The Sevan Podcast - #116 - Don Idrees and James Hobart

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

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Sorry. I can physically. My eyeballs can see you. The software we're using, Riverside, can't see you. Bam, we're live. But it doesn't matter. We can still talk about stuff behind the scenes like we're not live even when we're live. That's the cool thing about having your own show.

It's okay. I think as long as people say – can everyone see Don and James Hobart and me? The one viewer, can you just let us know? Hey, yeah, I see all three of you and I hear all three of you. Perfect. Pop the chair. Hello, hello, hello. Don, did you work out yet this morning? I see all three of you and I hear all three of you. Perfect. Pop the chair. Hello.

Hello. Yeah. Don, did you, did you work out yet this morning? I haven't worked out in six months. Oh my goodness. Partially stress, partially laziness. Oh my goodness. Well, Hobart, do you know James Hobart?

Do you know the guy who's down below? Have you ever seen his face? No, I have. Uh, were you, I watched the Devin podcast and the Jacobob podcast were you part of that no no no then i haven't seen you you do have a familiar face though you it feels like you should be or you were like part of a grunge band in the early 90s that's so sweaty right now yes yes like a like a like a member of Bush or what was the other one? Saigon Kick or one of those bands. I don't know.

You have a rock star face. That might be one of the nicest things, Don, anyone said to me ever. Instant friends. This is true. You've got that 90s album cover face. Actually, and the weird part is Hobart's really 74, but he just looks like he's 12. James and I go way back.

James and I are friends from, we both did CrossFit. We both worked for CrossFit HQ. I got fired. James got promoted. We both did CrossFit. We both worked for CrossFit HQ. I got fired. James got promoted.

And he sort of became a – not sort of. He became a legendary trainer in the scene because basically he traveled the world spreading the word of Greg Glassman and the L1, right? Basically the information that makes people live longer, eat smarter, be fitter, and be able to wipe their ass longer as they age and stay out of the nursing home. And James holds all of that information in his head and he leads teams around the world that share that information. And then of course, that was like, that was when he had like legendary fame, like he was a cool guy, but then he kind of, fame like he was a cool guy but then he kind of he went for a power grab and and uh he got on the uh he became a games athlete a crossfit games athlete and then where he really misstepped is he joined the teams and he was on rich froning's team for many years and they won championships out of the mayhem empire organization that rich froning runs. And that just really turned James into a supporting character.

So he was a big fish in a small pond, and then he went for the big pond, and he became a small fish in a big pond. Sometimes I think, and I think you're the promoter, and you could probably advise James as you think about that off-air of whether that was a smart decision in his career path. Hey, man, to each his own, to each his own. There's no harm in reaching. Actually, as we get to know each other, you'll find out that I'm a firm believer of there's no harm in

overreaching and biting off way more than you can chew. But hey, you know what? He wouldn't know this if he hadn't tried. It's true. And we never know until we try. So is he in a better position? And we never know until we try. So is he in a better position? That's really up to him. I'd like to think so. Don, I text James last night at like 10 o'clock. I said, hey, I'm doing this podcast in the morning.

Do you want to jump on with me? And he says, sure. And then before you came on, he's like trying to thank me for inviting him on the podcast. And I'm like, dude, you're like, that's like a box of Kleenex thanking me. I said, I should be thanking you. I'm the one who's scared and needs someone like you around. You don't need me. But, I mean, why? I mean, you think, Sivan, that by now you're sort of adept at this.

This comes to you naturally. You've got a very, if I might say so, like with all the respect possible, you've got a very Howard Stern thing about you. Okay. Since the first, since the first, um, I think I've,

I've been following you for a while, but the first one I fully listened to because it was relevant to me was, it was you, Frazier and, um, Bridges on one episode. That's when he announced the fight. Okay.

Yeah. There was the three of you. I think the three of you have a separate podcast right yeah yeah well i yeah it's something people always ask me if we're still doing it i'm like i don't know but yes for in the mean as a placeholder let's call it a podcast sure yes sure so i was just listening to that chat i'm like there's an awful lot of i don't know there's very, I think it's a good thing. I'm not sure like if you're a fan of Howard Stern or not, but I used to be a huge fan. I used to be a huge fan. Yes.

So, you know how he has this weird sort of calm yet commanding way of coaxing information out. Like he manages to, to pull out the weirdest shit that you don't want to talk about on the air. But that's the impression I got. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just thought I'd say that to start.

No, I take that as a huge compliment. I actually really, really, really like Howard Stern. And when he started spreading COVID fear, I just – I jumped ship. That was about, I don't know, 15 months ago. I just completely just – I jumped ship. That was about, I don't know, 15 months ago. I just completely just – I jumped ship. And he – I get the impression from him, and I don't want to hammer on Howard, but I'm a firm believer that people who – if you don't talk to strangers, you don't talk to angels. I think that's a Pablo Coel sign from The Alchemist. If you don't talk to strangers, you don't talk to angels. I think that's a Pablo Coel sign from The Alchemist. If you don't talk to strangers, you don't talk to angels. People who don't talk to strangers

don't talk to angels. And it's a very poignant statement for me because I spend a lot of time in my youth just walking the streets meeting strangers. And I spent time being homeless, and I really, really, those were the amazing years of my life that I really enjoyed. And Howard Stern is the exact opposite. He doesn't let any – I mean, he's self-admitted. He doesn't let anyone into his bubble. I mean, he's hermetically sealed. And I start to get that from him, that he's lost a piece of his humanity.

Like he's just – after a certain amount of time, if you've been, for lack of a better word, peopling, you kind of become bitter and – or self – maybe he never met the angels. I don't know. Maybe he's had enough bad experience to make him jaded. It could be that. Or like yesterday, there was a fighter I was supposed to have on the show, a guy named Reggie Northrup. And he – when we did the podcast, we started the podcast, he was in his car and he was driving. And this is a live show. And 10 minutes into the show, his line dropped and he cut out.

And then I had to talk for five minutes, even though I just wanted to hang up and run away. I was so fucking scared. And then he comes back on and he tells me, oh, let's keep doing the show. And I basically say, no, let's reschedule. And I'm panicking. And I end the show and I think it was a good experience for me. I enjoyed the discomfort. I enjoy uncomfortable situations, that's for sure.

And I think I even told the crowd this. I said, hey, in five years when this show is big as shit, I'll hate that guy. But today I'm like just glad he'll reschedule with me. So I think that's what, you know what I mean? Like I would, I would have been like, fuck you, dude,

you're never coming on the show again. This is a missed opportunity. But I'm like, but I'm not that big yet. And so I think that's what happened to Howard. It's the same thing. Like if I was making a hundred million dollars a year, I would be,

I wouldn't have sent over the link for the show to you and James this morning. I would have had someone else send it over. I'd be like, fuck that. I'm not touching my keyboard. You know what's happened to my keyboard? Well, I don't know. I mean, Matt kind of did everything. Matt Fraser?

No, Matt. Matt Sousa. Matt Sousa. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right. This is a bad thing. Are you making $100 million, Sivan?

Not this year. Not this year. You're right. You're, this is a bad. Are you, are you making a hundred million dollars? Not, not this year, not this year, not this year. Um, so people who are listening, who is Don and Don Indris Idris. So Idris, Idris,

my last name is, um, so I'm, my, my, my father was Egyptian and my mother's from former Yugoslavia. A very odd sort of mix. I grew up in, I know this is an unprompted question, but maybe this will just help you understand.

Yeah, help me, help me. The look, the accent. So I was born in Cairo, and I grew up in Nigeria, England, Pakistan, India, Iran for a couple of years, and then Belgium for a very long time. And now I live in Dubai, but my nationality is Belgian. And you sound American as shit. God, you sound like you just fell out of a TV set. You have an amazing voice. I'm sure you've heard that many times. Thank you you guys it's all i got it's all i got

hobart got a face and you got a voice that shit it's you know it's hopping from country to country you get put in international school of wherever you are and it's usually an American educational system, American teachers. So it's kind of a quasi American in foreign countries, the children of diplomats or expats, they get called, you've got the, the American brat accent. So you're not really American,

but because you're studying in American school and you're surrounded by that accent, you develop this sort of, um, yeah. Dawn accent comes from. It's to say your last name one more time for me. Idris? Idris.

Like Idris Elba. That's the easiest way to remember. Idris. I don't even know what that means. Idris Elba. Do you know what that means? Yeah, he's an actor. Idris Elba is the big... Oh, from... Yeah. The black guy from The Wire. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. He's great. Damn. I can't believe I didn't pick that up. I thought Idris Elba was like an injury, like some sort of sports injury. Idris Elba. Idris Elba. That's what I thought.

I'm sure he's got that a lot. Now I know why Hobart's on here. I think I've had that before. Yeah. Oh, sorry. When you have a no-show, you know that joke about the guy who's supposed to go out with two girls and there's a no-show? No. No.

Maybe I'll tell it later on in the middle of the show. It's a Viagra joke and an elbow joke. No. Maybe I'll tell it later on in the middle of the show. It's a Viagra joke and an injured elbow joke. Okay. So, yeah. No, no, go for it. So that's a brief in like a cliff notes, a brief summary of a very long and colorful past. And how old are you? You're not very old, right?

I think you're younger than I am. I'm 45 in a couple of days. Oh, happy birthday. That's cool. Thank you very much. Yeah, you are younger than me. And you're buff as shit too, man. It's all an illusion. Good lighting. It's good lighting, excellent skin tone yeah i don't work and no i need to get my ass back into the gym it's like it got to a point where i was i was feeling healthy

and all that but then between the stress and between the laziness and between the like whatever you know you get lazy um especially since it was being done mostly for therapy, because if I didn't work out, I'd probably choke somebody out. Yep. Yep. And, um, and yeah, just like,

you're like, Oh, I just can't do it. You think a week long break for recovery is a good idea, but as you get older, you don't want to risk it because a week and just, you fall off the wagon and then suddenly like, and shit will see,

and shit will seize up people don't realize it it's like a car if you don't drive you live in your driveway for six winters all of a sudden like the tires don't turn like that shit will happen to you if you're old too i know it's hard to imagine when you're 35 or 25 but um it sounds like one of you is operating a printer in the background that i used to have in the eighth grade in 19, which would be 1984. You know, like one of those ones, does anyone online?

Yeah, I hear that. Oh, let me see. Maybe it's just because he's in Dubai and the King records everything. And that's just their way of, uh, it could be it recording us or it could be because we're in the United States

and our King records everything. Um, so Don popped on my radar because the other day, an old and dear friend of mine, Devin Lorette, made this wild proclamation that he was going to fight that giant dude from Game of Thrones. And that guy is extremely popular in the world, but also extremely popular in the CrossFit community because I believe he's Icelandic, and every once in a while,'ll pop up on some of our favorite CrossFitters feeds working out with them. And so I called Devin, and lo and behold, it sounds like it's true.

There's pictures all over the internet saying it's true. I still am in a little bit of denial. And then while I was doing the podcast, the podcast oh my goodness did you see that hillbilly i did see it what what i'm superman and that's my kryptonite i'm superman and that's my kryptonite what coke sorry i was not aware i thought i'm like hold on am i getting yelled at for some kind of product placement it's like i'm a vampire and you just put guard you brought you held up the spike and the cross you're what like what's what's going on explain you can't just walk i believe that

i'll give you an example 55 of all the calories consumed in Mexico are from soda pop. I believe soda pop is when people say that, oh my God, this is a pandemic year. This is a COVID year. I think it's a lie and a misnomer and it's propaganda because basically what we're not dealing with this COVID is we're dealing with COVID response. COVID didn't shut down our airports. We've made the decision to shut down our airports. There's a huge and important distinction there. And just like people say that people are dying from COVID, I don't believe anyone's dying from COVID. I believe people are dying from being so morbidly obese that now they're walking a tight wire and the wind blew and it blew them off, right? They chose the wrong day to uh everest and they blew off the top and

they died and they want to everyone it's so sad actually because it's so unnecessary for and i believe that one of the big problems in that world is coca-cola for example coke is on the pfizer board we all know everyone who can read that the cure for covid has been around since day one it's ivermectin there's 52 clinical studies i mean blah blah blah i mean it's everyone's known why why isn't that known well the powers that be don't want it i i don't i'm not suggesting it's malicious or it's conspiracy or it's like i'm not suggesting anything i'm just saying like the same reason why we probably don't know what the i don't know the best of a lot of things are right um but so so i just i it just really disappoints me the and i'm being obviously dramatic drink what you want i i believe in total freedom of speech freedom of activity i i think

it's great that every that coca-cola is a company that offers drinks and blah blah blah but it's a it's just so sad that the truth can't be told um it can but nobody listens right right yeah you know there's a there's a difference i mean there is today more than ever there's so many different mediums of communicating with like literally somebody across the globe i was reading some stats the other day 3.4 billion is the number of people who have smartphones in the world. That's half the world, right? So information is easily transportable, transferable, communicable, and yet nobody gives a shit because everybody's attention span has dropped to like a fly on crack, you know?

So hold on. So you're thinking, what you're saying is you think that this whole COVID thing was the straw that broke the camel's back so you were already so sick and it was bound to be something that killed you right right we have proof of that going back to the 30s when cancer came on the scene and and we knew that and there was a guy won the nobel prize named otto warburg by the way i'm glad you drank the coke because it gives me an opportunity to get on my horse. My horse loves my ass sitting on his back, by the way.

You're going to love this. I 100% agree with you, but maybe this will make you feel better. Yes, sir. There's really water in there. You just like the color of the can. This and all the vaccines in the world put together is probably the least poisonous shit that I've put into my body over the last 44 years.

So this is a healthy step up, right? Good, good. So, okay, there you go. Just thought I'd throw it out there. Yeah, so that's my feeling is that. We knew in the 30s that sugar was basically the root of all evil. They basically – Otto Warburg started discovering that like, hey, everything – all the cancer is basically caused by overconsumption of sugar. I'm oversimplifying, but I think it's a fair oversimplification.

And we've known that over time now we know that pretty much all chronic disease is caused by sugar consumption. The lies have been cholesterol and salt. And basically the body just struggles to process anything and operate correctly once you consume – start consuming sugar. In excess. Well, that's debatable. I don't even like to have that conversation because we're so far over the edge. I think of it like this. People will be like, well, everything's okay in – everything's okay in –

In moderation. Moderation. Thank you. And Hobart, that's when you're supposed to talk. And a little bit of peanut butter in my Toyota 4Runner sitting on my driveway is not okay, even in moderation a little bit. And so when you do consume sugar what you are doing yes can you survive is it okay blah blah blah will you still operate sure but why would you ever feed your child poison why would you ever put a little bit of peanut butter into your gas

tank especially since it's super duper addictive so i you could say what you're saying is true but i think we're in this we're look we're in an era of over consumption and yeah it's just like let's get that out of the way yeah we're just so far past that we're so far it's like hey dude just stop eating added sugar and refined carbohydrates not you but just everyone like go stick something else in your mouth go drink a glass of water and run around the block. Go like call the girl you've always wanted to like have sex with and like introduce yourself. Like do something else besides sit at home and eat more ice cream. And the truth is it's like it's the most selfish, horrible – I like this guy, Sevan, Alan Nolan.

I know. This guy is cool. I should shut the fuck up and find out about him. That was someone in the comments um alan nolan alan nolan said i like this guy seven do you know him alan nolan i think if it's the same alan nolan he's one of my best buddies back in belgium oh shit he's a plant he's a plant i didn't tell anybody about this but if it's's Alan, no, just ask him if he, no, no, forget about it. He can hear you.

Alan, are you the Alan Nolan with the 10 inch penis? Thick as a Coke can. Don wants to know. It is not the 10 inch penis. It's mostly balls. Sorry. Sorry. I can't lose you with the other Alan.

Al, Al, where are you from? This will tell us. There's nobody from that town. If he says the name of the town right, then it's my Alan. You know how you know Don is old, old like me? He's like one of those people, like his voice is perfect and he's talking perfect, but then he puts a cell phone up to his mouth, and he probably is one of those guys that talks louder because the technology is still a little new to him.

So just now I tell him there's someone in the comments, and he turns a little cockeyed to the mic, and he has and he like probably is one of those guys that talks louder because the technology is still a little nudist so just now i tell him there's someone in the comments and he turns a little cockeyed to the mic and he has to say it louder i gotta yell this one to the guy in the comments alan do you have giant balls oh my god you know savannah you're absolutely right i just i literally only when you said it did i realize i'm like why am i yelling into the microphone you got to he's in the comments he won't hear you otherwise. He's in Belgium. Yeah, you guys got to be louder. The comment section is in the other room. Hey, can you hear me over there? Oh, my God.

That's like when Savan says soda pop. And I'm like, are you from the 1905 era? Lord. My dad said soda. I haven't heard soda pop in forever. Did I say that? I call albums records. Right. Oh,

she's come out with a new record. I'm like, she doesn't know what a record is. So back, back to your point, literally a couple of days ago, I was, I was doing a podcast with one of the big strongman podcasters,

Lawrence, Lawrence, Charlie, big laws. And the subject came up that why did you move the event suddenly from jacksonville to uh to dubai the one we'll get into that in a minute and so we got into talking about we did it for covid reasons and all of that not that florida shut us down but it just became one of those situations where

the florida numbers went high public perception people in the hospitals over there were saying the ICUs are flooded. And flying in 60 to 70 people from abroad into a place that's all over the news, maybe it was bigged up by the media. But I said to him, I'm like, it doesn't matter. We're a sports organizer. We don't care about the politics. It doesn't matter. organizer. We don't care about the politics. It doesn't matter. But looking at the trends of ticket sales dropping and people asking for refunds, panic and human fear is the real virus. Would you agree? Right. So if everybody's reacting to it, whether it's true or false or

over-exaggerated is irrelevant. We're trying to put on a show. And if people are freaking out, nobody's going to come to the show. End of story so uh that goes to your point earlier what you were saying about it's the reaction to covid covid itself didn't really go on and put travel bans or uh flood icu's is how we reacted how we restrictions, how we did this and this and this. And what is it now? 15, 16 months of this shit? A little more. 18. A friend of mine is pregnant with her second child during this debacle.

I couldn't even believe it. Miranda. Oh, really? Yeah. She's going to have two babies during the... It's a phenomenon. It's a phenomenon. I didn't know this was a thing, but

they're called COVID babies. Oh. This is probably not a great term. I'd rather be a Pisces. I'd rather be a Pisces. Something about kids who were born after lockdowns and they missed

that initial toddler, baby, infant social interaction with anybody other than their parents. And some people are projecting that this might have psychological problems later, blah, blah, blah, because they're probably going to grow into an era of schools being weird. Masks. Oh, the schools are so, yeah, the schools are so weird. Do you remember when homeschooling was for weirdos? Now, if you go to school, you are a weirdo. It just happened.

Someone in the comments, Jim Cleese, says sugar alone is not addictive combined with fat, salt, and other additives. Yes, nobody is taking table sugar and pouring it down their throat like crack. Sometimes I do that. Sometimes I do it when I'm about to pass out. A 12-hour day.

Jim, I totally agree. It's not HIV alone that kills people. Look at Don turned his back as he chugged the Coke. It's not HIV alone that kills people. It says zero sugar. It's when it's injected into the vagina using the penis or it's injected into the buttocks using the penis. I agree. It's like there's never just something doing it alone.

There's always an accomplice. I agree. But either way. So, Don, are you a promoter? Is that – are you an agent or are you the CEO of a promotion company? Can you put yourself in a box for me? It's kind of hard to… All of the above.

Okay. And the name of your company is CoreSport World. CoreSport, the handle, the social handles are CoreSport. And the website is CoreSports.world, but the mother company is Core Sports. So it's kind of, I am all of the above, but I'm also the water boy, the driver, athlete's PA, just whatever needs to get done. We're a large yet very compact team. It's a multinational organization. We've got several business lines, events, events, promotions, owning the IP and streaming them

is one part of our business, the pay-per-view, the subscriptions to all of that. We've got a fitness and personal training business here in Dubai. It's more of a concierge service, kind of a high-end client pays you, tells you what they need, you go source and manage everything for them. What's that called? What's the personal training business called? All In. All In, okay. All In. We've got an inbound tourism business that kind of, We've got an inbound tourism business that kind of, you know, since last year, it's been a bit challenging. We own a couple of gyms. There's like other stuff like real estate and all that, but we're not going to get into that.

But we also work a lot with the Dubai government regulating the personal trainers, their certifications, just managing the whole thing. Because it is a bit of a wild, wild Middle East here when it comes to, like, training and coaching and people spending money on unregulated trainers and getting injured because it's a status thing, you know. So it can go very wrong very quickly. Is there licensure around trainers in Dubai? Yeah. Okay. I mean, you can still get away with it, which is what the government is trying to change because everybody and his dog was claiming to be a trainer.

And it just basically depends on how good you are at selling yourself. Right, right. And last but not least, so all these verticals kind of feed into each other. So our inbound tourism, the hospitality part, that takes care of all the visiting athletes. And therein we have the relationships with the hotels and the flights and all that. The events, we do event production for other parties, but usually we own our own IPs. Okay. World's Ultimate Strongman is growing to be one of the biggest strongman events of the world. Excuse me. We have an amateur MMA promotion, promotion rain mma we've got an amateur boxing promotion we did arm wrestling we just started arm wrestling and that's devon was in our pilot event king of

the table we do core sports fight nights we uh have agreements with certain e-gaming companies or brands that we're going to launch very soon um we're in collaboration with the arnolds to do their middle eastern show like show. There's a bunch of things. And then we own our own filming and production company. So we film our own events, we stream our own events, we manage our own events. So it all kind of feeds into the same pot, if you will, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally. I get it. And you, and this is all, what was the original idea? What was the seed? What, what did, what did Don Idris, Idris, Idris, Idris, what did Don Idris, one person

told me like at show number three, that I really like it, how you say people's names like, and give it, keep giving them attention. So it's like something, I think it's the only feedback I've ever taken. And I like it. What did Don Idris start with? Like what was his first, now that this thing has all these branches, what was the original idea

that these other things grew out of? And how long ago was that? You're looking at the whole health and fitness concierge thing. That was the original plan. And that started sort of January 2017. I was working at, I was managing this personal training studio. And I left that job and a bunch of clients left with me. And we were thinking,

always thinking about how you can, because we live here in a country of convenience, right? Dubai has an app called CAFU. You're going to get a kick out of this. My American friends don't believe this. It's an app where you can order a fuel tanker to come fill up your car at home. I love it.

Same price as a gas station. Same price as a gas station with a $5 delivery charge. That's it. Then they upgrade it. Then you can order a guy to come wash your car at home. It's all in the same app, right? So if there's any place where we could start something like this, where a client, you consult with them, they tell you what they need.

You've got connections to the doctors, to the physiotherapists, and you have somebody scheduling everything for them and bringing them to them. So their work route, their traffic, their weight, their address, their schedule, they pay us for that service. And then we go and source everything, manage it, schedule it, and bring it to them. I started with five clients, and within seven months, we were up to like 87. And by the end of the year, we were close to 200. So that was great. So you're like this crazy executive assistant to these people. Essentially is what it is. You kind of have your own health and fitness PA. Yeah. How about haircuts? How about about haircuts would you even get them well you know what we've done that we've done that for some of our athletes like i need a haircut i need a haircut i got a meeting in three hours and then you like it's usually a lot different

than that we got like hey can you send a guy to trim my beard to the hotel room yeah okay yeah so it's like you're super concierge. It's something like that, yeah. Focused mostly on the health and fitness, but once you have that client comfort, they start asking you for the weirdest shit. And you know what? If you know a guy who knows a guy, you'll get it done for them. Why not? Right.

So then end of 2017, one of the people we were doing some work with with coaching-wise, he had started doing this strongman show locally. And I looked at it. I'm like, you know what? I want to get into events because I love anything with, like,

the smoke and the lights and the panache and all of that. So we dumped a load of money into that, did it for the first time in that region to that extent. And at the same time, one of our other coaches had a pole dancing competition. So we ended up doing that. So essentially, we also own the only pole dancing competition in the Middle East. What do they wear in that Middle Eastern pole dancing contest? I'm having trouble picturing that one.

No, it's skimpy. No, it's fine. Oh, it is? It is, but with some caveats, like you can't wear high heels, like it can't look too stripperish, if you will. It still has to. Exactly. It still has to classify as pole fitness, I believe they call it. Okay.

It's still fucking pole dancing. That's just the truth. Can I swear on this thing, by the way? Yeah, yeah. Just not as much as Hobart, but other than that, just a little under Hobart's swearing. So, yeah, so we did that show. It was in an expo of sorts.

And then Eddie Hall was visiting that expo. He was doing some kind of appearance. We looked and we grabbed him. We're like, right, we want to have a meeting with you. He was doing some kind of appearance. We looked at him. We grabbed him. We're like, right, we want to have a meeting with you. He had just won World's Strongest Man. And we took him to the side.

We're like, right, okay, forgive the megalomania. We want to do the biggest strongman show in the world. We want to do it better than ever before. What's missing? What's been done wrong? We're going to improve on that. He gave us all what's needed. We used him as our liaison.

March 2018, contracts were signed, and we announced that we're launching World's Ultimate Strongman, biggest prize pot in the history. Can I stop you here a second? Yeah. And fall into the weeds for a second. How do you approach... This is at a pole dancing competition where you approached Eddie Hall? No, it was in the middle of an expo. That was a funny story, actually. Yeah, that would have been great. Paul Dancing was here. Our Strongman show was here, the local Strongman show. He was doing an appearance for the expo.

They had paid for him to come over. Okay. You know, expos do that. They pay big athletes to come and do signing and shit like that. They offered me $100,000 to come to the CrossFit Games this year and do my podcast. I was like, eat a dick. So we just, yeah, he was doing an appearance. We're like, would you like to come to the CrossFit Games this year and do my podcast. I was like, eat a dick. So we just, yeah, he was doing an appearance.

We're like, would you like to come to the show, to the Strongman show? Give it a little bit of, you know. Did you personally walk over to him? So you just walk over to Eddie Hall. You're like, hi, I'm Don Idris. Yeah. I live here in Dubai. And you guys just hit it off?

Straight away. I mean, it was me and my guys just hit it off? Straight away. I mean, it was me and my partner, Mark Boyd. He's Scottish. So obviously, he was a bit taken aback when we had the first meeting. He's like, what the fuck is going on here? There's a one-eyed, dark-skinned dude and a Scottish guy, and suddenly they're talking this crazy shit like, we want to do the biggest strongman show in the world.

Exactly, exactly. It's a gangster movie. The Egyptian and the Scottish guy. Exactly. exactly guy with one eye and he's scottish oh shit um so yeah that that was great when we we did our first show and that it was just you you know when you want to make some noise you you really got to make some noise. And we had to capture a lot of attention. But just doubling up the prize purse of any other promoter was probably not to our own detriment. Because we can't go back, right? We got to keep it at the same level. But it's the athlete treatment and how we got everybody's food taken care of.

Because, you know, strongman is a niche sport that was kind of like the arm wrestling. There's not a lot of money in it. And there's not a lot of, you take a soccer player or a football player, their top end athlete and take top end athlete of arm wrestling or strongman or anything like that. There's no comparison. And we aim to change that. The rest is history. Immediately after that, we're like, you know what?

There's a copy and paste formula here for events that we can do. My job technically doesn't change no matter what the sport is. It could be Strongman. It could be pole dancing. My job as making the deals, putting the show together writing the show

maybe a bit of directing maybe a bit of production it doesn't matter if there's two guys in a ring two guys in a cage mongoose versus snake whatever you want to do my job stays exactly so most of the time i don't even know what the fuck's going on in the competition arena if that makes sense yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well something you said that really resonated with me is when you said that your job is to do everything from pick people up at the airport to bring them water. And a lot of people don't realize that, that as an executive producer of events,

your job is to support people. So basically, you're two things. You're the lowest man on the totem pole, and you're also the highest man on the totem pole. You're there to make sure everyone has what they need, but if someone's fucking off, you also fire them. Lickety split. Like that's it. There's no middle ground.

And I think a lot of people don't understand that. Like you're the guy who will tape some wires down and fetch water, and at the same time, you'll swing that axe and chop someone's head off or fucking off. It's like – And we've had to. I've had to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean but it's – those are the I've had, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,

but it, but it's, but those are the best ones. Like the, yeah. Anyway, sorry. So,

so go, so, so events replicating events. One thing I must say that I've been very, very, very, very lucky in getting and putting together just an amazing team between partners and employees and department heads.

It's just without them, everything would fall apart. Right. And yes, I do not to toot my own horn, but I do have an intuition towards talent and I like working with people and within their restrictions rather than like, if you've got a sales guy and you've got a

spreadsheet guy, you can't teach. Like, why bother? You're good at sales. Do sales. You're good at spreadsheets. You're socially awkward. I'm not going to send you out to do sales. So work with and within people's realms rather than trying to force a two-page job description on them that they're probably going to hate and suck at. So we've got a very beautiful team. We're all a bunch of weirdos. So everybody has a certain skill set. And I'm like, just stick to that.

You can always find somebody else to do. Our head of operations, she just cannot do sales. And she's just this little Nazi, for lack of a better word. We're all scared of her. She's 5'2", and she's just duck, duck, duck, duck, everything with deadlines. But she cannot do sales. And she told me that from day one. So, all right, don't need that.

We'll do somebody else for sales. You do that. I don't even know what most of the team does most of the time because I've been lucky enough to find the right people that I don't have to look at their work or micromanage, which saves time. And that's why our small team is equivalent to most other companies either have double the crew size, double the payroll. So that I must say right now, this is not a me thing. Without them, I'm absolute shit. i can't organize a cup of coffee that's the truth i can hey i have an idea but then somebody you know that there needs to be coffee and you and you're capable of delivering it but

all the other stuff in between you can't do it it's it's just a fact i'm absolute shit at spreadsheets and keeping timetables and i'm horrible do you promote within or do you believe in going outside the company um i don't follow like so like if um that was a big thing at crossfit i i was always a firm believer that you should always give someone inside the company a chance first not for ethical or moral reasons but because it was good for morale. And the truth was, is that the experts really aren't outside the company. Like I really believed, you know, to get like, for example, I ran the media department over there and there would be someone who was a,

let's say they sat at the desk and ran our YouTube channel. Right. But they wanted to get into filmmaking. I would be like, okay, cool. Here's your camera. Here's your first assignment. Go do it. And let them – and I believed in people and would let them climb. And other people would be like, hey, that's stupid.

You're wasting time. I'd go ahead and hire a professional and get someone who knows how to make films and to do it. But I was always like, I think we should give everyone from the inside an opportunity. So there were kind of different belief systems on that. Now I understand the context of the word promote. I thought it was the other promote. Oh, the other promote, right. Yes, absolutely. If it's possible to keep everything sort of within the family um like our graphic designer for example

he wanted to move up and do this and he's essentially now our head of e-games okay because he wanted to expand past he's like i just don't want to be creating social posts for the rest of my life can i do this i'm like well i'm not gonna do it i don't understand e-games so why not you know but there will always be a financial element. If you find yourself that you need something to be done quickly, and although you might want to help somebody from the team, it's just not possible for them to accomplish that in that time frame. Right.

They can then shadow. They can be a part of it. Right. But it would be explained to them that look yes you are on that journey but i just can't trust you with this project right now because there's no way you can learn this in three weeks right right i know you want to start up a a business on the side what's that called people who deliver food uh what's that called people what's that called people who like you can hire them and they bring

food what say it again hobart uber eats or something that called? People who like you can hire them and they bring food. What? Say it again, Hobart. Uber Eats. Uber Eats or something. No, like, you know, like you'll hire someone and they'll come bring your food to a wedding. Caterer. Caterer. Yeah, they want to start a catering business and you have a party of 100 people. Thanks, Hobart.

And you have a party of 100 people. You're not going to tell your buddy, hey, I know this is your first event. Come cater my event for the first time. It's like, no, no, no. I'm going to get someone who's experienced just because you're my friend. You can't experiment on my World Strongman competition with your first cater my event for the first time. It's like, no, no, no. I'm going to get someone who's experienced just because you're my friend. You can't experiment on my world strongman competition with your first catering event. Poison everyone. But you know what?

That's a good example. But you know what? We've never ever like we've never restricted our employees from doing or having a side hustle or whatever, especially if it's a passion project. Yeah. Because if you start blocking people from following their passion, if we can provide that passion or if we can help grow it, great. But we're not going to stand in the way of it. And I've never, never talked anybody into staying who wanted to leave. I've had one person want to leave and that was because they were leaving the country. Right? Yeah.

Our team has been the same with new members, but it's been the same from day one. Yeah. Because it's just, we work with each other in this magical way. We yell at each other. We're a very flat company. There's no hierarchy.

I get yelled at most of the time. You know, like, how dare you talk to me? Like, I'm not that guy. Right. I'm shit at this. Tell me what to do. So we're very, everybody's on an even, respectful keel, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah.

So it's a very odd collection of people, but we make it work. I mean, Devin came over in May. I think he met everybody from our social media team to our ops team. And it's just like a nice little family environment, even though we're 20 people. We make people feel welcome. And I think that's why all the athletes trust and believe in us and they want to come back, even if it's a 14-hour flight. They love coming here because they know they're going to be spoiled. Not in throwing money at people, but in taking care of people.

Right. You feel at home. Right. What was the first fight you put on? And how did this one... I'd love to hear just the gritty details of how you take the world's strongest guy... How you came up with the eddie hall thor fight like whose idea was that how did that i'd love to hear the gritty details of that okay so the first

professionally as a business fight that we had put on was we had this idea of okay the pro circle the pro circuit sorry is saturated we're not big. We're not going to go in and start competing with UFC, but we love mixed martial arts. And you know what? Let's try a amateur country versus country or gym versus gym format. So one of our guys is a friend of mine. Actually, he, he knew John Kavanaugh, uh, SBG gym, you know, John Kavanaugh SBG gym you know John Kavanaugh McGregor's trainer we called him and were like hey how about you assemble a team from SBG

the gym in Ireland and then we called I was friends with I still am actually Christoph Suszynski used to fight in the UFC ever seen the movie Here Comes the Boom no I bet you anyone has why have I heard that before in the UFC. Have you ever seen the movie Here Comes the Boom? No.

I bet you anyone has. Why have I heard that before? You watched it on a flight, on one of the many flights you've been on, Hobart. It's a Kevin James movie. He's a school teacher. Trains him to be a fighter. So that's Bas Rutten, the Dutch guy. He's a legendary MMA. You know the

bad guy in the movie, the guy who he actually beats in the end? The scary-looking guy with all the tattoos? That's Kristoff. Right? By the way, he's the sweetest guy on the planet. So I called him. Hobart, do I need to see that movie? Sorry, Don. It's great. You'll love it.

Yeah, I think you'll like it. Here comes the boom. Okay, sorry, Don. It's just a feel-good little you know silly movie so i said christoph we need some polish fighters we have this idea what do you think race you're an mma guy because he's polish he calls martin lewandowski martin lewandowski runs it's probably ranked the third best mma promotion in the world ksw okay all right so they send a team over if they send the polish national team over and we had this great show where a team versus team that was the first mixed martial arts thing we did

before you know it six months later we did the same thing but with boxing get country teams because you know once you throw in patriotism, you get more of a reaction from a crowd. The people are more emotionally vested into it. So then like right at the beginning of 2020, I saw, so I know Eddie and Thor both because they've both, Eddie's consulted for us in World's Ultimate Strongman. Thor's won it once. He's one of our ambassadors. We have contracts with both of them. And I know for a fact they both hate each other. I get along with both of them, but they truly, truly despise each other.

And I saw some talk online of saying, somebody said something on YouTube. You know when you pick up on a comment here and there? And it looked like they really wanted to fight each other. I'm like, well, you know what? If anybody's doing this, so I call Eddie. I'm like, so I have an idea. You're not going to like it. He's like, I know exactly what you're about to say. I'm like, what is it? And you're going to ask me to fight tour. I'm like, yes. Right. How did he have to, I don't know. He just felt it because he knows how I function.

Okay. He knows that everything, a little bit bold and ridiculous. Okay. I got another time. I'll tell you the stories of what we did to get global attention. So he expects a bad idea to come from me, if you will. And he knew that this was buzzing in the ether web or the interweb so he got the call he knew he's like what does he have to say i'm like i still have to talk to him but you're

the you're the mouthy one i just want to make sure that you actually do want to do this or you're right he's like nope 100 here's what i would do here's really he didn't even flinch you just ask him and he's like yeah bring him to my to my house. I'll whoop his ass. He'd been thinking about it. Oh, wow. Because he's angry at Thor. Like he's got a bone to pick for a long time. So I called Thor.

I'm like, right, here's what's going on. What do you think? And then we began that process of looking at terms and conditions, looking at the money, what it would entail for both of them, because Thor was still in his prime. We made the plan. We're like, right, we're doing this. I'm taking that risk. I believe in both of you, and I believe this thing is going to pay off.

Then COVID hits, and then that whole deadlift bonanza happens, right? Because we were supposed to do a show in Bahrain, and Thor was supposed to break Eddie's record at that show, but that show got canceled. So we quickly thought on our feet, and we did this online streaming from wherever you have access to. We got 18 episodes on ESPN out of it, by the way, because we were the only live sport.

That's the one that had like 100 million views or something like that? Something crazy? Yeah. We got, hold on, let me tell you. May 2nd, Thor broke Eddie's deadlift world record by one kilogram, two and a half pounds, in Iceland with a referee and whatever he had access to during lockdown. And ESPN said, we were the only live sport on planet earth at the end of which he announced like called out Eddie for the fight because ESPN gave us the biggest microphone in

the world Savan that thing that that 24 hours did 1.7 billion PR hits. I don't know what PR hits are, but I like it. Like online press impressions. How many people reported on it? CNN, New York Post. And you put all the circulation together. It's a media thing. I'm just talking. I like it.

It sounded really cool. I was like, oh my God, it's amazing. I mean, regardless, I don't know what it is but here's the crazy part 1.7 billion of anything just so there's only 7 billion people on the planet so that's almost one for every person on the planet got their own little media click or post for it so that's it's that's just madness you're right of course there was nothing else going on and people were just glad to see something online in the news that was not COVID. There was that factor, but still, it just went viral.

It went bananas. It was shit talk. The strength and fitness industry YouTubers were picking up on it, and they were using it as clickbait. There's a couple of YouTube channels who actually admitted that the Eddie and Thor saga before the deadlift got them like 10 million views on their YouTube channel. That's a lot of, that's a lot of money. I mean,

you can see Devin Lorette's YouTube channels exploding right now. He's got like over a million views in a week since he announced. Yeah. I'm trying to not look at it and it's everywhere. I'm just like, God, Devin's killing it. I love,

I love Devin. He, he has, he doesn't have a camera or a studio he just talks to his phone basically or makes memes or everything that man touches turns into a meme have you noticed that yes it's so good he's so great and he's got that troll army online yes follow him everywhere and just just it's just brilliant so that's how the idea came about and then the long process of actually training to be a boxer if they had gotten into a fight right there and then i don't know that

would have been a shit show because one was 450 pounds one was 420 pounds what do you mean right right then and there like when they when they announced last year oh right after the deadlift okay they were but eddie wasn't in the room when thor did it right no he was like i'm sure he was Like when they announced last year. Oh, right. After the deadlift. Okay. They were strong. But Eddie wasn't in the room when Thor did it, right? No, he was. I'm sure he was watching. Right. This was during COVID.

So one was in England. One was in Iceland. But the world, Rogue carried the stream. There was like 600,000 people watching it live. Yeah. It was just ridiculous. Announcing the fight at the end of that was a big controversial, let's say. It was Eddie and Thor fans obviously reacted the way they wanted to,

because they all hate each other. But then some of the strongman commuters are like, oh, you're ruining strongman. You're taking an athlete away from his prime. He's now going to train to be a boxer. What is this shit? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But everybody's talking about it. Haters are the first ones who usually pay

right away. Right, right, right. Good. Yes. I like it. And then, yeah. And then just at that time we were like, oh, it's 18 months away. It went by quick. Suddenly in April, I find myself in vegas doing site visits looking at the hotels and uh yeah from the end of april till now it's just been it's like event musical chairs with all the changes and all the challenges and fuck me man have you have you always lived in dubai since your youth since all of that traveling are you like 2015 i moved to dubai in 2015 and where did you live before then belgium and so you've never lived in the united states never you know you sound american as shit you know that right i know i know that's so weird

it's so bizarre that you've never lived here i I mean, you sound like an ESPN sportscaster. It's nuts. Well, he said straight away, though. Earlier on, he said straight away, and I was like, that's how I know he hasn't grown up in the States or lived in the States. Everyone in the States says right away. I'll get that right. And I think straight away

makes more sense. When I heard you say it, I was like, God, it's really interesting. This is a foreigner masquerading as yeah yeah he's an alien um and and so when you do an event like you you have all these other businesses simultaneously rolling and then this is obviously the loudest one does does the does the rest of your business suffer because this thing is getting a disproportional amount of attention? No, no, no. Because they all get to a point where they're a well-oiled machine or most of the processes are automated and there's someone

in charge of them. So the events and promotions team that our workload over the year is a couple of weeks of rest and then just madness for a couple of months and then a couple of weeks of rest and then mad. So they're kind of used to that. That's a completely separate team. All the rest of the businesses I mentioned, they have sort of a head of department, you will and there comes a time in the economy or the business or whatever it is that one is not doing as well as the other so like march last year when all this covid shit happened all of our businesses got shut down like as in shutdown like our revenue went to zero right no filming no events gyms closed down, no flying. This is literally all the verticals I've mentioned to you.

One day we found that there's no income coming in because everything got shut down. I had a day like that once recently in the last year and a half. What was this? The one that fired me when they got canned i was at the skate park with my kid at my job of 15 years they called me and told me my position's no long what how do they say it your position is no longer viable yes definitely not viable your position is no longer needed tell me tell me about that like it's i've been talking for quite some time

no no no i'm quite interested to know what happened like or you know what i like that don interviews you like he's done this two or three times about your eye there's no time to talk about me getting fired i love it uh it's in an in a nutshell, basically, the owner of CrossFit got canceled. He got accused of being a sexist and a racist, which by far he's not. 99% of every single person I know is much more sexist and racist than this guy. This is a guy who at a very young age was diagnosed with polio, which was basically the AIDS of its time, but worse because people thought if they touched you, they could get it. He was treated like shit his whole life. He's, you know, in his youth because of that.

He was made fun of. He had a limp. He survived. He had a very tough upbringing. He had a dad who was a rocket scientist, the head of Hughes Space, head of Hughes Aircraft, their chief scientist there. So he's an incredibly smart guy. And the guy's name is greg glassman and he grew up basically with an enormous chip on his shoulder just imagine a guy who was just you know he was tired of hearing like oh that's pretty good for the boy who has polio and basically at the age of 46 or five or something

near being homeless didn't have two pennies to rub together, his CrossFit thing caught on because of the internet. He didn't even want to launch it. And the thing exploded and he gave it away free for fucking 15 years. There's never been a more noble, powerful entity in my entire life on this planet than CrossFit Inc. that Greg Glassman started, regardless of what you think about him. He developed the human operating system. He wrote down the human operating system that best allows human beings to express their DNA.

Diet, movement, sleep, everything. He fucking did it. It's crazy. It's never been done before. He defined fitness for the first time, scientific definition. He believes in reality. He believes in truth, and he just got behind it. And when everyone was telling him, you're a fucking idiot for giving this away free, he said, no, my goal is just to keep giving this shit away free. And it basically turned into a giant experiment, and it exploded. Well, some fucking idiots, this group of woke idiots basically jumped on this when the George Floyd thing happened and the COVID thing happened. He said, saying, hey, you fucking idiots are handling this thing all wrong. This is not the way racism works, and this is not the way sickness spreads. And he called it out for the truth. And people, really what he was doing is standing up for the black community. But people, the idiots, the idiots, they killed their Jesus.

There's no one who loves a homosexual black man or a disabled kid or anyone more than Greg Glassman. And let me tell you something. There's a lot of like I work closely with Greg for 15 years. There's a lot of beefs I have with the guy. I'm not defending him by any means. I'm just telling you, you got it all wrong. They killed their fucking Jesus. They're morons. And they attacked this poor guy.

And he was rich as shit and he was easy to attack and he had a ton of power. And they attacked him and he got – now he's even richer because he sold the company and abandoned – he left his church. But he was so – I mean, like this guy would talk to homeless people. He went out of his way to help a gay dude or a black dude to the point of like it was uncomfortable like he preached libertarianism but he had this soft spot in them that was crazy anyway so this new regime comes in and they can't have someone like me on the team i'm just i i'm i'm not um i was ruined by greg just tell the truth don't sell like i can't sell coke because i'm just going to Just tell the truth. Don't sell.

Like I can't sell Coke because I'm just going to tell you the truth that it's just killing you. And so when you have someone like that and you have a business that's a corporation that has fiduciary duties, which I completely understand. It's not a knock at them. But they have fiduciary duties to make money and they can't have someone like me around. And there was a few misleading, lying articles published in new york times about me and things like that and and it and it you know so i was fired but i was i'm eminently capable i'm the hardest working dude in the room and it was it was a enormous mistake on their part but that being said, I'm not upset that I'm fired. I live a very charmed life.

So who took your place? Nobody. Nobody. I mean, they have no head of media. So we weren't allowed to use the word marketing when I worked at CrossFit Inc. Because marketing is when you sell something. And we were just told always everything we produce should just be adding value. And so basically, when they got rid of me, they have a PR guy in there.

And I've heard recently that they've hired a chief marketing officer. They basically just turned the whole company around. The company, they've changed its, it used to be just to tell the truth and now it's a business. They have to sell, they have to do marketing

and they have to put together a plan. Understood. And so it's a whole different um excuse me it's a whole different without going into too much detail because i just gotta ask you more questions about josh bridges and jacob heppner and avril and stephy cohen so anyway another show though maybe you should start a podcast and have me on don't tempt me don you would start a podcast and have me on. Don't tempt me.

Don, you would have a great podcast with all the people you meet. It has to be sort of in a couch, relaxed, drinking sort of setting. That's where everybody gets really comfortable and tells you the real stories. When they're not camera, when they're not, you know, oh, it's it's a camera here hobart who would you hidden camera hidden camera podcast that would be great hobart who would you fight if you were on the card anyone i fight anyone you would fight like uh spongebob i could see you fighting spongebob i'd fight you i know who wouldn't you fucking asshole who wouldn't you know savant you say i popped up on your radar maybe by name when you were talking to devon yes but i think um josh had inadvertently mentioned um that his guy cooper made it reached out and said,

hey, you're putting on a show. That was actually a direct phone call with me as well. Oh, so the Josh and Jacob thing wasn't even your idea. They solicited you for that. They reached out to our, I don't know if it was our social media page or email or something. They're like, hey, we can do this. Are you interested?

And our social team sent it to me. They're like, Hey, we can do this. Would you like, why are you interested? Now? Social seems to send it to me. I'm like, you know what? If we're taking other sport athletes and getting them to have a trial by combat. Fuck. Yeah. I'd love to watch two CrossFitters go at each other.

Yeah. I said this somewhere else. I don't remember where, but I've always thought that sick is the ultimate test of fitness, right? There's no combat element in the CrossFit Games. There should be like the two top winners. I don't know. I've always said that they were missing a trick, right?

Not death matches, but you know what I mean, right? Okay, we've pretty much covered every possible test except combat. So this was like, I'm like, fuck it, this is brilliant. And they're coming and saying that we want to fight each other. I'm like, oh. It was pitched as Castro versus Bridges. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Initially. Yeah, I have a memory. And then Dave Castro, for some reason, they came back and they're like, oh, he doesn't want to do it. Pussy. Would you, would you still be okay if we bring another CrossFit athlete? I'm like, well, if it fits the bill, then they came back with somebody else and somebody else. And then they said,

I'm like, you know what, let's just do it. Cause I think it's a good idea. It'll bring a lot of eyes to this. I'm like, you know what? Let's just do it because I think it's a good idea. It'll bring a lot of eyes to this. Josh seems to be like kind of a bit of a legend in that world. I'm like, let's do it. For sure. For sure.

Initially, I was kind of like, I'm like, tell me it's Fraser and Froning. Oh, man. Look, someone just wrote that in the comments too. Oh, man. That would be nuts. I'm like, come on. They're like, nope. They said Fraser was taking time off, but if he ever did consider fighting,

I don't know how true this is, it would be like mixed martial arts. It wouldn't be boxing. That's what I was told. I don't know. I think it would be a mistake for anyone to get in the ring with Rich. We should just keep putting it out there in the world. Rich is a gifted athlete. He would fuck someone up. Really would i've never spoken to him

he's i've never spoken what do you what do you think hobart yeah rich rich is a really good athlete yeah like he's not just a good crossfitter like he he yeah he would he would fuck someone up i think who's not who's not a trained professional i don't think matt wants to get in the ring with rich i don't think don do you do you have a fighting background like not professionally just part-time casually covered in covered in scars and all that they didn't come from nowhere but no never professionally no no i mean up until the age of maybe 17 i used to like martial arts like taekwondo and kukushan and stuff like that but that never actually fought in a ring so just hobart do you know what do you know what kukushan is i don't i heard that and i was like i'm just

gonna glaze over that one for a second i do what is kukushan what is kukushan it's it's one of these like there's so many of them we don't actually realize how many martial art disciplines are out there. I believe this one is Korean. When I was growing up in Pakistan, there was two or three coaches, and there was only Taekwondo, Kung Fu, Kukushan, and something else. A striking base? Those were the options. Yeah.

Very, like, it was quite even between the arms and the legs. Taekwondo is mostly just legs. Kukushan was more kind of street fighting, if you will. I'll fight you in a Kukushan fight. Hey, I had something horrible. You know what? Honestly, just before any criticism comes in through the comments, I'm not 100% sure that's how

you pronounce it, but that's how I was taught to pronounce it. I'm pretty sure it is. I looked it up. It's Cuckoo Sean. I'll take haters. I can tell you. Do you ride an assault bike? This is way off subject, but do you ride an assault bike, Don?

Or an eco bike? Do you ride one of those bikes i have done so um i hate it just like everybody else and when i'm in the groove i love it too just like everybody else did you uh it's humbling yeah have you ever been into bike riding like did you ever like have a bike and you rode it every day for like a year like you started riding like 100 miles a day well so go ahead no no no i'm cycling like sprinting and until the age of about 15 i was like in the top three in my school just for school sports day it's just two kilometer sprints on a you know those thin wheel like racing bikes yeah that's that's it yeah the story i'm going to tell i think you need a hair on your ass to for it to make sense so maybe you didn't have this experience at 15 but the other day i wrote about two weeks ago i rode the assault

bike for 40 minutes and i got 400 calories i was pretty impressed with myself wait 40 minutes yeah and um when whenever i and i normally don't ride it for more than like 10, 15, 20 minutes. And I fucking two weeks ago got this – and after doing that, and I used to get this when I would ride my bike for a long time after not riding my bike for a while. I have these crazy – I got these two crazy pimples on my ass or ingrown hairs. That's disgusting. Oh, dude. It's worse than disgusting. I can't stay still as I talk to you guys.

Did you shower after you got off the bike? No, I haven't showered since. Of course I showered. I'm just telling you. I knew it. That's what than disgusting. I can't stay still as I talk to you guys. Did you shower after you got off the bike? No, I haven't showered since. Of course I showered. I'm just telling you. I knew it. That's what it is. If your ass has to get conditioned for long bike rides and you can't just like – yeah. You have that – you know like when you ride a bike for a long time, the inside, like the bony part of your cheeks that feels like bruised?

Yeah. I've had that because of the thin race bike seat. Yeah. But that's why cycling shorts have like some kind of padding on. I don't think it helps at all, but it has some kind of a padding. Maybe I need cycling shorts for myself. You should just wear a diaper, Siobhan. I mean, you are what?

Would you say you're 47 now 49 do you know those um i dread that by the way i fucking dread that idea of wearing a diaper sorry go ahead don't do it the about your sitting do you know those um the hemorrhoid cushions the ass cushions i don't know those it's a circular thing that you know he knows what i'm talking about it's like a donut you put on your bike seat to protect your ass no you put it on any seat usually you put it when you have hemorrhoids because you have some painful shit dangling out of your anus yeah i haven't had that in years since i stopped squatting over 50 pounds but god hemorrhoids are i'm so happy that this is where we're headed right now.

It's finally... I'm not sure how many people are watching this that would probably be like, what the fuck is happening here? Hey, Avril is the only athlete in your event who doesn't have hemorrhoids. I'm willing to bet any of you a thousand bucks that Thor, Devin Lorette, Jacob Heppner,

Josh Bridges, and Steffi Cohen all have hemorrhoids. I'm willing to bet $1,000 on that. Or have had at some point. They got them right now. Fuck it. I'm going all in. Those squatting machines. Devin's the only guy who's popped the hemorrhoid while holding another man's hand. The other five

have just squatted them out. Oh, Devin. Devin, Devin, Devin. So you got Jacob and Josh. Jacob and Josh. They're the co-mains. And then you have this match that I'm, I'm a little concerned about.

I know Steffi Cohen looks good, but this other chick is a professional boxer. Oh, we lost him. We lost you. We can't hear you. But this other chick is a professional boxer. Uh-oh, we lost him. We lost you. We can't hear you. Check, check. Oh, he's muted.

Ah, there we go. My hand accidentally hit. Am I good? Yeah. Hobart's just paid the bills right there. He's added some technical expertise. To be clear, Steffi's not fighting avril oh okay their actual their opponents haven't actually been announced or even finalized yet we wanted that fight to happen but it would have been an unfair fight so if you look at the fight poster it says featuring steffi cohen

and avril matthew it doesn't say versus it's a very subtle thing because we were still until the last minute, trying to get that fight to happen, right? But their managers wouldn't agree. So Steffi's going to fight a little, I'm not sure am I allowed to say this, a Colombian boxer who's kind of a little bit, she's had a little bit more experience than her, but I think they're trying to go for some kind of Latin title next week. Okay.

Next year, sorry. So we're flying her over from Colombia. Marcela Nietes or something is her name. And Avril, we had picked an opponent. Their managers had agreed just literally last week. But we're having trouble getting her into the country, so now we're going through a whole list of other. If you're not in the boxing world,

this might seem really weird that you don't have an opponent three weeks out, but it's very common, very common. So Steffi and Avril, those are the two female fights on the card, but they're not fighting each other. We have, um,

yet to be announced. We have five more fights, but they're pro boxing fights. One is this gentleman called Martinin bakoli from congo he's number he's ranked number 14 in the world i think he's the actual biggest pro boxing star on the card and then we've got four more local like dubai guys oh yeah a dutch guy a cameroonian guy they've they've fought on our exhibition cards before so we have a we could put a fight card together pretty quickly here in dubai so you're looking at nine fights

how how is how is dubai you you know i i i live in california when i was in the eighth grade was my first trip to new york city and i couldn't have put my finger on it then but i can put my finger on it now difference between cal can put my finger on it now. Difference between California and the East Coast, and especially those East Coast cities, but especially like some places in New Jersey and New York and Boston, they feel like a piece of your freedom is, it doesn't feel as free as California. There's always like a road toll there or some rules about which lane you can drive. It's just there's way more rules in New York City than anywhere else. You can't drive until you're 18.

And there's so many of them that they compound that you actually feel them. It's like living in a fish tank. It's like the Truman Show. You know where the walls are when you're on the East Coast. You don't know where the walls are when you're in California. There's a bit of more freedom. The roads feel more free and in the middle of the East Coast. You don't know where the walls are when you're in California. There's a bit of more freedom. The roads feel more free and in the middle of the country also. Dubai, on the other hand, is kind of the ultimate fish tank.

My trip there was like, holy shit, this is a really… When was your trip there? Five years ago, four years ago. Like you probably wouldn't even recognize the place. Oh, wow. Okay. Construction, development. Remember, none of this existed a few years.

Like, how old is this place? 40 years or something? I came here for the first time in 2011. Okay. It looks nothing like it does today. But it's still highly organized. It's the safest place in the world. There's nothing...

I don't think people understand that. If you dropped your wallet on the street, you could come back three days later and it would be there, or someone would have picked it up and it would be turned in. There's no crime there. Found you and called you.

There's no crime there. I'm not exaggerating people. You could leave a wheelbarrow with $10 million cash out in front of a store and go and shop inside and come back and it will be there. No one would dare steal anything there. The amount of times I've forgotten my phone, house keys, wallet,

car keys or whatever at the bar. Just like, I want to go home. And the next day you come, it's either there or the bar staff have kept it for you or they figured out a way to call you and let you know. Or even better, sometimes delivered it. Yes, absolutely. Via an Uber or whatever, sir.

You forgot your thing at some place. It's your wallet. Nothing missing. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but it's so rare that you even hear a story about theft or because the punishment outweighs like you know what i mean and everything is tracked right like i my experience was i left my i left my iphone in a cab um two or three days later i thought it was gone two or three days later, I thought it was gone. Two or three days later, I'm just talking in the lobby of the hotel.

One of the security guards hears me. He's like, oh, you lost your cell phone? I said, yeah. He goes, where? I said, I left it in a cab. And he goes, oh, where did you get on the cab? And I said, here at the hotel. He goes, oh, when?

And I told him the approximate day and approximate time. He goes, oh, hold on. Yep. And he comes out of the back room and he's like, your phone will be here in 35 minutes. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And someone showed up with my phone three days later. I'm like, how can this be?

It's great like that. Yeah. I don't, I mean, it depends on your definition of fish tank. I mean, I moved here in 2015 because of a job opportunity. And that didn't last very long. And I was going to leave everything and move back to Belgium. But my friends and my mother talked me out of it. They're like, okay, Belgium, it's great for retiring.

It's great for security, but there's no opportunity. Give it a chance over there. And it only took me two months of being here realizing this really is like the new world land of opportunity it's so if you get look every place has its quirks and its idiosyncrasies right some things here are archaic some systems are outdated but it everything everything works everything works and there everything does work yep it's a very unforgiving city it's not like in europe where you show up with a backpack and a phone number into a bar and you're like oh so and so your cousin from another town sent me can i get

a job do a couple of shifts in the bar live upstairs you can get by here you gotta grind you gotta work hard to to get anywhere there's no social welfare there's none of that shit here right so if you if you're willing to put in hard work and be patient because everybody hates it the first year everybody because it's just it's one of those just like any big getting that ball starting to roll down the hill is very difficult but once you do in dubai there's shit tons of opportunity so much opportunity but you have but get but you have to yeah you don't have kids do you i get it i get this thing you're talking about no interesting um do you think you're gonna have kids do you have a wife no do you have a

husband no do you have a dog no listen. Do you have a dog? No. Listen, people, this is the key to success right here. When I hear… Be alone and miserable and you're going to make it. When I hear about games athletes who have dogs or wives or professional athletes who have dogs or wives, I just think they're not committed. And I know there's exceptions to the rule but like like like man like this this is this is you're either if you're going to be successful you better grind and occasionally you'll find a husband or a wife who fits in that area but man people who are grinding they don't they don't fuck around with dogs and wives and husbands.

I'd love a dog, but the only reason is it would be animal cruelty. I do not have time. Right. I can't just get a dog just so you can listen to me bitch or punch the walls or whatever. You got to take a dog for a walk. I mean, I'm crazy about animals. And that's why I don't have any because I just don't think it would be right how would you meet a girl in Dubai the same way you meet a girl in California

like could you just be like at the bar at the beach or same thing it's weird here it's a very tech based culture especially the newer generation I don't know maybe I'm wrong because I'm kind of in the sports and fitness industry.

Just too many dudes. Is that what you're saying? There's just, there's that, but there's also too many Instagram accounts. So DMing and Tindering is a big thing here. People call me old because I call it Tinder. Apparently it's like 10 new apps out there for dating that I'm not aware of,

but it's very, I find that it's not like Europe or America where you can just easily go up to, you can, but that thing, remember when you used to buy a girl a drink and then have a conversation and hit it off? Yeah. Now it's done via behind the screen. It's just odd. I find it odd. I still can't do it. If I want to, I guess that's part of getting older, isn't it? When you just don't give a shit about, you're looking for some kind of a connection. Right. If I can't talk to you or if you're annoying me, chances are I really don't want to sleep with you.

You know what I mean? Right. So not like when you were in your 20s, you're like, fuck, yeah, whatever. Now it's like like do i have the time or the energy to oh good that makes me feel better yeah you know so this doesn't work for me if you can't connect with a person it's but but i don't know maybe we're just old and bitter and jaded so you gotta you gotta send them that uh what was that, cow food? You just got to go send that truck that fills up their gas tanks.

Hey, man, I didn't buy you a drink, but you got a full tank of gas tonight. You want to go home? Enjoy. Put in the premium. I think, you know, anytime I think of something happening to my wife, I just think of myself. I think I would just become a monk. I have no interest in, I i would have the thought of starting a relationship with anyone besides

the one i've cultivated with my wife makes me ill so like i get like i just would never want to do like i but it's interesting it's you're right it's different when you're 20 you're like you have enough passion and energy for 10 girlfriends and you want to keep them all but the funny the funny thing is you get older for sure i do have a girlfriend but it's like someone i've known for 18 years who i didn't even meet in dubai it's like awesome we've knew each other when we were in our 20s you know what i mean um and then she just happened to move to dubai and now we're together but it's not i didn't go around cruising for it here and like, oh, this is great. This is just – I've been here.

I've been working nonstop. And I just – there's a lot of plastic here. You know what I mean? There's a lot of – you know, the fake boobs. The veneer of people. Yep. All the personalities to the boobs. Don veneer of people. Yep. All the personalities to the boobs. Don't get me started.

They look, well, to the point where you know how anybody who's done plastic surgery, they kind of lose perspective. Yeah. I don't know that, but it makes sense. Surely you see it in California. Yes. I just don't know any of those people.

But yes. Yeah. But you see them. Yes, yes. And I have trouble know any of those overly but yes yeah but you see them yes yes and i have trouble looking at them too because my brain doesn't want to even register them as human beings it kind of sucks i feel bad it's so bad look away yeah it just gets to a point where you're like there's no way they can see what we're seeing right they probably started off with a bit of a this and then a bit of a this and a bit of a this. And now they have no actual idea of how, like that jigsaw character from that movie, Saw. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What a brutal analogy.

Oh, that's good. The cheek fillers and the no expression. That was good. That's good. That was great. no expression that was good that's good that's great i i i i want to tell you like i have never been comfortable with the fact that we live in a society where like women's chests are cut open and then like plastic balls are put in to trick us into thinking, to making our dicks hard. Like, there is a bizarre phenomenon to that. It's like, you know they're fake.

You know, a man's brain is bizarre. I guarantee you this experiment would work. You could take a woman who's perfectly flat-chested, have her walk into the room. Then you could have her walk back in five minutes later and have put two softballs under her shirt. The men would become aroused. You could tell the men,

those are just softballs under there. They don't care. Their brain would only see what it wanted to see. You could tell them, those are only softballs. You could even show them the softballs and then cover them back up. And so like there's this – how did we get to a point where it's okay? And I'm not saying it's not okay. I just – it is a very weird phenomenon that you can – we would ask – not ask.

So societally – Society, yeah. Yeah, I'm not trying to blame anyone, but it's just, it's tough for me to, if I had a daughter, I wouldn't want anyone doing an operation on her that cuts her open, that changes the size of her boobs so that dudes would want to fuck her more. And I'd be, oh, it's not for the dudes. Hey, shut the fuck up. First it was magazines, now it's Instagram. It's what society tells you is like oh this is attractive yeah and it is attractive and it is attractive i also don't want to deny that like there's nothing greater than a

big old set of titties like so it's like this weird like i can understand it because you can't grow them out and they are a major part of i suppose a woman's security and how she feels about herself also i think it's a thing that arouses boys more than men. Men like ass. That's just a fact. The older you grow, you're more of an ass guy.

But men, you think fake boobs have been accepted since Pam Anderson. But now you've got fake abs, fake butt implants. And the amount of it. And sometimes when it goes wrong, Oh, you ever seen an ass implant that you can tell it doesn't belong. It looks horrendous legs and this droopy, like you ever seen a sheep's tail that kind of goes like that. It just looks unnatural. people get ab implants i mean what the

fuck like where does it stop like is it really and they'll be perfectly not they're not obese or anything they're normal people but they'll get a sheet of abs and get the skin done around them hobart has ab implants no thinking about getting them now one of those hobart has ab implants no thinking about getting them now you sold it so well just buy it at like a coin op or something i just go down to walmart and just i can't imagine taking a month of my life to deal with something like that no matter how bad i wanted it i can't imagine like being like okay i'm gonna go make this appointment with a doctor i'm gonna go get check out the different kinds of butts then i'm gonna have the surgery then i'm gonna go through recovery and i just i just couldn't imagine like even if i wanted it i wouldn't have the dedication to it like but you know that's that's

you know they have a saying have you ever heard the saying if you sit in a barber shop long enough you're gonna get a haircut oh but i like that if you live in dubai or calbershop long enough, you're going to get a haircut. Oh, I like that. If you live in Dubai or California long enough, you're going to get some surgery. If you're in a male prison for more than three weeks, you will. You're going to, yeah, exactly. You're going to dry dock at some point. You're switching teams.

You're switching teams, buddy. Teams! You're switching teams, buddy. Will this be just the beginning of your fight promotions? This is the biggest fight you've done, right? Well, yes. The original plan would have been the biggest fight. Now that has moved to March because Eddie tore his bicep ah because that was the original plan right what if devin knocks thor the fuck out well then will devin fight eddie

no i i don't know i don't know i first of all i don't think that's going to happen i don't think neither of them it'll be a good fight devin's unpredictability and just that weird killer instinct that he has and thor's skills that he's developed. He's a very different fighter now from three months ago. I mean, he was not a boxer, but then he's just dedicated so much into it and he's done ring time. He's done two exhibition fights.

Then he got a proper pro boxing coach. He's like a totally different animal right now. He looks fucking ripped. Oh, he's totally ripped. he's totally ripped it's insane and he's still 330 pounds right um he's slow as shit though right he's slow as shit right i mean the footage i've compared to who he's faster than you savon no he's definitely not 100 faster i would guarantee it i would run through his legs and pull his tampon out before he knew what happened. There's no way that guy could catch me. Consider the opponent.

He's like a tree. But Devin's also a senior citizen. Devin's three years away from being put in a nursing home. So we've got a weird match here. Devin's been walking around like a T-Rex for the last 10 years, right? Yes. He's got his crazy ape index. It would have been even crazier if he could actually extend his arm,

but he's got that killer instinct and the grit to be able to prep for five months. Crazy grit. It's unpredictable. We don't know. But the Eddie and Thor fight has its own, there's a saga, there's a story, there's hatred that's been brewing for three years that is its own separate and it's not like winner takes this and winner goes there that is going to happen has its own um viewers no matter what right do you know why they hate each other

it depends who you hear it from right is there a there a girl involved? No, not at all. Oh, damn. There was a world title involved. Okay. So apparently some shit happened at World's Strongest Man 2017 where Eddie won. Thor thought it was rigged. Eddie got pissed off that his win was kind of overshadowed by the news picking up on the fact that it was rigged. And it got worse and worse and worse and worse.

And you can't put them both in a room together. They'll tear each other's heads off. Wow, it's like that, huh? Oh, no, it's proper. Like, it's horrendous. And they're fans. It's so... It can split the room.

It's like putting Mentos in Coca-Cola, right? Anytime you see Eddie and Thor in a comment section, the Eddie fans will hate. If you put their fans in a room, there's a brawl. I guarantee you. Wow. I had no idea. That's awesome. Let's get that event set up.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just 50. Royal Rumble. Royal Rumble. Thor will put up a picture of his baby or his family, nice family photo on Instagram, and they'll be constantly like, Eddie's going to fuck you up for no reason.

I swear to you, go through his posts, do whatever you want, but Eddie's still going to fuck you up. He's putting you to sleep, boy. And then the other way around as well, you go on Eddie's post, yeah, Thor's going to put you to sleep. For an unrelated post so that that bile that bile needs to happen at some point so now we're looking at March um March 26th because by the time his bicep heals luckily it came clean off the bones it was a

like a quick recovery and now it's just rehab and he gets back into training and but Thor wanted to continue fighting and I, we didn't want to rob Josh and Jacob and Steffi and everybody else of, uh, cause it was a good card on its own with this added sort of magnum of Eddie and Thor. So I'm like, all right,

Thor, if you still want to fight, we need to find you a proper opponent. Um, somebody who's not a boxer, somebody who can hype the fight up a bit because eddie's he's he's very mouthy he's great at selling a fight what people don't get is unless you're a hardcore fan of the sport it's the hype that sells a fight not unless you're a ufc like die

hard fan of combat sports and you're watching the tech, this is not that card. This is not that card at all. So how are you going to sell it if there's no da-da-da-da-da-da? Not the fake trash talk, but… Yeah, you found sincere. You found two guys who sincerely want to beat each other. Hobart, if you have to go, you can go. I know I'm keeping you on.

I know, I'm good. Okay. Okay. I kept you on. Devin, we had an experience with Devin. We brought him over to do the arm wrestling with Michael Todd. Yep. It was a very anticipated match.

And I am told by other arm wrestling promoters, we broke all pay-per-view records. That's awesome. Ridiculous, the amount of people who bought that thing. And there's not really two more dedicated people to their craft either. Michael Todd and Devin deserve that kind of attention. I mean, they are arm wrestling dorks. Those guys, they're amazing. They are PhDs in arm wrestling.

And they're wives. They are amazing. And their wives. Yeah. The whole atmosphere. So our streaming service providers, their entire office wash. They're like, we've never watched arm wrestling. That's awesome. We didn't realize it could be so exciting. Right.

Because it's, it's a form of combat. Sometimes they call it an arm fight. Yeah. Yeah. We've done it. I mean, I don't know about Hobart, but arm wrestling was like kind of how you marked your territory

in school. I arm wrestled Hobart before. Actually, there's a good story about this. I marked my territory all over Savan when I crushed him in an arm wrestling match. And he just thought he had some insider information because he was pretty close to the sport. Very close. But no, i'm glad

you brought that up hobart and i arm wrestled about uh 10 years ago yeah 10 years ago yeah and in the video it looked like a close match and i hadn't seen the video like in five or six years and then i watched it recently and then i asked james i said hey were you just fucking with me and i i was really thought for sure he was gonna say no that was a good match but he goes dude i was totally fucking with you yeah so he hurt my feelings so he did mark hobart did mark me all over but as a kid i mean i i don't know like the schools i grew up in yeah hell yeah arm wrestle or you'd have a fight after school in the parking lot or something and that's how you

establish dominance especially as you hit puberty so arm wrestling is a thing that we all kind of know especially guys and that it's it can be very very very exciting like the arm wrestling fans are just as hardcore and diehard as MMA fans or boxing. There's less of them, but they will go the extra mile. And we learned that from that event. I'm like, man, these are really loyal group of viewers. Of course, you add Devin in, you add Michael Todd in, you add their wives in. We're talking shit to each other from both sides of the table.

It becomes a really small, hardly 10 square foot atmosphere that is just electric, you know? And it's a guy staring into each other's staring each other down. It's just, I mean, what's, I don't know. Yeah.

I love it. I think it's great. It's, it's bizarre that it hasn't, it it's not bigger to be honest. It's been around forever and it's bizarre that it's not bigger, to be honest. It's been around forever, and it's bizarre that it's not bigger. What's – Don, what is – do you have another big – next big thing lined up? Like is there something that you're working on now that's been inspired by this that you're like, holy shit, this is –

Yeah. Well, there's more of this format so excuse me it's during this preparation for the eddie and thor fight then when cooper got in touch i think it was january when thor was doing his first exhibition fight and then steffi and then and then that's where it sort of it hit me that i think we've got something here it's elite athletes from other sports having a trial by combat. Do you remember Pride? Yeah. Pride and K-1.

But that was different martial arts disciplines fighting each other. Maybe there was a grudge element to it with a different set of rules. So essentially we're taking that a level up and it's different sports. Like right now you're looking at, we've got the arm wrestling community in Devon, which I think was a perfect replacement for Eddie. Cause we're expanding the viewership base. You've got strong man Thor,

you've got CrossFit, you've got Josh and Jacob, you've got power lifting, which is Steffi. I don't know. I mean, it's how does your sport translate into combat? It's not a bad, I think, maybe it's not as hyped up and crazy as these YouTube fights with the Paul brothers or

whatever, but, and it might not have as big an audience, but it's still, it's still professional. It's still athletic. It's still respectful to all of the sports. Yeah, of course, there will be the trash talk and all that. But although some people might view it as a circus, but I mean, everybody still goes to the circus, right? I want to see Michael Phelps fight. I was literally going to say this. The gymnast versus Simone Biles.

Is that her name? I want to see those two fight each other. It's funny you should mention that yeah please I was saying yesterday Phelps versus Usain Bolt oh oh my god that would be awesome dude it's it's a thought it's a thought but that's the whole idea right it's like oh my goodness that would be amazing that's better than my matchup best swimmer in the world versus it doesn't necessarily have to happen of course the idea seed was you know that bar room conversation yeah when you get shit face with your friend who do you think would win in a fight batman or superman or a tiger or a bear it's why not take that and take professional athletes who are willing to and happy to do this make sure they get a decent payday make sure it's done right safety and

you gotta we didn't do mma because that's just an injury galore that's asking especially for these strength sports it's a lot of stiffness. And MMA needs you to be quite fluid. Sorry, I'm rambling on here. It's too bad Kendall's not younger. Kendall Jenner would be great in a fight too, but I think she's too old. How old is she? I don't know, but she definitely should

fight someone. You got this former decathlete. Oh, Caitlyn Jenner. What did I say? Kendall Jenner. Oh, whatever. Caitlyn Kendall. I don't even know my own name.

Next up is your postman versus your bank manager. You never know. I mean, that's what white-collar boxing was, isn't it? It's just – sorry, James. No, no. i'm hoping this opens pandora's box on crossfitters fighting each other that's all i'm just i'm just hoping for i really want to see rich fight someone you do know that like we we actually have a deal with crossfit incorporated no you do no i didn't know that yeah we signed a deal with them a couple of months ago

the press release went out and everything because they loved the idea. And they're kind of co-promoting the fight. Oh, yeah. They did something at the games, right? They should have run that on the live feed. That was a fucking debacle. Is that video online anywhere with Jacob? It is.

It is. I think it is, yeah. I don't think it went in the stream, but they let them do something in the Coliseum. Yeah. Yeah, let's see, man. It's like Coliseum yeah yeah yeah let's see man it's like coliseum but spelled differently right maybe it might be the cross it's spelled with a cr no uh colossio like the coliseum in italian okay c-o-l-o i believe i think here they spell it c-o-l-e or i don't just he went way above our

head yeah he's talking about spelling in italian so i can barely i can barely you're worldly you're an english man yeah sorry i grew up in a town of 1100 people and but i do think that video is on the internet somewhere um yes it is on the the The Buttery Bros did something with it. You know the Buttery Bros? I've heard of them. The content creators. I think they're called the Buttery Boys. I think you might have their name wrong. Buttery Boys.

Or no, Butter Boys. It's Butter Boys. No, it's the Buttery Bros. Butter Boys, I think... That sounds like a porn title. Yes, yes, yes. Butter Boy. Butter boy. Butter boy.

The CrossFit put something, sent out a couple of emails, did a couple of posts. We know they have a content plan of some kind, especially during fight week, because the reality is nobody buys pay-per-view until the last day. Yeah. Our experience, UFC's experience, we do it. We hate it. Why would you? I buy it like 30 seconds before because why

would you buy it sooner? What if you end up having explosive diarrhea and you have to be in the bathroom the whole time and you miss the show? You don't have to be 65, 99. I know, but as an organizer and a promoter and if it's your ass and your money on the line, it's the most stressful thing. Unless you've got everything covered, you don't know if your event is going to do well or not until the last hour. Right.

Right. But we can't blame people. I fucking hate that everybody's not buying. But what do we do? I've never bought anything that far in advance. Right? I've never bought a fight. Oh, fuck, it's on.

All right. Okay, sure. Oh, I forgot to buy it. And that's what the trends are. But people don't buy shit in advance. 98% of the sales are done in the last hour for most paper events. Yeah, I believe it. So, you know.

But fight week, especially with these COVID times, the whole everybody being together and the press conference and the weigh-in, that's when the viewers start saying, oh, fuck, this is really happening. And then there's the face-offs and the shit talks. The last three days are the most important. The press conference, the weigh-in, and then the hour before the fight. Where will your pay-per-view be available? CoreSports.world is on our own platform.

That's the beauty of it. And do you have an app on iTunes? Yeah. Google Play and iTunes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coresports.world. Wow. Okay.

So not on like these other weird ones like DAZN or FITE. Okay. They say weird ones. They've got a pretty big reach. It's our own. So we own it. That's the beauty of it. But it's hard.

Building and marketing a streaming platform in this day and age is hard. People don't realize how much it takes to market successfully a pay-per-view event or what the cost of customer acquisition is like these things can be because there's so much out there to choose from right you know uh and if you're the kind of guy who has to make cutbacks you lost your job or whatever you're going to go through your subscriptions you're like wait a minute i'm paying nine dollars a month for netflix nine dollars a month for amazon i don't need this i don't need You're going to get rid of what's not giving you value. Yeah, I just canceled my

DAZN. You did? Yeah, it was like $99 a year. I couldn't remember the last time I watched a fight on there, and I canceled it. But they got me, and maybe this will work for you too. Basically, you have Core Sports World, but even if this didn't meet your expectations, what you can leverage,

and I know you know this, is all the people who downloaded your app for your next fight. Oh, yeah, for sure. Or your next event. So it's awesome. I would have never heard of CoreSport World, but now because of this, I'm going to be talking about it for the next two months, right? Or next month until the fight happens. When is the fight? September 18th?

September 18th. What are we today? Thursday? Yeah. We start loading into the venue three weeks from today. Press conference is three weeks from today. Are you watching it, Hobart?

Yeah, I'm going to try and watch it. I'm actually working a seminar that weekend, but I really want to watch it. So I've talked to Josh a lot. Oh, by the way, you got a kick out of this because we're obviously trying to make it as user-friendly as possible. You've paid for fights before.

Yeah, every weekend. Our fight's $9.99 for the whole card. Wow. It's under $10. I think that that was a smart decision. There is people who will probably pay more. I just didn't want to risk it. Let's just get it done. Let's see see because you can always go up in price but if you start with fit we're not espn plus

we and we're not anthony joshua and or wilder fury we're not we're not able to charge ridiculous amounts of money because remember boxing and fight fans are used to paying for fights right we're now entering a realm of sports that are not used to paying for fights right we're now entering a realm of sports that are not used to paying for fights or paying for watch their content yeah so the minimizing the risk and you know we'll see what happens and then after this december we've got king of the table two we've got eddie and thor in march so months are going to be interesting. $9.99 is basically free. It's less than a caramel macchiato at Starbucks. Yeah, right.

Especially in Dubai. And you don't think twice about pushing the buy button on that. It's less or equal to what people usually pay for a super chat to get somebody's attention on a live Q&A on YouTube. Oh, yeah.

They pay $5 or $20 or whatever. Pay attention to me and my question. Here's $10. Don, I know you thought that this was me, you coming onto my podcast and me interviewing you, but I have to be completely honest with you as we wrap this up. This was actually you interviewing me because I need you to push your talent my way so that I can grow my podcast numbers and pay for my kids' jiu-jitsu class.

So as we wrap this up, I hope you really enjoyed yourself. I would love to have you on more to talk about your eye and um and and thank you for coming on and you don't have to answer now but i hope that over the next week you'll percolate you'll think okay yeah maybe i do have some athletes that i'd like to or some talent i'd like to push his way um or maybe some people you don't like and you want me to torture them i'm capable of many many things all of the above the only thing is savon you're so like i i only just looked at the i can't believe we i'm sorry if i rambled on too much but it's almost two hours where we've we've been on

because again it's the howard stern thing well thank you we didn't i i have it was crazy um i have two pages of notes we didn't really touch on any of them my notes are usually my just my crutch i'm just like hobart's my crutch um but we learned a lot about plastic surgery and anal fissures on bicycles apparently and we really do we really do have to get into who you are it's fascinating how much you've traveled a lot of people i'd be curious to know all that stuff about your history um don is uh the big event that he's i mean he's working on a lot of big events but the big event that we're interested in hobart myself and the listeners i think is september 18th it's um devin lorettata and Thor, Jacob Heppner and Josh Bridges,

Steffi Cohen, and a yet to be announced and an Avril. By the way, if you haven't seen Avril's Instagram account, I highly recommend it. Speaking of boobs and gorgeous, isn't she? She'll kick your ass.

Anyone who punches her in the face is going to hell. Gentlemen, thank you so much for having me, Simone. It was an absolute pleasure. We ended up talking about everything but what we were supposed to talk about. I love it. And Devin Lorette, thank you for insisting, pushing Don's name my way. What a great opportunity. Hobart, do you want to say anything before I make the end of the stream?

Don, awesome to meet you. Likewise, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope I was a good guest. You were a great guest. Hobart just doubled his word count for the show just now. That's what happens when you listen, Savan, you know? I have no idea what you're talking about. What? What'd you say? Thank you, guys. Thank you so much.