The Joe Rogan Experience - #497 - Tim Kennedy

Episode Date: May 7, 2014

Tim Kennedy is a Special Forces operator and professional mixed martial artist who currently competes in the UFC's Middleweight division.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! Tim Kennedy, ladies and gentlemen. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, dude. You're an interesting cat. You've been around the world.

You're saying that you're laughing, like you're not? No, I'm not laughing, I'm not interesting. But, I had wanted to talk to you in the Octagon for a really long time. Took a while. It did take a long time 12 years as a pro to finally get a little Joe interview yeah but the interview was you couldn't ask for a better environment

to do that first interview when the UFC fight for the troops to do it and to do it after that spectacular knockout that was intense man it wasn't just intense because you won. What was really intense for me is, and I've always experienced this in these fights for the troops. First of all, it's great to be able to go to them and put on these fights and have them in these hangers and these tight environments.

And just the appreciation and the respect that everybody has for the fighters is really intense but you first of all you being a veteran and you you being unabashed in your love for soldiers and your respect for your your fellow military members when you got on top of that cage and after you know they were cheering and you were yelling out to all those people that you love them. I mean, this is all off camera, man. We'd cut to commercial and you're on top of the cage and you're just yelling at all those people, letting them know that you love them. That's some intense, intense shit. Yeah. Overwhelming, emotional, near shutdown. Yeah. I'm walking out to the cage. I see this dude. He flies for the 160th which is like the Special Forces wing

of aviation. The last time I saw that dude was I was handing him my shot buddy. I'm like, it's a big thing in Special Forces community. We're real tight. I'm handing him my brother that has bullet holes in him. And I'm like, I don't want to let him go.

And he's like, hey, I got this. This is what I do. You go do what you're supposed to do and get back to work. That was the last time I saw this dude was handing him my buddy on a medevac. Then I'm walking out of the cage. I was like, holy shit. There is that dude from the 160th

that I handed my shot buddy to. Totally overwhelming. Then I have to go in there and fight. And then, you know, nice fifth special forces group is co-located there. So I saw to go in there and fight. And then, you know, 5th Special Forces Group is co-located there, so I saw a bunch of dudes from, like, the Green Beret Regiment. Yeah, it was entirely too much emotion.

I just wanted to, like, curl up and cry. Yeah, it's a completely different kind of... There's you on top of the cage up there in that photo. That's just an intense, intense picture. That picture should be framed and on your wall somewhere, because that is one of the greatest pictures I've ever seen. If you could cut me out and just have the dudes. No, no, no, no, no.

You need to be in there for reference. I mean, but that's your attitude, what you just said, cut me out and leave the dudes. That really is your attitude. You really don't want... You were saying while you were up there that my job in here is easy, easy what you guys do you guys are my heroes yep you know good memory yeah i remember everything that's disturbing scary don't get in

a fight with joe rogan verbally does not go well for you i remember things just well i remember important things and that was a that was a deep moment you know there was um i wrote a thing a long time ago about uh one of the fights for the troops about the National Anthem. And I recorded it, I filmed it on my phone when someone was singing the National Anthem and you turn around and, you know, I was filming the crowd while it was all going on. And the feeling in the air, the electricity in the air of hearing the National Anthem while you're around active duty soldiers who are in a war currently have had friends had loved ones die have experienced firefights have

been there have come back and now they're here in time off getting to enjoy a fight and everyone's standing up and there's electricity in the air man your fucking hairs are standing up on your back it's's crazy. It's intense. It's intense. It's a totally different experience. It's there. I don't understand the whole realm outside of what you can physically see,

but there's no way to describe moments like that where you're surrounded by these heroes, these selfless freaking superstars of humanity. They bleed in every sense of the word for their country. And then the national anthem come on or the flag goes up and you see them all. And there's this energy there that just can't be described. It can only be experienced. It's surreal.

You know, that's the really intense aspect of it is that there's a lot of resistance and blowback towards war and towards the military industrial complex and towards— Both of which are horrible. Yeah, but what's important is everybody wants everything to be black and white, and there's no black and white in this world. There's this gigantic spectrum of shades, and there's positive and there's negative, there's good and there's bad, but there are real heroes in the world. Pat Tillman is a perfect example of a guy who is a real hero, in my opinion. A guy who saw what was going on and said, you know what, fuck this NFL career. I don't need millions of dollars. What I need to do is do what's right, and I need to fight for my country.

He goes over there, and then when he gets there, he experiences chaos and nonsense, and he's super vocal about it, and completely, as is his brother. And that's, to me, a perfect example of that there is no black and white. There's a lot of, there's real heroes. There's people that have heroic intent,, there's people that have heroic intent,

and there's people that have heroic ideals, and they really do love and respect the idea of freedom. But they get thrust into a situation where everything is completely out of control and chaotic. And a guy like Pat Tillman was very vocal about it. And well-spoken. Very well-spoken, as is his brother. It's a very intense thing. And when people are anti-war, and it's fashionable to be anti-war.

It's a thing that a lot of people put on like an outfit. They just sort of jump into the sentiment that we shouldn't have a military and we shouldn't have war. The real problem is human beings are still animals in a lot of respects, a lot of senses. And probably nobody knows that more than a guy like you who's been there. War is horrible. I hate war. I am anti-war. I've been anti-war my whole entire life with uncles that fought in World War II or in Vietnam, uncles that fought in World War II or in Vietnam, you know, grandparents that fought in World War II. But with that position of being anti-war, I don't think you should be able to be anti-war

unless you understand at a fundamental level how awful and horrible war is. That doesn't mean that you have to go and serve, but it's necessary. You know, it's, I don't, I wouldn't wish, you have to go and serve, but, um, it's necessary. You know, it's, um, I don't, I wouldn't wish, you know, what I've seen in my life on my worst enemy. You know, there's no way I'd want the people I hate to have to see, you know, what a little girl looks like once she's been through, had acid thrown on her cause she tried to go to school. I want that, want that on my worst enemy. But, um, there's people that do those things. You know, there's people that go and kidnap 300 girls in school this week because they were going to school.

Those people don't – they have to answer to somebody, and the only people they would answer to are guys like me or guys that are better than me that are still doing it. And it's a necessary evil. You fight fire with fire. You fight evil with just a more violent, better version of evil. That's a crazy way to look at the world. But in a lot of respects, there's no other options. In some situations, there are no other options unless you let evil overwhelm an area or evil overwhelm a group of innocent people. There's almost no options.

And to deny the existence of evil is completely fucking ridiculous. Especially if you just look at human history. Look at human history from recorded times, from the beginning when people started writing things down, people always did awful shit if they could get away with it.

To get away with it, for evil to prevail, all it takes is for good men to do nothing, right? Yes. Great quote. Yeah. You just have to do something, even if it's horrible. How long were you over there for? I was eight years active duty, special forces, and now it's been three years as a national guardsman in special forces.

And how old are you now? 34. So, wow. So you were really young. So you're, you're essentially like, you know, college age. Yeah. As soon as I was in grad school, when I enlisted. And how old were you then? I was 22. Wow. So you, you saw what was going on and you just decided that this was calling you. It was a balance. It was like the perfect storm for me, for me to go in. I was, I was kind of, this was before it would call, we'll call it pro. I was

a pro MMA fighter and I had five fights. I was four and one, you know, I just won this ECC 50 big eight man tournament. You know, Jason Miller, Dennis Kang, myself, we're all in it. And I was the one that won it. So like I had good promise. I was a douchebag I was a little idiot you know in San Luis Obispo you know with the entire the mecca of fighting at the time um like what worrying about what jeans I was going to wear to the next party you know like uh what with my next winnings from this fight I'm going to go buy these, something stupid. Did you have jeans that were like already ripped? Oh yeah, absolutely.

Can I pay way too much for really crappy jeans? That looks cool. Anyways, so making a lot of poor decisions and, you know, nine 11 happened and it was just one of those instances. That's God send divine intervention. Maybe where you get this existential perspective of how much of an idiot you are. And that's what I had. I was like, God, I am really one of the worst people on the planet. You know, not being a productive contributing member to society in any way, just being a succubus of life.

after 9-11 to the recruiter's office. And the problem, I wish I could just knock on the door, but that wasn't the issue. The issue was that there was like a thousand other dudes in line ahead of me that all wanted to do the same thing. And just to give you a testament about how amazing the backbone of our country still is. What was that feeling like when you showed up and you see a thousand other people that are-

Wrapping around the supermarket. That have the same mentality. Humbling, you know, where you're like, again, I'm still a little mentality humbling you know we're like again i'm still still a little fucked hard you know um i was like thinking i was i'm gonna go enlist you know and i get down there i was like man i should have been here like five hours ago you know and uh instance after instance yeah um it was cool it was amazing it was humbling is what it was to see all these dudes ahead of you that their instant reaction, you know, it wasn't a little retrospective perspective of like what

you're doing in your life. It was like, fuck this. Those dudes just flew planes into our buildings. I'm going, you know, that's, that's what they were where I was a little bit late. So I think just the response is humbling. Yeah. It's, it's very tricky because the people that flew the planes are already dead. Right. So it's, but the, the idea that there's a, a faction of the world that's planning things along these lines and it's willing to, to go to such extreme lengths when you, when you see shit like that happen in the world and you see it from a perspective of an outsider versus seeing it from a perspective of someone who's actually there happen in the world and you see it from a perspective of an outsider versus seeing it from a perspective of someone who's actually there and in the military what what is the difference

like what is the feeling like because once you became active duty once you're there what is the difference in your perspective you know at 9-11 i think everybody remembers exactly where they were you know i'm no different i remember the the everybody remembers exactly where they were. You know, I'm no different. I remember the exact place that I was and exactly what I was doing. Um, you know, and I remember my response being anger, you know, like I wanted to lash out and revenge. Um, I don't have that in, that's not in me anymore. You know, I never respond that way anymore.

When I see things happen, I almost have like this cold calculated response, you know, like, um, you know, I hear about something happening and I don't want to like go over with a baseball bat and smash a bunch of dudes heads in like I did, you know, 12 years ago. Now it's, um, like when bin Laden was killed, you know, I spent some prime years of my life in mountains of afghanistan pakistan looking for that that idiot and um and then navy seals going to get him you know and i was like dang i missed it you know i was kind of sad i wasn't mad i wasn't angry i didn't want to be there i don't want to shoot him myself but i was like oh man you didn't want to shoot him

yourself um not i would love to have shot him myself but I wasn't mad that I didn't get to, which was like my response, you know, 11, 12 years ago, just calculated like, ah, man, that whole event was one of the biggest, like, what do you think really happened? Conspiracies online when they didn't show the body and they threw it in the ocean. And the whole idea that he was going to be a martyr, that was so perplexing to me. The whole thing was so completely perplexing to me. Why wouldn't you just show his body?

Can't we take a look? The whole world wants to see the bad guy. Historically, through the course of this war, we've done it on numerous instances, whether it's Saddam hanging or Zarqawi and his blown up body. You know, like some I was involved with, some I wasn't.

It's been very clear, the response by the fanatic side when they see the body. You know, maybe that person becomes a martyr, you know, and then he's like idolized for years or maybe it just incites an immediate riot. So yeah, it sucks. We want to have that justice feeling of like the conclusion, the finality of like, ah, there's Bin Laden, he's dead. Look at that pointy beard of his. That's definitely him. All right, we can sleep at night. The boogeyman Bin Laden's not under the bed. You know, the boogeyman bin Laden's not under the bed. But had they done that, the repercussions would have been so much more severe with riots and possibly, you know, a longstanding martyrdom.

So, I don't know. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Shades of gray, like you said. It sucks. Yeah, I'm selfish. Yeah. I want to see the dead body. Yeah.

And plus, I don't totally believe everything they say. So, you know, when you talk to high-ranking military guys and say, that guy's been dead forever. He's been dead a long time ago. That was another part of the conspiracy. Guys that were, you know, in the know were saying, I think that guy was dead already. There's no way that he's still alive because we've probably killed him like 10 times now. So whether this was the final version of him or the 10th, it's irrelevant. All versions of bin Laden are dead. Yeah. He's not Jason. He's not going to pop up out of the ocean. The 11th time. Yeah. Swimmed ashore. Tricked you, bitch. Yeah. I'm

going to start from scratch. The idea is terrifying to us. Like fanatical religious fundamentalists that are willing to die is terrifying for a good reason it's one of the worst aspects of human beings is that we can talk people and to believe in some completely ridiculous shit and talk them into believing so much so that they're willing to kill themselves yeah and we are the other problem with human beings is that once a guy gets that far once a guy once a human man woman whatever is far gone, how do you bring them back? You don't. I have a friend who has adopted a child.

And the kid was, I think she was probably three when they adopted her. And she's about six now. And the poor kid's a mess. And they're really worried. They don't know what to do. She experienced a lot of abuse before they ever got to her. And now she's six years old and they're just trying to wrangle her and educate her and give her love. But they're like, God damn, if we just got there sooner.

That's their idea. You're talking about three years old. Get some guy who's fucking 30 and he's a la Wakba all day you know bowing and and ready to be a martyr and it's fucking it's impossible to change the course of that sort of ideology yeah i have no idea how if you you're smart ecstasy mushrooms, reprogramming, you know, some of that. My solution was way easier. Yeah. But I had infinitely more repercussions. Yeah.

Well, you know what? We're all going to live. We're all going to die. And you've got to pull weeds out of a garden sometimes. That's just the reality of the situation. Yep. The idea of equating a human being like a weed is pretty gross, but it's just a bad analogy. We're not all flowers.

Yeah. I don't think you're a flower. No, I don't think I'm a flower. I'm a vegetable. Some sort of a... I'm an artichoke. I have layers. Artichokes are great.

I love artichokes. I'm like a pineapple. I'm rough on the outside, but inside I'm delicious. But the core is really hard as well, so... Yes. There's elements to you. Deep inside, I'm very on the outside, but inside I'm delicious. But the core is really hard as well. Yes. There's elements to you. Deep inside, I'm very fibrous. That's a good metaphor.

I like it. So you were over there, and you continued your mixed martial arts training while you were over there as well? Yeah, Special Forces as a whole, there's the expectation that all of us are just good fighters like we're just born badasses obviously this is not the case right nobody is um so we train you know we shoot all day long and morning and night we fight you know usually pt is um some

form of jujitsu boxing wrestling kickboxing hand-to-hand combat, small arms. And then evening is more recreational, you know, after you get back from the range. So you get up, you work out, then you go to the range and shoot for, you know, three, four hours, go back, clean the guns, and then your evening is usually on the mat. That's Monday through Thursday. Friday is you're trying to fix whatever you broke during the week. That's the week. So do you guys, when they set up training for you, whether it's physical martial arts training or fitness training,

is there instructors who set a program for you? Like how does it work? So sometimes you bring in experts. You know, Hoyce Gracie came and trained us countless times. You know, Greg Jackson comes out still. You know, guys like Greg Thompson, you know, he's a Hoyce black belt. He's there permanently. So there's permanent fixtures at the Special Forces installations that train guys on a daily basis,

and they have relationships to bring in experts. basis and they have relationships to bring in experts. Um, obviously, you know, what you do in a house when to blow a door in, when you're going inside on kill capture mission is different than you're going to do in the cage. So it has to be guys that can adapt whatever they're teaching or know what their limitations are. You know, Greg Jackson doesn't go in there and, and try to teach knife fighting. You know, he knows what his left and right limits are, but he comes, you know, he's one of the best. So he comes in and gives, gives the best instruction that he can to try to teach knife fighting. You know, he knows what his left and right limits are, but he's one of the best, so he comes in and gives the best instruction that he can to try to provide tools for guys to be better at what they do.

You train a lot down there in Albuquerque. I do, yeah. He's a fascinating guy. He is a cool cat. He's a one-of-a-kind, very unique dude, like, really humble, like, really humble. Like, there's a lot of people that pretend to be humble, but if you pick away at them... To a fault. You pick away at them and you find some bullshit, it's just putting on a

no, he's humble to a fault, to a fault. Yeah. How so? Um, he and Winklejohn both, I say humble to a fault where, um, they have, um, they have all these things to give. They're the best that there has ever been on coaching staff. They've trained more champions. They have the best stable of fighters on the planet, arguably, and they're still training guys, you know,

and it's not by design. This is just out of like, um, almost necessity, this scary staff. No, it's not even scary. I don't know.

Um, out of a bar, barn warehouse, you know, like industrial commercial ghetto building, you know, like where I can walk out the door and score some meth as fast as I can come inside and get around with John Jones.

You know, those are my options. Front door parking lot, get some meth, come in. It's that bad a neighborhood. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Really? Yeah. All you ever see is the outside, you know? Yeah, no, no, no. Jackson Winklejohn, like, oh yeah. Driving down Central, it's like you can count anywhere from four to eight transvestites any given morning. Nice variety. No, yeah. There's a famous one named Grace. She's this beautiful black girl that wears this huge wig and she's like four or five inches taller than I am and probably 50 pounds bigger than I am. Whoa. Yeah. And, but it's, you know, he bring her in. I know she's amazing. She's scary. Bring her in. And every corner is like, Oh, there's that drug

dealer. There's this drug dealer. And then you're like, wait, is that the guy from breaking bad? No, it is. Is he really selling meth? And then the irony is there. No wait, is that the guy from Breaking Bad? No. Wait, it is. Is he really selling meth? And then the irony is there. No, that is not the guy from Breaking Bad, but he's really selling meth, and he's dressed like the guy from Breaking Bad. Wow. Yeah, that is what it's like there.

Albuquerque is a weird spot. It is. It's kooky. Why do they stay? It's just because the gym's there and good stable of tough guys there? I mean, I would love it if Mike Winklejohn and Greg Jackson, let's say, were in Austin, Texas, you know, or LA or, you know, San Luis Obispo, but they're in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So that's where I go. If they're in Idaho, that's where I would go,

but that's where they are. So you train in Austin during your time in between fights. Yes. How do you, uh, how do you like plan out? Like, like when, like how many weeks do you give yourself where you go to Albuquerque? I get six weeks, six good weeks in Albuquerque. Um, so, you know, hopefully you'll get 10 week head up, heads up to your fight. So then I have four weeks to start doing pre-fight camp development,, speed, explosion-type physical stuff, working on specific techniques, and then move to Albuquerque for the six weeks for the final fight camp. You trained at a great spot in Austin, too.

I was down there really recently, and I met the owner of that facility. What's that guy's name? Donald Parks and Paulio Brandao. Yeah, great facility. Amazing. Yeah, really nice guys too yep and um so you do just all your the most in-between fight preparation there good group of fighters out of there as well yep east side austin elite justin lake was my strength and conditioning coach he's

like my brother on a whole bunch of different levels he married my sister or my um my wife's sister um we used to go to college together. We used to hang out with the same girls together. And then we enlisted together. He went to Special Forces. He went to 7th Group together. He went to Afghanistan together. And then he married my sister-in-law.

He might be stalking you. Yeah, no. I hope not because he's like 200 pounds, snatches 250 pounds, deadlifts 500 pounds. It would be a bad thing if he was stalking me. Is he fighting? Does he do MMA? No.

Just trains? Just trains. Yeah, there's a lot of those dudes that are scary that just train. Please don't ever get mad at me. Tear my limbs off and beat me to death. How did you get hooked up with Jackson and Winklejohn? and beat me to death. How did you get hooked up with Jackson and Winklejohn?

When I lost the Stryforce title to Jacare, it was a really close fight. Very close fight. I thought you won. I thought I did too, but it was close, and there were just small adjustments I needed to make and adjustments that I wasn't making on my own. I needed somebody that was smarter than me to tell me what those were and how to,

and how to prepare for them. Um, you know, so since then I'm what, seven and one since I went there. Yeah. Jackson's an interesting guy, um, in that he didn't have any professional MMA fights, but he's a virtuoso. I mean, he really is like, I've had long conversations with him about strategy and weird shit about music, about how, you know,phonies and compares the rhythm of symphonies to the changing rhythm of a fight. He looks at everything as strategy, whether it's like he's playing Lemmings, like the old school Lemmings. What is that? I don't even know what that is. It's a video game where you like move lemmings to certain portions of the map

to try to achieve some stupid engineering goal. It's a very like archaic, like 16-bit game from like almost Commodore 64 type things. Like he still plays stat, not often, but he's like, you know, everything has strategy, whether it's chess or backgammon, you know, or if he's like playing Monopoly with the family the family you know it's like everything's about strategy he had a conversation with my friend Ari my friend Ari Shafir has a podcast called Skeptic Tank and Ari is a really

smart dude and him and Greg Jackson Greg was his guest and Greg was like picking his brain about the comparisons like he's trying to figure out how one crafts a piece of comedy and like tries to attack an audience with it. Like how you get an idea past the boundaries of someone's consciousness. Can that be adaptive? Yeah. You know, like when you're talking to this audience, you already have kind of the template of what you're trying to get to them. But then their responsiveness, you know, like can it change? Like I envision that is exactly something that Greg would do.

Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating to listen to his mind because I don't know anybody like him. It's a very unique sort of a mindset. And then Winklejohn, who's a great striking coach, was a great kickboxer himself. You know, he's an interesting guy too.

Yeah, he's like the yin to the yang with Greg. You know, he's an interesting guy too. Yeah. He's like the yin to the yang with Greg. You know, he's, he's a linear thinker. You know, he's, um, he knows what, like where Greg wants you to paint the best version of yourself. Um, Winklejohn doesn't have that kind of responsive approach to you. He knows what you need to do to be better. You know, this is what you should do to be better and we're going to drill it relentlessly until you are. Greg's like, alright, I want to see you develop this. Let me give you some tools so you can implement this in your fighting style and it's going to be adaptive to every single different athlete that he has. Winkle John's like, no, this is what you need to do and this is how we're going to do it. You're like, yes sir.

Please don't hurt me. What eye do I look at? What eye do I look at? For folks who don't know, he lost an eye in training someone. They threw a kick, and the toenail missed the pad and caught his eyeball, which is the first I've ever heard of that happening ever. I've heard of guys getting scratched badly in training from sparring but never from holding pads. He wears safety glasses

every time he holds now. He has one eye. Can he see anything out of that other eye? No, definitely not. Wow. No, the eye poured out of his face. Fuck. That was my eye. Fuck. Safety glasses. Trim your toenails, bitches. Seriously. Do I get on the mat?

Fingernails and toenails and hygiene? Yeah. It's gross. No, I'm not rolling with you. Go clean yourself and trim that stuff. Yeah, I got one of the nastiest infections once from a guy peeling my hooks off, and he had these giant fingernails. I brought it out to the class.

I'm like, come here, folks. Look at this. You can't have this. That's got to go. You're going to fuck everybody. It's not going to make you a at this yeah you can't have this okay this is you're gonna fuck everybody it's not gonna make you better fighter you can't have this i have toenail clippers in my jiu-jitsu bag yes me too yeah belt headgear mouthpiece toenail clippers and file them bitches too cut them and then there's rough edges file those bitches down yeah when you see guys

like about to go into the cage and herb dean Dean would look at their nails and they bite, I'm like, no. They still get scratched. This is not the time for that. You don't bite them down now. You should have done that already. Then you come home and your wife's like, why do you have scratches all over you? You're like, I fight for a living. Why do you think I have scratches on me?

Golly. Yeah, that's hilarious. Why are they on your back? Because someone was fucking scratching my back. I know. I didn't want them to. The moan scratches. Oh, Tim.

Oh, more. More. Yeah, not good. Is there a solution for fucking eye pokes? Yeah, we change the gloves. What should be done? Heaven forbid we ever say that anything was done better in pride yeah their gloves are better they're better right

they're better they're curved more curved they got like how many guys right now do you see with broken hands a lot it's like tons of them so we have this padding like on the two-thirds of our hands right well that's not where we break our hands we break our hands and metal carpals in the back of the wrist or just above the wrist, the bottom of your hand. Pride gloves had padding there, which provided support. So it's a lot harder to break your hands. There also, the padding was curved. So it was actually, you actually had to straighten your, I'm a grappler, obviously, you know, like I like to grapple. So as a grappler, I could complain that like, I want to have the total use of my extremities.

Right. No gloves would be better for most grapplers. Yeah. Absolutely. You could slide things in better. With that said, I don't want to get poked in the eye. Yeah. So the pride gloves.

That's how we make them better. Yeah. We own pride. The UFC owns pride. Take their gloves and just take the word pride off of it and then put those three letters on there. Bam. Yeah, they brought over some new glove and they're like, here's the new glove. And I put it on.

I was like, what the fuck is the difference? It's just slightly curved. Like these bitches should be like really curved. Like whereas if you want to do that, it's an effort. And when you relax, it goes right back to that. But the effort is for 15 to 25 minutes. Like I'm sure my hand is strong enough to go like that when I need it to. Yeah.

For 15 to 25 minutes. Well, I mean, as long as you can do it in certain situations. Like, you know, you're trying to apply a choke or something. But it's very disheartening to me. All the people that are having detached retinas and Alan Belcher's eyes fucked up. Mike, I mean. Bisping. Yeah.

Bisping's eyes all fucked up. I can't look at him in the eye. I was just like... Well, he's got oil in his eye. They inject oil in his eye, right? Yeah, yeah. And I don't know what he can see out of it or what it looks like.

I mean, I guess it's diminished in some respect. It has to be. Yeah, it's so fucking weird. And he's had a couple eye surgeries, right? Bisping's had more than one eye surgery. It's fucking crazy, man. I like my eyes. I don't want them.

Yeah. I need them. Is it possible to do something where the fingers aren't exposed? Or you chop them off. No, no, no. I'm talking about like a covering. Like what I was thinking of was like a lambskin sort of a covering, something that's not thick,

but like maybe like a band around the tips where you don't really do this ever anyway. I do. Do you? Yeah. When do you do that? Body lock, take down stuff. You grab like this? No.

No, but you do this. You still have this or this. You still have that? I don't know. I mean, you mostly do this, right? Let's design it. Okay, well, I'm saying for folks who are listening, there's a thing called the gable grip.

And the way a gable grip works is picture your hand if you're going to karate chop someone and your thumb was pressed tight against the side of your hand. Then have your hands like in a cross position where one's sideways and one is sitting straight up. And then crush down with your hands, with your fingertips. That would be what a gable grip is like. And that is the majority of wrestling, of grabbing when you cinch around the waist. That's most of the way you grab. The other way would be an S grip, which is you would make like a hook with your fingers.

Yeah, 69. That's it, yin and yang if you're more uncouth or couth. And you grab like that. But you never, very rarely do you do this. Very rarely do you let your fingers intersect with each other. So they don't have to be free like that. And when they're free, that's when fingers go in eyeballs. Yep.

You know? I thought maybe there could be some sort of a flexible, rounded covering, which would eliminate pokes. Seems like they've had to have tried it, you know. I don't think they have. Let's give it a whirl. It's amazing to me how things just stay stagnant when they're retarded.

They don't make any sense. These gloves suck. The 12 to 6 elbow. God, I love those. Why can't we do those? They should be in. Knees to the head on the ground. Were you telling me you can kick someone in the head

with your shin, but you can't drop an elbow down your head? Someone has never been someone in the head with your shin, but you can't drop an elbow down your head? Someone has never been kicked in the head with a shin. Obviously. That's the only reason why you would make that rule. Can't we thank John McCain for this one? Wasn't it that era? It was that era.

According to John McCarthy, who was there when it was all going on, John McCarthy, famous referee, the gold standard. Love that guy. Great guy. Big John told me that they were having this meeting with the Athletic Commission and they had seen karate brick breaking demonstrations on ESPN

at like 2 o'clock in the morning. And the boards shatter and everything. Well, they said you can't do that move because that move could kill someone. Yeah, if you can break bricks, you can obviously break somebody's neck. Exactly. And just blow their scalp.

So that is the real reason why the 12 to 6 elbow is illegal. But arguably, this elbow is stronger. Definitely. It's got more torque to it. It's a more natural movement of the body. This is an awkward movement in comparison. Yeah, but I mean, do you remember Cobra Kai?

Yes. Yeah, I mean, Daniel Sun watched those guys breaking boards. Yeah, it's tough to argue with that kind of logic. But that is the logic that literally is complete, pure ignorance. If you asked mixed martial arts competitors,

trainers, fighters, people in the know, and ask them what should be illegal, the 12-6 elbow is not going to be on that list. Now we're near. It's a fine technique. It's a good technique. It's excellent. As are knees on the ground.

I think knees on the ground, and it could be, you know, if someone wanted to have some sort of a compromise, maybe it would be knees on the ground when you're not pressed up against the cage. That could be a possibility. You know, the idea being that the knees to the head on the ground would be problematic against the cage because the guy couldn't move and that was one of the good things about pride was the ropes yeah if soccer kicks and all those things you can kind of scoot your head under the ropes to get away from things you're not you're not contained by your environment to the point where you would suffer a damaging blow that you could have avoided by your own power

yeah i mean outside of like the north south you know 69 position for knees to the head on the would suffer a damaging blow that you could have avoided by your own power. Yeah. Outside of like the north-south, you know, 69 position for knees to the head on the ground, that's the only position I could think, you know, like obviously the limitation is you still can't strike to the top of the head or the back of the head with a knee. Right. And that, under that premise, then it doesn't really matter where you're needing somebody from because you can't hurt them any worse than you could in any other way with any other strike from any other position. Right.

Yeah, and also I don't like this thing the guys are doing where they drop one hand down to avoid being kneed in the head and they pick it up and they drop it down. Like, oh, let's gameplay this. Yeah, the gameplay. Oh, I'm down, I'm down, I'm down. Don't need me. Yeah. I'm up.

Well, it's very, very weird. It's a weird gray area that I think needs to be sat down. And then, of course, there's the scoring system, which is adopted from boxing, this 10-point must-scoring system, which is just terrible. And the implementation of it is even more terrible because very few 10-8 rounds get scored. Yeah, rarely.

There's 10-9 rounds that are squeakers, right? Like maybe one of your rounds with Jacare might have been a 10-9 round. And then there's 10-9 rounds where a guy just gets fucking mollywhopped. Dropped two, three times. And still a 10-9 round. Like how is that possible? It's a terrible system. And I don't know if you ever saw Doc Hamilton's scoring system.

Yeah. He had a half point scoring system, which is much better. Way better. Way better. I would want Doc Hamilton's and to know what the scores are every round. I agree. 100%. I agree.

Every other fucking game, whether it's football, basketball, everything else. I think it should be that way in boxing, too. So it would discourage shitty judges from continuing their shittiness. Yep. And shitty fighters from continuing their shittiness yes you know the only real worry would be that a guy would be so far ahead that he would run in the last round he's up four rounds yeah john jones moving to the fifth round against glover right right now he's like all right i have this but a guy like john wouldn't do that anyway neither would i you know yeah yeah the great fighters would still fight the same.

And not only that, the other guy is going to get more desperate, so it will make it even more exciting because he's going to have to. And if he doesn't, like, well, are you not trying to win? Like, you know you're not going to win a decision. So either you just fucking throw caution to the wind and throw yourself in the line of fire, or why are you fighting? Move on. Yeah, move on.

John Jones is a fucking phenomenon man that dude as good as he has looked in the past the fight against glover was just just sensational it was masterful yeah it was like it was something to behold i was like he's amazing in the gym he's i mean he's so talented in every respect you know know, like, I've been doing jiu-jitsu forever. And he's good. He's really, really good. And then, like, stand-up is a whole different world. His wrestling is just out of this world.

And then he goes on game day, on fight day, and he's better. He improvises. Dude, it's beautiful. Yeah, when I asked him about the elbows in tight, like, fighting Glover against the cage like that, I knew, I just had a fucking feeling that he was improvising that. I was like, is this something you planned out? He's like, no, I just felt it. He was winding up,

and I just felt like I could get away with that. We were in fight camp at the exact same time. I fought one week before him, and he didn't drill those. You know, like we're watching out for Glover's big overhand right, you know, obviously. We're looking for the two big, the two, three punch combos that he does in entrances. Watching, of course, for Glover's wrestling.

He's a beast on top. And then you watch the fight and you're like, he didn't do that stuff in fight camp. He just fight night started improvising and destroying the still number two dude on the planet so decisively. It's disturbing. He also added a new thing to his game that I think you're going to see a lot of people do. That's that attacking the shoulder with that loose underhook.

When a guy has that relaxed underhook and you yank that arm up, I mean, he fucked Glover's shoulder up in the first round. He never really recovered. No, it changed the whole feeling of what Glover could do offensively from that point forward. Yeah, it was mangled. And now, you know, his labrum's torn. He's going to have to get surgery. Yeah.

Yeah, John's done a lot of things that a lot of people implement now. The front leg side kick to the thigh. There was very few people doing that before him. No, everybody does it. He's got to watch the finger pokes, though, man. John is always doing that thing where he's extending his hands and you know, guys trying to move forward, they wind up running into his fingers all the time. Yeah. I really do believe, I hate finger pokes, knees to

the groin when guys get tired, cage grabbing, like don't like it at all. So he's a teammate. I really do believe that he doesn't intend to hit them in the eyes. He likes controlling range. Yeah. And he has that open hand out, you know, to try to set that range and responsibly counterattack. And just like you said, guys, just run into it. You know, he's not trying to poke them, but it's his fault because his hands open and his fingers are freaking pointing up there. Yeah, I don't think he's doing it intentionally either, but it is an issue.

It has to change. It happened with Gustafson. It happened with Glover. It's a very tricky situation because on one hand, it's a good tactic. It's a good tactic to try to palm the forehead. It's a big one in Muay Thai, but in Muay Thai, of course, you're dealing with a fully enclosed glove. I don't know what the fuck they can do. They really need to do something.

It needs to be a priority. Pride gloves. Pride gloves. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, man, you watch Pride, and I've been watching a lot of Pride lately because at home I— Yeah, it's fucking awesome. It's just the greatest shit ever. You know, it's really interesting to watch their evolution of the sport, too, when you watch Pride.

You watch, like, guys, and you compare them to the best guys of today like wow this is like there's been a big fucking jump yeah big fucking jump i love don fry and his mustache um rest in peace mustache but you shaved it off i heard that's crazy but like don fry in pride compared to you know like the light heavyweights now yeah um just the the disparity of skill and technical level, even athleticism. And Don was a beast. It's night and day. Well, I was watching Vanderlei,

the best of Vanderlei in Pride. There was an episode in the Best of Pride where it was all Vanderlei's fights. And, you know, Vanderlei is one of my favorite fighters to watch. He's a wild man. But, you know, you compare his skill level to, like, a guy like Jon Jones, where they're fighting at the same weight class. You're like, that wouldn't even be a hard fight for Jon.

No, that would be like a round. Yeah, it would not be. It would be, you can't touch me, and I'm going to keep hitting you, and you're going to not know what to do, and then either you're going to get choked unconscious or beat the fuck up. Yeah. It's amazing how much of a jump there's been from 93 to 2014 as far as the evolution of martial arts. I say it like it's a line that I keep saying, but it's true.

In those two decades, martial arts have evolved more than they have in the last 2,000 years. It's incredible. Absolutely. It's the longest time, man. You know, I grew up doing martial arts in the 80s, and nobody knew what the fuck worked. It was all just guessing. You know, everybody knew that, you know, if you were a really good wrestler, you could take guys down.

And if you were a really good boxer, you could probably punch better. But what would work better, karate or judo? What would work better, jiu-jitsu? Nobody knew. Nobody fucking knew. It was just all guessing. Guys naming new moves every single card. They're like, oh, what are you going to call this one?

How can we progress so quickly where every Saturday night we're like, oh, here's a new submission. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, the Peruvian necktie. Tony D'Souza, which you very rarely see. I mean, C.B. Dalloway's probably the only... I don't even know if D'Souza's ever pulled it off inside the octagon, but C.B.

Dalloway's pulled it off. There's a few guys that use that Peruvian neck time. And then there's a few chokes that you see them once, and then you never see them again. It's a fascinating thing where you're watching all this stuff evolve right in front of your eyes. How do you manage your training when it comes to like working on new techniques adding new things to your arsenal and then still just the conditioning the sparring the the day-to-day drilling that you have to do like how do you manage stuffing all that stuff in time management

like a good athlete you know i i do things in like ratios percentages percentages of, okay, I want to develop or give a certain percentage of time to getting better. So I'm going to, you know, let's say I have 10 classes a week, just easy round number in that in those 10 classes, you know, like I want two or three of them to be exclusively focused on drilling new techniques, you know, that I want two or three of them to be maintenance of things that I do well and want to continue to do well. And there's just grappling, like in a one-week, 10-class setting. And then two or three of them are hard grappling, rolling, sparring-type sessions. And then the other one's like maybe a floater of I'm teaching or I'm working with just you know a hand handful of black belts trying to create new stuff you know so like it's equally proportionate to um staying good challenging myself physically and developing new technique

and learning you know what about recovery like what about um what do you do that stuff recovery that's for pussies yeah it's for the birds what do you do? Screw that stuff. Recovery. That's for pussies. Yeah, that's for the birds. What do you do? Do you have like a routine as far as like deep tissue massage? Yes. Cryotherapy? Yes.

What do you do? Yes to both of those. All those. Yeah, so Austin Cryotherapy, I'm there. Is that one of those things you stand in one of those chambers and it's 50 below zero or something crazy? Like negative 300. Is that crazy?

Yeah. What happens to your dick when you do that that seems to me to be a problem gloved fingers right and i take those glove fingers and i cover what is going to be my very small penis in like seconds you know and i make sure i like double hand it so both my hands are like double insulated yeah does anybody go raw dog and just let their dick freeze that would be a because if you found out that guy did it you'd probably have to do it too wouldn't you no i would assume that you would be one of those guys would be like all right i am that dumb yeah it's true like i am so stupid i'm gonna did you really are you messing with me fuck i'm gonna do it yeah just do it in a monk position

you're only in there for like three minutes right Right. And then you get out, huge infusion of blood. You feel better. Eddie Bravo did this in preparation for his Hoyler match, which is the first time I'd heard about it. Explain it to me and for the lay people at home. Your neck is above, right? Your head is exposed. Yeah.

So it closes on you like a sun tanning bed. Exactly. But you're standing up. Right. They punch liquid nitrogen gas in there. on you like a sun tanning bed exactly but you're you're standing up right um they they punch punch liquid nitrogen gas in there so up to like about your chin down to like negative 300 degrees so you're breathing the gas is coming up to your chin and um you know the largest organ in your body is your skin so it's very responsive you know it's it can absorb quickly and like people take drugs

that way uh you know you also, it's very responsive. So it gets exposed to negative 300 degrees. The first thing it does is take blood from the extremities and rushes it to the vital life sustaining organs of your body, your brain, your heart, and your lungs. So all the blood goes from your extremities to your core. And then you get in there for like two three minutes and super crazy because if you have an injury like a hurt knee or a hurt hand um where you have extra fluid there it gets super cold there because you have more fluid there and more fluid is conductive and it gets colder faster so you can feel these injuries on your body get crazy cold and then you hop out

three minutes up you get out of the get out of the chamber and then your body responds to being in 80 degrees and all the red all the blood rushes back out to the extremities so you get this huge infusion of good healthy blood back out to these injuries and back out to your extremities it's a rush it feels like you just drank like five cups of coffee and you're like amped and uh it's just this weird tingly fantastic sensation so that's what happens and how does it help you recover by doing that infusion circulation like the in the trying to treat an injury you know you have you have rest ice compression elevation you know when when you're trying to work on recovery without injury you

want circulation so you want good healthy blood going to muscles that you've just fatigued to increase recovery and response time. So like if you just like simple terms, if I went and did like a big squat and deadlift workout for the day, right, my legs and back and butt are going to be sore. You know, those extremities, it's vascular region. So go hop in the cryo chamber, all the blood that's sitting there in that area, in my legs, in my back, in my butt, um, all rush to my brain and lungs and heart. And then I get out and all sorts of great, new, fantastic blood goes back to my legs, back and butt. So I get a great, huge infusion of good, healthy blood back out to my extremities to increase recovery time because I'm just increasing circulation. Increasing circulation is increasing recovery. Wow.

That's fascinating shit, man. It's fascinating when you see all these new innovations when it comes to strength and conditioning and recovery and fitness. That's a unique one, man. That's interesting stuff. It's cold, though. Yeah. How many days a week do you do that? Like four.

Wow. And they have a place like that in Albuquerque? No, they don't. They have a trailer that sometimes they'll bring out to me in fight camps. That has that in it? Yeah. Oh, that's nice. That is super nice.

Wow. So Albuquerque doesn't have that? Nope. Greg Jackson, get on the ball, bitch. I know. Come on. You should have that. Yep.

Deep tissues, great. You know, I believe like the tenets, the foundations of being a healthy, recovering athlete, you know, like good sleep, good food, good sex, you know, like you have to have those. And if you're doing those things, then your body's going to adapt to whatever the workload of volume that you're putting out.

So I have a crazy volume, like guys that come and train with me, they're like, this is normal. Yeah, this is normal. Like, this is what I do normally, but I just have a very healthy foundation of a lifestyle, you know, like where I don't really drink, I don't ever smoke, you know, like I train every single day, two, three times a day, like this is my body's adaptive to that. And then everything else, the supporting structure of eating well, you know, having awesome supplements, um, you know, having everything just to make my body respond properly to training volume is, is there. So how do you work your diet out? What do you, uh, do you, do you have a nutritionist that you work with? Do you do it on your diet out? What do you, uh, do you, do you have a nutritionist

that you work with? Do you do it on your own? A little bit of all the above, you know, like, um, I have nutritionists that I bounce stuff off of and like people that are way smarter than me that, um, and then I'm surrounded with so many other elite athletes talking to them and their coaches, you know, the guys on it, you know, they have a whole, they have a stable of guys there that are always looking for the next best thing. Um, or even not the next best thing, things that are just have been there around for thousands of years that nobody uses like they should. So it's, it's a constant discussion of like how to improve. I know what my calories that I'm burning in a day. Cause I log everything. Um, you know, I fought two weeks ago. So, um, I was on crazy strict diet for like three, four months to get down to 185.

So now I'm back in Austin, Texas. Maybe I'll have a little bit of brisket. It's getting in there. Or, you know, some tacos. So, which I think is actually needed. You know, you should, you can't be perfect all the time. Your body needs those cheats. Yeah, I agree.

I think cheat days are important. I think people that are just completely clean and strict, you're robbing yourself also of enjoyment. Yeah. Life's too short. Yeah. Yeah. There's some delicious food that you shouldn't eat all the time, but you should eat sometimes. Definitely. Right. Yeah. Um, so do you, when you say that you log the amount of calories that you burn, how do you calculate that? So heart rate monitor, right. During the workout knows my, my resting metabolic rate, you know, is key, you have to know what that is. And once you know what that is kind of in between workouts, you know, cumulatively in a day what you've burnt, and then you just add during the workouts, you know, if I work out two or three times that day, if I'm doing a 90 minute strength and conditioning session, you know, I'm going to burn anywhere between 12 to 1600 calories in that session, you know, from warm

up, warm up to cool down. Um, you know, then like last night I had a two hour jujitsu session, you know, like in it smashed afterwards, you know, like I know what my kind of what my heart rate was at, um, during the entire time and two hours, you know, that's, that's going to be another 1500 calories that I'm putting on top of what I burnt in that day. So I get a snapshot that I burnt, you know, 5,500 to 6,000 calories. That's insane. Yeah. That's way more than most people eat in a day. Yeah. It's fun to eat that though. How do you stuff that in though? I mean, what are you doing to eat? I'm in Austin, Texas.

in though i mean how much what do you what are you doing texas brisket so easy do you uh have any other like nutritional requirements like do you eat gluten do you do you take sugar into your diet at all i try i try not to um definitely fight camp i don't have either of those you know but like right now um you know i had an apple fritter bagel on monday like i hadn't had one of those and i don't even know how long. And it was amazing. It was like a small orgasm in my mouth. I don't even know what that is, an apple fritter bagel. No, not bagel, just an apple fritter.

Oh, okay. Apple fritter donut. Oh, okay. So it's like just donut with apples. Yeah, gluten and sugar and apples. Sugar and that sort of, what is that, syrupy stuff in with the apples and the cinnamon. That's exactly what it is. Ooh, that sounds good.

It was good. Shit. Do you Krispy Kreme it? Do you ever Krispy Kreme it? No. You don't go to Krispy Kreme? No. Damn, dude.

I know. There's a spot that I go to. I'm getting Regenikine. Do you know what that is? I don't. It's a thing that they go to Germany for that Dr. Peter Weller invented. It's a blood spinning procedure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. NFL guys are doing it too. Yes. Yeah. I've been getting it done.

I had it done on my neck. I had a bulging disc in my neck that was impinging on nerves. I was getting some numbness in my hand from jujitsu. Went away totally. Magic. The thing just shrunk down to nothing. But the place where I get it is right down the street from Krispy Kreme. And I drive.

I'm like, do I want to fuck up what I just fixed? Just do it. Inflammation. Apparently inflammation. I found out about it from a physical therapist, that gluten and inflammation. People say, oh, you're not really gluten sensitive. Most people aren't. I mean, you can eat gluten and you'd be fine.

But the reality is it does cause some inflammation. The more you eat, the more you get. Yeah. That's a fascinating thing that it's a normal part of everybody's diet. You wouldn't think that it would have that sort of an effect on your joints or your back, but it really does. Yeah. Well, especially if, you know, like they train like we do. Yeah.

You know, like then now we're just compounding problems where we have the enablers to cause inflammation. And then we're diet giving something that helps cause it you know now things are just compounded and it's exponential and then we what about dairy not much at all some cheeses i just can't live without you know cheeses you're a cheese guy no i mean yes i'm a food guy if it's good i want it yeah you cook right right? Oh God, I love to cook. What kind of, what do you, what do you cook? Um, I love everything, but I love cooking like real. When I say real, um, it's my food that I shot. It's that I cleaned, that I froze, that I packaged, that I brought in from my greenhouse, my backyard, you know, like my food. Right, right, right right so i i'm with you a thousand percent i love being connected to what i put in my body yeah there's very few people who have experienced

that haven't said that it's something special and when you cook an animal that you actually hunted shot butchered cut up put in your freezer or it in camp, which is even better when you're eating it a couple hours after it died. This is an amazing connection that people will poo-poo that. It's not important. Oh, you're just using that as an excuse to go out and shoot animals. I would really like to take someone who is a meat eater who is anti-hunting. You need to just experience this. Just experience this.

100% agree. I wish every person that ate meat, and ironically, a ton of anti-hunters eat meat, obviously. There's no connection to food these days. People just want to go to the grocery store and pick their stuff off the shelf and have no idea how it got there, what was put in there.

But then they judge me because I hunt. but I know exactly where this animal came from, you know, and like, I felt sorry for it when I shot it and I thought it was beautiful and I still do. And I'm enjoying every single bite of it, but they, but they're going to sit there and be like, oh man, that guy hunts, you know, like I'm a, I'm an absolute fanatic conservationist. Uh, but I hunt. Yeah. And I love my food and I love good food so they're they're all connected and i think people should wake up it's also what we were talking kind of talking about earlier is that there's a there's a broad spectrum of things that are going on in this world there's is no black and white when it comes to hunting you can actually love animals and still shoot

them and kill them i love them and that it's a crazy thing. Like people have, they find that like impossibly contradictory. Yeah. But it's not. And it's also, the other thing that people don't want to admit is that if you do not shoot these animals, they're going to continue to fuck, they're going to continue to procreate, and then how are you going to control the population?

Because you have two options. Either you can hunt them or you can bring in wolves. Yeah. So what do you want to do? You want wolves running around through your fucking neighborhood, killing everything that they can get a hold of, including dogs, including livestock. Do you want

wild panthers? What do you want? How are you going to control the populations of these animals that don't have natural predators? The first, my experience, I was like a prepubescent kid when Catalina Island off the coast here of California, somebody accidentally introduced a hog to Catalina. And it mated and boned with maybe one or two other wild hogs that were there that created this feral, big-ass hog

that made a whole bunch of shit tons of more hogs and then started destroying the entire island so they brought in hunters to like get rid of these hogs that were destroying the the the entire ecosystem of that island um and that happens on a much more that's the micro example on a tiny little island with a tiny little animal. But if you look at the big picture of, you know, like deer in the South or hogs from Florida to Texas, you know, like, or the python that was introduced to in the Everglades, they have to be hunted to maintain the balance of harmony in the ecosystem. And, you know, the ecosystem will crash if it's not done. So you either, like you said, give a predator, and that predator has serious problems

that come along with it, or you have the hunter that does it properly, and then you have the benefits that come along with it, which is a proper ecosystem. And you get delicious wild ham. Look at that. I smoked that bitch myself. Look at that. I smoked that bitch myself. Look at that.

In my backyard. I shot it and I smoked it. And it was the best tasting ham ever. Wild pig has a completely different texture. Than anything. It's like a, I marinated it or brined it rather for seven days before I smoked it. But even so, it's like, it's a more dense meat. It's more muscle.

It's darker. It tastes better. It's better for you. And you fucking have to kill them because there's 50,000 hogs. The place where I go to is Tohon Ranch. We're only an hour and a half outside of LA. And they have elk.

They have a pond up there that they put a trail camera on just to see what's eating there. 16 different mountain lions. Oh, nothing. Just 16 different fucking wild murderous cats. And it's because there's so many pigs. There's so much game up there.

You could, from Texas to Florida, you could bring in every hunter in the nation and have them kill 10 pigs apiece and it wouldn't even dent the population of wild hogs in the southeast. Have you ever seen Aporkalypse now? No, it sounds like the best movie ever. It's a show. There's a dude, his name is Brian Cuaca, I think is his name. That's a great name, Cuaca. He's a guy from Texas, and he's got a show called Pig Man. And Pig Man is a hunter in Texas, and he hunts wild pigs,

and then he owns a barbecue place and then serves up wild pig barbecue. Now he's got a show on one of those, like History or something like that. It's called Boss Hog, and the show sort of details what he's doing. I'm familiar with it. Him and Ted Nugent got in helicopters with fucking machine guns, and they're flying around with ARs shooting pigs out of the sky.

I mean, it is the craziest fucking thing I've ever seen on TV. That's legal now. Yeah. We passed legislation. They have to do it. You have to. And for folks who don't, that's cruel, that's horrible.

There are millions of pigs. And they don't care. And they, not only that, they don't stop fucking. They breed all year round. It's not like deer that have a rut and then they'll have a fawn. No, these are animals that are shitting out four or five pigs every four or five months. Yeah. And they just,

don, don, don, don, don. This is, uh, this is the video of,

uh, them shooting these things from the sky. There's actually companies. This is the wrong one. You see what you're showing is there's a pig hunting video. That was a pig hunting promo for the sportsman's channel. But this is, uh,

they, they had a whole episode, and in the episode, they killed 450 pigs. In a fucking 22-minute episode with commercials. Yeah, but that's like a drop in the ocean to what's there. Yeah, literally, it is like taking a shot glass and tossing it into the ocean. I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen in your life. And they're just, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, and they're catching these pigs

running, headshots where they're tumbling while they're running and there's something barbaric and fucked up about it but they're taking that food and they're feeding hungry people they have hunters for the hungry they give the wild pork which is excellent meat they give it to hungry families and it's really really really delicious food and it's important too but then there's that thing where people are like well that's fucked up man that's not really hunting they're shooting it's well they're not really hunting they're eradicating these problematic delicious animals that's the best way to look at it they have to be eradicated and while

it might not be the most humane approach to it um it's an it's a necessary one that has to happen yeah and so I don't know like it's a necessary evil a little bit well do you know what's going on in the Hamptons? You know, the Hamptons, the luxury area outside of Long Island where all these rich folks. No, I don't know what's going on. They have so many deer up there that they're bringing in snipers. They're bringing in snipers in the middle of the night. And the town has proposed to give these deer birth control, to somehow or another give them food, put food out that has birth control in it.

Which, by the way, the male deer are going to eat too. So you're going to make bitches out of the male deer. The male deer are going to run around, I think I'm fucking pregnant. Why are my nipples swollen? Is this natural? Yeah, so you're going to have these male deer that are eating birth control, female deer, and it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's a direct result of the failure to eradicate these animals or control their population

through hunting. There's a place in Pennsylvania where they have 24-hour day, seven day a week, hunting 365 days a year. You can hunt with bows and arrows. You can hunt all year round because there are so many deer. They're like, just fucking bring in hunters. And the hunters come in and there's these huge estates that have these, you know, like 10 acre properties

where there's fucking tree stands. There's million dollar houses with fucking putting green courses and dudes in tree stands launching arrows at deer because they're fucking everywhere. They're like ground squirrels. You ever drive into like a ranch that has ground squirrels? And as the car is running, you see like thousands of them just running across the road. It's incredible.

Like Tohon Ranch, which has 50,000 hogs. It has Rocky Mountain elk, gigantic elk. They have thousands of deer. They have bears. They have mountain lions. They have everything. The number one animal mass, pound for pound, is ground squirrels. And this 2,700,000 acre ranch, number one is ground

squirrels. Believe it. My dad, he was a narcotics officer for 30 years, door kicking superstar. He spends his retired time now shooting ground squirrels. It's like the most amazing setup. For ground squirrels? For ground squirrels. But you can't even eat ground squirrels. No. On the ranch, the cows will step in their holes and break their legs. Or they destroy irrigation for the vineyards. They're nasty. They're disease-carrying.

And they also breed like crazy. You can't stop them. They're cannibals, too. You shoot one, they'll drag it Into the hole And eat it Yeah they're Very different From tree squirrels Yeah

Tree squirrels are actually good I've eaten tree squirrel They're delicious I've eaten a squirrel They're pretty They taste good man Steve Rinella The guy who was the host

Of Meat Eater Shot a squirrel When we were in Wisconsin And cooked it And it was really It's a very unique taste too It doesn't taste like Anything else

But um Ground squirrels Man I wouldn't eat one yeah yeah you can't apparently you can't apparently they're just fucking disgusting yeah it's like I mean I guess you could eat it if you were starving to death but another problem is if you shoot them you have to kill them because if you shoot them and you wound them they run into their hole and then

the other ones eat it yeah fucking creepy little creepy little. Yeah, they're nasty. There's a lot of creepy little animals out there. Yep. But this, I mean, the idea that this one ranch with 2,700,000 acres. Their largest. Largest animal mass is ground squirrels. Well, they say that the largest mass of life on earth, moving life, is ants. And that there's more pounds of ants uh than there are humans pounds of humans it's incredible yeah and they're like 10 000 times stronger than we are yeah ratio yeah

they never get mad at us or they better better not start growing you know if you go back throughout the you know history and you find some of the animals that were just really enormous just a few hundred million years ago and they've somehow or another shrunk down to a manageable size yeah like if bees if bees are the size of horses we'd have real problems yeah i love honey yeah honey's delicious you know vegans don't eat honey that's horrible it's hilarious it's a it's hilarious just show if you ever want to know how retarded being a vegan is, you won't eat honey. I know they're retarded the moment that they start with, I'm a vegan. Well, they can't help say it.

It's like they're holding a hot pan. They run marathons? Yeah, it's like the other thing that comes out right away. It's like, I'm a marathoner, or I'm a vegan, or I eat paleo, or I'm a CrossFit. It's like nobody can help but tell you those necessary elements of themselves. Yeah, what is that? I don't know what it is. It's they want to tell you they're awesome.

But to me, that almost discounts you as being such. Yeah, if you're a vegan and you cannot tell people for a long period of time, that's super impressive. I'll like you more. Wow, you're a vegan and it took you two weeks to tell me? I'm impressed. I'll like you more. Wow. You're a vegan and it took you two weeks to tell me? I'm impressed. Can I buy you lunch?

A vegan lunch. I get it for people that don't want to be cruel. I totally get the whole sentiment. I get all of it. I get the idea of wanting to eat fresh vegetables and it's healthy for you. I get it. But the finite nature of life itself, it seems to me it's so silly that you

think that somehow or another you not killing animals is somehow going to balance things out or you not being a part of killing animals is going to balance they're killing each other do you know that like there's a war going on all the animals are involved in it including humans we're just so far ahead we forgot it's a war And we have POW camps we set up in cities. We call them zoos. And that's what that is. They didn't ask to be there. We capture those motherfuckers and we put them, and they're in these weird things where

we don't let them interact with the other animals in the zoo. We block them off their own little apartments so we could stare at them while we eat popcorn. I'm not sure I agree with that. I don't. I think that if you should have zoos,

you should lump all those bitches together. And if you run out of monkeys, go get more. The monkeys that survive are going to be the ones that know how to get away from the cats. Yeah, he's a badass. That monkey I want as a pet. Yeah, that's a monkey who knows how to zig and zag. He knows how to juke. When the cats come, he knows how to get to the tall branches. The monkey that's a monkey who knows how to zig and zag. He knows how to juke. You know, when the cat's coming,

he knows how to get to the tall branches. The monkey that stays in the ground and picks his ass while the jaguar is slowly creeping up on him, that's the monkey

that's supposed to die. The weird part about the sea worlds and the zoos of our life is that they do, I love when people are like, oh, did you see

the movie Blackfish? You know, like, it's so horrible, I'm going to boycott SeaWorld. You're like, have you ever given a cent to marine biology or the preservation of marine wildlife? No, but you're going to boycott SeaWorld. How much money have they given in the research and preservation of marine wildlife? Oh yeah. A thousand times more than you. It's the same with the zoos. You know, like I don't like zoos. I think it's horrible that the animals are there, but they do more in research and understanding wildlife and the preservation of wildlife than almost everyone that goes there and then, or doesn't go there and complains about it.

And so it's just like this, again, shades of gray. My problem with sea world is very simple those animals are smart they're very smart in fact the cerebral cortex of a dolphin is 40 percent larger than that of a human being beautiful we don't even understand how smart they are because they can't alter their environment so we don't think of them as being smart because they can't they don't have thumbs they don't pick things up because they can move in 3d all around the ocean they can fucking dive and swim and move around and they have these pods they stay together they have families they have dialects they have languages they're so intelligent that we we're just now starting to understand that they have variations in the way they speak depending

upon what geographic location they're at they're really fucking smart like human type smart and just because they're different from us and they don't build houses doesn't mean they're not smart so to me it's like slavery it's like just because you know well we have donated so much money into slavery research but you're still fucking slave owners you cunts you know the reason why there needs to be slavery research i just think that anything smart shouldn't be in captivity. But like giraffes? They're so stupid. You go to the zoo and they seem happy as fuck. There is happy there. Babies feed them.

They let babies feed them. I have a three-year-old. She holds up lettuce. The giraffe comes and take it. That fucking giraffe's not upset at all. They're so confident that giraffes are chill that they let babies feed them. They are. They are so chill.

They're just happy. There's no lions. For you to be a giraffe all day, you have a giant target. Your neck is just this huge target that somebody wants to bite. There's not one spot. It's not like a warthog that has this little short fucking stubby neck it's tough to get to. You have this giant neck like a tree. Everywhere around it, you could bite and kill you.

I mean, they're so happy they're in the zoo. They're so happy. No, they don't know how happy they are. They're like, wait, nothing's eating me? And this three-year-old's giving me food? Yeah. Okay, I think this is good. But then there's weirdness when it comes to captive animals like these hunting camps that they have in Africa.

It gets, again, the gray area, the weirdness of the world. Because you know Louis Thoreau, the documentary guy? Yeah. Fascinating guy. Had him on the podcast. Really, really interesting cat. I want to watch that one. It's a good one. One of the best documentaries that he did was when he went to Africa and went to these hunting camps. They have these high fence hunting camps where they take these animals and they put them in these huge enclosures and they let people hunt them.

The irony is these animals are, there's higher populations, they're healthier, there's more of them. Animals that were on the verge of extinction are now, there's many, many, many of them, but they're hunted. they're hunted. So it's like people have this weird sort of like, well, yeah, the animals are healthier, the populations are healthier, but the reason being is because people can pay to go kill them. Like, whoa.

But it's just another example of the world not being so clear cut. There's a lot of weirdness out there. Ironically, some of the rhinos that are left in this world are at those camps. They're not being hunted. They're being protected. They're in these high fence, game fence areas

where people are coming. They'll come look at the rhino and be like, oh, wow, what a beautiful rhino. All right, let's go shoot a gem's buck and a kudu. How much does it cost? Something they couldn't do 20 years ago because there weren't enough of them. But now, like, oh, limitless impala?

Well, that's a blessed buck. Oh, I'll take one of those. That's $1,000? Not a problem. That's what it's like there. But they saved species by making them available to be paid for. Yeah, it was very strange. I don't know.

And Louis Theroux's documentary really captured it. What was his position? Well, his position is, you know, he's trying to get to it. He's trying to get to his position during the whole documentary. He's like, okay, I see. But the real position is really clearly established by the guy who runs the hunting camp because he gets angry at Louis at one point in the show.

Like, you know, three quarters of the way in. He goes, you don't understand. He goes, Africa is fucked. He goes, it's fucked. And unless something is worth money, it's going to fucking die. They fucking kill everything. It's fucked. He goes, it's fucked. Unless something is worth money, it's going to fucking die. They fucking kill everything. It's fucked.

There's nothing here. The reason why these fucking animals are here is because they're worth money. That's it. That's it. Do you understand? And, you know, Louis is like, I guess I understand. It's true. It is true.

It is true. And in a sense, that sort of mirrors what's going on when it comes to wildlife in America. to establish clear protocols as far as how many animals can be sustained in any given location and keep the populations healthy. All that money comes from hunters, which is just amazing. It's another one of those things. It's like when you look at it in clear, objective terms, you see that this is a very complex issue. And it's not as simple as, these animals are beautiful, we should not kill them. They are beautiful.

Yeah, you have to kill them, though. But you have to kill them. Whoa. Yeah. Right? It sucks. Not really, they're delicious. That's the crazy thing is, no, it doesn't really suck.

They are delicious. Like, fuck, man. There's so much going on there. And again, it's just the way the world is yeah the world which is like this ironic contrast to the first 10 years of my life where like i didn't think what i was shooting was beautiful because they're evil fuckers you know so like now as a sportsman a hunter like i love these animals and which animals do you think were evil uh terrorists but we are you said for the first 10 years of your life you're shooting

terrorists 10 years of my career oh like as a shooter oh i thought you're saying as your life wait so when you're nine years old you're hunting terrorists at nine no like at 23 you know it's like no remorse slept very well at night you know because these were evil people right and now i'm like oh man i don't want to shoot that that That's pretty. You know, that thing's beautiful. That I'll shoot, you know, because that is really yummy, and there's too many of them. Yeah, I have a buddy who served and came back, and he loves fishing, and he had a real hard time getting back into hunting. He said, you know, you see so much death at a certain point in time,

you don't want to be a part of any of it. Totally sympathize. Yeah. He got back. He lives in New Mexico. He got back. He lives in New Mexico. He got back into elk hunting. New Mexico is great for elk. He got back into it after a while, but it took him a while.

It took him a while to just sort of settle in. He's just like, I saw too much death. Totally empathetic to that. Is there ever going to be a time when there's no war? Is that even possible with human beings? I don't know in our life. Not in my lifetime. That's a disturbing idea for people.

Because if people have this idea... I mean, this is a shitty analogy, but it's one that I use. If 20 people can get along... If, like, okay, there's five of us in this room. Or four of us in this room. If there's four people in this room and we can get along, can 40 people get along? Yes, 40 people can get along. You could have a community of 40 people with no problems and just live from birth to death and everybody, you know, nobody

kills anybody. Maybe that weird outlier at 40, but you know, as a community they'll absorb him for what he is or whatever. Yeah. But then you get to 4,000. No, no. Someone's going to die. Yeah. Jim's a douche Yep We gotta take out Jim You know And everybody's gonna meet By the campfire

And go look This motherfucker Is just ruining our life He doesn't hunt He eats all our food He fucks our women When we're not there He beats our kids

We gotta kill this guy And there's one There's out of like A certain number There's gonna be this one That comes up And then when you deal with Seven billion, it's like, whoa, how does that ever become manageable? I mean, do human beings have to evolve past what we are right now?

Do we have to reach some new stage? Yeah, I hope so too. Well, you would know better than anybody what the horrors of war are so would you think that someone who has experienced that would have a better perspective about what's necessary and what's not necessary when it comes to sort of just managing peace try to yes and no you know there's no like neurotic moment where you have like this clear sight of, you know, what an understanding of what's necessary and what's not,

how people should be or how people shouldn't be. Like if anything, you know, as six years as a door kicker, a salter, and then four years as a halo sniper guy, um, I've seen death like from a foot

away and from a mile away you know so like there's no range of death i haven't seen so if anything like i value life more i think um i hate war more like i know like i think it's horrible and disgusting but without a doubt i think it's absolutely necessary and needed to such a level that I can't even imagine what this world would be like had we not been involved to the degree that we've been involved in for the past 12 years trying to eradicate this fanatic group of psychopaths. So I don't want to think about what the world would be like, but you know, I don't want my, my nieces and my nephews or my kids to ever have to do what I did or see what I saw. So I don't know, like, um, I hope we never have to invade a country. You know, I remember we were talking about Syria. You're like, are we going to go over there? I was like, God, no, you know, there's no, there's no need. There's no resource.

There's no necessary element for us to be involved in. But the preservation of human life, isn't that needed? Right. Well, that's one of the reasons why false flags and false flag operations are so disgusting. When you find out that someone's lying about the motivation for profit. when you find out that someone's lying about the motivation for profit. There's nothing worse than somebody that lies for the benefit of themselves. Like, Joe, I think you're a good-looking man.

Thank you. And I think that dress looks great on you. Dress? And it makes you look thin. That's an okay lie sometimes to tell. Wait, it's your 28th birthday? That's great to hear. No, I's your 28th birthday? That's great to hear. No, I'm 40.

Whatever. Those are not self-serving lies. Those are cute lies. Yeah. But when you're lying so that you can put money in your pocket at the expense of human life, I hope you burn in hell forever. It's a dark lie. No. It's a very, very dark lie. It's a confusing lie, too, because it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute

This has actually happened? When you find out about the Gulf of Tonkin Or Operation Northwoods That there have been these moments in time Where people have tried to figure out a way to lie In order to drag people into war A war that otherwise the public wouldn't support It's dark

It's dark It's a very weird aspect of society Not only that exists, but that's ignored. It's ignored and almost brushed under the table when you start talking about war and about policy. the past and that it is actually many standards yeah standard operational procedure yeah they will come up with different ways in order to uh to get people to support war and one of them is to lie yeah yeah when when guys come back um the big one is uh ptsd that's that's the the hardest aspect it seems to to integrate back into a normal society with normal life and normal jobs and normal, just the things that we all just deal with on a regular basis, for some folks, it becomes almost unbearable. What is the difference between people that integrate smoothly and people that have an incredibly difficult time? You know, from that incredibly difficult time to smoothly are all scales, you know,

and the biggest or the factors are the degrees of coping mechanisms that an individual has. I have a very strong family, you know, like an amazing wife, fantastic father and mother. They're still married, amazing brother and sister, great. Like, so the family unit, very supportive. I'm very fit. i'm very fit i'm very healthy um i'm well educated i was well trained these are all different mechanisms to deal with stress everybody deals with stress differently but the the foundation of how you deal with stress you have to have these fundamental elements to be able to do it the more of them that

you have the more stress you can deal with so a a guy like me that was a ranger, sniper, green beret, like killed lots of dudes can come back and sleep well at night. You know, yeah, I had to adjust. There are things that, you know, like I had moments where a guy smoking a clove that maybe just ate at an Indian restaurant. So I'm having some sensory to like how he smells, listening to, you know know music from that culture that i just spent six you know six months with you know like i'm like i want to shoot this person like that instant reaction but then i'm like okay you know everything's okay i'm wow what is that like

it's weird i was walking to a best buy and this is that was an exact example this guy driving a yellow bmw he was smoking a clove And I got this whiff of like curry. And so everything was there, like the music, the look, what he was wearing, you know. You know, I was just like, that guy looks like a terrorist. You know, snap judgment.

Like I just got back a couple of days later and I was like, should I shoot this person? Wow. No, I'm in Fayetteville, North Carolina, walking into a Best Buy to buy the new Avengers movie. No, I think it was Iron Man. I don't remember what it was. But you were an educated guy and you're an intelligent, introspective guy. For a guy who's not, that's very problematic.

So those coping mechanisms, like how much does that person have? You have a National Guardsman that enlisted out of high school. Him, comes from a broken home. He's poor. Then he goes, he enlisted comes from a broken home. He's poor, you know, then he goes, he's, he, he, he enlisted to be a truck driver and then his truck gets blown up and they get in a firefight and then he sees death. He saw, you know, the guy that his navigator just lost an arm. Dude, that guy is scarred for life. You know, he has no coping mechanisms deal. And then he comes home

and he's broken and he's damaged. You know, like how. How does that person reintegrate into society without all the necessary coping mechanisms? It's hard. When you hear about stories where guys snap, and there have been several over the course of these two wars, and one of the big ones was

a decorated guy wound up killing a bunch of civilians and it made a lot of the rounds on these talk shows where people try to discuss PTSD and traumatic events and that this guy was having real problems and reporting having real problems before all this happened and they kept sending him back over there. Do you relate to that and you try to figure it out for yourself?

Like when you see these stories in the news, like how do they hit you? I wish I could be empathetic to, you know, like I've had PTSD nightmares where I wake up in a sweat, you know, and like I put my hand through the wall. You know, my wife's like, are you okay? You know, like that was years ago, you know, like first came back after, you know, some bad rough trips. So maybe I have some empathy to that, but the special forces unit by design is very tight. And, you know, like if you're having issues, I can go to my team sergeant or I can go to my senior and bounce things off of them. I get really resentful over people making snap judgments about these guys that are coming back and having issues.

You know, like, oh, you're a veteran. Is it safe for my kids to be around you? You know, like, hell yeah. They're like the greatest human beings on the planet. You know, and like one in a million have not one, a very small percentage have serious issues. But we have to have our eyes wide open about how to deal with post-traumatic stress and there's not one easy solution and it's a lot of hard work to get there it's not one easy solution there's not one standard set of

experiences that each veteran experiences over there and brings back with them it's all it varies and that's such an important thing that you said about the coping mechanisms that you have in place. What's done to help veterans when they come back as far as like help them strengthen their coping mechanisms, help them deal with situations? What kind of support do they offer you? Now, you know, we've been at war for a long time. We have a lot of things in place where, you know, FRG, the family readiness group is there for your family. So when you're coming back that your family has an understanding of what you've experienced or how to deal with you, you know, like, um, you're not, Hey,

Saturday, you're going to be coaching kids, softball Saturday night. You know, we have this, we're going to mom and dad for, you know, they're not like overwhelming you with like American life, which is normal to everybody else, unless you've been in a, you know, plywood building for 12 months. And now you're back surrounded with like thousands of people that you have no idea. It's weird. Um, so the military has done a way better job of trying to reintegrate soldiers back into, you know, normal life. But then you have a lot of great organizations that are, that are veteran started and these guys really get it, you know, like, um, Brian Stan

is a great example, higher heroes, you know, he's involved with getting these guys back to work. Um, veterans outdoors, like a make wish foundation for wounded guys. So like, if you have a serious physical ailment from, you know, battle, whether it's internal or physical, um, they'll give you these crazy things just to be like, Hey, things are okay. You're still surrounded by friends. Let's get you reconnected to a community that you're involved with and do something fun at the same time. So there's a lot of different ways. Like the worst thing though, is when they start throwing pills at these guys, um, you know,

the pharmaceutical approach where it was like, all right, let's get, put you on antidepressant and like hope for the best. There's a lot of that, right? It's freaking retarded. When,

when you're over there, do they try to offer it to you when you're actually in country? Uh, not, not like antidepressants. There's pharmaceutical things to keep you awake longer, to make you alert longer. What kind of shit? You're in special forces.

Hey, here's this. Well, I mean, even some great stuff where over-the-counter things. I wish I had AlphaBrain when I was there. Not plugging intentionally but like that stuff's fantastic you're focused you feel good you're ready to go you know that would have been a thousand times better than you're like hey here's here's something the DOD just sent down for us to use you know it's it'll keep you awake for three days awesome what what did they give you like what I have no idea you don't even know what they were Whoa. Yeah. But I know I was awake for three days.

Yeah, I have friends who went over there and said they just gave them steroids. They gave them oral steroids. Well, do you know what? I've never done steroids. I swear by all that's holy and true. Were they offered or available? Yeah. But we have a Special Forces guy.

He's 38 years old. This is his sixth, seventh combat tour. We're doing two, three, four hits a night. Hits like missions. We're doing mission, follow-up mission, follow-up mission. We're doing a helicopter landing. We're doing a gaff where we're on a ground assault force. And this guy's broken.

He's hurt. He physically can't keep up. He needs it. Do I want the 38-year-old dude next to me that's on steroids, or do I want the one that can barely walk because everything hurts so bad? I want the 38-year-old on steroids. Yeah, and that sort of brings up what we were talking about before, where it's the discussion of TRT when it comes to mixed martial arts training.

Testosterone replacement therapy. For folks who don't know this debate, they're not mixed martial arts fans, and there's probably a lot of people listening to this that aren't. For a long time, over a year, two years, whatever it was, you were allowed to get prescribed testosterone. And Brendan Schaub said it best. We were discussing it on the podcast. He said that there's youth. And with youth, you have elevated hormone levels, but you have a lack of experience, you have a lack of knowledge. And then as you get older, you get wiser, you get smarter,

you have more knowledge, but the body just does not respond the way it used to. And Eve Edwards was talking to him and he was saying, you know, man, I'm, you know, he's like 37 now. And he's like, I know so much now, but my body just doesn't listen. Just doesn't, doesn't do what it did when I was 20 and I didn't know as much. And that this is the nature. I love Eve. He's a great guy. and that this is the nature love eve it's a great guy but there's that nature balance that is sort of stopped and it's placed with injections of testosterone and then you're introducing this

weird element into one of the most dangerous sports competitions the world has ever known mixed martial arts one of the most there's more on the line as far as your emotions, your physical body is at risk. There's always, and you're sort of, you're changing nature. You're making it so that these old wise people now are juiced to the gills and they can train 17 hours a fucking day. And it gets real weird. It gets real weird when that's, for a while, was accepted by athletic commissions. Yeah. The youth is wasted on the young.

You know, like that expression is like you have now, you know, I'm 34. I've been doing martial arts for forever. I want the body of a 22-year-old with what I know now. Right. You know, but I can chemically do that, you know, through testosterone, which is what guys have been able to do for the past couple of years. And it's dangerous. If it was golf, I wouldn't care. If it's baseball and Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire era, I don't really care.

But we're in a sport where we're hitting each other in the face and choking each other unconscious. where we're hitting each other in the face and choking each other unconscious. We do not need the advantage of taking the years of experience of doing martial arts for, you know, 20 some odd years, and then giving us bodies of 20 year olds. The physicality, the recovery, the responsiveness, it's horrible, you know, but guys have been doing it. And now we're at this juncture where we're now saying, okay, it's not okay. Like you can't have an athletic commission allow you to do it. So does that mean that guys are going to do it on the side and do it orally because they know when they're going to get tested

or now they're not being monitored, so they're just going to do it whenever and however they want? Like what does that mean? It's scary. It's weird because there were a few guys that were on it for several years and they were being very successful while they were on it. And then all of a sudden it gets pulled away. So what do they do? Do they try to bring their body up to natural levels?

See, but that takes time. It takes a long time. You know, for like a, I don't know, let's say a hypothetical 37 year old that's been on testosterone for four or five years, and then he can't have it anymore. It's going to take that guy a long time, if ever, to be able to naturally produce testosterone. And he'll never have the levels that he had when he was on it. No, no. Because the levels he's had when he was on it were 25 year olds levels. Yeah. And the other thing is the things that you can take to bring your levels back up are also banned. Things like Clomid and all these different estrogen-producing or estrogen-suppressing devices.

All these different chemicals that people do post-steroid cycle are also illegal. So it becomes like that was what Dennis Seaver got popped for. He got popped for one of these post-steroid cycle things. And now he's on the shelf for nine months because of this. Yeah. People are like, wait, wait, why was that guy, he failed a drug test because he's blocking estrogen? Yeah. Yeah. You have to, otherwise you're going to grow breasts after you've been using anabolic steroids and testosterone. It's like, you have to. Yeah. Well, see, there's testosterone replacement. Like if you went to a doctor and you said, hey, doc, I'm 60 years old. I would like to get on some testosterone and have a better quality of life. Well,

the doctor will give you a slow dose of testosterone, slowly ramp you up. He's not going to, bam, jack you and turn you into a 20-year-old. But what a lot of fighters are doing is they're taking way more than you would have when you were 20. And what happens is your body goes, what the fuck is going on? And it grows tits. Literally, your body starts producing massive amounts of estrogen to counteract the massive amounts of testosterone. Your body gets so confused as to these levels of hormones that are completely supernatural in your body. And under those conditions, under those conditions, you develop bitch tits. Yeah.

And a lot of guys have had them. And you'll see this weird, like, thing where you, like, you see this jelly, like, growing around their nipples. And I've seen guys where they bounce up and down in the cage and they have tits. It's remarkable to me where people don't understand. We're a pugilistic sport. Guys are trying to take every advantage, every shortcut that they possibly can. You and I can look at a dude

and we, just from the texture of his skin, can know if he's on a cycle, if he's off a cycle, if he was on a cycle. By texture of their skin, you mean like zits on their back and stuff like that? Yeah, like acne or acne scarring. It's possible that they have that naturally, right? It's possible.

Some guys, but it is a sign. It is a sign. And then they have bitch tits, another sign, another clue. Or like a guy looked one way five years ago when he was 32 and now he's 37 and he looks then 10 000 times better than he ever has in his whole entire life you're talking about victor belfort no i'm just i'm just giving you an example of perhaps another clue okay you know like yes i am just so we're not being unclear about can you talk about what we were talking about before the show or is that the the offer no no okay so you know he he was the he's a scapegoat i think

a little bit for trt because there's a bigger problem for the you know for the entire sport where uh he in my opinion just personified a problem and then you know everybody like put pinned everything on him but it was a big problem throughout the whole entire sports, which is performance enhancing drugs. And is it right for a 37 year old dude like Vitor Belfort to be on testosterone for five years, look amazing and fantastic why he's on it and nothing like he did five years ago where, you know, he was struggling, you know, like winning a fight, losing a fight when now, now he's like knocking guys out with crazy fight of the night fight of the year like knock out of the night knock out of the year type stuff um you know you can't have that turnaround and then like stop testosterone and two months later he's ready to go no that's chemical you know like that doesn't work that way

yeah how does a guy get off of it in that short of a time and then have the ability to compete again it would seem like it would take like a year to get here if ever yeah chemically there's no way around it no there's i i i'm not a doctor you know but having been a professional athlete for 13 years i've never seen somebody that was so responsive um you know, to testosterone like he was, and then come clean and try to be an athlete like they were when they were using performance-enhancing drugs afterwards and just like miraculously being as good as they were when they were on it. It has never happened. I can't think of a single sport, a single sportsman in history where they got popped,

they were watched closely, and then performed as well after that point, you know, ever. Yeah, I completely agree with you that it's so different than baseball and all these other things. What I don't like about the baseball steroid controversy is that a young kid who's coming up who wants to play baseball almost has to do it in order to compete. So when there's a guy like Mark McGuire who's juiced to the gills, crushing the ball out of the stadium, a young guy coming up that wants to be like Mark McGuire, most likely, unless you have incredible genetics,

you're just a genetic specimen, just a weird freak of nature, some guy who's just the extreme mesomorph, genetics. You're just a genetic specimen, just a weird freak of nature. Some guy who's just the extreme mesomorph. You're probably not going to ever be able to do that. Yeah, I know. That, to me, sucks. That a young guy has to risk his endocrine system and put it in.

But there's such a big difference between that and a combat sport. Yeah. I don't know what the solution is. Testing. Testing, right? Year-round testing, random testing, in-fight camp, post-fight.

You know, like right now, I fought two weeks ago. I'm getting back into training two, three times a day. Like, this is when you, this is when a guy... Test him. Test him.

Yeah. And just show up. Hi! Yeah. Joe Silva's about to throw an offer, you know, my way, let's say, to up. Hi. Yeah. Joe Silva is about to throw an offer, you know, my way, let's say in to fight in 10 weeks, he knows he's going to throw an offer my way before he throws the offer my way, a guy from the athletic commission and the respective state that I'm going to be fighting in shows up and says, Hey, pee in the cup. Um, that's how you're

going to get a fair equal system. You know, system. Not where you tell a guy in Brazil, hey, you need to come up here and take a drug test. And he's like, oh yeah, man, I'll be there in like four days. No, dude. Athletic commission guy shows up randomly and right there, pee in the cup. And when you catch someone, I think it should be more than nine months. And I think in this day and age, you should let everybody know, hey, look, we're going to cut you.

You're not going to fight for this organization anymore. And let them know and then just say this is the rule. This is where we're at right now. So everyone's been served notice. Everyone knows what the repercussions are of this illegal activity that puts people in jeopardy. My real concern is medical science is not going to stop. Medical science and the innovative technology. The way guys are going to cheat.

Not just cheat, but just the things that they're going to come up with to change the human body. Just restorative capabilities of new advancements and new techniques. You could say that getting in that cryo chamber, if you can do that cryo chamber and another guy can't do that cryo chamber, do you have an advantage? Is it an unfair advantage? Where do you draw the line? Should you be able to take creatine? Well, creatine's legal. Doesn't that increase muscle power? And it does. It increases your ability to work harder. It's like where is the line? Can you take Tribulus?

Can you take, you know, Onyx T+. We're having great results with that T-plus stuff where guys are showing these 50% increases in rates of lifting and their rate of progress over people that are not taking it and double-blind placebos. Like, when does it become legal and when does it become cheating? When is it like a nice supplement and when is it a performance-enhancing drug? I think one of the big things is what does it do to your body in the long run? Right.

When you're using a supplement, we'll just call them all supplements. We'll just even remove performance enhancing drugs from the discussion. Just a supplement that does, in the short term, great benefits. In the long term, big damage. You know, when you have WWE stars

that are dying at 41 from heart attacks, you know, and lo and behold, they've been doing steroids for 12 years. You know, it's tragic. It's sad, but not been doing steroids for 12 years. You know, it's tragic. It's sad, but not surprising. Isn't a lot of those guys, it's pain pills. Yeah. Those guys are folks who don't respect pro wrestlers.

You know, I know a lot of people think that, oh, it's all fake. It's silly. Those guys work hard. That is hard. And damage their bodies. All the time. If you watch those guys flying through the air and jumping on each other, that's not a free ride. They're getting. All the time. If you watch those guys flying through the air and jumping on each other, that's not a free ride.

They're getting hurt all the time. And a huge problem in that world is guys that get hooked on pain pills, man. So they damage their body, but then they have a show next Saturday. They have to, like, you know, McMahon's like, no, you've got to perform, bro. That's like, you're on contract. You're going to get paid. They're like, I can you know, McMahon's like, no, you've got to perform, bro. That's like you're on contract.

You're going to get paid. They're like, I can't move my hands right now. You're like, I can't use my fingers. All right, well, take this. Now everything doesn't hurt, and you'll be able to perform because that's what's important. Yeah, it becomes like a thing where there's things that you can take that elevate your body's natural production of testosterone, and they can enhance your body's production. But what they don't do is introduce synthetic versions of it that shut down your endocrine system. What they don't do is give you these

hyperhuman levels that are causing you to grow tits. You know, there's, there's gotta be like a comfortable medium between eating healthy, having benefits like the cryo chamber and all these different things that do enhance recovery. But don't put you and your body in danger. Don't burn you out in the short term, you know, to give you like the rest of your life. You're fucked. You know, from 35 on, your body's just devastated. And it's not going to be black and white. You know, it's not going to be a line drawn in the sand. You know, that line needs to be able to be moved.

You know, it needs to have, you know, commissions and medical professionals that can adjust and adapt to what's happening, you know, with the growth of science, you know, like there's a reason why we're breaking records at every Olympics. We're getting better, you know, like with the human body, how to make it perform better. Having people that are smarter than me, like, figure out where those lines are and move them, you know, so that you don't have to, but that line has to be there, you know. It can be a mobile line that they move, you know, from year to year, but that line has to be there, and when guys step across it, you know, there has to be repercussions. My concern is what's really going to happen in the future,

which happens with almost anything that involves human innovation. Like if you look back at the cell phones of the 1990s where they had these fucking giant bricks and they'd hold them up to their head and wrap videos. Now you can go anywhere in the world, in a third world country, in an impoverished neighborhood, and people have these really small, incredibly complex cell phones that are just these magical devices that allow you to interface with the entire knowledge base of the world.

And they're everywhere. I wonder what's going to happen when you have the kind of technology that they're working on right now, genetic engineering at a cellular level where they're able to change people. I mean, I'm sure you're aware of the myostatin inhibitors, like these things that they use with, well, they've demonstrated in whippets, these dogs, where just because of breeding, just a mistake in breeding, they've produced these super hypermuscular dogs that have double the muscle, and cows as well.

Have you ever seen those images? It's incredible, right? Well, people are being born, just born with it. A kid in Germany was born just a genetic mistake or, or a benefit to him. Well, they're going to be able to figure that out with a pill or with a shot and your fucking mailman's going to have it. Your mailman's going to look like the Hulk. Yeah. And when that happens, when it's everywhere, what is, what do we do with athletes? You know, they, the Germans were trying it with eugenetics. You know, like we've done it periodically throughout history.

The Spartans did it. You know, they did it at a very— What do the Spartans do? They'd throw babies that didn't meet their requirements off the cliff. Yeah. There's eugenetics at a very primal level. It happens in nature all the time where a mom will be like, this cub is not going to be able to walk.

I'm leaving it. So that's eugenetics. That's survival of the fittest. Now, we as super too smart for our own good sometimes, humans can take eugenetics and fix it with chemistry? That's scary. Where we can just magically pop out superhuman. I don't know if I'm ready for that's scary. You know, where we could just like magically pop out like superhuman. I don't know if I'm ready for that.

I don't know if anyone's ready for it. Or the implications of what that means morally. If we don't get hit by an asteroid or invaded by aliens or blow each other up with nukes, it's common. Yeah. They're not going to stop. There's eggheads that are in laboratories right now that are constantly working on new shit.

And that's what they do. And that's what they do. And that's what humans do. We push the boundaries of innovation. We always have. It's part of what makes us human. It's why we're on a podcast right now talking to a microphone that neither you nor I could have ever figured out on our own. It's just a part of the program. And they're going to figure out something, man.

They're going to inject you with nanobots or some sort of a new chemical that allows your body to work like Spider-Man. You're going to fucking climb walls. You're going to have incredible balance. They're going to figure out a way to stop traumatic brain injury by re-engineering the human mind. There's going to be a lot of crazy shit. It might not be in our lifetimes,

but our children's children for sure are going to experience human beings that no one has ever experienced in the entire history of the world itself. Yeah. It's coming. It's coming by human innovation. It's going to leapfrog evolution. I'm not sure I want to, like, I'm going to kind of sad that I'm going to miss it, maybe.

You know, because, like, I want to reap the benefits of it, but then at the flip side, you know, like, I don't want to have to deal with the implications of that. I'm sad that I'm going to miss it too, or we might not miss it. We might just catch the wave. But I'm also glad that I saw the world before a lot of shit was there. My kids are going to grow up in a world. I have a 17-year-old, and she doesn't have any idea what life was Like before the internet she has no idea the Internet's always been there. She has a question. Oh, there's the answer I

Grew up I was retarded when I was her age and I put it in her head every day I go let me tell you if you met me if I was 17 and you were 17 you would think oh my god This is the dumbest fucking guy that's ever walked the face of the earth and he thinks he's so smart i was an idiot i i knew how to throw kicks and i i knew which stephen king books i liked that's it i knew it's the right combination of words to say to get a girl to fuck me sometimes that's it that's all i knew i was a moron like what a 17 year old knows today as opposed to what they knew when i was. Now, the future is going to be even crazier than that, but at least I got a perspective. I got to see what it was like to grow up where you didn't know. If you called someone and they weren't home,

they just weren't fucking home. I remember when answer machines were invented, where people were like, holy shit. You'd go on the internet and you'd hear this. where people were like, holy shit. You'd get on the internet and you'd hear this. And it was slow as fuck. And if you wanted to see a picture of something, it would be like click, click, click, click, click, click.

And maybe it was black, white, and green. Yeah. Variations of those three. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember when internet searches first came about too. When you would first find, I got a great story. There was, we don't even need to say the name of the organization, but a buddy of mine used to be co-owner of a small mixed martial arts organization. And this was in the late 90s. And they were just starting to promote fighters through the internet. And they were just starting to do bios where they would research a guy through the internet. Well, they researched this guy

and they find out that a guy with the exact same name won something called the Hungriest Butt Contest. Oh, no. So their gladiator, their heavyweight, their Adonis, six foot four, shredded man with his penthouse pet girlfriend, you know girlfriend that he would parade around at all these events, also had done gay porn. Yeah. And so they pulled down the picture.

They downloaded some pictures. And my friend described it as like you see click, click, click, click, click, click. You know how those pictures would slowly show up on a 56K modem? It would like you would get the top of it and it would slowly start to pan down and as it pans down well that looks like his hair click click that looks like it could be his forehead click well that's his eyes click click click that's a dick in his mouth oh my god and there's a dick in his ass oh my god and there's two guys using him like chinese finger handcuffs and they're like whoa and so this dude had no idea that that was even possible to internet he'd use the same name yeah you know he just figured out no one was gonna

look that up but homos you know and then they did yeah when they also said you know he needed a lot of money and they they gave him some money so he did it once turn Turned out he did like 100 films. It was a lot. He did a lot. Was the money good? How good could it be? The joke is I would say, what does a lot of money mean to you? A lot of money to me means I do one gay porno and I live like in a Jay-Z video for the rest of my life. I'm in my underwear with two bottles of Cristal on a yacht with a thousand models forever.

We did 100 porns. He should have all the money on the planet by my calculations. Yeah, there's no one richer ever, anywhere. Fucking is Khan. Fuck everyone who's ever lived who's got money. That guy would have all the money. Every country would be bankrupt, and this guy's bank account would have all the cash.

Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, it's just like no one knew before that that an internet search was a possibility. And think about how many people that have done things that just had no idea. Well, you're going to be able to find that out? Like how could you?

And find it out on your phone. Just doot. Yeah. And be able to access the person that said content is about. Yeah. Never in our history, in mankind's existence, have we been able to connect so effortlessly to so many different people. Yeah. You know, like a fan that doesn't like me, you know, can just get on Twitter and like tell me that I'm a baby killer, like just because, you know, or they can do anything, anytime, anywhere.

And they can, you know, like you can find out anything about anybody and then probably reach that person. Especially a fighter or someone who's got a social media account or a presence. Who doesn't have a social media account? There's a few folks that I know that just avoid it all together, but they don't have to do it. There are 350 million people here, like almost all of them. Like 300 and 49.

And Mexicans. You've got to count Mexicans. It's probably another. 50 million? At least. Who knows how many 300. And Mexicans. You got to count Mexicans. It's probably another. 50 million. At least. I don't know. Who knows how many. I love Mexicans.

Don't get me wrong. But there's a lot of them that aren't taking the census. How often do you get fucked with on social media? Oh, all the time. All the time. I guess I'm like a polarizing figure. I don't know how. I think I'm kind of a likable guy.

But for some reason. People have a problem with strength. People have a polarizing figure. I don't know how. I think I'm kind of a likable guy, but for some reason... People have a problem with strength. People have a problem with confidence. People have a problem with folks that have strong opinions or controversial opinions. And a lot of those. Well, you know, you should.

I think anybody who's paying attention to the world and sees all the contradictory information that we're receiving, sees the chaos, just sees how fucked our political system is, our financial system. If you don't have strong opinions, if you don't have controversial opinions, you're not paying attention.

Open your eyes. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had about gun control, just about guns itself. I'm like, goddamn, guns aren't the problem. It's people that use guns that are the problem. You leave a guy, you know, that old adage, guns don't kill people, people kill people. And people will fucking argue that to the end of time. Goddamn it, it's true. Every time you go to the gas station, you got a store in that gas station that sells lighters. You got fluid that comes out of a pump

and anyone can just light people on fire. I mean, anyone can do it. It hasn't happened that often, but anyone can do it. Or just take your car and turn two degrees to the right and run down the sidewalk. Yeah. The option to kill is always there. It's always there. It's a choice. And they're like, but it's a tool. It's a mechanism that serves no other purpose. A car can get you from point A to point B. So why do they need a gun if the only thing it does is kill? I could say

the same thing about a tractor if I wanted to. If I wanted to make a killer tractor, the only thing that it's designed for is to kill because I put spikes on its wheels and it doesn't excavate anything besides human souls. But no, it's the choice to kill because I put spikes on its wheels, you know, and it's not, doesn't excavate anything besides human souls. But no, it's, it's the choice to kill, you know, it's like, get over it. People kill. It is, I mean, it is a way that they can do it easily. And that is an issue, but it's also, why does a person have the ability to do that? And how come so little effort and so little emphasis is on what causes a person to be able to disconnect or to be able to have so much hate and anger in their heart that they can kill a bunch of school children, that they can use a gun to shoot up a mall?

Why isn't that the subject of discussion? And why is it always the tool for madness? It's not the madness itself. it always the tool for madness it's not the madness itself it's the tool of madness but that same tool could be used by anyone else to do a million other things it's like it's a bad analogy but it's one that i always use with marijuana people go oh you could ruin your life if you smoke pot but you could you could also take a hammer and hit yourself in the dick you know should should we make hammers illegal because you because the hammer is just a tool if you take marijuana and just enjoy it and you don't hurt

anybody should that person be penalized because someone decided to just wake and bake every day and then fucking go into debt and wind up it's humans are the problem and human weakness and a lack of character and all sorts of chemical imbalances or the culture and the structure around the person that led them to subsequently make these horrific decisions and actions you know that they use whatever tool don't care what it is gun knife everything up to that point is what we should, the emphasis of trying to understand or prevent and acknowledge and research should be done, not take away, you know, whatever it was that was the end conclusion. It's all the things up to that point that are important that nobody pays attention to,

nobody cares about. That's what's ridiculous about any sort of control, gun control, knife control, bow and arrow control debate. It's not that. It's what constitutes, what makes a human being capable of horrific things. And I think you're uniquely qualified for a bunch of reasons. One, because you have a family. You know what it's like to raise a person. you've seen the consequences of human beings when they're in this environment that is totally fucked from, from the jump. And you see these religious fanatics and you see fundamentalism, you see chaos and a land that's just, just overrun with it.

You see it's, it's humans. It's the development of humans. In air. Yeah. The development erroneously, like the development of human the wrong way. Yes. There's the right way and there's a, not there's the right way.

There's about a billion right ways. Yeah. And then there's a couple of wrong ways that through through combat and through you know especially through martial arts i i think the the deepest bond of commitment that i've ever experienced was outside of my family is the friends that i've trained with and people that have competed with that that that have just you see them you know who the fuck they are when you see a guy break in training when you see a guy know, with 30 seconds to go in the round, put his hands down on his knees and just take deep breaths and step away,

and then you see the coach go, get back in there! And you see him suck it up, and, you know, there's the guys who suck it up, and there's the guys who don't. And you see the difference. You see who they are. You see their soul. You see, and you learn about people that way, in a way that a lot of folks don't ever get a chance to learn even about themselves. The refiner's fire. The refiner's fire is like this beautiful thing.

You know, it's. The what? Say that again? Refiner's fire. Refiner's fire? Yeah. It's like, you know, you take a metal. Refineries.

Yeah. Right. Okay. Like when you're making a sword, you know, the folding process of heating it up and pounding out the impurities and folding it again and pounding out the impurities, impurities, like the hotter the fire, the more bad stuff gets cooked out. Um, that's the same with people, you know, you put them in a room that's hot, put them in a ghee that's hot, um, around a whole bunch of other dudes that are like trying to choke each other out and kill you.

You get glimpses of the depth and hardness of somebody's character and soul. And it's these awesome snapshots. And even kids like down at the youngest level, putting them into competitions of martial arts, you see the exact same thing. You see the development of this character and of somebody's soul as they get tougher and deeper, you know,

as a human. And you get in, in these snapshots, you get a clear glimpse of who that person is. What's, what's, what's part of them. You're like, it's, it's gorgeous. Krong Gracie said it best. He said, uh, you know, uh, I, I, I reserve judgment until I've trained with you. He said, I think, you know, me, you know, you seem like a nice guy, but I reserve judgment until I've trained with you, which is such a great way to put it. And, you know, you seem like a nice guy, but I reserve judgment until I've trained with you, which is such a great way to put it.

And, you know, a lot of people think, well, I don't want to fucking train you. You don't have to. It's not that. It's just you should in your life do something difficult. If it is not martial arts, maybe it's mountain climbing. Maybe it's hiking. Maybe it's anything.

Mud runs. It doesn't matter. Do something that's hard to do. Maybe it's write a book.'s anything. Mud runs. It doesn't matter. Do something that's hard to do. Maybe it's write a book. Find out what your fucking barriers are. Because the most reprehensible thing, the thing that we all pretty much universally despise, is a spoiled rich kid. A spoiled kid that never had to work for anything. They were handed it their whole life.

Their parents never gave them values. And what did they do? They grew up yelling at servants, and then they become some rich asshole that's a sociopath. I mean, that is a key character in so many movies, that's in so many books, literature. We all can relate to that person who

didn't earn it, who got that place without hard work and how gross they are. I hate that pussy. Fucking everybody does. You're supposed to. They're not supposed to be there. It's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to win the lottery like that. Yeah, fucking everybody does. You're supposed to. You're supposed to. They're not supposed to be there. It's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to win the lottery like that. That fucks you up.

But the really remarkable ones that are the ones that could or have access to all of that and then choose not to, or on the total flip side, the guys that have access to none of that and challenge themselves and put themselves through hardships, the aldos,

you know, that like they have nothing and just through hard work, determination, they become something, you know, like those are two complete polar opposites of a human that I'm just like, I adore, you know, like guys that, you know, in the military, you see these guys like, you're like this Ivy league, super rich you're enlisted why are you here you know you could have done anything they're like i wanted to be here like i love you you're amazing you know and then then the flip side you know the the puerto rican that his parents swam over here or on some horrible boat and um you know they're one generation removed and they've like, they put themselves through college or maybe they joined the military so they could go to college

and they're at this exact same point of their life as this rich yuppie guy that are just there because they want to see how far they can push themselves. Yeah. Human beings are just, we are just a mass of potential. And it's awesome to see someone rise through adversity and reach a potential that elevates us all. Because when you see someone reach their potential or reach a very high level of anything, it changes the way you look at what's possible. When you see a guy who gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning, the alarm clock goes off and he just fucking hits those hills and starts running. And he does it every morning before work. You go, fuck, I'm a bitch. I'm just a weak bitch. I don't do that. Fuck. And then it changes your perspective. You want to do that too. You want to absorb a little

bit of that guy's strength and that feeling that you get from being around that guy. It's empowering. Or you're one of those guys that diminishes that and tries to squash it because you're insecure And you want to you want to tweet tim kennedy you fucking bitch you fuck you and fuck the military man You know, there's there's folks like that, too I think that Strength is the the best Antidote for a lot of the weaknesses that we find in our society that we consider to be strength, like bullies. People say like, what's the best solution to bullies? Teach them how to

fight. Teach them all how to fight. Everyone. I think that is a core problem with men. Men have a giant fear hanging over their head all day long, and that is being dominated by other men. You know, I mean, this is what led me to martial arts 100% was I was scared of dudes kicking my ass. So I got into martial arts as a very young kid because of that. And I think that the more kids, if we had programs in school where we taught martial arts to kids in class, you would have so few instances of bullying.

I think the dramatic decrease in bullying and the respect that people have for each other would change. The respect that people have for themselves, like a bully cannot respect themselves. They just can't. Unless there's some sort of a complete sociopath, you're not going to be happy with yourself if you pick on someone smaller than you. You're doing it because you're insecure. But if you weren't insecure or you were less insecure, or you had some sort of sense of personal sovereignty because of training, you would have less of, of,

of this, this inclination to do something shitty to someone like that. Yeah. It'd be cool to see. Fuck yeah, man. I think martial arts programs should be mandatory in school. Just like they have PEs mandatory for,

for boys, especially martial arts should be mandatory. Yeah. You want martial arts should be mandatory. You want to see your kid have discipline, focus, understanding of right and wrong, a little bit of confidence, restraint. Put them in martial arts. You did it so you didn't get beat up. I did it because I was second born. I was a crazy middle kid. You know, my dad's like at a very early age, like you are going to be doing martial arts, you know? And so like,

I was like nine. I remember saying a bad word on the mat and having, you know, my sensei come up with an eskimo stick and hit me in the back of the head. You know, like I missed up and doing stuff. And he's like, ah, and then I said a bad word when I messed up. And then, pow. You know, like, I didn't say that bad word again. And, but more importantly, I was able to control myself, which was the element, the necessary element that I needed. And also this, the great feeling of accomplishment that you get when you learn that you can control yourself. When you feel yourself improving, you feel your character improving. And you have a character improving and you you

have a difficult situation and you navigate it successfully and you go oh i'm a better person now than i was when i was whatever when i was young and stupid and that's just one of those things where everybody wants to be comfortable everybody wants to look towards their golden age and everybody wants to retire and sit on the couch and put your feet up. That's horseshit. That's not, you only can experience that and enjoy it if you've earned it. No one wants to earn it. The earning it is the most important part of your life. Individual responsibility. Nobody has it. You got to earn it. You got to work for it. You got to, you know, and it's so much better when you do. Yes. Well, that's why i

think guys like you are important man i think you set a great example on that i think you set a great example with your words i think you set a great example with your actions it's one of the reasons why i've been wanting to talk to you on the podcast you're a very inspirational guy in my opinion i think you what you the way you talk about things and the way you express yourself, it's admirable, and I think it helps people. It sets a very high standard, and I think setting a high standard is one of the key things that young men and young, I'm sure young women as well, need in life. They need to see a high standard. I'm not perfect. You know, like, I make mistakes probably way too much or more often than I'd like

to admit, but like, I'm always searching and seeking to get better, you know, like, and I, I think that's something that I always try to project. Um, you know, and the only way to get there is, is like, you've just said, it's, it's through hard work. It's through determination. It's, you know, it's, it's through the amazing innate part of the human being, which is the ability to do, you know, and to not quit and to have the inner strength to try to achieve and surpass whatever it was before. And there's beauty in imperfection. You know, this idea that you're going to be this enlightened Kwai Chang Kang character, like in the TV show, you got to take a leak. Good. I saw you drinking that gigantic smart water.

There's dudes who have bladders like mine who could just power through a three-hour podcast. And then there's guys like Tim Kennedy. You know, it's cool. It's like, you know, we all learn. We show that there's higher levels. My fucking bladder, bro. It's like a duffel bag that you can carry guns in.

It's large and it's durable and it gets dirty and filled with liquid, but don't worry about it. I can hang in there. What I was saying to Tim that's important is I think everybody has this idea that there's some guy out there that's like Jet Li, that's like a perfect person, some character. The beauty really is in the imperfection. The beauty is in knowing that we're all just these weird, flawed creatures that are trying to figure out. It's not even that we're flawed. It's just that we're dealing with an impossible amount of variables that we're constantly navigating. And this idea that you should have gotten it right, it's not what it is. It's the idea is that you learn from what you get wrong. And then that

thing you don't do the same way next time. You say, you know what, I made a mistake the last time I was in a similar situation. Now I know that. And so now I'm going to power through with the knowledge that I've accumulated in my life from my past mistakes. That's a, that's a huge factor about being a person. A huge factor is that we're all learning from each other. And, uh, I said a lot of cool shit when you were gone, but that is uh that but learning and learning from each other is the whole reason why it's great to have inspirational people to draw from and i think that now there's never been a time like this where you could just go on youtube and you could be inspired for 24 hours a day seven days a. You could watch videos of guys pushing through things.

Guys are doing fucking hundred mile ultra marathons and just seeing people talk about the things that inspire them and what pushes them. There's never been a time like this where inspiration is available everywhere you look. And a whole bunch of different, not everybody's inspired the same way. I think it's amazing to see a guy that has nothing do something remarkable to come, you know,

not the underdog, but that has no resources that then all, you know, like, um, there's this guy in Austin, Texas, um, his, he runs this running group called the Gilbert Gazelles. And the Hutu, when the genocide was occurring, he has these burns on his body because his family was murdered and he was piled into this pile of bodies and set on fire. And once the militias left from the Hutu and Tutus, he got up and started running. Then he went to the NCAA and started running there. And then he went to the Olympics.

And now he runs he's an inspirational dude in austin that just tells people to run and he's one of the most remarkable human beings and there's there's tons of people out there that are so amazing and remarkable and you can if you just look you can find them and then i i love latching on to people like that and just trying to get into what's in there and try to, I don't want to say steal it, but I want some of that. Yeah. Well, you don't steal it because they still have it. They'll always have it. But yeah, but you absorb some of it. It's very important. We surround ourselves with inspirational people and become inspired. Surround yourself with negative cunts and

your life is going to be a wreck. And that's a lot of people don't realize that. And they just try to work through these negative cunts in their life. You got to cut them off, man. You got to cut them off and keep moving because they will hold you back. There are crabs in that bucket. And when you try to reach the top of that bucket, they will latch ahold of your little crab legs and drag you down with them. My dad was so, you know, retrospectively, my dad was so wise when he's like, no, you don't want those guys around. You know, you're going to be who you surround yourself with. You know? And I was like, whatever, that guy is so cool. I want to hang with that guy, you know? And now I'm like, God dang it. It's hard. How did he know so early? There's always going to be people that will, but those people are also important because you, you learn, you

know, you learn from watching them fuck their lives up. I've never done cocaine. And one of the reasons why I never did cocaine is because I grew up with a buddy of mine whose cousin was selling cocaine. And I watched this guy fall apart. Him and his girlfriend would just do blow and they would hide out in their place. And they would they had this attic apartment and they would just fucking watch tv all day and they would shrink like their fucking face was shrinking their body was shrinking they all they would do is do coke i don't even know if they ate you know and i watched this guy it was like a guy who got bit by a vampire and became like this disease thing

and i went whoa keep the fuck away from coke you know and i didn't have to do coke and go to rehab and pull myself out you know i you know i lived 40 plus years of my life with no desire to do coke fuck that and so it's not always good you need losers you know losers are there too for a reason it's that the whole world was filled with inspirational winners like how would you figure out where where do we begin if everybody's a fucking winner no you got to see people who ring that bell right you got to see people who tap out quick you got to see a guy who taps before the choke has even sunk in like what are you doing or types to taps to strikes well you know sometimes you know gsp versus matt sarah sometimes it's good to tap the strikes because the fucking fight's over you know you're not going

anywhere when the guy's on top of you dropping bombs and you're starting to see sparks and the versus Matt Serra, sometimes it's good to tap the strikes because the fucking fight's over. You're not going anywhere. When the guy's on top of you dropping bombs and you're starting to see sparks and the elevator doors closing, do you think tapping the strikes is a bad idea? I don't know if I have it in me. I don't know. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. Maybe I should respect the guy that's smarter than I am. I'm kind of like an oak.

I'm big, I'm strong and I'm dumb. You know, like I'm just, I'm going to grow and I'm going to do what I do. Um, maybe I wish I was smart enough to tap to strikes. I don't think I am. I just don't, I don't think I have it in me to be like, okay, I'm not going to get out of here. I'm just going to quit. Hmm. I don't think this is a problem with tapping the strikes, but I respect your viewpoint. I know what you're saying. And I think you probably have to have that sort of mentality to be an elite-level competitor in something like MMA, where that's not even an option in your head. These guys don't tap. You know, look at fucking War Machine.

He just gets choked out. There's a lot of guys that just say, I will never tap. I will go out. I will get my arm broken. Fuck it. I'm not tapping. It's not in there. Yeah, it's not. Look at Jon Jones. We fought Vitor his arm is completely hyper extended would not tap

Let I got let it get completely popped backwards and then won the fight anyway. Mm-hmm The before you go to Special Forces selection There's this phase for guys off the street called Sop C special operations preparation course The only thing that is, is in a tritter. They take like 400 dudes and they end up sending 80 of them to selection. The other 320 at some point either got broke or quit. I remember seeing the gong that you go up and hit. And it's like so longingly looking at that thing,

being like, that's the smart thing to do. Like, you know, you have blisters in your feet that you've injected stuff into so that thing being like, that's the smart thing to do. Like, you know, you have blisters in your feet that you've injected stuff into so that you can't, so like your skin, like glues back to what portion it separated itself from, you know, like you've lost 20 pounds in the course of 30 days. And, um, and you're looking at that gong and you're like a smart person would go and hit that gong you know and i watched guys go up and do it and i was like that's that's a smart person probably i just didn't have it in me so um maybe i'm dumb i think that's my i'm either like like too dumb you know like there's a balance

there and i think we're kind of agreeing each other from with each other from different perspectives well i think that you're you're being self-deprecating when you're calling yourself dumb. It's not a dumb thing. But if you wanted to be smart about the amount of punishment that you endure, yeah. But if you wanted to build the highest level of character and durability and mental toughness possible, then it would be dumb to hit that gong.

Yeah, I don't know. Because the benefits of not hitting that gong. Yeah, I don't know. Because the benefits of not hitting that gong is what you are today. I would have got a cup of coffee and a hot breakfast. But you didn't. I didn't. And you get a cup of coffee today and have the knowledge that you didn't hit that gong.

It's a good-looking gong. I could go back. You're a thick guy for 185 pounds. You're built in a very muscular weight class. Squat is the word my wife uses. What do you walk around at before you start your cut? Day of cut? No.

If you had a fight that was four months from now and you don't have to worry about your weight, what are you going to weigh? 220. 220. Wow. Did you fight light heavyweight at all? Yeah. I think I fought WC as heavyweight. IFL as a light heavyweight, middleweight, and then I've stayed at middleweight for a while. So when you, if you're walking around in the 200s, how do you navigate a weight cut to get down to 185 pounds because that is a big issue in mma is that

point of diminishing returns where some guys like anthony rumble johnson's perfect example god he's good at 205 jesus christ the kid was so fucking big in between fights i would see him walking around he was fighting at 170 fought kevin burns and i saw him like two months later he was 230 i go what the fuck are you eating he's a house he was bigger than Fedor I mean he was just he was on inside MMA with Fedor and he was towering over him wider thicker you're like what is going on and then finally he gets his shit together decides to come back as a light heavyweight and dominates Phil Davis at 205 and you're like okay this, this kid was obviously

past the point of diminishing returns. He was diminishing his own ability to perform by cutting so much weight. What is that number? I think it's different for every athlete in person. Right. And when I'm 215, 220, I feel like I'm a juggernaut. I never have training related injuries. You know, like I I'm running an extra three, 4% body fat. I'm just like all

around healthier. My brain's working right. You know, like my libido is good. You know, I'm sleeping very soundly all eight hours, you know, like things, everything's great. You know, like when I'm down to like that, that one 95, one 93 pre cut type weight, you know, where I'm like that 5% body fat, um, my brain's not firing on all cylinders, you know, like it's libido's rough. You're training three, four times a day. Like just things suck. Um, you know, everything hurts. You get down to 5% body fat when you're like 195 yeah the are you doing how are you measuring it um pinch test water stuff the water tanks and and then um the calipers that's a lot that's really low yeah like and then you're gonna cut another

10 pounds on top that's just water right 10 pounds of water yeah i think my final cut's usually like eight pounds of but you know your body like my body doesn't i don't think it even recognizes like i'll cut i fought um michael bisbing i was probably 205 when i fought him you know i weighed in at 190 or 186 the day before you know and then 30 hours later you know i've been eating and drinking and feeling fantastic. Do you IV? Yeah. Do you recoup for that?

How many bags do you use? 1,500 milliliters to 2,000 milliliters, like the Gringer. I honestly don't know fighters that don't. Right. And nowadays, yeah, pretty much everybody does, unless you're like a Frankie Edgar that literally weighs in at what he fights at. Maybe he's like putting some weights in his pocket. Yeah.

Frankie fought at 155 and weighed 155. Lyoto Machida fought at 203 for the longest time and, you know, weighed in at 203 for a 205-pound weight class. But look how good he is at 185. Yeah, better, much better. You know, so the diminished returns, like it's different for everybody.

You know, I'm 5'11". You know, I have a 73-inch reach. There's no way that I can hang with the tool fibers, you know, that have 86 inch reaches that are six foot four. Um, yeah, I might be as strong as they are. Um, but I'm like a, like as Brian Stan calls me like a squat, a little Hobbit, angry Hobbit, um, sometimes troll endearingly. He refers to me as these things, but he's right. And I just can't reach them. He refers to me as these things, but, um, he's right.

And I, I just can't reach him. You know, like John Jones can runs around the cage, you know, and, and jabs me to death. And then when I try to like athletically explode in, then he violates me with something painful. Yeah. Do you ever think about going 170?

Is that possible? Definitely possible. Yeah. Yeah. We've, um, I mean, honestly robbie lawler beat johnny hendrix um i always get i would cut to fight robbie really because you beat robbie in strike force yeah do you um you you when you walk around a 205 or 220 rather is it because you're lifting a lot of weights is because you're doing a lot of uh yeah yes um i like I treat the annual cycle of like fight camp, post fight camp,

pre fight camp, fight camp fight. And, um, kind of, if you look at like a, like an NFL player, you know, they have the preseason where they're, they're trying to get their body strong and healthy so that when they go into the season, they have everything that they need to perform during that season. Um like my pre-fight camp, like right now where I'm lifting a lot of weights, doing a high volume of work where I'm working on like my, my sparring stuff now is a lot more drill oriented. I'm not burning tons of calories, grappling or boxing or sparring, kickboxing. I'm lifting a lot of weights. So my body's responsibly like getting, big, and strong again.

I'm getting my technique better. So when I move into that fight camp, I have this mold of clay that's totally healthy that can be shaped into what needs to be shaped to be executed for a particular fight. So when you think about 220 and a guy like Rumble Johnson who used to weigh somewhere around that even heavier and get down to 170. It's crazy talk.

If you were going to get down to 170, if Robbie Lawler beat Johnny Hendricks, how would you do that? Would you cut out the weightlifting and start doing like marathon running? Like what would you do to get yourself leaner? Yeah. Would it be leaner or would it be like less muscle? A little bit of both. You know, I definitely have to lose a little bit of muscle to be able to.

And how would you do that? By not lifting? Just changing the type of lifting that I'm doing. You know, like I'm not doing those three rep maxes of deadlift at, you know, four or 500 pounds. Is that what you do these days? Yeah. Like right now.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm loving it. You know, I was like, I did shrugs yesterday. Just shrugs? Well, not just shrugs, but like I got to do shrugs. You know, it's like, I was asking my strength coach, I'm like, can we i got to do shrugs right it's like i was asking my strength because i'm like can we do some curls you know he's like shut your mouth you know it's like you're like straps that you right never allowed to touch those and i was like looking at

those like how about i use some straps that looks yeah grab the bar and do some more weight you know he's like no now you know like the point of departure has come and he's like come back to me tim and we're not doing curls i'll let you do shrugs but that's, you know, like the point of departure has come and he's like, come back to me, Tim. And we're not doing curls. I'll let you do shrugs, but that's all, you know, like. So straps being, you don't do straps because you only want to lift what your hands can hold up. Yeah. What's the point?

Yeah. I don't ever use straps. I see people using straps and I get it. I get what you're doing. My ego wants to use straps. Functionally though, right? It should be whatever you could carry with your hands too. Especially for a grappler, right? Absolutely.

So you would just start doing high reps. High volume, a lot more speed. I think I'd have to be faster too at 170. Watching these guys, they're just like all over the place. You see Damian Maia when he dropped down to 170

and fought Rick Story. You see the difference in Maia when he dropped down to 170 and you know fought Rick Story and you see like the difference in the just the the amount of physical strength that he had over a guy who was used to fighting at 170. It's a big leap. Yeah. Do you think there should be more weight classes? Yeah. I do too. Yeah I think that like 185 to 205 Jesus fucking Christ that's 20 pounds. There should be three champions in between those weight classes, or at least two. Yeah, I mean, if you look at a guy from, I'll go all the way down from like 155 to 205. You know, you have 55, 70, 85, you have four weight classes from 155 to 205. That's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think it's crazy. And I think that, you know, a lot of people say that boxing is watered down by all the weight classes. I think it's watered down by all the titles, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having a welterweight class at 147 and then a junior middleweight at 154 and then a middleweight at 160. The six pounds between 154 and 160 is fucking significant. Six pounds is significant. 20 pounds is crazy. And I just think that there's just a lot of fighters who are tweeners, like Diego Sanchez. I think Diego should be fighting at 165. You know, I think when he gets to 155, I think he's too diminished. He's too scrawny.

When he fights at 170... He's a little soft. He's a little small for some of those really big, giant dudes. I think I'm kind of between 185 and 170. Yeah. Like my shape, you know, like my reach, my height. You know, like, I would love there to be5 and 170. Yeah. Like my shape, you know, like my reach, my height. You know, like I would love there to be like a 180. Yeah.

That'd be awesome for me. I think there really should be more of that. I mean, those are the things that I would like the UFC to change. The downward elbows, the knees on the ground, and more weight classes. We've solved a lot of problems. Dana, can we go ahead and execute these things that Joe and I have concurred on from today's podcast? Yes. It's not even Dana. It's not even Dana. It's the athletic commissions.

That's what's really crazy is that it's sanctioned by athletic commissions. And you really don't have that much influence over athletic commissions. Any. Yeah. Well, now that Keith Kaiser's gone, maybe they have a little bit more. But I don't know how much they listen. I wish they would listen about a few things. Certainly downward elbows and certainly at least consider revamping the scoring system and then adding weight classes.

One of the things about weight cutting do you find that are an issue? There's obviously an issue with injuries and there's obviously an issue with diminishing health. Do you worry about the long-term repercussions of like, there was an article recently, uh, Jim Miller was talking about weight cutting. He's like, I know I've taken years off my life through weight cutting. Do you worry about that? I do. Um, the things that, you know, I am really conscious about my brain. Um, you know, when I'm cutting weight, I, I, I love reading. I love writing, you know, like even, you know, creative writing too. Like I, I love. Do you write a blog? Do you keep a blog or anything? Yeah. For me. Just for you? Yeah. Are you going to publish it someday?

Maybe. There are a couple of times where I wrote some blogs when I was deployed, letters from a foreign land. I'm an okay writer. Anyways, everybody's the worst critic. And when I'm cutting, my brain doesn't work right. I feel it. And then when you're getting hit in the head while you're cutting, you know, from guys like John Jones and Carlos Condit, you know, like life sucks. Your brain sucks.

So I'm like, yeah, I have my eyes are wide open that there's, you know, physically going to be some repercussions to me fighting, you know, for me jumping out of airplanes for like, you know, at what point do I say, okay, I'm not going to do this because it hurts me in the longterm. You know, like you're 34. Yeah. Do you have a cutoff? Do you have like an age where you're like, this is the age where I don't want to be doing this anymore? Definitely. What age is that? I can't tell you. You can't tell me. Okay. But you have a number in your head where you would like a goal to reach. I love Randy Couture and Dan Henderson. And I think it's some of the, they had some of the greatest fights towards the end of their career. I am not going to be fighting at 40. I'm not going to be fighting in my late thirties. Oh, you told me the number then. That's only, you don't leave

it out with five years. It's not much. You have a window there. Yeah. You got a five-year window then. Wow. Yeah. No way. I got too much I want to do. What do you want to do? I want to change people's lives. You know, I want to be able to impart individual responsibility to people.

I want to save some animals. I want to hunt some more. I want to make some awesome TV shows and try to. What kind of TV shows? So Duck Dynasty. No, I do not want to do Duck Dynasty at all. And I don't even think I've ever seen a full episode. Good for you.

I haven't. Maybe I've seen like three quarters of an episode. You done lost your redneck. I ain't lost my redneck. Those guys took values that they wanted to project and they figured out a conduit to do it we might call them idiots and like they have horrible accents and they do stupid things and um but they had a set of morals that they try to convey and they found an avenue to reach thousands millions of people you know like I want that platform because I have some good things to say.

And I think I want to have an opportunity to make a difference. Why don't you do a podcast? Start off with a podcast. Do a podcast now. Be like one of the first MMA guys. I mean, Brendan Schaub does one with Brian Callen, but Brendan's kind of a meathead, let's be honest.

He's a great guy. I love him. You're intimidating and smart. Like, how could I compete with the Joe Rogan? Get the fuck out of here. Fuck yeah. Don't blow smoke up my ass, sir. I know what you're doing.

I'm not that smart. You are. Nope. Nope. I was warned. They're like, don't get in an argument with Joe because he doesn't forget anything and he's deceivingly smart. I was like, I'm aware of these things.

Well, I definitely look dumber than I am, for sure. But that's not saying much, because I look really fucking stupid. I use that to my benefit as well. Yeah. I was like, I'm an infantryman. I'm a grunt. I'm an MMA fighter. I'm dumb.

Yeah. Talk shit to me. Go ahead. For sure. Yeah, I've definitely, I smoked a lot of weed. I've got plenty of brain damage going on. Absolutely. But I'm not nearly as dumb as I'd look.

I look way fucking dumber. I think you would be great on a podcast i think you in a pot the beautiful thing about a podcast is and i i fucking swear to god everybody comes on my podcast you should have a podcast i'm like trying to give i don't know i i don't believe it's not that i don't believe in competitions i don't i have the exact opposite of a famine mentality. I think there's 300 million fucking people out there. Everybody could support everybody, and there's still plenty to go around. I really believe that. Obviously, my bladder even can't handle the podcast at this length.

So we've already discovered a limitation to... Well, in your defense, you have a one liter smart water, and you've drank a big cup of bulletproof coffee. There's a lot of liquids in your defense you have a one liter smart water and you've drank a big cup of bulletproof coffee there's a lot of liquids in there it was and it's also just stamina i just like i probably couldn't keep up with your strength and conditioning program and you can't keep up with my bladder program my bladder is like a fucking it's like a leather satchel back in the old days you can make them out of buffalo skins, strong and durable, last a lifetime, hand it down to your grandchildren. You could easily do a podcast, dude.

And the beautiful thing about it is that no one would be able to tell you what to do. No one would tell you what to say, what to talk about. You wouldn't have to converse with producers. I'm trying to captivate enough people to, you know, because I want that,

the access to the audience, you know, to influence lives. You know, would my words have enough meaning to draw in enough people? Of course they would. I hope so. They are doing that right now. Right now, millions of people are going to listen to this.

If I jump out of an airplane into the water, into the ocean with a whole bunch of sharks and go swim with them, people are going to tune into that. Yeah, but what if you get eaten? I'll survive. And they're like, this whole thing is fucked now. into that. What if you get eaten? I'll survive. This whole thing is fucked now. But then I get out of the water. I'll survive, he says. And I can talk to him. 16 million people watched him parachute out of this plane into shark-infested

waters and then rode a motorcycle up onto the beach. But then I have him. But you have him already, man. You don't have to do that. Trust me. You don't have to do that. You've already done enough that you're qualified you're you're a qualified legit badass the idea that you're gonna parachute into sharks and that's gonna change everybody well the guy's a fucking pussy on the sharks oh he's got me yeah let's sit out and listen to what tim has to say i think this just broke off there you're so powerful joe rogan just broke his microphone

i think this microphone was... I'll just hold on to it until we're done. Bare hands. This microphone is made from a... Made in a foreign land where quality is not valued. You easily, dude, could do a podcast. Easily. Without a doubt. I think that

you do a lot of videos, too, with Ranger Up, right? If you call them that. I call them that? What was the one where you did the black swan thing? That was interpretive dance. Can we show that? Yeah, that's fine. Pull it up. What's the name of that?

I think it's Tim Kennedy Black Swan. Pull up Tim Kennedy Black Swan. Yeah, you too. And I'll try to fix this microphone while that's happening. Yes. But the problem you're going to have with doing a television show is producers. Because they're going to look at you and they're going to try to put you in a mold. And they're going to try to get you to do a bunch of fake shit.

They do fake shit, man. They fake shit. I had a problem with fake shit on my sci-fi show. They faked a bunch of shit and I didn't find out about it until it was aired. And I came on the podcast and I apologized and I didn't know. And it was a huge fucking problem. And that was on a show called Joe Rogan Questions Everything. Like I'm trying to find the truth about these things.

And their instinct is still to fake shit and to put fake shit in that you don't even know about. I would respond well to that. It's fucking horrible. I'm not very malleable. No, you're not. That's why a podcast is perfect. Malleable. Yeah.

No, you're not. That's why a podcast is perfect. You have a very unique vision, and your unique vision is qualified by your unique life experiences. Any Hollywood douchebag is not going to understand that, and they're going to try to mold you into someone what they think could be more profitable for the network. Yeah, but they would also have to sleep at night, and they'd be scared of what I could do to them once they go to bed. They would, but they wouldn't. They live in gated communities, and they fucking hire people to keep an eye out for you.

Is this it? Here, play that and I'll fix this thing. Hello and welcome to Masterpiece Theater. Here is a scene from Black Swan performed by MMA fighter and special forces operator Tim Kennedy. I had the craziest dream last night about a boy who was turned into a swan but her queen falls for the wrong guy and He kills himself For the folks who are not watching this, please watch this. Go to YouTube.

What compelled you to do this? So the... The movie Black Swan, obviously? Well, Natalie Portman is beautiful. She is beautiful. And my mom used to make us take dancing lessons. So as you can see, there's some skill here. You just can't do this stuff, whatever.

That is scary. Your mom made you take dance and your dad made you take martial arts? Yeah. Interesting. Cooking classes with my mom. Cooking classes? Yep, hunting with my dad. That makes a balanced person.

That's like Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings. He believed that every warrior should also be well-versed in poetry and calligraphy and art. Yeah. It wasn't by choice. I was like, yeah, let's go to ballroom dancing and learn how to swing dance. Ballroom dancing? Oh, yeah. She got them all.

Oh, God. I'd have probably moved out. I was like 11. I didn't have a choice. Yeah. I would have found someone to take me. Motivation was having fun. You know, like you can't, if you don't enjoy and have fun in life and be able to laugh at yourself and put on like a tutu and dance around, you know, like, like a beautiful fairy butterfly,

swan, both the black and white version, and be able to understand, um, that what the, the transition, the metamorphosis from the black to white swan, it's scary, scary process. It is. And once you understand that about yourself there's really nothing more frightening um that you could do in the rest of your life if i was that guy from what is that show inside the actor studio is that analogous to your transition as a fighter i really really try to you know personify the depth. Are you the black swan or the white swan when you fight? In me, it's the journey to the black swan.

I'm neither. It's like the scary down the rabbit hole. I took the blue pill, and now I'm becoming the black swan, and there's violent, scary things on the way there. And that's where I try to fight at, is on the journey to the black swan. Is that why you come out to the rooster? No, I come out to the rooster because it's a badass song. It is a badass song.

Roosters like to fight. They do like to fight. But the song's about Vietnam. It's about Vietnam vets, the 101st. They used to call the tail gunners, or the machine gunners, the rooster on the team. Is that Allison chains? Yeah.

So like POWs, MIA, Vietnam vets, all of them, that song, the song was written by the, by lead singer about his father who disenchanted, they grew apart and he kind of resented him for being in the war.

And then he kind of had this revelation that it was that he had to. He didn't have a choice. He was drafted. So he wrote that song to reconnect with his father, who was a Vietnam vet. So that song has a lot of meaning to me and my community, you know, veterans.

So when I walk out of that song, man, there's like... I feel like there's nothing you could, you could hit me with a freight train and I wouldn't care. You know, I got to grab the portions of my body and try to keep fighting. It's a great fucking song for you, man. There's certain songs that just sort of, you hear that song and you know, that guy's fighting. Like there's a country boy can survive when Matt Hughes fights, Hughes fights. There's just no getting around it. Stranglehold when Benavidez fights.

Joseph Benavidez fights. He comes out to Ted Nugent's Stranglehold, which is a great fucking song for him. It's just there's certain songs that just personify a fighter. That's a good one for you, man. I'll have it forever. That's my song.

Do they give you any pressure about songs? Do you have to prove it? Because I know Uriah Faber, he always comes out the California love, but he wanted to do Going Back to Cali, and they wouldn't let him do it. I don't think it's like the UFC, Zufa. I'm not sure it's them that, because they have to get rights to use that music in the UFC, Zufa, I'm not sure it's them that, because they have to get rights to use that music

in the production. And I don't, I have no idea how, you know, legally that, that occurs. So sometimes they have a list of what you're allowed to do. You know, there, there are some fight promotions for like, all right, you know, submit your, your song that you want to walk out to two weeks before, and we'll see if we can can if it's approved or if we can get approval um you know it's it's i don't know i have no idea how it works but thank god i can walk out to rooster because i'd be really sad if i couldn't yeah it's perfect for you i'm glad that you have an exit strategy because there are a lot of fighters that don't and the saddest thing to me is a guy who looks at fighting as everything.

Like, that is all they are capable of, that is all they're ever going to be. They don't know what to do next and they get out of it and they have this thing where they're diminished. Like, you could see their aura is diminished, you know, if you believe in auras. But whoever they are, like, seems

less when you're around them than who they were when they were competing. Yeah. It's true. There's nothing more tragic than seeing the guy that bled and sweat for your entertainment. And at the end of his career, you know, he wasn't smart or he didn't do things, you know, how he should have. And then at the end of his career, he has nothing. He's fought 20 fights. He's broken physically and mentally. There's nothing left in him.

And he has no resources to continue his life. I've ranger up a company that I'm intimately part of. I have great relationships with partners that are going to go outside of the cage when I'm done fighting, that are going to be part of whatever TV series that know, series that I'm in. But it's, it breaks my heart seeing these guys that, you know, at the end of the careers, they have nothing. And you're just like, God. Yeah. Yeah. It breaks my heart too. And it, I've, I've seen it so many times that it just, it drives me fucking nuts, man. It, it, it just, it drives me nuts. I, I, I almost want want to grab them in the middle when they're peaking and go, listen, man, this is beautiful, but it ain't going to last.

You've got to have something else. You've got to have something that you have as much passion for as you do this. Maybe that's one area where you have an advantage in that you've been in so many life or death struggles, have an advantage in that you've been in so many life or death struggles, firefights, being deployed overseas, seeing life and death, and your perspective is far broader than a person who's just been an athlete, just been an athlete that has just sought glory and believes that that is the end all be all. Yeah. Maybe, you know, I definitely have this perspective that, you know, we have a shelf life as an athlete and it's short. It's this, this window of opportunity that if you don't capitalize on it, you know, it's

come and it's gone. And, um, most people don't understand that, you know, we have this, this, this window to, to earn our earning potential is small for an athlete. You know, like I never had that. This is something that I wanted to do. I wanted to be champion. I want to be champion. And that's what I'm trying to achieve in this window. Not, not financial gain or like,

like if I don't achieve it in that window, I can move on, you know, to the next thing to then achieve the next thing that I'm trying to do. But, uh, these guys that go in there, they, they, the Mike Tyson's perfect example of where, you know, he literally pissed it all away. And then at the end of, you know, what happened to $230 million that you had? Yeah. You're bankrupt.

Crazy. Didn't you just stash away 10? You could live off 10 for a long fucking time, man. Just take 10, blow 220. Yeah. It's,

it is crazy when you see those stories, but it's almost like the hubris that allows you to be a combat athlete in a lot of ways, this idea that I'm different. Or like your idea, that you're going to fucking parachute into sharks, you're going to be fine. I'll be fine. I'm not like that poor fuck that was triathlon training off the coast of San Diego and got bitten in half in front of his friends.

That happens, bro. It happens to anybody. It gets in there. It's a bad world. The ocean's a bad world. It's a scary place. I don't like it at all. Sharks are beautiful.

Yeah, they're beautiful when you have them filleted over a grill. It's delicious as well. 170 is the last question. Do you think that your best chance for a title would be at 170? No, I think i'm close either you know i next fight you know who joe silva gives me is you know if it's the vito belfort's jock rays you know that that puts me right there you know i'm number six i beat number two three guy that's the title fight you know i'm four and only i'll be four and only ufc just beating in a title elimin. My last two fights have been five round or main events. You know, how can you not say, so am I, I'm potentially one fight away. You know, Mark Munoz and Musasir fighting. Could I potentially be fighting the winner of that fight? You know, that's, that's

definitely in the realm too. And if that's the case, then maybe I am two fights away. If I cut down to 170, I don't think that let me fight for the title. You know, like I'd still be one fight away, maybe two. So no, I don't think I'd be any closer. Would, uh, physically the physicality of like me being a bigger 170 than a lot of guys stronger than 170. Yes. There'd be benefits there, but again, diminished returns. Like what am I giving up for that in exchange for? Do you look at the window that you have? I mean, we've established that you think you have a five-year window. I know you don't want to give up the number, but you already

did. Do you look at that and say, well, if I do get to a title shot at 185, how much time would I have left to work myself up to a title shot at 170 or would I regroup and try to again at 185 if I wasn't successful the first attempt like do you have those thoughts in your head or do you just think about next fight no I definitely have those thoughts in my head I love having um the five meter target that's the super close thing that I'm looking at that I'm like this is the goal that I'm trying to achieve I'm trying to get a perfect grouping right here and that's that potential next opponent you know that's that guy that's ranked achieve. I'm trying to get a perfect grouping right here. And that's that potential next opponent. You know, that's that guy that's ranked two, three, four. So I can get a title eliminator type fight. But then I see the, the, the long road where like, okay,

I fight in that fight. I win, I'm fighting for the title and I lose the title. Can I kind of chail sonen it and talk my way into another title fight at a different weight class? You know, chail sonen it as an interesting way to describe describe it because that's what a lot of people are doing now. Yeah, dude. When your name has become a verb, like, dude, he just totally got Chael Sonnen. Well, Chael's a master wordsmith. He really is.

You did a great fucking job Chael Sonnen-ing it with this Michael Bisping fight, though. The both of you did. I mean, it got interesting and I was very happy that you guys sort of sorted it out inside the Octagon, and you both gave each other a lot of respect. But, god damn, there was a lot going back and forth between you two. Yeah, we're never going to be friends.

But when you hit—I hit him so hard. I had the same performance that in strikes landed in percentage that John Jones to Teixeira did as I did to Michael Bisping. Like that's, I hit that guy that many times. You blasted him with some hard shots. He took them. He took them. You know, like I know I hit hard. I hit, I put guys down in the gym with way less and I'm wearing four ounce gloves. And Michael Bisping was like, Hey, I'm here for 25 minutes. You're not going to put me away as like, how can you not respect a guy for that? He's definitely a tough dude. He's very, very determined.

He's also, you've got to give it up for him for mental toughness. Just not even considering retiring, the fact that he's fucked his eye up, had two eye surgeries, not even, it's just a thing. I'm going to pull aside, get back in the gym. Wickham is striking. He's tough as they come. He's just a thing. I'm going to pull aside, get back in the gym. Wickham is striking. He's tough as they come. He's a born fighter. Really, that's what he's supposed to be doing.

Is he the personification of our nightmare? In two, three fights, let's say he loses two more fights, that is the end of his career. His eye is going to be permanently damaged the rest of his life. How much brain damage has he had and how many fights and how many sparring preparations for a fight has he had, you know, now he's done and he's out of the limelight and he's broken, you know, does he have, was he smart enough to prepare for that? I think he was, but you know, he, he is that example of, you know, he left everything in

the cage time and time again at 24 minutes of the fifth round, that dude was still trying to get up for me. When the 32nd call was from our corners, he started coming right at me after I just dominated him for 24 and a half minutes. Yeah, he wasn't giving up. No. He was still trying to win that fight. Dude, what a great athlete. He's a tough dude, no doubt about it.

And he's got some serious problems. He's got a real injury to his neck that's affecting the strength of his arm. He's as tough as they come. He's definitely as tough as they come. But I know what you're saying as far as guys that accumulate injuries and then they get to a certain point in time. What is left? There's a lot of guys that have done far less successful than him that their bodies have given out along the way.

It's a fucking hurt game. So the hurt game and the hurt game is along the way. Just the amount of accumulation of damage that you get in training. Forget about it. That's what most casual fans just have no idea. You see little cuts, a little bit of blood, a little bit of sweat in the fight. That's nothing you know like leading up to my 25 minute fight with michael bisming like my sparring partners were like bubba mcdaniel and carlos condit when they're peaking for their

fights and then they moved on and then you know i had john jones myself like this room full of dudes that are the best in the world and we're sparring two times a week for six, seven, eight weeks, you know, like leading up to that fight, you know, and like,

we're hitting each other just as hard there as we are in the cage, you know, cause you have to put, push yourself as far as you can in training. So that the best element of who you, what you are occurs in the cage. What do you, how do you feel about that? Like as far as like sparring hard, um, do you think that you have to spar as hard as you fight or do you think that there's a way, like Robbie

Lawler famously said that he doesn't really spar. Much anymore. Yeah. He said he knows how to fight. He said it's just about getting in shape and working on his technique. I spar way less than I used to. On very rare occasions do I really go all out. But I think there are times in a fight camp where both your coaches need to see you and you need to see yourself when you're trying to do it all.

When you're broken, when you're're, when you're trying to do it all, you know, when, when, when you're broken, when you're hurt, when you're tired, you know, and sometimes the only way to get there is to push yourself to the limit. And the only way to get there is man, by going after it. And so you have to feel what it's like to be inside that, that, that, that position to be inside that that that position where you're just duking it out at a hundred percent there's no holding back you you know what it's like to be exhausted you know what it's like to be stung you know what it's like to be hurt you know what it's like to bounce back from being dominated in a in a training session like there's no substitution for that actual fight. No. You know, in grappling, like do I ever, am I in a position for, you know, a guy for me to work on an escape of an armbar?

No, there's, you know, the thousand ways that I could have prevented ever getting there, but I still have to see what it's like to get out of it. And the only way I'll ever see what it's like to get out of it is if I'm actually put in it. So it's the same in fighting. Like, um, when I, when I thought I had really hurt my hand in the, in, uh, in the first round, you know, I sit down, you know, and I come out the second round, I just tanked, you know, like pain, adrenaline dumps against, against Mike. You know, I come back to the corner at the end of the second round and they're like, all right, so you're going to lose this fight. If you do that, I was at the pits. My hands hurt. I wasn't sure if I could throw my right hand again.

But you threw it. Yeah. What was wrong with it? Broken. It was broken. Yeah. But it's okay now. I have the brace in the car that I'm supposed to be wearing. I'm just embarrassed. What's broken on it? The metal carpool on this right here. How bad is it broken?

Not super bad. Does it always snap through? Just a hairline fracture? Yeah, hairline fracture. They said six weeks in a cast, and I was like, I can't handle a cast. So they gave me sprays. Just jump in the fucking ocean and have the sharks take care of it. Yeah.

Dude, you're a crazy man. But that's why you do what you do. Yeah. Look, we're out of time. Tim Kennedy, you're a bad motherfucker. This is a blast. This is you do. Yeah. Look, we're out of time. Tim Kennedy, you're a bad motherfucker. This is a very fun podcast. We've got to do it again. And please, do one of your own, man.

Please. You'd be awesome at it. We'll see. Please. Thank you. Follow Tim online. You can get a hold of him on Twitter, but be nice, you fuckheads.

Don't be a dickwad, all right? Tim Kennedy MMA on Twitter. Do you have a website? Yeah, Tim Kennedy MMA. Facebook's Tim Kennedy MMA. Instagram's Tim Kennedy MMA. It's Tim Kennedy MMA on Twitter. Do you have a website? Yeah, Tim Kennedy MMA. Facebook's Tim Kennedy MMA. Instagram's Tim Kennedy MMA. It's Tim Kennedy MMA. Tim Kennedy MMA, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you very much, brother. Thank you so much. It was a great time. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to 1-800-Flowers.com. Go to 1-800-Flowers.com and enter the code word JRE or call 1-800-Flowers and mention JRE to get yourself 24 beautiful multicolored roses for just $29.99. And that is regularly $49.99. So you will save yourself $20.

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And I think I have a podcast with Aubrey this weekend too. A lot of good shit coming up. A lot of good people. Much love to everybody. Big kiss.