The Joe Rogan Experience - #1605 - Mark Smith

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

Mark Smith is an airline pilot, mixed martial arts referee, judge, and trainer, and corporate health and wellness advocate. Prior to his career in the private sector, Smith served his country as an Air Force F-16 fighter pilot, with tours at NASA, the White House, and the elite flying group the Thunderbirds. https://www.instagram.com/markdsmithmma

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it. Great to be here.

You have, first of all, as a referee, you have one of the most difficult jobs in MMA, and you're one of the rarest guys because no one complains about you. Do you know that? Like, I have heard zero complaints about you. Maybe there's somebody out there that's complained. I've never heard it, which is crazy. It's weird. You want your name to be called one time.

And that's what the announcer says. Referee in this fight is such and such. You don't want any complaints other than that. Because we know it's a lifetime opportunity for these fighters. We don't want to do anything negatively to affect them. So that's a good thing. Well, it's such a difficult job because you have an impulse. You don't know when to stop.

Is it now? Is he okay? Is he going to be okay? Sometimes fights get stopped early, and it is the worst feeling when a guy is kind of rocked, but then someone stops the fight, and then the guy complains, and the crowd's like, boo, and you're like, shit. You know, it's weird, because our philosophy, and I primarily work with two of the commissions, Nevada State Athletic Commission in California, two of the top commissions in the world. You don't want the fight to go too long to risk long-term injury for the fighter.

So there's that philosophy of maybe stopping a fight one punch too early versus one punch too late. Your goal is to stop it right on time. But it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point. Depending upon the history of the fighter, their ability to come back, and you've got to make that subjective determination right away, when is the time to stop that fight. But, man, it's the worst feeling in the world if you think you get to that point you let it go too long or if you

mistakenly stop it too early oh god it's a hard feeling and trust me it's such a difficult job it's so much harder than anything other than fighting like everybody else is like judging is kind of hard but they kind of they can hide like you're on tv that's right you know you're right there if it happens and if it's you that makes a bad call, like, all the hate comes your way. And, you know, you got to kind of stay away from, you know, some of the social media criticism because you got someone there that may not understand the detailed, you know, specifics of how we officiate and what we do. And you're going to have critics.

I tell everybody going into a fight, fans are going to hate you or love you. Half the fans are counting for a fighter in the red corner half account for fighters in the blue corner and depend upon the call you make it may be the referee's fault it may be the judge's fault but your goal is to go in there and being as objective as possible and fighter safety is always number one yeah and some guys just want to see people get beaten almost to death they they don't want to be stopped even if the guy is covering up and in a turtle they think they should they shouldn't stop the fight if you stop a fight while somebody is standing up you're just going to get crucified for that so well there was a call like with max uh holloway

and calvin cater there was a lot of people thought you could have stopped that fight standing up but herb was like not quite and i think it was the right call i think he gave them but it was touch and go you could tell he was looking at calvin very carefully and there's that you know you obviously go to there's no one better than john mccarthy and herb dean right doing this they've been doing this for so long that's the goal so their eye of what they're looking at and it also it comes down to intelligent defense yeah and that that's not just holding your hands up that needs to translate into doing something offensive and if you could tell that a guy's listening to your verbal commands and he's doing something to fight back as long as he's showing some good cognitive skills and showing something offensive where he's not looking at

long-term injury there's a possibility of him letting that fight go but man if it's starting to stem on a 10-7 round where the fighters just get destroyed and they're going to get hurt, now it's our responsibility to step in with fighter safety. Yeah, like I said, it's a very difficult job, but you do it well. You do it excellent. You're one of the best.

And what's crazy is I got a text from Pete Spratt, the OG. That's my buddy. And Pete Spratt, let me know about your background. Like, I did not know you were a fighter pilot. I did not know that you... Did you work at Area 51? I cannot confirm or deny that. Whoa.

I worked at Nellis Air Force Base, which is... Okay. In that general vicinity. So you can't talk about, like, experimental shit or anything like that? You know what I did? The first thing I did at Nellis was when I flew in the Thunderbirds. Right. And then I went away for a couple assignments.

And then when I came back, I was an aggressor. And if you remember in the movie Top Gun, you know, Viper and all those guys that were in the camouflage planes, they acted as the enemy forces and trained blue forces before they go off to combat. That's what I did the second time around. So the Nellis ranges are probably up in that general vicinity. But as far as being someone that worked at that, no, I worked at Nellis Air Force Base. Oh, okay. We flew in that general vicinity but as far as being someone that worked at that now i worked at dallas air force base oh we flew in that okay in that general area i don't believe you i think you're lying now now i think you're holding back you guys did you feel it jamie

all of a sudden he's like smiling i don't know the answers of the question you guys don't want guys in dark suits and shades to come in here and be like mr smith we needed i already talked to those dudes they're good guys. They're just trying to protect us from the aliens. You know the crazy thing is, in that area when people used to think they would see UFOs and stuff like that, there was a book that came out a couple years ago

called Red Eagles that explained a lot of that stuff going on and what they thought were UFOs or transportation planes that were landing at some of the bases and stuff up there. Yeah, a lot of people see wacky shit. Yeah. The first time I ever saw a stealth bomber, I was, uh,

it, I was filming fear factor in, um, Palmdale, which is, uh, near, was it Edwards?

Right by Edwards. Yeah. Yeah. And I saw a stealth bomber flying overhead. I swear to God, I thought it was Darth Vader. When you see one of those things in real life, you would think, especially if you didn't know that the United States was developing

one of those, like when they were first developing them and flying them before they made it public, that thing looks like it's from another world. So as part of you say that, so when I was on Thunderbirds, we do incentive rides for like media personalities and other people. And I was out at our training area, which is over Death Valley. And we're talking to the Navy controllers and they come over and say, you know, I was Thunderbird 2. T-Bird 2, I need you to fly straight and level

for five minutes. There's going to be aircraft off your nose. I need you to, you know, diverge to the right and stay away from it. And I'm like, what in the world is this? So I threw my radar out there, which is snag anything out there. And I'm getting these intermittent hits.

And I go, I don't see anything on the radar. thing you know I look up and I go what the shit is that and I look up and it's a b2 that has you know an escort plane right next to it that comes right next to it I looked at it for the first time and I go there's they're aliens out here this is some kind of spaceship that thing yeah I mean look at that that does not look like it's from here yep that absolutely looks like it's from another world. Like all those when people talk about seeing those triangular spacecrafts in the sky, I mean, maybe some of them are from another planet. So if you've never seen one of those, and like for me as a pilot perspective,

I've never seen anything like that. You know, you hear about the F-117 from the Gulf War, and then you see this big thing coming towards you. And that's what everybody always reports, too. A triangular object with, like, a light on each corner. I mean, that is a stealth bomber. Yep. That's a crazy-looking aircraft, man.

Yeah, so I had somebody in my backseat that was like, oh, my God, what is that? What is that thing coming by? I mean, if we thought that we were being invaded and then you saw things like that flying overhead, that is what I would imagine they would be flying they came from another planet that thing is out at whiteman air force base you know you see it flying out there all the time so there are folks here in a local area that'll see it taking off and are there some new ones that they haven't released yet i don't know so i retired about eight years ago right i heard a crazy story one day that someone was hunting up in montana and saw something similar to that that he had never seen before that like came out of the ground in like a vertical type thing and then took off which you know the F-35 and planes

like that will take off some of them in a vertical stance and then go forward but to see something that size and that scale do something like that it kind of makes me wish I was still in the military just so you'd be in the know that's right what so which one can do that and take off the f-35 yeah so there are a couple variants um so the air force one does traditional rolling takeoff but the marine one you know it's almost like a harrier so the the back engine will rotate so it'll take off vertical and then as it's going forward the engine will rotate back the other way to give it forward propulsion but But man, just technology-wise, the stuff that we're flying now... So I will tell you this. The first time I fought on the range against the F-22 Raptor, and I fought against everything in the world. So out at Nellis with

the aggressors, everybody comes there to train, to get prepared for combat. There is no better plane in the world than the F-22. When that thing passed me and some of the stuff that I saw it could do, I go, there's no better plane in the world. So as far as air superiority, F-22 is at the top of the food chain. What is the difference? F-22 is primarily air superiority, you know, so like air-to-air dogfighting, long-range, short-range missiles. F-35 is, you know, command and control platform. It still has weapons on it, can drop bombs, shoot missiles, et cetera.

But the role is a little bit different. So, yeah, that's F-22. You go to an air show and see that thing, you're like, is that a plane or a helicopter with some of the stuff that it does? But fighting against that, as a fighter pilot, your average fighter pilot

is the cockiest person that you will ever meet in the world. Just like Top Gun. Like the movie. That's all real. We're better than everybody. That's our philosophy. You kind of have to have that philosophy, right?

I mean, look at that. Look at that. That's insane. Oh my God, that's insane., look at that. Look at that. That's insane. Oh, my God. That's insane. It just shoots straight up in the sky. Yep. Oh, my God.

I mean, it doesn't even look like a real plane. That is a mean machine right there. So I got friends that fly that plane, and, you know, you see it. A, it's designed in combat. You know, the United States is still going to be at the top of the food chain as far as the personnel that we have, the men and women that fly these airplanes, and then the equipment that we're flying. You're not going to find anything to match it. That's incredible, that turn that it just made in the sky.

So is that the maneuverability of it? Is that what's superior? What the fuck? How does it do that? That's insane. So thrust vectoring on the back, you know, plus the flight controls. I mean, look, he just flat-plated that. And the amount of thrust is coming out of it.

So, you know, internal avionics, the stealth capability, and the maneuverability of it, nothing in the world is going to beat that. But they can't fly very long, right? You know, it's a total package. So whenever you go to combat or something, you're going to have tanker support out there. So you're going to meet a, you know, an air refueler up at 20,000 feet and get gas. And that thing can carry external fuel tanks. But the goal is to be able to plan a mission, to be able to go in, escort, have guys drop your bombs or do whatever, and get back out with tanker support. You know, there's always that philosophy without the gas, you know, no one is going to go.

So like when I was in Iraq and stuff, we'd take off in Saudi Arabia, fly an hour up, meet a tanker, go fly a five hour mission, come back to the tanker, get more gas, go out and fly for another couple hours and then go back to the base. How long can that fly for? You know, I don't know. It obviously depends on how hard you got the gas pedal down. Right. I think in the F-16, if we stayed in full afterburner for, you know, five minutes, you'd probably run out of gas. Five minutes. Or it could be quicker than that.

Now, the goal is endurance. You obviously want to be able to stay out there to maintain the, you know, go the length of your mission. But you look at the length of the mission and fuel capacity, and the goal is obviously to have somebody there as a backup because you never want to be out there by yourself. You always want to have that support. So you may have guys that are sitting back here in a cap

waiting for their turn to come in. You run out of gas up front. Now you swap out. Those guys come back in. So total protection. So until they come up with something superior to internal combustion engines, we're always going to be limited by the amount of fuel that it can carry just because of the weight, right?

So as far as endurance, yes. Now, capabilities of the plane, most fighter planes have a G capability of 9Gs, and that's, you know, times the force of gravity. Do you wear a G suit when you're in there? We did wear a G suit. So in a fourth generation, like an F-15, F-16 is a fourth generation fighter, we wore G suits on the abdomen and down on the legs.

And basically what that does, as you pull Gs, you're going against gravity and blood starts to drain from your brain down into your lower extremities. So the G suit is just a capability to help counter it. It's really a tightening restriction of your muscles, starting with your calves, hamstrings, buttocks, all the way up. And we do the hooking. Yeah, theoking yeah the hook you hook that's really to hold the oxygen in and what that does is lock everything down to hopefully hold the blood up in your brain as long as possible I told you I flew with the Blue Angels once and when I did that I I got to seven and a half G's before I couldn't take it anymore so did you start to gray out or did it start to tunnel vision?

Yeah, it was like an elevator door was closing. Yeah. And, you know, I'm doing that. So it's weird because people think it's, you know, two G's would be one greater than one. Three G's is one greater than two. But when you start to get above five, it's not a plus one. It's exponential.

Oh. So when you start to get to seven. So six is ten. That's what it feels like. Yeah. And you can't explain how it feels. But nine G's is absolutely. I mean, you get back home that night from straining and everything.

You know, measles, what it looks like little. We call them G's where your blood vessels will actually start to pop. Oh, wow. And you get these little specks from straining so hard that you're popping blood vessels. But the goal is obviously not to fall asleep. We call it fall asleep in airplane. G loss of consciousness.

G lock is what it's called. If you do that and you're in the air, it may take you 30 seconds to a minute to be able to come back to any kind of capacity. And if that happens, you know, majority of the time it's going to be catastrophic. I made it through that

and then I blacked out on the way back. Because I didn't hook on the way back because I got cocky. I thought we're good. And we made a hard turn. And I think I blacked out at like five. Like four and a half or five. It wasn't even that much compared to seven and a half. Yeah, if you're not ready at four, you know, people are like, oh, I can do G's.

You get on a roller coaster, that's like a half a G or one G. I blacked out and i threw up it was double embarrassing did they make you wear a g-suit no no g-suit see the reason they don't wear a g-suit is because in close formation if you wear a g-suit the g-suit is going to fill with air to help with that restriction on your legs and in the f-18 they have a center control stick and they rest their arm on their right leg and if that g-suit is moving up and down it's going to move your control stick so the f16 has a side stick controller where it doesn't touch your leg at all i mean it's like you recline back in the seat in the side stick controller so we can wear a g-suit so it won't affect precision

you know moving your arm back and forth is there any other technology that they've invented to deal with gravity? Like just the sheer force of the acceleration? So not just a G-suit, but you will have induced pressure breathing, you know, so you wear a specific kind of oxygen mask and that's going to force air into your system. Because the one thing you would hate to do is just hold your breath. It's like a three second count. You know, you do that hook and then it's a three second count. Exhale, inhale right quick. And as part of that pressure

breathing, when you exhale and open your mouth, it's going to force air back in with that pressure breathing system. So with the two of those together, and then we combine it with, you got to be in shape. You know, you got to lift weights. You got to have some kind of cardio conditioning to be able to last. Cause it's one thing to be strong enough to hold that you know g position but then you do a 45 minute you know dog fighting mission your body's going to get tired so you got to be able to sustain that the entire time so most fighter pilots are going to lift weights they're going to do you know extreme cardio exercises to be able to sustain but anything else other than that it's kind of weird back in the day it would be go drink a coke and a bag of doritos and get that

sugar rush for that 45 minute flight and be able to sustain through it really it's more of a health conscious uh thing now you know the total pack is staying in shape i guess they're just smarter now about it probably a lot the blue angel guy that i flew with was a tank and the dude was swole he was like yoel romero he was jacked you know that was philosophy because when i was on the team i'm six one i probably weighed 230 235 that's large for when I was on the team, I'm 6'1". I probably weighed 230, 235. That's large for a fighter pilot, right? The cockpit was extremely tight. Usually they're smaller guys because is that a thing with the gravity?

It's easier to sustain gravity? It's a height limitation. So you can't be so tall where your head is up against the top of the canopy. Oh, that's all it is? But you also can't be that short where you can't see over the dashboard. But there's a weight limitation, too. You know, you can't be below a minimum weight because if you ever had to eject and you're below, let's say, 125 pounds, that parachute is going to drag you.

You won't be able to stop. Or if you're above, you know, whatever the weight is, 250, 265, you're going to come down on that parachute pretty hard and you're probably going to get hurt. Yeah, they can't make custom shit for you. Nope. And it's the same basic fighter. So the Thunder it's a you know it's a frontline fighter that they take some of they take the gun out and they put a smoke barrel in it but it's the same basic

avionics the same basic controls and it's just painted red white and blue and all the professionals that are the maintenance guys for the thunderbirds the best in the world the finest in the world and i had four of the finest when i was on the team they take them off of active duty lines and bring them nellis air force base and do all the stuff on the planes but there was there hasn't been a real horrible air show collision in a long time but the last one i remember there was one in 1988 when i first started doing comedy i remember watching on tv and it was uh i think it was in italy yeah so we try to cover for that you will notice there's never any energy coming towards the crowd that's the first thing because those air shows and those happen the planes crash and they went

into the crowd which is catastrophic catastrophic and accident in the same sense but then if you go into the crowd it's just horrific so there's never any energy coming towards the crowd. So if we hit each other, you'd go into the crowd. Now on the Thunderbirds, we have trim. So the plane is trimmed to fly level. But like in the Diamond where I was, we would fly full nose down trim. So I'm flying there for some reason. What does that mean? Full nose down trim? So at level trim, the plane, I could take my hands off it. It's going to fly straight and level. Okay. Full nose down trim, I have to hold back pressure the entire flight.

It's about 30 pounds of back pressure the entire flight. So it's like doing a bicep curl for 30 minutes. And if I were to pass out with that full nose down trim, instead of possibly bumping into one of the other planes and making it more catastrophic, my plane is going to go straight down into the ground and it'll be at a minimum loss. So, you know, you'll see when guys and gals apply for the team, they'll put them through strength tests. They'll sit there on a, you know, a shoulder pull machine and they'll have to hold this 25 to 30 pounds in this little range like this for 15, 20 minutes. They have to sit there and hold that like that. Are there women that can do that? Yeah. So the Thunderbirds have had five females on the team, and I was on the team that selected the first female Thunderbird.

Do they all look like Chris Hyborg? There are variations that are going to be on there. They have to be strong as fuck, though, right? You got to be, and I mean, that's the, you know, the standard for all fighter pilots. Nicole Fifi is her call sign. Malachowski was the first Air Force female Thunderbird, and she was outstanding. You know, she was an F-15 strike eagle pilot prior to that, so she was a combat pilot prior to getting there. Wow. And she had an amazing tour on the team. A good friend of mine, you know, gone through some great things.

She worked at the White House a couple years after I worked there. Probably more difficult for someone like that to train for that, right? Like what kind of weight training does she have to do to prepare for that kind of physical strength? Everybody does their own program. Oh, so there's no like program that's assigned by? You do have to do an Air Force fitness test, which is, you know, so they do waist circumference. And then you have to do sit-ups, push-ups, and a mile and a half run. What's a weight circumference?

Waist. Waist. I can't have a size 45 waist. Right, you can't be fat. And it's really, you know, a combination of standards that they do for that uh you have to do that and get scoring on it and based upon your age the minimum numbers that you have to get but honestly if you're someone that's in shape and you work out regularly like if you go out to las vegas and go to the base their gym out there looks like one of the best gyms that you've ever seen in the world like the

ufc performances exactly like that kind of stuff yeah so you'll have that kind of high level stuff and everyone is encouraged and it can be to the point that if you don't pass that fitness test and that's not just pilots that's everyone across the board you don't pass that fitness test you get another opportunity to do it if it gets to the point where you can't pass it they'll say so long you don't meet the standards you're no longer in Air Force. I would imagine that has to be that way. I mean, you're flying. How much does one of those cost? Like the F-22, how much is that?

I don't know the exact cost of that, but when I was on the team, those F-16s are $30, $40 million a piece. So if something happens to one. So I was on the team in 2002 to 2005. Is that accurate? Oh, my God. That's a lot. F-22 is an estimated, what?

$334 million. Yeah. Now that cost is based upon how many you buy. Obviously, you buy more of them, the cost per is going to go down. How many does anybody have? Who's buying these things? I mean, it's obviously just the Air Force. Yeah, the F-22 is only a United States Air Force platform.

Now, the F-35 is Navy, Air Force, Marine, and we do have some joint partners in that one. That plane's been sold around the world as well. Yeah, that's what I was going to get to. They sell those to other countries? The F-22, they don't. Good. F-35, they do. It may have limited capabilities on it, so it may not have all the bells and whistles that our planes have.

Does anyone have something that's similar to an F-22 in other countries? I think Russia has a stealth-ish looking fighter, and China has one. But I don't think the capabilities are anywhere near F-22. I would imagine that there's got to be a lot of pressure on them to design something that's competitive with that. It may look good on the outside, but it comes down to the question of, you know, is it stealth and what kind of capabilities that it has. We've never had a war or any kind of combat where those types of planes have fought against each other. You know, there hadn't been a shooting war really, you know, in a number of years since Iraq and, you know, maybe some stuff in Kosovo and like that. But there's as far as dogfighting enemy versus enemy in the sky, you haven't had that in a number of years.

What do you think about all this Space Force talk? It's kind of weird because you had those capabilities within the Air Force already. Yeah. And to split it off into a separate force, you're essentially just pulling entities out of branches of service that were already there doing the same thing. And there are a lot of people that, you know, we got some great folks that work, you know, do all the space stuff, you know, working with NASA and international space entities doing all that. But was it necessary? I don't quite know. Well, you're on the, you're in the know. So you have to tell us because we don't know shit. I didn't, I didn't personally think it was necessary um you know so this is is the idea that they're

preparing for one day when wars are going to be fought in space is that the idea behind i don't think it's just wars you know it's communication capabilities so like when i worked at nasa we were finishing the space shuttle and it's like what's going to be the next generation of going into space and the goal was eventually to get to Mars and so my daughter at the time was six seven years old and my boss the NASA administrator he looked at her because my daughter wanted to be an astronaut he's like you're the perfect age of someone that's going to go to Mars and the goal was to be able to go back to the moon to build a platform at the moon so we'd launch and go to the moon and we'd have a outpost at the moon and then launch from the moon to be able to get to mars and then it'd be like you know it's like a year to get to mars literally a year go do your

stuff there and then a year to travel back now that has changed a little bit because you know you need congressional funding and all that stuff and And there has to be a determination of, do we need to go back to the moon? How much money would it cost to set up a base on the moon? A lot. And that's the question. Oh, God. It's like, you know, priorities as far as financial budget, what we need right now. You got some incredibly smart people that work at NASA and, you know, some of the other international space entities.

But I think the truth of it that came down to, and, you know, you saw those movies, Hidden Figures, and that talked about launching to the moon and stuff. Some of the knowledge and capability to get to the moon was lost. Because a lot of these professionals that did all their mathematics and calculations to get us there, they had that stuff up here. They go to a chalkboard and they write it down and say, okay, this math formula, this calculation, this projection, this will get us to the moon. But as they started to age off, guess what?

We didn't have that technology written down. So with our capabilities today. That just seems so ridiculous. It does. With our capabilities today, you would think, oh, we can go back to the moon today. My favorite is looking at the NASA, the room in Houston where they're all smoking cigarettes.

They're all wearing them nerdy glasses with the ties on. It's just such a window into the past. Such a strange time. Those rooms are still down there. Are they really? So I got a chance to, you know, failure is not an option. All those discussions. You go down there.

Are they updated or are they in the original form? They still look like in the original form. Oh, man. So NASA's obviously changed a little bit you know it was a sad day with the cancellation of the space shuttle but we had to that thing was starting to age out yeah as we look at the next phase of what's gonna you know take us up in the space but working there for a year i got to go down there and see all that stuff you know with the yeah oh yeah look at those whack monitors and everything it seems it seems so weird yeah way everybody drink

computers like in the bottom left down there all that stuff it you know still looks like I wonder how many of those guys died of cancer because they all smoked right they were all smoking in the movies they were I'm looking for cigarettes in the photos oh come on these guys are smoking they just put their cigarettes away before the for the photo it's the craziest thing when I was working down there I had some friends down there in the space industry. And I was talking to one of my friends down there. And I had on this little band that said, you know, failure is not an option.

There you go. Yeah, look, he's got a cigar. Well, that's because they – I think that's, yeah. That's when they made it. And the lady I was talking to, she worked in one of the space industries. And she's like, oh, that's nice. You got my dad's band on.

And I go, what? She goes, yeah, my dad's Gene Kranz. He said that. I was like, oh, look out. He's over here. You want to go meet him? Oh, wow. All those guys, you know.

Tell everybody who that is. So basically the philosophical head of all the launches down there when we had some of the Apollo missions that were not successful. Launches that went off that weren't able to do everything or not able to get to our destinations. He basically threw down with a NASA philosophy that said failure is not an option. That's him right there with the vest, right? Yeah. We're going to make it to the moon. We're going to do this.

And as you know, it was a race, a race to space against Russia. And we were able to, you know, they had Sputnik that went off first, but we were able to successfully make it to the moon. it's weird a lot of people believe that was in a studio somewhere and but man as you work at NASA and get to see all this stuff you go nah well Sputnik might not have been in a studio but the the film footage have you ever seen the film footage of uh Yuri Gagarin that's his name right oh yeah I haven't yeah it's kind of crazy because the they faked the footage like Like, they recreated it. Because the actual thing that he was in, what would you call what the Russians had?

The first man in space. What was his, what was the... Oh, the actual module? The actual module. Do they have a name for it? I don't know. The one now is called the Soyuz, which is the top of the Roman candle when they shoot you off. Yeah.

Well, they recreated it but it's kind of obvious because it's like he looks like he's acting and it's like a light here and a light here because like those shadows are in different directions and he's like sitting like you could tell it's fake it's kind of weird but they had to have footage of it because just to kind of show that they did it but But then actual experts analyzed this and were like, this is probably not the real footage of the actual module being in space. You know what's weird? Is everyone depicts Russia and the United States as being so adversarial. So when the space shuttle ended, to get to the International Space Station,

there was one way to do it. You had to go to Russia. So we had, was one way to do it. Yeah. You had to go to Russia. Yeah. So we had, you know, Russia and the United States were going head to head. No, if I were an astronaut and were selected to go to the space station, I'd go live in Star City outside of Moscow. And they got, you know, U.S., Canada, all international forces there.

You'd live there and do all of your training. And you'd launch on the Russian Soyuz to be able to get up there. That's pretty wild. It is wild. So I got to visit, and, you know, people bring their families and stuff over there, and there's a row of like 10, 15 townhomes. You live in your one, so it's three stories. Top two stories are yours, you know, kitchen and stuff in the middle, bedrooms up top. And then downstairs, everything is joint.

So there's a weight room, there's a game room, there's a TV room, there's a movie room that everybody shares together. But it's at this place called Star City on the outside of Russia. Have you been? I've been there a couple times. What was it like hanging out with the Russians? A, the food there is incredible. Really? What do they eat? So, like, we would have, you know, like, barbecue meals.

So I was told, you've got to get your system ready because they're going to toast to every kind of success that they could think oh no so i'm not a heavy drinker so my boss was like oh you can tip it back but just don't you know don't get drunk don't anything like that but it's like every two minutes cheers you know to this to that and it's like god man i'm gonna is it vodka mostly it was a vodka yeah vodka is easy to get carried away with because it doesn't seem like you're drinking much so here you are this you know at their space station thing their headquarters and they're celebrating a successful launch they're celebrating going to stage two stage three etc and there was a lot of

you know celebration a lot of caviar and stuff like that but i kind of looked at it like the base could my kids live here for a year or two? Now, obviously, they're going to take care of you. The weirdest thing for me, when we travel around, you'd have security and stuff with you. But we went to Russia because there may be some forces that, you know, are anti-government or other things that you want to deal with. We would have like we'd be walking in our group and there would be Russian soldiers surrounding us like in a circle that would have, know like their ak-47s and stuff and if anybody thought they were going to interact and get in the middle of this you know those guys are

hard the way they keep their security protecting their vips and stuff but it is interesting the relationship between the united states and russia when it comes to space travel that the united states needs the russ. They just need them. Yeah, because we had a design to have the constellation, what was going to be our new rocket system, et cetera. But once again, because of budgetary constraints and what Congress is going to approve, if there was another means to be able to do that, we said we're just going to send our folks to Russia for right now.

So when I left the White House, the boss was like, what do you want to go do? And he said, narrow down to three places. I was either going to go fly the F-22, I was going to apply to be an astronaut, or as I did, I was going to go back to Nellis Air Force Base. The astronaut program would have been a dream come true. But since we had already selected the last crew for flying the space shuttle, I said, I don't know if I'm going to get the chance to go up in the space or not. What if they talked to you about going to the moon and putting a base up there? Would you have done that?

I probably would have done that. Jesus, Mark. Why do you want to go do that? As long as I can get back, it's all good. You know what freaks me out the most about a base in the moon? There's no atmosphere. So shit that comes flying out of the sky that we see that's just shooting stars, that stuff lands on the moon.

It just slams right in there. So you could be chilling in your little space station that you spent six months to develop and set up, and then boom, you get hit with a rock. Going out with the bang, though. It's that I've always had the goal of achieving something incredible in life. What is this, Jeremy? Guys going, paying money to go. Oh, my God.

Oh, to the ISS. For now. Axiom. Oh, for now?'s going, paying money to go. Oh, my God. Oh, to the ISS. For now. Axiom. Oh, for now? I mean, it's the first. Not the very first, but this is big news, I think. The first private crew. Wasn't it Martha Stewart's?

You know, former boyfriend of somebody? I think he went up on the Soyuz. He might be going there just to get away from her. I think he already did it, though. A few people have already done it it but this was like a new trip They're all paying 55 million a piece Jesus To go hang out for 8 days

There's no room for them to sleep on the ISS They just like grab a sleeping bag and float I guess The third guy from the left makes sense He's like fuck it I ain't got much time left In a heartbeat if I were to get the phone call to say Hey do you want to come join the current space program To go do it?

I'd ask my bosses over in Dallas for a little hiatus, and I'd go do it. What is the highest you've ever been in a fighter jet? Possibly over 50,000 feet. Possibly. You don't want to confirm or deny. I understand. That seems like the edge of space. You can start to see some pretty interesting stuff up there.

The plane is rated to go to 50,000 feet, and that's really for pressurization and some other stuff but maybe to expedite get from point a to point b we may have gotten up there may have gotten over that once or twice so what does it look like up there uh so all the flat earthers out there you can actually you can start to see the curvature take those earth. Don't you want to take those dummies up there? Just get in the plane, bitch. So I made a bet. Some guy was arguing with me on social media, which is smart on my part, right? You were arguing about the flat earth?

I put it to him. I said, you go find the point on earth where it ends and you can fall off. And I said, I will pay for college tuition for all of your children. I didn't hear another thing from him ever. So when I fly now, you know, our plane, you know, we'll go up into the, you know, the low forties. Most of the time we're going to fly in the high, you know, 39,000, something like that. You can start to see the curvature of the earth when you get up there, you know, especially at dusk and dawn. So when you get up at 49, 50,000 feet, you can, you can see the good curvature yeah the the view from

the space station you know that just the images that i've seen from there it seems like that would just change your life just the the relationship that you have to the earth the way you look at living on earth being above it and looking down on it like oh down there is home it's just it must be a like a complete paradigm shifter you know what's amazing so whenever i go fly you know we can't do anything below 10 000 feet but once you get above that you can take pictures and stuff and you know taking off out of vegas at six o'clock in the morning at sunrise you get some pretty amazing sunrise photos if we're going eastbound so i will post stuff to my social media all the time some of the you know if there's a big thunderstorm right next to us you know i'll film it and post it and people go crazy over that kind of stuff and i'm sure beautiful day over the

gulf of mexico and i'm snapping pictures and posting on social media and stuff there's no restrictions on like using your phone while you're up there you can't be on wi-fi you know you can't be we don't sit up there and you know watch the game on super you can't be, we don't sit up there and, you know, watch the game on Super Bowl. You can't be arguing with people on Twitter while you're flying. You don't do any of that stuff. So in the back, you can. But as far as the limitations up front, one thing I will say is we are a very disciplined group. So below 10,000 feet, unless it has to deal with specific flying, there can't be any casual conversation. And that's an FAA mandate.

We adhere to that 100%. Once you get above 10,000 feet, we do have Wi-Fi up there, but we simply use it for navigation and looking at weather and stuff like that. I can't be, you know. Now, do you have a, is it a satellite link? It is a satellite link. So we have a couple communications, you know. There's a satellite link on the back of the plane, and hopefully it's working

because that's our communication as far as back and forth, talking to the company, the company looking at weather and you know folks in the back as far as being able to socialize internet social media stuff like that there are kid billies and you know who i work for is it whack is it like airplane wi-fi where it's real slow and you can't really watch youtube um no actually i use it coming out here yesterday and i think it's pretty good now some of the expanded you know things that it, you may have to pay for that. But as far as basic capabilities, you can't connect to it and be able to use it. Are you talking about on a fighter jet? Or are you talking about on a regular passenger?

No, on a commercial airliner. Commercial airliner. So it's gotten better? Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah. I don't even bother anymore. If I fly, I just watch a movie on my laptop or something.

You know, I do that, and things have changed over the years. I used to get on a plane and sit in the back, and I would be asleep before we pushed off the gate, and that makes that trip. But now I'm so conscious of everything going around me. Because of sitting up front, we have to be, you know, our flight attendants are amazing, everything they have to deal with in the back. But because of security procedures and stuff like that, so I had an incident on the plane about five years ago that I'll never sleep on the plane again. What happened? So it's very secure when we come out of the cockpit. You know, you don't want any kind of cockpit intrusion. And you'll notice when we come out of the cockpit, pastors cannot use the front restroom, and there'll be security procedures in place.

So I came out of the cockpit, and this gentleman got up and started to walk towards me, and the flight attendant was like, you got to sit down. And the guy just stood there and turned into a Texas standoff, like, who's going to win here? The guy wouldn't sit down. So I leaned around the flight attendant very aggressively. I was like, hey, sir, you got to sit down.

And he didn't. He had this mean mug on his face. About five feet away from the flight attendant very aggressively. I was like, hey, sir, you got to sit down. And he didn't. He had this mean mug on his face. About five feet away from the flight attendant. Wouldn't sit down. So what I did now is I picked up the PA, got on it and said, hey, sir, pilot's out of the cockpit. You need to sit down right now. And now what that did is that got other passengers involved and everybody's looking around their seat to see what's going to happen. I thought he aggressively was going to try to come up and do something.

So what I did is I put my hand on the back of the flight attendant and I said, if he comes forward, I just need you to lean about five feet to the left. If he aggressively postures and tries to attack, I'm going to put his jaw on the floor. You hate for it to come down to that. You never want to be able to do that. But I thought the guy was going to- Was he drunk? I don't think he was. I think it was to come down to that. You never want to be able to do that. But I thought the guy was going to. Was he drunk? I don't think he was.

I think it was probably something more to it. But, you know, our goal is safety of you as a passenger. There was something more to it. So he was thinking about going to the cockpit. You never know what someone. You just don't know, right? There have been cockpit intrusions. You know, the doors are really enforced, but there have been people that have, before the safety seal at the bottom,

that have busted that out and tried to get into the cockpit and other crazy things that have happened over the years. My goal is to get you from point A to point B as safely and smoothly as possible. And if somebody tries to get into our cockpit, I'm going to defend that as much as I can. What happened to the guy? Did authorities meet him at the gate when he landed? We don't get involved in any of that. If there is a potential law enforcement engagement, we may call them. But if there was an incident, what we did is we just kept the door closed.

So they may have met him, but we won't get involved in that at all unless there's actual interaction, physical contact. Did he eventually sit down? He did sit down because one thing I noticed after 9-11, a lot of people like, not happening on my plane today. So when I picked up the PA and said that, I had a lot of other passengers turn around. I was like, you better sit the fuck down right now. You're not going to do this. And, you know, got other people starting to get involved with it. They made him sit down.

He very angrily sat down. How weird. But now you got other passengers that are, you know, conscious of it. And that's one thing we would probably ask. You don't want people to engage in it. But if something gets out of control, everybody better step up and do our part to, you know. We never want a 9-11 to happen again. We don't want to ever experience that again.

It's just some people are just, if there's any sort of pushback against them at all, they're almost ready for conflict. There's certain people that, you know, you tell them you have to sit down. Or what? Or what happens if i don't fucking sit down we're gonna land and you're gonna get a nice greeting at the gate so like now the big thing is the mask right you gotta have the mask on yeah so if we're taxing out you don't have the mask on they will our flight attendants i saw a thing though where a lady got kicked off a flight because her baby wouldn't keep the mask on which is kind of we

were just talking about that that's kind of tough what what age do you you know if it's a two-year-old two-year-olds can't have a fucking mask and by the way if they get sick it's like nothing it just goes in and out of their system i mean it the flu is actually very dangerous for them nobody ever did anything about that but coronavirus for little kids is not like statistically speaking, it's not a big danger. It takes some, you know, that's how I go back to our flight attendants. One of my flight attendants, Frank, you know, we talk about it all the time. They are amazing with what they have to, you know, deal with. So one, customer service, safety, et cetera.

And when you start to deal with issues like that, man, it takes a lot of, you know, patience and discretion to do the right thing. But if it's an adult that simply does not want to comply, they'll do everything they can to get that person to comply to the point of having to call up front and tell the captain that we have an issue. And then even when it comes to that, because it's about safety and customer service, we're going to get on a PA and say, ladies and gentlemen, we have compliance things that you need to follow. Please do this.

If you don't do it, now we have to go to the next step. Some people just don't like following orders, man. It's so weird. You can see it in their face. It's like maybe something they grew up with or whatever. They're like, no, fuck this. There's an easy fix to that. We'll land and be like, have a good day.

You said that flying over here to do the show was the first time you sat in the back in a long time. In a long time, yeah. Was it weird? It was weird, one, because the lady next to me was coughing. Oh, no. Oh, weird? It was weird, one, because the lady next to me was coughing. Oh no! Oh no! It was funny. Everybody around her, every time she coughed, everybody would look at her like, that's not Dorona, is it?

So I casually reached down in my bag and I pulled out another mask. A double mask. A double mask. With my hat on and my shades and I'm kind of sitting in a corner like this. My friend Reggie Watts has this helmet that he's going to wear when he comes here. It's the most preposterous thing. It's a HEPA filter.

It looks like a space suit. Pull that stupid thing up. Oh, you got it right here. We have it. We actually have it. Oh, wow. We bought a couple of them. That's incredible.

I haven't put it on. Jamie put it on. But it's kind of ridiculous. Very ridiculous. Kind of. Yeah, very ridiculous, right? Yeah. You can't hear anything when you're in.

Which one's the top? That's it. There's only one way to put it on. Oh, like this? Yep. Yep. So Reggie's going to flip like this. There are aliens.

And I guess if you seal this bitch up, though. Yeah, there's a fan you gotta turn on, though. Huh? Just a fan on the side. Where's the fan? There's a slit where... Like, right here by your jaw. Yeah.

I don't know where to go. Where's it turn on? He's fogging up. He's fogging up. There's a thing right under there. But the fan will... How do I turn it off? It's in there.

Come. Help me out. It's like under here. That's like an astronaut helmet. Oh, there it goes. So it's got a fan, and it apparently clears the air too, right? Oh, man. It's like a HEPA filter.

Sure. So Reggie's out there flying like this. People would freak out if they saw that. Follow him on Instagram. He's a great follow. But he's actually flying with one of these things they'll make you take it off at tsa because they gotta see your true face yeah like you come up with the mask and stuff yeah they make you pull it down once you're on the plane can you wear this i don't see why not i don't see why not it's better than a mask there was a there was a guy that had a a boba fett

helmet on in the airport yesterday. Did they let him? No, they'll make you take it off because they got to make a determination if you have a true mask on. Yeah. A true mask. You know, because, like, you can't wear the ones with the vents in it anymore. I never understood those vents.

Like, a guy came to the studio once and he had a mask and he had two vents on each side. I'm like, what are you doing yeah that you have a hole in your mask this is not a real that and you know the little like the plastic face shield yeah it's about you can't wear anything like that those are ridiculous too there's a hole you can grab up and grab your face yeah i'll just the rona will come out on the top or bottom oh it's just so strange because nobody knows what's really working and what doesn't work and then there's these anti-mask people who think that nothing works and there's no evidence. Some of them are actually intelligent.

That's what the real problem is. Like Alex Berenson, who used to write for the New York Times, was on this podcast and he said there's very little evidence that shows that masks work. I wear a double mask. So I got my mask and then I put one of the medical masks on the inside.

That's what Tom Cruise does. And I kind of look at it like if I can't smell anything, that's at least a start. It's at least some. I would imagine if someone's coughing, there's stuff that's in the air. And if you have a mask, it's got to stop some of that shit. Yeah. That's been the goal to stay as safe as possible. That's been the goal, to stay as safe as possible.

Now, explain to me how you go from being a fighter pilot to being an MMA referee. All right, so it's weird. When I was in Vegas the first time, 2002 to 2005, part of my physical fitness regime was, like, everyone has to box. I went to the Air Force Academy. Everyone has to box there. Really? Everyone has to box at the Air Force Academy? Yeah, part of the PE programs is you go through a boxing program.

Really? Yeah, so for a semester, you've got to box. That's great. It's part of the self-defense skills. There are other things that they do. They make you spar? Yeah, you've got to fill out spar. Whoa. We've got boxing teams at the Academy,

and I will say that for years, the Academy boxing team was the best in the world. Ray Mercer won a gold medal in the Olympics when he was fighting for the Army. There are a lot of my classmates. Pretty sure that's the case. Yeah. All-Americans that boxed throughout the years. Randy Couture boxed in the Army, too.

Yep. So that's kind of tied in. That's how it started. When I went back to Vegas, I went to a gym called JSEC, which is now Fight Capital. Sure. And JSEC, you know, with Skipper Kelp. John Lewis. John Lewis.

Yeah. That's the first gym that I went back to. Shout outSEC, you know, with Skipper Kel, John Lewis. Yeah. That's the first gym that I went back to. Shout out to John Lewis and Skipper. Skipper Kel, all those guys are amazing. Skipper's awesome. So back in the day, that's where Randy Couture would train, Marvin Eastman, Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell. I went in there, and that's where I started doing all my boxing,

my jiu-jitsu, and everything else. So I was already doing some stuff with the UFC. You probably don't remember, but some of the old school UFC fights, like when Randy Couture fought in Columbus, Ohio, they would have me come out to the fights and go to a local VA hospital there in the area. And I bring a group of like five or 10 vets out to every single UFC fight. Is Columbus when he fought for the title against Tim Sylvia? Against Tim Sylvia. Yeah, I remember that.

That and some of the other UFC fights I bring these guys out. So I already had a rapport and a relationship with a bunch of those guys. And here I am doing this training, boxing stuff at JSEC. And we had a couple guys coming there that wanted to spar one day. And I was like, oh, that looks interesting. I think I'd like to get in that referee with them. And Skip was like, practice with some of the other guys first while they're doing their live sparring. And then when these pros come back, I want you to get in the ring and move around with them and see what you think. And it was weird because Dana came in there one day and I was like,

Dana, can I have a picture with you? We took a picture. He's like, what the hell are you doing in there? I was like, I was just practicing refereeing a little bit. So he's like, is that something that you're interested in? And I said, yeah. So him or, you know, somebody that worked for him told me, I want you to contact these guys. I want you to contact Barry Meyer, God rest his soul, and the folks over at Tough Enough.

Jeff, his younger brother. One of the top amateur promotions there in Las Vegas across the world, you know, MMA fighting, et cetera. So they had me go to their fight the next day, and I sat there next to Barry, and he's like, is this something that you want to do? And I would practice scoring fights. I did that for a little bit, and the ISKA folks brought me on as a judge,

and I did the judging for about six months. While the whole time I'm still going to these gyms, Extreme Couture, Syndicate, JSEC, getting in the ring, and I'm practicing with these guys. And I go, you know what? I love this referee and stuff. So I decided to take a formal course. So I went and took Herb's course. And I realized how much I didn't know.

So I took Herb's course and I did really well there. Where does Herb teach his course out of? You know, he was teaching out like in the Glendale area at one of his gyms out there. Yeah. So how long is a course? Like if you wanted to learn how to referee, it seems like it would be very extensive.

Yeah, so you have to be qualified to get to that point to accept it. So Herb's course is over two days. So you already have to have some experience as an amateur? If you want to pass. If you want to pass. If you want to come there and just show up and learn some stuff, you're probably not going to pass. You've got to be proficient when you get there. So I took Herb's course, and I did really well.

And I made Herb calls to his dean's list as one of his top officials. And then I switched over to refereeing. So here I am judging amateur fights and then refereeing amateur fights. Bill Brady, who was the chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, was coming to the fights. And then he knew I was military also. He knew I'd done some stuff with the veterans coming to the fights. He talked to me one day, and he's like like how far do you want to progress with this and at the time I didn't know because I was still active duty military so he came and he

watched me do a bunch of fights and he would look at my scores and watch me refereeing and then I got this phone call one day that says we want you to come to the commission meeting on Tuesday and I was oh man this is either good or bad. Either I did something wrong, I'm about to get suspended. Well, I went in and, you know, you stand up in front of them and they ask you these series of questions. And I was very lucky. So I got licensed in Nevada, which is obviously the biggest state for the biggest fights in the world. They brought me on as first a judge with Keith Kaiser. You know, he brought me on for a judge a little bit, and I'm still refereeing amateurs and getting more proficient. I started to try this again. So I went and took Big John's course and Herb's course is hard.

Big John's course is extremely hard. Three days to get to that level of proficiency. And Big John has a, you know, pass rate is extremely rare. You got to be. Yeah. And, you know, they work together, you know, with the commissions and the Association of Boxing Commissions to get proficiency across the board. Well, I took John's course and I was like, God, man, this is really challenging.

Is he still doing that now that he's doing a commentary? I don't know if he's doing it just because of all the virus stuff. But one thing I will say is we still do training. Like, so tomorrow the state of Nevada has training. I run all the training for the state of Nevada. We're doing that via Zoom. California did training last week, and John and Herb and all the top officials in the world, everybody participates. So John is still doing that while he's doing commentary for Bellator?

I don't know if John's course is still active or not. And he also does that podcast with Josh Thompson. Yeah, he does a podcast. So, you know, but although he's, you know, doing the stuff with Bellator, he's still, you know, very much involved in the game. With that knowledge base, you know, he essentially wrote the Unified Rules of MMA. He's become a very good commentator too. Yes. He's excellent. Yeah. So you can imagine me now having my two mentors in the game are Herb Dean and John McCarthy. And, you know, for folks to say, oh, these referees, they mess up or these judges mess up. No, it's not like that at all. If I mess up something, I hear from both of them

because again, the goal is to not affect the outcome of a fight. So I do that for a little bit. And then the athletic commission goes, we think we want you to be a referee as well. So at the time there was no one that was doing both. They want you to concentrate on one of your expertise. So if you know, you go back and look at it for a while there i was the only person that was refereeing and judging eventually worked my way up to ufc fights now i made a transition so i could focus more on refereeing and then my fights have progressively gotten bigger and bigger as my proficiency has gotten better if you look at that last card that we did i think i had three of the biggest fights of any ufc card i did Cub Swanson fight. What a fight that was. It was.

Holy shit. I get about a 20-minute break, and then I do Kevin Holland versus Jacare. Woo! And then I finish my night with Tony Ferguson and Oliveira. That was crazy, too. So it's like, man. Three crazy fights.

Three crazy fights. Yeah, God, that's a great card. That Kevin Holland KO was bananas. I think I've done, and, you know, we don't have anything to do with the assignments. The Athletic Commission gives us our fights. I've done Kevin Holland's, like, last four fights. And, you know, I tell folks I got the greatest seat in the world sitting there in the octagon with these, you know, men and women who go in there and do that stuff. But I fortunately have, with great mentors and guidance and opportunities from the UFC and some of the organizations, have gotten some of the biggest and best fights in the world.

I'm very high on Kevin Holland. He's something special. He's good. He's got crazy power. And it's weird. Like, to knock out Jacare off your back with a punch, like, what? And we sit there and, you know, you look at both fighters and see what's happening. And I go, it went down to the ground.

And you have to know your fighters to know where their expertise is going to happen. Well, he's a Travis Luter-trained jiu-jitsu practitioner. Travis Luter, one of the best American jiu-jitsu practitioners really ever. Travis Luter, you know, he comes from a different era. But back in his day, like the guys that I know that trained with him were like, holy fuck, is he good. And it's great to see him, you know, there in the corner.

You get to, you know, some time to chat with these guys and hear all the stories. He's out of Dallas, right? Yeah. When that fight happened,

yeah, when that fight happened, he's on his back and he throws that first punch. And I go, okay, this is going to be a transition. Now look at Jacare.

And you know, if you go back and watch the fight, he's actually rocked when that first happened. We'll step a little bit closer. And by the time he throws the next three punches and i'm stepping in to try and stop it you know jacare is out out and they'll concentrate on the fighter that wins but you know one you don't want a fighter to come back conscious and take you down to start to do something right

that does happen and if there's a language barrier you know so i'm sitting there telling jacare the fights over the fights over you know i say stop stop stop so there's no misunderstanding about what's going on and I'm holding the Jacare and holding the fence because he's starting to you know come back coherent again right and I want him to understand that he's been knocked out and you know he's like no no I'm good I'm good I'm gonna man you got knocked out you've been out for you know a minute or two isn't that crazy everybody eventually starts to come back they all think they're fine like people think that fighters like they're trying to cheat or something like that.

You don't understand what it's like when you get knocked out. Especially fighters, when they come back, they think they're in the fight. Exactly. They'll try to take a referee down. They're holding on to pants legs. They don't even think that it's a pants leg. And then eventually they go, why is this? These are black pants.

It's always, what happened? Yeah, what happened? They always say, what happened? Or they get the bright light of always what happened. Yeah, what happened. They always say what happened. Or they get the bright light of the doctor shining a flashlight in their eyes of what happened. And one thing we tried to transition doing, you know, I've had some fighters get really hurt really bad. We normally keep everybody out of the octagon. But one thing we're doing is we're allowing a coach to come in with the doctor, with the inspectors, with myself, and give them a familiar voice. You know, you get knocked out, you come back, and here's Mark telling you, no, the fight's

over. You may not recognize, but if a coach is there in the corner saying, hey, such and such, you got knocked out, calm down. It's fine. This is coach such and such. I'm here. We're finding that's calming the fighter down just a little bit. Obviously, medical protocols and safety, we got to do all that, but I like doing that. I like asking one of the coaches to come in, stand off to my side, and kind of give them a familiar voice when Oliveira had Tony Ferguson in that arm bar and he had his arm completely hyperextended and it looked like his arm was breaking like what was your thought there because some guys have stopped fights when a guy has a fully locked out arm bar and it's very controversial like

some people think you should just let it keep going other people think like that one of the best examples was herb Dean with Tim Sylvia versus Frank Mir that went through my mind yeah and see what a lot of people didn't understand at first is herb is looking directly at arm and sees and heard it to hurt it he heard the crack yeah now he called a lot of flack for that. He only did for a couple seconds. Once I got in the octagon and I explained it, and I explained it to the audience, because people were booing like crazy because the fight was stopped. Tim Sealy was like, what the fuck?

What the fuck? Meanwhile, his arm was trashed. He had that adrenaline going too. Well, his arm was gone. Yeah. I mean, it was, and then I explained it on TV, and then when I got into the octagon, and I said, I want you to look at something. Watch this.

Watch this. And then you hear everybody go, oh! When you see his forearm bend in half. And then everybody's like, oh. So at that level, with a choke, I'll tell guys in a rule meeting in the back, I'm not going to stop unless you go out. You can have someone in a fully compromised position. You know, who was it? The Chiesa fight. position. You know, who was it? The Chiesa fight.

Yes. You know, he was fully compromised. But how good could it be? How long can he hold that? Can he turn his chin to the side and get out? Yeah, you got to let him go out. You got to let him go out. But Kevin Lee has a nasty rear naked choke

and he had Chiesa fully locked in. But even in that position. You got to let him go out. So I tell guys in my room, and we learn as we progress watching fights. You know, we talk daily, weekly about stuff that we got to do so i tell them in the back and rules meeting for a choke at this level i'm not going to stop it unless the fighter goes out good if it's any kind of other submission i got to see a dislocation separation or it has to break or if you scream

and there's a difference between a scream and a you know a grunt to get out of something if you scream it's a verbal submission and we're going to stop. That's a weird one, right? The scream verbal submission thing is weird. Tony, man, that was... You could saw his leg off with a rusty fucking axe. That was beyond human. He will not tap. When Charles transitioned from across the chest to under the underarm, Tony grunted.

Yeah. And he bared through it. Look at the hyperextension. I don't know what happened to his elbow. You see my foot there look how close i am so i'm doing two things one i'm looking for a dislocation separation of break but i'm also listening to see if it's going to be crack a verbal you know the cracking arm or verbal submission he did not he he man he battled through that and there's we got to be conscious of the time. So the 10 second clapper had already gone off.

So I'm counting down in my head. And the goal is to right when that horn goes off, you'll see when we stop a submission from that, we go right to the pressure point, push back the opposite way and take off the pivot point and it's underarm to stop it. Because some guys are going to try to hold it for an extra second after the bell goes off. Right as that

stops, I'm pushing on it and stopping it. Also verbally telling the guy to stop because you don't want any extra damage after the bell. You remember Husamar Pajarez? Yes. Yeah. We saw, I think he did a fight, Jake Shields or somebody like that. What's that loud noise all of a sudden?

That thing? Oh, great. I think when he fought Jake Shields, you know, there was some extracurricular activity. That was with Kimura, and that was in the PFL, right? Yeah, he held on to a Kimura, tapped Jake, but then held it long, and then afterwards there was a brawl inside the octagon. Yeah, and I think I had refereed the fight right before that. And, you know, it's our responsibility as a referee to know your fighter. a brawl inside the octagon but yeah and i think i'd referee the fight right before that and you

know it's our responsibility as a referee to know your fighter you gotta you know we do you what i do is i look at the entire card and i'll go back and try to look at their fights so whatever i get assigned and i don't know what i get assigned until i get there to know if anyone has any tendencies you know are they great on the stand up are they great on the ground that they have a tendency to foul because we got some guys that like to fight with their fingers extended a lot and i put that into my rules meeting of you know washed fingers just what it's going to be fingers straight to the sky or make a fist or someone has a propensity to foul a lot that may be something i'm going to watch out for now when you see something like that if you saw the arm break you would have stopped it i would have

stopped you have to look how bad it looks yeah it's so crazy how hyper extended that thing is yeah now you got some folks that are super double jointed and they will tell you ahead of time hey i'm a flexibility i'm double jointed do you remember uh hoyler gracie versus sakuraba it was that with the he got him in a kimura as well and he got his arm like way wrapped up behind his back but hoyler has crazy joint flexibility like it's really nuts like and he was like i'm fine i'm fine they stopped the fight and he was furious because his arm was like sakurabo's a catch wrestling guy you know so he's got a lot of those like old school double wrist lock techniques

that are really brutal in the joints and he's got got his arm deep up high on his back, and he's twisting it. But Hoyler was like, I'm fine. I'm not tapping. And he won't tap, which is crazy. And it depends on the level. So can we do Tough Enough, the amateur fight steer? Yeah. Yeah, if he keeps going, you can see that's only the beginning of it.

It got a lot worse. If you see Hoyler versus... No, that's the beginning of it it got a lot worse if you say Hoyler versus no that is that's the beginning of it yeah like at the amateur level somebody could be in a choke and if it's compromised we may stop the fight or if they get stuck in the arm bar or something don't demonstrate the capability right right in the amateurs yeah so this is hoist that's hoist this is a different guy hoiler is much smaller that's the problem with sakuraba sakuraba is a big guy and a hoiler is fairly small hoiler is like i mean he might be like 160 maybe you know it's different now because they're not fans in the ufc apex or you know

wherever some of these other people are doing but if it's like the T-Mobile or something, and you may hear something, you may hear a snap or someone may verbally submit. And if you stop it, man, the crowd will go crazy. They'll be ballistic. So we, you know, we count on. And one thing I've learned, so I did a UFC fight a couple years ago and I had a fighter bite somebody. I had a, you know, who was it, Mowgli, I think, Benitez.

He was fighting somebody and the guy bit him. He's trying to pull his chin up. Oh, I remember that. And I stopped and I called time and, man, the fans went ballistic. And what I learned from that is the best thing to do is to include you guys as to what happened. Lean over to you or DC or Anik or somebody and say he bit him. Or you guys may be able to hear.

But the audience doesn't hear that, though, right? That part, yeah, they don't hear that. Unless at some of the, like, PFL and other stuff like that, when they mic us up, that mic may go out to the crowd. That would be nice if it did, right? In some senses, because some stuff you don't want them to be able to hear because you could overwhelm them with, you know, referee feedback. The goal, i really don't want to say anything to them a lot during the fight i want to interact as least as possible you know you say some stuff you know some fans like oh he's in the middle of the fight he's

interacting too much but to help the tv audience the pay-per-view audience etc what i've learned i need to do is you know either say it in the microphone where you guys can hear me or to come over to the table and you know kind of tell you what's going on it would help but i think maybe you should have the ability to like press a button and broadcast to the crowd too like he just bit his opponent and have the place go you know so we're doing some different things right now you know we just started the instant replay yes which i'm a giant fan of so it's huge so that's so important they assign myself jason Herzog, Jared Villal, and Herb Dean as a committee to build that. And we took what the boxing guys had, and we developed it into MMA. And then we had kind of an approval board that we had to present it to.

So we had to present it to Big John McCarthy and Mark Ratner. And what we did is we took the platform, told them how we were going to do it, and then we actually got their blessing to be able to do it. Well, those are two very reasonable intelligent guys that have a tremendous amount of experience and then once we were done with that we took it to the ABC rules committee you know who looks at what's going to be fouls what's not going to be fouls and then we presented it to them

about two months ago everybody there you know we gave some feedback we're still trying to refine it it used to be you could use instant replay but then once you did it, the fight had to be over. It had to be for a fight-ending sequence. I could not restart the fight. It needed to progress past that.

So I can call time now. We have a dedicated instant replay officer that's sitting there at the table, and that's all he's looking at. He's only looking at potential files. He's working with the production truck. You know, the views that you guys get for instant replay and stuff, he has a capability to, you'll see, they'll put that yellow light on the catwalk of the production truck. The views that you guys get for instant replay and stuff, he has a capability to, you'll see, they'll put that yellow light on the catwalk of the octagon. That's telling me it's going to be an instant replay.

Or if you see the referee do like this, that means something just happened where I need an instant replay. I think enough people don't understand that now, what's going on with the instant replay. Because for the longest time, it stopped the fight. Even if it was an illegal move and someone was going to get a point deducted, once you institute the instant replay because for the longest time it stopped the fight even if it was an illegal move and someone was going to get a point deducted once you institute the instant replay to find for whatever strange reason the fight was automatically stopped had to stop i don't understand that why was that we don't know why but we decided we had to progress past that you know because we had a

couple fouls and the ufc fights earlier that could have constituted the fight continuing to you know make a determination was it a foul or not and then we you know you can get to the point that we find if someone is faking an injury if you find that through instant replay I was just gonna ask you about that what do you do like if a guy pretends he got kicked low and then you see in the instant replay that he got kicked in the liver so if we call timeout I want to see the instant replay if if I miss it, if I make a mistake, I got to man up. No ego, no pride or anything. But if a guy's really badly hurt with a body shot, and then you go to instant replay, you're talking about a minute, two minutes,

three minutes. He's got, you know, that feeling is gone now. Now he's been able to recover and he can actually keep fighting. You as a referee have to make a subjective call there so at the time when you call timeout if you feel that the injury warranted enough to be a tko i can't stop the fight if that time has gone by and i think the fight can't continue i have to put the fighter back in that same position you know if he's down on the ground yeah there's going to be a level of recovery there so you are going to lose something but i'm going to put the fighters back in that, you know, whatever the dominant position is. Oh, so if a fighter kicks a guy to the body and the fighter that is down said he got kicked low and you determine that he did not get kicked low, you'll make him down on the ground again?

Wherever he fell. So you've got to take that snapshot. You know, if someone's in guard and there's a foul, I call stop time. And if I need to have a doctor look at them, before I bring that doctor in, I'm going to take a snapshot of where they are. So let's say the bottom guy commits the foul. I want to put him back in that same, if it's a dominant position, at least 51% dominant position, I'm going to put him back in that.

So in that case of if someone fakes an injury, I can't get it back to that point where he's 100 hurt but i can put him back as close to i can in a dominant position now if i determine that a guy is intentionally faking an injury or something and i can't put him back in that dominant position i can fix it by saying unsportsmanlike conduct and it can be up to a point deduction or if i determine that nope he would have been done at that point get up and fight right now now i'm still recovering okay fights over tko right so it's it's a tough position yeah because you know some of them are razor thin was the knee down or was the knee not down yeah those are really thin right it's tough and you know as a referee you got to have you know

a little bit of lobster eye going on to a look at the strike i had a had a fight i don't know two or three months ago where the guy was transitioning. What a lot of fans don't understand. It's a grounded opponent. So anything other than the soles of your feet touching the ground, it could be a knee down. It could be a hand down. But what we do is the hand down has to be flat palm or flat fist.

It can't just be a finger. It can't be fingers anymore. You know, it has to be weight bearing. And the way we determine weight bearing, I can't determine weight bearing if he just has his fingers down even though there may be some bending in it so we alleviate it and we say flat palm or flat fist if that fighter is flat palm and they're transitioning coming up and you catch that person you know that if the hand is

that close man it's a tough call that's what they pay us for to be able to make that high level subjective call though and a fighter is legally allowed to lift a guy up slightly, just enough to get his hand off and then land a knee to the face. Yeah. You know, I tell them in the back, if they got him down and you got that flat palm, you can lift him back up. I think it was a Gegard Mousasi fight a couple years back. He lifted somebody up and threw the knee and said, oh, he was grounded.

He was grounded. Right. That was Chris Weidman, right? Yeah, Chris Weidman. Yeah. He was transitioning, but his hand was up when that happened. Was that your fight? No, I think they were in New Jersey or something like that.

I think so, too. The referee, you know, we got some great referees. You think about in Vegas, Herb Dean, Jason Herzog, Keith Peterson, Mark Goddard, Dan Migliotta. Oh, yeah, man. That's the best. We all work together. Yeah.

We got some great guys there. You know, it's teamwork because the fans don't see it they may see us potentially make a mistake oh that guy's idiot he's this and that man we get out of the ring out of the cage we all talk to each other i'll go over to herb i'll go over to goddard say you know what do you think about this and it's really an education process for us to get better because again the last thing you want to do is affect the outcome of a fight and we know what this means to you what it means to dana and everybody else me as a referee go back to that i want bruce to call my name at the beginning of the fight and never have

to say anything again yeah herb is such an open-minded guy too like he's come up to us before in like after a stoppage and come up and go what do you what do you think about that like he'll ask questions you know and i almost always agree with him i mean it has to be that way yeah there's there's no you know we got to be consummate professionals but there's no pride and ego the worst feeling in the world is as a referee to know that you just made a mistake in front of however many millions of people that just watched that pay-per-view yeah i mean listen if you do enough fights you're gonna make a mistake there's no way around it it's just being a human being but the job is so tough i mean it's it's so difficult and you know kudos to you for never getting your name mentioned other than don't jinx me no we got

fights on saturday let's knock on wood yeah we do we do. Are you doing those? I'm very fortunate. It's Alistair Overeem and Volkov, right? Yeah, I don't know which fights I got, but I've been assigned to all the fights for the rest of this month. Do you find out when you get there, what fights you're assigned? The only ones you know ahead of time is if it's a big title fight. When the athletic commission gets together, they will give a selection of potential referees for the title fight. And each camp has an opportunity to object or oppose, object or oppose, you know, anyone that's going to be one of those choices. So your name for the title fight for the referee and the judges

may come out ahead of time. Otherwise, when we get there, we have a pre-meeting where we talk about, you know, anything that we learned from the last show. And Jeff Mullen, who's, you know, our lead there in Nevada, he hands out our assignments with our executive director, Bob Bennett. They make the assignments, and you go in there and do your thing. We do our pre-fight meeting before the fighters come out to the octagon and talk about any potential issues. We've been very lucky having the facilities there at the Apex. We can have the closed environment be in a bubble. We used to have the fans there for the Tuesday night fights, and hopefully we get back to that eventually.

But, man, what a great venue to have those fights in. You know, there's something about the venue with no audience that's really special, though. It's weird. So I did the Travis Brown-Andrej Lovski fight. Oh, my God. That was the most fun fight I've ever had in my life. That was a wild fight, man. You know what scared me in that fight?

What? It was, I mean, you remember, it was so loud in that arena. I can hear the coaches coaching back and forth. I can hear you guys at the table talking. But if I can't hear that, that tells me I'm not going to hear the horn or the bell. I was so worried because, man, these guys are slugfest back and forth. I go, I was so much into it, I didn't have track of how much time was left. So I go, that horn is going to go off and I'm not going to be able to hear it.

Oh, right. But the great thing right now is, A, you can hear the horn, you know, with no fans in there. But it is so incredible because we can hear you guys with all your commentating and you can hear the coaches and then you can hear the fighters talking back and forth to their coaches. They can hear all the specific instruction. And as you know, this whole season, you know, back from like March or April, whenever we started, man, we got some hungry fighters in there that, you know, with the teamwork with the coaches and stuff, that closed environment, you could hear the punches and the kicks, you know, a little bit harder. It's pretty wild. The impact. And it's just a great venue to

be in. Well, the first one I did without any audience was Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson, which was in Florida, which was just wild just to be there and to see a fight with no audience yeah i mean you you really feel first of all you feel very fortunate because there's so few people that are going to get to be there live but also there's a dynamic to the fight it's there's a purity to it where there's no audience and you're just seeing the competitive drive of these fighters just that the two fighters and you're hearing them breathe you drive of these fighters. Just the two fighters in there doing it. You're hearing them breathe. You hear the footsteps. You hear the impact of shins.

You hear everything. You hear every punch. You know, the fans get to hear things they normally wouldn't hear. Like, you know, I had the fighter that kind of quit on the stool a couple months back. And the fans, with the microphone that we have on, they get the chance to hear me actually talking to the fighter. I went over to him and said, hey, do you want to continue to fight? And he had the interaction back and forth with his corner a couple times.

In the normal, in like the T-Mobile, which is a phenomenal arena, I may not be able to hear that because you've got 20-some thousand fans in there. Right, right. But as I go back to the corner, I can hear everything that the coaches are saying. And if a fighter is given an indication that they no longer want to continue now i can put that back into my equation on how the fight's going to go my interaction with the doctor etc and that occasion i heard him going back and forth with his coach you know i don't want to fight i don't want to continue and the coach is trying to encourage him yeah and a lot of people got on drysdale for that but you know at

the end drysdale said you know he's done He's going to encourage his guy in the corner. As much as he can. As much as he can to try and get it right. When that 10-second clap went off, it's my determination now, unless the corner they throw in the towel early, make that determination. With my doctor two feet away from me, I go over, I look at him physically,

try to get a mental assessment, ask him one question, do you want to continue to fight? He says no. Fight's done. You know, I go back to Nigel Benn versus Gerald McClellan, which was a tragic boxing fight where Gerald McClellan was one of the best fighters on the planet Earth and just a destroyer. And he knocked Nigel Benn out of the ring in the first round, just had him badly, badly hurt. But Nigel Benn was a warrior and survived.

And then later on in the fight, Jerram McClellan gets hurt, takes a knee, and winds up stopping. And people were going crazy. They were booing. They were pissed at him. Commentators were upset that he was quitting. And then it turns out the guy collapses in the ring and winds up having bleeding on the brain he's never been the same again jaron mcclellan is uh he's you know he's basically i believe he's blind he's partially deaf he can't walk correctly i mean it was a severe injury but at the moment people were criticizing him for quitting yeah the fighter knows how

fucked up they are you gotta imagine the the kind of courage that it takes to get into that octagon if they're in a world-class environment like the ufc they're bad motherfuckers i agree and they know they know when something's wrong and sometimes you just gotta live to fight another day yeah and you know you count on having a great corner it's a whole it's a team concept yes you know so the preparation you know the matchmakers matching somebody up with a good fight having a proper preparation training it started to be able to get to that point but i mean you know this the first time i've done hundreds of fights the first time i stepped inside of an octagon it's like man, man, this is surreal. And I'm just, I'm refereeing it.

Can you imagine? What was your first fight in the UFC? It was actually Robert Drysdale. Really? Yeah, I did. My first fight was a Robert Drysdale fight. He wound up winning. Who was he fighting?

I don't remember who he fought against. He only fought a couple times in the UFC, right? Yeah, I think there were some issues that happened after that. But it was that card that I did my first fight. With the bomba. So my first big fight was at UFC 200. Whoa. I was the first referee to go in and step on that yellow floor.

Oh, no. And I think that was, let's see, so that night, I can't remember who I did that fight, but. Was that the Brock Lesnar-Frank Mir rematch? No, I think that was the Lesnar hunt. Oh, that's right. Why did I think-Frank Mir rematch? No, I think that was the Lesnar-Hunt. Oh, that's right. Why did I think it was a rematch? That's so much earlier. Yeah, so you stepping there, for me it was preparation ahead of time.

And what helped me out is Big John pulled me off to the side. And he said some crazy stuff to you to prepare you he said one thing to me when you get in there he said mark don't fuck it up i was like yes sir i won't and you know that it that may seem very harsh to say that but it's a simple thing of hey we prepared you you prepared to get to this point going in and do your thing also he's kind of fucking around too yeah it's to loosen you up a little bit now when we got to that my first pay-per-view fight

was Travis Brown and Arlovsky so here I am with these two giants that's your first oh my god that was my first pay-per-view that's so crazy that was your first pay-per-view fight he pulled me to the side

and I didn't know it ahead of time but when I got there he said hey we're going to step it up a little bit tonight. This is what you're going to do. And I know you knew it, the production team knew it, but a lot of people didn't know about Arlovsky's injury prior to that fight. Remember, he had the potentially torn calf muscle.

So here we are in the back with the athletic commission. They weren't even sure if he was going to fight. They weren't sure. So we had to take him through a series of medical tests in the back. Mr. Ratner was back there. The athletic commission was back there, a couple of medical tests in the back. Mr. Ratner was back there. The athletic commission was back there. A couple of the doctors from the UFC. And they were like, Mark, if he

demonstrates that he tears that muscle even more, if he's hurt, you gotta stop the fight. So can you imagine in that Orlovsky fight with Travis Brown, if I see that calf muscle tear, I have to step in the middle of that fight and stop it. I'm like, i'm nervous like

that was one of the best one round heavyweight fights of all time it was of all time it was so wild that was a fight that was fought at such a pace that you knew this fight could not go the distance and they had a history together training at jackson's and arlovsky had incredible confidence coming into this fight because look in training he had gotten the best of Travis. That was the word. And so he kind of big-brothered him. And it seemed like Travis kind of knew that too because when Travis was really in his prime,

Travis was one of the most athletic heavyweights I think I've ever seen. I mean, he kind of changed his style at one point, and he started fighting more flat-footed and slugging. But when he knocked out Semmy Schilt with, like, a Superman punch, I was like, that guy is the dark horse of the heavyweight division because he's a huge heavyweight, but he would move really light on his feet. You can see his legs are gone right here. And, you know, remember, he has him up against the fence here,

and I step in and I say, Travis, fight back. And I need to see something. And then he caught Oloski and rocked him and dropped him. And you see me start to step in. You know, because you think about previous fights from the guys, like when Oloski fought Fedor. You know, was it that kind of shot? But he was able to get right back.

But I can tell that. Ooh, these guys. He caught him with a back fist there and hurt him. We thought the fight was almost over and why in the middle of all this slugging travis catches him and drops him yeah it's coming up right here i just told him to fight back and he's gonna catch him this fight was so crazy right there oh my god i mean he literally spun his head around and it looked like it was over and you got to remember, Travis came back against Alistair Overeem, right?

I mean, Alistair Overeem had him battered. Alistair Overeem had him up against the cage in deep, deep, deep trouble. Hit him with some nasty body shots. Really had him fucked up. And Travis weathered the storm and came back and KO'd Overeem. It's about right here that I'm thinking the fight's over because he's going to miss him with the punch and he's right there and he staggers so much that

I'm already at the mind frame that this fight's going to be over. And then he catches him here and then he turns away without any intelligence. Now see, that's the kind of... Perfect. The fans may get mad at you for stopping it standing, but everybody knows. He folded. When you see his body cave in like that

like his his body was barely conscious let's see it again like when he hit him with the uppercut like right there in the right hand like he's he's done he covered up i mean it was a good stoppage you saved him in a way and my goal is to never get hit by some 260 pound heavyweight you gotta worry about that right you know you try to step in. It's always protect the fighter, fighter safety. Yeah. But I will step in. So guys get on me because I yell, stop, stop, stop. There is no confusion if the referee is yelling, stop, stop, stop.

But I also step in definitively to protect myself and the fighter. And then sometimes you may have to aggressively push someone off. Have you been hit with a straight punch before? I've been hit behind the ear before from a heavyweight. I went in to stop it right as he's throwing a fight and he hit me. Now I was lucky I saw it coming and I turned away because can you imagine me as a UFC referee getting knocked out of there by getting hit? I turned my head away from it and I was able to soak up most of the punch. Who was it? It was actually an amateur fight, a guy named Chucky Williams. You know, great fighter, a lot lot of power i went in to stop his fight and he's throwing a punch right as he's doing it and he caught me and what i tell the guys

if if you know the fighter is done show some professionalism you don't have to sit there and keep punching and you know fighting to the referee tells you to stop but if you can tell that a fighter is out right if someone's unconscious you know do the do the walk off and make sure they're done yeah that's a weird one right like you's unconscious, you know, do the, do the walk off and make sure they're done. Yeah. That's a weird one, right? Like you're not like you're taught to keep fighting until the referee pulls you off.

But when you see guys get KO'd and they're out cold and the guy jumps on them and pounds them a couple more times, that's unfortunate. Like the, was it the chaos Williams fight? Yes. Yeah. I was like,

whoever catches first year is going to win this. Yeah. He catches them and he goes down. And he's going in to finish the fight. And I dive in and stop it. That kind of stuff you have to do. It's fighter safety. You've got to protect the guy that's been there.

And he was out before he even hit the ground. Yes. Yeah, Chaos has got some serious power. And he fights like a fucking demon, man. There's a few of these guys coming up right now that are just so talented. They're hungry. Yes. Well, they've realized. They see these, you know, the Conor McGregors, the style benders.

They see these guys that are becoming these gigantic superstars, the Dustin Poiriers. And they realize, like, wow, like, you know, fortune favors the brave. Like, you've got to go in there guns blazing. We see it with the Tuesday night fights and then also the Saturday venue there at the Apex. Some people may not realize the impact of what the UFC did in the middle of this pandemic. Bellator did it in their bubble as well, but UFC kind of led the sports world for everybody. Folks are getting burned out on social media, and it's like, what else do we do? And they're not sitting on the couch doing their thing.

That gave an outlet, not just for us as officials, but athletes and teams and everybody, of something exciting to be able to watch. You know how passionate Dana is about it, and we all kind of follow that lead. So we as officials, whatever commission you're working for, we're very fortunate that he's given us the opportunities to do that. Well, listen, as fans, we're all very fortunate because the UFC led the way for the return of live sports they really did i mean dana stuck his neck out there and led the way for the return of live sports and they did it in as

safe a way as possible and when we're talking about the athletes there was a lot of crazy hyperbole like you're risking their lives like listen man those guys are not dying from coronavirus maybe we thought maybe they were risking their lives at the beginning of the pandemic because we didn't really know what the virus was but now the argument that they're risking their lives now is preposterous you're not gonna kill elite athletes with this virus they may not know the safety protocols that we go through you know no you know the testing you know you test and you go in a bubble and you isolate and also they're alerting the fight the fighters about vitamin supplementation, how to strengthen your immune system and how to check.

And if they're paying attention, they're monitoring their resting heart rate. Or, you know, if you wear something like a whoop strap, it'll show where your cardiovascular, like how your body is recovering for things. And it can actually give you indications that you might be suffering from this virus. Exactly. You know, like for me, it's preparation. You know, so one, we study fights and get all the understanding in there, but proper nutrition, you know, rest and recovery. You know, I go through a routine every single time before we do a fight to get myself ready for it.

And I do that religiously to get ready for it. What's your routine? So one, we do our zoom training. Um, and that's all the top officials in the world. You know, Herb gets on there, Jason, Sal D'Amato, Chris Lee, you know, Derek Cleary with the athletic commissions. We do our training and we go over fights and we watched him. And then his phone calls back and forth of, you know, Hey, Hey Herzog, what'd you think about this fight the other day? Give me feedback. And then what we're doing there in Vegas is we go into the bubble. So we go to our hotel facility.

They test us, and you go into isolation. And you have to stay in the hotel, right? You got to stay in the hotel. That's annoying. So you got to bring all your food and stuff like that and prep for it. And I've kind of gotten used to it. And to prep us to be able to do that, you have to do it. They may look at some rapid testing and stuff,

but for right now, this is the way we do it. How long do you stay in the hotel hotel? It depends. Some people get there the night prior on Friday. And then, you know, we go to the arena like at one o'clock or two o'clock or like since I live there local, I'll go over Saturday morning at seven o'clock test and isolate and then go to the... What do you bring like a Yeti cooler with you or something? I bring a food bag. And, you know, I do my meal prep at home. So I do all my stuff there. Like I work with, you know, some folks like the Honest Plant Company, and they give me protein supplement and immune booster.

You know, I've heard you talk about the vitamin C, the vitamin D, the zinc, and then I take one of their immune boosters, and that helps me out. So like for me, I had my thyroid removed a couple years ago, so, you know, proper nutrition. Did you have cancer? No, it was I had hypothyroidism. I have that. Yeah, and then what happened for me is my neck started to get bigger and my thyroid actually died. Yeah.

It was like nine and a half centimeters. And we decided to have a surgery to take it out. Oh, Jesus. The crazy thing about that is when I had the surgery, the anesthesiologist made a little mistake. And I wasn't completely anesthetized yet when they put the intubation tube in and I hit my vocal cords. So you go back to that Orlovsky and Travis Brown fight. I took a little hiatus right after that because when they hit my vocal cords, I couldn't talk for about six months. So they, he damaged my left vocal cord and then he stretched my right vocal cord. You know, your vocal cords essentially touch together to make the tones.

I couldn't talk for about six months. So here I am, an airline pilot and a UFC referee, and I got to be able to talk. Or, you know, MMA referee, got to be able to talk for both of them. As a single dad, primary income for my kids, I was like, what do I do? I can't talk. So I had to go through voice and speech therapy, and I eventually got all that back.

For six months? It was about six months it took my voice to get back. Did they give you any kind of medication or something to help heal the vocal cords? There wasn't really anything they could do. I would do the voice therapy. I would go to a speech therapist, and she'd do stuff like she'd have me go over certain tones to be able to get it back and never raise my voice. They don't even want you to whisper because I guess the whispering would still have you know effects on the vocal cords being able to heal oh my god and my voice has changed a little bit now

because i'm still not back to 100 recovery but going how long ago was this this was uh shoot 2015 you you're not 100 recovered my voice will never be the same sounds good i appreciate that i mean this is your voice from now that, that's a good voice. Right? You can't be hating it. No, I'm very fortunate that I got it. How is it not recovered, though? In what way? So my voice is a little bit scratchier.

Oh, it just sounds different. Yeah. But you can talk no problem. I can talk no problem. The only place I notice it, if I do a lot of fights where I have to yell a lot, at the end of the my throat can be sore and I you know sound like I lose my voice just a little bit oh okay so in that preparation thing um I take caution to all of that so I bring my food bag with all my supplements and stuff uh I do a lot of do you know who Norm Turner is no I don't know Turner he's a strength and conditioning coach at Syndicate he's worked

with you know Gina Carano okay I've trained at Syndicate before John John Woods John Wood you know he works with a lot of fighters there. A lot of good fighters there. Vinny Magalish. So he's my strength and conditioning coach. He helps me do all that stuff. And in the hotel, I do a lot of prepping, stretching and other stuff. But I got to tell you, the one thing that religiously,

whether I'm doing it with the UFC or whether I'm doing my flying, I got into Tim Tammy. Oh. That thing is incredible. I was in the gym one day and it just so happens i got a gift for you what is this that is one of their products that's their portable that's a pocket massager pocket one so joe i gotta tell you change the name of that i know you know it's people but i got into tim tam i was in the gym

one day and i was you know lower back soreness and some other stuff. And I saw this guy. He's doing this massager thing. I go, what is that? He goes, man, it's my Tem Tam. I go, let me try that. And he said, take it home for a couple days. And then I didn't realize how magical that thing was as far as, you know, pressure points and, you know, active release and stuff like that.

So I take that thing with me whenever I go fly a trip for the airlines or when i do that preparation for the u.s because it's small well you know they got the traditional ones that have the heated tips and the pressure points and stuff like that that is part of my everyday routine and i absolutely love it um so i do that and then i sit there and i will call up i got usc fight pass you know i got some of the other stuff i will sit there and watch fights if i know I got UFC Fight Pass. I got some of the other stuff. I will sit there and watch fights. If I know it's someone that's going to be on the card, I will sit there and I will shut my phone off. I'll put it on do not disturb. And I'll get myself in the mind frame of, okay, this is serious business.

The world is watching us right now. Again, go back to that philosophy of I don't want to have any negative impact on the fight. And I'll sit there and I'll watch fights. And then, you know, I'll make sure my body is all warmed up and stretched, ready to go. And we'll go over to the arena. As soon as we step in that door, it's game time. You really do have to be warmed up, right? Because you got to sprint sometimes.

People don't realize the lateral movement back and forth. I am sore when I'm done with the fight. Oh, I imagine. The side-to-side movement. And if you have to step in and pull somebody off, you know, it can be, you know, exerting on the body. So I lift weights and do other preparation and stuff like that. And just the mental fatigue from, you know, you go back to that last card with the three big fights that I had.

All huge fights. Every fight is important, whether it's the first fight on the card or whether it's the 12th fight on the card. But when you have a night like that, just a mental preparation and a letdown when you get done with that, you know, you realize it's a little bit fatiguing, tough on the body, et cetera. So, man, there's so many elements that you got to come into to be ready for that. Do you train by, do you do side-to-side movements in training? Like, do you run sideways or anything like that? So, when you see me warming up, you know, I learned a lesson.

I watch Bruce Buffer warm up. You know, and how, what an incredible person. I watch him warm up. Nobody gets the fights more pumped up than that guy.er warm up. You know, and how, what an incredible person. I watch him warm up. Nobody gets the fights more pumped up than that guy. Pumped up. But I said, I'm in great shape. I can go in there and do this. And I realize I'm not doing this good enough.

So I watch Bruce warm up, and I had to come up with a routine, you know, to make sure I'm prepared. So I go in the back, you know, behind the curtains and stuff, and I'll do some forward-backward sprints. I'll do a lot of side-to-side movement. You know, I'll stretch hamstrings, quads, and stuff like that. You don't want a referee going in and popping a hamstring or something in the middle of a fight. He blew his ACL out in a fight. Yeah, I remember that. We've had some referees that have gotten hurt before during fights, and it affects the rest of the

fight. What do you do? You call timeout, and you bring in another referee, or what exactly do you do? That's a good question. What do you do so what do you do if someone accidentally gets KO'd I saw a referee get punched accidentally in the nose before and he was you know he's leaking from the nose and he wasn't able to call timeout so one of us ran up and said stop timeout and then the doctor's going to give attention you got to make determination is is he or she good enough to continue the fight he puts some you know stitch or one of those guys you know they do their thing cut guy went in there put some stuff in his nose doctor made a determination he was able to continue the fight for the fighter i imagine like that sort of momentum stopping for something outside of the actual fight itself it's

got to be very annoying i i have never seen knock on wood a ufc fight or bellator fight or anything like that have to be stopped because of that you see all the stuff on youtube and everything if a referee gets hurt most of the fighters you're going to hope at this level they're professional enough they're going to stop it's pretty rare yeah it's pretty you're going to let them come in and get the proper medical attention but we don't want that to happen but i would imagine like so flyweights or something like that like man you got to be be in shape. I call it getting on my bicycle. Some of the Benavidez, guys like that that are hustling, moving around the whole time, man, you've got to. And folks don't know it, but we're in a slightly smaller octagon inside the apex right now.

So there's not a lot of room to run. You've got to get away from those dudes. You've got to stay away from them. And last thing you want to do is get pent in a corner and have the fight come into you so we try to maintain that you know 90 degrees off where the fight is directly on your left and right and keep a constant movement with them you're looking for eye pokes and groin shots and stuff like that but you you sit there and watch us you know we're usually sweating by the end of the fight because oh yeah for sure i mean you have to be in great shape to referee a fight especially with small guys that move a lot.

And I try to, you know, so in addition to the strength and conditioning stuff, you know, I've done some classroom stuff like, you know, people talk about what they do during the pandemic. I was actually crazy enough. I went back to grad school during the pandemic and I got master's number three and I went and got a master's in exercise, wellness, fitness and nutrition. and got a master's in exercise, wellness, fitness, and nutrition. And that helps me understand, you know, do I really know how to meal prep? Do I really know what proper proteins and supplements and stuff to put in my body? So I wanted to learn that side of it. And then I'm planning on taking that back to share it with the other officials that work with us and doing some corporate wellness and fitness too. So I got grand plans and stuff that's coming out there.

Well, that's cool. That's cool. I would think that, like, it would benefit you to, like, get to a field and just do some sideways running, you know, just do some sideways, that kind of stuff. I do. Like, you know, the octagon surface is one thing to be able to do it. But, like, what I do for preparation back, I do a lot of side-to-side movement to the left and back to the right

and then shuffling back and shuffling forward to try to mimic the actual movements that I'm going to do inside the octagon. You know, I got to be able to practice with the application I'm going to use it for. So I try to put myself in that scenario. Where we stand, you know, when guys are fighting, what am I looking at when they go to the ground and certain submissions come up? What position am I going to be able to go into look at the pressure point to be able to hear and see, you know what the fighter is saying. So it's a lot that goes into it it's a lot of preparation and

getting ready for it is there a fight that stands out for you as like the most difficult fight you ever had a referee um I would say that Travis Brown and Orlovsky because of knowing of Orlovsky's injury ahead of time the impact of that the number of fans that were there, how loud it got. And first pay-per-view. First pay-per-view. The expectations of my two mentors, John McCarthy and Herb Dean. But, you know, one, it takes a great message like that from a mentor. Don't fuck it up.

You know how John's personality is. He's a great teacher, but there's no one more knowledgeable about the sport yeah than him but knowing that you got the trust because you know the the athletic commissions are going to talk to the senior referees as to where to start to put people and to make it to a ufc slash bellator level of fight you got to be really hopefully a good judge a good referee or a great judge great referee because of the impact that it could have. And then to have that on a pay-per-view, to have the expectations of the Athletic Commission and Dana and the rest of the UFC staff there,

because the last thing you want is to have a fight get messed up and catch the criticism of the promotion, the fans, fellow referees, et cetera. And then because of how loud it got in there. But what I try to do is I try to say, regardless of it's, you know, amateur fighter, AB, professional fighter, fighting for a title, contender, et cetera. Once that door closes, I try to treat everybody the same. My routine is the same. How I talk to the fighters, how I treat them is the same, but man, just going in and have a good time. I may smile a little bit every now and when I'm in there, cause I'm like, man, this is an incredible fight. Now you box, but have you trained in any ground fighting?

You've done any jujitsu or anything? I do. So we have to be careful how we do that. Do you want to go train with someone who can potentially do their fight? So there is a fine line between how you do that. But I've had the best of both worlds. When I started there at JSEC, you had John Lewis and stuff. And then when I went back to D.C., I belonged to Lloyd Irvin's school.

Another great school. Lloyd Irvin, he teaches you. You know, my first interaction, he'd come in and spar with us. You know, I had 230 pounds, and he slammed me down to the ground. But just the amount of learning. Well, that doesn't seem fair. I didn't let it happen again, though. I'm not sparring with you again.

But, you know, you get the best stuff there. When I came back to Vegas, you know, I go to a couple of different gyms there and trying to keep that balance of professionalism with training with the guys. I go to Couture's and I go to Syndicate. And then, you know, I was at one point there, we had Vinny and Fredson and Mike Powell, all those guys in the same gym. Now, I train for application. A lot of people train to get the belts or to go do a tournament and stuff like that.

That's not where my focus is. One, because I don't have the time. I train to learn how I can apply that back to me refereeing, knowing the details of a specific submission or hold or something like that. And at what level? Amateurs, am I going to stop it when the guy's in a good choke and he can't get out of it? Versus at the next level, knowing how somebody's going to transition from one position to the other that's where my focus is going to be there's a benefit to a guy like lloyd irvin throwing you

around though and that is that just you recognize the levels yes because sometimes people get a very distorted sense of what they could physically do to a large black belt you you get the you know the guy sitting at home eating wings with a beer in his hands. And you hear it at the T-Mobile. I could get in there and kick his ass. And they don't realize the level of professionalism and proficiency

some of these fighters have. To watch a Vinny Magalhaes do a stand-up fight and then transition to the ground, you're like, man, you're about to see something incredible. His ground game is insane. I've never trained with Vinny, but he's one of the best in the world. And his ground game is just preposterous. And then, you know, the, you know, your fighters across the roster in the UFC, they may think someone is a standup expert and they go to the ground and you see something

amazing right there. So that's why us as referees, you got to be proficient at it. You get, you know, you got to have an understanding of how that's going to apply and really our judges as well you know the judges are like they think they just sit there and score the fight but our judge has to be able to determine is that more of a position or is that a scoring type right you have to understand what's going on you have to understand so that's where our training comes into play and we talk about stuff like that what is a judge i will not name but he told me that he was in the middle of a fight once judging a fight and one of the other judges asked him what the person was doing oh god the person was it was something simple too like an americana and the person was

like what is he doing you won't get that doing you know you got the derrick cleary's's all these guys this is back in the day this is you know we're talking about more than 10 years ago but it was it was weird back then because you had a lot of people that were refereeing fights that didn't really even understand what they were or excuse me judging fights they really didn't understand what they were judging they didn't understand what they were looking at and you know we you see that criticism out there you you know, these judges in this jurisdiction are boxing judges and stuff like that. Now, you've got folks that have been doing this for, you know, 15, 20 years. They may not be proficient on the ground themselves, but they have an understanding of it. You know, some of the judges may be in whatever, you know, their 60s.

The issue is when you go to some smaller commissions that don't have the kind of experience obviously Nevada and California are the top of the heap but there's places we've gone to where you've seen judging that you're like well this is just insanity like this this is not a person that really understands what they're talking about it's really incumbent upon every referee and judge that wants to get into the game like Like I had somebody call me yesterday, a former fighter at Fortis MMA, you know, great guys down there, incredible team. Great gym, great gym. That wants to transition into refereeing,

and we talk about how to start it from step one. Knowing which one you want to do. Do you want to referee or judge? Got to understand the unified rules of MMA. Yeah. You got to get proficient at it. You got to start from the bottom. You know, go find an amateur organization.

Sit there and watch and start a shadow program with them. So we do that now. I don't know if you knew or not, but Jake Ellenberger is making a transition over to officiating. Frank Trigg did it a couple years ago. Is Jake going to referee or is he going to judge? I think he's going to look at

judging. Like when we do our training tomorrow, I started a process with the training with him, so he's going to look at judging and you know like we do our training tomorrow um you know i started a process you know with the training with him so he's going to participate with us from tomorrow but being a consummate professional he understands where he has to start so we need amateur fights to come back we need to be in a position where we can do amateur fights because that's really where they got to start no one is ready from day one to step in the seat and do a ufc so that's a thing now with the pandemic that makes it difficult, correct? It's tough because we can't do in-person training. So what I would do before the pandemic is I would go to these gyms.

It's like how I got started in this. So in Vegas, you know, you've got a lot of gyms. I'd go in the Syndicate on a Saturday, or I'd go in the Coutures when they're doing their sparring. And I'd get in there. That's how I keep my proficiency. I'd go in there when they're sparring. You know, you got in Ghanou into Couture's when they're doing their sparring. And I'd get in there. That's how I keep my proficiency. I'd go in there when they're sparring. You know, you got Nganou at Couture's.

Yikes. He does his, you know, sparring with big country. I get in Randy's octagon with him and practice refereeing. I mean, can you imagine just a Saturday casual sparring? Well, I guess no casual sparring with those two. You got Nganou and Roy Nelson sparring against each each other i couldn't get any better proficiency than that and i treated just like a fight i treated as a professional there's no bsing with them on the side because who knows i could get one of their fights one day right but what i started doing is a you got to get the

permission of the commissions i bring one or two judges in with me while they're doing their rounds for sparring and i say go sit as you're an A or B judge, come out and I want you to score. It's a little bit different because they're not going in a hundred percent. Of course. You know, some of the places go at 50%, 75%, but they're still getting hands-on proficiency. When you got two high level guys like that that are doing it, you may see some things that you may not get at a lower level, but it's upon each person. The commission is not going to force you to go do this training. They're not going to make you take Herb's course or John's course,

like I teach as well. They're going to encourage you to do it. And if you want to get the top-level assignments, you want to get these opportunities, you've got to show proficiency. You've got to be consistent. Like our executive director in Nevada, Bob Bennett and Jeff Mullen, they're going to make the selections for the top referees and judges in the world.

They're going to get those opportunities. Yeah, those are great guys, and it's a welcome change from the past administration. Now, when you're talking about fighters, you can't really get close to these guys, huh? That's kind of a tricky situation for you. It is. If you train with these guys and you're friendly with these guys, do you excuse yourself from a fight? Or do you just keep it professional with everybody?

You try to keep it professional with everybody. That's kind of annoying, though. What if someone's cool and you want to be their friend? It is. You know, and like I will tell you, Mike Powell is one of my best friends. Oh, I love Mike Powell. Mike's an awesome guy, and we've been friends for a while. I have a fight.

I can pick up the phone afterwards and get honest feedback from him. It's a little bit easier right now that Mike's not fighting, and I can get that kind of feedback. Is he training guys now? What is he doing? Yeah, I think he's out at Syndicate. He's doing some of the movie things. Still rocking the mullet?

Off and on. I think it depends on what day of the week it is. He's such a skillful guy. He is. Just such a really intelligent, well-rounded game when he was fighting, like just a consummate professional. And, you know, for me, so like when I started at JSEC Fight Capital back in the day, he was in there with Randy and Marvin Eastman and all those guys. So, you know, I've taken this transition with him the entire time. It would be really tough for me to go in there and do a Mike Powell fight.

So what I do is like, you know, two primary commissions, Nevada and California, I'll call them ahead of time and say, you know, hey, Mr. Foster, I've trained with Mike Powell before I did this kind of training with him. And I'll leave it at that. And that's something that Herb and Big John taught me back in the day, present it to the commission and tell them and let them make determination. Yeah, that guy, Andy Foster is one of my favorites. He's really so ahead of a lot of other commissions. They're so proactive in implementing more weight classes and weight cutting and a lot of the things that they do I'm a big fan of. There are a lot of great commissions around the world,

but you can't get any better than California and Nevada. No, you can't. For me to have the opportunity to be licensed in both, I'm very fortunate. Do you have any championship fights under your belt? So I've done some. I have not done a UFC title fight yet. I did some in PFL and some of the other organizations. What did you call in PFL?

Which title fight? I don't remember. I've done like 1,500 fights. I can't tell you the name of the fight that I did last time. Yeah, so you lose track of that. And because I try to treat every fight as the same, it's a level of confidence. So the UFC has to have confidence in who they're going to put in the main event. And it's not a matter of we're not confident in Mark Smith,

but the household names of Herb Dean, John McCarthy, Mark Goddard. Well, John's now stepped aside. Yeah, John's stepped aside. Mark Goddard, Well, John's now stepped aside. Yeah, John stepped aside. So you got Mark Goddard, Dan Mergliata. Those guys, Mark Goddard and Herb Dean, are going to be the top tier guys. Yeah, guys are getting more and more of a name the more big fights that they get. But yeah, those guys get the championship fights. And it's about proficiency.

I think John Morgan and MMA Junkie guys did the article a couple months ago, and they talked about the numbers of fights of the year for 2020. And I think Herb was at the top. And then, like, he had 80-some fights, and Jason had 60 fights. I didn't realize I had 57 fights. Wow. And then within those, the confidence in the commission and obviously the promotion of which fights that they give you.

So I think Jeff Mullen showed a lot of confidence in me with that last card to Cub Swanson, Kevin Holland, and then the, you know, Olivera Tony Ferguson fight that's showing confidence. Yes. And it's about working your way up. Yeah. You know, you it's, even if it's a title fight and you're like, I've done this a thousand times before you got to be mentally prepared for it. There's something to be said about, you know, the, the Blockovich and Adesanya fight coming up.

You got to be mentally and physically prepared for that one. That one, you got to be really really that card has three title fights on it yeah that's a crazy is that going to be on fight island no the i think the next like eight to ten weeks are projected to be in vegas oh jesus louises yeah so that fight you got those two you got amanda nunez fighting and then you got the uh and that is that's march correct yeah march what do we know i don't remember the exact date. I usually look at the UFC fight or Sherdog or one of those. Stylebender, he's special.

March 6th. March 6th. Stylebender, he's something. When you see how he picked apart Paulo Costa, that's a special athlete. Because Paulo Costa literally wrecked everyone they put in front of him. Yeah, I did Paulo's fight against uh uri hall and then you know two great fighters you know that came down to yeah that last round we caught him with the body shot and hurt him yeah but you know folks don't understand you know i'm six one i walk around like 220 you get in there with these giants and even if

these guys weigh less than me just you know. They weigh less than you for about five minutes. Paulo Costa, he makes 185 by the skin of his teeth. This is the big one, baby. This is the big one. My God, I'm excited about this fight. That's going to be a great fight. That whole card. And, you know, kudos to the, you know, Sean Shelby and the matchmakers over at UFC.

This entire season, there have been some great fights the entire time. I mean, look at that. And Aljo versus Piotr Jan is a crazy fight. That's going to be wild. That is a wild fight right there. Amanda Nunes is in a tough position, you know, right? Because she's a two-division champion. And there's not much competition for her at 145. And, you know, Megan Anderson is long and tall tall and she's got very good strikes but

you know Holly Holm kind of exposed her on the ground I'm sure she's gotten much better than that but there's no like compelling like this is the fight for her you know she's just so terrifying I'm just so dominant I'm excited that you know we took a little break I think I December 19th was our last fight there in Vegas and we had the holidays and then they did the three fights fights over fight island but now they're coming back man oh my god yeah 10 weeks coming up with and that's you know in addition to doing the tuesday night fights and we're gonna do the ultimate fighter again so well there's so many ufc cards yeah if you're a ufc fan is the best sport to follow because first of all there's no season it goes all year round. Oh, my goodness, Woodley.

Oh, Usman and Burns is the fight. That is the fight right there. And I'm excited to see. You know, these guys trained together. Yeah. So they're both training down in South Florida under Henry Hooft, and now Usman has moved to Trevor Whitman,man and he's training with justin gaethje yep you look at the you know the number of top tier fights that we got coming up you know i think they said a number of champions that we have like 70 of them are

going to be in title fights coming up in the next couple months so yeah and you know both guys dominated tyron woodley which is uh crazy to think about that Tyron Woodley was literally at the top of the heap destroying everybody. And then two guys come along and dominate him back to back. And those two guys are now fighting for the title. And both guys can do everything. I mean, both Usman and when you look at Gilbert Burns, you're talking about a guy who's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, like top of the food chain grappling game. And all, you know, like learned how to strike while he was fighting. Like started training in MMA and didn't know how to strike.

Now is one of the scariest strikers in the sport. He dominated that fight with striking. Dropped Woodley in the first round, which is crazy. But you would thought if anybody has an advantage in the striking, it's going to be Woodley. I mean, so well-rounded, both of those guys. And Usman is just such a destroyer. And you find out that Usman fought Jorge Masvidal with a shattered nose.

That's right. Which is crazy. Yeah, that just came out recently, didn't it? He just announced that. That guy's mind is a steel vault. It really is. And I think fans don't understand. You know, you see, we see the fighters afterwards with the physical impact that it has on them.

You know, the fans have their favorites and they watch and they want this and that to happen. They don't understand the physical impact on the fighters, you know, during the fight and after the fight. Well, that's why, you know, a guy like, bring up a guy like Tyron Woodley, you know, who was on top of the heat for so long. And then you go through three brutal fights in a row. a guy like bring up a guy like tyron woodley you know who was on top of the heat for so long and then you go through three brutal fights in a row he has those two fights and then the colby covington fight it's like you you you it's such a fucking hard scrabble game like you're on top and then you're not and then you look at a guy like anderson silva was on top forever and then just lost like eight fights in a row yeah I mean he won one fight like he who who did he beat Derek Brunson beat Derek Brunson with by decision every other fight

he lost which is crazy yeah and I got to do the uh you know the inspection of the pit for his last fight you know with Uriah Holland what did you think of that fight um He looked good for the first couple rounds. And then when he got caught and went down, that's when you go, the skills have depleted a little bit. It's crazy to watch. Uriah Hall put it up on his Instagram. He said, when I said I learned from this man, I learned from this man. And it shows the difference between,

it shows a contrast in Anderson Silva silva's fight with forrest griffin when forrest griffin comes charging at him he picks his spot and lands the right hand and that is exactly the same thing that uriah hall did to anderson silva the exact same move yeah like literally the same punch you know what impacted me the most was the interaction after the fight yeah he realized this is probably yeah you know, the transition point. And really the emotion and thankfulness that, you know, Uriah showed for it. That, as officials, you know, that touched everybody. Well, it's interesting to me that Anderson's not going to hang it up.

The UFC doesn't want him anymore. They don't want him fighting in the UFC anymore. So, like, where does a guy go? And what, you know, this is just being honest. more they they don't want him fighting in the ufc anymore so like where does a guy go and what you know this is just being honest it's probably better if he does go to another organization not not that there's not high level talent in another organization but they don't have high level testing and i think when you get these older fighters the fighters that are able to sustain their careers outside of the UFC are clearly using hormones. You know, and so there's protocols, obviously, for that,

that, you know, from the USADA. In some places. Yeah, some places. But what we do is if a fighter has aged or something, the commission will talk to you about that ahead of time. You know, you have two fighters where there's a higher propensity for a knockout, but you have fighters that are a little bit aged and they have to go through different testing if they're of a certain age we are cognizant you know cognizant of that as officials that we may have to watch someone a little bit closer but you really count on regardless of organization the officials knowing and understanding that that someone's a little bit older and it's going to have an impact you better do your part as a referee yeah it's. Yeah, you have to look at each fight differently, don't you?

You do. You have to look at, you know, you see two 22-year-old guys, you look at them very differently than two 39-year-old guys or a 39-year-old guy versus a 22-year-old guy. You do. You have to treat each one differently. Every round is looked at differently. Every impact is looked at differently.

But you have to have an understanding of the fighter before you step in there. You know, someone has gotten knocked out a couple of times. Right. And, you know, we have to do, you know, brain trauma protocols and courses, you know, cause you want like your high school coaches and stuff like that to understand that for their athletes. But we as officials have to go through those protocols as well, you know, to take these courses and understand well you know to take these courses and understand you know the impact of brain injuries because once again fighter safety is always a top priority i would never want to be part of a fight that someone had a long-term impact injury because of brain trauma or something else because i didn't intervene

yeah um what is your thought how do you feel when you see guys that are fighting, like they have these 20-plus year careers, like guys like Diego Sanchez? That is, you know, I mean, he won the Ultimate Fighter Season 1 in 2005, which is really crazy when you think of the fact that 16 years later, he's still fighting in the UFC. And then his actual career, fighting career, goes back a couple years before that. You know, he's been fighting a the UFC. And then his actual career, fighting career, goes back a couple years before that. You know, he's been fighting a long time. You know, it's tough because I think at UFC 200,

he fought against Joe Lozon. Yeah. And you remember up against the cage, he was taking some pretty hard shots. And you have to delineate as an official, do I step in and stop this? Or do I know this fighter's history of being able to come back? And man, that was probably one of the tougher fights I had to do. And then looking back at it, that was probably a lesson learned for me that I probably should have or could have stopped that fight a little bit earlier. You think so? You know, I let him take the shots and then he threw some punches back. And then finally, when he punched him and he went down, I stepped in. And Diego actually, excuse me, he thanked me afterwards for when i stopped it you know he came to realization that

he could not have uh come back but you think of a guy's resilience you know and then i did this fight several years later against kiesa and i mean you know how diego's one of the all-time great fighters when he does stuff his ability to be able to come back so subjectively as a referee there's that fine line balance of man do i make this decision my decision and the best interest of the fighter do i think about the impact you know the capabilities of this fighter to be able to come back so one you got to know who it is and they're fighting with you doesn't kind of have to look at where they are now because if you go back to to the Diego that fought Marvin Campman, I mean, he was like indestructible. Like Diego is responsible for some of the greatest third rounds in the history of this

sport. Him versus Clay Guida. Oh my God. Greatest lightsaber. Oh my God. Well, that was from the jump, from the opening round. I mean, he won the opening round and Clay won the second. But like another one is a Jake Ellenberger fight.

He was losing that fight. That was a 170 fight. Ellenberger was a a Jake Ellenberger fight. He was losing that fight. That was a 170 fight. Ellenberger was a destroyer at the time. He was knocking everybody out, right? He literally gets hit with all these big shots from Ellenberger. In the third round, Diego starts coming on. And Diego actually had his back when the fight ended. And you've got to think about those kind of things.

Yeah. It's one of the worst feelings in the world. You go in to stop a fight, and you stop it too early, and the guy gets up, and he's fine. A lot of fighters instinctively are going to, I was fine. I was good. But if you do make a mistake like that, you feel like crap. Yeah. So it's that balance between where are they at in their career?

How's the fight going? How are their last couple fights going? You know, did they take a knockout blow in their previous fight? Are they still suffering? You really kind of have to be a historian of the sport. You've got to study it. You can't step in a fight and not do your pre-fight study and look at the fighters that are on the card.

You can't know every single thing about all the fighters, but it's your responsibility as an official to know as much as you can. Yeah, to know what a guy's capable of, whether or not a guy's a big shot lander or whether he's not yeah it's uh it's such a complex sport you know there's so many different things going on because of when you're combining the wrestling and the jujitsu and the striking and then powerful guys versus endurance guys and i mean even like i get in my head like oh this is the way to do it And then I see another guy who does it differently. I'm like, well, that way is pretty goddamn good too.

It changes. There's trends that happen in this sport. Some guys are just big-time power shot guys. And then other guys, they hit you with like 50%, 60%. Guys like Colby Covington or guys like Nick Diaz, they don't really throw 100% shots. They just pepper you and stay on you. Guys like Neil Diaz, they don't really throw 100% shots. They just pepper you and stay on you. Guys like Neil Magny, they just stay on you and overwhelm you with volume.

You know, one thing I try to do in completely different worlds, but I try to treat it just like I did, you know, as a fighter pilot. And if you're in a dogfight against someone, you know, knowing possibly what could happen here, think about the predictions. So if I'm fighting against a certain type of plane, know what their capabilities are. I got a certain type of fighter here, knowing what their capabilities are. Is this fighter going to be more apt to want to go to the ground than going to throw a power shot? And doing your study of what the fighter traditionally does. You know, some people go back to their bread and butter, regardless of what's going on. A guy's going to want to fall down and, you know,

pull guard or something like that, or he's going to go up against a cage and do this. But just going with the flow of the fight. As we move with the fighters, look and see what's happening. If it's time to stop the fight, it's our responsibility to step in and stop it. Now, when you train, if you're training jujitsu or what have you, are you training just to get better as a referee, or do you actually enjoy it? I do enjoy it. I would say my foundation is more in stand-up, like with, you know,

so one of my best friends in the world is Chaz Mulkey, one of the great Muay Thai fighters in the world. So that's probably where the basis is. So I do twofold. One, you've got to be in a position. Do you train Muay Thai? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's where my foundation was.

I started with Marvin Eastman. Oh, no kidding. Yes, I moved up a little bit more, you know, started training with Chaz and a couple other folks in town. So I would say that would be more my foundation was. I started with Marvin Eastman. Oh, no kidding. Yes, I moved up a little bit more, started training with Chaz and a couple other folks in town. So I would say that would be more of my foundation. But to fully understand with the jiu-jitsu, taking a shin-to-shin kick, you've got to do it at least one time to know what it feels like to see what these fighters are going through.

With the positions, to train to get an understanding of, yeah, that's a good choke right there. That's a good pressure point submission right there. But what I also do in conjunction to get on the mat and actually doing that is I will have two guys get on the mat and roll, and it may be a step-by-step process. Okay, put on a Kimura, and I want you to flex it to the point of knowing when you're going to tap to be able to equate that.

So I've got a fighter in the cage right now knowing what to look for. And when you've got Vinny and Fredson and those guys out there showing you the different types of things. So I do a little bit twofold. You're going to get on the mat and roll, but I also want to stand there next to Vinny and say, that's a pressure point right there. That's where the guy's going to tap. So my methods may be a little bit different, but me as a referee, I got to understand fully what I'm looking at there from the outside perspective of knowing. Yeah. There's some that are really confusing, right? Like a von flu choke. Yes. That's a weird one because it doesn't seem like a choke unless someone puts it on you and then you go, oh,

Jesus. And you've seen some crazy ones. Yeah. I think I had one on a Tuesday night fight. You remember when Snoop was announcing with Uriah Faber? And what's unique about that sometimes is a guy will go to sleep with their eyes open. Yes. And you don't know they're out. So the first time I saw one of those MA fight, the guy's looking at me. And he stopped moving. And he stopped like this.

And I realized he was out. Oh, my God. Now you put that into your memory bank. Yeah. And go, okay, fighters have their app to go to sleep with their eyes open based on this. Very unique choke. That's one of the only ones that they're going to do that. I had a Tuesday night fight that the guy's on the ground.

He gets put in the Von Flu and he's looking at me. They really should rename it to the OSP choke. Yes. Right? He has more than anybody. That's right. But that Tuesday night fight, this guy goes out from it and everybody's like, what is he? He's still, his eyes are open.

He's awake. I go, no, his eyes are open, but he's not awake. And then when a fighter lets go of the hole and then you realize that he's out that's the kind of thing you got to train for to be able to well osp he moves the guy's arm to the guillotine position it's so interesting he like he'll force a guy like he'll he'll say why don't you try to choke me he'll like force a guy yeah and then he'll tie it up and then it'll sit back and put people to sleep. And it's weird because they're in apex. Everybody can see it.

And you'll hear the coaches saying, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Because they know what's going to happen. And he'll put you in it. The thing is, it's like if a guy's neck is there and your arm's here, it's like an instinct. There he is. See the way he. And look at his eyes.

Yep. See, he's out. His eyes are wide open. Out cold. Well, show the setup again because the way oven sets it up it's really interesting yeah because ovens well they're not going to show the whole setup but the way he clamps it down he does it better than von flu he does it better than anybody it's amazing it's such a good show it's just weird you know fans and stuff that don't

understand it they'll yell at you for stopping the fight and they'll go, his eyes are open. He's still awakening. Fuck those people. Stand them up. They'll be, yeah, they don't know jack shit, but that, but that's a great example.

The Von flu chokes, a great example of a, you know, a situation where it's hard to figure out what's going on. If you've never been put in that position before. So I'll let anybody do that to you. I, you know,

I have, and I've actually, you know, you get it in training and stuff all the time. I try to, you know, you never, from a flying perspective, a pilot perspective, you don't ever want to get knocked out or passed out. So there are limitations there. You know, that could affect your medicals and other stuff like that. If you get choked out, it could affect your medicals? You know, they'll ask the question.

That's a little bit different versus getting knocked out, you know, if you got any kind of brain injury. But I mean, we got a lot of pilots that we work with, you know, that, you know, they do train, you know, for one cockpit defense and, you know, physical preparedness and stuff. But I think to fully understand it, you gotta be put in those situations. Like I will tell you, for me, one of the most painful things I've ever been in

was a toe hole. I mean, I thought I was gonna, you know, break the damn mat I got put in a toe hole before. And some of the other, you know, submissions and stuff like that may not be as effective on you. What about like heel hooks and stuff like that? Do they show you where it's dangerous? Yeah, I try to get into the fine details of what can potentially break or dislocate or separate, what's going to be the pressure point.

And it's a multi-process. You've got to look at that to pressure point and it's a it's a multi-process you got to look at that to see how deep it's in right but you also got to be able to look at the fighter to see how much agony they're in and be able to hear yeah you know somebody goes ah you know they scream you gotta stop the fight so you have to even if they're in pain they want to keep going you have to stop the fight it depends on what they do a grunt versus a scream and i tell them but if they scream and they're trying to get out if you scream it's a verbal submission god it's so weird because a lot of guys just want to scream because it hurts but they still want to keep

fighting and i will i'll explain to them in the back there's a difference between a grunt to get out of something and a scream if i make determination i say please don't put me in that position wasn't there a fight recently where someone did make a scream and they said it wasn't a verbal submission i thought it was one of the pfl or bellator guys something like i think it was a bellator fight one of those guys he screamed at i think it was a you know a knee bar or something and he screamed out of it and the referee stopped it and he yelled he's like no people do that though right what was your opinion on the low calf kick? It is becoming prevalent. You know, there are certain camps that everybody.

Isn't it crazy? They don't. See, people don't realize the physical impact of it. When you get hit with that thing a couple times, it starts to swell. And because of where it is, that swelling, you know, the blood doesn't have room to expand. Like maybe if it's the quad or something like that, it can expand out a little bit more. But in the calf, you know, with the stricted limitation there, that swelling and the blood compact is going to stay there in that area. And if you don't learn how to properly check, you get hit with that thing a couple times.

Let me ask you this, though, as a Muay Thai practitioner, because I haven't really gotten a good answer. Why isn't that prevalent in Muay Thai? Isn't it interesting like that's not very common in Muay Thai that guys get stopped with low calf kicks don't you think it's because of the capability to check I would imagine so I would imagine so you think about the fights where the kicker has gotten hurt you know Anderson Silva fight you know the Corey whatever his last name when he you know broke his leg on that one yeah cory hill you got people that are proficient in checking like you know what chris weidman did against anderson silva yeah was a simple turn of the leg and he tried to catch it you know right on the top yeah and if you do that shin to shin it could hurt the kicker more often than the person

that is getting kicked so if there's proficiency in defending against it guys are going to be apt to not do that yeah but it seems to me that like guys are trying to check them but maybe it's in mma the stance is different i was gonna say the stance if it's a you know a wider type of stance where that front leg is open to it right and you know you could tell people you know with the fight that happened you know with with connor and dustin that camp is practicing that a lot. Oh, my God. And we as referees look at what people may be more apt to do during the fight.

Well, also specifically in that fight, because Conor has that wide stance, and he puts a lot of heavy weight on that front leg, and they're also southpaw to southpaw. So it opens up that back left leg kick to that front leg of connor's and we can tell that if somebody gets kicked like there a couple times and then they change their stance you know that's going to alert us on what we got to start to look for and if i think someone's hurt from that we may not interact with them but you know i'll bring the doctor in a couple times and the doctor will sit there and they'll watch them stand up and they'll look at it if it gets to the point like the um who was it what's the kid's name sean you know the oh uh sugar uh you

know it's it's sugar time baby sean o'malley o'malley you remember when he fought that kid and he hurt his foot yes if he could not his opponent's mistake was he went down to the ground with him. If he stepped back and Sean couldn't step back up to get into a fighter stance, I would have had to stop that fight. So I don't know if you could hear, but the corner was yelling at him. And you refereed that fight, right? I refereed that fight. Marlon Vera put him out, right? He put him out with an elbow.

No, I don't think it was a Marlon Vera fight. Wasn't it Chido Vera? No, this was a couple years back. So that was the second time he hurt his foot remember this was when we were over at the mgm or t-mobile that he hurt his foot and he went down to the ground oh that's right and he won the fight he won the fight he won the fight that's right and i interviewed him when he was down that's right yeah so remember he got hurt he threw a a high kick and it hurt his foot. And he went down to the ground.

Yes. If he had not been able to stand back up and maintain a standing fighter posture, I would have had to stop that fight. Right. So his opponent went down to the ground with him. His corner is yelling, let him back up, let him. And he never did. And he stayed on the ground. He was able to finish the fight.

You know, that happened in Bellator. In Bellator, Michael Chandler got hit with a low leg kick. And he got hit with that calf kick, and his foot went numb. Sometimes that does happen, and his foot just gave out. And when his foot gave out, they stopped the fight. Yeah, and who was it? Jamie Varner had the same thing happen at UFC fight years ago? So we as referees had the discussion and the debate.

What does a fighter have to be able to demonstrate to continue to fight? And it's, you know, they're down posture and they're standing posture, but a guy has to be able to start or continue to fight up in the standing posture. So if your ankle keeps giving out and you fall down, we have to step in and stop the fight. Well, it's interesting enough.

Dustin Poirier was in that same situation with Jim Miller. Jim Miller had his leg destroyed, but Dustin got the fight to the ground. Like Jim was like one kick away from ending the fight. Justin's leg was just trashed. Keep it there, you can continue. Yes and that's what he did. But if there's a stand up and he can't stand up then you got to step in and stop the fight. It is just bananas to me how that one technique has dominated the sport over the last several years. Sometimes a technique comes around and a lot of

fighters start doing it but it's very rare that a technique that's been around forever just they change the location of the impact and by the way Benson Henderson was doing that way back in the day and for whatever reason it didn't have the same impact and you have people that don't know how to defend it because some people simply think lifting your leg no but you're still catching right you got to turn it you got to turn it out yeah it's it's just weird that it's not working um with mma fighters but with muay thai it just it's not a factor it's not a factor because with muay thai fights like a lot of fights get stopped because of leg kicks you know like liam harrison how many how many fights does that guy have stopped from leg kicks?

A lot. You know, he's got like highlights all over his Instagram of him stopping guys just chopping at their legs. And if someone's proficient, they chop that enough. One of the guys is going to probably change their stance. Yeah.

Which is going to have impact. You know, if you fight traditional and you now have to switch to southpaw, your whole game plan may be gone out the window yeah well liam is very good at hiding and he doesn't have his his kick comes out so quick like he doesn't have like a pivot a step it's not like there's no telegraph it's just he's in the mid and he's showing you hands and he just chops at the legs before you even know it but not targeting the calf it's interesting because he can land that shot to the thigh like that it just seems to me that he should be able to land it to the calf and other

muay thai fighters should be able to as well but they're just not doing it that way does this make sense i'm reading it's because the muay thai stance to your front leg is usually off the ground so like weight bearing sort of this is an argument i'm reading online that's this it's a it's a decent argument it's a decent argument the problem is that argument applies to the thigh kick as well yeah but thigh kicks in muay thai are of course one of the most prevalent techniques it's just such a devastating technique it really is a devastating technique when they that shin slams into that calf you got a few of those you got a few of those and with some guys look khabib said that he was in trouble like his leg was in trouble in that fight and then just just engage you that was as hard as he's ever

been hit but he's just so fucking tough that he figured out a way to get through it and get just into the ground and finish him and people may not understand the impact so it's like you know you got chas that comes out there and kevin ross to train with you if they see you not checking it right they may target it a couple times. Yes. You realize, I'm tough. I can tough through it. And then you realize after the second or third, we're like, uh-oh, that was a mistake.

There's no toughing through that calf kick, man, especially not the way Dustin was showing it to Connor. And he took what, like, you know, he threw two of them, and that changed the whole impact of the fight. Yeah, it really did. Well, because you could see Connor was moving funny. Like, even though he's trying to pretend everything's fine, when he would get hit, you would see that little,

because the pain is just, it's a weird pain. It's nerve pain. There's not enough muscle there to absorb it. We have to recognize that. Yeah. You know, if we see a fighter change in their traditional game plan because of an impact or injury, now that changes. So, you know, I may stand about 7 to 10 feet away from a fighter.

Right. If I see that somebody's hurt like that, I may move a little bit closer so I can get a better feel, look at their face, and see what kind of impact. Or if he changes his stance, now I know we could be stepping down to ground to a stoppage of this fight. So as a referee, you've got to build all that stuff into it. You've got to understand what the guy just threw, the impact, that calf kick, impact that it could have on it, and, go back to that fighter safety again. If a guy doesn't know better and he keeps taking all those shots,

it's our responsibility to help him out. What do you do if you think a guy's got a broken hand? So I won't make a medical assessment. I'll make an observation. I'll look and see if he or she is stopping to throw it. And then what I'll do, we've got the best doctors in the world, Nevada and California, and I try the best doctors in the world, Nevada and California. And I try to never take away time from,

if it's during the round, there's no injury timeout. But how do you decide what to do? Say if a guy like Tony Ferguson, who his hand could be broken in a million different places, he's not even going to let you know. He'll still keep swinging it. How do you know? If you notice that someone did something like that,

they pulled their hand back or shook it like how do you make that distinction i'll i'll look at whether to continue to throw it and you got to look at you know the look on their face so if they make any sounds after they throw it and it's really my responsibility in between around i'm going to get the coach there for a minute i'll let the timekeepers know i'm going to call time out and i'll bring a doctor in but if it's broken do you stop the fight or do you allow them to keep swinging it it it depends on the severity of it fight or do you allow them to keep swinging? It depends on the severity of it. Because you've got guys that may be hurt. They're going to continue

fighting. They'll just change their game plan. But if the doctor makes a determination for the long-term longevity, their health, etc., you'll see the doctor and I walk off to the side and we'll cover the microphone up. You still can hear what we're saying, but we want to be able to have a discreet conversation right there.

In our jurisdiction, in Nevada, it's up to the referee to make the decision with the consultation of the doctor. In other places, California, et cetera, the doctor can stop fights, but we work together as a team. So if the doctor says, you know, Mark, his hand is messed up, we need to stop this fight. I'll back we'll make decision and we'll pass it you know under the advice of the you know medical staff nevada state athletic commission or whatever commission referee such and such is going to stop i know corners have stopped fights before because of broken hands but i can't remember a time that a referee stopped to fight for a broken hand i have only stopped fights if i see like compound fractures you know bones and stuff

sticking out something but if i've seen that uh yeah you know which we've had you know at the amateur tough enough where you get some of the best competition we've had fighters that have had you know leg breaks and bones coming out and you know other stuff like that you know we've had fighters get teeth knocked out and you know if a fighter says tooth came out you know they swallowed a tooth or something like that, that's an automatic stoppage, stuff like that. I've seen some crazy stuff. We've had fighters that have gotten knocked out and defecated on themselves

or peed on themselves or something. That causes bigger problems now. You've got to sanitize the ring and stuff like that. How can you sanitize poop once it's there? You call it a night wait for the next show to come up yeah it seems like if that's in the early fights you got a real problem some diarrhea is all over the octagon we've seen it before though you know you haven't trying to do what you can but we haven't seen it in the ufc well tim sylvia shit

his pants once in the middle of a fight but i think what he didn't get knocked out he just had diarrhea i think there was a female fighter that had some Yeah there was an issue right? Michael Chiesa almost shit himself he was in the middle, he came up to me at cage side he goes dude I'm about to shit myself I go no

and he's like yeah this is before he fought and he was fine, he kept it together but he's like dude I am about to shit myself So out of respect for the fighter we had a UFC fight during this season that somebody probably used the bathroom on himself. Oh, okay. Well, unfortunately. I'd say don't wear white shorts inside the cage. Yeah, that's right.

When you've had this incredible military career and been a fighter jet pilot, military career and been a fighter jet pilot and I would imagine that the thrills and the physical demands of that it's probably pretty hard to top so I've been very lucky with getting to do some great things you know so first I attributed back to my parents Norris and Shirley Smith who you know an older brother Norris who don't you have like three masters too I graduated from the Air Force Academy so I got a everybody from the Air Force Academy gets a Bachelor of Science because of the amount of math, science, and engineering that you do. So I did political science there, but I focused on like legal studies and pre-law. And I got a

master's in computer systems management. I got a master's in international security and strategic studies, which is like state department stuff. And then this last one with, you know, health and wellness, nutrition, physiology, et cetera. And you fly for Southwest. That's outrageous. I fly for a airline in Dallas. I believe it might be Southwest. That's what I heard. So I tell you what it comes down to.

One, my parents always pushed me to do something amazing. But you got to have motivating factors to go do stuff. One, I wanted to be successful. And it's kind of an analogy for me. You know, my parents worked too hard for me to not, you know, keep making them proud of my accomplishments every day. But I had somebody years and years ago that looked at me and they said, you're never going to amount to be shit.

Oh, one of those guys okay that's a bit amazing how haters can motivate some people who is the person this was a so when I went to the Air Force Academy you know we got enlisted instructors you know along with the officer instructors that help us do stuff and it was someone I guess didn't like Mike the way I talked to my persona and you know she pulled me to the side and gave me the you ain't gonna ever amount to be shit oh one of those okay we'll see how this gonna go isn't it funny how the people that do that usually ain't shit you know nobody who's like very accomplished pulls someone aside and says they're you're

never gonna accomplish shit and it was funny because i saw them years later you know and it was pretty big accomplishment. It was a childhood dream. I dreamt of being a Thunderbird. And when I made it back, we always do the show at the Air Force Academy. It was a stroke of luck that I saw this same person. I think she's like, I know you from somewhere. And I went up to her and I said, thank you for what you said to me years ago.

Look where I am right now. But it's one of those never. You told her what she said? I did. What did she say back? Oh, I don't believe I said that. Why would I say something like that to you? I was like, okay, I'm not going to worry about it.

But I'm never. I love being able to accomplish stuff. But it's like, what challenge can I take next? And one of my friends said, man, you have about three or four or five lifetime dreams all in one lifetime. You really do. Thunderbirds and being an airline pilot. And then, you know, people call it. Thunderbirds and being an airline pilot. People call it UFC referee.

It's MMA referee. Your academic career, just the academic accomplishments are pretty goddamn impressive on top of that. I've been very lucky. Dude, that's more than luck. Come on. That's the thing that I love about military vets is that when you become very accomplished in that,

in the military, the amount of discipline that's required they just develop superior human beings like i've run into so many guys that are accomplished military vets and they're just they have more character they have more discipline it's like it's standard it's like you know like some some cars have a v8 with a lot of horsepower like military vets accomplished military v, they just have more character. You know, so you kind of relate it to the fight game. I had a mentor tell me, you know, you get championship fights.

It takes a lot to be able to get there. And he said, you think about your career, military, academics, you know, referee in fights. And he said, you begin to hang around champions enough, you start to get that championship mentality. And I try to look at it on everything. You hang around Herb Dean, Big John McCarthy, all these guys enough, that stuff starts to rub off. You want your level of proficiency to be that good. At Nellis Air Force Base, where, you know, it's the home of the fighter pilot, the best of the best hang out there. You begin to increase your level of proficiency. You become one of the best in the world. You know, you got

to have that, is it cockiness? I'd rather call it, you know, confidence yet unassuming. You don't want to be too cocky to the point of thinking you're, you know, you're indestructible, but you want to be good enough to be able to declare and know that you're the best in the world. And if I achieve something, yeah, I'm satisfied with it, but it's like, okay, what else can I go do now? You know, I finish at the Air Force Academy. Let's go get a master's, go to pilot training. Let's not just go to pilot training. Let's finish in the top so I can choose which plane I get. And I chose to get an F-16. So here I am, this kid from Southeast Washington, D.C. that, you know, grew up with my parents taking me down by Reagan Airport and watching planes take off. And then I saw an air show, Thunderbirds, and I said, I think I want to do

that one day. And here we are years later, I stand out and the greatest accomplishment, greatest thing I think I've ever had. I was in the gym at the base in Arizona, working out one day and I get paged to the front desk. I go, what is this about? On the phone, it's a four-star general that's in charge of, you know, all of air combat command. And he goes, what are you doing six months from now? Why don't you come out to Nellis and be one of my Thunderbirds? I fell on the floor. Wow. And then my parents were on vacation somewhere, and I called them, and I said,

What are you guys doing in about three months? I don't know, boy. What's going on with you? And I said, Why don't y'all come to one of my air shows and I'm a Thunderbird? And my parents started crying, you know, to know that that type of dream has come true for all of us. And as we get to do these other things, you know, my parents are in their 80s, and I get them watching UFC fights on Saturdays. Really?

You know, the joy and the respect, the fighters, but also get to see their son, you know, smile about this. And I guess I don't smile enough inside the octagon, as my mom tells me. He doesn't smile. You better smile in there, boy. That sounds like something a mom would say. You just smile more in there. You look mean in there. Why do you look so mean in there? I'm mean in there serious concentrating on what's going on but man and you know like i

told you when i got that message from you about stuff like this is you know we believe in the adage of good things happen to good people and you know a lot of dreams that keep coming true and i try to impress this upon my children as a single dad and i will tell you above all else anything else i've done i'm most proud of being a single dad so that's beautiful that's beautiful you should be a you should be a proud of a lot of things that you've done man you've accomplished a lot I'm trying I'm trying keep doing some good things yeah no you certainly have now tell me what like to be a Thunderbird when they have those crazy air shows I mean there's so much danger and so much so much

coordination between all the jets like how long does it take to prepare for one of those shows so um the training season is about five to six months pull up a video of one of them thunderbird air because they're so crazy so give me anxiety i was uh i was on the team probably doing one of the most unfortunate. If you look at the Thunderbird ejection at Mountain Home. Don't do that. You're barely touching. Yeah.

So I think if you do like Thunderbird ejection at Mountain Home in 2003, and everyone has seen this video. This is one of my teammates. So I was in the Diamond. Yeah, that's it right there. I was in the Diamond, which is the four planes that stay together. We had just taken off, and we go behind the show line and come back around. The two solos do their takeoff.

Ah, you're using an ad blocker. That's okay. The two solos take off and do their thing. So this second guy that takes off, he's going to go do a max climb to get out to about 5,000 feet and then roll and then do a split ass back in front. And he actually winds up rolling too low. And that picture that you see right there is the result of it.

So he actually crashes right in front of us. So that's the video from... There's a little cockpit camera that sits right here that looks at it so he he rolled too low and then he ejected and we're a half a mile away can you explain what that means he rolled too low so when he rolls inverted to come back the other direction he needs so many thousand feet to be able to make it on the back side of it without impacting the ground. So how does he make that incorrect?

So the F-16 has a radar altimeter on it, which tells you your above ground, how many feet you are. And let's say on this maneuver, he had to be 3,000 feet above ground. But the antennas are on the bottom of the plane. So when you roll inverted, the only thing you can look at is your altitude calculation inside the cockpit and there's above ground level and there's mean sea level so you know like like las vegas is you know 2000 mean sea level whereas washington dc will be like at sea level so you have to make a calculation based on being in mountain home he had to add 2000 feet to his above ground level

to be able to read it properly inside the cockpit so it makes it it makes a transition determination of how he just had a math problem it was a miscalculation versus where we practice at home versus where we are stationed at home and when he rolled he didn't have enough altitude to come around the backside is this the cockpit camera this isn't 4k that's yeah that's that's gaming but that's exactly what it looks like okay okay okay it's way too fake then all right that's but that's that's a true depiction of what an f-16 cockpit is going to look like so your your airspeed will be on one side and your altitude is going to be on the other side do you use one of these simulation machines and practice in it uh so at the bases they have actual simulators that you can get in does it seem like you're actually like is it is it all hd and yeah it's it's high

level stuff you so it seems like some of them may not be motion uh but this is exactly some of them are motion though some of them will sway side to side and the whole deal oh wow yeah so uh so you really do feel like you're flying you don't have the three dimensions sensation right the xyz axis so you don't get that part of it but as far as the you know the the ocular stimulation you're going to get all that you're going to see everything that you would actually see and it's more of of a hand-eye coordination. So, you know, athletes tend to do very well when we fly because it's a lot of look outside. It's not a lot of looking down at your instruments inside the cockpit. With the heads-up displays, it's designed to very rarely look inside the

cockpit. And then your control stick is going to be on your right hand, and then your throttle and everything on your left hand with, you know with anywhere between five and ten buttons on either one. So we used to call it the piccolo drill. You do all this stuff, and you'd have to manipulate doing shooting missiles and turning the gun on and turning your radar and doing all this stuff with your hands. So it's like your musical instrument almost. Exactly. Wow. And then the whole time you're fighting against the G-forces, and you're looking outside.

So what's unique about this, the solos demonstrate the performance capabilities of the f-16 etc the diamond which i was in we demonstrate uh proficiency close in flying so in a diamond we may be doing 450 miles an hour doing a loop upside down we may be 18 inches apart from each other so our wings are overlapped and then 18 inches apart and the goal is to do everything in unison. And in that training program to get used to that, it's a step-by-step process. So go out and learn how to fly a loop. Get proficient in that. Then put another plane next to you.

We start off at about seven feet apart. And then as you get more proficient, we go into what's called the diamond position. So the closest plane there on the left is a position that i would fly and that's about seven feet apart right there we eventually get to the part where your wings are overlapped and the slot is going to fall down into the slot position in the bottom of the diamond oh fuck that and we get closer your wings are overlapped and you're about 18 inches apart so that's the solo. He may do something like an aileron roll. How do you know exactly where they are?

So in the diamond, there are two positions that I would look at to put my plane in the right position. So the back of his wing, I would always line up and I would take the front of the missile rail. It has U.S. Air Force painted on the side. I put the front of the missile rail on It has United U.S. Air Force painted on the side. I put the front of the missile rail on the A in Air Force. And then, you know, for two years, my neck would be turned

45 degrees to the right. I mean, you can see right there how close you are. And everyone is going off of the movements and the cadence of the lead plane. And he's saying, you know, something like, you know, left turn and the T in turn is when he's starting to move the stick to turn to the left. Or, you know, left turn and the T in turn is when he's starting to move the stick to turn to the left.

Or, you know, back in with the pull to start pulling back. You practice that hundreds and hundreds of times before we ever get out in front of a crowd. Is there video of you doing this? I don't know if you'll be able to find specifically to me because, I mean, should we in 69 years of the Thunderbirds doing stuff? So you'd have to find it. But anything between 2003 and 2005, you know, that team is a team that I was on. Is it an important method of recruiting? Like, what is the purpose of the air show other than being awesome?

It's a primary recruiting tool, you know, for us, the United States Air Force. We're the spokespersons for the Air Force, Department of Defense, et cetera. But it's also instill, you know, faith and confidence in your military. It's a little bit different than out there dropping bombs and shooting missiles, but it's to show the performance capabilities of the men and women in the Air Force, the personnel, as far as the performance capabilities of the equipment that we fly. The F-16 is a fourth generation fighter. The best of the best will be the fifth generation plus F-22s f-35s um but that's also to have a little bit of fun and go out and do an air show you know as fans

you're living the life of a rock star i mean there's no doubt about that the blue angels thunderbirds you know we did shows in fort lauderdale like over spring break where they're you know a million plus people out there. Oh, my God. That's so crazy. You imagine you get back on the ground and your picture and everything is in the paper. You may not be able to. You think UFC fighter is popular. It's the same sense. You go to a restaurant and you can't even eat because everybody recognizes who you are.

A million people watch. Over spring break in Fort Lauderdale, we fly shows over the water. You're going to have that many people there so to prepare for that kind of a show how long do you train uh so the training uh so we practice in Las Vegas at the ranges just up north and you start basically right after Thanksgiving so the last show of the year is going to be the second week of November they take Thanksgiving off and then they get cranking from there. And from end of November, all the way up until March, Monday through Friday, sometimes on Saturdays, you fly two to three times a day, every single day. So it's about a hundred, you know, anywhere

120, 150 rides, flights to get you prepared for that. Wow. And then it's, you start off as a two ship, bringing the third plane, bringing the fourth plane. So the diamond goes and does their thing. The solos go and do their thing. When they get proficiency up to like 50% of the flights, everybody comes back together. And the goal is always perfection in an air show. We honestly believe we never achieve perfection. You know, the crowd may be sitting there loving it and crying out.

That was incredible. You've never seen a debrief to talk about a flight until you watched a Thunderbird or a Blue Angel debrief. We could be in there for hours talking about you taxied out and you were, you know, six inches off to the right or you were taxing five knots too fast. We want perfection. You know, the way we salute, the way your uniform look, you can't be fat, dumpy and sloppy in your Thunderbird uniform. It was that goal of perfection. Because, you know, you as an American citizen want to have faith and confidence in your military. And that's one of the greatest tools that we can have to be able to demonstrate that.

You know, it's fun for people to go to air shows. We want to recruit. We want to have that next generation come in and follow in our footsteps. You know, it's all voluntary force, so we've got to get people to join. But we also want you to have a little bit of fun and you know see something amazing when you come to an airshow when there's a disaster like the mountain home crash or some other crashes like what is that like like what's is there a complete revamping of how things are done like what how much you know what what happens so the the first thing is

you know we hope and if there's's video to it out there and audio sometimes. You know, the first question that came out was, did he get out of the jet? And that's what scares everybody. Our hearts sank. And you can't see it at first because there's so much smoke and the engine goes flying, you know, down inside of the runway. But we would practice for stuff like that in off season. You say, if you ever eject out of the plane plane we wear red show suits so everybody can see you physically capable if you can stand up wave to the audience and then take care of yourself and that's exactly what he did is there a way you can move like

the horrible thing would be if the plane crashed and then they parachuted down to the fires can they maneuver the parachute in any way you have drawstrings on it but so when he ejected there so when you watched the video inside the cockpit he's going down like this and you could he has his hand on the right stick and you could see his left hand move three times he's thinking about ejecting had he ejected first time he would have gone right into the fireball oh second time he's starting to flat plate the plane a little bit. He still would have gone into the fireball. So he waited to the perfect time.

He's actually below the ejection envelope. It's a 0-0 seat, meaning sitting on the ground, no airspeed. I can eject out of it, and it's going to give me a parachute. He steps on the rudder, which turns the nose of the plane about 10 degrees to the left because he's over the runway. When he ejects, the drogue chute comes out, which slows him down, and he separates from the seat. But he does not get a full parachute. So you go, how does somebody survive without getting a full parachute?

Well, the drogue chute pulls him out enough. Is this him? Yeah, so you can see his hand move right there. He's actually reaching for the ejection handle. And there he ejects. And you see him. that's the the camera turns off when he ejects wow but because he stepped on the rudder he's moved a little bit to the left uh he actually misses the runway when he hits the ground he lands on the side where it's it it rained you know a day or so before and he uh he lands in some soft dirt right there and that kind of is

what saves him but if you're high enough you can grab the string so you can manipulate the parachute but he was not even close to being high enough right so there was no other way for him to pull out of that he had to he's full go eject yeah he's full aft stick and full power trying to get out of it there's no way he was going to make it he would have missed it i think they did a calculation he missed it by like you know 900 feet a thousand oh my god and they they roll out at the bottom they're at you know the solos are low they're you know 150 feet above the ground when they finished this hit right here oh i'm scared to watch this even though i know he's okay oh wow he's like right before the ground yeah holy shit and this there was a so that picture

there was an air so that picture, there was an Air Force photographer that was on a catwalk of the tower that, this is when digital cameras start, first start coming out. He's sitting there,

click, click, click, getting everything and that's how that, that picture. Now, does that dude get in trouble after something like this? He was,

they'll make a determination of cause and, you know, unfortunately in this one, it was deemed to be pilot error and he was removed from the team. So that was towards the beginning of the show season. So it's always six airplanes.

And there are only six demonstration pilots. There are eight pilots on the team, but one is the narrator and the other is the safety officer. We don't have any backups. So if I wake up Tuesday morning and I got a cold, there's no backup for me. So he got removed from the team. And then, you know, unique for us, we finished the season as a five ship.

So we changed around some of our formations. Instead of having a six ship formation, we did five ship formations. We had to do some, you know, downtime there in Idaho. And then we got a waiver to fly back to Vegas. And then we sat for a little bit until they made determination it was not actually something wrong with the plane you know because if there's determination there's something wrong with the plane everybody has to be grounded right when they determine all that was fine we started training again and made a transition to a five ship show and we finished the season as a

five ship and then they hire odds and evens every year so one three five seven nine will stay on the team while they hire a 2, 4, 6, 8. And that's to keep consistency on the team every year. So that next year when 1, 3, 5, 7 are done, they'll hire a new 1, 3, 5, 7. And now you've got your 2, 4, 6s and 8s that are second-year consistency and will be the instructors for the team. Wow. But it's, again, at Nellis Air Force Base,

a homeowner fighter pilot out in Vegas. You know, you got the best of the best that are out there. And, you know, to be a Thunderbird, it's a multi-step process. You know, you got to have great flying capabilities, letters of recommendation from a lot of people, and you got to look good in uniform. You got to look fit. You can't be out of shape.

And you got to be, you know, have the nerves to be able to do this. It's one thing to go out and fly a fighter plane. All the basic maneuvers that we're doing are the same as every Air Force pilot learns. But now you're doing this in tune to music, you know, sitting 18 inches away from another plane, you know, in front of a crowd of however many hundreds of thousands of people. And it was fun, though. You know, it's high stress. You know, my instructor was like, wiggle your fingers and wiggle your toes because you start to tense up and you do that you're going to relax a little bit but you know my neck was stuck like this for about two and a half years because that's

you know they were like oh we're going past Mount Rushmore how did it look and I go it looked like 132 bolts on the left side of Thunderbird 1 because that's all I can see all you can concentrate on yeah how many different jets have you piloted? So I started in gliders at the Air Force Academy, and then we flew. So they teach you how to do it in a plane with no engine? Yeah, yeah. So a tow plane, you're being pulled behind another plane, and they take you up to 5,000, 10,000 feet, and you start off on a glider.

Wow. Very capable. Why do they do that? You start with the basics. So it's a two-seater. You've got the instructor sitting behind you, so it's safe. But you want to start with the basics and learning the concepts of flight, aerodynamics of flight. And then from there, you move into, it's a little bit different now, but when I did it, they had a single-engine Cessna.

And then when I went to Air Force pilot training, we went into a T-37 Tweet. And then from there, we tracked based upon how well you did. So we went fighter bomber track or tanker transport. I went fighter bomber. So I flew the T-38 and that was the first, you know, really sleek, fast training type of airplane. How many years into training is this? So you do the T-37 for, so at the Academy you flew the glider for, I don't know, 10 rides and then the T-41 for, you know, 10, 20 rides until you solo. You know, they put you in a plane where you're proficient, you go out and solo. And then in pilot training, this is a formal after you graduate at ROTC, the Academy, you do six months in the T-37, decide what track you go on and then you do six months in the T-38, decide what track you go on, and then you do six months in the T-38. And then I did well enough in the T-38 that I was able to pick. I selected F-16s, and then I went to Luke Air Force Base out in Arizona and became proficient in F-16s. And then from there, I went

to combat squadrons all around the world, South Carolina, Korea, you know, back to Arizona, Nellis. So I've flown, I think, six different versions of the F-16 and then flew to Thunderbirds where they fly F-16s, went away to do the tour at the White House, and then came back and finished up on F-16s again. And the tour of the White House, were you Secret Service? What were you doing? No, so I was actually a White House fellow. So in 1964, President Johnson formed a program called the White House Fellowship, where the, it's actually the President of the United States will select anywhere between 12 and 15 young Americans, doesn't matter military, civilian, anything, to come and serve in their administration. And what it is, it's the highest level mentorship leadership program that you can be a part of in our country.

And the President places you somewhere in their cabinet to be a senior advisor to like a cabinet secretary, or like for me, I was a senior advisor to like a cabinet secretary or like for me I was a senior White House advisor at NASA so I worked directly for the NASA administrator and you're a you know essentially a senior White House you know advisor or consultant whatever task that cabinet secretary wants to have from you at NASA and what I did for uh you know NASA administrator Mike Griffin one of the smartest guys you'll ever meet in your life, like he had seven degrees, a couple of doctorates in there. I was in a lot of capacities, his right-hand man. So he would have me do all the programming for stuff at NASA. He would take me on trips with him to Russia, you know, discussions about the

International Space Station. And I prepared a budgetary book for Congress 2007 that was presented to Congress to talk about the, you know, the compartmental programs for NASA moving forward with the cancellation of the space shuttle. Where is NASA's budget going to go? So that was my, you know, kind of summary project for working at NASA for the year. And then I got to interact with all the agencies that work with NASA, you know, the International Space Station, working on the Soyuz, going to fly, and essentially getting to see things at that level. Now, part two of it was back on the White House side. They bring us in a couple days a week, and we'd have one-on-one private meetings

with cabinet secretaries or chief of staff of the Air Force and folks like that. What is that like? What's it like just being in the White House? How bizarre does that feel? So I grew up in Washington, D.C., and you get these tours of the East Wing of the White House. You know, you can walk through and see all the stuff on the East Side. But it's surreal to be in the West Wing because they meet outside, and, you know, you've got to do all the safety protocols and everything. And then they take you in, and you take the elevator up to that.

Like one of the safety protocols, they check you for weapons? Yeah, you've got to do all that. You know, you can't bring cell phones and all that kind of stuff in there. You can't, you know, just all the protection stuff for going in. They take you in the elevator, and you go up, and you're like, man, that got to do all that. You can't bring cell phones and all that kind of stuff in there. You can't. Just all the protection stuff for going in. They take you in the elevator and you go up and you're like, man, this is the floor right here. And they walk you down the hallway and they open up that door into the Oval Office. And you're like, wow. God, man, I've seen this on all the movies.

I heard it's small. I think it's not really huge, but it depends on how much furniture and stuff that they have in there. But I mean, I heard it's not really huge, but it depends on how much furniture and stuff that they have in there. But I mean, I heard it feels small, maybe because it's just so grand, the idea of being in the Oval Office where the president sits. It's so crazy. But when you're actually in there, you're like, oh, it's like a regular room. Yeah. I mean, it's obviously circular, I guess oval in shape. So I work for President Bush.

I would say the best part of it is that program is a bipartisan position. So you don't have to deal with the partisan politics and all the nonsense in D.C. Right. But I work for President George W. Bush. And what an incredible person. Because your perception. Is he a nice guy? What an awesome guy.

Really? Outside of politics, everyone has their opinion there. Right. But a lot of times, regardless of whatever administration, they only know what we see on, you know, the news media. Also, like 50% of the country is going to hate you. Exactly. No matter who you are. You know, but as a husband, as a father, you know, how passionate he was about, you know, his incredible spouse and, you know, his children.

To see that side of a person. And, you know, a lot of stuff we can't disclose just because it's private conversation. It's nonddisclosure, but to see the emotion, you know, of a father talking about his daughters, you know, who are in college and, you know, his hopes and dreams for them. And to be able to really respectfully ask any question, you know, that you want. We'd have these sessions, like with the president, we'd meet in the Roosevelt room and over office. And it's tough as a cabinet secretary to get five, 10, 15 minutes with the president we sit in there with him for an hour and a half

and talk about stuff is the country ready for a female president what did he think he had people that he looked at leadership that he thought would be candidates for, you know,

presidency, like Condoleezza Rice was on, you know, his administration and, and obviously, you know, Hillary Clinton was there. So the, the level of people that were out there to have these discussions of these are the type of people that we think regardless of political affiliation, that, you know, could be looked at for leadership in our country. And with us, the people that they select to be in that program, you know, to be future leaders, military, non-military, you know, you're sitting around some of the finest people in the world, people that I still talk to and associate with and, you know, have discussions with today.

So here we are years later that these are still some of my best friends in the world that you talk about goals and dreams and, you know, you think about stepping into politics and stuff like that. And, you know, you get some sound advice to these people. But I'd already seen and been around the president before, because when we did some of the air shows, you know, the president or vice president, someone come and, you know, they come and speak. And we did a show at the Air Force Academy. President Bush was there. So I got pictures and stuff with him and getting to talk to him. And it's weird because we have military call signs, you know, like Maverick and Goose.

My military call sign was Chappie. Chappie? Chappie. After General Chappie James, the first black four-star in the Air Force. So we go back and do this White House stuff, and we're at a Christmas party, and there's a formal greeting line to go and meet the president and the first lady. And the aide is standing there, and he says, you know, Major Mark Smith. And he goes, Chappie, come on in. Meet the wife.

And I was like, how the heck did he remember, you know, what my military call sign was? But that's the type of personal relationship in that ultra professional environment that you get. So, you know, so here I am growing up in southeast Washington, D.C., go away to school. And the proudest moment I think I've ever had is we would get to give tours and stuff for the White House. So I get to bring my parents down and give them a tour of the West Wing of the White House. So, you know, people talk about dreams dreams come true hard work and stuff like that man i've had a you had a wild life man it's it's been good so and still going i should say like it's over didn't mean it that way no no we don't want that to happen no i got a lot of stuff i'm still trying to accomplish so now you're talking about all the various jets that you flew.

Did you ever test fly anything? What do they do when they're testing out new vehicles? So we do have test pilots. Edwards Air Force Base out there in California does a lot of testing with current inventory and potential future inventory. And then we do have test and evaluation there at Nellis Air Force Base, testing planes and, you know, weapons and stuff like that. I never did that. I traditionally stayed in combat roles at combat coded squadrons or training, you know, there, like I was an instructor teaching kids how to fly F-16s at Luke Air Force Base. The reason why I brought it up is like, I've always been curious, like when they develop a new vehicle they must

have to talk to pilots right I mean that has to be an integral part of the design of it like you have to talk to someone who has a lot of experience flying a fighter jet like what is missing what what could be done better like how do they do that so as part of the design program uh we have pilots that will be coded as test pilots. You know, so they may be stationed at Edwards or they may be stationed there at Nellis Air Force Base. That's their active role. You know, they look at development of it based on historical platforms. You know, you go from the F-16, F-15 to the F-22 to the F-35.

You get all that kind of input. So they're guys that instead of being in a combat coded squadron, they're actually in a test and evaluation squadron. They get to do all that stuff and they go out and test, what are the capabilities of this missile? It's not doing exactly what we want it to do. And they take all that feedback to the design folks and like Lockheed Martin or, you know, General Dynamics back in the day when they're building stuff. Because, you know, for the longest time, the F-15s and F-16s, for us, that production line was done. But you go to St. Louis, and you look on the opposite side of the runway, they're building F-15s there again. And we just announced that the Air Force is going to start buying the next block of F-16s, the Block 70s, which is, man, that's a really advanced plane.

And guys that are active duty, they get to go out and fly that thing and test it. Now, you said the F-22 is the most capable. It depends on what it is. Between the F-22 and the F-35, those are probably the most. What does the F-35 do better than the F-22? Command and control, so maybe communications with other systems. The F-22 is by far the air superiority, dogfighting, air-to-air. It's the most advanced plane in the world.

So why don't they just make only F-22s? Budgetary constraints. Oh, is that what it is? The amount that it costs, you know, when the agreement came down to how many we were going to buy, I think it's probably in the hundreds now, you know, that we have. Congress is going to allocate a certain amount of funds to, okay, you can have this much money to buy this money f-22s and the more you buy the you know per price may go down but because we have a limited amount budgetary wise that's what we stop with and then we got congressional approval for the f-35 and you know their competitions the f-22 versus

the you know yf-22 back in the day versus the YF-23, which company makes it, they're going to have fly-offs and make a determination of which one we're going to get. So it's only communication that makes the F-35, that the F-35 does better than the F-22? It probably has a lot more than that, but I can tell you I've never flown it. I haven't had a chance to fly it. But advanced avionics, weapon systems, stealth capability, all that stuff is probably encompassed in the package. Don't you want to fly one?

I would, but they're going to have to make some concessions and things to allow me to go back into the Air Force. Man, I would feel like someone like you, that would drive me crazy if I never flew one of those things. Yeah, but... That thing looks insane. I'm living a pretty good life as an airline pilot right now. MMA referee, so I got it pretty good right now.

No, you do have it pretty good. I'm not saying you don't. I'm just saying that out of all the jets, like watching that thing maneuver, I didn't know it could do all that. Yeah, it's insane. It doesn't make sense. It's not a plane or a helicopter. First time I fought against it in the air, I was like, I'll sit there. I probably got lost for a second.

I'm like, is that a plane or a helicopter with some of the stuff that it's doing? Is there a way to improve upon that? I think there are probably limitations in the capability of the pilot that's flying it. I think the most I've ever pulled is 10.3 Gs. The plane is designed at 10.3. Yeah, so if you think about the concept of a g if you're the amount of g that you pull you take the body weight or whatever it is and multiply it times that so if my hand weighs 10 pounds i'm pulling you know seven g's my hand feels like it weighs 70 pounds

so as a 200 pound guy you pull nine g's your body feels like it weighs 1800 pounds and you're trying to maneuver the plane, keep sight of the other plane, you know, maybe deploy weapons, control avionics, control your radar and stuff like that as you're doing all that. So there are physical limitations of the person that's flying the plane. That's why they looked at, you know, pilotless aircraft. You know, I think some of the cargo companies have talked about that. There's a human element that I believe you always have to have there because of unknown conditions, you know, emergencies and stuff like that.

They've looked at single pilot, you know, cargo airplanes and stuff like that. But I can tell you when you have emergencies up there, it's nothing like having a person sitting in the seat next to you where somebody can handle the emergency while the other person is flying the plane. You can't get around that. of the emergency while the other person's flying the plane. You can't get around that. But as technology advances, you know, we got drones and stuff that are out there, and you may have a pilot or a controller that's on the ground that's controlling a single drone or multiple drones. So, yeah, we're probably going to advance to that because...

The physical limitations of the human body? The limitations of the human body. Because watching that thing, the way it just changes direction and shoots straight up in the air, you're like, what is that like on a human body because watching that thing the way it just changes direction and shoots straight up in the air you're like what is that like on a human body yeah you got to get over the air sickness and the fear of you know moving in the the third dimension and really combating against the g-forces but in a dogfight scenario you may get maneuvers like that but in a you know a long range fight you're going to be flying straight and level and maybe shoot a missile you may not do stuff like that but my body eventually got used to it it was tough at first you know fighting against because i'd never experienced anything like that before you get on a roller coaster it's like one or two g's like that's nothing right when you get up to

nine you're like oh my god this is you know sinking down into the scene then you've seen like a footage of uh they call it the uh likechamber where guys go and do their stuff. When they spin like that, you can see the physical toll that it has on the body and what it does to you. Now you put that up in the air, moving in three dimensions while you've got the G-forces on you. Does they do that with you, that spin thing? Yeah, you have to go through training for that. When I finished pilot training, it's down at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. You got to do that to be able to go into your fighter. And then once you're done, to be able to prove that you're combat ready,

you got to go down there and you do that. You sit in a seat and you got to be able to pull 9Gs or whatever it is for a certain amount of time. If you don't pass it, see you, go fly something else. How much time do you have to do 9Gs for? You got to do like a series of different exercises. So I think the longest one was off and on anywhere between 30 and 45 seconds. They have you looking over the shoulder to do it, to look at a plane back behind you. They put a plane out in front of you on the screen and you're like, you got to stay with him. You got to keep him in that pocket, which means you got to pull back on the stick a certain amount.

And that determines the amount of G that you got to pull. You got on your G suit and everything like that, but if you don't pass it. 45 seconds sounds so crazy. It's an eternity when you're sitting there in the seat. And the weird thing is, in the centrifuge, because you're at the end of a pendulum, it doesn't feel the same as it does in a plane. Because the shorter the pendulum, the higher the force is going to feel. If you're sitting at the end of a 50-foot pendulum,

it's going to feel a little bit different. But the shorter the pendulum, it's going to be exponential. So guys hate going to the centrifuge. Guys and gals hate doing that just because it's so tough. When you make it through the centrifuge, there's probably going to be a little bit of partying and celebration after that. Well, listen, man, I appreciate you. I respect you

tremendously you're a great referee and your accomplishments are incredible and it was fun talking to you brother thank you Joe I appreciate you

I'll see you in like two weeks right which one are you coming back for you coming on the 6th or the 13th the 13th I think I'm there

for both of them but I'm there for the 13th for sure absolutely I'll be there all month so just a really incredible opportunity thank you Joe

appreciate you having me bye everybody Sure. Absolutely. I'll be there all month. So just a really incredible opportunity. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Bye everybody.