The Ariel Helwani Show - Dan Le Batard

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

One of the most respected voices in sports media joins Ariel for an open and honest conversation (and I'm glad we're having it). The two friends discuss Le Batard's new outlook on life thanks to the founding of his new company, Meadowlark Media, and his relatively new marriage. He also discusses the separation of his personal and professional lives, why he's happier than he's ever been and the importance of therapy in his life. Then, the guys trade stories about their respective times at ESPN, with "El Bastardo" Le Batard opening up about his exit from ESPN, and if he ever regrets joining the company in the first place (33:20).Dan Le Batard is one of the most celebrated sports media personalities of the 21st century. Before founding Meadowlark Media in early 2021, LeBatard spent a decade at ESPN hosting The Dan LeBatard Show w/ Stugotz and Highly Questionable. Prior to joining ESPN, LeBatard wrote for The Miami Herald in his beloved home city of Miami.You can follow Dan on Twitter and Instagram @LeBatardShow.We're brought to you by BetterHelp. Join over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health and get 10% off your first month by visiting our link at BetterHelp.com/AHS. For more episodes of The Ariel Helwani Show, please follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.Theme music: "Frantic" by The Lovely Feathers

Hello everyone, hope you're doing well. Welcome back to a brand new edition of the Ariel Helwani Show. I, of course, am Ariel Helwani. It is Thursday, January 13, 2022. I am so happy to be back. I missed this show. I hope you did as well. And we've got a fantastic interview on today's episode. Dan Levitard, in my opinion, is a pioneer. He is a trailblazer. He is

one of a kind. He's one of my favorite people that I've met doing this crazy career that I get to do. And as you know, in early January 2021, he left ESPN officially, started his own thing, Metal Ark Media, The Pirate Ship, The DraftKings Deal, all that and more. And he doesn't do a lot of these interviews. He's rather reserved when it comes to doing stuff outside of his orbit. media, the pirate ship, the DraftKings deal, all that and more. And he doesn't do a lot of these interviews. He's rather reserved when it comes to doing stuff outside of his orbit. And so it's a huge honor and a privilege for me to have him on this program. Great conversation, open, honest, candid, talk about his legendary career, leaving ESPN, happiness, therapy, life, all that stuff. I am very excited to share this with you and i think

you're gonna love it dan lebitard i mean what a freaking legend miami zone and we even talk about flirting with each other last year potentially doing some work together it's uh it's awesome and el bastardo even makes an appearance now this is something that you probably need to see you can watch the interview on our youtube channel, but if you're a podcast listener, here it is for you. So in a matter of seconds, we will get rolling. But before we do so, I want to tell you about our good friends once again over at BetterHelp. This episode is being brought to you by our good friends over at BetterHelp, and they are fantastic people. Obviously, I've talked a lot about my own mental health struggles, therapy, trying to be happier, getting better, wellness, all that stuff. Even Dan talks about it in this episode. So it's very apropos. And if you think you need some help, then I want you to visit my URL at betterhelp.com slash A-H-S. Why? Because BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist.

They'll connect you in a safe and private online environment and you can start communicating in under 48 hours time. With BetterHelp, you can send a message to your counselor anytime and receive timely and thoughtful responses. Also, if money is tight, BetterHelp is more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is also available. Best of all, anything and everything you share is confidential. So I want you to start living a happier life today. Sincerely. As a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting our sponsor at BetterHelp.com slash AHS. Again, that's BetterHelp.com slash AHS.

Join over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health. Again, that's BetterHelp.com, H-E-L-P.com slash A-H-S. All right, there you have it. Thanks so much to BetterHelp. Please support them because they support us. Now time for my conversation with the great Dan Levitard. Enjoy. This man, you know him. He is a trailblazer. He is a pioneer. Dare I say, he's a good friend as well.

He's one of the greatest sports media guys of my lifetime. It is such a massive honor to have Dan Levitard on because I know he is, A, very busy, and B, doesn't do a lot of these. Correct me if I'm wrong. Am I right, Dan? Is that a fair assessment? You don't do a lot of these? No, I enjoy the great shield that allows me in interviews to not be the one actually being vulnerable but asking the questions that force others to be. And I know how skilled an interviewer you are as well. So I've been looking forward to this because I don't know if your audience knows the nuances of how you do

your craft, but if I may flatter you for a moment, I have watched your work for a long time and marveled, really been in awe that you have as a hustler and a grinder and somebody with sort of an immigrants mentality on work that you have made it journalistically moral professional decision to bring a really polished person to the to the sewer that I think MMA and martial arts can sometimes be and I understand and appreciate the arts, though not like you in mixed martial arts, but that sport is a gutter birthed by boxing, birthed by a lot of corrupt people and criminal people and an element. The fighting world is filled at the top end with a lack of honor, stealing money from the participants. And you've been somebody throughout your career has brought honor to that sport, journalistically, professionally, and I hope your audience appreciates that part of you,

not just the information and the guy being an entertainer who likes also to be a luchador and enjoys the personality of that. Well, that means the world to me. I feel like now I'm on South Beach Sessions now where you are showering me with praise. I'm just appreciative of the fact that you're not doing this from a children's park nearby on, you know, Collins Avenue or something like that. But truly, it is great to have you on. And by the way, I wanted to ask, speaking of Miami, I guess I missed this over the years. I didn't know that Dan Lebitard is from Jersey City. I didn't realize that you were actually born in New Jersey.

Why don't you rep New Jersey as much as you do Miami? Oh, because I don't have any memories of anything other than Miami, right? Because my formative years, I got nothing in the bank. I got no memories of anything. Born in Jersey City, and then my parents were here when I was like, I don't know, four, five, six. And we got to Miami, and I didn't even realize what was happening in Miami around us, which is at the time, right? Because it's the 80s and this was a beachfront community here filled with old people feel like it's, I've been proud to represent. It's one of the great honors of my career to represent this region, this brown, sugary region that birthed this fat kid who got to do something, you know, that could make Miami proud as a Cuban kid with my father as well, being proudly Cuban from a different part of the United States.

Ariel, I don't have to tell you, you've seen what's happened in this country in terms of the other, the other, the other. I hope somewhere along the line, somebody thought that it was pretty cool that we got to do a diverse thing at ESPN that was a little weird. And we shall get to that. I think the first time I ever sort of noticed you from afar, I grew up in Canada. So initially I didn't get ESPN. It was only in high school that I got ESPN, but I was't get ESPN. It was only in high school that I got ESPN, but I was very aware of sports media. And it was because of your last name, your last name is French. I'm from French speaking Quebec. And I always thought it was interesting. This guy from Miami, Le Batard, to me is like the bastard, right? In French. Where does that name come from?

The earliest settlers in Cuba were French. And so that's the so that is part of the lineage of that. But yes, it's been very weird to check into French hotels. And it's the universe's joke on me to be a diverse figure at ESPN who doesn't look quite Hispanic enough or sound quite Hispanic enough to actually rep the Hispanic demos. So we got to bring in my dad next to me who looks more cartoonishly Hispanic. And we build that show from there. It's the universe's joke on me that it's always under my name, illegitimate son of the king, if you prefer to make it royalty

or just the bastard, which is like checking into a French hotel. They look at my license and they laugh, right? They're like, really? This is your name? So yeah. Thank you, Ariel, for bringing up a trauma that has been every time I've been in France, that has happened every time I've been in a hotel. So as I said, and thank you for clearing that up, I just wanted to make sure that I was right all these years. I started doing this kind of solo endeavor, interviewing people from around the sports world and all walks of life back in September.

And I wanted to wait till January to ask you, to make that ask for you to come on, because I wanted to wait for at least the one year anniversary of you flying solo on the pirate ship, leaving ESPN, starting Metal Ark, all that stuff to be completed. And now we are officially one year into this venture. And so could I ask you, Dan, how would you describe 2021 for you, both professionally and personally? How has it been? Oh, it's such a great question, right? Because I'm happily married. I'm very much in love. I want to gravitate toward all the light and warmth that is growth and possibility in my relationship and from whatever is left of my career creatively. I want to run toward that. But I've had to exercise muscles building a business over a year that aren't my area of expertise, that don't have anything to do with

what fills my heart, which is creativity, doing this, right? Interacting with my friends and connecting and birthing content during the content age. Really, laughter and love is the company I'm trying to build, but the mechanics of it have been hard, right? I don't want to be talking to lawyers. I don't want to be talking to accountants. I don't want to have to understand health benefits, but I've got a family around me, a dysfunctional, funny family of of people that, you know, came jumped off of the ledge. You know how hard it is to jump off that ledge. You tried all your life just like me to get to something that resembled ESPN, the validation of it, the credibility of it. Even with my confidence in my career, I had a whole family behind me here of, you know, we needed to jump together off of the biggest platform in sports.

If it was hard for you with your credibility and your audience, how hard do you imagine it was for my crew? And they didn't ask a question, Ariel, because we're like, okay, we got to go do it somewhere else. And so I had to build something over the last year that I think the first year, I hope the first year is the hardest and the most mistakes get made. So you learn so that you can build something that's special because you've realized, like we've realized that this is a new age and you have a value that ESPN did not assign to you. It's a business decision, but you had a value. You have a very, your audience, your brand has a value that you don't have to share with anybody else anymore in the golden age. You are the standard in this sport for mixed martial arts coverage. You couldn the standard in this sport for mixed martial arts coverage. You couldn't at ESPN do some of the work you wanted to do interviews like this one,

somehow, even though you're one of the best interviewers in the business, because I don't know. I don't even know why I remember the conversations. You don't know how much of that you want to talk about, but I remember the conversations with you trying to grease the place so that you could get in there and have some power at ESPN to do the kind of professional work that you wanted to bring to this sport. But you're too classy for your sport and you're almost too professional for the highest of professional standards, which I would assume the worldwide leader in sports aims to. Would you say the past year, and again, thank you for that. This is not about me, Dan, okay? This is about you. So I see you're doing this great thing where you kind of deflect all the praise onto me, but I want this to be all about you for once. Um, tougher than you thought, easier than you thought about, you know,

cause there's a lot of emotion. I thought it'd be easier. No, I thought it'd be easier. Oh yeah. I thought, I don't know why I thought it'd be easier, But yeah, it's just tougher because of what I'm telling you. Crawl to freedom. My family story, Cuban exile story, always front of lobe with me. Freedom is always front of lobe. Don't make decisions over money. Make sure to chase freedom because you come from a house where they taught you work and you can make it in this country away from communism and away from oppression and away from the horrors in the streets if you just work, just work.

I was doing the job that I've always done and gotten paid for and it just birthed freedom at every turn, more freedom at every turn. Keep fighting for freedom. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Keep fighting for freedom professionally. Now I have it. But the last year was a bit of a slog. And it was a slog because we had to jump off the worldwide leader in sports platform and build it ourselves, plane in the sky during the pandemic, and don't miss a

day. Build a company around that. You know, I found this article that was posted amazingly a little over 10 years ago in the highly prestigious Aventura Business Monthly. It was posted on March 1st, 2011. It was an interview with you about your career. It's actually a great Q&A. I don't know if you recall this article slash interview, but one of the few I've done incidentally and if I may, just to tie it together because forgive me if I'm rambling, but you asked me how the last year has been. So professionally, it's been hard, rewarding, challenging and because of all those things, the growth and pain, it has been something that has been fulfilling. It can't be fulfilling if it is not hard, but then personally, because I'm very much in love and interested in, in, in learning from the mirror that love gives you to where it is that your blind spots are. Um, I want to be in this place where all I am doing every day is just birthing the thing I love with the people I love. So I can go home and continue to be in love and, and follow love. And that is the, that the journey for me is to try and get the professional to have the balance so that I can get to the maximum on the personal.

Were you worried that – and I'll get back to the Aventura thing, but were you worried that the professional was ruining the personal or could ruin the personal? Not – no, I don't worry about it, but it's a strength. It is a testament to my wife and where it is she's brought me with love, where I will follow her heart, her light to wherever it takes me. I could not have done this. I simply could not have done this if I had not been in love. And so I can understand how it would be a test, right, to be less or to just be struggling with too much work at a time you should be

honeymooning and building the first parts of your life. But this is what they say about the teamwork of the best marriages or the best teams, that I can't do this unless I'm following her. It's simply not possible. You've been a very public person, obviously, around the nation, but of course in Miami and South Florida. But you have kept your personal life very private. You have referred to your wife on several occasions, just in this conversation, I know you referred to her and what she does for you on the show as well. And I remember when Greg Cody broke the news that you were getting engaged and that was somewhat of

a, you know, of a shock that, you know, this was written in the paper. Why have you kept that part of your life so private? Like she never comes on the show. You never referenced her by name. You don't post anything of her. Why have you done that? That's interesting that you would ask that because I have kept those two lives separately and I don't know whether those are two lives that should be merged. But we have one of the great joys of doing our show. And I don't know how many of our listeners will be here. So I don't want to get too deep into the weeds. But one of the great joys over the last 20 years, especially at ESPN, Ariel, is that sometimes with us, you don't know what's real and what isn't.

You don't. So many of the bits are like, wait a minute. Did that actually happen? You just mentioned Greg Cody betraying me on the news of – in the most read article he's ever written, betraying me on the news because he reported that one of – a very loudly single man was getting married. And that's one of the brief views anyone's gotten into my life, because why would I want to trust the public with that length of vulnerability? You've seen what the public is. You've seen the internet comment section that has come to life. Like, I don't want to, these are precious things. Like I will share much of my life with you. You will get a good, hell, my dad was on television with us for 10 years.

You'll get a good look into my life. The whole thing was birthed around telephone calls to my father that he didn't know that I was recording that were uproarious because my father is funny and cartoonishly funny. And he's a cartoonishly funny sports fan that people connected with. But, yeah, you get the glimpses of my life that I choose to show you. It is why, Ariel, I hope, right? Because this stuff can feel invasive in the modern age. It's why I never complain about the modicum of celebrity that I have right now. It's good enough to get you good tables and restaurants, good enough to have some power

when you are fighting your enemies, as Tony Kornheiser says. But it's not too much that it's that kind of invasive. I can still be down here on Ocean Drive, lovely Ocean Drive, and treat it like my backyard, walking shirtless with my dog because it can feel like our backyard without anybody bothering us. So back to Aventura Business Monthly, there was a question in there and the question was, and this is 2011, in 10 years time, I will be blank. And your answer was, do you remember what your answer was? No idea. I love that you unearthed this interview because it's one of the few I've ever done. And I did sort of delight in the idea, well, no one will ever see this. It'll be like nine people in a mall. So sure, let's sit down and get into my soul here in a magazine that not many people are

going to see. Honestly, it's a great read. And there's actually no name attached to it. There's no byline. The questions were actually fantastic. The answer that you gave to that question was, I'll be really happy, that's for sure, laughing if you want one word. And it's amazing to me when I read that, it kind of hit me in the heart because it feels at least to me from the outside looking in as difficult as this jump was and all the stress and all the pressure and all the responsibility you put on your shoulders, it seems like you are very happy. It comes across in your work. So was your prediction correct? Oh, wow. It's funny that you would say that because I can get into deeper stuff that goes through therapy and learning about yourself and learning about love and learning about how to be in a relationship and learning how you can't have a team with somebody else if you don't start with the loving of yourself first.

But if I'm going to age with any grace in a business that's gotten cruel, Ariel, because we will drag down Dick Vitale. Lee Corso can't get old. You know what I mean? We can be cruel. Women aren't allowed to age at all on television. If I'm going to age with grace at all, it has to be with the young people keeping me young because you can go very fast to something that's forgotten about as this media landscape change and monsters like you come running into the space because you realize I can build my own thing here too and it can be – it can represent all the things that I am. Yeah, I need to surround myself. This is the end of my career, whatever it is here. This is the last of it, right?

I don't want to be – I don't want to still be doing this in my 60s unless it's going to be just the most fun and the best work, right? If I can make the best work. That's why I'm building this company. Hopefully – I'm trying to get actually – you can speak to this just like I can, right? One of the grinds about the ethos of ESPN is just make more, make more. I wanted to make better while I was there. And there were a number of things in the daily producing of the daily diarrhea that get in the way of producing better. But now I want the freedom. I've crawled toward the freedom of like, I'd like the next few years to be the best work of my life. I don't want it just aging into the ground, shouting at clouds,

being an old person telling you what my sports opinion is. So going back to the question, you didn't really answer it. Are you happy? Yes. So I'm sorry. The answer to the question is yes, I am happier than I've ever been. And I'm happier than I've ever been because I'm following some of these things that I'm talking to you about. I would not describe my childhood. Look, we all look into our patterns and you can be all manner of introspective in trying to get to the roots of who you are and how you defined love growing up without blaming your parents or just loving your parents up and forgiving them. However it is, whatever damage it is that parents leave, my parents were hugely supportive so that I could change, chase this specific thing, Ariel,

right? Like it means a lot to me to be a Cuban American in Miami representing and fighting for freedom at this time in America, blown out at ESPN at the end because of all the stuff that everyone saw happen. So now on our own, build the airplane in the sky during a pandemic with freedom you earned in the city that you love, in the city that ESPN hired you for 10 years to work at next to your father because you wanted a show that gave off Miami and Cuban America to the audience and did it in the middle of ESPN's lineup for a long time. I'm hugely proud of that. But now on the back end of it, I have worked toward and earned my freedom and I'm through the hardest parts of the company building. I'm very much in love. And so yes, my 50s have been my best years. There've only been three of them,

but that's, this is the happiest I've ever been. You mentioned therapy. Do you talk to a therapist? Yeah, all the time. How long have you been doing that? I've been doing that, I don't know, for probably about 10 years. Um, and what led to that? Um, wow. That's a, that's an interesting story and that's good that you would get in there. If you would, and this is difficult for me to not answer because I like to answer questions honestly, but I don't have any interest in embarrassing anyone close to me. Sure, that's fair. I sort of – I just saw early in my 30s. I didn't grow up as fast as I should have.

My parents sort of handled things for me. This happens a lot with Cuban-Americans. They handled things for me and so I didn't get – my job was to concentrate on work, doing well so that I can build a career, freedom and happy. My job was to have a freedom. They were going to hand me down. It was going to be their greatest gift, their support, their belief and their love. The greatest gift they were going to give me is you can have the tools if you work to build the life that you want to build. And I told my father at the dinner table who was an engineer and sort of grinded his way through life as a factory manager.

I told him one day when I was very young, I told him that when he asked me, what do you want to do when you grow up? I said, I want to make a lot of money and I want to come home from work laughing. And he's like, good luck with that because his American dream had more of a grind. Started in Jersey City and wanted to get to the paradise of Miami so that he would make and my mom would make all the sacrifices so that I would have a better life than the one they had, a freer life than the one they had. And along the path in Miami, I, you know, I grew to embrace those freedoms, to represent those freedoms and to want to

fight for those freedoms, even if it's in this stupid little, in this little playground. And I just want to say, I hope you don't feel like I was prying too much and being too personal. Therapy is something that means a lot to me, because I started only back in February, and it changed my life. I don't think that I make this move. I leave ESPN. If I don't go to therapy, I'm a big advocate of it. So when you said that word, I'm always curious as to what leads to someone going down that path. Of course, it could be very personal. So I hope you don't feel- Okay. No, but so from there, no, no. So from there, no, to answer your question best I can without betraying any confidence is it just became obvious to me in my late 20s or early 30s. So I

guess I've been doing therapy in some ways longer than I thought, trying different therapists and whatnot. But the moment I remember choosing therapy is when I was filled with a sort of despair. I had just come back from a sabbatical that I had left some of the things that I had worked for. And I was – I went to adulthood very fast. I was examining my life for the first time. I was wondering if – I was feeling something that felt like loneliness after a lifetime of repression and I realized very dramatically that I was the – that my parents, the figures that had always been the adults in charge, that I needed to be an adult, that I needed to, in my late 20s, early 30s, sort of be someone who handled shit and welcomed adulthood. Do you want to be a father? Yeah, I'd like to be a father. I'm getting late in life for some of those choices,

but yeah, I'd like to be a father. Were you always that way? Or, you know, because a lot of people who have the success that you have are somewhat, and I don't say this in a mean way, but like, you're so, you know, locked into your job, you're somewhat selfish, right? You know, some of the best don't have families, don't have careers because their career is their wife or their life. You know what I mean? So were you like that and have you changed? Has your mindset changed about family over the years? If that's part of your imprint growing up and you don't care to ever actually look at it, then it's not a little bit selfish. You described it as a little – it's you choosing you because you don't think that you can hand me down whatever, conscious or subconscious, that you're not thinking about the things that involve giving to someone else and turning your life upside down in your wants because you've got to pour real love into whatever. Like if you're going to respect that responsibility the way that it needs to be loved and respected, if you're going to try and build for that child an investment of a love with a partner that makes that child better than yours was, you have to then choose to make your life all about that child.

And so there's inherent selfishness in chasing some of these, you know, superficial rewards that we've chased. Of course, that would, I mean, you have four kids, right? Like how? Three. to be able to examine these things with someone you trust, your vulnerabilities spoken out loud, your fears with someone you trust to not be judgmental about them and help you give you some of the tools to fix yourself and love yourself. I'm surprised it took you that long to get to it. Yeah, I probably should have done it earlier. Also, I think that I am not where I am today, wherever that may be. And again, this isn't about me if I don't have kids and if I don't have a wife, because as you know, this business can be so intoxicating, especially with social media and the criticism and all that. You would go home, I would imagine, I would definitely, and look at Twitter and look

at the mentions and let it change my psyche for the worse, my mental health for the worse. So I do think that balance is like a gift from God. I would say my kids and my wife saved my life because I couldn't go down this path in the public eye being alone. I don't think I am strong enough for that. At least I'm not. Perhaps you are. But it really does give you great balance and perspective. I remember, Dan, vividly when you announced that you were going to stop writing, when you were not going to be at the Miami Herald anymore and you were going to kind of devote all your time to your endeavors, radio and television.

Why did you ultimately make that decision? Because I remember that actually hitting me hard is like this guy, I first found out about him as a writer. I think he's one of the best sports writers in the country, in the world that I can read from a sports standpoint, and he's stopping what he's best at. And that to me was very profound because I don't know if I would have the guts to do that. Back then I was like, wow, that takes a lot of guts. Ultimately, why did you feel the need to say no mas to writing? I would say that it was an existential crisis that I was having, right? I don't know how old I was. I guess I would have been in my early 30s, but I had worked all my life because of the exile mentality of you just have to work to get to whatever it was that represented the top of professional freedom to me, right? I wasn't going to be good enough to be an athlete. But could I live a life professionally where I was paying for myself to make whatever art I could make in this little playground world,

writing about sports, doing this stuff. My father had wanted me to be an engineer. He sacrificed everything, right? We're going to school in a 1969 Valiant. The glove compartment opens any time we hit a bump. Hole in the floorboard. Friends making fun of me in the backseat because we don't have anything, but he's taking me to a private school because he wants me to have the education I need

so that I can have the freedom that he thinks for me is the right freedom, which is to be an engineer. So I've got scholarship offers to good schools to be an engineer and I tell him I want to be a sports writer. Now I work the next 10 years to be as successful a sports writer as I can, and I arrive at 29, 30 years old, the sports reporters, whatever is the biggest platform, on ESPN, Mike Lupica, Mitch Albom, Titans of the Industry, Bob Ryan. We're going to discuss sports. I am whatever I am, 28 years old, 29 years old.

This is the top of my career, and I'm in a sports bar in Times Square. This is the height of the thing and I'm in a sports bar in Times Square. This is the height of the thing. It's ESPN zone. And it smells like a bar in Times Square from the night before urine on the floors, people threw up, uh, the, you know, smells like mop and antiseptic. And, and I'm, I'm looking around and the table that's in front of us is like 27 years old and covered in stains, coffee stains. And I'm like, this is it. This is the thing that I was working for. This is, this is happy. This is the top, this is the view. And I didn't have anyone to share it with outside of, you know, my family

and, and a very small family and, and nobody who understood what it took. And so then from there, I had to just do – I did a lot of introspection looking in for the first time on buried repressions and whether work had become too dominant, too much of my personality, made me too imbalanced, and then just started the journey toward exploration there. It's an amazing story that you tell about the sports reporters. Who was the host at the time? Was it John Saunders or was it – you weren't there for Dick Schaap, right? No, it was the late John Saunders. Like I was, I remember one time this is, like, cause I was doing sports reporters too, right? Just like ESPN, just like anybody really.

If you have one successful thing, you keep making a thousand things like it, cheapening it all along the way, never making it as good, just copycat ripoffs. And so we did for every week, I was going back and forth between Miami and New York, flying every week to do the sports reporters, a half hour of television on ESPN2 with Jack Ford and stuff in order to get it to the big leagues, which was a Lupica album, Bob Ryan, and at the time you had John Saunders.

Wow. I mean, to me, that's, you say that story and it resonates because I sort of felt the same way when I finally got to Bristol. I was like, wow, is this what I've been trying to get to for 18 years? And I looked up to the sports reporters. In fact, I created like a spinoff show for MMA called the MMA beat, where it was the exact same format. You know, I was playing the role of the late great Canadian, John Saunders. And there was three other journalists. When you make it there, you say that story, but you did stick around, and you've told the story of John Skipper asking you multiple times to come to ESPN, and you saying no multiple times. And him finally saying he wanted to create this scene in Miami and all that stuff. Do you regret, Dan, going to ESPN?

Oh, this is so good. That was deft how you did that. You carved me up, carved me open. We talked about the personal upbringing stuff. And now the question that would be the newsmaker makes an appearance. Let me see here if I can get, I'm going to need to get into character. Forgive me if this is a little clumsy. And it's been- Do you have a luchador mask as well? I got to take off the headset for a second. So just give me a second. Here we go. We're going to make news. Oh, this is great. He's got a mask. Oh my God. This is amazing. It's a little tight for me. Should I put my on as well? Do you want me to get mine too? Should I get my mask as well

so we could both have luchador masks when we're talking about espn or no this is your time if we're gonna make news this is this looks funny because it's too tight for my face and it's and it's fat so i will be the the fat wrestling character if we go viral with something uh let's call let's make this character el bastardo okay i'm a hispanic luchador i am of any part of Hispanic, right? And I don't, you don't know if I'm Mexican or not, but I'm heavy set. And my whole thing is I'm El Bastardo. So let's see. Amazing. The question, the question again was, what do I regret ever going to ESPN? Yes.

All right. So this is one of the things that I have learned. God almighty, this is going to be a long conversation. I don't know. Forgive me before I answer your question. How vigorous was your non-disclosure paperwork when you had to leave there about how it is that you sign the NDAs under the terms that you leave? There were no NDAs. No? So you didn't have – so this wasn't – by having this conversation, you do not know that if I say the wrong thing here, you are throwing me into legal liabilities. Oh, that's not what I want. But it might be worth it anyways to get into a big fight with ESPN as El Bastardo. But as El Bastardo, like come on ESPN. What do you got ESPN? Do you want to really fight El Bastardo. But as El Bastardo, like, come on, ESPN. What do you got, ESPN? Do you want to really

fight El Bastardo? No. Listen, I hope you appreciate the fact that we've been talking for about 30 minutes and I haven't asked you literally a specific question about ESPN. I'm not here to do that thing with you, but it obviously was a big part of your life. And so I'm just curious if looking back, you regret, maybe you look back and you say, maybe if I just would have stayed you know locally did the radio thing locally the newspaper thing locally maybe all this other you know heartache wouldn't have affected me so much i don't know it's just okay well this is okay it's an interesting thing about regret right because so often i ask this question i fancy myself a decent interviewer

and i ask interviewees about regret and very, many of them have what to me is a standard cliche answer that doesn't have a lot of introspection, which is, or it might have introspection, but no regrets. I don't have any regrets. Everything worked out fine. And that's not a revealing answer. What I would say to you is all of the hard was worth it. What I would say to you is that wherever it is that you find regret, which is like, I wish that this hadn't happened and this hadn't happened, it hardens into a resentment that you hold around expecting someone else to heal you on, right? where they had given me freedom to do all this fun and cool shit that people didn't even understand how it was on ESPN

because ESPN was kind of serious about, you know, just serious about sports coverage. Like, it seems crazy to me, Ariel, the idea. You come from, like, wrestling and fighting background, that it wouldn't be very easy to understand this is entertainment. Like, why wouldn't you make it a little more fun? It doesn't have to be sacred. Ariel does plenty sacred and plenty silly, and it doesn't mean he can't do smart and stupid. Why wouldn't you allow in sports the playground? Why wouldn't you allow everybody to be screwing around like this?

Because it's fun to be El Bastardo in character, letting you look behind the curtains of the machine and being like, so they allowed us to exist as an anti-establishment entity inside the establishment. They gave us the credibility of the establishment, but people who were watching us were like, oh, they're making fun of the whole thing. They're making fun. They are revealing all of these debate shows, all of this stuff. This is just silly. Look, look at all this. This is just television.

You're allowed to have fun around all this. This is just television. You're allowed to have fun around all this. We were hired. I don't know if you know this story, but John Skipper's idea at ESPN was, okay, it's the worldwide leader in sports, but it's born in Bristol and it's this beautiful sports streaming thing. How do we make it more national? Like I know it's the worldwide leader in sports. So he puts places in New York, puts places in Los Angeles, puts Kornheiser and Wilbon in Washington and hired us in Miami and was trying to build a little more diverse thing, right? Because we were representing Miami, the Hispanic thing. And he built this beautiful thing for us here that is right, you were here a couple of weeks ago. It's a beautiful stretch of

land that is, that is being, you know, the corrupt politicians of Miami are, are purposely trying to raid and destroy, but we won't go down that path. The point is he built something on the beach that was behind me. I was doing it with my, with my dad. I can't help, but be grateful for that. Even if the job changed a little bit at the end and I didn't have total freedom, right? I would have preferred total freedom. I always want total freedom. I will fight for total freedom and I didn't have total freedom at the end. So we left, but it worked out. They gave us all our shit. That's pretty rare. They gave us our audience. That's pretty rare. And I don't know how much I'm allowed to regret something that was, you know, I mean, I got to the best part, Ariel.

It's not just that I love all of these people with whom I work. They are very much my family. We left the ESPN when they let go of a family member. That's when we all left without asking a question. But also to work 10 years late in life and connect with my father in some of the places that I couldn't in childhood as an adult in therapy, to have a relationship with his dad that is loving, forgiving, and do it on television and learn about who you are with this blessing that this man birth blessing for you because he was fired from a factory when he was 60 years old and his identity had been stripped away. At the end, it was thrown in a garbage can. He shows up for work. All his stuff is in the garbage can. That's it. You're too old. No announcement. That's the end of the line on professional freedom. My father has never examined his relationship with his own mother, where she rejected him, any of the story of them. He's a stoic Cuban man.

Comes to work one day at 60 years old. His identity is in a garbage can. Fish it out, old man, if you want to work. The son that he made an investment in, the son that he drove that 1969 Valiant with the glove compartment that would open. I mean a piece of shit car that he was driving. My friends at private school making fun of my dad trying to get his kid to a higher place. That I would be able to spend years fucking around with my dad on television doing a stupid show, connecting with my old man, aging with him on television that way

at a time when, like, there are no sitcom dads and he comes close, people, like, it's a daily, they're trying something. Look at them. They're trying, it's weird, but they're trying something at ESPN. They dared to have an old man on next to his adult son, his fat adult son, El Bastardo. How much can I regret it?

I'm yammering. You know what I mean, though? No, I'm happy with that. I think that's a great answer, and I'm happy you feel that way. I'm wondering, if John Skipper is still the president of ESPN, do you think you're still there? That'd be interesting. I think that's a better question for him because I didn't anticipate.

I tell people this all the time. John Skipper and I didn't become friends, friends for real until after he left ESPN. Like he was always protecting me at ESPN. And so I guess I took some of the freedoms he was providing for granted, but I never knew about it. Like he was protecting me because he was very much protecting the idea of who I was. Latin guy, he'd promised something. Like I never wanted to leave Miami. I never wanted to be anything bigger than what I was already in Miami. Afternoon drive host, newspaper columnist, and I could still be doing PTI. PTI's still on the air 20 years later. I can make a career from there and be happy. He said, no, I want to build something more diverse at ESPN. I want to build something that has what he considered the preeminent American sports journalist who was Hispanic. I want him to have a show with his dad that feels like something different. And then that most diverse show at ESPN, the most diverse show at ESPN became something that is no longer on television. Two to three, you could catch Max Kellerman.

They're trying to kill poor Max Kellerman, working him every day from 5.30 to 3 in the afternoon or 4 in the afternoon. The Most Diverse Show at ESPN became Max Kellerman, went to the internet, and we got out of there. And the latest commercials I saw at ESPN, and you should have had commercials at ESPN, were Marty Smith going to make ESPN southier now. We are going to make ESPN southier. So you make your own conclusions from there. El Bastardo has spoken. I love it. It's a great mask, by the way.

And I feel like El Bastardo should make more appearances on your show. Do you recall, Dan, the moment? It's a little tight, though. I'm a little worried about how much fat is leaking through. I mean, feel free to take it off now. The regret. No, but I want to keep it on because I'm hoping that we still, I'm hoping to give you an answer that makes news somewhere. It's the goal of what we're doing for me. Well, Andrew Marchand is obviously watching right now. So I do want to say hello to him at this time. Um, well, can we talk about Andrew Marchant?

Because Andrew Marchant, come on, Andrew. Andrew, you got your sources, like they can't be so one-sided. Like this is what I've been watching this for so long, Ariel. Jimmy Kimmel talks about like the cathedrals that were like these pregame shows and stuff and how comedians didn't fit here. And in this world, there was, you know, they were always worried about what media critic Rudy Martzki was going to write. In sports, of all places, you know, executives,

and no one ever grew up, Pat Sajak says this, no one ever grew up wanting to be a television executive. That's not how that one works. Can we please stop paying attention to what somebody is writing behind a paywall at the New York Post when the information being leaked ain't coming from one of the sides that has the truth? Amen to that. Amen to that. TV, media, sports media, it's a very insecure place. And I think some people like to get their

egos puffed up a little bit in these outlets. And there are people who are willing to help puff up those egos. Could I ask you, Dan, do you remember the moment where you realized, finally, I know there were ups and downs, especially some downs towards the end where you're like, I got to get out of here. I know my contract's not up, but my my time is done here. I know it's over and we got to start thinking of the exit strategy. What, what was that moment? I mean, it's, I'm so, I'm so reluctant, right? Because I wish there were, I wish there were one moment that I can point to because once the, I mean, everyone knows that, or everyone who cares about us knows that once they let go of Chris Cody, who is the son of one of my best friends in the world and again, of a dysfunctional family that has only made it this far because,

you know, somewhere in the stickiness of what we do, people identify with like, those are just dudes. Those are just people or now women, I should say. They're just people who I recognize. Some of them shouldn't be there. And Chris Cody, they're authentic and they're an authentically weird family. When you do that to me or somebody who represents the things that I do, we can't work together anymore. We got to figure out how not to work together anymore. But it can be any number of things before that, right, Ariel? Like if you're three days before the election, the most turbulent election of our lifetime with Cuban-Americans who nobody understands, I'm being offered a moderator with the future president of the United States among Cuban-Americans with Joe Biden to just do

journalism. I'm not even doing activism there. I wasn't allowed to do it. And there were, there were like, that's where freedom was getting impinged on. And that, and I can give you a lot of examples like that, which when you got to the company, if you'll remember, I was trying to hold your hand through some of these things where we're talking to executives about how do you snake your way through this labyrinth where there are partnerships, where there are journalist impediments. And when someone like Dana White is trying to contaminate the entire system and take journalism away from you, the company that you and I were at when we were having that conversation, you and I are no longer at that company because it became impossible to navigate all of that and

represent your true journalistic, most professional identity, right? Like, I mean, I'm not saying anything you don't understand. I thought maybe you were going to say, you know, that whole incident with you talking about, you know, the policy and having to go to New York and meet with President Jimmy Pataro. Even though it kind of worked out where you didn't get in trouble, right? I thought maybe in your mind like that was when you kind of knew the writing was on the wall. No, but it was just so weird to me the way that that played out. And this is why I tell you about this bogus – I don't even know if it was Marchand who did this. But when you get your stories from only one side, that doesn't represent the truth.

That just represents the truth that the New York Post at a time when truth is harder to handle than it's ever been. And the New York Post is compromised at every turn, including in its sports section. When we arrive in a place where I'm sitting here at ESPN and I'm trying to do better work and I'm trying to fight some of these good fights that I've been hired to fight by John Skipper, who, you know, empowered me to try and be a journalist at this company that did a lot of growing over the years that we were doing the journalism there. It was made to look publicly at a time where I was the one that was heated because of what was happening in this country. I was the one who was saying to himself, wait a minute, this is a desperate time in America. I've got a microphone.

Do you know me at all? Do you know my story at all? Do you know how I got here? Do you know what I believe in? And you're going to make me sit out unless I hold up Russell Westbrook as a shield? Any of the conversations when we've been having, Ariel, we were at ESPN talking about race for like 10 years. I was unpopular because of how much I talked about race and I vastly, vastly underestimated the problem in this country. When I'm doing the job at ESPN the way that we want to do it, which is free and clear. And then I can't talk about that. I don't know why people would assume that that was a meeting that Jimmy Pataro had to have with me. I don't know why people wouldn't want to see that I needed to see Jimmy Pataro to see if I could work with him. And I found Jimmy Pataro to be a very nice man and a man who tried to protect me as

much as he could within the corporate structure, which can be difficult to protect me. And at the end, we left as amicably as we could. He wanted it to work. I wanted it to work, but I don't understand why people would assume, at least in part, because they can control the narrative by leaking stuff. And then I can't speak publicly without getting punished. I'm not going to speak anonymously given the business that I come from. So like that's the story from inside the dirty media machine. I don't know, you know, like I don't know how people absorb that or if they care about the minutia of that. Maybe the details don't matter to anybody else, but they are our life. You know, like so to have publicly out there the idea, that was some shit eating I had to do.

But I did it on behalf of the company because I value the platform and I wanted to see if I can work within the construct of new management. I promise you we go 45 minutes. We have time for just a couple more. We're at the 45-minute mark here. Is that okay? Yes, please forgive me though. I hope you can edit it if I've been talking too long or not answering your questions in the right places. This is one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done. I really appreciate the candor, the honesty, the emotion, and the mask on top of that. So thank you. So is that okay? You're all right with that? Yes, of course. I don't want Mike Ryan to be texting me angrily.

No, they'll come in. If they come in, it's okay. And I'll, yes, go ahead. You send David Sampson my way and he'll, you know, try to take my baseball team away or something like that. No, please, go, go, go. Let's go. Okay, okay. So one thing I was worried about when I left ESPN was that I would be bitter, that I wouldn't be able to even watch the programming, the games, right?

The actual shows, whatever, take them or leave them, but the games. I'm a huge NBA fan. I was afraid that I couldn't even turn on the channel because I felt a certain way. Thankfully, that hasn't happened and I'm okay. I'm able to watch the national championship, all that stuff. Is it hard for you to consume ESPN content because of the way things ended? Oh, no, it's not that. I would understand that bitterness or that resentment if you were totally ungrateful for all the gifts ESPN provided that allowed all of this. It wasn't like that for me. I wasn't consuming ESPN's coverage the last six or seven years I was working at ESPN, because there are a lot of people at this trough, a lot of people giving opinions.

And for me, I just didn't see – and this doesn't mean it's for everybody, but I just didn't see a whole lot of programming that was super original or was at the high end of whatever can be creatively. The sports debate is a construct. I lived it, right? I was on the sports reporter standing there questioning my life, right? So you would understand or you'd forgive me if I got are you going to end up? And you make this big news regarding the DraftKings deal, which I think worked perfectly for you guys. How close were you to signing with an actual network broadcaster, something like that, a more traditional route? How close was that? Yeah, very close. Like we had great conversations.

They were, God almighty, SiriusXM was so good to us. And it was going to feel like, you know, to the degree that you could do this, Ariel, Howard Stern, younger radio thing. Like we're not quite that. I won't put ourselves in that kind of pioneering company. But we could have helped and there was a good amount of money and partnership that could have felt less alone than this does, but also less free, right? So if you're put behind a paywall, we've got some issues with our fans, our customers. Ariel, I don't know how to explain it to you. You've probably seen it when you visit us, but it is a rabid group of supporters that they ride with us for the right reasons. And so the way that they're sticky is

they're like, no, we're all about these guys. Like that's the thing that ESPN gave us that DraftKings recognizes the value. They gave us that audience, right? DraftKings. And that's not just the – that's not the value now, Ariel. You saw that we made the market a little bit. El Bastardo is here to tell you that we made the market a little bit with our partner, DraftKings. And then Pat McAfee comes in, old punter S. Thompson there, and he decides,

oh, I'm going to do this too, and you see what he got paid. So do I need to announce as we need Florida to legalize gambling and I need to tell people Florida sports education is where you go to make gambling legal in this country? Do I need to explain to people and DraftKings that we're underpaid now, Ariel? We're underpaid. I agree. Are you okay with the mask? Is it? It's a little tight and I'm having trouble with the character because the flab is pouring out of my eyes and it doesn't allow me to be maximum confident the way that you're so good at the wrestling characters. You're so good at the fight game. This is an, I'm not an actor.

I'm not a professional actor. I have to feel it in my soul and I'm feeling fat in this costume. I gotta be honest with you. No, please, I want you to be comfortable. The ESPN stuff is done. I just have a couple more questions. My favorite thing that you do, if I may,

is South Beach Sessions. Like when it pops up on the feed, I get excited. Even if I'm not familiar with the guest, I love the art of interviewing. And I think in sports, you just, familiar with the guest. I love the art of interviewing. And I think in sports, you just might be the very best. The way you ask questions, insightful. It's emotional. You're caring with your guests.

But you also, you have a demeanor and a tone where it reminds me to a degree of Howard in the sense that you break the guests down and they become vulnerable and open up to you. And so I'm just curious, who is your favorite interviewer of all time? Where did you develop this style? Well, it's interesting because you've probably felt some of this in this interview. I don't even know how often it's happened to me because I have blind spots too. But what's funny about interview styles, right? Because I never heard Howard Stern very much and I can't say that I have copied anybody. But when I make connections with any kinds of human beings and I gravitate toward the unusual ones, right, whether it's John Amici or Ricky Williams in sports or Pat Riley, where they're giving you like some of the real vulnerable stuff that sometimes men don't talk about in this world. I have found two things. One, I am endlessly curious, but also that endless curiosity allows me to ask questions of others that make them feel heard and seen. And it's an excellent way for me to not ever show anybody real vulnerability because I can always hide

behind the questions and I could learn about you, but it doesn't have to be an interview technique. It could be a meeting people technique that I've had to disarm over the years because I didn't realize that it was keeping me from real vulnerability in intimate relationships because it's so easy to be endlessly curious.

Ask someone about themselves so you never have to look at yourself or anything you're doing. It was something that I was doing that I didn't realize I was doing that was sort of masking the parts of my life that I wasn't being, I wasn't honoring myself, being true to myself by being my most vulnerable self. One of my favorite things that you've ever written came out in 2002. It was such a huge thrill for me as someone who loved sports media, wanted to work in sports media, and looked up to the likes of you that Dan Lebitard of ESPN had written a profile on one of my favorite baseball players of all time, Vladimir Guerrero, and my little baseball team, the little engine that could the Montreal Expos. It's a great profile.

If you type in your name and Vladimir Guerrero, it was just like, because ESPN didn't care about the Expos, and I loved them, and they were on their deathbed at the time. I don't know if you recall. Is there anything you remember about that? Could you give me something about the Expos that, you know, their memory is fading away? Is there anything you remember about dealing with them? You interviewed Michael Barrett, who was the catcher back in the day. Like, it was great to go back and read it. And by the way, fantastic profile, Expos or not.

But it was just very exciting for me to see the Expos get the Levitard treatment. It is so nice. There are so few people like you, Ariel. I wish I heard from them more often because it really is delightful to look back at some of the portions in my career where I'm assuming many people, even listening to this this right now have no idea how much I poured into writing, how much I loved writing, how fulfilling writing was, even though it was the hardest thing, right? And that's why it was so fulfilling. It was the loneliest thing, but writing was hard. And what I remembered was trying to cross symbolically over the language gap that there is in this country that could be represented by baseball

that was represented by so many Hispanics, but the language kept Vladimir Guerrero from being a superstar. And I'm not just talking about the language. I'm talking about all the differences between us that forced this guy to work in that city with Dominican culture and not wanting to leave his mother's side because like me, he had the, like me and a lot of Hispanics, the adults handle things for you for a long time. Next thing you know, Vladimir Guerrero is trying to grow up in a foreign country with a, I believe a sixth grade education. I believe as a kid who drank from puddles as a child, sometimes to get running water, he arrives at celebrity at fame and then gets it on his own terms just because we can't jump over the language barrier to get to know him.

And so what I enjoyed about that time, I remember how honest Frank Robinson was in an interview just saying, look, I'm the leader of this team. I have no way to connect with my superstar. Just leave him alone. And I just thought that was – I remember it because this is a hall of famer. This is a guy who came up through, you know, he came up through the civil rights movement as a hard ass personality type who's now in leadership. And very few people of his color get to that size of leadership and they have to be all stars to do it. And this guy is trying to teach the most precious resource, baseball resource in the history of Canada, right? Because it's not just him. Now it's his son too.

There has never in Canada been someone that fertile for Canada on behalf of excellent baseball. And Frank Robinson had zero access to him as the leader and his boss, zero, because he could not speak to him. So he was afraid to speak to him because he didn't want it to get confused and Vladimir Guerrero to sulk for a month because he doesn't understand his manager. Did you communicate with him in Spanish? Yes. Wow. Because you know with him in Spanish? Yes. Wow. Cause you know,

it's amazing. I don't even know what his voice sounds like. Like he was the star of Montreal. I've never even heard an interview with him because he was so shy. I think you have to go. So I'll ask you one last question, Dan. Shy,

but also shy. This happens a lot, right? This happens uneducated. So afraid to feel stupid, right? And a second language. Anybody can understand that,

right? Trying to just afraid to sound stupid. So Vladimir Guer feel stupid, right? In a second language. Anybody can understand that, right? Trying to just afraid to sound stupid. So Vladimir Guerrero, he wasn't effusive in Spanish either. You could just get some answers in Spanish. If it ends tomorrow, the career ends tomorrow, and I disagree with you. I think you will go into your 60s because this whole new venture has given you a whole new lease on life. But if it ends tomorrow, what is Dan Levitar most proud of?

What do you want your legacy in this crazy world of sports media to be? And if I can, and maybe it ends up being this, I think you're going to say that you gave the voices to the likes of Mina and Pablo and all these guys at ESPN. I've heard that answer before, but from a selfish professional standpoint, what are you most proud of? Most proud of, I have to that answer before, but from a selfish professional standpoint, what are you most proud of? Most proud of, I have to choose one thing, and I'm only allowed to choose one, right? Because I could go through a bunch of them.

I could go through how proud I am to represent Miami. I could go through how proud I've represented Cuban-Americans or Hispanics. I could go through how proud I am of getting to work with my father on television, being somebody across many platforms for plenty of years who has advocated for athletes and their humanity and getting called an apologist. I'm proud of some of the work that I've done in writing and some of the environments that I have created professionally where my friends can be themselves, right? It's not just that Mina and Dominique got to bring the smart and Pablo and Amin bring the smartest of different perspectives. And you, you know, you really do cease to see some of the differences when you just like people because you're like, I like hanging around with these people. We were able to show off the full range of their personalities. But what I'm proudest of is that I've done all of the growing

and introspection over the last 30 years of studying myself and what I want to be and how to represent freedom, my family, and the things that I believe in. And that has borne evidently fruit, a business that can be successful so that all my friends and family in this dysfunctional family can go chase what their dreams look like too. I'm trying to build a company with a soul, right? I'm trying to talk. I wanted to hire Ariel Helwani. We couldn't afford him because he realizes that his brand is, uh, is big and giant now. And I want to do stuff with people who represent the things that I believe in that I care about, that I want to love and laugh with because it will birth a lot of fun, creative stuff if outside of the corporations we're able to do

that. It's a long answer, right? I can't answer with one thing. But the fact that the family, the work, the best I can do was imprinted with my family's work ethic and following work through a path of loneliness that required the 30s and 40s to grow up some, I arrived in a place professionally where hopefully I can turn this business into something that makes the dreams come true of everybody who works for us because we're trying to do it our way, right? And so if applying the most pride and the most ego to it that I can apply of everything that I just told you, the last sentence is the one, right? Our way. We stuck to our shit. We stuck to our convictions. We stuck to our fight. We wanted to get to the things that Stugatz and Mike Ryan and Billy and Roy and Chris Chris that they wanted, our family, stuck together. They jumped with me, all of them, without a question. Audience jumped too, said, we want to be about what that's about. That means something.

That's authentic in this day and age. I'm proud that we did that our way. And amazing way to tie this all together, just like another famous New Jersey native once said, right? Frank Sinatra, he did it. I mean, how about that, Dan? I mean, you couldn't have served that up better for me. You did that, but you did that to me. It betrays all these allegiances to Miami Hispanics, and you betray me as a fraud from Jersey City.

Your Garden State's own Dan LeBattard. I cannot tell you how much respect I have for you. It is infinite. This was such a huge honor, a massive, massive deal for me to have you on. Not just you, but also the great El Bastardo. I mean, this is just a huge, huge honor. I mean, can I just very quickly hear my thing? Eres un come mierda, Helwani. Here I am, too. El come mierda más grande que tenemos en el periodismo.

Eres. I can't let you be El Bastardo without Heel Wani El Nariz coming out as well. Dan, much respect. My best to you and the entire team, your family as well. Thank you for doing this. And I really appreciate you and your friendship more than you know. I've got fat pouring out of my eyes, but you look like you're wearing the underwear, the panties of a deviant.

That does not look like a wrestling mask. That looks as someone who's trying to get comfortable with their sensuality as they role play in the bedroom with a rainbow of underwear colors. We'll leave it at that. Thank you, man. El Bastardo signing off. My sign off should be in Spanish, I think. All right. So that was amazing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. What a legend.

And again, he doesn't do those often. So I really appreciate him doing that for me. And, you know, I was worried when we didn't come to a deal last year that maybe it would ruin our relationship, our friendship. And honestly, I was really hung up on that. I was really worried about that. Dan and I met for the first time. I was on his show the Monday after I was banned in 2016. And he kind of like was making fun of me. I didn't really get it. I was a little emotional,

as you may recall. And we kind of got off on the wrong foot, but we have become, I think, good buddies and I appreciate him and I'm happy to say that it didn't ruin our relationship, the fact that we didn't work together and maybe down the line we shall. Great, great career. If you're unfamiliar with him,

I hope you appreciate just how great he is now and I hope you'll check out his work. He's got the great YouTube channel, Levitard and Friends, obviously South Beach Sessions and all the podcasts that they do, they are omnipresent. So I wish the best to him and the entire shipping container. Also, Stugatz Legend as well. Just great to talk to these media people.

So I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Thank you very much to BetterHelp for sponsoring today's episode. Thanks to our production team. Thanks to all of you for your continued support. Please continue to rate, download, subscribe, and review. I love you all very much. And check out our YouTube channel. Ariel Helwani is the name.

YouTube.com slash Ariel Helwani. That's where you can see El Bastardo in person. It's a great site. It is an absolute great site. So if you want to see that or any of our previous interviews, go check that out or listen to them on this here feed.

All right. Back next week. Hope you have a great weekend. Thank you again for listening. I love you all and I will talk to you then. Take care. Thank you.