The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #120 with Jim Miller

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Joe is joined by mixed martial artist Jim Miller: a competitor in the UFC lightweight division and the host of his own program, "The Jim Miller Podcast."

the Joe Rogan experience are you a good cook I see you cook on Instagram looks like you're into it I am yeah food has always been a pretty big part of my life. I grew up in a family of cooks. I actually consider myself probably the worst cook in my family. Don't say that before you sell your book. I know.

I'm still pretty good. My brother Dan and my other brother Michael are both phenomenal. Your brother Dan has the nastiest guillotine finish I've ever seen in all my years of watching MMA. The one in the IFL where he had that dude pinned up against the cage. It looks like his head is gone. It looks like it's disappeared.

The way it bends over, it's like an elbow. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. It's sideways. I didn't see that. We were on the opposite side of the ring. I didn't see that until the next day. I was scrolling through some pictures on one of the forums, and I was like, holy shit.

Here, watch this here. Let's see if they can show it from the beginning again, please. Okay, here it is. I'll show it. Yeah, folds him in half. No, when he stands up, see, he's still fighting, like right there, like there. What the fuck, man?

It shouldn't work, yeah, yeah. How is that possible? Look at that, look at that. It looks like it's disconnected. How is that possible that a neck can do that? He's literally hearing his own heartbeat, right? I'd be dead. I think that's the craziest guillotine

I've ever seen in my life, which is amazing because think of how many guillotines you've seen. Yeah. Right? I've never seen anybody do that. I mean, that's a wild guillotine. It is. The IFL was weird because there was good fighters and good fights,

but the concept was so goofy that people were like, what? There's a team? Yeah. And, like, your team wins? It's like they were doing that people were like, what? There's a team? Yeah. And your team wins? They were doing it like wrestling teams, right? Yeah. It was kind of like you could win your match, but your team could still lose. And there was team names.

Yeah. And I think a couple other promotions have tried to do something similar, and it just doesn't seem to work in MMA. I don't like what the PFL does either, where they have point systems, and you get more points for finishes and more points for this, and so you're ahead. It's weird.

I can't pay attention to all that. Just let him. I think it's like they see how people are really into stats, like rebounds, and he's got most assists and this and that. There's a lot of guys that are like numbers guys. They can tell you, you know, this guy ran for this amount of yards and this and that. You know what I mean? Like they love those statistics.

But in MMA, that's just like. Yeah, people just want to see us punching each other's heads in. That's really what it is. You're overcomplicating what's essentially the purest sport. Yeah. It's so pure. I mean, you could show an MMA fight to someone who has no fucking idea what's going on, and they're going, oh, my God.

Like, you show them cricket, and they're like, why? Yeah. What's the point? What's the goal? Why do you have a paddle? Like, what's happening here? How's this work? You know?

Why is he throwing the ball like that? Right. Or baseball. Like, like baseball is american pastime but if it if it wasn't and someone tried to invent it today people be like get the out of here with this game too complicated it's just what is going on here he's stealing bases he gets to steal bases like what's happening you know why nine why nine innings why nine yeah dudes and what's going on with the pitcher with his fingers? What's he doing there? The catcher and the pitcher communicating in some weird way.

You know? How about when a guy like can – the catcher will stand away from the base and he'll intentionally walk them. Like, what are you doing? Like, what is this bullshit? I guess, yeah. You're cheating. Strategy, right? You're cheating. Throw the fucking ball. Throw it's yeah you're cheating strategy right you're cheating

throw the fucking ball throw it try to strike him out you fuck it's silly yeah i i guess there's there's some there's some silly stuff that happens in mma though and you know what's what's the silliest thing like because i mean i fell in love with it watching, like, the early days, watching Pride and the early days of the UFC where it was like, dudes were just going in there to beat the fuck out of whoever was across from them. And, you know, like, when I see a fighter try to game the clock, you know, I understand why they're doing it because they want to win. Right.

But like my whole goal is to not have the judges have any fucking say in it because I got three. Questionable. Yeah. Questionable would probably be a better word. They call them schmucks. On the outside of the cage, like that have zero experience in the martial arts for the most part, a lot of them. A good percentage of them, unfortunately. And, yeah, they're picking who's going to win or lose, and, like, I get paid twice as much if they think that I win.

So, like, I think that, you know, the purest part of the sport is when two fighters are just trying to beat the shit out of each other. Undeniable. I mean, there's some really good judges out there. We should acknowledge that because they don't get enough love because there's so many bad ones. I feel like number one hardest job is fight. Number two is referee. Number three is the hardest job because they can step in too soon. The guy jumps up.

What the fuck yeah the worst is when it's a submission yeah you know like when when someone is like fighting their way

out of a submission and then the referee separates them and you're like oh my god what have you done yeah and you can't restart it

yeah well they did before you remember Murillo Bustamante yeah and Matt Lindlund he had to tap him twice

yeah Lindlund he caught Lindlund in an R bar and Lindlland's like, I didn't tap. I didn't tap. Which is like, you fucking definitely did.

You got to make sure, yeah, like let him rip you off of them. There's only two times in the UFC that I can recall that a fight was restarted. And there's that fight, and then there was another one that was actually not restarted, but redone. Conan Silvera and Sakuraba. Do you remember that? Yeah. Big John McCarthy stopped the fight early.

Sakuraba dropped for a single, and he thought he was out cold. And Sakuraba was – he got hit with a punch and dropped down for a single, and they stopped the fight, and Sakuraba was like, what the fuck? And they were in Japan. So because it was UFC Japan, they're like, what are we doing here? And it was actually proved to be a historic moment because then he came back and submitted Conan. And everybody's like, what? He submitted a black belt in jiu-jitsu?

That was unheard of. You never thought that a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu could get submitted. Yeah. You know? So those are only two times that I know of where a fight was like, but there's a lot of times where I think it should have been that way, where they should have probably let him continue. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, like, as a fighter, it's, I feel like it's tough because, you know, the ref is there to, so I can fight again, you know? There's, I mean, I want to choose my way out. Like, let me decide that it's enough. But I do appreciate that they're looking out for us. But like you said, it's not an easy job.

It's not an easy job at all. You know, my last fight, I thought it could have gotten stopped a little bit quicker. And, you know, that's probably because I haven't knocked a lot of guys out. I knocked him down and it was like, I threw one or two, they kind of hit glove. And then it was like a second one just sunk in. It's like, dude, that, that didn't need to happen. And then it's still, it's still going on. So I was a little bit amped up, uh, you know, post fight, but, uh, it's a, it's still it's still going on so i was a little bit amped up uh you know post fight but uh it's uh it's a difficult spot it's the hardest spot other than fighter

yeah you know commentary is probably the easiest because you're just kind of saying what's happening you don't really you know i don't know you guys do a lot of fucking work like it's not that hard it's not that hard the work i I do, like this weekend's a big event. The work I do is fun. I'm watching fights. All week I'll be watching fights. There's some folks that I haven't seen fight before. I'm going to watch their fights.

I'm going to go back and look at their records and look at their history and stuff like that. But I don't even consider it research. I'm just excited. I just think of it as fun. If I was doing that on hockey or something that I don't really follow, then it would be work. I'd have to write stuff down. I'd have to really think about it.

But I'm looking forward to it, so it's easy. Yeah. Yeah. I think fighting's easy. It's amazing. If anybody saw you and you said, like, this guy has some of the most fights in the history of the sport Like you in the history of the UFC like who fucking has more fights than you nobody nobody. Yeah, nobody

Yeah, nobody you how many fights you have in the UFC 39, but what's crazy is you don't look fucked up You don't talk fucked up. I try not to you don't at all like if i introduced you to someone and i said this young man has the most fights in the history of the the most brutal combat sport in the world they'd be like what you yeah uh i i think i found the thing that i was kind of built to do because that's one of the things that uh people don't understand like i I've never had surgery. Like, knock on fucking wood. That's crazy. Nothing? Yeah, nope.

You know, the only bone that I've ever broken is I chipped my sinus when Dan Hooker kneed me. Like, chipped the outside of my sinus. That's the only bone I've ever broken. Really? And that just heals up on its own? Yeah, yeah. There was nothing they could do for it.

But, like, and I've been bouncing around outside the octagon, probably worse than I have been inside the octagon, and it's like, shit, man. Like, I was just kind of, like, built to take lumps, I guess. I've got a fucking giant head for a 5'8 dude, and I think that's helped me, you know, absorb some shots. And then stylistically, yeah, I just, I try to, like, I do sacrifice some power for trying to be protected.

Well, you're very smart defensively as, at the same time, you're hyper-aggressive, which is very interesting. You know, it's a good combination of two things. Yeah. Well, you're also very good off your back, too. It's like the combination of two things. Yeah. But you're also very good off your back, too. It's like the combination of all those things is like you can – there's not a place where you fight where I'm like, ooh, this is not his best –

like there's some guys that get taken down and you're like, he's kind of fucked here. You don't have like a spot like that where you're in a bad position. I try. I try. You know, it's a – that's one of the exciting things about the sport is it's, there's so much shit to do and to learn. It makes it difficult on one side that like you have to try to get in workouts for, you know, not only to be a good, you know, technical fighter, but a good athlete. And then you're working on, you know, ground stuff, clinch stuff, wrestling, striking.

So there's, there's so many pieces to the pie that you got to like stuff in there. It's not, it's not like, Hey, uh, all I do is grab a ball and run. Right. You know? So, um, yeah, we, we have to, you know, find your strength and try to fight to your strength. And I think that's an issue that sometimes fighters get away from is they, uh, you know, they learn new things and then they don't fight to their strengths that like got them there right um like i've done that in the past um in what way uh when i fought um uh gray maynard um you know like that was my third fight in the ufc uh tough dude good wrestler better wrestler than me um you know big step up

but like to that point I really hadn't been doing like private striking training like really before the UFC uh yeah I was taking I was taking uh like Thai classes at night like group group classes like a kickboxing class no well first six fights yeah basically yeah my first six fights uh i started out at a place called planet jujitsu tiny little bit bigger than this uh this studio here uh this room of the studio um and yeah i was taking like cardio kickboxing classes because i'd never thrown a punch before and it it was helping me uh you know but the the ball had already started rolling, so it was like, fuck it. Like, we're just going to go.

Take me back to, like, what was your initial martial art? What was the first thing you ever did? Wrestling. Wrestling. Yeah. And that was in high school? That was as soon as I could walk. Okay.

You know, my mom's side of the family, pretty fucking good wrestling locally. And then one of my uncles was a two-time national champion for Lehigh. He was actually an Olympic qualifier in 1980 when we boycotted Mike Frick. So his wrestling career was done before I was born. But his younger brother, Jim, who's also my my mom's younger brother, he wrestled at Lehigh as well. Never quite made it to All-American status. One of my first memories is watching him wrestling at Lehigh. You know, I think I was like three or something like that. And I remember it because he ended up breaking his ankle that that match. like that uh and i remember it because he ended up breaking his ankle that that match but uh yeah like uh as soon as i could walk i was pretty much on the mats uh i you know i wish i would have been a better wrestler but i was a i was a late bloomer uh you know physically and uh you know in in the sport of wrestling too i think and then you go from there to jujitsu yeah so i wrestled uh through

high school one year at virginia tech um that was a it was a learning experience uh you know wrestling on a for a d1 uh program like i walked on late um and three weeks later was starting um and uh wrestling at a weight class that I probably shouldn't have been wrestling at, too, 141s. Too light or too light? Too light, yeah, way too light. You know, they can't do anything about it now, but we snuck by the hydration test. Oh, boy. Yeah, I carried a cup of my coach's pee down to the trainer's office. Oh, really?

Yeah, since I came on after all the hydration tests and all that stuff. So it was like, hey, this will work. Wow. So, you know, like I said, it was an experience wrestling in a room full of, you know, multiple time state champs and stuff like that. And, you know, it taught me a lot about kind of surrounding myself with people that support me because I didn't quite have that in the coaching staff. And, yeah, I wrestled for a year, was pissed off because I didn't like, you know, the program and came back, was working a little bit. And my brother and I, Dan, were messing around at work, with our father and and finally decided to start training jujitsu and um we walked into the the first gym that we trained at in may of 2005 um came in and we had been like fucking around so we ended up like submitting some guys on the first

day and uh we told the coach like hey like we want to fight and he's like all right give me like two or three years and uh six months later we were later, we were stepping into a ring for our first professional fight because there was no amateur at the time. No striking training. Literally three months of striking training at a cardio kickboxing class. So at that place that you were telling me about, Planet Jiu-Jitsu? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it was a trip, you know?

Rolled the dice a little bit, you know? Yeah, and then it was just like fight after fight. I mean, in a year, I had six fights, basically. Wow. Well, that's the way to do it, right? I believe so. I think that's one of the biggest issues with, like, local MMA right now is that they're making these fighters sign agreements, you're kind of locked in and then and then the house oh well

they're making they're making fighters like like local promotions local shows are making fighters fight exclusively for them oh that's terrible and then they're only putting on you know three cards a year yeah yeah don't do that guys yeah don't sign that don't do that, guys. Don't sign that. Don't sign that. Whoever's listening, amateur fighters, guys coming up, don't sign that. That will fuck you. Those guys, that's unethical. It is.

They should not do that. Yeah. Because, you know, look, if you have a good promotion and you pay well and you put on a good show, people will fight for you. Yeah. But if you want to say that a guy has to be exclusive on a small card, and then he gets a call from one FC or fucking Bellator or whoever. A lot of them have like those, you know, the UFC clause where like if one of the big promotions call you, but the problem is, is like-

You should be able to fight for a bunch of small organizations. You want to fight almost once a month. Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly it. You know, like I have some guys to train with me that they don't get to fight as often as I feel they should. Because of that. Because of these contracts. Yeah, they're like the two different roads you can take. You can't fucking be exclusive if you're a small company like that.

That is not ethical. Especially if they're making like a thousand and a thousand, maybe, or a thousand bucks. It's crazy. they don't even have win bonuses like it's crazy yeah there's it fucks your development up yeah because if you can get a fight in every two months man that you'll get more comfortable with fighting you get more relaxed because you do it a lot you know and when you do it a lot it like alleviates a lot of the tension and the pressure because it comes you could fight more to your potential Yeah And the more you fight to your potential the more confidence you get the more you make gains and training you started

Adapting and growing and learning how to compete if you're with a company that's fucking you over and some shit these fucking I've met some Look, I've met some great guys that run some small organizations, but I met some guys to just think they think they're big time yeah and it's a real problem they ask big time yeah and then like one of the one of the new ones well new I mean probably a few years old now that the idea is that they make these these fighters have like ticket quotas and stuff like that so that's like like dude you're that drives me crazy it's the worst it's the it's it's the absolute worst explain that to people don't know what we're talking about so um in their in their bad agreement they're gonna have to sell a certain amount of tickets in order to get

their their pay yeah so like they'll have a you know 40 40 ticket minimum or whatever uh that they have to hit uh in order to get their full pay and then for everyone below that they're they're docked you know uh from their you know their win bonus or their their uh their show money um that's a yeah it's a it's a bullshit fucking move uh you you kind of understand it but it's like, hey, you're the promotion. Your job is to promote the fight. So you're the one with the marketing knowledge and then this and then that and the dollars to put down for ads and flyers and shit like that. If a fighter has the opportunity to sell a couple of tickets and make a couple extra bucks, maybe, all right, great. But like what happens and this happened to, um, a bunch of my training

partners and, and this is like kind of led to my, one of the things that led to me opening, uh, my gym a few years ago was we had seven guys on a local card and all of a sudden there's a ticket quota and after they sign well it was before they signed but they didn't know that it was there so you had like a a group of you know seven seven fighters so a gym like okay like one guy could have handled the quota two guys but like seven like then you're like trying to make sure that you know the the training partners buy from from this guy because he hasn't sold a bunch and uh and yeah it was it was kind of a it was a bullshit move uh that uh you know got put in there but like i don't think any of them like really hit it. You know, they all got fucking docked a bit.

So it's like, you know, you're looking at a couple hundred tickets between the seven of them that they got to sell, you know, so that everybody can make the money that they were. And obviously they have that with everyone on the card. Yeah. So that's how he's selling tickets. That's his promotion. Yeah.

He's double fucking the fighters. Yeah. how he's selling tickets that's his promotion his he's that he's double fucking the fighters yeah really like if you want to say you're going to guarantee i'll guarantee you a thousand dollars to fight a thousand dollars to win which i think is bullshit by the way i i don't like bonuses yeah i fucking hate it especially with bad judging i fucking hate it when i see a controversial judgment and you know and one guy like here's a good one. It's not necessarily controversial, but really close. Some people think it's controversial.

Barbarina and Matt Brown last weekend. Fucking real close fight. The idea that Matt Brown is going to get paid half as much, and one judge thought he won, and two judges thought he didn't, and he's going to get half the money. Fuck that. That's crazy. I don't like to get half the money. Yeah. Fuck that. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

I don't like that. It's a, it's a weird, uh, it's a weird model. It really, like I, I like, so the, uh, that London card, it's like everybody with a finish got a, you know, that's a great idea. That's a fucking great idea. If you tell the fighters that before the, before the fight, Garen fucking teed guarantee everybody's going out there looking for a finish. Right. You know? And that's what I want to see.

Like, that's what I'm trying to do in the fight, you know, no matter what. But, like, as a fan, I want to see aggressive fighters, not guys that are just trying to, you know, game the clock, win a couple points and and you know get the w because they they granted they used effective octagon control but like right i want to i want to see finishes and that way you eliminate all the fighters that get fucked over by bad judging because then they don't miss half their purse. Yeah. Because if you're missing half of your pay because of bad judging, that should stop. That should stop.

I just don't like that. I don't like it. I love the incentive, the finish incentive. That's great. Keep that. Keep that. That'll maybe make guys fight more. Well, you know people definitely fight more aggressively for fight of the night and performance

of the night and all that stuff. But keep the finish thing. That's great. That'll incentivize people. But the win bonus, that's not incentivizing people, especially if it's a fucking close fight. Like Matt Brown could not have fought any harder. Like that was a war, man. It was a crazy fight.

But the idea that he only gets half as much because of some subjective opinion on whether or not he did enough. This is not taking anything away from Barbarina. It was a great fight, a real good fight. Maybe I would go back and score it for him if I watched it and tried to score it, but I remember thinking, God damn it, I hate that model. I hate it. Yeah, like I said, it's weird. It only exists in MMA.

It doesn't exist in boxing, right? Have you heard of it in boxing? No. I think it's all show money. I mean, maybe on the lower end, but for what I understand, a majority of it is just you get paid to fight. Yeah, and if it is on the lower end, they probably copied MMA. Yeah. Does one FC have that?

Do they have a fight and win? I have no idea. I wonder. Never fought for them. Yeah. It's unfortunate. That's very unfortunate. So you start off, you do a little bit, where did you start off with jiu-jitsu?

That place. Same place, plant jiu-jitsu? Yeah, it was like no- Cardio kickboxing. Cardio kickboxing, like no-gi, no-gi jiu-jitsu, tiny little room. Did they have any fighters yet? Well, that's why we went there, because they had a couple of fighters. It was the closest place that had, like, an MMA team at the time.

And so I signed to fight Frankie Edgar in November of 2006. And the gym was kind of like, it was breathing its last breaths, you know? Like people at the gym kind of knew it was going to go under. And it did, like three weeks before the fight. Oh, no. So it was like, it was a shit show of a camp, you know?

Like Frankie was training with Team Rhino at the time, which was huge. They had like 60 fighters something like that um and and I had like two 16 year old blue belts and like a purple belt and another purple belt who was 305 and like I had I had Dan to train with for like two weeks uh he had he had cracked a rib and then like the first sparring session i just hooked him to the body and i was like oh fuck so he was out so it was a it was a shitty camp um great fight frankie and i fucking i i've never seen the fight but uh i had people coming up to me for years after that one like dude that fight with Frankie was was crazy do you watch your fights

afterwards uh not usually how come I don't know like as I I remember like I remember the good and the bad you know and it's like I should um but like I I'm focusing on like what's next and just trying to get myself better and and and work on things. I let my coaches kind of peel that stuff apart. Do you watch tape on other guys, on opponents? Occasionally. Usually just to see them fight, you know. But, like, I'm not trying to break things down. Because I kind of what happened in that fight with Gray is that, like, I expect him to throw overhands and, like, looping punches.

And he came out and he just fed me straight rights. And it was like, you know, I had been working with a boxing coach for a couple weeks. And next thing you know, I'm trying to like slip and move. And it's like, that's not me. But I had been doing it for a couple weeks. So I kind of picked it up. And, yeah, he broke my nose pretty early in the fight and then continued to hit it. And, yeah, it was like it was a good learning experience you know

but uh well he's an example of a guy who had wars and then the wheels fell off yeah why do you think you have been able to fight the way you fight and not have the wheels fall off you fight and not have the wheels fall off fuck if i know um you don't there's no uh luck um like i said i i think i'm kind of i'm i'm built to get roughed up built to get you know into the mix um just durable yeah and uh you know like i and then there's definitely a portion of that that is like skill set like i i try to like i try to not get hit right you know like you know and i'm willing to like like if you keep your hand up right if i if i throw a left and my right is glued to my face i'm probably losing a little bit of power than if i like loop that left over and drop my right hand but then if i my opponent throws a counter i'm more protected right

and that's what i'm trying to do like i'm trying to land good shots and hit people hard but be protected at the same time because i also consider myself a bit of a counter puncher so like i'm i'm looking for somebody to throw something at me so that I can, you know, snap something at them. And yeah, I just, I don't fucking know. It's kind of crazy though if you really think about it because we all know guys that they, how do I put this charitably?

They should have stopped a long time ago and they kept going and you know we all know them like we see them backstage and we're like oof like there was guys at a certain point in time where I'd see that they were on the card and I would just like raise my eyebrows and take a deep breath

okay you know because you know like they probably shouldn't be doing this anymore and you see the opponent and you're like that's what's scary and then you see them a lot of times they'll leave and they'll go to other organizations they're like oh boy you know like they were already having problems and now they're

you know it's uh it's a business that's unforgiving and there's no when the brain goes when the chin goes there's no return i've never seen anybody where their chin went and then they made a comeback. Yeah. And all of a sudden it's back. Yeah. Have you? No. No, I have not.

I haven't either. You know, it's, like you said, it's super unforgiving. And I'm not the type that I'm going to try to tell people what to do. Right. You know, like, but I'd like other fighters to try to tell people what to do right you know like but i'd like i'd like other fighters to try to make good decisions about it you know it's like uh it's uh i don't i don't consider fighting like super dangerous like i think there's a lot more other you know sports and and and types of like entertainment out there that are a lot more fucking dangerous than than what we do um but like over the long haul this shit you know

it it adds up um but yeah like i i i hate i hate the idea of like telling somebody like hey you know yeah you need to hang them up. What would you do, though, if you were coaching a fighter and you realized that they're having problems, you see telltale signs and slurring words and things along those lines? I think in that position as the coach, it's your responsibility to have that conversation with somebody, and they might not take it well. Um, but like coaches have a very important job and, and that is to, that is to protect their athlete. You know, you're not only trying to make somebody better,

but you're trying to protect them. Um, and like, unfortunately in the, in this sport and the way that it is, it's like sometimes a coach has fucking 30 athletes, you know, and a lot of times they're, hey, they're all here on sparring day. So it's like it's hard to pick out like who's having all right, who's having a bad day? Like who's who's not on today that maybe we should just pull, you know, go go hit the bag today. Go. We'll do it. We'll do a conditioning workout, something like that. But no, it's a hard sparring day. So that's what we're geared up for. That's what everybody's, you know,

they got a stiffy on hard sparring day because it's the fun day. And you got to make the differentiation between a bad day and your skills are eroding. Yeah, yeah. And like, that's one of the things that i can definitely attribute to my ability to be still sticking around here at 40 you know just about 40 fights and uh how old do you know 38 wow um is that like i i opened my own place and

dude like being able to train with a with a good group of guys that i trust and not have a fucking target on my back is is awesome um you know and when did you open up your own place uh end of 2014 tell everybody what that is uh well actually i ended up selling it uh but yeah yeah so i opened up uh miller brothers mma in 2014 then um is it still called miller brothers mma no no that would be weird yeah it would be weird wouldn't it uh yeah i sold it to one of the guys who uh who worked for me and uh you know one of my training partners how come you sold it because you know it was like covid was a pain in the ass uh obviously um and it was going to get to that point where in order to get

it at least back to where it was i would have had to be there you know teaching classes all the time stuff like that and i was like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna fight as hard as i can for as long as i can you know i put it out in the air that i want to fight at usc 300 and i think the best way to to get to that point is to just focus on fighting and not be, you know, teaching classes. That's the goal. 300.

That's the goal. We're at what? 270. What's this weekend? 273. Is that right? No. So I think like,

uh, it should be about two years from, you know, so you want to hit 40. What? Years old. Well, yeah, I'll probably be like pushing 41, yeah, I think. It's going to be tough.

Yeah. I can slow my pace down. I can slow my pace down. In terms of the amount of fights you have? Yeah, yeah. I like to fight shit. I'd love to fight four times a year. But, you know, three times a year is pretty good.

When I get those like eight month layoffs i fucking hate it so where are you training now so i'm training still at the same place okay yeah what do they call it now uh sussex county mma yeah so um still the same group of guys um you don't have to think about i don't have to i don't have to deal with yeah yeah yeah that's you know whatever the hell it like $7,500 a month to keep the lights on and the rent paid and all the utilities. So it's like, yeah, it's nice to just be a fighter again. Yeah. There's a side of me that I enjoy teaching to a degree.

I enjoy teaching self-defense a little bit more than I like teaching jiu-jitsu. Why so? Because jujitsu has got like a couple different parts of it. You know, you've got the sporty side and everybody's motivation is different. If I'm teaching somebody how to defend themselves, that's like, hey, man, it's fucking hardcore. I get to be an asshole. Like if it's jujitsu, then it's like, oh, well, you know, I got a bad knee. I don't want to do takedown-jitsu then it's like oh well you know I got a bad knee I don't want to do takedowns today and it's like shut the fuck up like every fight starts on its

feet like you know like oh but you're you're training so that you can go pull guard at a you know at a competition like or whatever you know like I think jiu-jitsu is for everybody i love it but um i just find that uh my personality type aligns more with like you know some rex quando type stuff that's hilarious did you ever think at any point in your your career of relocating and going to a big camp like american top team or some, I did, I did. Um,

so we, you know, my brother and I were training at, at, uh, AMA fight club in, uh, in New Jersey. And there were,

you know, there's some bullshit and we had a great group of guys. Um, and that's kind of why I opened the place. Uh, and it was like, do I open my own place or do I go to a, you know, ATT, uh, or something like that?

Um, and honestly, I feel like having my own spot is, it saved, it saved me. If I was in one of those big gyms, um, like late 2015, early 2016, when I was sick with Lyme, uh, I don't, I don't when I was sick with Lyme, uh, I don't, I don't think I would have fucking made it. Honestly. Um, I think that just the,

like the attitude is different, right? When you, when you've got a big group of fighters, there's definitely ego and it's not gonna, that doesn't go away. Right. But,

you know, there are, there are plenty of sessions where it was like, I was kind of, you know, like I got to literally defend myself sometimes, you know, like some of our sparring days were fucking insane. And like we had, like I said, a fantastic group of guys, um, you know, my brother and I and Charlie Brenneman and, had – like Jamie Varner came for a bit and Brian McLaughlin and Rafael Oliveira, Tractor, fought in the UFC for a bit. Like the best. Like the best fucking group of good fighters but also good people, um, that were

looking out for each other. I mean, we pushed each other, but we were looking out, but you know, injuries happened and you know, like you, you, you push the shit out of each other and it's going to happen. But, um, when it's like, next thing you know, you've got some, you know, some Russian or something like that, that doesn't speak a lick of English and you're like trying to tell them hey I'm I'm fighting in a main event next you know next week don't uh you know don't stomp my knee please right and then it happens and then it happens again and then it happens again you're like it gets it gets stressful and I've I've heard some of the other fighters that have left some of the big gyms talk about some of the same stuff where it's like, uh, you know, cause obviously the gym is looking for as many people as they can. Cause it's a revolving door. Um, but you have to realize where the specific athletes are, like I said,

like good day or bad day, you know? And that's one of the things that I've, I've realized over the years is it's like man like as a 26 year old shit there were fucking no bad days really it's like one a year where i felt like kind of sluggish where now it's like okay you know i i listen to myself a bit more um where like you have to have a coach that can do that too because as a fighter i feel feel like if I'm asked to something, I'm going to do it, you know? And there are times where, like, my coach is going to be like, nah, we're good.

Like, we only do the extra round, the extra two rounds. Like, you got it in today, and you're healthy. Like, that's what we need. So, like, I have a lot of uh admiration for some of those the coaches at those big gyms but uh i feel like that what what mma is and how the teams are is kind of one of our detriments at the same time i think there's way too many like uh like you know gym wars i think that they've they've toned that shit down um you know talking to other fighters and stuff like that i feel like it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to uh but uh it's still it's like you got you got two alphas you know

banging heads and and uh like if you look at boxing and the model they have it's it's usually just a small you know couple coaches and you you pull professional sparring partners in and stuff like that so it's like it's focused around the fighter now granted the pace the pay is completely different and and there's so much there's so much uh so many differences between m MMA and boxing, but I feel like, like that small, small tight knit group is, it's, it's good. Like it's, there's obviously a benefit to having all sorts of bodies and styles and all that stuff. But, uh, there's been some guys that have gotten very far with small gyms. Yeah. Yeah. Stipe, right? Like Stipe's gym, It's not a small gym, but it's not like known as being a place where people move there and train there specifically because of that. Oliveira.

Yeah. You know, Charles Oliveira's gym is not known as being like a hotbed gym. Yeah. And there's two schools of thought, right? There's a school of thought where you're better off in this giant ocean filled with sharks. thought where you're better off in this giant ocean filled with sharks and then the other school thought is you're better off with specialized individual and attention that's on you and your skill set i i think that the latter is you know like look at uh demetrius johnson and gsp right like gsp wasn't going to fucking you know uh open mat at henzo's like he's doing specific training

for a specific opponent and same thing with demetrius john Like, he's doing specific training for a specific opponent. And same thing with Demetrius Johnson. Like, he's not going with just everybody or, like, the new, the next killer. But those two examples are examples of, like, elite coaches, too. Yeah. Firas Ahabi and Matt Hume. You know, those two guys are, like, hugely respected veteran coaches. Yeah.

like hugely respected veteran coaches. Yeah. The, like, you know, shark among shark thing is, like I said, it's great to have that there. And there are times where, like, you need that little bit of a push. But, man, I've seen so many fighters through the years that I've trained with that they could hang in the UFC, but they didn't make it. Right. For various reasons. For various reasons.

And, you know, personal life stuff is probably a big thing. But a lot of times what ends up happening is that personal life stuff falls into you know finds its way to the to the training map and then a couple of that bad days of training and it's like fuck this you know the guy that i was used to you know pick him apart is beating the shit out of me fuck it i'm done you know like it's uh it's hard when you're young to have that vision too because if you are getting picked apart, the idea that you're banking your future on this, maybe you could go and be a fireman. Maybe you can go and do this.

You might have other options and things you've been thinking about, and then you keep getting lit up in the gym, and you're like, what am I doing? I'm not going to win a world title. What am I doing? And you just give up. Bad confidence or bad relationship. Yeah.

Bad relationships, that's a big up. Bad confidence or bad relationship. Yeah. Bad relationships are a lot. That's a big one. That's a big one. It really is. I knew this one guy that right before his fights, his girl would start big drama with him. Right before his fights. Like the night of the fight, she would leave the hotel,

storm out, go down to the bar and drink. And it was like, oh, my God. And his coaches would be going crazy like yeah control this lady yeah and you know and he's fucking the night before his big fight and she's down at the bar in the hotel in the casino and he's like what the fuck man but it's like there's certain people male or female that need exorbitant amounts of attention and when they feel like you're paying attention to you and this one goal that that that that fight Takes away from them. Yeah, they're vampires and they're like I'm not getting enough blood I'm gonna have to go downstairs and get some other blood. Yeah, I mean this really right we know people like that, right?

We do right see them seen them pull It's horrible because you want to tell the guy like you gotta get out yeah now yeah get out now and run change your phone number and throw that old phone in the ocean like get the fuck out of here man move out in the middle of the night don't let her know where you're going you gotta go man you gotta go that it's like i mean my wife and I, Angel, she's shit. She bet on me. I mean, we're a team, and I wouldn't be still fighting today without her. It's been a long road. Well, most guys like you that are super successful over long periods of time do have a steady relationship because it takes that factor out of the equation.

I think for fighting, it's very important. I mean, you look at all these fighters that are elite and have done really well for long periods of time. A lot of them are married. A lot of them have families. Because that's a stable home life. It gives them comfort and security, like relaxes them. The guys that are out chasing tail all night long and dealing with 50 different DMs that you're juggling back and forth, those guys are crazy. You only have so much bandwidth in your life. I don't understand how they do it. They don't do it well.

No one does it well. There might be a couple exceptions to that. Maybe. For a little while. I've heard some stories. But it's like guys who drink a lot who also train and then they get to a point where you're partying like a couple of days before the fight and you still pull it off. Like, yeah, you're pulling it off. But you're not hitting your full potential.

There's no fucking way. Yeah. But you're not hitting your full potential. There's no fucking way Yeah and if you fight somebody like you the thing is it's like if you're an elite fighter and you can drink and you can party and You can still win. What if you fight someone like you who's not drinking not partying sleeping well getting all their recovery in and It's doing all the discipline things that you need to be it They're gonna edge you or

they might knock you out they might catch you they might catch you because you even though you're a bad motherfucker there's a lot of bad motherfuckers there are just a lot and and everybody's gotten off switch and every like everybody can make a mistake everybody can get submitted like oh yeah fucking plenty of jujitsu black belt you throw strikes into the mix have been choked out so when uh rodolfo vieira got submitted remember uh hernandez caught him in a guillotine and we're like no fucking way yeah like that tells you right there that guy is a gorilla yeah i mean he is fucking jacked in an elite Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. And for him to get submitted?

Yeah. Anybody can get submitted. Jacare got submitted. Remember? I mean, people get submitted. Got his arm broke. Got his arm broke, man. Yeah.

Muniz is no joke, man. That guy's terrifying. Yeah. It's just, we're humans. Yeah. You know? The body's not designed for this. So speaking of we're humans, like, tell me about this Lyme disease thing, man,

because I'm terrified of Lyme disease. Yeah, it's a bitch. So I, like 2015, I started feeling like shit, you know? And it was like joint pain. I was getting some neuropathy. I'd sit on the floor with my kids and my legs would fall asleep or just positional shit.

And it's like I fucked my neck up in 2014, like 10 days before I fought Yancy Medeiros. So I was like, okay, my neck's banged up. Like bulging disc? I don't even really know. Did you get an MRI? No, I didn't get an MRI. It was 10 days before the fight. Uh, it was the most unspectacular thing.

It was like a whiplash injury. Uh, I, uh, I was sparring, uh, Mickey golf when he was like 22, 21. And, uh, he threw like a hook and I just clinched a body lock and my head hit his, his chest. And it just tweaked to my left. And like, I felt it. I have it on video. And it's like, i'm like shrug my shoulders move my head around it was the last round of the day i was like all right this is

gonna hurt later but we're gonna get through it um like i only got to that fight because of you know a chiropractor and his magic fingers uh and some grass and uh but uh so like a lot of the symptoms that i was getting um from the lime i attributed to being a fighter like my knees hurt well of course they fucking hurt like uh you know i mean to the point where i'd be 45 minutes into a training session and have to get up like an old man push on my knees stuff like that it's getting you know numbness and tingling uh i was getting like brain fog and it was pretty good. I, I kind of like go into a room sometimes and like go to like clean up and just kind of get lost. Um, so, uh, before my fight at one 96, um, like it got, it got so bad that I was like, I was contemplating retirement at UFC 200.

I was like, I'm going to get through 196. I'm going to ask to fight on 200 to retire. And you did not know you had Lyme disease? Did not know I had Lyme disease. Like I said, nervous system was kind of shot. Joints were swollen. I'd get some twitching in my eye. It was mostly where I'd get it just for like

days on end um very occasionally i would say the wrong word while i was speaking and not even anything close like just the complete wrong word would come out um and you know you'd notice and you're like what the fuck did i just say i I hope they didn't notice. Um, so I was telling my doctor about this, uh, before my pre-fight physical, uh, or during my pre-fight physical for one 96. And he's like, you know, he's like, honestly, I think you have Lyme disease. And I was like, all right. You know, so we, we ran some tests, test me for Lyme. Um, to this day, I still don't test positive. It's about 50% of the people, uh, that have Lyme test positive for it. Um, so he's like, uh, if it's Lyme disease, you know, and he's like, we ran some other tests. There's some antibody that I had that

showed an infection that they associate sometimes with Lyme. So he's like, we're going to put you on doxy. And he's like, if you do have Lyme disease, within a week, 10 days, he's like, you're going to feel different. What is it called? Doxine? Doxycycline. Doxycycline. So I fight Diego.

And that was the first time. I was kind of out of it. I barely trained for that fight um like i would i would miss training sessions like live grappling sessions or sparring sessions and like because i could barely get out of bed or like uh so i was i i would i would get in maybe six sessions a week um you know and kind of just focused on like all right well just be in shape you know like i could run on the treadmill. That's the easiest thing for me to do at that point was to run on the treadmill, which is weird. It's different than what most people experience. Most people experience, uh, difficulty doing aerobic exercise and, uh, they can do anaerobic

stuff. I couldn't do anaerobic stuff. If I lifted or did sprints, I'd be banged up for fucking days. So and that fight, I remember when I fight, and I think it has to do something with the lights too.

I don't see the cage, like beyond the cage. I don't see anybody in the stands i don't i barely hear my fucking corner for crying out loud um so that fight i the whole during the whole fight i could see like throughout in the stands you know i was so like unfocused um that like it was just it was a weird experience it's the only time that's ever happened to me. Um, but I get out of the fight, uh, and, uh, and get on some doxycycline, uh, the following week. And it was like within a week or so, just like my doctor said, I started feeling way

fucking better. Um, it took me a few years to figure out when exactly I got bit. Um, it took me a few years to figure out when exactly I got bit. I had assumed that it was probably early 2015. And then after learning about, uh, you know, the early symptoms of Lyme disease and pulling my head out of my ass and remembering the experience that I had in 2013, it, I'm, I'm pretty much a hundred percent confident that I was bit in like late May, early June of 2013. What makes you think that? Uh, I had a period of time where I was bit in like late May early June of 2013 what makes you think that I had a period of time where I was like I basically had morning sickness I was extremely nauseous in the morning and and like early Lyme it's

like flu-like symptoms and and and migraines and stuff like that and so I had really bad nausea like if I picked up my coffee cup and I was like breathing in and i got a big whiff of my coffee i'd it would make me gag really yeah uh like brushing my teeth i'd fuck just take the taste of like the toothpaste would make me gag uh i had two kids in diapers at the time every time bringing the freaking garbage out oh man i'd be dry heaving the whole way down the down the driveway for like two weeks and i was like like, my kids are in daycare. I think my, my niece had like rotavirus or something at the time. I was like, I got a stomach bug, like whatever. Um, and then I got, uh, a series of

migraines, like right kind of as the, the nausea was dying down. I got, I don't know if I think it was like seven migraines in 10 days or something like that. So I went to a neurologist in ENT, ran a bunch of tests. They tested me for Lyme, tested negative. They couldn't find anything. So they're like, Hey, let's just, we're going to, we're going to kick the ball down the road a little bit, see if it comes back and, you know, and, and figure out what we can do. So that, I kind of forgot about that. And after and, uh, after, you know, kind of educating myself online after I, uh, you know, was diagnosed, uh, I was like, oh, maybe, you know, maybe that's when it was. Um, but it took, it took a while to get over it cause it was, you know, just about three

years that it had untreated. Uh, you know, and, and the bacteria is a sneaky little bitch. They call it the great imitator because it can give everybody completely different symptoms. And it can pass the blood-brain barrier and all this other shit. It also has a

toxin in the cell wall of it. So if you kill too much of it at one time uh or in a short period of time you experience what's called like the herxheimer reaction uh which is basically you're being like poisoned by the death of the lime bacteria yeah it's uh it's a shitty it makes it makes you it's it's a fucking amazing thing because it's like here's this little thing that – this little bacteria that when it dies, it makes you change what you're doing so that you don't like – it's a – getting over Lyme is especially like untreated for a while is a marathon. And I'm not good at that shit. So like I was on doxycycline for six months.

I ended up – six months. Yeah. And then it's a, that's an antibiotic. Yeah. It's an antibiotic. I was, I was, I was, I was shitting like four to five times before noon. I mean, in, in 2016, so leaning up to like, I started to lose a little weight in 2015, but I used to walk just under a buck 90. After that first six months on Dock Cycling, I was walking around at 163 pounds before the Tiago Alves fight. Whoa. Yeah, I lost a fuck ton of muscle. And of course, it's like, oh, it's USADA. Jim's off the sauce. It's like, no, I'm a fuck ton of muscle. And of course, it's like, oh, it's USADA. Jim's off the sauce.

You know, it's like, no, I'm pooping so much. Like, you have no idea that I just can't keep up with it. But you were still fighting. I was still fighting, yeah. That's crazy. But we're not even done, Joe. So I was on it for six months, and I felt way better. So I was on it for six months and I felt way better.

You know, that was whatever it was, September. Then I did, you know, in March. So I was like, hey, Doc, like, do you think we can, you know, get off of the antibiotics? And he's like, yeah, let's give it a try. And it was about seven weeks. And then I started to feel like my symptoms were coming back. And then me being an asshole and like, no, no, they're not like, it's, it's not, it's not the lime again. So like I kind of waited and by the end of the year, uh, it fucking kicked my ass. Um, like leading up into, uh,

what was that? 208. Uh, when I fought Dustin. That was the hardest couple weeks before a fight that I've ever had. Because I was trying to get back on the doxycycline. I was trying to supplement even way better. You're not supposed to take it within two hours, like two hours before, two hours after supplements and stuff like that. And like, I don't like working out with food in my stomach. So, and I can't take the doxy on an empty stomach because it then, you know, makes my stomach upset. So, uh, so I was like trying

to figure out like the best way to get back on it. And it just kept kicking my butt and kicking my butt. Um, finally, like, I don don't know maybe two weeks before the fight i started to kind of get it get it dialed in uh and then unfortunately i was like fight week i was uh i was having a herx uh reaction and and uh it was a really weird experience getting uh i was i was having like muscle tremors when i was cutting weight so like I was sitting there like punching? yeah yeah couldn't stop my arm from moving

wow that's gotta be freaky my vision was a little messed up and I don't know if it was the lights or whatever but like when I fought Dustin that night like to me like everything kind of had like

a yellow hue to it it was weird and I don't know if that was just my eyes being weird or what but so this is the side effect of the virus exuding a poison yeah yeah yeah because i i finally like kind of figured it out uh like right right before that fight um so then like 2017 was uh like i was still dealing with it, and it was difficult. Like, the first half of the year was pretty difficult.

And then, like, through the summer, it started to, like, get a lot better for me. You know, I changed my diet. I started eating a lot like a lot better food i mean like when i first found out i had lime we were trying to like kind of adhere to the lime diet you know the lime lime diet is like basically a paleo it's a it's an inflammatory disease so avoiding alcohol sugar gluten uh dairy stuff like that but it's like i also had a bunch of little kids and it's like well if i'm making my food and trying to make their food so they're not eating mac and cheese, hot dogs and chicken fingers every day, like this is going to be really fucking hard. So, you know, like I've never like adhered to that diet like specifically, but totally eat a ton more like whole foods and vegetables and shit like that now.

So and definitely like I eat way or drink way less you know so how did you get off of it how did you kill the line is it a hundred percent done or do you still have like relapses I haven't had a relapse since yeah about 2017 yeah oh that's five fucking years yeah freedom yeah so you went through it for a for essentially like a solid four years? A few years, yeah. So it was, well, like it took a while for it to start kicking my butt, you know? Like I had that first instance in 2013 when I first got bit.

But then like I couldn't really tell anything, you know? But if you had gotten on antibiotics right then, you probably could have killed it. Yeah, yeah. really tell anything you know but if you had gotten on antibiotics right then you probably could kill yeah yeah three to three to four weeks uh is usually um what doctors will uh you know prescribe uh and if you catch it early you usually fare pretty well with it um but like yeah it was uh i mean 2017 i didn't feel like i could start really like excuse me uh like pushing myself and and sprinting and lifting again until like maybe april of 2018 wow um and then i was still on doxy through that period of time so i basically i took it for about two years uh like so i had a six month period like eight weeks off well a little more

than eight weeks off but uh you know a couple months off and then basically two years that's crazy yeah a lot it is a lot and i i what what what made me completely stop i kind of had figured like figured out how to you know the diet and all Right. Um, and with the meds and the, and, and supplements, um, and I ended up getting the stomach bug was going around. So the last time that I took doxycycline was, uh, new year's Eve, 2018. Uh, I rung in the new year, puking my brains out. And I was like, like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. Like it was like, it was a, you know, a bad one. And it's like, that's it. That's, I haven't, I haven't taken that. Did you have to take probiotics while you were taking that

to help your gut health? Yeah. What stuff did you take? Um, I took a few over the years. Um, a couple of, yeah, a couple of yeah a couple different brands i was trying to what about like fermented foods like kimchi yeah like right after that like when i was sick uh with that with that stomach bug like yeah it was like uh kefir and yogurt and like that's all i ate for like a couple weeks was was uh anything fermented sauerkra you know, unpasteurized sauerkraut and like kimchi and shit. It was like, it was, uh, I was a ball of gas, but, but yeah, I felt like it kind of kickstarted me into like a little bit repairing maybe some of the damage. I totally did. But, yeah, it was a long fucking road, you know. And it's such a shitty thing because it's like since people don't always test positive for it, it's hard to get diagnosed with it. And you have to, like, I mean, some doctors don't, they don't like, uh, it's not that they don't understand.

It's that they don't necessarily appreciate what, what everybody's going through. And there's like kind of two schools of thought with it. There's a lot that say, Hey, you know, it doesn't matter how long you've had it three weeks of doxycycline is going to kill it. and then there's the other side it's like no like it it can be fucking stubborn um you know and it's uh for for me it was easy because i was the one fighting it like i'll fucking i'll deal with anything you know uh it the scary part is, like, my kids. Like, fuck, man. I don't want them to have to, you know, deal with the bullshit. Like, I'm used to being in pain, you know. Like, I'm used to being uncomfortable because it's like I appreciate it. Being a lifelong athlete, it's like, oh, yeah, my knees are sore.

My back is sore. It's like it's supposed to be like that because, my knees are sore. My back is sore. It's like, it's supposed to be like that. Cause it means I went hard yesterday. Right. Right. You know, like, uh, I've, I've had the, the opportunity to meet a lot of people that, uh, have been super, uh, like super tough and, and, uh, you know, elegantly fought this thing um it's uh it's a it's a shitty shitty little thing you know it ticks her assholes and they're fucking everywhere too it's so common on the east coast i know so many people that have lyme disease yeah and do you know what morgellons is you ever hear of that no morgellons is a disease that they don't even know if it's real.

And I had to interview these people once at a Morgellons conference. And it's very strange because they feel like they have fiber growing out of their body. And they start itching themselves and they hallucinate. But one of the people that I talked to was a doctor. And he also has Morgellons. And he said, but one thing that we all have in common is, he goes, most of these people also I talked to was a doctor and he also has more Jones and he said but one thing that we all have in common is he goes most of these people also have Lyme disease and they're the links between Lyme and like ALS and and

some other stuff it's like it's fucking wild oh that makes sense right crazy it's got neurological yeah yeah well What he was saying is that it's neurotoxic and that when you say Lyme disease, like if a tick carries Lyme, the way he was describing it to me, it's like it's not as if it's like you can isolate a compound and that compound is Lyme. He said, depending on the tick, it could have a host of different toxins along with this one that we consider Lyme. It's not one thing. And he said the Lyme disease itself, like when people have Lyme, one of the symptoms is this neurotoxicity. And that in neurotoxicity, he believes that it can trigger hallucinations. So he was seeing things moving across his eyes.

Like he would look at himself in the mirror and he thought he saw like a worm moving across his eyelids so like these people they start scratching themselves and they itch like little holes in their skin and then you get carpet fibers or like and you know dog hair or something on it and you think you're growing hairs out of these fibers, and part of it is because you're kind of hallucinating. And this is very controversial. I'm not sure if this is right or wrong, but it made sense when he was saying it,

that everybody who he knows who has it or a large percentage of them, of course, in your situation, you didn't even test positive for Lyme, but he was saying a lot of these people also have Lyme disease. Yeah. was saying a lot of these people also have Lyme disease. Yeah. There are a lot of like, I know of a lot of like co-infections, right?

So the, I always hack up the name. It's like Borreli or whatever is the typical like Lyme bacteria. But sometimes there are certain types of like mold that create sensitivities. And I mean, shit, you get what is the Lone Star tick. Yeah. There are certain types of mold that create sensitivities. I mean, shit, you get the Lone Star tick. Yeah. You get allergic to red meat. Yeah, Alpha Gal.

My friend Evan has that. Yeah, Evan Haver. Yeah, you know Evan. Yeah, we were hunting together, and he couldn't eat red meat. I was like, what are you saying? Yeah, we've talked about it a little bit. It sucks. Yeah.

Fuck that. I know. That would be the the worst that's 80% of my diet yeah yeah you know and he just he shot a giant elk too so there's like 400 pounds of red meat that you can't I haven't asked him like what were your symptoms right like is it worth it tough that out yeah I's bad. Yeah. I think it's pretty bad. You get a little itchy or like- Right, right, right. You're like, does your asshole prolapse? One of my kids is allergic to dairy, but she'll take like a lactate if she wants ice cream and just fart it out.

She had no idea why. She was so farty. Then we realized we had to run her to run some tests and she has like a legitimate allergy to lactose my my uh my oldest when she was born she was uh lactose intolerant so she like was just fussy we didn't figure it out um until like we we put her on, even though I hate it, we put her on soy formula, and it was like day and night. All of a sudden she's sleeping. And then my youngest, he was lactose intolerant for, I don't know,

maybe the first year or so. And then he kind of grew out of it. That's interesting. Yeah, my middle daughter was like that too. Yeah. She, we gave her milk one time and she threw it up all over the place. And I was like, that's interesting. You know, like what, what is the, what's going on?

Like formula with milk, like milk formula. She couldn't tolerate it. But breast milk, no problem. Yeah. And then as she got older, it went away. But now she just avoids it. You know, that's, it's nice when your kids eat healthy yeah you know my kids eat healthy fortunately but man it's so it would be a trip when i'd like we were like one of their friends would stay over and you

know you'd have to feed them and you're like what do you eat you don't eat that you know it's like can you give me pasta with butter like Like, that's all you eat? Okay, we can definitely have pasta with butter, but I need you to know that there's nothing in there. Like, there's no protein in there. There's no vitamins in there. Like, you're not getting any real food. My kids are good.

Like, they have their picky moment, except for Wyatt, my 10-year-old. That kid will eat anything, and he will out-eat the both of us combined. And he's like, you know, I mean, he's a decently sized kid, but like, you know, he's fucking strong as an ox. He's not like a huge kid, like, and he will eat like a man. He always has. He always has. He's like four years old and

they're weird how different they are out of the box the personalities are different everything's different same household same parents same rules yeah they they come out of the womb different i mean i used to think i was more skeptical of the nature and I thought it was much more nurture with the way kids personalities are formed, but watching my own kids, they're so damn different from the jump. Yeah. So my oldest, I didn't read any books. I was like, it's a baby. We're going to figure it out, right? You know, like, be cool with it. Like, how hard can it be? Like, when she was born, she had, I don't know, probably three, four-inch long, like, black hair. She had hair on her arms and legs.

She had Popeye forearms. When she was born? Yeah, when she was born. She had hair on her legs? Yeah, like Popeye forearms. Yeah, when she was born. She had hair on her legs? Yeah, like Popeye forearms and calves. She was a little monkey. She popped out and I was like, holy shit, I have a picture of her at a day old holding her head up. Whoa.

Yeah, she's laying on my chest. I'm doing the skin to skin thing. And my wife snapped it. She picks her head up and I'm like what the fuck you know the other three like total newborn baby like you know lose head and all that stuff and it was like a complete trip going from her who i mean as soon as she could stand she could run and jump wow like she was just she was born at three months old it was was crazy. That's wild. Yeah. And she's shit.

So she's a little less. Well, she'd be 12 in like a month and a half. And she's as tall as I was when I was like 16. Wow. Like she's totally going to be taller than me. I mean, my dad is, well, was four before he you know squished all his discs how old is she now though she's 12 well that's usually when they hit periods right 12 13 we don't want to go over that yeah i know believe me i've been through it um but when they do that

that's when they kind of stop growing yeah yeah for girls keep going. Boys keep going until sometimes like 19. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild, the difference. So I got girl, boy, girl, boy. Was your dad a wrestler as well? No, no. My dad, I think he wrestled like one or two years. But he probably could have played football.

He was a big dude. How did he smush his discs? Carrying heavy shit. My dad, he still is today, just in a different way. But growing up, he was a cartoon character. I was looking through some pictures, and I posted one a couple weeks ago. He looks like fucking Mr. Incredible from the cartoon movie, you know, the Pixar.

Like his head is just fucking this giant block. And like the one picture, I mean, he's got the 80s shirt and it's like a V-neck or something. And it's just this big plume of fucking black chest hair coming out. And it's like, dude, like he was, yeah, he was 6'4", 240. Like just, it's like dude like he was yeah he was six four 240 like just it's towered above everybody and everybody always you thought he was everybody thought he was like bigger than that like it's okay sick you know

I've met plenty of people who were bigger than he was but he had this like presence that he was like seven foot tall and you know 500 pounds like uh but yeah he used to he used to carry just stupid shit did he get his discs fused no no they're just still kind of fucking little that's a shit design yeah disc is a shit design because it's one of the things that goes in fighters and wrestlers and jujitsu people, more than anything. Everyone I know that does jujitsu has disc issues. After a while, you just hit a point where something's wrong. Yeah. He definitely, like, exacerbated those issues.

Like, I've seen him, so, used to do, like, residential framing, you know, like, skeleton of the house. And this one builder that he used to do like residential framing, you know, like skeleton of the house. And this one builder that he used to work for, a guy was a little tiny Italian guy, was a bit of an asshole. He wouldn't like backfill the houses to the foundation. So it was, you had like one spot to maybe bring lumber in to the foundation. to the foundation. So when we're doing the beams in the basement, like you'd have this 40-foot beam that weighs 800 pounds,

and it's like you really don't have a good way to get it across the fucking, to the other side. So that motherfucker would cinch his tool belt tight, tall enough his shoulder just fit right where the middle of the beam was, and he would pick that fucking shit up and walk across the stone, you know, three-quarter gravel stone basement, get to the other end, lean back a little bit, lift it up, and put it on the side. It's like 800 pounds. 800 pounds, yeah.

He dragged 800 pounds? He carried 800 pounds. Carried? Like off the ground? Off the ground, Off the ground. Yeah. Yep. That's insane.

It is insane. That sounds like one of the strongest humans that's ever lived. He's got some stories, but- How long is the beam? 40 feet. How is that possible? So we weighed it. So every foot weighed like 19 and just under 20 pounds.

So he's in the center of this? Yep. Bouncing on his shoulder. 800 pounds? Yeah, 800 pounds. It's fucking wild. That's crazy. It's almost hard to believe.

It is hard to believe. I've seen him almost die a few times too because he's doing stupid shit. Really? Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of occasions where it's like, oh, fuck. He's not going to be moving.

The one time we were, we were raising a great room wall. So it was two by six wall. And we had this machine, this rough terrain forklift, and it was the biggest piece of shit. Like company colors were rust. Like that's, you know, like we weren't, like we weren't we didn't we didn't have a shit ton of money growing up uh so like he it saved so much time having this forklift um so he buys this thing it had a it had an old straight six from a uh i think it was a six

might have been a fork from a jeep that was um taken by the Nazis in World War II and actually had a swastika welded onto the case of it. Whoa. Yeah, like he found this thing in a junkyard and like- Really? Yeah, yeah. And it was like the biggest piece of shit, but it saved us so much time

like getting stuff up to the second floor and all that shit. So it got to a point where it would just constantly stall it hadn't zero breaks um so he's lifting this wall and uh or going to lift this wall in that kind of position and so we had it laid out so you got these two by sixes and there's like the king stud which runs up where the header is you know the big piece that like over the windows and and fireplace um and uh and then like liner so it was like i think it was three i think it was three two by sixes um so he's driving it's got this tiny little cage like over top of it and it stalls so the machine starts rolling backwards, and these 2x6s get caught on the back of the cage.

And, like, it's winding back, and my brothers and I are up on the second floor, and we start fucking screaming at him because you see it just, like, winding up. So he, like, looks, and he sees it, and he throws his head down as hard as he can as the 2x6 slides off. And it was like a sammy sosa 450 yard bomb like crack and it's like i'm jumping off the second floor you know my brothers are sliding down uh the the the studs to get down to the floor like and he rolls out he rolls out and he like gets up the machine rolls into the woods

and he's like fucking you know it starts swearing he's a like yosemite sam you know bumps anything starts wearing like a like a sailor uh and it's like you're standing up like what the fuck like you should be dead like you should literally your brain should be like 20 feet that way wow uh yeah so he ended up you know this back of his head ended up swelling up pretty good but he was okay you know concussion but you come from durable genes yeah dude like he actually got a an mri uh a few years later uh and the doctor's like you know he's like you know your brain looks good and everything he's like you know one one interesting thing is that for the size of your head your brain is kind of small you're telling me I've got a

BB in a boxcar he's like pretty much he's got Homer Simpson itis like he's just got an extra thick layer of bone around his head. Oh, man. Yeah. So there have been a couple others that were like, dude. I saw him cut himself with a chainsaw once. That was exciting. Oh, Jesus.

Yeah. It's funny how some people are just born more durable. Do you ever see when they examine Marvin Hagler's head? No. Marvin Hagler, head? No. Marvin Hagler, who's one of the greatest boxers of all time, one of my favorite all-time boxers, Marvin had muscle on the outside of his head like headgear.

Yeah. They said the size of the muscle outside of his head was far larger than a normal person, like unusually large, to the point where it's literally like he had like a cushion on the side of his head so weird well he also had a tremendous chin anyway there's only knocked down once ever in his whole career but it was a bullshit knock down get one rolled in okay pretty sure is one rolled in but it was a it was a fake knock down like you should have been a slip and they called it a knockdown.

It's like, man, it sucked because you go and watch the punches he absorbed from murderous knockout punchers like John the Beast Mugabe, Tommy Hearns, never goes down. And this one slip, it was almost like the guy cuffed him in the back and kind of pushed him down. But his head, he had built in these muscles right here, like the mandible muscles. They were, like, extra thick. That's the, like, that's the fucked up part is that my head is just as big around as my dad's.

And he's eight inches taller than me. And it's like I could take my hat and plop it onto his head. That's crazy. If I didn't have a hunched over Quasimodo posture, I'd probably look like a lollipop. But yeah, his head is super. Do you ever go back and look at your career and go, man, what would have happened if I didn't have that fucking Lyme disease? No, not really.

Just deal with it? Yeah, just deal with it. I'm not that type. I'm good at what's right in front of me, like going forward. I mean, even with the positive shit, you know, it's like, okay. You got to be that way if you're that way with the negative shit. Yeah. Like, okay, that's good.

That's awesome. You know, like, oh, I won. I won and I won a bonus and, you know, I made a bunch of money. Great. When's the next one? Like, what's next? Right. You know, like, I've obviously, like, there are a couple fights where it's like, I'd like that one back.

But, you know, I don't have a time machine. What are you going to do? Yeah. What is this booze you brought? What is going on here? Tell me about this. You make your own booze now. Well, I haven't in a little bit.

These are actually, well, that is, so this one right here is a coffee liqueur, like basically a cold brew, an alcohol cold brew. Like a Kahlua type deal? It's less syrupy than Kahlua. So I make one. Crack that bitch open. Let's find out what's up. I make one. They're better cold.

They're not very cold. Well, maybe it's better to have it when it's not cold to see how good it really is. So, yeah. Should we get ice cubes? Or should you just drink it like this? have it when it's not cold so you see how good it really is. So, yeah. So this – Should we get ice cubes? Or should we just drink it like this? Let's try it. All right. Let me try it.

All right. Pour a little of that. Let's see what's up. So how did you learn how to do this? I just read stuff. And just started practicing? Yeah. You know what?

Reading comprehension, it fucking works. How does one learn how to make a coffee liqueur? Yeah, you know what? Reading comprehension, it fucking works. How does one learn how to make a coffee liqueur? Cheers, sir. Cheers. So this one I made up the recipe myself. Whoa. That's an acquired taste. That is not that bad.

When I first make it, it's pretty hot. When it's cold, like I said, it'll be- It's not bad, though. It's interesting. It is like a liqueur. I guess like a Kahlua-ish, but not- Yeah, exactly the same. Essentially, this one is just like some cold brew with some other stuff in it and then some Everclear.

Is that what you add to it? Yeah, yeah. Essentially, this one is just like some cold brew with some other stuff in it and then some Everclear. Is that what you add to it? Yeah, yeah, because it's highly alcoholic and it doesn't affect the flavor. Do you make your own Everclear? No, no. I can't. Oh, jeez. Jesus.

No, that was an inadvertent cough. I think I have allergies now. That's the thing about moving to Austin is they say you develop allergies. You got got any allergies jamie uh yeah sure did you get them before i had them i lived in ohio a long time yeah some weird stuff starting to get like i'll get like runny nose and i think i'm sick but then i work out i feel great and i'm like hmm i think it's a fucking allergy because the pollen's in the air like i went out to my car that i have a black truck it was covered with like yellow stuff like this is wild so much fucking pollen i didn't get i didn't i got to like 26 before i experienced any allergies and then i broke my nose and my septums mushed to the side

so now i have like a constant post-nasal drip and it's like i experience a little bit of hours when you retire you're gonna get that fixed i am i after seeing dudley's pictures it's like I experience a little bit of hours. When you retire, are you going to get that fixed? I am. After seeing Dudley's pictures, it's like, oh, shit. Oh, I told him to do it. I got mine done. Man, it was the greatest fucking thing. I fell down a flight of stairs when I was five, and I think from then on I've never had a nose. My nose has been useless.

And then, obviously, all the years of combat sports, and I broke it I don't know how many times yeah and then um i got it fixed and when i got it fixed it was all of a sudden like yeah oh yeah i got full like i used to go to yoga class and they'd go breathe out of your nose and i'm like that's not possible my nose doesn't work i had no nose and you could hear my voice back then it was a different voice it was a more nasally voice and it just changed everything changed my cardio yeah my cardio went up a solid 10 like immediately i was like this is wild like i was like mouth breather i was a mouth breather

there's a lot of people that are mouth breathers yeah you know like justin gaethje you hear him talk yeah it's just every time he talks it sounds sounds like this. It's like he's just stuffed up. Yeah. All the wars. Because he gets scar tissue in there, too. That's what I didn't understand is that the way the doctor was describing it to me, he said it's just like cauliflower ear. And you get cauliflower ear, and you get all the blood pools, and it calcifies, and it becomes hard. He goes, that shit happens on the inside of your nose.

He didn't say that shit. But he said that happens on the inside of your nose as well. I was that shit, but he said, that happens on the inside of your nose as well. I was like, really? He's like, yeah, your nose is a disaster area. He's like, you have like maybe 1 eighth of one nostril. He said, the rest of your nose is totally closed. I was like, oh. Because one side, on my left side, I go,

I could get a little. And the right side was just junk just garbage there's nothing going on in that side funny thing about cod fire so the only time i've ever seen that uh so when i fought frankie uh like he's he's beaten me you know uh so i go into the third round and i'm like i just got to do something big so i rip a left high kick and of course i don't hit him in the temple i don't hit him in the chin i hit him like right across the cheekbone and the ear so his calcified cauliflower rips open and this chunk of like rock shit yeah goes flying over to the other side of the cage and like one of the state athletic guys like scoops it up they ended up uh his his old coach like took it

and put it in formaldehyde and shit like that how big was the chunk i think it was like you know maybe the size of a nickel wow yeah uh i so that was right before tryouts for ufc uh they're uh rather tough uh five so like i think it was like three weeks prior so like we go down there my eye is bloodshot red still and his his freaking ear is as black as his mug it looks like it's gonna fall off oh my god cauliflower ear is so nasty yeah i've there was one mma fight in japan i forget who was fighting but a chunk fell off that was the size of a fucking silver dollar. It was this giant chunk of this dude's ear fell off.

And there was a photo of it on the canvas. And it was like missing from his ear and there's blood pouring out of the side of his head because it's basically a rock. Yeah. Like you don't have much. You don't have much cauliflower. No, not too bad. Not too bad.

Like Randy. Yeah. Randy Couture. He's got goddamn gophers living in his ears. I mean, they're just huge lumps. Yeah. And that is a rock. It's a calcified rock.

Yeah. And Randy told me that he would rub it in guys' eyes. Like when he'd take guys down, like he would like shove it into their eye socket. And like it's basically like a rock in your eye as he's taking you down. Really a point of leverage. Yeah of makes sense right like i mean i guess it's a i i feel like it makes him makes your ear a little more fragile it does right so like you might dig it into his eye and then rip your ear yeah it does jessica i fought Man, who's the woman she fought? Laura. God damn it.

Yeah, you're asking the wrong guy about names. I'm not good with names. Pulled Jessica I's career up. They stopped it. They stopped the fight because her ear was hanging. Yeah, hanging off. Leslie Smith. Leslie Smith.

Thank you. Why did I say Laura? Leslie Smith. So Jessica I hits her and itatters, and we see this hole. There it is. Yeah. It's like basically hanging off. Like, look at that.

There's a hole in her head. And Leslie Smith's so tough, she didn't. Look at that. That's the splatter. She did not want to stop the fight. Didn't that happen to James Thompson, james thompson too right yes yeah but that was a that was cauliflower or his pop like yeah that was liquid yeah it was just it wasn't cauliflower yet and it popped and they stopped the fight and we're like what are you doing you can't stop that

it's funny like what someone will stop and won't stop a fight for, you know? Yeah. It's, that's another one. Like, you know, the cage side doctors, it's like you have to try to make a call. Yeah, there it is. So, oh boy. Yeah. It was bleeding pretty bad.

Yeah. But it's still, it's like, oh, well, you know what? He could have stopped the fight for that. Yeah, that's better. He could have stopped the fight just for that. It's like, hey, it's still, it's like, oh, well, you know what? He could have stopped the fight for that. Yeah. Yeah, that's better. He could have stopped the fight just for that. It's like, it's a fucking referee. That's big. That's funny. That's big damn.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was a lot of blood coming out of his ear. But I think the punch that Kimbo hit him with was worth the knockout. That's, you know, the ear thing is weird because that fucks with your hearing. If you take your ear and you bend it over and listen to things like that, it sounds different. And then you pop it open, boink, and now you hear everything. That's how you're supposed to hear.

The ear is designed that way for a reason. So I never wore headgear as a wrestler, ever. You know, I got had to for matches, but at practice, I never wore it. Never got caught fire. I'm training for my first fight, and all of a sudden it's like my right ear starts puffing up, you know. So I get through the fight, and it's like a golf ball, you know, on the side of my head. ball, you know, on the side of my head. So, um, my, my brother, my brother, uh, my oldest brother, excuse me, um, is, uh, is a veterinarian. So at the time he was in vet school, uh, down at UPenn.

So it was two hours away from us. So he comes up for, uh, Thanksgiving, a weekend before Thanksgiving and, uh, and drains it. He's also stitched me up a couple times on my parents' couch before some of those earlier fights when I got cut in training, but the athletic commission doesn't need to know about that. So he drains it. It was like Wednesday night,

drains it. Thanksgiving, I'm fucking around with Dan, rolling around on the, and he just goes and smushes it. Oh, no. Like before his eyes, it swells right back up. So when it swelled up, again, it covered the hole in my ear. So a few days later, I ended up getting like a swimmer's ear infection. And that was like top two most painful things, like, that have, I guess, lasted.

I'm sure that I've done some things that, like, hurt instantly, like, a lot more. But, like, the whole side of my neck was swollen. I go to urgent care, and the guy, instead of, like, drawing it out and bolstering it and stuff like that, like you're supposed to do, he just lances it, cuts my ear open. Oh, Jesus. Squeezes the shit out and like gauzes my ear to my head. And I'm like, dude, like I've got a fucking infection in my ear. I can't turn my head. Didn't give me any antibiotics or anything like that.

Wow. Like sends me out of there. I'm like, you're a prick. So I ended up, uh, going to, uh, you know, a specialist,

uh, had fucking no money. Go to the specialist. And, uh, he ended up doing it right. You know, putting a wick in there.

I couldn't hear anything for like three weeks. Oh my God. I'd be, I'd be driving to, to practice and Dan be talking. And, uh, all I could hear was the speaker,

you know, on my left side. And like, he's, he's having a conversation. and Dan be talking and all I could hear was the speaker, on my left side and like, he's having a conversation and it's nothing, absolutely nothing. And then like, since then I get little, I've gotten a couple of little ones, but like when mine is swelled up and like liquid, it's never hurt me. A lot of people complain about the pain from that,

but I've never I've had them be like bruised and sore but like never like the cauliflower when it's growing has hurt but that infection fucking that hurt like a bitch it's funny how vulnerable your ears are

like your equilibrium gets all fucked up too yeah actually mine are still healing. I was out in Utah last week at the Traeger event, and it was so loud. I kind of partially blew my ear out a little bit at this party. Really? Yeah. It was that loud?

It was that loud. So for a few days, it's kind of going away, but higher-pitched noises sound like they're behind me. Do you have a thing from gunshots? No, because I wear my ear pro. You always do? Well, I mean, not when I'm hunting or anything like that, but if I'm shooting, yeah, I'm wearing ear pro.

There are a lot of guys that are hunters that have fucked up ears because of, especially guys who've been doing it a long time because they didn't realize back in the day that you get ear damage from gunshots. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's like, I don't wear anything like when I'm pheasant hunting. And sometimes you shoot a decent amount of times, but the shotgun is not as bad. Sometimes when I'm shooting like

if i if i have to shoot uh or i decide not have to shoot i haven't had to shoot uh my rifle or you know one of my rifles are the handguns but like they're a little sharper sounding yeah they they fucking hurt oh yeah yeah um i have a nine millimeter remington ultramag with uh the with a muzzle brake and it sounds like i mean it's a seven millimeter yeah seven millimeter seven millimeter remington ultramag it sounds like a fucking cannon going off it sounds so goddamn loud yeah and if i don't have earphones on or a head headsets on if i don't have something it's you're fucked yeah like i would never hunt with that without some kind of plugs in yeah you better be taking one shot if yeah you know yeah follow-up shot you're gonna go deaf yeah i was uh

just the other day i was shooting with uh my son and i'm so i've got a 308 uh bolt gun and i had him like you know laying and prone and we were shooting it at 200 yards and uh every time i'm sitting there i got my my binos up and just the way the break was made it's like throwing the the the gases kind of back it's like getting slapped and i kept flinching like a little bitch and I'm like all right he's gonna pull the trigger like just don't flinch like keep your eyes on the dart and every fucking time I kept like blinking and fucking drawing myself I have a friend who was a guide and he lost his hearing because the guy had a muzzle break and uh the guy uh swung to take a shot I think it was at a pig I forget what he said but it was too close to his head. Blew his fucking ears out.

No hearing now. He's got to wear his hearing aids. Yeah. It's spooky. You know, it's like your ears, once they go, man. It's like your chin. Yeah.

Yeah. There's just no like thing you can put on your chin to make it tougher again. Yeah. Now that you're 38 and you're thinking of the future you know and you you put out this cookbook what do you see yourself doing when you transition out

of your mma career uh i'm i'm not totally like like i'm not committed to anything just yet you know it's like it's one of those things that i i feel that I feel like athletes in general, fighters included, we need to look at the opportunity that we have. When you make it to the UFC, you're a guy that's playing in the NFL. Dude, you have to look at it like tomorrow could be your last day. So we need to maximize this opportunity as much as you can. And I feel like that's kind of something that I failed at, you know, when I was younger. I do remember asking, you know, former management, like, hey, you know, like I just made a bonus. I want to do something.

I want to diversify. I want to I want to get into something else. And it's like, no, just focus just made a bonus. I want to do something. I want to diversify. I want to get into something else. And it's like, no, just focus on fighting right now. It's like, well, fighting might not be here, you know, in a few months. I could walk outside, step into a pothole and blow my knee out and like who the hell knows. Right. Or be training and, you know, get clipped with a knee in the head or something like that. or be training and, you know, get clipped with a knee in the head or something like, like plenty of, plenty of my peers have, their careers have gone from awesome to off, you

know, like, like that. So, um, yeah, so I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is. The problem is, is that I've lived my entire adult life as a professional athlete. So I'm super fucking spoiled. Now, while I would have liked to have made more money over the years and stuff like that, but that's neither here nor there. But I have freedom. I have time.

So I'm trying to figure out what's going to give me at least some of the freedom that I have now to be able to make my schedule so I can spend time with my family, so I can do the things that I want to do. Um, and I, you know, uh, the, the cookbook is, is like the, that first step, I think, like I always knew that food was going to be a part of my life. Um, and cause it's, I, it's, it's always been a family thing. Like as a kid, we were always, no matter, we had football practice, wrestling practice, baseball, like we, we always ate dinner together. So I, I try to do that with my kids and I love sharing. I love sharing fucking food or, you know, any of the stupid booze that I make,

I love sharing fucking food or, you know, any of the stupid booze that I make, you know, the homebrew. So it's like, how can I how can I do that? And I think the cookbook is the well, I know the cookbook is that first step. I'm sure I don't want to work in a kitchen. like with with this the you know the fighters cookbook hopefully get people into like kind of realizing to that that they need to take a little control of their food because I think it's been such a big thing in my ability to still be fighting today and my my getting over Lyme disease has been my diet. You know, like we sacrifice a lot for the convenience that we get, you know, living in America

and it's as easy as pulling out your phone and going on Uber Eats and stuff like this or, you know, pulling into the drive-thru. But it's like we don't pay for that convenience necessarily with our dollars like we pay for that convenience necessarily with our dollars. Like we pay for it with our health. Um, cause while, while there's a lot that goes into like the food science and all that bullshit and I'm not a fucking expert with it. is and I know that I feel better when I'm eating real food when I'm eating you know a deer or bear or pheasant that I shot and some vegetables that I grew in my garden I just feel better I perform better but yeah so hopefully like hopefully the the book can kind of create a little bit of an environment we

can go from there and and uh, I don't know, you know, it's uh, I Sure as shit would like to shoot my bow and my you know my rifle for a living but who the hell knows? I've also, you know, I've spoken to Dudley and I've I've I've dipped my toe into you know, I made a pilot for an outdoor show and I Man, I'm not a huge fan of like, at least where it was with on TV. Um,

you know, I know that there are athletes that go that direction. Um, what didn't you like about doing, uh, well, it felt a lot like MMA, like back in the,

back in the, the sponsorship days. Um, you know, like I, I have a couple of companies that I i'm i consider myself like friends with right like i fucking i josh smith at montana knives i love the dude he's fucking awesome um you know like but the traeger people are great vortex great but like i hate the the whole like influencer sponsorship thing like yeah you know like if it's

if it's natural like because if it's like hey if we have a relationship and we're friends like it's great right but like man i have a tough time with like you know uh faking it because that's the last thing that i want to do you know like i my my attitude with i was never very good at social media and i'm still not very good at social media um but when i when i was diagnosed with lyme i feel like i made a change in the way that i approach it and it's like hey fuck it like fuck it. Like, I'm just going to be me. And I'm going to show people who I am because I feel like every fight that I've had since then has been a gift. Um, so it's like, you know, I'm just, I'm going to be honest and I'm not going to portray, you know, some, some brand uh like myself like make myself a brand um and not really show who i am um now granted i probably swear too much on social media but no you don't if that's who you are it is

who i am then you don't but like yeah it's uh it's it's it's it's tough. The whole transitioning thing, going back to that. Yeah, it's a tricky world. I have a tough time with it. It's a world where a certain amount of bullshit is necessary. Yeah, and I don't do that. I don't do it. It's just who I am, and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna change who i am like i'm not like in the world of jujitsu and martial arts like loyalty is this

thing that gets thrown out all the time right i'm not loyal to people i'm loyal to to principles right like if if you and i are similar and we believe in the same things and you're a good fucking person and you treat people well, hey, man, we're going to get along. Like, but as soon as, like, shady shit starts happening, like, I've walked away from probably a lot of money, but plenty of people. Because they treated people like shit or they, you know. But you know what you get out of that? You get something that's so valuable. Yeah, I get to sleep at night. Peace of mind is everything.

If you're involved in like, imagine if you're involved, like you're running like you have some sort of a business and you and your partner in your office, you know that he's, like, doing something illegal. Like, imagine being, like, Bernie Madoff's kid. Yeah. Like, they all worked with him, right? One of them wound up committing suicide.

Yeah. I mean, that's not an accident. Yeah. It's not a coincidence that it happened together. Like, imagine being involved with someone who you know is not the way to do it. Yeah. Because you've got to live with that. You go to bed at night.

To be able to go to bed with peace of mind, knowing I'm doing my best, I'm doing the right thing, I'm being ethical, I'm being a good person. That's everything, man. People can't do that. They live in hell. Even if they're making a shitload of money, even if their business is running well, well if they're fucking people over i don't know how they do it yeah neither do i they're they're the the guys that i have around me that have been around me for a long time they're there for a reason you know so you don't want to run a gym you done now with that i am done with that yeah like i well one of the reasons why i don't want to run the gym is

because i didn't i don't want to have an anchor in new jersey you know um like i got i got a lot of people that i love in in new jersey um you know that are related by blood and that aren't um but i the last the last two years it's just just like, you know, there are better places. Yeah, you're talking to a guy who bailed out of California for the same reason. If you had talked to me three years ago and said, do you think you'll ever leave California? I'd be like, man, it's going to take a lot to get me away. All my friends, the comedy store, jujitsu,

all the things I like to do in California. But then they're like, oh, well, we'll show you. Yeah. The government was like, check this out. And that's like New Jersey's, it's like mini California, you know? It's close. Now, granted, I'm a firm believer on like, you know, turn off the fucking TV, don't listen to the bullshit bullshit and, you know, go talk to your neighbor.

Right. Like where I live, you know, I'm 20 minutes from Pennsylvania ish, you know, maybe 30 from New York. So I'm like on the in the northwest corner of the state. And I live in this tiny little town that it's fucking awesome. Um, we bought a place right before like the, the, uh, pandemic hit and stuff like that, or end of 2019. And it was like, you know, okay, if we're going to spend a little more time here until I'm done fighting, like this is where we want to do it. It's surrounded by state land. It's great.

But yeah, you deal with all the bullshit, the cost of living, the bullshit politics. I had to sign my kids up for private school because public school has to follow by some bullshit stuff that our governor is pushing down the pipeline that mimics some of the bullshit that California has to deal with like There's a lot of things that uh that I don't want my kids to have to have to learn at school like what kind of stuff well tell that a lot of the

The Let's say You're making me could fucking go off the deep end here we're not even drunk all right we're not even i'm not i'm actually a little bust but um florida's new thing uh you know the whole fucking anti-grooming law yeah right like so i mean why is a uh why should a you know fifth graders be taught about stuff like pleasure? Well, it's not even fifth graders. Yeah, I know.

Florida is first through third. Even less. What the hell does a math – why is a math teacher in high school talking about sexuality? Right. Right? But, you know, like so in New Jersey, they're kind of changing over the sex ed thing to, to start teaching kids about like essentially kink, you know, like what are you doing for fun with someone else? And it's a slippery slope. Yeah.

It's an adult telling a child what they can do that feels good. I've had the conversation with my kids about reproduction because we have farm animals. We don't have a male pig. We don't have a male goat. We just have females, two pigs, four goats. But we've had the roosters. They're gone now. And we had a male duck until recently because my one new dog is an asshole.

And they saw that corkscrew-looking thing dragging off the ground after he was on top of one of the other ducks. So we've had conversations. Explain that corkscrew thing because many people don't know that a duck's penis is very unusual. Oh, a thing. That's his dick. Many people don't know. Yeah, yeah. A duck's penis. A duck's very unusual. Oh, my God. It's fucking weird as shit. It looks like a spiral noodle.

And it's like 12 inches long. Yeah, yeah. It's huge. Well, I mean, it's- For a duck. Yeah, it's long. It's not very thick, right? I heard that girth is what matters.

It doesn't have a lot of girth. I wouldn't know either but anyway um so we've had those conversations but it's like uh that's about like you know making baby ducks making making baby humans the thing about these conversations in school is who's having them? Yeah. Are we talking about a sex ed teacher that has a degree in this and understands, has been educated in how to communicate sexuality and talk to kids? Or are we talking about a history teacher that for some reason wants to talk about queer theory and wants to talk about sex and gay sex and all these different things. I'm not opposed to people being whatever they want to be, but I think there's many people

that are teaching children all kinds of things that probably that's not their field of study and they might not be qualified to teach it and i don't necessarily want them to be the person that introduces my kid to the idea of you know whatever fill in the blank about whatever sexual proclivity it doesn't seem like that's your your business it's not i don't i don't think it is either especially not for a fucking first grader dude it's yeah so it's a they don't that's not what they're interested in kids that's not what they care about. So I guess like with New Jersey, it's teaching them about, you know, anal stimulation and stuff like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Which, again, two consenting adults. How old are these kids when they're teaching them this? That's like fifth grade. So what? Really? Yeah. Like 10, 11. Fifth grade and grade they're teaching about anal stimulation maybe just math yeah maybe just history yeah like this it's just

not their job to it's like I think it's their job to educate children in all sorts of ways right you can teach them how to teach you could teach them you know history and sociology and all sorts of things but when you start doing stuff like that it's like why are you doing that yeah what is this we never had that before like this seems like something that I mean some parents are never gonna have those conversations with a kid right true which is maybe not good either but who are the teachers like what teachers qualified to do that I would want to know who is this person talking to my child about anal stimulation who are or even what are that what is the

conversation like like is it a skilled conversation they know what they're doing or is this like some weird clunky shit where you're saying try it billy put your finger in your asshole it feels good like or even just i don't think anybody's doing that just like like orgasms right right like okay it's a it's a part of reproduction but do we need to go into like, Hey man, some of them are fucking great. Like, like, Oh,

if she, if she tickles your balls, why? Right. They're teaching eight year olds that we don't, we don't need to, we don't need to teach them what they can do for fun or what they can do for pleasure.

If it's the, it's the, like the creation of life. Cause I mean, on the flip side, a lot of, a lot of kids don't understand about death. Right. Like, having some animals and being a hunter, my kids kind of understand, like, hey, once the lights are out, the fucking lights are out. Right.

But then it's also, like, you need to have the other side of that where life begins. Right. You need to have the other side of that where life begins. Right. But yeah, like the stuff that you do for fun, I don't need any teacher. I don't need any adult teaching my kids that. It's a complicated issue. And I think rightly so.

A lot of parents are very sensitive about people teaching their children about these things. And there's a lot of teachers that feel like they're saving the child because they are allowing the child to explore subjects that the parents don't explore at home. Yeah. And they feel like maybe there's a lot of queer kids or a lot of gay kids or trans kids that don't have these conversations with their parents. And then the teacher could step in and help. that don't have these conversations with their parents, and then the teacher could step in and help, and that would be like a way where they could have like a safe discussion about these issues. But then on the flip side, they're trying to hide it.

Right. They're trying to say like, hey, you're not allowed to know what we're talking about. Right. It's like, whoa. Yeah. That's not – yeah. But they're worried about parents complaining about stuff. Well, you know, parents have a right to know what their children are being taught. 100%.

Because, listen, we all know that some teachers suck. We've experienced it. I've had teachers that sucked. You've had teachers that suck. If you have a teacher that sucks and they're teaching you history, the consequences are not grave. If you have a teacher that sucks and they're teaching you, you know, various things about alternative sexuality, alternative sexual practices, like, are you encouraging the children to try this? Are you encouraging the kids to do these? Encourage the kids to have sex with each other? Like, what are you doing?

And how is this conversation being handled? I don't know. And that's where parents are very right to be concerned because a lot of these people, they don't, they're not qualified to have these conversations. And maybe the way they have these conversations are against your values as a parent. And you, you would not have that same kind of conversation in that way with your kid. And they think it's their right to do this. And it's not your right to know what they're teaching your kid and they think it's their right to do this and that it's not your right to know what they're teaching your kid well it depends on what the subject is if you're saying do i have the right to tell you how to teach math if i'm not good at math no i don't but when you're talking

about things that aren't even your field of study yeah i mean I mean- Yeah, why? Why is it a- It seems super complex. If you want to talk to children, very young children, about sexuality, that seems like that should be something that you go to school specifically for, and then this curriculum is carefully analyzed with psychologists and sociologists and people who are experts in sexual reproduction. They should have informed conversations of how to have these conversations. If you're going to have a conversation like that, but you're just like a fucking history teacher and you want to talk about your husband and you're a gay man, this is how me and my husband have sex with each other and you're talking to a seven-year-old, like, hey, maybe this isn't

the place for that. It's not the place for you to talk about how you fuck your wife either. It's not. Exactly. I like it when my wife sticks my penis in her mouth. Like, hey, hey, hey. Exactly. Hey, this is a fucking little kid who just wants to play games and hang out with her

friends and you're just supposed to be educating them. But it's one of those things where it's the idea that you don't have any say in how your children are educated is bonkers it is that's bonkers it is and i know i've seen some of those fucking parent meetings where the karens get up and start screaming at the board members and fucking ruin it for everybody i get it i get it if you're a teacher and some crazy person who believes in QAnon and thinks there's fucking kids tied up in the basement somewhere of a pizza place, you know, I get it. You don't want to talk to that person.

That person maybe shouldn't have the influence on how the school curriculum is run. I get it. But you can't lump everybody into that thing. And when there's something that makes people very uncomfortable, like all of a sudden a public school stepping in yeah and dictating how sexual orientation and and sex preferences and all that should be handled and discussed amongst seven-year-olds i'm i think i'm right to go what wait wait wait yeah who are you yeah who are you just not like whether or not this subject should

ever be breached with kids it's like who's doing this and how good are you at this and i'm not supposed to know what you're teaching my kids yeah and then they come home and mommy what's a rim job what the fuck what did you just say what the fuck is going on well well hey hey it's different than tossing salad it's like I get it I mean we're in a weird place as a culture we really are you know and I'm you know I'm not some right-wing nut but but I see the writing on the wall. I don't like it. I don't like this idea that parents don't have any say in how their children are being educated. Because who's to say this person who's teaching school is even good at it?

Oftentimes they're not good at it yeah it's there's oftentimes they're not good at it and i mean not that listen not all parents are fucking good parents but absolutely not all teachers are good teachers no so i mean you're still seeing to this day teachers doing inappropriate things with their students yeah so so why why are we like why are we trying to skirt the line of what they can get away with? I just saw an article about some guy who got arrested because he was forcing boys to watch him masturbate. A teacher. Like, what the fuck, man? It's like 13 boys.

He forced like 13 boys to watch him masturbate. Jesus Christ. Yeah. What? What the fuck? You know, and then there's the other one that we don't care about. It's when hot teachers fuck kids. Yeah. What? What the fuck? You know, and then there's the other one that we don't care about is when hot teachers fuck kids. Yeah.

That's the weird one. When the hot woman has sex with like a 15-year-old boy, we're like, ah, he'll be fine. But he won't. Because we all were like, that would be cool. Yeah. It would probably be super confusing. It would be. Well, a lot of it. I mean, that's, you know, there's a lot of those stories out there. You can go find them in be cool. Yeah. You know? It would probably be super confusing. It would be. Well, a lot of, I mean, that's, you know.

Yeah. There's a lot of those stories out there. You can go find them in the news. Yeah. Doesn't usually wind up so well for the guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, but so that's, so New Jersey, you're thinking about. Yeah. Where would you go? I don't know. That's a smooth transition right there. Um, I want to go West. I want to go, uh, to the mountains, Montana, Utah, Idaho, maybe Colorado. Uh, my wife is looking further, like just straight South on the Eastern side. So, um, Western North Carolina, South Carolina.

How old are your kids now? Uh, 11, 10, eight and six. You could do it now. Well, you know, listen. Western North Carolina South Carolina how old are your kids now 11 10 8 and 6 You could do it now. Well, you know listen now is a good time You know why because like when they get into high school, it's hard to move. Yeah, that's that was our thought when we moved here It's like get him get him in and they get made friends like that. Yeah, you know, it's I moved to a new high school I knew moved to a new town when I was 14, and it was rough. It was not that rough, but, I mean, it's hard. You've got to make friends.

It's like everybody grew up with everybody, and I come in, I'm the new kid. It's uncomfortable. Yeah. You know. So, yeah, we haven't figured it out yet. I've got a family, and, you know, one of my, like, coaches, mentors down in North Carolina. So, like, in that area would be nice. I fucking love Tennessee.

North Carolina is nice, too. Yeah, it is. They get some wicked storms, bro. They do, yeah. And it's like it snows like two flakes and the whole state shuts down. Yeah, that's how it is here. Yeah. Last year, everything shut down. Oh, yeah. Well, that was a pretty rough one eh i grew up in boston yeah i know it's

not rough it was fun i was i have a 95 land cruiser it's like all built out and so i was like yeehaw but it wasn't it was cold it was cold for a while and yet like people don't it sucked for people don't know how to like winterize their house and stuff like that so they lost their power that was a real problem yeah that was bad about it but the roads were what people were complaining about i'm like man yeah it ain't shit yeah you just get used to it well it's also having the wrong vehicle is the big thing if you don't have a four-wheel drive we had uh we. We had some snow a couple weeks ago, and like, yeah, there are people out. I think, so on a 13-mile drive from my house to the gym, there were five cars that were like stranded, and it's like, come on.

One, you knew this was coming, and it's like, two, you should be used to this by now. If I was living in a place like Jersey where it snows, there's not a fucking chance in hell I didn't have a four-wheel drive. There's no – that would be my car. I'm not going to – like when I lived in New York – They're trying to make it so you can only have 40 miles per gallon. Like you have to have something that gets like 40 miles per gallon. Is that New Jersey?

Yeah, in a few years or whatever the hell it is. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, my truck gets like – 10? Yeah. 11 if I'm lucky. Yeah. Why can't you pump your own gas there? few years or whatever the hell it is that's crazy yeah that's crazy yeah my truck gets like 10 yeah 11 if i'm lucky yeah why can't you pump your own gas there i know it's weird right it's weird i was like what the fuck's going on well you can't what you can't trust anyone you can uh i i do it

all the time okay well why aren't you supposed to? But I think it was a liability thing. Yeah, you're not supposed to. But everywhere else was like, what was the issue? Well, New Jersey is right next to New York. You go to New York, you pump your own gas. Yeah, Pennsylvania. It's one of the, I don't understand it. I think it's a couple of other states that have a similar rule.

No, I think like Oregon is the only other state I believe that they have. Yeah, I believe so. That has certain stations that are like full serve. Dude, I fucking never see full serve gas stations. When was the last time you saw a gas station where someone's pumping other people's gas? Ten years ago in New Jersey. I was like, what the fuck's going on here? It's weird because it's like, you know, people are like, hey, get rid of it so that we can save money on gas.

And it's like, you know, but PA has pretty fucking high, like their gas tax is high. So the gas is kind of similar. They would save money, like we would save money, you know, if we got rid of it. But there are a lot of people that live in New Jersey. They're like, I won't pump my own gas. Really? Yeah. That's so weird.

They just want to stay in their car? Yeah. Stay warm? Yeah. That's so bizarre. I used to work at a gas station, and we used to pump people's gas, but that was in the 80s. I wonder if it was even legal to pump your own gas back then.

I wonder if they had self-serve gas back then, because back then I don't even know if people used credit cards. I remember growing up, there were pumps that were – there would be stations and it was like that's the ones closest they're full, the ones everything else is self. I've seen that in places. There's like one in Ohio that I know about. Yeah, I've seen that in places, but it's been a long time. But yeah, we used to pump people's gas. And they would check your fluids and everything.

Oh yeah, yeah, pop the hood. Clean your windshield. Yeah, add washer fluid, all that jazz. Yeah, clean your windshield. It's not like a bum on the side of the highway. Spinning on it with a piece of newspaper. Oh my God, there's a guy the other day that he was so dirty,

and he had this bucket of water that I'm sure was as dirty as him. And he was trying to wash people's windshields. Like, it's already clean. What are you doing, man? Poor guy. There's other ways to make money. It's true.

Also, you see, I saw a guy the other day that was just standing there with a bucket. He had a thick gold chain on, like a wrapper gold chain, and a nice pair of sneakers. And it looked good It looks like he's alright It's like he's doing good and he's standing there on the at the stop side on the corner where the stoplight is with a bucket Just asking for money and then the light turns red and he starts walking up to cars with the bucket and some people were giving Him money. I'm like what's going on here? You do not look like a bum sir You're like a man who's found another way to make

money yeah just ask for it yeah which is tricky it is tricky um so you'll go somewhere else and then so you're just going to figure out what you want to do when when you're done yeah yeah uh you know it i want freedom yeah like i've kind of come to that point where it's like, um, I, no matter what I do, I, I kind of need to be able to do some of the stuff that I want. And you know, I, I finally got the opportunity to go elk hunting a couple of years ago.

I haven't gotten one yet. I've gone twice. I've been fucking from me to Jamie away from one. Oh wow. Didn't get a shot at it cause it was still in the Oak brush. Um, but, uh,

I really want my kids to hear that like i want i want to be able to be somewhere where like okay since you know elk season's in september you're not you you're still gonna have to be in school but like we can go on the weekends like that's my yeah yeah it's uh well montana's a good spot for that yeah so it's colorado yeah for now for now they're trying to bring in wolves to colorado oh what a what a shit show like the people's fascination with bringing in large predators is really interesting to me i don't understand why so they they bring in they bring in the wolves, right? They're willing to do that. Like, okay, why don't you breed up a herd of 3 million bison and let them loose in the center of this country?

We know there's talk about that. Do you know about that? You know about the American prairie? What is it called? Oh, my God. What is the name that they use? There's a group of people. There's a fund.

They're buying up land, and they're reintroducing all sorts of bison, pronghorn, all sorts of it. And they're trying to make an enormous national park-type deal. But they're also opening it up American Prairie Foundation that's it yeah that's over and so they're buying up enormous chunks of land but they're also gonna have it open for hunting yeah so this is not gonna be like Yellowstone yeah where you know you have all these animals and they live in this very bizarre, protected sort of park area. They're trying to sort of bring back this enormous swath of land

and reintroduce all the kind of animals that lived here probably at the turn of the 19th century. That's cool. Yeah. I like it. that's cool I like it you introduced the wolves and the wolves don't

stay where you want them to stay they fucking go everywhere they eat cattle they eat sheep they get into all sorts of trouble it's a complex issue and the problem is when people agree

to bring the wolves in they generally agree that there's a number that those wolves will get to. This is what happened with Yellowstone. They agree there's a number that those wolves can get to that's a sustainable population, and they'll open them up to management. And what management means is hunting. Like people will kill some of those wolves to keep the populations in check. hunting. People will kill some of those wolves to keep the populations in check. And as soon as they hit that number, then they move the goalposts and they fight against that. And the environmentalists, a lot of these animal rights groups, they call themselves environmentalists. They're really animal rights activists. They have lawsuits against these

proposed hunting seasons. And they do that all the time. That's a giant issue. I think if they recognize that needs to be taken into consideration whenever they make this sort of agreement to reintroduce wolves, they have to look at what happened when they reintroduced the wolves in D'Alestone, how many lawsuits were, like, how many people fought against this idea of the hunting of the wolves? Because I know they've had problems with them in other states. Montana, they have wolf seasons in some places, and they never reach their quotas.

That's the thing they need to understand. Like, if someone says, we're going to release 100 wolf tags, you're not going to kill 100 wolves. They're just not. They're so smart. They're so clever. They're so fucking, they're not going to kill 100 wolves. There's just not. They're so smart. They're so clever. They're so fucking, they're so adaptive. If they get lucky, you kill a percentage of that. I don't know.

You'd have to ask someone like Steve Rinella. He would be able to tell you what the percentage of success is. But it's definitely not 100%. Yeah. You know? It's similar to like black bears in New Jersey. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. New Jersey thing is is crazy it's fucking wild so in yeah in like turn of 2000 we had we had the largest

population of black bears per capita yeah in the united states yeah in the fucking world yeah like that section of northwestern new jersey because it was only three counties had black bears like legitimately had black bears in New Jersey. And then it was New York, Pennsylvania, right in the tri-state corner. And like I started hunting them right when it opened. I never saw a fucking bear during season because it was always during six day firearm, which is the second week of December. And I fucking never saw them. I I fucking never saw them I'd see them before and I'd see them afterwards

as soon as they hear the first bang bang they're so tuned in their nose is so fucking good and like yeah like you you managed them the first year that they opened it up.

We got a decent amount. And then like they started to spread out. And now they're in every county in the state. And like me, I've got trail cam pictures of a sow with five cubs. And what people don't get, the only reason a sow has five cubs is because she, her body feels like she can support them. Because she's got plenty of fucking brows to eat you know these the bears don't want to eat garbage and get into you know human shit um but they will and like a lot of the issues you have too is that people are like oh well you know we can just scare them off shoot them with rubber buckshot you know and that's's what like the cops try to do

when they come to a bear call. And it's like, this bear doesn't have millions of acres to go, like a bear in Montana. Right. Like he can go like 1,500 yards, if that. Right. You know, and then he's in the next person's, you know, the next town over or the next person's yard or whatever. Like, and the reason that they're coming into people's like

get busted into garages and stuff like that is because they're not the big bear. Like the big bear never does that shit. The big bear eats whatever the fuck the big bear wants to eat, which is the blueberries and the, and the raspberries and all sorts of... And the cubs. Yeah, and cubs. And eats whatever the hell they want, and it's the little ones that come into, you know, where humans are and create all the trouble. And the thing is, is they know that that bear, the big bear, will kill them. They don't necessarily know that we're going to kill them.

So they're more willing to deal with us than they are with the big fucker that scared them away. Right. So, like, I mean, yeah, they got rid of our bear hunt this last year. You know, we're trying to get it back. It's a shit show because it's like you've got the most populated state in the country. Yeah. And a giant fucking bear herd that, I mean, you shouldn't see one.

You really shouldn't see them, like, in your yard. In suburbs. Yeah. And you see them all the time. You see them all the time. Did you see that one in Far Rockaway where these two giant bears were in a brawl? There's a YouTube video. Yeah, yeah.

It's a fucking residential suburban neighborhood, and you got, like, two 500-pound bears going to war, fighting over trash cans. That's what they fight over. They fight over territory. Like who can get the trash cans in this neighborhood? It's so dumb. California almost killed it.

They almost killed it last year, but all the protests and all the people rallying against it, they backed off. But they were trying to get rid of the bear hunt in California. And it's a similar situation. There's an overpopulation of bears. And overpopulation of black bears is – I understand that people have this thing about bears where Rinella calls them charismatic megafauna. And it really is what that is.

People grew up with teddy bears, right? You grew up with Yogi the bear on TV, but bears are predators and they're also edible and they taste good. They do taste good. Yeah. That's, that's another thing. People go, man, you don't eat bears. Why would you kill a bear?

No, I fucking eat bear. I've eaten them. They're good. Buy my cookbook. There's a couple of recipes. Yeah. It tastes like that. I described it.

It tastes like a deer fucked a pig. That's what a bear tastes like. I feel like they taste a bit more like bison. That's what I get. A little beefy. Yeah. Yeah. Like beefy, a little more irony than beef.

But like I've prepared them. I made some sous vide for Thanksgiving the one year. So like I cooked them in the water bath for a while at like one 35 or whatever. Um, and then took them out because trichinosis, um, you know, it dies at whatever the hell it is.

I think we are one 37. Uh, and that's where I got it to, uh, and, and left it there. Um, and then just hit them on the,

hit them on the grill real quick. And like, you couldn't tell that they weren't beef. It was a little tougher. If you're going to do 35, I think it's over a prolonged period of time. I didn't get trichinosis. Yeah, it's not like if you throw it on the Traeger and get it to 135, you might get sick.

But also freezing kills the trichinosis. Not always. Well, you've got to put it in the deep freezer. Yeah, but even then, some trichinosis, the trichinosis from Not always. Well, you've got to put it in the deep freezer. Yeah, but even then, some trichinosis, the trichinosis from cold areas does not die that way. I didn't know that. Yeah, I think there's different strains of trichinosis. Let's look this up, make sure I'm right,

but I'm 99% sure I am because this is something Rinella told me. Rinella said that there's strains of trichinosis that are southern strains, and those strains, that if you do put them in the deep freezer, they'll die. But then there's strains of trichinosis that are southern strains, and those strains that if you do put them in the deep freeze, they'll die. But then there's strains from Montana, Alaska. Well, mine was a New Jersey bear. Let's see here.

Freezing pork, yeah, but I guess it's similar. Okay. However, trichinella parasites in wild animal meat are not killed by freezing, even over a long period. Freezing pork that is less than six inches thick for three weeks will kill parasites. But freezing trichinella parasites in wild animal, that's interesting. I wonder why that is. Because if pork has, one of the things they're saying recently is that you can kind of eat pork medium rare.

Yeah. Where you're used to domestic pork. Yeah, domestic pork because they're raised on concrete. Right. So here it is. Does freezing kill trichinosis in bear meat? Smoking, freezing, or curing gay meat does not kill all trichinella species. Low temperature smoking will not kill trichinella either yeah i think from

what i've read you have to do it over a long period of time i think and i don't think it's 135 buddy i think it was 137 or 20 20 27 something like that i think it's like 150 where the hell website was that it was a it was a government website that I went to. Yeah, there it is right here. It says 160 is more than ample temperature to kill all forms of trichinosis that may be living. That's instant. Right. It says while freezing for at least 20 plus days is known to kill most forms of trichinosis, I cannot recommend this method as there are strains that are resistant to freezing.

Yeah, that's what I've heard. And that's what, yeah. Well, i hope that nothing eats me because they might get trichinosis well if you had that you would know ranella had that he said his whole crew got it and they uh they ate bear um uh they were hunting with rork denver and they were in uh alaska and he shot a bear and they cooked it over the fire and i was watching the episode knowing that they had all gotten trichinosis. It was raw as shit.

I was like, I wouldn't have eaten that. But it was kind of rainy and they had a shitty fire and they just made do. I think he's like secretly wanted to have trichinosis. I kind of secretly wanted to get it too. Some people do, right? My eyeballs are floating. I need to run to the potty.

Well, go ahead. Well, let's just wrap this up. Okay. It's already 4 o'clock. So tell everybody, when is this book coming out? So the book is shipping on April 16th. April 16th, and it's called The Fighter's Cookbook? The Fighter's Cookbook, because I've used food to kind of fight old age and Lyme disease to be able to continue to fight.

And just to maintain health. Yeah, man. And the direction that we're going with some of this shit, I see some of this lab-grown meat or this 3D-printed shit. I mean, even some of the farming methods that we're using and that we have been using for a long time. It's so fucked. It's so fucked and people have gotten into this rhythm of just eating for convenience and eating real food.

It changed my life. It's a tool. It's a medicine. We need to take it seriously. We'll let everybody excuse me we'll let everybody know when the book comes out and uh to get you on social media what's your uh instagram jim miller underscore 155 on everything on twitter yeah i'm not on twitter yeah good for you yeah you know what elon musk just bought a giant chunk of it i know i saw maybe he's gonna fix it

hopefully because uh when i heard that they like fought to like keep child porn on there was a case where this kid got like catfished and uh he was like 15 somebody took his pictures that he that he took and sent to this person and they had him on twitter and twitter was like fighting him because they wanted to keep them up no sure that's true that's 100 true i believe so that sounds insane it does sound insane that doesn't seem we up. You sure that's true? That's 100% true? I believe so. That sounds insane. It does sound insane. That doesn't seem, we need to find out if that's true.

Otherwise, we're going to have to edit that out. Okay. That seems that maybe, there's one of those things where you get a weird, Twitter refused to remove child porn because it didn't violate policies. Yeah, copyright. That's what the lawsuit says.

And let's see what the actual case said. You're going to have to hold your urine in for three more minutes here. Says the teen, who's now 17, lives in Florida, identified only as John Doe, was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers posing as a 16-year-old female classmate started chatting with him. Okay. Doe, acting under du duress initially complied and sent videos of himself performing sex acts and was also told to include another child in his videos which

he did the suit claims eventually doe blocked the traffickers and stopped harassing them that uh they stopped harassing him but at some point in 2019 the video surfaced on twitter under two accounts that were known to share child sexual abuse material over the next month the videos reported Twitter at least three times first on December 25th 2019 but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved the suit states Doe became aware of the tweets in January 2020 because they'd been viewed widely by his classmates. Holy shit. Which subjected him to teasing, harassment, vicious bullying, and led him to become suicidal. Court records show. While Doe's parents contacted the school and made police

reports, he followed the complaint with Twitter saying there were two tweets depicting child pornography of himself, and they needed to be removed because they were illegal, harmful, and were in violation of the site's policies. A support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe's ID so they could prove it was him. And after the teen complied, there was no response for a week, the family claims. Around the same time, Doe's mother filed two complaints to Twitter reporting the same material and for a week she also received no response.

Finally, on January 28th, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn't be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 187,000 views and 2,223 retweets.

Disgusting. Holy shit. Thanks for reaching out. We reviewed the content and didn't find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time. Wow. Fuck you. That's what I thought.

I haven't deleted my thing, but I don't want to go on there. Holy shit, that's great. But that's employees I thought. So that's what I, I haven't deleted my thing, but like, I don't want to go on there. That's great. But that's, that's employees, man. Yeah. It's some. Twitter's a wild west anyway. Like I forget what fight it was. It was like a 35 pounders.

Um, the guy like hits an arm bar and his toe got caught in the cage. And like, I remember like people like attacking him. Oh, he's grabbing the cage with his you know his pinky toe is like blast two toes Yeah, and I'm like he's not like it got caught like when you're pushing your toes kind of curl. It's the way it worked People were fucking arguing with me like I'm like have you ever fought like right have you ever have you ever put your foot against it? Yeah, even grappled in a kid. Oh like yeah He's not his arm bar would have been better if his foot wasn't caught he would have been it would have been tighter he ended up finishing the armor but they're like oh you know we use it i was like

no he didn't use it like it was just fucking happenstance and you fucking dumb asses are you're on here because it's so toxic and you're just fighting with me a subject matter expert right well it might have been a 15-year-old kid. It was like six or so people that I was just like, fuck this. I'm done. Trolls. I'm done. Stay away from the trolls, Jim Miller.

Listen, brother, I'm a fan. I appreciate you very much as a fighter and as a person. And I wish you all the best. And I wish you all the best with your cookbook and your career until that UFC 300. Let's do it. Then you're going to wrap it up. All right, brother. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye.