The Joe Rogan Experience - #267 - Mac Danzig

Episode Date: September 19, 2012

Joe sits down with Mac Danzig.

And Brian, anything more to say? Oh yeah, Desquatcho tonight. We're at the Ice House tonight. It is, oh, Tom Segura's out. Ari Shafir's in. That's how we roll. We got Ari Shafir, we got Joey Diaz, we got Dom motherfuckin' Irera,

we got Greg Fitzsimmons in the house, bitches. Fitz Dogg. And Doug Benson. And Brian Redband, did I say you? No. No, you're in there too, bitch. And me, yeah, I'll be there too. It's gonna be awesome. And Brian Redband. Did I say you? No. No, you're in there too, bitch. And me. Yeah, I'll be there too.

It's going to be awesome. Icehousecomedy.com. Yeah, we do these on a regular basis here. And there's another one here. I'm in Toronto on Friday night at Massey Hall. That shit's sold out, son. But if you want tickets to a comedy show in your LA, you can come to the Ice House.

Yeah, Death Squad show Friday. All right, bitches. MacDenzie's here. We're going to get it done properly. We forgot to do the piano. Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

This is way better. Mac Danzig is, I think you might be podcast haunted, my friend. No, no, no, no. We're going to fix it this time. Yeah, we're going to fix it. We're going to get this done. See, you demand a proper setup. That's what it is.

The fucking setup of my house is ridiculous. Little goddamn stupid webcams. That's why I have a studio that's in the process of being put together. That shit's going to take months, yo. Somebody said I should make a little video of where it, you know, show like what it looks like in the beginning. Yeah, I might do that. Time lapse it.

Just set one in the corner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be cool. Yeah, I've never done anything like this before, so it's kind of exciting to build something up. But Mac Dan's like my humblest apologies on my retardation and my technical abilities. Mine and Ari Shafir's. Ari did a podcast with him.

We had a good conversation. You know, it wasn't on video or whatever. He does his podcast just audio. We had a really good conversation. Afterwards, I was like, oh man. I think he was more disappointed about it even than I was. He felt pretty bad about it. There's nothing you can do.

I was like, you emptied the trash too? You didn't just delete it, but you emptied it? He's like, yeah, well I had to make more room. And I'm just thinking. Oh, God. Get a new laptop, bitch. We had a great little conversation. Yeah, well, there's 40 minutes that we may or may not put back on.

But what happened with us was the second file was corrupt. It wasn't working. When we started over. Yeah, it wasn't working on Ustream. And the thing the mp3 recorder went off and then i had to turn it back on again remember brian i had to take the battery off and the file afterwards was corrupt yeah wacky ass and you shouldn't work it was that that's crazy that he both haunted as fuck yeah that was a big goddamn disaster but we're gonna

correct that so you think you're gonna add the 40 minutes to this one when you put it on it we could do that we can could make this the – well, I just hope we don't get redundant. The problem is when you have a conversation like – there's a lot of shit that we said that I want to make sure we cover. Right, right, right. So fuck that other podcast. Okay, cool.

Ghost that bitch. Yeah, all right. That's what's up. Unless we're going to send someone back to the archives to edit it. I don't know, man. A lot of internet drama, man. Have you been paying attention to this crazy video that all these Muslims are responding to all over the world? This ridiculous...

You told me about it last week. Yeah, the Christian fundamentalist video. Yeah, yeah. Have you been watching all the reaction to it? I haven't. I haven't, no. Well, France, in their infinite wisdom someone has decided today to uh publish a cartoon with muhammad in it like they're just pushing it like it's gay yeah we're going to be crazy

how do they smoke cigarettes is it like this we're going to be crazy look muhammad make a noise with his face yeah there's something about the way they hold cigarettes that was really annoying right how's it like this is it this well they hope they call them facts yeah that might be yeah yeah there's something to it was it this is it this there's something there's something wrong yeah it's like hey fuck face this you know this is the way to do it this is the right way to do it you have full use of your hands what's all this crazy shit it's like the the tea the tea thing yeah you know yeah we did it smoking like this i just got another text from dice clay telling me how awesome his special came out he's so fucking psyched dice clay said he did a special and he said it was like the old days he said dudes

were standing up and screaming. He said there was mad Death Squad fans in the crowd, too. He had a bunch of guys coming up to him that said they heard him from the podcast. Yeah, he said it was like one of his best specials ever. So that's the only time you're allowed to hold a cigarette like this. That just reminds me of the people that got the tea or the coffee or whatever it actually reminds me of one of my favorite scenes Mulholland Drive are you familiar with it?

you're a Lynch fan right? huge Lynch fan and he's holding the coffee he requests a napkin first sips it, sets it down then spits it out into the napkin my god this is the finest espresso in the world.

That's what's up, man. That's funny stuff, man. David Lynch is a master. He's so weird, isn't he? Yeah. His movies are so like, sometimes you leave and you go, what did you just do to me, you fuck? I know. I trusted you. It's like the ability to express emotions through film,

the ability to make the viewer, to evoke emotion in the viewer, is strange emotions that are very peculiar, like nothing that really you can put your finger on, at least I can't as far as articulating it with language. It's just one of those things you've got to watch. You feel creepy. You feel a little bit, you know, like it's a little exhilar language. It's just one of those things you've got to watch. You feel creepy. You feel a little bit, you know, like it's a little exhilarating. It's cold and wet.

But there's humor involved in it, too. Like it's sort of a dark humor. It's really cool. He's able to play with ideas and notions and just, you know, purvey them with film. That's pretty cool. I've really enjoyed some of his stuff, but I've walked out of a few of his things going,

what the fuck? What did you walk out of Inland Empire like that? No, Inland Empire was, uh, that wasn't that bad. I thought I'd like that one. Yeah.

Who is this? Who is the stars of Inland Empire? Um, that's going to be Laura Dern. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And, um, uh, man, what's his name? The same guy that, that, uh,

that played in Mulholland Drive. See, I thought Mulholland Drive, I thought the end of it was just too fucked up. I was just like, wait a minute, what? This is it? It just ends right here? But that's the whole thing is I don't, the way I look at his films, I don't think that they're always necessarily a plot or a story to figure out. It's just.

An experience. Yeah, an experience. And you can take it for what it's worth. And there's all sorts of theories as to what was really happening in the story and everything. And there's one major one that everyone adheres to as far as Mulholland Drive goes. But I think it's like, man, it's just the experience.

I don't even try to figure it out. It's like a psychedelic experience. It's like you can't force yourself back into the here and now, like regular reality, and try to figure everything out while it's happening. It's just you just have to let it go. Just got to go with it. Yeah. Submit yourself to it.

Give in to the lynch. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I remember Blue Velvet. Yeah. Was it Dennis Hopperper we had the the mask he kept huffing yeah and he was just so intense and i remember he could pull that oh god it was so intense it was so like oh my god like that guy dennis hopper for sure has seen some real life insanity there's no way he could be that intense about some shit unless he's i know

he's seen something man yeah you ain't pulling that out of your ass that shit was too real that blue velvet huffing character yeah man that's that was that was one of the greatest scenes ever man yeah lynch had just done such such bizarre. But that's how it would make you feel, like almost creepy. Yeah, yeah. If you watch, I have a DVD that has some of, I think it's called The Lost Films of David Lynch, and it has some of the things that he was doing when he was in college and when he was coming up, like his first, like some animation stuff. And some of it's pretty disturbing, and then some of it is like, wow, this is borderline genius stuff,

at least from a creative standpoint. It's pretty cool. Oliver Stone's lost his fucking mind. Yeah. This movie tried to put out where these two dudes are living with this one chick, and they're both banging her, and there's no problems. Oliver, fuck you.

Yeah, man. Fuck you, silly. That movie's more ridiculous than The Avengers. Yeah. You know, I'm cool with Oliver Stone. I don't think he sucks. He doesn't suck. He's amazing.

But, like, I don't know. Platoon? Yeah. He's fucking brilliant. Oliver Stone. Wall Street? Oliver Stone's brilliant. I'm not going to see your drug war movie about the noble drug dealers who are both in love with the girl.

Fuck you. That is just so ridden with cliches. It's like, how much coke were you on when you came up with that idea yeah i i often think back and and almost wish that that tarantino would have followed through with his script and done natural born killers himself because i really would have loved to see what his take on it was i loved dollar of stones's take on it. I did too. There's been two movies like that where Tarantino said that he didn't really enjoy the finished product. It wasn't really like what it was. That was that and the

Christian Slater movie. True Romance. Which was a fucking brilliant movie. How you could complain about anything about True Romance? God damn that was a good movie. When you a baby you know what i mean like like if you were if you were to write a stand-up routine and then have somebody else doing it even if they hit it out of the park it'd be like well that's not the way i wanted to be the worst writer

terrible but yeah um the true romance the movie the finished product was a fucking work of art. Yeah. That's one of the all-time best, like, troubled romance, you know, fight for each other to the death. Yeah. Whew. Absolutely. That's a lot of positivity in that movie, man. Perfection. Perfection and the imperfections of life.

That's a badass fucking movie. Patricia Arquette. Christian Slater was a bad motherfucker in that movie. What happened to that dude? How does that happen where a dude does a true romance? You would figure he'd be in movies constantly. If he can do that, what he did in that movie? Did he do Cuffs before or after that?

Cuffs? Yeah, remember that with the K? It was just one of his... A dog movie? Was it a dog movie? No, no, no, no. It was just like a silly comedy where he was like a it a dog no no no no it was it was just like a silly comedy where he was like a cop or something like an undercover cop or something like that it was just one of those things that like actors they gotta work and everything and understand

that and so that was just one of the things where it's like well like you're kind of starting to take a path on a you know kind of corny direction you know what I mean? I watch guys do that all the time who are great actors and they were able to repair it by picking and choosing the projects that they want to work on and then they redeem themselves every time. But he was kind of...

I think that was when I was starting to kind of look at him funny. Well, I looked at the whole world funny once Ice Cube started doing family comedies. I was like, what the fuck is going on? Have you ever seen that picture online? The first picture, it's one of those, the internet pictures, where they took a photograph of him. I think he has an AK-47.

He's sitting there with Be Real from Cypress Hill. Bandana on, looking frowning on his fuck dana on yeah and it says at first i was all like dot dot dot and then at the bottom it shows him with like a like fishing pole like on a vest like with a big rolex yeah he's got like a like he's like out on a boat or something he's got a life vest on like a big life vest all the way up to his neck he's like smiling all goofy and it's like but then i was all like yeah it's weird seeing him in those uh beer commercials you know look i can't talk shit about people selling out i did fear factor you know and i did it twice i took some time off and went back and did it again um so i can't talk shit about if you gotta make your money you gotta make your money but for us it's very odd to see i mean i'm not criticizing it

oh my god that's so hilarious oh that's i love these fucking things internet memes man make me laugh so hard i i spent like four hours the other weekend on um knowyourmeme.com you ever seen that website it's like i think that's what it's called knowyourmeme.com you ever seen that website it's like i think that's what it's called knowyourmeme.com and it's like this site that that documents pretty pretty thoroughly all these different internet memes from techno viking to that jesse slaughter girl you do remember her jesse slaughter it's sad in a way it's it's fucked up i mean that she's like some 11 or 13 year old girl who got like all into gossip and some little scene or subculture of music and everything and you know

how is she the friday girl friday no no no no this is some girl where like what happened was she became so popular in this little subculture and everybody just jumped on her and was like ridiculing her and all this stuff because she was going around saying that she was sleeping with all these dumb emo artists and everything in some rock band and you know she's like a little kid and she's doing all these webcam things you know how it's popular now with youtube where everybody just sits in front of their computer with like their their like clothes hanging from the doorknob in the background they're like you know like talking about whatever giving a review on a movie or talking about whatever. And she was doing all that stuff and getting really like scandalous with it.

And so people just were just tearing her apart. And her dad got on like a live webcam broadcast. It was like. Was that the one, Brian, that you did? Yeah, with Lil Esther. Brian did like a parody of that. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people did. Yeah. And he's like, he's totally did a parody of that. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people did.

Yeah, and he's totally talking out of his ass. He's like, I'm talking to the cyber police, and I've backtraced all of the emails. And if you ever come near my daughter and talk about her, he wants his big quote. He goes, consequences will never be the same again or something like that it was just it was it was sad i mean people screw up their lives on the internet oh yeah here's the here's a parody of it yeah that's brian that's brian we gotta see the real one first yeah we gotta see the real one first so we can know how silly yours is yeah it's it's the um it's sad well you know what you're also seeing in that video you're seeing a guy who's not aware of the

playing field yeah no totally that's why it's so interesting yeah it's fascinating because that's there's a guy who doesn't understand that you're you're do you just put something out there in the internet like virally like you don't really know what that is do you like that can that's going to hit millions of people like the idea never crossed his mind that he would be able to yell something into a video camera and then it would become like a meme and people would do parodies of it yeah he thought he was just talking to a select group of people who are like tormenting his kid or whatever yeah oh man yeah That's still you, you fuck. Yeah.

Trying to trick me. Oh, man. Yeah, it's weird to see viral videos. Everybody knows about the Goatsy guy, the guy who pulled his asshole apart, and it's particularly disturbing because in the photo he's wearing a wedding ring. He's tugging his asshole open.

Can you imagine if we know this guy, the original guy? Can you imagine ring he's like tugging his asshole open can you imagine if we know this guy the original guy can you imagine if it's just somebody that we know and he's like very ashamed of that photo and he's just like a normal guy it's like look i was just really drunk yeah you could be but the thing is the way he's clawing at it it's like this guy's done that before i mean he's he's just clawing open his asshole the way he's doing it just doesn't seem you know what for a second there when you read i said clawing open his asshole. The way he's doing it just doesn't seem... You know what? For a second there, I said clawing open his asshole, and you reached for the board.

I was like, oh, I swore. You know why? Because I had to do radio this morning. I'm about to close my eyes if you put that shit up. No, you can't put that up. You can't see that. The people at home, they don't deserve Goetze. Oh, man.

But I had to do regular radio today. Oh, that sucks. It doesn't suck. I mean mean they were real nice but i forgot like how rarely i do that now so when i do it i always have to go don't swear don't swear like i'm not a professional anymore like any at any second something come out of my mouth you're a professional you're just not censoring yourself with these ridiculous censorship ideas that it's yeah it's just to me it was it was strange uh being aware of it and thinking about it just for a second and thinking this is like the reality of most people's lives

that are on radio everybody's under the gun you got to be real careful what the fuck you say yeah yeah i haven't done radio in a while when i had like my little 15 minutes of fame right after the ultimate fighter show i was doing a whole lot of radio shows and you know for those of you don't know mac danzig won the ultimate fighter in season what season six was about five years ago um it it completed in what was that 2008 i think or two four years ago yeah yeah 2007 yeah yeah i think it was 2000 2008 yeah it was it was like right when it completed 2007 2008 you're an alumni

that's a very prestigious group of humans yeah guys have won the ultimate fighter well yeah I guess so you know what I mean

it's it was definitely experience it's a huge accomplishment accomplishment it's not just like winning a fight just getting through

the experience I mean I've you know I watch the tapes I've seen I've talked to dudes about what it's like it's like fucking it's not just like winning a fight they're just getting through the experience i mean i've you know i watched the tapes i've seen i've talked to dudes about what it's like it's hellacious yeah yeah i mean i knew what i was getting into when i did it so my whole idea heading into that show was just to win like i you know there's this guy i don't know if you know who he is he doesn't really do jiu-jitsu anymore but he was one of the guys that i first started training with it in los angeles when i first moved out here's named fernando vasconcellos probably he won the worlds in jiu-jitsu as a black belt when

he was 16 he's one of like the like in the gym one of the best prodigies in the world i mean i i've never rolled with anybody anywhere near as good as him like yeah honestly like i mean maybe like like robert drysdale is like you know has that same type of ability but robert's also way bigger than me but uh fernando was just amazing and i remember one of the things you know he had already kind of given up on on fighting and everything and he told me before i left he's like just remember just do this to win you're there to win you're not there to goof off and and like you know you can do whatever you want but but the goal is to win the show so that you can have a career and you know better

yourself and keep moving forward and i was on there as soon as i got in there was all these guys half of them were like deer caught in the headlights they were just like oh man like I'm actually on the show and what's gonna happen are they gonna surprise us or you know what's gonna go on and then the other half of the guys were just there to to be goofballs hoping that they get enough exposure to you know put some pictures up on their myspace page or get laid or whatever they wanted to do. And I was, that's why everybody's like, oh, you're so grumpy and you're so angry and everything. It's like, well, dude, I'm trying to win this. This is what I'm doing.

Like, I'm very serious about this. Do you find that that's a weird position where a lot of fighters find themselves where they have to also try to be a showman? They have to, like, you see the encouragement that uh people get from trash talking because it sells pay-per-views sure yeah i mean my whole thing is the whole reason why i'm doing this and maybe i didn't know it when i first got into it but now after looking back of years of a career like over 10 years i've been doing this and reflecting it's like I picked this because one it's artistic two it's fighting and I love I just like the fight and and three it's it's honesty it's about being authentic and that's from the beginning to the end for me

like you know like the marketing of the fight the preparation of the fight and the actual act, the art of doing it live in a spontaneous way. And I do it because it's about being honest with yourself. Once you get in there, there's no script, there's no faking it. That's what's going to happen. And I love that. I love putting myself out there. And like, you know, it's the ultimate sacrifice his ultimate commitment and so um when you start to like fake beefs with other fighters you start to like you know play up all this stuff in my opinion you're playing a game with your authenticity you know what i mean and and that's a heavy load to bear like take someone take someone like Chael Sonnen, who, like, I like Chael a lot. I like his shtick. I like him as a person, and I like him as a fighter.

But that's a heavy load to bear, to say all this stuff. And he's great at it. I mean, he's a great talker. He's got amazing, you know, all sorts of funny things. I mean, I laugh my ass off listening to him. And he's really good at it. He's the best at it. He's amazing.

ass off listening to him and he's really good at it he's the best at it he's amazing but it's like you know do you really want to do that when you have to step in there and be 100 real and the in that moment and you have to like back up all this stuff that you said i mean like if he can come to terms with it then he can and that's and that's up to him but my whole thing was i want to to be the person that i am inside and outside of the ring and and like when i was on the show i was i was mad i was angry that that there was all these guys who weren't serious they were screwing around they were drinking every night and then there were some guys that were serious but they were too scared from the whole situation just scared them you know and they they were just shutting down and i watched like especially guys on my team like i watched their

morale break down especially with the way matt hughes was training these guys and and they just you know they just broke and i was like man like like what's with these guys being nice to my face and then being all silly behind my back it's like i would never choose to live with you ever in any other circumstance and now i not only do i have no contact to or from the outside world but i'm i'm stuck in a situation where i can't even take a walk in the neighborhood to get away from you guys so if i saw somebody and i and they're talking all kinds of shit on me and they don't like me and they're drawing little cartoons of me in this juvenile way, I'm trying to win this thing.

I see them and I'm like, dude, don't talk to me like I'm your friend. Like, fuck you. You know what I mean? And people are like, oh, man, well, Mac, he's so grumpy and he's mad. Well, it's like, you would be too. I mean, this is what I do for a living. This is how I'm going to- Well, you had already had a lot of experience for you on the show.

You'd already fought Sakurai in Japan. And I mean, you were pretty well known. As far as, like, guys getting on the show, you're about as well known, you know, an MMA fighter outside of the UFC as you can get. And so, yeah. So what ended up happening was when I got on there, I took the confidence that I had from all that experience and I just turned it into like like I've always been very respectful. But when there are people who disrespect the sport and disrespect this, you know, I mean, I understand it's a show and they pick goofballs like Richie Hightower and stuff like that. But when you take a bunch of guys who are disrespecting this thing that I've dedicated my life to,

um, I'm like, fuck you guys. Like I'm winning this thing. And I, and I took my experience and I, I turned that into like, um,

alpha male type of, you know, attitude. I was like, fuck this. Like, who's going to beat me? Like I'm,

I'm taking out all of you guys. And that's the way I, I operated. And that's what won the show for me. How much older were you than the average guy on the show? I think about four years older. That's big, isn't it? Yeah, that is pretty big.

Yeah, I was like 27, I think, when I was on the show. And most of the guys were in their early 20s. God, there's such a big difference between me at 21 and me at 27. Yeah, yeah, me too. I was retarded at 21 yeah it's hard not to be you know how how long ago was that was that before like like you started breaking into acting and everything yeah i was 21 in 1988 okay 1988 that's when i first started doing comedy. Right, right, right. So that was like a big transitionary period for me. No more competition than going into comedy.

But I just remember being so stupid. Yeah. Like in the ways of the world. Sure, sure. I was just a fucking dummy. And I think today when I talk to 21-year-olds, I'm so impressed with how much information kids have today and just how the world really works.

It's so different than when I was 21. When I was 21, if you had come up to me and asked me a political question, I would have been dumbfounded. Sure. I would not have had any answer. I don't know how the process works. I would have had no business voting. Right, right right right

but but you know of course i could and i did i think i uh i voted for somebody who lost i don't even remember who the fuck it was dukakis it probably was it probably was it probably was way back then yeah i was probably i had a a very strong democratic girlfriend at the time, so I'm sure she probably talked me into voting Democratic. Babbitt, maybe? Yeah. I don't remember what it was, but I just remember being so dumb at 21. But 21-year-old kids today, they have way more information in their head. Yeah, yeah.

They do, but I still think there's... It's a maturing process. You just have to go through. Yeah, yeah. I mean, i think the information is there but i feel like um i don't know i i i personally look at look at some of the young people that are like in their early 20s and i see a lot of the same like passive aggressive ways of of handing handling social situations that you would that were sort of the norm with kids when

i was 16 or 17. I don't know. I mean, I guess it goes both ways. But there's definitely a huge access, a much bigger access to information now, especially because of the internet and everything. And I think there's more open-minded people. And I hope that's the way that we're going.

Yeah, the idea that kids are more street smart or more worldly in the days gone past, the reason why that makes sense to me is that you don't just let your kids wander on the street anymore. Right. Like people used to just open the door when they were young, you know, when they had 10-year-olds, and the 10-year-olds just go out in the street. Nobody fucking does that today. Everybody keeps an eye on their kids because, know you can't you can't do that you can't do that anymore so guys of a younger generation just a little while ago i mean when i was a kid that wasn't

like a really highly discussed topic of child molesting because it wasn't like you went out of the into the street you thought there was child molesters everywhere nobody even brought it up nobody even fucking warned me about my mom did put the fear in me she was kind of like like on the cutting edge of all that she i mean you know she you know looking back at it like when i was a teenager i was kind of i kind of started harboring resentments because i was like man like when i was five and six and seven years old, I'd have these nightmares about getting kidnapped and stuff. But man, all that, because of just, she wouldn't go into detail, but she'd be like, hey, look, if somebody approaches you, you know what I mean? You don't know them.

You know what I mean? You've got to be careful. And she educated me on all that. That actually saved me one time. Man, it was the craziest experience. saved me one time. There was the, man, it was, it was the craziest experience. Cause when I was, I think I was 10 and I lived in this sort of old fashioned suburban neighborhood, which is very near all this stuff that was once rural farmland and had now become industrial parks. And I would cut through these industrial parks to get to my one friend's house. And I

went over, you know, like to his house to try to find him and he wasn't there. And I had a scooter or something like that. I was like trying to go back and I had to cut through these woods to get to this Holiday Inn parking lot and then cut through the parking lot to get back over to my neighborhood. And these woods were, it was just a really small stretch of woods, like very small, just a little wooded areas, probably like maybe a hundred yards or something. And no one's ever there. You know, it's the little path in between the parking lot and this cul-de-sac. And I get up there and I start walking my scooter cause I'm on a dirt path. And all of a sudden there's this guy standing there and he's like, he's, I remember him, he had like a, like a button up t-shirt, but no tie. And he had a sudden, there's this guy standing there. And I remember him. He had a button-up t-shirt but no tie.

And he had reddish hair, like a little light red beard. And he was like, hey, hey, how you doing? And I stopped at my tracks. And I was just like, oh, shit. I was like, this is what she was talking about. And I was like, hey. And I went to go past him. He's like, hey, come on up. There's a lot of other kids playing up here hey go go ahead up and i was like

oh wow like you're like and i hurried up and i was just like ah i didn't even say anything i was like i was just frozen and i turned around and i i took off and then it was it was so it was so crazy. It was like there was kids that had been abducted that this guy was kidnapping kids. And I don't even know what he was doing or whatever. But he was there at that Holiday Inn. And they were following him throughout western Pennsylvania. And I think they actually found him. But that was the guy. And I was like, wow.

Like, what the fuck? You know what i mean like like and i if it wasn't for my you know so it was like all those nightmares and all that shit was probably worth it because uh you know she sometimes fear is is an important thing to have just instinctively you know like yeah somebody can let you know that hey it's probably not going to happen but you got to know the difference you know you can't be naive the the moment you know that, hey, it's probably not going to happen, but you've got to know the difference. You can't be naive. The moment you realize that you're on your own out there making decisions and that you can get roped into something like that.

Fear is not a factor for me, Joe. It's not at all? I was like six or seven, I think. I think I was seven, and I was at the library, and some guy came over to show me these. I was looking at these monster books. I was into Frankenstein, The Wolfman. Right, right, right.

And the guy goes, I have a lot of monster books in my car. And I go, oh, yeah. Oh, you do? And he goes, yeah. Do you want to come see? And I go, OK. So I was really young. And I just left with him.

And I'm walking out the door with him. And the librarian sees him. And she yells, she knew my name, she goes, Joseph, you get away from that man, you get away from that man. And the guy started running, the guy started running. Oh, shit. And then I realized, oh, so I started crying, I was crying like crazy. And then she, the librarian said that he just got out of jail. That's a serious close encounter.

Wow. Yeah. If that librarian didn't see what was going on. But isn't that a horrifying job for the librarian, too? I mean, she did it, and thanks to her. I might be dead. I might not have ever survived. I don't know what he went to jail for.

I don't know what he's willing to do to not go to jail again. I don't know what he's willing to do to not go to jail again you know i don't i don't i don't fucking know but the um the librarian has to think that like while these kids are walking around her library reading books it's just to think that someone can come in and snatch him and fuck him damn he could have had a big cock there joe brian you need to shut the fuck up today. Oh, man. You just got to know when to not say something and when to just stop trying to be silly all the time. Oh, man. Well, the podcast is working, so.

Yeah, this one's live. Yeah, but see, this is why I tried to avoid it. The kids that get, like, if you let your kid out today, like, that's like a recipe for disaster. Like, nobody wants to just let their kids roam the streets today. I know, and it's a shame because it's like we need to be in touch with the earth. We need to be in touch with, you know, like, just experiencing society and experiencing other people.

And, and man, it's like, we've got to shelter our kids to a certain extent. You know, my, my daughter's only, she's going to be four, but it's like,

like she's the, you know, most important thing in the world to me. And it's like, I, I don't, what was, it was McKenna that said this is like,

like he was saying that, that he struggles with this as a parent he's like what will it be like uh cynical intellect who's like sheltered or slack jar jawed um consumer halfwit of the horse shit handed on from down high or you know like so in our case of what we're talking about now, it's like even worse possibly, like something bad happening because your kid gets in a situation that they shouldn't be in. Yeah, that's the big worry. I think that's what we're so aware of today that we weren't aware of. But it is a legit concern when people say,

oh, we have to live without fear. Yeah, maybe, sort of. But look, there's some horrible shit that's happening out there for real like you can't just deny that so to roll the dice with your babies it's not it's not so easy to do when you're aware when you're aware what the fuck is going on in the world we got to figure out how to stop all that and make something an environment where you can let your kids go again but that's that's changed radically just in the last like 30 40 years you know the way people raise their kids i mean i i want to homeschool my kid i just don't have the resources to do it and and a lot of people when they hear

that you know they're they're stuck in the same modality in the same way of thinking it's like as everyone else and they're like well what do you mean you're gonna homeschool and they're how is she gonna be adjusted socially it's like well just adjusted to what you know what i mean like like i mean there's plenty of other experiences that you can have socially with people and get to know yourself and get to know how to interact with people without going to the institution of public schooling i mean public school like pretty much i mean ruined me and like and when i try to tell people about that, they're like, well, I don't say ruined me, but it definitely sent me off

spiraling into a different path. And it helped me become the person that I am and everything, my rebellion against that. But I don't want to put my kid through that. And I don't think it was an isolated incident either with the public schools that I had to deal with. What was wrong with your experience? Well, I went, I immediately, you know, I was already in public school from, like, first to fourth grade. And it was, like, this strange school where, you know, you had half of the kids or more than half were like these rich yuppie kids and the parent the uh the teachers really like favored them so like i guess it was

kind of like a social experiment in a way like they the teachers were very favorable to these kids and then there was all the kids from where i was from which was like kind of like the poor area and a lot of them were like misbehaving white trash type of kids. But they were, you know, they were, you know, they were just kids. And I was sort of stuck in the middle. I was from like the poor area. And we just got treated like crap. We got treated like second class citizens. It was almost like being a minority in this in this situation. I thought that was really weird. And almost all the teachers there would just hand out worksheets, stay in your desk, that whole thing. You know, I came from Montessori

in kindergarten, which is a completely different structure of learning. And we understood mathematical stuff like multiplication just through physical work. Like they have these beads that you count on almost like an abacus instead of writing things down and doing like the worksheet type of work and so i understood all of that like even going into first grade i just wasn't able to articulate in the same way like this memorization way where it's like two plus twos four you know what i mean that that type of stuff it was it was all just you know like hands-on and so so I was just like, what is with, you could choose what you want to do in Montessori. In public schools, it was just like,

you know, they try to keep everybody in line and control and understand why they have to do that. But the classrooms were big. There was no individualized attention. And then when I was from fifth grade to eighth grade, we had moved to Virginia. And then all of a sudden I became the minority, which is fine. But it was very interesting. You mean you moved to a black neighborhood? Yeah, we moved to like an all black neighborhood. And the school, especially the school, like the neighborhood I lived in was like 50-50.

But like the school that we went to was like, I think it was like 88% black or something like that. And the, I just watched like, I mean, nobody cared about the students. There were fights pretty much every day. It was kind of, it reminded me of like the footage that I see of prisons, the way fights would just break out. And all of a sudden it was just this crazy thing. And I was always this like small little kid, you know what I mean i was just like you know i was like interested in these fights and everything and i thought they were pretty cool but at the same time i was like i couldn't get involved with that i mean i was like four foot something you know what i mean i was like a little kid a lot of these guys had already gotten their man size by the time they were in seventh or eighth grade and i was just like shit

and i was watching it happen so I would resort to you know like my way of getting along in that situation was resorting to like class clownism or whatever because I couldn't like beat anybody up at that age you know what I mean or like stand my ground that way but I would I could at least win their favor by you know telling the teachers to fuck off or whatever you know and they and they thought that that was really funny and and i was screwing myself up the whole time and then it was like okay well these people like the kids there really didn't like me you know they didn't like the most of the black kids didn't like the white kids it was just the way it was and so at the the very best case scenario you'd be in a situation where you were ignored and the worst case scenario you'd be in a situation where you were ignored. In the worst case scenario, you'd be fucked with all the time and picked on.

So the best thing to hope for is being ignored. It's like, well, where do you look for your role models in that situation? And as a kid, people would always tell me, well, you need role models and male role models. And I was just like, what are you talking about? I don't need that stuff. And looking back on it now, it's like they were right.

You do look for role models and you look for people to set an example of of what to do to become a man or to you know to just move forward and grow up and become mature and so i started looking at that i was like well what about these guys and there is these always a little group of heavy metal guys and metallica shirts and long hair and everything and they were just heavy metal guys and Metallica shirts and long hair and everything. And they were just smoking cigarettes all day long, skipping school. And I felt, I just was like, okay. And I started falling into that.

And then it was just like a downward spiral from there. And then once I moved back up to Pennsylvania and there was all these rich white kids who thought they were gangsters, I was like, wow, you guys are really fake. And they hated me because I was skateboarding and stuff. And so I was like, you know what? I was like, I'm done with this. Like, I don't want to be forced into this situation. Like I want to hang out with the people that I understand. And I, and I hung out with older kids all the time who were already out of high school. And, um, I just, I was done with it. And, and, um, I abandoned, I was pretty bright, you know, I abandoned like the possibilities of, of moving

forward with academics and and i've struggled with that for years and years and thought to myself well you know what if i you know i was regretful i was like what if i you know would have kept going to school and i could have gotten the degree in science that i wanted to or maybe become a a biologist or like you know done something in in one of these fields that I'm really interested in. But as I've gotten older, that regret has started to fade because I'm like, you know what? I think I did pretty damn good for myself. I think I did one of the things that really spoke to me, which is fighting.

You can't have regret for taking a pursuit and enjoying the path. There is no regret in that. Sure. There's a choice, and then there's life and there's the idea that it would have been better if you went one way or another yeah yeah it's hypothetical but the beautiful thing about education is you have access to information that no man before you had ever had in any university absolutely out of your computer yeah out of your your your ipad or your kindle you can just fucking read book after book after book after book yeah and if you know you really pay attention to what

you're reading you can get a fucking fantastic education without actually having to go somewhere and have somebody write it on yeah you're absolutely right it's just like like one of i and i agree with that completely i was just um for a, somewhat regretful because of the hypothetical idea of, well, if I did that, that could have been even better. You know, I might have been really enjoying my life because I would like to be, I would like to travel and be one of those people who just lives in the rainforest for weeks on end, gets stung up by mosquitoes and just, you know, documents insects and knows every single tree frog and finds new species. That is really interesting to me. That could have been you in another life. Sure, sure. And so, you know, when things are bad, that's when you always start to look into your regrets.

And I had many bad times throughout my entire career. And, you know know there was times i was like man like shouldn't have taken this path you know it's just it's part of life you know you question uh what you're doing it for and everything and those were the times when i when i look back and wish that i i would have done those things but yeah now like as i'm getting older i really and and i hate i hate to like put I hate to put a negative spin on it, but I'm seeing how much of a sham the academic institutions are and colleges are. One of my best friends has a master's degree at UCLA, and he's going to get his PhD,

and it's just – I mean, he's not doing it. He's doing it because he can't do anything else. He can't get a, the PhD program's paying him, but he can't get a job doing anything else, and he just was watching people just get fed basically lies, even in what's supposedly a prestigious institution like the University of California in Los Angeles. And it's like, man, I'd rather sort through the information

and find it on my own, just like you said, rather than get some kind of a degree and really have nothing to show for it. And I'm not putting down people who get degrees or anything like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, nor am I. Yeah, yeah. But like you said, the information's out there.

And if you really just want the knowledge just to have it, it's there for the taking if you have the time to do it. Yeah, it's a matter of just immersing yourself in a topic. The information is just readily available. I think living with regret is a very dangerous thing. Absolutely. Put yourself in that mindset. It's a very dangerous thing.

I think you've got to just appreciate the now. I always tell people it sounds completely silly but it's a great way to think about your life to live your life as if you were the hero in your own story absolutely the movie starts today how do you go forth what do you do do do what the hero would do yeah do what the person that you would most admire would do and everyone can do that we can all be in a movie where the hero wakes up and realizes he's been a fucking dipshit half of his life

and it's time to pull it together. For sure. For sure. You can do it. Anybody can do that. I think, yeah, I think for me

it was being regretful or feeling regretful was a coping mechanism of just being down and having depression and it's like, well, you either get through that

or you don't. This is the Vegas Times. We talked about this on the podcast that would never be yeah yeah the one that will be whispered throughout the ages the last one the last podcast it's a conspiracy um yeah you moved out to vegas uh to try to you know to further your mma career yeah but uh like a lot of people you found vegas to be a very scary hollow freakish fucking town of depression yeah yeah it is i mean not all of it well happy out there like pendulet's happy out there i don't know i would imagine he really is being horrible listen there's there's some guys there like especially guys that I train with that still live out there, and they seem content and happy. And I don't mean to like put these people down.

I mean, these people, I respect them and I like them. They're my friends. But in a certain level, they're simple. And I don't mean simple like retarded. I'm talking like they're simple. Like a Leonard Skinner song. Yeah, well, but yeah, maybe even not so quite. That's almost like simplicity manifesting like being noble.

But I feel like these guys that are able to... I almost envied them at the time. They were able to honestly live their life. Maybe they're suppressing their hate for their life, but it feels like they're content with their life. Maybe they're suppressing their hate for their life, but it feels like they're content with their life. They come home every evening and they play Xbox or PlayStation.

And then they go and they train. They train their ass off and then they play Xbox or PlayStation. And on the weekends, they either go play paintball or they go to a strip club and they live their life that way. And it's like, you know what, man?

Like, that's cool. It sounds pretty awesome. if you're into that. But I don't know. I mean, yeah. So I had just won the show. I was presented with this contract. Knowing how fickle the sport is and how easily you can get forgotten and how easy it is to get dropped from your contract,

I was like well listen i've got it there's nothing in la there's no great mma teams in la there's nothing no one here to train with i've gotta take this for all it's worth i'd already been going to vegas for a while you know every before every fight i would always go out and stay with gray i'd been doing that since the z stays before, even before Kator ever opened up a gym. And so I knew all those guys, Forrest and Pyle and Jay Haran and Martin Kamen and Gray. And so I was like, I'm going to move out there with them and I'm going to train at Kator's. And Tyson Griffin's there now. And like, you know, it's a really good

situation. And we're just, I'm going to have the best training partners and I'm going to work my ass off every day. And I'm going to give this the best shot that I, uh, that I have. And what happened was I went out there and I realized that like, it was just so competitive. There was no, um, there was no nurturing the athlete. There was nobody saying, Hey, if you pay me, you know, a percentage of your purse, I will be there for you every day. I will monitor your training. I will help you out. We will study your opponent. We'll just, it was none of that. It was like, you go in, you spar, you're in a war every day, whether it's a grappling day or the standup day, it's, it's a physical war. And these guys are very competitive. They've all got the alpha male type of personality and, and all got the alpha male type of personality.

And all the fun got taken out of it. I mean, I would go there, and those guys would go there too. Everyone hated it. I don't care what those guys say. They're my friends. Everyone hated it. Gray was one of the top dogs in the room. Nobody could touch him. Once he got to a certain level.

For a while, he was just a wrestler, and you could catch him in submissions because he didn't know any better, and his stand-up wasn't that great and then he turned the corner real quick and gray got really good real fast it was right around the time that he beat frankie edgar the first time they fought and right around that time he had gotten really good no one could touch him and it seemed like he was just on top of the world and he was hating it the whole time too and he was just putting up with it and all these other guys i know they feel the same way and we'd beat the crap out of each other we'd have so much pressure on us everyone has a ton of pressure for every fight that's just the way the sport is you go and fight win or lose it's time to come back do you want to come back to the gym and see

the inside of that place again i know i didn't i and then i would just immerse myself in in going to remote places and doing photography and like really experiencing nature which is what i loved and it spoke to my soul and so i really like doing that and when i would do that instead of like i was saying before in the podcast that got lost instead of feeling refreshed like oh i was i spent a week and a half in the desert, and I experienced this timeless beauty and all this stuff, I was like, man, I want to just go back out there again, and I don't want to go back to the gym, and I don't want to study. It became a job.

It no longer became the creative, fun thing that I love doing. It became an absolute 100% job where I was like, okay, time to go to work. So was it the overly competitive nature? Was it the lack of structure? Was it the fact that it wasn't being done correctly, that everybody was just trying to KO each other all the time? It was all three of those things and um uh 115 degree weather that was another thing and then just uh man it was i don't know there was there was no unity there was no feeling like it was like we were all friends and we were all cool with each other some more than others but there was always this underlying thing of especially if you're in the same weight class well well, I might have to fight you one day, so fuck you.

You know what I mean? Even though we were cool and we were cordial with each other, and I'd watch other fighters come to the gym, like good fighters would come to that gym all the time because it was a hub, you know. You're in Vegas maybe cornering another fighter, and so you're going to hop into Extreme Couture because that's where everybody goes and that's where all the good guys are and you're gonna train or like guys would come out for a couple weeks and like jay haran and mike pile would just run the fucking clinic on those guys

and be mean about it you know i mean they weren't like that you know like really like it wasn't like they were angry but man like they would put it on these guys. It was this real alpha male competitive thing. This is competition, and that's one way to look at it. A lot of people might think, well, that's how you have to be. You have to be like that, but I don't think so. If you look at the way that both Gray and I are training now, and I respect the hell out of Gray because he's been training at a high level since he was 12 with wrestling you know and even before that he's always been wrestling since he

was five or something but he's been training at a high level like hard high level workouts and he knows the difference now he's training smart and that's what I'm doing now I mean I still spar and stuff but I'm not in there getting hit getting the the shit beat out of me, beating the shit out of other people just to try to put myself through the fire to simulate the idea of what a tough fight might be. I've been in plenty of tough fights. I know how to get through them. I know how to deal with my mind. I don't need to prove to anybody that I'm tough. I don't need to prove to myself that I'm tough by getting the crap kicked out of me every day. What I need to do is love the sport again, love the technique, love the art,

and, and, uh, man, just, just go out there and, and, uh, you know, learn again, learn, learn the techniques again, and then apply them, apply the techniques that work. That's why with my trainer now, Chipare he's he's he the guy's like a genius man and i i do not use that word you know what i mean with with anybody you know like he's the guy's a genius in that respect and he's giving me he's like teaching me a whole new language as far as body mechanics and wrestling and grappling and just the fight game in general he understands it on a whole different level and he's giving me this whole new language to work with and i can there's some words that i'm gonna use and put into my vocabulary and some that i'm not but that's when your personality comes out

i think we were talking about that before that's why it's so interesting to watch the art of mixed martial arts because you watch people's personalities manifest in the way they fight. Yeah, which brings up what you talked about earlier with Chael, how difficult it is to put on a persona and then go into the octagon and compete and have it be real. Yeah, because you see the stark difference with him. You see his bravado and the shtick that he taps into,

and he's amazing at it. Amazing. But when you see the contrasthtick that he taps into, and he's amazing at it. Amazing. But when you see the contrast in between that and him when he walks into the ring, he is not looking at the crowd and doing his little shtick anymore. He is just a man focusing. He has to focus even more because he's so used to being in that persona. You know what I mean? And you see such a difference. I mean, look at him after the Anderson Silva fight. like focus even more because he's so used to being in that persona you know i mean he has and

you see such a difference i mean look at him after the anderson silva fight yeah you know the way he was staying it's like he was like broken for a moment you know i mean he's a tough guy he's amazing competitor he'll he'll get back well right away he tried to fight john jones right after that yeah he's hilarious yeah man he's a bad motherfucker he is. He really is. He's one of the baddest. Yeah. The shit-talking is unparalleled. Muhammad Ali would have fucking hated it if he had a bout rigged with Chael Sonnen. I mean, look, if it was a boxing match, he would have balked Chael Sonnen's ears off. But if it was a shit-talking match, I say that I would take Chael Sonnen over Muhammad Ali in a fucking heartbeat. You know why?

Because Chael would sit in front of his computer like a fucking maniac for 10 hours coming up with the right shit to say, whereas Muhammad Ali would try to act on the fly. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're right. You're right, and I agree with you. However, Ali, his art of trash-talking was not, none of it was he didn't have the supply of information

that the internet had at the time he was much more poetic with his trash talking too and original Chael is great with it and he's very much so like a Joe Frazier type if you could like

take a boxer and say what type of fighter would Chael Sonnen could like take take a boxer and say like what type of what type of uh fighter would chael sonnen be if he was a boxer back in the day it would be a joe frazier for sure grinder yeah yeah absolutely get inside get inside you know yeah it's a it's interesting when people i mean that to me is one of the best examples of the the fact that we're moving forward as a society as chaotic and crazy as it might be it's uh it's everything of today is better than what it was you know in the 1950s i mean like anyone everybody talks marciano was the best retired undefeated marciano would have done this marciano would have broken ollie mike t Tyson would have ran through Marciano like fire through bushes.

Are boxing historians not the worst? I mean, I love boxing. I love, love, love boxing, and I love the history of it. But in Sugar Ray, I'm going to use this example. Sugar Ray Robinson was amazing, and he was fucking great. was amazing. He was fucking great. But to say that he could have hung in there

with Roy Jones' prime... Boxing people all over the place that are listening to this are saying, blasphemy, now all Roy Jones is... They love to discount the new guys, but these guys are amazing in comparison to just what they're

physically capable of than the then then the old then then then roy jones is way too big that's a weird okay okay okay even though uh you're right he your sugar rate did go up to fight light heavyweight yeah he collapsed but okay so so let's he was he was a tricky one man i don't know about that i think what a direct example how about Roberto Duran? I think Roberto Duran would have run through most of the old guys in his weight class. You know what I mean? Well, he was a real 135er.

Roberto Duran, even when he fought at 147, he was just going up there to fight Sugar Ray Leonard and stayed up there and then went as high as 60 and 68. When he fought Iran Barkley. Yeah. Woo! That was beautiful. When he knocked down Barkley, that was beautiful when he knocked down barkley i was like holy shit here's a guy who's got like a serious reach disadvantage and he's

playing the outside slip on the outside game with the guy who's who's got a reach and a guy who destroyed tommy hearns a dangerous striker that's when iran barkley was a fucking beast yeah he was a strong puncher man he took a lot out of Barkley. And Davey Moore. Remember when he boxed up Davey Moore? And you're like, God damn! Everybody thought Roberto Duran was done. Roberto Duran had lost to Sugar Ray Leonard

in this humbling, no-moss fight. And he won in the first fight, and in the rematch, he quit. There's all sorts of speculation as to why he did it. The range from him being paid to take a dive to him being sick in the ring. Who the fuck knows what it was.

Something messed with him at that moment. Something broke and he was humiliated for years. It took a long time for him to come back to the public's acceptance. Yeah, man. I admire those people that have come back. the the public's acceptance yeah man i i admire those people that have come back look at look at foreman after he lost all the he took that hard 10 years man he took that hard but he came back yeah you gotta you gotta give him credit i mean regardless of how silly the the whole you know naming all your kids ge George and being like a crazy religious person

and having a Foreman grill, all that stuff, he's still, he's done some amazing things that are truly admirable. And it's like people that can come back from that, that's, you know, those people are my inspiration, you know. Yeah, George Foreman didn't box from the time he was, I think he was in his 20s until he was in his 30s. And he was, like, completely fat and out of shape. And I remember he had a comeback fight, and they put it on, like,

it was like trivia. Like, it was like, what? Former heavyweight champion. And you see him in his comeback fight, and you look at him, and you're like, oh, my God, this looks so silly. Like, look at him. Like, poor George Foreman. And the next thing you know, he's on HBO knockingael moore to be the oldest heavyweight champion ever michael moore was my favorite heavyweight at the time and i remember

just being like i was i was so distraught when i saw that i was like this has got to be fixed like i was i was a little kid at the time but i was like i can't believe that just happened you know because i was i was hoping that moore was going to end up eventually fighting Lennox Lewis like they were both really they were undefeated and ranked really highly and you know Holyfield and Bo were still very major players in the heavyweight game at the time and uh I was I was hoping to see that matchup and that just squashed everything Moore was never quite the same Michael Moore was a tweener and really he was like one of the greatest yeah one of the greatest light heavyweight champions ever michael moore was a destroyer at light heavyweight yeah but then he

goes up to to heavyweight and they're those dudes are big man those dudes are really big those klitschko fellas like what the fuck is? That guy was on the plane with us. I forget where we were going. I think it was Montreal. And he was on the plane. The guy stood up. He's a giant. He's this giant, just super athlete dude.

Those dudes are badasses, and they're very good. Rocky Marciano. It's a shame. I know. It's a shame, too. Because people have a whole... They bring, like, boxing historians and people that fancy themselves as boxing experts that like know about the old times. They have some sort of nostalgia or some personal like nostalgic connection to these old fighters. And they did acts of human endurance over a time span of 20, 30 years sometimes that are amazing and had so many fights and beat the shit out of themselves just to continue on their career and to make the public happy.

And they really destroyed themselves watching what happened to all these guys like Joe Lewis and and LaMotta and you know like Archie Moore and all these great people but the actual skill I mean we're at a higher level right now and I hate it when people don't want to accept that and they don't want to talk about that they're they're just like oh no like you know you've got you've got a yeah I give credit where credit's due but but you can't you can't compare the best old fighters to the best fighters nowadays. You know, even with the heavyweight, I mean, I hate heavyweight boxing now. I don't really watch it. But even with the heavyweight division being as dismal as it is, it shouldn't take away from how excellent these Klitschko guys are.

Yeah, they are excellent. But I'll be tuning in to, like, you know, whatever's playing them, whether it's Showtime or whoever. And I'm like, who the fuck is this guy fighting no they have nobody to fight it's ridiculous yeah the boxing heavyweight boxing is just not in a good place right yeah i mean unless there's like a fight at the press conference like david hay and uh that other dude what the fuck's that guy's name the guy that uh i forget his name they they had uh some crazy brawl at a at a press conference but all that's manufactured you know what i mean like i don't think this one was david hay punched him in the face with a bottle in his face in his hand really yeah it wasn't manufactured do you remember do you remember when when riddick bowe knocked out larry donald or knocked him knocked him down

on stage that that if if you ever google that riddick Bowe Larry Donald Larry yeah this was a punch him not he he hit him with a two-punch combination that was like it was brilliant Larry Donald had no idea that he was going to do it to him he like they Larry Donald's really sucker punched him I mean well I mean I'm not giving him credit like if that was awesome that he did that, but the combination was brilliant. They were standing there face-to-face, and Rick Bowe just dipped down, I think, through a left hook and just cracked him right on the chin.

If you watch it in slow motion, there's a second where Larry Donald's chin just snaps, and he's still standing there dumbfounded, and then Bowe comes down and dips and hits him with an overhand right. What were they arguing about? It was just the same tired boxing thing where two guys. Brian, pull that up so we can see it. Yeah, yeah. If you can find it.

Riddick Bo, Larry Donald press conference. I remember that. Did they fight after that? Yeah, well, that was the press conference for the actual fight. How many days away from the fight was that? Man'm not sure up yeah yeah he cracked him i mean he got fined and like all this stuff happened like like like they the commission came down on him and everything but i i feel like these guys are always you know every single fight that we have now they're like i love boxing but boxing is desperately trying to promote itself and that's

why you see like like all these little scuffles and all this stuff going on. Yeah, I think this is it. Oh, my God. Yeah, this is it. Getting excited about the upcoming Riddick Bowe-Larry Donald heavyweight fight. This could change your mind. How do you do that? Oh, my God. Look how he dips into it.

Oh, my God. That's fucked up. Yeah, you know, it's totally fucked up, but it's wrong. And, I mean, I'm not condoning it. Have you seen Riddick Bowe today? Oh, man. It's terrifying. Yeah, that's why it's scary.

See if you find anything riddick bow today brian he's uh you listen to him talk and it's like oh shit yeah and he's only like 40 something yeah you know his his uh his transformation hasn't even begun yeah i know and and we were talking about that before last week about how it's's scary because there's no science that can really tell you what's going on with your brain. I had so much on my mind, not to make excuses, but that's just the way it was. Was it the death of your sister? That's back then. The death of my sister?

Yeah, this is when he was okay. Yeah, this is when he was the champ. So if you can find something of him now, that would be a good contrast. If you just Google or YouTube Riddick Bowe today talking, the second one down looks like him today. I'm sure it's horrific. Did you see the fights this past weekend, the boxing matches? I didn't.

I missed them. I missed them. Along with James J. Dillon, the WWE Hall of... Yeah, that's... The Canelo Alvarez fight was amazing. Yeah, yeah. But they were talking to Paul Williams, the guy who crashed in the motorcycle and was paralyzed from the waist down.

Yeah, he was one of my favorites. Great, great fighter. But he was struggling to talk. I was listening to him talk. I was like, this guy sounds punch-trapped. I know, I know. You've seen cage matches. You're going into that 15-foot steel cage.

He was going to do MMA for a while. You or your opponent getting really hurt is very great. Well, it is what it is. You know, the better man will come out. Now, why do you believe you've been training and all this? It's unfinished business with Andrew Gulotta. Can you give us any, I don't

know, anything, how are you going to beat him in the steel cage? What a terrible interview with this guy. I'm going to beat him good. You're going to beat him good. Now, you've been training. I mean, you can't really tell with this one, but yeah, he's pretty messed up. If you look at the second one down, it's an actual yeah, he's pretty messed up.

If you look at the second one down, it's an actual interview where he's talking. It says so much to talk about Riddick Bowe, and this is in 2009. Well, the point is, these dudes, they reach this point where it just all falls apart. And the crazy thing is it might not even be apparent during their career lots of times. You see it 15 years after they retire in lots of cases. This is still a new sport, even boxing. Like combat in the way that it is now is very new. The thing is, his determination, I had to outwit him.

And I think that was the difference. I outwitted him, and so I was able to come up with the decision. There's no doubt about that. No doubt about it. That was it. That's the one. And it's a shame because, you know, like, I mean, I struggle with the idea of that possibility

myself as well and i think a lot of of uh the prevention of that can happen in the gym and i've spent years being the the type of fighter that was like oh well i've got a spar because it's the only thing that would hold my attention because i was so down on myself about the sport i was like you know not interested in drilling or learning technique. I was like, let's just get in and get out as fast as we can and beat the crap out of each other, and I'll be able to wake up in the morning knowing that I have to do that, and then I'll go and my timing will get better and everything,

but that is not the way to have longevity. And so now I'm loving myself again, loving the sport again, and I'm realizing that the less shots I take in practice, the less likely my chin is going to become glass as I get older. And the better I'll be able to have a functioning brain as I get older. You know what I mean? You've got to be smart. Yeah, the thing about taking punishment in the gym

is a very real thing. And people think that's the only way to do it. I completely agree with your idea that you've had plenty of tough fights and you know what a tough fight is like. And what you need to do is just work on your skill and work on your conditioning and then execute, come fight day.

The battery that guys take inside the gym is uh it needs to be managed it really really needs to be managed and it's a real problem in this sport that um there's so many different ways to do it nobody really knows the the exact correct way to do it yet the sport's still in its infancy it really truly is as is by the way football yeah when you when you talk about uh head injuries the newest Sports Illustrated has Jim McMahon on from the Chicago Bears. And I read it and I started talking to some friends about it and I started watching some documentaries about it. I've been paying attention to football only for this reason, this head injury thing, really. Yeah, yeah.

It's fucking terrifying. It's only been around 50 plus years. really yeah yeah it's fucking terrifying they say it's only been around 50 plus years you know i mean all these guys are you know take some 20 years to you know end their career and then start having problems and then they're fucked yeah and we're slowly watching what's happening because because like i said like some guys they don't even show symptoms until way later way after they retire you know once that once you get older and other organs stop being as efficient then all that is brought out i mean you're scrambling your brain literally and the the messed up thing about football is like what we were talking about before um they're using their heads i mean because

the helmet protects your skin it protects your skull. Your skull won't crack with the helmet. That's what it's designed to do. In my opinion, and if you look at it from like a physical standpoint, it centralizes the percussion of the impact. And so, yeah, sure, you can ram your head into a steel post or someone else's helmet or someone's body, and you can rush at them with all the power that you've trained to do and use your head as a weapon. And every time you do that, you're creating a concussion. You're causing your brain to bounce around in the skull literally. And it's like they don't even feel that lots of times.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you get a flash of unconsciousness or you feel like you get rocked and they've got these big traps and and everything and they work on their their neck strength to to uh help displace the impact for the rest of their body but it's like man you're screwing yourself up every single time and they and they don't even think about words with fighting it's like we've got these small gloves, so when you get hit, you know it. And then there's time when you've got to stop and check yourself, like, oh, I got hurt.

And you know when you're taking punishment, whereas with football, you can just go through the whole game, go through a whole career doing that. Well, and even in MMA, especially if you're not being managed by someone or trained by someone who's really paying attention to you and monitoring you and looking out for you. Guys get tagged in the gym, and then they have to keep training. They have a fight coming up. Man, I'll tell you what.

If there's great, great trainers out there that understand that and understand all the technical aspects the mental and emotional aspects and the health aspects i don't know of them and you know i'm not um that's crazy you know like like look i'm not like people are going to take offense because we've got all these public highly publicized trainers especially in mma right now but i've worked with a lot of people, and I know a lot of the fighters that work with a lot of these other guys that I haven't worked directly with, and I don't see anybody really being an amazing trainer as far as monitoring the overall

health. I mean, there can be. I don't want to say that there isn't for sure. But if there is anyone, they're up and coming. I can tell you that much. And we're still, the sport's still in its infancy to the point where I think it's going to take my generation of fighters retiring and the few that are able to understand fighting and understand the right smart ways to train. I would love to. You'd be amazing at that. I would love to be a trainer. It's just the only thing is I don't really know, like, how to segue into that, like, as far as financially,

as far as the financial aspect goes, because I feel like if I just all of a sudden say, hey, I'm training fighters now, hey, you know, I need, I will need at least one or two star people who are making decent money to, you know what I mean, to not only publicize the fact that I'm doing this, but to create an amount of revenue to make it worthwhile. Because if I'm training a fighter and they're at a high level,

I want to be there for them all the time. I'm going to have to, you know, monitor every single thing they do throughout their entire training camp and be a monitor of them in the downtime as well. And just, you know, be there for the fighter. And I just, it's going to be an interesting thing to see if I can somehow segue into that. I would love to, interesting thing to see if I can somehow segue into that. I would love to, but I don't know that it's necessarily readily available for me, but time will tell. Well, it seems like you could probably join up with someone who has good intentions, but isn't doing it, you know, what you think would be correctly or, you know, or doesn't bring to the table what you think you

would bring. I mean, you have more than 20 MMA fights. How many MMA fights do you have? I mean, if you count the fights on the show, too, I think I have like 35 or something like that. But like, some of them aren't on Sherdog and stuff. But I think I'm like officially like 32. But then, yeah, I don't know, over 30. That's a wealth of experience. Yeah, yeah. yeah something i don't know over 30 that's a wealth of experience yeah yeah and and a lot of and i've taken especially in the latter years taking a lot of break like long break time in

between fights just due to injuries and just taking time off to reflect and things like that i i was able to work with gray a lot and me and gray have a really good relationship gray maynard we're actually really good friends so last fight when he was getting ready for Clay Guida, I went out of my way because of the situation that he's in right now. He kind of needs somebody to do that. I went out of my way to try to, to, you know, help him in a trainer type aspect, but the same thing applies. Like I live in LA, he lives in Santa Cruz and I just don't have the time or resources to be there with him every day. But I did watch tape of his opponent. I fought his opponent, so I knew his opponent really well.

I studied a lot. We took notes. And I helped monitor his training, and I cornered him. And I think that could be something that I want to do in the future. It's just whether or not I have the facility or the resources to start. Well, you're an easy guy to get along with. I think that would be, you're a rational person, so I think it would be a good fit for you.

And you obviously have a passion for the development of other fighters as well. Yeah, definitely. I'm an analytical person, and I know the boundaries of over-analysis. So I feel like I could be a good person for a lot of fighters. I think you'd make an amazing trainer. Yeah, you're an open-minded dude, too. You're always looking at different aspects. You tell me all the different shit that Rico was doing with you.

Yeah. By the way, I'm also super happy to hear that Rico's working with somebody again. Because Rico is one of those guys that's like the lost talent. Rico's a brilliant guy. It all comes down... There was a whole lot of things that I didn't understand that were going on at the old Raw gym. I was there...

For the folks who don't know, Rico Ciapparelli was one of the original trainers of Raw, which was real American wrestling, which was Henderson and Couture, Vladimir Matyshenko, all these like big name guys from back in the day. And Rico Chaparelli was always known as this like really brilliant, super analytical guy who was wicked on the ground.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was one of those people who, he understood body mechanics and combat so well that it was so quick his transition from being uh like a high level freestyle wrestler in in college and in on the world stage and then transitioning to to being a brazilian jiu-jitsu someone who understood submissions and and everything was just so quick and um he only had to be taught a few things and like he figured out the rest himself and i i'm saying like you know maybe not in every aspect of life but in that particular aspect of understanding grappling wrestling body mechanics and combat in general mentally emotionally and physically he's a genius and um yeah he was working with i was there with couture and henderson

and erickson erickson had already left on good terms and couture and henderson you know were doing their own thing and when i got there it was me and vladimir matyshenko and frank trigg and then a few other guys like fernando vasconcellos who i had talked about before and some other fighters were always coming through wally Dishmail was there oh yeah and I actually was his roommate oh man understand yeah man you understand this guy's handshake man you ever see that it's a weird three finger thing oh man silly but he's awesome yeah yeah but uh Rico I mean I I just had this quality, and I don't even know, I don't even think he purposely projects it, but people, they want to be around him. They want to hear what he has to say.

He's almost like a prophet. He's a brilliant guy. In the social situation of the gym, then it became too dramatic for him, and he really doesn't like drama. He doesn't like being surrounded by the scene of a gym you know like all these things they become scenes and then you know there's politics and you know people are talking about this and that and there's all this silly stuff going on and it's no longer just about learning and training and competing it becomes this whole other thing and he got fed up with that uh his way of coping with it may have

not been the best way but like you know he he had to distance himself from it and now i'm just i'm like i couldn't be happier i'm just honored to be uh like a part of of what he's doing he's that's what he told me he said you know like i would love to try to make one fighter great instead of just having some big facility where a bunch of, you know, fairweather people come through when they want to and show up. He's like, I want to just focus everything on one person. As long as you guys have foil on your T-shirts and, like, Japanese lettering, as long as you have that, you know, like, you need a cool logo. I know.

Maybe something people can tattoo on their body. I know, I know. Well, unfortunately, all the affliction stuff is going out of style, so I can't have patches across my back and safety pinned onto my other garments. They fired my man Tom Atencio, so I used to wear affliction stuff. Yeah, yeah. Tom's my friend, and also, Tom, I feel like Affliction MMA. They tried to pay some fighters.

They tried to do a good thing. Yeah, no, no, no, no. I just think the physical style is ridiculous. It's not as bad as Ed Hardy. No, no, no. They sponsored a lot of fighters, but I talked shit about them, and I felt bad because I like when guys sponsor fighters, obviously.

Oh, for sure. So I bought some of their dragon jeans. Yeah. I wore them to the weigh-ins. I made a big deal out of it. I still have them, man. My wife tried to throw them away. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

You're not throwing out my dragon jeans. I wore those things only for the weigh-ins. I might have worn them for two weigh-ins. I announced it on the UG. I will be wearing my dragon jeans. Because it's so ridiculous. it was it was so weird it was like all like like all of a sudden this subculture has these guys wearing these strange shirts where like things are made to look like they're torn with little holes and little worn spots and things stitched all oddly across them what's that about? I don't know.

And then these strange, like we're bringing back like the heavy metal skull logo stuff. It's like, okay, well, do any of you guys listen to Iron Maiden? Do you remember like Eddie and all that? Do you remember Vic, the Megadeth guy or anything? And like they're just, that's not even what it's about. It's just this new retro thing that most of the people don't understand the nostalgia in it or that it is retro.

Like spray tans, faux hawks, and then these flare bootcut bell-bottom-ish pants that have the same distressed look about them. And then those weird square-toed shoes that are like patent leather or something like that they come up really long and like all these sons of these guys are like i just it was the most absurd style i'd ever seen and i'm i'm so glad that that's kind of starting to fade away but i'm just leery of what is going to replace i'm i'm i'm not sure what's more absurd the built-in holes or sagging i don't know what's more ridiculous i think sagging is more ridiculous even the built-in hole well i think sagging is particular ridiculous particularly ridiculous now because with with especially with the hipster type of culture and then hipster hip-hop culture now is

tight jeans but sag them and it's that's the worst style ever. Cause it's like, if you got some big jeans, you can sag them because they're big jeans. And like, I might not be into that, but it's like, you know, you rock a little bit of a sag because you're wearing 38 size, 38 jeans with a 30 waist. I get it. But when you, when you have these, like these jeans that are made out of denim, but they're made to fit the way that spandex do. And then you pull them down so that you can see your boxer shorts in the back. It's really hard to walk around. They're wearing shoes with no support these days. Glasses that aren't prescription.

It's the oddest thing in the world. And I don't understand style. I don't understand how these things get popular, why everybody sheeps together and conforms to these absurd styles. All it takes is one person who is like an icon or the hero worship mentality that we have nowadays, the cult of personality thing. It's like... Is that what it is? Because it doesn't seem to be one person that created that. It seems to have been something that sort of emerged.

It doesn't seem... There's not like an example that I can look back and say, well, that guy was the first guy to wear the already tattered jeans. I think it starts to happen and people are pushing for it. And then what validates it is some hero person. And then the other hero person does it. Some celebrity. It's a very strange society we live in with just the idea of celebrities and the cult of personality. Yeah, it is ridiculous. I saw one photograph of this guy who had... Oh, that's my fanny pack.

There's my dragon jeans. Yeah, that's them fanny pack. There's my dragon jeans. Yeah. That's them. Those are real. Look, they're the dragon jeans with built-in worn-out spots. I told you I wore them shits twice. Wait, wait.

Do we have... Are we doing this with cars now? Do we have cars that have rust holes and dents in them already? No, you can't have that. People want shiny cars. Cars are still shiny. Cars represent your...

You know, like you made up going to a nightclub on a red carpet right yeah i was like wondering like when when is that gonna get popular where people are like kind of taking a hammer and kind of like banging little holes or cars start being sold with with like rust spots already where i'm from we rust. I just got my shit hail damaged. There's a lot of dudes who are really into old cars, though, and they don't even clean them up. They just drive them around all fucked up. They don't take a 65 Mustang and wax it and make it look nice and take it out for it.

No, they like to keep it dirty and fucked up. I don't know. Some people don't feel like they're they they they're defined enough by who they are by their actions by their work by they don't feel like they're defined enough so they want to really put out this image and work really hard at it and they're always gross yeah there's just something about people who try like really really hard that's always there's something gross about it yeah yeah and then there's people that legitimately wear something because that's who they are and you just you know up that's what he like when joey diaz wears like when he was wearing those

sweatpants like he was in the sopranos all the time remember he went to that phase if you remember that phase yes i don't give a fuck it's joey diaz i'm happy to see him no matter what he's wearing if that's i mean if that's what you feel comfortable with that's fine i mean i've always Remember that phase? I don't give a fuck. It's Joey Diaz. I'm happy to see him no matter what he's wearing. I mean, if that's what you feel comfortable with, that's fine. I mean, I've always, at some point, like the slightly baggy jeans, the cargo pants, and a regular T-shirt just always, like at some point, I think I was skateboarding when that was kind of in. Do you know who Mark Gonzalez is, the skateboarder?

One of the most amazing people in that subculture that we've've ever seen he's he's an amazing guy he's an artist and everything but he was wearing cargo pants i remember in this blind video is it blind skateboards anyway um and and i i just took to that and not because i wanted to be like him and i was like that that looks cool it It looks comfortable. I tried it. It did. And I've been on that same path for like 17 years now or 18 years. And before that, it was just a very similar type of thing. I've never – I always thought the faux hawk was ludicrous.

I mean, I thought like the faux hawk especially is – and I was i was just talking to this this girl that i'm friends with the other day it's like okay when you're a little kid i i think i was actually in this situation you're a little kid and you're like i want a mohawk i want a mohawk like like they have like in you know like on in the cartoons and stuff like a punk mohawk like a tough guy mohawk no you're not having that i'm not gonna let you shave the sides of your head and have a mohawk, like a tough guy mohawk. No, you're not having that. I'm not going to let you shave the sides of your head and have a mohawk. Well, fine. And then, you know, you take your mom's hairspray, you lock yourself in the bathroom and you try to smoosh up like your hair into like a mohawk. It's like, I think I actually did that once. And then I saw what happened. This was like

the faux hawk circa 1987 or 86. And smushed my hair up and i was like that's not good enough that's not going to cut it and i put it back down and i gave up on it and i didn't think about it till years later and all of a sudden i moved to la and there's people like smushing their hair up into this little point it became very different though it didn't become like pretending to be a mohawk right like some no it gave yeah it turned into its own thing. But, man, what an absurd style that was. Joey Diaz talks about it. He goes, it's like you're sucking some guy's dick, and he grabs you by the top of the head.

He goes, you're doing it wrong. Smacks you in the face and sends you right back down. Oh, man. I mean, that's, yeah. And I knew a lot of people, like friends of mine, like good friends that were, like, cool people, and i thought were with it and then one day i'd look and i'd be like dude you have a faux hawk like what what is

that and they'd be like oh what what what's the big deal and i'm just like well okay there really is no big deal they are correct they are correct i guess i know this is wasted you're worried about some guys with wonky ass hairstyle i know but it's just so ludicrous. It creates this itch, and the only way to scratch it is by telling people that it's ridiculous or by actually going up to their head. It is, but all haircuts are ridiculous. Your decision to keep it short, my decision to shave my head, hair's crazy. It's fucking ridiculous.

It's a ridiculous body part anyway some weird shit that you have to maintain and hack off on kind of occasion but what we're doing is I'd like to think it's a lot less pretentious than the faux hawk but yes okay I guess I've I've dumbed down the conversation by leading it to faux hawk criticism

no you're being what you're doing is you're observing not just this weird phenomenon of people, like what you call style. It's a bunch of lost folks trying to communicate in really boxy sort of confined terms who they are. I have skinny jeans on, but I'm sagging. I'm super cool.

I know a lot of black people. Sagging makes me want to take your money, and I'm not even a thief, but it makes me want to pants you and pull your fucking wallet away and run because you look like a goddamn victim. I don't get it. Brian, are you faux hawking over there?

Oh, wow. Yeah, look at you faux hawking with just sweat and lack of showering. You faux hawk the shit out of that thing. It's just pussy juice, Joe. Whoa, Brian, again. Two hits before a show, never three. I was watching the...

Didn't he do something awkward before the Kat Von D thing? When did he not do something awkward? Yeah, the Kat Von D thing was one of my favorite ever because you can see Kat Von D look at him. He told a story about a girl who had a tattoo of her dad as a baby on her arm. Right, right, right. And he said, well, is it weird?

Talking about coming on it. Yeah, guys, come on it. And Kat Von D was like, what the fuck? You could see the look on her face. It was right in the beginning of the podcast. She was probably like, oh, no. Am I going to have to put up with two hours of this type of thing? Yes, exactly.

That's what I was a little worried about. He went in deep early. And she had never listened to the podcast. She had no idea what the fuck he was going to – people who have listened to the podcast, like yesterday we had on your buddy Rich, Rich Wohl, great guy, really, really fascinating guy. But he's listened to the podcast. That's why when we were talking and he said,

what do you think of when you think of a vegan? We were like, well, two dudes blowing each other eating a salad. He didn't get offended. Of course not. and he said, what do you think of when you think of a vegan? We were like, well, two dudes blowing each other, eating a salad. Right, right, right. He didn't get offended. Of course not. But if you were some dude who's really on this podcast to express yourself, and you didn't know that we're retarded. But you're comedians, too.

So the punchlines like that just come out of you. I would have to say that about myself. I mean, if that's the joke, look, what is the funny thing about it? It's two dudes blowing each other, eating us out. That's what was funny in my head. I would have had to say that about myself, about anything that I enjoy. If that's what's funny, that's why I get crazy when this Tracy Morgan type shit happens, when Tracy Morgan gets in trouble for saying that if his son was gay,

I stabbed that little nigga. He's not really saying that. He's trying to say something totally outrageous. Of course. That's just the funniest thing to say at that moment. He's playing on the, in a sarcastic way, he's playing on the idea

of the stereotype that most people will think of. Yeah. He's not even expressing your opinion. So in order to get offended by that, you know,

like it would have to, it would have to be presented in a much different way. Yeah. That's really driving me nuts about this literal aspect of our culture lately when it comes to, uh, when it comes to standup comedy is cause you're playing dumb. You're playing dumb in order to call gotcha on somebody. You're pretending that, that comedy is in a really subtle and weird nuanced part of

human expression. And you're just taking it literally. You're choosing to listen to what he says and look what I have written down. These are the words that came out of his mouth. Like, that's ridiculous. To take that out of context like that is, it's a moron's game. And when you're locked arguing with a moron about whether or not that should or shouldn't have happened, you're trapped. That's the worst thing.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, or shouldn't have happened. You're trapped. That's the worst thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can't do it. There's a guy named Brian Holtzman. He's one of my favorite comics in L.A. that nobody knows about. Some people are starting to know about him. We've got to get Brian Holtzman on the show. I love the guy. He's a great guy.

But his whole act was just saying the most preposterous, mean shit. He came on stage at the comedy store maybe a week after susan smith had drowned her kids and it was like this crazy thing with his mother and drowned her children and he goes i heard those were bad kids he goes ladies and gentlemen i heard they never put their blocks away they sat that close to the fucking tv he goes those kids would not be missed and it was just it was just ridiculous it was so ridiculous that was this this uncomfortable sustained laughter through the comedy store like oh no but we were all scumbags i mean he was telling this to a bunch of dirt bags in the darkest most demonic club in hollywood and he

always went on yeah and he always went on late they always put holtzman on late so it was like you know probably like midnight or something everybody had a lot of drinks on them yeah on midnight on a tuesday when you're watching brian holtzman on stage the comedy star anything can happen yeah but that that to me but you're in a comedy club exactly you know what i mean yeah and and and that's that's the art it's like how do you push the boundaries of of the art that you're doing. It's like, well, my art is making, your art is making people laugh. And there's all sorts of ways to go about doing that. And we have a framework to work with. You know,

we have, we're standing up, we're doing a routine, we're talking about things. Why not go there? You know, like why, why not do that?

Why does everything have to be so literal? Well, I mean, yeah, you don't have to like it. Right. And if you don't like it, then that's fine.

But would you come to a, like a comedy place for, you know what I mean? Some people are going to like some styles of comedy and some people aren't, you know, it's, but to pretend that it's literal is like pretending the X-Men are really fighting aliens.

It's, it really is. It's like, it's like pretending that the, that vampires can go outside and be sparkly you know they sparkle in the sun and they just want to romance you get the fuck out of here it's fiction yeah stand-up comedy is just a it's just a form of expression and brian's form of expression is derailing conversations or really uncomfortable moments

about coming on tattoos of babies and that was his move you know you gotta understand he doesn't that's not what he really was talking to you about on a regular basis are you sure i'm pretty sure i know the guy that's cool man yeah yeah yeah what's funny and what's not funny it's like who knows until you try that's the other problem sometimes the the trigger between thinking something might be funny and pulling it, you have a very short window where it's really going to work. And sometimes a bullet comes towards you and you're like, do I let this go? Am I letting this one go? Are we letting this one go?

Let it go! Let it go! And as you're letting it go, you go, oh, no, this poorly – do you know you're drunk and you're letting that one go? You don't know how to articulate it correctly. Yeah, there's the attention span of the audience to deal with, you know, like when to pull the trigger and when not. And then there's just the difference in the demographic of the audience, you know.

I don't know if you're going to do the same routine, you know, in North Carolina that you do in L.A. or whatever, you know, like how you're going to change that, if you're even going going to bother changing, but I definitely, I'm sure you'll notice a difference in the authenticity of, of their reaction. And, you know, that's a lot of other different things. I believe the word is authenticity. Authenticity. I do get punched in the head for a living. See, every time I pull out, like, like, like I expose myself for being stupid, especially with vocabulary or speech, I can just always fall back and then I get hit in the head for a little bit.

Do you seriously monitor that? Do you say like, okay, the moment I feel like a little weird, I'm done? Yeah, yeah, I do, I do. Because you seem totally lucid. I've known you for at least seven years now. You haven't changed at all. I knew you before you ever got on The Ultimate I've known you for at least seven years now. You haven't changed at all. I knew you before you ever got on The Ultimate Fighter. Were you training at Legends?

Yeah. You were the same guy. Yeah, we were training at the Bomb Squad. Yeah, the old Legends. But we both know guys from that era and before who are not the same guy now. I know, I know. same guy now i know i know yeah um the my only my only fear is that um even though i'm monitoring it that it might come out long after i retire which is what happens to some people and and if if that happens i hope i sincerely hope that doesn't happen but if it does it's because the damage

has already been done there's nothing that i can do about it from this point forward. All I can do is train smart. You know, like if you look at the way that I'm training now, if you look at the way that like Gray Maynard is training now, like we are no longer like killing ourselves for this sport and hating every moment of it just so that we can try to win and bask in like the wonderful glory of winning on that one night. It's like you should enjoy every day.

And yeah, it's like bad days are going to happen, but you should enjoy every moment of it and you shouldn't be physically hurting yourself. Obviously, you don't want to blow out your knee. You don't want to hurt your back when you're training. Why would you want to hurt your brain? You know what I mean? Like this is something that we have to think about you have to train smart and you have to figure out ways to keep your speed and your timing and your reactions on point and at the same time not go in there and hurt each

other and you can't be hurting your partners either i used to beat the crap out of my training partners to the point where i had like taken their their morale down to a peg to the point where they would never give me a good spar because they were just worried about me beating the shit out of them all the time and that's no way to train it didn't better me it was just me being like being so fed up with with my spot in the sport that sparring was the only thing that would hold my attention. And then I just became a bully. Even these people were my friends and I'm not, I don't have a bully personality, but it would just be like, okay, well we're sparring today

and I'm going to win the sparring session. And then like, that's what I'm trying to do. And I'm trying to beat you up. And like, I would do it. And these guys, you you know like they were afraid and like i would watch the anxiety just like billow off of them like smoke before every fucking training session they'd be like oh man like i gotta go in there and spar with him now did you experience that sparring with any people that same sort of anxiety so you could see it in yourself sure for sure yeah like i experienced that while i was at coutures even with the guys who I didn't feel were at a higher level, but like it was just every day. Was war.

Every day was war. You know what I mean? And like I would go in there and it would be daunting. It would be like, okay, I'm exhausted. I just did a ridiculous amount of cardio and weight training this morning. And it's 116 17 degrees outside and i'm i've got to go back in and once i go in i'm going to warm up and everybody nobody's really going to talk to each other nobody's going to discuss anything and we're all going to try to like

hit each other while not getting hit and like day in and day out then you start to i started to loathe competition just the idea of competition bothered me i when i'd come home i would not want to play chess with somebody you know what i mean like the idea of trying to beat somebody or best someone in a contest was just overdone it made me feel sick and i was like i don't want to have any and that's why it was it sucked so bad because then i would fight and win or lose after the fight i'd be, I don't want to have any – and that's why it sucked so bad because then I would fight and win or lose. After the fight, I'd be like, I don't want to have anything to do with fighting. And then people would be like, hey, did you see the fights?

I don't want to think about fighting. And I became like all disgruntled and negative about it. Like, I don't watch that shit. I don't watch it. You know what I mean? Like that's who I was. And it was like, well, there's this ironic thing. You've got this professional fighter and he doesn't even it, and he doesn't like it and everything.

And it was just me trying to deal with my personal life and my career at the same time. And I'm glad I had the experience. What do you think of when you see a guy like Brock Lesnar jump in? A guy who clearly is a freak athlete, but clearly also has had a very limited amount of striking and doesn't feel comfortable on his feet. And then all of a sudden he's fighting fucking Cain Velasquez

and Shane Carwin. He's in the big leagues right away. Randy Couture, what was that, his third professional fight? I try to look at things really objectively. Like, I mean, there's one way to look at that, which is, what the fuck? This guy doesn't belong here. He didn't pay his dues. He's got mad balls, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy has mad balls. Right, right. And that's one way to look at it. But I really don't look at it that way. Even the fighters that I don't like personally that are marquee fighters that do like, you know, like make a lot of money in the sport. I'm always happy to see anyone making money in the sport. And it's like, well, this guy came from pro wrestling. He was already making millions of

dollars, but you got to expect that, especially with the heavyweights, you got to expect guys like that to just come in every now and then. And i think that we're going to see a lot less of it as the sport progresses and as it becomes this deal where new guys are coming up people are becoming amazing fighters at the age of 16 17 now by the time they're in their 20s they're ready to go we're seeing less and less of that sort of thing so it was like you know what let him let him eat his cake and if it makes him sick then so be it that's what that's what happened funny cake and eat it too metaphor there let him eat his eat his cake and if it makes him sick then so be it and then it's you know seeing how

you're so careful about your diet it's very funny uh yeah man i feel like he's one of those guys that epitomizes that old joke about the young bull seeing the cows saying hey let's run down there and fuck a cow and the bull says let's walk down there and fuck them all that's right that's right what movie is that from i don't think it's a movie well yeah it is an old old joke but but is it from a movie some there there was a movie yeah man i'm losing i don't remember it but it's a it's a super old joke but the um the the idea that they would take him and throw him in there the second pro fight against a guy like mir yeah like you're crazy like i mean he might have won if mazagati didn't stop stop because

he was punching him in the back of the head he might have won that fight on a tko right there but it's still not worth it he doesn't't understand the submissions enough. Why do that when you got a freak? When you got a guy, he needed someone who would listen to him, say, listen, man, we do this right, and you're the greatest of all time. If you really want to do this, you really want to do this,

because if you don't really want to do this, you just want to get paid, you can just jump in there and see what you can do right now. But you look at a guy like that, you're like, obviously, that guy has some freak physical abilities. You ever see a video of him walking around on his hands no walks around his hands you know can run a ridiculous fucking 40 yard sprint he can leap

through the fucking air he's a he's a freak yeah no i i think like he was one of the few people who has the power to pull that card of the fast track and he did yeah and um and with a little bit of luck and a lot of ability he was actually able to win fights and and like as soon as you win a couple fights in a row especially against guys like carwin and and um mir and uh couture it's like oh wow well you know i see his game, but holy shit, he's winning and he's beating great fighters. He's the man, you know, and that's all it takes in this sport. Yeah, but when he fought Alistair, and he fought Alistair O'Reem after having stomach surgery, he had 12 inches removed from his colon, and then he fought one of the scariest fucking strikers to ever compete in MMA

and got kicked repeatedly in the body. Yeah. I mean, you've got to go, who is talking to you? Is someone talking to you? Is someone managing you? strikers to ever compete in MMA and got kicked repeatedly in the body. I mean, you've got to go, who is talking to you? Is someone talking to you? Is someone managing you? Because what you guys got here is the craziest goose. Money is managing him. Yeah, but that's the wrong way to look at it. You've got the craziest goose that laid the golden egg ever.

You know, a Brock Lesnar career could be an enormous, enormous career. The buildup to him actually challenging for the heavyweight title could be him fighting competitor after competitor over and over and over again. I don't know that he would have wanted to do it that way, though. Yeah, I bet he wouldn't have. I think he just wanted to fast track to it, and he's one of the few guys who had the power to pull that card. And he probably thought he could beat all those guys.

Yeah. He needed someone to look at him and say, just listen, man, you just need to watch some Alistair Overeem kickboxing bouts and understand what the fuck is going on here. Because this isn't as simple as you throw a punch, and then he throws a punch. Every time you're punching, he's stepping, he's measuring you, he's going to step twice and then kick your fucking legs out.

And by the way, if he hits you once, your leg's not the same ever again. That leg's done. That guy. You ever see the Brett Rogers fight? Yes. Jesus. He hit Brett Rogersgers with this thigh kick he slams that into brett rogers thigh and you see a look on brett rogers face like holy what have i gotten myself into yeah because it was just steps to bam and it was like oh no more of these are coming? Like, that was too quick. That was too confident.

Overeem is like an experiment, you know? He's turned himself into quite a dangerous man. Yeah, he's a weird guy, right? What a trippy career. The guy goes from being a skinny 205-er who keeps gassing out. What do you think? Do you think it's all horse meat? I don't know.

Hey, listen, man. I know when I take my Advil, you of times there's just testosterone pills mixed in with it. And I'm just like, oops. And all of a sudden, my testosterone levels are really high. Just lucky for me, they just haven't tested me yet. Is it Tylenol they inject into you? Because that was what this doctor did. Apparently, this doctor is fairly sketchy so uh you know look look i don't care how dumb you are as a fighter

i i'm tired of this bullshit naive act that these fighters pull well i was taking the supplement and this doctor told me to tell the supplement or it was an over-the-counter supplement it's like no shut up just fucking admit that you're doing steroids. But the track record is that a lot of these guys have learned to just deny, deny, deny it. And then if they deny it, I mean, I've watched guys. I'm not going to name any names. But, I mean, there are guys that I train with that would be like, I've never done steroids before ever.

I don't know what they're talking about. Like, there was one guy in particular and everyone knows that he's on steroids he's a great guy but everyone knows he's on steroids and the the the mother of my child who i was with at the time is a massage therapist for for athletes and she went over to his house and she came back and she's like how come he has in his house in the fridge all these vials and syringes and these bottles that have like pictures of horses on it and stuff? And I'm like, why do you think? And he's like, yeah, but he said that he never did that before.

It's like these guys would lie to their own mother about it. They would like lie on their deathbed about it. I don't know. It's just like this shutting off the brain thing. It's like, just admit that you did it. You know what I mean? Like that goes back to what I was talking about before about this being an honest, authentic event. Like this is why I do it. Like you can't make anything up. Like this is not a movie where you had 50 takes to get the scene right. You had 50 takes to get the scene right.

This is a one-time thing. You're being honest with yourself. All the training, everything you do culminates into this. Why do you want to be a fake and a liar outside in other ways? And if you do, then that's your prerogative. But it's like, man, I could never live with myself going around telling people that I didn't do something like that. It's like you guys know what doctors are giving you. What percentage of you guys do you think are using performance-enhancing stuff that's illegal? Because for sure there have been a bunch.

I mean, just one thing to clarify. There have been a bunch of companies who have been busted for putting stuff into their supplements just regular shit that you buy at GNC that contains illegal compounds and stuff that will test you positive for steroids. And that's how they get results. What they're doing, they're getting results by essentially selling you steroids, just not telling you in the list of ingredients that it's a steroid. People take it. It works. I mean, there's been a series of different things that have been pulled from the shelves and have proved that Victor Conte guy has talked pretty extensively about that.

And he's about as big of an expert on the subject as you can get. He's a former head of Balco, which is a company that created a designer steroid to mask from the test. So in his opinion, there's a lot of those false positives. But outside of that yeah what percentage you guys are using okay this is this may be a shot in the dark but i i have you know a lot of access i mean i know all these people and i know of them and i train with them and i deal with them i would say at least 60 are on them all the time, and I'd say up to 85% or 90% total have at least done them at some point or tried them.

Now, how are they on them all the time, and then they pass tests? Well, these guys cycle the stuff. They take it, and then they know how long it's going to take for it to get out of their body. how long it's going to take for it to get out of their body. And when I said that 60% and 90% thing that I just thought of in my head, that was my estimation, I'm also talking about HGH, human growth hormone, which isn't something that is tested for right now just because it's hard to test for it and it's very expensive to test for it and the commission is not going to pay that kind of money.

And it's still very random, you know what I what i mean like i wish they would just test everybody why like instead of doing this random thing where hey you might get picked and you oh you may have to do the piss test it's like make us make it a requirement for we have to all have to uh submit physicals and blood work before before every fight before every fight we have to we have to submit physicals and blood work before every fight. Before every fight, we have to do that. And once a year, we have to do ophthalmological exams, eye exams, dilated eye exams. So why don't we have, instead of just HIV and hepatitis, why don't we have anabolic steroids? Why don't we do tests for the levels and all that stuff every time? Why? It's because it's too expensive and people are pinching pennies.

And that's what the commission's doing. That's the way I look at it. And it's like, test everybody. And then we will have, you can either sink or swim. You can keep taking the stuff and it can be a mental crutch for you. And you can feel like, oh, I can't, I can't perform anymore because I don't have my steroids. It's what's been helping me win forever. Or, you know, you can learn to live without it. Like I do and like a few people do. And it's just like train without it. You don't need it. I don't want to look back on my career and be like, well, I did some great stuff, but I did that great stuff when I was taking all these steroids. And, you know, while I was taking the steroids, then that's what helped me. And it wasn't really all me. I don't want anyone's help. This is about the individual, the martial artist.

This is about their journey, trying to better themselves in the art with their technique and their training and it's just it's a journey it's like why do you want to know screw that up you have a very noble point of view on this but how many people share it how many how many guys you know I knew I know there's guys like John Fitch I've had this conversation with John he shares a exact same point of view and he very specifically said to me that he would never want to think that he couldn't have made it without, you know, taking something. And even though he knows that it would make him a faster athlete, it would make him better,

it would make him stronger, he doesn't ever want to think that there's no way he could have made it without this stuff. How many other guys feel that way? I don't know that very many of them do at all. That's an astounding number that you gave me the you know that's my honest estimation that's yeah well listen no one's more uh no one is uh more qualified to give that estimation than you yeah or a guy like you and the thing is like years and years of training with different people and everything and then like you know whispers start to come out oh yeah he's on this he's on this you know you hear things i never go public with it i don't usually don't talk to

other people about it certainly don't name names it's it's their you know prerogative they can play with it if they want but like the more and more i i stayed in the sport the more and more i see oh wow i thought that guy was was clean i thought he wouldn't do that the thing with me was I had a certain amount of principles that I personal principles that I had when I came into this and I was just like I don't want to do that you know I just don't want that to be a part of my

personal legacy even if no one ever knew about it I believe you I know you I believe you what you're saying is absolutely true but you know how few people are so especially few people who aren't wealthy, they're not, you know, they can't retire and live the rest of their life. You're so dedicated to those principles. It's such a rigid and like a foundation of your character.

How did that set in with your life? How did that, when did that become you? I don't know. Because this martial arts attitude that you have, it not bravado I know you it's not like I'm not you know I don't need no bullshit I'm gonna kick your ass anyway it is more of a you know you are doing it all the correct way in your eyes I yeah I just that's that's why I chose this that's why I'm not working for a corporation in a cubicle or something like that that's why I chose this that's why I'm not working for a corporation in a cubicle or something like that

that's why I'm not like when I had those types of jobs I felt horrible about myself and about my life and when I finally decided to try to take MMA for what it was and dive myself into it 100% and dedicate myself to it

I was like I had nothing to lose and I'm like this is a perfect path because I'm either going to make it or I'm going to break myself to it, I was like, I had nothing to lose. And I'm like, this is a perfect path because I'm either going to make it or I'm going to break myself doing it. And, and, um, I mean, I don't know what goes through these guys' minds. They, they just, it's like this, the idea of winning is too enticing and the idea of having an edge. And I watch guys and I know people who became so addicted to that stuff that when they don't have it then they have this insecurity in the back of their mind in their subconscious and they don't think that they can actually

pull off what they did when they were on the juice what did you think of when you saw like the pride era where you it was just super clear that no one was tested for nothing and in fact i have friends who uh fought in japan who were told to take steroids sure sure sure all those almost all those guys were and like and and it's just while it was happening i was just in limbo because i was trying to work my way up in the lightweight division and small shows where there's all these scumbag promoters that are just trying to screw you over. And I was like, you know, seeing the lightweight division be completely dissolved for a few years. And I was just like, wow, like the closest guy to my weight that's fighting in any kind of show that's getting paid more than $10,000 ever

is like high and gracy versus that Ichigawa or whatever. I'm looking at guys that walk around at like 190 pounds. So I guess what I'm saying is it seemed so otherworldly to me. I mean, it was MMA and I was interested in it, but it didn't apply to me. I was just was mma and i was interested in it but it was just like it didn't apply to me i was just like well that will never be me even if i did like throw my principles out the window and just decide to take a bunch of steroids it'd still be uh uh lightweight in frame you know what i mean like and i just like that would be silly like i

would look like that was that remember that guy jimmy ambrys yeah yeah I would look like that. Remember that guy, Jimmy Ambriz? Yes. You ever heard of him? Yes. I'd look like that. You know what I mean? That's the only way I could get up to heavyweight. That guy was 300 pounds and like 5'6". I remember all these. Powerful dude.

Yeah, yeah. He was. He wasn't 5'6". He's taller than me, I'm sure. I'm only 5'8". How tall is he? I think he was like 5'8". Yeah, yeah.

And he's like 300 pounds of solid muscle. And huge lats. And he could never put his elbows in. I'm learning a lot about technique. And it's funny. A lot of people scoff at this because they're like, oh, you've been doing this for 10 years and you're learning now? Good for you. It's kind of weird that you're learning. You can never master all of this. But I'm really understanding that elbows in and bringing everything into the core and almost like 99% of all the techniques you do is very important.

And that guy literally could not do it because he's in constant bench press mode. He's ready to bench at any time. You know what I mean? Just the way he walks. But if that guy got on top of you, what a nightmare. Yeah. A big, strong guy like that gets on top of you. Sure.

I think he's a black belt in jiu-jitsu. I think he's a black belt under Carlson Gracie, isn't he? Wow. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Not to talk bad about the guy, but that's not what his frame is designed for. I know what you're saying.

I've gone off on a long tangent, but what I want to say is that watching that stuff with Pride, my feelings were just like, hopefully the sport will change, and the UFC did change it. They brought in the lightweights, and I was able to compete with guys my size. For folks who don't know, Mac fought at 170 on the ultimate fighter yeah and the dude that you fought in the finals uh tommy was a big fucking 170 yeah

tommy spear is a big fella yeah yeah yeah he was he was big yeah and but but i knew like just from training with him he was very green you know what i mean yeah um and uh i don't mean that in like the eco green sense in fact he's the antithesis of that he was yeah oh i mean he was he's a dairy farmer you know what i mean that's that's like what he did he's the guy had never ever eaten a pineapple in his life whoa he had never eaten a mushroom in his life what he didn't know what a mango was um and he didn't know what an avocado was. Holy shit. And this guy was eating bacon out of the package the way you'd eat lunch meat. And we were like, yo, Tommy.

You could die from that, dude. Yeah, you could die from that. Yeah, yeah. And he's just like, oh, it isn't. I'm like, no, it's not pre-cooked. This isn't pre-cooked. And he's like, oh. I'm like, dude, it's raw fat-cooked. This isn't pre-cooked. And he's like, oh. I'm like, dude, it's raw fat. That's just the way he – who knows?

I mean, this is a guy whose only vegetable experience is like corn on a plate or maybe like peas or something like that once a year or something like that. Frozen peas. We found some peas, Tommy. What's that? Yeah, he was a big, big dude. And yeah, I mean, I just knew, though, that he was very young in his experience and his understanding. Did they hook your diet? You're a vegan.

Did they hook your diet up while you're in the house? The one good thing, even though with all the negatives about being there and the no contact to or from the outside world and no freedom, the one good thing that they they have is is you can food wise you can order pretty much whatever you want you tell them whatever you want and he it's as long as it's you know at whole foods or at the regular grocery store they'll go and get it for you as long as it's within reason so guys were even like ordering like like like the most expensive stuff they could they could get like they want like flounder from the deli and like filet mignon and all this shit and like i yeah i was able to get keep my diet

like on point and and that was one of the things i established from the beginning like i was worried about that kind of like the idea of guys being you know how being jokesters and messing with somebody's food and like from the very beginning, I just gave these guys that look. When I look at them, you're not going to fuck around with me. I'm not going to be the butt of your jokes. You aren't going to pee in my bed. Don't come in my lettuce.

Yeah, exactly. That's not happening. You know what I mean? Did someone do something like that? Did somebody come in someone's food? Something like that? I don't watch that show. Sushi? Yeah, yeah. He's like... I don't watch that show. Sushi?

Yeah, yeah. He's like, I don't watch that show. I've got better stuff to do. No, but one of those seasons, the season that Ryan Bader and... What's that kid? Felipe Nover. The season that they were on,

we had two different weight classes, and someone peed in ryan bader and philippe novers like like fruit or something like that they peed all in it and those guys just ate it and they were cool with it and they didn't even think anything of it and then like when they heard that it had had been peed all over it then they started feeling sick and were like trying to force themselves to throw up and stuff but yeah nobody messed with my stuff the only thing that happened was guys on my team like guys that i was supposed to be friends with were like eating my food and it was like look you guys

can eat whatever you want you can order the same stuff that i order or you can eat your own food but my diet is is very specialized so don't take my stuff like it's public domain so i started like writing my name all we even they didn't show it on the show but me and this other guy named billy that was on my team grabbed this uh this like small refrigerator that was in the back um you know near near the uh grill outside on an outlet and, like, brought it into the room. And it was, like, my personal, like, dorm refrigerator. And, like, I kept all my food in there. And so, yeah, nobody messed with it or did anything with it.

It was just, there was an issue about it. It's a shitty thing to have to think about, though. I know, I know. Yeah, it was hard, man. It was hard. I don't know how I got through it, but I did. I just kept my eyes on the prize. When did you switch your diet over to vegan?

2004. Yeah, yeah. What was it like before that? What was your diet? Up until that point, okay, let's see. When I was like 16 or 17, I was kind of like, I'm done with red meat and pork. For health reasons and just, I don't know, like my own half-assed moral ethical reasons,

I was like, I just don't want to mess with red meat and pork. It's bad for you. It's just, I don't agree with it right now. So I stopped that. And then when I was about 19 or so, I realized that all these ear infections and sinus infections that I'd been having for years and years, like seriously bad ear infections, like I would get them at least twice a year

to the point where there would be so much pressure that my eardrum would inevitably puncture. And it was the worst pain, the worst pain that you could think of. I mean, I've broken my femur before. I've had all kinds of like bad physical pain. Nothing is as bad as a few of those, uh, uh, ear infections and those ear infections, uh, the pressure on the brain too, you can almost feel it too. It's incredible. And there's a, it's very sensitive in there. And then I would get vertigo for like months afterwards. And I don't know if you know what vertigo is like, like, but it's absolutely miserable. afterwards. And I don't know if you know what vertigo is like, but it's absolutely miserable.

You can't, you can't, everything is spinning all the time. And you try to focus on different spots in the room, like the corner of a door or anything, just to force your brain to remind your body that you're not actually spinning, but you can't stop your eyes from doing that. Like if I were to spin around and around a circle, you know how your eyes go like this and dart back and forth to try to catch up. It's just like an involuntary reaction. Well, your eyes are doing that, but even close my eyes and try to like put my fingers on my eyes and they just

be darting back and forth because your equilibrium is so messed up. And when it is okay, you try to go walking around. You still feel like you're in an episode of cops like everything's sort of bouncing around it's it's you completely feel detached it feels awful and so i dealt with all that and what i'm getting to with that is that um then this is a personal thing this is a personal allergy not everybody has this not everybody has to quit dairy because of this but dairy directly affects uh a lot of people within in the sinuses the ear nose and throat that's why

like if you drink like a glass of milk feel like there's like a lot of phlegm yeah well i developed like a severe allergy to it it was probably due to the fact that i was drinking milk constantly growing up like my mom thought that that, you know, she believed the, the bullshit, like, like, you know, grow big with milk, you know, like osteoporosis, strong bones and all this crap. And I was drinking a ton of milk growing up. And, um, I think that contributed to my allergy possibly. But, um, anyway, I, I tried all sorts of stuff and I finally came to the realization after reading some stuff from Andrew Weil, who's the dude with the beard, the homeopathic, or not homeopathic necessarily, but like holistic medicine guy.

And he was like, if you have problems with your sinuses or ear infections, eliminate milk and all dairy products. I did, and I haven't had a single problem with ear infections since then. So that was when I was about 19. So I spent 10 minutes off on a tangent. You asked me what my diet was like before 2004 when I went vegan. The only thing that separated me from having a vegan diet was chicken and fish. And the reason why I was eating, and maybe turkey, you know, like poultry and fish. And the reason why I was eating that stuff is because I believed what everybody had said beforehand, that you need some type of animal protein in your diet.

And also, like, I like chicken, you know what I mean? I like the salty, greasy stuff. I like the flavor, you know what I mean? It was cool. Even like regular grilled chicken breast or whatever, you put seasoning on it. I was like, well, this is what I'm supposed to eat. And so I would eat that stuff. And I was, you know, thought to myself, okay, one day when I'm done trying to be an athlete, and when I don't need this animal protein that everybody says I need, I will stop eating that and I'll have a vegan diet. And what I told myself was, I will not call it vegan. I will just live like that. I will not wear it on my sleeve. I won't become part of some cult. I will just do it because I feel that it's the right thing to do as a consumer in this day and age. And I want to, I want to address that

too. It's, I don't think, I think we're made, we're omnivores. We're made to be able to either eat meat or vegetables, you know, and plants, nuts and everything, or a combination of both. And, you know, depending on where people lived and, like, what part of the world they lived and what they had access to and what they could hunt or not be able to hunt for, they would eat a combination of both or just one or the other. And this is, and, and we have the ability to do either. We live in a day and age now though, where it is not, we're not the hunter-gatherer anymore. It, you know, if I live back in the day, you know, or whatever, some hypothetical situation hundreds and hundreds or thousands of years ago, I would, if, if that's what I had to eat, that's what I would eat. I have compassion for animals and all living things, so I would feel bad about it, but I would

respect what I killed, much like I feel my soul tells me that, much like the way that a lot of Native American tribes did. They, like, revered the animal, they killed it. They ate it. They used everything. They didn't waste it. And they respected what they did. And it wasn't like, yes, like, I want to hurt this thing. It was like, this is our food. We have to kill it for food. That's different than this day and age where you have mass amounts of suffering. Even in, like, lots of people that are vegetarians that eat milk and eggs and things like that. It's like the, the, if you care about the animals at all, the moral issue is still the same. These animals are living in horrible situations and they're suffering. Like whether

or not you like animals or think that they have like the same, you know, abilities to, to reason or, you know, have any emotions or anything like that. The one thing is true. They feel pain and they can feel pain and they live in the worst, most fucked up situation. So I was just like, look, I'm a consumer. I don't want to be. If I could live exactly how I would be, I'd be like living off the land somewhere. But that's like like a pipe dream you know i'm i'm a consumer i buy stuff if i'm gonna buy stuff and i'm gonna like like contribute directly to things that i buy i don't want to contribute to this industry it's just it's just wrong for me and i don't want to tell other people what to do or force it down their throats and that becomes religion yeah you

never approach it that way which is uh well i respect that i've had uh many conversations with vegans that were enlightening and equally as many that are annoying sure i think we all have and it becomes one of those things where they're excited to let you know that they're a vegan they're just it's it's like a thing that they push it's all over their stupid twitter Twitter. It's just, it's a constant definition. I battle with that a lot because a lot of the people who follow me like through social media, I'm not on Facebook, by the way,

but I'm on Twitter, but like a lot of people that follow me and that are fans of mine and like hold me in high regard, they're part of that scene. And I don't dismiss that scene, but like any scene, it tends to push people away. And like a lot of these people are really passionate about what they believe and they believe in animal rights, which I believe is a, is a, is a noble cause.

And it's something that should be treated seriously, but they get so frustrated and then they turn it into a them against us type of attitude and they want to force it down people's throats and they want to they want to like you know it turns into like a religious type of thing and and this type of thing where you're either with us or you're not and we're gonna criticize people that don't it's like a lot of people aren't vegans because they just they they just aren't educated they don't understand what's going on you end up pushing you end up putting more people under the defensive and pushing them away from the cause than than you do educating people when you're like oh i'm part of some exclusive

club and like you know like we're all we've all got a name for it and you have to follow these exact rules and if you deviate from that, then you're disgusting. And oh my God, meat is disgusting and everything. It's like that whole thing. It's like I don't, almost all of my friends eat meat. You know what I mean? Like I'm watching more and more people, but like I never, ever want to make somebody feel defensive about what they do.

If they have questions, I answer them. You know what I mean? And I tell them why i'm doing it and a few of my close friends after years and years have just recently done the vegan thing and they're like dude how come you didn't like like like kind of tell me about this more earlier and i'm like because like you're either gonna do it or you're not i don't want to like be the guy that forces people to do things or tries to like tell them, oh, you're wrong because you're doing that. Most people are just victims of consumerism and they're victims of misinformation like we all are in so many ways.

And the nutrition thing and like what's going on in the world with diet is no different. And so it's like why, you know, don't force people away with your cultish ways. Educate people. And if they don't come around, then they don't come around. That's fine. We're not trying to change the world and create an army. You're not trying to.

Some people are. Some people, being a vegan becomes just like being a Mac user. Why are you using Windows still? It's the team mentality. You know what I mean? And it's like they've picked a side. And it's like, I feel bad about criticizing it because a lot of these people that are involved with this

are really good people. And they're noble people that have taken that choice because they feel it's the right thing to do. And I'm with them on that a hundred percent, but what's, what's hurting it more than helping it is the attitude of it being like the, like it turns into the scene, you know,

it's a moral high ground thing as well. And so it's a chance for someone to say that they're better than you. It gets real weird, you know, lead by example. what happens? Yeah. Yeah. People get defensive. Lead weird. You know, lead by example. And so what happens? Yeah, yeah, people get defensive. Lead by example.

Yeah. Lead by example. If you enjoy your life now because of it, people will be gravitated towards that idea. They see success. They want to imitate it. That's the best way to get someone to change their diet. That's the best way to get someone to change their life.

Lead by example. But when you start being a sanctimonious douchebag, when you're talking about lettuce, you can go fuck yourself. Right, right. It puts people on the defensive. Enough already. You're annoying.

It's like anything else. Yeah, so then they've created a divide. And when you create that divide, the line becomes very hard to cross again. And people already stereotype me. They're like, oh, as soon as they hear the word vegan attached to already stereotype me they're like oh like as soon as they hear the word vegan attached to my name they're like oh great like here's this douchebag and he's just gonna be talking about his diet all the time and telling me that i i need to

repent for my sins and everything is hipster genes people people don't understand like i i ate chicken and fish and and like meat products all through growing up and everything. Like I, like, I'm just like everyone else. I just said to myself, I feel that this is wrong. I don't want to contribute directly to this anymore. And like, people love to argue about stuff. They want to pull up hypocrisies that, you know, like, like, like, well, you know, I guess I probably like hit some bugs on the way here in my my petroleum powered car and like you know like i've got like a you know like like whatever i'm i've bought strawberries that were organic from from chile the other day and like like all the you know like the economic issues that that they are not economic sorry environmental issues that come up and it's like yes you can you can point

out hypocrisies but i don't i live by the set of rules that I've picked because I feel that it's right. I don't feel that I should be contributing as a consumer directly to these industries that cause nothing but suffering. And that's my thing. And, like, if somebody doesn't want to do it, they don't have to. And we're still on the same ground. And I'm never going to shove it down anyone's throat to and we're still on the same ground and i'm never gonna shove it down anyone's throat no you're not and that's uh it's one of those things where you know what you what you're showing is what what i said earlier about you about your unwillingness to take performance

enhancing drugs or to be a part of you you're doing it because of your principles right we look would be a way better world if we all lived by a real set of principles. And that, I think, is one of the underlooked things that martial arts, true martial arts, provide. And I think that we should emphasize that. As much as we emphasize competition success, we should emphasize the ability to enhance your development as a human being. Because that's really what martial arts are spectacular for if you never get into a fight in your whole life you develop skills through difficult work and through you know building your character and responding to pressure and stress and and it makes you better at everything that you do evolve whatever that means to you but but but try to evolve move forward you

know like like build build off what you're doing and i we won't don't need to get on the steroid thing again but i just want to say like like this is one thing that i want to touch on is i've never done them but the one time that i actually considered it there was a point in my life that i actually was like well i just didn't know anyone i was like well at the time i was like if i had access to it i might I might go ahead and do something like that just because I just need to make money. And that was me responding to the lowest point of my life. That was the lowest point of my life as far as depression goes in the sport and everything. And I was almost willing to go ahead and entertain the idea.

And I came to that through weakness. and go ahead and entertain the idea. And I came to that through weakness. And so all I'm saying is maybe, you know, if people are as great as they say they are, you don't need it. And I really don't care if the other guys are doing it. I don't care if the guy that I'm fighting is doing it and he thinks it gives him an edge and it may be giving him an edge. I'm doing this for me.

I'm not doing it for my opponent and I'm not doing it for the sport. What do you think about the future of performance-enhancing drugs? Because the real issue to me is not things that you introduce to your body, but rather what you do to change the way your body behaves and reacts. When you talk about gene therapy, and when you talk about the improvements in our understanding of genetics and certain switches and different mechanisms inside the body that trigger muscular development, recuperation,

and all that stuff is going to eventually be manipulated. What happens to mixed martial arts when that happens? Well, people are sheep. No, for the most part, they really are. And so whatever is established as the moral norm will be okay like right now like we're in a situation where everybody's like mad like oh mark mcguire and mad at barry bonds and mad at these players for doing all this stuff but if somehow they're able to legitimize a different type of of uh of performance enhancing scenario,

like what you're talking about, like gene therapy or whatever. If they're able to legitimize that socially, like on an ethical way, then as long as the public thinks it's okay, then everybody will start doing it, I think. You know what I mean? It all depends on, and right now,

the public, for the most part, seems like they start doing it, I think. You know what I mean? It all depends on – and right now the public, for the most part, seems like they feel like it's wrong to go ahead and agree to not take steroids and then like lie about it and then go and do it. And I think that's a good way of thinking about it. I think they also realize in some sports is no matter what, you're getting it. Football is one of them. When you look at the size of those guys you go what is going on yeah what has changed so radically that people are that enormous yeah you know what's going on there well who knows is it protein hormones in the meat you know what is it yeah it seems like there's certain heights of of size and strength that you can't reach without supplements. Yeah, yeah.

To me, it's a weird thing because this is a mere blip in human development. I mean, if you go back just 100 years ago, there was nothing. There was nothing. There was nothing you could do. You ate good food and that's it. 100 years is the tiniest amount of time you can even measure when you start talking about the universe. 100 years is a joke you know i mean as far as like change and that the radical change in what

we've been able to do and manipulate the human body when you watch like ray kurzweil um the singular do you know his uh his movie about the singularity what is it what is ray kurzweil uh transcendent man and it's all about the technological singularity that like avoided whether or not you want to avoid it like there's people that like you know what i just read books i don't go on the internet i don't even have an email that's all good but you're you're not going to stop it it's swarming around you whether you accept it or not and i kind of have the feeling that that applies to all aspects of technology improvement and innovation including the manipulation of the human body.

And it's going to be really strange when they start figuring out a way to turn virtually every person you see into a Vitaly Klitschko, into a giant super athlete. I mean, we're going to be able to do very strange things and manipulate the body in very weird ways in the future. Yeah, if it's profitable. You know what I mean? That's all it comes down to.

If it can create entertainment for the people paying for it, that's the question. It also will change life as we know it. If the organic body ceases to become finite, if the organic body is a renewable thing that you can constantly replace limbs on and constantly fix organs and and literally we change the whole idea about having a lifespan yeah i mean it's not as simple

as cheating in mma it's as simple as like we're going to transcend the boundaries of our biological nature and that that's something where mma is sort of caught up in the periphery of that like the the improvements that we've been able to do to sport science and you know i love that that term sport science i mean it's basically just the body right yeah yeah how is about science biological science the the improvements that we've made just understanding diet nutrition supplementation and training all that is pretty substantial but it's nothing compared to what they're going to do once they introduce genetics and all of a sudden you're a lion you know i mean we're going to have a weird world yeah it's it's you know and that's interesting too because um like like evolution has happened a lot i think if if i'm correct uh through like

mutations that happen you know like like on a like on a hormone level or a cellular level within people. And if that mutation happens to be advantageous to have in the current environment, then that moves on, you know, rather than like the person adapting to the environment. It's like here's a chance, you know, here's a mutation. This is a little bit different you know and so we're able to actually we're at the point where we're actually able to manipulate that manually or we're going to and that's just uh fascinating yeah it's fascinating and i and as strange as it is i don't feel like it's completely unnatural you know what i mean like like it is unnatural like like like in a primal way but but like i feel like that's completely unnatural. You know what I mean? Like, it is unnatural, like, in a primal way,

but, like, I feel like that's just what we're kind of rolling into, you know, as a species. I completely agree. Yeah. Everything's natural, even pollution. Sure, sure. It's a natural aspect of the ability to control their environment. We're just displacing stuff.

Yeah, and it's also the lack of discipline, the ability to have the ability to say, let's move this over there, without you ever having to figure out how to move this over there. You're just a guy with a crane. Let's dig a hole and throw it in there. How can you dig that hole so efficiently with some brilliant person figured out how to make this monstrous machine

that moves ground very easily? And you come along with very little responsibility for that. It's like winning the lottery. All of a sudden you have this money and the money goes away. You have power you haven't earned. You haven't developed the character to control that. It's a strange situation that we're in now with all this technology. It's like how many people actually know how to engineer the iPhone?

Really, like all these things that we're using, like the knowledge of it is so specific that we don't know. And that's why like the software guy knows nothing about what the hardware guy knows and vice versa. And lots of times, neither one of those guys can change a tire and they sure as hell can't identify what plants are poisonous and what plants are edible in the wild. So it's like we're on a very strange path, and I don't want to necessarily judge it or criticize it as being completely negative and evil or wonderful and beautiful. It's like it just is what it is and we're we're people are doing what they're doing

um i personally feel like more people should should get in touch with the actual earth which is you know we're products of the earth where this is our this is our cradle you know what i mean this is like where what we're born into and i feel like like people should get in touch with the essence of the earth more and just understand the earth. But don't go close to bears and take pictures of them, you motherfuckers. There is a reason why they have a 50-yard rule when you go to Yellowstone. Some asshole got eaten recently. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure he's not an asshole. It's true. He fucked up. I shouldn't call him an asshole. He probably has a lot of friends that miss him. I apologize for that. But, yeah, homeboy took pictures of a bear for eight minutes before it ate him oh he's got eight minutes of photos oh man yeah he fucked up wow yeah we can't you

gotta take you gotta be really respectful of nature you gotta really understand that there's a food chain going on you you you just you're. You don't have a real place in it, a natural place where they consistently hunt you. Sure. But you go out there. You're going out into the wild. What I mean by being in touch with the earth isn't necessarily going out

and trying to live with the actual animals. Oh, no, I'm not saying that either. This guy wasn't living with them. He was just taking pictures. Well, no, I'm not saying that either. This guy wasn't living with them. He was just taking pictures. Well, yeah, or expose yourself. Understand it. Yeah, understand it and just understand how it works. And it would be great if people understood.

I mean, look at it this way. We're supposed to be these amazingly evolved people and we're superior than everything else on the earth. Okay, well, why is it that every single other species living on the planet, you can, you know, unless it's in a completely alien environment, like a penguin in the desert, most of the time you set it out in the wild. You take a deer and you set it out in the

wild it's going to be all right unless it gets hit by a car killed up by a person it knows what plants to eat what plants not to eat it knows where to go to get water it knows how to go after or we don't know anything you know you take like a person even that that is like an outdoorsman and and put them in the wild and there's there's a chance that they they're not going to survive if you watch survivor man you know it's fucking hard just to be outside of course just to be outside for a few days and think about the hypothetical scenario i'm not trying to get all like paranoid doomsday or anything like that i'm just saying if it you know how many people and obviously we're going to be dealing, and obviously we're going to be dealing, if that happened, we're going to be dealing with the urban environment and what's left of it in many ways.

Building a battlefield. But, yeah, it's like if you are in the wilderness, like how are you going to survive? Are you going to be able to make a run for the wilderness? even if it's all rubble and just trying to get together and and and grow some make something happen in that in that way because i don't think that people are going to be able to live in the wild i want to live off the land i think that'd be the most romantic thing ever have a house by lake eat fish grow your own vegetables go hunting homesteading it's the way to go it just takes too much goddamn time you want to write comedy and go to jiu-jitsu class well yeah yeah you can't combine that with with the format regular life yeah that we're living in now you

you'd have to to take a step away from that and that seems maybe it's just a like a romantic idea to me maybe it's like naive to think this way but i would i would like to step off of the grid at some point in my life and live my life that way you know for for the remainder of my years you know i don't know if it'll ever happen um it might be just you know a pure fantasy um but if i'm able to i think that that would i think i would learn a whole lot more about myself and about the earth than than i would in any other way and i would learn about a lot more about the essence of of being a human being um rather than just you know waking up and doing the same thing every day you know that that we do in society nowadays have you ever thought

about doing your own podcast dude i have yeah why don't you do that yeah i want to i just don't have i don't know like i'm not good with uh like i don't know do that? Yeah, I want to. I just don't have, I don't know. I'm not good with, I don't know. I'd have to set the whole thing up, like where to host it. All the technological things, I have to learn about all of them. I take the technology pretty well, but I have to research it. You can do it. Trust me. All my retarded friends do it.

You can do it. Everyone I know has a podcast now. Yeah, Ari had the little, what is it is it recorder zoom thing yeah yeah so i i actually got one of those and mics i just don't i you know i just have to start organizing it figure out where to host it and how to put it on itunes and all that stuff play around with it dude you could do it and you got a lot of shit to say about things i think uh there's there's uh there's only so much you can express yourself when you're on the ultimate fighter right or when you're you know in post-fight interviews you know i mean it's like there's not that much time where people get a chance to sit down

and uh get to know you but i think you're you're in an admiral you're an admirable example for young men as far as like sticking to your principles as far as having a code that you live your life by which i think is something that's really absent in a lot of people in this life. You know, you're another example of a guy who's gone through a lot of adverse situations and developed great character and resolve because of that, man. So this is a great podcast. I really enjoyed it. And I think people are going to enjoy this too. They're going to get a different sense of who you are. And, you know, we all need to hear these kind of stories about turning your life around, about developing, you know, your character. I mean, these are all, like, really important stories for people to hear.

They're empowering. And I think they allow us to learn things without having to go through your experience. We can learn from your interpretations of your experience. And if we're presented with similar problems or similar scenarios in our life, we can learn from your interpretations of your experience and if we're presented with similar problems or similar uh scenarios in our life we can learn we can learn from what you learned and what the people before you who express themselves that you learn from from their experiences as well it's very important man and so uh thanks a lot for doing this yeah man thanks for this again and i'm so sorry it's fucked up before but according to twitter everybody's enjoying the shit out of this so it's all legit now yeah it will be saved on twitter and if people want to get in touch with

mac you can get him on twitter it's mac danzig mma whoever you are you dirty bitch that has mac danzig give it up to the man you know that's his name why are you playing games man what are you doing your name ain't mac danzig son there's a few real live joe rogan's out there it's not that unusual and i'm sorry if you have to take a lot of shit because of me. It's not my fault. But Mac Danzig MMA on Twitter. Tonight at the Ice House Comedy Club, again, it is a crazy fucking stupid packed show with Joey Diaz, Greg Fitzsimmons, Duncan Trussell, Ari Shafir, Brian Redband, Doug Benson.

Did I mention anybody not? Did I say Joey Diaz? Ari? And me. You fucks. It's going to be incredible. And we're going to take a little break, and then we're going to be back with Billy Corbin. Billy Corbin is the director of Cocaine Cowboys, and he will be joined by Mad Flava, cocksucker,

who's going to lay it down and let you know what the fuck was really going on in miami in the 70s joe rogan the 70s very very intense conversation i had with him about this yesterday thanks to on it.com go to o-n-n-i-t.com and get yourself some alpha brain you dirty bitch improve the way your brain functions son don't snort it off your keyboard though i don't think that shit's recommended that really really fucked me up like i almost had to leave because that like it started really felt like it was fucking you really did snort it no i i inhaled it through that big straw like so it's all this powder in my mouth and whatever's in that like really made me feel like i was really fucked up for the... Oh, you're such a unique person. Go to Onnit.com, use the code name Rogan, save yourself 10% off any supplements,

and go to Death Squad. Get yourself some delicious Death Squad stickers, some yummy Death Squad t-shirts. And by the way, it supports the Death Squad podcast network, which is the only place to hear the Ice House Chronicles, which is the one that we do hear the Ice House Chronicles, which is the one that we do from the Ice House with all these badass comedians. All right, you freaks. We'll see you in a little bit.

Thank you.