Latest / Coffeez with Joe Shalaby / Randy "The Natural" Couture | UFC Legend, 6x Champ, Army Veteran | Coffeez with Joe Shalaby Ep. 301

Transcript

Randy "The Natural" Couture | UFC Legend, 6x Champ, Army Veteran | Coffeez with Joe Shalaby Ep. 301 · Coffeez with Joe Shalaby

0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey!
0:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Nice to meet you, how are you?
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Cheers, well.
0:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Good.
0:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to the coffee for the show.
0:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Shall we?
0:18
[SPEAKER_03]: What can I get for you?
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot that would be great.
0:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I think.
0:21
[SPEAKER_03]: But milk, oh milk?
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh milk.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just milk.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.
0:26
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
0:27
[SPEAKER_03]: This is that.
0:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Would you like a kiss candy?
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You got some dark chocolate there.
0:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Right over here.
0:34
[SPEAKER_03]: 72%.
0:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, perfect.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me take it over.
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
0:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome everyone to Coffee's with Joe Shelby.
0:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, I am literally sitting here with a living legend.
0:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Six-time UFC World Champion, movie star, entrepreneur, and God knows what else he does right now.
1:01
[SPEAKER_02]: The one, the only Randy, the natural couture.
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Randy, thank you so much for being on the show today.
1:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, show.
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate you having me on bud.
1:09
[SPEAKER_02]: We just launched Season 3 and it's been an absolute blessing so far and, you know, sitting here with you, just really.
1:18
[SPEAKER_02]: makes me like a geeky kid, right?
1:21
[SPEAKER_02]: The production crew is making fun of me, just for being so geekly and just being around such greatness.
1:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's very rare where I'll sit with someone who's just dominated as sport.
1:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like the Michael Jordan of UFC.
1:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll get into it.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I ask everybody this same question when they're on the show.
1:38
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your morning routine?
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Morning routine.
1:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Take my vitamins and supplements and get my coffee in and that's about it.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a big breakfast guy.
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing the intermittent fasting since I retired from fighting in 2011, so my window to eat is generally from 1 to 7, 2 to 8, that's 6 out of window.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Still saying super lean, you still say it, fine, I still doing a lot of circuit training, don't do a lot of sparring and grappling anymore, the neck just won't take at the distance and the neck are worn out, she pours heat five down to T1 or tired of my crap.
2:11
[SPEAKER_02]: What your body endured is just unreal and at the age you dominated the sport, just defies like what the human body can take.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the science about Linux has come a long way and you're seeing that across the board.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, obviously in MMA, I pushed that to 47 but you're seeing that in a lot of other sports athletes fighting into their 40s where I think 30 kind of used to be that cut off so to speak.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that cut up has been pushed back out of 40.
2:38
[SPEAKER_01]: pretty pretty significantly across the board, seeing hockey players, ball players, and all sports playing longer.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: We just got a smarter, smarter about our bodies, what to put in them, how to get the most out of them.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm certainly no exception to that.
2:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, trying to run a Ferrari, so you got to put good things in it, and take care of it, or it's not going to run very long.
2:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine,
3:00
[SPEAKER_02]: the lifestyle you live to leave the sport as a champion at 47.
3:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You must just live in a camp.
3:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that was certainly my happy place.
3:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of the thing I miss about it now.
3:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not so much the fighting and walking out of that tunnel, but the camaraderie, the team, the routine, because life is anything but a routine.
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's crazy.
3:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm traveling all over the place, but
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I do miss every teen.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The one thing I miss, it was the impetus for all my buddies from high school, college, the army would come to the fights.
3:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They'd come to Boston, they'd come to wherever I was fighting Vegas and I'd get to see those guys.
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the one thing I miss about fighting right now.
3:41
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you staying in touch now with social media now?
3:46
[SPEAKER_01]: These digital phones were all carrying around.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty easy to stay in touch with people now, compared to when I was a kid.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank God that we didn't have cell phones back then.
3:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, do you think you would have maintained that level of discipline?
3:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
3:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I was pretty passionate about what it was doing.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Russell and became the thing for me at a pretty young age.
4:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I often wonder, will sports be impacted because of the distractions on cell phones?
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I look at like every major athlete, like just scrolling in between, being banched or, you know, be careful to be in a little fight.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's kind of...
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: lead its way into athletics, I mean, it's certainly a distraction and I like to think of social media more of service media, I'm focused on it for our service.
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: aspect of it that I'm probably going to be okay if you're actually using it for the social aspect of it you're going to find all kinds of issues in my opinion.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's become a viable tool but is it going to start affecting athletic performance?
4:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
4:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're certainly seeing in intelligence dropping since we started implementing screens into teaching our kids, which is interesting.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: They're tracking that and they've been tracking that for quite a while.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're seeing a significant drop in the intelligence of our youth.
5:01
[SPEAKER_01]: by all this screen time that they're getting now.
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We know the blue light's not great for you.
5:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The EMF, the radiation's not that great for you either.
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's some issues there, for sure.
5:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do what we can to mitigate, but the studies are...
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: The studies are... Yeah.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, Randy.
5:19
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people like to talk about the champion, Randy.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to do something a little different.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to talk about the Randy that most people don't know, which is what was life like in the Army.
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Army was great for me.
5:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I was one of those kids where everything kind of had its place.
5:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my room was always clean.
5:36
[SPEAKER_01]: My friends would come over for sleepovers and dump their crap on the floor and they'd go, bro, they'd don't go there.
5:40
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing?
5:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was the kind of kid I was.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So the transition to the Army was pretty smooth for me.
5:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just need to learn how to fold by underwear properly and how to brush my teeth by the numbers.
5:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Six years of my life, 19 to 25 years old, very former
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: He looked at the world in a particular way.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, I think he goes back further, you know, it started rustling at 10.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: For all the wrong reasons to get the attention of a dad that wasn't around much.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom raised three of us by herself.
6:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And rustling those coaches filled that void.
6:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I found the place where I flourished, those were my friends, soccer and rustling my two favorite sports.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, still friends with my junior high school coach, literally my very first coach in wrestling, coach case beer, and you, I think again, look through a particular set of eyes putting yourself through that kind of pain, that kind of suffering, if you will, every single day at practice, once you've been through wrestling practice, everything else you face is pretty easy to be honest.
6:47
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why special operations guys look for guys that have strong wrestling pedigrees, because we have a particular mindset.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And fighting just became an extension of wrestling for me after the Army after college after chasing that Olympic dream for 20 plus years, this crazy sport of no holds barred came along.
7:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were some good wrestlers, you know, Don Fryer, Mark Coleman, you know, a couple others, Kenny Monday, Kevin Jackson, you know, both Olympic champs, trying this crazy new sport of MMA, no holds barred is what they call that back then.
7:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I saw that, I was college teammates with Dawn Fry, and I competed against Coleman in freestyle.
7:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I knew these guys pretty well from the rest of the world, and I see them fighting, and I'm like, oh my God, that's crazy, what a crazy sport.
7:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I was lucky enough back then to get into it, but I think the army in many, many ways fashioned me.
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think as a one-time state champ from Bluewood, Washington, I don't think I had the confidence in myself to compete at that international or national stage.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that six years in the army and wrestling for the army, wrestling in Germany.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're tagging leg and debug, making the national team by, by 86, 87, and being an alternate on that 88 Olympic team as a soldier gave me the confidence that I could compete at that level, and I'm from there, Oklahoma State, I got a scholarship offer after being an alternate on the 88 team.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: All the college coaches are like, where did that kid come from?
8:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Because like I said, I didn't get any attention out of high school.
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And the phones started ringing, and I had to make a decision.
8:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Was I going to stay in the army at that time after six year or two kids, which is what sent me to the army in the first place at a kid on the way.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And then my daughter was born when we were stationed in Germany.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it was a big decision, kind of a scary decision, frankly, to get out of the service where my family was being supported, and I was still chasing that Olympic dream.
8:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So, that was first big decision I really had to make, was getting married.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: and becoming a dad and then the second was I'm not going to get out of the army and take a scholarship and go and try to get a degree and wrestle in college where am I going to stay right here and keep supporting my family and keep chasing the Olympic dream.
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Thankfully Coach Winter, you know, the army coach, you know, he was a great guy, he's still a good friend and someone that helped me in my journey along the way.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: another one of those coaches, said, man, if you're crazy, if you don't take that scholarship, and you're crazy if you don't go to Oklahoma State, he had done there, you know, to put the Hall of Fame and stuff, which is right there on campus.
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So he pushed me in the right direction and then made the choice to get out of the army and and chase that that college career.
9:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So you were special forces in the army?
9:42
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
9:43
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a common misconception.
9:44
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people think I was a ranger.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I never went to ranger school.
9:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen my ranger.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: They trained me as an air traffic controller.
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was right in 82 right after Reagan fired all those guys.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they gave me an enlistment bonus to and I qualified academically.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So I joined just an air traffic controller.
10:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they figured out I could wrestle.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: After about two years in, I made the All Army Wrestling Team, and so I think most of my enlistment, I spent wrestling for the Army.
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Four of my six years in uniform was spent wrestling for the Army.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even know that was the thing.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a big thing now.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They will class athletes program now in the Army, and the wrestling program is very, very strong.
10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Back then when I was in in the 80s early 80s the Marine team was the team to be they had the best program But that's changed hands actually my last year on the Army team in 1988.
10:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We beat the Marine team for the first time in In the time I was on the team So that was exciting.
10:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It was cool to go out that way and then I drove from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Still water Oklahoma start my college career.
10:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's really cool that you're able to
10:57
[SPEAKER_02]: actually turn wrestling into some sort of a, come on, an educational goal.
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we're seeing right now is wrestling is becoming a way to actually make a living because there wasn't a way to really make a living and wrestling up until what we're seeing right now with the resurgence of wrestling as like a mainstream combat sport.
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think if I may as been a big part of that, I think if you look at what RIF, real American freestyle is doing and they're streaming on Fox.
11:26
[SPEAKER_01]: is they're mimicking the ultimate fighter in some ways and that show obviously revolutionized mixed martial arts and RAF is the first group to kind of come together to kind of put a package together for wrestling and make wrestling palatable and marketable and they're doing a great job so we're very interesting matchups a bunch of absolute studs you know world champs across the
11:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think M.A.
11:52
[SPEAKER_01]: is part of that puzzle.
11:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You're seeing some bigger names in M.A.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: that have wrestling pedigrees in some of those cards as well.
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But why?
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they made names in paper views fighting in no holds Barton and mixed martial arts.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So those surprise there.
12:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're doing a great job and it's fun to watch.
12:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, MMA has become the professional outlet for amateur wrestling in many, many ways.
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you look across the board and all the promotions, a lot of the guys in those titles are guys that have strong wrestling pedigrees.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Or did you get to?
12:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Jits and wrestling are both grappling.
12:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They're kind of the inversion of each other in many ways.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Jits who is is wrestling inverted.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: In many ways, the guys are so good from fighting from their back and using their long levers and their legs and an operating from what, as a wrestler, you would account as a position to disadvantage, you know, be it on the bottom, but they're very functional and they survive there, do very well.
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you can have to know both.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You do.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You do.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you have to be a well-rounded fighter now that this third generation of mixed martial artists is very skilled in all areas of the fight game.
12:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can't survive long in the sport now if you have a glaring weakness.
13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not good at some form of striking, not only being offensive, but defensive, protecting yourself, some form of transition from those striking positions to that grappling and that clinch fighting and then putting guys on the ground and being able to operate on the ground, both on the top or the bottom position, is what MMA is grown into, this hybrid sport.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's interesting those early days it was all about proving that your martial art was the best martial art.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we quickly realized there was no one style and one martial art that encompassed everything you needed to be good at.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So I came in on the cusp of that change in mindset.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: My wrestling was a great place to start, but I had a bunch of other stuff I had to learn to be successful and not to have those glaring weaknesses.
13:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody points those out to you and a fight is not very much fun.
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when did you start to work on your stand-up game?
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it immediately?
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny because that was the one sport my mom forbid me to do as a kid.
13:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to box, I loved boxing.
13:58
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like, no, you can play football, but you're not boxing.
14:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And she laughs about that now.
14:03
[SPEAKER_01]: She should've just let you do it back then, but yeah, it's interesting.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the sport a boxing, but Rustling was always at for me, started there at 10.
14:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we saw a UFC enter due to it's who now they got UFC BJJ.
14:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think UFC will start arresting subsidiary now that RAF is actually making some other ways?
14:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an interesting idea.
14:28
[SPEAKER_01]: RAF and from what I've seen have been some other people prowling some other organizations that have tried to throw wrestling matches and not had very much success, but it seems like RAF is doing very well.
14:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're going into what their tenth show.
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And now they got big headlines, they got Mirage.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: The box is doing a great job of streaming.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: They're putting a great package together.
14:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's exciting.
14:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun to watch.
14:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Getting as a co-sider and so many amazing both wrestlers and mixed martial artists.
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: The sound and the moderating.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very cool.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Sun and Sun is doing a great job.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Commentate.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Chale's pretty sharp.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Wasn't he always your student?
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Chelle, somebody I've known since he was in high school, prior to recruiting him, to come wrestle for me in Oregon State, when I was coaching in Oregon State, he chose a different pass, so I ended up having to coach against him.
15:18
[SPEAKER_01]: He went down to the ducks, and I was up with the beavers in Corballas.
15:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had to coach against him, but I've known him since he was in high school.
15:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great guy.
15:29
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, let's talk about your debut at USC at age 33.
15:35
[SPEAKER_02]: First off, I want to talk about what is it that inspired you to start such a crazy sport at that age?
15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, like I said, it's an extension of wrestling.
15:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I saw other guys like Don Fry, who I knew very well in college and Mark Coleman, who wrestled her to Hawaii State before I got the Oklahoma State.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But somebody I wrestled in freestyle, a new from the International Wrestling Circuit that we're doing this crazy sport of MMA.
15:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So as drawn to it, and back then it was different.
16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: If you build out an application, there wasn't any amateur MMA to speak of, so it wasn't like you were going to go test yourself and work your way up.
16:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, literally my first show was a UFC UFC 13.
16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: In 96, I saw Fry and Coleman both competing in a friend of mine through the wrestling worlds.
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how man, you see that, you should do that.
16:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll send in the application for it, you're like, all right, whatever, I didn't think twice about it.
16:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It was that easy to get a UFC fight back then.
16:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they didn't want any more wrestlers, because Fry and Coleman, you know, were kind of dominating.
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Coleman was the first heavyweight champ in many ways and, you know, ground in pound and a bunch of the things he brought from the wrestling world.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: and the Russers' intensity to the sport, Coleman and Frey were, you know, Dan Severn, those are guys that were exemplifying that.
16:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And got guys like mine and Dan here, Dan here said, Matt Lennon, a bunch of us other wrestlers saw what they were doing and, man, that looks like fun.
17:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was fortunate enough to get in, but it was a different back then.
17:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You literally put it in an application.
17:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't like there was someplace you could go fight your way into a promotion like now.
17:13
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an actual amateur sport.
17:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got that through.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Work your way up in the levels and get up to the regional shows and then get noticed there when some titles there in a regional level and you'll get noticed by a, you know,
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Bellator PFL LFA LFA LFA is one of those regional shows has made West show that's pretty solid.
17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The CEO on the show he's like the G League of the U.S.C.
17:37
[SPEAKER_01]: He likes to fight.
17:38
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, I don't want to compete with them.
17:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's smart.
17:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a smart promoter.
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm poking the bear.
17:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what I'm poking.
17:46
[SPEAKER_01]: No, he just wants to breed up.
17:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he's on their streaming.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yeah.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a brand guy.
17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Good job.
17:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So we need outlets like that.
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: The more outlets we have as fighters, the better, and that's the same at the highest level.
17:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the UFC can't be the only show in town.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We need these other promotions to flourish and do well, so we as fighters have lots of choices.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can get a fair shake and get, you know, get your piece of the pie while you're still physically capable of fighting.
18:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they do try to rock you down with contracts now.
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The contracts are horrible.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: They really are.
18:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I was fortunate to get in at 33 almost 34 years old and that age, that number, you know, that used to mean something to a lot of people, especially in combative sports, by combative sports thought processes.
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I was already over the hill.
18:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was almost in underdog and every fight I got in from that very first show because of my age.
18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: which you know I think the science of athletics has come a long long ways and a lot of us across the board and all sports are getting a lot more out of our bodies than we used to.
18:50
[SPEAKER_01]: What used to be 30, you know early 30s is that cutoff I think is now more in the early 40s stage and I bought
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So you fought for 33 to 43 consecutively.
19:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you took a break.
19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It was going through the divorce and kind of just didn't feel like myself.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of stuff going on personally stepped away from the sport for a little while.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I started commentating at that time.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That was 0506 around then.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: got into a grappling competition here.
19:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The professional submission league with Rico Chipper earlier, my old manager, and was a really fun event.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had been out of competition for over 10 months when that event came along.
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And they matched people with Jacques Rade de Sousa.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, I thought I was going to get smoked.
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he's a world champ and a great huge, it's a practitioner.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a very competitive match and an an an an an an an an an an an an an a draw and I knew in that moment that the competitive Spirit was still there and I still had more to do so Was a couple months later I came out of retirement and fought big-tem Sylvia I think that was UFC 68 Not sure.
19:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're like 320 now the numbers run together But yeah, you won that fight.
20:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know that was that was a heavyweight, right?
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I was at heavyweight It was my first fight at heavyweight
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And you were the light heavyweight champ prior.
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been the heavyweight champ of beating Maurice for the heavyweight title, but back then, the only two weight classes.
20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything over 200 was a heavyweight.
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, obviously now there's eight or 10, eight weight classes.
20:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we have light heavy weights and all this other stuff that you've been to weight.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: After, yeah, after the sport ran toward regulation.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: coming up with the weight classes and all those things that we're already used to from boxing that kind of in some ways gave us some credibility.
20:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if we thought we were crazy, getting in the cage and fighting, somehow we were all criminals, and most of us are called educated guys.
20:53
[SPEAKER_01]: This was our outlet to be a professional athlete, which is a big deal.
20:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's crazy.
20:58
[SPEAKER_02]: The negative stigma of the era of fighting that you grew up in and even us as, you know,
21:06
[SPEAKER_02]: the people who just enjoyed the sport and watched it, they looked at us as, you know, crazy people.
21:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we're criminals too.
21:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
21:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there was two stigmas, one, the ground fighting, nobody understood the ground fighting.
21:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even John Wayne picked that guy back up before he punched him again, right, in the cowboy movies.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was something about fighting on the ground and punching a guy on the ground and all the stuff that kind of went against fight etiquette in some ways.
21:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the cage, I think, was a stigma to overcome too.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys block each other in a cage and fight each other.
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you thinking?
21:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's certainly what my mom said to me.
21:43
[SPEAKER_01]: When I told her I was going to fight in this thing, got the UFC.
21:46
[SPEAKER_02]: The negative PR went all the way to like Capitol Hill.
21:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was just like that.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That ticks involved in everything.
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Senator McCain, yeah, started speaking out against the sport.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Because he's connected to Anne House at Bush and boxing.
22:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're starting to break into those paperview number ranges that are threatening what boxing he's doing at that time.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's where the political backlash come on.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't really give us shit about us as athletes.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on.
22:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They were being threatened by the paper unit numbers that MMA was putting up at that time.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they started trying to politically undermine the sport.
22:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And we did the right thing by running towards regulation.
22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, make this more understandable.
22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Create more rules.
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They were really only full rules and those early shows.
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you could wear gloves and not wear gloves, wear shoes and not wear shoes, wear ghee and not wear ghee.
22:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you got boxes out there with one boxing glove on, crying out loud, I mean, you know, some of the wrestlers in there getting their teeth kicked out, it was pretty crazy back in the day.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he couldn't eye gouged.
22:48
[SPEAKER_01]: couldn't bite, couldn't grind strike, and you couldn't fish hook, which is, you know, putting your fingers in cuts or are in a guy's mouth to control them.
22:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were the only full rolls in the early days of the sport.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So we started running towards regulation every show.
23:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They're seem like there was a new rule or something that we weren't allowed to do anymore.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just slowly started figuring out what is now an amazing hybrid sport.
23:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and now it really tests like the greatest athletes on the planet.
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It, I mean, in many ways, Bruce Lee was the first mixed martial artist, right?
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: He was kind of the first guy to want to buck the system, not operate in a single operating system.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Winchon, Kung Fu, and they were kind of pissed that he steps outside that box and trained in all these other disciplines and started pilfering and picking what worked for him as an athlete from all these other styles.
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of went against the tradition that martial arts had established.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in many ways he was the first mixed martial artist and the grace he's came along.
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: to promote Brazilian GG2, they had this house fights that had been going on for a long long time, you know, if anybody from any other martial arts style or school came to their school and beat their best student, you're going to take home a 50k check.
24:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And to my my knowledge, I don't think they ever gave that check away.
24:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Hory and one are the final way to market this this style, Brazilian GG2, he teamed up with our
24:19
[SPEAKER_01]: 93, I think was that first fight in Denver, you know, hoist they picked, they hand-picked hoist because of his size, because he was a smaller athlete and they knew he was going to be out there against some of these giants and used you just to find a way to win.
24:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Brilliant, marketing.
24:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Revolutionized martial arts in many, many ways.
24:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we continue on, you want some more coffee?
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I have the breeze to bring some more coffee.
24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I love, I love some more coffee.
24:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
24:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.
24:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
24:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Randy, you managed to dominate two weight classes and you were the first I believe to do it, right?
24:59
[SPEAKER_02]: First win in two divisions, yeah.
25:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
25:01
[SPEAKER_02]: What is it that ran through your crazy head to fight two different weight classes?
25:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It started to sound like my mother.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And then just that that's for and then just the dominate in two weeks of the start of every division because I wasn't cutting to 200 pounds I was bigger than that.
25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I was walking around and wrestling at two 13 walking around at about two 20.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a small heavyweight by heavyweight standards the cut-off is 265 for heavy weights
25:28
[SPEAKER_01]: wasn't that when we started the sport there wasn't a cut-off you could be as big as you wanted to be so I think it's actually when I'm towards regulation they created a cap at 265 so guys started cutting brock cut you know 20 25 pounds to make 265 to fight I know
25:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Tim Silvia cut weight and these heavyweights started getting very very big and not just big guys the early days There were some big guys too.
25:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean Tony Allama in my first fight was a 300 pound Finn But he was a boxer and I took him down.
25:58
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't have any ground skills and and it was over and 40-five seconds
26:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So, there were big guys, but there were ways to operate around the big guys, the big bodies.
26:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Make the move, make the work.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were things that tend to be deficient in as mobility and finding guys big enough to push you hard enough to get really get you in shape is a challenge for those big guys.
26:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So, as they started,
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, as a sport started hybridizing and become more specialized, these heavy weights are not just big guys anymore.
26:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They can actually move, got great submission skills, good wrestling skills, good striking skills.
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: They became more formidable and more dangerous.
26:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my first loss in the sport was Josh Barnett and the heavyweight division.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a 260-pound guy with some,
26:44
[SPEAKER_01]: decent wrestling pedigree heavy hands and great submission skills.
26:49
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy is not just a big dude.
26:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He can actually move.
26:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Rico Rodriguez, my second loss in the sport right after that.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what brought me down to light heavyweight.
27:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I had two losses and one more fight in my contract.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, lose a couple of times especially nowadays you're going to get cut.
27:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's the way it is.
27:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So they asked me to fight Andre or Lovsky for that third fight on my contract and then three weeks before the show Andre broke his hand
27:22
[SPEAKER_01]: and they couldn't find a replacement.
27:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So they said, hey, Tito and Chuck are having this rhubarb, Tito's the champ, Chuck's the number one contender, but whatever reason Tito won't fight Chuck and give him his shot at the title.
27:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to strip Tito, we'll wonder if you want to come down the light heavyweight and fight Chuck for the interim championship, while we're in the process of taking the belt away from Tito.
27:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure they were thinking this guy just lost twice and they had a week division.
27:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to finally get rid of his old ass and we'll put against Andre and Andre will open because Andre was tearing everybody up back then and then we'll be done with him and Andre gets hurt.
28:00
[SPEAKER_01]: They asked me if I fight Chuck and I'm like, yeah, I'll come down and play Chuck.
28:04
[SPEAKER_01]: No problem.
28:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was pretty sure they were reasonably certain that Chuck was going to be me and it didn't go that way.
28:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I made friends with a potential that Chuck had knocked me out and I'm like, well, he might.
28:17
[SPEAKER_01]: He's good at it, but I'm going to hit him first and step in the pocket and hit him before he got a chance to hit me and that kind of kept him off balance for the entire fight in the first go around.
28:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So now they're stuck with me as the interim champ and not Chuck, which is who they wanted.
28:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to force T-O-D either by Chuck or be stripped of the title.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the only time they've ever asked me to say anything in the cage.
28:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, look, if you win this fight, we want you to call out Tito.
28:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we want to unify these titles and we want Tito to fight you if you win this.
28:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I stepped up after the fight and said, yeah, if you want this belt, you're going to have to come in here and take it.
28:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the only times I've ever done anything like that.
28:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, good for you.
28:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it worked.
29:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I ended up fighting Tito a couple months later to unify the two titles.
29:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And you won that one.
29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I won that one.
29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it was going to boil down to Russland, Tito, that is very strong.
29:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Russland pedigree used his wrestling very diligently offensively to put guys on their back and make them fight up their back.
29:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was really good at floating over him and making their life miserable.
29:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So I knew it was going to be, he was going to come down to who got that take down.
29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I let him take me down or conceded to take down, then I was going to end up on the bottom and eating his elbows and that wasn't going to be much fun.
29:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So I knew I had to outruscate.
29:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That was just a monumental part of his stream in the fight world.
29:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this was the fight in the world.
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Tim, I think coming out after 13 months off and fighting Tim was one of a few times my mom was like, what are you doing?
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Scott is huge six-foot eight.
29:59
[SPEAKER_01]: She actually came to that place.
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: She was at that one and that crowd was ridiculous that night in Ohio
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what did your mom say, like, when you just decided to... She refused to come for a while, and then we finally talked her to come into one of the show's live, because it's a different animal live, and then, you know, she's not waiting for me to call her after the show, and oh, I'm okay, mom, just a couple stitches, no big deal.
30:23
[SPEAKER_01]: She was there, she knew I was fine.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But the first one she came to was the Riko Rodriguez fight in Connecticut, and that's when the worst injuries I've sustained, I caught an elbow in the fifth round and fractured my orbit.
30:35
[SPEAKER_01]: couldn't fly home for a couple of days after that.
30:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Had to wait until things settled down and I could fly and I could stand up without you.
30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a pretty serious injury.
30:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Took me about six months to recover from that.
30:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I was probably the worst injury I sustained as a fighter.
30:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as a fighter.
30:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
30:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, let's talk about, you know, defying the gravity of age, because I think you hold the record as the oldest UFC champion in history.
31:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I might.
31:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted at 44 against him, I defended it against Gabe Gonzaga.
31:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought total was 47, but the last, I think, two years of my fight career wasn't I wasn't holding the title anymore, you know, everybody talks about oh six world championships like I do, that means I lost at at least five times and the truth is I lost at all six.
31:31
[SPEAKER_01]: championship spirit is not about winning all the time.
31:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about how you deal with the adversity of losing of those setbacks.
31:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where she real championship spirit lives in my opinion.
31:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of champions they live around that title and then they lose that title.
31:45
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just destroyed.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: We saw that with Ronda.
31:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited for that fight coming up.
31:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Her and Gina obviously we were part of Gina's process for a while once she was still fighting back in the day.
31:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm happy to see her getting the recognition.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: She deserves as being one of the first female fighters to step up in the sport, to headline an event, all that stuff happened under Scott Coker and Strikeports.
32:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, years later, Rhonda comes around and Dana gets behind her and puts her in the UFC.
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's cool that those two are matching up and finally going to get to settle that little debate.
32:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a classic matchup, the grappler and Rhonda, you know, the judo bronze medalist and submission artist versus a very formidable striker in Gina Carano.
32:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder why you have seen and take that, do that fight.
32:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, it's a great question, you know, I think Ron has been not with the company for a while after the noon has lost, she went into WWE for quite a while.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I don't think she's under contract with any more with the company consequently what are we seeing?
32:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing a lot of rhetoric come out of her about fighter pay and some of these things that I think, you know, six, seven, eight years ago, she would have never, never churped about because she was still attached to them and being paid by the company.
33:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We're getting a little different view of Rhonda and what she thinks about the UFC and how the UFC does business now going into this fight I feel like you aligned with her on that that might be a lot of fighters that do and then they don't they should Yeah, I mean to look at what's going on in the sport.
33:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean You know, they're trying to keep us in under 20% of the take from any single event Show me another professional sport in our society where that's the case.
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't one.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's they're all at least a 50% split
33:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And boxing is 65 to 75% depending on who's fighting on those cards.
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So the promoters in the sport of mixed martial arts are taking advantage of the fighters in a significant way when it comes to fighter pay.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no transparency in our sport.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Then nobody has to disclose how much money they're making off in any single event.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So how am I supposed to do as a fighter that goes shape from my fair value in the marketplace?
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: If nobody knows how much these promoters are making off any given event.
34:06
[SPEAKER_01]: there's that transparency thing.
34:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the flaw in our sport embossing the sanctioning bodies are separate entities that are independent of promoters that have stables of fighters that they want to promote and see get ranked and see get a shot at those titles.
34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: That's two separate entities.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And MMA is the same guy.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: He's setting all those rankings, determining those titles, and he has a stable of fighters that are all bidding to be one of those guys.
34:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's way too much power, and that's the flaw right there in the sport of mixed martial arts right now.
34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they don't like it, there's good paid millions of millions of dollars, and even the top tier MMA fighters are making no one near that amount.
34:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually talked to a boxing promoter and he said, you know, for, I mean, there's only few boxing fighters that really get that representation, but for my understanding from what he told me in the boxing world, it's, uh, it's ran like the mob, too.
35:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I see a lot of correlation between MMA and, you know, boxing, but it's only a few fighters that really make those big bucks similar to it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_01]: MMA.
35:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only act as a big piece of that, it was a federal legislation that was founded in 1996 when it attributed to Muhammad Ali.
35:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Because here's one of the best fighters in the history of the sport that had to fight with promoters to take care of his money.
35:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We all know the Tyson stories in Don King and all the money that went away.
35:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Some had disappeared through these promotions and these promoters.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Ali Act was designed to create transparency in the sport of boxing.
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: and hold these promoters accountable for how they were treating these fighters.
35:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And who was the commissioner in 96 when that act passed Lorenzo Furtita, the same guy that in 2001, bought the sport of mixed martial arts and the brand of the UFC.
35:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So he knew exactly what he was looking at in my opinion.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: and how to exploit through these contracts and get their per share of the money that they made.
36:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you have to give them credit.
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They had the savvy to revamp the sport, give it a new facelift, make it more acceptable in the mainstream public.
36:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And the ultimate fighter was a certainly a big piece of that.
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The reality genre was a great way to go behind the scenes and see what makes these guys tech who wants to get in the cage and punch another dude in the face.
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: The ultimate fighter was a great vehicle to expose that.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The character that all these fighters have, and then that first season of guys was a very unique guy set of guys.
36:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know if this show was going to be successful or what was going to happen.
36:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't care.
36:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to be there and get their shot.
36:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Get their opportunity to succeed in the sport, and obviously the show was a huge success.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Dominated the charts.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:55
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
36:55
[SPEAKER_02]: You're 47.
36:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And you decide now, okay, I'm going to hang my hat on them and walk away from the UFC.
37:03
[SPEAKER_02]: After you walked away, what came next?
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a big decision.
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we talked about some of those other decisions was going to leave the army and pursue getting colors to agree and was going to get married and have a kid, you know, and step up there.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were big decisions in my life.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That was another one.
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Walking away from the sport I just spent 14 years of my life.
37:23
[SPEAKER_01]: and a huge piece of who I am investing in that.
37:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the James Tony fight, you know, was a fight that I took very seriously and I think I was honored that I got the nod, I think they knew I wasn't going to try and stand around and box with James Tony, I was going to make him fight me in an MMA engagement and take him down and see how much MMA he'd learned in the four months, but that every old injury I'd ever had nagged me in that camp for some reason.
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Kelly's 10 and I had this all these different things that had happened to me over the years or rustling and fighting.
37:55
[SPEAKER_01]: All flared up in that camp and it was the first time that little internal dialogue that crazy roommate was like oh man maybe that's your body telling you it's time to retire.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm not retiring on this fight.
38:06
[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm out of retire, I'm going to go out on a real, you know, a real MMA fight, you know, fight somebody that I respect.
38:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And not that I didn't respect James Tony, but that was more of an enigma fight, you know, boxing versus MMA and all that stuff, wrapped up in that fight.
38:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I ended up deciding that Leo to Machita would be my last fight.
38:27
[SPEAKER_01]: at 46 going on 47 and and and and turn 47 before that fight happened I didn't tell many people because I knew it would take on a life of its own but it was an amazing experience Toronto you know 55,000 biggest biggest venue in crowd we'd had in the sport of mixed martial arts in North America at that time.
38:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and Leona was kind of the Rubik's Cube of Emma May.
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a unique style Blackbone GD-2, but came from a kilkish and karate background.
38:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So his footwork was completely different.
38:59
[SPEAKER_01]: The way he said everything up was just, was completely different.
39:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um, that was interesting, uh, took me a while to come to terms with that.
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, it becomes a huge piece of who you are.
39:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see this sort of military veterans as well.
39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They walk with that uniform.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: The military doesn't prepare them very well to assimilate back to civilian life, and civilian lifestyle.
39:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And so these guys flounder, they self-medicate their adrenaline seeking, athletes struggle with a lot of the same things in transition.
39:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But they got a little more barato.
39:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in the NFL.
39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's this facade that everything is great and it's part of our training certainly in the military and as athletes, it's not to show weakness, not to show vulnerability, not to ask for help.
39:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And we as males.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: in our society, or suffer from the same lie.
39:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That we're somehow weak if we show that we're emotion or any kind of vulnerability.
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So the whole thing is predicated on that.
39:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is the downfall for a lot of guys, self-medicating and adrenaline seeking.
40:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Now they've walked away, who am I?
40:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's my purpose now?
40:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that was certainly a big thing for me.
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Thankfully, both my transitions when I walked away from the uniform, I was going to college to get that degree in Russell Perrokel, in the state.
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: When I walked away from the sport of MMA, I'd already built this acting career that had already started.
40:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had, you know, the gym and the clothing line, and these other things that grew out of,
40:27
[SPEAKER_01]: My time, my, my, my brand.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my time as a fighter.
40:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had those things to focus on.
40:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't flounder.
40:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't wonder who I was.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to be that gym owner.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That, that business owner continued to chase acting jobs.
40:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Something that became passionate about.
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't have to wonder who I was and what I was doing.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I started the foundation in 07.
40:50
[SPEAKER_01]: A way for me to get back to a community that means a lot to me.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That six years I spent the uniform.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started the GI Foundation to raise awareness for these guys since 9-11 and the war on terror.
41:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They're getting messed up and Uncle Sam can't take care of all of more won't take care of all of him who knows which, but was a chance for me to raise awareness about many of these guys that have been wounded and helped them out.
41:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Put some funds in their pocket, take that stress out of their
41:22
[SPEAKER_01]: those things gave me purpose and allowed me something to focus on something competitive acting competitive.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You're reading and trying out for parts against a lot of other guys, for these roles.
41:33
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a competitive side of that and that certainly just looked through those fighters eyes, those wrestlers eyes, and I'm going to solve those problems.
41:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So your first big move, you know, as an entrepreneur as an actor right after the gym right after fighting was it extreme couture was it, uh, was it the clothing line?
41:52
[SPEAKER_02]: No, those things thankfully were already in place.
41:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They're already in the after weight.
41:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I had already built those while I was still fighting.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a good one.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, like I said, I didn't flounder, I didn't sit around like, man, what am I gonna do today?
42:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I already had a bunch of stuff built in and built up and running that required my attention.
42:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was a lot of fighters make that mistake now.
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't forward think.
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's something that I think makes us good as fighters is we're very egocentric.
42:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be a little bit selfish to be a good fighter because you're going to make sacrifices in time and energy with friends, family and loved ones.
42:29
[SPEAKER_01]: because your laser focused on solving that problem, developing the skills, and being in shape enough to go out and solve the problem.
42:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Every guy you face is a problem.
42:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we see your gym has extreme success, extreme contour here.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got, you know, the sea which you did there Joe.
42:47
[SPEAKER_02]: We got the resurgence of your clothing line with your collab with the Fliction, obviously a huge winner.
42:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And then let's talk about the movie business.
42:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, your movie star.
42:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's something I didn't see coming, but like fighting, you know, I was in two fights all through school.
43:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't one of those kids, I spent my time on a Russell and Matt, so I never had to get fights.
43:07
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, the two fights I had, wrestling, shine through and, and once that happens, nobody's going to mess with you.
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was never in trouble, and I spent, you know, it was an athlete, I was a jock, basically.
43:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been an amazing journey, frankly, and did it all backwards, but somehow it managed to turn out.
43:34
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your favorite movie that you ever started?
43:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
43:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I've gotten to play in all four of the expendables.
43:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I grew up.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: in that action era in the 80s where, you know, Willis, Schwarzenegger, and Stallone, we're all competing for box office ticket sales and all these crazy action flicks.
43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Rambo was in my home state of Washington and I hope Washington, and I was one of those kids that ran around with a stick plan army anyway.
44:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love the Rambo, the Rocky movies.
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how many raw eggs I drank as a kid, but it was a lot.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... you know because a rocky and and and everything that he did so then passed forward and now i'm getting a call from a agent and hate slice along with you to come by his office he wants to talk about this project he's he's making uh... and i'm like really all right and it was you know that's one of those meetings you're not passing up
44:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, of course, show up 10 minutes early because that's the army in me.
44:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not 10 minutes earlier, I'm already late, so, you know, slivering me in his office to talk about Expendables 1, this project that he's putting together is on Somblecast and he wants me to play Hail Caesar.
44:49
[SPEAKER_01]: which I haven't even read a script yet, so I don't even know if like Hail Caesar, that's a weird name.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of pitches me originally wrote this for Wesley, Wesley's got some issues, we can't use Wesley, so I want to use you for this character.
44:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll rewrite it a little bit, you know, want you to be this college educated guy that rants about his callflower ears and quotes Nietzsche, and I'm like, all that.
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds amazing.
45:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where you are now.
45:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And casting director was a little bit late.
45:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So she comes rushing in because she's late for this meeting with Solano.
45:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, she bumps his bookshelf coming in the door.
45:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's got action figures on all of the shelves on this bookshelf.
45:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And Brigitte Nielsen falls off the top shelf and hits the deck.
45:29
[SPEAKER_01]: As long as I do, is where were you a few years ago?
45:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, that was his ex-wife.
45:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like, where were you a few years ago?
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get a year as you.
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We just busted up Lappen.
45:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just how witty and clever and quick he is.
45:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of my favorite projects and movies to be a part of for sure.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to be successful in an industry like that, then go hang out with a guy like that that's been a top of his game for over 30, 30 plus years.
45:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Still the top of his.
45:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a profession and care about being famous.
45:59
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just where he wants to work and what he wants to do.
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an amazing writer.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously Rocky Rambo.
46:05
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is renovated.
46:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He wrote all of those.
46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: He does a great job directing.
46:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned a lot from him just sitting around in video village watching the way he operates.
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: and approaches the profession.
46:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a big one for me.
46:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like every time I put myself out there, I learn a little more, I get a little better.
46:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's been my whole life as an athlete, boxing up my emotions and putting them to the side and staying laser focused on solving the problem, you know, figuring out how to beat that guy that's standing across the mat or across the cage for me.
46:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Now they want me to walk in front of one of these things and let all that out, and I'm like, damn, I don't know if I know how to do that.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a very interesting process.
46:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I've done 75 or 76 feature films now and been involved in a few reality shows and a few scripted TV shows as well.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a really, really interesting journey since the early 2000s.
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Great little to the grape was my very first feature film.
47:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, remember that one.
47:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Jet Lee and DMX later, fight scene with DMX and with Jet Lee in the movie.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: One line, let's go check and shit.
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That was it.
47:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Brandy, any exciting projects you got coming up that we should be looking out for?
47:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a film out on Amazon right now called F Plus.
47:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a kids movie.
47:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a comedy and it was a lot of fun.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Film that a few years back and I've got one coming out at the end of May that's hitting all the AMC theaters.
47:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a horror flick.
47:34
[SPEAKER_01]: slasher flick and i'm the psycho that's running around the hacking people up so it's a fun one i really like to script because it shows flashback to why this guy's batshit crazy were most of the horror flicks you know i'm no idea why friday was the way he was but we kind of have an idea why the hunter was the way he was and i made that psycho kind of like a lot of dad was very psycho and he just kind of you know childhood trauma what's the movie
48:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, is that like the video game, as I know, is not to do the video game, but if you watch Scramble, you know, we made these booby traps and did all those kind of things that were indigenous.
48:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a way of, a form of hunting, as well, is to get a pit with pungi sticks or spikes in the bottom of it.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what a pitfall is.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's certainly a tactic that the hunter uses in the movie.
48:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful, huh?
48:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's stress.
48:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just calm.
48:31
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, over the last decade, over 2,000 people have gone missing.
48:33
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the matter?
48:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Scared of the woods?
48:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on,
49:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Where's Scott?
49:07
[SPEAKER_03]: She shouldn't have been back by now.
49:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to find him.
49:11
[SPEAKER_01]: No!
49:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We're being haunted.
49:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, watch your head.
49:27
[SPEAKER_03]: He's watching us.
49:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I love a weekend, huh?
50:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!
50:07
[SPEAKER_02]: given the length of the average fighter is now what would you recommend a young fighter think about in the early stages of fighting and what should they be investing in early on in their career?
50:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, this are valuable lessons there that I learned the hard way that first year of fighting I made more money than I had ever made my life and Uncle Sam handed me my butt.
50:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first thing I try to instill and a lot of the guys I work with is incorporating.
50:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, get an LLC, get its formal corporation, make this a business, you have a small window of opportunity to make this kind of money, you know, six or seven years, is the average lifespan.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a lot of time to make that kind of money.
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you better find a way to take care of it, going out and buying, depreciating assets, like fancy cars and crap like that, and not going to help you.
50:54
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, when you can't walk those four steps up in that cage anymore, you better hope you have taken care of that money and put it in places where it's going to continue to work for you down the road.
51:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I liked real estate.
51:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I had some rental properties.
51:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a bunch of that stuff, but there's a lot of work involved in that.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, finding these management companies that are going to take a percentage to do a lot of that legwork for you can be an important piece of that puzzle for real estate, for sure.
51:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's tough to go wrong with real estate.
51:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always going to appreciate, you know, driving a fancy new car, second you drove that up the lot, it just cut its value in half.
51:32
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... so that's not a very smart move frankly but getting a fighter to see those things is a real challenge because part of what makes us good at what we do is this kind of ego centricity or whatever happened to me we have this kind of ego centric attitude that that allows us to stay laser focused on exactly what we've trained to do and getting them to look at the big picture
51:54
[SPEAKER_01]: and recognize they have a very small window and opportunity to be successful to make this kind of money as a professional athlete is sometimes a hard message to get across.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, your transition from fighting to entrepreneurship to business mogul was seamless.
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, movies to our business mogul and you're right, you know, leveraging your brand and your public persona just paved the way perfectly for that.
52:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the thing is to be yourself.
52:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I didn't know if you had from China all I want to came to business and I got my butt handed to me a couple times.
52:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But you'd find the right people.
52:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you find the right people, you hang on to them.
52:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You had to develop new filters.
52:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody you meet doesn't always have your best agenda and best intentions.
52:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were valuable lessons I had to learn early on as an athlete, as a professional and public person.
52:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, unfortunately lawyers and contracts and all this, so the stuff became part of life.
52:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it was kind of way more of that handshake guy.
52:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's looking at me and tell you, I'm going to do something I'm going to do it.
52:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of the business world doesn't operate that way, unfortunately.
53:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to cover your butt, you have to incorporate, you have to kind of do some of these things that are outside of the comfort zone.
53:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're important pieces, not only to protect your cash from
53:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Uncle Sam and paying an exorbitant amount of the taxes of the certainly when we know where those taxes are going now That's crazy, but but recognizing that you have a short window of opportunity to make that kind of money It is a professional athlete and you better figure out where to put it so that it can work for you down the road When you can no longer compete and do the thing you're passionate about Yeah, that brings me to my next question.
53:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm and I'm hoping young fighters get to get the opportunity to watch this episode, but if there's
53:46
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a couple of major takeaways, some major life advice that you'd give a young fighter now, what would it be?
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep it simple.
53:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The world's complicated enough.
53:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you talk to guys like Tito and some of these other guys that have created these personas that they now have to live up to all the time and people think that's who they really are.
54:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not who they really are.
54:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean we saw the real Tito when he was on the ultimate fighter and the passion and compassion he had for those athletes that were on his team, not this brash guy that's talking smack all the time.
54:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But he created that persona to market himself.
54:21
[SPEAKER_01]: and all of that.
54:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So, everybody assumes that he is that edgy kind of... Well, you also sold there, so let's go inside of that.
54:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I mean, there are two wrong things there.
54:33
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, certainly guys like Dana White, who was his early manager and Chuck's early manager.
54:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He likes that kind of rhetoric.
54:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He thinks that generates heat and interest is going to help himself pay per views.
54:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a psychological aspect to the sport.
54:47
[SPEAKER_01]: If you start talking smack and trying to get under a guy's skin and irritate him and anger him, then he's not thinking about the right things he needs to be thinking about to go out and solve the problems that you pose.
54:59
[SPEAKER_01]: If you let Tito get under your skin and talk smack to the point where you're just pissed and want to smash him in the face, then he's winning.
55:06
[SPEAKER_01]: because he's psychologically beating you and you're not staying calm, focused, and calculated on the ways to actually technically beat him.
55:14
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the psychological part of the game.
55:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the business, obviously, the business side of the game, where that kind of heat sometimes brings people in that want to, you know, it's a car wreck.
55:25
[SPEAKER_01]: People want to see those.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They slow down on the freeway, so they can see what's going on, the lucky loose.
55:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's that same mentality.
55:34
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, we're ending the show today with a new segment that we've launched.
55:38
[SPEAKER_02]: You're one of the first guests on season three.
55:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's called fight to win or cut your losses and tap out.
55:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's going to be really quick.
55:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So here's the rules, Randy.
55:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give you a word, a situation or scenario.
55:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And all you have to do is instantly answer fight.
55:54
[SPEAKER_02]: or tap out.
55:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's do it.
55:56
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
55:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Trash talk a opponent.
55:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Fight to win or tap out.
56:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, fight to win.
56:02
[SPEAKER_02]: House with a bad foundation.
56:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Fight to win or tap out.
56:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Who?
56:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you got a tap out on that one.
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: The next question applies to right now.
56:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Training at 5am.
56:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely fight to win.
56:14
[SPEAKER_02]: An over-priced mansion.
56:17
[SPEAKER_02]: tap out.
56:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that about your Andy.
56:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
56:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Upon it 20 years younger than you.
56:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, fight to win.
56:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Put the old man on him.
56:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Mastering is a real thing.
56:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
56:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Interest rates drop suddenly.
56:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Inter space.
56:34
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
56:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Interest rates?
56:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, interest rates drop suddenly.
56:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Fight to inter tap out.
56:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, fight to win.
56:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go.
56:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Broken nose and round one.
56:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Fight to win.
56:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Randy Katoor, the man, the legend.
56:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being on the show today.
56:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been an absolute pleasure.
56:52
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm giddy about you being here.
56:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a dream come true for me.
56:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure for many people watching the show.
56:58
[SPEAKER_02]: They're excited to hear the real Randy Katoor story.
57:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for being on the show, Randy.
57:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, show.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate you for having me on the show.