The Joe Rogan Experience - #937 - Justin Wren

Episode Date: March 24, 2017

Justin Wren is an American MMA fighter. Justin is currently fighting in the Heavyweight division of Bellator to help raise more awareness for helping the Pygmy people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Five, four, three, two, one. Boom, Justin Wren straight out of the jungle. Look, you got coconut water, you ready to party? Oh, absolutely. You got two of them, just in case. Oh, I live off of that stuff. So, first of all, congratulations on your Bellator fight, man. You looked outstanding.

Thank you, thanks a lot. Your look is really, like, clicking, man. It's really coming together, huh? Yeah, finally the muscle memory is back, and i'm at a new camp that's great for my style training with rafael lovato jr uh maybe the best american grappler uh for bjj most accomplished maybe he's fantastic oh good you're so you're in oklahoma is that where he's at yeah oklahoma just moved there and just moved there to train yeah moved there to train and interesting train alongside him and that's also where water for is headquartered out of, is Oklahoma City.

Oh, how fucking convenient. Absolutely. So now I have the best of both worlds, my two passions right there. Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. He's really good, man. Yeah. Rafael Lovato has that pressure style, too, that Salo Hibero smashing style.

Very fun to watch that guy. The only guy I've ever felt claustrophobic underneath. Without a doubt. He's just, I can't explain it. You just cannot get away. That smash pass, that pressure pass. He just melts into you and there's no escape. It's like he's melting and he's like glue.

Yeah, Salo, Shanji. That whole family of that style of jiu-jitsu is so powerful, man. Yeah, I've gotten to meet both of them now. Training with solo and then shanji was there in uh our corner so it was pretty awesome for a bellator fight i was kind of i was kind of bummed out at rafael levato's last fight because he stopped him with strikes i was like god damn it yeah kicked him in the head 13 seconds yeah it was crazy i mean it's great to see him succeed and do well, but I wanted to see his jiu-jitsu. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think people will, but he's, man, he's an animal.

Honestly, he's one of those guys that is so well-rounded, and you think he's just one-dimensional because of everything he's done in jiu-jitsu, but he grew up kickboxing. Oh, did he really? Yeah, his dad's been a lifelong martial artist, senior. Artist senior he's an incredible guy and he's been taking Raphael all around the world since he was a little boy Having him train mixed martial arts not just jiu-jitsu his whole life, and he's fighting Bellator as well, right? Yeah That was his first fight so we fought back-to-back. He fought right before me. I fought right after him. Oh, that's nice Yeah, Bellator is making some moves man You know they're doing Mitrione versus Fedor and're going to Lorenz Larkin just signed with them. Yeah.

Rory McDonald signed with them. Right. That's a stable now. They have a legit stable. Especially their 170-pound division is super legit. Oh, yeah. Daily MVP. Lima.

Yeah, Lima. Korshkov. Yeah. That's a serious division, man. And now Fedor. Very interesting. What did you think about the Fedor-Mitryon thing where they had to pull out? Like, Mitryon had to pull out because it was kidney stone.

And then they're going to schedule it again, apparently. Yeah, that's Madison Square Gardens. Yeah. So, June 24th. That's a pay-per-view, right? Pay-per-view. First one for Bellator. Pay-per-view is tough, man.

It's tough to get people to buy something they've been getting for free. Right. But I think this card, they're stacking it pretty heavily. Chael Sonnen versus Vanderlei. That's a good fight. That's where Rafael has been going down into, I forget how to say it, but Curitiba, Brazil. Yeah. Down there and was sparring with Vanderlei before his fight. Sparring with Vanderlei is a, yeah, train easy. But it's that picture of him in Pride or something, or maybe training where he's jumping in the air and he's just coming down with a big hammer fist and going to land on you with his feet. Yeah. It's like, that's a light day.

He's kind of known for that, just being a barbarian 24-7. Yeah. But that's why he was so fun to watch. Yeah. And I think what you said and just asked about what did I think between Fedor and Matt Mitrione when they had to pull out. Man, I flashback right away. Do you remember whenever Stefan Struve had to pull out of his fight with Mitrione backstage? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like blacking out or something, right? Yeah, I think he passed out a couple times and he was having that heart problem as well.

But Mitrione was back there all gloved up, already taped up, had his gloves on, was hitting mitts. And then there were some of the behind-the-scenes cameras that caught a moment where I believe it was Dana coming back there telling him the fight was canceled. And Mitrione just was, you know, cussing up a storm. No way. Not at all. No. But then all of a sudden you saw it shift to where all of a sudden he was worried about Stefan. And he walked down there, went backstage or to his locker room and man he just

hugged him and stefan was sobbing and matt mitrione was just like you know hey it's all right bro i know if you could fight you would have and all that other stuff and so i guess he had passed at least one or two kidney stones the fight week uh maybe a couple days before weigh-ins um and then the day of the fight they just started coming back out. I think he had something like 15 or 20 total. So, man, I know all the ladies out there, you're a lot tougher than us, given birth. But I hear this is the equivalent, you know, for the men. I doubt it.

I doubt it. Yeah. It'd be like more like passing a marble through your dick hole, you know, maybe even a golf ball. It seems like it's not even close yeah it probably hurts definitely sucks yeah it does but that 15 or 20 of them something like that brutal instead of just one or two they are a side effect of weight cutting for a lot of people right like i know aldo had one yeah and uh i think some other fighters have had them too and they

think it has to do there's some sort of connection with massive dehydration which i'm sure matt doesn't have to worry about you know making fighting heavyweight he doesn't have to cut the weight like that so i wonder what what caused his yeah i don't know but yeah exactly i mean you're putting so your kidneys through so much when you're cutting weight especially those extreme weight cuts yeah uh yeah i'm lucky i'm a heavyweight very yeah dude fuck all that man yeah like what do you walk around at like what's what's your, when you're in shape, like you're in shape right now. Like, what do you weigh? Yeah.

I weigh 248. That's a good size, man. Right? 245. Don't you think they, they think that that 240 number is like the right number for heavyweights. They feel like, I don't know who they are, but I'm just talking shit. Yeah. But they think that, um, the, the conventional wisdom is when you get into 260s and above

and, you know, like above 250, that there, that there's a point of diminishing returns where you're carrying around so much mass, you can't really perform as well. But a 240-pound guy is so big and so strong that you can handle a 265-pound guy, but you have more endurance and it's just a better weight. I totally agree with that. I mean, when I was living at the Olympic Training Center and wrestling there, the weight class was 264.5 or 120 kilos. Um, and we always try to stay above it and then cut for the, to make weight because wrestling, I mean, being the single sport of wrestling, like you need that weight. It's only a six minute match. Um, and then the new Greco Roman rules, I mean, you get three breaks in between a two-period round.

And so you're getting that weight you need to throw the guy around. When it comes to MMA, you're adding in that, what is it, anaerobic strengths and cardio and everything else. You need it all. And so, yeah, my first two fights back, I was coming in heavier. And, man, to drop a little bit, I felt a lot, a lot better. My conditioning was, was on point. I wasn't rushing. I'd put in the time, the effort and everything else and got my cardio good. My diet really, Raphael's got an awesome strength coach.

His name's Lucius Tyree. Now he's my guy named from green strength. And man, he just got us on this warrior kind of lifestyle. It's not about a program or fight camp and you getting ready. Then it's about, Hey, let's just live this in day in and day out, eat the right food, real food, put real nutrition in your body, real strength, kind of like the on it stuff, you know, the kettlebells, everything else. And I had never done that before. So, uh, this was a real shift in my training and, uh, it paid

off. So he works with you in nutrition as well. Yeah, and what kind of changes he made for that man for me I think that It's about maturing to I mean the five years I took off and before that I was 19 fighting professionally until I was 23 24 And I was young and dumb I was dealing with addictions and depression other stuff and man I would I would tighten everything up during fight camp, but before fight camp I'd eat whatever and This has just been having just tons of salads, eating meat, veggies, fruits, just fueling your body constantly. And so that's just been something really good for me. I have celiac, so I can't eat the breads, the grains.

Oh, you do? Yeah, I can't eat wheat, barley, rye. You're a huge guy to have celiac. That's interesting. Did they find out when you were really young? No, I found out. So I'd gone through the opiate addictions and I had six years of that, that I had an ulcer in my stomach. And so, but I noticed that during that time, anytime I would eat wheat, wheat bread with breakfast that I would get nauseous. I would, I would just. Those during that time? Yeah.

So did you have it before or did you get it because of the ulcer? I think that probably triggered something, the opiate addiction and everything else. Then when I went to Congo, it really got bad and I didn't know what it was. And then whenever I got back, I mean, having the malaria three times, dengue fever, black water fever, all sorts of intestinal parasites and bacterias. When I got back here, I was just wrecked. And so my doctor did some tests on me and was like, man, you weren't just any more gluten intolerant. Now you have full blown celiac and you're at the top of the chart. So you used to be gluten intolerant. Yeah. And then it became celiac, top of the chart celiac. Do you think anything has a connection to, for people who have never heard you before,

you live in the Congo for long stretches of time, working with the pygmies and digging wells, and you've caught malaria there on two separate occasions, but you've got it three times because it reoccurred on you, right? Right. Do you think that that might have compromised your immune system and contributed to the celiac disease? Yeah, absolutely. They say that my immune system was just shot. to the celiac disease?

Yeah, absolutely. They say that my immune system was just shot. And so that's been, I mean, so the fight, I mean, before that, the drug addictions, that took a toll on my body. Then going to the Congo, having the malaria, having other things, it's wrecked my body. And so now, over the last three years, and that's why I am so thankful for a guy like Rafael

modeling how to live this lifestyle, this just day in and day out. Lucia's there to guide us because I needed that. I really needed to rebuild my health from the ground up. Right, right. And to stay consistent with that. It's like when the fight's over, maybe indulge for like one meal, but then get right back on the grind.

And so it's been, yeah, really, really great for me to live it out and to really, I don't know, just felt like I'm finally healthy again. That's awesome, man. It's amazing that you just come back after taking five years off and essentially not even working out at all. to live it out and to really, I don't know, just felt like I'm finally healthy again. That's awesome, man. It's amazing that you just come back after taking five years off and essentially not even working out at all. Yeah. And now, you know, I mean, you look good in the first fight, but man, your last fight, you just really look tuned up.

Yeah. Thank you. It was awesome. I appreciate that. Now, when you, you say that you have celiac, so they're, they're adjusting your diet accordingly. Like what, like I'm a really big into like fat based diets these days. Are you doing something like that? Are you on a different kind of carbohydrates?

Like how are you, how are they monitoring it? I'm definitely getting a lot more, uh, a lot more like coconut oils and the grass fed butters and all of that to, to have a high fat content with every single meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was still dropping weight. And so that, I mean, this is kind of all new for me where it's like, man, I'm getting in a lot of fruits, veggies, carbs, and mostly fats, fats, then proteins, um, then fruits and vegetables, and then probably carbs.

I mean, I know carbs are in fruits and vegetables, but. So do they plan your meals out for you? Do you have like one of those? I have a meal prep place in, uh, OKC called a provision kitchen. And it's pretty awesome because they, um, they have their own farm. Everything's organic, locally grown. Um, and so, yeah, I just go in there and they're able to help me out and Luke works with them. And Lucius helps me know what I need to tell them to eat. And so it's just for me, man, I, I mean, being a heavyweight, um, a lot of times we haven't had to take a diet too

strict. Um, and other times I would during fight camp, but I would just do what I thought was right. And what was feeling my body was feeling good for performance, but now it's just like all around health and performance. Like I need to perform like a machine, like a professional athlete. I need, I need to feel my body like that. And so having this team of people that are around, and I think that's why the move to Oklahoma city before coming back, having the five years off, then coming in, uh, being in Dallas, Fort worth and trying to rush back, then moving to Colorado, trying to get the camp there, train at six or seven different gyms, you know, cross train. Um, it wasn't really all clicking, but now being in Oklahoma city, there's water for right there.

There's Raphael's team, which he has world-class guys all around him. He's got the nutritionist and the right restaurants and places in place to where now I can just focus on training. And then I get to, in the meantime, their break time, I get to share the story of why I'm back to fighting. That's amazing. Now, this meal prep place, do you give them like, hey, I would like my food to be, you know, 75% this, 25% that. This is the carbohydrate quantity I'm looking for. There's the amount of protein. So how many calories basically, and I don't know exactly. Um, I need to have a better like input into it, but man, they've just really said, this is what he needs here in fight camp. And then I was focused on

training. And so it was really good though, because I'm getting, you know, a bunch of coconut oil and avocados and everything else all throughout the day to make sure I'm having the high fat content. And how many times are you eating a day? Three to five, three big meals. If, uh, if I'm not able, if I'm just swamped and busy, but then if I have time to make sure I'm feeling my body, I mean five meals. So are you working out twice a day or like how you do three times a day, five to six days a week. Yeah. Wow. Damn dude. Back in the heat of things. Yeah, man. 100%. Raphael's a machine trying to keep up with him, but feeding off that energy. Um, it's been really great. I mean, cause it's, I've been around a lot of guys in the sport and, uh, I didn't even expect to talk this much about them, but it's, uh, it's

been really encouraging. I've been around Kenny Monday, Kendall Cross, Kale Sanderson, all these Olympic gold medalists. And it's been great because they were my coaches pouring into me. But here's a guy that's the best at his craft. That's world-class. That's world champ. He's completely obsessed with every aspect of MMA and being able to see that and feed off of it has been incredibly encouraging for me. So him and I both were like, Hey man, like the stars are lying. This is destiny. You and me both. We're going to go get those Bellator straps, world champs. Let's do that first. And let's do that quick. What does he weigh? And he walks around at probably two 10 to 15, um, maybe two 20. And what's he fighting at? Man, he cuts all the way down to one 85. Um, so he's the biggest one 85 or I've ever trained.

Jesus Christ. And he feels like he's 400, man. I mean, Brendan and I were just talking about this yesterday. Um, but being under Shane Carwin and worst case scenario where he's having you mounted, I mean, it just, you hated life. Yeah. Big Shane on you. I'm sure. Um, but there's something so, uh, demoralizing, but then at the same time encouraging because Rafael's doing that and making you

feel claustrophobic, like a 400 pound gorillas on top of you or 600 pound, whatever. And then, but he's also coaching you, telling you how you can do that to somebody else. And so at the end of it, you know, he's, he's showing you how to do exactly what he's doing. So he's a fantastic coach and you don't always see that from the best athletes. exactly what he's doing. So he's a fantastic coach and you don't always see that from the best athletes. Um, right. Sometimes they're, they're incredibly talented and great at their craft, but explaining it, you're like, okay, now explain it to me again or show me how to do it. Like here, I'm showing you like, just watch, you know, but he can, he can tell you every little detail, every little inch. Well, that's a, probably has a lot to do with a Salo Hibero

lineage too. You know, that's very, very technical school. And they're really involved. Salo's really involved in the history of all the different techniques and you know, where they came from. And now why did he move to Oklahoma city? Why is he down there? Uh, I actually, that's where he's from. So I think whenever he was like six, seven, eight years old, he moved from Chicago there. Um, I watched a documentary on flow grappling. That's how I even got ahold of Raphael. I knew I was moving to Oklahoma city. I'm like, who's there to train with, uh, moving there for water for, and fight for the forgotten. Um, and I saw that documentary, incredibly inspirational shows, the whole lineage of him training with Salo and Shanji and how he went to Brazil to train with them, live with them.

How they came up to like Toledo, Ohio at at first he went there and they were living in basically like this little apartment that was freezing inside in the toledo winters and they're having to put their geese over the heater to try to warm them up after every training session to get back in there and do it again and that's some of their best training matches were in the living room on the mat that they would throw out there right in front of the couch and so it's just cool to see how these guys were where they came from and what they've done now it's like truly for me inspiring because that's what i want to do now no i mean that's the best way to do it right to just be with the elite of the elite and with that one particular discipline at least resilient jiu-jitsu and you can get so much out of that especially coming from your background as a wrestler you know i was super

impressed with your arm triangle too, man. Thanks. Clamped down on that head and arm choke. That was nice. Yeah, thanks a lot. No, I think it's a great style because I'm coming in with a wrestling background. I've won a couple national championships there. And then to come in with Rafael,

once I put a guy down, now I need to finish him. Yeah. And it surprised me. Lovato's wrestling because he's actually got some good stuff that he does. But now I'm going to be able to show him that. He's showing me his world, and then we're growing together. That's amazing. It's like boxing.

That's so good, dude. That's so good. It's so interesting, too, because there's very few real submission artists today in the heavyweight division. It used to be Fedor when he was in his prime as a submission artist. Of course, Noguera was the premier submission artist. Frank Mir, one of the all-time greats for sure in terms of his accomplishments as a submission artist. But there's not a whole lot of that today. You know, you see knockouts and stuff, especially in the UFC.

You don't see a whole lot of submissions. Right. Except Verdum. You know, Verdum can still submit people and win the title off a cane that way. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm excited because statistically, I think, in my fights, if I've put it on the ground I've already finished it but now having that guy with me coaching me through I heard him in the fight during the fight. I'm doing this I'm doing that and he's just telling me these little adjustments to me right next to you while you're

He was across the cage where he's he's a good coach and I had the whole camp to sit there and listen to him While he was off to the side. He's yelling at me. So he just tuned his voice in. Yeah. Nice. Trying to do that. And we used to do that at grudge, uh, training center in Colorado.

We would, uh, turn up the music. We'd blast it, uh, during sparring. And then we have our cornermen, uh,

off to the side and they're hollering and yelling. That way we're able to start trying to pick their voices out with like a distraction with loud music going on, just like in the fight. So that way if there's a huge crowd all yelling out different stuff you're able to tune into the voices you need to hear that's whose idea was that trevor's yeah trevor's powerful trevor whitman yeah he's very smart very smart now how are you balancing out your full-time training now that you're moving

up in the rankings in bellator and you know you're you're being more and more successful, but you're also doing this for a cause. And for people who don't know, you are doing this for your Pygmy family, these people that you've sort of become a part of their world, and you've lived there for many, many months at a time, and you go back and forth to help build water wells with Water 4 and your organization, Fight for the Forgotten. And how are you balancing that out with being a professional fighter and trying to compete and perform at your very best? Yeah, that's been a learning process without a doubt.

But now it's trying to find ways to set the right boundaries and in a way to protect my training schedule. At first, I was just saying yes to basically everything. And that made it really tough for my first two fights back where I felt rushed. I didn't feel like the muscle memory was clicking in between every training session or I'd be late to training sessions, doing an interview or trying to talk to somebody or trying to tell people the story or I would have to leave early to go do it. Now it's like it's been really great to move to Oklahoma City. I have Waterford there to protect my training schedule. And training comes first because if I can keep going up in the ranks,

if I can get a world championship under my belt or a few, I'll have a bigger platform to stand on to tell. I'll have a bigger microphone, bigger platform to be able to continue to tell this story. And so, yeah, we have a team of about 10, 12 people at Water 4. I've all rallied around it. They're trying to take stuff off my plate and be able to help fill in my schedule, but making sure I'm getting enough time to get in the training, get in the rest. And man, just eight, nine weeks of that before this last fight, it truly paid off. It felt like there was a whole team around making sure that going into this fight

everything was exactly the way it should be and that's how i felt too i mean uh i have a little highlight clip of the fight but i mean the the crowd was just uh it was overwhelming in an incredibly good way where it like felt i could feel the energy i could hear everybody there i'd grown up in dallas Fort Worth, Water 4 and Fight for the Forgotten is based in Lovato's is out of Oklahoma city. Um, and everyone met up in the middle on the border at this big casino called Windstar. And it was just awesome going in there and having everyone rally around. I don't feel like me. I mean, me too, but rally around, fight for the forgotten, what I'm fighting for. We'll see that video, Jamie. Yeah. And then the post fight interview. I mean, that's, that's what I'm living for now.ten, what I'm fighting for. Let's see that video, Jamie. Yeah, and then the post-fight interview.

I mean, that's what I'm living for now. That's what I'm fighting for so I can talk. And how supportive has Bellator been about all this? Oh, man, incredibly supportive. It's blown me away. I mean, I get to talk about it and everything. So it's been awesome. There's Rafael up at the top left.

Big Josh Copeland to the right. And, yeah, I get to put Fight for the forgotten all over my stuff is that a new tattoo on your back no i've had that i've had that but uh yeah it's been really great you haven't added anything to it um yeah well i had the cross and i did add the vikings below it but here i had gotten a lateral drop before and then i was able to hit a belly to back beautiful suplex thanks oh i like how you call it suplay yeah and there's the arm trap nice so now where do they have you in their rankings and i mean their their heavyweight division is in the deepest in the world right right? Who's their heavyweight champion? Well, it was Vitaly Minnikov, but he's been kind of, you know,

in a struggle. Yeah, been inactive. Here's the part that I really like. I don't know if we can turn on the volume. Sure. You were kind of getting your feet underneath, remembering how it went. It all seemed to come together tonight.

Is that how it felt? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I got a lot of room to improve, a lot of work to do, but yes, it felt like the muscle memory was back. I'm in a camp that is so great for my style with Rafael Lovato Jr. and the team, big Josh Copeland, I'm just so blessed, encouraged, excited to be here.

The little dance I was doing in here, hopefully it didn't look cocky or arrogant, that was my pygmy dance that we do out in the forest, and I just love them to be able to come in here and fight for them. Most people are lucky enough to have one tribe. You have two. Not only a family in Congo, apparently here, they were very much behind

you. How did it feel to win in front of them, man? It's just so awesome. Thank you guys so much for coming out here. Everyone from Water 4, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Fort Worth, Eco Survivor. I'm just so lucky, so fortunate. People have jumped behind this

because I love to fight. I love to be here and compete. But it's even better to fight for people. And so to know that fighting in here, getting a chokeout, I'm going to go to Congo and knock out the world's water crisis for my big family.

Moving forward, you said you have a lot of room to grow, but with performances like that, people are thinking about you in a wide open heavyweight division. What's next for you? Well, I'm coming for that belt. It's going to come. It just might take a little bit of time to get there. I'm still getting my feet under me. I had five years, two months where I did zero training.

And so I'm excited to get back in there, keep working my way up. I got to earn it. But I have, I think, more of a reason, a purpose, a passion to be in here. And so I'm just so thankful for everyone that's got behind us. Eco Survivor right here is donating 50% of their profits of their entire brand to come to the water wells in the Congo for Water Cooler Fight for the Forgotten. Thank you, guys. We're getting behind us. Before you go, you always talk to your Pygmy family. What do you have to say to them tonight?

. Man, I just, I love them so much. I was saying I'm in here, I'm in here because I love. I was saying, I'm in here. I'm in here because I love you. That's what I'm in here. I'm a goo, I'm a goo. We are one. We are not different.

And so, it's been many, many days. I can't wait to come back and see you guys very, very soon and drill some more wells. The Big Pygmy, Justin Ray. That's a crazy platform, man. To be able to do that on TV like that in front of, I mean, who knows how many millions of people watch.

I think, I think that came to 1.1 or 1.2. Who was the headline? That was Marlos Conan and Julia Budd for that inaugural featherweight, I believe, or a world title. Do you feel like Bellator is getting more respect now? Like it's becoming more of a, like for a while it was looked at as sort of an also

ran, you know, but I think like now with the lineups getting stronger and stronger, it seems like the organization is growing in notoriety. Yeah, I believe so. And I mean, I think it's healthy. It's very important. I think it's good for everybody. Yeah, I believe so. And I mean, I think it's healthy. It's very important, I think. It's good for everybody. Yeah, exactly. And great for the fighters.

My bosses might disagree with the UFC, but I really think, actually, I don't think they would. I think they'd probably agree. I think it's important. It's important to have competition. It's good for everybody. Yeah, absolutely. And so, yeah, I think Bader just came over.

Yep. Phil Davis is over. Phil Davis is the light heavyweight champion now? Yep, absolutely. So you don't really have a heavyweight champion? Is that what's going on? Yeah, they stripped Vitaly Minnikov of it because he's fighting over his contract allowed him to fight in fight nights or EFN over in Russia. I went over there, cornered Josh against Vitaly. And so he just hasn't come back and he just is, I think he's making money in Russia and fighting there. And, uh, they're, they're kind of been in a standoff and he can come back and fight, but he's been stripped of his belt. Um, and now I think they're, you know, Scott's a smart guy. So as Rich, um, they're putting something together for the heavyweights and, uh, yeah, the Fedor, Matt Mitrione fight. That's going to be exciting to watch.

That's not for a title though, right? No, it's not for a title. Is that a three-rounder? Yes. Three fives. So when are they going to try to have a heavyweight title? I think it's coming up pretty soon. So I think probably in the next six months or, I mean, within that next three months.

Now, looking at yourself and your own development and growth, how far away do you feel like you are from that, from fighting for that? Man, I want it now i want to take that now but i think that realistically being smart strategic get another couple wins under my belt some good wins where i get to go in there and and really show to myself to bellator one i need to earn it and two um i need to get a couple more real impressive wins under my belt. Um, and yeah, I think, I think I know who I am as a fighter and I can hang with those guys. It's just, I need to, to build back cause it's, it was a long time off. Yeah.

Imagine. Yeah. It was a long time off and then, but train with great guys. I think in the next two or three fights, I'll really start taking a big steps up. And then, um, after that that maybe in the next two three years i'll have that belt yeah they have uh their division is interesting now rampage is going a heavy way too right yeah i think uh i think it's a catch weight against king mo um i think that might be this next friday or saturday so yeah they're fighting in chicago yeah i've been

reading shit talking online yeah yeah they keep going back and forth. King Moe keeps trying to fat shame Rampage, and he's coming back. I love that expression. It's so silly. It wants fighters fat shaming. When they're about to beat the fuck out of each other, call it fat shaming. So these lanterns you brought me, first of all, thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

And second of all, what is the deal with these bad boys? So this is the first product that they had developed um and it's eco survivor they're also out of oklahoma city so this is the company that's donating 50 of their money their profits to water for absolutely and so all the packaging this is old packaging and let everybody know that water for is the company that's building these wells in the congo for the pygmies and this is the organization that you work closely with right and so they started eco survivor so that it could be basically an empowerment mechanism on all the, all the packaging. It's going to have, um, a picture of me, a picture of the wells, a picture of the pygmies. Um, and we're going to tell the story. And when they go to eco survivor.com, uh, which I think just launched looks great. Um, you would almost think it's a nonprofit website

because they're highlighting the cause so much, but they but they uh we're talking about how we make it sustainable there empower them with sustainable business and they're like hey we want to we want to do that here they were already a very successful company the the parent company's jasco products company and they make uh they do licensing things lights and all sorts of things for general electric and uh energizer and phillips i mean they have 3 000 products on the market so they're incredible um yeah so there's there we go would you drink dirty water nearly a billion people have no choice this is uh this is great man so these things oops i just turned it on accidentally and so they're they're rugged they are um i mean i I mean I've done impact testing where I'm

jumping up on down on top of these what they're that strong that's wrong I got something on it right now yeah there you go put it down stand on it you'll be fine I mean my heavyweight butt gets on top of it and jumps around and dude is incredible right so I mean our team is using this in the congo there you go look at that balance you are what's that the scorpion i don't know what it is i don't know pay attention i just do what they tell me to do that's amazing man that's crazy you can stand on this thing yeah i've done that with uh i won't name any names of the competitors but whenever i start to stand on

the other ones the bulbs crush and the things break. Yeah, so this right here, though, it's got carabiners. Our guys were using this until 1.30 in the morning, maybe a week ago. They put it up on the tripods, and then they're able to just go to work. So it's really great. What is the glass made out of? How is the glass supporting me?

That part, actually, so I do know this, that a dome structure is the strongest thing out there, but it's plastic Yeah, it is it is a plastic. It's a super strong plastic super strong plastic. It's LED light and it's got 360 degree Omnidirectional lighting which basically just means it goes all around and there's no blind spots with the light for the most part and then that's killer Man, yeah, and then so from there we're going to do flashlights, headlamps, uh, Bluetooth speakers, Bluetooth speakers that have battery packs in them. Then just battery packs. Then we're doing walkie talkies, walkie talkies that have battery packs in them. Um, yeah. And so we're doing it to where the everyday adventurer can be part of it. Um,

but, but we're doing it so that way this stuff's going to last for a team in the Congo. And then when people are buying it here, they know that 50% of their purchase or the profits from the purchase are going straight to the cause. That's awesome, man. That's awesome, man. I've heard of companies doing, you know, I love it when a company gives 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, but I've never heard of a company. I mean, they're running this better than a lot of nonprofits are with giving 50% of the profits away. No, that's insane. That's incredibly generous of them. That's awesome, man.

Thanks. And so one more time, the company's called Eco Survivor. And what is their website? Ecosurvivor.com. And it's kind of cool. Jamie, if you can pull that up, even if you scroll down. So two days ago was World Water Day. Oh, yeah, and right on there, make a donation.

It goes right to our page. Make a purchase. You can buy the lanterns right now. We have a lot more coming out soon. So right now it's just the lanterns and then the headlamps coming out because I use those. Yeah, hopefully I'll get you some. I'll buy them. I want to contribute.

Thank you so much. It shows where the wells are being built. Yeah. Wow, that's so cool. And then down a little bit shows the statistics. And it just shows, I mean, the average water walk, for instance, is 3.75 miles round trip for a woman to just go collect. Oftentimes dirty, most of the times dirty water. And heavy.

Heavy. 44 pounds. It's a 20 liters, five gallons. Most people have no idea how hard it is to carry 40 pounds. Yeah. Oh, think about one of those kettlebells. Right. And then, uh, and then a lot of times the women, the women do two at a time and the children do one. And so these little girls can't go to school because they, and that water walk, they're not doing that one time a day. They're doing it two and three times a day because their, their household needs more than just five gallons of water Yeah

And so a lot of times the girls can't be sent to school Where the kids can't or they have to pick one of the kids that can go to school so the other ones can go collect Water all day. I think it's over a billion days each year Work days that are lost just because of the women that have to go do the water walks over a billion work days And there you you and if people have never seen any of the episodes that justin was on before please watch the last ones Uh, if you get a chance, you'll you'll catch up more to What you've gone through what some of these people have gone through the kind of parasites these people get from this water and how? Important it says for you and how much growth and progress has been over the past few years of your efforts down there. Yeah. Well, thank you so much.

It's, it's been incredible. I, Emily was telling me, uh, my wife, uh, coming here that, wow, this was over four years ago when you were on Joe show the first time and we hadn't drilled one single well. That's crazy. I had just been there. Andy Bo had happened, the one and a half year old boy that had passed away. I held his lifeless body and buried him and just did,

it ripped me open, you know, tore my heart apart like it would anyone, like it would anyone. But it was just a rude awakening to the water crisis that there's 800 kids every day

die just because of diarrhea, just like literally die from diarrhea. And then 2,350, 2,350 die of the malnutrition that diarrhea causes. So if you're in an area that doesn't have access to clean water, there's probably not a abundance of food around you, but even the food that you do get, you're eating it and it goes right through you because you have diarrhea. You don't absorb any of the nutrients. And so that's over 3000 just because of that. And then that's not counting a lot of the sicknesses and everything else, typhoid, E. coli. And so that's 1.5 million deaths a year of children under the age of five, 1.5 million, all of them are preventable. And so like, I truly believe, man, like we have,

we've found something really special at Waterfor and others, other organizations that I'm sure are doing it in different spaces, but I feel like us, we are doing it in a way that we put the tools in the hands of the people that need it the most, the people in the community. I mean, our team's 18 people and we've first year that I was there. So in the last five years, I lived there for about two years, back and forth one, one year at one time. But then I was able to help drill and train them for the first 13 wells. The year I was stepping back, I was nervous. You know, I'm not going to be there. I can't micromanage these guys or I can't watch them. I can't encourage them. You know, uh, I don't want to micromanage anyone, but I can't be there to do the work.

But then they were able to do 20 wells the year without me the next year, last year they did 29. So we're up to, I think 62 wells, um, that they've drilled for themselves in their own community. And that's our guys of 18, but water for us, has 375 and they drilled 690 water wells last year alone. Wow. And that served. So those are 375 people in the continent of Africa that live in 16 African nations. And they were able to give 172,000 people clean water for the first time in their lives.

And so, um, man, we can, we can knock this water crisis out in our lifetime. If that's what we do do if we give them the solution That's incredible. That's that's amazing progress in just a few years. Yeah, it's been It's blown me away. So talk to me about how Bellator is helping how they're getting behind this Well, that's what really sold me with I mean I had offers from most places when I was when I came back and But but when I sat down with Scott, um, and I was writing the book, uh, with Loretta and went out to eat with him in Santa Monica. And he was just like, Hey, like, we want to give you a chance to really tell your story.

Like you need to fight. You got to prove it. Like you have to have that, that hard work and skill and talent behind you. You have to be able to perform. But if you can do that, we're going to rally around you. They want to rally around their fighters that put in the time, the effort that they can produce results. But it was really encouraging to hear that. And then I was bummed out the first two fights. I mean, I won, but I didn't win decisively like I wanted to. So to get this last fight underneath me where I really performed well and was pretty dominant, like I think they know that I can fight and I know I can fight.

And so now we can do this in a way that, man, when I win, literally wells are being drilled every single time. Wow. And so Eco Survivor is helping me drill several wells after this last one. That's incredible. Yeah. Now, how do you balance out your training when you're, when you're visiting the Congo and staying there? Yeah. So a tough thing is, so I kind of shared a little bit of our model and how we give the tools to the people, um, in the community. So my travel schedule, it's, uh, it's been a hard pill to swallow, but I think it's the most strategic thing where I'm only going to go once a year. Now,

um, I'm going to go once a year because I need to be here training. Um, that's my, uh, at first I thought I was the one that, that made this thing go, but really it's, it's, it's our guys in the field. They're the engine. And I was maybe the spark plug that that they kind of started up something and now I get to go back And be the encourager or to fuel them back up But they're the ones doing the work and so I'm only gonna go once a year I'll probably fight in June or July I was talking with Bella tour and then right after that we're starting up a soap production facility in Congo With our guys is gonna start another eight to ten jobs because we go in and we, we teach the wash program. So we need, uh, we need them to start

making soap for themselves because right now the only thing I've ever seen available is car washing soap that's packed full of chemicals from China or India and they have all the raw themselves with car washing. I did while I was there for the year and my skin would be raw afterwards cause there was nothing else available. I mean, I took soap with me, but when I was there for a full year, I mean, it only lasted for the first month maybe. Right. And so the rest of the time I was using this car washing soap that, man, it's rough on your body. And so we are partnering with a company called Pacha Soap.

They're at all the Whole Foods. They have a sister company, Amazi, there at Target. They're at all the Whole Foods. They have a sister company a mozzie They're at Target and though those guys go around and they start up soap production facilities in the developing nation to give jobs So is it possible that could become an industry for the people in the Congo where they can start selling absolutely and then you know Maybe eco survivor could sell it on their website as well. Yeah, absolutely or or they start up a new yeah Or that other company yeah, Pacha, which has been great to us. They actually Or they start up a new, yeah, that other company. Yeah, Pacha, which has been great to us.

They actually, kind of cool story, the founder of Pacha was listening to this podcast whenever he had the dreams to start it up. And he was actually being like kind of a, I think it was a janitor at night through the night shift. And he was listening to this and he had all the dreams to start up Pacha. He helped us get our 501c3 with Fight for the Forgotten. Holy shit. So after my first time being on the show, he reached out to me and he had just started up Pacha. He helped us get our 501 C three with a fight for the forgotten. Holy shit. After my first time being on the show, he reached out to me and he had just started up Pacha. And so he helped me get fight for the forgotten started up. His name's Andrew verbis. Great, incredible guy. But the inspiration he got from here to do something, make a difference. Now he's in all

the whole foods. He's about to be in target. Um, and he's coming with me this next trip, or actually he might not come cause we don't really take volunteers now. We just empower the locals. But we're going to start up that soap production facility that's going to start eight to ten new jobs. We'll go in the schools because last year our team spent 301 days teaching the wash program. So teaching water and sanitation and hygiene, helping them dig latrines, helping them know the importance of clean hands. So we set up outside the latrines a hand washing station, which is called a tippy tap. So they have a clean jug of water.

They have a bar of soap. They step on a stick and a rope and it tilts this jug over and they're able to wash their hands right there. But then they only had that car washing soap. So now we're going to meet another need, start up the soap production. they have the eucalyptus trees there the palm oil the avocados i mean just whatever we need with lemongrass um whatever we need to make the soap with which that's not my specialty but i know all the raw materials are there what is this company again and how do people find out about this company pacha spell that p-a-c-h-A. Pacha Soap. And you can go, I think, into any Whole Foods. Pacha.com?

I think it's PachaSoap.com. PachaSoap.com. But they're incredible, man. They're in Whole Foods. They're already in Whole Foods? They just started? No, no. They've been in there a few years now.

Fill your Easter basket. But yeah, but you're saying this is all within the last few years, right? Oh, yeah. Within the last few years, last four or five years. It's amazing. So it's PachaSoap.com? Yeah. PachaSoap.com. And they're hiring. Look at that. There you go. Your purchase spread goodness. Yeah. And so they do a buy one, give one, but they do it in the right way because they're the

social entrepreneurship of like you buy one and then here and we give one in a developing nation. Right. Sounds really good. It's got the right heart, heart good intentions but it can be very dangerous if it's distributed in the wrong way so their buy one give one actually creates jobs in the developing nation then they make it and then they sell it and they're able to give it that way to their community instead of some of the charities um you buy something here and you go give it over there and then when they go they go with huge amounts and they say if they're dropping off shoes or clothes or whatever the local people that have a shoe store go out of business whenever you bring in containers and containers of shoes or the guy that's repairing the shoes the cobbler you know the one that's making shoes there so you can't just go into community and give it out. I actually watched a documentary recently called Poverty Inc. Man, it was powerful showing how how charity hurts or how there's also a great book out called When Helping Hurts. And it talks about, hey, charity is awesome.

And when it's absolutely needed, but it's very dangerous if you use it in the wrong way you can cripple a community and so how do we empower the local communities with a hand how does it cripple the community by by giving them something for nothing and then they give them something for nothing either either yeah that's first on the surface um they can develop a dependence mentality of just putting a hand out because they got to get what they can get whenever people just show up, blow up and blow out of there. But the documentary poverty Inc goes in there and shows how in Haiti, their local farmers have been put out of business by government subsidies. Um, from I I've been to Haiti and I've seen the American grown rice. That's all just given out for free or at the

markets. The people that get it for free, then go to the market and they beat all the local farmers because they got it for free or they played a paid such a small price they didn't really do all the work so they're able to beat all their competitors the local market so they get it for free and then they sell it is that what you're saying they can at little shops they can do that or they just get it and they don't need it i think it cuts off the local farmers who are trying to sell their own stuff. And since they're getting it for free, they can sell it at a much lower price. Right. Absolutely. And it shows, it dives deep into how it hurts so much in a way that like, man, I think Hades, they used to eat rice two to three times a week. Now they're eating it three times a day with breakfast lunch and dinner

Hmm and they're doing it and it's all the rice that they have available to them are from the US or from China or from India and it's because these Big farmers with a lot of power in the government They're able to make deals with the United Nations and other places To be able to go in and give out their rice there and they get paid for it from the government here, right? Yes government pays these farmers these prices. And then they go into a community and just give it out. And now, how do I say this in a way that it's not bad intentions.

No one's trying to. I don't think there's these evil people trying to destroy developing nations. I don't think that's the case. But there's a model out there that's been the traditional model of let's announce our arrival by throwing throwing a parade let's throw a big party let's get a bunch of pictures and let's let's leave to the next one because we have such a big organization or so many funds or a big quota to hit we have this is our goal this year we have this many tally marks to get so we blast into one community and then we blow out of there into a new one we don't develop relationships with them to be able to

empower them teach them skills that that part how do I say it like the the answer to poverty isn't charity it's opportunity opportunity is always better than charity if that if that makes sense, a handout or hand up like the give a man a fish, feed him for a day or teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime. And so if there's a disaster, if there's a person with a disability, if there's a war or famine, then charity is the solution, but there's gotta be an escape plan. There's gotta be a route out. Otherwise, whenever I went to Haiti, it was a year and a half, two years after the earthquake. And the tent city they had had doubled or tripled in size

because I met a guy there that was saying, I moved out of my apartment, which wasn't damaged by the earthquake. And I get to go live at tent city rent free. I still have my job and I get three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't have to prepare them. I don't have to pay for them. And so, and these places are always going to be giving to that tent city. And it's actually grown in size. He was like, I'm saving up to buy

a house. And so it's like, if people think, Oh, there's just this disaster. It's like, man, if someone brought in like some vocational training, you know Let's teach these people how to do this kind of work. Like I don't think honestly most sane people Out there that are living in poverty want to be poor for the rest of their life They're sitting there waiting for an opportunity. The dad wants to put food on the table for the family So does the mom she wants to take care of her kids. And so whenever we can come into a community and Spend time with them if that makes sense, like sit down, listen to them, learn from them. And then we can say, how can we work together?

How can we brainstorm? What does your community really need? Instead of treating it like there's a cookie cutter solution or blueprint that since it worked in this community, it's going to work in that community. Or since it worked in this country, it's going to work in that community. Or since it worked in this country, it's going to work in that country. Like every country has its own culture. Congo has over 200 tribes. That's over 200 different cultures. And so some are going to receive it well.

Some aren't. How do you work with them in a way that isn't just coming in and just giving them stuff? I've seen it. I've seen a riot happen in Uganda. It was in Jinja, Jinja, Uganda, where an organization came in with a bunch of canned foods. And they did it in a very poor fashion where they just cracked open this container in a slum. And it's one of the roughest slums in Uganda. And people just raided it.

And it didn't even give probably a quarter of the people in the slums a canned item from the US And so people started fighting over it and they're fighting over it and it's uh, and someone got really hurt I don't know if they died but someone got really hurt there. We had to get out of there and so What I know from that organization is and I'm not gonna say the organization But I heard from the other organizations there that they, they had been warned like, you're new at this. Don't go in there and do this. Don't crack open this container and do it that way. But they had spent like $20,000 getting the canned goods there, shipping, buying a container, shipping it over there, going through Kenya, then, uh, then probably Tanzania or Tanzania, then Kenya, then Uganda. They're

having to pay all the fees everywhere they go to just go give it away. That $20,000 could have empowered so many farmers locally, or people that don't know how to farm, to be able to start farming for themselves, that then is going to have such a better return on investment, because you're investing into the people, into a trade, into a skill, into something that they need. And it's going to last. It's going to continue to produce results. It totally makes sense. And I think what you're saying is so important that these people have great intentions, but that just human nature and giving the circumstances in which these people live in where they had no hope. And then all of a sudden they have this one thing. And this one thing is gifts, right? Far better to do what you're doing, to provide them with opportunity, you know?

And I think that's, I mean, the issue that I think a lot of people are going to have with even discussing that is the callous discussions of the welfare mentality, you know? The way people look at some communities and people who, you know, the term welfare brats or welfare, you know, welfare people that are just kind of like connected to that, the need for charity. And I think that mirrors the idea of welfare and, you know, where people don't have jobs and don't have opportunities and just getting money and getting addicted to that money. That problem exists in America as well. Obviously, it's a much bigger deal in the Congo because you're talking about basic life necessities like fresh water. But I think that's important, man. It's important to understand what

human nature, the mechanisms of human nature and what you're talking about here is really powerful. To have thought it out so well and to give these people this opportunity and now to give these people this opportunity with soap. I mean, Pacha is doing an awesome job. I mean, that's an amazing thing. I think that's so important. And I really hope that more people listen and more people hear you and more people say, hey, you know, I want to get involved. Let's do something else in the Congo.

Let's give these people another opportunity. If they could start businesses down there, man, and like really empower themselves and be able to build homes and just, just like in your lifetime, you could see some crazy change. Yeah, yeah. I know themselves and be able to build homes and just kiss like in your lifetime You could see some crazy change. Yeah. Yeah, and I know that's coming in Congo But I think like let's not let's not set a ceiling or roof on it And I'm not that's what I'm not saying

That's what you're saying But I'm just saying that I truly believe that the water crisis 1 billion people not having clean water in our lifetime We have the tools, the technology, and people are learning. I mean, from podcasting, like people are getting better than doctorate's degrees, you know, like in information and, and, and life experience and learning and learning to do things the right way and truly have people's best interests at heart. Um, I think there's going to be a real shift to where, I mean, if I have, if I have the water to, to take a piss in, um, or to water my lawn with, or to give my dog clean water, uh, we're going to be able to give every person in the world clean water.

Um, but it's through empowerment and it's through opportunity. And, uh, and that's what I love. I even have a, since it was world water day, two days ago, I have a video that kind of explains the problem. And, uh, it's from a village that, um, I'm really close with named Ataluhulu. And there's this little girl named Siku that was just, uh, a beautiful little girl. And, um, and if it's okay, but it shows what they're facing, what they're drinking. Um, and man, it's, it's, it's powerful. You got that Jamie? Hashtag powerful. You got that, Jamie? Hashtag powerful. Yeah.

My hope for my children is for them to go to school, to grow in peace, and to be good and take care of me when I'm old. That's the water they were drinking. Jesus. For folks just listening, it's green algae all over the surface of it. It looks disgusting. Yeah. Everyone is suffering here, but in most cases, it's our children.

I know the water we drink gives us all these sicknesses. My daughter's name was Siku. She couldn't speak yet, but she was able to crawl. She was a baby. I suffered so much when she was suffering. I brought her to the hospital. She passed away there. I said to myself, I was just carrying my baby. And then to see people burying her,

I said, how did she disappear? Where did she go? She's carrying this water on her head, folks. This giant jug. When I lost my child, I lost all hope for the future. We're watching a video of her walking through the Congo carrying this water jug

on top of her head. This 45 pound jug. Fuck, man. That's hard to deal with if someone like you wasn't bringing attention to this I mean do you understand

like what a huge role you're playing here is that um I mean it's it's surreal and uh but at the same time

like I I think that's why I've completely wholeheartedly dedicated my my life to this because that was the that was the first promise i didn't know that we could do anything with land or water or food at first um now we have 3 000 acres of land drilled the 62 wells we have three farms up and running um about to start the soap but man like i didn't want to make any promises that i couldn't keep and for the chief to come to us and say hey everyone else calls us the forest people

but we call ourselves the forgotten it wrecked me and then he said can you help us have a voice because we don't have one i said yes i knew from fighting, from being on the ultimate fighter, whether that ever grew or didn't grow. I had some people and just having the platform of being here, being from the West, being from somewhere where people can have an abundance of resources to make a difference. And even if it's small, like our small here is so big there. And so I said yes, uh, to that. And little Siku was the third, uh, little one that I knew, uh, that had passed. I'm an Ataluhulu. And before that was Andy Bo after that was a little Bobbo, um, a little girl named Mo also, uh, in Sangule and Kaptula, um, in Siku. And, and uh these are all kids i knew that i was uh

i'd become friends with over two years living there and um and so having either held them or buried them or having played grown up knowing their families they're seeing some of those kids grow up and then their lives get cut short um it's it's been like, man, like when I fight, it's in honor of them. When I talk about this problem, like I know the, it's not just, I read about it or I just maybe saw it and it hurt for a little while. Like I knew him like those, those kids, 800 kids a day from diarrhea and 2,350 from another 1.5 billion a year. Like I know the names of some of those kids and had relationships with them and their families. And so, um, like I never would have thought that this, that I would be in a position to try to,

to help or that I even knew about the problem. I didn't, um, until it hit me upside the head. But, uh, but now that that's where my life has gone, that's what I'm going to dedicate it to. Wow. That's powerful shit, dude. You live in a fucking crazy life. Yeah. You really are. I mean, you, you really living a life of purpose. It's so rare that someone does it at such a high level, you know, when you're, you're in a very strange situation, a very strange driver's seat in life. I mean, yeah, it is definitely strange, but thank you to you, man, for even allowing me to have this platform before we drilled.

I mean, like we were getting to it, but we hadn't actually completed it yet. It's kind of how Andrew was listening to jre while he's being a janitor had this dream i had this dream and you allowed me to come on and share about it and so many like stars have aligned because of that um and and there's just been a lot of really great stuff that that knife actually i have a picture for you i'm holding up a knife it's uh made out of a nail it's actually i use this to open up all my letters and packages and stuff. Yeah. So awesome. Yeah. It's cool. Chief Leo may made both of those for you. And, uh, uh, I think on that little file it says knife. Um, and I actually

had a picture I didn't get to show you yet, but this is how he makes the knives. Um, but he just finds the nails out in the forest and, uh, some ladders or different things. And he pulls them out, uh, the people deforesting the rainforest, he gets their nails and makes them something, uh, something useful. Um, and so that's, that's a picture of the knife. I think there might be one more picture of him making the knives. What he's doing is he's taking a nail and he's hammering it flat he's taking this big spike nail like a construction nail like a railroad yeah and not quite a railroad or uh that's actually the one in his right it's like a framing nail right that makes all the the one in his right hand that he hammers

it down with he uses a hammer it's a railroad spike. Yeah. Man. So just really creative. And this is actually, if you pull up the other one that says, oh, yeah, there he is with some of the kiddos, this little swazi on the right, and there's the huts behind them and the twigging leaves. They make those kind of doorways in there. And it's just been really cool. They live on 247 acres. It's land that they have for the first time. And oh, man. So I that that video was powerful because it showed the problem.

But there's actually one that's with Chief Leo May. It's the second video on on that list. And if I can show that to you, I got something for you from there, from Leo Mays village it's called Bobofi and there's a video that's gonna show like kind of the transformation or the solution kind of to the problem because that first video just showed the problem is hard right but then there's hope too so we can do something about it Real transformation changes the present and the future. We out there! We out there! So he's walking with a giant.

My name is Leome. I'm from Bobofi Village. I want to teach my grandson how to hunt. We are teaching these young boys this because this is our original way of life. One day we'll die, but these young people will live on. I love that forest. I love it. It's gorgeous. People treat pygmies like we aren't important.

They think we're stupid. They think we're stupid. When we worked on farms, we would get 10 or 15 bananas to split among seven people. If I tried to start a small farm, someone would take it from me and say, your father did not own any land. In 2013, Leo May's village received land of their own. It was about 247 acres. I was happy to have my own land, but we were getting water from the river. It was bad water. Our people were sick.

Sometimes they would get sick and die without treatment. I've never heard of anybody getting sick from the water since we've had the well here. It's so good. It's so sweet. I love it. But the big change is that we can farm. This is a before and after of the same place. All those banana trees. We started with potatoes, then cassava, then we planted some banana trees.

How many banana trees have you planted? I cannot count. It's a lot. I can't finish counting. Wow. It's the potatoes, the cassava, the bananas. The first time we took bananas to the market, we bought clothes for the children. When we saw them wearing clothes and shoes we were so happy. Today we have a toilet. We have a place to wash our hands. We have a place to shower.

So to me that's progress. Wow. That's intense. this land. Wow. That's intense. Imagine living your whole life in despair and then all of a sudden over the last few years, things radically change for the better. That's powerful, man. Wow. Man.

What a crazy thing you're doing, Justin Wren. Well, to be completely honest, man, I got to be the spark plug, but man, there's a big engine around this. Oh, I understand. State side water four, without a doubt, all of our supporters, we couldn't do it without them. But mostly, we couldn't do it without the people on the ground there in the congo 18 congolese people with a heart to change be the change in their own country to change the country from the inside out countrymen to countrymen not being dependent on others i mean they're they're starting to secure water contracts uh

to drill wells and do water projects in their own country. So that way, they don't have to be dependent on us. I mean, our team in Uganda is over 70% self-sufficient, self-funded inside the country. Our guys in Congo are close to 50%. And we're on track to get these teams to where they're 100% self-sufficient to where we just come in with the training and the techniques and the tools, but like they don't need us to fund it anymore. So that way we can go off to other places and do it again, replicate it. Wow. So what is the, is there a long-term strategy in terms of. Yeah. So basically things that work, um, in their context. So that way we give them like the manual drilling. Um, one instance, I don't know why this Swahili proverb just popped in my mind

But they say you you Americans or you Westerners you guys all have watches But we're the ones that who who have time and so Does that make sense like you guys all have watches? But we have time right and they see us as always rushing rushing rushing And trying to get this done and that done and this done and like hey It's good to go out and crush things and get so many goals and so many accomplishments under your belt But let's make sure we're doing it all the right way So that's what I mean, honestly, I've learned from them slow it down so you can do it right do it correctly

I've even started implement that into my lifting and in training right like slow things down Do a slow controlled, do it slow controlled and do it correctly instead of just trying to put up a bunch of weight. Um, and so there they, they slow things down. Um, and, and, and honestly the longterm solution is reason why we don't take volunteers anymore. Um, and I've only taken two people with me to the Congo, but they were geohydrologist or engineers that needed to come. But the reason is, is because when you take volunteers over, most of them are going to be amateurs or they're going to be white belts. If I put it to MMA or BJJ analogy and our guys in the field there, they're becoming black belts where they are now. And our guys in the field there they're becoming black belts where they are now after years of training years of development on this

since 2011 I Mean our guys in Congo have drilled those 62 wells, but they went to Sierra Leone they taught a team in Cameroon from the ground up they went to Uganda Kenya and Rwanda and There these teams are all working together and they're going off after they learn how to do it they're going to other communities in their own country or they're going to another country it's so cool we have this dynamic going on between we call it the Virunga initiative there's the Virunga mountains that are on the border of Uganda Rwanda and Congo now there's so many, uh, rebel groups, uh, that are there. Um, and, and the, those countries have been at war against each other. Like the people from those nations pretty much hate each

other. Like they, they all blame the one another for you guys are doing this in our country and you're rebel, you're sending rebels into our country and where your government soldiers are actually pretending to be rebels, but they're working for the government and they're stealing our gold and our diamonds. And anyway, so they, they don't work together, but now our well drillers that are from Rwanda and Uganda and Congo, they're all working so much together. We get everything in from Uganda. Our team goes to Rwanda from Congo to teach them how to train. But that Rwandan team comes over to us and teaches us business principles. And so it's just been so cool to see how they're working together and how our guys in Congo are holding Ugandan and Rwandan flags over their back, taking pictures. And the

other guys are wearing Congo flags over their back. And our team that came from Uganda to live with me for three months and our team to help us really get off the ground and start learning. They had drilled over 100 wells for their fellow Ugandans. They left for three months to come live with us in Congo. Their first day there, the car flipped, their taxi driver flipped. The car ran over a woman, killed her. They don't speak the Congolese, Swahili or French. They're from an English speaking nation in Uganda. And all of a sudden they had the car was looted.

It was torched and people were chasing them down, wanting to put tires around them and set them on fire and burn them and kill them because they were Ugandan. They got in an accident. It's the whole mob justice kind of mentality that happens. Like if, if they send them to the jail or court, they know that, you know, justice probably won't be had if they have money on them. And so, uh, people just want justice then it's kind of wild over there in, uh, in that area of the world. So these Ugandan guys literally knew they're risking their lives to come live with us in Congo, just because they're hated by Congolese. But then whenever they flip their vehicle first day there, they're on the border, basically still of Uganda. They're

in a town called Nyoka, which means snake. And they hit a lady, it killed her. And that was the taxi driver driving and he's not part of our team but then they all wanted to kill the ugandan guys instead of the congolese guy um and then they still stuck it out we're able to regain our fifteen thousand dollars of well drilling equipment that was there luckily we had a uh this is a side topic but we had this um this water filtration system that was from solar panels and they had these two big chambers on it and in the middle is this timer That you literally twist and it goes for an hour and has a green and red light on it and it ticks tick tick tick tick tick

Well, we had it locked up whenever it came from the States and our Ugandan team picked it up and they go hey the something called TSA broke off the lock and left you a note and so they are checking it because like these two chambers and a Timer and it looked like it could have been a bomb in this big Pelican case. So whenever the Congolese guys looted the car, set it on fire, they ran away with it and hid behind a hut. Well, whenever they opened that Pelican case, all of a sudden they thought it was a bomb and they ran away and left all of our stuff there. So whenever they found out that these guys from Uganda already risked their lives to come here and teach Congolese how to drill wells for themselves,

they were truly good guys. It was just an accident. They got behind us and led us back to our equipment and said, be careful, though, like that bomb. That's why we left it out there. So they understood that it was a big misunderstanding. Yeah, it was a big misunderstanding. And so they forgave those people?

Forgave our Ugandan well drillers who weren't even really a part of it. It was the taxi driver that accidentally hit. Did they apologize for wanting to stick tires around them and light them on fire? Yeah, absolutely. Fuck. And so anyway, that's a long story. It was crazy wild. And we thought our guys were going to die because we were like six hours away from them.

And we were hearing like a riot basically happening. But it was so cool, man, that that we got all our supplies back. And then afterwards, I mean, we we we gave we helped with the burial process and the funeral and everything else, even though it was the taxi driver, not us. We felt so bad that that had happened. a taxi driver not us we we felt so bad that that had happened but then to know like hey now it was just a story that we were able to i mean not not that loss of life but but those people now know that we're here to help them right right and we were able to go back in there and do that for them afterwards so it's amazing man i mean i know there's a book that uh loretta hunt wrote with you right but you've lived another life since the book.

Yeah. You know, I mean, you have another book's life, a book's life's worth of, what's the word, the way to describe it? Another, easily another book. Right. Well, thanks. It's crazy.

Well, that's what I love about, man, these short films, that's all part of the documentary. In fact, maybe, I mean, I should probably say, say that after I was on the second or third time here, we did a Kickstarter for the documentary, and we got it fully funded. Yet the documentary's not out yet because we're going back one more time to film. That'll probably be July or August. Right after my fight, we'll bust over there, and we're trying to submit it to Sundance Film Festival this year.

We submit it in September. Hopefully we get in the festival. It will be there in January. And then it will be out. And a lot of the GRE supporters that gave to the Kickstarter will be able to do it. But we really wanted to do the story. Not the story. We want to do the pygmies and their family and everyone suffering from the world's water crisis.

We wanted to do them justice. To give them a voice. The book was me giving them a voice, but the documentary, they're going to have their own voice. And so it's been so cool. It's been filmed over three and a half years now. I think when it comes out, there'll be a four full years that Derek's been able to go back and forth and go get more of the story and show, not just like them getting water for the first time, but then also how we're giving jobs, how they're getting trained, how they're starting up workshops, how we're breaking ground on the soap production facility. We already have the land. We started the foundation of the place. And, um, and so how it's the full spectrum of it to, to hopefully show how empowerment, uh, how much farther that goes.

Now, it's a lot tougher. It takes a lot more time. You really have to be strategic. You have to sit and listen and learn and be humble enough to say like it's a learning process. Like when you do something, whenever you get out of that lane of truly listening and saying, I think that's that's the quote that our team tries to live by. It's a Swahili proverb that says, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And so it's like, how, how can every community we go in, how can we take this as far as we can not go as fast as we can? Because if we want to go fast, we just leave them out of it.

But if we want to go far, we'll go go together so we do that with our well drilling team but we do that with the communities too because they all lived like a saying that that's just ingrained in them wow do you have a long-term strategy with this like do you do you see yourself like how long do you see yourself fighting and what do you see yourself doing after you're done with that? I think I'm going to fight for the next five to seven years. Well, I mean, if I can go out on top, I'd love to do that. I don't think I need to carry it too long, too far and go out on a bad note of a string of brutal losses. I think I want to get that platform when we get to the top. Um, and then I want to, to leave and go do something else. And, uh, which is this, but man, it's been so cool. Our team in Sierra Leone and our team in, uh, uh, Kenya. And now

we're about to do it in Rwanda. We did this like crowdfunding campaign that we threw up on world water day. We're doing it through the rest of the month. Um, but we have started water towers. So basically we drill a well and then we have a water tower, which turns into a water kiosk where people from the community come up to it. They might pay, pay five shillings for Jerry can. So Jerry cans, five gallons, they pay five cents, but eventually all the people in the community, the one in Rwanda we're doing is going to serve 4,000 people. It's at a school. So the kids will have clean water all throughout the day, but then people come there and the one in Kenya is funding a school, but the one in Rwanda is going to fund more water wells. So as these people buy clean water, the only clean water

around there, that community, the only thing they have to drink, there's a lake that, uh, has the cows and everything else drinking out of it cow patties are inside the water and you can see people collecting water at the same time that cows are drinking from it right beside them people are washing clothes in it they're washing motorcycles in it and then that's their drinking water and so we're putting up this water kiosk where yeah we're gonna charge them five cents when they get five gallons of clean water, but those are going to turn into multiple water wells throughout the year. And so we're trying to do all these sustainable solutions to where after we do

that in Rwanda, we're taking that to the Congo. They'll be close to the soap production facility and the community development center we're going to have, which will have land, water, food solutions, even the forestry. We've helped to replant over 4,000 trees now in the Congo. And it's like, because of deforestation is so brutal. So I think it's just sitting back and saying, what do you guys need listening and learning that need and saying, okay, where can we fit in? How can we help in this area? Who's a specialist? How can we really make an impact? I think our lane is definitely water. I mean, from that chief Leo may village, uh, or the story that you just saw, but Bofi,

where he made that knife for you, um, you can see that water changes everything. And so that's going to be what hubs that's our hub. That's, that's our lane. And that's what all of the water for teams are doing. But in the Congo, because the pygmies are so vulnerable, we're trying to find the ways to help them come up. And as they come up, other people are watching and looking looking and they're starting to implement the same kind of things. So it's pretty cool to see that happening.

And before I forget, the reason I wanted to show that video was I got you something. This is Leo May's wife. So you have the you have the the knife from Leo May. His wife made you this right here. the knife from leo may his wife made you this right here and so because from our second jre episode i believe uh we funded a water well there in babofi and so uh she's really talented um i mean it might not look like too much here but uh it's cool what is it made out of it's bark cloth so it's a tree bark cloth and when they take the the bark off the trees fine but they uh that used to be what they would make their clothing out of their clothing they would make other materials out of them uh they can make

these little kind of carrying cases or backpacks kind of out of it do they treat it with something like how do they get it so soft they pound it down and i haven't seen the whole process but i've seen the bark and where they pull it off and they kind of beat it down and beat it down um until it's this like cloth i know that this right here when i've been doing research they have those pygmy uh mabuti pygmy paintings that are made out of bark cloth at like our national museum of history in new york, they have a few of these there. And so it's kind of cool to see, I don't know. I just was,

uh, was excited to bring it back to you. I think I got a picture of, uh, said painting and, it's, it's mama Leo may. And she's,

uh, she's painting it for you. So that's awesome, man. Thank you. Yeah. And thank her, please.

I will. That's so cool. I will. They just have, when I go back, sometimes they're like, Hey, thank your friends yeah so that one's not the same one i actually didn't think to or i didn't get a picture of it whenever she was painting this one but i got a picture of her doing some other ones that's mama swazi and uh she's pretty

great at it as well and um so they just uh yeah i mean that's a little bowl little leaves um this paint that you actually have there was they had some leftover black paint but sometimes on that other photo they just use like cassava or berries and they beat it up uh pound it down and make this paint out of it but it kind of fades over time so this one's one where yeah that's that's it right there where they just pound up the stuff and it's part of their culture. It's what they love to do. They kind of how you saw Leo May passing down, uh, you know, the farming and that video was actually San Gee over here from that handprint that you, you got his grandson. Um, and this is what the women passed down to their girls is how to make the spark

cloth and how to, um, how to paint. So it's pretty neat. Their culture, like they just do everything together. They rally around each other. They're happy together. They sing, they dance, but they also suffer together. If one person in the community is lost, even for instance, uh, might sound weird in our culture, but let's say a mother passes away. Who's there? Like she's breastfeeding, right? And she passes away, but the baby survives. Some other woman in the village will take the baby up and start taking care of that little one. And, um, there is an adoption in the pygmy culture. Like you, no one, no one needs to be adopted because the community rallies around them. When someone's lost, they all mourn the death together,

but then they rally around that family and see how they can all help and put in. So it's pretty cool. I love it. I've learned a lot from them. Well, that's how people used to be, man. That's the original sort of tribal life of human beings. They would all raise each other. Christopher Ryan had this whole take on it in

Sex at Dawn, you know, and McKenna had a take on it as well, where they were talking about these ancient cultures. Because of these small groups of people, they were much closer. They knew everyone in the community was intensely important. And there's a lot of people that think that some of the problems that we deal with today in society are because of this disassociation that we have with our neighbors. And we don't have a real sense of community. I mean, I know like two or three of my neighbors and I see them once a year, you know, I say, hi, wave, how's everything, man? Everything cool. All right. Good seeing you. But that's it. You know, there's no real community. There's no interaction. There's no, there's certainly no contribution as far as like working together to gather food or water or anything like that and i would imagine that

these people were just intensely close yeah absolutely that must have been a big part of the attraction to you to them like when they took you in and you were living with them and yeah absolutely i mean i think the average mabuti pygmy village is only 85 to 150. On our 10 villages that we help and have the 3,000 acres of land, it's over 300 for each village. it varies, but the number is somewhere around 150 for most people. There's a number of people that you can keep close relationships with that you really only have room for 150 people in your head. You essentially have hard drive space. Wow. Yeah. And that seems to be related to ancient tribal communities that people had that we developed that way. We developed these, these small groups of 50 to 150 plus people. And then when you get larger than that, things get weird. Yeah.

Well, no, that's so true. Like I, whenever I went through the six year battle with Oxy and just narcotics or pain pills, like I, I don't know, I would always be able to isolate super easy. Right. Because when you're in your home, you're completely alone. isolate super easy, right? Cause when you're in your home, you're completely alone. Um, and so it's different when you're in a village and with the pygmies, you saw some of those huts, how, how small they are, you know, uh, seriously in several of them, whenever I'm sleeping, I have to sleep in the center and I have to have my feet out the door, um, because it's so small.

Uh, but it's, um, the only go in there when you're going to sleep, uh, or if you're not feeling good and you need some rest or the sun's right over your head and you're hot. Um, but besides that, you're cooking your kitchens outside. Um, that's where the people is. That's where you do. Life is outside of your home, uh, around the campfire. We call it campfire university cause that's where we've been taken to school from the, from the pygmies. That's where they teach us the most about life is around the campfire, learning their culture, learning about their kids, learning about the hunts, learning about how they make this, make that. And it's where you get to do life together.

And so it's something really, really cool. Honestly, I told them they want to know a little bit about my life. And I told them that I went through drug addiction for six years and you know, they don't really struggle with that at all. And, uh, and then I told him I got really depressed and I told him I really sad. And I told him that I got so sad that I decided one time to take as many pills as I could and drink. Uh, there's like half a bottle of Everclear or more, um, and snorted a bunch of Coke and just wanted to end it all. So, I mean, I, I told him that I was suicidal and, um, I can't, I, I won't ever forget how they, how they looked at me almost dumbfounded in a way of like, and then, and then one of the

questions the chief asked me said, well, wouldn't hurting you yourself, wouldn't hurting yourself only hurt you. And, uh, so the whole concept of, I guess what I'm getting to is they had never heard of anyone killing themselves. Like, uh, maybe they had heard stories or something like that, but they have never known anybody that actually killed themselves or heard of it. It's not something that their community, their culture, the pygmies kind of untouched out in the forest or even not up in the cities. Like that's just something that they don't struggle with there. They're struggling so much day in and day out with struggles that are so deep and they see their family and they do life together

that I think they just have so much more of what we were just talking about so much more of a support system people that will rally around them when you lose a family member everyone rallies around you like whenever I go to the funerals it's the it's the worst thing in the world the sounds like people don't try to compose themselves. They don't try to dress the body real nice and have flowers all around. And now losing loss of life is always tough, always terrible. But there's something we do here in our culture where we make it, try to make it as nice or smooth or almost pretty as possible. You know, the person's dressed really nice and has the flowers and you compose yourself to come there. You gather yourself, you prepare

the eulogy. There's a, there's a program when you step in there, people get handed something and you know what's going to happen there. So you kind of can all compose man there. It's just so ugly. It's so raw. It's so real. And it's so like in your face and it just rips your heart open to where people are mourning. I saw JLUA, um, whenever Bobbo, I was the one, me and Ben were the ones that told JLUA, he's the chief, um, about his grandson passing away. We were there when it happened. He wasn't around. He was out collecting or gathering. We were there when it happened. He wasn't around.

He was out collecting or gathering. And we met on the same path together and he saw it in our face that he knew Baba was sick, but now he knew that he was gone. And I remember J. Law just falling on his back into this off the side of the footpath into like this pile of brush, like a, like, like probably two, three foot tall where he like sunk into it and he was just squirming on his back you know he's like in his 60s and he's watched so many of his grandchildren like pass just because they don't have clean water and seeing them squirming almost wanting to like crawl out of his skin you know um and so but i i don't. I don't want to be a bummer. I'm just just express yourself. It's it's but then how the whole community

all 150 200 300 people that were there all mourned together like we shared it like I cried in a way that was like You know like like like wiping my tears with everybody because everyone you know, like, like, like wiping my tears with everybody. Cause everyone, everyone was mourning. Everyone was crying. It wasn't just a few people. It wasn't just his mom and his dad, his mom, macho. It wasn't just JLU. It was the whole village cried together. And so I don't know, but for me that, that makes it seem like, I don't know if this, I don't want to make too many connections between our culture because they're completely different or a lot different. But I think here a huge cause of divorce is the loss of a child.

But there it almost unites the parents so much. So whenever they lose a little one and I don't, I don't mean to make this comparison, but it's like, I think it's because when they mourn, they truly go to the depths of the darkest place and they're able to truly almost get it out. If that makes sense, where when you're at the funeral, you let yourself go, you just let go and, and, and it's okay. However ugly or however you handle it, whatever emotions come, you just ride that wave. If that makes sense. Do you think that because their life is so difficult that life itself becomes more precious and the loss becomes more powerful or more intense, more, more raw?

more intense more more raw Wow yeah I needed you to to sum that up for sure yes I do I think whenever you struggle so much you're you become so much more appreciative and grateful of life of every breath you take well that's got to be connected to their lack of understanding of suicide because our, you know, our idea of what a difficult life is, it's difficult, but there's food and shelter and there's, you know, and really the easiest place to live in the world. All those things connected. Whereas with them, just staying alive is such a struggle and getting water, which is so easy for us. Anybody can walk in any bathroom and any gas stop, turn the water on, water comes out. I mean, water's not hard to get in America. Even with droughts, it's easy to get water.

We water fucking golf courses with millions of gallons of water every day. Our understanding of what a struggle is is so different. Yeah. And I think whenever we struggle here, we can go hide away and we don't have to deal with it. We don't have to have conversations about it. Um, we can, we can almost escape it. We can escape it with our, with our toys, with our technology. You know, we can, we can just bury our face in our phone or a computer or sit and watch a movie. And like, whenever those uncomfortable feelings come up, we can try to ignore them or suppress them if that makes sense. And there they're so it's almost, man, this is going to be a weird, strange curve ball or left

turn, but it's almost like, uh, I've started floating recently. And whenever I go in there, um, into the tank, tank it's like you have to you're you're left alone to your thoughts right you don't have that technology you don't have this and so you can deal with stuff and you can try to focus and let go and and for me it's been really beneficial and so I don't I know that sounds weird for me to make that connection but but whenever you're just left alone with your own thoughts you can go deep yeah and i feel like our culture here well okay if we compare and i love our culture i'm not saying there's so much wrong with it but uh but i feel like there in

relationships you go an inch or two wide and you go a mile deep in the congo you get to know people inch or two wide and you go a mile deep in the Congo, you get to know people. And then here, a lot of times you go a mile wide, but you go only, you only scratch the surface. You don't go beneath the top soil that much. Um, so you do sometimes with, with few people, um, there's only few people we trust with that, you know, but it's almost like they're everyone's so open to, um, to go in deep with one another. And because of that, you get to know each other better. You get to truly hurt when they hurt. You get to laugh when they laugh.

You get to cry when they cry. And, I mean, I don't have to keep going on about it. No, please. Listen, don't apologize. There's a real argument for the way that we live right now is not a way that we're designed for. Meaning that not that it can't be sustainable or manageable and you can't figure out a way to live a harmonious life in the modern context. But that a lot of people think that we're just, we would naturally fit right in in a tribal environment. That it would feel natural.

And a lot of people experience that when they go camping for long stretches of time when they're out in the woods together you know for whatever reason they just decide to find a place and live off the land i mean that's why i think a lot of those shows like those um subsistence living shows like um the homesteading kind of yeah yeah that's very good it's very attractive to people because I think there's a longing in our DNA even where there's a pull. There's a pull to that. Man, I would love to just grow kale and raise chickens and live off the farm. There's a lot of people that feel really, really attracted to that. And I think it's something deep in our being that we're longing for this connection to the real world.

We've done an amazing thing creating cities. It's stupendous. It's almost beyond our comprehension because we're a part of it. We're a part of it. It's normal. You get on the subway. You get in your car. You drive through the city.

It seems normal. But it's so far removed from every single aspect of our history. I mean, this is so new. It's so recent. I think these people are just more in tune. I mean, it's horrible that they have to deal with these situations, like the lack of water and toilets and the diseases and all the other struggle. and the diseases and all the other struggle. But man, there's a part of what they're doing and the way they're living that just seems like

they're more in tune in a natural way. Yeah. Right? You would think that they would be more depressed. Right. And, but like you heard, you heard Leo May's laugh in that when they asked him about the bananas

and he just got tickled. You know, he couldn't hold himself from just laughing and saying, I can't count that much. You take someone from Beverly Hills and say, Hey, this is what we got for you. You can grow bananas now. They're like, fuck you. How do I get out of here? First class only, you know? Right. Where's my iPhone? Yeah. It's, it's weird, man, because essentially this life is temporary ride for all of us involved. No one has ever got out of this thing alive. No one, no one will. It's not going to be you. It's not going to be me. We're not going to make it.

No one makes it. No one's ever made it before. No one's ever going to make it. So it's essentially like, what is the quality of your experience while you're here? And how much people, how many people are you touching? And by that life, by that definition, you've lived one of the richest lives that a person could ever live. Thank you. Do you realize that? You trip me out every time I'm around you. I feel like a piece of shit. No, I don't want anyone to feel that way at all.

I don't really mean that. I'm kidding. But in a way, you're so selfless in that regard. Well, I just, okay, if I just connect it back to that, I remember little Jippy. He got about 10. He's Chief Alondo's grandson. Chief Leo May's brother is Chief Alondo. And his grandson, Jippy, had gotten paid basically 10, 12, maximum probably 14 or 15 peanuts. He worked all day long. He's a five or six year old child that worked from sun up to sundown.

And that's what he got paid was five or yeah, up to 15, uh, peanuts. And so a little handful in his little hand and he came and he sat by me and I just kind of put my arm around him and said, how you doing? And he just instantly like put his hand out for me to have. And like, he, he went like this and he got like half for him and got half for me and just put half of his peanuts in my hand. I'm like, you just worked all day long for that, you know, like from sunup to sundown, but they're just so incredibly generous, you know, Hey, what's mine is yours. And what's yours. I mean, like, it's fun to kind of sit around, uh, the fire sometimes and eat because, uh, I uh i mean it's it's rude in our culture

and everything else but uh but i just i just enjoyed it whenever people would start eating off my plate and i'd eat off their plate and it just kind of becomes part of it yeah yeah or there's just a kind of a pile in the middle or big plate big thing and it's like hey this is what we have let's uh let's share let's uh let's make sure we share everything together. Now, sorry to interrupt you, but besides the farming and besides the clean water, what other, what other changes have you witnessed? Okay. So Jippy, um, which is so cool. He's like my little buddy, getting to watch him grow up and he's going to be chief one

day. And, uh, so when we got there. Did he determine that like that young? Yeah. So his father had passed away and he would have become the chief but uh how do they decide who's the chief and who's not it's not an election process or anything um basically there is uh just among the village whenever i think i forget i need to ask chief alondo how he got kind of voted in or whatever but he was just the one that showed the leadership qualities, the one that everyone followed, uh, the one that was most respected, the one that was kind of the most, uh, knowledgeable or caring. That's a huge thing for them. Who's going to

think about our interest the most and, um, and then be strong enough to like be tough whenever he needs to be tough. And so chief Alana, he's got incredible leadership skills. Um, like just a, a great guy. He was one of the first ones that bought into the vision for us to come in with the land, water, and food. A lot of people didn't trust us, thinking, oh, they're saying this. And they have those tools that look like they're going to drill wells, but really they might be surveying for gold or diamonds or coal tan. Who knows? They're just maybe using us as a cover. But he was one that stood up in the community and was like, no, we believe them.

We're going to work with them. And so from that, he's been able to go out and, um, tell other communities what's happened in their village. And so one of the things that he's able to go do is say how water has changed everything to where they were able to get land to secure that. So we could come in and drill the wells for them. Then after that, they were able to start farming. And then you saw them go in and selling it at the markets to where they can buy clothes for their kids. Well, it's not just about clothes. Little Jippy, last time I was there, getting ready to leave. He's always around.

And I had just been able to go for the weekend. And I was only being able to stay there for three days this trip in that village because we were going to some other places. But I always stop and see him. And so we're leaving. And I don't get to see kind of my little buddy. And I'm like, where's Jippy at? And they're like, oh, you'll see him. And so we're leaving and I don't get to see kind of my, my little buddy. And I'm like, where's, where's Jippy at? And I go, Oh, you'll see him as you go. And so we got in the truck and we start driving out and all of a sudden little Jippy comes out of the schoolhouse and he's running to us and I got to get out and give him a hug, tell him bye.

Um, but what's so huge is he was the first Mbuti pygmy ever in school in that region, that area that they know of. And so from kind of getting a little bit more equal rights, but then also being able to pay for themselves. You know, there's supposed to be a government program where the pygmies can go to school and go for free. But they're like the only ones. They're kind of like the Native Americans of Congo. They have basically zero rights, but that's one that the government has said but normally it's not honored and secondly um they don't go to school if they need to be spending time hunting or gathering because no kid's going to sit in school while he's hungry he's not going to be able to focus

right so for him to be able to have food to take to school is a huge thing so that he can sit there for them to be able to pay the school fees on their own. They didn't take that. They said, no, we don't want the government program saying we can come to school for free. We're going to pay his school fees. He's going to be chief one day. We're investing into him. And so to to know that once once there's some educated Mabuti pygmies, that takes away the last excuse that i see for the government to not honor them as like

true citizens of the country um they have no representation on the government level zero but there's over 200 tribes there all of them have representation but uh for years it was because or for always it was because they thought they were half man half animal well now it's um it's because they say no one's educated no one one's ever graduated from primary school or secondary school. No one's ever graduated with a high school degree. And so until that happens, no, Mbuti pygmy can, or they don't have representation. So we're hoping that as they get schooling, they'll be able to go to the courts and represent themselves and have more rights in their community and culture i don't know if i've ever told you that but um a real dark part of the the pygmy history uh or congolese history and what we what people have done to them what we have done to them uh 1902 to 1906 uh we had a mabuti pygmy from the ituri rainforest right

where i've lived and stayed and we put them in the zoo yeah did i say that yeah we did talk about that i think we talked about it on the podcast, but yeah, it's horrific. Yeah. His name was Otabinga. And we literally fed him bananas in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York. So we threw him bananas while he lived there with the monkeys. Jesus Christ. And a human being like that.

And so, you know, that was over a hundred years ago, but it's almost like in those regions where they don't have land or water, sorry, they don't have running water and electricity. And a lot of the education that we do here, some places are kind of stuck in this pocket that's kind of about 100 years back. And so some of that mentality still exists. So this could be the beginning steps in just completely changing their culture, educating them. That's what we're seeing, having the chief come out and say, this is the first official ever land that Mbuti Pygmies own in our government's history. This is the first water well, clean water source ever among the Mbuti Pygmies that they've ever owned. First time they're ever farming for themselves and going to the market and selling it.

That had local radio station. There's only like one and it's in the rainforest a few hours away, but they came out to the market to do a story, uh, with chief Leo man them because they were actually selling their produce. And they're like, what? The pygmies have always been hunter gathers. Well, the deforestation has made it basically impossible for them to completely sustain themselves off hunting and gathering. Animals are scared and skittish and they run away from the trees that when they fall sound like thunder going through the forest so it makes it really hard to to go hunt um and be able to feed a whole tribe you know a whole village

and so uh yeah to be able to say these are this is the first time they're farming and selling this you know it just they're getting more and more i don't know it's like they're they're catching up with um the people around them and we want them to do it at a slow pace that they want so keep everything culturally sound for them but what they do want to bring into their culture we want to rally behind that wow that's powerful dude you're you're there at the the steps of their culture changing i mean you're you're right there well it's been it's been changing or or it's been corrupted so much because of because of outside influences coming in with the the chainsaws you know that are the mechanized ones

where they can just start cutting the trees down at such a crazy rate yeah i've seen those monster machines they're terrifying. Absolutely. They strip the bark off of it all in one movement and cut it down. Oh man. Isn't that nuts? Some of those. It's scary.

Yeah. It's like science fiction movie stuff. Yeah. So they have that because there's a lot of it's not as advanced as that, but, um, they have guys just constantly day in and day out. That's almost like, uh, ants following each other through the forest.

But they have bicycles and they throw these long 20 foot planks of mahogany. I think it's isn't it ebony that that other really heavy hardwood. And they're just taking those out of the forest all day long, just in lines. There's a line of people going with empty bicycles and there's a line coming back out with it full of wood and they just start legally deforesting putting it in the back of these uh 18 wheelers that normally have two uh trailers on the back of them or two containers on the back and they fill them to the top and that's where a lot of the bridges collapse because they're going over they They're overloaded. I have a picture of that.

That was a wild time where we got behind this lorry that was ahead of us. We didn't see it collapse or anything like that. But we knew that they were carrying way too much weight to cross the bridges that we had crossed earlier. And so we knew, oh, man, I hope that bridge is still up and running by the time we get back. Oh, no. And then it just completely caved in and crashed. Wow, look at that bridge is still is still up and running by the time we get back And then it just completely Caved in and crashed Bridge that bridge is ridiculous. Yeah, and so that was built and how did they get across that?

Well, I drove across that they were driving out that was with their planks on top of it or something Yeah, wooden planks, and that's what we would drive across all the time to go out and drill our wells and stuff But the guys legally logging and carrying way too much weight. Legally. Is that what you're saying? Illegally. Oh, so they're illegally logging. Yeah. I thought you were saying legally.

No, sorry. Illegally. Oh, man. So what kind of reinforcement do they have in their laws, like the deforestation laws? Basically nothing. I mean, they say it's illegal, but everybody does it blind eye because they're getting paid off the bribes yeah well there's a lot of money involved in hardwood oh yeah especially those rare african hardwoods and that's where the rubber boom basically started was congo

by the belgians king leopold ii he wrote a crazy or there's a crazy book written about on king leopold's ghost talks about how that was the african holocaust and basically that congo had 20 million in population but eight to ten million people were killed throughout the belgians coming and colonizing uh the congo um and he he paraded around like he was the hero of congo and we're bringing infrastructure and business and they're getting rich and they're growing and they're getting water and buildings and they're advancing so much. And he would go on these public campaigns, basically talking about all the good they're doing in the Congo. But basically, you can see these terrible, brutal pictures of basically a father, I think, reaching out to his child's hand that's on the ground because they took a machete and cut his kid's hand off he's reaching out to grab it and he doesn't have hands because they had already cut his hands off

too and so it's just been since it's just been brutal there always because they the it was the rubber and ivory boom and then after that now it's the rare hardwoods the gold the coal tan the uranium which they use to make cell phones with yeah it conducts electricity at a really high rate but it stays cool so it doesn't overheat or blow up on you and i think 80 of the world's coltan comes from the congo and basically all of its illegal mining uh ran by rebels and everything else yeah that's the dirty secret about people's phones and a lot of the electronics that we use. Yeah.

Yeah. Fuck. Man, it's, uh, but it's been, it's been an incredible, um, journey to be part of, cause I couldn't have dreamed this. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have thought it up or, uh, didn't have it on my goals list. Didn't have it on my radar as a kid. Yeah, but you're so perfect for it. That's what's so crazy.

It seems like it's kind of changed you as a human being and solidified you in a lot of ways. Like the conviction that you fight with, it's not just that of a competitor. It's like a man with a, not even just a goal, like a destiny. It's very strange. You know, you're, you're doing something that's bigger than most people can even comprehend. And I feel like the, the weight of that is pushing you forward in this, uh, this really incredible way to watch. I don't know anybody like you, man. You're the only guy I know like you. You're the only guy I know like you, my friend. So interesting. And so, so many awesome people that you've been able to interview and

have them pour into your life and you pour into theirs and because of that there's so many cool things that are happening man i mean honestly i'm just grateful to have your friendship and have this opportunity to share because it's helped out so much us be able to do this well i'm very great very grateful as well very grateful as. And I also feel like this, I mean, I can't even take credit for this thing. This thing made itself. Yeah. How did this turn into this? I don't know. I don't know what this thing is. This thing, I just have to show up and try not to fuck it up. That's what I try to do. I try to show up and not fuck it up.

Yeah. But it's so nice. Oh, well, you know what? The float tank center that I go to in Oklahoma, it's called Float OKC. On my first, no, second time in there, they were like, oh, you didn't check the box of how you heard of this. And it was like friend, family, this or that. And then Joe Rogan. Because they started up because of you. And they were talking about, hey, there's probably 20 or 30 in the country before Joe started talking about it on the podcast. And now it's just grown so much. There's hundreds of them.

It's crazy. I think there's over 300. Yeah, people say, do you have a piece of those? I'm like, nope. No. Good, good. Keep going. I don't want any money.

Yeah. More power to them. I think it's an amazing way to change the way you look at the world and see yourself and be alone with your thoughts. And I just think it's one of the best tools for human development. That's awesome. I just think it's incredible. I was shocked when more people didn't know about it. I had one in my house in 2002.

Wow. Somewhere around there. Look at that. Yeah, 2003. That's awesome. One of the reasons why I got this house was because it had a basement. And I'm like, ooh, perfect place had a basement and I'm like, Ooh, perfect place for a tank. I'm like, that's, I, you know, I'm, I'm looking at houses all fucked up.

I'm like, do I have enough room in the backyard to shoot my bow? Yes. Is there a tank room? Yeah. I mean, that's like how I look at houses now. That's cool. So how do you, if it's okay, how do you use, I floated eight times now and the, I've finally done a two hour float, which was, I think a lot more beneficial doing a little bit longer that's the game changer oh man that was awesome and then but wednesday before my fight on friday uh march 3rd i went in and i had this intention where neil from floater he was like hey why don't you instead of just rushing in here from training or rushing in here from, uh, from the office at water for like come in 30 minutes early, kind of sit down, chill, close your eyes, like, you know, set an intention, um, and then do it. And I came in and I had watched a documentary called float nation. Um, and, uh, it was cool. Cause it's like an hour, hour and a half. And it showed a lot of

different things, but it showed some scientific stuff of uh of sports psychologist and basically visualization and then i've done some more research and there's this like place in tulsa that has some brain doctors or i mean doctors that are researching neuroscience and different stuff but they're finally doing a clinical study with people with anxiety and depression it's finally fully funded um and the guy was talking about it and was saying that basically the same exact results that anti-anxiety medicine has, the float tank can do a hundred percent naturally and that the studies are coming out to back it up. And so it was just really cool. But the tank Wednesday, I basically visualize the fight exactly the way it went down on Friday. I just had this intense time

That was the best float I've I've had Just sitting there thinking about the fight thinking about the fight thinking about the fight and saying everything that I wanted to do It was almost like I went to training before then I got and I was drilling the moves I wanted to do in the fight then I went into the tank and I and I had right before that so I was drilling early that morning Everything that I wanted to do in the fight kind of visualizing before I went into the tank and I, and I had right before that. So I was drilling early that morning. Um, everything that I wanted to do in the fight, kind of visualizing before I went into the tank. Then when I came out, I was, or before I got in the tank after training, I started to watch fight film on him, see how he's moving. And then I went into the tank and I was able to just think about

what he's going to do. Think about what I'm going to do, how I'm going to implement it. And then it's not, it's like the only thing, only difference was, is I got two big throws instead of one big throw. Um, in the vision I had one throw and then in the fight I had two big throws, but the ground and pound straight into the arm triangle, exactly what I'd been envisioning. So when you say personal development, I'm like, man, I get it. Like, so how do you do it? What do you, I mean, I don't know if that makes sense. Like sense. Like I'm wanting to learn how to go deep with it and just let go and use it as a tool of personal development. Yeah.

The more often you can get into it, the more you get relaxed and the more you can sort of slip into that comfortable state of not feeling the water or feeling the air and just being in your mind, see nothing, feel nothing, released from your body. And then I'll either go in there with ideas, like maybe I'll go in there. I've gone over jiu-jitsu in there. I've gone over different martial arts techniques in there where you sort of visualize movement. But a lot of it I use, I'll go over material, like I'll have ideas. Sometimes it fucks up my float where I have an idea that I can't let go.

I have to set something up where I have a voice-activated recorder inside the float tank where I can talk. But part of me doesn't want to talk while I'm in there. I just want to be alone with my thoughts because I think when you talk, it'll take you out of it. But there's some ideas that I don't want to escape me because ideals are slippery, man. You have a great idea. Sometimes I'll have a great idea when I'm in bed. some ideas that I don't want to escape me because ideals are slippery, man. They, they, you know, you have a great idea. Like sometimes I'll have a great idea when I'm in bed and I'm like, I'll remember that. I don't remember it ever. Like you fucking ever. I might remember one out of 10 that I think I'm going to remember. So I'm probably going to have to figure out some way to record

things while I'm in the tank. But for me, um, you know, it depends on what I'm trying to do. Just trying to just be balanced. Think about life. Think about my behavior. Think about my, my interaction with people. You know, my is, uh, do I have as much energy and, and, and appreciation as I should? Do I have as much gratitude as I should? You know, I want to, I just want to optimize my thought process, you know, and I'm definitely not claiming that I do or that I always have it right. I definitely don't. It's an ongoing process. And that's one of the realities of being a person.

The idea of the perfect person, it just doesn't exist. And I think it's a bad model to strive for. And instead, you should strive for doing your best whenever you can, as much as you can. And instead, you should strive for doing your best whenever you can, as much as you can. And I think that reviewing your thoughts and reviewing your whole where there's no influence of the body, the distractions of the body of just even the weight of sitting down, feeling your, your butt on the chair, your, your elbows on this desk, all those things are factors and they're, they're being calculated by your mind. And the way the analogy that I always use is if you and I were having this conversation, but right next to us was a jackhammer, it would be super distracting, but that's just input. That jackhammer is just,

it's just profound input. And I think that everything is input. Social cues, looking at people, sounds, feeling, touch, gravity, all those things are input that is going into the mind that your mind has to calculate. In the absence of any input, whether it's physical, touch, you feel like you're flying through space. You feel zero gravity. You don't feel the water because it's the same temperature as your skin. You're floating in it. It's total silence, total darkness. In the absence of that input, I think your brain becomes super powered.

I think it becomes super charged. And I think you get to see things in a much clearer way. And I've seen myself at fault when I thought I was innocent. I've seen myself happy and fulfilled when I thought I was longing. It's given me a much more balanced perspective and a better way of addressing the realities of the complexities of life. Man, that's great. That's awesome. It's a powerful tool, man.

It was weird to me that around 2002, when I really started talking about it, that nobody knew what the fuck it was. I was like, how is this a weird, how am I the guy who's talking about this? How's the UFC commentator, the guy who's talking about floating? I mean, it just didn't make any sense to me. Yeah. No, I don't think I, I mean, you had talked about it and I knew about it, but it wasn't until I got in the tank and came out of the tank for the first time that then I got it.

Yeah. It was like, oh man, like this is awesome. And the physical aspects of it, the way the magnesium makes your body feel and the looseness of the being in zero gravity environment, what feels like zero gravity, everything gets loose. It just relaxes the back, relaxes the arms, the knees, the, the neck, everything just gets loose in there. And you come out just feeling good. You want to hug people. Oh yeah, I know. That's exactly how I came out. I came out and had a smile from ear to ear. And when I came out of it, they're like,

oh, you have that post flow glow. And I actually gave gave the guy a hug i didn't even know his name but gave him a big hug and it was so cool man and it's neat uh the the float community seems like uh like like everyone just chill everyone that has a deeper um appreciation for that might be too much but it seems like everyone's got a deeper appreciation for life where they, they just, um, I don't know. I think there's something into what you're saying. It sounds pretentious, but you're right. There is something there. I know what you're saying. It's like saying that, I don't know. It's, there's something special about it. And I think a big part of what that something special is, is the alleviation of tension. And I think tension, you're much like inflammation causes a lot of diseases

and a lot of disorders that people have pertaining to diet, and that inflammation causes like you were talking about with your celiacs. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of it is based on inflammation, right? Right. I think tension is, in many ways, the physical tension is also another real boundary to comfort. And that physical tension is alleviated greatly when you're in that tank.

And I think when you're more comfortable, you're more relaxed. When you're more relaxed, you're more open. When you're more open, you're more loving. I think all those things sort of cascade. You know, they feed on each other and they help. And when a tense person that's, like, stressful, like like fuck, fuck, fuck, you know, God damn it. You know, it's really hard to like be calm and kind. You know, it's like you're so wound up. I think that thing removes a lot of the physical aspects of being wound up. And then on top of that, the deep meditative effects of

being in that tank, especially if you go into it like you did with a, like a vision or a direction and a thought to work on. I think it does wonders for, for your thought process. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm still learning about it because the first couple of times I was just trying to just wipe my mind clean and it coming out stress, completely stress-free feeling completely stress free at least was awesome. And then going in there with an intention and with a goal, with a fight just a couple days away. I don't know that this is what happened, but in training I had been feeling great. But then it felt like something just turned on or started firing where it connected like the mental visualization to the physical of actually going in there and doing it the exact way that I saw it was something that just, I kind of blew my mind. It was, it was cool to see that happen. Um, because you'd want to see the match or the fight a hundred times

in your head before you ever go out there and do it. Um, I mean, not, not put things in it to where if it goes bad or if it doesn't go exactly the way in the fight that then you freak out during the fight, but you want to have a goal and an intention and know what you're going to do in there i think that's probably what connor did when he was fighting aldo he he knew he was going to go in there and end it quick and he saw that happening and so um not not saying i don't want the words do you remember when he talked about it after the eddie alvarez fight he said i i had a vision of me standing here with the second belt like where the focus me other belt Yeah, I think really upset like yeah, right I visualized this I want it and then Tyron Woodley of all people had to give his belt

It's really cool that they did that. Yeah, the tyrant allowed that to happen kudos to him, but that that You know the visualization of a goal is very important to like solidifying this idea of what that goal is in your mind. Visualization has been – there's been studies done on visualization as far as athletics and skill learning. And some people believe it is as important as physical practice, which is kind of crazy. Yeah, no, I can see that. I mean, Kenny Monday, who's been involved in the MMA community quite a lot. He was my high school wrestling coach. And, uh, he told me, go home, write a goal, put it somewhere you can see it. So I wrote down, uh, he told me to write down state champ, but I wrote down national champ and I put it above my

bed and then over, you know, working with him, training training getting some wrestling moves I put a step around body lock on the left and I put a lateral drop on the right and so my my favorite wrestling move on the left and my second favorite wrestling move on the right and when I won my first national championship it was with the move on the left and when I won my second it was with the move on the right and so it was I, I was going to bed, thinking about it, dreaming about it, waking up, starting my day, thinking about it and, uh, and wanting to really put that in action. And so I, I totally get it. And I, I need to be more conscious of it and dive even deeper into it because I'm like you, I agree that, um, or at least I can see the point and how it's valid that the mental focus and energy

and visualizing is pretty much just as important as actually physically doing it. It's huge. And all of them together are really what it's all about. It's none of the, no, no, no aspect. Yeah. No aspect can be ignored. Um, I gotta get out of here soon. Is there anything else you want to tell people about or wrap this up? Man, we can, we can get to wrapping it up, but, uh, to tell people about or wrap this up? Man, we can, we can get to wrapping it up, but, uh, real quick, we have two goals going on right now where, um, at water for.org, we're doing a world water day campaign. Uh, we threw up a goal to raise a, it's an audacious goal to do that water tank, water tower, water kiosk system. Uh, it's going to serve 4,000 people and then create more water wells. It's a $50,000 goal, but we've already raised 35.

Someone yesterday gave 25 grand to it. Um, and so we're, we're, we got about a week left and we're hoping to get another 15 because if that happens, we're able to really make that sustainable, that team there in Rwanda. Um, and then, I mean, we, so for that people go to water for.org. Yeah. Water for.org. If they go to my social media, number four.org. And then it's like campaign. It's, it's our world water day campaign. I think I have it up right now on my social media, on Twitter and on Instagram. It's the link, uh, like the website or the link in the bio. Um, it's the actual campaign link. So if you just go to at the big pygmy on Instagram or Twitter, um, you can just click right there and get right to the campaign.

And yeah. And for people that can give one time, uh, that's, that's where you can give one time. And if you want, we're trying to make us sustainable here. And so if we had people that bought in and, uh, did $25 a month over the course of a year, you're give 15 people clean water for the rest of their lives. And the reason that is is because we train up the locals to go out and be able to repair the wells and always be able to serve the community. And so $25 a month goes a real long way. And, yeah, so, brother, I appreciate you so much.

I appreciate you too, man. It's always a pleasure having you in here. And thank you very much for the gifts. And please tell your pygmy family, thank you for this. I'm going to definitely have this framed. Absolutely, man. Justin Wren, ladies and gentlemen. Woo-wah!

See you guys soon. Bye. Hey, yo!