The Joe Rogan Experience - #1417 - Kevin Ross

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

Kevin “The Soul Assassin” Ross is an artist, writer, and American Muay Thai kickboxer fighting with Bellator Kickboxing.

two one kevin ross bringer of gifts what's good man how you doing good to see you brother thank you very much for that bag oh you're very welcome it's very cool people uh i'll let you know kevin brought a giant heavy bag filled with sand that has to weigh north of 200 pounds oh yeah i think it's about 250 yeah it was a lot of fun getting that in my car by myself is that your preferred method for conditioning your shins for sure for sure you know the the thing with shin conditioning a lot of people do you know they smack themselves in the shin with bottles and kind of stupid things like that but you're you're not really creating what you need to which is a overall overall conditioning, overall strengthening of the bone.

All you're really doing is deadening little spots in your nerves, but that's the worst thing you can do without strengthening your bones. So you're deadening the nerves, but not strengthening the bone overall. And if you're not doing that, you're going to think your bone's a lot stronger than it is but it can't handle the impact so with with a sandbag you're you're covering much more uh surface area and you know applying it in a realistic situation where you're you're able to throw kicks repeatedly at this thing and what you what you really want to do is do it to a degree that it's causing a certain amount of pain but you're able to do this daily with repetition because that's how you continually develop, just like getting stronger at anything. It doesn't happen overnight.

You got to just do this every day, just at the end of your session, knock out a few kicks, and then again tomorrow, and again the next day, and you slowly and steadily are able to go harder and harder and develop the strength and conditioning in your shins so the idea is that you're making like these little tiny micro fractures right yeah for sure and um yeah like i said you want to be able to cover a good surface area so you're hitting it all kind of at once as opposed to like little spots which is what happens when you just whack it with a bat or something like that. My experience with whacking it with a bat is everybody kind of quits.

You're like, hey, I'm going to condition my shins. And then they just go, what the fuck am I doing? And they stop doing it. Well, the thing too with when you're able to kick like that is you can kind of slowly build up. You start a little bit lightly and develop a little bit stronger, and you kind of create a little bit lightly and develop a little bit stronger and you kind of create a little little bit of a crease and you know as you get going you your brain can kind of

wrap itself around it a little bit better and then you start going harder and harder and by the end of you know your five ten minute session you're putting some serious weight into that and you're not you're not um noticing it as much yeah we were were talking about your knee, that you had a fracture in your knee that you didn't realize you had. Yeah. And it's weird. The thing that disturbs me maybe the most in kickboxing, and so I've only seen it a few times, is when someone checks a kick and their leg snaps in half.

Yeah. Like Tyrone Spong when he fought Gokhan Saki, or Anderson Silva when he fought Chris Weidman, same thing. That snap of when the shin gives out, like that, can you prevent that from doing this? Obviously, it's one of those just freak things that happens. You know, clearly with those guys, you can have the most conditioned shins in the world,

but you catch them the wrong way at the wrong time. It can happen, and it's rare, rare but it does happen and it doesn't really matter how long you've been doing this how strong your shins are sometimes things just break i always wonder how many guys have little breaks and they don't know about it too probably a lot yeah a lot yeah they said that's what happened with anderson that anderson threw a kick and he broke it before that. Like he felt something was wrong. And then we threw that second kick and it snapped in half. That's,

that's why it did that. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, Weidman was checking it. Perfect. He was checking it right at the top of his knee.

Yeah. And you know, that's a big thing with, um, you know, fighting a lot of, a lot of people tend to just blindly just pick their shin up, as opposed to paying attention to where it is on your shin that it's hitting. Just like when you're kicking,

you need to pay attention to what piece of your leg you're hitting with, which piece of your shin you're checking with, and the higher up on your shin it is, the harder it's going to be. And when you're southpaw versus orthodox and throwing that inside leg kick you're you're you're coming up towards at an angle which is tends to be like low on your foot or your your your ankle and then you're checking with high up by your knee so you have the smallest part of your shin connecting with the the hardest part of somebody else's and with that that's just the one that tends to do that yeah it's a shin on shin contact is such a brutal thing like i think everybody should experience it once yeah you know just crack i eat that yeah and you know the funny thing is it doesn't matter how long you've done this for you we watch these fights and assume that

they don't feel pain and that it doesn't bother them but even guys with hundreds and hundreds of fights you see in the next day and they're gimping around pretty good. You know, we have this idea in our brains that eventually you're going to get to a point when you just don't feel pain and it doesn't bother you. But eventually you realize that never happens. You know, and it's better to get that out of your head now. You know, Muay Thai and kickboxing and anything that's bone on bone, it's going to be painful.

And that's part of the art of it. You learn how to place your kicks better and pay attention to what you're doing. And, yeah, of course, you develop your shin conditioning and that kind of thing. But it always hurts. It's always going to hurt. It's such a brutally effective way to fight. And it's so interesting that Thailand perfected that. I've always been fascinated

by that like you know you think about the entire world it's an enormous world and people have been fighting in this enormous world from the beginning of time and this one island they said hey i got an idea well it's a cultural thing over there you know it's part of their upbringing it's a cultural thing over there. You know, it's part of their upbringing. It's like baseball over here or soccer in other parts of the world where everybody kind of does it to one extent or the other. And, you know, clearly if you're doing this from a time you're a child, particularly when it's a job like it is for them over there, it's more than just for fun. It's not for fun. It's like this is how I survive. It's this or working in the fields, you know, and that completely changes their mentality about it.

And that's why when you go there, it's like obviously the skill for sure, but the mentality and the reasons for doing this, like it's so different. It's so different. Yeah, and they start so young and they're basically sent to these camps. And they start fighting before they're 10 years old, oftentimes. Yeah, a lot of these kids, their families send them to these camps, and that's where they're raised. They're raised in a gym to be fighters and to work for the gym. I mean, that's really what they're doing is they're working.

You know, they're getting money to send back to their families. And they're not doing this for fun. They're not doing this as a hobby. I've always been fascinated by the way that Thai spar as well because I think it's really interesting that given that they do fight so often and their livelihood depends on it and that it is not a game. They've really figured out a bunch of things, and one of the things they've figured out is hit the pads hard, hit the bag hard, spar light. Yeah, yeah.

There's give and take to everything that we do, and we're trying to maximize our learning and minimize the damage or the risk of injury that we're taking. And we have the opposite approach here in America, which is beat the shit out of each other. And you know, that's good. That's how you're going to get better. But you don't really develop when you're going hard like that. You're learning how to be tough and you're learning how to take damage and you're, you know, learning how to be in the fire like that, which is important, but you're not really developing. You know, when you're playing, when you're practicing, when you're not thinking about getting injured or knocked out, you're able to learn and apply new things and new techniques and practice things that you normally wouldn't. It's like when you're worried about getting hurt, you're only going to focus on the things that you normally wouldn't. It's like when you're worried about getting hurt,

you're only going to focus on the things that you're really good at. You're not going to try these different approaches, and that's what really limits a lot of our development. You see a lot of fighters, their ability kind of levels off to a certain degree, and they don't continually develop as their careers go on, and they also don't last very long either, because the amount of damage their bodies and their brains are taking, you know, each one of us only has a finite number of shots to the head we can take and shots of the body we can take. And

do you want to use those in the gym? Or do you want to use those in the ring? You know, and I think it's really about finding a good balance between that, you know, in the beginning, all I did was just go crazy and spar super hard six days a week, leading all the way up to the fight. And six days a week you were sparring hard, really? Yeah. Yeah. And with guy, I mean, the smallest guy I had to work with coming up was probably 20 pounds bigger than me. And, you know, in a lot of ways, this helped me develop and gain a lot of strength and confidence and ability to take that kind of punishment. But it also did a lot of detrimental things, a lot of stupid injuries, a lot of damage. And, you know, over the years, I've come to develop and get more onto the Thai approach of things and practice and playing and, you know, finding when the time to go hard is and when the

time to learn and develop is and what's counterproductive and what isn't. How do you make that distinction? Like, how do you know when it's the time to go hard? You don't, you don't really. I mean, everything that we do is a process of trial and error, you know, and I think once you kind of understand that you can think clearly and apply the things you need to in the midst of that firefight, which, you know, is really what shuts a lot of people down in the beginning. They can't process the information that's happening because it's so intense. And that is why it's important to kind of have that and have that fight-like situation scenario in in the gym but once you've done that and you've had the experience and all of that i think it's it's so much so much

more beneficial to start going towards the other direction especially if you want to stay in this sport for a a good amount of time and and and not take unnecessary damage for really no purpose whatsoever. It should, to me, it should be the exception and not the rule. You know, like have those hard training sessions in once in a while, especially if you can get working with people that you're not used to because, you know, obviously when you fight, it's, you don't know what they're really doing in there. And it's like working with a stranger. And in the gym, we know each other so well that we tend to just work on those things and not practice.

But that's how we develop. And if we're not doing that, we're really limiting ourselves. It's got to be difficult to find the right balance in terms of what gym you're training at. Where are you training at these days? I'm down in San Diego now. I moved down there two years ago at the uh the boxing club oh is that uh artem yeah yeah shiroishkin levin's place yeah yeah and levin was is there too um artem um shiroishkin the small artem he uh he we met

almost 15 years ago he was actually the janitor at this gym uh had just moved from russia and now he he owns three of them and um is this amazing gym owner and business person which is it's just an unbelievably fascinating story that he has an inspirational thing and um but yeah that's where i'm at now and i kind of bounce back between um san diego and and out here um Gina lives out here, so I kind of go back and forth. Now that place is called the Boxing Club, right? Yeah. But it's Muay Thai. Yeah, yeah.

There's another gym out here called Boxing Works, which is the one I turned out in Torrance. Same thing, it's a Muay Thai gym. Both these gyms are Muay Thai and kickboxing related, yet they're boxing. Why do they call it Boxing Works? Is it just to get people to join? I don't really know.

You know, I don't really know why that happened or how that happened. But yeah, it's kind of ironic that both those places are seemingly boxing gyms and they're not at all. What made you make the move down there? A lot of things. I'd always planned on ending up in San Diego. I mean, that's the one place. I love it down there.

Yeah. And I've lived all over this country since, you know, I've moved all over the place since I was a little kid, and San Diego was just where I always planned I'd be one day. I didn't think I'd move down there until I was done fighting, but through the process of a lot of things and, you know, transitions in my life, it just kind of was the right time to go. It's the perfect balance

because it's like a city but it's not a big city yeah and it's got a lot of beauty like there's beautiful hills and the ocean is beautiful like but it's not that crowded it's like it's all right i shouldn't even even be talking about it yeah and i don't want people to move there once you go there it's it's tough to want to be anywhere else you know the the energy that's there the the the way that people are you know you you have all those things that are in other cities but all everything that's perfect and in one place it's it's very unique in that sense i think there's a lot of positive aspects to the military presence there too because i think there's so many disciplined people down there.

Yeah. There's like a lot of health conscious, fitness oriented and disciplined people. Yeah. Because of the fact there's such a giant military presence down there. Like there's so many people that are involved in the military and so many people that are involved in the military have a lot of discipline, train a lot, are interested in martial arts in particular. Yeah. You know, it just, I think it flavors that community yeah it's it's it's a wonderful place i love it i love it yeah don't go there the problem is the fucking drive whoo that drive yeah well every time i work in san

diego i leave here at like eight in the morning oh yeah yeah just like let's if i have to work there at night i'm like let me just fucking get it out of the way yeah get that four hour drive out of the way early yeah you know if you like for me if i leave at around 10 10 30 i can usually get there in about two hours before traffic hits but there's this really short window of time but if you miss it it's a rough one yeah my friend bill burr takes helicopter down there yeah well he's been taking helicopter lessons we should all get some helicopters and uh it'll be a lot easier to get around well he doesn't have his own but he uh takes lessons yeah and so uh you know he just hires one and he'll actually fly and he has a co-pilot who's like the you know flight instructor explains everything to him make sure he's doing everything right yeah and then you're down there in an hour yeah oh yeah have you ever been in a helicopter

i haven't they kind of freaked me out a little bit you know just they just seem so sketchy they're sketchy yeah yeah but if they're well maintained like anything else you know he took me up in one and we flew over van nuys and over matt it was crazy flying over malibu because we did it right after the fires oh so you got to see all the houses that were burnt to the ground nuts man and like point doom so these just huge estates that are probably worth 25 million dollars just burnt to the fucking ground it's like and so many of them man malibu lost like 600 structures that's wild man it's hard to wrap your brain around the the damage that was done and then i saw this scale which

showed you know what the california fires are and what the australian fire oh my god that's just my friend tom is there right now and he said they had to divert his plane he was supposed to fly into melbourne and they diverted it to sydney because they couldn't fly through the smoke 70 of the country's covered in smoke and a good percentage of those fires Were started by people Just fucking around Like throwing cigarettes into the bush

Crazy Yeah They said half a billion animals are dead Jeez Yeah That's terrible It's insane And they said that the koala bear

Like so much of their habitat is destroyed They're in like grave danger Yeah Yeah I mean like It's something about like 80% of their range has been destroyed. Jeez. Yeah. It's crazy. You know, koala bears only eat like, I think they only eat eucalyptus trees.

Yeah. That's all they eat. It's just kind of fucked up. They found what works. Yeah. They're into one thing. It's like a dude who only eats blueberries. You know, like, bro, what if they run out of blueberries?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they can eat other things i think that's like their digestive system has evolved to eat eucalyptus leaves yeah yeah yeah that's horrible it's fucked up man when you look at the map of where the fires are it's it's crazy it's like multiple if like it's like if we had like multiple states like texas wy Wyoming, Nevada, all on fire at the same time. That's what it's like over there. Yeah. It's hard to wrap your mind around. It is.

Have you ever been when there's a fire here? Not close enough to really feel like that. But around and even just them in the general area, I mean, you realize how quickly they can spread and just take over everything and yeah it's so devastating i've been evacuated three times yeah from where i live and uh this last one the houses across the street from my house burnt to the ground yeah and then two houses down one of those houses burnt down on my block 10 houses are gone wow yeah it's fucking nuts man i went to walk the dog today and we're walking by these just empty lots where these people used to live you know you know the bright side nobody died

hopefully everybody had insurance but it's just uh it's humbling when you see it coming because everybody's like they're the firefighters are doing their best they're just they're dumping water they're doing their best to create fire breaks and everything they can but there's nothing they can do it's so big i mean it was so big it was just coming over the top of the mountain you looked all the way to the left and all the way to the right just nothing but fire and these guys are just constantly circling over and dropping water down and doing their best but it's like it was crazy and that was nothing compared to up north north in california north in california people died on the fucking highway they couldn't get out of the way of it that was terrible man

that was so bad you know i was up there probably about five years ago when these were going on and they were just popping up everywhere and and there were some that were pretty close to the gym and having to like watch and see where they're at because they were close to the apartments we lived in like we might have to like get out of here because they just pop all over the place and they hop from one place to the other with the wind and everything henry cejudo almost burnt to death you know the story about him he had to jump out the window barefoot burnt the fuck out of his feet yeah like he didn't even know what was going on he was sleeping and then all of a sudden he's waking up he's like what is happening and he looks out the window and everything's on fire it got to him that quickly scary shit man but it's it's the you know that's fucked up about it but we all had to go to

like me and my neighbors um and some friends of mine we all uh picked a hotel in town we all went together but there's like a weird camaraderie about when shit like that goes down where everybody was happy it's horrible that those things kind of happen and they really make you realize like what is important in life and and you know it's the same thing like when you when you travel overseas and go to third world countries like they seem to have a very good understanding of what life should and is about and then you come here we have everything everyone has everything and everyone's complaining yeah everything and we're miserable and we're we're spoiled and that's that mentality it's it's so unfortunate it's like the more you have the more you have to complain about and forget what what is important in this life it's weird that it takes something like that to jar you it's

you should be able to learn from that and then carry that lesson. But that lesson is like sand in your fingers, man. How quickly, like after 9-11 or things like that, how long does it last? And such a traumatic thing like that. We have like a week or two of, oh, America, let's get together and let's take care and love each other. And then I forgot. Yeah. let's let's let's get together and let's take care and love each other and then i forgot yeah well i've i mean to make an analogy with martial arts one of the reasons why i enjoy being around martial

artists and why most of my friends a good percentage of my friends are martial artists i feel like training all the time and getting humbled particularly in jiu-jitsu because you can get tapped out a lot and you you know you just train and you get tapped out and you keep going it's not like getting knocked out it's not like you know you can only get cracked in the head so many times and sparring but you you develop this kind of humility that is uh it's, everybody kind of understands it. And there's this feeling that you get where you understand, when someone's trying to kill you all the time, like on a regular basis,

some dude's trying to choke the fucking breath out of you and someone's got their arm wrapped around your neck, like the rest of the world seems easier, you know? And I almost feel like human beings are engineered through through evolution we've we've sort of been designed through natural selection to learn how to survive difficult things and when the difficult things don't exist we make things that aren't difficult difficult yeah very much so very much so you know me, I feel that stuff seeping back in yeah and it's it's it's substantial you know and like i don't know how everyone's not running

around shooting each other because just a few days of not doing this i'm like i want to kill somebody because because i allow just the stresses of nothing to get it there to make this sound more consistent just push that a little bit further just because it's you're doing those cigarette things like hello i don't have a voice all right how about that that's perfect all right um how much longer do you think you're going to compete i have no idea man how old are you now i'll be 40 this year oh shit yeah that's the magic number you know the since the day i started you know i didn't start till i was 23 yeah and so let's tell your story because it's it's an it's a fascinating story because i love a guy whose life

is fucked up and then he figures something out yeah and then becomes a role model and in a lot of ways that's what you've done yeah it's a long story and i am i'm actually in the process of writing my opera biography right now um which I've been working on pretty consistently for the last five years. Something that, you know, I really was doing it for myself in a lot of ways to have an understanding of the things that I've been through and the things that I've learned and processed and acquired over these years, which is, you know, in a lot of ways it's been extremely rewarding doing all of this, but it's also been very difficult, very painful and emotional going back through all of these things that happened to me in my childhood and my upbringing and things that I'm, even to this day, I'm still trying to process and understand a lot of and um

where were we on all this my story yeah well your story of not starting until you're 23 and before that too much partying yeah so summarize a lot of this you know i was i was i grew up in a lot of different places moved around a lot you know my parents split up very early um me my mother and three brother four brothers sisters um you know we basically lived in somebody's basement for in the beginning and uh we're living on welfare and bouncing around from place to place and so much of that shut me down emotionally and and you know when I was a kid from what I'm told I mean I've really not much recollection of my childhood because I've blocked so much of this out and that's why it's been really difficult for me to write this book because I don't really have

many memories I have almost no memories of that time in my life where I felt like a child, that carefreeness of childhood. And I've had to, you know, talk to siblings and friends from back then and look through photo albums and slowly things start coming together. And, you know, that's why a lot of this has been really therapeutic. But I always loved fighting. I always loved boxing and was very intrigued by it. And martial arts, you know, Bruce Lee was always a hero of mine. But I hated violence coming up. I hated it, but I was intrigued by it.

So a really good friend of mine, we lived in Colorado for about a year or two. He would get into fights on a weekly basis in school. And I was fascinated by it. And I'm like, wow, that like, you're so brave and so strong. And I felt like such like a weak, I was very allowed like weakness to, to, to, um, overtake me throughout the, the, the events of my life. And I was very shy. I didn't talk. You know, I was always athletic and that kind of thing. But as far as confrontation and that, like, it just shut me down. And I didn't like it. It upset me a lot. You know, when people would be angry with me. And so I had this strange dynamic where I was drawn to fighting and I was drawn to violence in one way, but I also hated it a lot and was scared by it. But over the years, you know, I thought about, I was drawn to violence in one way, but I also hated it a lot and was scared by it.

But over the years, you know, I thought about, I was like, oh, maybe I'll try boxing one day and that'd be really cool. You know, I was fascinated watching two people in the ring and all these people are watching and they're there with each other, regardless of their skill level. And, you know, just thinking about what it must be like in there to do that, you know, and it fascinated me. But again, like I said, I love martial arts, so I wanted to be able to kick people. I wanted to be able to elbow people and knee people.

And I never saw any fighting that was like that, you know, as I was coming up. I mean, you'd see taekwondo and karate and a lot of point sparring and that kind of thing, and forms, and, you know, as I was coming up, I mean, you'd see taekwondo and karate and a lot of point sparring and that kind of thing and forms. And, you know, even that I thought was fascinating, but I wanted to fight like boxers did. And I just never really saw anything like that. And one day, 94, this was right when we moved to Vegas. I was watching ESPN at like two in the morning

and they used to have tie fights on once in a while and this fight came on i got this next fight it's a mutai fight between so and so and when that started i was immediately hooked it hit something in me that just like lit me on fire i I was like, this is everything that I've been looking for. This is something so different. And it just spoke to my soul. And it fascinated me. And I was like, if I am ever going to do this, that's going to be it. It's going to be Muay Thai. But, you know, for various reasons, it scared me.

One, I didn't know how I'd be able to afford it. I didn't know if my parents would even let me and you know coming up the way I did I was partying and drinking all the time even at that I mean I started drinking when I was like 12 years old holy shit yeah and by the time I was probably 18

I was physically dependent alcoholic I had to drink every day in order to keep my nerves from shaking my hands would tremor. How much were you drinking? A lot. A lot. Every day I would drink.

Every day I would drink. All day? Throughout the day a little bit. At night I would just be pounding 40s. Fuck. Constantly. And that's all that I did. That's all me and my friends did.

We would just drink. We would drink every day. How did you wean yourself off that? Starting Muay Thai is what did it. As I said, I learned about it in 94. Over the years, every once in a while, I'd see a fight, and I'd be like, oh, I want to do this so bad. In 98, I actually started calling around gyms in Vegas. once in a while i'd see a fight and i'd be like oh i want to do this so bad and in 98 i actually

started calling around gyms in vegas i was like oh maybe i'm gonna find a place to do this and for me it was one of those things where if i'm gonna do it i want to do it right and i want to do it to fight and if i'm gonna do it to fight and what is the the fastest way to get there and i was like i need to take one-on-one lessons. I need to, um, I wanted to learn from a Thai, you know, and that was not to say, you know, like Americans or anybody else can't, can't teach it. But I was like, if you're going to learn it, you might as well learn it from the source. And the only place in Vegas that taught Muay Thai, one of the only places that even taught Muay Thai and definitely the only place that had Thai instructors was

Master Tati's gym. And I called the gym, gym, you know, went down and talked to one of the instructors. And when he let me know how expensive it was going to be, I was like, there's just no way. There's no way I'm going to be able to do this. And for me, I also knew that if I am going to go after this, I'm going to need to stop drinking, stop partying, completely alter my entire existence. I'm probably going to lose all my friends. Um, everyone's going to laugh at me. I didn't even

know how serious I took myself. You know, I was like, I laugh at me when I say this, you know, like it's, and if you knew me back then, you'd probably laugh too. Like, what do you, what do you mean you're going to fight? Are you stupid? That's the stupidest thing I could ever think of. And one of my best friends, Mo, he, for whatever reason, this one night we were up on the roof drinking and smoking weed. And we got to talking just about life. And he was actually born with a heart defect. I can't remember the exact name of the disease that he had. But he was in and out of hospitals his whole life. He was eventually going to need to with a heart defect. I can't remember the exact name of the disease that he had. But he was in and out of hospitals his whole life.

He was eventually going to need to get a heart transplant. And he said, what do you want to do with your life? I looked at him like he was asking me what I want to do when I got to the moon. I'm like, what do you mean what I want to do with my life? And he was like, well, I always wanted to fight. And expecting him to laugh at me about this, he was like, well, why don't you? Like, why don't you do it? And, you know, I told him, well, I feel old already.

I was 18 at the time. I already felt ancient then. You know, and I told him all my reasons and all my fears and doubts and all these things. He's like, you know what, man? He's like, if anybody can do it, you can. He's like, I think you should. And that really that always stuck with me i was like um maybe i can and in that moment you know i felt very motivated

and wanted to do it but by you know continuing to drink and all these other things i just put it suppressed it into the back of my mind and then about a year later um he was in the hospital and um he needed to get a heart transplant. He was basically at that point was like, you're going to be here until you get one or you're going to die. And, you know, I don't think any of us realized how serious it was or maybe we just didn't want to. He ended up passing away while he was waiting for the transplant,

and that just obviously devastated me to no end. And through that night, through my drunken coping, I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go after this dream. My friend, he didn't even get a chance to fail at a dream, and I'm too scared to even try for no reason, just out of fear. That's literally my only reason not to do this, other than financial and all those other surface things.

But it really just boiled down to fear. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to go after this for him. He didn't get a chance to live. I'm going to live for the both of us. But unfortunately, his death sent me even harder down that downward spiral of alcohol and depression and three years later i um i just had a realization one day i was like if he was still alive he'd beat the fuck out of me for wasting my life i've been

wasting my life for 21 years because I'm afraid. You know, I'm afraid. And I'm too afraid to fail. I'm too afraid of all these stupid reasons that all of us give ourselves in order to make ourselves feel better about not going after things. But really, they're just that. They're just excuses. They're just things that make you feel better.

And they're bullshit. They're all bullshit. Almost're just things that make you feel better. And they're bullshit. They're all bullshit. Almost every excuse we have is total bullshit because there's people with those excuses and with all those reasons and more. And they're able, then they do it. Like, what is your excuse? And it just, it just smacked me in the face one day. And I was at that point when I could not ignore it any longer. And this was going into 2003.

So I was like, made it my New Year's resolution to do this. And, you know, one night I was sitting down with my father, and he'd get into these long talks with me because I was always very quiet, and he'd, like, take me off to the side, and his way to kind of talk to me and get to know me better and he's like so why don't you tell me something you've never told anybody you know i'm like what do you mean like what can i like i killed somebody when i was little i'm like like racking my brain what i could possibly tell him and uh you know that that kept replaying in my mind you want to fight you want

to fight you want to fight and um very like quietly he's. You want to fight, you want to fight, you want to fight. And, um, I very like quietly was like, Oh, I want to fight one day. And he's like, what? He's like, I want to fight. And he's like, what do you mean you want to fight? And, you know, I told him and he's like, well, why don't you? And I told him all these reasons. He's like, well, I cannot help you with all of your fears and doubts in this, but look, I'll make a deal with you. If you quit drinking and dedicate yourself to this i'll take care of um every all the financial things in order to let you do this i was like he said we got a deal and i was like all right yeah and he's like points down i was drinking a 40 at the time he's like what about that drink in your hand and i was like well i was gonna start tomorrow so you know i don't want to

you know maybe i can finish this all right but you know, I understood even at that age, like, you can't put things off like that. It was like, you got to do it. If you're serious about it, you're going to do it now. So I dumped out the rest of the 40 and the sink he had in there. And two days later, I got into the gym. Was it hard to wean yourself off the alcohol, though, if you were physically dependent on it? It was both extremely difficult, yet I was so focused on this goal that none of those...

I had to overcome so much, not just the physical dependence on alcohol, but my lifestyle, and it's changed so many things. But I'd been putting this off for so much, not just the physical dependence on alcohol, but my lifestyle and it's changed so many things. But I'd been putting this off for so long that I knew there was no time for me to waste. I was so focused on this that once I made that switch in my mind, I'm going to go after this and there's nothing that's going to stop me. And I've wasted so many years already that everything I'm doing is going to be playing catch up. You know, there's no way for me to get to, like, I'd look at, you know, like sunshine guys like that. And

I'm like, I'm never going to get there. So everything that I do has to be to get me closer to this goal. And I can't allow, you know, my physical dependency or my doubts or any of these things slow me down because everything I'm doing, I have to play catch up, you know, and having that, that focus allowed me to overcome all of those physical and emotional and mental challenges. And of course, that's not to say it was easy. It was extremely difficult. It was extremely difficult, but it was, you got two choices. You know, you can allow these things to slow you down and hinder you and weaken you. Or you can say, I'm going to go forward anyway.

It doesn't matter how afraid I am. It doesn't matter how hurt I am. It doesn't matter how tired I am. This is what I want. And I'm going to put everything that I have into this. So that way, when I'm done, when my life is over, when I can't do this anymore, I can look back and have no regrets that I didn't allow these things to slow me down. I didn't allow the excuses that we all have hinder me and keep me from doing this, because one day we're going to wake up and realize we could have gone after these things,

and we didn't because of X, Y x y and z but really those things aren't aren't anything you know do you stop and think about those moments when you first started this because that's a profound life shift like to go from being a guy who's kind of aimless and partying a lot but knowing that you should do something with your life to finally doing something. What was it like when you finally started training? What did it feel like when you actually – because you hadn't – had you done anything athletic before that? I was always athletic my whole life.

I was always really good at sports. I hated the team aspect of things, though. I despised being on a team of any kind i love playing sports for the for the love of it you know but anytime i was on like a team i just hated it i despised it and you know by the time i was like i think 12 i completely turned my back on anything team related because i felt to me it felt like it just ruined all the beautiful things about the physicality of, of athletics. You know, it put this, this, this, it hindered me in a lot of ways, you know, and having to rely on other people,

you know, was always a big thing. You know, it's like, it doesn't matter how hard I work because this person might not have worked at all. And, you know, that's why I'm so drawn to fighting because it's, it's, even though you do have a team, of course, it really is. Everything is on you, the good and the bad. There's nothing you can point, you can point to all these other things, but it's really just you. So, yeah, I think back and I look back to that time. What was the first day like? It was. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah, I think back and I look back to that time. What was the first day like? It was. Do you remember?

Yeah, yeah, I do. So I started out just doing private lessons. I didn't even start doing classes until maybe six months to a year. So I was doing private lessons on a daily basis. My trainer, Master Chan, who's one of Tati's original instructors, he had me in the gym at like 6 a.m. So this is January in Vegas, which is brutally cold,

which not a lot of people realize. And their gym had no heat. All the windows were like broken, so there's no insulation or anything. And I don't know. I i was just i was i was so excited you know so nervous and you know obviously i wanted to do really well and perform and everything was just everything was so new that i didn't really i didn't really have a lot um i couldn't even really process it so there wasn't a lot of um there wasn't really a lot of thought

that was going into it. I was just, I was just excited. I was just constantly excited and motivated and wanted to, my whole goal was to fight. You know, it was like, I want to fight even if it's only one time. So everything I did was with that mentality, you know, it was like, I want to get better. I want to get better. I want to do everything that I can at every moment. And I put every ounce of myself into every second of the day was geared towards this. You know, it was singularly focused on this goal. Can you remember the first day? Yeah.

Can you remember the first day of footwork and holding your hands up? The first day. The first day he has me up in the ring. first day he has me up in the ring it must have been maybe the second or third day because um there was i know there was other people there and maybe they were just hitting the bag and stuff so there there was a couple of the other pro fighters there or other they were pro fighters i was nobody and i'm up in the ring and so this is is day one. He's like, Shadowbox, I've never done anything fighting related. I'm like, what do you mean? I don't even know what that is.

You know what I'm saying? Like, what do you mean, Shadowbox? So, like, so much of my, everything in my career has been, like, thrown into the deep end, can you swim kind of thing, and, like, this forced learning curve. I didn't get babied into anything you know it's like all right shadow box go ahead and everyone all these fighters are like staring at me watching me i'm like i don't know what i'm doing but whatever you know it was it was

it was traumatic in a lot of ways but having to confront that and face that, particularly me, because I'm naturally a very shy person, a person that doesn't speak ever to anybody. I mean, even now, you know, I'm still very quiet, but if you knew me back then, I was basically a mute, you know, and I had no interaction with especially strangers and people I didn't know. And even the ones that I do, I'd still barely even communicate with. So all of this was so foreign to me. This was like an alternate universe that I was in. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was so scary, but it was like, you don't have a choice, like get up there and do it or get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? So there wasn wasn't there wasn't time for me to really think about it or or like even be really nervous about it's like do it shadowbox like and and and this instructor he barely spoke english so it's not like i can like say hey well i i don't really

know what i'm doing and maybe you can show me some things just like go and that's very much a a thai approach it's like just do it I'm not gonna tell you how I'm not gonna explain the steps just go kick the bag or hit it just do it and um yeah it was uh it was scary but then once you got some momentum once you had a couple of weeks under your belt and this started becoming a real normal part of your life what was that feeling like what you realized like hey i'm fucking actually doing this like it's this is actually happening well every day every day i was taking significant jumps i mean as i said i've always been naturally athletic so i was picking this up like quick really quick i mean even within

a few weeks people thought i'd been doing it for years. You know, and a lot of that, you know, does come from my physicality, but my drive to do it and to have my sights set so high that, you know, I was taking these quantum leaps every single day. you know, I was taking these quantum leaps every single day. Um, so over, over the weeks and over the months, you know, it just, it really felt like I was like, Oh, I'm on, I'm on track. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm on the path I should be on. I'm going to, I'm going to be amazing at this. You know, this, this is great. I'm, I'm natural at this, you know, I'm going to be, uh, I'm be a champion one day. I'm going to just be crushing people. And, uh, you know, I'm going to be, uh, I'm be a champion one day. I'm just be crushing people. And, uh, you know, everything, everything was pointing in that direction, you know, with my, my development and, you know, started, uh, eventually going into the classes and sparring

and all those kinds of things. And, um, you know, it was always like, when do I get to fight? When do I get to fight? When do I get to fight? And do I get to fight? And I think it was nine months in, I finally got to fight. And I was like, oh, this is it. This is my moment. You know, I'm going to go out there. You know, I'm going to crush this dude. And then I'm going to be, you know, on my way to the big time. Not that there, even, you know, back then, there's no big time.

There was no, this wasn't, this was before YouTube. This was before anyone even knew what muay thai was you know you had to tell everybody you did kickboxing basically which just crushed my soul every time every time say well it's like kickboxing and you know for muay thai people to have to say that is it's devastating it's like uh someone say well it's like karate you know what i mean which no disrespect to any of these other arts but but to say that it's that in order to help people you most of the time i would just say yeah yeah yeah it's like kickboxing instead of having to explain to them what it is and um yeah so nine months in i got the uh

there was going to be a fight in salt lake city utah and a bunch of the other people at the gym were fighting as well and we're all going to go up there um and compete is this an amateur fight yeah yeah headgear um no yes headgear but you know the funny thing was we had headgear, but we didn't have shin guards. We had 8-ounce gloves, and we had knees to the head, which was a trip. Anyway, so I was like, oh, yeah, great, we get to fight. And I was so excited, and my pops and Gina, and we drove up there. And like I said, I really felt like I was on my way.

But when we got there, the guy that I was originally supposed to fight, I don't remember if he backed out or it was just that he was closer in weight to somebody else. You know, and that was kind of the thing back then. We would just show up at places and be like, you got to fight for me or don't you? And they didn't. And I was like, oh, my God. I was devastated. I was devastated.

I'm like, I did all this work. I was so ready. And now I don't have a fight. And, you know, my trainer's like, well, is there somebody else you can get? And so the promoter, you know, he's calling around, calling around. And then then he finally's like um well there's one guy that's gonna take it but he outweighs you by 20 pounds and he's had about 30 fights already i was like let's do it i don't give a fuck man i was like i didn't do all this for nothing you know what i'm saying and you know and again that like that was just our mentality the way

that we came up and the people that we came up under was you fight anytime, anywhere, anyone, any style, any weight. It doesn't matter. And so, yeah, I didn't even really think about it as far as like that goes. You know, it's like I get to fight. That's a fucking awesome man. And I felt confident in a way, but it's also that you have no idea what you're really doing like you can train your whole life but if you've never fought you don't know anything anything you have no concept of what it's like to be in there you have the hardest sparring in

the world with with complete stranger and it's night and day between a real fight and sparring and so it's like yeah you you you want to feel confident going in there but you have no concept of of what it is so it's really just fake it's fake confidence and um i got a fucking crush man so i got there and uh i uh you know i have no concept of like pacing myself or anything so i just like I'm like sprinting at this guy. And in like 30 seconds, I was just done. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think.

I couldn't, I could barely even see. It felt like, felt like I was underwater. And it was, it was, it was the worst thing in the world because nothing this guy was doing was hurting me. And every time he had hit me the whole crowd's like oh and all i wanted to do was just say it's it's not bothering me this isn't hurting like i wanted to like tell everybody like this isn't hurting me i can't breathe like all i'm really trying to do is not pass out right now and and i i mean like physically i couldn't do anything but but i was able to last for a while and do a couple decent things in there.

But by the third round, he was just battering me, kneeing me in the face, and he just kept clenching me up and just kneeing the piss out of me, and there was nothing I could do. And they finally stopped it in the third round. And I was devastated, man. I was devastated. I remember walking, like as I was walking back to the locker room, everyone in the crowd was, like, cheering for me.

Like, oh, that was awesome, man. Like, good job, good job. I'm like, what is wrong with these people? Like, that wasn't good. That was so terrible. That was terrible. And I was, like, laying in the back and bleeding all over the place. And my opponent comes in.

He's like, dude, that was your first fight? I was like, yeah. He's like, man, I hate to see you in, like, a year comes in. He's like, dude, that was your first fight? I was like, yeah. He's like, man, I hate to see you in like a year or two. He's like, that was amazing. And, you know, that really stuck with me, you know, that one that he said that. And also just the impact I saw that you could have on people, that it's not necessarily about whether you win or lose, that it's what you show in there.

It's the heart that you show. It's the spirit that you show it's the the spirit that you show and um you know i i had like a day or two when i was like maybe this just isn't for me you know i thought i thought that this that i was going to be so good at this i thought that it was just going to like skyrocket to the top and i got crushed man i didn't even make it out of the fight and like like, maybe this isn't for me. But I was forced to face that day one. Like, do you want to do this? Regardless of how good you are, regardless of you win,

if you can't win and maybe you can't be the best in the world, do you still want to do this? Yeah, I fucking do. I love this so much. Yeah, I fucking do. I love this so much. And me having to face that so early on was extremely significant. I saw so many of the people I trained with would go on these undefeated streaks, like 10, 15, 20 fights, but inevitably you will lose. And if you haven't had to confront that early on, eventually you do. Most of those people never fought again or just like crushed them mentally where they weren't able to overcome it but i had to deal

with that the first day and overcome it and be like you know what that doesn't matter i'm gonna i'm gonna bust my ass in the gym and don't make sure that never happens again and i went on to win like 19 20 fights in a row from there and And, you know, that was really a significant moment in my career where I had to confront the reality of this. And, you know, that so much of fighting is a perfect metaphor for things in life. Like if you really want something, you can't always focus on what the results are or the immediate results, like winning and losing and all of these things are so much of that is just on the surface ego level of things. And when you break it all down, like, what is your, why are you doing this? I'm doing this because I love it. I'm doing this to

improve myself. I'm doing this because it's it. I'm doing this to improve myself. I'm doing this because it's what keeps me healthy, mentally, physically, spiritually, and all of these things. And that's the most important thing. And yes, it was an extreme motivator to be better and, you know, not to let that have happened to me early on what's important here. Also, just to get over that. It's so psychologically important. Like you were saying, you just kept getting sort of tossed to the wolves. Everything you did was difficult.

It was almost symbolic of your journey that you were forced to fight someone who had 30 fights and 20 pounds heavier when you had no experience that trusting the process is you really only trust the process if it's difficult yeah you know that whole expression trust the prize well if you're fucking everybody up what do you mean trust the process you're out there just fucking everybody up of course i'm trusting i'm the man right but when you get your ass handed to you and then you have to rebuild then you have to realize well there's a series of variables in your you're encountering the variables in speed and in aggressiveness and in styles and in trickery and some people are better than others at figuring you out and some people have a style that's tailor-made to defeat your style and it's

good when that does happen yeah and not just to trust the process but to uh appreciate the journey yeah yeah and sometimes people they just want success well we all want yeah of course we all want we always want things to be good it's it's kind of that same, you know, like you want to give your kids what you never had. But a lot of times when you do that, you end up with a spoiled brat who has no concept of work ethic and what it really takes. And you're hindering them even more so than you were because you had to, like, confront all of these things. Right. You know what I'm saying? And it's unfortunate that so many things that you would think would help us

or really hurt us in the end. And it needs to be difficult. It needs to be a struggle. And, of course, you want help along the way, but the harder you have to work, in the long run, the stronger you're going to be, the better you're going to be, the more independent you're going to be, the more self-sufficient you're going to be.

And all of these things are going to be the the more self-sufficient you're going to be and all of these things are are um gonna better you so then in a lot of ways it's like maybe i should make my kid's life hell and then he's gonna be really strong and he's gonna be an entrepreneur and he's gonna change the world um i don't know yeah it's it's hard you know i have children it's uh it's tricky i think you don't want them to have a hard life, but you do. One of the most difficult things too is we're all on our own journey and what's beneficial for one is detrimental to somebody else. So yeah, it's good to have advice. It's good to have somebody that believes in you, but that's not necessarily going to help you just because sometimes that might end up hurting you.

Having people that do believe in you and telling you how great you that might end up hurting you you know having people that do believe in you and telling you how great you are and you know opening doors for you and all of these things you know in in many ways those things can be extremely detrimental and you don't you don't develop the things that you inevitably will need in the long run you know and there's no there's no one way to get anywhere you know it's it's there's it's so complex and there's so many variations of things that that that that apply to success in anything i have one favorite day in the weather in los angeles the weather in los angeles is perfect right it's just so often it's like 80 degrees and sunny.

It's like 90% of the time 80 degrees and sunny. Me and my friend Brian and my friend Steve Rinella, we filmed this television show called Meat Eater and went on a hunting trip in Prince of Wales Island in Alaska where it's the rainiest part in North America. It's so fucking rainy. You think you're going to stay dry in your your tent but there's no such thing as dry like and i realized this one of the first nights i had to get up take a piss in the middle of the night and i had a headlamp and i turned my headlamp on and inside my tent was like it was raining because it was so much there was mist yeah it was moisture like so much moisture that turning on the headlamp was like you you were like doing it in fog like everything was wet my sleeping bag was wet my

clothes were wet and i was like oh you don't you don't get dry there's no dry we had one day where we had a fire one day we figured out how to start a fire actually using fritos is a pro tip if you ever fucking fritos are made with some fucking crazy toxic grease that they work great as lighter fuel. Like if you light them, they stay lit for a long time. And then we were like taking like the inside of logs and like using that wood and wood that was like maybe under the bottom of other wood. So it didn't get as wet. We slowly put a fire together. Anyway, I was there for six, seven days.

We got back to L.A., and it was 80 and sunny. And the feeling of that sun, I was like, this is the same sun I always experience. But it's always just, you know, it's normal. It's no big deal. It's just California weather. Another day in paradise, but not that day. That day I was like you know, it's normal. It's no big deal. It's just California weather. Another day in paradise. But not that day.

That day I was like, fuck, this is amazing. I was driving on the street. My face felt good. Like everything, it felt good. And I called my friend Steve up. I go, dude, I've never been happier. Like this is like the happiest day I've ever experienced. And I think it's because we were suffering in just cold and rain for seven days.

You need that. Yeah. Because if you just have these goddamn sunny days, you're like everybody out here in California. You're just spoiled baby. Well, it's like if everybody's winning, nobody's winning. Right. Nobody's losing. Nobody's losing.

So if you don't have the good and the bad, you don't even understand. You can't appreciate the good or what the bad can be, the helpful things that it does. Yeah. Yeah, we don't want that. But those are the things that help you grow, and those are the things that we inevitably need. You know, I hate to. Well, I don't hate to because I want to do this. I'm going to toss a little hand grenade at you and see what you want to do with it here.

But, um, I've been thinking about this a lot lately and, and, you know, wanting to communicate my story and these things that have happened to me. And then this opportunity came up and this opportunity to reach a lot of people and to, there's that quote that says, be the person that you needed when you were younger, you know, and Gina has that on her wall and it stares me in the face every day. And I realized that I now am the person that I needed when I was younger. And if somebody would have opened up their mouth and let me know that I wasn't alone and that, that I needed when I was younger. And if somebody would have opened up their mouth and let me know that I wasn't alone and that I wasn't so isolated and so many horrible things that we all deal with is because we feel isolation. We don't think anyone could understand.

And we don't think that anyone else is going through these things. And if we did, just that knowledge of not being alone would be so significant. But when I was 14 years old, I was molested by my stepmother. And this went on for well over a year, close to two years. And it was obviously detrimental to me. And these are things that I'm just now finally starting to be able to understand and realize what happened to me and realize how young I was at the time. When I meet a 14-year-old kid, you're a fucking baby. You're a baby. It's like when we think about ourselves when we were younger like at least myself i'm like i still feel the same i did when i was younger i was just little you know what i mean like but you don't really understand how little you were until you have

like a little 12 14 year old kid standing next to you like you're not like you don't even how could how could that happen? And like thinking about how, so a study that said one in six males are abused by the time they're 18, which means every one of us probably knows somebody that this has happened to, you know, and to think how devastating it is to women. But to our men, it's such a different thing because you're almost it's almost viewed uh well when it happens from a a woman you know it's it's almost viewed as like a good thing yeah like it's a positive thing like oh i wish that happened to

me when i was a kid like i want to i want to be molested and um you know we're not able to really understand it um and understand the the damage that it that it does and and you know i i i i if i wouldn't have felt so alone and and and so isolated at the time i you know i don't necessarily know if things would have changed but i definitely would have wouldn't have felt so alone you know i wouldn't have felt like there's nobody in the world that could possibly understand this there's nobody that who can i talk to about this you know like i can't talk to my friends a couple of my friends knew they thought it was the coolest shit ever you know they're like, I want that. I want that bad. And I'm like. Well, it was your stepmom, too, which is. Dude, it was so confusing.

You know, I was very conflicted by it. You know, like I couldn't understand it at all. And then to have this person like mentally manipulating me and making like oh it's not a big deal it's okay it's almost like it's a good thing you know like it's like there's nothing wrong you know it's it's um you know i'm not a stranger and and this um you know even prior to that as i said i started drinking when i was 12, but this really just derailed me so much and made me internalize and put up these barriers and walls around me and things that, like I said, I'm only even just at this age starting to understand like the negative habits that this created in me, um, of, of distrust and

of, of, of, of, of negativity and of, of, of, um, you know, having to be, having to be alone and not trust people and, you know, and so many things like that, that, you know, like Gina's probably the only person that I've ever talked to in depth about this. I mean, a couple of people in my family know, and almost none of my friends know. I've never spoken to this to anybody. You know, I tried to go to a therapist once and talk about this, but I started realizing, like,

this therapist is getting more out of this, our interaction, than I like he's you know like a overweight person that needs like self-confidence help i'm like oh geez man like like who can i fucking talk to about this and you know maybe maybe i can't talk to anybody but i am in a position to where i can reach out and let other people know that they're not the only ones going through this. And that has been weighing on me so much lately, especially over the last few years. I'm like, you are in a position to be able, even if it only helps one person, like you can. You just don't know how to. I'm like, well, i could write about it or i could do like a video blog or something and i've been thinking about this a lot lately like i'm

like how do i how can i do this and like should i do this i'm like i don't know if that's like a good thing like i'm it's not like i'm a like psychologist or someone that can help with this. But I just felt like I need to express this and communicate this. And maybe it can do some good for even one person. And if I didn't, that would haunt me forever. I had an experience when I was 13 with a girl who lived up the street Who was 21

A couple times But it was very different Than your experience It was I mean I'm ashamed to say it It was kind of fun It was different I couldn't believe it

It was very weird But it definitely You know, it was different. I couldn't believe it. It was very weird. Yeah. But it definitely, like, kind of screwed up my idea of what boy-girl interaction was. I didn't go from, like, 13-year-olds, most of the time, they're like, you want a kiss? I don't know. Do you? I don't know. Yeah.

To, you know, this girl grabbing my dick and pulling her tits out she was a woman you know she was 21 and it didn't it didn't hurt me like your story like your story hurts like it sounds like you were betrayed and you were you were and also the fact that it was your stepmom I mean with me it was like what the fuck was that all about and i don't i don't i didn't tell anybody yeah i didn't tell anybody for like fucking years and years later i probably didn't tell anyone until i was in my 20s and uh i think i probably told a girlfriend when i was in my 20s yeah and she was like when was the first time you ever fooled around i was like well because that was really the first time i had ever fooled around with anyone was this 21-year-old woman.

It was the same thing for me. I didn't even kiss a girl until I was, I don't know, 12, 13, like late, late because I was such a shy person. So I went from just kissing to that. There was no in between. I think the same with me. I don't even think I kissed. I think I kissed her. Yeah. I think she was with me. I don't even think I kissed. I think I kissed her. I think she was the first person I kissed.

Yeah. Yeah. And to just have your innocence ripped away like that and to be thrust into this adult thing. Obviously, the situation was that much worse. Obviously, the situation was that much worse, my stepmom and it being molested. It's such a different thing than a woman or being forcefully raped. Oh, it's way different, yeah. But psychologically and emotionally, it's devastating. It is's it's devastating it is it it is obviously and you were living with her as well yeah yes that's the whole thing's terrible and you said

it went on for a year longer than a year it was probably close to uh two years how did it stop i stopped it actually you know this was this this was something, you know, I never felt right about this. I was very conflicted by it, you know, and I was like, this definitely isn't a good thing. But I don't know. Like, I definitely didn't understand how bad of a thing it was, you know. And again, she was very manipulative. And, you know, any time I would kind of bring that subject up, like, yeah, I don't think this is okay.

You know, this feels wrong. And she'd be like, no, no, you know, and find this way to, you know, rationalize it or make it okay. And, you know, as time went on, like, I was just like, this is bad. How old was she? She was probably 30, young 30s. That was another thing. Once I got to that age and then I saw a 14-year-old, I'm like, what the fuck?

I couldn't even conceptualize how twisted this person was until I got that age. How could you look at a baby a child and and do that how could you do that you know that expression hurt people hurt people yeah and you know and and and and unfortunately a lot of that for me is helps you like rationalize it and make it uh like oh well you know she's fucked up and you know even even my father you know after he found out like he kept this lady around for a while really yeah after he found out yeah i mean they they they kind of split up and divorced but but um they kind of worked together still and and you know he kept her around for for quite some time and And, you know, that alone was extremely damaging to me.

A betrayal. Such a betrayal and such a traumatic thing that I didn't even really understand how damaging that was after the fact until really till recently, you know, because I myself would rationalize it. Well, you know, he didn't want to like, like be an asshole and like send her off like she was an alcoholic too and you know you know it's like oh you know he's just

trying to you know make this horrible situation like okay for all of us and you know I didn't really think about like how fucked up he was in the whole situation and like how how much more damaging it was in the long run to me by not having my father protect me like if my this happened to my child i would fucking murder a woman that did this you know i certainly wouldn't keep her around you know and i certainly wouldn't um like just handle it handle it the way that he did, you know, and that was, that was almost, it magnified the damage that much more so because of the way that it was handled, you know, and to not have that, to not be taken care of by adults, by not be taken care of by my

father, by the people around me that were supposed to love me and take care of me and and they did the exact opposite like they fucked fucked my world up you know and i i i put band-aids of alcohol on it my whole life you know and and i understand like why i why I did that and why it was. I mean, I really was trying to kill myself, really. I mean, when you look at it, that's what I was doing. I was just doing a long process of it. And that's what we do. It's like we don't want to take a gun and kill ourselves,

but I don't want to really live. And I want to check out of this place. Sooner the better. So I'm going to do everything in my power to make it happen, and that way I can't say I killed myself, but I was killing myself every day and putting myself in situations that were extremely dangerous and detrimental and damaging. And that's what I was doing.

And, you know, half of my life was just destroyed and I'm trying to use this second part of my life to make up for that, make up for the damage that was done and to try to turn a horrible situation in a negative situation, something that I could easily point to and allow destroy my life, which is what I was doing. Um, and trying to do the opposite, you know, again, with the, the, the fight approach is like, you have a loss, you have a horrible thing happen. You have an injury. What are you going to do with

it? Are you going to let it destroy you and break you and never do this again and then be depressed and bitch and complain and whine about it? We're going to say, yeah, shitty things happen to all of us. Fucked up things happen and we all have the excuse to let it destroy our lives and to use it to make ourselves feel better about drinking and drugs and just being an asshole. And, you know, like we all have reasons to be dicks and we all have reasons to, you know, take it out on other people. But that doesn't mean that you should and that doesn't mean that you don't still have a choice. It's that victim mentality.

And this is something that I just started understanding because that term victim mentality, I'm like, yeah, well, I'm a fucking victim. But what victim mentality really is, is feeling like you don't have a role to play from that point. Yeah, you might not have been able to control these terrible things that have happened to you but you do have control over what you do from there you have control over whether you use that to go into a more positive light or you use that to to drastically damage you and and you know be this burden that you carry well sometimes i think when someone like you goes through something like this and comes out on the other end, what you can do by talking about this can set a path for so many people to understand that, you know, someone looks at you, you know, they see you fighting on television and they see you on the internet and successful Muay Thai fighter. You look cool. You have this beautiful girlfriend.

Everything seems so positive. When you're a young kid and your life is shit like mine was, clearly like yours was, you look at these people like they're nothing like you. They're aliens. They're some different thing. The world has opened up to them so easily yeah and they're better than you when someone hears you talk about your experience the alcoholism the abuse the isolation the feeling like a loser and all the things that are so relatable to so many people and all the things that are so relatable to so many people when you can talk about this you can you you're you're setting a map that other people can follow yeah and this is something that's so

important in culture and in human beings we're all part of some strange evolution of the human race and the things that our grandparents went through were likely un-fucking-believably horrific the things their grandparents were went through were probably magnitudes worse and this is just how human beings have gone from being monkeys to being what we are now and it's happening very rapidly yeah and one of the things that accelerates this understanding of consequences and of the ability to rise to the occasion and overcome obstacles and to be able to use adversity as a tool to better yourself is someone like you. What you're doing right now is very, very beneficial to so many people. Millions of people are listening to this right now. And very beneficial to so many people millions of people are listening to this right now and so many of them this is going to resonate with them they're going to say oh this guy who is this fucking badass kickboxer moit excuse me moit bad ass dude who's

this like you know like people admire you and to hear this is so it's so powerful i mean it's it i'm so glad you said it i'm so glad you talked all of it from the beginning you know your your earlier struggles to this because this is medicine for people man there's a lot of people that are hearing this right now and they're going i can do it too i can do it too yeah and that's that's always been a motivational thing for me um to try to be honest with the the things that i deal with the ups and the downs and and to to show my losses to show my injuries to show to be vocal about the doubts that i have that that i still have that i still deal with you know it's it's easy to look at these people in the spotlight and be like they don't deal with fear they don't deal with. You know, it's easy to look at these people in the spotlight and be like, they don't deal with fear. They don't deal with pain.

They don't deal with doubts. They don't deal with feeling like they're inadequate. Yeah, I think it was a clip or something you were talking about the imposter syndrome. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, like it doesn't matter how amazing you seemingly are on the outside to all of these people. Like we're all just human beings. We are all just individuals that have made choices and have steered our lives in certain directions.

But it's almost like when you make it to a point, it's like, oh, they don't deal with this anymore. I deal with the exact same fears, doubts, and all of these things that I dealt with day one, to this day, I still deal with them. Those same questions, they've never gone away, ever gone away. You know, you learn how to handle them better and you learn, you get strengthened by them, but they don't necessarily disappear. And a lot of times they can get worse over the years because now you're in a position where you're expected to be a certain way. People have expectations of you. You're supposed to be this superhuman being or you're supposed to be extremely confident or you're supposed to only put on A-plus performances. And you're not allowed to fail.

You're not allowed to be human anymore. And when we can humanize these things, it lets people realize that they can do it too. We're not necessarily made up of anything different than anybody else. We've just gone through a process of learning and developing and diving off of cliffs that we didn't know where they were going. And that's what we all have to do. Like the people in these spotlights, they're just human beings. And the more that you meet them

and read about their stories. And that's why I love reading autobiographies. Like, geez, like the things these people have had to overcome, they weren't handed anything. More than anything, it was more devastating and detrimental, and they've had to overcome more than you could possibly imagine. And it wasn't just given to them.

They had to work and strive and struggle and fail, fail over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until they got to where they got to and still do. They still do. They still fail constantly. We all fail constantly. Yeah. Well, failure is a gift.

Yeah. It really is. Once you make that switch, once you understand it and, like, you can view these losses or these things that happen or these struggles as, you know, I always view them as challenges. Be like, are you going to quit? Are you going to give up? I always view like when I'm tired in the ring or on a workout, I'm like, you want to quit? I'm like, fuck you, man. You know, I view that voice in your head, you know,

that devil that's looming over your shoulders. Like, you're going to quit? You're a failure. I'm like, you know what? Fuck you. I'm not quitting. I'm never going to quit. I'm never going to stop. And there's nothing you can do. So keep talking, but I'm like, you know what? Fuck you. I'm not quitting. I'm never going to quit. I'm never going to stop.

And there's nothing you can do. So keep talking, but I'm going forward. Is there a time where you ever get past that and you understand that you're never going to quit and instead just concentrate on the task at hand? Or do you think that that voice that you're duking it out with, that you take that motherfucker to the grave. You definitely take it to the grave. I think we feel like we get farther away from it,

and we get stronger, and we get more confident, but you never get farther away from it. I compare it to my alcoholism. It's like I could go 10 years without ever drinking again, but all it takes is one bad day. We are all one bad day of being in the worst situations ever. And that's why it's so important to, you know, you look at people on the streets and things like that,

but like, you know how easy that can happen? Like how many bad days or bad situations would it take to turn a successful person into that not a lot like we're all just balancing on this very yeah delicate thing that you know it seems like we're all strong and safe and all this like well when the power goes out and you know that the world's gonna go to hell like that. We just pretend like it's not because that's how we get through the day. But, yeah, like to your point is I don't think we're ever any farther away from those things that held us back before.

We get stronger and we learn how to process them and we understand it more and we understand that the series of things that we need that will take us down that road or get us farther away from it but it but it's just right there you know and um no matter how much we learn and develop i think sometimes that makes it even more scarier it's like the higher you get the farther you have to fall um and and it's the more you can be aware of that, that you're never going to get farther away from it. You always need to be diligent, that you always need to do things

that are going to steer you in a more positive way. I think that is the goal to not falling back on that. I think the worst thing that we can do is have this belief that we're past it. That's never going to happen again. I'm not an alcoholic anymore. I'm not a drug addict anymore. I'm not depressed anymore.

That's what's helped me. I did think one day I would be so far away from it that it would never be a thought anymore. But by knowing that it's always right there, that keeps me sharp. It's like you need that thing to keep you at your best or else we start to get lazy. It's that same concept of having people that push you in the gym or in life or et cetera. If you don't have somebody pushing you, you can only ever push yourself so hard. You might think you're pushing yourself really hard, but you don't really have a basis for, for where that is. Um, so like for myself, I always run my

sprints on a treadmill because a treadmill doesn't lie. This is how fast you're going. And this is how long you're doing it. Now you can go out on the street and say, Oh, I was going as fast as humanly possible. You're always going to hold yourself back a little bit. You know, that's just the way we are as human beings. You know, that, that safety net that we have ingrained in us to not go over that edge. But if you're not pushing that edge, you're not developing and you're always holding yourself back a little bit, a little bit. And no matter how hard you think you're going or or how honest you think you're being unless you have somebody that's why it's so important to have people in your lives that that that keep you in that sharpened state you know that that that

that uh that question you yeah that uh that push you and um you know like like for me Gina's always been that way for me that person is like she's not going to look at my, let me bullshit, you know, keep me honest, you know, sometimes to an extreme extent. I'm like, give me a little bit of a break here. But, you know, it's like that person that pushes you. And it's uncomfortable to be pushed. And you don't want to be pushed. I want to relax. I don't want to like sit on the beach and drink beers and do all these things but is that gonna help me get to a better place in my life

a better place in my mind and my heart now that's gonna allow me to just like be a lazy piece of shit and just drift off and die and be no benefit to to myself or anyone else for that matter so as uncomfortable as it is to be pushed and as uncomfortable as it is to be no benefit to to myself or anyone else for that matter so as uncomfortable as it is to be pushed and as uncomfortable as it is to be pressured and to to want to excel um we all need those things you're either improving or you're declining yeah and i i think that's such an important thing to keep in mind like it's only one or the other yeah there is no in the middle it's like the concept of balance you never find balance because once you find it you lose it you're always jumping on both sides of this line too much or too little you're either going too fast or too

slow yeah and we're trying to find that perfect balance of everything and you'll never can find it. But knowing that you never can find it forces you to be diligent about all these things and to constantly be trying to find it. And the more you try to find that, the more you're going to develop and learn ways that aren't the right way. And then finding what, uh, what does work. Um, it's like trying to find your, your, your calling and your passion in life it's like you don't have to necessarily know what that is but whittle it down by fine what don't you want to do what do you hate what do you hate right don't even look like what you like what do you hate i don't want to do this i don't want to do this i don't want to do this i i learned very

early on at a young age like i do not want to go down this path that I see everybody on. Go to school, get a job, have kids, get married, retire, die. Like, I don't want that. I don't know what I do want. I just know that, to me, I don't want anything to do with that. And I'm going to go in the exact opposite direction. Whatever that is, as long as I'm far away from that, that's where I'm going to be. Well, it's one of the benefits of being an outsider.

Yeah. When you're an outsider and you see all these people that are supposedly doing the right thing, but living these sort of empty, meaningless lives that they don't enjoy, particularly that they don't enjoy. And then when I was a kid, I always looked at normal people living normal lives. I could never relate. I never understood it. I also grew up from a broken home, and we were also on welfare and the whole deal. Because I think a lot of motivated people come from a place of despair when they're younger.

And I always had this thought in my head that one day I would make it. One day I'm going to make it day I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it. And then one day I realized, and I don't know when I realized it. Probably when, like, on paper I'd already made it. Yeah. I realized, oh, there's no such place. Like, this is not real.

Like, you can't ever, you don't make it. No one makes it. Yeah. Like, every day you have to be trying to do better every day you have to be trying first of all there's no perfect human let's accept that you're always going to be flawed you're always gonna you're always going to be subject to fits of rage and envy and and all the things that you wish that you would never have in your mind so you've got to constantly be working to make sure that that never happens you've constantly be working to make sure that that never happens you've constantly

be working to make sure that you are always evaluating your perspective on life and always looking at things from meditate constantly meditate make sure that you approach life with a learned perspective like you're a better person than you were the day before and whatever you're trying to do whether it's fighting or whether you're you have an art form that you practice whatever it is that you're doing you're trying to do better every day and you never even if you you accomplish something like when you know you accomplish some amazing work of art that's just that day the next day you got to go back to work like like if you have a world championship fight and you've trained for eight weeks and you win by knockout the spectacular result and you're very

happy with the result you got a day or two to relax yeah you got a day or two and then you're like fuck okay now what well now you got to get back to work and if you if you think that there's some place like a movie where you're holding hands with your loved ones and the fucking sunsets going on and the credits roll that's horse shit and we have this idea in our head that there's this place that you can get to where you've air quotes made it yeah and i'm here to tell you that motherfucker doesn't exist i mean obviously i'm not the most successful person in the world but on on paper, I've accomplished a lot of shit, and it doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Every fucking day.

Every fucking day I get up and I'm like, all right, I've got to figure out how to do this. I've got to work on this new bit. Okay, I've got this podcast today. I've got to be on point. Let me think about this. Let me read this book. Let me, you know, whatever the subject is, let me get into it. You have to. If you don't, you're going to feel subject is. Let me get into it. You have to.

If you don't, you're going to feel like shit. Yeah. It's that destination mentality. Yeah. There's no destination. Yeah. It's just a journey. You're never going to get there.

It doesn't exist. There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. As soon as you get there, you're like, geez, I'm just as far away from that thing that I thought because as you develop, the things that you think you want develop, too. Like, oh, one day I'm going to be rich. But the richer you get, the richer you want to become.

Well, then you start filling up your life with these meaningless destinations, right? Which are material objects. Like, I want a fucking yacht, bitch. I want a jet. And you're like, I want a bigger jet. Tom's got a fucking jet but i want a big jet i want to show i'll pull my jet up beside his jet let him know motherfucker there's levels to this game you know and that's what people do and it's they they fill their lives

up with meaningless possessions and they and they still aren't happy a band-aid to cover up the like what is the real thing here do you know how many really successful people I know that are fucking medicated to shit? All of them. A lot of them. A lot of them. More so than the people that aren't in a lot of ways. The people that struggle, they're on a better medication. For real.

The struggle of, like, a hardworking person that can get done with a day of hard work and have a feeling of accomplishment and then go home to your family and get going again, knowing you have to get up in the morning and do it again. Knowing you don't have enough money to buy a yacht, but knowing you have enough money to put food on the table and there's a satisfaction to be able to provide that. That's a better medicine. Well, that's the thing with why it's so important and vital to travel and go to these third world countries. These people literally have nothing and are inviting perfect strangers into their homes and giving them things that they do not even have themselves. Why are these people so happy?

Why are they so at peace? Because they understand what's important. It's not this materialistic thing. And that's not to say that materials are bad, but we view them as these objects of success. And I've made it, and things are perfect in my life. And they do the exact opposite in a lot of ways. If you don't have a good grasp of what's really important in this life.

And unfortunately, a lot of times we need everything taken away for us to really understand what those things really are. Yeah. You can appreciate some things. You can appreciate a nice car or a nice house. But if you get really caught up in them, you are trying to fill up a bucket with a hole in it. Yeah. And it's never going to fill up.

Yeah. You're always just going to look for bigger and bigger things to try to fill that bucket up. And you're going to feel full of anxiety all the time chasing that. Yeah. And there's no real satisfaction. And that's why when you look at one of the things that people look at, when you look at people that are extremely materialistic, that, you know, where the, the most fancy jewelry and drive the most fancy cars and the biggest houses.

We always think they're shallow always. I mean, isn't that funny? Like the thing that you would look at in terms of like, like markers for success, markers is like material things are the big ones right they're the big markers for success the big house that's the big one right big ass fucking mansion look at this big everything big everything big fucking rock on his finger yeah big chain you know big this big that there's

nothing there there's nothing there and so ingrained in us from the time that we're born because it's hard to get that's it that's why it's a trick it's one of those things it's hard to get so you think you want to get it yeah because there's a lot of things that are hard to get that are worth getting for sure right i mean becoming a great fighter is hard yeah but it's worth doing because once you do do it and you you realize like like there's an expression that i've used before but my uh tango no instructor said to me when I was a little boy, he said, martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential. Yeah.

And I remember that. I mean, like, oh, shit. And I've used that many times, explained it to people. But that is the benefit of getting good at a martial art. Yeah. Like, you go through this difficult thing, and then through that, you reap all these personality rewards. You all these personality rewards. You reap these character rewards.

You reap this understanding of what you're capable of, right? If you are capable of making it through a brutal camp and getting up in the morning when you know you don't want to, that alarm clock goes off and you're like, I don't want to fucking run. But you do it. You go out and run, and you do it every day, and you get through it, and then you're successful. And you realize that you have this incredible endurance because of the discipline that you do it. You go out and run, and you do it every day, and you get through it, and then you're successful. And you realize that you have this incredible endurance because of the discipline that you put in.

You realize that you have this incredible skill and this understanding of how to fight correctly because of all the time and the hours and the focus. You're a better person because of that, right? That's a real goal. But that yacht, you know, like, I'm going to work 16 hours a day so i can get a bigger yacht and then you know i i need a house with bigger windows i need a it's there's a nonsense to that like look i'm not saying if you can afford a nice house get a fucking nice house it's great to have a nice house but what i'm saying is it's not the end yeah it's the you you are the project your mind is the project yeah how you treat people is the project how you you're the way you are with your family and your friends and your loved ones and

the people you communicate with get better at that yeah that's that's that's the goal in this life the goal in this life is how we treat each other i I know. And I wish these were things that were taught. No, no, no, no. It's better. It's better that you didn't learn it that way. Because you had to figure it out yourself. Yes, because you had to figure it out yourself. And because you can explain it to people.

That's true. You, in particular, you can explain it to people, having gone through this horrific adversity, and come out on the other end with a message. Yeah. And so other people that are going through some tough shit, you've got the medicine. Yeah. The medicine is your, you've actually experienced it. And, you know, it's a map.

It's a map of the territory. It's not a fucking pill that you can take and all of a sudden everything's going to be better. But what it is is a map of the territory and a knowledge. Hey, you can get through these woods. And on the other side, there's a beautiful green meadow and there's a lake, and it's really nice. Yeah, for sure. I think that was one of the benefits of the way I grew up, which was really hard and horrible,

but I got to see firsthand both sides of money. I went from living in a basement with five other people and living on welfare to living with my father in a mansion and it's like oh yeah all this money and all this stuff is just emptiness and and meaningless and and it doesn't necessarily equate to real happiness and like why are we all chasing this so hard and i got to see that firsthand very very early on i was like i don't want this at all it's a trick it's like the same reason why people love to play video games because they're difficult but there's no there's no real reward unless you're a professional video game player and you make a living doing it there's no real

reward you just get better at it and you get some sort of a sense of satisfaction and i mean there's a there's something to be gained from it in fact some video games they've actually shown can increase your cognitive performance and other things similar to the way chess does right but the the trap is that they're hard to do so when we see things that are difficult, human beings are sort of puzzle and problem-solving oriented. We see puzzles we want to solve, and we see mysteries we want to find out. That's why everybody's into Bigfoot and UFOs and shit, because it's a mystery.

Oh, what is it? What do you think it is? We have a natural inclination to try to solve things like that. And we think that because in life, look, if you try to solve where the food is, you survive. That's what made us alive. That's why our DNA has been passed down for all these hundreds of thousands of years. Yeah. Because our ancestors figured out where the food is.

You know, they figured out how to drill a hole in the ice and fish. They figured out how to, They figured out how to survive. And this is why things that are difficult to do are attractive to us. But we have to be able to differentiate between things that are difficult and meaningful and things that are difficult and bullshit. You know Brian Cowan? My friend Brian Cowan said something to me once when we were really young. And it was the perfect thing.

We're both in our 20s. And he said, all you want is enough money so you don't have to worry about what something costs when you go to a restaurant yeah he's like everything else is bullshit i was like you're right like that feeling of being able to have enough money to just get a nice meal at a restaurant and not sweat it yeah like everything else is else is gravy. Yeah. Well, you know, they've done countless studies on this. Like once your basic human needs are met, you know, you have food,

shelter. Yeah. Everything from that point on doesn't correlate to any kind of happiness and in many ways is the exact opposite. You know, creates more stress. Yes.

And all of these things. Yes. Like what, how much do you really need? And if you, the more you think you need, the more stress and all of these things. Like, how much do you really need? And the more you think you need, the more problems you're creating and the more distractions you are from the important things in life and developing as a human being. You know, you're developing all these materialistic things,

but you're not developing yourself emotionally and mentally and spiritually. And, yeah, like, just as soon as you realize that and be like why why am i what am i what is the purpose of what it is that i am chasing yeah i think the study was like they said eighty thousand dollars like everything over eighty thousand dollars like you really don't experience any much more you know before that you're you get into like 40 000 30 000 well now you're struggling it's hard to feed yourself yeah becomes very it's a weight on your shoulders but once you hit a certain number it's like you're gonna be all right yeah yeah you're not gonna be in the street yeah you're you're living like i remember i lived in a this apartment i had this uh kind of shitty apartment and then i moved to a better apartment and then i was sitting in this better apartment i was like i'm kind of used to this like i'm used to this like

this is just home now there's a feeling when you get when you're home like all right i'm home now i'm in this other apartment it just costs more money yeah you know like okay i remember thinking that like is this better yeah i mean i guess it's better but it's cost twice as much like now i gotta fucking think about how i'm going to pay for this bitch. Yeah. Boy, I think about, like, when I had, like, $5 in the bank, or when I had $5,000 in the bank, did I feel different? I didn't feel different at all. No.

You know, I might have felt different, like, when I go out to eat and the check comes, like, how am I going to pay for this kind of thing? But emotionally, I didn't feel any different whatsoever. And, yeah, I think that's such an important lesson for all of us to learn. And, you know, the sooner you figure those things out, you know, the better. Like so many things in life we figure out so late, if ever. You know, when we're kids, we look at adults, our parents, those in authority and we're like, oh, they got it figured out. You had a really good joke about this, about thinking the older you get, the more you understand life and how things are going on.

But the older you get, nobody knows what the fuck is going on and everyone's out here just winging it. Yeah. Like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm just kind of trying my best. But I'm like, oh, maybe I should look to my parents for advice. I'm like, geez, they're really just adult kids. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Yeah, the bit was, do you remember when you thought that grownups were real?

They don't exist. I used to think that one day I'm going to be a grownup. I was crying. I was young. I was so upset. One day I'm going to be a grownup and everything's going to make sense. And then one day you're at the supermarket and the guy goes, paper, plastic, sir. And you're like, sir, I'm a sir.

Am I a grown up? Fuck, this is it. And then you realize no one knows any more than you about what this is all about. You might have more data in your head. You might have more experience. You might be a brain surgeon. You might know how to build rockets. You might be smarter than me, but you don't have any fucking idea what this is yeah no one does

you cannot no you can but everything is there i like to think there are there are really no facts everything is a theory because we could all be asleep in a dream right now or hooked up to a machine like nobody knows that for sure so how can you possibly say anything is factual you can say things are factual with the information that's in front of you but that information might be bullshit and 10 years from now we might say we might have a completely different perspective on things that we're doing now that we think are right and like this is the way life is this is the way the world is you know like 10 years ago people had a very different approach to things you know what we can say is as far as we know this is the case and this is what we know is repeatable

yeah if you do this if you put two bricks on top of two bricks you have four bricks we're pretty sure but maybe not but we might be in a dream yeah like we could all be wrong and that's why i i think it's you it's so stupid to judge other people's beliefs. Be like, oh, your way is the right way. You got it figured out. And everybody else is crazy. But you think it. I'm like, don't you think that they think the exact same thing you do?

Well, there's a problem today. And there's a lot of people out there giving advice. And this is what's interesting. Sometimes advice advice it resonates and then you get older and wiser and you realize that advice is really fucking stupid because you have it's there's people that are giving advice and they're they're they were they're there's like a lot of value in motivating people right like when someone's a like legitimately motivational person whether it's like wim hof the ice man or someone who's like really done some things

there's something about them that that their inspiration is fuel it's it really does something to you but then there's a lot of people out there that are just saying shit because they think it's going to be motivating to other people and it sounds like horse shit yeah and it only tricks dummies yeah and that stuff is painfully prevalent yeah there's so much of it there's so many people out there that are trying to offer advice and they're trying to motivate people but then you go hey man what have you experienced they've had a placid dull life filled with non-accomplishments yeah the biggest accomplishment is tricking people into thinking they're a good motivational speaker like the uh get rich quick thing oh there's so many of those this is how they've gotten rich sure yeah dude i was watching

a documentary on one of those guys one of these these internet guys who rents houses and rents cars and tries to pretend he's this big baller and spends all this money and ran a bunch of scam dating sites and all these different things. And I'm like, wow, this pursuit is odd. It's a fucking odd thing. This pursuit of tricking people

into thinking that you're more knowledgeable than you actually are what resonates with people is like what you were talking about from the beginning of this podcast when you're talking about your life and how you felt and your own real legitimate experiences and the feelings of inadequacy and then the finding the light at the end of the tunnel and all these different things that are just you're you're you're relaying your your life's lessons and experiences those are extremely valuable for people yeah those are extremely valuable but because people know they're extremely valuable there's a lot of bullshitters out there that are trying to concoct these things and and trick you and like this is how i got this mansion you can

get this mansion too you can make i'm gonna show you here on a whiteboard this is what you can do and like they're just horseshitting yeah but there's money in that and so there's a lot of them there's like they pop up all the time i get emails from them i get uh the fucking instagram messages i i see them like hey i want to come on your show motivate people i'm i'm really about motivating people. Like, bro, you're 22. The fuck are you motivating? You ain't motivating shit.

You know, go move to Nepal for a year. Yeah. And it's also such a tricky thing because like even for myself, it's like, of course, I want to motivate people. I want to help people. Yes. But you can start drifting into that. Now I'm a motivational speaker yes now i'm not being honest yes communicating the full spectrum of the things

that i'm dealing with and going through and like i'm only going to focus on this positive thing like oh just do this this and this and you know you're going to go the right way and oftentimes because they don't have someone in their life like the way you were describing gina yeah someone who's good hey fuck face you know pull your head out somewhat you you have to have someone in your life that's raw with you that's real with you and for me it's my friends it's definitely my wife she doesn't bullshit me about anything yeah those those people are giant in your life you gotta have people that check you yes they have to know you too they have to know you you can't hide anything from them we have we have a lot a lot of us tend to have these um um what would the word be i don't know

these people in our lives that like they're only there because you're doing something for them yeah just like yeah but those people aren't pushing you they're they're yes men yeah they're parasites they're parasites and they're not it's not a real relationship no it's not a that it's not a relationship you're gonna grow through that's a that's the relationship's gonna make you feel good yes and and in a lot of ways and yeah that's fun and comfortable it's like but if you if that person can't uh get to the core of you yeah and really like when you tell me something, I know it's truth because you have no other reason to say bullshit to me.

Right. You don't owe me, you don't need anything from me. Yeah. Yeah. That's giant for people. You can't, like,

this is one thing that I've seen many times with celebrities. Yeah. When they go off the rails and they don't hang out with other people like them. So they don't have real friends.

They have these employees and people, and it gets real sketchy. And everyone that they talk to and interact with needs something from them. And they assume this position of authority where no one can question them. No one can call bullshit. You've got to have peers. It's very important and you don't have if you don't have the respect and the friendship of your peers like man you're adrift yeah you're not tethered you're out there in orbit just fucking floating around you're another dimension and yeah not good it's easy to get there too very easy yeah much much easier

especially for successful people people start kissing your ass yeah i'm like oh this is nice i don't need i don't need to deal with this bullshit i'm gonna have these people around me that make me feel good and say yes to me and bring me all the things that i want and give me no stress when i meet people like that i go you should do jujitsu yeah go get choked well that's such an important thing any anything physical yeah that yeah is uh extremely i think vital for everyone i mean particularly kids coming up yeah putting kids into athletics and martial arts and things like and if you don't like martial arts look you can't fake a marathon yeah 26.2 needs to be run you need to go left foot right foot left foot right foot till you hit the fucking finish line period end of discussion yeah if you don't do that you don't get there you can't fake it you can fake a lot of shit yeah

there's a lot of shit you could fake but moving your body you know you can't really fake that you gotta do it yeah you know a 90 minute yoga class is 90 fucking minutes it's hot as shit and you're in there sweating your balls off and it you know you got to get to the end yeah you got to get to the end you know and it's just it's a small thing that's a small thing yeah you know life is a big thing but these small things that you can do they'll help you understand what's necessary to get through the big things yeah and there's there's it's all macro and micro it's all connected in some strange way yeah yeah i'm glad you talked about all this stuff man all of it from the beginning you know and then leading up to the the thing with your stepmom

people you know people need to hear from a guy like you that looks like you know you're a cool cat you got your shit together well you know it'd be it would have been very easy for me just to come on here and ask the bullshit about fighting and that kind of thing. We can do that too, though. Yeah, we can definitely do that. It's important for me just to be honest with all the aspects of my life and to not start drifting into that. Just this surface, this is who I am. Image.

Image mentality. this surface you know this is who i am and you know image image mentality and uh yeah i i'm very aware of not wanting to be there yeah and trying to uh always express myself it's a trap yeah yeah yeah the image thing's a trap it's not bad to look good but the this to concentrate on your image above truth and honesty is a real trap yeah and um especially i think there's fighters fall into that category a lot because fighting is so fucking it's so perilous yeah you don't know what the future holds you have no idea every time you train you could tear an acl you really have no idea. Every time you train, you can tear an ACL. You really have no idea. Every day is a – and you're relying on your tissue to feed yourself, right? Your tissue and your cells and physical motion and action in order to – that's what you do for a living. It's so perilous.

There's so many things. There's so many things that could go wrong and and when you know you think about an actual fight itself i mean the anticipate like i i think back to um this past weekend with uh cowboy and connor and looking at cowboy like the what the weight of the moment yeah in in his eyes you could see him warming up and he talked about it there's this video that they played before the fight, which he goes through all of the nervousness that he experiences before he fights. Goes through all the faking it and smiling and pretending he's cool. And meanwhile inside, he's freaking the fuck out and all that stuff. That adds to this need to make everything look great.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we want to be viewed as superhuman. Yeah. Yeah, and none of us are. No. My favorite piece on that was Mike Tyson in his prime. Remember Mike Tyson, that documentary where he talked about his mindset,

walking to the ring. I was afraid. Yeah. Yeah, about not losing. Yeah. And I'm a god. documentary where he talked about his mindset walking to the ring i was afraid yeah yeah i'm not losing and yeah i'm a god yeah once again sign and i stepped through the throats i'm a god yeah that gives me fucking goosebumps every time yeah you know because he would just put himself into this state of mind you know custom model used to hypnotize him when he was 13 oh yeah huh yeah i didn't know about that till he was on the podcast

i don't even know if he ever talked about it oh yeah but he was talking about how when he was a kid like this guy he went from being this really you know poor kid who was abandoned no love a constant crime and terrible poverty around him to all of a sudden he's getting all this love for doing this one thing, for smashing people. And he's found himself with one of the greatest boxing minds that's ever lived in Castamato who's explaining to him fear and motivation and all these different things. And he's hypnotizing him. So he's hypnotizing this 13-year-old kid to smash people and saying, you don't exist.

Only the task exists. And he's putting him into this mindset. And so then when he gets into the ring, he's just fucking steamrolling people. It was almost like a science project. Like Customato found at the end of his rope, right? He's an old man about to die. He's been through great champions like floyd patterson and he trained all these great fighters and now he's got the greatest one he's ever seen but he's a dying man

and this kid's 13 and this kid is just he was 190 pounds when he was 13 teddy teddy teddy atlas said he would bring him to these smokers and no one would believe it yeah he would go how old they would go how old's that kid he goes he's 13 he was like get the fuck out of here and he's like okay how do you how old do you think he is he's like 16 all right he's 16 put him in there with a 16 year old and he would smash some 16 year old he was just built insane he just had insane genetics and then on top of that he had the greatest mind ever when it comes to motivation and understanding and fear and boxing. A guy who studied it his entire life.

And he's a hypnotist. And he's hypnotizing this young 13-year-old kid to smash people. And the results? Youngest ever heavyweight champion. And one of the scariest fucking fighters in the history of sport. There he is. In the Catskills. I mean, that's also raised in isolation in the fucking Catskills

up in the mountains yeah fuck what a story it's a goddamn movie yeah oh and then well then you think about like how amazing

that was for him as an athlete but how detrimental that was to him yeah as a human being and all the things he's had to

develop so much later in life and like yeah you understand like why he was fucking nuts yes you know like you it was fucking nuts yes you know like you expect these people to be normal when they're doing this thing right why do we

expect that right like you you you you want these people to be these amazing athletes and these savages and these things but then when they're human beings on the outside like oh well that's a guy's piece of shit like you can't have it it's difficult to have it both ways well it's also human beings are so incredibly nuanced and when someone does a thing wrong we want their whole to be wrong everything who they are we want a one or a zero we want a black or a white and particularly when you're dealing with people like fighters that are dealing with this insane amount of pressure and this incredible emotional rollercoaster ride. And then on top of that, why did they become fighters in the first place?

Almost all of them. I mean, let's say, let's just be real generous and say 75%. 75% of them came from a fucked up childhood. There's 25% of them. Maybe they're just really enjoy competition. But 75% came from a fucked up childhood. There's 25% of them. Maybe they're just really enjoy competition. Yeah. But 75% came from a feeling of deficit. 75% came from a fuck you.

I'm going to show you. Yeah. They came from this thing and people that come from that thing. They're not the most balanced folks. Yeah. They're going to make mistakes, you know, and compassion and understanding and,

and the ability to forgive, those are some of the most important aspects of community and of friendship and of the human race. We have to be able to be compassionate towards people that have experienced a different life than we have. And we have to be able to forgive people when they fuck up. And we can't just write them off. And that's one of the weirder things about today with this whole cancel culture shit. Like people would just want to decide, you know, like based on a tweet someone said or something someone did. That's it. You're canceled forever.

Get out. Kill them. Death. Off with their head. Yeah. It's almost like there's too many of us. So we just don't value. It's almost like people in traffic. We don't value each other because there's so many people that we just have an overwhelming abundance of human beings.

You can cancel somebody and you don't even think about them. Get rid of them. Who's next? It's so much easier for us to be judgmental and have a voice and to say, you're wrong. I'm justified in the way I am because I've never done that. So I'm a good person and you're a bad person. Right. Because we don't want to look inside and be like, we're all fucked up.

We all do horrible things. We all do really awful things to each other. And these people are in the spotlight. So it's easy to point at them and make yourself feel better about the things that you haven't done. Sure. Or justified in your actions. But we're all fucked up and we all make mistakes and we all need some sympathy and love and we all need these things yeah we're

all human humans need love we need sympathy we need understanding and we need to be able to say i'm sorry and we need other people to be able to accept that we need to be able to communicate with each other and that's also cancel culture i think is born out of social media because it's the most bizarre way to communicate ever a one-way like text message to the world yeah you know it's like that everybody's gonna see that everybody sees that you don't know right and then also people are sending these you know really disingenuous ones just hoping that people like them more because of the things they're saying, which is like a sport now. It's like, let's see how many likes I can get.

Ooh, I got ding, ding, ding. I got a thousand likes. And then you feel justified in your opinions. Yes. And then that becomes who you are. I'm an activist. Bitch, you're just complaining to the void. You're screaming out into the world.

Yeah. That's, you know, we're living through strange times, man. Well, it's the the cancel culture and i view it as the the team culture of everything is what's i think one of the more detrimental things to our uh to humanity is you're either on this side or that side and our side's right your side's wrong when most of us are somewhere in the middle yeah but we can't have an in the middle conversation because it's you're with them or you're with us yeah i want to know how people think if i disagree with them i like talking to people i disagree with well that's what

i you know that's really um one thing i really love about your show is your ability to communicate with people even the ones that you obviously don't agree with but you're able to talk to them and to hear their points of view and not be like oh you're a fucking idiot like even if you're nuts like and talk to them and and that is something that is so missing today is our ability to communicate with people that don't agree with us like just because you have a different opinion than me doesn't mean we can't meet in the middle somewhere or learn from each other or or uh you know a big thing for me coming up was we can learn from everyone even if

it's what not to do yes that is so vital in you know um in everything but like for me in training it was like yeah this person doesn't want the fuck they're doing but maybe one day i'm gonna face somebody like that so maybe i should kind of get a little grasp of their mentality and you know that just applies to life's like maybe you don't agree with their thought process but you can at least understand it and and know what it is you do and don't like. Know what your beliefs are. You've got to take a step outside of your beliefs to understand, is that even what you believe or is it just the way you were raised

and the way you grew up? Do you really believe these things? Have you ever taken a step outside of them or listened to somebody else's alternate perspective on what they believe and have an open mind to it. That kind of makes sense a little bit. It's hard because you don't get that many conversations with people where you disagree with them, and it's not confrontational.

Usually they're confrontational or you're confrontational, so it always starts off on the bad foot. I've learned how to do it from doing this podcast and one of the most surprising things about doing this podcast is i've learned how to talk to people better yeah i didn't think that was a thing i thought i just just was talking to people but then i realized somewhere along the way not only people listening but sometimes i'm annoying okay how do i how do i do this where i'm less annoying and in learning how to do things that are less annoying i've become a more compassionate

conversationalist i understand how to talk to people better and i've gotten it's i apply it to my whole life now i've gotten better at it and i see people who are bad at it it's so frustrating like i have some really smart friends and you know i'll talk to them and they just fucking interrupt each other, and they interrupt you, and they don't let anybody talk. They're not listening. They're just waiting for their time to talk. And it's so strange. They're not able to ever consider other people's opinions. They think that everyone but them is wrong.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's basically like, you know how it is when you see a youtube video where people have no idea how to fight and you see them fight you know that thing that is so crazy i've to this day i'm like i've been doing martial arts my whole life i don't want to fight anybody but i see people fighting they have no idea how to fight i'm like i imagine myself if i was in a street fight with this guy i'm like this is i would be like why are you doing this man this is so crazy you don't know what you're doing hey yeah hey you're crazy you're gonna get killed you're lucky i'm nice but that's the same way with conversation there's a lot of people out there having conversations have no idea how to talk they don't they're not even

really listening to you yeah they're just so and like why are you doing that why are you arguing you're you're in a conversation you don't even know how to have one yeah you're not listening you're just talking you're just using someone like a like a wall that you're throwing a fucking tennis ball off of it's bizarre yeah yeah yeah well you had you had a good uh um statement on this and then i think it was your last special where he was like you have two idiots in a room it's the more confident one that they listen to yeah and it's that that concept of you just just say more words and you know have more opinions and you don't have to think just be loud and make a lot of noise and it's a game they're trying to like checkmate you yeah instead of

like having a communication and conversation they're trying to like socially dominate you. And this, look, I used to do it for sure. I mean, I think it's a learned thing. You know, people do it to you and you go, man, I got to fucking kick my ass in that conversation. I'm going to get better at kicking people's ass. And then you get better at sort of bulldogging people or talking over them or talking loud or having these sentences

that maybe you could pull out of your ass every now and then to shut people down. It sounds good, and it becomes a sport instead of what it really should be, which is sharing ideas and communicating with people. I mean, if you're really into the sport of just debating people and shutting people down and insulting people, okay, good for you. But people don't like listening to that that much. okay, good for you. But people don't like listening to that that much. What people like listening to, from my experience,

is someone actually talking to someone, someone actually expressing their thoughts, and then the other person considering their thoughts and either agreeing or disagreeing. But people are so happy when you can do that without real conflict. Yeah. I've had some people on that I, just five years ago, I would have,

I would just said, you fucking moron. I would have screamed at them. What are you talking about? Yeah. You're an idiot. You can go fuck yourself, jump off a bridge.

But instead of doing that, I'd be like, okay, why do you think that? And tell me, tell me what about this. Yeah. And here's what I think. Let me tell you what I think.

Yeah. You tell me what you think. Yeah. And this is i think let me tell you what i think you tell me what you think yeah and this is why i was able to do that in a non like snarky way yeah oh yeah you think that yeah tell me more but but yeah like like that's how you get the best out of people though that's how you understand who they really are yeah and it's so valuable so valuable for me it's just for me i know it's valuable for people that are listening, but just for me as a human, for my own education, it's been everything. Everything. I've learned more from talking to people on this podcast, both from talking to scholars and scientists and really intelligent people and morons yeah you know i've learned a lot from talking to morons just just the awkwardness and the way they process thoughts and the way they view the world and the way they've chosen to communicate like you learn from that just like you're saying like sparring with someone who's

like doing has terrible habits yeah you go oh look at this guy what the fuck are you doing man yeah but you learn you can learn from people yeah well i think that's something that that really separates you from a lot of people i mean like yeah there's something that that really separates you from a lot of people i mean like yeah there's shows where people are very opinionated and loud and you know people like that and that kind of thing but your ability to communicate and to bring out conversation regardless of what the subject matter is makes it very intriguing and you can learn a lot um you know regardless of who the guest is like you learn so much from these people because of the way you're able to communicate with them the way

you're able to bring out conversation and and get in depth with all of these subjects well i'm genuinely curious about most things and i'm genuinely curious about the way i think i'm like why do i think that way so if someone thinks different than me i'm genuinely curious like why do you think there's an instinct to go nah you're fucking wrong i'm right but i i just go oh i know what that is that's a trick don't do that that's that's dumb don't think that way just try to find out this is not a game it's not a contest yeah find out why this person thinks this way and it's better for everybody yeah but it's just a lost talent like a lot of people don't and i didn't even know it was a thing until i started doing podcasts it just took me a while like podcasts are like anything else for me at least as i'm doing it i'm trying to get better at it

and i realized oh i used to not be as good like i can't i never listened to my podcast but if i did listen to like the old ones from the beginning i probably like fucking terrible jesus christ you know plus most of them i was high out of my fucking mind i don't even know half what i was talking about while i was saying it i was ruining conversations left and right but these conversations for me are like it's like going school. It's like every day I'm going to school about humans, you know, going to school about whatever the subject they're talking to me about. But also going to school about how, you know, the more people you talk to, especially like this, no cell phones. We're wearing headphones. And there's one of the reasons I like headphones is because your voice is in my ear. You're not over there.

You're right here, man. We're locked in. And this is exactly the same way that other people are going to hear it, which is a very unusual way to hear a conversation. You don't think about it that way, but most of the time when you hear a conversation, your voice is louder because it's closer, and they're over there. And you're talking to each other, and maybe you check your phone

or maybe you're distracted by other noises. But when you're wearing headphones, you don't hear anything else. So you're locked in. And when else would you and i and we're friends i've known you for years when will we ever sit down like this yeah for hours just across from each other staring each other's eyes just talking yeah yeah i never thought about that with the headphones big yeah that's interesting it keeps you from talking over each other too much too because conversations are improvisational, right? You have a dance partner.

You don't want to step on each other's toes. But you do it occasionally. So you get better at it. And for more than two people, it's mandatory. Like when you have three or four people on a podcast, you cannot do it without headphones or it's just talking over each other. I learned that doing those fight companions. Oh, yeah.

Because everyone's drunk. Yeah. And then they have the headphones on. It sort of at least calms some of the over talk, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's a journey, man, like everything else, you know? Like everything else, it's a journey.

I mean, if you're doing it right, your relationships, being a parent, being a comedian, being comedian being a fighter being a doctor i'm sure you if you're concentrating on it you get better at it yeah i'm sure yeah i think i think just the understanding of it's a constant balancing act it's a constant development the sooner you come to terms and understand that, the better off you're going to be. But we get locked into these ways of thinking, these ways of living, and you're that way until you die, a lot of people are, and to constantly be questioning yourself and to be searching.

I feel like I'm a seeker. I'm seeking different ways to do things, different ways to think, different perspectives on situations, particular ones I might be stuck on. This is the way I think. This is what I believe. I want to explore what my beliefs and feelings and viewpoints are on everything. Yeah, I think that is how you gain a better understanding of what this thing is, what this thing we're experiencing is. trying to they've written a book about it but they're trying to come on the podcast to lay out all of the reasons why this is a simulation yeah and i'm going over some of their work and i'm like this is fucking so crazy yeah because if if they're right like what are we doing yeah are we playing a video game yeah if they're right we are maybe we are and then there's the thought that maybe that is what

life is period and that this idea of like oh one day we're going to create an artificial environment that we exist in that's going to be indistinguishable from the real world that we exist in now maybe it's always that yeah maybe it's been that from the beginning and evolution is actually a part of this long game and that this cycling of life and life and death and all these things is just a part of this insanely long progressive game yeah yeah blow your mind up the more you think about it and you know who can say that that's not the case? Yeah. You know, nobody can. No. You can't.

And the more you think about it, you might, like, check out of reality to a degree. So it's a scary thing. I'm also genuinely curious as to other people's perspectives. Like, there's sometimes, you know, I love reading people's takes on current events, takes on people, and takes on, events takes on people and takes on like movies and music and all because i i disagree with so many of them and i i go what how is this person viewing the world like i would like to be them for a short period of time if i knew for a fact i can come back and be me again i want to see what are you seeing like how seeing? Are you in pain all the time?

Why are you mad at stuff? What is it? Is it an emotional thing? Or is your mind just wired different? We're all assuming that water tastes the same to you as it does to me. And that the sunshine feels... Everybody knows sunshine feels good. But does it feel the same? I don't know what your sunshine feels like, right?

Yeah. You know, I think about that a lot. One thought I have is like, this is white. We both say it's white, but maybe this looks completely different to you. Maybe this white looks like yellow, but we call it the same thing because we agree. And that's like so much of reality is just something we all agree upon until we don't until we change our minds but there's so many people that see and feel and think very different things and we look at them as crazy because the majority of us say that's not the way

we see or sure but all anything is is an agreeance upon what this thing is. And is that what makes things real? That we agree that it's real? I don't know. That's the trick. I don't know either. Well, I mean, think about other things that people have tastes for. Like food, for example. There's people that enjoy certain flavors, like spicy foods, for example.

And there's other people that fucking hate it my wife's mom she can't have anything with any pepper or anything anything even remotely hot like oh it's too hot like not everything is too hot and i can't make things hot enough i'm pouring hot sauce on everything like what is she feeling like what is it like i wonder if she had my taste buds like what is it what am i if she had my taste buds like what is what am i experiencing different than her what you know what people that love certain kinds of music there's people i've tried so hard to like jazz because it seems like a cool thing to like like it seems like you you must be a cool guy if you like jazz like my good friend alonzo boden

hilarious comedian loves jazz goes on jazz cruises does stand up on these cruises i try man i try listen to it i get some of it's kind of cool but if i had to choose between jazz and other music i'm like get the fuck out if there's one music that i could just wipe off the face of the planet i don't know probably be like dumb country songs but outside of dumb country songs i just i don't know what they're experiencing. What is it about it that's resonating? Why do some people go bonkers for some movies and other people think they suck? What is it?

Yeah. One thing that always trips me out is I think about people we view as lunatics. I'm like, what if they are seeing reality and we have blinders on? What if they are seeing reality and we have blinders on? Because when you take into account what a finite percentage of what's really out there that we're able to see with our perception compared to x-rays and gamma rays and all of these things, we have such a tiny filter on everything that's really going on out there. We don't really see shit compared to what's really going on out there yeah we don't really see we don't see shit compared to what's really there and like maybe these whacked out people are just seeing more of what's happening and that's what makes them nuts because they're like you're not seeing all

these demons flying around and all these colors and like we just have we have a filter on that so we can like process information information and it keeps us sane. But that's, I mean, what's really going on out there? When you think about how small an amount of acid you need to take to completely perturb the way you view the world. Yeah. acid that the potency of acid is like it's literally like for in terms of like the amount that you need in order to have an effect he made an analogy like an ant deconstructing the entire empire state building in a matter of seconds like that's how potent it is in terms of volume you don't need a couple drops of acid in a huge human body,

and you're tripping balls for seven hours. That's a chemical disruption of this very delicate ecosystem. So if your neurochemistry is off in any way, up or down, sideways, screwy, you got too much of this or too much of that, which we know is the case with everything Right Like some people are born With bad eyesight

Some people are born deaf Some people are born And they have problems Processing pain They don't feel pain correctly Some people are born And they must have An imbalance of the chemicals

That are floating around Inside your head Yeah And their view of the world Is radically different than ours Yeah And also those chemicals Can shift depending on for your personal experience like life abuse children that are abused their chemicals in their head as they're developing

are off they're different their brains are different they process life different because of abuse people that have experienced extreme trauma, extreme violence when they're young, PTSD, they're processing things differently than people that have not. Yeah. What's even crazier about that is I read a book called It Didn't Start With You, and it talks about how these things are passed on generationally from like trauma your grandparents had is passed on to you through your DNA and it changes us. Like how much is passed on to us that we have no control over, that alters our, the way we feel things, the way we see things, all of these experiences that people have that

just get passed down like that without um outside influence just just through that process of being do you have any children no when you have children you see it in a really weird way like um my middle daughter my 11 year old is uh an obsessive yeah like she she's obsesses on things and tries to get better at them or you gotta try to tell her hey time to go to bed she's doing like backflips in her room and shit like stop stop go to bed like you got to go to bed but that's me like and i always thought i was fucked up i was like i thought i was doing this and i probably was my whole life to try to show that i had value because i felt like i was ignored and i didn't know my dad and i always felt like an outsider and a loser and i always felt

like i would become i would throw myself into things to show that i had value and i would get really good at things to show that i had value and that would be this obsession was like me trying like trying to escape the existential angst of my existence and just the the constant anxiety and this just feeling of just inadequacy trying to escape it by being obsessed with things but also trying to prove through getting good at things that i have value because the first time i ever felt like i was worth anything was when i started getting good at martial arts like and then people started respecting me i was like oh i have a thing that people think I'm good at. Now that I'm good at this thing, that became my identity

and I just threw myself into that. But my daughter's grown up with none of that. She's all loved and she's all smiling and happy and she's not depressed. She gets a lot of hugs and she has friends, but she's a fucking psycho. And I'm like, oh, you got that from me. Like you got my crazy gene gene but you got it without

all the fucked up parts right like you're not sad you got it without the sad thing you just want to get good at stuff without like a happiness to it and also a feminine happiness to it instead of a masculine like a i just want to smash that's all i wanted to do i just want to smash things because i was angry she's not angry so it's weird to see this obsessive like completely obsessive behavior in terms of like trying to get better at things and she accelerates it she excels at so many different things that she gets good at yeah she gets good at things and they become her whole life like all day long obsessive like it's really weird but in a happy way and it's so it's it's strange genetically yeah you know and you know you've met my dog marshall the fucking nicest dog

in the world right he's so nice yeah that's a genetic thing that dog is a golden retriever and when he like when you come over to him and he starts whining and he's so happy and he wants to get pet and he runs and grabs a toy. Always. He always wants to bring you something. I didn't teach him that. I found him for three years. I found him since he was a little tiny baby. He was like six weeks old when I got him.

Never had a rough day in his life. Every day has been fun. But he's learned through his DNA that he's supposed to retrieve things and bring them over and that you you are happier when he brings things over, because that's the DNA that's in his system. It's not, he didn't learn it. This is literally inside of him from the box. Like, right out of the box, look at the ingredients. Oh, he likes to bring you things, because his ancestors brought you things. His ancestors brought other people things, and they were rewarded for it,

and they said, oh, they give me treats, and they like me more when I bring things. So I'm going to just keep, when you shoot a duck out of the sky, and they get that duck and bring it over, and everybody gets happy, so it's in him. I don't think we understand what DNA actually is,

or whatever the fuck. DNA is just a name, right? The components of the life form that are passed when two life forms breed and they make another one. I don't think we really understand it. I think we have a rudimentary understanding

of the chemistry involved, but in terms of like personality and in terms of like the thoughts that are in our heads, like I was reading something by Rupert Sheldrake, and he was talking about why children are afraid of monsters. He's like, children that grow up in the city are afraid of monsters. They're not afraid of gunshots and car accidents, things that are really scary. They're afraid of monsters.

Because our ancient ancestors were eaten by cats. They were eaten. And by wolves and those kind of things. We're afraid of fangs and things in the dark. When you can't see them coming, you can't protect yourself. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

It's in there. It's in the DNA. Yeah. I mean, there's so much stuff like that that just we don't understand anything. Have you ever met someone that has like a legit phobia like a phidophobia or arachnophobia like fear of snakes or spiders i know that i have i'm trying to think i don't know who that was but yeah it's like where did that come from it's dna man i guarantee i've seen it on fear factor we had a few people that had a legit fear of snakes and

spiders they're like oh my god oh my god you see their whole body was shaking and they were trying like hey these aren't even fucking poisonous yeah these are just snakes but there's something about snakes like someone they love or they're someone in their ancestry or some someone survived a snake attack something yeah there's something yeah well like and like so much of that is realizing how little, like, control we have over everything, like how we raise our children or how we interact with people and, like, what does and doesn't affect us. And, like, the fact that any of this works in any remote way is insanity.

Yeah. Like, it doesn't make any sense. We think it makes sense because it's normal to us but if we really take a step back and like think about it like this is nuts everything's all nuts this life is nuts and you know like sitting here with you is nuts a year and talking about like like some of the people you've met through this and be like you're like how did i get here and like what is this like yeah i feel that. Like, what the fuck is going on? Like, what did I do to get here?

Like, this is weird. What did I do to get here? Yeah. I think I really believe in some strange way that this thing made me do this. Yeah. That this podcast, like almost like the universe made me do this.

Yeah. And it sounds like so pretentious, but I'm just being honest. I feel like almost like this thing has a life of its own and a mind of its own, and it tricked me. It tricked me, and it played on my obsessive mind. Just keep doing it. Keep doing it. Maybe you get better at this.

Hey, keep doing it. Bring on other people. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. And through this, untold millions of people have been exposed to all these different – we've had 3 billion downloads over the course of 10 years so i don't know how many people that is how many individuals but it's a fuckload so all of these different people have come on and expressed all these different ideas and so many different people are hearing them in their earbuds whether in traffic or when they're at the gym and all these ideas percolate inside people's brains and that

it gives them different perspectives and that it makes them maybe explore things maybe i'm gonna try jujitsu maybe i'm gonna try yoga maybe i'm gonna try eating better maybe i'm gonna try doing this and through all that you see a shift in the culture of the human beings that have been in that have been affected by all these people's conversations. Yeah. And for me, it feels like I'm getting sucked into being here. Yeah. I'm like, okay.

And then also me getting better at it is just me. It's like it showing me how to extract better information, get out of my fucking way, don't ruin it, and make it better for the people that are listening. Yeah. It's really what it feels like. Mm-hmm. I know. It's crazy. It's all's crazy even saying it sounds like hippie bullshit well and you think about like why are we attracted to certain things certain people certain sometimes we're attracted to people

that doesn't make any fucking sense be like everything you do and say and make me feel is like everything opposite of what i really want and but but i'm attracted to you and like these things like like bring a certain thing out of me yeah develop me in a certain way and where nobody else could do that like you this person does that for me for some reason or this action this sport this thing like why am i drawn right right right like i shouldn't be like it's fucking horrible and like it hurts and like all these all these things that doesn't make any sense at all but nothing makes any sense at all and like it doesn't make any sense and like that i think that's why it's so

vital to follow your heart and follow the things you feel because everything else like nobody knows what the fuck is going on like nobody can tell you what you should do or shouldn't do to be successful or to be happy or to be all these things like you've got to listen to what's inside of you yeah i mean you could be wrong you could listen to what inside inside of you and you could be wrong but you have to learn how to like decipher that voice better yeah like i've been wrong about things that I thought I wanted. And then you go, Oh, okay.

This is why I was wrong. I was delusional or I was kidding myself. Or fixated on the wrong thing. Yeah. Or I was thinking that this thing was going to bring me some sort of peace. So it was going to bring me some sort of, uh, some,

some sort of just normalcy, you know, and then it doesn't happen. So you go, all right, well, I guess there is no normalcy. Nothing is normal. Everything's crazy. We're all nuts. Yeah. Nobody knows what's going on.

All those things, that should be a t-shirt. Nothing is normal. Everything is crazy. No one knows what's going on. No one knows what's going on at all. The sooner we realize that, the better we'll be. Like, we're all in the loony bin. Yeah. It will definitely be easier.

That's why I'm always scared of drugs that make people confident. My favorite drug is marijuana because it does the opposite of making me confident. It makes me paranoid. It makes me compassionate, and it makes me also like going, geez, this is

crazy yeah like that's why i like it yeah i like it because i think the drugs that make you like we should all be a little less confident yeah you know we we need each other a lot more than we like to pretend and this life is like this temporary thing that we're going through we have a certain amount of heartbeats and uh then who knows? The lights go out and hopefully we go to a better place. Yeah. Well, I think the thing it does too is it strips that veil away, like that veil of feeling like everything's in balance and normal. And, you know, life is like this is life.

Life is fucking weird, man. Weird. Super weird. Super weird. We distract ourselves with normalcy and habits. But take a step back and like, this is nuts. This is all nuts. And we pretend like it's normal and it's cool.

And everyone's like in agreeance that like, we all know what's going on. We don't know what the fuck's going on. We're all living in a spaceship flying through the atmosphere. Yeah. We're all tripping balls over here. We're just all doing it, so it feels normal. But we can find some moments of comfort and happiness in the chaos, and that's what we're all seeking.

Yeah. We're all seeking these moments of comfort and happiness and camaraderie and friendship. We're all seeking love, too. We're all seeking the good feelings. But you got to get through the shitty ones to even appreciate the good feelings. It's a catch-22.

Yeah, yeah. But just understand that. You need the good and the bad. You don't know what good is unless you have bad. It has to be that way. So we're getting towards 3 o'clock here. We're almost going to wrap this thing up. What are you doing now in terms of your career you're still fighting for bellator yeah yeah so bellator

kickboxing which i'm very i'm very thankful that they have that still um yeah yeah i'm you know i'm a gigantic fan of kickboxing in muay thai and it's always perplexed me why it hasn't caught hold in america more than it has. Which is something we could talk about for hours. Yeah, I'm very thankful that Paramount Network is still invested. Yeah, huge shout out to Scott Coker. Scott Coker. Just amazing promoters. Shout out to Scott.

There is and they got that big fight this weekend with Julie Budd and Cyborg which is cool. But yeah, I'm still fighting for them. I don't have anything on the books right now. I'm waiting like I always have been since the beginning of time. You know, something you think is going to change.

Like eventually I'm going to have all these fights lined up and I've never known when the next one is and certainly not when the next one is after that. But yeah, I'm hoping something will come up and you know, as far as how long I'm going to keep doing this, I don't know, man. I could be done today. Maybe I'll decide I don't want to fucking do this shit anymore. But I think I've always had a healthy understanding of that.

Like fighting is what I do, and I will always be a fighter. But this isn't it for me. Like I have so many things that I do in my life. You know, I'm a writer. Like I said so many things that I do in my life. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm a writer. Like I said, I'm working on my autobiography right now. I've written two books so far. I'm an artist. I paint, I draw, play the piano a little bit. Um, I speak, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, a Renaissance man. Do you think you'll be more invested in art when you're done? Do you think you'll be more invested in art when you're done?

I don't know. You know, I think I'll definitely have more time to do it, you know, as far as how much I'll do it as a career. I don't know. You know, for me, art has always been something that I do it because I love to do it. If it starts becoming a job where it's like you need to do this or you need to do that, I think that would make me lose a lot of love for it. Yeah. You know, that – Like most things.

Yeah. So – But I think you can get through that without it becoming a job. I think that's a perspective. Because at the end of the day, it's still art. Yes. Like, just because you have to do it for a job, like, what does that mean? Just do it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, if you think, oh, I have to do art now. Now it's a job like like what does that mean just do it yeah you know what i mean like if you think oh i have to do art now now it's a job it's like you know the the expression marrying your mistress well i think you can just do art yeah you know you just be obsessed with it like you are if it's not a job yeah and then the other parts just sort of take care of itself yeah well like everything i do i feel is artistic expressions you know my fighting my actual art sure my writings and those kinds of things but uh i don't think i'll ever be like have be stuck on a job or one thing you know because there's i'm just too interested in too many different things. You know, I think I'll always be balancing many different aspects and certain times I'll be more focused on one

thing like my fighting. Obviously that's a very finite timeline on that. But once that's done, you know, it's going to shift. And I think it will always be that way to one extent or another. I will be always be doing a multitude of things and exploring and developing and learning. And, yeah, like I said, I'm a seeker. I love it. Well, when you're done and you want to do something else, come back in here and talk to us and tell us what's up. I would love to, man. This has been really great.

My pleasure, brother. Always. I appreciate you, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. Kevin Ross, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Goodbye. Goodbye. that was great thank you man