Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - UFC Fighter Caught Smuggling, Locked Up Abroad, & Fighting for His Life | Ian Heinisch

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

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Colombia, Venezuela, Aruba. We would package the kilos, we'd swallow them, turning $900 into $100,000. They jumped on us, secret police. I get thrown in general population. God started to call on me and put this dream in my heart. He's like, you're going to get out of here and be a UFC champ, proclaim my name of the world. Came up in a middle to upper class, nothing like a crazy bad childhood.

Like most people would think when you have a crazy story, you know? Some people go through some crazy adversity. But I just, man, got in trouble all the time. I had this crazy energy inside of me. And at a very young age, I started to get kicked out of class. Just little stuff. My parents didn't know what to do. So they took me to-

What little stuff, like fights or just- Fights, ditching class, and just like hyper. Like I was just messing with people all the time, just like this crazy. So they took me to the doctor and the doctor said, you know, he's got ADD, ADHD, right? Put him on pills. And I come from a long line of addiction. Like my dad, my uncles, my cousins, like all struggle with addiction,

alcoholism, like generational curses. instantly hooked lost my relationship with god and just went all in on partying man and uh still was a very successful wrestler a couple of times state champ national champ all-american you know i was doing my thing in wrestling and had a very bright future i was i remember i'd be cheating off these like super smart girls and then they would call my name and they'd be all mad at me and i'd get a letter from like stanford handwritten letter we want to give you a full ride scholarship and they are just like losing their mind because uh you know wrestling was getting me some big opportunities but i i blew it i got expelled my senior year a year before that i was driving home from a party

before wrestling tournament drank a couple bottles of southern comforts fell asleep behind the wheel drove off the road missed a sign by inches and a telephone post by a couple feet and that was one of many times that god had spared my life i woke up with the tire still spinning drove off the bank in the snow and I mean is this like you got a DUI or you just took off running okay well how'd you get how'd you get expelled the car and stolen what had you said you got expelled your senior year I thought that was it fights in school um basically ditching a lot of class drugs and then um I I drew it was a stupid reason to be honest I drove my dad's truck to school is roofing truck and they searched me for drugs and they found a big knife and you know it was kind of when things are starting to get crazy with

And so, you know, they took that very serious. We fought it to the end. But then at the end, it was just, I was a habitual offender. My wrestling coach sent me out. He's like, dude, there's nothing I can do. And he was a good man and Tim Ottman. And I was like, I don't know. He's like, you're expelled, bro.

I left the school, just started partying full time, training a little bit. And I made my way to senior nationals. You have to be a state champ to qualify for this big tournament. It's like the Super Bowl of your high school career, only state champs from all around the country go. And I willed my way into taking fourth place and had a line of college recruiters trying to get me to go to their school

because the first three in front of me were already signed. Full-ride scholarship to Boston University. Then when they found out I got expelled, of course, you're not getting that. So I got a full-ride scholarship to a Jucco college in northern Idaho. Okay.

Yeah. Did you end up, I mean, you got expelled, what did you do, get your GED and then go? Yeah, I got my GED a line. Okay. Yeah. So what happened? Did you graduate? I mean, you went to, you were wrestling. You just said you got to college. So did you go through the whole thing? I got my GED and I got a full right scholarship to a junior college. Right. Did you get like an AA and go on to a state college or? No. So I rolled up to junior college, checked out the campus. You know, they do like these like three days like check out the campus. The boys take you to have a good time. rolled up with my two crazy buddies and got arrested the first day. At this, at any point during this whole fiasco, like, are you thinking yourself, maybe I need to, I got to straighten up.

This is not going well. No. At that time, it was just increasing. And I'll tell you what, I was walking down the street, drunk and a bike cop rolled up on me, ID me, obviously wrote me drinking underage, I ripped up the ticket, wrote me a littering ticket then i ran and he wrote me a evading arrest and then i spit on the cop car because i was so drunk i fell over they caught me and then i spit on them and and they wrote me a disturbing the piece luckily not assault on a cop so i'm back in a jail cell my wrestling coach bails me out and i'm like

dude like you know when you try to leave you try to i tried to run from trouble all the time you know going further in my story i posted bail and fled the country but the trouble continues to find you you know you got to really deal with that eternal internally and um i wasn't ready to do it then i ended up going back there uh i would wrestle good i would party good and not any school so within a couple months it was done my parents it was 2008 they had lost their house they got divorced they couldn't sell their house the bank took it and now i came back to colorado and i'm like going through this like crazy whirlwind and you know i was like man i had these petty warrants for my arrest and then this girl from Canada that I used to date in high school she moved over to

Canada she said hey you want to go to prom with me I was like yeah sure let's go so she flew me to Vancouver I went over there fell in love with Vancouver and so I was like I want to stay here I make this crazy uh you know this we didn't have chat gbt but I made this crazy resume like with state chant wrestler like and like made up all this stuff I threw it on Craigslist this guy says come downtown Vancouver so I show up in this big building this high rise, go in there. And I don't know if you ever seen, like, boiling room. Yeah.

Yeah. We just talked about boiler room. Yeah. So you know when, gosh, what's the actor's name? I'm so bad. Ben Affleck. When he does. Throws the keys.

Yeah, we just talked about this. Yeah. This is the last episode that was filmed. Really? Yeah. So he does this crazy thing like, do you want to be rich, this and that? Like throwing money around. And then I was sold.

And we were selling fixed rate contracts for natural gas. going door to door. Okay. And he had me believing that I was saving the world. Even though we were locking people in at a premium for five years, but we'd show them these graphs of how gas always goes up. And I was making killer money, two to four grand a week. As a 19-year-old, I moved way up in the business,

and I was, like, top five in the business. And, man, I didn't work out with the Canadian girl, where she's American, but the girl I originally went out there with. So I started living with these Guatemalan. that I met on the beach and you know seem like stand-up guys we were having fun it sounds like so one day I'm knocking on doors doing my thing and you know I was still crazy at this time right like now I was able to go to a club legally because it was 19 in Vancouver and if I didn't sell anything by noon I would go have a picture of beer and I would sell better at the end of the day

because I just I guess that liquid courage so I knock on this chick's door there's five girls they say hey, oh, he's cute, and they pull me in. So I'm, like, dancing with her. And this girl's in the corner crying. And they're like, oh, he's cute. Come over here. She just broke up with her boyfriend. So I'm like dancing with her.

I sign up everybody in the room. And then they're getting me drunk. And then finally, you have to have this meeting after work. So I roll up and I give the contracts. And I was like, I got to go. And I remember my boss screaming at me. And I took off running. And the girls are like, you have to drive this girl home.

She's too drunk to drive. So I was like, all right. So I drove her home way far from Vancouver and we get in the house. We're drinking a bottle of wine because she sold wine for a living and all of a sudden I hear boom boom boom boom boom on the door like the police and I was like who is that and she's like oh my gosh oh my gosh and she gets up and she looks and opens the she had like a curtain it was a duplex and so her front door was like a sliding glass door very strange setup so she opens the curtain and it's her ex-husband and so he's free

get out pounding on the glass i'm gonna kill you like talking crazy then he sees me and goes berserk and he's like get out here i'm gonna i'm gonna beat your ass all this uh so i walk up to the door i'm like you want me to come out there he's like yeah i was like you want me to come out there he's like yeah i slide it open just like six inches boom popped him right in the nose he goes down i jump on him i'm like choking and granted his two kids are sleeping in the house with his ex with his ex-wife so i'm just giving him slaps like bro go home you don't want to do this tonight trust me boom he grabs me in the balls and twists and i just snap so i lift him up and i hold him over this two-story building and he's like no no

and i hear the girl she's like no obviously she doesn't want me to hurt this guy so i throw him down grab him by his pant leg in his collar walk him to the flight of stairs and roll him head first and he gets up and he's all injured he gets in his truck drives away i'm moving with this chick 11 days later. It sounds like a perfect situation. It doesn't sound like there's going to be any issues at all. I mean, this just shows you the mind state I was in.

Like I was just, I was 19 at the time. She was 37. And we're great friends now. Like, so there's no animosity or anything. She's doing her thing. But yeah,

I was just, I was like, my mind was exploding because she goes and takes her kids to school. I stayed the night there. I'm just like these Canadian chicks are crazy like I could be like anybody I'm just chilling in her house and Anyway, she came back and I had a living situation that wasn't working out and I was got to move in with the Guatemalans and so I ended up moving in with her and I don't know why they were moving in with the Guatemalans makes me laugh That seems insane. I don't know why I'm sure they're great people they're great people man But they come in later in the story um so I'm living with her about six

months goes by making good money playing stepdad you know this totally twisted big deal but it was fine at the time i had my car and uh all the sudden it was like 8 a m and i hear boom boom and i'm like oh this dude's back you know so i roll up in my underwear ready for round two at this guy because it sounded like the same knock open the doors to uh immigration police so he had been like spying on me found out i was working illegally and in between that time i went back to colorado just to see my family and when I came back, I flew to Seattle and tried to Greyhound across and they really look at you there and I had DUI, all this stuff. So they stopped me at the border. Then I posted up in a hotel and then I tried to walk across the border and they like came

at me and they were like, we're going to let the dogs out. Stop. They were like, if you try to come back again, it's a hundred days in jail, guaranteed. So I called the girl that I originally went there with and her mom picked me up and drove me across the border. So now I had this like rap sheet of trying to break into Canada. So they take me to jail, obviously. Four days. It was a Thursday. Friday was holiday.

So you know, you're sitting in that holding cell through the whole weekend. So I'm freaking out. I'm on Xanax because I forgot to mention when I was 19. They prescribed me an absurd amount of Xanax. Right. Which is crazy because I was all hyped up on Adderall. Right?

Good old big pharma. So I'm in this jail cell freaking out, coming down with these withdrawals. And I remember it was when Kane Velasquez fought Brock Lesnar and they've gained me my Xanax because they have to if you freak out. And then the girl came to the court on Monday, posted $5,000 cash to bail me out. She bails me out, takes me to her house. I'm like, stop real quick.

I want to take some shots to tequila. I'm sad, right? I got this life that I thought I built this good job. And now I know I'm going to get deported eventually because I'm working illegally. I tried to sneak across the border. All the deal. And she ended up talking to the girl that I originally. moved out there with and uh she said that i was like hooking up with her when i was living with

her so she was really mad so it was this like whole drama so when i was all messed up the girl's like yeah i was hooking up with my ex-husband's wife or our ex-husband's friend while you were locked up and i was like what because i came home and i had a big bag of ecstasy and it was gone and she's like yeah we took him so i like snapped tore up the house just like drunken raging and anyways just passed out she takes her kids to school the next day and her kids are freaked out because obviously i was just being wild she comes back jumps full mount and just starts teeing off on me boom boom boom and the only thing i remember because if you ever taken a bunch of zanax and drinking tequila and all those things you're like you're zonked for like a day and i just remember whatever

i was happening to me i wanted to stop and i like woke up holding her down and like i finally could open my eyes and i was like she's like you're crazy so i grab her like most of expensive bottle of wine and just take off towards the beach and the cops pull up cut me off i roll over the hood i apparently i came out the cops which if it was america i would have got shot and they they beat me up man swollen black eye i remember just kicking you think you americans can come here and do this wham i mean they let me have it i got to the court or i got back to the jail they come and interview me and i'm totally messed up dude i make up this crazy story like because I didn't want to sell out my boss

because he was paying me under the table so I was like I was a cage fighter I met her on the internet and I made this crazy story up and I was like just talking belliger I was like whoever ratted me out I'm gonna sneak back across the border and get him and put him in the ocean

front page of the Vancouver son boom they printed out and it's just me talking crazy I'm still a little bit out of it a day later they put me in front of a judge the lawyers like don't say anything I'm like stand running up your honor i would like to speak and he's just like oh my gosh and i was like i know i am in trouble

today but i'm only like this when i drink and do zanics and i will not do it anymore and they're she's like mr heinous you are a threat to canadian society you will not walk another day in our country she's like you were going to be locked up with no bail until you were deported back to your country and boom i got walked away in handcuffs in the canadian girls in the stands with her Canadian accent, Ian, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I'll never forget that. And we're cool now. Like, she came back out to Denver later and, and it was all cool now.

So now I'm deported back to Denver, Colorado, back to square one. I mean, there's worse pace to be deported from a year or two. Who gets deported from Canada? I was going to say, well, who's trying to break into Canada? I did eight months in a Canadian jail, which was surprisingly rough. okay yeah it was actually because it was like i mean i always heard can it's funny you talk to one person and they'll tell you how that they're jail the prisons are rough and then you talk to somebody else and they're like they're super sweet i think it's more like the time is sweet because you can

they normal white collar guys they let out but you weren't an immigration holding right no i was in gp okay and i was in vancouver and i was you know i was taking my zanx i was just like dude i just want to get out of here and it was like six to eight months i forget the stretch it seemed long it was like when are they going to come like let's go and the first couple days i'm in there i'm popping zan i'm just all out of it and stuff and uh apparently i use someone's toaster that i shouldn't use so these guys roll up in here slap me across the face i'm up like ready to go and there's two guys with knives so then they're like you're going to obey by our rules and this and that because you know it's like the hell's angels type crew and i was like all right

man so in my mind i'm just like i'm gonna get these dudes like i'm just waiting for the right time and actually one of them came up to me and they're like yo this other dude's calling you a yank and he hates americans and this and that and he's like you got to go handle him so i roll up in there open up the cell and just like honestly it was probably just someone they wanted beat up because this dude didn't have any business right running his mouth so i just pieced him up slammed the door walked out he comes screaming ah pounding on the door to the guard we all go in ourselves they shut it down and the guys who actually slapped me are down talking to the guard and I'm like oh they're gonna put me in the hole let's go and they actually stood up for me and they were like we have no idea who did it and so after that it was pretty chill but I was even surprised it was like super political you know you can't sit on these chairs can't use this toaster this microwave is only available at these times you know how it is man it's just I'm shocked they had a I've never been in prison where they had a toaster but you know every prison is different some some states they have like video games and TVs in their cells and like now that was nowadays they got like

iPads like they're texting you yeah it's like they're watching movies yeah yeah you know how sweet that would have been um so yeah so i got so i got so i got deported man and i was really happy to get out of there it was bad man i was just i went to my dad's house opened up his drawer when he wasn't home he just had all these drugs i just ate everything i wish you still had the picture he said i looked so disgust i was just passed down on his chair I was deep in the drugs, man. Like, it was bad. And I started to get sober.

And I was like, okay, what am I going to do now? My dad is living in a condo. My parents are, like, broke now. Like, we, like, I got, like, I'm on my own, which I already knew I was on my own. But, like, there's no, like, falling back. Like, parents can help when they can. But it's like, now it's like, you need to figure something out. Well, the Guatemalans I met had their connections.

And the one, especially, the one I was like my workout buddy. And the other one was like the guy making moves. And he would get. these super cheap excee pills about $2 a pop and they were super good and we were sending them back to Colorado to a connect I had and we were just testing it out in the mail and it worked so I was like hey man I called him up I was like I was like let's start sending me out let's try it so he started sending 2,000 pills a week he would vacuum seal them and in a box and then put carbon paper and it would be the whole outline of the box and you put art in it FedEx shipped me out 2,000 a week I started going to

the raves. I started finding connections. And it just started moving super fast. And I'm obviously partying my ass off at this time. And all the sudden, and I got my Bitcoin story, he's like, the Western Union started to freeze the money. We were starting to send it back. I would use like this chick, hey, here's 50 bucks. Send this Western Union. And I'll come with her. All of a sudden, they start freezing the money from my area to his area. Why? Just too much money flowing back. It looks suspicious. And who knows? Probably they had issues. issues before they were super like a pain Western Union and uh so he was like hey man buy this thing called Bitcoin and you could send it to me and I was like what is it he's like it's kind of

like a stock goes up and down I look at it was 17 cents and I was like I don't understand 17 cents for a Bitcoin yeah you imagine if I bought a hundred bucks and just forgot about it anyways a lot of people have Bitcoin story that's mine I was too ignorant to try to like understand what this was right that wasn't my mindset then even though I'm huge in now. Right. But so he's like, all right, I got a solution. I'm going to send a guy down with 100,000 pills and you just give him the cash. And when he's, when he's done, he'll drive the cash back up and I'll send the next guy down. So now he's sending, he's giving me 10 boats a week and we're going out to these raves, right? And I'm giving 100 to like five of my boys. I'm walking around.

I'm like, hey, you need pills. You need pills. You need X. You need X. And then when they would, I would point to the guy, hey, green shirt, hey, black shirt. And then sometimes secret police would grab me right and throw me on the wall search me and i'm like i'm just messed up man i don't even know what i'm talking about because i would never hold i was the mouth and i would point the people at the end of the night we'd all empty our wallet our pockets and it would just be a mountain of cash and and then it started to be too much where i would just send people in so i was just wholesaling it and uh we started hanging out with these girls and it was kind of a little strange with the one and she would come up to me and we never told her we sold but she's not

stupid right we're parting all the time she sees what's going on but she's like hey my buddy wants a boat right which is a thousand and i was like uh i don't know what you're talking about and then she asked again and then she asked one more time and she told me a price that he's going to pay which was super high and i was like well will you drive and she was like all right let's go i sat behind her seat i was like if she gets pulled over i'm pushing it right under her seat i don't even know like nothing about her and we pulled up to this macdonalds and this dude opens the door sketchy looking dude kind of you know and i could just see like a little shake and he didn't have enough money i could just tell right away it wasn't enough cash so i didn't know if he had in his pocket i was

just like this doesn't seem right pull out of here and go to the mcdonald's drive-thru while we're doing this deal and uh why the drive-thru i just didn't like to be like a sitting duck you know what i'm saying like he got in the car and we just sit there and he gets out i'd rather it look like someone's getting in my car and we're going yeah yeah and there was a mcdonalds over there so i was like go through the drive-thru why we do the deal because it just felt weird and at least i felt like i could like maybe run or something or i don't know that was just my instinct so we she pulls out and she starts to drive car comes up boom big as he smashes in the front smashes in the back this dude jumps out like freaking g-i joe on the hood pistol pointed out

us i get thrown out of the car thrown to the ground pistol to my temple i remember staring at this like half-broken walmart sign and i'm just like dude i am big trouble did you kick the drugs underneath or do you have a chance to kick it underneath the the seat oh yeah okay yeah i was gonna say because to me that's her car it's under her seat i'm fucking know what she's doing it was a setup oh i know so was she wired i don't know because she ended up going to jail and she ended up i like i don't exactly like were they setting her well you see what you're saying like are they setting her up or she's setting me up she's probably got you on wire if they're setting her up you know or or setting you i'm sorry if they're setting you up then they may not have you

enough on you to where you can say hey that fucking shit's in under her seat in her car i don't know nothing about what's going on but you're saying it's too my my theory was um that she got in trouble in california because she just had moved out here okay and she needed to like get someone to get like get her sentence done or reduced right okay but she still ended up going to like jail from what i hear well you still enough you know she might have got it reduced she still got to go i think she came out and got more trouble so a little time had you a little bit she got some time And so it was an interesting situation because then they went to my grandma's house where we were posted up or my grandma's apartment. She lived in New York and thank God she never came back and saw it.

But these guys came in and cut pillows. I mean, they tore this apartment apart. Like the movies, like ripped pictures off the wall. They found like another 3,000 pills, like 30,000 cash, all this stuff. I mean, they just took everything and all they reported was X. I mean, they took like ounces and ounces of weed. like i mean they just they clean shop and so went to jail got bailed out and i was like dude i am not doing prison time in my golden years i'm 19 years old i'm like i'm getting out of here so i went to

the post office i was like i don't know if this is going to work they issued me a passport and i was like they sent it to my house i was like this is insane i hopped on a greyhound i said goodbye to my family i went from uh colorado to indiana i said goodbye to my family i said goodbye to my family i said goodbye to my there. I was like, yeah, I'm just going to go backpack Europe. They're like, oh, cool, have fun. And then I took a train from Chicago to New York, sick about to my family. Now, they knew, and they were like freaking out, go turn yourself in, and my dad

actually supported it. He flew out there. He's like, he's like, good luck, man. He's like, I wish you the best. He's like, I'm not going to say anything that's going to stop you. He's like, I'd rather you not be in prison, too. How much time did you think you were looking at? I was looking at 4 to 8. Okay. But I mean, if I, it was probably my

first offense. Yeah, but at that, at that age it seems like forever and right and the thing was i couldn't do probation i wouldn't do probation and i wouldn't do jail so there was really no other option it sounds very familiar because me i'm running because i i had all these little charges i had a d ui which was a different incident i fell asleep i i've actually pulled over and went to sleep which i thought was responsible no so it's still the keys yeah i found that out so i got a d wa or whatever DUI and I had some drug charges and I just keep failing drug tests and it finally came to the point where I went to the judge brought in a national champ trophy set it on the podium and I was

like I just need to go to jail because I can't do probation and she gave me 10 days she cut me and I was like I want to do my wrestling career I just can't do it I can't afford it I can't drive up here like you know it was I was probation is a revolving door right probation will make you hooked on the system forever especially if you can't like I mean if it will if you if you're unwilling to stop doing drugs and alcohol it will some people success some people successfully go through probation i successfully went through probation after after later which i'll get there so so i hopped on a flight jfk to amsterdam with like two thousand dollars in my pocket when they raided my grandma's apartment they tore everything except there was a

slipper that i owed a guy a couple grand and i put it in a slipper and that was the only thing they did not find took that money i was like chiching i bought myself a ticket uh to new york or sorry to amsterdam and a couple of family members are like hey here's a couple hundred bucks have good have fun backpacking you know this and that i was like thank you i really need this got to amsterdam got locked up first day right how why so i got off the plane and i said look what can i do that i can't do when i'm in america and like all the fear had me like even when i would sleep man i remember just like every night of sleep was on the run like i was running it was always the dream would always end the same i would be running jumping through and i would get to this

cliff and i would look and the police were coming and there was and i would jump and right before i would hit and i would wake up like that like and in this dream continued to happen until two weeks of being in prison it went away forever and um so i was on the run yeah you got arrested you said i was on the run I was having these dreams, but then when I landed, I said, you know what, I'm a backpacking Europe. That's my mindset. What can I do that I don't do when I'm in America? Went to the liquor store, bought some absinth. I was like, this is cool. I've never drank this. Saw it in a movie. And then I went to the coffee shops. He'd hanging out with some Canadian guys. They're like, oh, yeah, we're going to this club tonight.

And they told me the address to it. I don't know. For some reason, that really stuck in my head. And then I went around and this Russian chick was like, hey, come on this. vocator and I'll drink with you and I was like okay and I didn't even understand what she was saying and then at the end she's like actually I don't drink but you can have my shots that's the last thing I remember and uh apparently I just fell asleep on the street or I don't really know I woke up in jail and I was like dude are you serious didn't make it 24 hours didn't make it 24 hours and like I said it's like when you I was running for my problems but I wasn't dealing with the core and so I I wake up and I'm like police officer please I'm a stupid American I am so sorry I am so sorry

please give me a second I was like begging and obviously he's like are you sober you're you good I'm like I am sober I'll never do this again I'm such a stupid America he's like all right all right all right we'll take you back to your place he's like where are you staying and the only address I remember was the club and so I was like I just told him that address he drove me straight to the club three in the morning walked out of the police car went right in the club and I was like Europe is insane. I was like, Europe is crazy. And I was like, okay, I got sober the next day.

I was like, I need to do something. I'm running out of money. So I called my cousin in New York and he was like, hey, I got this friend in Belgium. If you want to go stay with him, maybe you can get on your feet and get a job. I was like, cool. So I hopped on a bus and I was literally out of money

to the point where I was like, I'm going to have to start robbing people. And the next day it was. Because that's the normal. That's the go-to-mom. Like, that's what normal people, like, bro, like, I'm going to start. That was your thought process.

Let's got to start robbing people. Had you robbed people before? Yeah, it was robbing drug dealers. And the crazy part was the next day before I left, this dude comes up to me and he's like, I sold you a bunch of glass now. You didn't pay me. And I was like, I don't know who you are.

And he was following me. And I was like, dude, Amsterdam is sketched. I like ran and cut some corners and got away from him. And I was like, get me out of here. So I got on that bus and I went over to Bruges, Belgium. Okay. So real quick, how long have you been here before you've been here before you ran out of money because when you landed you had a few thousand right yeah it was probably

only like three weeks okay yeah i thought it was it sounded like it was like a couple days i was like a couple days like no it was it was a couple weeks and i mean i was like i was pickpocketing people at uh or not pickpocking but like at the hostels i was staying in a hostel's like 12 bucks a night 12 euros a night you know and uh you know i had to get some money to get on the train so i was you know going through people's stuff you know not proud of it at all Not proud of really much of anything except the end of the story, which we'll get to, but I made it to Belgium and this guy took me any... How can you get even more of everything you love about Porter with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard? Enjoy more freedom, more flexibility, more rewards, more of all the things you love.

Need I say more? Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value, In your first 13 months, terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. It's like, cool. And so I'm walking around and I'm like, man, I need to get a job, right? I pull out my handy resume that has my wrestling credentials and I'm going around. Because people are like, there's no way you can get a job.

You don't have a work visa. And I was like a go-getter. I was like, I will get a job. I'll get a job less than 24 hours. And I'm walking around. I go to this Irish pub and this guy's looking at it. And he's like, all right. he's like you can work in the kitchen he's like where's your work visa i was like oh it's coming in

the mail i was approved it'll be here when it comes i'll let you know he's like okay cool so i'm working here two months go by and uh he's like hey man where's that work visa and i was like oh you know the mail here it's just terrible i was like but he's like okay well if immigration comes hide in this closet and so i was like at that moment i knew what it was like i yeah and uh so six months goes by everything's pretty normal you know i'm drinking this really heavy belgium beer so i'm still drinking pretty heavy but i'm holding down the job you know and nothing fancy this crazy english guy starts working at the um the restaurant bar and one night the guy leaves just me and him there and this guy's crazy like he has no family he's just like a like a drifter he met a chicken bell or he met

a belgium chicken tenerife and moved to uh belgium with her and he's just he's just he's just a wild dude and so i'm shutting down the the restaurant and then i come downstairs and he runs the bar and a hen party comes in of like 30 chicks and me and him are like let's go we're supposed to shut down the bar but we end up parting with these chicks all night in the bar just drinking from my thing didn't charge them like we just like turned it into like a house party the dude comes in the next day freaking out prints out the the vancouver son newspaper that i'm in and he's like you're a criminal. You ever read a headline and think, wait, that's not what I read earlier, or hear a story that was covered two totally different ways and think, I wonder which one's telling the

truth. We all know the news can be biased. Algorithms push stories that they think you want to see. And some outlets spin stories to fit a certain agenda. It's exhausting trying to figure out what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just straight up misinformation. That's why I use ground news. It's a news platform that doesn't just show you the headlines. It shows you the whole story. It gathers articles from across the political spectrum, tells you the bias of each source, and even lets you compare how different outlets are framing the same event. For example, the recent federal health agency layoffs. Left-leaning news described the layoffs as a major crisis, calling them a bloodbath that could

harm important public health work like tracking diseases. On the other hand, right-leaning news saw the layoffs as positive change. They called it a win-win for taxpayers, which could save $1.8 billion a year. Both sides agree the layoffs and changes were happening, but they strongly disagree on what meant. Ground news lets you compare these side by side so you can actually see the bias and decide for yourself what to believe. You can also see things like how news sources are covering a particular story, political leaning of news outlets, and the blind spot feed where you can see stories that are disproportionately covered by one side of the political spectrum. In a world of

clickbait and echo chambers, having access to all perspectives is more important than ever. That's why I love ground news. It helps me cut through the noise and stay truly informed. And right now you can get 40% off the vantage plan for unlimited access. Just hit the link in my description, ground. dot news backslash inside and start seeing the news differently today. You guys rob me, this and that. And we walk up, we're like, dude, just pay us our salary and we'll never see us again. And he's like, no, no. So we just like ground. We're like, just open it and pay us. And he pulls it out, gives us our cash and we disappear. And I talked to him like, dude, what are we going to do? And he's like, he's like, don't worry, mate. I got, I'll get us a job in England. And I was like, all right,

let's go. So we hopped on a ferry and we went over to England. Okay. So we landed in England. I didn't know his idea of a job was us painting this empty apartment in the middle of nowhere in England in the north near Sheffield. There was no electricity, no running water, no carpet, and no furniture. So it was basically a shell of an apartment that we painted the day and we'd camp in at night. Because I had my backpack. Right.

Like I was like, like I had my like backpackers backpack. Like I looked like a backpacker. So I was like, dude, I can't do this, bro. This is like terrible. Like I'll take my chances anywhere else. Like I'm not doing this. and he's like all right let's uh he's like he's just like a hustle he's like all right let's go to the clubs and we'll get a job and i was like all right let's go so we roll up this club's like

we can't pay you guys we're like listen we'll work for free tonight and if we do a good job we want money tomorrow and he's like he's all right let's see it we filled this club of because it was like a PR we go around hey ladies come on come on come on in and we just like push him in push him in push him in all right three months of this i'm moving to student housing this crazy english guy tries to rob the safe and i was just like dude i don't even know this guy very well and he disappears he goes on a complete bender and i actually met up with this guy i fought in uh ufc england london and i remet this guy and he's been on like five episodes of life by the vow or not not life by the bow uh below deck oh life by the bow's uh fishing show that i watch um but below deck

yeah so this dude is like crazy guy if you watch his show it's probably freak you out a little but anyways so he disappears and i'm working at this club right and i'm like all right i work at the club i got a good scene i'm living in student housing you know everyone's pretty nice here so i call the guatemalan i was like bro start sending me shipments over here and he's like cool done so he starts sending shipments so i go back to the clubs and i'm like all right let's try this again now if you've ever been to england i have they do the dirtiest drugs okay they do like mcat and like it's like plant fertilizer and like like it's just like like they do a bunch of whippets and stuff i don't know if it's i don't know what any of that is it is

some weird stuff ripets is that that's that's the is it the like whipped cream yeah you i was gonna say yeah it's it's like helium or what's in the yeah it cuts the blood cells off to your brain it's just and the the x that they get they would take like 20 pills their jaws would be typewriter chewing their face off and i'm like dude this is not like it you take one pill you're going to be good for four hours trust me so we go to the clubs i give this english dude he he he's like give me four and i'm like dude they're five euros or five pounds you know it's and it's expensive to them they're like dude it's usually a one pound i get a two pound i have connections who do you think you are yank he throws four in his mouth chews him up and swallows and he's got like scars

he looks like a uh uh a hoodlum like uh what's it called like the soccer player like crazy guy you know skinhead like you know like a Manchester United fan or something and and I'm looking at this dude I'm like this dude is about to be lit and he comes back over in the club and it's like shaking me he's like you sold me fake stuff you yank you sold me fake stuff and I was like bro get away from me and so he was like following me around so I was like here take another four on me and he pops it and choose it and I was just like do this dude and he's like looking for me to try to tell me next thing you know he's on the couch just like like he couldn't even move i walked up wham slapped him i was like i was like now tell me it's

fake now tell me it's like i love you bro listen man and like and like in an english accent and i was like this is a bad place and there was like pakis pakistan people that were like running the drugs there so it was just it was like interfering and then they got word that i had like the best stuff and everyone was trying to get it finally i just found one guy just whole sailed it to him. I was like, this is not a good scene. I feel like something's going to pop off here. At least I had the senses to get out of there. So from the English guy, I heard there's a beautiful place in Tenerife, the Canary Island, Spain. So I was like, that's what I remember. I was like, I want to go to the beach. So I booked a flight. I got out of England. I flew to

Spain. I walked down the beach. I was like, man, this is paradise. I was like, there's like beautiful women, beautiful beaches. It's like so nice here. So real quick, I took geography. in Florida okay so I don't know where the canary islands are I've heard of them what what it who who is you know is that a possession of of Spain okay yeah so I would say it like this it's islands off the coast of Africa near Morocco okay so geography wise it's like Africa I know we're Africa I know we're Africa I know where Africa I know it's run by the English most of the islands but it's Spanish okay at least when I was there. It could, it could have changed. So was paradise. I walked down to the clubs and I was like,

dude, there's just a whole club scene here. I walk up and they're like, I was like, are you guys hiring? They're like, yeah, you're hired right now and like start PR in. Why didn't know that basically they pay you in drinks. You get eight drinks when you work, four drinks when you get off and you get one year old per person you bring in. Okay. Three months of this, bro, full blown alcoholic. Right. Like, I mean, I was like sleeping the four. Waking up shaky. I feel like you're full blown alcoholic pretty much before. this like it sounds like it was but this was like next level okay this was like every moment i was awake i was drinking hard like liquor all right doing drugs whatever drugs came i would just do them like

it was it was a sad moment i couldn't even afford 30 euros to sleep in a cockroach infested apartment with three other dudes i was then sleeping on the beach i was sleeping on park benches um you know couch surfing and i was at one of the lowest points of my life these Colombians that actually the son was from Miami I had known him from like the clubs and met him a couple times say hey Gringo come live with us man we don't want to see you living like this they took me in like family still are like family to this day but the Colombian dad sat me down after like three months working out eating healthy like feeling like a normal human again and he's like hey Gringo you want to go make some real money and I was like yeah I do he's like Columbia

That's when we started taking the trips, Colombia, Venezuela, Aruba, and we would package the kilos, we'd swallow them, and we'd bring them back. But the first time he sent us was the sketchiest. Okay. Yeah. How does that work? Like, how did that? So the first time, he was dating a chick who had relatives in Cali, Columbia, which Cali is, like, kind of like, ghetto. Like, it's not really a touristy.

And it's in, like, the mountains. And so he sent me and his son down there, and we, like, meet these people we've never met. which I'll send you the B-roll. And they took us all the way up into the mountains. And I'm looking around and like everybody sees me and it's just like looking at me. Like I'm in the river. There's this beautiful river. It's like out of the jungle book.

Like it's so beautiful. And I'm sitting in the river and the guys are talking to some people that are like going further up in the jungle. And I'm just like swimming. I'm like, this is paradise. And all these kids like like I remember like 14 kids circled me and they were just staring at me. There's never seen a white boy. As you said, there's not a lot of six foot. all blonde hair blue-eyed people in Columbia that's crazy not in the mountains of Cali's and I was like

I don't think probably anywhere right or are there I mean there's it looks like a German bar room yeah yeah I was gonna say you know you I was exactly I mean definitely now I hear of Colombia is a lot more like like there's a lot more tourist yeah yeah it's really but back then especially where I was at like these kids were just like mind blown and I had a sombrero on and I look at him I was like I was like, where is down the garija? And like, that's like the, like, cartel that makes the blow. Like, I eat, like, over there. And I was just like, oh, dude.

And so, like, put my sombrero down and, like, went over in the corner, tried to not be seen. It's just like, dude, they'll just kidnap someone. And we're, and we keep driving around. And it was some sketchy things. So we came down the mountain with kilos. They're putting in the blender, grinding it up. They give us some. And I'm like, oh, man, I do vines back home.

You don't know me. and that like they're like don't do a line do not do a line of it and i'm like watch this and i like do a big line of it bro i was like i double-aaked my buddy put them through a glass table and we like went to this crazy party and then it was like the craziest feeling ever followed by the worst feeling ever like my jaw was like and like my hands were curling up like it was just like i was trying to just drink their a guar dente did just feel normal because it wasn't cut it was just so pure or such of who no i mean that is it because the it was pure it was just pure it was straight from the jungle it was like 98% pure okay like if you do pure below it will like eat your nose

away like you actually want it to be cut one time not like how they cut it in america but like if you're doing like the pure from the jungle it's so like acidic that it will just like completely like burn through your nose cavity that's appealing yeah it's it's a terrible drug man You get like 10 to 15 minutes of like this insane endorphin rush and energy. And then it just, it just crash. It just crash. And it's like everything tenses up, locks up. So I was in a bad way, man.

I was like, all right, I got to never do a line again. Just do like a bump because that was like out of control. We were partying with these guys. You hear gunshots on the street. It was like, it was like dirt road with piles of trash. And you would like see homeless like in the trash eating it. And then there would be like just like a beautiful girl. just come out of nowhere like it was such like a there was like chickens and stuff like that and then

there would be like you go to the gym and there's just like beautiful girls doing like like squats like like it was just like this is such a crazy place so we go to the park and we're smoking this jay all the sudden i look up guns pointed at me it's the military and i was like flick it out they searched me took my money took my shoes and bounced just got robbed by the military yeah because they don't i don't know why they I hear they steal a lot of people's shoes. So, um,

anyways, so this is our first time trafficking. This is sketchy because I'm not even wrapping my own stuff. Like I'm a pure mule on this run. But I'm with the, the son, you know, who was my boy.

So I'm like, we'll be good. We swallow it. And it was weird, man. They drove us back to the mountains. When you say you swallow it, so they wrap it like,

so it's like 10 gram balls like the size of my thumb. Okay. So you don't really swallow you. you just like put it in with like some yogurt and just and it just goes down and you swallow like three to five every 30 minutes so you got to wake up like eight hours before and you try to get a hundred so you're swallowing them and then you get on a plane or where are you going with these and how quickly does it go through your system because at some point you're going to shit this out yeah yeah so if your flight leaves at 9 a.m. right right or let's we usually get around like 11 a.m.

right you'd wake up at like 4 a.m. and start going okay you'd swallow like three walk around a little bit swallow another three walk around a little bit you would want to eat chips and you'd feel terrible because it's so much plastic and they would put this like shiny paper on the end of it and then they would put like this soft plastic around it so it wouldn't like cut you on the way down and the Colombians told me that this paper would make us pass the x-ray. And I was like, I was like, I was like, I want to believe it, but I've never, like, I can't verify it. So, um, it's, I was going to say that I don't think anything's going to pass the x-ray. Well, we got a guy that we paid off a guy. The guy at the, you're going to be good. The guy at customs, he's on the payroll. You'll be fine. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah. You'd actually be surprised. No, I'm sure, but I mean, a lot of times, that's what, like, They say that so you feel comfortable. You go in, that guy pulls you over, so you're shit, and you're like, okay, you're going to jail. And you're like, no, no, no, where's the guy that's on the payroll? Yeah, exactly. What they will do, too, they will sacrifice people. They will be like, hey, man, I'll pay you like 10K to bring them back, like, half a kilo,

which is, like, stupid. And then they'll put another guy with, like, five kilos in a suitcase. And they'll anonymously tip off that there's someone on there. So the police will jump on the guy with the half a kilo. The other guy goes straight through. like they are sacrificing people like that all the time it happens all the time that's so dirty you believe that take someone's life years of their life like there's a lot of like they're drug dealers i mean their cards cartel what do you expect like yeah yeah they're not they don't

you do some evil stuff that's an evil drug and um it was so we're about to swallow the night before they drive us back up to the mountains i'm like what are we doing they wouldn't tell us like oh i'm like dude i'm about to get like traffic Like, I don't know what's going on. And I'm like, telling him what I was like, I'm about to jump out of this car, bro. Like, what are we doing? So we get to the river. And they do like some like weird like Santeria stuff on us, like whipping us with sage and like praying.

Like it was weird, bro. And then we drove back down in this freezing cold river. And I remember waiting the night before I could not sleep good. The movie Blow comes on and an American gangster comes on. And I'm like, I do not want to watch the end of these movies because they get caught. And so we wake up. swallowing my buddy has a little bit harder time swallowing it and my the guy in the coming we're calling him and he's like he's like hey man swallow a couple more and i'll give you

this much more money and i'm like all right all right all right so we swallow and uh then we head to the airport drink whiskey right after totally forget that you have them in you you're just a drunk tourist going home right go to the airport and uh yeah we passed through about the fifth trip the fifth trip the fifth trip so in the beginning i just did you it was only like six seven thousand euros which was a lot for me it was like 10 gs

let's think that i mean not for not for the risk but the risk was and the first one was scary because like the one was staying in me forever and it finally came out and it was like soft like it was ready to break and when i came home i got definitely ill sick from the first time and i was like at the the gas station like buying a beer

And I was like, dude, I'm going to die. I think one's breaking in my stomach. But it was just this, like, illness because I was in the river and the stress and swallowing all that plastic. It was terrible. But then I was like, all right, I know what to expect. And we're going to wrap our own stuff. I was like, I will never eat nothing that I don't wrap.

And we're going to extra do it. So we extra did it. We went down there, me and the dad. And we started doing it together. And we were bringing them way more. And, you know, I was keeping some. So we would be able to go to the club and make a lot more money. You know, we could sell it.

basically $900 a kilo bring it back to Spain turn it into two kilos it's still stronger than anyone else's stuff and you sell it for 35,000 euros you're basically turning a $900 into $100,000 that's a good that's a good rate of return it's yeah it's a good margin but it's still for what you're doing it's sketch yeah yeah and it's not I mean yeah what happens it well I think we're about to find out what happens if you get caught. What happened if you got? So, yeah, so it's the fourth trip, right?

And I'm going through the airport. And now we kind of got a rhythm, right? We know what we're doing. We would go to Columbia for a month, go back to Spain for three months, and then come back. And this black guy comes up to me in the airport, and he's like, Domi Supassorte,

and I'm like, no comprendester. I act like American. And he's like, pulls out the badge, secret police. Give me your passport. Opens it. He's like, oh, you like Colombia, huh? Yeah, you like.

it and I was like yeah I have a girlfriend here he's like yeah sit down holds my passport and I was like oh dude beautiful girl next to me sketchy looking dude next to me and I'm like I look to the girl I'm like hey where are we going she's like he tells me Spanish to x-ray and I was like dude at this moment and I did I had no idea I was like maybe I would get four years in a Columbia nine to 12 years in a Colombian prison that was it that was game over for me thank you Lord that I did not get caught in there so I walk in and it's this x-ray and I'm doing everything I can to not

think about what's going to happen to me because like I am the most nervous I've ever been in my life like I have a kilo sitting inside my stomach and I'm going to the x-ray in Bogota Columbia so I'm just trying to think of like fun times and just put my mind in a different place I walk in this room it's this room the size of your podcast studio big machine I walk in there it's like a treadmill push me through and I'm like looking at them like just like in like pale and they're just like can in one d s and your highness have a good day and i was like fingerprint sign and the shot of adrenaline that hit me after that was like ah i got like i got like i could jump and touch the ceiling and i just walk and i was like

don't look crazy right now don't look crazy and i just walk walk and i go in the airplane and like the plane's about to take off and leave us i walk in the airplane i see the columbia guy and he's like like looking at me he's like you're good you good and i was like i'm good bro I'm good. The paper worked. No way. The paperwork. Stop it.

The paper worked. Dude, that was so crazy. But it was bad because we started to get cocky, right? Like, what are they going to do? Take us to the X-ray? Listen, we've heard this so many times. The worst thing was, I got away with it. That was the worst.

So now it's like, okay, now we're going to throw steroids on it because, you know? Yeah, because what's the worst they can do? Take us to the hospital, or I mean, x-ray us? Yeah. So a couple trips go by. we make this trip to Aruba, right? And we usually never fly directly back to the Canary Islands. It's always the mainland of Spain, Madrid, Barcelona, then Tenerife.

But this time, we couldn't find the work in Aruba, which we usually can find. It's a little more expensive there, but it's like, it's not good to keep going to Colombia. You know, you want to mix up the location. And we went to Venezuela. That was pretty crazy, too. And I passed the X-ray again in Venezuela. So now we're in Aruba, and we finally find the work. We keep extending our stay, which could have brought up some red flags, right?

We were there two weeks, and we moved it to another two weeks, and another two weeks. And we were like, all right, we got to go if you don't find it. We found it. And we wrapped this stuff up, and we swallowing it. We go to Venezuela directly to Spain this time. And we land in the Canary Islands. And me and this guy, we act like we don't know each other because it's not a good look. if me and him are like he's older Colombian gentleman and I'm white boy so we walk through

they see me I'm the only white boy on the flight hey you come in the office and this has happened one other time they question me what are you doing here why do you keep coming back here I was like I have a girlfriend and they're like uh and like I pull up my wallet no credit cards just cash just like 5k cash or something and they're like yeah that's sketch and I was like I got sent western unions and they're like rich people don't do that yeah so my girlfriend comes in verifies that she's with me and then they let us go and we walked down to the car and the Columbia made a bad movie should have hopped on a taxi and got out of there he waited for us in car car garage right when we met up boom they jumped on us secret police I'm just running my

mouth to them I'm like I'm like I'm a tourist here I spent money here this is my girlfriend she's crying her eyes out because she's involved in this now and they're like all right we're just gonna we're gonna they didn't have an x-ray because it's such an old airport so they took us to the hospital well that x-ray is a little bit stronger so we go there and they put the plaque on the wall that I don't move and I'm like

and they're like no no do not move so then they laid me on the bed finally where I couldn't move and they took it and I was like and then they were like looking at it and they're like all right man we don't really see anything we're actually really sorry this and that we just have to have the doctor sign off on it

this and that I was like yeah that's right I was like you guys should be paying me for this I'm like, this is complete crap. You're traumatizing my girlfriend, this and that. This beautiful doctor throws it on the screen. And she's like, uh-uh. You have drugs. You have balls of drugs in your intestine.

She told me in Spanish. She's like, what is it? What's the drugs in it? And I was like, no. And she's like, no, it's Seguro. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's for sure. And finally, they were just like, I was like, I ate Chinese food. And like, shut up.

Boom. and yeah that was rough man i stayed in the hospital for three or four days they took my girl out of there she was crying her eyes out she went to jail she missed picking her kid up from school i felt terrible i was like let me sign stuff to get her out she has nothing to do it she doesn't even know we're doing this and they're like yeah you have to pass all this stuff first clummy guy made a big mistake he told him the exact amount that we had i was gonna pinch off like 10 and just like hold that and get a nice come up in jail told the exact amount that we had and I was like dude why did you say it and uh because I told

them 10 less so they were mad at me and they made us drink this nasty laxative and it was just like I was pissing out my ass bro like day two no nutrients I was like dying and they like came up with a need I was like get away from me and they're like she's like it's just nutrients and I was like just give me food and they're like no it'll break in your stomach it'll make it break I'm like I was like and I didn't want to be like well I've done this like like three 13 times and it won't like trust me I know what I need and so finally it was like day four I was like all right what is that I was like I was like I need it because it was like like I was felt like I was gonna die like it was like green coming out and we had to like they'd like watch us every time it was so

bad bro and I was sleeping in every 15 minutes you wake me up can you go yet can you go yet can you go yeah because they couldn't go home apparently or something like that it takes shifts finally I pass all the drugs I come down to the jail sign a piece of paper they let my girlfriend go thank God bless their heart and then I get thrown in general population

in the Canary Islands okay me and the guy get separated how bad is the canary how bad is that it can be very bad depending on where you're at just because there's like all right the good parts about it is you get your own clothes

street clothes there's activities if you're well behaved like lifting weights boxing but if you get a psychopath there's a lot of weapons like like a lot like you can get crazy fights sprawls break out um and you get a vis-a-vis which is like a conjugal visit once every two weeks nice so right you you can live like you can arrange it you know if you have a girlfriend you know what I'm saying like it's you you can live life in there Like, if you have a wife, they let you go. If it's a girlfriend, you have to, like, prove it

or do, like, phone meetings for, like, 12 weeks, and then you can take to the next level. So, but, yeah, I mean, dude, I'm sitting in, I'm hearing people screaming, alarms going off. They throw me a bag in there. I look in there, and there's condoms and loob. And I'm like, what is this place? Like, all this weird stuff, like, a toothbrush and, like, five condoms of loom.

But I didn't know they could do these, like, conjugal visits. So I'm like, I was like, bro, what is this? is this place. I was like, this is, I was like, and then right when we walked in, they're all like, yes, a cuckolo. Like, look at that ass. Look at that. Like, so like, and they separated me. So I was like, I was like ready to go, bro. But actually, a lot of them were more talk, bark than bite. And I just went in there, man, stayed to myself. And it was crazy, though, about four months in, they're like, hey, we're going to test you for tuberculosis. And we're going in there and they're like sticking this needle. And if it blows up, you have to

tuberculosis and I'm seeing these like Moroccan dudes that I've been hanging out with they're blowing out. I'm like you just threw me in a holding with like uh with all these people with tuberculosis because half of were from Africa yeah and I was like this is crazy so I had to choose in there there was a way I could continue to do drugs there was all these pills they'd give you and or I was like dude I have to change my life right I started to sober up and come to this realization I had this epiphany I was like dude I'm not meant to be here like I was I woke up in the middle of the night, looked at myself in the mirror and, like, screamed, scared the death out of my roommate. And I was like, I'm done living this life.

Like, it was like a pinnacle moment. So I started training. I went up to the wrestling program, and it takes three months to get in. I showed him my ears. They let me in day one. I was like, let's go. So I started wrestling, fell in love with wrestling again. They had a kickboxing program, started doing that.

And I was just like, I started going to church. God started to call on me and put this dream in my heart. He's like, you're going to be out. He's like, you're going to get out of here and be a UFC champ, proclaim my name of the world. and I was like, let's go. So every day my goal is to train my mind, body, and spirit. I had never read a book in my life. All I would do is read books, read the Bible, train, and learn Spanish and go to church.

Like it was like, it was like training camp had begun. There was a really good kickboxer in there. He would beat me up a kickboxing. I beat him up in wrestling. I was like, dude, let's help each other. Let's do it. We started training. He got released and the next day a Muay Thai fighter came in.

I beat the team that came in from the streets, a professional team of Lucha Canaria, which I have a picture of, they put me in the newspaper, and I gave them this crazy story. I was like, I love, done jiu-jitsu, I've done wrestling, but I love nothing more than Lucha Canaria. And I was like, maybe I'm going to have a career here. The president of the federation of Luch-Cannaria wrote the ward in a letter and said, keep this American here. Stop.

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Tickets on sale now. August 1st. When he gets out, we're going to sign him with a contract. I'm like, these guys are making money doing this. I was like, this could be a career for me. The next time the warden came up to me, he's like, you better not talk in the newspaper anymore. They're like very, like, racist.

Like, we're the best at our sport. No American's going to come in here. Another team comes in. We beat the team, me and this other crazy American. And we're getting involved. fights they pair me up with this guy from chicago and this dude is crazy like he did eight years in a chicago prison and then he is done five years in a spanish prison and he is just like this crazy white boy like just been in the game and he is giving spanish dudes slap collecting drug

uh money like just doing like we were making wine we started to make wine and uh we went out and this team. I talked to the newspaper. He's the type of guy that when the guards wouldn't give him what they wanted, he would go up to them and he would say, because he started like brawls before, he was like, you give me this, or I promise you there's going to be CNN helicopters over this. And they're like, what? And he's like, I promise you, there'll be helicopters over this prison. And then he would just walk away. And like, he actually had the guards, like, scared a little bit of him because, like, he would do crazy brawls because there's broomsticks. And he would go in with broomsticks and do these words. So anyways, me and him, they moved us away real quick.

They found out that was not a good idea. Me and him beat this team. I talked to the newspaper and I was like, I love Lucia Canary. I was doing the whole thing. They put a picture on me in the newspaper. The warden came in through a thing in my face. She's like, get out of here. Pack your stuff. You're getting out of here right now. Like they were pissed that I did that. My girlfriend was visiting me and then one day she called me and said she's going to be there tomorrow. And, and, And I showed up to the thing, and they were like, she's not here. And I was like, what? And I called her, and her number was off.

And it was like three months later, it was like, it was literally like the movie below, I had a visitor. And I was like, oh, who's that? I walked to the phone visit. And she's like, Ian, I can't do this anymore. I just had to tell you face to face, put the phone down and walked away. And how much, have you been sentenced yet? I stayed in there a year and a half without being sentenced.

And they could keep you up to four years, which is. they would do to a lot of foreigners the good thing is if you have under a kilo which they only put i have like 400 grams which i was cool with all right um because apparently they kept a little bit pocket a lot of that stuff you get three to six years if you have a kilo to a million kilos six to 10 i was like bro i should because i met this this french mafia guy he had a hundred kilos was gone a boat and i was like man that's the gig and he got out suited than me started paying all these people and next thing you know he's walking a free man so after a year and a half i went to court and they said you got three and a half years right if you and if you i was like all right i was like

three three years six months and i was like okay and thank god right if you get caught in america Columbia oh yeah yeah yeah what 10 years if you get caught in Amsterdam with a kilo they give you eight months in jail and they let you go geez because it happens all the time yeah they would be filled there so um so you had two more years to go or do you have a good time so I had um I was about a year and a half in I was looking at doing about another year and a half to maybe to you know if I had to do the whole time and I get this bag thrown on my face pack your stuff you're getting out of here. I was like, all right, let's go. Pack my stuff. I'm throwing chairs. I'm like, this is, because they were, I had a friend there was bringing me contacts. I had my terrible

vision. And he was maybe putting some money on my books. And that was like my whole life there. I'd been living there for two and a half years before. So they shipped me, they caught everybody to the north of Spain. And this is crazy, man. It was like cops and ski masks. We roll up to the airport. You can't even look up. They walk up, make you take your shoelace up, they dig their fingers through your mouth and then they put you on this airplane and you're just like this head down every time you look up wham they'll smack your head and it was like it was like these cops were not messing around it was like secret like uh police or like i don't even know the like they were like a special branch in the government that would because there was like rapist terrorist drug dealers

like big people on this 150 people shipped to the north of spain they flew us to the north of spain we got there like these guys are like kicking their shoes off because they they were super racist to the canarians like you're speak castiano which is like the normal Spanish because they speak like canarians and i remember this dude kicks his shoes off when they finally left the hand cuts off and tries going out the police and they just wham cut his ear and half like and i'm over here just trying to eat a bologna sandwich and there's like a brawl going on and it was it was wild man they were throwing me in with like terrorists and like all these crazy people but they mostly thought i was russian so i didn't have any issues

then i got to leone spain the north of spain finally after three months was able to call my parents i'm good this and that like they had they moved me they don't give you any phone calls they don't let you call when you're moving or in transit because you could try to have someone intercept you yeah so i get there uh first two days someone tried like taking a chicken leg from me blasted him in the lunchroom got two two weeks it was two to three weeks of isolation right off the bat you can't let someone try you right when you come in a new prison right um and man i'm just losing my mind bro like i was counting the cracks in the room were you ever in isolation yeah but it was it was i was in the shoe for i mean multiple times but long a stretch was like 45 days and i'm sure it was

vastly different than this was coleman federal prison we have i have my own toilet my own sink i have my own shower. It's just me in the room. The cops are bringing me books. It was okay. It was clean. Yeah, yeah. I would come in some cells and there would be pigeon nests in there and it would smell like mold. Oh, my God. The only problem with that was it was so cold. It was so freezing cold. That was the, I mean, so I'm, you know. Where was this prison again? This was a place called Leon's fame. Is there air conditioning? No, there's no air conditioning. And that was the hardest part about in the Tenerife because there was a lot hotter there.

In the summer, you'd be so hot at night. You'd just keep waking up and wet a rag and just put it on you and just rub it on you. And I remember the ants were so bad. They would just keep coming in a room, keep coming in a room. I remember at one point I just surrendered and just like let them crawl on me.

And now I have like PTSD. Like if bugs crawl on me, I like freak out. And then in the summer, the water would burn your skin off in the shower. and then in the winter it was like an ice plunge so in the summer you'd have to fill up a bucket let it cool down for about half an hour and then a bird bath splash yeah do a little bird bath so but in leon spain it was just so cold because it's the north of spain and it was there in winter we'd have like four blankets it was just so cold but in this time in the cell i just start losing my mind i'm counting

cracks in the room i'm rolling up my bed i'm boxing i'm doing handstands i'm just doing all this wild stuff talking to myself finally i'm just like dude god if you're real i need you i'm freaking out right now and all i had was a bible that was in spanish and i didn't read spanish at the time and i was just opened it and it i dude i read this bible like it was my first language and god just like spoke to me and brought this peace on my heart and i was just like thank you lord like i just felt the tears rolled down my eyes and it felt the holy spirit on me and i just had like two weeks of the most peaceful like uh isolation by myself and it was just like and i could never read in spanish again after that moment but it was like this empowering moment and you would have thought at that moment i would have

like actually like turned to god but it wasn't enough so i found this boxing program there was like a spanish champ there i made all my activities two activities boxing one um strength conditioning so i just kept my fight camp going they would play all these mind games with you that was was like probably the worst part to be honest in the spanish prison fights were not that bad um there was definitely a lot of knives but you had i would i never use knives i would rather use a broomstick like come out me with a knife and i'll have a broomstick i'll win that and uh but the way that they would get you is mental warfare they would send you a paper and be like yeah you're going to get out next week and this is the co or the the prison okay this yeah so they would send you a piece of paperwork and you'd

read it you get someone to translate and you're like dude i'm almost going to get out they're gonna they're gonna expel me from their country thank god and then a week would go by you'd ask the guard hey what's going on with my stuff oh manana they would always tell me menna tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow and they would do this for like six months bro just playing game send you a letter oh yeah you're gonna get out i signed this paper finally that i would get i would couldn't come back to i thought it was just spain but it was all of the eve for five years they were like do you want to sign this paper and you will cut your sentence by one fourth so basically instead of three and a half years I was going to get like two years and seven months and I was like where do I

sign give me it so I signed it then new papers new papers new papers finally I'd get to the point where I was like dude I don't care I don't that was how you beat them you don't care anymore I don't care keep me here forever because they would get like a kick out of it they would love it they would like call you send you this paper and be like oh yeah you're almost going to get out and finally I just let it go two years and seven months they put me on a plane they took me to the airport kept put me in a holding cell walked me to there took the handcuffs off me put walked me on the plane gave my passport to the flight attendant I was now a free man for the first time in two years and seven months and I was just freaking out on this plane I was like this is crazy I was like talking the girls

all crazy I was walking around like bro like people were like what is wrong with this guy I'm like walking around like feeling all good and I remember I Every time they came over, I ordered a wine thing. I knew I couldn't drink, but I was like, I was like, I'm in for it when I landed in JFK. When I saw those, when I saw those New York buildings, I just drank all three because I was like felony warrants. And I was like, in my mind, I was like, should I run? And I was like, no, 9-11. I was like, they're not, that's not going to work.

Because I was like, I did not want to go back to jail. Like, it felt so good to have a taste of freedom for 14 hours. And I landed. I walk up handed my passport scans red or whatever they sir how long you've been out the country I'm like a while they're like how long's a while five years they're like okay come with us take me in the back to keep me in this like holding cell for like three days bro I hear all these like immigration like these like illegal aliens come with no documents and I'm hearing them scream and like there's some crazy stuff behind the scenes they do to these people that come

with no documents because they're like they want to know who they are and they're holding you in in the airport in the airport yeah for 48 hours okay then they get to call that i have a felony warrant in colorado and there's no bail and i'm like come on let me out and they were cool with me because i i was who i was but they would get so mad when people would come with fake papers because they're like who are you and like i don't know if they were beating these people but i heard them screaming then they moved me to the jamaica queen's jailhouse that was so bad bro is there all weekend there was like when addicts like puking in the toilet i had to big Italian leather jacket that thank God this Italian guy gave it to me I like lived in that

jacket bro I just stood there and it was just the most disgusting holding cell and people would come in people would come in people get taken out finally go to the guard I'm like guard what's going on what's up like I'm still here 48 hours later you're a special case shut up so finally Monday comes I go to court the judge says no bail you are a fugitive and you're going to rikers Island. The lawyer, the public defender, pulls me in an office. She says, you are going to Rikers Island. You need to go to protected custody right now. And I was like, what? I'm not going to Punk City. Why? I mean, why, why are they want you to go to protective custody? Because I'm a white boy. And Rikers Island? I mean, okay. Yeah. So I, and that's what I thought. I had the same

I'm assuming there's, there's, there's white guys in New York, right? I mean, there's, there's got to be. Not in Rikers. no okay you'll get everyone every now i saw one guy and there was a there was a super irish guy in our cell too but like he just was like mobbed up you know um but so i'm like no i had the mentality you throw me at the wolves i'll lead the pack and i start getting on this bus i get on this bus and we're driving and i'm like dude this is actually an island like whoa this is like like legit an island and it's crazy dude we walk in there and there's just it's like a zoo screaming like all the sudden someone's getting drug down we all have to put our faces to the

wall the guard comes up to my ear ha and i'm just like like bro what is going like a white guard and i'm like this is crazy bro and i'm walking and the guard goes man you must be one tough white boy i said why's that he said we don't see your kind around here and i'm like you're damn right I am and in my inside I'm like where am I like this is crazy like I was like because I was going to maximum security because I was a fugitive right so they throw me in there I get swarmed right away who are you where you from this and that have a snicker bar under my pillow like I'm just like bro get all this out like I know all these prison tricks you know like get get this stuff out of here like I don't want nothing I don't want no issues I don't want no problems I'm just doing my

thing so they see me shadow boxing in the cell you think you fight we fight for real on the streets and you got the guards coming and throwing up gang signs to the inmates and like i told you they threw in a opposite gang member and they just start beating this dude i mean five on one just boom boom boom dude drops bleeding and the guards sitting over here reading his newspaper eating a sandwich the dude's bleeding out i'm seeing a pool of blood and one of the guys comes around and soccer kicks him in the face and i was like dude i can't look at this so i just start working out like a savage in there and it was the hardest part of my entire prison sentence the mountain i had to look over my back and i remember the first day i could speak spanish like fluent i still can for the most part but i was like living like

where i only spoke spanish and there was some like you know obviously some latins and i was speaking to them and uh you know it was lunchtime the first day and i was like dude because you have one you have one outfit you had another gang over here and i was just like dude and i remember a guy told me he said you tough white boy but lone wolves get eaten in here and i was just like man and one of the guys that speaks spanish was like hey man come sit over here i was like thank god so i kind of blended in for a little while um about three weeks later i get called to go to court i'm like okay good let's get out of here and to go to court you got to go through this process as you know pull down your pants squat and cough they lock you up they drive you to the courthouse they throw you in this

trusting holdings sell they feed you nasty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches i sat there eight hours no judge no lawyer they and then they ship me back and i'm like what are we doing next day they do it again and now i'm pissed what are we doing they say highness you're going to court the next morning and i said you ain't gonna i ain't going and one of the latin guys he goes bro they come in with tasers trust me you want to go so i'm just like fuming and they they come in handcuff me they have tasers and stuff and I'm like look let's go and they take me the court they do the whole thing again they take me back and I get back there and one of the game members is like yo we're using your phone today and I was like ain't nobody using my phone and we go in the back and this fight breaks

out and dude pulls a knife I drop him we get in this fight and uh you know the fight breaks up the spanish guys actually stood up for me for a second because i was about to get rushed i took my shirt off and have my shirt my hand about to grab knives and uh they break everything up they put in the cell and the spanish guy comes up to me the latin he goes man he goes we like you but you ain't one of us and they got an sOS on you he goes if my my my my advice is go to protect custody you ain't no punk go and i was like what's a sOS like stab on site and i was like geez so And there's strength in numbers. Like, it doesn't matter how tough you are.

There's, there's eight guys that rush you. And they're just going to stab you from everywhere. Yeah, it's not going to. But even if it was a fight, eight guys on one, it doesn't matter how tough you. It's, I've got eight or ten guys are going to, you know what I'm saying? Even if you, if you remove the knives, it doesn't matter. There's eight fucking guys. But I would way rather them come with fists.

Yeah, no, obviously, yeah. Because there's nothing worse than throwing and getting stabbed in the back or something like that. That's, you know, fortunately, I avoided all that. Yeah, I was going to say, I watched a, or there was a black guy that was like six foot four in, uh, uh, in, in Georgia. And he, big guy decided, you know, we, you have one TV and it was all in 80% of the cell, 90% more like was all Mexicans. And he was sick of watching like, you know, whatever their Mexican, the Spanish TV. So he finally decided, you know what, fuck this. And he got up to change it. They said, change it back. He said no. And he got rushed by like. 10 Mexicans. He goes, I thought I could take them. He's like, you know, they're little. He's, but there was fucking 10 of them.

You know what I'm saying? There's just too many. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying is like the tough guy thing. Like, I get it, but that's great if it's one, two, maybe three, but when it's eight, fuck. And then if there's nine, and they rush you with like three, four or five guys. Yeah. I mean, once you're on, then it's too much.

Three is a lot. Yeah. Three and then eight. Four, it's like. And then if they have even three of them have knives, like it's over. It's done. Like you, you, you, you, yeah. You're smoked, and there's nothing you can do, especially when,

and the part that really freaked me out was the guards. Yeah, they're not helping. They're not doing anything. So it was kind of crazy, too. We all kind of actually came together. Like, this is how crazy state it was. We were watching the Super Bowl, right? And all of a sudden they shut it off because they would shut us down at 6 p.m.

And everyone starts freaking out, like turn on the Super Bowl again. And they're like, no. And so everybody starts flipping chairs, taking their shirts off, smashing on the door like full on riot and we all came together blacks whites like like it was black white me the irish guy and all the latinos and like some guy comes in and he counts us like this and then he turns the tv back on i think they were legit counting to see how many people they would have to go against and they were like no and uh so going back to where i uh the latin guy's like bro you got to go i call the guard over guard take me out of here man these guys are going to kill me

i got to go protect the cut see let's go right now and i'll never forget it bro eff you white boy boom slam my door shut and that's when i was like okay there's going to be like four or five of them but they have to go through this small door so in my mind i was like reading the art of war in there and like i was like okay i'm going to make armor i'm making knives like i was just up all night I was like, I'm going to get them. And the Latin guy was, like, throwing me over Suboxin. So I'm, like, taking this stuff, tweaking out, like, praying to God, like, please, Lord, get me out of this. But if you don't give me the strength to beat these guys and, like, man, I was just trying to make weapons and everything I could.

And all of a sudden, boom, my door opens up. And I'm, like, tweaked out, jump up. And I look, and it's these big white boys. And they're like, Heinish. And I'm like, what? And they look at me, like, like, my mattress was flipped up. All my sheets were everywhere. it was like the whole cell was torn apart and like let's go and I was like who are you guys

and they're like U.S. Marshal and I was like thank you God and had a man I was like let's go put him on walk me out of here and as I walked by all those guys like wherever you go we're going and get you and I was like my mom was like coming to Colorado and um and the guys like hey man you got any personal belongings anything at the office and I had all my passport all this stuff I was like, nope, let's go, let's go, because they have everybody, I mean, there's people everywhere. So we got on there, and like I said, they put me in handcuffs, shackled like this, hunched over.

For 11 days, they drove me around. 48 hours, they drove me to Pennsylvania, to Vermont, back to New York. 48 hours, I was back in New York. The heater was broken in this van, and they drove through the night. And if you know on East Coast, I don't know, on February, it is freezing there was literally ice we were shivered like this and we'd be like guard we're freezing our ass off help us or do something and they'll be like shut up or we won't feed you and they feed you

three square meals a day of McDonald's and burger king they only would let us go pee every six hours so i quit drinking water because there was no point because one time i was like dude i am gonna piss my pants he goes deal with a bounce though gatory bottle off my head and i had to like hit my knees driving and just piss all over myself try to get in this bottle it was like treating like an animal like more than ever in the canary islands i was like this is crazy i'm in america like what is going on they're doing circles because every state line they crossed every jail they dropped off they get paid more so they were just doing circles all around the country every 72 hours they were required to let you go to a jail and take a night sleep but every time i would lay my head down heinish you're on the next van and so they

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And you'd just be chilling like this. And I'm like, and I was like, dude, we're cool, right? And I was like, you really think you could escape? And he's like, oh, for sure, 100%. He told me he escaped. He would put him in the back of a cop car handcuffed. He would push the, the, you know how the bar goes like this? He would push a gap.

He'd jump in the front seat and then unlock the door and slip the cuffs and get out. And he was like, I got a kid now, so I'm not going to escape. And I was like, tell me when you would escape. And he's all like chilling with his slip cuffs the whole time. And finally, and he would like put them on before they would come. and then one time there was an opening where they had the door open and they were taking someone in and he's like now i was like wow this dude's legit but it was just like meeting these crazy people i thought this one guy was going to die it was so cold in the beginning part of it we were just shivering

and we would just bounce at night like this just bounce because you couldn't sleep so finally i get to the mountains in colorado they let us off of this jail cell and it was like this nice jail man and I had bed sheets and a pillowcase. That's like so rare for us in prison. And dude, I went and I couldn't sleep. I had like crazy insomnia. Finally, I went to sleep and I made it finally to my destination in Jefferson County, Colorado. And about three days of that, my mom posted bail and I was a free man for the first time,

2014 Valentine's Day. How many felony warrants are you being held on? know what and this is all from the original from the original ecstasy thing yep a couple thousand pills so you still have to face those charges yep that sucks like that's like okay yeah so um i know the common denominator of all the trouble's drinking something like i cannot drink and i was like i probably should go to church too i went to this church and it was like all they talked about was money and i was like i don't need church i got my relationship with god which the devil was lying to me because i needed a community around me to build me up and at least

keep me accountable and and have fellowship but i just knew i couldn't drink i think i broke like three times um but i found this gym super discipline structure coach started training went four and o as an amateur really fast all knockouts all submissions then he's like all right you're going pro i want eight and no as a professional and now I'm in the fight of my life my entire hard work is to the pinnacle of this fight if I win in this fight I go to the UFC if I lose them in the back of the line you're out on bond right no yeah okay so you're still waiting to go to either or what do you I mean have you know what's happening with the you know what's happening there like are you are they giving you an offer like come to jail for

five years or two or a year yeah anything so what happened was when you post bail there was like uh it's not it's not called uh it's not probation it's not parole it's post trial probation pre trial release pre trial release so i'm on ua's i got to go to classes i got to check in with all these things i have to like be on point and i was super clean edge like i was like i am doing everything perfect And so I was doing all these stuff And I was winning all these fights My aunt was a social worker in that county I finally had my court case

That was going to give me my sentence I went in front of the judge Showed him all the fights My aunt got up and had a speech She got me this amazing public defender And my fight coach got up and had a speech I filled the entire stands with my whole MMA team There was probably about 15 guys in there

everyone just sitting there like you know back in me and the judge is like well mr heinish since you haven't been in trouble in the past five years we are going to give you no jail time five years probation no extra fines which i already owed like 30 grand and supervised probation they had no idea that i was locked up in spain well i mean thank god the left hand i don't know what the right hand's doing seriously and dude i'm telling you i was pitted out like i was so nervous i did not want to go to jail again so they gave me this probation officer did this happen before the pro fight or the fight that could could you could send you to the ufc yes so it did that happen before and okay yeah yeah yeah yeah so i kind of i kind of skipped that i'm glad you brought that up because my dad's

like why don't you talk about that i'm like i just forget about that because it went so fast it was probably about my third professional fight and that's when I had my court hearing so I had like I had a really strong team behind me because you know we delayed delay delay delay delay and then um we went to court and we had all this ammo of like look this guy's winning fights he has a promising career in m-ma my coach went up and was like he's going to be a UFC fighter my aunt went up and like this is a good kid he just got caught up in drugs and alcohol and he's sober now boom five years probation they sent me to this latina uh probation because you can get bad probation officers oh yeah real bad bro this chick i was speaking

spanish to her telling her about my fight career she ended up like wanting like fight posters and like we became like cool like i even wrote her an email after the end so after three years of probation um she started she was just like i'm gonna end it early and uh the uAs they were making me do were um they give you a thing and you go in the room so i did start smoking bringing fake piece so what happened with the what happened with so one like you know the um like you you definitely got blessed you know i was blessed yeah but um what happened with the fight so you're gonna you're about to do this fight and then you can go to the ufc yeah so i break out of probation right and now i'm full steam ahead like i told you i broke like three times drinking

alcohol and i was like dude focus focus i was just trying to make myself focus i'm fighting Well, a year before this fight that I was supposed to win, I tore my LCL a week before the fight. Went to the doctor, wrote me 40 percocet prescription, instantly hooked. Now I'm doing oxy. I'm smoking it. I'm snorting it. I'm fully addicted to painkillers.

When you're not living right outside of the cage, it shows inside of it. I went in that fight just wasn't mentally there. about submitted first round was devastated and I was like man Ian you really messed this up you're addicted to drugs again you almost had everything you worked for and it's going to be gone now

so I went on this camping trip and about six months into this drug use I met Nate the Great Mark Corps was a UFC legend and he's a sold out Christian a pastor and he's training with me and he's like dude come to our Bible study so I'll go to his Bible study I'll go to his church sometimes

And he wrote me this Bible, so he's like, go on a camping trip and just read this at some point. I didn't want to read nothing. I went on this camping trip, I chopped wood till my hands bled. I went on this hike where we summited the mountain hit like 70 mile hour winds. My buddy almost died. I just wanted to feel pain. Finally, I went back to the campsite and I was devastated. I lost this fight.

Like, I was so mad at myself. I was like, dude, there's no point of living. Like, you're just going to be addicted to drugs and fail. Like, it was just like these voices in my head. And finally, my buddy's like, hey man. let's just read this Bible study. So we read it, and it was challenging my salvation. It was like, you're not even saved.

You have no power of God in you. And I felt offended at first. I was like, who is this guy? I have my relationship with God. And then it smacked me like a ton of bricks. It was like, you were living as a hypocrite. You're doing drugs. You're hooking up with chicks.

And you're bonded to this generational curse of addiction. And at that moment, I was like, God, if you're real, take my life. Because if not, I'm going to take it. Because I don't even want to be alive. Every time I try to control it, I fail and end up broken and hopeless. And at that moment, man, I felt this peace that came over me like I felt in that prison cell. And this time I stayed to it. I went to church the next week.

It was a baptism call. I felt so strong in my heart that God was calling me. I went up and got baptized. As I walked in that water, it looked clear. When I walked out, I looked back. It looked black to me. And I felt God was said, there is your sin and your addiction dead. At that time, I was broke.

I was living in my buddy's basement. I wasn't in the UFC. I'd never pay taxes in my life. I was just a wild, dude. One year later, I had met my wife, married my wife, broke into the UFC, broke into the top 10, bought a house, and was a taxpaying citizen for the first time of my life.

So God just opened the blessings, and I was finally free from addiction. It was a powerful moment. Yeah, so, I mean, not to say that, like, everything gets easier at that moment. You know, I've had some serious challenges, is health-wise, you know, my third fight in the UFC, I was number nine in the world, fighting the guys at the highest level. But thank God I met my wife, man. What an angel she was.

Never had a speeding ticket in her life, just a godly, beautiful woman. And she was in functional medicine. And I had all these issues, man. I had like, I kept getting these skin things that I got in prison. Like, it would just be like these, like, they call it follicitis, but they don't turning to staff over and over and over again. And the doctors would just be like, antibiotic, antibiotic, antibiotic, antibiotic. Next thing you know, man, I had like blood in my stool. Like I was messed up. I went to her doctor and they're like, man, you're anemic and iron. You have a thyroid disorder, Hashimoto's, you have ulcerated colitis and just my levels. Everything was messed up. So I really had to get my health on track and obviously probably

swallowing those kilos, you know, all that plastic that I was swallowing. could not be good um so i lost a couple fights and then i moved down to florida and i took a head kick and i've had these residual concussions before but i took a really bad head kick and uh man one month went by and i was like dude i don't feel better i don't feel any better i had light sensitivity um confusion uh anxiety like it was terrible and i was like i got a fight i got to get back to the gym i got a fight so i would go back to the gym i got to fight so i would go back to the gym i would try to drill and not get hit in the head boom i get smashed in the head by someone falling into me just stupid stuff and i was like man what is going on and uh you know i'm just trying to

get back in the fight i had booked a fight for myself i was like this is the easiest fight no disrespect to this guy but i've been fighting top 10 guys in the world and this guy was like had a lot of losses and i was like i'll highlight real this guy let me get back in the winning column and get going and uh one day i was driving to the gym and i missed my turn i missed another turn and Next thing you know, I didn't even know where I was. I didn't know what state I was in. I didn't know nothing. And I pulled over, man.

And the anxiety I had, I was freaking out and called my wife. I was like, at that moment, I didn't care about fighting anymore. I just wanted to feel normal again. And so I went back to the house and just had to sit in a dark room every 10 minutes of engaging in conversation. I'd have to lay down and take deep breaths and just let myself like reset. And that's kind of how I fell into crypto. I started, the only thing I could do was go on the computer. on the computer for like 15, 20 minutes, go take deep breaths, go on the computer.

And I had made a lot of money on GMC. After I saw GameStop fly up, I threw like $5,000 in AMC, and I did like a 10X on it. And I was like, wow, like this is like legit. So I started looking for other things that I could make money on while I was in this healing process. And that's when I saw crypto. And I got into Doge. I got them in Theorem Classic. watch it go up, I round-tripped it. And then I saw this meme coin. It was Joe Rogan's dog. And they

were paying fighters with the taxes. They had a 50% tax on buys and sales, which is astronomically high. But nobody cared because they were throwing fighters cash. Hey, you get paid 10 Gs for your fight, we'll double it. Hey, you get paid 20 Gs for your fight. We'll double it. Give us a shout out after, oh, you need a car to go to the gym, we'll pay for that. I got on this space and I was like, I just have had this fight booked. I paid 10 grand for this fight camp. I can't even fight. I'm not to get paid i only get paid when i fight i poured my guts out on this twitter space next thing you know the guy hits me up on telegram he's like hey man we want to pay for your stem cells and i had got a quote at cellular performance institute and it was 30 gs and i was like man that's a lot of money

i was like i can afford it but i'll be really strapped because i haven't fought right and i wasn't going to fight for a while and i had my wife quit her job she was all in on helping me with my diet nutrition and everything just along for the journey so she could travel with me to all the fights and they called me that I came in we're going to pay for it and I had prayed to God I was like God if it's in your will make it happen and I was like what you're going to pay for it they're like yeah what's your wallet address boom they sent me 10th or uh yeah 10 Ethereum which was 3 Gs at the time I was like whoa and I was like thank you God I called cellular performance institute and I was like

hey I got Ethereum they said we take Ethereum for payment boom transferred it right over I was like bro crypto is on another level I just paid for that so I I went all in on it And then we went to these UFC fights To watch the fight I started to feel normal again I went down and got the stem cells Started to feel better again

Where did you get the I'm sorry Where did you get the stem cells? In Tijuana, Mexico A place called cellular performances Two owned by Ed Clay and Scotty They're partner with the UFC They've been on the Joe Rogan podcast a lot The best stem cells in the entire world

And uh you know I started to feel it finally brought me on I should go down and get a treatment Well I feel okay does it grow hair anti-aging everything I need I need thicker hair

that's my that and I need I need like three inches if I had if I had three inches on me I'd be run

in this fucking country yeah they do everything man hair I don't know if they could grow you three inches but they could try

so I went down there and like I got back three weeks I already started to feel better I was coming out of this fog they would put 50 million stem

cells in my brain stem intrithically a spinal tap boom right in there and at the time it was very like experimental now they do it all the time and it's helping a lot of people and finally i felt good enough i was like okay let's go to this ufc fight all these crypto guys are there and then i went to these fights and i met all these uh guys jake gagan and b roots and um man i just linked up with them and we were like really cool that they they got a picture with dana white that was the time top of that coin. It was a buy the rumor, sell the news. It was a crazy night. Every fighter was saying, shout out to Marshall Roganino. Shout out to Marshall Roganenu. The UFC was so mad because crypto.com was their main sponsor. And they're like, who is this meme coin? All these fighters

are shouting out. Right. So they called it a complete scam, flipped out on everyone, said you're going to get fined if you talk about it again. And that was the end of it. But they were bonusing fighters, $30,000, $50,000 for fight of the night. And then crypto.com started doing that. it changed the whole game it was cool but then i partnered up with these guys and we started a crypto shark tank show and it just took off and um a crypto shark tank show what is that what is that so like uh if you have like a low cap meme coin which we deal with mainly which is like doge coin which but that's like the granddaddy of all meme coins you would come on the show and you get to pitch it for two two minutes and you have like a panel that yeah me and my us three and then we all give

opinions. Sometimes we invest. Sometimes we roast them. Sometimes we just kick them off and sometimes it's funny stuff. Where is that? On Twitter. Okay. Yeah, it would be on Twitter spaces. So the show absolutely took up. Jake went and did his own thing and Beiruts is the was the first 200 people to buy Shiba Inu. Okay. The guys fully retired cashed out millions from $1,900. Bought Shiba Inu, wrote that thing up. be like if you bought bitcoin with at the 19 cents sheba enu yeah he sheba enu did a million x in one year the highest appreciating asset in human history he was this like first first 200 buyers of it it's kind of like a lottery ticket but this guy is a research guru i mean this guy can research

anything he can find trends all he does is research so anyways we learned some good marketing skills and crypto's been able to pay the bills i've been blessed man it was like one door closed and another door open and i've been just trying to get back to the ufc i still have my contract but obviously i'm not going to risk fighting with what i had to go through it was about a year and a half of not feeling right i just got my third stem cell treatment and cellular performance institute and i feel god has linked me up with a buddy that i used to do below with and he was shooting we were robbing drug dealers he disappeared i thought he was going to die that doesn't say the way you said that sound like god

hook me up with this guy. Okay, I hear it. Well, we thought, I thought he was dead. I thought he was dead. And come to find out, he went to a treatment center that was fully like faith-based, spiritual boot camp, no even detox. And after he did that, he went on, got completely sober, transformed a guy, went on four years of mission trip.

He now has three beautiful kids and a wife. And he has a mission in Panama, like a church that he started. So I linked up to, with this guy out of nowhere. And we started going on mission trips. together and god has put it strongly on our heart we started a podcast now for testimonies we want to hear the most powerful stories of god moving spirit and truth media so you know all these people i'm sorry i'm sorry where is it and what platforms that on youtube on youtube okay yeah so it's it's we just started off the ground um but we want to do testimonies we want to kind of do stuff like where we

kind of like mark does where we would interview like homeless people or drug but we want to give them a way out. Our goal is to buy a ranch in the next year and we're going to make people who are in this treatment center work a hard day's on the ranch and then we're going to make them train them in May at night and it's going to be a spiritual boot camp

and we want to see full transformation and we want to interview people on the street whoever God calls us to and offer them a way out say here's a full scholarship. Do you want to change your life today and follow their journey? There's a lot more ideas like that. Everything you can find on e.n.hynish.com

if you want to follow that journey drop your email in there it's uh something we're going to let everyone know what we're doing and uh it's tough because my whole identity was in fighting i spent 10 years of my life in fighting i felt like why wouldn't god heal me why wouldn't i be ufc champ by now like i was nine people away there was only nine people in front of me to reach the pinnacle of the highest sport of fighting in the world and you know but the good thing was I realized my identity wasn't in that and God has redirected me in a new area and I feel even a bigger blessing coming and he's provided through crypto and I've learned a lot of marketing skills through that with the podcast and learning and now I'm taking this new journey on and God willing I would love to fight again but

yeah but you don't yet that's not up to you like you don't know what his plan for you is that's your plan that's my that doesn't mean much that's my want right that's what you want that doesn't mean that it may not be what's what's in store for you I know you know I know know and I've realized that it was it was a lot of pain to have that taken away from me and uh but I wanted to play in the NBA yeah yeah that wasn't God's plan he took it real quick he took it real quick at 13 he said stop growing and I was like but what about the NBA yeah um so Yeah. So that's my mission now, man. I want to have a calling to help people that are so addicted to drugs, man, because I was so stuck in that. And I was going to die. I just feel this calling that

I can, through my testimony, through Christ, through the treatment center, through the spirit and truth media, I feel that I am going to be able to change so many people's lives and redirect their lives. And I mean, who knows, maybe they'll be champs. Maybe they'll do something so great. and that's been the calling and like i said it was a lot of growing pains you know if you get something taken away from you that you work so hard for um but now i'm in a position that um i've been just growing my brand sharing this testimony it's already affecting so many people on soft white underbelly they the the comments are insane the connect and uh now we're just growing our our podcast up from ground level which you know is very difficult yeah especially in this like

very, but we believe God's blessing is over it. And we're praying the crypto market goes well. We hope Trump can lift these tariffs and just do it, let us do our thing and be able to purchase this ranch in the next year. If you guys want to follow this journey, Ian Heinish.com, go to my website, drop your email in there if you want to stay updated on it or you want to get involved as well as follow me on Ian Heinish MMA on Instagram and on Twitter. If you want to do crypto stuff, check out the Crypto Kings on YouTube. And yeah, follow. of the journey man there's a lot of stuff coming this way and i believe god's leading it and um i'm excited for this next journey as you know man it's it's a journey when you hit the ground running after

prison and it's been a it's been a good one for me and i know it has for you and it's cool to see people like us that have come from these rock bottom places where statistically we're not supposed to succeed and we come out and we do great things hey you guys i appreciate you watching do me a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of it videos just just like this. We're going to leave all of Ian's links in the description box so you can click on it, go to his YouTube and follow, and Instagram, and Twitter and follow. And I really appreciate you guys watching. Once again, please consider joining our Patreon. It's 10 bucks a month. It really helps Colby and I. Thank you very much for watching the video and please

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