The Joe Rogan Experience - #603 - Justin Wren

Episode Date: January 26, 2015

Justin Wren is an American MMA fighter, formerly on the Ultimate Fighter. He recently returned from a 1-year mission helping the Pygmy people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Learn more about his project here: FightFortheForgotten.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. And we're live back from the motherfucking jungle. Justin Wren, saving pygmies, hanging out, having a good time. What's up, brother? How are you?

Man, I'm excited to be here. Excited to have you. Hey, thanks. I've been paying attention to your crazy travels and your journeys, and you brought some pictures and videos for us today, too. How long have you been back for? I've been back since late October. And you were here for a little while, and the last time you were supposed to be here, you were real sick. And I've got to be honest with you, we weren't too excited about a dude fresh back from Africa

coming in with some sort of funky jungle virus. Yeah. Well, I'm glad I didn't come in. What did you have? Did you have anything crazy? Well, I had bronchitis, but before that I had Shigella, which is an intestinal bacteria. I don't like that.

How do you get that? It's not fun. It's a waterborne disease. Waterborne, so you drank the water out there? Yeah. There were just times that I couldn't help it. But, yeah, or it could be from food or a fly landing on your food while it's being cooked. There's many different ways that you can get it.

Whoa. So you either live your life like the boy in the plastic bubble. Remember that John Travolta movie? Yeah, I think that's the only way you can't get sick. How many times have you gotten sick over there? All throughout. All throughout. You're always sick.

Yeah. Yeah, I had this guy on the sci-fi show that I did who told me that everyone who lives in South American or jungle climates, everyone has parasites. Oh, yeah. They just live with them. Yeah, I had them too. I had amoebas. I had some kind of parasite in my stomach also. I'm actually still a bruise from here because i got seven uh vials of blood

drawn to see what kind of parasites are still in me still recently yeah yeah that's just a few days old oh yeah so it's it's been a battle since coming back um but i think i'm getting i'm on the track to getting my health back together so what's a crazy uh place to live, to spend your time. It's a very strange thing, the environment, where you have all these crazy tropical diseases. Is it the heat and the moisture and all of the above? Yeah, I think it's just the entire environment. It's just brutal because right when I got there, I got malaria, and so that was pretty bad.

So the mosquitoes, the bugs, the parasites, everything can mess with you. Yeah, so the water, the climate, the bad living conditions. So, I mean, not having a nice bed and not having a good home to sleep in, all those can contribute to sickness. Malaria is no joke, huh? No. What was that like? Oh, man, that was brutal. That was a

one of the toughest times of my life, but I counted it as I don't know it was actually a good experience for me in the end because I got to share in the suffering that they're going through because because they don't even have all the Antibiotics and all the medicine to pump your body with to get healed from it So I had to be evac'd out of the Congo and and into uganda i was misdiagnosed four times so they drew my blood they did two quick tests for malaria and they said it was negative then they drew my blood said it was negative but uh i got real sick real sick like six days i couldn't eat six days i couldn't urinate um i think i lost 34 pounds

um and then whenever i finally did urinate in uganda it was after i got the right medicine they saw they took my blood out saw that i had over 70 70 percent uh was of my bloodstream was parasites what yeah 70 of my my blood was was full parasites. They would hide in the liver, and then they would distribute through your blood. Whoa. Yeah. That's crazy. Like, you're invaded. Yeah, absolutely.

70% of your blood was parasites. Am I getting that wrong, or 70% was infected with parasites? They said 70% of my bloodstream. So they said between 60% and 70%. So I was on the third tier. Like, there's level one, and three and four and four i was right at right at four which was a coma so um when you get to four you there's you're in a coma and you it's it's pretty bad a lot of people die well lucky you're a strapping healthy young buck of a man that you got through that huh yeah

yeah absolutely man it was it was really good like I mean, the pilot that flew me out, it was actually on Thanksgiving of 2013, and he flew me out, just me and him on the plane. And he found out that they're misdiagnosing me, that my buddy there was like, the doctors don't know what's going on with him. He's going to die if we don't get him out of here to a good hospital. a good hospital so they took me out of the jungle flew me to uganda and when i landed an ambulance came and picked me up because my vomit had turned to blood and bile so it was literally i could smell you know like in the fight game you can smell the blood right so uh i could smell the iron i think in my blood and it was really it was literally christmas colors red and green and it was brutal for two weeks after my esophagus was raw. And so I could barely eat much. I mean, I'd really have to chew it down a lot or I'd have to just drink a lot. And so, yeah, replenishing my body after that was a whole, I mean, I think it's still happening, but it was at least a month-long process to start putting weight back on.

You think it's still happening from over a year ago? Your body's still replenishing? Well, from that and from some of the parasites and everything else. So yeah, but the malaria, I guess there's mixed reviews, but a lot of times they say that the malaria never literally leaves your body a hundred percent. So it's dormant in your liver and then it can come back up whenever stress and other things happen. So we're getting that tested that's one of the things they're testing for me so we can come back up like say if you get run down like maybe you get

the flu or something like that malaria might go come here you got them back yeah and that would that would be brutal because my fever got to like almost 105. it was like 104 104.5 or one what's fatal it's like one six or.7 or something like that? 1.10? Yeah, they were saying it was getting high enough to where they really had to watch me because it can do stuff to your brain. Yeah, if your brain gets too hot, right? Parasites are terrifying, man.

Don't ever watch that show. You ever seen that show, The Enemy Within? What's it called? The Enemy Within You or Enemy Inside You? It's all about people who do what you do. Go to some place and get some crazy parasite and then they have like some softball sized ball of worms living in your brain you know and they're like oh I have headaches I started seeing Jesus and

there's angels floating around me I couldn't figure out what it was and then I went to the doctor and they found this mass inside my brain and don't well you you'd live it I mean you don't have to watch it you live it we got plenty of coconut water for you my friend if you want some we got c2o you ever have that shit no c2o is the bomb diggity get the man a can of c2o all right thank you it's uh from thailand they're really yeah they're coconut waters like it's really sweet it's weird it's a short tree it's only like five feet tall. And, you know, you think of like the big tall like palm trees as being coconut trees. But the Thai trees are short and it's like a much sweeter.

You drink it, you would swear that they have some sort of sugar in it. But it's not. It's totally natural. Dude, thank you. It's delicious stuff. But those parasites, the thing about parasites is that it's really hard to root them out of your system. And some of them, like trichinosis, I found out recently. My friend got trichinosis, and they said he's got it essentially for life.

They give him pills. It flushed the active parasites out of his system. But say trichinosis comes from an animal eating an animal with trichinosis. So if somebody cannibalized him, they would get trichinosis. Wow. Yeah. To this day.

And he's walking around like a normal person. But he's got trichinosis in his system essentially forever. So that's like kind of how malaria is? I guess so.

Something like that? That's what we're looking at. So if I ate you, I'd get malaria? I hope not. If you ate my liver, I think you'd never liver. Dude, I'll tell you right now. I'm pretty confident. Unless we're looking at. So if I ate you, I'd get malaria? I hope not. If you ate my liver, I think you'd never eat me, dude. I'll tell you right now, I'm pretty confident.

Unless we're in some Donner Party type situation and you die first. Man, it's nuts, the suffering that they're going through, though, with malaria. Because they don't have mosquito nets and all that other stuff, so I was kind of not cautious enough. And one thing I didn't want to do was take a malaria pill that would prevent malaria. What's that called? A prophylaxis or something like that? Something like that. And so I didn't want to take that because a doctor here stateside said that if I took some of them, they're really intense. They can really hurt your body.

They also said that even mentally, taking them for a full year they could give you night terrors and terrible dreams but then also like people have uh moments of psychosis from taking them and stuff so i was like well i don't want to be dealing with that and if the guys in congo said oh yeah once you get malaria once um normally it doesn't come back very bad and so all we have to do is all we have to do yeah the next time the next time is much lower and much lower and much lower and it's much more uh i don't know you can control it easier and so the thing that was the struggle with me was that they misdiagnosed it four different times and we took it to two different labs um and they just didn't have the i guess the right tools

and technology to really see that because whenever i got, we're flying and I'm hugging a bucket. And whenever they were putting me into the ambulance, I remember my vision was tunneling. And all in front of me was completely, I mean, it was just a blur. And when you say tunneling, could you actually see the walls closing in? Well, not at first. It was like I woke up one day and it was like all of a sudden my peripheral vision was kind of blurry And that messed with me. I was like what's going on And then all sudden started getting darker and so it didn't like start closing like if you're getting choked or something right? Yeah, I didn't do that, but it kind of stopped

And I think it just prevented my peripheral vision from from really functioning or working And then the thing that sucks is is get these crazy back and forths between shivering uncontrollably and your teeth chattering to then you all of a sudden just like on a dime it switches and all of a sudden you're incredibly hot, sweating, and you're throwing everything off and you're grabbing a fan and it just goes back and forth. It goes back and forth for maybe 30 minutes or something. You're terribly cold. Then for 30 minutes, you're terribly hot and incredibly thirsty,

but then you drink something, you vomit it up. And so they were trying to force me to eat because they're like, you don't have malaria, you've got to eat. And everything I would eat, I'd just vomit. You don't have malaria, you've got to eat. I had one doctor there that they couldn't agree with each other There's because they didn't know what's going on with me So the up-and-coming doctor and one of the young nurses said this guy's got malaria 100%

But the older ones were just going off of the results and they're like no look you wanna see the first test second test third Test or fourth test that says he doesn't have malaria. And so there was some, uh, humanitarian organization there and they had gotten this crazy, I don't know, virus or flu kind of thing. And, uh, they would be sick for three or four days and then they get better, but it went through all of them. And so they thought that I had gotten that. So they said, just let them ride it out and he'll get better. Um, and then kind of the, the head kind of doctor that was overseeing it came and I was in my room, but she wouldn't even enter into the room. Cause, um, she was looking at me through the, through the, uh, screen door saying, I'm not coming in there. I'm not risking me getting sick with that. But malaria, you can't pass on like that. It's gotta be from a mosquito.

Do you know that malaria has killed half of all the people that have ever died? I had no clue. No. It's the nuttiest statistic I've ever heard in my life. I had to re-research it and look it up and find corroborating sources. Yeah, it's killed half of all the people that have ever died, ever, have died from malaria. I think there's a guy named, that's nuts. That's fucking nuts.

That's crazy. But listening to your story, it's not surprising. not at all um yeah it's brutal i think even if you go back and look at congolese history um james jameson i think is his name uh but he's one of the jameson guys that founded the the whiskey in ireland he went and this is the story i think it's been conflicting but it's been confirmed by some some sources there that were with him traveling and he went to some of the cannibalistic like villages there in Congo back in the day in the 1800s and he would actually that's crazy but he would buy some of the young kids and he would feed them to the cannibals and he would he would do like art and stuff like that. What? Yeah. That's what they said about the Jameson guy, the whiskey.

He would buy young kids from who? From slave villages and stuff like that. That's a big past in Congo is that tribes have enslaved other tribes and things like that. Yeah. And so they would buy. You can buy people there. That's what happened whenever we brought a pygmy over to the United States, put him in the New York Zoo. He lived in the monkey house for a couple years.

Yeah. But you can just go buy people. That was the Bronx Zoo, right? Yeah, the Bronx Zoo. Yeah. And then also the St. Louis World Fair. And he toured around with them for a little bit. Got depressed, got a gun, and shot himself.

So he got off the security guard, I think. But with the Jameson guy, he died in Congo or Uganda from malaria. Whoa. And that's the, has it been confirmed that he actually did that? That he actually bought people and fed little kids to these cannibals? Well, it looks like it because I think it was Stanley. I forget Stanley's first name. I think he was the one that confirmed it.

Like they would go and they would have to have protection. So they would get some of the warrior tribes there to protect themselves. And then they would, yeah, in his downtime, he was an artist or something. He would paint pictures and stuff like that. So he would paint pictures of suffering. I'm pretty sure it happened at least once. I mean, maybe that's something that the listeners can go go look up or google but i'm pretty sure it's uh it's confirmed so are they relate i mean did the art was it related to the the children

being eaten like did you draw art about that yeah i think i think there's one confirmed story so i don't know that he did it a ton but i know that he did it once which is is awful terrible you know it's crazy wow you know that's the weirdest thing about people is how how much they vary and how adaptable people are and the people when they're involved when they're in in an environment where horrible things are going on they do horrible things like people who have gone to war and have talked about horrific things that they've witnessed and how it became normal and it became a part of them and they they contributed and they became a part of like these horrific war crimes like like riots perfect example when people riot you you

take a person who would never throw a molotov cocktail or break a window or stomp a cop to death or whatever, but you get them involved in a group of 10,000 people that are doing the same thing, and it's almost like it's in the air. It's like people get infected by whatever's around them. They sort of imitate their atmosphere. Yeah, in Congo, in Uganda I saw it once, but they have something called mob justice, and so that's a crazy thing, kind of like with riots, where if something happens, someone just has to accuse somebody and then everyone comes. And in some cases it's okay because if a thief is there and they yell thief, then the whole

community surrounds the thief. But the danger happens whenever someone wants to take justice into their own hands. And instead of turning that thief over to the authorities, what they do is they beat them and kill them. So me and my buddy Benjamin, he was my translator, we were walking down a center street of, like, basically Main Street, one of these big towns. It's called Bunia. And in Bunia, they have a big past for lots of different struggles and even, like, I think smaller kind of genocides.

Well, I say smaller, but I think 50,000 people were killed there just in that one town. 50,000 people killed by different rebel groups, machetes, all this different stuff. But we were walking down the street and someone yelled thief and nobody even confirmed it. They grabbed the guy, started beating him. And then whenever we got up there, Ben's grabbed me, said, you don't want to be around this because I'm the only outsider there. And so, but at first, my instinct was like, instinct? I didn't know that they were saying thief, thief. My instinct was like, there's 30 guys pounding on this guy.

Like someone's got to, you know, give this guy some rooms, give him some space. He's grabbing my shirt, pulling me. And so, anyways, whenever we went back and saw him, his body was just twisted up. And he was bent up in basically a ditch. Dead. And then, yeah. They just beat him to death. Yeah.

There's a lot of that for witchcraft, too, right? They accuse people of being witches and burn them alive. And that's a big problem with orphans in Congo, is that if they get accused of witchcraft, they just excommunicate them from their family. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, education, man, right? It's like these people have these ancient ideas that are based on just one person who's ignorant telling another person who's ignorant.

It becomes doctrine, and they just pass it down through generation to generation, and they really believe in witchcraft. Apparently, they have a real issue with albinos too oh yeah they think that albinos like that they're cursed or something like that or yeah cursed and then if you can kill cook and eat an albino guy uh this is in tanzania that i know that i can confirm this that um though if they can consume the flesh of an albino then it can cure them of hiv um tuberculosis uh i don't know some other sicknesses too fuck that's crazy and that's that's with the pygmies while we're there celebrating on our our first water well that we accomplished there um some of the government officials came and said that this is the first ever uh clean water source among the pygmy people the mabuti

pygmies in eastern congo becauseuti pygmies in eastern Congo. Because the pygmies are in many different countries, but in there, that country, this is the first water source for them. And so, but on that day, a rebel leader named Morgan of the Mai Mai, it's a terrible rebel group there, they had been confirmed in 2012 of killing, cooking, and eating pygmies, thinking that it makes them invincible going into battle. But while we were there celebrating, all of a sudden, all the Congolese army is driving by us.

And basically the Congolese army is just a bunch of rebel groups that defected and came together to be the Congolese army. But they're all driving by where we are celebrating. And I guess what turns out, guys have rpgs and machine guns and all sorts of crazy stuff and i guess i had morgan the main leader in the back and they had killed him but he had came to peacefully turn himself in but anyways they they killed him and so that that took the um the my my they didn't want to the rest of the rebels now they don't want to turn themselves in because if they turn themselves in peacefully then they might be killed

or executed you know so they went back and started killing more raping more uh attacking more gold mines stuff like that and then um some of the people there from the un that were studying the conflict and stuff said be careful in that area where you're going. Don't go. Um, for a little bit. So we stayed for maybe three weeks and then we went back out. But, uh, they were saying that the, my, my walking around drinking from all the, the

pygmy skulls, just drinking out of their, their skulls. So it's, it's pretty nuts, man. Fuck. Yeah. Jesus, man. You've seen some crazy shit in the few years that you've been down there I mean what a wild transformation your life has taken from going from the ultimate fighter fighting in the UFC experiencing the the trip the initial trip when you went and you met those people and you

became incredibly committed to helping them like you just felt like you were overcome with this, almost like a calling, right? Is that the best way to describe it? Yeah, I'd say so. And then you've been there back and forth ever since. Yeah. The first time I would say it wasn't until my flight back that I felt that initial, like I got to do something because whenever I was there, the problem just seemed so huge. And so, I mean, so insurmountable that what am I going to do? How am I going to help? Um, and, and, and am I going to get in danger myself or

get sick or die or whatever in the process? Um, and, but on the way back, it just felt like, you know, if, if, if not me, then, then who, you know, like they asked me if I would give them a voice, if I could help them, if I could. And I just felt, I don't know, a yearning, a longing that I had to do something. And so the second trip back was great. I got to actually meet some people that really had some real plans because the first time I went with people that we didn't have plans to actually help or anything, like sustainability, it was just kind of a learning trip, going and seeing what their problems were.

Second time, it was the university there, their school of community development, and they had dreams of giving them water, giving them land, giving them food, but they didn't have any way to do it, really. They had the plan and everything in place, but they didn't have funding behind it. They didn't have the technology behind it.

And so the third time was whenever I came back and I had studied how to build those ecodomes and I partnered with an organization. It's a great organization called Water4. And their big thing is what I was searching for was how to put the tools or basically the power in the hands of the people there. Instead of having to have outside help,

how could we actually help them to continue to do it, continue the process. And so water for puts the tools in the people's hands and then they teach them how to do it. And then now they can do it for themselves. It can be a sustainable business for them. They can, they can use whatever model they want.

If it's a nonprofit model, if it's a business model to, to make it sustainable there so that way yeah where i'm at congolese can help congolese and that way um i can hopefully you know fan the flame uh go over there teach them more bring over the right people water for really supported and sent over um you know their director of implementation to come really sit down with us for two weeks teach us he came back came back out, did it again. Now he's gone over since I've been back already.

He's been back over teaching our team even more strategies of how to dig these water wells. We had a bunch of people donate to your cause, which is fight for the forgotten. We had a bunch of people donate Bitcoin, and I matched the Bitcoin. Whatever people donated, I matched it. But Bitcoin is kind of weird like it's fluctuating up and back and although I'm a big believer in supporter and I think it probably better if people donate cash so we know exactly what the fuck we're dealing with what's the best way they can donate to to your cause well they could go to fight for the forgotten

dot com and they could just click donate and do there. We're going to be updating the site real soon. But, yeah, that's straight to the nonprofit 501c3 bank account. They could go to Water4 if they want to fund the water projects there. F-O-R? Water4? F-O-R? F-O-U-R. With a number.

The number 4. So Water and the number 4? Water4.org. Okay. So they could go to fightfortheforgotten.com, donate, or they can go to water4.org. Water, then the number four. Not F-O-U-R, but the number. Right, the number. There you go. And since coming on the podcast and people becoming aware of what you're doing, are you getting other organizations that are reaching out to you to try to help you and contribute as well?

Yeah, that's been a cool thing, but it's trying to be selective in the process because, I mean, funding is something that, yeah, we definitely need. But at the same time, we want to do it in a way that's going to be practical for the people there. So sometimes you have to, it sucks, but sometimes you've got to say no to good opportunities or chunks of money if they're going to tell you how to use it, when to use it, and kind of control. If they give it to you with strings attached, instead of saying, like, well, culturally, it might not work here, doing it that way. You know, instead of going and just, I don't know, does that make sense? Well, sort of. Like, what experience have you had? Like, have you had people that just had the wrong idea of what the environment is like there or what the culture is like? Yeah, I don't want to knock um any organization so but but things have to be

sustainable to really continue change um my mind frame is that opportunity is much better than charity if you give people an opportunity to get out of their poverty um then that that that empowers them like teach a man to fish absolutely and you feed them for life you know give them a fish yeah for a day and so there's been things where people are like hey i'm donating um you know i had to turn someone away that was going to donate 5 000 um of the water straws and that might sound really bad i didn't turn them away i said hey how about you help us fund a water well? Like you guys did. And I got some pictures to show. It's awesome of the village you guys supported, but, uh, but really, um, the, the water straw thing is, is great. What's a water straw? Well, uh, I don't want to knock them,

but, but it's, uh, I think it's a great organization. Um, and, and I didn't turn the organization down. It turned a private person that wanted to say, Hey, I'm doing this and you, you run with it. And I said, thank you. But I think a water well will support them better than because I've had one of those, it's called a life straw. And I think the way it's marketed is that it's going to save the third world. Um, but then if you think about it, uh, how many times does someone in the third world, every single time they want to get a clean drink of water, do they want to have a straw wrapped around their neck and then put their face in the water i'm not sure what exactly is it it's a it's a filter yeah yeah it's a live straw and i think it's great i think it's great for survival um you know if you're out camping

um i also think that what does it look like pull it up james yeah you say it wraps around your neck yeah you it wraps around your neck you walk around with it so um and then if whenever you need clean water you just you you put your face in the in the ground in the dirt um and then you suck clean water out of it but if uh that what he was going to support was going to be worth like two or three different water wells and it's a really cool idea it's a great a great thing i really i really don't want to knock him i think it's awesome is this what we're looking at here yeah so he has this whole contraption see how you have to put your face in the ground right there It's a great thing. I really don't want to knock him. I think it's awesome. Is this what we're looking at here? So he has this whole contraption.

So see how you have to put your face on the ground right there on LifeStraw? Oh, it's called a LifeStraw. Okay. So see, now that's a great marketing. I agree with that, you know? You have camping, doing something like that, and you need a clean drink of water, you don't have it. Right. Put your face on the ground and get it.

So he can just drink through that straw? Mm-hmm. That's it? And it's clean water what about like but you have to suck pretty hard i mean you really do have to to pull pull on it real hard to get the water maybe maybe after you use it a while it gets easier i'm sure it does that's how most of those filters are but yeah but at first you're having to really you know you're turning red in the face and stuff like that sort of like inflating a really thick balloon or something like that but the opposite yeah and i think it's great i i really do but at the same time to to

take it in and say to my my i i really think of the pygmies as my family i'm not going to go in there and just drop those off i'd rather give them a water well that they can go to time and time again they can fill up as much as they want they can drink it from a glass instead of right face in the ground no well that definitely totally makes sense. It may be, be good to have both. Yeah. Yeah.

It could be, could be at the time though. It was like even getting it over to Congo. Some people are really gung ho and I love it. Like, please, you know, help us support us,

things like that. But then, um, if you're going to donate and say, this is what it's for. And then, and then we have to find a way to get it there, ship it, you know, 5,000 of these straws or something like that.

It's a lot of work. So you turned them down because you didn't have the ability to ship them there? To ship them, and then I was trying to just say, hey, this is the real solution that we see right now. That could be in the future, and right now I'm in the jungle. It's hard for me to come out. Getting things in through customs is crazy. Also seeing 5,000 of those boxed up. The Congolese government there in the Border Patrol, they're absolutely crazy, man.

There was $3,000 worth of mattresses donated to this hospital. And these people sent it on a truck and paid for the shipping and everything then whenever they got there the government wanted five thousand dollars so that they could bring it into the country and they're like what do you mean so the the hospital now has three thousand dollars of donated mattresses for their yeah for their beds but but now they have no way to get it in there because they don't have the funds to pay five thousand dollars to the corrupt government officials just to get their beds released across the border, all that other stuff. That's got to be insanely frustrating for you trying to make a change and running time and time again into all this corruption and all these devious people. And this,

it sounds like if you go back to the Jameson thing, it's like this long history of horrible things that have been happening in this area. And there's a kind of like a momentum attached to that. It's almost like this is just the way it is. This is a fucked up part of the world. Does that accurate? Yeah, it's crazy. It's nuts. Every single time I've gone across the border, there's been some kind of problem where they want to arrest me. They want to, and my team, they want to find someone that they can single out, find something that they can get a bribe for, and they just waste so much of your time. For instance, we got a truck donated to us,

which was awesome, so that we could get our PVC, our tools, all that out to the forest. And whenever we brought it into the country, we had all the paperwork saying it's under the university, it's tax-free basically, and this is a university vehicle that's going to be used for humanitarian aid. But then whenever we get to the border, the head guys, the absolute head guys of customs were saying, yeah, but how is that going to feed my family? And it's like, well, isn't your job a government job?

And they pay you. It's not my job to pay you. So they locked up our truck for three and a half weeks. So we were delayed almost a month in our process. And everything we had laid out, strategies. We're going to be in this village from this day to this day, this week to this week, this month to this week. So they were just waiting for a bribe. Yeah, absolutely.

So after three and a half weeks, how did you resolve it? They were just waiting for a bribe. Yeah, absolutely. So after three and a half weeks, how did you resolve it? Yeah, they came back to us with a long list of new fees, of processing fees. And we had to go do this to get it and go do this to get it and go do this to get it. And by that time, we just decided that I think we ended up paying like $750 to get our truck released. But it was going to be $500 anyways. So I think they got an extra $250.

Fuck. But you lost $3,500. Yeah, but they were first asking for $7,000 or $8,000. They were looking for 50% of the purchase price of the vehicle. Oh, god damn, man. It's got to drive you nuts when you're dealing with something that's you know you're trying to help you're you're going over there you're essentially dedicating your life a huge part of your life you're going over there and helping these people being you know completely humanitarian and your your your your actions and then you run

into this kind of shit it's got to be really really frustrating yeah i mean it it absolutely is it's it's different than anything that we experience here because that corruption isn't i mean i'm sure there's corrupt stuff that goes on here but it's not so open so public um i mean by the time we finally paid that 750 i remember grabbing my wallet and uh and because he was he was wanting more and i grabbed my wallet and, uh, and because he was, he was wanting more and I grabbed my wallet and I had like Congolese Franks in my wallet and I just shook it on his desk. And he had, he had other people witnessing this and other people outside that could see in. I'm like, here, this is all I have. This is all I have. You've delayed us one month from giving your people, um, your countrymen water, like, and they're dying from it and i think right before that um a little guy

named babo had died and i had been holding them in my hands and so um i mean i've i've buried you know now a couple of kids but i've seen i've been to over 10 funerals um and so i've i've yeah i was And so, yeah, I was holding Babo, and, you know, I didn't know. I didn't know. I just got in the hut, and whenever I crawled in, you know, his mother is my mother's sister. So basically she was my aunt, and Babo was my cousin. So Chibusiku is my mother, Macho is her sister, and Babo was Macho's son. And when you say my mother, like your adopted mother? Yeah, my adopted mother there.

So they just gave you a whole family there. Yeah, I love them, man. Wow. I love them. My name in that village is Efeosa, which Efeosa means the man who loves us. And then my new name that everyone's been calling me, especially when I drive up and down the roads there, is Mabuti Mangbo. And Mabuti Mangbo means the big big me and so they just call me the big pig me and the big pig me and the man who loves us yeah and so the thing that was tough with Babu had just passed away before we got the truck I think and and and and I

actually think Bob will happen after a girl named Little Mo happened before. And so it's just tough stuff because I'm seeing this. It's really wrecking me, you know, seeing kids go through this, or anybody, really. And knowing that we have the tools, we have the solution to that problem. And what was that problem? What were they dying from? Water. Water. Yeah, just dirty water. The parasites, they get tapeworms. There's other kinds of sicknesses that attribute to it, but most of them, the little kids, they run around with these

huge bellies and it's just full of tapeworms, other kinds of bacterias and things like that. And if you can just give them clean water, I think the stat from the United Nations Human Development Report is 85% of sickness just disappears once you have clean water in your system. But once you're constantly getting sick from that, not only that, but it's diarrhea. Whenever you have waterborne illness and drinking dirty water, now these people that don't have a lot of food, that are either slaves to get their food, which a whole family can work, you know, a mother, father and their two or three children can go work for their masters and they get two small bananas at the end of the day. And they have to split that within their whole family. But now if you have diarrhea added on top of that, now you don't absorb any of the nutrients from that banana you just ate. It just goes straight through you.

you don't absorb any of the nutrients from that banana you just ate. It just goes straight through you. And so it's real tough to be like, man, first we got them land while we were there, which was a huge thing. We negotiated and petitioned and lobbied for them and their rights with the government there, but also the local slave masters, the chiefs of that area, and said, you know, these are the first citizens of Congo. Why don't they have any land? Why has all their land been stolen from them? Why is the land that they and said, you know, these are the first citizens of Congo. Why don't they have any land? Why has all their land been stolen from them? Why is the land that they're on now all

of a sudden legally in the name of somebody else? And so where's some land that we could get and purchase on behalf of them? And the university did a great job in that. I was kind of in the background for that for sure, because just being a an NGO a non-profit something like that uh the local government officials again will see dollar signs and so if we were going to buy the land um it was going to be astronomical we couldn't have done it if the university would have done it it would have been over 250,000 dollars um but since we came up with an idea and a solution saying well who cares who gets the credit like I don't need it and fight for the forgotten's name. Like, it doesn't have to be in the university's name. What if we just, what if we're just kind of the caretakers and we handle the

documents and the negotiations and seeing that it's legally done and then all parties will get copies of it. They'll put their thumbprints all on the documents and each chunk of land, they have like 10 or 12 thumbprints on it with signatures and there's a handwritten one there's a typed out one and then the government comes out now we're doing gps coordinates of the land but uh the land we got was 2 470 acres so we've been able to do that in 10 different spots so it's one square kilometer in each each different village that we've tried to now establish and now we're putting water wells all in those and hoping to start farming projects on them all too. That's fantastic. Do you have any concern that with all this added publicity and all this attention that's in that area that the

people will come in and try to exploit that because they know the resources are in that area now? I think what's been great for me is being able to kind of dive in as part of the university and have their kind of – their covering because now – they say I'm a teacher. I'm a – of appropriate technologies. And so I'm teaching Congolese how to, yeah, dig wells, farm, and build build new homes just different sustainable things i'll come back here learn it and and i'll come and i'll either teach it or bring someone with me that really can you know even if i don't know the everything about it i'll get someone there that will um and so the university there is um it's kind of just they're they're able to really negotiate and show everybody on both sides like hey this is in everyone's best interest,

which is something cool because whenever we go in and we drill water wells, we're not just drilling them for my pygmy family. We're drilling them for the people that oppressed them too. And that way we can show them that the project isn't just for the pygmies and just going to benefit them. If you can sell us their land, which sometimes the land prices that we're buying them for are three years, five years, ten years salary for the people that either enslaved them or that own that land. And then we come in and we say, we're also going to give you a water well.

Well, their kids are dying of the same stuff, too. And they've been struggling with diarrhea their whole life or parasites or whatever it is. Now we're going to give you guys both water wells. And when we start our farming project, we're bringing in a agriculturalist to teach both sides better farming practices oh that's great yeah that's a beautiful strategy right and so that way it doesn't nobody gets offended it's like hey no this isn't this isn't a pygmy project because if it's a pygmy project then then that's not going to be received well but people get jealous and then they'll yeah yeah and they're used to oppressing them and

why are they getting help and so we're going gonna help everybody out let's let's come up together wow that's beautiful man that's beautiful and is there any resistance there because they they've been so prejudiced against the pygmies for so long is there any resistance to the pygmies having equal treatment um i'm sure that there there is like and things like that, but we haven't seen. And what we do also is we go in there with the university, like dean of the department of development, and we sit down with them, we explain everything. And it all becomes like agreeable and written down on paper before we ever take action. And so that way we can always show them, hey, we all agree to this, you know. And so it's been a great process for me do they all speak the same

language these people that you're communicating with the kidneys and their oppressors and what language have their own dialects also but most people have the Congo has so many languages about 200 Wow yeah 200 over there of their local tribal languages do they share words in common in common? Some of them do for sure, especially ones that border each other. But then there's always a common thread. I think there's five national languages of Congo. And one's French. So that's like kind of the government language and the language spoken schools. Another Swahili, and that's on the eastern side. So that's what I've been trying to learn. And I can pick it up pretty good. But speaking it, I'm still kind of far behind.

So I always have a translator right beside me. But they have Lingala and they have a thing that's called Banacongo or something like that. So kind of in each region, the north, the south, the east, the west, all that, they have their own kind of language that everybody speaks. And then as a nation, everybody speaks French. Wow. So do you speak French at all no just what do you how are you using like a program or something like that or books trying Rosetta Stone but really just immersing myself because it's it's really hard even the

French there is is I mean I guess you could French would be good for me to learn it absolutely would um to communicate with the government officials for for sure. But everybody in the East speaks Swahili. In my pygmy family, they speak Swahili, but it's broken. And so even like Rosetta Stone, it's a hard thing to go on there and learn because that's the proper Tanzanian Swahili. And then Kenya, it kind of gets a little worse. And then there's a break in between Uganda, where in Uganda, it's basically just the military language of Swahili. And then you get over to Congo. And so there's a big break between that pure, proper Tanzanian Swahili and the Swahili spoken in Congo

because they mix in local language and they mix in French and all that other stuff. And accents, I'm sure, as well, right? Oh, yeah, definitely. So I just try to immerse myself in there and learn it that way. I'm able to talk a little bit, but really just having a translator there is helping me. It's amazing how many variations there are in languages. I went to Northern Ireland once for the UFC and spoke to people in Belfast. You can't understand a fucking word they're saying.

I mean, they're speaking English, and you'll pick out like one out of every four or five words that you you're pretty sure That's what the word is, but they're speaking English Whoa like and they're communicating back and forth with each other like this and it sounds like remember that cantina scene in Star Wars Like, remember that cantina scene in Star Wars? No. You ever seen... Oh, yeah. And they're all, like, speaking all these crazy languages. Yeah.

That's what it's like. It's like being in this, like, weird star port, but they're speaking English, you know? Yeah, and my best friend there, Ben, he used to be a translator for the United Nations, so he speaks fluently seven languages, but he knows more than that. Wow. So, fluently, so he just goes around. We're buddies. We're side-by-side side all the time and he's helping me out you have to like if you speak fluently seven languages you have to kind of practice those languages all the time right to keep them fluent

i'm pretty sure but that's what he was doing where i mean yes but that's what he was doing was at the united nations for the the russians because he speaks i mean he's a congolese guy that's speaking russian i'm like that's. Whenever we see any Russian soldiers, he would just go on in a conversation with them. English is one of his, not his worst because he's great at it. But, yeah, all the other languages he's super fluent in. It's so fascinating. It's like that story from the Bible about the Tower of Babel, you know, that the idea being that this was all like some sort of a plan

to keep people from being able to communicate with each other. I mean, it's probably indicative of like how frustrating it must be to realize that there are, I mean, I don't know how many languages there are worldwide, but I think it's over a thousand, right? Yeah. If there's 200 in Congo, it's got to be. Yeah. Imagine. I mean, I mean, how the fuck, until you have some sort of a program that translates an order and still, until someone creates a universal language and gets people to adopt it but shit we won't even adopt the metric system you know i mean when i was in high school they tried that shit they tried to push that someday everyone's going

to be and remember everyone in the class like fuck this nobody's going to adopt this you know we we lived 15 years learning about inches and yards and we're not into meters you know we don't really care and it's it seems like it's incredibly frustrated for people to communicate without some sort of a universal translator whether it's a program or something but even then without a universal language it's it's it's going to be really hard for people to relate to each other and to to not like it's it's easy to look at someone who's speaking some crazy language like people in afghanistan or people in saudi arabia and think of them as like not us because they don't they don't speak the way we speak if

we heard someone in afghanistan speaking total fluent english we would think of them way different than if you hear them in some crazy Arabic language we totally understand yeah yeah without a doubt language is something that I wish I had a gift at like I I just I really wish I could just grasp it and speak it so well but I really think just immersion into it is the way that you really start to to pick it up because i i found myself just you know able to start learning swahili and then someone's over to the side and they make a little joke and i could i would be able to start laughing with them you understand the jokes yeah sometimes like sometimes for sure what's a good swahili joke good swahili joke um i'm not i'm not sure it was like almost two white guys walk into a bar

yeah well they call us mazungus they both have diarrhea like would they call you what mazungu that's what guys call tits isn't it the same thing mazungu related or something like that yeah mazungu is uh definitely they just mean that for white man that's swahili was wazungu mazungu mazungu is that um like derogatory like haole like hawaiians it it i i think it is but to them it's so it's so i i embrace it though i embrace it and i'll say it with them if the kids are saying it and stuff like that um but they for them it's so I embrace it, though. I embrace it. And I'll say it with them if the kids are saying it and stuff like that. But for them, it's just more everybody sticks to their tribe. And I think that's a problem with some of the ones that chose the boundaries of our country. You know, it was the people that colonized us, stuff like that. And so we would have been off on our own in this region because this is our language and this is our tribe. And so I think that's why there's a lot of tribal conflict and things like that in different languages.

And so people will pride themselves on their culture, which I love cultures. It's great. The pygmy culture is awesome. In fact, I mean, there's like some great photos in there of hunting and a little boy getting his first hunt, which is great. His name is San Gee in the same village that you guys sponsored a water well for. So I love cultures. And this little boy, what did he hunt with? A spear?

Yeah, it's a spear. He got a forest antelope. So I was there and had just woke up. He got a forest antelope. Oh. So I was there and had just woke up, and this is early in the morning. I don't know if you can tell. It's kind of like a- How tall is that little fella? He's a little dude.

There's another picture of me standing by him, so you'll see. But he got it with a spear. That spear that he's holding? Mm-hmm. That seems like a heavy spear for a little guy like that. Yeah, it's his great-grandfather's spear. So his grandfather took him out hunting, and he was the one that got it. Oh, he's got the other one's head.

So there's the head. How cute. So there's another picture of it. And if you go to the next one, it's called a, I think they call it a genet or spotted genet. What is that? It's almost like a, more like a mongoose, but it's kind of like in the leopard. I mean, it would be like a cross between a mongoose and a leopard or something. A small leopard because they're pretty small in size.

That is wild. They eat that? Yeah, totally. They eat everything, man. Wow. So you can see how small he is. Yeah. How old is that little dude?

I think he's probably around 12. They don't know their age. Wow, they don't know their age. That's fascinating. So there's some of the men in the village. But if you go back to that last one, you can even see the bellies on the little guys down right there. You can see the big infected bellies of different kinds of parasites and sickness and disease. Wow, that is nuts, man.

And these people have a clean water well now. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have to give them medicine to get rid of that belly, or does it go away just with clean water? It doesn't go away just with clean water, but the sickness drops about 85%. But what we do is we have different nurses and things that are partnered with the university, and we send them out. And the pills are like, I mean, a dollar for like 10 of them. And you can give one pill to each of them. It's not a fun process, man.

They either vomit or have to get the worms 10 of them and you can give one pill to each of them. And it's, it's not a fun process, man. They either vomit or, or, or have to, they have to get the worms out of them. It has to kill these biological entities inside their body. So it's poison essentially. Yeah. Some type of poison,

right? Definitely. And they, I mean, I've seen mounds of, of these, I mean, it's mixed with other stuff, but just stumbled upon it.

And Ben's like, Oh, that's because we gave him the pill. Like, and I'm like, what is that in there? And there was tapeworms all inside this mound of, of, of feces on one of the trails that we're hiking. Wow. So, um, and how come the adults don't have it? They have flat stomachs. Um, I think as they get older, I mean, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think their body just starts learning to fight it better. And some of them have had the medicine. And so they'll be smarter and try not to drink dirty water whenever, just from anywhere. When these little guys are walking around,

now they're being taught, you have a clean source of water, this is where you get your water from. And they can carry little containers or bottles and take those around with them. And they do most of their hunting with Spears most of bows and arrows I think but they'll they'll drive them into nets and if you keep going down there'll be a picture of the net so but they have these nets that's in that yep and they just go and they break these little trees that are starting to grow there maybe three foot tall they break them and they lay a net the top of the net on it and then they just kind

of weave them in and out of the forest then what they do together is maybe they get leaves maybe they see an animal and they just drive it into these nets sometimes uh like with monkeys and parrots and stuff like that they're using their um their bows and arrows which if you go up one picture that shows the the little boys i mean even from that age right there uh those little boys are just nailing anything i mean you give them a target uh my my wife and i would uh would get passion fruit and we what we do is we if there's a rotten one if there's an empty one um we would we would roll it to them and these guys could hit the moving like this age right here uh which i don't know what you think that's five five years old they could hit a moving passion fruit target that were rolling.

They could just nail them with their bows and arrows. Wow. There's even a short video I got of them nailing a mouse. That's what it is. A mouse? Yeah. There was a mouse in the village, and they wanted to show off to Emily. That's my wife, and she came to visit.

And it was just really fun because they she wanted to experience their culture and whenever you show them interest in the culture they get really really excited this is the video yeah there's the mouse running I don't know if you can see it around yeah and around there but it's it's definitely live moving and I just said hey shoot it and and just nailed it that sounds like a foot away yeah I'm not that impressed but did they eat that mouse yeah they'll eat it they'll eat it and then they'll even do like turtles they'll go out and they'll make backpacks out of turtles that sounds

crazy but they'll they'll go out and they'll look for the antelope or something like that and then if they come across a turtle they'll make out of turtles. That sounds crazy, but they'll go out and they'll look for the antelope or something like that. And then if they come across a turtle, they'll make out of, I don't know, these little vines, literally just backpacks where they tie it onto the legs of the turtle and they walk around with it. And if they find a big thing of meat, then they let the turtle go. But if they don't, if they come back empty handed, they're going to come back with the turtle. And these arrows that they use, what do they use for the feathers, for the fletchings and all that stuff? The feathers are leaves. Leaves.

So they make a small slit in the back of the arrow, and then they slide in a leaf that's formed just like a feather. And when they use the tips, what's the tip? The tip can be metal. And when they use the tips, what's the tip? The tip can be metal. If they find scrap metal somewhere, they can beat it down and, yeah, turn it into a very, very sharp. Yeah. But then sometimes they have these wicked barbs on them too.

And then what they use most, though, they would use the metal on smaller game. But on bigger game, they use their poison-tipped arrows. So they just have it in wood, and they sharpen it down. and they kind of do the spiral at the tip of the the arrow and then what they do is they take roots and berries and i think that's that's pretty much it but they get like a basically a poisonous cocktail that they make and it turns black and then they dip the tip of the arrow right in it and that's what they use for for something they really want to, a monkey or an antelope or anything like that. And when they do that, doesn't that poison the meat? They eat it, and I ate it.

So I guess it could. I didn't ever think of that. Maybe I should be careful. Well, I would wonder, like, how does the poison work, and if that's the case, how are you not ingesting it? Maybe is it local? Is, like, only the spot where the arrow hits? That doesn't seem to make sense, though.

Or the bloodstream, maybe, once you drain the blood out of it. They shoot it, and then they just track it, and then once it falls over dead, they just put it over their shoulders and bring it back. How long do they have to track? How long does it take before the poison kills them? This will be kind of funny. I can't really follow them very well through the forest. I'm just big and clunking around. I got hiking boots on or whatever, but they're just fast and quiet.

So I've tried to go out on a couple of hunts with them, but I knew they were just kind of humbly being nice, letting me experience their culture. But then I realized these guys are quick, they're quiet, and I'm not. So I better just let them go off on their own and do their thing. Do they hunt barefoot? Yeah. They do everything barefoot?

Most of the time everything barefoot. If they can find, like, most of the things that they're wearing on their body is because they've worked for someone or been a slave for someone, and that was part of their payment was clothing. Wow. Clothing or shoes or things like that. But their culture is just to run around um barefoot everywhere they got tough feet it's it's it's pretty cool to see like just their feet the the structure of their feet they don't have the real high arches and it's not real soft skin you know but they can just they can just book

it through the forest and step on stuff that i'm feeling through my boots, but they just they just keep going You know, did you ever see that show dual survivor? Just like I don't think it's on anymore. Yeah. Yeah, that guy's crazy The guy walks around barefoot everywhere. Yeah, he does everything Cody. Yeah. Yeah, he's uh, he's an odd character Like he has this house that he built that's some sort of a sustainable house It's got you know, know, I think it uses like a sod for the roof or something like that. And his whole deal is like surviving with minimal equipment. But he does everything barefoot. He runs around barefoot and his feet are like this thick skin.

It's disgusting. You don't want to give that dude a foot massage. Yeah, he probably wouldn't feel it. Yeah. Well, it's like a shoe. I mean, he wears a permanent shoe. I guess that's like really what's supposed to happen yeah to people you know yeah i think so too um but it's kind of funny like you know you know you know from martial arts but like the bottom of your heel you could fucking pound on things

with your heel but like that same impact on your shin would be very painful you know it's kind of interesting how that works yeah even on the ultimate fighter west sims when i fought him i mean it was like a minute and a half fight i got him to the ground and and put him in arm triangle but but before that he fractured a small like a small fracture hairline fracture in my foot with just a couple of foot stomps i mean mean, he just did it a couple times. I was like, dang, I've never, you know, we didn't train for that in the gym and stuff. So I never felt that before. But right when he did, I knew whenever that hairline fracture came, yeah, just being able to stomp with that is.

Yeah. Yeah. The heel is amazingly powerful, which is one of the reasons why I've been sort of a proponent for no gloves. I kind of, I've been on this kick for like a few months now. I mean, I'd always been aware that gloves really protect the hands more than they protect the opponent. Definitely. You know, they really protect the guy who's using the gloves more than the guy who you're hitting with. I think it's kind of

unnatural in a way. And I think it's also unrealistic. Like wrist wraps as well. Wrist wraps and gloves, I think those probably contribute more to opponents getting hurt than anything. Sort of like the same argument that a lot of people think that football would be safer if people didn't wear helmets. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. If you can wheel kick somebody in the head with your heel, which is like one of the most powerful kicks you can throw. Isn't that Barboza? Yeah, Edson Barboza and Terry Edom, which is a crazy knockout.

The first knockout ever in the UFC from a wheel kick. But if that is legal, and you can spin and kick someone with the heel, why do your knuckles have a pad on them? That seems completely ridiculous to me it doesn't make any sense and it seems also like an unrealistic depiction of martial arts of course if you want to go that route you would say well you shouldn't wear cups either because that's kind of unrealistic too yeah i like wearing that yeah i'm not a big fan of kicking people in the balls yeah but even even with the, being able to hook into it, you know?

Hook into it and pull. I mean, that's a little trick that everyone... Well, guys use that to submit guys, too. I've seen guys get chokes and guillotines where they'll hook their own glove and use it to finish a choke because it's like you can get some mad leverage along with, like, grabbing it. Yeah, and that guy's not going to be able to hand fight it very easy. Yeah, no, man.

Once you hook it, you're allowed to hook your own gloves too which is another thing you're allowed to hook your own you're allowed to grab your own shorts like say if a guy's trying to get yeah if you try guys trying to get you in a kimura you can grab your own shorts and hold on as long as they're not his yeah as long as they're not his wow yeah it's just kind of squirrely you know but that's it's a frustrating too, when you see two guys grapple and one guy's trying for a takedown and the other guy's grabbing the guy's shorts. And the referee will say, stop, and they will stop. But that brief moment where they held on might have been just enough

for them to scoot their hips out and defend. Yeah. You know, I think everybody should wear tights, too. I think everybody should wear, like, old-school Marco Huas, little bikini briefs. That'd be great. Dennis Hallman. Yeah. Like Dennis Hallman. Dennis almost, oh, you almost got fired from the UFC for that, man. I think so. I think there was almost a slip. Yeah. Well, apparently he lost a bet. So Dennis Hallman came out, see if you can find a picture of that cause they're hilarious. Dennis Hallman came out with the smallest bikini briefs, man panties probably of all time it was pretty ridiculous

yeah did you have dennis hallman underwear i don't remember man i think it had like yeah there they are down there i think training was a training mask is that what it said i think it is yeah that is what it but meanwhile why is that homoerotic? Like, why is everybody upset about that? But like, you know, if they're longer shorts, I mean, his junk is covered up. Are we terrified of the upper thigh? Like, what is it? What is everyone afraid of?

How come you can see his nipples and nobody freaks out? You know? Nobody freaks out that the guy's bare chested, but for some reason having little shorts on is offensive. Yeah. I don't get it. That was the only thing I would do to joke around with guys was wear mantis at weigh-ins because they couldn't look into my eyes serious if I had these leopard man panties on with sequins and things like that. That kept guys from looking into your eyes?

Well, they would grin or something like that, you know? They wouldn't, like, really do the deep stare down, if that makes sense. You made a post, like, recently, like, within the last six months, saying that you were considering coming back to fighting. Potentially, yeah. I mean, I think I should give it a shot. How old are you now? 27. You're still young.

I'm a year younger than the youngest dude I fought. So in my 15 fights, the youngest guy was 28 years old. I think I was 19 or 20. And so, I i mean i think that that the reason i would want to really at least give it my full effort at least for a season at least for a year to see what i can do see i'm not taking you know big really tough fights you know right when i come back but to build my way back up because if i could use the platform of fighting to to and and the name of of the non-profit is fight for the because if I could use the platform of fighting to, to, and the name of,

of the nonprofit is fight for the forgotten. If I could literally fight for the forgotten and, and, and fulfill my first promise to give them a voice, the man I'm passionate about both. Those are like my two greatest passions, you know, is, is, is MMA. I can't, I can't stay away from it in Congo. If I got to the internet, it was, it if I got to the Internet, it was straight up the UG or MMA TV. Yeah, the underground. It was what I had to check. The first thing I was on was how to get my MMA fix. And then, I mean, I'm so passionate about the pygmies and seeing just what I can do.

I mean, there's even an African proverb or a Congolese proverb about mosquitoes. It says, if you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito or try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito. And so I just think that, that, that me in my mind, like at first, when I got there, it's like, there's no way I can make a difference. And then, and then I met some great people that already were, had a heart for it. And then if I could use fighting as a platform, um, I'm passionate about it. If I can use a platform to say, Hey, for my wind bonus, we're going to buy this much more

land. We're going to drill three more water wells. We're going to, you know, fund this new farming project. Um, I think if I didn't do it, I'd be an old man one day wondering, what if? What if I would have tried it? You know, and if I just went to the jungle, because I would love, I mean, I feel like I could be completely content with living in a twig and leaf hut for, I don't know, maybe the rest of my life, at least for a while. But if I just did that, then, you know, nobody's going to know about it.

Nobody's going to support it. And so if I could use this as just a tool, a platform, I would have to take it super serious. There's no way I could just, you know, lackadaisically come back into fighting. But have you been training at all? I'm getting back into it with Team Takedown. Yeah? Yeah, Dallas-Fort Worth. Okay.

So are you living out there now? Yeah, I am. So that's where my— Great spot. That's a great place to train. Yeah. Dude, I love how Mark Leh Great spot. That's a great place to train. Yeah. Dude, I love how Mark Lehman trains. He's a genius.

Yeah. I mean, I've never seen it in a gym. Maybe you have out here in Cali. But we walk into the cage, or they do. I've only done a few times there, but that's going to be my gym, I think. And so whenever you walk in, he's got the flat screens all around the cage, and he's got his Mac, and if he's showing you a move, he'll show you three, four, five fights that this move has been finished in

in the UFC or other promotions. And so if you doubt him, he's going to say, hey, pull up to his assistant. He'll say, hey, pull this fight up this much into it, and then he'll start breaking down the fight breaking down the move the setup and how to finish so i think it's great yeah he's a wizard when it comes to mma knowledge and jiu-jitsu knowledge like he always has been like he's always been like completely engrossed in the world of jiu-jitsu he was one of those guys like way back in the day that had like all these moves categorized and he had like folders and files

for basically every move. I never even heard of anybody that like sort of broke it down the way he did. Yeah. So that's, that's what I love about that team. Whenever I walked in there, I was thoroughly impressed because they treat it like any other, um, like a professional sport. Yeah. You walk in and, and, and the water, the supplements, the whatever you need is at your disposal. And then whenever you get in there to train, you have five full-time coaches that are paid, you know, just to train you. So you get a lot of focus and they're, they're training the guys really right. I like what they're doing with heavyweights actually with a Rochelle. Um, he's training five days a week. And what I used to do is always train six days a week. And I trained two to three times a day and that's what Brendan would do and that's what Shane would do and that's what you know

I think attributed to a lot of our our injuries But with Rochelle they trained five days a week and make sure they're getting his cardio up But he can't train like a 125 pounder 135 pounder We're heavyweights are taking more of a pounding on their body. So you got to find a way to Not just train harder, but train smarter. That's interesting. Um, is it just because of the, the gravity, just carrying the extra weight, the pressure on the joints? Like, why do you think that a heavyweight can only train five days a week? Like, what is it? I don't think they can only train five days a week, but I think it's a smart move, uh, for, for Rochalton. And I think it would be a smart move for me to do too.

And maybe other guys would adopt it. I don't know. But for me, whenever you look at the heavyweight division, I mean, they can end the fight at any minute, you know. And you look at the 145, 135, 125, the smaller guys, they're really exciting fights, super talented guys, world class without a doubt. But sometimes there's just not the same weight and power behind

their punches, behind their takedowns, behind everything. I mean, it goes from, you know, 255 pounders equal almost one of us, you know, or a little more than one of us. And then, and then now you have 500 pounds colliding into the mat whenever you're taking someone down or punching. There's just all this stuff that, that I think you take a lot more of a beating on your body well certainly cardio wise it's very difficult that's what makes cane so unique is that yeah he can keep up a pace that's usually reserved for people that are like 170 he can do at 240 he's he's so unique in that way right and maybe if if on the the if you're going to train six, it's something that's specifically about recovery or cardio or both. Because the way that we were doing it at Grudge, and that's a world-class gym, I love it,

but something I look back and see from assessing just my opinion is, man, we were three days a week training and sparring hard. And for heavyweight, sparring hard three days a week you're taking you're taking a lot of punishment you're dishing out a lot of punishment and so we're you don't even have time on sunday it's not it's not enough time to to rest and to recuperate and to for your body to heal up yeah especially if you're sparring shane fucking carl oh yeah dude that guy that guy was scary it's still still scary. He's still scary, absolutely. But whenever he would throw a hook, your body would quake. It would send like a ripple effect through your body. Yeah, he's a big boy.

Big-ass bones, too. Yeah, and again, his issue was the same issue. It was cardio. I mean, go to the Brock Lesnar fight. I mean, he had Brock Lesnar all butt out in that first round. But the second round came around, and he just was spent. He just emptied his gas out in that first round. But the second round came around, and he just was spent. He just emptied his gas tank in that first round. And if you look at it, though, he was, I mean, if you look at how he's training,

he was training six days a week. And so somehow that cardio didn't come in even training six days a week. So I don't know. I think maybe it was also that adrenaline dump. I think he was going to finish off Brock and all that other stuff. He forgot to breathe. He was talking about how when he was punching him. He literally forgot to breathe Yeah, cuz he was just he figured like let's just sprint and this is gonna be the end here Yeah, it was very close to being then so I could I can understand what his mind frame was as close as you could ever

Get yeah, I mean it was like many people would have stopped that fight many refs would have stopped that fight. Yeah, absolutely It's cool. They gave I mean, it It's cool they gave Brock a chance to recover. I mean, I love Carwin, and he's a great friend, and he's a great person, but it's cool to see whenever a guy can have that time to recover and see during the round them recover and then come back and win. Yeah, that was an issue this weekend, like the Dan Henderson fight in particular, like that fight was stopped yeah like fairly quickly he got tagged by gabor

musasi and in a way i kind of understand because i think that uh referees sometimes will look at a guy who's older and judge it slightly differently than a guy like maybe say who's who's younger like like frank i always go to this one example frankie edgar gray maynard they could have stopped that fight multiple times and frankie came on to stop gray maynard in the second fight wow you know it was an amazing amazing fight but if you go back and and watch that fight watch that first round there's so many moments where you say like if a guy was quick to pull the trigger it could be over not everybody's Frankie Edgar either like the other one was this weekend Andy Ogle and I don't want to mispronounce his name so let me say it

right the guy from that was finished but yeah from Iraq right yeah I actually missed that fight I didn't see it. Makwan Amerkana, who is a bad motherfucker. This kid, first of all, this kid goes into the octagon and does these perfect flips. Like, right away, you could say, like, whoa, this kid is like a serious gymnast. And then hits Andy Ogle with this ridiculous flying knee. Like, launched across the ring. Tags him with this flying knee. And then tags him with an uppercut,

and then the referee stopped the fight. And I even said, I probably shouldn't have said, that I thought it was a premature stoppage. The referee could see better than I can, obviously, like whether or not a guy's eyes rolled behind his head. But, you know, Andy Ogle was pretty upset. Maybe I was going on that. But the stoppage in that fight was certainly more understandable, I think, than the Henderson fight.

The Henderson fight was like one shot. And he went down and then stumbled back. Well, he tagged him. I mean, it was kind of grazing, but it was kind of like the temple area, which always fucks with your equilibrium. But this Amerkani hit him with this flying knee. Like, he traveled so far like if you watch the flying knee see if you can find it jamie this is his opening move he hits him with this ridiculous flying knee i mean it was just he launched himself like 14 15 feet across the

kid's a freak athlete man and i'd heard that about him uh entering into this fight how quick was the fight eight seconds wow yeah man it was amazing he's uh he's pretty impressive yeah that's great he said i i is that what he said about me i thought he i thought he was a drunk that's what he said about me he's a funny dude man he's got a lot of personality too man he's very funny very funny but find the fight itself. Don't just pull shit up. I can't look at it without... I think the thing with...

You can't look at it without us seeing it? Yeah. Why is that? The way it's set up currently. Oh, but the audience doesn't see it? Is that what's going on? Oh, okay. That's fine.

But... I think with that Dan Henderson fight, I think maybe the angle, because I watched it a couple times, and I think maybe the angle of the ref, he was kind of maybe behind kind of Masasi whenever he hit him, and then whenever Hendo's head kind of hit the back of the cage, maybe that scared the ref and prompted him to stop it early. I always wonder when you go to new places, too,

whether or not commissions are more sensitive, you know, when you go to new places too, whether or not commissions are more sensitive, you know, because like maybe Sweden has like less sensitive or referees are more sensitive to fighters getting injured. Like we find that in Boston. In Boston, they stop cuts. They stop fights on cuts way quicker than other places. Like Mark De La Grata, who's from Boston,

told me they've always had issues with that. Like in Boston, when fighters get cut, they'll stop it way quicker than they would say in Vegas were these all Swedish refs no um a lot of the guys were English guys um it was it was different you know I know in uh in Finland they have the brutal MMA that you can headbutt still and in Finland stuff right isn't that right is that where I mean at least a couple years ago I whenever I went to Golden Glory out in Amsterdam and with I was training with Alistair for a bit but also do you remember John Olov Nemo yeah John Olov animal animal who is a Abu Dhabi champion yeah fantastic grab absolutely a beast on the ground he was like us I

don't know like like a spider his legs and everything was were nuts how they could wrap around you um but he was from norway and there mma they just they they were very very resistant this was when i was training with him back in like 2008 i think but they're very very resistant to i thought it was a brutal barbaric sport all that but then in finland just a couple countries away you could still headbutt and that's where he's getting some of his first fights, I think. Wow. So just such a contrast in how they viewed the sport.

This is the flying knee. Watch this kid. Oh, the kid just flies out. Wow. That was... I mean, it was a quick stoppage, but, man, that kid, that flying knee is fucking incredible. Look at that. I think he only took like three or four steps before he launched in the air.

Wow. Yeah, and Ogle tried to tackle the referee, which is always bad. I get sensitive because Ogle was in the cage. He was super freaked out and upset. He thought the fight was stopped too quickly. It's a weird thing, man. It's hard to say when to stop and when not to. It's hard.

You want to give a guy a chance to recover, but you also want to save the guy from unnecessary punishment if he can't defend himself. Absolutely. They have the fucking hardest job in the world next to fighters, is referees. Yeah, man. I wouldn't want to know all the backlash that they get.

I think it's like fighters number one, of course, referees number two, judges three. You four? I think I'm way down the line. Bruce Buffer's job is probably harder than mine. I mean, my job is I'm just reacting to things. The only time it becomes an issue is things like if I'm critical of a stoppage or if I'm critical of judging, and then it becomes a point of debate.

But I think that controversy, especially subjective controversy, whether you can agree or disagree, I think it's important because it starts the discussion of what should be legal, what shouldn't be legal, what should happen, what shouldn't happen. There's a lot of people that have some really strong feelings about the shape of the gloves right now and that they're contributing to eye pokes. And that's something I've had some recent conversations with Dana and with Lorenzo, and they're of the opinion, I think, that the fighters need to be penalized more

because the gloves have been the same for a long time. But back in the day, it wasn't nearly as much of an issue. If you go back to UFC 37 1� UFC 37 and a half or UFC 40 or UFC You don't see a lot of eye pokes But now it's hard to go one fight or one event rather without a couple of fights having eye poke issues It's super common and I think maybe you can attribute that to a lot of Muay Thai training Because a lot of guys are doing this which is really common in Muay Thai and step in with knees and, you know, all these guys who do these things with gloves on, which are, you know, totally fine with a glove on.

You're palming a guy's face with a glove on and throwing leg kicks or a knee or elbows behind it. But doing it with his fucking fingers, man, fingers just go in the eyes so much. It drives me crazy. And when you see a guy like Bis who's he's got one eye that looks completely different from his other eye now because of surgery detached retina surgery and then they have to put oil inside his retina and i don't even know how much he can see out of his right eye but when you look at him in the eyes his his one eye looks very different than the other the other eye alan belcher same thing even anthony johnson had a problem with that right yeah with kevin burns yeah kevin burns poked him in the eye and then

in this fight gustafson accidentally poked him in the eye they're totally accidental but it's like this thing where guys are doing that john jones is the number one guy as far as uh like the controversy yeah for sure because he's so tall and long that's an excellent strategy to he's almost like doing that cartoon thing where he puts his hand on your head and you're swinging because he can't reach him yeah so i wonder if there's a way to cover the fingers you know i've always wondered i mean this is a kind of hypocritical because i think they shouldn't be wearing gloves at all but i wonder if there's a way to to like like put like some sort of a soft leather over the tips of the fingers.

You know those old school Everlast boxing gloves, those bag gloves? Remember those? Yeah, absolutely. They had the little bar inside them almost. Yeah, they had the bar inside of them. I don't know why they had the bar. Why was the bar there? I don't know.

Yeah, it didn't make any sense. But those gloves almost like would be better. Like some people think that it would be bad for grappling because the fingers wouldn't work as individuals, but you never really do this anyway. If you use your thumbs at all, you kind of use it like this. It's very rare that you hook a finger and a thumb together. I think the Pride gloves, you weren't really too...

We have a pair of them around here somewhere. Do we have a pair of them still? The Pride gloves, they had far less problems. But, you know, Crow Cop and Josh Barnett, that was an issue. I mean, it happens. Guys get poked in the eye. It's almost like it seems like it's inevitable, but Dana's opinion is that they should be penalized.

Every time there's an eye poke, one point, which, I mean, it's pretty harsh. But you wouldn't do it. harsh but you wouldn't do it yeah you would i i've never had a in my fights i never had a problem uh the pride gloves are blue jamie yeah i never had a problem poking a guy in the eye i got poked in the eye once and it absolutely sucks because for the whole round my my vision was was like it would double and it would turn black and it would just it just jacked with me the entire round these are the pride gloves um brian from london real gave me these that's awesome thank you brian um piece of history yeah these are uh nobody fought with these on but these are the the original pride gloves they're so they're very different and there there's a pronounced curve to them that you don't get from the gloves the UFC uses.

Everlast, which is now a sponsor of the UFC, or I don't know if you'd say sponsor or a partner, or they're working together with the UFC, I guess we're going to use the Everlast gloves. Everlast has an excellent MMA glove that is more curved than the ones that we use now. These also are longer. Yeah, and they're easy to form, too. Whenever you get those UFC gloves, you instantly have to start breaking them in you know and so i could see the argument of it making it harder to to close your hands sometimes because if they're not broken in like this yeah look these automatically make your hands curve like automatically it's like by default

your hand wants to curve i would think these would be why don't they just go back to fucking pride gloves i don't understand why don't they go back to this this seems like a good glove yeah absolutely man yeah i don't know i i just feel like there's a better way and i feel like if you do you know that's that expression like what's the definition of insanity do the same thing over and over again expect a different result right now it's just it seems like the gloves that we have now everyone says the same thing every fighter that i've talked to that it actually they make your hands straight now especially as your hands fatigue as the rounds go on they literally make your hands straight now but the bellator gloves um that they're using that everlast designed are far more curved so Everlast has like their own sort of patented

technology, their patented design. And they're also having less handbrakes too. I didn't know that at all. Yeah, yeah. Bellator did, they did some sort of a study on handbrakes before the new gloves and handbrakes after the new gloves. And they have much less brakes after the new gloves because of the shape of it and the support on the top of the glove. It lends more support to the metacarpals, I guess. Wow. I don't know.

But then again, like I said, I think they should be bare-knuckled. I really do. I think if you can hit somebody with a shin. I was just about to ask you that. Do you think it would ever go back to that? Probably not, right? I think it's too ingrained or too adopted, too part of the culture now. I don't know, man man it's a weird thing it's like why why is everybody so hung up on like everything staying

the same first of all i think cups cups are a huge goddamn issue all right guys get hit with glancing blows to the sack and they go down um i think there's a lot of guys that wear really shitty cups like there's some like you've seen if you're worn the diamond MMA Oh, get them on we have them in the back. Oh sweet. That's awesome Yeah, we'll give you I had one and one not fit your fucking giant strapping glutes you savage But if they do fit see if you get a large or extra probably extra large Whatever the bigger ones are but diamonds figured out a way to make this compression short with all these straps And this cup that is like

sort of it's got a rubberized outside but it's hard as fuck around it and the compression shorts keep the glove the the uh cup right over your junk and you could take full blast shots and you're it's not gonna feel good but it feels way better than anything else i've ever used yeah i've i've had it the same fight i I got my eye poked, I got a groin shot that splintered my cup. It splintered my cup, and I had a little cut from it. It was up in the pubic area, but it was brutal,

and I hated that, and then I wanted to go to steel cups, which it's got this in it. Well, the steel cup is i think probably one of the best the thai steel cup see that's that's their design it's a very good design of a cup but there's nothing too extraordinary about it but what's what's really interesting is the way it fits into the um compression shorts the and this they they're constantly redesigning it they just had a new updated design it just sent me a couple of weeks ago but um i had uh one incident

in jujitsu where i wasn't wearing a cup and i had a lot of bleeding um and uh since then i went to cups but a lot of guys say that the steel tie cup is uh one of the best uh solutions too because you could tie that fucker up tight it feels super uncomfortable you know when it goes up your asshole area and g-string style but when it's tied in like really fucking tied in that's one of the best ways to uh to protect yourself too but they they outlawed steel cups in uh jiu-jitsu matches wow oh yeah because of stuff like frank mirror right with uh breaking that... Yeah, well, the leverage.

I mean, it becomes like this insane fulcrum point because it's literally steel. And when that steel is pressed against your pelvis, I mean, that's like this crazy lever. And if you get an arm there, you know, it's really unfair. It's an unfair lever that doesn't exist in nature. It's like the opposite of what nature gives you. Like I've had a lot of people, like you teach them how to do an armbar, like, ah, it hurts my balls.

Like, yeah, you've got to get used to that. Like an armbar will probably hurt your balls. But if you're wearing a steel cup, it hurts them way more than it hurts you. I think that's what popped Tim Sylvia's arm in the forearm, right? Well, it was something like that. Certainly Frank Mirian Yankovic didn't. Yeah, well, for sure. No, he's an incredible martial artist. He's a stud jiu-jitsu guy.

One of the best guys ever. Whenever you can get Nagara and do that to him. Break his fucking arm. Yeah, that's nuts. He's the only guy in the UFC's heavyweight division that's broken two people's bones with submissions. Wow. You know, I mean, Frank Mir will go down in history as one of the greatest submission guys ever. Yeah.

For sure. The times I grappled with him, I was like, wow, he's amazing. Oh, he's a stud. He's a guy who's got guys ever. Yeah. For sure. The times I grappled with him, I was like, wow, he's amazing. Oh, he's a stud. He's a guy who's got a lot of fucking miles, man. He's fought a lot of fucking hard fights. But those steel cups, like, you can't wear them anymore in jiu-jitsu matches. So, I mean, I wonder how long before people recognize that in MMA and say, because right now you could get away with wearing a steel cup.

But, like, have you ever had someone mount you and they have a steel cup on and they compress your sternum? Yeah. Yeah. It's brutal. It's brutal. Yeah. Those are dangerous, man. Definitely.

In that way. Well, hey man, thank you for this one. Oh, please. I'm excited to give it a whirl. Yeah. Those guys are pretty dedicated, man. There's Diamond MMA. I shouldn't say pretty.

They're very dedicated. There's Diamond MMA guys. They've done a lot of, they're constantly redesigning that thing too. But I think that's an issue like there's guys who wear like the standard jock strap with like a little silly cup inside of it that's just fine if you're playing softball you know but god damn it when you're getting kicked like the we really need like a better a better design when it comes when it comes to that definitely man yeah thank you so much for this and I also want to thank you man coming in here because the village of the Bofi is the village that you guys sponsored and they got a water well so I'm just thankful you're giving me this you sponsor my

family getting water we even had I mean if it's okay I could show you a picture yeah please of this is kind of the drilling process right here of the tripod. Is that something you brought over there? Yeah. Well, the tripod legs we bought in Uganda, and then we hauled them over. So that's our drillers. They get ready. They put it on that tripod.

This is us getting ready in Bobofi to put the pump down. And so those bricks and that circular, it's the cement well pad that we're getting ready to do. But first we've got to put the PVC down and and put the pump how do you find where to drill do you get one of those dudes that has that chicken bone thing does that shit work no divining i i'm not sure if that works but but there's there's some expensive equipment that you can get but we we really there for the for the things that they're going to do and where they are in the rainforest. There's water there. There's clean water. It's just under your feet. You got to get to it. And so most people don't know how to get to it. So we show them how to get down there to it. And so it's once it's below six meters or 20 feet, the water for system has been approved by USA, USAID and the UN and all these places saying it's just as safe as a lot of

mechanized rigs. And so what they do is they drill it down there. And once you get to a certain depth, you can put a cement pad that protects it at the top. But you also put like a clay sanitary seal up from six meters and above. And then that makes it hard. Clay sanitary seal. a clay sanitary seal up from six meters and above. And then that makes it hard. Clay sanitary seal. A clay sanitary seal. Do you guys make that or is it something you purchase?

Like how does it work? You can purchase it. Did you guys make it? What we do is we go find it from a hill. A hill on the forest. On a t-shirt. There we go. Look at you.

Yeah. So that helped me out too over there. So you helped me out a lot over there. But what the sanitary seal does is one meter of clay, it can take 100 years for water to get through. One layer impermeable clay. And so if you can put that down there, then it takes a long time. So any ground contaminants that are trying to pass through that, first you have the cement pad that we put on, and then you have the clay sanitary seal beyond that. And then it's not going to let the ground contaminants and other kinds of waterborne disease get down into our

clean aquifer. So we try to find a good aquifer that's going to keep refilling. That's fresh water, clean water. We test it, all that. Did you have failed wells where you tried to make some? Yeah, we did. The first probably seven or eight we failed because I had like a short training here. Then they also sent over a guy that had done 28 water wells in Congo. And I was like, great. He's a Congolese guy all the way across the country. And we flew him out, and he was 28 for 28.

He had never failed a well. And then we got out there, and we hit seven in a row that we we failed whoa and so um so when you say failed like it didn't give you any water or was bad water well i guess i guess sorry what we should what i should have said was seven holes fail and so what we're doing is we're looking for the water and sometimes you're you're digging and you come across a layer of granite or a layer of our problem with sandstone. What would happen is we'd have these clay or these augers that have like these claws on it and we'd pull out scoop after scoop after scoop and a foot at a time and sometimes

you get to like a sandstone layer and if you get to that it's hard to advance through and so a lot of times you do need a machine that helps you get through that and so water for has been helping us with that and so normally under that sandstone layer there's there's fresh like a very good powerful aquifer that's gonna you have to probably be careful about ruining your equipment yeah yeah that's right these we didn't want to waste our our tool so what we do is we would pick up and we move because we can't make those tools yet in Congo. So we're bringing them from the States and it's high quality stuff. Hopefully one day we do have a metal shop there

that we can start trying to produce things that will just blast through, you know, softer layers. And so you're doing this not just in the pygmy villages, but in also these neighboring villages too, to try to help these people out so that they don't get angry at the pygmies for having this stuff yeah absolutely so how many of these wells have you guys 15 wow 15 water wells there's each one of them is serving hundreds of people this is Bobofi this is the JRE well this is the Joe Rogan experience water well that's so cool we're dancing around it how happy those people that's that's actually saying G on my shoulders on that other picture the hunter those two things that's so cool. That's actually San Gui on my shoulders on that other picture. The hunter that killed those two things.

Oh, that's so cool. It's on my shoulders. If you go down, this is the chief's wife, and she took one of our well driller sunglasses, and she was the second one to pump, and so she loved it. So that thing that's on top, that blue metal thing, is that metal? What is that thing that we're looking at that's pouring into the bucket um the blue is actually just a bucket that's holding our cement um so it's like a we use it as a form so we could pour the cement inside of it that protects the the the pipes that are coming up from deep in the ground and the pump is a hand unit is that how it works yeah it's it's basically

like a t handle and you you grab each side you pull up like down pull up pump down an old school cartoon dynamite thing yeah absolutely and every time you go down it sprays out i don't know maybe 10 ounces of water wow that's amazing yeah so what is the quality of life change for these people now they have this clean water i mean it must be amazing yeah they they've they've never they've never uh seen clean water before that's, they've never seen clean water before. That's so crazy. They've never tasted it, except for maybe rainwater, but they don't have a way to collect it. So it's like them going out and if you go to the folder saying bad water. How often does it rain there?

It rains quite often, but they don't collect the water. It's easier for them to go to where the water sat, where the creeks or streams that that rose to get their their water there well it seems like that would be an awesome supplement as well so that's the water that they usually get yeah that that actually isn't that's actually a pretty good one but i thought what was cool here was she was using the leaf as a funnel but she would scoop it and pour it into the into the container but yeah that's completely dirty contaminated that's where the the antelopes and other animals are going to to get water and then they you know shitting it yeah absolutely man giardia is something that people get from gophers and shit and all these different animal beavers i had typhoid while i was there what is typhoid like um it's it's brutal um but

i had it at the same time that's why they misdiagnosed me with malaria they thought that i had um typhoid because i it was i had i'd gotten typhoid but like a small amount of it and then um so they started treating me for typhoid and um but it was so since it was mixed with malaria i don't know if if that was why malaria was so so brutal i mean i got it from two different sources i obviously obviously had dirty water. Someone cooked with dirty water and ingested the typhoid fever. So cooking with dirty water, even if you boil the water, you still get some of those illnesses? You can if you don't cook it correctly right, if you don't get it really, really hot.

And sometimes out here, you're just cooking over a fire and just sticks and you put on a bowl over it and it's uh it's it has to get to that boiling point and stuff and and if if they don't cook it right or if they add some water to it you know a little later to add some more you can still get sick from that do they have metal pots and pans and stainless steel or cast iron like what are they? Yeah, a lot of times they do get, well, they would make a tripod. I wonder if that's in the folder. They would make a tripod to smoke the meat. And so they would just use wood and leaves to cook the meat. But, yeah, they would bargain or get the scraps from either their slave masters

or someone they went and worked for. They would negotiate and bargain labor to get some kind of pot like that's discarded and yeah right there that's great that's that's uh babofi village the jerry village and um and that's kind of how they cook it so that one i think we brought with us though and they just cook it over the fire that one we, we got real hot. Normally, they don't waste wood, man. They just put an X or a cross of wood, and they just push it in from the sides. And so basically, it's just smoldering. There's no real flame.

And so that's how they cook. It's not even on a real hot flame. Wow. It's so much we take for granted living in civilization. Those huts, maybe you could go to the folder with my wife. It'll show some of the size of the pygmies and then also the huts. But it's crazy how they're living. This guy's Bajanji, but that behind him is one of our huts that we're staying in.

So their huts are, you know, chest height to us. And then living there, it's crazy. There's all sorts of stuff that come in there, spiders, snakes. Love those too. A lot of poisonous stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. A crazy story right here in this village was a spider. Actually, Emily had gone in there.

By the way way this is her first ever camping trip her first ever time camping she went hard yeah that's that's how you go hard i don't know if there's camping camp in the congo wow maybe there's another picture of a hut her and i but it's it's crazy because yeah right there um the rain had beat us there so um going from the roadside to getting to the actual village can take over an hour um it can take an hour and a half hiking and so rain had moved in and it just drenched us on her first night ever camping and then uh and there was roaches well it stopped raining and then you you're thinking that it's it's raining but it's actually or that sprinkling

but it's actually the legs of the roaches running on the leafs so that that freaked her out um and she had to get up and leave and uh i understood you know i walked her out it's gonna be okay she's like because one of the roaches had fallen on on her neck and she that that's when she kind of lost it and i don't know if i can do this wow but but after that she she embraced it and and really fell in love with the people. And then there was another crazy story with this gigantic spider, or at least to me, you'll know why I thought it was gigantic in a minute. But it was on her. What we would do is we'd put up a little tent,

almost like a mosquito net tent inside of the huts, so that she could be protected from all the mosquitoes and stuff like that. But Ben and I would sleep next to that, we we didn't have a mosquito net over us and um all of a sudden she saw this gigantic spider crawling on the mesh and she freaked out and um called for me and then it jumped it's like this tarantula kind of spider and it jumped onto the leaves and that's the wall it's just leaves and sticks um and so i grabbed a flip-flop trying to kill this tarantula and and whenever whenever I finally started to hit at it it slipped right behind one of the leafs and disappeared and she's like you didn't kill it and I'm like yeah I think I did and Ben's

like I killed yeah he killed it he killed And she's like, I want to see a leg, a body, something. I want to see its guts. And so anyways, right after that too, there's two chickens sleeping beside her, her tent in the wall. She's like, get these chickens out of here. So I grabbed them, got them out. But then the next day we woke up and she woke up before me and she was outside. The women were kind of painting, doing this awesome paintings on bark cloth. So it's cloth that is actually just bark. And so they're out there painting. It's bark cloth?

Like, what do you mean by cloth? They make like a cloth. It used to be clothing that they would wear, like, in traditional ceremonies. But it would be cloth that they, or bark that they would beat down. And it would kind of be like these fibers that would stick together. And it would actually be like a bark cloth You know, I'll have Emily bring you some of it. She's coming out here and we got you a knife because they can

bang down these knives into or bang down these nails into knives Super wicked looking and sharp, but they can make nails into knives. So we got you one of those. And it's nuts the things they can do. How big are these nails that they can turn them into a knife? They're normally pretty big, like from the lumber guys and stuff, whatever they're doing, if they're building ladders and things like that. And so they can do everything. And so she was out there watching them paint on this bark cloth.

I think if you just this bark cloth i think if you just google bark cloth they'll show it too but um uh and then i i step out of the hut and ben's standing there and when ben's standing there he looks at me and uh and all of a sudden he goes don't move and i said my eyes got big and i said why and whenever i said why all of a sudden i saw that big spider from the night before that tarantula it was in my at the time gigantic you know chest length um beard and its legs were just coming up right on my face and and ben literally just slapped you in the face oh my gosh so so hard just smacked me and and the the spider fell and um emily starts turning around and ben steps on top of the

tarantula because he doesn't want to freak her out she's like what just happened i said oh nothing nothing happened she's like what's going on and ben still you know moving his foot back and forth squashing the thing killing it making sure it's dead but um they're just crazy stuff out there like i've been able to pull out i think Emily and I counted five times in one night that I pulled these little roaches out of my beard because I guess they think it's like a nest or something like that why are you growing that crazy beard out there man well I didn't take any beard trimmers with me or anything like that but also I wanted to see how long it would get in a year and it's kind of an icebreaker for me it's kind of it's kind of funny or crazy but for me

they they've never seen something like it. I look like an animal to them a lot of times walking through. They have these jokes that I wouldn't want to come across him in a dark forest, you know, on a dark path. And I've come into the village, actually Bobofi, that one, whenever I first walked in, people grabbed their kids, jumped in their huts, or literally just booked it and disappeared through the forest because they didn't know. They've never seen anything like you before. Yeah, they've never seen a white dude. Never seen someone with white skin.

Did they know that white dudes exist? I'm sure there they did, but they've never seen it, never heard of it. They've heard stories. I mean, they've been told at times. It's almost like sometimes white guys are the boogeyman or something where, you know, if you don't behave, a white man's going to come get you or come eat you. Really? I've heard that before, yeah. Until I develop a relationship with them, and as goofy as it is, my hair, my hairy, hairy, enormously hairy arms and beard and long hair can be an icebreaker.

So I can first scare them, then it can be an icebreaker, and then it can be kind of entertainment for them. They braid my hair. They play with my beard, all that. Well, there's some great videos of you that have gone online that people have actually tweeted to me not even knowing that i know you of them seeing you for the first time of pygmies touching you and touching your beard and seeing your white skin for the first time yeah it's crazy some of the rumors that happened too is uh there was a neighboring village and he had sprinted from babofi back to bahaha'a. And he was visiting there, got terrified, ran away, and basically said that there was a big white ape that had walked into the village. And basically I was a great white Sasquatch or vanilla gorilla.

And it made him terrified. And so then he found out that we had been there there we'd gotten them land we'd dug a well we started farming yams and potatoes and beans and corn now there and so it's uh it's been it's been pretty funny another another thing was uh one of the slave master villages um had said that i came to uh to leave jim do you have your mic on? Is that what's going on? No, there's someone outside. Oh, there's someone outside? Yeah. My real reason of being there was because I would go and I would walk with them to the dirty water source.

If you pull up the bad water, I would carry it with them just to experience how long that they would have to walk. Sometimes they were walking five miles, five miles. With dirty water. with dirty water with dirty water to come back and cook with and give their kids and drink and bathe and those those uh i think are 20 gallons or 40 liters or something like that but they're they're like 30 40 pounds man and in my neck just doing that with them would get so incredibly sore in these i mean those are are grown women next to me and they're,

they're walking sometimes with two of them. Um, sometimes they're walking with two of those and, or, or, uh, one about half that size, but the, the other people from the other tribes that are bigger and stronger, they're walking with one on top of their head and one over their back. And it's just crazy. And, and, and one of those villages that said, what I really come there to do was study their streams, their creeks. And then I left behind my half fish, half woman and stationed them at each little creek and each little stream that I was going and investigating. So basically they were saying that I had brought mermaids to leave to leave at every every village and I'm like where did that come from like where did you guys think I'm coming up with a mermaid to come bring and leave here and they didn't

say it was evil or anything but they said I was bringing mermaids it's so strange it's like you are you know you're living in the 21st century but it's almost like you're you're going into this land that hasn't changed much in thousands of years, and they still have the same sort of mythologies and folklore that you'd expect from people that lived before education, before the internet, even before books. Yeah, I mean, it's like you're going back in time because people don't have cell phones. A lot of times what I would do is, yeah, we'd take pictures together. But then I'd come and I would go into town and I'd brought with me, I think it's called a selfie. It's like a little Canon printer. And I could print off photos that I took.

So I'd go back and them seeing themselves on my camera for the first time. Some of this is their first time seeing themselves. Whoa. Besides being in like a reflection of water or, I mean, they don't have mirrors. Whoa. They don't have cameras. They don't have any of that. So how did they see themselves besides their reflection?

And so, but what we would do is, I mean, there's been other people that have come into some of the villages and take pictures and they leave and then they never get to see them but we would go print them and we come back and we give them family photos we'd give them like a family portrait and uh and so but we would either put it in like almost a ziploc bag or or kind of do one time we did like this laminate kind of stuff on it because in their living conditions in their huts with the rain coming through it with their their ground sometimes turning to mud that they're sleeping on. Um, you know, we wanted to protect the pictures that we were giving them, but just something like that. It's a, it's a small gift to us, but to them, it just blows their mind that you can take a picture of them a moment in time.

You can go print it and then you can give it back to them and now they can have it for forever. If they keep it, keep it right. That's incredible, man. Is there any superstition involved in photographs like you heard with like the Native Americans? No, not there. Now, in other places like populated areas in Congo and Uganda and Rwanda, anywhere that there's been conflict, that then brings in a lot of reporters and other people. in conflict that then brings in a lot of reporters and, and, and other people like they, they come and they take pictures and the locals will say, oh, they're coming and taking our pictures. And then they're, they're, they're going and making money off of us. We don't get to see

those pictures, anything like that. So you have to be like, I'm not going around like a tourist and taking pictures. I'm, when I get into the village, you know, sometimes I pull it out for entertainment and, and, and show them themselves where they can, you know, in the iPhone where you can actually see yourself on the screen at that time and their eyes just light up. And it's like a mirror, but it's, you know, it's on a screen. And so it's crazy for them. That is so cool, man. What an amazing journey you've been on, man. I mean, just I know Loretta Hunt, who's sitting over here to our right, to your right, you've written a bunch of books, Loretta,

and she's writing a book about you right now. I want to read that book, man, because I think it's really fascinating. But I think a documentary is really what we need to see, too. Like someone needs to get out of some bad motherfuckers and go with a camera crew to the Congo, too. Yeah, well, we did something for Water 4, and it's on Vimeo, but it's called Freedom in the Congo too. Yeah. Well, we did something for Waterford and it's, it's on Vimeo, um, but it's called, uh, Freedom in the Congo. And it's a very, very well done seven minute documentary of kind of the work we were doing. Um, so yeah, it's called Freedom in the Congo on Vimeo.

And the, what was so cool was this guy that came to film it, his name's Derek Watson, and he's done stuff for National Geographic and PBS. And he's done like full documentaries and got a woman named Sister Rosemary that was helping girls that were abducted by the LRA and made, quote unquote, wives of them. But really, they're just sex slaves. She would help them out. His documentary got her in Time Magazine's top 100 people. But anyways, he snuck in a GoPro drone. Here it is right here.

So it's just flying over the forest. Wow, you get a sense of what the forest looks like. Yeah, man. That's what I thought, you know, living in my American bubble. You know, there's no slaves today. You got rid of that in the 1800s. Slavery in today's age? Why? Why should it exist Mary gonna treat it over so come on but I'm gonna be gonna say my test

I'm gonna say some money for answer but you walk you say my name booty way this This is all subtitled for folks that are just listening to this. Freedom in the Congo, check it out on Vimeo. Their slave masters come up to me and say, what are you here doing with my animals? What are you here doing with my property? I own these people. That's them getting paid two bananas. They just need to be given a few fish, a few bananas, something small

so that they can come back and work the next day. So that they're hungry enough that they have to come back and work the next day. they have to come back and work the next day yeah let's leave this for people to watch the full thing so they don't yeah one thing on that that we're going to edit um just just to to know is it says on there um it says bantu on it and and yeah they are some of the slave masters there. It's the Bantu and the Pygmies, but really it's the Machapala. And it's basically the non-Pygmies. Again, we want to work with both sides, and we want to add to each.

We don't want to take away. We don't want to hurt them in the process, but we want to educate them that, hey, we're both equals, and how can we do this in the best way possible? So we're changing that just so that there's nothing seen like we're trying to point them out, because they're the biggest people group in all of Africa. And most of them live where there aren't even pygmies. But where there are pygmies, most of the time the pygmies are being enslaved. Do these guys know, these pygmy folks, do they know that you fought in the UFC? Do they understand what the UFC is?

Trying to explain it, they kind of wonder how can that be a job because they've only seen physical conflict um whenever there's a real dispute you know and there's there's not really martial arts there um but but they they do kind of wrestle around some and um but it's gotten me out of out of trouble before um in the congo i had a tops card and uh and i i just kept it with me on me and i'd try to show them, and it was me just blasting a guy, hitting him in the chin. It was – anyways, yeah, they were being real corrupt and everything, and I showed them it and ended up signing and just giving it to them.

They let us go instead of paying any money. Give them a baseball card or an MMA version of the baseball card. They were going to try to steal – well, Jay Lua, he's my grandfather, he gave me a pygmy bow and arrow. Well, a bunch of arrows and a bow. And this guy was just saying that it was illegal for me to have it. And I'm like, it's a gift. He's like, no, no, no, you came here to come take our artifacts back to your country and make thousands of dollars. And if you're going to make those thousands of dollars and you have to give me

hundreds of dollars like that's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen and so he's like trying to pull it out of my hand i said what if i give you this and just gave him the gave him the the ufc tops card and uh talked to him and played around with him and you know if you just sometimes when they're asking you to give them something matt actually taught it to me the guy in the video um from water for he if they if they ask for you to give them something sometimes you just got to give them anything and they'll let you go it can be a bottle of water it can be a passion fruit can be a banana um one time it was a it was a guy said you got to give me something or i'm not gonna let you go so i just wrapped him up in a big bear hug. Afterwards I said, there, I gave you a hug. And he was laughing, you know.

And in between us, you know, he's got a machine gun. And so we're hugging. Whoa, Jesus Christ. Bear hug to do with a machine gun? Well, he wasn't holding on to it and, like, pointing it at me or anything. They just always have him around them. That's still a bold move. And Matt had done basically that same thing in, I think, Togo, where he was doing water wells all throughout there.

He's done hundreds there. But yeah, it's just sometimes you got to find a way to make them laugh or to make them like you or to try to find a way to get the job done. Do they speak English when you're communicating with these people? Some of them are. Some of them are pretty educated. It's crazy how, I think it's harder for us in our culture to learn languages because we don't grow up learning several languages at once. But there, they're growing up learning four, five, six languages at one time.

And so some of them, yeah, they speak English very flu fluently and are they learning this from school are they learning this from school or a lot of times the military are learning it from their jobs their work if there's humanitarian organizations that that are speaking English and different things like that yeah what is the end game for you here I mean you you're obviously improving their lives dramatically by creating these wells and bringing them medicine. What do you eventually hope to do? Well, that's a that's a big question, but I'll try to simplify it. I just want them to know that they're loved, that that they're not forgotten and that this is a lifelong thing for me.

There's no way, I mean, it doesn't matter what's going on. I'm going to be going there my entire life. And what I hope is just to add to their life. Like for me, whenever I sit back and I say, okay, what does a perfect world look like? sit back and I say okay what does a perfect world look like and how can I try to take action to see that the good comes into the world instead of the bad so the evil so the the kids dying of dirty water you know what can I do as a person to to see that that is alleviated at least a little bit even just for one person if I can do that and so for me and my my pygmy family like I don't want to see

that that same kind of suffering them we've actually seen them set free now and we've seen them get clean water and seen them have food and and that's hopefully just the beginning of of different things that will be a lifelong way to to sustain them and in the people in that region when when you're there and you you you hang out with these people especially when they know that you've done you know the UFC and they understand that you like participate in professional conflict as it were do you teach them things do you ever like have a class there I've shown a few of them uh about maybe 10 or 15 of the men

one time just some little little wrestling i was teaching them uh an arm drag um just because i didn't want people falling down and getting hurt or something like that right so teach them an arm drag a throw by um a little bit of a double leg but how to set them down easy um so it's fun and then they really grasped onto it um and a guy named by wanja by wanja just he loved it and he would go around and he would be grabbing on to everybody arm dragging them yeah arm dragging them jumping on their back you teach them how to take the back yeah yeah from an arm drag or a throw by you know from a throw by not not on the ground grappling but i would yeah, he would get behind him. That was just his natural reaction was to be a spider monkey, just jump on their back,

Marcelo Garcia style, be the back on them. Yeah. That's awesome. What about striking? Do you teach him any striking? No, I haven't done that, man. I think for me now it hasn't been a big thing showing him martial arts. It's my big passion.

I'd love for him to, but it's just kind of hard being in the jungle, in the forest. There's trees everywhere. There's stumps everywhere. Right. It's hard to get a nice space to grapple. Yeah, I would imagine that would be, especially for takedowns, right? Yeah, definitely. Fall down, land on a log up your ass.

When you are planning, I mean are have you committed to this plan of fighting again or is it still something that you have in your head i haven't haven't uh like announced it or formally made a plan with anybody yet but um for me my family my wife and and the team takedown guys know that i'm gonna make a real real real stab at it so you're definitely gonna do it i'm gonna do it so you do that, how much time will you spend here and how much time will you spend there, and how much time do you spend here and there right now? Yeah, well, I've been going since 2011,

and I've taken month-long trips there until this last one, which was a one-year trip. And if I go back into fighting, it would only allow me probably to go there one, two, or max three times a year for anywhere from two to four weeks at a time. So I would love to train hard, to fight hard. I'll never have, I know one thing's for sure. I'll never have more motivation to beat a dude, to go in there, to get my hand raised, not just for me, but for starting my family with my wife, but also for the family there in Congo, that more is going to be added

to them and to alleviate what's going on there. Now, were you released by the UFC or did you just stop fighting? Like, what happened? Yeah, I was released and then I fought and I won three fights and I stepped away. I'm sure there was an open door to go back. What organization did you win three fights with? Ring of Fire. Okay.

So you were in Denver fighting in Denver. And then I fought in Vegas once for another promotion. Fought a dude that I think was 6-0 at the time and stopped him. For me, though, I be uh it wouldn't be a step right back into that level of the ufc right not right away i'd have to work my way back up to that um but you know what though if if the right opponent and stuff like that comes along but but for me i i want to train hard but smart be strategic about the matchups um i mean me i'm a competitor whenever i i was wrestling at kenny monday as my high school coach olympic gold medalist kindle cross olympic

gold medalist then i went to olympic training center so something i think if you ask brendan or or anyone that's trained with me they'll they'll say that i'm a competitor and that my heart or or spirit is a spirit of a fighter heart of monday's that team takedown yeah that's great that's something that is is you know is a light bulb i was amazed that they let him go with the black zillions i was like are you crazy do you know what a wealth of knowledge that guy has when it comes to i mean i guess it was a personality conflict or something like that but man what a great coach that guy is and a great wrestler yeah for with me high school and then ever since then,

and then even now, whenever I stepped away, he fully 100% supported everything and said that he loves what I'm doing. But what's so great about Coach Money is he really will invest into people and really teach them slick stuff that you're not going to find from a high school or college program. Like this is Olympic-level stuff that's coming from all over the world, and it's the little things that matter. And so he's able to teach us those things.

He's a great man. Yeah, I thought he was a great addition to Team Takedown. I saw him when he was training and working with Johnny Hendricks in the rematch with Robbie Lawler. What's going on right now with Johnny Hendricks? Are you training with him? Are you there with him in Dallas? I've watched him train. I haven't really stepped in there yet. I think for me right now, I Hendricks? Are you training with him? Are you there with him in Dallas? I've watched him train.

I haven't really stepped in there yet. I think for me right now, I'm out of shape. I'm out of shape and I want to come back in. My problem was that I would come back too soon and then injuries would happen. So I'm going to get my core and all that back before I step in there with those guys. What do you weigh?

Right now, 280. 280? Yeah, 280 right now. Wow. Yeah, and so I'll have to with those guys. What do you weigh? Right now? 280. 280? Yeah, 280 right now. Wow. Yeah. And so I'll have to get back down. I'll probably be around 255, around fight time, 250. That's me coming back from Congo, having no food, coming back and having all the food at my disposal. Barbecue, baby. Yeah. Are you living in Dallas? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And my grandpa owns several barbecue restaurants. Oh, how dare you have Texas barbecue something special man Yeah, wow, that's a you're living an incredible life man You know

I think it'd be really fascinating if you did come back and what a story that would be and how I mean it would generate an incredible amount of press and Incredible amount of attention towards what you're trying to do in the Congo. Well that that's of attention towards what you're trying to do in the Congo. Well, that's humbling to hear because, I mean, I respect your opinion so much of being in the fight game for so long. I want to be realistic about it and say, like, right now I'm not looking at the world champion level, you know, I'm not aiming at that right now, but that could be a future goal once I get back into it, get in shape um and really start start start just knocking some dudes down do you know how crazy it would be if you got to

to the point where you're fighting for the title do you know how fucking bananas that would be that would be nuts but i mean you want to talk about the most incredible pr campaign ever i mean you want to talk about some someone that you could really get behind and root for? Jesus Christ, you'd have the whole world rooting for you. It's a goddamn Rocky movie. I'm getting goosebumps. Wow. That would be crazy, man. Yeah.

If you could really get into, like, top shape. Yeah, that's the thing. I would love that. That would be the perfect world. That's the thing. Like, I feel like in my heart, that's one of my deepest desires is to fight and contend for the highest possible good in every circumstance. Like, it doesn't matter if it's there or here, whatever it is, whenever I'm meeting somebody, like, what can I do to add to the lives of another? And if I can do that through fighting, something that I'm very passionate about, I mean think yeah I mean it's humbling that goes through

my mind I try to be realistic try to but but at the same time um I'm a big dreamer and I think that if if I could do I mean that would be obviously the the the cat's pajamas if I could if I could be the champ and cat's pajamas could you imagine if you won the title I mean that would be unbelievable obviously that's going to take some superhuman dedication to hit that level. You don't get to that level without it. No. But, yeah, that's what's so motivating about me getting back into it is I see a huge opportunity to fulfill that first promise I gave him.

Man, I was standing at the grave of Andy Bo, and I had held him in my hands and I'd had his blood on me and I'd I'd I'd buried him and And it was so tough so hard and then one of the chiefs came to me and said nobody knows About what's happening to us. Nobody knows about the suffering and he said I know you can't promise us Water land any of that stuff, but can you can you can you tell people can you can you can you at least? You know give us a voice and so that's whenever I I made that promise and and so me going back into fighting it be Extremely emotional for me to get back into it to get back in shape to go back in there to knock some dudes out

Like they're gonna have to they're gonna have to put me away Really like really put me away for me not to To do everything my power to win that fight that fight well you've always had a ridiculous chin that was like one of your biggest assets you take a tremendous shot has that always been the case i they people would always joke saying i have some get that big viking head dude yeah well even at heavyweight my head's normally like twice the size of everyone else so it's an easy target but but it's but it but it takes a beating was it uh tough watching a fellow viking go down this weekend what was so tough was like him afterwards like even with with anthony saying that you know he's

crying i can't even celebrate that was tough well he's so loved there man i mean it's uh he literally is carrying the entire country on his back there I mean there's a tremendous amount of pressure involved in that a tremendous amount of love to they they fucking love Gustav so I mean they were cheering for him after he lost no but it was like in America I mean I want to shit on America but man when people lose in America everybody fucking clears out of the arena right away yeah you know and nobody cleared out after he lost they stuck around and they wait I mean you're talking about an arena filled with 26,000 people too it's a

long fucking commute it's zero degrees outside it's cold as fuck and they all stuck around they were they were chanting out his name after he lost Wow I didn't know that I knew that it was it was a deafening silence when he lost yeah I could just start crying if I start thinking about it I could have started crying then you know watching him it. I could have started crying then, you know, watching him. It was pretty intense. But I was so blown away by Rumble, too. It was like this combination of moments.

I mean, that's often how it is when you watch fights. It's like there's a combination of moments. Like, I'm a big fan of Jon Jones, but I'm also a big fan of Daniel Cormier. I love Daniel. I love both those guys as human beings as well as as fighters. So after Jon Jones trounced Daniel, part of me was like, man, I feel sorry for Daniel. But the other part of me was like, god damn, Jon Jones is a bad motherfucker.

It's like there's this weird sort of you revel in the moment for the guy who won. Also, you've got to look at a guy like Gustafsson and go, wow, that's hard for him. That's got to be hard. It's really cool hearing that about the Swedish fans, though. I mean, that's a reason why I loved Pride, was that the fans were so educated. And they would sit there, you know, quiet and polite, and then whenever they would appreciate

even the moves of grappling, you know, passing full guard to half guard, and they would clap, you know. That's something that here you's that's something that here we're starting to see that more now yeah you know and people understand positions like uh someone will move to a mount you'll hear like a big cheer like throughout the audience or people understand but yeah japan it's a very very different environment there's it's incredibly quiet while the fights are going on yeah and then there's a cheer when when there's some sort of a transition or someone does something good Yeah, and they also they don't put as much of an emphasis on winning as they do as much as you fought your hardest

Yeah And there's always going to be people that beat you like you could you could train your hardest and you run into somebody Who's just far better than you and there's just nothing you can do about it. That guy's always going to beat you. There's certain guys like, perfect example, Stefan Bonner when he fought Anderson Silva. You fight your hardest, man. You're not going to beat Anderson Silva. He's better.

He's just better. He trains just as hard. He's probably just as smart, if not smarter. He knows way more. He can move as hard. He's probably just as smart, if not smarter. He knows way more. He can move way better. But in Japan, when a guy would fight like that, they would still appreciate your warrior spirit. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

It's like that samurai kind of spirit. America, we just like winners. Yeah. We like winners. When you lose, people will get on your fucking Facebook page. They'll get on your Twitter page. I mean, I've read some, I don't want to call them fans, just douchebags that torment people after they lose.

And I've read some of the tweets, and it's just fucking appalling. It's appalling that these anonymous shitheads who go on these guys' pages after they've spent, you know, eight weeks plus camps every day preparing for this moment. And then they get, they get trounced and then people just go off on them and they make memes about them and they mock them. And, you know,

it's, that's a very unfortunate aspect of our culture that they put so much emphasis on, on the winner only. But it's on the other hand it's like that cruelty and that intense pressure it's also why the baddest motherfuckers come out of that culture it's like people that can withstand that and you know i mean it's there's a yin and a yang and the yin is harder and the yang is harder it's it's weird you know there's i don't think it's the right way to be i certainly don't think there's enough respect paid to the people that lose in in mma in

america i think i appreciate the japanese version of it better i don't like win bonuses either i mean uh i don't know the ufc probably doesn't like to hear this but i think i think a guy should be paid a certain amount to fight and i know that guys are going to fight their fucking hardest. I mean, they're not fighting harder because they get a win bonus. They're trying to survive. I mean, you could say that. I mean, you could explain that more than anybody, but you're trying to win, you know?

A win bonus? Like, the fact that you can make 50% more if you win than you do if you lose, like, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Cause once you get to a certain level, at least, yes. You know, once you get to a certain level, man, I don't think it, it does make you fight harder afterwards. It sucks more. Yeah. It sucks more because now you can't, you can't pay the bills that you were hoping to and things like that. Well, Tyron Woodley had a really good statement recently. We was talking about how people are always saying, you know,

don't leave it in the hands of the judges. He's like, do you fucking think we're trying to leave it in the hands of the judges? Yeah. You know, they're fighting the best guys in the goddamn world. And there's, it's like you do what you can do.

And if you do more than that, like if you do something stupid or you do something illogical or you do something reckless, you can get knocked the fuck out. I mean, that's – you have to – I'm a big fan of guys fighting intelligently. And when people fight intelligently, sometimes it's not the most entertaining fight. But that is the fight that you have to – that's the way you have to perform in order to use your skills to the best of your ability you know and people don't understand that and this idea that like they're trying to leave it in the hands

of the judges i mean occasionally you'll see a guy fight safe yeah you know you see a guy that goofy fight um where the goofy ending nate corey versus who was it where he's walking oh yeah yeah walking him down like that yeah i'm sure they wouldn't want to pay him the same amount i'm sure they were happy that they paid him 50 yes so that's that's the worst example of all time yeah and i don't know what was wrong with caleb starnes in that fight but yeah that's a i mean those memes exist that'll haunt that dude forever yeah you know yeah without a doubt but i think yeah once you get to a certain level and they're in and if you're a real competitor that does have the eye on the top prize, then you're going to fight your heart out every single time.

I'm glad Woodley said that. That's a very important point. I hadn't heard that. That's great. Yeah, I don't like that. Don't leave it in the hands of the judges. You know, oh, come on. You know, it's just – and then the judge thing, too, is a real issue.

Like in Boston, there was a few hard decisions where people just went what and people just turned around we're looking at each other i love watching a decision when a decision is bad i always turn towards the crowd because i like watching people look at each other like what the because you'll see like head turns when people like turn to their their friends like what the fuck just happened how did that happen yeah there's some bad fucking judging man there's some really really bad judging and it didn't help that it was in boston where the white guys were getting the good judges the good call you know because boston where i'm from is not exactly known for for being the least racist place on the planet. Yeah, I don't want to sound sexist at all, but one of my fights on the—

Too late. Oops. Whatever you say. I don't want to—sorry. On the Ultimate Fighter, when I fought Big Country, two of the three judges we had were women, um two of the three judges we had were were women and one had gray hair and the other had her two kids that were running around running around at the the ultimate fighter like jim and and so she was worried about her kids while we were warming up for the fight and then and then i'm not saying that affected the decision um it could have gone a third round uh i definitely believe that but

but at the same time like it was just nuts to me that I'm like, whoa, how are these the judges in Vegas? Not that, I mean, but I think that judges should at least have had to have trained or fought before or really had to have gone through some deep training to become a judge. Yeah, there's no way you understand it any other way. I don't, especially the ground game. You know, there's a judge, I don't want to say his name, but he told me that he was watching a fight once, and there was a woman who was also judging, and the guy was going for a Kimura, and the woman said, what's he doing? Oh, my gosh.

She said to him, what's he doing? Like, what's he doing? Like, God damn. See, for my fight, it was nuts because I'm like, this woman, I don't know that she's ever, I mean, maybe she had really watched MMA and studied it, but she's got gray hair. It's not normally into her, you know, element and then her time zone or whatever. But then also the other lady that brought her kids there, I'm like, do they know what these moves are that we're doing? Like, do they know the names of them?

Do they know the setups? Do they know the defenses? Do they know what's going on during the fight? them do they know the setups do they know the defenses do they know what's going on during the fight while that while that human chess match is going on do they know what the fighters are thinking doing how they're making it happen and if they don't they shouldn't be judging there's no way they should be judging i mean there's so many fans of mma and i've said this many times i've even said this on broadcast there's so many incredibly knowledgeable fans of mma that if they held open casting calls for new judges

you would get incredibly qualified people who have either trained their whole lives or competed multiple times that enjoy the sport love the sport like you if you decided to never like Ricardo Almeida he's a judge in in New Jersey that's great I don't know yeah he judges in New Jersey and that's a guy I would trust yeah fucking without a doubt. Or even if it was a girl, if it was one of the women that had fought before, trained before, you know, like a Rose or a Rhonda or someone like that, like I could trust their judgment.

Yeah, and I think you should be like, God, you've got to have some grappling experience because grappling seems to be the most confusing. It seems like if someone, like, is hitting the other guy more and the other guy gets stunned, it's kind of obvious, oh, that guy's winning the fight. But if you're watching, say, a guy who's really slick on the ground, like fill in the blanks, some guy who's got a nasty guard, and he's putting this guy in all sorts of bad positions, but the other guy's on top, sometimes people like Charles Oliveira,ivera perfect example he fought jeremy stevens i mean he was catching jeremy stevens and all kinds of shit but jeremy's a beast and he kept

pulling out of it but in for my money he's winning the exchanges i mean he he had him like threatened with arm bars he's threatening with all this sort of shit off of his back if you don't know what the fuck is going on you're watching that i think got on top swimming exactly you might be inclined to think that and i think with a person who's trained you you you understand it way better and i just think it's unfair like just deeply deeply deeply unfair for a professional fighter who's taken eight weeks out of his life and and just every morning got up sore and did his road work and, you know, hitting the pads and sparring and doing constant drills and strength and conditioning. You're jumping over hurdles. You're doing all this fucking shit.

You want to puke blood. You're throwing up. And then some a-hole who doesn't know shit about what they're talking about gives the other person. They just go left or right, you know. Oh, pick this guy. Yeah. And it's a lot more than that eight weeks of training, too. That all goes into it. All of the stuff that ever came before it

and all your heart, all your soul, all that. And then what is, I was going to ask, what is even the process to become a judge? Because I don't even know what that is. Well, it depends on the athletic commission. Okay. I mean, the local athletic commissions, there's a lot of local athletic commissions

where they do a better job than the bigger athletic commissions, really, because the people that are involved are dedicated mixed martial artists like in in Boston I know Joe Esposito was part of the Commission and Joe Esposito was my first karate instructor I mean he's a guy was a lifelong martial artist so he is a very credible source of martial arts knowledge means I've been involved his whole life whereas you've got people in Nevada that came from boxing They were boxing judges and then someone said, you know, we need judges for MMA, you know

We'll just take take these boxing people and you know, we'll use them to judge MMA fights. It's fucking crazy I mean, it's really crazy. Well, you know, you've got people that don't understand how much a leg kick hurts Yeah, they don't think that that's anything, you know, you've got people that don't understand how much a leg kick hurts they don't think that that's anything you know you've got people that they have no idea what's going on when you're watching infighting up against the cage they have no idea you know who's getting the better of those exchanges they just don't know they just see bodies moving you know and they just they don't you know see guys reversing positions back and forth and they really don't understand what's happening yeah it's a it's a it's a real shame because the sport is growing in such in such a huge way I mean it's it's exploding all over the world and leaps and bounds but then

you're hampered by these bad judge calls you know yeah it's terrible I know that it's robbed a lot of people of not just you know their their passion their hopes to win the fight but even that 50% win bonus. Yeah, that's disgusting. Yeah, so they're actually taking money out of people's pockets that should have won the fight. If you decide, and you have decided, I guess, to go and do this, what's your timetable?

How much time are you going to spend training before you get in there? I think I need at least maybe before my first fight, maybe around six months of actually once I'm in shape, then training, which I'll be getting in shape while I'm training. But actually before I start taking some of the bigger, tougher fights, maybe it's a year, maybe it's longer than that. It's not something that I'm going to do in the next month or two months or three months. It's got to be a process of really getting my lungs back getting my core you know um tightened up so it prevents injuries getting the timing back of the striking you know and timing back of you and the transitions on the ground that chain wrestling or

or just flowing and grappling so you starting that process right now so you've already like tightened up your diet and started to train harder and started just slowly ramping it up? Begun to. One thing that I'm getting done before I really maybe start sparring, before I start, yeah, before I start sparring, things like that, is I'm getting my knee checked. I got an MRI done. And so a doctor says it could be, I mean, an MRI, like, scope can be three days down. But I might get something scoped either before or after my first fight back. Three days down?

What do you mean? Someone, well, even Loretta's husband was down for only three days after getting his meniscus scoped. Three days. Listen, I've had my meniscus scoped a couple times. This shit's more than three days. I know it could be two weeks, three weeks, six weeks. It could be all that. You want to make sure that you don't.

There's a lot of guys that have had knee operations and then got in too soon and done more damage. Yeah, that's brutal. You're dealing with pain and inflammation. They're cutting away soft tissue. It's not nearly as big a deal as ligaments, but it's so important with knee injuries especially to do the rehab. Just do the full rehab. You'll listen. I mean, I'm sure if you get it done, you'll get it done at a reputable place,

and you'll talk to a really good doctor. Right now it's the Denver Broncos knee doc that I'm talking to. Perfect. He's a great guy. What's their prognosis as far as how long? First MRI we sent, his office, we think lost, but I sent another one out. They lost it? Yeah.

Well, it got lost in the mail or something, but we sent it. And the second one he's looking at, though, I went in for an exam. He started moving my knee around. He said it feels like there's something with my meniscus, and whenever I move it around, it cracks a lot. But I don't know that it's going to be something that keeps me out from the first fight.

Maybe it's something I do right after. But I think it would be good probably to get it done before. Get it done before. Yeah, get it done before so I can done before. Yeah. Get it done before. So I can train right. That's what fucked Kane up in the rematch or the fight with Verdum. His meniscus. He blew his meniscus out earlier and then, you know, sort of rest and rehabbed and then tried to go back again without getting the operation and then wound up having to get

an operation. Yeah. It's the same knee injury that he had when the first fight with Junior Dos Santos. Right. For me, before I won a actually hard spar, I know it might sound kind of goofy to some, but I think there's truth to it. My wife was a swimmer in high school,

and so getting into swimming, something that's low impact, but also that's going to be great on my lungs, cardio. You don't even notice that you're sweating, you know? So swimming, we would do that at the Olympic Training Center. We'd play underwater hockey 12 foot deep. We'd down and just um have teams and have to score a goal and swimming's not goofy at all yeah swimming and yoga is what i'm gonna get into hard just to get me back my body back in in shape in a way that that my core starts to catch up and develop before i go in there and get put in these um funky position sparring or picking a catch up and develop before I go in there and get put in these funky positions

sparring or picking a guy up and that's been one of my problems sometimes I'm slamming a guy or something and that's when I get hurt because I came back from a back injury and then I slam him and then I re-hurt that right back injury and I should have should have rehabbed it better should have should have taken the time to really build my core back up so so that's going to be not my focus I'm gonna be doing everything else but but that's going to be a priority of mine at the beginning is swimming and yoga. Well, listen, dude, we're behind you a hundred percent and your website. Let's put it out there one more time. Fight for the forgotten.org.com. Yeah. And then water4.org. Water4.org, fightforthevergotten.com. And there's a donate button on there. So please, whatever you can do, folks, donate.

This is a beautiful cause. I think what you're doing is awesome. It's so inspirational. And you're just an awesome guy, man. Just happy to give you a platform to let people know what you're doing. Yeah, well, I can't thank you enough for what you've done for even, I mean, I know you don't even want props, but whenever you did the Bitcoin and then whatever came in, you matched it. I mean, that funded a well plus more.

Let's fund some more wells, baby. Let's do it. I'd be more than happy. That'd be awesome, man. Thank you so much. You're an awesome guy. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Justin the Viking on Twitter, holler at him. Go tweet him and go to the website and donate whatever you can. This is a real, legit, awesome, humanitarian cause. And you're an awesome guy.

Thank you, Justin. Thank you so much. All right, fuckers. We'll be back in a little bit with Eddie Huang. He's got a new CBS sitcom. And we'll be right back with him at 3 o'clock, which is about 25 minutes. See you.