Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Story of Bumfights

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Bumfights was a controversial video series from the early 2000s that showcased homeless individuals engaging in fights and performing dangerous stunts in exchange for money, alcohol, or other incentives. The series was produced by Ryen McPherson, Zachary Bubeck, Daniel J. Tanner, and Michael Slyman under the label Indecline Films.The birth of crappy mean-spirited prank videos.

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like doing kickflips and stuff. And over time, he meets a couple of homeless guys in the area. And these two unhoused guys, they're addicts, They're intoxicated all the time and they're sort of known locally for their antics. And at some point, Ryan and his friends start paying these two guys to do stunts and to sometimes fight each other. And they'll film it and they offer them a little money or sometimes they offer them just free beer. Hey, you one dollar? Can you do some stuff for video?

What's that? Why'd you want me view? Um, there's some crates back there you can walk into. Yeah! And so over the next few years, Ryan and his friends collect. all this crazy footage of themselves messing with these homeless guys or just paying them a few bucks to do crazy shit on camera Now this footage will eventually go on to be the movie Bumfights and the stuff they film is absolutely atrocious Like they light one of the homeless guys on fire they pay one homeless guy to spray paint another homeless guy while he's asleep

Where do you get away from me motherfucker I just won't write me? You don't write it on me? They pay one of the guys to get the word bumfifers fight tattooed across his knuckles. F FFK for a lot, forever! They pay another one of the guys to get the word bum fights tattooed in big letters across his forehead. And they sometimes just pay these guys to beat the shit out of each other. I kid you's fucking ass and you got a broken ankle big deal. They even have a diabolical segment called Bum Hunter.

Hey, I'm Steve Urban and welcome to another exon in addition of Bum Hunter. And this is where they have a diabolical segment. have an actor dressed like Steve Irwin and he goes out and they will capture homeless guys and like duct tape them up. Just relax, just want to get your measurements here. And yeah, it's some of the most disgusting behavior you could see, like filming addicts and people who are mentally unwell. I am mentally disturbed from the military. Oh, and I'm only describing a fraction of it. There's way worse stuff than that that they film. But anyway, in 2001, I think Ryan is 18 at this point. He and three of his friends, they form a production company.

And they combine the footage of the homeless guys' stunts with footage they got of high school kids fighting. I guess they filmed a bunch of schoolyard fights when they were in high school. And they cut all of this footage together into a movie called Bumfights, Volume 1. And in 2002, they put it on a DVD and they start selling it online. And they're like doing the shipping and everything. And this movie blows the fuck up. Like, there are clips of it all over the internet.

And the controversy around it is making it go viral. And soon, the news is talking about it. Howard Stern shouts it out on his radio show. And of course, all this hype is helping the DVDs sell even more. It's helping sales so much that they actually sell 300,000 copies that first year at $22 a piece. So do the math, and that's $6.6 million. So these teenagers profited millions. off of this. Then that same year in 2002, Ryan and the three guys sell the bumfights name and the

business for $1.5 million. And they sell it to this guy, Ty. But we'll come back to Ty. Meanwhile, the district attorney's office in San Diego, they catch on to all this hype about this amateur movie. And they're watching it and they're like, oh, we can't let these guys treat homeless people this way. This is disgusting. And so they look for something to charge Ryan and his friends with, And it turns out it's actually illegal in the state of California to pay people to fight. Like you can't arrange a monetized boxing match, not without a permit. And so the DA charges Ryan and his friends with conspiracy to stage an illegal fight. And so, bam, police arrest Ryan and the others.

Here's a picture of Ryan in real life. And they plead guilty and they get sentenced to three years probation and they're banned from working together for three years. and they're no longer allowed to work with unhoused persons for three years. And that is when, of course, they sell the company for $1.5 million to the guy, Ty, and a business partner of Ties. Now, the difference between the original owners and Ty is that Ty is, he's kind of a wild dude. It is illegal. It's probably wrong in a lot of people's eyes. And the way I look at it is just don't get caught. Like, bro doesn't give a fuck.

He's loud. He's obnoxious. He's kind of a troll. he leans right into this controversy. People are bored, and I think people want to see something different, something new, something they haven't seen before, something that's going to make them curl up in their seat, something that's going to make them want to puke, something that's going to make them want to go out and maybe knock somebody out. And Bro seems to really love doing media and promoting bumfights.

Are you abusing the homeless with this film? No, we have a mutually beneficial relationship with the homeless. We have changed a lot of their lives. And so, under his ownership, he creates three more Bumfights movies, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4. And I assume they sell moderately well. I actually couldn't find any sales data on them. But anyway, then, in 2006, because these movies are still very controversial,

Ty gets invited onto the Dr. Phil show. Because I guess Dr. Phil plans on scolding him about the series of Bumfights movies and how unethical they are, which, yeah, they actually are very unethical. However, like I said, Ty, he's kind of a troll. And when he comes on the show, he comes out dressed as Dr. Phil. And like he's shaved his head to look like he's balding just like Dr. Phil. And then Dr. Phil watches a promo of bum fights with his audience before they get to Ty's segment. And Dr. Phil immediately kicks Ty off the show.

Stop the tape. Stop the tape. I don't want to talk to you. Why not? That's despicable. I don't want to talk to you. You can go. Now, it goes without saying, Dr. Phil, he's kind of a turd himself. Like, he didn't just watch that footage for the first time in front of his audience.

All that stuff is planned by him and his producers beforehand. So that means Dr. Phil and his writers watch the bumfights footage before this taping, and we're like, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if we, like, brought Ty on stage and then kicked him off the show right in front of him? of the audience? And so that's what Dr. Phil does. He kicks him off, making it look improvised, but it's definitely not. They planned it. However, before Ty leaves the set, he drops the best truth bomb on Dr. Phil. Anyone has ever dropped on him. If you think I exploit people, every time you bring a guest on this show, you exploit them and spread whatever problems they have to the whole world. You think that's helping them? I mean, yeah, Ty is a terrible guy,

but like, he's not wrong here. That's exactly what Dr. Dr. Phil's show does. Anyway, so then they escort Ty off the show just like, I'm sure they planned. And after that, you don't really hear much about Ty or bump fights. I guess the phenomenon kind of fizzles out over the years. But Ryan, on the other hand, he and his three friends, they actually get sued over bump fights for $6 million. And they get sued by those two original homeless guys they used to film and one other homeless guy who was also in the movies. and they sue him and the three other producers, and they end up settling out of court for an undisclosed amount,

and Ryan and the producers end up paying the three homeless guys, allegedly a really large amount of money. So good for them, I guess.