Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #10 Mindset, Motivation and the Heart of a Champion with Kevin Ross

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

Bellator Champion Kevin "Da Soul Assassin" Ross sits down to talk about addiction, tackling fear and what it takes to become a Champion.      Connect with Kevin on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook            Check out Kevin’s OSU Video with Johnny Riley                      Get on the list for his book here        Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on Twitter and on Instagram               Get 10% off at Onnit by going to Onnit.com/Podcast                     Onnit Twitter         Onnit Instagram

Welcome to the Onnit Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Kingsbury, and we're joined by a very special guest, Kevin Ross, the Soul Assassin. Kevin's been a longtime Muay Thai specialist and fighter. He's the Bellator World Champion in kickboxing and just a bad, bad dude. You know, we had a great time. He's an Onnit-sponsored athlete, so we had him in town jumped on the podcast I really you know I had met him only briefly once before at a wedding and had been a fan of his for a long time as a fighter didn't really know what I was going to get from him on the podcast but I I was unexpectedly blown away this guy's been through a lot he has an excellent head on his shoulders and outlook on life and i think you're going to get a lot from this podcast check it out welcome to the on it podcast

i'm joined by kevin ross what's up man hell yeah it's good to have you out here in austin yeah man it's good to be here well fuck dude we just watched a very very inspirational badass video uh osu os so you rocking the hat right now oh yeah we're gonna link to it in the show notes Watched a very, very inspirational, badass video. OSU. OSU. So you're rocking the hat right now. We're going to link to it in the show notes. But yeah, let's ask some questions about that. How'd you get LinkedIn with the guy that made it? Because you wrote the whole thing, right?

Johnny. Johnny Riley. Yeah. I actually had been following his work for a couple years. Always loved all the inspirational videos and stuff that he did and uh got introduced to him through a mutual friend um this guy back east uh steve rozillo he was actually uh the first seminar ever did was at his gym and they knew each other i don't really remember how they knew each other, but he was trying to put us both in contact with each other.

And apparently, I'm a really kind of laid back guy. And like Johnny was talking to him. He's like, yeah, I'd love to have him come over here to Holland and do this movie. And, you know, for me, even like when stuff's real, when it's not, I'm just like, yeah, whatever. I'm down to do it. And like so this being a back and forth, he thought I was just messing around and wasn't very serious about the whole thing by that. That's just kind of the way I am until something's like actually going down, you know? I mean, how many people do you have, like say they want to do something and nothing

ever comes of it. So yeah. Especially in the fight game. Yeah, of course. So I don't get too excited about it. Like, yeah, if it works out, that'd be cool. But eventually he like put us into contact with each other and we did a Skype callpe call one day and like he's like yeah you come over here to uh holland we want to shoot this video he'd been uh reading some of my writings and stuff he's like it'd be cool to do a

a little mini movie um off of one of your pieces and he kind of asked me if i had any that i liked a lot and stuff most of the stuff i've written is pretty long and drawn out. And then this one piece I did is the only piece I've ever done like that. It kind of comes across like a poem and it was kind of about my life and about my getting started fighting and facing all my fears and stuff. And it just it just worked perfectly. And he wrote this screenplay for it and sent it over to me, and I was just like, wow. And it was still kind of like, you know,

you had to know if that was ever really going to happen. But it just kept going and kept going, and I flew over there. I think right after my second Bellator fight, which was two years ago, I believe, a year and a half ago, and I was over there for just like three days. We filmed it in Holland. And we were fortunate to have Andy Sauer come in and hold pads for me in the video, which is cool.

I've known Andy for a while, and they've known each other too. So we've kind of always been around the fight game, you know, and had connections throughout that. And, yeah, it just turned out really amazing. I was really blown away by it. Yeah, I'm still blown away by it i'm glad you liked it man both of us had uh it's it's it's always weird for me like like seeing stuff like that because like it inspires me too and like i wrote it you know and that's my words and that's me in the video and it's it's always uh it's a surreal thing for me to see that because i still view it from, it's always a, it's a surreal thing for me to see that. Cause I still view it from an

outsider's perspective, I think, you know? So, so it, I feel it just as much as I think other people do maybe even more so because it is about me. Yeah. Obviously there's some deeper meaning for you as well. Yeah, of course. Of course. Well, let's fucking, let's unpack that video. There's a lot of fairly deep stuff you talk about in the video so you know a lot of times when i have fighters on um it's not just about the next fight or the title shot or that kind of shit you know i try to dive into mindset and some of the shit that that people have struggled with because not everyone listening to this podcast is a fighter of course but everyone deals with some shit in life right so you know what was what was it like

growing up you know when did you start fucking uh getting into some shit it was rough man um i moved to uh vegas when i was 13 and uh it was kind of all downhill from there you know vegas isn't exactly the best place to grow up if you're inclined to that kind of lifestyle you know it's's too readily available. No matter where you go, it's in your face, and whether you want it or not, it's right there for you. So I started drinking at a very early age. I mean, I was probably like 10 years old when I first had a drink,

but it got worse throughout the years, and then moving to moving to vegas and uh everything there you know with it with it being so so uh rampant and that lifestyle it just uh i really got sucked into that um drinking and partying and every day and screwing around and really just wasting my life away you know and uh you, uh, you know, over the years, a lot of, a lot of bad stuff happened, you know, I lost some friends and, uh, almost lost myself more times than I could count. You know, the fact that I'm still breathing is pretty, uh, surreal to me. Um, I never thought I'd make it past 20 and I literally almost died right before new year's going into, uh into the year 2000, which was a huge wake-up call for me. And through a series of pretty bad things like that, you know, one of my friends almost killed

somebody drunk driving and another friend put himself through a windshield and a lot of things, all this happened, all these really bad things happened in this like month span of time. And years before that, back in 98 um one of my best friends passed away he was born with a defective heart condition and uh you know struggled with that his whole life and eventually passed away from it and he was actually the only person i ever told about this dream i had about being a fighter you know i never uh i never wanted to express it to anybody you know i didn't uh i didn't know how serious I even was, you know, so I wasn't very confident in telling other people about this crazy dream.

If you knew me back then, you'd be like, well, what are you talking about? You're going to fight. And, yeah, one day we were just hanging out, and I told him about it, expecting him to laugh at me. And, you know, he was like, why don't you do it? You know, why don't you go after him? I'm like, well, you know, like I feel like I'm don't you do it? Why don't you go after him? I'm like, well, I feel like I'm old. I mean, I was only 18 at the time, but it's still, for a lot of fighters, that's old to get started.

To start. Yeah, a lot of people start when they're kids or at least kind of get introduced to it. And I'd never done anything. I'm like, well, I'm kind of old. I know if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to quit partying. And I was worried about losing all my friends. I would have to completely change my lifestyle. I've always been someone that I'm all in or all out, and that applies to bad things too.

So I knew if I was going to do it, I'd have to cut all these things out of my life, all the drinking, all the partying, all the hanging out. And I wasn't ready to give all that up you know and then uh you know he passed away which was was at first the first thought was all right i'm gonna go live for him but it was just too much for me to handle and it just it just made made things even worse and i was drinking just way more and it just became uh completely like like i literally had to drink every day just to function properly and like this is at 18 years old you know i was completely dependent on alcohol and uh you know like i said over the years things

got worse and then that that series of things happened throughout that month and i just had like this this awakening one day that i realized i'm like if my friend was still alive he would like beat the shit out of me like what are you doing like you're pissing your life away i didn't even get to live you have every opportunity in the world you're just too afraid to go after it because you're a coward you know and it just like it like smacked me in the face one day and uh i uh i was actually talked to my father about this at the time, and he's like, why don't you do it?

And I gave him all the reasons, and one minor reason I had, well, maybe a major one, was I couldn't afford it. I was like, I don't have the money for it. He's like, well, I can't help you with all the other fears you have, but if you commit to giving up drinking, I will happily pay for all your training everything you need and we'll do it like that and uh i was drinking a 40 at the time i was like cool i was like cool you know uh i'll start tomorrow and he's like why don't you start right now and i poured out

the drink that was in my hand and then two days days later, I was in the gym. And the rest is history. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Fuck yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. Well, let's fill in that history. Yeah, there's been a lot.

It's like 15 years of history. So 18, right? 18, you make the decision? No. So I actually learned about Muay Thai when I was 14. I always loved boxing coming up in martial arts movies and I thought about doing boxing and I thought I could be really good at it but there was just something about martial arts that I loved like I want to kick people too you know

elbow people and uh at that time you know I just never really saw I was never exposed to any real martial arts fighting just point point stuff and you know things never really saw, I was never exposed to any real martial arts fighting, just point stuff and, you know, things like that, competitions. And I was like, I could do that, but I want to fight, you know, I want to do what, like, I see boxers doing, like leaving it all in the ring and, you know, that kind of, like, real intense, beautiful thing. And one random night I was watching ESPN and I saw Muay Thai fight. I was like, oh, like oh dude like that is

it if i ever do it that's it you know um but yeah i didn't uh step foot into uh gym until i was uh 23 so the seed was planted yes you know what you wanted to do but i put it way like like i as i said i was too afraid to do it so i just kept burying it burying it drinking burying it and it would like pop up every now and again i'd see a fight and it would like just shoot to the surface and i'd be like oh my god and it was like each time i had to like try that much harder to bury it again you know because i just wasn't ready or willing to risk failing at it you know i mean i i think that's what really stops all of us from going after things is if we fail or if we're not good enough or, you know, if we can't do it the way we want to do it,

you know? And it's such a, it's such a minor thing, but it's the major thing that keeps people from going after things, the fear of failure. Yeah. The fear of failure. And if you can get past that, you can really do anything. Yeah. There's fucking thousands of stories and analogies that fall right in line

with that frame of thinking. Of course. You might strike out, but you'll never know if you don't swing the bat. It goes into fucking every sport and every analogy. Yeah. It's a huge obstacle to tackle. The thing is, it's such an easy thing to huge obstacle to tackle it's the thing is it's like such an easy thing to say like oh just just get up and swing and you know even if you miss at least you

are at the bat but it's a lot different when it's you and you have to be the one to go out there and you have to be the one to put yourself on the line you have to be the one to fail you know particularly like in fighting where it's just you out there like you are in the spotlight everything you do or don't do is on you it's not on your team it's not on your sparring partners it's not you out there like you are in the spotlight everything you do or don't do is on you it's not on your team it's not on your sparring partners it's not on all the work you did or didn't do it's what happens in that ring in front of all these people like it's very it really exposes every good and bad side of you i think that's the greatest part about fighting but it's also probably one of the more scary things is you have to just be completely exposed to everybody yeah it is the ultimate fucking test there is no sport like it

you've got mental physical emotional breath work all of it ties into how you perform right and then showing up you know how you periodization and fucking the tour de france is one thing but you show up to a fight with a broken rib or something like that that changes yeah without a doubt i i actually uh i read the study they did and it was about why professional fighters have like i think like one of the higher rates of like depression and it boiled down to the fact that our livelihood is literally gauged on like less than one percent of our actual work like other people it's like okay you have a game this week you have a game next week you know where us is like you do two months of work and you get to show 15 minutes in the ring and everything is is is gauged on how that performance went. You can't have a bad day. You

can't have an off day. You can't make a mistake because you will be, everything you do, you are viewed and gauged on whether you advance or whether you drop back down is all on that very limited frame of time you have. And it's like, it's tough to deal with, you know, it's, there's so much riding on such a minute little speck of time. It's ridiculous. I mean,

nobody, nobody see hardly ever sees 99% of what we actually go through. You know, we're not, we're not, we're not judged on that. We're judging this, these few minutes.

And it's like, that's a lot, man. That's a lot to deal with. Yeah. It's tough, man. And I think most people don't even realize that. few minutes and it's like that's a lot man that's a lot to deal with yeah it's tough man like and

i think most people don't even realize that i think that's what's kind of motivates me to be a lot more vocal about like the things i go through the things i do the ups and downs because so many things particularly fighting um are just viewed at as like the highlights of what we do you know i mean take a highlight video for example it's like all the like really great things you do that's why my first highlight video ever got done i wanted to show all of my failures as well i showed the good stuff too but i wanted to show both sides like like it's not just me going out there saying look how good i I am, look how great I am, put me up on a pedestal.

I fall, I fail, I get knocked out, I get hurt. As well as this is all the stuff I had to do to get back up to the top. After I got knocked down, I had to get back in the gym. I had to put all those fears behind me and I had to face them again and I had to overcome them. And that's really what makes you a great fighter and a strong person is dealing with failure and dealing with your shortcomings and then moving past that and growing and getting stronger hell yeah brother very well put thank you

so fuck yeah dude i'm getting you're getting my fucking fighting juices flowing right now man all right all right seriously just don't take them out on me i dig it uh i'm fragile so 23 did you when did you first go out to thailand like how'd you you started training out in vegas yeah your buddies with uh anthony and jokowani yeah right yeah that's my dude man we met each other on a tour for the troops anthony and uh chidi both used to beat me up and i don't know what i was thinking sparring with them because they're so huge and fast and fast and just ridiculous. Yeah, we used to work together in Vegas. We didn't train at the same gym, but we did some cross training.

Yeah, so I've known both of them for, geez, over 10 years probably. Yeah, so I started in 2003, and the first time I went to Thailand was in 2007. Okay. Yeah. So you had some decent skill sets before you went out there? Yeah. Yeah, but that was just a whole new world. It's like the more most things are like this, the more you learn,

the more you realize you don't know nothing. You have this very skewed perception of where the top is and then where your abilities are until you realize you're just a little guppy in a giant ocean and there's just no hope. And either you let that discourage you or encourage you, which is what it did for me. I'm like, that made me really realize I'm so far behind, particularly since I started so late. It just gave me that much more motivation. I'm like, no matter, I have to do everything to perfection and as hard as I can, as much as I can, I have to fight everyone that I can in order to even

be able to come close to competing with these guys. You know, that's the only way I'm ever going to be able to do it. And, and, you know, that's why I kind of came up the way i did plus that was just like the mentality of the the gym i was at in the the time i was fighting was you just you fight everybody anytime anywhere any weight any style like just go out there and fight man it's that thai approach like you know no matter what as long as you take it the right way it's going to make you better you know as long as you're not getting like you know it's going to make you better. You know, as long as you're not getting like, you know, crippled in the process. You know, you can always take these things to make yourself better. And it's tough for me because I could never tell somebody else that's what they should do.

I'm like, you have to be the one that's going to go out there and maybe get killed. It's a possibility and you have to take this very seriously because if you don't, like your worst nightmares are going to happen and you're going to live your life in regret if you live at all because you didn't take it seriously, you know, and a lot of people don't and they get hurt. But I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to get where I needed to do, even if that meant not surviving. Because to me, this has always been extra credit. You know, as I said, I didn't think I was going to make it past 20. So even if I have to go in the ring and die, I didn't think I was going to be here anyway. And I think that's what allowed me to push past where most people stop.

And I think that's how I've won so many fights that I shouldn't have won because I was willing to go farther than anybody else was. And I always knew that. I'm like, no matter how good you are, no matter how much experience you have, there is no way you want this more than me. And there's no way you're willing to give up as much as i am to get to that point and i think that comes across in in the way you carry yourself and um it breaks a lot of people yeah the inner fire will outdo technique fucking nine times out of ten and that's how i got my nickname you know it just uh the way i fought it just sucked the life out of people because they it was like they realized they couldn't do anything to slow me down. And I was going to keep coming no matter what they did,

no matter how good they were, no matter how many things they hit me with, they were going to have to kill me to get me to stop. And they had to risk dying themselves in order to get there. And they weren't really to do that. And I was, you know, again,

that's not the safest or smartest way to fight, but what's safe or smart about fighting? Nothing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Nothing. Not the best thing for the brain. Nah, man.

Like, what are you trying? Like, you know, a lot of times people get kind of caught up on trying to make fighting safer, but fighting's not safe no matter how safe you try to make it. I mean, how many people have been killed in, like, amateur boxing? It happens. It's rare. But a lot of times these like safety things they do

actually make it more dangerous, you know, which happens quite often. Yeah, you hit a lot more with headgear on. And like it might look safer, but it's not safer at all. And, you know, that's kind of the downside. One of the huge downsides in fighting is like so many people that have control over this have no idea what they're talking about they've never done this before if they did they would know better but they don't they're viewing it from the outside and from the outsider's perspective

yeah that might look safer but it's just not it's like the 12 to 6 elbow rule in mma of course there's there's fucking no reason for that what crazy person came up with that nonsense somebody watching espn in the middle of the night espn 2 at like 3 a.m for the brick breaking like i guess if they were sitting there on a table and you had all day to like line this elbow up maybe that might happen three minutes of breath work a weight belt strapped around your waist but yeah so i mean let's let's talk about safety because here's something that i got and and you know being a little bit older now and having you know even though you started late

you've definitely got some mileage right one thing that i've noticed from a lot of guys that make it to your level is that they start to realize that they don't have to fucking kill themselves in the gym and sparring anymore especially if you're consistent with your fights that's the first thing i noticed when i went to bouquet to train at tiger muay thai was all these thai fighters were fighting frequently but they never sparred incredibly hard you know there was a lot of work a lot of seeing stuff coming at you but it was a lot of flow and movement and still you know still drilling dudes in the legs and stuff like that but yeah they were taking it easy on each other's heads yeah and that stuck out to me yeah without a doubt um it's a tough thing to find out what the best way is because like one in the beginning you just

gotta do the work and you gotta learn how to take an ass whooping and how to give an ass whooping and how not to flinch and all these things and yeah just mindlessly beating your brains and isn't the smartest thing but but at the same time you just it's like in the beginning it's just about quantity and the longer you do this it becomes more about quality than the quantity and you can find the ways to make those adjustments and then when it comes to like thailand and stuff you got to realize they're fighting all the time so their hard sparring is fighting you know what i mean like like if you're fighting every month if you're fighting every couple weeks you cannot risk getting what I mean? Like if you're fighting every month, if you're fighting every couple of weeks, you cannot risk getting injured in the gym. Now, if you're fighting once a year,

every six months, you better be out there like taking your lumps or else you're not going to be able to fire correctly when it comes to somebody really trying to hurt you. So there is that balance. There is that like, it's easy to sit on the outside and say, well, the ties do it like this,

but there's a reason they do it like that it's not just this cut and dry thing oh you should spar like this or you should spar like this because they do it like that but if you're fighting frequently yeah you don't need to do uh go so hard and if you are have this much experience you don't need to do it at that much but some people just got to do it like that. And some people, um, kind of, uh, perform better off of that, you know, and I could never tell somebody like, you should do it like this or that because everybody's different. Everybody's going to, um, take benefit out of certain techniques, certain styles, and you got to do what works best for you. I mean, the, what you need to do is find the best way to minimize the amount of

damage you take so you can make your career last as long as you want it to last or unless you don't want it to last long just beat the crap out of each other every day i mean that's what we used to do yeah but that's also like what made me as strong as i was mentally and physically and it allowed me to have the confidence to go in there and stand toe to toe somebody with 300 fights feel like i'll had the crap kicked out of me by 200 pound dudes every single day you're like you ain't nothing to me i don't care how many fights you have you know so it's one of those things it's tough to it's it's tough to ever tell somebody this is how you should do it because there is no like blueprint to this everybody's different everybody's unique in that aspect so um again that's what i said i would

never tell anyone to fight the way i fight to do the things i've done to to take fights when you've got broken hands and broken shins and busted faces and cracked skulls and things like that but but that's what i did and that's how i got to where i got to if i didn't do it this way would i have gotten here i don't think so you know but, but I wouldn't tell anybody to do that. Yeah. Everyone walks their own path. I've said it a thousand times about diet, but there's no one size fits all fight game, right? Yeah. I mean, whether it's diet, whether it's fighting, whether it's your strength and conditioning, like you have to find what works for you. And that can literally change

week to week. My diet changes depending on what I need out of it. My training changes depending on how I'm feeling. And I think that's what you really learn how to do the longer you do this, is make those adjustments and be more flexible to push when you need to push and to kind of take a day off when you take a day off. Like this last fight, I didn't cut any weight whatsoever. And I felt like I didn't do as much in the gym, but I also did it smarter. Like I said, days I felt good, I was able to push 100%. Days I needed to take it easy, I took it easy. Days I needed to take off, I took off. Where before, I would just go 100% every single day,

no matter what, no matter how I felt, no matter where my head was, no matter if I was sick, tired, whatever, I would just push through it all. And the longer I've done this, the more I've found how to be smarter about it and things have gotten a lot easier because of it. You know, the older I've gotten, it's easier now because i i know how to listen to my body my brain and and what's working

and what's not yeah that's a huge thing for any athlete or anybody that's just in the gym trying to get in shape is listening to your body yeah it's tough though because i wrote a blog about this because you have a fucking deadline right and then And then there's also the, how do you know what is being a baby? And how do you know what's an actual injury? You know, there's that great line in, I think it was G.I. Janie's, it's like, are you injured or are you hurt? There's a big difference between the two. And that's like, are you tired or are you like broken?

Is training today going to make you worse broken is training today gonna make you worse or is it gonna make you stronger because you push through and who's the person that can say what that is you know nobody can unfortunately and for me i've always been on the opposite side like i'm gonna push through to my own detriment at times but i'd rather be on the far side than on the narrow side, you know, where like, it's very easy to say, oh, I'm just not feeling good. I need the day off, you know, that's, and that's what comes with experiences is like, you really learn to know the difference between the two. I don't think you ever really do know. It's just something that kind of comes with trial and error, and you realize, you know, and you could be wrong too,

but there's days it's like nothing positive is coming out of today. I'm going to take the day off. Yeah, that's time in, right? That's time in. But I like what you said. You know, when you first get started, it's important to get your ass whooped. It's important to feel that. And that's a great barrier to entry for a lot of people that are like, oh, I want to fucking do this.

I'm going to be a fighter. And I'm going to do it for all the reasons that aren't within themselves. Like for other people or for the spotlight or for the money that doesn't exist. Or whatever fucking idea they have in their head about being a professional fighter. And then go in there and get tuned up a couple times and say maybe maybe this isn't for me yeah but if you go in there and everyone's you know a yes man and you know powdered and powdering your ass and wiping for you and doing all that and you get into a real fight yeah that could be you know a one and done scenario of course better to figure that out in the gym than to find that out in front

of all your friends and family and people watching yeah without a doubt that's that's kind of uh an unfortunate thing that happens a lot is people a lot of people don't really have to face that until later on and you don't want to learn that later on after you've put so much time and like maybe this isn't for you you've been doing this you're just giving five years to this and you don't really want to do it that's why it's like go in there the first day get the shit kicked out of you if you come back the next day yeah this might be for you it's like that really great uh uh hulk hogan story where the dude snapped his shin in half his first day training with the guy come back tomorrow yeah this is what you want to do for the rest of your life because that's going to happen at some point you're going to get injured

you're going to be crippled do you want to do this anyway if you do this is for you if you're only going to do this when things go well that's always the best thing that ever happened to me is I got the crap kicked out of me in my first fight. I got stopped. I mean, I did fight a guy that outweighed me by 20 pounds, but still, I went in there. I had all this confidence. I was like, this is for me.

This is what I want to do with my life. And the shit kicked out of me. It got stopped. And I had that moment of, do I really want to do this? And what came to my realization was, I want to do this regardless. It doesn't matter if I'm the best in the world or the worst in the world. I love this sport and I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to be the best I can be, whatever that is. I don't know what that is. You don't know what that is. Nobody can actually tell you what that is until you've pushed pushed yourself past those those things that get in the way those barriers and if those barriers are going

to stop you you shouldn't even start yeah it's really good too that you had you know with the rough upbringing still support you know when you when you put yourself out there and said this is my dream to have somebody say yeah do it because a lot of people in situations like that would shit on your dream i mean i had a buddy i remember i was staying up late we were like 10 or 11 we were drinking jolt cola pulled an all-nighter out of sleepover and uh you know under the stars what do you guys want to do when you grow up and we went around and i said i wanted to play in the nfl and my buddy burst out laughing he said you can't play in the nfl you're not even gonna play college football and i was like fuck you man i'm not even gonna play college football i'm for sure

playing college ball yeah yeah yeah yeah uh you know i often have people ask me that like do i have what it takes do i have what it takes and i try to express to them i'm like if my answer can change whether you do this or not, you don't have what it takes. I shouldn't be able to say anything to you that will keep you from going after this. Yes, it's nice to have support. Yes, it's nice to be at a great gym. Yes, it's nice to not have to work and be able to do this full-time. But even if you have all those things and you do it anyway, then this is for you. If you're going to let an obstacle or a limitation or only having one arm or whatever the case may be, keep you from going after this, then yeah, it ain't for you. Because

there's a million people who have every excuse that you have and worse and do it anyway. So your excuse is just there to make you feel better about quitting. That's all it really is. And I think that's what I finally realized and And what, what got me started was these excuses are just for me to feel better. And I'm really just lying to myself. You either, you're a coward or you're not, or either you really want to do this or you really don't. And that's okay. You don't have to do this, but don't pretend like you would, if only yeah that's there's no if only that you could possibly say that will make your excuse seem legit there just isn't one then you're fucking uncle rico and napoleon dynamite talk about winning the state championship if coach only would have put him in uh could have gone all state yeah

you throw a football quarter mile yeah throw it over that mountain over there yeah and it's it's it's like excuses are only for you because you don't make yourself seem better to anybody else it's yeah not like everyone in the room nods their head and they're like oh yeah yeah yeah you're right man you'd have been fucking you to beat john jones i guess i guess everyone nobody else has limitations except for you you know and, I think that's why, for me, it's been important to express those things because it's very easy to view maybe a world champion like, ah, well, you know, they just had the right situations. They were naturally gifted. You know, they started's so easy to look at someone in the spotlight or look at someone at a high level

and assume these things where if you really, which is what I love to do is read about people's life stories. Anyone that's ever made it anywhere, go read about their life and the things they had to do and overcome. Like you'd never say that again. Like you can't even imagine the things people have gone through that have made it.'t even imagine the things people have gone through that have made it you just see the end result of all their hard work you don't see all the times they wanted to give up or did give up all this shit fell in tony robbins lap look at him he fucking won the lottery like like who who won the lottery like the only people they only look at what happens to people that win the lottery it's a horrible thing because they

didn't earn it and it ruins almost every single person's life that wins the lottery. Yeah, money's gone in a year, fucking friends and family. There's a great documentary on it. And that's just the way things are. If you don't do the work to get what you've gotten, you're never going to keep it. You're never going to be able to hold on to it. And you're certainly not going to be able to keep pushing it past that level, you know, because you didn't earn it, you know, and that's kind of the downside of being naturally gifted and having,

you know, things handed to you. You know, if you don't learn that work ethic, it's a very hard thing to overcome. You know, it's something I saw coming up that like so many people that I trained with were very naturally talented fighters and just were walking through people. But each time they trained a little less, you know, they didn't take it as seriously. And each time they'd win, it'd get worse and worse and worse. But eventually, that level of natural ability and work ethic even out. And once that happens, they're going to pass you up, and it's too late to learn work ethic at that point.

It's the most important aspect, I think, in anything is work ethic and that drive to never give up. If you have that, you can literally overcome any limitations you may perceive and that's a trainable skill people don't think of it that way they're like oh man that guy just knew from day one or his dad had him bucking hay bale since he was two that's why he's so strong and can do all the shit that he does it's like no man he at every step people can learn to push themselves past what their perceived limitations are right and then when you hit that once or twice, then you realize there is no fucking limit bar.

I'll take this to a whole different level, and I'll continue to beat my own goals, my own limitations, time and time again. Yeah, and I think that's like a guy like Mayweather. That's what has allowed him to stay at the top. It's very easy to say, oh, he's just so naturally good and all these things, but he's still killing himself every day, let alone the mental side of it that it takes to stay at that level for that long

with that many people trying to break you down. Like, yeah, he puts on a show and does these things, but he's out there busting his ass. Like, you don't see all that. You know, you see the show, which is what he wants you to see. But he's putting in the work way more than you are you know but but you don't think that and don't realize that because all you see is the end result of that work and that's like with everybody like you got to put the work in i don't care who you are you have to put the work in more than

anybody else just don't stop don't give up keep going can always be better you can always do more there's always more to be done you do need to find that balance between burning yourself out but but more times than not you're just making excuses not doing too much yeah and it takes a few burnouts to realize where that limit is to pull back yeah well yeah should i pump the brakes just keep going you'll find out when too much is too much but but if you think it's too much is this probably not like your body eventually will stop functioning correctly your your brain stops before your body stops you know uh um i wrote this thing about how uh um we all have uh uh well i said bitch, but a coward inside of us because... You could say bitch.

A bitch. We all have a bitch inside of us that we have to fight. And the bitch inside of us is our survival instincts. Everything in us is trying to keep us safe, okay? That's why when you get tired, you want to quit. Your body is like, this 80%, you're still okay, but we should stop here because 100% you're going to die. But you still got 19% in there before you keel over. But you got to realize there's this trigger that's trying to keep you safe. And when it comes to

fighting or probably just about anything, you have to get to the 20%, you know? And so for me, I think I realized that very early on. So whenever I would feel that, okay, you're tired, you need to ease back, I would go harder. And once you realize you can go more, it just opens the whole world up to you. Like you, you're like that, that tiredness is just a trigger that I'm about to go to another gear. It's like when you're like that that tiredness is just a trigger that i'm about to go to another gear it's like when you're driving your car it's going to the red line but you don't realize you have these other gears you can hit but you're taking that red line as i should ease off the gas just switch your gear and go to the next one it's uncomfortable

but once you get through that man you got a whole world of gears left you and those gears can keep going each one each time you go to the next one there's one after that one after that one after that one after that but most of us function like we got three gears here and we got unlimited yeah 100 there is a there's a big thing that goes into that with with feeling like everything we do the brain is protecting us yeah it's it's all of it. It's how we deal with cold, hot, all that shit. That's why we drive around and, you know, temperature, climate-controlled cars,

climate-controlled house, all this shit. And there's a lot to that, you know. God, what was the name of the book? Ryan, you got me? It's not Ego is the Enemy. It's the other one. Something is the way. The obstacle is the fucking way.

The obstacle is the way. Phenomenal book. It just talks right about that, you know? But yeah, evolution has designed us to survive. Right. Right? So same deal. That's why we talked about this with Rob Wolf.

You come across a berry patch, the guy that took a couple berries and said, I'll leave the rest, that dude never lasted because when famine happened, he fucking died. The dude that said, I'll eat this whole thing and stored it as fat, that's the guy who passed his genes on to us. That's why we want to fucking gorge. We're wired to eat. We're also wired to protect ourselves. We're wired to pump the brakes when shit gets hard yeah

and say maybe now's a good time to relax a bit or maybe i'll tap yeah maybe i'll just uh curl into a ball in the corner and let the referee stop it yeah you know that that's all inherently in there by design but you can switch that that's uh that's also something we can manipulate yeah without a doubt um there was a a good documentary on um george foreman and he talked about how he realized so many knockouts come because they allow must allow themselves for that to be an option you know and you see it in a lot of fights people get knocked down and then their brain even if it might not be conscious at the time that it was in there prior to it they allowed weakness to get in there and they allowed themselves to not push to that uncomfortable place and then there's people just will not stay down

because they are on that that 20 percent level i was talking about where you literally have to kill them to get them to quit you know or, or shut their body completely down. But if the brain's working in them, they're going to get up. And he's like, I will never get knocked out again unless I'm dead. And, you know, that's something that really hit home to me. And something I realized is there is that natural instinct in your brain for safety and and whether you consciously gave up or not there were moments in your life where you allowed that weakness to set in and if you don't push past that you're not going to have that automatic strength that comes from doing that in moments like that when maybe your brain isn't really consciously telling you to quit it's like we know what this is we're gonna stop it's whispering

gently yeah yeah yeah i mean i've had those moments in fights where i got cracked in the back of the head my equilibrium was all off and i have this very vivid memory of this fight in vegas where that was happening and uh there was this moment i remember it's like it'd be so easy just to go down right now and nobody would think otherwise you're getting thumped on like you're getting beat up it's easy to get beat up and knocked down and nobody nobody would have even known that i gave up i knew though and i was like fuck that you know i'm like you're gonna have to kill me to get me out of here and i went out to knock the dude out and, it was a very eye-opening experience for me that there is a choice that happens, even if it's not a conscious one. And you have all these moments throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout training,

throughout your life, where you have an opportunity to either get stronger or get weaker. And it can be something as simple as having a cupcake, you know, or any moment you have in your life, you have an opportunity to strengthen your resolve or be safer and be weaker. And the more opportunities you take to better yourself, the more those things will naturally come out when maybe your brain isn't functioning correctly. Yeah, consistency is king and it makes everything fucking easier

the longer you stick to the path and continue to work. Yeah. You know, as you're talking about this talking about this i of course think of my fight career and uh my inner bitch came out with with uh glover to shara you know i knew it was his first fight in the ufc i had trained with chuck liddell and john hackman for a while i knew exactly who he was you know the world didn't know who he was it was a terrible fight i'm supposed to win all the excuses in the world you know running through my mind yeah and um you know we get in there and he just fucking buried a beautiful hook counter right in my temple two times counter slip slip bang slip slip bang same spot and uh i never felt that out of place in a fight as i did right then just fucking nowhere with all off balance like walking on stilts trying to hit him and uh i shot this sloppy fucking single leg just to try to get close to him he ends up mounting me and pounding my face and in that moment i

thought fuck man i'm just gonna fucking try to push this guy off me. And if he arm bars me or fucking chokes me out, fuck it, it'll end. Yeah. And of course, dude throws the arm triangle on and chokes me out. Right. So there was me failing with the inner bitch. Yeah. But I can at least say, you know, in the fight that followed, I had my face fractured in two spots and the inner bitch came back. You know, I got flash ko'd the second i went down in slow motion i watched that fight over probably like five or six times and i go down pretty fucking quick in real life like super quick but it was almost like the matrix like that kind of slow motion as i was going to the ground and right then i had the thought am i knocked out is

it over and then no yeah and that switch went on and i fucking believed i could win and the second i hit the mat remember turning to the guy and saying get to your fucking feet kick him away and kept going and then the second round i came out started taking him down and pounded on him and then it was stopped and i lost the fight in between rounds because my face was fully fucking fractured right good stoppage good stoppage but yeah i think you know if there's one piece i look back on my fight career it was that moment that moment where i recognized the inner bitch come back and i said no to it yeah you know and even though that fight's still in l that's my favorite fight i've ever had yeah without a doubt it was like those moments like that even even when you

do end up losing like you realize we do have these choices you know even though they might appear on the outside to be like not there we have them in our head and i would never say whether it's right or wrong to take them but but it's still a choice you have whether you give up or keep going you know of course there's those moments when yeah you're just lights are out and you can't move but so many times it's it really is a choice, whether that's in the gym, whether that's in the ring. And I don't think enough people realize that it's not just going to automatically turn on once you get in the ring. If you're giving up and half-assing training, you're not going to go out there and just be at your peak. You know, my old trainer used to say, you have to train at 100% to hopefully be able to fight at 80%.

So if you're 80% in your training, what do you think your number is going to be when you get in the ring? You know, if you're kind of giving up when you're tired, hitting pads, do you not think you're going to give up when somebody's trying to kill you? It's not going to get easier. It's going to get worse. You have to, like, just crush it every day, like, in any kind of hopes to ever be able to make it to any sort of level. You know, and again, I think that's what allowed me to make it to where i gotten it to it was just my inability to give up i just refused to give up

to back down and your body language what's in your eyes people see that and if they don't have that too you're gonna beat them yeah i think a fucking guys like fedor and then my teammate came velasquez and kind of going back to what you're talking about with guys that had all the talent, you know, that kind of shit. I played football at ASU. I had, you know, guys that were fucking superstars. And they'd always, you know, we'd go to do our last 100-yard sprints at the end of the practice. And then, oh, my calf is cramped, you know.

They'd fucking back out. Those guys never amounted to shit in the NFL. Of course. You know, and Cain, I think fifth in ncaa's his senior year and just had a fucking chip on his shoulder his whole fight career you know like he never never thought of himself as you know all world all talented and that drive is what makes him one of the best one of the greatest of all time you know but you talk about that look in your eye like i fucking get goosebumps when i see him staring across the cage at someone else you know just fucking fearlessness and an unwavering belief in self makes the difference between being a champion and not yeah without a doubt without a doubt um you know a perfect example is that my fight with

san chai who's granted as one of the greatest Muay Thai fighters of all time you know he had like 300 something fights and I went in there up against him like no one gave me a shot in the world to even make it out of like the first minute let alone the fight you know and I

saw all these fights people had with him and it was as if they were in there just to like watch his show you know they just had the front row to it these people that would fight him and and it just gave him so much respect and like arguably so you know he's truly amazing and for me it was just like I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna push it 100% no matter what happens I'm gonna have no regrets because I'm going to just go nonstop, and there's nothing in the world he can do to me to make me stop. And, you know, I probably had one of the closest fights with him

out of anybody ever and had a split decision lost to him. But to be able to do that and to really realize that where your level is, it's just like your skill set is, it's just one piece of the puzzle. There's so many aspects to fighting, to life, that aren't just about that singular thing. There's all these pieces of the puzzle that you can still have greater than somebody else

that might appear to have more than you if you just have more in a different department. And a lot of times that is just not quitting it's such a simple thing like yeah courage will all that stuff is something that that's controllable you know it doesn't necessarily it can be learned and strengthened over time but you know on competition day or when the shit hits the fan in life with stressors and challenges, that's a controllable factor on your side that has very little to do with how much your skill set is at or any of that stuff.

I think maybe that's what makes it so difficult because we do have a choice to keep going or to quit. And it's so easy to quit. It's so easy to quit. It's so much easier to quit than to do anything else. It's amazing that we do anything ever. Not only that, it's so easy to quit it's so much easier to quit than to do anything else like it's a it's amazing that we do anything ever um you know it not only that it's so easy to quit and make it look like you still tried really really hard you know and and i gave it my best yeah it's so easy to say that

and like but people who know they know what really and you know that's the worst part is you will always know that you gave up. For me, that's always been the hugest thing is I know I have to look myself in the mirror every day for the rest of my life. If I quit now, I'd rather die right now than give up because forever I'm going to be a quitter. It doesn't matter what it looked like to anybody else. I know I gave up. I know I kind of half-assed it when I didn't need to. I didn't push it as hard as I had to. Like, even maybe in fights that I've won, if I think I kind of held back and kind of babied it, I don't, I'm not too happy about that. I'd rather go out there, fight my fight, do what I want to do, push it to what I feel is pushing it, and I'd rather lose, get knocked out. Because I'm the one that has to look back on my career.

I'm the one that has to look myself in the mirror. I'm the one that has to be happy with the things I've done and accomplished. It has nothing to do with what other people's perception of me is. It's what my perception is. Yeah, it's what you live with every day. It's what you look at in the mirror. Yeah, that's tough. You got to lay down with that every night in bed too get away from me it's a lot easier to

sleep at night when you know you've done everything you possibly can without a doubt without a doubt and again that is um the hugest factor that got me past my fear of failure and got me into the gym was I'm the one that knows that I didn't try you know anybody else can say they can point to all the excuses I had and like ah well you know you probably weren't going to get very far you were starting too late you know you weren't going to do much anyway so it's probably best you didn't try but I'm the one that would have had to live with that for the rest of my life and and I was not willing to do that. I get why so many people are so depressed and just ruined because of that,

because of giving up. Yeah, you do what's safe, right? I battled a shit ton of depression after college football, not because the dream of playing in the nfl was over but just because i didn't want a fucking desk job yeah i didn't want to settle for a lot and my apologies for everyone has a desk job i too has a desk job now and on it so i've come full circle it's not that bad working for the man working for the man yeah throwing on the worky suit uh throwing on my doll seems yoga action here but um yeah you know like like looking at that office space life for me was the fucking

dread like that was the thing where i was like i don't what the fuck is this degree for what the fuck have i learned here that's worthwhile what do i want to do with my life that's going to add meaning you know and i didn't want to settle i didn't want to do with my life that's going to add meaning? And I didn't want to settle. I didn't want to settle for that. And thankfully, even though it was late in the game as a 24 or 26-year-old, at least I had some wrestling and football and things like that and was an athlete. But, yeah, there's always a fucking option.

Just because you've had a job for 10 years or, you know, this is what my degree is in or any of that shit. I mean, fuck, 90% of the people that graduate college never do what their fucking degree is. Yeah. And unless you're an engineer or fucking something like that, you know what I mean? It's still, there's, there's other options. So it's really your choice. Yeah. I think, I think it was Jim Carrey's graduation speech. I don't remember. Maybe he was just talking about how no speech. I don't remember. Maybe.

He was just talking about how no matter what you do, you risk failure, even if you do the safe thing. So you might as well go after what you love because you can do everything right. You can do everything safe. You can do everything the way it's supposed to be done, and you can fail just as miserably as you would have if you'd gone after it. At least if you go after something, you're going after what's in your heart. You're going after what you know. I'd rather fail at what I love

than succeed at what I hate, without a doubt. Hell yeah, brother. Yeah. I'm looking at Ryan right now. That's for sure going up online. Nice, nice. Yeah. I got a chance to meet Jim Carrey at Gabby Reese and Laird Hamilton's spot out in Malib online. Nice, nice. Yeah. I got a chance to meet Jim Carrey

at Gabby Reese and Laird Hamilton's spot out in Malibu. Oh, yeah. And it was just a few months ago. The guy is fucking phenomenal. Like one of the nicest dudes I've ever met. He had so much to talk about on mindset and healing and using sound and different types of meditation and things like that.

How do you tackle i mean it seems like from day one when you started you knew i'm gonna you you had the path like i know this is how i'm gonna push myself i know what i need to do to be successful and if i fail at that that's fine but i'm gonna fucking bust my ass to get there along the way you know haven't haven't fought as many times you've had have you introduced any types of breath work visualization fucking meditation any type of practices that help you get in the zone or dial in what you're going to do in the fight yeah i mean i've experienced or experimented a lot with uh you know mind coaches things like that visualization and

again it's it's it's it goes along the same lines as training and diet and all those things. You just find what works for you, what does and what doesn't. You know, certain fights I've done certain things and some I haven't. You know, when I feel like I need it or need a different approach, I might look into things like that. You know, because so much of it, most of it, 90% of it is all mental anyway. Um, you know, really learning how to find what works for you. Um, whether that is studying your opponent, visualizing, whether it is going to the beach and clearing your head and, and, you know, everyone is, is, is different when it comes

to that. And maybe every fight is different when it comes to that too. So it's been a constant growth in learning and in trial and error, along with every other aspect of training and life in general. Different things work at different times, and what works today might not work tomorrow, and what didn't work yesterday might work today. So yeah, just I think having an open mind and being willing to try out and experiment different things and different techniques, whether that's a mental

or physical or diet, I think will continue to allow you to grow into advance to be the best version of you you can be. Yeah. i like to think of it as either resistance or receptivity and if if someone is talking about something you know and then and it's it's making you feel like what the fuck is this guy talking about you're resistant to it right without a doubt you're automatically before ever trying it you're saying no to it yeah and if it sounds cool or it sounds like something you've done before you're receptive to it so you're like oh yeah i know that thing that that fucking works yeah i like what they're talking about right yeah because that goes back into something you already know and a lot of things that we don't know we're resistant to without a doubt right especially if

it's weird or especially if it it it doesn't follow the idea you have of yourself right but they're all all these tools can fucking help us get better. All these tools can help us grow and learn. Yeah, I try to tell people, like, when it comes to fight training and stuff, I'm like, you should literally be able to learn from every person, whether it's their first day or their last day, because sometimes what you need to learn is what not to do, and that person could be showing you something very wrong.

But by seeing that weird, wrong technique, what you need to learn is what not to do. And that person could be showing you something very wrong. But by seeing that weird, wrong technique, you might be able to see where those openings are. Maybe you're going to face someone that throws that thing that was just so weird. Like you were so like, like, against working with this person, you know, fortunately for me coming up, that was something that was like drilled into us is like, you need to have the ability to train with everybody, kids, women, children, grown men. The more you can do that, the more opportunities you have to learn and grow. The more people you can actually work with, you know, even if it's a baby, you have more training partners. And the more training partners you have, the better because it's great if everyone you work with is the most amazing fighter ever but but not all of

us have that opportunity and we can truly learn from every single person that's on this earth whether it's what to do or what not to do you know you can learn just as much about doing things wrong and not doing them even if that's what that person's doing. Like, that's what I don't ever want to do, but you're showing me how you do it and how I can avoid doing those things. Yeah, I just got back. You're hitting a high note for me. I just got back from Spirit Ranch. It was a little retreat out in Sedona that Aubrey runs. And we worked with a lady named Anahata, and we had a conscious relationships workshop. So for all the gentlemen listening right now, you know, my wife's there and I'm like, oh great. We got fucking two hours

of therapy where I'm going to fucking learn about my, how to talk to my wife better. There was some resistance there to say the least. But the whole thing was about my mom, my relationship with my mom. And the reason for that was she wanted us to ask ourselves, who was your greatest teacher? Who have you known the longest that's taught you the most? And then dive further than that. Who's taught you the most things positively and the most things negatively? The most things that you never want to do again,

the most things that you don't want to give to your children, the things that you don't want to carry on in yourself. And it's, it's usually, I mean, 99 times out of a hundred, that's going to be one parent or both, right? Because they showed you, they gave you love or they didn't give you love. They gave you tools that you could use that helped you in life. And maybe they didn't give you some of those other things that your friends had. And I'm not talking about financially, I talking about you know skill sets mindsets things that you can take with you and if those are absent that's programming that's shit that we got to fucking unwind and deal with later on in life otherwise somebody's got to fix it yeah that's the baggage we carry with us right

and and uh i think you know learning to see those things and hold it in gratitude and understand like, yeah, be grateful for the fucking white belt you're training with. Be grateful for all the shit that your parents did wrong because it teaches you what not to do with your own children moving forward. Yeah. I mean, anything can be a tool that you use to grow if you use it correctly. Wins, losses, trials and errors. It's not just the easy times. It's the hard times is what really makes you a stronger person, not when everything's working out. So as rough as it is, as hard as it is, when things aren't going right, you have a better opportunity now to be a stronger, better person if you overcome it than you do

on those victories. And, you know, again, that's, I think what helped me out so much is overcoming all of the losses, all the limitations, all the hard days, all the times I wanted to quit, all the fractured skulls and fights with the flu and all these things, like overcoming that. And like when I go into a like when i'm when i go into a fight when i'm healthy it's like you're crazy weird like like something's wrong here like i need to be half dead when i go into my fights or else like i i don't i don't have anything to overcome just a fight like that's that's nothing like i need like something seriously wrong with me let's get a little extra i'm like just hit me in the face with a shovel right now i will be okay

i swear i'll fight better. Like all my best fights have been when I've been extremely ill, extremely injured, dropped in the fight or whatever. I'm like, how can I turn that on without horrible things happening? But it's like when I have something to overcome, it's when I really get geared up. I'm like, there's no backing out now. Now you've really got to push it.

Learning how to turn that on without those things is something I'm trying to figure out. How do I do that without something horrible happening? Because I go back and watch all my fights throughout my career. The best fights I've ever had were the worst situations going on. Like a fractured skull or I took a flying knee to the face that almost killed me and I just got up and overcame that

and then came back. How do you turn that on without that trigger? And that's, I think, the hard part and that's all a mental thing. Yeah, there's more to learn always, more work to be done. Yeah, or just get hit in the face really hard before you walk out there. We used to talk about Forrest Griffin, yeah. He used to get hit. Yeah, or just get hit in the face really hard before you walk out there.

We used to talk about Forrest Griffin, yeah. He needs to get hit a few times, then he goes into the fight. Really hard. Like drop him a couple times. Just do that on the way out, though, so it doesn't look so bad. Hopefully it's not a knockout. Well, shit, man, we're almost out of time here, but you got a book you just wrote.

Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. It's a little book. It's more of a journal. I'm actually going to do a series of books. I've been writing about my career and my fights and things like that for over 10 years now and kept track of them all. And I thought about putting a book out at one point, but I started realizing I don't know if I'm ever going to be done to the point when I can actually put one

book together. So I'm going to do a series of them on different fights and different things I might want to write about. And I really did this one just for fun. Like I didn't really expect nothing out of it. I kind of wanted to see the process of getting a book printed up and published. And you know, I had planned on just giving them all away. And I was like, oh, I'm just going to do like 50. I'm like, man, I literally have to give away like 100. I know way too many people and I'm close to way too many people. So I was like, all right, well, the price from 50 books or 200 books

is the same amount per book. Like you don't get a break until like 500. I was like, all right, was like all right one more buy 200 and you know if i have to have them sitting around for a couple years till i give them all away cool whatever so uh i got them done and i put a post out like uh yeah i got these books and like in six hours i had 200 people want them well now now what have i got myself into like i didn't even think about that now like i think i have like 600 people on the waiting list for my book and i'm like i've got to do all this by myself man like this is hard i gotta send them all out i gotta keep track all these people

i gotta keep track of their money 90 of them are on instagram so they're not actual real names so like trying to find them again is almost impossible and then like finding their money on paypal is not their real name either so i'm like trying to coordinate all these things and do all this myself and train for a fight um but it's a great problem to have you know and it's really cool and well if anybody's listening that knows how to fucking help manage some of the, you know, navigate some of the water and take some slack off your plate. Fortunately, my buddy in San Diego, he put up a website for me where people can just go put their email address down. And so I have this huge database of just as soon as I get books in, I can ship them out.

So the book is all on my training to and fight with San Chai. It's basically a journal about that whole period of time in my life. And you can go to thesoulassassin.com. And it's just a real simple thing. Put your email address in. And as soon as I'm ready and have gotten the rest of these hundreds sent out, I'll send them out to you. So if you're interested, go and hit that up.

Fuck yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes. And where can people find you online, on social media? Everywhere. My Instagram is thesoulassassin with a D, A, soulassassin. Duh, soulassassin. So is my Twitter. I think Facebook is Kevin the Soul Assassin,. I believe I'm pretty easy to find. You put my name in it, all that stuff pops up. So yeah, brother. Yeah. I appreciate all the people

that support me and you know, hit me up, letting me know that, that the things I do help them. Cause that, that's really what drives me to keep doing this and then gets me up days when I don't want to get up is the people that I know are looking to me as the reason for them to get out of bed. I better get out of bed. I have these other people look at me even if it's just one person. That's what

keeps me pushing and I appreciate everybody's support. Hell yeah, brother. It's been excellent having you. Thank you for coming out. We'll have to run it back with you after your next fight. Yeah, without a doubt, man. Awesome, it's been excellent having you. Thank you for coming out. We'll have to run it back with you after your next fight. Yeah, without a doubt, man. Awesome, brother. Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you very much. Thank you guys for listening to the podcast with Kevin Ross. We are going to link a bunch of things in the show notes. So you can check out

the OSU video as well as links to Kevin's books and different things that he's got going on anywhere. You can track him down online. Be sure to check out the show notes. Thanks again for listening.

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