Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 92 - Stone Cold Steve Austin

Episode Date: August 3, 2018

The Texas Rattle Snake, Stone Cold Steve Austin stopped by the Malibu beach house to check in with the Meathead Millionaire Mark Bell. The former WWE Super Star talked about his current diet, current hobbies and what he has on the horizon. ➢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 ➢ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

What you been up to, my man? Just hanging out. You know, as we are here in Malibu recording this, I used to live here about 10 years ago. Maybe a little bit longer than that. And I moved out of here just because I'm not a beach guy. Right. Well, why the hell did you move here for? I just thought Malibu would be a cool place to live.

It is. But, man, back in the day, I was doing a lot of meetings. And, man, if there's a rock slide, a mud slide slide one of those guys on a 10-speed bicycle gets hit there's a big ass traffic jam so that just pissed me off so i moved back into town but now i'm in marina del rey so same thing here pch gets smoked busy because the traffic everybody going to the beach everybody's going to the beach in venice as you know you've been training there i was getting ready for your contest you look like a million bucks thank you marina del rey man if it ain't nothing but the uh the people going to the beach it's the homeless people heckling you so i've

just been staying busy uh trying to mind my own business and get down the road yeah i got yelled at yesterday god told me it was gonna fuck me up for what i was just i was just turning and then like he kind of hesitated and then i went and he threw his cigarette butt at me at the car. Really? He's like, I'll fuck you up, this little crackhead. Yeah. There was an angry guy on the corner of Lincoln and Washington a couple of months back, and I was going to do something.

And I said, man, let me fuck with this guy. Because he was just ranting and raving by the bus stop. And I said, hey, shut up. He's going to fuck you. And boy, he just went off. And I just cruised through the bus stop. And I said, hey, shut up. He goes, fuck you. And boy, he just went off. And I just cruised through the green light. But I just had to rile him up a little bit. Because they walked down the sidewalks.

And don't get me wrong. I'm not making fun of homeless people. But this particular individual was very ornery and very mad. I guess he needed a fix. You used to live out here with DDP, you were mentioning earlier. No, I lived in Playa Vista with DDP. That's when i first came out to los angeles and then uh i moved in with my wife in venice and then we uh came out

to uh malibu for two years and i said hey man let's go back in and said that's where we've been uh in marina del rey and then you had your place in texas for a long time sold it sold it time to time to get out you're from texas right, right? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, man, born and raised, I still have property there. Yeah. And, man, I'll always be, you know, from Texas. That's where my heart is. Right. Bought a place in Nevada, and we've been going back and forth.

So Nevada is 1,100 miles closer. So, you know. Right. That's a lot easier to do. And 90% of Nevada is public land. So you can ride damn near wherever you want to and you know i had i had 2 000 acres in south texas which that's a big ass place but it's basically rather than a big rectangle right now i have access to you know hundreds of thousands

if not millions of acres and so i take advantage of that oh that's awesome um my brother and i were on this mission you know part of the reason why i brought you here today is we're trying to get to the bottom of this mystery that's been bothering us for a long time. Is Michael Hearn natural or not? What is going on with this guy? I've been working out with him every morning. Is he stronger than you? We can start with that.

Yeah, he is. And he weighs about 40 more pounds than me? Yeah, and he's probably about 3% body fat. Hmm. Here's the thing mike has outstanding genetics he does and he does the work every single day and i've known a lot of guys and like i was i was messing with you guys down in the kitchen earlier like you know hunting season comes you know it's time to drink and not lift as much margarita season just happened so hell i just got out i didn't know that was this i didn't even know it is not everybody knows but i know and you don't even need a license my wife would like to sound like margarita season michael hearn uh his attention to detail with his

diet with his training you know genetics a big part of it as you know yeah from the powerlifting game to the bodybuilding game to almost anything with an athletic endeavor or something as far as brains. It's all about that, what you're bringing to the table. So he's bringing those good genetics to the table. He brings a strong work ethic, and he does the nutrition. He ain't 85% in. He's 100% in as far as the nutrition goes. So he does hard work, great genetics, and due diligence on everything,

and his cardio. There's a lot of people that are you know that that feel like they're doing it full blast but they're not really doing it to that level when you were um at the top of your game in pro wrestling i mean you were it was very clear you were the you were the best in the world i know there's there's you know you can always argue there's this guy and that guy but for argument's sake you were the best in the world you were drawing the most money you were the most successful the world. You were drawing the most money. You were the most successful, selling the most shirts and selling the places out and everything else.

How were you able to stay on top of that game from a mental standpoint with all the travel and you still got to lift, there's still got to be some sort of diet in place, right? Almost back then, you know, I retired at 38, so that's still extremely young. Yeah. But you're so active, you know, you know, I retired at 38. So that's still extremely young. Yeah. But you're so active, you know, that time in the ring every single night is so intense, you know, and you're doing cardio at the gym.

And like, let's just say you're in the United States. It's just all one big loop. So you fly in somewhere, you know, where all the gyms are, you know, you know what your job is. Your job is to go entertain a bunch of people, but you know, you need to look good or prepare yourself. So, you know, where all the gyms are, know you know what your job is your job is go entertain a bunch of people but you know you need to look good or prepare yourself so you know where all the gyms are you do your cardio you eat half-ass clean you know you know you can always eat clean at waffle house denny's i-hop man any fast food place damn near you can eat clean that if you want to right and then uh egg whites chicken breast type stuff they'll steam your hash browns you know chicken breast all that

stuff so it really is easy to eat clean on the road if you're motivated to do so. I was drinking a lot of calories of alcohol. That was my thing. Go back and look to certain parts of my career.

You can look at my face and say, okay, this is when he was really on the whiskey. Or if I was really skinny, this is when he was really starving

back in the U.S. I remember going to a show with my brother. I think it was maybe here at the Staples Center and you and The Rock went at it. And as soon as you guys went off air, you guys were doing a whole other thing. And it went on for like, I don't know, like 40 minutes.

But you were drinking a beer. And then you drank another beer. And then you drank another beer. I'm like, at this point, he's just getting hammered. He's having fun in the ring. He's just getting destroyed. Towards the end, I used to tell people, man, you know, I drank 411 and wrestled on the side towards the end.

But that was all the entertainment thing. It was funny because we did that damn near every single night. And one time we was up there in the tri-state area, probably New York and New Jersey. And those people that work there, they're in the union. And so because I was out there doing my thing, it cost Vince damn near $20,000 in overtime for that crew. And so he told me about it the next day. And he goes, Steve, you cost me almost $20,000 last night by going over.

And I said, I'm sorry, man. I said, I'll split it with you. He goes, no, I don't want your money. He goes, I'll pay for it, but just next time don't stay so long. Sure enough, the next night out, same thing happened. Kevin, it was TV taping. Kevin Dunn coming from the truck. Steve, it's time to get out and so i just left and but it was just it was a fun time but yeah man uh entertaining people drinking on the road and stuff like that but we were so active

or i was so active back in the day you can damn near get away with it can i get away with it now that i'm retired and you know uh post primeprime no shit no you get motivated by the other guys too right and then you get motivated by the big ones the summer slam right the big matches the wrestlemania you tighten up a little bit diet gets a little better no no no no i would say that's uh triple h that's kind of his mo always on wrestlemania he's the game he looks like he is the game i mean triple h always looks good and you know, he's not a drinker. So, I mean, like he may drink, may drink one or two nights out of the, out of the year, just with some guy that drinks or whatever, but he might just have one beer or whatever he drinks. I mean, no, he always tunes up for WrestleMania. That's kind of

been his MO forever, but he always looks like a million bucks. But mania is like our Olympia or our Super Bowl, so he dials in for that as far as I go or as far as I went back in the day. No, man. I mean, people didn't expect to see Stone Cold show up out there, you know, with a six-pack of abs or whatever. They didn't want to see me bloated like a pig either, but that wasn't how I rolled, and that's what they weren't paying their money to see.

They wanted to see me go out there and talk trash, stomp a mud hole in someone's ass and walk it dry and tell them tell them a good story in a wrestling match right uh so you know uh you're representing a working man too like you don't want to look like a slob but at the same time you can have you have some flexibility don't get wrong i don't want to you know totally you know just say yeah i didn't care about my physique i did i mean i went to the gym damn near gym every single day and trained like a bodybuilder, but I damn sure didn't live like one. I was living like a road warrior, pro wrestler on the road and having my fun.

Right. Is it hard to do some of those workouts when you're just tired and stuff or you just know you have to get part of it? No, man, because, you know, if you ask me now, you know, because I retired 15 years ago, but, you, but in your mid-late 30s, I mean, dude, you still have all the energy in the world, and you're damn near bulletproof. Nothing hurts. You don't feel anything.

You can just go like it's nobody's business. For me, I always tell people like this. When you're on the road, you kind of turn into a zombie. I mean, you're fully coherent, but you're just wading through things. You're going through things. You've got the same shit going on everybody else does. Problems, good times, bad times, but living on the road is what you do. Then all of a sudden, when you get out, the whole world slows down.

And it took me three years to come to grips with that. And so now that I've turned back into a civilian, you know, I don't know what it's like to be on the road anymore. But I think now that I've turned back into a civilian, I know for a fact that I don't like to travel like I did. You know, back when I used to go home back in the day, I'd be like on the road for two and a half, three weeks, think, shit, man, I'm ready to go home.

I'm about to go crazy. I'd get to the house two and a half days off. After a day and a half, I'm ready to get back on the road. So it's that, it's a kind of like a vicious cycle, but you're caught up in it, but that's the way you live. Now that I'm in civilian mode, I'm just much more low key. What'd you think of Ric Flair's documentary? Cause they painted a picture of some of that, how hard it is to, to step away and to transition like, uh, you're this character, um, which is still a version of yourself, then how do you transition into everyday life? Cause you can't go through everyday life as John Rambo, right? I think Rick's deal was, you know, I still think to some degree he's,

he'll always be the nature boy. And until, you know, he had all those medical issues, I mean, he was still living that life. For me, you know, Stone Cold Steve Austin is me turned up, right? But, man, I'm Steve Austin. And, you know, I realized, you know, after those three years of retirement, my transition back into being a civilian, I saw right then and there that I needed to back down on a lot of the shit that I was doing.

So I did. Just dial it back, and then you go to the next phase. But I'm no different than almost every other guy that came out of business. A lot of people had plans of what they were going to do post-wrestling career. Hell, I didn't. I was a pro wrestler. That was the only thing I wanted to be in my life. And it ended, and I ended up out here.

Now I'm talking to you on a podcast and, you know, still doing my podcast and some reality television, stuff like that. So it just takes you a while to find your way. Was your family and your, like, your parents and stuff like that, were they into pro wrestling? Were they, like, were they for it, against it? Nah, no, they didn't. They thought it was the craziest shit

they'd ever seen you know and i've told the story many times like what are you doing but i we were in edna texas and i was changing channels on tv well i was watching houston wrestling and dusty rogers in the ring bleeding and my mom was reading her magazine in her chair and uh dusty was bleeding like a stuck pig and the security guard had a sidearm and he was just walking around smoke filled-filled arena. This was way back in the day. This ain't like everything is today. You had a guy with a firearm on his hip and just a rope banister around the crowd.

And Dusty was bleeding like a stuck pig. And I looked at my mom, and I said, God dang, Mom. I said, why don't that security guard help Dusty? Because I thought it was a shoot. The guy's got a gun. If the heel was in there making Dusty bleed, he ought to be able to stop him. And so my wife just rolled her eyes.

My mom just rolled her eyes and went back to her magazine. But when I started wrestling, they told me I'd have to change my last name because they didn't want to be embarrassed. But that was a joke from her to me. But no, they always supported me, but they didn't quite understand it. And my mom told me back in the day that if she if she'd have saw me you know back in the day she wouldn't have let me watch me on tv right because i was a little bit on the edgy side for her and then when it started to turn into what

it turned into i mean they must have been like mesmerized right like what the hell's going on why is everybody they were really proud of me you know my folks uh it was interesting because i've been meaning to watch Chris's other documentary about the coaches, about parents being too hard on their kids. Trophy kids, yep. And it's like, man, when I played football down in South Texas, I was a star running back.

That ain't bragging because that's South Texas 2-3 football. But I was the badass here in school. And if I had a good game, my dad and my mom said, hey, good game. If I had a shitty game, hey, man, you'll be good next time. So throwing the discus at the track meets, they were always there. They really supported me, but they never, ever pushed me into anything. So they're not the greatest parents in the world from the standpoint of always supporting me. But they didn't quite get the wrestling thing, but they've always supported me

and been into anything that I did. I always think it's important to know some of these things about people because it's important to know perspective. It's important to know where someone's starting from. You know, people nowadays, you hear people talking about success and how to be successful. And it's like, well, everyone's starting point is so different. You know, if you're trying to preach to someone that's 20, maybe their parents were never around. Maybe their parents made fun of them. Maybe their parents abused them. Maybe the parents just weren't around for them ever. And so how can I sometimes give advice to some of these kind of younger people coming up, you know? Yeah, man, I don't know. That's a pretty deep question as far as, you know, you see people on Instagram with a bunch of great advice all the time.

So whatever their level of success is, is personal and unique to them. Although many things could be considered, you know, good advice as far as staying consistent, you know. Absolutely. You know, go get it and, you know, the basic things. But I don't know where everybody's coming from, but it is what it is. I really don't know how to answer that i was working out in golds uh a couple days ago and robbie robinson was working in with us and his age just keeps getting higher and higher every time we talk about him but i think he's like in his 70s and uh we were doing some incline

presses with a hammer strength and we had three plates on there and uh i did some reps and he went on the previous set and he you know he did two plates and i knew that i knew he's going to get heated if i asked him if he wanted the weights off there so i kind of did it on purpose i was like hey you want me to take the weights off there and he just stared at me the whole time just stared a hole through me and then he sat down and he banged out like 10 reps easier than i did and he like dropped the weight and the weight went you know and he gets up and he still stared at me like holy shit man man robbie robinson's a legend he is such a physique and you know because i remember him he was you know in pumping iron you know in that scene on a football field like what was that was it ken waller that was the river

oh yeah trash because they was going to set uh cats up for the t-shirt uh t-shirt and the crusher they were talking trash they're throwing the football and those are the classic those are as uh as rick grayson would say the the golden era of bodybuilding yeah and all those guys had that that kind of physique that wasn't so freaky and kind of just that was a bunch of badasses hanging out just just kicking it i enjoyed that scene but robbie robinson's a legend they said that arnold was two like 228 on stage 222 229 so much bigger than that to me i know he was huge yeah i wonder if he's the first guy to be photoshopped his arms were so damn you know his arms are so damn big.

There's guys that have been bigger and freakier and crazier and stuff like that. And I really love the physique that a lot of guys are putting out these days. And Flex Wheeler was a badass physique. But I think I was talking to O'Hearn or somebody one time, and I think I picked Flex over Arnold. But when you go back and look at the pictures again like i've been uh recently to get a little bit of motivation arnold to me classic all and dorian was such a mass monster but just as far as the classic and dorian's a beast uh lee haney wasn't bad oh lee was awesome like seven in a row or whatever it was yeah but arnold to me to me for just looking at a dude,

probably the greatest genetics of all time. Yeah, and there's been a lot of pro wrestlers who've been really built over the years. You know, guys like Cena, guys like the Ultimate Warrior, right? There's a lot of guys that have been. That's why you need to ask about how he keeps it all together. Yeah. Because, I mean, he was on the road and the grind for, shit, 20 years.

Yeah. And now he's kind of getting into more acting stuff but you know he he had a way higher level physique than i did there's no comparison so he would be a good guy for you to talk to because first of all he is genetically gifted as well yeah but he's putting into work and he was a guy that now he'd have a couple drinks now but and i told him i was gonna give him a beer one time and he goes goes, no, Steve, I don't really drink. I said, all right. I said, a couple of years you will.

And so a couple of years later he does, but he's still in impeccable condition. Yeah, that's like his diet. He said that he doesn't eat carbs and the only carbs that he eats is from alcohol. That's his own like weird version of a diet. Again, you're talking about a guy with with not not just uh you know bodybuilding winning genetics right but dude's pretty freaky oh he's insane yeah how when you were really young how did you train when you were young when you first started to get into it what was bodybuilding kind of a foundation for you even though you're playing football huge uh

bodybuilding powerlifting fan man i was getting powerlifting usa as long as i can remember muscle and fitness and muscular development. All those old muscle magazines. A couple of them I can't even get in my head right now. I was in fifth grade, and my brother was two years older than me. And seventh grade is the first year you can start playing football in Edna and the junior high system. So because it's my older brother, man, I'd follow Scott to go work out.

And we're underneath the stadium. This is an old cement stadium that got torn down halfway by Hurricane Carla. And the weight room basically was just one of them old universal gimmicks. And one of the coaches says, what are you doing here? I said, I'm Scott's brother. He goes, you wanna work out? I said, yeah. Hell, I started working out with the seventh graders when I was in fifth grade. what are you doing here i said i'm scott's brother he goes you want to work out i said yeah hell i started working out with the seventh graders when i was in fifth grade so that's when i officially started working out and i was that guy when my dad poured a patio right outside our bedroom for

his barbecue pit and all that other stuff i had to cement and plastic weights with a one inch bar and i'd be you know lifting weights and stuff like that and my i didn't even drink back in and my younger brother kevin was the biggest hell raiser in the family. So he'd be out there with his buddies on the patio and I'd be in bed trying to get some sleep so I could grow. Right. And, uh, they'd be out there raising hell. I'd slide the window open. God damn, shut up. And you know, so I get my sleep. So, man, I've always, like I said, I kind of took some time off because of margarita season, but I've always, I always feel better, you know know when i'm training or i'm in the gym psychologically i feel better and i'm in a better place and when i'm eating good but it goes back to fifth grade for just for football i you

know and like i said i always trained like a bodybuilder dude i got shit genetic for bodybuilding so but that was the way i trained what uh what kind of weights were you moving around? Like I remember like in your early wrestling career, I mean, you, you were built, your legs were fucking jacked. Man, I never was, uh, a real big single guy because I was just, I was into reps because I could rep. And, uh, probably my, my best squat was not, uh, a heavyweight, but I squatted four 55 for 30 deep. And that was just in a set, warming up with 315 and, you know, 405.

Then I stuck another quarter on the bar after four wheels. And so I was 30 deep and I racked it. And my best bench press was a touch and go 440. And that was right after I finished North Texas State. And I was probably right before I got into the business pro wrestling because I started wrestling when I was 24, so that was when I was 22 or 23. And deadlift, I remember bent over rowing, not with Great Form,

but with 405 at Milotech Gym in Denton, Texas. And deadlift was not something that I really messed with, but those would be a couple of general numbers. But I've always been a rep guy and not really a maximum one rep guy bent over rows uh military press behind the neck you know some of those old those old classic exercises were some of the best and you know nowadays i was just at gold just now and i was there with uh my buddy over here smoky and as we were going through there there's a lot of like quote unquote bro, bro science going on, right? You hear that nowadays, people on YouTube are like, that's bro science. I'm like, man, all these guys that are in gold, these guys are jacked. And of course

there's PEDs involved and whatever else you want to say is involved. But people just think that some of those old school things that those rules don't still apply. And they still do. You go in the gym, you have consistency, you work your ass off, you do some of the basic movements that you can overload and stimulate your body with. The reason why a bench press is great is because you can handle more weight on it than like an overhead squat. Not that there's anything wrong with an overhead squat. It's a perfectly great exercise. But you're not going to be able to really build as much muscle mass with something like that.

A deadlift is another good example. Remember back in the day, everybody used to shrug a shit ton of weight and they used to cheat and they'd use straps and they'd wear a belt and they'd move around like a, you know, like they were doing like some funky chicken type thing, but just holding those heavy weights is important. I still, some funky chicken type thing but just holding those heavy weights is important i i still i'm still trying to figure out why the behind the neck press fell out of favor everybody talking about

rotators this rotate it well i have both mine rebuilt and so now i'm just strictly a military guy or dumbbells but back in the day that was one of the standard exercises you did as a compound movement. Behind the neck press. Nobody was military pressing back in the day. They all are now. Why is that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the changes are.

Are you still doing behind the neck presses? I recently started to do behind the neck presses and behind the neck pull downs. You're such a renegade. Charles Glass told me that I needed to do that. So that's, that's, uh, that's what I've been doing. Charles Glass told you that's all you need to know. Yeah. So that's, that's what I've been on, but yeah, everyone's just like, oh, it hurts or it's

bad for your neck. So you got to lean your neck forward. But what I'm learning with training with O'Hearn is you just, and you learn a lot of this in wrestling too. You, you, you just, you can push yourself a lot further than you think. And if you're along for the ride with somebody who's great at it, it makes that much easier. Man.

I a hundred percent agree with you. I've been training by myself for many years now, but my old travel partner, my old training partner, Dan, we strain a world gym and man, we just push each other, each other to the brink and,

you know, just getting that extra rep and not a plug, but I mean, each other to the brink and, you know, just getting that extra rep and not a plug, but I mean, if I want extra reps on a bench, I'll put on a slingshot or whatever, but, and that's the only assistance I can get. You know, I just can't hook a band onto each end of the barbell. So man, having a training partner, I wish I could find someone that was either is kind of low key like me or out there as me or whatever, that I, okay, man, we're going to train together. Right.

Don't want to go back to goals. I like kind of doing my own thing. But, yeah, pushing yourself. And it's funny, in talking about the behind-the-neck press that's back in vogue with you, the sit-up. The sit-up just became a bastard. You can't do it. Don't do a sit-up. It's-up just became a bastard. You can't do it. Don't do a sit-up.

It's working everything but your damn abs. Arbitrarily, someone decided that, so a sit-up is out of the equation. It's bad for your back. Yeah, bad for your back or it's getting all this bullshit down here. Yeah, the hip flexors, yeah. Yeah, yeah, your hip flexors. So I'm not buying that, but these days I'm doing crunches. I appreciate the bodybuilding

advice you gave me yesterday thank you the cheat day that blew right up it worked great he we were texting back and forth and he texted me and he said yeah i just got off the phone with your coach and turns out tomorrow you have a cheat day he's like enjoy i know you weren't gullible enough to buy that and some of that, I got old school stuff of like, you got to rev up your thyroid and you got to rev up your leptin levels or whatever. Right. Yeah.

I always tell you, always hear that. People say always weird things. A cheat day when they're not ready for a cheat day. You got, you got to be for me. Uh, and I'm not on a diet right now.

I just got back on my eating program, but I got to be several, several weeks in before I can warrant a refeed more so than a cheat day right i agree 100 you have to uh to be depleted to even earn one in the first place damn right are you going to take two steps backwards and it'll take you you know it might take you a week to get caught back up it could easily take you a week to lose all that weight. What's your, what does your diet look like when you just have freedom? Is there any, any rules when you're not on like a real diet plan?

Man, I, you know what, I've tried that. And I told my wife, you know, cause my wife is a vegetarian and she just, you know, she just eats whatever she wants and she can get away with it. Me, you know, not so much because, you know, my thing is I'll always get in shape. But, you know, getting in shape, a little like for a photo shoot or for you for this contest, you're going to peak for that. But then, you know, you're going to come down from that. That's a very temporary state.

But you come down, I mean, you know, do you want to go back to 280 or whatever? So let's just say you go back to 240. So that's going to be a certain level of eating. Right. So if I'm just left to my own devices because I'm such a counter and I'm such a huge numbers guy, still to this day, even though I'm kind of not really training for anything, as long as I'm weighing my meat, six or eight ounces, I know exactly how much protein there is in everything.

My carbs, it's going to be 100 to 140 a day. And then my fat's going to be somewhere around anywhere from 60 to 110. But that's just me left on my own devices. That will keep me in the ballpark. that's just me left them on devices, you know, that will keep me in the ballpark. Now, if I throw in the extracurricular stuff like the margaritas, and you can toss everything out the window because, you know, when you're starting to do that on a daily basis, I'm living proof, you know,

you're going to look like shit when you come out, come out of the other side of it. And when you do that, that's when it's hard to make the correct choices too, right? Once you had a couple of drinks, you're going to eat whatever you want. We were in Nevada. My wife had some Butterfingers, and I was just in there raffling through the drawers,

and I found those Butterfingers. Well, hell, I had to add peanut butter to them because I eat peanut butter in my protein shakes for some fat. Shit. Fat in a protein shake is one thing if you're just trying to get two tablespoons out of it, but when you've got a whole jar in front of you, you've got a bag of those little ass Butterfingers,

you're probably ringing up 2,000 calories on top of a bunch of alcohol yeah everything's all you know on a whole pattern while your body gets rid of the alcohol and you look like shit your body weight is still down though from from years ago i think when we first started to have some conversations about mess around some keto diet and stuff what what do you weigh now man right now this morning i probably clocked in about 258 which is down from about 264 just coming off those margaritas but you know my weight is deceptive but just because my shoulder girdle upper chest i don't really hold a lot of muscle there mine's all in my ass my my legs yeah i'm not even squatting but i'm just leg heavy and ass heavy more so than anything else so

i think i was talking to a dude the other day he he guessed me at 225. he goes where you went 225. i said no man i'm about 260. so you know i'm kind of like almost like an ectomorph meets an endomorph yeah weird you're not in that uh royal rumble mode anymore you don't need to build up that base that you were talking about in that center gravity gravity mark you go in about roll i mean i can't train you for a bodybuilding event but i can train you to be very successful in a royal rumble yeah throw everybody over the top rope and just eat a lot of junk food and drink a lot of alcohol i gotta say that's my favorite promo of all time because of the leg presses in there, the leg extension, the bench press, the squat, all that. Was that when I reentered myself on the next year?

Because I said that I was going to win that one. I think so. The only reason I've come up with that promo. The year before, maybe Vince won? Yeah, I think so. But the reason I came up with that promo was because I told everybody I was going to win. And so if you tell somebody you're going to do something you don't do it you need to have a damn

good excuse so i went on the entertainment side of it and entered myself in the next year's world rumble and that was my training protocol and so it's like everybody said we don't give a shit if you want or lost you know the promo was so good you know we like him again yeah that was uh uh kind of aimed at triple h too right you were You were, you were talking. I wasn't, definitely wasn't aimed at anybody. That was for me by me for me. Yeah. There you go. How'd you come up with a lot of this stuff just on the road? Just,

just driving. I mean like even like the what gimmick and some of these different things that happen, like, well, the, what, the,

what thing just happened when I called Christian and he didn't answer his phone with the voicemail. I just started kind of just leaving this ram. Are you there? What kind of thing? Voice ram are you there what kind of thing voice message i kept saying what and i you know that that's when i knew i had something but most of the time i would ride down the road and when you first get in the wrestling business and for a while as you you know you gotta just jump in a van or a car with a bunch of guys because

ain't nobody making no money you're starving but finally when you get a chance to get you know make a little bit of money you start traveling by yourself i'd be riding down the road solo you know having a beer or whatever and i'd see a billboard or something some words on a billboard i listen to a song and hear a phrase or some lyrics i always have my fanny pack back in all my credit cards receipts bullshit but i had a pen and a paper in there anytime i saw something good on a billboard heard a good song heard the lyric come up with a phrase because you know a lot of times you're you know when you're with a group of guys you're booking the territory when you're by yourself you're just thinking of shit to get you more over so you kind of get these creative spurts because i know you're a guy that likes to think a lot and think about your next big thing like a slingshot or whatever but that's

what i would do just brainstorm in that car and come up with shit and always write it down because i'd forget it if i didn't that was my mo yeah that's always a tough thing because you're like oh i'll remember and you always forget dude you wake up the next morning you're kicking yourself in the ass it's like how could i forget this this was such a good idea and i knew i couldn't forget it and i just woke up and i forgot it the other thing that helps too when you write it down is sometimes the next day, when you look at it, you're like, that's not such a good idea. And true. That can happen, man. But I tell all these, uh, kids on the road, I'd tell anybody this is doing anything, man. It just, if,

especially in the business of pro wrestling or, uh, with, with respect to keeping a track of what you're doing as far as your lifts or goals or whatever, man, have a daily journal. If I would have had a daily journal, when I wrote with Jim Ross and Dennis Brent, The Stone Cold Truth, I barely participated in that book. It was what it was. But had I wrote like, hey man, we was in Nassau Coliseum. Then we was in the garden, okay? We're in Cleveland. Here's the house. Here's who I worked with.

Here's what we did for the finish. I mean, hell, I'd have to write a book if I just wrote down three sentences. Right. Or flat tire in, you know, North Dakota. You know, I always recommend to everybody these days to write what you're doing down. And as far as learning the business, you can learn the mechanics of the business, as you know, the psychology of the business. But you got to learn the business of the business. Dollars and cents, you know, based on what that house is, where you were on the card, how much you got paid.

In two, three years, if you've advanced as you should, you need to be making more money. We've all said, hey, man, we're getting paid to do this. I do it for free. Sounds good in theory, but bottom line is you're trying to make as much as you can. So if you write down all the paydays, where you were on the card, how much was in a house. Therefore, when you go to renegotiate your next deal, you have some solid ground to stand on as far as knowing how the formula works, that kind of shit. Some of the guys don't even know that they're going to owe a lot of taxes. You know, they move up a bracket or two, like they never had any money, and now they do stuff for a video game or they do stuff for this or that,

and they're just, they get these nice checks, and they're not factoring it in. My dad does accounting. He does taxes for a lot of the pro wrestlers still. And, you know, he has to kind of coach these guys kind of out of some of these bad situations because, like you said, they don't know the business side of the business. Well, I mean, you know, the exact same thing happened to me. That's why I talk about it.

I wrote about it in my book. One of my wives back in Atlanta, you know, was handling, you know, all the financial stuff. And I was like, hey, man, you know, I'm a wrestler. You know, I'm just going to go make money. You take care of it. I get a damn letter from IRS and Oh, a shit load of money. I look at that and I call somebody and they said, man, you need to file for bankruptcy. I said, well, I ain't going to do that because then your credit's dead for seven years and all this shit and that, and that. And I said, well, I ain't going to do that because then your credit's dead for seven years and all this shit and that and that. And I said, at the end of the day, I said, I'm going to make this right. And it wasn't my fault.

I didn't try to cheat anybody, but it's my responsibility because it's my shit. You can't pass it off. So, you know, I had my head in the sand. I pulled my head out of the sand. And, you know, luckily, I hooked up with WWF my first year and didn't make shit. And then we started making some money. And, man, I wrote those summits as a chick. You know, I wasn't trying to do nothing wrong in the first place.

And I paid those motherfuckers back. And I always stay on top of my shit these days because it doesn't matter whether you're wrestling, you're bodybuilding, or all of a sudden you're in the NFL or NBA or whatever. You're going from nothing and finally make some money. You need to learn how to manage your money. Make it as one thing, managing, managing it and making it grow and work for you as a whole different ball game.

Yeah. Yeah. So man, it's, it's the basics. And if you don't know how to invest, just leave the shit in the bank where you're going to get 0.2% interest on it. Have you invested in other businesses and stuff? Well, I mean, invested in different things. Yes.

Um, when it comes to, uh, your career, when stuff? Well, I mean, invested in different things, yes. When it comes to your career, when it comes to, you know, probably the t-shirts and stuff is what a lot of people remember. People remember the sayings the most. They remember the skull and now you have, you know, broken skull ranch and you still carried some of those things on. What did that look like? You know, you said you had all these years where you didn't make money or you're really struggling and i've read before and seen before i think you even told me before that you just ate like potatoes every day for like a long ass time because you just didn't have money for anything else what was it like to see some of these checks coming in was did it just like

blow your mind like you or was it such a progression to where it wasn't that big of a deal or or do you not care about money no i definitely care about money because you know i've been everywhere that you can be and i ain't the richest guy in the room or in malibu or in in the world but you know i'm growing up we were very middle class never had too much money we you know we always made ends meet but uh finally after uh you know paying my dues and finally getting up to WWF and back in the day you know as a ringmaster things weren't that great and then we started really going good and so things started coming up to answer one part of your question and so things started trending up and so I was able to okay here's what's happening and then uh things really started going crazy, and Vince came to me one day,

and he brought me my royalty check. And normally they'd mail them to your house. He goes, Steve, he goes, I wanted to hand this to you because I've never seen anything like this before. Nobody's ever done this. And he handed me the check, and I looked at it. I looked back at Vince. i said god damn so that was that was you know my first huge royalty check yeah which was a sumbitch so it was a real cool it was a real cool moment and it was a real uh eye-opening

experience but things had been trending up now i didn't expect anything like that but it happened and you just dude you just always keep things in perspective and always realize you gotta save your god dang money i find that extremely motivating you know because you're you weren't even thinking about it like that's really cool like the work but the work was being done but you weren't like hey like dude where's my it just happened because your head was down you were plowing forward you were working towards it the whole time and then it wasn't until vince said hey like check this out yeah it was really cool and i think i think i took uh i think i still have that that pay stub or whatever oh nice i can't check out i think i still have that pay stub or whatever. Oh, nice.

I can't actually check out of it, but I think I still have the receipt for it, and I was going to get it framed and put it in a kayfabe spot just for me, you know? Right. And like I said, it's motivation. Or you know what? After no one thought, and this is a personal thing, after no one thought that I would ever be shit in the business to get that, and that's like, yeah, you know, you can't never put a limit on me.

If I want to do something, I'm going to do it. And that message goes through to anybody. If you want something bad enough and you work your ass off for it, you can do it. Any idea of the number of shirts that you sold? Because I remember that was just. We used to get an itemized account back in the day, quarterly stuff like that.

But, I mean, if I didn't give you a total number, I'd be pulling something out of my ass. You'd be totally making it up. Yeah. What's the diet that you're transitioning into now? Because you mentioned that you were just kind of on this margarita kick for a while. And so what's the plan right now? Man, right now, just. Carnivore, keto.

There's a lot of options out there. I'm glad you brought that up. Sean Baker came by the house a couple weeks ago. Real interesting guy. Super knowledgeable. Big son of a bitch. Yeah. Strong, powerful.

Robby, big. He's just obviously hell on a concept two rower. But anyway, so he's not a normal human being. Dude's pretty genetically gifted because he's pulling 775 back in a day 705 about 10 years ago eight years ago and now he was messing around i think he did 10 reps with 500 or whatever not dudes and he's built for the deadlift he's got the well he's tall but he's got the long arms but anyway talking to sean baker we're talking about the carnivore diet and i said man i going to give this a try.

It sounded crazy as hell. It sounded extreme as hell, and it is. But I figured, okay, you take out all the variables. You're dealing with the protein and fat source, which is red meat. Ain't no carbs in it. So I figured, okay, I'll give it a shot. And here's the thing about Sean.

When he does a carnivoreore diet he doesn't like vegetables okay to begin with he doesn't like them he doesn't care for them maybe put that put it that way me I like vegetables and uh when I was not making any money if you'd have told me back in the day say Steve we're gonna put you on a program where you can eat four big ass ribeyes every single day. I said, shit, sign me up. I've been happy as a clam. All of a sudden you try it. And I got two and a half days, like I was telling your brother Chris,

because I think he's still on it. Yeah. I did. My teeth got sore. You know, I like red meat. Right. But I probably eat for a shoot, maybe 10 steaks a year. You know, I mean, hamburger patties and stuff like that.

There's other forms of meat out there. A lot of chicken breasts, some chicken thighs. But I just don't eat a shit pile of steaks. And all of a sudden you're talking about four pounds a day. It made my teeth hurt. So I just, I went belly up and said, uncle, what I'm doing right now is in the vein of 300 to 330 grams of carbs. Like I said, 150, I mean, three to three to three uh 30 on protein 100 to 140 carbs and 60 to 110 fat and whatever you want to add that up to it's basically going to come up to right at 2,800 calories yeah that's actually the same diet that i'm on right now doing this bodybuilding show and i shifted from you know being on almost 300 grams of fat like the amount of fat i was taking in for a little while

now that was only for a short period of time because i went into like a really really deep uh ketogenic diet for just about three weeks um but even prior to that i would say that my fat my fat was probably over 200 all the time anyway but what was your protein at if your fat was at 300? Protein was probably around the same or a little less, you know, depending on the day. That's not even classic standard keto. I mean, that's almost not even modified keto. Well, when the fat was 300, I would say that the protein was, because like I said, it was extreme. The protein might have been almost half. It might've been almost half. That would have been standard keto. Yeah. Okay, man. I did that for a while.

And then, uh, you know, I was eating Jimmy Dean sausage, bacon, you know, I was making my fat bombs and people over there tell you, you get on a standard keto diet and don't worry about weighing everything. You know, you can't out eat that diet. Bullshit. Yeah, you certainly bullshit yeah you certainly can learn a couple tricks and trade real quick and out eat that diet uh but i didn't like standard keto so much and then that's when i uh hooked up with palumbo and we did modified keto right and my macros were right at 340 grams of protein 150 fat and under you know uh 25 net and most time i was under 15 and that's when I really started losing fat. Now, along with that, and I got, I went from 258 to 240 and while I was weak

as a kitten, no, no glycogen. Uh, if I'd had to do something performance oriented, you know, I don't know how to, how I would have held up at an endurance level or total strength would have been a shit. But it was effective as a – probably that's why when I say I'm at a give or take 150 carbs now, my buddies always tell me, don't worry about the carbs. Carbs aren't your enemy. You only had me eating 300 grams of carbs. And I just don't feel like I handle carbs that great. But when I go all the way off of them, I don't do great with that either.

But as a weight loss mechanism, it certainly is effective at doing that. And it's so easy to maintain because he has you eating lean sources of protein. So I'm eating chicken, chicken breast, fish, like a flank steak or skirt steak. And, man, the other thing was just a handful of almonds, which is an ounce. So, dude, I mean, that's pretty easy to do. Yeah. There's meat and a couple of almonds. Yeah, I think the human body wants to burn off of both. You know, I think it wants to utilize both.

You know, in my opinion, I think sometimes it wants to use sugar and sometimes it wants to burn, burn off of both. You know, I think it wants to utilize both, you know, in my opinion, I think sometimes it wants to use sugar and sometimes it wants to use fat. And I think the diet that you're talking about makes a lot of sense where there are at least some carbohydrates in there. What I will say about keto though, is, uh, fairly easy to follow. It might, might impact your, well, it definitely will hurt your performance, especially as you lose more weight and the longer that you do it. Um, there are like tricks that you can get into where you can have some carbohydrates or some weird types of carbohydrates to kind of pull you out of that. But in my opinion, you might as well just transition into something else at that point. But I think where

a ketogenic diet is really effective is you can get somebody to do it for two or three months that has really, really struggled. Every time they lose weight, they gain it back. It can really give them a good discipline of like, hey, you know what, man? You just need to cut all this sugar out. You eat way too much carbohydrates. You eat way too much sugar. You have way too much refined stuff. You just eat way too often. And that's where I think things like intermittent fasting can come in to play. I don't think people should fast all the time. I don't think people should fast every day. But I think that if you can learn the simple fact that you are shoving stuff into your face too often during the day, and you can, you need to, at some point, you need to teach yourself to eat less because what you're eating currently isn't really working great well i just think that when a lot of people talk

about uh what you what you're just talking about a lot but it's like it's the garbage shit that you don't even account for like if someone goes through the uh sonic gimmick and gets a large uh for me, like a vanilla diet Coke, I'm not dumb enough to think that there ain't no calories in that son of a bitch. Right. Right? So if you get this person, and, dude, this is on a once-in-a-dial thing,

a once-in-a-while thing when I go get my jalapeno burger with cheese, and I get that damn diet vanilla Coke. I think we need to go there right now. No, I know, but I mean, I love it. Sounds so good. But I'm just saying, people just keep eating'll keep it in their Cokes or keep drinking their Cokes or even Diet Cokes. All that shit is bad for you.

Bag of pretzels here, bag of chips there. Here's a candy bar. You know, that roll just put on the table. And people don't want to account for that shit. And all of a sudden, it's like, if you really are mindful of what you're putting in your body, you know, definitely carbs aren't the answer. It's those shit carbs that are so fast digesting, and all of a sudden, it turned into sugar, and there you go.

Well, I think it's just people tend to snack a lot. You know, and some of the advice I try to give is like, you know, never shop hungry. Because if you shop and you're really hungry, like you're almost delirious, youious you got done with a workout and your glucose is low your blood sugar is a little low it's going to be tough to make the correct choices well that's 100% shoot man i you know i've gone to the store hungry and you buy all the dumb shit i mean because it sounds good at the time and all of a sudden you get a meal in your stomach and they're okay what the fuck am i gonna do with this well i bought it i'm gonna eat it or if you if you go on a stomach and they're like, okay, what the fuck am I going to do with this? Well, I bought it. I'm going to eat it. Or if you go on a bender, you're going to eat it because you ain't got no willpower.

And it's hard to do this as well. But, you know, when you're eating, try to be like mindful of what it is you're eating. Try to actually kind of sit there with your food and enjoy your food rather than like you're watching TV or you're halfway on your phone. I think, again, some of these things, it's like a ritual. Every time you go to the movie, you have to have your popcorn and you have to have your diet soda or even a regular soda. You don't really have to. You just lost track of like what's going on. You don't have to. You want to. And so I think at some point, if you can, again, going back to a ketogenic diet, I think that's where that discipline comes into play. Cause what the hell are you going to eat the movie theater? When you're on a ketogenic diet, you got to bring in your own jerky or

something like that, which takes a little bit more of a step, but it's teaching you the correct step towards some of the goals that you may have. Yeah. but you know what? Going back to what you were talking about with intermittent fasting, it's like at the end of the day, all that is, whether you've got this eating window of opportunity is two hours or it's four hours or whatever you've destined it to be because you've done a lot of this. But at the end of the day, it's about being accountable for what you're putting in your system

because calories in and calories out is what I believe. And people get all – you're a pretty genetically gifted guy. To me, when everybody just starts saying, yeah, intermittent fasting is a key. Horseshit. It's whatever you put in your system on a 24-hour day is what you put in and out of your system. Right? No, I agree with that. I mean, that's what I No, I agree with that. That's what I believe.

I agree with that a hundred percent. And everybody that I've communicated with, my brother and I are working on a movie right now, a nutrition movie right now. And there have been some guys who are like, Oh, I don't really care about calories. But when you pin them down and you say,

Hey, listen, calories still matter. They say, Oh, absolutely. They still matter. I think one of the issues with calories is that it can sometimes be inaccurate, but it's the only measure that we got. When you go to look up salmon on the internet, there's so many

different versions of that, right? But so what, maybe you were a few hundred calories off or whatever you were for the day. Uh, at least there's still some sort of record of it. At least, at least you're still, uh, in the ballpark. Now I even still getting ready for a bodybuilding show. I'm still not even tracking and really counting calories. Um, because I just don't like to get too involved in the numbers. I don't like to get too distracted, but I'm doing the same damn thing anyway, because I'm still weighing out my meat and I'm still weighing out my carb sources. Carb sources are usually six to eight ounces. And the protein usually matches that for now. And as we go further into it, I'm sure those will reduce. If I have a meal that has a little bit of fat in it, let's say it's salmon and let's say

it's a sweet potato. Then the next meal probably won't have the carbohydrates and maybe it won't even have as much fat, and I try to balance it out throughout the day. But you're 100% right. It's a lot of give and take on those calories. And I ain't going to sit here and shit all over intermittent fasting because many people have used it as a tool to effectively lose weight. But it doesn't allow you to eat more.

It doesn't allow you to eat more. It doesn't allow you to eat more. Whether you go keto, whether you go 33% protein, 33% carbs, 33% fat, whatever you do, whatever is the vehicle or method with which you choose,

it's just a means to an end. And intermittent fasting. Okay, I'm going to get all my calories in here, and I'm going to go empty for a while. And, okay, if your body responds to that, then good. But to me, at the end of the day, we all use things that are going to help us mentally to accomplish the task at hand. So whether it's intermittent fasting or carb backloading or whatever the hell it is,

it's just a means to an end. But at the end of the day, dude, it's how many calories have you taken in? And that's part of the reason why for a long time, especially coming down from 330 pounds, why the ketogenic diet worked for me is because I was able to stabilize. I was able to make a little bit more sense of how much food I was taking in. Whereas if I'm left, if someone says hey you know back then if they said you could have some carbs those cars the the rice turned into pizza you know and it turned into ice cream and everything else you can think of right butter fingers with dipped

in peanut butter yeah which sounds fantastic by the way on another uh cycle of of a different diet. That might sound good to me, but right now it doesn't. Yeah. You're focused in pretty good now. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. As soon as I make up my mind to do something, then I'm good. But it's kind of like being half in, half out.

It was like I said, you know, I took off for about maybe two months from the gym. And so when you start getting back in the gym, it's just like, because to me, I've got to get that momentum going again. You've been doing this stuff since you were 12. And how old are you now? Yeah. So it's just, but it's getting back into the routine.

And so now that I'm back in the routine, now everything's easy. It's just cruise control. You've been doing it for decades, so it makes sense to pull stuff out every once in a while, right? Absolutely. And, and, and obviously, you know, like if, uh, if you're trying to be mindful of your body composition and the only X factor out of everything that is factored that the only

X factor thing is alcohol. Hey man, I'm not getting results. I want to pull that X factor out because that's the thing that you, you don't have no, you know, okay. Okay. Let's say, let's say I'm drinking, uh, say I'm drinking four mar's say let's say i'm drinking uh say i'm drinking four margaritas i am gonna die but i'm drinking four margaritas well you're dumber than shit because you ain't gonna lose no weight drinking them you know four margaritas so take that out and you'll start doing well what's your favorite thing to do

nowadays i see a lot of uh a lot of times i see pictures of your like four wheelers and your dog and a lot of stuff like that. What's some of your favorite things that you love to do today? Man, riding my four-wheelers and my side-by-side. And I'm exploring Nevada. I'm finding different places to ride. And my dogs, man, they're like the love of my life. I'm a dog guy.

And I was just now, I'm kind of my life. Yeah. Dog guy. And, uh, just, I was just now I'm on a, I'm kind of on a O'Hearn program. Kind of follow, you know, Mike's template a little bit as far as, uh,

you know, one body part a week. Uh, I know Mike gets up early. He's one of the first guys in goals every day. Right. Uh, because my day gets busy and I'll get scatterbrained.

And right now there's a heat wave and I just don't feel like training that damn heat. It's getting hot. I said, dude, piss on it. You need to start getting up and pulling all her and so now i'm up at 4 15 i just throw down my two cups of coffee i got a i got a key to this little uh gym i belong to cool so i'll go get my swell on and get that done in the morning and uh my black lab cali is my gym dog now wherever i go she goes with me and so she's kind of like my little buddy.

She hadn't pulled any weight off my chest yet in the form of a spot. I'm hoping I can train her to do that. But yeah, man, I'm riding around a lot. I got a couple of irons in the fire on a professional level. And if those heat up, we'll take them out and do something with them. Until then, I'm just doing my podcast. I'm doing a couple of side projects. I'm a brand ambassador for Kawasaki Motorsports. And that's a great partnership because projects, you know, I'm a brand ambassador for Kawasaki motor sports. Right. And, uh, that's a, that's a great partnership because they make great stuff and I love to ride.

And so, man, those things that I like the most, the things that I post on Instagram are things I'm passionate about. Uh, and if I was a little bit more jacked up, I'd probably be posting, you know,

more physics in my body when I get there, I will. But yeah, for me, it's a four wheel drive vehicles and, uh, my dogs. What about movies?

You know, like you see a lot of guys transition into movies maybe if the right thing came along yeah the right thing came along it really had to be the right thing i ain't flying overseas to film nothing you know i don't want to go nowhere to make nothing i'm kind of done traveling and i don't mean to say that say that as a blanket statement but right me if you if you said okay ste, Steve, you can make this by remembering 130 pages of dialogue. It'd really have to be worth memorizing 130 pages. Now, all those 130 pages ain't going to be mine. I know that, but I'm just making a point.

I find that trying to memorize words on a piece of paper, I would rather drag my face across a barbed wire fence than do that. And that's how painful that is to me. It isn't fun. I would rather drag my face across a barbed wire fence than do that. And that's how painful that is to me. Yeah. And it doesn't, it isn't fun. I probably made 10 or 12 movies, low-budget movies in Vancouver or wherever. We did Condemned in Australia. That was a blast. That was a fun time.

But it's not where I'm at right now. And it was a means to an end. When I found reality television, I knew that I liked being myself more than I liked being a character. Reality TV fit what you were already well-trained in. Yeah, yeah, man, improvising on the fly. And, you know, that's why I love Tough Enough so much. Way back in the day when we filmed that, I showed up and met the showrunner, Eric Van Wagen, and said, hey, what are we doing?

He would tell me. Went out and did it. There wasn't no paperwork involved, nothing. And so same with Broken Skull, same with all that stuff. So I don't like memorizing shit. Who's the toughest person you've seen on Broken Skull Ranch? Because sometimes, I mean, that show seems like it's pretty brutal at times. It is brutal.

And I'll tell you what, did you see that big guy? He was about 6'2", 225, Zach, when he fell off the bell. Shit, no, I didn't see it. He raised that bell to, I think it was 25 feet or 22 feet. But anyway, he got this far from the top and boy, you could just see it written all over his face. His body just froze up and said, dude, we're done. And he came sliding down that rope at full speed. And the only good thing was.

You caught him, right? Yeah. Made the big change. I flinched when he hit the ground. When he hit earth, I flinched. Yeah. And ground when he hit earth i flinched yeah and he got lucky because he made a flat back landing or almost flat back and didn't get hurt and that guy was extremely tough we took him to the hospital and another guy out of florida uh had uh rhabdomyelosis he ran so hard on the skull buster where'd he get his legs kidneys why do you get all the lactic

acid oh so just kind of overall body information oh yeah dude he just pushed himself i've seen people get it like actually like in certain areas where they get in their arms their arms will swell up one of dudes uh not not on broken skull but doing something else got it in his back and they cut a bunch of it out uh i think uh one of the one of the toughest guys out there those are two guys that push themselves to the limit and ended up failing. But Hunter McIntyre, my returning champion, he was the guy that was putting in the work every single day,

every single week. That guy's an animal, and he's also crazy, too. He lives here in Malibu, I think. Yeah, he's probably right down the road from you. You know, he comes from an affluent family in, I think, Connecticut, and family lawyers. And, uh, he was just kind of wild child and they were all hung over one day or they were drinking and the Spartan thing came on TV and said, I mean, let's go down and enter that.

None of his buddies did, but he did. And he ended up getting third or six or whatever. And all of a sudden out of a drunken stupor said, Hey, you know what? If I i can be pretty good at it but he was right he's dominating the world he's pretty damn strong in the gym too i've seen him doing squats and bench presses and stuff stick of wood he's very deceptive you get up on him he's every bit of six two and if he's 180 or 205 that's a stout 180 or 205 yeah but but he really puts in the work how would he do with a stone cold stunner i mean you know you think he gets his entire nervous system and he would just be from a neuromuscular and neuroskeletal level he shit himself you think it would be that bad definitely definitely and that's what happened most people for him i'd probably put a little extra i'd probably start training

traps a little bit and get a little extra in there. A little jaw jack. Just totally ruin his brain. Scrambling for life. A neurological overload. No, I mean, but he's a good kid, and I say that respectfully to him. How are you liking doing your podcast? It seems like you enjoy that a lot. Yeah, yeah, man, same old, same old. I got a chance to talk to a guy the other day,

Joey Janela, and the kid's 29 years old. He started wrestling when he was 15, and he never had any formal training. And he lied to the promoters, said, yeah, I've been training, and yeah, I'm good. And they'd give him 15 tickets to sell. If he could sell the 15 tickets, they'd let him wrestle. Well, he sold three tickets, but they still let him wrestle

without any training. And so he was a big fan of Hogan, Warrior, myself, Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, people like that. But he really fell in love with the death match style of pro wrestling, really popular over in Japan. And obviously the hardcore stuff with ECW, he was very enamored with. And he took some of the most insane bumps. He was a kid.

He's only 29 years old. He'd been working 12 years. And he came by the house the other day. So it was really interesting getting to – because I've talked to so many guys that are from pro wrestling who are doing regular pro wrestling. Right. This guy was interesting to talk to at a whole different level

because he was coming from that death match standpoint and it's kind of hard to wrap your head around the motivation that goes into a cat like that taking all these super, super risky, crazy, insane bumps and coming out unscathed. So it's a very calculated risk. Yeah. That kind of stuff seems, uh, it seems, it seems crazy. What do you think you're most proud of when it comes to all the different things that you've done? Shit, I don't know. I don't know. I'm glad I found my wife.

I'm glad I got two dogs. Yeah. And a pickup truck. How long have you been with your wife? We've been together since I came to L.A. Well, I lived with Paige for a year. Well, then I started living with her. Then we've been together 14 years.

I think we've been married nine. I got married on December. Here's the funny thing. I just got finished filming this low-budget movie, and we decided we was going to get married. And so it was on December 21st when I came back from Vancouver. Where'd you meet her at? World Gym.

Oh, there you go. In Washington. Yeah, it's a Firestone Walker Brewery right now. Yeah, I met her in the gym. She's a special education teacher at John Adams Middle School. And she knew my training partner, Dan. Me and Dan would just push it to the brink like we were talking about. And one of her kids brought a WWE calendar to the classroom.

My wife never watched pro wrestling. So she put it up and flipped the month over, and there I was. And she came to the gym one day, and she goes, Dan, isn't that that Stone Cold guy? And he goes, yeah. And she said, you think he'd read to my kids? I don't know, go ask him. Anyway, I read to her kids.

I took her to a Lost Lonely Boys concert. She just moved in about two days later. We've been together ever since. But when I came home, this is ongoing rib. Uh, we don't want no big wedding. I've had a couple of those, right? Didn't end very well. Uh, my wife's not into shit like that.

She, she, we want to do it and get married and just maintain our privacy. So she goes, she calls a marriage to go.com. Lady comes over the house. I come in off a Vancouver flight is a what, two and a half hours to L.A. Drinking screwdrivers. And so she still thinks that I was buzzed up so hard that I don't even remember getting married, which is bullshit. That's her rib on me. But it's funny because we were standing right in the fireplace of our house.

And it's me and Kristen standing in front of the fireplace. The lady is the pastor. And we have, our dogs are Brio, who's a male, a lab mix, Shona, a black lab, and Hershey, the wonder dog, my prized chocolate lab. And Hershey was a big ribber. And she always liked to steal stuff, whether it's tennis shoes or whatever. And the lady had this bell with a wooden handle on it. And she rang the bell a couple of times to start the ceremony. and she put it on a table. And as soon as she put it by the table, Hershey just sidled by,

picked it up in her mouth, and started walking around. So, you know, then you've got to make a big deal out of Hershey. Hershey, and this is right during our wedding ceremony, right? So it was just one of the fun memories. We had to put Hershey down this past year, the first day we were filming Broken Skull Challenge. And it was heartbreaking for me. So she's no longer with us.

But that's one of my fondest memories of Hershey. Yeah, I've seen you talk about it. Yeah, but what I'm most proud of, hell, I don't have any idea. Like I said, I'm happy that I'm married to my wife, who's my soulmate, and happy that I got a couple of dogs and my trucks and my four-wheel drive stuff. And I love to hunt. But just I'm proud of the fact that, you know, my parents, you know, raised me.

I made a lot of fuck ups in my life, made certainly made my share of mistakes, but, uh, I'm proud of the person that I am, that, that my parents raised that my wife makes better. So the belts mean a whole lot to you. Yeah, man. Absolutely. They do now. I mean, that actually mean you know wrestling you know

it's scripted or whatever right like people say whatever they want about it but that actually means something to have a belt oh yeah man mine ain't on display i mean ain't shit in my house it doesn't you can tell him a wrestler lives there but if you go out to my safe in my garage i got two big ass fort knox safes and there's a pile of belts and and one of them and there's a pile of ammo and guns and a leather vest. Don't fuck with me. Yeah. All my vests are in the closet. Uh, I gave a couple of way to a couple of kids at some hospitals and, uh, the belts are very important to me because, you know, that's, that's a, that's a sign or a symbol of the major organization, you know,

whether, whether it was USWA or WCW or particularly WWF, says, hey, man, we're betting the whole kit and caboodle on you. And you put up or shut up. And so you try to put up. Right. And so, yeah, I'm very proud of those belts, and they mean a lot to me. But I ain't no Mark. Yeah.

And, you know. Not a ton of wrestling memorabilia around or anything like that. No, no. But, I mean, I do have some stuff. And it just means something to me knowing that I got it. Because that's where I come from. Pro wrestling will always be my background. And it was always a love of my life and a passion.

I got a chance to follow up for men seven or eight years of age. And all through high school. When I started growing my long, blonde hair out, people would say, man, you ought to hair out people say man you ought to get into pro wrestling you ought to get in pro wrestling yeah man i'm going to i'm going to well finally you know i saw a commercial on tv in dallas texas when i was working at a freight dock and i said that's how i'm going to get in well anyway here i am sitting with you so yeah i'm proud of it man i love pro wrestling i still do i love all the guys and girls out there still trying to figure it out and draw houses. Where's the million-dollar belt?

You have one of those still? Now, the million-dollar belt was a piece of shit. Oh, don't tell me that. No, I mean from a standpoint of badass belt. And Ted DiBiase got that belt over. And Ted DiBiase is one of my favorite pro wrestlers because that guy can work his ass off and he can talk a blue streak. So when I got the call from Vince that I was going to be the million-dollar champion

and Ted DiBiase was going to be my manager, that's great. I wasn't sold on the ringmaster, but I was honored to have that belt. When I say it was a piece of shit, I mean it like this, and Ted will back me up on this. If you were walking to the ring trying to wear that thing, it would come unsnapped and fall on the floor. If you're trying to shove it in the ring, a dollar sign was going to fall off. It was always in disarray or in some state of destruction. So it just wasn't in one piece very well. Other than that, it was a magnificent belt that someone took a lot of time and care and hard

work to, to make. And so the fact that I got to carry it for a little while was a true honor, but from a standpoint of just carrying that summits around, it was a pain in the ass. Awesome, man. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength and we're out of here. Thank you so much. Damn right.