The Ariel Helwani Show - Steve-O

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

In a wide-ranging conversation about his INSANE life, Steve-O tells Ariel about his journey from clown school to the big screen. The guys discuss many things, like how a college breakup led to his daredevil career, using his body for medical testing, his relationship with Johnny Knoxville, how the idea for Jackass came to fruition, the intervention that turned his life around, his 14-year sobriety, the closest he's ever felt to death, and so much more.Steve-O is a widely celebrated actor, comedian, author, podcaster, and stuntman. Known most for his work on the early 2000s popular TV show Jackass, Steve-O is also a massive MMA fan. His YouTube channel has 6 million subscribers and he also hosts the podcast, Wild Ride! with Steve-O. In 2011, he co-wrote Professional Idiot: A Memoir, which provides a deeply intimate look into Steve-O's life.His new movie, Jackass Forever, is available in theaters now. You can follow Steve-O on Twitter and Instagram @steveo.Today's episode is also brought to you by ExpressVPN. Visit ExpressVPN.com/HELWANI right now to arm yourself with an extra 3 months of ExpressVPN for free.For more episodes of The Ariel Helwani Show, please follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on Ariel's YouTube channel.Theme music: "Frantic" by The Lovely Feathers

Hello everyone, hope you're doing well. Welcome back to a brand new edition of the Ariel Hawani Show. I, of course, am Ariel Hawani. It is Thursday, February 10th, 2022. Thank you so much to the Lovely Feathers for this great intro song. It's called Frantic. I love those guys, and I also love today's guest. I love today's guest so much. I was first introduced to today's guest back in the year 2000 when he was a star on this show on MTV called Jackass. You may have heard of it. He is probably the second most famous person to come out of that show, and I would argue right now is even more famous than the original most famous person on that show. Of course, I'm talking about Steve-O.

Alongside the likes of Johnny Knoxville and so many others. They burst onto the scene back in 2000, and it was a crazy show at a crazy time in our lives. And they just did things that were just so insane, you couldn't even imagine trying to pull this off. And they were part of multiple movies, three up until this year. A new one just came out called Jackass Forever. And as I tell them in our interview, Jackass Forever coming out right now feels like the ultimate comfort food. If entertainment was comfort food, this feels like comfort food because it feels like the world wants to laugh. They want to be nostalgic. They want to think about simpler times, if you will. These guys, as crazy as it may seem, remind us of that. And so I think you're really going to love this. He is such a lovable, genuine human being. He is

such an authentic human being. He is completely, I mean, he is one of a kind. And he talks about these crazy stunts and these injuries and all this stuff so nonchalantly. It's actually mind-blowing how he talks about it because just one of these things would alter my life forever. And that's why we love him so much. And he has been through a lot. He has had his ups and downs. He hit rock bottom. He had to be put into a psychiatric ward. He was an addict. He is now sober, almost 14 years. And he has really built a great life for himself post-Jackass with his YouTube channel, with his books, with his podcast, with his comedy career. It's really an amazing

story. It felt like Steve-O was on the path of just becoming like, oh, remember that guy Steve-O from Jackass in 2000, 2001? To now, he's a huge star on social media. He's a massive MMA fan. That's how I met him. And it's just an amazing, heartwarming story. And one of the best byproducts of doing this job that I do in the public eye is meeting people like Steve-O. I met Steve-O at an MMA event, at a UFC event, three, four years ago. We've stayed in touch. Every time I reach out to him, he writes me back. And he's just a lovable, kind soul.

I can't say enough good things about him. And so here I am talking all about him. Let's hear from the one and only Steve-O, who's one of the stars of the brand new movie, Jackass Forever, which as of right this moment is the number one movie in America. How crazy is that? The number one movie in America, one of the stars of the number one movie in America, is on my show today. The Little Engine That Could continues to chug along. Without further ado, here's my conversation with

the one and only, the inimitable, the often imitated, never duplicated, Steve-O. I don't know if we have a lot in common on the surface. I think internally, we actually do have a lot in common, Steve-O, and I was listening to an interview with you very recently where you talked about your podcast, which is doing very well. Congratulations. And I love the setup. I love the RV look.

I love everything that you're doing. And we'll get into how you've become this incredible entrepreneur. But you mentioned something that really spoke to me about the anxiety that you get from having to book guests and having to see like, is this guest going to do well? Is this going to hit? And just reaching out to people and asking for favors. Nothing has ever spoken to me more, Steve-O, than that because I hate reaching out to people, yet the majority of my life is

reaching out to people to come on my various shows. So it was nice to hear that people like you actually can relate to the feelings that I have almost 24 hours a day. Yeah, absolutely, man. And it's before I got before I started my podcast, I would find it quite annoying when people would ask me to do their podcast um in a lot of cases not all but the reality is that everybody has a podcast you know and and a great number of the people who were asking me to do theirs it was just like i knew they didn't have an audience it's like no i don't want to do your podcast like how annoying and uh. And then I really was resistant to jumping on the podcast bandwagon and assuming that role, where now I'm the guy asking the annoying question, will you do my podcast? And that was the inspiration for me to set up a studio in the van,

because the philosophy was that at the very least I could make it as painless as possible by bringing the studio to the guest wherever and whenever is most convenient for them and it worked out as a you know worked out as a cool little gimmick and um yeah you know the the success of the podcast is absolutely driven by the guest You got a guest that's either going to perform or it's not. And you live and die by that. And, you know, I'm a pretty ambitious guy. And I just felt that the more high caliber guests I would get, the more I would get, you know, like the big names would get big names and it would take on a snowball effect.

And I'd love to say that that was the case, but it's not quite galvanizing the way I thought it would. But despite that, I've been fortunate to get a lot of big names and it's been great. The podcast, by the way, is entitled Wild Ride. You broke the MMA news cycle not that long ago. Well, now it feels like it might've been a long time ago. I've lost all track of time, but you had John Jones on one time and a big exclusive. That was a huge deal. So you're doing just fine. By the way, I'd be remiss if I don't say hello to Wendy, who's joining us as well. Another thing we have in common, Walter was once a name of a dog of yours. And my son's name is Walter. I love that name. I would be offended, you know, dog, son,

but I know the love that you have for your animals. So I was honored when I found out that you like the name as well. And of course, I met you and this is probably like the best byproduct of my career is meeting people like you, who, you know, I'm just a schmuck kid in the year 2000 watching MTV and you're a huge star on television. And now like you're a bud because we both like MMA and it's been amazing to meet people like you through mixed martial arts and so I do feel like I need to start with MMA we've got a big card this weekend you know what's amazing Steve of course I look at your Twitter and it is literally 98% UFC talk it It's just you, random thoughts on UFC. So, Izzy, Whitaker, UFC 271

this weekend, who do we like? I will absolutely weigh in on that, but let's call it what it is. My Twitter feed is whatever percentile you just attributed. It's that devoted

to attempts at getting my tweet on screen uh during ufc broadcast i mean that's like let's be honest i'm an attention whore and and when i tweet during the fight and i see my tweet on the screen it means the world to me and should my tweet not be broadcast it's devastating for me i'm really i'm a simple guy ariel i feel like you i feel like you make a lot no do you not are they ignoring you i feel like i love you i i do i do pretty well i do i do i do pretty well i'm very very grateful for uh you know i'm very grateful for the love that the ufc gives me and and they give me so much love.

I mean, it's it's really remarkable and I shouldn't suggest that I'm unhappy with anything about them. But on to this weekend, Adesanya Whitaker. I mean, shoot, I've done a very bad job of predicting previous fights of of Adesanya I mean going into Adesanya versus Vittori I thought that uh the wrestling was going to be too much you know I like I thought that uh I mean I'm having trouble remembering I mean I had a full philosophy, but one way or another, I was more confident in Vittori. I think that I can sum this up by saying, I've done a bad job of betting against Adesanya.

I think more and more, Adesanya has proven himself to be so talented. I mean, it's... I don't see what's going to be very different with this rematch with Whitaker. What do you think? I mean, I tend to agree. I think it's going to be a much closer fight than the first fight. I think it's going to be a much closer fight than the first fight. I think it's going to be a much more entertaining fight than the first fight. The first fight was entertaining because of just the sheer domination.

I think this one goes the distance. And I would lean, I think Izzy is the better fighter right now. I know people talk about his wrestling and whatnot. That was against a 205 pounder who was much bigger than him, Jan Bochovic. You know, they're at equal size. And I think Whitaker has actually improved a lot. Izzy doesn't want to say that.

I think Whitaker has improved a lot since the first fight and mentally he has come a long way. He's claiming that he's out of his head and all that stuff. But gun to my head i would i would have to go with izzy right i i think so um he brought up the blachowicz fight um and where i thought it was very telling that that izzy went up to that 205 division but stepping on the scales clearly he had done made no effort

whatsoever to put on any weight he weighed the same that uh that he ever weighed and uh you know the speculation was that is he's just that talented that he didn't want to give up any speed for for bulk you know and that he was going to handle it. But clearly that didn't work so well. Do you think that there was... Wait a second, am I on your podcast here? I feel like you're turning the tables on me here. This is incredible. I love it.

Like the way that Izzy's move up to 205 was thwarted. It was pretty hard for me not to kind of make some sort of inference and compare that to Jon Jones going up to heavyweight. I don't like it for Jon Jones. I'm on record. I don't think the move

to heavyweight will be fruitful. I think it will be fruitful in the financial sense. He'll get paid to go up, but I wouldn't advocate for it. He doesn't have that frame. He's not that big of a guy, you know, like he's a big guy now, but like when he actually wants to get into shape and fight camp shape, there's some big, like Francis Ngannou is a big guy. Cyril Ghosn is a big guy. Derek Lewis, big guy. These guys hit really hard.

And if his recent fights would prove anything, it's like, yeah, 10 years at the top takes a toll, right? You're just squeaking by Dominic Reyes, which by the way, I thought he lost to Dominic Reyes in Houston. Squeaking by Anthony Smith, squeaking by Tiago Santos. Those aren't the upper echelon of the 205 pound division, and he was just squeaking by them. So the upper echelon of heavyweight5 pound division, and he was just squeaking by them. So the upper echelon of heavyweight is pretty impressive. So yes, I don't love it. I think in retrospect, it was a mistake for Izzy to move up. I respect the fact that he wanted to just kind

of go for it. You only live once. Why not go for some history? Everyone thought Jan was kind of a weaker champion. In the end, Jan had the perfect game plan and the perfect size to execute that game plan. Right. Was John Jones not carried out of the octagon after all the leg kicks from Thiago Santos? Well, he did get banged up a little bit, but it was more Santos that got hurt and had to have the surgeries on his knees. Santos did a good job. Yeah. He got a lot of leg kicks in on

he did get a lot of leg kicks yes he did he did by the way could I ask are you shyer now to make picks you know because of the whole crackhead incident with Conor McGregor because I feel like for those that don't know you made a pick or at least you weighed in on the second

Poirier fight and he tweeted to the UFC account like to get this quote unquote crackhead as he put it off his timeline and I kind of felt from afar like that kind of bummed you out but then you kind of doubled down and went all in on Poirier no it it didn't bum me out at all um you know to call me a crackhead, I'm many years removed from my active drug addiction. So I really think that I'm pretty confident and secure in who I am. And to have somebody in MMA, there's nobody bigger than Conor McGregor. So for there to be news stories about how he called me a crackhead. I mean, again, I'm a simple guy, Ariel. I'm an attention whore. I got a lot of attention from

Conor McGregor. And the fact that it was in the context of me picking Poirier to beat him, it worked so well for me, not just because I got attention, but because I had already signed a deal to post a number of times for a gambling operation. And I got to take that and say, I snuck over to Joe Rogan and DC and John Anik and waved a bunch of money around. I got a great photo, which performed super well on my Instagram. And I used that to promote my gambling sponsorship. And, and, and Conor McGregor gave me the perfect opportunity. Plus I was right. You know, that was the bet I won.

You know, I'm not like that, that I won that. And, and I think that my, my, my view of it, my instincts were correct. The line on that second fight between Poirier and McGregor was, it was wrong. Poirier was a slight favorite, if I recall, and Poirier had that by a mile. Yeah, I actually messed up. I always call it the second one. I always make the mistake. It's actually the third one,

but it's almost like those last, you're talking about the one in July. So I messed up and I put that in your brain. Technically it's the third, but second at 55 and we kind of view them as two separate entities in a weird way. Those last two fights from last year

and then the one from like 2014. Oh, right. It was the third. Yeah. It was the third. How. It was the third. How about that? Yeah, okay. But yeah, I mean, either way, it's the same story.

I picked that one correctly. And I think, I don't really, I'm not really a gambler. You know, like I felt that my integrity demanded that if I'm going to promote a gambling thing that I have to use anything that I promote. And so, again, Connor gave me this great opportunity to sort of walk the walk and place a bet. And I felt strongly about it. I was right. I won. But then the next bet I placed,

I lost. And then I decided, you know what? It's not for me. That's fair. That's fair. Somewhat surprising because one would argue that you gamble in a lot of different ways with your own health and your life. But in this regard, I get it's not for everyone. I've heard you mention the attention whore, you know, line and describe yourself as such in multiple interviews. Do you recall, like the earliest time that you were an attention whore? Like, do you remember, like, for as long as you can remember in school, were you always craving attention? Or was there a turning point in your life? I absolutely was. And it's not even a memory that I have, but just stories about me when I was a baby, like climbing out of windows and stuff like, you know, apparently my first attempt at walking like I knocked out some baby tooth or something. Um, it was, uh, I was, I was just a maniac attention whore for sure as a kid. Um, and I have some pretty wild memories from,

from grade school where attention seeking, I remember being in the cafeteria in third grade when I was eight years old and, and, uh, getting everyone to corral around to watch me open up a salt shaker and just consume like ridiculous quantities of salt uh and and that inspired the teachers to call my parents and bring them to we got a problem with your kid none of the none of my parents were particularly impressed they thought oh what a weirdo you know there was another time when I was 10 years old in fifth grade, and one of my last baby teeth, I could tell it was just beginning to

come loose. And I had learned enough about my baby teeth to know that if you rip out the baby tooth before it's quite ready to come out, then there's going to be a great deal of blood. So sensing that this tooth was just becoming loose, I hatched a plan and I walked into my class and sat next to the prettiest girl in the class, which I normally would never have done. And I confidently told her, I said, I don't have to be in class today. I can leave whenever I want. And she looked at me like I'm a weirdo kind of a thing. And then when the class started, I ripped out the tooth as violently as I could. And sure enough, there was all this blood. And I raised my hand, there was all the blood in my mouth. And I said to the teacher, I said, teacher, you know, like, I'm bleeding or I need to go to the nurse.

And the teacher, seeing all the blood, of course, you know, like, yeah, go, go, get out of here, go to the nurse. And I proudly stood up, turned to the girl and said, I told you so. You know, and I said, I skipped out of the class and went parading around the school. And yeah, sure enough, the girl thought I was a weirdo. All of these antics did not work in my favor when I was a kid, an attention-seeking kid. It took a long time for me to harness that in a way that was constructive. Yes. And it has certainly paid off. I was actually going to ask you a follow-up because I'd read a story that essentially, and correct me if I'm

wrong with the details, you had a girlfriend that you loved in college. She broke your heart and you wanted to kind of make her feel worried about you. And that's why you started to do all these stunts. And so in my mind, I was going to ask you, you know, if not for that girl breaking your heart, let's say you last, you know, five years together. Do you not go down this path? However, it does seem like even at an early age, you enjoyed the thrill of shocking people and injuring yourself. So maybe she expedited or just get this out of you because you really wanted her to feel bad for breaking your heart? I'm going to class her as an expediter.

Okay. I'll class her as an expediter. Okay. I'll class her as an expediter. And, um, you know, uh, I, I really, this is still, you know, kind of off the topic of MMA, but I really look back on my life and, um, I can't help, uh, but feel, but feel like a fairly profound sense of faith that a lot of the timing of different, you know, events in my life that, you know, looking back on it, I can't help but feel that I have some kind of network of guardian angels that the universe has some plan because, you know, my history, it almost feels like there was this old show called Mr. Magoo. And, like, Mr. Magoo, like, he was, like, walking along and, like, not even realizing, but, like, he would take a step where he would fall off the building, but a beam would come in and meet him, meet his foot.

He was oblivious to terrible peril that he was in, and everything just worked out where he was able to walk through his life with everything working out. And that's poignant for me because I look at my history and I see a lot of that. And, and I feel that there's the universe had a plan for me and I, it gives me a great sense of faith. Was there ever a point where you felt like you didn't deserve those guardian angels? Like you were testing them so many times that at some point, you know, that, that, that luck, if you will, would run out?

I, I think that the common sense would dictate that I should have felt that way. Yes. Um, there was a point in, um, there was a scene in our second Jackass movie where we, um, we were out on a boat and we put a fish hook through my cheek. With this fish hook through my face, connected to a fishing pole. We cast me out to swim with sharks connected to a fishing pole, using me as bait to fish for sharks. And there was our legendary shark expert, Manny, with his long hair. He's treading water and hacking up fish, trying to attract sharks. And one particularly aggressive species of shark is the mako shark. And Manny saw this mako shark coming towards me and he was freaked out and he screamed, Steve, watch out.

And I heard Manny scream that. And so I jerked and in jerking, reacting to Manny say, watch out. I inadvertently kicked this Mako shark in the head as it was like, as it appeared to me going for my foot. You know, it was was this super close call. And the reality of that situation, we were in the Gulf of Mexico. coast was uh of louisiana like 2006 we're you know less than a year removed from hurricane katrina which had devastated louisiana and and so had that shark bitten my foot it would have been a two-hour boat ride to get to the hurricane katrina devastated

coast of Louisiana. And, and, and it took, you know, quite some time. I think it was like, uh, you know, years later where I asked the, the Jackass director, I said, if that shark bit me, like, what was the plan? And, and, and the Jeff Tremaine, the director said, we didn't have, you know, we didn't have a plan. We had God. We got God. We got God. And it's an absurd thing to say, but it's impossible to look at our history and not feel that there's really something to that.

You've told the story that originally you wanted to be a clown. You go to essentially, no? Yeah, I didn't. I started out as a skateboarder. That's what led me to the video camera when I was 15 years old. I really fell in love with the video camera. And recognizing that I wasn't particularly great at skateboarding. If I thought about a future and a career, I pictured that I wanted to have a career as a creative advertising guy.

I love the video camera. I love making videos. I feel like I could make commercials. And so I enrolled in the school of communication at the university of Miami and going to class wasn't in the cards for me. The girl dumped me and I started filming these crazy stunts, trying to make her worry. And, and compared to my skateboarding videos, the stunt videos really got a reaction. I could tell, you know, people were impacted by it. I thought, oh, I'm going to be a crazy famous stuntman. That was my plan, was to become a crazy

famous stuntman. And everyone I told that to, as I was leaving the University of Miami, having been kicked out of the dorms, having failed out of classes. Everyone said, what are you going to do now? I told them, with my home video camera, I'm going to become a crazy famous stuntman. And in 1993, when all that was happening, there was no precedent and everybody felt sorry for me. Like what they thought, what a tragic loser. And I was homeless for three years, videotaping my stunts whenever I could, but I wasn't getting anywhere. And when I found out about Clown College, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, I thought, ah, well, this is it. If I graduate from Clown College, then I will be a trained circus professional, and this will lend legitimacy to my efforts in becoming a stuntman.

All my simultaneous fire-breathing acrobatics and backyard wrestling-type stunts really weren't giving me any traction in making a fruitful career materialize. So clown college was an effort to, it was an exercise in trying to further my goal of becoming a crazy famous stunt man. Okay. So what a fascinating life. Just a couple of followups. The girl, did you ever hear back from her? Like, have you ever? Yeah, I, I, I absolutely did. And you know, like when part of her dumping me was, you know, she was right to do that. You know, she was the type of person who kept two jobs while she was in school.

Very, you know, driven to succeed. She'd got great grades. And, you know, here I was just like fucking off and not showing up. And I wasn't going to class. She saw my grades taking a nosedive. I was just like, she said, hey, man, whoa, I want to be somebody. I want to be somebody. I want to have things. I'm looking into my future.

And I can't see you in it because, look, you're blowing it. And she was right to do that. But that didn't make it hurt any less. I felt that that I didn't feel that she had called me a loser she said she expected me to fail in life and uh that kind of lit a fire under my ass and I was like oh I'm gonna show her and so a lot of you know she she really did motivate me and every year subsequent to that you know like i took uh my best footage which i was always doing anyway i was always making stunt videos and editing my footage and and every year i would give her i would i would mail to her a new vhs tape which represented my progress, like the next installment of, of my, like my best, my greatest hits year by year. And she would actually watch them, you know, like she humored

me, like, and, and, and, you know, every year the stunts were dramatically more impressive. And then, you know, the year after next, we would see skateboard company sponsorships integrated in with professional. It became more and more pro as the years went by. Then all of a sudden, I'm on this TV show, and I actually have a career. Yeah, we did keep in touch. It's been some time since we were in contact, but not more than like five years or something. And when you say you were homeless, what do you mean by homeless? Like legit sleeping on the street?

I was a couch surfer. I mean, there were times when I slept on the street. Not a whole lot. You know, there, there, there was a point after I left the university of Miami, went on this cross country road trip with this snowboarder kid to, to go to, uh, Northern California to try to get a job at a ski resort, you know, so that we can get a free snowboard pass. And I thought that that kind of played into my, I'm going to be a crazy stunt man kind of a thing, but it wasn't snowing there. And then we went to Colorado and, and, and that was kind of a disaster. And then I found out about this medical study situation in Austin, Texas, where they test drugs on you and they pay you.

And, and as it works with medical studies, the more dangerous the study, the more compensation there is. So if you're going to, and nothing can ever enter the human body without being approved by the FDA. You know, like they can't put out a new toothpaste without doing some kind of a trial or study on it. But if you're, if you're testing out toothpaste, you're going to get maybe 10 bucks or something, you know? And, so I went for the

most dangerous medical study I could possibly get into, which was to have an experimental drug for pigs and cows tested on me. The philosophy was that this drug, it was called Ractopamine Hydrochloride. And it was intended to give to pigs and cows, where it would cause the pigs and cows to have less fat and more muscle. It makes it when they were slaughtered, it would be leaner meat to appeal to a more health conscious consumer. And by the virtue of the fact that if they went ahead with it, the people who ate that meat would have a trace of this drug enter the body, then the law dictates that since it's going to, the idea is for it to enter the human body. Now they have to test the human body to see how much can withstand. So the study was about giving humans racked dopamine hydrochloride, the target

being that they wanted to give it to us until somebody in the study had a resting heart rate of 150 beats per minute, which is pretty crazy. That's like a full workout mode. They knew that the drug would make our hearts go pretty crazy. And it was a radical study. right in with, with what I was trying to do and who I wanted to be. And, uh, I got paid 2000 bucks to, to, uh, to do that. I found out that I have an incredibly, uh, strong athletic heart, you know, like, um, they say they're all the time that the heart of an athlete. Um, but yeah, there were other people in the study. There were only six people in the study too one of them i remember was like drenched in

sweat was like you know like it was a pretty crazy thing but but when that happened in austin texas and that this was the one time where i legitimately was sleeping in the streets waiting to get into that study i slept on the streets for like two weeks when you were in clown college and then you went to work on a on a cruise ship um i read that the crew basically after a year said that they like they would quit basically if you got brought back why why did they dislike you so much it was it was a six-month contract and, and now like I dropped out of college in 1993, I did the medical study with the pigs and cow drugs in January of 1994. I was, I was the couch surfing without a home of my own for three years. And then I went to clown college in 1997. And, you know, then I went back to kind of flailing around, I got the job on cruise ships in 1999. In all of these years of flailing around, and, you know, couch surfing and being a broke,

you know, unemployed guy, I got through life by, you know, developing a skill set. And really, the focus of my skill set was to be able to go into a bar with absolutely no money and earn free drinks all night long. And I even had so many bar tricks. The skill set I put together was really rather impressive. And I had like bar tricks for, for getting drunk. And then once I was drunk to the point that I was like largely incapable of pulling up, then I had like the bar, you know, I had bar tricks for every phase of the night. And, and so, you know, I, and I was proud of the skill set and I really had the ability to, to impress people like immediately, you know, to perform like I was a little like

the David Blaine of bar tricks in some sense. And so when I worked on cruise ships in 1999, I was, you know, in a, there were a group of four of us clowns, you know, we had various duties as clowns on cruise ships. And some of those duties involved, it was everything was based on performing to entertain the passengers of the cruise ship. And, you know, we would, the idea would be that we would write little acts to perform. And I just didn't think that the other clowns in the group had any skills that impressed me you know i thought that i didn't think they were rad to use my vernacular i thought that you know i i thought i liked rad stuff i didn't think they were rad like the the comedy gags that they were trying to write and include me and i didn't think they

were funny you know like uh and and and i just didn't respect these other clowns and they knew that and and i didn't think i mean i didn't think i needed to respect those other clowns because again i had this skill set that was really i was killing it with with entertaining passengers on the cruise ship so i was largely disrespectful of my, um, my, my fellow clowns. And then they were, you know, appropriately offended by me. And they said that at the, you know, as the end of our six month contract approached, they went to the cruise ship, how is that B? And they said, if Steve-O comes back for another contract, we all quit, which I love to describe as a clown mutiny. And it was a good job, too, man. had you know struggled his way through life you know up to that point performing bar tricks and

selling bags of weed that didn't weigh what they were supposed to weigh you know like it was a struggle for me and now here i had found uh this job on cruise ships where all of my bills were paid i clearly had no rent i had no you know car no, I lived on a cruise ship and I was, had my own cabin on the cruise ship in the crew area. I was compensated 625 bucks every week. You know, it was pretty good. And I, you know, and I had nothing to spend it on, you know, I really like, largely saved everything that I earned.

And then here I'm not coming back for another contract. And my boss clown, of course, he knew what these other clowns were doing behind my back. And he arranged for me to meet him. And he said, look, I'm going to tell you something. And I can't, you know, I'm not supposed to be telling you this. If you let on that you know what I'm going to tell you, that I could lose my job. And I loved my boss clown. He explained what the clowns did. He said, you know, they've, they've arranged to me. You're not coming back. You're out of a job.

This contract ends, you're, you're done. And he said, so like, I just can't, I just can't sit by and let them do that to you. I'm telling you that you don't have a job. And I'm suggesting that you reach out to your skateboard buddies, try to drum up something else because this is over for you. And I really thought that was awesome of that boss clown. And it was a tough situation for me because I had, I think, a month and a half left on my contract.

And I had to work with these clowns and not let on that I knew what they had done, which is fine. But what's notable about that is that I did reach out to my skateboard buddies. I called up the guy in charge of Big Brother Skateboard Magazine, who is, of course, Jeff Tremaine, the director of Jackass. It was before Jackass. And I told Jeff Tremaine that I had a stunt. I was going to be on the cover of Big Brother magazine. So I'm going to come out to California. I'm going to get on my stilts.

So I'm 10 feet tall walking on stilts. I'm going to, we're going to set my stilt costume on fire. So this 10 foot outfit is going to be in flames and I'm going to have a unicyclist ride a unicycle through my stilts. At the same time, a skateboarder jumps off the roof of my house over my head and a fireball that I'm blowing out of my mouth. And when those two ride away, I'm going to crack open a beer and tip myself over and crash onto the concrete. And then I need, like, you guys put me out with the fire extinguisher. And he thought that idea was great.

So, you know, I spent all my money that I'd saved on cruise ships. I bought, like, I got stilt costumes made. I bought all the gear. I flew myself out to California. And when I got out to California to perform that stunt for Jeff Tremaine and Big Brother Magazine, that's when he told me that what they were actually shooting it for was for a pilot for MTV, which would be the pilot for Jackass. And had those clowns not gotten me fired, I would have missed that opportunity. You know, like had, had I not been a complete asshole to my fellow clowns and, and inspired them to get me fired, I would have been floating on a cruise ship juggling oranges for tourists rather than participating in the pilot for jackass.

And that's just another one of these examples of where everything came together, you know, in this like blissful you know like the angels were conspiring to you know do you recall the first the first time you met johnny knoxville and if so what did you think of him sure that i mean i i first became aware of Johnny Knoxville for his self-defense thing. I like to describe Johnny Knoxville's story as very similar to the hit song by a bad company called Shooting Star. Johnny was a schoolboy when he heard his first Beatles song.

And he says, I'm going to be a big star someday. And he goes to the door, Mom, I'm going to leave. And that kind of was, rather than with music, it was with movies. Knoxville was a schoolboy. He decided he wanted to be a big star. And he graduated high school in Knoxville, Tennessee. And, you know, like, told mom, I'm going to go away.

I'm going to be a big star someday. He moved out to Los Angeles to try to become a big movie star. I really believe that was right out of high school. And, you know, he struggled in L.A. He found some success in television commercials, but things weren't happening for him like he wanted them to happen. And as he saw himself approaching 30 years old, and then he found himself with a kid on the way,

he really became more urgent about making things happen. And he decided rather than sort of go with the paradigm of being picked out at an audition, you know, he was going to pick himself. And he proposed this, he came up with this plan to do a review of self-defense equipment, which would entail being sprayed, sprayed point blank in the eyes with red pepper spray. This ended up on MTV, except for the last test in the self-defense equipment bit, where he put on a bulletproof vest and shot himself with a bonafide 38 caliber Smith and Wesson handgun. MC would not show that they wouldn't, they wouldn't show that. And, um, but yeah, not to pitch this to, you know, the Howard Stern show, the late night shows,

like all these like media outlets and, and none of them would have anything to do with it except for big brother magazine and jeff tremaine that was how yeah that was how big brother and and knoxville came together well yeah film and and big brother magazine was making these skateboarding videos which which sort of like uh almost accompanied the magazine would come out every month and then every so often there would be a video that came out, which sort of colored in all the, you know, the behind the scenes of all these, you know, articles in the magazine, all the photos that would come to life with the videos.

And the videos, the Big Brother videos were absolutely ridiculous. They were there. They almost didn't even care about the skateboarding, even though it was a skateboarding magazine. It was just chock full of absolute insanity. And the Big Brother videos developed a cult following. And Jeff Tremaine recognized that. And Jeff Tremaine knew Academy Award winning Spike Jonze since he was 12 years old. They've known Spike Jonze they came up in through the skateboard industry and so jeff tremaine reached out to spike jones and he said

hey uh you know our big brother videos have this crazy cult following and i'm positive that nobody cares about the skateboarding and i think if we subtract the skateboarding then what's left over could be a tv show and that was the genesis of jackass and um and and i became aware of knoxville for the you know the first time he was in in a big brother video which was called number two the first big brother video was called shit the second big brother video was called number two which is a poop reference okay third big the third big brother video was called boob which they very clearly pointed out if you held it up in a mirror upside down it would say poop so and then the fourth big brother video was called crap and that one came out after Jackass had launched.

But yeah, so it was Knoxville did self-defense in the number two video. My first Big Brother video was the boob video. And in that one, Knoxville says, I'm Johnny Knoxville, and I'm going to get hit by a car real soon. He's standing in the middle of the road and sharing up a car just he he gets he gets hit by the car like the car doesn't slow down it just keeps going he gets hit by he goes through the windshield but rolls over under the roof and the car just keeps going through the frame it's the most incredible thing you ever saw wow and yeah and uh i mean it just it was on and so all of that had happened. The boom video with the,

with Knoxville getting hit by the car and with me doing all the drinking the bong water and lighting myself on fire and the double front flip off the bridge that came out before I even got on cruise ships. So that was pretty, that was pretty cool. Yeah. I didn't get paid anything, but I didn't get paid anything for it, but I was making some kind of strides. And so that's why jeff tremaine was the dude i was calling when when i got fired on the cruise ships and and when i met noxio in person for the first time i mean dude he was a hero to me what not not so was getting in the bull ring back in the big brother

days for the big you know big brother videos he was just messing around with bulls getting clobbered by them you know shooting himself with handguns like getting hit by cars like he was like the you know i mean he was a he was a hero to me like you know he didn't need to be in big movies or or uh tv shows or anything he was a hero just from what he was doing in skateboarding and he never skateboarded at all and and so when i met noxio it was it was when i did the stilt stunt it was noxio i held the torch to light the stilt costume and uh that was specifically on december 30th of of 1999 and uh and that was when i met nox on person for the first time but i was so well aware of who he was and just i don't want to say idolize him but man i admired him i respected him your memory your memory is incredible man for for all the the knocks that you've taken

it's amazing how you remember these details really impressive all the drugs well thank you like uh thank you i think um i wonder what it is man because i really like impressive all the drugs well thank you like uh thank you i think um i wonder what it is man because i really like between all the drugs and and all the concussions like you would think that my memory was shot but i i think i'm just so focused on on on my story and like you know like the communication of of uh you know that i don't know. I just really locked down all this stuff. It blows me away that first season you made $1,500. That's a massive success. I mean, 2000, I'm 18, MTV's at its peak, TRL, all this stuff.

You guys were legends. Like, I mean, it was must-see TV. Also, they replayed those episodes a thousand times a day, it seemed, it was must see TV. Also they replayed those, those episodes a thousand times a day. It seemed like it was always on. Could you even describe like those early 2000, 2001, 2002, when you guys are just, what is life like for you? Is it, is it just completely surreal now that you're actually making it, your dreams are coming true.

You're becoming a household name. I mean, dude, it was, uh, it's so like the, from when I walked off cruise ships, I had saved 9,000 bucks. And I know that the 4,500 of those dollars I spent on buying a used car. It was a big old 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis. And then that left 5,000 and, you know, whatever. And that went to the stilts, the stilt clothes, the juggling clubs, the airplane tickets to go to California. I actually flew myself back and forth to California twice to do, you know,

stuff for the skateboard industry. But I blew through, you know, um, I blew through it. So early in year 2000, uh, after having filmed the stunt for the pilot of Jackass, you know, you film a pilot, then the pilot's got to be made. And then you got some time. And, uh, and I, I blew blew all the i blew all of my savings i was living with my sister and uh you know i came back and she says okay great now you're broke you know and unemployed you're living in my house if you think i'm gonna just let you be a slob and eat all the food and be a freeloader and a nightmare. You're out of your mind. But, but this was in Florida and not far away was, uh, the Fort Lauderdale swap shop,

which was the world's largest flea market slash drive-in movie theater with more drive-in movie theater screens than any drive-in in the world. Um, it had a circus as well in an amusement park. It was this crazy place that they still have there. And my sister knew they had a circus that was residential. It had shows every day. She said, you're going to get a job. She says, you're going to go down to that flea market circus in Fort Lauderdale. You're going to tell them that you're a graduate of Ringling Brothers Environmentality Clown College and that you want a job as a clown.

And I went down there and they hired me right away. They didn't ask me to audition. They had me audition in the circus itself. And they loved what I did. You know, they loved what I did. And they said, you're hired. And I was getting 500 bucks a week. It was a step down from what I got paid on cruise ships.

But, you know and then so i got this job and and um it was while i was working in that flea market circus that uh i found out that the jackass pilot got ordered to series and i and and and they were then the knoxville and the mtv crew was coming to florida to film all my parts for the first season. And they were going to start by filming me in the circus performing. And I told the circus owners at the flea market, dude, I'm going to be famous, man. I'm on this show. And they're coming to film me in like two months.

They're going to come here. It's going to be dope. They're going to film me. And the circus people were like yeah okay like whatever and on the precise day i said that the crew was coming to film me in the circus they sure enough they did and the circus owners didn't take me seriously but now they come up to me they said what are these assholes doing here uh filming with camera filming our elephants it's very touchy okay three elephant okay they had three three elephants in the circus and they were very very touchy about about because they were all animal rights people with cameras trying to like get them you know like they were they were a

constant pressure from from animal rights people. And for that matter, these circus owners were more afraid of their own elephants than, than anybody in the audience. It was a really, really weird animal situation with the elephants. So it touched a nerve. It touched a nerve for them with MTV crews to just showing up and parking their cameras. So what are these assholes doing filming our elephants they did not like that one bit and i said dude i told you guys they're coming it's mtv they're a big corporation they're not gonna like like you know let you they're not gonna use any

of this footage like illegally they're not gonna let you sue them they know what they're doing but still the circus owners did not like that and like like I told them, I was going to be gone for five days, and then I would be back. And those were the five days that I filmed all of my parts for the first season of Jackass, during which I was bitten by a shark on my finger, and we just wrapped up and went and kept filming. Like, didn't even go to the hospital. I was all banged up and hung over and limping back after those five days of filming.

And I showed up back at the circus on exactly the day I said I would. And the circus owner said they no longer had it in the budget to keep me around and that I had lost my job. And so I was fired. Yeah, I was fired from the circus. And that was notable because now we've filmed the show now the show is actually going to come out but i made less than 1500 bucks for that first season by the time the show came out i had received the money and spent it i was like in trouble with with drugs and alcohol specifically cocaine i was you know unable to you know prevent myself

from you know being awake for days on end with cocaine my sister kicked me out of the house so when the show aired on mtv i was actually homeless unemployed, and like a star on, you know, and overnight, my, like, there was this one scene where I swallowed a goldfish and regurgitated it into a fishbowl. And that scene was shot within 30 minutes of me washing off my clown makeup for the final time in the circus wow you know i watched out that clown makeup and within within a half an hour i was barfing up this this uh goldfish into a fishbowl and immediately after that happened on in that scene noxell said well steve-o if you weren't already famous i'd say you're gonna be famous now like uh he called that and and sure enough when that goldfish segment aired on mtv it was my life changed so

dramatically and in such a short time you know it was like you know because that was year 2000 and and at that time really i mean the internet came out in 1996 you know in year 2000 sure they they had aol you've got mail but there wasn't like you didn't you didn't watch videos on the internet you know you had dial-up modems like they'd like to try to watch a video on the internet would take forever to download. So what I'm saying is that the media wasn't so fragmented as it is today. They had network TV and basic cable, but God, when Jackass came out, it was officially the highest ratings that they'd ever had for any programming like that. And, and overnight when that goldfish bit aired, like it was everywhere going through my day. I was recognized. I was, you know, like, I remember it was just crazy. Like the attention that I, that I got, like from, from being a nobody to being like recognized.

It was literally overnight on one night that that changed. And it was nuts. And people were asking me for autographs and pictures. And I was asking them if I could sleep on their sofa. This is so much fun, Siva. I mean, you're such a great storyteller. And that's why I would urge anyone to check out your YouTube channel, your podcast, all the content that you're doing. Also your bucket list tour that you're on. I want to give a shout out to that.

Even more importantly, even, and sorry for interrupting, but even more importantly, my book, I wrote a memoir, of course, with the help of a real professional writer to make it great. And I think my book is like the best thing i've ever made it's uh it's got a five star it's got a five star rating on amazon it's a new york times bestseller it's the juiciest fucking craziest book that you can hope to read and um and it's also like largely inspirational it's a story of redemption it's a story of recovery it's a it's also like largely inspirational. It's a story of redemption. It's a story of recovery. It's a story of hope. And it's just also hilarious and nuts.

And I proudly autograph every single copy, which I sell from my website, which is steveo.com. So if you go to steveo.com, you can get an autographed copy of my book. And we just put so much crazy new merch out that it's a lot of fun to check out the crazy shit that I have going at steveo.com. The reason I bring that up is because I know we're up against the time that I told you, but do you have a few more minutes? Oh, no, dude. I didn't even know.

Yeah, by all means. Okay, okay, okay. Let's keep going, man. Okay, this is just so great. You're so good with your memory and dates. What does March 9, 2008 mean to you? That was the day that Johnny Knoxville staged the intervention on me.

That was the day before my sobriety date. You see, for people who are in recovery as sober alcoholics and drug addicts, it's very important to have a sobriety date. And the sobriety date is the first day that you did not drink or take drugs. And, and March 9th is not my sobriety date. I was very much drinking and taking drugs, but that was the day that Johnny Knoxville locked me up in a psychiatric ward.

And, and, and I've been clean and sober ever since. There's a, He took you and put you in there? Like he, how does he lock you up in there? I was in a particular downward spiral. I mean, I was, I was like really, you know, in, in a bad way. And March 9th of 2008, uh, by that point there, there was video on the internet. By that point there was YouTube and, um, and then social media in 2008 was really dominated by MySpace. And I was broadcasting this hellacious downward spiral that I was on in virtually real time on MySpace with YouTube videos. I want to say about 200 people. Like I compiled an email list of roughly 200 of the most influential people who had the misfortune of me getting a hold of their contact.

And I called it my rad email list. And I was just out of my mind. Drugs. It was crazy. And it was evident that I was, you know like in a bad bad way and everybody knew that because they were receiving these emails all day long around the clock like with disturbing videos with them i was broadcasting a bad downward spiral in real time and knoxville was the recipient of these rad emails as was the famous dr drew pinsky as was i mean there are all kinds of industry professionals and you know

tommy lee and and mars ulrich i mean like it was pretty, pretty crazy. I mean, actually, to go through it and really compile a list of recipients would be wild. But in any case, it became clear that something needed to be done. And Knoxville reached out to Dr. Drew Penske, and he said, hey, you know, Steve was in a really bad way and we're worried that we're going to lose him. And Dr. Drew was very aware of my situation as well. He said, I agree with you. And so Dr. Drew kind of coached Johnny Knoxville through what an intervention would look like. And I had, you know, on this email list, I had, you know, said and done enough things to qualify myself as harmful to myself or others, which made me eligible for California's 5150 law, which states that you can lock somebody up involuntarily for 72 hours in a psychiatric ward against their will for a formal psychiatric evaluation. So Dr. Drew suggested that Knoxville, he said, get over there and just get him in a car and take him to the hospital and and enact this california 5150

law he says i don't care if you have to tie it tape him up tie him up you know just get him there and um so uh i mean to color in how like not how gnarly my final week was um i had been uh i've had this neighbor war going on with my because i was out of my mind the neighbor who was a a first year attorney uh would would fairly regularly call the police making noise complaints yeah my neighbor you know police would show up and say tell me to be quiet and this out of this enraged me i was so mad at the name because i was calling the cops on me so one night like while particularly intoxicated on ketamine and and uh cocaine and you know alcohol and you know whatever else i actually banged a hole through the wall like uh i you know you get the drywall and then there's the fiberglass stuff in the middle and then there's the drywall on the other side like i bang i broke a hole in the

drywall on my side and then it was actually scissors i stabbed through the wall. It actually made a hole into the neighbor's apartment where now I can see. This guy's got fucking scissor blades coming through the wall. So now he calls the cops on, you know, it's not just a noise complaint. Now it's vandalism. And the cops show up. They say, we have to arrest you for vandalism and uh the cops show up they said we have to arrest you for vandalism there's we have no choice so sadly we have to take you to jail right now and i'm shirtless no shoes and and um the then the cop says you know if you want to put on a shirt and some shoes because you're going to jail right now and i'm like fuck a shirt fuck shoes let's go like i had a bag of cocaine in my pocket you know and i was i was

so out of my mind i had any like i was so out of my mind that when they offered for me to go and put on a shirt i could have gone in be like oh yeah okay cool let me go in grab some shoes a shirt maybe take the bag of cocaine but no i went to jail with no shirt no shoes and a bag of cocaine in my pocket so when i when they arrested me when they processed me into the jail for vandalism you know they do a routine search and and so i got arrested while i was getting arrested oh you know they read they rearrested me for the cocaine so now i've got a felt now i've got a felony cocaine charge i was in jail for a couple days i i'd had a like the relationship i was in with like ended i got out of jail i came home there was an eviction notice on the door of the apartment.

Now I'm being evicted. So I was arrested, evicted. And I took to my rad email list, emailing these 200 people. I just got back to my apartment. I'm being evicted. I have to be out in two days. And so I've got two days in this apartment. I'm going to jump out of the window. I was on the third floor. I'm like, I'm going to jump out of the window and, and, and not still bring the guys, like bring a hot tub, a camera crew and bring something for me to land on, I'm going to jump anyway and find out how many bones are broken when I land on the concrete three floors below.

I'm ready to die. And that was what qualified me for the 5150 law. And in telling Knoxville to come over and bring the camera crew and bring me something. I inadvertently scheduled my own, my own intervention. Wow. This is crazy, man. What a life. And it makes it better now knowing that you've been sober since, since what day? What's the date since you've been sober? My sobriety date, my sobriety date is March 10th of 2008. Wow.

So, so if I, so if I can continue to stay away from drugs and alcohol until this March 10th, it'll be 14 years of sobriety. Amazing. Whether it's with drugs, alcohol, or the stunts, what's the closest you've ever felt to death? Yeah, I mean, what a fun question. I get a lot of questions that aren't as, that's a good question that I don't get asked a lot. But I think the answer is sadly a little bit lackluster. I think truly the closest I came to death was in scuba diving.

Like there was a situation where, as I i understood it the sharks were on the bottom of the ocean and the idea was to go and then i wasn't even particularly aware of the cameras i just went to go to the sharks and and and it was like there's just things about scooting if you descend or ascend like uh you know with the pressure you can get what's called the bends and i still i'm still ignorant of what it was but um but but but i was going down and and i felt someone grab my my scuba fin and uh this exasperated camera guy grabbed my scuba fin and he tried to cut them and started like he brings me back up and he's just losing his mind and he says dude you almost fucking died fucking doing that and i almost died trying to save you oh and uh you know i mean it's kind of lame but but but

that was apparently a really a really close call and what was super, I shouldn't even say it, but tragic and sad was that that guy, that same cameraman had lost, I want to say his nephew, to the same situation in a freediving spearfishing situation. And so it was particularly close to him and this guy knew what he was talking about he knew what he was talking about and what i what i had done was not okay there was also another time ironically with the same cameraman uh we went to to try to buy weed in Jakarta, where like drug offenses are capital punishment. They'll kill you. And we actually found weed. Wow. Yeah.

We called it the Jakarta death doobie um have you have you ever bailed on something at the 11th hour where you were just like this is too crazy for me sure yeah for sure really i mean i wouldn't say i wouldn't say bailed as much as just like uh i mean it was a um it was so cool dude When we were in India, they had this firewalking, like hot coals situation. And you can walk on hot coals. We had done it before for a different thing. But they made a massive bed of hot coals, like ridiculously big. And it took them all day to do it too. It took them all day to set this whole thing up.

And in the middle of the hot coals was, it looked like a gymnastics balance beam type situation, but it was just a narrow plank. And the idea was that I would be on this plank. And with my unicycle, I would try to unicycle across the plank and, you know, fail and fall onto the hot coals and scramble my way out of this big ocean of hot coals. And it was so visually glorious, man. It just looked so killer. And, um, you know, I got on the plank and I had my unicycle and I just,

I just couldn't get myself to do it, man. Like, uh, I couldn't commit to it, like to have both my feet on it. Like, uh, I mean, I don't even know if I ever would have been able to, and if I had the chance to do it again if i would but i just wimped out i you know there's a difference between oh i'm gonna back out and it's like like i did i backed out of putting a toy car up my butt on the first movie citing that citing that it would disappoint my father so much that i feared he would disown me i said i could not put the toy car up my butt. So I backed out of that before, before the day. And then with the unicycle over the hot coals, it was more of a situation of, I was there on the day and I just couldn't,

I just whipped out in the moment. And there was another one where it was called the homemade hang glider. And they had this like double wing hang glider thing that was all made out of like tape. And it was really well-made. It was super well-made. It was super impressive. And, uh, you know, I had like a limited amount of time to just get the bit. And I just went, went out on that one too. God, I'd love to get another shot at the homemade hang glider god i wish i could you could do that i mean you still got many years left you still got many years left and uh you know it's not obviously the homemade hang glider was a masterpiece waiting to happen and it just kills me that uh

that i wimped out on that one it doesn't surprise me that jackass forever is the number one movie in america i think it's like um it's almost like comfort food and it's it's very nostalgic and people want to laugh and they want to think about other things and they want to go to movie theaters and they want to you know remember the good times from 20 years ago when they were in college watching you guys or whatever. So like you guys, I think are coming at the perfect time for people. They just want an escape. I'm just wondering how close were you to not being a part of it? I don't know. I don't know. I like, it's a really interesting question because, uh, I, I certainly held out.

I felt that that over the 10 years since the previous movie that I really, you know, hustled, I'd, I'd built up this social media following this YouTube career, this, with the standup comedy, like, you know, I had really done a great deal of work to build momentum in my own right to, to build myself up as, as a, you know, a brand like separate from Jackass. And I felt that I brought more to the table and that it made sense for me to hold out for a better deal, specifically because going all the way back to that first season of the TV show, every time there was a contract for the second and third season of the TV show, for the first movie, the second movie, the third movie, I had always just found out what I was going to get, you know,

compensation wise and never, never pushed back to improve the financial compensation, you know, or the terms of the deal. I just always found out what it was going to be. And I never even countered. And, and I felt that, that now 10 years later after having done so much work to build myself up, that I felt that I owed it to that younger version of me who fight and I did and I I did so in a fashion that that really like became contentious it you know it got like really pretty ugly but I think that your question really cut through everything the question being like how close was I to actually

not being in it you know like and and I don't, like, and, and I don't know that, uh, I don't, I don't know that I was really doing much, but bluffing really. And I have an interesting MMA, uh, anecdote for this. Um, I was on Mike Tyson's podcast, uh, at the same time as Henry Cejudo. And, uh, you know, Henry Cejudo, I really, he, he, he won me over in short order, short order. I really liked, I really liked him quickly. And, uh, I told him, I said, Hey man, you know, I got to call you out, triple C. So I got to call you out because there was a real flaw in, uh, in your retirement thing after this fight

with uh it was against dominic cruz's retirement fight right yeah um i said i said i said you really screwed that one up and he said why he said he said well because here you are retiring, you know, but you're retiring immediately after a fight, which you referred to as a tune-up fight. So if you're going to retire, what the fuck were you tuning up for? You don't tune up to retire. I said, I'm calling you out that all that was a bluff, a negotiation, a negotiation tactic. And in the same breath as I'm, again, calling out Triple C, I'm going to call myself out because that's what I was doing too. Wow. Your answer cut right through. I don't think on any level that I was prepared emotionally to have Jack guys continue without

me. Yeah. It would have been a bummer now, especially with all the hoopla and seeing how well it has been received. Right. And right, right. And then furthermore, to the point where that I was making, and I think that there's a strong argument to say that, that I did, um, you know,

that I didn't put enough work in that I deserved a better deal. One could argue that, but it's equally valid that because i've put it in all that work which i'm breaking my arm patting myself on the back for that i that i've developed ancillary revenue streams which are benefiting from the movie and all the hoopla around it so you know sure maybe i have the same exact contract as uh you know i I didn't, I didn't improve my deal at all. But I get more out of the movie because of all this other stuff that I've built. So, so, you know, I think I choose to go with the, the, the, the latter argument, which is that forget the contract, be in the movie and thrive in all of my other areas. Very smart, very mature way of thinking. I only have two more questions. And

again, thank you so much for the time. Hey, man, you know what? Let me tell you, dude, thank you for your time, man. I enjoy you, Ariel. I value our friendship, man. I respect you, Ariel. Thank you. I really, you know, I value our friendship. I respect you. I admire you. And, you know, it's meaningful to me that we have this relationship. And I consume your content. I value your opinions. I enjoy your analysis. I, I, uh, you know, everything, all of the credit

that you get as being the, you know, the, the pinnacle of MMA journalism, I feel you deserve. And I, and I echo that sentiment. Oh man, that means a lot to me, honestly, because I know it's sincere. You're such a genuine and sincere person. So thank you very much for that. I just hate taking up too much of anyone's time, especially someone like you. And I read about your schedule and how you have everything color-coded. And it's like it's a testament to your maturation. And I would actually say, and I wouldn't just say this to you, like right now, I put you up there. And I'm not trying to create, like you are as popular as Johnny Knoxville. You are what you've done with your social media, with your YouTube, with your comedy tour now, selling out theaters, not just comedy

clubs anymore, with your podcast, like what you have done, to me, you are on equal footing. And I think you deserve a lot of credit for that. Maybe I'll tell you something that maybe some people might think is controversial. I think it's pretty objective, but as I compare, Knoxville and I are just different beasts, you know, and, and I have such a reverence for him, you know, like where I described decades ago, like how I viewed him as, as a hero, you know, someone that I really admired that I was just so impressed by, like that's never

changed and um the my relationship with knoxville at this point is is better i think that having been through the content the contentious contract negotiations with knoxville for this last movie and you know that that served a real as a a real obstacle. It really, you know, made things very, very tense between us. But ultimately, we overcame that obstacle. And as a result, you know, I came to him and acknowledged that, you know, that I was out of line in some respects and he, uh, acknowledged that he could have handled things better than the, we had this really, really healing and, uh, and wonderful, um, you know, conversation, which ultimately brought us closer together now than we've ever been in our lives. And I'm very grateful for that. And, and, and I still have the reverence for him. I call him the captain. I could not be more profoundly grateful for the way that in all of the solo projects that I've put together, like almost invariably and maybe literally invariably I've reached out to him

for feedback on whatever the project is. My first book, he was the first one to read the original manuscript. My new book, which I just finished yesterday, was shot the cover for he he was the first one to read the original manuscript you know like i call him the captain i you know he's a big brother figure to me and um you know his success contributes to my success you know there's no like point in me competing with noxil because you know i want the more he does well the more that that helps me to do well, there's no like point in me competing with Knoxville because, you know, I want the more he does well, the more that that helps me to do well. So there's not a sense that, that, that, that we compete with each other, that I'm trying to overtake him. It, I don't view it that

way. Plus what I'm going to get to now, which I think is on some level controversial that I should even think of it this way, but we're different. We're different in our approaches. And I have this metaphor for Knoxville and I and how we approach our careers, which I think is valid. And I would say that Knoxville is of the old school and I am of the new school. And the metaphor is Howard Stern and Joe Rogan. Howard Stern is very old school. Howard Stern's very old school. He believes in a corporate approach to entertainment

where if you're going to be a star, then that means you have a television show on bona fide corporate networks. You've got movies from corporate studios. You've got albums from corporate record labels. There's no view or, you know, real, you know, like there's no respect for the digital world. You know, the digital world is the new world. And one could say that, yes, Howard Stern is the king of all media. Nobody's going to deny that.

Howard Stern is Howard Stern. He's an icon. He's unbelievable. But you could argue, and I think you can argue very effectively that through the digital world of the new school, Joe Rogan has come up and eclipsed Howard Stern. Just with YouTube, just with podcasting, just with

his digital presence. And, uh, is Joe Rogan a bigger deal than Howard Stern? Apples and oranges are different, you know? So, you know, could one argue that I've, that I've built myself up to, to be considered a bigger deal than Johnny Knox. So I say it's apples and oranges. And, you know, you could look at social media followers, and I've got way more social media followers than Johnny Knoxville.

But let's be clear that Johnny Knoxville is much newer to Instagram, you know, much newer. And his paradigm, his view of his career, social media, that's not, you know, that that's just not important to him. So maybe the Knoxville is of the old school and I'm of the new school and, and our relationship is wonderful. And he's, he's, he's the captain, man. I don't want to get you in trouble here sincerely, but a lot of great things going on in your life. I don't think any of that gets me in trouble.

No, no, no. But this might. This question might. Okay. The Lincoln Memorial stuff or this. Yeah, yeah. That's fine. That's fine.

You're good? Yeah, yeah. I mean, nothing happened. I was virtually begging for, I mean, I wasn't because people probably don't know because it didn't get a lot of attention. But after one of my tour stops in Washington, DC, you know, by the time we got out of the theater, was you know fairly late at night and my girl had never been to Washington DC so she wanted to do some late night sightseeing and we went to the the uh the Washington Monument took some photos and the Capitol building and and then we ended up at the Lincoln Memorial and it was about two it was about one in the morning it all lit up and you know there were some people there but it just felt one in the morning that it was kind of and and and they had this little it was roped off of the rope that was like one

foot tall and said like please stay off and i said to my girl i said if you're going to commit a crime you got to be prepared to face the punishment and in this this case, I am. And I stepped over the one foot rope, and I proceeded to climb up on top of the Lincoln Memorial. I'm standing on the Lincoln Memorial, which was a thrill. It was fun. It was silly. And what I did not understand was that off to the right of the Lincoln Memorial, when you're looking at it, is a door behind which is a police officer who is always there. So I'm on top of the Lincoln Memorial. The door opens. The police officer comes out. He calls me down. He puts handcuffs on me. He tells me that I've just committed a federal offense, which carries with it a potential for 10 years in prison, that this is a law which Donald Trump passed as president, a statue climbing law, which made it a federal offense to climb statues. He said, while I'm handcuffed, and he told me, I'm going to let you go. I'm going to let you go with the warning. But hear me when I tell you that if I see photos

or video of you climbing that statue, I will issue a federal warrant for your arrest and and so like don't you have video like you know you post that video if i see your federal warrant 10 years in prison and i'm like okay and i thought about it you know i i sat on it for a little bit and then i decided that the best course of action for me would be to give it to my uh my graphics guy and have him animate me climbing up but i told him at the point where i hop off the statue on that specific frame where i'm no longer on the statue i want you to kick it back into the actual video so and so it could not be more abundantly clear the way you just just saw the animation of what was the footage like i totally did it but it was just a little loophole and i think that in hindsight i was too

careful because uh because by only putting out the animation of it i did not draw the ire and the the uh the charges and the stories and the you you know, and, and maybe that's maybe, maybe that's an older, more mature or more pussified version of Steve-O. I don't know, but yeah, I have enough going on at this point. Yeah, you don't need that. What about the Ski-Doo accident thing? This guy coming after you? I can't like, you know, know, I gotta give you that.

Okay. All right. I just want to make sure you're okay. I mean, Yeah. Yeah. I'm not like, uh, these are things that are going to go on forever. So that will see, I can't, I can't, uh, interfere with, with an ongoing process. I get it. Uh, last question for you. And again, thank you so much for the time. This is tremendous. What do you want at the end, whenever this ends, what do you want your legacy to be?

What do you want people to remember you for? And they talk about, you know, like I always think about like the last bio that's written about someone and what are they going to lead with, right? What do you want them to lead with you? I mean, it's always been very important to me to, to receive attention, to, to, to be noted, to be notable. I think that, and I might get a little bit philosophical here, but, and it sounds like you've heard this from me too, but I think that the human experience is really one of difficulty because we only have one instinct, which is to survive yet we only have one guarantee which is we won't survive so we're in this like catch-22 of like you know mortality where the one thing we just don't

want to have happen is all that we're the only thing that we're barreling towards and so mortality is inherently just a a motherfucker of a condition and we're like i can even suggest that our our human experience is like a cruel prank on us and i think that uh that our purpose in here you say what do you want to when it's all over like what do you want to be you know remembered for what do you want your legacy to be? I point to the, just that concept of it's all over. Like it's not, you know, when it's all over, like you said it so casually, but I think it's really like an existential crisis for all of us, like that it's all going to be all over. And I think that our human experience is really largely an exercise. Like the purpose of our life must be for us to wrap our head around our mortality,

for us to reconcile the idea that it's all going to be all over. And this is why people turn to religion, to guarantee them a comfortable like heavenly afterlife where everything's going to be okay that's why we're so drawn to religion and that this is why people procreate you know they're so they've put so much uh importance in reproduction so that their their lineage continues and they have the children to, you know, to carry on their legacy and religion never turned me on. And I never wanted to have kids. And I really made for me, my exercise and reconciling mortality has been in leaving behind evidence of my

existence. And that's what it's been from the very beginning. Since I first found the video camera when I was 15 years old, it really struck me that, man, this is a permanent record of my life. So I think that the legacy for me is in the permanence of the content that I create. And that's why my approach to a basic YouTube video, it's insane how meticulous, how anal, how crazy I am about every little frame, every little edit. I mean, the work I put into YouTube videos is unjustified for what it is, you know, but I can't help that because I have this view of these videos outliving me, you know, and, and I really care about, about doing the, putting the most.

So that's, I think what it is. And then if, if I were going to put, if I were going to say that something's important about, about what I do and how I would want to be remembered, I could call myself an attention whore, which I do. But if I, if I'm really honest, I think a more appropriate title, which I'm more proud to give myself is that of distraction therapists. The way I see it,

I would venture to guess that most people don't enjoy their jobs. I know that a lot of people are not happy in their marriages. I know that there's all kinds of different scenarios, situations, problems, which really affect people's quality of life in a negative way. And I very proudly approach my in such a way that I really think, like you said, Jackass Forever is something that people need right now. It's an escape, like very much so. And I think that that's always the way I viewed what I do is that I bring a gift. I come bearing gifts that whatever your personal problems are today,

whatever's dragging you down, that as you consume my content, as's dragging you down, that, that as you, uh, consume my content, as you witness my art, they can alleviate, uh, you know, your, your troubles that I can, that I can just, I'm a distraction therapist. So when it's all said and done, I would like, uh, to be remembered as a guy who, uh, who made people's problems go away. I didn't fix anybody's problems, but I made them go away. I love that. I love that.

You are truly a beautiful soul, Steve-O, really. Honestly, you're just one of a kind. You're a Renaissance man. And what you're doing now is amazing. What a story of success and falling down and reclaiming your life. I mean, I just can't say enough good things about you and what you represent.

So I'm a huge fan of yours. It's a massive honor for me that you gave us all this time. Continued success with the tour, with the podcast, with the books and the comedy. I know you just shot a cover with my man, Will Fox, who's a tremendous MMA photographer, right? So your connections to MMA, no, no bounds. So I just wish you all the best, man, and keep it up. And there's a lot of people rooting for you. And it was great to see you and the whole crew back for Jackass Forever.

Thank you for that as well. Hey, man. Yeah, I love you, Ariel. I respect you. I admire you. And thank you for your time, brother. All right. How great was that?

I think we went like an hour 20, an hour 30. I could have gone three hours asking that guy crazy, crazy questions about his crazy, crazy career. But I don't really know Steve-O. I think I've only met him once in person, maybe twice. I am proud of this man because he's grown up in front of us. He's 47 now, and he has such a great success story. He's going out there. He's living his life. He's chasing his dreams. And one thing that is not talked about enough when you talk about Steve-O is just the kind of entrepreneur that he is. I mean, the guy has built an incredible business with his merch, with his podcast, with his touring, with, you know, the books, the YouTube. The YouTube

page has like 6 million subscribers. It's amazing. It really is amazing what he's done. And again, he could have taken a left turn and just been an afterthought, but he's a very, very bright guy, a very ambitious guy, a hardworking guy, a very organized guy. I just can't say enough good things about him. I'm so impressed with him and I'm so happy for his success. So I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

Thank you for listening. If you wanna watch our conversation, you could go to my YouTube channel right now, youtube.com slash Ari Ahawani. That's where it is. It is a great chat, and you see his facial expressions. And, you know, if you're watching the podcast, I urge you to download the podcast. If you're downloading the podcast, I urge you to at least click on the podcast. All this helps. Please continue to rate, download, subscribe, review, follow, all those things and more. Thanks for all your support.

We'll be back next week with another great conversation. For now though, thank you to the lovely Feathers. Thanks to the production team. Thanks to all of you. And most importantly, thank you so much to Steve-O for his time and thank you to all of you for your support and your time as well. That was not a short conversation. I love

these long conversations and more are coming. Rest assured. For now, though, I am out of time. I'm sure you are as well. I will talk to you next week. Have a great weekend. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh