The Joe Rogan Experience - #682 - Mark & Chris Bell

Episode Date: August 12, 2015

Mark Bell is an elite powerlifter and owner of Team Super Training Gym in Sacramento, CA. Chris Bell is a writer, director, and filmmaker known for the documentary "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" and his new documentary called "Prescription Thugs" premieres in the fall.

All right, we're live gentlemen. What's up? Hey now, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Thank you bigger stronger faster. It was uh, It was a documentary that I could not um There were so many people that were talking about it You couldn't avoid like having a conversation about it, especially like in the ufc Because so many fighters have been accused to take a performance enhancing drugs and there's so many conversations about that So, uh, I always wanted to talk to you guys and I watched it again I watched I watched like the first half of it when it first came out, and then I watched it all again this morning to check it out.

Did it bore you the first time, or why didn't you watch it all the way through? I don't remember. I think it was on a plane, and I think the plane probably landed, and I shut my laptop, and I never picked it up again. Just forgot about it. Yeah. What did you think of it? It was great.

Great documentary, and interesting and honest it was really hilarious when you're going over the people that like what's the number one reason to go to the hospital and then they like aspirin fucking vitamin c and then below that was steroids and then steroids was way down i think the amount of deaths it's like steroid deaths are like slightly above water, drinking water. Yeah, there's no real proof to link anything scientifically. You know, you can have anecdotal evidence on a lot of things, but nothing scientifically links steroids to these deaths. This is a real problem with some people. They don't want to hear that.

And they don't want to hear it because they don't, there's like a, there's a narrative that we're being taught in this country or that we're being told to embrace. That narrative is steroids are for cheaters and cheaters are losers and losers aren't American. But as you highlighted in your movie, over and over and over again, all these examples of different athletes that were caught with performance enhancing drugs. Whether it's the guy from the Tour de France, whether it was Carl Lewis. The Carl Lewis thing was fucking hilarious. Because a lot of people don't know, when Ben Johnson got tested positive for steroids, they stripped him of his medal. Carl Lewis tested positive for amphetamines.

Yeah, he wasn't even supposed to run. Yeah, the whole thing's crazy. I mean, they're all doped up. But like you said about the narrative that they want you to believe, the narrative doesn't come from health problems. The narrative comes from, you know, nobody's concerned about the health of the athlete. We say that, but nobody really is concerned about the health of the athlete. They're concerned about an unfair advantage. Yeah. They're concerned about someone being able to do what we suspected the Russians were doing back in the fifties. And that was really

enlightening too. When you were talking to that guy that was saying that they had found out about it from the Russians doing it in the 1950s. And from then on, they were doping. Yeah, over shots of vodka. They were actually hanging out with the Russian strength coach. And he was a little loose, loosey-goosey. And he sort of slipped up and was like, yeah, we're giving our guys testosterone. So as soon as that got out of the bag, Dr. Ziegler raced home and he created Dianabol, which was even a stronger steroid than was currently available on the market. And they started testing guys with like five milligrams of Dianabol. And of course, they found other ways to get it through the testing facility

or however they were getting their hands on it once it was manufactured. And that's when it became, you know, the Wild West basically. It was like people started taking 20 milligrams and getting way stronger. It's kind of crazy, because if you want to get better at something, people don't have a problem with people using certain means, or people don't have a problem with someone going to a supplement store and purchasing something that doesn't work. But as soon as you take something that's powerful, people are like, well, wait a second. We don't want you doing that good.

I was just telling people that the strongest shit i ever took they made illegal but you used to be able to buy it at gnc it was called mag 10 do you remember that stuff oh yeah totally yeah oh my god that stuff i took that shit for like whatever it was like six weeks i gained like 10 pounds i was jacked up all the time it was like a bunch of pills you had to take like 10 pills and after it was over my dick died like it got hit with a meteor my dick was useless yeah it was useless like it took me for my testosterone to come back it was like oh this is steroids like real steroids you could buy a gnc so they made it illegal those drugs are

more dangerous than the actual real testosterone blow you and all kinds of stuff too yeah i don't know what the fuck was in it either i just bought it because it was legal yeah probably a lot of salt. Fucking sodium. A lot of those pills, what they do is they'll give you a huge surge of estrogen as well. Yeah, bad for the tits. Did your tits grow, too? No, they didn't.

I got lucky. But, you know, that's what one of the guys who was on the U.S. powerlifting team with Bruce Jenner thinks happened to Jenner. He believes that, well, first of all, he said he knows that they had Jenner thinks happened to Jenner he he believes that well first of all he said he knows that they had Jenner pumped full of steroids he said we were all on steroids because Jenner was absolutely pumped full of steroids and he said that was what started his like training is where I'm heading just stay on dude you know that's that's interesting but mark and i had this talk the other day and i think that um this whole like gender issue and transgender and all these

uh different things like i don't know how much that's linked to testosterone levels or not like i don't know if there's that many definitive studies on like whether your testosterone like if you have a high estrogen level just someone because someone's gonna be trained they don't have testosterone yeah there's a lot of people that are if you have a high estrogen level. Yeah, because someone's gay, they don't have testosterone levels. Yeah, there's a lot of people that are gay that have very high testosterone levels. And a lot of people can kick ass, too. They're gay. But those are gay.

They don't identify as female. There is a difference there. I don't know how that actually correlates. I haven't read the studies on that stuff. I think it's probably as difficult for us to understand as to understand what it's like to be a woman. It's like you don't get it. You don't get it. Like they probably don't get what it's like to not want to be a woman.

You're like, I'm good. You're like, are you sure you don't want to be a woman? Like, I'm good. I'm good. For me, it's everything. All right, well, good luck. In the powerlifting world, in the world of powerlifting, it's been sort of turned on its ear by a guy named uh matt crock is that his name crock aletsky uh marks uh can tell you a little bit more about him but uh i've been friends with him for about a decade um i've known about his uh

issue for about six or seven years now and he's actually going to be on my show uh coming up soon but you know he's uh transgender and he's you know it's ruined uh relationships for him many times over he's got three kids he's a good father he's he's a good person it's ruined relationships for him many times over. He's got three kids. He's a good father. He's a good person. He's a good dude. Or female.

He's a good woman now. He's a good woman. But the issue is really interesting, and that's why I want to talk to him and try to help people just better understand it. Because people get so mad. That's the thing that I don't get. I do understand voicing your opinion and saying, fuck, man, that's weird. Like, that makes sense to me.

But people actually getting mad and committing hate crimes and stuff, to me, is just disgusting. I'm not on board with that. Yeah, it is disgusting. And I just got to think that it comes from their family, from the way they're raised, that their parents are ignorant. It's the only thing that makes any sense. Right. I just think that we're moving past that.

I think there's more awareness and more acceptance for those sort of issues that people have than ever before. Yeah, this country worries about some fucked up shit. There's a lot worse things going on. What about the lion? What about Cecil? You're on steroids. Who cares? Cecil the lion and steroids. Every day another cop's shooting somebody,

and we're worried about that. We concern ourselves so much more with the tabloid media than we do with what's really going on in this country. Well, the cop shooting part, you know, is a horrible thing. But cops on steroids is something that people don't talk about too much. It's kind of hilarious when you see cops busting people for steroids because we all know, anybody who knows people that take steroids knows that cops are on steroids. Absolutely. A giant chunk of them.

Cops busted our brother with steroids. And they were probably on it when they were busting him. They confiscated it. They confiscated it and they never found it again. And then every cop in Poughkeepsie where we're from got huge. They took like a thousand pills of Dianabol from him. And next thing you know, the cops are walking around all jacked. Everyone's all jacked.

Well, I had talked to a guy who's a cop I used to work out with, and he had a rational explanation. He's like, look, man, he goes, it's fucking gross out there. He goes, it's dangerous as fuck, and you got to be on top of your game, and you want to have an edge. Meanwhile, dude was 5'7", he weighed 250. I'm like, you got a couple of edges. You got edges all over your body, dude. It's just so fucking jacked.

That's great. How do you even move like that? Not very well. Well, all someone would have to do is get a hold of him and hang on. All you got to do with a guy like that is ride the bull. He's got about 30 seconds in him. Look, if you taught those guys what you know in jiu-jitsu, they'd be much more effective than taking steroids,

but that's probably the easier route, right? That would help, but the reality is you're dealing with guns and knives and shit like that. Yeah, so no matter how big you are, it doesn't even really matter, right? No. Well, you definitely should know how to defend yourself physically, 100%. Every cop should be a black belt in something. You should know what it's like to be in a wild melee with another person who's trying to kill you with their hands.

But that's not going to protect you from guns and knives and all that gun defense stuff. That's an art in and of itself. There's some guys who are experts in taking guns away from people and shit. Good luck with all that. What do you think the major difference is between UFC and Pride? Pride, I don't think they really had rules. They definitely had rules because they had no elbows. No, I just meant testing-wise.

Oh, testing-wise. Yeah, no, they didn't have rules at all. In fact, they specifically said on their contracts that there was no testing of steroids. Ensign Inouye, who's one of the fighters from Pride, great guy, fought in the UFC as well. He did this whole thing about it where he came on the podcast and explained the verbatim contract. It said, we are not going to test you for steroids. Meaning, go ahead and do your thing. Yeah.

Well, they encouraged it. I had a buddy of mine. He would fight in America at 170. And they wanted him to fight in Japan. He went over there and had some meetings. He's like, you're 185. And he's like, but I don't weigh 185. I weigh 180 right now.

And he's like, no, the steroids are getting the wit. 185 and he's like but I don't weigh 185. I like way 180 right now. He's like no idea starts again with Like they were like really sold on him being way five they wanted big Americans They wanted everyone to look like Mark Kerr remember. He was amazing a smashing machine That's what the smashing machine as a documentary filmmaker. That was my favorite documentary. I think it still is to me We ever it's an amazing documentary and for folks who don't know what it's about it's about mark kerr who was at the time one of the most dangerous mma fighters in the world like a guy who you you would look at and you'd say well that is what an mma fighter should look like right 260 pounds fucking jack to the tits just giant and smashing people but they caught. There he is right there at his prime.

What a fucking gorilla. Oh, shit, man. Yeah, that's a good picture. They caught him right when he slid. They literally caught him on top before he slipped and then went into this mad fucking painkiller slide. Absolutely. It happens to everybody. I mean, that's what happened in the world of pro wrestling,

which we're really closely associated with. All these guys, you hear about the wrestlers dying and everything. It's not necessarily the steroids. It's a deadly cocktail that they're all doing. The steroids are a big part of it, but the steroids, it's tiny in comparison to the head injuries they're taking. It is important to point out that they're not safe. I think sometimes people that take them are like, fuck yeah, man, take steroids. They definitely have their drawbacks.

It's a drug, and it's an illegal drug. It's dependent upon dosage as well. There's people that are going to take a little bit and be fine, or there's people that are going to go off the rails. There was a dude that we knew that was Vitor Belfort's trainer in the 90s, and he died real young. He died at like 32 or 33. We used to call him Garden Hoses because he would work out.

He would be purple in his fucking arms, his veins. Yeah, Curtis Leffler. Oh, yeah, yeah. Big purple. They called him Barney. Big purple. They called him Barney at the gym. They called him Barney because he was so purple.

He was on so much shit. Nicest guy. The greatest guy. Really great guy. And Vitor at the time was jacked and he was training at Gold's Venice He almost got to Jack memory came and smoked everybody and all of a sudden he got like kind of too big When he fought Randy he was too big. It was like 240 when he fought Randy and he had no gas tank He was a specimen when he was younger when he's 19

Well when he was 200 pounds he was like the perfect size because Vito has like a size 8 foot He's not a big guy like his hands are fairly small too, but he's just a spectacular When he was 200 pounds, he was like the perfect size. Because Vitor has like a size 8 foot. He's not a big guy. Like his hands are fairly small too. But he's just a spectacular athlete. Yeah. It's amazing he's done it for so long. It's unbelievable.

I know. It is. And it's a really, he's an interesting point. Because Vitor, for the last year and a half, was on testosterone replacement. It lasted like two years. And had the most spectacular results of his career. It was really crazy to see a guy who had been fighting since 1997 in the UFC, and he's knocking out Michael Bisping,

he's knocking out Luke Rockhold, he's knocking out Dan Henderson, he's wheel-kicking people in the head, and the way he was doing it was just fucking crazy to watch. He head-kicked three of the best fighters in the world and did it with muscles grown out of his fucking teeth. I mean, just jacked. Was that legal in the UFC? It was legal.

It's a therapeutic use? Then, yeah. But now it's not. Nevada came in and went, whoa, hold the fuck up. What's going on here? First of all, they had guys, there were guys that were in their 20s that had been prescribed it. And they're like, well, what happened? Why do you have a low test?

And most of them, it's because of steroid use. And we all know that there's a way of manipulating those tests, too. And maybe some are overtrained, not sleeping well on top of... 100% overtrained. And if you don't think those tests get manipulated about what you need to do, in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, I show you how to get human growth

hormone and basically go to your doctor and do this and that. And the way that you take the test was you had to, like, pee in this bag basically all day long. And then you take a sample of that urine. But, you know, the way that I did it was I only took the urine from, like, two samples that were taken at night when your growth hormone is the lowest. So my growth hormone looked like it came from a guy who's 125 years old. They're like, Oh my God, you have no growth hormone. Well, if you take it in the morning, it would, and balance it out with during the day, it would have been normal. It would have been normal, but it was really low. So I just wanted the doctor to

give me growth hormone to see if they would do it for the movie. Right. Well, they also, they say, if you eat a very large fatty meal, like cheeseburgers and fries and shit like a big burger, like right before you take the test within an hour of the test, your shit just plummets. Your test plummets, your growth plummets. Everything just goes. Oh, there's ways to beat all these tests. Even even the guys that are beating the test to compete. Lance Armstrong, all these guys. Armstrong lies.

A good documentary to me. I saw that it was fucking incredible amazing well Jeff Levitsky the guy who busted Lance Armstrong is going to be on my podcast next week

oh cool I fucking can't wait I had a great the UFC hired him to try to clean up the sport I don't know it's like going to a hoarder's house

you need to hire the other guy to eat off this floor yeah I need to hire the Ferrari guy the guy that was Lance Armstrong's coach oh the guy yeah the guy that was Lance Armstrong's coach.

Oh, the guy who, yeah. Because that's the guy that's trying to beat everything. No matter what you do, the cheaters will always be ahead of the guys that are trying to catch them. It's just a cat and mouse game. It's been going on forever. Yeah, well, they're kind of ahead now. What they're doing now is they're, you know, the way they make testosterone, apparently they do something with yams. That's how they make it.

Do you know the process? Yeah, Mexican wild yams. Yeah. Well, now they figured out. next Mexican wild yeah yeah well now that's where it's like derived from or something yeah well now they figured out how to do it with animals and they've made a bio identical testosterone that's you can't differentiate so we just spoke about a stem cells now stem cells aren't gonna make you superhuman but stem cells are gonna allow you a Vitor Belfort, right? Now that he can't do the testosterone replacement, he gets stem cells done to all of his existing injuries. You know, he's basically, you know, got a clean slate and he's back to normal without

all those injuries that he built over time. You know, a baseball pitcher could pitch 10 more years. How is that going to affect the future of sports with the records and all these things like who can hit the most home runs and who can you know play the longest and all yeah it's like there's a word that's a banned word steroids is like you know it's like it's a it's a negative word and that word will never be polished up you know what i mean it's like the barry bonds shit with mark mcguire all over congress by the way that was one of my favorite parts of the documentary was watching those dummies in Congress.

That was amazing. Seeing Joe Biden talk about, remember when I was a good athlete, I thought, the fuck you were. The fuck you were good at anything. You were never a good athlete. I would like to see some evidence of that, sir. They took it away from me. It wasn't by God-given

talent. Like, what? like what a third string baseball player like you know community college yeah you know whatever he was save it buddy whatever he was just shut your mouth yeah exactly and that's the thing was like they bring up uh these baseball players and string them up before congress yeah it becomes this like huge media circus everybody you know loves to see that oh look at their you know, they're pointing out all these guys, and they're the bad guys. And you have guys like Mark McGuire up there looking like, Mark McGuire said steroids is bad. It's a bad message. Don't do them.

It's like, this is people, these are these heroes to these kids up there that are completely looking like idiots. And there's a better way to handle it, you know? Well, it just seemed really frivolous that they were in front of Congress. They're getting too good at hitting the ball with the stick. We need to bring in all our leaders. What the fuck? It's insane. It doesn't even seem real.

It seems like a plot in a movie. Even in swimming, they made suits a few years ago. They got rid of them right away. It's a Speedo company made a suit that makes you swim faster. And as soon as they did that, they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't want you swimming that fast. So they got rid of them. So it was like a body suit?

Like you would put it in your whole body? Yeah, it's just a body suit. So like a wetsuit? Yeah. Well, just like a lycra looking. I think it helped increase buoyancy a little bit and just helped you kind of glide through the pool faster. That's pretty dope. Wear and get one of those.

Yeah. Well, I guess the issue with it was it's expensive. And so they were like, oh, it might price some people out of it or whatever i was just like i don't even understand what that means yeah because all these sports end up being pretty expensive come on man the amount of money that's involved in training for the olympics for swimming the things that are going on now with training are insane you know i did my second film did a movie called trophy kids and it's about parents that pushed their kids in sports and that was on hbo and the the thing that is so crazy now is the way that parents have access to all these things we didn't have like you'll go to a you know a baseball camp and they have like this nike makes

this hand eye coordination thing that you wouldn't believe how it tells you like what position your kid should play it tells you you know and and parents are actually going and getting genetic testing on their kid they swab the inside of their kid's uh cheek and they send it off to this company and it'll tell the parent what sports the kid will be good at this is when they're like an infant you know so there's some crazy stuff going on where where uh you know technology is far exceeding like you know what we've been able to do before. That's fucking madness. Swabbing your kid's cheek

to find out what sport they should do. There's a California cryobank. It's like a sperm bank. It's at UCLA. Don't get that confused with getting frozen. Yeah. Hey, this isn't cryobank. I'm jerk off in this cum.

What the fuck Sorry, I'm just part of the therapy I have arthritis Wow, I feel great, that Joe Rogan was fucking right Yeah, describe that Shit tastes great Anyway, you can get It actually shows a guy on HBO Real Sports

He goes in and basically like They custom order their kid And it's like this fat it's like this fat Mexican guy. He goes in and he says, I want a kid just like me. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and big calves. And it's like he looks nothing like the guy. So it's not his sperm. He's using a sperm donor because he couldn't get his wife pregnant.

And they decide, well, we want our kid to be a father's like you know similar similar you know similar to me you know like athletic and outgoing and you know so they picked the six two blonde haired blue-eyed kid with uh and it actually says on the application huge calves huge calves on the application what the fuck they they so the california cryobank goes out and they recruit players. I went to USC, so I know it goes on at USC. They go out and recruit players to make extra money. You can make $900 a month or something, jerking off in a cup, and basically selling it to your parents.

It's a good deal. Yeah, it's not a bad deal if you have rent. You've got to pay it somehow. My sperm might be tainted. Probably. Yeah, they don't need to know somehow. My sperm might be tainted. Probably. Yeah, they don't need to know that. No. No, but it's amazing.

It's an amazing phenomenon to see parents now getting into, like, how am I going to help my kid cheat? Well, it's getting to the point also where they're, within a few years, have you heard of CRISPR? Do you know what CRISPR is? No. There's a Radiolab documentary that they did on it, or a Radiolab episode, rather. There's a Radiolab documentary that they did on it, or a Radiolab episode, rather. It's all about this new tool that they have for engineering genetics and for splicing genes and for adding traits or subtracting traits. Sure. And, you know, you showed on the documentary the myostatin inhibitors that they're doing with these cows that make these cows grow enormous amounts of muscle. Well, they're going, first of all, they could do it now to pigs, and they're going to be able to do it to people it's just a matter of when Jesus

is going to be in a year is it going to be in a decade it's gonna happen if we live another hundred years of human beings survive a hundred years and the asteroids don't blow us up or we don't get hit by a fucking nuke we're gonna have myostatin inhibited people oh sure that look like the Hulk that's fucking craziness it's gonna going to be nuts. And they're going to live longer. That's what's even more fucked up. What do you think about steroids and the UFC?

What's your take on it? Do you think they should be illegal or monitored? Well, I think it's going to be a moot point once you get to genetic engineering. And I think ultimately what steroids are is it's a form of engineering. It's a form of biological engineering. You're taking these substances and you're adding them to people. But as you pointed out in your documentary, look at the guy who was the Tour de France guy that had this oxygen tent. These hyperbaric or these altitude chambers. Hyperbaric chambers.

What I do all the time, the cryogenic freeze tanks. All that shit is cheating. I mean, if you really want to look at it, I take TRT, I take human growth hormone. If I was competing in somewhere that wouldn't let me take that, that would be considered cheating. But for life, I'm like, if you're 48 years old and you're not taking testosterone, what do you do? You hate life? You hate having energy? Sort of throwing it away. You like your immune system sucking?

Yeah, you want to feel better, look better. Yeah. Your body works better. It's that simple. It's all about optimizing what you already are. And I think when people go beyond that, that's when it becomes into like, okay, well, then it's cheating. I don't know why people think that, but that's what it is. It's like, you know, if you say, well, I'm on TRT, nobody really cares, you know?

And the same commercials for TRT, I don't know if you noticed, but during the World Series, the same sport that they condemn for steroids, during the commercial break, the first commercial, do you have low T? Yeah. You know, that's the very first commercial that came along. Hilarious. I think that the issue with steroids also for a lot of people is they believe that it's going to get kids into them and that the kids are going to get sick or they're going to get hurt or they're going to commit suicide like the guy in the documentary had. He was convinced that his kid who he had on Lexapro, who was a teenager, he was convinced it was steroids that made this kid commit suicide. And steroids very well may have played a factor.

Abuse of anything is bad, whether it's abuse of alcohol. There's a lot of different drugs, painkillers that you can abuse that will make you suicidal. Abuse of anything is bad. So to blame it on one thing, that guy had this blanket thought in his mind. He's just going to throw a blanket over the problem, the problem with steroids. I don't even think you can blame it on the Lexapro. There's a deeper issue going on with the child that takes his own life. He certainly had some issues, and he also didn't want to communicate with his parents these issues too much.

There's a lot more going on with that story that I put in the movie, and that was to protect the kids. The kid's gone, yeah. Somebody loses a child. I don't want to go into their family history and all these other things that we found out. But yeah, it's definitely hard. Good for you for doing that. That's a, and they gave his father a million dollars to go in front, to, to continue this, uh, education, to continue, uh, lying to people basically.

Well, that makes sense because that's why he had this thought in his head. Like he wouldn't even consider the fact that he's, his kids on psychoactive drugs and he, what those had nothing to do with the fact that his brain was fucked up sure like come on man you don't know you don't know those drugs are are dangerous to anybody there's a hundred there's a hundred million people walking around on psych meds and yeah you know there's really no proof that they actually work there's really no scientific proof that they improve any sort of uh problem but is that though? Because they definitely do help some people. I think they definitely help some people, but there's actually nothing.

There's no, you know, if you look at, you can look at, like I said, anecdotal evidence for anything. I took this and I got bigger. I took this and I got stronger. Scientific proof? No, because there's no real markers in the brain. There's no test I can give you to see if you feel better. Right.

There's no depression test. Exactly. I think, yeah, that's the issue. feel better right there's no depression test exactly yeah i think yeah that's the issue so but there is there's a lot of evidence that ssris help improve mood right and they do yeah yeah but there's also uh you know while they improve mood in some people a lot of people commit suicide on them because they are so low down like you'll see a person that's like severely severely depressed they can't even get out of bed to kill themselves and then they put them on ssris and now they have just enough energy to like say fuck it you know and that's what's this jesus christ that's so crazy also with uh steroids

though when um you know that kid he just stopped cold turkey you know he stopped the steroids right away and then uh went on those other drugs but stopping him as you mentioned earlier like if you're 48 years old, you want to get the energy boost from them. Just like coming off them actually puts you at a lower state than you ever were before. So with that kid coming off them, his testosterone levels were probably low. His estrogen levels probably came up. He's probably just insanely depressed.

That does get you depressed, and that's a big issue with fighters and football players and people that have had a lot of head injuries. Dr. Mark Gordon, who was in your documentary for a brief amount of time i saw his face in there he works with a lot of traumatic brain injury people and one of the things that he finds with them they almost all have low testosterone sure and something about getting the pituitary gland rattled whether it's through an ied or football collisions or head kicks whatever the fuck it is almost all those guys have low testosterone they're just like super it's almost like you're getting kicked on the balls you ever pose a question to this like you collisions or head kicks, whatever the fuck it is. Almost all those guys have low testosterone. They're just like super. It's almost like you're getting kicked on the balls.

You ever pose a question to this, like, you know, Nevada State Athletic Commission, you know, all these guys are getting pounded in the head in the UFC. They get punched a lot. They get kicked a lot. Head trauma is a on-the-job injury, but you're not allowed to treat an on-the-job injury with something that works like human growth hormone. You'll talk to Mark Gordon.

He'll tell you one of the best things they can do to treat these concussions and traumatic brain injuries is to supplement with human growth hormone. So you can't treat those injuries. You can get them. And if you're a normal everyday person, you can be treated, but you can't be treated if you're a fighter or if you're an athlete. And there's a thing with fighters as well now. They're not allowing them to use IVs to rehydrate.

And the reason why is because IVs and use of IVs can mask some of the signs of steroids. So something that was ultimately very beneficial now you can't use because people can use it to cheat. So even though it's just to rehydrate you and even they can prove that it's just rehydrating you. You can't use it because it could be something that you're doing because you're trying to cover up. It's actually probably healthier for the fighter like a day before to have all those electrolytes in them and everything in them, right? I mean, rather than fight depleted. Since they're cutting weight, yeah, that's the argument. But there's some arguments, some people, I don't know, I haven't researched researched it but there's some people that say that it's actually more effective to rehydrate

orally i've heard that's bullshit i've heard that's true i don't know what's right i'd have to talk to an expert about that so do a google it's hard it's hard to be uh it's hard to be way on top of all that though like when you're um these these fighters they travel you know in powerlifting we do the same thing we use iv bags to rehydrate, and guys will do 30-pound weight cuts and stuff like that. So you do 30-pound weight cuts so that you compete at a lower level to powerlift? Yeah, lighter weight class. At least you're not getting hit in the head, though. Right, right, right.

The rehydration orally, if it's not effective, is if you fight in a dehydrated state and you get rattled, your brain bleeds. They say that almost all the deaths in pro boxing, almost all of them, were in the lighter weight divisions. Even though the heavyweights hit hardest, they didn't cut weight. So they didn't have all the same problems. Is there any rules in UFC about cutting weight? How much percentage you can cut? No, there should be. If you can make the weight, you can fight.

You just have to make the weight 4 o'clock on Friday. And then Saturday, whenever your fight is, the fights don't start until 4. Do you think this IV thing will change the game? I hope it does. I also think the UFC probably is going to have to add more weight classes eventually because there's not enough weight classes. There's some big gaps between 185 and 205. That's a 20-pound weight class. That's a giant gap.

I think that for fighters that are tweeners, there's guys that are a bit too big for this weight, but a little bit too small for that weight. They could use a 195. I think every 10 pounds would be pretty reasonable. Seems like it'd be an advantage to actual, you know, to the fans and everything. More champions, more championship fights, more everything. And then also there could be some reasonable like champion versus champion, like 195 versus 205 is pretty reasonable. Whereas like 185 versus 205, like man, it's a big fucking jump for those guys.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think to answer your question about steroids in the UFC, I think we have to kind of define, I think the real problem is what we said earlier, that the word steroid is, it's like a tainted, it's a dirty word. But if it's far as like supplements, should supplements be legal? Kind of everybody says supplements are legal.

Fuck, we have MusclePharm that sponsors the UFC. They sell a ton of shit that's supposed to help you recover and protein powders and all this jazz. Think about creatine, absolutely clinically proven to enhance performance. There's a lot of stuff that you can get that's legal. Even caffeine. Yeah, absolutely. It's all stuff that gives that you can get that's legal. Even caffeine.

Yeah, absolutely. It's all stuff that gives you, like, a very slight bump, a very slight edge. And then taken all together synergistically, like, it will supplement, like, you know, it says, your diet. So if you have, you know, a diet where you're not getting enough stuff in it, like, I was just reading this. I posted something on Facebook the other day, and people went crazy because I posted this thing about fish oil and the effectiveness of fish oil not being really scientifically proven. You know, it's like, if you eat fish, you know, twice a week, then you don't need it. You know, and everybody goes crazy. No, I need it. People are convinced, you know, the supplement industry is a $24 billion.

No, I need to burp up fish oil. I'm convinced of that. I need to have 20 pills a day. It's a $24 billion industry and people are convinced that they need these things. There is some science behind fish oil and krill oil though, especially the anti-inflammatory process. The anti-inflammatory at a high dose, yes. Yeah, that's what I do. I take a lot of fish oil. It makes sense for that.

If you're trying to like prevent heart disease and all these things like that, they're saying that the link isn't there and if you eat fatty fish, you probably get enough in your diet. Yeah, well really good fish like salmon that's high in those healthy fats that should yeah everybody should eat that like once or twice a week have some sushi yeah i mean i believe i you know i'll read i'll read all this shit about supplements right all this stuff i'll read like okay this doesn't work this barely works and whatever and the next thing i do i go open up my cabinet and i take 20 pills because like because it doesn't fucking work I don't know I mean it's like that placebo effect is really really strong and you

know certain things I take because I oh I heard this works for you know alpha lipoic acid when you eat carbs it'll help shuttle it in your muscles well do I know that that even works like I don't know I feel a poke acid supposed to be clinically proven isn't it I think there's studies on alpha lipoic yeah i'm sure there's studies on everything then you get into like the whole thing it's oh it's an antioxidant and you're like well wait a second what the fuck's an antioxidant why do i need why do i need it you know like you you forget even why you need it to a certain right well berries are like the best antioxidant aren't they like blueberries and boysenberry and then they find out there's studies that say that eating antioxidants in your diet doesn't really matter uh it doesn't translate into antioxidants in the bloodstream and

all the stuff like that so you got to look at it like they say you need certain precursors to be able to digest these things so it's too complicated ice cream it's too fucking complicated you need to be your own doctor you know you do your own research. I find I get big benefits when I eat a lot of vegetables. Absolutely. I feel a big benefit when I drink like these kale shakes. Oh, no. Get the man a kale salad. I thought you were tough.

Dude, it's good stuff for you. It's healthy. No, he just makes fun of kale all the time. I was making fun of one of my friends because he's like, I went over here and had a kale salad and he's super skinny. I'm like, dude, a kale salad? Come on. on just make up a lie say that you had a fucking 20 ounce ribeye well you can have both i just think in general that's the best way to go like you know we need we need vitamins yeah vitamins and minerals and we need uh all these things in our diet yeah and so vegetables are probably the most abundant source of great nutrients vegetables and

fruits and things like that. So, like, why wouldn't you eat them? Like, it seems to make sense. All I know is I feel different when I eat them. When I have one of those kale shakes with giant clumps of fucking ginger in it and four cloves of garlic and an apple and celery. It's amazing. Cucumber. You feel like fucking Superman.

You got to choke it down. It tastes like shit. But when you're choking it down, once you get it in, you're like, whoo. You feel like you've had a double shot of espresso, but you don't feel it in you're like whoa you feel like like you had like a double shot of espresso but you don't you don't feel like jittery you just feel like ah fucking yeah i remember talking to you about um it was kind of amazing and it was kind of a good example for me uh talking to you about like you were talking about going on the road and traveling and you said oh man i need to find a whole foods i don't eat that processed shit and like to me

that was like a real eye-opener to find that like somebody as busy as yourself goes out of their way to find like good healthy food it's important and yeah and it's probably more important almost for him because he's on a plane or in a car or some shit all the time yeah it's just you can only go so many i always bring vitamin packs i have those pure athlete packs i bring with me to supplement when i'm on the road i always make sure I eat a lot of salads. Like, I get salads before every meal, whatever I'm eating. I eat salads first. But it's hard to find, you know, food that's not just full of garbage and bullshit.

Contaminated, that's what it is, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, you go to Subway. I mean, yeah, you get bread and there's meat in there and it kind of can fill you up. But, like, you know, all the different preservatives and nonsense and processed bullshit. Fucking kills your stomach. Yeah. All the gluten. Oh, Chris's girlfriend eats tons of vegetables, and she's super hot.

So she must be working. Maybe that's the formula. We can all be super hot chicks if we just eat tons of vegetables. If Bruce Jenner had only known about this. Yeah. But the key, like you said, is good nutrition. Good, solid things in your diet. I think when you're dealing with things like UFC fighters,

you're dealing with a level of performance that they're requiring of their body that's so extreme. Because even boxers, like the average boxer, they do their boxing workout, they'll spar a couple of times a week depending upon the philosophy of the camp. In the morning, they usually run. Maybe they'll have a strength and conditioning session instead of a run, but they're doing two workouts a day and one of them is pretty mild. It's not that big a deal.

They can get through a six to eight week camp and most likely, they never pull out of fights. It's very rare that a championship fight... Manny Pacquiao almost pulled out of the Floyd Mayweather fight because he apparently tore his labrum, but he wound up fighting. Now there's a lawsuit because he pushed through the injury.

You hear about all that? Five different people are suing him because they bet a lot of money on him. They didn't know that his right shoulder was fucked up. He had surgery right after the fight. But for the UFC, fucking 20% of the fights fall apart, at least. And guys fight injured all the time. Even Conor McGregor, when he fought against Chad Mendes after Aldo pulled out of the fight,

McGregor had been getting stem cell shots in his knee. He was fucked. He was thinking he couldn't—he didn't wrestle the entire camp because he was thinking there's no way. He was like, I can't. It'll fall apart. It was a good fight. Great fight. Yeah, it was great.

It's got to be the toughest sport. I mean, I say that. I think so. People go like, oh, basketball players are the best athletes, or these guys are the best athletes. I just think that the amount of maybe genetically basketball, you know, but the amount of effort it takes to step into the octagon, the amount of mental focus, it's like, to me, that's amazing.

It's like truly baffled by it. Basketball, I think, has the best six-foot-six athletes. Yeah. Well, fighting is not made up. best six-foot-six athletes. Yeah. Well, fighting is not made up. It's something that is part of us. Everything else is made up. Football, basketball, baseball. Made-up sports, you know? When it came along, we were like, this is the only sport to me that

makes sense. It really makes sense. But the movements and the art are all made up. So you have to figure out what's the most effective way of striking and moving and grappling. How do I fuck someone up the fastest? All of that is where the sport lies, but I think you're right about the level of athlete. When you see the guys that play

for the NFL, those are fucking super freaks. Those motherfuckers will be coming in the UFC soon, I'm sure. Well, if the money becomes right... Well, that's Jon Jones. Jon Jones could have probably opted to go play in the NFL. 100%. His brothers both do. He could have. What's crazy is he's not even the toughest one in his family.

Both his brothers say they kick his ass. His younger brother and his older brother. That's crazy. Fucked. What kind of a fucking family is that? One of the guys got drafted. One of his brothers got drafted. I saw them all jumping on each other and shit. They're all kicking the shit out of each other.

I was like, Jesus Christ. A lot of shit must have got broken in that house. Oh, yeah. I think that's why it happened. And that's why he came out so badass and not afraid of anything. Talk about genetics. I mean, like that family, the Manning family, like there's these families are just incredible. Yeah. Genetics.

And that goes a long way. Oh, 100%. In everything we're talking about. You know, Matt Hughes, former UFC and World Series champion. His brother is a twin. Looks exactly like him. Their entire Lives they Beat the

Fuck out Of each Other So of Course he Gets to The UFC With his

Fucking Steely Eyed Gaze He's used To facing Himself Literally

Like a Mere version Of him Beating the Fuck out Of him His whole Life

They're just Smashing each Other running Through walls Like juggernaut The ultimate Sparring partner That's why he

Used to pick People up And slam Them Yeah his Brother's Bigger Wow his brother's bigger. Wow, his brother's 265. Jesus Christ.

His brother was talking all kinds of shit that he would kick his brother's ass. I think Jon Jones could probably get up to that weight, right? I mean, he's probably fighting his whole life. Well, Chandler, I think, is a bigger guy. He's one inch taller. He has two brothers in the NFL, right? Yeah, Arthur, too. His brother Arthur's even bigger than Chandler.

His brother Arthur's more than 300 pounds. Man. That's a super athlete family. His dad's a big dude, too. His dad is just naturally very gifted. It's taken a long time for the sport to evolve to where it is. I'm interested to see what will happen with the female division. Rhonda's just killing everybody, and she's obviously amazing,

but I don't think the girls have caught up to where the guys are at. No, not yet, but have you seen Ioannina Jacek, the strawweight champion? Dude, you think Ronda's impressive? This bitch is ruthless. She's from Poland. What does she weigh? She's 115. Six-time world Muay Thai champion.

That was a fight companion one, right? We watched that girl get busted up. Jessica Penne. Oh, my God, dude. It was the ugliest female fight I've ever seen in my life. This girl's nose was smashed. A giant gash across her nose. And this Joanna chick from Poland was just beating the fuck out of her, literally.

To the point where you're watching and saying, please stop this fight. This fight is a terrible mismatch. That chick is lethal. Because when Ronda beats chicks up, she knocked out Betch with one punch, and most of the time she flips chicks on their back and arm bars them in the first round. This bitch beats the fuck out of chicks for like four rounds.

That's got to be cool calling that stuff, because I saw your excitement, and it was so genuine. You're so pumped to call that fight. The Ronda fight? Yeah, you were pumped. Oh, yeah. You could feel it, though, when you watch it.

It was a piece of history, I felt. I feel like where she's at right now is just so strange and rare. It's not just calling a fight. I feel like I'm calling a piece of human history. Yeah, it's an event. Modern-day Mike Tyson. Yeah, she's like a real's not just calling a fight. It's like, I feel like I'm calling a piece of, like, human history. Yeah, it's an event. Modern day Mike Tyson. Yeah, she's like a real Charlie's Angels character. Yeah.

Like, there's never been, like, a hot chick that actually can fuck up a lot of dudes. Yeah, it's always been fake in a movie. Okay, here's Wonder Woman. Ching, ching. You know, it's like, fake. Someone was pounding on your door at, like, 2 o'clock in the morning. Like, what the fuck? And you open up the door and it was Ronda Rousey angry.

You'd be like, oh, shit. Your heart would drop. would drop you're like this bitch is gonna beat my ass yeah right now yeah i was like farting in my sleep or something if she was outside she could you know and she break in your house she could kick your ass like that's real damn her confidence is through the roof i just saw something today where she's like uh they can you beat floyd mayweather in a fight or whatever you know she's like yeah in a fight or whatever? She's like, yeah, in a no-rules fight, I could beat anybody. Well, she said, not in a boxing match. She's like, he's a boxer. I'm sure he would beat me in a boxing match.

She goes, but I don't have matches. I have fights. Right. You know, and she's just letting him know. Yeah, she's a badass, man. She got a hold of him. He's going flying. Yeah.

That's for sure. There's no way he's going to be able to understand what she's doing. No. If he tied up with her, he'd have so much to think about. I'm sure she trains with guys all the time. 100%. I've seen her. I've been there in the gym with her flipping guys.

I've seen her tap guys. I've seen it with my own eyes. Tap good guys. Yeah. Get them in arm bars. There's a video of her with Luke Rockhold. They're like, oh, I wasn't trying. No, they're fucking trying.

There's a video of her with Luke Rockhold. And Luke lets her get into a position. But she finishes him. Luke Rockhold's a fucking giant dude. Yeah, he's big. He fights at 185, cuts a lot of weight to get down there. He's strong. He's a stud, and she finished him with an armbar.

I'm like, whoa. It's not even embarrassing. She's the fucking best. She's pretty goddamn wicked. What about steroids in that division? That's the issue. They talk about Cyborg. Yeah, that's the issue. They talk about Cyborg. That's the issue.

You got guys, I know you talk about it a lot in your podcast, you get into steroids here and there. And a lot of guys, they don't even look like they're doing it. Like Gilbert Melendez or Hoist Gracie. It's like you can't tell anymore. Well, Hoist actually did look like he was doing it when he got popped. When he got popped, we were there for that fight, and I was there with my friend Eddie, Eddie Bravo. And Eddie was like, dude, when was the last time you saw Hoist with traps? He had popped. When he got popped, we were there for that fight, and I was there with my friend Eddie, Eddie Bravo. And Eddie was like, dude, when was the last time you saw Hoyce with traps? Yeah.

Like, he had traps. Like, he was pretty jacked, and he was way heavier than normal. He was like, he usually was around 170-something. He was well over 200 pounds. But I think because the benefit of steroids isn't just with weightlifting. It's like overall, you know, overall recovery, overall energy and health that a lot of people just take. Oh, and the guys are probably taking a cocktail, probably a little growth hormone, a little test, a little EPO.

Yes, 100%. I think the EPO is a big thing, too. The vibrancy, just having energy, just having enthusiasm. They don't test for EPO, do they? Oh, yes, they do. They do now? Ali Bagutinov got popped for it when he fought against Mighty Mouse Johnson for the flyweight title, and he's still suspended because of that.

Yeah, but there's guys who fought on it. Because I know that EPO test is pretty, it's a little wishy-washy. When we did Bigger, Stronger, Faster, we looked heavily into the EPO test. And there's a guy that came up with a definitive EPO test. Definitive, like just either you're on it or you're not, synthetically. And he got a letter from the olympic committee saying from the u.s olympic usoc saying uh we can't use your test because we'll be out of unfair uh you know we'll be it'll be unfair to the americans because the other foreign countries are relying on a loosey

goosey test yeah exactly that's hilarious so all they're so what they they saying is we're going to have to allow a certain amount of cheating to win. Exactly. That's really what they're saying. Well, we have to be able to cheat just as much as the rest of them. If you look at the, you know, when they do these testosterone ratios, like 99.9% of human beings should be at a one-to-one ratio, epitestosterone to testosterone kind of thing. And they allow it to be like 4 to 1 or 6 to 1. They used to allow 6. Now they allow 4.

Yeah, now they allow 4, right? So you can take a little bit and be under the radar. We've had guys pop at like 50 to 1. Yeah. I remember when I was doing... That's awesome. That's hilarious. They're like gorillas.

I want to see a non-tested UFC and have the guys weigh like over 300 pounds. They go one minute on and five minutes off. And just let them just kill each other. Let them just fucking slug it out. I like the one minute on and five minutes off. And also you can't train. That's the other thing. You can't train for fighting because that's an unfair advantage too.

Then you know how to fight and it ruins the fun. Well, the other person's training too, so it's not an unfair advantage. Well, you can lift weights. That's about it. That's it. Just lifting. I think that there's a benefit to being a certain weight, but there's a negative effect when you get over a certain weight. And I think 240 is around the right weight.

I think body weight or body, how lean you are is probably a big thing, too. how lean you are is probably a big thing too. I think once you get under 10%, I think is when you start to get in trouble, unless you're used to that. Unless your body is always under 10%, then you could probably operate at that body being that lean for a while. I just think if guys have good defensive

skills and they can avoid the bum rush for the first couple rounds. Guys who are over 240, they have a real hard time getting into the third, fourth, and fifth rounds. There's just too much mass to carry around. The bones and the muscle and all the blood. It hurts being that big. Yeah, the oxygen requirements.

So I think a guy like Cain Velasquez is always about 240. He's known for his spectacular cardio. Fabrizio Verdum, same thing, somewhere in the 230s. That seems to be the right weight. That was a shocking fight, huh? Yeah, it was crazy. Kane fucked up. I mean, Kane is known for his cardio, so I think he just got a little cocky and decided

not to go to Mexico City. But Mexico City is so, I can't believe how high it is. 7,000 plus feet above altitude. Did you have trouble breathing there? I did. I worked out in the gym in a fucking elliptical machine that was breathing heavy. That's awesome. I was like, I can't believe these guys are going to fight.

But Fabricio was breathing heavy. I was like, I can't believe these guys are going to fight. But Fabrizio was real smart. He moved to a place that's a thousand feet above that for like a month and a half. And Kane was only there for two weeks. And he's improved all of Fabrizio. I see him all the time at Gold's Gym. He's improved vastly, every step of the way, which is nice to see too. Well, he was such a high level jujitsu guy. I was one of the best jujitsu fighters in the world and to get that good at jujitsu You have to have an intense mind for learning Yeah And so he just took that and applied it to boxing and kickboxing and just once he figured that out

Everybody is fucked You don't want to go to the ground with that dude. He's beat some awesome fighters. Yeah, maybe Oh the first guy right he's first guy to submit Fedor, first guy to submit Kane. That's a pretty goddamn spectacular resume. All he has to do is beat a few more guys, and he is arguably one of the greatest heavyweights, if not the greatest of all time. Sure.

It's interesting you bring up those two fighters. It makes me kind of think maybe there's an upper weight limit of muscle mass that you can carry around because neither one of those guys is real lean, so maybe around a 200-pound mark is probably almost like the cutoff. If you start being more jacked than that, maybe you can't sustain it for three rounds. Yeah, I think it's a matter of durability.

You want to be big enough so that you can take shots, but you can't be too big because you just can't carry it. Especially a guy like Kane. Although Coleman and Kerr were kind of the exception, I guess. Yeah, but they were on everything. They were on bathtubs full of shit.

Brock Lesnar's an animal. Just an animal. He's such a freak of nature. I still maintain to this day that if somebody got a hold of Brock Lesnar early on and said, Listen to me, and you can be the best heavyweight fighter ever. Like a Firas Zahabi or a Matt Hume. Someone who's a real expert in MMA who Brock listened to and just said, look, this is what we're going to do.

The first thing we're going to do is we're going to do nothing but striking for a couple of years. And you're not going to get hit. I don't want you to develop any bad habits. You're not hitting anybody either. All you're going to do is you're going to do movement with people. You're going to do pad work. You're going to do technique work. And we're going to have that

shit built into your neurons. We're gonna hit you gonna do pad work you're gonna do technique work, and we're gonna have that shit built into your neurons Yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna have all these movements They're gonna be a part of your natural movement And if you're willing to do that you're gonna develop a base and that base will translate into success But otherwise you're gonna be scared of getting hit and that's what his problem always was he would always get tagged by like someone like Shane Carwin or more Alistair Overeem, and you could see just he didn't have enough time in there he doesn't like it either yeah you you gotta spar with guys who barely touch you they're like they're not hurting you and you don't hurt them and that's in the beginning that's like the most critical thing yeah because

otherwise you're gonna miss giant chunks of the development because you just get a fucking swing it's amazing that uh he said he was able to get to where he did during all those years of WWE first. What a fucking mutant. What if he had just, like you said, gone straight in? Oh, he would have been the best ever. But he's still a heavyweight champion in the fucking world. He still knocked out Randy Couture. He's a stud.

Beat the shit out of Frank Mir. He's a stud. I love watching him. He just had to... I was kind of bummed but happy when he decided to quit MMA. Recently he had a moment where he was trying to figure out whether he was going to keep going to WWE or give one more shot at the UFC. And I know he talked to Dana, he talked to the UFC. He was really thinking about it.

Yeah. But ultimately decided for himself. You don't want to see him go down a bad path of like being the guy that gets, you know. Concussions too. Yeah. I think that was a big one. He was worried about post concussion syndrome. Like Joseph Valtellini, who's the glory welterweight champion.

He just stepped down and relinquished his title because of concussions. Like concussions in MMA are a big fucking issue. You don't hear about it. How do you feel about, like, I watch a lot of fights where, you know, we, you want to see him go on. You just want to see this, you know, some guys will get pounded. Don to see these. Some guys will get pounded. Don't stop it. Some guys will get pounded.

And come back. And they come right back. And it's like, oh, well, good thing they didn't call it. Great job, Herb Dean or whoever the ref is. And then other times guys get pounded, and they get pounded ten times in a row, and then they're out. And then it's like, well, do they need the ten shots to be out? Why the fight is actually happening, I always root for the guy to come back.

But after the fight's over, if I'm analyzing it from a rational standpoint, I'm always like, oh, stop it. He's in trouble, yeah. Yeah, it's not good. Yeah, you're ringside. I mean, it must be a little scary at times when people are getting blasted, right? Some of the knockouts. There's been some knockouts where you just go, Jesus.

And you probably see the eyes and everything, right? Yeah you get into that like were you were you fighting before way before yeah way way before you had a really big interest in it yeah well i i um i stopped competing in like 1988 that's when i got into comedy and uh maybe 89 was probably like my last kickboxing fights And then I went into stand-up and then I just trained recreationally until like around 93 the UFC came around I think I saw the first tape. I saw a tape of it at 94. Yeah, and then I was like, holy shit What is this jujitsu? Yeah, we were there from day one too. I watched that first pay-per-view live I remember that like it was like crazy. Yeah, I didn't get a chance. I saw it on tape. Someone talked about it at the gym, and I was

like, what is going on? We couldn't believe it. We saw the commercial for it. We saw the commercial for it. I'm like, oh my god. It was crazy back in the day. Remember, it used to be in the Faces of Death section at the Video Star? But it got banned for a long time. It went completely away. Well, that's when I came

in. I came in while it was banned. I started working in 97. So I started doing the post-fight interviews in 97 while I was on the sitcom, News Radio. I would go on the weekends, fly off to fucking bumfuck Alabama. There's a great book, Blood in the Cage, that outlines all that stuff. And it outlines how Dana got into it, and they went to an event, and he was like, this just sucks. They don't even sell T-shirts. What's going on?

We need to take this over, that kind of thing. It's really cool. Yeah, they bought it in 2001, I think. And I came in in 2002 and started doing the commentary. And remember when it got in trouble before the Ultimate Fighter, I actually worked for WWE. And Vince McMahon, I remember being in a limo with Vince McMahon, being like, dude, it's like they're trying to sell it. You should buy it.

And he was like, I don't know. Then years later, they tried to unsuccessfully start some sort of MMA thing. But I think Vince McMahon did? Yeah, they tried to. They never got off the ground. Oh, they were planning on it? Yeah, what happened, though, was Vince, and he had a legitimate concern. He's like, I don't want, it'll take the legitimacy out of it, you know, like if he owned something like that.

They might think it's fixed. They'll think it's fake. Well, they didn't think that about the XFL. I guess not, yeah. That's true. Yeah. I think the real problem is the talent pool. There's just not that many good fighters.

Right. The UFC owns the contracts for 500 fighters. Wow. And they're all the good fighters. Right. The UFC owns the contracts for 500 fighters. Wow. And they're all the best fighters. Sure. There's not one fighter in any weight class outside the UFC that you can make a rational argument that's the best fighter in that weight class. So once they have that, it's like, boy, it's hard to sell a league when you know the UFC. Like, this is our 170-pound world champion.

Like, well, is that really? Because everybody knows Robbie Lawler is the fucking world champion. It's hard for me to watch any sort of competition. Yeah. It's hard for me, you know. I get it. Well, there's real good fights in other organizations.

Yeah, sure. You know, like, World Series of Fighting has some good fights. Bellator has some good fights. But it's just going to be real hard for them to build stars.

Right. To build like a, because everybody, like a kid coming up, wants to be the best. You know coming up, wants to be the best. If he wants to be the best 135 pounder, he wants to fight TJ Dillashaw. He doesn't want to fight Marty McFuckface from

Mike's Hardcore Fighting Championship. You know what I mean? You want to be the best. So they're always going to recruit the best guys. They're ahead of the game. It's not a lockdown game. Especially if Bellator signs Fedor and maybe somebody gets gina carano like shit can get weird yeah i feel like it's all like the same with wrestling though if you look at wwe they've been they've had a monopoly for a while

then wcw came along and they started getting popular but then you know now the w now the leagues uh the other league tna it's so lame you know it's like nobody really gives a fuck about it at all and that's the thing is like in the end like uf lame. Nobody really gives a fuck about it at all. And that's the thing. In the end, UFC will be around forever. It's like the NFL. Unless they sell it. They could get to a point where they're like,

look, let's just get the fuck out of here. This is too much work. Killing us. Because Dana works all day long, every day. He's constantly flying all over the world. And Lorenzo's doing the same thing. It's a lot of work. It's not easy doing what those guys are doing. And when they're gone, everybody's going to miss them. People complain about the world, and Lorenzo's doing the same thing. It's like, it's a lot of work. It's not easy doing what those guys are doing.

And when they're gone, everybody's going to miss them. People complain about the UFC, but when they're gone, you realize the alternative. They've created an industry. People are mad about stupid uniforms. I mean, that's the last thing to get mad about. Well, they have some points. I'm on the fighter side when it comes to that. With the sponsorships? Yeah.

They lose too much money you know it's just i've been i was lucky enough to get in on the last uh the last thing before uh reebok took over with uh with one of the fighters it was pretty cool it's cool to see the logo up there and all that stuff it was nice people well that's a big part of what the fighters get is what you would say like ego sponsorships right like dynamic fastener is on like so i don't even know what that is right but it's on so many different t-shirts how do you uh so many no reebok said that there i guess it's it seems like um over the spread over all the fighters they'll make more money the younger fighters or is that just not true i don't think it's true yeah no i don't think it's true i think um maybe if the deal changes or they start to make more money and it becomes something bigger than what it is right now.

But if you look at it right now, Tim Kennedy said it best recently. He said on one Strikeforce card, he made more money in sponsorships than the Reebok paid out for the entire last UFC card from Brazil. Yeah, gotcha. So all those people wearing Reebok gear, he made more money from one fight in Strikeforce. Yeah. Yeah, it looked like Reebok got, he made more money from one fight in Strike Force. Yeah. So. That's so wrong.

Yeah, it looked like Reebok got a pretty good deal from what I heard. I don't think it's a good deal. No, I mean for Reebok. But no, I don't think it's a good deal for Reebok is what I'm saying. Oh, okay. Because I think it gives them a bad name in some ways. Yeah, yeah, I understand. All these people complaining.

Yeah, wearing a tap out and wears, yeah. Well, no, no, no, no. It's not tap out. But all these people are complaining. Like Tim Kennedy complains. Stitch Duran complains not tap out. But all these people are complaining. Like Tim Kennedy complains. Stitch Duran complains. He gets fired. All these fighters are complaining.

Lots of fighters are complaining. Brendan Shaw complained. All these different guys complained. That's all negative press towards their brand. I mean, they're not a person, right? They're a brand. Correct. If you associate that brand, you can't like fire the head guy and change the brand.

The brand's still the brand. Right. And everybody's going to associate that brand with it. Is fire the head guy and change the brand. The brand's still the brand. And everybody's going to associate that brand with it. Is it a big name brand? Yeah. Is it good to see a big name brand attached to a sport like the UFC? Absolutely. But I feel like whenever you're in a situation where the fighters are going to lose money, that's always the number one concern that people have. Everybody knows the window of opportunity for a fighter is extremely small. They'll have a few years to make some money. So when you take some of that money away from them in favor of prestige, the prestige, which is inarguable, Reebok's a huge brand.

It's great to be in business with a big brand. But if it costs fighters money, boy, that's going to be hot. You can't not see that. It's not like you're going to put blinders on and ignore that. You have to address that. And social media is a huge thing. So the that's going to be hot. You can't not see that. It's not like people are going to put blinders on and ignore that. You have to address that. And social media is a huge thing, so the fighters are going to be heard. The hugest. It's bigger than anything because if you bitch about something on Twitter

and someone says, holy shit, Chris Bell just went off about that, and then some newspaper gets a hold of it, and then boom, it goes viral on Facebook and people repost it and tweet it. Because we live in a different world. And so anytime someone like Stitch gets fired because he said something about, hey, Reebok, this deal kind of sucks for me because now I'm not making as much money. So they fire him. And then all of a sudden, boom, that becomes a way bigger issue than it was just with him saying that. If he just said that and that was it, it would have been a small issue.

But him saying that and then getting fired for it it compounds the issue people react quickly to social media you know makes everything go a lot faster yeah they start wearing Nikes I'm not a business person I'm not I would if I was running the UFC it would have been bankrupt a long fucking time ago but you you I think it's it's real it's real dangerous looking at the bright side of deals like this. Let's look at the bright side. Let's look at the worst case scenario. What's the worst case scenario?

Everybody's going to hate Reebok. That's the worst case scenario. People are going to be mad at the UFC and mad at Reebok. So I go, ooh, I don't know, man. I was able to sponsor Joseph Benavidez, and that was pretty cool. Which company? What is your company? Slingshot. The Slingshot that I had you know, man. I was able to sponsor Joseph Benavidez, and that was pretty cool. Which company? What is your company? Slingshot.

The Slingshot that I had you throw on earlier. It banged out some push-ups in. Yeah, it's got this cool device that you slide. It's like this heavy-duty rubber thing that you slide up to your biceps. It actually gives you a bit of an assistance when doing push-ups or bench press or something like that. It feels good, man. I like it. Where can people get this?

How muchyoubench.net. How much you bench, yo. There's the fucking plug. How muchyoubench.net. Don't you bench some retarded number like 700 pounds? Did you do 705? My best bench press in competition, this is with a bench shirt, which is much more heavy-duty than something like the Slingshot. It's this supportive device that's crazy-looking.

It looks like a straight jacket, but I did an 854 pound bench press in the 275 pound weight class and then without a bench shirt my best bench press is 560 pounds in competition that's like a harley-davidson right how much do those weigh those weigh like 800 pounds it's crazy that's a lot of goddamn weight dude how much i've been at it for a long time i started when i was 12. Two older brothers that are dicks that forced me to lift weights even though I was a pussy and I didn't fucking want to. Now, what are those bench shirts, those vests? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do those things do? Yeah, bench shirt. It's like wearing a denim jacket backwards is what it's like. Originally, it was designed just to be protective. And then people were like, wait a second, not only is it protective, but I can lift more weight with it. And so then they started making them more and more extreme. They used to be like one layer. Then they started making two layers.

Then they started making them out of a pair of fucking jeans. Then they started making them out of a canvas and all kinds of different material. And it got to the point where people revolted against that. And now everybody lifts raw. A lot of people lift raw because you could say oh how much do your bench oh five and raw would just be with just what did you do what did you do raw five 560 560 that's crazy you can do 300 pounds more with one of those shirts on yeah isn't that nuts that is not on a squat too his squat was like a thousand pounds did a 1080 squat and fell pretty

bad with a 1085 you fell i fucking I fucking fell. Well, what happened was, is there's a girl that's, uh, was trained at her gym and she's running our, she's running the squat rack. The squat rack is called a model lift. And, uh, when you, uh, you release this like lever so that I don't have to walk the weight backwards. You understand that? I don't have to walk the weight backwards. The lever moves out of the way, and I pick the weight up and go. The problem is the girl's hot, and she's in a sundress, and I'm trying to fucking concentrate on a lift here. So midway down on the squat, one knee shoots out to the left,

the other knee shoots out the other way, and next thing I know, I was on the fucking ground. Was it on your back or in front of you? No. How did it land? Well, luckily, I got kind of unloaded from the weight quickly. It fell back behind me, and I fell forward. But I was kind of unloaded from the weight quickly it fell back behind me and I fell forward I was fucked up for months from that. That was a that was a pretty bad. How'd you fuck like what what kind of injury? Uh, you know what? I never went to the doctor. I'm not a fan

I'm going to the doctor so I just Rubbed some fucking dirt on it and just live with pain for a while My ankle was like black and blue right? My ankle was fucked up. My knees were fucked up But you know, I I did go to, I went to a friend of mine. He's like, what are they going to compare x-rays and MRIs and stuff to? He's like, you already know you're all fucked up anyway. Are you all fucked up

from lifting? No, I'm not that bad. I'm pretty much okay. So why would an MRI reveal damage? Well, he was just saying like your knees are probably, there's probably slight tears here and there, you know, because I've had knee pain and all kinds of different things for years. So he was just saying, like, your knees are probably, there's probably slight tears here and there, you know, because I've had knee pain and all kinds of different things for years. So he was just saying, like, yeah, they're going to tell you that you're fucked up. He's like, what are you going to do about it?

Well, shoulders are a big one for guys who bench that much, right? The shoulders, pecs. Yeah, people blow off their pec. That's how I invented the slingshot was I tore my pec three times. I injured myself. Three times? Yeah. So did you get it stitched back in?

No. No. You didn't? No, I don't like going to? Yeah. So did you get it stitched back in? No. No. You didn't? No, I don't like going to the doctor. So you tore it and you just dealt with it? Just dealt with it. Yeah. I never had a rupture.

I never tore it. All the way through. Yeah, I never tore it all the way through to where it was bleeding down to the bicep and all that nasty shit that can happen with a torn pec. I did it with my tricep and it's brutal. Yeah, I've seen people. Tore the tricep off the bone. I've seen a lot of people that get the bicep where it curls up like a torn pec. I did it with my tricep and it's brutal. Yeah, I've seen people, seeing a lot of people that get the bicep where it curls up like a golf

ball. It looks crazy. You know, like, there's some fighters that like getting punched in the face. I kind of like pain. So, for me, it's kind of just part of the territory with training. Yeah, the pain guys, those are weird people. You're a weird person. Yeah, no, I'm weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I don't mind it I don't mind well the thing about soreness. It's like it lets you know like yeah, I fucking really got a workout There's a difference between soreness though and not being able to get up You know out of bed in the morning and stuff like that that stuff's you know brutal joint pain especially right? Yeah, pain and joint pain are two different animals joint pains rough. Yeah, I can back Yeah, you know you get some little shit that for some reason you just can't handle it's like the little tiny things that just gnaw away at you you're like motherfucker why is my elbow hurt so bad goddamn hangnails just from uh it's the littlest thing

just from crazy lifting in general like ever you know pretty much everybody we know has some sort of injury yeah everybody's hurt somewhere or you're not working out hard yeah right one of two things people people look at uh forms of exercise, like CrossFit, and they go, oh, everybody gets hurt in that. I'm like, everybody gets hurt in powerlifting. Everybody I know that's a bodybuilder gets hurt. Everybody gets hurt doing this. And that's what we were talking about on the way up here,

is just slowing down in your workouts, just taking time to actually think about what you're doing. There's 1,036 pounds and 1,085 pounds. Oh, yeah, I actually make this one. But see the sundress? Why does it say tumble? Oh, that's the tumble?

That's the girl in the sundress? She fucked you up. Look how big his face is. Yeah, I'm about 320 pounds in this video. Or 310 pounds. That's a wide-ass stance, too. You always squat that wide? In a squat suit, I squat a little bit wider.

It creates some tightness around the hips and kind of gives you some support through your hips. That's pretty hot, too. Isn't that the trainer, UFC guy? Oh, yeah, that's Amadeo Novella, who is a trainer of some UFC fighters, Chad Mendez and Joseph Benavidez and a bunch of other small dudes that can fuck people up. Yeah, it's funny that they have a whole camp full of those dudes, isn't it? Is this you giving out? Oh, Jesus, dude. God damn, that's a lot of weight.

Yeah, and so when it happened and it wasn't it didn't hurt that bad initially but then as time wore on it got worse and worse and worse the swelling just started getting fucking crazy i stayed at the competition and i'm a coach for all the athletes that are in that video basically and i stayed the whole time and helped everybody and just like i normally would normally do and then the next day when I woke up, I just, I couldn't, or by the time I got home, even I couldn't even, uh, couldn't even get upstairs to go to bed. I just fucking sat on the couch and, or sat on the chair and just slept in a chair for the night and slept right there for the next like two or three days. You know, one of the interesting aspects of your film was Louie Simmons. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Greg, I have one of his reverse

hypers in the back. It are awesome. It's an incredible machine for decompressing your lower back and pumping blood into it and everything. Oh, the thing's amazing. But he's a refreshing character too, you know, who's funny when you're saying that you were going to get off steroids. He's like, he'll be back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course. But that's the attitude that all those guys have. It's like, look, you just have to accept the fact that you are now a steroid dude. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, making a good documentary, I think, it's a lot about casting. It's about who you pick. You know, it's just like any other movie. Who you pick to be in the movie.

And Louie Simmons was somebody that inspired me to do things differently, to think differently, use chains and bands. I used to go into Gold's Gym 15, 20 years ago. Yeah, he's the pioneer of that, by the way, bands and chains and all that type of training. Using chains on the bar to accommodate resistance. So the band will, oh, you can tell them. It gets harder as you get higher. Yeah, as you go up. It's called accommodating resistance.

It basically makes you drive into the bar faster. So if you can picture a bunch of chains on the bar, there's, let's say, 40 pounds of chains on the bar. As you lower those weights, there'll be less and less weight on the bar. Right. And as you go to pick it back up, there'll be more and more weight on the bar. So you have to actually physically move faster. A way that I try to explain it to people is if you were to try to hop up on this podcast table, you can't do it slowly. So when you train with bands and chains, it's a similar thing.

You have to do it quickly. You have to try to get a lot of acceleration into it. That makes sense. So that would probably aid in explosive shit like football or punching people. And then also a huge benefit of it is that the weight is lighter at the bottom. Same thing kind of happens with the slingshot. But with the weight being lighter at the bottom, it creates a safer environment because the bottom of a squat and the bottom of a bench press are kind of somewhat dangerous positions to be in.

How much does a chain weigh normally? They usually weigh about 20 pounds, the ones that we use. They're pretty goddamn thick. Yeah, like big-ass motorcycle chains from the 70s? Like a boating type of thing. The thing is, I would read a magazine called Powerlifting USA. We didn't have the internet. Oh, I thought you were going to say inches.

Oh, yeah, inches too. Hey, don't tell them about that. And foot action. Yeah. So we used to look at that magazine. It was the only information on strength training in the entire world that a kid 15 years old growing up in Poughkeepsie, New York could get his hands on. So I would read that, and I'd go to the gym, and I'd try out all these weird things. And people were like, what the fuck are you doing?

And when I was a kid I was squatting, you know 500 for sets of eight reps and people like what what is he squatted? 675 pounds in high school. He was like, well, what's insane? What the fuck are you on? Right? I'm like, I'm not I'm not on anything. I'm on Louie Simmons, you know And so when I started training mark to just be you know an animal It was he had a lifting belt that said, Roids Suck. Yeah, yep. I had a lifting belt. I rode on it.

The director of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. And it said, Roids Suck. And I would go to the gym, and all these guys were, like, all juiced up. Like, Poughkeepsie, New York. It's like, I don't know what is in the water there, but everybody was on something. And I just always wanted to sort of deny that, go against that. Like, I'm not doing this.

And that was the whole genesis for that movie, was the fact that I always had this weird moral thing against it. I can't do that. That's just fucking cheating. Jamie, can you get some of those caveman, give me some of those nitro cans? Those fuckers are good. Yeah. Bring a few of those out. Are you trying to kill us? No, this is the good shit, man. We're out of regular coffee.

What was it that pushed you over the edge and made you want to try steroids then? Society. You know, I went to USC and there's hot chicks everywhere. But you were a gorilla. You were fucking squatting 600 pounds. But I wasn't really in good shape. I didn't look good. But all you had to do was clean up your diet. He's always had a conflict with his build. He's always I wasn't really in good shape. I didn't look good. But all you had to do was, like, clean up your diet.

He's always had kind of a conflict with his, like, build. He's always been trying to get in better shape, and so I think that steroids is a quicker and easier route in some cases to get in a little bit better shape, you know? I totally understand that, but, I mean, you were... It sounds like... Would you say you squat 675s, you said? Yeah, when I was younger, yeah.

That's a lot of fucking weight. I mean, you had to be a big fucker to do that. Yeah, I was about, I was a little bit fatter than I am now. You know, going down the way about 210, I was about 240 maybe, you know. So it was just a matter of you just didn't like the way you looked. Yeah, I didn't like the way I looked. It wasn't a sport. And everybody else was in good shape.

I was training at Gold's Venice. I'd be in Gold's Gym Venice and,, and the Hulkster would be in there. And Macho Man, Randy Savage. What you gonna do when a black guy dates your daughter? Yeah, right? The Hulkster, yeah. That was depressing shit, wasn't it? That's amazing.

You know what? He'll be back. Throwing an N-word rant. He said some bad things. I think with wrestling, like, it's... The most inexcusable things have been excused, and I think that

they'll figure out a way to... Did they fire him from the WWE? They erased him from their website completely, like, as if he never existed. Oh... You can't do that

to the Hulkster? Damn. Yeah, I mean, it's just like... How rude. Hey, he's still pinning Iron Sheik. Yeah. I was there.

I saw it. I saw it. No. That'd be amazing if you were there. Physically? No. I've never been to one of those things. Madison Square Garden.

You're not into wrestling, are you? No, I'm not. No. No. Because it's fake? We were just into all that shit. We were into wrestling. You were into martial arts since you were a little kid, too, right?

Well, I was into it in high school. In high school, I loved Jimmy Superfly Snooker and Bob Backlund and all that shit. I wrestled Jimmy Snooker. Did you? He pinned, listen to where your career goes in wrestling. He pinned Jimmy Superfly Snooker at an Indian casino for like 50 bucks. Yeah, in front of about 40 people. It's awesome.

Where was this? Time of my life. What part? I don't know where the fuck I was. Where was I? Somewhere in California. Somewhere. God damn.

50 bucks. 50 bucks, yeah. God damn. What does Snooker look like these days? It was in a circus tent. He looked like a transvest California. God damn. 50 bucks. 50 bucks, yeah. God damn. It was in a circus tent. He looked like a transvestite. Really? He was hot. Wow. Actually, Rowdy Roddy Piper

just passed away. That was the nemesis. They're actually having, next week, next Monday at the comedy store, there's a tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper and all the people that knew him are going at the Comedy Store, there's a tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper and all the people that knew him are going to come in and talk about him. I never got a chance to meet that guy.

It always bummed me out. He was great. He was awesome. That's all I heard. I heard he was such a great guy. That's what we loved about wrestling. We just loved the personalities. We loved, if UFC was around when we were little kids, we probably went into that route.

Our older brother was always beating somebody up. He went into pro wrestling because that know, our older brother was always beating somebody up, you know, and he went into pro wrestling because that's all existed at the time. But I know if MMA existed at the time, he would have went that way. The thing when you did with Jimmy Snuka, like how old was he at the time? He's got to be in his 60s, right? This was probably about 15 years ago. Might have been in his 60s then. But But yeah, yeah, he was definitely old,

definitely out of shape, yeah. It wasn't pretty. Was it weird? Did it feel weird? Oh, it was fucking really weird, yeah. And the poor guy, like, what does he do for a living now? Pro wrestling in general is weird. Like, wrestling another dude in, like, tights and stuff.

It's really strange. I mean, like, we used to run this small wrestling federation with a guy named Rick Bassman, who's a good friend of ours, and it was called UPW, Ultimate Pro Wrestling. And we put like 30 guys into WWE. So a lot of times, like these young guys had to work with the older guys. Like John Cena would be working with Greg the Hammer Valentine. Greg the Hammer Valentine, like, hey, kid, I'm not going to bump for anyone.

You know, bump means bump around the ring. I'm never going to hit the mat. You're just going to beat the shit out of you. So it was like, that's part of that whole thing. What does that mean, bump? What are you saying? Just hit the mat you're just gonna beat the shit out of you so it's like that's part of part of that what does that mean bump what he's saying I just hit the mat basically you know just like fall for the other guy meaning meaning like the older guys don't want to do any of the work you're gonna work around them and make them look good but they're not actually gonna do anything oh so they don't fall down anymore cuz they're all banged oh yeah that makes

sense like fuck you I'm not falling down. Did Superfly have that kind of a conversation with you? A little bit, yeah. How does it go down? Well, he basically just told me the different moves he wanted to do, and I was like, all right, well, it just sounds like I'm not really getting in too many moves. Yeah, but what happened was he did the Superfly move, right? Yeah.

And then you flipped him over and pinned him, so you ended up winning. Right. He still does the superfly at his age? Yeah. It's amazing. He wanted me to sit way up, though, to catch him. And I did, and it hurt like a motherfucker. I'm sure.

Yeah, these old guys will stiff you. You ever have another man jump off the top rope on you? No, I have not. Did you ever see the one where Brock Lesnar does the shooting star lands on his head? Yeah, I was actually there. And he's done that move like hundreds of times when he was younger in a different federation before he got to WWE. I worked at that WrestleMania. I was up in the skybox.

I'm watching. I'm like, oh, my God. He's dead. He's dead. Meanwhile, he still completes the pin. He just messed up. He was a stiff neck for a week or something. He was messed up a little bit, but he wasn't that bad compared to what he should have been.

He's such a freak. He really is one of the biggest freak athletes. In an interview, there's like two years that he just doesn't remember. Because of that? No, because of drugs. Oh, what was he on? I'm not sure. Pancreas?

Probably Oxycontin. Well, those guys, they do. That was the other thing that was in this article about Rowdy Roddy Piper. Two years just to raise his fucking mind. There was an article about Rowdy Roddy Piper where they were talking about the drugs that they do. Here it is right here. Oh, shit. Look at this.

Oh, my God. Dude, a normal person would be dead. And he's 290 right there doing a fucking backflattle. Look how jacked he is. Oh, yeah. he was giant. We were just talking about Piper You know the interview Oh They were talking about the amount of time that they spend on the road Wrestling and they're like any other sport you get like time break

Yeah, like these guys are wrestling 390 year which is crazy like you don't you can't recover you just can't recover So they all get hooked on pain pills. I just did a movie called The Resurrection of Jake the Snake. It's about Jake the Snake Roberts, who was an 80s wrestler. And he was a crack addict. So another wrestler, Diamond Dallas Page, helps him get sober. We just showed that movie at Slamdance. It'll be out pretty soon. But it really shows what these guys go through afterwards.

It's a documentary that's just like the movie The Wrestler. It's a real life version. Darker though. Yeah, pretty much. It's fucking dark. Jake the Snake Dallas Diamond Page is doing wrestling or doing yoga now. He's like this big yoga proponent.

He's fucking crazy fit for an old dude. He does Superman push-ups on his fingertips. He takes his ankle and puts it up by his fucking face. I went to his house when we were doing the documentary. I was an executive producer on the documentary, which I do all the Hollywood stuff. I help get it sold. I help get it to festivals, all that kind of stuff.

And I just really believed in it. And I believed in it from the beginning. I knew they were making it. And they asked me to get behind it really early. So when I went down to their house to work on the movie, he's like, yeah, I'm going to take you through this yoga thing. And I'm like, okay, what is this bullshit? Within 10 minutes, he had a heart rate monitor. And my heart rate was up to 155.

And he's like, okay, we've got to slow you down to keep you at like 145. So this is like this constant cardio, flexing, moving, awesome yoga thing that somebody like me needs for mobility. I think it's actually a really cool thing that he's doing. Well, yoga is great for mobility. It's really hard to do. It's one of those things where you look at it and you're like, ah, a bunch of fucking soccer moms. But then you get in there and you're like, holy shit, this is fucking hard. This is a little bit more digestible for someone like me because it's a lot based. He sort of bases it around wrestling.

You do the down, you kind of, and then you flex like this and you hold it, and it's kind of fun, you know? Yeah, I get it. It's kind of, there's no namaste's. Yeah, yeah. Now, you had a double hip replacement? Yeah, actually right towards the end of doing Bigger, Stronger, Faster. When we were doing the movie, I was just worn down all the time. I'm like, I don't know what's going on.

I mean, I can barely walk. I just kept having all these problems with my hips. And I went and got it checked out, and the doctor just said, okay, walk across the room. I walked across the room. He said, you need two new hips. And I'm like, what? Like, what are you talking about?

He's like, you need two new hips. Was this a doctor that sells hips? He was an orthopedic surgeon, you know. Jesus Christ. And what did the MRI reveal? He was an orthopedic surgeon, you know. Jesus Christ. And what did the MRI reveal? I'm sure they did MRIs on you. Basically, bone on bone. And my bone was completely smashed on both sides.

So they were, like, smashed into the, you know, into your hip socket. And he was in a lot of pain all the time. He could only, I mean, like, three or four hours at a time was what you could give to the film, usually. And then you were just... From your hips. You had to sit down a time was what you could give to the film usually, and then you were just getting shot. You had to sit down a lot. And you said this is a genetic issue? Yeah, my dad has the same thing.

My dad has two fake hips now, but he didn't get them until way later. So what happened was, who knows if wearing down to the hips, squatting all that much and whatever, I don't really blame it on powerlifting because I don't think that that's really the cause because there's a million powerlifters out there and I'm the one with two fake hips you know so it's not like oh this happens every powerlifter you know it doesn't you think it has a mess have some effect I think everything has everything has an effect you know it's like they played football you wrestled shit like that I mean yeah he's he's uh he doesn't have two fake hips and he's the same genetics you know

as you know you know as me so I I got it from my dad you know, he doesn't have two fake hips, and he's the same genetics, you know, as me. So I got it from my dad. You know, my dad has the same. Well, what are they classified as? What are they classified as? Just osteoarthritis. It's just so, but you only get it in your hips. No, I have it in my ankles and my knees.

Both my knees need to be replaced, but I'm just sort of. Oh, Jesus Christ. I'm just sort of like putting that off because, like you said, we have new therapies that. You had your knees done when you were a kid too, right? Yeah, when I was 17 years old, I had double knee surgery. What did you have done? I just had arthroscopic bone chips removed and stuff like that. Yeah, but the thing is I've been in pain my whole life,

and there was a certain point when I got the hip surgery that I wasn't able to handle it anymore, and they started feeding me pills, you know, like crazy. And I got into that really hardcore because that was something that, you know, at first you do it because it helps the pain. And then after a while you do it because it's fun. So this is post Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Yeah, right after Bigger, Stronger, Faster. After Bigger, Stronger, Faster, you get your double hip replacements, and then you have the pill problem.

Yeah, you get hooked on drugs. It's like you never aspire to become a drug addict, but it happens. And it happened to a lot of my friends. It happened to a lot of people. It's happened to a lot of people I know. Do you think a little bit of that had to do with the recovery? Because you had both of them done rather than just one of them done at a time? Yeah, I would always suggest to anybody that has to have double hip replacement surgery, get

one done at a time because at least you have one side that's good and the other side that heals. He literally couldn't really move at all. I was sort of like in a point in my life where I'm like, you know what? Just do it. Who cares? Let's go. And didn't really think it through that.

How old were you? 33 at the time. And Jesus Christ, double hip replacement at 33. And if you don't know what a double hip replacement means they cut off the Top of the bone and they literally have this long Screw that they drive into the meat of the bone where the marrow is and it locks in place this new Fake hip right it's fucking gnarly shit my friend Graham Hancock had it done He was here six weeks later

He wasn't even walking with a limp. I was like this is crazy. You had a hip replacement Yeah, they had complications with mine so on on one of the sides they had complications Getting it in because they're like oh all this muscle from squatting your ass is like a rock So they're trying to they had a pounded in with a hammer It looked like I saw the surgery part of the surgery back on camera, and it looked like an auto body shop I look like they were fixing the car. Yeah, there's a video of Tito Ortiz getting his disc replaced in his neck He there got his disc fused I think you got a I'm not sure if as a spacer or disc replaced But they're fucking hammering on his neck like clink clink clink clink clink clink

I gotta get it in there like what the like, what the fuck? That's his neck, man. That is insane. So what does it feel like now? Now, actually, the hips feel okay if I lift heavy. I still like, I'll still squat and deadlift. I just can't go as heavy as I used to. You know, I've deadlifted up to 550 with two fake hips. Jesus Christ.

You know, not a very good deadlift in Mark's world, but, you, but for having the surgery and everything, it's okay. And they're fine. It doesn't... And they're built... Did you tell the doctor, like, give me some fucking serious heavy-duty ones? Give me some off-road shocks. They're titanium. And a lot of people say, well, why do you have to lift like that?

People always want to concern themselves with what you're doing. They go, like, why do you feel the need to have to lift like that? It's just something that's ingrained in you. You just like doing it. If you had surgery and somebody told you, why do you have to fight still? Why do you have to go? Because you have to. Did you ask the doctor for a bigger dick?

He couldn't give me that. Well, that's an option. Oh. Now, when they cut you open, where do they cut you? Right on the side of your ass cheek, kind of. Is it a giant scar it's like that big like three or four inches hmm wow that's amazing you do all that work with three or four inches yeah like i have a buddy who was on the u.s ski team i have a buddy who's on the

u.s ski team and uh he's had no bullshit i think 28 knee surgeries wow yeah he's got i'll show you the surface of his knees skiing is not good for your knees. No, he's had his knees resurfaced. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's fucking gnarly. Let me find this picture real quick and I'll show it to you because it's one of those where I show people and they go, what am I looking at? But anyway, his scars on his knee, it looks like you're gutting a fish.

Yeah. They go all the way down the side of the knee and they opened it up. And this was just in the 80s. My dad has that. My dad has fake knees also and he's got those big scars. Fuck, man. Your dad's got it rough. He's a warrior.

Frankenstein. That's a lot of fucking surgery. A lot of shit to get done on your body. Yeah. Fake knees and fake hips. So you think that you're going to eventually have to do that too? The knees? Yeah.

I'm going to try to hold it off as long as possible, and I think that the best way to go is try new therapies like stem cells, other things that are coming out. I know that certain – there's actually a gel that they can put into your knee that replace cartilage. John Cena had it done. It's like a, it's a very advanced technique that, you know, they're just basically, they use very sparingly.

Well, I know that they're doing, they have this new meniscus surgery that they're doing where they are taking this, like a scaffolding and they implant it inside where your meniscus used to be with these proteins in it. And somehow or another, your body grows meniscus in this scaffolding. Seems to make sense. It's nuts, man. It's crazy. The shit that they're able to do now is just amazing.

Let me show you. This is my buddy's knee. Wow. Yeah, that's the same guy that was on the U.S. ski team. Wow. They cut him. Steve Graham, what's up, brother? They cut him open like a fish. It looks like steak and like two wedding rings.

Yeah. That's fucking gnarly looking. Yeah, it's pretty hardcore. I'll send this to you, Jamie, so you can put it up on the... It looks great. Injuries are no joke, you know? Yeah, no, they're no joke. Well, this guy, too, he's fucking crazy. He's in his 60s.

He still spars MMA on a regular basis. He's an animal. He's a doctor. He's an ophthalmologist. Doesn't give a fuck. He's always been crazy. He's just... I've known this guy for...

He's the guy who talked me into doing stand-up. This guy's always been an animal. He's just... It's just hard to imagine that that's the inside of his legs. Wow. Shit. I me into doing stand-up this guy's always been an animal he's just uh it's just hard to imagine that that's i saw you wow shit i saw you do stand up in sacramento about uh two years ago maybe oh where was it at maybe three years ago um i don't know it's called like comedy store or some shit like oh that that cool little upstairs comedy club yeah yeah that's a good spot they have the punchline right yeah there you go do you live up there?

I do. Sacramento? Yeah, I'm in Sacramento. Do you go to Team Alpha Male and watch those? You know, I'm friends with those guys. I haven't been over there a whole lot, but I see Uriah around. I see those guys around a little bit here and there. He's got a huge, his own gym, huge gym.

Okay, give it a plug. What's the name of the gym? The Super Training Gym, just in West Sacramento. But it doesn't matter because it's free. Yeah, it's kind of weird. It's free? The gym is free. How's that work? It doesn't. It's not the smartest business

model. It's not my brightest idea. The gym is free. It's a way for me to give back to powerlifting. It's predominantly a powerlifting facility. And I think that if other people had the ability to make their gym free, they probably would do it. And so I'm in a position to make it for free. So I did. Wow. That's crazy. That's a

beautiful thing, man. You never hear that. You usually hear the exact opposite. Well, you know what? Everybody asks for him, hey, can you train me? Can you train me? He's like, I don't train people. I even do seminars and stuff a lot for free. just did one at a deuces gym uh in venice um and a lot of times i'll do them uh do some down in uh downtown la at barbo brigade but just if i'm in town somewhere i'll just uh i'll just i'll email email the uh owner of the gym to say hey i'd love to come in and teach your people how to squat or deadlift and they're like okay well what does it cost i'm like it doesn't cost anything that's so crazy coming in to fucking do some work what makes you uh such a generous guy that's uh i just uh kind of have a passion for inspiring people and not so much uh just

instructing them because i think that uh the main message is to get people moving get people doing shit rather than just saying oh here's how you a lot of this comes from uh people that we looked up to louis simmons you know louis looked up to, Louie Simmons, you know. Pat Miletic has a free gym, you know. I don't know if he still has it, but he had a free gym to help people do what you couldn't do when you were younger, you know. It's great for young folks. There's the fucking knee and it's all, it's cool.

And you know what, too, is what ends up happening is people, I'll put up a post on Instagram. It could be of, of like me eating food or some shit and somebody would say oh i got your slingshot i got your wraps i got your this i got your that so it's like people are giving back to me anyway so it's just um it's just another way for me to give back to community and for like you said reebok is is a brand my company is not my company is me and so the brand is growing and sometimes people don't know that I'm associated with it, but nine times out of ten

they do know I'm associated with it. That's awesome, man. That's a beautiful way of looking at things. I love it. And because of that, we were just actually at the coffee bean next door and these two guys wanted to take a picture with him. People know who he is. I saw you on YouTube. It's funny. Tons of free videos.

YouTube.com backslash super training 06 thousands of free videos on there on how to squat deadlift bench that kind of shit nice now your new documentary is prescription thugs absolutely yeah and this is based on your experience and getting hooked on pain pills after you had your double hip replacement yeah sort of based on a lot of people's experience you you know, after bigger, stronger, faster, uh, our older brother passed away about eight months after making that movie. And, uh, he had a really bad struggle with, uh, prescription drugs, mainly painkillers. Uh, and then it went to, you know, Oxycontin when you could use it, used to be able to crush it up and inject it and all that stuff like that. And he was getting into that kind of stuff. Um, I don't

know if he was injecting it, but he was definitely snorting it and different things like that. And my parents, he loved it all. Yeah. My parents found out about it and they were obviously heartbroken and, um, helped him, helped him get clean for a while. And then, you know, then you go back to it and back and forth and back and forth. And, um, it's just crazy because he, after he got off all the pills, sort of switched to alcohol, you know. And it was like alcohol and a little bit of everything else, a lot of weed, a lot of alcohol, this and that. You know, just things that when you're not in the right state of mind or you're depressed, they're not the best things for you, you know. That's what he seemed like from the document.

Yeah, he ended up going down like a really bad, you know, just a a bad spiral you know and he was on some uh psych meds to uh for depression and different things like that and um he died in a sober living house with no real you know explanation of how he died and uh we still don't really know exactly what happened there was really no drugs found in his system in a toxicology report and stuff like that so it was just like to to me, something where this is an epidemic that hit home with me. After I saw my brother die, I was like, I will never go down that path.

And there I am on the floor scrambling, looking for another Vicodin, going, I must have dropped one somewhere. And just knowing a lot of other people that went through it, I decided to pick up and make a movie about it. Now your brother, in your Bigger, Stronger, Faster, seemed like a very troubled guy. Yeah, mad dog, yeah. He struggled

with himself more so than anything else. He was bipolar. And so all this stuff sort of just compounded that. Yeah, yeah. Did he get a prescription? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but did he get a prescription for an injury or how did he get it? Yeah, he was wrestling with WWE. He was sort of

on that, doing the rounds I don't know if he got? Yeah, he was wrestling with WWE. He was sort of doing the rounds. I don't know if he got a prescription, but he got drugs. Yeah, they all got drugs. So when did he start wrestling for the WWE? Back in like 1990, like early 90s. And he wrestled forever. Like he was always on TV.

1992 or so, 93, something like that. Yeah, he was always on TV and then he wrestled all the way through kind of up until he died. Like, he had still some matches, not really with WWE, but with other, like, smaller federations and stuff like that. So he kind of wrestled for a real long time, but he never really made it. And that was a really big problem for him. You know, it wasn't good enough to be a good coach or a good teacher.

He wanted to make it. He wanted to be a big superstar. I also don't know if he knew exactly what he was chasing. So even if he obtained some of that success, I don't think he would have even recognized it. That's a really good point. It's a really good point. I think a lot of people, yeah,

it's hard to get satisfied with certain things. And so he was just, he was troubled. You know, the quote that's on the wall in my gym is from the film. It says, I'd rather be dead than average. And that was something that he, you know, the quote that's on the wall in my gym is from the film. It says, I'd rather be dead than average. And that was something that he, you know, he just couldn't live without, you know, being whatever his ideal for success was. And the problem, I think, that you really just nailed, though, is that they don't know what that is. What's that goal?

Yeah. What is that? And if they don't ever reach it, they never feel satisfied. that and if they don't ever reach it they never feel satisfied and the thing is that he despite all that he's like the nicest like coolest guy in the world would have our backs you know on everything did he have good friends yeah he had crazy emotional here's what everybody has right they have good friends and then they get into drugs and then they don't have good friends so you have a lot of enabling people a lot of people that will allow you to keep doing what you're doing. A lot of people that'll put up with your bullshit. My father wasn't one of them.

You know, my father was somebody who like put his foot down and was helping him get clean. And, you know, we just weren't able to catch it in time, you know? And so people that are listening to this, I think it's really important to talk about these issues. It's just, you know, people want to always try to push these issues under the rug. So if you know someone who's struggling, try your best to reach out to them and just see if you can get to the bottom of the problem. I know it's the worst fucking thing in the world to try to approach somebody about it, but see if, you know, whatever you think is a good way of going about doing it and try to reach out to the person because you don't know how much longer they'll be here for. It's just so hard to get people to listen to you though, isn't it? It's brutal.

It is. When you've been through it, it becomes different. It completely becomes different. I went through it. I ended up it's kind of crazy halfway through this film that I was making relapsing and started popping Xanax and all

sorts of other stuff. Halfway through the film on prescription drugs, you start relapsing yes Crazy how when did you do this film? We finished it We finished it for Tribeca Film Festival. So I was like in May so you you relapse like a year ago Yeah, you're in so five months ago Fuck and I was popping Xanax and stuff like that because you know there's like filmmaking is not an easy business you know like if you were if you didn't have all this other stuff going on you were just a comic and you were trying to make it it's it's

brutal you know the ups and downs and oh i have an audition for something yeah seeing other people be successful can really beat you down you know people fly by you that were like way behind you you know all these different things that go on like way behind you, you know, all these different things that go on in your head. So you feel like that about the documentary world? It's like people that were making

some documentaries that would do really well and you get bummed out? I wouldn't really get bummed out so much about other people. I try to like always stay in my own lane and think about myself,

but I get more bummed out putting the pressure on myself. Right. So you see someone do real well and you go, God damn it, why am I not doing really well?

Yeah, I could have done that or somebody makes a documentary and then they're like off to the races doing like all these big movies. And, you know, you're like, why didn't somebody pick me for that? You know, like my documentary did way better than that documentary. So, you know, those kind of things in your eyes. But just the film world in general, Hollywood in general, gave me this feeling of inadequacy. It gave me a feeling like I wasn't good enough. Like everything I did, I wasn't making it.

People go, well, you did this hit movie. It was really big. Yeah, but it didn't really make money at the box office. Which is not your original intent. When he made the film, he said, I want a lot of people to see the movie. Tons of people see it. Your language, when you say it gave you

this feeling of inadequacy. Isn't that maybe the way you approached it yourself? It seems like it maybe the way you approached it yourself? I mean, it seems like it's not giving you anything, right? Yeah, making it up in his own head, yeah. Yeah, make it up in your own head. Yeah. You feel inadequate.

You feel like, oh, man, you know, I, you know. And as many people tell you that you do good, you're still looking for, like you said, you're still searching for that thing. So for me, it was all about finding balance. So when I relapsed and realized I need help, that's, I reached out. I didn't really reach out, like, but once I, once I knew I needed help and everybody sort of figured me out, my girlfriend helped me a lot with it. She sort of found me really fucked up one day, drunk and on Xanax. It was the middle of the night, and she called me.

I don't really answer my phone a whole lot. I don't respond to it a ton. It rings a lot, and I get a lot of messages and shit, so I'm not really on my phone that much for that kind of stuff. But I noticed a number was odd, and it was probably about midnight, so I was like, that just seems kind of weird. That's not like a telemarketer calling at 7, like calling at like 7 p.m. or something. This is something different.

And for whatever reason, I didn't have her number in my phone. But it was from like Pennsylvania or something, I think where she's originally from. And it was Lauren. And she said, you know, your brother is blah, blah, blah. And I couldn't understand what she was saying because she was very, very sad and crying and stuff. blah and I couldn't understand what she was saying because she was very very very sad and crying and stuff and so I asked her to kind of calm down and um kind of assess the situation a little bit she said I think your brother's in in his uh apartment I think he's passed out um I said well you're the only one there you got to kind of go in and you know see what's you know she's like I don't know

how I'm gonna find him or and I was kind of like whoa like what do you mean you don't know how you're going to find him? Because I didn't know how bad the situation was or how serious it was. I did know his friend. His friend called me a few times and said, hey, man, you know, your brother, you know, he's fucking up with some pills and doing this and that here and there. And then, you know, then I would communicate with that person again. And I'd find out that he's doing a little bit better. And then he'd be doing a little bit worse. So it kind of went back and forth, and having my other brother die from it, I was like, fuck, man.

I don't have the energy to fucking go down that road again. I want to reach out to him. I want to talk to him. I do love him. He's a hero and an idol to me in a lot of ways. And I really did want to reach out to him, but I just didn't know how to fucking bring it up. But he was really suffering, and I didn't really realize how bad it was until she called. And then I got off the phone with her. I just said, you know, take his keys

away, make sure he's okay. Talk to my wife. My wife's fucking awesome. She's super supportive about all this kind of stuff. And she said, we need to fly him here tomorrow, you know? And I said, well, let's fly Lauren here to make sure he gets on the fucking flight, that he's not drinking or taking pills or doing something crazy and he misses his flight. So we flew both of them up. We were able to get him some treatment where he was able to work on starting to recover. It's a nasty path. Did you document this in the film?

I didn't document all the stuff that went down, like, leading up to it. But, yeah, it's in the film. We talk about it for sure. But, like I said, it's a nasty path that, like, it was like a snowball effect. You know what I mean? And looking at it now, it's, like, I mean, it's not funny ever, but it's, like, laughable. Like, what the fuck was I thinking? You know, I can see it now from a different point of view.

So you said you relapsed on Xanax. So was it just you were having anxiety? No. I mean, you don't have anxiety. It's just whatever. You know, you just like to take it because you can't sleep. My mind is always racing. There's always another idea in the head.

There's always I can't go to sleep. My mind is always racing. There's always another idea in the head. There's always, I can't go to sleep. So I've tried the float chambers. I've tried stuff like that. I can't even get my mind to stop thinking a lot of times, or so I thought. So I always thought that I needed something, whether it was alcohol, whether it was pills. And I realized through the whole journey that all I really needed was to believe in myself again, to believe in who I really was and what I started doing when I started out trying to make films in the first place and tell the truth and be honest. The problem was I couldn't be honest with myself. I had a real hard time being honest with myself, and that's what recovery has brought to me.

It's amazing to be able to say. I don't know how much he's allowed to talk about the film, but I'll talk about it a little bit. Yeah, he basically interviewed somebody for the film that ended up helping him. He interviewed this guy, Richard Tate, who owns a treatment center in Malibu. And for his film, he researched it, and they had like a 95% success rate with people that were there, I think for over 60 days or something like that, correct?

90 days. 90 days. And he was like, what the fuck? 95% success rate with people that were there, I think, for over 60 days or something like that, correct? 90 days. 90 days. And he was like, what the fuck? 95% success rate? That's crazy. The whole time I'm interviewing the guy, I'm like, I wish I could come here. I wish I could come here. Because I knew that I still had a problem with alcohol.

And I wasn't really doing Xanax at the time. He researched it for himself. He's trying to tell himself he's researching it for the film. But he's researching it for himself. It's a weird thing, man. You start looking. Did you go to this place? Yeah, I ended up going to Cliffside and Allaboo for 90 days.

So what do they do that's so successful? They just change your life about everything. Well, Richard Tate was a wild man himself, and he came from that background. Yeah, here's the thing. So when you have a guy tell you, listen, 14 years ago, I was on my couch smoking crack with a hooker on each side. I was oiled up for some reason, smoking cigars, smoking crack, you know, and- Sounds like a good time. Yeah. Yeah. And he tells you, you know, that eight of his friends come and knock on his door and try to get him sober. And he slams the door in his face. And then he's like, you know what? That was rude.

He goes back and opens the door. He goes, what day is it? And they said, it's, you know, Friday. He goes, come back on a Monday. He slams the door. They come back on Monday. He was at that point just done doing drugs and alcohol. And they took him to treatment. I'm like, man, if this guy can get better. I wasn't that bad.

I didn't have hookers. At least I didn't have hookers. What did they do for you specifically like what is what is the process of getting someone to be to get 95 of people staying clean first part is uh separation from the problem uh just just being away from drugs and alcohol i think like aa is a great thing but for me if i would have went to an aa meeting i would have went home and drank that night i needed to be for me i needed to be in a place where I couldn't get drunk at all. I needed to be isolated from it for like a little while to get away from it.

The main thing was therapy. It's all therapeutic. It's all like group therapy. You go sit in a group with people that are fucked up and you talk about, you know, your problems. And in a good facility, they had such good counselors there that they, these people, like it was, it was more about like being loved again, feeling part of your, you know, I moved to LA and I was on my own. I moved to LA when I was 19 years old from, from New York. My whole family was back East. My brother moved out here eventually. My older brother moved out here eventually. And

eventually my parents moved out here. And we do have a close family too. We have a really close family. So to be away from your family and this whole time and not feel like any love from the world is a tough thing. You know, like a lot of people don't really express that. You know, it might sound kind of wimpy or something like that, but it's true. There was no feeling of comfort or safety or security in anything that I did. So, like, regaining that through being around people with like-minded experiences. And there's just some counselors there that will break you. You know, there, there's people that go there, hardcore heroin addicts that like will sit there in group therapy

and not want to be analyzed, you know, and these guys will break them down until they're, you know, punching pillows and shit, saying, this is my father, and you fucking piece of shit. That's how it goes. It's a really intense therapeutic thing that allows you to see yourself in a different way. And it's very humbling. The number one thing that I had on my side was a desperation to get better. It was one of the fucked up parts of the film, Bigger, Stronger, Faster,

was your dad saying that he knew that your older brother was going to die that way. Mm-hmm. And to go through that and then to have your brother die that way and then for you to get hooked on pills yourself, that had to have been a helpless feeling. Well, that's why I felt like I couldn't tell anybody. So I went to my parents and I was doing an interview with them and I really wanted to tell them. But I was like, you know, I don't know if I can tell them. So early on in the movie, before I before I had relapsed, I said, hey, listen, I had a problem with this.

My mom cries and she's like, well, why didn't you tell me? I'm like, how am I supposed to tell you? You just lost a son. My mom cries and she's like, well, why didn't you tell me? I'm like, how am I supposed to tell you? You just lost a son. I'm going to tell you like I'm going to go, you know, next or you're going to worry about me because I'm not there. You know, what is if you can try to describe what is the feeling like when you want to take that shit, when you want to take a pain pill? Like what what is there's no feeling it's a it's it's not it's not the addict's fault. You might have friends or people that you know that, why don't they just wake up and stop drinking? Well, you can't. It's not your and built in your system. It becomes a neurological pathway in your brain,

and you tend to habituate the things that make you feel good. So that's just something that an addict will do more so than other people. You're saying that this is a very distinct black and white thing, that it's not the addict's fault, but the addict has to be sober first before they can get fucked up right so you're sober sure so if you're sober you have a conscious mind you're aware of your actions and you decide to take a pain pill how is that not the addict's fault if you're already addicted it's it's an automatic thing your body feels like it needs it okay but you weren't addicted right

maybe because you never got actual treatment how do you get addicted in the first place but you weren't because you were off of it for a long time, right? Yeah. So it wasn't like you had this mad need, like your bones were aching. You had to get that. I think you switched to alcohol, I think is kind of the part that you're. Yeah, I switched to alcohol instead of having pills. So I always had something. So you get the double hip replacement surgery.

So you did your documentary bigger stronger faster was 2008 yeah right so right after that 2009 like when are you talking about your you're getting your hip replaced yeah 2009 okay six years ago and then how you get off the shit our 2007 i actually got it replaced i got it done before we finished the movie okay okay oh you did 2007 but then but then I didn't mention this. So then I had my hip. I said they had complications. They had to redo my hip.

Oh. So two years later, they redid it in 2009. They redid my right hip. They completely took it out and put it back together. Oh, my God. They unscrew it? Well, there was some messed up parts in there. Did they have to unscrew that thing that digs into the bone?

I think they left that. I think that was fine. I think it's the other part that was messed up. And then a month after I had that hip surgery, my brother died. Oh, man. You know? And it's like just tough. It's like you can power through that stuff if you have the tools.

But I didn't have any tools To stay sober. Let me ask you this So you you get the hip replacement surgery the first time then you get hooked on pills then you get off pills But two years later they want to reopen you up. Do you take pills again? I got back on pills for how long? About another two years and then and then what was, so then I went... Two fucking years? Yeah. So then I went back to try to get off the pills. Like, I knew I needed to get off the pills. How long were you on them for the first time?

The first time when you had the first problem? I was on them for like a year, and then I got off of them. For how long? But I only got off them for a couple months, and I had the second surgery again. So it was a really up and down... So you had just gotten the second surgery again. So it's a really up and down. So you had just gotten off of them. Yeah, it's a really up and down thing. So there's a drug called Suboxone, and Suboxone sort of mimics the way that a painkiller will feel in your body.

But it doesn't get you high. It'll just basically make you not feel sick. So the biggest problem is withdrawals. You feel so bad. It's like the flu times a hundred. So the thing is that when you're coming off them and you want to get on Suboxone, so my, my insurance would cover all the pills. So there was 10 bucks a pop, you know, 10 bucks for like 180 pills of, of a Percocet or Vicodin or whatever the drug I was taking. When I wanted to get off of them, I had to consult with a doctor every month for $250,

and I had to pay about $225 to $250 for the drug, and insurance doesn't cover any of that. They don't cover you getting better. They only cover you doing the dangerous drugs. Wow. So that's another brutal thing on top of it. And then Suboxone. Why do you think that is? Do you think that's built into the system to make sure they sell more drugs?

It's built into the system. That's a scary thought if that's true. If you look at it, yes, if you take painkillers, it's your fault for getting addicted, kind of. But if you actually look at the history of OxyContin, that drug was designed to hook people on what's basically very similar to heroin. The drug company that made it Purdue Pharmaceuticals, they lied. They made $8 billion on this drug, $8 billion, and then they had to pay a fine of $2 billion. So look at the profits, still $6 billion. They call it the price of doing business.

So they lied and said that you will not get addicted using this drug. Well, they got the whole country addicted to this drug. Those people should all be in prison. They got the whole country addicted to a drug that's made for severe cancer patients. And that kind of stuff is just criminal. And people go like, oh, well, you should have known. It's like most people don't know. That's why we're making a movie, to have awareness, you know, for these things.

So this is really fresh for you. This is not something that you have overcome a long time ago. No, no, I still go to meetings and I still, you know, stay up on it. I think every day you need to remind yourself that you can go back there. So you're 100% sober now. You don't fuck with anything. No, nothing. Nothing.

So the feeling that you get when you have this relapse with Xanax, the feeling that you get, do you just feel helpless? Do you feel just pulled to it? What's pulling you? Yeah, like, for example, so Xanax was a drug that would help me. I would drink a lot, you know, like I wasn't because I was an addict. He'd kind of drink to the point where, you know, it was compromising the next day type of thing. And then also you ended up in the hospital a couple times from drinking.

Yeah, I think I went with some serious bouts of drinking but it wasn't like nobody really knows this but i went to the to the uh urgent care or emergency room i think 10 times within a matter of like 20 days what yeah because i go to urgent care and i go get xanax because i had hangover so bad because i would drink so much you know and it was continuous like every day. So for me, it became, it became a labor. It became like every day I was like, you know, uh, this cat chasing his tail. Like I would never get better or feel better. At first you weren't, uh, drinking that often though, right? No, no. At first it was like every three days, seven days, you know, we talked about it, powerlifting and everything like that. We were sports guys.

Like we were never into drinking. We were never into drugs. Like that wasn't something even on my radar when I did Bigger, Stronger, Faster. I would drink, you know, here and there. But I should have known back then because like when I did drink, it was like binge drinking. And that's when you know that you'll probably have a problem somewhere down the road. If you're the guy that drinks and you got the guy that drinks once a month, but you get completely hammered, you know that you might have a problem. You know, I wasn't the guy that could ever put it down. So how, what does it feel like to make

a documentary about prescription drugs while you're hooked on prescription drugs? Guilty. Yeah. Really guilty the whole time. Like I had raised the money to do it. I was moving forward with it. I had a bunch of people involved. So I like who the fuck do I tell you know you're in this weird situation where you're like I'm a hypocrite but I can't stop what I just stopped doing this and pull the plug and I have people working for me people editing the film my partner Greg Young was there since uh the very beginning and he was you know he knew what was going on but he didn't know what he's gonna do like pull the plug on his own job.

And like he didn't he cared about me and wanted to help me, but he didn't know how to help me. So how much of a part of the film does this become? It's it's sort of towards towards the end. It's sort of like in the third act of the film. You know, we sort of discuss it and go into it. We didn't go into a whole lot about recovery because the movie isn't really about that. But by the end of the movie, you know I'm okay. But it took you a whole quarter.

A whole quarter of a year. That's crazy. They take you away from society for a quarter. Very few people can afford to do that. No, it's crazy, man. What happened was, I i i feel this i feel almost everybody if they could unplug from their life for like 30 days even like 10 days like you know people go on vacation they still bring their phone and stuff a lot of people around them that

they know and it's just to be in that environment of solitude is just like an amazing feeling that um go dark yeah yeah going. What happened to me was, in the third, so you asked how they helped me. And, um, I could tell you that I think part of it, a big, huge part of it, they talk about like AA and all these other programs and everything. Everybody talks about a spiritual awakening. So like the third day that I was in rehab, I went and took a shower and it was like, I don't know, four o'clock in the morning or something. I couldn't even, couldn't sleep or anything. And I went in the shower and I just cried for like three hours. The fuck am I doing? I went to USC film school. I went, I did all the right things. I, I, I trained, you know, my whole life. I did everything the right

way and I'm fucking blowing it. And that's what got to me. It was myself that got to me. It wasn't anybody else, really. Another thing that happened to him in treatment was Cliffside, Malibu is beautiful. Multi-million dollar facility. It's really nice. It's in fucking Malibu, California, which is beautiful. But I think once you were there for like two weeks,

they took you away from there and threw you in some shithole, right? Yeah, what happened was, so I was there for... I personally think it's all part of the plan, but I don once you were there for like two weeks, they took you away from there and threw you in some shithole, right? Yeah, what happened was, so I was there for... I personally think it's all part of the plan, but I don't know. Yeah, I was there for 10 days, and after 10 days, I was being helped by the facility. They were funding it. They were helping me. So since they were helping me out because I was part of this movie,

and the guy just had compassion for me, Richard Tate, and wanted to see me get better. The guy was suspicious that you had a problem when you came there the first time to interview him anyway, right? Exactly. And so he said to me, we can't afford to keep you here anymore. It's $60,000 a month to go to that place.

Jesus Christ. A lot of insurance covers it and different things like that. Insurance covers that? Yeah. Depends on your insurance. It's a double scam. So it's the fucking insurance covers that yeah it depends on your double scams so it's the insurance covers that they make a little yeah yeah it's all part of the system it's all part of the system what do you mean suboxone oh i need money for that yeah yeah sorry it's hard to come up with that money i don't have any money for that sorry yeah but but they

have the money for the treatment everything so anyway throw you in this place it's not so good so what happened was i went to a place called Claire Foundation. It's in Santa Monica, and it's, like, very industrial. It's a government-run rehab facility. I mean, I walked in there and saw this guy with no teeth, and he's, like, scratching his nuts, and he's like, you're not going to like it in here. The pillows are really tough.

And I walk in, and I'm like, you're not going to like it in here. The pillows are really tough. And I walk in. I'm like, where the fuck do you sleep in here? And I'm looking and there's all these bunk beds. I'm like, well, where's my room? And they're like, no, there is no room. It's one big room with 40 bunk beds and 40 grown men. And 39 of them just got out of jail. And you're the only one that's normal.

Kind of. You know, it was sort of a facility like that where it was just something out of like one flew over the cuckoo's nest. And when they put me in there, that was like, fuck this, man. This, you know, I know like a lot of addicts will say, like, I'm not like that or I'm not like this. This was something that was so far fetched from where I would ever find myself in my life. So far down that I was like, fuck this. I'm getting out of here and this is it i'm never gonna drink or do a drug again and you know hopefully hopefully you can stick to that you

know um but i don't have any urges to anymore but it was that facility that um that really cemented it you know after so then that's only 10 days so why did you i was in that facility for 19 days and it was like about 10 days in 10 days and then 19 days there 19 days there and then and then and then when I got when They had room for me back at cliffside and I ended up going back to Malibu and like living out the rest of it in Malibu And what was really nice about that was I was still able to work So I was going to treatment every day for three hours In the morning and then I would drive to

like LA and I would I would work on the movie the rest of the time wow it's pretty twisted but it all worked out you know but you you pretty much feel like you were done after you went to that shithole right yeah but you just felt like you needed more treatment to cement it it's like what's the thought process you know like uh it's, it's hard to explain to people that haven't been through it. People that have been through it, they know what it's like. But addiction is one of the most powerful forces in this universe. It's something that drives people every day to do bad shit, you know? You need continued support, right?

Yeah, you basically just need yeah you know basically like um a lot of it's set off by trauma like things that happened in your life a lot of it's uh you know but i didn't really have that like one main trauma that like set it off people go oh well your brother died and like well that was it wasn't as traumatic as it sounds like of course it's uh traumatic but but i was i was doing stuff before that so what was before that i don't even know maybe the hip surgery didn't seem to me i think a big part of it for me was having the hip surgery took away something that i really loved which was like lifting you know something that like if you couldn't fight anymore you'd fucking hate it

you know you'd be like bummed you'd be grumpy because it was a part of you just in your everyday life and that was gone yeah and it might sound Because it was a part of your everyday life, and now it was gone. Yeah, and it might sound stupid, but it's something that you do. Right. If I said, hey, Joe, you know what? No more fighting, bro. You're done. So you just felt like just a giant loss.

You just felt like something was missing from your life, and that's what led you to just start getting fucked up. Fill it in with other stuff, you know? Wow. And you didn't think about maybe trying something healthy and trying to engineer your life in some sort of a way where you do something positive? Okay, so when you take away working out, what's healthy? Well, you couldn't do any working out? Not, I mean, not a whole lot. Not like I used to. For how long?

I mean, just for like years, I just felt shitty. You know, I just didn't feel good. Because of the hips? Yeah. years, I just felt shitty. I just didn't feel good. Because of the hips? Yeah. I think he also felt lonely, too. I mean, he didn't have her until kind of more recently. And even though our family is in California, I have two children. So our parents moved to this side. They were from New York originally. They moved to California, but we all live in Northern California. And when it came to holidays and some different things, I mean, we'd call him and communicate with him a little bit here and there, but you know, he, he kind of just seemed

like he didn't give a fuck. Are you still in upstate New York? No, he's LA. You're here too. Yeah. He's in LA. Yeah. Yeah.

So he was only in LA and we were in Sacramento, but, um, it wasn't, you know, not that far. It's one hour flight or whatever, but we'd communicate with him here and there and just, you know, even like on his birthday or something, call him or whatever the case might be. And then he would come up to Sacramento or I'd come down here and we'd meet up with each other here or there. But we just didn't really realize how severe the situation was in terms of just his like mental health. You know, it's just like not a dude thing to do. Like, hey, man, how you doing? And somebody doesn't just like pour out their fucking feelings.

They're like, oh, I'm doing good. good you know they just leave it at that and you kind of move on to the next thing i have people that are in my film that have relapsed you know since the film um and i have people that i have a guy who i had to get a release for the film like somehow somebody slipped up and didn't didn't get a release for the film and um just like this is like two days ago i have a guy who who relapsed and he's all fucked up we're trying to get a release of the film we can't even get in touch with him so I did send somebody to his house and then we found out that he's relapsed and he's a mess and he needs treatment too so it's like this it's a dangerous powerful thing and and part of the whole program

is helping other people and I think it's beautiful it's like that the thing now is like how do I help other, how do I help other people? How do I help? People will listen to this show and they will hit me up on Facebook and they'll say, listen, man, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. What do I do? And the beauty is I don't have to do it for them. I can just lead them in the right direction and help guide them to treatment and be there for them.

The people that run these treatment centers, they must feel like they're combating vampires or something. It's like everyone is just getting bitten and sick. It's incredible the numbers. Sick is a good way of putting it. When somebody has something like that, you kind of feel like they have cancer or something. You don't know how to help them. I think a lot of people just think, oh, I can help them. Hey, if we go work out together, if we hang out together, if we go eat together, like, that shit will be fun and, like, take his mind off it.

But it doesn't work that way. As soon as you get back home, you turn back into the vampire. Yeah, I mean, and looking at it, people go, oh, it's not a sickness. It's your own fucking fault. It's your own personal. Take all that away. Well, what's going on? Someone's got some shit in their veins that they need to keep pumping into their body.

It's like sick. It is like sick. You know what? All those same people that say it's not a sickness, a lot of those people will fall into it too. Well, that's what's fucked up about it, how many people fall into it. I've had a lot of friends get hooked on pills.

Chris Lieben's in my movie. Is he? Yeah. Yeah, he's had some issues. And he's had some issues recently. I just spoke to him a couple days ago, and he's back on the suboxone again.

And it's hard to get off of that shit. Like, it's really hard to get off. And it's like, suboxone is a maintenance drug to keep him going back from doing the oxys. But it's just something that he's going to have to battle and fight every day to get off. What are the numbers? How many people

in this country are addicted to pain pills? I think it's like 2 point something million. Jesus. Well, then just how many people are just on pills, period. I mean, I know some people some of the, you know, obviously some of the pharmaceutical drugs can be beneficial. You want a number? Hold on, that's a real number?

2 million people are hooked on pain pills? Yeah. Fucking people walking around like zombies. Say you had an idea to help people. Holy shit. I'm just freaking out. Give me a second here. I can't believe that's real.

Two million people are hooked on that shit? Yeah. That's like a national epidemic. Yeah, absolutely. That's almost 1% of the population of the country. So last year, I think- What's the country? 300 million people? I think so, yeah. That's almost 1% of the population of the country. So last year, I think. What's the country? 300 million people?

I think so. That's, God damn it. 2 million fucking people. 3 million people is 1%. I think it's in 2012. That's crazy. Like 254 million prescriptions were written for Vicodin. Holy fuck.

So that's enough to medicate say that again say that 254 million Prescriptions for Vicodin were written in like last year the year before and that's enough drugs That's enough painkillers to medicate every male Every every adult person in America for a month. What? Yeah, $254 million. Here's another step for you. Hold on. $254 million prescriptions were filled?

Is that the idea? Yeah, for painkillers. How does that even make sense? Is that in a whole year? In a whole year because people get several. Right, so they get 90 pills or 100 pills. Yeah, a lot of times it's like once a month. A lot of times with stuff like that, you only get like 10 at a time though too yeah well here's another step for you if you

if you wanted to do something about it and you're a congressman right and you're like you know what fuck it i'm gonna do something about this epidemic and then there's 445 000 sitting on your table i can either take that money from lobbyists because on average that's how much money the lobbyist will take on average there's how much money the lobbyist will take on average there's a certain amount of number of people in congress and a certain amount of money that's spent so if you average it out it comes out to like over 400 000 per congressman that they use for their campaigns and everything else so you can either take that money and just say you know what everything's cool you know or you can take that money and try to fight them and risk losing that money out of your campaign. So all these special interests and all these different things that people talk about all the time, pharmaceuticals is one of the biggest ones.

They're one of the biggest contributors to these campaigns. So people don't really have a vested interest to stop it. They have no interest, right? I mean, that's an epidemic. Any if they were trying to fight it, if they fought it with that little amount of money, it wouldn't even fucking work. Well, what amount of money would be effective? Yeah, billions. It seems like it's so intense. What's really fucked up is this shit didn't even exist 50 years ago. Right.

That's what's really fucked up. It didn't really exist, you know, 20 years ago. Well, how nuts is that? That's something so... Well, 20 years ago, they did have Quaaludes. Yeah, that's a big have quaaludes that's the big bill cosby drug right yeah his thing quills but are they as addictive they were a completely different thing from what I understand this is just a total new level of addictive properties right yeah it's so if you if you look at um okay so we you have drugs like morphine, right?

Morphine and heroin are like really closely related. You can make one out of the other, right? But on the other side, they now make them synthetically. So this shit doesn't even require, it's just chemical upon chemical upon chemical. It doesn't require any sort of base. You don't need opium to make it. You need opium to make morphine, but you don't need it to make Oxycontin. So they figured out a way to make these things synthetically so that they can just, you know.

I don't understand that. How does that work? I don't understand either. Like, where are they getting the raw properties? They make it in a lab, but I don't know what the fuck they make it from. But, like, you can't make something out of nothing physically impossible, right? That's why I always did understand, like, everyone said, well, yeah, Afghanistan produces, you know, 90-whatever percent of the world's opium and heroin. Yeah.

But what about pills? If it's synthetic opium or synthetic heroin, are they getting it from Afghanistan? Is that what they're doing? They figured out ways, special ways, you know, ways to make it out of other things that are like normal bases and changes chemical makeups of them somehow. We're too stupid for this conversation, aren't we? Yeah, they're called opiates. People go, oh yeah, he's on opiates.

But that's not really true unless he's on morphine. They're on opioids, which are synthetic. Kind of like steroids. Steroids, opioids. See all the bad oids? All about the oids. Hemorrhoids. How strange, man, that we live in a world where 200 million prescriptions for super highly addictive pain pills get prescribed in a year. And we're supposed to be like an educated country and stuff, too.

And you think that, like, that's an epidemic. And you look at what we're prescribing to the kids. We're giving kids, you know, speed. Adderall. We're giving Adderall, Ritalin. And that's's a you know five million prescriptions written for that for kids every year you know whoa just keeps going up and up and up it seems so easy to get too i had a mom easy i had a i have a mom in my film and she has a daughter that has uh adhd and so she brings her to the you know psychiatrist or whatever and they prescribe her ADHD pills you know Adderall and the mom starts taking it

and then the mom convinces the daughter she doesn't have ADHD and she shouldn't take it so then the mom starts taking the other kids there's three other kids she took all our kids to the doctor and got like four prescriptions every month and was taking like tons of Adderall. She would take like 10 a day. I bet that bitch got a lot done. Yeah. House is clean. 2010, every American adult every four hours for one month.

It says every prescription painkiller were prescribed to medicate every American adult for every four hours. What do you mean? What does that mean? You can't see that line. Well, why don't you make it

so I can see it? It's a... Here's the... Sorry. Oh, it so i can see it it's here's uh sorry oh it's like it's like oh it's like a bad there's a there's a text of it okay in 2010 enough prescription pain pillers were just prescribed to medicate every american adult every four hours for a month i wasn't lying j Jesus Christ. Nine million people. So that's like three pills a day or something. That's abusers. That's 2010. Now, has it gotten better or worse in five years?

Either way, that number is insane. When I talked about Purdue Pharmaceuticals and OxyContin and how that invaded America and all that stuff like that, if you look at it, the government at some certain point, you know, got fed up with it. And they said, listen, people are dying, right? So it's cool that you guys are selling all these drugs and everything. We'll take your lobby money, but people are dying. So you can't take this drug. You got to make a way that you can't take it and crush it up anymore and inject it or snort it or do other things with it recreationally. So now if you crush Oxycontin, it turns into a gel. It turns into like a mush. So what they did, what happened after they figured out how you couldn't crush it and snort it anymore,

once they did that, the sales dropped 80%. Holy fuck. So what does that tell you? 80%? It just shows you anything is possible with money, though. How the fuck did they figure out a way that if you crush it up, it turns into a gel? I don't know. The fuck does that even mean? It's amazing that someone talked them into doing that.

And then they dropped 80% of their profits and they stuck with it. They're probably fucking scrambling for studies to show that that gel is less effective. They find other... We need to go back to the pills. There's no other way. probably fucking scrambling for studies to show that that gel is less effective they find they find other we need to go back to the pills but here's the problem there's no other way here's the problem with uh a study right so everybody wants to think that they read the studies and the studies are good and the studies are valid and you know what happens is you need two studies that prove that your pill is more effective than a placebo. Not more effective than anything that's on the market, just more effective than a placebo to get your drug passed.

So it costs a lot of money and a lot of money through the FDA and a lot of testing and all these things, but it's still not very hard to get a drug passed. They just passed one called Zyhydro, and it's more powerful than Oxycontin. So now there's another drug on the market that's more powerful. Who are these fucking monsters? How do we get some of that shit?

Who are these monsters that are making this stuff? Does anybody need something stronger than Oxycontin? Is this some fucking rallying cry for stronger pain pills? You talk about medical marijuana. I talked to a senator about medical marijuana. He's like, medical marijuana is not killing anybody. And I'm like, exactly. So is that something that's

good or bad? And we look at it and go like, man, it's crazy what we could do with a plant compared to what's happening with these pills. I don't know anybody. I know maybe one or two people that have ruined their life with pot just because they're fucking lazy.

But beyond that, beyond the scope of that, it seems to be very helpful for so many people. Yeah, my point of view has always been that if pot ruins your life just because pot got there first, like cheeseburgers or scratch tickets or fucking Jehovah's Witnesses, whoever gets to your house first. Look, man, alcohol is the fucking worst. Alcohol is the devil if you indulge in it.

Yeah. Or, you know, you don't have the gene for it or whatever it is, and it's not the worst. You just have a drink, and then you don't want to have a drink anymore. Yeah. Like, I've never had the urge to drink. I like a drink every now and then, but I've never had the urge. It's the same way. But I have friends who have it,

and I see it. It hits them, and it's like a blanket goes over their eyelids. It's like they vanish. It's like they're not there anymore. And then there's some new persons there. And those are the people that you know are going to eventually have a problem if they don't already. If they don't already. Yeah, I definitely have known a lot of alcoholics, and I know a

lot of people, like more than half a dozen people whose lives have been wrecked by pills yeah they just usually a back injury you know something along those lines and then they they take something and the next thing you know they can't get off it it's very innocent you know it's not uh it's not something that's uh but but it turns somebody who can be a great person into somebody who lies che cheats, and steals. And that's what's wrong with it. You know, the pills, I always used to think like, well, if I could just be on these forever, because I still have a lot of pain in my back and my hips and like not in the hips

necessarily, but like in the lower back because of the hips were messed up and because of my knees are messed up and still have a lot of pain. But I know that what happens with the pain pills are it's diminishing returns. Like after a while, I'll i'll need you know for a while i had to take 12 percocets a day what just to maintain the pain you know the pain level that i that i used to how many hours do you wake yeah like well you know what's the other thing keeps you awake all day percocets keep you awake yeah some people go to sleep and some people stay awake all day i would stay awake all day. Percocets keep you awake? Yeah. Some people go to sleep and some people stay awake all day. I would stay awake all day, but after a while, I get up to taking like 20, right? 20 a day?

Okay, so I thought that was bad. It's a PR. Yeah, it's a PR. My friend in the movie, I said to him, he was in WWE, he's a wrestler, Luther Raines. I said, how many were you taking a day? He goes, 90. And he would say, I'd get up in the morning, my girlfriend would lay him out all out

it'd be like you know 10 vicodin 10 soma you know he was taking muscle relaxers painkillers he said i even take uh viagra and cialis every morning with my vitamins like what do you take that for he said just to be ready you know is this because it sounds like an asshole well we're we're we're we're in like he's the coolest fucking guy ever. He's amazing. He's got some great stories. He's pilled up with a giant hard dick. So he tells me...

A vampire with a boner. At the time he lived in Phoenix. And in Phoenix they have cameras on the freeway. And he was on... Soma makes you go to sleep. It's a muscle relaxer. It makes you go to sleep. So he said he gets a ticket in the mail. He's like, what the fuck is this ticket? I never got a ticket.

Driving asleep? He opens up the ticket and there's a plane as day. He's fucking passed out. And he's driving in his Corvette going 95 in a 65. Asleep? Asleep. He got the ticket. Jesus fucking Christ. I wonder if he got a ticket

For being asleep too Oh my god I don't think everybody What's going on with him now He had a massive Massive stroke He had a Cardiac

Arrhythmia I don't know what you call that He had something wrong With his heart To begin with All the pills And sort of Living the tough life

Because he did a lot of Illegal drugs too He had a lot of illegal drugs too. He had a stroke. Illegal drugs? Like what? He did like Coke and everything else on top of it. But what happens is he was getting them on the black market. He used to get them a thousand at a time.

Big bottles. A thousand? Yeah. Oh my God. They told me he was selling, you know, selling. He had a customer that was buying them at $28,000, like, a week. So he had to get massive, massive amounts. So he was, like, dealing them and selling them.

$28,000 worth of pills in a week? He needed a fucking forklift for that shit. Selling them to guys in the NFL. You know, selling them to the Phoenix Cardinals. God, that's insane. Wasn't Rush Limbaugh taking like 90 a day? Yeah, I think so, yeah. I think he was taking a lot.

Well, anyway, so my friend Luther Raines, he ended up, he had a massive stroke, and now he's actually somehow, so when you have withdrawals from painkillers, it feels like you're going to die. And so when he had this stroke, they said, get his mother here. He's not going to make it through this, and we can't pump him full of enough drugs for him to get through this. He's probably not going to make it.

Somehow, miraculously, the part of the brain that is – like 30% of his brain got killed during the stroke. Part of the brain that got killed was the part that was responsible for feeling withdrawals. So somehow he fucking dodged a bullet. We call him the bulletproof bad boy. Somehow he dodged a bullet. He's alive. He has no more hangovers. He's completely sober.

And he goes around and talks to kids and churches and things like that. So he's doing great work. So he lost 30% of his brain. Yeah, but somehow he's still cognitive. He's still there. He's jacked. So he's on steroids. Yeah.

Jesus fucking Christ. I don't know. Maybe. He might be. He's got to be on something, yeah. So he's off the pain pills, on steroids, and helping out kids. Yeah, there you go. What the fuck kind of a world we live in.

I love that one day we were eating with him. We were grabbing a burger or something. He's got this fanny pack on. He's, like, pulling stuff out. He's trying to find his, like, money, you know? He's like, I'll pay for it, bro. And he's, like, moving in slow motion. He's fucking drooling.

I'm like, this guy's amazing. What is going on with this guy? He's putting all these different bottles of pills on the table. He's got Viagra and a bunch of other shit. He carries a bottle with him? Yeah, and then he put like... In his fanny pack. Yeah, well, there's Bob Tolles, the

many bottles. And then he puts down a little bag, like a clear bag of something, and he's like... He looks at it, and he grabs his money clip, and he puts his money on the table, a little bag like a clear bag of something and he's like he looks at it and he grabs his money clip and he puts his money on the table he looks at the clear bag he's like whoops and he puts that back whatever the fuck that was that was like that wasn't okay for him to put on the table everything else was fine for some reason he's like whoops it's a big old stack of cash that That's so crazy. Oh, yeah. He's.

Oh, my God. I was like, dude, what if you get, like, your pills mixed up? Like, you're just running a ton of fucking Viagra and shit. Like, what are you doing? Maybe when he was passed out in the car, maybe he was driving with his dick. Yeah, maybe his dick was so hard there was no blood in his brain. It's amazing now, though, because he was dating a porn star for a long time. So now he's like a born again. He brought porn stars to your fucking movie premiere.

It was amazing. Yeah. Bigger, Stronger, Faster. He brought two porn stars. There's two chicks making out right behind my parents. It was like the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life. What a good guy. Oh, he's awesome.

He's a lot of fun. So then he'll be going. Now that he's a born-again Christian, he'll be like telling me, look, bro, now that you're sober, now you need God. And he'll be like, look at this chick's tits that just texted me. It's like such a walking contradiction. He's hilarious. So what, if anything, can be done about this crazy prescription drug crisis? Because it seems like when you're talking about millions of people that are on it, what's the number?

Eight million people abuse it every year? Eight million people. What is that? Is that like 3% of the population of the country somewhere around there? That's pretty big. What's the country? 300 million people, right? So nine would be 3%, right?

Jesus Christ. 8.76 million in 2010. So what is it? Oh, I wonder what percentage of people are adults. It might literally be 3% of the population of the whole country is fucked up on prescription pain pills. Well, here's the deal, too. We only represent 5% of the entire world's population. We consume 75% to 85% of the world's prescription drugs.

That's a lot of drugs. Well, that's because we're America and we do it big. Everything we do. America. Yeah, so if you want to see what can be done about it, first of all, just ban advertising on TV for drugs because that just creates an environment where people go into the doctor and tell them what they have. A doctor is a fucking doctor.

A doctor went to school. All you did was watch a commercial that's advertised, do you have toenail fungus? All these stupid things. So that creates a drug culture, an idea that there's a pill for everything. I think that that idea is an idea that needs to just go away. There is a pill for everything, but let's not think that way. Are you tired? Are you sad? Yeah. Let's talk about me well and that's that's one thing but i think also just like education is the most important thing that we can have for anything whether it's steroids whether it's prescription drugs yeah but you say that you say that but yeah you were educated you you knew the all the pitfalls you

had a brother who died of it you had been been hooked on it yourself. You've been doing a documentary about all the different components of addiction, of selling these pills, and yet you still got sucked into the web. Yeah, exactly. That's how powerful it is. That's so crazy, but you are about as educated about

it as a person can be. I think now I am. But back then when you were making the documentary, don't you think you were way more educated than the average person? Yeah, I was way more educated. I was already susceptible to it. I'd already been in, you know what I mean? So that's a tough thing.

It's like if you can get somebody before they ever experience it, that's definitely Are there other warning signs maybe before you get to that point of reaching for a pill? What do you mean's other warning signs maybe before you get to that point of like reaching for a pill what do you mean other warning sounds like like like something that happens before you actually start to take pills or or do drugs you know what i mean yeah there's always sort of gateways drinking and other things you know that make it right mark what is it like for you to have two brothers that have these poles but you don't my family's fucked up but you you know i mean you obviously like steroids but i love them yeah they're great but but you don't have like this self-destructive thing going on like you seem like a real generous guy right but you are a real generous guy just with the fact that you have this free gym and these free seminars and i saw in the in the documentary that you

really love working with kids and helping them out like what is it yeah um i think um seeing my older brother um like um he just like his life was uh his life was really hard and he had to like evade stuff and lie and like go through all these crazy things all the time because of the pills yeah because of the pills and it also put a lot of heartache and stuff on a lot of other people so it sort of made me go the other direction you know like sometimes people have a parent that's an alcoholic or a parent that abuses them and it makes that person go the complete opposite way and then other times you have someone someone who has a parent that's an alcoholic and they end up becoming the same thing i think for me it just made me steer clear of that. I just remember seeing my brother hide alcohol in bushes and shit like that from my parents and lie to my parents.

And my parents are about as awesome a parents as you can have. So I was always just like, man, that just seems like a lot of extra work to go through. Even if you told them that you were having a drink, they probably wouldn't care. Not like they would be like, hey, go for it, man, that just seems like a lot of extra work to go through. Even if you told them that you were having a drink, they probably wouldn't care. Not like they would be like, hey, go for it, man. They're not going to be like your buddy and have a drink with you. But at the same time, I don't think our parents would really care, especially if they were in the house. They'd probably be like, fuck it, man. I'd rather have you doing it here safe.

I know you're not driving and causing a lot of other problems. So I just saw a lot of baggage that came with all that shit. And you didn't see that? I saw it yes i completely saw it uh like i said uh getting the hip i think the hip replacement thing and getting hooked on pills in a way that seemed to me to be uh organic you know it wasn't like my brother started taking pills because he got hurt in wrestling and then he but did he really you know it's like i don't know if he ever got a prescription for it My brother started taking pills because he got hurt in wrestling. It's like, I don't know if he ever got a prescription for it. They were just passed around. They were passed around so much in wrestling that it was such a huge problem.

So for me, I was like, well, I'm taking them legitimately. And it just was a snowball effect. Legitimately, because the doctor tells you it's okay. Yeah, it was a real snowball effect. What about you when you got hurt from the squat? When you fucked up your ankle and your knee when you dropped that weight? Yeah, I had to take a little bit of stuff just because it was just unreasonable not to. Like, I just physically could not get up off the couch. You were just in agony.

And then I just talked to one of my buddies at the gym. I'm like, dude, like, I was like, I need some stuff so I can fucking move around. So you're just getting it from the gym. Yeah, I'm in a lot of that's where everything comes from from that's so crazy. You guys don't ever go to doctor I gotta say like when I when I talk about the hip surgery I mean it felt like my my right side that they botched mm-hmm for two years It felt like it was on fire, you know, so I mean if you're on fire, right? You got to put that out right so that's and then by the time you ready to get off of it

You're just so addicted right also told my friend though, too i was like dude like i'm gonna come back to you for more don't give me don't fucking don't give me any more so give me like an amount that you think is like reasonable because my friend what did you take uh i don't even know i don't even remember exactly what it was yeah whatever it was it worked pretty good though you just don't know yeah take two or how many did you tell uh whatever yeah yeah just take some for a few oh my god um i also uh what also steered me clear of a lot of stuff um at least as i got a little bit older as i met my wife like you know we've been married for almost 15 years now and been together for about 17 years and i have children i got a lot of responsibility so like even if i wanted to get fucked up, like I don't have time to like go do it really.

Right. And I got a lot of obligations. Your brother didn't have any kids. No, he was married. He didn't have any kids. You don't have any kids. Not all kids. I wonder if that's it.

I wonder if it's the responsibility of having children just keeps you from being an adult. Yeah, just having somebody else in my life that cares about me, somebody else that's supportive and, you know, she's as much a part of the company's success as I am. So all that definitely plays into it. That's such a scary number of the 8.76 million people that are abusing it, and that being 2010 and not knowing what it is in 2015. That's terrifying to me. That's crazy. The idea that we could be in that state, and it's sort of like something that flies under the radar

for the most part unless you know somebody and then you think of that person as an isolated incident. Yeah, you think that person's crazy or that person's doing it, like you said, doing it to themselves. And, you know, like there is definitely personal responsibility in all of this, whatever it is. But at a certain point when things are so addictive that people don't really know about it or the doctors are just you know handing them out like crazy you

know there were for a while a couple years ago and they shut these all down there were pill mills so you just they call them pill mills people would come from west virginia drive all the way down to florida just to get pills you know so my friend that we were talking about before luther he just said he'd have seven prescriptions and he's like, my whole day would be driving around to different pharmacies picking up different prescriptions. Now they have this drug database

that if you get a prescription from Walgreens, you can't go to Costco and get that prescription. However, nobody really uses it. That's another way to get it. Nobody uses it. Plus, the DEA regulates how many of these drugs are made and there's

way more drugs made than are actually needed. So a lot of those fall off the truck and you know, different things happen where they're obtained. Really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So is that sort of built into the system? This is a massive massive, massive money making system and everybody's

on the take what the fuck a lot of money be made and it's killing people like vampires yeah but we have a war on drugs are there really vampires that's a vampire to me that's what i say in the movie i say in the film is there really a war on drugs like no there's a war on drugs like that was a war on some drugs that's what there's always been right yeah while we had uh nancy reagan you know up there saying you know just say no her husband's uh lifting the bans on big business that allowed the pharmaceutical companies to grow so big wow so this documentary the the newest one um what takes place in it that you found was shocking? Going through this journey of putting together this documentary, was there anything that shocked you?

Yeah, a lot of the numbers, but also I interviewed this woman, Gwen Olson. Gwen Olson used to be a pharmaceutical sales rep that quit when her daughter killed herself on psych meds. And her story's just insane and just meeting somebody who actually worked through the system to to know that the that people in the pharmaceutical companies get pumped up when they have a new drug coming out that can actually fix the side effects of another drug they already have on the market and they're so excited because they know how much money they're going to make off of this. It's just like sickening. The whole thing is disgusting and sickening.

And it's not about health. And that's what I really learned. Her story is terrifying. That was fucking crazy. How does that ever get stopped? How is it such a machine that's making so many billions of dollars? How do you stop it? And how do you level it out?

You know, I think people that stop taking money from pharmaceutical companies, that's a so many billions of dollars? How do you stop it, and how do you level it out? You know, I think people that stop taking money from pharmaceutical companies, that's a big thing, you know. They have Donald Trump running, and half the people are like, oh, God, Donald Trump. But, you know, that's something that's not going to play into his decision-making. So if people like that, I'm not saying him specifically, but people like that to say, you know what, I'm not going to take their money. I don't care what they say.

I'm not going to take, you know, it's the same thing with oil or any of these other problems. Like we, the way we fix problems is not to bribe congressmen. You know, I think that that's a huge thing. And a huge thing is for regular average everyday citizens to say no to, uh, to what's going on and stop and, you know, write to their congressman and make a stink. If all this stuff, like people wanted wanted medical marijuana medical marijuana didn't come about because some congressman said you know what I'm gonna make this took a long time it took a long time it took a massive movement of a massive amount of people to say we want this and you know if you look at a food for example

everything's sort of going organic it's's easier to find, as hard as it is sometimes to find good food, it's also a lot easier than it used to be. So that's like Costco. Costco is like all going organic now because people want it. So if people want, you know, a drug-free society, a society where their kids aren't dying and killing each other over drugs, a society where people can live in peace and harmony and not have their families ruined by these problems they can they can basically start that front you know just like they did with all these other things it's a groundswell you know it's like something that has to start it's just I just don't know how you would ever stop that amount of money yeah it

seems like the amount of money is so fucking terrifying and that these companies can just live with themselves. It's so bizarre that they can justify the production of these fucking pills when they know that 9 million people, or whatever the number is, are abusing them just in this country alone. A massive amount of the drugs on the market, pharmaceuticals, they don't even work. They're not proven effective. The psych meds that we put put our kids on were never tested on kids so if it's not tested on a kid don't give it to my kid that's what people need to start saying but people say you know what it's easier for me i put my kid on everybody wants

to make the exception every parent i talked to says yeah yeah but my kid's different because i put him on adderall and now he's fine rather than to search out all the other all the other options i think people want to try to solve stuff with money or with um or with a pill rather than with their time you know that's a big big issue if your child has you know trouble in school maybe maybe your kid just has trouble in school i fucking sucked in school it doesn't it doesn't really uh each person's gonna have their own different thing they're gonna be good and bad at it You don't necessarily need a pill to try to solve that problem all the time Yeah, and school is fucking gross the idea of sitting in a classroom, especially with some fucking teacher that's unmotivated

Sit there and you're just supposed to absorb just fucking hours on end. There's a lot of people That's just they're not designed for that. Yet they would thrive doing something in life. They just have to figure out what that something is. They can absolutely contribute and just not care about geometry or not care about history or not care about whatever it is that's uninspiring. Sometimes it's the teacher. Some teachers get you excited about anything. They're like fun to be around.

Creativity is more important than knowledge. It's like Albert Einstein, right? And that's like with him. He always had trouble in school, learning disabled, diagnosed with all these learning disables, put in a class with the kids that eat glue and all that stuff. Like the typical case of that, and he's become very successful off of passion. Yeah. If you just find what it is you're really good at.

I mean, there's just people have different personalities and there's different occupations you just got to figure out what works for you but the all that aside it's just the the sheer numbers of the drugs is what's freaking me out in this conversation this almost seems like like some crazy plague that no one's talking about like a disease about. Like a disease. A disease that's just spreading across the country, and we're all kind of silent about it until it's too late, and there's no vaccine.

There's just nothing to fix it. That's why he was so excited to come on the show, to be able to talk about it and get more information out there. And then when does your film come out, too? My film will come out in the fall. We haven't announced a release date yet, but Samuel Goldwyn's the one that's putting it out, Samuel Goldwyn Company. So it'll get a theatrical release, and it'll get a big digital release. So we're excited about that.

Well, let me know when that happens, and I'd be happy to tweet about it and let everybody know about it and put it up on Facebook and whatnot. Yeah, absolutely. Whew, god damn. So do you do these yourself is this like your own project do you storyboard them out you like you yeah it's a little crazy um so i did bigger stronger you know i went to usc film school when i was trying to make films for years and we all struggle trying to like you know make it you know in these different endeavors whether it be acting or filmmaking or anything so So I was struggling for

years, writing a bunch of scripts, getting really close. You know how it is. You're really close to getting something made. And, you know, finally, after a while, like nothing was happening. And I said, if anything in life is going to happen for me, I need to make it happen. I can't be sitting here waiting for somebody to go, you know, I really like your script, I'm going to make it, or blah, blah, blah, blah. So long story short, Bigger, Stronger, Faster was the brainchild of me and my partners Alex Buono and Tamsin Buono. They were a couple that had experience with documentaries and stuff like that, and just through conversations with them, we're like, fuck it, let's go make this on our own. So we raised all the money, we went out, and we made it on our own.

The second film I did was called Trophy Kids. I did that with Peter Berg, was the executive producer of that. And that was a film that because of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Pete's like, hey, I want to work with you. So we did a movie about crazy sports parents that ended up on HBO. And that'll be actually be available on demand, November 17. It'll be coming out on demand everywhere. but if you have hbo go you can watch uh trophy kids it's called trophy kids uh the extended version is the one we actually did uh pete bird used it as a part of his show called state of play um so that you know ended up serving like two purposes we got distribution for a movie we thought was really cool and uh he got a pilot for for his tv. So that's available on HBO Go now?

Yeah. Oh, okay. Trophy Kids is basically, it's so fucking weird. We just came here and we have this tennis mom that's in Trophy Kids and she's like this really godly Jesus freak. And we just saw her at the restaurant. We just ate out before when we came here. I haven't seen her in like two years since we did the movie.

But yeah, that film's really interesting because parents nowadays are really putting the pressure on their kids to succeed well i think they always have but now there's so much money involved in sports it's getting scary kids like investments and the kids the kids aren't any good you know bottom line is like if a kid's good they're gonna make it you know i mean no amount of uh investing in their quarterback skills is going to, you know, it'll help some kids get maybe over that hump. They're not going to beat Jon Jones. Yeah, in reality, Jon Jones is going to be Jon Jones coming out of the womb,

you know, killing you. Yeah, the thing about the trophy kids or the thing about parents that are really into that that's always disturbing is it seems like they're trying to live their lives, their failures through the kid. Yeah. Like they want to sort of reimagine their own life and have some success through the kid's work. I have a basketball dad who's like, you know, he'll say, I say, do you think you're living vicariously through your son? He's like, not vicariously, man, directly. I'm in every shot, in each move, in each go.

And that's why the referees make me want to pull my hair out. Or in my case, make me pull their hair out. It's like, you're listening to this going, you're fucking crazy. You're out of your mind. And it's just normal behavior to these people. It's just everyday behavior. I said, how much did you spend on your son's basketball career? And he goes, i'd say two

lamborghinis easy and who who measures their wealth in lamborghinis first of all yeah that's weird with the um did you see this story on uh todd marinovich yeah absolutely todd marinovich which is another similar story but to the extreme is a great movie that uh espn did as part of part of the 30 for 30, which I actually pitched them that before they did it, so that somebody else had pitched it, I guess, right around the same time, and they did a

great job with it. I thought it was awesome. It's a very disturbing story, but it's also really highlights the problem, because here you've got a guy who's an all-time great NFL strength and conditioning coach, understands really highlights the problem because here you got a guy who's like an all-time great nfl strength and conditioning coach understands like the science of strength and conditioning and and preparing someone for a sport almost better than anybody and he has a kid and he says you know what

listen i got a fucking project now yeah turn this kid in and it worked but meanwhile the kid didn't want to do it and he became a heroin addict yeah he became an artist he's like i didn't want to do it. And he became a heroin addict. Yeah, he became an artist. He's like, I don't want to do it. And I think that's what happens when you push kids too much. Like a kid kind of has to find their own thing. You know how talented Todd Marinovich is? I've spoken with him several times. He's actually like a cool, really super cool guy. He told me he went and played an arena football league game.

And he was withdrawing from heroin so bad that he had shit his pants and he had thrown 10 touchdown passes with shit in his pants oh my god that's how fucking good he is he's just like it was just so easy for me he's like football's easy man it's just like it's just like numbers he was unbelievable boom he won the heisman trophy didn't he no he was not up for it i think you know his dad is a fucking freak man his dad did an amazing job with BJ Penn, too. His dad's a freak, man. His dad, they think they've made amends with all that and stuff. It's just hard to do it to your own kid. You could do it

to somebody else's kid, make him a fucking machine, but you're not the parent. You also don't know what your kid wants. I think at a young age, I think Todd Moranovich said, I want to be in the NFL, but what kid doesn't say that? Right. Well, not only that, what kid doesn't change his mind when he becomes 16 or 18 there's a certain side of it too though look at the dad you know i was influenced heavily by my older brother i wanted to be i wanted to be in

like you know i wanted to be like theater and drama i wanted to do these other you know things considered like oh you're a pansy what are you you know and and so those things through the culture i grew up in was like you're not tough if you do those things. Everything we did when we were kids was considered to be gay. Yeah it was considered gay. Soccer's gay Yeah that's gay so when I wanted to like make you know when I had like a passion to like make films and do

that stuff it was sort of hard to tell everybody like hey man I'm not really I don't really care that much about lifting anymore I want to go this way you know or whatever it's that stuff's weird you know. Well, Bigger, Stronger, Faster is available. It's been available for a long time. Trophy Kids is available right now on HBO Go.

And when is this new one coming out? It should be out in, like, the late fall. We don't have a release date yet. Late fall. Prescription Thugs. I'll help you promote it. I'll talk about it on Twitter. And you can get a hold of Mark,

Mark Smelly Bell, on Twitter and Instagram. And Big Strong Fast is Chris's handle. Do you have an Instagram too? Yeah, at Big Strong Fast. Big Strong Fast on Instagram as well. Even though I'm not none of them anymore. You're not Big Strong Fast.

I shaved my balls for this interview, so I appreciate it. I'm glad you did that. I shaved mine last night. Oh, good. Awesome. It's a nice feeling. All right. To know that someone else in the room shares my shorn ball.

All right. Well, thank you, guys. It was a fun conversation. I really appreciate it. And very enlightening and terrifying in a lot of ways, too. Sure. Thank you. Thank you.

See you guys tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. That was fun, man. That was fun.