Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 157 - Luke Hawx

Episode Date: December 15, 2018

Luke Hawx is s pro-wrestler, stuntman, actor, and a member of the ST B Team. He is also the founder and CEO of WildKat Sports & Entertainment, biggest wrestling organization down south with the goal to pump out talent, and prepare athletes for success in wrestling. As his own agent, he was able set himself up for success and continues to work on the next thing to keep progressing in his career. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

this fucking guy is going to get all wired up. He's going to get all fired up on Monster Energy. And Kratom. And he's going to, and Kratom, and he's going to kick the shit

out of both of us. Oh no. You're going to put me right through the table. Choke slam. Well, I told him to take some Kratom hoping it would calm him down,

but I don't know, it might have the opposite effect. I'm a little wore out yesterday. Jess wore me out. So Big Jess put it on me yesterday. She killed you. I saw it on her instagram yeah exactly yeah it wasn't nothing triple x rate or anything it was on the instagram i was wondering

if anybody yeah wanted to know what i meant by that yeah yeah yeah you guys got into it you know i i i have to admit i was uh i was disappointed because you're a seasoned veteran wrestler you've been around the block several times. And then to see you, like, I just, I didn't even understand why you locked up with her. I mean, you got to use your intelligence. You got to use your ring experience. There were so many other things you could have done. But to tie up with a power lifter like that is a huge mistake. Exactly.

I screwed up because I'm not here every day at Super Train Gym. I don't have that. You haven't seen the progress. Right. So last time I was here, you know, she was. She actually was deadlifted more like three plates. So you weren't intimidated by that. Now she deadlifts over four plates.

Yeah, and she put me flat on my ass, which was embarrassing. So you had no idea that was coming. Look at it. Jesus Christ. Boom. Like a grizzly bear. Like an albino grizzly bear. Jesus, I could watch this all day and this is kind of a you know we can't let this get out i mean this could damage my career

i mean i would say it's embarrassing but really the strength of the women nowadays like it's not embarrassing you know you see these girls on instagram what they're lifting yeah you know what and some of them i want to call out because i'm not i like i'm not you think you're calling fake plates or what yeah i mean look i'm not a seasoned power lifter or anything but but you see some of these instagram lifts and you're going can they do that in a meet can they what's going on here right and they got some strong women out there they got some women out there kicking ass they got some women out there that are kicking ass. They got some guys out there that are kicking ass. But, you know, there's a lot of controversy around powerlifting and Instagram lifting. You'll see the Brad Castleberry effect, right?

I mean, obviously the guy's strong. Yeah. But everybody's saying, hey, why is this guy not competing in a meet? Why is he not doing this? Why is he not doing that? It makes a sense, too. Like, if you're strong and you can throw around, like, you can throw around four or five plates. If you can sneak a fake plate in there, then that puts you on that next level right right going from four plates to

five plates on something's a big deal it is it's huge i mean and just to do i mean three plates is a lot yeah like i i don't feel like very strong right i mean i'm stronger than your average guy because i'm especially thanks to you for helping me with my lifting. But if I go in the gym and I'm putting up three plates, you know, three plates and a quarter for me and for the average guy, that's a lot. That kind of stops the gym where I'm at down in New Orleans. People are like, man, is this guy really going to lift that much? Yeah. And then I come here and I see like Marcus, like load everything up.

And I just want to pack my bags and go home. Seven plates, eight plates. It just never ends. Right. They just keep stacking on those weights. Yeah. I'm jealous. I need a, I need to pack my bags and go home. Seven plates, eight plates. It just never ends, right? They just keep stacking on those weights. Yeah, I'm jealous. I need to up my testosterone. Anyway, everybody, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project.

We're here today with my boy, Luke Hawks. Known Luke for a few years now. Luke is a pro-wrestler along with a stuntman, along with an actor, along with a very handsome son of a bitch with some huge ass arms over here. And, you know, I wanted to get Luke on the podcast today. I think we've podcasted before, right? A couple of years ago. We did a podcast and it was wonderful and I appreciate that.

I think that was probably my favorite podcast ever because it was completely different. Normally when I'm on a podcast, I do a lot involving wrestling. And it's always the same BS questions. Who trained you? How long you been wrestling for? This, crap, it's like anything you can obviously go online and look up right away. Like when you pull my name up on there. So I had a lot of fun when we did our first podcast.

So I'm really looking forward to this one today. Yeah, and I think last time too, I think we went in we went in a little bit on your, uh, your history, your background and stuff like that. And I'd like to dive into that again, just cause it's been so long since we've had you on. I'd like to talk about that again, but I also, but before we dive into that, I want to talk about, you've had a great transformation. I mean, you, you were in good shape last time I saw you, but you also have, uh, you got yourself into way better shape. You did a photo shoot. You looked amazing in the photo shoot.

And what I like about it is you're still carrying around a better body now than you had, uh, two years ago. Yeah. So what did you do? What are some changes you made? Actually, my training's been off right now. So I'm not in as good of shape because I've been filming like 15-hour days for the last month. What are you working on?

I just finished two projects. I did a Netflix movie with Jamie Foxx that's directed by Henry Just and Raoul Schumann. Oh, we hear that. Is that your stomach? Yeah. I got gas, so excuse me. I looked outside and the scissor lift went away, so I don't know what. It shouldn't be here too much longer, right?

Should we pause this uh we probably we probably should uh pause this and come back because we don't know how long it's going to last and that'll that might make us uh that's terrible yeah that might make us a little bit crazy so uh we apologize we don't have any control somebody's working on the roof and i checked outside to see if that scissor lift left, and it did leave. Probably went to In-N-Out Burger and came back. Lunchtime. Okay, so then we'll just fade to black for now. We'll keep the stream going, and we'll check back in with you guys in a minute. All right.

And we're back. And we're back. Sorry about that. We had somebody working on the roof, but we're back, and we're here with Luke Hawks, and this is Mark Bell's Power Project. And I was talking to Luke about getting in shape. And, you know, for myself, getting in shape for that bodybuilding show, even though I'm not in the shape that I was for the show, I'm still in better shape than I was previously. And this is a great lesson for a lot of you guys and girls are listening right now. And if you get in shape for something, it's going to force you to get in better shape than you normally would ever be able to get into. And then you don't need to worry about trying to hold on to being in that exact same shape forever.

But what you do need to do is try to be responsible and try not to get back further than you were before. And also try to hold on to something that still looks better and represents you better than ever before. And that's what I've been able to do. I noticed that in Luke. And so that's the question where we kind of left off was, you know, how do you get in better shape? I think it's all about pushing yourself, right? And always striving to be better or do something different or conquering one goal and then moving on to the next goal.

And like I was saying, since I was on this film project I was on for like a month straight, I was working 14 to 15 hour days every day with one day off. So I was really only hitting the gym maybe once or twice a week. And obviously you kind of slack when you do that. So I'm not in bad shape now but now i just wrapped it was a henry juiced and uh rel shulman project with jamie fox for netflix if you go if you're familiar with those guys they created catfish they were the directors at tv show catfish and they also directed a bunch of films like paranormal activity three and four so this was a big project it's an untitled project right now. It doesn't have a name,

but they were tentatively calling it Power, but obviously the TV show's called Power. Right. So it won't be called that. But the point of this movie is they have this drug dealer and he invents these power pills. And when you take these pills,

they give you all these mutant-like, X-Men-like abilities. It's like a mushroom in Mario Brothers. Yeah, exactly. The same thing. It's like Trin. you all these mutant-like, X-Men-like abilities. It's like a mushroom in Mario Brothers. Yeah, exactly. The same thing. It's like Trin. That big flower in Mario Brothers.

Boop, boop. And you can shoot out the little fire and shit like that. It's like Trin at Gold's Gym. Wait, they sell Trin at Gold's? No. Hello? Huh? No one ever offered when I was going in there. I'm the skinniest guy there. No one said one thing? So, uh. No one ever offered when I was going in there.

I'm the skinniest guy there. No one said one thing. Yeah. Hey, brother. That's not customer service. That's bullshit. Let me help you out. Hey, when they ask you if you have any trend, that means they're trying to sell it to you. Do they have like Black Friday sales on trend and stuff?

They should. Dude, I always wanted to go to the Arnold and have like some steroids there, like legitimate steroids and just see how long and how much money you can make. Who cares if you get shut down? It'd be a great story. It'd be a great YouTube video. Yeah. We'll just shut down and start up as a new company.

You're good to go. Literally selling steroids right there on the spot. It doesn't have to be FDA approved, right? Bottles of tests. Just say this isn't for human consumption. That's right. That's right. You know what would be great too?

I know. You know what would be great too? I know. You know what would be great is to put them next to each other too. You got a bottle of testosterone. You got a bottle of trend. You know the trend would sell like wildfire. YouTube and the internet has already done all the marketing for you. Yeah. People would be like testosterone.

What's that? No, I don't want that. Isn't that steroids? And be like, yeah, you want to go with the trend. I'll tell you my first steroid story. Trust me, buddy. You want to go with the trend. I'll tell you my first steroid story. Trust me, buddy. You want to go with the trend. I was sitting in our wrestling locker room in Atlanta, Georgia.

And they had this big jacked up wrestler. And he was jacked. I mean, he's more jacked than anybody else around, right? And the guy, one of my friends who was a referee, who was in good shape, a little skinny guy, but always in great shape. He goes, yeah, man. Yeah, he's taking steroids. He had some shit in here last week and it had a horse on a bottle. And I was like, what?

It had a horse? He goes, yeah, he's shooting some stuff up that's supposed to be for a horse. And that was like the first time I ever really heard or seen anything about steroids. So I had to ask to see the bottle and sure enough, it had the horse on the bottle. And it said. And you're like, why would anybody inject this into their bodies for a horse yeah like what's wrong with these people but to get back in shape uh yeah i'm i'm off now from the film i just wrapped up in this film last week and came out here as soon as i wrapped on uh the film

i came to super training so to celebrate and do some uh ass kicking to myself in this gym get my squats up get my bench up. Get my bench up. Get my deadlift up. And because I'm going to be in the Super Training Classic coming up in February. It's my first powerlifting meet. Hell yeah. The Super Training Classic. So I got to get my shit together.

Yeah. Those of you that don't know, we had the Super Training Classic last year. And it went over really well. We had Brian Shaw come out and did some exhibition lifting. And I did some lifting as well. And I'm going to lift again this year. I know that along with Luke Hawks, we got Matt Vincent is slated to come out once again. Jesse Burdick will be there. Louisiana boy, by the way, Matt, my boy, Louisiana in the house. Maybe a little Wayne will show up to help represent shoot a little music video, Help represent even harder, right?

But yeah, last year we had a great time. You're allowed to wear a slingshot for the bench press, or you can just bench press raw. It's a push-pull contest, meaning that you push something, bench press something, and then you pull something, meaning that you deadlift something. So I think my brother's going to come up to that again this year. And last year, I think my brother dead going to come up to that again this year. And last year,

I think my brother deadlifted like right around 400 pounds. Speaking of your brother, man, he's been kicking ass. I know. So I was about to say, cause he, he did around a 400 pound deadlift there last year.

I want to say he did like four 18 or something. And it wasn't really, from what I remember, it wasn't like easy. It was kind of hard for him. It was got two fake hips and all kinds of shit. And he, if anybody hasn't seen yet, you go to his Instagram page, Big Strong Fast.

On IG, yep. He took a picture this morning in memory of Mad Dog and Mad Dog's tights. Yeah. And Chris is jacked to the gills. He looks amazing. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Now, go back and watch one of his old films. Exactly. You bring it up right there now if you go back and you pull up

something from Prescription Thugs like when he's interviewing people in there and he's heavy and you go and look at this picture and I don't know what the time lapse is between them but I mean just such an amazing transformation yeah I would say it's really only well you know what it's probably been

about four years from prescription thugs till now and look at the cuts in his shoulders that's not jesus he looks better than me i'm jealous he looks awesome right there that's that's a really good uh picture yeah he's been doing great but like last year like i said he pulled 400 uh maybe he did a little bit more but now he's like he tried a 585 deadlift the other day he didn't get it Maybe he did a little bit more, but now he's like, he tried a 585 deadlift the other day. He didn't get it, but he, uh, has hit a 545 deadlift. And when he did that, he did it fairly easy. So he's just been, I mean, it's been amazing to watch.

So the first time I came to super training, Chris came up here with me and obviously Chris introduced us. Uh, we didn't introduce here, but he introduced us down in LA, but then you said I can come up and, uh, came up with chris and i remember chris telling me pulling me aside because chris is one of the people i hold dearest to my heart good friend of mine he's amazing isn't he is very inspirational he's the biggest smelly fan on the planet he he just never stopped he never shuts up about me he loves you he's proud of you i'm proud of him I love him too but he just he just was relentless so he pulled me aside when we were here lifting

and he told me how much it was killing him that we were lifting and that he couldn't lift because he was in pain from his hips and his shoulder

and everything so to see like and at that point he didn't know if he was gonna ever lift really again yeah and now look at him

yeah he's crushing it dude I texted him the other day and i was just like i'm proud of you and it's fucking awesome that's great that's you know what it to me i think it's all about just you gotta hang in there you gotta really hang in there and you and you have to um you have to try to hold on to the things that you can do and the things that you enjoy and you have to really try really hard.

And these are all things that are easy to say, but they're hard to do. You got to block out the shit you can't do. You got to block out the negative. You got to block out, okay, you're in pain. Are you in so much pain that you can't walk? Like if you can walk, there's kind of that old saying, if you can walk, you can run, right? So if you can walk, maybe you don't physically run. But if you can walk, you can play. You can get in the game. You could still stay in

the game. What are the things that you enjoy? Maybe, maybe when you go to the gym, maybe it looks different than it did five years ago, but maybe over a period of time, maybe you work yourself back into being able to do more of the things that you enjoy. Maybe you work your way into, uh, being able to do things to do things from when you were younger and things like that. I feel better now than I ever have. And it's all about making footsteps to move forward. So, and finding new things.

Like I told you, every time I come to super trading, I try and take something home with me where I learned something. Not from our store though, right? If you're not looking. You can't trust Luke Hawk. He's a lifetime heel. Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat. See, that's what I'm talking about.

And I want to apologize to everybody listening today. If Andrew has to put closed caption up for my ghetto ass Cajun twang, you know, I got that little, it's my Southern charm. It's what I got going for me. It's about all I got going for me I think you're just trying to use that that accent for the ladies I pulled up today not today

a couple days ago when I flew in and I was getting a rental car and the lady checking out my rental car I said how you doing and I told her something and she goes ooh baby where you from

I love your accent that's great. So it works. It works. I got, like I said, it's all I got going for me. You know, you mentioned as we were talking a little bit, we talked about your wrestling background and stuff, and you mentioned a referee. I want you to try to explain to people that, you know,

because the referee is a funny position, and if you don't know anything about wrestling, I guess the referee is a real afterthought. You know, you don't really think about it much, but that guy's very active in the match. And then also like they take their job just as seriously as the wrestler. And most referees are actually wrestlers or past wrestlers or former wrestlers

or guys who got hurt and couldn't wrestle anymore. So when I do it, excuse me, this monster got me burping. Uh-oh. What I do at my school is when guys come in that want to be referees and if they're in really good shape and it looks like they take care of themselves, I ask them, what brings you to wanting to be a referee?

And they'll tell me. But then I'll say, yeah, we think about wrestling. Well, I don't really think I have enough confidence to be a wrestler. And I say, okay, well, the difference between wrestling training think about wrestling well i don't really think i have enough confidence to be a wrestler and i say okay well the difference between wrestling training and referee training is we start referees out pretty much the same way for the first about six months but once you start learning the real fundamentals and and as far as like move hole for hold you don't need need to do that. You need to have the basics down. You need to know how to bump.

You need to know the psychology of wrestling, things of that nature. Yeah, because a ref always gets killed. Right. So same with managers, right? Yeah. Because I get so many people hitting me up and they're like random people messaging me

and they're going, hey, bro, I know I could be a great pro wrestling manager. I'm funny. I'm this. I'm that. People will hate me. I'll make people, and I'm like, it's not that easy. You got to train. You got to take bumps. Well, why do I could be a great pro wrestling manager. I'm funny. I'm this. I'm that. People will hate me. I'll make people, and I'm like, it's not that easy. You got to train.

You got to take bumps. Well, why do I have to take bumps? Well, you see Bobby Heenan getting his ass kicked, right? Eventually, the baby face grabs him and kicks his ass or something happens. Like, you have to be able to move. You just can't. But they think it's, you know, all show business where they don't have to do anything. They can just talk or they're popular at home.

Well, if you're able to make someone hate you, then you're, their next job is that. I know a lot of people like that. Yeah. But if, if you're, if you're good at that, if you're good at drawing that heat and getting the crowd to hate you, uh, the next obvious thing is for you to get your ass kicked by somebody. There's gotta be a payoff, right? There has to be a payoff.

Everything. Yeah. It's just no different than powerlifting training. You train to get your ass kicked by somebody. There's got to be a payoff, right? There has to be a payoff. Everything. It's just no different than powerlifting training. You train to get that big payoff. What are some things that you learned from wrestling? Because I heard something yesterday. We had Per Burnell in the house yesterday, and he's a really successful photographer in the fitness space. And he was here, shared some stories with us, but he told us next week he's going to

do some stuff with The Rock. I know next week he's going to uh do some stuff with the rock i know you had the opportunity to work with the rock before yeah a few times but one thing i thought was awesome is he said he goes you know what the rock is great i know we anytime i've ever uh shot anything with him anytime i've ever done anything with him he goes around the room shakes everybody's hand looks him in the eye and i I was just thinking to myself, that's awesome, right? That's amazing. But I was also thinking, like, I learned the same damn thing from pro wrestling.

Right. Well, that's what you do. What are some things you learned from wrestling that you've carried, that have carried through? I've brought that to the movie set. Yeah. I treat the guy picking up the trash no different than I would treat the director.

Everybody I go see, hello, how you doing? Smile, introduce yourself, no matter who they are. And I think, I don't even just do it on movie sets, I do it in life. You see me come do it when I come to the gym here.

Even if it's somebody coming into the store to buy something, I just happen to be here, I say hello to them, introduce myself, because I think that's what the world needs more of.

Everybody's so negative nowadays. Everybody's so quick to judge each other or crap on this person or talk some smack about this person or judge this person on the way they look or they dress or who they're hanging out with. If everybody's a little more friendly with each other, and you have to have a reason to not like somebody, right? Like, you can't just be negative. So I that that came

from wrestling because we were taught to treat everybody equally um and if you don't you get a bad rep from it it's like this guy has an ego this guy has this and of course some of the guys do have egos and some of this guy this guy wants his own dressing room and this guy doesn't want to be bothered but that's in any line of entertainment. Like The Rock, okay? You take The Rock. The most successful man in Hollywood, hands down, right now, right? No question. Not even debatable. The busiest person I ever met in my life.

And I've been around, you know, top celebrities. I've been around everybody. I've been around Arnold, Stallone, Jason Statham. I've been killed by every top guy in Hollywood, okay? Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman. I've died at their hands. I make a living dying.

But The Rock was different. And I would imagine maybe Arnold was like this in his heyday, but when we were filming Fate of the Furious, the only time me and Rock talked was right before we were about to film our scene. We got face-to-face. Hey, man, how you been? What's going on? Blah, blah, blah.

And as soon as they would go, action, we'd do the scene. As soon as they yell, cut, 10 people were literally running in. Somebody shoving food in his mouth. Here, eat this. Somebody, I need you to sign this. Hey, Dwayne, we need you to do this for the next thing. Hey, like, and they're talking over each other. And I was just going, God, how does this guy function i mean literally how does he function because he never had like a free moment i never and i'm not exaggerating i never seen him have a free moment and you can only imagine if he's out

on the streets if he has to work out in a private gym right because everybody's going to try and get a picture with him everybody wants to talk to. Everybody wants to pitch this project to him. Everybody it's, you know, but you're in that position. So it's, it's a double-edged sword when you're in that position, because you want to be a top guy and you want to be the biggest thing in the world. You want to break these records and, you know, just do these amazing things, but your life also changes. So I can also understand how you don't have time to stop for everybody's picture. Yes. Well, and maybe some of the celebrities don't go that extra mile the way The Rock does because they don't want to be so inviting all the time.

Because The Rock, I think everybody feels like they know him. They feel like they could go up to him and be like, hey, bro, what's up? Well, we just had this conversation about your parents. Everybody feels like you know him. I just like they could go up to him and be like, Hey bro, like, what's up? Like they could just have this conversation about your parents. Yeah. Everybody feels like, you know, I just met Rosemary for the first time yesterday, but I've seen her for 10 years now. And I friends with her on social media and we interact on there. So it's, it's like, I've known this person. What about Rosemary's transformation? You look back at bigger, stronger, faster. I mean, she was, she was big, right. And she's lost. I mean, you look back at Bigger, Stronger, Faster. I mean, she was big, right? And she's lost, I mean, from that time period, she probably lost well over 100 pounds. But more recently, she lost about 80 pounds.

I think it's something in the water up here. Yeah, something's going on. Everybody in this gym is just getting jacked to the gills, losing weight. My dad has been pumping iron. He's been lifting. He's been getting after it. Brilliant man, by the way. Like a lunatic.

It's amazing right and then you know but but it's it's it's traits that you guys carry on and pass on to others and i i kind of have that same thing as where i started my wrestling league in louisiana that it was it was not there before it didn't exist yeah i brought it in it took me years and we were still we're still growing yeah so we've only been around seven and a half years but i bred this league of wrestlers who are all phenomenal i have some very talented guys and you know as far as like i was inspired by you by your brother by ct the guys that took me under their wing and really helped me out when y'all didn't have to give me the time of day and i'm just this is i'm not shooting any BS.

You guys obviously are inspirations to a lot of people, and you drop a lot of knowledge on a lot of people. And even your friends, we're friends. I talk to you regularly. I talk to Chris regularly. But I still draw inspiration from you, and I feel like I pass inspiration on to other people. I do it even with my son.

You know how amazing it is to see my son follow in my footsteps and go to the gym. I don't have to push him to go to gym because he wants to outdo what I'm doing. Right. It kind of like a little competitive, but like he just wants to be, and I see him get excited when he comes over to the house and we're joking around, he'll shoulder bump me and go, I'm jacked up old man. Woo. You know, it's just getting hype.

Like, cause he's like, I just left the gym. My guns are getting bigger. You know, I see him enjoying and seeing the progress that he's making in wrestling and how he did it in high school wrestling and amateur wrestling.

Last time I was on a podcast, I told you we were having a little trouble because him and I, he was at that age where I was getting really busy. He's like 20 now. He's 20.

I think it was his senior year in high school and he was just kind of coming into being a man, and he was really aggressive towards me. Like, he had to be better than me. And we were kind of butting heads a little bit. We never had trouble, you know, and he's a good, good kid.

But he was coming to that age where I was starting to blow up in my career. So I was missing a lot more things that I, you know, he was used to me missing things because I was always busy. Right. But obviously when you start getting busier and more popular, you miss more things. Right. So it didn't matter how many wrestling meets I woke up at four in the morning and drove in three hours to this meet. Right. If I missed that one meet, I was a bad guy.

Right. You missed my meet this weekend because you were off wrestling. I was like, yeah, I'm making money. We got to pay bills and I'm filming this. So, and we had it out back then. I don't know if we, I know we talked about some of it on podcasts, but we had it out and, you know, he was just like, you were never a state champion wrestler.

You never did this. I want to do this. And I said, look, one day we just, we stopped talking for maybe a month, month and a half. And we started talking again and I had to sit him down. I said, what is your problem with me? And it was two things. And it broke my heart because when me and his mom got back together,

we split up now, but we've been split up for years. But he said, well, when you left the second time, when you and mom split up, it really, really hurt me. And that broke my heart because he never told me that. And so I had to sit back and I had to say to say well just because me and your mom aren't together doesn't mean i don't love you and just because i'm doing all this and like and i said and it's not a competition between you and i like i'm not trying to out beat you in anything i want you to be better than me in all aspects of life and the reason i do the, he knows the way I grew up.

He knows about the boys' home. He knows about the drugs in our family. He knows about me being adopted. He's been to the past houses, and he sees how my grandma and my mom and them live. And, like, how, you know, they just, he sees everything. And he doesn't want to go there because it's such a bad environment. And so he understands it. And as he gets older i'm

like this is why i'm working so hard to provide for you i mean i'm doing it for me too don't get me wrong yeah like i'm living my dream this is things i wanted to do i i wanted to be a professional wrestler i enjoy being in films doing acting and stunts and and you know and i completely fell in love with lifting like i love power lifting and lifting weights and going and, you know, and I completely fell in love with lifting. Like I love power lifting and lifting weights and going to gym as much as I love wrestling. And I never thought I would love anything else that much. I want to reiterate something you just said, because I think it's really important for the people listening to this show. We always talk about, you know, doing better, but we always talk about, you know, um, you know, trying to get better all

the time and all these different things. And we also talk about, you got to do right by your family and do right by the people that you love and do right by the people that you care about. Now, how do we end up with some sort of balance? Well, I think that what happens is we end up out of balance in times of our lives. And I think that that's okay. But put an end date on that. Put an end date on having three jobs, you know, put an end date on some of these things. But also realize this, that it's okay to love to work. It's okay to love not being around your family just as much as it's okay to love being with your family. It's an important thing. So those of you guys out there that are hustling,

that feel like you're not there to see your kids recital of this or your baseball game or you're missing this and that, it's as a woman, and you don't feel like you have purpose and responsibility in your life, then you cannot handle and take care of other people. Right. And there's a difference between being busy because you're making progress or doing things you have to do to pay your bills and take care of your family and going to the strip club and hanging out with your boys. You know, you're like, you you're not if you're missing it and also as as an example somebody like luke uh may have traveled from new orleans to los angeles to go see ct fletcher what does that have to do with luke making money for his family you're kind it's kind of like uh like no you're doing this for the betterment of our family not like no fuck you dad like you're not here and it's like no no well wait a. Let me try to figure out how this fits into the piece of the puzzle. I like to lift.

Lifting gives me self-gratification. It makes me feel good. I like to look good. So it makes me feel good. The more that I feel good, the more I can help pour into other people. But if you feel like crap about yourself, if you're down, you've told me you're you have a a family history of a lot of drugs and alcohol what if you stop lifting what if you get out of shape and what if you fall victim to those same drugs you know what i mean like so there's there's all these things that

it it's okay to chase down your dreams it's okay to go for it it's not okay to screw people over but it is okay to chase down your dreams. And you should go after what you want and communicate. And I tell everybody, yeah. And I tell everybody, like, I'm a huge advocate of going after your dreams, but being realistic about it. Right. You know, if you, I do a lot of public speaking. I go to schools and talk to kids. And I was in a, I was a part of Boys Town.

If you're not familiar with Boys Town, it's based in Nebraska, but I was in Boys Town in New Orleans. And that's the boys home I was in. Completely changed my life, but it put these rules and regulations and put some, it really just put stability in my life. Because before that, I had none. I was running, I was literally eight years old running the streets. I would leave for two or three days at a time and I wouldn't come home. And then when I would get home, my mom would be like, where were you at? I was by this house.

I was by that. Now, look, my son is 20. If I didn't hear from him in a day or two, you know, which I mean, we talk every day or sometimes you don't. I mean, he's 20 years old. So if I didn't have an idea, when he was 13, my son didn't go down the block by himself. So if I didn't hear, imagine being eight and leaving the house for three days. This is how I would literally survive. There was a mall around the corner from our house called Esplanade Mall.

And like we would bounce house to house. So I'm just using this as one of the places we were staying at. I would go to the fountain and I would dig coins out to go buy food every day. I would go there and I would dig coins out the fountain and go buy food. Go buy like a 99 cent hamburger to eat. And then I had a little Caesar's pizza. Also around the corner from that house they had a guy there uh i don't know what happened to this guy his name was perry he was a really nice guy

he knew my situation so they would close around midnight i would go in every night that he worked i would sweep up i would mop up i would clean the windows and he would let me take make pizzas and take them home and that's the thing I learned that from an early age. That was my hustle. So I would eat. Because if not, I wasn't eating. Because my mom didn't give a damn. She was out smoking dope.

Drinking. Doing whatever. Because that was their priority. But the whole time, I was told, I love you. I love you. This, that. You don't love me. It's like, I'm dealing with the same thing.

I was going to bring this up on this podcast. and I hope you don't mind me talking about it. I kind of touched base on my brother's last time and the drugs and all this. I have two brothers that were heroin addicts. One's now serving a life sentence in prison because he got busted armed robbery, robbed a pharmacy, stole the prescription pads,

was in a stolen car, robbed a few houses. So he's doing a long time in jail. And if he gets out, which will be many years from now, he'll go back in because he just can't stop doing that. Like he's been like that his whole life. Now, my other brother's recovering from heroin and he's been clean over a year now. I didn't talk to him for several years. I talked to you last time about me having kids for a few months. He's got three kids.

They're all in state custody now, all three kids. So about a year, probably about six, seven months ago, I talked to him for the first time in about five years. He hit me up, and he's like, hey, I'd like to talk to you. Will you come talk to me? And I had to go. He was at a rehab house in Lafayette, which is about two hours from New Orleans. I was going to go out there to, uh, I had, I had a doctor's appointment out there actually. So I was like, I'm going to a doctor in Lafayette, a specialist. So yeah, I'll stop

in and get lunch with you and we'll talk and let me see how your progress is. I really didn't want to talk to him because there's just every time I talked to him, it pissed me off. It upset me. It's sad to see someone that you care about in these situations. But I also knew that I had to take myself out of that equation because no matter what I did, it was never going to be, it wasn't going to have an effect on me. It wasn't going to help him. And my dad said it in this video that we did for my brother. You know, today's the 10 years since my brother passed. And my dad basically said, eventually, it doesn't matter who you are. Everyone wears out their welcome. And it's kind of a crazy thing to say about your own son or your own daughter or your, you know, a relative, you know.

But how many chances are you going to give somebody? Right. You can't. So after several years not talking to him, I went, he cleaned himself up. you know but how many chances you gonna give somebody right now you can't so yeah after several years not talking to him i went he cleaned himself up he's in this halfway house so he had a decent job plumbing he was making 16 17 an hour and also getting like food stamps and this and that because he was with his girlfriend they weren't married so they had like all these ways to kind of beat the system, right? Right. And they were just blowing it all on Duke,

shooting heroin. So now he's cleaned himself up. He wants to get his life together. He's depending on me. I knew that he has nobody else to help him. And I'm like, you're so far in the hole. So I came up with a game plan for him. I said, look, this is what I'll do.

You come back home with us. You can stay with me for three to six months. You have to save every dollar you make. I got a mind on your money. No going out with your friends. No doing this. No doing that. Because I don't want you to fall back in that same hole.

But this is a 34-year-old man. I got to babysit. I don't want to babysit anybody else because I babysit enough people. I run my company, you know, and I got my own kids and I got my girlfriend and I got my own life and I got all these other people who really depend on me that are really working hard and we're making progress together. But obviously I want to help my brother. Now it's been four months, almost five months in the making. He's been gone every night. He goes to work. He goes home. After he comes home, he leaves again with his friends. He's not shooting dope, but he'll go out drinking.

He'll go out and do this and that, like hanging out. I said, dude, you need to be working a second job. You need to be, you're in a hole. Well, why do I have to do that? You know, I'm'm working every day why can't i come home and enjoy some beer i don't know maybe because all three of your kids are in state custody you know and i can't i can't get through to him yeah and he just sees like the jobs that i'm doing the money that i'm making oh well you go work and you make this extraordinary amount of money for working a day or working a week on this film. I'm like, yeah, well, that took me 15 years of hard work to be in this position. He doesn't see that. So I'm to the point now, now when I leave

Super Training, when I go home this week from Super Training, I have to have a talk with him and give him 30 days to get out of my house because I'm never going to be able to get through to him. He's just spending money. He's doing this. Oh, well, you know, I had to go here. I had to go there. I wanted to have fun this week. It was a long week.

Well, I don't care how long your week was. I don't care how stressful your week was because, you know, I have stressful weeks. It doesn't mean I can go screw up that week. It doesn't mean I can just go blow a bunch of money. You need to focus on getting your driver's license on doing this. And I love him and he's doing a lot better than he was doing, but I can't do any more for him. Well, and people, you know, they think they have a stressful week and it's like, okay,

your week is more stressful than, uh, parents that have, uh, kids, uh, you know, that have pediatric cancer or disabilities or your week is more stressful than the rocks or the presidents or like, it's like, yeah, somebody with a disability. Right. I mean, there's, there's so many things where it's like, Hey, calm down for a minute. Okay. You worked in eight, you worked three, eight hour days in a row. Like, yeah, let's all fucking celebrate. You know, like it's, it's, it's not, you know, and maybe you work 10 hours and 12 hours, like a couple of days in a row. And yes, we understand you're tired and you want to have a piece of cheesecake at the end of the night or whatever. But it's, it's, uh, it's ridiculous, you know, to, to not understand that your time is really valuable.

You know, you have to, you have to figure out ways of, of getting out, getting out of your own way in some sense. And you have to do as much as you can to make progress. You know, you gotta be doing things that are going to make you better, not things that are just gonna, you know, your paycheck. Yeah. So if not, you're just, you, you're going in that same circle again. And I'm always looking for ways to break the circle and do something different and do something more and what's going to better my future. And how's this going to help this person? Because I don't just worry about myself. I honestly, I worry about everybody. I worry about my children.

I worry about my girl. I worry about my ex-wife. I worry about, you know, like her family, her mom, people who are good, my adoptive parents, like people who are good to me. So I want to be able to take care of anybody I can take care of any given time. I don't, you know, I don't,

I'm not looking for more miles to feed necessarily, but I want to be in a place to where if I need to help somebody, I can. And you want to help people that are helping themselves. What do you think would be something that would, uh, potentially work, you know, to get through to your brother? You know, that's what I don't know. I mean, I thought this would be the awakening and uh i know it's gonna probably turn into a fight now i know i'm gonna deal with some issues because i'm gonna be the bad guy because i'm gonna tell him that he's gotta get out and he's not doing it and the other thing too is like okay so he gets his children every other weekend and i love my nephews i love them to death they're but they're bad they're bad kids and they're in

trouble you know they just don't they are not used to um any kind of not just stability but they they have no rules and regulations they've always been wild authority no authority like it's always kind of like they grew up the same way i grew up so i can adapt to it you know i can relate to it um so when i'm with them they're just tearing up everything in the house. So say, like last week, I'm working 15 hours. How old are they? I think 14, which is the 14-year-old's pretty good. He's like, you know, because you can talk to him. He looks up to me.

He wants to be a wrestler. He wants to lift weights. He wants to, yeah. So he's in a little trouble, but like he's a 14-year-old. And the younger two are, I think, think one's seven and i think the other one's nine or ten but they're bad i mean they tear things up and they don't care so like you tell them they don't want to listen and it's just because that's how they grew up their whole life they didn't have any rules so do whatever but like it becomes tough for me and i'm just speaking

from the heart because i know there's somebody out there that's listening who's going through the same situation. I go work, and I'm working 15 hours a day. So I'm not getting a full night's sleep. I still got to try and do the other things I got to do. I still got to work on my wrestling company. And I have a day off, and say that day off is Saturday morning. Well, he can only bring the kids to my house

because that's the only place he has them, so he has them every other weekend. So at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning when I want to sleep in because it's my only day off for the week, they're up at 6 a.m. tearing the house apart and I can't sleep. And I'm going, well, you're blowing your money. You should be able to afford a place on your own right now, but you can't because you're blowing your money. So who's stuck out in this situation?

I got to put up with everything. And if they break in the house it's it's my stuff right and you can't afford to pay for it so and it sounds like i'm a dick right because it's like oh yeah well who cares it's your family you got to take it but at some point you have to draw this line and say hey i'm doing all i can for you I'm not doing anymore Like you have to Or like when I talk to him I'm a man You don't have to tell me what to do I'm a man

I can take care of myself Well yeah if you're a man And you can take care of yourself Then you should be paying your own rent And taking care of these kids And doing these things that you gotta do And he loves his kids He does

But it's the same situation with my mom I grew up with my mom telling me I love you, I love you, I love you But you love me so much That you smoke and crack in the bathroom instead of buying me shoes and clothes and putting me in school. Right. That's not love. That's you have a problem and you don't know how to be a parent and you need help. And thank God that the court systems did step in at a time for me and put me in a system like Boys Town where I i had some regulations and i learned these responsibilities in life i learned how to do homework i learned that how to make my

bed and go to sleep at a certain time and put me on this schedule that i wasn't used to and i hated it at first because it was a it was it was a life changer you know i mean it's like taking a kid out the jungle and putting them in the suburbs it's just not happen, right? If this kid's living off the land, you can't put them in a house. You know what I mean? Like it's like taking a wild animal and putting them in a house. You just can't do it.

They won't adapt to that environment. So that's what it was for me. It was a culture shock. So now I got to go home and handle this situation. Sorry to air out my real life on the Mark Bell show. No, it's awesome. You you know i i think you know you you want to try to help as much as you can but then you get into that you know category of enabling and it's like it's hard you know um when sometimes you see some efforts and sometimes you see some

sparks of potential and you get excited and you're like, okay, well, I can support that. I'm going to help that. I'm going to keep, keep helping. Maybe somebody does overcome an addiction or they overcome a problem, but they're still not like even keel with society. Like it takes a long time. You gotta, it's almost like rehab. Like if you didn't walk for three years, uh, it's going to take you a long time to, to learn how to walk again. And so, uh, this process is really hard and, and no, there's no good answer that that's why we lose, uh, you know, millions of people to drug overdoses, um, and, and things like that. But I think ultimately one of the best things that you can do is turn your back on somebody

and say, look, whenever you're ready to actually handle this in a way that makes sense, I'm here for you. And I always will be, but for now this isn't working and I'll see you later. How did you deal with it with, with Mike? It was kind of like that. You know, I, I like, I, I, you know, I can, I can feel, uh, I don't even know the right word, but I guess I can, uh, I can feel good about the way I treated him. Right. I never mistreated him. I never was like, you're a fuck up, like get out of my life.

It was never anything like that. I always, always try to give him the benefit of the doubt. I always try to give him a chance. But you're also a close family. Like everything, everything I see from you guys, from, from not just you and Chris, but your mom and everything's family, family, family. And I didn't come from that. We're a close family, but if you're a maniac, you're not hanging out with my wife.

You know what I mean? So like, like as things, you know, as I met Andy and Andy came into my life and stuff, I was like, and then I, as I had children, I'm like, man, I, this is like, this breaks my heart to even say it. But like, I can't, like, I can't leave Mike with my kids because I don't know what he's doing. I can't trust him. And I think it's really important for everyone listening to the show right now to understand if you're dealing with someone who's bipolar, which is a totally separate category than drugs. A woman, right? You're talking about a woman?

Yeah. which is a totally separate category than drugs, but usually... A woman, right? You're talking about a woman? Yeah. If you're dealing with someone that's bipolar and or does drugs, the only reason why I mentioned the two in combination is because Mike was bipolar and he did drugs, and there's a lot of people that self-medicate and they try to find some sort of relief from, relief. Yeah. From, from drugs. And it, it does, it doesn't work. But if you're finding somebody doing that and you're trying to like inject rational thought

into their life, stop doing that. You're going to make yourself crazy. You're going to make yourself really sad. You're going to make yourself really upset. You're going to make yourself really stressed out because it does not work because they don't have rational thought they're on a different playing field than you and that's just i'm glad you bring that up because i do a certain times i stress out about it because obviously i care about my brother and i want to see him do good and he's doing better like mentally than he was before but he's still not where he needs to be so i'm glad you bring that up and you put that out there because that's something that even when I go home, that helps me.

Yeah. And it will make me kind of feel better about myself because I do, I'll feel like a dick for telling him that, hey, you can't live here anymore. And it's not because I don't love you though. It's just because you're putting me out of my way. You're putting my girl out of her way. Like you're not doing anything to better yourself. You're putting my girl out of her way. Like you're not doing anything to better yourself. You're just doing like the kind of norm.

You're doing like the bare minimum of what everybody in life has to do. And let's be honest. Life sucks. It's difficult. But it's what you make of it. You can have a good life if you go after it. You get after it and you do things. And the harder you work and the more you educate yourself and the things.

You know, you pick up what you put in yeah so if i'm working you know if you go to school and get education you're going to get a better job obviously if you go for a certain thing the same thing with with him working now if he puts in the work and he just don't worry about because you work an eight-hour day five days a week okay well you're in a hole so you need to get a second job yeah or do something to learn about potential of getting another job right and just maybe you go back to school or you pick up a class somewhere or seminars or whatever anything you can do to start making more money to get you back on your feet and get out of the hole and once you get out of the hole maybe you can step back a little bit and relax right that don't mean take your foot off the gas though yeah because my foot look i'm busy get out of the hole. And once you get out of the hole, maybe you can step back a little bit and relax.

Right. That don't mean take your foot off the gas, though. Because my foot, look, I'm busy. I know you're probably way busier than I am, but I'm busy. And my foot is never not on the gas. Like, I'm always, everybody is talking about, oh, you were in Logan. You were in Fate of the Furious. This is so cool.

I don't give a damn and I don't that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate those two cool projects I was in I was in so many films I'm blessed with that but I'm looking for the next project that I'm doing and the one after that and the one after that because I never want to look back and go I was that guy

from that I'm trying to make steps to go in you know a further direction and better myself and get bigger roles and big and bigger films and i don't you know i mean i don't want to live on the past i don't i feel like my better days are still ahead of me yeah that's why that's the way you got to think yeah yeah and i'm you know and that's why i'm doing this thing like tagging with my son my son's 20 years old he's in great team partners tag team baby we in the house i love that so it's cool because who can get to do that yeah you know like how many guys you know that are in wrestling that are tag teaming with their son and can have a successful run because i feel like i haven't hit my prime yet and he's damn sure young

enough where he has a lot and he's talented i'm not saying it because he's my kid he is talented he's taller than me you know he's 175 pounds he's you know like i said he's a way better wrestler than i am he was a you know a very accomplished amateur wrestler he's way smarter than i am i was the first person in my family to graduate high school my son will be the first person in my family to graduate college that's all awesome. So he's a sophomore in college. You know, he was in the top 10% of his graduating class in high school. Before he flew in his Spanish and English, you know, he's half Spanish. He's half Colombian. You know, he's just a good kid.

He was the homecoming king. He's everything. He's the poster child for anybody's family. That's what you want your kid to be. Like he doesn't screw up. He doesn't, he's not worried about girls right now. He's not worried about guys neither, but,

but he's not worried about girls. Like he's worried about getting through school and about wrestling and like he's coaching high school wrestling. So I'm very proud. It's, it's cool because I often think that is accomplished as I am and all these amazing things I've done because I was supposed to be, you know, in jail. I was supposed to be done because I was supposed to be, you know, in jail.

I was supposed to be dead. I was supposed to be a drug addict. If you're looking at statistics from my background, coming from where I come from, I was supposed to be like the rest of my family, but something made me different. I think that something was my thinking. something was my thinking. Um, and also to, uh, aside from just your thinking, just, just enough people, just enough people caring about you at the right time. Right. You know, somebody placing you in the right spot or saying, you know what, that's not right. What's happening to that kid. Like somebody else stopped and said, this doesn't make any sense. This is stupid. Right. And they,

and they took care of you. Well, you fall into that category. No, I'm serious. I'm getting a little teary-eyed thinking about it. It's amazing because take our friendship out of it and take out my friendship with Chris. All that came because of a freaking dumb movie. It's not dumb, but you know what I mean?

A movie. A movie. I seen Big dumb, but you know what I mean? A movie. A movie. A movie. I seen Bigger, Stronger, Faster, and it inspired me so much because I related to it so much because of the situation with Mike, because of the wrestling,

because of, you know, lifting and wanting to, like, I wanted to better myself and I didn't know that much about lifting. Like, all that was very inspirational to me, which, you know,

I eventually, I got connected with Chris and connected me with you and you know you guys provided me with opportunity to do things that I loved and instead of just like you know taking a picture with me and telling me to screw off you guys gave me the time of the day and you you cared about what I was doing and you helped me and I realized not everybody can do that with everybody but I was fortunate enough to have that and I was fortunate enough to have it with my adopted dad. So like he took me in at 15 years old. And I know that was difficult for him because at 15, you're pretty much a man,

right? At least you think you are. Yeah. Yeah. You think you can do everything on your own. You think, you know, everything,

but your mindset is completely different at 25. Right, right, right. And it's different at 25. It's still very immature. Right, right, right. And it's different at 25 than it is at 15, and it's different at 35 than it is at 25. It should be, at least, if you're making progress. Right. So at 15, I thought I knew everything. I thought I can do everything.

I thought, you know, you couldn't tell me nothing. And at somewhere along the line, somewhere, somebody got in my head and made me think to shut the hell up and listen to somebody. So when I started doing that and I started picking up things from certain people and different, you know, this all around, I try and pick up something all around. That's when my life really started changing the uh guy that adopted you and like maybe you saw this even before that but like you ever kind of like look around and think like okay i i my living situation is is really shitty but there's other people that for whatever reason their life isn't as bad like they have like life maybe doesn't have like almost you get the idea of like maybe life isn't as bad. Like they have like life maybe doesn't have, like almost get, you get the idea of like, maybe life doesn't have to be that bad.

Well, yeah, but you know, like you look back and as I look back on things, like people always go, Hey, do you think about suicide? Of course I thought about it.

I never wanted to kill myself. I think, I think it's pretty, I think it's pretty normal, but yeah, but I always questioned why my life was so hard what did I do wrong

why do I have to starve why do I have to get in fights because I'm wearing my mom's clothes to school because I didn't ask for that and it was all out of my control why am I sleeping with no heat why are we sleeping on this freaking couch in some crackhead house I didn't understand it as a child and and as i got older

i understood that it was because of the decisions that my parents made yeah it had nothing to do with me so i i'm i'm thankful that i was kind of smart enough to listen to people and like, except not, not be so close minded on having like adopted it because you know, a lot of kids in that situation, when I go to talk to kids at school now, some of them won't give me the time of day. Some of them just put their heads down and go to sleep. They could care less what I have to say because they know everything already because they grew up similar to me. But there are a handful of them that want to talk to me after and they want to know.

And those are the kids I really reach out to because I enjoy doing it because I can speak to them and I can kind of connect to them and give them some positivity in their life and let them know that everything's not as bad as it might seem now. And if you really want something, you can get after it. You know, just because your environment and your situation doesn't mean you have to be in that environment and situation for the rest of your life. If you want to get out, you're going to find a way to get out. If you want to be successful, you're going to find a way to be successful.

If you want to screw up and you want to fuck up, guess what? You're going to find a way to do it. And that's not that hard to do. That's the thing. It's much harder to do the right thing. And I'll give you a little piece of advice that I told somebody the other day, but Scott Hall, who's obviously had his issues in life, always told me, don't do the right thing. Do the next right thing.

So go above and beyond. Right. For, you know, do a little extra. Do things that, because that's going to really make your character and that's, what's going to make you stand out. You know, there's always these things. I mean, just take your diet for one small example. Don't do the right thing, do the next right thing.

So that would mean that the meal that you have is, is a good meal, but you're also thinking about where's the next one coming from, or maybe even prepped your meal, right? Right. That's planning ahead and you're allowing yourself to have an opportunity to succeed. But that's just one tiny example. You could take a shower the night before so you prepared for something really early in the morning. I mean, there's, we can, we go down the list of this all the time here on this podcast. Yeah. You have to have a routine. Do you know Stevie Richards? Yeah. Are you friends with him? I don't know him on that podcast. Yeah, you have to have a routine. Do you know Stevie Richards? Yeah. Are you friends with him? I don't know him on that level, no.

Okay, so Stevie is one of my closest friends and one of the guys in wrestling who really kind of took, you know, kind of gave a liking to me when he didn't have to. Mentored you kind of? Yeah, yeah. But this guy is in his mid-40s in better shape now than he was when he was wrestling. I mean, he's always been in pretty decent shape.

He's been around forever. He looks great. He has a fitness thing. He's very involved in fitness. He has like some, you know, he's got his like band resistance program. He does all this free advice too. And that's one thing that another person who inspires me

because of you know he doesn't do drugs never went out drinking so like you got this era of guys that he was involved in and think about all the guys that died or all the guys especially that were around him yeah because coming from that ecw era that he's one of the only active ones that are still wrestling that can probably still talk to you in a complete sentence yeah you know and looks jack like you you look at him and you're like god damn man you look phenomenal after all and he's broken his neck yeah had multiple surgeries on different things so like like i so i got to give a shout out to stevie because you know he's another one who just puts

out a lot of positivity and always looking to help people and not looking for nothing in return. He just wants to see everybody be better and do better. You know, one thing I wanted to say, you know, back to, uh, when we were talking about, you know, trying to have, trying to be rational with somebody that's acting irrational. I want the people listening to this podcast. I want you to think for a second about that cousin or that brother or that person that's, they're very rarely on, you know, they're always late. You know, they say they're going to be somewhere and they no-show you. Like all these things, all these, those kinds of things are characteristics of somebody that's abusing drugs.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they're abusing drugs, but it could. And I want you to kind of think carefully about the frustration that you may have with a loved one or frustration you may have with somebody because the frustration could simply be that they have, they have a drug problem and you just wasn't, you were never aware of it. The one thing that happened with my brother over a long period of time, he frustrated me a lot. You know, I've, it's, it's easier for me not to cry about it now. Cause I cried so much when he was here, cause there was just a lot of pain. It's very hard to have people in your life that are addicted to drugs and alcohol.

And, uh, it was very painful for my parents. And so for me, it was painful to watch all that happen and painful for my brother, Chris and painful for the whole family. It just, it caused a lot of problems, but my wife told me one day, and I was just really upset. It was just another stupid situation that happened with my brother. I was just kind of at the, I was sitting on my bed, on the edge of the bed, and I was crying. I was just like, I just can't take it anymore. Like, it's killing me.

Like, I just, you know, I love him, but fuck, man, like, this just sucks. And my wife I just, you know, I, I, I love him, but fuck me. I'm like, this just sucks. And, uh, my wife's like, you know what? She's like, you really just, you need to stop applying rational thought to somebody who's irrational. She's like, she's like, who knows what his problems are, you know, whether it's the bipolar or the drugs or both or like whatever. But she's like, you're not going to, you know, I don't, she's like, I don't but she's like you're not gonna you know i don't she's like i don't think it's you know your job to really try to fix it and i i think that would be best if you stopped applying you know rational thought to someone who's irrational and from that day forward i never did that ever again i never because you want to help people you know so you you're thinking

like like somebody might be fat and out of shape and like that's it you're going to the gym with me but they're not ready for that right and. And there's nothing you can say or do to make them change their mind. It wasn't his time to, to be able to make those changes. And luckily, you know, luckily we still have Chris here and he, he fell into a similar trap, but you know, he, luckily he was able to turn the corner and able to, able to have a moment where he said, you know, I I i'm ready i need to make the change and the cool thing is he puts it out there yeah to inspire others and let people know hey i did it so you can do it because we're all in we're all in the same scenario man our lives are

different but one banana peel away from being fucked up right i mean everybody's lives are really you know we're different but we're the same. We deal with the same problems. We all have these problem people in our family. It could be yourself. It could be, you could be the problem. So it's how we realistically look at the situation and deal with it. Take a step back. I tell my girlfriend all the time. I tell her because like a lot of times like she's, my girlfriend's very irrational.

I think that's just women in general. Yeah, I think so. But she'll blow up. She'll blow up like that. When something happens, she just goes from zero to 100, and it's like, ah. And I'm like, take a step back. Solutions, not problems. Let's look for the solution.

How can we fix the situation, and what's the easiest way to fix the situation? Before you get all frustrated, and you want to go off on this person or that person, why'd they do it? What happened? Is there a way around? You know what I mean? She gets out a machine gun to kill a fly type of deal, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So I got to sit back and tell her to calm the hell down. Yeah. Sometimes I got to go upside of head with the back of my hand. No, I'm joking. But then she ducks and then she gives you a suplex, right? And then next thing, the chairs, tables, and ladders are busted out. And it's Royal Rumble in my house.

You got something, Andrew? No, I was just going to ask, like, what if you have somebody, but you don't feel like maybe the timing's not right to let them go? Like you said, when you get back, you're going to have to tell your brother, like, Hey, you gotta, you gotta get out of here with mad dog. You kind of had to, you know, it's tough because like, I went through a similar situation with my brother and it's just like, dude, like I can't, I can't not be there for him. And I think it just kind of goes back to the thing of saying, like, I'm here whenever you're ready. And, and they might be like,

oh, well I'm ready now. And it's like, listen, I'm, I'll say it again. I'm here when, whenever you're ready, whenever you're ready, whenever you show me that you're actually serious, it would be like, it wouldn't be any different if we want to invite someone into our group to train. Like we take our training very serious and sure. It's okay to have someone dick around for one day and like they, they come in and lift, but it's, but we don't, we don't want that person around forever. They're going to kind of wear out their welcome. And so what we would tell them is we'd say, Hey, you can come back and train with us, but it's going to have to be when you're ready.

Cause you're not really pulling your own weight and we don't have time for that. That's why I always come every so often, you know, wearing out his welcome. Like, man, every time he leaves, like, holy shit, I'm glad he's gone. He was weak, wasn't he? We'd all laugh. We watched the videos over and over again. Look at him. He thinks he's lifting heavy weights.

Look at Jessica putting him on his ass. Yeah. Yeah, she killed you, man. I still can't believe it. I still can't. Just can't get over it. It's her progress, right? I mean, I'm not in shock, you know,

because she's strong, but I just, I'm disappointed in you. I'm disappointed in you. I might go home and, I might hit that Golden Gate Bridge. I'm disappointed in you. I am disappointed in you. I might go home and I might hit that golden gate bridge. I ain't even going home. I think you should hit some pushups or something. That's what I'm going to do. You know what?

You got to get that strength up. I'm going to load up. Rematch. I'm going to make some internet orders and I'm coming back in about two months. And Jessica, your ass is mine. You know, I think the last time, well, one of the times you were in the gym, you came off the top of the, uh,

off the cable crossover. That's it. Damn. We did that back in the day. We always have some fun training. And that's one thing I like about coming here. Not just the environment. And I said this before,

uh, in a past interview, uh, is a lot of gyms you go to. When I first started lifting, I didn't know much about lifting other than going to a gym. I didn't have somebody correct in my form. Honestly, you, Mike, and Marcus were the first guys

to take the time out of y'all's day and say, like, fix my squat and fix my deadlift. Because I didn't know anything about it. I was just imitating what I seen other people do around the gym. Right. And I didn't understand what I was doing or how it was, you know, how I was making any kind of progress and what the benefit of it was.

It was just like, hey, you're supposed to do these lifts. Right. Right? These are lifts get big and jacked. Right, right. So, and you guys were the first ones to take time out of your day

to tell me what I was doing wrong and why certain things helped me and what I needed to do to get better. So, when I came here, like that environment, the gym environment where everybody stops and circles around you when you're going for a big lift and everybody's pumping you up. Now you do that like a regular gym. The gym stops. Yeah.

And they look at you, but they look at you like, look at this asshole about to drop this weight on his head. And they want to see you fail. And nobody's like, nobody's there like, come on, man, you need some help. You got this. Let's do this. No, but there's no camaraderie. Everybody's just there looking around. And that was a big difference, man. And that's why I fly all the way from New Orleans, Louisiana to Sacramento, California to come here and pick up my workouts because I'm here to learn. I want to be around this atmosphere. I want to be around these, I mean, everybody in here, no matter who they are, you see people just going after and getting after it.

And everybody's supporting each other and everybody's in it together. And I love that environment. That's like, thank you. Because where else is that? I love going down to CTs and Metro flex and some of those gyms in like Los Angeles too, because you know, those are like hardcore training environments.

Right. But they're, they're different. Yeah. It's like do pushups to your pass out, you know, I lift this way. It doesn't matter what your form is,

where it's here. It's like, Hey, we're going to correct this and we're going to fix this on you. So you're able to do better in it next time. Right. So you're able to fix your lifts and you're,'re you know you're going to make more progress now because of this so like that just i can't even tell you enough good things about having that and this

place is just inspiring too because it's like i mean no it's my place so of course i'm going to love it but like the the whole entire place is built off of a fucking elastic strap, you know, that goes up over your arms and helps you fucking bench press more ways. Like this simple idea and the whole entire spot is like funded by that. That's the key to the city right there. That's it. The slingshot's the key to the city. That's it.

Yep. It's the key. So, you know, and I, we got a good gym at home. Like I got, it just opened up.

I, it's called Valhalla and that's's in Louisiana, in Metairie. The first real powerlifting gym kind of in that area. Yeah, because, like, we didn't have that environment. It's all, like, kind of commercial gyms. Right. So this guy wanted to create this no-nonsense gym where, like, who cares if, you know, like, you take your shirt off and pose because you're flexing or if you're grunting or if you're… Yeah, get some chalk or whatever, yeah.

Right, right, because all these other gyms, you can't do that. You can't put a water bottle on the ground. You can't, you know what I mean? You can't... The Planet Fitness bullshit, the Lunk alarms. Like, we don't judge you, but if you're big and you're strong, we judge you. You know, like, if you're trying to make progress, we judge you. They want people to be, you know, they cater to the non-reel lifters.

We talked a little bit earlier about, uh, the stuff you learned from wrestling, like the handshake and things like that. And you, you kind of mentioned about being like positive and things like that. And, um, you know, some like sometimes, you know, and you even mentioned social, social media, sometimes when you see something on social media, I don't know if this happens to you, but this happens to me sometimes, like I'll go to make a comment and like i always like to make a wise ass comment so i always try to like tease people and kid around and stuff it's fun it's fun and sometimes like a lot of times you know and it surprises me that i'm still this way but a lot of times the first

thing that comes to mind is very negative and i have to audible i gotta i gotta call it audible i gotta yell omaha omaha i gotta call another play and be like hey dick like why don't you be more positive like why are you trying to shoot down this person's progress trying to does that happen to you yeah i mean yeah no because people are fucking stupid dude come on now like there's no filter like people are doing dumb shit online that's why yeah you know like they're doing stuff yeah that they shouldn't be doing yeah and some some is because you know they don't know any better right but some are just fucking morons and sometimes you got to tell somebody that they're fucking moron like doing stuff just for instagram right right right right so sometimes you got to do

that and it's cool like to be inspiring but it also, man, we got to have some fun too. I mean, you pick on yourself, right? I've seen pictures where you pick on yourself or you do things like, I remember reading a comment and I laughed and I felt terrible for laughing because you just said you just spent the $250,000 to join the- Oh, yeah, yeah. IPF, yeah. And then they pulled it back and somebody put a meme where your face was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they pulled it back and somebody put a meme where your face. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And you caught, and I was like, dude, that is funny, but I'm sure he's pissed. Cause that's like $250,000.

Yeah. But you commented on it and you're like, yeah, this is pretty funny. You know what I mean? I'm like, at least like, I wouldn't be laughing if I had that kind of money.

They had a picture of me. Like I was, I was just like somewhere else. And I was kind of making, I don't know, like a kind of weird face. Yeah. Kind of a funny face. And, and, uh, it was like, somewhere else and I was kind of making, I don't know, like a kind of weird face. Yeah. Kind of a funny face.

And, and, uh, it was like, uh, something said like that reaction you make when you find out your 250,000 didn't go as far as you wanted or whatever. Yeah. I was like, this guy's brilliant. I was like, that's great. But I was like, man, I, I, I was scared of liking the picture. I didn't want to like the picture. Cause I was like, damn smelly.

He's gonna see us. He's gonna get pissed. Cause he just lost 250 K possibly. Isn't that, isn't that kind of, I mean, Smelly's going to see this. He's going to get pissed because he just lost $250,000 possibly. Isn't that kind of... I mean, social media is so funny. Yeah, like, I better like this picture because, like, the person's going to see it or maybe I shouldn't like it because, you know, it's just... They might be offended

I thought it was funny. Yeah. But that's the world. You know, there's funny videos, there's sad videos, and I think the key, though, is it just, you know, they're attacking everybody nowadays. They're attacking though is is it just you know they're attacking everybody nowadays they're attacking kevin hart right for the whatever oh yeah but let's be funny let's be more positive let's be funny let's i mean as long as you're not on air calling somebody hey man you're a fucking piece of shit right and you have no purpose in life you know like that's

like going like a little overboard right like if you but you don't really see that it's more like picking or somebody joking and I seen a meme a while back was they had a jack chick and a fat chick

and they like okay it's wrong to fat shame this woman right but it's okay to tell this woman she looks like a man right

yeah I've seen I've seen that before too I think they used maybe like Dana Lynn Bailey as one of the yeah yeah they had a heavy woman on the beach. She big league me by the way. Dana, Dana Lynn all jacked. And, uh, yeah, it was one of the, one of those things. It was like, you know, there's just a lot, there's just a lot of, uh, a lot of hatred being, uh, being touted around. And it really, it just, you know, it just, it doesn't end up, um, it doesn't end up being productiveed around. And it really, it just, you know,

it just, it doesn't end up, um, it doesn't end up being productive at all. No. And if you're out the normal, you gotta be, if you're out of the norm,

you have to be prepared for some kind of hatred because everybody hates things that aren't normal until you make them normal until you make them acceptable. So if you have an idea that you're working on or you're trying to be groundbreaking in something, prepare to get hate. But brush it off your shoulders. If you know you got something and you're sticking to something

and you think you're original, push forward, man. Fuck the hate. Yeah. Right. Well, you're not going to care about it. If you're occupied, if you're working,

you're not going to care about it. You know, you were talking about like being, you know, being really busy and stuff. And I think that keeping yourself busy is a really critical thing. You know, you talk about, you know, drug addiction and some of these things. I think some things that could possibly help would be that, know people at a young age are you know they they get bored of shit you know right and and to try to keep people busy i mean it didn't work with my brother he he played a lot of sports did a lot of things but things like that could potentially work i mean you want people to find some sort of self-worth and maybe you can find something in a sport or in playing an instrument or or something but if you can find a passion that's going to be something that's going to occupy a lot of your time keep you very busy right influence though as well yeah it's who you're running with what you're doing yeah you know i mean you start

to pick up things that you might not normally do it's no different if me and you and andrew are sitting in a room and i'm with y'all for a month straight and you start using a word that y'all are using that I've never heard. Like, you know, in California, they say hella. Hella. Everybody says hella, hella, hella, hella. We say woe to you and stuff down in New Orleans. Like if you're around us long enough, chances are you're going to start saying that or I'll start saying hella. Right.

Because it's just, it's human nature. We pick up what, you know, each other's doing. So that goes for all aspects of life do you think that's something that happened to your family like because we were talking earlier about how drug like we know drugs are bad i don't know how stupid it is to get involved and then end up you know doing things like heroin and all this i often wonder like what i don't put as much thought into it as I used to, but I wondered, like, were they a normal family at one point? Were my grandparents normal? Were they normal before that? Like, why is my family so bad compared to other families?

And why did they make all these mistakes? And why are they all on drugs? Why are they dying of drug overdoses? Why are they all in jail? And is the community part of it? You know, I think so. Cause poverty breeds ignorance. And I like to use that.

And I say that a lot because, you know, when you're, when you're poor, you're often, uh, that doesn't mean like rich people don't make mistakes and like, well, again, we know the kids that like, I know a ton of kids who grew up with great families and great households and rehabs and stuff. Yeah. Or they died, you know, or they were depressed but you know poverty really does breed ignorance you know they just they have this chip on their shoulder where you can't tell them anything if you're poor you know because they're used to struggling and you know they're

doing what's around them in their environment i think maybe like because like you're not used to being like maybe treated well that you don't treat yourself well like like i know like i've always told people uh you know i i've been uh i've been rich before i've ever been wealthy you know i've always i always felt fulfilled i always felt good um the only thing that didn't make me feel good is like school like i just didn't do great in school but like other than that like i kicked ass when I played sports. And I put a lot into it. I tried to, you know, like, for football, I worked out hard and these different things.

But I always tried to, like. You were passionate. I always tried to treat myself well, you know, as much as I could to try to make myself feel good. But you had goals and you were passionate. Right. And you had a good family. Your parents were supportive, right? Yeah, absolutely.

So, and that's, like like the thing with my son. Like, I wasn't able to progress, make progress in wrestling early on, like high school wrestling and stuff because obviously I had my youngest son in high school who's 20 now. But he doesn't have the same struggles that I had. Right. He has good family background. He has me. He has his mother.

He has his grandma. He has his aunt who all, we all raised him together. Right. So, he has this love from all we all raised him together right so he has his love from all over he's not missing any love even though like we didn't grow up in the same house every day together because me and his mom were separated he still spent a lot of time with me he spent a lot of time with his mom he spent a lot of time with grandma a lot of time with his aunt and he was just getting love love love from all over everybody was taking care of him everybody

just comes down to just parenting period period, or somebody looking after the child. Somebody's still going to screw up, though. Kids are going to screw up. Right. And again, that has to do probably with a lot of influence. If you raise them right and you put yourself in the right situations, like this kid has to know, hey, don't go do these things because they're bad. Now, I knew when I was growing up, I knew stealing was bad. situations like this kid has to know hey don't go do these things because they're bad now i knew when i was growing up i knew stealing was bad even though my family was stealing my brothers

and my mom and like her boyfriends or whoever that's like i i wasn't comfortable with it even though they were doing it i didn't want to be around it i was like no yeah we don't have money we got to do this to make ends meet. Right. And that's bullshit. That's a bullshit excuse. No, you go to work. You don't steal something from another person. What they used to do, like, they used to go break in, like, people would have these freezers in their backyard, like the deep freezers, and they would go scope out yards, go in the deep freezer and steal the food out.

Which some people might say that's not that bad. Well, yeah, it's still bad because it's still stealing. But the thing is, like, they knew it. Instead of going to work, they would sit around and buy dope and buy beer and sit around, you know, they just didn't work jobs and they would steal from other people to get certain things. That's not acceptable. And there shouldn't be any tolerance on that.

It's almost, it's almost more work too. You're doing something right. And you're taking a risk. In the long run, it's almost more work to like, work to like yeah to just to steal and do all these things like it seems like a nice shortcut and maybe it is for the moment but in the long run it's not but you shouldn't take shortcuts no not if you want to be better but they're never going to make their lives better right and and they'll always have an excuse like my mom always had an excuse for why she wasn't successful or anything.

She had drug issues though, right? Right. Yeah. And drinking and like, but there was always a reason why she had those issues. Have you ever heard of a, it's called sparring partner syndrome. You ever heard of that before? No. So you've seen Rocky.

Of course. Right. So when they bring Rocky in to fight Apollo Creed, Apollo or Rocky's like, Hey, you know, just so you know, like, I'm not going to take any cheap shots. I'm going to make a great sparring partner for Creed. And they're like sparring partner. Like, no, we want you to you're fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world. And then Rocky's next reply is like, Oh, like, I don't know about that. Like I wouldn't make such a good fight you know like he he's not he he doesn't feel he's worthy right right stepping up to the next level so do you think maybe some of the people

maybe in your family kind of uh didn't feel enough like self-respect for themselves that they deserved something better or they just don't know any better i think they don't know any better but i mean it also comes with you know i had a chip on my shoulder my whole life i'm sure you had a big fucking chip on your shoulder right you wanted to be the best power that you wanted to do this you want to do that you want to kick ass so like you came in very aggressive and you attack things so i did the same thing before i even knew about you that's what i did in wrestling i was like because i was told my whole life you're not going to be nothing you're going to be in jail you're going to be dead you're going to be a drug addict like your mom you're not going to be nothing. You're going to be in jail. You're going to be dead. You're going to be a drug addict like your mom. You're going to be,

nobody said you can do this. I'm telling you, nobody, nobody said you can be a pro wrestler. You can be a movie star. You can be a fitness guy. Nobody had, I've never had somebody back me.

Now people tell me all the time. Oh yeah, you're going to do it. Awesome. You're going to do really well because they see like I'm persistent. They see I kick ass. Like I'm not taking no for an answer. You're going to tell me no the time oh yeah you're gonna do it awesome you're gonna do really well because they see like i'm persistent they see i kick ass like i'm not taking no for an answer you're gonna tell me no 100 times but i'm gonna find a way to show you why you should pick me i wasn't the first kid being picked on teams i wasn't athletic when i was young because i didn't have any fundamentals

but i wanted it and now all the kids that were athletic all the kids that did have fundamentals are living either normal lives which there's nothing wrong with, or they fucked their lives up because they made wrong choices in life. Right. Where me, since I didn't have anything, it almost made me better because it made me fight and fight and fight to prove to everybody how much I'm worth, how good I am, how much talent I am, how much, how, how good I can be and what I can do.

You tell me I can't do it. Fuck you. I'm going to shove it down your throat and I'm going to do it and I'm going to do more. So, and I, and I, I'm still like that to this day, you know, and I don't get told no as much, but it's not like nobody's just handing me everything, but people, people don't, they watch what they say around me now because they're like, yeah, know yeah they know i'm i don't care they don't get burned i'm gonna fight the giant yeah i don't care what the statistics look like i'm fighting the giant he might get me but he's gonna have to kill me because i'm coming for it and i want it and i

want it now to this day you know i mean like and it doesn't it doesn't go away and as soon as i get what i want i want something else and and that don't mean i'm changing my goal i'm just making a bigger one because i said i did what i was going to do now i want to do something else you're growing from it yeah i can never never step back and just chill that's just not me there's something i said on uh andy forsella's podcast uh a while back that he just loved. And I said, you know, you want to, your goal is to try to live the kind of life that tells people I told you so without having to say anything. That's right. And you know what?

I got that clip on my phone. And I play it and I say things, you know what I mean? Like there's certain things like stuff like that fires me up because I can relate to it. But it's great that you don't need to go back to somebody and say, I told you so. No, never. They just know like, whoops, I was kind of wrong about that guy. Yeah, but I mean, the average guy, and I understand why. I want to get this out there.

I understand why people are that way because there's so many people in the world that are full of shit, that are lazy, that say one thing and do another, that aren't trustworthy. You know what I mean? Like, go to Hollyweird. You you know i mean yeah go to hollyweird you'll see it but like they're just everyone's got an eight by ten photo everyone's an actor yeah exactly and and none of them are doing the work though to put in what it really takes right they're just looking for a come-up i tell this i told this other day people were asking i was speaking at this high school and i was speaking to a group of kids. And this girl was like, oh, yeah, I raised myself.

I do everything on my own. My parents, blah, blah, blah, you know. I'm like, okay, yeah, cool. So I'm kind of talking to her, hoping I can relate to her. And she's like, yeah, I want to be an actress like you. So can you hook me up since we come from the same life? And I'm like, no, I can't hook you up. You got to work for it.

I said, do you have performing arts at school here? Yeah. Why aren't you taking theater class? Oh, I don't want to do that. I ain't doing that. That's stupid. Right. And I'm like, well, if you want to be an actress.

Maybe you should start acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe you should start acting. Well, I'm not doing it. Well, then I can't help you. You know, like you have to put work in. Nobody's going to take somebody and just bring them up. Well, and imagine if she said she was.

Like if she said, yeah, I've been doing it for the last two years. And like, you know, I got a headshot and I did this. I did that. And you'd be like, oh, okay. Show me. Yeah, let me see it. Let me check it out. Well, then you might be like, oh, well, actually, you know, I can make a phone call for you.

Yeah, maybe you should talk to this person. Yeah. Yeah, maybe you should. Maybe, or go to this person. Maybe you should go to this audition. Maybe there's something. People want to help people who are helping themselves. Bottom line. Nobody wants to take somebody and just give you something.

That's the only way you're going to get better. If you start by helping yourself. So if you want something, fucking put your right foot in front of your left foot and let's go after it. Yeah. You know, it's, uh, it's actually interesting that when you start to help yourself, then

other people start to help you with open arms. And it's like, you create a whole nother life for yourself. And I always said, I'm lucky. And people were like, dude, you're not lucky. Like you've been working and you've been going after and you've been taking chances and you were doing these things you were sleeping in your car and you missed all these you know you made all these sacrifices to go after what you want to go after and i'm like well i'm still doing that because i'm not satisfied and i'm not happy i'm not depressed

and my life is a lot better than it was growing up, but I'm not where I want to be. I'm still hammering the hole, bro. And I'm still in it tomorrow. I'm going to hammer it. And the next day after that, and the next day after that, and no matter what comes along, I'm getting after it. Keep working hard for it. Keep it up. Yeah.

You know, it's, uh, it's hard to try to keep that, you know, keep that pace, you know? So like now with some of the stuff that you're doing when you're, uh, you know, shooting these movies and doing all these different things. Um, how do you keep your schedule going? Uh, it's weird because you never know. Do you have an agent? No, I do everything on my own. So the way I get my little roles, I'll tell you a funny story. So I'm working on his Jamie Foxx movie, right?

Like I would just finished up. I didn't know I was going to have a little acting role in it. So I had worked on the film. You're normally a stunt movie, right? Like I just finished up. I didn't know I was going to have a little acting role in it. So I had worked on the film. You're normally a stuntman, correct? Well, I do stuntman and acting. And I get a lot of like bit acting roles because of my look and because of, you know, the way I talk, my southern charm. So I did some stunt driving in the beginning of the movie. Well, it's not actually the beginning of the movie, but like when the movie first started filming.

So they had cameras on us, but they didn't see me. They thought they seen me because like, you know, it was kind of like long shots and stuff. I was just fist-tailing out this parking light, doing this getaway. And it was a couple of days of work doing some stunt driving. Then they called me back to help out with some fight choreography. I was doing some, we were doing some choreography for the fight,

the very last fight in the movie. And that was... And then some of that comes from your wrestling background. Right, right, exactly. So some of that comes from my wrestling background. So we put these fights together for the movie. Me and Corey DeMeyers, who's awesome, a really badass little stunt guy and fight choreographer.

So Corey called me up and he asked me to come help with the fights. So we did that. And I was on this commercial a Super Bowl commercial I just got finished filming cool I was doing that for uh and I was playing

this kind of like knock off Thanos character like this three hours of makeup really cool scene oh shit so they called me while I was on set

for the movie I mean on the commercial and they said hey are you available tomorrow throughout the whole week next week and I said actually

I'm on this commercial right now I got one day left to film in he goes well can yeah you see that check that out

it was three hours so he said can you can you make it the day after that if I can push you starting a day can you make it

the whole week after that and I said sure didn't know what I was doing just thought I was coming he goes I have to make sure we didn't see you on the driving scene though if we seen you on the driving scene, I can't use you.

So they went back and reviewed the footage. It was too far away. They didn't see me. That's cool. Yeah, they didn't see my face driving off. So when I get in, the stunt coordinator, Kevin Scott, goes, hey, okay, so you're going to be in the first scene when Jamie enters the room, and you're going to notice him.

You look at each other other he notices that you notice him you make a call on your security wire say a couple lines and then you and jamie meet up right here say a couple lines each other didn't even give me lines they said you say a couple lines and y'all ad-lib something and then jamie's gonna kill you because that's what i do i die so um i didn't know that you know i So, I didn't know that. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't know going into it.

I just got a nice acting role with Jamie Foxx, who was like a big time A-lister. You know, to add to my career and my credits and everything else, like all these amazing projects

I've been able to work on. Yeah, that's us talking smack about the Saints versus Cowboys. He got me. Got your head all bloody, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

he jacked you up he jacked me up wait till you see the scene i'm not gonna give it away but it was this why did he do that to you he's seen hugh jackman do it so he wanted to jock his style how many times have you died man too many oh you get paid extra to die yeah actually you do well because then you don't you're seeing everybody everybody everybody thinks that you get paid more to say lines. Stuntman contracts are actually more than actor contracts on SAG because you're putting your body at risk. Right. And you're also getting your adjustments and everything else and you're over time.

So I do a lot of stunt acting roles. Like my acting roles always involve some kind of stunt because they want a stuntman who can act. So, you know, like I said, I just showed up to work for the week thinking i'm doing this fight and gonna get my ass kicked and i end up getting i have an acting role and it's like hey we put you in because we thought you'd be good in this scene but jamie and y'all run these lines and me and jamie ad-lib some lines which was awesome and it everybody loved it you know and it's just i live an awesome life man how cool is that right that's great because i'm doing these things that everybody wants to do right and i mean i'm going after it like i said earlier i put in a lot

of training i went to stunt school i think acting classes i did you know i'm not leaving any i probably left it out of this podcast but it's not like i'm sitting home waiting on a phone call right right i'm always working like you said i'm juggling my schedule wrestling I know ahead of time people call hey we got a show February 16th I need you that day okay that's in my calendar

hey we got a show you know what I mean I'm marking down my wrestling schedule way ahead of time film work is not like that it jumps around so much

because of weather if they're shooting outside this scene and they don't know six months ahead of time right they don't know so like they kind of give you tentative dates

but they'll call you hey are you available in two weeks for a week straight? I mean, I've had jobs where I had to turn down my dumb ass. Let me tell you how dumb I am. Uh-oh. This might take a while. I better take a pee break while he goes on. Hold on. I'll be right back.

You can keep going. So, I'm going to tell you how dumb I am. At one point, I wanted to wrestle so bad for WWE that, um, I had a tryout match for him. I had worked several tryout matches in the past, but I had a tryout match. And then I got booked for three weeks worth of work on a film.

A film called me up and they said, Hey, we need you for the next three weeks. Are you available? Just to give somebody an estimate of what I would have probably made in those week, three weeks is easily between probably 15 and $25,000. And who was the project with?

It was GI Joe too. So, uh, they, they, they called to see if I was available for three weeks worth of work on it for stunts. And,

uh, and, and I was like, Oh hell yeah. What's the dates. And it was in the middle of my WWE days. I had two days at WWE to go make 500 bucks. Okay.

So I was going to go make 500 bucks for working two days at WWE. But that means I got to wrestle for WWE. I got to get in front of their eyes. Maybe a big opportunity because I wanted to be a wrestler at WWE at that time. It's all I wanted to be a wrestler at WWE at that time. Like it's all I wanted to do. So I turned down the big money to go wrestle for two days for WWE and basically get nothing. I mean, you know, but that was my passion though. You know what I mean?

I loved wrestling so much and I put all this work into wrestling still to this day. I'm a wrestler first. You know, I love wrestling. I love films., I'm a wrestler first. I love wrestling. I love films. I love being a stuntman. I love being an actor. I love having these opportunities, and I work just as hard at them. But I'm a wrestler first.

It's what I did my whole life, and that's what led me into having a film career. What drew you to wrestling in the first place? Well, it's all I ever wanted to do. Excuse me. From the time I was, like I said, my earliest memory of wanting to be a wrestler was three years old. Wow.

So anytime, like I had this terrible life, but when wrestling was on, nothing else mattered. Like it literally put me in this zone. It didn't matter if I was reading a magazine. Yes, I can read. I know what y'all thinking at home. I was reading a magazine and yes i can read i know what y'all thinking at home i was reading a magazine watching it on television listening to it on the radio because they used to come back on the radio back in the day if wrestling was on it just took everything

every problem in my life and it put it out the window so and i knew from an early age that i wanted to be a pro wrestler that's all i ever ever wanted to do. So that's why I chased it. Yeah. So a similar opportunity comes up today. Yeah. I'm going to do it. All right. And it's happened. Yeah. So when it comes to your son, like you had kind of mentioned it earlier with like Stevie Richards, he's, he's made it out. He's, he's doing fine. Right. And then you hear about the stories with the other, you know, whether it be pain pills or whatever. Um, I mean how did that, like, with your son, how did that come about? Like, was there a conversation? Did he just jump right into it? Were you hesitant at first?

With pro wrestling? Yeah. He just wanted to do it. It was his goal. And then at one point in high school, he didn't know if he wanted to be a pro wrestler. And I think that was around a time we were having those little bit of problems I talked about. And I think that was around a time where we were having those little bit of problems I talked about. And I think he was just saying that

because he was mad at me and he was trying to like to get a reaction out of me. But my reaction was, I don't, if you don't want to do it, I don't, you know, I don't want you, I'm not forcing you into it. I want you to do something that you love and something that you're going to enjoy

for the rest of your life. And, you know, I love you. You're my child. So whatever you do, I'm going to be supportive of you. As long as it's, you legal and and not not nothing bad you're not hurting anybody and it's difficult though because being a father like i'm tough so when i go wrestle i'm tough i get my ass kicked and hurt i'm pain but i can take it i'm a man and some things are really freaking bad like like you're in a lot of immense pain.

I mean, Mark, you know, and there's things that people don't understand. So, so, when I watch my son do it, I'm not watching it as a wrestler.

I'm watching it as a father. Oh. And it hurts. Because I know he's brutal. Right. Because he's, he's tough too. And he wants to,

you know, his first, his first match, he split split his lip not his first match his fifth match it was at the ECW arena in Philadelphia Pennsylvania the very end of the match he gets clotheslined in the face put his teeth through his lip and I seen it and like I'm like oh my god my baby you know I mean like yeah some of the worst emotional pain that you can have is like the pain that you feel for somebody else. Yeah. And he's like, I'm fine. I'm fine.

I'm like, no, you need to go to the hospital right now. And he did. He had to go get stitched up, but he's like, no, I don't need to stitch up. I'm just going to take it. And I'm like, dude, stop showing me how tough you are. I don't need you to be tough right now. I need you to go to the doctor and get stitched up. I need to Fucking pay for your

Hospital bill You little asshole So Are you worried At all about You know him falling Into some traps Nah

That there are in pro wrestling He's got a good head On his shoulders He's straight edge He's never drank He's never smoked He's never wanted to be Involved in any of that

He's been very much Against that from day one So He's one of those kids who makes a lot of smart decisions wrestling's also changed a lot too right yeah it's not as bad as it used to um you know and i just don't think like i have trust in my kid like he he knows right from wrong he has those similar qualities that i have now my youngest the seven-year-old. Uh-oh. You've told me about him before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's, boy. Now, he's, everybody says a kid's smart, but my kid is legit in the top 4% of intelligence

in the nation for his age group. He's been tested. He goes to the number one elementary school in the state in Louisiana. He's seven. He's fully fluent in Spanish, English, and French. And he's a savage, right? Dude, he's a savage.

And he tells you, I'm a savage. Like, hit me. I don't care. I'm still going to be bad. That's what he says. You can hit me. You can be. I'm going to be so bad when you drop me off by mommy, you know.

And that's what he's just. Man, I don't get it, man. Like, because they're night and day difference. Like, but he's always been that way. Like, he's always been mischievous. He's always like. He does like. My son wasn't. The oldest son wasn't doing anything sketchy like he wouldn't climb stairs he wouldn't do any like

the baby is climbing jumping you know throwing things like like anything kind of daredevil he's gonna be he's gonna be a hell of something i just hope it ain't the wrong thing when he gets older so he's got a lot of energy huh i got? I got a note from the teacher the other day. She sent me an email and she said that, I just want to tell you we got some complaints from other parents for your son at school. One complaint was he was wiping boogers on a kid. Second complaint was he keeps telling these other children the word that rhymes with duck. And that's what it said in the email.

And, you know know doing kid stuff but i that kind of don't fly at like a really good school with you know and the other parents and so but you know he's he's a seven-year-old i got my hands full with that one so what is what do you do to uh relax and kind of chill because you got a lot on your plate a lot of things going on i come to super training, and that's God's honest answer. There you go. This is, like, training is my escape. And, obviously, it's difficult for me because I set goals. Do you, like, read or walk or meditate or, like, go in a hot tub or go in a, you know?

No, it's coming to the gym. And it sounds like I'm kissing ass, but I'm just really honestly telling you the God's honest truth, being around guys like you, because where I'm at is I'm the big fish. And, you know, a lot of people look to me for inspiration. They look to me for advice. And, you know, it's always me. Hey, Luke, what do you think of this? Hey, Luke, should I do this?

Hey, Luke. So when I come around guys like you or, you know, other guys I look up to, I just shut the fuck up and I watch what you guys are doing. And I try and pick up some knowledge. So, you know, and obviously I pay attention to your social media and just things like that. And it's that's where I draw inspiration from, because we all have somebody that we look up to and we all have things that inspire us and um and if you don't man i feel sorry for you because there's a lot especially with the world of social media you can escape into anything you want to nowadays you can look anything up online there's so much i mean there's you look up to rogan right i know y'all talk about rogan all the time and

what he does and you know his studies and stuff like that. And like, so I try, I don't like reading. I've been thinking about forcing myself to try and read because I just never enjoyed it. It wasn't something instilled in me. My youngest, the seven-year-old loves to read. My 20-year-old loves to read, but their mom reads a lot. So I'm thinking. I think different people learn different ways i never enjoyed reading i i still don't read much nowadays but i don't want to be closed-minded

yeah yeah i want to expand so i also i need to do something a lot of times i find myself trying to do something that i find difficult i i have tried to like sit down and read like even more recently. And it's, it's, it's difficult for me to adapt to. I, I, I don't think I've given it like enough of a shot though. Cause I've only,

I've only tried it a handful of times and then I get distracted and I end up doing something else. So it's like, I got to really give it like a real honest shot and maybe try it some more. Cause I do think there's a lot of value in it. I think there I think it'd be cool to kind of get like lost in a book and just, you know, like people talk about. Right. I've never had that experience. No, neither have I. I don't know. I don't know what the hell that's like.

I've gotten lost in music and stuff, though, like you listen to a song or you listen to and it sparks something totally different. It triggers something in your brain that has nothing to do with the actual song or lyric. Well, that's how you do it with some movies too. I mean, that's how I was with Bigger, Stronger, Faster. I related to it so much. I've literally watched that movie probably over 2,000 times. I've watched it on every flight I was on for a while. That's crazy.

It's just one of those things. So I related to it, and it really fired me up and it pumped me up. So when I would watch it, I would draw inspiration from it. So there are certain things like that. There's videos on YouTube and people, just being around certain people. I just like to be around positive people. I like to be in an atmosphere where I can influence people. I get told so many times, especially like at my gyms at home.

I go to two different gyms. There's a commercial gym called The Zoo and that's in Kenner. Like, so it's kind of like right by the airport. You've been to New Orleans before? I have, yeah. Okay. So yeah, it's about five minutes from the airport. So it's, you're kind of average every other day, lifter, you know what I mean?

And then I'll also go to the powerlifting gym, Valhalla. But they're two different atmospheres. So, and I like both of them because I find when I go to the zoo, people tell me, Hey man, dude, as soon as you got here, my workouts just picked up because I love watching you work out. Cause you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Cause that, that makes you mean some cause you know, I'm doing what I love and I'm going after my workout and I'm freaking having

the best time doing it. And even if I'm on a difficult day, right? I know that I have to turn up because I'm inspiring people. And I know even if I have a bad day, I have to bring it up. I got to bring the energy in. Right. Because people are looking to me for that. You know, even like, it doesn't matter what's going on in my life. I could be fighting with my girlfriend.

I could have an incident with my brother. I could do this. When I go to the gym, I got to be a whole my brother I could do this when I go to the gym I gotta be a whole different animal no different than when I go to Wildcat if I'm at Wildcat Wrestling and I got my students I gotta be a different animal I can't come in and go

oh life sucks oh man I just fought with my girlfriend and you know oh blah blah blah like no they don't want to hear that shit they want to say hey

what are you doing today? Man, I'm getting after 5 for 5, 315. Let's do this. Bench pressing. So like, really? Well, how are you going to do that? That's a lot of weight. How did you get to that?

And then you break it down. I remember the first time I hit 405, I went in so pumped up to bench 405. The first time, the day I actually hit it. I made up in my head i was getting it today there was nothing gonna stop me i went in and there was this black dude standing across from me or the black dude you know probably in his like 40 late 40s early 50s and he was standing like 10 feet away from me on the benches right across from me he seen me loaded up and i got my zone i I'm kind of getting in,

you know, just getting in that mental state, pacing back and forth. Like I went and I hit it. He came right over to me. He put his fist out and he goes, bro, you got that.

You know, like you said something like that. Like, and he was just like, dude, that's, that's, you know,

you know, and so I knew like I made that guy's day better because it inspired him a little bit. You got him fired up. Right. Cause now, so now every time I see the guy, he comes and talks to me. And it's just crazy what, because of my atmosphere and the energy I brought in, it changed his.

And there's another guy there. This guy, his name's Rodney. He's an older black gentleman in his 60s. He had a stroke. This dude was in a gym a month later. His left side was still kind of paralyzed not all the way he had a stroke

I didn't see him for about a month he told me he just came back he was in there getting after it every day he had three plates

60 something years old man 62, 63 somewhere up in there you know two months after having a stroke he's hitting three plates I mean

and this is you know not a big guy like not a jack guy like he was just he was forcing himself and i said dude that's so inspirational for me yeah yeah i guess you fired up right because i'm like you don't have an excuse like you you had this stroke and like yeah he's like look i can't lift my arm past this still now he's probably got full range but like at that time

like he can lift one arm up and then one side he can lift up like halfway you know so like and he's just every day he's in the gym forcing himself to get better though. And, uh, that's, that's one of those things is like, he wasn't taking no for an answer. So why should I take no for an answer? Right. I'm not looking for excuse. You, uh, mentioned earlier about, uh, you know, people chasing down their dreams, but at the same time, they should be realistic.

You touch upon that a little bit more. So I think it's important. Cause like, yeah, it's's it's a hard thing to kind of figure out balance out yeah look you're not playing for the when i go talk to these kids and i say what do you want to be i want to be pro football player every time i want to be an nba guy i want to be a rapper every now and then you hear like i want to be a veterinarian or something. You know, something like that's really obtainable, that is easier with school and stuff. But I said, do you play football now? No.

I just told you the story about the girl who wasn't even taking acting classes. Like, how are you going to do that? And keep in mind, these are kids, but it's also adults. There's also adults to do it. Yeah. If you want to do something and you're not doing anything that complete like that in some way shape or form relates you don't have one thing pointing towards it at all yeah yeah then you're just full of shit right it's you and you're shitting yourself and you're shitting everybody else because be realistic if you want to be a singer and you're not going and

doing gigs or you're not singing you're not practicing or you don't even have a voice to sing, you're not going to be a singer. You know, it's just look, I've never played a guitar in my life, but you don't see me saying I want to be in a band. Like that's the one thing I haven't done so far is I got to be in a band. I don't play any instruments. I'm never going to do that. Be realistic. Know that what you're good at. And just because you're not good at something doesn't mean you can't get good at it. You're going to have to put the work in. You're going to have to make the progress. You're going to have to put time, effort, money, all that goes hand in hand. I hear a lot of, uh, young, younger people, uh, saying that, uh, they don't like something cause they're not good at it, you know? And they're, they're, you know, I remember like, even just like, not necessarily my kids, but you know,

other kids that I'm around and even my own children at some point, like they didn't like baseball cause they weren't good at it. They didn't like, and it's like, well, you're not that good at it cause you haven't really done it before. Right. I mean, I wasn't good at sex when I started, look at me now, but Hey, check out later good at sex when I started. Look at me now. But hey, check out- Two kids later. Check out this link below.

That's right. Yep. Yeah. It's going to take a lot of practice, right? That's it. Practice. You know? It's going to take a lot of time to be able to build into something.

And being realistic. I mean, anything you want to do, you're going to have to put work in to get better at it. And that's what a job too, though, that I'm not even just talking about, you know, entertainment. I,

if you're a plumber, if you're an electrician, if you're an AC guy, if you're anything, you have to put that work in that time, that training, you don't, you know,

so you have that experience. Right. And you know how to make things easier. And like, you know, one thing I've always kind of juggled with is you say, don't cut corners, but they also say work smarter, not harder. But sometimes working harder makes you better. Yeah. No, I think the smarter, not harder thing can only be explored after you've already done that kind of work

before. So like maybe you've learned some things about acting that you don't have to do again and you can work smarter, but not harder, but you can only do that when you have experience. Right. And it all comes from experience. And you would, you might say that in a wrestling ring, cause like we could tire each other out really quick if we're both really green. But if we know what we're doing and we're experienced we could take our time we could slow everything down and we can work smarter but not harder but you you have to

work harder first before you ever even get the opportunity to even think about working smarter and i would i like even just podcasting doing interviews um i would always go back and i would listen to them several times over and over again because i don't want to go uh uh uh every other word and for most people they're like oh that's fine but for me it's not acceptable i'm like if i'm going to be a public figure and i'm going to be speaking i do it every now and then but i try to not do it yeah because you're going to have transitions where every once in a while you do it but yeah i understand right so i i'll go back and i'll look at things and I'll study my performances,

no matter what they are, and how I can improve them. I was talking to Ryan over here. Did you see that nice video they did on me last time I was at ST? Yeah. They did a wonderful video, just dropped last week on the channel,

on the Mark Bell Slingshot YouTube. There I go saying, um. But Ryan told me that was his favorite video that he's ever done at super training. And he goes, dude, your interview is awesome. This is like the best interview. And that made me feel good. Cause I'm like, I, I do put a lot of time and effort in trying to make my interviews

better and trying to be, trying to bring some energy to interviews, trying to be active, trying to make people, trying to relate to people, trying to have people want to listen to me. So, and that's not easy. Right. But I do it through having all these opportunities. Repetitions. Right. Repetitions.

So, so that's what I do. Reps and sets. And that's why we always go back on this, you know, podcast and you hear. Look at that spank kick. You see me take that guy's head off? That was, that was flawless. I mean, you hear other people talk about it too, but the, the lifting and life relationship, I mean, they, they parallel each other so well, you're not going to know these things until you've done a lot of reps and done a

lot of sets. And also too, one thing that happens that's freaking great from fitness is, you know, that's freaking great from fitness is you know it's it seems like it sucks but it's actually a blessing in disguise you can work really hard and you can do almost every you think you're doing everything right and there's still you're still not uh uh you're still not assured that you're gonna get that pr like like you still have to go work for it. And you might still have to scratch your head and go, wow, like I ate really well. I slept really well. I trained really hard. I thought I did everything right. But I still miss that weight.

Like what the hell is going on? And sometimes it's like you just have to keep trying to figure it out, but you can't ever give up. And you go after it and eventually you'll get it. You keep going after it. You keep coming back for more. Yeah, exactly. You're going to fail.

Life's going to have failures, no matter what you do. You're going to get told no. Somebody's going to say you're stupid or it's a dumb idea or you're going to fail at something. But if you're persistent, that's what it all goes back to, being persistent, never giving up. Your old buddy, John Cena, right? Never give up. That's how you become successful. Slingshot wasn't built overnight.

Super Trainer wasn't built overnight. Think about the acting gigs and somebody said, yeah, you have this. And then they call you back, you know, 10 minutes later and say, no, I'm sorry. You don't. It took me two years. Or you show up somewhere and they're, hey, we don't have time for you. Or, oh, we're going to shoot it next week. And you flew out to somewhere.

You don't have any money. You're like, shit, man. Like, now I'm in a really weird spot. They're going to film this next week like shit took me two years to get my so I got my first gig

in 2006 I was filming a TV show for MTV called Wrestling Society X I got my first movie from there was a low budget indie movie

made in Mexico but it was still my first opportunity it was a cool project and they paid me a thousand dollars a day which was like absurd to me

you know because I never made that kind of money before but that opened my eyes to how I wanted to be involved with more films And they paid me $1,000 a day, which was like absurd to me, you know, because I never made that kind of money before. But that opened my eyes to how I wanted to be involved with more films. So a long story short is I got involved with some people after some hard work and chasing it down and looking up things. I started training at a stunt school with a guy named Phil O'Dell. So I was training with Phil for two years, killing myself until I got my next film opportunity.

Now, how many people would do that? Right. Because you would think, oh, I already did one. I'd go to the next project and I'd do this and I'd do that. Or how many people stick with something for two years before they even get an opportunity? Right. And that's what I did. You know, it was just like, I knew if I kept working and I kept training and I kept doing the things I was supposed to do, something was going to come.

And lifting is like that too. You might lift for two years. You might have to lift for five years before it even looks like you lift. Well, I've been lifting a long time now. And you still don't look like you lift. Exactly. You got a lot of work to do, buddy. I look like shit.

And I'm doing my first meet. It took me this long. And that's really because of the b team over here at st you know my boys so jess and john and sal and everybody and pig like we we you know in cali we just they were like dude when you're gonna do a meet i was like well i don't feel i'm not marcus you know i mean yeah yeah so why would i do a meet i'm not marcus they're like no you got to do it for you and then after seeing people and getting to a few meets, because it was intimidating to me. After I went to a few meets, I was like, you know what?

And I've seen people who didn't compete before. And, you know, I was like, they're doing well and they did this. I can do this too. You know what? I'm going to go kick some ass. So that's what I started doing. And you're the one who talked me into doing a Super Training Classic. Because I don't know if you remember, last time I was here here, I said, hey, I want to do a meet.

You said, oh yeah, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. Sometime in 2019, I'm going to pick out a local meet. You said, no, fuck that. You need to come be with the team. You need to come out here. The Super Training Classic is going to be in February. You need to come do that.

I was like, well, then that's what I'm going to do. See, I do a lot of stuff like that, and I forget. I do stuff like that all the time to people. I put them on the spot, and then I kind of forget about it. But you did it. So it's like, you know, I, I, I got, uh, I'm watching, you know, we're watching these clips of, uh, Luke wrestling and he's got this, uh, back spinning heel kick that he does. And, um, you know, I, I don't know, you know, I'm not, I don't follow wrestling as much

as I used to, uh, but I'm pretty sure, like, I, I hate to bring this up but in Louisiana I'm pretty sure that back spinning heel kick is banned. It's outlawed from there. I'm pretty sure and I think you're kind of using illegal tactics to get over

on these matches. What are you trying to say here? I'm trying to say that I think you're playing outside the rules. That's it. Cut this fucking podcast. Look at that. It's Jerry Lynn. So this was one of my dream matches.

So Jerry Lynn. Yeah, it was cool. But yeah, I got a badass fucking backspinning kick. Maybe I'll show you later. Hey, now. Right to the noggin, right? If you've ever seen me stretching, I posted a picture of me and Marcus not long ago. Marcus was helping me stretch. You got some of that mobility?

Yeah. My goal is here. I can't be the strongest at ST, but I damn sure can be the most flexible. Who's your favorite wrestler of all time and why? Mr. Perfect. Mr. Perfect and Rick Rude. Because Mr. Perfect was able to hit that gum every single time he spit that out. Every fucking time.

He didn't miss it, right? He was just so good. And, you know, as a kid, the cartoon characters were great for me. But as i got older and became my you know my uh teenage years mr perfect was great he was just awesome he was just so good at everything he did and then i liked i really liked shane douglas which is is which was crazy because i don't you don't know my story with that right no i just wrestled shane douglas for the first time because he ducked me for like 15 years. We really had bad blood.

He was my idol in wrestling and then I worked with him and I had bad blood with him and found out he was a piece of shit. It was like this whole big ordeal where you meet your idol and it's just like,

it becomes like, it sucks because they're everything you never thought they were. Oh, you did tell me some of that. Yeah. You did tell me some of that. We talked about this probably years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you did tell me some of that. Yes. I did tell you.

We talked about this probably years ago, but for 15 years, he wouldn't wrestle me. You like traveled out to him and he wasn't there and all that shit. It was a big ordeal, dude, big ordeal. And like,

uh, like he was shitting on me and just talking negative about me because like, he just didn't see anything. I was just young, skinny kid. Yeah. And you know, so I thought,

Oh, there's that stretching picture. Oh yeah. There you go. Look at that. That's great. It's stretching picture. Oh, yeah. There you go. Look at that. That's great. It's not gay. It's stretching.

That's right. It's super training. Now you're trying to warm up for squats. Yeah. Look at them stick legs. But you guys had some bad blood? So, yeah. So, it's funny because when I started getting- I got really popular on YouTube for a minute in the wrestling community, not in the world,

but like because I was coming out and doing these outlandish promos, so to speak, because they weren't really promos. They were coming from the heart. I started calling out Shane Douglas and I started telling people how I felt about him and the things that happened and how I thought he was a piece of garbage and like, he wasn't what he seemed to be. And I did that because like, he didn't see anything in me like he treated me like crap there's a lot there's more to the story but the God's honest truth was like he just

he was caught up in his own world he was on drugs he was this like so like he just looked at me as a nobody and I was looking to him for advice because he was my hero in wrestling he's the guy who really changed the landscape for me as I got older um and to be treated like that by somebody you look up to it hurts so i started at some point i just didn't care anymore so i started making these videos about him and i started catching on because people's like man luke luke's crazy yeah he's just he doesn't care he's putting all this out there so um long story short, I was challenging him. A couple people tried to book the match. He wouldn't do the match.

He backed out. We were on some of the same shows together. He hired personal security to be with him, and he locked himself in a room to get away from me. Dude, seriously, if you ever talk to Steve Richards, ask him about it because Stevie mediated some of it. But eventually, 15 years later, I just wrestled him. Like, he came out of his box and wanted to wrestle me.

And after, he apologized to me and he said he doesn't know, you know, like he didn't know why he did the things he did. He said maybe I was caught up in my own world. And, you know, but he said that, you know, I proved myself to him and he watched some of the things I did, which was cool, you know, because we're not like best friends. Right. But it was cool to end that heat because we had real, like, that was all real life stuff. That was real life emotion, real life heat, real life hatred. real life emotion, real life heat, real life hatred, you know, that kind of like that, it wouldn't be a

Cinderella story, but it would be a story where it's like, you know, you thought it was going to be good, it turned out being really bad, and then in the end instead of having this animosity towards each other, we were able to bury it and we were able to shake hands and you know, get some respect

from somebody who I respected a lot along the way, and then I lost respect for, and then he earned my respect back by respecting me. So that was a big, big ordeal for me. Cool, man. That just happened this year.

Yeah. Where can people find you, Luke? On Instagram at Luke Hawks, five or four L U K E H A W X five or four. You can check out our wildcat Wrestling on Instagram as well. And that's at Wildcat Sports. Cat with a K.

K-A-T. At Wildcat Sports. All over Twitter, social media, Facebook. Where are you going to be next? Are you going to be at the LA Fit Expo or the Arnold or any of these different things? Or where are you going to be at? So I'm just signing a new contract. I haven't signed yet, but I was with Isotor, as you know.

They just let me know. They were bought out by a company called FitLife, and my contract's been up for a few months. We're on a handshake deal right now. They just called me last week and told me that they plan on doing more with me, and instead of just being an Isotor athlete, they want me to be a FitLife athlete. So I'm sure at some point I'll probably hopefully be at the Arnold with them.

I'll be out here for that expo doing the super training classic in February, February 9th, right? Yep. 8th and 9th? 8th is the weigh-in? Yeah. It's a Saturday, Sunday contest, yeah. I have a big wrestling event Christmas night, Wildcat Sports.

That's in Metairie, Louisiana. And, yeah, I got a couple things in January but that's I'd have to look at my calendar to say for sure but and I also have a horror film coming out

in March it hits theaters in March it's a Babic and Avari horror film it doesn't have a title yet they haven't released a title yet but I play a cool role

in that movie so that I wish I could tell you the name of it but I don't know what it is yet. So yeah, a lot of these movies, they do that, you know, they, they, they, they have these

plans and they change the title or they have a working project and then they change it. So, uh, but yeah, that's going to be a big, big horror film. There's a big budget, you know, national film that hits theaters in March, like towards, I think like the end of March. So I got a nice role in that. And then that Netflix movie with Jamie Foxx will be dropping probably not too long after that, probably summertime. Cool.

Plus a lot of other projects. I just did the 500th, I mean, the 100th episode of NCIS New Orleans. Just did an episode of Cloak & Dagger on, I think that's ABC or Disney. So, I mean, a lot of work and then a lot of wrestling. Cool. And then training my ass off at the old ST,

you know, coming up here and get training in that's right well uh that's uh all the time we got for today thank you guys so much for tuning in to mark bell's power project uh as i mentioned earlier in the show today is the uh it's 10 years since my brother uh mike passed away he passed away december 14th in 2008 and uh go over to my youtube channel and check out the video that we made uh talking about him and and basically kind of updating you on how the family's doing um you know going through you know all those hard times and going through that struggle and everything uh my brother was a professional wrestler as you'll get to see you know in this piece and as you learn through bigger, stronger, faster. Um, but in addition to that, he was, uh, like a mentor to me. He was an

idol to me in a lot of ways. I looked up to him a lot of ways. I ended up doing a lot of the same things that, that he did, uh, football pro wrestling, a lot of those kinds of things. And then my brother, Chris and I, uh, got John Cena into wrestling. And when we got John Cena into wrestling, his first coach was my brother, mad dog. So my brother, you know, he wanted to have an impact on wrestling and, uh, he got to see a little bit of that impact, uh, when John, you know, John made it, but he never really got to see, you know, John is, is one of the most successful, uh, wrestlers of all time in terms of the amount of money he's been able to draw to the sport and stuff like that. So anyway, check out the video.

I think you guys will love it. Rest in peace, Mad Dog. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.