The Joe Rogan Experience - #1503 - Josh Barnett

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

Josh Barnett is a mixed martial artist and professional wrestler who competes in the Heavyweight division of Bellator.

Two, one. Demons. Demons. Demons be gone. Demons. I'll take them. I'll just, you know. Just absorb them into your soul.

Sure. Enough. And kill them with your own darkness. That's probably possible, you know. Just a beard alone might scare them off. Could be. I've definitely always got the soundtrack for it. How long have you been drawing that fucker?

That's a real one. That's a man's beard. This thing actually has taken quite a long time. I am not of the sort who is prone to growing facial hair. Like, it took me until probably 36 before I had a single chest hair. What? Oh, yeah. Really?

Yeah, I blame the Native American side of my family. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, I've got back hair now, like full back hair. Something over the last, like, from the time I was, like, probably 35, I started growing, like, full back hair something over the last like from the time I was like probably 35 I started growing like serious back hair now I'm 52 and you know I'm not like who's that Russian wrestler dude this is one oh well there was this guy Victor Zangief who who actually did professional wrestling and that guy was just coated in it oh yeah, yeah, right. And there was another guy, Solomon Hashimakov, also.

He's just a fur coat. Who was the... There was one wrestler who had... He'd done a bunch of films and stuff. George the Animal Steel. Oh, well, yeah, him. He's about as hairy as a human gets. He was a math teacher

or something like that in real life. Yeah. Yeah, look at him. Full-on gorilla. I mean, that guy was a fucking werewolf. Look at the hair on him. Jesus Christ. When you got a head like that, it's like you're always walking under a full moon.

He was in a bunch of like art house movies. I could see that. Well, there was also a guy named Tor something who was in Plan 9 from Outer Space. Oh. And he was also a professional wrestler. Well, I mean, they're acting all the time. Is this like the hairiest wrestlers? Is that what you pulled up?

I was looking for the Russian guy. I bet you if you put in the hairiest wrestler's feet, I'm sure that would show up too. Yeah, the Russian guy is a current competitive grappler, and he's built like a brick shithouse, and he's covered in hair. Yeah, he's like everything. Hairy as fuck.

Yeah, so I'm not naturally all that prone to being particularly hairy. But your beard is so uniform. It's beautiful. It's like the front part is dark and the sides are perfectly white. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that, dude. You know, it's coming in kind of nice. I use all the right lotions and tinctures, unjunts. Do you use lotions on it?

No, no. That doesn't look like you do. I'm not a very high-maintenance guy. Every now and again, I will put some beard oil in it, but that's about it. Beard oil. Beard oil. And it's mainly because I'm just trying to keep the knots out of it. Yeah, people will look down upon you if you groom your beard hair in any way for some strange reason.

I have seen that. It's very weird. You think a razor touches this? That's not reason. I have seen that. It's very weird. You think a razor touches this? That's not okay. I mean, possibly. Like you can shave, but you can't trim. No, you got to let this shit just go to nature. This is full will to power right here.

It just does what it wants to do and gets stronger every day. Like if you took your pubic hairs and you made like a crown. Oh, for sure. Yeah. You just formulated that into your monument to your cock. Who was the dude? There was a guy who was a UFC fighter. Did he?

Who had a hair up. Oh, Brian. Brian Ebersole? Yes. Something like that. Yeah. He's a kook. Really skill? Yes. Something like that, yeah. He's a kook.

Really skillful guy. Very, very skillful. Very slick. He was a guy that had, fuck, man, he's like a Jeremy Horn type character with like 100 plus fights. Yes. There he is. Yeah. I never saw a guy more calm, cool, and collected in a fight before. You know, I'm surprised that he has it pointing upwards.

Like, you know, hit here instead of... But I guess the nature of chest hair is as such. Yeah, maybe just wanted to avoid nut shots. There you go. You got the very manicured one. Yeah, that one, I like that one a lot. He probably waxed to finish that off.

Those nice lines. Had someone do it. Someone really talented. That's like a broadhead. I mean, that looks like a real serious broadhead. Oh, goodness. Like he knows what he's doing. He's out there. He ain't fucking around when it comes to his chest hair.

Yeah, that guy, he just, I don't know what happened. He just stopped. I don't know if, I don't think he's, I think he retired, but he had so many, so many fights. Well, you got to figure, you know, what is the length of time that you can continue to be an athlete? And I've said this to a lot of folks, and that is you don't know what your athletic window is. Right. Especially when you create something exceptional like you start – if you're an Olympic athlete or you're a world-class athlete or professional athlete, as you continue to move up the ladder of difficulty, so to speak, the shorter the window is that you can compete at that level, obviously. But everybody's athletic window is limited. So the length of time you can be a competitive fighter is, you know, who knows how long.

competitive fighter is, you know, who knows how long. I guess I've seen some stats that say over five years it starts to decline. Over seven or around seven it really starts to take a nosedive. Yeah, they say for a pro MMA fighter it's like you have nine years to compete at a very high level. But that's who's they. And even then that nine years is still more towards the tails and not into the middle of it. And, I mean, a lot of folks, you you'll see them you'll get to the ufc they are there for about three four years and then even towards that tail end of that four years it's like they're they're no longer in comp in in um

the running for any of the major fights yeah um i think for people on the outside i don't think they understand what's going on in terms of injuries, wear and tear, just the overall punishment that your body takes through the grueling sessions, training sessions, sparring. Yeah. You're doing untold amounts of damage to your body. And there is, of course, a matter of chance in terms of, oh, did somebody roll into your knee that day or not? Or did you just land a punch wrong? I mean, there's all kinds of other factors that just can't be accounted for. That's why it's kind of crazy when you see a high-level fighter who's training for a world championship fight and they're in one of those group class environments where there's like 13 other dudes around them.

And you're like, Jesus Christ, man, that's so risky. It is. And I think a lot of it stems from the origin of MMA. It's being derived from wrestling, from the jiu-jitsu, from martial arts structured elements. But also, the money wasn't there for dedicated trainer-manager types. So it's like as soon as the manager construct came into mma and i i say construct because i don't think most mma managers are actual managers they're mostly just agents they just they find fights and whatever and they'll they'll get a collective of of other

fighters under their wings so they can have some sort of collective bargaining by having these other athletes or always being able to shuttle somebody in depending on what the UFC or some other organization might need. But they're not really overseeing someone's career. Right. We should talk about that, like what that means. What you're essentially saying is they're not – like a boxing manager will slowly build you towards a world title fight and a UFC fighter doesn't really get that opportunity.

No, that's true. And part of it is because I would say a lot of these quote unquote managers want to fast track an athlete into getting the money. And with boxing managers, and there are times where people are fast-tracked. Look at Lomachenko. So he was such of a high level that he's already being put into the big high-dollar matchups and what have you. Or look at in MMA, Jon Jones, where it actually worked. Yes. You know, fast-tracked.

Or yourself. You're the youngest ever UFC heavyweight champion. True, but I did have 24 fights by the time I ever hit the UFC or something like that. But you're still, what were you, 23 when you won the title? I was 24 when I won the title. 24. Yeah, 24. That's still very young, particularly for a heavyweight, right?

Yes. Yeah, no, it is quite young. And it lasted as the youngest UFC champion of all time until Jon Jones beat it by like a few months or something like that by age when he won his title. But these management types came into the fold. And then they're like, well, you know, we get 33% or 20% or all these different percentages. Do they get 33%? There are ones out there that do get 33%. Jesus Christ, that's criminal.

There was a case around a fighter suing his former manager. And the manager was getting 33 and a third. So which I guess was the maximum allowable by California standards, I believe. But that seems so wrong. It does seem wrong. But the other thing about this and the way I approached it was you get these numbers, you get these ideas from boxing and these other avenues that are more established. But here's the thing. A boxing manager will take a fighter, house them in the Catskills or whatever, take them to Big Bear, put them in a home,

pay for sparring partners, so on and so forth. And the amount of actual management in terms of logistics and everything else going around someone's career is being is is vastly different from just oh yeah well i called up the ufc and said yeah i'll throw you in in two weeks right it's not the same thing and you think you deserve 33 and a third percent for that with my fighters uh i tell them look once i can make you over 10 grand start paying me because other than that like what am i going to do with your 200 bucks? Right. By myself. Are you managing guys or training?

I have actually been managing fighters since the early 2000s. No shit. Yeah. I didn't know that. I knew you were training guys. Yeah. No, I started off with managing Megumi Fuji's career. Oh, okay.

I got her her first fights in the U. US, helped her turn pro, all that, and negotiated her Bellator deals, all that kind of stuff. And then I managed Victor Henry as for a more modern athlete I'm working with. Victor Henry, he's on eight fight winning streak. He's probably next in line to fight for a title in Ryzen. He's been kicking the crap out of people in Ryzen. He's the deep world champion. He's beaten people up in Russia. And the thing is, you know, people are so concerned about just the UFC or the American market, which I get it. It is the largest market. It is the most notable. And it has incredible fighters in it. But there's incredible fighters everywhere. And there's also that process towards graduating a fighter up to their best position and giving them the best experience for that fighter. And I was just talking to someone at the UFC the other day about Victor.

And he goes, you're doing the right thing with him. You know, you're building him up. You're making him the best version of himself he can be. And you're taking care of him and getting him paid. That's part of the experience. Also, I try to make sure to give my fighters the experience of being around the world, seeing the world. There's nothing that will change your outlook towards being in other places, especially the more disparate from what you're used to. I got a great fighter named A.J. Bryant at Featherweight, and I took him all the way over to Khabarovsk, Russia.

Whoa. And, yeah, it was a real eye-opening experience. But the thing was it was eye-opening in all the right ways. And he had such a blast being in such a different environment and getting to be really out of his comfort zone. And, you know, I live to do stuff like that for my fighters as well. Yeah, that's growth as a human. Exactly. Which will translate into growth as a fighter.

I don't see how it won't, especially, I think, within that overall apparatus of fighting and the constant failure to succeed rhetoric, you just can't come out and immediately win at everything that you're trying to do. And you won't come out and immediately be great at everything you do. Some things, sure. But it's about the overall path of all of this. It's about your overall growth and where you started and where you end up. your overall growth and where you started and where you end up. And I think if you look at the overall talent pool in the world, it used to be that the elite fighters were all either at Pride or at UFC.

That's what it used to be. But now, like you see when Eddie Alvarez went over to one, he fought that Timothy Natsuyukin. Yes. Natsuyukin is a bad motherfucker. He must be if he's beating Eddie Alvarez. He's got to be tough as shit. And Eddie Alvarez, of course, former UFC champion, is world class. Yes, he is.

To see him get beat down by that guy, you go, well, these motherfuckers are out there. And the talent level is so high. There's guys that get to the UFC, and right when they get here, you go, holy shit, where's this guy been? they get to the UFC and when they, right when they get here, you go, holy shit, where's this guy been? Like Piotr Jan, who's fighting, he's fighting for the title this weekend against Jose Aldo. And Piotr Jan is this badass Russian dude who's fucking vicious. And when he first came over to the UFC, I'm like, Jesus Christ, where's this guy been?

It's like, you see these guys who are all over the world now. You know, you see an elite world-class fighters, and it's not just the UFC anymore. Like, I firmly believe Douglas Lima is one of the best welterweights on the planet. Agreed. If not the best. Yeah, he's got an incredible dynamism to his game, and his offensive capabilities are just absolutely deadly. Deadly.

Yeah. He finds holes, you know. I mean, for him to knock out Michael Page. But we're not talking about my dating life. Differently. Yeah. He finds holes. You know, I mean, for him to knock out Michael Page. But we're not talking about my dating life. Different kind of holes. I mean, for him to knock

out Michael Page like that, I mean, Page, it's hard to even hit that guy. He is. He is very elusive. And I know a lot of people like to really rag on Page. I think he's awesome.

Me too, man. And I met the kid. It's so weird to think that everybody's kind of like kid to me now. From youngest ever UFC champion to here you go. There's still some people I'm sure I'm kid to like Mark Coleman. I'm sure he'll always call me kid. Or Gene LaBelle.

Or Gene LaBelle. Yeah, 100%. If you ever come across Gene, if my name comes out of your mouth, he's going to go, tell him Uncle Gene said thanks for teaching him a Kimura. It never ends. I'm like, oh, you mean double wrist lock. He's such a character. Yeah.

I love Uncle Gene to death. Me too. I absolutely do. But there's great fighters everywhere. Great fighters everywhere. And really promotions, one of their biggest duties is to find them, to cultivate those fighters. They're not great just because they're in your organization. They're great because your organization finds great fighters.

Right. Right. Yeah, they're out there. And, I mean, if you think about just the level of awareness of elite fighters now, because of YouTube and because of all these different streaming services, I mean, you can watch. You could be anywhere in the world and watch Top Flight Talent. It's not a surprise anymore. There's even amazing guys out there like Jack Slack and Lawrence Kenshin that do breakdowns on specific fights, fighters, and specific techniques. Breakdowns on specific fights, fighters, and specific techniques. Where if I send Jack Slack and Lawrence Kenshin stuff to my team all the time in group chats,

like watch this, watch this, watch this. If any of them pick up a teep like Sam Art, then I'm like, job done. And I didn't have to do anything about it. It's even better. Those clips are so great too because they'll highlight a specific technique. They'll show the KO or the finish and then they'll break down all the different moving parts. Like both those guys are fantastic. Robin Black's created it as well. Robin Black. Yeah. Robin Black is fantastic. Robin is very entertaining too. He's a really entertaining person, you know, and his enthusiasm for martial arts really comes through. I do love his sincerity.

Yeah. And that's just a thing that is missing, you know, sincerity and authenticity in anything you do. And just like we talked about the, the, the Rogan man cave, but it's not about being a man cave. This place is a, an, a extension of everything that you're trying to create for yourself. And that is honestly, whether you have the means to create something like this, or you just have the means to create something really small in your own little apartment,

everything that you do should be in worship, so to speak to what your ideal you're trying to create. Yeah. And you can't do that if you're insincere, you can't do that if you're, if you're just trying to be the packaging and not the item. Yeah, we were talking about that earlier that there's too many – and I think this is part of the problem with social media is that people are intoxicated with this idea of having other people think they're awesome. So they put out all this stuff to make it look like they're this amazing person and they'll put up these quotes and put up this shit. But it's not really what they're into. They just want you to think they're into it. And it comes off that way.

One of my biggest pet peeves, and I posted a quote last night, not a quote rather, but an image of Miyamoto Musashi because I got into the Book of Five Rings again. I cannot wait to hear what just criticism somehow came out of nowhere to tell you what a jerk you were, how wrong you are, whatever. I don't know. I don't know if there is any criticism. I didn't pay attention. But what I was going to criticize is I was going to say that I have an issue with, there's a lot of people online. It's not even that I have an issue. It doesn't resonate with me.

This is a better way of putting it without being negative. There's so many people that are posting motivational shit, but they haven't done anything. True. It is trying to be the packaging and not the item. You can do this. If you feel that, go do this. This is how you go get it. What the fuck have you done?

You have to do something. And I didn't say this last night, but this is what I meant when I posted it. Like, if you want to take inspiration, there's something about the words of Miyamoto Musashi that are profoundly inspirational. Because he's a man who bested over 60 men in one-on-one sword fights. So when he's talking about strategy, or he's talking about technique, and he's talking about preparation, and you must research this, you must look into this, and this is how you go about attacking,

this is how you play off your opponent's strategy. He's talking about life or death with a fucking sword. You can't get more serious than that. It comes through in his words, man. Even translation from Japanese to English, even though it's 400 years later, there's something about that guy that it gives me goosebumps, man, when I read his shit. I fell in love with samurai philosophy a long time ago from Nitobe and the Hagakure. and the Hagakure. And there's even one called Budo or Samurai,

Philosophy of the Samurais. I forget the name of it, but it's a really short, succinct book that really nails down some things. And I think part of why what they have to say is so authentic

and so real, so to speak, is because it's life or death for them. Reading Storm of Seal by Ernst Jünger, and you're reading this guy's take on being in World War I. And it's not that he was never afraid. It's not that he didn't understand what war is. It's just from his position as a soldier and the way he approached things and the way he even still saw beauty in these moments in living in that part of his life. It's clearly somebody that I believe has a good grip on being towards death, as Heidegger would put it, like embracing what it means to be alive. And by embracing that, you're also embracing the fact that you are going to die. It is not going away that, that death is alongside you and you don't know when

it's coming. And there's no need to, because you're not supposed to be thinking about whether or not you're going to die or when it's going to come or anything like that. But you're, you need to be thinking about what you're going to do before that time does show up and how you're going to do it. And for why, you know, what is it, how are you finding meaning and fulfillment in life so that when death comes along and tugs on your shoulder and on your shirt sleeve, you're like, all right, well, this is it. Yeah. And those guys, people that you've described, whether it's Musashi or any of those people, what comes out in their words is authenticity because of the fact that they have led these extraordinary lives and they have faced incredible danger.

They have lived. There's something about that where you can genuinely learn from those people, whereas there's a lot of people that really haven't, but they know that people long for those things, so they try to recreate it. They try to recreate these quotes or they try to find some words that will inspire you to get going and seize the moment and make the most of the day and go out there and conquer and kick ass. And it doesn't mean anything. It's all persona. It is attempting to take on, it's presenting the persona of that kind of individual mainly because they know that deep down all of us realize that there's weight to those kind of people. And I'm sure Peterson would be like, it's the bloody archetype or something. Yeah, that's exactly what he would do. But –

Well, he's an example as well. I mean when he talks about – whatever he's talking about, he's talking about Gulag Archipelago or anything. He's talking about it from a place of profound understanding, and that resonates. When he critiques Marxism or he critiques certain philosophies and certain trends that he sees in social behavior, he's doing it from a place of profound understanding. And that's why it resonates with people. That's why he became so famous. People think somehow or another that he became so famous because there's an angst in a lot

of weak men that he tapped into. That's the typical criticism. The surface level diagnosis of all these kind of things, or prognosis. But the thing is, even as much as, to put it in perspective,

so I have my own journey dealing with Marxism, Neo-Marxism, whatever, and how it has ended, at one point, was a part of my life and just making me absolutely miserable from another person. It was like, why?

It was a person you were dating or something? Yeah, it was someone I was in a relationship with. And it was just like, I'm getting assaulted in a way. No, I'm not trying to say words of violence. Calm down. I was just under, I felt like I was under attack all the time for things that I didn't do and things that I, from arguments that I had or accusations. I'm like, well, I don't understand why I am being, uh, this is being offloaded onto me at the time. So I start researching and researching and researching because I truly believe, uh, essentially like, like, uh, JS mill says that, that, though, that who, he, who understands only one side of the argument, not the other, understands a little of both.

And so even through all this, I had to come to the fact that as much as if you'd want to take that shallow diagnosis of Peterson, it's the same as if you want to take a shallow diagnosis of Marxism. These things aren't operating out of complete falsity. They're not coming out of nowhere. They're not built upon nothing. There is truth being said in everything. They're stemming from truth. So if you read Marx, there is true critiques. There's true things within it. Now, where people often go wrong is, you know, they take a seed of truth and they plant a forest of bullshit, right? So just because you can grow it doesn't mean you're necessarily like, I think of bamboo, right? So if you put bamboo in a lot of the places, especially in Western, especially the Pacific Northwest or Western America, it depends on your climate zones.

We're not going to get into all that. But a lot of strains of bamboo will grow to the point that they just, they can't be stopped. They will grow through concrete. They will grow through asphalt. So if you're going to plant it, you have to plant it in like steel boxes and concrete barriers and things to make sure that the bamboo stays only where it's supposed to be. Otherwise, it's going to be fucking everywhere and it's going to out-compete and dominate everything else. Now, planting the bamboo, great idea. But if it goes nuts and destroys all your native flora, well, fuck, that wasn't so great, now was it?

Right. You know, great, I hope you like bamboo because that's all you fucking got now. Yeah, like there's truth in a lot of those philosophies in terms of they have a point. Yeah. But then when you apply it large scale and then you take into account human nature and how humans find ways to blame others for their own shortcomings and find ways to juke the system and then you wind up with a mess.

Well, it's definitely a problem if you take mostly an external look at everything. It's all outside of me. It's all other things. It's all these systems. It's all these other aspects, these external processes and none of it is me

and none of it is the individual and none of it is the small group to the large group to the... All these things change from every vantage point, from the single person to the small tribe to the larger nation-sized community. I mean, to think about the logistics it takes to keep some of these systems working and working accurately, or as accurately as we can at times,

something dumb like, I don't know, just making sure electricity gets to your house. It's enormous. Right. It's unreal to think of. And people completely take that for granted. A great micro version of what we're talking about is the Capitol Hill autonomous zone, which turned out to be a fucking disaster. Hitting so close to home, Joe. I'm from Ballard.

Yeah. And, you know, it's so interesting. It's like, of course it would be on Capitol Hill. I mean, that was like our little Haight-Ashbury of sorts. But, you know, I thought Capitol Hill had really jumped the fucking shark a long time ago when I was reading an article about people wanting to be on Capitol Hill so bad that they were willing to live in shared living space scenarios where they're sharing bathrooms and kitchens and all this and paying stupid money for a room and i don't mean a room in a house i mean purpose-built habitation scenarios to to do that and i'm just like why the fuck do you want to live there that bad i mean there's plenty of cool shit there but there's plenty of cool shit all over seattle what was it about

capitol hill because i'm not a seattle guy it was just, you know, it was the, it was the gay or LGBT, I guess now, as you would refer to it, epicenter. There was a lot of, there had some head shop stuff. It was just sort of a counterculture district, you know? And I remember as a kid, you know, we'd go up there and go to the weird little stores. I mean, that'd be the place where you want to buy some like crystals and all that kind of stuff. It would be there. But it was a groovy, very densely cultural place and, you know, famous for a lot of things. You know, some things unfortunate, like me as a potter getting killed behind the comet tavern, but also for many, many great things too. But it would definitely be the place where you would see something like a Chaz pop up.

it would definitely be the place where you would see something like a Chaz pop up. It's just that the separation from idea to reality with something like a Chaz, and it's always going to be this case, it's always going to be just mountains in between the two. The funniest part, I think, for me is watching that altercation video with Raz and his new police stating we're the police now. And the guy in being approached for graffitiing a building going, well, you know, what's up with all the guns and all that? Why you guys got all these guns? And this lady who's filming going, don't worry about us having guns. Who cares about guns?

Cops carry guns. Guns are no big deal. And I'm just like, whoa. You guys are doing exactly what you're complaining against. They basically made all the worst aspects of a country. They put up a border immediately. They kept people from going in. They had no medical.

They had no police. Their police was a bunch of thugs. If something went wrong, they beat people up attacked them right one guy was filming things they didn't like him filming so they jumped him yeah beat his ass yes and there's a picture afterwards of of raz and the guy then embracing each other which to one side i'm thinking see i fucking told you people violence isn't the worst thing in the whole world like you know to be perfectly honest violence can bring people a lot closer together than you think. You know, we've never trained together, but we know what it's like to train.

So there's already this inherent rapport between us. And then the rapport between you and anybody that gets on the mat is almost sussed out immediately because you just cannot be on a situation like that and be living on persona alone. You need to really be who you are. And that might be a really great fighter. It might be a really mediocre one. It doesn't really matter. Everybody is generally towards their purest

self when put into that kind of scenario. It is the Chuck, I can't say his last name, Palanuk Fight Club. Palanuk. Palanuk. He's been on the podcast. He's awesome.

I listen to it. He's a rad dude. Palanuk? Palanuk. Okay. And he, you know, that line about you never know who you are until you've been in a fight. Yeah. It's true.

You really want to know who you are? Get into a fight. Yeah. But watching that, you know, so the side of me is going, see, perhaps a little bit of fisticuffs could make things a little better, especially if we're to talk about the law of mutual combat that exists in Washington. Right, which is really weird. Which I think should be national, to be perfectly honest. The only problem I have with that is that they let people fight out on the street,

which you should be aware that if you get ko'd you're gonna might you might die i know i think that's gonna bounce off the concrete that has to be included in in such a law you have to be like look you're taking your life into your own hands like legitimately if you're doing it out in the dirt yeah you probably i know but we can't nerf the world that much we just can't it's just not possible and as much as we would love to think about the ideal scenario for everything, you can't. There's always going to be that one, 10, whatever. It's just not possible. And so, and then you see Raz and this guy and it's like, oh, it's all good. But it's just like, well, but what if cops just got to just smack people all

the time? I mean, that's part of the problem with police issues in general, right? I mean, we can go on about, I've seen, you know, you get the arguments about stats from the FBI and about the shootings and unarmed shootings and all this kind of stuff, but they don't have stats for how many times has a cop just beat someone's ass. Right. They don't have stats. They don't have stats don't know you know and it's a lot right and uh but with the the the the chaz you this thing that the saddest thing about all this even besides i'll take an argument on this even besides all the fucking property damage and they're just tearing everything up and

and obviously loss of life right there is there is legitimate loss. How many people got killed there? At least two, right? I think more. Seven people died? Seven. Jesus Christ. Seven people are dead. Should we have a drink to those people?

Yeah, we should. We should absolutely have a drink to those people. You have your own whiskey. Yep. The War Master Edition. How many bad motherfuckers have their own whiskey? Yeah, a few. A few.

But yeah, we can get into my love of whiskey at some point here. So seven people died? Seven people died in Chaz, which is obviously awful. That is crazy. I didn't know it was that many. But what I guess where I'm going with this on what I think could possibly be the worst of all of this, people not learning. People not learning that it's not so easy to put societies together. Small or large. And even that one, it was basically you occupied,

you basically did what everybody complains about the founding fathers do. Correct. You took over property and land that was held by other people. You conquered a space. Yeah, you conquered a space. Yeah. And you didn't even conquer it for very long. Salad.

Yeah. Salad. You didn't even conquer it for very long. Salad. Yeah. Salad. Mmm. Whoa, that's good. 115. My first Warbringer.

Yeah. Mesquite smoked. This is good shit, man. It is. How did you make this? It's a gold medal winner. Really? At the San Francisco International Spirits Competition.

I always think those people are drunk. They don't know what it tastes like. It's like, because I was. Is winner at the San Francisco International Spirits Competition. I always think those people are drunk. They don't know what it tastes like. It's like, because I was a judge for High Times once for the High Times Candidates Cup. Well, that's a little different. Yeah. I mean, look. It was preposterous. I don't know how guys, like, I'll see Tony.

I go, how do you go up there and do this whole fucking shtick? If you gave me any of that, I'm done. I can't have a coherent conversation. I would be unable to actually keep track of what the fuck anybody's talking about. You get accustomed to it. I guess. Yeah, it is. Marijuana, you build up a tolerance.

But there's some rough nights where it doesn't. See, what it is is like for working out material. What it is is for working out material. What cannabis does is it allows you to have these possibilities that you can open these doors or not, but they're there. If you're high, if you've been doing your act and you're doing stand-up four or five nights a week and you're really in the groove, you're honed and you're not going to get thrown off by some pot. You know what you're talking about. And especially if you smoke pot a lot. But what pot does do is it gets you to these places where you might not have gotten before. Like, you go, who the fuck is judging whiskey?

Like, what are they doing? And then you'll, like, off the cuff on stage, you'll go into this place that maybe you wouldn't have gone into before, and you'll find ideas. So what I like about it is it opens up like a flower. Take these ideas and they spread. Not always, though. Sure. It's a risky thing.

You just never know what's going to come with any sort of alteration to your mind state. It also makes stand-up a little more dangerous, so it gets you a little scared, and that is also good because it opens up possibilities and it allows you to stay sharp because you're a little nervous. Like, if you've been doing, I've been doing stand-up for 31 years. You know, when I go on stage, it's kind of normal. Even like last weekend, I did the Houston Improv. I hadn't done stand-up in 90 days.

But before I went up on stage, I listened to a lot of recordings. I went over my notes. I knew what I was doing. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun. It wasn't terrifying. But if I got really high before it, it would be fucking terrifying. Dude, the idea of it terrifies the shit out of me.

I have material. I got all kinds of shit. But I'm just like, whoa. That's hilarious. A guy who's fought as many times as you afraid to do stand one of the scariest things I ever did was the first time I ever sang on stage with a band and that was this band Niall death metal band and so I'm friends with them Carl you're the man but I'm sitting in the audience I'm there with my even with a my ex my

girlfriend at the time and we're at the house of blues in hollywood and he literally goes hey josh barnett's here this that and the other but get this and they put a spotlight on they go he's gonna come out and help us sing black seeds of vengeance and i'm just like oh you know i didn't tell you before. No. And so I'm just going, no. OK. You know, so at some point. Yeah. By the way, people fronting a band with a microphone, you have an inordinate amount of power. Be careful about how you flex it.

So I go backstage. They come grab me. I'm just waiting. And I'm breaking out into a full sweat. All I can think of is that my throat is going to close up and only squeaks and weird mouse noises are going to come out. And I'm just going, oh, fuck. And I get up there and I can't hear myself. I'm doing my thing and I get off stage and I'm like, oh, that was pretty good.

I'm like, I'm just losing my shit. And he's like, what the? I go, I have never been more scared in my entire life. He's like, how are you afraid of being on stage and just singing when people are trying to kill you? I go, honestly, fighting for my life feels good. Like, I'm not saying that that is the way most people should have viewed things. And, and, uh, and I I'm of the believer that if you're, if you enjoy delivering violence, if you really are into it, then you also enjoy when violence is brought to you

and the escalation that comes from it, the feeling of, I don't know, I feel like in your best mindset, there's a feeling of power that is derived from it. I talked to, God, we're going all over the place. You might think we're already high. Did you always feel like this though before you go into – I talked to?

Yes. Did you feel like that when you first fight? Yes. How old were you when you had your first fight? Like actual just fight? Back when you were the baby face assassin. My first fight was 19 years old. I was on winter vacation from the University of Montana.

One of my wrestling coaches called me up. And AMC Pancration was a legit – was a pro gym. They had pro fighters, and they were out there, and I knew of Montana. One of my wrestling coaches called me up. And AMC Pancration was a legit, was a pro gym that had pro fighters and they were out there and I knew of them. But this was 1996. So this shit was still real, like DIY sort of, there wasn't really an avenue towards things.

And these, I've talked to MMA people now. These are like, you guys don't get it. You don't know what it was like back then. And my old wrestling coach, he calls me up. He goes, hey, I know you've been training. I know you're into this. There's an opening to fight this guy, Chris Charnos, on January whatever it was. So it was 11 days.

I go, all right. I go, oh, Chris Charnos. Yeah, he fought in Super Bowl. He's pro, yeah? Yeah, okay. When? All right, 11 days. I go, oh, Chris Charnos. Yeah, he fought in Super Bowl. He's pro, yeah? Yeah, okay. When? All right, 11 days. I'll be there.

And that's it. I just went and I trained with an old martial arts coach of mine. Ran a little bit. You know, I was already training back in Montana over at Jim Harrison's Bushido Kong Karate. You know, rest in peace, sensei. Much love. But I'm like, well, yeah, cool rest in peace, sensei. Much love. But I'm like, well, yeah, cool.

I want to fight. That's it. I'm standing in line to go through the medicals. And this other cat, he looks at me. His name is also Chris, and he fought on that card. And he goes, so where do you train, man? I go, oh, I train over in Montana, but also I trained a bunch in this church basement.

And he just looks at me, he's like, cool. And later he tells me, he goes, I thought you were gonna die. I thought this guy was just gonna annihilate you. Well, back in the day, there were guys that had no business being in there. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And so I get in the ring, I fight Chris,

I choke him unconscious in like two minutes and I get in the ring. I fight Chris. I choke him unconscious in like two minutes. And Matt gets in the ring and he goes, hey, you know, we'd love to have you come back in the summer and fight again.

I'm like, all right, I'll be here. And that was just, it was just a matter of, I was so, the funny thing is I was ready to get out there and amp to do it.

But even then, when you get started, it felt like my first ever wrestling match to some degree and like everything kind of turned into tunnel vision. And it's, But even then, when you get started, it felt like my first ever wrestling match to some degree. And everything kind of turned into tunnel vision. And it's a strange feeling about how everything seems to be going a million miles an hour.

And you watch it back in reverse. You're like, oh, my God. There was actually a lot of time in between segment A to segment B. And I do remember my first wrestling match, especially because I fucking head and arm this guy who had already placed he had placed in the district so

or the city whatever in metro we call it he wrestled for Ingram I wish I could remember his name he's a cool cat but I threw him

with a head and arm boom and as I'm pinning him I'm screaming ahhh it's just like. Had you ever screamed before when you were pinning somebody? It was my first ever wrestling match.

Oh, there you go. I'm just like. I get in there. I'm just. And I throw him and pin him on his back. And I get the pin. I'm just like, what the fuck was that? Everything going A-wire.

Keep your shit together. That's the crazy thing, right, about life, real life, normal life, and then competition or chaos or a fist fight. There's a thing. It's like you enter into a world where all of a sudden the sky looks a different color. Your hands don't move the right way, you hesitate, you're thinking too much. It's weird to watch people enter into that world for the first time. I think that part of it, I would say, is that we're too disconnected from things associated

to that state. Not just danger, but just that- Chaos. Chaos too. Things associated to that state. Not just danger, but just that. Chaos. Chaos, too.

As I got more and more and more into philosophy, and I'm really heavily into Nietzsche. In fact, that's actually even how I even came across Jordan Peterson to begin with, was I was just looking for lectures on Nietzsche. Really? Online. And this is before any of his stuff with the pronouns and the bills and stuff. No, this was just me listening to his university lectures. That's all it was. Oh, okay. So you're OG.

Yeah. Yeah. Viral OG. Have you met him? Never. No. He's the nicest guy. He once, he did, or someone from his Twitter reached out to me at one point when his book

came out and said, hey, we'd like to send you a copy. And I go, yeah, sure. No problem. And it was signed John. So I don't know how the fuck that happened but i did it was like that in a way that's kind of better but whatever so so the guy named john signed it i don't know no to john instead of josh oh jesus so i don't fuck i don't know you know i know how that stuff goes. So I'm sitting there, and as someone being so into Nietzsche, I started to look at it as this is tapping into your highest state of being, so to speak. So when I'm in the ring, I feel like things that are attached to me from modern and general living are removed.

I feel like it is the most freeing, alive moment in my life. And as I can look back, even to that wrestling match, even to getting into fistfights as a little kid, like there was always something about me that was drawn to it, not just because I wanted to conquer and crush skulls, but that I literally could not get enough

of the feeling of aliveness from it. And it wasn't just that it was dangerous. It's beyond that. It is, I think, more akin to people talking about that no-mind state. And of course, if you can operate in that state, well, then you might Michael Jordan yourself a night and look amazing. But even when that isn't the case, if you can center your focus into being in that moment, you can experience a type of being that is at its highest level of human existence.

It's just that it's not something that is – I had to learn is not – you can't be that way all the time. And other people can't relate to you when you're in that state. Like you just – your ability to communicate with your fellow man just isn't really there unless they're also in that state with you. Right. Yeah, it's these moments where you're forced to live in the moment. You have to. There's no other way around it. And everything requires so much attention and so much focus.

That when you go back to regular life, that's the thing that fighters have a really difficult time with. Yes. And people don't understand why do they keep coming back? And don't they know it's over? Why don't they find other things to do? Because there's nothing that's going to ring their bell like a fight. There's nothing like getting up for a fight, knowing that it's around the corner, the anticipation. Participation. You have to build a way out of fighting, so to speak, I believe, to try and really simplify it.

And remember there was that clip just not that long ago of Mike Tyson talking about no longer being a fighter. And, you know, he's broken into tears. Like I was able to watch it once kind of from afar so to speak but i couldn't watch it again like it i'm like no no that's that's a hundred percent like i i'm like oh i know this way too fucking much you're you're tugging on strings that i don't i don't really want to play with right now that i already know of and it's just yeah uh, yeah. I don't expect that other people are always going to know what that's like, and that's okay. When people say that they don't understand my affinity to violence, I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. That makes total sense to me.

You're capable of it, by the way. All of us are. But not everybody's built the same to do the same things. Just as much as my way of abstract thinking, if I sit down with Eric Weinstein, he leaves me behind if he takes certain subjects. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm just going to be along for the ride because my brain can't operate on the same level in this fashion that you can. But you haven't spent time in that realm. brain can't operate on the same level in this fashion that you can.

But you haven't spent time in that realm. Well, yeah. And maybe I could become competent enough in physics with him. You would have to start all over. You would have to start your life over. Yeah. Weinstein talks to me about that stuff and I'm like, okay. I don't know where you're going with this. I don't even know what you're saying.

Yeah. So it was Eric I was talking to because he's always interested for my take on violence and how violence relates to humanity and how it relates to being. And I listened to his podcast with Jocko, and I would say, I mean, it was really great. And I've never met Jocko, but he sounds like a really awesome dude. He's the best. I'll connect you guys. I would say, I mean, it was really great, and I've never met Jocko, but he sounds like a really awesome dude. He's the best. I'll connect you guys. I would love to.

But I said to Eric, I go, one of the things that I saw that was kind of different here in the way that both me and Jocko seem to approach this is that he's so very clinical about it, very regimented. And I understand that because if he's in a military presence, like you can't just have a guy who's, you know, soaking himself in the enemy's blood and running around the battlefield, screaming at the top of his lungs. That doesn't help anyone, right? Like reveling in something like this isn't really a necessity in anything, right? That is, it's besides the point. And in fact, if anything, especially in 2020, when they went when they went after Gurkha soldiers, Nepalese soldiers who were sent on a kill mission to grab some sort of extremist. And they were like, well, we want proof too. So what do they do?

They pull out their cookery and take the dude's head off and bring it back. And then they went and put that guy on trial for doing his job because we thought, oh, that's too much. Too much proof. It's death and war and violence. What is too much? You know what I mean? I mean, what if his head had gotten cut off and stuck on a pike somewhere to be like, don't fuck with us? The problem is how it appears to people that don't live in that world, right?

Yeah. That mean the problem is how it appears to people that don't live in that world right yeah that's the problem like if you if if a soldier kills someone and then they say we need proof that you killed that person they bring back a head and you go hey you fucked up now yeah you brought back his head like well what do you want me to do bring back a picture of him dead yeah that's not good enough you need the head correct correct and and and also i guess to take on uh a tone that seems to be permeating the the general uh sphere of consciousness in the west oh well who are we to tell gurkhas that they're not allowed to cut people's heads off right that's their culture yeah yeah don't uh don't don't do this you know don't do this yeah

the cookery yeah yeah i i i own a a cookery Steel, man, and that thing is one of my prized possessions. Why do they shape it that way? I don't know the history of why the blade takes on that shape, but I can say that the shape of the blade, the way it's designed, is one of the greatest chopping devices you will ever come across because of the angle in the blade and the way that it widens out towards the tip. It creates this belly of cutting pressure that when you swing that fucker, it just whacks right through anything. Looks pretty dope, too.

Oh, that's a Damascus one. Yeah, mine's an old-school Sanmai 3 cold steel that has my logo on it. Thank you, Andy and Lynn Thompson for that one. But it is arguably one of the baddest fighting knives ever created. It's pretty dope. It will take off pretty much anything. Very old school. That's a 19th century. There's small ones that they make folders. And Cold Steel has a small one called the Raja 3. And with that same blade design, they can just whack through a bunch of pork ribs or whatever. Just take it apart.

And just boom, just explodes. It's gone. It's a weird shape. But it's physics. I'm sure Eric could sit down here. Yeah, I'm sure. But it's physics. I'm sure Eric could sit down here. Yeah, I'm sure. But it's interesting that it was not universally adopted. Well, it has to do with a lot of different things.

I mean, I'm trying to go back through my military hand-to-hand fighting books and stuff like that. Think about the samurai blade, like the katana. Well, it's curved, too, for being able to cut from horseback. It's a great cutting blade as well. But it's interesting that that blade was not recreated by other cultures. Well, similar in Korea. They have a similar blade, too. And theirs more resembles early style blades called tachis, I believe.

And then the Chinese have the broadsword. And then, of course, you have – so they don't have the exact same design. I'll give you that. With the way that they have designed the shape of the edge itself and the way that they refine their point with that sort of wedged tip. But scimitars are curved also for their cutting ability and also for when you're on horse, if you come by and you swing that curved blade, when it starts to make bite as you're continuing to go through, it transfers that energy across the blade in such a way that it doesn't tear

your arm off your horse. Imagine if there was a YouTube video of every person who ever died by the hand of a sword just from the beginning of time just chop chop chop chop chop chop you'd be like what the fuck that that's part of the problem with seeing things on video yeah right like you don't see all the life that was lived before that moment where someone was chopped you just see the chop you don't see the conversations. You don't see the love. Think about the UFC.

Guy goes out there. Gal goes out there. Fights. Loses. And then when people take up the position that, oh, from this moment on, oh, now they don't matter because it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. That lady just won 30 fights in a row and never lost.

Now she sucks? Right. Now she sucks because she lost a fight. Wow, that's the problem with our culture. It is a culture thing, yes. People are commenting that have no understanding of what they're commenting on other than the actual act of a knee hitting a chin. Like all the people that ragged on Ben Askren for getting knocked out,

fastest UFC knockout by Jorge Masvidal. Yes. Dude, that guy endured it. Today was the one-year anniversary. So I've been paying attention just to comments today. Just like, God damn it. You know, Ben likes to be a big mouth of sorts. And he really loves to rile shit up.

But, you know, even the better person person i don't necessarily even mean better than ben i just mean the better person as a general has to look at that which even if you dislike it like if you you hate the way ben speaks and what he has to say but that doesn't take away from what he's done i'm sorry like his body of work stands on its own sure and you can think him a shitty person or or God's greatest. Go back and watch his fight with Douglas Lima, who we were talking about, who is one of the best fighters in the world. He ragdolled Lima. Yeah.

He ragdolled Koreshkov. When he was the Bellator champion, I mean, they had a problem in that his style, no one could defeat him. And it wasn't fun to watch for people who didn't like MMA. defeat him and it wasn't fun to watch for people who didn't like mma unfortunately ben's finishing capabilities did not uh did not uh grow or did not um it didn't grow to the same level that his wrestling ability was but it did when he went to one fc it got much better but because they allowed him to do some shit you couldn't do over in bellator like knee a downed opponent in the head sure but i mean ben just should have been subbing guys left and right in Bellator. But he just didn't quite have it.

And my opinion always was, at least from watching it, if you're this inventive of a funk wrestler in collegiate wrestling and what have you, international wrestling, I know you could be a literal submission machine. It had to be just approach, maybe pressure to just get those wins. I mean, there is an issue with, I think, some of the wrestlers coming in and thinking about the game structure of wrestling and being like, okay, okay, so if I win this five minutes, then I'll give him the next two minutes and then I'll take three minutes. You know, they're thinking about how to win a match. Right. Whereas I've never thought like, oh, you know, maybe if I, I'm like, I'm going to kill him.

Right. And if someone doesn't come in to stop me, I'm just going to keep like, fuck it. You know, and if maybe his corner jumps in, then I'm going to kill him. And then I'm going to just, you know, it's just like, I don't have any friends when I'm in the ring. The only people I have are the people that have my back that are in my corner and that's it. Everybody else is the enemy if they decide to get in front of me. And that's a difference between a fighter's mentality and someone who's trying to win a match. Correct. And Ben Askren is awesome at, he was, he's, he's been awesome at MMA. He was an awesome wrestler.

It's un, it's undisputable. Another thing to take into consideration for people who are Ben Askren haters, Ben Askren needs a hip replacement, and he's needed one for a while. And his hip was pretty fucked up over the last year and a half of his career. And, I mean, I think he's talking about it now, but he definitely talked about it to me. It's fucked. I have no doubt.

A lot of these wrestlers, Coleman, Mark Coleman got a hip replacement. Yeah. John Wayne Parr just got a hip replacement. It's all over his Instagram. He went and elected, I guess,

to get what the shaved. Yeah, which obviously as technique gets better. One of my friends, someone you might have even used to roll with, Victor Webster.

Yeah. He got discs replaced in his back and now he's back on the mats. Yeah, Eddie Bravo got the same thing. Exactly. He trains with Eddie. Yeah, Victor Webster. Yeah. He got discs replaced in his back, and now he's back on the mats. Yeah, Eddie Bravo got the same thing. Exactly. He trains with Eddie. Yeah, it's fantastic.

He got a titanium, this articulating titanium disc instead of getting his back fused. And Victor goes, I've never felt better. That's amazing. That's fantastic. Eddie still has pain in his. Nothing's 100%. But I think Eddie fucked his back up so bad before he got it fixed. Could be.

Like he was all the edge of the bone itself was getting, you know how it frays out and you develop this extra bone because your body's trying to fuse it itself. Your body's trying to figure out what to do with all this inflammation. You know, that was the thing about Pat Miletic. Pat Miletic didn't get his neck fused, but it fused itself. That's insane. But that body will do what it needs to do. That's a hard man right there.

The body will do anything it needs to to keep going. Yes. Well, people actually reported that Pat Miletic had neck surgery. So Pat Miletic had to spend all this money to get these MRIs done and x-rays to show, no, no, no, didn't get any neck surgery because they were saying to someone, but like, why are your discs like that? They fucking fuse together from combat. Yeah.

Just the, and you know, he's got a lot of atrophy in one of his arms like Boss Rooten has. Yeah. Benji Radek had a problem with that at one point too. And luckily he was able to get it sorted out. Yeah. Boss's right arm is obviously not its best anymore. get it sorted out uh yeah boss's right arm is obviously not it's it's best anymore and that's

you know fucking around with the spine uh damaged around the spine is something that we really need to be uh super aware of but at the same time some things are just it's unavoidable it may happen it may not you uh always from the beginning of your career, you have always had a love for catch wrestling. And catch wrestling, particularly the Carl Gotch School of Catch Wrestling, was very conditioning heavy. Yes. Very strength and conditioning heavy. I mean, he was a big proponent of clubs. Yes, maces.

I swing the mace. And someone was asking me about, you know, do I have weights at my house? I go, I have a 22-pound mace at my house. And people are like, 22 pounds, bro. I'm squatting 450. Yeah, they would think that that's not a good workout tool. It sounds like, oh, yeah, well, what's up with this thing? And I'll tell people, like, no, do not try to swing this thing.

You're probably going to blow your elbows out if you don't know what you're doing. Isn't that funny? Yeah. 22 pounds. They're like like get out of here if you go look up uh yuko miyato uh there's videos of him swinging clubs and he's probably 60 something now and he can still pick up a couple clubs and just start mealing the shit out of them remember the iron chic yes deep into his career yes those big ass wooden. There's a video where Iron Sheik was doing call-outs at some event, right? It was a promo thing. Hey, you know, whoever the biggest, strongest guys are in here, come in here and see if you can swing these clubs like me.

And one of the guys that comes up there is the ultimate warrior. There he is. And he couldn't fucking swing them. No, man. That's a very specific kind of strength that you have to develop. Yes. very specific kind of strength that you have to develop. Yes, and it's a strength coordination, the ability to move through all the planes of movement. In fact, I did a whole ton of club and mace swinging

in preparation to fight Frank Mir. Look at this. This is Precious Paul. And look at Precious Paul. That guy's a gorilla too. Yeah. The size of this motherfucker. He can do that, but he's not swinging them.

You know what I mean. He's just letting them go back and forth. The swinging, the shield cast is where it gets different. It's much easier to sit there and just go back and forth. He's like, down with America.

He's a guy who's really hurting. I look at the ref who's like, Jesus, man, don't get bashed on this club. Yeah, see the difference between the way he's doing it. That's that shield cast motion. That's a very difficult motion. Yeah, if you're into club and mace swinging, there's two people that I highly recommend. One is Jake Shannon.

The other one is Greg Walsh. Those two guys are, I mean, mace swinging and club swinging are, especially mace swinging for Greg, are part and parcel to the entire, like a foundational aspect to their training stuff. So, and they're, you know, Jake's a catch guy. Greg's a physical fitness conditioning guy. So, but I think the mace is a fantastic tool for building great strength. And it's all, it's wrestling related. It's warrior related. Didn't Carl have some crazy requirements that you had to achieve physically before you were able to train with him?

Yes. And part of that was also to just keep idiots away. Yeah. Just to keep the dummies away. Because Carl was such an irascible dude. irascible dude but i meeting carl and getting to train a little bit under carl made me feel like i met someone who you know may have been related to me in some way like i felt like this guy was somehow part of my family but i didn't know it for so long and yet i come from part of that that lineage especially uh and we're sitting there and these japanese reporters have set this whole thing

up and they're like here we're gonna to have Carl watch you fighting Minotaur. All right. And get his opinions. And I'm just like, oh, God, all right. So Carl's watching this thing, and he's just making comments. He's tearing into it, and he's being highly critical. He'd say something. He'd look at me.

He'd smile a little bit, and he'd say something. And then look at me. He'd smile a little bit. He'd say something. And then we're all said and done. And the Japanese reporter's just like, you know, they're just losing their shit. They're just like, oh, God. This is not what we expected to happen. They're just like, oh, what's going to – how is this going to fall apart? Like, Carl just tore this guy – a whole new one over this. And Carl looks at me and he goes, what did I say?

Does that piss you off? I looked at him and went, I don't care. All I want, all that's important to me is to try and understand what it is from how you see it and see what I can do to take that and be better and to take your criticism and your eyes and your experience and the way you see it so that I can use it to make myself a better fighter. And he looked at me and he just went, huh. And then he just started showing me stuff.

And he would call me and give me workouts and see how I'm doing. And I honestly not being able to spend more time with Carl and even to an extension, you know, Billy Robinson, even though I got to train under him for years and years and years in Japan. There was never enough time. And Billy Robinson was the guy who worked with Sakuraba, right? Billy Robinson worked with Sakuraba and all the UWFI fighters. And Carl started with New Japan Pro Wrestling. Antonio Inoki brought him in there to be their head trainer. And he's the one that prepped Inoki for Ali. You can see some of Ali's camp getting real rambunctious,

and Carl just laughing, smiling, even though he knows that Inoki's been just handicapped, like, oh, you can't throw him, you can't put submissions on him, you can't do this, you can't do that. It's crazy that they allowed leg kicks. They didn't think about it. That's so funny. They had no idea.

And the way he did it, too, from his back and from his side. Great story. I'm with Victor Webster, and we're hanging out. And he's friends with Kenesha Norton, who is an absolute sweetheart. And so Ken Norton's daughter. So we're hanging out at this coffee shop, and Kenesha comes by with her friend. So me and Victor are there and we're talking, I'm wearing this t-shirt and it's,

uh, it's got a Nokia on it or it's, yeah, it's got a Nokia on the shirt. And, uh, one of the, the friend that comes with Kenesha goes,

that's interesting shirt. I'm like, yeah. I go, yeah, that guy put my dad in the hospital. There's one of all these daughters. Whoa.

Those leg kicks. I'm all what's there which daughter i i don't remember i only met her the one time and uh but i know it wasn't leila obviously because you know she's obviously out in the public all the time but um aaron i should say in the public spotlight but i was just like yeah those leg yes Yes, that did happen. And I'm like, actually, Inoki is one of my mentors. He helped train me in professional wrestling and was part of the reason why I was in New Japan Pro Wrestling.

It's just such a crazy moment that they decided to actually do that match where Ali is there with boxing gloves on and Inoki is kicking him in the legs. What the fuck, man? Ali was the champ then or no? I don't know. I don't know if he was a champ at that point. I'm trying to remember where he was in his career. What year was that? It was in the 70s.

I'm pretty sure about that. Gene LaBelle was the ref. Wow. It's some wild stuff. But, you know, interesting enough, that was of an era where boxing still knew how dangerous wrestling was. Because boxing and wrestling used to be really interconnected to itself and to each other. And it wasn't actually until the Marquis de Queensberry rules where they started, they got rid of kind of make it up as you go. I mean, there used to be bouts of pugilism back in England or whatever where, okay, well, yeah, you can headbutt.

You can do whatever. And so they finally set up some sort of structure of rules. And then eventually, you know, gloves and other things came into play. But even you can go read things of. Seventy-six. Oh, he was the reigning WBCWBA heavyweight boxing champion. Wow. That's crazy.

That's wild. Now, here's the thing. If Inoki would have been allowed to use submissions and all this kind of stuff – Oh, it would have been over. The match would have been done. He kicked his legs 107 times. Oh, my God. Yep.

Wow. Oh, and here's the other thing. If Inoki didn't, if he had worn gloves, then he could have punched. But what's the point of trying to box with Ali? You know, there's no. Well, it's amazing that Ali absorbed all those leg kicks. Do you remember when cool Vince Phillips fought Masato? Oh, yes.

Yeah. There was a time where a guy who was pretty close to the top of his game. Vince was like sliding a little bit. Yeah, but he was still up there. Pretty close to the top of his game, fought Masato, and Masato just lit his fucking legs up. So Stitch was my, he used to wrap my hands and do my cuts for all my pride stuff, everything. So I brought Stitch with me from the UFC. And Stitch goes, yeah, he talked to Vince.

He said, don't do this. You should not be in the ring with this guy. You're a tough dude, but this is a different story because Stitch had trained Muay Thai in Thailand and all kinds of stuff. So he's like, don't. And Vince got his fucking femur cracked. Oh, my God. Did he really? Yes.

Holy shit. Yes. From a leg kick? Yes. Or, you know, many leg kicks. At that time, Masato was at the top of the food chain, though. Masato was not. He was in his prime.

Yeah. It's like, oh, well, he's not winning the K1 Max. Yeah, but he's losing, like like Bacow and Andy Sauer. Yeah, I mean, that was a shark tank. They're all killers, man. Killers. That was a crazy time for that weight class, those size guys. There were so many murderers.

I mean, that was Ramon Deckers. That was those days. God, that was a crazy time. What an amazing thing to see such high-level artistry. Consistently, man. Yeah. Yeah. People don't understand what K-1 had done.

Unfortunately, I heard that Glory's going bankrupt. Yeah, I heard that too. I mean, it's just so hard to keep any of this shit going right now. Not right now. Everything's fucked. With COVID, everything's fucked. That's such a bummer, though, man. I am such a huge fan of high level

kickboxing and muay thai like you know lion fights i was always like why why are people not watching this i mean what do they have to do it's it's just everybody talks about the ufc and mma like the people that don't like grappling like oh i hate it when they go to the ground yeah i got a solution for you this shit never goes to the ground how about. I got a solution for you. This shit never goes to the ground. How about this? Watch these guys. But for whatever reason, it never caught on. And I don't understand. I'll at least put some blame on the UFC for even creating an audience that was like, oh, look when they go to the ground.

Because look at like the first, I don't know, Zuffa takes over. How long have they been in charge now? I don't know. 2001. 2001. 2001. So for probably the first 10 years of UFC, the highlight stuff around every event, around every promotional opportunity around UFC, what is it? Knockouts, knockouts, knockouts, knockouts.

Everybody's getting primed to watch for knockouts. And yet people are going to the ground and getting choked. People are going to the ground and getting armbarred. What are you telling them to like? I think people were okay with people getting armbarred and choked. What they didn't like

is like Ben Askren beating Karskov. I mean, those kind of fights. Yeah, I mean, that's a bit later, longer in the tooth, but also MMA,

like everything, eventually goes towards what is incentivized and how you can game it. Right. The system is, I mean, like everything, eventually goes towards what is incentivized and how you can game it. The system is not, I mean, for me, the way I look at MMA, I go five minute rounds. No, they don't belong. It's too short anymore. Like everybody's too good of an athlete.

They know how to game the system to go out round by round scoring. No, you got to get rid of that. You got to get rid of the five minute round. You got to go at least probably six, maybe 10. Don't you think there's also a problem in incentivizing people to just win because you have a win bonus? Yes. That win bonus I do not like. I have said this from the beginning.

I just don't think it's fair. First of all, if you're going to do a win bonus, you need to do something about the judging. Yes, 100%. You need to have a better scoring system, and you need to do something about the judging yes 100 you need to have a better scoring system and you need to get rid of incompetence and then when you go to other states you need to take control of the situation and accountability to the scoring too it's in other states it's dire like if you and i don't want to name states but there's been states we do fights where i'm just going what who watched that fight yeah i hear you how is that how is

this even possible people just get fucking robbed. Yes. So if you have win bonuses and, you know, if a guy comes in and he's getting 50 and then if he wins he gets another 50, you stole $50,000 from that guy by giving him incompetent judging. Yes. And I don't – if you're a fighter, you've got to do your best to win. If that means take the guy down and hump him and throw enough punches to keep the referee from standing up, that's $50,000 for you. Now add in oh yeah, by the way, you lose, we can just cut your contract. Yep.

No security. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. That doesn't help anybody really and I would say a better system would be to have a win bonus and a finish bonus. And the finish bonus be double the win bonus. I think no win bonus. Or at least a finish bonus. And the finish bonus be double the win bonus. I think no win bonus.

Or at least a finish. Look, finish bonus sounds great. Finish bonus sounds great. That's just going to entice people to fight harder. Of course. I want a fighter to know that if you're going to get X amount of dollars, this is what you're getting for that fight. It's not you're going to get half that because the judges are idiots.

Correct. Yeah. No, I feel you there. Because the judges are idiots. Correct. Yeah. No, I feel you there. And that's a lot of ways the UFC style of pricing, which seems to be kind of the general model for MMA, is that you get five bucks to fight and five bucks to win for a guy that you might have paid him $8 to just fight.

Yeah. And I understand the concept of a win bonus is incentivizing but it only incentivizes to win it doesn't incentivize the finish and if the argument is those guys at the top level i mean guys are trying to fuck you ever not tried to win no no but i'm not that i i know people who tried to win who just i, I've been in fights with guys who are out there trying to just win the cards against me. I've been in there with guys. Win the cards against you. Well, I mean, just like, oh, I need to win these rounds.

You know, if I can't, oh, this guy seems like he's too tough to take out. Fuck that. Right. Just win the fight. And I see it all the time. I deal with it with my own fighters. I go, you need to make sure that you really put a hurt on this person and make them want to call for God because otherwise, if they get a chance,

they're just going to try and get in control, ride this shit out. Like, whoa, boy, that was dangerous. Glad I made it through that. Okay, cool, great, man. That's not what anybody paid to go and see, and I thought we came here to see who could win, who could finish a fight. Finish a fight, yes. I think finish bonuses is not a bad idea

but I think it should be a bonus. Not like half of your fucking purse. I agree. It would be better if people well, you pair that together with say more dedicated contracts so if I'm running a company

if I hire somebody, if I put them on a long-term exclusive deal, I do it because I believe in them. Now, there may be ups and downs and what have you, and I could make a mistake and I'll just have to take that. But I want this individual to be able to go out there and give me absolutely everything they have and know that they're not going to be punished if they fall short. Right. And so I'm going to pay them appropriately. Now, on the flip side of things, if I'm running something as big as the UFC, I'm going to just have a lot of one-off deals on the lower levels until I see that person that I think,

I'm going to invest in this person. And that's the thing. There's skin in the game in that investment. And there's skin in the game for them. And that's where you get – you're going to get the best responses out of people. And that's where you're going to get their best efforts and their best energies. And sometimes you're going to be wrong, but sometimes isn't all the time. I'll take the exception to the rule as long as the rule is giving me what I need.

need. Yeah. I would at least like to see someone come along with an alternative take on how fighters are paid. And we haven't really seen that. Well, look, man, if someone wants to put me in a position to do that, I'll do it. But nobody wants to. And at the same time, nobody wants to create their proper accountability structure for judging either or for, you know, even for some of these athletic commission apparatus, for all these things. And which is, you know, when you talk about Chaz and all these things and about universality, everybody, whether they're voting left, right, middle, doesn't matter, right? Everybody, however they fall on any side of any of this shit, everybody knows. And I think that part of this big protest slash riot at time slash what have you is that everyone knows that the state,

a lot of these state and these bureaucratic structures are unaccountable. They're not being held accountable. And the ability to affect them, to make them accountable is also minimal if at all, if potentially impossible. And then on top of that, what is the thing that you see as the apparatus that you interact with and interacts with you the most and directly? The police.

So how do you relate that to athletic commissions? the police. So, but what, how do you relate that to athletic commissions? Athletic commissions are in charge of how judges get trained, how people get licensed, how events are run, how,

so all this stuff. So if they fuck up or if these judges do a bad job or the referee is incompetent, someone has to be accountable, right?

They're filtered. They're never accountable. Right. They're hardly ever made to be accountable. That is a good analogy then, right? Because what you're seeing with the justice system, when people who live in the hood see police brutality over and over and over again, and nothing ever happens, and then finally the world pays attention. And it's really interesting how there's been many George Floyds, right? Yes. There's been many. I mean, even the Eric Garner case in New York, which is equally egregious in terms of like what the actual crime was.

It was nothing. Like George Floyd was nothing. You know, at worst, give him a ticket. Right. Whatever, if you have to. Or, you know what, maybe try having a conversation with him and just saying, like, dude, come on. Well, the George Floyd one, too, is like a fucking fake $20 bill gets you in a cage. And I realize that a counterfeit bill is a felony, whatever.

How are you going to prove that the guy did it? I don't know. You know, how you prove that he deliberately. Yeah. I mean, there's counterfeit bills in circulation that nobody knows about. Somebody gave me a counterfeit hundred once. See? Yeah.

And I was looking. I was like, this seems fucking weird. Yeah. And then I don't remember how I figured out that it was an actual counterfeit hundred. I don't remember. It was quite a while ago, like more than 10 years ago. But I remember looking at it like, it feels off. But they can get pretty goddamn close. It's true. And if you're not paying attention and wasn't George Floyd on drugs? Yes. I mean, they said he was high. They say he was on

potentially a variety of drugs, you know? So how the fuck is he going to pay attention to whether or not a bill is legit? I don't know. If you're whacked out. You know, it's been really interesting to me to see people come out and try to, I don't know if they're necessarily trying to justify, but they're definitely taking this eye of trying to demonize George. And I'm like, because of his previous stuff about like the home invasion with the point of gun in a pregnant woman's belly and where he's on drugs and what have you. And I go, you know what? and he's on drugs and what have you. And I go, you know what? You don't even realize this, but you just made the greatest argument for why he shouldn't be dead.

Because whether you've done something terrible or you've been the best person ever, you need to get the same amount of justice as anybody else. Equal treatment. Equal treatment. That you need to be, if you have to be put into cuffs or anything like that, if you have to be brought in, whether you did X, Y, Z or you did, you know, the nicest thing ever.

And you just had this one slip up that was real. It has to be the same across the board. That is the great argument that why police have to be held far more accountable than your average citizenry. police have to be held far more accountable than your average citizenry. And that means not to just land a bunch of shit on top of their head and like live up to this, you know, dumb fuck. No, it's why you need to prepare them and help them and foster them to be able to be capable. Like who's ever going to be capable of doing anything if you don't give them the right support? I can't send in some amateur, just started, whatever fighter to go out there and fight Ben Askren. That's never going to – I'm just going to get them murdered. Like they're not capable.

But over time, maybe I can get them to the position and maybe they'll never be capable of being able to fight a Ben Askren. Or maybe they're not capable of being a police officer., or maybe they're not capable of being a police officer, but also maybe they're not capable of being a lot of things, but there is something that they are capable for. But when that leaves the realm of my responsibility, then that's a different story. Well, when Jocko was on the podcast, and obviously Jocko has a deep level experience

of training people in war, I mean, and training Navy SEALs, training the elite of the elite. And he said they should be doing 20% of all their time on the job training. 20%. I agree. Because they train for a few hours when they first get the job. And then the rest of their life is just doing the job.

Yes. He's like, that's crazy. It is crazy. There should be de-escalation training. There should be psychological training, coaching. You should be able to figure out how to handle a situation. And when you see someone who's abusing someone like the other cops that were around-

Step in. Step in. You know, if a cop needs to put knees on necks for seven minutes on anyone, you're competent. And the thing is, it's not as if I can't understand and be sympathetic for how difficult a job that must be. Right. Okay. But there is no way to have a rule of law society and proxy out your violence to another apparatus instead of you doing it yourself without that apparatus fighting handicapped all the time. It's just, it's just the way it has to be.

You know, the dude that freaked out at the, he was getting arrested and he was drunk at his car and what have you, and then he finds out he's actually gonna go be taken in for this DUI. Like, oh shit, steal the taser. Okay, I get all that, but as soon as you fucked up and he got away and his back's to you, can't shoot him, sorry. You just can't shoot him.

Well, I think their point is that he was shooting the taser while he was turned around and when they shot him that he was shooting the taser while he was turned around. And when they shot him, he was pointing the taser at them. Yeah. And that's why you're shooting him in the back. I get it. But it was what? Two cops?

How many cops were there? I believe there was two cops. I don't know. You got a partner. Yeah. Sorry. You got to trust him. Don't blast this dude in the back.

Even when he shoots his fucking, the taser that he stole off you. Eventually, you got to trust him. Don't blast this dude in the back. Even when he shoots his fucking, the taser that he stole off you. Eventually, you got his car. You know who the fuck he is. You'll just have to show up and be like, man, I know this is real bad. And I'm sorry that it's real bad. And I'm sure you never intended it to be this real bad. But we got to do something. Someone had a real good point that you shouldn't call the police for something like that in the first place

because the person is drunk and they're asleep in their car and there should be someone you can call where that person knows they're not going to get arrested. Someone said, listen, man, we're going to get you an Uber. We're good. You're all right. Look at how much,

and that's another part of this whole thing. And this falls into all of this stuff. We're constantly calling on the police to do fucking everything. No one wants to just be responsible for their own life. They don't want to take the agency of protecting their own things, standing up, being their own agent in the world. They always want like, oh shit, something happens. Call this person, call that person. Always, you got a problem with someone at work. Sit down and have a conversation with them. No, no, fuck that.

Call HR. Call this. Sue this person. It's always, everybody wants to met out their responsibilities to something else. Well, the system is structured that way. I mean, if you are in an office and you have a dispute with someone and you sit down and want to talk to them person to person, you're putting yourself in a handicap. dispute with someone and you sit down and want to talk to them person to person, you're putting yourself in a handicap. If you have a real dispute with a person, like say if someone did something to you that

you found questionable or against the rules, like you're incentivized to contact HR. Yeah. They really push that. You're right. You're right, Joe. And that's bureaucracy for you. Bureaucracy will always grow. Don't get a job.

That's what I say to people. Yeah. Someone needs to do those jobs, but it shouldn't be you. Get out of there. I'm not in the 9-5 for a good reason. I've worked in environments of that nature with HRs and all that kind of stuff, working in tech and

doing other things. And I've done sales. I've done menial stuff. You're not structured for that. No, I'm not. I had a real, I had some struggles with it. I really did. Most people aren't. I mean, you neuter a person when you make them work in those environments, man or woman. It's not natural.

No, it's not natural. It's not natural to like, it's, I mean, cooperative ventures are fantastic as long as the cooperation is mutually beneficial and natural. Correct. Like if you have two good friends and you're like, hey, man, let's start a fucking motorcycle company together. Let's make motorcycles. And you're like, yay, let's do it. And then you're doing it together and you're enjoying it.

Yeah, there's problems, but you enjoy communicating and working together. If you're a person, you want to make a living, you have to join a cooperative venture that, you know, you're in an office with people that you might not ever hang out with in real life. And then when you get in coffee, some creepy fuck says some weird shit about your ass. And you're like, God damn it. And you're a woman. You have to deal with this. Like, you're walking out to your car and he's asking you to go to dinner with him or something.

You're like, this is bullshit. This is not what I signed up for. I just want to make a living. Like, I get it from all points of view. But at the same time, you would like to be able to think that if you can just go and say, hey, I'm not interested. I would like that. But if I was a woman, I would never believe that. Guys are disgusting.

Guys are pretty disgusting. And there's so many weak guys. There's so many weak guys that would, when a woman will, like, I was reading this thing about the Unabomber. so many weak guys that would when a woman will like i was reading this thing about the unabomber about um one of the things that happened with the unabomber when with his brother the brother had he had to chastise the unabomber because the unabomber when ted kaczynski he had this issue with a woman where he was interested in her and she wasn't interested in him and when she wasn't interested in him anymore he started leaving all these fucked up notes for her saying horrible shit to her and the brother had to like, like that's real

with men. And for a woman, that shit's scary. See, like for a man, it's scary. Like, oh, this bitch is going to slash my tires or she's going to say I raped her. She's going to make up a story about me. I can get, I can get fired. I can get arrested. That's scary for men.

Right. Yeah. But for a woman, they have to worry about their, I can get arrested. That's scary for men, right? Yeah. But for a woman, they have to worry about their actual life. Correct. It's another level of scary. Men are more, Peterson's already laid this out, men are more agents of physical violence and action than women are.

Women are more character assassination. Espionage. Yeah, things like that. Which completely makes sense. But now you shove them in this environment together and you say like, now don't allow anything to go sideways. Right. It's hard enough for men and women to try and figure out how to interact with each other in a space to even get in each other's pants, to create anything of value. I mean it's just not easy.

Right. And then you have office – like people actually do wind up dating. Yes. Which is fucking crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's really typical though, right? Of course. So it's like-

You're working together all day. So many, or look at gyms. Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. And then you're also dealing with like emotionally damaged people for the most part.

I mean, half of the people that are fighters are fucked up. Like fighters are an interesting. They keep it together through fighting. I mean, it's not like they chose to be fucked up. A lot of them are fucked up through physical and sexual abuse. And that's what led them to fighting in the first place to try to exercise some of those demons. And then you have them involved in relationships with each other. And they're training together.

And then there's other guys around. And then there's other girls around. And then it's fucking madness. There was some studies or there was at least something about how people were getting really into doing yoga. And now all of a sudden, all these people in yoga studios are fucking each other like mad. Oh, yeah.

And they're like, well, what's happening is these people are getting into better shape their testosterone's going up all these different things are happening i'm like to me i just thought oh so you started being more towards a more natural state of being you know being physical being active being now i understand that this is in a very controlled procedural environment. It's not like you're running around trying to get an elk because if you don't, your tribe's going to die, but people need to be active. They just need to. Also, in yoga, it's very sexual. I mean, girls are wearing- There is a big sexual aspect to yoga. There are some sex-related- And then there's, yeah, you get those tights that are made to like lift

and separate the butt cheeks and all this stuff. And besides that, there's just an intimacy in the fact that you're struggling together. Like you've overcome this thing together. Exactly. And then you want to go out to lunch. I look at that with martial arts training too.

You guys are struggling together. You're overcoming together. You're both facing adversity, the same adversity and dealing with it in your own ways. And that creates camaraderie. It really does. And it can create an intense rapport,

but that doesn't necessarily mean even that that can be sufficient or that relationship can then go towards something more long-term and firm, right? Which, you know, we're so great at lying to ourselves and fooling ourselves all the time. Like, oh, I'm so intense with this person. And, you know, we hooked up and this and that. And then you start getting together and then it's it's a shit show you know uh because you thought that just because you guys had this one metric at which you guys

were both very intense that that would cover for everything else and it's like well no that's not how relationships are built and that's how humans have a lot of fucking things that need to be checked a lot of boxes hey there's a great website or a great YouTube that I send all of my friends and all of my fighters for sure called Academy of Ideas. And this dude has these

awesome lectures on all kinds of things dealing with life and current climate stuff and all these different things but all dealing, taking pieces and building these lectures around philosophers and throughout historical, historically correct lens or not historically correct, but, you know, going through papers and pieces by all these people throughout time.

And it's been really, you know, things like that. I mean, we need things to help us with orientation in such an absurd world. And we take for granted that things are just microphones and cameras. And I don't know how many tens of people are going to watch this because I'm on the show. But, you know, like I have this whiskey, right? I love the shit out of of it but I'm not making a whiskey to be a celebrity with a product you know otherwise I'd have vodka because that's just a who gives a shit and quality thing

is vodka the move? vodka's always the move because it's bullshit is it really? vodka's just supposed to be odorless tasteless neutral grain alcohol that's bullshit and so you want to make your stupid vodka so you can be at bottle service

and idiots are like, I'm going to buy this vodka. It's like, I could get vodka for $14. It's just as good as that. Like, who gives a fuck? Well, you could take vodka that's cheap and put it through a bunch of filters. They put them through water filters

and apparently you can make it taste really good. Look, unless... Shout out to all the shysters. Unless it's, depending on whether it's made from wheat or potato or triticale, whatever, right? Like the grain base maybe might influence some of it. But the standard definition for making vodka in the United States is odorless, tasteless, distilled at over 100, up to 180 proof. I mean, come on. You're not going to get that much different.

The only way that you could really fuck that up is if you really don't care about the process of fermentation that much. You're just trying to get the product through and you're not that concerned with the source of ingredients. So what is it? It's like a name brand thing where people really get into like Tito's or something like that? Yeah. Well, you know, about the name, I would say research Rennie Girard and the medic desire for that kind of thing. So you see somebody else is like, well, I have to have the, you know, celebrity vodka a because what have you and someone else goes, oh,

oh, they like celebrity vodka a well, if they like, Celebrity Vodka A must be the vodka to buy. And someone else sees that and then so on and so forth. And now people are like, we have to have Celebrity Vodka A because it's what the other people like. I remember P. Diddy had a vodka, right? Ciroc? Ciroc. It's still around.

His shit though, right? It's whatever. Like, why am I going to pay for Ciroc? He was connected to it. Yeah. Because you want to look cool. I could buy pretty much any low-tier regular vodka and get just as much out of it as any— Right, but you're Josh Barnett. If you're a knucklehead that's getting bottle service to impress the ladies, you want to get something that's got a name brand, right?

Well, that's true. You want to drive a Mercedes. It is. You want to wear an Armani. Now that's a matter of, are you looking for external validation or own personal validation? Is the job to get a bunch of people so that they're all partying with you? Or is the job for them to seem as though you're specifically cooler because of the type of vodka you have?

Isn't it funny that the commercials that attract people to those particular products show these sort of superficial relationships? They show someone popping the bottle. They show all the other people looking at them. Everybody looks like they've got a bunch of money. Yes. Yeah. Yes, all that. Yeah, they're building this archetype, this idealization. But I'd say part of the problem with that is the ideal that they're pitching is a really vapid one.

It has to do with, okay, they're wearing an expensive suit. Money doesn't give you any idea about the character of the person or the things. Right. The value of it. Before I got into bed with these guys to start making whiskey with them, I said, well, I got to be there to come and drink it. I'm not going to put my name on anything that I don't like and that I'm not into. Did they design it based on what you enjoy? Well, they had a mesquite smoked uh bourbon on the market called warbringer and i came up and they listen this folks it's legit this is a an actual 19th century bourbon bottle design too so uh i came up there to drink that i drank their hey school i came up

there to try basically all the stuff that they had, and I got to drink this rum that we're working on straight out of the barrel. It was fucking unreal. And from that, I go, okay, we got something here. And then I drink – even their vodkas are – the infusions they were doing with them. Is that a chicken killing another chicken? It is a chicken killing another chicken? It is a chicken killing another chicken. It is a blood oath level battle right there.

And I got talking to the head distiller, David, about my tastes in whiskey and what I was looking to do. And we were already on the same path. And so single barrel, cask strength. This is batch two, which has like a big dark chocolate note to it and like a cherry finish. How do you make a dark chocolate cherry finish note? Well, for one, the ingredients. First of all, I'm not smelling any chocolate.

I don't taste any chocolate. You don't taste chocolate? I smell the smoke for sure. Oh, for sure. But leave your nose in it. I can smell that dark chocolate element, that more bitter side of things. I think I'm too stupid for that stuff. No,

I just think it's about like when people do like when they do wine, I've been to a wine tasting before and they swam around like this is, um, I have very oaky. I taste the tannins and I'm like, well, here's the thing is thinking. So one of,

one of the people, a part of this company, a cat, she's a whiskey sommelier. So when I, when we asked for notes from her, I'm like, oh, fuck. I am just blown away about all this stuff and I'll smell. I'm like, yeah, I can kind of see. I can see that.

Oh, you're right there. Yeah, exactly. But ultimately, you got to just like it. You smell what you smell. You relate it to the things that you can relate it to. What are you going to say, Jay? What are you laughing at? Working at restaurants for a long time, we had to do wine tastings.

And one of the times the note they told us to look for was cat piss in the wine. And I've never forgotten. I think about it every time someone mentions it. That's an Ohio thing, bro. I'm sure someone's going to be like, yeah, that's it. This is a high-quality, pure-grade cat piss right here. It's the flavor of it. I mean, the smell, the ammonia, I have no idea.

But it's always stuck on me. That is the number one problem with having cats, man. They fucking piss on everything. If you don't clean the box, they'll piss on your couch. I've never had a cat that lived indoors. Really? Never. My cats always go outdoors. piss in your couch. I've never had a cat that lived indoors. Really? Never. Oh, my God.

My cats always go outdoors. Those are murderers. I know. Cats that go outside are the most ruthless fucking animals. And that's the only kind of cat I've ever had. They are responsible for, in the bees, billions. People don't know this. If they have cats and they think the cats are cute and they're adorable.

They are adorable, but they're responsible for billions of mammals and billions of birds in the United States every year. Cat pee, believe it or not, cat's pee is an aroma. Fuck. A high quality Sauvignon Blanc. Funky and tangy smell.

If you're a cat person, it can be eerily similar to another odor which you find often come in contact. Wow. That's wild. Okay. That's crazy. Let's say it does have a cat pee note. That's crazy.

How is that going to encourage people to want to drink it? What are you in the mood for? You know, I think cat pee would go with this steak right now. Cat's pee, Tim Aiken, master of wine. Scatological tasting terms are comparatively- Great burgundy smells of shit. What the fuck, man? It's very weird.

It gets really weird. That's how you know you've lost the plot. Like you got so far that somebody goes, you know what? How do I- Fuck, I'm just sounding like everybody else right now. How do I turn this up a notch? You know what? I'm looking for cat piss.

This smells like specific like everybody else right now. How do I turn this up a notch? You know what? I'm looking for cat piss. This smells like specific, like Bangkok street food diarrhea. Very specific. This smells like a week old yeast infection. I'm looking at a port-a-potty from the 80s at a Guns N' Roses concert. Rose's concert. This smells like a pay phone that's been in Skid Row in L.A. for the last 10 years. Pay phones. Those used to be a thing.

I do have a description, though. So we're in China, me and this fighter, Alyssa. And I got Alyssa this fight in China prior to this whole tour I had set up. So Alyssa Garcia is a 105-pound fighter of mine, but I got her this fight at 115 in China. Then I was shipping her to go train with Santian Noy, his Thai boxing gym. That's John Wayne Parr's coach.

And then she was going to then fly back to Tokyo, finish her camp. I was going to meet her. And then she fights in Ryzen. Or no, she fought in Deep. So we're over there and we're being taken out to this big fancy dinner ahead of the event. And the promoters there were in Shanghai. It's all this big deal at this private room. And I'm like, yeah, I had some Chinese wine once. It was awesome. I'm down to drink whatever you guys want to drink. He's like, I got the best stuff for you. You just wait. All right. Fuck yeah. So we got these tiny little glasses and what they're pouring in it is this stuff called Baiju,

this Chinese wine or this Chinese fermented liquor. I'm like, oh, well, that's got a nose on it. I drank it and I'm just like, oh, what the? But it's the kind of thing that this is probably a pretty real expensive one they're telling me. And they just keep pouring ones.

And at some point, Alyssa goes, dude, I can smell that shit from here. Why do you keep drinking? Do you think I'm going to be the guy to turn over and be like, yeah, this sucks. I hate it, you know, too, on your fancy booze. And she goes, what's it taste like? I go, okay. This tastes like an old abandoned home that has been rained on for years. And what you've done now is all this water has leaked through onto the floorboards.

These dirty floorboards have been pissed on and dead cats are on and all this kind of stuff. And it's all gone through these floorboards. And this water has been collected. And it's been filtered out through a hobo's sock. That's what this shit tastes like. And she goes, what the fuck, man? I go, do you want one? She's like, why would I ever do that?

I just didn't know what it's like. I would take it. I would say pour me one of them babies. How do we get that stuff here? Oh, it's know what it's like. I would take it. I would say pour me one of them babies. How do we get that stuff here? Oh, it's here. It's here. You can buy it. You want me to bring some Baiju?

We're going to drink some Baiju together. Oh, man. Next time. We're going to set it up. I need to know. Oh, man. It'll probably happen in Texas, though. It's brutal.

I've heard people describe it as it tastes like something you clean a carburetor with. It's fermented sorghum and other stuff. describe it as it tastes like something you run you like clean a carburetor with uh it's it's fermented sorghum and other stuff it's there's some weird tastes that like cultures sort of have like almost rituals with like for uh iceland they're into that fermented shark bourdain told me it was the single most disgusting food he ever ate. I remember being on tour in Japan for New Japan Pro Wrestling and having – so it's pretty common that as you go from town to town, you would then go out and you'd be taken out by sponsors for the town, the local sponsors or maybe whoever put the vent on, what have you. And so I would get taken out to these restaurants and they would always order stuff like cow intestines. There's four different types that are raw or this or that. And they're always – I figure what they're trying to do is like test me.

Like see if you can fucking eat this. See if – does Mikey like it or what? And so – yeah, you're probably the only person laughing at that one here. I know. We're old. That's life cereal. We're old as fuck. That's life cereal from the 80s.

I remember being given something called chanja, which is a Korean dish, actually. It's raw fish guts in a fermented, like a spicy soy paste. Now, the spicy soy paste on its own is actually, it's pretty good, and they use it in a lot of different stuff. It might be considered gochujang, I not sure but but you know it's raw fish guts and so they bring

this shit out and they're like here eat this i'm like oh fuck so i'm i'm like but i ain't no bitch so i started eating this stuff and they're looking at me do you like it? No. But, you know, I have to try it. And the whole time I'm just thinking about this tastes like bait. This tastes like whatever it was we were using to catch salmon growing up. This tastes like fucking bait. And I can't eat salmon egg either. Like it's just too briny, salty.

That's a weird one, right? Salmon egg is a weird one. It's just super. salty. That's a weird one, right? Salmon eggs. Yeah. It's just super. But I realized that, at least in this case, Japanese people's palate is more accustomed to these kind of really powerful, you know, something even similar across the board. So a friend of mine is Ludo, Chef Ludo. And we used to go to his Ludo Bites events. And so I went to this one with my buddy, and we get this uni something. It was like lobster uni, whatever.

I love sea urchin. It was so sea briny. It was just the first bite, me and my buddy Tomo, we go, oh, that's not so bad. Second bite, it's like, okay, now we're already reaching maximum saturation on this. Third bite, it's like, we can't fucking do it anymore. And it was just overpowering us. Our taste buds just couldn't handle it. It wasn't that I would sit there and say that uni is bad.

It's just that I couldn't enjoy it. Like, it was just too much for me. And I tell Ludo, well, he goes, well, we have a huge Asian clientele that loves to come to these Ludo Bites, and they love the uni-derived stuff. I go, it must be just, you know, a palate thing. It really must because I just can't handle it. Yeah, the uni is a weird one. Like, my kids are into a lot of weird food. They'll try

everything. They love sushi. They've eaten wild game since they were babies. But I can't get them to eat sea urchin. They think it's disgusting. Do they just stomp around with, like, big, giant fixed blade knives everywhere? No, they're pretty normal. Like, spike bracelets. What am I in? They're pretty

normal for girls. With a piece of elk jerky hanging out of their mouth. But they like to freak their friends out. Like my daughter, when she was 10, her friends were like, what's your favorite food? She goes, I like bear. I like to eat bear. They're like, what? They're like looking at her like, are you serious?

She's like, yeah. You ever have bear sausage? It's amazing. My dad makes bear candy. And they're like, they don't know what to do. You know, average kid's never going to eat bear. Their whole eat bear i've only had bear once and i did like it uh what i had it was uh i've never had grizzly but i've had a lot of black bear i have no idea what kind of bear this was i'm not too hip to the bear population or bear bear genie uh genus of far east r. Oh, Far East Russia?

I was in a banya, which is a very communal thing in Russia. So I'm in Khabarovsk, up in the far eastern north, where it's negative 30 degrees below at night.

I'm up there. We're in this banya. Explain the banya. A banya is basically just like a big sauna. But it's a traditional setup where they have an oven with rocks and stone. And they will throw water over the stones and things like that. It's not exactly, it's not a dry one like a finish, but it's as similar to any other sort of sauna setups as you can come across, but it's not a steam room. And that's also famous for, they have a process where they take these bundles of tree branches with leaves and everything on them. And they'll use white oak, eucalyptus, other and put blends together. And what they'll do is they'll take these two bundles

and they'll whip the air around you as you're sitting there. They whack your body with it. And these leaves, these bundles are made of mostly fresh. So there's still oils, there's still live or there's still elements within it. It's not fully dried out or anything like that. And so this thing is all being hit upon you and they'll hit your feet and they'll do all this kind of stuff, to be honest. So the first time I ever

went through this, this guy is like beating my ass with these things. And I'm just like, okay, I can get through this. I can get through, I know this has got to be healthy. You know, I read the Wikipedia. It sounds all great. And I'm sitting there and you go through sessions, like three-minute sessions or whatever. And I'm on the third one, which is like towards the end. And he's whacking away and he's whipping these things around me and circulating all this super hot air. And I swear to God, my pale ass, sensitive, white boy skin was just felt like it was on fucking fire. And to point that i started i'm like i got i got i can't do the name and so i get up and i'm i'm yelling in japanese in russia and jumping into a cold pool because i'm i i'm so fucked up from getting my ass beat by this

little russian guy with a pile of sticks why japanese Japanese? I don't fucking know. I have no idea. And I'm sitting here cooling off. He had spent so much time in Japan that... Like, what the... Do you not know any Russian? No, I don't know. So you just substituted for another language that you barely know? I don't know.

My brain was in a different place, dude. And as you can relate, when you're sitting in those things and it's pretty fucking hot and you're trying to get through it, sometimes you fucking hot and you're trying to get through it. Like sometimes you're just, you're trying to get past it. I would imagine the beating from the sticks is like the next level, right? Because it's frustrating enough just dealing with the heat. Well, think about it. Right.

So you're sitting still and you're having, maybe you're having a tough sauna session and you're like, okay, if I don't move enough, I'll get through this. Right. Now this motherfucker is pretending to be a fucking helicopter spinning around the room. He's like a Beyonce fucking dance number getting all this hot air blown all over you, like flying, like caressing it up your taint, all this shit. You're just like, ah! Really? Dude, there's no way of stopping this.

Does he have towels or no towels? Yeah, yeah. Either or, man. So you're lying face down, basically naked. Basically naked. He's hitting your taint with this stick. He's hitting your whole body, man. Very rare that a man hits your taint with sticks.

Very rare. I can say that it has got its enjoyable minutes. Yeah, there's something to it. There's a little something. Taint, often really neglected part of the human body. Super neglected. I'm going to start the whole taint-specific movement around how you need to massage and stretch the taint. And you have to, you know, I bet your taint is all locked up.

I bet the fascia around your taint is keeping you from being able to kick properly. Yes. So this guy, so anyways, I get through all this. And they have a phone that goes right to the office. And they have a menu and all this kind of stuff. And people will bring food as well. And usually like samagon, which is Russian moonshine, which is essentially like vodka type stuff. So they get hammered?

Oh, it's fucking great. It's beautiful. I love it. And so pull up this menu all in like Cyrillic Russian. So fuck, I don't know what any of this is. And so I'm just sitting here like Google Translate. You're trying to get this thing. You're like, I don't know anything.

I can't communicate. Are you getting cell phone service out there? Well, I download the languages that I need when I'm in countries just in case. That's the problem so I can get translation. You use Android. I do. Is that better for that? I think Google –

I couldn't say one or the other. I think Google Translate works better on Android phones, I believe. I mean, perhaps. You have a Pixel? No, I have a Samsung. Oh. What is this one? Galaxy S9 Edge X23.

It's basically Elon Musk's next child's name. How come you haven't switched over to iPhone? You're resisting. No, no, never. Not going to do it. I knew it. That's why I'm asking you. You also drive a manual transmission.

I should tell everybody this. Yeah, I drive a six-speed car. Yeah. No, no, never. Not going to do it. I knew it. That's why I'm asking you. You also drive a manual transmission. I should tell everybody this. Yeah. I drive a six speed car. Yeah. No, I, uh, you're part of the resistance. Yeah. Hashtag. Uh, it basically came down to the fact that, uh, Apple is too much in charge of your, your, your hardware and your software. The, the minute the iPhone came out, I was like, cool phone, but you're telling me I got to pay you more money to expand my memory or my storage capacity when I have a fucking memory card? Do you think that I don't know if that exists? Go fuck yourself, Jobs. I know you're on this, but it's like I feel like Joey Pants in The Matrix when he's eating

a steak. He's like, I want to be an important person over here. Yeah. Like, he's willing to be in the Matrix. Yes. And know he's in the Matrix as long as he gets a good experience. That's how I've, I've, I've gone Android, and I have an Android. I have a Galaxy, um, um, a Note.

You were a Pixel guy, too, yeah? Yeah, yeah. And you, did you, you liked your Pixel? They're good. Okay. They're good. The problem is AirDrop. AirDrop's an issue.

Like, AirDrop's amazing. Oh, yeah. And then the walled garden of Apple. Like, all my apps work together. My notes sync up. And I use other note applications so that I can sync them up with my Android phone. But the reality is the experience in iOS is better. You know, I'm not here to say that Apple

isn't creating things that are worthwhile to a degree. It's just that I refuse to spend that kind of money to have a phone. I just won't do it. This is an S9. I mean, this thing is three years old. It works just great. I get it, but

here's my thought. I was like, am I just by trying to be a rebel, am I having an inferior experience? So I had to sit and think about it. And I realized I was. I have an iPod Touch. Oh, congratulations. Because the only – besides that and iTunes. You can bring it to a museum.

I have no interest in having any Apple products. Really? I don't need them. I use a laptop that's a Windows laptop, though. I use Windows everything. I use Windows everything. Yeah, of course you do. Yeah.

You're a rebel. Well, I also, I mean, I remember when having to, man, I've had computers in my household since I don't know when. I'm not like some super programming geek or anything like that. But I remember what it was like. You had to operate things. You had to learn how to use DOS and other operating systems before that or using Unix-type based stuff to get on the internet and do things from the library back in the day. So for me, I just want the ability to get what I need and to have the proper amount of storage as necessary. And that's it. My phone isn't for holding music on it. It's

not for, I have Spotify, which by the way, I've just took over what used to be the Adrenaline Workout Spotify playlist. And now it is the War Masters Workout. And so I put together 96, 97 songs for this playlist for people to just go absolutely fucking ape shit in the gym and get their shit done. As a part of my Spotify deal, I am putting together Spotify workouts. Hell yeah. I have a cookout workout or a cookout playlist. I have a workout playlist. I have a bunch of different playlists. I have a driving playlist.

Nice, nice. You have the War Masters workout. If you guys are out there and you want to be fueled by the incredibly powerful thing that is metal, if you want to get some serious gains. That's it yes we got a monomarth we got behemoth we got bolt thrower we got dissection oh my goodness there it is yeah there's me from the every time i die show

you're balancing some dude on your fucking head that guy's like over 200 pounds i threw i threw people your head, it doesn't end. I threw like 50 people off the stage that night. My buddy to the right, that's Andy Williams. He's in AEW as a pro wrestler right now as well. You see, you know, Keith, all the Every Time I Guy guys. Keith's up there just like, don't crush me while I'm up here trying to sing. There's this chick who must have been this tiny little blonde thing who maybe weighed

110 pounds at on her best day who i chucked her once and she comes back she goes i'm gonna do it while holding this beer the whole fucking time and mind you it was a can but still there's a i have a picture that i got from someone where she's launched into the air she'll has her beer she lands on the crowd and when she comes back to backstage she goes yeah i didn't spill it that I got from someone where she's launched into the air. She still has her beer. She lands on the crowd. And when she comes back to backstage, she goes, yeah, I didn't spill it. That's hilarious. You're a fucking champ. Well, the only way it'd have to be a can.

Like, you wouldn't throw her the glass, would you? No. Uh-uh. No, because the risk is too much. You'd have to be a little drunk. The risk is too much. But there's moments where you're like, I'll roll the dice. Throw her with a glass you know

no risk no reward man maybe a shot glass i'll throw someone with a shot glass right because the shot glass is hard to break it's pretty hard to break yeah but a beer like a regular beer glass that's oh that thing would shatter pretty easily and it's just non-stop in a pit man that's bad news bad fucking news uh but yeah so I've taken over this Spotify playlist. In fact, I've been a really busy little fucker come COVID. People are like, oh, man, how you doing? Busy as shit. Well, that's good.

I launched a new website. JoshBarnett.com is up and running. We got this Spotify takeover that I just did where I'm running this War Masters workout playlist. We got the whiskey stuff. We have more whiskey projects in the works, as well as rum. We have our vodka, of all things. That's a sign of a man who adapts. And, you know, there's a challenge with, I came on here a long time ago, and I said,

life gives you the opportunity to grow in as many ways as you want to choose to. You didn't come out of the womb and just start shooting arrows. It was something you decided you wanted to do. And as you went through life, Joe Rogan's journey brought him to all these different things. And from those, he acquired new things, new endeavors. But all these things required growth, required having to suck or whatever or deal with new things to begin with. I'm learning how to distill. Our head distiller is like, I want you running these runs from front.

I want you to learn how to do this from start to finish. So you're part of the entire process? I'm becoming a part of the entire process. So even with this stuff. Talk me through that. So how does that work? With this stuff, it started off with. So we talked about what we were going to do as far as a whiskey was concerned and what we wanted it to resemble.

And by the way, it's mesquite smoked because this place is in Oxnard. This is a Southwest-derived variant on what you might think of even as like Isla Scotches, which is peat smoked. Well, we use mesquite because that's mesquite's found in the Southwest. And we finish it in sherry cask. So to give it that sweetness. What do you start with? So your first day of work. Yeah. You would take grits corn.

Grits corn? Grits corn. What is the difference between grits corn? The quality of the corn kernels itself and the way they're cut to begin with, the way they're initially milled, which leaves them all in big kernels, but it exposes the sugars in such a way that when we go and we put it out there in the smoker, that this kernel of corn gets hit, the smoke hits all of it and brings all these sugars to the surface. So you start off with the grits corn, and then before anything happens, it goes into the smoker.

We smoke it. Yeah, we smoke. What kind of smoker? happens it goes into the smoker yeah we smoke what kind of smoker uh it's something that he david who this guy i i'm not entirely sure if he has four phds or at least multiple phds and multiple degrees i'm not i don't know he used to be like head of rnd at procter and gamble really like this guy is brilliant bonkers brilliant and. And in fact, one of my students, Mary, works in – she works in microbiology. And so I want to bring her up to try and mentor under him a little bit. Wow.

Learn some shit. So – Grits corn. Grits corn. Smoker. Like a regular smoker? No, it's built out of a giant – one of those big cargo containers. What?

A shipping container. A Gritz Corn cargo container smoke fest. Yeah, so we're smoking Gritz Corn. So this is a custom thing that he's built himself. Correct, yeah. So he's using actual wood. Yes, we use mesquite wood chips. So he has some sort of side cart that he's chucking the wood into,

and the smoke is going into this cargo container. Is there a video of this, Jamie? that he's chucking the wood into and the smoke is going into this cargo container. Is there a video of this, Jamie? It might be on the Warbringer Bourbon website. It might be up there. A picture of me shoveling Pete and his key chips. So it was always Warbringer Bourbon even before the Warmaster edition? Yes.

That's hilarious. I think it was because it was Warbringer. Alfred, one of the investors, came to me and said, hey, we could make this fucking thing. Conor McGregor's got a whiskey in this. And I go, hold on. I'm not here to talk bad about Conor McGregor and what he's doing. I don't care if my product and his product are different. It's fine.

You know? And I understand the marketing potential. But I just – I'm a whiskey head. Like I got into this shit living in Japan. My family's always drank whiskey. It's always been around us, but I really got deep into being a connoisseur of this shit living over in Japan. And so I was actually actively searching to link up with a whiskey distillery. There it is.

Yeah, there I am, shoveling mesquite chips to create a whiskey distillery. There it is. Yeah, there I am shoveling mesquite chips to create a whiskey. And I know that there's like McConaughey and other people and Slipknot has a whiskey. Lots of people are doing different booze, but I really am involved in creating this.

McConaughey's got whiskey? McConaughey's got a whiskey with Wild Turkey. And Wild Turkey's a great distillery. They make great shit. All right, all right blend? Probably.

Well, because I'm sure it's good, but generally the celebrity route is to make something for the biggest audience possible. Right. Right? I'm like, no, let's put out this big smoky motherfucker. It's very good. Some people are going to be like, I don't dig it. It's fine. this big smoky motherfucker. It's very good. Some people are going to be like, I don't dig it. It's fine. Those people can suck it.

Those people can fuck off. This shit is good. Most people, I've had people come back to me and say, this is the smoothest, best whiskey they've ever had. It just makes me happy to bring that into their life. Well, I love whiskey and it's very good. It's very good. And it's very good. It's very good. And it's very unique. The mesquite flavor is very unique.

Exactly. Was that your idea to go with mesquite? No, that was David. David came up with the original mesquite formula and all of this. And then the other portion of the mash bill is malted rye. Or yeah, malted rye. So that goes into a mash and the way he ferments it is three times as long

as a normal whiskey fermentation cycle. So even if you get what's called the white dog, which is the stuff just coming off the still, it hasn't been barrel-aged in any way, and I sat there with this cat, Will, from Bourbon Review, and we're drinking straight up. This shit's smooth as hell at 160 proof.

And it's because of the or 135 sorry it's because of the the fermentation cycle and with the fermentation that he the yeast that he uses all this and uh as this thing gets done we had three barrels three barrels to choose from and because it's a single barrel product you got to choose them so i did i tested every single barrel took notes did my deal and then we did a blind and came back again same day and i tested again and i chose the same barrel twice and so we went with barrel seven to be our initial release this is what uh barrel eight and barrel nine was cycled back into normal war bringer and then we've got another barrel sitting there ready to be put together because fucking batch one was done in like two months it was all sold out it won a gold medal it was gone so when you

is batch seven batch barrel seven barrel eight do they have the same flavor? No. Oh, my goodness. So batch 1, which was barrel 7, is 109 proof. That's this right here. This is batch 2. This is barrel 8. Barrel 8. So this is different. Yep. And the difference is also in the proof?

Yes. In this case, yeah. So once you stick it in the barrel, whatever happens, happens. Right. This is real shit. This is not some mass-produced nonsense. No. Whatever happens, happens.

Right. This is real shit. This is not some mass-produced nonsense. No. This is when people say craft distillery or small batch, this is we get about anywhere from 210 to 230 bottles out of any one barrel. And once it's gone, it's fucking gone. That's good stuff, dude. That's very good stuff.

Yeah. I appreciate all that. I appreciate everything you just said, the fact they're doing it that way. That's the thing is I've always tried to do everything that I do that way. Because in a sense, right, if you take the concept of what is your word, right, your word is essentially the social credit on anything you do. And if your word doesn't have value, right? If it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, if it isn't consistent, then no one's going to ever fucking believe you. Well, when I'm endorsing

things, that's an extension of my word. So if I'm going to put bullshit out in the world that I don't fully invest in, then my word is going to get degraded so for even something like a whiskey you could easily just merchandise it like who gives a fuck right you could take that approach or you could take the approach of every bottle of this shit that goes out and gets into someone's hands and touches their lips is an extension of me and my word and so it better hold up to it and if you don't like it that that's okay. That's fine. It really is fine. Everybody's got their own palette.

Yeah, but that's how you approach everything. You're not a mass-produced guy. I'm not, man. That's why you're using that fucking Samsung phone, trying to fight the power. My own little rebellion. My own little protest. Elvis was a hero to most.

You're out there fighting the power. I love it. Oh, fuck. Well, look, we need rebels, legit rebels. For real, we do, man. We do. Today, in particular, it's so easy to get sucked up in the herd mentality. Of course it is.

Nietzsche would say a man goes into a crowd, he comes in with one mind and gets rid of it and takes on another. And it's true. There's a difference between the mindset of groups and the mindset of the individual. And I'm not one to be like such a hardcore individualist where I think the individual is the start. I mean, I believe it is the starting point of everything, but it's not the end point of everything. And we're made to be social creatures. Exiling somebody out of a tribe way back when was tantamount to basically giving them a death sentence. And they've said that somebody being in isolation away from other people can at a point become more detrimental

than even being an alcoholic. I don't know how they came up with that metric, how that lined up per se, but I know that by not being attached to, not having proper interaction with others, it's degradation to your sense of being, and it is incredibly harmful to you. So we're made to be in groups, and we're also made to be individuals. Now, I would say that the makeup of what you bring into a group is also related to what you create as an individual. If you come in as a fully formed, healthy, capable individual, then you're only going to be somebody who could potentially,

as long as you can keep what's important about yourself, you're only going to be somebody who could potentially, as long as you can keep what's important about yourself, you're only going to be a benefit to such a group. That's what's difficult for people, though, is to have what's called personal sovereignty, to be able to be yourself in a group. It's very hard for people. Well, yeah. And if a group does something, OK, great. But if you're a part of that group, then you're accountable, too.

You can't just pass it off onto everyone else. There's certainly a little bit of that, but it's also just keeping your ideas the same or not. Like sometimes there's benefit to change. I mean there's benefit to recognizing that these ideas that you have, in a lot of cases, they're really just sort of a defense mechanism and they've sort of shielded you from growth. And then maybe you run into new people that have new ideas and these ideas resonate with you in a different way and you go, oh, okay, well now I'm faced with this truth that I can't ignore that my previous conceptions of the world were twisted in some sort of a way. How often do you come across people that will fight you tooth and nail to the death to hold on to those preconceived notions?

A lot, man. Exactly. That's a real problem. A simple one I came across was even involved with this COVID stuff was trying to talk to people about how the mainstream media has had bad narratives from the get. Be it they were given bad information, but they fucking doubled down on it all the time. Or if it's the WHO and they're running interference for China, whatever, right? There's all this manipulation going on around something that is not, that is, it's not subjective. Viruses aren't subjective.

You just, you can't play this game with that kind of thing. And people would fight me tooth and fucking nail to defend the mainstream media over it. And I go, look, here's example one, two, three, four, five. Look at how they're all fucking wrong. They're fucked up. They're doing this. They're politicizing. They're doing all these different things for different reasons. But none of it is really for your own betterment of understanding and to be safer and healthier. Or even just to say, we still don't know yet because we just don't have the data. And people fight tooth and nail over this shit because there's so many people that use the current media apparatus as their mainstream sense-making apparatus. And if you tear that away from them, now they have to sit back and go, what do I really know?

Right. What is the reality, what do I really know? Right. What is the reality of what I think truth is? What is the metric upon understanding now that you've just shown me that? And of course, even at its best, of course, media is going to be faulty at times because it's just made up of people. Right. We're always going to be imperfect. We're always going to make mistakes.

But there is no admitting of mistakes anymore. There's no saying I was wrong. We were wrong. There's also a problem with mainstream media, and it's the same problem that we have with the police. You're giving people an inordinate amount of power. And when you give people that amount of power, they don't want to ever let it go, and they don't ever want to say they're wrong. And they don't ever want to say they're wrong.

And they don't ever want to admit fault. And they don't ever want to open the door to nuance. And that's what you see with whether it's CNN or Fox News or any of these motherfuckers. They have this idea that they've been selling you, whether it's this idea about Russia, whether it's the idea about COVID, whether it's the idea about Trump, whether it's the idea about COVID, what's the idea about Trump, what's the idea about Biden. I mean, they're selling you some shit. And it's very, very difficult to get an unbiased perspective on the world. They came after you for no reason. You know, they would write all this kind of completely disingenuous, just narrative-driven bullshit around you, a person

who brings people on and has conversations and tries to flourish that idea of the, what are they, marketplace of ideas, like having conversations and trying to earnestly and sincerely explore things and try to have a better grip on the world and try to better orient themselves towards just knowing and knowledge, in addition to even having a fucking good time about it, being here. Well, it's a competitive thing, too. Of course it is. When someone reaches a point where they're interacting with too many people

and they have this potential to really influence things in terms of the political process, in terms of the way people view things, that becomes very dangerous for people that have a different perspective on things or people that are connected to a traditional machine. True. Whether it's newspapers or whether it's, you know, and I have friends in both those things. I have friends in media and I have friends, I have people that have apologized for things that other people have written. I'm like, listen, man, this is part of the game. You're not going to rattle me. I'm okay. I get it. You accept, you're not, you're not sitting here saying that it's okay. But what you're saying is I know what the landscape looks like. I know

what I expect. I understand humans. I understand why people would attack me. And I understand why people would attack me, and I understand why you would even look at very small things that are taken out of context and develop your own perception of me that's inaccurate. I get it. I'm not angry about it. Correct. But I don't want it to be any different. This is what's fucked up. I kind of like the madness of it i really do i know what you feel i i i wouldn't on a personal level i can relate to that yes if this world was

logical a person like me wouldn't have no place where someone just comes from doing some live stream on a fucking laptop and then 10 years later has hundreds of millions of downloads. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know. I think you're tapping into something that is universal. I think that, you know, when it comes to like, I love studying history and religion because those are some of the oldest insights

into the way people think and the way people act. Those are some of the oldest insights into the way people think and the way people act. And within these frameworks are tons of windows into human thought process and psychology. And it's the same as yours. None of it has changed over the oldest religious texts, the oldest historical things we can find, the stories that exist, the myths, all all this. This is the same shit over and over and over again. The first time I ever saw that was reading the Hagakure and seeing that the complaints and the issues, the criticisms that this monk, who was a former samurai, had of his current era in the 19th century, the same criticisms and problems and the same issues with people's

actions deriving from the same human places of insecurity and, and psychological element. It's all the same shit. Nothing has changed. Like we're not any different than a person in the sixth century in, in the Roman empire or anything like that. Then, then anybody this,

this era, we're, we're not different people. We have different technology. We have, we have different communication in terms of which language you use, but we don't act differently. We're not driven from different impulses.

We're not Rousseau. We're not a blank slate. I don't buy that concept at all because history would look so much radically different, but it fucking doesn't. And I've written you so many times. And I've written you so many times and at times whoever has your old number who's probably incredibly confused about what the fuck is this guy talking about. But about how I think a person like you is critical to what – towards the interaction of the current paradigm is. You are a necessity because right, wrong, whatever your personal opinion is, is whatever, it's the fact of creating the ability

for people to get out here and speak. Nobody ever had Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders in a place to feel more open. And I'll say as politicians, they probably were as open as they could be but they're fucking politicians in this current in the paradigm of the western politician

who knows how legitimately sincere any of those fuckers are but this has been probably the only place that you could have had someone like that and allowed it to that window into their their least politician self. I got to sit here and listen to Andrew Yang talk about UBI and be like, nah, dude, I don't

fucking buy it. But I like you. I fucking like you. I like you. It's just a matter of not being so pent up on, oh, God, well, my narrative, my ideology, my fucking – I got to tribalize all this into such a degree that I have to tear down everything else around me so that mine can exist. And that even goes with this bourbon or anything I do. Like I don't need to cut other things down for mine to rise to to for other people to enjoy it you don't have to you don't have to tear apart the mainstream media for yours to exist you know now mind you the

mainstream media tries to destroy you all the time but i think it's just players in the media the media itself is just a it's just a pathway for people to express themselves. It's very limited. I would say the media among a lot of things, like there is a good, for a term that I really like, it's called managerial elites. And so most things are big bureaucratic structures that have managers and it's just all managers everywhere. And they're all operating into that human resource paradigm that we talked about earlier. And they don't, they don't, managers don't usually create anything. And this is not to say that managers aren't an important thing. I think managers are very important, but how many times has anybody worked in a place where

they have management that has, is so divorced from the creative or from the actuality of creating a product or whatever the job role is. And yet these people are making decisions all the time and bleeding into telling people how to do their job instead of managing people to be able to be best at their job. Well, they're invested in it as well because they have mortgages and they have bills and they want the money to keep rolling in. So their idea is to make sure that whatever this thing that they're doing, whether it's a newspaper or whether it's a television show, they want to make sure that they stay in the

most wide mainstream of lanes. It's going to bring in the most money. And that's the weird part about media in general is that it's motivated by people that are trying to seek a profit. That's what they're doing. And there's a giant machine behind them. We have two video editors and Jamie. That's the whole deal.

That's the whole, and you can't – this wouldn't exist any other way. If you had more people, you would have like, well, you need a more diverse group of people working here. Oh, you need to hire this and you don't support trans people. And where is your money going? Well, that's an assumption. That's putting bad faith on you. That's thinking that as if somebody who is trans or what have you might show up for a job that you need filled. And somehow you'd be like, well, because you're trans, you can't. No, if they're capable of doing the job, you hire the fucking person.

I agree. But the way it looks in terms of optics, like people feel like they need to hire X amount of Asian people and X amount of this people. And there's a weird climate right now where- It's just a really bad heuristic. That's all that is. It's a horrible heuristic saying that the makeup of somebody's external or the external makeup of a company somehow has any real indication of its actual quality and character. Well, it's the lack of diversity is an assumption of prejudice.

Correct. That's what it is. If you have a writing group, if you're on a sitcom, I am just going to say this because it's true. The majority is going to be white males that are Jewish. Those are the writers on sitcoms, and they're really good at it. I mean, there's a whole fucking culture attached to it. It doesn't mean that

an Asian woman can't be a great sitcom writer. It doesn't mean. Full on. Yeah but it's a thing where there's in many of these businesses there's a tradition of hiring a certain kind of people because they've been very effective at it but there's also in a lot of these places a meritocracy.

Is there a boys club in a lot of these places? Yeah, there is. Are they hiring their friends? For sure. Is it harder to get in in some of these places if you're someone different? I would imagine so. I would imagine so. There's all these different scenarios that can lay themselves out.

There's all these different scenarios that can lay themselves out. Some of it can even be perhaps the aggressiveness of men towards acquiring certain positions versus maybe a more subtle approach a woman might take. That's the argument about why women don't make as much money. That is the argument. I like about when Peterson brings that up is, and people always neglect this, is he goes, it almost seems as if really that perhaps women are just fucking smarter than us. Like they're just saner. They're like, oh, well, why be a maniac that only lives for this job? Instead, how about I be a person that does all these other fulfilling things in their life instead of driving myself into this insane near single-minded obsession. Right.

That's the only metric that we're judging success by is money. Correct. Money and social status inside of a corporation, right? Money is a great tool, clearly. It can do a lot of things for people. And it's a lot easier to exchange money with people than to exchange livestock, fucking, I don't know, giant buildings and pieces of stone. What are you going to fucking carry around?

A bunch of pieces of gold on you? I mean, come on. A bill is probably the simplest solution to creating ways of barter instead of actually having it. But I mean, really, what we're talking about is happiness. Yeah. Happiness isn't about the things you own. Which is insane, so difficult to measure. Yeah, well, I mean, think of how happy someone might be buying something versus if you actually built it. Or think about how happy someone might be if they have this really powerful career, but they don't have a family.

Versus someone who does have a family, who doesn't have any career, really. They make enough living to get by, but they, they love being around their tribe. I keep telling people, uh, like, um, there there's, there's, there's two people that I, I really idealize. I don't even know if they know this. So Bill and Wanda Goldberg and Michael Jai White and Gillian are two couples with families that I look at them and I think, this is proof that this is a thing that is, that is creatable. You can have a beautiful, amazing family and, and have a great relationship and you can continue to create and make great things. And, and you can, you can really have it all. It really is possible. And I look at that, and that's what I want. I want family. I want to be able to create my own sort of tribe around that

from a familial sense. And I want to bring a child into the world and pass along all that has been given, and I say given, to me by all these amazing people and all the amazing relationships and experiences that I've acquired throughout life. And I try to do that with my so-called, quote-unquote, kids, my students. And I impart this lineage down to them, these experiences, this knowledge. I give to them and I give to my friends and I do as much as I can to keep the flame alive. Are you trying to tell me you have baby fever? That's what I'm hearing. Have you found a gal?

Are you ready to shoot a live one into? You know, there's always practice. Practice is fun. Practice is fun. I don't want to fuck this moment up. Are you done fighting 100%? No. No.

No. How old are you now? 42. When do you think you'll be done? When I'm done. Just when you're done. When I'm done. I don't know what that window is.

I just know that I've got some fights left in me. You're still signed with Bellator? Still signed. And what is the – they don't have a timeline? They have nothing going on right now. No, nothing that I know of. Isn't it interesting? Why have they decided to not do events without an audience?

I don't know. Because, well, I guess they need the gate. I personally would love to even run – people have talked to me about running my blood sport events my pro wrestling stuff that I've been doing and me and GCW could easily put together

a blood sport event with no audience and as long as we got the revenue to do so like we'll fucking we'll make a killer event we don't need an audience for what we create.

Right. And the UFC has done a great job in the way they have been handling, testing, and putting people in. One of my best friends, Eric Hammer, Eric Arabello, he trains and works with Spike, who fights in UFC right now, a ginger-haired wild man. And he told me all about the process they put everybody through for testing. And he also works with Benil Dariush. And so, you know, hats off to the UFC for keeping people employed.

I don't, and this isn't to knock at Bellator either, because they, I'm sure they have their reason and their rationale for running their business the way that they do. But the UFC found a way that they could create the opportunity to keep people working so to speak I think it's great I'm glad that they're doing it and the testing is very rigorous and it works like I mean we had a great fight this weekend that got canceled yeah Gilbert Burns was supposed to fight Kamaru Usman yeah but they had uh Masvidal waiting in the wings luckily mean, I don't know how much Masvidal has been training. I don't know what the – but he took it. Yeah.

He took the gig. It's, you know – Very exciting. Props to them, and it's a bummer for – The only other fighter – yeah, it's a bummer for Gilbert, but he'll be back. Yeah, it's a bummer for Gilbert. You know, as long as he's healthy and he can come back – I actually thought it was a little quick for Gilbert to be getting right back in after five hard rounds with Tyron Woodley.

I mean, that was just a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, perhaps. I mean, maybe five weeks ago, six weeks ago, whatever it was. But the fights without a crowd are really exciting. It's real weird, man. I personally would probably love it. I love the quietness in Japan when I fight. I think it's the best.

Yeah, we should explain that. I've only done one UFC in Japan, but it's amazing how polite the audience was. They would really clap and applaud at strange things, too, like someone escaping from half guard. They're just so well educated. Combat sports is such an integrated part of Japanese culture, be it doing judo or karate or something like that. It's just in grade school or middle school. I remember watching someone pass the guard and everyone, oh, clap. Yeah. They know what they're looking at. Wow, that's crazy. They know what matters. Yeah, they really do.

And there's sometimes I really love the raucous nature and energy of an American crowd. But I think, at least for myself, I just don't give a shit about anything else but going to war at that moment. I don't care about the crowd. I don't care about anything. All I want to do is fucking kill. There's something wild about watching it when you're right there and there's no crowd, because you could hear the huffing and puffing you could hear the shit talk you can hear the smack of a body shot you hear everything you hear the smack of shins when they check you know it's like it's a different experience man and I don't think it's better you don't think it's better no no because there's something about like a Conor McGregor fight at the fucking sold-out T-Mobile arena where

everybody goes apeshit and Sinead O'Connor singing and there's blue smoke everywhere or green smoke everywhere. There's something wild about that too where it's a spectacle. But there is something uniquely raw about these Apex fights where they have them at the Apex Center. And then the one we did won in Florida as well. There's something uniquely raw about no crowd. Intimacy versus intensity. Yeah. I don't know, but, man, there's a lot of fucking intensity.

Like that Tyron Woodley-Gilbert Burns fight was fucking intense, man. You know, there's a lot of intensity in these fights as well. It's hard to call. Well, I mean, when you have a crowd, again, like when a man loses his mind and gains another, as this crowd starts to surge, you get pulled into it. Yeah. So if you've got a protest and you're out here to say like, hey, fucking get your shit together. And then someone starts lighting off fireworks in the middle of your crowd. Or someone starts turning it into, hey, get your shit together.

Hey, we're going to push your shit in. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Boom, there it yeah yeah yeah yeah boom there it goes mentality there it goes people lose their shit and so uh plus or minus man uh you go out there and a fight goes on and and when the crowd reacts it's like oh this really matters oh yeah i'm into it now i i i'm involved, you are because everybody else around you is. Yeah. Of course you are. Right. Yeah.

They're both awesome. They're both awesome. I completely can get behind that. They're a slightly different thing. They're a slightly different thing. It's hard to wrap your head around it until you're actually experiencing a world-class fight, know five rounds with no audience it's they're different well but it's fucking amazing they're both fucking amazing i'm glad that it's going on i'm glad for the fighters uh i'm looking forward to when when scott and company get things up and rolling again uh i just want to see the world in general just open up to when fights can be a thing?

Well, one of the interesting things that seems to be happening, and I've been reading a lot about this, is one of the things is the CDC, the death rate of COVID has dropped so low, it's in consideration for being removed from pandemic status. CDC said, okay. Yeah. So I think what's happening is younger people are getting it now because a lot of people, believe it or not, got it because of the protest. I know it sounds crazy. What a wild idea. What are you saying, Joe Rogan? You're talking nonsense. What are you,

a right winger now? No, I'm not. And that's not what I'm saying. I mean, come on, folks, you get 50,000 people and I'm all, by the way, I should say, I'm 100% in favor of protesting. But I'm also 100% in favor of people wearing masks and going to a restaurant, which I just did. I was in Texas this last weekend. And in Texas, they got it nailed, man. I know they have a lot of cases. They don't have, look, the point is that there's a lot of people. But also the death rate is lower for this round because there's two possibilities.

One possibility is that it's lower because it's about to spike up and there'll be more deaths soon. The other possibility is herd immunity, is that the virus is potentially getting weaker, like it's maybe possibly evolving. I've heard all these different arguments from all these different biologists. It's so hard to run down, especially when you're a moron like me, figure out what exactly is right and what exactly is wrong. I'm in the same boat.

I'm trying to make sense of it. My head distiller, David, used to work in infectious disease, and he told me about the structure of the disease itself and why is soap and water so effective. Well, it emulsifies the fats around the virus itself and it breaks it down. This is also why things like Windex will kill it. It's not particularly hardy. UV light kills it. UV light will kill it. UV light and sunlight kills it. But he also says that coronaviruses are known for enjoying colder weathers. So fall and winter is a possibility.

And then when you talk about spikes, so that thing, one of the thing that really was in my mind when I was talking about people fighting tooth and nail to defend their use of mainstream media as their de facto sense-making apparatus is that I was posting stuff about wearing masks. And by the way, all the people that I listened to

who were giving me information, either stuff coming straight past the firewall in China, like weird Twitter accounts and YouTubers and whatever, I had my supplies end of January because one, I live in an earthquake state and I needed to have it anyways. So it didn't make, it wasn't like no skin off my nose. I didn't have enough. I wasn't storing water and whatever. And okay, I should have that just in case there's an earthquake. So I'll do it for

this. And then, but I had enough toilet paper. I had enough things because I figured people are going to be the big problem. That's what, that's the thing that I could, that's going to affect this the most. And I told so many people, and they all looked at me like, what are you, some sort of fucking weirdo prepper? And I go, I guess. But when I can wipe my ass, you'll be, you know, let's see what you do. And let's see how much your cat likes it when you've got no more toilet paper left over.

You're fucking using your cat to wipe your ass. Well, that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about food. Oh, food. You can always wash your ass in the shower if there's water. For sure. Food and water is what's really nerve-wracking. But I was like, look, everybody, we need to be wearing masks.

And people would fight me because the mainstream media said, don't wear masks. You know, we need masks for the – Look, fuckface, I didn't say N95 mask, which, by the way, there's mask which by the way there's also n99 and there's also p95 and p99 and there's you don't even understand the classification of masks and now you're gonna fucking tell me when i've already done the research and i know what the difference is and now you're gonna just fucking put cloth over your face do something when you

had lex on here uh fucking sweet dude lex friedman. I love that guy. And he's just simply showing you that's enough. Yeah. And I said, look, if we're just wearing masks, as a guy who used to live in fucking Japan, it helps. Because a lot of people in Japan wear masks out of courtesy. It's just out of courtesy if they're feeling the sniffles or what have you. Really interesting, isn't it? That culture was so ahead of the curve when it comes to mask wearing with respiratory illnesses?

Yes. Full on. Also because they're jammed on top of each other. Of course. There's that too. But they think about their own – they think about the honor of having their own social responsibility for their part in things. And they've had a very low death rate. Very low.

What do they attribute that to? I think it's due to – I personally think it's due to just mask wearing on a cultural basis. I think it's due to – if you tell people in Japan like, okay, hey, we got some shit coming up. Here's these three things that you need to do. They will do them. Right. It's the same reason why when you have a natural disaster coupled with a nuclear issue like the tsunami, Fukushima, that the older people will come up and go, okay, hey, you younger guys, you've got families, you've not lived as long as us, leave. We're going to go in. We'll take care of it you know that's why they will put together uh resource centers or or fallout centers for people to to house in

while everything's destroyed and no one's getting raped and murdered whereas katrina hits you fill up the superdome because holy shit man there's all these people that are displaced. You guys are suffering like mad. Okay, well, we got this, at least this piece of property that we can use to try and help people out. And it turns into a fucking nightmare in that place. That won't happen in Japan. It's just not the way that they are. I find that so fascinating, how cultures evolve so differently. It's just so interesting that human, I mean, even the negative aspects of it. Like I was talking to

a friend of mine once, we were talking about communism and the threat of communism. Oh, you don't have to worry about that here. And I'm like, listen, man, the people that live in North Korea are humans in 2020. Correct. And they are under the grip of a military dictatorship. Correct. Like there's no getting around that. The people that live in the United States in 2020 are not. No. But they're just humans on earth during the same time.

And there's styles of living. It's a weird way to look at it. But if you look at it in terms of styles of living, there are styles of living. to look at it, but if you look at it in terms of styles of living, there are styles of living. And these styles of living, whether you're in a cult or whether you're in a commune or whether you're a part of a Republican town or whether you're living in Chaz before they tore it down, there's styles of living. And some styles are far more problematic than others. And the style of living that we should really be worried about is top-down power.

One person, like a Kim Jong-un, who's running the whole fucking show, and if you don't cry when his dad dies, you have to go to jail for six months. Correct. And I spoke to people, I had a conversation with someone a long time ago, and I go, look, the problem is if you have the ability to at least vote, I mean, and we can, I mean, that's a whole nother discussion about how effective our votes are anymore. But at least there is some semblance of us being a part of the process and being able to freely protest and do other things to try and influence the way government is going. When you have this massive

top-down structure, it's just not going to happen. They're going to dictate from top-down structure it's just not going to happen they're going to dictate from top down plus it's the idea that you can you can predict everything that everyone's going to need all the time and that's just impossible you can't predict every necessity you can't predict every every problem that's going to come uh it's just not you can't do it well this virus has shown that for sure. Well, long supply chain. You want to push all your manufacturing out to other places. You want to stretch out all your supply lines.

Or how about all the people running businesses on the edges all the time? Like, oh, if you get money, don't save it. Spend it. Go and buy more debt to do this with it. And then all of a sudden this happens. It's like, well, you're fucked because you didn't save anything. You didn't see it coming. Yeah, you missed it. And then all of a sudden this happens. It's like, well, you're fucked. You didn't save anything. You didn't see it coming. Yeah, you missed it.

You missed this opportunity to. Yeah, I mean, and look, I would not want to be a mayor or governor right now. But you're also seeing the different ways mayors and governors handle these things. And, you know, some of them are of the idea that you should be willing to let your people take chances. And these people should, if they want to, they should be able to make a living. They should be able to wear a mask and protect the elders and protect the sick people. There is a possibility to create protocols to take into consideration the unknown and

protect as many people as possible. I mean, I've been wearing a mask every public place I go to, I wear a mask. I just do. And do you attribute your time in Japan for like your sensitivity to that? That and just what I understand, what little I will say I understand from even reading people like Nassim Taleb or Balaji Srinivasan or epidemiologists or talking to my head distiller or my student Mary, who literally works on COVID machines in a microbiology lab. Really? Okay. I can understand a little bit, but I know that even they don't have all the information.

Nobody can. It's novel because it's new. Now, I know that they've been studying Chinese horseshoe bat coronaviruses since like 2015, or maybe even sooner than that, especially after the issue that the world had with SARS. So of course, it starts to become a priority. Fine. But here we are, here and now, what I don't know, I'm not going to just assume that things will just be fucking fine. That's just not a way I can approach things. What I have to do is what I can take on responsibility for myself, okay, that's mine. But for other people, different story. And when I can do something as simple as wear a mask and be in public, I'm not damaging. I'm ensuring myself

and others from hardly doing anything. Well, we also talked about before the podcast, you take the necessary precautions to protect your own health in terms of supplementation, in terms of- Yes, of course. And following up on any kind of studies and just any previous understanding of supplementation in regards to other viruses and infection and things like that. But also, when this first came down, I had stuff to protect my eyes. I had N95 masks. I had Tyvek suit, if need be.

What's a Tyvek suit? They usually use them for painting and things like that. But you can duct tape them off and what have you. So outbreak. Who knows, right? But I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going to happen. I just know that I don't want to get fucked.

Yeah, that was the big fear. When the shit hit the fan, the big fear was that this was going to be something that we really had to worry about that was going to kill a giant percentage. Could have been. Could have been. But then, okay, so it's not that bad at least, right? But for a while there, what I would do is when I would leave the house, I had my outdoor clothes and my indoor clothes. When I came back in the house, I took all my shit off in my little foyer, put it in the corner, took a shower, cleaned up, then put on my indoor clothes. Really?

To make sure that if I was an issue, all right, I don't know what this virus can or will do, but I'm going to avoid bringing it into my house as best as possible. Josh Barnett was going all out. And so then as I started to learn that, okay, doesn't seem like it's this, like it is gnarly. It's real, but it's gnarly to certain people. And I have a few friends with it was nothing. Yeah. I am.

I think to be honest, I think I already had it. I think I got it. We're going to find out in 25 minutes. Yeah. I think that, to be honest, I really believe there's several strains and I've read that, but I mean, it only makes sense. There may be a few strains for sure, although from what sources I have, coronaviruses are not the kind of thing that mutates very much. And what they're more likely to do is become more benign and not more aggressive. heard that the strain in India is so vastly different than the strain here that if they develop a vaccine for the strain that's in North America, it literally won't work for

what's in India. Yeah, possibly, you know, not enough curry. It's a tumeric thing. It's a tumeric thing. For sure, this is a trying time for us. It is for everybody. You know, think about being in India. Think about being in all these other places.

It is. It's also like really ramped up all the anger. I think a lot of it comes to. Fear. Yeah. And there's fear. The unknown is one of the greatest motivators or creators of fear. But I would say that this reminded me a lot from Get.

As soon as it was like, okay, we need to shelter in place or safer at home or whatever the case may be. And it just made me think of Cormac McCarthy in No Country for Old Men. He wrote, you know, you can change your name. You can do this. You can do that and go to some other place. You know, but at the end of the day, when you're laying there in bed and you look up at the ceiling, it's just yourself staring back at you. And you're made up of the days that came before and nothing else. So you can cry and change what all, but you're not any different.

You're the same person. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. You're still you. And so these people are having to sit there at times, especially those that don't. There's these people in a relationship where they're now starting to realize, well, what kind of relationship do I really fucking have? Like what is this built upon? Or even sitting at home and people having to sit there and basically be in the mirror all day long with themselves. long with themselves and how many people are really how many people are really built upon the foundational tools of like fulfilling meaningful things like things that i here i don't want to die tomorrow today not even five years from now, not 10. Hell, if given the chance, I would fucking live a thousand years if I could, because

I think that this world is so fucking amazing that there is there. I don't think I could learn all the languages, eat all the foods, even the ones I don't like, see all the mountains, all the architecture, meet all the people, all the cultures, all the fucking everything that exists in this just glorious fucking amazing place. I don't know that I feel sad that my life can't go on long enough to know these things. And, uh, uh, but I've lived such a life to this point. There are things that 10-year-old me would just have just fucking had an aneurysm thinking that this was ever going to be the way his life turned out. Considering what an outcasted, pushed aside, bullied, fucked with, really sort of twisted up, confused young lad and getting to where I am now. And I can leave this place and die. And my life has been fucking great.

I'm fulfilled. I live because I want to experience things. I want to create more. I want to do more with my life. But my life has been great enough. It's been great. I've had all the. I want to do more with my life. But my life has been great enough. It's been great. I've had all the things that I need that are essential in life. That's real success.

Yes. That's real success. It's hard to find. It is very hard to find. But getting through all the adversity and coming out on the other end better for it. Yeah. I'm more concerned, like in an ensign in a way, I want to die right. I think more about that. Or like the Sto way way i want to die right i think more about that you know or like

the stoics how to you know i want to die right i want to go to valhalla i want to i don't want to die a pathetic way from living an epic life um that's more of a concern uh in in terms of death but otherwise no death is there death is coming death's no, death is there. Death is coming. Death's alongside me. Death's riding in the car with me everywhere I go. And that's fine. He's a good fucking wingman. It's great. Well, there's that energy that comes with death that makes life so exciting.

If you were immortal, it'd be like playing God mode in a video game. It's not exciting. No. Have you ever played God mode in video games? You know I fucking have. Hey, you had Carmack on here, right? So I fucking played. Doom scared me as a kid when my friends were like, check this shit out.

It was like a fucking secret drug deal. Like popping the little disks in the library computers. We're like, okay, okay, what's this? It was just, what a freak out. Yeah, I played God mode in video games it's terrible because you can't die for people who don't know what we're talking about when you play God mode you have unlimited ammo

and you can't die it ruins life it ruins the game, games are thrilling but a video game where you're playing in God mode is terrible and the reason why is because there's no consequence, it's the same thing as life there's no risk, if there's no risk, there's no overcoming. And it's like I always say, like I always say, I have this concept of human entropy, that all humans without

proper suffering and overcoming, to use some generic words, obviously from a Nietzschean perspective, you just go to your lowest state of energy. And people are, all things in the universe are subject to entropy and humans are no different. And so obviously we experience entropy and then our bodies break down and obviously we have cellular degradation and things like that. But we can spiritually degrade. can spiritually degrade. And if we don't have proper overcoming, if we don't have a certain kind of suffering in our life or agitation, we don't grow. Agitation is a great way to put it. Agitation is a great, yeah. And I'm also a big fan of Heidegger. So like being towards death, towards death, knowing that this is inescapable. Stop trying to look for anything to alleviate the burden of your own death and the responsibility of your own creation of an authentic life.

Because at the end of the day, you can do all these different fucking things. You can change your mind. You can become this kind of a fucking ideological, you're a communist or you're alt-right or you're this or you're that. You can create all these little things. You can be a Christian or a Catholic or whatever, right? If you're using these things to replace your ownership of authenticity and carrying the burden of your own being in the world, then eventually, regardless of all this shit that you do, when you're laying in bed at night and you're looking up at that fucking ceiling you know that you're a fucking fraud and that you're you you have offload you've tried to offload something that you can't get rid of yes yes 100 well put i tell people don't ever seek

comfort seek clarity and seek improvement. Comfort sucks. Comfort's whack. Comfort's great for a couple hours if you want to chill and watch a movie. But comfort as a lifestyle is bullshit. It's like you're not going to get any improvement. You need to be tested. That term agitation is excellent.

How far did you start shooting arrows at to practice? Well, I was really fortunate that I was taught by great people. You know, Cam Haynes taught me, and, you know, he had me probably like 15 yards at first practicing, 10, 15 yards. And now where do you shoot at? Well, in here I shoot at 45 yards, but I have a range at the house that goes to 85 yards. But you had to get there. Yes. You know, I went shooting yesterday.

Pistols? Pistols. And, you know, I can put some groups together. And honestly, part of that's because, you know, the pistols I'm using are fucking – they're accurate enough to do it. It's not them. It's me. And I like to, you know, go – not to shoot shit at 10 yards and 6 yards. Like, okay, well, 10 yards is fine or whatever.

But unless I'm doing a specific motion-derived drill, whatever, man. I can hit center mass and I can hit ahead all the time. I don't care about that. I keep pushing it out as far as I can go in the indoor range. Yeah, because I want to get better. And I bring it back in. I'm like, it's not good enough. And I've been shooting my old.44 auto mag as much as I can recently, especially they're starting to make new ones.

They're going to redevelop, revamp, and re-put this fucking thing out there. And I'm like, oh, yes, thank God I can get new parts. That's a fucking cannon. It's great. The original cartridge was made by taking like a.30-06 or.308 rifle cartridge. You put it in a base block and you cut it down to size. You ream it, flare it, and then you make your ammunition out of that using a.429 caliber bullet. I reload.

Do you really? Yeah, I'm a reloader. I grew up reloading, shooting, hunting, fishing, all that kind of stuff. When you shoot rounds, you save your shells? If it's.44 automag, yes. Or.475 Wildey or any of these kind of wildcat weird things that I shoot, yeah, I reload. But if it's just.45, it's cheaper to just buy whatever, you know, regular shoot-em-up ammo. But you probably get a satisfaction out of reloading, right?

Oh, 100%. Because, again, it's the being involved in the process and the creating part of it. And one of the things why I love my auto mag so much is because, well, one, I'm a fucking weirdo. So if everybody says, hey, do the easy thing. No, I want to do the weird and odd thing. I want to go, no, why do jujitsu? And you can catch wrestling, right? Why use a manual or an automatic transition? Yeah, when I can use a manual. Why use an iPhone? So for me, it was, yeah, let's buy this gun made in 1970. And it has an incredibly rare amount of spare parts available and reloading data and all this stuff. Like, yeah, sure, I'm game.

Yeah, I'll do it. A lot of kick too, right? It's not that bad, actually. I mean, it kicks pretty substantial, but I've seen women shoot them with no problem. But I learned to the point of taking the... In fact, I dislocated my shoulder fighting Crow Cop. So I couldn't work on my Cobra, my Mustang, and I couldn't even drive it at the time. I was like, well, this blows. What can I do? All right. Well, while my arm's in a sling, I'm going to take this,

my auto mag apart and completely take it down to the frame, have the frame be blasted, put it all back together. And then I was on this forum, so I'm talking with this legendary pistolero,

rest in peace, Lee Juris, who is famous for creating these custom badass auto mags and like taking antelope with auto mags at like 200, 300 yards. Really? Yeah.

Jesus Christ. He's bonkers. He is so incredible. That's a crazy shot. Chatting with this fucker. Freehand? Yeah. Well, I mean, or he could use sticks and freehand, whatever.

Like the guy is like one of the great American pistol shooters. Wow. And so I'm sitting there just chatting with this guy on direct message on fucking forums and he's like yeah okay well when you're gonna if you want to slick this action up here's here's the type of uh compound i would use here's this you know here's the places and so here i am just fucking away playing around on this little this tinkering around on this piece and i'll put my gun back together and take, go out and shoot it. And it just fucking cloverleafs things.

And it's, you know, it's brilliant, but it's also the brilliant that regardless whether it's pistols or what, it doesn't matter. You're learning, you're putting yourself in the position to where, okay, well, you're going to make mistakes. And now you're part of that creative process by being as involved in the whiskey. It means that much more to me but i also don't know any other way to do it like i probably could have had someone make that playlist for spotify for me or just thrown in a few tracks and then just use the the recommendation at the bottom

yeah but it wouldn't be all that weird obscure fucking death shit that you like it wouldn't be dissection yeah it wouldn't be uh There's Melvins are in there, The Bronx, all kinds of great shit. Yeah, you're one of those guys who likes bands that I've never heard of. Yeah, I bet you'd like The Bronx.

I'm sure. I know you'd like The Bronx. I'm sure. They're not a death metal band. What are they? They're a hardcore punk band out of LA. Okay.

And you would like them. Oh, okay. Send me a text message. Fuck yeah. Let's do it. I will, I will, I will. But it's just being involved in the process and starting from not knowing anything and then that overcoming, man.

Yeah, I can't agree more, man. I love learning shit and I love doing new things. I love being a beginner. I think being a beginner is like really rewarding. And I think that as you get better in things where you're just starting out in these things, I really feel like it enhances everything you do. I think it just adds an edge to your mind. And as a person who does this for a living or I talk to people for a living, I think it's crucial.

Because if I just did the same thing over and over and over again, I wouldn't have any frame of references. I wouldn't have any interest in... It fuels my curiosity, which is I think one of the most important parts of what I do. I have to be curious. And I just happen to be, which is why it worked out in the first place to do a podcast. But it's fueled by doing new things. Well, and your podcast, like anything else anybody does, will take on evolution.

does will take on evolution. And one of the things that I would say in regards to you is the way people talk about you to me says more about them than it ever says about you. And when I have someone, let's say, respond and take a bunch of uncharitable takes, I'm like, oh, you actually don't fucking pay attention, do you? You're really not listening. You're not listening at all. You don't understand anything that what Joe's creating here. You have no clue. And you're telling me not about Joe at all. You're only telling me about yourself. And I just, through everything you do, that opportunity for new pathways, new growth, better understanding. What is it? Maya Angelou quote, we do the best we can.

And when we know better, we do better. And that's a really simple way of looking at things. But when we know better, we can do better. When we know better, whether we do better, we can just do differently sometimes. And seeing the progress of this podcast, like I told you, I talk to people from the internet dark web. Now, I talk to the IDW guys. I talk to Dr. So. I talk to James Lindsay. I talk to Eric Weinstein. I've been to dinner with Eric. And there's probably other people I'll meet through this. And for me, it's just I want to be exposed to all these people's ideas and thoughts and these conversations, especially when they're going to be in areas of expertise.

I'm not an expert. Yeah, it's fascinating. And for me, it's very valuable to be able to get those people's thoughts and yours as well to get them out to the world. I think it's very beneficial. And I think for a guy like you, it's very beneficial because they look at you. And again, if they looked at you on the outside, they go, oh, the youngest ever fucking UFC heavyweight champion has got some shit to say. Get the fuck out of here. I get a lot of this.

Of course. I'm so surprised that, you know, I really didn't expect this, that, or the other. And I'm like, well, okay. Yeah. But that's just preconceived notions. And it's also, it's more comforting for someone to look at a barbarian like you and say, well, he's got to be dumb. And then when you're not, then they'll try to diminish whatever salient points you've had.

And that's, again, it says more about them than it does really about you. I've seen it on Twitter where they're like, oh, well, you know, what a dummy you are. Clearly you've been hitting the head too much. They love to do that. People love to do that. But that's also the sign of a loser. Of course it is. It's a sign of someone that doesn't actually want to engage in anything in good faith.

It's also they don't want other people to be good at things. They don't like it. They don't like exceptional people. Of course. And I feel like personally that something I've had to deal with in my life is that I think that there was or is maybe even still this idea, this construct of what I'm supposed to be and how successful or what have you I should be, right? And if I exceed that, people get pissed that I'm somehow doing something in a way that they don't think I should be or that I'm getting notoriety in a way they don't that I'm no no no you're not supposed to be that person now you're supposed to be this and only this and if you

exceed that fuck you for for not being what I want you to be. What they don't understand is that that's fucking them. Of course it's them. They don't understand that, though. They think that somehow or another. I mean, I don't mean that's them. I mean, it's fucking them over. Yes. That mindset is fucking them.

When you want someone to do poorly, you're exposing the flaws in your own thinking, exposing your own personal weakness. It's super unhealthy. And I used to have it, man. I used to want comedians to fail when I first started doing it. I used to want people to get their ass kicked when I first started doing martial arts. I used to want that because I was a weak person and I didn't, but I realized it. And I said, oh, this is a trap. Like I have this thing where I am fearful that I'm not rising to the level of my full potential. And so I want other people to fail.

So that where you're at at this point can then still can be the new peak. Yeah. You're only halfway up the mountain as long as nobody gets higher than that it's good enough yeah yeah and i realized that when i was like 21 and i really i remember real distinctly the time period when i recognized it i just recognized that i had a deep flaw in the way i was looking at things and um and i realized like oh this is, this is weak. And then, but once I recognized it as a weakness, it was impossible to embrace it anymore.

Then I realized like, oh, okay. That feeling of discomfort that you get when looking at someone who's clearly better than you at stuff, that should be a blessing. You should be happy that that person exists because that person is fuel. That's going to motivate you to do better. as long as you approach it with the right mentality. As long as you don't become a hater.

Haters are all losers. Yes, haters are losers. There's no winners that are haters. And they don't even realize that every time they hate, they think they're getting you or getting that guy or taking her down or throwing these jabs out there and that it's going to work and make you feel bad. What they don't realize is they're literally stealing time away from their own interests and loves. They're caging themselves to be only as good as they are at that moment. It's super dangerous.

It's really bad for you. Yes. And it's so intoxicating and so easy to fall into. Well, nobody lies to themselves more than themselves. Right. And unfortunately, we are the best at finding every excuse we can to justify our position. And it's just like, okay, I'm dealing with whatever from all this ideological poisoning and all this shit in my own home.

And yet, at the end of the day, instead of going out there and just being like, look at how terrible everything is and just taking a very surface level understanding, just being like, well, it sucks. And I'm going to tell you it sucks. And I'm going to tell you that this person sucks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, is that, okay, even the ideological stuff, it's not all bullshit. Not everything is a lie. And it wasn't necessarily created just to damage me. Like, stop making it all about myself. And even then it's also like,

okay, if all you can do is say something bad about the person that you chose to be in a relationship with, then that says more about you than them. And to think that I would never be involved in somebody with somebody that I didn't love and enjoy. And so to say that regardless of how things finished, that doesn't mean to sit there and say that that which was negative takes precedent over anything else is a really myopic way of viewing things. And it's more or less, I would see it as a tool to narrow your focus into that which you want to take precedent, so you can justify your grievance in this instead of saying, okay, well, I can have a real grievance and that's totally acceptable and I can justify it.

I can show for the grievance itself but this wasn't only a grievance. The whole thing itself isn't nothing but grievance. It isn't nothing but bad. If it is then it's on your fucking ass. Yep, that's it. Seek clarity kids.

Warbringer Warmaster Edition. Go get it. Where can they get it? They can get it from the website warbringerbourbon edition go get it where can they get it? they can get it from the website warbringerbourbon.com slash warmaster and we ship to everything but I think

maybe only seven states and it is available in some liquor stores obviously can't get it at any bars really right now

since they're not open but it is yeah go through the website use warbringer10 to get 10 bucks off and uh instagram and twitter is josh l barnett i have a website up www.joshbarnett.com it is now the fortress for the war master on the web and uh i'm taking over that spotify playlist use the war

master's workout to get fucking jacked as shit and we're gonna test you for the cooties hell yeah all right thanks brother i love being here yeah always always a pleasure bye everybody that was great i always get you know