The Joe Rogan Experience - #1664 - Josh Dubin

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Josh Dubin is a criminal justice reform advocate, attorney, and Ambassador Advisor to the Innocence Project.

the Joe Rogan experience Joshua good to see you what's happening I'm uh I'm just in awe I love the the new digs man thank you super happy for you it's come together. If you were here six months ago, it would look pretty shitty. But Matt Alvarez has kicked some ass. So let's continue this conversation. Okay.

Because you guys are just talking about golf. And you're talking about how you don't want to hate golf, but you enjoy it. It's like an inevitability, which happens. It's happened the one or two times I've played this year by a whole 12 out of 18. You're like, I want to get the fuck out of here. I suck. Oh. I'm tired of sucking.

That's what it is. Let's end this suck. Have you hired someone to coach you? No, no, no, no. I don't want to get that far yet. That's like, I feel like you can't come back. But wouldn't that, I would imagine that it's like anything else. It's like if you don't get a coach, then you learn bad habits, and those are hard to break.

Yes, but I am breaking bad habits I had started with from like my whole life of everyone trying to say, like in the four or five times you play, you're doing this wrong, keep your head down, we'll watch the ball for you, all that kind of shit. Oh. I just started swinging the club however I wanted to, and the ball was going straight and far.

And I was like, that's the goal of golf, right? Straight, far. At least you know where it's going. They were all talking shit about you the other day at barbecue. I'm sure. They were like, Jamie just whacks the ball as far as he can. That's what Tony says. That's exactly what Tony would say. Of course, because Tony saw me play golf once and he can't hit as far as me.

Oh, so it's envy. A little. And you were saying that you don't like it, Josh. You don't. I don't know if it's driven by me sucking or if it's that the culture and what's in my mind about what the culture of golf is, is like, you know, people all tucked up in whites. Yeah. And then, or the few times where I've played and felt pressure from people that were behind me to move it the fuck along.

I don't know what it is. I have a very negative association when people tell me, well, deals are made on the golf course. I'm like, I don't know what kind of deals you're making, but I get how peaceful it is, and I know that my hatred is driven by my insecurity around sucking at it.

But having played baseball, I think there's this little ball. I should be able to hit it real far, and then I swing and miss or make a big hole in the course, which apparently isn't good. Divots, I think they call them. I don't play, so I don't know. I'm scared of it. Sometimes you want to divot.

Oh, you do? But there's a lot to it. You know how many strokes of like – you've taught me without playing with you, a pool, like I hit it this way, hit it this way, hit the ball here, here. I can do this kind of stuff. Same kind of thing. There's like 12 or 15, maybe 30 different kinds of strokes to make the ball flight, go different ways, roll backwards, stop.

Yeah, I've seen that where they make it land and then it actually, like a draw shot. Yeah, like a draw shot in pool. In pool, yeah. No. Am I having a mushroom flashback? Shooting star. Oh, okay. This ceiling has shooting stars, folks.

I wasn't going to say anything the first time, but then the second time I was like, oh, no. Yeah. This could go bad quick. No, we have a shooting star. It goes across the top of the ceiling. Yeah, those games, any game like that, the problem with golf for me is that once you're committed, you're on this course. You've got to go walk around. It's a long-ass place to go.

It'll take you hours. I have upped that, though. You've upped that? Get a simulator. You don't have to go anywhere. You stay still. So you have a simulator in your house? Yeah, but you can't putt.

But that's half the fucking game. Right. But is it helping those long, straight shots? I've just started, yeah. So, yeah, you need to practice a lot lot i need to get thousands of strokes done so i can figure out what i'm doing and there's only one way to do that you have to swing hard and do it you can't like hit foam balls right and so you have it set up in your house we could swing full blast and wax that's pretty dope there's not a lot of things like that where you can simulate in your house that usually you do outside.

It's pretty fun. Seems like a bit of a cop-out. If you're going to get in there, you got to get in there. It's been raining all month here too. But it's also like if you want to do numbers, like you can't just whack ball unless you go to one of those top golf places.

And we work all day. So like at night, I can get in 200 strokes. At least I know where it's going. Listen, again, this is driven by my insecurity. I think it's probably a great thing to have a simulator. Yeah. I know how I am with games.

And I know that golf seems to me from the outside in looking like one of the most addictive games ever. It seems super addictive. And now that I think about it, I forget which Malcolm Gladwell book it was, whether it was Blink or Outliers. And I do ascribe to the 10,000-hour rule that if you're going to get good, it seems like a way to get good.

So I don't know what I'm talking about. You got me on golf. I'm away. I'm real out of water. Yeah. It's a weird one, though, right? Because it's a thing where it's the only game that's really connected to business

right tennis isn't necessarily connected to business like you know because golf you don't have to be that athletic I mean there's a physical movement involved to it but you don't have to be able to explode side to side like you do with tennis see See, and that's where I guess you just touched the nerve. I think that that's where my aggravation comes from with golf is I think if you got into this conversation with a golfer, they would chew you alive about, oh, really? It's not a sport? Because I think it's a game. I don't think it's a sport. It's a skills game. It's a skills game. Yeah. I mean, it's not that it's not a physical movement that you do, but you don't get exhausted. No one's whacking you. There's no defense.

Yeah. You could have somebody that is really struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction be at the top of the game like that guy John Daly was, right? And I don't think that there's any sport where you can say the same thing. That guy said he drinks, how many? 16 Diet Cokes a day? I thought of Coors Light. I don't know about Diet Cokes. He doesn't

drink water. He only drinks Diet Coke. And he gets Diet Coke from McDonald's because they have the best Diet Coke. They have that petrified ice. Well, they also have the syrup is stronger, I guess. Oh my God. I think it's awesome. Look, I have extraordinary reverence for people that become

skillful at anything like I'll often look around a room and be like How the fuck did people you know? Invent light bulbs yeah microphones or get great at this game with this little ball So I you know I'll lay awake tonight regretting the fact that I was shitting on golf. Shitting on golf. And there goes my existential angst.

I'm kind of with you about all these things. Like I'm impressed when people get good at Dance Dance Revolution. Watch them do those fast footwork movements. Like it seems kind of useless, but probably actually for fighters, actually, if you really think about it, like, the ability to do that kind of footwork, to move the feet that quick, like Lomachenko, right? That's how he really got good with footwork is that Ukrainian dance. I mean, the guy can do things that, not just dancing, but, you know, you ever see what he does with a tennis ball tied to his head on a string?

Yeah. I was like, well, that'll be good for hand-eye coordination. What did you think of his fight with Lopez? I thought that there was something off about him. I remember you and I spoke about it before the fight, and it seemed like his slow starts might catch up to him. It seemed like that happened there. I mean, I just think he's a mesmerizing athlete. And I feel like he always gets started four or five rounds too late. And I think Lopez had this weird, sort of awkward smothering, you know, in and out cat and

mouse style. Look, people can say what they want about Lopez. He's quick. He's accurate. He's a little awkward. So I was disappointed because I think Lomachenko and his dad are good guys and great athletes. And they sort of, they broke the paradigm of how you're supposed to ascend to a championship and they got there quick. Well, I think he's too small for Lopez. Lopez is a monster. That motherfucker hits so hard. There's so much danger in getting close to him. And Lopez is constantly pressuring.

And he's got incredible endurance for a heavy hitter. Like a lot of guys who hit real hard like he does, he basically doesn't throw anything half speed. Yeah, I saw him in the gym when a guy that James Prince and I managed, of course, Stevenson, in this you know third or fourth fight and and for a guy that hits as hard as he does he he's very um it may not seem so when you see it but he doesn't expend a ton of energy in getting off a big power shot and i was like wow this guy he's he's technical in a way that is not doesn't seem intuitive because you're looking for the the sort of hallmarks of a technical puncher he doesn't

seem that way but boy does he hit for his size he hits fucking hard and he knows how to get his knuckles on your chin he's got ring intelligence he's got that torque to his punch yeah you can't teach well he's got he definitely has natural punch, which you can't teach. Well, he definitely has natural power, right? And you know better than anybody that you either have that or you don't. He's got it. He's got it, but what's unusual with him is he also has volume. He doesn't fade. He won the 12th round, which is like Lomachenko came back and was winning the 11th, right?

That was when he was making his big push. But then Lopez came back and won the 12th. And he wins it with power because it's so dangerous getting close to him. I mean, he's obviously got great skill as a boxer, but his style is such an assaulting power style. He's just always pressuring, always pressuring, always throwing big shots. It's just the consequences of getting too close to him are so dangerous. Well, you know, you put your finger on something that I think is important,

that even people in boxing or in MMA, any combat sport, you know it when you see it. You look at Golovkin, for instance. If you see him and you see him next to other people in his division and you didn't know anything about the sport and you said, that guy's the biggest puncher in his prime, people would be like, come come on the kid with the nice haircut and not overwhelming looking big drama show big drama show listen there's something about the way the fucking guy punches the torque on his punch he knows how to put everything together just right with the right kind of torque and and the way he turns his knuckles over he's also so well school-schooled. He's just so good at finding openings. I felt like he won the first Canelo fight,

and I felt like the second fight was arguable, but it could even have been a draw. But his last fight, who the fuck did he fight in his last fight? I forgot. He nuked some dude. I forgot. He looks good. He looks good in a way that makes me suspicious.

Well, you have. Because he's a little older. Yeah. You have reason to be suspicious of these guys that get more endurance and stronger. When they're 38. No. It's not. Mama nature doesn't ordain it that way.

Back in the day, remember when Larry Holmes came back to fight Mike Tyson? People don't realize that. I think he was only 36. That felt much older back then, didn't it? I know. Isn't that crazy? Like, 36 back then was fucking old. Even when George Foreman came back and knocked out Michael Moore, I remember looking at him being like, how's this old man doing it?

But he was, like, in his early 40s. I know. Well, he was 45, right? Was he that old? I think he was 45 because I think that was the oldest person that's won the heavyweight title. He looked every bit of 45, too. He was so thick. He would walk forward and put those hands up like this.

What crazy style. Crazy style. Archie Moore drive style, you know? Yeah, he was like, if you could sneak one in there, I'll eat it. Yeah. Well, he could take a shot, too. That's the other thing about Foreman. He could take a shot too that's the other thing about foreman he could take a shot and his hands are as big as this fucking table the nicest guy you'll ever meet

too sweetheart of a human being i believe it yeah he really is his whole family he's his career is so interesting takes 10 years off becomes a priest right And he's a preacher. And then comes back. When he comes back, he's like 330 or something like that. Way overweight, big fat. Everybody's making a joke out of it. Like, LOL, look at George Foreman mountain a comeback. And then you keep seeing him winning. And then every time he wins, he looks a little slimmer. Every time he wins, he looks a little smaller.

And then he gets in there with Jerry Cooney and beats the fuck out of him. I mean, that was like if you ever want show, here's what could happen to you, even at the highest levels of the sport. Pull that up. He beat the shit out of him. George Foreman versus Jerry Cooney. And that was a time where Cooney was trying to make a comeback, and people weren't sure whether or not George was ready for top-notch fighters. That was pre the Tommy Morrison fight, right?

Yes. Yeah. Uh-huh. So Tommy Morrison was one of the few guys that beat him. He figured out how to... But look, George did not look bad there. Yeah, he was slim. And this was back when Jerry Cooney was still fucking dangerous.

He had a crazy left hook. You see that catch move he was starting to get down. In this fight, George is looking pretty slim, too. Not looking real overweight, but just very skillful. And the power, the George Foreman power is just something to behold. See, like that little left hook? Stung Cooney. Oh, yeah.

Right at the ear. He knew where to throw it. Such an interesting style of defense, that style that he uses. It's really interesting because, like, you don't see a lot of guys target his body, you know? I mean, it wasn't, like, a thing that ever got him in trouble. There was not, like, some guy. Like, a guy like Cooney had a really good left hook, but he wasn't really known for a left hook to the liver. His left hook was mostly up top.

He was always a headhunter, especially after the norton fight that was like the big fight to put him on the map right you know the one thing that i asked george once why he never got attacked to the body more i know his son one of the georges really well and he was a big fan of lennox's and he would always um call every now and then. He'd come to camp. And he said that people were reluctant to attack him to the body because that exposed them too much for him to come upstairs, right, because you've got to lower your hand so much more to go to his body. Well, when you get a guy who's a big puncher,

like George Foreman is one of the all-time great punchers, right, a guy who's a big puncher, there's so much consequence to any mistake you make anytime you get close to him I mean in the UFC you saw that with uh Francis Ngannou and Stipe Miocic like when when Francis knocked him out to win the title there's so much there's so many consequences like you can't fuck up with him because he hits so hard Jesus Christ George is swinging for the fucking bleachers here. You see how much stronger he is, too. He just bowls him back. Yeah.

Two of the nicest guys, by the way, outside of the ring that you'll ever meet. Cooney, too? Cooney established a pension fund for fighters, right? And he has this organization in New Jersey. And he is Gentleman Jerry. Very fitting name. Just the nicest guy you'll ever meet. Kind of amazing that he never developed a right hand that goes along with his left hook.

You know? Because his left hook was sensational. It was so good. But look at him. He's like 80% lefts. He'll throw the occasional right. But look, it's jab, jab, jab, left hook, jab, jab, jab, left hook, left hook, left hook. Look, it's all lefts. He'll throw the occasional right, but look, it's jab, jab, jab, left hook, jab, jab, jab, left hook, left hook, left hook.

Look, it's all left hooks. Kind of crazy, right? Well, and he also was, you'll notice that he was pretty good on his feet, and people missed with him a lot. See that? Little subtle little moves on the inside. Oh, he was a skillful boxer. He just came along when Larry Holmes was the baddest motherfucker

on earth. Yeah, one of the most underrated fighters ever. Yeah, but look how many lefts he throws. It's kind of crazy. He's probably, other than Andre,

but Andre had a reason for it because of his right shoulder being fucked up. He's probably one of the most left-handed heavy fighters of all time. Yeah, I can't think of another one you watch.

He's probably thrown 30 left hands. Yeah, it 30 left hands in this round that we're watching. It's all lefts. I mean, he was known for it. It was a jab and then a hook, or two jabs and two hooks. And even in these exchanges, everything is coming from the left side, everything. The right side, it just seems like he's like way less effective way less confident but i i never understand that unless there's an injury like why wouldn't a fighter i mean he's a professional boxer why wouldn't he develop a wicked right hand like how does a guy just have one oh there it is oh oh oh that's a wrap george Foreman with that fucking

tremendous power talk about reverence I could never I don't care if they're 110 pounders I can never be critical even in a

casual conversation of a fighter I just can't they're the I don't care what sport it is you mean in terms of like their performance

and their ability yeah just because I just feel like and I don't want to sport it is. You mean in terms of their performance and their ability? Yeah, just because I just feel like, and I don't want to unearth anything, but hearing guys like Stephen A. Smith or Mauro or any of these guys that don't have any experience fighting, period, having even fought just like bullshit amateur tournaments, you try to hold your hands up for three minutes. Forget about having to worry about being punched or punching.

It's fucking hard. It's hard. And these guys are so brave. And even being close to it as a manager in it and representing fighters, I will never, ever, ever, even in private conversation, be like, he sucks. Yeah.

They're fucking great. It's a different thing, right? It's not like a guy sucking at golf, right? The guy sucks at golf, he sucks at golf, right? I feel much more comfortable saying he's got no business on the golf course than saying he's got no business in an octagon or in a bare knuckle fight or in a boxing ring. As do I. I feel the exact same way.

There's more laid out. It's like you're laying something on the line when you get into a ring and you're fighting. It's a different thing. You're exposing yourself. You're much more vulnerable, and I feel like they deserve a level of respect. You could say things about their technical proficiency. I don't have any problem with that.

But these terms that people like to use with basketball players or baseball players, like, oh, he fucking sucks. He's, you know, he should quit. You fucking boo. Like, you know, you get paid to do nothing. You bum. Like that kind of shit, they do it. Like baseball games, they scream out at people.

I can't take it. But that's- I can't take it. Doing that to boxing, it's like the problem is a lot of these sports guys, and we had a problem with that early on in the UFC, is that you would get these sports guy writers who would try to write about the athletes, the fighters, in this really disrespectful AM sports guy way. You know those AM radio sports guys?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like all insults. It's like what they do with some of them. It's like they have this style of attacking all the different players' work ethics, and they got signed for too much. They're not worth it. Fucking trade them. Get rid of them.

They were doing that same thing with fighters, and I'm like, hey, man, this is a different thing. These guys are literally laying their health out there. And did you put your foot down early? A bunch of times, yeah, a bunch of times. I had some real heated exchanges with some people about it. I just didn't, I don't like it. I don't like that way of disrespecting fighters. It drives me nuts.

And if you let that culture, if you let that get into the sport, it diminishes the the culture of martial arts and I think you can make an argument that shit-talking does that too and I could see that argument I could see how they would say that like that shit-talking and like the Conor McGregor style shit-talking that that kind of diminishes the culture of martial arts too but that in my eyes is a tactic because it's you're you're fucking with someone's emotions and you're testing a person's mettle.

You're testing a person's composure. Like how are they going to be able to handle the emotions of hating someone? Someone gets you to hate them. You know, they say terrible things to you. They mock you. They insult you. And then that fucks with your head. And then when you go to fight, you're very emotional, and you leave yourself exposed.

Like, that's an old-school Miyamoto Musashi tactic. Well, there's a big difference, isn't there, too? Because, like, I had my son, I took him to his first Yankee game where he could actually comprehend what was going on, right? He's nine now. So I had taken him when he was four or five. So he's nine, and there's a guy sitting behind us. He's a college. So I had taken him when he was four or five. So he's nine, and there's a guy sitting behind us. He's a college-age kid.

And, uh, fucking suck, you know, take him out of the game. And I, you know, first of all, you know, not that I need to cover his ears from curse words, but, you know, he was, he asked me, he said, why is he so, why is he being so mean? And I said, you know what the irony is, son? He probably, you know how to stop someone dead in their tracks, dead in their tracks and say, what level did you get to in baseball or basketball or football? You know, 99% of the time, someone yelling that shit sucked in Little League and probably

never made it out of Little League. And there's something that I think is remarkably consistent with fighters, even guys like Conor McGregor, even Floyd. At the end of it, they will freely admit after the battle is done, that was all in prospect of promoting the fight. promoting the fight, you know, and there's always this, I know I've told you this, it's remarkable how these MMA fighters come together and they, they celebrate each other's success at the end. Very rare. It seems to me, even in boxing that at the end, there isn't like, you know, you get knocked out. It's like, what are you going to say? You got me very rare that you get like a Deontay Wilder making up these conspiracy theories about his gloves, about the opponent's gloves being loaded and something was put in my drink and it was this fault. Most of the time what I see,

especially with fighters, which is I guess why I love them and I always have a soft spot for them, even though I've promised my wife, all right, no more boxing, no more. There's something about it that's in your DNA. You're not handling any boxers anymore? No, no, I am. I'm still, James Prince and I are still partners. But you still promise your wife no more boxing? No, I promise her that I won't get as emotionally caught up in it. Because I fall in love with fighters in a way because they're sensitive people. They're introspective.

They have, you know, I think existential angst like me. There's something that they're struggling with that they're trying to work out a lot of the time. And I find them to be fascinating people. But I'm not the way I was when Lennox was fighting or, you know, when Andre was fighting or, you know, earlier on, I'd be going to all the fights. I can't because I want to be with my kids and my wife, but it'll never be gone. But yeah, we have Shakur Stevenson and some of the best, you know,

this great heavyweight prospect named Jared Anderson, who I think is going to be heavyweight champion. We have a ton of fighters. How many fights does he have? Jared's, I think, 9-0. How old is he? Nine knockouts. He's 22.

Ooh. Yeah. One of the most decorated heavyweight amateurs. He was, you know, going to be on the Olympic team, and he decided to come out early. 22. Ooh. Yeah. One of the most decorated heavyweight amateurs. He was, you know, going to be on the Olympic team, and he decided to come out early. Just remarkable. You'll see that Tyson Fury has had him as his sparring partner and repeatedly has said, this guy's amazing.

What do you think about what's going on with Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder? Do you think that Tyson knew that he was going to have to defend against Deontay and that this whole Anthony Joshua thing? Because that's what Joshua thinks, that he knew the whole time that he wasn't going to be able to make that fight. And they were just letting them get all hyped up about it, but knew he had to really face Deontay Wilder because of the lawsuit. It's 100% not true. Not true. No, there was an arbitration going on and they were actively trying to, you know, and I know this on firsthand knowledge, they were actively trying to make sure that they, he was trying to get out of the third

fight. He thought that he had a contractual right not to have to fight that third fight because it had to happen at a certain time. And they and they are, I mean, the arbitration is confidential, but I know what was going on and I know that they were actively trying to make sure that, um, he didn't have to fight that third fight. So I don't, I don't believe in the conspiracy theory. I think Tyson Fury is, he's call him whatever you want, but that's a man right there. He'll fight anyone. That's a fact. I mean, if you ever see him live in a gym, I mean, everyone who's watching the sparring's jaw is on the floor to watch this guy, as big as he is, with back fat.

I do love that he gets fat. That back fat is like some stubborn, they look like two ham hocks. And you see him and you're like, what the fuck? That's beer. He moves like a fucking gazelle. He is, I've never seen anything like it. Lennox has watched him and be like this. I can't believe what I'm seeing he's just

remarkably gifted and you know well he's always moved like that from the time he was young he's moved like that so it's just part of his style now he can punch a little bit though yeah well now he he sets down and he moves forward instead of just trying to box and box and box you know like that was the key to the Wilder fight was the 12th round. 12th round of the first fight. Yes. We had Wilder on his heels and he realized, okay, this is how you fight this guy. Yeah.

You go after him. Because if you just try to move around, then he can move forward and set his punches in and put his weight behind his punches like he did in that 12th round and dropped him. But then when Tyson got up and then had Deontay backing up, as soon as he had Deontay backing up, it's almost like he was like, oh, this is how you fight this guy. Yes. And he can't fight backing up, in my humble opinion. Here I am again. This is my humble opinion. He can fight backing up. It's just not his best. It's not his best position to be in. He's got that, what Teddy Atlas calls the eraser you know like all mistakes erased with one shot yeah and I mean that's another guy it might not

look as conventional but I mean I've he puts people he pulls the plug on their consciousness in a way that Ortiz hit him in the forehead yeah that was it and that got that guy Ortiz by the, he fought a fighter that I managed with James, Brian Jennings, who's super tough. And he got hit with bombs, Ortiz, in that fight. And he was just like, all right, what's for lunch? All right, now give me dinner. He just is a tough hombre. And he got, you know, and that was a competitive fight.

That second Ortiz-Wilder fight was a competitive fight. Well, the first one, he almost took Wilder out. Yeah, yeah, he had him hurt. He had Wilder in real trouble. He had him hurt in the garden, yep. Put up Deontay Wilder KOs Louis Ortiz, because that is one of my favorite KOs ever, because it was just blap, one shot out of nowhere,

sweat sprays, and he walks off. off he just pivot and walked off because he knew he's like the guy he's like he's like babe ruth or mickey mantle or one of these home run hitters that right off the bat if you watch him he turns his back and he's like it's over and i think what happened with tyson fury is he felt the same way and And Tyson got up. Tyson got up. Like Lazarus. Oh, my God. He got up and won the round. That's what's crazy. And you hear the announcers are just, they think it's a wrap.

He's lying on his back with his hands over his head. Where many referees, that's where it gets subjective, right? Many referees would have just called it right there. It made me believe in a higher power to watch him get up the way he did. He just was like, all right, I'm getting up. That's hilarious. It was crazy. Yeah, he's an unusual person.

Yeah, bag it up a little bit. Watch this. I love this knockout. Just blap. Here it is. Sets it up. Right on the top of the head. And just walks away.

I mean, look at Ortiz's arms paralyzed. He's trying to fit his mouthpiece in. But look at how it sets it up. Bam. Watch him turn around. Yep. Just pivot. See ya.

Walk away. See ya. Fuck, crazy. Crazy power. Look at the spray flying off his head. I mean, who the fuck hits harder than that guy? No, and you know, that's another thing. He could say all these crazy things about the gloves and his water and everything.

But he can do that. You know, I saw his first pro fight live. Really? Yeah, it was in Nashville. And it was, you know, his balance was so bad. He could barely, he would throw a punch and then he would be dancing all over the place he just couldn't get his balance down which is not uncommon for heavy for big heavyweights Lennox was like that before he got with Emmanuel Stewart he had a big

problem with his balance and the notion that this guy would make it as far as he's has this far and then develop the right hand he knows he knows that his balance is improved he's got that what he had to do to improve it is wide in that stance so wide that his back foot is so far behind him he can't really do anything about that because his balance will get all fucked up again but a guy that you know there's something to be said about a guy that says, all right, this is my moneymaker, and I'm just going to figure out how to dance around, stay in the fight, figure out when I can unload it.

I mean, that's, to me, I marvel at that. I think it's just, it's extraordinary to see. Well, if you look at his career on paper, he's the most extraordinary knockout artist in the history of the heavyweight division. No one has had a record like his. He literally has only won one fight by decision, the Stiverne fight. That's it. Every other dude he beat went night-night. Watch this.

That's crazy. That's crazy. James Prince calls me one day and he's like, this guy, Bermaine Stiverne, wants us to represent him and negotiate his rematch against Wilder. And I said to Jay, you sure we want to do that? Because this guy went the distance. So the problem was that Stiverne was represented by Don King. So, you know, we had done so much business with Don. And Don kind of knew not to.

We had like an unspoken understanding that you can't fuck around too much with us. I had been involved suing Don. James had been involved suing Don over the years. So we had this one meeting before the fight where we're in a hotel room in Brooklyn where Don is trying to grind down Stiverne's purse. where Don is trying to grind down Stiverne's purse. And he finally, we finally negotiated these terms and Don kept on bringing up, well, if he wins the fight and if he wins the fight,

we were all looking at each other. And I think the three of us looked at each other and burst out laughing at the same time because we knew we were all, you know, Stiverne's a big, strong guy. He came out in the rematch and while there was like this is the one guy that i went the distance with he blew him out in the first round and in a way that i was like this guy is gonna get hurt stay down you know

it was a wild first round too like he threw everything behind those punches yeah like pull that up cuz it's the way he knocked him out was so ridiculous like look at that one too I mean come on son then watch this boom I mean come on dude just show that again that one two is insane look at this boom I think he gets up, if I remember. Yeah, he got up. He got up, but he was fucked. He's in real trouble. Oh, boy. He was like, I told them I didn't want to do this again. What does he say to the ref right there?

I don't know. I don't know what he said. He's in real trouble here. Don't make me do it again. Look at, look at, look at his hands down. That guy's a badass. He stands there with his hands down like a charging bull. He just stood there with his hands down like,

why, you really want some of this? And Stiverne got up again. That's what's crazy. He almost made it out of the first round. Here we go. Wiping his gloves off. Like, the referee's giving him plenty of time. Look at Deontay just runs towards him.

Boom. Oh. That's it. Look, and now he's fighting off the referee. Get off me. I would never. I mean, to get up. To get up from two punches like that.

But it's not just that. I mean, from two knockdowns. It's like the brazenness. You know, like, Deontay, like, had zero fear of this guy. Look at this. Step to the side. Bang, bang, bang. I mean, totally unnecessary.

I'm trying to find myself and Prince and King. We must have been on the other side of the ring in the crowd because after the second knockdown, I remember Don King turned around and it up started laughing it was terrible but i mean he represented them he promoted him he didn't represent anything but himself only in america oh my god but you know i could watch that and be like, look, we're laughing because it's, you know, we're laughing in awe of both of these guys. Because you have to be a badass to get knocked down like that. And get up. And get up.

And want more. Twice. Twice. I don't care what you're saying to the ref, shaking your head. So I will always be in love with men that are willing to risk that much because what's never been lost on me, not to get too introspective or poetic about it, it was always, like even with Bermane-Siverne,

it was a quick representation, but James and I got him paid. And this is a sport that plucks the most disenfranchised people most of the time out of the worst circumstances, out of the poorest neighborhoods. And it's like the fucking wild west. Yeah. You know, like I think Dana White and the UFC get a lot of shit for, oh, well, it's a monopoly. It's this big thing. All right, look, there's some organization there. There's a central body. You know, in boxing, you have, like, when I shut my eyes and think about it, it's like a bunch of rabid vultures that are looking to pluck flesh off of people, eat it, and throw them aside. Well, this is what's going on right now where a bunch of fighters are upset because Logan Paul and Floyd Mayweather just fought.

And Logan Paul made $20 million and Floyd Mayweather made $100 million. And they're looking at this like, hey, what about me? Like how come I'm not making that kind of money? And I think what they have to understand is whether you like it or not, even if you are an elite, the elite of the elite, a Kamaru Usman or, you know, pick any style bender, the best fighters in the UFC, even the elite of the elite, the money comes from people wanting to buy your pay-per-view. It's real simple. Yeah. It shouldn't maybe, you know, maybe in a perfect world, it's the most skillful fighter gets the most amount of money.

But that's not how it works here. In the world of combat sports, professional prize fighting, it's all about how many eyes are going to watch you, and that fucking Logan Paul kid has a lot of eyes on him. He's had a YouTube channel since he was 14 years old. He's been on Disney shows. He's this controversial, larger-than-life Internet celebrity, and people are willing to pay a lot of money to see if he can box

with literally one of the greatest fighters that's ever lived in Floyd Mayweather. Hey, look, I'm not mad at it. I'm not mad at it either. Yeah. And you know what? The best fighters in some of the best fighters to ever fight, Lennox Lewis, Andre Ward, these guys that I had the honor of representing, you never hear out of these elites that they're pissed Like good for them because I think that they get on a fundamental level that as human beings we unfortunately Were hardwired to watch the train wreck we want to see carnage We want to see a free and we want and we want it is a freak show that was a freak show It's a circuit. I was looking forward to it. I really was.

I was so excited before the bell rang for the first round. It's like going to the circus almost. It's like a dude wrestling a bear. I mean- Can he wrestle a bear? You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of when Rocky fought Hulk Hogan in one of the Rocky movies. Well, the thing, the difference though is that Floyd, first of all, you got to give credit

to Floyd Mayweather for doing that because it's so crazy to fight a guy 35 pounds heavier than you. That's so big. He looked like he was fighting a giant. Yeah. And to watch him, look, people have a lot of opinions about Floyd Mayweather, what he does, how he spends his money. Listen, the guy's brilliant in a lot of ways. He's tapped into something that human beings want and want to see. But I was watching him in the fight. The guy outweighs him by 40 pounds and he's walking to him, walking right to him with his hands up. And so I was like, listen,

he is a badass. And listen, the guy, Logan Paul, he's got balls to get in there and to do that. How could you ever be mad at that? I mean, you could take a step back and be like, oh, God, what has society come to? Right. I mean, it's come to watching the freak show. Yeah. It's come to watching the freak show. And maybe not just that because there were some professional fights on the undercard, but no one's talking about those.

You know, it's just the big fight was the freak show fight. And you wanna know what? I think that this is gonna continue until somebody shuts these kids up. And like people wanna see now they want, I think it's the same sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that Mayweather sort of tapped into. It's like I realized the more I run my mouth,

the more I make people have an emotion towards me. Love's like, I realized the more I run my mouth, the more I make people have an emotion towards me. Yeah. Love or hate, mostly hate, right? Mostly they're going to be pissed at me. They, now they want to tune in to see me lose. And that's just as valuable, if not more valuable than wanting to tune. So I think that on a, on a, um, he gets human behavior and human thinking more than he gets credit for. I don't, you know, I'm not here to weigh in on his life or his lifestyle because who am I? I'm just another human being. But I think that same thing is happening with these two. People want to see them lose now and they realize how there's currency in that. Yeah.

No, there's a lot of currency in that. It's super valuable. People want to see them get fucked up. And, you know, we were at the UFC recently, and Jake Paul was in the audience, and the whole audience was chanting, Fuck Jake Paul! Fuck Jake Paul! And he was laughing and holding his camera up and filming it and shit. And DC got in his face.

Yeah. Which I love to see. That was so cool. But it was like, then the story became, Cormier confronts Paul. And look, there's part of me that is like, you spend your life racking your fucking brains. How do I make it in this world?

How am I going to support my family? What am I going to do to make a difference? So there's a part of it that I get where people are like and these two fucking kids what did they do what how did they get famous i don't know they piss people off yeah but they got famous first this is what's interesting they got famous first and then it turns out they can fight especially jake that kid can knock people the fuck out he knows how to punch can Can he knock fighters out, though? Well, we don't know. I mean, we saw Askren, right?

But Askren, first of all, coming off of a hip replacement surgery, it's a brilliant move, right? You get a guy who's arguably the worst striker in elite MMA, which is Ben Askren. And that's no disrespect to Ben Askren. He'd probably admit to that. He's a wrestler, right? Phenomenal wrestler, like elite wrestler.

Great guy, not a good striker. You make him box. It's like the worst thing that he does. And then Jake Paul starches him with one punch. But you looked at his body. He looked severely out of shape. He looked like he hadn't trained for a long time and then kind of got in good enough shape so he could compete.

The guy knows how to fight and knows how to win, but that's not his sport. It's not his sport at all. He just took a paycheck. I'd like to see this guy, Jake Paul, fight someone. He's going to fight Tyron Woodley. Well, after he fights, can Tyron Woodley fight? Can he box? Well, I know he can punch. He punches really hard, but he doesn't punch like a boxer. He throws big bombs and sets up takedowns and you know he can crack though with one shot he could fuck anybody up but the thing is like the way he throws shots he'll throw like a bomb and then set up a takedown or set up a clinch he's not a guy who's like going out there with peekaboo style throwing jabs and hooks to the body that's not

his style he's never been a guy who boxed. He's been a guy who uses boxing in MMA, but he uses everything. Does Jake Paul beat him, you think? Oh, we won't know until they get in there. The thing about it is he'll be the most dangerous guy that Jake's fought for, sure. Not even close.

No one more dangerous than Tyron Wood. Well, if he beats an MMA fighter... Tyron's not just an MMA fighter. Tyron is a UFC world champion and one of the best welterweights of all time. If you looked at all the UFC welterweights of all time, he's top three. He's fucking phenomenal. But there is something fundamentally different about MMA fighters fighting a boxer. Yeah, because there's other stuff that you incorporate into your movement, right?

You're worried about leg kicks. You're worried about takedown defense. You're worried about all these different things. You have all these different variables on your plate. Now, you remove all those variables. You give Tyron a pair of shoes, and you just let him punch. You know, he punches really fucking hard. And when he doesn't have to worry about wrestling, he doesn't have to worry about getting his tired,

and he can pick his shots, he'll be the most dangerous guy that Jake Paul's ever fought for sure. But it doesn't necessarily mean that he wins. And I think Jake Paul can fucking box. If you look at that Nate Robinson fight, I know Nate Robinson didn't know what he was doing, but the way he landed those punches, he cracked him and knocked him out moving backwards. He can move backwards and then plant.

So he doesn't have big wind-up movements. His brother has more wind-up shots. His brother was throwing more windmill-y type arm punches. Jake throws things straight and hard. They're dangerous, much more dangerous. Here's why I have more respect for the older brother for what he just did. Yes, he outweighed him by 40 pounds, but he got in there with perhaps the best fighter to ever get in a ring. I'd love to see how Jake Paul fares against someone similar in size that is a boxer.

Yeah. Well, you know what, man? He's only is a boxer. Yeah. Well, you know what, man? He's only got a couple of fights. Here's how you have to look at him. Look at him like any other guy who only has a couple of fights. If you saw a guy who's coming up and he didn't have an amateur career and he's only had a couple of fights, you'd go, man, he's got some promise. Yeah, I know, but these guys aren't in it for the long haul to become boxers.

Jake says he is. They're in it to become spectacles. But imagine if this guy gets all the way up to a world title fight. Imagine. Imagine if he actually works his way through some professional boxers. That would be remarkable, wouldn't it? It wouldn't just be remarkable the fucking money he'll be able to earn. Well, how about fighting a recently retired?

You know who would fuck him up right now? Who would fuck him up right now? Andre Ward. Are you saying Andre now? Andre Ward. Are you going to say Andre Ward? Andre Ward. Because Andre can't fight professionally anymore because he's had some physical problems. But Andre is still in shape. He's recently retired.

Maybe he'll get mad at me. Are you trying to set something up? Look at you. You're looking away. You're like the worst poker player ever. He's like, well, maybe. Well, I just know, I know. I know.

Look, that's my brother. I mean, I know that he's like. Has he thought about it? He's thought about it. He's thought about it. He's thought about it and be like, we've talked about it recently. I texted him after he announced that he wasn't going to take the Canelo fight and retire. And I said, I admire him so much.

And I admire the way he carries himself so much. And I think it's so valuable for the sport of boxing. Because here's a guy who wins an Olympic gold medal, wins two world titles in two different weight classes, is undefeated. Not only undefeated, but fought the majority of his fight, of his career rather, with one arm. Retires undefeated and then says you know what that's it i'm i will best serve boxing as a commentator and as a representative and that's what he decides to do and he's so eloquent and so composed and he's such a great spokesman for boxing and such a great commentator like i love the fact that he got out with all his

marbles got out with plenty of money got out with with his health. Good. He's, you know, here's the thing about Andre too. When you get to know him, he is, there's a reason why you have respect for him in those ways and others, because you've gotten to know him a little bit. He's, he is a,-in-a-lifetime streaking comet of a human being. And I say that not because of what he accomplished as a fighter, but if you look at his childhood and, you know, he's been out there about the fact that his mother and father struggled with addictions. His father dies suddenly. And he had every reason to go in a completely opposite

direction. He is like a brother to me in so many ways, but I'll spend hours on the phone with him just talking about life and existence and everything that you've said about... He's the rare instance of a human being that his pub was projected about him publicly is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how how yeah I get emotional thinking about him because he's so he's so important to me as a human being. And if you look at his family, he's a guy that all his dreams came true. And to one child to the next, everybody that he touches, he has that impact on. And he's a guy that when he makes mistakes, he'll admit his mistakes. And we're both stubborn and have our ups and downs, but I could not be happier to be associated with him.

And you're right, a lot of money was put on the table for him to fight Canelo. And we still get, James and I still get asked about it, and he has that stick-to-it-ness. But why would he want to fight Jake Paul then? Because I think it's, in his mind, it's an exhibition. And I don't think that he looks at it as even a remote threat, that it could tarnish his legacy or that he would have to expend too much physically. I think that he probably is sitting back looking at this and like, you know what? I could now secure not just my children's, but my great-grandchildren's futures. And I could, you know, I think that there's a

part of Andre, if you know him well, everything that I've set aside, oh, he's got some dog up in him. You heard, if you ever watch his fights, if he gets hit, you'll see him. now I'm going to get you four times. You know, he is a mean SOB in the ring. And I think that there's a part of him that sees this and is like, these guys need to be put in their place. And I could do it pretty easily. But do you think that Jake Paul would be willing to fight a guy like Andre Ward, Olympic gold medalist, multiple division world champion, undefeated fighter? No.

Who's still young? No. I mean, how old is Andre? 35?, undefeated fighter. No. Who's still young. No. I mean, how old is Andre? 35? Yeah. Just turned 35. 36. He's still in the prime of his athletic career or close to it, close enough to it.

But he's a little banged up physically. He basically, you know. You trying to sell this fight? No. That's what it seems like to me. Not trying to sell it. Seems like you're trying to. I would love for the guy

I would love for Jake Paul to be like, you know what? I'll take that on. So in that but in my mind it's like that would never happen. The guy's very risk averse. I don't know about that. I mean Tyron's a risk. Tyron Woodley's a real risk.

And he's also offering to bet Tyron his purse. He said he'll donate Tyron's purse to charity. I noticed that Tyron did not take him up on that. Yeah. Not good. Yeah. I mean, that's a- I noticed that. I said, Tyron is just saying, I'm not saying anything. I think Tyron needs that money. Yeah. I think he's planning 100% on that money, and if he were to lose the fight, it's not good. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think he's the biggest threat, though. Hey, listen. He can knock him out, and I think he's got a legitimate shot at hurting him. He fucking hits hard, man. I have a question for you. What do you make of all of these exhibitions have caught fire?

I don't know if it's because of COVID that people began thinking, well, I got to watch something. I'll watch anything. Yeah. And then they watch. And Tyson and Lennox are now talking about an exhibition. That might happen. I think it probably will happen. I think that there's something I'm biased there's something interesting to me to

see how will a guy in his mid-50s get in shape enough because Lennox is a perfectionist how will he get in shape to the point where he feels comfortable getting into a ring that would be interesting to me to watch pretty crazy it's it is interesting. See, it doesn't necessarily matter who's the most skillful. It matters what's the most entertaining. I'll give you an example. Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward.

It's not saying that those guys weren't skillful. They're both very skillful fighters, but they weren't the best in the world. But what a fucking matchup that was. And when those guys fought, the whole world watched. And no one was under any illusion that those guys were going to be the best in the world that they were the world champions it didn't matter it was just like this is a recipe for a fucking really incredibly exciting fight it was an apocalyptic cataclysmic explosion i went to the second fight and it was like in that boardwalk hall in Atlantic City. The place was fucking vibrating.

There's fights that it's not important that they're not the best in the world. What's important is how they match. A good example in MMA is Diego Sanchez versus Clay Guida. One of the wildest fights of all time. Have you ever seen it? No. Jamie. Pull that shit up.

No. Because it is one of the wildest fights of all time first this was diego sanchez in his prime when he was a fucking savage still is a savage but in that day i mean he he fought like nobody else he would just come at you like a wild animal like a wolverine just like a wolverine trying to steal your food. And the two guys just went to war. And I believe it was at the Palm in Vegas. Diego just runs at him. This is the beginning of the fight.

This is the fucking- Oh, this is the first round? This is the first seconds. I thought you were showing me highlights. No, man. This is the first seconds of the fucking opening round. They were going after each other. I mean, first of all, Clay Guida takes a shot like fucking no one on the planet.

Does he survive this round? Yes. He almost wins the fight and arguably did. He lost a split decision. It was a crazy-ass fight, but he got hurt in this fight. But, I mean, the way they fought, they did this for three fucking rounds. Clay wound up taking him down and winning at least one of the rounds with some ground and pound. And some people thought that maybe it was close enough that he pulled it off.

But it was maybe even a draw. But Diego, I mean, I'm not arguing against the decision. I'm just saying it turned out to be pretty fucking close. Well, how fitting is it that he's wearing a Chicago Carpenters Union endorsement on his trunk? Well, that's who he is. It's his nickname, the Carpenter. Clay the Carpenter Guida. Oh, man.

Yeah, but that fight is like that for three rounds. Just fucking madness where the whole place is screaming. It was nuts. I still, look, maybe boxing people will jump on me for this. maybe boxing people will jump on me for this. I have never, I went to my first MMA fight live for the Masvidal-Diaz fight, and I have never seen a live sporting event that was that exciting ever.

And that includes when Lennox fought Mike Tyson. That includes any pro fight I've ever seen. There's literally nothing like it. And I know this is like a boxing fanatic. How could you say that? It's just a fact. MMA is more exciting. It just is.

There's more elements going on. Boxing feels like watching a baseball game after you go to an MMA fight. You have to appreciate the skill and the science and the art of it, which I do. But in terms of pure excitement and product, the entertainment is just... Yeah, it's different. Although, like, you know, when a guy like Canelo fights, see, it's like

when Mike Tyson was in his prime, too. It's the same kind of thing. Like, a guy who could just take anybody out with one shot, there's something about that, because you're watching this guy stalk someone. Like, when Canelo fought Billy Joe Saund saunders one uppercut boom breaks his face and points at him he's like i broke your face and then does this to the crowd yeah come on like i got it that guy's he's special i don't know man i've like shakur stevenson who i think is special one of the most special fighters in the world right now Shakur says to me watch him

in the pocket he watch him make people miss and he'll give me time stamps to watch this round how does he do it he makes people and Shakur is a very um how should we say self-assured young man he doesn't think anyone but he he said that's the goat right there. The guy stands in the pocket and with these little subtle dips of his shoulder or angles on his head, he just knows how to make people miss. He's remarkable. Well, he learned so much from that Floyd fight, right? He fought Floyd and Floyd was so hard to hit. And I think that was a real eye-opener for him because he's this murderous young puncher. It's just, just seek and destroy Mexican style fighter. And then he fights Floyd Mayweather and he can't

hit him. He's like, oh shit. This is crazy. This is the thing. The first time I went I managed a kid named Kermit Cintron who was a welterweight champion of the world. I remember him. Best athlete to this day. Pure athlete that I've ever managed.

He could bowl like a 280. He could, Jamie, he could golf. Fucking great golfer. He could play basketball. Amazing balance. Unbelievable. So I had him training with Emmanuel Stewart at one point, but Ronnie Shields, the great trainer in Houston, trained him. And he got a fight with Canelo. This was maybe eight years ago. And he was fighting in Mexico City and we went down to Mexico City. James Prince wouldn't come.

He's like, I don't know why you're going to Mexico City. He's like, black guys and Jews don't belong in Mexico City. We're all going to get kidnapped. So we go down to Mexico City and the fight is in a fucking bullring. All right. Now, Canelo was smaller physically back then. The first round, Mauricio Suleiman, who is the head of the WBC, comes over to me and says, do you want a drink? All right. I said, no, I'm good. They were warming up in trailers set up like it was a movie set. We walk into this bull ring.

There's 9,000 people. And it's like they're right on top of the ring. And this guy, Canelo, came out in the first round. And he hit Kermit with a one-two and the matchmaker standing next to me goes, this guy's going to fucking put a hole into Kermit. He's going to put a hole. I have never seen a guy that size punch the way he punched, like a fucking mule. And Suleiman must've seen the look on my face. He didn't come over and say, do you want another drink? He handed me a double scotch and just walked away. I was like, that's about right. And Kermit just didn't make it

out of the third or fourth round. He just overwhelmed him. Powerful, skillful, and just, he's got that, there's like a dominant gene in his genetic sequence where he's just like like there's just something special about him i don't think he's going to be beat he's a monster and he's so dedicated it's not

just that you know there's a what is that guy graham elwood is that the guy's name that um he does uh interviews on youtube is that his name i forget the guy's name i'm sorry uh but the guy has a a bunch of interviews on YouTube. He's a really good interviewer, and he goes to Canelo's home. And he interviews Canelo, and Canelo gives him a tour of all of his cars and shows his house and all these different things that he does. And Canelo basically, he's going over his philosophy on staying at the top. And he's like, you know, a lot of philosophy on staying at the top.

And he's like, you know, a lot of times people get to the top and they're not hungry anymore. And he's like, but I'm very, very hungry. He goes, I want to be the best ever. And he goes, and I just, it's all about hard work. And he just keeps working harder and harder and harder and keeps putting in that time. Like you could see it in his head. It's like he's dedicated on this path. He's not like full of himself. He's obviously super confident but aware that all this could go away if he starts to think about it the wrong way.

If he starts to think that he's already made it or that he doesn't have to work as hard because he's so much better than everybody else. He doesn't think that way. Cool motherfucker too. Yeah. Just, you know, like treats everybody respectfully. Just seems like a super grounded guy. He's amazing, man. And you need those outliers.

You need those people like him to shake up the industry. You need people like him that are so good and so dedicated and so physically dominant. And I always go back to the fight with Danny Jacobs. Like, that, to me, was, like, the clearest progression of his defensive skills. Because, you know, Danny can crack, and he's dangerous. He's a super athlete, too. He's a big guy. Yeah.

And he's coming at Canelo throwing bombs, and Canelo's just bobbing and weaving and standing in front of him, like using it as an opportunity almost. Some of the best defense I've ever seen in a fight. Yeah, it's crazy. And Danny's a tremendous athlete, great kid. I know him since he's like 15, 16 years old in New York. See if you can find that.

Clips of Canelo defense Danny Jacobs. Because it's fucking incredible. It's when you know how good Danny Jacobs is and you know how this is a big fight. And a lot of people thought Danny had a chance. He's a big guy for the division, power puncher, real elite boxer, world-class skills. And you see him. And it was a good fight. Still a good see him, and it was a good fight. Still a good fight.

Yeah, it was a good fight. And you think about what that guy's overcome. Yeah, yeah. You know, stage three or four cancer, like a tumor wrapped around. What kind of cancer did he have? Some sort of bone cancer, I believe. Jesus Christ.

Blood cancer. I mean, look at that. I mean, look at this fucking head movement. I mean, it's just so smooth. It's incredible. It's incredible. And he's doing it so efficiently, right? Right in front of him. And his feet are always in proper position. I mean, it's really amazing. He also, you know, the Golovkin fights, I think, taught him a lot about how to stand in front of a power puncher. He was so much better in the second fight than he was the first fight.

I think in the first fight Golovkin got robbed. I really do. Yeah, I thought Golovkin won that fight. I thought he won that fight. But, I mean, this fight's incredible. Just fucking defense is phenomenal, man. I mean. He literally can't land a punch on him.

It's nuts. But it's also he's doing it from, like, right in front of him. That's that in-the's also, he's doing it from like right in front of him. That's that in the pocket stuff. Yeah. He knows where everything is coming from. It's just incredible. I mean, who's better than this guy? Fucking nobody.

You know what I watched today that's pretty goddamn impressive that I forgot? Oscar De La Hoya's Instagram page is his fight with Julio Cesar Chavez and I know Julio was older when they fought but god damn I forgot how good Oscar was when Oscar was young when Oscar was on fire

when he was young and pretty he was he's still pretty he's an older man yeah he's not bad looking but look look how fucking good

he looked here I mean these combinations from Oscar and this left hook, the way he would leap in with the left hook. Like, watch this here. Yeah, he was fast as shit. Fuck yeah.

Look how good he looked, man. Like that left hook. Like, step in, left hook to the body. And the footwork and the movement, light on the toes. Yeah, he never stops bouncing when he's younger. And Oscar's one of those rare guys who's a southpaw. He's a left-handed fighter that fights with his left hand forward. It's hard to see that.

I know. Because he's another great guy. Yeah. And in his prime, one of the greatest of all time. In his prime, he was just a perpetual motion machine. Him, Roberto Duran. Oh, yeah. That's where, by the way,'s where tyson got a lot of his

he used to he's told me this before he used to watch roberto duran and shit he would say and the way it would get a rise out of people and he would watch tapes of him and say aha now i see how to put the put the needle in and then maybe maybe rub something in the wound maybe a little salt but then when I pull it out let me pour alcohol in it let me really sting people mmm and if you watched Roberto Duran will call people dogs their mother's a dog yeah your mother's a whore mother's yeah all sorts of shit apparently you know you ever see there's a documentary where Sugar Ray Leonard talks about his experience with Roberto Duran

and that after their fight, they had to do some sort of press thing before their second fight and Sugar Ray's kids were there and he was worried about his kids being around Duran. But Duran was a total gentleman,

like super sweetheart to his kids and like when it wasn't like promoting for the fight and wasn't when it wasn't all that, like he was like super calm and cool and collected. And he said it was it was really impressive, though. He was really nice to his children. There's something about the society, too, that especially where we're in this. This very like digestible tidbits of things that we can pop in our mouth and then make a decision on. It's like when you know that these guys are showmen.

They're in the entertainment business, so they don't get enough credit. Roberto Duran knew what motivated people back then before we were in this sort of like, you know, ubiquitous, media is everywhere. It's all encompassing. He got human emotions the way Tyson got human emotions, the way Mayweather gets it. So people make decisions that he was an animal. He was a showman is what he was. And he was a calculated showman that knew that, you know, I'm not going to cross those lines. I guess there are some people that do, but most of the time what I find, whether I'm dealing with like boxers or even in like,

you know, like people talk about juries, people are dumb. They don't think this way. The lay people don't think this way. Let's deal with people individually and give them a little bit more credit than they deserve. People are, I actually think that there's a lot of people that are a lot smarter than they get credit for and I think Duran's one of Them I think that what you pointed out shows shows some smarts in my mind because it shows the Self-awareness that I'm not gonna be a shithead of a human being all the time I'm gonna do it when I think it might of a human being all the time. I'm going to do it when I think it might help promote my career for better or for worse.

Or help get under the skin of my opponent and get him to be emotional. And then there's that. Sugar Ray wasn't the first fight. Right. The first fight, Sugar Ray tried to fight him the way Duran wanted him to fight him, like toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano.

Right. Yeah. That didn't work out so good for Sugar Ray. It was pretty close. You know, it was a good fight. Didn't play to his strengths. No fight. Didn't play to his strengths. No, it didn't play to his strengths. But he wanted to show that he could stand there slug with Roberto Duran.

I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if Duran prepared correctly for the second fight. Because of the second fight, they knew he was fat and out of shape. They made it short notice, so he had to kind of get in shape. He was overweight. He apparently had a really hard time making the weight, and then after the weight put on, just ate a bunch of food and had cramps, and then quit. You know, just looked like shit. Sugar Ray was like, I'm going to move this time. Yep. Yeah. I would have loved to see that Sugar Ray, though, fight Duran the first time. I would

have loved to see if he could do it. You know. I wonder if he would have been able to utilize that same sort of strategy against a prime Duran that was ramped up from trying to kill him, like the first fight. You know what that fight reminded me of, that second fight? If you ever play tennis, that's a sport, right? Tennis is a sport, yeah. Where you know that somebody is going to gas out, so you just hit lobs to this side of the court and that side of the court.

If you watch that fight, Sugar Ray would pot shot him walk around go the other direction get on his bike switch directions and he knew he could just tire him out I think they knew Durant was fucked going into that fight I mean people know you know you have camps that have spies in them and people tell you he's fat he's out of shape he's drinking he's doing this he's doing of shape. He's drinking. He's doing this. He's doing that. Boxers also are human, right? They fall like you get into a camp for eight weeks, and there's temptation and women and all kinds of shit around. They're not just men, rather.

They're not just humans. They're humans that do the most savage thing you can do for a living, and they're risk-takers. So they're addicted to risk-taking. So they're addicted to risk taking. So they're always like, maybe I'll just drink one night. Like John Jones used to get fucked up before every fight and he said he did it to have a built in excuse. He kind of admitted it. Really?

Yeah, he said he always had a built in excuse. Like if I lost, at least I was partying. Like now next time I won't party and I'll really be dedicated. An excuse to himself? I don't know if it was to himself, if it was to other people, what was, but he, and he still never lost.

It's such a lonely thing, I think. It's a crazy way to make a living, man. And you also, you're getting hit in the head, and when you get hit in the head, you become more impulsive, you take more chances, you become more erratic, you know, the more you get hit in the head you become more impulsive you you you take more chances you become more erratic you know the more you get hit in the head the more you accumulate damage it's just a fact of being a human being yeah that's my love-hate with the sport mine too that's why I I've stiff-armed it a little bit more when you said are you still involved with fighters I can't

once you start to care about these guys in a way that they become like family to you, you know, you try to talk them out of doing anything that's going to get, you know, them exposed to. That's why I thought it was so amazing what Andre did. You know, in his prime, with this big fight, you know, this big potential. This was after Canelo knocked out Kovalev. That's when they offered him the fight, and he's like, nope. Hey, Lennox did the same thing. They offered him a major rematch with Klitschko, the bigger one,

who I think was the better one, and he walked away from $25, $30 million. The bigger Klitschko could hit harder. Oh, my God. That was the thing. It's like not that Vladimir can't hit hard, but the bigger Klitschko could hit harder. Oh, my God. That was the thing. It's like, not that Vladimir can't hit hard, but the bigger Klitschko hit hard and also could take a shot. He was awkward. Iron chin.

Awkward and strong. Lennox hit him with the biggest uppercut he's ever thrown and landed. And the guy was out on his feet, but he stood up. Well, he's also super fucking smart. Does he speak, like, multiple languages? The mayor of kiev yeah yeah super bright guy crazy nice guy too he's a fucking tank of a man he that's uh that's an interesting group of brothers those two guys the klitschko's they're very boring but very

interesting well vladimir was boring up until the joshua fight the joshua fight was not boring that fight and i'm just saying like as human beings you talk to the nicest guys in the world, but you're like, what else? Jab and hold. Jab and hold. Yeah. They figured out a way to win fights, Vladimir did, without getting his chin tested. Yeah. Somebody said that he might fight Shannon Briggs.

There's some rumor that Vladimir might come back to fight Shannon Briggs. Well, Shannon Briggs went on like a years-long campaign of tormenting Vladimir Klitschko. He'd like show up. He would show up on like paddle boarding. Yeah. You know, I mean, he showed up at restaurants. I mean, that was fucking hysterical. Crazy that he kept doing that.

It was crazy. He made his life about- He drank his water. He showed up. He will you eat I eat Will you eat I eat champ Let me hear that play that He just starts eating his food. He's telling him, have some food.

Enjoy your food. Can you imagine? What was all that? Can you imagine? What was all that? Some water in my head? Yes, Shannon. What he did was, after you pulled up to his table and began eating his meal, he dumped water on your head.

But it's the way he fell down after the water pulled over his head. It was like a scene in a movie. It was a work, right? Show that again. Show the water get poured on his head. It's like a pro wrestling work. Watch this. Watch.

What? What? What is happening? He pushes the table over, falls down. The other guy grabs him just in time. He goes down again. I mean, come on, man. Do you think they planned that?

No. Definitely not? Nope. Klitschko is not that guy. But if you didn't know, you would think they planned it, right? It looked like a work. Well, you got to think. Wait, like, what is happening?

Pour the water. He falls down. You got to think who'd be in on it. The restaurant owner's got to be in on it. No, I don't think the restaurant owner would be in on it. But whoever that big guy is, man, he got in just in time. The big guy that grabbed Shannon? Yeah, that guy. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know. By the way, how courageous is that guy? I know Shannon. He's one of the funniest human beings you'll ever meet. I love that dude. Always smiling. I just love that whole let's go champ thing. I say that to people all the time. Let's go champ! He's got hats, shirts. He's got a whole line around it.

I love the guy. So they were talking. See if you can find that. Because they were talking. At least I saw something. I mean, you know, the problem with the internet today is like something shows up in your Instagram feed. You're like, is that real? And they just fucking keep, you know, somebody calls you.

You go about your business. You go to try to find it again. I can't even find it. I don't even know whose account it was on. I don't know what's real anymore. At all. About anything. I think anybody knows.

It's like our relationship to reality has gotten really slippery because it depends on what news channel you watch. It depends on what political party you're involved in. It's hard to know what to trust, what to believe. Yeah. It is a confusing time to be alive. The most confusing.

The most confusing with the most information. According to Shannon Briggs, he accepted a fight against Vladimir Klitschko. Oh, look at this. Vladimir Klitschko linked to shock boxing comeback against Shannon Briggs. Here's the quote. I mean. Fate has it as it is. Just today I accepted to fight Vladimir Klitschko in his comeback fight,

Briggs said, disguised, toe-to-toe podcast. You're the first person to know it. My wife doesn't even know this. She's outside. She don't even know this. You guys are the first people to know this. I swear to God on my mother's grave. No one knows this.

You're the first people to know this. It's so funny because you've got to read that in Shannon's voice. It says givemesport.com. I don't know if I believe it. It's the only place I found it. We could ask Shannon. He's very gray now. Yeah, his crazy gray beard.

Says the guy with the crazy gray beard. Yeah, he's got to be close to 50, right? Shannon's got to be 50. I think he's over 50. 50 to December 4th. Yeah, he's got to be close to 50, right? Shannon's got to be 50. I think he's over 50. 50 to December 4th. Oh, wow. I don't know. I don't know. I'll say I wouldn't watch it, but then I'll watch it. I'll tell you, I watch him spar all the time.

He spars on his Instagram feed. He puts sparring rounds up. He still looks good. Tyson versus Briggs. That ain't happening. Why is he doing that? Scroll down and watch some sparring footage. Right down on the right-hand side. Lower right-hand side, right there.

Watch that. I mean, he still looks pretty good. This is recently. He's a little overweight. I think he said he's like. What was that? Him being silly. What was that?

Him being silly. He's out of shape, and he said that he's been working seven days a week. So he's quite a bit overweight. Oh, yeah, he's 284. And he wants to be 249. He said he's 49,000 years old. I mean, the guy he's boxing with, though, does not look like he wants to be in there with him. Yeah, I think the guy he's boxing with might have drove him there in the Uber. Could be.

So that's his friend, I think. Nephew. Yeah, his nephew. So he's beating up his nephew. All right. That's something. At least he's out there doing something. Yeah.

He's out there doing something. Like. He's out there doing something. Like, who knows? I'm interested. Like, we're talking about people fighting crazy exhibitions. Him versus Vladimir Klitschko.

You could show so much footage of Shannon torturing him. Like, the paddleboard incident. Oh, I mean. He knocks him off the boat. He's laughing. From an entertainment standpoint and packaging it up,

it'd be great. It'd be terrific. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's why, you know, I have, I realized that as you get past 40, for me it was past 40, and then you have kids, your bandwidth starts to shrink. So while I find it still entertaining and there are things about it that I love, you know, I decided to pivot in a big way because, you know, you only have so much,

I don't know, I'm haunted by time. Yeah. I'm haunted by how much time I have and have left. That's because you're smart. Well, I don't know. I don't know what that makes me. It makes me tortured, But I that that's I really cut boxing out of my life to the standpoint from the standpoint of being so emotionally involved with the fighters. I sort of like got that. I got I backed into it at a young age in my 20s to manage the heavyweight champion of the world for his last few fights. I got to got that out of my system. And then I was like, all right, this criminal justice reform is where I want to be. That's where I get, I feel like I can make more of an impact. Although you can make an impact on people's lives, I guess, in boxing, because you can help make sure they don't get ripped off. You can help make sure that they don't get taken advantage of. I know what you're saying though. It's, I mean, it's a crazy, chaotic thing to get involved with. And at the end of the day, you're also though it's i mean it's a crazy chaotic thing to get involved with and at the end of the day you're also you're you know you're getting involved with this thing that's sanctioned violence yeah i i have a it's interesting because we spent the last hour or so

talking about it um and i feel like i'm sitting here with this shit idiot grin on my face and i'm like what the fuck are you doing because there's a part of me that is, like, hovering outside of my body with the streaking stars on the ceiling being like, what are you doing? Because I'm mad at myself for being as attracted to it as I was and apparently am to some extent because, you know, I have seen people get hurt really bad. And when you start to care about them, that's what bound Andre and I and even me and Lennox, where I was like, do you really need to get hit in the head again? Right. Not that they wouldn't have retired without me, but I became very unpopular to the people around Lennox, for instance. Because they wanted it to keep rolling? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the circle around him talk about a circus it was a traveling circus there were people that had grown up with him um that had tethered their very existence to him financially um spiritually and otherwise and when he decided not to fight and leave all that money on the table. They were like, well, what the fuck am I going to do now? And to his credit, he's like, listen, it was a good ride, but I don't know. Figure it out. And they didn't like him. They blamed me for it. They were mad at him?

Oh, man. So what did he have, like a giant entourage? Yes. He didn't have a giant entourage, but he had enough of an entourage where he was employing people that he was being loyal to. He had guys that he went to high school with, guys that he grew up with. One of them was his trainer. One of them took care of his mother's house and properties. And he made sure to employ them all. But when it was over with and he was like, look, I don't have tens of millions of dollars coming in anymore. I can't

employ you guys anymore. I don't need you to be security at the gym. I don't, he didn't need it anymore. Oh, they were pissed. And they blamed me for it because I didn't like seeing my friend get punched in the face anymore by guys that were 260 pounds. That's a crazy thing, right? Like, look at his situation. He's saying, hey, I have to stop this, Look at his situation. He's saying, hey, I have to stop this game that you can only do for so long. No matter who you are, you can only fight for so long. And it's time to end it. And they're like, what am I supposed to do?

They're upset at him that he doesn't want to do this thing anymore. So now they have to figure out a thing to do. They would rather him continue doing this thing that. So now they have to figure out a thing to do. They would rather him continue doing this thing that you have to quit eventually. Just don't quit now. Keep going, get hit from me. Go get hit from me so I can get paid. It was fucked up. That's a crazy request. It happens a lot. It happens a lot. Yes, men. So you got to have something else going on in your life. And there's also an element, the thing that got me down about it always and still does, and I think why I got away from it, aside from my wife being like, really?

You're going to be fielding calls from people like my internet doesn't work in camp. What do I do? Is like, you know, you're part of being being some you're part of boosting up someone else where i wanted to sort of be on my own and do my own thing so there's that also yeah yeah it's um the the obligation of the entourage is a it's a big issue for a lot of um very popular people whether it's celebrities or athletes but with a fighter it's particularly e, whether it's celebrities or athletes. But with a fighter, it's particularly egregious. It's particularly creepy because they'll let a fighter take beatings when they shouldn't. They'll let a fighter keep fighting when they should have retired.

Or tell them- They'll tell them they can still go. Tell them they can still go. Or if you would have done this different, everybody becomes an expert, by the way. Boxing trainers trainers the strength coach becomes an expert Yeah You know the nutritionist becomes a lot of people start to think that because I'm around this a lot And I see it as a fan. I think I could give him the keys to victory Mm-hmm, which is a dangerous proposition when people are risking their lives very dangerous

Super sketchy. It's like when you're in that sort of situation, you know, you could be like Muhammad Ali, perfect example, right? Towards the end of his life, that guy took all the really horrible beatings, like the Trevor Burbick, Larry Holmes, all those terrible beatings. He took all those beatings and all his entourage, like they were still with him.

You know, they were still riding around with him. They were still showing up, and they let him. You know, I went to his 70th birthday party at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. I was like Lennox's date. You know, I forget whether his wife just had one of their kids or was about to. one of their kids or was about to. And I went with him and they have like this entire floor of this museum essentially called the Muhammad Ali Center. And it's all his contributions to the civil rights movement and to society is an entire floor. And then there was this reception for him upstairs. him upstairs and it was a private birthday party and he was just it was frightening it was he was falling asleep um and there are these people around him which you know should have been just

this great celebration and i don't know if he was able to comprehend what was going on absorb it it was it was frightening on many levels and that that was a bit of like a I don't want to say a wake-up call but I was like you know you you you're constantly living if you if you have warm blood pumping through your veins and you're honest with yourself you're constantly living with the sense of guilt being involved in a combat sport I think yeah I don't know how it is for you. No, it is that way.

I think about that when I see fighters that should have retired and are still doing it, and I know they've got problems or guys have vision issues. On one hand, it's like a choice that they make, and they can make a good living doing it. And if they become a champion, they can make a great living doing it. And they have glory forever. They have this legacy. And for a lot of fighters, that's all they ever wanted. All they ever wanted is to be professional, to be elite,

and hopefully to win a championship. And that's what they want. But the ones that don't know how to get out and don't know when to get out and make a mistake and stick around too long, you see them be a shell of what they used to be. You see them not be able to take a punch anymore. You see the slurring of the speech for all the words. That's the worst.

All the words sort of garbled together. They forget what they're talking about while you're in the middle of talking to them. That is very hard to deal with. But for guys like that, you look at a guy like Andre Ward and go look at that it's possible you can do it right and Andre you know has always been a guy that learned defense he learned defense first he learned he learned to to be elusive he learned how to be in the right position he learned how to be in a place where he could strike and he can't get strict struck back he did it all the right way and even retired the right way.

Everything was perfect. I mean, Andre Ward is the blueprint. Now I feel guilty for having said anything about an exhibition. Bah! On the flip side, in MMA, there's George St. Pierre. He's a similar situation. You know, George, unlike Andre, has a couple of losses, but phenomenal fighter, won world titles in

two different weight classes, the whole deal. And then gentleman, great spokesman, you talk to him now, he sounds great, he's not slurring his words, he has intelligent conversations with people, I love it. I love when a guy gets out. Yeah, it's nice to see. It is. And George like, I love it. I love when a guy gets out. Yeah, it's nice to see. Yeah, it is. And you know, George got hit a lot too.

But he also recognized, like after he fought Johnny Hendricks, he recognized he had to step away. He's like, I gotta stop. I'm just like,

this is too much. That's why a backup plan when you're a fighter is never underrated. Oh, it's so fucking important, man. So fucking important. A backup plan is so fucking important. It is, it so fucking important. A backup plan is so fucking important.

It is so important. And having people that know that you're going to get out and they're helping you. And they're like, this is the plan. This is what we're going to do. Yeah, it's fleeting. It's also fleeting. And I just, you know, again, like for me personally, it was more like I feel like I have something different to you know offer in terms of my energy and I feel like it's okay at some point to say you know what I did

this I did it at a high level I feel like I made an imprint on some people's lives but I feel like I have something different to contribute in a way that is much more meaningful because I think that like, for me, to exist in this world is, if you're not trying to help other people in some way, then like, what the hell's the point? And that could be your kids, your family, but to me it was always like, all right, well, let me find a wrong and try to right it.

So for boxing for me, I got involved because Lennox got stolen from. He had a lot of money stolen from him. And I got hired to help pick a jury in his case. That's how I met him. He had this promoter and manager steal like $10 million for him. And I, you know, look, I was never starstruck. I was more annoyed. I remember the first time I met him, I was more annoyed because I had to prepare him to testify. I remember it was Super Bowl Sunday. And I was going to a Super Bowl party, that he would meet this guy, trust him. And whether it was send money to my mom in Canada where they had to convert British pounds sterling to Canadian dollars.

Guy would jack up the inflation rate and keep the difference. He would find little ways. It was like death by a thousand accounting paper cuts. And you had to go through everything to find these? a thousand accounting paper cuts. And you had to go through everything to find these? Yeah. That's how I got involved in the sport was that I had to understand the business to understand how he got ripped off. And then little by little, he was hanging in New York City for six weeks before he fought Tyson. And we were similar in age or off by seven or eight years or nine years, whatever it was. But he was single, I was single, and we would just play basketball. And I was preparing him to testify,

but it was awful. You know, he got all this money stolen from him. And then when we won those cases, I just started to get fighters calling me, hey, I got ripped off too. Hey, I got, and then you realize you've unearthed this very dark underbelly of this unsanctioned, you know, sport where people, you know, take advantage in any way they can. So that was what I was originally attracted to. And then you realize at some point that you can't cure everything, you know. And if you could touch a few people's lives along the way and change them and, you know, educate them as to how they can take care of themselves, then you've done your job. Well, you're a guy that you, you relish the role of taking care of people that have been fucked over by the system. I mean, this is why you got involved with the innocence project and

why you've done so much work with people that were unjustly accused and imprisoned for crimes and managed to get a lot of people out of jail now, which is pretty fucking amazing. Yeah. Thank you. It's a very admirable path, the path that you've taken. Yeah. And look, I think that, first of all, I appreciate it. And I view myself as like I have this feeling of urgency that there's so much to be done in that regard. And it's like almost like an addiction to me to help people. And I always feel like there's so much more to do.

to help people. And I always feel like there's so much more to do. Just since the last time we spoke, we talked about a case last time I was on about this guy, Albert Wilson in Kansas, who was accused of, you know, a black man accused of an assault of a white girl, and that I felt he was unjustly accused. And we had unearthed some things about the alleged accuser. It's a difficult situation because I have daughters, but I was very, very solid in my belief. And since then, his conviction has been thrown out. I was able to successfully get his conviction thrown out. And the way that I end up getting involved in these cases almost feels like I hate it when people say this so when I say it I want to stuff the words back in my mouth but it feels like it's

for a reason because it's almost like the universe is telling me all right now you got to do this next I'm walking out of court in in November and the hearing is is it's in Lawrence Kansas the armpit of the middle of the country the only thing that's there is KU you know the school and when I say armpit I don't mean that in a pejorative way it's like one of these forgotten towns I guess there's no other way but pejorative when you say armpit so It was a poor choice of words. But the hearing was being broadcast live over YouTube because the courts want to maintain the integrity of having a public hearing. So I walked out of the hearing. The case hadn't been overturned yet. And there's like 100 people outside the courthouse in the middle of the pandemic, rallying for this guy's conviction to be thrown out. And this mother

runs up to me and she hands me a newspaper article. And there was an activist with her. She says, this is the case of my son. Can you read about this? And I was like, okay, with her and she says, this is the case of my son. Can you read about this? And I was like, okay. I stuffed it in my bag. She said, I was watching you in court and he needs you. Please don't turn your back on this community. And you know, when you put it that way, I'm like, you know, Jesus, I already start to feel guilty because I'm riddled with existential guilt. So I'm like, the last place I want to come back to for a murder trial, this is a guy that was accused of this awful homicide. So I just put it in my bag.

I get on the plane to go home, and I take out the newspaper, and I start reading about this case. It's the case of this guy named Ron Torres Washington. And I start reading about it on the front page of the paper. And I like I started talking to myself in my seat. And the guy next to me goes, he goes, excuse me. Are you talking to me? Like what? Like I must have been disturbing him.

I kept on saying, holy shit, this guy's accused of a murder he spent six years in pre-trial detention before he got a trial he's sitting in jail for six years and he I talked about the Clemente Aguirre case last time we talked um about how this he he goes to a neighbor's house and he walks into a crime scene and then they accuse him of it Right six acts same fucking thing. This guy lives down the hall from this murder victim He sees the door cracked open and he knocks on the door to see if any everything's okay He walks in gets a little bit of blood on his sandal and they accuse him of the murder and it's so obvious so obvious that the that the husband of this victim killed her. There's her an accused person, a black man in Kansas, where the former prosecutors were accused of all sorts of racial insensitivity, all sorts of prosecutorial misconduct, where I'm going to get this guy. This guy's mother shows me a newspaper article about the case.

It's got so many stunning similarities to another case I did in Florida. A neighbor walks into a crime scene, gets accused of the murder. All the forensic evidence points to someone else. There's no way I'm letting this go. So you're right. It's this sense of like when I feel I can make an impact on righting a wrong, I can't turn away. I can't to the point where, you know, like I'm gripping the table because it angers me when I see what happens. So, and I know that if you give people that otherwise wouldn't have it resources and the same sort of attention that they would get if they were another color or in different financial circumstances, it could be the difference between saving their life or them spending the rest of their life in prison for something that they more than likely did not commit. Well, you're the man for the job because you have that conscience, because you have that thought process where it chews away at you and you have to go back. I mean, that's your calling, man. I mean, it really is. You have the perfect personality for it because you're not a pacifist, right?

You want to fight for those guys. You want to help them and you recognize the wrong and it becomes a huge part of the way you think. It's terrible. It's terrible that that, you know, there's one day they're going to look back at the way people were prosecuted and the way people were tried and imprisoned. And it's going to be a dark stain in our history. When you look at the fact that what percentage of the people that are imprisoned in cages right now are for nonviolent drug offenses? What percentage of the people that are in jail are innocent? What percentage of the people that are in jail came from abusive childhoods and horrific neighborhoods and no one gives a fuck about it and nobody changes it or

fixes it. They expect these people to just figure it out on their own. You know, someone who grows up in a nice middle-class suburb in Connecticut expects some kid who lives in the South side of Chicago where gunshots are going off every day. And the, the, the guy you emulate and the guy that you want to be the most, the guy you envy the most as a drug dealer. Like you expect that guy to live the same way you do. You expect that guy to have the same opportunities in past and behavior in life as you do. And we as a country, at some point in time, someone has to step in and say, there is no way we can continue to allow these neighborhoods to be crime ridden and drug addled and filled with gangs and expect people to come out of them and behave the same way everybody who lives in nice neighborhoods does it's crazy you know

it's interesting to me because what what you just articulated I'm so like furiously writing down notes is that and this is not meant to stroke you in any way but you get it in in a way that struck me from the first time we spoke. You just get it. And with all respect, it shouldn't be that hard to get. When you take an entire race of people, steal them from their homeland, put them in bondage, dislocate them, expose them and treat them as savages, as less than human. As property. As property. And then you put them in a foreign land, you've completely fucking ruined them.

And then you say, all right, now you're free, but then in our lifetime, excuse me, in our parents' lifetimes, they couldn't urinate in the same bathroom. Couldn't drink out of the same fountains. Couldn't drink out of the same fountains. And we are the aftershock generations of this, of slavery. That should not be controversial to me. So when my accountant says to me, you can't keep giving away your money. All right. I say, I'm sorry. I'm going to keep on giving it away because I'm going to keep on pouring it into resources

because that will be lasting. And here's a good testament to how if you see past the bullshit of what divides us and labeling people this and that, you can always, because we had a lot, Jason Flom and I, you I, who's a board member at the Innocence Project, we were overwhelmed by the outreach just from being on your show and talking to people. How can I help? One thing you can do to help is always keep an open mind regardless of who you're dealing with. That's an easy way to help. Watch this. I represent the chairman of Marvel Entertainment. His name is Ike Perlmutter.

Billionaire many times over. He happens to be closest friends with Donald Trump way before he was president. I could have used that as a way to separate myself from him, to dismiss him. And I represented him. And I represented him, I still do, in this wild case where his DNA was stolen and he was accused of something he didn't do. And Ike Perlmutter at one point said, you're not paying enough attention to my case. And it was because I was working on an exoneration case in Florida, Clementi's case, actually. And he started following the case in the press. And this isn't a guy that was like some criminal justice reform advocate. He said it struck him that if I didn't have you and Roy Black, who's a famous criminal defense lawyer that was handling this civil case, if I didn't have you

and the resources to fight this, I would have been accused of a crime I didn't commit. And it struck him that he had the resources to make a difference. So he started making gifts in my honor to the Innocence Project, substantial gifts. And I could have, everybody around me said, you're friends with this guy, you've become friends with him. And he got enlightened to the point where in December, I'm in Florida, a week before the Capitol riot, he called me and said, Josh, look, I want to help get somebody executive clemency if I can. And I want you to figure out one person that you think is, you know, the most deserving candidate for it. And let's try to get it before the president. I was in Florida. He was in Florida. He said, you're going to meet with the president. And look, a lot of people would have said to me, fucking crazy.

How could you meet with him? I don't care about any of that. I'm trying to save a life. So there's a retired judge, federal judge named John Gleason, who started this project called the Holloway Project, where he started to realize exactly what you were talking about, people on nonviolent drug offenses, where there were just disproportionate sentences. He had a list of people where, you know, to come up with one was difficult. But I asked him, Barry Sheck, who's one of the founders of the Innocence Project, and various others, who do you think is, worst possible circumstances. He gets arrested on this reverse dry sting, they call it, where he's asked to cobble together $20,000 and make a heroin purchase in New York. And no drugs ever existed. It was all a scheme. It was a setup by an informant. He cobbles together five of the $20,000, goes to New York, gets arrested on the spot, and sentenced to life in prison.

Jesus. So I read about him. He's in jail for over 30 years. Oh, Jesus. He has 52 degrees certificates by all accounts judge Gleason said look he pointed out areas in the law that I had never considered so I could not get this guy off my mind so I finally put him forward as the person so I thought that I would submit paperwork and that it would go away.

So one week before the Capitol riots, Ike called me and said, you're going to come to dinner tonight with your wife and you're going to present the case to various people in the White House at Mar-a-Lago. Now, there are some Democrats, left-leaning or otherwise, you're going to go to Mar-a-Lago? And I would always say, hell yes, I'm going there. I'm going to try to save someone's life. I met with Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and just explained to them the case. And I got to tell you, she said, look, I really admire your work at the Innocence Project. I think this is really noble. We think that this is a great candidate for executive clemency. And it was like throughout

the dinner, it was on to the next person, on to the next person. So at one point, there's a table, like we're sitting at a table and literally the distance you and I are from each other, there's two empty seats. And it dawns on me that we're going to be having dinner with the president and his wife. So at some point he walks out and everybody stands at Mar-a-Lago and claps when he comes out. Like Kim Jong-un? It was worse than that. Have you ever seen the Kim Jong-un clapping? Oh, yes. I saw the videos of it.

You see the recent one? No. The recent one is mind-blowing he walks in but we'll get to that in a minute so I said to Ike do I have to stand and clap and he goes if you want your part and you do so I stood and clapped so dinner is progressing and we're not talking and fine you know we're not talking about this so finally Ike says to look, he wants to talk to you about this case now. And he asked me a bunch of very pointed questions.

So all of a sudden, then I find myself at a table. My wife, myself, the president, the first lady, Ike Perlmutter, and his wife. And he says, look, I hear great things about you from Ike. Tell me about the case. Tremendous, tremendous things. I mean, it was so fucking loony. I remember him saying, I want ice cream, ice cream, two scoops. I want two scoops, two scoops.

He kept saying, I don't know why that stuck with me. But he said, he told me this story. He said, you know, do you, do you think he's innocent? I said, no, I don't think he's innocent. I'm executive clemency. We're asking you to pardon him. It was a nonviolent drug offense. I explained the whole case to him. And he said, I can't. I had Jim Brown come to me, the famous running back. And the guy was a murderer. I couldn't do that. I only want nonviolent drug offenses.

And he said, where is he going to work when he gets out? And I said, I've offered him a job. He has his paralegal certificate that he got in jail. And he said, you'll employ him. I'll employ him. A week later. So I meet with him. He tells me, call White House counsel. And then a week later, the fucking Capitol riot happens. So everybody involved in this potential presidential part, everybody involved in this potential presidential part is like, well, this is a wrap. This isn't happening. The last day of his presidency, the last day, I was at Ike's apartment with my wife and kids. And the phone rang and he goes, it's the White House. He said, don't go anywhere because we were walking out. And he walked out and he said, the pardon was just signed. And I don't know this man. I never met him. My immediate release of, I started to weep openly. You know, there's just no feeling

that you can ever put into words when you help restore another human being in that way. Now, Jawad Musa and I met for the first time over FaceTime. Four days later, I flew his brother to meet him. He was in Colorado, some awful facility in Colorado. I flew his brother out there. He got out like that. The pardon happens and then you're out. He was flown back to Baltimore. We met in the airport on FaceTime

and we were immediately felt like bonded like brothers. He now works for me and his insights in the four or five months that he's been out, his insights on cases, a man that spent 30-some-odd years working on it became like a jail lawyer. You realize that there are people, human beings that have been forgotten that have so much potential if someone just cares. So now he's – it's not without problems. He's working on getting his official out of jail paralegal certificate. But you realize that if you just create connections and allow, I don't want to sound like some silly infomercial, but I easily could have found reasons why not to try to enlighten someone whose politics were different than mine. And Ike Perlmutter was the least likely person.

But he's now, I've found that if you tap into it and turn his mind on to the human suffering, he now wants to start a criminal justice reform center that we're working on together. That's amazing. So I just feel like sometimes in a world where our politics are so divided, it was one of the more bizarre meals I've ever had. Tooth sc two scoops but it was worth it man wow um it's it just it's first of all it's

shocking that someone could uh over a five thousand dollar heroin deal wind up in jail for life where there's no heroin i mean if that doesn't seem like you're getting railroaded, if that doesn't seem like a setup, if that doesn't seem like that, that shouldn't be legal. It's called a reverse dry sting. And so crazy, you know, I look, you've read about cases where for low level drug offenses, mostly people of color, the way that they were forgotten about is that our justice system said, let's accelerate the forgetting about you process. Look at the Innocence Project. Close to 60% of our clients are African American. There's a reason for that. It's not an accident. Well, it seems to me that in this country, there's a real, well, first of all,

there's a real problem with the fact that the legal system is essentially a game, right? And if you are on a team, your team is trying to win the game. And if you're on a team that's trying to prosecute someone and you have the ability to figure out a way to push it through, to show someone in a light that's not accurate, to not have certain evidence be admitted, to withhold evidence that might have exonerated that person. Like this is all part of this game. It's not. And we know about this at very high levels that this exists. This is it's not Justice right it's it's a game of winning and losing the same thing with dirty cops, right? If a cop plants drugs on someone, what are they doing? They're cheating on the game

That's exactly right. And it is a game in that cops have a certain amount of arrests are supposed to make You know they have in certain places they have You know, they have quot in certain places, they have, you know, they have quotas. They have to make quotas. I don't know if they still do that anymore, but I know cops have told me that that's sort of an untold thing. And in some places, they have quotas where you have to arrest a certain amount of people. Well, it's certainly a gauge for how effective they are at their job. So you put your finger on exactly the point of all of this. And where I found success is trying to disarm people

and having them understand that this isn't about winning or losing. We're dealing with a human being here. A person of flesh is a life. So let's talk about while we respect the victim. It's making them understand that it's less about winning and more about let's just take an objective look at the evidence. Look, there's a DA, a new DA in this county where this Ron Torres Washington case is being tried. Now, I have now signed on. This is not, you know, I guess was kind of predictable with the Midwest

Innocence Project, which is a different innocence project, but it's part of the Innocence Network and a local lawyer to represent him. And the case was tried got the conviction thrown out, and the Ron Torres Washington case were problematic prosecutions and that she was going to take a close look at them when she became DA. And at least she is giving me a forum and saying, I will let you come in and present to me why we shouldn't go forward with this prosecution. Now, is she still, now that she's DA, is she firm in her belief that Ron Torres committed the crime? I think she is at this point. I think when we get before her and we're able to convince her that this is not a sound prosecution, I'm confident that, you know, she ran on this platform. So let's see if she'll live up to it.

So far, I've been pleasantly surprised. But that's such a small, that's a grain of sand on a beach that stretches this whole country. And so that's where the sense of urgency comes, is that the more people we can get being focused on identifying the problem. And as you correctly put it, a lot of it is about winning and losing. I'm working on a case right now where the latent print examiner in the case was making up matches of fingerprints and palm prints. And it took a whistleblower in the latent print unit to say, if we don't agree with her, there's this process by which you verify when a latent print examiner says that is Joe Rogan's fingerprint on the murder weapon. She then has to give it to another print

examiner for what they call verification. It's a process called ACE-V, right? The V stands for verification, you know, analysis, comparison, evaluation, verification. If that person doesn't agree that that is an identifying print that can be matched to Joe Rogan, can't call it a match. What she was doing is when she wouldn't get an agreement from one of her colleagues, she would say, fuck you, I'll go to a different one, go to a different one. And it got so bad and it got to the point where she started sending them out to a guy that retired out of the latent print unit because he had health problems so severe that he admittedly, quote, lost his eye for identification. And she'd get the verification from him. So watch what it takes. This woman writes a whistleblower complaint saying there's a big problem here.

So this happened in Florida where a lot of weird shit seems to happen. And Florida says, all right, let's call in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. And let's call in an independent consultant and reexamine some of her cases. They found five cases where she made positive identifications to prints on murder weapons that were totally fucking made up. Why did she do it? She wanted to win. She wanted to win. She wanted to win.

She wanted to have an amazing record. I mean, that's one of the things that people hang their identity on is how well they do at defense or prosecution, right? I mean, it's not just that. prosecution, right? I mean, it's not just that. It's like these prosecutors come out of their prosecution units, out of these offices, and then they oftentimes switch to the defense. And they want to come in and say, I never lost the case. Well, okay, you never lost the case. You know, the reason the conviction rate in most jurisdictions is upwards of 98% is because most people assume that if you have been accused and charged with a crime, you have done it. That's just the assumption. Of course.

And when you're black or Latin, person of color, I would venture a guess that that rate of assumption jumps to 99.9%. Because what sells papers is not, you know, we hear about these cases when it's frankly too late after someone served 10, 20, 30 years in jail take a deep breath at the outset. All right. Let's put the winning and losing aside. Let's just take a real close look at the evidence. Let's just take a real close look at the evidence. You know, there would not be as many wrongful incarcerations and wrongful convictions. And we hear about these cases where it takes, I mean, to get an exoneration is like pushing 14 boulders up a hill with your back, you know, and getting rolled down upon so many times. You hear about them after the fact. And they're great stories and they sell and everybody's. But if you saw what's behind it, it's devastating. It's heart-wrenching.

And I think that if more people paid attention and did not jump to that assumption of guilt rather than the... Or excuse me, did not assume guilt rather than do what we like to believe we can do in this country, which is presume innocence, there would be a lot less of this because we have to be real about the fact that nobody presumes innocence. That's just a natural thing. You know, it's as soon as someone gets accused of something in that. Why is that though? Why do you think that is? I don't know, because we're in a lot of ways, we're call. In a lot of ways we're angry about crime. If you hear someone get accused of murder, you automatically go, oh, he murdered somebody. It's like a thing that goes off.

And part of it, I think, is also because of pop culture. I mean, how many fucking Law & Order episodes do we have to see? How many of these cop shows do we have to see? We're fed this narrative, right? That the cops are the good guys. They prosecute people that are guilty. They go after them and they finally get them. We very rarely get the narrative of someone unjustly accused. It's much more rare and it's novel. When that's a narrative in a movie, it's like, wow, that guy's innocent. And then it's usually like the really nice people are going to get him out of jail. Yay, Josh Dubin did it. You know, that's really how they look at things. They look at

things like a movie or a television show. Well, that's why, you know, why I'm so appreciative and thankful that you give us a forum to speak. I don't think I give you enough. I think we should do this more often. And I think we should try to figure out a way to highlight these cases, because I have to think that what it looks like to you is like an ant going up against an army I mean, there must be so many cases. Well, you put yeah, there are so many cases You've put you know, Jason flom and I decided to sort of take it on on our own shout out to Jason Jay because we we have said you're good people No, but we could make it but we could help make a difference by

giving resources and assembling teams. Outside of my affiliation with the Innocence Project, because the Innocence Project is a big organization that has, I can't speak on behalf of them. I'm the ambassador to the Innocence Project. So sometimes I work on cases where they ask me to take a look, and I'm an advocate for the Innocence Project. But, you know, it traditionally was an organization that just looked at cases where there's DNA. And if there's not DNA, which is evolving, they're starting to take on more cases. But take the case of Juwan Musa. You know, I mean, that's not an Innocence Project case.

It's just a case where someone has to care. And I think that the more we can help promote the narrative that you need to take a deep breath and you should not hear about wrongful accusationsenez was just exonerated here in Texas. Look, they're not, there are no happy endings. By and large, there is no way to undo the psychological damage that is done. No way to undo it. They are, the stories don't always end up, No way to undo it. They are, the stories don't always end up, they don't, this morning, a dear friend of Jason and I are,

you know, Jason helped send him out to Vegas with his new wife. He just got out in Pennsylvania for something he didn't do. He went to Vegas, I think for the first time, sat down at the airport and dropped dead yesterday. His name is Corey Walker. And he and his, and you could read about it online about the framing of Corey Walker and Lorenzo Wright. They think he might've died of an embolism. I have to think that what happened to him might have killed him, right?

I don't know for sure. But these guys don't get medical care, these guys and gals. And it's just that, you know, I have clients that smoke a cigarette and stomp it out and then pick it up and put it in a baggie because they're afraid they're going to get framed again. They're paranoid. You know, they have, they live under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of their lives because oftentimes what we call an exoneration, states will say is just not enough evidence to proceed with another prosecution because they know that when they admit that they're wrong, speaking of right and wrong, they're going to get sued. So the cloud of guilt still hangs over that person's head. Yeah, oftentimes.

And especially the way the rest of the people look at it. Like, oh, he didn't get exonerated. They just didn't have enough energy, evidence. Evidence, yeah. It's just, it's scary when you're on the outside of it, you know. I can't imagine being one of those guys. You know, I remember reading this story about a guy who got set up. I can't imagine being one of those guys. I remember reading this story about a guy who got set up, I believe it was by the FBI. He was kind of like mentally

impaired or something wrong with him and they tricked this guy into detonating a bomb that didn't exist. It wasn't a real bomb. I believe it was in Dallas. See if you can find this. FBI tricks, or FBI prosecutes man for, it was like some sort of a sting with a bomb that you set off with a cell phone. And the moment he went to press the buttons, they move in and get him. But they gave him the bomb. They set him up. They gave him the idea, the whole thing. They told him what to do, and this guy was like this wannabe terrorist. And he was probably just a guy who's not that bright who got talked into doing something. There's a legal concept that should cover that. It's called entrapment. And it doesn't get credited enough. There's a big push right now, a big reform push, to make it illegal for police to lie to suspects during interrogations.

To say, hey, we know your friend told us this, so we know you have it. It's an accepted practice in all 50 states. It's starting to get attention. And it is a devastating psychological, talk about psychological warfare. This is devastating psychological hand-to-hand combat. When you lock someone in a room, a windowless room, deprive them of food, sleep, communication to the outside world and say, we have your fingerprints on the murder weapon. And they don't. And they don't.

And they can do it. That's crazy. That's crazy. And now, is this recorded and can that be reviewed after the fact? They're allowed to do it. It doesn't matter. They're allowed to do that. They're allowed to do it.

So if you play that in court and then you say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there was no fingerprints on the weapon. He did not have. He was lying here. Because the convention, yeah, they can do it. And the convention. Is this it? Okay. Yeah, this is the guy.

He's provided a fake bomb by the FBI agents posing as members of Al-Qaeda. He placed the device in the parking garage under the building and activated it with a cell phone. Instead of setting off a bomb, the cell phone rang a phone number at the FBI offices. Smoddy pleaded guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction under the terms of a plea bargain, an additional charge of bombing a public place was dropped, and a sentence of not more than 30 years was recommended. On October 20, 2010, he was sentenced to 24 years of imprisonment.

He will be deported from the United States after serving a sentence. So this is really crazy. He was a citizen of Jordan, and he was unaware that he was under continuous surveillance and that the other members of the sleeper cell were all federal agents. So it was a fake sleeper cell. So this guy was in this group of people that he thought were all terrorists, and he was going to be the fucking man. You're going to do this.

You're the fucking guy. They give him the bomb. He's on this mission. They talked him into it. They give him a fake bomb. Like, how is that legal? Listen. Do you know what I'm saying?

I know, I'm acutely aware of what you're saying and the sense of injustice and just how wrong that feels to you. It feels wrong, but it also feels wrong that a guy could press the buttons on the cell phone to blow up the building. So I'm torn. Is he... But what I had heard, see if you find that there, that he was mentally impaired. There was something wrong with him. You can't play to someone's... Assuming there's mental impairment or not, there's no place

for law enforcement to set up a situation where they're playing to someone's mental illness or proclivity to commit crime what the fuck are we doing as a society when we're saying it's on here just do it you know you want to do it think about all those facts there was no real sleeper cell there was no real bomb there was no plot they made him do it they talked him into doing it and then when he did it, they're like, gotcha. What we treat- He's only 19 also. Wow. Well, listen, 19 and from Jordan, right?

One of the things you can do, one thing I know works is pressure breaks pipes. It's that way in sports. It's that way in reform. And it's that way in these prosecutions. The more people we can get to pay attention, right? And people feel powerless and then they opportunity to do is once we get people interested and affected, you are not only interested but you're affected. We can get people to pay attention and do things. What would be really cool is if whether it was once a quarter, biannually, we had an exoneree with us on the show or a case or cases where we can have a call to action and people can take action, we will get exonerations. If it's a reform initiative, like making sure that people don't lie to suspects in jail, you have to pressure these fucking politicians and embarrass them into doing shit sometimes. I know of no more powerful tool than using the press so that a politician feels like, you know what, if I don't, let's play, let's play to their,

you know, sense of let me not burn my constituents. Okay. Well, if your constituents are all saying, don't do this anymore, or make this practice end, whether it's lying to people or it's cash bail, where we just know that people are staying in jail because they don't have the money to get out. You know, you can make these practices end if they feel like there's a legal threat. And let me qualify that where there is, you know, the legal threat is the threat is I might not get reelected. People won't like me as much. This is going to be an unpopular decision. The more we can get people interested in tapping into the sense of injustice about whatever issue it is, the more results we're going to get. Or be able to get to a point where, you know, the chairman of Marvel, who is a right wing, not a right wing, he's a Republican, who's best friends with Donald Trump, was so affected. And the guy's become one of my closest friends. We have political differences. We have differences in approach. He's in his 70s and Israeli and he doesn't have kids. We couldn't be more opposite on paper. You know, my kids call him Uncle Ike now because they saw what he did.

They saw that he took his time to help someone. If I could change that the way that man thinks or open his eyes and his wife Lori to that so much that they went to the president of the United States and said, you need to help us. And I don't care about all the other people that people say, oh, but he exonerated or he gave presidential pardon to this guy and that guy. OK, but he also gave a pardon to Juwan Moussa and he gave a pardon to other people that deserved it. I don't care if it was for his political gain or not. I think the more we can do that, the more we can make a difference. For sure. And, you know, just because someone's a Republican doesn't mean they're evil. They're usually just conservative fiscally and they want things that are good for their business.

That's a lot of people. We've got this narrative in this country that there's good people and bad people. Right, right. We've got this narrative that there's people that care about people and those are the people on the left and there's people that are evil and those are the people on the right. And a lot of that is exacerbated by the way Donald Trump treated the press and treated people and talked about things, and it ramped up this us versus them, which was already a problem.

There was already a tribal problem in this country, but Trump's method of rallying the troops got people, well, obviously a lot of people felt that led to the January 6th invasion of the Capitol. All that stuff is connected together for the reason why people think about people on the right as being evil and stupid and the party that's wrong and everything that's wrong with America. But there's a lot of people that are Republican that are very good people. They just have values that are different than some of the people on the left. And there's a lot of people on the right that believe in a woman's right to choose, and they believe in civil rights, and they believe in gay rights and trans rights and all these things that a lot of people stand for, but they

don't agree with it fiscally and economically with the people on the left. Fiscally and economically, they think that the ideas of democratic socialism are just not founded in any real basis of human nature and any real logic. They don't think it's going to work. They think this is frivolous and they spend too much money on these programs and they waste it on bureaucracy. And so they vote Republican, but they're not bad people. I know a lot of people like that. We have a bad narrative in this country that if you're a person on the left, you're not supposed to be talking to a person on the right. And if you do, they accuse you of being a right-wing person. I get accused of being a right-wing person all the time because I've had a bunch of right-wing people on the podcast and I've had

civil conversations with them. But conversely, I have a lot of left-wing people on the podcast and I have civil conversations with them. I never get accused of being some radical lefty. I don't because it's not convenient to slander someone or to put someone in that category, to mischaracterize someone. But you can mischaracterize someone as a right-wing person, and it does two things. One, it makes you self-censor. So for someone like me that interviews people and talks to people, has conversations with people, I should say, it makes you not want to have controversial figures on because then you get attacked. And then people, you hear about it, you're like, well, I'm not that. Why are they saying that? Why are they saying that about me? Oh, they're saying that about me

because I had that guy on. I had Ben Shapiro on or I had Dan Crenshaw on. Well, you know what? I'll probably not have those guys on again because last time I had them on, people got mad at me. And that's what's going on, man. People self-center and then self-censor rather. And what it does is it makes people more tribal. They separate even further. They get more polarized. And it's not good for anybody. The only way to find common ground is to have communication with people that you might have differences in philosophy or politics or whatever the fuck your difference is. But as a civil person, as a person who can have a nice civil conversation with someone you should be able to have Conversations with people that you don't agree with everything on and maybe you could find common ground

And that's what you found with that guy his common ground is his humanity his common ground is maybe he's a Republican Maybe he's friends with Donald Trump. Maybe he's a billionaire that's protecting all that money But at the end of the day he's a human being with a heart and he cares And he doesn't want someone to be in jail for something they didn't do. And that's how we all feel. And I think that's how we all feel about anybody because it could be your son. It could be your daughter. It could be your brother. Anyone could get wrongly accused and you could be under the grip of an evil prosecutor and a corrupt cop and then you're fucked.

And then that becomes your life. And then the next 10 years, 15, whatever years, that's your life now. Because you got stuck into this system. And when you weren't in that system, you didn't care. Because you're like, why am I spending time worrying about this system when it doesn't even affect me? Well, look, what you say hits me on so many levels because- Dude, I got to pee so bad. So do I.

Thank you. We'll I. We hope. Okay. Thank you. We'll pause. We'll be right back. You rolling? Okay. So where were we?

Well, what I was going to say was, besides thank you, was you should not be the exception to the rule. you should not be the exception to the rule. And it's unfortunate that you are, because I learned that you have to be willing to take a step back because I could fall into that. Our default should not be us versus them in this tribal mentality. It's part of our DNA, it's part of who we are as mammals called human beings.

But what I learned was my immediate aversion to this man could have literally cost someone his freedom. And so it was such a valuable lesson to me that I have—I feel like we should be so much better than defaulting to, fuck you, I don't like you because of the way you think, or I'm not going to have anything to do with you, or I'm going to cancel you. And it takes more. There's more effort involved in getting to know someone. And we don't fall into neat boxes or neat categories of information that comprise who we are. We're complicated.

Life is messy. Human beings are messy. When I pick juries, judges will often say there's a big problem with jury selection in this country. When someone's accused of a crime in a federal court where your freedom is on the line, a jury is often seated in a couple of hours. Someone could be facing 20 years in jail and judges think that they're the best at it, federal judges. Now look, they're appointed by the president. They deserve to be respected. They're some of the most brilliant legal minds in the country. I wrote a book with a former federal judge and she caught a lot of

shit when she was on the bench because she had this novel idea that attorneys in federal courts should be able to ask questions during jury selection. It's called voir dire, to learn the search for the truth is the Latin translation. You should be able to say to someone, how many of you think that my client is probably guilty because they were indicted? The hands will fly up and judges never allow you to ask that question. And here's what they do all the time. And I'm going to relate it back to what you were saying. Someone will say, you know what? I have preconceived ideas about this case. I read about your client in the press. Certainly seems like they must have done something. And the judge will say, but can you put that aside and be fair and impartial? Now,

think about the mindfuck here, okay? Think about this for a second. You're in a room full of strangers. Let's back up. You start with the proposition that we all want to be able to view ourselves as fair and impartial people. That's a given. Do you want to admit it to an authority figure? Because there's certain kinds of bias that suck, you know, bias against someone because of their, you know, sexual preference, their, you know, religion, their ethnicity. Those are terrible, ugly biases. But we're all biased. You know, we're all biased. If you've been, you know, antagonized and fucked with by cops, you're not going to like cops very much. If cops have done nothing but help you and your uncle, cousin, brother, and, you know, great uncle are cops, you're going to have reverence for them. We're all impacted. We're all sort of, we view life through the lens of our life experiences. So, you know, I feel like if we, but it's too much of an investment

at the most critical moment of a trial to sit and really think it through, is this the best person to be sitting in judgment of that accused person's freedom? It takes more of an investment. So to your point, you just articulated a very intelligent, tolerant view of other people who you may have differences with.

I have to confess, I didn't always have that approach because it's easier just to say, fuck you, I disagree with you. It's really easy. And it's sad that we can't as the most... It's encouraged, right? What's that? It's encouraged to say, fuck you. It's encouraged. Yeah.

Yeah. You got balls. You got this. You got that. Other people in the tribe will let you know that they support you. I like how you did that. Tell those Republicans to go fuck off or tell those Democrats to eat shit. That's really, it's encouraged more than it is, more than open discourse is encouraged.

It's much more encouraged to be openly tribal. You know, and I think that you get, there's some endorphin rush when you tell someone off, I guess. Some cheap sense of, I told them. There's also an endorphin rush that you get from signaling to the tribe that you are committed. You're committed to this ideology. You're, you know. Yeah, I never really thought about it that way. People love that.

They love when, you know, the group supports them and that they support the group. There's a lot of, like, really ridiculous things that get pushed through based on ideology. Like, how about this whole case of like transgender women in sports? Like a lot of this is people supporting it because they're progressive, because they're, they consider themselves good liberals and they want inclusiveness. And so they say it's okay. And they, they're looking at someone who's a man who competed as a man and then switched over and became a woman and now is weightlifting and is breaking world records. And they think it's good. It's amazing.

It's inclusive. It's like, no, this is not fair for biological women. And you're not willing to look at it this way because you want to be pro-trans and you want to be pro-inclusivity and you want to be a good person. And you're afraid of the backlash, frankly. Exactly. And by signaling that you're okay with all these things that are very controversial, hormone blockers for young people, there's a lot of these things that fall into this category that are super complicated.

And people immediately have a side. It's like they've read the peer-reviewed papers and they've got this really well-informed opinion, but they don't. They just have an opinion that supports their ideology. And a lot of the times their ideology, whether it's someone who's pro-life or whether it's someone who's anti-trans participation in sports or pro-trans participation in women's sports, these are complicated things a lot of times that people haven't thought out, these really controversial third rail subjects.

They exist in so many different ways. And prison reform is one of those. If you talk to a lot of right-wing people on prison reform, they will give you a non-thought-out opinion. Fuck that. We need stricter sentencing. We need more people in jail. And that will drive you crazy too because it's like, man, like how do you fucking know anybody in jail? Like, like,

would you know anybody has been railroaded through the system? Have you never committed a crime? We've all committed. Listen, man, we've all, you know, what's the same, but, but for the grace of God, there go I, I mean, some, something like that. I mean, for, for all the people that are saying that, how many of you got in, in a car after a few cocktails and, you know, chanced it? Yeah. And, you know, God forbid you hit someone and killed someone, you could be one of those people. You could be one of those people, yeah. And, you know, I think that the only thing that, you know, because sometimes I feel overwhelmed and feel like, can you ever change the conscience of an entire country?

Probably not. But look, the Baltimore Sun did a front page story on the exoneration of Jawad Musa. And it talked about my involvement with Ike Perlmutter and how Ike Perlmutter did this. It was the first public interview Ike had done in over in over I think 36 years. He wouldn't speak to the press and I encouraged him I said people need to know because That the way we break this cycle of characterizing someone you're this Therefore you will act like that right the way that that breaks is by telling the story as much as you can that you know here are two people that couldn't be more different you know i was afraid

that he would see tattoos on me and make a judgment about me you know and i would always wear long sleeve shirts around him because i didn't want to offend him before i got to know him is he jewish yeah he's jewish so he probably like, you're not going into the right cemetery, you piece of shit. What are you doing with these? And you know what? The first time, not only is he Jewish, but he fought in the Israeli army in the Six-Day War and won't talk about it. And he came to this country with literally 200 bucks and would translate at funerals Hebrew to English because he knew English.

That was his first job, selling shit on the streets. I mean, here's a guy that came here with nothing. And when I finally said to him, once we got to know each other better, they did the interview of me for this Baltimore Sun piece. And they were FaceTiming with me and took a screenshot and didn't tell me. And then that got printed in the paper. And I was like, shit, this guy

who I built this relationship with, I said, did you think twice? He said, are you crazy? You think I care about that? And here I was worried about something that didn't require being worried about because I made an assumption. And I think that that's where we go wrong a lot. We assume that, you know, words are a cheap excuse. You know,

how are you doing today? Fine. How are you doing today? Okay, great. And who the fuck knows what we're actually thinking? If we just take a little bit more time to hear people out, I think you can start to see that you can, we're more similar than we are different. And look, this behavior is learned. I watch my own kids and I see how they feel. It makes them feel good to help other people. And I don't think that that's a democratic thing or Republican thing. I don't think that that's whether you're fiscally conservative or if you believe in socialism. I just think that what is innate in us is to help each other and to do something. That is the drug that I'm addicted to now.

And I think that as corny as it sounds, the more that we can – you meet somebody that has survived a wrongful incarceration or any type of incarceration, these people, you know, I would be a puddle on the floor to have to endure what some of these people have gone through. And the fact that they can make it and just be functioning human beings on the other side blows my mind. And I find I learn more from people like that than I do from someone preaching to me about how my ideology is wrong because I'm a Democrat or an independent or a Republican. And I just think that unfortunately, we do, we're lazy. We're lazy in certain regards. Well, it's easy to be lazy in that regard. It's easy to categorize people in a certain way or to have only casual communication

when someone does not have a deep conversation. Deep conversations are hard, and they require honesty. You have to get past the shell. You've got to put out the facade that you put up when you communicate with people. You've got to get through that, and you've got to let them in. It's very hard to be vulnerable. It's very hard to be honest and to like really think about how you

really feel about things why you feel about those things and then when you're looking at something that seems so insurmountable like the legal system and like someone who's stuck in the legal system unfairly and then you think well how many more of these people are like this out there how many more people are having their lives ruined because of circumstance, because of their economic status, because of their racial status, because of who they are in life and what, you know, things completely outside of their control. Uncontrollable variables that have left them in this situation where their life is now

going to be spent rotting away inside a cage. Yeah, and I think, you know, and I think it's also, it requires a certain bit of understanding. You know, like even me, I'll tell you this. I used to, in my mind, demonize bad cops or demonize cops in cases that I was involved in. And I learned a real valuable lesson from Barry Sheck, who was one of the two founders

of the Innocence Project. He came to see me in court. And this was a case where my clients were framed outright. The police took the hair of the victim and planted it in his van. Oh, yeah. You told me about this. Because of the hair root planted it in his van, okay? Oh yeah, you told me about this. So. Because of the hair root. Exactly, so I told you about this. So I would always think that these were bad cops and a lot of times it's not.

They're just, you know, trying to make, you know. They think the guy's guilty. Right. And they want to make it stick. Yeah, and I think that it's that same level of understanding you have to have and apply it in different areas. Like I find it like a puzzle. You know, I told you about that before. So I find it like a puzzle trying to figure out, okay, well, how can I find out to sort of get in touch with this person's humanity?

And if you can get in touch with it, you know, I think that you can make change happen. And when you can make change happen and it's to help people that otherwise wouldn't have it, you see the thing that I guess is most frustrating is that it starts with recognition, which drives me absolutely fucking insane is to hear people. And I've lost some who I thought were good friends over this. What's wrong with people of color? Can't they just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and just, you know, come on, enough complaining already. I fucking hate that. It fucking drives me insane. It's one of the most heartless perspectives.

It's let them eat cake. Yes. It's a version of let them eat cake. That's exactly right. Yeah. And I lost a close friend over it, someone that I grew up with, where I just had enough of it. And it's like, you know, to me, it's so simple that you can't see, like, what happened. It's pretty obvious that you talk about whether it's African-Americans, whether it's, you know.

Immigrants. Immigrants of any kind. Look, you know, so many of my clients were, you know, it doesn't have to be some outward manifestation of it. Like, let's get him because he's the Latin guy or let's get him because he's the black guy. When you see that they're only investigating, you know, undocumented immigrants and not the white girl who actually committed the crime. It's pretty obvious what's going on there, right? Any old undocumented Latin man will do, you know, or any old black guy will do. And, you know, unfortunately, that is the, you know, that's the mentality. And once you realize that it's not always a conscious decision that they're making, you know, there are ways that you can fight back against this. And if I could get the chairman of Marvel to care enough that he wants to start, you know, something at, you know, we're going to start something together at Redemption Project, where we seek to redeem people that whether it's a bad conviction based on DNA, or bad forensic science, or just that it's some disproportionate sentence for someone that

deserves a second chance, we're going to get law students involved in it. You I can do that just by making him care, he had to care in the first place, he and his wife. They're remarkable people. They gave an untold fortune to the NYU Cancer Center. It's called the Perlmutter Cancer Center. And there's another example, right? Oh, he's just some billionaire. some billionaire giving away hundreds of millions of dollars you know as a philanthropist that is a majority of that some billionaire thing so it's such a weird it's such a weird one because we put these people into a negative category we put uber successful people businessmen in particular into this negative category or they have to be

like heartless or shitheads or he's one of those guys. Some people are billionaires just because they had an amazing product. I mean, there's a shit ton of them out there. But we decide that if someone is really successful in business in particular, that they have to be a bad person. Isn't it a weird...

Isn't it a fucking irony? It's so strange. we have politicians fucking tax the rich aoc sells shirts for like how much were those shirts they were really expensive sweaters but but i don't get it so you work your whole life maybe you went to charity to try to break the cycle right and you do great things along the way and then once you make it to where you're told you have to strive to be yeah you're torn down yeah well we don't like winners you know we do like winners but we don't like winners right we like winners we like winners but we don't like when they win too hard well how about this and you'll probably shut me up because you'll you'll tell me you you you because you'll tell me.

You don't know? You don't know my opinion? It'll sound like blowing smoke. I was taken aback when I first got to know you. And I was taken aback by the fact that you were rooting people on, right? Here's a guy that genuinely, like outside of what the public sees about you, you know, here's a guy that wants to see people succeed.

And I remember thinking to myself, the fuck is up with this? And I had to stop and say, wait a second, isn't that the way it should be? You know, like you genuinely want people to do well and succeed. But I have been conditioned that other people are always not, you know, I think that it's like when you achieve some modicum of success, people are trying to tear you down or poke holes in you. And it was like a breath of fresh air to me. And it like that. And that's the way you sort of you never knew that I thought this, but it kind of lit a match, you know, under my butt. Like, look, lift people up more, because when you lift people up, it sort of changes their perspective. And I think that it's bothersome to me that, you know, we are hardwired as human beings, you know, as the rule rather than the exception to want to like sort of tear each other down in a way that's so unproductive and unhealthy that I sometimes am like, can you really make a

difference on a macro level? I don't know. Well, the tearing down and the building up thing to me, the tearing down thing is 100% insecurity. We're all insecure, right? No one is enlightened. No one has achieved this perfect state of bliss. But the insecurity involved in tearing down people just because you find them threatening because they're successful is an intolerable weakness to me. Intolerable to me. I don't, I mean, I understand it when I see it in other people. I will not tolerate it myself. I just think it's though it is a terrible way to look at things because anybody who is successful in anything, you can

learn something from them that'll make you better at what you do, whatever you do. I don't care if you're a fucking painter or a singer. If you see someone who's kicking ass and someone that has some incredible level of discipline and focus, like you can get something out of that, man. You can get something out of a song. You get something out of a book. You certainly can get something out of people that are kicking ass. Now, if you see someone out there that's kicking ass, the idea that somehow or another that takes away from you in any way, shape, or form is crazy. I love it. I love when people do well.

I love when I see people pull themselves up when they're not doing so good, and then all of a sudden they are. I love when people lose weight. It's one of my favorite things. I have people in here that lost 100 pounds. I'm like, fuck yeah. I know how hard that is. So hard. It's incredible to see someone do something like that.

I love when people get successful. I love when people have a great attitude towards things and they help others. But I genuinely love pumping people up. I genuinely love encouraging people and I love people getting successful. And doesn't it feel good when you do that? You know, I had this, I had this thing happen. I told you before my son, um, he's nine now when he was six, he got diagnosed with type one diabetes. Right. And you know, I took him, um, my wife said, look, he loves sneakers.

Like we would collect, you know, Nikes and he loved Air Jordans. And we, my wife said, look, he loves sneakers. Like we would collect Nikes and he loved Air Jordans. And we, my wife said, well, here, there's this thing that a parent at the school owns this sneaker store in Manhattan, in the Lower East Side. And I go to this thing where they're going to like explain like the history behind Air Jordan and Nike. And I'm at this place at the sneaker store. And they're like, they're not new. They're like secondhand sneakers. They're brand new sneakers, but they're not like sold by Nike. They're like these rare Air Jordans, not even so rare. And I'm sitting here with my son watching this guy. And the whole time I'm thinking to myself, this poor schmuck, how the fuck is he going through his existence? And how did he end up in the secondhand sneaker sales business? And I'm sitting there feeling bad for him thinking, you know, they must be on some

sort of financial aid. And I leave with my son and I Google him and see that he just sold a company for $250 million. There it is. I know exactly who you're talking about. Wow. So I have become, listen to this. I have become, this guy's become like a brother to me. His name is John McPheeters, right? He's just some knock around guy from Manhattan who made it. And we have become super tight friends. His son is friends with my kid. His wife is this dynamite person. And he's a guy that I'm like, I've told him the story of what I was thinking. And I'm so happy for him. I really am. And it feels good to be happy for him and he will like read about a case

And send me like that a boy and I'm like, dude, where's this guy been? It's great to have someone like that in your life and I'm so happy What are the odds and he went through he went through a shit storm to build up this business He worked at this sneaker place and that sneaker place He traveled all over the world and him and his partner built that up It blows my mind and I love it and it feels good to root for him you know that's amazing that's yeah stories like that are fucking awesome you know stories like that i like that's one of the reasons why i like fighting and i like athletics i know how hard it is for someone to get really great you know and when you are you can be around people, it's one of the things about fighting

in particular, when you can be around a champion and you watch what they've done and how they can improve and achieve and how they can become a guy like Canelo Alvarez or a guy like Francis Ngannou or fill in the blank, whoever it is. That's an exceptional person. You can learn something from what they did. That's one of the hardest things in the world to do. Now that guy's story Francis incredible oh my god incredible I was I was openly weeping I knew that he had worked in a sand mine when he was a boy I did not have any idea the extent of the journey that he outlined when he was on the show and he was explaining how his his trip to try

to escape from Cameroon and make it to Europe took 14 months, and that they caught him and captured him seven times and sent him back to the Sahara Desert to die. Like, holy shit. I could not believe that a man as big as he was surviving in the physical circumstances that they put him in. It seemed like there needs to be a movie made about the guy's life. There probably will be him in. It seemed like it is, there needs to be a movie made about the guy's life.

There probably will be one day. It's unbelievable. I mean, he's, and also, he's probably the scariest fucking heavyweight that's ever lived. I'd love to see him box. He probably could do well. Well, first of all, his power is extraordinary.

I mean, just really, truly extraordinary. It's something to behold. Seems like a dynamite human being too. He's a natural 275. Wow. Yeah. A natural. How tall is he? Six four? Six four? Six four, I think. Six five. He's a big fella. He's a very nice guy too. Yeah. Super sweet guy and soft spoken. I mean, the guy telling his story. I mean, you could see in his face the lessons that he learned and who he became from that 14-month journey. Two of those months in prison in Europe. Yeah, the part of the story where he is captured, I think it was for like the fifth or sixth time. And I think he said to you,

like, I thought it was over for me then. I didn't know what they were going to do to me, something like that, but I knew it was going to be something bad. Look, those kinds of stories should be not only told, but celebrated, right? Yeah, for sure. should be not only told but celebrated, right? Yeah, for sure. So I love it when somebody makes it. Look, and I think that that's what attracts me to guys and stories like, you know,

Andre Ward, for instance. We talked about him earlier. He is, when you surround yourself with people like that, it makes you want to be better. Yeah, it rubs off on you, for sure. It definitely does. You know, and here's the thing that's very interesting about the Francis Ngannou thing. What he did was not legal, okay?

I mean, there's a difference between something that's not legal and something that's admirable. It's also admirable. It's not legal, what he did. But thank God he did it, right? Well, he had to. Well, you know, there's people in Cameroon right now that never did that, right? But he decided that he had to. That was his journey.

And obviously now it's become an insane success story. He's the heavyweight champion of the world. Not just the heavyweight champion, but he knocked out the most successful heavyweight of all time. Stipe, right? Stipe Milos. Are they going to fight again? I don't know. Right now I think the plan is there's not a date booked, but the plan is, I guess, for him to have a rematch with Derrick Lewis

because I think Jon Jones wants more time to get to heavyweight and he wants more money. I think one of the ways he thinks he's going to get more money is if, you know, if Francis beats Derrick Lewis, which is a big if because Derrick beat him the last time they fought then John Jones gets to Say hey, there's no real Big money contenders out here. I'm the guy I'm the fucking greatest light heavyweight of all time arguably the greatest mixed martial arts fighter of all time I'm ready the way you go the way you're moved by his story

I Move that way and I think you would be and I guess I'm angling for it by some of these exonerees when you hear them tell you what they had to survive be it on death row or avoiding gang violence or sexual assault sometimes they're not able to avoid it,

any of the above. And the stories of, you know, I think what we're attracted to also, it's not just success, it's, you know, endurance and beating the odds. And you're right. It's all, you know, when you were talking earlier about it being rooted in insecurity, it is. Because I think, like, I put myself in those shoes and say, I don't know if I could survive that. Right. And then I think our natural instinct is to say, all right, so let me tear it down. And you have to be able to get past that and say, you know what, let me just marvel at this person for what they were able to do. at this person for what they were able to do. You know, like I, I got arrested when I was on my way to my office in a case against Don King. I was representing terrible Terry Norris. Oh, wow.

I remember Terry. And it was an awful case. Don had, um, he was, was accused of giving a loan that was a 24-hour demand note to Terry Norris' manager, meaning that if this guy did not pay Don in 24 hours, Don King could take his property, take his home from him. How much was the loan? I forget what it was, several hundred thousand dollars. And he only had 24 hours to pay it back? If Don ever said, I want it in 24 hours, if he didn't pay it back in 24 hours, Don could take his home, take his property. Wow. So what's going on here? The manager's job is to get the highest purse for the fighter. The promoter's job is, you know, let me get the expenses down.

And one of those expenses is the fighter's purse. So there's this natural, you know, that's why the Muhammad Ali Act now codifies this as the firewall between the manager and the promoter. They can't have any financial interest in each other. So Terry Norris was a mess during the trial. He could barely speak cogently and he they would talk about his brain injuries. He would fall apart. So I am on my way. There was going to be a hearing about whether or not people of color were being excluded from the jury.

It's called a Batson hearing. Another story for another time. But I come out of the battery tunnel and I get pulled over on the West Side Highway and on Christopher Street in Manhattan. And the cop said, you have a suspended license. This was in like 2001, 2002. And I got arrested and it was a mistake. I had paid the ticket. My license shouldn't have been suspended the whole thing got thrown out This cop books me as Christopher Dubin because I got arrested on Christopher Street and puts me in jail and I Had the next day to be back in court for what at the time was the biggest trial I'd ever been involved in

against Don King it was being covered by ESPN and I was petrified. And I was told, you're going to be here for three days because the judge is so backed up. I finally got a friend of mine who's a lawyer to get me out that night in night court. And they couldn't find me in the jail because they booked me as Christopher Dubin instead of Josh Dubin. And it was like that scene out of, uh, out of the hurricane. I called my brother. I said, I can't do the time. And I was in there for like 15 hours. And I always think about that. What I, what I have adapted, what I have, you know, and I'm like, shit, I was a mess after one day. And I have to be honest with

myself enough to say, you know, I want to be a tough guy here and say, Oh, it was a mess after one day. And I have to be honest with myself enough to say, you know, I want to be a tough guy here and say, oh, it was no problem. It was nothing. All that, I'm fucking scared out of my mind. And that was for something I knew would get cleared up. I knew it wasn't going to be a big deal. It was a traffic infraction.

And I think about, you know, what some of these people have endured. Falsely accused of murder. Oh, it's... Yeah, trapped in jail for decades. For decades. Yeah. Well, just thank God there's someone like you out there and more people like you out there.

There's a ton more like me out there. Jason Flom and the Innocence Project and all the people that are involved in trying to do this. But the system itself has got to be overhauled. And I don't know how the fuck you do that. I mean, you've got to figure out a way to find out truth, right? And truth is, is it dependent upon evidence? Is it dependent upon memory? Like, how do you know whether or not someone did or did not do something?

It's really hard. When you have these cases like the guy walked into the room where the woman had been killed by her husband and he gets some blood on his shoe, there should be a way to dissect that. There should be a way to figure that out. All right. I'm going to keep telling these stories. That's one way, but the answer is brick by brick. All right? My homework will be to propose to you again when you can fit us in quarterly, biannually.

Yeah, let's do quarterly. Quarterly is the best move. That way we'll just get it into people's head that every three months, listen, here's some new ones. We should know about these, and we have a significant problem. And here's how you can get involved. Now look, we could do, like I'll give you one quick example and then we'll wrap. Okay. Because I know that look. Or maybe I don't. You know, our memory, human memory, is among the least reliable evidence. Least reliable. So eyewitness identification, as is fingerprints, are synonymous with being the gold standard, right, of evidence. I saw him do it. I saw her do it.

And there is so much scientific literature of how unreliable our memory is. Fingerprints we look at as the gold standard. So if we talk about it in the context of cases, it becomes apparent how it can go wrong. And when you enlighten people, your listeners will be jurors one day. They'll be related to people that will become jurors. And they start to convey these stories so that maybe one day when they go into jury selection, we can cut the problem off at the pass, right? So instead of reading about some awful story about someone that spent all this time in jail for a crime they didn't commit, it could just be a murmur to a friend,

I helped make sure someone didn't get convicted for something they didn't do. Yeah. I think the more people are aware of these problems, I think people are kind of peripherally aware. But when someone like you explains the intricate details, all the important aspects and all the infuriating aspects, all the corruption and all the bullshit and the lies and the bad cops and the planting of evidence and all that stuff, and you realize, again, that could be me. That could be someone I love. That could be someone. And also, fucking, even if it's not someone you love, it's a human being.

There's no way that should happen ever. No innocent person should have. And when you see when these people get out and you see a guy who's like got gray hair and he's been in jail for 30 years or something he didn't do, like, how do you fix that? You don't. Do you have a fucking do like how do you fix that you don't What do you have a fucking time machine? You don't you don't so we are we monsters now because this is how our criminal justice system is set up Are we are we as a society have we tolerated this stealing of lives?

We have unfortunately and it takes I'm one person. I mean there is a There's an army of heroes all across the country that are fighting for this. Nina Morrison, Vanessa Pocken, people of the Innocence Project that have been there forever. My friend Rebecca Brown fighting for reform. But I feel like we're complicit by our silence and our inactivity. I do. I think most people don't know where to start or where to begin or even the extent of the problem itself. Most people don't know.

You've extended an olive branch to me. I'm going to grab every twig of it and yank on it, and you have my word that I'll help provide interesting stories that are enlightening and that we can help people know a little bit better. So let's plan on doing this again in September. I love it, bro. All right. My man, you're the best.

Great to see you, bro. Thank you, brother. Always great to see you too. All right. Tell everybody your Instagram, tell everybody what's the best way to review more of this information online if they're hearing this and they're interested. Yeah, that'd be great. Let me give you my Instagram is Dubin.Josh. D-U-B-I-N. I believe. Shit. Yeah, they are Dubin Josh Okay, and then what's the best place to you know? innocenceproject.org is a great way to learn about the innocence project and I make it a point to only really post on on my Instagram about cases and causes and You know a great way to learn about what we do at the Innocence Project is going

to the website and our Wrongful Conviction podcast that Jason and I do. You know, my junk science series just got nominated for a Webby, which was pretty cool, where we go through each discipline of forensic science and explain, you know, what is wrong with each discipline of forensic science. But you just have to be willing to invest the time and learn, and hopefully through our future podcast with you, we'll keep the word out. Definitely. We'll do it. All right. Thank you. All right, brother. Goodbye, everybody.