The Joe Rogan Experience - #1920 - Dave Portnoy

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Dave Portnoy is the founder of the website and digital media company Barstool Sports. www.barstoolsports.com

the Joe Rogan experience the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day we're up how's it going good to see you brother we were just talking about how we're a couple of right wing psychos

yeah perceived that way at least it's so weird people just have to lump you into one category or another and if you're not completely aligned with the left they'll just lump you in with the right yours is pretty easy to figure out though because you didn't endorse bernie sanders right so i mean it should be like all of one second to figure out maybe you aren't. Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything to anybody. It's just living in the weirdest time.

People just want to categorize people in a tweet. They want to categorize people in 140 or 280 symbols. They just decide that you're this or you're that. That way they can categorize you as the enemy. Does that bother you at all? Do you care? I mean, I wish that they didn't. But what are you going to do?

I mean, yeah, if somebody miscategorizes me or mislabels me, I guess it would bother me a little bit. But that's just on them. It's not who I am. I'm a big believer in social programs i'm a big believer in welfare i'm a big believer in taking care of poor people i'm a big believer in like social programs to clean up cities and there's there's a lot of shit that we should be doing in this country to to help people that are disenfranchised because it's not fair anybody thinks it is fair that someone lives in a fucking crime infested gang ridden inner city. And that's exactly the same as someone who grew up in the suburbs. That's crazy. Right. So that would go against what I think a lot of people would expect you to say. Yeah. But I also, you know, I'm a cage fighting commentator. I,

I, I'm a big believer in the second amendment. You know, there Amendment. There's a lot of reasons why they would decide to categor you have to say and not say and what you can and not say. It's like none of that is liberal. None of that is really like open-minded or progressive. It's all just a – it's a cult. And so if you go against it, the only thing you could possibly be is the other. So you must be like a mega supporter. My main thing with it is if I know how you're going to answer a question basically before it's asked, which I think you can do with like almost everybody involved in politics, I don't trust you. And you really can.

Like on both left and right, ask any question, you know what they're going to answer it. So it's like you're not thinking independently. Yeah, there's a lot of that, right? Like if you are on the right, I have to assume you're dismissive of climate change. If you're on the left, I have to assume that you want a woman to have the right to choose, period. And there's things like that. Like you are pro-abortion or you are pro-this or you are pro-that. What's weird now is like if you're on the left, you're pro-Ukraine war.

You want to send – you're pro-military industrial complex getting funneled billions and trillions of dollars into their system to be able to create weapons to fight off Russia. It's like, whoa, that's the left now? And really that should have nothing to do with either side, really. Like, I mean, how you feel about that I don't think should be left or right. I mean, that's a super complicated issue, to be honest. For me, at least, it's like Ukraine. You don't want a country being invaded that doesn't want to be invaded. They're not Americans, but they are humans.

So it's like, what do you do? Like, what do you do there? It's a tough situation. It's very tough. And it's also very what do you do? Like, what do you do there? It's a tough situation. It's very tough. And it's also very complicated, too, because there's NATO's involvement and pushing weapons closer to the border of Russia and trying to get, you know, trying to get the Ukraine to join NATO. It's like Jack Ryan. The latest season of Jack Ryan. It's literally sort of like that plot.

But, yeah. No, there is no easy answer to a lot of issues. But it's just so black and white. And that's no good. None of it's good. This is a scary time to be alive. You know, someone told me the other day that Nostradamus predicted

that there was going to be some sort of a World War III. But doesn't that every year? Nostradamus, though, just throws his hat on the field, and it's like it's vague enough where anything can be true, so everything he's ever said can be true. Right. Didn't he predict someone named Hister that was going to start a world war? He came real close with, like, Hitler.

start a world war he he came real close with like hitler that's like have you seen the titanic book the the book that was written about the titanic before the titanic if you want to google that there is a literally a book that is called like i forget the name of the book but it's like the biggest cruise ship that will ever sail it's gonna hit an iceberg and it's going to sink. That is weird. But Nostradamus, I'm not buying the hype on him. I haven't looked into it. Now, if he has a guy named Hissler, what does it say?

What fewer people have heard is a short novel called The Futility, The Wreck of the Titan, published in the U.S., writer Morgan Robertson, a novel that tells the story of the world's largest passenger ship, the Titan, and how it sank after hitting an iceberg. A novel published 14 years before the Titanic sank. That's pretty crazy. That's crazy.

It's called The Titan. Yes. And an iceberg. Wow. But I bet they hit icebergs all the time back then. Well, see, that's the Nostradamus theory, that if you do enough, like, I mean, you can at this point say pretty confidently there'll be another gigantic war at some point yeah the problem is how does yours stay lit i don't keep puffing on it

i told you i don't gotta get better at this you're not a big you're a toxic masculinity guy you have to do toxic masculinity things not a huge cigar guy no no i mean. I mean, I do like them, but I don't smoke them a lot. I kind of quit. When I started my paper route, we had a cigar company called Honey's, something Honey's. So it used to be a paper route. I delivered it.

And it was like our first advertiser. I'd smoke them when I drove the Astro van. I got so high and I was just done with them. When was this? 2004. You had a paper route in 2004? Barstool started as a newspaper. So I used to like hand it out and we had those little news racks outside subway stations.

For 48 hours, I'd just jump in my Astrovan and fill the news racks, drop them in bars throughout Boston. Really? Yeah, that's how it started. That's how you started? Yeah, it was a newspaper. Wow. Yeah. So your own newspaper.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. So your own newspaper. Wow. I'd wake up like 4 a.m., go to the subway, hand it out to people like walking by me and just scream at them, like take the newspaper. What was the motivation to do that? How did you get the idea? I was always into gambling. And so I had a normal sales job. I always knew I wanted to try my own thing. Flew out to Vegas, met with like the casinos. They're all like, you got to be a dealer. You got to start at the bottom. I was like, I don't want to do that. Talked to offshore casinos and said, how do I get involved? And they all said, the internet at the time I did this, if you went to a gambling site, fireworks, pop-ups,

look like you're getting your credit card stolen. They actually said, get us off the internet, put us in a physical newsletter, and we'll advertise. So I sold like a year of advertising before we launched, and it was a gambling rack. It was like a four-page newspaper, but I sold the advertising, and it allowed me just to morph. So during the course of the year, we slowly moved strictly away from gambling to more men's interest, like girls and things like that. That's how it started. Wow. So when you were into gambling, why did you decide to do a newspaper? Because I knew I wanted to do something I enjoyed doing.

I was doing cold calling sales. I couldn't do that my whole life. And when I called these casinos to advertise, it's what I just said. The internet was cluttered. It was filled. It was a time when literally every gambling website had little graphics of fireworks popping up, everything. And the gambling companies wanted to get off the internet because it was too cluttered. So they said if you do a newsletter or a newspaper, we'll advertise.

So that's why I created it. How funny is that? They wanted to get off the internet. Off the internet. Yeah, there it is. Bar, stool, sports. Oh off the internet. Off the internet. Yeah, there it is. Barstool Sports. Oh, my God. Look at that.

2003, the first issue of Barstool Sports. Yeah. Wow. Hooters football headquarters. First advertisers, yeah. Hooters. Hooters was your first? Yeah.

Wow. Hooters is apparently in trouble. I just read something about Hooters is not doing well. That's the fake story? Is it a fake story? I don't know. The one that people aren't interested in tits anymore? Well, that's a fake story.

I didn't hope that's the one. That's not true. I think that's a ridiculous conclusion. Like, just because a business that has girls, you know, with owl eyes over their tits. I don't know how they get away with it. I've always wondered that in this, like, culture, basically, where you can just hire on looks. Yeah, that is true, right?

But don't they do that in strip clubs, too? Yeah. I mean, they kind of do. Yeah, but I don't know how. Yeah, there's no equality in strip clubs. No, some are better than others, but, yeah, it's based on looks. Yeah, all that body positivity shit. Out the window.

So how do you figure, like, how do they get away with it? How does a restaurant get away with it? It's a good question. But it's the same thing in, like, those Chippendale shows. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's what you're selling. If that's what you're selling. You get away with it.

Yeah. That must be the case. It is the case. I mean, but it's not with models anymore. Like, now you can be an obese model. Yes. But that's also because you're. Now you can be an obese model. Yes. But that's also because you're selling clothes to people that are obese. Because there's a lot of people that are overweight.

You can sell them clothes. I guess it's good to have an overweight model. Because if you're an overweight person, you buy clothes. Like, oh, that would look good on me. It looks good on her. Yeah, it's half public pressure and half business. on me it looks good on her yeah it's half it's half public pressure and half business because like victoria's secret got basically bullied out of their fashion show and their entire model by only having like like the perfect victoria's secret angels they had to go plus size now

they did that because of public pressure or because of business decision or kind of both you know were they stuck their guns if like our business is killing it we don't care what you say They did that because of public pressure or because of business decision or kind of both? Were they stuck to their guns if our business is killing it? We don't care what you say. I don't know. I wonder. I bet it enhanced their business to a plus size. Correct.

It's a good business move. Are they doing it right? Are they doing it? I'm one of those guys. I don't think there's any, I forget the word that I'm going to say, altruism. I don't think there's an altruistic act in the world. I think every single thing somebody does is, even if it just makes you feel good, well, that's not altruistic.

Right. Yeah, I've said that before about being kind and generous, that it makes you feel good. It's actually good for you too. Correct. But it's still kind and generous. Just because someone enjoys it doesn't mean it's not altruistic it's just that there is a benefit to the person that does it too the i think a lot of people have this idea of altruism that you only uh you're only benefiting the person you're

helping and that's the only real altruism i think it's you're also yeah i mean it it benefits you but it's benefits you and it just it feels good it's like i think people look at when people have ulterior motives someone else like like charities bother me when i find out that the people behind the charities are making millions of dollars that's the worst thing in the world that is scary that freaks me out we've almost so we've done a lot of charity through and obviously anytime you say do charity it is self-enhan, so we've done a lot of charity, and obviously, anytime you say do charity, it is self-enhancing. But we've done a ton of charity, and it started, we did it with Boston Marathon. So we were in Boston at the time of the bombings.

That's the first time we did it. And we don't really ever give our money to anybody else. We control it. We give it direct to the people because of what you said. Like, I don't trust charities for the most part. There's just too much overhead. Mm-hmm. I mean, when you give to charities,

there's a list of charities that you can find online where, like, you can see what their overhead is and how much money actually gets to the people. And it's a very small percentage in most of them. What's, like, the lowest charity in terms of, like, the worst charity for, like, you give them money and how much of it actually goes to the charity.

Because some of them are pretty good, but man, some of them are shockingly bad. Like, you know, 10%. Yeah. Like, which is crazy. You know, when you got executives making six figures and... Yeah. Well, it becomes a business. It's no longer like charity.

Yeah, that's real common, though. Like, a lot of people freaked out when the Black Lives Matter people were buying mansions and shit. Yep. Well, I mean, rightfully so. Make-A-Wish. Oh, my God. Look at this. The name game. A very commonly known and respected group is the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This organization spends the vast majority of its donations on children.

Kid Wish Network, however, it spends only three cents of every dollar collected on kids. But their website and solicitations are designed to look and sound like Make-A-Wish. In fact, they count on confusion to gather contributions. What? Did we just bury Make-A-Wish? I hope not. It's not Make-A-Wish. It's this Kids Wish Network. Oh. It's copying Make-A-Wish? I hope not. It's not Make-A-Wish. It's this

Kids Wish Network. Oh. It's copying Make-A-Wish. Kids Wish Network. Put it on the record. We're not burying Make-A-Wish. Make-A-Wish is a very respected group. That organization spends the vast majority of its donations, but the Kids Wish Network spends only three cents of every dollar collected on kids. Well, that just sounds like a group that may be trying to trick people. It is. Yeah, so they're designed to look and sound like Make-A-Wish. You got a special spot in hell if you're doing that.

Yeah, that's evil shit. Three cents on every dollar. And you're using a name. Yeah. I'm surprised. I don't know how you get away with that. Yeah, the Kids Wish Network. Make-A-Wish Kids Wish.

Three cents of every dollar. Yeah, there's Wish Network. Make-Wish Kids Wish. Three cents of every dollar. Yeah, there's a hustle in advertising like that. Yeah, I don't know how that wouldn't be a copyright. It should be. Maybe we just blew the lid off. I hope we did. Yeah, because you get something in the mail, Kids Wish Network. You're like, oh, I want to help these kids.

And you may think it's Make-Wish. Yeah, which is a great organization. Great it's uh which we almost just buried not really well we're we're close we're one quick clear up there yeah yeah well that's why they they do it that way so they can they can trick you thinking they're a part of that there's so many of those organizations so that's that's like kind of a fake charity. But let's go to the Red Cross. How much of the money, if you donate to the Red Cross, how much of it actually goes to charitable interests?

Do you care about anything you say? In what way? I have one off the top of my head. I don't want to say it because I've heard many times that it's not great with donating, but I'm afraid to say it. Like, what is that? The Red Cross is proud that an average of 90 cents of every dollar spent invested in

delivering care and comfort to those in need. The remaining 10 cents help to keep the entire Red Cross running by supporting routine but indispensable day-to-day business operations. That's fucking great. Can I say one? Yeah. But what if I... Red Cross is fucking great. Can I say one? Yeah. But what if I... Red Cross is fucking great.

Yeah, Red Cross. I have one that I know that I've heard is not great. I'll check. What's the name? Wounded Warriors. Wounded Warriors? Yep. Really?

That's the one why I didn't say it. But I love military cause. But that's one I've heard is not ideal with getting most of the money out. Let's find out. Yeah. I mean... I apologize in advance if that's one I've heard is not ideal with getting most of the money out. Let's find out. Yeah. I mean. I apologize in advance if that's incorrect information. We'll just edit it out just to avoid trouble if it's incorrect.

It does say it has a good rating, but it also says scandal, and I have to investigate what scandal means, I guess. We moved to, well, we've done a bunch. We do Headstrong Fisher House Wounded Warrior Project's top execs Fired amid Oh boy Wounded Warrior Project's top execs

Fired amid lavish spending scandal Fuck What is the What's got an ad blocker These motherfuckers CEO So it might have been just the people that were running it. Could be. They were fired by the charity's board amid criticisms about how it spent more than $800 million in donations over the last four years.

The development was confirmed by Abernathy McGregor, a public relations firm hired to represent the veterans charity. a public relations firm hired to represent the veterans charity, to best effectuate these changes and help restore trust in the organization amongst all constituents, sees WWP serves, the board determined the organization would benefit from new leadership, blah, blah, blah. What happened, though? What did those guys do? When was this article? This is 2016. It says they were fired for... Fired by the board for criticisms

on how they spent $800 million in donations. Right, but does it say that they stole it? Like, no. There it is. This nonprofit watchdog charity advocate says Wounded Warrior Project spends just 60% of its budget on veterans. The Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation provides more than 98% to veterans.

Wow. Maybe it changed since then. Yeah, maybe it did. And also, I'd like to know why. Maybe there's some logistical explanation for why they have to spend so much money. I mean, what does that mean because that's a cause you hear the name yeah and it's like we've donated tons of different mill that's the one you want to get behind right off the bat of course just the way it says yeah

exactly yeah the same with like make a wish oh kids exactly yeah for sure dying kids yep yeah but that's the problem with fucking sleazy people it's like they'll hide behind i mean that's you hear a lot of athlete ones obviously like the brett barf stuff's crazy yeah i didn't look into that that much because i'm not i'm not the biggest football fan but it looked pretty sad yes very sad from what it seems like uh the money that should have been going to the state was going to build a uh volleyball court at the school because his daughter played volleyball. Yeah. Not great.

And he was aware of all that? Certainly seems that way. Doesn't he also have like probably pretty significant CTE? There was a thing about Brett Favre, like he thinks he's had a thousand concussions. A thousand? Yeah. That was him, right? Yeah, it was because it's

just like every time any shaking could be a concussion so he was considering like the definition of concussion to be like well then I've had thousands of them yeah we used talking about how tell me how many times he's got his bell ring yeah that is a concussion for the most part it's certainly close to it is I've always had this question you're're an MMA guy, obviously. So the NFL, the concussion thing, I think it's because if they start acknowledging it, really, they're going to go all the way back in time and deal with ex-players and things like that. MMA guys get hit in the face every two seconds.

Are they just released? Is that why no one ever talks about concussions in MMA? But in football, it's a huge discussion? talks about concussions and MMA, but in football, it's a huge discussion? I think in football, it was never known, whereas in boxing, it was always punch drunk. Everybody always knew about it. So I think you thought going into it that this was a risk that you were taking if you wanted to be a fighter. So I think the thought behind it was, look, everybody knows what happened to Muhammad Ali. Everybody saw Joe Frazier at the end of his career. Everybody saw all these guys who could barely talk, who used to be these great, great fighters. And everybody who was aware, who's in the game said, look, you got to talk to your

fighters when it's time to leave. And you got to be aware of the risks, but you know what you're getting into when you get into it. You know, just like if a guy is a bmx jumper and he does those flips on dirt bikes and then he falls and fucking breaks his neck like you know he knew that that was that was it's on the yeah i get it you know the risk going into it where football they i think they didn't know. Yeah. I don't think people really knew... And he hit it. Yeah. Goodell hit it. Yes. Yeah.

How did they hide it? I mean, they just... I believe they buried the surveys, at least from that movie Concussion with Will Smith. Yeah. I didn't watch that movie. Yeah. But I've seen that guy, the original doctor,

that was the motivation of that movie. Yeah. I think they buried a lot of it, That guy, the original doctor that was the motivation of that movie? Yeah, I think they buried a lot of it, released their own, control it. I mean, I've had my issues with the NFL. I think they're like maybe the most powerful group there is. Various players have filed lawsuits against the league for the concussions, accusing the league of hiding information that linked to head trauma and permanent brain damage, Alzheimer's disease, and dementia. Some teams choose not to draft certain players in the NFL draft due to their past concussion history.

And I think that's part of the problem moving forward with it a little bit is if you admit it or change, you have this laundry list of lawsuits that can come forward then. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But the more the information comes out, it kind of traps them. It's like, what are you going to do? You have to admit that all those other players.

Yeah. Well, I think according to what we just read and from the way I understand it, you got to slant it like it's new information. Like, well, we didn't know, well we didn't know so you can't we didn't know that so how can you hold us responsible if they can prove well you did know that and you hit it then i think you had a lot of issues when did they know when did they first find out about a lot of that's in the movie but there's different studies the nfl tried to intimidate scientists studying the link between pro football and traumatic brain injury this is

in 2017. Rather than honestly deal with his burgeoning concussion problem, the National Football League went after the reputation of the first doctor to link the sport to degenerative brain disease. He named chronic traumatic encephalopathy. So it was back in 2002. I think that's the guy. Yeah, Dr. Bennett Omalu. Yeah.

That's real, man. And I think with football, it's probably even more pronounced because if you think about what they're doing, they're running full clip into each other. So you have these giant super athletes, 300-pound guys capable of generating preposterous amounts of power and force. They're just fucking good. Yeah. Boom! The flip side, I think 99% would sign up for that anyways. Like, I've always said that.

If you told me I could be one of those people. Now, maybe not now because I don't know about you. I didn't dream I'd have the life I had now. But for 99.9% of Americans, I would think being a star athlete football player is worth that risk. I think most of them, if you said you may get a concussion, you may get brain damage from doing this, they'd still probably do it. I mean, you live a life that you really can't compare to from what you're when you're 15 years old or whenever you start being that athlete to well into your 40s. Yeah. The end of your life is going to suck, but not people. People don't look forward to that. Like people don't worry about what's going to happen to them

generally when you're 20 at 50. Yeah, they don't think about it. They also think about, Jenny Buffett quote, content to be living and dying in three quarters time. Yeah. That's that. It's like, live your fullest when you can live. Yeah, and that life, I mean, the life of living a star NFL football player's life, that's a crazy life. You're driving around in a Rolls Royce.

You got diamonds on your fingers. Like, Joe Namath showing up with a fur coat on. Like, you're driving around rolls royce you got diamonds on your fingers you like joe namath showing up with a fur coat on like you're the fucking man if someone said you can do that but at age 50 you're gonna have unbelievable problems people don't think about that and i would generally i even now that most people would sign that contract if If you told me I was still cold calling my 9 to 5, I'd be like, sign me up. I'm not worrying about 50. Yeah. And they also think, by the time I'm 50,

someone's going to figure out how to fix that. Yes. There's always this thought of medical interventions, stem cells, hyperbaric chambers. Everything. Your office. Mm-hmm. Come to Joe Rogan's office.

Yeah, I think that people don't generally think about the risks in terms of the future. They think, how do I feel right now? Especially fighters. And the glory of winning a fight, the glory of getting your hand raised, it's so above and beyond normal life experiences that even guys who have taken some shots and probably do feel the effects, they take a few months off and they want to get back in there again because it's so much more exciting than regular life. I've been blessed at this point with things that I never thought I'd be able to do ever.

Walking in with Patty, I got to walk in with Patti in London when the crowd was chanting his name that is still like maybe the best thing that I've gotten to do I can't imagine being a fighter like in the tunnel coming out there is nothing really else like it in sports and anything the walkout no there's nothing like it I saw you by the way, roll your eyes when Patty won. Shouldn't have won. I thought it was a close decision. I thought Jared won.

I thought Jared Gordon won that fight. Did you see? It was a good fight. It certainly wasn't a blowout. It wasn't one of those fights where there's no fucking way. It was a close fight. Did you see the Twitter war I got in with um a guy after the fact no justin gaethje oh justin gaethje yeah he and i he threatened to beat me up well he definitely could that's by the way that's not

saying much like your producer could beat me up so i don't that's not much of a threat i've never been in a physical altercation he's the most violent man in mma justin gaethje is a fucking savage is is he capable of beating up a civilian would he no he wouldn't do that's good to know no he wouldn't do that he's not stupid because this is what happened after the fight patty in the ring fight of the night he said fight of the night the third round they didn't throw a punch it wasn't fight of the night but he's he was talking fight of the night patty's our guy well he's just a fun guy yeah so we're saying fight of the night fight of the night he got mad at us he's like you're trying to steal money from the actual fighters who won fight of the night like no he didn't people went into his background and Wait, what did he say exactly? What was his quote to me?

He said, embarrassing. What was the? No. Something we got to be better. We don't stand for this. People, the comments littered. He was out with like a third world dictator. Oh, the Chechnyan guy.

Yeah, so I hit him back with that I'm like I you know we just said Paddy was fighting the night you were out with a Chechnyan dictator is one of the worst guys on the planet one thing led to another he threatened to beat me up yeah yeah this makes the barstool guys look really bad bending over for the lad fight of the night Barstool can give him 50K, but that performance will never get you a bonus in the octagon. Eh. Eh. I quote tweeted, this makes the Barstool guys look really bad.

I said, it's probably there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There it is. People are telling me that Justin Gaethje was recently seen hanging out with a warlord accused of brutal crimes against humanity, so it's hypocritical for him to say we look bad supporting Patty when he supports a warlord. I'm going to take the high road plus not mention it. Yeah, and then he got mad at you for that?

Yeah. Yeah, he's like, I didn't do that. Find me a picture of me with the warlord. But he does have a picture with his son at his birthday party oh so he may be he got paid to go there with some other guys there's a lot of guys who got paid to go there a lot of guys go there yeah he's been doing that for years he's a big mma fan and he brings over champions and I guess they have what are your thoughts on that I don't know exactly what he's done or what he is accused of doing I think it's no Chechnya is a brutal part of the world there's some fucking crazy shit that's happened in Chechnya I mean that's where Hamzat Shamayev is from. Hamzat trains with that guy.

There's videos of him wrestling with him and grappling with him. Yep. I know that he's been involved with a bunch of MMA fighters. That's his thing. He's a fucking savage dude. He brings over savages. It's a savage game. Yeah.

Yeah, the Warlord game? Yeah, no, the Warlord 3rd, that's a savage game. Yeah. Yeah, the Warlord game? Yeah. Yeah, no, the Warlord third, that's a savage game. Yeah, that's an interesting decision, right, to decide to go over there. And many fighters have gone over there. And others haven't. Like, when we did that, some fighters were like, well, I think. Sugar Sean O'Malley. Yeah, he said he ought to offer.

Yeah, he wouldn't go. Sugar Sean's the man. Yeah, he's like, fuck that. I'm not fucking going there. Yeah, I mean, how much is he offering you? Probably a lot, I would guess. Yeah. Because you have to know.

You gotta know. That that, right. Yeah. I mean, he's out there shooting guns on his ranch or whatever. Yeah, it's not like, he's a warlord. Yes, there's no other way around it. There's no confusion. None. You're like, maybe he's not. he's a warlord. Yes. There's no other way around it. It's not a, there's no confusion. None.

You're like, maybe he's not. Maybe it's propaganda. You know, it's like when you hear things about Zelensky, you know, you're like, well, he started off as a comedian. You know, like there's like, there's room, there's wiggle room. He's being attacked. Yeah. Is there something where Ukraine is cracking down on the media? Is there something where Ukraine is cracking down on the media?

Somebody sent me something about Ukraine trying to control the media now. Are we anti-Ukraine? No, no. Why would they crack down on the media? Well, I think because of the war effort. You know, if the media is saying things like, oh, Ukraine is corrupt, or oh, Ukraine has done this. Critics say a new media law signed by Zelensky could restrict press freedom in Ukraine. Lawmakers who passed the bill said it would help meet European Union conditions for membership,

but journalists have denounced it as a move toward censorship. Oh. Imagine if you have to join the European Union, you have to fucking... What is that? Some of the law's most stringent provisions were relaxed in response to the criticism. Serious concerns about the independence of the regulatory body remain. Domestic and international news media groups said on Friday, noting that they were still receiving details of the final 279-page legislation.

The law expands the authority of Ukraine's state broadcasting regulator to cover the online and print news media. That's not good. Previous drafts gave the regulator the power to find news media outlets, revoke their licenses, temporarily block certain online outlets without a court order, and request that social media platforms and search giants like Google remove content that violates the law. Well, you know, they're doing that over in America. I mean, we found out that because of the Twitter files. When Elon released all the Twitter files, they found that the United States government was actively trying to suppress the voices of certain people that were saying things they found disagreeable on Twitter.

Yeah, to me. It's a fact. Yeah. I got attacked for this take. I said that was like a and I get it obviously but I assume that was like a no duh to me like I that's what I expected right I wasn't like I get suppressed like the second Elon took over my Twitter and I'm sure I don't know if you use Twitter but mine went way up like 900,000 new followers in like a couple of weeks. Correct.

It was crazy. I didn't get to that, but I direct up arrow. I went from couldn't gain a follower to up. You're being suppressed. And I knew I was, so I wasn't surprised. That's why I was like, oh, that's not surprising if you're paying attention. I got attacked. People don't pay any attention.

They acted like I was on the left on that. It's like, no, I was one of the ones being suppressed.'m just saying yeah no shit that's what they do yeah i don't complain about that shit but i'm definitely aware of my instagram used to move way quicker same and then something happened a while back where it's slowed down by a significant margin the amount of growth and i'm like how do you complain when you have 16 million followers like do you really you really complain that you're not, that you're somehow or another suppressed or am I really suppressed? Or maybe it's because I'm not doing reels. You know what? Maybe there's like a logical reason for it. I don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of fucking algorithms and weird shit at play when it comes to Instagram and all those social media companies.

Also, it's not only the handpicking of people, but if people complain, if they just, this is offensive, this is whatever, there's a certain number of those that will trigger you to get pushed down. Now, for whatever reason, one thing that also I think is kind of

self-evident, if you're talking left and right, the left is far more savvy savvy like with social media like the the right will generally just wants to sling it out they'll let you say anything and they're not going to complain and they're not going to try to violate like oh that's a violation complaint the left will and it's a good tactic to get the right off but it's also because the left is in control of all of the social media platforms where the right it has nothing 100 i mean there's no social media platform i mean

there's people that are trying to accuse elon musk of being right wing but i think that's just because elon musk has said the democrats are out of their fucking minds he's said what i've said in many different ways now i don't know how i go back and forth on how i feel about elon sometimes i think he's genius other times like he may be getting a little full of himself. Like, I don't think he bought Twitter for the reasons he's saying he did to be some great humanitarian. I think he could try to, he bought it because he got mad almost, and then he tried to get out of it. But they held, that's the other thing. Like, stop complaining on the left. They, he tried to withdraw from buying Twitter, and the CEO or whatever stuck him to the price because it made money and they got a great price.

They got a ridiculous price. Ridiculous. He gave them way more than what it's worth. And he had a mindset of going into it. There was two things going on. One, he believed that it's very bad for democracy in general when you have suppression of free speech. And I agree with that he really means that and he sees it happening to him right and so he sees it happening to people

that he knows and people whose voices he's respected and he saw that like uh the babylon b got banned which is crazy which is crazy for calling rachel levine the man of the year yes a biological male calling him the male of the year like that that's crazy yeah that that's so offensive the Babylon Bee gang kicked off crazy yes yeah so he was like well that's enough and then the reason why he tried to pull out of it he's like they're not giving me data on the actual amount of fake accounts. Correct. There was a former FBI guy, pull up that story, Jamie. This former FBI guy estimated the actual amount of fake accounts on Twitter. And he was like, it could be as high as 80%.

So if you're buying something and they said, well, it's 95% people, it's 5% bots, but we're trying to figure that out. And he's like, how are you trying to figure that out? Show me. And they won't show him. And he's like, show me your data that shows you. And they show them a hundred accounts. They went over a hundred accounts. Uh, over 80% of Twitter accounts are likely bots, former FBI security specialist, which is fucking wild. So if that's like 20% of the

people on Twitter are actual humans and 80% of it is propaganda either by publicity firms or super PACs or whoever the fuck is trying to manipulate narratives and one of the things you saw with Elon was like there's a bunch of tweets that people retweeted they're from wildly different accounts that were all the exact

same tweet and he's like these are bots like these are there's a thousand percent bots I mean I went through a phase like you, if I posted something, it was all bots. A hundred percent. So I don't there's a million percent bots. They probably weren't giving the right information, but he did

want to pull out. Well, I think if they found out that information, Twitter would be worth substantially less. And that's also what he was trying to do. I think he was trying to probably talk them into a better price. Because if you find out that a company is 95% horseshit or 80% horseshit and 20% what they say it is, if that gets out, that's devastating to the company. But he also, 100%.

He also has such fuck you money, though. He was upset about the suppressing. And I'd probably be the same way if I had that type of money. It's like, I'm just going to fucking buy you. And that's essentially what he did. And I do think, like you said, the bots and going back and forth. He wanted to get out. That's the one thing, though, the Twitter approach where everyone's like, I'm going to get off my – my dad was one of those guys. I'm leaving Twitter.

It's like, what are you talking about, dad? Why was he leaving Twitter? Because Elon. My dad was one of those guys. I'm leaving Twitter. It's like, what are you talking about, dad? Why was he leaving Twitter? Because Elon.

My dad is like a very liberal guy. Like, hated Trump. Hates him. Hated him before he became president. Just hate him. So I interviewed Trump, and I FaceTimed him. I tried to keep it a secret, and I FaceTimed him when I was doing it just to see my dad's reaction. He turtled. My dad turtled when he saw me.

He's like, oh, hi. But I mean, he hates him. Hates him. But he's one of those guys. And my dad's one of those guys. So it's been interesting with my dad because I have been relentlessly attacked by the left. And he is a left guy. So we get in these little things.

I'm like, do you still think the New York Times is unbiased? And he can't answer. He's like, well, do you think Fox News is unbiased? I'm like, no, definitely not. But do you think the New York Times? He has a very hard time bringing himself to it, but it is eyeopening for him, I think. I think it's eyeopening for a lot of people, but for a lot of people for a long time, that information never got to them. They didn't really know. That's one of the most substantial and significant aspects of Elon buying Twitter is these files being released where you're getting to see the actual involvement of intelligence agencies, the actual like banned lists and blocked lists and shadow banned and how they're suppressing people's signals. It's pretty fucking wild shit. And it's almost entirely done to people that are on the right. And then the people that are on the left that are dissenters, right? The people that went along with the Great Barrington Declaration and

didn't think that we should shut the country down during the pandemic. And the Great Barrington Declaration- I have no idea what that is. Legitimate scientists, like top of the food chain epidemiologists, virologists who said that we are handling the pandemic absolutely wrong. And then there was internal emails and memos from Fauci calling to publicly discredit these people who were legitimate, like absolute top of board scientists that were saying that this is not how you handle a viral pandemic and that we don't need to do it this way and they were suppressed yeah they were see that's one of those issues that will get i know for a fact you suppressed on social media

like covid was yeah the all-time like i i went back and forth on it and because i in the beginning I went back and forth on it. Because in the beginning, like the wearing the masks. I was like, I don't know if there's science. I don't know if it's true. I do know this. If there's a.00001% chance you can get COVID or whatever they're saying gone, I'll wear a fucking mask. What do I care?

It doesn't matter. I don't think they should shut down business. I thought it was totally up to them. So I became pretty pro small business business let people make their own decisions But that that slant will hurt you on social media Yeah, it would then more than it does now but as time goes on more and more information comes out about how Deceptive they were about their studies and how many actual risks there are involved in the vaccines and how much damage it did to small businesses and all that shit. When that starts coming out more and more and more,

there's so many people that had this like dug their heels in stance on what is right and what is wrong, and now they're being forced to reevaluate. And it's also they're confronted with the overwhelming evidence that pharmaceutical companies have been doing this forever. They've never been honest about stuff. They've always hid information. Not only have they hid information, they've actually – the way they run their studies is so fascinating because when you know you hear like peer-reviewed studies, the scientists that value peer-reviewed studies from pharmaceutical companies don't get the data. They get the review of the data by the pharmaceutical companies, and then they study that. So do you trust anybody then?

Like, even here, we're pulling up articles, and who knows who wrote these articles. I've always said about me, there's articles that we could pull up on me, and I'd read it, and I'd be like, this guy's Hitler. Like, honestly, they're that bad. And if somebody just read it and didn't do it, they'd be like, this guy, no shit, this guy's the worst guy on the planet. Right. But that's why freedom of information is so important

and freedom of expression is so important because you've got to be able to find out what's true and what's not. And the only way is you get differing opinions, differing perspectives. Someone could write a very biased perspective on you and they're doing it on purpose. It's a hit piece. They're trying to make you look bad.

But then someone can write a glowing review that might ignore some of your flaws and some of the things you have done. And that's not real either. It's like you need to sort it out over time. And the only way that gets done is through through freedom of information, freedom of expression. And if we don't have that, we're fucked. Because then whoever's in control of the media, who's ever in control of social media, or whatever the narrative is, they're the ones who get to dictate what's real and what's not real, and you can convince a lot of fucking people that things aren't true.

Yeah, so do you try, like, if you're trying to read up on something i'm talking now the major like outlets so whether it be uh you go on twitter your facebook but i'm going new york times watching posts there one side fox news is the other is there any place where you're like i'm gonna get a clean slate not from i don't think from mainstream media i think first of all mainstream media is so controlled by advertising there's so many like if you know that 75 of all advertising on television it's pharmaceutical companies 75 that's a big fucking number if you think that they are going to have an unbiased negative perspective on pharmaceutical drugs or the pharmaceutical industry, that's not going to happen. They're going to suppress that because that's bad for their business.

It'll shut them down. If they lost 75% of their advertising, they would fucking go under. Think about a company like CNN. CNN is already hemorrhaging money, hemorrhaging viewers. They've dropped radically since Trump left office, right? If they came out and started attacking pharmaceutical companies and they lost all their ads, they're fucked. So you're not going to get an unbiased, really honest perspective on anything that has to do with pharmaceutical companies when it comes to CNN or when it comes to any of these mainstream news platforms that rely on pharmaceutical companies for ads. You're just not right. I mean, I don't think any of those are the ones you just mentioned. I mean, I'm super jaded now at this point, but and then you have ideological perspectives. You have the people that are in these ideological camps where you this is this and that is that and

you can't differ from you can't like have any sort of nuanced perspective or look at people that have a different point of view in a charitable way. You can't do that because then you're a sympathizer or you're, you're platforming these bad and evil people and you're carrying water for, there's all these stupid fucking phrases that they like to use. It's crazy how quick they jump. Yeah. But also they're fucking dying too.

Like all those media companies, nobody trusts them anymore. And the reason why nobody trusts them anymore is because they're not trustworthy. It's real simple. It's real clear. It's not like fucking, you know. So you last that cigar with one light up, huh? No, I had to hit it a second time. Okay, good.

I hit it with this little lighter. It just wasn't as loud. Good. Yeah, it goes out. I think that, you know, it's an interesting time though because it's caused the emergence of You. Well, me, yeah. But also independent journalism. Like guys like Matt Taibbi,

guys who were with these corporate news structures who left and now they're doing it on their own. Glenn Greenwald, Crystal and Sagar from Breaking Points, all these kind of people that you can trust because even if you don't agree with them, you know they're not lying. That's all I need. agree with, and I 100% support your ability to do that. I don't want to suppress people I don't agree with, but I want you to be honest. I want you to tell me what the actual data says. And even if your perspective on that data I don't agree with, at least I know you're telling me the truth. That's all I need. And there's not a lot of that in mainstream media. And that's why mainstream media is dying. It's controlled by these corporate interests that really care more about money than they do about anything else then then like if you think that like the washington post or the new york times is really just about getting out the truth that's not real no and those two are

extreme examples at this point they're they have an ideology that they adhere to and what is straight i don't know what the right word is. If I wasn't doing what I was doing, I would still – because I don't pay enough close attention, I would still sort of believe the New York Times was like a real thing. I just grew up. New York Times, oh, yeah. Why would they have – If I didn't have a podcast and I didn't talk to people all the time and talk to people from different walks of life and different perspectives and different careers, I would have no idea. I would have no idea.

If I was just a comic, I would kind of vaguely know that they're probably corrupt, vaguely know that they're full of shit. But if I read something, I was like, oh my God, this is terrible. I would just take it at face value. Same. Especially if you have a regular job where you don't have the time to be looking into this shit, you're busy all day, and then maybe you have a regular job where you don't have the time to be looking into this shit. You're busy all day. And then maybe you have a family and obligations and fucking bills that are piling up.

And you don't have the time to be sorting out whether or not the Washington Post is being honest about gender affirming care. And on top of that, Twitter is not the real world. It's important. But you step outside, you walk down the street, and most people don't even know what's going on on Twitter. You wear it, so you see it, and you pay attention to what people are saying. But I always, if I'm in the center of a controversy, something's going on, I focus like, oh, my God, the world, everything's happening here.

And then you go outside, nobody knows. I think Twitter's radioactive. I think that you can stay in it and you'll get sick. That's what I think. I think, but if you just visit briefly and get the fuck out of there and then take care of yourself, you're going to be all right. Yeah. I don't think it's good for people. It's the old Ricky Gervais.

He's like my favorite comedian of all time. He had a quote. Do you like Ricky Gervais? Yeah, he's great. He has one about Twitter. Someone posts something in a town square. I'm botching his line. It has nothing to do with you, but people run up to it just to complain about it.

That's kind of it. It's an echo chamber. It's toxic. It's also, I think, legitimately bad for mental health to communicate that way. To communicate just through text. And it's almost all of it is aggressive and almost all of it is insulting and almost all of it is disparaging of people. The amount of like anti or negative tweets versus positive tweets. I mean, I wonder if anybody's done a study of that, like how much negative tweeting versus positive tweeting.

Probably, I guess, like 90 percent. It's probably somewhere like that. It's just bad for you it's bad for you to if you if you went to a bar and every time you went to a bar people were fucking arguing and screaming at each other you'd be like fuck this bar 100 this ain't fun i want to go have a good time i don't want to be around these people it's it's not a normal way for human beings to communicate where they're not looking at each other across the a table having a drink just looking at each other as another human, appreciating each other as a person, a human

being. When you just see text on a screen and you're like, I'm going to fuck this guy up and you go. And it's easy to do it. Yeah. You can say whatever you want. There's been plenty of times I've seen examples where someone tracks down like the commenter and then the commenter apologizes.

Oh, I didn't know you'd say, you know, it's a different it's a different mentality when you get to that. Of course. It's not normal. Humans are supposed to communicate with words in front of each other. That's how we supposed to. That's how we evolved. That's what we're capable of understanding and appreciating. You know, and you know, when someone's bullshitting you and you know, when someone got a secret agenda and you're like, this guy's kind of a creep.

You get it. And then you get some people like, I really like talking to that guy. And then you can't wait to talk to him again. And then you kind of have an agreement. When you see each other, you know that he likes you and you know that you like him and you know he's a nice guy

and he knows you're a nice guy. And you're gentle. Let me buy you a drink. All right, let's have a drink. And you never know. Twitter, it's like you could be getting worked up on what an eight-year-old says. You have no idea. Or a bot. Yeah. There's a lot a drink. And you never know your Twitter. It's like you could be getting worked up on what like an eight-year-old says. You have no idea. Or a bot. Yeah.

There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that. And there's these Macedonian fucking troll farms where they have thousands and thousands of accounts and they're just trying to undermine democracy 24 hours a day. And they're literally being state sponsored to do that. There's that too. And that riles people up.

You know they found out that like 19 of the top 20 Christian sites on Facebook were run by troll farms. No, I didn't know that. 19. So there's 19 out of the top 20 Facebook Christian pages that are not real. All they are is riling up people against whatever it is, Islamic people or gay people or transgender people, whatever it is. They're just trying to get people to argue about shit, getting people angry about shit. It's really easy to do that too. Very easy.

So I think the solution is post and ghost. Post shit that you want. Don't read the comments. Get the fuck out of there and don't engage in back and forth disagreements with people. It's so much easier. I don't, but it's so much easier said than done. So many people, you preach that. It's hard to do.

It's very hard to do. And also, like, I have a podcast, so I can actually sit down and talk to people, which most people don't have, right? So you don't have that opportunity to, like, work things out with someone and try to find out what they really feel and what they believe face-to-face in front of them. Right. It's the best way to talk. It's the best way to communicate ideas It's the best way to communicate ideas. And so I don't communicate ideas in a piss poor way because I think that way sucks. And so if I get to do the best way all the time, which I do, why would I engage in the

worst way? Like just back and forth with people on Twitter that just want to make you feel bad. Like not interested in that. Do you have any dream guests? No. None. guests? No. None? Uh-uh. Never?

No. I like talking to people. I don't care who they are. I mean, I like talking to my friends. I like talking to, I had a lady in recently that was a beekeeper. I saw that. I had a guy the other day that he has a giant piece of land in Alaska, and they're finding woman with woolly mammoth bones.

I like that. That's what I like. I like talking to fighters. I like talking to you. I like talking to whoever. I just like talking to people. It's fun. I like seeing how different people see this world.

It enhances my perspective. I've gotten, through this podcast, a very unexpected and accidental education. That's what I think. So because of that, I don't have any desire to communicate in an ineffective way that makes me feel bad. And read a bunch of mean things that people say about you and just go back and forth with them and saying things that's not true. You're welcome to have your thoughts. Good luck. I'm not going to engage in that.

See, I'm like a petty person. I'm quite petty actually so like if somebody says something i don't like not once but if someone says it a bunch i i keep a record i keep a mental record the champagne bottles champagne bottles yeah that i that became, that's something. So I had champagne, I have champagne bottles engraved with the top of the list enemies of mine. And I wait for them to fuck up. And then I pop them. So like the most famous example of that is John Skipper, the old ESPN guy. I don't know who that is.

He ran ESPN. Dana just talked about it the other day because he said he was anti-MMA. The deal never would have happened. He ran ESPN. So we had a show on ESPN, Barstool Van Talk. And it maybe set a record. Last one episode, he canceled it for things we said, which in hindsight, I wish we didn't say them the way we did.

But it was years in the past. So we launched one episode. ESPN had a multi little uprising about doing business with us. And they canceled after one episode. They didn't tell us. And John Skipper was quoted as saying, I didn't realize Barstool Van Talk. That was the name of the show. Barstool Van Talk would be associated with Barstool.

That was a direct quote he had. So we put him on a champagne bottle. Literally like three days later, he got blackmailed by his Coke dealer. Supposedly. This is what happened. It had to step down. According to John, it's the only time he used this guy. He found a random Coke dealer off the street, impossible to believe, and got blackmailed.

So he popped the champagne bottle. It was perfect timing. He had to leave ESPN because of a Coke dealer? That's the story. That's the story. Yeah. And then he went over to run DAZN. Oh, he runs DAZN now?

He used to. He doesn't anymore. So, yeah, but the champagne bottles. And then HBO did a quick little documentary on us. I thought it was going to be fair and even. That's one of the last times I'll – that was almost the last time I believed the media would be fair. It wasn't. It was a hit piece, but they showed the champagne bottles so people became aware of it.

That's funny. Yeah. That's funny. So i am petty in that respect you should be petty about that this is fucking so stupid the guy was doing coke imagine getting black and by the way who like if he's just like i don't know maybe i'm naive but to be like yeah i've done coke like who cares yeah i think in that world you can't even admit you did coke. Which is crazy. It's a stupid world. It's a stupid world

where you have to pretend to be a fake person. Yeah. Look at these people on Good Morning America that are having an affair. John Skipper details his ESPN exit and a cocaine extortion plot. Dun, dun, dun. 27 years.

Jesus Christ. The guy did good work, so he likes to do a little coke. He had a substance addiction. What did it say there? He has an addiction. I don't even think he admitted to that. He's just like, I tried it.

He's the only guy. But he called it. He called it a substance addiction. Did he? Yeah. John Skipper suddenly resigned. I thought he said he did it once. Yeah.

To seek treatment. That's what you do when you get busted. Skipper, 62, the married father of two sons, was raised in North Carolina. I don't give a fuck where he's from. 27 years at Disney. They washed down the toilet for a little coke. Meanwhile, you look at the body of work that he did. Did he do a good job?

I don't know. But, I mean, if you kept him fucking hired for that long, I would assume he was doing good work. Fucking knuckleheads. He says he did it on his own. That he resigned. Just a little blow. Who cares?

Who cares? I think I wrote that most likely how did I phrase it? Not necessarily do it, but like people act like coke, I don't know what they act like. It's like if you haven't been around coke in your life, you're probably a loser.

Like honestly, if you haven't been around it, I'm not going to say do it, but if you haven't been around it at least once, you're probably not the most fun person ever. Yeah, I've been around it i'm not gonna say do it but if you haven't been around it at least once you're probably not the most fun person ever yeah i've been around it i've never done it but i had a friend in high school and his cousin was addicted to coke and uh this was like when i was there's a formative period of my life when i was doing martial arts and uh for the longest time like from age 15 to 21 i did no partying i did not all i did was train i mean i trained every day i just like ate clean i slept well i did how old were you 15 to 21 from 15 to 21

those were like you know how'd you get into that oh man um well i was bullied like most people you know got i didn't know how to fight i was scared and i was. I didn't know how to fight. I was scared. And I was like, I need to learn how to fight. And I joined a martial arts school, and I just got obsessed with it. Because that's early. The reason I'm asking, that's before the trend of MMA. Yeah, but martial arts had always been around. I was a big Bruce Lee fan, Chuck Norris fan. Watched a bunch of those movies and shit.

God, man, amazing to do that. How cool would it be to be able to do that? And then I watched a bunch of kickboxing and shit. And I was, God, man, amazing to do that. How cool would it be to be able to do that? And then I watched a bunch of kickboxing matches, and I got into it. And then coming home from a Red Sox game, it's a crazy story. I had already been taking karate a little bit, but it was too far from my house. It was hard to get there. My parents didn't want to drive me. And this place was right off the tee.

So I was at Fenway Park with a buddy of mine, went to see a baseball game. And then I was like 14 or 15. And when we were walking home from the baseball game, there was so many people waiting in line for the tee. You know how it is after a game. So we decided to just fucking walk upstairs and see what this Taekwondo school was all about. And as I was walking up the stairs I was hearing the sound and it was like whoop like it was a whoop and what it was was this guy kicking this heavy bag and the bag was flying and the kachink was the chains that was holding the bag and I got up there at the top of

the stairs and watch this guy John John Lee, who was the national champion who was training for the World Cup. So he's at his peak of training and he was doing a spinning back kick over and over again into this heavy bag. And I remember watching it and I could not believe what he could do. I couldn't believe the power that this guy could generate in that kick and he became like a mentor to me and uh this guy who was like this wild street guy from Chelsea Massachusetts who was this elite Taekwondo fighter like he wasn't like

you know like bow like he was like hey what's up man what the fuck you doing man he was a funny dude he would like eat food right before he fought ah fuck these people man i'm gonna fuck these dudes up he was a street guy who was really good at martial arts i mean he bowed and said yes sir to everybody and all that stuff but when people were not around he was just cool he was hanging out he had drug problems there's a lot going on but in that moment where I saw him he was in the he was 27 years old He was in the prime of his career, and he was the lead of the elite and that's how he got hooked I got hooked hooked hooked mine saying I I went there the next day I signed up and I was there every fucking day every day. Yeah, I became obsessed

Interesting so I didn't want to do anything that fucked me up. And my, my friend, Jimmy, his cousin was selling Coke. And I knew his cousin, Mike, from like when he wasn't selling Coke, like he was a mechanic. He's a cool guy, you know, fix my car for me. He's a fucking guy from the neighborhood. We hang out with him. And then him and his girl got into Coke bad. He was selling Coke. And then he was just fucking just emaciated he looked like he got bit by a vampire and they would hide in there they had an attic apartment they would just go in that attic apartment and do coke every day and i was like fuck coke that's hardcore to get like hooked like that he got hooked well he was also selling it so he had all this access to coke but it was people in the neighborhood i saw them doing coke

and they just wanted to do coke all the time they wanted to get out and do coke and as a kid who was like finally i was a loser my whole life and then finally when i was 15 i found this thing that i got obsessed with that changed the way people looked at me like i was now all of a sudden i was good at something like really good at something and then i became state champion four years in a row and i won the u.s open and i won these national tournaments and it was a big fucking deal for me so i was like i am not doing anything to jeopardize that right and coke to me was the big one like i knew that that was it i feel like if i got drunk in which i did occasionally i would feel like shit the next day i couldn't train well i was hung over and i'd get beat up and sparring i was like i can't do this so i just

cut most partying like i smoked pot a handful of times i got drunk a handful of times during high school and in my early 20s and then uh i just in the comedy world coke was a problem with there too i sue i saw all when i i used to work at nick's comedy Stop in Boston. Yeah, sure. And they offered to pay me in Coke or money. Like when you work there for a weekend, like you want to get paid in Coke or you want to get paid in money? And even trade? Like same amount of Coke, the dollar value? Some guys went half-half. Yeah.

Some guys went half-half. I guess if you like it, it's easy access. But there were so many guys that got hooked on Coke. I knew so many guys that had Coke problems. And I was like, that is a pitfall. I wanted to succeed. And I felt like that was one. And also it was a drug that got you hyped up.

And I like being hyped up. And my friend Jimmy said this to me. He goes, don't do coke. You'll like it. I was like, oh, no. I'll never forget this. It was me and my friend Steve. We were driving home from Kelly's Roast Beef in Revere, massachusetts and we're overrated yeah it's a little overrated the beef is but

yeah the clams are pretty good yeah so we were we were driving and there was a car next to us and they had the dome light on and there was a girl in the back seat doing blow off a mirror so she's there yeah doing blow and she looks over at us, and I'm looking over at her, and she goes, just for no reason. Just fuck you. I mean, that's Revere Beach. But that's Coke, too. Yeah. And I was like, no Coke.

And then I also had another buddy who got arrested who was selling Coke, and he got arrested for murder. And this was a scary murder where they beat- How close were you with this guy? He's a training partner of mine? Heesh, yeah, I knew him very well. I don't think he did that murder. He might have did that murder I don't he what he did some shit. He wound up going to jail. He went to jail for quite a long time Quite a few years and then he came out and he was just a totally different person He came out super jacked and all he had a bunch of like really bad tattoos and all of them were now these heavy keloid scars.

Like he had like burned off his tattoos or cut off his tattoos or some shit. I don't know what he did in prison. He was real vague about it. But when he came out, like he was a fucking different human. He was an animal. You didn't want if you sparred him like when we sparred, they weren't sparring matches. They were fights. Like they were full on fights.

Like we would spar like we were trying to kill each other. It was very dangerous. And he was doing, I know he was selling coke and doing coke. And then he got arrested for this murder where they took this guy. And again, I don't know if he did but he did he did get arrested and then released they broke all the bones in this guy's body with a hammer and they kept injecting him with cocaine to keep him awake what yeah and then they cut his hands off and they cut his head off and then they left his body somewhere and that i think the idea of cutting his hands off was to hide his fingerprints. And then this dude got arrested for that crime.

And I was like, geez. So it was more evidence to me like coke is fucking crazy business. I mean, yeah, well, you just described a guy. It's not funny, but, I mean, getting all his bones smashed with a hammer, his hands, did you say his head cut off? Yeah, they cut his head off, cut his hands off. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's like pretty bad. It's the baddest of the bad.

It's horrible shit. But I knew a lot of guys like that. I knew a lot of, because of the martial arts, there was a lot of really tough guys that gravitated towards. I truly hope you didn't know a lot of guys like that. I didn't know a lot of guys like that i didn't know a lot of guys like that but i knew i knew guys who were hit men i knew a guy was a hit man for whitey bulger i trained him i trained him i remember like teaching him shit because i was once after like a year or two of uh doing taekwondo i my instructor offered me uh a job and I was basically like teaching the younger, uh, like,

uh, lower belt classes, teaching them basic techniques. And I would teach like early classes and kids classes and stuff like that in, in exchange for training. So I didn't have to pay for training anymore. And I get a key to the school. I could go anytime I wanted. It was like, they would do that with like the, uh, uh prospects people that they thought really could have a potential and so i was teaching a lot of people and i was teaching this one guy and i remember he goes you wanted to kill somebody where would you hit him it was like a real question it wasn't like an asshole just fucking around like if i was going to kill somebody it's like if you want to kill somebody where would you hit him i was like the neck maybe that's what, where would you hit him? I was like, the neck maybe?

He goes, that's what I think, so I'll do probably the neck. What a crew you were running with. It was very strange. Well, most people were respectable, but it's like, you know, if you have hundreds and hundreds of students and your business is teaching people how to fuck people up, you're gonna get bad people that wanna learn those skills.

That guy went away, and I knew a couple guys who went away who were in the South Boston mob. And that was the reason why Dana moved out of Boston, the South Boston mob. They were shaking him down when he was running a boxing gym. It was scary. There were scary fucking people. That's the Whitey Bulger situation because he was in bed with the FBI. They were letting him kill people.

They were letting him sell drugs. Departed. Yeah. The movie. Yeah. Departed sell drugs. The Barted. Yeah, the movie. Yeah, right. The Barted, yeah. That's real. That was all going on when I was a kid in Boston,

and I was connected to people that wound up, like a good friend of mine who was a comic, his brother was in Whitey Bulger's crew and wound up getting arrested and going to jail. His brother that I knew very well from the gym. So I knew a few of those guys. Yeah. I don't have any of those stories.

I grew up in a little suburb. I did too. Granted. I grew up in Newton. I was living in Newton. Yeah, no, that. But the school was in Boston. So I would go into Boston

and most of my friends were from the inner city. Most of my friends were from Chelsea and city. Most of my friends were from Chelsea and, you know, Dorchester and these, you know, young, tough kids who would come from these, you know, bad neighborhoods and bad households. Those are the ones that made the best fighters. Well, that's still true. Oh, yeah, for sure. So. Still getting. That's how I kept the fuck away from coke people don't believe me they think i'm

lying why would i lie i tell the truth about everything yeah people always there was a phase where everyone called me a coke head i'm not like i've handful this is a barstool like people make fun of it but i've done coke less than a handful of times adderall yes coke no well my friend duncan trussell has a great joke about Adderall. The Adderall is like someone did Coke and they were a scientist and they're like, I can fix this. Maybe. No, Adderall. I was warned even for this podcast.

They're like, don't do too much Adderall. You'll talk too much. It's like, but I did a little. How much do you do? I've toned it down, but like, you know, a 30 a day. If I have to think, it makes me feel like I can cure cancer. Really? Yeah, it makes me, I love it.

Like, I don't get jittery, at least I don't think I do. Coffee, Adderall, I like, it gets the brain going. But I have tried to wean off of it because I don't want it not to work when I need it. Right, right. So you want it to be a tool. Yeah. Well, we were just looking that up last night and we were trying to figure out how many people are on Adderall and there was 41 million prescriptions, I think in 2020. 41 million. Now, how many of those are-

Fake? No. It's like how many people are doing it? If you have 41 million prescriptions, like, well, you get a prescription, like if you get a prescription, is it for 30 days or for 60 days? Like, how many prescriptions do you get a year? Like, how many humans are we talking about? I mean, that's- 41 million prescriptions. Like, how many people? If it's 41 million people on Adderall, we get a fucking messed up country.

You know? Everyone's like, you'll wait. I mean, for documentation that it's really bad for you, but who knows? Well, is coffee really bad? Coffee is good for you. Some of it. I've gone to war on this. There's studies that say it's pretty good for you.

There's some studies that say it's bad for you. They used to say that it dehydrated you. You can find out with everything. But now they find out that coffee actually can hydrate you. That I don't believe. Yeah, it is. It's coffee actually can hydrate you. That I don't believe. Yeah, it is. It's liquid. Coffee hydrates you.

See, that's, it can't. I know what it does to me. But it makes you urinate because it does, it is in some ways, it dehydrates you because it is a stimulant. But you're also drinking in so much liquid that it doesn't dehydrate you. Like people, Google that. Make sure that's true. I think you can find both. I think you can find both.

I think you can find both. Here it is. Does coffee hydrate you? The answer is yes. Coffee does count towards your daily water intake. However, drinking huge amounts of caffeine can be dehydrating. That may be from big coffee, though. It could be.

That's because the increase in urination can result in a higher risk of dehydration. I don't think it is. It's on the coffee website. Yeah, right. It's a coffee website. Yeah, right. It's from Big Coffee. But the thing is, I don't think they need to say coffee's okay. Everybody's hooked on coffee. I fucking love the stuff.

Mayo Clinic. Caffeinated drinks can contribute to your daily food requirement. All right, good. Listen, I'm a coffee guy, so the better the- I am too. I love it. I love coffee. But I love a little bit of, I like a little guy, so the better the... I am too. I love it. I love coffee. But I love a little bit of...

I like a little cigar. I like weed. I like a little booze. I just... I feel like it's a balance thing. Like, I don't want to be a teetotaler, and I do Sober October every year where I don't do shit. But at the end of the day, I think a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of...

You just got to take care of your body. You got to know when you're overdoing it, know when you're doing too much, make sure you take vitamins, make sure you recover, do a bunch of different things to take care of your fucking meat vehicle. But as long as you do that, I feel like. I mean, anything in moderation is probably fine. Look, if you're training for a fight, don't drink, you know, don't do Coke. Don't, meanwhile, John Jones did and greatest of all time.

Right. This is one of the greatest fucking quotes ever. When he was in a press conference with Daniel Cormier after their first fight, he goes, I beat you when I was doing coke. I feel like a lot of the fighters are probably doing stuff. The elite of the elite aren't. No, I mean, other than Jon, most of those guys are not partying at all. Most of those guys are just like... In training, yeah.

They're just trying to maximize their... You know, there's one moment of 25 minutes in a championship fight, and you've got to be fully fucking... If you're fighting Israel Adesanya or Alex Pajero, and you have that fucking cage locks, you don't want to have any thought like I should have got more sleep or I shouldn't have got drunk last week or I shouldn't have this or I shouldn't have that. At the elite levels, everything has to be on point.

These guys are so good. You have to have your recovery, your diet, your nutrition, all the fucking modalities have to be on point to compete at the elite of the elite level. Unless you're Jon Jones. But even Jon Jones. Jon Jones was so goddamn talented and still is that if he just did none of that and just trained like a fucking Spartan and was a samurai about everything, it would have been unstoppable.

He wouldn't have have those close fights like when he fought alexander gustafson he didn't even train didn't even fucking train and he beat him but it was a close close fight close close fight but then when him and gustafson fought the second time he beat the fucking brakes off gustafson see because he wanted to let everybody know like this this is Jon Jones when he's ready and prepared, motherfuckers. See, I'm like a top... I'm a casual MMA guy. Like, those fights, I don't know. If there's a big fight,

interesting, top of the name, then I get it. But I'm not watching, like, the weeklies. Mm. Yeah, I get it. I mean, look,

I only watch one sport. No, I know. For me... That's what everyone said to me. Just heads up. He's not a sports guy. He's an MMA guy. I don't know jack shit about sports, and I'm friends with Aaron Rodgers.

I know. I heard that story coming in. I love that guy, but I don't know jack shit about his sport. Meanwhile, my wife is a crazy football fan. It's really funny. My wife's mom is a crazy football fan, Green Bay Packers fan. She wants to meet Aaron Rodgers. So that's unrelated.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, but sports to me are great. I love sports. I love them. I love that people do them. I love athletes. I love discipline and commitment. I love excellence.

But I only have so much time in the day, and I have to just – what excites me? What excites me is combat sports. I watch very obscure kickboxing matches from Thailand. You know, like if you see me on my phone and I'm just like sitting somewhere, I'm probably watching some weird grappling match, you know, that's taking place in fucking Uzbekistan or some shit. That's what I like to do. You have the background in it.

But that's what's interesting to me. I like combat sports. It's not that I don't like sports. It's just I don't have any time. I mean, I went to a soccer game recently in Austin. It was fucking great. I was like, this is amazing. It was so much fun.

But am I following soccer? I don't have the time. There's not enough. I can't get obsessed with some other fucking disciplines. Yeah. No, I hear that. But to me, combat sports are the ultimate because the consequences are so high, the excitement so high. There's nothing to me like a world championship UFC fight.

There's nothing like it, man. Then when Bruce Buffer is red in the face and he's like, it's time! The whole place goes, ah! He leaps off the ground. They had him. So I went to Michigan. I was at the football game there in the semis.

They lost, but he did the call for that. They had him out there. He's the fucking man. Bruce Buffer is the greatest announcer in the history of the human race. No one gets more pumped up. That guy, he bleeds it. It's crazy, the family. Oh, yeah.

You know they didn't know each other? They grew up separate. He didn't find out he was his brother until he was like 30. Yes. I didn't know that. Yes. That's crazy. The reason why the UFC got Bruce Buffer was because they didn't have the money from Michael Buffer.

And his brother Bruce was like, I can do it. In the beginning, he was kind of, you know, he was learning how to do it. No, I had no idea. I figured it was just in the family. They grew up together. Look, if you go back and listen to my early days of commenting i was terrible if you go back and listen to bruce buffer's early days of announcing he wasn't as good as he is now he just yeah he was learning how to do it now he's the fucking man yeah if you told me that he could eclipse michael

and you could argue either way because i am a boxing guy he's done the biggest fights but you know are you ready to rumble I would have said not in a million years he's eclipsed him by far look Michael Buffer's the fucking man too let's get ready to rumble that though that nothing eclipses that like it's pretty god damn good

Bruce doesn't have one catchphrase that everybody knows. Yes, it's time. It's time. If you go to a UFC fight, the whole audience cheers with him. They do it. Yeah, no, you're right.

You're right. You're right. It's just different because Let's Get Ready to Rumble was the first. It was iconic. Let's get ready to rumble. And he has a beautiful, silky smooth voice. Michael Buffer's voice is fantastic. They're very different deliveries.

Very different. But Bruce is perfect for cage fighting. That's Bruce. Let me hear this. He looks like he's 12. I thought Buffer had the potential. He's about him. Oh, it's a documentary about him.

Jeremy Horn. That's the old days. Did you watch the original UFCs? I mean, like when Hoyce Gracie would beat people in his, what do they call the... The guard? No, the... The kimono? He'd choke them out in the gi.

You didn't even know what happened. Well, the gi's brilliant for a jiu-jitsu player because the gi makes people grab it. They grab it. They don't even, just instinctively, there's clothes there, you grab grab it and then he just drags you yeah and he beat like five guys in a night oh yeah i didn't find out about the ufc until ufc2 i had heard out i heard about it and then i watched ufc2 uh i rented it like a blockbuster or something and i remember immediately i was like oh my yeah i was hooked right away on too. I also was like an eye-opening experience because I was a kickboxer. So I was a stand-up fighter.

I was a striker. And then I was watching this guy just grab a hold of people and get them to the ground and trip them. I'm like, is it that easy? Is it that easy to fuck me up? I wrestled in high school for a year. Like maybe I could stand up on my feet. And then I went to jujitsu classes and got mauled.

And I was like, oh, my God, I'm helpless. Like, I had this totally distorted perception of my abilities. I was like, I'm a good kickboxer. If somebody comes up to me, I'll fuck them up. And I had this whole idea in my head. And then, like, jujitsu, like, I'm sure it's good and everything, but I could avoid all their bullshit. No. I got just mauled and manhandled.

I remember thinking, like, after a few classes like oh my god i'm fucking helpless and i thought i wasn't that's most people most people have this idea in their head like oh my fucking mentality i see red body start dropping like you you're helpless you're like a child you're a child to someone who knows how to fight. You really don't know until you experience it. And so I think what UFC did is it opened everybody's eyes to jiu-jitsu and how effective jiu-jitsu is and how it's so much different than every other martial art because if you're a good athlete and you're strong, you can hit hard,

there's always a swinging chance. If you're in a fight with someone and you sucker punch them or something happens, but in a jujitsu match or a guy was a jujitsu black belt, there's no chance for like a lucky submission. There's no chance for you winning. You have zero chance. If they clinch you, you're fucked. You don't even know how to stop it.

You don't know what to do. All of a sudden you're tripped. You're inside control. You're like, what is this? Why is this knee on my chest? I still don't know watching it. You don't know what to do. All of a sudden, you're tripped. You're inside control. You're like, what is this? Why is this knee on my chest? I still don't know watching it. I've been ringside for a couple of times. I don't know enough about it.

I don't even know when someone's necessarily in trouble. It's like because I'm a novice watching it. Well, they used to have these earpieces that they would hand out. They would sell at the concession stand. It was like a little local radio. And you could put it on, you can hear the commentary, which was great.

But I don't know what happened. They stopped doing that. It would be a good thing for people to have because it's like, I think if I was watching in the audience, I think I might also buy it on ESPN Plus and then listen to the commentary in like an AirPod.

I think that's the way to do it because like when Daniel Cormier is explaining wrestling like to this day when he's explaining shit to me like I'm all ears when he's talking about clinch positions and you know what what's important and what what a person has to do in this spot or that spot and then when it goes to the ground like when I'm explaining transitions and I'm explaining when someone's okay when they're not okay and now they're fucked yeah and what he's going to do is this and then the person does it like for people that follow along at home that was in the early days of the ufc that helped the ufc very much because otherwise like it's just a scramble of bodies on the ground you don't know what's happening right you need someone to walk

you through it in a step-by-step way. And so if you don't have access to commentary, I think that does hurt the experience a little bit. But if you do have access to commentary. But it's also electric live because the crowd's electric. Everyone knows. So you get a sense. Like, well, I may not know. I get a sense from the crowd. Yeah.

Because the crowd rises and gets, like like super loud when somebody's a little bit of trouble yeah well in a stand-up fight there's nothing like that's like adesanya versus pejera like that kind of fight like it's there's nothing like being there live because you if you see pejera throwing those fucking death hooks at him and like yeah right you know what's happening it's very clear to see what's going on everybody understands that but then the ground is where it gets a little more complicated for people i have a question for you okay when spotify you did spotify did you care when all that was going on with spotify with like the people revolting against you at spotify or did you just not give a at all well the people at spotify weren't there was just a couple of people that

were like tech people that were upset but so then how did that become such a big story the real story was the medical misinformation story that's where things got weird and there was a lot of people that were behind that that you know democratic super PACs and there's a lot of shit it was like very organized but that was because of having people like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough that were telling a narrative that was contrary to what was going on in the public about vaccines and about the efficacy and about the dangers and about COVID and the actual dangers of COVID and also alternative treatments, whether or not they were effective, whether or not the information is being suppressed.

That stuff got creepy. Did you care? Is it more like, because from outside looking in, you had built this thing up all yourself, took a paycheck, but signed it over to Spotify. To me, that would be, I was curious what your thought process, at any point, you're like, I wish I just kept this to myself. I don't need this headache. No, because I would have done the same thing and I would have been banned from YouTube.

I would have been in trouble in other ways. It was a matter of a time where talking about certain things was very taboo. And I talk about everything. very taboo. And I talk about everything. And when I had access to someone like Robert Malone, who owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology, and that guy who got vaccinated was telling you about a terrible cardiac event that happened to him while he got vaccinated, and then him doing the research on mRNA vaccines and the benefits as well as the adverse side effects and as well as what the actual studies showed in terms of efficacy, the fact that they never really showed that they could stop transmission, that they were lying about that. It's going to stop it in its tracks. There was no information about that. In fact, there was a woman in Pfizer that had to talk to the European Parliament and they asked her like does

it did you do research to see if it stopped transmission she said no so they all they knew is that it created antibodies and everybody wanted the pandemic to be over and everybody wanted it and they feel like this is our way out of this and it was like that was the narrative Rachel Maddow was like if you get this vaccine you get this vaccine, you won't get COVID. You won't spread COVID. The virus stops with you. We all now know that is horseshit and that's a lie. And this guy was telling me that over a year ago. And when I started talking about that, it became a real fucking issue. But my perspective was like, look, if it's true, it's true. And the chips will fall where they may. And if the only way people are getting this information is through me, that's fucking crazy. But that's also the cross I have

to bear. This is what it is. I'm talking to this guy. I'm fascinated by it personally. I want to know. I mean, he was wildly disparaged. So was Dr. Peter McCullough, wildly disparaged. But turns out he was accurate. And as more and more information gets out over time, it will show what happened, how they were suppressed, how there was active campaigns to silence them, and how those campaigns were funded. And that's what we're finding out right now. So it was an uncomfortable time for sure, especially when people like, you know, fucking Neil Young. Oh, I loved Neil Young. You know, but, you know, you know, fucking Neil Young. Oh, I loved Neil Young. You know, but, you know, Neil Young, I don't know if this is true or not. Somebody told me that after I released my video explaining how a lot of the stuff that they called misinformation in the past that would get kicked you off is now mainstream news.

Like the fact the lab leak hypothesis. If you talked about the lab leak hypothesis on YouTube at the beginning of the pandemic, you would have been fucking canceled. They would have pulled you off of YouTube. They would have suppressed your episodes. They would have canceled. Now that's on the cover

of fucking Newsweek. Right. Right? And now most scientists and epidemiologists and virologists are porting towards that as the likely scenario

that is a lab leak. I had Brett Weinstein, who is a evolutionary biologist on Yesterday, and he explained why a lab leak. I had Brett Weinstein, who is a evolutionary biologist on yesterday, and he explained why that lab leak hypothesis is most likely correct in scientific terms that are like mind boggling. So was it good? No, but it is what it is, you know, and you know, my perspective is, look, it could be, I'm in a very unusual, unfortunate situation. And sometimes you find yourself in a place in life where you have to figure out what you're going to do.

Are you going to not talk to these people because of pressure when you think these people are telling the truth? Or are you going to let the chips fall where they may? So that was over because from, again, totally outside, it seemed like a big deal. Like it seemed like a big thing within Spotify. It seemed you're saying it wasn't as big though it's just small like you weren't getting that for me is the bit almost all the stuff you said whether it was true or not true i think you believed it was true that's all that kind of matters it turns out a lot of it was but it's uh there's similarities you did it it so long yourself and then Spotify was under a ton of pressure. Didn't they delete some of your episodes?

Yeah. Well, they did that and they also were very apprehensive about certain guests that I had on. And there was a lot of pressure from advertisers. There was a lot of pressure from different people. They were like different artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their stuff. And it was touch and go. But again, over time, it showed that that was all true. And then all that went away.

Yeah. And so it was the right. Now, if I was wrong. Now, imagine if I was wrong. And imagine. Well, not even me. I shouldn't say I was wrong because I wasn't really the one who was saying these things these things were mostly being said by experts But if those experts turned out to be horseshit that would be devastating

Like if it did cause the death of millions of people because these guys were lying Yeah, people didn't take something that could have saved them and you know, but turns out that's not really the case and turns out There was alternate therapies and alternate different medications that were suppressed. Not only that, the information about simple things like vitamin D and exercise and the benefits of those things and how that was suppressed, about how obesity contributes to COVID, that was all suppressed. None of that stuff was being discussed. Awareness. beats to COVID. That was all suppressed. None of that stuff was being discussed. And so it's just one of those things where you find out that the more things change,

the more they remain the same. Pharmaceutical companies from the fucking beginning of their industry have been full of shit. They make great stuff. They make Adderall. You love it. They make Viagra. They make cancer medications at work. They make all these different things that are wonderful for people, all these different things that save people. But really what they're in the business of is making money. That's what they're in the business of. 100%. And when something comes along that fucking steps on their money, they don't like it.

You know? Yeah. Like I said, for me, it was almost the bigger issue of how you, I was curious how you were dealing with it. Meaning? I'll just keep on keeping on. Just keep doing it. Was that relationship ever close to being severed because of that or no? I don't think so. I don't know though. You know, I don't know from them. My relationship with them was always great in communicating with them.

They stood by me the way they stand by rappers. And it was one of the things they said, like, think about all the shit that rappers say. But they stood by you for the same reason you're saying everything else you make them money yes like they probably weren't standing by you because we think he's got smart guys joe rogan we like joe they're staying by you because you're the biggest podcast a friend of mine who's a brilliant businessman said you have the number one podcast in 96 countries if you had the number 96 podcast in one country, you'd have been gone. Correct. Yeah. And that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. And that's everything. Yeah. But that's,

that's why for whatever reason, you know, I found myself in the position I found myself in. Like, that's, that's who you are right now. That's, that's your, your place in life. And you have to just be who you are. You can't change because of the pressure. You can't just decide to become a different person because there's all this pressure on you because you're scared. Right. Then I'd quit. I wouldn't want to do it anymore. I would go do it for free.

There was a point in time I was like, what would I do if I lost all of it? And I thought about it very carefully, and I said, I would just do it for free. If I lost all my ads and all my advertisers, I would still have the number one podcast but no advertisers. Okay. I'd just do it for free. If I lost all my ads and all my advertisers, I would still have the number one podcast, but no advertisers. Okay.

I'll just do it for free. I'll just, you know, cut my spending down a little bit. Still do stand up. I keep doing the same shit. Yeah. Well, I mean, you don't need advertisers. You can do that in this day and age. This is a different world.

You know, the fact that an independent media organization, whether it's like Breaking Points or Substack, can exist and have millions of subscribers and millions of people that pay attention. This is a different world. Totally. This is not a world where you're on fucking ESPN and you get caught doing coke and they just fire you. That's a different – they live in a different world than I do. I live in the world of social media and the world of online platforms. Well, you're direct consumer. Direct to consumer. It's a different thing. And I've had a lot world than I do. I live in the world of social media and the world of online platforms. Direct-to-consumer.

It's a different thing. And I've had a lot of offers to do that. There was a lot of people that were these fucking huge billionaire people who came to me and said, Listen, we can take this and go straight to subscriber model. And then you never have to deal with anybody ever telling you what to do again. Right. And I thought about that. But I'm like, but also Spotify has been great to me. I have a great relationship with the CEO of Spotify.

He's my boy. I love that dude. So, you know, I stick with them. They stick with me. We're good. And it works. It's a, it's a fucking very unique thing that I got in right at the right time where YouTube was demonetizing people. And they, that was one of the ways they got people to self-center, self-censor rather. They demonetized people that talked about controversial subjects and they demonetized a lot. That was one of the things that we found about when we left YouTube, because we had a really good relationship with YouTube and most of our episodes were monetized, but every now and then they would demonetize an episode and we would try to, Jamie would, um, you know, he would protest it or, you know, he would, uh, dispute it and, you know, put in a request for review and sometimes they

would reverse it and sometimes they weren't. And it was like this weird touch and go game where like, who is telling me what I can and can't say? Who the fuck are these people? And why are they in my life? Why am I making decisions based on whether or not some fucking dork who has this subjective opinion of whether or not something should be discussed or not discussed? Right. And so when we left Spotify, we left YouTube and went to Spotify, all that stopped. The moment we left YouTube, the moment we got a deal with Spotify, we were on YouTube for several months.

They didn't demonetize any of our shit during that time. They just took in all the revenue. They stopped demonetizing us completely. So it was an increase in revenue by somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30%, because that's the amount of podcasts that they would demonetize. The revenue just went sky high. I was like, this is wild. This is really fascinating. And if I stayed over there during the whole COVID shit, during the Neil Young stuff and everything, dude, it would have been bad. They would have probably yanked me off of YouTube. They'd have probably killed my account. They

could have done it. They did it to manyanked me off of YouTube. They'd have probably killed my account. They could have done it. They did it to many people. They killed many people's accounts for wrong reasons. And those reasons now are being like very clearly exposed as being incorrect. Right. Huh. Fascinating. That was,

uh, yeah, I always wondered that part. It feels very weird though. It was felt very weird. But the thing is I kept kept doing stand-up. And when I'd go on stand-up, people would go fucking crazy when I'd go on stage. Yeah, well, the thing you have, I've said this in the past, similar, I think, to Barstool.

You've been doing it so long, so your audience knows very well who you are. Yeah. So it's not like what Neil Young or anybody said. It's not going to affect your base because your base is very real and they've been with you forever. In fact, I gained 2 million subscribers during that month. 2 million. That makes sense to me.

Yeah. So that was what was wild about it. It had the opposite effect that was intended. Well, that always does. Lil Fats O'Brien's Delta was on CNN talking shit about me. I'm like, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. That's been Barstool from day one. The more people attack, the more your base grows, and they almost become more ravenous.

They do become more ravenous, especially in response to someone like Brian Stelter. Yep. Because you see that guy talking like, who the fuck are you? Right. Like, imagine a world where that guy's your best friend. Well, that is is so of all the people have come at me and a lot of people say it so you can take kind of with a grain of salt if someone writes a hit piece someone i always say let's sit down i'll bring my cameras you bring

yours yeah and we can both do whatever nobody ever has taken me up on that ever and now that's interesting because that takes away their power ever ever they love to be able to edit and take your stuff and you can just see how their body language is and whatever because i see who they are correct yeah because i'm confident i know there's things i've said that you know with time culture environment they don't come across i would have worded differently said different jokes whatever But I'm comfortable with, I've never, I always got a kick out of it. There's accounts that hate me. They deleted their entire like Twitter profiles. They just went back like delete everything.

We've never deleted anything really. It's all out there. You want to find it, it's there. But I'm comfortable with who I am. So if you have this big problem with me, wouldn't you want your subject to sit and be like open book? You can do it live. You can do all the footage they never do it not once because they're not trying to have an objective analysis of who you are and you get to see them yeah like you get to see what type of person how

they are are they normally not normal do they squirm and they know your base will come for them yes that too which we've had. People have criticized me for that because there is a theory out there and I'm sure they say it with you that I have a responsibility because we have this base. So somebody throws a jab at me on Twitter or says something,

I have the responsibility not to respond. If it's an individual that's not connected to a media? No, they say anybody. That's ridiculous. Yeah, that's what I say. Because that person also has a base that person has a platform and twitter is a public square you're tagging me you're saying like i don't have to bite my tongue even within barstool people feel differently they're like well don't do it because it does reflect you know you can't control everybody and we do have idiots who will say stuff that's too far over the edge. Yeah. How do you stop that?

You can't. But at the same time, I'm not just going to let someone go there and take shots at me. It's like that's not my nature. It's never been my nature. So that sometimes I've tried to be a little better with it, but it's not the best. But it's an interesting thing because this is all very new. Like the idea of podcasts and these independent platforms that reach millions of people has never existed in human history. There's never been anything like this. So guys like you and guys like me and people that are doing it, there's no roadmap to follow. Now for young guys coming up or young girls coming up, like young non-binary folks coming up, they get to look at what we're doing and they see a little bit of a roadmap.

So for people that are getting involved in this right now, I love the fact that some 17-year-old kid in Michigan in his fucking apartment or his bedroom can start a podcast. And if people like it, they keep tuning in and then it can grow and it can and it can get to a point where that person could be the number one podcaster in the world you see it with like twitch streamers and youtubers it's a fucking amazing time it levels the playing field you don't need a network talent generally if you do it enough can rise it's more than leveling the playing field because you're uninhibited you You're unhindered by corporate interests. So you have this ability to talk about things in a way that like there was never a long form discussion of complicated ideas

for hours and hours uncensored that ever existed before. Didn't exist until podcasts came along. censored that ever existed before. Didn't exist until podcasts came along. So it's not even a level playing field. Like they're working hindered. They have ads. They have to cut every fucking seven minutes and go to commercial break. They have corporate interests that like review what they're doing. They have to have meetings with managers and executives. I don't have any of that. Zero. So it's not level at all. I have a monstrous advantage above and beyond. I'm drunk and executives. I don't have any of that. Zero. So it's not level at all. I have a monstrous advantage above and beyond. I'm drunken high on 45% of the podcasts that I do. Like, what are you talking? There's no, it's the advantage is a hundred percent on my side because it didn't exist before. And I'm a pioneer. I'm one of the early guys. So because I've been around it now

for 13 years, I've been doing it for 13 13 years i've amassed a following that's been paying attention for so long it's like it's not it's not even that's also why i think you're perceived well i don't think i know as a threat because you you you can say what you want and you can also influence politics, whatever it may be, and they can't get to you, really. Well, I don't know if that should be perceived as a threat. I think they're looking at it the wrong way. If they were an individual, I would say you shouldn't look at it that way. You should look at, like, what are the benefits of doing something in the way that that person does and whether or not you can adjust and do whether – You don't think they – you don't think you don't

think like i'm sure they do but i'm what i would say if they were an individual i know they're a corporation so it's sort of a different entity but if they were an individual i would tell them you're looking at it the wrong way if someone's out there killing it don't look at that person as a threat look at that person's like what do they do how they do that why they do that so differently why is it so effective like what maybe what's the flaws in my delivery what's the flaws in my application what's the flaws in the way i'm promoting my thing and why doesn't that resonate with people you know if you if you have someone who speaks like a normal person like who speaks like you would if you're having a drink with a buddy, that resonates

with people. They go, oh, I get Dave Portnoy. He's a fucking regular guy. Totally. I get it. I like to listen to him, even if I don't agree with him. At least I know where he's coming from. That's a regular person.

When you're listening to Don Lemon talk, you don't get any of that. You get there's a way of discussing things that you know. If that guy was in your living room talking like that, you'd be like, what's wrong with you? We've got to get him out of here. He's crazy. I think he's on drugs. Right.

Yeah, no, 100%. Nobody talks like that. Nobody talks like a news anchor when they're alone with you. Right? So that's one of the reasons why Greg Gutfeld works. Right? When that guy's doing his show, when they're sitting around with a bunch of people talking

they're laughing right they're talking normal normal normal normal that's why it works so well people like how is that the number one late night show how's it not right how's it not look at what he's doing he's him that's across i mean that's across the board like we just so we just did our first we had the rights to a college football game and we announced it as though we had a rooting interest because we did. And people, half the people loved it, half hated it. But even the people hate it. It's like, this is how we talk in our living room. That's what people want.

They want just normal. That's what people want. Yeah. We used to do fight companions when I lived in LA. Me and Brendan Schaub and Brian Count and Eddie Bravo. We would do these fight companions where we would sit down and watch the UFC and talk shit and drink and get fucked that's the man in cast which you're not football guy but that's what it is same kind of yeah second screens those fight

companions would get way more views than the UFC would because people would like to listen to and they would also listen to us we would let them sync it up we would give them the exact time that the fight because it was like a bit of a delay because of the networks and all that shit so we would tell them and it also if they were watching the fights afterwards like they had to work and then after they got off work they could sync it up i'd give them like on the first fight we're at five seconds six seconds seven seconds eight so they could pause that at eight seconds rewind rewind their thing to eight seconds, bam. And so they were with us, and they would listen to that instead of the commentary.

100%. I mean, we did that with normal sport. We had the same thing. We would turn the cameras early on us, like the Barstool people watching sports, in our biggest moments because everyone wants a fan. Like someone hits a home run against your – the biggest is always when your team loses people like to watch someone die on camera which is great but it's the fan experience it always works and that is what works with podcasts if someone's interesting yes if someone but if they're not god so fucking annoying like if you like i watch a lot of uh professional pool and uh there's a lot of telling me that yeah i'm addicted

and then there's uh these like pool commentators that are just fucking amateurs they're terrible and they talk too much and then there's guys like jeremy jones it's amazing and i can't wait to listen to him or earl strickland but the guys who are bad they ruin it like i just turn the volume down i don't want to hear them talk they talk they're stupid they talk too much yeah they don't know what they're doing you know it's just it's just if it's just, if it's good, but if it's good, it'll, it'll, it'll resonate. People will like it. If it's not, it won't. I mean, that's what it's supposed to be all about. That's what people are supposed to have the freedom to do something that other people enjoy. And that's the most unique thing about this time is this time. You don't have to have any qualifications.

You don't have to have any background and broadcasting from a specific institution or any of that you just be yourself do your thing and even us when we've hired people from networks it's crazy first the internet the network people generally flame out with us a little bit because they want, they're expecting like a producer to be like, you got to do this. This is set up where people who are kind of born from the internet, they've gotten on our radar or wherever they are by just doing themselves. Like you don't need anybody really. I always, that drives me nuts when people apply for us and like, I can do this. I can do that. It's like, you don't need us.

You should have like a library that I can just go watch you. Why do you need Barstool? You don't need anything. It's so easy to create your own content without any help, really. But they'd like to be connected with Barstool because Barstool is a brand that also has a gigantic following already attached. So they know if they hook up with you, they'll get an audience. We can be the gasoline. Yeah yeah so we can blow somebody up but if you don't have it and you're not motivated like the example that i've given call her daddy which i think is second to you on spotify uh do you know

that are you blank you give me a blank like you don't know that i don't pay attention do you know you don't even know what it is. I know what Call Her Daddy is. I know the whole controversy. Do you know why I know the whole controversy? No. Because of my boy, Andrew Schultz. Oh, yeah. Andrew Schultz, who was supposed to go on a date with that one girl.

He told me that story. Sophia Franklin. So he bails on the date. She goes out and meets the agent who winds up trying to negotiate this contract. Suit man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell the story from, you know it. Yeah, well, I know it really good.

So call her daddy, Alex Cooper. We saw a sizzle reel that she made. So call her daddy. He's now on Spotify. She got a huge contract, I think like three years, 60 mil. She's great. But we saw a sizzle reel, called her in. I'd never seen anything like the sizzle reel. And she sat down. I'm like, who made this for you? And she's like, I did. I

learned how to edit it. I did all of it. We just hired her on the spot when she said that. She said, oh, by the way, I do it with another girl. I'm bringing her with me. It's like, okay, fine. Didn't even meet the girl, Sophia Franklin at the time. The thing exploded. Now, Barstool has been around close to 20 years. It's no overnight success. You were around for 12 years doing the podcasting. They went from zero to 100. Like within two months, it's all anybody was talking about. Call her daddy, call her daddy.

So we hired them each 70 grand a year, three-year contracts. You can look at, like we'll reevaluate it at the end of the year this thing blew up so quick and they start looking around being like wait a minute we're making 70 grand our numbers we should be making millions they're right they should have been if they were independent and they weren't through us but it's kind of like the band model right the band label you signed to think yeah so we did give them a raise they were each making about 500 grand by the end i think of year one sophia franklin's boyfriend suit man was an executive at hbo and what essentially happened is he started shopping call her daddy around and and we still own them they stopped

putting out the podcast they wouldn't do anything. And they started leaving little clues like, hey, we're being held hostage in so many words by Barstool, making stuff up, frankly. And it got to the point, this is in the middle of COVID, and they wouldn't put out episodes. And we're trying to pay the bills for everybody. So they came over to, and this is like for Barstool lore

and Call Her Daddy, we had a very famous meeting on the roof deck of where I lived. It was Alex and Sophia. And I said, listen, we own the IP. Caller Daddy was ours. And I basically shortened their contract and agreed, I'll give you guys the IP. You guys just work one more year. Somewhere in there. Should have been two more.

They left. I'm like, this is the deal of a lifetime. We need to pay the bills and get them going. Alex calls two days later, and she says, listen, I want to take this deal. Sophia is never going to take this deal. She's in with her boyfriend. They're shopping it around. They're saying all these things.

It's not going to happen. So I called both Sophia and Alex. I said, we're going to do a deal with Alex. Sophia, you come or you don't come, but we're moving forward. Didn't hear anything back from Sophia. Alex, we do the deal with, and it's all because of the boyfriend. We had Scooter Braun. This is also, you know, Scooter Braun, he's Bieber's agent.

He calls, I've never talked to Scooter Braun the like he's Bieber's agent he calls I've never talked to Scooter Braun ever um I got a call from a guy I know Dave Grutman who's like a Miami like nightlife guy he goes hey I got Scooter Braun on the line will you talk to him I go yeah but you tell him everything he says to me is on the record like I don't give a fuck like I'm in my own world I could give a fuck less who Scooter Braun is so So Scooter Braun gets on the phone. He goes, I talked to Sophia Franklin. This is after we already moved along. He's like, I think you should take her back. Do the deal.

I was like, all right, whatever. We're already moving on. Hung up. Made a video instantly. I'm like, Scooter Braun just called me. Who the fuck does Scooter Braun think he is? And the rest is so much history. Alex went, got this huge deal.

She's killing it. Besides you, I think she's just about the biggest podcast out there. And Sophia went on her way. I went nuts. Like, I actually hijacked their stream. Like, we had their stream, and they hadn't posted in maybe two or three months. I just went on. All these Call Her Daddy fans thought it was going to be the next Caller Daddy.

It was just me explaining what the situation was. And all their fans had no idea who I was. Like, who the fuck's this guy? So they went their separate ways. And what actually happened with them behind the scenes, who knows? I believe Alex's side of the events. But it really seemed like he thought he was going to take them, be their manager.

It was what's the big, there was, there was some big network that like basically had the deal ready for them. So it turned into a huge thing. It was all during COVID. It was a big story. What is Sophia doing now? She has her own podcast,

Sophia with an F. She's not my favorite person. She's not my favorite person. Well, I gotta think that people like that are influenced by the people that were... Is that guy still her boyfriend? No. And you know what's crazy? I thought

if you asked me beforehand... That guy cost her millions. Millions. Millions. Millions and millions. Imagine how long that podcast could have kept going. And everything on the IP. And they could have left and gone to Spotify the same way with her attached. And she would be fucking driving a pink Rolls Royce and balling out of control. I don't know that she's doing terribly.

She's certainly not doing what Alex is. And what does Alex do now for a co-host? Does she have a co-host? Solo. Just took it. So it went from splitting it 50-50. She just took it all. Yeah.

That was crazy. Crazy. It's weird when there's one person that's like the driving force behind it, but then another person is connected to it. And like that person thinks that they should be the person. And it was a he said, she said on who was doing it. And then you got a boyfriend who's also in the business. And he, listen, trust me. I got this

I'm gonna handle this money and also he's like the new boyfriends. Who's fucking excited about it all I Mean he's actually a boxing guy. I've never met him. He's a boxing guy. Yeah, he did he did all HBO boxing Interesting, which doesn't exist anymore. No, which is a fucking terrible tragedy. I Used to love HBO Boxing. Me too. Jim Lampley and fucking Roy Jones Jr. Legendary Nights are like the best. Oh my God.

Have you seen those documentaries? Yes, yes. Those are the best. HBO Boxing was one of the greatest institutions that ever existed, and the fact that they went away made me so fucking sad. I couldn't understand why they would do that.

They put on some of the most amazing fights ever. And the broadcast was excellent. Jim Lampley's the best of the best. He was so good.

Other than John Anik, who I think is the goat. John Anik is the greatest play-by-play guy that has ever existed. He's the best. And then Lampley, for me,

was the best in boxing. And Howard Letterman. He was so fucking smooth. Harold Letterman. They had it all. Everybody.pley, for me, was the best in boxing. And Howard Letterman. He was so fucking smooth. Harold Letterman. They had it all. Everybody. I mean, fucking, it was amazing. Yeah.

The different people that they had that would sit in and do commentary. It was fucking perfect. It was the perfect group. It really was. It was perfect for boxing. It always had that big fight feel, but boxing's so fucked up. Yeah. I mean, I love boxing.

Larry Merchant would get all grumpy and shit. But perfect. Remember but boxing's so fucked up. Yeah. I mean, I love boxing. Larry Merchant would get all grumpy and shit. But perfect. Remember when Larry Merchant was in? Perfectly, yeah. Grumpy. Remember when he was in the ring with Floyd Mayweather? I was 20 years younger. I'd kick your ass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's the craziest thing that anybody can ever say ever. You're literally talking to the greatest boxer the world has ever known. And you're saying, play that, play that. Even though it appeared that he wasn't protecting

himself and thought that that was part of the ceremony that you were going through of apology, that you unfairly took advantage of it, what do you say to those who say, what did you do there? You were winning the fight and in charge.

I just want to say to everybody that bought pay-per-view, that came out to Las Vegas, thank you. It was a hell of a fight. You know you're a promoter, but now we're talking to you as a prize fighter. Let's take a look at what happened at the end of the fight, and you describe it. I love this moment. We touched, we touched gloves.

We're back to fight hook. Right hand. That hook. And that's all she wrote. So for you, it was just an automatic response, let's get on with the fight. It's protect yourself at all times. He done something dirty. We're not here to cry and complain about what he did dirty or what I did dirty.

I was victorious. If he wanted a rematch, he can get a rematch. You were in charge of the fight. You were aggressive and taking advantage of what you saw as a flaw. You know what I'm going to do? Because you don't ever give me a fair shake. You know that? So I'm going to go and let you talk to Victor Ortiz, all right?

I'm through. They put somebody else up and give me an interview. What are you talking about? You never give me a fair shake. HBO needs to fire you. You don't know shit about boxing. You ain't shit. You got shit.

I wish I was 50 years younger and I'd kick your ass. First of all, I'm on Team Floyd Mayweather in that exchange. You gotta protect yourself at all times? You have to protect yourself at all times. Also, Victor Ortiz did do something dirty. He headbutted him. Also, that's just all within the rules

of boxing. That's why he won the fight. Also, Larry Merchant, I don't agree with the way he communicates with fighters. The way I communicate with fighters, I try to be 100% respectful at all times. And also with reverence to the fact that these people, they trained for their whole life and then, you know, 6 to twelve weeks for this particular event when i'm in the ring and i'm in the cage and i'm trying to interview a fighter all i'm trying to do is try to get that person to express themselves the best way that they can as respectfully as they can i would have not talked to him like that yeah you're you're you come across to me as part

of the brotherhood of the fighting community whereas i get like larry merchant even like jim gray like i don't get that they come across very different to me and i don't mean like you're carrying anybody's water they're sports broadcasters yes right you you are you are part of the ufc yeah i also i i do it from a deep respect. Yeah, well, that's even what we were talking about earlier, your training and all. That's what I mean. They're coming at it totally different. Well, Larry Merchant came from a different world.

It's a different world. Back in that world, the sports world, the way sports broadcasters talk about athletes is very different than the way fight broadcasters talk about athletes you know sports broadcasters will call athletes bums they'll call athletes you know he's lazy he's this is that i will never fucking say that in a million years i also think social media has sort of changed because his era athletes couldn't go direct right to social media and express him going direct yeah right that was him expressing himself exactly look you know i don't think i don't think floyd's wrong i think floyd's right and i love larry

merchant but you know look that's just what it is i think the whole exchange is hilarious hilarious it's amazing but i would never talk talk to Floyd Mayweather that way. I would try to get him to express himself the best way possible. When he said, I want to thank the fans for coming out, I would let him say that. I would have let him get it all out of his system. And I would say, so your perspective is that he should have protected himself at all times. I would have said, what did you feel like when he headbutted you? That's what I probably would have said. That was a crazy moment. What did you feel like? I just want him

to express himself. It's not about me. It's about me trying to figure out the best way to get the fighter to express themselves. I want them to have like, did you ever see Michael Chandler? When Michael Chandler called out Conor McGregor, he had one of the fucking greatest post-fight speeches of all time. I barely talked. And he was just talking about, I am the most entertaining fighter in the UFC. I was like, fuck yeah. I don't want to interrupt.

No, no, no. No, no, no. You tell me why this and that. To Merchant's defense, defense may not be the right word. He's just an old guy. Play this. Play this. Play this. Play this from the beginning. Find it without this fucking shitty music. Jesus Christ. People ruin everything. Why would you

have music over that louder than him talking? Fucking jerk-offs. Find the real one oh it's got to be available okay just try to find it no worries no Larry Merch is an old dude so he can sort of play that role like I don't it's a different world yeah different different time different era and he didn't start out as a fighter he's well that's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's like. Ladies and gentlemen, referee Jason. Spectacular.

It's the first time I just got outside, inside of you, and God came through. Here we are. You were saying something to your corner in between rounds about your right eye. Yeah, it's the first time I've been hit, and then my vision went double vision. Don't tell the commission. Is it back now?

No, it's fine. It's fine. I think it just swelled up pretty quick. Don't tell the commission. Is it back now? No, it's fine. It's fine. I think it just swelled up pretty quick. I think we're good. Listen, I'm ready to come back. The main event. There is not one Iberman fan on the planet that doesn't want to see me rematch you, Charles. Or rematch you, Justin Gaethje.

Or rematch a fighter here in 2021., a rematch of fighter of the year 2021. Five rounds for the UFC lightweight title in John. If Hunter Campbell and Dana White have a momentary lapse of judgment and they give the title shot to someone else, I got one dude on my mind. Conor McGregor, you gotta come back and fight somebody. Yeah, it's a great speech. Cover this for all this winter. Cover up the floor. God bless. I'll see you at the top. Michael Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, it's a great speech. You have totally different techniques.

Also, you're the announcer. So you're – Larry Merchant has his two minutes sort of to get – No, but he's an announcer too. Does he call the fights? Yeah, he calls the fights. Oh, well then I retract that. That made no sense. Yeah, he calls the fights. But you're very different. You let the fighters shine. I want them to shine.

I want that. Yeah, that was great. Great. A lot of them have great. The UFC guys are great on the mic. And the mic, for that one thing that's never changed, for the fight game, the mic matters. They're learning. They're learning. And they're learning, I think, because of Conor. Conor changed everything.

And Chael Sonnen changed it first. Chael Sonnen was the first. Because Chael Sonnen did it in a way. He's like super witty. He's fucking great. When he said, Anderson Silva, you absolutely suck. He's literally talking about the greatest middleweight of all time. Who was a fucking ninja.

He was an assassin. He was in the Matrix when he was at his best. Anderson Silva, you absolutely suck. Look at Anderson. Anderson knows he's going to light that dude up like a Christmas tree. Look at him. Super Bowl weekend, the biggest rematch in the history of the business. I'm calling you out, Silva, but we're up in the stakes.

Yeah. Chael, he has like WWE microphone skills. Oh, my God. He's so good. He's so smart, and he's so witty,, he's so good. He's so smart and he's so witty and he's so good at it. You know, when he got popped for steroids and a bunch of stuff, he and I had a conversation about it. He goes, you know that the USDA, USADA, turns out they're really good.

They're really good at catching you. From the outside, he's always been as good as you can be on a mic. Well, he opened up a lot of people's eyes to what you could accomplish with that. Because although Chael was a world-class fighter, defeated world champions, submitted Mauricio Shogun, who, I mean, he beat guys when they were at the top of their fucking game, who were like beating Nate Marquardt when he was a fucking killer. I mean, Chael Sonnen was a beast. He was really fucking good.

And people get confused about that because of like his antics and his, I mean, he's not the guy that's going to beat Jon Jones. He's not the guy that's going to beat Anderson Silva. He almost beat Anderson Silva, but Anderson Silva had a fucked up rib going into that fight and wound up submitting him in the last round with a fucking triangle, which was wild. But Chael opened up people's eyes to the benefit and the value of promotion. And to be witty and entertaining and get people invested in you fighting. They wanted to see you get your ass kicked.

They wanted to see you win. They wanted to see there was some shit talking going on. And then Conor McGregor took that to a completely new level and while he also had the combo if you have the you know you can talk like him and back it up yes yeah you can talk like him and you're also the elite of the elite you know that's how you become conor mcgregor yeah i mean but just like that is very very valuable and promotion is very very valuable and they learned that in You know and I wanted to help those guys do that in those moments That's what all I'm trying to do is get like I've had conversations with people that that wind up getting jobs like that and other

Promotions and then and I say here's it's not about you make sure you know It's not about you What all you're trying to do is get them to give the best interview that they can give. And just stay out of the way. Stay out of the way and make it as entertaining as possible. Like when Derek Lewis takes his shorts off in the middle of the cage. And I go, why'd you take your shirts off? He goes, my balls was hot.

I mean, they're all. And I'm like, I understand, sir. Okay. I mean, my whole thing is just make them shine. That's all I'm trying to do. And occasionally, occasionally I have to confront them about certain things. Like when Hamzat Chamayev beat Kevin Holland. See if you can find that interview.

When Hamzat Chamayev beat Kevin Holland, I was in a very interesting situation because Hamzat weighed in eight and a half pounds overweight. And he fucked up the entire main event because he was supposed to be fighting Nate Diaz so I was in a situation where I wanted to praise Hamzat because he just ragdolled Kevin Holland in one of the most spectacular performances of the year I mean he showed why

he's the motherfucker of motherfuckers and why everybody's scared of him but also he weighed in eight and a half pounds overweight he fucked up the entire promotion. Like, why did it happen? And so, like, play it for me again. This is Chechnya. I saw this. I have to confront him.

I don't care about that. I killed that guy. Gotta go for everybody. I can't fight right here. Let's come down. Give it to both guys who last year. I fight the both of them. I know you don't care about that now,

but if you want to compete for the welterweight title, it's important that they know you can make 170 pounds. Yes. So watch. Of course I'm humiliated. I'm supposed to make that weight as well. But doctor stopped me. Nobody can stop me.

If I die, I die in the cage. I didn't come here to make my weight. I died in my pants. I can't die in the cage. I died in the cage. I never leave that cage now. It's my home. I can take everything from you guys.

I believe that, Hamzat. But imagine if this was a fight for the title and you came in eight pounds over. It wouldn't have taken place. It was lower. The guy said to me, the doctor, you have to drink water and make some vitamins and shit.

And they let me do that shit. And I knew that night I'm going to fight that guy. So they make my weight up to the guy. I wasn't that more. So, the doctor told you to stop cutting the weight, but you believe you still could have made it? Yes. Okay, let's take a look at the finish because it was absolutely... I give you the most credit.

I had a hard time. You understood him perfectly. I love that dude. I love that dude. You may be the only one. That crowd was... I fucking love him to death. He's got the opposite effect.

The whole crowd was booing him. Yeah. Which is good. By the way, just as good as cheering. I don't know why they were booing him. I mean, they can do whatever they want. That's their reaction. What do you mean why they're booing him?

He basically- Did you watch that interview? He missed weight, and then he's basically like, fuck you, fuck you. Yeah, I get that. But Kevin Holland was supposed to be fighting Daniel Rodriguez at 180 pounds. So Kevin Holland was 180. He was at 180. He fought a guy that was at his weight class in that fight and dominated.

Here's a question then with fighting. Like, I know at boxing, you don't study your opponent. But that was not the right opponent. Kevin Holland was not supposed to have that opponent. Correct. So Kevin Holland— Kevin Holland was supposed to fight have that opponent. Correct. So Kevin Holland... Kevin Holland was supposed to fight Daniel Rodriguez, who's primarily a stand-up guy. So did Kevin Holland have a choice?

Like, no, I don't want this fight? Absolutely. Got it. Because, I mean... Kevin Holland's a gangster. He'll fight anybody. And he said, I'll fucking take it. I'll take it.

You know, Kevin Holland's a fucking entertaining guy. But this is... Yeah, this fight was crazy. For a fight where you just trained stand-up and you're against literally the best wrestler in the division who's a fucking motherfucker. That guy's a motherfucker. Hamzat ragdolls people and talks shit while he's doing it.

He picked up Lee Jing Leon and carried him to Dana White while he was talking shit. Yeah, well, that's my point, though, to what you're saying is gangster. So he took the fight. You train for one guy, then you the arguably the best guy who's a totally different style. He had to just do what he did and hope that his

skills would prevail and they didn't. He got fucked up. Yeah. But if he survived that, let me tell you something, the pace that Han Zot put on in that first round, I don't know if he would have been able to do that for three rounds. He might have significantly tired if he didn't get that finish because the amount of, look at this, he picks up Li Jingliang

and he carries him over to Dana White, drops him down, and while he was doing it, he was talking shit to Dana. You're not seeing it here, but before that, when he picks up Li Jingliang. I didn't even think this was that. This is a different opponent. This is just him fucking with you. This is him rag opponent. This is just him fucking with people. He just carries people around. This is him ragdolling people. But when he fought Li Jingliang, he literally hoisted him up.

He's right here. No, that's an uppercut. That's in another organization. So he carries Li Jingliang over to Dana White. So he just carries people. He's looking over at Dana White. He's like, I fucking killed everyone. He's lifting the dude. That's not Li Jinglian either.

That's another guy. That's true, right, correct. He just carries people then because we've seen two different characters. He's just a monster. Yeah, that's what I thought. But the fact that he's literally hoisting Li Jinglian, who's a top flight fighter, top flight welterweight fighter. He's holding him up in the air and talking to Dana White.

I kill everyone! He's like in the middle of a fight. Everybody talks to Dana White. Yeah, but during the middle of a fight. Everybody talks to Dana White. Yeah, but he During the middle of a fight while you're fucking a guy up, before you even decide to fuck him up, you're holding him up in the air talking shit. That's how good that guy is.

He's so good and he's so focused and dedicated. Hamza Chamayev is a fucking terrifying human being. So who's his terrifying. Like okay, so on the casual, I know who he is now i've known who he threw i don't know how brown's name but he's a guy if they got a fight like who who's capable of giving him a fight everybody in the division the top guys balal muhammad leon edwards who's

the champion kamaru usman all those guys are very capable of giving him... So is Usman... He's a huge name, obviously. He's the one who got caught by Edwards. Yeah. So is that the next fight? I think Usman, the rumor was that he has to get hand surgery. Kamaru Usman had a tear in one of the ligaments in his hand that had bothered him for a long time and was misdiagnosed, and then he eventually wound up getting surgery.

And he got that surgery before the Leon Edwards fight but I believe the word is that he needs another surgery for his hand I don't know if it's the same hand I don't know what it is but I do know that there's been talk of whether or not he will fight Leon Edwards for the title in England now because that's a giant fight Leon's coming home right spectacular Knockout one of the greatest head kick knockouts if not the greatest the most consequential in the history of sport fifth round Down on the cards a minute to go and then again That's why John Anik is the goat John Anik is literally saying that he could stop and he could he could resign himself to say But that's not the cloth he's cut from. Boom! Head kick.

Right after he says that. It's the greatest call in the history of MMA and maybe the history of all sports. And then that would be the big fight. The rematch. Because Kamara was winning that fight and if he just chose to fight defensively and move away that round, he would have won that fight.

But he engaged and he got head kicked. That would be the big fight. But he engaged and he got head kicked. That would be the big fight. But if Leon wants to fight in March and if Kamaru can't recover in time, maybe it was a minor surgery that only needed a few weeks off and he can get back. I don't know what the story is, but I've heard various stories. I haven't talked to Leon. I haven't talked to Dana about it. I don't know what's going on.

What is the latest on the latest I saw it's still from like December was Wonder what Thompson said something in an interview and then like Ali said that's fake news And I can't find another update newer than that Hmm like he said he was supposed to have hand surgery is what Thompson was saying They might want him to fight in my Well, dude, but Thompson broke his hand in that fight, too. Thompson broke his hand in the fight with Kevin Holland. Kevin Holland broke his hand

on Wonderboy, and Wonderboy broke his hand on Kevin Holland. He stood there looking at Jorge Masvidal. No, that's a good fight. That's a good fight because Jorge Masvidal sucker-punched Leon Edwards backstage when Jorge just won a fight, and then I think he just knocked out Darren Till.

Masvidal was my most Miami night I've ever had. What happened? I love him. So I am in Miami, and I got invited to a barbecue at Masvidal's house, and I've known Masvidal from the early backyard fights, basically. The Kimbo stuff. The Kimbo stuff, yeah. It's like, all right, I'll go to this.

They asked. There it is. They actually asked me. They go, you bringing a girlfriend? And I was like, should I? Like, I will. I don't even know how they knew I had a girlfriend? And I was like, should I? Like, I will. I don't even know how they had, they knew I had a girlfriend. No, don't bring her if you're coming to this.

It's like, alright, fine. It was they had a girl sitting next to me who was like assigned to me, basically. Like, everywhere I went, the girl was following. And finally, somebody's like, are you not interested? assigned to me basically like everywhere i went the girl was following and finally i they're

somebody like are you not interested like no i'm not interested i have a i have a girlfriend she was there for me it was a wild wild experience they had all this food barbecue everything but uh that was to me he's like the real king of miami it was a it was a wild wild barbecue he's a bad motherfucker that knockout of uh ben askren oh my god craziest knockouts in the history of sport that was crazy and one of the great celebrations oh my god of all time oh my god the sleep so yeah when he just and he punched him a couple times where he's out cold. Somebody did that celebration the other night. They mimicked it.

I forget what I was watching, but they mimicked the Masvidal. That, to me, is maybe the most iconic celebration I've seen. It's one of them. It's definitely one of them. It was just a perfectly timed and a clever knockout. He did it on purpose. He did it. He planned it out, and you could see him training that there's video footage of him i saw that because he knew that he tried to shoot instinct

was 100 going to shoot and if he gave him that opportunity so he came at him like this then he went at him at an angle yeah then when he went out an angle askren is just immediately going to try to contain him that's in his instinct it's his fucking DNA. He's an elite wrestler. Right. And then he comes at him with that flying knee. I like Ben. Ben has one of the, now his legacy is getting knocked out for a guy who was like what you said, a world-class wrestler. Well, we got him, unfortunately. It was, I was one of the reasons why he got into the UFC because I was telling Dana forever, you got to get this guy. He's great. He's great with the mouth. And he's a specialist, man. When he was in Bellator, that's when he was in his prime.

When we got him in the UFC, he already had fucked up hip. He had a hip replacement. And then when he fought Jake Paul in the boxing match, which he had no business in doing. He just did it because he's just giving it a try. And it's a paycheck. Yeah, right. He had no business doing that.

That's not his sport. But when he was in Bellator, when he was the champion in bellator he was a motherfucker he would ragdoll people like douglas lima and andre koroskov all these elite killer fighters and i was like jesus christ could he do this to everybody he might be able to do this to everybody and he might have been able to do that to everybody if they fought him during that Time period but unfortunately he was in Bellator and Bellator was always considered like the B league, right? It was never you know Like it was always like guys who fought there they fought there because they couldn't fight in the UFC And I was like maybe for some of them, but I don't think that's the case for there's guys over there in Bellator guys

Like Douglas Lima that i could think could beat anybody in the world they just have to they just have to be in the situation where they could fight them and that's how i felt about ben askren at that time i'm like he's so fucking good man he's so fucking good and his wrestling was so above and beyond what everybody else's was that he would get a hold of you and and you were just going down. You're going for a ride, baby. And you couldn't stand up with him because, you know, you always worried that if you committed to a strike, he was going to grab a leg, grab an ankle, grab your fucking waist,

and then you're ragdolled. And that's what he did to everybody. Find, like, Ben Askren highlight in Bellator. Because when he was in Bellatorator people thought it was boring because all he was doing was like throwing him to the ground and giving him noogies like he wasn't like a devastating striker and he wasn't a devastating ground and pound man but for me it was I'm a purist I want to see what a person is capable of doing to another person and if even if it's not exciting even if that person can just take that person down at will and hold them down and keep punching them, even if the punches aren't

devastating, I am fascinated by someone's ability to impose their skill set on someone else. See that, I find boring. This was Ben Askren, man. He would just take guys down and, you know, these aren't the most devastating elbows, but you ain't doing shit about it. You can't do shit about it. And if he can do that to you for five rounds and so be it, everybody got taken down. Everybody went for a ride. Everybody wound up with Ben Askren on top of them, beating the fucking shit out of them. And you know, was he the most exciting fighter? No, no. But was he exciting to me? Yes, because I'm a purist. What I want to see is guys at the height of their ability doing what they want to do to people.

Look how he voids this leg lock and he just starts beating people up. They didn't know what the fuck to do. They couldn't believe it. He could just take you down at will. And the way he would do it was so weird, like that. Like, look at it. Just back up a little bit so you can see that exchange right there. Like, he goes down on his back and then grabs a hold of a leg like he's

doing things you're not supposed to do you gotta be a purist but this to me just looks like mission like this to me is a turn the channel but this is not to me because this is a guy that is doing what his skill set is he's doing wrestling and he's doing it to the best fighters in the division and just beating the shit out of them and no no one could stop it. I firmly believe that if the Ben Askren in the peak of his condition at Bellator fighting the UFC, I think he's a fucking nightmare for everyone in the sport. Everyone. Maybe guys like Kamaru Usman, because he's also an elite wrestler, would give him a hard time and maybe he would have beat him.

But I would have loved to have seen it. I would have loved to have seen him against Tyron Woodley in his prime, against all those guys in their prime, against Wonderboy in his prime. I would have loved to see it. Could you stop that? Can you stop that guy? So what do you think then of you're talking guys in their prime, and you mentioned him, but what do you think of the Jake Paul phenomenon?

He's a bad motherfucker. Anybody who denies he's a bad motherfucker is crazy. He knocked down Anderson Silva in a boxing match. I don't care if Anderson Silva's 47 years old. I'm sure he's in the best shape that you could be at 47, and I'm sure their drug testing is basically non-existent. I'm sure he was probably, you know, trained as well as you can be trained at 47 years old,

and he's also like a certified killer he's so good anderson silva was so fucking good and still good i mean in the beginning the first round he's winning that fight you can see what anderson silva is capable of and jake paul beat him that's fucking end of story now if he goes on to start beating actual real professional boxers with credible records that's where things get interesting. And I think the way he's doing it is brilliant. He fights Nate Robinson. He fights Ben Askren.

He fights Tyron Woodley. He gets all these fucking brutal knockouts against guys who are like, at least have names. Tyron Woodley. Even though Tyron Woodley might have been, you know, at the end of his career and maybe not as dedicated he was when he was the welterweight champion of the UFC, he's still Tyron fucking Woodley might have been at the end of his career and maybe not as dedicated he was when he was the welterweight champion of the UFC. He's still Tyron fucking Woodley. He's still a dangerous, dangerous man. And Jake Paul flatlined him.

Yeah. Flatlined him. That is with one punch. I don't know if he'll ever fight a boxer. I don't know what. Of course he will. Of course he will. Sure.

Why? Because the money's right. If the money's right and they give him the right fight where it makes sense, like Tommy Fury, that's a good fight for him. Tommy Fury is not a real boxer. Of course he's a real boxer. No chance. He's a professional boxer.

Is he a world champion? No. But maybe he is. Is he? No. What is he? Tommy Fury. He might have some sort of a title.

If he does, it's a name only. I saw Tommy Fury box. He is not a boxer. Well, he's definitely a boxer. Well, is not a boxer well he's definitely a boxer well he puts on gloves he's definitely a boxer but is he a boxer like his brother no well clearly but you tommy fury would not we would not know who tommy fury was if his last name wasn't fury probably we wouldn't know as much about him i don don't. But he's still a good-looking guy. He's built great.

He looks the part. Looks the part, no doubt. He's a good journeyman boxer. Let me rephrase this. I'm not. I think Jake Paul would kill Tommy Fury, and that wouldn't change. I don't know how good Jake Paul is,

but I don't know of any boxer who can bring enough to a Jake Paul fight. So here's Tommy Fury. You tell me this guy doesn't look like a boxer, you're out of your fucking mind. Who is he fighting? But I don't give a fuck, dude. Look at this. Look at this. He's fighting a professional boxer.

The guy he's fighting looks good. Dude, you're crazy if you don't think Tommy Fury's a boxer. No, I don't think. Look at that uppercut. Shut the fuck up, dude. No. Shut the fuck up. Watch this.

Look at this. Find the Tommy Fury fight on the uppercut. Shut the fuck up, dude. No. Shut the fuck up. Watch this. Find the Tommy Fury fight on the Jake Paul card. Dude, shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. I cannot. Please shut the fuck up and watch this. Watch what he's doing. This motherfucker is 100% a boxer. Can you find me the record of Bokyansky? Watch this. Stop. Watch this.

Watch this. Look at this. Look at this. What is that? This guy's a fucking boxer, man. That doesn't prove anything. Find me the record of Bokyansky. Just look at this. Just look this. Look at this. What is that? This guy's a fucking boxer, man. That doesn't prove anything. Find me the record of Bokyansky. Just look at this. Just look at what he's doing. I don't give a shit. Look at the way he's delivering these combinations.

He's 100% a boxer. No. Dude, you're high. You're fucking high. Look at that right hand. Dude, look at this fucking punching ability. Tommy Fury is 100% a legit boxer. You're out of your mind. No. Look

at this. Look at that right hand. That was in slow motion, I think. No, it's not in slow motion. I think you slowed that down. No. I didn't do anything, but this is a highlight reel. It's a highlight reel. But look at his highlight reel. Look at his highlight reel. He is 100% a legitimate professional boxer. If you

don't think so, you're just being a hater. No, I'm not a hater. Dude, I'm telling you. Why would I hate Tommy Fury? He might not. He's not Dimitri Bivol. He's not Canelo Alvarez. But he is 100% a real boxer. I'd like to get the combined records of everybody Tommy Fury has fight.

I would guess there's not more than two wins on there. There is, for sure. But do you know that that's also the case with a lot of undefeated fighters as they're making their way up? Because what happens is fighters are very clever. Their managers are very clever. They match them up with people that's going to give them a good record. Because in boxing, if you're going to be challenging Canelo Alvarez or whatever, they want to see 16-0.

They want to see someone who's like an undefeated fighter or like 16-1. The last guy he fought was 11-2. Yeah. I mean, that's a good fighter. I feel it. Dude, you're out of your mind. I don't think so. Play that highlight reel again.

I just want you to look at this. I want you to look at this objectively. If you look at this objectively and you look at the way he's knocking guys out and landing punches. I have nothing against Tommy Fury. Just watch some of this. Just watch some of this. Dude, this is legit boxing, man. Watch this.

You're out of your fucking mind if you don't think that's good. Look at this. Shut the fuck up and look at this. Can we rewind and show the punch that guy in the red trunks threw? Because the guy's already rocked. No, he wasn't rocked when he threw that. Yes, he was. He absolutely was.

He'd already been pummeled. I saw that fight. The guy was already getting his ass kicked. What round is that? He was already getting his ass kicked. He was already getting his ass kicked, man. Watch this right hand. Dude, that is legit. If you don't think that's

legit, you're fucking crazy. Watch this uppercut. Watch this punch. Boom. Body to the head. Dude, he's legit. 100% legit. Are these guys the best fighters in the world? I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this

But watch his skills man These skills are absolutely legit I'm telling you You can't disparage a man's ability to land punches like this Then why hasn't he fought Why does he keep backing out of Jake? I don't know what's going on I don't know if he gets injured

Guys get fucked up all the time in training They break hands, they fuck their wrists up Their shoulders get injured Fights get fucked up all the time in training. They break hands. They fuck their wrists up. Their shoulders get injured. Fights get canceled. They get moved around. That's like saying Errol Spence and Terrence Crawford suck

because they haven't fought each other. No! But there's a reason why they haven't fought each other. They're trying to make the most amount of money possible.

The same thing with Tommy Fury. They're trying to set it up where if he's going to fight an elite fighter... I hope they fight because I'll put my net worth on Jake Paul. What if Tommy Fury boxes him up? What are you going to do then?

He won't. You don't know that. You don't know that. I was at the fight, the Jake Paul fight in Cleveland. Tyrone Woodley won. And Tommy Fury fought on that undercard. Okay. He was the worst fighter I've ever seen.

So maybe he's improved. Okay, well, let's find that fight. Let's find that fight. Maybe he's improved. Let's find that fight. Maybe he's improved by light years since that fight. I'm seeing right there, that is a boxer. I could probably watch you versus Tomato Can and you'd be throwing Haymaker and be like, oh, he can throw punches, but

it's versus Tomato Can. That's not just Haymaker. It's skillful boxing. The way he's setting that up, that's very skillful. So here's the fight versus Taylor. Taylor, by the way, I think showed up on, he was working the ticket booth before this. Somebody dropped out and they needed. Yeah, I do believe this is a last minute replacement. But what I'm seeing is a real boxer.

And if you don't think he's a real boxer, you're being a hater. I have no reason to hate him because he's good looking? No, because he's Tommy Fury's brother. I love Tyson Fury. I love Tyson Fury. I just have never... We're going to have to agree. I don't think he can... It's not

the best video, but you're still seeing a real boxer, man. He's a fucking boxer. Just by standing there? No, by boxing!'s a fucking boxer. Just by standing there? No, by boxing. He's fucking boxing. This might not be the best performance that he has ever had in his career, but what I see from his highlight reel, what I see from some of the fights that I've watched,

he's a good boxer, man. You're seeing it right here. He's a real boxer, dude. You think he's not, you're crazy. If you're saying he was good in this fight, I got nothing for you because he was- Right here. What are you seeing here? You're seeing a bad fighter?

I'm seeing a guy just standing in the ring. Oh, you're so crazy. You're seeing a good fighter right there? He's fighting. He's fighting a guy that's not elite. But me and you, if we just start fighting, we're fighting. Yeah, but he's not fighting a guy that's elite, but he's still fighting. He's a real boxer.

For you to say he's not a real boxer is crazy. What's Anthony Taylor's record? This is a last-minute replacement, right? This is not the best example of him. And I'm not saying that he's even reached his full potential or gotten to a place where I think that he should be in consideration to be fighting for any kind of a title. I'm just saying, Jake Paul beating Tommy Fury does nothing for me in terms of me.

I think Jake Paul, I have no idea. I'd love to see him fight what I consider a guy who has dedicated his life to boxing, which Tommy Fury has not. How do you know? Because I've watched him fight. Oh, that's so crazy. It's so crazy to say.

How do you know he hasn't dedicated his life because you've watched him fight and he doesn't seem to... Because he's on... He was on... He's two and three. That guy was two and three? Yeah. So if you can really fight, you take him out pretty quick.

There's a lot of guys that are two and three that are still good fighters. He was on... He's Big Brother. Yeah. That's not a real fighter. Because he was on Big Brother? Yeah, because... Probably on Big Brother for publicity.

Yeah, he was definitely on for publicity. Wasn't Andrew Tate on one of those fucking stupid reality shows too? Andrew Tate was a world-class kickboxer, a world champion kickboxer. Like, it doesn't mean that someone sucks just because they're on some stupid reality show. Was Tate on before or after? I don't know. He was on Big Brother, I think. No, he was.

He got kicked off, I think. Yeah. And kicked off. What do you think of all his stuff? I don't know what's happening, right? What really happened and why is Romania

going after him? Are they being pressured by someone else to do this? What is the reason why they're doing it? And what do they have on him? I don't know. That, to me, is the right answer. Nobody knows. A lot of people are acting like they know if you go really well they want him which is crazy they want him to go down and they want him he represents something he represents toxic masculinity well he is he he is sort of toxic i mean he says crazy they seize his car collection as investigation

continues the one thing i don't get about this, well, I do get, I understand. People are actually like want the charges to be true, which is crazy because that would mean a lot of bad shit to what happened to a lot of bad people. Yeah, I would rather the charges be incorrect. You know, look, Romania, I don't know what their system is like. I don't know whether they're corrupt. I've heard things, but I don't have any real information. So I'd be talking out of my ass to say, you know, if he really did, like, sex traffic people, if he really did all the things he's saying, well, I hope that gets proven in court, and I hope he gets punished, if he really did that. If he didn't do that, I hope he gets exonerated, and I hope he gets the fuck out of Romania. I don't know. I don't know what he did. I know a lot of what he does is theater, right? A lot of what he does is very like satire. He plays the role of this boastful misogynist who smokes cigars and drives Lamborghinis and that's his thing. And because of that, he's amassed an amazing

amount of money and he's done it by doing this character, this online persona, but then also says very wise things. He says ridiculous shit, but also says really interesting things. He's a very smart guy. If you listen to him being interviewed by Patrick Bet-David, Patrick Bet-David interviewed him after he got canceled off of all social media. And Patrick is fantastic. He's really good at letting people talk and talking to everybody. And Patrick is so wealthy and so successful outside of the world of podcasting that he only does it because he's interested in it. And so he's the perfect guy to handle that because he is not afraid to talk to anybody. He'll talk to anybody. And so he had him on for a long form conversation. They talk for

hours and you get to see this is a very intelligent and calculated guy. You might not agree with his message. You might not agree with all the misogynist stuff. You might not agree with, and I don't agree with it. You might not agree with all the crazy antics, but you cannot deny that that's been incredibly successful because it resonates with a lot of young men who don't feel represented in the media. And they see this guy and it looks like fun. Do they agree with what he's saying? That doesn't mean they agree with it.

They think it's fun. It's like pro wrestling. He's like a bad guy in pro wrestling. He's a heel. He's smoking cigars with his Lamborghinis. See, that's where I go. I think there's probably a lot of people think that, and then I think there's probably other people who take think that and then I think there's probably other

people who take it seriously which is where that's where it's a super that is where it gets fucked up where it gets fucked up is like young boys repeating the shit that he's saying to young girls because I mean he says they're supposed to property and he owns them which is nuts and so you hope people are like oh that's an act an act. The one thing I will say, for an intelligent guy, which I agree with you he is, to be doing the things he's being accused of doing and then go seek publicity

is a very unwise move. If he did the things that he did. Then it's like, you would think if you're committing atrocities, you would try to stay under the radar. He does quite the opposite. Yeah. But again, we don't know.

No, nobody knows. That's the problem. That's like the pizza thing, the pizza box. I don't know if you saw that. Everybody saying he got busted because of the pizza box. And then the authorities are like, that had nothing to do with it. No, they knew he was in Romania. It was just, what's that word?

Schadenfreude? Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude. That's what it was. He's making fun of Greta Thunberg and then he gets fucking arrested right afterwards. It's kind of hilarious. The way it happens, people said it's the biggest

self-owned L. Third biggest tweet or retweet. It was Greta. It was okay. It's kind of funny when she said that's what happens when you don't recycle your pizza boxes. That shit's hilarious. That was good. That shit's hilarious. You was good. Chad, that shit's hilarious. You got to give it to her. Look, and also, why are you going after some 19-year-old autistic girl who's really into climate change?

I tried to figure out whether that was provoked. He just did that out of the blue? Yeah, he's just talking shit. Now, again, that move from somebody who's being accused of sex trafficking, I think rape was thrown in there. And then you're out there being like, look at me, look at me. Crazy. Again, but what you said nailed it. Nobody else.

Yeah, I think the latest thing that they're saying is tax evasion, right? Isn't that what they're saying? I'll be honest with you. I'm Googling him now. I just found an exclusive story on Vice that says the reason he was kicked off of Big Brother is not the reason that was publicly known or what was thought of. It says that he was arrested for suspicion of rape in 2015. He was investigated over allegations of sexual assault and physical abuse in the U.K., during which time he appeared on Big Brother for five days.

That was just posted a little bit ago. U.K. authorities declined to prosecute. This says that they told the producers of the show five days before he was kicked off, and then a video was found of him and a girl doing something. Then they came out and said this was a kinky video they were making, and everyone thought The girl came out and said that that was very consensual and that they were doing role play and that they liked to do this thing

where he would like beat her up or something. This article is saying that didn't have anything to do with why he was kicked off the show. This is one of the perfect... I don't know. This is one of the perfect examples, though, of kind of what we're talking about. Like, I don't fucking believe Vice.

I don't know. I don't believe... How can you believe anything that is said about somebody so controversial because everybody seemingly has already made up their mind so where to get real information on him who knows all the objectionable stuff i think also was unnecessary i think if you want i mean i don't know him if i did know him i would tell him all the the boastful shit and the the shit about him being you know the top g and all that stuff all that shit's great but the misogynistic stuff like if you have daughters

or if you have a wife or if you have sisters and stuff like that you don't want that well you don't that that that narrative like putting that out there that's negative to everybody it's not it's not even positive to him. It's not necessary. We had him on one of our podcasts, and he almost struck me exactly how you said. Let's say he's talking for 10 minutes. I'm like, oh, making sense, smart. And then he says something so wild over the top, literally like women are my property. I own them.

It's like, whoa, what'd you just say? And that's what he does. But he's also selling that class it what is the class the hustlers university what is that what are they teaching people to hustle but what do they teach are they I don't know to hustle they can quit at any time they want it's like 70 bucks a month and you become a top g that's literally i mean is that bad i don't know i mean is it is it a con game or is it is he trying to give them legitimate information what has he given him other than what he's already said in interviews and and like what how is it a university like what is he has people who and that's where it's a grayer because i aren't there like professors

hustlers university experience modern wealth creation i haven't looked at this i didn't know And that's where it's a grayer because I did. Aren't there like professors? Hustlers University. Experience modern wealth creation. I haven't looked at this. I didn't know this was even real. Yeah, no. This is what he said like a main. So many grifters. Main business.

Secure your spot for just $49 is your last chance to secure a spot or a discounted price. This weird countdown thing is such a trap. Oh, that's hilarious. Oh, my God. It's just recycled. I only have one hour, 10 minutes and 36 seconds to sign up. And that's going to be 147. Jesus.

Enroll now, Jamie. You have only an hour before this class. Enroll. Let's enroll. Let's enroll. What do we have to do? Click on that. Enroll now.

Okay. What do we have to do? The real world has launched a completely matrix-independent platform where we teach you how to make money in the digital age. How do they teach you how to make money? You just hustle, man. You just hustle. So 600 bucks a year. It's also another thing like this matrix thing, which he has, which again, I am a firm believer based on my experience.

Like people are out to get you. They're out to get you. They're out to get you. He also, if he committed these crimes, he's sort of brilliant. Be like, they're coming for me in the next couple days because you know they're coming. And then your followers go, aha, he was right. It's like a self-fulfilling product. Who knows? Right. But I will say, he goes too far.

And yeah, you'd think rational people would be like, whoa, you're crazy. But there's a lot of, and that's where anything's a slippery slope. He's also a wild dude that lives in the world of kickboxing. And that is a wild group of people. I mean, you pay attention to like top flight kickboxers like the Badr Haris and the, I mean, there's some Melvin Manhoof. There's some wild fucking people in that world. That is a crazy world where there's not a lot of money and you're facing fucking straight up killers. And, you know, I mean,

there's all sorts of different personalities in that world, but it's a different kind of human. They're just wild, masculine, very aggressive people, you know? And that's part of his shtick. But he, if you want to use the word toxic masculinity, he's it.

Well, the bad stuff that he said embodies that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why people are rooting for what he said to be true. Because they don't want that. Right. But you're still crazy to root for that because you're not thinking about the victims.

Basically, that means a lot of people were hurt. it means if it's true you want them to be punished correct like hoping that it's not true when it is true is not good either no but you know i'm saying like if you're hoping that it's true and it's not true that's horrible because you are hoping for people to have been victimized i see what you you're saying. Yes, right Yeah, I mean you should never hope violent crimes are committed right absolutely agreed Yeah for sure But you also hope that he's not accused of these things when it's just because of his bombastic Personality and talking shit and getting all this attention which he clearly has done You got to wonder how much of it is sat like when he talked to peers Morgan

That was a very interesting conversation because peers confronted him all these things and he did a great job of explaining what he does and why he does it and and you know it's like the guy went viral in a way that no one has and so quickly yeah in a while we're like my 12 year old and my 14 year old were asking me about it yeah no he he was it yeah all over tiktok and all over everything and and if you just look at some of those little parts in a weird way if you're 12 year old and 14 year old are hearing some uh right the outrage like nobody wants yeah yeah he didn't even have a tiktok i think and he was like the number one guy on tiktok crazy i think they probably banned him right i mean they banned him from everything

they banned him from facebook yeah he's still on his twitter yeah elon brought him back yeah which listen i agree with i think you should be able i don't think banning people's the way i think this exchange with greta thurnberg is a perfect example of how to counteract that yeah like she just mocks him and and and then he gets arrested and she has the fucking tweet of the year making fun of his arrest. And a fucking perfect one-liner. That's what happens if you don't recycle your pizza boxes. It's genius. That's why it's good that someone like that is on social media, because you get a chance for people to participate in the conversation.

I agree. I go back and forth. Because I am. You should go back and forth, I am you should go back and forth because you're a thoughtful guy because it's like super free speech take Kanye for example like I'm

Jewish I hate Kanye beforehand but I think he's anti-semitic like the things he's saying bother me and there's a lot of people in my mind who follow Kanye. They're rabid Kanye fans. And the things he starts saying to me can leak down.

What is the biggest thing that he said? I know in general. To me, Hitler wasn't a bad guy. That was crazy. What did he say? What was he exactly? He loves Hitler or something like that? He was with-

Loves everybody? He was with Alex Jones. And Alex Jones was trying- He was also wearing a mask. Yeah. He was trying to throw him a lifeline. Yeah. Alex Jones was trying to throw Kanye.

Alex Jones was the voice of reason. Yeah. And he's like, no, you don't mean Hitler was a good guy. He's like, no, no, no. Well, that's not what you mean. Yeah. Hitler's terrible. Yeah.

For Alex to have to tell him hitler was terrible it's pretty funny so if you're going down that way i don't know i think he's the way he's going down is he's never i don't think he's experienced anything like of course he's never experienced anything like this right where is everything's taken away from him i mean he had to stop construction on his house he's losing all of his money, all of his sponsorships. Everything's gone. All of his connections to all these businesses, connections to banks, everything's gone. It's kind of wild to see because we've never seen that before where a guy is a superstar and a billionaire.

And he says some awful shit and then everything's taken away from him. And this may be kind of his personality. then everything's taken away from him. Well, and this may be kind of his personality. And in a way, he's also, you can listen to him talk many times, be like, he's a genius, he's brilliant, like the things he's saying. What he did, which may be unique, and some could say maybe they respect, he didn't take a step back.

He kept saying things, and he wouldn't apologize, and now you could be like, well, if he didn't think he did anything wrong, but in the end, it came across he's just, to me, very anti-Semitic. I mean, if you're defending Hitler, you've gone pretty far. I think he's also mentally ill. Well, he's bipolar. I think he said that. Well, I think he said recently he's not bipolar, but he might be autistic,

but I mean, that's self-diagnosis. He was definitely medicated at one point in time, right? Remember when he got kind of chubby and he was like really sedated, but then he hated that. He didn't want to, he didn't want to be that. And then he got off of that and, you know, I had him on the podcast and you get a chance to see how his mind works. It's like, he works in these rants and he says something and he keeps talking and you got to like stop and wait, wait, wait, what did you just say? What did you just say? You you got to kind of bring him in but he doesn't want to have a conversation He wants a rant yeah, I mean remember when he sat down and ranted with Trump

And like in front of Trump and it's like saying that mean recently no way back in the day with the make America great again He's in the office with and Trump's just sitting there listening to him. God. He's in what you wild crazy shit and Trump's like sitting there listening to him. Kanye's in wild, crazy shit. And Trump's like, hmm. Trump is being the most persuasive, the best version of Trump as a manipulator and

a businessman. He's like, letting Kanye. Because remember when Trump got elected, they invited all these celebrities to come to the celebration. Everybody's like, fuck that. Nobody went. Nobody went. Kanye was the one guy that embraced trump yeah look at this he's sitting there with jim brown and and he's like interesting and he's like letting kanye rant and and go off and say all this crazy shit with a make america great again hat on

so like for him the free that's the thing with free speech like what i said some of that play some of that like elon booted him for doing the nazi he put he made a jewish star with the nazi symbol in it yes and for elon that was the line right so there's always a line but that is that is the complication of free speech yeah he made fun of el. Elon said, that's okay. He said, but this is not okay. Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is just like, yeah. I mean, what are you doing? You're connecting the star, David. Like, listen, play some of this. And really the reason why they imprisoned him is because he started doing positive for the community. Look at how Trump's like, yes, yes, yes. Interesting.

He wasn't just one of a monolithic voice, but he could wrap people around. Look at how Trump's like, yes, yes, yes. Interesting. I'd love to know what's going on in Trump's head right now. Interesting, interesting. Look at him nodding. I'm moving back to Chicago, and it's not just about, you know, Look at him nodding. I've had conversations that basically said that welfare is the reason why a lot of black people end up being Democrats. They say, you know, first of all, it's a limit to amount of jobs. I saw a picture like just a mouse running around on a circle in Trump's head right now as he's going around, like trying to occupy himself. I like how he has this like serious consideration.

I interviewed Trump. They called me up. They want our crowd, obviously, to do it. So this is when he was president. Probably I got a lot of hate from it. But he pulled me in. When he realized I wasn't out to get him, he opened up. He was nice to me.

But he pulled me into this little souvenir a little like a souvenir room is what I would call it with like artifacts. He goes, Dave, Dave, come in here. And so I go into the little room. He looks at me, goes,

this is the Monica Lewinsky room. He just started laughing. The Monica Lewinsky room. What a time. Yeah. What a time. What a time to be alive when that guy was the president. How crazy is that? I mean, that, to me, he changed. Here it is.

Oh, yeah. This is nothing like the one that you know the whole deal, right? How are you? Look, as a comedian, that guy was like the greatest amount of ammunition and information and the greatest resource a comic could ever hope for. So before he was elected, I said I would vote for Trump because of what you just basically said. I'm like, I hate politics. I'm like, I think I'll break it. Now, did I anticipate like the amount of hate in this country has gone both sides? Well, also the denying the results of the election.

That was where it got crazy because, you know, the saying the election was rigged and that's a threat to the foundation of our democracy. And I believe that if you're going to say the election was rigged, you have to have rock solid, very specific information that points to that, that you could show the world. And I don't think that was the case. I don't know how much election fraud exists. I know it's less than zero. There's no election fraud. There's fraud in everything. If you don't think that there's people that are running some sort of an election center, that are democratic centered, that wouldn't do something that they think would help the world

by making sure that someone who they think is evil and a very threat to democracy itself, if that person gets into power and you don't think that they would do something to suppress that, whether it's by making voting machines not work correctly or by suppressing ballots or by hiding ballots, there's unscrupulous people that exist. How many of them exist is the question. How much fraud was it on the Republican the question how much fraud was it on the republican side how much fraud was it on the democrats has it happened has election fraud happened in the history of humans abso-fucking-lutely 100 so the real question is how much election fraud

does exist and did it swing the election i don't think he proved that. I don't think he had the information where he could show the United States, here's how I know for sure. Objectively, have someone who's just like a rock solid statistician and analyst who can show you beyond the shadow of a doubt that there's a problem. That was the problem. I agree with that. And then when you got the fucking people that are these fucking MAGA people and they're out there and you got the FBI riling them up. You got guys like Ray Epps who is saying

you need to go in there. We need to go in there. We need to take this place. And that guy is not prosecuted, not arrested, not charged and then the FBI has to have a conversation with Ted Cruz. And he's saying, did you have people in the FBI that were involved in that,

that were actively trying to rile people up, and they won't answer that question? My issue with it, you alluded to it, I think both sides, and this is actually sort of sad, but my view of politics, both sides are equally treacherous, and they're both going to do whatever they can win. It's a dirty world. Yeah, they're both going to do whatever they can win to the election.

So if one side's cheating, I think the other side's cheating. For sure. So guess what? Whoever wins and cheats the best, whatever. Game's over. That's it. They out-cheated you, if you want to say that. Unless you can show that they cheated beyond a shadow

of a doubt and proved to the world, which he hasn't. Correct. And it's almost like the old, I mean, Trump, I think he's very, very, very smart. I don't think he gives a fuck about anybody but Donald Trump. And to be honest, I think most politicians, it's like the movie Gladiator when Maximus asks, he wants Maximus to be the president of Rome.

He's like, no, no, no, I don't want that. He's like, that's why you got to be it. Because nobody with a brain would want to, who wants this headache? Who wants that? Fuck that job. Yeah. So you end up with people who shouldn't have it. Exactly. Yeah. And those are the only ones that want to run. Exactly. Which is crazy. And that's the cycle. yeah who wants that job yeah so it's you end up with people who shouldn't have it exactly yeah

and those are the only ones that want to run exactly which is great and that's the cycle like this guy santos which now i am finding funny the guy from new york yeah what did what happened with that guy because i'm only seeing headlines his entire life is a lie is it bad it's a it's a meme now everything he said is a lie he he said bad? It's a meme now. Everything he said is a lie, apparently. Everything? He said, you'll love this. For a comedian, a comedian couldn't do this. He said he was Jewish.

Turns out he's not. He said, he clarified, I meant I was Jew-ish, like J-E-W dash I-S-H. One of the all-time answers. He said his mother died in the Holocaust. Oh, 9-11, excuse me. She did not. Two jobs that all-time answers. He said his mother died in the Holocaust. Oh, 9-11.

Excuse me. She did not. Two jobs that he said he worked. Called them both. No record of them. This guy is voting in Congress right now. They can't remove him? They can't. He's just sticking with it. He's like, people have trust. I've actually come to, this is how fucked up our country is. I'm actually enjoying it

from like, it's a whole, the cameras are falling around. No one wants to sit with them. They don't know where he got the money for the campaign. Is he a Republican or a Democrat? He's a Republican. His entire life is a lie. Wow. All of it.

Like there's not one. How did they not find that while he was running? Shows you how stupid politics is. And he gets elected. It's crazy. And he's in Congress. Wow you how stupid politics is, and he gets elected. It's crazy. And he's in Congress. Wow. What state? New York. Wow.

Wow. But, I mean, you... So, just... And so what do they have to do? They just let him ride out his term? I don't know. He's being looked at right now, like, Attorney General's investigating some of this stuff. Depends on how egregious, you know, if he broke a law. There's no law against lying about everything. Yeah, know if you broke a law there's no law against lying yeah i think that i think that's it there's no law about lying against everything every and when a lot of times people use like exaggerations it's everything

everything about his life was a total lie but that's the kind of person that wants that kind of power yeah and you'll do anything to get it lying, like, it's not hard to figure out. Like, one second he says his mother died in 9-11, and then someone just digs up a tweet. Like, here you are talking about your mother, like, after the fact. It's just crazy. But he's literally voting. There's cameras of him sitting down to vote, checking in. Oh, my God.

There was a video of him. there's cameras of him sitting down to vote, checking in. There was a video of him all the cameras were waiting for him and he's just kind of speed walking away. He just didn't know he was new to Congress. He just walked into a dead end and had to turn around and come back. That stuff makes me laugh

but it's actually kind of scary. It is scary but it's also funny. It is funny if there's no consequences it's scary because there are. Because that guy does get to vote and he's completely full of shit I guess Understatement yeah, oh my god George Santos. I think that's George And he won't be the last they'll be more like him. There's just a fucking litany. There's a whole fucking Line of those people that are full of shit. Yeah, and I don't lifetime be your cats all that

Yeah, it's just it's a gross world. It really is. It's a gross compromise world. And the only way to stop it is to get money out of politics. And how do you do that now? Who the fuck is going to sign off on that? I mean, who the fuck is going to sign off on getting rid of all the special interest groups, getting rid of all the lobbyists, no one. So it's like, that's why it was fascinating to see a guy like Trump getting to power because he was such an outsider. They didn't know how to do it. Their brains were so trained, they didn't know how to deal with them.

Everything they thought, like the years and years of politics worked against them. Yeah. Like everything he did was not what they'd expect and they didn't know how to react to it. And the morons had a king. Yeah. There's a lot of morons. Tons. And it doesn't matter what he's saying.

Like for them, he represents them. And he represents the anti of them. Like, he's not perfect, but at least he's real. Yeah. Like, there's that sort of thought process that he played with. And also people that didn't feel represented by someone who was ever in charge. And now this guy is. And it's their guy.

And that's the part where there's tate trump that is scary and i'm sure you have this like i've been accused of shit that is just patently false i feel like i've done an unbelievable job of having evidence and proof that's false but i also know my audience is so attached to me if i said i didn't do something they'd believe me regardless well you're an honest person yes but you're not a perfect person you're an honest person a hundred percent and you're honest about that yeah i've always been but i guess my point was it once you maybe not because i've established the audience what they don't people don't need to like you there's a lot of people that like all kinds of stuff that I don't like, and that's okay. But the problem is when people don't like someone like you, because you represent

masculinity, you represent gambling and sports and girls and money, and they don't like that. They don't like that. So they just like, like the automatic instinct, instead of just going, ah, that's not my thing. They just like, we got to take that guy down. And then of course, when someone, that's their job. Their job is to write hit pieces. And those hit pieces get a lot of clicks, and that's their industry. That's what they do. That's what their job is.

It's the arena. I mean, the shocking part is just, again. It's shocking because we've never done it before, and now all of a sudden you're in the middle of it. And as an independent person, which you are, it's a rare spot where someone gets as much attention as you do and has as much power and influence as you do,

but you're completely unconnected. Yeah. You can do whatever you want. And that's what's scary. That's where it gets wild. Yeah. To a degree. I mean,

we are right. It's crazy. We're regulated. So, I mean, I, I still deal with like, I've always said for people who don't like me, the best thing that ever happened was we became this gambling company or associated

because I can't be as unhinged or – like, I can't go after people in the manner I would like to. I have to stay away for the most part. That's probably good for you. Yeah. Well, no, it keeps me up because, you know, I am a petty person. I like gambling. I don't gamble. I don't gamble much.

I mean, I used to gamble a lot on fights. I used to bet on fights. Are you allowed to? I don't think I am now. I think now the UFC recently, because of the James Krause thing. But that was a fighter who was managing and training a fighter who was accused of telling people about an injury that could affect the outcome of a fight. And I don't know if it's true. I don't know what the evidence is. All I know is the allegations, but I know it's serious enough where they're

investigating it. And it's serious enough where his fighters are not allowed to compete in the UFC anymore. So it's a really big, really deal because like you know i'm friends with people that just train at his gym that work at the ufc that now have to find a new gym they feel and i'm like whoa like you but you just train there it's a gym filled with fighters like you're not even allowed to train there anymore or they feel like they're not allowed to train there anymore i should say like laura senko who's a top flight analyst who's like, that's her gym. That's her home gym. And she's in this situation and there's a lot of fighters

like Brandon Moreno who at one point in time was the flyweight champion. And now he has to find a new camp to train because he was trained by Kraus. Sports take it wildly seriously and naturally it's the integrity of the game. Gambling.

Look, if you're going to allow gambling, which I think you should allow, you have to make sure that there's no fucking bullshit. Yeah. And that people aren't doing something like that, where they're giving someone, like letting them know this guy's going to lay down, and then bet the house on this guy. Yeah. No, you've got to cut that off. But I used to gamble with my business partner and on it, my friend Aubrey. So the way I would do it is like I used to gamble in the fights early on. Like the early days of the year, it's like early 2000s.

I would just go to the betting. Oh, nobody even knows about Anderson Silva. Like bet the fucking house on this guy. Bet the house on this guy. And I would do that. But then I thought about it for a while. I was like maybe this isn't good for my commentary. Like maybe I'll be biased if I have like 500 bucks on this guy. And I would do that. But then I thought about it for a while. I was like, maybe this isn't good for my commentary. Like maybe I'll be biased if I have like 500 bucks on this guy or something. I'm like, I should probably stop doing that. So I just stopped

doing it. And I would just tell Aubrey. And we were at one point, I'm like 84% winning because this was back. If you have the inside info, if you know. It wasn't inside info. Well, it was just. Anderson Silva's Anderson Silva before the general public, I guess is not inside. It was bookmakers weren'terson silva's anderson silva before the general public i guess it's not inside it was bookmakers weren't obsessed with mma the way i was they didn't know about shudo they didn't know about ring and rising and k1 and all these different there's just so many

different organizations that people are fighting for overseas deep and like if you're gonna know real fighters like the like what a person's capable of i firmly believe you have to have some training yourself you have to be able to see like where the openings are whether or not someone's doing something special and you have to be obsessed with it and if you're not obsessed with it you're you're basing it on records and how well this guy fought without knowledge of whether or not a person was committed and whether you know There's there's guys that are underdogs that I look at them like how the fuck is that guy an underdog, right? And they wind up dominating. I'm like, this is a crazy line still to this day

Yeah So this day this bad lines where I see them I'm like, oh my god You gotta look at that guy like if that guy's in shape and he's training and I heard he is like that guy's a motherfucker man Like, if that guy's in shape and he's training, and I heard he is, like, that guy's a motherfucker, man. Like, people are in trouble. And a lot of these guys who, at least in the beginning, that were making the lines, they didn't really know what the fuck was going on. That's natural. It'll catch up, obviously, as MMA has exploded.

You knew I was on the wrong side of Meatball Molly. Well, I had a feeling. Yeah, you gave me the look. Erin Blanchfield was up bad. Yeah, she's got a big fight coming up, Erin, right? I believe so. Who's Erin Blanchfield? I think she's fighting somebody pretty good.

I followed her a little bit because I obviously watched that. That girl is elite, man. She's a future world champion. She's fucking elite. When I saw that she was lined up with Meatball Molly, and I saw that you were like, you bet some money on Meatball. Well, she's our girl. I know.

I love her. I love her, too. She just got engaged. Congrats, Molly. She's on me. Well, she's our girl. I know. I love her. I love her, too. She's just got engaged. Congrats, Molly. She's a beast. She's really fucking good. But Aaron Blanchfield's on another level. There's levels.

And there's Talia Santos. Ooh, Talia Santos is good. Yeah, that's what I heard. That's a big fight. Fight night. What night is that? Mmm, that's a good fight. That's a very good fight.

Talia Santos is no joke. So in that fight, you'll see. You'll see. You know, if she beats her, like, ooh, that's a fast track to the title. And, you know, she's young and super technical. Her technique is so sharp. So that's why when I came up to you. Once it was on the ground, it was done.

I was like, dude. I'll give Molly credit. She took about 9,000 shots before she submitted yeah she got she got she got owned but that's just you know that's it that's how the sport goes there's levels you know there's levels and you know sometimes a fighter just finds their fucking groove like charles olivera like for the longest time he was he had the the accusation of being a quitter you know that was the the rub on him it's like when the shit got hard he would fall apart and then all of a sudden he didn't and all of a sudden he started dominating everybody and all of a sudden he knocks out michael chandler

submits justin gaethje he's the motherfucker of motherfuckers you know it's like you never know with fighters like it's like it's their skill set and their mindset and where they're at in life like you remember when buster douglas fought mike tyson nobody thought he had a goddamn chance but buster douglas's mother died before that fight combo with tyson's life was falling apart tyson's life was falling apart busted buster douglas was always super fucking talented it wasn't just that you know mike tyson's life was falling apart it's's like Buster Douglas was a bad man. He just didn't commit himself to boxing like he could have. He was like many super talented people.

He just didn't go all in. There's some super talented people that just skate by because they're able to. You know, there's like Khabib said that. Khabib never got off. So the talented guys, it's too easy for them. And you want the guys that are just willing to just grind and work hard and they eventually overcome the talented guys, it's too easy for them. You want the guys that are just willing to just grind and work hard, and they eventually overcome the talented guys because they just have this mindset where they can suffer, and they can train, and they can get up in the morning and do it again.

They're dedicated, and they don't drink, and they don't party. Kamee makes all those guys cut their hair a certain length, and there's no fucking around in his gym, and that's why he's Nurmagomedov. That's why he's one of the GOATs, if not the GOAT. And that's why he retired undefeated. Because he had that unstoppable commitment, that discipline, that championship drive. And some really talented guys don't.

They just don't for whatever reason. They just, it comes too easy in the beginning or they're, you know, they're trying to chase pussy or they want to, you know, hang out with their boys and party too much. It's also, once you're a top, harder to stay there. It's like the old, who was it, Marvin Hagler? Yep. You don't do road work in silk pajamas or something like that?

Silk sheets, yeah. Marvin Hagler used to go to Provincetown, fucking running the snow. Yeah, that was commitment. That's like championship mindset. He's the epitome of that. Marvin Hagler was the fucking man. He was the guy that outworked everybody.

And he was the guy that always had a chip on his shoulder because he always thought that they all looked past him. And then when he knocked out Tommy Hearns, he's like, what's up now? Yeah, that was the best fight. Oh, my God, what a fight that was. Unbelievable. But Hagler had a chin, man. He had a fucking chin.

He could take it better than anybody ever. He fought John the Beast Mugabe, who was knocking out everybody, and Hagler just kept beating the fuck out of him. And eventually broke him, and Mugabe was never the same again. After he beat up Mugabe. But that's the, I mean, obviously Hagler was super talented too, and one of the best switch hitters ever in boxing, other than Terrence Crawford, who I think is right up there.

Terrence Crawford, he switch hits better than anybody. So you watch every boxing match then? I watch a lot of boxing. I watch way more MMA, and I watch a lot of kickboxing, but I still watch a lot of boxing. Yeah. I grew up on boxing, so I mean I watch them both. Terrence Crawford and Earl Spence Jr., that's the fight.

God, I hope they make that fight. I mean, I know Terrence just won, you know, and then they're trying to figure out a way to make that fight happen. I don't know what the holdup is. That's the biggest difference. Well, maybe not biggest, but what, in my mind, MMA, boxing, is the best guys always fight in MMA. boxing you may not get it but you have to be in the ufc like we never got fedor emilienenko right because you gotta be in the ufc yeah fedor

emilienenko when he was the king of pride he was the baddest fucking heavyweight that ever lived he was so good dude he was so scary and so stoic and he could submit you or he could knock you out and god damn he was good that's to me the biggest regret of all of MMA is not seeing Cain Velasquez versus Fedor Milianenko when Fedor was in his prime I would have given anything to see that I would have flown to Japan to see that fight I would have loved to Japan to see that fight. I would have loved to see that fight. That was, to me, the biggest tragedy was we never saw Fedor in his prime come over to the UFC. And by the time he went to Strikeforce, he was already, I think, miles on the odometer, hard fights, brutal, brutal, brutal fights that he had in Pride. I just don't think he was the same guy. I don't think that would happen now.

It could happen now. You think there could be a guy who could be that good who's not in the UFC? Yep. Yeah. You could have a guy in Bellator that's dominating everybody and just decides Bellator's giving him a lot of money and he doesn't want to go over to the UFC. You've got guys in one championship now that are fucking elite. They're straight up killers.

They're as good as anybody alive and they just they fight over in asia and uh they just haven't gotten the fanfare and the people behind them like say uh some of the fighters have in the ufc the ufc is the biggest organization in mma period there's no ifs ands or buts about it if you're not a ufc champion even if you are elite even if you fantastic, there's always going to be that thing that's attached to you that you never fought in the UFC. Which is why I didn't think that would happen because UFC has progressed so much. It has, but there's still guys that, for whatever reason, they don't make it over here. Maybe 1FC gives them a bigger contract. Maybe they feel like they can shine over there more. NFC gives them a bigger contract.

Maybe they feel like they can shine over there more. Maybe they're less stringent drug testing, which is a very big factor, an undeniable factor. If you have an organization that doesn't have something like USADA or people showing up at your doorstep at 630 in the morning and waking you out of bed and making you take a piss test and making you take a blood test, then you don't know. If you're just doing a drug test after the weigh-in, that's just an intelligence test. That's just a scientific test. That's like, do you have a good team behind you? Because the early days of the UFC, there was a lot of guys doing steroids and they still passed drug tests

because they knew how to cycle off or when they got to the weigh-in and they knew what was getting tested for and whatnot. There was camps that had scientists that were involved in the camps. And I know this for a fact. There was camps that had doctors who knew exactly what you could take, what you couldn't take, and how much to take, and when to take it,

and when to get it. Why wouldn't you? Because the rub was that everybody was doing it. And then USADA came along, and you saw physiques melt. You saw dudes who were just fucking... I mean, I... I would take... If I thought I wasn't going to get caught, I would take steroids in two seconds.

Especially if everybody else was taking it. Yeah. Especially. That's one thing I've never... Whether it's baseball, anything. If you told me I could take a steroid and become the best at what I do, I'd do it in two seconds. If you're in a sport where everybody's doing it, like if you're in a sport like bodybuilding, which you could say is a sport or not a sport, because they're competing just based on the way they look, I think it's still a sport.

But it's complicated. If you have a sport like bodybuilding and everyone's doing steroids and you say, I'm not going to do steroids, well, guess what? You're not going to win. Right. You're not going to win. You're not going to be in it. You can't be Dorian Yates. You can't be Ronnie Coleman.

You can't be those guys unless you're taking steroids. That's just the sport. And that's like where a lot of sports are right now. There's certain sports like grappling. Gordon Ryan, who's the greatest grappler of all time, openly admits to taking performance-enhancing drugs. Openly talks about it. Because everybody's doing it. And he's just honest.

He's just like, yeah, I take them. Everybody's taking them. They're not illegal in our sport. And if you look at him, he looks like a guy who takes performance-enhancing drugs. He looks like a fucking Greek god. But you can't look at him. That's Gordon Ryan. I mean, not only is he the greatest.

He looks like Zeus. He's the greatest of all time, and he's only 27 years old. What is he, he spray paints his beard? No, he bleached blonde his hair. Yeah, he looks like Zeus. He bleached it all white. He looks like he could be with the lightning bolt. But look at the fucking build on that guy.

And on top of that, he's the most dedicated, the most intelligent, the most technical, and he's trained by the best guy. I mean, he's the baddest motherfucker that's ever grappled. What sport is this? Jiu-Jitsu. Oh. He's the greatest no-gi jiu-jitsu competitor that's ever lived for sure. Everybody admits it.

Everybody's scared of him. He dominates everybody. He's won like 50-plus matches in a row, which is unheard of. Why would a guy like that not go UFC? Because of the drug testing? No. Because he could go to one FC. He could go to one of these organizations that doesn't test like that. But I think because he's not a striker and because he's dominant in jiu-jitsu and he thinks that he could be like a Tony Hawk of jiu-jitsu.

Like a guy who rises past the sport itself and he becomes like an icon for what that sport is and becomes pop and he is. He's making millions of dollars without fighting an MMA without getting the brain damage and dominating in his art and what he's dedicated to I mean you could say it's all performance enhancing drugs but that's not correct

because it's also his tech everybody's doing it and it's not everybody there's some like younger guys like the Rutolo brothers who are totally clean, but they're 19 years old and a lower weight class, but he's a heavyweight. And if you just look at all the elite guys in the sport, when you go to Abu Dhabi

and you look at the best guys that are competing, so many of them are on shit. Most of them are on shit. Well them are on shit well if you're not testing for it right be a moron not to be on it to be able to train every day the way a guy like gordon does and i mean every day he trains 365 days a year christmas birthday fuck you show up everybody shows up and his coach john donahue is not just one of the most brilliant guys that has ever coached anybody but he's one of the most brilliant guys I've ever talked to. He was a professor of philosophy at Columbia and got obsessed with jiu-jitsu and started training and then teaching it and then became the greatest jiu-jitsu coach literally the world's ever known.

And the two of them together are this unstoppable force. So to attribute all that just to performance enhancing drugs is crazy. But to say that it doesn't play a part in it is also untrue. There's a factor. Because the way he's able to train, one of the things, like if you're on performance enhancing drugs, your recovery is way better. So you're able to train far more than someone who's not on those things. On top of that, his nutrition's on point. On top of that his his recovery all the

stuff that he does to to get better i mean he's doing everything he's doing everything right and you can't stop it never heard of him he's the motherfucker dude i believe it just looking at him he's the motherfucker everybody like he he has these that's him when he was like 17 oh yeah well there you go yeah yeah to like whatever he's in his early 20s there. Yeah, for sure on some shit and openly admits it. But so are the guys he's competing against. I know for a fact. He's dominated guys that are also on performance enhancing drugs.

This is like the bodybuilder conversation. Like you can't compete as a pro bodybuilder unless you are doing something. Your body's not supposed to be that big. Right, right. And there's also this acknowledgement, like you're doing very serious damage to your body. You're getting yourself dehydrated down to like zero water and like 1% body fat.

Do you follow bodybuilding? Very little. Very little. I mean, just peripherally. Yeah, yeah. But I follow it enough to like look at their physiques and go, Jesus fucking Christ. I mean, the bodybuilder physiques are they're like cartoons and they keep getting bigger like

who won the world the mr universe is here these guys are fucking preposterously huge they're cartoonish they're so enormous like you you can't even imagine a human being you can't attain those levels of physique naturally even if you are like r, like Ronnie Coleman didn't even start taking steroids until he was 30 because he had superior genetics. His genetics were off the chart. But when I had him on the podcast, he talked about it. He goes, I still couldn't beat the best of the best until I started doing steroids. But he talks about it very openly about how it changed.

But he was still, even up to the point where he was 30 years old, was phenomenal. That's the guy. Jesus. Yeah, I mean, that's like, this is even five years ago. That's way too much. What the fuck, man? Who is that guy?

Hadi Kupan? Kupan? Hadi Kupan. Now, does this guy look himself in the mirror thinking he looks good? That's what he wants to look like. Maybe it's Chupan. Chupan? Chupan? But, I mean, That's what he wants to look like. Maybe it's Chupin. Chupin? Chupin?

But I mean, that's what he wants to look like. God damn. He wants to be a bodybuilder. I mean, does he look good? Yeah. No, he doesn't. He does as a bodybuilder. Yeah, as a bodybuilder.

That's why he wins. You just don't think he looks good as like a regular human. Correct. Like, is a girl looking at that being like, oh, he's attractive? Some girls. No way. Yeah, for sure there's freaks. Gym freaks who want to get stuffed by a giant warrior.

That's not a warrior. But that's what it looks like. Honestly, I didn't even know that was a cartoon. Look at that. That's what he looks like. Jesus Christ. Look at the fucking thighs on that guy. But that's that sport.

Yeah, right. I mean, that's what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to achieve Dorian Yates, you know? You ever see Dorian Yates? No. Dorian Yates was one of the first guys that was just super massive. Super massive. And I had him on the podcast, too.

And he's honest about drug use as well. But it's also dedication. His dedication was unsurpassed. Look at the size of him. Jesus. Imagine if he was in front of you on the podcast. If this guy's on the podcast, you'd be like, no, I'm natural. You'd be like, what, are you crazy?

Well, that's like the liver king thing, right? Yeah. It's like, come on, man. But you look at him there. I'm like, holy fucking shit, was he jacked. Look at that. Jesus. But he's not like that now.

Now he looks like that. Now he's just a fit guy who's like normal physique. Like if you saw that guy on the beach, you wouldn't say that's a preposterous physique. No, no. That's a guy who's in great shape. Yeah. He looks good. Still using steroids?

No, no, no. But he does take testosterone replacement. But he doesn't bodybuild anymore. I mean, he just trains for health now. He's a very intelligent guy, a very interesting guy. I really enjoyed talking to him and smokes a lot of weed. It's interesting. It's like popcorn muscles.

Yeah. So that's him later? Yeah, I guess. Oh, that's him early in his career, early, early before he got super jacked. I still think he's taking steroids on the right. Well, no, he's on testosterone replacement. You kind of have to on the right. I mean, he's in his 60s.

That's why I'm saying he's... But there's also like when you do those amount of steroids, your endocrine system shuts down. You stop producing testosterone. So you gotta take it? You have to take exogenous testosterone. There's no way around it. Crazy sport. Yeah, well, you have to be crazy to do it. there's no don't weigh around it crazy sport yeah well you have to be

crazy to do it like to see that and be like I want to do that yeah there's something weird going on to you

but to them no like that's what they want well you could say that about any you could say that about football like if you're gonna you're gonna get brain damage you want to do that

and they go but I want the glory. I want that pink Lamborghini. I want the fucking diamond-encrusted watch. Well, you can use that logic with anything. But that's brain damage. They're getting brain damage, and these guys are getting giant, and they're doing kidney damage because they're dehydrating themselves. I don't think a normal human, like, to me, I just look at that picture, and I'm not like, I want that.

No. And I don't think 99% of humans are like, I want that. No. And I don't think 99% of humans are like, I want that. Like you see, I see a good looking guy, a good looking girl. It's just inherent. Like handsome, pretty, attractive, that? No. No. No.

I think for most people, no. Right. But also that's not what they, they want that. Totally. Yeah. That's why they do it. Yeah. It's not normal.

I mean, it's also, it's body dysmorphia because a lot of those guys don't think they're big. That's why they do it. Yeah, it's not normal. I mean, also, it's body dysmorphia. Totally. Because a lot of those guys don't think they're big. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. They look in the mirror and they're like, I look fucking great. Or they think they look small. Like, a lot of those guys think they look small, which is crazy.

Yeah, that is what you said. That's like a pretty girl looks in the mirror and is like, I look fat. It's like, what are you talking about? That same vibe. Yeah, body dysmorphia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

People are weird. Understatement. Yeah. Yeah. People are weird. Understatement. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of strange people. Well, there's a lot of people that do it like that, and they're not even competing. They're just trying to get bigger and bigger and bigger. You know?

You ever Rich Piana? You ever heard of that guy? No. He was this guy who would take ungodly. He died young. He took ungodly amounts of steroids I forget what is like this like catchphrase was or something about yeah I forget I forget what it was but it was just basically saying that he was trying to be like look at the size of him on the right look at that the one where

he's got his hands on the equipment yeah the upper right. Like, what the fuck, man? Like, preposterously huge. Preposterously. And on everything. And also open about being on everything and, you know, died young. I think he died because of steroids. Yeah, I'm not giving these guys... Look at the size of that guy.

Yeah, I'm not giving these guys necessarily credit for openly admitting to be on steroids. No, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I'm not giving these guys necessarily credit for openly admitting to be on steroids. No, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Why? What are you doing? Jesus Christ.

He's sticking them out because of his arm. Yeah, his knees are below his arms. They post him out. But Jesus, the size of that guy. And how old was he when he died? I feel like he was like 40. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. I think he just redlined his system until it just boom.

2017, so he would have been 47. Yeah, 47 and just preposterously jacked. So he won a bunch of physique competitions, Mr. Teen California, Mr. California, National Physique Committee competitions. California, Mr. California, National Physique Committee competitions. But, you know, mostly it was like an online famous guy for being super jacked, which is like a lot of these, you know, social media influencers. That like becomes their business is to become super jacked or super shredded. And, you know, then they're committed to this.

Yeah. They're online. You find your lane, I guess. I guess. Be gigantically, preposterously huge. online you find your lane i guess i guess be gigantically preposterously huge yeah find your lane yeah that's his lane it's a wild lane to be in it's a strange lane to be in for sure yeah i would say so yeah dave portnoy we just talked for like three plus hours oh really so i? So I was wondering that. How much time has gone by? So I was looking at all past episodes because I know you go super long.

Yeah. And if one's like two hours versus four, does the two mean you just ran out of stuff? Sometimes it's just the conversation's over. And sometimes someone has to go somewhere. Got it. Like sometimes someone doesn't have three hours. You only have two. Yeah. So I was like, if I'm in the two,

I was going to take it. You were worried about that? Well, I was like, that means it didn't go well. It went great. Yes, we got in the sweet spot. It was fun. I enjoyed talking to you. Same, same.

Thanks for being here, man. I enjoyed it. All right, fun times. All right. I asked all over your table. I did too. All good. Good.

We'll do it again. All right. Bye, everybody.