Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0124_ STORY INSPIRE: A Conversation That Could Change Your Life

Transcript

#0124_ STORY INSPIRE: A Conversation That Could Change Your Life · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  by night, all day. You're all suited up. You got
• 0:13
  a wild card boxing hat on, a Bruce Lee shirt.
• 0:16
  Come on, son.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Hey, we got the yellow and thing going on.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got it all going on. What's happening? Great
• 0:24
  to see you.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Man, things are really well. This thing is a little loud.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Is it? On that thing there, there's a little... volume knob.
• 0:32
  You can turn that sucker knob. There it is. Last
• 0:34
  time I saw you was at Terry Black's Barbecue. Yeah, yeah.
• 0:37
  Random run-in.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was crazy.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: That was crazy.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I was thinking about going there right after this.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, what?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Terry Black's? That place was no joke.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: That place rules. Yeah, man. Are you still in L.A.? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:50
  What's it like? It's cool, man. Is it? Yeah. You're
• 0:54
  the only person that said that.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: No, no.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, because, okay, I defend L.A. in a way
• 1:00
  where First of all, if you've got a handful of
• 1:03
  good people with you, you know, your family, then it's–
• 1:07
  So the fact that L.A. has all kinds of different things.
• 1:10
  You could be on a hiking trail in 20 minutes.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: You could be– Oh, geographically, it's amazing.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the weather, you can't– Oh, you can't beat it.
• 1:19
  So if you've got good people, good friends with you,
• 1:22
  then it's all good.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You just run by crooks. Yeah. It's a nice neighborhood
• 1:26
  run by the mob. It's run by the woke mob. But,
• 1:30
  I mean, geographically, you can't beat it. You could be
• 1:33
  at the ocean, and then you could be in the
• 1:35
  mountains in two hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: So, you know, that's– even if you don't partake, it's
• 1:41
  still cool.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: It still amps up the ante, really.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Like, the spot itself is magical.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: It is a magical place to live. Although– I am
• 1:52
  deeply concerned that that motherfucker is going to get hit
• 1:55
  with a big one soon.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It's about time, right?
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was reading this article about massive earthquakes in
• 2:03
  California and how often they're spread out and the possibility
• 2:07
  of one of them happening within the next decade. It's
• 2:09
  very high. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: You know, I try not to think about that.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I try not to think about it, too. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: But, you know, now there's– you can– I think they
• 2:21
  have better detection of that stuff now, too. It's better.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They can't detect. Do
• 2:30
  you remember what happened in Italy? A couple guys got
• 2:33
  arrested and went to jail. They were seismologists because the
• 2:39
  country didn't understand the ability to detect it. They had
• 2:43
  a big earthquake and a bunch of people died. And
• 2:45
  so they blamed these geologists or seismologists. They wound up
• 2:50
  winning in court on appeal because eventually the science was revealed. Like, hey,
• 2:55
  there's no fucking way you can really tell. But they
• 2:58
  hung these guys out. They blamed these guys on not
• 3:00
  being able to detect it. Man.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, just think about it. The last crazy
• 3:07
  ones were 72 and then 94.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I think it was 93. I moved to L.A. right
• 3:09
  after the last big one.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I saw... One of the sections of the highway that
• 3:17
  had collapsed on the other one. I remember driving by going,
• 3:20
  fuck this place.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I was in the middle of that one. I just,
• 3:23
  I came into LA.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, you were there?
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Dude, I don't even like to tell the story about
• 3:28
  what happened during that 94 earthquake.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Because it sounds like bullshit. But literally, I got up,
• 3:37
  ran out of my house, my apartment at the time,
• 3:41
  jumped off the balcony and.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Watched it happen. You watched the house collapse?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I watched the earthquake happen from outside. Oh. It's like
• 3:52
  no bullshit.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Everybody.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: So I thought, oh, shit, I overreacted. I had a
• 3:57
  bad dream. I lived on the first floor of this
• 4:01
  apartment building. All I know is I wake up. I'm
• 4:06
  off balance, catching my balance in the parking lot.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: And like, oh, shoot, I got to find the guard
• 4:13
  to get me back in the apartment building.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, you know, like I've lost my mind
• 4:20
  or something. The next thing you know, everything shakes and the.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Lights go out.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Just everything gets black. And so I'm backing, I retreat
• 4:32
  back because I'm thinking the building is going to fall
• 4:34
  on me. And I'm like, wait a minute. Then I
• 4:39
  got the story from everybody else that experienced it. They
• 4:45
  said that the first thing that happened was the building
• 4:50
  shook and the lights went out. Well, I was outside
• 4:53
  watching that. So I'm outside when it happened like some.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Kind of canine. So what made you jump over the—
• 5:02
  I don't know. You had a feeling? Dude. Or did
• 5:05
  you have like the first— was it the first rumbles?
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I thought it was— I thought I reacted to the like
• 5:12
  some kind of an aftershock or some kind of rumble. No,
• 5:15
  because the girl that was with me.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: You left her in the apartment? Dude.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: All she knows is that you jumped up and you
• 5:28
  ran out of the house.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And I heard.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: The door slide. And the next thing you know, everything shook.
• 5:37
  She was trapped in there because there was a closet
• 5:42
  door that trapped her. trapped her in the hallway. So
• 5:47
  when I got back in the place, me and a
• 5:49
  friend had to try to pry the door open because
• 5:52
  she couldn't get out. But I ran out of that
• 5:55
  place before the earthquake actually happened.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: How weird.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: You got good instincts.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the hell that was.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: It has to be.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I don't even like telling that story because it sounds
• 6:07
  like bullshit. Because it really happened that way because it
• 6:13
  Then the guard, I talked to the guard. I'm like, hey,
• 6:15
  when did the lights go out? Oh, it shook and
• 6:17
  the lights went out. I'm like, I'm watching that happen.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: So you felt it happen before it happened.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Some kind of weird way.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I bet humans have that. Animals definitely have that.
• 6:29
  They talk about Thailand, how they had that tsunami and
• 6:32
  all the animals ran up to the highest point of
• 6:34
  the island. They all just took off. It's like they
• 6:38
  just knew instinctively.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Nothing like that has ever happened afterwards.
• 6:44
  But I got to say, I've been lucky over the years.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're a dude who's tuned in. You're tuned
• 6:50
  into your body. You're tuned into your environment. You're not
• 6:53
  going to get caught slipping. Like, you probably felt something
• 6:57
  and your spidey sense went off.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of have been like that growing up. Like,
• 7:07
  I've been on my own since I was 14.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Been through crazy shit that you normally would see on movies.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: And that's the type of shit that gives you those
• 7:15
  kind of instincts. But, yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: And I was always the one that said, hey, let's leave.
• 7:19
  Let's get out of here. And then, hey, man, there
• 7:22
  was a shootout that just happened right after you left.
• 7:25
  Or I could detect, like, the predators.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: So I grew up kind of that way. Right.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Because you have to survive on that. With nobody looking
• 7:33
  out for you. Yeah. Nobody was looking out for you.
• 7:35
  You had to look out for yourself. Well, yeah.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was... I was like always the junior
• 7:41
  of the group a lot of times because, like I said,
• 7:44
  I've been on my own since I was 14. I
• 7:45
  haven't grown an inch since I was 13, 14. I
• 7:48
  looked like a grown-ass man, right? I was fighting in
• 7:51
  tournaments at 15 against, you know, grown men, like, you know,
• 7:57
  fighting heavyweight at that time. But I was always hanging
• 8:03
  with older people, kind of, you know, Kind of like
• 8:08
  I got away with kind of living as an adult
• 8:12
  early on. Did you work? Yeah, well, I was teaching
• 8:17
  a karate class. What was happening, see, I used to
• 8:24
  hang out at this community center in the hood. At
• 8:26
  this time, I moved from Brooklyn to Bridgeport, Connecticut, right?
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Right. Bridgeport's a tough name.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we had the top murder rate per capita, man.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Bridgeport's rough.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah. So I was constantly, I mean, there's
• 8:44
  a community center that was like my haven. And I
• 8:48
  would go practice with me and my other karate nuts,
• 8:52
  you know. And so I'd be in the paper for
• 8:56
  winning heavyweight, you know, competitions or whatever. And so the
• 9:01
  people that was running the community center said, why don't
• 9:04
  you teach a class? They thought I was an adult.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's hilarious.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: And so I was teaching like a, you know, like
• 9:11
  kind of like just under the table. I was getting
• 9:13
  paid under the table basically. But I had like close
• 9:16
  to 200 students early on, like when I'm 15, 16.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's crazy.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, it was kind of, kind of
• 9:22
  a trip that, you know, which is one of the
• 9:25
  reasons why I was a father at 15, you know,
• 9:28
  because I had one of my, student's older sister you
• 9:33
  know was like had a crush on her her on
• 9:38
  his uh instructor but i was kind of living the
• 9:42
  life of a grown-up like early on and so you
• 9:46
  know there's there's a faction of people in bridgeport who
• 9:49
  think i'm satan i guess because they think that i'm
• 9:51
  probably in my 70s now.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: You're a vampire.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, so there's some people I had to admit, like, no,
• 10:01
  I wasn't the age you thought I was back then.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's crazy.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, so yeah, one of the things
• 10:09
  I'm really grateful for is growing up that early and
• 10:13
  having to use my instincts. And being that, you know,
• 10:17
  street fighting and fighting was like my favorite thing to do, actually.
• 10:22
  And so when I got into the martial arts deeper
• 10:25
  and everything else, you know, I just really dug into
• 10:31
  it and wanted to learn style after style and this,
• 10:34
  you know, everything. I was just a martial art nerd
• 10:38
  for it. But I also liked the realistic portion of it.
• 10:45
  Even though I was doing other styles like wushu and
• 10:48
  everything else. But, you know, it was actually my haven.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Somewhere Eddie Bravo has to find this video. There's a
• 10:56
  video of us working out together at Legends where we
• 11:00
  were talking about hopping sidekicks and different types of sidekicks.
• 11:04
  There was a bag that we had that had a
• 11:06
  shitty chain. But regardless, you threw a hopping sidekick on
• 11:10
  that chain, and the chain snapped and went flying. The
• 11:14
  bag went flying. And Eddie Bravo was like, what the fuck?
• 11:17
  It's a funny video, man. I know Eddie has it somewhere.
• 11:20
  I'll text him after this and try to see if
• 11:23
  he can put it up on his Instagram or something. Yeah, man.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: We were training when it wasn't even popular. I see
• 11:30
  you in the gym all the time.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: All the time, man. And you were– just think about this.
• 11:36
  Do you know it was 29 years ago the last
• 11:39
  time you interviewed me?
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: 29 years ago.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: That Bob Costa show. He took a week off and
• 11:47
  I guest hosted it.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: For a week.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: And at that time you were already training with Maurice Smith.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. Maurice was one of the guests.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Right. You were training– because I ended up training with
• 11:57
  Maurice Smith every time I'd go to Seattle. You know,
• 12:00
  we trained together. So, you know, we're, like, part of this, like,
• 12:04
  kind of karate, martial art nerd culture. Yeah. When it
• 12:07
  wasn't even popular.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: No.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I used to see you all the time. You know,
• 12:11
  you and, you know, doing jujitsu, Carl Parisian and all
• 12:16
  these guys, legends. There was another place. We had, there
• 12:20
  was legends and there was another place.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: The Bomb Squad?
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: The Bomb Squad was the first place that Eddie taught at.
• 12:25
  And then that place closed down. Then we went to legends. Legends, yeah.
• 12:28
  And then we moved to the other legends that was
• 12:31
  like in more East L.A. And then Eddie started opening
• 12:36
  up his own place in downtown. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: And that's where I would train with Josh Barnett at
• 12:41
  that place quite a bit.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, man. The old days. Yes, man. Yeah.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: And who would be coming through? Because I was training
• 12:51
  Bob Sapp at one time. And then that's how I
• 12:55
  got Frankie Lyles connected into that.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: And so I remember Frankie.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Frankie used to be at the bomb squad first. Right.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Frankie was like my best friend in the world. And
• 13:05
  he was, you know, he was super middleweight champion in
• 13:07
  the world. That's who got me deeply into boxing. And
• 13:11
  so I would always be at his training camps. And,
• 13:13
  you know, I got to train with like Tommy Hearns
• 13:18
  and all these amazing people like. Sugar Ray and all
• 13:22
  these guys, man.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Frankie's a great boxing coach. Yeah. He, one of the
• 13:26
  most technicals, he's one of the most technical guys I've
• 13:28
  ever worked with. Like he analyzes every aspect of your jab.
• 13:32
  He's pulling in your elbow. He's tightening this. He's moving
• 13:35
  you here. He's like, like he's showing all the like
• 13:38
  various basic little tiny details that make all the difference
• 13:42
  in the world.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. That, that he was my, my, you know,
• 13:46
  personal boxing coach. You know, I would train with him, uh, uh,
• 13:51
  Joe Goosen early on. But Frankie, I mean, we really
• 13:58
  kind of combined a lot of things. Because I started
• 14:01
  kind of teaching him things with the jab, like the
• 14:05
  un-telegraph type of stuff. And he started applying that. And
• 14:09
  he would bring me into stuff and have me show
• 14:13
  people like Sugar Ray, like, Mike, explain this jab. And
• 14:17
  I'm like, what? I'm explaining this to Sugar Ray?
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: This feels ridiculous, right?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: But it was like this combination because, like, I don't know.
• 14:27
  I'm very analytical, and I love technique, you know. And
• 14:32
  so I would just try to break things down, and
• 14:34
  my whole thing was always to pressure test things, you know.
• 14:38
  So if I could develop a tool or a skill,
• 14:42
  and you can't stop it even if I tell you
• 14:45
  what I'm doing, then it's a really good technique. Then
• 14:49
  it's legit.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing about no telegraph at all, it's so
• 14:55
  much more effective than a harder strike with a telegraph. Oh, God, yeah.
• 14:58
  Because it lands. Yeah. But it's so difficult to teach
• 15:00
  people that because everybody wants to hit everybody as hard
• 15:02
  as they can.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Especially if you have power. Your instinct is to fucking
• 15:07
  load up on everything. I remember I first saw you
• 15:10
  teaching that to Kimbo Slice. Oh, yeah, yeah. You were
• 15:12
  on a movie set. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Because Kimbo, oh, man, what a great guy. What a
• 15:17
  great guy he was. What a wonderful guy. So that's
• 15:19
  one thing about fighting. You can't hide your nature. You
• 15:23
  know what I mean? People see who you are. And
• 15:25
  he was a wonderful human being. But like a lot
• 15:30
  of people, almost like street basketball as opposed to professional,
• 15:37
  you miss out on certain techniques that you need when
• 15:40
  you're trying to step up.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: And so, like, well, Kimbo, you know, he would, like
• 15:46
  a lot of people, he would kind of telegraph. And
• 15:49
  so when we were shooting the movie, uh, you know,
• 15:54
  and I basically, we had a cameraman that did not
• 15:58
  really know how to shoot stuff. So I just had
• 16:00
  to do everything on screen. And so I would, I would,
• 16:05
  I just wanted to make everything very realistic. And so,
• 16:08
  so Kimbo had this rubber knife and I was like,
• 16:11
  try your best to touch me with the rubber knife.
• 16:15
  And so he would try, but before, But as soon
• 16:19
  as he would move, there'd be a little bit of
• 16:21
  an indication that I'd see. And then I throw the
• 16:24
  punch and it would go really close to him and
• 16:27
  I'd have him react to that. But he was going,
• 16:29
  wait a minute, how are you hitting me before I
• 16:31
  can get this knife out? And then I told him,
• 16:34
  you know, I'll show you what that is later. Because,
• 16:37
  you know, kind of like not to be real nerdish
• 16:39
  about it, but like why are like 50 and 60-year-old
• 16:45
  trainers meeting people people's hands, like a 20-year-old guy's or
• 16:50
  contender's hands like this. You see the person with the
• 16:53
  pad moving just as much as the other guy because
• 16:57
  there's an indication. They do this beforehand. They're always kind
• 17:03
  of flexing and going in reverse before they go forward.
• 17:07
  So just for over years, I wouldn't do that, and
• 17:12
  I would exploit that, you know?
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: So.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like a cheat code that I'm like, hell,
• 17:18
  what the hell am I going to do with it?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I'm an actor.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: So my thing is, just like yourself, when I see
• 17:24
  you with George St. Pierre and how we're always in
• 17:28
  the gym, we're kind of collaborating. It's about just getting better.
• 17:35
  No ego or anything else like that. It's just like, hey, man,
• 17:38
  we're kind of jamming on technique and getting better.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Well, especially if you want it as someone who has
• 17:46
  a different style. Yeah. Because there's always something in different
• 17:49
  styles that you could take out of it. Absolutely. There's
• 17:52
  always something. And we're seeing that now. There's all these
• 17:55
  different martial artists that are entering into MMA that are
• 17:58
  having these different techniques that people haven't seen before. And
• 18:02
  there's a lot of them that people dismiss that you're
• 18:04
  finding are very effective, especially if you don't know how
• 18:08
  to do them. You don't know what they are. So
• 18:10
  you don't, you have like a database in your mind
• 18:13
  of movements. Like, I'm sure you see one of the
• 18:16
  guys loading up on a spin.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Everybody sees that. But if you don't know that, you
• 18:20
  don't see it. Right.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And if you if you were loading up, then you're
• 18:25
  not going to you're not going to capitalize on it.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Because you don't you know, you're taking there's a millisecond
• 18:31
  that you're taking because your movement is not efficient.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Threat Locker. Here's
• 18:37
  the truth. Reacting to cyber attacks isn't enough. You need
• 18:41
  control from the start. That's where ThreatLocker comes in. With
• 18:46
  zero trust, you only allow what you need, blocking everything
• 18:51
  else by default. You're in control. What runs, when, where,
• 18:56
  and how. Ransomware, zero-day exploits. Block them before they can execute.
• 19:02
  And now with AI now increasing the speed and volume
• 19:06
  of attacks, a fast response isn't fast enough. Visit ThreatLocker.com
• 19:13
  slash JRE to learn more. There's a move that still
• 19:17
  to this day people aren't doing effectively when someone loads
• 19:20
  up because you can see the load up and it's
• 19:22
  just a jam. It's just lifting your foot up and
• 19:24
  putting it on the hips. And it's super effective in
• 19:27
  Taekwondo because everybody's fast. Everybody's trying to do that technique.
• 19:31
  But that jam of just lifting your foot up and
• 19:33
  just not trying to hit them hard, just putting that
• 19:35
  foot on the hip, it fucks people up. And I
• 19:38
  don't see anybody using that right now.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I tell you, man, as in life, there's always something
• 19:44
  that you can gain. People want to, I don't know,
• 19:47
  people are in their own ego. a lot of times. But, like,
• 19:51
  even Wushu, me, it's hard as hell for me doing
• 19:56
  Wushu against guys half my size. It's not against, but
• 20:00
  it's a performance thing.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: But if I can do all, if I can go
• 20:05
  to these very.
• 20:09
  Hard techniques of, like, I got to get down to
• 20:12
  the floor and I got to... Body mastery. Yeah, at
• 20:16
  my size.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Well, then I'm better. So if I want to kick
• 20:20
  you in the eyebrow, I can. Right. Because it's about,
• 20:24
  you know... having my body do what my mind's telling
• 20:28
  it to right and so but of course people want
• 20:30
  to dismiss it because oh that ain't real you can't
• 20:32
  use it yeah good yeah just like ballet is hard
• 20:35
  as hell you can't use that either but anybody any
• 20:39
  heavyweight who put themselves through ballet Would be a better fighter.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: 100%. Look at Lomachenko. Yeah. His dad taught him Ukrainian dance.
• 20:48
  Lomachenko's dad pulled him out of boxing for two years
• 20:51
  when he was young. Yeah. And said, you're just going
• 20:53
  to do Ukrainian dance. Yeah. He's like, what the fuck
• 20:55
  am I doing? But look at that guy's footwork. Exactly. Exactly.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: So it's just that as in life, man, I don't
• 21:02
  look at anything from one group and just discard any
• 21:06
  other stuff.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I used to when I was young.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: When I was young, I was pretty arrogant about certain things.
• 21:11
  I thought forms were stupid. All I wanted to do
• 21:13
  was spar and hit the bag.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Then as I got older, I realized, oh, there's a
• 21:17
  lot of wisdom in all this shit. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: But that's– like I say, I try to apply that
• 21:22
  to life, period. You know, I never look at anything
• 21:25
  from one perspective. I mean, I grew up in the
• 21:28
  hood and I'm– you know, my favorite band is freaking,
• 21:32
  you know, the Eagles.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, like, you know, and– I'm listening to Jody
• 21:39
  Mitchell and people.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Are like, what are you doing listening? I'm like, what
• 21:42
  the fuck?
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: This is my life, man.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Fuck you. You hear these lyrics?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: You hear Jody Mitchell's lyrics, man?
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: What the fuck? That's all for me, too.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just as passionate about Aerosmith as I
• 21:56
  am about the Isley Brothers. But I've never looked at
• 22:01
  life as I have to think in this parameter. You know,
• 22:06
  I've got to be marginalized. That's just, man, come on.
• 22:09
  It's such a waste of life.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: It's all for you, man.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: With the martial arts and everything else, I look at
• 22:16
  every martial art. Just like everything else, everything has something
• 22:20
  to contribute.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Just like all people have something to contribute. Even an idiot,
• 22:25
  you can learn from an idiot.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You can. You can. A lot of idiots say wise
• 22:29
  things occasionally.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because everybody's going to have a quotient of... of legitimacy,
• 22:38
  you know, maybe it may be 20% as a, and
• 22:40
  they don't see the 80%.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: But until you acknowledge that 20%, they're not going to
• 22:44
  hear you. Right.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: So that's the thing. It's like, man, we're on this planet.
• 22:49
  And one of the things I, man, I, I, I
• 22:51
  don't envy a whole lot of people, but I do, dude,
• 22:53
  I do envy you because you get to expand your world.
• 22:58
  You talk to so many interesting people and that's what
• 23:02
  a great thing. What a great thing to just have
• 23:06
  all these type of perspectives and all that coming through.
• 23:10
  And I got to say, man, I'm super proud of
• 23:12
  you because I know you as Joe from the gym
• 23:14
  and look what you've.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Done, man. Thank you.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Man, it's like that's a shot in the arm because
• 23:19
  it's like people that you like and seeing them prosper,
• 23:23
  that's cool as shit.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've learned a lot, man. And I didn't expect to.
• 23:27
  When we first started doing this, it was just for fun.
• 23:30
  We'd just get together with our friends.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: But you knew what you wanted to do, man. You
• 23:33
  were pretty damn clear. Do you remember this? You remember
• 23:37
  me coming to, I think it was the Ice House?
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: In Pasadena? No, no, no. Oh, shoot.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It wasn't Ice House. It was in Orange County. Comedy
• 23:46
  Magic Club, maybe? I came to see you perform, and
• 23:48
  I offered you— The role in Blood and Bone. Do
• 23:54
  you remember that at all?
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I do. Yeah. Yeah, I do now. Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Because Blood and Bone, which is like actually Sony's most
• 24:03
  successful non-theatrical, that was basically a kind of reimagining of
• 24:11
  hard times with Charles Bronson and James Colburn. And yes, well,
• 24:18
  that role was basically that I was offering you was
• 24:21
  the James Colburn role. Right. And but you were so
• 24:24
  you was dead. I don't want to do this acting stuff.
• 24:28
  I want to do I want to focus on what
• 24:30
  I you know, your interest, which was, you know, you
• 24:33
  stand up and you you're getting together. I mean, I
• 24:36
  know you and Eddie were doing like kind of the
• 24:39
  early podcast type of stuff and whatever. And I'm like, man,
• 24:43
  you know, you really kind of knew what you wanted
• 24:45
  to do.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Well, the thing about acting is, I mean, I admire it,
• 24:49
  especially good acting, but it takes a lot of time
• 24:52
  out of your day. It's a 16-hour day. It's a
• 24:55
  long day, and it will take away from other things
• 25:00
  you do. And I saw that with a lot of
• 25:02
  comics that they started doing acting, and it would take
• 25:04
  away from their act because they really couldn't go and
• 25:07
  do sets every night. They couldn't really polish their material.
• 25:10
  You could see stuff getting a little clunkier.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: You got to focus. You got to find the things
• 25:16
  you enjoy and focus on them.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I say I'm so proud of just
• 25:21
  being there and seeing what you did. You being a
• 25:26
  part of the UFC when it was nothing promised. You
• 25:29
  know what I mean?
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Not only was it not promised, man. People looked at
• 25:32
  you like you were doing like snuff films or something.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: They looked at you like– I remember the early days, man.
• 25:38
  Dana White always says this. People would talk to you
• 25:39
  like you were doing porn or something.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Like I was on news radio, the sitcom on NBC,
• 25:45
  and I was doing commentary where I was doing post-fight
• 25:47
  interviews for the UFC. And they were like, why are
• 25:50
  you doing this? Why are you flying to Alabama and
• 25:53
  doing cage fights?
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: See, this is what movies are. Good movies are made
• 25:57
  of shit like this. You know, and somebody just out
• 26:01
  of their spirit doing what they want to do with
• 26:04
  no promise of anything and then accomplishing something.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: So, you know, kudos, man. Seriously, man. Well, for me,
• 26:12
  and I'm sure for you as well, when we were young,
• 26:14
  there was always a question, what is the best style?
• 26:16
  Is it Kyokushin? Is it Judo? Is it Kung Fu?
• 26:20
  What is it? What's the best style? And no one
• 26:22
  really knew. I mean, Benny the Jet fought in a
• 26:24
  bunch of those no-rules fights early on, but they never
• 26:28
  really took off. There wasn't a lot of those. And
• 26:31
  Benny was obviously a very special fighter.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. He was one of my teachers, too.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I trained at his gym. He was on
• 26:39
  the podcast with Blinky Rodriguez recently, and I told them,
• 26:43
  I said, when I came to L.A., there was two
• 26:45
  places I had to go. I had to go to
• 26:46
  the Comedy Store and I had to go to the
• 26:47
  Jet Center. I had to go to the Jet Center.
• 26:49
  And I was there in 94 right before it went under.
• 26:53
  Because the earthquake damaged the roof. Exactly. And so when
• 26:57
  the rainy season came.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It was on Friar Street, right?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: It was on Friar Street.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Yep, yep, yep.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Right down from the Goossens.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, right down. Yeah. And that was an honor, man,
• 27:06
  to be able to train in that gym. Oh, yeah.
• 27:07
  That was incredible. It was an incredible place. Oh, yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I used to be there.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, man.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Those were some great times. Because, I mean, I connect
• 27:16
  with Benny because when I was in Bridgeport, my instructor,
• 27:21
  Manny Malisi— went to California and started training with Benny. Oh, wow.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Early on.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: So he put that on the map about coming to
• 27:30
  the Mecca and training with Benny.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It was the Mecca for kickboxing in the, especially in
• 27:34
  the nineties. That was the Mecca. You had to go
• 27:36
  to the jet center.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: That was, so we were always wondering like, what is
• 27:41
  the style? What's the best style? And then the UFC
• 27:44
  came along and I'm like, Oh my God, they did it.
• 27:47
  They did it. They figured it out. They put it
• 27:48
  all together. And for a while, it was jiu-jitsu because
• 27:51
  nobody understood jiu-jitsu. And Hoyce Gracie was just running shit.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: You know how that was kind of set up a
• 27:57
  little bit.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: It was a little set up.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, look, he had some challenges. Like, Ken
• 28:01
  Shamrock was a beast. Oh, yeah. He had some really
• 28:04
  good fighters he was facing against. Kimbo Slice. I mean,
• 28:06
  excuse me, not Kimbo Slice.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Not Kimo.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Kimo. Sorry. Kimo was fucking huge.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: He was a big dude, but, you know, he didn't really.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it was a 100-pound advantage. Yeah. He had 100
• 28:19
  pounds over Hoist.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: The Gracies were smart. They were very smart at that
• 28:23
  time in knowing, you know, the right people to kind
• 28:26
  of pick at that time. Because, you know, there was
• 28:28
  some killers out there.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: There were some killers out there. Yeah. They definitely set
• 28:32
  it up, especially the early ones. But it's also, it's like,
• 28:36
  you know, that was, it was good for us to
• 28:39
  see a guy like Hoyce who wasn't jacked. He was
• 28:43
  a slender guy who weighed 175 pounds and he was
• 28:46
  strangling everybody and armbarring everybody. It was wild to see
• 28:50
  when he beat Dan Severin. Dan Severin was 260 pounds
• 28:53
  and Hoist tapped him off his back with a triangle.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Man, what a story. That put jujitsu on the map.
• 29:00
  On the map, big time. But, you know, one thing
• 29:02
  that always broke my heart is people never knew about Hickson.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Right. Oh, my God. I know. That dude.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That cat was like, I always considered him like
• 29:13
  pound for pound the best because he had this, not only,
• 29:18
  you know, jujitsu skills, but just his Yeah. And he
• 29:23
  was almost like, you know, hypnotic.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? And just no waste of energy.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: None. Just unbelievable.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: What an amazing person to watch. I would encourage anybody
• 29:35
  to pull up his fight. Talk about David versus Goliath stuff.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Another great example of cross-training, too, because Hickson
• 29:42
  got really into yoga. And everybody's like, what the fuck
• 29:45
  are you doing yoga? Like, yoga's for girls, right? Hickson
• 29:49
  got really into yoga and got super flexible and really
• 29:53
  good at controlling his breathing.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And never got tired.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you saw him in the Hulk?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's something, man. Talk about a legend.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, a real legend.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man. Well, Hickson, there's a video of him, and
• 30:10
  he did this multiple times, where he would go to
• 30:12
  these gyms and he would teach a seminar, like a
• 30:17
  long seminar, and then roll with all the black belts. Yeah.
• 30:20
  And just tap them one after the other. World champions.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Guys that just didn't understand what was going on. Like,
• 30:27
  how is this happening? Oh, yeah. Like, Paulo Filho, when
• 30:30
  he was a WEC world champion, and he had won
• 30:34
  the Mundials, I believe. He had won multiple jiu-jitsu championships.
• 30:39
  And he trained with Hickson, and he's like, man, it's true.
• 30:42
  He goes, I can't believe it. He goes, that guy
• 30:44
  treated me like I didn't even belong in there. It
• 30:46
  was crazy. And Hickson, by that time, was probably like 40.
• 30:51
  You know, and it's still just dominating guys on the
• 30:54
  mat and effortless. It wasn't strength. It was, it was
• 30:57
  just pure technique.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And basics and just mastering of basics.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Basics. It was like, there's none of the,
• 31:05
  no Barambolos and no X guard, nothing crazy. Everything he
• 31:10
  did is like jujitsu 101, but to a masterful, masterful degree. Yeah.
• 31:18
  It was incredible.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: And telling people that, you know, Because everybody knows Hoist.
• 31:21
  And I'm like, you guys don't know who his big
• 31:24
  brother is.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: He would openly say that my brother is 10 times
• 31:28
  better than me. Right. Yeah.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: So, you know, that really put. And I love jujitsu
• 31:33
  because it's held up the tradition that martial arts, so
• 31:39
  much karate lost because it became a business. And people
• 31:43
  would just, you know, put their time in and. pay
• 31:46
  for their black belt.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: And it just watered it down.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: And all these people running around saying that they're master
• 31:52
  this and, you know, grand whatever and all these made
• 31:56
  up things. And it's like, oh yeah, the guy's a
• 31:59
  master in an Asian martial art. That's an English word.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? How did master sneak its
• 32:08
  way into it? But anyway, but, you know, male ego.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Well, the thing about martial arts other than jujitsu is
• 32:16
  when you're sparring, it's very controlled. Like a lot of
• 32:19
  karate sparring is very controlled. A lot of Taekwondo sparring
• 32:22
  is very controlled. But in jujitsu, the beautiful thing about
• 32:25
  grappling is you know how good everybody is because they
• 32:29
  all spar. They're all rolling with each other. And they
• 32:32
  essentially go in full blast until the tap.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And so there's no hiding. There's no hiding your skill.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love what Eddie Bravo used to say. Basically,
• 32:42
  when you won.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I killed you. Yeah, yeah. I just killed you. Yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: So that's like, wow, that is a trip because it's
• 32:49
  like it actually works out that way.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. If he gets you in a triangle and
• 32:54
  you tap, it's because you were about to go to sleep.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And once you're asleep, you could just stomp your head
• 32:59
  into a pancake. Yeah, yeah.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: You're done.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just hold on to that triangle and then you
• 33:03
  never wake up.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what a humbling thing. Yeah.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Very humbling. Yeah. And what's really humbling is how
• 33:09
  quickly someone could do it to you when you don't
• 33:11
  know what you're doing. Like that was shocking to me
• 33:14
  because I had all this martial arts experience and I
• 33:16
  first started training. I was like, what's someone going to
• 33:19
  do to me? I wrestled in high school. I'm strong.
• 33:21
  I'm fast. I know how to fight. I just got
• 33:23
  manhandled over and over and over again.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. Yeah.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: See, but kudos because a lot of people, because if
• 33:32
  you've got an egotistical thing going on. And you get
• 33:36
  your little, I don't know, your comfort because you got
• 33:41
  your black belt and all that kind of stuff. That
• 33:43
  means jack nothing. You know, everybody I know who continues
• 33:48
  and really to learn real fighting knows when you had
• 33:53
  a boxer beat the hell out of you and you go, oh, wait,
• 33:56
  there's a lot of this stuff I got to toss
• 33:58
  out the window.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Because, I mean, I never forget, like, times where, you know, like,
• 34:04
  A wrestler gets to me or a boxer, like, pieces
• 34:07
  me up, like, early on. I'm like, no, I got
• 34:10
  to learn this.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I went through several of those. I went through one
• 34:15
  of them in high school because I had a friend
• 34:17
  in high school that was a wrestler. And I didn't
• 34:20
  think anything of wrestling. I'm like, that's not even a
• 34:22
  martial art thing. And then we wrestled on the grass
• 34:25
  one day, and he just took me down at will.
• 34:26
  I was like, this is ridiculous. He was pinning me down.
• 34:30
  I couldn't move. I couldn't get up. I'm like, this
• 34:32
  is stunning. I thought I'm strong. I thought I could move.
• 34:37
  I thought I'll be able to get out of the way. No,
• 34:40
  I had no chance. And he wasn't even a great wrestler.
• 34:43
  He was just a decent wrestler. And he just humbled
• 34:46
  me over and over and over again. So then I
• 34:47
  started wrestling. And then when I got into Taekwondo, I thought,
• 34:51
  I'm really good at Taekwondo. I was competing on a
• 34:53
  national level. I won the state championships four years in
• 34:56
  a row. I was fucking people up. And then I
• 34:58
  remember the first time I boxed with a really good
• 35:02
  amateur boxer. I was like, oh, Lord. And this kid
• 35:05
  was like 18 years old. Yeah. And he went on–
• 35:09
  his name is Dana Rosenblatt. He went on to become
• 35:12
  New England middleweight champion. He beat Vinny Pazienza. Oh, shoot. Okay.
• 35:17
  He beat Howard Davis Jr. as a professional. He was
• 35:19
  a really good boxer. Wow. Yeah, he had to be.
• 35:22
  But he was kickboxing at the time and I was
• 35:24
  going to get into kickboxing. And so I was sparring
• 35:27
  with him. But when I was boxing with him, I
• 35:28
  was just getting lit up. I was like, oh. And
• 35:31
  then also when we're kickboxing, the moment he got close
• 35:34
  to me, I was in trouble.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, no. Like Taekwondo had too many flaws.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: The hand techniques. So I had gone through that. And
• 35:42
  so then I thought, OK, well, now I understand kickboxing.
• 35:45
  Then I met a dude who went to Thailand a
• 35:47
  bunch of times and was training Muay Thai and fighting
• 35:49
  over there. And then I started learning leg kicks. I'm like, well, oh,
• 35:52
  good Lord. Now all they have to do is kick
• 35:54
  my legs? I didn't even think of that. And then
• 35:58
  I started really paying attention to WKA fights, like the
• 36:02
  old Dennis Alexio days, Don the Dragon Wilson.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Leg kicks. Leg kicks are everything. Oh, my goodness. And
• 36:08
  then I'm like, okay, well, now I got a solid foundation.
• 36:11
  I understand how to fight. And then I started getting jiu-jitsu. Like, oh, no.
• 36:15
  Back to square one. I'm getting raped. I was just
• 36:18
  getting mauled on the mats. But I'd been through that
• 36:23
  so many times and restarted so many times. I was like, well,
• 36:26
  it's time to learn this now.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's what I'm saying is everything has something to
• 36:31
  teach you. And, you know, even though there's that. There's
• 36:35
  a martial art, there's a fantasy world, which is, I
• 36:38
  look at it as hilarious. You know, there's this, you know, I.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Don't know.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: There's sometimes, I would say it like this. Like, with
• 36:48
  martial arts, it's the Dunning-Kruger effect in the largest way possible.
• 36:53
  Because everybody out there has an opinion of martial arts,
• 36:57
  though very few people really know what it is. You know,
• 37:00
  they want to look at, you know, the movies and everything,
• 37:03
  and they really want to believe that. They want to
• 37:05
  believe that this guy who, you know, kicks in the
• 37:09
  air and all that kind of stuff will be able
• 37:11
  to beat a champion. And in a way, hey, I
• 37:15
  benefit from that to some degree because they, you know,
• 37:18
  they think that about me. But, you know, even though
• 37:22
  I'm comfortable fighting and I love to, I mean, I
• 37:25
  just love, you know, fighting against anybody, you know, but.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Well, you've had actual competition experience, like a lot of
• 37:31
  competition experience.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but my best experience is is with, like, I
• 37:37
  got the chance to train against champions at their place,
• 37:42
  you know, when they're at their best. And it's not
• 37:44
  an ego thing. It's just, like, I love to be
• 37:48
  able to test myself. And, I mean, because I'm my
• 37:52
  biggest competition. And so that whole thing about just what
• 37:57
  the bow means to me is, like, thank you for
• 38:00
  making me better by providing me an obstacle. And, and
• 38:05
  the higher the, you know, the better the person, the
• 38:08
  better I can become.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: And so I loved it. So I, you know, for
• 38:13
  years I'm in there with Gokhan Saki and, you know,
• 38:17
  Maurice Smiths and, you know, who, you know, you name it. I, I, there's,
• 38:23
  I've gotten, I consider myself one of the luckiest like
• 38:26
  martial artists on the planet because I get to train
• 38:29
  with so many people. Sometimes, you know, at my house and,
• 38:33
  you know, I've got all these, you know, Former champions
• 38:36
  training in Rampage when he was champion. I go to
• 38:40
  his place. And, you know, and honestly, like the things
• 38:44
  I brag about is when I get humbled, you know,
• 38:47
  because that's when I learn something.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: My philosophy is I love to be wrong because every
• 38:52
  time I'm wrong, I learn something.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: And so like some of the best times for me
• 38:57
  is like I know when I was, you know, Michael
• 39:00
  Bisbing was getting ready to fight George St.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Pierre.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: And we were in Thailand. I was like, yeah, you know,
• 39:07
  let's mix it up. What were you doing in Thailand?
• 39:10
  We were doing a movie out there.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: But he had to train. He was getting ready for
• 39:15
  the George St.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Pierre fight.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I was like, yeah, let's do
• 39:19
  some rounds or whatever. And I got so winded the
• 39:24
  second round. I'm like, dude, just whoop my ass. I
• 39:28
  feel so stupid. like I'm embarrassed.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: This man was a cardio machine.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, he was.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: He was a cardio machine.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: I didn't expect that because we spent all day on
• 39:40
  a yacht. The day before, and he was drinking nonstop.
• 39:45
  I'm a non-drinker, right? I'm like, this guy's going to,
• 39:47
  you know, I'm going to probably take it easy on
• 39:50
  him today.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: He is one of the toughest motherfuckers that ever fought
• 39:54
  in the sport.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I swear.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: This is what I say about him. No matter what
• 39:58
  you think about watching his fights, you have to understand,
• 40:02
  not only did he accomplish so much, he accomplished a
• 40:05
  lot of it with one eye. One eye. One fucking eye.
• 40:08
  He had 11 fights in the UFC with a winning
• 40:11
  record with one eye.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Crazy. Yeah, that's, man. He would memorize the eye chart
• 40:20
  so that when they covered his eye, he could side
• 40:24
  it out like he could read it. Oh, yeah.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: How fucking crazy is that?
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: He's got a hell of a personal story, too. I
• 40:31
  was trying to encourage him to get that. Get that made.
• 40:34
  You know, like, honestly, man, I really look at these
• 40:39
  UFC fighters and, you know, the MMA guys as our
• 40:43
  modern-day heroes. They're our gladiators. And so whenever I have
• 40:48
  a chance, man, I always like to put them in
• 40:51
  movies and try to expose them to another kind of
• 40:54
  way of, you know, getting paid.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Especially afterwards because it breaks my heart that, They're heroes
• 41:03
  and then they get discarded sometimes by– not by the
• 41:08
  union that they're with but just by the fans. They're
• 41:11
  so fickle sometimes.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Yes. Well, the casuals, the people that aren't really martial artists.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: They dismiss a guy when they lose a few.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: I just did my third movie with Cowboy Cerrone. We
• 41:26
  just finished a little over a week ago.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's awesome.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's doing really good, man.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I love that dude. Yeah, yeah, me too. That's a
• 41:31
  guy that could really legitimately transition to become a movie star. Yes, yes.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: And he's got a lot more confidence. Like I said,
• 41:37
  the third movie, he did a Western with me, Outlaw
• 41:43
  Johnny Black. I wrote and directed it. But I had Cowboy.
• 41:48
  I had Randy Couture in it.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: And then Josh Barnett.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Randy's done an amazing job of transitioning. Oh, absolutely. The expendables,
• 41:57
  you know, and he's great at it. Yeah, yeah. He
• 42:00
  has a great personality, just very calm. Well, I remember
• 42:04
  one time he was fighting Tim Sylvia for the heavyweight title,
• 42:08
  and he came out there, and he had a smile
• 42:10
  on his face. He looked over at me, and he winked.
• 42:12
  I'm like, how is this motherfucker so relaxed before his fight?
• 42:16
  But he had an amazing perspective. He said to me,
• 42:21
  The people who love you will love you whether you
• 42:23
  win or lose. And he said, what's the worst thing
• 42:26
  that can happen? You lose? He goes, you've lost before. Yeah.
• 42:29
  It's no big deal.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I remember him spanking Tito.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: He got on top of him and spanked him when
• 42:34
  he had him down. Randy was an animal. Yeah.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, he had that heart attack while he
• 42:39
  was shooting my movie.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: And it came back to set like nothing.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: How did he have a fucking heart attack?
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: I don't remember how exactly.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: And I think he. He drove himself to the hospital. Yeah, man.
• 42:55
  Talk about an American hero, man.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: I mean. I was there for his first fight. Really? Yeah, 1997. Yeah,
• 43:01
  I was there for his very first fight. Oh, shoot.
• 43:02
  He fought this huge jack dude, took him down, mounted him,
• 43:06
  beat the shit out of him. It was wild. It
• 43:07
  was like that was the time where wrestlers had first
• 43:11
  started cracking this code. Right. There was this code of.
• 43:15
  there was a lot of people that thought like jujitsu
• 43:17
  was the only way. And then the elite wrestlers got
• 43:19
  in there. Oh God. The Mark Kers, the Mark Coleman's he's.
• 43:23
  And then Randy, a bunch of these guys got in
• 43:25
  there and then they realized like, well, if a guy
• 43:27
  can just take you down and beat the fuck out
• 43:28
  of you from the top, there's not a whole lot
• 43:30
  you could do about it. Right.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: And then we realized like, boy, that is the corner.
• 43:33
  That's the true cornerstone of martial arts. The ability to
• 43:36
  take a guy down.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: My goodness. I mean, what's harder than wrestling? I don't
• 43:40
  think there's anything.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: The hardest sport in the world. Yeah. The hardest sport
• 43:42
  in the world and the best sport in the world
• 43:44
  to get your kids into is at a young age
• 43:46
  because the discipline and the mental toughness that they get
• 43:49
  will carry them through for the rest of their life. Yep.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Tenacity, just the stick-to-itiveness, whatever you want to call it. Yeah,
• 43:57
  that's just like, Even high school wrestling.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I remember wrestling in high school and I had already
• 44:01
  done martial arts, but I was like, I've never trained
• 44:03
  that hard. I was like, I can't believe. And then
• 44:05
  it carried me over into my Taekwondo career because I
• 44:08
  realized like, oh, I'm leaving a lot on the table.
• 44:11
  Like I'm not training like these guys are. So I
• 44:13
  started running. I started adding all these things to my
• 44:16
  training that I wasn't doing before. I started doing a
• 44:18
  lot more calisthenics, a lot more different things. I'm leaving
• 44:21
  something on the table because we were not training in
• 44:23
  the gym and we were sparring hard. We were doing
• 44:25
  hard rounds. You'd get tired. but it was not the
• 44:28
  same as what we were doing in wrestling. No one
• 44:30
  trains harder than wrestlers.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: That anaerobic stuff, man. I got the wrestling bug when
• 44:37
  I was a senior in high school. And the football
• 44:41
  coach was a wrestler in college. And he challenged me.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I think we did.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: This two years in a row, my junior year and
• 44:52
  my senior year. At the end of the year, we wrestled.
• 44:56
  We'd just go, like, you know, he and I. Like
• 45:00
  I said, I was big for my age.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Were you playing football?
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: I was for a very short time, but I ended up...
• 45:08
  I wasn't designed for team sports.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Me neither.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: I ended up beating up the football coach.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, no. Yeah. Dude, like, I had.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: I had the worst temper than anybody I'd ever seen.
• 45:28
  I mean, I used to go in the fits of rage.
• 45:30
  I was so angry early on, man. It's like the
• 45:34
  Hulk is like, Mike, you should chill out a little bit, man.
• 45:37
  Like I was just.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: It's probably from being on your own at 14. Yeah.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: You know what it is, is like I was growing
• 45:43
  up in a very harsh environment and I was I
• 45:47
  didn't know I was an artist. I didn't know I
• 45:49
  was a writer, director, whatever. You know, they didn't. You
• 45:53
  didn't see those growing up where I am. And so
• 45:55
  when you're a sensitive kid, man, what you do is
• 45:58
  you build armor. Like I was to play Mike Tyson
• 46:01
  later on, and I understood him quite well. And if
• 46:06
  you're sensitive, anything that's precious, you lock it in a safe,
• 46:12
  and you become the safe. And it's like I grew up,
• 46:17
  my brothers were completely different. They're engineers. So things rolled
• 46:21
  off their back. But like for me, just, I was
• 46:26
  just volatile. And luckily I had martial arts to kind
• 46:30
  of put my focus into. But like I said, like
• 46:34
  I was to play Mike Tyson, I understood him a
• 46:37
  great deal. And, you know, even though you take the
• 46:41
  moniker of this monster, it's only to hide what's really
• 46:46
  deep inside. And that's why you would see if anybody's
• 46:50
  gonna go into tears In front of a million people,
• 46:54
  it's people like Mike Tyson. And you go, how does
• 46:57
  that fit in the same person?
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I was growing up. And, you know,
• 47:03
  I don't know if you know this, but I was
• 47:05
  a school teacher before I was an actor.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I taught EMD. I was a special ed teacher.
• 47:11
  So I focused on a lot of kids who were
• 47:13
  very much like me. And I still do that. In
• 47:15
  a way, I consider that my real job. Whenever I'm
• 47:18
  off from work... on a movie or whatever, I go
• 47:21
  into the inner cities. I go into community centers. I
• 47:25
  devote my time because there's nothing that I could do.
• 47:28
  There's no better spending of time than something like that
• 47:32
  because I was luckily, luckily saved. I had just at
• 47:38
  the right times in my life, just different seeds planted.
• 47:42
  And so I'm, I'm confident that if those seeds were
• 47:45
  not planted, I would not be here because like I say,
• 47:48
  I was, I, Been through some crazy stuff.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: It's a classic story. Yeah, bro.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Man, like, I tell you, like, just a little under
• 47:56
  two years ago, a buddy of mine who's a close
• 48:00
  friend of mine, he got out of prison. He was
• 48:04
  in prison for almost, like, 30 years. And he found
• 48:07
  me on Facebook. And so when I went back east,
• 48:11
  we linked up. And, you know, I know a lot
• 48:14
  of people who have businesses and everything like that. hooked
• 48:18
  him up, you know, got him a job, and we
• 48:20
  were sitting over lunch. And in the middle of him
• 48:24
  telling me like the third or fourth story, like back
• 48:29
  in the glory days of us or whatever, while he
• 48:34
  was in the middle of this story, I was, you know,
• 48:38
  kind of getting myself set to kind of set him
• 48:40
  straight because I don't know if you want to call
• 48:42
  this superstitious, but I won't lie. I refuse to lie
• 48:47
  to my friends. I won't lie by omission. So I
• 48:53
  was getting set to tell him, dude, man, you got
• 48:55
  to stop embellishing on these stories. Just because you were
• 48:58
  locked up and you made these stories sound bigger than life,
• 49:04
  I get it. But that's not real. You got to
• 49:08
  really kind of not do that. And in the middle
• 49:11
  of me thinking that and I'm listening to him, I go,
• 49:15
  holy shit. He's telling the truth. I started remembering what
• 49:19
  he was telling. me and I'm like now I'm finishing
• 49:24
  his sentences not only was that story true but the
• 49:27
  other ones were true too and dude like I swear
• 49:30
  every time I think about this I got these goosebumps
• 49:34
  and I realize oh my god how close I was
• 49:39
  to being where he was or just not being on
• 49:42
  this planet.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Like, I better devote my time into helping kids the
• 49:50
  way I was helped.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't pull that ladder up. Hell no. Hell no.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Even if I'm taken out, I accept that. Even if
• 50:01
  I'm in some projects where I'm not supposed to be
• 50:04
  and I shouldn't have been, I accept that. Because, dude,
• 50:09
  I am abundantly lucky. Like, it doesn't even fit on
• 50:17
  the radar how lucky I am. And I can remember
• 50:20
  a lot of these crazy stories, you know, aside from
• 50:24
  the ones that he made me conjure back up. But, man,
• 50:28
  I'm like, wow.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Well, that speaks to your character that you had downplayed
• 50:32
  it all in your mind so much that you thought
• 50:34
  he was exaggerating. I swept it under the rug. Yeah.
• 50:38
  Because you're not that person anymore.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: No, no. But I mean, but there was so much,
• 50:47
  there was so many events, things that would, I just
• 50:51
  call it on a Wednesday that I went through that
• 50:55
  it's like, I don't know. Like, I think I wouldn't
• 51:00
  trade it because I continue to be the happiest guy
• 51:03
  I know because of, I think, some of that.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Because you can appreciate the good times. Oh, my God. Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: And I should be slapped if I complain about anything.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Right. You know what I mean? Like, what?
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, so I just, boy, I just
• 51:21
  know I'm so blessed. And, you know, what we do,
• 51:26
  what we're doing right now, man, we're in the service industry, man.
• 51:30
  You know, you're here to serve. In my opinion, that's
• 51:34
  what we're all here for. And, you know, it's great
• 51:37
  that we get to serve and doing the things that
• 51:39
  we would like to do.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: That's definitely a lot of what we do. I mean,
• 51:43
  there's definitely a lot of it, right? You entertain, but
• 51:48
  I feel very blessed that I've been able to expose
• 51:50
  people to so many different ways of thinking, so much information.
• 51:55
  so many different human beings that have led completely different
• 51:58
  paths that can tell you about whatever discipline they're involved in,
• 52:02
  what they've learned and what we're, what we're working on
• 52:04
  right now and what you can learn about the human mind,
• 52:07
  the body, ancient history, fill in the blank, like whatever
• 52:11
  it is. Yeah.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, and I see you do that over and
• 52:14
  over and you utmost honesty. I remember like where you
• 52:18
  had to kind of pull a shop aside until as
• 52:22
  a friend, some things that are hard for people that,
• 52:25
  you know, other friends to tell him, you know, and like.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: That was real hard. Yeah. Well, that was real hard
• 52:31
  because I love that guy. He's a great, he's a
• 52:33
  great person. He's a great human being. And I knew
• 52:36
  the path. I'd seen it too many times, but I
• 52:39
  hadn't seen it with someone I was that close with.
• 52:41
  I was like, you have to stop because you, not
• 52:45
  only that you're in the heavyweight division, so the knockouts
• 52:47
  are brutal. And you're going to get three or four
• 52:50
  more in the next couple of years. And then you're
• 52:52
  not going to recover from those.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Man, so many people. I hope they take a page
• 52:57
  out of that because it's so non-manly, I feel, to
• 53:03
  just not say anything.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: And allow somebody you love to go down the road.
• 53:08
  I mean— That might be detrimental for them.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Well, it was also when Schaub had another path. He
• 53:14
  was really good at podcasting. He's fun. He's a funny dude. Right, yeah.
• 53:18
  He's like, as a podcast, he's got a great personality.
• 53:21
  He's silly. You know, he's a big, giant, silly dude. And, like,
• 53:25
  we would have so much fun. And he was doing
• 53:26
  really well. And he was making more money doing that
• 53:28
  than he was fighting. Yeah. But his identity was so
• 53:31
  wrapped up in him being a top 10 UFC heavyweight. Right.
• 53:34
  You know, he had beat world-class guys like Mirko Krokop. Oh, yes, yeah.
• 53:37
  You know, and he was legit, man. But that time
• 53:40
  had passed. Yeah. And I saw that he was one
• 53:44
  foot in and one foot out. And as soon as
• 53:46
  the guy's one foot in and one foot out, You're
• 53:48
  going to run into some guy who has both feet
• 53:51
  in and is a fucking samurai. And then you're going
• 53:53
  to wake up on a stretcher. You're on the way
• 53:56
  to the hospital going, what happened? And you don't remember
• 53:58
  the fight. You don't remember nothing. And then you don't
• 54:01
  know where your keys are. You forget people's names. You
• 54:05
  tell the same story over and over again. And then
• 54:07
  you struggle to put sentences together. When you start seeing
• 54:10
  dudes with the slur. Nothing's worth that, man. Nothing's worth that.
• 54:13
  Because you're, I mean, at the time he was only
• 54:16
  35 years old or whatever he was. I'm like, man,
• 54:18
  you got another 45, 55 years of life. You can't
• 54:22
  do this. You can't sacrifice all these years for glory
• 54:28
  that will never be achieved anyway because you're not on
• 54:31
  that path anymore.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not about what strangers say about you.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: No. It's about your friends, your family. People really love you.
• 54:38
  It's just so hard for people to abandon that identity.
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: That's the hardest thing with fighters is to abandon that identity.
• 54:45
  We've seen so many guys, even the greats, they come
• 54:48
  back and they shouldn't and you see it and you
• 54:51
  see them get humiliated and you're like, oh. Yeah. Yeah.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: And when it comes down to it, these people, they
• 54:59
  don't love.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: You, man.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: They love you as the image. Yeah. They live vicariously
• 55:05
  through you. I remember.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: I remember one time I was fighting in Boston. And
• 55:11
  I remember when something completely changed. Usually, if anybody... Because
• 55:16
  I did any kind of thing. I would do kickboxing
• 55:19
  or this tournament. I just loved my best... I think
• 55:25
  the thing I did best in the world was fighting.
• 55:28
  I had this... I always had these cheat codes in
• 55:31
  a way. And I enjoyed the chess match of it.
• 55:35
  And anybody who... were, was against me. I don't care
• 55:39
  if you were my cousin or whatever, you're going to
• 55:41
  pay for all the angst that I've had in my life.
• 55:45
  But until there was this one time, I swear, I
• 55:49
  ducked a technique. I caught somebody with something that was
• 55:52
  kind of, you know, kind of cool. And I just
• 55:56
  remember the audience just cheering. And in that moment, I
• 56:02
  was like, just angry, kind of like, yo, this guy
• 56:08
  could really be messed up right now. You're cheering for me.
• 56:11
  You're living vicarious through me like I'm a pit bull
• 56:15
  or something.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: And I got angry at the audience. I fucking hated them.
• 56:20
  And I said, because if I was down on the ground,
• 56:23
  you'd be cheering for the person that put me down.
• 56:26
  And something just snapped. And I go, no, this is
• 56:31
  not enough for me. This is not what I want
• 56:33
  to do. And, you know, just something snapped. And I'd
• 56:42
  much rather be skillful, test myself in a skillful way,
• 56:52
  and I'd much rather not try to peel your head
• 56:55
  off but show I could as opposed to, you know,
• 57:01
  that triumph of dominating. It was nothing for me anymore
• 57:06
  in that. You know, and just something just rubbed me
• 57:12
  the wrong way. And I just, any time I would
• 57:15
  do any kind of competition, it was for me, and
• 57:18
  it wasn't for an audience. You know, just something soured.
• 57:24
  I always thought at one time, I'm going to be
• 57:27
  called out. You know, and I thought, oh, I'll rise
• 57:30
  to that occasion if that happens. And, you know, kind
• 57:33
  of like, remember the thing with you at West League?
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Which would have been– oh, my God. That would have
• 57:39
  been terrible. But I always thought, hey, maybe something– I.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Think Wesley just needed money.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: I mean that was when he was– I don't think
• 57:49
  he'd ever be– I don't think that was ever serious,
• 57:51
  but it's very much.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Like I think— We were in negotiation for quite a while, man.
• 57:55
  We had lawyers involved.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always easy to pull a plug on something
• 57:59
  like that. Just like Jean-Claude's talking about fighting Jake Paul, right?
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Is he talking about that right now? He's 100 years old.
• 58:05
  He weighs 50 pounds. He's 100 years old. I'm like,
• 58:08
  come on, man. Come on. Is he really talking about
• 58:11
  fighting Jake Paul? I just saw something in the last
• 58:14
  couple of days. I'm like— I think Wesley was serious
• 58:17
  because I think they had hit him with that tax case.
• 58:22
  And he owed a lot of money to the government.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: No, this was before that tax case.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. It was in the middle of it. Really? Yeah, 100%.
• 58:28
  I know it was. Yeah. Yeah, it was 2000, I
• 58:31
  want to say 5 or 6. It was in the
• 58:33
  middle of all that. And he was in trouble. It
• 58:36
  was serious. And he, you know, obviously eventually wound up
• 58:40
  going to jail. Yeah, yeah. And so they were going
• 58:42
  to set up a fight with him and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
• 58:44
  That was the first fight. But Campbell McLaren from the
• 58:48
  UFC was like, no one gives a shit about you
• 58:50
  fighting Jean-Claude Van Damme. You got to fight someone who's current.
• 58:53
  And so he said, let me contact Joe Rogan. He
• 58:57
  called me up and he said, would you be willing
• 58:58
  to fight Wesley Snipes? And I was like, what? And
• 59:02
  I was like, come on, really? I go, what is this?
• 59:04
  And so I said, let me think about it. I
• 59:06
  thought about it. I called him the next day. I said,
• 59:08
  let's fucking do it.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was training with Rob Kamen in the mornings
• 59:12
  and then I was doing jujitsu at night. I trained
• 59:14
  twice a day for six months. Wow. I was always tired.
• 59:18
  I was always tired. That's one thing that I realized, like, fuck, man,
• 59:21
  to be like, and I wasn't even a professional really,
• 59:24
  but it was training like a professional. It's like, I
• 59:25
  can't believe how tired I am all the time. But
• 59:30
  You know, I think Wesley had never really had a fight.
• 59:33
  I don't think so. I think he was an accomplished
• 59:36
  martial artist. He had good technique.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: I trained with Wesley's instructors. You know, Marcus Elgato was
• 59:42
  a good friend of mine. And also Lamar Thornton, who
• 59:47
  was Marcus Elgato's instructor. I believe that's the lineage I
• 59:54
  believe that he's through. I mean, I've never– I've known
• 59:57
  Wesley since– way before he was kind of Wesley.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: I was a giant fan of Wesley too, which was
• 1:00:03
  also wild for me because I love Blade. Blade was
• 1:00:07
  like my favorite comic book when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: I just didn't, I didn't think they were serious about it.
• 1:00:13
  I couldn't imagine why would Wesley, I always thought it
• 1:00:17
  was not real.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I think Wesley thought that I was just a grappler
• 1:00:22
  and think he knew that I was doing jujitsu. I
• 1:00:24
  don't think he knew my background. And so like, And
• 1:00:28
  Wesley was talking to them, saying, oh, he thinks he's
• 1:00:31
  going to be able to stop you from taking him down.
• 1:00:33
  And he's going to catch you with a knee while
• 1:00:34
  you're coming in to try to take him down. I go, oh,
• 1:00:37
  he wants to stand up? I go, I'm way better
• 1:00:39
  at that. Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was wondering how that even occurred. I didn't
• 1:00:45
  think that was serious. I was like, OK.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: It was serious.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: It was serious. It went on for a long time.
• 1:00:52
  It was a lot of negotiation to the point where
• 1:00:54
  I even talked about it on the UFC broadcast once.
• 1:00:59
  I said, come on, Wesley. Sign the contract. I'm getting
• 1:01:01
  bored training. Let's do this. Like, I have to do
• 1:01:04
  it now. I was like 35 or 36. I was like,
• 1:01:06
  I don't have much time left. If we're going to
• 1:01:08
  do this, we have to do this now. Like, come on.
• 1:01:11
  Let's go. And then he decided not to. And then
• 1:01:14
  I'm like, that's probably for the better.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: I know Wesley for a while. I remember when he
• 1:01:19
  was first telling me about this. sovereign being sovereign.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's where they got him with that sovereign citizen
• 1:01:25
  shit yeah and I was like I wish I was
• 1:01:28
  friends with him I would have said dude they're gonna lock.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: You up I'm super protective of my friends I've always
• 1:01:35
  been that way and with Wesley I was always like
• 1:01:38
  my thing is he used to have people around him
• 1:01:41
  that I'm like you know we have little get togethers
• 1:01:44
  at my house whatever I'm like don't bring any of
• 1:01:46
  those motherfuckers or it's gonna be a problem You know,
• 1:01:51
  because there's people that just I felt like were hangers
• 1:01:53
  on and, you know, that kind of a thing. And
• 1:01:56
  I was always like, hey, man, are you good? And,
• 1:01:58
  you know, are you staying healthy? I've always been that
• 1:02:02
  way because the way I look at it, he's a
• 1:02:03
  big brother. If not for him, it may not be
• 1:02:06
  for me. You know, he gave me some good advice
• 1:02:08
  early on. He always encouraged me that if I have
• 1:02:11
  a movie that's overseas, get there. You know, show up
• 1:02:15
  in those overseas markets and let them know that you're down,
• 1:02:19
  you know. And I took that to heart, and that
• 1:02:22
  helped me out in my career a great deal. And so,
• 1:02:25
  you know, I look at it like that. I'll never
• 1:02:27
  say anything derogatory about him or whatever. So, I mean,
• 1:02:31
  I just recently tried to reach out to him like
• 1:02:35
  a couple days ago just to check in, man, because,
• 1:02:37
  you know, I wish him the best. And, you know,
• 1:02:42
  I want him to, like, really start kicking ass again.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: I would love to see him return as Blade. Yeah,
• 1:02:49
  that would be cool. He could do it, too. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:52
  An older Blade?
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: He could do it. Yeah. Fuck, he was good in
• 1:02:56
  the original Blade. Yeah. That opening scene, that was one
• 1:02:59
  of the best scenes in any action movie of all time,
• 1:03:02
  when it's that vampire party, and the sprinklers start spraying blood. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:08
  And they're about to kill that dude. Yeah. And all
• 1:03:10
  of a sudden, Wesley shows up.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. What really gets on my nerves is that,
• 1:03:15
  you know, he saved Marvel, man. That movie saved Marvel.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: You know that, right? Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: That movie was a huge hit. Even Stan Lee admits that.
• 1:03:23
  They were like in trouble until that movie.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Because superhero movies are the biggest fucking movies in Hollywood
• 1:03:29
  right now. I mean, when they have a big budget movie,
• 1:03:33
  superhero movies are like the only movie that you can
• 1:03:36
  throw hundreds of millions of dollars and be sure it's
• 1:03:39
  going to kill it in the box office. Yeah. Whether
• 1:03:41
  it's the Avengers or Spider-Man or Superman or whoever the
• 1:03:45
  fuck it is. That's the only kind of movie that
• 1:03:47
  Hollywood's like, yeah, okay, we'll throw $ 500 million at this one.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not a big fan of those things. I
• 1:03:57
  know it's not– they didn't design it for people like me.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: So it's for the fan base. And to me it's like, ugh,
• 1:04:04
  you know, they tend to meld into each other as
• 1:04:09
  far as I'm concerned.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: They do. Yeah. They do. There's only so many times
• 1:04:12
  you could tell the story. There's only so– you know.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: But– I still enjoy them. I still enjoy some of them.
• 1:04:19
  They're fun.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like when people are believable.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Right. Believable. Yeah, there's nothing believable about those movies.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I like the actors that are like,
• 1:04:29
  you know, have some quirkiness and some, you know, edge
• 1:04:32
  to them, right?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe I'm being unfair because I really hadn't
• 1:04:37
  seen a lot. Maybe I owe it to myself to
• 1:04:40
  give some.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: No, I think you got it. It's simple entertainment. It's
• 1:04:45
  a silly release and escape.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: That's all it is.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: It's not a great– there's no great films that are
• 1:04:51
  superhero films.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, because sometimes I'm like, oh, yeah, she's 90
• 1:04:54
  pounds and she just threw a– okay.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Like Charlie's Angels or something.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, oh, come on now.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Kicking ass in stilettos.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: And it's like anytime somebody lands in a three-point stance
• 1:05:05
  and then looks up, I'm like, I just changed the channel.
• 1:05:08
  I'm just like, stop. Just stop.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: But, you know, people love those things. I'm like, that's cool.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know why they have so much appeal, especially
• 1:05:18
  in the American market. People, that is one of the
• 1:05:22
  only movies that you can make that's guaranteed to be huge.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's McDonald's, man. It's McDonald's, but I remember when.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember when you had, what was that, like
• 1:05:35
  the 300. You know, that was like nobody knew anybody. Right.
• 1:05:39
  But that was just such a breath of fresh air
• 1:05:42
  because it looked like some badasses that were real.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? I'd like to see more
• 1:05:46
  of that kind of a thing. Like, you know, not
• 1:05:49
  the star power thing, but just some motherfuckers that you believe.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Right. You know what I mean? That would.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: You know, that would attract me.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Also, the style of that movie was so unique because
• 1:05:58
  it blended fantasy with reality. Right. And history, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:05
  You know, I would. I got some things in the works.
• 1:06:09
  Do you? Yeah. What are you working on? Oh, man.
• 1:06:11
  I've been blessed, man.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: I've got some really good movies coming out and some
• 1:06:15
  things that I'm planning on doing. I'm getting to a
• 1:06:19
  place where I'm really shooting the things that I want
• 1:06:21
  and I'm producing and All that stuff. So, you know,
• 1:06:25
  I have movies that have their body count, but also
• 1:06:29
  have a little bit of, like, something to say.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: You know what I miss? What's that? Spawn. Oh, man. Bro.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: A lot of people, yeah.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: People forgot about Spawn. You don't hear about it anymore. Right.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: That was fucking great. Yeah, I had my.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Man, you didn't... Most people didn't see the first... adaptation
• 1:06:51
  of it. The first, uh, uh, well, I saw a
• 1:06:55
  cut of the movie before it, I mean, at this
• 1:06:59
  time it had like 71 special effects in it, but
• 1:07:02
  Bob Shea at the time that was running new line liked.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: The, that version.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: He just gave the director current botch to, to just
• 1:07:13
  add whatever he wanted. And the director was a special
• 1:07:17
  effects guy. So he started throwing special effects in there
• 1:07:23
  that was really killing the story, which kind of drove
• 1:07:27
  me up a wall. Cause then like, you didn't even
• 1:07:30
  see why my character wanted to get back. You didn't
• 1:07:34
  even see the life that I wanted to get back
• 1:07:37
  to because there was so much special effects. And even
• 1:07:40
  when I saw the final version, I'm like, what the
• 1:07:42
  hell is going on? People that knew Spawn, they were
• 1:07:45
  fine with it because they understood the character. But for me,
• 1:07:49
  It was like the story got all convoluted. But like,
• 1:07:52
  you know, but I mean, people love it. It was
• 1:07:54
  a I think it was a thing for its time.
• 1:07:57
  But unfortunately, I saw a version of it that made
• 1:08:01
  you care about it.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: I understand. But I cared about the one that I saw.
• 1:08:05
  And I felt like I don't understand how Spawn sort
• 1:08:09
  of escaped the zeitgeist. You don't ever hear about Spawn anymore.
• 1:08:13
  You know what I mean? There's all these superhero films,
• 1:08:17
  all these different things. But Spawn was unique. And it
• 1:08:19
  was really good and dark. Yeah.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: I always say if they did another one, you should
• 1:08:24
  do it just like the comic book. Make it hard
• 1:08:28
  R or non-rated. Because, I mean, like to do a
• 1:08:31
  Spawn PG, how we did PG-13, it's like, what do
• 1:08:36
  you want? Are you trying to go for a breakfast
• 1:08:38
  cereal like Spawn O's or something like that?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Like, come on, man. Let's go hard like the cartoon, right?
• 1:08:44
  See if you can find a clip from Spawn. Because
• 1:08:47
  I feel like no one talks about it anymore. It's
• 1:08:50
  kind of weird.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: They damn sure talked to me about it. Bro, it
• 1:08:54
  was good.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: What year was this? 97. Wow.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: They were fucking great, man. Now stay sharp. The night
• 1:09:07
  is young. Evil has a new enemy. Justice has a
• 1:09:14
  new weapon. And the world has a new hero.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: The Memories.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Bro, that was a fucking great movie, man. New Line
• 1:09:29
  Cinema Presents. Yeah. That was a great movie. How many
• 1:09:32
  did you guys do?
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: One.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Just one?
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Just one.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: There was nothing else? Wasn't there something else, like a series?
• 1:09:37
  It was a cartoon first. That's right.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it was a comic book, then it was
• 1:09:41
  a cartoon on HBO.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's right.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Keith David was the voice of Spawn on that.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yep. And so, yeah. But that was a
• 1:09:54
  big hit. I think so. It was successful.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: It made its money back. Yeah.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, I remember it was very popular. Like, everyone
• 1:10:04
  who was talking about it, people got excited about it,
• 1:10:06
  especially people like me that liked the comic books. Right, right.
• 1:10:09
  They were very into it. Yeah. I was always surprised.
• 1:10:12
  But it just– it's weird to me that that– that
• 1:10:14
  even the comic book spawn doesn't get brought up anymore. Right.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I– every now and then, like, I'm off doing
• 1:10:21
  a movie, whatever, I drive by comic book stores, I
• 1:10:24
  go in, I just start signing shit, right?
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: The Spawn stuff.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: So there's still stuff there.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. There's always going to be a hardcore fan base. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, you know, there's people, like, there's still
• 1:10:33
  hardcore about that. And then, uh, um, Todd McFarlane has
• 1:10:39
  talked about doing another Spawn for the last 25 years.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: It was huge.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: But the thing, the weird thing is, is like, Okay,
• 1:10:49
  I wish you all the best of luck, bro. But
• 1:10:53
  you created the comic book. When he's talking about doing
• 1:10:56
  another Spawn, I'm like, you haven't done a first one.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Like the comic book. No, he's not a director.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: It's just like Stan Lee hasn't directed a Marvel movie.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: And Tom McFarlane is talking about doing another Spawn, but
• 1:11:12
  I'm like, well, that would be the first time a
• 1:11:15
  person that created a comic book directed and produced a
• 1:11:19
  movie that I know of, right? Because even though he
• 1:11:24
  talks about he's going to do one, and he had
• 1:11:26
  this concept that he talked to me about, and then
• 1:11:30
  he said he wanted to, you know, I guess he
• 1:11:31
  wanted to use Jamie Foxx, and he talked about this
• 1:11:34
  concept that Spawn would be, you wouldn't see him, and
• 1:11:37
  it's like Jaws, he would never be around, but just
• 1:11:40
  people would get fucked up. All of a sudden, they're,
• 1:11:42
  you know, like a mist would come in, people are destroyed.
• 1:11:46
  I'm like, Good luck with that.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: But he's been talking about it for a while. And
• 1:11:56
  people say, oh, man, I'm sad that you're not the
• 1:12:01
  next spot, that they're using Jamie. I'm like, when is
• 1:12:04
  it going to happen? He's been saying that for a
• 1:12:07
  long time. But I'm going, hey, maybe somebody is going
• 1:12:11
  to give him that amount of money to do a
• 1:12:13
  movie when he's never directed anything before.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: He hasn't directed anything before. He visited set a few
• 1:12:21
  times because he created a comic book. Directing a movie
• 1:12:27
  is something completely different.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: So I'm like all power to you if that's happening.
• 1:12:32
  But it's like I wonder why people believe it.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot to bite off. Especially a movie
• 1:12:43
  like that, which would probably be a large budget. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but...
• 1:12:47
  And then you're going to get the executives involved and
• 1:12:50
  they're going to fuck with it because they always have
• 1:12:52
  to have their say. Yeah, man.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: It's a miracle that a movie gets done the way
• 1:12:58
  it's intended, period.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm like.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: A lot of times when a movie works, I go,
• 1:13:03
  how did some executive not fuck this movie up?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Right, right. I mean, I'm always like that. There's only
• 1:13:08
  a few guys that can get away with a movie
• 1:13:11
  where everybody just leaves them alone. There's a few Tarantinos
• 1:13:14
  out there. Everybody just let them go. Just let them go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:17
  If you tried to make Once Upon a Time in
• 1:13:19
  Hollywood and you weren't a successful director, you were just
• 1:13:22
  some guy with an idea, someone would come along and
• 1:13:24
  fuck that up. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: Luckily, I'm— People are leaving me alone. I've been directing
• 1:13:30
  and doing my own thing. They go, OK, you got this. OK,
• 1:13:33
  like I say, I'll give you the body count. But
• 1:13:35
  now if I could put stuff in.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: It, you know. What is going on with Jamie Foxx
• 1:13:39
  doing Tyson? Because that's been rumored for a decade at least. Yeah,
• 1:13:44
  that's another thing.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: It's like weird that Jamie Foxx wants to do a
• 1:13:47
  Tyson and a Spawn. But it's like, I don't know.
• 1:13:50
  I don't take it personally. Very talented guy. But yeah,
• 1:13:53
  I think Jamie does a very good impression of Mike Tyson.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you've got to gain like 100 pounds. Right.
• 1:14:02
  Jamie's got to get– he's got to pack on that
• 1:14:04
  meat at 50.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: But then why? I just sit there and I go, why?
• 1:14:09
  When Tyson's life itself has been very transparent.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: And so you can see the real guy in documentary
• 1:14:20
  form and everything else.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: What story do you have to tell? That's true.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be a hater, but I'm like,
• 1:14:27
  I just, I'm just curious.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: The only thing that would be interesting is seeing, like,
• 1:14:31
  Jamie do it. Seeing him pull, like, he pulled off
• 1:14:34
  Ray Charles. Like, seeing him pull it off. That would
• 1:14:37
  be the appeal of it, I think. Right.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: But in my personal opinion, I don't think that's enough.
• 1:14:42
  You got to tell the story.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Right. I know what you're saying. Yeah.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: It's got to be some compelling story. I mean, hell,
• 1:14:49
  I mean, people saw Titanic. You know how it's going
• 1:14:51
  to end. But you had to he had to present
• 1:14:53
  a story right there.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: You know, Jamie is so versatile. I mean, there's very
• 1:14:59
  few guys that can do all the different things that
• 1:15:01
  he can do. He could sing. He can act. He
• 1:15:05
  could do stand up and he could do all kinds
• 1:15:08
  of different characters. And I mean, and he's so believable
• 1:15:12
  in so many different roles. You know what I watched
• 1:15:14
  the other day? which is a fucking great movie that
• 1:15:17
  I forgot was so great, is Collateral. Oh, hell yeah. Oh,
• 1:15:20
  my God.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: No, no. When Jamie had Collateral and Ray, to me,
• 1:15:26
  you couldn't have had a better year.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: Right. Two completely different human beings. Oh, my God. Yes.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And he became those people. He became Ray Charles. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: And as good as he can sing, him singing as
• 1:15:42
  Ray Charles was insane.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: It's one of the best performances ever.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Ever. Ever. But so is Collateral. He really played that
• 1:15:51
  dude in Collateral. You believed it. And fucking Tom Cruise. Oh,
• 1:15:55
  my God.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: Tom Cruise really proved something to me in that damn movie.
• 1:16:00
  Because I would never think I would ever be scared
• 1:16:03
  of Tom freaking Cruise.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: And how crazy. convincing he was.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: He's a bad motherfucker.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: He's crazy as bat shit, but he's a bad motherfucker.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: He brought it in that movie.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: You have to be that crazy to do all the
• 1:16:17
  stunts that that guy does. He's 60 years old. He's
• 1:16:19
  jumping off buildings and shit and breaking his ankle. Yeah,
• 1:16:22
  just like Johnny Depp.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: I'm like, Johnny Depp, when he did Black Mass, I'm like, oh,
• 1:16:28
  you had that in you?
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right. Holy shit. And just like with.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: Tom Cruise, I'm like, Him having that character in him?
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: There's a scene in Collateral that tactical instructors play. Yes.
• 1:16:40
  The double tap. Yes.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: He whips it back. Double tap, double tap.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: He knocks the guy's gun out of the way and
• 1:16:46
  pulls it out. And it's so fast and so smooth.
• 1:16:50
  See if you can find that scene, Jamie. It's a
• 1:16:52
  scene where they're trying to take Tom Cruise's briefcase and
• 1:16:55
  he's in an alleyway.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: I played that over and over myself.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: The amount of times that he must have drilled that
• 1:17:05
  to get that, unholster the gun, pull it out, shoot him,
• 1:17:09
  shoot the other dude so smooth, and the way he
• 1:17:12
  did it, so professional. I mean, it looks like a
• 1:17:15
  legit hitman. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was.
• 1:17:21
  That character, I mean, from start to finish, like... to me,
• 1:17:26
  proved a lot.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, he embodied that guy.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: And to know that.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: He's... Is that my briefcase?
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: Is it your briefcase?
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. Why, you want it back? About your wallet.
• 1:17:44
  What else you got for me, huh? Come on, son. Yeah.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: I actually visited that set when they were shooting that.
• 1:18:03
  Not that scene, but it was another day. And it was,
• 1:18:09
  I remember it was weird because they were shooting something
• 1:18:13
  and they were shooting Tom, behind Tom Cruise's head. And
• 1:18:17
  he had eight camera angles just.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: Behind his head.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: I'm like, and I'm looking at the, you know, the
• 1:18:26
  video village where it's, They made sure they had a
• 1:18:32
  choice of whatever perfect thing that they want. It was
• 1:18:36
  the craziest thing. And I guess Michael Mann, he's known
• 1:18:40
  for shooting a lot. But it was like eight cameras.
• 1:18:47
  That's just behind the dude.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah. I'm like, this is a whole nother
• 1:18:53
  like level. Yeah. It was crazy. Great fucking movie. That
• 1:18:57
  movie holds up. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: That that's prime Jamie, man.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Yup.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: Yup.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: And the fact that he's got that much range, uh,
• 1:19:06
  that he can do this nerdy dude who's terrified, doesn't
• 1:19:09
  know what the fuck is going on, he's just driving
• 1:19:11
  a car, and all of a sudden he has this
• 1:19:12
  hitman with him, and then he gets wrapped up in
• 1:19:14
  this whole thing.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but as a fan, I want to see him
• 1:19:17
  do something else like that.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like, something, like, that requires
• 1:19:23
  what he can do.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot, you know, that's one of the things,
• 1:19:26
  there's not a lot of things out there sometimes. You know, so,
• 1:19:30
  you know, he's been doing things that I think show,
• 1:19:34
  you know, certain parts, but, like, To where he was
• 1:19:37
  going in Collateral and Ray, it would be nice to
• 1:19:41
  see that stuff again.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: It's got to be hard to find those roles, right?
• 1:19:46
  And when you find those roles, there's probably like six
• 1:19:50
  or seven A-list dudes that they have like on a
• 1:19:54
  board somewhere and they're trying to figure out who's the
• 1:19:56
  guy for this. Yeah, but I believe– Who's going to
• 1:19:58
  sell the most.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: I believe you got to create your own stuff, man.
• 1:20:02
  Put it this way. Nobody was going to write Black
• 1:20:04
  Dynamite for me.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: You know, my thing is largely creating my own lane.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: That was a fun movie, by the way.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks, man.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: Really fun. Thanks, man. So, yeah, man.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: So, luckily, like, I enjoyed writing. I was always looked
• 1:20:21
  at everything from, I was always fascinated about this industry.
• 1:20:25
  And I showed a lot of things as a writer,
• 1:20:28
  separate from the acting thing. And so, you know, just
• 1:20:32
  putting it all together is something that's, like, I really
• 1:20:35
  enjoy doing.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: How do you dedicate your time when you're writing? Do
• 1:20:38
  you just, like, have an idea and say, okay, for
• 1:20:40
  the next X weeks, I'm going to sit down and
• 1:20:42
  dedicate myself to this? Dude, it's all different.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: A lot of times I will see the entire movie. Like,
• 1:20:47
  when I did Black Dynamite, dude, I was in China
• 1:20:52
  going to set. I was in Shanghai.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: I was listening to James Brown's Superbad. And I just
• 1:21:03
  started thinking about, I'm goofing, I'm laughing. I'm in the
• 1:21:07
  back of this car and there's a driver wondering what
• 1:21:09
  the hell is going on with me. I'm seeing the
• 1:21:11
  whole goddamn movie, including a nunchuck fight scene with Richard Nixon.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm laughing. And, you know, I started jotting stuff.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: Down because it occurred to me, man. I was like,
• 1:21:27
  I mean, one day, I was thinking like, wow, man,
• 1:21:30
  like growing up we had Shaft and we had Superfly
• 1:21:36
  and the Mac and all the posters like that that
• 1:21:39
  we idolized. And I'm going, those were pimps. There was
• 1:21:43
  something wrong with my childhood. Why am I– I'm like,
• 1:21:47
  the Mac? Like that's a hero? And so it made
• 1:21:51
  me really think about it. And I'm like– I'm looking
• 1:21:54
  at these movies– And like Jim Brown and Fred Williamson
• 1:21:58
  are like killing like 60 people.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: And it's okay.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: Everybody's like this. They have a club and then they
• 1:22:05
  got all these women. And I'm like, this is actually hilarious.
• 1:22:09
  If I do a movie that depicted it exactly like
• 1:22:12
  it is. I'm thinking about this. One of the biggest
• 1:22:15
  movies of that time was Three the Hard Way. I
• 1:22:18
  don't know if you remember that movie. Jim Brown, Fred Williamson,
• 1:22:21
  and Jim Kelly.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I forgot about Jim Kelly. Read the hard way.
• 1:22:28
  What was it about?
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: It had the three predominant blaxploitation stars, right? And the
• 1:22:34
  movie was about an evil Dr. Feather who had these
• 1:22:39
  liters of liquid that he was going to put in
• 1:22:43
  the water systems of L.A., Chicago, and New York that
• 1:22:48
  were going to.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: Kill all the black people. It's not a comedy. That's
• 1:22:53
  the movie? It's not a comedy.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: It was going to give sickle cell anemia to all
• 1:22:58
  the black people. Now, the conspiratorial thing, I've been a
• 1:23:04
  black man for a long time, and it is really
• 1:23:07
  funny because in the community, conspiracy is a big thing, right? So, like,
• 1:23:13
  that whole conspiratorial thing, oh, they trying to get you,
• 1:23:16
  that kind of a thing, it really, its engine was that,
• 1:23:20
  that paranoia that This liter of liquid was going to
• 1:23:24
  kill black people.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Well, there was so much evidence that those conspiracies were real,
• 1:23:29
  like the Tuskegee. Of course.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: That's something that's like it's on its feet, though.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: But come on.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: A liter, something this big, in the water systems, that
• 1:23:43
  was going to kill all the black people. And that's
• 1:23:45
  not a comedy. That was a serious movie. But when
• 1:23:49
  you look at it, that's hilarious. It's absolutely hilarious to
• 1:23:54
  think that you can do a movie about that. So
• 1:23:57
  to do a movie, I thought that really, really talked
• 1:24:02
  about that time period where it was kind of this
• 1:24:06
  overcorrection because, you know, you had in the 60s, there
• 1:24:10
  were like, you know, butlers and maids and all that
• 1:24:13
  kind of stuff.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: But now you.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: Had these super overcorrected badasses that could just do anything, right?
• 1:24:22
  And I thought it was hilarious to look at it
• 1:24:24
  and treat it as if it were like back in
• 1:24:28
  that day, like a lost movie. Actually, Tarantino was somebody
• 1:24:31
  I was talking to about that whole thing when I
• 1:24:34
  was putting Black Dynamite together. And he had certain ideas,
• 1:24:38
  but I kind of went my own direction with it.
• 1:24:41
  But yeah, man. So yeah, things like that. I've gotten
• 1:24:47
  to a place where I'm putting these things together that
• 1:24:51
  really– interests me and I'm finding that there's an audience
• 1:24:54
  that likes it as well. But yeah, man. So, uh,
• 1:24:57
  you know, it, it, it just occurred to me that
• 1:25:00
  it was bizarre.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, so for that movie,
• 1:25:04
  that movie just came to you. Yeah.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: But it came to me just like the whole movie
• 1:25:10
  came to me in a ride to set.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: Is that normal for ideas or do you sometimes sit
• 1:25:15
  down and say like, I want to write an idea
• 1:25:18
  about blank?
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: Sometimes, sometimes. Like I have a movie that the next
• 1:25:22
  movie I'm going to do is a sequel to a
• 1:25:25
  movie I did called As Good As Dead.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: And it became Samuel Goldwyn's one of their most successful movies.
• 1:25:33
  I wrote the idea. It was based off my brother.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: My brother, he.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: He went from Florida to Mexico and started a family.
• 1:25:41
  He just like fell in love with Mexico and kind
• 1:25:44
  of based my my character on him. And he's basically
• 1:25:49
  a cop that's, like, hiding out in Mexico and, you know,
• 1:25:52
  trying to avoid this, you know, syndicate or whatever that's
• 1:25:57
  trying to kill him. But that movie just came to me.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: I wrote it.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: We were in production, like, two months later. And we
• 1:26:09
  actually got the movie done within a year.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: How did you get it made so quick?
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they responded to the script. And it
• 1:26:16
  was kind of like a grown-up. karate kid in a way.
• 1:26:21
  So my character, you don't know what was this black
• 1:26:24
  dude doing working construction in Mexico. And he's got, you know,
• 1:26:29
  he's got his Wing Chun dummy and he's training in
• 1:26:31
  his backyard. And it's a kid who's trying to avoid
• 1:26:33
  the gangs that he befriends that he's, he teaches this
• 1:26:37
  unique kind of martial art. And so one thing leads
• 1:26:41
  to another, this kid gets good at it and they
• 1:26:43
  trace the style back to my character. And then, You know,
• 1:26:47
  then the bad guys are trying to kill me and
• 1:26:50
  I have to fight back. So what we're doing, we're
• 1:26:53
  about to do a sequel. I start that in a
• 1:26:55
  couple of weeks, actually. So I wrote that one. But, yeah,
• 1:26:59
  so I feel like, I don't know, I'm still a
• 1:27:06
  fan of movies. I don't, I wouldn't write something I
• 1:27:10
  wouldn't want to see. And I've seen a lot. You know,
• 1:27:14
  I think I understand this industry. I understand there's a
• 1:27:17
  lot of stories that I think could be told with
• 1:27:21
  fresh ways and with the action and martial arts that
• 1:27:25
  could be new and exciting. I'm getting to a place
• 1:27:29
  where I'm trying to make fight scenes look very real,
• 1:27:33
  including choreographing mistakes.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: I think people have become so much more sophisticated watching
• 1:27:43
  UFC fights and all that type of stuff. I think
• 1:27:46
  you've got to raise the bar to make something look real.
• 1:27:50
  And there's a lot of the stuff that's in the
• 1:27:55
  superhero movies and whatever that you just kind of go, okay,
• 1:27:59
  you're seeing choreography for choreography's sake.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: And you're not invested because you don't feel like you're
• 1:28:05
  looking at a real fight.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: And so I like to try to use my platform
• 1:28:09
  to step that up a bit.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hard, especially as a person who is a
• 1:28:13
  martial artist. To watch fight scenes and go, you have
• 1:28:17
  to kind of suspend disbelief and go, all right, let
• 1:28:19
  this play out.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, kind of like, you know, it's weird, but,
• 1:28:22
  you know, kind of full circle. It's kind of going
• 1:28:23
  back to the way Bruce Lee did stuff. And he's
• 1:28:26
  a little faster than the other person. He has a
• 1:28:28
  little bit more technique. And, you know, if you imagine, like,
• 1:28:33
  even if I imagine you in a real fight, your
• 1:28:36
  technique is not going nowhere. And other people are not
• 1:28:39
  going to have that same technique. You beat somebody to
• 1:28:41
  the punch. You do things that would logically give you
• 1:28:46
  the edge.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: That's what you shoot. You know what I mean?
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, so it's not like you got to do
• 1:28:52
  a lot.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: Of camera tricks.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: If you're moving faster and stronger than another person, well,
• 1:28:58
  there it is.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: There it is.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: So luckily, you know, I mean, I can put things
• 1:29:05
  on screen that kind of resemble what things might look like,
• 1:29:09
  you know, and you get the benefit of the doubt because,
• 1:29:13
  you know, you're in a heroic position.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: It's just very hard to do that. It's very hard
• 1:29:19
  to make it look real. There's a real art to that. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: But like with the movie that you turned down, Blood
• 1:29:25
  and Bone.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I turned down John Wick 4, too, though. I
• 1:29:29
  turned down a lot of movies. You do.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: You did the right thing, because what you're doing, this
• 1:29:36
  could not be more up your alley doing the things
• 1:29:39
  that you're doing.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: John Wick was hard. I'm a giant John Wick fan.
• 1:29:43
  Are you? Especially John Wick 1. Well, there's going.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: To be a John Wick 7, so you can decide
• 1:29:48
  to do.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: Whatever you want to. They got kind of crazy. They're
• 1:29:51
  over the top now. But even John Wick 1 was
• 1:29:54
  totally unrealistic.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: Totally unrealistic, but so fun. I fucking love those movies.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I got something that's kind of in that
• 1:30:02
  vein that I just finished. There's a lot of body count,
• 1:30:05
  but a lot of CQB. I've been studying that for
• 1:30:08
  a while.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: What is CQB? Close Quarter Combat. Oh, okay.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: Close Quarter Battle. But, you know, I've been doing, like,
• 1:30:19
  you know, a lot of, like, tactical training and kind
• 1:30:24
  of getting myself. I may compete at some point.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty into it. Where do you train at?
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Well, a lot of places.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: I train with a guy named Tyler Gray. He's Delta Force.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: I had a lot of friends who were like special
• 1:30:41
  force guys.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: You ever go to Terran Tactical? Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: I go to Terran quite a bit.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: That guy's the best. Oh, yeah.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: He's a man. He's amazing.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: You want to talk about someone who's very technical. Oh,
• 1:30:53
  my God.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: He shoots from the hip like better than anybody using
• 1:30:59
  a laser.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: No, he's preposterous. It's unreal. Always iron sights. Yeah. You know,
• 1:31:04
  he doesn't I mean, he uses red dots, but, you know,
• 1:31:07
  he prefers iron sights. He's like, they never fail. They
• 1:31:10
  never go wrong.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: And he's so crazy accurate. It's wild to watch.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: And when you think about like how long, how fast
• 1:31:18
  could you just take out everybody in this damn room?
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: It's kind of. It's kind of spooky.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is spooky. Yeah.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also, he's so calm about it too. Yeah.
• 1:31:26
  It's weird. Like almost like autistic, like weird fucking rain
• 1:31:30
  man ish.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Like what the fuck? When you watch him do it,
• 1:31:35
  like many times I've gone to his range and trained
• 1:31:38
  and then, you know, people will go to him into it.
• 1:31:40
  Like do, do a run, like do this. And he's like, okay,
• 1:31:43
  I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.
• 1:31:44
  I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.
• 1:31:45
  And then I'm going to pull this out right here. Yeah.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: Like, It's crazy.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: You're like, what the fuck did I just watch? That's crazy.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: And then you see how many times he's won the championship.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Ridiculous.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: And like, there's only a few people that won consecutive
• 1:32:01
  years and he's got like seven years in a row
• 1:32:03
  and just chunks. I'm like, this is crazy.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He's a very unique talent.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: Very unique talent. Yeah.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: A buddy of mine, like Tyler Gray, he just, he,
• 1:32:14
  he's been Delta. He's been, uh, he's been decorated. He's, Oh,
• 1:32:19
  my God, his place in Vegas, he creates guns. And
• 1:32:25
  he's got, like, more in his arsenal than every gun
• 1:32:30
  store you can imagine. But, like, he's something else. Like,
• 1:32:34
  one of the most mellow people you ever want to
• 1:32:35
  meet in your life. But he's been the guy, been
• 1:32:40
  the consultant and director on Navy SEALs for years. But
• 1:32:46
  I got a lot of friends doing that. So my brother,
• 1:32:49
  he just... He just retired from Secret Service. And, you know,
• 1:32:54
  you know Danny Hester?
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: He was a former Mr. Olympia, classic physique. But he's
• 1:33:03
  gotten into, I mean, I shoot with these guys all
• 1:33:05
  the time.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: And actually Flex Wheeler.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: A lot of the guys are into the gun stuff.
• 1:33:12
  So we go set up stuff and stuff.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: But once you start training, you realize like how difficult
• 1:33:19
  it is and how long the learning curve is because
• 1:33:23
  you think, oh, you point, you pull the trigger. What's
• 1:33:25
  the big deal? Then you get into it and then
• 1:33:28
  you see someone like Taryn or someone who's competing and
• 1:33:31
  you go, oh, this is just like everything else, just
• 1:33:34
  like karate, like jujitsu, like everything. There's levels. Oh, yeah.
• 1:33:38
  Levels and levels and levels. Yeah. And you see people
• 1:33:41
  competing and you go, oh, wow. Yeah. I'd like to
• 1:33:44
  do that someday. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: You're in a great place for it.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. Texas is a great place for it. Oh, yeah.
• 1:33:50
  There's a staccato range that we go to sometimes. It's awesome.
• 1:33:53
  They have all these different setups out there. They have
• 1:33:55
  this old west town with all these different targets set
• 1:33:58
  up and you run from doorway to doorway. It's pretty badass. Yeah.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: John Jones, I see, is doing quite a bit of that.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: John Jones is a fucking scary human being. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:07
  And if you get past him, he's got his fucking
• 1:34:09
  dog Dutch.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: Which is, you know, he brings a Belgian Malinois everywhere
• 1:34:13
  he goes.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know my good friend Josh Barnett,
• 1:34:18
  he's at Terrence a lot too.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's another scary human being. Yeah, yeah. And a
• 1:34:23
  very analytical, intelligent. One of the most. Very well read.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: He is like Jeopardy smart.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: He's like ridiculous. There's not many things that he doesn't know.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: He's amazing. I watched you guys on this show. I
• 1:34:38
  was very flattered. He mentioned out of nowhere, he started
• 1:34:43
  talking about how he was inspired by myself and my wife.
• 1:34:48
  And that actually got me real choked up. Yeah, I
• 1:34:52
  was like, what?
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: Josh is a great guy. Yeah.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: Incidentally, my wife is somebody that, I don't know, you
• 1:35:00
  met her a long time ago. You last saw her
• 1:35:03
  sliding down the Luxor.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That's crazy. Yep. That's crazy. On Fear Factor.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: On Fear Factor.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: She was sliding down the Luxor when you last saw her.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: She slid right into my arms.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: We've done our sixth movie together.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: So we've been, you know, we got two, our teenagers are.
• 1:35:30
  We got one less– well, we got two left in
• 1:35:32
  the house. We're going to college now. So, you know,
• 1:35:35
  we're about to be empty nesters.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's wild how these things kind of connect.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: It is wild. Yeah. It is wild. Yeah. Josh is
• 1:35:46
  one of the– he's like one of the best examples
• 1:35:50
  to me of when people think of a martial artist
• 1:35:53
  or think of a cage fighter, former UFC heavyweight champion.
• 1:35:56
  And you think of a guy like, oh, probably some brute,
• 1:35:59
  some dude. Have a conversation with him. Yes. And you
• 1:36:01
  realize the depth of his intellect and the depth of
• 1:36:04
  his knowledge, like how much he knows about Nietzsche. He
• 1:36:08
  can quote Nietzsche.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: Like, he's so well-read. He makes his own whiskey. Yeah.
• 1:36:13
  You know, like, he's a very interesting guy.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: Man, what a renaissance guy, man.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. A real renaissance guy.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we usually, we have the same birthday, so sometimes
• 1:36:21
  we throw parties together.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's awesome.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when he's in town. He's always in Japan and
• 1:36:26
  just all over the place, man. He's like, he's an
• 1:36:29
  amazing human being.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: He really is. Yeah. Yeah. And again, one of the
• 1:36:33
  best examples, like when people have a stereotype of what
• 1:36:36
  they think a cage fighter is.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: And Josh was the youngest ever UFC heavyweight champion. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: And man, that's probably like, I've trained more with him
• 1:36:45
  than so many people. Like, you know, and it's just,
• 1:36:51
  it's just, what a great friendship and what a, what a,
• 1:36:54
  inspirational thinking person you know and you know so yeah
• 1:36:58
  and you know he did um never back down uh
• 1:37:02
  three with me we shot that in thailand oh yeah
• 1:37:06
  yeah yeah what's it.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: Like training in thailand that's gotta be fun oh man
• 1:37:11
  uh kind of hot yeah but the motherland of muay
• 1:37:14
  thai yeah.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah again like with every style there's it's it's strengths
• 1:37:19
  and it's weaknesses You know, a lot of them, you know,
• 1:37:22
  a lot of things around, you know, they go around
• 1:37:24
  and not straight, right, straight. You know, of course, the
• 1:37:28
  quickest distance between two points is a straight line. So
• 1:37:34
  it's not a whole lot of, well, they could do
• 1:37:37
  with a lot more boxing technique and some of those things. But, man,
• 1:37:43
  talk about toughness, that kind of a thing. But it's
• 1:37:47
  kind of a tragic, like, how they box. They beat
• 1:37:49
  the shit out of themselves. By the time they're in
• 1:37:52
  their 30s, man, they're like.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're busted up. Well, they start fighting when they're very,
• 1:37:56
  very young. But it's also led to them training so intelligently.
• 1:38:00
  You know, one of the things about Thai training, they
• 1:38:03
  don't spar like a lot of Americans do where they
• 1:38:05
  beat the fuck out of each other. They play spar.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: And that play sparring allows them to not get beat
• 1:38:11
  up by the time they get into the ring on
• 1:38:13
  Saturday because a lot of them are fighting every week.
• 1:38:16
  So they do touch sparring. And a lot of people say, oh,
• 1:38:20
  you can't get good touch barring. Well, you certainly can. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:38:23
  Especially when you're fighting every weekend. Yeah. And that's probably
• 1:38:27
  the best way to do it because you're you know,
• 1:38:30
  just working on timing, pattern recognition, and just getting your
• 1:38:35
  reps in.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just like with jujitsu, of course, when you don't
• 1:38:39
  muscle things, when the technique, you let the technique do
• 1:38:42
  its thing.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: That's so much better. Right, right. And you maintain so
• 1:38:47
  much better as well.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: Right. And I think one of the best examples of
• 1:38:50
  that is like Sanchai because Sanchai is in his 40s
• 1:38:53
  and he's still fucking people up. It's crazy watching that
• 1:38:57
  guy fight. But you look at him, a very unassuming guy.
• 1:39:01
  He's not ripped. He's an older guy, but his timing
• 1:39:05
  and his smoothness and the way he moves, it's very playful.
• 1:39:10
  He's just fucking people up. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: Man, it makes me, I miss Thailand. I actually did my,
• 1:39:16
  we did our wedding ceremony in Thailand.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know who was, who officiated part of
• 1:39:23
  it was Tony Jaa.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: Tony Jaa did the Buddhist part of our wedding. He
• 1:39:28
  did the water blessing and he also sang at the wedding. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: That's cool. He's like. Ong Bak. Yes, yes. Yeah.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: One of the greatest martial artists ever.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: What a great movie that was.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: For martial arts technique. That was like one of the
• 1:39:43
  first times like real true Muay Thai was exhibited in
• 1:39:46
  a film. Absolutely, yeah. Super high level. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: And Tony just, my God, like he would do these
• 1:39:52
  incredible feats in front of you. Just unbelievable. He could
• 1:39:56
  do a, do a somersault, hit you in the shoulder
• 1:40:00
  and just. tap you like that with your foot, with
• 1:40:03
  his foot.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: He had that much control. It's unbelievable.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: He was sick recently, but I think he's overcoming, I
• 1:40:13
  think it.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: Was a C word, man. Ooh.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I haven't talked to him in a minute, but
• 1:40:19
  I just found out about it like about, I don't know,
• 1:40:22
  a couple weeks ago.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: I knew he got thinner, but I'm hoping that he's
• 1:40:28
  better now.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a legend.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's something else.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: It's so fascinating to me how different parts of the
• 1:40:34
  world develop a different style of martial arts, and Thailand
• 1:40:38
  in particular, because of the fact that there was so
• 1:40:40
  much gambling and there were so many fights that they
• 1:40:44
  developed this very heavy leg kick, clinch, elbow, knee style. Yeah.
• 1:40:49
  It was just very different than a lot of the
• 1:40:51
  other styles. And for a long time was really dominating
• 1:40:56
  in kickboxing. But then you're starting to see other styles,
• 1:40:59
  like particularly a lot of Kyokushin guys now. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:41:02
  Specifically out of Japan. Have you ever seen this kid,
• 1:41:05
  Yuki Yoza? Is he Kyokushin? Yeah, Kyokushin guy out of
• 1:41:09
  Japan who's dominating people. He fights very different, man. He's
• 1:41:14
  fucking up a lot of Thai guys with calf kicks. Okay, okay. Oh,
• 1:41:18
  my God, dude. No, I hadn't heard of him.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: I just officiated a Kyokushin tournament yesterday.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: It was Sunday.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: Was that two days ago?
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm still connected in the Kyokushin.
• 1:41:31
  I've been doing that since I was a kid.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: Well, you did the whole thing where you have to
• 1:41:36
  fight like 100 guys in a day. You did all
• 1:41:38
  that shit, right?
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: I've done 30, man. I haven't done 100.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: I'm exaggerating, but it's like a lot of people. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:41:45
  which is the toughest. Honestly, I love it.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: It was the toughest thing I ever had to really
• 1:41:52
  face because you come to a point where you want
• 1:41:56
  to give up and you have to just you know,
• 1:41:59
  kind of walked the burning sands.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: What is it like walking the next day?
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: Man, I had, I mean, I remember the first time
• 1:42:05
  I did a 10 man and I had several knees
• 1:42:09
  on my legs, put it that way. So, because they,
• 1:42:12
  they destroy your legs so bad.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: I did a 20 man one other time and made
• 1:42:18
  the mistake of having a, I had like a energy
• 1:42:22
  drink beforehand, which is stupid because now my heart is
• 1:42:25
  racing higher than normal. And so it made it even harder.
• 1:42:29
  But somewhere around, like, inevitably, you get to a place
• 1:42:34
  where I remember the 12th guy, I'm like, what.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: The fuck are you doing? Why are you here? You know?
• 1:42:39
  But you have to dig deep. And you got 18
• 1:42:41
  more to go. Yeah.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm like, man.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: But honestly. It's such a hard style. Yeah.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: But, man, it's something about getting, you know, because you're
• 1:42:52
  going to be faced with yourself. You're going to be,
• 1:42:54
  you want to quit. And you have to just. Dig
• 1:42:57
  down and get through it. And there's nothing like it
• 1:43:02
  when you accomplish it. Because you know where you can go.
• 1:43:08
  You know that most of the time you tell yourself
• 1:43:13
  you're done.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: You're not.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: What a valuable lesson it is to know that about yourself.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: And you can't. There's no substitute for that. And it's
• 1:43:25
  just something that you just benefit. I remember the last
• 1:43:29
  time I did this, we had to train out in Banff, Canada.
• 1:43:35
  Because usually these things are in Japan. And people from
• 1:43:39
  all over the style, they come and they train. You're
• 1:43:42
  like training eight hours a day. You got these little
• 1:43:44
  lunch breaks. And I didn't think it through. I think
• 1:43:51
  the last one was like about five, six years ago.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: You know, wanted to challenge myself. I want to do this,
• 1:43:57
  but I'm by myself. And most people come with family
• 1:44:00
  members and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: So you're by yourself. You're a movie star. Yeah.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: And I have the target on my back, but it's like,
• 1:44:06
  of course.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: So, and so, and it's like, we'd have a training
• 1:44:10
  thing and then you got a certain amount of time
• 1:44:12
  to go eat, but then people want to take pictures
• 1:44:15
  of me and I'm the last guy to get into the,
• 1:44:17
  into the lunch thing. And then I was like, Oh shit,
• 1:44:21
  I got, 10 minutes to eat and then I got
• 1:44:23
  to get back in the next training session.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: And you have a full stomach. Yeah.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: And then, then you got like, I mean, it kind
• 1:44:30
  of sucked, but I, I taught myself something. I said,
• 1:44:33
  you know, you could be three hours in. I tell myself,
• 1:44:36
  I just got here. I just got here. And I
• 1:44:38
  dig deeper and whatever. And then the last few days,
• 1:44:41
  you're just fighting down to the last person. And, you know,
• 1:44:45
  there's people that it's like, you know, they got their,
• 1:44:48
  their eye on you. Cause like, you know, I've got
• 1:44:49
  the bullseye on me, but the great thing is, Dude,
• 1:44:53
  like I say, I learned a lot. I'm doing footwork
• 1:44:57
  with Frankie for years. I'm a boxing technique. I've got
• 1:45:02
  Benny Urquidez. Bill Wallace was my instructor. I've got so
• 1:45:06
  many things in my arsenal. And to test myself, it's
• 1:45:13
  such a great benefit. And it was weird because I
• 1:45:18
  was thinking, like, am I insane? Because I had a
• 1:45:20
  movie that I was going to be starting like a
• 1:45:23
  week later. I could have just been messed up. I
• 1:45:26
  could have had a broken leg or whatever. A lot
• 1:45:28
  of times you leave with a souvenir, they call it. Like,
• 1:45:31
  you know, when you trade in Japan, a lot of
• 1:45:33
  the Japanese want to give you a souvenir. That means
• 1:45:35
  a broken bone. But I had to try to, you know,
• 1:45:39
  overcome that. So in life, especially in this kind of
• 1:45:45
  coddled environment, life I'm living I don't get a chance
• 1:45:50
  to test myself that much right right and you know
• 1:45:55
  yeah I had to you know listen to my own
• 1:45:58
  complaints and shut the fuck up and get through it
• 1:46:01
  yeah oh it's not fair because everybody's taking pictures and
• 1:46:05
  you're doing this and I'm by myself no no that's
• 1:46:08
  not the point is get through it you know and
• 1:46:12
  I'm so glad to do that and I always like
• 1:46:14
  to that's why I like to train with champions and Because,
• 1:46:18
  you know, you want to get through things.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: You should be tested.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, if I had a religion, a large part
• 1:46:30
  of it, if I was the head of my own
• 1:46:32
  religious cult, would be that men go through something. There's
• 1:46:37
  a rites of passage. You've got to know how to
• 1:46:39
  protect yourself and your family and your loved ones. That,
• 1:46:42
  to me, is paramount. You also have to know what's
• 1:46:46
  inside of you.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And the only way to find out
• 1:46:49
  is to test it. Exactly. Because otherwise you get these
• 1:46:52
  dudes that have their chest pumped out and they're talking loud.
• 1:46:55
  Why are they doing that? Because they want to scare
• 1:46:57
  people off. Right. Because they don't know what they're capable of.
• 1:47:00
  They're terrified. Yeah, and you can't hide from yourself. Right.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing. I'm not going to bullshit myself.
• 1:47:07
  I want to know, you know?
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: And it's great.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: There's no substitute.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: For... going through that.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing that I, why I love fighters
• 1:47:21
  so much, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're basically
• 1:47:26
  naked to the world.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: Uh, you have to dig down, you have to overcome things.
• 1:47:31
  That's why I love them so much because they're, they're
• 1:47:35
  our gladiators. They, we, we live vicariously through them. And
• 1:47:38
  that's why I'm a little dogged about actors and, receiving
• 1:47:44
  those accolades.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: When they haven't done it.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: Myself included. I don't care if somebody says, Oh, he's
• 1:47:50
  not a fighter. You know, he's an actor.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: Fine.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: You should think that way.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: But personally, it's, it's something deeper for myself. And I,
• 1:47:57
  you know, one person, I think I identify with that
• 1:48:00
  as you, because I've seen you, I've seen you in
• 1:48:03
  the gyms back when it wasn't popular and, and we're
• 1:48:07
  doing it for reasons that are not, it had nothing
• 1:48:11
  to do with glory or, You know, ego or anything
• 1:48:14
  like that is just for self-improvement.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: You know, and that's what it's about, man, because it's
• 1:48:19
  about overcoming.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: Obstacles.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: And your biggest obstacle in the world is yourself.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. My instructor, when I was very young, told
• 1:48:26
  me that martial arts are a vehicle for developing your
• 1:48:28
  human potential. Exactly. Exactly. But it's so hard. Yeah. And
• 1:48:32
  people need something hard. Yeah.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: And what about Khabib's? What did Khabib say? Like what
• 1:48:40
  he says about discipline?
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, that rant?
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: Man, I had to– oh, that– I.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: Don't know if that rant is real. Somebody told me
• 1:48:47
  that rant is AI. What? Yeah. Is it AI? Damn it. What? Well,
• 1:48:52
  who cares? It's in Khabib's voice, and I bet Khabib
• 1:48:55
  would agree with every word it said.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Find that rant because let's pretend that it's not AI. Yeah.
• 1:49:02
  Or it may be one of AI's greatest contributions to
• 1:49:05
  martial arts.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: Right, absolutely.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: Because becoming addicted to discipline.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, every man addicted to something.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, it's such a great rant. Here it is.
• 1:49:14
  Give me this. Give me this. It's such a fucking
• 1:49:17
  great rant. Start from the beginning, too.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: Every man addicted to something. Some smoke, some drink, some
• 1:49:22
  chase girls, some waste time. But real man, he addicted
• 1:49:26
  to discipline. To early wakes, to prayer, to training, to silencing.
• 1:49:31
  Discipline no need motivation. Discipline move without feeling. Discipline say,
• 1:49:36
  I go anyway, even when tired, even when lonely. Discipline
• 1:49:40
  is best addiction. You want strong life? Discipline build it.
• 1:49:44
  You want peace? Discipline protect it. You want respect? Discipline
• 1:49:49
  earn it. No shortcut, only work. Be man with control,
• 1:49:53
  not man with excuse. No cry, no blame. You want
• 1:49:57
  better life? Start with better habits. Discipline every day. Until
• 1:50:01
  discipline become you.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Fucking yeah. Yeah.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: I don't give a damn if there's AI or whatever. Well,
• 1:50:08
  kudos to the AI person that put that together.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's how he lives. Yeah. So even if it's AI,
• 1:50:14
  he would go, this is accurate. Yes. Well, I'll tell
• 1:50:18
  you what, man. That part of the world, Dagestan, you
• 1:50:20
  want to talk about a hard part of the world
• 1:50:22
  that is developing some of the baddest motherfuckers. Even in
• 1:50:25
  Muay Thai. There's this cat coming out of Muay Thai
• 1:50:29
  out of Dagestan right now, Azadullah Imam Ghazaliyev, who's like
• 1:50:34
  22 years old, and he is fucking everybody up. A
• 1:50:38
  Dagestani Muay Thai fighter.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: Who has his own style. He's this tall, lanky dude.
• 1:50:45
  Who's one of the most terrifying strikers alive right now.
• 1:50:47
  A lot of people think he's the best striker alive. Oh, man.
• 1:50:50
  I think he's 22. 22 or 23 years old. And
• 1:50:53
  he's just fucking everybody up. He fights for one FC.
• 1:50:57
  Give me a highlight reel of this cat. That's it.
• 1:51:07
  Best technical striker in the world. That's it. Click on that.
• 1:51:10
  Just give me some of this. Just start it from
• 1:51:12
  the beginning. This dude. That tall dude with the beard? Mm-hmm.
• 1:51:16
  Azadullah Imam Ghazaliev. Watch this motherfucker. What a style he has.
• 1:51:23
  I mean, it's just this long, tall, lanky dude. Perfect
• 1:51:26
  timing and measurement. And he just starts piecing dudes up.
• 1:51:31
  I think this is like his full fight. Yeah. Well,
• 1:51:35
  I don't think so. If you scoot ahead, I think
• 1:51:37
  he fucks this guy up pretty quick. I've seen this fight.
• 1:51:41
  This guy he catches with one shot. But some dude's
• 1:51:43
  not so lucky. Oh, man. Yeah, that was one shot.
• 1:51:48
  But it keeps going, and then give me the next fight.
• 1:51:53
  He just starts lighting guys on fire, including Thais. And
• 1:51:56
  they don't know what the fuck is going on because
• 1:51:59
  he fights different than them. I mean, he's a Muay
• 1:52:01
  Thai fighter.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: He's got that straight, you know, he's exploiting the fact
• 1:52:06
  that they got so much round technique.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. A lot of front kicks up the middle, and
• 1:52:10
  especially to the face. But also his spinning attacks. He's
• 1:52:15
  got wicked spinning attacks, man. And also comes off angle
• 1:52:19
  a lot. His head's never on the center line. Super
• 1:52:22
  fucking technical. But just lighting dudes on fire. And just
• 1:52:31
  an attacker. Always attacking. And has the benefit of that range.
• 1:52:35
  That long range.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Nice.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: Dude is incredible. Incredible. And again... 22 years old. Like,
• 1:52:46
  look at that. So he's combining like Taekwondo techniques, karate
• 1:52:51
  techniques and precision Muay Thai. I mean, the problem with this,
• 1:53:00
  not this style, but this form, is that a lot
• 1:53:02
  of people aren't seeing it. One FC is doing a
• 1:53:04
  really good job of highlighting a lot of, like, elite
• 1:53:07
  Muay Thai fighters. You know, they have Tawan Chai over
• 1:53:10
  there and Siddharth Chai and all these, like, high-level guys.
• 1:53:13
  But in America, this, for whatever reason, has not caught on.
• 1:53:18
  And the only way this guy is going to get
• 1:53:19
  the kind of attention that I think he deserves is
• 1:53:21
  if he gets into MMA. Boom! Axe kick, spinning back fist. Boom!
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: His straight rights are no joke.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: He's a laser beam. He's so focused. He's so good, man.
• 1:53:34
  So good. So the Dagestanis are now entering into Muay Thai,
• 1:53:39
  which is a terrible sign for all these Muay Thai guys.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: Those are hard people.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: Hard people who start at a very young age. I mean,
• 1:53:50
  a very young age, like And also Dagestanis now, because
• 1:53:54
  of Khabib and Islam, they all know that this is
• 1:53:57
  the pathway to greatness. Yes, yeah. And so there's heroes.
• 1:54:01
  And there can be Ankhalaev. There's all these guys that
• 1:54:03
  have been world champions out of Dagestan now. So it's
• 1:54:05
  like you're seeing all these guys come out of there.
• 1:54:08
  And some of these young guys that are coming up
• 1:54:10
  are so good.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: They're so good. But this is fascinating to me that
• 1:54:14
  you take a guy who's adapted this Thai style but
• 1:54:17
  then morphed it into something that's different. And again, like
• 1:54:21
  you were saying, a lot of straight techniques. Oh, yeah.
• 1:54:23
  Especially when you're a tall guy like that for the
• 1:54:25
  weight class because I think he fights at 145. And
• 1:54:28
  when you're that tall at 145 and you've got those
• 1:54:31
  straight shots down the middle. Oh, yeah.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: Like his right is just like you can't really see it.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: Laser beam.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: Right directly at him.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: But it's also the hooks too. His hooks are coming
• 1:54:39
  around the guard.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: Like everything is precise and his accuracy is spectacular.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm a student, obviously. I watch every fight I can.
• 1:54:51
  I watch kickboxing. I watch Muay Thai. Muay Thai. I
• 1:54:55
  watch jiu-jitsu matches. I watch it all. But I'm always
• 1:54:58
  fascinated by these cats that stand out. And this guy
• 1:55:01
  just stands out. Yeah.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great when somebody knows how to use their
• 1:55:06
  length like that.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well, Yukioza, the Kyokushin guy that I was
• 1:55:10
  telling you, totally different. This guy is doing a shelling up.
• 1:55:13
  And getting in tight on guys and kicking the fuck
• 1:55:16
  out of their inner thigh, outer calf, lower, like he's
• 1:55:20
  chopping at their legs. Even Thai guys don't know what
• 1:55:23
  to do because they're not used to guys kicking their
• 1:55:26
  calves like this guy. So he's inside going shin to shin.
• 1:55:30
  And you know as well as anybody, Kyokushin guys have
• 1:55:32
  some of the most conditioned shins in the world. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:55:34
  They're always battering shin to shin. And this dude is
• 1:55:38
  just getting in. And you see in the second round
• 1:55:40
  a lot of these Thai guys are like, oh, fuck,
• 1:55:41
  I can't walk. I can't move right. My calves don't
• 1:55:44
  work anymore. Yeah. So the calf kick, which has really
• 1:55:48
  kind of revolutionized MMA. It's changed MMA. Because one, two
• 1:55:53
  hard calf kicks, you're compromised. You're not moving right anymore.
• 1:55:56
  And you're not pivoting off that foot when you're punching.
• 1:55:58
  So your punching power is diminished. This Yuki Yoza guy is, like,
• 1:56:03
  putting it on Thai guys with it. That's something.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, especially for a Kyokushin guy to— I mean, the—
• 1:56:09
  The knock with Kyokushin, I've been doing it ever since
• 1:56:11
  I was a kid, is just that not developing facial.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: Blocks. Well, this guy has incorporated Russian-style boxing. He's got
• 1:56:24
  Russian-style boxing with Kyokushin karate techniques.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. With that Russian-style boxing, they're… They really kind
• 1:56:32
  of mastered the non-telegraph kind of thing. Because it looks
• 1:56:36
  like they're not going fast.
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: Yukio's a highlight reel. There's a bunch of fights with
• 1:56:41
  him and Thai guys. And, you know, the first round,
• 1:56:44
  Thai guys are doing their thing. And it looks, you know,
• 1:56:47
  like a normal fight. But Yukio just starts chopping at
• 1:56:50
  those calves. Inside. And he's like multiple kicks to the
• 1:56:54
  calf from in tight and close.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's punishing.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: And you see guys, like, playing at, like, go ahead,
• 1:57:00
  kick me, kick me. And then after a while, they're like, fuck,
• 1:57:02
  don't kick me anymore. They try to get macho with them,
• 1:57:05
  but then it's not working.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, like, what would it take to develop, like,
• 1:57:12
  This is you, Piozza. Your thighs.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: You see how he's chopping when he's getting tight. Look
• 1:57:21
  at this. Always. Look at how much he's utilizing all
• 1:57:26
  the karate techniques, but also in tight just destroys guys' legs.
• 1:57:31
  But also spinning back kicks, all that other shit. But
• 1:57:34
  look at his boxing is excellent, too. A lot of
• 1:57:38
  Muay Thai stuff, dumping people. But look at that. He's
• 1:57:41
  constantly kicking the inside of the leg. When they're committing
• 1:57:44
  to kicks, he's taking their legs out. This dude, one
• 1:57:48
  of my favorite guys to watch right now. Like, look,
• 1:57:50
  that's a Thai guy, man. He's just destroying their legs, man. Man.
• 1:57:55
  An excellent movement.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: And he comes out of a very high-level gym in
• 1:58:01
  Japan that's produced a lot of really Masasaki Nori, another
• 1:58:06
  guy who's like that, is a very similar guy who
• 1:58:08
  beat Taiwan Chi recently like these guys are just destroying
• 1:58:13
  people's legs so they're utilizing a lot of the question
• 1:58:16
  mark kicks a lot of the stuff that that evolved
• 1:58:19
  in Kyokushin and But putting it into kickboxing, also with
• 1:58:23
  the toughness that is in, you know, a lot of
• 1:58:26
  the Kyokushin fighters.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I see him slip into like a Superman.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: Everybody's going to be susceptible for that. If you got
• 1:58:35
  a kick, a leg kick that's that legitimate, they're going
• 1:58:39
  to bite on that.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: Right. It's going to be open for them. And then
• 1:58:41
  he uses a Superman punch. Yeah. Yeah. And another very
• 1:58:44
  young guy. So there's these people that are exploiting like
• 1:58:48
  these holes and these styles because some of these– Thai
• 1:58:51
  guys are so hard to beat. By the time they're
• 1:58:54
  competing and they're 25 years old, they might have 150 fights.
• 1:58:57
  So much experience. But this cat's figuring them out, man.
• 1:59:02
  It's really interesting to watch.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I would love to see. I wish there was
• 1:59:07
  some kind of governing body that would get some.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: Superstars or whatever.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: Get this guy versus this guy from.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: Well, one is doing that a lot, but one, unfortunately,
• 1:59:19
  is not that popular in America. What I love about
• 1:59:22
  one is they'll have grappling competitions, they'll have kickboxing, they'll
• 1:59:26
  have Muay Thai, and then they'll have MMA. They'll have
• 1:59:28
  them all combined on one card.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: One is the one that Michael Giavello is on, right?
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: Well, he was on that. Michael Chavelle's not with one anymore.
• 1:59:37
  Michael Chavelle is one of the best commentators.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: He's excellent. Great guy, too.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: I'll probably be seeing him in another three weeks.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: You going to Australia?
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, going to Australia.
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: My wife and I, we did a tour. I do
• 1:59:53
  seminars over there and meet and greets and stuff like that.
• 1:59:57
  We haven't done that in a while, but. Yeah, got
• 1:59:59
  some really good fighters out there.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. John Wayne Parr.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: Some great fighters have come out of Australia.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're going to have some fun out there.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: They're in New Zealand.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Another hotbed. Oh, yeah. Another hotbed for fighters. Well,
• 2:00:14
  it's just warrior cultures. Absolutely, yeah. Warrior history.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: I've never met an Australian that I didn't like.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: I know. They're the nicest fucking people. They're so fucking cool, yeah. Yeah,
• 2:00:25
  they're the coolest people. They're friendly people. Yeah. Easygoing. Yeah.
• 2:00:29
  You have rites of passage still. Mm-hmm.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: You know, places like that. I mean, that's one thing
• 2:00:35
  that is sad about the United States. It's like we're
• 2:00:39
  not making men anymore.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: Not a lot of them. No, no. When they are,
• 2:00:42
  they stand out. Yeah.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: You know, that's why it's like a lot of times
• 2:00:45
  in these movies, if you have an alpha male, a
• 2:00:48
  lot of times— That alpha male, that American alpha male
• 2:00:51
  was being played by an Australian or somebody from the.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Chris Hemsworth. Yeah, it's, you know, it's like, it's very
• 2:00:58
  rarely an American. We got so, it's like such a trip, man. Well,
• 2:01:03
  masculinity is demonized here for some strange reason over the
• 2:01:07
  last couple of decades.
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: Bro, I saw the beginning of a lot of it because,
• 2:01:11
  you know, like I said, I was a school teacher.
• 2:01:13
  And I was right on the forefront seeing, like, everybody
• 2:01:16
  gets a trophy. You know, these kids, you know, they're,
• 2:01:20
  You know, it's about their self-esteem and you got to
• 2:01:22
  protect that.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, come on.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: And, you know, taking away competition.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: That just, I saw the beginning of that shit. And
• 2:01:29
  it's just so, so bad. And then these kids don't
• 2:01:32
  know how to deal with loss or anything. And then
• 2:01:35
  they end up shooting the classroom. You know?
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: Dealing with loss is one of the most important lessons
• 2:01:41
  you could ever learn. If you want to get better, lose. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:01:45
  Losing is the best medicine because you lose. I don't
• 2:01:49
  ever want to feel that again. And then you start
• 2:01:50
  thinking about all the things that you cut corners on,
• 2:01:53
  all the things that you didn't do. What can I
• 2:01:55
  do differently to make sure that never happens again, that
• 2:01:58
  I never feel that feeling? Or you quit. Those are
• 2:02:00
  the two options. Either you get way better or you quit.
• 2:02:03
  But winning sometimes you don't learn. You know, you go, well,
• 2:02:07
  I'm doing the right thing. I'm winning. I'm getting better.
• 2:02:09
  I'm developing confidence. That's good. But, man, sometimes a loss
• 2:02:12
  is the best medicine. Yeah, man.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: I realized something when I was, you know, I was
• 2:02:19
  born with some gifts, okay? I did one thing that
• 2:02:24
  got me into college is decathlon. As a fluke, I
• 2:02:29
  jumped into a race against one of the fastest guys
• 2:02:33
  on the track team and beat him, right? And that
• 2:02:37
  was just a fluke. And the coach saw that. The
• 2:02:39
  track coach saw that and was like, oh my God,
• 2:02:41
  you're fucking running for the school.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, okay.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: I was just like, I didn't have anybody, any kind
• 2:02:49
  of adult that took a liking to me like that.
• 2:02:52
  And next thing you know, I'm on the track team.
• 2:02:54
  And I started, I mean, I was really good. And
• 2:02:59
  then I wound up going to college because of that.
• 2:03:02
  And incidentally, That's the stuff that really kind of taught
• 2:03:06
  me to kind of evolve my martial arts. Because nowhere
• 2:03:16
  is there a benefit of like cutting off fractions of
• 2:03:20
  seconds in movement like track. Like when I'm doing the
• 2:03:26
  shot put. Well, a lot of times I was competing
• 2:03:29
  against people that were ginormous. And all they had to
• 2:03:32
  do was stick their arm out, and their arc was
• 2:03:34
  going to be better than mine. Well, I had to
• 2:03:37
  generate enough power to go at a 45-degree angle and
• 2:03:41
  inertia and all that to get past them. And with running,
• 2:03:48
  of course, if you shoot the gun off, all your
• 2:03:52
  motion has to go forward. If you go backward, you're
• 2:03:55
  going to be a step behind everybody. So as far
• 2:03:58
  as efficiency of motion, I.
• 2:04:01
  All the things I had to do with track, I
• 2:04:02
  started applying and fighting. And that's what kind of gave
• 2:04:06
  me cheat codes into things to where being super efficient
• 2:04:11
  really helped.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: And so one thing would like kind of help the other,
• 2:04:18
  but like, yeah, a lot of my, my, my whole
• 2:04:21
  track thing was a great benefit, but I did learn
• 2:04:26
  that I was kind of in a way like, the
• 2:04:31
  Bo Jackson's or the Herschel Walker's, I was gifted. And
• 2:04:36
  so when I would fight, I was, you know, I
• 2:04:40
  was a big guy that was fast and it didn't,
• 2:04:43
  you know, that was kind of rare. So fighting was
• 2:04:47
  easy to me, but I learned that when I was
• 2:04:52
  as the celebrated fighter, that was less of a good
• 2:04:57
  martial artist because then I kind of would, kind of
• 2:05:00
  flake off other things. Like I wasn't, I didn't try
• 2:05:04
  as hard as other people. And that's another thing. I
• 2:05:07
  don't know if Khabib really said, but it was a
• 2:05:09
  thing that he said about those gifted people. A lot
• 2:05:13
  of people who are gifted were not the best fighters.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That is a quote from him. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: And I took that, you know, that, that same thing.
• 2:05:22
  Cause I realized, dude, you're, you're, you're, you're doing it wrong. You're,
• 2:05:28
  I mean, my philosophy was like, uh, I feel I
• 2:05:32
  adapted the philosophy of, okay, say this kid Sean is
• 2:05:37
  140 pounds and there's me. And it takes me 1,000
• 2:05:41
  kicks to become fatigued. And it takes him 100 kicks
• 2:05:43
  to become fatigued. And he pushes to 120. And I
• 2:05:49
  push to 1,001. Who's the better martial artist?
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: Because he's pushed into his comfort zone. He's pushing himself further.
• 2:06:00
  What if he one day gets to 1,000? For him
• 2:06:05
  to go from 100 to 1,000, that's going to be
• 2:06:07
  a quality 900 that I don't have. Me being the
• 2:06:12
  gifted one, I'm looking at it using the comparative method saying, well,
• 2:06:17
  you know, I mean, at the end of the year,
• 2:06:20
  I used to kick a basketball rim. You know, I
• 2:06:22
  had that ability. But when I started thinking about, well,
• 2:06:26
  what I compare myself to other people, That was the
• 2:06:30
  wrong thing. So I said, no, I'm going to be
• 2:06:33
  like Sean. I want to train to my ability, not
• 2:06:38
  in comparison to someone else. And that really taught me
• 2:06:43
  something as far as like, again, why I put myself
• 2:06:48
  through these things and the benefit of it by really
• 2:06:53
  like when, what the martial arts really teaches is, is,
• 2:06:58
  You know, and the fact that, yeah, I had these gifts.
• 2:07:01
  But if I use those gifts as a crutch, I'm
• 2:07:06
  limiting what I can be.
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: Right. You're limiting your potential.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes it's too easy for the gifted guys. And
• 2:07:14
  so they kind of slack off. Right.
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah, that's– and I realized that's what I
• 2:07:19
  was doing. They also are not as comfortable with struggle.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And being comfortable with struggle is a very important
• 2:07:26
  part of growth. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: It's a mixed message because we start to admire the
• 2:07:35
  freak sometimes. As men, we celebrate the pugilist a lot.
• 2:07:43
  And that's kind of a thing that came full circle
• 2:07:47
  to where, okay, yeah, I'm able to do these things.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: But is that really me?
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: Is that me? the limit of what I can be
• 2:07:56
  by having someone else go, oh, well, do this or that.
• 2:08:02
  That's kind of a, that's not really the crux of it.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: Right. You know what I mean?
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: And it's really about like, yeah, there's going to be
• 2:08:11
  people that's going to praise what you can do physically.
• 2:08:16
  But is that, but I realized there was a point
• 2:08:18
  where That was kind of retarding where I could be
• 2:08:24
  mentally and what I can really become.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: You also have a responsibility to those gifts, right? Because
• 2:08:30
  if you are gifted athletically, you have a responsibility of
• 2:08:35
  achieving the full potential because you've been given this thing
• 2:08:38
  by genetics, by life, by God, this thing where you
• 2:08:41
  are faster, you move quicker, you have more explosive power.
• 2:08:45
  But are you going to harness that gift and allow
• 2:08:49
  it to reach its full potential? When you do that,
• 2:08:51
  then you get a Mike Tyson. When you do that,
• 2:08:53
  then you get a Michael Jordan. You do that, then
• 2:08:55
  you get an elite of the elite. You get what
• 2:08:58
  David Goggins always liked to call uncommon amongst uncommon men. Right, right.
• 2:09:03
  And that's the real hard thing to do because so
• 2:09:07
  many of these like really gifted guys in the gym,
• 2:09:09
  they always kind of peter off and disappear and And
• 2:09:13
  when they're in a fight where they fight another gifted
• 2:09:15
  guy that maybe trained a little harder than them and
• 2:09:17
  maybe he's got a little bit more experience, they realize, man,
• 2:09:19
  I don't want to struggle like that. I don't like that.
• 2:09:22
  I don't like that feeling. I like beating up guys
• 2:09:24
  in the gym that are below me. Yeah.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: And then you got to deal with that person in
• 2:09:29
  the mirror.
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's hard. It's hard for guys when they're
• 2:09:33
  the hammer their whole life and then one day they're
• 2:09:34
  the nail.
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: And you see guys that are like really elite that
• 2:09:38
  are dominating and then one day they get fucked up
• 2:09:40
  and then you never see them again. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oftentimes.
• 2:09:43
  But then you'll see the guy who, like, gets fucked
• 2:09:45
  up a bunch of times and keeps showing up. Oh, yeah.
• 2:09:48
  He keeps showing up. He keeps learning. And then you realize, like, oh,
• 2:09:51
  this guy is now elite. Yeah. And those are the
• 2:09:53
  true heroes. Right.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 2: You know? Right.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: You know, there's people I don't want– you know, sometimes
• 2:09:58
  you get in trouble pointing out people. Like, I don't
• 2:10:02
  want to say somebody like Izzy or whatever. But, like,
• 2:10:06
  you see the people who are used to having– that
• 2:10:11
  ability over other people.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: And when it gets hard, right.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: Right. And then it's like, um, even sometimes there's a,
• 2:10:18
  there's a talk about even Tyson and, you know, as
• 2:10:21
  just people are just, um, spectators when you go, Oh man,
• 2:10:26
  there was this guy, this guy's so gifted. Now, uh,
• 2:10:31
  some of the knock has been that when it became hard,
• 2:10:36
  you hadn't seen him dig down and overcome, Right.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: That thing. Right, right.
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: You know, because a lot of times when it got hard,
• 2:10:44
  it was like he just, you know, kind of tapped out.
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: And so that's something that, you know, not to disparage him,
• 2:10:52
  but just as people are looking at life, we look at,
• 2:10:56
  you know, we look at those things and we can
• 2:10:58
  take a lot of meaning from that and apply that
• 2:11:01
  and say, oh, wow, it's. I mean if that's on
• 2:11:05
  him to say, oh, was that the case? Or is
• 2:11:09
  it something that– I don't know.
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: I think with Mike it's a very special case because
• 2:11:15
  I think he had the elite coaching in the beginning
• 2:11:19
  with Cus D'Amato and training. And then when Cus died,
• 2:11:23
  he was kind of left with all this amazing ability
• 2:11:27
  that he had developed when he was young but not
• 2:11:30
  with the elite coaching. Like, so if Mike had left
• 2:11:34
  when Customato died, if he had then went to Emmanuel
• 2:11:38
  Stewart or if he had then, you know what I'm saying?
• 2:11:41
  If he had then went to an elite boxing coach
• 2:11:44
  and had someone analyze his style and someone he really respected. Respected, yes, absolutely.
• 2:11:49
  That he could still maintain that same level of discipline
• 2:11:52
  when he was the 21-year-old dominating the world.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: But he had so much pressure on him. So much.
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: Because, you know, I had to play him, so I
• 2:12:00
  had to study everything he did. And it's interesting because, oh,
• 2:12:04
  my God, like I always viewed him as somebody who
• 2:12:07
  was always looking for a father figure.
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 2: And I would study him and, you know, with Customato,
• 2:12:13
  he would dress like Customato. He's a young black guy
• 2:12:17
  from Brooklyn with suspenders.
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: You know, and a cabbie hat.
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 2: And then when Customato was gone, he was around Kevin Rooney,
• 2:12:29
  and Kevin Rooney had this– really fast way of talking.
• 2:12:33
  And it seemed like he adapted that. And when he
• 2:12:34
  was with, uh, with, um, uh, no, no.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: Um, uh, shoot.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: Why, why am I blanking? The, the other train, the
• 2:12:45
  other manager, Jim Jacobs, Jim Jacobs, you know, Jim Jacobs
• 2:12:50
  was married. He had, and he, I think marriage became
• 2:12:53
  important to him at that point. Cause he was really
• 2:12:55
  under the, you know, the umbrella of Jim Jacobs. And then,
• 2:12:59
  When he was with... Robin Givens? With Don King.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: The N-word is every third word out of his mouth,
• 2:13:09
  very much like Don King. He goes to prison. He's
• 2:13:12
  got two father figures on him, Mao Zedong and he's got,
• 2:13:16
  you know, Arthur Ashe on another shoulder. And I would
• 2:13:20
  just notice that, like, even speech patterns would change, you know,
• 2:13:26
  and I looked at him as, wow, here's a a
• 2:13:29
  guy that I felt like I identified with a great
• 2:13:31
  deal because coming from the same kind of, kind of place. Uh,
• 2:13:36
  but yeah, it's, it's interesting. Cause I think a lot
• 2:13:39
  of people don't know how much struggle he had to
• 2:13:43
  deal with. Cause the people think that Kevin Rooney was
• 2:13:47
  kind of a savior in that situation when he wasn't.
• 2:13:49
  Kevin Rooney explained to me directly that he, he says,
• 2:13:53
  if you ever see Mike, please, please, um, apologize for
• 2:13:58
  me because when Mike was married to Robin Givens, he
• 2:14:05
  didn't want to do this interview. And then turn around,
• 2:14:08
  Kevin Rooney did the interview. And Kevin Rooney was like,
• 2:14:12
  I really messed up when I did that. And Kevin
• 2:14:14
  Rooney even told me that when at the Spinks fight alone,
• 2:14:19
  Kevin made like over a million dollars. He left that
• 2:14:25
  casino owing. Mike had to bail him out like so
• 2:14:27
  many times. And so people thought, oh, Kevin Rooney is
• 2:14:33
  in control. No, Mike was, I mean, he had so
• 2:14:37
  much pressure on him. And I think with Don King
• 2:14:43
  trying to hire Mike's cohorts to help out, if he's
• 2:14:47
  going to hang out with him anyway, to try to just,
• 2:14:51
  This dude had so much pressure on him.
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. And Don King definitely took advantage of that. Yeah,
• 2:14:59
  I believe so.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: I knew Don because I was always in the fight
• 2:15:04
  camps with Frankie Louse. In fact, that's how I got
• 2:15:08
  to first meet Mike Tyson. When Mike was in prison,
• 2:15:11
  Frankie put Mike and I on the phone together. And
• 2:15:15
  so I would do my little kind of interviewing of
• 2:15:20
  Mike while he was in prison because I was going
• 2:15:24
  to be playing him. So I wanted the whole story.
• 2:15:28
  And I went to Catskills on my own and knocked
• 2:15:30
  on that door and spent time with the people he
• 2:15:34
  grew up with in that house. So I learned a lot.
• 2:15:38
  There's a lot that the public doesn't know and that
• 2:15:41
  I think he was concerned about coming out. And it didn't.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 2: It was really interesting. I was front and center on
• 2:15:53
  how much pressure this guy had to deal with. He
• 2:15:56
  had to kind of develop with the whole world looking
• 2:15:59
  over his shoulder.
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he was 20, which is crazy. Youngest ever
• 2:16:04
  heavyweight champion in the world. He went from being a
• 2:16:07
  13-year-old kid with no family. being adopted by this guy
• 2:16:11
  who's not just training him but also hypnotizing him. And
• 2:16:15
  then he's got Jim Jacobs who exposes him to this
• 2:16:18
  library of all the greatest fighters of all time. He's
• 2:16:21
  watching video footage of it.
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 2: Bill Caton.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 2: Bill Caton and Jim.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's an extraordinary story because it's like unlike anyone else.
• 2:16:29
  It's like the environment that he was exposed to and
• 2:16:33
  the way it produced this guy was who was unlike
• 2:16:38
  any heavyweight before. I mean, in his prime, I always
• 2:16:41
  point to the Marvis Frazier fight. I always tell people,
• 2:16:43
  you want to see like the scariest motherfucker that ever
• 2:16:46
  stepped into the ring, Mike Tyson versus Marvis Frazier. He
• 2:16:49
  was just undeniable, just undeniable. But that pressure, the kind
• 2:16:55
  of pressure that no one could explain what that's like.
• 2:16:58
  There's no internet back then. So there's not as many
• 2:17:01
  favorite famous people. So like, who's gonna who's he gonna
• 2:17:05
  relate to who's gonna tell him what this is like
• 2:17:08
  who's gonna there's no one like him yeah you had
• 2:17:10
  muhammad ali you had a few other guys that could
• 2:17:13
  maybe tell him what it was like but for the
• 2:17:17
  most part he's not he's got no roadmap and he's
• 2:17:20
  out there in this world of superstardom we could do
• 2:17:23
  whatever the fuck he wants yeah everywhere he goes people
• 2:17:25
  are screaming and cheering and yeah and he's knocking everybody
• 2:17:28
  out in the first round.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah the pressure on that man and They didn't
• 2:17:33
  have to fight Holyfield. Right. A guy who was really
• 2:17:36
  kind of more like a big brother to him throughout
• 2:17:39
  his life, you know, his professional life. Because, you know,
• 2:17:43
  Holyfield was his cruiserweight. You know, and Holyfield was the
• 2:17:48
  type of guy, how you doing, Mike? You checking on
• 2:17:50
  him and all that type of stuff. Then he has
• 2:17:52
  to fight this guy. And there was deep down, like,
• 2:17:56
  he's got to fight this guy who's got this reputation
• 2:18:00
  as a holy man and he's all this type of stuff.
• 2:18:03
  And then I remember being at that fight and I
• 2:18:07
  remember the press conference. And Mike was, like, really manufacturing
• 2:18:11
  this hatred that I was like, that's not real. Like,
• 2:18:15
  he's trying to dig down to really get this edge
• 2:18:19
  to really hate Holyfield. And I was like, I thought
• 2:18:24
  that was a mistake. And I don't think psychologically he
• 2:18:29
  was in his game.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: Right. Right. Holyfield had an edge on him. Yeah, psychologically.
• 2:18:35
  I think it was also the fact the holy man
• 2:18:36
  thing was a big deal. Holyfield had this incredible belief
• 2:18:41
  in God, and he really believed that God was looking
• 2:18:44
  out for him and he was going to go in
• 2:18:46
  there and couldn't be deterred.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: Dude, the third round. I mean, look, of course, I
• 2:18:53
  studied all this stuff on Mike Tyson. Third round of
• 2:18:55
  that first fight got chills because think about it. He
• 2:19:02
  heard something that he never heard his entire career. Everybody
• 2:19:06
  started chanting for.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: The other guy. Right. Holy field. Holy field.
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: And I swear to you, I saw just the air
• 2:19:14
  come out of this guy. Yeah. And it was like,
• 2:19:18
  I've done all of this and they're chanting for this man.
• 2:19:23
  And how gracious he was, how Tyson was at the end,
• 2:19:30
  I felt like, That's not a new thought. You kind
• 2:19:35
  of had that opinion of him going into this.
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: Well, Holyfield had been through the wars, right? He had
• 2:19:42
  those wars with Riddick Bowe. He had the first war
• 2:19:45
  with Dwight Muhammad Kawi. Remember that fight at Cruiserweight? Oh,
• 2:19:49
  my God. Go back and watch that fight. That fight.
• 2:19:52
  He had the war with Burt Cooper. He had wars.
• 2:19:55
  And Holyfield was unflappable.
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 2: He's like, I don't know why Mike Chain is about me, but.
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: It's like, he's just like. He never got angry.
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like, how you doing? It's hard to maintain, like,
• 2:20:10
  anger for that dude. Right. He's just like, okay. Well,
• 2:20:14
  that's also terrifying, too, because you know you can't get
• 2:20:16
  in there. Yeah. You're trying to get in that head,
• 2:20:18
  and it's like, you're not getting in there. God's in there.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 2: And then it's like, if you look at it, you know,
• 2:20:23
  Mike Tyson was committing to every first blow.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: Yep. Holyfield is a counter fighter.
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: Fake him, let him throw that counter, and you got him. Yeah.
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 2: And I was like, I think normally Mike knows this.
• 2:20:40
  Holyfield's center of gravity, so different. He's thin-legged, big up top.
• 2:20:46
  Mike should be able to push him easily.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: Easily.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: I didn't see the things that I normally saw from
• 2:20:53
  Mike Tyson in that fight, which made me feel like
• 2:20:57
  this is a psychological component.
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: It's a psychological component, but it's also a training component because, again,
• 2:21:02
  he wasn't with an elite trainer at that time. It
• 2:21:04
  wasn't the same as him being trained by Costamano. It
• 2:21:07
  wasn't the same. Yeah. He didn't have the bobbing and
• 2:21:10
  weaving style that he used to have.
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 2: Do you remember when he caught Holyfield with the body
• 2:21:14
  shot and the uppercut?
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: And just, like, basically you almost said, you saw, finish him.
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But he just chilled? Do you remember that moment? Yeah.
• 2:21:25
  I don't specifically.
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a moment. There's a moment like that.
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: Where he hurts him. He hurt him. And Holyfield looked
• 2:21:32
  like it's like. Yeah, but Holyfield would rebound. I mean,
• 2:21:36
  the really cool fights.
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 2: But you look at Tyson. You look at almost everything
• 2:21:41
  he's done. I thought I was about to see the
• 2:21:45
  beginning of the end. And I'm like, what the? I
• 2:21:48
  remember being there going, why isn't he jumping on him?
• 2:21:52
  You know, hey, maybe I'm wrong or whatever, but I
• 2:21:56
  swear I saw that moment. And I remember going, what's
• 2:22:02
  going on? Why is he not jumping on him? I mean,
• 2:22:05
  it's interesting. It's interesting.
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: Psychology plays a big role in how you feel about
• 2:22:10
  the opponent. And the opponent essentially holds up a mirror
• 2:22:13
  and allows you to look at yourself. And he's comparing
• 2:22:16
  himself to this holy man. He probably didn't like it. Joe,
• 2:22:21
  you know, I think. That's the way I thought about it.
• 2:22:24
  Of course, who am I to do it? But this
• 2:22:26
  is my opinion. Those dudes with that kind of character,
• 2:22:28
  like Holyfield had at the time, those are scary guys.
• 2:22:32
  Because they can't be broken mentally. Right, right. And if
• 2:22:36
  you try to break them physically and he rebounds, like, oh, God.
• 2:22:40
  How much will I have left in the tank? Yeah, yeah.
• 2:22:44
  How many more of these shots can I take? Yeah.
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: No, it's different if somebody, like, taunted you.
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 2: Now you can, you know, manufacture, like, you know.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 2: But when a guy's just like, okay, I'm just doing
• 2:22:55
  my thing.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You kind of start going, oh, is it me? Right.
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: Because you don't, you know, it's like, that's when you
• 2:23:06
  have the fate auras.
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: Right. Somebody like that is just like. Right. Like this.
• 2:23:10
  It's like you drown yourself. Stoic. Because I can't derive
• 2:23:14
  nothing from him. He's like– Oh, he was the best
• 2:23:16
  at it. Yeah, yeah. Fedor was the best at it.
• 2:23:18
  Fedor would be in the middle of the most chaotic
• 2:23:21
  war and it looked like he was just sipping a
• 2:23:23
  cup of coffee. Yeah. It was crazy. There was no
• 2:23:25
  one like that guy. He's one of the most unique characters.
• 2:23:29
  I think we were robbed of one of the greatest
• 2:23:33
  heavyweight matchups of all time when they never figured out
• 2:23:36
  how to put Cain Velasquez versus Fedor when they were
• 2:23:39
  both in their primes. man.
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 2: Cain Velasquez is the scariest person I've ever seen as
• 2:23:47
  far as I'm concerned. Like if there was one guy
• 2:23:49
  that like, cause I pride myself. I get in the
• 2:23:51
  ring with anybody. That guy, man, he never got tired, man.
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: He had cardio. He had cardio for a heavyweight. That
• 2:24:01
  was like a marathon runner. It didn't make any sense.
• 2:24:04
  He was a 240 pound guy who never got tired. Yeah.
• 2:24:07
  Perfect technique.
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the, the, The fights with... Junior
• 2:24:12
  Dos Santos?
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like they ruined each other. Yes.
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 2: I feel like they ruined each other.
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I think certainly ruined Junior. Especially the second fight.
• 2:24:20
  The first fight, Junior caught... The first fight, Kane should
• 2:24:22
  have never took that fight. Kane had to take that
• 2:24:24
  fight because it was on Fox. It was a big deal.
• 2:24:27
  It was the main event of the Fox, the first
• 2:24:29
  Fox card. And Kane blew his knee out. So if
• 2:24:32
  you look at that fight, Kane's wearing a knee brace.
• 2:24:34
  His knee was fucked up. His meniscus was torn. He
• 2:24:37
  was all fucked up. He couldn't anchor on it. He
• 2:24:40
  couldn't really post on it. And then he couldn't get
• 2:24:42
  out of the way. And Junior caught him with a
• 2:24:44
  big right hand, cracked him, dropped him, stopped him. And
• 2:24:46
  then he comes back. Here it is. Here's Tyson versus Holyfield.
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 2: Tyson unleashing uppercuts.
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: Boom. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, but Holyfield's still there.
• 2:24:59
  He's still there. Remember, he has a chance.
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 2: He has a chance right now.
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: You heard what he said, right? Yeah. But that took
• 2:25:10
  some wind out of Evander right away. Biggest round for
• 2:25:13
  Mike yet. But the thing about Evander is Evander was
• 2:25:16
  always there. He had been through these kind of fights before.
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 2: But I don't know where I am, but I was there.
• 2:25:22
  And something about seeing that. I felt like, oh, he's
• 2:25:26
  about to take him out.
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: But I think because Evander rebounded, and Evander had a
• 2:25:31
  history of rebounding. Oh, sure, sure, absolutely. He had a
• 2:25:35
  history of wars.
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, but it still doesn't change the fact that there was,
• 2:25:39
  I feel like there was an opportunity, and that was
• 2:25:42
  a very un-Tyson-like situation.
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: I just don't think Tyson was Tyson anymore by this time.
• 2:25:49
  I mean, I think he was a one-punch guy by
• 2:25:51
  this time. He wasn't cutting those crazy angles, dude. Slide
• 2:25:55
  off to the side and rip the body. He was
• 2:25:57
  standing right in front of guys. Yeah. He lost a
• 2:26:00
  lot of what made him special, which was the speed
• 2:26:02
  of combinations and the movement.
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 2: The movement is primarily because he couldn't have never gotten
• 2:26:08
  that far if he didn't do that.
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: Show that Marvis Frazier fight. Show that Marvis Frazier fight.
• 2:26:12
  Tyson versus Marvis Frazier is my favorite Tyson performance. Because
• 2:26:17
  Marvis Frazier looked like he was going to a funeral
• 2:26:19
  at the beginning of the fight. Look at him. I mean,
• 2:26:22
  you feel the energy from his face.
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: And he didn't play the Covenant right after this with
• 2:26:26
  the grizzly bear just mauling.
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing. Here it is. He's just all
• 2:26:35
  over Marvis, like from the beginning. This was on ABC
• 2:26:38
  Wide World of Sports. I remember watching this at home.
• 2:26:41
  But look at the bobbing and the weaving. It's not
• 2:26:43
  just right in front of him. It's angles. Like, right here. Boom!
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. That was when he was the champ. I mean,
• 2:26:56
  he wasn't the champ yet, but he was the champ.
• 2:26:58
  He was about to fight Trevor Burbick, but everybody was like, oh,
• 2:27:02
  my God, he's real.
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, here's the thing that sparked some controversy. Mike Tyson
• 2:27:07
  versus Muhammad Ali.
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: It depends on which Tyson and which Muhammad Ali.
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 2: Well, the best of both. You know, of course, you
• 2:27:13
  got to say the best.
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: I think the best Muhammad Ali wasn't Muhammad Ali. I
• 2:27:16
  think it was Cassius Clay. I think the best was
• 2:27:18
  when he fought Cleveland Big Cat Williams. To me, I
• 2:27:21
  always tell people, like, you want to know Ali before
• 2:27:23
  they took his title away, before they put him on
• 2:27:25
  the shelf for three years because he wouldn't fight in Vietnam.
• 2:27:28
  Watch Cleveland Big Cat Williams because Cleveland was a big,
• 2:27:31
  scary power puncher. And Muhammad Ali was just dancing around him,
• 2:27:36
  dancing around.
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 2: But was he bigger than Muhammad Ali, though?
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: Who does Woodland?
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 2: That's the thing about Muhammad Ali.
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: People don't realize he was like the biggest guy in
• 2:27:43
  the ring.
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 2: You know, he was only four pounds different than Foreman.
• 2:27:48
  People don't realize because he moves around the way he moves.
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: Back then. But in the Cleveland Big Cat Williams days,
• 2:27:54
  he was lighter. Was he? He was only like 215
• 2:27:55
  or 220.
• 2:27:59
  Speaker 2: And Cleveland Williams was what?
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: He was big. Look at the size of Cleveland. Look
• 2:28:01
  at his back. Look at the back on Cleveland. And
• 2:28:04
  look at the legs, though. Yeah. But he was a
• 2:28:06
  power puncher, man. Look at his back. Cleveland was a
• 2:28:10
  scary dude, man. He might be lean. He might be lean.
• 2:28:13
  But Muhammad Ali is a big dude. Oh, he's definitely
• 2:28:16
  a big dude.
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 2: I think Muhammad Ali is bigger than that guy.
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe. But look at the movement, man. My God. Oh, absolutely.
• 2:28:23
  So this movement was absent when he came back three
• 2:28:26
  years later. He never fought like this again. And when
• 2:28:29
  he fought Cleveland Big Cat Williams, Cleveland just did not
• 2:28:31
  know where he was. He was 2'12. Williams was 2'10. Oh, okay. Well,
• 2:28:37
  dudes were smaller back then. Like think about Rocky Marciano.
• 2:28:39
  He was only 185.
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 2: But the thing is that people don't realize because he's
• 2:28:43
  fighting like a lighter guy, you got a bigger guy.
• 2:28:46
  He didn't– especially he'll trick people to coming in and
• 2:28:50
  that magnifies everything.
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of. But they're basically the same size. But
• 2:28:54
  212 is fairly small. This is smaller than Mike was
• 2:28:57
  when Mike was in his prime and Mike was only
• 2:28:59
  like 215, 220. Yeah, 221.
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 2: So that's why it's interesting because like Mike moved his head.
• 2:29:05
  And the people who did the best against Muhammad Ali
• 2:29:07
  was Joe Frazier and Ken Norton.
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: Who moved their heads. Yes. But again, these are the
• 2:29:13
  guys after this three-year break. This three-year break, Muhammad Ali
• 2:29:16
  didn't train. He didn't train at all for three years.
• 2:29:20
  When you watch when he comes back after that, like,
• 2:29:23
  come on, son. Yeah. The speed. And Cleveland's like, what
• 2:29:26
  the fuck is going on?
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 2: But speed and a bigger guy. That's the thing. That's
• 2:29:31
  the thing. Because, like, you know, you thought when we
• 2:29:34
  were going in this clip that he was bigger than
• 2:29:37
  Muhammad Ali.
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the thing is, like, people don't realize how
• 2:29:40
  big Muhammad Ali actually was. Because George Foreman, you know,
• 2:29:44
  was a monster.
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: Look at these combinations.
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 2: And his legs are bigger than George Foreman's.
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 2: And we know where the power is, right?
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: Well, George Foreman, what did he weigh when they fought?
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 2: 218 and I think Muhammad Ali was 214. They were
• 2:29:57
  like right. So the actual fight day, who knew who
• 2:30:01
  was heavier?
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right. I'm just saying it's interesting. It is.
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 2: Because you got a guy the same size as Foreman
• 2:30:08
  moving faster.
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he didn't in that fight. In that fight,
• 2:30:11
  he mostly laid on the ropes, remember?
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 2: He did the rope-a-dope, but I'm saying he's still a
• 2:30:17
  big— 220.
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: 212 to 220. Pretty close.
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen it different.
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: He wasn't the same guy. If George Foreman of that
• 2:30:27
  time fought the Muhammad Ali that fought Cleveland Big Cat Williams,
• 2:30:31
  it's a completely different fight. Foreman's getting pieced up. Foreman's
• 2:30:34
  getting pieced up from the outside. And Ali was just
• 2:30:38
  picking him apart and moving and forming, swinging it in.
• 2:30:41
  He was like nobody else before him, man. He was
• 2:30:43
  so different. He was so different. But those three years
• 2:30:47
  when he had to take three years, and he didn't
• 2:30:49
  train at all. And then he came back, and now
• 2:30:51
  he's 30. And, you know, no strength and conditioning for
• 2:30:54
  three years, no running, no boxing. His body looked different.
• 2:30:59
  Who did he fight when he came back? He fought Lyle? No,
• 2:31:05
  that white dude had horrible brain damage towards the end. Cobb?
• 2:31:10
  Jerry Cooney. Oh, Jerry Quarry. No, no, no. Jerry Quarry.
• 2:31:12
  Jerry Quarry. Okay. Yeah, when he fought Jerry Quarry. See
• 2:31:14
  if you can find that fight. Now, look at his
• 2:31:17
  body when you see it. You see his body smooth.
• 2:31:21
  His footwork doesn't look the same. His timing is off.
• 2:31:25
  He had a ton of ring rust. He just didn't.
• 2:31:27
  What's that, Jimmy? He just didn't look the same. He
• 2:31:31
  didn't look the same. And I think that. That three years,
• 2:31:34
  they fucked him, man. Yeah. They fucked him. They fucked him. And,
• 2:31:38
  I mean, look, it made him a cultural hero because
• 2:31:41
  he wasn't willing to fight in Vietnam. And, you know,
• 2:31:44
  he famously, like, look at his body. It's different, man.
• 2:31:47
  He's just not the same guy anymore. He's not moving
• 2:31:50
  as fast. And Jerry Quarry was just a really tough
• 2:31:53
  guy who was, you know, famous for being able to
• 2:31:55
  take a beating.
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: Like, Ali didn't have the endurance anymore. Like, look at him.
• 2:32:01
  He's just not the same guy anymore, man.
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: He was a shadow of what he was before. He
• 2:32:08
  still went on to win the title. He still went on.
• 2:32:10
  But I always wonder what he would have been if
• 2:32:13
  those three years were not stolen from him in his peak,
• 2:32:17
  in his prime. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 2: That would have been something else.
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 2: You know, it's one interesting thing. Another interesting thing about
• 2:32:27
  Ali is, like, try to find him throwing.
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: A body shot. Right. Not a lot of us.
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 2: No, he almost never did.
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: Maybe a jab or two to the body. It's true.
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 2: It'd be interesting to count up all the body shots
• 2:32:42
  throughout his whole career, and you might get 10.
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it is.
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 2: That's why when people talk about the greatest boxer, of course,
• 2:32:54
  he's one of the greatest human beings.
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: Greatest Americans ever. Right, right.
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 2: Like just, man, the stuff he's– he put it– talk
• 2:33:01
  about putting himself out there for– as far as a
• 2:33:05
  servant of the world. There's nobody– I don't know anybody
• 2:33:09
  who compares to him.
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: Also, the personality. When he would go on talk shows
• 2:33:14
  and he was just so fun. How sharp was he? Oh,
• 2:33:17
  so sharp.
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 2: And all those things were memorized.
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite ones was Howard Cosell said– You're
• 2:33:22
  very truculent, champ. And he goes, whatever truculent means, if
• 2:33:26
  it's good, I'm that. Oh, yeah.
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was just a different human being.
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 2: He was not scared of anything, man. There's some stuff
• 2:33:36
  that some interviews that he's being real controversial.
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: Like he would.
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: Actually talk shit to people and talk about whooping their ass.
• 2:33:45
  You know, just recently I've seen some stuff that I
• 2:33:47
  was like, wow, I hadn't seen this one.
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. If anybody disrespected him, if anybody like if
• 2:33:52
  they wouldn't call him Muhammad Ali, if they were calling
• 2:33:54
  him Cassius Clay, he would fuck them up. What's my name? Pop.
• 2:33:57
  What's my name? Pop. Yeah.
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: He was a special person. And just culturally, like one
• 2:34:05
  of the most significant figures ever in the history of America.
• 2:34:08
  Because at a time where the world was torn, like,
• 2:34:11
  why the fuck are we in Vietnam? And this one
• 2:34:15
  guy says, I'm not doing this. And then they're like, okay,
• 2:34:17
  we're going to strip your title away from you. And
• 2:34:19
  then for three years he was persecuted and the whole
• 2:34:23
  world was watching and they eventually let him fight again.
• 2:34:27
  By then we had realized that Vietnam was not a
• 2:34:29
  just war. And this guy, they had taken three years
• 2:34:32
  of his life away from him because he wasn't willing
• 2:34:34
  to participate.
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, what a hero.
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: A real hero. A real hero. And like, again, a
• 2:34:40
  cultural icon, like just a different kind of human being
• 2:34:43
  that inspired so many people outside of fighting. My parents
• 2:34:46
  were hippies and my parents wanted to watch the Leon
• 2:34:50
  Spinks rematch when he fought Leon Spinks. Like everybody's sitting around.
• 2:34:54
  I'm like, I remember being a little kid going, I
• 2:34:56
  can't believe they want to watch this fight. This is
• 2:34:59
  so weird to me. Like they want to watch a
• 2:35:01
  fight because that's who Muhammad Ali was. He was just different.
• 2:35:05
  He meant something. to America in a way that no
• 2:35:08
  other fighter before or since has. Yeah.
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 2: Man, there's so many, man, just even for equal rights
• 2:35:16
  and just for everything. So, so much that I really
• 2:35:20
  can't think of many people that has been more significant.
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: No. And many people think, many people think about like,
• 2:35:27
  what do you stand for? What do you, I mean,
• 2:35:29
  this guy, he could have easily just taken some stupid
• 2:35:33
  fucking desk job with the army or something. And you know, Easily, yeah.
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, I did a movie last year in Louisville, Kentucky.
• 2:35:41
  And while I was there, I went and visited Muhammad
• 2:35:44
  Ali's gravesite. And, dude, man, I didn't expect it. I
• 2:35:49
  was just like, let me see it. And, dude, I
• 2:35:51
  couldn't talk for two hours afterwards. I just sat in
• 2:35:53
  my car and just got overwhelmed just to think what
• 2:35:57
  this man really meant. It was just like, it jacked
• 2:36:01
  me up. I didn't expect that.
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't think of another fighter that meant more.
• 2:36:06
  Like in terms of like a cultural icon. Can't think
• 2:36:09
  of another one. Yeah, and put his life on the
• 2:36:11
  line and just was so, you know. And a cautionary
• 2:36:14
  tale to fighters too about the end, about fighting too long. Look,
• 2:36:18
  no one ever forgave Larry Holmes for beating him up.
• 2:36:21
  Larry Holmes, one of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time,
• 2:36:24
  never got his just due. Right. Because people never forgave
• 2:36:27
  him for beating up Ali. Yeah, yeah, honestly, yeah. Which
• 2:36:30
  is crazy. Yeah. And it's not fair. Didn't make any sense.
• 2:36:33
  I mean, Muhammad Ali was trying to beat him up. But,
• 2:36:36
  you know, everybody knew, even though Ali was fighting, everybody
• 2:36:40
  knew it was over. He wasn't the Muhammad Ali of old.
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he wanted to call it into the fight, man. Like,
• 2:36:48
  Holmes was like, why am I doing this?
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah.
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was sad. And he wasn't, Holmes was never
• 2:36:55
  that much of a likable presence. It's hard to come
• 2:36:57
  behind Muhammad Ali.
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: Right, he was never that kind of a person. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:37:01
  But damn, did he have a jab.
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 2: That's the best jab around.
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: Even when he fought Tyson. He was popping him with
• 2:37:09
  that jab. And it made you wonder, God, I wonder
• 2:37:11
  what Larry would have done in his prime. This would
• 2:37:13
  have been an exciting fight to see in his prime.
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 2: The two of them?
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I still don't think he would have been able
• 2:37:17
  to beat Prime Tyson. No. But it was wild to see.
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 2: Tyson made his bones on fighting bigger guys and making
• 2:37:24
  them miss and pay for it.
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 2: So he he, he load up on, you know, on that,
• 2:37:28
  on his legs. And a lot of times when he's landing,
• 2:37:31
  he's in the air.
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: Yup. Yup. He's in the air, man. It was the
• 2:37:34
  speed too. Middleweight speed in a heavyweight body.
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 2: He's the fastest. Well, he was one of the fastest heavyweights.
• 2:37:41
  I think, uh, There's one guy.
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: Usyk's pretty damn fast.
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, Usyk's nice.
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. Talk about a person.
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: He's funny.
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 2: That's a funny dude.
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's a character. Yeah, yeah. And you want to
• 2:37:53
  talk about technique, too. And another guy was trained by
• 2:37:56
  the same guy as Lomachenko. Lomachenko's father trained Usyk. Oh, cool, cool.
• 2:38:00
  Which is also why he's like a heavyweight Usyk. Or
• 2:38:02
  a heavyweight Lomachenko, rather. Lomachenko, yeah, yeah. He's got that
• 2:38:05
  footwork and movement and that Russian style. You know, Ukrainian-Russian style.
• 2:38:09
  It's like Those guys, they figured out movement and footwork.
• 2:38:12
  Vival has it.
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: We're very fortunate that we can see all of these
• 2:38:20
  incredible human beings that have risked their life and their
• 2:38:23
  health and put it on the line so we can
• 2:38:25
  see true lessons about character and technique.
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wish heavyweights would concentrate on technique a
• 2:38:31
  little bit more.
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean, we're– Well, maybe Usyk's changing people's perspective
• 2:38:36
  on that. Maybe they're realizing, like, wow, you can't just
• 2:38:39
  one-two everybody.
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what happened, there's another thing in this country.
• 2:38:43
  It's like people, I think, they're not following boxing. They're
• 2:38:47
  not getting into boxing. A lot of these guys are
• 2:38:48
  going for the money. They'll try to play football or whatever.
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 1: Well, since Deontay, we haven't really had a heavyweight boxing
• 2:38:57
  champion in America. Deontay was our last heavyweight boxing champion. Yeah, and...
• 2:39:03
  Talk about technique. Not the best. But, you know, he
• 2:39:07
  had what Teddy Atlas likes to call the eraser.
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, true.
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 1: He can make all the mistakes in the world. He
• 2:39:12
  had that one eraser, blam. Yeah, yeah. Deontay's was the
• 2:39:16
  craziest knockout puncher that's ever existed.
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: It was nuts. He hit you moving backwards and flatlining you. Yeah,
• 2:39:24
  but he weighed like 212. 209 when he fought Tyson
• 2:39:28
  Fury the first time. 209.
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean— He and I went shooting before. Like,
• 2:39:33
  we've done some tactical stuff together.
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: Really nice guy. Yeah. I love talking to him on
• 2:39:41
  the podcast. Oh, yeah. He's great. I don't know. Like,
• 2:39:47
  just work on his technique, man. It's like, geez, I
• 2:39:49
  don't get it. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's too late.
• 2:39:52
  It's what you do for a living. I think he
• 2:39:55
  relied on that gift. for so long. Because, I mean,
• 2:39:58
  look at the gift, though. I mean, at one point
• 2:40:00
  in time, he was like 39 knockouts out of 40 fights. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:40:07
  But it's like he's... I know. Nuts. But it didn't
• 2:40:11
  matter when it landed. When it landed, you couldn't do
• 2:40:16
  shit about all that sloppiness. I still wouldn't mind seeing
• 2:40:20
  AJ versus him. I still wouldn't mind that either.
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 2: That'd be interesting.
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: I think after the car accident, AJ might be done, though,
• 2:40:26
  because he was knocked unconscious in that car accident. I
• 2:40:30
  heard really bad. I heard he was out for like
• 2:40:32
  10 minutes.
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And his two friends died. You know what I mean?
• 2:40:36
  And after all his fights and, you know, that is
• 2:40:39
  the last thing he needed is some extracurricular brain damage
• 2:40:43
  like that. True. True. And then also losing his two
• 2:40:47
  great friends like that has got to be, you know,
• 2:40:50
  that's just fucking crazy. Yeah.
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 2: That's a sad thing, but I think if he's my
• 2:40:57
  brother or my cousin, I'd be like, you got to
• 2:40:59
  go through this. You can't let, you know, you got to,
• 2:41:03
  for their sake.
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 2: What would your friends want you to do?
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll see. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 2: I hope for the best. He's another one of our warriors, man.
• 2:41:13
  He puts his body and, you know, life on the
• 2:41:15
  line for us, man. It's like, that's our modern day gladiators.
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 1: I know. There's nothing like a fight. It's different than
• 2:41:24
  any kind of sporting event. It's very different. And the
• 2:41:27
  losses are way different. They're way harder to deal with.
• 2:41:30
  And the victories are way greater. Yeah.
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 2: One of my best friends being Frankie, man. So I
• 2:41:35
  got a front seat to all of that. Frankie knocked
• 2:41:38
  out Roy Jones back in the amateurs. And I wanted
• 2:41:42
  to see him get his due. He was WBA super
• 2:41:46
  middleweight champ for.
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: Five years straight.
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 2: But, you know, it's a front seat to the boxing
• 2:41:53
  life and the fighting life.
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 1: It's a hard world. Yeah, it is. It's a hard world.
• 2:41:58
  In the end, it's not pretty. And there's no one
• 2:42:00
  there for you. In the end, I was watching this
• 2:42:03
  piece on Bobby Chacon, who was a great fighter in
• 2:42:06
  the 80s. And, oh, my God. In the end, it
• 2:42:09
  was horrible. It was just horrible watching just the deterioration
• 2:42:13
  and the brain damage and no one there for you.
• 2:42:15
  And that's a lot of guys. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 2: And if you, I mean, your brain, you know, it
• 2:42:22
  doesn't regenerate.
• 2:42:24
  Speaker 1: No, it only gets worse. Yeah. And if you're experiencing
• 2:42:27
  brain damage now, I mean, without treatment, there's some treatments
• 2:42:31
  now that they're able to use to help regenerate some
• 2:42:35
  neural tissue. Yeah. But there's a certain amount you never
• 2:42:39
  come back from. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 2: I know my son, one of my sons is, I mean,
• 2:42:46
  he's been going through, what do they call it?
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: This is like, stimulation thing. The magnetic stuff?
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, man, I forget. But he's actually, it's actually
• 2:42:57
  helped him out a great deal. I mean, he kind
• 2:43:00
  of went kind of an interesting route, like kind of
• 2:43:06
  experimented with some stuff before, but now he's kind of
• 2:43:09
  come back. It's turned him around.
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of was like, he ain't getting high
• 2:43:15
  doing it. He kind of went that route for a minute.
• 2:43:19
  But it's, but he's gotten, I've just actually seen things
• 2:43:24
  turn around with this, I don't know why I can't remember,
• 2:43:27
  but it's this brain stimulation thing. And it kind of
• 2:43:31
  rewires you, you know. You know, I think I heard
• 2:43:36
  you talk about the.
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: Ibogaine. You know, NED and those type of things. Yeah. So, yeah, there's.
• 2:43:44
  there's things that are going. There are things that can help,
• 2:43:47
  but you got to be very vigilant about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 2: So I'm, I'm, I've been connected to a lot of the, uh, uh,
• 2:43:55
  anti-aging type of stuff.
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: You know, we're getting up there, brother.
• 2:44:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's fascinating. A good friend of mine is, uh,
• 2:44:03
  Bob Goldman. I don't know if you know, Dr. Bob
• 2:44:05
  Goldman is.
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 3: No. Yeah.
• 2:44:07
  Speaker 2: You should have him on your show. He's an interesting guy.
• 2:44:10
  He runs A4M.
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever heard.
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 2: It's this conglomerate of, Doctors are all around the world
• 2:44:15
  that's dedicated to fixing causes of diseases, not just chasing around.
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: The symptoms and stuff.
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 2: And so it's like very much in the face of
• 2:44:29
  the pharmaceutical companies, they are really dedicated to, like, taking
• 2:44:35
  care of things from the source.
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 2: And it's been going on for a while, man. It's
• 2:44:40
  like they have, like, about six of these– things a year.
• 2:44:45
  One of the biggest ones is in Vegas, but like
• 2:44:47
  you look, look it up.
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: A4M. Okay. Uh, uh, uh, um, so that's alone.
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger. They, he's been, you know, dealing with them. They,
• 2:44:58
  I've actually tried to, I've hooked Nick, Nick Diaz up
• 2:45:02
  with him to help him because, uh, you know, they're
• 2:45:06
  on the forefront of the new medicine type stuff. So yeah, he's,
• 2:45:12
  It's an interesting thing. A4M, they have a lot of
• 2:45:16
  doctors who will be giving lectures on all the most
• 2:45:20
  innovative stuff, and they have all the newest equipment that's
• 2:45:25
  just like the biggest kind of, I don't know, like rooms,
• 2:45:32
  huge rooms full of.
• 2:45:33
  Speaker 1: All the most, Collaborating. Yeah. It's a good time to
• 2:45:37
  be an older person.
• 2:45:38
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of science behind it now. They have
• 2:45:40
  the belief that you should be living to 100 but healthily.
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 2: They really believe that.
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 1: If it's ever been possible, now's the time. Oh, yeah.
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 2: I think so, too.
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 1: My doctor, Dr. Alavizos, Dr.
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 2: 63, he looks like a freaking superhero. That's awesome.
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 1: 63-year-old guys when we were kids were basically dead. Yeah.
• 2:46:06
  They were just old men, frail, feeble.
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, man. It's like, yeah, we're getting older,
• 2:46:13
  but knock wood, man.
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: I've been very fortunate.
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 2: I've been very lucky.
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. This is a good time to be
• 2:46:20
  an older person. Yeah.
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 2: Man, you look good, man. Thank you. You too.
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 2: I think I'm a little older than you, though.
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: How old are you?
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: I'm 58. Oh, yeah.
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 2: I'm a little older than you.
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: Well, you look great. Well, thank you. You look great
• 2:46:33
  then if you're older than me. I feel good. Yeah.
• 2:46:36
  I feel very good. Well, there's so much information now
• 2:46:40
  on how to maintain your body and how to maintain
• 2:46:42
  your health.
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 2: When you're older.
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, brother. It's been great. I'm glad
• 2:46:48
  we got together. It was a lot of fun.
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 2: Me too, man. Again, man, I got to tell you, man,
• 2:46:51
  how proud I am of Joe from the gym. He's
• 2:46:55
  doing his thing, man, in a big way, man.
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: I feel the same about you. Thank you.
• 2:46:59
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, man.
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 1: This was a lot of fun.
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. We'll do it again sometime. Yeah,
• 2:47:02
  we got to.
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 1: All right, bro. Definitely. Thank you.
• 2:47:04
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:47:04
  Speaker 1: Bye, everybody.