My Mom's Basement - FRIDAY BONUS EPISODE 7 - KEVIN OWENS/JAKE HAGER (FKA JACK SWAGGER)

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

Friend of the show Kevin Owens joins the From The Top Rope boys for an interview about anything but wrestling, and Jake Hager (FKA Jack Swagger) sits down with Robbie afterwards to discuss his transition from professional wrestling to mixed martial arts, his two fights, and his career moving forward. Fun fact about this episode: Jake took his shoes off to record this interview ONE DAY after Ilima-Lei MacFarlane did the same. I must make guests feel very comfortable!You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. I have Kevin Owens from the WWE, and then we will flip on over to Jack Swagger, who is now known as his real name, Jake Hager, over in Bellator MMA. So it's going to be a little bit of wrestling, a little bit of MMA, although in the wrestling interview with Kevin Owens, we actually didn't talk that much about wrestling. Kevin Owens, if you didn't know, is like one of my best friends in the world, and we talk all the time. I've interviewed him a bunch of times, and we always talk about wrestling, and it gets a little exhausting just kind of going over the same bullet points. So for this one, me and Jared just came up with a bunch of random kind of fun, silly questions. We asked them all to Kevin, and they all generated pretty funny responses. So that's like a 10-minute interview, and then afterwards I have a longer interview

with, like I said, Jake Hager, formerly known as Jack Swagger, who's fighting in Bellator now. He's seen a lot of controversy in his young career, and I brought it all up. We addressed it. It was a fun time. That one was in person. The one with Kevin Owens was over the phone. But the next time Kevin Owens is in New York, I promise we'll get him in person,

me, Jared, and Kevin, and it'll be a really fun time. Of course, as always, I got to remind you to subscribe to this podcast. If you haven't already, give us a rating, give us a review. It helps out, and more importantly than anything else, just tweet about it on Twitter. Tweet about it at me, at Robbie Barstool, at Barstool Sports, at whoever you want. But just keep the discussion going. Let me know if you have any questions. Let me know if you want to see people come on the show. I mean, look at Jon Cavanaugh. I've got enough tweets about him, and he actually came on the show. So if there is someone you want to see on the show, tweet at me. I'll quote tweet you or whatever, and we'll see if people get behind it, and then we can go after those people. It could be a good way to start bringing in guests through you guys,

through the listeners of this podcast. Now, let's get into our interview with WWE superstar Kevin Owens. Before we do, I actually do want to mention his friend, both on screen and in real life, Sami Zayn, has kick-started a new campaign. He's actually just brought back up the campaign from last year, Sami for Syria, where he's actually trying to launch a mobile clinic in Syria. The website is samiforsyria.com. It's actually a really awesome thing that he's doing, and I'd be remiss not to mention it before I play this interview where we talk a decent amount about Sami himself. Go to his Twitter. He's at Sammy Zane.

Go to SammyForSyria.com to donate. He's got a ton of videos about it. He's got a ton of information about it at SammyForSyria.com because I do think it is a really awesome cause that's worth donating to, especially if you're a wrestling fan and someone that wants to support someone like Sammy Zane. So, yeah, let's get into our interview with Kevin Owens now. Kevin, what's going on?

Hey, boys. How's it going? What's up? Hold on. Oh, God, I just swore. Somebody started playing guitar. I've got to get out. Who's playing guitar?

All right. I don't know. They're doing a sound check for Alliance, I guess. Oh, geez. All right, so this will be an interesting one. We got you for 10 minutes here. We've obviously spoken a ton about wrestling in the past, so we figured with this one we'll shy away from that a little bit.

We'll ask you some fun lightning round questions. Now, just to start, we got to touch on this first. I know it's a bit of a heavy subject, but you and I have talked about it a ton. There's been rumors up about it in the air. Kevin, why don't you like Jim from The Office? He's just so smug. You know exactly my quote, too, about smugness in him. I can't repeat it right now, but I just don't like his smugness.

But you don't even like the Jim and Pam relationship? Like, you don't even find the beauty in that? No, no, that's fine. They're great together. Yeah, it was a great moment, all that stuff. But there's just something about him that rubs me the wrong way. And I actually consider him a bully to Dwight. You know?

I mean, but Dwight's kind of a guy that deserves to get bullied. So here's a question. Who in the WWE would you compare the most? I'm wearing, listen, before you go there, I'm wearing a Dunder Mifflin shirt as we speak. And Dwight is near and dear to my heart. I named my cat after him. Don't you come at me with this stuff.

Who in the WWE would you compare the most to what your view of Jim is like? Ooh, that's a very interesting question. I don't want to get you in trouble with it. You're putting me in the spot now. Well, because i've already declared how i just like smugness so whoever i name here i know i set that up nice all right well to be fair uh man probably shane mcmahon yeah

shane mcmahon he's got that smugness going on, which is not to say that I don't enjoy Shane McMahon's company, but we've had our differences in the past, but since then, you know, he's been gaining points in my view with the whole best in the world stuff. But if anything, that's a great example of how smug he can be. There you go. Kevin, I have a two-part question here.

I noticed that you've gotten more tattoos recently. I just started completing my sleeve on Sunday, and it reminded me how much and how uncomfortable getting tattoos is. The first question is, least favorite spot to get a tattoo? And then the second part of this question, think about this before you answer it. If you were forced to get a tattoo of any aquatic animal, what would it be? Oh, the aquatic animal one's easy.

I would get a shark. I'm probably going to get a shark at some point in my life anyway. Oh, hell yeah. I like that. There you go, a shark. I was going to guess a manatee. Yeah, me too. A manatee's great too, but I don't think it translates to a tattoo that well.

Weird tattoo, true. I actually swam with manatees not too long ago. It was a really nice experience. Where is that? That's a whole other topic. In Florida, my wife got me this little package where we can go and swim with the manatees for Valentine's Day, actually. Really nice. Unreal.

Romantic. Anyway, and as far as the worst place to get tattooed, for me, for some reason, and I think, honestly, it's it's probably different on everyone right the way their body reacts or whatever but for me just right on the shoulder is the worst spot it kills for some reason and a lot of people would tell you that that's a very easy spot for them so uh for me that's that's where it hurts the most i do remember it like getting like shooting pain it almost felt like if you're getting a tattoo on your shoulder that it was like shooting like lava down your veins and your arms like it did not nerve endings and all that yeah yeah yeah you're definitely getting some pain but i've heard from so many people that that's the easiest spot and to me it's the worst so but i mean anywhere anytime they got anywhere

near my elbow was real bad you know i guess that's a more common one that people would say but for me yeah the shoulder thing so kevin you used to host a long-form interview show for High Spots, and it was a very good show. And you used to have all guests from the independent wrestling circuit all around you. If you could reboot that show on the WWE Network right now, who would be your top three picks to have on from the WWE? Oh, yeah, I would actually love to do that.

And it's something I've actually wondered about pitching myself for the network executives, but if I were to do it, I mean, Vince McMahon would be my first request, and I'm sure he would turn me down flat. Then I would just keep asking and keep asking until he'd have to do it. Otherwise, honestly, man, there's so many people here, both guys and girls girls that have great stories and that are uh you know so much more entertaining i don't entertaining is not the right word but

they're so much like their personalities are so different in real life than what you'd expect from watching them on screen uh you know i i it's very hard to, to just pick one. Uh, but I probably end up, uh, of all people, I probably asked Sammy and that might sound weird because, you know, we've, we've, we've been, uh, we've been at, uh, joined at the hip for so long, but I think getting him into an interview with me and us talking pretty soon, people would get a glimpse into what our relationship is like. And I think, you know, I can see, see uh anytime we interact in front of other people how much they enjoy and how how big a kick they get out of us and our interactions so i think if we could bring that to a uh and it's not like on tv you know it's very different yeah i think that could be

cool and then finally uh my third choice would probably be philor because he and I are pretty close as well. And he's another guy that, you know, when you kind of get out on the open road, he's just a great guy. He's very funny, and I'd love to give more of that to the audience, expose that more to the audience. All right. Then if we're extending the show and if we're ramping up the budget and they told you you could get any three musical guests you want for the end, like it's a late night show, who are your musical guest picks? Well, Axl Rose would definitely be the first one. I mean with or without Guns N' Roses? I don't need the rest.

You just want Axl Acapella? Yeah, I think so because he's the only one I want to talk to, so you know what I mean? But I'm sure everybody else is pretty interesting. Otherwise, I guess for my son, I would have Imagine Dragons on, because he loves them. And I actually remember reading about how

they almost, I want to say, they almost get bullied by other bands now. Yeah, they're kind of becoming a Nickelback. Yeah, so I don't see that, man. I mean, whatever, Nickelback, I know a lot of people had a lot against them for a long time. I might have made, you know, I might have even made jokes about Nickelback in the past too, but I don't even, I never really got where it came from. To me, they were fine when, you know, when I...

So you're squashing the beef with Nickelback right here, all those jokes he made in the past. I've honestly never had any beef with them. If I ever hurt their feelings or my comments, I'm very sorry. I hope that's the headline to come out of this interview, by the way. Kevin Owens squashes beef with Nickelback. But, yeah, the Imagine Dragons thing, I was surprised to read about that stuff because, man, I went to one of their concerts with my son.

And I really didn't know anything about them before that concert. And I walked out loving, like I had a great time and my son loved it. Everybody in that arena was having a blast. So it kind of shocked me when I read about that stuff. I think they're very talented. Just to see, you know, I'm biased because my son loves them so much and i enjoy their music as well uh and uh you know so i guess i'd have them on and then a third one uh you know uh i i'd love to get somebody uh that my wife enjoys but she has so many favorite musical uh acts but i guess the top one would be britney spears

all right i would probably ask britney spearsars and make sure my wife is on set. We actually kind of got to meet her last summer, just literally like we were in the same hallway, and we happened to be waiting for the elevator after her show, and she was coming through. And my wife had like a two-second interaction with her, and it made her night. So I would love to be able to recreate that for her

and have her be able to actually speak to her a little you know a little longer have you ever worked out to your entrance theme before uh no no i i have not uh i actually whenever i work out i actually listen to talk radio or i watch well i mean if i'm doing you know lifting weights and stuff i can't really watch anything so i'm definitely listening to talk radio that but if i'm doing, you know, lifting weights and stuff, I can't really watch anything. So I'm definitely listening to talk radio then. But if I'm doing cardio or anything like that, I just watch wrestling. It's just, you know, just makes everything go by a lot quicker. And it's just a good way to just kind of get in the zone for me. How do you lift weights and listen to talk radio?

Are you just, like, mad at the takes? Well, obviously, you know, I'm not a physical a physical specimen here so maybe the talk radio is the wrong way to go a little more but uh that's just i i get uh even in the car when i drive uh my wife would attest to this i can't i just don't like listening to music i like talk radio uh i listened to the news i listened to podcasts stuff like that it's just uh i don't know i guess my uh it's where music for some people is an escape and a release. And for me, it actually makes my brain work harder, if anything, because I'm trying to listen to the lyrics. I'm trying to like, I'm not just, it's hard for me to just put music on and just drift away.

I need, it's like I start focusing on it. So it's Maybe the opposite effect for most people. If you went into the gym just threw music on those headphones, you came out looking like Jinder the next day. Yeah, maybe it's time to start. Jinder seems like an unattainable

goal, though. I don't know. I could probably get there. You put me in the gym for... I mean, I'm just lazy. If you put me in the gym for a month, I think I could get to gender status. And finally – Let's take up that challenge. Why don't you do that? Let's see if that happens.

I would feel bad for the people that can't attain what I could attain in the gym if I chose to go. You're the one who threw it out there now. We'll see. We'll see. Finally – You're just trying to spare people's feelings. If you could pick any actor to play you in the movie of your life, who are you picking? Man, that's another question I've literally never thought of.

You know who I'd pick? And it would make no sense because it's not somebody who looks like me or somebody much older than I am. And it would just literally make no sense. But the only answer I can. It's Tom Hanks. And I would just want Tom Hanks to be the one playing me. That's a movie I want to see. Imagine Tom Hanks played Kevin Steen at 16 years old, having his first match.

There's no way that's not a box office hit. I mean, they could definitely do it. You saw what they did with Sam Jackson and Captain Marvel. They made him look all young. Like, they could get enough prosthetics on Tom Hanks. Hey, technology today. Yeah, you can do anything. Man, you know, now it has to happen.

Maybe I'll try to talk to Dwayne Johnson about making it happen. Yeah, that would be awesome. I wonder who would play Sammy. Would you get Woody Allen to play Sammy then? It would be the illogical choice. But honestly, I feel like Seth Rogen would have to be Sammy because they literally are. And Sammy would hate me saying that, but they're identical. Yeah, they kind of are.

It would be great to hear Seth Rogen cut one of Sammy's promos with that laugh. For some reason, it's very important to me that in my bio film, whoever plays Sammy looks just like him, but Tom Hanks is the one playing me. I mean, you might as well pick the greatest actor of all time. We're definitely going to have someone make that movie poster now and just have Tom Hanks as you. I'm going to talk to the studios right now about it. Yeah.

All right, buddy. Thank you so much for joining the show. Yeah, thanks, guys. Great to be on. That was a lot of fun. I know we're going to have to get that movie made. Tom Hanks as Kevin Owens and Seth Rogen as Sami Zayn. I really need it.

I really need to see it. I just really, really, really need to see it. So we're going to look into that. And now let's get into my interview with Bellator's own Jake Hager, formerly known as Jack Swagger. All right. Welcome back to the show. I am joined by a very special guest now, a Bellator MMA fighter and a former WWE superstar, Jake Hager, formerly known as Jack Swagger. Welcome to the show. How are you?

Thank you. I'm great. You know I love New York. USA, USA. It's fight week for many, but not for you. You are able to just enjoy the fights as a fan this weekend. Are you excited for the card, Bellator 222? Really excited for the card, Bellator 222? Really excited for the card. They got so many lower weight guys, which as a heavyweight, you'd think I would want to see the bigger guys, but I always enjoy the smaller weight guys. My man Juan Archuleta, 135.

Ricky Bandeas is on here. Mike Kimble. You really do like the smaller guys. I do. I do. I like the action. I always got in trouble when I was wrestling when I was younger because they're like, Jake, you're wrestling as a lower weight guy. You're a heavyweight.

Wrestle like a heavyweight. In WWE you're talking about? Well, you know what? It's funny. In WWE I always got criticized for not protecting myself, like protecting my size as well enough. Because I can move and I can bump and I can roll and I can do all the little weight, the little cruiserweight stuff. But I'm a big guy, so I need to protect my size and, you know, make them work for it a little bit more. So it's kind of the same thing a little bit.

That's very interesting. When you were wrestling in the WWE, so you have a collegiate wrestling background. Yep. And then you go to the WWE and you're there for many years. I followed your career there. I'm a big wrestling fan um were you always not keeping this in the back of your mind but were you watching mma the entire time were you as a fan oh absolutely um when i was going into wwe and leaving college there were my teammates uh that were training in the room they started

training jujitsu uh in the room and it was still very new to me, but it was at the time. What year is this? This is 05, 06. Okay, so yeah, MMA is super young. Yeah, super young. You know, Iceman, Liddell, Ortiz are really, you know, headlining the pay-per-views.

Randy Couture was still in there too. But I still remember, like, going to parties on Saturday nights, renting the pay-per-view, putting your college money together. So it's very cool that I went into pro wrestling out of that because there was that opportunity there. And do you think if you would have graduated college, let's say 10, 15 years later, if you were just born later, you would have went straight into MMA and never went

into pro wrestling? I don't think so, you know, because I wrestled all my life and I'll be the first to say that when I was younger, I didn't have a love for pro wrestling. I didn't watch it. I didn't follow it. I can't tell you all the lyrics to the entrance songs from the 80s, but I did grow an appreciation over it over the decade that I worked with it. But, like, it really wouldn't have been the same route because it taught me the entertainment side of it.

It taught me about the bright lights, and it taught me about the television and the time, and it taught me about being a character, and it taught me about marketing that character. Whereas if I would have went right into it out of college, I wouldn't have wanted to show you any weakness, any vulnerability, any personality, really. I would have wanted to show you this big, tough guy that can't get taken down. And there's just limits to that. And it's so much better this way that you have that open mind to what we're really trying to accomplish. So when you were in the WWE and you're watching MMA over the years,

how long were you in the WWE? Over a decade? Yeah, 13 years. 13 years. Who in the locker room is watching MMA with you? I assume you had like a group of them because I see backstage, especially when you made your debut, there were oodles of WWE superstars that were watching it. And I don't think they were just watching it because they were friends with you. It seemed like a lot of them were actually MMA fans. Yeah, they were. Jamie Noble comes to mind. Daniel Bryan is a big MMA guy.

They would always have the pay-per-view on their iPad the next day. So we always knew who to get the free footage from. Yeah, I remember probably in 2011, 2012, Daniel Bryan and CM Punk recreated the ending of the Chael Sonnen-Anderson Silva fight in a match. Oh, really? If you put the side-by-side, like the missed spinning elbow into the falling down and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Daniel Bryan, he really likes it. He really appreciates jiu-jitsu. He has a great story about how jiu-jitsu stopped a home invasion and how he held the guy down. He also frustrated me in the back time and time again with his jits, and this was before I was training. And I was like, I'm a big heavyweight.

I'm going to come at you with my wrestling. And his jits would give me problems every single time. But now that I have my training, I'm here to formally challenge Daniel Bryan to a jiu-jitsu match and say, bring it on, Beardy. That would be awesome if you guys could do some kind of EBI rules jiu-jitsu match. Yeah, I know he'd be game for it. That guy has a gas tank that just doesn't turn off.

I've seen him chase Ron Killings down the hallway. And, like, Ron Killings is a big, grown man, and he's yelling, stop at the top of his lungs down the hallway. Ron Killings is a big grown man and he's yelling, Stop! At the top of his lungs, down the hallway. That's hysterical. So when you make your Bellator debut, there was a long time where we knew you were going to make your debut.

And I love that you had R-Truth on the ready to do your entrance music. When did you get the idea to do that? It was before I left WWE. You already knew before you left WWE that you were going to go to MMA and have him do your entrance music. When did you get the idea to do that? It was before I left WWE. Yeah. You already knew before you left WWE that you were going to go to MMA and have him do your entrance music? Well, you know, it's one of those things where you're sitting down on the road and, you know, you're talking about, you know, your future and you're being real with your homie. And

it's like one of those things where like, hey, this is kind of seems like a huge opportunity for me to leave here and go try this. And if that ever happens, I want you there because at the same time, he's telling me about his music and up and coming. And I've kind of been alongside him the whole way and seen the progression in him as a musician, as an artist. And it's really cool to see that because if you look at me, I have no music ability at all. I can barely clap in rhythm.

My son just kills me every time. But besides that, it's really cool that it happened. We were just talking about it and that we were able to, you know, chase our dreams and, like, keep our heads down because a lot of discipline and dedication and a lot of sacrifice came in to get that to come to fruition. But it was so special that he made it happen. Even more special that Vince and WWE, you know, let him do it because they're known for not letting their talent do anything. So, man.

And did he not look like a star? Oh, he crushed it. And like, I remember I was scrolling through Twitter, of course, as you're watching it and all the tweets, people are just like marking out. Yeah. Everyone crushed it. And I remember I was scrolling through Twitter, of course, as you're watching it, and all the tweets, people were just like marking out. Everyone loved it. They were like, oh, my God, R-Truth's doing his entrance. You must be so grateful that you're in Bellator because there's no other mixed martial arts promotion

where you could have a, let's say, WWE-style entrance. Bellator is the only one. And that was on purpose. We saw the trend that MMA was exploding, but we we saw the trend that MMA was exploding but we also saw the trend that a lot of the top MMA fighters and then your favorite MMA fighters are going to Bellator to where they can fight on their own terms and like Bellator is treating their talent like a promotion should and so that's one thing that we wanted to make a point we just left what was pretty much like a prison that we had to break out of in order to come.

We're not just going to go to another prison, pretty much. So it was very important to us to have that freedom and to do what we want because we know that we're on to something, and we're only going to show the world more of that. So you've had two fights now. You're 2-0, and both of your opponents, you've finished. Might as well be a world champ, right? Pretty quickly. Yeah, might as well.

A lot of people have criticized the stature of your opponents, I guess. How do you respond to those kind of people? Because you're 2-0 professionally. You've only had two fights in your life. So it's interesting that, you know, I don't know who they would want you to face. And I've been guilty of it as well, where when there's the matchup of you and your last opponent, it just looks ridiculous. He looks like he just rolled out of bed or something. How do you respond to those people?

Well, I think it's a great, great question. And a perfect example just happened when Anthony Joshua got defeated by Ruiz. Look at his stature. And that's the world heavyweight champion of the world. You can't judge a book by its cover, and that especially goes when you're inside the cage. Anything can happen. Honestly, I'm more susceptible to a lower, stockier guy

coming with overhand punches than a guy that's my stature. If you're as tall as me, it's going to be easier to take down. But if you're lower like that, there's going to be more of a space for you to have that angle on me. So it's one of those things where everybody does it. Everybody has a progression in fighters. I'm very new. I'm not going to lie about that. But, you know, if you're worried about my opponents uh i think that's

that's silly because you know i'm gonna get better and uh you should be worried about your own did it bother you the last time when when all the pre-fight talk was like oh my god he's gonna murder this guy in two seconds or you're like fuck yeah i'm gonna murder that guy in two seconds i mean i mean i thought it was hilarious i mean it just goes to show you the Internet is undefeated. I mean, yes, I will fight my Uber driver again. No, it doesn't bother me because in the end you want people talking about it. We are doing this for entertainment, and whether people want to realize it or not, this is a form of entertainment.

And so anyway, I get you grabbing a hold of it. I'm going to use it to my advantage. If you want me to be the guy, yeah, he was a big, fat tub of lard. But I'm a big, fat tub of lard beater. So I'll gladly be that guy. I like that. So and also talking about the showmanship, talking about that this is entertainment. You very much took that to the next level in your post-fight speech last time and so there was a little controversy before we even get

into that there's a little controversy about the finish because a lot of people said you held on to the choke too long yeah myself included and then i watched your side of the story and i watched the clip back and the more i watch it back the more i understand your side because the referee really doesn't tap you it's kind of a bizarre stoppage where he taps your opponent as your opponent's tapping. And I do understand. Do you look back and you're completely justified in holding on to the choke as long as you did? A hundred percent. Okay.

And then in your post-fight speech, you immediately just said that you had a boner. Just laid it all out on the table. You're like, I have a boner right now. I'm rock hard. No, no, no, no. I did not say I have a boner. I think you did. You're like, I have a boner right now. I'm rock hard. No, no, no, no. I did not say I have a boner. I think you did. No, I said I have a phoner.

A phoner is a fight boner. Oh, okay. I mean, it's still a boner. It's more of a metaphor. So, listen, here's a question for you. You're getting phoners. You're getting fight boners. You're rock hard after these fights.

Yes. Did you see what Israel Adesanya just said about his UFC debut? See? Stylebender. Did you see it? Yeah. He said that there was pre-cum dripping out of his wee-wee afterwards. Yeah. You understand that? No, I do not. You seem

like the only guy in the world that would understand it. I've been asking everyone what the hell he was talking about. The one with the phoner doesn't get it? Listen, you don't get a stone cold fox of a wife by coming too early. You know what I'm saying? I'm rock hard with emotion until it's time. Oh, my God. I don't even know where to go with this interview at this point.

This is crazy. So afterwards, you go, you do a bunch of post-fight interviews, and you're talking about Donald Trump, and you're really playing up the we the people and kind of playing up the heel do you did you have a plan in your mind before you even fought that you were kind of not to say turning heel because this is not the WWE this is real life but that you were going to show little heel tendencies no not at all um I knew going into it that I wanted to bring we The People along with me

because that was my biggest catchphrase and maybe my biggest claim to fame when it comes to pro wrestling as far as being known. So I wanted to bring that over because, one, I think it's a cool movement of the people and it gives them power and it brings them all into the show. Nobody else in MMA has a chant like that. Yeah, you know, and so it's all about, you know, I don't think you've seen a fighter like me yet. I have a lot to learn, but I got a lot to show, and I got plans.

But what you see from me is just real. That was a real reaction. Chicago pissed me off, you know. They have no idea what it's like to be in that cage, and for them to react like that, fine. That's their right. They bought their ticket. But, you know, I have a right to respond.

So your goals moving forward in Bellator. Let's talk about those. What are they? When do you plan on accomplishing them? Do you want to fight again this year? Like, what do you have left in Bellator? Not what do you have left. What do you have in front of you in Bellator?

You're very new to this. Yep, very new to it. Learning every fight. Definitely want to get better with my wrestling, my jits, kickboxing, boxing. And where are you training out of right now? I train in Tampa, and it's kind of a unique situation where I kind of have like a head coach, Josh Rafferty, and Rob Raffafford and Joey Best

and like through those three guys I train in Tampa and Cincinnati uh uh Joey has a jiu-jitsu school um Josh and I train a lot at Dave Bautista's MMA gym and do a lot of our conditioning our plyometrics and all all that sports conditioning stuff there. And then I go up to Cincinnati a lot for the boxing, kickboxing, sparring. Rob Bradford trained Rich Franklin to multiple, you know, world championship fights. So really lucky that it's kind of underground and it's kind of my collection of guys.

And it's pretty special how it kind of came to be like we first we went to josh because i've known him since 2010 and it slowly just built when i was ready you know we added another coach and when i was ready so it's really cool to see where it's going to go i definitely want to fight again um you know i plan on uh i want to you know september october depending quick turnaround yeah yep uh why not you know yeah i'm in shape i'm healthy um so just you know i was in the room the following the following week uh just in there doing something finding ways to get better i don't want to lose my shape which i'm a a country boy, and I'm very good at doing, so keep it going. I want to have the fourth fight by January, February.

Oh, wow. You're really moving along, and I guess it makes sense with when you started your career and everything to move along. Well, if you look at MMA, it's a very small window as it is, and then you add my age to it. It's also an even smaller window. So you've got to be smart. You want to train hard, but you have to train smart. You can't push it all the time, but you can push it. And so it's just a whether or not of getting in there. There's so many opportunities out there right now, so why not really devote this time to it and really focus on getting better and taking my game to that world championship level,

which is where I want to be. Like, you know, I'm a prize fighter. I said that from day one. I'm in here to pay for my family, to provide for my family, my beautiful kids. But I also want to be a champion, you know. It's just part of me. You know, I've wrestled since I was five years old. I want to win.

Win, win, win, win, win. So that's in the horizon, and we definitely are focusing on getting to that level, and I think there's a great crop of Bellator heavyweights for me to practice on and go right through that level. So we touched on a little bit earlier, everyone in the WWE watching your debut, and I know they watched your second fight, and I know they'll watch your third fight. They'll watch every fight until you retire.

How does that feel when you look and you watch those videos, especially like the New Day, Xavier Woods, Kofi, all those guys, losing their minds over you getting a win? Like that's got to be awesome, right? Yeah, it's really cool. It looks like when they show families back home, like when someone was at the Super Bowl, they were reacting so happy. Yeah, I mean, it's a special bond that I have with those guys, you know,

12 years, 13 years. Thirteen years in the company, most of them with those guys. Kofi and I started together. We were both in McDonough, Georgia, back in 2006, learning how to do it all. So you must be thrilled with what has happened with him since you left as well, like in recent months. Yeah, couldn't be happier. He's so athletic.

When he first came out, his finishing kick just, like, did things that people hadn't seen. And he continued to do that with his appearances in the Royal Rumble. Every time I was in a battle royal, I would go to Kofi first and be like, Kofi, what can we do? Can I be a part of it? Let me be a part of it. Yeah. And, you know, we had a couple good spots. We did one, I think it was on television, where he caught Cesaro's boot.

Him and Cesaro were on the apron and flung Cesaro's boot into my head and knocked me out, and then Cesaro got eliminated, then I got eliminated. Yeah. And then after the match, Cesaro came up to me and was like, Jack, how's your head? I go, fine, what happened? He's like, well, I got a goose egg on my shin from where your head hit it i was like oh maybe i should go into mma yeah and then here you are and here i am another person that you worked

with a lot in the wwe uh i saw a lot of tag team matches even one at the garden just down the block cody rhodes i saw you and cesaro versus cody rhodes and goldust at the garden it was when he did the whole uh flip thing one of my greatest moments at the Garden. Absolutely. How do you feel about what Cody Rhodes has done in recent months in starting AEW, this new, people are calling it, could be the next competitor to the WWE? Yeah, it's incredible. It's really cool to see all the success that he has accomplished since he's left such a huge platform.

Like, he's done that without a platform. So it's really a testament to his hard work. The Young Bucks have so much to do with it. Kenny Omega, best wrestler in the world. So you're really keeping up with this? I mean, I have to. It's my business. I mean, I still wrestle. I have a show in a couple weeks here.

I have two next month. I have two in August. So depending on, you know, when the next fight is, it's just a great way to supplement income. And especially when there's opportunity like this to really go at it, you know, no one's, everyone says, don't bite the hand that feeds you. Well, they know how they're treating their talent. And you can see the talent uprising now and wanting to show them, you know, no, we're better than this. So it's a clash that has been, you know, years in the making. And it's going to explode. It's going to be very cool to see and everybody wants to be a part of.

Is that inspiring to you in that, like, Cody went and made his own thing and you're kind of doing the same thing just on a different platform? You're doing an MMA thing. He's sticking with pro wrestling. I mean, you are with pro wrestling as well yep but do you take do you have takeaways from that on like oh that's inspiring as to what i could do in the mma world yeah absolutely um you know one of the best pieces of advice i got was from dirty dutch mantel and he said you have to use your exposure at the wwe uh into your next venture to whether you're going to be a meteorologist or whether you're going to be your own uh business person you have to find a way to use that exposure to help you out because it's it's a really big deal

whether whether you like wwe or not it's a huge exposure it's huge platform and so we definitely wanted to capitalize on that um we're not ready to sit behind the desk yet and be our own uh businessman yet so we're like all right what what else can we do and this is where it led us have you ever thought about bringing out dutch mantel to manage an mma fight of course have him in the corner yeah have him cut if dutch would have been there to cut that promo oh my god if he cut your post-bite promo for you it would have been there to cut that promo in Chicago. Oh, my God, if he cut your post-fight promo for you. It would have been cans. There would have been cups of piss thrown at us. Yeah, it would have been like Hogan joining the NWO,

everyone throwing garbage at the ring. Yeah, yeah. Have you talked to him about your MMA career, I assume, yeah? Yeah, yeah, I keep in touch. How does he feel about all that? He must think it's awesome. Yeah, he's seen firsthand what I can do, so he has confidence in my ability to stay safe and succeed out there.

He thinks it's great. We're doing a show July 14th together in Nashville, Tennessee, actually. Oh, nice. We keep it up. He's very positive and negative at the same time. Yep. Tell the people where they can find you on social media and all that. If you really want to find Jack Swagger,

you have to go to the CatalinaTechnique.com. I mean, no, that's a great place for at-home workouts. You don't need a gym or anything. That's not Jack Swagger. Real Jack Swagger, Instagram and Twitter. Jake Hager on Facebook Catalina Hager on Twitter Catalina Swagger on Instagram

I get all my jokes from her So if you think I'm funny Follow her There you go Cut out the middle man Yeah plus she shows you her butt Jack thank you so much Jake

Jack Jake What are you going by now? It doesn't matter Just come here Jake thanks so much Thank you for having me Lots of fun