The Joe Rogan Experience - #1797 - Josh Barnett

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Josh Barnett is a mixed martial artist, professional wrestler, color commentator, and host of "Josh Barnett's Bloodsport."

the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day and we're up Joshua talk what's happening what's happening is I've uh I've wandered into some sort of a strange portal has transported me here to this wooden galaxy-filled, I don't know, I mean, bunker, starship. It's just a studio, but you brought with you War Master. You're damn right I did. Yeah, I love this stuff. How did you, so you helped develop this with this company?

Yes, to a degree. Did you, like, give them, like, taste parameters? We were, yes. Cheers, sir. Hey, cheers. Cheers, Cole. Good to a degree. Did you give them taste parameters? Yes. Cheers, sir. Hey, cheers. Good to see you. I told myself I was going to take a while off of drinking after this weekend. Guess not.

Today ain't the day. Do you smoke cigars? What's that? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. day um what's that yes i do yes i do you actually uh part of the development of the whiskey prior to doing a single barrel product was um doing a lot of tasting with cigar clubs by our original head distiller so this part of the creation of this was also what would be the best bourbon to go with a cigar.

Oh, this is perfect because it's got smoky, like a smoky essence to it. How do they do that? Do you know how they do that? I saw a video. Yes, well, what we do is we take, thank you, we take 75% of our 75% corn mash bill, and we smoke it in a big shipping container on these racks. There you go.

There you go. Now you're up. And then after three days, we then take all that smoked corn, take it back to the distillery, and then we will mill it with the 25% roasted corn out of that 75% corn mash bill. And then we mill it with also a 25% malted barley or malted rye. And we mix it all together. We get our mash going and then starts the process of fermentation. And the company Warbringer, had they been around for a while?

Like, did you know them and then you decided to do this with them? I did not know of them. They reached out to me and I was actually in the process of trying to work with a distillery to do whiskey. Because, you know, I started to see a lot of this stuff popping up with celebrities slapping their name on these different things. And I have been someone who's a connoisseur of whiskey for a long time. And I wanted to do it, but I wanted to do it in a way that I felt was legit. Yeah, it's hard because people come to you with whiskey that they've made, and they're like, hey, I want you to try this.

And you're like, yeah. This is not good. Well, there's plenty of that. Whiskey has been an incredibly fast-growing market at this point, and the shelf space right now is getting pretty full up. It's also hard to make. It takes a long time to do it right. It does.

Like Buffalo Trace ages their shit for eight years. It's one of the reasons why it's so good. Well, and the thing is, Buffalo Trace has a rickhouse full of thousands of barrels to choose from to do whatever they want with. When you're a startup, or let's just say a craft distillery like us,

if we have 30 barrels sitting around, we're pretty happy. You know, it just, it takes a lot to get this stuff going. It takes a lot of little subtle things, which yeast you're using, you know, how long your fermentation cycle is. And then as it all goes to that distillation run, the low wine run, the stripping run is important, but that's pretty much full tilt. You're not really looking for anything in particular other than just watching what the level of alcohol you're getting out of it is and what that yield is. But then on that

second distillation run where the real juice comes from, you got to make your cuts at the right place. You want to avoid getting a bunch of heads and you don't want a bunch of tails. But you don't want no tails because some of those volatiles or higher esters will interact in the barrel in ways that come out really pleasant. But as you initially taste it, it might, you know, put a little what you feel is like some slight taint to what you're doing. But now it's all it's all process. And the thing is, you can't rush any of it. Is whiskey like wine where you want to let it sit open for a while? Does it change the flavor? It does.

And, in fact, I tell people if you really like it smoky as shit, add water to it or ice. That brings that essence of smoke. I believe it brings some of the oils up to the surface, and it makes it even smokier. that essence of smoke. I believe it brings some of the oils up to the surface and it makes it even smokier. If you want it less smoky, put no ice in it, no water. And then before you drink it, let it sit for five minutes and it opens up a little bit. And as you're sitting there, it will generally tend to get creamier, a little more buttery, less smoke hit in the front. It never loses all of its smoke because this is really smoky stuff. But as it sits, as time gets to it and oxygen gets to it,

it will change the nose and the palate. The nose and the palate. Hmm. I got it here. Sitting here, getting punched in the face all the time, talking about noses and palates. Your nose is in remarkably good shape. Well, I mean, considering it looks like

Mulholland Drive. It doesn't look that bad. I mean, there's a lot of guys who have way more jacked noses than you. It's a long career of fighting. I will let them have that. They can have that title. You know, this nose is when the gal was swabbing me.

I'm thinking, well, don't try to go up in this one because it's all broken up so bad you can hardly get a swab up that thing. Are you ever going to get them fixed? Yeah, I think at some point. Dude, it changed my life. I did it when I was 40. I had my deviated septum fixed. And all I could think of was, God, why didn't I do this when I was younger?

It's so much better. I know why I haven't. And that's just simply because I figure I'm just gonna bust it up again i'm sure and uh even though um you know fighting really is winding down it ain't completely over yet with me so i want to try and get every last drop of opportunity out of that and then walk away from it because it's not a kind of thing where you're like oh you know actually i feel like no you don't too late's gone. It's over with. How old are you now? 44. How many years do you think you've got of scrapping left? I don't know.

Maybe two or three, but I ain't going to spend two or three probably. It's so much different for heavyweights. Heavyweights traditionally physically mature later. If you were a flyweight at 44, ugh. mature later. Whereas like if you were a fly weight at 44, yeah, you, you're the fact that you've probably slowed down quite a bit is going to make a huge difference to you. Whereas a heavy weight, you, the last thing you're going to lose is power and lack of speed is not inherently going to, um, cost you out there in the ring. George Foreman, big example, but even at heavyweight, there in the ring george foreman right example but even at heavyweight there's not a ton of guys who are 40 right plus that were able to relaunch their career and go out there and win a world

title george is really the only one if you really think about he's like the number one but but even holyfield was still competitive um although not now obviously that thing now when he did with vitor was real weird. Yes. Because first of all, he took it on short notice, which is a terrible idea when you're almost 60. Exactly. And I know Evander had been training and gearing up for a fight with Mike Tyson. And he looked half decent on the mitts, but much better later than he did earlier.

And you see him early in the first few videos that he posted. It looked like he really hadn't worked out in a while, and it was really knocking the dust off and getting the old engine lubed up again. And then as time went on, he started looking pretty good. But then to take a fight, an actual fight, I think it was like two weeks' notice, right? That sounds about right. Because Vitor was supposed to fight who was he

supposed to fight uh roy jones was it that's right so here it was roy jones no i feel like it wasn't roy jones because it was like vitor is still fucking fast man he still hits hard and this is trt vitor yes this is this is a is really to me this is basically youth versus age and it was such a disparity that even the technical expertise and that boxing experience

that is far and above Vitor it didn't matter. Vitor's always been a fairly decent boxer though. Yes for sure. For, he's been an amazing boxer. Yes, and this isn't to diminish Vitor, but, you know. He's got to do everything. You're Evander Holyfield.

You've been in the Olympics. You've only boxed your entire career. His knowledge of the sweet science is going to be at an extreme level. Oh, that's right. Oscar de la Hoya. Right. He caught COVID. Yes, yes. He didn't just catch right. He caught COVID. Yes, yes.

He didn't just catch COVID. He caught a case of bad acting. Like, you know, that was nuts when he was like in the hospital really quickly. All of a sudden, like, oh, one of the chances of me catching COVID.

Like, hmm. And maybe he just has a catheter fetish. Is that what they do? They give you a catheter as soon as you get ineter? I don't know. Maybe he was hoping for it. He's like, you know what?

COVID has made my urethra swell so that I can no longer urinate. Can you please jam something up it? I'm trying to think if I've ever had a catheter. I think I must have since I've had a few surgeries. I have never other than a roll-on one for doing the Baja 1000. Oh, really? You just basically put on this little condom, and then you take the line, you run it down the side of your leg, and you put it off to the back end and off to the side of your shoe, your boot.

So that way, when you're driving, a little crack in the floorboard, if you pee, it just goes out the car. Oh, wow. That's genius. Because you ain't stopping. Yeah. No, that makes. Because you ain't stopping. Yeah. No, that makes sense. You ain't stopping. Somebody should have told that to, well, remember that lady,

the astronaut who wore a diaper to go kill her boyfriend's wife? Right, yes. Remember that? Yeah. She drove, like, many states across state lines, like duct tape and pepper spray. This bitch was motivated. Oh. It just shows you you can be an astronaut and still be a crazy fuck. That's true. State lines were like duct tape and pepper spray. This bitch was motivated.

Oh. It just shows you, you can be an astronaut and still be a crazy fuck. That's true. Also, don't fuck with crazy women. No. But that's the problem is they're sometimes the most fun. Yeah. That's the problem.

No, it is a problem. It's a huge problem. But you need to realize when you got to stop. Yeah. You got to know what's like fun is not necessarily good for you. Yeah. You know, it's not necessarily a bad idea if you bring someone home to take like a really long, convoluted, complex route. So they can't figure out how to get back. You can't do that anymore.

Girls have phones. I know. They just drop a pin where your house is. I get it. But most people are not that Machiavellian. They don't think that way ahead. Now, me, I might. I would think that way ahead now me I might I would think that way but you know hey and look maybe if you find a girl at

that's that that that is that Machiavellian maybe a merrier well the crazy ones are the ones are gonna drop the pin yeah no generally yeah generally yeah they're gonna make sure they come back well they're gonna leave panties behind job and no no crazy people in my life anymore. I mean, MMA and pro wrestling is crazy enough. But no, no. I decided that it was probably better for my health and sanity to be with someone that's just plain awesome and calm and is not interested in dropping pins and doing crazy shit. Your girlfriend seems very nice.

She is. It's like you've got a perfect one. Awesome. I couldn't be happier. That's nice to hear. Yeah. So how many times have you done the Baja? Just once.

Bud Brutzman hits me up. Oh, my buddy Bud. I love Bud. So Bud hits me up on short notice, and he's just like, hey, what are you doing? Actually, I was at 10th Planet in downtown working with Amir, I think it was. Renamardi? No, Alam. Oh, Miramar.

And because for a while there, all the bigger guys from Eddie's school were training a lot with me, and I was cornering them on a lot of the things they were doing. So I'm sitting there, and I get this call from Bud, and he's like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm just training. He's like, you want to do the Baja? I'm like, he's like you want to do the Baja I'm like uh yes by the way I've never done any off-road racing only only like road racing and drag racing and so I'm like but I know this is a completely different animal but yeah sure why not when oh Thursday it's Monday that's such a butt phone call. Where do I got to be? And it turned into a fucking adventure and a half. Explain the Baja for people that don't know what's involved because it's a crazy race.

In the Baja Peninsula, there is the Baja 500 and 1000. And the 1000 being the granddaddy of mall. It's one of the most prestigious off-road races in the world. It's also one of the most dangerous. And they have two ways of doing it. One is they do a circle where they set it up where you start off in Ensenada generally. And then you'll head down south and you'll make a loop and you'll come on back. And then the other aspect they have is it just goes in a meandering line

all the way down to 1,000 miles from where you started. So for the time I did it, I was part of a team, and I think I jumped in the car second or third. Me and Jesse Combs, rest in peace. So ours went from Ensenada to, I believe, La Paz. It's one off-road shot all the way down there. And basically, you're off in the wilderness, in the wilds. I mean, you can see the remnants of courses and things like that, but some of the stuff just gets made as it goes.

like that, but some of the stuff just gets made as it goes. And there's also a lot of people that do what's called pre-running. So they'll go out there and they'll map out the track and all that, and they will mark all the hazards and they'll get used to it because there's a lot on the line with the Baja 1000. And you have, if you've got the money especially, you'll have a trail team that'll travel down the highways and then can intersect with you at different points to do your driver changeovers. Is it 1,000 kilometers? Like what is it? I think it's 1,000 miles. It's 1,000 miles.

And you get out there and you're in the middle of nothing. And you could be, I remember we jump in the car at 4 o'clock in the morning, pitch black, lights are on, slap you on the helmet, put your shit on, bye. And we're already going 50, 60 miles an hour in the middle of nowhere in brush. And I'm looking at a GPS and looking up ahead. There's no windshields in any of this stuff because that would just get dirty and then you would get blind. So you wear your helmets and you sit on microfiber like mitts and things to just clear your face off as bushes, cacti, whatever, dust, dirt, silt is flying through that into the cabin and hitting you. You've got electrolyte drinks that are in a little like a camel setup that you can go and take a drink while you're in the car.

You've got your catheter set up to urinate and away you go. And it's pitch black. All you can see is what the lights are showing. And I'm just going, well, you know what? Tight butthole, I guess, but there ain't no turning back now. And we were in a class six vehicle, which was, it was like a dune buggy with a Subaru Boxster motor in it. But the thing did top out at like 98 miles an hour on a back road, just going straight, just hauling ass, four gears. And it's pretty hairy. I mean, when the sun starts coming up, though, and you're going 30 miles an hour along the side of this rock ridge on this cliff with like a 40-foot drop off to your right, but you're seeing the sunset coming up, the sunrise over the Mexican skyline, and it is just insane.

But also, people like to do things like create hazards on purpose and then film them for YouTube. So put a jump where one wasn't, put a hole where one wasn't, put a cactus right in the middle of the course, perhaps. I mean, it's just crazy shit. Yeah, that's what I kept hearing about. And stuff like this happens. I can tell you from experience, I rolled our vehicle over. Not that bad, thankfully. Someone came by, pulled us over, away we went.

Really? Yeah, we just blew all the oil out that had spilled, you know, in through the exhaust and just ran it, smoke, boom, bye. Wow. Away we went. They call those trophy trucks? Now, the trophy trucks, you hear them before you ever see them. And those dudes are going 150 miles an hour.

I don't know how fast they get, but,'re all like 10,000 RPM small blocks and shit just freaking flying. And you will hear them from – you can hear their engine. And then as they start coming up behind you, they start hitting these sirens and stuff to tell you to get the hell out of the way. And if you don't, they will come up, run up right behind you, and then bump you right out of the way. Just shove you right off the road and keep going. But you watch them hit these whoop-de-whoops, and the suspension's just going, where we're all, we're doing this kind of thing, right? We got to go over them, let up, get on, let up, get on as we're going, and we're going

on, and the trophy trucks just run, like, right over the top of them, like they were nothing there. And, uh... Is that a trophy truck? Yes. Wow, look at that thing go. And the trophy trucks just run right over the top of them like they were nothing there. Is that a trophy truck? Yes. Wow. Look at that thing go. BJ Baldwin. Another dude who loves shooting like we do, but is an insane trophy truck racer.

Yeah. Yeah, he's badass. Those trucks look insane. They are absolutely nuts. Those are stupid expensive, too, right? And they're automatics, too. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. So is yours a manual that you are just a manual with a four-speed volkswagen uh four four in reverse uh four in reverse four in a reverse oh and a reverse yeah i was like why

would you need four gears yeah although our reverse died on us at some point i don't know why yeah it decided like well i'm sure the beating of just the pounding and like, they can't last. No, and funny enough, the most durable vehicle that I've been told are the ones that make it through the most are stock bug. Volkswagen? Volkswagen bug. Really? Yes. So there's a limited amount of

things you can do to it, but they just soldier on and get through it, but I hear it is just brutal on the body. Yeah, I mean I can only imagine that those are tiny light vehicles. They make it. Maybe that's it, right? It could be. I think that by being lighter, you're obviously

going to have less impact amongst travel because it's going to have less kinetic energy. You've got less weight bearing down on things and releasing and bearing down on it again. But to the life of me, maybe they're just really well made. Bud does that every year. Yes, he does. He's so fucking nuts. His team won the class that we were in that year.

Him and Kyle. What's Kyle's last name he used to uh run detroit speed an absolute uh gem of a man you know when you meet that person you're like wow you are probably like the most pious person in the whole world that's kyle really he's just such a nice dude just so cool and uh i met him through Bud, again, doing Optima Ultimate Streetcar Invitational when I competed over there at SEMA. Yeah, Bud is a successful television producer with a beautiful wife and family and risks his fucking life every year for a goof. Yeah. I'm like, why are you doing that? He is just driven to go out there

and just compete. The guy is just such a competitor at everything and he's such a seriously intense person when it comes to competing.

And he still trains jujitsu and everything. No, he does that with his whole life. He's like that. Strange guy. He is,

but in like the best way. Yeah. No, I love him he's, he's an absolute fantastic dude. I sold him his house. You did? Yeah. That was my old house.

Oh man. Holy shit. Yeah. He told, well, I told him that, uh, you know, he was looking for a house and I said, Hey, I'm moving out of this house. Do you want to buy it? And it was perfect. So we didn't have to go through anybody.

Well, you know, I had to have plenty of car stuff for, for everything you might need. Back then, man, I was kind of broke. I didn't, well, I wasn't broke, but I didn't have a lot of cars. I only had a couple cars back then. You didn't have that sick, was it C2 Corvette? Oh, yeah, no, I didn't have that.

I saw that one up at Home Dude's shop in the valley. Steve Strope. Talking about Star Wars. Oh, he's a about Star Wars. Why? He's a Star Wars nerd? Oh, he's a massive Star Wars fan. He'll be like, and then Jibber Jabber.

I can't believe he was just left out of the canon. I'm like, okay. He's like into it, man. Deep. Bud wears only black. Only black. For people. You go over his house.

You open up his closet. It's like a crazy person. Where is your colors? None. You have no colors? He's just serious. Nothing but black. Johnny Cash, right.

His cars are black, too. Yeah, yeah. He's got a beautiful 69 Mustang. Have you seen that? Yes, he does. That one has a 4.6 dual overhead cam motor in it, too, I think. It's a gorgeous car. He's got a lot of good cars.

He was the producer of rides that show where I had my barracuda done oh right right right right he also produced overhauling and I had my buddy on overhauling that would bud uh I wrote out to him and I go hey my my buddy's got the 67 uh firebird and he's a comic artist Dan Pinozian, amazing dude, great guy. And he would love to get this thing really, I mean, it drives and everything, but he would really love to get it all done up. And so, of course, this whole elaborate scheme gets put together. Right. It's overhauling. For people who don't know the show, they pretend to steal your car.

So someone will steal your car. So like say if Josh had a charger, they would steal his charger and then they would do it all up and then bring you somewhere under false pretenses and then unveil your new car. Well, in this case, they didn't do any of the stealing, no thievery. But the deception was, oh, hey, Dan, the UFC, the magazine is going to do this photo shoot on me and they would love it if I could bring like a muscle car or something. So could, could we use your, your fire bird? Yeah, that's awesome. They're like, yeah, they'll give you like 500 bucks for the, for the time. And he's like, sounds great. Amazing. And so I'm standing there with, uh, it's me and Ariane and at this moment, but, or whoever is directing the photo shoot, he goes all right and action and ariani throws like a whole bucket of red paint all over the car and then i swing a sledgehammer through the front

windshield what in front of the dude in front of the dude oh my god the whole obviously the idea was oh we're gonna get this great tv moment where this guy just like melts in one way or the other. And instead he just kind of goes, hmm. And he kind of laughs. And so we bring him over and Bud's saying like, well, no, I mean, you got paid. I mean, the contract's not going to take care of this or whatever. But the whole time we're trying to get this rise out of him and he doesn't really budge.

And okay, then we let him on that it's overhauling and all this did you tell him before they fixed the car oh yes uh and did he have to fake it when you unveiled it uh no no he knew but he didn't get to see anything we were doing so he knew we took his car he knew a bunch of stuff was going to be done but he had no idea it was just like your car is gone it's got a sledgehammer through the windshield and a bunch of red paint on it and bye you'll see it when we're done and we're not telling you shit and but at the time he so bud's just like dude why are you so cool about this essentially dan just like well i really trust josh so i knew he would he wouldn't there's no way he would let my car just be fucked. And I'm like, God damn it.

We needed to be. He was like, what the fuck? Yeah. Wow, what a beautiful car. And I came, I worked on this a little bit with him. I did some of the deconstruction. I helped Lucky with a little bit of the electrical. I worked with Andreas a little bit on some of the other touches and me and chip sat down to do just like the rough outlining and designing about what kind of a car in terms of

purpose we want to build out of it yeah this dude had no idea no no clue and uh you know we're in there just working away getting it done and lingenf Lingenfelter supplied this sick LS3 that makes like 600 horsepower. Detroit Speed did a whole deal for the front and back suspension. Center Force is helping us with the clutch. And the car turned out to be incredible. It's like one of the, I think, until his son was born, and maybe even a little while after his, his wallpaper on his phone was his fucking car.

So that's how much he loves it. Do you still drive it? Oh yeah. And I make him take it out when I can too. Or we'll do stuff like there's this quarantine cruise thing that's still going on down in that got started during the quarantine, but it's still going on this cruising around pacific coast highway and all that kind of stuff and so i brought my gt500 out and i made him come out with the with his car mitra and uh yeah you see here's the thing if you ain't driving the

cars what's the fucking point oh yeah no that i firmly believe that i don't i don't understand people who have cars and they just it's like going to be in a garage forever. No, there's no point. A lot of people do that. I know. And I understand if you want to build something museum quality. But then I'm like, well, then just put it in a museum. What's the fucking point?

But in terms of what's the fucking point, at SEMA this year, there's always some trend that is trash, in my opinion, that always seems like maybe it got started in an interesting way. And then it just like runs the gamut of just every copycat version of it. It's just like, oh, God, we don't need any more of this. This year or last year, I guess, it was turning your classic car electric. And I'm like, fuck. i have a problem with that i have a massive problem with that i'm just like why would you take the soul and spirit out of a machine and replace it make it even more material more mechanical and less Yeah. And then it's so bad now that even with EVs for all kinds of aspects, there's people selling you, I don't know how they put it together,

but it's a thing that makes car noises for you. No. No. No, no, no. Like a vroom, vroom. Yes. Does is to pretend to shift gears because there's no gears i mean i think a porsche tycan has two gears for whatever reason but a tesla is zero it's like one gear so what do you what do they do does it just rumble when you hit the gas? I guess. No shifting? Dude, I have no idea. What do they do with their fake noises?

I guess they just add that to the rest of other fake shit that they're doing in their life and the way that they're doing things and, you know, hunky-dory. BMW started doing that back in the day with their turbocharged engines. They started putting, like, pumping in fake exhaust note through your stereo. Yeah. And it was an option, I believe. I believe you could shut it off. But I had a couple of M3s back in the day.

I had the older ones, though, with the V8. Oh, yes. It was really nice. It was like a high-revving V8 engine. Oh, it was great. Great car. Yeah, it was great. Great car. Yeah, it was so good I got two of them in a row. My lease went up and I got another one because I loved it.

It was just a real high-rev. It wasn't the fastest or the most handling, but it was very engaging. It's a car that has a driving experience to it. It's quick. It's fast-revving. But it's also easy to drive everywhere you want to go. It was a great commuter car. I loved it. I loved taking it to the comedy to go. It was a great commuter car. I loved it.

I loved taking it to the comedy store. It's just a great shifting paddles, which I generally don't like. But when you're in LA traffic, that's one of the things I always admired about you. In LA traffic, you still drove a stick shift. Yeah, yeah. No, I actually sold my SRT8 Challenger and replaced it with a diesel GLK Mercedes SUV. And I was so proud when I put a trailer hitch on it. I'm like, you know I've turned a fucking new leaf.

When I'm like, hey, look, it's a diesel and I've got a trailer hitch. Yeah, that's a new leaf. But at the same time, I'm still like with Victor Henry, who you just saw in UFC. We're building, he bought a 70 Cutlass S off of me, and we're building this thing up. Fitech is giving us fuel injection to do on the whole car. I've had a 455 with aluminum heads, roller cam that I had sitting around, put in it, tunnel ram. It'll be like 10, 10.2 to 1 compression. It's going to be, you know, he talks about that.

We, we actually talked about that during the fight itself. Ah, yeah. Which by the way was fantastic. And I really wanted to talk about that because Victor Henry was super impressive. It's so rare that you see a guy enter the UFC, um, you know, kind of unheralded, but like with a good reputation, but you know, not a lot of hype behind him. But performed that way against a guy like Hauni Barcelos. Yes.

Who's a top of the line fighter. Yes. He is so good. Hauni is so technical and so high level. And Victor just put on a fucking clinic. He put on a clinic. It was amazing. He's so good. And it's like Victor said

to the press afterwards where, you know, they, they usually ask a bunch of like, just wrote questions and like, well, you know, what, what did you think about, uh, being underestimated or whatever? And he goes, look, you guys are UFC people, you know, about UFC, you know, about people in UFC and you don't really know anything else. And so what you don't know about, I'm not surprised that you're not acquainted. Like you wouldn't really understand how to put this on some sort of metric. Right. That is a very good point because I think at this point in time, that's silly. It used to be you would look at the UFC and that was like the NFL.

Those were the elite football players. The UFC was the elite fighters. But there are guys in other organizations now that are top of the line. There's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of them that are fighting for 1FC. There's a bunch of them that are fighting for these other organizations. You know, Kayla Harrison, who's over in the PFL. There's top of the line fighters. There are killers all these other organizations. You know, Kayla Harrison, who's over in the PFL. There's top-of-the-line fighters.

There are killers all over the world. And that was, you know, one of the things that I like to do with my athletes is I want them to see the world. I want them to fight all over the place. And so I was taking Victor to Russia, and he's over there beating guys. He was undefeated in Ryzen. He was the champion for Deep. He had fought for the title in Pancras before early in his career.

And so he'd gotten to see all this different stuff and fighting all these different places, different rule sets. And so when it came time for the UFC and during the pandemic, it's just, okay, can't get to Japan. No one's getting visas. Fighting in the States is really limited. fighting in the States is really limited, but the amazing George and Steve Bash, they took, helped Victor out, got him a title shot against Albert Morales and LXF. And so we were able to keep him busy and it's like, Hey guys. And I'd been talking to the UFC, but I'd, I'd get the response like, well, you know, Dana White's contender series. I'm like, no.

This kid's 20 and 5, 21 and 5. He's got two world titles. I'm not doing it. I'm not putting him in the contender series for a maybe. This kid's legit. And eventually, this opportunity with Howie came up, and we just said, yeah, we're good to go. That's a good example because most people are not going to take that fight with Barcelo on such a short notice because he requires a lot of preparation.

This is true. Crazy endurance, super skillful, but God damn, I was impressed with Victor. I was impressed with how composed he was and how technical. He never wound up once. Everything is coming from the chamber. There's no telegraph. He's constantly moving. He's constantly fainting.

Lots of head movement. Fuck, he was impressive. It was us putting our game plan fully into implementation because Houni is such a tough guy, very physical athlete, great wrestling background as well, and a diehard heavy striker. So our thing is, well, you know, all right, we're not going to wrestle with him. Like, there's no point. I don't feel that Victor couldn't or couldn't submit him potentially, but why put it in places where we feel like not be giving something up or putting it in a place that he wants to be.

But we also know he loves fighting on the feet more than anything else, for the most part. And he really believes in his striking skills. So you could get into a big fight with him about that, but now you're kind of putting yourself in the position to kill or be killed and why. So the idea was keep tearing apart at his body, keep him fighting on the back foot. Um, don't let him fight moving forward and constantly use constant fakes, uh, feints, uh, keep tagging the body over and over and over again, getting our chip shots in hitting first and always hitting last and watching out for his, his right uppercut, his right hand, and how he loves to pull with his head movement and then throw a punch behind it.

So not getting too extended, letting that guy get his work off at times, but pulling with a half step, getting right out of range so that we're not behind or running into any of that stuff and continue to chip away at that body and take away his endurance and bank on our cardio and scoring and scoring and scoring. And if the opportunity presents itself, we had a few things up our sleeves for potential fight enders, but also we knew that if you keep pulling a guy apart, eventually if they feel like they're losing in any way,

they're going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And the bigger they get, the more openings they're going to leave behind. And there was a couple times it seemed like, you know, Vic had him rocked. Maybe he could have taken him out. But, you know, Hownie's so tough. So we're not going to just blindly run into anything. So Vic just kept pouring it on, pouring it on, pouring it on, pouring it on.

And, you know, in time, we just were able to pull Howey's tactics apart and leave him exposed to our opportunities. But, you know, the guy never stopped fighting the whole fight. You know, even in the third round, whenever he got a chance to get off, he was trying to take Vic's head off. Yeah. Which is why he's so dangerous. It was very impressive in that he had that kind of endurance given that it was such a short notice. Did he have a fight lined up anywhere else or was he just always in the gym? No, but as soon as that fight in LXF was over with, I just said, hey, stay in the gym.

You're not going to crank it up to full peaking fight camp, but you need to stay in the gym and stay at a certain level of conditioning. Keep a strong base. Because I'm going to try and find something for you. I'm going to be out there advocating to try and get you another fight. And if it ain't in the UFC, then maybe it's going to be again for George and Bash in LXF. We're going to keep you busy. We're going to make it so nobody can deny you at some point. And he's in this place where, is he 34, 35?

I think he's 34, going to be 35. So at that age, especially in the lighter weight classes, as we were saying before, that he's in a position where you got to kind of get going now. Exactly. And I knew that he had a lot left in him, and potentially he was actually coming into his his best era of himself right now and so i didn't want to let that go to waste what certainly looked like in the fight there's no way you could fight like that against a guy like at the end of the day sean shelby sees us in the back

and he just had such a shit-eating grin he's like fuck yeah that is exactly what we want yeah and i'm like i i told you but i know everyone's's always telling you, but he's the real deal. And he's going to give you badass fights every single time. This kid doesn't know what it's like to not have heart or will. It just doesn't exist. And he's skilled and mean, and he can get it done. He's great. I was really actually massively surprised in a pleasant way about what the UFC was doing for him in prep for this fight. It's like, oh, you have this fight camp coming up?

Oh, we have meal plans. We got this. We will make sure you make weight. We'll help you. It's like, all right. I love this. Looking after this kid in this way where you're not going to get that any other place. And not to diminish places like Ryzen or fighting in the places like RCC in Russia. I mean, we've been taken care of greatly

everywhere we've gone. But having the UFC go into their toolbox of things that they could put out there to benefit the fighters. I was stoked. It was great. Yeah, they've done a lot of amazing stuff in that regard. Like, first of all, establishing the Performance Institute in Vegas. Yes, that was a huge help too.

Yes. It's amazing. I was there with Travis Brown when he was going to, prior to his fight with Alexi Olenek. And then when we were there to originally fight at the APEC Center, you know, that was completely opened up to us. And that was a great, great opportunity. I've been in conversation with Forrest because I'm always interested to learn about why the PI itself does this versus that, right? Even I was talking to the people there about their normatex system okay well what what is your experiences with this you know how is this uh compared to was it ecg or ecgc which is another

we should explain normatex normatex is uh they're these awesome boots yeah that you put on well they're like pants they've got ones for your arms too and then um to me it kind of reminded me of the ecgc i think it's called where there's a system around heart patients where they put cuffs around you and they hook you up to an EKG. And then with your heart rate and your pulse rate, it's supposed to move and squeeze in succession to create extra circulation or help with circulation. create extra circulation or help with circulation. And so there's been studies that say there's a lot of benefits for this for people that have had heart issues or circulation related stuff and whatever. And so I started talking to the gal there about how does this compare? And so getting little bits of information like that, getting to understand more about what the systems are and what their intention is, what problems are

they trying to solve. That's great for me as a trainer, because then I can take that information back and then figure out how to use it with my athletes, find other complimentary things to go with it. And, you know, anything you can do to try and give that athlete that, not just that extra edge now, but something that can keep them in the battle even further along in their career which is even though i'm a heavyweight and we can get away with having longer careers to a degree i feel that the way i was trained from the beginning had a lot has a lot to do with me being able to stay in this game as long as i have well particularly conditioning right i mean conditioning yeah and tell everybody like everybody your background with catch wrestling.

You were very fortunate to be able to train with some real legends. Yes. So my initial training, well, I was a wrestler, and I saw UFC 2 on a tape sophomore year of high school, and I just looked at it and went, I don't know how the fuck you get into this, but I'm find a way somehow and i'm gonna do this it was just like that there's no questioning there was no hemming and hawing no if and ands i'll do it back in 1994 five six i mean it's all just like do it as you can yeah put it all together in any way that's

possible i saw your first one of your first fights on vhs tape so you gave it to me baby face assassin very much so yeah it was back in the day man it was a long time ago and through then i trained with jim harrison uh rest in peace one of the old school blood and guts bare knuckle karate guys you know the kind of guy where even chuck norris and all them are like that's a dude you don't fuck with. I mean, it was being at a celebration of life last year because he died during COVID and we couldn't, you know, we couldn't really put together like a proper goodbye. And it was like me and Superfoot and Troy Dorsey and, you know, a legend, a bunch of different legends. But then listening to guys that weren't martial artists even talking about, but people from law enforcement when he did this special, he was a part of this special criminal unit in East St. Louis.

Oh, boy. And hearing the stories direct from these guys' mouth about being there with him or people in the military, it's like, yeah, well, when Jim Harrison, you know, was paid to do some work in military action and go over and different things and talking about him in that regard. And it's like, this guy is something that doesn't exist anymore.

This is like Ernst Jünger type stuff. And even I who trained under him and knew him very well just was sitting there. I still had to sit back like, wow, what an individual. Those guys in the early days of karate, too. I mean, that was a wild time. Very wild. You know, in the 60s and the 70s when karate was being introduced.

It's a lot like MMA, right? They're building it as they go. Yep, very much so. Building it as they go. And when I tell people nowadays that at one point we just, oh, we'd agree on rules as we got there. Yep. Very interesting. of gloves was foreign to us because they didn't really exist right we had to if you wanted mma gloves at one point you basically had to buy harbinger wrist wrap bag gloves that were fingerless and then you would have to trim pieces off and build them that's what was available to you and then there was the boxogenics glove came out that was in the ufc and then after that you

know different people started making gloves and then gloves kind of became a standard. But at one point, it was like, yeah, they exist, but you ain't got to wear them. Well, wasn't the first MMA glove really those things that Bruce Lee was wearing? The Jeet Kune Do ones? Yes. Was that Enter the Dragon? Enter the Dragon, where he does a whole scene with Sammo Hung. Yeah.

And takes him down on armbars. Gets him in an armbar, yeah. Yeah. That was during the days when he was working with Gene LaBelle. Well, even prior to that, the guy who really got me into martial arts to begin with was Fred Sato, who was one of the founders of the Seattle Judo Dojo,

and one of the original four, that is Bruce Lee, Fred Sato, Taki Kimura, and Jesse Glover. That's the original four. And I remember looking through little old books, picture books and stuff of Fred Sato and Jesse and all them with Bruce. And they're just in someone's backyard. I don't even remember whose backyard it was. When Bruce Lee is a little skinny kid going to Garfield High School in Seattle.

Yeah. So FYI, people, if you watch Dragon, the Bruce Lee story, mostly bullshit, revisionist history. Yeah. Like a lot of things these days. No, he didn't go to UCLA, to my understanding. No, he didn't meet Linda Lee in California. They're all from Washington. They made all that up?

It's all made up. Why would they do that? Because it's cooler to be from California than it is to be from Seattle, I guess. But it's not. It's a historical figure. Leon is not. There was no Leon. It was Jesse Glover.

So Leon's a fake guy? Fake guy is supposed to be Jesse Glover, so to speak. Why wouldn't they just have Jesse Glover? I just don't understand why they do that. It's like in the Mark Schultz film when they had him fight a Russian guy at the end. When everybody knows he fought Big Daddy Goodrich.

It's a part of history. I know. You can go look it up. It's the same with all the stuff about Bruce. You could even, Taki Kimura put out a book. Something Memories of the Dragon. Whatever. It's got all the old pictures in it. Jesse Glover's passed away. Taki's passed away fred uh my sensei passed away but but you know i i remember watching that movie and sitting there just being just fuming about like why the fuck are they lying

you know i mean what's the point i mean the guy's point the guy's story is cool enough and yes at some point he ends up in la and everything. And, and, you know, the contributions to the idea of approaching martial arts from his perspective, absolutely, or live, live on in all kinds of aspects and all kinds of ways through all kinds of people. But, you know, I mean, I trained with Guru Dan before I I've been around all of these folks and it's just like, I don't, his story is cool enough. Yeah. But that's something that Hollywood producers love to do. They love to think they're smarter than the original story. Instead of just taking the original story and putting it together in an entertaining way, in their eyes, you have to

add some nonsense to it. Otherwise they don't feel like they got their fingerprints all over it. Yeah. I could see that. Like A lot could be from just simply ego. Like I wanna tell the story the way I wanna tell it. It doesn't matter what reality was. They do that all the time. Of course they do. But then what do they even make these days? Anything that is original, good luck finding that.

It's as if, it's just like what? Well, I'm sure they're making original movies. I'm sure. But the point is, it's like, why would you change the life story of a historical figure who's one of the most important figures in the history of martial arts? Right. I don't know. It's so dumb. There has to be some sort of reason.

And it could be arbitrary on one end end and it could be deliberate on another. At the end of the day, for me, it's just like a lot of things go to the source. Yeah. You know, it may not be the most popular widespread one, but it's out there. It's just so annoying. So how did you get into catch? I got into catch basically through Matt He who was training who had trained over in japan with funaki and suzuki and then got to train with sayama and so he's training under these

guys that all come from this carl gotch catch lineage who also are from antonio enoki so back in the 70s enoki he split off from j Japan Wrestling Association or something like that. So him and Giant Baba, they make a split. They both are trained under Ricky Dozan. And Baba goes, he makes all Japan pro wrestling. And Inoki goes, he makes new Japan pro wrestling. And Inoki's approach is we're going to make this the world's strongest martial art. That's our goal.

This is when we present professional wrestling, it's going to be something called strong style, and it's going to be the king of sports. It's going to stand at the zenith of all things, and it's going to be incorporated with martial arts and fight skills and all these aspects of reality combat. And he brings in Carl Gotch to come and run this gym and so all these guys are all getting trained by carl gotch who is a catch wrestler from um originally from from hungary and he goes and trains he was a an olympian and greco-Roman, and he trained in professional wrestling when it was also a much more reality-based product. But then he goes to the Snake Pit in Wigan, England and trains with Billy Riley, who is one of the godfathers of catch-as-catch-can wrestling, which the term itself comes from Wigan, England. Catch-as-catch-can. Get him any way you can. Where these old, these tough as shit miners

get out from the mines at the end of the day. They go and they have their pints and what have you. And then they go up on the hills and in the grass and they throw bets down and they just challenge each other and go after it. And this eventually starts to become what we know as professional wrestling. And at some point, professional wrestling is a hundred percent legitimate sport, but then it starts

becoming worked over time. How did it become work? Did it become work because of carnivals? Carnivals were a part of it because you could, like, let's say you got Tutsman and, oh God, I'm trying to remember the rest of them. They, The Gold Dust Trio, they go around up and down the west coast, and they go and they put these shows together. nasty badass who is either in the crowd to go wrestle someone that didn't know who this person was and go in and just murk them and take all their money. Or here's the other thing is they set it up where they have a guy in the ring doing all these matches, just smashing up all the locals. And then they say, well, who's willing to get in here next? And then they have a guy sitting in the audience who is their plant. He in the ring he wins and then they everybody bets against him the gold dust trio bets on him and takes all the money and away they go

and so this is also where the terminology of marks comes in because the audience everyone's a mark it's a con so that was the beginning of theatrical pro pro wrestling that was the beginning of conning stuff and and setting up a potential predetermined. But then it also got to the point where really highly skilled, evenly matched guys could be out there for an hour and a half. And it's just like, people don't want to watch this. They want to watch more action-packed, action-oriented stuff. And so then you start working the matches and putting more flourishes and things in it. It becomes more popular, more interesting.

And then you start, I mean, the basic premise of professional wrestling still exists. And that is you have a face and a heel. So basically you have a good guy and a bad guy. And the good guy is trying to overcome the bad guy. And at some point he will go through all kinds of torment and suffering and what have you and then come out on the other side victorious and overcome the problem. It is just it's basically the hero's journey contained in a little four sided ring. a little four-sided ring.

And oftentimes pro wrestling does a great job of mirroring the sentiments of the culture around it at large. And, uh, this actually would be a really great conversation to have with Eric Weinstein. Cause he's such a huge pro wrestling fan. He's massive. And he has this,

he's got this great series. It hasn't been finished yet. He's got two parts where, you know, it's got clips of him talking about kayfabe on here and, and, uh, work shoots and all this kind of stuff in terms of politics and culture, mostly politics. But, uh, but so the idea of it on a, on a metaphysical level, he would, he would enjoy that conversation, I think. And I, and I got to connect with him. I was, uh, I was just talking to him the other day. He's like, are you in LA? I'm like, I'm actually heading to Austin to go hang out with folks and

go do some stuff, but I'm coming back. But so pro wrestling starts getting worked at some point, but then it starts getting even more and more exorbitant and outrageous. And you start getting guys like Gorgeous George and you start, you know, people that are really playing to these big personalities and cutting promos and then you get the territories that start, they start branching out and each one would have sort of their own spin on things. But at one point, pro wrestling was the way, it was like MMA is now, except it was mainly confined to straight matches of grappling with submissions. But, you know, you'd have incidents like Ad Santel. He beats this world judo champion from the Kodokan and he goes, well, I'm the world champion of judo now. And the Kodokan

goes, what the fuck the hell you are? are get him and so all these guys keep coming after Ad Santel they eventually have this giant showdown in Yasukuni Jinja the shrine in Japan and he does I don't remember three matches over five days or something like that and he knocks one guy out in a jacket match so they made made them both wear jackets. Like kimonos? Yes. And he slams a guy and TKO's him, wins that match. And essentially the catch guys beat the judo guys at that point. But then it doesn't end. It keeps going.

The judo guys get some wins. There's draws. There's this. And eventually Ad just goes, that's enough. Okay, I got it. I can't keep this up. I'm not the world judo champion anymore. I'm shutting the fuck up about this.

Because they were not letting it go. And of course, regardless of Ad Santel being able to come out on top, these were no slouches. These were tough as shit dudes. Yeah. And a more, hell, look at that dude. You can imagine that dude was probably strong as shit. Jacked. Yeah.

And this is pre-creatine. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very much so. That's him? You can imagine that dude was probably strong as shit. Jacked. Yeah. And this is pre-creatine. Yeah. Oh yeah, very much so. This is all very much truly horse meat and bone marrow and all that good stuff. And just hardcore working out. Exactly.

One of the things about Carl Gotch in particular was he was legendary for his requirements of fitness. It's true. It is 100% true. Did you get a chance to train personally with him? I got to train a bit with Carl, although he didn't ask me to do all the requirements and all that. And I met him through a magazine interview where Gon Kakutogi brought me over to meet with him in Tampa. And I believe Jake Shannon helped set it up, in fact, because Jake and Carl were really close. And then

eventually Billy and Jake would become very close close because, uh, I brought Billy to Jake cause Billy left Japan and came back to America. I was living in Arkansas with some of his family. And I said, Hey, um, can we do something with Billy here? Like get him doing seminars, something, let's keep him active. Let's put some money in his pocket. Let's do something. And Jake structured this whole thing and got Billy out to the rest of the world. And it was amazing. And it was so incredible that Jake was able to do this for Billy and bring Billy to everyone and have some of this stuff taped, do these seminars and expose again what was old is now new. What was Carl's conditioning routine that he required of students before they were able to learn?

That's a good question. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was something like a thousand squats and 500 Hindu pushups and something, something. It was a pretty rigorous thing. And if you couldn't complete it, he wasn't going to teach you.

But I think a lot of that was, well, number one, he believed that conditioning is your greatest hold. That is a direct quote from Carl Gotch. But I think a lot of that was, well, number one, he believed that conditioning is your greatest hold. That is a direct quote from Carl Gotch. But also it showed how serious you were. A lot of people always say, oh, hey, Joe, you know, I want to be a comedian too. You know, what do I?

And you're like, no, you don't. You're not really serious about it. You see my success. You see these things. You think, well, I could have that. It's like you have no idea how much, you know, it's the iceberg concept. You know, you see this, but underneath it all was all this toiling and suffering and failing and all these different things to get to this point. And you can look at someone like, you're not ready to fail. You're not even ready to fail yet. You're not ready to

suck to get to being good. And it's the same with someone like Carl, you know, all these people will come around and, oh yeah, teach me. I'll be the best in the world. I'm going to be – it's like, yeah, sure you are. Show me some conditioning. You're out of shape. You can't do it. You can't – you're garbage. You don't take this as seriously as what it needs to be to actually be successful, let alone be able to be on Joe Rogan level or Carl Gotch level or Antonio Inoki or what have you. be able to be on Joe Rogan level or Carl Gotch level or Antonio Inoki or what have you.

Yeah. It just – people even back then weren't necessarily in for that kind of ride, let alone these days. Yeah, let alone these days. Yes. But to imagine somebody requiring that, like a Carl Gotch type guy today before he takes on any students, what a small pool of talent you'd have to draw from. This is true. And while it's not something I put my athletes through per se, I don't take on new students either.

I just don't do it. And people come at me all the time like, nah. Yeah, people like to say that like you're not a coach unless you take someone from like white belt all the way to like world championship level. I mean, there's something to be said about that, but there's a lot of different, I mean, coaching isn't- There's levels of coaching. There is absolutely levels of coaching. Yeah, there's elite coaching.

Yes. You know, like an elite fighter needs an elite coach and you don't need to be working with someone who doesn't understand a jab. Right. You don't have to. Like this idea, like there's a sort of hierarchy of coaching where people think that if you don't take someone

from the ground up, if you don't like really work with like bottom level athletes and bring them into top shape. But I don't buy that. I don't necessarily. I mean, there are people I've started from near ground zero and brought up. I mean, Victor, when I got him, he had five amateur fights. But it's also something, let's say like this. There's guys that can teach you all these techniques and how to lift and blah, blah, blah, right?

They're giving you all this structure and but beyond teaching you how to throw punches and do this, there's also the concept of why and not just why for you, why for you versus this guy, why for you at this time, why for you at this time, why for you based on what your body's doing. I mean, there's all these different contextual and subjective elements that come into this whole thing.

And I was talking to, I had three athletes I worked with fight at LFA last weekend. Me and Chad George are working with these athletes. And so Lou Schwenke goes out there and knocks a dude out in the first round. Chase Gibson has a great scrap back and forth with Javier Garcia, who's very tough. He wins an unanimous decision. And then Ozzy Diaz goes out and knocks his guy out in the first round. And I'm talking to someone and I go, yeah, there's a lot of folks that can get a guy all pumped up

and teach him how to throw a bunch of punches and do all this kind of stuff but can they actually break down the opponents and all their their tendencies all their their their like being able to see through that athlete and go like okay when things are at their best here's what they're going to do when things are at their worst here's what they're likely to do you know here's their tendencies here here's the things that you can pretty much count on that they're always going to go to when things get tough. When things are at their hardest, people are always going to go to what they're best at. And then it's also to look at your athlete and go, okay, how do I need to structure this guy's fight, not just on the day but in all the training leading up to it,

so that he's able to mitigate the strengths of his opponent and emphasize his own strengths and keep away from his weaknesses. And there's that aspect. And then there's the mental aspect of how to get into that person's head and give them the right motivation or the right comfort or whatever is necessary at that moment to get them at their best. Did you ever work with a sports psychologist? No. No? Do you read any?

Yes. I've read some books. Actually, one of them that was a real eye-opener was one on coaching women. And there was all kinds of great little bits of knowledge that I got out of that, just for general coaching and for working with female athletes. This thing was written by a female volleyball coach, and I wish I could remember the name of it. It was an excellent book though. And then it was just, I think, just paying attention, reading about things like psychology and philosophy and other things. I mean, it's one thing to say, to read philosophy, let's say, but

reading Nietzsche for me is not just about philosophy. It's about human behavior. It's about psychology. They call him like the first psychologist philosopher in a way. And so just being open enough to let the world show you what it is and for people to show you who they are because you'll come. Yes, everyone's an individual. They all have their idiosyncrasies. But in most ways, we're more alike than we're different. And we've been more alike in almost entirely the same ways since anyone has ever been able to write about what a human being is like, period. anyone has ever been able to write about what a human being is like, period. If you read about ancient Greece, if you read in the Bible or the Quran or any, whatever, you can grab yourself a

cuneiform tablet or you start reading hieroglyphs, you're not going to get a radically new, different story about what a human being is, how they think, how they feel, what are their motivations and what it takes for flourishing. It's never changed. You can say that we've evolved, but we're no really – but on what level? I mean maybe we still have like the remnants of a tailbone. we interact with the world and things and maybe the intensity at which we may express ourselves for good or for bad, but it's not new. Envy is still there. Egos are still there. Ego from the point of being healthy to the point of being unhealthy.

The same with envy. Same with resentments. All this stuff is all the same shit. You go read Gilgamesh. It's all the same shit you go read Gilgamesh it's all the same shit you know we're not telling new stories we're telling the same story over and over and over again and I think that as a coach

beyond that you know deeper meaning of being in humanity but at the same time it's just allow yourself to be open to see things let people tell you who they are and if you really are just allow yourself to be open to see things. Let people tell you who they are. And if you really are interested in trying to be about something, it's not always about charging headlong into it. Sometimes it's about sitting back and just shutting the fuck up and listening,

listening to someone who's telling you something or just listening in a metaphorical sense, just allowing things to show you something. Watch that footage over and over and over again and throw your preconceived notions aside and just let it happen and then see how much you start seeing that repeats itself. Yeah, there's probably a great benefit in learning how to teach women because from my personal experience, women learn better in a sense that they don't have as much ego when it comes to martial arts. And they also don't muscle things. True. I think that teaching all types of people is incredibly useful.

And I liked teaching women a lot, especially because they smelled better and took better care of themselves. liked teaching women a lot, especially because they smelled better, took better care of themselves. But it's a, you can't go out there generally and just start screaming at a girl like, why are you so stupid? They're going to take that in a whole different way. Although I've had athletes that were females that needed more tough love than they needed more gentle guidance. And to that, it just came down to the individual athlete themselves. And I feel like you need to learn how to coach women and men. And then in and amongst that, you then needed how to coach every single woman, every single man on an individual level, because they're not just women, they're not just men, they're individuals. And you got to get to know them.

Exactly. And so that's another reason why I'm not necessarily very eager or And you got to get to know them. when you do something dumb in your relationship or something fucks up or you make some bad mistake. I'm going to be there for that. You know, I don't, it's penny or a pound, penny and a pound, no matter how small or how severe, I'm signing up to be a part of this. And so I don't want to spend my time on someone that I don't think has the right kind of character. I don't want to bother because I don't,

it doesn't matter to me if they're going to go out there and win a bunch of titles and give me a bunch of money. It ain't worth it because now I got to hitch my boat to this person. And that says something about my honor and my word. And I just, I don't want nothing to do with something, something like that. If it doesn't, if it doesn't reflect the person that I want to put out there in the world. So what is the process? Like say if an athlete wanted to work with you, like how would you even go about deciding whether or not you'd be interested in that? Well, at least

one of the things I would do at CSW is people come up to me. Um, and Victor even was part of this process. I mean, he was training with a good friend of mine, Jimmy Romero, and Jimmy was at legends, uh, when you guys were all there. And at some, Jimmy's like, man, I just can't keep doing this. There's not enough money. I'm going broke. And I got stuff to do. I have a kid on the way. Like, this isn't just saying flying.

And he loves martial arts. And Jimmy was just coming by CMMA the other day and running pads for Chad and all that. It was awesome to see him. But I completely understood his position. But what happened is just like, well, okay, there's no more team, but he'd been bringing his guys down to CSW to come train and spar. And this kid, Victor, was his protege and he's a super solid kid. And I could see it in everybody around him that I knew all vouched for what a good kid this dude was. And he's growing up in Southgate, which is like the

Mexican Compton in LA. So it's a rough ass place. And, you know, he's been shot before, just sitting on the stoop playing with his friends. And someone does drive by and stray bullet, you know, all this kind of stuff. I mean, this kid's got a wild life. And I'm just like, all right. I call him up.

I go, hey, I heard the team is, you know, disbanded and what have you. Be here on Monday. Well, you know, I don't have any money. I go, hey, I heard the team is disbanded and what have you. Be here on Monday. Well, I don't have any money. I'll just be here on Monday. He shows up. I give him stuff to do. Come check in on him.

He's been doing it. All right. Now I start taking a more personal approach. Now I'm more right beside him as I'm doing things. He gets it that, okay, if you're serious about it and I tell you something, and if you don't do it, that's your choice. If it's not that important to you, you're not going to do it. All right, if it's not important to you,

then it's not important for me to give it to you in the first place. Not important for me to spend my time on you. Vic then says this to another athlete at the school who was brought in, who had come up to me before and goes, man, I see what you're doing with Victor and some of these other folks. And, and, you know, they're having a lot of success and, and I really liked the way that you're working with them. You know, would it be possible if I could work under you? And I just said, let me think about it. And then at some point, I think he, this guy, a fighter under me, AJ Bryant, I think this guy, a fighter under me, A.J. Bryant, another great kid, heavy hitter,

and he's got a fight coming up in May. He goes to Vic on the side. He goes, hey, man, what does that even mean? I'll think about it. And Vic just turns to him and goes, look, you show up. You keep showing up. You train your ass off. He's going to come over to you at some point, and he's going to give you something to do. He's going to tell you something, whether it needed to be done here or it needs to be done outside of the ring, outside of the gym, but he's going to come to

you and he's going to say something. If you don't do it, if you're not, he's just going to be like, you're not serious. And that's it. Fuck off. And so, you know, eventually I come over, I'm like, all right, Hey, do this. I just leave. Or, you know, I start feeding him little bits, and I see, no, this kid is serious. He really does want it. And then I take AJ under my wing. I start working with him all the time. He's a part of the team.

We're all going. We're all training. Turn him pro. After his last amateur MMA fight, I turn to him. I go, all right, that's enough of that. You've got enough experience for fucking free fighting for free. That's it. You're going pro let's move on. And he's like, uh, okay. And then boom, I have him fighting like five or six times in a year, like right off the bat. And I was like, if you're serious, I'm going to get you placed. And I'm taking, took him to Russia. I'm fighting all over the US. We're going to do it. But anything I'm going to

ask of my athletes is not going to be any less than anything I've ever done. And in terms of severity or intensity, and oftentimes it is less. It's like, you guys are going to get the benefit of all the shit I had to do and all the things that have created new structure for us as athletes now to take advantage of. But that same underlying sentiment about being the meanest, toughest motherfucker out there and whether you go down or your hand is raised at the end of the day, you keep your head high the same way. hand is raised at the end of the day, you keep your head high the same way. And even with someone like Haoni, I met Haoni before that fight in Brazil when I was training with Pedro Rizzo and Master Roberto Letao, rest in peace. And I remember Pedro going, hey man, this kid at my gym and this kid is dynamite. He is such a badass. And I met him and I'm watching him and I got to roll with him a little bit and get to see him. And so I run into him again, even before the fight. And he's such a badass. And I met him and I'm watching him and I got to roll with him a little bit and get to see him.

And so I run into him again even before the fight. And he's like, oh, hey, hey, master. I'm like, oh, oh, hey, hey, we met in Brazil. He's like, yes, no, that was me. And it's like, fuck, you know. God. Well, at the end of the day, it sucks that one of you has to win and one of you is going to lose. But, and you'll see this even at the end of the fight, the way Victor approaches, like it's nothing but love. Me and Pedro, we couldn't be happier for our athletes. And even though I know Hownie lost the fight, if he had won, I'd still be happy for Hownie. I'd still

have a lot of love for him and be like, man, Pedro, that's amazing. You guys are great. I'm so glad. And to have the opportunity to fight people that have that kind of respect and love of martial arts, all right, cool. That brings up an interesting point because one of the things that's happening today in MMA, and it seems it has a lot of elements of pro wrestling in it, is that there's a lot of shit talking for promotion. And Chael Sonnen was probably the best at it at one point in time great and then connor came along and connor's amazing at it now you know colby is off the charts with it maybe some people think he goes

too far with it but that's like a lack of the martial arts respect that is just pure showmanship and salesmanship to try to get people excited about fights. How do you feel about that kind of stuff? It makes complete sense in the era we live in. This is a world that is a degraded form of where it's come from. I mean, we don't really create anything anymore. We just make replicas. We do repeats. There aren't original things anymore. It's just all simulacra. It's as if the knowledge to create new things is gone. It's lost. It is a foreign idea anymore. And with fighting, it's like, well,

sure, we can become better athletes and we can do all this training and what have you. But at the end of the day, we start treating it more as an entertainment sport. And it is entertainment. Don't get me wrong. It really is. But when all you have to offer to get the crowd going is how much you win and then how much racy, spicy shit you talk about your opponent, not only does that say something about the people employing those means to which you can at least understand to a degree. It's a well, you know, this is their occupation and they want to get the higher contract, the higher spot on the card. More eyes on them, more attention. But the bigger perspective is that it works is the problem. So when people are like, oh, you know, the Kardashians,

they're the worst. I hate all this reality TV shit and blah, it's terrible. Okay. But people are watching it so who's terrible the kardashians or the audience well in that sense neither because what they're doing is they're providing you with like fast food tv like you don't have to drive by and and pull into the you know drive into mcdonald But what's better? You can keep going. But, I mean, isn't there a distinct difference between eating grass-fed beef, LQ shot? Yeah, there is. Yeah, versus fast food.

But don't you like the fact that if you feel like it, you can pull into a drive-thru and get a Big Mac? It's all right. But I know that— I don't necessarily want one. No. But if I do want one, I like that I can get one. I like that I can get one, but I also never lie to myself in that I'm not doing- To try to sell you to my-

I'm doing something that's even neutral because I'm not. Right. And that's- We're not doing anything neutral with this whiskey either. Oh, this whiskey's beautiful stuff, man. Are you kidding me? It's beautiful stuff, but it's not good for you either. It's beautiful stuff, but I understand that.

But I choose to engage in a vice as a vice and not try to treat it as a virtue there's probably some fatso out there with a cheeseburger right now just moaning in pleasure i'm sure he is an actually ecstatic orgasmic this quarter pounder oh yeah it's like double double quarter pounder with cheese just all those trans fats yeah in moderation i get it but but it. But it's approaching it as, yeah, it's the approach. And I love the shit out of whiskey, which has a long history and lineage to how you make it. And you can go into all the different types of stills, the different types of yeast.

If it's Scotland, it's almost entirely barley. And if it's over, whether it be malted or not, then you've got Irish and all this different stuff. That's the difference between, say, I don't know, like just distilling whatever, throwing a bunch of sugar in it because it tastes horrible and you're trying to cut all those heads down. So make it palatable and then like slugging it down. After you've added caramel coloring into it and everything. But to bring it back to MMA, this, this trend,

does it bother you at all when you see like, like right now we're dealing, we're, this is very recent into the Colby Covington, Jorge Masvidal fight just happened. And then Jorge Masvidal just sucker punch Colby at a restaurant somewhere. the sucker punching is I'm not down for that at all uh even if there is some sort of an issue that that that Masvidal has about say like don't talk you talked about my kids that was like the one thing or whatever I'm fine with that totally fine with that like to me that's just

that's that's honor culture things. Like you should understand that there's not, that there should be a line that you shouldn't cross in terms of aspects of civility. Otherwise expect nothing but hostility. And that is a choice. That's why we had all of these concepts of, of manners and courtesies was because violence is at the bottom of every word you speak. violence is at the bottom of every word you speak. Violence is at the bottom of every exchange. Literally, politics is war by other means. So Louis XIV had all of his canons inscribed in Latin, the last word of kings, the last argument of kings. Because when it comes down to it, violence at the it is the golden rule it is the thing

that is at the the absolute bedrock of human interaction it enforces laws it absolutely does it enforces laws it also it's about sovereignty too and um you know someone like try once try to argue because i said well you know rights are what you can, you know, rights are an abstract concept. You know, I mean, I understand the concept of Lockean property rights and all these things and it's, and it's wonderful, but what you can't, rights are what you can defend at the end of the day. You know, if you're like, well, I deserve to have this right and that right. It's like, well, who provides them for you? How do you keep them? How do you keep someone from saying, no, you don't. You use somebody else's violence.

You proxy it out to a state or you have to do it yourself. And that's, that is, you're not getting away from that ever, nowhere, anywhere. And we live in such, we live in a society where all of this is, is violence is something that happens to other people. Now, violence is, is that something that's done by someone else on our behalf? We don't take any accountability for it. We don't have. And,

and, and with that, it's like, if someone says, don't talk about my fucking kids and my family and you cross that line. Okay. If he does nothing about it, well,

if he just goes and whinges on, on Twitter about it, what does that mean? That means nothing. If he goes and like calls the cops, well if he just goes and whinges on on twitter about it what does that mean that means nothing if he goes and like calls the cops well he talked about my and the cops just go like well that's within his legal rights he can say whatever the fuck he wants sorry then how do you get him to stop doing it but do you think that what sucker punching him wasn't good no no no he should have been like i told you what's on. If I see you, come with me and come outside. The problem with that is if he does that, Colby's going to take him down. And that's what happened in the fight.

Deal with it. Yeah, but it's like if you want to fight someone and you fight someone and you lose, I feel like at a certain point in time, you've got to accept what happened. I think there's a way of creating through these conflicts some aspect of mutual understanding and respect in fact and that okay so what does that look like though between those two guys i mean i don't know them personally no no that ain't gonna do it that ain't gonna do it that's because again you didn't you hit him when he wasn't looking right it's like well okay how am I supposed, essentially what you're asking for

is for me to give you a certain modicum of respect and for it to not pass certain lines in terms of courtesies because this is unacceptable. How are you going to get them to do that when you cheap shot them? Right.

It's just not going to happen. I mean, it's like this. I had a guy once that, and this is, it's not happened many times. And, you know, I'm not one to go out there and shit talk people at all. I'm not, because for me, it's just like, well, I don't need to talk shit about you. I'm just going to go out and fight you.

If I have a real personal problem, I'll let you know. And that isn't about me getting a fight. It's not about me like, oh, I'm trying to drum up. No. We can fight in a professional sense and that's all good if you want to make this personal ain't gonna be professional it's for real and you shouldn't do it and because i don't want to do it i'm not trying to live my life this way but if you make this the case it's it's for real and it's on and so i had this guy talking just out of nowhere to

start shit talking to me i'm like what the hell is this guy's problem? I don't get it. And so this is a fighter. Yeah, it's a fighter. And so I'm just like, what the, you know, I've never said two bad words about this guy ever. Never. I'm not going to talk shit about him. And, and he's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, all right. So he starts going in. So I, I responded in kind and I started ripping on him a bit. He ran his mouth some more. And at the time, I remember my manager that I had, he's like, oh, well, you know, you can go. I go, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't, I'm not getting in the ring with this guy so I can make him a bunch of money

and give him notoriety and all this after I beat his ass. Like, nah, you don't get to make a bunch of money off of my name. I go, look, we're going to be out at this event. And if that dude's there and I'm here with Hammer, if that dude comes up to me and starts running his mouth, I'm going to tell him once. And then when I see that motherfucker go to the bathroom, I'm going to have Hammer come with me.

Hammer's going to block the door and I'm going to fucking tear him apart. I'm going to walk in. I said, I fucking told you, you're looking me dead in the eyes. Put your hands up. We're going. If you can see when I said, I fucking told you. You're looking me dead in the eyes. Put your hands up. We're going. If you can see when we leave, you'll be lucky.

If I haven't bit off pieces of flesh out of your body, you'll be lucky. If you can fight again after this, you'll be lucky. But I told you. And my manager's like, what? Don't do that. And I go, it's not up to me. It's up to them. Nothing happened.

Nothing ever happens, to be honest. But it's just, don't fuck around with these things. Hold yourself in high esteem, and with that, give that to other people. Until they give you a reason not to, and then just be like, you know what? I don't fuck with you. It's no good. So this brings us to last night. Yeah.

This brings us to Will Smith walking on stage where Chris Rock said one of the most mild jokes ever. It was pretty mild. I thought so. Jada Pinkett is bald. Apparently, I didn't know this. I found out after the fact

that she didn't shave her head voluntarily. She shaved her head because she's suffering from alopecia. I didn't know this either. So I don't know if Chris knew this, but Chris says a joke around uh gi jane too looking forward to it very mild just laughed and even said come on that was nice and then will smith initially laughs yes but it looked like jada was upset and so will changes his tune walks on stage and sm smacks Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars.

And then says, keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth. Yes, he does. And then he goes, come on, man, that was a G.I. Jane joke. And he screams it out. Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth. And his lips were quivering and he first of all That is a that whole scene doing that in that manner in that place is a great example of what's wrong with the the

glorification of just being able to go up to someone and smack them in the face because that is that That whole thing was so weird. I'm going to disagree with you here. Please do. What is your take on it? I want you to finish, though. Well, no. You said you were going to disagree with me.

What do you think? Well, I don't actually think that there's any glorification of violence in the sense of free capability on Will's part. What do you mean by that? Well, for one, I, I don't think that there was any inherent given that you could just get away with it. I think that whatever Will did, he did it.

And he was like, whatever comes with it, that, that, you know, I'll have to own up to it. I don't think he was thinking that far ahead at all. Maybe he wasn't,

but maybe he's like emotionally fragile probably. And he acted on impulse. Sure. And I think it's a foolish impulse that you do when you know there's no consequences. I don't think but here's the thing. I'm going to say that I don't know that he thinks that there's... Now, in terms of hitting Chris,

in terms of them and their physical differences and capability of combat, let's say, yes. There's no consequences. But I'm saying, well, but there's no consequences in getting out of your seat and striking somebody on national television. Yeah, but I don't think he was thinking about that. I think he was acting impulsively. In terms of man to man and who's capable and what's capable.

And you know what? That may be the case in the microcosm of things. But if you hit anybody for any reason in public at this point, you have the very real fact of all of the powers of law that be, especially depending on who you are and what the public and the cathedral thinks of you smashing you to death until you have your penniless bankrupt and everyone hates you stop that's not gonna happen here probably that's never gonna happen probably just smacked him but he didn't beat the shit out of him he didn't harm him but i mean we live in a society where violence is so but there's no way would stop there's no way will smith's to become penniless from smacking Chris Rock. I have. That was never

You wouldn't think so. He's extremely wealthy. It's not going to happen. And not only that, Chris Rock instantly didn't press charges. He wouldn't press charges and he just accepted it. I would say it should have been handled in the back or he could have at least

he could have stood up, said something right on the spot but listen no not done anything about or said it in the back fucking job you don't go and sit in the front row you're a star at the oscars there's a professional comedian whose job is to roast people that's what he's doing and what he did was not even insulting it's not it was a mild joke it's not about what is it it's not about giving will Will Smith a pass or saying what he did was right. But what I am saying is that from his perspective, if it was that important, he could have barring going up there and hitting Chris in front of everyone. And he could have said something if he had to do it right then and there uh if he felt that it was that egregious of of a remark and and i agree with you chris

rock's a comedian the presenters at the oscars are supposed to be entertainers often crack jokes that either a that they do themselves in chris's perspective or from Chris's situation or ones that are written for him. Chris is a comedian. I highly doubt that they don't know each other at this point being in Hollywood for as long as they have. And in my opinion, if you really want to settle things,

go do it personally, speak to the person first, give them an opportunity to apologize for things, especially if they didn't realize that what they were doing was- I hear all the things you're saying, but they're not applicable. That was not an insult. It was the most mild joke about her hairstyle in reference to a movie where a lady shaved her head. I fully get it. But I'm just simply saying... The idea that there's any justification whatsoever of him getting up there and smacking him in the face like that. No, he didn't need to go up there and smack him at all. No. But regardless of what you and I think of how important

or what the weight of what Chris said was, just removing us out of the equation, if it's really that important to Jada, therefore then becomes important to Will, then he should deal with it on a personal level and have a conversation with chris before anything of course because you have to give someone the opportunity because one you have to assume potentially that that chris had malicious intent and what he had to say

well how do you have malicious intent in a mild joke tell me about it no i'm saying i don't agree that i'm telling you dude this is all rational thinking about an irrational act what that was he was emotionally fragile and he acted on impulse in a staggeringly stupid way i'll tell you something somebody a good dude who i know didn't mean any harm was kind of you, playfully, verbally sparring with my girlfriend. And she didn't actually, it made her really uncomfortable and she didn't really like it. And so the next time we run into him and my girlfriend's like, I hope he doesn't, you know, come up and say X, Y, Z again. I'm like, I don't think that's going to happen. And he does.

And I'm like i don't i don't think that's gonna happen and he does and i'm like okay so i pull him to the side and i'm like hey look i know you don't mean anything by it but you know xyz and we just have a simple conversation and the guy's just like yeah yeah i don't want to have but that's a rational response i get it to to human beings having some sort of a dispute but to assume people have malicious intent, especially in that position, I think is an erroneous way of approaching it. So I don't think...

I don't think it had anything to do with that. I think what he was doing was saving face. You think so? He was doing some weird movie thing. It was like he was getting away with it as if he was living in a fictional movie. Like the idea that you think it's smart, while wearing a tuxedo, to walk onto a stage in front of the world, like literally the world, one of the biggest award shows on earth,

if not the biggest, and smack a comedian for the most mild joke, and then sit there quivering, saying, keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth and everybody's just gonna sit there in this shit that you just took on the table you just pulled your pants down and took a shit on the dinner table and they all have just sit there and look at that that's what it's like a shit full of peanuts and corn and everything it stinks it's just the whole idea behind it is completely irrational but what I'm saying is like these people live in this fake world of you're protected by guards, you're driven by limos, you're on the red carpet.

All of it is crazy life. I agree. And he's so goddamn famous and so removed from regular discourse and interaction with regular people that he, for whatever reason in his head, acted like he's a character in a movie. Maybe so. And I only am not speaking in definites in regards to Will because I don't know the man.

I never met him. All these things that you're saying could absolutely be 100% plausible and true. And especially a person like Will, who is in such an elevated position in society at large. And you are 100% right in that these types of folks get removed from reality for a variety of reasons. But it's often a catastrophic process to the person and how they approach the world. Yeah, but here's what happened right afterwards.

He won the Academy Award and then goes up and does a speech. The whole thing was so bizarre. And it made me think, like, how many other human beings could be in a similar situation and pull that off? Not many. Like, if a man walked on stage and smacked a woman. That would not fly. Would not fly. Not fly. If a woman walked on stage and smacked a woman. That would not fly. Would not fly. Not fly.

If a woman walked on stage and smacked another woman, I don't even think it would fly. Probably not. Probably not. But also, man smacking a woman, I feel like it's even an ingrained thing. You don't fucking do that. Number two, women smacking women, all the women are going to look back and be like, women don't solve their issues with violence. You're supposed to tear them down in other ways.

And when women start feuding with one another and one of them finally says, that's it, and they go to violence, it's almost as if they lost completely. Like all the other women are like, ah, you broke. Sorry, you're out. Well, I don't know. Just simply because women just- There's plenty of world star hip hop videos of women beating the fuck out of each other. You can find a lot of videos online of women in Walmart parking lots pulling each other's hair.

Yes, there are exceptions. I will agree. Kicking the shit out of each other. I will agree. There are some exceptions. In terms of society standards, I don't think they would have accepted it the same way. No. It was a rare instance where someone is so enormously famous

and successful like Will Smith that they literally still allowed him to not just win the Academy Award, but also go up and accept it and give a speech after he assaulted a small comedian on stage. Yeah, they should have ejected him. They should have ejected him from the show.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I agree with that. You can't just go smack a man in the face in front of the world and then go about business as usual. First of all, it sets a terrible precedent. Yes. In so many different ways.

It sets a terrible precedent for comedy clubs. Yes. Like, are people going to decide that they're going to go on stage and smack the comedian now? I hope they try to smack Brendan or you. I just want to see one joe rogan turning sidekick yeah chuggy i i don't i don't necessarily think people are going to change their behavior but dumb people might but also it's just like what are we saying as a society when the the people

that we look up to for whatever reason for good or for bad we look up to actors. Yes. And the Academy Awards is supposed to be them in their most regal outfits, their best behavior, and to drop down to violence for something so innocuous as a G.I. Jane joke. Look, man, it's not the hill that I'm looking to necessarily die on either in term whatever the in particular context and and you know I had you know having a conversation with somebody over something that was made my girlfriend uncomfortable was to me that was the way to approach it but I guess

if someone would you know want to tell me fuck you about it then it's like okay well now that changes things right you don't care how it's like, okay, well, now that changes things. Right, of course. You don't care how it affects other people, and you're not actually having consideration for me or my girlfriend. I know what you're saying, but in this case, we saw it. We see all the elements laid out. Chris Rock's joke was so mild. I get it. And so, you know, Jada's allowed to take offense and Will's allowed to take offense, but to jump up, run on stage, slap him, and then throw the scene that he did is a completely different story.

It was a meltdown. To at least to go and give Chris an opportunity to talk to him and maybe even Jada and just be like, look, one, you can see that he did not mean to try and cause any actual harm to you. you can see that he did not mean to try and cause any actual harm to you. So, you know what? Just tell him if you didn't like it, tell him face to face and be like, yo,

man, it really, you know, Hey, Jada, it really bugged you. You're talking about two totally different things. I get it. We both agree with that.

But to me, regardless of whether you're Will Smith or you're, or you're, you're, um, the other Will Smith, the, the former like special forces guy who speaks Russian was in all tons of of like 70s and 80s movies, played Conan's dad in Conan the Barbarian.

Like that badass motherfucker. You could be that guy, this other super popular Will Smith or Will Smith that nobody actually knows who that person is. The approach has to be the same. There is no exception for you if you played Ali or if you played Conan's dad or if nobody's seen you play anything even with yourself. Well, I think what we're looking at also is the culmination of a long period of like emotional distress. Like that family's been public about all their issues. And, you know, there's a conversation that they had to have like the two of them together about infidelity or about open relationships and they were openly mocked because of that but i think there's a certain

defensiveness that comes along with that well then you know what you've been out in the public getting mocked like sit in it then sit in it then because the public is mocking you for the thing that you brought to them yeah listen i'm, I'm going to agree with you 100%. So for me, I'm like, look, if you're adding stress into your life by publicizing and externalizing everything, which again says something more about the state of things, like why are you externalizing this shit? Right.

You know what I mean? Like even when I told this story about, oh, you know, this fighter and I had beef, I ain't going to say his name because you know what? I i had beef i ain't gonna say his name right because you know what i'm not trying to create more beef right because i'm not trying to live my life even though i'm the war master in some point of irrational unnecessary conflict when conflict comes conflict if it has to get to that yes then that's my whole point destroy everything you're a man of honor and of like deep moral principles and ethics you you have a very rigid way you live your life with discipline that's my whole point of this yes

this is a nonsense you're right where you're allowed to just go smack someone you're right like that is a non-consequential move that's like you're saying there's no consequences to this i'm gonna go up and smack him in front of everybody i get away with it give him the fucking the whatnot you know you you do this we live in unreality joe we live in unreality hyperreality you know i've heard it coined we live in a massively unserious place from our populace to our to our people that we put on pedestals within media to our politicians. All these people are massively unserious and. That's probably the problem with living, right? And it's what we're seeing represented in the media and in society, whether it's in films or television shows or even in the news in a lot of ways is so not, it doesn't resonate

with what we know to be true and real with real life. Like even just the way they communicate, They don't communicate like a real person. So so much of it, we've sort of accepted that so much of what you see is bullshit. And I just don't think like living that kind of life where you are that kind of person, you're an actor, you're constantly on the red carpet, you're in this weird public pedestal place. Yes. I think you can get a very distorted sense of reality,

and I think that's what we saw manifest itself. You're 100% correct. Yeah. Welcome to the Iron Age, the Kali Yuga. Yeah, exactly. Enjoy it. Well, we were talking about that before, and that's kind of where we're at.

We are in Kali Yuga. We are in Kali Yuga. And the Hindus were very smart in their idea of, it was the Hindus, right? Yes, the Hindus, yes. They came up with this idea that there are certain ages almost unavoidable of civilization. Correct. So they go through these cycles.

Correct. There is a, Nietzsche talked about this, René Guénon, a French philosopher, and Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West, a volume. We wrote two whole giant books on this. And, you know, I sent you a quote from Spengler, and I'm like, this is from 1922. And it's talking about the poisonous infiltration of the media into the way people view the world and how there has never been a more powerful machine than this to degrade and deracinate human beings. And all they had was radio back then. They're like, oh God, this could be a huge problem.

They thought the printing press was going to make a huge issue where all people did was just dream away in books all day long and not actually make anything or create anything. And yet people like Ganon and Spengler and Nietzsche saw these patterns of human behavior. I mean, even beyond a cyclical history of the Hindus, Ganon, who takes a lot from the Hindus and Spengler there's also even Strauss and Howe with their fourth turning concept it's like every 80 years that there's going to be

a complete changeover you have these four ages that you'll go through like how does it go it's like artist nomad or is it nomad, artist, nomad, and then you get hero, and then it just keeps repeating itself about every 80 years.

And Strauss and Howe think that like our fourth turning will come around 2030. I don't entirely buy into the entirety of the fourth turning concept because it's like, oh, the millennials are going to be the hero generation. I hero generation like i don't fucking think so sorry it's just not gonna happen you say no but then you see gen z and you go maybe uh well i mean compared to what compared to what you almost have to recognize like that the next generation is so fucked up that you have to pick up the slack i i i truly believe that at least this kind of aligns with the fourth turning concept in that it takes calamity to change humanity. I believe that too. And part of what Ganon and Nietzsche and Nietzsche's concept is the last man.

And this is, you know, you want to understand this, go read the book Zarathustra with Ganon. Start with Crisis of the Modern World. With Spengler, probably Man and Technics is the easiest one to get with. If you feel like it, there's a lot of people have now started reproducing his work, so it'd make it easier to get a hold of because it was hard. When I had to get my two copies, I found a couple old used ones and I had to pay like 120 bucks to get them. Now it's a lot cheaper. But there is – I would say you can go ahead and go with volume one form and actuality into perspectives of world history. But be prepared to be in for a long haul with that stuff. You'll see how the comfort of technology and the way I see technology is basically think of technology as not just illuminating or exposing, right?

Like understanding the grains of sand that you can then take and then build into – see how you can then create the form of a cup through heat and pressure. And now you have this vessel that can be used to hold things, or it could be a ballistic weapon. It could be all kinds of stuff. However, you know, you want to see what you could do with that cup. But it's also about abating nature, right? So technology is putting a roof over your head and then running water and lights and every little step further away of abating nature from how it can interact or how it can force you to and your being and existing and your action in the world.

You start abating nature, abating nature, abating. Oh, I don't have to walk somewhere anymore. I could get on a bicycle. Well, I can get off a bicycle and I can ride a horse. Well, I could get off this horse and I have a car. I can get off a bicycle and I can ride a horse. Well, I could get off this horse and I have a car. And each thing makes it so nature has less effect on you.

And you are abating the effects of terrain, which also another aspect of technology would be the roads to then be able to travel. Okay, no roads. I'll take a plane or a helicopter or what have you, you know, from the Wright brothers all the way up to 787s. I mean, man starts on this journey of materialism and starts seeing everything as atoms and pieces and parts and things without any spirit to him anymore. This is, you know, back to the thing about EVs. It's just like, well, you know, just make stuff, right? Technology will allow me to do this, so just do it. It's a constant conflict of shoulda or coulda instead of shoulda. And, you know, we have a phone that has all this access to all.

I could go look up audio books on YouTube of getting on and people's lectures on all these different things. But it could also be this thing that deranges me in how I start now having resentment and envy with people I'll never meet, I've never seen in a life that they're carefully constructing to be seen in one way versus the totality of what life is really like for anyone. And so now you get all these people across all these platforms that can now reach out way further than any tribe has ever been able to do before. Now all of a sudden it's like, well, your dumb bars number says like 200 people that you could actually have a real relationship with. Well, now you've got all these electronic relationships on top of that.

And they're making you believe as if you're really invested and engaged with this person, but you're not, you know what I mean? And at the same time, I'm not gonna sit here and just say like everything about social media and electronics and technology is just evil and bad. I'm not calling for like, uh, it's not evil and bad. It's just, we don't have the tools like genetically or inherently to navigate those worlds rationally. Right. I'm not calling for a Butlerian jihad. Yeah. What's going on with technology is that it's nothing wrong with it. But what is wrong is not having discipline and not having the ability to accurately assess whether or not something is good for you or bad for you.

Yes. And then also having a vast amount of people that are going to take the easy way out. And that easy way is provided to them through technology. We're generally primed to find easier ways. Yeah. That's how you survive. Exactly. Yeah. You know, you're not going to find, you know, if a wolf doesn't have to travel with their

pack hundreds of miles to go and get a kill, they ain't going to do it. Of course. If someone just starts chucking food out, they're just going to keep going there. Yeah. They're not going to take off. And if you think that we're that far removed from wolves, then you're fucking, you missed it. Well, that's how they turned a wolf into a collie. Yes.

That's literally how they did it. Yeah. They did it by chucking meat to wolves that came by the campfire and they turned them into dogs. One of my favorite Nietzsche quotes is, verily I have laughed at those who thought themselves good because they had no teeth. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, we are in a precarious situation where the human animal doesn't have an owner's manual.

No. We don't have a great guidebook to how to navigate all the perils of being a person. Well, we do have these guidebooks, but- But not one standard that's handed down to people. No, of course not. We don't have, I mean, yeah. We don't teach people how to- Of course.

It's one of the differences between martial artists and other folks is that you're willingly participating in something that develops character and discipline. It's very different. And it has, it's basically built on the concept of failure, trial and error, and effort and discipline. You have to keep showing up, otherwise you don't get the results. And intelligence.

You have to be able to navigate problems. The way I always describe MMA, it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. Indeed. consequences. Indeed. It is something that allows you to create a safe space for suffering, a place where you can go and bleed and sweat with your brothers and sisters and create community and have deep personal relationships based on the intensity of the activity. Because I have to trust that if you and I are rolling that like, oh, if Joe catches me, he's not just going to break my shit off because he feels like it. Instead, he's going to allow me to tap. And even then, it's like when I roll with folks, I'll lock something in super tight. And if I start feeling like, uh-oh, this

shit's going to go, I back off. Yeah. I go, look, man, it's not worth it. And there's been times where I've rolled with folks, and they don't tap. They think they're going to get out of it, and like, clack, and I immediately let go. I'm like, oh, man, I don't need you hurt. That's a horrible feeling. If you're hurt, we don't get to do this.

Right. If we're not doing this, then neither one of us is growing. Right. And, you know, even just the thin veneer of, oh, we're not just hanging out even in this gym. And I like that. It's part of the reason why I'm here. It's not the only reason, but having these relationships is part of why I'm here also, because I enjoy it. We have something in common, which we can have a rapport about. But there are all these, quote unquote, owner's manuals across time and history and cultures. And they're more alike than they're different. And there's a lot to be learned from it. I'm not a theist in any way, but I study religion because there are actual philosophical and metaphysical truths embedded within these things.

And sometimes they're the oldest texts I can get a hold of for a particular culture. Don't you think that – I agree with you that religions do hold truths and many of the ancient spiritual texts do hold guidelines on how to, you know, love thy neighbor, treat thy neighbor as if they were your brother. Do not covet. Yeah, all that stuff. But don't you think like physical action needs to happen to completely form a person? A hundred percent. That's where it's missing. If you're just studying these works, but you're not applying them in a way that tests you, tests your morals, tests your physical will, your discipline, your mind, tests the way, the patterns of thinking And this goes back to the Kali Yuga.

This goes back to what is written in the Kali Yuga will entail and how people will behave. To Nietzsche and the last man, to Spengler. And he breaks everything down into spring, summer, autumn, winter. We're in winter. And when he wrote The Client of the autumn, winter. We're in winter. And when he wrote The Client of the West, he's talking about the winter, the winter of our discontent, I guess. When you get to these parts in time, you see that everything becomes this little compartmentalized aspect. Training in the gym is this compartmentalized thing where I'm just doing jujitsu maybe. And then when I go and I go to church, if you're a church going person, that's its own

compartmentalized thing. And when I go to school and so everything is this other, it's everything's a deracidated atomized, you know, materialized way of doing things. And nothing is, is integrated into itself to make a synthesis of all aspects of being in the world. Right. You know, to be like Heidegger would say, like to be Dasein. But even still, you know, as you break these things apart, human beings need physical activity, period. And it's not even about whether you're good at it or great at it or

you suck. It doesn't matter. Finding places on a broad scale, finding things that challenge you and allow you to grow are an absolute necessity. Agitation or suffering in some way is going to help you break down and build up. It's like tearing down the muscle tissue, and then it comes back bigger and stronger. It's the same for a person in terms of their being. Also, the body needs to move. We're not made to sit around all day long. And we're not made to sit and do nothing and just eat processed stuff.

made to sit and do nothing and just eat processed stuff you know was also which is really like so bizarre how much nudging is going on to try and get everyone to eat fake processed meat everywhere it is driving me nuts it's driving me nuts as well it is all that plant-based meat shit there was a article recently where bill gates said that wealthy countries oh i saw that a hundred percent to plant-based meat. Like, what the? You first, Bill. Go for it. I think he's already doing it.

Just watch. Look at him. It shows. That stuff's terrible for your body. It is absolutely horrible. Listen to me, folks. If you want to eat vegan, there's nothing wrong with doing that. You can do it, and you can do it healthy, and you can sustain rigorous levels of physical

activity with a vegan diet. Some people. Some people can. But the point is you don't do it with fake meat. You do it with pea protein. You do it with hemp protein. You do it with eating fresh vegetables. You don't have these fucking garbage fake meat alternatives.

If you don't want to eat meat, just don't eat meat. But eating that stuff is not good for you. They're crammed with seed oil. Yes. And just trash. It's as processed as dog food. And some of it, when lined up against itself, ingredients-wise, it is indistinguishable from dog food. Dog food's

probably more nutritious. Dog food in general is probably more nutritious. But most dog food is a lot of animal protein. As an aside, to me, veganism is, if you're a vegan because you have such um empathetic and emotional attachment to the to animals in any way and you can't see yourself having an animal die in any sense for you to okay valid you do what you got to do to make this work for you. But I accept that and it's totally fine. And every other, all the stuff about this is healthier. It's this, it's that bullshit. This

is a luxury diet born of modernity. This is, you know, it's exactly the kind of thing you would see in the Kali Yuga. It is this idea that you can somehow all pretty much every historical tribe, peoples, nations, everything that has helped people grow. The fact that it is said that our ability to harness fire and cook animal proteins is what allowed us to get in the caloric and vitamin intake that we needed for our brains to grow to become us. Yeah, I think it's a primary factor you know even if you're eating pea proteins you're gonna have to do stuff to help break it down whatever it doesn't have the same amino acid profiles i mean it's just it's just not it's not but if the point is like if you do study it meticulously and you're very careful you can live a vegan diet and be healthy i know a lot of people that do it but the point is it's like you

don't do it through fake meat. That shit is not good for you. There's plenty of vegetables that are great for you. A hundred percent. You can eat legumes and lentils and blends of lentils and rice. And there's ways to do it. And you know what?

Ham parts. That's true. But yeah, all the nudging for fake meat is just like, oh, okay. It's like, I don't know why people are listening to him in that regard. You should listen to him and how to market an operating system and make billions of dollars. He did an amazing job with that.

They listen to him because he is part of our aristocracy. Yeah. And our aristocracy is nothing but managerial rent-seeking elites that don't know how to make or create anything anymore. Or they have a capability in one sector that they then think gives them the understanding capability across all things. That's a very good way to put it. That's a very good way to put it. I like that you called them aristocracy because that's essentially the way we look at extremely

wealthy business people in this country. We look at them as like, if this guy is able to accumulate billions of dollars, he must be a special class of person because clearly that's the one thing that every working person aspires to is to become exorbitantly wealthy. And that may be true. And that special class is psychopath. Perhaps. Maybe, right? Right.

There's a lot of business people. Or he is an exceptional class of person in a very specific context. Yes. But that doesn't make them exceptional. Right. Like, do you think Bill Gates could fucking fight at all? No. No.

No, Bill Gates, part of what makes a Bill Gates is that all the violence that he ever needs in the world to allow him to have what he needs is already proxied out and he never has to be the one to employ it. Yes, for sure. So if at any point all aspects of governance and personal private security just says, nope, you're on your own. Right. We will prosecute no one for what happens to you.

Well, that is a great point. If you put him, which means head of the wolf, which means that's it. You're on your own. No one will come for you. No one will help you. Anyone can attack you at any moment for any reason. You are under no protection under Rome. Have fun.

Bill Gates is gone. Yeah, quickly. Because that is the reality of life, period, at all points. Yeah, they will raid him the way they raid a San Francisco Walgreens. You'll get snatched out of the air. You'll get snatched out of the air like some hapless fucking seagull by a chimpanzee.

How wild is that video? Is that the greatest video? It is pretty great. And I, almost as great as, I write some little comment like, oh, this is the deepest, one of the deepest truths of being right here. And then watching the just like mid-level responses and then watch them go after each other.

I'm like, it's funny to see. That's why I don't read responses. No, I get you. I just want to enjoy that champ beating that seal to death. I know what's happening. I personally like to read, I read all the comments and everything because I look for the threads. What is the perception of me? What is the perception of what i say it's not about whether it's true or it's false i'm just trying to get an idea of what it's not a chimp it's a monkey it has a tail right it is a

monkey is that his feet is that his feet or is that it's hard to tell i think that's a tail it's hard either way it's it's locked in on there uh on that's a tail. It's hard to tell. It's locked in on that pole. Its balance is solid, which says something about fucking monkeys, right? I think that's a monkey tail. I think the low thing is the tail that's holding on to the tree. But he is beating the fuck out of that seagull. That is so wild. And he's going to eat it.

Probably. Well, that's probably what he wants. I mean, this poor bastard has probably been living in this fucking zoo, being tortured. He's in a prison for no fault of his own. He didn't do anything wrong. He just happened to be a monkey. Born in a prison, right?

His thrownness was to grow up in bars. And then he figured out how to climb up there and snatch one of those motherfuckers right from the sky. Hey, nature finds a way, bro. That does. I fucking love this video. First, nature finds a way, bro. That does. I fucking love this video. First of all, seagulls are cunts. If you don't know, seagulls are some of the most evil birds.

You ever see seagulls try to eat other birds? Oh, they're nasty. They're nasty, man. I grew up in Seattle, man. There's seagulls everywhere. They're everywhere. They are brutal little sons of bitches. They'll eat a pigeon and swallow them whole. There's a great video of a seagull eating a rat whole in New York City.

It is crazy. This rat is gigantic. And this seagull is like choking it down. Actually, it might be in Italy now that I think about it. Seagulls are brutal. Yeah. They're brutal animals. So I'm team primate.

Me too. I'm all with that monkey. I mean, if it was a crow, I'd be upset about it. Right. I like crows. Me too. Crows. Too smart, man. Magpies, ravens. I'm all about it monkey. I mean, if it was a crow, I'd be upset about it. Right. I like crows. Me too. Crows. Too smart, man.

Magpies, ravens, I'm all about it. You're so smart. One of my favorite videos online is there's a raven or a crow, whichever one it was, who convinces these two cats to fight. Instigates a fight. I've seen that one, yes. He goes to one cat, fucks with him, and then flies over to the other roof and fucks with the other cat and then goes back and forth until the cats decide they're never going to catch this

bird, but they're so wound up. They're so angry. They start going to war and the raven follows them. The crow is like laughing while these guys are going to war. Hugin and Munin, they are in the Eddas and all the Norse myths for a reason. Yeah, they're smart shit. They go out and they bring things back to Odin. Yeah, well, you've seen them do tricks, right,

where they figure out how to use tools to get... If you split their tongue, I think, it allows them to... They can start to speak. You can teach them to speak. Look at this. Research shows that crows and other corvids, a family of birds that includes ravens and magpies,

know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds. According to a 2020 study in ESTAT, this is considered a cornerstone of self-awareness and shared by just a handful of animal species besides humans. I wonder what the test entailed, that they can ponder the content of their own minds. I know I saw an article talking about that chickens can actually be trained to have the intelligence of a toddler, like a three-year-old, where you can teach them to take shapes and put them in the right boxes and things like that. Bro, I've never seen an animal more vicious than a chicken

when it's confronted with a mouse. Oh, I had four of them in Hollywood, of all things. And I would watch them just annihilate lizards and what have you. And then one time, this little chihuahua somehow, I don't know, got loose from its trophy wife or whatever. It's Hollywoodite and it's running around. Oh, my God, Precious, where'd you go? And it ended up somehow in our backyard, cornered.

And we hear this noise. I hear this. The chickens are going crazy. It's like, what the hell is going on out there? This chihuahua is cornered with all four chickens just like. Trying to eat it. Going to take it apart if they don't act right. Yeah, if you're small enough, a chicken will bust and move on you.

They're dinosaurs. They really are. They are such little creeps. It's dinosaurs. They really are. They're, they are such little creeps. But, uh, you know, we, we think that we can compartmentalize everything we do. Oh, I go and I, I work out because I want a six pack or I work out because, you know, we always have this external reason instead of an internal reason of I'm a human being

and I need to fucking move. Right. I can't just sit here and be unable to open a jar that's pathetic right you know a jar in and of itself is technology Manifest and now I'm too weak to even operate the thing that's made to make my life fucking easier I can't how do you get more pathetic than that well? It's also just for the management of the mind just to make sure that everything runs smoothly I 100% believe the body needs activity. Yes, you need something you need something and I think the mind needs challenges, too Yes, I don't think it's as simple as the the body needs activity

It's one of the reasons why discipline training like endurance training is so good for you Mm-hmm because it trains the mind because the money we don't think of like a discipline activity, like long distance running or any kind of like deep, heavy endurance training. It's a mind contest. Yes, it is. Because you're going to get to this point where it's either your mind decides that you're going to get it done or you'd make a decision it's not possible.

Right. And when you're doing these kind of hard, strenuous activities, and I explain this to my fighters constantly, most of this incredibly hard training, it isn't so much about the body. It's about you telling yourself that I can go past what I thought my limitations were. Yes. that I can go past what I thought my limitations were. And it's such a throwaway concept in today's way of being that people just think like, oh, that's just part of like, oh, I can biohack the body, I can do that.

It's just the whole concept, everybody says that. And it's like, no, this is fundamental towards your development. And like you say, being able to, even sitting here and you and me talking about this whole Chris Rock thing, me disagreeing on one end, you starting from another. I don't think we really disagreed, though. Not exactly, but even still, what did we have? We had a dialogue and we expressed all these different things. And, you know, it could just be, you know, people work just on that surface to begin with because, you know, that's how our heuristics work, right?

We don't have until we have the opportunity to sit down and get into the deeper branches of all this where it starts from. You know, it's like an hourglass. You know, all these ideas come to this one point and then they can all break away into others. And being able to have these conversations, to have people around you that you can have that, so to speak, conflict with is good. This is part of the process. Part of why I'm trying to track down Eric, who I know is an incredibly busy person, is because I want to talk to him so that he can challenge my ideas and vice versa and that we can get insights that we wouldn't have had otherwise because I want to try and get the most out of life

and I want to get the most out of me. And hopefully my friends think I'm helping them in the same way. Yeah. That's one of the things that's come out of this podcast for me that was in a sense accidental because I started it out just to have fun and just talk with friends and have a good time and then along the way it became a thing where I got to sit down with very intelligent people and pick

their brains and get to see how their minds decipher the world and through that I've learned so much about the way my own brain works and and why you know you you've you'll you'll slide into one pattern or another pattern and it might not necessarily even be accurate or relative. The way that people that are not being disingenuous describe your podcast as an exploration of ideas and conversations is 100% true. And last time I sat in here, which is also kind of funny because I can't wait for everyone to be like, oh my God, I can't believe you did Joe Rogan. I'm like, this is like my sixth time, assholes.

But I said it last time, this right now is so fucking important. I cannot stress it anymore that there is a place where people can come on here and have conversations and express ideas. I don't give a fuck if you like them or not. You have to interact with that which is the unknown and that which you don't even like. Yes. it came to things that I felt were fucked up or ideas or ideologies and philosophical contents that I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. None of this reads okay in my book at all. My position isn't to then go just read all the things and study all the things of people that hate it.

No, you got to go to the source. Go let it speak to you itself. And then once you've done that, now you can make your own decision. At least you heard their arguments, hopefully, in the best way that they felt they could make them. And being here and especially seeing after, I mean, it's just so, to me, a lot of things are self-evident in terms of the actions that happen and what seems to be a really clear underlying reason why. You catch COVID, you say, hey, I did this and I'm good and that was great. I'm glad I'm not hurt. This is what I did. This is for all of you to understand what I went through. So I'm helped in a way. I saw it as Joe Rogan is giving his experience

to try and bring something good into the world. It wasn't, it wasn't, there was nothing framed about it in like, and you know, I did it with this one trick that they don't want you to know about. It wasn't that kind of thing. It was just simply a matter of, hey man, here's what I went through.

Here's what i did to the detail hey man i'm okay take it for what you will i'm just trying to put things out into the into the ether to to bring more things to the world maybe it's going to help other people but the response was hey that's not the narrative fuck you you. You got to be destroyed. And I'm like that. I mean, how, how does somebody not, and then seeing people like, yeah, I see exactly Joe Rogan's so evil. He's such a bad person. It's like, wait a second. We're literally in a pandemic. A guy says, Hey, I'm suffering in this too, but I did this and it seemed to work for me. Hey, do something with it if you want.

Maybe this could be useful for you or other people or someone else could go, why don't we run this through some sort of controlled study as best as we can? Let's try to use some potential positive opportunities to then apply it to other people. But no, no, no, that's not the way we've decided this has to be. That's not the route that we have decided through propaganda and, you know, basically nudging and other things, you know, read Walter Lippman's public opinion, go read Edward Bernays' propaganda and public relations, and then go see how this shit is fully applied through this concept of the cathedral at anything it determines is a heretic. And it's like, well, is the point for us,

through our actions, to make the world a better place potentially or to have things out there for other people to use to maybe create their own benefit? Or is the whole point of why we're doing this to create this structure for whatever oligarchs remain at the top to then decide how the world should exist for you and for you to then just go, okay, this is the punch card you've put

into ENIAC right now. This is what I'm going to do because you put it in, you told me how I was supposed to act. Yeah. Well, it was an extreme time where people were so tested, like their, time where people were so tested, like their ability to deal with adversity, their ability to deal with anxiety, all those were stressed to attend. And people freaked out and they're looking for things to freak out about. And when someone took what they think is like an alternative path, didn't get vaccinated, but got over COVID very quickly with a series of medications. They thought that I was doing something evil. And I'm like, look, I'm just telling you that this is what I did. And they only focus on that one drug, too, which is so crazy.

Ivermectin. Because that was the number one thing that was making the rounds that was counter-narrative. Yes. And the cathedral, this concept of essentially, the idea was originally penned as it's all these emergent disassociated groups, but they all worship at the same church. So they're all in the same religion anyways. So they all have the same belief structure. Although I tend to believe that there is actually some levels of collusion at the highest levels where there is some organization. Don't tell me that the mainstream media doesn't talk to politicians or talk to this person or that person or speak with Bill Gates before they go on to think.

Whatever the case may be. Well, they're 100%. 100% they are. They're also 100% influenced by the companies that pay for their advertising. Of course they are. And we've seen all those ads. And if there's one thing at the bottom of all this, when it came to COVID, one, we as a people, especially in the West, Kali Yuga, we're afraid of death. Death, violence, these are abstract ideas. Now, these are things that happen to other people, not to us. These are things that don't

exist for me. They exist for someone over there. And having that unhealthy relationship with death puts you in a really unhealthy relationship with being because you're denying an absolute. You're denying your endpoint, whether you like it or not. You are refusing to engage with something that is in your future. When? Don't know. A lot of things go into that. But with COVID, the denial of death was so strong and was pushing people to act so utterly irrational and erratic. It was, well, I mean,

it was a great example of the decline of the West manifest. And the fact that people don't have that internal security in like, well, you know, I've done my life. I've lived my life. I'm going to do the best that I can by the things that I think are the way to approach the world. And when I die, I die. I just hope that what I put into it was something that is now within everybody that was a part of my life and everybody that was a part of my life before that put into me. I've put into them and it will live on. And like the idea of not necessarily a great chain of being because that's kind of a different concept.

But that I carry the fire for Jim Harrison. I carry the fire for Fred Sato. I carry the fire for Santia Noy. All these people that have ever been in my life. I carry the fire for Fred Sato. I carry the fire for Santia Noy. All these people that have ever been in my life, I carry the fire for Carl Gotch and Billy Robinson. And whatever I do, when I sit here on this podcast, Billy and Carl and Santia and all these folks, my dad, my grandfather, they're here with me. As I speak to you, as I have what I have formulated in my way of being and my Dasein is here. It's the same for anyone.

If you want to actually, if you want to make this a part of who you are, if you want to actually, if you really want to actualize everything that's been put into you and pass through, like we don't, I'm not just here on a rock spinning in space. I'm an evolved monkey, blah, blah. I'm not living in this state of nihilism doesn't bring you anything but misery. And you lose out on so much. You don't just lose out on, let's say, success or especially material things. No, you lose out on the deeper things, the spiritual things. You lose out on the true beauty of the world. Yeah, you lose out on the deeper things, the spiritual things. You lose out on the true beauty of the world. Yeah, you do.

You lose out on what's amazing about being a person is that you can meet people like yourself that have been tested and through that have developed these exceptional characters. And because of your exceptional character, it makes for fascinating friendship. Well, yeah, I'd like to think so. It does. Me being your friend, I'd like to think so. It does. I try. Me being your friend, I can tell you personally that. I always use you as an example as an educated savage.

I know, I know. And I'm always, and prior to coming on the podcast, my girlfriend will back it up. I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm actually nervous right now because, you know, we're buddies and we've been doing this for a while now,

but now this shit is so fucking huge. I know, it's weird weird that it's like, Oh no. Like, is everyone going to pour over every single little thing? They will. Because there's more people pouring over it, but it's the same thing.

I do it the same way. Yeah. It's the same thing. But, uh, it's true. And, and you know,

she's, she's asking me about like, well, what time are you supposed to be there? I'm like, I don't know. You'll tell me. And she's like, this is like the biggest fucking podcast in the world.

I go, I know, but it's my buddy. We're the same. It's my buddy. If I become something different because it grew bigger, I'll quit. If it gets to a point where I can't do it anymore, where I have to do it in some sort of weird way, where I walk on eggshells and mind my P's and Q's. Fuck that. No, I get you.

And you need to be able to do whatever you're going to do with 100% sincerity. Yeah. And you need to be you. Especially this. Yeah. This requires sincerity. Without it, this show doesn't have any success. requires sincerity. Without it, this show doesn't have any success. Everybody's complaint,

99, we'll just say 99% of everyone's complaint on you, any criticism is essentially a, they're, they're levying a insincere. They're, they're saying that they're putting insincerity on you. That's really what it is. Joe Rogan is this because of that. Joe Rogan is that because of this. And it's always from a concept of insincerity. It isn't because of the actual content of your stuff, because they've decided, they've already packaged and framed up who you are and what you are and what you're talking about, why you're talking about it in a way that has insincerity and some sort of ulterior motive beyond this is me, this is what I'm into, this is what I believe now, but yet I'm going to have people on here to talk to me about these things. And yes, you will argue with people about stuff that you don't buy into. You'll also allow yourself to be convinced. And that's the thing is that until you sit by

and allow someone to show you these different ideas and approaches, even to understand like, that's total bullshit. You don't know it until you've allowed yourself to engage with it. You don't know until you really allow someone to express themselves openly. And we live in an era where essentially

everybody assumes everything is insincere. Where people look at approach everything from well i have ulterior motives for what i want to do i want material gains i want this i want notoriety i want to be famous or what have you not just i want to do something because i think it's a good thing to do and it intrigues me and i like it but the thing is when you do something like that because it's a good thing to do because it intrigues me and I like it. But the thing is when you do something like that, because it's a good thing to do, because it intrigues you and you like it, it resonates with people because they're so starving for that. Because most of what you see, you see a lot of people that are cynical and they think that everything is insincere and you just find the

thing that's the most acceptable to you that's also insincere. And that's how we pick politicians. Everyone's a grifter. Yeah. Everyone is bullshit, except for my side. We have now we have two teams of morons and they're supposedly, you know, oh, well this guy, you know, the reason why, you know, gas is going up. Is this that? And it's because of this. Right. No, it's not. Right. You know, the price of price of the barrel of oil dropped at one point and the price of gas still went up. You know, it's like, oh, you. Sagar and Jetty has a really good analysis of what is causing the rise of gas prices.

I don't want to fuck it up, but I would guide people to go look up Rise. No, excuse me. That's their old show. Breaking Points. It's their new show with Crystal and Sagar. Breaking Points, it's their new show with Crystal and Sagar, and Sagar breaks down in a very detailed and nuanced way what's going on. To even dumb it down to the simplest version I could think of, instead of telling everyone to buy EVs and all of a sudden, hey, you got 50 grand laying around, just buy an EV. Or like, we're going to have to cinch our belts up. Hey, how about you just take away the excise taxes for right now?

Did you see some of the fucking hot takes on this from Bloomberg? Because some of them were so- No way. Bloomberg with stupid hot takes? I can't believe that. They were telling people that they should avoid chemotherapy for their dog. That was one of them. I'm not kidding.

I'm going to, because I made a screenshot of it because it was so fucking crazy that I was like, that can't be what someone's actually saying people should do because there's no fucking, because they're running out of money.

See if you can find that, Jamie, before I find the screenshot because I... I think it's in here. I'm going to try to find it. Well, it was a tweet. And in in the tweet they had made a synopsis of what you, you need to be doing to make it use archive dot today when you pull these things up.

So you get no paywall. I go when I get a paywall, I know what to do. I just don't, it doesn't always come up right away. I'm trying to find, don't make the mainstream media money. I make too many

god damn screenshots unfortunately of stupid shit so do I because I find so much of it it just drives me nuts

or get meme drops in you're like I need that I need that I've got it in here somewhere I know it's close but

yeah of course I mean in an unreality living in unreality, of course. That's it. Eat beans, take the bus, skip getting chemo for your sick dog. See if you find the actual tweet because it's so stupid it makes me furious.

Yeah, fuck your animal companion that you've raised and that you love and loves you back. Dude, let me tell you something. Don't buy in bulk. I would take out a loan before I would- Try lentils instead of meat. More nudging, by the way, to get you to stop eating animal products. Yeah, what the fuck, man? Nobody said this would be fun?

Yeah. Fuck you. What does that mean? Nobody said this would be fun? Look at that. Thanks, Dad. Look at this. Inflation stings most if you earn less than $300,000.

That's a lot of fucking money. Here's how to deal. Talk about being delusional and out of touch. Inflation stings if you earn less than a third of a million dollars a year. Yeah, no shit it stings. Yeah, duh. No shit. But here's what you should do.

Take the bus. Don't buy in bulk. Try lentils instead of meat. And nobody said this would be fun. Nobody said this was going to fucking happen. Yeah. Nobody said it was going to happen. Nobody said that any of this shit was going to go down.

By the way, no one said that we were going to have some plausibly lab altered coronavirus released on the world. No one said that we were going to have a war in Ukraine, in Europe. No one said that. But yet, by the way, it's like, it's a shift. Like COVID doesn't exist anymore because now we have the Ukraine war and so on and so on and so on. Like there's always a constant new thing. It's like, nope, that doesn't exist anymore. Now this is this.

And the same people are tweeting about it. Of course. My favorite, you know, some of my favorites are, was it Trump was talking to Zelensky, I guess, at one point about, there was like phone calls like, oh, see this, you know, but Ukraine and Zelensky said, oh, he didn't force me to do anything or threaten me or whatever. It's like, but you're just a corrupt imbecile and you don't, doesn't matter what you have to say. And now it's like, no, but you're actually the reincarnation of Rambo and Mother Teresa all at once.

So it's like, well, which is it? I mean, is he a human being or is he just some sort of a stand-in for whatever your narrative needs to be? And then with inflation, I saw an article, I don't remember who it was, Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or some other midwit news source. It's like, oh, inflation is on the rise and that's a good thing. Yeah, what? Now this is what I want to know. What fucking world are you living in?

Is that like a hot take for clicks? Is that like a clickbait thing or is that, do you think in the most cynical sense, someone is giving them a narrative? Someone is giving them a narrative, yes. And it's like, I want you to make a good spin on why you don't have any money. It's if your upper echelon of elites are just managerial types that they're rent seekers, they get into a position, all they do is they get rent off of it.

They can't make, create, or build, or fix anything. All they can do is manage. They can push the papers along. They can make the system grow. They can put more managerials in. They can solid the papers along. They can make the system grow. They can put more managerials in. They can solidify their position. They can consolidate things, but they can't make stuff. They cannot, if there's a problem, they can't really fix it because one, they're absolutely

way too fucking slow at doing anything because there's so many steps in between all aspects to like fix something like, I guess Flint has water now, but it took forever. And by the way, nobody even, I mean, most people have probably forgotten completely that there was an entire American city with poisoned water. And no one ever really followed up on, hey, guess what? We did something about it. Nobody said anything. And then-

I don't know if they have done anything about it. I read an article that said, because I looked up on looked up on i'm like what the fuck happened with this and it's like oh yeah actually everything's good now but people in flint are have such low trust that they won't drink the water and he's still well they should have low trust well yeah of course but you know when obama went there and drank the water like a stunt remember that it's one of my favorite like weird moments because he sipped the water in the tiniest little bird sip. Can I get a glass of water? I'm thirsty.

This isn't even a stunt. Michelle is here. I'd like a glass of water. She gave me this glass on our wedding night. Come on, man. Take a gulp. You know what? And yet, if it's one side, he's your God.

If it's another side, he's your devil. And I'm like, on both ends, it's like, guess what? If Obama's the devil and you think your guy's some sort of saint, you're fucked. Yeah. You've got it all wrong. Well, what he definitely is, is the best representation of an intelligent, articulate statesman who is a president of our lifetime, other than Clinton. And Clinton was kind of a sketchy dude who liked to fuck everybody.

Yes. You know, it seems like Clinton. All he is. Can I get a glass of water? Let me hear this. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on.

From the beginning? Can I hear it from the beginning? Electrolytes. No, from the beginning. No, no. It's a long video to get to here. Because he says, can I get a glass of water? He goes back.

This is the part that's fun. Can I get some water? Imagine living in a city where your water is poisoned and you cheer and that's how much they love this guy i mean when he was a president at the very least we knew that we had a super intelligent very like he he was composed you know what we knew we had together we had a first-rate manager yes yes we felt like he was smarter than us. Yeah, well, of course. If I saw him on TV, I'm like, well, that seems like a president to me.

Look, I voted for him. Yeah, I did too. If you look at Joe Biden, unfortunately, you're looking at him and you're going, I don't know what he's capable of. I don't think he's capable of figuring out problems. I mean, he's saying crazy shit in the White House. I was going, that's not what Joe means. No, no.

Right. That's not what Joe means. But we still have, not just across the U.S., but across the entire West, we have the oligarchs, and they are all oligarchs. Yes. Go read Political Parties by Robert McKells, and he will outline why every group, every group, eventually becomes an oligarchy. It is impossible for it not to, and especially in politics. It's impossible. It will always be an oligarchy. It is impossible for it not to, and especially in politics.

It's impossible. It will always be an oligarchy. Why is that? Because in the realm of politics, okay, you got all this mass of people. These people need to make a decision. So at some point, they're going to go through some process of figuring out who they want their representatives to be because everyone can't speak at once. Someone's got to distill the messages and what have you.

And people don't want to work in a gigantic collective of everything. At some point, somebody is going to be either the natural born leader or they're going to make them the leader because it isn't for everyone. And it's not even to everyone's capabilities to be the leader or to be the spokesperson to deal with the conflict from argumentation and so on and so forth, and to be the person to stand up and to get people to believe like, if he says to do it, I'll do it. You know what I mean? Right. Also, you then also start to have things like, all right, we live in a liberal democratic republic. So you're going to need in politics, oh, I need someone to run my campaign.

I need someone to do this. So you start getting the division of labor in and amongst even your political party itself to then handle all these specific tasks and get specialized people to do it. Well, then they also then become part of that oligarchy because it can't just be Joe Schmo and Betty Nobody. It's got to be somebody that is either A, capable of being the person that's the campaign manager and the speech writer, script writer, one and the same. All this different things. And this is all working towards your upper echelon to go out there and to represent on your behalf. And especially in America, which is a representative republic, it's a representative democracy. Somebody is there on your behalf. Although there is a jillion unelected non-democratic officials like a Fauci or what

have you that are out there making all kinds of rules, doing all kinds of things that you have no say in, and you get to do nothing about it. Right. But the thing is, as Mikelis points out, it always eventually, either by necessity or just by nature, every group becomes an oligarchy, always. And the thing about it is, okay, well, if it is an oligarchy, one, you should be truthful about it and not try to lie to everyone and say like, oh, no, no, we all have a say in this. No, the fuck you don't. You don't. We do. And if we don't like the sound of that, we ain't changing it, period. In this modern age, what we'll do is we'll get the cathedral to go and tell you how you're supposed to think. And then you'll come around to us or we'll nudge you until eventually you come to the point that, you know what, eating meat is bad.

You know why? Because reasons and studies and statistics and, you know. Climate. Climate is one. And it's like climate becomes more of a vehicle to insert particular political ideologies more than it has anything to do with saving the planet. Yeah, and that's part of the problem with any cause that we have that's a giant national cause. They use them. They manipulate them. You know, it's like whenever any sort of tragic event happens.

Yep. There's a lot of times people think that, oh, maybe it was orchestrated because you see how these people are using this event. No, that's like their default mechanism. They take advantage of chaos and of any kind of big event to implement ideas they already had. Like when 9-11 happened, one of the things about the Patriot Act, there was a bunch of shit they were already trying to pass through, and they couldn't get it before 9-11. But once 9-11 came along, they go, hey, now we got our shot.

Let's get in this mass surveillance. Let's start fucking ramping up our security state. Hey, Saudi Arabia funded a bunch of these guys to get all their training and all this kind of stuff.

Our funding came through Saudi Arabia and then, you know, we're doing all this, this, we're doing all this stuff with military arms and all this backing and supporting of Saudi Arabia. We go to Saudi Arabia and say, hey, can you put more oil? And they go, nah.

That's recently, right? Yeah. I don't know what's happening there because I'm only reading headlines in that because it's too much. Well, for one, I mean, not to get all into the Ukraine, but it's fog of war. You just can't know it. And now with our massive media state, you're going to only know what they want you to know. And to be able to get through and try to even understand some semblance of truth is going to be incredibly difficult. difficult and at the end of the day you have innocence dying on both ends for reasons that don't seem to be you know logical no i want to recommend a podcast to people because a lot of

people recommend it to me and i'm in the middle of it right now and it's excellent it's about ukraine if you want to get an understanding of like what's happening why it's happening it's called the marty made podcast excuse me martyr made martyr made martyr made podcast and it's called thoughts on ukraine updated and remastered and um it's very well thought out very uh it's very intense I'd like to add really well done listen to Samo Burja Burja's conversation he had how do you say his name

Samo S-A-M-O B-U-R-J-A he has a company that is centered around

analyzing all world events and politics and everything and trying to Bismarck analytics and there I'd also say Michael Malice and Curtis Yarvin on Your Welcome analyzing all world events and politics and everything and trying to bismarck analytics. And I'd also say Michael Malice and Curtis Yarvin on You're Welcome.

Michael Malice is great. He's a good dude. I'd like to meet him at some point. I want to argue with him about – He's out here. Oh, well, I'll try and track him down. Lex said that – suggested that him, I, and Lex all sit together. I was like, well, I'd love that. So I'd like to talk to him about anarcho-capitalism and anarchy in general and why it doesn't work. But I also respect him

in a lot of ways for putting his opinions out there. And look, if he's friends with Lex and he's friends with you and he's friends with my other buddy, Ethan, he's got to- No, you'll love him. He's a great guy. And Yarvin, as smeared and misunderstood as he is, I think has a lot of interesting insight. And I also think that, you know, just for your own sake, not just Ukraine or any, but for any understanding and getting a better idea on all about how, especially the West works on a political level, read James Burnham's The Machiavellians. political level, read James Burnham's The Machiavellians. It is the easiest way to get familiarized with the thinkings of what's called the Italian elite theorists, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert McKells. And they look at politics from the perspective of power, but from also the perspective of how these things work,

especially in a democratic sense, and how even though the concept of what we would call liberalism, which as an aside note, I hate it when people call leftism liberalism or leftist liberals. I'm like, no, everybody in America essentially is a liberal because we are a liberal society. We are built on classic English liberalism. That is the bedrock of who we are as a nation. But liberalism likes to say that, no, no, we're all in this. We all have a say. And they say, no, you fucking don't actually. You think you do, but that's not true. And in fact, at some point, this all goes away and the oligarchs

and the managerial class decide everything for you. And you think that what you're doing is going to influence these things, but it doesn't. You think that when, oh, there's this big, you know, uprising of populist movement of against this or that. It's like, yeah, it was all astroturfed. I'm sure somebody in the elite class somewhere funded it. The government either put rules in place to increase its probability of happening, you know, which is an argument of law.

Our culture is decided by law and not the other way. And that's an even deeper concept to get into. But just simply that at the end of the day, human beings organize themselves in such a way that there's always a representative at some point. And be it a king, be it a president, be it an elite managerial class, that's how it's going to happen. And once a managerial class sets itself up, the only thing it wants to do especially is manage because it's not there to create. It's not there to fix. No, it's there to continue management and to ensure, most of all, that they stay there, that they don't lose their positions. And so a lot of what I saw COVID as, like this is managerialism manifest.

It's not about whether this is healthy or that's healthy or we could make this change or, okay, what we didn't know, an overreaction makes sense. It's the unknown. And even despite our massive fear of death and modernity in the Kali Yuga, we still need to approach things, the unknown as like, well, I don't, it's the unknown. The fuck if I know what's really going to happen? Yeah, I'm probably going to overreact until I know more, until I've had a little bit more time, then I can readjust. But the readjustment really never happened very, definitely didn't happen with any sort of real speed because the managerial class is sitting back like, we cannot make a mistake on this in any way where it can be used against us, regardless if it's small or large, right or wrong.

If it was right, I guess it wouldn't even be a mistake. right, I guess it wouldn't even be a mistake, but any way that it could be used as ammo against us to lose our position to our enemies. Because all politics is breaking down, breaks down into a friend-enemy distinction. And that who is along with my narrative is my friend and that who is against it is my enemy. Because if you're against it, that means you could then use it to somehow say, I don't deserve to be here. And if I lose my spot in the managerial, I've lost. And all this way of rent seeking is now taken from me. And that's all I do anyways, because I'm not capable of probably starting a successful car company where I redesign suspension or I do... No, no. All I know how to do, I go to school, I get raised up through this managerial oligarchic class, I go to the right schools, I say all the right things, I join the right clubs, I get primed to go into places, then I get to become a managerial myself. And when I'm in politics, I'm part of that managerial oligarchic class.

And then when I leave politics, I'm still in it because now I'm working at Pfizer when I used to be a part of whatever, whatever, like the FDA or this, and I'm going back and forth between the two. I'm doing all this stuff for Monsanto, then I'm president, then I go back to it. And then, you know, I get to go and do meeting dinners while I'm in office at $30,000, $50,000 a plate and rake in all this cash and then go back to me and telling you about how you need to cinch your belts about this or that, or any number of reasons that you can, any other scenarios you can come up with. And that managerial class of person isn't capable of then coming down here and running a simple podcast.

No, their podcast has to be backed by parts of the cathedral that then back the managerial class to allow them to continue to push the same narratives that their class wants you to push and put things out there the way that they think is beneficial to them so that they can then go back to being a manager in some other way. And it's like the homeless problem in L.A. Every time I see someone rallying for they're going to go for some office and like, well, I'm going to do this. I'm going to build this low income housing. How are you going to put a paranoid schizophrenic on crack in a low income housing?

Yeah. How are you going to do that? You basically don't really give a shit about all these people in the street suffering. You think that it's okay for a person to live this way, deranged in their own head, self-medicating and living in filth, as long as you create some boondoggle where you got a bunch of property development people that are making money off of it, and you're making money off of it, and your little shadow corp or whatever is making... It's just like, you have to be a Machiavellian to do that and sit back and then walk out on those streets if you're Maxine Waters. And I was in her district not long ago.

And it's just like, wow, she don't come around. Got nothing to do with any of this. That area is a fucking holy mess. All of L.A. is turning into a holy mess, Joe. I have a buddy that comes from freaking Staten Island. And he goes, what the fuck, dude? Yeah. I go, this is how we run things here.

We don't fix problems. We just create them. Yeah, it just increases. You know, I never had this perspective on homelessness. I always thought that the problem was just really big, and if they had more money, they'd be able to solve it. Sorry, I've got something in my throat. I think you just need more whiskey yeah maybe but then my friend Coleon noir pointed out that you know he's a lawyer and he went to San

Francisco and he was talking to these people up there about the homeless problem and they basically laid out ago no no this is a giant money-making scam the reason why it's never going to go away is that there's a large payroll of people that are making exorbitant amounts of money to deal with the homeless. Now, those people would have no job if the homeless problem was somehow or another solved. And I'm like, how much money are they making? So he pulls up this fucking list of people in LA. And there's people on the list that make a quarter million dollars a year, and they're not doing a good job.

Obviously, the homeless situation is bigger and bigger every year. Seattle, too. The budget keeps getting bigger and bigger, and then these people make more and more money, and it never gets solved. No, of course not. Because solving it, one, they're not capable of solving it. They're rent-seeking managerials. They can't solve shit.

Russell, how do you solve what you said? How do you take a schizophrenic crack addict? I think the only way that I can think of is, one, you'd have to basically essentially outlaw homelessness and say, look, especially in a metropolitan, dense, populated area, you cannot have homelessness like this because one, you can't have people out here suffering like this. That's fucked up. It's not okay.

Number two, those people are a potential criminal problem too because- And there's a health hazard. Number three, it's a health hazard because you have all these populations intermingled with each other, but they're not going and getting health care and other things. I mean, they can't take care of themselves. So diseases are going to spread amongst these groups at different rates, not to mention there's a potential for superbugs to create and or medieval diseases to come back.

There was a typhus outbreak in L.A. to create and or medieval diseases to come back. There was a typhus outbreak in LA. And that's because now you got all these rats around the waste and the trash and all this. Plus, and then you make the environment ugly, disgusting, unlivable. And look, what you live around absolutely affects the way you feel,

but it also affects the way you interact with the environment around you. If you think you live in fucking barter town, you're going to act like it's barter town. Right. Period. You're going to tag every fucking thing up with every sloppy, shitty fucking tag. You're going to throw your trash out. You're not going to care.

You just, you know, oh, that's just another homeless guy. Instead of being like, God damn, you know. Another fellow human being. Why is this person suffering on the street? Well, you know why they're suffering on the street? Could be a number of things, but it ain't the regular narrative that, oh, they just fell on hard times. Fell on hard times. And then all of a sudden believe people were trying to get them and, or they're bipolar to such a degree that they're harming themselves and others. No,

the only thing I can think of is you'd have to make it essentially illegal. You would have to create a big ass camp and you would have to round these folks up, clean them up because a person that can't bathe themselves is a massive fucking thing. Human beings want to be able to clean themselves, feel like they've refreshed who they are. You got to give them psychiatric treatment.

You got to help them get off the drugs. You got to give them psychiatric treatment. You got to help them get off the drugs. You got to help them give them drugs if they need them for these things that are ailing their mental state, that are keeping them in this broken realm of suffering that doesn't allow them to actualize who they are. Then you have to give them a work opportunity because human beings need to do something. So in and amongst that, maybe it's just, to me, I think, oh, it's beautification, cleaning up all the graffiti, cleaning up the trash, giving someone something to do, pay them some sort of a small wage because you're covering all their, now you're covering their living quarters and all this stuff. And you're giving them medication, you're getting them help, getting them off of drugs. The state has credit unions

and all these things. You open an account in their name. Now they're getting a bit of money for everything they go out and do. Now, if they want to at some time, they can go, okay, you're clean. You're good to go. You know what medications you need. You're in the system. Go take the money. Go do what you want to do with in the system. Go take the money. Go do what you want to do with it. Or maybe integrate into the program and now you can help other people. Maybe now you can start going to school, go into psychology and psychiatry. Maybe then at some point you could be the person that's diagnosing this person, trying to help them out and get them off the street. get them off the street. And you create this process that tries to get people from this position of being deranged and in the dirt to able to have some kind of way of actualizing their life

and making their own rational decisions. Well, they've done something about it here in Austin. And I had a long conversation with the mayor about it here. And one of his points is that Austin only had about 2,000 homeless people. he's like 2,000 maybe 3,000 homeless people and he's like we can fix that that that can be worked he goes when it gets to the state where like Los Angeles is when you're dealing with several hundred thousand people potentially I'm not no I don't know what the real number is right but it's it's he goes it's too much it's insurmountable but at some point you got to sit back and go, we can find every reason to spend inordinate

amounts. I mean, I drove by and Officer Coughlin, who I was doing a ride along with, he shows me this new container homes that they're building. He goes, you know how much that one up on the top is going for? How much the cost is on it? 600 grand. I go- For a container home yeah

six where is it down towards in and around watts close to it and so is it like a complex container home because i know that they're all stacked on each other and all this kind of stuff but it's like you really think you're going to get a paranoid schizophrenic to go live in this or even just a drug addict because now it it's like, well, they ran this experiment in Seattle and they put these little shelters up and almost didn't use them. Because one, if you're a paranoid schizophrenic or something, some neurodivergent on that level,

I'm sure you're just like, that doesn't seem like a wise idea for someone to know exactly where I'm at at all times. If you're even just considering the fact of that what you're doing with drugs and maybe prostitution or whatever is illegal, well, now the cops know where you are in your mind. You're like, well, I don't want to be there. Right.

So it didn't work. It didn't do anything. Not only that, when you're living in Los Angeles, you can exist in a tent. It doesn't really get cold enough to kill you. That's true. It's not that big a deal. Or you roll up an RV. Yeah.

And you just sit there and you chill out there. And it's a fucked up problem. It is a fucked up problem. I want to, because we're running out of time, but I wanted to bring up this one thing that you brought up earlier. Because I think there's, you made a really good point, but I think there's more to it. When you were talking about people that want to avoid death and that this is like a main component of our life is like no one wants to die you want to avoid death you don't even think about it when do you think that because of the fact that we don't experience death the way maybe some primitive cultures did that we have disconnected

with it we don't think of it as this inevitable inevitable unavoidable thing instead We think of it almost like something that's not gonna happen to me and that like if you think about like the Spartans When the Spartans would meet someone who was 30 years old they would treat them with extreme distrust like how are you alive? Hmm, like how have you made it to 30? They thought that person maybe was like a traitor or an enemy or a coward or someone who avoided conflict Like how did you ever get to be this old and and not get killed in battle we don't see a lot of death here and i think because of that in most places because of that we don't have the same sort of resolve about the inevitability

of death that i think some cultures do have well Well, modernity is a major cause to this. But let's just say specifically in the West, like I said earlier, death is an abstract concept. It's something that happens to other people in some faraway place that doesn't exist around me, be it war, famine, or even just natural causes. We know people die, but we're never ready for it. We never expect it. And then when it happens, it's like, oh, no, don't touch it. Don't touch it or it'll get on you. But the thing is, so a friend of mine, one of my best friends, his dad is, well, he's

not in his best place mentally and physically. And my buddy, he looks at it like, you know what? I'm going to do my best for my father as much as I can. And I'm going to help him in every way that is possible. But he is going to die. And he doesn't know when. He doesn't know, especially because it could take all kinds of turns at places that he doesn't know and he can't necessarily expect but at the end of the day you know we just sat down there we looked each other in the eye go i just say look whatever whenever however just call me and i'll be there and we'll take him and we'll do what needs to be done well if we're going to bury him on his own land if if we're going to do this, we're going to do that.

Are you allowed to do that? I don't know. But all I know is this. When the people that are of my tribe, of my family, of my things in life are there, when death greets them, I'll be there with them. And when their body is without life, I will not treat them as if it is something that I don't want to get on me. I will hold that hand, cold as it may be. And I will know that this too is for me. And in this moment, I will not let this person be, I will not let this person essentially be alone.

And that's that. I'm not afraid of death, not my death, not other people's death, not death in general, because it's not like I'm so tough or cool or unafraid of anything. It is just that I've accepted this. I live my life in a way where death is beside me at all times. I remember having to have an MRI for something and I'm like, oh shit, you know, some heavy shit was going on. And I told this, I told someone, I go, you know, the only thing I thought of at that moment was, you know what? The only thing that matters to me

is I refuse to die a coward's death. That's it. That is it. I don't care anything else. I will not die a coward's death. I will meet death head is it. I don't care anything else. I will not die a coward's death. I will meet death head on. I will face it. I will hold its hand. And when I have to walk that way, if I get to go to Valhalla, if that's a thing that exists, that's where I'm going. And I'm not doing it like a coward. I'm going to accept it. And there we go. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to roll over. That doesn't mean anything else other than death is here with me at all times and everyone else, whether they want to acknowledge it or not. And the difference is I'm here to live life.

I'm here to face death squarely and accept it and then get everything I can out of being here. That doesn't mean go crazy hedonistically. I got to get it all in before I, no, no, no. That just means I'm going to let the beauty of the world enshrine me and enshroud me because it's all I got. And if I get to get reincarnated, cool. If I go to some sort of Shangri-La, fine.

I don't know what any of that could be. And I don't care if it even, if it doesn't exist, I don't care. I don't care if there's a heaven. I don't care if there's a heaven. I don't care if there's a hell. What I care about is living to my principles, being a person that is of honor and respect to those he interacts with and those that he loves and that are part of his life. And beyond that, I just have to accept where I fail, own it, and move forward. That's it.

And what you're saying sounds noble and honorable, and it's a great thing, but it also sounds incredibly rare. And I think that's one of the unique things about this time is that people that are accepting reality, accepting the inevitability of their own demise and trying to live life by principles and by ethics and a strict code of honor. It's rare today.

It's rare because, because Gannon, Nietzsche, Spengler have all seen and sorted out how we have, through the comforts and the malaise of modernity, found ways to divorce ourselves from all these things. To not have to have it. Like we live in a culture without honor at any point anymore. Or when we have honor, it's this exacerbated perversion of it where we come storming out of our fucking seat at the oscars we slap a tiny comedian who we know the motherfucker has known for i don't know how long and then we rant and we scream in our seat after the fact yeah instead of meeting the man face to face looking him in his eye having a conversation with him, and allowing him even the opportunity to say, hey, man, I really didn't mean anything by it. I thought it was a pretty simple, harmless joke, especially because it's still even in the vein of movies and acting.

And you know what? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt her feelings, and I didn't know this was such a serious thing for you. And that's that. And you know what? Allowing somebody to have that kind of humility or that everybody loves to fucking throw around the word empathy all the time. Nobody knows what it actually means. That's empathy.

Empathy is not letting all of the digital world infiltrate your person and then you going and throwing out all this emotional attachment and taking it onto yourself. So now you can be spun out of control and running around now having to see therapists 24-7 because you've now done something that the human body is not meant to do, which is try to interact with this simulacra as if it is actual reality for you. Right. Without all of the context of being a person, without social cues, without the emotional connection you have when you're having a conversation with a person. Look, that person on the other side of that Instagram account, unless you actually know them, is not an actual person.

That is not a person. That is a simulacra of that person. Yeah, it's a vague representation of their real thoughts. And they might be fucking with you. They might be trolling. They might be bored at work. It is the persona, the Jungian persona they want to put out to the world. That is not who they are.

Yeah. That is a giant problem with social media today. It's like that becomes a goal. It becomes a goal to be the baller on social media and to have this life that's, you know, at least seems unattainable. Well, I mean, you go, you can find inspirational quote right below some chick that's just showing you all of her goods. Yeah. Right below some chick that's just showing you all of her goods. Or inspirational quote besides some guy trying to ape the version of masculinity that they think is like the prime example of it.

Yeah. Something that's really going to make you go, wow. Right. So you just have fake on top of fake on top of more fake. And why would it not be fake when the ability to sincerely and accurately know and actuate those things is lost? Yeah. Yeah. There's just, it's such a strange thing to have as a primary influence. If you think of our culture, like that's one of the primary influences is the image projected by social media. It's a giant part. I mean, we even call them influencers, which is kind of crazy.

And why, you know, when it came to doing whiskey, per se, when they approached me, I said, that sounds great. I got to drink it and I got to meet you guys. Otherwise, we got nothing to talk about. And so I went up there, I met with them. We realized, not only did I realize they made, they were already making a great product, but then with bringing me on board.

And even then at the time, David, the head distiller, he was like, you know, I wasn't really quite sure about all this. And I thought like you were just going to be some fucking guy. But then here you are milling the grains and doing this and watched me with this guy from Bourbon Review do a double blind taste test back to back. And I picked the same barrels and the same notes and I could find the whiskey that I wanted to be the one that we released. He's like, okay. So how did they do that? So they gave you a bunch of bullshit whiskeys and yours and you had to taste which one was it?

No, in this case what it was, we had three barrels to choose from and all right, which one's going to be the single barrel. So I tasted all three, took my notes and then I said, you know, barrel seven. This is the one we're going to go with for batch one. And then,

uh, Will from bourbon review at the time, he goes, all right, let's do this again. Now I'm going to mix them up. I ain't going to tell you which ones they are. Taste them and pick them.

And I picked seven again as my choice, and then eight and then nine. So I picked them all in the same order that I ranked them before at the same time. And it was like, okay, well then, yeah, I guess seven's the fucking one. How do you do that? Do you have to clean your palate in between? You do. And there's a couple tricks. One is soda? Do you have to clean your palate in between? You do. And there's a couple of tricks. Uh, one is soda water is pretty good at cleaning your palate too. I mean,

being very aware of what you eat before you go and do it and not eating something that's like heavily spiced or something that's really, if you're trying to do a tasting, you don't want to do something where all these flavors and everything are over. Like don't smoke a cigar and then try and go and do a cigar tasting. A whiskey tasting. The other – yeah, yeah. The other thing I found was you could – I saw this on a YouTube video. You could smell the inside of your elbow and that can kind of help reset. What?

It helps reset your olfactory senses. The inside of your elbow? Yeah. Because it's you. You're smelling you all the time. Okay. I've seen people use things with coffee and coffee beans to smell and something to reset your nose. But there's other little tricks for tasting.

Like you put a small amount in the glass, shake it, get it on your hands, rub it, smell, then shake it, smell, taste a little bit because as soon as that alcohol hits your tongue, if it's the first drink, that alcohol hitting your tongue is like, whoa, okay. That's interesting. Let it settle and take another little sip. Now, move it all around your mouth. They call it chewing and then swallow and then let that all coat your mouth, and then try to get an idea, start picking things out. And by the way, there's no right way to, if you think

it tastes like, so last night, something we had, I was like, you know, the end finish on this is a bit like the smell of MDF or plywood in a Home Depot. They're like, what? I go, try. Yeah, I kind of get that. Okay. Oh, it's toasted coconut. Move to this, move to that. And if that's the note that you come up with,

that's a note you can come up with, right? It's yours. However, your memory of taste and smell is unique to you. But yet we've all eaten and tasted most of the same shit because we all live in the same country with the same cuisines. Did you take a class on this? No.

Or read a book on it? I just became a drunk. And talk to other drunks and they tell you how to do it right? Yeah. So doing this whiskey, it was really important, like everything I do,

that if it's got my name on it, I really got to stand behind it. It's got War Master right on the fucking bottle. That's my nickname. This is me. So, yeah. And then when it came to,

all right, we need to amp, we need to pick our production up during COVID. So it's like, here I am. I got the time. I'm here in the distillery.

So like the video you showed on one of your, one of your deals about talking about the whiskey. No, that's, I mean, yeah,

that's highlight stuff for that real, but that's real shit. I cleaned the floors, ran distillation runs, smoked grains, roasted shit, did mash bills, sat and worked underneath as an apprentice, a head distiller, who also was a PhD who also was a PhD biochemist. So we're talking about the aspects of physics and chemistry, as well as just stuff that comes with whiskey making, you know, that hand done process. And for me, this just lined up perfectly.

And not only did our normal Warbringer blend win a gold medal this year at world spirits competition and it's pot still category our we have a vodka that we put out where vodkas are basically all the same i don't give a fuck what anybody says to you if i make you a cocktail with absolute or russian standard or belvedere what you're probably you ain't gonna taste any difference i watched this video where they took cheap vodka. I saw that one too, yeah. And they ran it through a bunch of Brita filters and they said it's indistinguishable from expensive vodka.

By nature, vodka is supposed to be tasteless, odorless, neutral, distilled at like, I think over 180 and then cut down to, you know, 80 proof or whatever. With us, we worked with a mixologist, award-winning mixologist, Josh Goldman, to the idea was to create a vodka that would be the best well vodka to make the best cocktails. And the difference is our PhD biochemist and the mineral formulation in the water. So our mineral formulation in the water creates a different mouthfeel, a little bit of different interaction, brings out different aspects of what's in the vodka from the three different grains that are in it. And that vodka, we put it up to the World Spirits Competition this year, and it won Best Varietal in the Nation, Best Varietal in the World.

Whoa. Silvergrin. Dude, that's amazing. Yeah. And it's called War Master as well? Silvergrin vodka. Silvergrin. Silver Grin. Silver Grin.

Interesting. Like, you know, getting silver teeth back in the old days. We have a very old-timey Western aesthetic because we're in the Southwest. Right. And then we've got our rum coming out, which I made along with our head distiller at the time. He got a bunch of inverted sugar, and he's like, he made this insanely awesome rum it's it's it's more like a scotch kind of in a way and it sounds hard strange to say it but if you drank it you'd understood it you'd understand it and it's it was made from this incredibly expensive muscovado

sugar well he wanted to do something like well fuck we just can't keep getting muscovado sugar all the time and it's so expensive i'd like to do something what is muscovado sugar all the time. It's so expensive. I'd like to do something. What is Muscovado sugar? It's this type of sugar from the Mauritius Islands. And it's got its own unique terroir to it and everything. So by being in the location that it is, it has its own properties and the shit's incredibly delicious on its own. I've never wanted to try rum and vodka more than right now. But I'll get you some rum. I can get you some rum and some vodka. I don't know how many times I've ever had rum in my whole life. But, uh, he, so he's like, let's, I want to make one that's delicious as fuck, but on a lower price point

and easier for us to get ahold of. So he got all this inverted sugar and he goes, all right, we're going to cut it half and half with molasses. And molasses is a pretty typical admixture to make rum from. So we mix the two together. We did a half and half in our mash. Well, they don't call it a mash bill with rum. They call it a fuck. I forget what they call it with rum. It's a different term, but it's the same thing.

You're basically mixing all the stuff together. You're adding yeast to it and you're adding aspects for fermentation. You run your fermentation cycles. And we did it aspects of fermentation. You run your fermentation cycles. And we did it like our whiskey. We run a first fermentation. Then we run a secondary fermentation and oak tanks. Then we pump it over to the still. We do our stripping run, which gives you a low wine.

And then after that, you run it again. Then you get the final high proof product. So that's called Parlor K. Should be coming out sometime soon. And, you know, a whole other new experience. And I sat there and worked side by side making rum. Well, dude, when those come out, let me know. I'll let everybody know.

I'll post it up on social media. But for now, this stuff is like legitimately some of my favorite whiskey. I love the fact that you love this. I love it. It's mesquite smoked, and it's probably hard to get, right? It is pretty hard to get. Runs out quickly. Yeah.

When we do, I would say if anybody's interested in this stuff, one of the easiest things to do is sign up for the email list. I know that sounds so fucking corny in this day and age. Is it warbringer.com? Warbringerbourbon.com. Okay. And sign up for that email list because when we put the email blast for the two barrels that we had that were coming out, they were immediately gone. I'm sure.

All flew off the fucking shelves. I'm sure. It's great stuff. And listen, man, I love the fact that you do this. And you do this like you do everything else. You do it all the way. I don't know any way to do it. I don't know any other way to do it, man.

It's one of the reasons why I love you. Likewise. All right, man. Well, thanks for being here. Joe, you're a fucking treasure and I can't stress enough. And I've told you even his little text, man,

like someone's like, Oh, you know, Joe Rogan, this I'm like, tell me, tell me more. What about Joe Rogan?

Go ahead. Uh, nothing. It's like, you ain't going to fucking dog this dude when he ain't even here to defend himself, but go ahead. Well, thanks for that. And, uh, and you, and you know dog this dude when he ain't even here to defend himself. But go ahead. Well, thanks for that.

And you know what you do is an important thing. People are going to dog everything. It's part of life. I agree. It doesn't bother me. I just don't read the comments. I keep moving. But what's your social media? At Josh L. Barnett on Twitter and Facebook.

And then there's a Josh Barnett official. Oh, I'm sorry. At Josh L. Barnett on Twitter and Instagram Josh Barnett official on Facebook if you're like 65 and you still use that

I guess or you're like in Slovenia and yeah you can go to joshbarnett.com that's got like that's a nice placeholder for all the shit I'm doing

I didn't even plug this I have Josh Barnett's Bloodsport 8 in Dallas my pro wrestling show the hardest hitting pro wrestling show shit I'm doing. I didn't even plug this. I have Josh Barnett's Bloodsport 8 in Dallas. My pro wrestling show. The hardest hitting pro wrestling show. The hardest hitting show in all of pro wrestling. What is that? It is fight oriented pro wrestling

where these guys are going out there and going head to head and toe to toe actually hitting each other putting it on the line in a way that you're not going to find in any other pro wrestling show out there. Where is it? It's going to be in Dallas at the Fair Park Grounds.

And it's part of the GCW collective package, which is like this huge amount of different shows. Yeah, this is Josh Barnett's Bloodsport. Oh, so you don't have a ring? No, we have. And you only win by submission, knockout, or TKO. And so we go at it with each other. Submission holds. We trade back and forth.

Strikes. And when is this? This is going to be March 31st at 3 p.m. See, look, I'm wrestling Minoru Suzuki, former king of Pancrase, you know? And myself, you know, this is the IQ wrestler who is one of the absolute best highlight video makers in the entire fucking business. It's intimate, too.

It is. And it gets down and dirty. There is blood. There is violence. It is no joke. I love that you love this, too. There's Chris Dickinson on my guys. Yeah.

All right. That's it. Thanks, brother. I appreciate you very much. Likewise. Bye, everybody. alright that's it thanks brother appreciate you very much likewise bye everybody