier to stay motivated in gym when you're not, you know, screaming, you know, at night and bed, you know.

And so, but now it's been too long since I went there. Honestly, you know, we went in 2019 and then, you know, 2020 and 21 got screwed up. Well, 20 got screwed up because of COVID and then I got pushed back. and then I was supposed to go back out in November because I didn't know when I first talked to him in August. It was like, oh, you know, I mean I had the neck. There's something wrong with my neck.

It was just hurting. I didn't realize what was going on in there. And so I just thought I had, you know, neck pain, you know. And so they were going to, you know, try to inject my neck and then do my knee, shoulders and hips again. And so I'm going back again in July with Bella because she has, you know, already starting to get injured. So trying to stay ahead of the curve on her.

and then this time I'm actually having them, even though my neck now is fused from C4 to C7, they, yeah, if you're ever in Vegas, you need a good surgeon, Kaplan's phenomenal. Like, I mean, my neck, I mean, immediately when I woke up, I could move my arm a little bit again, obviously with no strength,

but the pain went 100% gone. My neck's not a problem. If anybody had talked to me before, if you saw me, even when I've done, you know, anything on TV, I'm constantly, I was pulling and squeezing on my neck, costly and discomfort and pain, and that helped relieve it immensely, you know?

So with all these surgeries, could you fight again? You know what? I'm going to keep trying. My goal, and that's what my goal has been probably the last two years, is I just want to be in the gym and train. I like to be healthy. I like to, especially when I'm coaching people, I want to be able to demonstrate what I'm talking about, you know, and show them.

You know, someone goes, I don't really think that works. Like, cool, grab your mouthpiece. Let's go ahead and I'll show you. You know what I mean? Like, you know, and so I enjoy martial arts. I enjoy fighting. I enjoy sparring. I enjoy rolling.

I enjoy. I like those things. You know, I didn't fight because I thought I was to become famous. I mean, hell, when I first started fighting and I turned pro in 2001,

no one really bragged about being a fighter. You know, like, it wasn't mainstream. It was still like human cock fighting. That's exactly what people were alluded to, you know,

like, it got to a while there that I probably lost more dates than I gained. In fact, actually, my current wife now almost left me

when we were through the dating period when she first saw me, she came out, watched me fight at P. William's fight. And we were just dating at the time. And as soon as the fight's over with,

obviously, you know, I'm 21, 22-year-old guy, get back to my phone. Oh, hey, did you get to see? Because I knew she was in the audience, you know? And she's like, yeah, we got to talk, you know, I got a kid. Like, I just didn't know this side of you. And I'm like, what? So she actually was going to leave me because she's like, this is barbaric. I thought you did like tie boxing or what she said, Billy Blanks.

I thought you did like cardio kickboxing. And I was like, oh, you don't know what? Billy Blank. Was that Ty Bo? Yeah, Ty Bo. Yeah. Because when we first met, like, hey, what do you do? I'm like, oh, you know, I'm a bouncer and I do this.

and I trained martial arts. I think at the time, I even called it No Holds Bar. I did, I'd do that NHB fighting in the UFC. She had no clue. You know, I mean. Your job while you were in UFC was you were a bouncer at Spearmint-Rino, right? Yeah. Like one of the most famous strip clubs here in Las Vegas.

You've probably seen some stuff. I've got to see human nature. I got to see money, drugs, and sex, and people surrounded by it at all times. We get to really see human nature. How many arms did you break as a bouncer? Never. You know, well, there might have been one time there was a kid who,

grabbed me as he was leaving and he wouldn't let go of my suit. Yeah, his wrists looked pretty jacked by the time we got done with each other. I centerlocked him bad. You know, I put his pinky against his elbow and so he probably broke. But for the most part, I wouldn't do that to people. I did a lot of walk-alongs and maybe, you know, I would put people in joint manipulation for motivation. But then I started learning early in my career that only worked against people that are moderately sober because then, like, you know, a drunk guy has a high pain tolerance. And what am I going to do, break your arm. I'm going to fucking be poor by the time all the lawsuit's settled, right? I learned that cutting off the blood to someone's brain was the most effective way

to motivate people to see things my way. What was your favorite choke? A red naked choke. I have a turnaround. When we're done, I'll show you on Cal, it's one of my things I teach in all my self-defense classes. I'm 400 for 400 on it. Like, I've never missed it. You know what I mean? Like, every time I go and someone with that conversation, basically, I hit an arm drag and I take people's back standing and I push their hips out from underneath of them. I got it from small circle jiu-jitsu. Watched a video. I don't. I don't one time. It's like, oh, let me train that. Man. Yeah, and it works great because

it won't work in an MMA fight because we're too far from each other. And then even in the clinch, you're fighting somebody who's already knows they're in a fight. So, you know, the plum clinch and a lot of over-under-50 clenches are going to be much more prevalent. But this one works great because it works phenomenal. Somebody who's standing there with your chest against your chest,

you know, they're face in your face squared, you know, with their knees aren't bent. Can you show us now? If we go to a two shot, like don't put it, well, you guys, don't take me out, but. Yeah, you want to see it. I just want to see the technique here. Yeah, yeah. Oh, hold on.

We'll just move closer. We'll take our head here off. Okay. Take our headphones off here. We'll just move our mics over. We're going to stand? Okay. Pull your mic up a little.

All right. So I would be here and people walk up. Yeah, they're really in your face. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So you can see how like, wow.

Ready for it. Because we're sitting you're talking like, hey, buddy, I just push and I keep stepping behind me. Yeah. So I turn you half the distance. I turn half the distance. And then I pull you in. by pushing your hips out.

Wow. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I like how you took your flip flops off for that. Yeah.

It was a barefoot. I felt like I was an inch away from death there. Wow. That's an impressive. That is. No, it catches people off guard. Like I said, if you resist and you pull back, I've only done that a couple times. You've got to go back that way now.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. I've only had a couple of. A couple guys pull on me. Probably have a wrestling background and understand that I'm taking the corner on them. Wow. Coming in here to readjust the cameras, so watch me a choked out, yeah. Wow.

Last time we talked, you were like, you were training to be a pro wrestler. Yeah, I was trying to get into it, but I kind of realized that, look, man, I have a lot of respect for guys in the pro wrestling industry. They have way more injuries, and there is a much more dangerous sport than mine. that being said as far as the health of your body. You know what I mean? Look, the mental fortitude to walk out there and fight in front of a bunch of people,

look, pro wrestling, do they have that? No, that's not the same, you know, because they're not nervous about outcomes and beating somebody and, you know, but they're still going out there performing. And they got to go out there and get hurt and take dives and bumps, you know,

that they know they're going to do backstage. In fact, you know, you can go to, you know, at least I can go into a fight and hope that I'm not that injured by the time. Yeah, you can come out of a fight on skates.

You could. Yeah, pretty much when you guys, those pro wrestlers are very skated. Yeah, you're always bumping. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, so I trained it for a little bit. And we got the first part, I seemed very motivated at first because, you know, we, they show, we got to learn how to tumble.

I'm like, oh, watch this. I can do cartwheels and, you know, the bumps, the front flip line on your back. Like, no problem, you know, from my wrestling and jihitsu background, you know, the dexterity and the gillia to roll around. No issues. And even taking bumps, we're just hitting the canvas was fun. I'm like, oh, this is fun. you know what I mean?

But then when it started like taking shots and getting twisted on and giving up my limbs to open up, you know, it was just too difficult for me. And then, you know, watching Austin Arias, you know, just in the gym, he got injured training. You know, I mean, he did some, it was like a, I think it's one of his signature moves like a 720. He like jumped off the rope where he does a front flip. Oh, 450. Yeah. And it landed on his face, right?

In fact, he's such a good, like, so impressive to watch because so many times I didn't know what was real or what wasn't. Like, even then I had to like about a minute. pass. I'm like, hey, is this real now? Or is this, did you really? And sure enough, he ripped the top of his nose. Basically, the, the tissue, I don't know what that's called that separates your two nostrils. He ripped it so bad that basically had one large nostril when you looked up because he landed. What is it? I don't know. I'm just saying, oh my gosh, it's crazy. Wow. I don't know. Wow. Wow. Yeah, so that's why I realized it's like, ah, you know what? I've already had a long

life of a career that that has not been the best to my body. This might not be a second life for me. Speaking of pro wrestling, how close were you to Meir versus Lesnar 3? You know what? I wanted to put myself a position by, you know, going out there and being successful at it. But, you know, it was one of those things that it wasn't even in the talk to you. But you guys were one and one. Like, what about it happening again in UFC? Oh, I would be game, you know. I mean, maybe not now, but were we ever close to it? Five. Why not? Not on his radar. I guess it's just nothing he wants to do it.

I mean, when you're the A side, you know, he's the draw money-wise. He gets to make more of the calls. And I guess he avenged the loss. Yeah, I think that's going out there, you know, from what I was told, that because of the way I responded after the second fight, that he truly felt that I was a little off. You know, I mean, like, I think in Leisure's mind, like, how could you want to fight me again?

Like, you know, people don't, you know, so there's something wrong with you. And I think it kind of made him uneasy. What's more memorable from UFC one? is it him beating you or is it his speech after with the Coors Light and Bloodlight and the whole thing there? I like the speech afterwards. I thought that, you know, it was definitely, you know, home to his, his demographic, you know. And I mean, he's not a guy that does a lot of promos.

Like in WWE, he barely talks. For, like, for WWE fans now to go back and watch that promo, they're like, give us this, Brock Lesner. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know much about his pro wrestling. I don't watch that often. So I don't know how bad he is at it. But I think this is definitely a guy. From what I understand, listening to other people in the industry,

you know, he does the bare minimum of what he has to do to cash check. And I don't fault him for that. Like, hey, look, we all got to make money. And, you know, I think he's more naturally a fighter than he is a pro wrestler. And so I think that, you know, it's not his first love, but financially it pays better. And obviously he can continue to do it for a lot longer. Is he your number one rival?

Is he the one person that people talk to about the most? Or is it someone else? No, no, no, definitely the legend would be the number one I get spoken to about. You know what I mean? And then who is it? Nogera, you know, just because fans of the sport, more Nogera, fans that are casual fans of the UFC, you know, that, you know, Brock is who they talk to me about. But if they're like a hardcore, if they know who pride, you know, all they know about pride, they know Fador and all that, you know, those times, you know, when, you know, Vandali Silva was, you know, the Axe Manor, what was it called? Vandleys nickname.

Yeah, well, the axe murderer, was it? The axed-menors, yeah. So, you know, they sit there and talk about it. If they're fans that understand what that means, then, yeah, then they talk to you about Nogera. Yeah. Who do you wish you could have fought? Is it a Fador? Well, no, face Fado and Bellator.

Yeah, I guess Fadour and UFC. Yeah. That would have been cool to see him. Yeah, I wish we could have fought there. Honestly, just a Brock for a third time would still be a goal of mine just because of where I've evolved. And, you know, now just, you know, the time is clock is ticking on that because at 43, I've realized that I am mortal and that, you know, that what I, you know, sometimes my mind wants to do things. I'm like, it ain't going to happen. So, you know, like my training now is so much different.

Even now, you know, like I walk to the gym and, you know, my kids are training. Like, you know, I load up the bar and there's like that. I'm like, eh, guys, like, you know, you know, I can go ahead and lift with you guys with you're lifting. But, you know, I'm going to be hurting tomorrow or tonight when I'm laying in bed, like I'm going to be, you know, suffer for it, you know. And so, you know, I lift a lot lighter. I do a lot less intensity, you know, you know, when I spa, I'll take rounds off in between. Like, no, I'm good guys. I'm going to go here or I wrestle. Even, it's funny, I'll roll with people and they think I'm being kind of sinning because I'll tap if I'm in an uncomfortable position. You know, just even if, you know, we're in a referee, I put my foot up the other day. I did that and the person pulled me back on my hips and my foot kind of got

stuck under me. It's, ah, stop, tap. And they're like, well, what is that? I'm like, well, well, it was kind of sitting on my knee and my hips messed up right in on my hip injury I'm dealing with. I'm like, I didn't feel good. Like, you know, I'm like, yeah, tap. And they're so competitive They're like, well, no, I mean, but would you have tapped in a fight? I'm all, what, what do you mean? Huh? I'm like, I'm tapping right now.

That's the point of this, you know? Get hurt. I didn't want to get my hip more injured. Yeah. You got me, dude. Like, let's reset. Like, you know, take a win, man. That's all right.

Do you think you have another match in you? You know what? I'm going to tell you probably in a couple months. Actually, Harris and I were talking about that. If in July and, you know, in August, I can go back to sparring again. after the stem cell? Yeah, I'm going to take the stem cells, and then after I come back from that,

I'm going to look at what my body feels like. If I can spar and train and roll normal, then yeah, I'm going to do another one. I just feel like you're not a guy who wants, like you're not, you don't want to retire. No, I want to keep fighting. There's a lot of guys that as they approach 40, they're like, eh, like 40's the number for me.

I'm going to retire. No, in fact, even why I pull back and sometimes I give people that look because they see the intensity which I roll or I spar at or, you know, I mean, or, you know, like even right now before my neck, I was only sparring hard once a week. You know, I would spar three times a week, but only one of those sessions are like,

all right, you know, like, we're going to go after it a little bit here, you know. They would take that as a sign, oh, you know, you've lost that edge. Like, well, no, it's because I want a fight that I realize that at 42, you know, 41, if I spar and I wrestle and I lift and I do everything like a 20-year-old, I'm never going to make it to that cage again. I have to pull back and do things much more intelligently and realize, all right, you know, what am I doing and what is the benefit of that? You know, am I doing it for my ego? Like, you know, if all of a sudden I'm in the gym and, you know, a 225 rep contest breaks out, I just watch.

You know, what do you mean? I'm not, I'm not, the old me would jump in. You know, all right, well, this is the only times I can do it, you know, and be competitive with everybody. And now I pull back because the big picture of me wanting to be healthy, roll, trained, and still take fights. You know, so I'm like, all right, this sucks. I got to pull back here if I want to have a chance there. There's a real lesson in here of, like, taming your ego, I feel like.

Oh, big time. It's been definitely an experience, my midlife crisis. Although I feel like with the Jake Pauls and Logan Pauls of the world, there might be another spot for you on a boxing card. Would you be up for that? Yeah, I would just definitely want to because I think I made such a good showing in my first fight, boxing, you know, with Cunningham that like I showed against a world champion boxer who was extremely fast, you know, that I could hold my own.

And, you know, and then the second match, you know, for people that sit there, I think I threw the fight or whatever happens. It's like, ah, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I kind of regret, you know, taking the fight. I go back and forth. I'll say that for five minutes that I regret taking the fight. They bought you a new house. Yeah, no, I did do that, you know.

But then, you know, for people to think, you know, well, you don't want it anymore. You did it just for this. Financial, you were injured. It's like, no, I still wanted to go out there and try to test myself, even if the circumstances were. I mean, like, what do you do if you get out of your car and there's five guys? Your family's in the car. You sit there and go, hey, this is unfair. There's five of you.

There's only one of me. And I'm my wife and kids in the car. No, you're going to get out and make it happen. Yeah. You know what I mean? Or die trying. They're going to find me dead, you know what I mean? But they're going to find someone's testicles in my hands.

You know what I mean? Like, I died, but like, you know, you knew I was here, you know? And so that's the mentality. I think that so many people don't have them. So I think that's why they think that I'm weird. You know, I'm like, look, man, I mean, I don't know, maybe it's growing up with video games. Everybody's used to like, all right, you get a second life. Or go ahead and hit reset.

I'm like, no, man. Sometimes it's not a reset. Your health bar is low. You lost all your equipment. You got to drive forward and go beat the boss, man, figured out. That's the bouncer in you're talking, I feel like. And it's like, no, no, I've seen too much. Yeah, well, like I said, like that's just life, man.

Like, life doesn't always line it up for you. It doesn't give you everything you need. You just, and sometimes you have to, you know, what they say now, you know, improvise, adapt and overcome. You've got to make it happen. And that's something that I think that we're losing our society is that too many people because of this whole, fucking participation awards. You get a place or a medal for just showing up, you know,

or I make it safe for the, you know, the 0.03% to feel comfortable about their choices they made in life, then now that they feel that, like, I have to bend to them. It's like, no, like, just that's not how it is. Life's unfair. In fact, that's the one word in my house that I hate. You know, I don't necessarily don't cuss. I think I've already said a few F words probably today. You know, I'm on air.

I try to watch myself. But, I mean, my kids all go to private school. They hear me cuss and they just know the one word that I immediately would stop me our dinner conversation. And it would be like the record would come to a halt, right, is if any of my kids ever said, that's not fair. Well, that's the F word for you. That's the F.

If you ever dare say that to me, you know, I mean, like, there's no such thing as fair. That's a made up human word. Like, fair, what the hell does fair me? Life's not fair. I mean, hell, from the moment we were, you know, conceived, you know, it was a billion in one shot. That's you know, I mean, life's just not fair. It's just, it's not even. There's nothing I can do to make it even, you know, equal opportunities, you know,

is about all we can pretty much provide anybody with. But as far as equal outcome, no, you can't. You know, I mean, like, it's just not, it's going to work. There's going to be somebody who's a buser. There's going to be somebody who doesn't make it. You know, like, that's his life, man. And what is that? Do you think that someone's drive, that they don't have the drive to want to be more?

Yeah, because you got killed from them. They got taken from them at a young age. I think that's a lot of it is our scholastics program, you know, especially the education system last 40 years is from pushing that, you know, to, like, you know, government and those, you know, because, you know, the school would do it for them, make everything fair, make it even. Like, well, no, let's give everybody, you know, I don't want anybody to feel left out. Well, yeah, feeling left out's a good.

good thing. You know, sometimes bullying, like this whole anti-bullient, I'm like, well, no, I think obviously bullying to an extreme is horrible, you know what I mean? But anything too extreme is bad. Hell, I can die from drinking too much water. There's a girl that died from a contest. She gulped a bunch of water to win an Xbox, threw off her electrolytes in her body, and she died, you know, so too much water can kill you. So, you know, can too much bullying be a bad thing? Yeah, but too little bullying is a bad thing, too. I even make jokes sometimes. Our wife will see somebody walked by, you know, you know, holes, you know, every part of their face tattooed on their eyelids, just, just crazy looking, you know, and I'm like, ah, you know, like, somebody wasn't bullied enough

as a kid, you know what I mean? Like, but that being said, that, like, sometimes, like, that's a motivating factor. I remember, look, I think I was in third grade, there was a girl I thought was cute. I tried talking to her. Now, for a third grade boy to walk up and talk to a girl, you know, it was already at the end of my, my abilities. I dug as deep as I could. And then she covered her face. She goes, oh, my God. My dad had been telling me to brush my teeth every morning. It had to fight with me all the time.

Saund did you brush your teeth? And I was hit and miss. I always brushed my teeth now. I have no problem with dental hygiene since that one moment in third grade because a girl that I liked made fun of me. She told other people that my breath sank and it was humiliate. It embarrassed me and it drove me. I didn't sit there and go to the teacher and make it to where her parents said that she couldn't tell me my breast stink. It was like, well, no, your breath sunk.

And it caused, I didn't like the feeling. that adversity, that suffering, that humiliation caused me to change for the better. You know, and I think that's something that we need in our society more is that, you know, that's why in the May makes in martial arts and wrestling and boxing, I think makes people such character. Because if I go out and go, hey, man, there's this new jab the way I'm going to have you throw it. Cool, we go out there and, you know, at the end of the round, you walk up to me, and your nose is sticking out your ear.

You're like, hey, I don't know if that's working out so good. I'm like, yeah, I know, but it should. I'm like, but it's not. You know what I mean, we get to test out reality real fast, not about our emotions, how I feel something should work, it is how it actually works. And so, you know, that's just the reality of it, you know. What do you think is the biggest life lesson that fighting has taught you? Oh, there's no guarantees.

Zero guarantees. So, like, there's no guarantee of failure and there's no guarantee of victory. All we can do is push the needle. And I say that all the time. My wife and daughters are probably tired of my boys, you know, push the needle. Meaning that, like, look, you know, if I eat healthy, I keep my weight manageable, I exercise every day. Does it mean I'm going to probably live longer?

No guarantee. Hell, the guy that invented jogging died at like 45. You know what I mean? Of a heart attack. Is that true? Yeah. No, what? The person, I can't remember his name right now, but made jogging famous, had a heart attack

45. While jogging? Who knows? I don't remember that part. The details. But I just remember just sitting there thing. I'm like, wow, you can do everything right and still fail. And then I've seen guys, look, you know, do everything wrong and be successful.

Now, percentage-wise, if I sit there and go, hey, what are the percentage-wise? percentages of success, if you do everything right, well, it will be much higher. So I can make sure I guarantee success by pushing the needle in that favor. Well, I can't guarantee success. But I can push it more in a successful range. And also, too, I can hurt it. I can bite hamburgers and bacon, you know, four or five times a day and I never exercise. I just sit on the couch and I'm 300 pounds overweight.

Probably going to have a heart attack. Not a guarantee, but I've definitely pushed the needle in that way. Now, if I stay healthy and eat right, you know, could I not have a heart attack? Well, yeah, but again, no guarantees. And I think people want that. They want to sit there and go, well, I did this. It just didn't come out for them. Like, well, that's life, man.

You do businesses? I mean, how many guys I know that are millionaires? It's like, well, hey, your first business, you knocked it out of the park. I've never met one that ever told me yes. Usually it's failure after failure. I just went up and did, you know, for, I was up in Illinois. And I was talking to a rich guy, you know, a guy. You know, 500 million dollar, you know, guy.

And, I mean, back in, I think, 2001, basically, he was like, you know, $8 million in debt. You know, he was the flip side. You know, there's risks, you know what I mean? There's a lot of guys that just, you know, you got to take a shot. Again, I think the biggest life lessons that that has shown me that I see that you get to visually see is that you can only push the needle. You can do everything right and have more success, but you can't guarantee it. You know, and you can do everything wrong and have less success. But even there, I've watched guys, you know, like out partying, girls, wives, upset with them.

You know, I mean, everything that you can sit there and go, man, there's no way this guy's going to pull this off. go out there 15 second later one overhand right now they won the fight like wow shit you know but they're not going to do that over a long enough period of time but again so that's that's the thing that i think that's really helped me is that like in life i just push the needle i try to you know do things just to go ahead and push the needle in my favor it doesn't mean things are going to be perfect you know there's another saying i always have is anything worth doing is worth doing poorly you know there's a lot of workouts that i'll show up and you know when i do them it's like i'm hurting today i'm just going to do this and people watch like what the hell was that i'm like well i mean that's that's

what I could do today. And I turn in a 30 out of 100, you know, but if I didn't show up, I turn in a zero. That doesn't average out that well. Yeah, yeah. I mentioned Jake Paul earlier. I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on him. Is he the real deal?

Well, you know what? After his last fight, I have to give him credit. I think that that's great showing. I mean, I know, look, no matter what we can critique that he hasn't fought a real boxer, his own size, you know, even Woodley, who's great boxing skill, I feel. But, you know, there's a drastic size

and reach advantage, disadvantage. for Woodley in that fight. And, um, uh, but I think that Paul, I'm actually in favor of them because I think a lot of people, again, you know,

talk about what we do. The fights that we just had Miami, uh, our freedom fight nights that I'm doing again July 15th in Arizona. Um, it's all about culture, right? I'll wrap this to how it's going to come to talking about Paul's.

Um, right now our youth admires mostly people with left side, uh, mentality, you know, ideals. Well, it makes sense because if you think about Hollywood is owned by the left, our major sports organizations are pretty much all left. So all our children's heroes that they idolize, you know, they click on and they watch LeBron James, then they're going to admire how he plays

basketball and everything else. Well, yeah, they admire him as an athlete. Then, well, that steps into the next level. You start admiring and wanting to take on their ideals. Like, well, what does he think about this? What he thinks that cop shouldn't have shot that girl? Really, he made that statement with no studying, no understanding of what was actually going on. And it could have really been detrimental to a human being's life. You just, you know, almost destroyed with one tweet. So that being said, our identity for our youth, our culture war is definitely being lost. And unless our kids, you know, you find a youth that has a military aspirations,

most of their idols are on the left. So I want to, you know, restore freedom or fight nights, you know, through Cloud Hub and other social media app that we have that we discuss. play them on is a way for us to showcase all these guys that have to have the same thought process that I have. And it isn't even so much left, or excuse me, right-minded people, because we have people that follow the card. They're also liberal in that sense. But they do believe in the freedom to be able to speak their mind and have conversations. And so I want to show children that these athletes are to be admired and give them a free platform on which to

speak. So wrapping up why I think the Paul brothers are actually a good thing. thing is because look how many kids are getting into fighting. They want to do martial arts. They want to wrestle, want to box, get into combat sports. Because I think combat sports, bar none is one of the best things a child can do. If you're a parent, you want to put your kid in a little, make them wrestle, make them do judo, jihitsu, boxing, put them in those sports because they're going to suffer. It's going to hurt.

It's going to build character. It's going to teach them how to rely upon themselves, how to face adversity, how to overcome adversity, how to have self-doubt, how to, you know, all these things. things that are going to be able to work on in a daily, you know, a daily process with somebody in front of them trying to kick their ass and then someone's showing them how to overcome that. Fear, how to deal with that, you know, so much of my success life and other things I've done stem from my success of my martial arts mind. And so the brothers, I think it's great, you know what I mean?

Like, do I agree with everything that they say or do and they're saying, well, no. I mean, you know, there's a 20-year age gap, you know what I mean? You know, I could be their dad more than anything else. So, I mean, you know, but as far as the eyes that they're bringing, the kid really trains. I mean, you say what you want about. Trains hard. He trains hard.

Like, that's respectable. He didn't just show up and go, hey, I'm so-and-so. And, you know, he could have trainers throwing bullshit guys to spa with him like, hey, man, make sure you make him look good. No, that kid's honestly, there's guys that are sparring with him. I've talked to some of my friends out of Florida that have gone in the gym. They're like, no, go get him. You know what I mean?

And get his ass. They're getting people to buy pay-per-views that have maybe never watched a box in pay-per-view ever. turning eyes and getting attention to our sport, which I think is a good thing. I really do. I see it as a much net gain than a net loss as far as the mode for our culture. It's not like, you know, it's not like this is the Kardashian show. Oh, my God, look, man, this is completely just, you know, the decay of our civilization here, guys, just embodied on TV right there. I think that the, you know, Jake and I'm commendable.

I'm glad what they're doing. I think that, you know, it's great. I'm all for it. Yeah, Jake and Logan are definitely bringing a lot of eyes to the sport. Yeah, and like I said, they train, they really trained. Had they just dialed it in, if they just showed up and go, well, you know, like I'm, you know, I'm this YouTube star. I'm just going to show up and you're going to buy the pay-per-view. I mean, look at what's his name, kind of equivalent did Charlie Sheen, you know, and he did a stand-up.

We're basically like, ha-ha assholes, you bought the ticket, right? Like, they could have honestly done that. They could have said, hey, you know, like showing up laid a egg and just said, screw it. They would have came out with money in their pocket, but they didn't. They went out there and actually lived the life. They're like, they actually train and fight. Like, they are, for him to be, he is a boxer. You know what I mean?

Like, I'm not saying, he's a YouTube star who boxes. I would say that, you know, Jacob, Logan, they're legitimate boxers. To say otherwise, it would be silly. It'd be like, well, they went out and they've had fights. They go out there and they train like a boxer. At what point do you not give them the description, the attitude? No, they're a boxer. And that's what he is.

Yeah. It'll be very interesting when they actually fight someone who's the same size with a similar skill level, who's also a boxer. Yeah. Maybe that's the next fight. No, it has to be, I think, at this point. they uh you know look i think they was smart how they've matched up every fight up to this point yeah and i think now like yeah that's with the crowd's screaming they realize that them fighting

somebody who's not a boxer just another youtube star or some kind of rapper uh that's not gonna no one's gonna be impressed they're like all right well you can kick the shit out of anybody who's not a fighter now like now you got to fight a fighter you know i mean i'd be like me even now with my injuries of my age facing somebody who's a celebrity go okay how many fights is i got have like none like there's no chance yeah yeah you're very little right the needle is almost on the guarantee of loss for you, buddy. I don't think anybody's going to, you know, buy into that. But at this point, yeah, they go fight a boxer. I think we're good. Well, look, Frank, it's always a pleasure to chat with you. I'm so glad we were able to sit down and do this because it's been

way too long. Yeah, man. You've got to learn my secret choke. Jeez, that was insane. I feel like my life flashed before my eyes with that. Wow. I end every conversation with the same question, because I'm all about gratitude. What are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? family you know what I mean that my family my wife my children have definitely given me direction in life Help me you know stay on the path when I fall off of You know and then I guess I think I'm grateful for us for the martial arts It's giving me the mindset how to overcome and you know it gives me my identity and my culture and that third is I really enjoy The Hammer Alley podcast an 80s flashback mockumentary

Back in the 80s there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock but there was one band that had it all Hammer Alley Whatever happened to Hammer Alley How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video They're a band from 1987 Hammer Alley Ever heard of then?

To Rock Bottom Dude, I was born in 1987 I can't believe he's doing this Hammer Alley Follow and listen on your favorite platform