Locked In with Ian Bick - Surviving PRISON GLADIATOR SCHOOL | Damien Trites

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

After his parents decide to move Damien away from the violence in Springfield, Massachusetts to Long Island, Damien begins to hang around the wrong crowd. It doesn't take long for a couple assault charges to pile up, leading Damien to spend time in one of New York's worst juvenile detention facilities. In this episode we dive into getting bullied as a child, surviving a prison known as gladiator school, the struggles associated with addiction and turning negative energy into a MMA career. Connect with Damien Trites: https://instagram.com/gigi_moccia_413?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Connect with Ian Bick:  https://www.ianbick.com/ 00:00 Intro 01:26 Childhood  07:33 Leaving Springfield  10:05 Start of Problems in Long Island  18:11 What Leads to Juvenile Detention  26:55 What could have helped 27:50 Life after Juvie  32:10 Moving Back To Springfield Massachusetts  37:25 Drug usage  39:40 Time for a change  41:53 Fighting Professionally  46:40 Chasing Hollywood  47:47 Being a Positive Role Model to His Son  Subscribe to our membership program on YouTube to get early access to interviews, see behind the scenes photos, live chat with Ian & more: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvVklIft6DMelVW18M0oBw/join Powered by Q29 Productions, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th,

the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavah Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Welcome back to Lockton with Ian Bick. On today's episode, I have Damien Trites here with us today. Another guy from Springfield, Massachusetts. Guys, what's up with all these guests that want to come on from Springfield Mass? I think it's great. We love the Springfield Mass, guys. You guys love them. We love them. Great and entertaining stories every time. On today's episode, we hear about Damien's journey in and out a juvenile detention as a young man in New York. and the alcohol and drug addiction he develops as he begins to grow up.

And then we find out how he gets a career in mixed martial arts and is able to turn his life around. Thank you guys for tuning into the show. Thank you guys for week after week supporting us, sharing this podcast with your friends, all the messages I get week over week day after day in my inbox on Instagram, which is at Ian underscore Bick,

if you guys ever want to reach out. It really means the world to me. I take all the time to read, reply back to comments as best I can. And if you guys could take a second also and just head to Spotify, head to Apple Podcasts, leave us a review. It helps us tremendously. Thank you guys again. Hope you enjoy my interview with Damien Trites. Damien, welcome the show. I think you're our first MMA fighter on the show. I appreciate you having me. And thank you so much. little intimidated by you all jacked with the tattoos. We were just talking about you look like Airadakar with the jaw line and everything.

Thank you. Look at you, man. You look great yourself. I got the baby face, though. You do got a baby face. I can't grow the facial. Yeah, for sure. Awesome, though.

You're my second Springfield guy I've interviewed today. Yeah. We just wrapped up the interview with Jeff Asher, whose episode will be out by the time. Yours drops. But, you know, the Springfield guy is something's in the air. Yeah, putting Springfield on the map for sure. Absolutely. All right, let's get into it.

For sure. Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? What's childhood like? So I grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, born and raised. I lived there my whole life. My childhood was a great childhood. I had an amazing childhood.

I have a brother. I have a sister. I was raised in the East Forest Park section of Springfield, which is near Forest Park. It's a decent neighborhood I'd say I was like lower middle class And my childhood was great Nothing bad really happened when I was a kid What'd your parents do for work?

So my father's a chef Oh he's a chef? Yeah yeah my father's a chef My dad's a chef too Oh cool that's awesome yeah so I grew up kind of like In the restaurant business being around that And my mother was a stay-at-home mom She looked after me, my brother and my sister So, I was reading in like an article or like a biography about your life and it was saying that you spent time in New York juvenile detention center.

I did actually 15 minutes from here. Me and Jeff just left there. Really? Oh, you stopped there? Yeah, yeah. I stopped there to go on the property and just kind of. Is that the one that's right down the road? Yes.

I pass that all the time. I was wondering what that was. Yes, yep. So that's a juvenile facility. Yes, yes. So how does a guide that grows up in Springfield end up in a New York juvenile facility? Okay. So let's, you want to start a little bit with Springfield before I moved to New York? Because I ended up moving to New York. Okay. So let's start at your childhood, you know, middle school, high school, but kind of leading up to what happens that gets you into trouble. For sure. Okay. So basically, I grew up in Springfield. I was like the smallest kid in my neighborhood. I wasn't really like a big kid. I got bullied a lot. I grew up in a time frame where that's all we did was fight every.

day, day in and day out. The Springfield Public School system was terrible. It always has been bad. So a lot of fighting, a lot of violence growing up, you know, not in my house, but outside of my house in the neighborhood, at school, that sort of stuff. So, you know, like I was trying to fit in. I was trying to, like, fit in. I didn't really fit in as a kid. Like I said, I was small. I got beat up a lot. So that's kind of sort of how I started gravitating towards fitting in and towards the wrong crowd, so to speak. I wasn't very good in school. I had ADD. So school wasn't really for me. I didn't really like school. And I just started hanging around with the wrong people and getting involved in, you know, fighting and just kid stuff really at the beginning. You also probably didn't

want to go to school because you were bullied. No. Yeah, exactly. And the Springfield School public school system was really, really bad. So I think the turning point for me when my parents decided to pick up and leave Springfield was when my principal got stabbed in the hallway. Your principal got stabbed. Yeah, yeah. That was, I mean, that was one of multiple occasions that happened that I seen growing up. You know, when I was in elementary school, three kids beat up Miss Brown.

She was the principal of the school I went to. But fighting and violence in the Springfield school system was normal. It was like an everyday thing. These kids would play suicide. It was a game that was a violent game. It was a game where you threw a ball at a wall and you would stand on a line. And if you'd drop the ball, you'd have to run to the wall before you would get beat up. Like there was all kinds of that sort of stuff going on in the schools.

And it was kind of sort of like dangerous minds. If you've ever seen the movie Dangerous Minds, the kids, the kids ran the school. The teachers would just basically sit there and the kids would just really do whatever they wanted. That's the way it was. And my parents just had enough. My father took a job in New York and we uprooted to New York. Wow. I had no idea.

Springfield was that dangerous. Yeah, I just listened to Jeff. And what Jeff said is true. Springfield is horrible. But even the high schools, like I know like the mob and what Jeff was talking about with that kind of crime, but I didn't even know it was affected by the school. I mean, people, I mean, look, the mob was, you know, it controlled Springfield for the most part back in those days. But the problem in Springfield was more of the street gangs than it was the mafia.

The mafia, believe it or not, they actually kept the city safe. When the mafia had a presence in Springfield, it was a better place. Springfield has sort of fallen apart since the mafia has collapsed in Springfield. Isn't that kind of ironic how crime can keep, like one part of crime can keep a city crime free in certain aspects of? Yeah, because I guess that they were so respected that people knew not to mess around in certain neighborhoods in Springfield that were controlled by certain people. So that's just the way that it was.

But yeah, no, I was accustomed to violence growing up. It was all around me. And it was normal. Did your parents want to get you away from them? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's, they were just, you know, my parents were afraid. You know, they saw that I was, excuse me, headed in a wrong direction.

And they said, we're going to move to New York. That's good that they saw that, though, happening and wanted to move. Because some of the people, the guests we have on, the parents are either, A, oblivious to it, or B, they're not, there's nothing, their circumstances don't allow. allow them to move. They can't move out of the area. They're just, they're stuck in that spot. I think that it was just timing. My father got a job offer. It was like perfect timing. My principal had gotten stabbed. I think my parents were sick and tired of the violence. They saw that the neighborhood was deteriorating and that Springfield was getting worse and worse and

worse with time. So they decided to move. But with that came a lot of resentment. You know, I have the greatest parents in the world. I love my parents dearly, like very, very family-oriented, very close to my parents. My parents have been married 40 years. I'm very blessed. But when you uproot a kid at 13 years old, it already has problems fitting in to a new community that creates a whole set of different issues and different problems. Going to a new high school is not easy, you know, especially when you're from Massachusetts,

you're not from New York. You can imagine the stuff that happened when I moved to New York, you know? Wow. So how old are you exactly when you moved to New York? I was 13. And where, which part of New York? I moved to Long Island, New York. Oh, Long Island.

Yeah, about 40 minutes outside of Queens. Where exactly town? I went to Bay. I lived in Bayville, which is right next to Oyster Bay and Locust Valley. I'm familiar with the area. I did a stint in, like. Long Island when I worked for Whole Foods. Yeah.

In 2021, I moved to Massapequa. I lived in an Airbnb for a little bit. Okay. And then I moved to, it's a town that's right, it's like north, something I forgot that's right near JFK kind of, but it's in, it's on Long Island. Northport, maybe? Not Northport. It's in a little area.

I forgot. Small town. Okay. Close to a train station. I mean, that doesn't really mean much. Right. Yeah, but I did a stand on Long Island. The thing I realized was I didn't know anyone else.

out there and it was winter and Long Island's kind of like dead. Yeah, it's not a whole lot to do. But yeah, I moved to Beville. I went to Locust Valley High School and that's where my problems started to really begin, you know, where I started to really, um, my life started to change, you know. So talk us through that. What, what's the first instance that you realized that your life's changing for the worst? So I, uh, you know, you know, day one new high school, uh, everybody was making fun of me, test to me. Why'd they make fun of you? You know, I talked different. I didn't have the New York accent.

I was from Massachusetts. Everyone thought I was a Red Sox fan, even though I was a Yankees fan. Aren't kids so cruel? Just stuff like that, like just little things like that. And just it just snowballed. And, you know, when you're a kid, you're just literally trying to fit in. You're like, you know, you're trying to blend in. You don't want to be the source of everybody's attention.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm not good with handling people. people all eyes on me, you know what I mean? Which is interesting because you become a fighter later on. So the attention, you're in an arena and you have eyes watching. Yeah, it was the progression of who I ended up becoming. And none of this would have happened if my life didn't go the way that it did, you know. So it was sort of a blessing in a way, you know, and I'll get to that later.

Now at 13, that's a freshman, right? Yeah. So I guess the one good aspect is you could start. at like at the entry level, I feel like it would have been a little bit worse if you went at like sophomore junior year to a new school. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But you have to remember a lot of these kids that I was going into high school with grew up together. I know. That's how I felt too. You know, like it's it's not like you go to a new school and it's like you're not really going to a new school. You're going to a new school, a new school, but all the same people that you

came up with. Like a lot of like, you know, a lot of people go to high school, people they were in elementary school with. That's just the way it is. If you're from there, that's how it is, you know? Yeah. So the bullion started, you know, immediately right off the bat and the fighting started every day, fighting new people, you know, fighting, getting into fights. How do you know how to fight? Like even going back from- I didn't know, I didn't know how to fight. So you're just swinging no, yeah. It was just like when you're a kid, you know, you train boxing, right? Being a skilled fighter and being just a street tough fighter is a completely different. You know, you get these guys, oh, I'm a street fighter. They come into the gym and then what happens to them? You know, they get,

they get hurt, you know what I mean? Because they're not skilled. There's a difference, right? So when you're in the street, you're mostly, it's like who's the toughest guy, you know? So it's like just brawling, basically. You know, you're just throwing punches and winging punches, hoping that one of them lands, you know? So it was a lot of that, you know, it was a lot of, a lot of that. that, you know? It was the 90s. So it was the era of everybody hanging out on the corner, you know, with the boombox, Wu-Tang was playing, Mobb Deep is playing, the 90s, you know, like everybody had a block, everybody had a corner, neighborhood versus neighborhood. New York was like that, you know, like, it's just the way that it was.

Words are movies, like you were influenced by, movies or TV shows? Yeah, of course, man. I mean, hip-hop culture was thriving back then. So we were all influenced by, you know, like Belly, the movie Belly or paid in full and like all these like hood gangster movies. You know, obviously there was good fellows and all that stuff. I didn't really get into that type of stuff until I got older in life. But yeah, movies influence us for sure. All right. So you're at this new school. You're getting into these fights. What happens next? So I had this group that was bullying me And they were like sort of a gang

But they weren't a gang They were just like a clique They thought they were a gang Well no no It's not that they thought that they were a gang They had every makings of a gang They just weren't organized You know what I'm saying

They were more like a crew Okay So that's how New York was back in the day There was a there was groups of crews Like you had the older guys And then you had like the younger guys And they were all friends but it was just like very clicky you know and i had this one group this one click

that used to like you know fuck with me every day you know and um i got into a fight with this the one bully and i got the better of it finally after all these fights me getting beat up and i lost so i started to earn respect i started to make some friends and things started to turn around but it it was turning around because i was being accepted didn't mean that my life was turning around. It was actually headed in the worst direction because now I'm being accepted by the bad group, the bad groups of kids. It wasn't like I was being accepted by the jocks or the people that are involved in sports and stuff like that. No, it was the street kids, the kids that were hanging out on the corner that were drinking and smoking and partying, you know.

So that's when it started to get towards a street life for me, you know. And what happens in the street life? a lot of drinking a lot of fighting a lot of people testing you people um the older guys you know telling you go go go punch this dude in the face you know um this dude's from a rival neighborhood you know we're going to go over there and we're going to you know we're going to handle business stuff like that and you just want you're doing this to fit in yes and did your parents realize what you're getting yourself in a oh yeah yeah we had we used to we used to we used to i'm not going to I'm not lying when I say this.

Like, we used to hang out like 30 to like 40 deep, like on the corner. We'd be like 30 of us. And we all had beepers. Like if we were like, yeah, we all had like pagers. And there were codes that we used. You know, some codes were for drugs. Some codes were for, you know, beef. If we had beef, you know, like com 911 meant beef.

Like codes of certain spots that we would meet up because we had like three different spots that we would hang out. Like the arcade was one of them. the middle of town was another one. And then we had like by Center Island, like the beach was three spots that we all would hang out and congregate. And if, you know, other kids our age from other towns will come to our town, we would fight with them.

You know, that's just, that's how it was, you know? And were you feeling like happier that you were being included in something that you weren't necessarily the kid getting bullied anymore? What's like the thought process? I mean, like, to be honest with you, man, like, I don't know if I was happier. I mean, I was happy that I had friends and that I was like actually fitting in with people now. And I wasn't the center of everyone's attention anymore, you know,

and that I was starting to become respected and stuff like that, you know. Do you think if you were never bullied, this never would have, like you wouldn't have gone down the path that you would take? You would never ended up in juvie. You maybe not even have been a boxer or an MMA fighter. Oh, yeah. My life would probably be a completely different direction. I think that if I never moved my life would be completely different today.

But then again, you don't know. I'm always just fascinated with like the what, not that I dwell on the what-ifs, but like it just, it's curiosity. Like what if this relationship worked out? Yeah, yeah, what if this business worked out?

It just, it puts it in a perspective because then you know for the next time you're faced with that decision on which move to take. Yeah. Decisions tend to repeat themselves just in different forms. I think when we're younger too, we don't think as much as when we're older about the decisions that we make, right? We're kind of just like going with the flow type of thing.

And, you know, when you're younger, you think you know everything, you know. And yeah, so to answer your question, I don't know if my life would be different, but I know that bullying and me moving molded me and shaped me to become, you know, a fighter, ultimately. So what actually lands you in Juvie? Like, is there a certain event that lands you into this? Okay, so I had two friends that were my dearest friends in the world. One of them's name was Slim. We called them Slim, and my other friend's name was Kev.

We were like brothers. We were inseparable. We were like, we were like, the three of us together were like terrors, you know. Like when we walked down the street, if kids saw us, they crossed the street. They were afraid of us in my town, you know. And we had a strong group behind us. It was the three of us, but we also had like 30, 40 guys at our disposal that were extended members of our family or our crew, right?

So what ends up happening to me is I end up catching a case with my friend Kev. A couple cases actually. I had an assault and battery case and then I had another assault and battery case. And the second assault and battery case, the judge just basically got sick of seeing me. and he basically, you know, sent me away, put me in juvenile. But my friend in the process that I was on the case with committed suicide. Oh, wow. So this is what really altered and changed my life.

And you guys are close. Yes, he was like my brother. So when he died, I'll never forget it. In the town that I lived in, they had a fire, the fire department down the street and any time there was an emergency in the town the fire whistle would go go off in the town and everybody knew that something significant was happening right i got a knock at my door and it was my neighbor she told me basically that my my best friend had did what he did i hitchhiked to the hospital found out that he passed away and my life just kind of fell apart after that you know that was

the beginning of my life of crime and not caring and anymore and not giving a fuck to be honest with you i didn't care i wanted to die at that point did you have anyone that you could find comfort in at the time i mean i mean at that when you're that young and you experience that kind of trauma you don't you you don't want to be comforted you don't care you there's nothing nobody can say that can bring that person back or that can make you feel better and i think mentally i just i couldn't handle it and it just sent me over the edge It sent me over the edge. And then I had to pick up all the slack of the case because he passed away.

He was on that case with me. So basically, I ended up going to juvenile. I did 18 months. And that turned me into a monster, obviously. You know, being in a place where it's predominantly black and Hispanic, you know, people. And I'm one of two white kids in the whole. and the whole program, it's not going to be good for you. And especially you're from Long Island. Most of the kids are from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, the city, you know, they're all going to test you.

So the fighting and the bullying, here we go again. It's another cycle. Yeah. Now, what was the initial assault charge for? Like, what exactly did you do? So the initial assault charge was just a regular fight. It was me and a fight and a kid and I beat the kid up and he pressed charge. on me. The fight with Kev, when he killed himself, we both beat the kid up and I stomp them out and they gave me shod foot. In New York, when you stomp someone when they're on the ground, it's assault and battery with a shot foot. They consider it a dangerous weapon, so it's a more serious crime. So after the first assault and battery charge, the judge was like, no, you know what I mean? Like, you did this, now you're going to pay. So are these innocent people you're fighting?

No, these are, these are, these are not. These aren't innocent. people. There's like there were reasons for this stuff like um you know obviously it was kid stuff you know obviously but it was all like street beefs like you know over like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so you get to juvie what do your parents say to you when you're sentenced to juvie they were happy they were happy so you're really my parents my parents my parents I put them through hell. Absolute hell. Like, you know, my mother used to come up to the corner when we were like 30 strong and she'd be like screaming at everybody, telling everybody, you know, go home. Like, I'm going to tell your parents. Like, she would call, she would tell the police that she thinks

that something's going to happen because every year we would have like brawls at like the feasts and stuff like that with other kids. And, you know, people got really severely hurt. Like, One time I was involved in a rumble that was like a 15 on 15 brawl and my friend got hit in the face. Remember the car club, the club? Maybe, I don't know. Yeah, it's a thing that locks your steering wheel. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you can't steal the car.

My friend got hit in the face with the club and he had that plastic surgery on his face and this in this huge brawl that broke out on the street. It was like 15 on 15. So there was all kinds of bad stuff happening. So my parents had had enough. Like at that point, they looked at it. like jail is going to maybe save his life, you know, or him going away is going to actually help him. They looked at it like that, you know. So your relationship's deteriorated drastically. I mean, I mean, look, my parents have always been there and supported me and always have loved

me. But at that point, they just got fed up with the bullshit. They didn't, you know what I mean? They had enough. It was very difficult to deal with, you know. So New York State juvenile detention facility, what's that like? war every day i saw i read somewhere that you called it like gladiator school that's what it is yeah why how does it get the nickname gladiators because all you do is fight every day is every day are you guys in like cells or no open dorm open dorm and you're sleeping it's the middle of the night and you guys are just fighting no not in the middle of the night there's a lot of fights like behind the scenes like and like there's rooms that people fought in there's the chow hall that people fought in people fought in the gym people fought all over the

facility. They fought outside when they went for rec. Is there like politics in a juvenile? Yeah. Yeah. What are like some of the politics? Just like the same politics that go on in any other center, you know? Yeah, but it's different when it's like in juvie. Like juvie's worse. Really? Juvee's worse because it's a bunch of kids that don't give a fuck. They don't, they just don't care. They just don't, all they want to do is fight. The respect level probably isn't there. They have no respect. They don't they it's just it's madness. What about the guards? How are you treated by guards? I mean, they don't really care either.

They're just there to collect the paycheck, you know? This is all wild, Ben. This is like... Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But real doesn't start on a label. It starts at the source. Like real California milk from California farm families, it's real dairy delivering high-quality, complete protein,

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A whole different life. Yeah. What about, like, what's the worst fight you got in at a juvenile detention center? Well, I got into a fight with this, the only other white kid that was in my unit over food. He told me that he was going to take my cake off my tray. And I told him he's not going to take the cake off my tray. And obviously it didn't go good for him. What happened to him?

I knocked out some of his teeth. And do you go to like the shoe or the box after that happens? Yeah. And what's a shoe like inside these facilities? Is it different? Is it the same as, well, you haven't been to like an adult prison, right? I've been to jail. You've been to regular jail?

Yeah, a regular county jail. But what was the shoe like, the box? Same as any other place. They keep you segregated until your time's up and then you come back out, you know. Does it happen? Do you think it has a worse mental effect on you because you're that young? Yeah, but at that point, I was already far gone as far as mentally. My friend was dead.

I was locked up. I didn't care about nothing at that point. Do you think you were just getting into all these fights because you wanted to get hurt? You want maybe die. No, no. So you still wanted to live? Yeah. I never really contemplated suicide ever when I was in there.

And I started to become, I started to build myself, actually. I started to work out every day. I was in freakishly good shape by the time I came out of when I came home. I was in incredible shape. It was 170 pounds, solid muscle, benching 250 pounds, and I was 19 years old. Did you have like any plans, like aspirations while you're in? No, I. just no no I didn't know I was just day by day trying to get out of there and just get home what do you

think you needed back then like looking back on it now what could have someone have done for you to help you because you're it doesn't just there was there was nothing nothing no I think that I think that no matter what I was never going to be good in school I never liked school so I didn't think it really mattered what anyone did no one was going to uh The rail, the train that I was on. I was on the train where I enjoyed, I enjoyed it. I'm not going to lie to you. I actually liked being in the streets.

I liked that environment. I felt accepted. And I just liked the chaos. I'm going to be honest. I've always kind of been an adrenaline junkie. You think that translates into your career now? Yes. But you're able to do it in a positive way rather than a negative way?

Yes. Of course, yes. So 19, you get out of juvie. is this where addiction starts to take place or what happens so um i mean addiction addiction i think was often on my whole life but i wasn't really like back in the day i wasn't really doing like hard drugs you know i was just doing like weed and you know drinking and you know i dipped and dabbled with some stuff but i was never like i never considered myself like a junkie you know um you know i

Like I said, I dipped and dabbled with stuff, but yeah. And then what happens, like, when you're 19 and you're out? So when I'm 19, I come home and my parents tell me that in a few years, they're thinking about moving back to Massachusetts. So I'm like... Why a few years? I'm like, I'm like, what is going on? Like, I'm comfortable in New York.

Like, I finally, like, I'm home. Like, I'm, you know, like, I have friends now and now. you want to go back to Massachusetts. They wanted to be closer to my family to like my grandmother and like my relatives that were still alive, you know? So, yeah, that was it. I was, I was 19. I came home and I was just back into the bullshit, you know.

So you got back right. Yeah, I was back into the bullshit. So Juvie didn't help like fix you at all. No. I think if anything, it just made me more street savvy. It just made me bigger. It made me scarier and it made me more danier. it made me more dangerous.

That's what it did. Did your parents visit you while you were adjo? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So they were still maintained support. Yes. They were trying to be there for you.

They just knew that you needed to be there. I would cry when they would come up, when they would leave. You would actually cry in the visiting room? Yeah. Yeah. And other guys would see you cry? Yeah. Wow.

I'm surprised. I didn't care. Really? Yeah, I've always been, man. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I don't hide who I am from nobody. Never change that because that's a great trait to have. I don't hide who I am, man.

Never will. never ever will so you weren't worried about the perception I don't care what are you going to do you're going to beat me up okay let's do it you know I mean I didn't care you know so how bad do things get as time goes on between the drugs the alcohol your life you know crime dealing with the bad unsavory people so I had this mentor growing up who I met when I came out of Juvie named Mike Minimodo what a name yeah he was a lunatic and And he built mini motorcycles. Like back in the day, he was from California originally, but he moved to, like, he had family

in like Brooklyn or whatever, and then he ended up in Long Island. But he used to build the mini motorcycles, you know, the little mini motorcycles when they were popular when they first came. I always wanted one when I was a kid. So he used to build those, but he didn't have a job. He came from a rich, rich family. He was born into money. But this dude used to drink like a bottle, a jack a day.

And he was a lunatic. and he had dogs that he fought. He had two pit bulls that he used to fight. And we started hanging around with Mike Minimodo, like all the kids in the neighborhood. We used to go to his house. And he'd take us to, like, New York to go cop heroin because he was a bad drug addict.

But he was a lunatic. He would fight anyone. He was big into jihitsu and mixed martial arts. Even though he was all messed up, you would never know it. The guy was an animal. Like, he was in great shape, whatever. So he mentored us, and he used to make us fight in his living room with the geese on

and we'd get into fights within, you know, our friends would all fight and he treated us like dogs. Like really, like you would put the geese on us and we'd fight in the living room or we'd go in the back and box. And this was, you know, this was like we were real young and it just kind of snowballed

from there, man, and we started hanging around with more, worse and worse people, you know, all kinds of street guys, you know? So do you go to college? Do you get a job? How are you making money at this? No, I was, I was, I was selling weed when I was a kid. I used to sell, you know, I used to sell weed and stuff and to supplement my income. But, you know, back in those days, it was like you were selling

nickels and dimes and ounces and weed was a completely different game back then. You know, it wasn't like, you know, how it is today. I mean, this is, we're going back to 1997, 98. You know what I mean? It's a long time ago, you know. And how old were you? 19, 20, 21? So how long does this go on for? Pretty much until I came back to Massachusetts, you know. And when do you go back to Massachusetts? I came back to Massachusetts when I was 24. 24?

Yeah. And is your mindset different? Is your attitude different when you get back to Massachusetts? I mean, look, I mean, in retrospect, I think that when I was going to move back to Massachusetts, I said to myself, like, this is a fresh start for me. Like, you know, like, I'm going to come back to Massachusetts. I'm going to, you know, reconnect with some of my old friends. and, you know, I'm going to do the right thing.

I'm going to get a job. I'm going to, you know, do all the stuff that I should have been doing long ago. Now I was at an age where I was finally over my friend's death, you know, not over completely, but it had been so long. So obviously I wanted to do the right thing when I came back, you know, but that didn't happen. So what happens when you get back to Massachusetts? So when I get back to Massachusetts, a lot of like the guys like, I grew up with and stuff, like, just weren't really, like, around, you know, anymore.

Like, or they were around, but they had, were married. They had kids or they were in relationships or they just weren't my type of people anymore. You got to remember, I significantly changed. I went to jail. Like, I went to New York. Like, I've just kind of lived experience. Yeah. Like, I just grew apart from people that I, like, grew up with, you know?

So when I came back, it was like all over, like me kind of starting all over again, you know, but I was in Springfield where I grew up, you know. So what are you getting involved with with these new groups of people? So at the beginning, I wasn't really involved in nothing. I was just trying to find my way and find a job. And I was working like landscaping and I was doing like construction and, you know, trying to make money. And I was trying to be legitimate and just go on the straight and narrow.

But then I started like meeting like wise guys and like, you know, I wanted to train more. I wanted to, you know, train more. And I started, you know, boxing and I started like doing martial arts and stuff again because like that was something that I did all the way from when I was a kid. I didn't really talk about that. But that's, I've always been involved in martial arts my whole life. So when I came home, I wanted to start getting involved in martial arts and stuff again. So I started doing that. It just became more dangerous, man.

It started, you know, bouncing and being around more seedy people and, you know, higher level criminals and that sort of stuff. When you say, like, dangerous and seedy individuals, what were you, like, exposed to? I mean, I mean, Springfield is filled with dangerous and seedy individuals. I mean, I grew up there, so it's like, I know all the groups. Like, I grew up with a lot of Latin kings. I was around that life for a very long time. I was probably one of the only white guys that was allowed at a 50 to 100 party, Latin King party with all Latin kings. And I was like the only white guy that was in the party.

What's a Latin king party? Just like, you know, like a house party, but with all gang members. you know, in a house, you know. And, you know, they're all, they're all gang members and they're all very dangerous guys. A lot of them are murderers, a lot of, you know, they're dangerous people, you know. And are you getting arrested still at this point with your dealings with individuals like this and whatever else you have going on? No. So you're done getting arrested?

No, I was done. No, I was done at that point getting arrested, but I wasn't done getting arrested in general. In generals? No. So you have a little, like, bit of a quiet spot. You're still trying to, like, find your way. Yeah, but like, like I said, I was starting to, you know, get involved back with some of the old people that I knew before. The girl that lived behind me was her boyfriend was the headleader of the Latin Kings.

So I reconnected with her, this girl, Heidi, that I knew that I grew up with. Chicky's nephew was actually married to her. And yeah, he's the head of the gang. So Chicky's nephew and I have known each other since. like 1993. So, and he was, he was, you know, heavily involved in the Latin Kings back then. And there was other high-ranking members of the Latin Kings that I was friends with. And were they having you do anything for them or they knew better not to?

No, I think it was more just the, at that point, I wasn't interested in being involved with them as far as, like, crime stuff goes at that point in my life. it was just partying more or less you know me going over there partying with them and stuff like that they knew how to have a good time and i like to have a good time is this when like your drug and alcohol use ramps up a little bit yes i was you know i was drinking i was you know smoking more weed and that sort of stuff but um the drug use didn't come until later so let's get into that how does that evolve how do you go from someone that you're smoking weed drinking you're really not even doing too much at this time period so so okay so I was like kind of on the fringes of being around the

land kings I had some friends that were wise guys that were involved in in that life um and I was a bouncer right so that's how it kind of started where I started getting into the into the drugs so um when I was a bouncer I worked at this this bar called McCaffreys it was an Irish bar but it was you know, a hangout for wise guys and for a lot of guys that were involved in stuff. You know what I mean? So that's where, like, my drug use started and where the violence really started because, like, you know, beating people up all the time in the bars, getting into fights all the time, you know, doing blow here and there, you know, drinking, you know, doing blow while you're working. It was common. Like most bouncers drink on the job and they do drugs on the job.

most of them you know what i mean so that was just like common it was every day you know and what at your lowest point what kind of drugs are you doing oh i didn't i never did like i never did like like hard hard drugs like heroin or um crack or nothing like that my drug of choice i would say um was cocaine which is still technically a hard drug yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no for sure for sure how much coke are you doing at the worst part part i wasn't like i wasn't like a cocaine user where i bought it and did it all the time it was more just like uh two or three times a month if that you know but it's still drug yeah yeah for sure so this continues on for how long i'd say i'd say uh all the way up until my 30s man off and on you know and anything like traumatic happened during this time period yeah i had some

man in my day for sure you know like what what type of scares are we talking like like you know know I had scares where I was partying all night until the wee hours of the morning and I thought I was going to have a heart attack and I had to go to the hospital and I stayed you know the night in the hospital not something I'm proud of but that's that happened to me for sure so what's your wake-up call like when does everything when does your life change you're like I got to get this on track I got to fix this thing you know because you went to juvenile detention at a very young age you're you're involved with shady individuals drug use alcohol use how do you turn it around i think that i think that my wake up call was when i started to look around at my circle chicky actually was a mentor of mine

um i used to hang around with chicky all the time at the social club that we used to hang out at the mild carmel club um and that club was just evil it was just the evil evil club a lot of people died in there there was there was a few guys that got killed um in that club, and I'll be honest with you, it just had an evil presence in that club. When you went in there, you just got that, you got a feeling about, it's, it's, it's kind of hard to explain, but I spent a lot of time in that club, and, you know, the treachery of that life, I was around that life, uh, is scary. You know, you're sitting at it, you're sitting at table with guys that you don't know if they're your friend or they're your enemy. You know,

that's just that life. That's the way that life is. I'm not saying everyone is like that. Obviously, me and Chiky have a great relationship. He's one of my best friends. But my wake-up call was just being around people that I didn't trust anymore and seeing how the, seeing the streets for what they were, what they really were, not what we glamorized them to be, right? Because a lot of guys that get involved in that life, they watch the movie Goodfellas or they watch whatever movie. They love the beginning of the movie, but what always happens at the end? Everybody dies or goes to jail, and it's not ever a happy ending. So I guess my wake-up call was just seeing that I couldn't trust anybody anymore and that I just didn't want that life anymore.

I just didn't want it for myself. Do you ever think about what could have happened if you didn't give up? that lifestyle of course all the time so when you decided to give it up what do you put your energy into like what do you get into training training so you knew you wanted to be a fighter training oh i was i was yeah i mean look i um i always wanted to be a fighter i had my per my first professional fight in 2004 how old are you then i was uh 25 years old and you get paid for that fight yeah measly how much how much was the pet yeah how much not a lot of money not a lot of money not a lot of money Not a lot. I got like, I think I got like four to show and four to win. And 400 or four thousand? Yeah, 400. Four. Yeah. And you won the fight. Yeah. And I got like 800 bucks. Now when you're at your peak of your training and you do this first fight, you're drug and alcohol free? No. Isn't it hard to compete at that level while? Not for me, man. Okay. Not for me. No. I, um, don't get me wrong. I wasn't partying like every day. Like I wasn't like drinking and using drugs during training camp all the time. But, you know, there were training camps.

where I did go out and I did go on a bender and I did party. A lot of fighters done it and do it. So you never work. It comes with that lifestyle, right? When you're a fighter and you're under the lights, everybody wants to be close to you. Everybody wants to be your friend. Everybody wants to say, I know Damien.

Hey, call Damien who got a problem. I was that guy. What's training entail? Like, what's it like to train at that level? I mean, when I was at a high level, when I was fighting at a high level, like when I fought in Bellator, It was you train, you know, you train for six hours a day.

You do a three-hour session in the morning and you do a three-hour session at night. Like I lived in South Boston for a little while. I lived in Southie. That's where I make my kid's mother, my son's mother. I used to train three hours in the morning. I'd go home for lunch. I'd eat a lunch. I'd take a nap until like four or five o'clock.

I'd be back at the gym and I'd be at the gym until 10 o'clock at night. And then after training was done, I'd go and I'd bounce all night. That was my life. That's how you would make money. That was my life. I would bounce five to six days a week, and I would train the rest of the days. And, you know, five to six days a week, it's not too shabby. I was making like a buck 50 a night, 150 bucks at night.

It's not too bad to just stand at a door. You know, and I lived in a fighter house in Boston, so I didn't have to pay rent. I lived with all fighters. Everybody I lived with was a fighter. What was your motivation to fight? Like, what kept you going? What made you want to train? I was good at it.

I was good. at it you know i i enjoyed it i enjoyed the competition i enjoyed the grind of being in a training camp i enjoyed the brotherhood of it um you know being around a bunch of fighters and training for a fight it's awesome you know and do you think that your time and juvenile detention help like strengthen your mentality no yeah definitely do you think about it at all like the past yeah of course i always think about the past i think everybody thinks about the past you know are you cautious of who you hang around because of the past? I mean, not really, man. I mean, not really. I still have friends that are involved and stuff. I still have friends that are in the life.

I still have friends that are in gangs. I still have friends. I wouldn't say friends, right? Friend is a is like, you can count. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I have people that like, look, I was a fighter for a lot of years. I grew up in Springfield. Everybody knows me. So everybody wants to be my friend. Doesn't mean that I'm their friend just because they think I'm their friend. You know, at the end of the day, I just like to be under the radar, small circle, go to work, train, and go home now. I try not to go out and party as much as I used to. It's just not my lifestyle anymore. I'm in a different direction, you know. I'm acting now. I'm doing movies. I've been involved in some film stuff, and that's the direction I'm in. The street life is a dead end street. There's

nothing in that life. So there's no point in headed back towards going backwards, right? You've got to move forward in life. Do you still do drugs or alcohol now? No. I mean, I drink occasionally, but not like I used to. How do you prevent yourself from like relapsing? What keeps you dialed in? I mean, relapsing is a word for somebody that, you know, use drugs on a regular basis. It's just not my life. I'm healthy. I like to be healthy. I like to eat healthy. I like to train. You know, do I do I hang out and go out and have a drink every once in a while and have some drinks with my friends every once in a while. Yeah, I do.

A drink is fine. You know here and there socially? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, look, I enjoy going out every once in a while and having a cocktail and having drinks with my friends and my family. But as far as the drugs go and that lifestyle of being out in the nightlife and in that kind of negative environment, it's just not for me no more.

43 years old. I don't have time for it. Working on a movie that I wrote myself. with my partner, Brian Hoyle. I don't know if Chicky told you anything about it, but he's in it too. We're casting him for it. Chicky you're casting? And for anyone that doesn't know, we've mentioned Chicky multiple times,

he's Chicky Chicky Tully. We had him on one of our recent podcast episodes, the Bookie for the Mob episode. Chicky's a great guy. You guys got to check out that episode. Yeah, for sure. Chicky's one of my great friends. He's a great guy. That episode was really, really good.

and yeah I wrote a film during COVID I wrote a screenplay for a movie called Hungry Hill Hungry Hill is about a neighborhood in Springfield it's primarily predominantly an Irish neighborhood enclave my mother grew up there my mother's Irish my father's Italian so I wrote the movie I wrote the story during COVID and we've been rewriting it and working on it for the past five years now. That's great, man. So we're hoping that the process is going to be close to where we can shop it soon. How old's your son? My son's 19. How do you instill the values you have now into him to make sure that he doesn't follow down the same path that you did? I couldn't be more blessed with how my son turned out. My son is a great, great kid. What I do with my son now is I

tell him everything. I'm honest with him about my life. I'm honest with him about the sacrifices that I made in my life to try to make a better life for him, you know, with the fighting. I did everything for him back in the day. Like I did all that, that dream that I was chasing. Look, when you're chasing a dream, you're chasing a higher purpose, right, than a normal person that works at regular everyday nine to five. I wanted to be a huge, big name fighter. You know, I had some injuries along the way. I had some things happen, you know, whatever. It didn't work out the way I had wished it did. But what I instill in my son now is, you know, always be a good person, have morals, have

respect, you know, always say please and thank you, all the things that my parents taught me growing up. Like I said, I'm grateful. My parents are still married. They've been married 40 years. You don't see that anymore. But my son does martial arts with me. He trains with me.

And to me, that's important. I'm passing the torch to him now, you know. and he trains stand up he does some boxing he does some jihitsu and stuff like that so that's important to me have you talked to your son about your past of course and what is he said yeah yeah he knows does he ask you questions is he curious yeah he does yeah he asks me questions and do you give him like honest answers yeah of course i'm always like transparent with my son like i say i wear my heart on my sleeve i don't hide who i am you know yeah i don't hide who i am i don't i don't have nothing to hide whenever he asked me something i have to be honest with him

because he's not going to get the lesson if I'm lying to him. There's a lesson in everything, right? When we fall, we get up. We have to learn the lesson. And at the end of the day, if I'm not transparent with him, then he's going to, he's not going to respect me at the end of the day, you know? Yeah, on the topics of lessons, what do you think are the biggest lessons from your story for others?

I think that the biggest lesson from my story is that never give up. never ever give up like don't let anybody ever tell you that you can't do something um that's like i've had a lot of people in my life um try to sway me from my dreams a lot of people that are my so-called friends that you know they're not really my friends they you know they're my friends when something can benefit them or i'm doing something for them or if they need me at three in the morning to come hurt somebody or help them in a beef. I'm their friends then. But when I'm moving in a different direction and I'm in the gym and I'm training and I'm like, nah, man, I'm good. I don't want to go out tonight. I'm in the gym. I'm training. I'm working out.

I'm training for a fight. I'm 43. I'm fighting in September. You know, I mean, I haven't stopped. Like I took a little hiatus and I have the itch to get back. I have. have some stuff still that I want to get out of my system. Yeah, you look great, man. I've been seeing your photos and videos and stuff. I appreciate it. You're jacked up, man. I work hard, man.

I work hard. I'm in the gym every day. I train every day. I work hard. What keeps you grounded like that? You know, when you said about my son, that's the most thing that keeps me the most grounded is my son. Without my son, I don't know where I would be.

Because I'm going to be honest with you, my son motivates me to be a better person because I'm inspired by how good of a person he is and how good of a person he's become. That's powerful. When you can look at your kid and say, wow, that's amazing. Like, he's just such a great kid. So he inspires me to want to be better every day and to be a better father, a better human being. And, you know, we all go through stuff in life.

But at the end of the day, what it's all about is getting a good. up and being a better person each and every day. How do you get through like the dark days now? Because we all, no matter how good our lives are, we're going to have tough days. What is your method to get through those? I tell everybody, man, wait. It's going to pass, man. It's going to pass.

Whatever you have in your way, it's going to pass. It's a roadblock. It's not your circumstances today will never be your circumstances tomorrow. or the day after that. Life changes dramatically. You never know what can happen in your life. You don't. But if you give up and you just lay down, then what?

Yeah, you can't give up. You can't lay down, man. I don't lay down for nobody. I don't care who you are. I'll never lay down. Nobody's going to ever make me lay down. I'd rather stand and fight and go out on my shield than lay down. So at the end of the day, you just got to keep moving forward

and keep fighting every day. And life ain't easy, especially as a man today. It's not easy, but I don't want nothing easy. As a fighter, do you have to be more cautious, like, when you're interacting with people, if someone, like, heat you up at, say, like, you're at a bar or restaurant, that could ruin your whole life. People test me all the time. How do you restrain yourself?

I mean, look, I just look at it and I laugh because they just don't have an idea. They don't have a clue. Like, people in the, I'm a street fighter. Everybody says that. I'm a street fighter. Yeah. You know, you're a joke, buddy. That's what you are.

You're a joke. You're not a street fighter. You never fought nobody. Why? Because you knock some guy out at the bar that had like 20 drinks. That makes you tough. A tough guy, you don't have to prove it. He's already proved it a million times in the ring, or he proved it in the gym, or he goes to the gym every day and he proves it. The real tough guys are in the gym, building their bodies. And they're building their bodies for war. That's the real tough guy. Do you ever take time to reflect on how far you've come, like since being a kid, being that

fighter that wanted to stand out as a bull, being bullied, fighting with everyone and now, you know, evolving and where you're at now? Do you think about that? All the time, man, every day, every day. And I'm not done. I'm a work in progress, man. I could slip up tomorrow and make a mistake. Every day, it's like a chest. You got to think before you move that chess board. I mean, that chess piece, you have to think about every move strategically in your life. What's the best possible move on the chessboard. That's just life. If you, you know, if you don't think about what you do before you do it, you can make a fatal, fatal mistake that can mold and shape your life forever. You said, do people try me all the time? You know, one thing I'll say is this, nobody ever tries

my family or people that I love because then I won't care. I won't hesitate. When it comes to my family or people that I love, I'll lay my life down. That's just how I am. That's a great attitude. You know, and, and, um, I'm a warrior. That's why what we do. We fight, right? Warriors fight. So at the end of the day, like, um, I can tolerate abuse and disrespect to me. You know, I can, because I'm a bigger person now. I don't have to prove anything. But when it comes to my family, that's different, you know? What's like the next five, you? years look like for you? What's the plan? The next five years is to work on my movie, to work on this movie that I've been working on with my partner, Brian Hoyle, called Hungry Hill. We're working

with Jimmy Tamburino, who's a writer who wrote Wittsec Mafia. Wittsec Mafia was a project that I acted in with John Gotti Jr. And we got the writer from Wittzek Mafia working on Hungry Hill now with us. So that's been super excited. because he's an extremely talented writer. My next five years looks like landing more acting roles, staying in good shape, spending time with my family, and elevating as a person,

just becoming a better person. That's what my next five years looks like, making good decisions. That's great, man. Well, Damien, thank you for coming on the show today. It's been great talking to you. Thank you so much.

I know you got a nice two-hour ride back to Sprick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I enjoy the trip back and, you know, looking forward to keeping in touch, getting a training session in. For sure, man. You know, I would love to help you. I know you said you wanted to do some boxing stuff. If I can help you get, get you a match up with somebody, I have some connections. You said celebrity boxing. Damon Feldman knows me. I know Jared Tillinghast.

He partnered up with them recently. He's out of Providence, Rhode Island, so maybe we can make something happen. Definitely. Dude, dude, I'm itching for a fight, man. Like, I'm training. It's, dude, it's like, because it's, I love the whole, like, comeback underdog story. So I think that fits with what I have going on. Yeah, for sure, man. And, look. Look, dude, and like, it's commendable, like, what you went through, and now you're starting to climb out of it. And look, you got an amazing podcast. You're doing great things, man.

I respect it a lot, man. I appreciate it, man. Well, have a good one. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it.